Blood on the Dance Floor made a horror video!

Not only have Dahvie and Jayy made a mini horror movie for their new song 'Damaged", but they've made it as an extreme horror movie with some lovely torture at the end too. Bloody brilliant! This'll keep the haters busy for a while!

From some of things Dahvie Vanity has been saying on Twitter, and knowing his taste in movies, I had a feeling that he would do something like this eventually. It was still a nice surprise to see it actually happen though.

Directed by Rob Zombie's cinematographer Patrick Fogerty, "Damaged" boasts some impressively mean-spirited gore which is above and beyond what you'd normally see in a music video. The CGI fire and blood splatter effects give away that "Damaged" isn't a big-budget production, and it's a bit tongue-in-cheek (or tongue-in-a-pair-of-forceps to be precise), but posting it on YouTube is bound to be controversial.

Although a more cohesive storyline would have sorted out the slight incongruity between the style of the song itself and the visuals, the practical effects are used well, and the message that the boys want to get across is pretty clear. The "Bad Blood" album is very much Blood on the Dance Floor's love letter to their critics, and their fans will love this!

I don't expect "Damaged" to be available on YouTube for long until some prude or hater flags it, so watch it while you can!

Also check out Blood on the Dance Floor's official website at www.ilovebotdf.com.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2013 is coming!

So far I've only picked three favourites (out of four), but it's still early days yet.


1. Zlata Ognevich - Gravity (Ukraine)



Fantastic, but she needs to get rid of her overloud backing singers.


2. Emmelie De Forest - Only Teardrops (Denmark)



A mixture of Shakira and The Cranberries perhaps?


3. Danica Muscat - Fantasy (Malta)



I'm not completely sold on this, but she's pretty like Martine McCutcheon used to be.


4. Alyona Lanskaya - Rhythm of Love (Belarus)



Catchy, very catchy. Probably won't win though.


Have you seen or heard anything that you like?

The Devil's Carnival (2012)

"Lost souls enter The Devil's Carnival where they are each faced with the sins they committed in life."

Yeah, I know "The Devil's Carnival" is a musical and isn't my kind of thing at all, but I was challenged by the Real Queen of Horror to watch it. Once I discovered that it had the beautiful Emilie Autumn (one of my favourite musicians from the heyday of MySpace) and Briana Evigan in it, the idea didn't seem so bad. Challenge accepted!

Unfortunately, apart from providing the opportunity to lust over Emilie Autumn in a very small acting role as Painted Doll, the movie doesn't have a lot going for it.

It all looks very nice, but the three Aesop's Fables underneath aren't used to convey exactly the same moral messages as they were originally intended to. Moral messages are redundant if the recipients are already in Hell, but that little detail never bothered the Amicus anthologies much so I'm willing to make some allowances. The songs which unnecessarily repeat the same tales again are absolutely dreadful though.

"The Dog and his Meat" or "The Dog and her Shadow" doesn't quite match the original apart from being about greed. Let's be brutally honest here, Briana Evigan is far from being a dog! It's nice to see her get topless for a split second although it would be better if she turned round while being whipped. Boobs and blood are sadly lacking throughout.

The second story comes closest to "The Frog and the Scorpion" by showing the danger of trusting someone who is unable to control his nature, but it's still a bit of a stretch. Jessica Lowndes looks amazing in her '50s-style green dress, but her character, Tamara, is the one who can't change her nature to trust people too easily rather than the Scorpion (Marc Senter) who is nothing but a liar.

I can't even place the third story, "The Devil and his Due", among Aesop's Fables, but it's been many years since I last looked at them (plus there are over 650 of the buggers anyway). It could be one of Aesop's Fables or it might possibly be a conflation of any other fable with a Faustian theme. The punchline seems to be from "The Monkey's Paw", but it could even be from one of the fairytales by the Brothers Grimm. Whatever the case, Sean Patrick Flanery is okay in it but not exceptional.

The Devil or Lucifer, played by Terrance Zdunich, is the best of a bad lot. Having a slightly similar appearance to the late Andy Hallett from "Angel" apart from the green is no indication of talent though. Lucifer is no Lorne, and his sing-talking is worse than Ke$ha's.

As with all musicals, I can't help but feel that 'The Devil's Carnival" would've been a lot better without the music. The lyrics of most of the songs are hard to decipher and some don't fit the tone of the movie whatsoever. I doubt that they took more than five minutes to compose, and if they did, they were meant for something else. If you've never seen a musical like this before, just imagine a really crap pop video of a song you've never heard before which has been coupled with burlesque images that don't match the lyrics, then multiply it by twelve, take away the number you first thought of, and try to lick your own elbow.

Even though it's short, the film exceeds in self-congratulatory padding to show off the make-up, sets and costumes. Mercifully, this does limit the number of songs involved but still allows the ones that do exist to be unintelligible and boring. At least there are some pretty girls in bikinis to ogle.

It's no great surprise that "The Devil's Carnival" is from the same director (Darren Lynn Bousman) and writer (Terrance Zdunich) as the equally horrible "Repo! The Genetic Opera" (2008). What does amaze me is that anybody likes this kind of thing or that it has any commercial value outside of a very small niche. Netflix subscribers beware!

For me, "The Devil's Carnival" was 55 minutes of absolute torture compounded by the fact that I also spotted the loathsome Hannah Minx from YouTube as an extra. Yeah, she's pretty and everything, but why have such a talentless waste of space in a movie? Oh, because she has enormous boobs, obviously. Gah! You have to laugh that she's wrongly credited as "Hannah Jinx" instead of her YouTube moniker or real name. Aw, how sad.

After that segue, I'll end this review with an ungrammatical YouTube comment which sums things up almost perfectly: "It's just a bad musical with corny songs, corny dancing with a bunch of girls walking around with their tits hanging out."

Zena, if you truly enjoyed this, what the Hell is wrong with you?

Next!

Music for Hallowe'en - part 2 - We're Having a Party!

Even though it won't be Hallowe'en until Wednesday, I know that a lot of people are too impatient and will be having their Hallowe'en parties this weekend.

Here are some more songs to get you in the mood.


1. Igor's Night Off - We're Having a Party!



The quintessential Hallowe'en party record. Annie Nightingale used to play this on Radio 1 every time her Sunday show fell on Hallowe'en.


2. Aural Vampire - Freeeeze!!



Everyone knows "Darkwave Surfer", but I'm sure you'd rather see the pretty girl all vampired-up rather than watch a lyrics video.


3. Jennifer Rush - I See a Shadow (Not a Fantasy)



When I first heard this, it made me think of vampires. I have no idea if it really is supposed to be about vampires though.


4. Aqua - Halloween



There's a better video here where some girls do an amazing job of miming to the song. It's a shame that Aqua never made an official video for it themselves.


5. And One - Traumfrau



Their video for "Sometimes" is far creepier, but I thought you'd enjoy this one more.

Music for Hallowe'en - part 1 - Blood on the Dance Floor

Since all my recent movie reviews have been turning this blog into a poor man's version of the IMDb, I thought I'd break things up a bit with an occasional series of music videos. Having been given a shoutout on JJAMZ official Facebook page after mentioning their "Heartbeat" video, it has inspired me to write about other bands who I've discovered during my various internet surfing sprees.

I've only just heard about "Blood on the Dance Floor". I'm not sure what to make of them yet, but I thought their latest song was appropriate for the Hallowe'en season - plus, of course, the band name has "blood" in it.

Maybe the video doesn't really count as horror even though the lead singer, Dahvie Vanity, is quite horrible to look at unless you are into "scene" or "emos" or whatever the hell they are, but I kind of like the song. It's nothing amazing musically, but it's okay for a pop song, and not what I was expecting the band to sound like. At least it's not some nasty heavy metal crap which every other stereotypical horror fan seems to be into.

Apparently, "Blood on the Dance Floor" have attracted a lot of online hate due to various allegations against Dahvie Vanity, but I couldn't really care less about any of that drama. As far as I can tell, there isn't any truth to any of the rumours, and most of the insults flying around seem to be fuelled by jealousy.

"You're attractive, little witch, you're beautiful."

I don't know who Lady Nogrady is other than being the pretty girl in the video, but some people say that she was in a movie called "Poe". I can't find any further details about it, although I assume that it was about Edgar Allan Poe. That's good enough for me.

Part of me thinks that "Blood on the Dance Floor" are some kind of joke act rather a bunch of serious musicians, but the same was said of "Aqua" and look how well they did.

Ivi Adamou won the Eurovision Song Contest!

Actually, she didn't but she should have. Cyprus came joint sixteenth with Ukraine. Either the votes were rigged or people were stupid and voted for the scruffy Swedish baglady trying to swat invisible flies in a wind storm instead.

Here are the results of the top four and their points:

1	Sweden	372
2	Russia	259
3	Serbia	214
4	Azerbaijan	150

Disgusting, wasn't it? It's not that I've got anything against Sweden but they had far from the best song in the competition. The other acts might as well have not turned up especially the predictably depressing dirge from Serbia or the Albanian girl with the acne scars and ball of rope on her head who screamed for most of her three minutes.

When a joke entry like the old Russian grannies (who presumably have all been stacked inside each other now that the show is over) gets almost four times the points of a catchy pop song such as "La La Love", it's time to never watch that Eurovision crap again.

I've been watching the show every year since I was a small child but it pissed me off way too much this time. Even Mr Lordi turning up in his full monster costume and make-up to slowly give the results of the Finnish voting couldn't redeem things.

So, you'll be glad to read that I will never waste another week of my blog on this musical horror. Normal service, including horror movie reviews, will recommence in a few days (once I adjust to the unbearable heat and humidity).

For now, I will leave you with a beautiful picture of Ivi Adamou who, unlike the "winner" of the Eurovision Song Contest who we'll never hear of again, is still thanking all her supporters and fans on Facebook and Twitter.

She's a classic beauty and pure class all the way.

Eurovision Song Contest 2012 - Grand Final

The results of the second semi-final are now in so, coupled with the winners of the first semi-final, here is the line up for the not-so-grand final on Saturday.

I've highlighted the ones I like in red. We will see if I managed to predict the top four.

01	United Kingdom	Engelbert Humperdinck	Love Will Set You Free
02	Hungary	Compact Disco	Sound Of Our Hearts
03	Albania	Rona Nishliu	Suus
04	Lithuania	Donny Montell	Love Is Blind
05	Bosnia & Herzegovina	Maya Sar	Korake Ti Znam
06	Russia	Buranovskiye Babushki	Party For Everybody
07	Iceland	Greta Salóme & Jónsi	Never Forget
08	Cyprus	Ivi Adamou	La La Love
09	France	Anggun	Echo (You And I)
10	Italy	Nina Zill	L'Amore È Femmina (Out Of Love)
11	Estonia	Ott Lepland	Kuula
12	Norway	Tooji	Stay
13	Azerbaijan	Sabina Babayeva	When The Music Dies
14	Romania	Mandinga	Zaleilah
15	Denmark	Soluna Samay	Should've Known Better
16	Greece	Eleftheria Eleftheriou	Aphrodisiac
17	Sweden	Loreen	Euphoria
18	Turkey	Can Bonomo	Love Me Back
19	Spain	Pastora Soler	Quédate Conmigo (Stay With Me)
20	Germany	Roman Lob	Standing Still
21	Malta	Kurt Calleja	This Is The Night
22	F.Y.R. Macedonia	Kaliopi	Crno I Belo
23	Ireland	Jedward	Waterline
24	Serbia	Željko Joksimović	Nije Ljubav Stvar
25	Ukraine	Gaitana	Be My Guest
26	Moldova	Pasha Parfeny	Lăutar

Unfortunately, the results of the Eurovision Song Contest are never based on the quality of the music. It will be the usual shenanigans with all the European countries voting for their political allies and neighbours so absolutely anything could happen.

The Grand Final starts on Saturday, May 26th at 8pm (GMT) and ends around 11.15pm. If you don't have access to the BBC, you can watch the whole thing live online at the Eurovision website (presumably by using the Octoshape plugin yet again) or on the official YouTube channel later on.

Of course, if you have no desire to make this your appointment television for the weekend, you can always watch the playlist of all 42 contestants (below) and save yourself from having to listen to Graham Norton babbling and cackling.



They didn't think it through really, did they? Now that we all have the internet, there's no reason to watch what was once Europe's most highly viewed show on TV ever again.

Who do you think will win? More to the point, do you even care?

Ivi Adamou is through to the Eurovision final!

Ivi Adamou flew through the semi-final (as I knew she would), but she still has to go on and win the Eurovision Song Contest to make me truly happy for five minutes.

Hopefully, once she becomes world famous, she can give up singing and replace her lookalike, Liv Tyler, in movies. She already has more facial expressions.

Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Semi-Final (1)

The first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest is tomorrow night. As usual, it's mostly a load of crap.

I've already written about her on here but Ivi Adamou (representing Cyprus) is the clear winner of not only this semi-final but the entire Eurovision Song Contest itself. She has to be. I've decided. It must be so.



Obviously, Russia don't want to win. I wouldn't be suprised if one of their old grandmothers drops dead on stage. It would be hilariously tragic though.



Thus, even Jedward (representing Ireland) might stand a chance this year. At least they look the part.



It's going to be interesting to see what other musical dreck goes through to the final just for padding.

Crispin Glover's Ben Video from Willard (2003)

"A young man with an unusual connection with rats, uses them at his own sociopathic will."

This is an extra on the DVD and at the end of the VHS version after the film itself.

Even though it's a remake, I think Crispin Glover did a great job and I like it more than the 1971 original. This cover of Michael Jackson's "Ben" is pretty good too.

Jesus wept more

I knew something like this was inevitable.

Yesterday, Michael McLaughlin (AKA behtbeht) sent me a link through Twitter to his parody video and so I'm posting it on here for other cat lovers to enjoy. Actually I'm not sure "enjoy" is the right word but it is funny (and creepy!). It also hits a bit too close to home in my case. :)

Jesus wept again

It's a bit better than "Friday" but it doesn't make me happy.

In fact, this is even more annoying than when she was just a spoiled rich kid who got her parents to pay for somebody to create a song for her to begin with (allegedly).

I've got nothing personal against Rebecca Black but I would like to know how she managed to acquire the YouTube account name "rebecca" so easily. You would think that would have gone a long time ago. It's as mysterious as the mole which has disappeared from her face.

I'm also curious about who set up her official website and all the other social media outlets which have suddenly appeared overnight and are all professionally branded.

Ever feel duped? I think there's a record company's PR team behind this somewhere that's forcing a female version of Justin Bieber on us. Yes, I do realise the irony of the last part of what I just wrote there.

I'm so excited about the inevitable parody, "My Breath Mint". How about you?

"This is my Moomin... my Moomin..."

Sweeney Todd (2007)

Probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen. There are no similarities to the "real" story of Sweeney Todd whatsoever other than the names and locations. This is the crappy Stephen Sondheim reworking of the urban legend with love stories and a revenge motif mixed in.

It has awful singing, terrible "music", very poor acting (when there is any acting), and it all looks horrible.

I hate musicals anyway, but this has the kind of music that wouldn't be out of place in the improv singing section of "Whose Line is it Anyway?". It's that bad! It's extremely amateur and seems like it was knocked together in about 30 seconds. There are no memorable songs, and the lines might as well have been spoken.

The dodgy "cockney" accents make a lot of the words of the songs unintelligible especially when the notes are drawn out. Thus, "Sweeney Todd" is a film that definitely needs subtitles.

As for the gore that some people rave about, well, I've seen better in a low budget independent horror film than in this fiasco. It's not quite as cartoonish as "Kill Bill" but it's still completely unrealistic. I wish that I could give this an even lower mark than I have (...er, yeah... nothing!). It sucks! Tim Burton should be ashamed of himself.