NECRO SHOCK RADIO – Session 3.9

Time once again for some more Therapy! Got some interesting choices in the Randomizer, featuring cuts from:

::END TRANSMISSION::

Book Review: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

Philip K. Dick
Doubleday
1966

War had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn’t ‘retiring’ them, he dreamed of owning the ultimate status symbol – a live animal. Then Rick got his big assignment: to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But things were never that simple, and Rick’s life quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit.

By now, every sci-fi enthusiast should know the source material of the classic sci-fi noir film Blade Runner. Originally published in 1966, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? takes place in the near future of…well, 1992 originally, but subsequent editions have used 2021 to keep things future-y, I guess. Earth has been devastated and rendered nearly uninhabitable due to the radioactive fallout of World War Terminus, but some of us tenacious humans have remained despite mass colonization of the other planets in our solar system. One of those humans is one Rick Deckard, who lives along with his wife Iran in San Francisco, working as a bounty hunter of androids who have escaped from the Mars colonies to Earth in reaction to the slavery and psychological isolation they come across for not being human, even though they resemble humans in every facet except for that pesky “no empathy” thing. Three rather nasty ones happen to arrive seeking refuge from the slavery of being (I’ll just go ahead and say it) “more human than human”, befriends a simpleton who works as a “vet” for the android animals that the humans keep in lieu of owning a real animal (on account of them all being nearly extinct), and Deckard takes up the task of retiring these rogue androids. And then he drives into Oregon to have an existential crisis. Which is what you would do. The end.

I’m not going to spend the duration of this review discussing the differences between the book and the movie. You’re welcome. There are plenty of websites and articles that have done that kind of pedantic work, so I wouldn’t have to (might I suggest this particular one, from a YouTube series that I enjoy so very, very much?). Instead, as a stand-alone sci-fi novel–and a classic one at that–Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? hits all of the usual Philip K. Dick hallmarks: questions about life, religion, identity, all wrapped up in a flaky crust of paranoia. What fascinates me is that Dick could juggle all of these kind of heady subjects and yet manage to write a story that is relatively simple enough to read. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing juvenile about this book. He just trims the needless fat and leaves the tasty lean bits.

Overall, I found Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a really engaging story that caused me to read it all in merely a few hours, while causing me to chew on the story long after I finished it. I will say this, though: If you’re avoiding reading this because you’ve already seen the movie, so why bother?, you need to dislodge your cranium from that distinctly smelly place you’ve inserted it into and go read it. Highly recommended.

NECRO SHOCK RADIO – Session 3.8

SESSION 3.8

Featuring cuts from:

On Worship Music…

Is there an unwritten rule that says that Christian music played before the actual service begins has to be of the emo-drenched acoustic variety? Maybe playing music to put you to sleep with helps to make the worship band seem exciting by contrast. Like having a local band open up for the national touring band. Or something. Point is, listening to this gives the unintentional impression that Christians have been de-nutted, that once you give your life to the risen Savior, you must now listen to and play sominex-style troubadours. Probably why I enjoy metal so much. Metal is the music of awesome, the perfect style befitting my warrior soul. When storming the darkness on a daily basis, I’d rather have Horde’s Hellig Usvart or Frost Like Ashes’ Tophet blaring as the soundtrack, rather than wuss music. Then again, that’s just my opinion. Not a very popular one, I realize, but again…bite me…

::END TRANSMISSION::

Movie Review: EVIL DEAD (2013)

TriStar Pictures / Ghost House Pictures
2013
R

“I just don’t wanna become the devil’s bitch.”

Five twenty-something friends become holed up in a remote cabin far away from civilization. When they discover a Book of the Dead, they unwittingly summon up dormant demons patiently waiting for the chance to manifest themselves in the mortal world. They were warned not to read from the book, but now it’s too late. Now they must fight like hell to survive the night or succumb to a fate far worse than death.

In 2011, the decision was made to remake one of my all-time favorite movies ever made: Evil Dead. This news was not received very well by yours truly. An Evil Dead movie without either Sam Raimi or the great Bruce Campbell involved? This was my response:

I didn’t care if the makers were fans of the original or not. I didn’t care if they were going to go with all-practical effects instead of any kind of CGI. In my mind, there was no justifiable reason whatsoever to remake, reimagine, reboot–or whatever other buzz word they’re using nowadays–this classic in the horror genre. So, it was clear that I was not only going to be watching this whatever-it-is of Evil Dead, but I was going to take some perverse pleasure in watching the flaming reviews on this when it came out.

But then…then, I began reading the various reviews, stating that the Evil Dead remake (or whatever) was actually…not bad. Pretty good, in fact. From sources that I was expecting scathing venom from. So…maybe it was worth a watch. But, I still waited a while after it was released on DVD to give it a go. I had my principles, after all.

Anyway, what I was trying to say through all of this was, I was ready to check this out, to give it a chance to either impress me, or fill me with rancid bile. And so, I did. Trust me, I wanted to not like this Evil Dead with a passion. Like with the Night Of The Demons remake, I pressed play daring it to impress me.

Aaaaaand…*sigh* okay, I concede. This updated take on Evil Dead was actually pretty good.

The first thing I want to point out is, the story line is very much its own entity. It doesn’t just carbon copy the first one, substituting young, nubile actors who look like they were developed in a eugenics lab doing the usual shtick. Well, they are, but at least the story involves a bunch of kids gather together in the famed cabin to help one of them kick their heroin habit cold turkey*. While setting up for the stay, they of course stumble upon the Necronomicon in the basement, this time with a bit of a different look but still rather creepy cool and effective, there. It’s wrapped in what looks like black plastic and tied off with barbed wire, so obviously one of the group had to open the thing up take a gander. And all the first pages with the big, bold DO NOT OPEN THIS UP! AND IF YOU DO, DON’T READ IT OR SAY ANYTHING OUT LOUD! warnings are met with a chuckle and “pshaw” from the hipster, who proceeds to do just that, which leads to the junkie getting possessed by the Evil Dead. Junkie Girl starts exhibiting odd and erratic behavior…which everyone chalks up to the withdrawal process. Of course, things escalate when she proclaims that everyone is going to die that night, before going full-blown Regan-from-The-Exorcist on their collective butts. Next thing you know, each one of them is being mutilated and taken over by that evil force that book has conjured up, and it’s up to Junkie Girl’s brother to try and stop the thing from destroying everything. Wackiness—and an ending showdown which really dropped the ball by not including Slayer’s “Raining Blood” as the music—ensues.

All things said, I didn’t really get the feeling that this was a remake of Evil Dead; really, more of a supplemental continuation of the Evil Dead mythos, maybe? Like one of those Legends of the Evil Dead or something. Call it what you want, though, this Evil Dead was indeed a very well-made and well-executed horror flick that pulled no punches, and really went that extra mile where all other modern horror movies that make it to the cinemas nowadays would have petered out around the PG-13 mark. There were homages, yes, and you could tell that the makers of this were fans of the originals, but it remains that this Evil Dead is its own entity that surprised me pleasantly.

Mind you, the originals are the best. But with this Evil Dead, it’s worth checking out without feeling embarrassed about it.

[*= it occurs to me that, this is the second horror movie that I have watched in less than a week that involves bad things happening while trying to detox from heroin…what kind of message is that sending, I wonder?]

Movie Review: ZOMBEAVERS

Universal
2014
R

“We cannot turn against each other right now. That’s exactly what the beavers would want.”

A group of college kids staying at a riverside cabin are menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers. A weekend of sex and debauchery soon turns gruesome as the beavers close in on the kids. Riding the line between scary, sey and funy, the kids are soon fighting for their lives in a desperate attempt to fend off the hoard of beavers that attack them in and around their cabin.

Yep. This is a movie called Zombeavers. Yep, it’s about zombie beavers. And yep, it’s just as mindless as you would think a movie entitled “Zombeavers” would be. How mindless, you ask? Well…think a Troma movie as filtered through a Full Moon Productions flick.

So, we start this little cheesefest with a couple of truck drivers loosing a canister of something iridescent green and liquid-y after hitting a deer, immediately contaminating a dam of beavers. We then join three young twenty-something girls driving out to a lakeside cabin in a remote rural community to have some Girls Only time away from their boyfriends. Which lasts about a few hours, when said boyfriends show up unannounced. Your standard Young Adults In Remote Lake House shenanigans ensue, until one of the now-zombified beavers crash the party. They think they’ve taken care of the thing, when the next day they’re swarmed by a whatever-the-word-for-a-group-of-beavers-is, which they narrowly escape by chucking the lap dog of one of the girls at them for a distraction, but not after one of them gets their leg gnawed off. Your standard Night of the Living Dead Beavers standoff happens, when they discover that anyone that was bitten became a living human beaver, complete with a flat tail and giant buck teeth. Oh, and hack ’em up all you want, they’re not dying. Only one survives the night and makes it out alive and not infected…only to be run down by the two truck drivers from the beginning of the flick. Ah, the circle of stupid…

Look, I’ll be blunt about this: Zombeavers is the kind of movie that sets out to revel in its B-Horror Movie badness, and does so with gusto. Mindlessly entertaining, not at all painful to watch, and you can tell they put some loving effort into the process of making this. Not too many people will get this, but I do, and that’s what matters. Check this one out for a good Bad Movie Night selection with your friends some time.

Movie Review: INNER DEMONS

IFC Midnight
2014
NR

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one: A film crew follows around and films a documentary-style film about a kid who may or may not be possessed by a demon. Said film crew is skeptical, even when weird things start happening. Wackiness then ensues, but the audience has lost interest from suffering through all the same tropes by that time, rendering the final big cliché ending kind of a wet splat more than a bang.

Welcome to the movie Inner Demons. Though not technically a “found footage” movie, as there was not crawl or text at the beginning stating that the footage was found and then put together like every other found footage movie since The Blair Witch Project has done. Instead, we have the raw footage of a documentary-style television show that is modeled after the A&E show Intervention, setting up and filming the life of a young drug addict named Carson, a former straight-A student who’s been using heroin (smack, dope, mud, horse, junk) since she’s started attending a prestigious Catholic high school. While opposed to the idea at first, she then agrees to be put into a rehab clinic, where the show’s film crew continue to track the process. The thing is, the cleaner Carson gets, the worse she’s actually getting. She’s displaying very erattic behavior, which is not helped by her claim that she was taking the drugs to sedate a demon that has possessed her. And it seems that the security cameras are picking up some weird supernatural shenanigans, but only when she’s alone. The head of the clinic decides to have Carson admitted into psychiatric care, to which the documentary film crew thinks is kind of a bad idea for the ratings of the show. Meanwhile, one of the film crew has taken a shine to Carson, believing her claim that things may be more than they seem…especially after she bites his fingers after she tries to seduce him with those all-black eyes of hers. Carson is expelled from the clinic after Altruistic Camera Boy gives her a dose of heroin () to sedate the alleged demon inside of her; Altruistic Camera Boy discovers that her “friends” at the Catholic school made Carson go through a prank Satanic ritual, which seems to be where she got that there demon, named Molock or something thereabouts (“Mollusk”? The great Demon of Shellfish?)

Overall, Inner Demons wasn’t one of the worst (for lack of a better label) found footage style movie I’ve watched. As a matter of fact, it was rather watchable. Mildly entertaining, if you will. On the good side, the movie doesn’t rely on a bunch of cheep jump scares (though there were a couple I groaned at), and does build up some tension. I think at this point that the whole exorcism angle in modern horror movies have over-saturated the market to the point where hardly anyone is going to be shocked at the big reveal. Or the build-up. Because they kind of go the opposite route of another documentary-style horror flick you may have heard of, called The Last Exorcism, in that they make no big secret that Carson is, in fact, possessed pretty much from the start, mostly by having the camera start acting weird whenever Carson’s little spirit hitch-hiker exerts itself. Usually that means that you’re using Radio Shack brand video tape. Anyway, while the first two-thirds of the movie was decent, the last part devolves into your typical ho-hum slasher ending, with some jarringly unconvincing CGI effects.

All together, Inner Demons gets a solid “meh.” The first part was relatively fun to watch unfurl, the actors were above average (which is good for this kind of movie), but it’s nothing you’ve never seen before. As a matter of fact, I would wager this is exactly something you’ve seen before. Only it didn’t suck as bad as I would have thought. One watch and I’m done.