There isn’t enough witty banter in the world to lead you into this one, and besides that if one more plot element got introduced, I think you’d turn on me.

We’re talking The Dead Matter, a film by Midnight Syndicate, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with. Their music is awesome, and nobody disputes that. This movie has gotten glowing reviews all over the place, but unfortunately I can’t quite echo those sentiments, though I can say this is a better movie than some I’ve watched recently (I’m looking at you, Inheritance.) I had the pleasure of meeting the writer, Ed Douglas at the Cinema Wasteland convention back in April, and I can say with certainty that he is one highly creative dude. This movie proves that with extra to spare.

I’m going to break this down as best I could follow it. There are, that I counted, at least 4 different plotlines flowing through this mother, and I’m going to outline them here:

1. There is an amulet that allows the wearer to control the dead, and it’s in the hands of an evil vampire who wants the zombie hordes to be his army. Vampire hunters are trying to get it away from him and into the sacred woods of Ohio to dispel the evil.

2. A girl is in extreme mourning over her brother, and will resort to desperate measures to get him back, including witchcraft and the use of any amulets she happens to find in the sacred woods of Ohio.

3. War has broken out in the vampire community between those who cling to the old ways, and those who embrace change and the modern world. The ringleader of the modern vampires and the old school vampire go back and forth about the merits of real blood vs. synthetic vampire drugs.

4.Scientists are developing a weight loss drug that has an unfortunate side effect: Vampirism. Mayhem ensues.

All of these plot lines crash around the amulet, and left me wanting.

It’s like eating a casserole that’s got too much going on; it’s enjoyable, you’ll eat it without a problem, but there’s something that’s just not right about it. Take out the extras, and give me one solid dish. Any one of those stories would have been amazing. Sadly, mixing them all together, no matter how skillfully they segue into one another, just didn’t work. Maybe I’m a simple woman, I like chocolate chip cookies, but not chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and coconut; maybe this one was too sophisticated for me. But I’d rather watch vampires duke it out with hunters for the fate of humanity, or a girl getting her just desserts for not letting the dead rest, or even the drug. I love the drug plotline, and that was the thinnest one of them all. I leave out the vampire war plotline simply because I’m a little burnt out on the old fangsters. Maybe if the acting, while not lacking in star power, I mean, Tom Savini, Andrew Divoff, and Jason Carter are awesome, but the surrounding characters gave them nothing to play with. Gretchen, the mourning girl, had one of those annoying soft squeaky voices and looked almost bored the whole time.

The saving grace for this movie is it’s technical side. The movie is absolutely beautiful. Lighting, music, sets, shots, editing…this sumbish is sharp. You can tell how much love the filmmakers have for the genre from the opening shot. The special effects were largely practical and were spot on. Vampires ripping peoples gutsacks open, zombies falling apart all over the place, fridges full of meat coming to life and wiggling all over, too many dead bodies to count, realistic fighting scenes… its good stuff! If the stories had been given more room to grow, and I know this is a remake, but take out one or two elements here, and perhaps I’d be singing a different tune. I could see each of those plots as a Creepshow-style anthology series, wrap each one around the amulet or whatever you need to do, but tell the whole story, don’t just give me this, oh and then this too, then that, oh, and we can’t forget that! By the time it was over, I was scratching my head, and having to watch it again only to not really get any of my questions answered.

At any rate, you have to watch it at least once, if nothing for the scene where the amulet has attached itself to Gretchen’s chest and she makes her friend’s hair attack her, because hair is dead except for the root. I have to give major credit to Ed and the rest of the Midnight Syndicate folks who made this movie independently and gave us something original to gnaw on for a while.

Leftover-fu amulet-fu stake-fu séance-fu zombie-fu pharmaceutical-fu neck chomping gut stomping hair and nail attacks sacred Ohio woods-fu vampire war	8 BLOOD 8 quarts of the red stuff 0 BREASTS It was such a blur I can’t remember. 3 BEASTS Andrew Divoff and Tom Savini vampires, and Gretchen with the amulets 2.5 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “The Dead Matter”

Texas Chainsaw Halloween Hootenanny October 28th. Our friends at Scott Ford’s Drive-in will be hosting a super 8mm of Texas Chainsaw in St. Louis, MO. You can meet Grandpa from the original TCM! Visit http://www.scottfordsdriveingraphics.com/ for more info and remember the saw is family.

Tiger here — Well, for some dang reason, the titular ginger and the geek of Ginger and the Geek axed me to do an audio review o’er on their Listenin’ Show (AKA “podcast”).

If yer so inclined, you can listen to my audio review of Food of the Gods (’bout seven minutes) all on its own. Or, if you need help fallin’ asleep, you can listen to the full Ginger and the Geek episode (Lordy, ’bout 60 minutes).

I can’t says how much they spent on bribin’ my gov’ment overlords at the base to let this happen, but I imagine it’ll be a boring Christmas this year. Here’s a tip: paper airplanes: cheap, fun, pointy.

Enjoy. I think they worked out some kinda deal to torture feature me at least once a month.

1980’s “alligator” might just do for pool parties what Jaws did for swimming at the beach as a giant mutant alligator terrorizing the sewers and streets of Chicago. Robert Forester stars as detective David Madison, a  former hair club member with a nasty habit of getting his partners killed. He’s called in to investigate why some pets have suddenly gone missing and random body parts are clogging up the sewers. Turns out, a flushed baby gator grew to the size of a Eldorado while snacking on hormone injected canines and is now moving up the food chain. Side effects also include insatiable hunger, dry mouth and an overall improved batting average.

David heads down into the sewer to check out the disappearance of a sanitation worker and that’s where he runs into the beefy reptile. His new partner is quickly made into a giant gator chew toy proving that David goes through partners faster than red shirts guys on Star Trek episodes. Back at the precinct, nobody believes the detective’s story and some even suspect that he might be a serial killer but a snooping reporter gets some glamour photos of the giant lizard right before getting killed.

The city gets gator fever and the mayor orders a bunch of police officers to bang on trash can lids like rejects from a Stomp recital to scare it out of hiding. The gator’s a no show since he’s been sunbathing in a backyard pool… relaxing, drinking margaritas, and eating the occasional kid dressed up as a pirate. Meanwhile, David has been making night moves on the local lizard queen (Robin Riker), a scientist who specializes in reptilian behavior and how to brutally reject guys at pickup bars. She’s immediately attracted to David’s receding hairline and his sweat stained t-shirts which leads to a late night of love making and watching Chip re-runs.

David discovers the laboratory responsible for making the mega-gator food, but the CEO is best buddy with the mayor, so he just ends up getting fired instead. Left with some free time David makes the sign of the two horned platypus again with Marisa, while the gator heads out for another kiling spree smashing up cop cars and tail spanking rich white people around like a frat hazing.

The mayor decides to hire a safari hunter to track the gator down in the streets who also enlists the help of some local gangsters as guides. They end up finding a big pile of gator poop right before a gator ninja sneak attacks them from behind. Another inner city gator drive-by.

With the police in hot pursuit, it escapes into a nearby lake where some cops in speed boats do some stunt jumps off it’s back and a cop gets his legs chewed off. It’s probably the worse boat show ever. David is put back on the case and he corners the reptile back in the sewer. Using some spare dynamite he ignites the methane in the tunnels just before barely escaping when the “where’s the beef lady” parks on the escape tunnel. Sure he blew up 20 square blocks, but at least the gator is dead….and smelling delicious.

Somewhere in heaven Steve Erwin sheds a tear.

Barry Goodall says “Alligator” is a bloody good time, just remember to never flush your pets down the sewers or you could end up with a giant man-eating alligator…or even worse, mutant ninjas turtles and a kung-fu rat.

gator wrestlin’ multiple severed arm multiple severed leg dead dogs with gigantis disease improv stomp garage band. alligator hunter sorta like crocodile hunter alligator poop pirate pool parties alligator drive-bys gator jumping stunt spectactors boat and car crash and burn gator tail baseball	9 BLOOD Multiple severed body parts and gator chomping with splatter. 3 BREASTS talked of often but never actually seen..sorta like bigfoot. 10 BEASTS A sleazy guy in a hawaiin shirt and one 30 ft. mega-gator. 8.3 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “Alligator”

Bloodtide, AKA Demon Island, AKA James Earl Jones Needed a New Water Heater, is pretty much The Creature From the Black Lagoon’s Greek Holiday. An American tourist, played by Martin “Sweep the Leg” Kove of Karate Kid fame, goes looking for his lost sister in the Greek isles. What’s the worst that could happen?

The film actually starts all the way back in ancient Greece, when Larry King was just learning to shave, and the folks on the island are in the middle of a virgin sacrifice. And no, they ain’t tossing her to Gene Simmons, but rather some kinda critter in the water.

Fast-forward to the always-whacky 1980s, and Kove, with bikini-clad wife in tow, is island hoping around Greece looking for his estranged sister, who musta not gone to my high school, because she is a virgin. Kove finds a Greek island where throwing cats is a type of greeting and Cousin Balki is nowhere to be found. Jose Ferrer (the Emperor in Dune) runs the show, and he subjects Kove and his wife to the island’s clumsiest waiter, in hopes of scaring them off.

But Kove will not be turned away by any waiter, no matter how clumsy (as long as he ain’t trained by Mr. Miyagi, I s’pose). Kove finds his sister, who splits her days between hanging with island’s nuns and a very drunk James Earl Jones—and at this point in the film, one wishes they were as drunk as JEJ. It would only improve things. But JEJ, being a talented actor, is not content to just sit around and drink, nah, he quotes Shakespeare. A lot. Character depth: he has it.

Why is JEJ on the island? It ain’t the cat throwing or Jose Ferrer’s mustache keeping him there. Treasure. He has found a sealed door in an underwater cave. Because, nothing bad could be behind a bricked up door in a secret, underwater cave on a secluded island.

After JEJ’s Shakespeare filled demolition, an eerie mist flows out of the cave. No big deal, right? Wrong. Something nasty was hidden in that cave, and it wasn’t the Little Mermaid. What hath Darth Vader wrought?

Speaking of mermaids, we’re treated to a “beach day” scene with blondes in bikinis. Thank you for the distraction, Movie. The high point of this scene involves melons, no, not the kind in the ladies’ bikini tops—watermelons. JEJ demonstrates the correct way to prepare said melon: “You don’t cut watermelon with a knife!” he says, before punching the doomed melon open like it was an Ewok’s head.

While all this melon punching is going on, Kove’s sister begins to lose it. She has been working on restoring an old church painting of a guy fighting a monster, and keeps finding older versions under each layer. The first new layer is a guy fighting some kind of fish monster, but the next layer, shows an anatomically correct fish man attacking a woman—and let’s just say he is “standing tall” in the painting.

Forty-two minutes into the movie, give or take, we get our first kill and it is very Jaws-like. We also see our monster—which looks like a sea horse man. And it ain’t the last kill either. The bodies start piling up all over the island, and only the sacrifice of a virgin can quell the beast’s hunger. Kove won’t stand for such a thing, and neither will JEJ. But, the most terrifying part of the film is yet to come: Kove and his sister—his SISTER—share a rather passionate, touchy-feely kiss. This marks yet another JEJ film where the relationship ‘tween a brother and sister is a bit, to use the Facebook jargon, “Complicated.”

The first 40+ minutes of the film are rough, but JEJ’s over-the-top, drunken Shakespeare scenes are amusing (as is the watermelon punching scene). The monster is pretty creepy, even though you don’t see it too much, and the use of a real Greek island makes for a great location.

But the real gem here is the beach aerobic scene with one of the leading ladies. A drinking game could improve this film: take a drink whenever JEJ quotes Shakespeare, and forsooth, you’ll be in the same mindset as his character forthwith.

Cat Throwing Clumsy Waiters Shakespeare Quoting Jaws Shots Blondes in Bikinis Beach Aerobics Virgin Sacrifices Watermelon Punching Floating Feet Rope Used as a Belt Naughty Monster Paintings Awkward Brother-Sister Kissing Water Monsters Blood in the Water	3 BLOOD It takes awhile for the blood to show up, but when it does, there is plenty of it. 2 BREASTS Sadly, bikini tops cover the only breasts in the film. 3 BEASTS Bloodtide’s beastie takes its time showing up, but it is one of the more unique movie monsters, even though it looks like a giant sea horse with an overactive libido. 3.0 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for “Bloodtide”