Cool Thing: Jenny Hanivers!

Theme: Sunk Costs - Jenny Haniver

"Ayy lmao" - J. Haniver

In the 16th Century strange creatures from the deep began to circulate, doubtless portending the rise of Cthulhu from his house in sunken Rl'yeh. Some were dubbed mermaids, others monk-fishes or sea-devils. WAS this a newfound cryptid, like El Chupacabra, the fabled goat-sucker of Old Méjico, or Consuelo Delores Marìa Xōchītl Velasquez, the contemporary donkey-sucker of contemporary Méjico?

At frist i was liek

But then

I lol'd.

NO!!! For instead they were elaborately carved from the desiccated carcasses of skates and rays, granting them the skeletal appearance of a Wicked star. Eat a sandwich, Ariana!

Your friend and mine, Salvador Dalí, poses with Ms Haniver.

Although Jenny Hanivers are technically fake and gay, at least they were creative, and becalmed sailors can't have had much else to do besides say arr and go insane. Bring back Jenny Hanivers!

"I can be yuor angle or yuor devil" - J. Haniver

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: DaDa!

The album cover being a modified detail from Dalí's Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire is a return tribute to Dalí, who was a major Coop fan and declared his act "musical surrealism". Dalí made a First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain, the story of which is the best thing you'll read all year.

Everyone knows Alice Cooper for his pioneering theatrical stage show and his slew of classic anthems from "Eighteen" to "Elected" to "Poison", but the thing that really stabs you in the neck as you delve into the Cooper catalogue is how eclectic it all is, like a Ween album strung out over half a dozen decades. The first two albums are as uncommercial as it gets, weird psychedelia with odd melodic gems jutting out randomly like teeth out of a Briton's gums. Then there's the era of unimpeachable classics from Love it to Death through Billion Dollar Babies or even Welcome to my Nightmare (depending on how charitably you view Muscle of Love), but even this hit-making hard rock era has its oddities like the dark jazzy atmospherics of "Blue Turk" or the James-Bond-meets-King-Crimson pastiche of "Halo of Flies". Then you've got disco parodies and showtunes on Goes to Hell, sci-fi new wave on Flush the Fashion, hair metal, industrial and more. For every wild left-turn that crashes in flames, there's one that pays off in spades, but by far the oddest and greatest Alice album is one he doesn't even remember writing or recording at all. Just as Bowie's cocaine album (Station to Station) was his best and bleakest, so too was the Coop's. Now I'm not saying you should dabble in white powder for the sake of a tune. I mean, fuck it, Minor Threat coined straight edge and their Complete Discography is one of the few punk discs that holds up after half a spin. But just as LSD seems to inevitably lead to inane surrealism and heroin to insomniac self-pity, cocaine seems to have a distinctly dark and empty energy you wouldn't guess from something that has adults bouncing off the walls like kids on Halloween candy.

Not that DaDa doesn't have laughs - "I Love America" is almost tryhard in its comic aspirations, though redeemed by the fact Cooper actually meant it - but there's a sort of desperation in the laughter, like a guy trying to distract himself from gnawing despair with a good time. The synthy opener is weirdly beautiful and almost goth, but Cooper sounds like a for-real mental patient on it, far from the theatrical madness of "The Ballad of Dwight Frye". "Enough's Enough" sounds like it was inspired by Midnight Cowboy, a tale of an abusive monster of a father taunting his boy now that his dear old mother is no longer there to protect him, set to a dissonently bouncy bit of new wave that reflects the awful glee in the bad dad's jibes. "Former Lee Warmer" is a tale of a mute, mentally retarded brother kept locked up in a family home that makes those Phantom of the Opera organ tones you'd hear in haunted house parodies actually creepy again. "No Man's Land" is actually hilarious but the casual mention of "my other personalities" brings chills back to a superficially comic scenario. "Scarlet and Sheba" is like some kind of twisted BDSM tango that evokes a dungeon with the scent of candles heavy in the air. "Fresh Blood" takes a startling detour into funk and seems to describe the unhappy lot of a Renfield stewarding a vampire from kill to kill amid the festivity of an uncaring city. "Pass the Gun Around" is a raw sketch of the end of the road against the grandest, most ostentatious arrangements on the album, with a Dick Wagner solo that sounds like David Gilmour having the worst nightmare of his life. Maybe Alice just doesn't want to remember.

Travel 3: MOAR

There's nothing inside this big pyramid (Memphis, TN).

I'm a bastard who likes to travel. I believe it broadens the mind and teaches you things about the world. This year I returned to one of my favourite cities, Barcelona. BCN is great because it is full of weird shit. Everyone who goes there will remark on the abundance of strange and wonderful things to be found on every corner and in every street.

Raval es mejor barrio.

I like the way that someone's shredded jeanshorts were nailed up here. As a warning? Centrepiece?

Here is an Ashley Madison themed parking garage. Note the addendum (topical at the time the pic was taken), which reads "fuck off, you cheaters".

This was a skull I liked.

Moreover, this is a very exciting and exuberant city because of its active populace and strange rituals. You will never be short of things to do and see.

This is something people do in Barcelona when they're bored. They spin these things with sparks shooting everywhere and you get in like an open air mosh and you try to not get burned (but if you do, even better).

On alternating occasions, Barcelonians parade giant birdcage fairy people around.

And here is a sassy giraffe. Not sure if rad or kind of degenerate.

You saw nothing.

Travelling the world is one of the best things you can do. Research that I can't be bothered to link to suggests experiences are a better investment than things, because they last longer. We should all enjoy the opportunity to travel while we can and see the sights before the clouds break and our civilisation is lost in a tsunami of horror forever.

Deadly Blessing!

Deadly Blessing stars Ernest Borgnine as an Amish-style cult leader and has a scene where a spider falls into Sharon Stone's mouth. This alone makes it better than everything you've watched all year, especially if you're the sort of person who looks forward to Jar Jar Abrams' Star Wars and Zack Snyder's Batman Meets Superman: Dawn of Just Ass.

Say ahh.

The movie opens with a bunch of quintessential Amish imagery and spends the rest of its running time trying to convince everybody that they're not Amish, but "Hittites". The Hittites apparently make the Amish look like pussies, which is a strange thing to say because the Amish are pussies; it's their way of life.

"U wot m8? I'll fuckin' have ya, ya Amish knob!" - Hittite Ernest Borgnine

Since this is a movie of the late, great Wes Craven, someone immediately starts hacking up the cast. Is it the normie family that live beside the Hittite community, and may be in danger of being edged out? Is it Michael Berryman? Naturally Michael Berryman is in this movie because it is awesome. Could it be the Final Girl, or the old lady, or Ernest Borgnine himself? Or is it an evil spirit called...the Incubus???

Michael Berryman is outside your window right now.

There are so many possible suspects and motives, which intertwine with the main slasher plot in all kinds of ways. There's even a forbidden love story between an Amish Hittite boy and a normalfag woman, a full four years before Harrison Ford movie Witness. Did Witness rip off Deadly Blessing? I think you know the answer.

For never was a story of more woe/Than this of English, and her Hittite, Joe.

Yet for all those myriad joys, the best part of the movie concerns Sharon Stone's battle with a barn door that keeps closing on her, finally locking her in the barn where she comically falls face-first into a succession of spider webs, and then a spider falls in her mouth.

"Derp" - Sharon Stone

Actually, I changed my mind, the best part is when Ernest Borgnine fucking beats this kid with a cane for going into "The Forbidden Barn!" Why do you have a forbidden barn, asshole? What a stupid thing to build.

"Spare the rod, spoil the child" - anonymous; good parenting

Wes Craven actually grew up in a sort of cult-like environment. One of the interesting things about him is that he wasn't allowed to watch movies as a kid. Good job, guys. You really put him off that. Maybe the movies were his forbidden barn. Maybe deep thoughts.

Definitely watch Deadly Blessing, it's great.

Razorback!!!

Have you ever wanted to watch a really stupidly well-made movie about a great big giant pig that eats everybody, like Lena Dunham? Well Razorback is just such a film!!!

lol guess who?

The movie stars no one of consequence, and concerns a man's quest to find what really happened to his girlfriend, who, of course, was eaten by a giant pig. Along the way he encounters an old man who lost his kid to the said pig-monster, and a pair of kangaroo hunters who drive a big beast that looks straight out of The Road Warrior. Maybe they don't realise that movie wasn't real, or maybe to Australians it was.

Get in, loser. We're going to get the guzzoline.

Anyway, this assortment of protagonists pursues Moby Pig with the dogged determination of Captain Ahab. It's Jaws with a pig. Jaws is Moby Dick with a shark. I read Moby Dick in high school and that's all I did.

He's dead Jim.

The best part of the film is when the hero gets lost in the desert and has to sleep up a creaky windmill or something to escape from pigs. He yells at the pigs "Ha ha you stupid pigs! You are pigs and cannot reach me!" He was so happy. But then the thing collapsed. Then he wandered around in the desert and goes fucking bonkers and starts seeing visions and it's really super cool because it comes out of left-field so you share him going crezzy.

holy crap look at this fucking shit

Like all 80s movies, it ends with a fight in a smoke-filled industrial space (The Terminator, Empire Strikes Back, Cobra), and the hero whacks the pig and makes so much bacon that all Australia could eat for a month.

ain't no Razorback girl

What's confusing about the movie is that it's a simple, basically inconsequential story about a few people chasing a pig, but it's one of the best visual movies ever seen. Every single shot in this movie could be framed and hung on your wall, even the ones of the giant pig. Definitely see this movie, it's way better than whatever stupid crap you like.

Has this ever happened to you?

Where you're asleep, and you're dreaming about something funny, and you laugh yourself awake, and it's early morning so you've got a boner, and you're just lying there at 6 in the morning, cracking up with a hardon?

Is that normal?

Album review: LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, by Charles Manson

Hey folks it's that time of year again!!! The time when I review an album of music for your listening pleasure. Today's album is a bit of a classic, yet sorely overlooked by the music press due to its singer/songwriter being involved in some interesting side projects. Charlie "Jesus Christ" Manson was a hippy who auditioned for the Monkees and squatted in one of the Beach Boys' houses, before breaking away from show biz to develop his own sound. I used to own his live album too, but I sold it because it sucked balls. It was recorded in a prison and the main instrument was the toilet flushing in the background. But LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, an album released to help fund his trial expenses, is his real artistic statement.

Sadly, Charlie's image was a little too unorthodox for the mainstream charts.

The album starts with "Look At Your Game Girl", which would letter be covered by the Guns and Roses. This sets the standard that will be maintained throughout the artist's oeuvre, in which the lyrics start off coherent and flatten out into a repetitive drawl like something a crazy wall-slapper would say over and over. He then lurches into "Ego", an uptempo meditation on Freudian theory with a nice string break for variety.

In fact there's quite an impressive variety of sounds on this album, though almost all anchored to this cool-ass chunky guitar sound. Charlie's vocals are similarly varied, as he tries on different personae on the various tracks. "Mechanical Man" he sings like a mechanical person of some sort, and relays the sad story of his pet monkey who died, although this may not be entirely autobiographical.

Charlie also lets the Family girls chime in on "I'll Never Say Never To Always", which sounds exactly like the kind of slightly-off nursery rhyme type melody they used to put in horror movies in the 70s, so maybe Charlie invented the trend.

The production is a little rough around the edges, but that's good because it allows Charlie to spread out his ideas, which often seem like sketches and half-finished musings, but are always tuneful and intriguing.

It's a shame Charlie didn't pursue his music more successfully, because you could slip some of this stuff into a playlist of late-60s standards like Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane and Crackerjack Fuckface* and you'd never know. In a parallel universe somewhere Charlie is remembered as a rock star like Jim Morrison, instead of a crazy-eyed cult leader who cut a guy's ear off and his hangers-on killed people.

9/10 very good album.

*This is not a real band.

Blunt Force Troma: A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell!!!

Everyone loves Troma, the studio that brought you such all-time classics as The Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die, and the tender Tromeo and Juliet. Well, come with me and I shall take you on a journey to the far future of the Tromaverse. Yes, despite being populated by dinosaurs, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is actually set in a post-nuclear future, like a much lower-budget Mad Max meets The Valley of Gwangi.

An appropriate response to everything in this movie.

Some questions may inevitably arise, like "what's a nymphoid?" and "what's going on?" Well, dear reader, let me advise you to leave such dreams of enlightenment in the dust where they belong. You'll never find out because there's virtually no dialogue. Fortunately, the DVD in which I got this movie (along with seminal slasher movie Graduation Day, which I'll be getting to later), contains a trailer that elucidates the post-nuclear scenario, because I never would've guessed this wasn't meant to be some sort of prehistoric budget Hyboria.

The back of this box actually gives away the ending of Graduation Day, for even less value!!!

Perhaps the reason it was decided that the movie was set in the future is because the dinosaurs don't really look like anything in particular, and Lloyd Kaufman cares about nothing if not saving you the stress of worrying what species they're supposed to be (this sentence is literally true, because Lloyd Kaufman does not give a fuck).

This was the family dog before the war (srs).

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (a title you'll hear several times if you watch the trailer, which I advise you do because it's better than the film) stars "international cult heroine" Linda Corwin as Lea, the nymphoid barbarian of the title. When we meet her she's in the business of running around in a forest, because her family were killed in the war, and she woke up to find herself in Dinosaur Hell!!! IMDb reliably informs me that she's also credited as "Secondary Reptilian Goon", because this production was damned if it wasn't going to get full value for everyone it had to drag out there and feed. It also informs me the movie came out in 1990, which is a good couple of decades more recent than it looks.

Tromaville would come to regret spending its fallout shelter budget on a giant skull-faced castle. Note that the river in this shot is an effect, for no reason.

Anyway, Lea meets a guy named Marn, and because he's not deformed like everybody else, I guess that makes them a match made in Dinosaur Heaven. Marn spends most of the movie trying to save her from the evil, but inept Clon, with little success. She spends more time being rescued by a masked stranger (who perhaps not coincidentally resembles Toxie), and a giant sandworm out of Dune. There's also a man who reads "The Jabberwocky" and carries a gun, but he is of no consequence, and may just have wandered across the set while they were filming.

This movie is to 1 Million Years BC as Bizarro is to Superman: a weird, malformed imitation. The stop motion stuff is fun though. It's also fun to watch Clon bumble about losing limbs and getting brained all over the place. I don't recommend this movie to anyone, but it meets my criteria for notability, which is a wake-up call I shall choose to ignore as my body continues to decay.

Movie Who Cares Presents: The IntruderÜø¿×É»Ö{ê─×¢¥┐└┴♠◙♂•◘♣♦♥♫3☼

The Intruder is a movie about everybody dying in a supermarket. Despite this, it is slightly more good than depressing.

I may be a grave robber, but at least I don't work here.

The movie starts out documenting the shenanigans of the aforementioned store's employees. It's night, and the last few shoppers are going home. We get some nice POVs from their trolleys, which might make you wonder: why? and huh? 

You'll never live like common people. You'll never do whatever common people do.

Then an old man tries to buy some shit, but everything falls out the bottom of his paper bag, which is a metaphor for life.

Aw, darnit! First World War 1 and now this.

Sadly, the plot then kicks in, as our heroine is menaced by a mullet, and her ex boyfriend, who is wearing it:

Ladies, take heart: if you were born after 1972, you didn't date this guy.

The mullet gets in a big fight with everyone, and runs off into the store, instigating a sequence in which the staff try to hunt him down, Alien-style, which is reasonable when dealing with the pathologically bemulletted. This would be enough plot for the rest of the movie, but we're not so lucky.

Die Hard with a Mullet.

This isn't a very good movie, but it has a very unique and interesting visual style, which involves putting the camera inside things where a camera doesn't normally go. For example, here is a POV shot from inside a rotary phone:

Whose POV is it? Do the phones have gremlins? Sadly, this line of inquiry is never developed, like most of the characters.

Why is this shot framed like this? Are we looking at a mirror? Why? I picture the director jabbing his crazy fingers at the cast and yelling "dammit they're too up-and-down! Make them more sideways!", not because that's necessarily what happened, but because I'd like to think it is.

Say, do you think someone's going to get that through their face?

So anyway, long story short, someone starts butchering the cast. Is it the mullet? The store owner? Ted Raimi? Godzilla? Barbie? Does it matter? As befits these type of movies, the killer's motivation, when revealed, makes absolutely fuck-all sense, but the actor gives one of the gurningest, most gleefully batshit insane performances ever seen outside my special ed class.

The main thing about this movie is the way the supermarket location is used. People go up and down the meat conveyor, the killer chases the final girl over the tops of the checkout counters, and they all play bumper cars in the trolleys (well, not really, but they might as well have). The slasher plot is kind of extraneous to the enjoyment of the movie, which centres on the fun of watching people get to wreak havoc in a supermarket. Just like in Dawn of the Dead and the greatest movie of all time: Career Opportunities. It was while writing this review that I decided all I really want in life is to trash a supermarket.

Get out while you can, Final Girl!!!