In The Helicopter Bay 9-18-11

Trying to nail down a rhythm in my blog-writing, and I think it'll come around once I'm used to my new schedule.  What I need to do is write about non-film horror subjects, like I had always intended.  Well, here are a few tidbits for this beautiful almost-fall day:

*  Speaking of writing blogs, I'd better get my rhythm together because I have decided that I will indeed write a comic book blog.  Its theme and tone will be similar to this humble blog, and I hope to delve into the mythology and symbolism of certain stories as well.

*  I also think I may try expanding into more genre films on this blog as well, such as martial arts films, grindhouse goodies, and whatever I think would be a good fit.

*  Recently, I received a very nice award from Pixie over at Pixie's Horror Galore, the "I Dig Your Blog Award."  It's always nice to be given a little recognition, and so I thank Miss Pixie for this and will place it over in my sidebar.  Now, the award comes with some criteria, but I'm going to go against the grain and modify some of them just a tad.  The first three criteria, I'll keep the same, which were to gratefully accept the award (which I did above), link to the the person who gave it me (which I also did above), and jot down three interesting facts about yourself (which I'll get to in a minute).  I'm going to add a few nice words about Pixie and her blog, and modify the original bestowing of awards on other blogs.

First, let me say that Pixie is a fresh new voice in the horror blogosphere.  Her enthusiasm and love for the horror genre cannot be measured, and that energy comes through in her written voice.  She's very funny and very nice as she engages all of her readers in conversation.  So thank you, Pixie, and keep up the good work!

Three mildly interesting things about me:

• I lived in Sweden for a year as an exchange student, and can still reach deep down in my subconscious to speak/read the language despite it being AGES ago.  It was one fantastic year.
• I worked at Walt Disney World in the 90's, first at Magic Kingdom then what is now Hollywood Studios (Disney-MGM back then). Three AMAZING years full of fun, mischief, and friends with whom I still keep in touch.
• I did play-by-play commentary for numerous wrestling companies throughout the midwest and also in Windsor, Ontario, Canada in the 2000's.  Some of the greatest adventures I ever had came during those road trips.

Now, as far as giving out awards, it's a slippery slope.  I know there are some that don't care for getting awards, especially those that require you to do something, like continue to pass it on.  I know there are some that absolutely love it.  So here's what I'll do:  see that list of blogs over there on the right?  Scroll down, you'll see all of them.  I list them here for a reason.  They're worthy of any award that finds its way to them and therefore if you have a blog listed there, consider yourself a recipient of this award.  I may also let you know in an e-mail or something at some point, and you can decide what to do with it.  If you do post it on your blog, consider it coming from me.  If you don't want to do anything with it, hey, that's why I'm doing it this way.

That being said, if you're reading this, have a really good blog, and think I should include it on my sidebar, then get a hold of me and show it off!

As for me, I'm going to put it on my sidebar and once again, thank Pixie for the award.

*  OK, what else is there today?  The weather here is getting cooler and crisper, and that means my favorite time of year is not far behind.  It's almost October, which will bring Halloween and of course, Chiller Theatre in Parsippany, New Jersey.  I am planning on being there, but won't be set in stone until I actually buy the tickets in advance.  Hopefully, my plans won't change!

Until next time, fellow zombie apocalypse survivors, enjoy the approaching autumn!

In The Helicopter Bay 9-3-11

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it?

Last time I checked in with a blog, I was in the middle of a vacation.  Since then, I've been rather busy, but have been rewarded with a new career after a very long search.  There was also the matter of that pesky Hurricane Irene.  I hope you dear readers who had to put up with that storm came through unscathed.  Real-life terror is far more frightening than what we see played out in fiction.  

Let's move on with this edition of In The Helicopter...

*  In taking an unintentional break from horror, I'm thinking of including more genre films under the banner of this blog.  Hey, it's my baby, I can basically write about what I want, but horror will always be the core genre featured here.  We'll see how that goes, but I'll still stick with the easy-going, drama-free, and friendly tone I've always maintained.

*  Speaking of blogs, I've been tossing around the idea of starting a blog about another strong interest of mine, comic books.  I've been reading them since 1974 and while I realize there are a million comic blogs out there, I'd just want to write a few words about the medium in the same tone as this horror blog.  None of the poison, none of the bitter dismissal of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, just a guy who grew up loving the art form writing about it.  Again, we'll see what I do with that.

 

 The Anti-Monitor?  Do not want.

*  Earlier this evening, I went to see Apollo 18, directed by Gonzago Lopez-Gallego for his first English-language film and produced by Timur Bekmambetov (director of Wanted and Night Watch).  While presented as "found footage," I did recognize one of the actors as Lloyd Owen, who played chaste James in three episodes of one of my favorite British comedies, Coupling.  The film's pace didn't gel well with me, but the performances of the three leads as well as the bleak, claustrophobic feel made it a pretty good movie.  I felt it should have been a different kind of movie, maybe more terrifying - and it could have been done - but it wasn't all that bad in my opinion.  It also made me think of the mixing of horror and science-fiction, and why we don't see more of that out there.

*  I'm also thinking of writing some "horror primers."  The approach:  what if someone who has never seen horror films asks me "give me five good movies to watch and tell me why I should watch them"?  Taking it a step further, what if they want to know five good movies I'd recommend in any given subgenre, like zombie movies or ghost movies?  What I'd like to do is write short paragraphs about each film and why I think they're important to the genre.  Maybe, if I'm lucky enough, I could have some of my horror blog buddies write about what they would recommend for their primer.  Stay tuned.  It might be fun to write.

Well, that's all for now, dear readers.  Back to regular programming for the next blog, and until then, take care of yourselves and make sure your door is barricaded.

The Walking Dead Premiere - Some Things Are Worth The Wait

"Anticipation...it's makin' me wait!" - Old Heinz ketchup commercial

I've been disappointed by hype before, or at best, just a little let down. Way in the back of my mind, I feared the same would happen with AMC's new original series, The Walking Dead. It finally - after months of waiting - premiered appropriately on October 31 to the well-oiled hype machine that is AMC. That station, I tell you, is riding a serious wave of successful original series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. They, like HBO, seem to set the bar very high in terms of quality, so I knew the series was in good hands. But that nagging fear remained in the back of my head: "What if it's just so-so...or worse, what if it sucks?"

I'm happy to say that not only did the premiere live up to my expectations, it exceeded them.

Now, I may or may not review each episode. I haven't decided yet. More likely, I'll bookend the season with reviews starting with this one. Needless to say, if was borrowing a page from Roger Ebert's book, I'd be giving this a huge thumbs-up.

I love infection horror, and that's evident in my blog. Hell, I prefaced watching this premiere with my annual Halloween viewing of 1978's Dawn of the Dead. More than that, I'm a huge fan of the comic book from Image Comics, created and written by Robert Kirkman, who also co-produced the series (Kirkman also writes a superhero series called Invincible that I hope makes it to the screen as well). Knowing he had a huge say in what went down, and knowing director/screenwriter extraordinaire Frank Darabont was in charge, put me more and more at ease.

Many of you have already seen it, and I'm not going to spoil things for the rest of you. Basically, the plot follows the book for the most part: Deputy Rick Grimes wakes up after a gunshot puts him in a coma to find that the world has really changed. There aren't any living people that he sees right away, but there are plenty of dead bodies...and some of them move. Rick leaves the hospital and returns home to find his wife and son gone. He meets Morgan and Duane, a father and son living in a house once occupied by Rick's neighbors, and they get him up to speed about the disease that has reanimated the dead. In a brilliant but tragic addition to the mythos, Morgan and Duane agonize over the sight of Morgan's wife, Duane's mother, returning day after day as a zombie. Rick intends to move on to Atlanta to find his family, hoping Morgan and Duane will join him later. He finds a horse and rides into the city, but finds nothing but hungry ex-people. Trapped in a tank, Rick hears someone calling him "dumbass" on the radio (if you read the book, you know who it is) as the episode comes to a close.

I skimmed over quite a bit of it, but really, if you're able to watch it, you need to see and hear the experience. The flies buzzing? Nice touch. There are scenes that are perfectly silent, and the confusion and disorientation is enough to drive you crazy because you have no music cues to warn you, or tell you how to feel. The disease spares no one. Yes, a little girl zombie falls in the first few minutes. I know the "politically correct" will be up in arms: "what kind of image is that to show our precious children?" Please. It's horror. What would you do, give it Twizzlers and positively reinforce it not to bite you? Same with the horse. That's in the comic as well. It's hard to see, but it portrays how a zombified world would be. The living dead don't care about cuteness. They're just hungry forces of nature. Another gory, but great, touch was the completely masticated woman lying in the hospital hallway. Darabont told so much story in Rick's post-awakening scene with hardly a word. The half-woman bicycle zombie is straight from the book, but Darabont adds so much pathos and emotion to each scene, it's like an enhanced version of an already-great work. I really hope the rest of the season holds up to this fantastic premiere.

I can't enough good things about it. I've seen overwhelmingly positive reviews, and mine stands as my own. I'm sure there are some who didn't like it, but that's life. Or undead life. So many puns, so little time.

Until later, my friends, try to be awake when the zombie apocalypse comes. And be sure to catch The Walking Dead on AMC, Sundays at 10 p.m.

Horror In Comics: Final Crisis (DC Comics) Turpin Becomes Darkseid

(ALL images contained herein are the property of DC Comics - at the end of the day, you should really buy the book I'm about to discuss - trust me on this)

In the world of the superhero, at the end of the day's adventure, the good guys win. No matter how vile the bad guy, somehow the hero will find a way to defeat him or her. It's part of the wish-fulfillment aspect of the comic book and superhero fiction: we, the readers, wish we could employ a variety of powers to tackle the bad guys of the world. But that very notion and super-basic plot device is the basis for something with terrifying potential in fiction:

What happens when evil wins?



Sure there are times when the bad guy gets the upper hand. You can't have a plausible hero without some setbacks here and there. It's why for every hero, there are at least a good half dozen villains in his or her "rogues gallery." But what if there was a moment when the ultimate evil finally - after centuries of trying - set his horrible foot into our world and brought it crashing down, and the heroes figured it out too late to stop it?

This is the basic premise of 2008's DC Comics miniseries Final Crisis, written by my favorite comic book author, Grant Morrison and featuring art by J. G. Jones, Doug Mahnke, and several others. Like a good writer should, Morrison began planting the seeds for Final Crisis in earlier works, going back several years. There are clues pointing to Final Crisis in books such as JLA and the wild, ambitious miniseries 7 Soldiers of Victory. In fact, the Mister Miracle portion of 7 Soldiers serves as a prequel.

While Final Crisis has its place in the Crisis trilogy of DC Comics (Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis), it owes more to legendary creator Jack Kirby and his New Gods stories. Kirby wrote and drew huge epics about two warring worlds of demi-gods, heavenly New Genesis and hellish Apokolips. Sometimes the wars spilled over to our world, and there in the mix of things was Superman himself. The demi-gods were varied and colorful, intensely powerful and yet individually interesting. Heading up the evil gods was Darkseid, a granite-skinned despot who sought to ruin the heroes of Earth and corrupt reality to its core. Much of Darkseid's Silver Age appearances included soliloquies swearing vengeance or making threats.

In Final Crisis, Morrison laid the groundwork for Darkseid to finally enter our world. Doing so not only corrupted reality, but as Darkseid fell, it bent reality and put him at the epicenter of a cosmic pit, dragging our dimension down with it. High concept stuff, but never expect anything less from Morrison. The evil New Gods could infect the bodies of regular people until such a time that Darkseid could manifest himself in the body of a noble soul that he could systematically corrupt. And that's the moment I want to focus on for this blog (even after all that set-up!).



He finds such a noble soul in detective Dan Turpin, another great Kirby creation. During his investigation, Turpin meets Boss Dark Side, the manager of a seedy fight-club style nightclub for villains. Too late does he realize, but Turpin is infected by Darkseid's spirit through the Anti-Life Equation, a mathematical equation that is proof that Darkseid is lord over all.

This Anti-Life Equation is this - read with caution, lest YOU be infected:

loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment -- n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side


Turpin finds himself infected when he goes to investigate a lead in a bombed-out city, he meets strange, disturbing people who refer to him as "great one" and seem to know him. Hell, they even have Batman as a prisoner. There's no escape for Turpin. He's getting sicker while those odd people around him rejoice.


His body begins to change. His skin becomes like...granite. His soul is battling against something dark and familiar. He's had run-ins with the New Gods before, so he knows what he's dealing with and yet he knows how futile it is:

"I tried to show them what humanity's made of...But wrestling with Darkseid, well...It's like trying to beat the ocean unconscious..."

It's too much for Turpin, and as the world deteriorates in both physical and relative space, his soul is entirely supplanted by Darkseid. When his minion G. Gordon Godfrey (in the body of a Don King-like evangelist) asks for a sign:

"Give us a sign, great Darkseid...Thumbs up for the triumph of the human spirit...or thumbs down to summon a day of holocaust that will never end..."

...the former Dan Turpin gives us his chilling answer:


Outside, heroes are dying or are corrupted. Time and space is warped. The world has ended. Humans are slaves or dog soldiers completely ruined by the Anti-Life Equation which was broadcast on the Internet to infect as many as possible in the shortest amount of time. Weeks become days. There is no sunlight. Pockets of heroes and villains band together to resist the best they can. It's the end.

What gave me the heebie-jeebies was the deft combination of street-level spookiness and cosmic-scale scares. It's a world being corrupted almost overnight due to the ruination of time and space. The aspect of a mad god falling through dimensions and dragging realities into a dark singularity with him is a wild concept right at home in the mind of Grant Morrison. Evil has won and good didn't see it coming.



I reason I picked this instant of Final Crisis - the transformation of Dan Turpin into Darkseid through a corrupted soul - is that the idea of a malevolent force edging out the personality of a good person while ruining reality at the same time is a grand-scale scare to me. It reminds of what good Lovecraftian fiction is about: Old gods scratching their way back into our world through the corruption of everything that is good about us, and there's nothing we can do about it.


Of course, there is a conclusion to Final Crisis, but the heroes have to really fight for it. The miniseries remains very polarizing, with many fans hating it and many (like me) loving it. Since this is my blog, I'm just dealing with my perception of it. Morrison touched a dark nerve in superhero storytelling with this epic. It influenced my own writing, much as Morrison's work did when I discovered it in the 80's on Doom Patrol. The idea of the storyline made me re-think the box in which I imagine my own written worlds, and forced me to step outside of it.

That's good storytelling.

So, yes, while this isn't horror per se, it does have horror elements, most notably possession. That which was creepy in films like The Exorcist and more recently Paranormal Activity is present in Final Crisis. Also corruption is there, as I mentioned it in relation to H. P. Lovecraft's visions. If you have a chance to read it, I highly, highly recommend it.

Until next time, fellow survivors, don't let the zombies get blood all over your comic book collection. Bag 'em up!

Stay safe!

Horror In Comics: Crossed (Avatar Press)

I admit it: I'm a huge fan of the apocalypse. Not a real one. I just like seeing the end of the world in print or on film. Infection horror seems to head the list of ways for the Earth to die, and it's enjoyed a resurgence of respectful nostalgia (the undying...pardon the pun...love for the original Dawn of the Dead), creative new directions (28 Days Later, [REC]), amazing stories (the comic The Walking Dead), and even a billion poor attempts (the "remake" of Day of the Dead). While Robert Kirkman's aforementioned The Walking Dead remains as the leader in modern comic-based infection horror, one of the strongest and most disturbing entries in the genre was Avatar Press' Crossed, written by Garth Ennis with art by Jacen Burrows.

If you're a comic book fan, you're already familiar with Garth Ennis. Extremely prolific, he writes outlandish action with all inhibitions removed, yet still squeezes in true humanity and emotion. His run on Marvel's The Punisher is arguably the best in the history of that character. His World War II comics are heartfelt with a demonstration of historical knowledge. The Boys is a unique, unflinching, and very adult look at the underbelly of a world "infested" with superheroes who are little more than spoiled celebrities. Ennis remains one of my top ten favorite comic scribes. When I heard he was going to write an apocalyptic infection horror series for the wonderful Avatar Press imprint, it was like hearing Quentin Tarentino was going to do a movie with a ton of shooting and swearing, with no studio restrictions. I had to get in on this action.

I picked up Issue #0 in 2008, and in its short time frame, shows the moment the world started going to hell. When I read this interview at Comic Book Resources, I was sold even before I got to the end of it. Add to that the intrigue stirred up by the striking Internet advertisements (three of which you see in my write-up), and I was ready to invest time and money into reading this story.

It was time and money well spent.

One of the selling points for me is that, much like Kirkman's The Walking Dead, no one was safe. Not a single character was going to be immune from the ravages of the disease in Crossed, and with Ennis humanizing each one, it was going to hurt. See this cover with the cast on it?


Everyone except two in this picture die. Some die in the most unexpected, painful ways, but that's Ennis' specialty: coming at you from angles you don't see. He'll kill off a character that he's spent considerable time making you care about. The deaths in Crossed mean something, and they aren't pretty.

Nothing about Crossed is pretty. Imagine the savagery of the zombies in Romero's Dead movies combined with the frantic speed of the infected in 28 Days Later, but retaining all of their intelligence. The infected or "crossed" develop a cross-shaped rash on their faces, and worst of all, any filter they have between their darkest, most depraved desires and urges and real life is shattered. Take the worst things the human mind can dream up to do to another human being, and multiply it by billions. That's the infection in Crossed and it's terrifying.



There might be some slight spoiler material in the next section since I'm going to go into the plot and all. One word sums up that plot and it's survival. Sure, the familiar plots of many zombie, virus, infection, world-ending movies is survival, but Ennis made a point - as evident in the promos - that in real life, there would be no heroes. There would be no hope. There would be no eleventh-hour rescues by a recovered band of military badasses.

It starts small, as it usually does. We're introduced to several main characters in issue #0, including tough waitress Cindy, chief narrator Stan, Kelly, and Tom, who looks after Kelly after she's blinded by a nuclear explosion that occurs at a nearby reactor. They're in a diner when a lone man strides in, strange markings spreading on his face, and throws a bloody set of vertebrae onto the counter before lunging to bite the manager's nose off. Of course, any transfusion of bodily fluids spreads this virulent disease, which is fast-acting and brutal. Things degenerate pretty quickly from there as a local nuclear reactor goes up, blinding Kelly.

The rest of the series is told in two parts, present and flashback. The present takes place about ten months after issue #0. Stan, Cindy, Kelly, and Tom have joined up with various others, including Cindy's son Patrick. Issue #1 not only catches the reader up on the world since the Crossed spread, it flashes back on how our core group escapes town together just short hours after the diner scene. It also focuses on how the survivors cope in the present, focusing on one man's conviction that the Crossed are like zombies in movies - even that they're weak around salt. He tests his theory to horrifying - and I mean, utterly sickening - results in the first of many slugs to the gut each issue would provide. If your stomach and sensibilities can handle it, you see firsthand what happens to the guy and his wife and daughter.



Issue #2 finds the group continuing to run and hide out with the Crossed everywhere. The flashbacks flesh out the core characters more as they witness the world ending. In the present, the group learns just how ruthless the Crossed have become. Remember how I said before that the disease spreads through bodily fluids? Let's just say the Crossed apply certain...fluids...to bullets and manage to turn one of the group just through a simple flesh wound. It's one of those memorable moments that make you wonder just what goes on in Garth Ennis' mind, and envy how brilliant the guy is. The survivors also finally consider making a trek to Alaska, hoping its isolated landscape offers safe shelter.

Issue #3 has the group running into another group of survivors, consisting of a kindergarten teacher and several of her students. They've survived by trapping their food. Often their food consists of other unlucky survivors making their way through the devastated town. The flashback shows what happens to a charismatic tough-as-nails cop who tries to lead the survivors, and demonstrates that there are indeed no heroes. When the kindergarten teacher dies, the main characters have a heart-wrenching decision to make. Nothing is easy in the world of the Crossed. There isn't time, and no one wants to have musical montages of them enjoying the fruits and treasures of a dead world.

In issue #4, the climactic plot kicks in as the survivors try to leave a town lorded over by a group of Crossed that has become organized, led by an enormous biker-type nicknamed after...well...a certain part of a male horse's anatomy. Why is he called that? Because that is literally the weapon he uses to club people. I ain't kidding here, folks. It's morbidly funny, yet frighteningly true to the theme of story. The Crossed just...don't care anymore. Seems this Crossed biker dude and his crew, including an old man named Face (who wears a face...as a loincloth) and an armless, legless, sightless "lookout" with insanely good hearing called Stump, decide to make a game of pursuing our survivors after they barely get out alive.

Issue #5 takes the crew into winter. While they seek shelter, warmth, and food, the flashbacks sees what will become the present survivor group coalesce into their own organized group, led by Cindy, whose minimal toughness leaves little with which to argue. This issue is a bit of a respite, as the Crossed don't appear. Cindy and Stan grow closer, not through love but respect. There is a striking scene depicting the parallel between their will to survive and that of pack of majestic wolves.

Issue #6 tells the reader, "break's over, back to assaulting your eyes." The survivors pick up two new friends: Brett, an arrogant prick with lots of food and weapons, and later a stray dog that warms up to Stan. We also find out through flashback what happened to poor Kitrick, a morose young man with little to say. During a fireside chat, we also find out a little more about elderly Geoff, and it ain't pretty. The way the survivors, especially Kitrick, deal with it is subtle and quite sad. And Alaska seems so far away.


Guess who's back in issue #7? Much to their surprise, the survivors find the organized group of Crossed have followed them. It leads to an encounter on a dangerous river that ends with unimaginable tragedy. Ennis makes a point to say no one's safe in the series...he proves it with the climax of this issue. It's still very hard to read. At this point, you could say "it's on."

In issue #8 - only one more left - the crew finds a downed helicopter for shelter and to gather their thoughts after the shocking end to the last issue. Stan finds the last diary entry of a dead soldier there and reads about the early days of the plague and how the military reacted to it. The group is changed in their own way, and Stan reacts to Brett's douchbaggery in a most unexpected way. Stan and Cindy connect, and the group splits up to meet later after Cindy tends to unfinished business.

In the final issue, Stan and Cindy take care of that unfinished business. Meanwhile, the others have a run-in with the persistent pursuers that ends in violent sadness, yet a spark of defiant triumph. In a final, deadpan show of revenge and finality, the remaining survivors finish off their enemies before heading off into their own very uncertain future.

Whew. Long synopsis, I know. I hope it tempts you into at least taking a glance at this remarkable series. Yeah, I'm biased. I've been a Garth Ennis fan for years, and his amazing The Boys is still a treat I look forward to every month.



Not only is the writing great in Crossed, but Jacen Burrows really nails it with his art. It's clean and detailed, right there with no compromise. Gore and brutality is center stage in the book, and Burrows doesn't shy away. I guarantee there is something to offend nearly everyone in Crossed, but think about this: if this disease really happened, would political correctness be on the mind of a purely insane, purely evil person with absolutely no filter? Yeah, not likely.

Now, Crossed is being set up for the big screen, with a script by Ennis himself. Get ready to see that "R" rating smashed to bits. Take a look at an article about it at Bleeding Cool. Wow, The Walking Dead on AMC, and now Crossed in theaters? Sweet.

Not only that, a new comic series called Crossed: Family Values has begun, with excellent writer David Lapham penning it with art by Javier Barreno. This one is not a sequel, but a parallel story about a family with horrible secrets of its own on the run from the Crossed. Only one issues is out so far, but believe me, it follows in the Garth Ennis tradition quite well.

This book is not for everyone. It's sick, sad, brutal, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and wild. I understand if it's not a person's cup of horror tea, but I really enjoyed it. I knew what I was getting into, and the team of Ennis and Burrows delivered. Bravo, Avatar Press, bravo for publishing it.

Until next time, my dear fellow survivors, thank your lucky stars that our undead don't have the organizational potential of the Crossed. Brrr...that's a chilling thought...

In The Helicopter Bay 4-8-10

Nice weather + non-horror films in my mail = laziness.

Yeah, I've been slacking again lately, but I'll have more reviews coming soon. In the meantime, it's another edition of The Helicopter Bay while I do some routine cleaning of the chopper. Zombie brains are pretty hard to clean off the blades, but I was showing off during that last rescue.

Onto the tasty tidbits:

* While I had no horror movies to report on, I did manage to see a few others of varying degrees of quality:

--2012 didn't fail to disappoint. I knew going in that it was going to be a simple, over-wrought disaster movie. But even the scenes of wanton destruction left me hoping for a more spectacular end to the world. The movie was about an hour too long and was full of convenient deus ex machina. "Oh, hey, he happens to be a pilot!" Yeah, lots of those.

--On the other hand, the brilliant Black Dynamite was like a hidden treasure. Slightly more subtle and closer to a real homage than the very funny I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, the movie was simply a great time with an intentionally so-bad-it's-good script and blink-and-miss sight gags. Highly recommended.



* It's looking more and more likely that a trip will be made to attend this year's Chiller Theater Expo in New Jersey. More details to come because I don't want to jinx it.

* Horror movies are on their way to me now, including Orphan - which I've heard both good an bad things about (mostly bad, to be honest) - and Plague Town, which I know nearly nothing about. I need to take more advantage of the instant watch gimmick on Netflix, too.

* With "The Walking Dead" really moving along as a TV series at AMC, I'd definitely like to write a blog about the comic, as it is quite honestly a brilliant book. Recently, another plague-centered comic, "Crossed," finished up and is about to have a spin-off called "Crossed: Family Values," written by David Lapham and drawn by Javier Barreno. I'd like to do a write-up on the original series before the spin-off is released.



Well, that's about it from here. I'd better get the hose going to spray off the chopper's windshield before it gets too gunky. Take care out there and don't hesitate to radio if you need assistance. That approaching loud recording of Motorhead's "Ace Of Spades" will be me.

Be safe, survivors!