TUBI TIME - Unga-Bunga Edition

I'm still working on how to transfer some of my fiction from docs to blogger. Keep in mind always that I am a Neanderthal despite my many pretentions otherwise. I haven't tried to manipulate online content since the days of Angelfire and Geocities, and my usual problem-solving process culminates in blunt force trauma, public urination, and tears. But I can still watch my Tubi movies, and I can still use my reaction to flail away at a keyboard. THUS:

LILY C.A.T. (1987) - I generally don't care for most anime or anime-adjacent things, but I have an eternal soft spot for 1980s hyper-violent neon-dytopia anime. Artforms evolve, but occasionally my heart cries out for simpler times. LILY C.A.T. is a pleasant, undemanding experience. Nothing particularly unexpected happens, but there are enough twists on the formula to keep things engaging. We get some psychedelic alien violence, but nothing too harrowing. Our lizard brains are placated, but not overly stimulated. Psychedelic body horror is presented, but nothing that provokes any more engagement than a solid "neat!" The plot is smart and cohesive and utterly inoffensive. LILY C.A.T. asks for very little from the viewer and delivers just the right amount of entertainment in return. It crosses up ALIEN with THE THING in ways that fans of both will appreciate, but it also puts forward some interesting ideas about the whole "1 year in space is like 40 years back on Earth" thing. In the end, this is my comfort food; the Saturday-morning Cinnamon Toast Crunch of animated sci-fi horror features.

REAL CASES OF SHADOW PEOPLE: THE SARAH MCCORMICK STORY (2019) - This, on the other hand, is far less than the sum of its parts. (There are only, like, two parts. Maybe three.) I get the sense that this, like so many other micro-budget found footage horror flicks littering the virtual bargain bin, was either a very cynical attempt to cash in on a horror meme or a flimsy excuse for some college friends to go on a road trip. Perhaps it was both. I suppose that's fine, and I hope they had a good time and are living very rich and fulfilling lives to this day. I did not have a good time watching their movie. Nobody possibly could. There are no scares. There is no plot. Nothing compelling happens for long periods of time. We are treated to multiple 10+ minute stretches of time watching three people engage in obnoxious car banter that serves no purpose. It is an exercise in frustration and futility. I think its most valuable use is as a counter argument to the idea that anybody can make a found footage horror movie. That is not the case.

CONTRABAND aka THE SMUGGLER (1980) - When Lucio Fulci is good, he's really good. This is Fulci's take on gangster/mob films shot in his usual blood soaked grindhouse style. This is some damn good Fulci. As it happens, being good at filming creative and gory horror executions means that you're also really good at filming creative and gory gangster executions and shoot outs. Who'd have thought? The plot actually makes sense and leads to a tremendously satisfying climax. The macho posturing is both amusing and compelling. On the downside, you do have to deal with a lot of explicit and uncomfortable rape scenes. CONTRABAND is grindhouse through and through. It knows itself and works to be the best version of itself it can be. It's flea market pulp trash, and it's very much for you if you're into that sort of thing. I'd go as far as to put this in my personal Fulci Top 3 alongside THE BEYOND and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. Bless you, Tubi.

THE RESONATOR: MISKATONIC U (2021) - A big part of the charm of Full Moon Features is that the house style is fully self aware. That is also one of the main drawbacks. Self Awareness in a microbudget genre film will kill it dead 9 out of 10 times. Compare the hillarious majesty of SAMURAI COP to the dull shit show that was SAMURAI COP 2, or compare EVIL DEAD 2 to any one of its many peer clones. This stuff just works better when the creative team is sincerely trying to do good work within their means as opposed to fucking around, winking at the camera, and eblowing the audience in the ribs every thirty seconds. "It's a joke! Get it?!" Get fucked.

THE RESONATOR is one of the good ones. From the get go, it wears its intentions on its sleeve. This is a straight-up tribute/remake of Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND, which is one of my very favorite horror movies. I absolutely expected to hate it, and I ended up kind of loving it. It is not perfect. It has some cringey moments. They were clearly working under a tight budget. Yet, the passion and the talent shine through. There's something very fun and compelling about a movie where you can just tell that they had a specific slime budget. I don't love some of the CGI effects, and nothing about it is surprising or new if you know the material. Despite this, it moves very quickly, the run time is exactly right, and that lovely microbudget passion project vibe is firmly in place. It felt very much to me like a Lovecraft themed R-rated episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a great way to spend an hour, and it was a very nice, well-intensioned fan project that worked for me. It looks like this is Part One of a series of sorts, and I'm going to try and check out the whole thing.

Delays

Blogger does not seem to care for the big, juicy chunks of text that I am trying to feed into it. Blogger hates it, precious. Chapter 1 of Evergreen is going to take a bit longer than I had anticipated while I figure a solution.

In the meantime, because I cannot help myself, here is the EVERGREEN project music playlist if you're interested. I have a lot of these laying around, and it is often my custom to create various playlists to accompany my writing projects. It's sort of meant to be a companion to the process. Like, it helps me stay in that space even when I'm at work or making dinner or some other activity. It keeps me tethered to that world in a way. Anyway, here it is. I'll be listening to it while I try to remember how to HTML.

Very short Youtube sample version

Much longer shuffle 'n write Spotify version.

EVERGREEN: Project Overview

I'm working on a couple of fiction projects at the moment, and I've decided that the time has come to start sharing and potentially workshopping them a bit.

The first project is tentatively titled "Evergreen," though I'm 99% sure that's going to change as I get further into it. I'm about 80 pages deep so far with most of the main story outlined. My biggest motivation for sharing is for funsies and mild accountability purposes. I also need to get used to the idea that the endgame of writing a story is that people should eventually read that story and provide feedback. That's a terrifying thought and it provokes mucho anxiety. So, fuck it. Full speed ahead.

EVERGREEN: THE ELEVATOR PITCH

A Post-Apocalyptic/Weird Western story that's roughly 1/3 George Miller, 1/3 Rio Bravo, and 1/3 Trailer Park Boys mixed together in a discarded Big Gulp cup and hurled against a brick wall. Serve at room temperature.

EVERGREE: Sypnosis found on the back of a hypothetical paperback:

After two decades of roaming, robbing, and reaving across the wild wilderness that was once the American Midwest, Rochelle Dellacourt has finally stumbled ass-backwards into something resembling a settled life. The former outlaw has become the elected Sheriff of an isolated pot farming commune known as Evergreen. She'll have to set aside her moonshine jug and draw on every bloody lesson from her shady past when the seemingly random murder of a drifter leads to crazed road gangsters, a rogue military detachment, and a sinister post-human terrorist descending upon her little backwater town. They're all searching for a legendary stash of long lost Old World tech. Rochelle's ragtag militia of outcasts, mutants, and burnouts must defend their home against long odds; and a bad situation becomes exponentially worse when the diabolic cult leader known as The Diesel Witch descends from the Ozark Mountains with a fist full of secrets to claim Evergreen for herself. Rochelle's going to have to face down a lot of monsters, including the one in the mirror, to save her quirky little adopted home. That is, if it's even worth saving at all...

Chapter One to follow.

SHUFFLIN ALONG 08 - Life Shifts Up and Down / Everybody Knows It's Wrong

HAUNTED by CRESCENDO

Pleasant shoegazy Dream-Pop that sounds a bit like a less kitschy version of The Casket Girls. I like the "narcotized play date with troubled girls" vibes that you get with a lot with 2010s-2020s indie dreamgaze bands.

DIVIDE ET IMPERA by ROPE SECT

From the cover art and the introductory Bible verse, you'd think you're in for something ridiculous and insane like Coil. Instead, this is straight-forward goth rock. You get some guitar solos and traditional structure and a singer with a pleasantly spooky baritone voice. Kind of a breath of fresh air to be honest. Like, there's room in the goth tent for bands that sound like The Cult and bands that sound like Anaal Nathrakh AND bands that sound like Ghost. No need to be exclusionary.

BLADE RUNNER BLUES by VANGELIS

Top 5 Film OST of all time? I dunno. It's definitely Top 10, right?

SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME by JULIE LONDON

I find this track really funny because I am the kind of person who imagines Julie London replacing Quint in JAWS when I hear it. It is also really funny to imagine a modern trailer for JAWS that uses the "moody cover of a well-known song" trope.

I AM THE LIVING DEAD by HARLEY POE

I get the sense from this song that Harley Poe could be one of those artists (like Voltaire, Alestorm, and Abney Park) who ends up on a lot of Renassaince Festival-related roadtrip playlists. (Not to play into stereotypes, but any home that contains a Voltaire record will also contain multiple sets of polyhedral dice, at least one book by Neil Gaiman or Charles de Lint, and at least one set of steampunk goggles.) I usually like DnD flavored folk/cabaret/goth lounge stuff in small doses. Harley Poe, however, is a little bit different from that because there's a midwestern crust-punk edge to a lot of their work, and I find it very appealing. They also get bonus points for writing this catchy folk-punk song about walking through the modern world feeling like a zombie who just wants to bite people. I relate to all of this. More exploration is needed.

SMOTHERED HOPE by SKINNY PUPPY

Probably my favorite band. One of the appealing things to me about Skinny Puppy is that I always find something new and interesting every time I listen to them. There's always some weird sound low in the mix or some crazy esoteric sample with a backstory or some new piece of unsubstantiated lore. For example, allegedly this song is about the time that Ogre accidently smothered his pet mouse in his sleep. I don't think that's true at all, but I'd never read that story until today.

SUPER CHARGER HEAVEN by WHITE ZOMBIE

I have, like, a seriously longform piece on Mr. Zombie's artistic output in me somewhere. Suffice it to say that when he's on, he manages to capture these perfect little glimpses into a low-bar trailer-trash scumfuck horror aesthetic that feels completely honest and true to both itself and the culture that inspired it. When he's off, he gets really self indulgent and kinda silly. This whole album is a blend of those two things, but this track in particular is really very silly. But's it's my kind of silly, and sometimes I just want to yell "DEVIL MAN! DEVIL MAN!" over and over to achieve catharsis. Mr. Zombie might actually be the true king of the Ren Fest Roadtrip Playlist microgenre now that I think about it.