If it’s true what they say, that you are what you eat, then Colonel Ives is every man.
Literally. He’s EVERY man.
Because Colonel Ives is a cannibal.

This week I’m going to talk about Colonel Ives, about his adventures in superhuman flesh eating and the terror and unexpected hilarity that ensues. Come with me as I muse on a film that escapes many a genre film fans radar and yet has held a very special place in my spleen since I first bore theatrical witness to it way back in 1999.

Now then.Who’s hungry?
Me?
I’m RAVENOUS.

Directed by British art house filmmaker Antonia Bird (the spectacular melodrama PRIEST) as a last minute sub for director Milcho Manchevski, RAVENOUS is, simply put, one of the strangest studio supported shockers ever made. Starting as a kind of western and then becoming a horror film before revealing itself as a comedy, then a social satire, then a western again, sliding back into horror before…oh balls, I’m losing you. Let’s back up a bit…

You know you’re in for a sneering anti-mainstream epic before the word RAVENOUS even pops up on screen as two portent dripping pre-credits quotes appear: The first is a serious minded scribble from Nietzsche; the second is credited to ‘anonymous’…it reads, in bold caps, ‘EAT ME’.

Game on…

MEMENTO vet Guy Pearce stars as Captain Boyd, a soldier who, after playing dead during a Mexican ambush, inadvertently drinks the blood of a slain comrade, gets an inexplicable jolt of energy and single handedly saves the day. When details of his initially cowardly exploits sour his reputation, he’s stationed in the farthest outpust in California, Fort Spencer, a camp populated by assorted drunks, hookah smokers and military cast offs of every sort. One night, a barely dressed, shivering and raving traveler drifts into camp named Colqhoun (28 WEEKS LATER’s Robert Carlyle), spilling a wild eyed story about his trapped companions and the cannibalistic means they were forced into by their guide, a one Colonel Ives. The outposts leader Colonel Hart (played by the always entertaining Jeffrey Jones in a turn that would be sort of reprised in the awesome HBO series DEADWOOD) in a fit of outrage, decides to take leave for grim site in hopes of rescuing any non-entrée survivors there may be left. However, upon their arrival it becomes clear that Colqhoun is not only insane but is in fact the demonic Colonel of his own tale; the rescue mission turns out to be a trap and the feral Colqhoun/Ives proceeds to kill and eat as many of the search party as possible. The woozy Boyd – who by this time is fascinated and tempted by the power of cannibalism – tries to escape by jumping off a cliff with the corpse of a semi chewed colleague. Trapped in a hole, battered and broken – and hungry – Boyd opts to power up and have a bite before setting forth the get his revenge on the maniacal Ives. And then RAVENOUS really gets weird. Turns out the overly viral Ives has tapped into the power of the Wendigo, an ancient Indian cannibal spirit, and has become a sort of superhuman vampire. It becomes clear that his chief goal to position the apprehensive Boyd as his male Eve, the other half of a soon to be flourishing mid century skin eating California uberclan.

Taking its cues from the tragic, true life tale of the Donner Party (an unfortunately real band of 19th century settlers who were forced to cannibalize their dead during a treacherous trek) RAVENOUS goes off the rails fairly quickly and refuses to behave by any sort of narrative rule. I think it was this very tonal freestyling that doomed the picture to a critical death as many journos and genre fans didn’t get what Bird and company were trying to do. Now, I can’t very well claim that I do either, but I can tell you that RAVENOUS is one of those rare films that stands tall in its staggering originality, a film that defies audience expectations at every turn and manages to entertain smashingly while provoking goosebumps and giggles. I absolutely love this movie.

The cast is universally excellent. Pearce is vulnerable and tough when he needs to be, while Jones and the usually aggravating David Arquette offer fine, quirky turns. But the real star is Carlyle. Looking like a spooked deer one second, turning into a drooling, cunning, salivating wolf the next, the veteran Scottish character actor’s on screen presence as the arrogant ghoul Ives is unlike anything previously essayed by anyone in any film.

In my essays, I always attempt to isolate and stress how pivotal a picture’s music is, especially in the annals of horror, to effectively stamp the filmmakers imagery and ideal into your psyche. The score for RAVENOUS ranks as the most unique and effective since Goblin’s prog rock in SUSPIRIA. Blur front man Damon Albarn and (my personal favorite modern composer) Michael Nyman have created a disorienting, weird aural landscape of hillbilly loops (Albarn’s stuff) and dread drenched orchestral string stings (Nyman) that uncomfortably combine to goose the already disturbing and outrageous flesh eating cowboy set pieces and elevate them into brain scrambling hysterics. The final piece, which meanders over a long, ultraviolent 15 minute struggle between the reluctant Pearce and the cocksure Carlyle, is particularly effective and hypnotic, brilliantly at odds with the frenetic on-screen action.

Full of left field Nietzsche –esque flesh eating superman philosophy, gruesome bloodletting, berserk performances, peculiar plotting, deranged music, beautiful cinematography (by Anthony Richmond, TALES FROM THE HOOD) and a deliciously cross eyed sense of lunatic humor, RAVENOUS is a fascinating one off and I’m willing to bet, a future cult classic. And the film may seriously tempt your inner cannibal: one look at that chunky fork or spoon human stew bubbling away in the movie’s final reel made me fucking ravenous indeed.

Alexander out. Eat me.

NEW RELEASE:
SPECTRUM X – Darkest Night Ever

What do you get when you mix the ferocity of BILE, the deadly delicacy of KMFDM, and the dark aura of MARILYN MANSON? You get the Italian psycho industrial band SPECTRUM-X. Consisting of Nullifier X and Candy Bones, SPECTRUM-X has earned a cult like status since the release of their 2007 CD “Tea Party With Zombies” (released by the Japanese Record label DARKEST LABYRINTH). Their latest full length release entitled “Darkest Night Ever” features 14 tracks of hard hitting, industrial chaos that leaves the listener with a feeling of tension and fear. The new heavier guitar sound can be attributed to Kiwamu of the band BLOOD, who lends his musical talents on this CD, creating a distinctly heavier sound than their previous release.

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Got a clip from War Devil, though I would share. I know nothing about the game other than the promo stuff I recieved and that its for PS3, but it looks interesting enough.

Heres what the promo for the game is:

WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within - the first footage of ’08 for the anticipated action-adventure videogame currently in development by Digi-Guys.

As I write this overdue entry in my BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG, I’m sitting in a fancy hotel room in Nanjing, China. The reason for my visit here? Lecturing about cinema at various Universities. The purpose in me telling you this? None, outside of setting up the scene of the following lurid literary love in….

While flipping the primarily Chinese language channels in my suite’s TV, I managed to find a class of 24 hour movie network that screened films both Asian and American. As the tail end of a mid period Jackie Chan Kung Fu comedy was winding down I was both shocked and delighted to learn that the follow-up feature was none other than one of my fave nature gets pissed pictures, 1977’s creepy, crawly and campy exercise in arachnophobia, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS. I’m not kidding. Though I’ve seen this gem over 100 times since that first fateful ABC primetime encounter in the late 70’s, watching this classic Bill Shatner starring shocker dubbed into Mandarin and subtitled with English was fresh, invigorating and totally surreal – an appropriate summation of my experience in this country, in fact.

For those of you unlucky shmucks who have never seen this curiously rare eco-holocaust horror potboiler before, allow me to fill in a few blanks. Made in the wake of Spielberg’s untouchable JAWS, SPIDERS stars legendary scenery gobbler William ‘Captain Kirk/Bran Man’ Shatner (am I the only one who finds it funny that a guy named SHATner is now hawking bran?) as macho Verde Valley, Arizona veterinarian Rack Hanson, a guy who loves ladies and heals horses with the best of ‘em. After a crop duster sprays a new fangled pesticide over the desert, local livestock begin to bite the dust prematurely, their carcasses encased in gossamer cocoons. When the spate of sudden death starts to spread to humans, Rack, along with sexy entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) determine that hordes of hairy tarantulas, affected and displaced by the incessant ultra powered DDT showers, are rising up and feeding on everything in their path. Pretty soon, every spider colony in the state descends on the screaming populace, spitting venom and eating everyone and spinning a web of 8 legged B movie horror that soon spirals completely out of our heroes control.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS was directed by a one John “Bud” Cardos, an old school B movie vet who was also responsible for the goofy 1984 Wings Hauser bio-zombie vehicle MUTANT and a really lousey 1979 Bill Devane starring Sci-Fi number called THE DARK. SPIDERS is, without a shred of doubt, his masterpiece: a cheesy, breezy, somewhat disturbing exercise in venom spewing mayhem that manages to chill without breaking its PG rating bonds. The spiders themselves are a shuddery lot and watching them crawl out of old tires and sand hills, from under tables and spilling out of ceiling vents, is downright nightmarish. Best of all the poor little multi eyed thespians are absolutely real; if you have even a trace of revulsion regarding tarantulas, you should avoid this movie like a bad case of bird flu. Similarly, if you LIKE spiders you might want to side step it too – scads of the leggier cast members get squashed for real, something that apparently pissed off more sensitive animal rights authorities.

Watching KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is especially awesome when dubbed into Chinese if only to see some poor Asian actor attempting to replicate Shatner’s unique. Line. Delivery. In Chinese. If you’re a fan of The Shat then you OWE it to yourself to track down a (probably impossible to locate) Mandarin saturated print of this picture….it’s absolutely fucking hilarious. But the movie, for all it’s low budget flaws and seen in any language, is actually incredibly well made and well paced and the characters are all solid, stock, small town folk character actors that give their all, though the dub threatens to turn the amiably low key turn by the great Woody Strode (SPARTACUS) into one of manic high camp.

Fans of library film music and counter culture pop culture TV will also find much to revel in while watching SPIDERS. The score is a fantastic patchwork of cues and themes recycled from both the original THE TWILIGHT ZONE (the brilliantly horrifying tinkling piano and harpsichord music heard in the episode TO SERVE MAN and THE INVADERS is all over this pic like a cheap, sweatshop sculpted shirt) and Ralph Bakshi’s 60’s SPIDERMAN cartoon. The tunes are used well and give the sun burnt Arizona landscape set arachnid carnage a strange, viscerally edgy, sensational sting. Also great is the opening and closing trucker rock tune “Peaceful Verde Valley” by former rockabilly idol turned born again Christian country warbler Dorsey Burnett; when the final shot of the spider web entombed town (a cheap but effective matte painting) scans across the screen, hearing this lumbering, deep fried track drift overtop of it as the credits roll is downright weird…in a good way, of course.

If you’re a fan of movies that feature Mother Nature getting medieval on man’s ass, then this classy little shocker is something you should see. And baby, if you’re like I am at present time, lost in translation in a land that 1.3 billion people call home, forced to eat at one of the myriad, wretched McDonalds to avoid dining on gizzards, chicken testicles and cow throats, and breathing in clouds of noxious pollution, watching a dubbed version of a childhood favorite will warm your cockles and connect you with home.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS rocks.
Alexander in.
China.

I try not to pigeon hold myself to purely video game news on this blog. We all know that the electronic gaming industry is not only the place where the most movement takes place but it also has by far the most money involved; therefore news is a lot more common to report on. But since I started my gaming career as a CCG/RPG/Tabletop guy, and still play these games possibly more often than any video games (varies depending on what the industry decides to put out) I do get very excited when news hits regarding something new in that field.

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On March 13th, 1996, cinema lost one of its most eccentric, innovative and interesting counter culture auteurs; a man who needs no introduction to diehard European horror aficionados but whose name was, to the film world at large, either a dirty word or even worse, ignored completely.

I’m talking about that gruff, grand old man of Italian genre filmmaking; that bishop of bizarre bloodshed; that overlord of oddball head drilling, gut barfing, eye puncturing, throat opening, daylight through a little girls head revealing epic shock celluloid melting madness; that…

…aw, fukkit. You get the picture. I’m talking about Lucio Fulci, here.

Lucio Fulci.
One of my heroes.

I have the book of Eibon symbol from THE BEYOND tattooed on the back of my neck for crying out loud.

Fulci.

A man who, in his long half century career behind the lens, managed to dabble in every conceivable genre but who truly made his mark with a series of late 70’s and early 80’s metaphysical horror classics that bent logic and (with plenty of help from FX maestro Gianetto deRossi)turned tummies with high style and an almost innocent desire to disturb. And though, by his own admission, much of Fulci’s darker genre work traveled the same head spinning roads paved by his much artier and slicker contemporary (and fellow countryman) Dario Argento (Argento’s immortal SUSPIRA being a particularly obvious influence), I’ve always preferred Fulci’s work by a brain encrusted hair, being far less pretentious…and considerably more visceral.

One thing that has always endeared me to Fulci’s best work (and indeed to much of the Italian genre filmmakers from that lovely and lurid 60’s/70’s/80’s golden era) was his heavy reliance on progressive rock and jazz music to goose his often outrageously gory set pieces, often using the strains of composer Fabio Frizzi. Recently, I scribbled a blog entry/slash love letter (or as my ex-radio partner and genre journo colleague calls my fervent essays, ‘surprise birthday party’) to BEAT Records and their latest CD Italo-horror score release CINECOCKTAIL 4: THE ITALIAN HORROR SHOW (scroll down, down, down to read it). Well, I managed to get my mitts on another BEAT release from a few years back, kind of awkwardly, but truthfully called LUCIO FULCI: HORROR AND THRILLER, a collection of cues from seven of the Maestro’s classic shockers, a few of his misfires and a couple of his less popular but more than worthy titles.

It’s a fantastic disc that also functions as tip of the hat to some of European horror cinema’s greatest composing talent.

Here’s the track list:

1. Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna: La Lucerta – Ennio Morricone
2. Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna: Sole Sulla Pelle - Ennio Morricone
3. Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna: Magia Mera - Ennio Morricone
4. Una Lucertola Con La Pelle Di Donna: Sfinge - Ennio Morricone
5. Lo Squareatore Di New York: Fay - Francesco De Masi
6. Lo Squareatore Di New York: New York One More Day - Francesco De Masi
7. Lo Squareatore Di New York: Suspance And Murder - Francesco De Masi
8. Lo Squareatore Di New York: New York One More Day (II Vers.) - Francesco De Masi
9. Quella Villa Accanto Al Cimitero: Quella Villa - Walter Rizzati
10. Quella Villa Accanto Al Cimitero: Tema Bambino - Walter Rizzati
11. Manhattan Baby: Baby Sequence 1 - Fabio Frizzi
12. Manhattan Baby: Baby Sequence 2 - Fabio Frizzi
13. L’Aldila’: Voci Dal Nulla - Fabio Frizzi
14. L’Aldila’: Verso L’Ignoto - Fabio Frizzi
15. Demonia: Hell Flames - Giovanni Cristani
16. Demonia: The Nun Crypt - Giovanni Cristani
17. Demonia: The Blue Mountain - Giovanni Cristani
18. Demonia: The Revelation - Giovanni Cristani
19. Demonia: World’s Navel - Giovanni Cristani
20. Demonia: Farewell To Dread - Giovanni Cristani
21. Door To Silence: Melvin’s Theme - Franco Piana
22. Door To Silence: Love And Death - Franco Piana
23. Door To Silence: Running - Franco Piana
24. Door To Silence: Unknown - Franco Piana
25. Door To Silence: Dark - Franco Piana
26. Door To Silence: Leave A Message - Franco Piana
27. Door To Silence: Bechet - Franco Piana
28. Door To Silence: Magician - Franco Piana
29. Door To Silence: The Nun Crypt/Lucio’s Message To His Fans - Franco Piana

If you’re already a Lucio Fulci completist you may already have this fine disc. If you are and you don’t simply log onto www.beatrecords.it and get a copy.

And if you’re NOT a Lucio Fulci fan, stop reading my BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG immediately because I have and will again, use this dark corner of the web to wax wickedly of the man and his work.

Until next time, Alexander out.

There’s a look, a tone and texture to science fiction films from the early to mid 1970’s – a sanitized glimpse of a future that, seen today, exists as a perversion of the past. The blinking lightboards, silly tubes that lead nowhere, white washed walls, turtleneck wearing intellectuals….the list goes on. Think of the great glossy glimpses into ersatz tomorrows of that era – THX1183, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, SOYLENT GREEN, LOGAN’S RUN, CLONUS – and you’ll see what I mean. But outside of the curiously antiseptic funkiness of their art direction, 70’s Sci-Fi was also incredibly high minded and intellectually bold, criticizing politics, people and technology with a grim humorlessness and nightmarish immediacy that suited the material beautifully.

Then STAR WARS came along and fucked it all up…

But the very same year that George Lucas and company were saving Hollywood by demolishing sophisticated cinema, wobble psyched British filmmaker Donald Cammell was unleashing his own mind bending stab at future shock. A loose adaptation of a very early and only so-so Dean R. Koontz pulp thriller, Cammell’s seminal (and I mean that literally) 1977 technology run amok masterwork DEMON SEED has never gotten its dues as a serious piece of Sci-Fi / horror cinema. Don’t get me wrong, the film has its fans, but, I mean, I’ve never seen anyone prancing about with a picture of an electrode wearing Julie Christie on a T-shirt or anything. But if you follow me down into prophetic disco-era cyberspace for the next few paragraphs, you may just find yourself wanting one. Read on…

DEMON SEED stars hangdog faced character actor Fritz Weaver (key TWILIGHT ZONE episodes, CREEPSHOW) as Dr. Alex Harris, a scientist working for a shadowy corporation that has invented an organic, sentient computer system dubbed Proteus IV. The multi talented machine has been blessed with the world’s first synthetic cortex – a real deal brain – and can do everything from solving impossible mathematical equations to kicking ass at chess to curing leukemia. When nervous executives order the Proteus IV project to be shut down, they little suspect that the high brow hard drive has in fact developed a basic human trait – the need to live, to survive no matter what the cost. Tapping into a portal in Harris’s state of the art, high tech home, Proteus proceeds to take over the place, possessing everything from the kitchen appliances to the security system and imprisoning the good Professor’s beautiful wife Susan (the gorgeous and talented Christie in a fearless performance that runs the gamut). Seems Proteus’s desperate desire to stay alive has forced him to devise the most diabolical of plans: coldly, clinically he informs the terrified Susan that he will, over the coming days, bind her, probe her, prep her, make love to her…and impregnate her. See, Proteus has pretentions of parenthood and thinks that the key to ensuring his immortality is in spilling his seed into a human woman and hiding his cyborg self beneath the guise of the very humans who sculpted him.

Taking it’s cues from both Kubrick’s landmark 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY, Cammell’s film manages to out freak them both and operate on a far more emotionally sophisticated level. The fact that Proteus wants to live at any cost and, though she is both opposed and repulsed by her impending A.I. (artificial insemination), Susan is still carrying guilt and misery over the death of her own daughter the previous year, adds a complex dynamic to the proceedings. The movie also echoes the same existential terrain explored in Sci-Fi guru Phillip K. Dick’s 1965 novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP (developed even more explicitly in Ridley Scott’s loose 1982 big screen adaptation BLADE RUNNER) in that the so called ‘villain’ is in fact the victim: an ersatz, Frankenstein like, man made creation that simply wants to belong in the natural world, but has no conception how to.

Though DEMON SEED does indeed function as an intellectual genre exercise, don’t let me mislead you about the more visceral frissions the film provides – it’s as kinky, eccentric and bizarre as a film directed by the co-helmer of the spectacularly sleazy Mick Jagger shocker PERFORMANCE should be. The late Cammell (who blew his own head off in 1996) was a real deal lunatic who lived an extreme and extremely volatile life, only actually making a handful of pictures (including the blistering 1987 slasher deconstruction WHITE OF THE EYE, another of my personal favorites) - but when he spoke, baby, he spoke loudly and damned ferociously.

And though DEMON SEED is set in a world of harsh edges, speculative science and malevolent robots, Cammell chooses to accentuate the more organic angles of the tale; this is after all an exploitation film about a computer fucking, or rather, raping, a woman in order to create a kind of bionic bastard. During the pivotal and perverse fornication sequence, Cammell spins the picture into hallucinogenic visual overdrive, blasting colorful wormholes and violent editing spasms across the screen in a miasma of melty eyeball spinning bliss; at DEMON SEED’s halfway point, as Susan begins her rapidly belly swelling incubation period, various people stumble into the home only to be dispatched by the defensive Proteus. For these sequences, Cammell temporarily abandons his elegant science sex shock approach and goes for outrageous horrorshow, as the nest protecting computer miraculously transforms into a smooth, pulsing and homicidal, human crushing Rubik’s Cube; a writhing, larger than life riff on the decade later Lament Configuration in Clive Barker’s HELLRAISER. It’s out of left field elements like this that make DEMON SEED such a head spinning, brilliant and disorienting experience.

Firmly set in the centre of DEMON SEED’s weird celluloid universe, and indeed the source of much of the picture’s dramatic power, is the low, controlled and chilling passive aggressive vocal persona of Proteus himself, a tour de force turn by THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E’s Robert Vaughan. Forget HAL, Vaughan’s Proteus is a sexually aware device that tries to imitate his human masters but just can’t find the eye of the mortal needle. There’s a real vulnerability to the omnipresent Proteus that, whether vindictively punishing Susan by cranking the heat in the house to lethal levels or cooing like a microchip Casanova, makes him both a scary and realistic screen presence. If I ran the world, 1977 would have been the year Robert Vaughan took home the Oscar.

As decadent and out of control as DEMON SEED may appear to be, Cammell knew exactly what he was doing, making a futuristic sex thriller by way of brain melting acid trip; a smart, frightening, sexy and one of a kind movie that also stands as the last great science fiction films of the decade. If you, like me, adore this flick, then I hope this rant has done it some kind of justice. If you haven’t seen it, you’re dumb and you should track down the recent DVD re-release and fix that which is broke.

And George, if you’re reading this…Kiss my wookie.

Alexander out.

I had a real deal thrill last week, sharing air time with the kid that Mel (and Anne) built, WORLD WAR Z and THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE author Max Brooks, on MTV LIVE.

Here’s the clip…

The gaming community is blessed with multiple high quality MMO games, with more coming out every day. There is a niche for just about any player craving any type of game.

Do you like Superheros and comics? Then City of Heros/Villans is right up your alley.

Do you love anime? Give Dofus a whirl.

Do you love Fantasy settings like Lord of the Rings? There are umpteen games for you, even one set in the Lord of the Rings Middle Earth setting.

High flying space adventures? Star Wars!

Hong Kong action shoot em up? Gunz: Online will have you breaking your fingers as you try to click fast enough to keep up.

Horror? Well then you should play, Um, something……

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If you are at all interested in the new movie SHUTTER which came out last Friday, (personally I think it’s about four years late on the Asian film remake boat), you should really check out Anne Harney and Leigh McCuen’s book, BEYOND THE GRAVE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY. I haven’t seen the film yet, but it reminded me that I had bought this book on amazon.com a couple weeks ago and still hadn’t checked it out. The book mainly covers the history surrounding the spiritualism movement which began in Europe at the start of the 19th century. But the movement really gained momentum with the invention of the camera in 1840. A mere ten years later the photo below was published and the public went wild for spirit photography.

First Spirit Photo

Most of the founders of the movement were later discredited as frauds but people (like me!) are still really fascinated by spirit photos.

Urg when I was doing research on this topic I realized that there was an exhibit at the Met in 2005 called “The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult” Arrrggg! I can’t believe I missed that!

http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/exhibits/spirits/index.htm

I think my all time fav spirit photograph though is this one:

Chimney Mother Photo

The story is that in 1959 after visiting her mother’s grave, Mabel Chimney decided to take a picture of her husband waiting in the idling car. But she got quite a surprise when the picture came back from the printers. Sitting in the backseat of the car is Mrs. Chimney mother! It was examined by a photo expert who said ‘I would stake my reputation on the fact that this picture is genuine.” Holy crap, this one really gave me the chills!