Cinema of Spookeries: Day 9 – Pixels

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The Ghoulish Plot: In the mid-90′s, a comedic man-child grabs the attention of the world with his silly voices, sophomoric jokes and generally harmless shtick. As time goes on, the man gets older but the jokes do not. Movie by movie, he continues to offer the same, tired shtick of a shlumpy man who endlessly wears cargo shorts, always loves some band from the 70′s and somehow always wins the day and gets to walk into the sunset with a beautiful woman. 

Then, the unthinkable happens – the man-child decides to try something new and take risks. He acts in serious movies where the quiet, seething rage underneath his flubby exterior is brought into full view for the world to see, in an attempt to prove he has more value than just silly sports movies where fat guys fall down. 

Alas, by then it is too late. Much of the world has written him off and his fanbase will not dare see their sweatpant-clad hero as anything else. It is then that his rage finally takes over and the man begins making movies even more awful than ever before, one after another, filled with scant plotlines, jokes that simply refer to older jokes from older movies and recycled visual gags from other movies. 

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With every hateful, angry film a concoction of such putrid garbage is unleashed in cineplexes all over the world, and as each dollar rolls in the man sits in his Hollywood home, laughing at how he has proven the world is stupid, meaningless and without concern for the sanctity of the few moments of life each is granted. As time goes on he swears that he will continue to rob these poor souls of every penny he can, so that his children may enjoy lives of quiet solitude on private islands far away from those wretched, meandering sacks of meat on which he profits from. His soul grows darker with each passing film, but there is nobody on Earth whom he hates more than himself. 

The Scariest Part Of The Movie: It made $77 Million Dollars. 

Our Hero’s Downfall: Believing in his heart that humanity is empty, careless and stupid. 

Could It Happen: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IT WILL NOT END

Spookiness Factor: 10 out of 10

See more Cinema of Spookeries:
2015
Day 4: The Blair Witch
Day 2: Alien
Day 1: Monster Squad

The 2014 Archive

Weekend Show

The funniest person in the office gets their chance! 

One Comedy Fan and Wannabe has been selected to headline this new show at Lost Weekend Video, and we’ve got a great lineup of comics helping them to write material and get ready for the show. 

The Comics:
Allison Mick
Adrian McNair
Ben Feldman
Chelsea Bearce
Red Scott
Sean McKenzie

And the Comedy Newbie:
Introducing Dan Hamilton, a comedy fan from San Francisco!

Tickets are available on Eventbrite now. It all happens at Lost Weekend on October 20th at 8pm. 

Cinema Of Spookeries 2015: Day 4 – The Blair Witch Project

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The Ghoulish Plot: It’s the 90′s and everybody’s feelings have feelings. Three college students go into the rural woods of Maryland to film a documentary project entitled “The Blair Witch Project,” about the story of a witch in the woods who has killed kids, fisherman, random hillbillies and other people who wander into her field of vision. The trio is led by Heather, an ambitious girl who is determined to make her movie at all costs, until she begins to realize that there might be things in the woods that are out of her control, other than the unstoppable force that is the band Oasis. 

As the three work their way through the woods to see locations from the stories, they start to find that their map isn’t accurate, and strange forces begin to attack them at night that are much worse than secret tent farts. Finally one of them disappears in the middle of the night, and the two remaining try to find him, finally discovering a strange house in the middle of the woods. They enter inside and begin to find signs of the witch, but they might not get it on tape. For the kids, tape is what video used to go on, before everybody had a movie studio in their pocket they could also use to find strangers for sex. 

This is also the mother of all “Found Footage” scary movies, so the next time your friend takes a class in editing movies and wants you to come see the movie he helped make about the haunted closet in one of his classmate’s apartments, you have Blair Witch to thank for it. 

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The Scariest Part Of The Movie: The woods. The woods are scary as hell. I grew up near the woods. The woods are where meth-soaked hillbilly monsters go to get away from the rest of the world and do meth-soaked hillbilly shit. If I had to pick between living in Compton in the 90′s or the woods, hand me a Raiders hat, dude. 

Our Hero’s Downfall: On one level, it is the hubris of man to believe that they can overcome any obstacle, whether it be fact or possible fictional monster, and that through sheer force of will and determination they might prove their mettle. But also a scary Murder-Witch. 

Could It Happen: I don’t think there are undead floating ghost-witches floating around in the spooky woods. But I do believe there are cannibalistic hillbilly creatures whose god is Bill O’Reilly out there. 

Spookiness Factor: 7 out of 10. The way this was made ensured that the actors were experiencing real terror out there in the woods and it translates onscreen. I also grew up near woods that look exactly like the ones in the movie and would occasionally find spooky-ass shit out there. Hello, City Life! 

Cinema Of Spookeries 2015: Day 2 – Alien

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The Ghoulish Plot: Somewhere in the future, when science has created a utopia in which people in pressurized spaceships are allowed to smoke like chimneys, the 7-person crew of the Nostromo ride through space in a suspended animation on their way back to Earth. Their ship begins getting a random distress call from an unknown source, kind of like a booty call from a rando in space. 

The crew heads to the signal to investigate and finds a large spaceship unlike anything they’ve seen before, and inside a large skeleton whose chest was blown up from the inside. Since that seems like a cool way to die, they keep looking around and sure enough, find some weird eggs with spider creatures inside and poke at them long enough for one of them to jump out and attach itself to John Hurt’s face. 

They take him back to their ship and after a few days, the spider creature climbs off of his face, just long enough for him to start eating some crappy noodles and he then gets to experience the joy of motherhood as a creature then makes a hasty retreat out of his chest. 

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The crew begins hunting for the creature, but find it is growing astronomically fast and is a fan of killing everything it comes across. It also has acid for blood and a bit of a drooling issue, leading us to believe it really is running away from its own insecurities. Love yourself so others can love you, Alien! 

One-by-one the crew is killed off, until the Captain bites it and Ripley takes control of the ship, at which point she learns that picking up this deadly creature was the company’s plan all along and she and her coworkers are considered expendable. She and the remaining crew hatch a plan to escape and blow up the ship, but the Alien might just be too smart for that, but it also might wait long enough for Sigourney Weaver to strip down to her underwear. 

The Scariest Part Of The Movie: That this is basically a workplace horror movie. Think about being in the toughest and scariest situation in your life, then think about trying to get through it with Linda from Accounting. “Maybe send it 33 emails all marked ‘Urgent,’ Linda?” 

Our Hero’s Downfall: Trusting her company to do the right thing. Profit margins, bitches! 

Could It Happen: If vicious acid-bleeding death machines exist out there in space, some company will find a way to make a mess with it and then require you to spend two hours on hold with customer service to request assistance in getting rid of the acid-bleeding death machine. 

Spookiness Factor: 8 out of 10. This movie is dark, spooky and still looks shockingly great for being made in 1979, despite the old computer screens and insistence that the future would involve lots of blinking lights. It’s one of Ridley Scott’s masterpieces, which is why he won’t leave it alone and keeps making crappy Prometheus movies. 

Find the 2014 Cinema of Spookeries Archive HERE

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Back in October 2014 I attempted to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days and write them all up as part of a silly “Cinema of Spookeries” series. I failed to watch 31, but I came pretty close. You can find those all HERE.

I already know I won’t get to 31 movies this year, but I’m sure a few will make it. For October 1st here’s #1 – Monster Squad.