Divided by Werewolves - Episode 31

Episode 31 of the Divided by Werewolves show is up! We talk a LOT of Destiny 2 and the new film adaptation of Stephen King's IT. You can listen down below or find us on iTunes by searching for Divided by Werewolves. Thanks as always to any who listen.

Rest in peace, Basil Gogos

Tim Curry on IT 2017

My favorite youtube channel, Bloodbath and Beyond, recently uploaded a video from Fan Expo of Toronto of Tim Curry speaking about the new IT. The video has gone viral, and so I thought I'd post it up as well. I believe this video needs to show up everywhere, as I love Tim Curry and I'm of the opinion that his performance in the original IT is about the only reason to watch it. Enjoy!

Italian Horror Week 2017 - Nightmare City

As promised, here's my entry from Doc Terror's Italian Horror Week 2107...

Italian Horror Week is how I got to know Doc Terror. My exposure to Italian cinema is best described as “limited”, and once I decided I wanted to seek out more, Doc’s name kept coming up in my search results. This of course lead me to the Blog of Horrors. I may not have ever met James Harris in person, but I learned more about horror from him than I have anyone else in my life. I am honored to be taking part in this first Italian Horror Week without him. I may not know as much as many of the other contributors, and that should be said up front as you decided as to whether you read on or not, but I owe Doc Terror at least this much. For my entry, i did a first time watch of Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City from 1980.

Following an explosion at a nuclear facility, an unidentified aircraft that’s supposed to have the world’s leading nuclear scientist aboard arrives at an airport. The plane has made no radio contact, and the air traffic control tower calls in the authorities after several attempts to reach anyone inside the aircraft. Standing by is network reporter Dean Miller, who is there in the hopes of getting an exclusive interview with the scientist, professor Hagenbeck. There continues to be no response from inside the plane when the military begin ordering the door to be opened. When it finally does, the doctor and everyone inside emerges in a murderous rage. Dean narrowly escapes, and races to get to his wife who is performing surgery at a nearby hospital. Together the two fight to surive against a growing army of radioactive zombies who are cutting a violent swath across the city.

Ok, so I said “radioactive zombies” there, but honestly, I don’t know what they were. They ran, used weapons, and they drove vehicles. Some acted like zombies, doing what looked like they were eating their victims, others acted like vampires who were in a bloodlust. Nightmare City is a lot of things, but consistent it ain’t. It’s full of plot holes, what plot is there doesn’t make a lot of sense, the effects go from almost non-existant (there are times in scenes with a large group wreaking havoc that knives stab or go across knecks and there’s not a drop of blood to be seen) to comically over-done (a shot from a pistol makes a woman’s head explode). The “zombies” themselves even vary. Some of them just look like regular people holding their eyes wide open, others are covered with this strange brownish green substance that closely resembles clay or mud. The acting is bad, dialog is bad, and it has one of the most unsatisfying endings you’ll ever see.

So how did I feel about Nightmare City? In short, I fucking loved it. Yes, it has all of the problems I mentioned, but it’s charm is undeniable. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Umberto Lenzi watched George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, immediately left the theater, and started writing. Nightmare City feels like Dawn’s idiot cousin who nobody in the family talks about. I laughed, a lot. This is that kind of movie. If you can have a couple of drinks, get some friends over, and just let the movie be itself, it’s a fun time. If you’re a horror snob, who needs their movies to be perfect, it’s probably best if you move along and leave Nightmare City for those of us who enjoy watching the occasional trashy movie.

Nightmare City gets a thumbs up for me. If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me. Enjoy the rest of your Italian Horror Week, I’m sure I will be. Doc Terror Forever.

Divided by Werewolves - Episode 30

Episode 30 of Divided by Werewolves is here! This time we talk about Adam Wingard's Death Note, It Comes at Night, and our initial impressions of Destiny 2. You can check it out below or find us on iTunes. Thanks as always to any who listen.

Italian Horror Week 2017

It's that time of year again, and in honor of James "Doc Terror" Harris, a bunch of us are keeping the tradition of Italian Horror Week going. There are giveaways, reviews, retrospectives and more all week long, celebrating Italian horror, which Doc loved so dearly. Yours truly did a small write-up on Nightmare City which I'll be posting here as well, once it has officially gone up. You can follow along with us over at Doc Terror's site. Feel free to share things around on social media, and make sure to enter the giveaways. It's going to be a fun week.


There's still not a day that goes by that I don't think of James, and I hope wherever he is, he's celebrating along with us. Love ya, Jimmy. Miss you every day. DOCTERRORFOREVER.

Destiny 2 - Official Live Action Trailer - New Legends Will Rise

Next week, the addiction returns. Not that it ever really left, as I more or less have played Destiny since it first came out. This game became a lifestyle, I studied it when I wasn't playing it. I logged hundreds of hours on both Xbox One and PS4. I'm nervously excited to jump back in 100%, but I'm helpless to resist. See you next Wednesday, Guardians. 

Divided by Werewolves - Episode 29

Episode 29 of the show is now available! We talk about games, Defenders, and Brandon's first ever viewing of The Human Centipede. You can listen below, or find us on iTunes. Thanks as always to any who listen.

Night Trap 25th Anniversary Edition

As you may have heard, Limited Run Games recently did a physical release of the infamous Dana Plato starring fmv horror game, Night Trap. My own personal history with the game isn't nearly as interesting as the game itself's story, but it's a controversial horror game so of course I'm interested. I knew what it was, but at our home the Sega CD was my brother's (even though I bought it for him as a gift). Thanks to the magic of the internet, even though the game had been pulled, he managed to grab a copy. I watched him play a bit, and I think I tried it once or twice. My brother always worshipped at the altar of these fmv games, and in fact still does at times, you can watch him stream Double Switch over on his Twitch account, but they never really grabbed me. I mean, I liked Sewer Shark, Tomcat Alley, and Midnight Raiders well enough, but tracking down my own Genesis and Sega CD to play them was never anything I considered.

Still, I was pretty excited when the announcement of the remaster came earlier this year, and I waited impatiently for news of the release date. If you're unfamiliar with Limited Run Games, in a nut shell, they produce small runs of physical copies of games that have digital releases. You know I love me some physical media, and Night Trap would be my first attempt at ordering from Limited Run. Now, this wasn't my first rodeo when it comes to trying to score something with a limited release. Scalpers, website crashes, bots, I've seen it all. Still, I wanted this and made sure I was at my laptop. I watched the counter tick down, and the second "add to cart" popped up, I hit the button. The site told me I was in line and not to refresh or I'd lose my spot. Finally the time came for me to make payment. I was sent over to PayPal (which I'd already signed in to), and when I was sent back to Limited Run to complete my order, I was notified that the item was sold out. To say that I wasn't happy would be an understatement. 

I basically spent the remainder of that day publicly stating my disappointment with Limited Run on Twitter/FB/etc. To be told to wait because there was a line, and then having the opportunity to pay but then be told the item sold WHILE I was paying, I just couldn't wrap my head around. Why is there a fucking line at all then? In fact, apparently with this particular release alongside Wonder Boy which also released the same day, a lot of people had negative things to say about their business model, so much so in fact that it has since been announced that they will be offering pre-orders on larger titles in the future. But anyway, I was done with them. Yeah, they release half of the run early for East coast people, and the second batch later in the day for West coasters, but I assumed even if I tried again, I would get the same result. In fact, I wasn't even at home or anywhere near a computer when the email came across my phone that the second batch was about to go live. Meh, I thought, fuck these guys. But I have to be honest, there was that little voice that was in my head saying "What if?". Eventually my resolve gave way, and I went to the site with under a minute left on the countdown. The place in cart button showed up, I clicked it, then the dreaded wait in line page came. Oh well, right? Suddenly it went away, much faster than the first time, and there I was looking at PayPal. So I hit buy, was redirected to LR's site, and I smashed the place order button. 

I waited for a while for the email telling me my order was cancelled, or something went wrong, but it never came. What did come was a order confirmation email, and it appeared as if I had successfully scored a copy of Night Trap. About two weeks later now, there it was, a black bubble mailer in my mailbox with the Limited Run Games logo on it. 

Here it is in all it's glory. It comes with the game, obviously, reversible cover art, a booklet, and a folded poster of the original game artwork. It's a pretty slick package for the $30 asking price. I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet unfortunately, but I will be doing so pretty soon. The plan is to stream the game for Werewolves. I'm still undecided as to whether I should play it first, so at least I know what I'm doing when I stream it, or if I should just go in blind and see just how badly I can fuck it up. 

So that's my first experience with Limited Run Games, and how I got Night Trap. If you're unfamiliar with the game, and would like to know more about it I highly recommend watching the documentary from My Life in Gaming which I'm embedding below. I may or may not post the stream vid when it happens here, so if you're interested in that, give the Divided by Werewolves youtube page a sub. 

Best of 2017 so far - May/June

As predicted, I'm just going to post May and June together, since I didn't really see a whole lot of things in either month. Still, there were *good things, so off we go.

Alien Covenant

You know what Alien Covenant is. I'm not entirely sure what people expect from this franchise at this point. Everybody saw Resurrection, right? And yet people still bitch about Covenant? I've read so many criticisms at this point, and to be perfectly honest, all of the shit people bitch about did't bother me in the least. It's not Alien, it's not Aliens, but as a movie that's meant to bridge the gap between Prometheus and the Alien franchise, I think it serves it's purpose just fine. But again, I'm easily entertained apparently (dumb?), so take that into consideration. I do find it amusing as the excitement for Covenant was pretty high before it's release, just how many people who had never done anything but bash the fuck out of Prometheus were suddenly "watching it for the second time and enjoying it a lot more". Bitch, please.






Raw

This is another one that is high on the list for the year. Absolutely loved it. It's about a young girl, Justine, who is about to head off to vet school, following in the footsteps of her older sister, the black sheep of the family who already attends. Her family are strict vegetarians, and after a hazing incident the first week of school where she is forced to eat meat, Justine begins to have an insatiable hunger for it. As the cravings get stronger, and her will begins to break, she eventually becomes cannibalistic. That's about as much as you need to know before going into Raw. The way the story unfolds is done so well, that to say any more will give too much away. I will say, this is not The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Justine doesn't pull up to the table with a plate full of ass or anything. It handles cannibalism much in the same way that Ginger Snaps sort of tied lycanthropy and puberty together. In Raw, Justine's descent is portrayed not so much as a "mental break" but as how this repressed young girl is out on her own for the first time, discovering who the she is and what her place in the world is. Highly recommended. If you want to hear more about it, we talked about it on Werewolves here, but warning, there are major spoilers.



Wonder Woman

Again, not a whole lot to add to what you've already heard. Absolutely refuse to continue to have the fucking DC/Marvel movie debate at this point as well. I'll just say that Wonder Woman is pretty damn high up on my list of favorite comic book movies of all time. It's wonderful, pun intended. You can hear more about it on our most popular episode of Werewolves.















That about wraps it up for May/June. I do want to give an honorable mention to a movie Binky recommended to me though, Shimmer Lake. It's a Netflix original movie told in reverse about a small town Sheriff who's trying to get to the bottom of a bank heist gone wrong. Very good movie, I enjoyed it a lot.

*After some interactions on the internet this week, I felt like I'd say this yet again. I'm not a critic/reviewer of movies, or anything for that matter. I don't know why it bothers people so much if I like a certain thing. It seems to bother some people to the point that the feel the need to let it be known they didn't like it ANYTIME I mention said thing. The very thought of running to the defense of something like BvS, or Suicide Squad, or whatever, every time somebody on the internet says they don't like it is both pointless and exhausting to me. Let's just let each other watch and like whatever there fuck we want, k?