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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 23, 2019 4:09:30 GMT
The other Zebra book that Dawn Pauline Dunn and Susan Hartzell managed to write by plagiarizing Phantoms before they got caught. I nabbed this one for about $10.92 on eBay (for some reason it's more expensive than Demonic Color), and eagerly await its arrival, which, of course, will include my report here, as will Demonic Color. Gotta love that tagline, too; "They laid their eggs of evil - and hatched their horror on innocent flesh..." Now that's a cover blurb!
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 22, 2019 14:07:56 GMT
Nabbed for about $4 and some change on eBay. I'm unsure what the plot is, but that cover intrigues the hell outta me. According to one (mostly) spoiler-free user review on Goodreads, this book, written by Dawn Pauline Dunn and Susan Hartzell using the former's middle and last name as a pseudonym, it's about an evil green gas (gettin' some " Colour Out of Space on steroids" vibes). As long as two 90s fashion victim kids with gelled hair get eaten by the killer green fog, I'm down. Of course, there's the elephant in the room, which is that in some respects, this book is simply Dunn and Hartzell's earlier The Crawling Dark with a different title and a slightly different plot (evil flesh-eating gas as opposed to evil Satanic worms or whatever it was in Crawling Dark)... and that both steal entire passages from Dean R. Koontz's Phantoms but just change the characters' names and the nature of the threat. That they got away with this twice before someone finally caught on and Zebra pulled the books from shelves following a court case is amazing. Dunn and Hartzell did manage to write one more book for Zebra, Flesh Stealer, but by then the damage had been done (or should I say "Dunn?"). According to Goodreads' bio, Dawn Dunn continued writing under her own name without Hartzell after the plagiarism fiasco, at least until '01, and she currently works as a nurse practitioner. No word on Hartzell. Anyway, I eagerly await Demonic Color's arrival by mail. And I eventually wanna get Crawling Dark as well. I'm a big fan of Koontz's Phantoms and I wanna see exactly just how badly these two plagiarized it. I'm hoping it ends up being decent despite this, because the idea of killer green gas sounds interesting.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 20, 2019 4:01:43 GMT
Koosh, if you like Slime, you can't fail to appreciate Victor Norwood's outrageous plagiarism of same, Night Of The Black Horror. Great cover art a bonus. Victor Norwood - Night Of The Black Horror (Badger #44, Jan. 1962) On it! Meanwhile, I also listened to Edward E. French's readings of The Corpse of Charlie Rull and Diary of a Werewolf. The latter may have juuuust edged out Slime as my favorite Brennan story. It really felt like something Lovecraft would've written. The unnamed narrator's descent into utter madness is believably detailed by Mr. Brennan, and I found it interesting that, some early attempts to catch rabbits aside, he expresses no particular desire to hunt and kill animals - only his fellow humans (and in fact mourns for all the bears and foxes and such the people of Juniper Hill kill thinking they're "the thing"). It gave him a sympathetic quality he otherwise lacked. As for Charlie Rull, well, it was a little too short for my liking, but hot damn was it violent for a 50s story. The death of the serial killer in particular was nasty, especially the way Charlie hurls the body parts and entrails onto the highway. Imagine being a happy, 50s nuclear American family driving along minding your own business when suddenly arms, legs, guts and blood start raining onto the windshield, hood and road... What I like is how in each story so far, Brennan doesn't fall back on the "idiotic cops" crutch of so many other writers. Chief Underbeck, Sheriff Maceland (sp?) and the unnamed captain in Charlie Rull have all been depicted as levelheaded individuals more than up to the task which confronts them (save Underbeck, who at least has the good sense to realize he's in way over his head and call in the Army). I like it when the plot doesn't require the characters to be morons to function. Also, despite the fact good triumphs over evil at the end, each story has somehow still has a bizarrely fatalistic/nihilistic tone (again, very Lovecraftian; fitting since AFAIK Brennan was a big fan of ol' H.P.), making the victories seem somehow hollow/pyrrhic. I like it. Anyway, I'll definitely check out Night of the Black Horror, dem! EDIT: Bah! EBay didn't turn up anything, and they want $50+ for it on Amazon. Phooey. Payday it is, then (I also still pine for the elusive Rodent Mutation) someday)! And speaking of straight up ripoffs, anyone read The Crawling Dark and Demonic Color by Pauline Dunn, which were not only apparently the same book published twice under different titles, but also a total ripoff of Dean Koontz's Phantoms? A shame, as those are two more of the very kinds of covers I meant when I was praising The Shapes of Midnight ( Crawling Dark's in particular reminds me of the cover for the novelization of John Carpenter's The Fog).
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 20, 2019 3:50:33 GMT
THE ANT MEN by Eric North Nugget Smith - An Australian man hired to act as a guide for Professor Orcutt's expedition. Bill Carey - An English grad student from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories. Tod Gray - An Australian student from the University of Adelaide. Best friend of Carey. Nicknamed "Jugs" due to his large ears. Professor Silas Orcutt - An American scientist from the Smithsonian Institution. He leads the expedition and is abducted by the Ant Men, but rescued. Dr. Gregory Wise - Orcutt's colleague, an Australian scientist. The Ant Men - Intelligent ants who have evolved into a near-human form. Their society is very caste-based, with red priests, green officers, black soldiers and gray civilians. The priests are wiped out in a civil war after betraying the other Ant Men to the mantises. The Giant Praying Mantises - The sworn enemies of the Ant Men, a colony of giant mantises. Nicknamed the "Big Sticks" by Orcutt's expedition, the Ant Men call them "Imbricks." Ior - A black ant soldier who befriends the humans after they save him from a mantis. He is nicknamed "Bracelet" because of a bracelet he wears on his wrist. Japu - Ior's mate, a short, female black ant soldier. Prior to learning her gender, the expedition nicknames her "Big Boy" ironically. "Greenie" - Ior's superior, a green officer. The Frog God - A giant frog creature worshiped as a god by the Ant Men, the red priests in particular. During the civil war, it is killed by the soldiers who melt it with their formic acid spit.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 20, 2019 3:36:54 GMT
DIARY OF A WEREWOLF by Joseph Payne Brennan The Werewolf - A former heroin addict who moves into Hemlock House in Juniper Hill at the suggestion of his doctor, and gradually begins giving in to animalistic impulses. He narrates the tale in the form of a diary. He ends up imprisoned in a mental institution. Doctor - The narrator's doctor who suggests he move to Juniper Hill. Alberta Bates - An elderly local woman who becomes the narrator's first victim. Freddy Camberwell - The town drunk. He becomes the narrator's second victim. Sheriff Macelin - The county sheriff. He calls the narrator to warn him that "the beast" might be hiding on his property. He later rescues the narrator from a lynch mob. Debra Dorman - A young child who is the narrator's third victim. Wagon Driver - A Juniper local who the narrator has to conceal Debra's body from as he comes up the road. Young Man - A driver who pulled off to the side of the road to make out with his girlfriend in the car. He becomes the narrator's fourth victim. Girl - The young man's girlfriend. She flees when the narrator kills her boyfriend. He almost kills her before a patrol drives up, forcing him to abandon her. Farmer - A local man who gets the narrator's license plate.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 18, 2019 20:06:03 GMT
SLIME by John Payne Brennan The Slime - An amorphous deep sea predator which takes up residence in Wharton's Swamp. Burned up by a soldier with a flamethrower. Henry Hossing - A homeless man passing through Clinton Center. He becomes the slime's first human victim. Jim Jelinson - The local druggist. Hears Henry's dying scream in the night. Giles Gowse - A superstitious farmer who lives near Wharton's Swamp and is convinced it's haunted. Sarey - Gowse's cow, who is presumably eaten by the slime. Rupert Barnaby - Gowse's neighbor, who he has a rivalry with. Goes hunting in the swamp at night and becomes the slime's second victim. Jibbe - Barnaby's dog. Chief Miles Underbeck - The chief of Clinton Center's police force. Tasked with solving the mysterious disappearances in the swamp. Sergeant Grimes - One of the officers under Underbeck. Reports that their men didn't find anything unusual at Rupert Barnaby's farm. Motorist - A man passing through Clinton Center, who rescues Dolores Rell and drives her to the police station. Dolores Rell - A young woman living in Clinton Center. She and her fiancé Jason Bukmeist are attacked by the slime and only she survives, but goes insane. Jason Bukmeist - Dolores' fiancé, who is from neighboring Stantonville. He becomes the third victim. Patrolman Luke Matson - One of the policemen searching the swamp. He becomes the slime's fourth (and final) human victim. Patrolman Fred Storr - Matson's partner, who survives the attack by shining his flashlight on the slime. He goes insane from witnessing it devour his partner, however. Soldier - A US Army reservist from Camp Evans, one of several summoned by Chief Underbeck. He kills the slime for good using a flamethrower.
THE CORPSE OF CHARLIE RULL by Joseph Payne Brennan Charlie Rull - A homeless man who dies of a heart attack and falls into a swamp polluted by radioactive chemicals. Resurrected as a mindlessly enraged zombie, he goes on a killing spree and is finally shot to death by police. Salesman - A man who hits Charlie on the highway. Charlie overturns his car, tears off his head and rips him to pieces. Hitchhiker - A serial killer posing as a drifting hitchhiker. He becomes Charlie's second victim. Charlie rips him apart. Cynthia Mellett - A little girl who lives on a farm near the highway. Mrs. Mellett - Cynthia's mother. Her quick thinking saves her and her daughter from becoming Charlie's third and fourth victims. Crazy Zack - Another local homeless man. First Tramp - A homeless man who initially thinks the approaching Charlie is Zack come to join them for dinner. Second Tramp - Another homeless man who insists that Zack won't be getting his share because he never brings anything. Third Tramp - Another homeless man with the first two. He recognizes Charlie and attempts to reason with him, but Charlie attacks and kills him. He is Charlie's final victim. Police Captain - Head of the Newbridge police force, who leads the hunt for Charlie. Police Sergeant - Police officer manning a machine gun who, along with several of his fellow policemen, manages to kill Charlie finally.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 17, 2019 19:49:33 GMT
I've only recently discovered Mr. Brennan myself, though his short story Slime, specifically a very wonderfully eerie audio version read by Edward E. French on YouTube (which makes judicious use of ominous pipe organs, really giving it that old-fashioned horror movie feel). I learned of the short story from the comments on Liz Kingsley's review of The Blob, and it sounded so good I had to read it. Failing to find it anywhere online, I couldn't believe my luck when I found French's YouTube channel. I listened to each of the three parts over three nights and have fallen madly in love with it, enough that I just nabbed The Shapes of Midnight (which actually would make a good alternate title for Slime) off of eBay, primarily because it is the story depicted on the cover. And what a cover! That cover is awesome. I miss horror covers like these. This beats William Essex's own Slime any day (and I love that cover, which is probably the most exciting thing about a frankly bloated and meandering book that could've done with being half the length it actually was). Am I the only one who thinks Officer Storr, as depicted there, looks an awful lot like Michael J. Fox? "Jeez, Doc, this is heavy!" Of the other stories in the book, I am particularly interested in reading The Corpse of Charlie Rull, Canavan's Back Yard and Who Was He?, based on what I've learned of their plots. Charlie Rull in particular really does sound like something straight out of EC Comics, and which would probably star an aged Lon Chaney, Jr. if it were adapted into a movie, similar to Indestructible Man.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 15, 2019 7:59:42 GMT
Like Slimer, it's been reprinted: Any word on a reprint of Carnosaur...?
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 15, 2019 7:54:40 GMT
Good news for Slimer fans. It's been reprinted, complete with an introduction by John Brosnan's co-author Leroy Kettle (or "Roy Kettle," as he calls himself). The Fungus has also gotten reprinted by the same publisher. Roy, if you read this, I really loved your introduction to this edition of the book, and it's great to finally have Slimer back in print again.
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Post by kooshmeister on Oct 15, 2018 5:13:04 GMT
American scientist Professor Silas Orcutt of the Smithsonian Institution and his Australian colleague Dr. Gregory Wise have mounted an expedition deep into what the book refers to as "the Central Australian Desert." For what, we don't know. We're told that Orcutt and Wise have been planning the trip for months in advance and have hired a local man, Nugget Smith, to act as their guide and to go ahead of them a few weeks prior to the group setting out to plant caches of food and supplies every few miles or so, but I can't remember exactly what it is Orcutt is doing out here. It's even described as "informal" and "semiscientific," as if Orcutt thinks he's off on some jaunt into one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It won't matter anyway considering the manner in which the expedition is rudely interrupted and sidetracked. But that doesn't come until a little later. Besides Professor Orcutt, Dr. Wise and Nugget, there are also two grad students from the University of Adelaide's Scientific Research Laboratories, Bill Carey and Tod Gray. Carey is English (that's him on the cover using a rifle the wrong way) and (I think) Gray is Australian. He and Carey often greet one another by going "Hi, Pommy" and "Hi, Aussie," respectively, hence my suspicions that Gray is meant to be Australian. Aside from his introduction scene, he's never referred to by his actual name; he has rather big ears and so he has earned the nickname "Jugs." Regarding the fifth member of the team, the aforementioned Nugget Smith, he has the unfortunate habit of exclaiming "Mamma, mamma!" about every other sentence, something many reviewers of this book have latched onto. In fact, "Mamma, mamma!" is his very first line. I don't know if this was a particular phrase used by rural Australians at the time, but I kept misreading it as "Mama mia!" half the time, as if Nugget were an Italian stereotype instead of an Australian one. Anyway, the five of them are crammed into "a big utility vehicle" (What? it isn't a "ute?" I thought author Bernard Cronin - writing here as "Eric North" - was an Australian!) driving through the desert. They drive through a cave entrance with no earthly idea of where they're going (for such a meticulously planned expedition, they sure have no set goal or path in mind). Suddenly, there's a steep incline and the truck roars downhill inside the cave and... then, well, Cronin is a little vague about what happens, but things get swirly and it appears as though the truck drives straight through some kind of shifting rift in the rocks (rather like the one in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie), which shuts after them. They promptly crash, wrecking the truck beyond repair, and decide to just... sort of continue the expedition. No real though of going back. Onward! Professors Challenger and von Hardwigg (or Lidenbrock, depending) would be proud of Orcutt. Exiting the cave, the five idiots find the skeleton of a crocodile completely stripped clean of flesh, smelling strongly of formic acid. Ahead they see a jungle and several lines of what they at first take to be emus as well as "mast things." In short order, they learn that it isn't a line of emus but a line of humanoid ant creatures which they decide to call Ant Men, who dwell underground in another cave near the jungle. Despite being capable of spitting formic acid, the Ant Men are not evil; just not especially trusting of outsiders, and so they pretty much avoid the human interlopers initially. The jungle itself is home to various lost world type horrors including carnivorous toad-fungus things, but the main threat are the "mast things," which it turns out are giant praying mantises, and which the explorers infuriatingly keep referring to by the name "Big Sticks," which I'm sure Cronin thought was very clever. The group gets separated during a battle between the Ant Men's soldiers and some of the mantises. Carey and Gray (I refuse to call him Jugs) witness the mantises eat a huge rock python and hypothesize that the Ant Men killed the crocodile whose skeleton they found earlier, but were interrupted in their meal by the mantises and driven away. The Ant Men the explorers encountered were a war party sent out to fight the "Big Sticks." Anyway, after an encounter with one of the toad-fungus creatures, Pommy and Aussie find a note from Dr. Wise explaining that Professor Orcutt got kidnapped by the Ant Men and taken into their underground realm. Reuniting with Wise and Nugget, the four men head off to try and rescue him, only to discover he doesn't necessarily need rescuing at all, for the Ant Men are treating him quite fairly. The humanoid ants' society is very caste oriented and the Ant Men are all telepathic. The soldiers, who are black, only have a single antenna, while the civilians are green and have two antennae. The men meet and befriend one such Ant Man who they nickname "Bracelet" on account of the fact he wears a bracelet. Then there's the priest caste of the ants, who are red, and worship a giant prehistoric frog monster called the Frog God. They aren't very nice, and a civil war is brewing in which the black and green ants would very much like to throw off the yoke of the red priests so they don't have to fear the Frog God anymore. In the meantime, the human explorers agree to help Bracelet and his friends in their battle against the giant mantises, and much adventure is had. My copy of the book (by Dover) is somewhat misleading on the back cover. It says "one of the fossil hunters" (is that what they were doing?) is captured by the Ant Men, and "Professor Orcutt must lead a dangerous rescue mission." Uh, Mr. Dover Copy Writer? How can Orcutt lead a mission to rescue himself? Said copy writer also discusses how the book "builds on a basis of scientific fact to create an authentic background for its pulp-fiction thrills." Well, sure, if you mean the preface to the book where Cronin basically says "fuck your scientific accuracy, but here's some dated-even-by-1955 pseudoscientific gobbledygook about living fossils, because if Coelacanths exist, so too must telepathic humanoid ants, giant mantises, fungus monsters and huge frogs worshiped as gods," even though it's intimated that the explorers pass through some kind of dimensional rift to enter the realm of the Ant Men, meaning Cronin's rambling at the beginning has nothing to do with anything; living fossils and creatures from alternate dimensions are apples and oranges, Bernie. Not that the front cover is any better, depicting red ants fighting the mantises, even though Cronin is clear that the reds are the priest class, with blacks as the soldiers, and I can't recall a scene where a mantis attacks red Ant Men while being bonked repeatedly with a rifle by Bill Carey. Oh well. Anyway, all that aside, I loved this goofy book.
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Post by kooshmeister on Aug 7, 2018 21:01:41 GMT
Hot blonde babe EPA representative Kelly is sent to Deepcore Station in the antarctic, which, despite ostensibly being an American installation, is run by a crazy Russian named Colonel Valentine Tarosh who has a whole squad of Makarov-toting douchebags with scary European-sounding names at his disposal. Hunky man's man Troy Darrow and his best buddy Jack Raines have discovered a dinosaur egg frozen in the ice. Nobody likes Kelly, who has arrived because the egg was technically found in a section of Antarctica that's international, and therefore she's there to ensure it is preserved for the scientific interests of all nations, not just the US' (I was unaware the EPA did this sort of thing, but whatever). Despite her insisting that they study the egg where it is, Tarosh and chief scientist Dr. Lyle Burke dig it out and bring it back to Deepcore where it promptly hatches into a baby Tyrannosaurus rex. Kelly is surprised it hatched so quickly, and then discovers the reason for it; the US government is using Deepcore as a cover to dispose of nuclear waste, which they're burying thousands of feet under the ice. Now Tarosh and Dr. Burke want to infuse the baby T-rex with more radiation to make it grow bigger and bigger so they can study it or something. Even though she's not a biologist or a paleontologist, they insist Kelly handle its care and feeding. She's so enamored with this discovery she has seals killed so that their meat can be fed to the rapidly-growing beast. But when it bites the finger off of cook Mendoza, Burke suddenly begins wondering if making it continue to grow bigger is such a good idea and wants to call the whole thing off. So Tarosh does the only sensible thing and blows him away consequence-free, because of course a former Soviet agent running a US base that's illegally dumping radioactive waste in the antarctic can murder his staff without any blowback. Nobody really considers this too out of the ordinary except Kelly; apparently blatant murder is the norm for US antarctic research stations. Tarosh has decided to make the dinosaur grow to full size, then transport it back to the US so he can profit off of it somehow. He radios the mainland and says Burke committed suicide and Kelly died in a tragic accident, forcing the captive EPA agent to take care of the rapidly-growing T-rex more or less at gunpoint and ignoring everything she and Troy Darrow say. A big cargo plane is flown in along with a security expert friend of Tarosh's who brings a tranquilizer gun. The plan is tranq the dino and put him on the plane. It goes tits-up, the security guy gets killed, the dinosaur escapes, and becomes an unstoppable killing machine who can do everything, always succeeds and pursuing and killing everything it targets, is bulletproof, can leap through the air and take down airplanes and helicopters, and survive living in subzero temperatures for extended periods of time. Tarosh goes full Captain Rhodes, terrorizing the base's staff and forcing them to assist him in his plan to recapture the thing. Despite him having only a handful of loyal fellow Russians, the some forty or fifty odd Deepcore personnel are spineless wimps who obey his every tyrannical whim. Each plan to recapture the thing fails, and multiple attacks against the buildings eventually whittle the personnel down to just Kelly, Troy, Troy's friend Jack, Tarosh, his goons Zalman, Belin and Provkov, Mendoza the cook and a few other nobodies. A plane is sent to find out why Deepcore hasn't been sending progress reports, and Tarosh plans to get the T-rex out on it, but his plan goes awry; despite successfully recapturing the Tyrannosaurus using Kelly as bait (during which Zalman is killed), the dumbshits left to guard it let it get away. Belin and another guy get the plane destroyed by trying to hide behind it; the plane runs over the one guy, and then takes off with Belin hanging onto the landing gear. He loses his grip and falls. The T-rex leaps into the sky and brings the plane down because it's indestructible and can do anything and everything. Obtaining Zalman's Makarov, Kelly, Troy and Jack decide to escape along with Troy's faithful half-wolf sled dog who is of course named Wolf. Belin, who survived his fall somehow, shoots at them with a Weatherby rifle and kills Jack, then gets eaten by the Tyrannosaurus. Tarosh and Provkov get Mendoza and the last remaining Deepcore personnel and reveals he has one particular roid-rage Russian sled dog he calls Grushka. He declares that Kelly and Troy are deserters and must be pursued into the arctic wilderness. Troy is to be killed, while he has "other plans" for Kelly, who he hates for "trying to act like a man," implying he intends to rape her. Mendoza and the others are surprisingly on board with this because everyone in this book is either an idiot or a sadist. Chase, chase, chase, blah, blah, blah, Mendoza gets hurt when shooting at Kelly and Troy causes an avalanche, so Tarosh mercy kills him. Nobody cares much. Grushka turns against his ostensible masters and mauls a guy. Troy tries to do something stupid and gets caught. Provkov moves to shoot him but Clark swipes the "there's a gunshot and the hero thinks he's been hit but then the shooter falls dead revealing the love interest behind him with gun raised" thing from every movie ever. The T-rex attacks, kills the guy Grushka mauled, then finally does us all a favor and bites Tarosh in half. Finally. Good riddance. Kelly, Troy and the final surviving guy, Benson, try to make for a Russian outpost, but Benson dies in another Tyrannosaur attack. Only our two leads and, I think, Wolf the dog make it and are evacuated in a helicopter. As for the T-rex, the ice its standing on breaks free and it drifts away into the arctic ocean like the monster at the end of Frankenstein.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jul 11, 2017 16:42:39 GMT
Anybody else here hate found footage movies? Can't stand half of 'em.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jul 9, 2017 7:05:38 GMT
Let's see. There's Lifeforce and Blue Monkey (which I reviewed, albeit in a very perfunctory manner), as well as the new Wonder Woman movie, which I found pretty decent.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jul 8, 2017 9:38:52 GMT
I remember seeing this at Blockbuster all the time, but never rented it. The title always confused me. " Blue Monkey?" Really? Oh well. The story begins in a greenhouse owned by an eccentric elderly woman named Marwella Harbison. She's the type who talks to her plants and plays music for them. Handyman Fred Adams stops by to do some work on the light fixtures and comments on how one of her plants is drooping. It's a weird-looking thing with yellow flowers. According to Marwella, it came from a newly-formed volcanic island off the coast of Micronesia. Its current state happened overnight and Marwella is at a loss to explain what could've caused it. Fred inexplicably hurts himself on the plant somehow, as though he pricked his finger on a thorn. However, Marwella claims the plant has no thorns and neither she nor Fred can make heads or tails of what could've pricked him. Nevertheless, he seems okay, and after bidding Marwella goodbye, he walks out to his truck, whereupon he immediately starts feeling strange and collapses. Marwella calls 911. One ambulance ride later, and Fred has been taken to the Hill Valley Clinic with a very high fever. On call are Doctors Rachel Carson and Judith Glass, who are astonished to see that the man has already developed gangrene where he pricked his finger. Attention is taken away from Fred when police detective Jim Bishop brings his partner in with a nasty gunshot wound. The two had been involved in a stakeout that went sour, and Jim's partner got shot at point blank range. However, Rachel is confident that with surgery, he ought to be okay. In the adjacent bed, Fred begins convulsing and winds up vomiting an insect pupa out of his mouth. After this, he seems to stabilize. The pupa is hurriedly contained in a belljar in the hospital's in-house laboratory. Rachel is concerned that whatever Fred had might be contagious, and orders mandatory checkups of everyone, including Jim. When Jim comes back clean of any mysterious parasitic insects, Rachel decides to show him around the hospital, including their high-tech research facility where they're testing out new and powerful surgical lasers. Attempts to x-ray the pupa prove futile, so it is decided to slice it open. In doing so the doctors unleash a particularly feisty insect-like critter, but with Jim's help, they're able to get the thing contained. Meanwhile, Fred isn't doing so hot; in addition to having been parasitized by the insect, he's come down with a mysterious disease the creature was carrying, and when Judith Glass attempts to revive him with shock paddles after he suddenly goes into cardiac arrest, his chest violently explodes. Ick. She and Rachel quickly realize that the insect has a particularly nasty disease, and it's highly contagious and could spread throughout the entire hospital. Hospital director Roger Levering is resistant to quarantining the facility for fear of causing a panic, but Rachel is at least able to get him to bring in entomologist Elliot Jacobs in the hopes of identifying the mysterious insect. But before Elliot can arrive, a bunch of kids from the hospital's pediatric ward, completely unsupervised, roam the halls. The lab technician tasked with guarding the insect specimen is lured away from her post by her boyfriend, an orderly from the laser lab, for a little hanky-panky, leaving the insect completely unguarded and allowing the kids to waltz right on into the lab without anyone noticing. Seeing the bug, they decide to feed it some bluish powdery substance one of them finds in a bottle on a shelf, but an argument over who gets to pour it into the jar with the bug results in them pouring too much. Hearing the technician and orderly returning, the kids beat feet, leaving the amorous duo to the tender mercies of the insect, which has broken free of its glass prison and grown gigantic, promptly killing them both. Elliot Jacobs arrives and he, Rachel and Jim survey the carnage, and Elliot is horrified when he discovers that the bluish powder the kids fed the thing was a growth hormone. Now the insect is giant and it could be anywhere. "Anywhere" turns out to be the utility tunnels underneath the hospital, where the creature kills a hapless janitor and then begins building an Alien-style nest for its brood. Now it's up to Rachel, Jim and Elliot to figure out how to stop the bug, while Judith struggles to deal with the consequences of the disease the creature has spread throughout the building, before the military, summoned by New York's Lincoln Institute (a facility for disease prevention), takes drastic measures... Blue Monkey is a very weird movie, but, its nonsensical title aside, I quite like it.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jul 8, 2017 9:37:16 GMT
Lifeforce is a very odd, but interesting, horror film directed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Tobe Hooper and written by The Return of the Living Dead's Dan O'Bannon, so it clearly has something going for it. A joint British-American research team is aboard the space shuttle Churchill to study Halley's Comet, when they detect a mysterious signature located in the comet's tail. American commanding officer Tom Carlsen orders an investigation, and the explorers discover that it's an ancient alien spaceship of some sort. Carlsen and others board it and discover dozens of dead winged creatures and three naked people (two men and a woman) contained within crystal spires of some sort, apparently in a kind of suspended animation. It's decided to take all three of them, plus one of the dead creatures, back aboard the Churchill for study, although Carlsen begins acting a little weird in regard to the woman, creepily insisting to his colleagues that she is "perfect." Thirty days later, and Earth hasn't heard a thing from the Churchill. A recovery team is sent up, and they discover that the interior of the ship has been almost completely destroyed by a fire, reducing the what appears to be the entire crew to ashy skeletons. The escape pod was launched, however, so perhaps someone survived. The three naked people from the alien ship are still inside their crystals in the cargo hold, though, completely untouched by the flames. They're brought back to a research facility in London run by Bukovsky. He enlists the aide of biochemist and thantologist Dr. Fallada to try and determine if the three individuals in the crystals are alive or dead, or even human. All Fallada is able to determine is that he can determine nothing at all; not even what the crystals are composed of. The woman is removed from hers and taken into an operating room for study. A security guard, alone in the room with her, decides to risk his job by molesting the apparent corpse. One boob-grope later and the woman wakes up. Observing via security cameras, Bukovsky races over. The woman kisses the guard, causing bluish electricity to surge violently between their bodies. Bukovsky arrives just as the guard backs up out of the operating room. As he collapses, Bukovsky catches him, and is horrified to discover he's been reduced to a shriveled up dead husk. The naked woman emerges and begins putting the moves on Bukovsky, as well, and he finds himself equal parts excited and terrified, unable to resist her lusty, predatory advances. Before she can finish him off, though, Fallada and others arrive, prompting her to exit. The woman encounters resistance to her efforts to leave in the form of some more security guards, but they don't fare any better than her initial victim. She hits two of them with blasts of energy from her hands, while the third guy wisely backs off and does nothing else to impede her exit, which she makes by blowing out the huge front windows of the building, apparently using the power of her mind, and then moving away naked into the night, heedless of the fact she's walking barefoot over shards of broken glass. The SAS' Colonel Caine is sent in by the British government to find out what the fuck just happened. A visibly shaken Bukovsky and very disturbed, somewhat withdrawn Fallada do their best to bring him up to speed about things. An APB is sent out with the woman's description (presumably something along the lines of "naked lady"), but all this nets them is another victim: a naked woman (a different one) is found dead in Hyde Park, her body drained and dessicated like the guard's. Her nakedness makes Caine realize she has acquired clothing and can therefore move more easily among the population of London without attracting too much attention. Back at the research center, two soldiers are guarding the crystals containing the two male individuals from the alien ship. Suddenly the room explodes, and, freed, the two men begin marching purposefully towards the soldiers. Bullets from their Steyr AUG assault rifles do jack diddly, as the men stride forwards with Terminator-like intensity, heedless of the rounds upon rounds of ammunition penetrating their chests. The soldiers finally resort to grenades, and this succeeds, blowing the two attackers to bloody bits. Hearing the explosion, Caine and Fallada race in and Fallada orders the remains quarantined. Elsewhere in the building, doctors attempting to perform an autopsy on the guard who got killed discover that the corpse is extremely uncooperative; he awakens before they can begin and sits up on the operating table, then grabs the lead pathologist. A mysterious bluish vaporous light shoots out of the pathologist's eyes and mouth and into those of the corpse; the dead man begins to look livelier and healthier, while the pathologist starts to shrivel into a dried husk. Moments later, the pathologist hits the floor, dead and mummified-looking, while the previously shriveled up corpse of the guard has returned to a very alive, healthy and virile young man. Having observed from a viewing room, Fallada orders him locked up in a cell. And just to be on the safe side, he has the same thing done with the bodies of the pathologist and the woman from the park. After two hours, something begins to happen to the revived guard. He begins making animalistic roars and growls and reaches through the bars of his cell at the men observing him, before he collapses to the floor and shrivels up into his previously dessicated self, and then turns hard and brittle. In the adjoining cell, the body of the pathologist springs up and lunges ferociously at the onlookers, running headlong into the bars, his extremely frail body exploding into a cloud of dust as he hits them. Fallada orders the body of the woman from the park strapped to a table and monitored. She, too, awakens, and roars and struggles against her bonds before perishing just as suddenly as she revived, then her corpse blows up into a big puff of dust. Fallada theorizes to Caine that whatever the alien humanoids are, they survive by sucking the lifeforce out of their victims, and that said victims will revive and become like them, dying and turning into dust after two hours if they fail to feed. Fallada explains his fear that the escaped woman will attack more and more people, and that those victims will return to life, and seek out others to drain, spreading a plague of life-suckers throughout England and eventually the entire world. They then get a call about an escape pod landing in Texas. It's the missing one from the Churchill. But who is in it? And are they human, or now one of the living dead? Watch this incredibly weird movie to find out!
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