[EXPRESSO] Red One (2024) | Christmas In Wakanda Pole

The Rock is back, as Santa’s bodyguard in Red One, which comes out in mid-November because fuck it, you’re already thinking of Christmas anyway.

One Red goes for the “Santa Is Real” school of phylosophy, but actually adds something as Santa is real and powerful as the legend says, as true as the various mythical creatures related to his figures, often working for/with him in a hidden Wakanda-esque city-factory, where they prepare all year so on Christmas they can actually deliver children worlwide their gifts in one night, using magic and top-tier technology to be unseen and unheard. This time however a legendary hacker manages to find a flaw in their security, which leads to a mysterious figure kidnapping ol’ Nick.

So its up to The Rock (as Santa’s grand general) to find out who’s responsible, alongside the same hacker that unknowingly helped kidnap Santa, and a gauntlet thingie that gives him bootleg Ant Man powers, because why not, it makes for some fun (albeit not original) ideas and visuals.

As expected, this is yet another one of those that could simply be called “The Rock/Dwayne Johnson movies”, as it features everything you’d associate with the actor and his filmography, so it has monsters, fantasy stuff, action, comedy, The Rock having “legal plot armor”, all in a family friendly package, even more as this one it’s a christmas film, so JK Simmons can’t reprimand Mark Grayson or insult Peter Parker.

The final battle is a bit of an anticlimactic cop-out, but overall, this one of the better ones as of late, far from turds like Black Adam but also definitely above middling and completely forgettable stuff like Red Notice, there’s definitely a bit more creativity and energy to be found in it, making for a decently entertaining action-comedy-fantasy Christmas romp.

Orcs! (2011) [REVIEW] | 3 Inches Of Snooze

Time to rummage through my B-movies DVD collection and pinch one out, in this case salvaging from one of the huge ass bookcase style holders Orcs!, a 2011 direct to video monster on the loose flick with a fantasy twist of sorts.

This time around it’s not mutated bears, cocained panthers, or landlubbing sharks running amok in a place, it’s the green, Dakka loving green boyz, that threaten to invade modern society starting from a US National Park, so it’s up to the resident Park Ranger, Cal Robertson, and his sidekick, Voluntary Cadet Hobie, to stop them hordes from leaving the park.

Sound like a fun little comedy horror B-movie, the formula it’s more than proven, have monsters invade and have two or more dorkuses left as humanity’s unlikely last stand, the cast being mostly made of people you’ve never heard or seen before it’s an acceptable risk and not damning in itself.

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[EXPRESSO] The Substance (2024) | Perfect Yous

From director Coralie Fargeat (previosly known for 2017’s Revenge), The Substance tells the tale of a middle aged star, Elisabeth Sparkle, a forgotten movie star also known for her aerobics program that for her 50^th birthday gets laid off by her dipshit sleazy producer because he thinks she too old.

Later she is given an USB key with a video promoting a black market drug called “The Substance” that promises a new, better, sexier, younger you, if you remember the simple rules the promo laids out, which include respecting the balance of days between the “old” and “new” you.

But worry not, this is not a set up to a Perfect Blue/ Black Swan scenario… not quite, because this is the kind of movie that takes that general idea and decides subtext is for the meek & weak, so in this case the premise is far more literal than you could expect, more of a body horror, entertaiment biz oriented pastiche between Dr Jekyll and Hyde, Seconds and The Neon Demon, with an exploitation style to it.

It’s in the way The Substance handles these ideas that it finds a fresh variation/angle in tackling the subject matters and themes of feminism, the cycle of power and abuse, mercification, self-loathing, using satire as blunt as they get, with some frankly stellar performances by the cast.

The ending is a bit hockey as it’s an odd mash of references (in a movie that maybe does get carried away in tributing other films) that almost feels like a joke on purpose made to deliver a smorgasmboard of spectacular gore effects… one i’m willing to 100 % accept, since it also serves as the perfect cap of a story about self-destructive spirals and excess.

Regardless, it’s one hell of a ride i highly recommend.

[EXPRESSO] Terrifier 3 (2024) | A Terrifier HallowXmas

As an avid Terrifier fan that have been religiously followed the series since it debuted, i was so happy to learn Terrifier 3 was not only gonna be released in theathers here too, but also get a Halloween preview screening.

Terrifier 3 continues the story from where that delirious ending of the second film left us… not before a prologue of Art The Clown invading a house dressed as Santa to massacre them all, because its the third one, might as well also make it a killer Santa movie too.

That said, after the events of Terrifier 2 the two surviving siblings tried to move on, with the brother going to college and Sienna being released from a mental health clinic, but they both feel Art is somehow back, to the disbelief of everyone else…

It’s also the longest Terrifier film yet, reasonably so, as it does expand and explain the main lore and puts in prospective certain events from previous films, escalating even further the stakes and finding many creative ways for him and the deformed Vicky to be even more sadistic, morbid and graphic with the kills, which are even more excessive and depraved than before, running the gamut from classics like chainsaws, hammer, to animals and improptu murder gizmos.

It’s the kind of movie that should come with a barf bag, William Castle style, because it utterly unfliching, unbound and uncaring of who gets the axe (including some unexpected cameos) and how, before and after Art does his deranged mime routine and clown antics with gusto.

I would have given it the best vote i could for EXPRESSO if it was the final film in the series, would have been a perfect point to stop, but on the other hand i DO wanna see more of Art.

The Spooktacular Eight #24: Mother Joan Of The Angels (1961)

Let’s conclude this year’s Spooktacular Eight by reviewing the 1960 Polish classic Mother Joan Of The Angels, also known as The Devil And The Nun.

Based on the real, documented case of demonic possession (or mass hysteria, let’s be real) that affected the nuns and took place in 1634 at a convent in Loudlun, France… well, indirectly, as it actually based on a novel of the same name by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (which would later by adapted by Kent Russell for the infamous The Devils), itself loosely based on the aforementioned Loudlun possessions.

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[EXPRESSO] Halloween: Match Made In Horror iOS | Realtor Squallor

One day, i get an email of recommended apps from the Apple algorhythm… and among the endless anime gacha games, i saw his face. Or his mask, in this case, as the app icon for something called Halloween: Match Made In Horror.

I shouldn’t be surprised, since we even got a match-3 puzzle game to promote Godzilla 2014 and there’s even shit like WWE Champions, but still, i was stunned by the creative entropy on display, ensnared by the utter audacity of it all i did end up downloading, playing it more than necessary and making this review, because if i have to know this is a thing, now you have too.

And no, it’s was not meant to advertise the David Gordon Green legacy sequel to Halloween (which would become a pointless trilogy), it’s just based around the first movie, and beyond the Halloween licensed skin, it’s just another match-3 puzzle game, a shitty free-to-play one too, with the semblance of progression provided by spending the stars collected by finishing levels on renovating the various houses seen in the film, like the Stroude house, because when i think Michael Myers i think of the cut-throat world of real estate.

Just the more barebones generic and non-descript viable product you can squeeze out of your bumcheeks, with some of the more desperate window dressing i’ve ever seen, and it look like ass in very conceivable way, even still images of the franchise characters look like they were sculpted out of expired bootleg butter, and the “animated” cutscenes that either are too brief to make any sense, try to recreate various shots from the 1975 film, or some weird meta shit like the one where we get the POV of someone playing this very game and then briefly sees Michael Myers.

The Spooktacular Eight #22: Wendigo (2001)

At the turn of the millennium, found footage horror was born and while it’s often a very divisive subgenre nowadays (as big budget companies co-opted it since it lowered the already low costs for horror films), it can’t be denied The Blair Witch resparked interest in urban legends, the lore of the suburbs or previously forgotten folklore myths, which affected even films not made in what now we call “found footage” or “mockumentary”.

This is i guess was the overall unspoken mood of the era, even though in this case director and writer Larry Ferdessen (1997’s Habit, the Until Dawn videogames, The Last Winter, Depraved) set out more to channel the 30s classic horror monster films (which the director himself confirmed are a great influence on his works) but in modern arthouse fashion, with a psychological horror thriller named after the mythical monster figure of Native American/First Nation folklore (Algonquian one, to be precise), of the titular Wendigo.

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[EXPRESSO] Megalopolis (2024) | Golden Experience Requiem

Megalopolis it’s Francis Ford Coppola doing a more modern take on Metropolis, basically, just with the city of the future being a New York-Imperial Rome hybrid, and the framing of “a fable by Francis Ford Coppola” setting the angle right… but that won’t really soften the blow.

The plot sees New Rome, a city split between tradition, embodied by the city mayor Cicero, and innovation, represented by Catalina, a genius architect willing to seek a new better way, with the crux of the conflict incarnated by Cicero’s daugher, Julia, whom falls in love with Catalina.

Aside from the opening really making you feel like you tuned into the movie 1 hour in (which is a costant all throughout, btw), and the implication of Adam Driver’s character having a time-stopping Stand power of sorts…the movie is a mess, it’s a long, sprawling, unwieldy mess of scattered plotlines (some never resolved by the end), trippy imagery, pretense of being profound when its all so utterly blunt it’s almost comical, and even when you do where the hell is going, it’s hard to care, with too many characters (though that would imply “characterization”), the starfilled cast having no chemistry, bad dialogues, and the direction that makes it all feel like they’re rehearsing for when they gonna actually shoot the scene… doesn’t help.

It’s not boring, at the very least, but it’s an hilarious damning moment when the best scene of a Francis Ford Coppola film is John Voight as an old gajillionaire shooting Shia Labeuf in the ass with a bow. Twice.

It’s a weird, messy, disjointed vision that becomes outright bizzarre with these Hollywood high production values and quality cinematography, so in a way, it’s a fascinating bad movie from a legendary director, the kind that don’t come around so often anymore.

Pygmalion (manga) [REVIEW] | Ore Wa Cyprus Ou Ni Naru!

It’s not exactly encouraging to see the boxset for a 3 volume horror manga called “Pygmalion”… having on the back cover a pig amusement park mascotte drenched in blood.

(yeah, i bought this on a whim without doing any research while visiting my local comic book shop)

Not random per sé, as the story IS about a rampage by mascottes during the National Mascotte Festival in Japan, after a series of weird announcements that trigger the suited creatures to go on a massacre, and Keigo is separated in the following chaos from his younger brother Makoto…

Still, i feel a refresher about the myth of Pygmalion is needed, just in case.

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The Spooktacular Eight #21: The Awful Doctor Orloff (1962)

Ah, good ol’ Jess Franco, the master of lesbian vampire action, the exploitation master from Spain that both film dozens of softcore trash but also worked with Christopher Lee as either a vampire or the old villian Fu Manchu, that deals in adaptations of Marquis De Sade but also completed the previously (and unfamously) unfinished Orson Welles version of Don Quixote.

I really can’t do him justice, but i did pick one of the films from before he really declined and put out some really atrocious stuff, like the final entries in the Fu Manchu series (the Castle Of Fu Manchu being the subject of a popular MST3K episode ), shit like Dracula VS Frankenstein, or even pseudosequels that cannibalizzed on Franco own’s Dr. Orloff series with reused stock footage to make in name only adaptations of Poe works, in particular his The Revenge in The House Of Usher, which is a mess and a half since it has 3 different cuts (often having different titles as well). 2 of which reuse even more footage from this 1962 Dr. Orloff film that started the series.

But let’s pretend we do not yet know of this, and let’s talk plot.

Which is not quite original, as it’s an amalgamation of Frankenstein and french classic Eyes Without A Face (especially the latter), as the titular Dr. Orloff attracts young women to his castle so he can harvest her skin with the help of a disfigured, blind assistant/henchman named Morpho (a Mighty Monarch approved name indeed).

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