Author Archives: Kristoph Johannes

Avia Vampire Hunter!

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Avia Vampire Hunter ~ 2005, Leon Hunter, USA

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WHOA!! Talk about slumming it… This is a grotesquely incompetent production. Let’s start at the beginning… So, I have no idea how this movie wound up at the top of my Netflix queue. It somehow arrived at my house unannounced, and I have no memory of having ever heard of it before. All in all, I am beginning to suspect paranormal intervention. Then I watched it. Wow. This thing is an epic turkey.
Avia Vampire Hunter is a remarkably boring and generic story about a woman who has devoted her life to hunting vampires because they “killed her baby.” …Okay? Mostly, her hunting amounts to wandering around parks and neighborhoods wearing budget conscious Matrix cosplay and carrying a ninja sword she bought of Amazon for 60 dollars. Sometimes she finds cheap, plastic skulls or other Halloween Store decorations laying around. On rare occasions she might use her flashlight. Every once in a while she manages, somehow, to find vampires, and then she kills them in a clumsy, slowly acted, badly choreographed fit of bellow average ninja fury. Your neighbor kids are probably making a movie that will surpass this in quality as we speak. Also, she apparently falls in love with a cop pretty much instantly early on in the movie, and at some point the movie tries to establish some sort of tension by floating the idea that maybe Avia is actually crazy and vampires don’t exist. That subplot remains very brutally underdeveloped.
There are a couple points we should probably talk about individually here. Let’s break it down:

  • MUSIC ~ First and foremost, Avia Vampire Hunter has the most hilariously inept use of score that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Yes, including Birdemic. This one wins out over Birdemic in this category. The music sounds like the editor clearly just bought a ton of public domain (I hope) music by different composers and jammed it in there with all the grace and subtly of an occupied porta-potty tumbling end-over-end down a long staircase. There is a valiant, if not completely insane effort to add suspense to scenes of Avia wandering about mindlessly by using the most suspenseful music available to man. The end result is equally comedic and pitiful. Who did this, and how is it that they didn’t know better?
  • VAMPIRES ~ This is the closest I can come to actually complimenting this shambling ambulance crash of movie- some of the vampires are creative looking. Others look like your typical mall goths. There is some variety here, but for some reason there is included in this film a vampire troop decked out in bloody blindfolds with Rick James hair and long sticks stuck onto their fingers (I think they’re supposed to be finger nails.) I don’t know why these are in the movie, or why they have bloody blindfolds, or really anything else about them, but in this sea of mediocrity and recycled cliches, these stand apart as slightly more imaginative, so I thought they deserved a mention, whatever the hell they are.
  • ROMANTIC SUBPLOT ~ The romance between Avia and Lieutenant Whocares (May not be his actual name- I don’t remember, and it’s just not worth a trip to IMDB to find out) is handled so, so terribly. They basically fall in love immediately despite their every interaction feeling skeezy and bleached of any form of humanity whatsoever. Toward the end of the film What’s-His-Name is informed that Avia might be insane, and finds himself under pressure to arrest her for murdering humans who she believes to be vampires (The movie never clarifies if she really is crazy or not)… When I say “put under pressure,” he’s not really put under any sort of pressure at all. Some guy just mentions it to him the same way a frat boy might say “Stay away from that chick, bro, she’s bad news.” This seems like it’s going to be a major plot point, but then he really doesn’t do anything. He acts like he has to, and then he just doesn’t. One gets the impression that writer/director Leon Hunter clearly tried really, really hard with this movie, even if his effort was totally fruitless, so this feels like a weird thing to establish and then completely fail to explore. Are we supposed to accept that Detective Whocares just decides to take her word for it? This is all part of the staggering stupidity with which Avia Vampire Hunter is so generously endowed. Also, it’s really hard to critique Avia Vampire Hunter without launching personal attacks against it’s director, come to find out. I’m trying, though.
  • TONE ~ This is the most damaging quality found in the fibers of Avia Vampire Hunter. It takes itself really, really seriously. If Leon Hunter had his way, this would not be a fun popcorn flick, this would be a heavy, emotional action piece which volleys between deep canyons of human drama and exciting sequences of sword play and horror. Frequently we are treated to scenes which are meant to show case the talents of our lead actress as she grapples with her inner demons in a struggle as heated and desperate as any Rick James vampire battle ever could be. Of course, no one in this movie can act, so in the end we would have been treated to a better acting tour de force had Hunter just filmed some shoes or a can of tomato sauce for a while. Really anything would have been better. Avia just looks like an idiot trying to wrap her mind around some simple concept she just saw on Sesame Street, but this movie so badly wants for her to be Meryl Streep yanking at your heartstrings like crazy. For all it’s effort, none of what Avia Vampire Hunter tries to do in establishing emotion lands at all, and the movie ends up being less authentic or emotionally hard hitting than say, Ernest Goes to Camp, or a McDonald’s commercial. That wouldn’t matter, but the effort is so apparent that this failure feels particularly devastating.

In closing, Avia Vampire Hunter is unforgivably terrible. Everything about it sucks. One time my mom accidentally filmed the inside of her pocket with her cell phone while she walked around the grocery store, and she asked me to help her delete it. I did, but before I removed this footage from her cellular device I was treated to a movie which bests Avia Vampire Hunter on every conceivable plane of human accomplishment.

Special note, this movie is still better than Sucker Punch.
F

Abominable!

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Abominable~ 2006, Ryan Schifrin, USA

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As it stands, Abominable is the single best sasquatch movie ever made. This is the one to beat. It’s no small feat (no small feet!? Hilarious!), either, many quality films have come before, be they your family friendly Harry and the Hendersons, your spine tingling speculative documentaries like Legend of Boggy Creek, or your crowd pleasing horror romps like Shriek of the Mutilated or Night of the Demon, but of all these, Abominable is the one ring to rule them all. How can this be? Well, the first key to Abominable’s success is that it has gore and naked people. Even with glorious titan of entertainment John Lithgow slam dunking that mother like a champ, Harry And The Hendersons simply cannot compete with Abominable in this regard. Secondly, Abominable rips off Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rear Window with apparently no remorse of any kind. The plot is damn near identical, a wheel chair bound man witnesses something terrible and tries frantically to warn those around him, but his claims are dismissed and thus he must race against time to prove himself before it’s too late. Now, in Rear Window we had Jimmy Stewart trying to convince people that Raymond Burr had murdered his wife. In Abominable, we have Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach star Matt McCoy trying to convince a house full of college girls that a Sasquatch is trying to eat them. Knowing that director Ryan Schifrin must have watched Rear Window and recognized the potential of remaking the film with the inclusion of a sasquatch and a house full of college girls is pretty awesome. In Hitchcock’s defense, there was virtually no way for him to have known how desperately Rear Window needed a Bigfoot type monster in it, no matter how glaringly apparent it is to us today. You see, Rear Window was released in 1954, a full four years before the term “bigfoot” was coined in 1958, and a full 13 years before the Patterson Film raised sasquatch public awareness and made him a household name. In other words, at the time of Rear Window’s release, Alfred Hitchcock may not have even known what a sasquatch was. Doubtless, he knew his film was missing some crucial component, though, and when he did see the Patterson footage years later there is no question in my mind that he was immediately hit with the realization that this is what his film so badly needed. I’m sure this shortcoming haunted him for the rest of his days, but happily we can now see that his suffering is at an end, because Ryan Schifrin has succeeded where Alfred Hitchcock could not, he has brought us the movie we’ve needed without knowing for over 50 years. Now we can all sleep easy knowing that future generations will never again have to settle for the inferior bigfootless 1954 version, now we have Abominable. Finally we are able to enjoy Hitchcock’s vision as it was always meant to be seen; a Sasquatch stomping about violently, the screams of young women echoing through the forest in utter futility as they are one by one dismembered for no apparent reason at all, and all of this transpiring before the wide, horrified eyes of Matt McCoy, himself nearly powerless to bring this bloody rampage to an end. Rarely can we see examples of films which bring this much wanted closure to our pained, desperate zeitgeist, but Abominable is that one special film out of a million. I mean, no disrespect to Jimmy Stewart, he’s one of my favorite actors ever, but go watch Jaws without the shark and let me know what you thought of it. Also, the sasquatch in this movie kinda looks like Luis Guzmán, which is clearly also a plus.

squatch guzmanSeeing double?!

A

Frankenstein Conquers The World!

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Frankenstein Conquers the World ~ 1966, Ishiro Honda, Japan

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Awesome. This is maybe my favorite kaiju film ever, but knowing that it exists is actually a lot more fun that watching it, and takes less time. Anyway… It’s a simple story- Nazis find the still beating heart of Frankenstein’s monster, Nazis give heart to the Japanese for safe-keeping, Japanese take heart to Japan, Americans drop atomic bomb on Frankenstein’s heart, small Japanese boy eats the now atomic Frankenstein heart (because who wouldn’t?), boy grows into a gigantic Frankenstein’s monster, gigantic Frankenstein’s monster wrestles floppy eared turtle dragon, everyone lives happily ever after. So, it’s fairly boiler plate, all things considered.

Frankenstein Conquers The World (In which Frankenstein most certainly does not conquer the world) is  a treasure from a bygone era where if it wasn’t several stories tall, the Japanese just flat out didn’t wanna hear about it. “Frankenstein’s monster? Sounds good, tell me more. Wait- he’s NOT several stories tall!? Well, that’s you’re problem. Fix that and we’ll talk.” Around this same time, however, the Germans were renaming Godzilla (And various other Toho film monsters) “Frankenstein” and re-dubbing the movies for German release to contain explanations that Dr. Frankenstein was actually responsible for the appearance of the film’s giant monsters, so it appears that those two nations have a mutual need to project onto each others monster related film output. Understandable.

Frankenstein is not alone in Frankenstein Conquers the World, however. Baragon, an old Toho standby, turns up, eager to get Franken-Stomped ruthlessly for about 90 minutes.

baragonBehold- terror incarnate!

This same monster would also later turn up in other films to get slapped around by both Godzilla, and at one point, Ultraman, which kinda makes him the Homie-Hopper of the Kaiju world. I like to think of him more as the puppy dog of Godzilla’s extended family, however, because for a rampaging behemoth gone berserk, this thing is damn adorable, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll love watching his rhino horn, spiky back, and giant floppy, puppy dog ears wiggle about as he is relentlessly clobbered by a skyscraper sized Frankenstein over and over. This is probably a good time to remind readers that this is an actual movie, that was actually made. Presumably by adults.

baragon-vs-frankenstein

If we’re being serious, though, Frankenstein Conquers The World has it’s problems. Like many of the old Toho and related Kaiju films, the film is a little slow, and considering the ideal viewing audience for a movie like this is an unfocused gaggle of five year old boys, it would benefit from less talking and more furious monster combat. Today’s monster fans lack the attention span for lengthy exposition scenes shot in outdated 1960’s laboratories, regardless of their age. This isn’t enough to ruin the movie, though, and I recommend it highly for it’s sheer audacity, as well as for it’s no-holds-barred kaiju fisticuffs.

B+

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Antfarm Dickhole

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Antfarm Dickhole ~ 2011, Bill Zebub, United States

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The worst thing a psychotronic film can do is to be is boring. Anything else is forgivable, even encouraged. It’s almost unthinkable that a movie about a man with a colony of killer fire-ants that live inside of his genitals could manage to suck in a way that isn’t even fun to watch, but that’s what we have with Bill Zebub’s shockingly lackluster Antfarm Dickhole. Even the title sounds like this thing has just gotta be an automatic home-run, but buyer beware, this movie is not the classic it should have been. The gravity of this missed opportunity should not be lost on you.
The first sin of Antfarm Dickhole is that it knows it’s ridiculous. Uh oh. Insanity always works better when it’s sincere. Not only that, Antfarm Dickhole isn’t even a horror film, it’s a comedy. This is no minor flaw, it’s a mortal wound that leaves this movie dead before it even begins, because Antfarm Dickhole is not funny. At all. The only way something like this was ever going to be funny was inadvertently.
It is, however, shockingly self indulgent. Writer/Director Bill Zebub also acts in the movie, playing a neurotic/intellectual type who spends a good portion of the film jabbering on incessantly and basking in what Zebub must think is romantic tension with his blatantly too attractive female co-star. He comes across like a high school drop out version of Woody Allen that probably listens to a lot of Pantera and most likely doesn’t smell very good.
Even if you can get past all that, the film just flat out doesn’t deliver like it should. It falls short over and over in ways that should have been a no-brainer, and against all logic, it somehow just isn’t crazy enough. Antfarm Dickhole feels like an eternity with people you don’t want to hang out with harping on a joke that isn’t funny. It’s like the universe handed Bill Zebub a glorious, shining opportunity to soar, but he forgot it at the bus stop and doesn’t know where it went, so here’s this piece of crap instead. Tragic.

D

Big Man Japan

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Today’s movie recommend is:

BIG MAN JAPAN– 2007, dir~ Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japan
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Big Man Japan is a good example of the kind of film the Japanese seem to do well; it somehow manages to be zany as hell, while at the same time feeling vaguely tongue-in-cheek. Maybe that’s just the language barrier… Hard to say, but it’s certainly a smarter comedy/psychotronic mashup than say, Zombie Ass, or Vampire Girl VS. Frankenstein Girl, especially since the low brow humor is minimal, and there’s no sex or gore to speak of.  It’s a mockumentary style parody of the Japanese Kaiju genre, with an usually human protagonist; Big Man Japan. Big Man is an ordinary guy who inherited his role as the towering, monster clobbering defender of Japan from his father, grandfather, and so on and so fourth. Essentially obsolete in today’s Japan, his presence is more tolerated than celebrated by a culture which values tradition greatly, but at the same time demands the ultra-modern. Caught up in the crossfire of this contradiction is Big Man, who is obligated to devote his entire life to a people which no longer need nor truly appreciate him. If these ideas sound familiar, it’s because they’re probably the most inherently Japanese concepts of all time. That story has been told countless times through samurai fiction alone, the Japanese have wrestled with these ideas for literally centuries, but the way Big Man Japan explores them still manages to seem fresh, because it’s so grounded in human emotions, and because the historical context of the Samurai has been replaced with something equally Japanese; the Kaiju genre. The film climaxes with a Deus Ex Machina style American intervention which is even more telling about the likelihood of this being a thinly veiled exploration of Japan’s turbulent transition from the golden age of the samurai to it’s role as a major player on the international stage. Plus the monsters in this movie are wacky as hell. And it’s funny!

Is anybody still reading? The movie might feel a tad long, and the pacing may be difficult for people more accustomed to the flow of American Pop Cinema, but I would encourage just about anyone to give it a try, because it’s an extraordinarily likable movie, and I want others to enjoy it, too.

B+

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Crimes Against Humanity: Tim Burton

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Tim, Tim, Tim. You’re done, son. At one time, a strong argument could be made for Tim Burton being a strong, unique artistic voice. That time was called the early nineties, and much has changed. Now, he’s a machine that takes old, boring ideas, goths ’em up a little bit and farts out complete and utter tripe. He sucks now, and everybody knows this. I have no illusions about this blowing anyone’s mind, I’m beating a dead horse with this article, and I know it. Sometimes, though, that’s fun to do. I think. Come, join me as I kick this guy while he’s down! The following is a brief list of some of his foulest crimes; may God have mercy on his soul.

  • Becoming Messiah for millions of Devoted Hot Topic Shoppers because he directed a movie he didn’t direct: Tim Burton did not direct Nightmare Before Christmas. He was involved heavily with the project, but he didn’t direct it. By now, most people know this, but it needs to be acknowledged here. Does it matter? I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything anymore.
  • No originality in 11 years, very little over all: Tim Burton is basically ‘The Nothing’ from Neverending Story.
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    He’s a bleak, colorless cloud of intellectual death gobbling up ideas and spitting them out as Danny Elfman/Johnny Depp goth-pop bore fests. He doesn’t really do new ideas at all. Big Fish, 2003. That’s the last original thing Tim Burton did. Before that he had fumbled his goth ass through a shabby damn Planet of the Apes remake, as well as a somewhat original/still based on existing source material filmed versions of Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks, and a comedy/drama adaptation of the life of Ed Wood. The film prior to that was his Batman sequel, so we’re really reaching far back into his filmography to desperately grope for something original, and the truth is there really isn’t much there. As it turns out, Tim Burton’s strengths aren’t so much in new ideas, he’s more about that all too recognizable Tim Burton aesthetic, and it seems that his goal in life is to reshape the world into this distinct (boring) style franchise by franchise. He could also be compared to the Borg. It’s similar.
  • Trying to make Nicholas Cage Superman: YEP! He did this. He wanted this. This was going to happen. Don’t even try to tell me that it isn’t fair to judge a film that never came out, and I’m also disinterested in the defense that Michael Keaton was also a controversial choice for Batman, because there comes a time when enough is enough. This was that time.
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  • Frankenweenie: At a time when Burton was taking tons of heat for his continued drought of original ideas and his zest for remaking movies that were already good without him, he made the brilliant decision to actually remake his own movie. Good work, genius. Next up; a remake of Edward Scissorhands, now with every single cast member being played by either Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter. In one scene an angry mob will be made up of over a thousand Johnny Depps, Tim Burton’s ultimate fantasy. Speaking of which….
  • Johnny Depp overdose: Painting Johnny Depp some shade of pale and giving him stupid hair is not an idea.
  • All that weird Helena Bonham Carter/Johnny Depp crap: And what the hell is going on here? Not only is Johnny Depp 90% of the screen time for any Tim Burton project, he also has a romantic entanglement of some sort with Helena Bonham Carter in pretty much every film. The weird thing about that is that Helena Bonham Carter is Tim Burton’s common-law spouse, thereby lending credibility to the theory that Tim Burton, himself pale-ish and with stupid hair, is actually trying to live vicariously through Depp as some sort of weird, Hitchcock style on screen surrogate… Let’s all be honest with ourselves; if Tim Burton came home to find Johnny Depp in bed with Helena Bonham Carter, do you really think outrage would be his reaction? My guess is it would be more something along the lines of “Oh, is it six o’clock already? Sorry, guys, let me get my pervin’ chair and my reading glasses. Don’t let me slow you down, looks good.”
  • Alice in Wonderland: Wow, this movie. This was so, so horrible. I really can’t pardon this, it’s extraordinary. The movie acts as a semi-sequel, if you haven’t seen it, with Alice returning to Wonderland. What for? I guess to kill a dragon and fulfill a prophecy, or something. In other words, the most bland and recycled fantasy film storyline ever, but with Alice In Wonderland garbage smeared all over it, and then Tim Burtonified. Also, she get’s to pal around with her very best friend in the whole world, The Mad Hatter! Remember how tight those two were? No? That’s because they damn weren’t, not at all, but Tim Burton has painted Johnny Depp purple, gave him dumb hair and called him the Mad Hatter, so you know that role had to be expanded and transformed into something that could justify more Depp screen time.
  • The end of Dark Shadows: Dark Shadows isn’t a movie I was excited to see, because it basically looked like Tim Burton was actively crapping all over the source material and making some sort of vampire Austin Powers, but imagine my surprise when I watched it and found that the experience was much, much less excruciating than I anticipated… Until the end. Actually, before we get there, I need to point out that Chloe Moretz (the annoying, sneer faced little girl you’ll remember from such films as Kick Ass, and whatever the hell else she was in) is uncomfortably sexualized periodically throughout this film… And that’s creepier than anything Burton has ever done since Large Marge. F’ed up. Now, the end of the movie; the final act of Dark Shadows has the single worst thing I have ever seen in a movie ever… And I own the Traces of Death boxed set. I’ve watched Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. I’ve watched humans die on film, and that’s much less offensive, existentially, than what happens at the end of this movie. It’s a jaw dropper. Hold up, ~~~SPOILER ALERT~~~So, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but from what I remember this came without any foreshadowing whatsoever; in the third act during the climactic battle between vampire Austin Powers and the witch lady, Chloe Moretz’s room is broken into, revealing her all furry and monster style. She yells “Get out!!” In a dumb monster voice, leaving the viewer to say “Oh, I guess she’s a monster?” A few moments later, she stomps down into the room that the main throw down is happening in, now clearly a werewolf of some kind, she turns to the camera which zooms up on her face, and she says, and I shit you not, “Yeah, I’m a werewolf, let’s not make a big deal out of it.”And that’s the single worst thing ever. It is so, so stupid. I can’t believe it ever got filmed. Forget the rest of the list if you like, This alone erases the glory of the 1989 Batman. Tim Burton did that. We should cram his ass in a wicker man and light that thing up, before he remakes The Wickerman with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. And that could happen at any time.

Fantastic Crap The Movie Casting Call; KROTAR!

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I really wish I could make a Fantastic Crap/Architeuthis Joe movie, for a million reasons. If ever this were to happen, I’ve got a list of which actor I want for which character, as seen in previous inane and largely unread blogs on this wasteland of a blog page. Behold; my pic for Krotar, issue 3’s villain; non other than Ray Wise of Robocop and Twin Peaks fame. Some drawings of Krotar actually look a lot like Ray, we’d just paint him green and pop a big foam head on him. It would cost like, three bucks. If, for whatever reason we couldn’t get Ray Wise, my second choice would be Hugo Weaving, but the truth is that I’ve wanted Ray to play Krotar since I first made the character up way back around 1999.

Krotar"Jeepers Creepers 2" Los Angeles Premiere

How (and why) to say “Architeuthis Joe”

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So, the character of Architeuthis Joe is much, much older than fantasticcrapcomics.com. I’ve been making crude, pen on paper comics called Fantastic Crap since around 1998, and the character of Architeuthis Joe was introduced as a minor character, a sort of foil for an un-named pirate captain to hunt, in a short one page comic. I came up with the name ‘Architeuthis Joe’ Due to a misunderstanding of how to pronounce ‘Architeuthis Dux’, the Latin name for a species of giant squid (I’ve always been very interested in cryptozoology and monsters.) Thinking that ‘Dux’ was ‘Deux,’ the French word for ‘two’, I mispronounced it as “Dough,” which, of course, rhymes with “Joe.” Therefore, here we are years and years later, with a character founded on ignorance. How appropriate.

In related news, I just now, about ten minutes ago, realized I may have been saying “Architeuthis” wrong all these years also, which is significantly more upsetting. According to the internet, you don’t pronounce the ‘TH’ noise, substituting that with an ordinary ‘T’ sound. So…. I guess you say it “ARK-KAY-TOO-TIS.” Sounds stupid to me. I’ve BEEN saying it “ARK-I-TOO-THUS”, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s how Joe says it, too. So, chalk it up to regional dialect or something, according to me, and him, it is pronounced “ARK-I-TOO-THUS,” and that’s just the end of it.

Also, I’m really, really excited to spring new issues on you guys. I hope people enjoy what I’ve got cookin’. Issue 3 is already finished, issue 4 is nearly done, and I have issues 5,6, and part of 7 written, sketched and ready to rock when the time comes.