The SCP Foundation: Declassified (Monstrum)

"Join us as we delve deep into the mysterious world of the SCP Foundation, uncovering the most enigmatic and anomalous objects ever contained."

Predator: Badlands Movie Gets Comic Book Prequel

In the one-shot, a young Yautja warrior is given a seemingly simple task by his father: retrieve a piece of technology from a derelict spaceship that crashed years ago. Inside, however, an ancient and deadly threat lies in wait.

This one-shot comic book prequel to the forthcoming movie, Predator: Badlands #1 - written by Ethan Sacks with Elvin Ching on art duty, and inks from Oren Junior - will be released by Marvel on November 12. The cover art is provided by Juan Ferreyra.

The movie's director, Dan Trachtenberg, will write a foreword to the book.

Chewing Over The Meat of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Fifty years after Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shocked the world and forever changed the face of global cinema and popular culture, Chain Reactions charts the film’s profound impact and lasting influence.

Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe (Lynch/Oz, Memory: The Origin of Alien). Featuring Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Karyn Kusama, Takashi Miike, and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Only in theaters September 19.

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

If Camp Blood and Shark Exorcist set a new low in crapness that I will endure on DVD, then Hobo With A Shotgun has become the new benchmark by which all future OTT, Grand Guignol, splatterfests will be judged.

Inspired by a fake trailer from the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double-bill of Death Proof and Planet Terror, Hobo With A Shotgun  is the charming tale of an ageing vagrant (Rutger Hauer), pushed over the edge by the violence and lawlessness run amok in Hope City, who turns vigilante - with aid of a pawn shop pump-action, 20-gauge shotgun - and delivers "justice one shell at a time".

In a Taxi Driver-esque development, he saves - then teams up - with a young prostitute, Abby (Molly Dunsworth), to take on the city's out-of-control crimelord The Drake (Brian Downey) and his two Tom Cruise-inspired sons Slick (Gregory Smith) and Rip (Nick Bateman).

This is Robocop meets Braindead (Dead Alive for Americans) with all the slick, sick, black humour and ridiculously over-the-top gore you would expect from such a pedigree.

Not for the feint-hearted, closed-minded or humourless, Hobo With A Shotgun is in a class of its own for tongue-in-cheek shocks and taboo-bending casual violence (Torching a packed school bus? A human piñata?) but it's also a straight-up revenge story with a mix of great, quotable, dialogue balanced with deliberately campy dialogue and a brilliant central performance from a grizzled Rutger Hauer.

Hobo is pretty much review-proof. It wears its grindhouse credentials with pride and the chances are you're going into this with a good idea of what kind of entertainment you can expect.

And if any sensitive, serious, cineastes should stray into a screening of a film called Hobo With A Shotgun they're going to get what they deserve.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sic Itur Ad Astra

The Star Trek: Voyager episode One Small Step features a discussion of childhood dreams and ambitions.

Whenever I watch this, it strikes a particular chord with me as, at about the age that Chakotay decided he wanted to be a palaeontologist and Seven Of Nine was dreaming of becoming a ballerina, the only thing I wanted to be was an astronaut.

It wasn't even Star Trek (The Original Series) or other sci-fi shows of that era (early '70s) that drove this dream but simply the fact that I was growing up in age when men were still walking on the Moon and the "space race" was a vibrant and exciting part of everyday life.

Sadly, I also remember when how that dream got mothballed.

I was reading an article in an annual (either Star Trek or Doctor Who, and I'm leaning towards the latter) about the reality of space travel and I came across a paragraph that pointed out that if your craft re-entered the atmosphere at the wrong angle you'd burn up (I already had a childhood phobia about fire from being freaked out by The Amazing Mr Blunden as a six-year-old) and so that was it. Dream shattered. Astronaut ambitions shelved.

I wonder how different my life would be if, at that impressionable age, I hadn't read that article in an old annual and had instead pursued my space-travelling dreams through later life, studied the sciences at school (heck, any studying would have been an improvement), gone off to university at 18, taken a job in the aerospace industry or become a scientist or a pilot...

Talking of old annuals, as we were, another "freaky" story revolved around a pair that I picked up at a summer fête at the old Pembury Hospital (I think one might have been a Victor annual, but I can't remember the other, it might even have been a Doctor Who one).

One of favourite annuals as a kid
- but nothing to do with these anecdotes

What I do recall is that the two annuals were from different years and I didn't look inside them until I got home - only to discover that these two, otherwise unconnected books, both contained exactly the same illustrated article about UFOs! My little kid mind was officially blown!

The Pembury Hospital fêtes were fixture of the Knight's social calendar as, in their day, the events were always able to attract "big name stars" to open them.

One year we had Rod Hull & Emu (I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I stroked Emu) and another time there were a couple of genuine Daleks for people to inspect (before my time, even William Hartnell, dressed as The First Doctor, opened the fête one year).

In later years, once I was a local journalist, the hospital fête gave me my first opportunity to interview Louise Jameson (The Fourth Doctor's companion, Leela).

She was thinking of moving to the area and so ended up grilling me on what I thought about Tunbridge Wells.

Either later that year or the next she moved to Rusthall, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells.  I like to think I played some small part in that decision.

Jakob's Wife (2021)

Jakob's Wife was a pet project of the iconic Barbara Crampton, who had apparently spent years trying to bring the script by Kathy Charles, Mark Steensland, and director Travis Stevens to life.

She is quoted on IMDB as saying:

"I read it and I was immediately captivated. I hooked up with Bob Portal at Alliance Media Partners and it took many years for us to develop the project and put it together."

In the film, Crampton plays Anne Fedder, the dutiful but downtrodden wife of a boorish, small town minister, Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden).

The film wastes no time in getting to the meat of its storyline when an attractive girl, Amelia Humphries (Nyisha Bell), disappears on her way home from an evening church service.

Then Anne has the chance to meet up with an old flame, Tom Low (Robert Rusler), who is back in town to help with the restoration of a historic gin mill.

The couple rendezvous at the rundown, out-of-town, property but just as it looks like their old romance is about to be rekindled, they are attacked by supernatural forces.

Tom is killed off swiftly, but Anne returns home later... a changed woman.

Bonnie Aarons as The Master

She has fallen under the spell of an enigmatic, asexual, vampire lord - of the old school, Nosferatu-style - known only as The Master (Bonnie Aarons, who also played the titular role in The Nun).

Once Jakob realises what's going on in his town, he is at first naturally horrified, but then his desire to exterminate the vampire threat (which he readily accepts as real) is tempered by a determination to save his wife, somehow.

The story pivots and lurches thematically and tonally, but it is Barbara Crampton's powerful central performance around which everything revolves and that holds this strange 98-minute affair together.

I think it's supposed to be a dark comedy, but this really isn't clear from the get-go.

There's a definite Fright Night vibe - and even a touch of Buffy The Vampire Slayer - to Jakob's Wife, but it has an odd habit of allowing characters to flip from 'good guys' to 'bad guys' at a moment's notice.

Jakob, for instance, isn't a particularly likeable person to begin with, and yet there are times when he's suddenly - slightly uncomfortably - thrust into the role of 'hero'.

In all honesty, the majority of the audience isn't ever going to care for him... even if, at the eleventh hour, he realises what a great catch his wife is.

And I wasn't totally sold by his transition from "thoughts and prayers solve everything" to "killing in the name of love".

Conversely, Anne switches from murderous monster to "hero" and back again several times in the tale.

Director Travis Stevens was certainly very lucky to have an actor as brilliant as Barbara Crampton as the power engine behind his movie, because it could have possibly spun totally out of control without her presence.

Jakob's Wife is a buffet, a potential melange of different tastes that may, or may not, appeal depending on your personal preferences and tolerances.

And So Begins The End of My Hero Academia

The final season of top-notch superhero anime My Hero Academia begins on October 4 in Japan.

Flight Of The Living Dead (2007)

Ever get one of those "that was my idea" moments; when you see some film with a clever twist that you'd dreamed up years ago and never done anything about?

Well, I had one when I first came across adverts for this little beauty.

Flight Of The Living Dead: the title alone tells you pretty much what you can expect from this wonderful piece of trash cinema.

Just when you thought every aspect of the zombie genre had been milked dry; and wannabe writers like my good self were scratching around fruitlessly to come up with different take on this popular subject.

If you think about it, really, Flight Of The Living Dead is an obvious conceit, and it's hard to believe no one had tried it before... a zombie outbreak on a passenger plane at 30,000ft.

It's the ultimate "spam in a cabin", to quote legendary drive-in film critic Joe Bob Briggs.

The acting may be pretty awful and the script not much better, but once the carnage begins all the half-baked 'character stuff' is forgotten (along with logic - as guns are fired left, right and centre within the aircraft) and the bloodshed takes over. And let's be honest, that's what we watch zombie films for, isn't it?

And once the chewing, dismemberment and shooting kicks off, Flight becomes a great little horror flick. Unfortunately it takes over half an hour to get to the good stuff, but the wait is worth it!

The plane is loaded with a typical Hollywood passenger list of potential inflight snacks: a group of renegade scientists with a suspicious cargo, a cop and handcuffed wisecracking convict, a nun, a professional sportsman and his disgruntled wife, the feuding teen couples and, best cliche of all, an aged pilot making that one last flight before retirement (guess who doesn't make it out alive?).

It swings violently from classic moments (watch for the laugh-out-loud umbrella sequence) to silly (the ridiculous crash landing stands out in particular), but really it doesn't matter; it's zombies on a [melon-flipping] plane! What were you really expecting?

Good Boy Pits Brave Dog Against Demonic Forces

A loyal dog moves to a rural family home with his owner Todd, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows. As dark entities threaten his human companion, the brave pup must fight to protect the one he loves most.

This could be the one that breaks me. Humans under threat in horror movies are par for the course and often deserve whatever they have coming for them, but making a dog your protagonist against supernatural antagonists is a major challenge to my blood pressure!