A new scifi thriller Surrogates (US-2009; dir. Jonathan Mostow) sets up a scenario that sounds intriguing enough — a variant on the “locked-room mystery” subgenre, only with robots, and with an added apocalyptic feel. Isaac Asimov’s classic Robot series of stories — ill-served in the 2004 Will Smith vehicle I, Robot — is the classic work in this subgenre, though the premise there is completely different to this new one.
FBI agents (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell) investigate the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase unflawed robotic versions of themselves – fit, good looking remotely controlled machines that ultimately assume their life roles – enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes. The murder spawns a quest for answers: in a world of masks, who’s real and who can you trust?
At last the long-anticipated alien monster vs vikings flick Outlander (US-2008; dir. Howard McCain) is being released on DVD, at least in the US. The date that it fell to Earth was the 19th of May.
In fact, just for the hell of it, here’s the trailer for the UK theatrical release, which I like even better:
To celebrate the coming of the US DVD, Kaiju Search-Robot Avery has gotten hold of an exclusive Making of Outlander featurette, followed by a gallery of pictures of the Moorween.
Rumour has it there has always been a certain competitive quality of the “casting” of cities in Godzilla movies, with local tourism councils keen to have their city trashed by the King of the Monsters, all in the cause of highlighting its charms as the monsters annihilate them. With the Big G currently in retirement, the City of Hakodate in Japan has decided to create their own kaiju advertising collateral in a series of tourism videos based on the premise that people will definitely want to come to places where they might witness an apocalyptic battle between gargantuan opponents. At the very least the videos can show people what local landmarks are likely to appeal to city-trashing monsters.
In the video below, we are told that, Hakodate is the number one city they would most like to invade. So you never know your luck (survey data based on 100 alien respondents).
Year 1942. Summer. The Martians landed somewhere in Siberia and attacked the glorious people of Holy Mother Russia. It was a hard time for USSR, as you might know from the history books if the whole thing hadn’t been suppressed by the decadent West. The situation was so f**ked up that comrade Stalin took the anti-ET military operation under his personal control. The campaign was top secret and virtually nobody knows about the fact of extraterrestial intervention.
Interesting idea? Well, bizarre anyway, the sort of thing that gets my interest — if I played video games.
In fact, it’s the background scenario of a new real-time interactive strategy game called Stalin vs Martians. It is released by Mezmer Games.
The makers describe it thus: “Our game is unique. Trashy and absolutely over-the-top, arthouse kitsch production in its finest.” What’s more, in the FAQ an interesting daikaijuesque facet of the game is revealed, when, in response to the question: “Can we play Stalin?” they answer:
Yes, but not from the start. Stalin is our commander and he gives us orders. Closer to the grand finale he will appear on the battlefield as a playable unit — a huge colossus, five times higher than any other creature. Just like it was in the real life.
Meanwhile here’s a rock video for a song used in the game, by the heavy-metal band Firelake — with lots of nice visuals:
God knows if the game’s any good, but I like the packaging…
There’s lots more of it on the website, including another music video that seems to involve zombie Stalins.
Source: Thanks to Jason Fischer, who has a nose for “crazy stuff”. Maybe he’ll let me blog one of his bizarre zombie stories one of these days.
My short story collection, Creeping in Reptile Flesh (published by Altair Australia, 2008) has just been reviewed very positively — and dare I say insightfully — by Keith Stevenson for Aurealis #43. Here is the review:
In the Collection shortlist for the Aurealis Awards [earlier this year], there were just two titles, Creeping in Reptile Flesh and Sean Williams’s Magic Dirt (reviewed in Aurealis # 41). In any other year, Creeping would have won.
Robert Hood has been writing chilling, sickening, funny and thoughtful horror for longer than he cares to remember. Creeping in Reptile Flesh brings together some of the best from his twistedly evil mind including three previously unpublished works.
Robert’s writing has many shades. His heroes are often people just like you and me. Beset by the horrid and supernatural, they rise to the challenge or sink beneath the slime. Whatever happens, there’s humanity there, the best of us and the worst of us on show. Some pieces are brain-bendingly philosophical in their intent, like the title work and ‘Rotten Times’ which appeared in Aurealis #27/28, and my personal favourite, ‘Heartless’ (first published in Aurealis #31) which manages to be both viscerally gruesome and a cool-headed debate about whether the ‘soul’ resides in the heart or in the head. Others are funny with a sick (sometimes literally) twist, like ‘The Slimelight and How to Step Into It’ (which you can hear Robert read on the Terra Incognita podcast site at www.tisf.com.au), and ‘Rotting Eggplant on the Bottom Shelf of a Fridge’, and others are just plain weird, like ‘Dreams of Death’. There are many types of horror here to suit many tastes and all of them will please the discerning reader who enjoys good tales told well.
Should this review inspire you to want to read the book, you can buy a copy direct from the publisher or from Twelfth Planet Press’ independent publisher online bookshop.
Creeping in Reptile Flesh (both book and novella) are on the relevant Ditmar Award shortlists, so don’t forget to vote for them if you are eligible.
If you were a robot with a human skull for a head, and you’d just been dredged up from the depths by fishermen, without memory of who you are or why you existed, you’d no doubt be plagued by all the questions that drive the central character of a new comic series by Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford, co-creators of Robot-13. The first issue of this series — portentously titled “Colossus” — is due out from Hall and Bradford’s comic imprint, Blacklist Studios, this month. When I tell you that Robot-13 has an instinctual and irresistible drive to protect mankind from mythological creatures of destruction and that the first issue includes a major mash-up with a gigantic Kraken, you will understand why regular readers of this blog who are into comics will need to check it out as soon as you can shoot off an order.
The issue comes with a choice of two covers — the above, in a “naturalistic” style, by Jeff Slemons, or in the more comicbook style of co-creator Daniel Bradford (see below):
As you can see from this cover and the following scenes of combat between Kraken and robot (pages 8 and 10), Bradford’s stark, high-contrast approach is somewhat reminiscent of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, which in turn displays the influence of Marvel’s iconic Jack Kirby. Edgy and dynamic, Bradford’s art compliments and drives the narrative, which is scripted with no-nonsense clarity by Thomas Hall.
Comparative example of a page from Hellboy: Wake the Devil, by Mike Mignola:
Bradford’s cleaner, even more stylised images seem to take on board what is good about Mignola’s approach and give the influences an individual quality of their own.
Story-wise, the Robot-13 narrative expands outward from the opening “discovery” of the titular robot and flings him into a frenetic journey of self-discovery, driven by a compulsion to protect humanity from various large mythological beasts. Says Hall:
On the surface, it’s about a skull-headed robot who fights giant monsters from Greek Mythology. From a storytelling standpoint, however, it’s somewhat a reworking of Frankenstein meeting Homer’s Odyssey — it’s the story of a thing created by Science who goes on a Hero’s journey of sorts to find out who he really is…
Hall identifies the novel Frankenstein and the mythos that has grown from it as a major inspiration:
Daniel had this robot design he was working on, and I had been reading Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ at the time … I thought there could be a connection. Frankenstein was really a product of its day. People wondered if science had any limits and whether it should have them. … If something is created that can think and reason, what would that creation think about itself?
He also expands on how the original Frankenstein novel, which was subtitled “A Modern Prometheus” — a reference to the Greek myth of the titan who defied the gods and incurred their wrath — plays into Robot-13:
… we decided our robot should fight giant monsters from mythology, just like the ones in the [Ray Harryhausen] movies we grew up with! But the monster mash-up of the Frankenstein creature and Greek mythology goes beyond mere battles between behemoths. In Greek mythology, there’s always the journey where the hero goes to find himself. Having our “creature” follow that hero’s path, looking for who he was, gives me as a writer some great stuff to use. And who doesn’t love a giant monster fight?
Indeed!
Hall and Bradford’s previous comic for Blacklist was one with a rather startling and equally attractive concept. King! — a four-part series — featured a character clearly based on the iconic and increasingly mythologised “King” himself:
Meet Jessie King: Former Mexican wrestling bad ass turned supernatural hitman, King is THE man. Be it Bloodsuckers, Shape Shifters, Flesh Eaters or Mouth Breathers, King puts an end to the freaky, antisocial, abnormal misfits that torment the common Man and threaten Freedom and Fried Foods everywhere! Anywhere there are people to help, money to be made and savory grub to chow down on, King will be there with his fist and his Blue Suede Colts…
Elvis-esque ex-wrestler vs zombies! What more could one want?
The mythology of the snake woman, at least in its Asian aspect, is the subject of a new film by Jennifer Lynch, director of Boxing Helena (1993) and Surveillance (2008). Lynch is probably tired of being referred to as “daughter of film auteur David Lynch” — but, you know, you can’t escape your family, especially when one of them is famous and you decide to work in the same field. Interestingly, she made history in 2008 by becoming the first woman to win the Best Director award in the history of the New York City Horror Film Festival, for Surveillance — which, oddly enough, is more crime than horror. (We should perhaps ignore the Worst Director Razzie Award she won in 1994 for Boxing Helena.) She appeared in her father’s surreal nightmare film Eraserhead (1977) at age 9 and was production assistant on his Blue Velvet (1986). She also wrote the bestselling Twin Peaks tie-in novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (1990).
Her latest film veers into full-blown fantasy-horror territory, but uniquely she is directing it in India, working with two of Bollywood’s biggest names — Mallika Sherawat, who headlines as the shapeshifting naga, and leading man Irrfan Khan, who recently appeared in Slumdog Millionaire.
The film is called Hisss!
Synopsis:
The Curse of the Cobra Goddess – anytime man desecrates or violates the cobra, they are doomed to suffer the petrifying curse of the snake woman, of death and infertility. Only respect and worship can keep the population safe and the women fertile.
Over 4000 years ago the inhabitants of the Indus Valley sculpted the image of the shapeshifting snake. These half cobras, half human creatures were said to inhabit an awesome, mysterious temple, made of material unknown to mankind, deep within the jungles, far, far away in the legendary spice forests of the Malabar Coast. Children grew up hearing about the story recounted to their grandfathers, by their forefathers about an ancestor, who had journeyed to the edge of the world, and came back to recount a frightening story about the Snake Goddess and her mate…. and from here the legend travelled across India, and the far east along the silk route – passed on from generation to generation for thousands of years until this day.
It is the year 2008, an American man, named George, packing high tech gear, and evil intentions, makes the arduous journey into the heart of the forbidden forest. He captures a male cobra the size of a large python when he’s at his weakest, while mating. Little does he realize when they embark on testing this mysterious creature in their high-tech lab, what horror and destruction awaits him…. (Official website)
From all appearances the film is set to be as sexy as it is creepy, with the beautiful Mallika already known as a sex goddess in her own country. The excellent make-up SFX of Robert Kurtzman — who has worked on a slew of genre films, in a history that includes genre classics/favourites from Evil Dead II, From Beyond, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Bride of Re-Animator, Tremors andIn the Mouth of Madness, through to Thir3een Ghosts, Bubba Ho-Tep, Undead or Alive, Ang Lee’s Hulk and much else besides — transforms Mallika from this:
into this:
and from this:
into this:
Pressed to describe the film, Kurtzman said:
“HISSS is a real Hindi horror movie! Mallika transforms from a serpent into a human in order to find her lover. She needs to mate to carry on her kind, basically, and it’s sort of like CAT PEOPLE in that sense. She goes from being a serpent to a beautiful woman, and then she experiences the real world through human eyes—seeing big cities and stuff like that. But she comes across some evil people in her journey to find a lover, and gets rid of them in all sorts of odd and interesting ways.” (Fangoria)
The newly released official trailer gives every indication that the film will be unique, with a Lynchian sensibility transposed into a Bollywood mystique.
Trailer:
Several creepy and effective shots of Mallika as the naga have appeared, giving a strange surreal quality to the image of the film that pre-publicity is creating.
All it all, the film looks like one we can anticipate as being a classy and unique experience.
Bitten (UK-2009; short [15 min.]; dir. Mark Fieldhouse and Andrew Cairns) offers viewers the last moments of a man bitten by a zombie. It’s not action, or even horror as such, and is basically one character in a room — but it is effectively done, with a sort of slow, inexorable poignancy. Filmmakers Mark Fieldhouse and Andrew Cairns are collectively known as Echelon Form. From the minimal content on their website, I’m guessing they’re new to the game.
And while we’re at it, the following isn’t so much a completed film as a ghostly moment — though in its 1:30 min running time it packs in more narrative content by way of suggestion than many full-length films. Very well done, I thought. It’s called Project “Ghost” by JONGJUNAN.
Some of the comments left on the YouTube page for the trailer to upcoming The Asylum film, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, express the opinion that the octopus wouldn’t have a chance. An invertebrate, albeit prehistoric, against a mega version of the ocean’s deadliest killer? Ridiculous!
Well, think again. Check out this battle between a real “giant” octopus and a shark. They are basically the same size, relative to each other, as the main stars of the film. Warning: sharks were definitely harmed in the making of this film.
This excellent piece of atmospheric artwork — either a promotional banner or an undead memorial (“Here shambles Robert Hood, hacking into your backbrain from beyond the grave”) — turned up unheralded in cyberspace this morning. It was created by Nyssa Pascoe of Awritergoesonajourney.com fame. It’s one of a set that includes a banner for my partner Cat Sparks and good friend and surrogate offspring, Sean Williams. Go check them out — along with the rest of Nyssa’s beautifully gothic design work — on her deviantART gallery.
Thanks, Nyssa. It’s superb.
Below is the “corrected” version of the banner, with the name of the blog correct. I’ve left the other one up because it seems oddly appropriate. Initially I thought the “mistake” was deliberate, until Nyssa confessed otherwise. I guess you should use this version for any linking to Undead Backbrain.
