Futurama: Bender's Game

And so to the third of four Futurama "films", Bender's Game. As previously stated the main problem with Bender's Big Score and The Beast With A Billion Backs was that they felt episodic, mostly due to the fact that they really were four episodes each stuck together. As much as there's a common story running through them, the structure dipped and peaked as the episodes changed. Bender's Game goes a long way to fixing this, but still not completely.

Bender's Game is Futurama's stab at the fantasy genre adopting Dungeons And Dragons and Lord Of The Rings as its basis. What would be the last two episodes take place in a fantasy world and run like a full forty-five minute episode. What would be episode two leads up to how they get there. The wrangle comes with the first segment. It introduces some stuff integral to the plot but then takes what seems a pointless detour when the crew take part in a Demolition Derby. It feels a little unnecessary even if it does lead to a few things that kind of pay off, such as Leela's electro-shock collar, setting up her abhorrence of the violent being she becomes in the fantasy world.

I could go on, but Bender's Game is funny as hell, still as flawed as the other two Futurama "movies", and more than likely won't win any new converts. If you love Futurama then you know this is for you. If you don't, well it isn't.

Ruud's Halloween

I thought i would just say on the subject of Halloween that this year is one of the only years that Halloween actually falls in my home town the same day it falls in everyone elses.

Halloween in Kimarnock is on the last friday of October, every year, the 31st of October means nothing to the good Killie people, if the 31st falls on a Thursday, then we have done all our trick or treating (rubbish americanism which blows big fat ones) or rather going round the doors with your party piece and basically forgot about auld hallows eve before the rest of the western world has got round to dressing up!

But this year the last friday IS the 31st or rather was, so the planets are aligned and Killie becomes part of the human race again.

Halloween: a pointless exercise which teaches bad things for children to learn. Never talk to strangers we were told, except on th 31st (last friday in Killie remember) of October when you can go around strange weirdos and local paedos doors and ask for sweets and apples, monkey nuts and the occasional fifty pence bit. where is the sense in that? fuck of back to america halloween where you belong, we want our kids kept safe and not growning up a bunch of Britney Spearses and Linsey Lohans!

actually, that has given me a thought,

Halloween usually means that hot burds are careening round the town dressed like slutty nurses and sexy bees generally more scantilly clad than we are used to seeing in the times after the clocks go back, fuck it, come on back Halloween! all is forgiven!

Scary Films.

the splice guide to halloween scary films has been a more or less Ruud free zone, basically cos i dont like them. saw a few but thats it. i could make up for it by a wee look at films where folk burn shit to the ground for Guy Fawkes night but fuck that, no i will turn my attention to the spice guide to romance in the lead up to Valentines! or is that a bit gay?

Ruud Keroauc

Happy Halloween To You

Here's a scary video for you. This is a terrifying series of images:



Told you. Also the scariest, creepiest song I've ever heard!

Happy Halloween!

Slither

And so we come to the end of the Splice Halloween marathon thing for this year and what might be the most intense of all the films suggested. Slither is a strange, brilliant beast. It's a mish-mash of horror staples done in a style that recalls Evil Dead, Re-Animator and a ton of those schlocky 80's comic horror films. It too is very funny, but the humour is used to punctuate a pretty extreme set of events. So for every funny line, of which there are many, or stupid action, ditto, there are alien rapes, fat women giving birth to killer slugs, guys getting split in half, cows getting killed and the mutation of one character that just spirals until he takes up a house.

It sounds terrible when written down, I suppose much like Bubba Ho-tep, but just like that movie it's all about the execution and the performances. Nathan Fillion is the hero Bill Pardy, although I use hero in the Ash in the first Evil Dead sort of way, and as can be expected from him he's great. Goofy, charming and finally the guy you do want in this situation. Elizabeth Banks is also fantastic as Starla, a woman you most certainly don't fuck with:



The masterstroke in the casting though has to be Michael Rooker, who played Henry, that serial killer they done a portrait of, who as Grant Grant moves from an obnoxious slob through soeone experiencing love for the first time in their fifteen billion year lifespan to murderous alien to mutant freak with aplomb. Grant's the guy who finds a meteor with an alien parasite in it. it infects him, but has to use his brain and body to go about business so falls in love with Starla. then the parasite begins to mutate his body and he becomes a tentacled freak. That's not all, as he has set up a "womb" which gives birth to alien slugs that burrow into a host's brain, making them into a zombie that is connected psychically to Grant's original parasite. Then they go through the process of becoming one physically. So it's an alien possession, creepy crawly, mutant, zombie movie that's a bit like a comedy as well. A lot to take in.

It's a film that knows what it's doing though. As much as the threat keeps changing, and as a result the main protagonist of the movie changes on a number of occasions, this never becomes a mess, well it becomes a gory mess but that's something else altogether. this is thanks to James Gunn, who directed and wrote it. He's a guy that knows the genre very well, he wrote the 2004 version of Dawn Of the Dead and worked at Troma Films for quite a while. As a result he knows what he wants to do, and that is re-create those 70's and 80's films such as the early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson ones, or the works of David Cronenberg during that time. There are many, many nods to the films throughout Slither. And what is so impressive about it is that Gunn has turned in a film that is worthy of those directors. It is intense, in an Evil Dead or Braindead sort of way. It bludgeons you with its ideas, and it is pretty damn sick. There's a good level of gore, disgusting but never too much that it becomes ridiculous, see Braindead, but there is also some genuine comedy found here too. Not just in the witty banter, but in the actual events. It's a film that becomes funnier the more you are acquainted with the genre .

In short if you're looking for just one modern B-movie to view with a group of friends on Halloween then Slither's the one. It was released about the same time as Snakes On A Plane and slipped under the radar while that film rode in on a wave of hype that was totally mis-placed. But it's a gem for those who like their horror gory, funny, sick and extreme. See Slither, it's one of the best movies of the past five years. I'm serious!

Ross and Brand

In suspenders from the BBC for phoning Manuel from Fawlty Towers and telling him that his grand daughter has been pumped. Lets face it we all know the story its been done to death in the papers and on the news.



I would like to put the Splice team forward to fill the gap. Film 2008 with Red and Ruud, Friday Night with Red and Ruud. Fucking hell, if you ahve seen any of the big mans videos on here he is a shoe in for ponderland as meandering bollocks talking is his favoured mode of verse!



Dear BBC,

myself and my esteemed would like to be considered for any of the posts you have available after "rossbrandgate" (can i claim this as my own?) we feel we fit the bill as we have done some radio work before (our excellent show breaking balls (see the list of websites splice endorses on the left of the screen)) and in all our time we never worked out how to get the phone to work so we can be seen as relatively low risk.

cheers for listening.

ruud and red

i think we have a chance.

i will now ask for my coleague to film a wee opening credits video for our new film 2008 show including the old barry norman music. and i will put a thanks underneath it showing that i asked, he obliged and i thanked him. (ie put vid under this but above thank u mate)

Cheers bud.

Ruud Kerouac

Action edit from Big Red:

Right here's what I knocked u. It features the new theme tune, a short synopsis of the sort of guff we'd do and then appeals to the Beeb. I suppose this is really a pitch tape for something that can and won't happen!

Enjoy:

Bubba Ho-tep

Strap yourself in for the plot to this one; Elvis and JFK are alive and unwell in nursing home in Texas. The former swapped places with an impersonator for a quiet life, the latter survived Dallas and was dyed black by the CIA so he couldn't be found. Then they realise that a mummy who has lived in the American south for so long that he's become a redneck has been sucking the souls of the residents of the nursing home through their bums thanks to some graffiti he's left in the public bathroom after crapping the soul residue out. Well The King and the President ain't taking it and armed with an electric wheelchair and a zimmer frame set out to kill Bubba. Oh and the entire narrative thrust of the film revolves around Elvis getting his first hard-on in over a decade.

It sounds like the most ludicrous film ever made, and yet it is in fact poignant, surprisingly moving and damn funny. Of course it's up to you if this is really Elvis and JFK, common sense would say no but the movie peppers little clues that suggest that they may not be two old mental cases. Either way by the end you'll have fallen so greatly for the characters that you won't care if they're the real deal or not. In fact you won't even notice how ridiculous this all is. This is mainly thanks to the performances. Ossie Davis as Jack is at once Presidential and also paranoid. Look for the little quirks he brings to the role, forever looking out for Lyndon B. trying to get him. Even better is Bruce Campbell, the God of cult schlock. It is often ignored, mainly thanks to the films that Campbell is in, that he is a pretty good actor. The fact that he chooses to do these projects, as opposed to them being all he can get, shows this. If you've seen his stint in the show Burn Notice you'll have already realised how good he can be. Here he is breathtaking as a man defeated, regretting the choices he has made in life and reduced to a bed-ridden, cancer of the penis stricken wreck. As the events unfold he finds he still has some life in him and finally gets to play the hero and go out a somebody. Again it doesn't matter if he really is Elvis, he believes he is and so he experiences true longing for a life gone south. The fact that Campbell manages all this while trying to be one of the most iconic people who ever lived, and a staple impression of every drunk guy, while in tons of old guy make up is even more unbelievable. It's just typical that when he finally turns in a performance like this he does it in a movie with this premise meaning that it will be forever ignored. It's unjust and deserves to be seen.

It's not just a sad peon to how to grow old gracefully. It's also a great comedy. The premise should tell you that, but the whole approach to language, and in particular Elvis' way of describing stuff is just beautiful in its hilarity. The fact that Elvis would clearly describe the size of a cockroach in relation to banana and peanut butter sandwiches is brilliantly observed, as is Bubba's hick speech, represented by hieroglyphs that spew forth from his mouth. Also look out for Jack's Oval Office style room and his words to ward off evil.

Bubba Ho-tep is a classic example of a film that could never be made within the studio system. Its premise is just too ludicrous and its execution totally skewed from what you'd expect. If a studio did green light this they'd insist on something less sad, more scary and they'd probably want a younger Elvis. And Bruce Campbell would never be allowed in this, unless he was killed first.

The Monster Squad

Twenty reasons, in no particular order, why The Monster Squad rules:

1)The pompous opening salvo about Van Helsing and the vampire fighters that concludes; "they blew it".

2) Shane Black co-wrote it.

3) It's got a montage in the most 80's of senses.

4) "Scary German guy's bitchin'".

5) "We're at war with Vietnam. It's in Rambo!"

6) Richie Aprile from The Sopranos is in it.

7) Groundhog Day Part 12; not the Bill Murray film's eleventh sequel, but a swipe at Halloween, Friday 13th et al. Anyway this is older than the time loop comedy. So Monster Squad is directly responsible for that other great film (okay, it's not).

8) Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolfman, The Mummy and The Creature From The Black Lagoon (okay that's cheating a bit)

9) Mr. Alucard (straight from the Nilbog school of clues that one).

10) Eugene's Dad deals with the "monsters".

11) "Rudy, a question. Do you know any virgins?"

12) Dracula drives, and a hearse with a silver skull hood ornament no less.

13) The effects are actually way better than you remember/think.

14) "Creature stole my Twinkie".

15) "Maybe we should be 'Nature Squad' and look at rocks and birds and not be dead".

16) "The Wolfman's got nards!"

17) The Mummy's death is genius.

18) "Like really religious Sean, why don't we just go and do it in Burger King?"

19) "My name is Horace!"

20) The closing "with it" Monster Squad theme tune:



See the Monster Squad! I bloody well mean it!

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

Some site this as the first horror film ever made, it more than likely isn't, but it is still one of the finest. And although it's not the first horror, it very likely is the first film to feature the "twist ending".

So why should part of your Halloween marathon include a silent movie from 1919? I mean it can't be scary can it? To modern audiences, no, but if you allow yourself to be enveloped by its world it'll seriously get to you. The story is a pretty simple one. When a small German town holds its annual fair the main attraction is a weird man called Dr. Caligari who shows his ability to control a somnambulist. The sleep-walking freak predicts people will die that night and then they do. When one of those people is Francis' friend Alan Francis decides to take matters into his own hands.

Ho hum by today's standards. What makes Caligari so astonishing, even today, is its visual style. It is a film of artifice, with a style drawn from the German Expressionist movement of the time. Firstly it looks unrealistic, and this is deliberate. It looks like it is shot in a studio and that everything is painted. Rather than this being the result of it being low budget tat, it's like this by choice. The set design actively draws attention to how fake it looks. It wants you to enter the world of the film, one that looks similar to the real one but is just ever so slightly off. Beyond the fact it looks like a set, obviously influenced by theatrical productions of the time, is the fact that everything within it seems to be misshapen. Angles jut from all corners of the screen and everyday things are twisted and stretched into odd shapes and sizes, a perfect example being the town clerks ridiculously over-sized chair. he has to stoop to fit under the ceiling. What is great is that beyond this being merely cool looking the skewed sets actually tell the story of the film. The overall feeling is an ugly world, twisted and jagged. It looks as if it is created by a madman, or that the people who inhabit it have mutated it into something vile and dangerous. Within the big picture there are some fantastic little visual moments. The aforementioned chair tells us that the clerk is important but could also be read as a representation of the pomp and self aggrandising of people in these sorts of positions. The chair is ridiculous, but the clerk continues to sit in it as it raises him above everyone else. When the clerk is found murdered in his bedroom we are presented with the scene here to the right. He was stabbed, and the room's telling you that. The huge window appears as a knife's blade thrusting into the bed where the dead clerk lays, as if the world itself has murdered the man.

Now this is a spoiler so stop reading now and go watch it if you don't want it ruined for you but have been intrigued by what has been written.

The clerk has been murdered by the world. This is because the world is the creation of one character's insane mind, hence the way it looks. His murder has only happened because Francis has made it up. This is the twist I was talking about. A framing story was added by the director after the fact that reveals Francis to be in an insane asylum. He is telling his story to someone, but it becomes clear that all of the characters are based on fellow inmates and the story is in fact an old Italian tale he has read, but he has been unable to separate fact from fiction. And of course we're put in the same position. Is this a true story or a load of rubbish, the ramblings of a madman?

This is not to say that the story isn't intriguing. It's actually a very clever little story. And the acting is great too, in that over the top silent style. Here it really works though, especially for Caligari, who is all bluster and huge gestures, and Cesare, the somnambulist, who walks about with fluidity, almost in slow motion. He is genuinely creepy wandering about as if a dream creature, at one with his surroundings, no matter how bizarre.

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is a work of art. Not just as a visual feast. It is an important piece of filmmaking that has gone a long way to dictating many of the tenets of the horror. It is also massively important in the shaping of filmic storytelling, not just in the twist, but in the continuity style as well. It still influences filmmakers to this day, the most obvious being Tim Burton. Then there are the social readings which I won't go into here, but Caligari is seen as a key text in understanding post World War I Germany, and the feelings present that allowed the Nazis to gain power. In fact it is actually blamed in one of the most famous film critiques ever written; From Caligari to Hitler by Siegfried Kracauer. Whether you agree with the idea that a film can hold that level of power or not, it is an interesting read nonetheless. As much as it is a fine example of film as art and a damn important film, it's also great. It's a film that will get into your head and stay there, gnawing away at you. Think of it as the film version of Edvard Munch's The Scream. Another words, it's a perfect little horror film for your Halloween marathon.

Splice's Greatest Films Ever Made To Come Out In The 90's (the 1990's)

Tremors (1990)

For some reason I keep thinking that Tremors is an eighties film. Of course it actually came out in 1990 and thus is eligible for Splice's Greatest... and so I'll pop it in. My write up is here so i won't bother doing that again. All I really need to do is place it in the list so:

1. Braindead
2. Hudsucker Proxy
3. Grosse Pointe Blank
4. Tremors
5. Cube
6. Galaxy Quest
7. White Men Can't Jump

Splice's Greatest Films Ever Made To Come Out In The 90's (the 1990's)

A Preamble

Aye, aye, it's been two months! Well now that Halloween's upon us I'm going to cover one of my favourite films of the 90's and one that would have definitely gotten done anyway:

Braindead (1992)

Synopsis

Peter Jackson trumps Pegg and Wright by doing a Rom-com with zombies over a decade before Shaun Of The Dead. Lovable loser Lionel falls for shopgirl Paquita but his overbearing socialite mother is having none of it. Then she gets bitten by a Sumatran Rat Monkey and all hell breaks loose. It's officially the goriest film ever by volume of fake blood used.

Review

Those who thought Peter Jackson was a bad choice for the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy may have watched Braindead before making that decision. In fact they could have seen any of his early movies, but the first three, this and the two previous Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles, will have brought them to the same conclusion. I'd have loved to have been in the room with the Tolkien fanatic who decided to check these out to see who this upstart New Zealand director was and if he was fit for the task of interpreting this blokes equivalent of a sacred text.

Braindead, for lack of a better word, is mental. Jackson had already shown his intense sense of humour and love of gross-out gore in Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles, but the third by him trumps them with such incredible gusto that it's difficult to actually stomach at times. A friend of mines had to turn it off after about half an hour. The thing is that's the movie at its tamest. sure there's the custard scene, the bit with the dog, a neat solution to the problem of getting bitten and a zoo keeper with a bad sense of tact. What probably finished him was the bit with the nurse's face. But that's nothing on one of the most notorious scenes from any splatter movie, one that was heavily edited in America when Braindead was originally released, as Dead/Alive thanks to another movie with the name. It is of course the lawnmower scene:



That's one hell of a set of blades on that thing! My lawnmower packs it in if you hit a patch of moss. Of course it's not just the level of gore in this scene, and the rest of the movie, that makes it. It's the ideas. Jackson has played with the convention of the zombie movie hero with his chainsaw in a way that fits into the film perfectly. It's quirky in that way non-American takes on these types of films tend to be. Why else would the central plot really be a pretty typical romantic comedy? And the supporting cast of characters are great, the main attraction being the Nazi war criminal vet, but the Kung Fu vicar comes close. Then there's Uncle Les a sick fuck you're glad gets killed, but at the same time appears to be the only one able to actually take on the plague. Of course it's his party that creates it. Another great twist in Braindead is that instead of the plague of zombies laying siege to the family home they are already in it thanks to Les' shindig.

The fact that the threat for Lionel is in the family home is central to Braindead's theme. It's really a film about family, or rather about the point when it's time to fly the nest. Lionel's mother is horribly overbearing but in Paquita he is presented with his escape. Of course Mum has to go and become a zombie and infect a few others forcing Lionel to make what appears to be the pretty bad decision to set up another, this time very dysfunctional, family in the basement. It's like he's actually not ready to give up his family, even when Mum dies and so creates a new family unit when surely it would have been easier just to kill the zombies. Of course he may also be creating the family he didn't have thanks to his Father's. Then there's his "grandchild", the zombie baby, the answer to the question "but what if zombies give into our other base instinct, to mate?". The scene where Lionel takes it for a walk is straight out of slapstick, except you won't see many old films where the hero punches the kid in the face. Again, why does he take it out? Eventually Lionel naturally is forced into the decision to give up on the family home but in a truly demented ending has to literally escape the womb.

Braindead isn't a scary film. It's really a comedy, but like Tremors it has some brilliantly constructed set pieces. As for the gore it is insane but actually gets to be so much that it just becomes hilarious. By the lawnmower scene you are almost numb to it after witnessing the myriad deaths, I won't ruin them for you, but how they managed to pull this off on the pretty small budget is a miracle. Then there are the different zombies, from the one who ends up with a gnome for a head to the one who ends up as three, his top half, his legs and his innards that dropped out the former which form into a creature by using his sphincter for a face. As I said, you wish you could have seen what the Tolkien enthusiast's face looked like taking this in, but as I pointed out it really is an incredible achievement given the budget and so actually does hold great significance into how Jackson pulled off his famed trilogy. They'll be the films that he is remembered for, but Braindead may well be his actual masterpiece.



Top 100 Where And Why?

Braindead goes in at number 1 at this point.

1. Braindead
2. Hudsucker Proxy
3. Grosse Pointe Blank
4. Cube
5. Galaxy Quest
6. White Men Can't Jump

Over to John and his list!