Generik's Tap: Entertainment

Memorial Weekend Recap

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:31:11 GMT

What I can remember of it at least. Friday was spent dodging raindrops at the track drinking Schlitz and Stroh's with an oilcan of Foster's in there for good measure. We walked through the tunnel to the infield as the IRL cars were on their final hour of practice, and right as the rain was starting. So for about 2 minutes, we got to see some actual activity, then everything shut down. Disappointing, yes. Day ender? Not at all. We met up with a few more friends at the track and we all decided that there was no point standing around there and that it was time to move the party to MacNiven's. Once there I had a Founder's Red Rye and a Boulder Hazed and Infused on draught. Both excellent brews. We left MacNiven's and journeyed up the street to The Rathskeller where a few more large beers were consumed. Unfortunately at this point, I don't really remember what I was drinking, just that it was good! Ended the evening with some good food at El Rodeo and a couple cans of Tecate and then home to sleep it all off.

Saturday I awoke to a stomach not real happy with the previous days performance and worries about how well I was going to enjoy hosting a cookout later on. After mowing the yard I poured a 22oz hefeweizen from my tap and enjoyed a breather on the patio.. and as they say, a little hair of the dog goes a long way. Fired up the smoker grill around 4pm and shortly after that had some cajun marinated chicken drumsticks and a lot of smoked sausage smoking away. A friend brought a bunch of chicken breast fillets and we marinated them in a variety of sauces and threw them on the grill. Along with some awesome baked beans and coleslaw, we had a veritable feast. All washed down with fresh hefeweizen from the kegerator. That evening we gathered downstairs to watch game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals in which the Red Wings dominated the Penguins for a 4-0 victory at home. A great Saturday all the way around.

Sunday dad and I got up early to heard back to the track for the race. Well some miscalculations on my part while driving got us turned around and we wound up approaching the track from the wrong side. Pretty annoying and in the end cost us $10 to park as we couldn't tolerate the traffic we were stuck in any longer. But our annoyance quickly left as we made our way in and found we had good seats in the Northwest Vista, perfect weather, and good beer to drink the day away. It was good to see Jim Nabors back at the track this year to sing Back Home Again in Indiana, as he was ill last year and couldn't make it. That is an institution that will be sorely missed one of these days. A sweet fly-over by 2 F-16s and 2 F-18s and an exciting race made for another great day. Our seats were in the prime location to see 3 accidents and a spin out, which was really the bulk of that type of excitement for the day. All in all, another great race which leads to the depressing 1 year wait for it to come again. Afterwards, my dad and I grilled out some burgers at home and finished of the few cans of beer that somehow didn't get drank at the track.

This may be the best summer for movies ever!

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:07:55 GMT

If your a geek at least, this summer is shaping up to be truly extraordinary. I can think of at least 5 must see movies coming out this year that I will have to insist seeing in the theaters. So without further ado.. below you will find links to the trailers of my personal Must See list.. presented in no particular order:

The Incredible Hulk

Iron-Man

Speed Racer

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

The Dark Knight

I have deviously already gotten my son hooked on the trailers above so the prospects of seeing these films when they come out is nigh unstoppable.

I Love the IRL...

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:29:37 GMT

This should provide enough reasons why...

Down Concert

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:02:45 GMT

Saturday night I went out with my buddy Mike and we saw the band Down. Down is an interesting band because it is made up of members of various other bands I am a fan of. Phil Anselmo and Rex of Pantera, Pepper Keenan from Corrosion of Conformity to name a few. Anyway, we started out at MacNiven's Pub and proceeded to get our drink on pre-concert. MacNiven's has an amazing beer selection and I was drinking a wide assortment of delectable beverages. Three Floyd's Alpha King, Bell's Hopslam, and Harviestoun's Bitter & Twisted.. all on draught. On top of that, I watched one of the bartenders perform what is known as the 'Master Pour' when she poured a hefeweizen for another patron. Most people wouldn't even notice this.. but I geeked out as it is the only proper way to pour that style of beer and most bartenders would never even bother. But I digress.

We left MacNiven's and proceeded to The Rathskeller, which is right across the street from the venue for the concert. Had one more beer there and then we were off to the show. All in all it was a good concert. I spent a minimal amount of time in the pit.. enough to knock some fools around but not enough to get all bruised up.. just about right lol. Then spent the remaining time smashed up front within spitting distance of the band members. When it was all said and done I walked out with a guitar pick from Rex. To get it was an epic hand fighting battle on the floor with someone else. This guy multiple times had his fingers on the pick and slapped his hand out of the way repeatedly before I finally got it and bolted the area. Pretty awesome night. On the way home I stopped and grabbed some La Bambas and counted the evening as a total success. Of course I spent the remainder of the weekend with ringing ears.. but it was worth it.

40oz. to Freedom

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:16:32 GMT

Today turned into a pretty craptastic day at work. I got a lot done, but it felt like the closer I got to getting something accomplished, the further the finish line was moved away in front of me on 2 other things. Totally ridiculous. At one point I had 7 separate tasks going at the same time, and in the end wound up working 30 minutes past my normal time to leave. So with all that said.. I did what any sane person would do when they got home from a day like that.. drank.

Ahhhh.. all is good in the world again!

Black Dragons

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:48:08 GMT

Black Dragons (1942)

This was the first movie on the 2nd disk of the 50 Horror Classics. Starring Bela Lugosi I went in with fairly high hopes. Alas, the movie had potential, but was weakly cobbled together and was basically confusing even after reading the synopsis before starting it. This movie clocked in at just over 1 hour in length and really would have benefited with an extra 30 minutes to flesh out the plot. It was an interesting premise and could potentially be redone very well. But with all that said, I would barely qualify this movie as a horror film. It would better be classified as a suspense thriller then anything else.

Anyway.. on to the plot summary. The movie takes place shortly after the United States is attacked by Japan during WWII. Japan has initiated a diabolical plot in which 6 prominent American industrialists were kidnapped and murdered and then replaced with Japanese agents who underwent cosmetic surgery to look like the slain Americans. In these roles they were to undermine American industry and cripple the war effort from within. Bela Lugosi's character was the Nazi surgeon who performed this transformative surgery. Unfortunately for him, he was re-paid by being imprisoned by the Japanese to avoid any loose ends with people who would know the truth. Well he escapes by apparently surgically modifying himself to look like a prisoner who was set to be released, but we will never know how he managed this feat in a jail cell. He then comes to America to exact his revenge and murder the Japanese agents.

That's the bare bones of it, and I am really not going to go into the precise details. The problems arise in that very little of what I related above are revealed until the final 10 minutes of the movie. So you have a film where Bela Lugosi is killing these men who appear for the majority of the movie to be Americans committing treason. In the end, I found it ironic that it was a Nazi who technically saved the day by murdering these Japanese agents, and by extension of that, further helped bring about the downfall of his own regime. All in all, the movie was not bad, but it really fell short of it's potential. All it really needed was some more explanation in the beginning to help the viewer understand why these events were taking place. Unfortunately it took until the very end for the pieces to all fall into place, and with a movie that is 65 years old now, this generation of movie viewers probably wouldn't make it that far.

Nightmare Castle

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:55:30 GMT

Tonight was the night to watch the 4th movie from the 50 Horror Classics set.

Nightmare Castle (1965)

This turned out to be a fairly enjoyable horror movie. The plot revolved around a fairly deranged scientist who was married to a woman who had inherited a castle. She ends up having an affair and the husband catches them in the act. He tortures the both of them and then removes their hearts in retribution. It turns out that he is actually involved with an older housekeeper and he performs some experimental medical treatment on her using the dead wife's blood to make her younger again. The major problem is that the now dead wife informed him that she had changed her will secretly and was giving her castle to her insane sister, whcih would leave the scientist with nothing. With a very abrupt scene change, the scientist returns to the castle with his new wife, the 'insane' sister. Immediately from this point on, he and the housekeeper attempt to force her into madness to complete their plan to have the castle and all the possessions for themselves.

A doctor that had treated the new wife for her mental problems is called in to monitor her as she is hearing things and having vivid nightmares. As one would guess, the dead sister and her lover are reaching out from beyond the grave. In the end, the doctor cannot be completely fooled and he starts to figure out that the scientist did something to the ex-wife. He pretends to leave to head back to the city and instead sneaks back into the castle. While this is going on, the housekeeper is having an adverse reaction to the treatment she underwent to make her yound and needs new 'untainted' blood... yep, the new wife is going to be the donor. The scientist knocks out his new wife and starts a process where he is basically taking the blood from her and pushing it into the housekeeper. At the same time, our doctor friend is upstairs, where he discovers behind a hidden panel a glass tank with the hearts of the ex-wife and her lover stuck together with a knife through them. He removes the knife and the two of them appear in the flesh. The ex-wife eventually burns the scientist alive and the lover stops the ghoulish treatment taking place on the housekeeper. This of course leads into a scene where the housekeeper reverts back to her original age, and then turns into a skeleton. To end it all, the doctor throws the 2 hearts into a fireplace to destroy them and the vengeful spirits disappear. The End.

All in all.. the plot wasn't the greatest but there were a number of cool scenes. The film was in black and white and was pretty grainy, which really adds to the mood. Classic horror organ music and some surprisingly decent special effects made this an enjoyable viewing. It appears that this movie was originally filmed in Europe in a different language, then dubbed in English, and looking it up on IMDB reveals about 5 or so different titles it went by. I would say if you are in the mood to watch some obscure old school horror, this would fit the bill rather nicely.

Creature from the Haunted Sea

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:15:46 GMT

This is the third movie in the 50 Horror Classics set. By far the worst of the initial offerings.. but I will get to that in just a sec. Let us begin.

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

I hardly know where to begin with this movie. It was bad all the way through and under no circumstances could you ever have called this a horror movie, much less a classic. This is apparently an attempt to make a semi-slapstick comedy horror movie on a nothing budget in black and white. ugh... The plot.. to be honest if I hadn't read the paragraph on the DVD case I would have had no idea what was going on. Basically this movie starts off in Cuba and there is a brief explanation that this is during the revolution and the old guard is trying to make off with the money. With this brief glimpse into history, we get to a scene with a Cuban general making a deal with a shady Sicilian to take a chest of gold off of Cuba. The Sicilian has a motley gang with him and so the adventure at sea begins. Oh yeah.. there is an American spy who has infilitrated the gang played by Robert Towne. I should also mention the bumbling aspect to this spy and he is madly in love with the Sicilian's girl. Anyway, the Sicilian gets about 10 Cuban soldiers and General Tostada on the boat and comes up with the idea that him and his crew will slowly kill of the Cubans and make it look like a sea monster is responsible. Around this point we really get to meet the crew, including one guy who does animal sounds instead of speaking.. like lions, apes, etc. The actor himself doesn't do the sounds.. no they went all out and added real animal sounds and dubbed them in. Totally bizarre to say the least and when he does talk he sounds like he is retarded. He also follows orders for lollipops. Seriously I can't make this stuff up and I am a little unamused that I have to type this.

We as you can maybe imagine, at some point in a "horror" movie there has to be a real monster. And this movie doesn't disappoint. Well ok, it does.. this is one of the most ridiculous looking monsters ever.

The Sicilian and his crew kill of some of the Cubans, the monster kills of some more and eventually they all wind up stuck on a beach. The chest of gold was dumped over board and every day they go diving to find it and more people get picked off. At some point all these people wind up finding women who just happen to live in the jungle on this island. There is a phone along the beach that the spy uses to call another spy in Cuba with an update. And during that call some random guy walks up and waits for the phone with an inane grin on his face the whole time. Seriously.. WTF!?! To put an end to the misery, the monster finally kills off everyone but the spy and some French woman he has decided to hook with.

I couldn't in good conscience recommend this to anyone. Although I will say the first time the monster appeared on screen I laughed out loud. There were about 4 or 5 other scenes where I literally looked around the room to see if somehow, someone else had walked into the room and was there to witness how off the wall something was. Unfortunately for myself, I had to suffer in solitude. But I do this so you don't have to. Definitely avoid this one.

Next up.. Nightmare Castle. The synopsis sounds ok.. can't be worse than this one.

The 50 Horror Classics Review is REBORN!

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:41:36 GMT

Alright.. I had to go dig around on the old blog but I found some posts I made in August 2006 that needed to be resurrected. Way back when I started with the idea of watching this fairly massive collection of DVDs I bought from a TV commercial website called 50 Horror Classics. Well in August of 2006 I watched the first 2 movies of the collection and reviewed them. Then I promptly stopped. So with that said.. I am reviving the idea and to kick it off I am reposting the original 2 reviews here, typos, bad grammar and all. Next post will be review number 3. Oh yeah.. back in the saddle. :-)

Posted August 17th 2006:

A few months back I bought a DVD collection called 50 Horror Classics. For the most part they are movies from way back, names like Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, etc to give you an idea of the vintage. Anyway, 50 movies on 12 double sided DVDs for $20 was way to good to pass up. I have been planning to start watching these movies and doing a quick write up on here, so let the fun begin.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

This was a fun movie to watch overall, but nothing about it would qualify it as horror by today's standards. Movie was filmed in black and white and you could tell that even when it was new it was probably a shoddy production. Many scenes were very dark and you couldn't tell what exactly you were supposed to be looking at. The basic premise is 3 girls dragrace against a couple guys, and they wind up go over a bridge. One of the girls mysteriously walks out of the river the wrecked into hours later unhurt, and moves out of town the next day to take a job as an organist at a church. She starts seeing ghoulish faces and people and has a few episodes where she can't hear anything and nobody can see or hear her. In the end, if you haven't figured it out already, she died in the car crash at the beginning which explains the odd events surrounding her. The best part of this movie was the organ music. Classic horror organ that just doesn't exist in these types of movies anymore, and it was very prevalent in this one. One could almost say it was overdone, but for me it was a throwback and I couldn't get enough.

The scenes where our protagonist cannot been seen or heard are pretty well done. All background noise goes silent and you see people talking but can't hear them. Probably the highlight of the film in terms of giving the viewer a sense of dread. So...would I recommend this to anyone? If you are a fan of the old school horror or are interested in seeing 1960's Americana, yes. Otherwise probably have to say this is a pass for most people.

I should mention one source of amusement in the movie. There is a character that lives across the hall from our dead heroine who keeps trying to go out on a date with her. The second time they meet, he shows up at her door it is 7:15AM and he brings over a small pot of coffee and two cups to share with her, then proceeds to pull out a bottle of whiskey and starts pouring slugs into his mug talking about how he likes to start the day off in a good mood. This guy is super aggressive tryig to get in this chicks pants, always saying things like "maybe you will want company tonight", etc. Something I found a little surprising for a movie from this vintage.

Up next on the queue.. Atomic Age Vampire! Yeah, this already sounds like a winner. ;)

Review 2 posted on August 18th 2006:

I watched the second movie in the 50 Horror Classics set last night, this one titled:

Atom Age Vampire (1960)

This movie was pretty mediocre to say the least. Originally filmed in Italy and dubbed into English, it seemed to jump around a bit into scenes that did nothing to move the plot forward. And there are numerous times where characters make assumptions and there has been no evidence to support their decisions. Let me get to that after a plot summary.

The main actress plays a stripper who is dumped by her Navy boyfriend when she refuses to quit her job. She chases after him in her car and winds up crashing down the side of a mountain. Now she is horribly disfigured from burns on her face and is contemplating suicide to end her misery. Enter the brilliant scientist who is looking for test subjects while attempting to create instantly regenerating cell treatment. Now this doctor has an atractive assistant and they are obviously a couple, and we learn that his previous attempt to create a treatment actually turned test animals into monstrous creations. Anyway to cut to the chase, he uses the treatment on the stripper, it works, but a short while later, the affected area starts regressing back to scar tissue. The doctor immediately falls in love with the stripper, but he is out of the potion he has injected into her. To create more, he has to harvest tissue from a live donor from the same area that she is disfigured. His assistant gets jealous, and he kills her and she is the first donor. He then goes on a killing spree to get more and more samples to keep the stripper looking beautiful, and to do that, he injects himself with the failed first attempt and turns himself into a monster, then steps into a radiation chamber to turn back to normal. All of his advances to the stripper are rejected, and to really cut this short, her ex-boyfriend and the police start closing in on him. He regresses to monster form at the very end and is killed by his his other assistant who is a mute. (You like how I didn't even bring him up before now?) Boyfriend and stripper are re-united, The End. Yay!

OK.. that's out of the way. The good things about this movie is it did have halfway decent special effects. There is a scene showing the doctor transform into his monster form that was surprisingly good when you take into account this movie was made 46 years ago. Basically some stop motion effects where used, but it had to have been pretty awesome for it's time. The scarring on the stripper was pretty graphic as well, and while it would look ridiculous today, taken into context of when it was made was pretty decent. I personally found the idea that the doctor was trying to create this gene therapy, and basing the research on survivors of the Hiroshima bombing interesting. I would think that concept wouldn't have been around at that time. Unfortunately that is about all the good I can really say for this. There were quite a few scenes where the police come to the doctor's house to ask him questions because he is considered an expert. Then out of the blue, they are trailing him as a suspect even though there has been nothing to link him to anything. It was a completely illogical leap. The acting was more or less shoddy, but at least the 2 actresses that got a lot of screen time were pretty attractive.

I wouldn't really recommend this movie to anyone... Fun to watch for this the sake of reviewing a bunch of old horror flicks, but not if you were looking for a decent movie to spend some time with.