 Article
DCJ Network
Decemberized
DCJ DB
Ductwars
O-Review
RI Bugs
|
Goshzilla.com - Now in colour!
| Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - Animation |
Blood Tea and Red String [2006] - A bird-girl is fought over by a group of mice and birds. Stop-motion is one of my favorite forms of animation. The works of Jan Svankmajer and the Tool videos are some of my favorites. There's just something about the final production that, while not as smooth or realistic as CGI can be nowadays, the level of detail is unsurpassed and often results in many surreal environments. continue reading...
|
| Monday, July 26, 2010 - Games |
Hugo's Whodunit? [1991] - Hugo's girlfriend tries to solve a wacky murder mystery in what might be the most frustrating adventure game ever made. It's been a while since I've written anything for Goshzilla, and I'm all torn up about it! I'm seriously doubled over in agony as I struggle to type out this article. I'm going to present you with the infamous sequel to the shareware adventure game Hugo's House of Horrors. A game not only infamous for daring to actually follow up the weirdness of the first Hugo game, but for also being mercilessly difficult, especially compared to it's predecessor. continue reading...
|
| Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - Foods |
Soda Batch #4 - Black Jack and Cintron Energy Drinks This review cost me over $4, so I think I've hit my quota for spending on reviews. I suppose that isn't too bad for six rather large cans, but then again I suppose they should be six good cans of something. Either way we all still lose.
Ranging from 60-70¢, each of these came in an over-sized can and probably per ounce are many times cheaper than Red Bull or otherwise, but I wouldn't say they are a better value by any means. We're split between energy drinks, and teas/lemonades. Let's dig into the teas first. continue reading...
|
| Monday, June 07, 2010 - Horror |
Seedpeople [1992] - Another adaptation of body snatchers takes the form of spitting flowers. I'm not really a huge fan of body snatcher-esque movies, as they usually tread the same ground from one to the next. This one isn't too different as people get possessed, others don't know who's real or not, and somehow the survivors have to figure out how to end the infestation. continue reading...
|
| Friday, June 04, 2010 - Horror |
Dark Angel: The Ascent [1994] - A demon from Hell is tired of torturing the sinners and decides to punish those on Earth before they die in an attempt to lessen their afterlife of suffering. Dark Angel is one I hadn't heard about from Full Moon. But as it came with several others, I now have it. Of course the several others were new to me, but be that as it may.
Being from the hey day of Full Moon films, they were able to really nail down the high budget look, despite I imagine minimal funding. The movie was filmed in Romania, so there were plenty of existing locations that I imagine saved a lot on set design. The city, while looking like any other (and stocked with American actors), was also in Romania, so it gave off an older vibe. continue reading...
|
| Thursday, June 03, 2010 - Sci-fi |
Arcade [1993] - A virtual reality game becomes a lot more real once several teens get sucked in. For a short while, this was playing on cable a lot. I remember first seeing it at 15 in a hotel room in Delaware trying to pass the time. Later on my parents had actually gotten a better cable package, so it was on HBO or one of those channels. At the time sci-fi was making a decent comeback with the 80's sci-fi machinery being replaced with the dawn of affordable CGI (or Silicon Graphics as we said back in the day trying to impress people). continue reading...
|
| Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - Blog |
Be back soon - Be back shortly Due to a hectic schedule, we will be taking a break for a while from reviews. Posting will resume once things free up a bit.
continue reading...
|
| Thursday, March 11, 2010 - Horror |
A Crack in the Floor [2000] - A man who has lives under his abandoned house's floorboards most of his life, kills off local trespassers. I rented this a long time ago. Gary Busey was misleadingly given one of the top billing slots. Now I don't know why that fact alone was the tipping point for renting the movie, but I also don't know why I ended up buying the movie in the sales bin year later either after knowing the movie was terrible. I guess I just don't make good decisions. I suppose that's a given though.
The Car Ride Cliche pretty much plays out note for note. Some random couple that we don't care about is killed off, and then there's 10 minutes of driving and talking after five minutes of packing. Some young adults are heading off for a camping trip, and we all know how well those end up. continue reading...
|
| Monday, March 08, 2010 - Horror |
Hellspawn [1993] - Yet another demon child kills people, but he feels realy bad about it, and just wants to be loved. And here we are, the final disc in the Spawn of Satan 4-pack. As I've come to notice, Satan was noticeably absent from pretty much all of these movies. I think this one comes close though. I also was hoping that the last movie would be the absolute worst, and there's no doubt that I struck gold here.
It's apparently by the same guy who did [Night Crawlers], and one of the extras here got promoted to lead actor for that movie. Well it was also the director's brother, but pretty much most of the cast played similar yet expanded roles later on. That said, this movie is absolutely hilarious. In fact, I'm seeing flaws in my rating system since it is so bad and perfect for riffing that I want to max out the Bad-Good side, yet that would put it in the same category as Monsturd and Terror Toons. I can't very well put it in the Bad-Bad extreme as it was enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. This leaves me no way to convey the extreme absurdity of this effort. But such is life. continue reading...
|
| Friday, March 05, 2010 - Horror |
Lukas' Child [1993] - Actresses auditioning for a movie role, are later kidnapped to be fed to a demon child. In furthering the attempt to work my way down the Spawn of Satan pack, we move to the last two movies both produced in 1993. It's hard to say if this was really worse than The [Screaming] or [Night Crawlers], but it's certainly pretty bad.
There is one high point that balances out the mess. Now first off, this movie does pretty much play it straight, and there isn't really any cheese to it. The actor that plays the old man cult leader is actually pretty good. He's provided some decent lines and despite having to feed women to his demon child, he is able to portray that these events do trouble him. Everyone else is pretty shallow, and you end up having quite a bit of difficulty separating actors and actresses. At times, I saw someone locked up in the dungeon in preparation for the demon's feast, but then I see someone I thought was the same woman, and she's still at home. But this matters little in the end, since they don't tend to have much screen time. continue reading...
|
| Thursday, March 04, 2010 - Animation |
Dead Space: Downfall [2008] - The animated prequel to the hit video game is less horror and more exposition. From Goshzilla: We are still trying to locate Brian, but we have no word of his location at this time. We received this review from an anonymous P.O. Box which has since been used by a different client.
Update From Goshzilla: For those of you telling me I should call the police. Yeah, sure, and then admit to how we pretty much kidnapped him to begin with.
Update From Goshzilla: Plus, I'm a talking monster! Think they'll ask first, shoot second?
I have mixed feelings regarding this movie. At the time of its release (October 28, 2008; three days before the hit video game's release), EA's marketing department was in full swing informing the entire world of their latest game: Dead Space. There were comic book miniseries, alternate reality games, interactive websites that functioned like adventure games; a tremendous amount of work went into this (I'm sure we'll see this again with Dead Space 2 on the horizon).
I played Dead Space before continue reading...
|
| Wednesday, March 03, 2010 - Horror |
Night Crawlers [1996] - An evil bug kills people when they move into a new home. But it apparently can kill people in other places too. And on to another entry from the Spawn of Satan 4-pack. I'm attempting to go from the better entries to the most horrible. I've only been able to manage to skim them, so it's a rough guess, but I figure reverse chronological order might also be a good bet.
Unlike The [Screaming], which had somewhat of a plot and sort of went somewhere, this just makes a huge mess out of a simple plot, but fails so gloriously that I can't help but like it to some degree. There's really no saving grace presented here, it's all bad from top to bottom. However the badness does make it interesting to a degree, so that prevents the dreaded so-bad-it's-actually-bad syndrome. continue reading...
|
| Thursday, February 25, 2010 - Horror |
Screaming, The [2000] - A man rents an apartment, but soon finds himself being lured into the cult of Crystalogy and has to fight a demon. If you're ever at a movie store and look through the horror/sci-fi section, you may notice some DVD sets by Brentwood. They boast having several movies in one place for the low price of around $7. Many have about four, while a few have upwards of 10-20. I learned a while back that these are not in any way good deals, and the money spent, while it gets you a lot, is still a waste due to the utterly horrible movies you end up with.
Many of them seem to include horror movies from the 60's like Carnival of Terror, real z-grade drive-in stuff. Those types of movies, I just can't stand. With a few friends they may be fun to rip, but otherwise it's just an endless scene of boredom with possibly a few cheese moments sprinkled in. continue reading...
|
| Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - Horror Sci-fi |
DMX Carnivorous [2008] - A child draws monsters out of anger derived from his abusive parents, but one monster becomes real and only DMX can stop it. I shouldn't act surprised about these types of movies. I really shouldn't. I suppose the first hint was that it not only starred DMX, but it was also directed and produced by him. Now as far as rap goes, I did find him one of the more tolerable artists, and the constant barking was at least a clever way to create a radio edit rather than bleeping, silencing, or reversing the offensive words. continue reading...
|
| Monday, February 22, 2010 - Animation Series |
Gurren Lagann [2007] - A coming of age story about a boy who uses giant robots and his own personal confidence to save the world. This has never been done before. From LesserGood: We have currently been unable to reach Brian pending a reevaluation of his activity on the site. Please enjoy this review he sent in advance while we attempt to track him down.
A while back I reviewed Dead Leaves, an anime so visually expressive and fun to watch that it went well beyond the archetypal trappings of what it means to be "anime" in this day and age. Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, he would later move on to direct Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in his first time directing a full-length series. While there's no denying the magnitude of Gurren Lagann, with the overall scope, intricate story arcs, and complex character development, in comparison to Dead Leaves, the series felt a little restrained.
If I see the name "Hiroyuki Imaishi" attached to continue reading...
|
| Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - Classic Documentary |
Public Enemies [1935] - A pseudo-documentary about the downfall of 1930's crime masters While I'm usually a proponent of the private sector spearheading many innovative trends, and government usually bloating things to the point of extreme inefficiency, I must admit I was wrong about one thing: gratuitous death footage. continue reading...
|
| Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - Games |
Enviro-Bear 2000 [2009] - Imagine a world in which bears can drive. This game can best be described as chaos.
In this strange game, you take control of a bear, or rather his one arm, and attempt to drive a car one-handed. This involves turning the wheel, hitting the gas, hitting the break, grabbing food, and throwing away stowaway badgers all with one hand. How does it work? Badly. Badly, but in a good way.
From the very beginning continue reading...
|
| Monday, February 08, 2010 - Horror |
Colour from the Dark [2008] - A well on a small Italian farm heals ailments and grows larger crops, but has horrific side effects. I'm not as big into H.P. Lovecraft as many others, and in actuality I didn't even know who he was until recently. It was more of a concept that I didn't get for a long time. That said, it appeared that the many adaptations of his work would vary to a wide degree. After realizing that the subject matter originated in literature and your mind was meant to fill in the lack of details, there is also the fact that no one can really see many of these creatures since they are unimaginable horrors or simply make you go mad.
Releases like the Dunwich Horror, which I couldn't bring myself to finish, were dreadfully dull and seemed to deal with futurist occult material. The Unnameable series and Castle Freak became traditional monster movies, while Dreams in a Witchhouse treads some more psychological yet still tangible ground. continue reading...
|
| Friday, February 05, 2010 - Animation |
Dumbland [2002] - David Lynch offers us a rare glimpse of how pesky humanity is through the eyes of God. Amen, brother. Imagine you're sitting in your living room on a sweltering July afternoon. A common fly whizzes by your ear maintaining a perimeter of no less than two inches about your head. The incessant buzzing of its little wings soon overpowering everything else in the room as you try to go about your business. Imagine that same scenario only instead of one fly, there's a couple billion; all buzzing about. This is what it is like to be a god.
If you were to watch Dumbland you'd probably think that it is both noisy and continue reading...
|
| Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - Horror |
Attic, The [2008] - After seeing a doppelganger in the attic, and agoraphobic girl tries to figure out what's going on. It takes a lot, but I can fairly safely say that I didn't like this movie. Not because it was really bad, but more because they tried to be good and then ultimately weren't.
While several complaints are due to unattractive leads, I suppose that wouldn't really fly nowadays, so I'll attempt to find other things that I didn't like. Now I don't like to harp on 'these modern day horror movies' being nothing like the classics, but usually that context relates to the big budget theater releases. No, I tend to get more annoyed by the medium budget films that seem to occupy the middle ground between indie effort and mindless popcorn flick. continue reading...
|
|
