Posts Tagged ‘gore’

New Contributor and First Successful Test of Splatterworks

Posted: September 21, 2014 in News
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Hello one and all, we would like to introduce to you our new movie reviewer, Jenicide, who has just written and published her review of the 1978 classic, Halloween. So go ahead and check it out!

We would also like to announce the first successful test-run of our Fourth of October celebration splatterworks. For those of you who don’t know, October 4th is the day we celebrate independent horror filmmaking, and we celebrate by popping our own version of fireworks, which we call splatterworks. Very soon we will be posting a How-to video where we will teach you how to make a simple splatterwork and then show you the actual explosion. So watch out for that!

For more info on Fourth of October, check out this previous post:

October 4th: Celebrating Horror Independence!

Updated Splat-Stats Info

Posted: September 19, 2014 in News
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Very soon we will be updating our Splat-Stats info page in order to make it a little more readable and a little less technical. The original info posts will still be available under the “Info” category, for those of you who wish to see them.

Also, in light of the recent arrival of two new contributors to our offices, we will be adding author names to every article and review from now on.

Things are moving along swiftly here at splatterjunkie.com and it’s only going to get better, so keep your eye on us and we’ll do all we can to keep raising the bar.

Movie Review: Ravenous

Posted: September 16, 2014 in Reviews
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Bare Hands, Knife, Tomahawk, Black Powder Revolver, Musket, Mallet, Cavalry Saber, Log, Pitchfork,

Head-Butts, Meat Cleaver, Bear Trap

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Reviewed by: Pontifex Aureus

Every now and then a weird little oddball movie will pop up and truly surprise me. Ravenous, at first glance, looks like your run-of-the-mill cannibal in the woods movie, but not so; instead the movie takes a slight supernatural turn as the cannibals literally gain strength and heal wounds from eating human flesh, making this feel almost like a vampire movie. And while a dark, gritty tone would have been perfectly acceptable, the movie surprises me again by taking a bit of a humorous bent; not all-out comedy, but certainly tongue-in-cheek.

During the Mexican-American War, Captain Boyd is punished for cowardice by being transferred to the worst post possible, Fort Spencer, an isolated little shack out in the western Sierra Nevada Mountains. Just as Boyd is getting adjusted to his new surroundings, a shaggy-haired man comes stumbling out of the woods with an incredible story of survival and cannibalism that leads Boyd and his fellow soldiers to mount a dangerous rescue mission into the woods.

Bad Ass Boyd  Ives on the Hunt

Like I’ve said, this is no ordinary cannibal movie; these cannibals can get stabbed, shot, and skewered and still come after you just as long as they can get their hands on some fresh meat. In fact, these cannibals are actually Wendigo. As an American Indian recounts in the movie, when a man eats the flesh of another man, he steals his spirit and gains his strength, becoming a Wendigo. However, the effects don’t last and the eating becomes like a drug habit; the Wendigo is forced to keep feeding, becoming hungrier the more he eats.

Yum Yum Crazy Face Deadman

It’s a very fresh premise and I absolutely loved the hero, Captain Boyd, who is so atypically unheroic. He is in fact a coward and proves it more than once in the movie; he also happens to be a cannibal (don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away, as this fact is revealed early on). Yet despite all that, he eventually finds the strength to stand against his enemy (and his own cravings) and ends up being rather likable. The villain is no less remarkable as he transforms from a raving lunatic to an implacably cool and manipulative devil-in-disguise. You’ve got to love a villain so megalomaniacal that he compares his hunger to manifest destiny. The interplay between Boyd and the villain keeps the movie moving along briskly in between massacres.

RUN Knox Stew

Speaking of massacres, there’s a good helping of blood to be had here, but nothing wildly over-the-top. There’s a few spilled guts here and a little flesh-eating there. The best parts are really the implied cannibalism; any movie that can make eating stew seem gruesome is doing something right. And I have to mention the outrageous soundtrack. The music was probably the first cue I had that this was going to be something special. It’s an off-kilter hodgepodge of wheezy concertina, demented banjo picking, and sprightly fiddle—a hillbilly nightmare of a soundtrack that ranges from manically cheerful to rabidly ferocious.

A truly original and entertaining movie all around but the real meat of the film is the battle of wits between Boyd and the villain, since the other characters (aside from the delightful Jeffery Jones as Colonel Hart) are mostly disposable kill fodder. If you’ve got a meat-tooth for cannibal mayhem, Ravenous serves it up extra-rare.

October 4th: Celebrating Horror Independence!

Posted: September 15, 2014 in News
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We really love Halloween. In fact, it feels like for all of October we’re just preparing for Halloween—planning parties, designing costumes; every day before the 31st is just build-up to Halloween. So it seems a shame that we only celebrate on the 31st when the whole month is so powerfully marked by the spirit of the macabre. That’s why, in the spirit of prolonging the spooky festivities, we here at splatterjunkie.com are introducing a series of new October Holidays.

First on the list is “October 4th”, celebrating Horror Independence! Yes, it’s a holiday held in honor of those intrepid indie horror filmmakers out there who are doing it all on their own, free from the tyranny of Big Studios. So be sure to observe this special day by participating in some October 4th traditions! First of all, since we’re celebrating independent horror filmmakers, watch some independent horror movies! Go out of your way to find something obscure and new. Secondly, if you know any indie horror filmmakers, give them a buck. Or go to their websites and give them a buck–it doesn’t have to be much, just enough to show you care. Thirdly, indulge in the traditional October 4th savory dish (that I just made up): the Shamble Pie.

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Shamble Pie Recipe:

Ingredients:

  • Box of Filo (Phyllo) Dough
  • Pack of Baby Spinach
  • 2 Red Onions, sliced into thin rings
  • Gruyere Cheese
  • Thin-Sliced Lean Roast Beef
  • Olive Oil
  • Rosemary
  • Salt

Lightly oil a casserole dish and lay down a sheet of Filo Dough. Next, put down a layer of grated Gruyere Cheese. Layer some  Baby Spinach over the cheese, lightly drizzling the spinach with Olive Oil. Then put down a layer of Roast Beef, folding it up in ripples rather than laying it flat. Sprinkle the Roast Beef with some Rosemary. Next, put down a layer of Red Onions. Top that with another layer of grated Gruyere Cheese and then put another sheet of Filo on top of that. Repeat this process twice more, adding salt to each layer according to taste. Heat up the oven to 200 degrees and let bake for 18-20 minutes.

Finally, as a last step, disregard the previous instructions and make your own damn Shamble Pie! We’re celebrating indie filmmaking here; it is not a straightforward process, you make your own rules as you go along. So throw whatever you want in there—make it weird. If you’re following a recipe, you’re doing it wrong.

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And finally, don’t miss out on the best October 4th tradition of all: Splatterworks! Splatterworks are basically fireworks, but with a bloody twist: they’re fireworks wrapped in blood packets! To make a simple splatterwork, just fill a condom with fake blood and wrap it around a Black Cat (make sure the fuse sticks out enough so that the flame won’t touch the condom or it could prematurely burst). That’s just one idea; be as creative as you like (while being safe and obeying your local laws).

So there you have it my fellow horror addicts, a brand-new October holiday complete with traditions and all. Will you let October 4th pass unnoticed or are you ready to let the fake blood fly?

Movie Review: Leprechaun in the Hood

Posted: September 2, 2014 in Reviews
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Afro pick, magic, semi-auto pistols, bare hands, microphone stand, fire, claws, fork, four-leaf clover joint, chair

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Reviewed by: Pontifex Aureus

Ok…I will admit that I went into this review looking for an easy target to pick on; what better than something ridiculous like Leprechaun in the Hood, right? Well, surprise—it wasn’t actually all that bad! I take that back, it is bad…but I could sit through it once. The Leprechaun series was never one to take itself very seriously, but Leprechaun in the Hood takes it to new levels of stupid and almost ends up being decent if only it didn’t skimp on the gore and run out of comedic gas early on.

There isn’t much in the way of plot, but basically, a trio of young rappers rob a local gangster and steal his magic flute that has the power to make everyone like your music, no matter how terrible it is. As it turns out, the gangster himself stole it from the Leprechaun, who gets awakened during the robbery and sets out to get his flute back, discovering the joys of weed and rap along the way.

LepintheHood Cast  Leprechaun Joint

The movie starts off surprisingly well; inside the first ten minutes, we get to see a man stabbed to death with an afro pick and Ice-T pulling a baseball bat out of his afro Looney Tunes-style. After this, a few amusing scenes with the rap trio trying to pawn a guitar left me with high hopes that Leprechaun in the Hood might actually turn out to be pretty good. Unfortunately, the laughs die out quickly around the 20 minute mark and the movie becomes unbearably dumb. Where we started off well with silly but effective slapstick, we end up with lame rhymes and cross-dressing rappers by movies-end. Also, the horror and comedy aren’t particularly well blended; rather than both elements being in harmony, they seem to diminish each other, with horror and comedy taking turns at being dominant.

Afro Ice-T Afro Picked

Ok, so the story’s bad and it’s not all that funny, but does it deliver the gore? Sadly no, it does not. For a horror movie, Leprechaun in the Hood is pretty stingy with the special effects. Many of the kills aren’t even shown at all, but are either implied or happen off-camera. Other kills are simply lame, like death by green CGI lightning or the Leprechaun’s favorite attack of pointing at someone and magically blowing a hole through them. Honestly, he might as well just be going around shooting people with a gun…hell—that actually sounds like a funny premise (Leprechaun with a Shotgun)!

Post in Drag Leprechaun Kills

But worst of all, after the initial strong beginning, the movie becomes boring and not very well made. In fact the direction is so poor that some scenes don’t really make sense at all. In one scene, a man is making out with a woman who starts to morph into a monster, therefore implying that she’s the Leprechaun in disguise, right? But no, because as the monster woman makes the kill, the camera cuts to the Leprechaun laughing inside of…somewhere, some kind of void. It’s not clear where he is or if he’s watching what’s happening. Later on however, the Leprechaun gets trapped inside a safe and there we see him inside that void we saw earlier. So in that earlier scene with the monster woman, they actually cut to the Leprechaun inside a safe that he wasn’t even in yet.

Leprechaun in the Hood, to the surprise of no one, is a bad movie and its over-all boringness and unimaginativeness makes it fall short of attaining even so-bad-it’s-good status. However, it really does start off well, it’s not the worst Leprechaun movie I’ve seen (cough, Leprechaun 4, cough), and I give the film credit for its wacky premise. The idea of an evil Leprechaun running around Compton is so juicy that you really wish that they’d done more with the idea. If you decide to watch the movie, do yourself a favor and watch the first 20 minutes, stop the DVD and then imagine a better movie in your mind. Oh…and in case you were wondering, yes, the Leprechaun raps and yes, it is every bit as painful as you’d think.

Movie Review: Dead Alive

Posted: July 19, 2014 in Reviews
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Pole Cleaver, High-Heeled Shoe, Claws, Teeth, Bare Hands, Syringe, Hummingbird Sculpture, Severed Arm, Karate Kicks, Scissors, Garden Gnome, Pitchfork, Pliers, Light Bulb, Broken Door, Hedge Clippers, Kitchen Knife, Meat Cleaver, Wash Wringer, Severed Leg, Blender, Frying Pan, Lawnmower, Amulet

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Reviewed by Pontifex Aureus

Among gore aficionados, few will deny that Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (yep, “Lord of the Rings” Peter Jackson) has rightfully earned its place in the pantheon of the goriest movies of all time. Some will even tell you that it’s THE goriest movie of all time. Maybe so, but despite all its corn-syrupy bloodshed, the best thing that Dead Alive has going for it is that it’s just so damned funny.

Set in 1950’s Wellington, New Zealand, Dead Alive follows the story of Lionel Cosgrove, a life-long mama’s boy who finally slips away from Mother when he meets his fate-foretold love interest, Paquita. Things go well for the couple until Mother tries to intervene and finds herself unexpectedly becoming a pus-spewing zombie. Ever loyal to his mom, Lionel is forced to become her caretaker, keeping her hidden, sedated, and locked up. The cat doesn’t stay in the bag long though, and the zombies start piling up, leading to an unforgettable climax that ranks among the bloodiest in all of cinema.

Lionel Tranq  Vera Paquita

There’s a lot to love in Dead Alive. You want memorable characters? How about a karate-fighting priest or a Nazi Taxidermist? What about a Sumatran rat monkey that’s the product of inter-species rape or a blob of living, anthropomorphic intestines that’s actually kind of cute? Speaking of intestines, let’s not forget the gore. So much blood and guts spilled that to this day the house Dead Alive was filmed in still bears a few dried-out blood stains on the ceiling. If haven’t seen a man’s face being pulled off like a mask or a zombie baby hatch out of a human head, then you are missing out my friend. And yes, this is all done in tremendous old-school style; no CGI, just lots of fake blood and rubber puppets. Oh yeah…and there’s also zombie sex (because that’s where zombie-babies come from).

Cute GutsRat Monkey

But the best thing of all about Dead Alive is that it is deliriously, stupidly funny. Example: If you have a zombie baby, what’s the first thing you do? Take him out for a stroll in the park, am I right? And if he starts to act up and you have smack him up a bit…people will understand, right? Or what if you have dinner guests, but –uh,oh– your mom comes down with a little case of explosive zombie zits…what do you do? That’s right, you serve ’em up a mess o’ pudding! And have some pudding yourself; it makes for an excellent movie-time snack.

Baby SelwynPopeye the Zombie

Dead Alive (or Braindead, as it’s known overseas), is a notorious monster of a goreshow; it was banned in Germany, Finland, South Korea, and heavily edited in other countries, and though somewhat ignored in its time, it has since become a holy grail of delightfully puke-inducing splatter and nastiness—the goriest movie ever made. Be advised horror fans; this one’s rich and creamy, just the way you like it.

Introducing SplatStats and the Gore Quotient!

Posted: July 15, 2014 in Info
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Greetings horror fiends, within the next few days, we here at splatterjunkie.com will be posting our first movie review: Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive!! Our review will include a feature called SplatStats. The SplatStats track three kinds of horror movie statistics: Kill Count, Gore Quotient, and Weapon Inventory. The Kill Count is simply a tally of the total amount of kills in a movie and the Weapon Inventory is a list of all weapons used. The Gore Quotient is bit more complicated.

Basically, the Gore Quotient is a mathematical measure that tells you how bloody a movie is. This is accomplished through an in-depth procedure that allows us to determine the area (in square inches) of all the frames in a film. With this information, we are then able to determine what proportion of this screen area contains blood/gore. For example, the movie Dead Alive has a Gore Quotient of 1,927; that means that for every 10,000 square inches of measured screen area, 1,927 of those square inches were occupied by blood.

Dead Alive is well-known for being one of the goriest movies of all time, so it was specifically chosen to be the high benchmark against which all other movies compare. So if a movie gets a Gore Quotient of 964, you’ll know that it’s approximately half as bloody as Dead Alive. And that’s not opinion, that’s measurable fact.

Watch out for our review of Dead Alive, coming soon.

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