Why you should be watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

In general, I'm pretty big on horror comedies.  Although I may not be an expert in the sub-genre, I would definitely say I'm a buff, or perhaps an enthusiast.  So when my friend Ron sent me a link to a blogpost a few months ago about Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, it quickly moved to the top of my "gotta see" list.

The show is a series within a series, being a fictional supernatural horror series from the 80s which has finally been released in 2004 (which is the actual year in which the series is released,  starring actors who are playing other actors and filmed using techniques, editing and music made to appear as if the show was created in the 80s).  The six episodes are interspersed with retrospective interviews from the cast (agin, actors playing the actors who are looking back at their time filming Darkplace), which are pretty darn great.

Yesterday Ron showed us the entire series and I cannot believe that 1) I haven't seen it before, and 2) It isn't available for Region 1 DVD or Blu-Ray players.  

Because this show is amazing, you need to see it, and if horror comedy is your bag, this show must be seen to be believed.

Game Review: Lollipop Chainsaw

So I just finished the zombie-themed horror comedy game Lollipop Chainsaw yesterday which pits an eighteen-year-old cheerleader/monster hunter against a potential zombie apocalypse and in the end it was pretty fun.

The best parts of the game were the concepts and dialogue, the banter was witty, the zombies were silly (think Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead wherein the zombies generally speak one liners and you get the idea), and the idea of racing through zombie hoards with the goal of getting home for your birthday party and pairing zombie destroying with interpersonal relationships was pretty fun.  A personal highlight - fighting the video-game themed zombies in levels which mirrored classic arcade games.

The game did fall a little in the control department - the controls felt a little clunky, and often I would be hitting the combos as outline with no result multiple times before a combo would occur.

I did like the fact that each level ends with a report card (counting zombie kills, number of continues used, etc), so it would be easy to play the game again and see if you could beat your old score.

Having long been a fan of the films of James Gunn (Slither, Super, etc.), I felt the game had a pretty fun feel overall, but could have had some help in the monotony of the levels - different types of zombies appeared, which was fun, but each level was a "clear the room and move on" type, with limited puzzles or other types of games involved.

Things I've Noticed: Cheesy horror is some of my favourite horror

For the last few months I've been revisiting old horror movies with my youngest daughter, a couple years ago we watched all the old Universal Horror movies from the 30s and 40s in preparation for Van Helsing, and then she decided to check out a newer horror film.

Against my wife's common sense, I picked Jaws, and after two weeks of nightmares (hers, not mine - I didn't get much sleep those weeks), my daughter decided to take a four year break from horror films.

Recently she's decided that as a junior high school student, she should take another look at the genre, so this time I've decided to focus on Horror comedies, and to let my wife veto any film she thinks our youngest might have difficulty handling.

So far we've checked out The Lost Boys, Fright Night, An American Werewolf in London, Alien, and a Kung Fu movie called Mr. Vampire - now I know that Alien is not a horror comedy in the strictest sense (or in any sense really, because if you found that film funny, I'd like you to stand waaaaaaaaay over there), but otherwise we've stayed with films that have more chuckles than scares.

And you know what - I'm really loving these movies! In most cases I haven't watched these movies since I was a kid, and I've got to say they are pretty amazing, good stories, good fun, and a wonderful amount of cheese.