A FEW (STRANGE) WORDS WITH ODERUS.

Way back when, during the mammoth nerd expo that is San Diego Comic-Con (circa 2009).   


At one lofty point during the course of my Comic-Con immersion I found my self locked in one particularly cramped and unsanitary men's restroom with none other than the morally ignorant, gloriously inhuman Oderus Urungus, front man to the world renowned 'Scumdogs of the Universe', GWAR. I put myself in this potentially suspect situation (think prison sex with less hygiene) in order to obtain some nuggets of wisdom from perhaps the greatest rock persona since...uh, that guy with the chainsaw from Jackyl.

We begin with a warm up, just to get the juices flowing.
I ask the esteemed Mr. Urungus to share his thoughts and musings on the  impending 25th anniversary of his band, the accompanying tour and (most  importantly) the arrival of the latest and potentially greatest GWAR record to  date, 'Lust in Space'.
'Basically what we got going this year is GWAR's 25th year on the planet since we've been dethawed via the copious overuse of hairspray. 25 years is not a heck of a lot to an eternal god, it's more like half of an eye blink, yet in human terms it's a long time. So we have decided to declare the onset of a two year celebration of all things GWAR. Our new album, 'Lust in Space' drops on August 18th. We will have a two year celebration because, quite simply, one year is too short. Two years is twice as long! We might even take it up to 3 or 4 years if it's going well.'

'GWAR will go down in history as the band that took 25 years to break. It's a lot like jacking off for 25 years and finally getting your nut, which is what I will be doing at every show.'

Every  one?

'At every single show I will share my filthy load upon your faces and together, all you freaks out there who have supported GWAR for all these  years will be paid back in full. GWAR is not an easy band to support, you've got to take the slings and arrows of ignorant assholes that don't understand our majesty. It's a whole new level of commitment. What other band asks you to sever your mother's head, core out her genitals with a daisy cutter and then have sex with the family dog? Not many, but GWAR fans are all over it.'

About this new record, where does it fit in reference to your earlier works?
'I would say that it is a new level of GWAR's super awesome-nasity (sic). If you took all the GWAR albums and melted them down into mush, it probably fits somewhere in the middle. It's got the thrash of 'Hell-o', the epic metal of 'America Must Be Destroyed', the Dungeons and Dragons on LSD of 'Violence Has Arrived' and it's got the  title of 'Lust in Space'. It is the greatest GWAR album since the last time  we did an album.'

'GWAR at its' worst destroys Slipknot at its' best. Even when Cory what's his face is crapping into a solid gold toilet right onto his fans' faces. We've got a relationship with our fans that is beyond insidious, it's not rape, yet it has something to do with dentistry. I'm not sure what that means but I know that Monty Python would understand.'

Let's talk about your re-signing with Metal Blade Records and also one particular track on 'Lust in Space' that appears to have heavy radio airplay written all over it, 'Make a Child Cry', what inspired you to write this little gem?

'On this planet, there is this whole idea that children are to be 'cared for'. They are to be fed, they are to be given presents and so forth. In outer space, children are used as power units for cybernetic war suits or sex aids and the like. The children of your planet are your  future and if we can destroy them all you will have none, and that is kind of the idea behind  that.'

As for Metal Blade........?

'We're back with Metal Blade, we were on some other label for awhile that didn't make any sense what so ever, they went broke or something. So we're finally back with the ultimate metal label in the world, it was just the perfect time, with the 25th anniversary thing and all. The cosmos, the planets, they're all in line to make this the most successful year in GWAR's history. Metal Blade, they are very much like us, they've been out forever and gone through highs and lows, yet they've hung in there. Brian Slagel (the label's founder) is fat and bald and I love the man. Bringing GWAR back together with Metal Blade is like Laural and Hardy, Charlie and Chaplin, it's like 'you got your anal sex into my carburetor!' It's a wonderful thing.'

Huh?

'They're putting out the new record, it's really the  story of GWAR's final escape from earth. We travel through space, we run out of crack, we have to go back to  earth, that's pretty much the story.'

How about this epic new tour? Any surprise guests?

'Well, we don't wanna give anything away. We got Sleazy P. Martini with us this year. Now that he's solidified his control of the crack industry and the world porno industry, he's back into erecting solid gold skyscrapers and managing the band. We got a lot of off-planet people, back from the old days before GWAR came to this world. Like our old General, General Zod.'

Will you make another stop at the Rave, in gorgeous downtown Milwaukee?

'We'll be back in Milwaukee or Chicago, it all depends on who gives us more money.' (The boys will be sharing the stage at the Rave with Lamb of God and Job For a Cowboy November 6th)

In conclusion, can you just throw a few words out there about what GWAR means to you at this  point?

'All I can say is this, GWAR is the greatest band in rock n' roll history. Nobody cares so much about their  fans that they would mouth Jello molds into a testicle.'

And with that last pearl of infinite wisdom, Sir Oderus wraps me in a sweaty, drunken embrace and we part ways. I stumble in my typical Menasha way out into a fitfully rank crowd to bare witness to the two-fold threat of GWAR and Canadian battle metal progenitors, 3 Inches of Blood, and I have lots of woefully under lit pictures to prove it.

Perfect.

ROWDY LIL' DEVILS

(Print version published in the May 2014 issue of The Scene Newspaper, scenenewspaper.com)

It has come to my immediate attention that some of the more necessary recent examples of quality genre cinema appear to center the weight of their chosen plotlines around some curiously small packages. The most obvious of the commercial, mainstream representations of this can be found in the work of director James Wan, most specifically 'Insidious', but I was thinking more in terms of reduced popularity yet equal (or greater) value and I have two wholly fitting flicks that fit this criteria; 'Here Comes the Devil' and 'Knights of Badassdom'. It is with these two very differing slices of economic yet effective little big threat storytelling that this month's chapter in slightly off the radar motion picture analysis and incessant rambling is prepared to devote itself.

Here Comes the Devil.

When the comfort zone of a typical familial structure becomes uprooted, say by virtue of the mostly commonplace interferences of emotional, financial and/or fidelity issues, the chief members are left with the taxing yet inevitably surmountable task of picking up the metaphoric pieces of their given lives and continuing to soldier on. In the moody and unapologetically graphic case study of the young Mexican family unit in 'Here Comes the Devil', however, we find the main parental pairing abruptly forced to contend with the sharp and dedicated intervention of a cruelly possessive element that seeks to drain away the innocence of their two prepubescents in favor of a more malicious alternative.

The set up is simple, following a startling prologue of sorts involving a juicy lesbian tryst interrupted by a maniacal house invasion and subsequent bloodletting, the base action shifts over to a sunny Baja California vacation site being occupied by the film's protagonist foursome. While Sol (Laura Caro) and Felix (Francisco Barreiro) sun themselves with nary a care to mention, their kids, Adolfo (Alan Martinez) and Sara (Michele Garcia) are nearby dealing with the alien prospect of Sara's inaugural encounter with that strange feminine occurrence known as menstruation. A quick trip to a local convenience store to deal with the inconvenient 'girl' problem and we're back in business with the kids looking to explore some area caves and the adults just looking to further pursue their relaxation agenda, only on a more romantic level (naughty, naughty).  A couple of beats later finds them snoozing in their car, the sun has set and their children have not reported back.

Thus begins the thrust of the whole 'parent's worst nightmare' come to life (and then some) scenario that really informs this delectably demented piece of modern horror. With the local law alongside, the couple frets and scours the surroundings to no avail, only to have their babies appropriated off some remote road the very next day and delivered to their door. All is set to right, or so we are briefly mislead to believe.  The kids almost instantly begin to exhibit a notably detached, vacant quality and suspicions arise that they may have been more than just lost in the cavernous hills. At first, after some snooping in and around the area of the disappearance, a local social reject may prove to be a prime suspect and solution to the mounting mystery of what hath molded the children in such a dark and uninviting fashion. In fact, the spectre of some variant of child abduction/unspeakable contact eats at the parents to such a degree that they carry out their rabid phobia to ultraviolent ends (no direct spoilers, just know the effects crew more than earned their keep). This all leads the parents on a downward spiral of their own en route to the true source of the madness, the dread that awaits with a proper solution they could probably due without ever encountering.

'Here Comes the Devil' marks the 10th feature offering of a deft Spanish fella named Adrian Garcia Bogliano (with another feature, 'Late Phases' waiting in the wings). He infuses his weird and wonderfully creepy opus with healthy measures of the requisite horror staples of sex, gore, lingering unease and lurid personas taking the task of boundary pushing and amping the shock  and awe factor to acceptably elevated degrees. He has also made it clear in previous media coverage his love and adoration of the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and 80s and that is in blatant display care the warm, somewhat sleazy imagery and fearless employment of sharp zooming in on key moments (Bogliano has also stated his specific use of lenses based on those used in comparative old school favorites). This all combines to make for one of the more satisfying and fully unnerving horror entries in recent memory. Produced for a relative pittance by even so-called low budget standards, 'Here Comes the Devil' shines with a polished look and fitfully creepy vibe that is certain to endear it to a wealth of genre devotees.

The rich looking Blu Ray from a company called Magnet Releasing comes complete with the usual audio commentary input form the Bogliano man himself plus several bits of behind the scenes info to help flesh out the origin of this warped lil' devil. Recommended to all who still hold hope for the future of all things horrific.

For more info, check-magnetreleasing.com/herecomesthedevil

Knights of Badassdom.

Back in the summer of 2011 I was attending the enormous nerd-chic mecca known the world over as San Diego Comic Con when I found myself surrounded by a grand party of fools dolled up as some sort of medieval war party (or cast offs from a Manowar video shoot, take thy pick) and fully reveling in slapping the piss out of one another with big, realistic looking weaponry right outside of the convention's most beloved of locales, the infamous Hall H. Turns out, this was all a part of the publicity juggernaut for a charming little love letter to something dubbed 'Larping' (where participants enact a roleplaying scenario on a three dimensional scale) named 'Knights of Badassdom' that I would have to wait a further 2 1/2 years to actually witness.  The film, for one reason or another, sat dormant until being swept up by distributor eOne Entertainment for fleeting screenings and a decent home video berth.

The story involves a basic collection of boy buddies, the majority of which cling to this Larping thing as if it were a serious religion. When one of their roommates, Joe (Ryan Kwanten of 'True Blood' fame), finds himself abandoned by his true blue love of all that is worth living for the resident nerd posse takes it upon themselves to lure him into a weekend role playing getaway. The gents, made up of a fairly solid batch that includes Steve Zahn (a very accomplished thespian who saw this picture released in the near vicinity of more recognized fair that he also took part in like 'Dallas Buyers Club', now there's a strange double bill) and that mightiest of little big men, Peter ('Game of Thrones') Dinklage, see this as both a bonding ritual to help bring their bummed bro back up to par and as a method of further strengthening their dominance in this fabricated geek realm.

Complications and such arise when Zahn's character, Eric, invokes a diabolical succubus that so happens to occupy the body of Joe's former flame. Once this disturbing revelation comes to the fore, our noble lads must find a way to wrangle their fellows in geekdom to help combat the rising body count and become true, victorious...er bad asses. The guiding hand behind these ramshackle events is Joe Lynch, a director whose most noted previous credit is 'Wrong Turn 2' coupled with acting/producing chores on the late FEARnet series 'Holliston' (which also featured the equally 'late' Gwar frontman Oderus Urungus). Lynch has crafted a right serviceable mash-up of comedic shtick and blood splattering spectacle in spite of the much mumbled about budgetary short comings and debated handling of the actual final edit of the film. The pace and progression of the whole affair is adequate and the technical aspect (especially the mostly old school, hands on make up and gore effects) only aids in the cause. By the time the film rambles its imperfect way to the climactic stage and the final monster is let loose on the party, the picture will likely have endeared itself to many a game viewer (awful pun, you're welcome). The cast gives it like seasoned pros, both the above mentioned peeps as well as Summer Glau (the gal from the T.V. shows 'Firefly' and 'Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles') filling out the hot babe/rebound love interest part and many, many actual dedicated Larper types (many of which were among the crowd lurking around San Diego Comic Con way back when) all do their duty at a commendable level.  

The video release of 'Knights of Badassdom' contains several interview segments with the cast members and the director along with a lengthy panel presentation from the greatly aforementioned Comic Con Hall H appearance wherein many of the players discuss the project and their approach to the material and also entertain questions from selected lucky nerds from the massive crowd. This whole thing makes me ever so eager to return to another ridiculous convention down in southern California this July. Can't wait.

Again, info.....here-knightsofbadassdom-movie.com