For today’s Inktober challenge the scrap of paper I found in my magic Tupperware container was C.H.U.D. I confess I never actually saw the movie C.H.U.D. I was using it as a catch all term to describe any subterranean inbred human cannabal, like Hills Have Eyes and similar works.
I regret that this forced me to have two sewer related images in a row, But the whole point of this exercise the improvise your way around such inconveniences.
Well after the dead serious batch from last week I decided to take the a slightly different direction in the next week of halloween with some vampire Comedies. I sort of found two ones… One that definitely on it’s way to being a cult classic, the other that is already nearly forgotten.
The first on my list, What We Do in the Shadows, a mocumentary about vampire roommates living in Wellington New Zealand (by Flight of the Concords alumni Jemaine Clement and Taika Waitit ), was one that I’d been looking forward to seeing, but at the same I wasn’t completely sure of what I’d think of it. Certainly the MTV style roommate reality show deserves to be mocked, but I’d seen plenty of parodies of the genre before of with heavy differences of quality…. But this one was about vampires so everything was all right.
Viago, Deacon, Vladislav and the ancient Petyr (who lives in the basement rarely interacting with the other three) “Live” ordinary lives. Hunting for fresh blood every night, banging heads with the local werewolf pack (who act more like a men’s tharapy group) and prepare for an upcoming masquerade ball.
All of this changes when they accidentally turn their latest victim, Nick into a vampire. He introduces them to the modern world, something they are more than a little clueless about and wrecking their status quo in the process.
This was a really fun film. It’s intentionally silly, something I normally have problems with but they pulled it off quite well. I like how a lot of the completely fantastic is treated as completely mundane (things like arguing over chores that include vacuuming the ceiling and washing the blood off the dishes). It was all the little things like a perfectly articulate zombie at the masquerade complaining about all of the “brains” cliches, while his two inarticulate companions are filling it to a T.
I think my favorite bits consisted of their long suffering human servant whose responsibilities include everything from shopping for victims to washing the blood out of silk blouses. All the while treating it like just another job.
The next film on my list Innocent Blood by John Landis was described to me as doing what American Werewolf in London did for werewolves for Vampires. This was something I had mixed feelings about this. An American Werewolf in London is one of my favorite werewolf films and while it’s certainly humorous, I’ve never considered it a comedy. Based on that I wasn’t sure if Innocent Blood would count as a comedy either. Happily as far as I could tell after watching it, I’m pretty sure it is… albeit not a very good one.
Our story tells the story of Marie, played (by Anne Parillaud) a beautiful French pixie of a vampire who has very strict rules about her hunting practices.. Her number one rule is to never feed on “innocent blood”. To get around this she only feeds on criminals and a ongoing mob war gives her plenty of opportunities.
Regrettably due to a series of unfortunate events she accidentally turns a mob boss into a vampire (They’re ridiculously easy to create in this film to the point if Marie doesn’t blow a victim’s heads off with a shot gun they’ll be up and undead in an hour) Now he’s transforming his gang into an army of vampires to take of over the underworld and Marie has to team up with a cowboy cop (played by (Anthony LaPaglia ) to stop him… really.
For the most part this felt more like a spoof on vigilante cop movies then it is on vampire movies. (Though considering a lot of this films from that time period it’s really hard to tell.) It throws a whole lot of stereotypes around (one of the reasons Marie wasn’t able to finish the mobster, was because he was eating a lot of garlic.) A completely gratuitous love story that had nothing to do with the rest of the story, and way to many plot points that are dependent on being idiots. (The one that really sticks out is LaPagilia (having supposedly deep under cover for three years) blows his cover talking to his superior at a crime scene)
Still there were a few fun moments the bestsellers being the newly turned Mob Boss running out of town hall chased by the corronors and the pathologist.
Well as many people may know Macintosh just brought out the latest flavor of their operating system Sierra. As a diligent and responsible user I didn’t wait to move up and start the instillation. Turns out I probably should have waited at least until the weekend.
I downloaded on both machines, though the laptop was ready first. Here was my first problem. I’ve had a loosing battle emptying a lot of useless garbage from my laptop that doesn’t help in it’s function as my mobile secondary office. The amount of space required to install the new system was considerably more than was available. I found myself spending the next hour in digital housecleaning. Finally after just a few false starts The laptop was done.
Forty five minutes later the software was ready for the main computer. Other than things going slower than I’d like… and a nerve-wracking point near the end where everything seemed to stop for just a little bit more than a half hour… everything went fine.
And then the fun started.
One thing I always forget when I’m doing this is my tablet stops working whenever these installations occur. This alway brings things to a grinding halt because I can’t move the curser to click on the “please continue” button. This means I have to search for the paperweight otherwise known as the mouse that came with the machine. After an aggravating fifteen minute search came step two. Since I only use the mouse about every other year for these occasions I need to replace it’s batteries and I was fresh out of double A’s. This meant I had to go to the nearby drugstore and get some.
So fifteen minutes later I had the mouse up and running again. So the main problem was done. Now all that’s left is replacing all of the plugins that Sierra has declared obsolete. I’ve taken care of the obvious ones but some of the less obvious ones keep sneaking up on me.
When I put the mandatory Lovecraft entries into my monster lists the first thing I ask myself is, does it need a footnote? Sure, most of us know Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep, but you have to be an expert to know anything else from the Mythos. Naturally I picked Deep ones. I was a little bit reluctant. I’ve done Deep Ones before, they even had a supporting role in one of the Christmas stories. But then I realized that all of those were Deep One Hybrids. If I stopped to think about it I’m not completely sure if I’ve ever drawn a real deep one.
So here we have one in it’s natural habitat.“ Dwelling amidst wonder and glory Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei. (in hindsight I should have read that passage before doing the drawing. Y’ha-nthelei looks more like hollowed out coral rather than anything cyclopean, and there’s definitely not enough columns.)
I was looking forward to doing the Bogeyman about as much as I was looking forward to the monster under the bed last year… So naturally I pulled it from the magic tupperware on the third day. (Rereading this I’m not sure if the sarcasm registers as much as I’d like, but with any luck the idea comes across.)
Anyway not sure what I wanted this Bogey to look like in ten minutes or quite figure out the angle of the closet before my morning coffee, I made it a point of view of the bogeyman coming out. And since I’d written the more popular “boogie man” on my list I threw in the hat. That way this Bogeyman was also a Boogie man.
A Rodent of Unusual Size lurks beneath the storm drain waiting for someone unsuspecting and slow.
Buttercup: We’ll never succeed. We may as well die here.
Westley: No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt – no problem. There’s a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.
Buttercup: Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.’s?
Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.
[Immediately, an R.O.U.S. attacks him]
Princess Bride – 1987
Ever since I saw that scene in Princess Bride, I’ve found Rodents of Unusual Size to be the best catch all way of describing this wonderful low budget easy to do monster.
I don’t believe I’m alone on this because I’ve seen R.O.U.S’s (I’m partial to R.I.C.E but I’ve yet to figure out what that stands for) show up by name in lots of games, films and books since then.
All in good fun of course.
