Archive for the ‘creature features’ category
May 14, 2018
Watching a late episode of The Terror series is somewhat like regarding a mummy; there are things here that are distinctly unpleasant to see, but not only can’t you not look away, but you keep on going back for more! As someone who is also reading Dan Simmons’ novel as they watch the series, you might even say that I’m double-dipping, a true misery porn junkie. This is depressing and disturbing stuff, but I can’t stop returning to it because it’s so well done!
As people with an understanding of what actually happened to the historical Franklin Expedition, we know what the characters do not know as the story unfolds, namely that they are all doomed and that this doesn’t end well for them, regardless of what they do. When faced with extreme and desperate conditions, we are shown the polarities of how people can respond to dire circumstances in the now separate camps of Captain Crozier versus the mutinous and psychopathic rebel leader, Hickey. Crozier has become elevated as the series has progressed, whereas Hickey has gravitated towards the bestial. Whereas Crozier has remained a civilized man and become almost a spiritual leader, for Hickey cannibalism is now literally on the table.
We say goodbye to Commander Fitzjames in this episode, his condition deteriorating rapidly and an assisted suicide conducted by Crozier. Captive in Hickey’s camp and witness to a murder, surgeon Goodsir (pictured) is forced to butcher the body for consumption lest Hickey kill another for failure to comply. And Ice Master Blankey, already minus a lower leg from a previous confrontation with Tuunbaq, goes out solo in a suicidal mission against the creature to buy his compatriots some time. Ingeniously, the guy wraps himself in forks so as to make the monster’s job less easy, and perhaps enact revenge from within should he be ingested…the guy’s going down, but you gotta love his spirit!
Betrayed by a double agent in his own camp, Crozier is captured by Hickey’s men, with the final outcome to this and other hanging issues to find resolution in episode 10, the last of the season.
Categories: animals, anomalies, anthropomorphic, creature features, furry, paranormal, television
Tags: the Open C, The Terror
Comments: 4 Comments
May 8, 2018
With all hell breaking loose both within and without on episode 8 of The Terror, Captain Fitzjames unleashed a rocket on the rampaging Tuunbaq running amok in their camp, hitting the over-sized, long-necked polar bear-like creature a good shot but basically just changing its course. This was a very cool use of retro technology, and Fitzjames looked good while deploying it, showing courage under extreme duress. Mid-19th century weaponry just wasn’t up to the job, sadly…
The climatic battle scene followed an episode fueled by paranoia and rebellion in which seaman Hickey almost staged a successful mutiny after blaming his slaughter of two crew mates on an Inuit family who were then killed in reprisal by the Erebus/Terror crews. Hickey then whipped the camp into a frenzy by rumors that an Inuit counter-attack was imminent, using it as justification to seize arms and distribute them among his followers. When Hickey’s ruse was discovered and countered, we were fixing to see a hanging when a cocaine-addled crewman Collins posed a distraction, staggering in and closely followed by the Tuunbaq monster, who was either irate that natives had been killed or was uncontrolled by the departure of the shaman-like Lady Silence.
Anyways, Hickey escaped in the confusion of the Tuunbaq’s killing spree together with sympathizers and captives, and in alienating the Inuit population the expedition’s members have lost their best remaining chance of survival. With their bodies becoming covered with loathsome sores from scurvy and lead poisoning, things will continue to go downhill from here in the two episodes remaining of The Terror…
Categories: animal presence, anomalies, anthropomorphic, creature features, paranormal, sci fi, television
Tags: Terror Camp, Tuunbaq
Comments: 2 Comments
May 1, 2018
Smelling human flesh burning in the fire which had taken down the carnival in the previous episode, a starving and troubled crewman confesses to ship’s surgeon Goodsir that it smelled good. “My nose and my stomach, they don’t know horrible from supper. But I do!,” he agonizes. This exchange explains the episode’s title, one in which the men of the doomed Franklin Expedition begin to have more to fear from themselves than from the supernatural. As a Walt Kelly character from the comic strip Pogo once remarked, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” While the Tuunbaq monster does not make an appearance, his handiwork is seen in the form of the decapitated heads of the advance expedition sent out in episode 2 for civilization from the becalmed ships…poor devils didn’t make it further than 18 miles away before having their heads handed to them, quite literally.
Abandoning the ice-locked Erebus and Terror ships, the crew drags supplies and rowboats on sledges over the frozen terrain, with their badly canned food proving over half rancid and 100% lead-tainted. The effects of the lead poisoning are becoming increasingly visible, with acts of violent madness emerging to layer onto the on-going grinding hardships that are inexorably wearing down the British seamen, geared now for physical survival rather than adventurous discovery. This is “misery porn,” and the worst lies yet ahead.
We are given glimpses of that grim future in the deteriorating mental health of a number of the crew who are beginning to turn from their fellow mates to acts of rebellion and even murder against them. With the captain’s dog being surreptitiously harvested as food and an officer initiating first contact with an Inuit group brutally slain by the mutinous (and now mad) Cornelius Hickey, it’s time to start your countdown to cannibalism clocks ticking…
Categories: creature features, horror, paranormal, sci fi, television
Tags: Horrible from Supper, The Terror
Comments: 3 Comments
April 11, 2018
I’m glad that my cousin, Ralph, finally made it to the big screen! He always had dreams of going to Hollywood, and deserved it after all those years of parking cars, pumping gas, and hanging out at furry and video game conventions. It was annoying to him that people would pull at his costume only to discover that it wasn’t one. – – Ahh, his mother would have been so proud of him! On the other hand, I wasn’t granted Ralph’s athleticism, being only a bookish writer…fortune, thou art a cruel mistress!
I suppose it was inevitable that they’d make a movie loosely based on the vintage video game, Rampage, and starring Dwayne Johnson. After all, Doom turned out so well! In the long-ago, I can remember playing the video game, and never doing terribly well…such is the the story of my life! Anyways, in his latest action film outing, the Rock plays primatologist Davis Okoye who is attempting to intervene on behalf of his albino silverback gorilla, George, the object of a rogue genetic experiment gone awry. – –Tell me about it! George, Ralph, and other mutant animals grown to enormous size are, well, rampaging through North America, and causing big trouble and general mayhem. It’s up to Dwayne Johnson and others to find an antidote…
This sci fi/fantasy offering sounds like good brainless fun, and is opening April 13th at a theater near you! A CGI-heavy movie, it also features Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Walking Dead, minus his Negan bat, Lucille. I expect that Ralphie will give a memorable performance, and even if he doesn’t, I’m still proud of the big lug… 😉
Categories: anomalies, anthropomorphic, creature features, fantasy, furries, furry, furry horror, movies, scalies, sci fi
Tags: Ralph, Rampage the movie
Comments: 4 Comments
April 10, 2018
To dispense with what the episode title refers to, it appears that when you’re “punished as a boy” on a 19th century British ship, you’re flogged on your bottom rather than on your back, complete with all of your shipmates watching for both pain and humiliation. We do get to see this, unfortunately, complete with blood spattering, agonized grunts from the punished, and the man’s behind resembling raw hamburger following his ordeal.- – Hey, horror isn’t pretty!
This is grim stuff, but things are getting pretty grim indeed, with the Tuunbaq creature shredding members of the expedition brutally and pretty much at will, leaving some as only bloody smears on the ice, removing part of another’s skull to expose his brain (“It looks like pudding!,” remarks the ship’s surgeon), and tearing two others in half to crudely reassemble their bodies together. The Tuunbaq has also demonstrated that it can move onto the English ships pretty much at will, and escape unscathed. We’re kind of at the stage now that we were in The Thing where the men realize that the alien is inside the camp, and they’re relatively ineffective at countering it. Composure and discipline are beginning to fall apart, just as some of the men’s gums are starting to turn black from lead poisoning brought by their spoiling and badly- packaged tinned food.
I’m not going to go on about the many complexities and layers of character and plot going on in the story, which can be appreciated on a variety of levels; we limit ourselves to just a few paragraphs here. But central to the story and ever growing in importance is the enigmatic and appropriately-named Lady Silence, the Inuit woman whose father was accidently shot by the English in an earlier episode. She was seen engaging in some kind of interaction with the Tuunbaq, perhaps a ritual. Is she controlling the creature, or what is the nature of her relationship with it? Hmmm…we’ll just have to wait and see!
Categories: anomalies, anthropomorphic, creature features, cryptozoology, fantasy, furry, horror, predators, sci fi, television, unexplained
Tags: " Punished As A Boy, The Terror
Comments: 3 Comments
April 3, 2018
Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming! Season 1, Episode 3 of The Terror was almost a snooze fest until three quarters of the way through the hour when the Royal Navy’s tent station to catch the creature attacking them is set upon from above by the crafty Tuunbaq, who snatches one of the men and scatters them all, including Captain Franklin (pictured), who was basically paying the men a morale visit, and enticed to stay so as to share in the glory of the kill…
…bad career decision! Curse the creature for not playing by the rules, and walking up to the lures to be shot! Defenseless, isolated, and disoriented, Captain Franklin staggers about the polar wastes before being seized by the creature, separated from his leg, and then jammed through a hole in the ice. It was not the kind of retirement plan he had in mind from the Royal Navy. Only a leg left to bury, too…
Good horror doesn’t play by the rules, either. It builds up a sense of tension and dread, and then springs something on you that you weren’t quite expecting, often while you were anticipating quite another outcome. While ironically the men set out to slay the monster had been told to show it no mercy, it was they who were shown none. Horror’s vehicle here is to overwhelm and then subsume prideful men.
Alas, Captain Franklin, we barely knew you, but you seemed to be a likable if vain man. And in the Of Ice and Men scenario, the ice seems to be winning…
Categories: animal presence, anomalies, anthropomorphic, creature features, cryptozoology, furry, furry horror, paranormal, sci fi, television
Tags: The Terror "The Ladder"
Comments: 4 Comments
December 7, 2017
It’s being called everything from a sympathetic re-telling of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” to an origins story for the Abe Sapien character from Hellboy, but by most accounts The Shape of Water is one of the best films that Guillermo del Toro has produced.
Set circa 1962 during the depths of the Cold War, the fantasy drama concerns the unlikely relationship between a mute female custodian, Elisa, and an intelligent amphibious humanoid creature torn from South America and kept in a secret government laboratory in Baltimore. It’s readily believable for any dabbler in government conspiracy theories. Called “the Asset” by his captors, the being faces exploitation and eventual “harvesting” in order that his biology might be further studied and applied to the space program. As their relationship deepens, the humble cleaning lady resolves to take action to save a unique individual from captivity and worse…and “the Asset” has additional capabilities of his own…
The film works on many levels, and is rightfully up for numerous awards. Seeing it might be the best Xmas present that you could give yourself!
Categories: anomalies, anthropomorphic, aquatic, creature features, cryptozoology, furry, furry perspectives, movies
Tags: films, The Shape of Water
Comments: 3 Comments
November 23, 2017
Terror in the Woods does not refer to the state of the weeds and brush in my backyard, but is rather an entertaining if uneven offering on the Destination America channel network, your gateway to the paranormal! While not the best paranormal show I’ve ever seen, Woods is certainly not the worst, and is probably worth a look if you’re into this kind of thing, especially in light of the dearth of new show material involving cryptids.
Now the Werewolf and Demon in the Woods episode (S1/Ep5) featured two segments, the first of which involved two campers, David and Lisa, who while traveling on Roanoke Island in North Carolina encountered a wolf-like creature with glowing yellow eyes that was about four feet tall and challenged the male of the pair who investigated sounds that he heard outside of his camper and the vehicle that he was pulling it with. Things got freaky when the beast stood up upon two legs, which increased his standing height to about seven feet. The wolf-thing then approached the guy, closing the distance while ambulating on two legs! In the best Clint Eastwood tradition, the guy then pulled a magnum and fired a round at the creature, believing himself to have struck it in the shoulder. This seemed to annoy rather than deter the beast. When he perceived a second creature growling, the unhappy camper perceived himself to be outnumbered, wisely retreated to his vehicle, and beat a hasty retreat. Later at a gas station, the motorist asked another person if he had ever seen something strange in the woods, and the reticent stranger admitted that he had. This is the stuff of urban legends!
The second segment, Demon in the Woods, involved college-aged geo-cachers who carried their search for buried objects into the night where they found evidence of a satanic ritual in a clearing in the woods. Discovered was a fenced-in circle with hanging objects around, similar to those portrayed in The Blait Witch Project. The guys heard growling, grunting sounds which seemed to encircle them, and they took off running. The tale-teller, Davey, went back for a straggler, and was again surrounded by a sound that seemed to pursue them as they fled. Limbs and sticks were heard breaking as the duo fled. While there was no physical presence seen, the sound seemed to be palpable, and shook them. They felt that something was trying to drive them out of the woods. It was later learned that a demonic cult held sessions in the area that they had visited… ooh! (Face-palm scream)
So be careful when you go out in the woods, for “the nights are dark, and full of terrors.” And that’s the way that I like it!
Categories: controversial, creature features, cryptozoology, furry, strange happenings, television, unexplained
Tags: Terror in the Woods series
Comments: 4 Comments
August 24, 2017
Noteworthy: It was Dragons vs. Zombies on a recent episode of the HBO series Game of Thrones. Just when things were looking hopeless for virtuous character Jon Snow and his small band of seasoned fighters under siege by thousands of White Walkers (kind of like frozen dead), it was three great dragons to the rescue, spewing flames and causing the walking dead to combust merrily, a rout and a slaughter. This is the kind of spectacle that makes for great television, about as good as it gets…
…but wait! Things take a twist when the demonic leader of the White Walkers is able to peg a lance into one dragon, slaying it and later resurrecting it as a kind of zombie ice dragon ready to do his bidding. The series finale of Game of Thrones should be truly epic…
Categories: creature features, fantasy, scalies, television
Tags: dragons, fantasy, Game of Thrones, Zombies
Comments: 6 Comments
August 8, 2017
He waded out of the Pacific Ocean in 1954, and into cinematic history. He was one of the great ones, in every sense of the word. And now it is with regret that I report that the original actor to play Godzilla has died of pneumonia at the age of 88…
…Haruo Nakajima played Godzilla in twelve films, his last outing in 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan. To prepare for the original role, Nakajima went to the Tokyo zoo to study the movements of elephants and bears, believing that Godzilla had to move convincingly to avoid being a farce. The suit that he wore weighed up to 220 lbs. as it was crafted in part of ready-mixed concrete. Stomping among miniaturized sets, Nakajima suffered for his art as wearing the suit caused him to sweat terribly.
Nakajima began his movie career in samurai and war movies before becoming a monster movie icon. Not limited to one role, Nakajima also played Rodan, Mothra (my personal favorite), and King Kong! – – Thank you, Haruo, for bringing the King of the Monsters to life!
Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, creature features, famous furries, furry, furry film classics, furry heroes, furry horror, sci fi
Tags: 1954 Godzilla, iconic monsters, Original Godzilla actor
Comments: 1 Comment
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