Cinema Suicide



It’s not exactly “Hangin’ Out With The Family” but it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. To commemorate the inevitable release of Birdemic on DVD and Blu-ray, Severin Films issued this music video, a send-up of the cancer that’s killing metal, nu-metal (think Korn, Coal Chamber, Mudvayne, Slipknot). The band, Chamber of Pudd, serves up the rock-world’s equivalent to Birdemic with a song and accompanying video that is so bad that it boggles the mind. If you’ve never heard of Chamber of Pudd, that’s okay. Neither have I and their singer looks suspiciously like Severin’s point man, Evan Husney. Just a little observation there for you.

So there you go. Chamber of Pudd. Birdemic. The impending release of a movie I’m not certain deserves a 1080p presentation but on February 22, 2011, you, too, can own this masterpiece of outsider cinema. In the meantime, rock out, dye your hair green, take your ritalin and update your Livejournal with the latest about how much you hate your parents. IT’S A BIRDEMIC!!! DON’T YOU EVER FORGET IT!!!

I love Rondo season! I couldn’t care less about The Oscars, Golden Globes, People’s Choice but I fucking love Rondo! The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award is an actual physical award (pictured left) given to movies, writers, artists and bloggers (among others, obviously) who excel in the field of horror fandom. Some of the people involved in this award are real achievers and long-time personalities in the genre and I’m not going to lie to you when I tell you that it’s a massive honor to be considered eligible along with people like Tim Lucas, who’ve earned their stripes over the course of decades.

I’ll be the first person to admit this, though. I really don’t care for the voting method. What you’re going to do is head over to the Rondo Award website, read the instructions carefully, copy and paste the ballot into an email and then mark your votes however you want, remembering to include your name in the email. When you get to Category 16, best blog, I sure would appreciate it if you put a little X right next to Cinema Suicide. Here’s the thing, though: Make sure you vote for as much as you’re familiar with because there is some awesome shit on that ballot and I share space on it with others who spend precious time, energy and money to keep the horror wheels turning in their spare time. Don’t just vote for me. When that happens, I suspect that they toss out the vote since it looks like I’m campaigning with a form email or something. Don’t do that. Vote for me and anything else you know about. Don’t see your favorite stuff on the ballot? Write it in.

Rondo season is fun as hell and if you’re like me, then you’re probably making a list out of all these awesome DVDs, Blu-rays, magazines, books, comics, toys, etc. that you need to get your hands on. Voting ends at midnight, March 27th, 2011 with winners being announced on March 28th so get your votes in and encourage your friends to vote for Cinema Suicide, as well. Since I’m already on the topic, New England is representing on that ballot like crazy, y’all! Aside from me, Cinema Suicide favorite Richard Griffin is up there, nominated in Best Independent Film or Documentary (Cat. #8) for one of my favorite movies of last year, Atomic Brain Invasion and Providence’s hexcellent horror host, Penny Dreadful is up for Favorite Horror Host (Cat. #19). This is my official endorsement of those two nominees, as well. Vote for them, too, will ya?

The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards

Sweet fucking Christ! Why can’t Richard Raaphorst get a project off the ground? Would you look at that teaser? No one can tell me that the guy doesn’t have an amazing eye for horror and those old spots he directed for his doomed nazi zombie project, Worst Case Scenario, were some of the most harrowing horror shorts I’d ever seen. Neither really said anything about what Worst Case Scenario was actually about but the zombie makeup was the most original and stomach churning shit I’d ever laid eyes on. Seems like this week marks the return of a couple of projects I’d reported on back in the Cinema Suicide 1.0 days and I’m glad because I was beginning to think that Raaphorst was going to go down as one of horror’s most criminally neglected talents.

A couple of years back after years of struggling to secure funding, Raaphorst threw in the towel on behalf of Worst Case Scenario and the cool kids in horror circles cried out collectively. To get everyone to chill, Raaphorst immediately turned around and reassured everyone that everything was okay and that even though WCS was deep sixed, he had something else in the pipeline called Army of Frankenstein. Due to Raaphorst’s reputation I dismissed it as one more thing we’d never see but the teaser above shows that there has at least been at least some movement on that front and, man… that is some creepy-ass shit.

Now under the title of Frankenstein’s Army, this silent teaser shows Nazi soldiers digging up corpses in a cemetery and cutting them up. The story alleges that in the last days of World War 2, Hitler finds the journals of one Victor Frankenstein and uses his forbidden science to engineer new soldiers from the corpses of dead ones to replenish his armies. Everybody loves this Indiana Jones occult Third Reich shit. This being Raaphorst, the movie looks fucking incredible based entirely on the teaser but it remains to be seen if this flick will actually see the light of day. I have my fingers crossed and will be sorely disappointed if Raaphorst goes down in the books as the greatest horror director that never was. Keep your eyes here. Or, for that matter, on the upcoming and extrremely noisy Frankenstein’s Army website.

It seems like it was forever ago when I ran the trailer for the animated animals with guns flick, Cat Shit One. Now it’s finally here and what’s more, the creators have actually invited the entire world to watch the actual premier episode, also available on DVD and Blu-ray, on Youtube for free. The catch is that it’s only available for two weeks, beginning yesterday so watch it while you can!

I’m still not sure why it’s called Cat Shit One. The team-up in episode one is codenamed Cat Shit One and that’s pretty much why but it’s still a weird name. The idea is that in the wake of the cold war, private military companies popped up all over the world. Presumably, Cat Shit One is an arm of one such company. The episode begins as Botasky and Packy (two rabbits), the eager but green rookie and the gritty veteran, respectively, have staked out a desert settlement where three hostages are being taken in by a pack of insurgent camels armed with former Soviet hardware. The mission is to free the hostages and get out. The entire episode is what happens when two specialists take on a bunch of scrappy insurgents in some vaguely defined Middle Eastern locale. Storywise there’s not much to speak of. That’s it right up there. Dialog-wise, the talking is stiff and riddled with hardcore military cliches but the action is where this fucker sings. Cat Shit One is basically a Modern Warfare cutscene stocked with accurate tactical situations, cast with cutesy anthropomorphic animals. It’s compelling as all getout and for 20 minutes it’s a noisy spree of violence and tension. Cat Shit One, when the characters aren’t talking, is fucking awesome!

There is a fucking buttload of Star Wars fan material out there on the internet and there’s even more from those prehistoric days before the internet that are probably lost forever in basements and attics. It would be interesting to see which franchise carries more fan material, either Star Wars or Star Trek but even with 11 years on Star Wars, I bet Trek doesn’t hold a candle. Nothing against you Trekkies. You guys are seriously committed. Thing is, fan materials typically stick to the fanfic or fan film conventions. Let’s be honest, it’s a lot more fun to dress up in robes and choreograph some sick Jedi fights in front of your homebrew greenscreen than it is to, say, do years worth of research, assembly and editing on a documentary that would never in a million years get the Lucasfilm seal of approval on account of George Lucas being kind of a dick when it comes to his property.

It takes a special kind of dedication to Star Wars to put that kind of energy into a project like Star Wars Begins. This may, in fact, be the final word on George Lucas’ saga and I gotta tell ya, that’s fucking amazing! Jambe Davdar has pulled together every conceivable piece of archival Star Wars behind the scenes footage, concept art, bloopers, whatever. It’s all in there! I’ve been a fan of those movies since I was four and I thought I’d seen it all! There’s a ton of shit in here that I’ve never seen before! What’s most amazing about a doc like Star Wars Begins is that it had the power to make me fall in love with Star Wars all over again from a completely different angle. After the prequels I thought that this would be impossible. What’s more, Davdar isn’t finished! There are two more documentaries on the way about Empire and Jedi and I cannot tell you how excited I am for that. (I stand corrected, Jambe informs below that the other docs have been in the can for a long time) Below is part one of the fourteen parts on Youtube. You can see the rest after the break.

Continue Reading »

I realize that if you’re reading this, then chances are you don’t apply. The Harvey Awards is an award that is specific to professionals in the comic book industry. It’s not like it’s something that you and I can vote on or nominate for but since I was involved in the Zombie Bomb comic, several of my friends were, as well and Rich Woodall and Adam Miller are a pair of tight bros I figured I’d put this up and try and draw as much attention to this nomination as I can.

The Harvey’s, named for Harvey Kurtzman, founding editor of Mad Magazine, cartoonist for Playboy and a general cartoonery renaissance man, are the comics and cartoon industry equivalent of The Oscars. These awards recognize excellence in the industry. Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure how The Harveys are different from The Eisner Award with the exception that the award pool is smaller but recognition in either is a major honor in the industry, particularly if you’re the most innovative zombie anthology, like, ever.

Zombies are played out, man. Zombie Bomb, however, available in four volumes with another two coming soon from Terminal Press, gave artists and writers the opportunity to tell the zombie stories that they wanted to tell in their own unique voice and the results were staggering. The great minority of the stories were the usual Walking Dead ripoffs while the bulk were unique spins on horror that would have made the late Bill Gaines proud.

If you’re eligible to vote and nominate, i.e. you work regularly in the comics and cartoon industry, please take a moment to nominate Zombie Bomb in the Best Anthology category. This is a book that really deserves to be on the ballot.



I don’t ask you guys for much, do I? You come here time and time again and you read my rambling bullshit and examinations of movies that don’t deserve the kind of analysis that they get here and that’s really the best thing a guy could ask for because I often wonder if all this time spent blogging is also time well spent. Your continued support of Cinema Suicide keeps me going and believe me, your support is massively appreciated because if I didn’t interact with you guys here, on Facebook and Twitter, I’d think the only people reading this site were 15 year old girls obsessed with the frontman for Ghost Adventures and people bitching me out because I had the balls to heap praise on the movie Ink (Review). So now’s your chance to help me out. Indirectly. See by helping out director Greg Croteau and producer/editor Jon Mercer, you show me that maybe my incredibly poor taste in movies and appreciation for the DIY ethic has rubbed off on you a little bit. How do you do this?

Thought you’d never ask.

Support the short film, Remember Your Death. Go to their Kickstarter page and give them your cash money. You can donate as small as $5 and get your name in the credits or more than $2,500 and get an actual Executive Producer credit. That elusive, hard to define credit in movies that tends to translate to: “This guy wrote us a big check.” or “This guy’s company is distributing the film.” In between those two values there’s a range of other cool shit.

You know me. I’ve been through some bullshit in the world of endorsement and some shifty companies have taken advantage of my enthusiasm for film and occupied prime real-estate on the site without seeing fit to cut me the check that we agreed would be coming in exchange for serving their ads. So I’m leery of all comers these days and I’m making damn sure that the only people who get the Cinema S seal of approval, for however much it’s worth, are people whose project or product is something I can believe in. In the interest of transparency, Remember Your Death gets that stamp for a couple of reasons. They’re reasonably local to me (Boston) and I feel it’s my duty to promote art and film in New England. I also think that they’re straight shooters with a really good, really original, really fucking bloody idea for a movie that explores that signature human existentialism while slipping in crime scene blood. They’re also opting to fund this through the magic of Kickstarter so that they can make the movie on their terms and I respect that in a big way. So without further adieu, please check out their Kickstarter page and consider throwing them a few bucks because I sure would appreciate it and I’m sure they would too.

Remember Your Death on Kickstarter

Learn more about the movie: http://www.rememberyourdeathmovie.com/

Check them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RememberYourDeath

Follow them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/RYDFilm

There’s a review of The Taint coming shortly but right now I’m still trying to sort out what I’ve seen and what to say about it because it’s pretty much like no horror movie I’ve ever seen. The Taint reminds me of the Canadian outfit, Astron-6, if they were to suddenly decide that what the world needed right now, more than anything, was an apocalyptic movie about exploding cocks and heads of women being crushed by rocks.

Hey, that rhymed!

This isn’t much of an endorsement because you don’t even know what it’s about yet but in the next day or so, I’ll be posting the review and encouragement for you to drop cash money on The Taint because it is seriously fucking twisted and funny as hell. The soundtrack is also really cool and can be bought at The Taint’s website. Do it! Do it now! What are you waiting for?



I probably could have let Tony report this on his own but who knows? That might be viewed as a conflict of interest and as it stands, us blogs are routinely on the chopping block for breaking some of the cardinal rules of journalism even though none of us are really journalists no matter what the media reportage would have you believe. Why am I bringing this up? I’m always going on and on about how much ass director Richard Griffin kicks and I’ve spoken highly of many of his movies. Richard’s outfit is called Scorpio Film Releasing and part of that crew is one Cinema Suicide writer, Tony Nunes (himself, a filmmaker – director of Zombie Allegiance). Richard is currently in post-production on his latest feature, The Disco Exorcist, which looks like it’s going to be great, and coming up after that is one that I’ve been particularly excited about.

Griffin is hard to keep up with. He’s a very active guy and at any given time, he has a half dozen proposed projects on the horizon. The latest, co-written by Tony Nunes with Guy Benoit, who wrote the script for the last Griffin feature, one of my top picks of 2010, Atomic Brain Invasion (Review), is an expansion on the Scorpio entry into the 2010 48-Hour Film Project, 2009: Mutants of the Apocalypse. A keen observer can tell you by title alone that this latest project is a riff on the Italian post-nuke flicks of the 80′s. For some reason, when I was a kid, these movies, no matter how awful, really resonated with me. I’ve seen a lot of them and upon reflection, I’m at a loss to explain why. The vast majority of them were fucking terrible and that’s exactly why Scorpio is the perfect outfit to do this. Their genre send-ups in the past have been spot-on and hilarious and the crew behind the scenes and in front of the camera knows exactly how to interpret the scripts and milk the most of the funny.

It’s still too early to say but the smart money is on the usual Scorpio cast. No one is set in stone apart from the role of the film’s star, Gio Castellano in the role of the hero, Python Diamond, a role originally played by Michael Reed in the short (sort of). Reed will most likely be on hand as well as Sarah Nicklin, Brandon Aponte, Ruth Sullivan and David Lavallee, Jr. – I mean those guys are in all of Griffin’s movies, right? Here’s hoping. If you need to get acquainted, here’s the original short.

Finally through the holidays, are we? Hope yours were as good as mine. 2010 has been a pretty kick ass year in Casa de Cinema Suicide and all of you people who come back again and again to read my hastily prepared opinions about movies, TV and comics are greatly appreciated. So keep on coming back, will ya? I don’t have much to show my appreciation apart from some more articles to read and hopefully with the Christmas season behind us I can bring the frequency of new articles back to their previous levels. I’ll be the first to admit that for the last month or so, things have slowed around here considerably and I’ve left much of the writing up to Tony, who has performed admirably. On the horizon are some reviews of kick ass flicks.

For now, let’s talk Alejandro Jodorowsky. Every now and then I drop science about this filmmaking lunatic, but I never really go into it. I’m a huge, gigantic fan of his movies but, quite frankly, I’m not sure how to review his movies. I’ll have to figure it out, though. Severin is releasing his psychedelic riff on Hitchcock’s Psycho in a couple of months, Santa Sangre and one copy will most likely be on its way to me. I’m also really picky about my electronic music. I feel like so much of it, particularly the popular stuff is a cheap cash-in on the popularity of the music and the vast majority of the rest of it is anonymous. It could all be generated on auto-pilot by a farm of music making computers for all I know. But there are pockets of real vision out there operating way above the bass-heavy blips and thuds of the party crowd and I think I’ve found more of them hiding in Mexico City. Video artists, XNOGrafikz (site in Spanish), teamed up with Mexico City-based DJ and producer, DJ Saeg, to cut Alejandro Jodorowsky’s landmark pictures, El Topo and The Holy Mountain into an audio/visual experience set apart from the movies but just as psychedelic using sounds and clips from the movies to make glitchy electronic music. It’s fucking awesome, by the way.