TAKE AN EASY RIDE

I’ve learned a lot from horror films. Over the years, I’ve picked up some damn good advice. For example, I no longer open doors, go into the house, look in the basement, open the window, answer the phone or go in the woods. Whenever some old guy holding a severed eyeball tells me that I’m doomed if I go to the lake, I promptly change my vacation plans. If I’m going to hang out with friends, I immediately turn down the offer if I think there’s even the slightest chance that one or two of them might have sex. I believe every word of every urban legend I hear, if only to be on the safe side. I never go swimming, rock climbing, driving at night, driving during the day or get on an airplane. I’ve learned never to go to a summer camp, abandoned mine, any house that looks over 100 years old, graveyards, shopping malls, grocery stores or even to sleep. Yes, sir. I learned all those lessons well and as a result, here I am, having never been murdered. Thank you, horror films.

Now I won’t give any details about how I go about doing (or not doing) all of that stuff. Let’s just say that my life is a living hell. But what I really want to tell you all about is the danger of hitchhiking. Long story short: don’t do it. Why? Because every single person that picks up a hitchhiker is a psychopathic rapist who will kill you horribly after violating you terribly. This is simply a statistical fact. Arguing otherwise would be to argue that movies lie. And movies don’t lie. Ever. Never ever.

TAKE AN EASY RIDE, a British film of unbelievable importance, illustrates perfectly why you should never ever consider hitchhiking. It does this through pure, easy to understand facts, interviews with people on the streets and a nice, trustworthy narrator. It also utilizes reenactments, sometimes four or five at the same time, to really bring home the point: if you’re a woman, every man is looking to rape you so don’t ever, under any circumstances, get into a car with one. But don’t just believe me. No, no, no. Believe the film. OK, I shouldn’t say “every man”. Just most of them. Some of them are decent folk, like the one driver who says that he will only pick up men or that one guy who says that hitchhikers are an insurance liability so he just ignores them. But don’t let that fool you. They are the minority. Most men sit in their cars looking at pornography, just waiting for some nice looking dame to rape and kill.

Now halfway through this most important of all British films you might find yourself thinking “what the hell is going on? Why are there six different stories going on at once? Why are there naked men walking around a field? Why is the only trustworthy driver dressed like a manager of a funeral home? Whose parents are these again? Why, in a film about the dangers of sexual abuse at the hands of strangers, are we being treated to countless upskirt shots, random bits of nudity, softcore lesbian sex and other kinds of exploitative filmmaking? Why does the film take a sudden shift from the dangers of hitchhiking to the dangers of picking up hitchhikers?” Allow me to answer those questions. Right after I’m done changing the subject.

If you’re a woman, TAKE AN EASY RIDE will change how you see the world. You’ll be much more paranoid, for starters. You’ll probably think twice about wearing short skirts, not wearing bras, having friends or leaving the house. You’ll also learn something about life. You’ll learn that life is far too precious to risk it hitchhiking. You might be mildly groped by a man in greasy jeans and that groping will leave you in the hospital, shaken up and inexplicably blind. Is that what you want? Then don’t hitchhike. Ever. Never ever. But do watch this film. It is an unimaginably great piece of work, shot with a kind of documentary realism that just, oh it just, well dammit it just, it just

This movie sucks.  

ARGENTO'S DRACULA

There are many ways I could write this review. I could, for example, spend whole paragraphs bemoaning the fall from grace that the once great Dario Argento has succumbed to over the years. I could walk the tightrope of apologetics, claiming that it isn’t Argento that has lost his touch but the Italian genre industry, that films as brave as THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE simply are not targeted for the kind of mass appeal dictated by the more commercially minded Italian executives of today. I could claim that the film is simply some kind of mistaken masterwork, that it is not meant to be taken seriously in any respect. That is to say, by trashing the film we are simply missing out on what the film really has to offer. That might be reaching a bit too far but there is some truth in those other statements, some valid points to make. I'll touch on a few of them later but for now, how about an opinion and a little bit of history?

Full disclosure: I am pretty much done with Dracula at this point. It’s hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t some variation or direct adaptation of Bram Stoker’s tale in the cinemas. Murnau’s NOSFERATU was the first to arrive back in 1922 followed by the Universal adaptation in 1931. Throughout the decade, Dracula would become a franchise, spawning no less than four installments. Hammer came along in 1958 with their more serious (and infinitely superior) adaptation. Again, Dracula would form the backbone of a franchise, this time upping the number of installments to eight. As the Hammer franchise was picking up steam, numerous adaptations were made around the globe, including DRAKULA ISTANBUL’DA, a Turkish production, a Western-horror turd called BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, a teenage rebellion flick from Herman Cohen called THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, a bizarre modern day interpretation from the UK called THE FANTASTIC DISAPPEARING MAN, a low budget shocker from Al Adamson titled BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE, a typically shoddy adaptation from Jess Franco, a camp comedy from Roman Polanski and many, many others.

By the time the inevitable blaxploitation adaptation came around in 1972, there wasn’t much left to do with the story. But that didn’t stop people from trying. We had TV-miniseries about Dracula, hardcore gay sex flicks about Dracula, family films about Dracula… Hell, in 1979 alone we had three adaptations all come out within eight months of each other: the Frank Langella-headlined adaptation, the pitiful spoof LOVE AT FIRST BITE and Werner Herzog’s remake of NOSFERATU. The 1980s were thankfully a bit less Dracula heavy, not something that can be said of the late 90s up until the present day. Since 1992 we’ve had Coppola’s adaptation, the Mel Brooks romp, DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT, the godawful DRACULA 2000 franchise, the meta-horror of SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, yet another Jess Franco adaptation, the wonderful Guy Maddin ballet film DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY, a new BBC television adaptation… They just keep coming. And really, what the hell is the point? We’ve had monstrous Draculas, emo Draculas, funny Draculas, porno moustache-wearing Draculas, misunderstood Draculas, reluctant Draculas, sappy romantic Draculas… Every flavor of Dracula has been brought to market in every possible variation of story, theme, setting, time period, etc. etc. etc.

So the idea of watching a new Dracula adaptation was not something I was looking forward to. Knowing that it was an Argento film made me even more reluctant to watch it. To go back to one of my opening points, the Argento of today does not resemble the Argento of yesterday. The last truly inspired piece of filmmaking Argento made was back in the late 1980s. OPERA represented the ultimate culmination of everything the Argento name used to signify. Graphic violence, black humor, sweeping, masturbatory camera work, a pounding synth score, inexplicable lapses in narrative logic and a barely there story that only makes sense within the diegetic world of the film. Argento would spend his next two films trying to break into the American market. Both of those films, TRAUMA and TWO EVIL EYES, failed miserably. But then Argento made THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, a meta-giallo well ahead of its time and easily one of the most overlooked gems in his entire filmography. For the first time in half a decade, it felt like Argento was back on track. His next giallo, SLEEPLESS, was, in every way, classic Argento. Everything was in its place again. The driving score, the brutality, the pretzel-like narrative, the chiaroscuro lighting, the fluid camera work… It is the best of Argento’s contemporary efforts but its glory would be short lived. The film did not make much of a mark. What was left of the giallo during the 1990s had been assimilated into the North American sex thrillers that flooded the market place and sometimes graced the big screen, the best example being Verhoeven’s BASIC INSTINCT. The giallo he helped to create was gone and his next two films, THE CARD PLAYER and DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? felt like direct acknowledgments of that fact. They are stale and dull looking films, built around barely serviceable plots. They were not, as his Animal Trilogy was, artistic endeavors. Argento had become yet another “for the money” filmmaker.

The less said about MOTHER OF TEARS and GIALLO the better. The only thing I can say is that the DRACULA feels like a desperate attempt to make up for those failures. MOTHER OF TEARS was a desperate attempt to regain some level of fanbase support. GIALLO, with Hollywood heavy Adrien Brody in the lead role(s), was an attempt to regain some kind of directorial authority. Neither was successful. MOTHER OF TEARS was rejected by a majority of fans and GIALLO became a legal nightmare, one that eventually led Argento to disown the film entirely.

And that brings us here. Dracula is, in every way, an old man’s tale. It feels dated and tired. It is so familiar to us that nothing can really make it exciting again. However, it’s an incredibly safe bet. It’s one of those stories that people like to hear over and over again, despite having heard it a billion times. I can imagine Argento feeling quite secure in his choice to make this film. It’s a familiar, routine story (thus negating the need to do much work) but one that everyone loves. For a director fighting to retain some standing in the genre world, filming a well-loved story probably seemed like a safe bet. And, in the hands of virtually every other filmmaker, it would have been. How Argento fucked it up so bad is beyond me.

Let’s start with the look of the film. Close your eyes and imagine what a Dracula film should look like. Are you thinking heavy atmosphere? Gothic cathedrals and castles covered in cobwebs and shadows? Buxom, bodiced ladies slinking through dark corridors by candlelight? Those are the typical Dracula bits of filmmaking. None of that will be found here. In Argento’s world, everything is brightly lit and heavy on the artifice. Every set looks fake, every bit of decoration seems chosen at random from a box of left over dinner theater props, costumes range from period-appropriate to contemporary. It doesn’t look like Argento ever got around to sending the film in for color correction. Even the ghastly MOTHER OF TEARS managed to create atmosphere. But DRACULA looks plastic and fake. Because the majority of it IS plastic and fake.

Then there’s the score, a theremin-heavy clusterfuck that sounds like the soundtrack for a cheap, FMV-filled Sega CD game. Then there’s the completely inappropriate dubbing, the way the camera always seems to begin the scene by pushing in, the disregard for any kind of continuity in setting, the way the film just doesn’t bother to clue you in on the geography of the surroundings, the overly languid pacing, the fact that all the vampires hiss constantly throughout the entire goddamn film and the terrible CGI that figures in almost every single scene. THE STENDHAL SYNDROME was one of the first (if not THE first) Italian genre film to utilize computer generated effects. As you can imagine, the results were not top notch. The level of effects work here barely rises to the level of a Syfy movie. CGI spiders, CGI tiny Draculas scurrying up CGI walls, CGI skylines, CGI buildings, CGI streets, CGI fingernails, CGI fangs, CGI bullets, CGI fire, CGI insects, CGI animals, CGI blood, CGI teleporting vampires, CGI disintegrating vampires, CGI this, CGI that, CGI here, CGI there, CGI everywhere. And it is absolutely dreadful. The film does manage to whip out the practical effects from time to time and when it does, DRACULA becomes a bit more enjoyable.

And don’t get me wrong. I think a lot of people will in fact find this movie enjoyable. I’ve spoken to people who do enjoy this film. I won’t begrudge them their opinion but I want to make one thing clear. There is a difference between “camp” and “unintentionally comedic”. There is nothing in DRACULA to even suggest that Argento set out to make a camp horror film. Everything is played incredibly straight. Even when the film descends into total stupidity (ie. the infamous praying mantis scene) it does so with a straight face. But yet people keep telling me that this film is meant to be campy, that Argento was no more serious with this film than Paul Morrissey was with BLOOD FOR DRACULA. I call bullshit on that. Yet people will say “of course it’s bad! It’s meant to be bad!” Well, why is that a good thing? Why would anyone want to watch a film designed to be bad? Why waste your time? If that’s the best argument you can make for this film, your argument stinks.

So is there anything that DRACULA does well? Not really. If the best thing I can say about your film is that the actresses are all attractive, chances are your film is really terrible. But at least it isn’t painful. I suppose it has that going for it. I’ve seen a lot of terrible movies in my time, movies that have literally made me scream out loud. This isn’t that level of terrible. And while I don’t ever want to fall into the trap of comparing “new” Argento to “old” Argento, I cannot help but look at this film and think “Dario Argento, Thomas Kretschmann and Asia Argento once teamed up to make THE STENDHAL SYNDROME and now they’re making this”. I cannot help but think “Luciano Tovoli once did the cinematography for SUSPIRIA and TENEBRE, and now he’s making this”. I can’t help it. I cannot get it out of my mind. With each new Argento film, his genius seems to fade. So despite all the facepalming, groaning and laughing I did while watching DRACULA, when it was over all I felt was profound sadness.

NINTENDO POWER - FIRST FIVE COVERS, FIRST FIVE POSTERS

NUCLEAR THRONE

I remember when the testing period for software went like this: developer programs alpha, developer moves to beta, developer releases beta to group of testers, developer addresses bugs, developer releases product, customers purchase completed product. This is how it used to be. But these days Early Access is all the rage. Looking through the front page of Steam today, I came across half a dozen Early Access titles. These are games still in the early to late alpha stage. All of these games carried a price tag above ten dollars. Some of them, like Wasteland 2, are priced in the range of AAA console titles. This strikes me as a bit odd. I get the pricing. Most of these titles were funded on the backs of Kickstarter campaigns. The pricing for these titles represents the minimum or average donation price. What I don’t get is paying premium for a title that is far from finished. More to the point, aren’t you paying these people in hopes that they finish their game?

Thanks to a friend, I gained access to a game called Nuclear Throne. Published by Vlambeer, the masterminds behind the insidiously addictive Super Crate Box, Nuclear Throne is a twin stick shooter all gussied up in 16 bit visuals. It’s a corker of a game, even in this early state, and one that shows great promise. Though I don’t think I would have plunked down the 13 dollars without playing it first (I have no idea why demos, a staple of my early PC gaming experience, have suddenly become a thing of the past), I can confidently say that you should not hesitate to. Like BROFORCE, another game in early stages of development, it contains enough of a good thing to justify multiple play throughs and enough of a challenge to keep you coming back for more. 

Yes, the game has issues. There are only a few enemy types, only a couple bosses to fight, a musical score that repeats far too often, different characters that only change the gameplay in minor ways, a low weapon count… but all those faults are overlooked once you get into the swing of playing. Like Hotline Miami or The Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne borrows its control scheme from Robotron. You move using the WASD keys while shooting with the mouse. I would have liked to see a more traditional control scheme (moving with WASD and shooting with the arrow keys) but keyboard/mouse works perfectly fine here. Anyone familiar with Hotline Miami will be right at home. The game is part bullet hell shooter. It isn’t enough to have good marksmanship. You have to be able to maneuver in a matter of seconds. The first stages of the game are deceptively easy. Once you leave the sewers and step foot into the second main stage, the game becomes downright ridiculous. Learning to master the art of moving one way while shooting in the other is a necessity. There is no time limit for the levels. It is simply a case of "kill 'em all". Earn enough experience (here represented as little bars of green uranium) and you'll be able to choose a mutation at the end of the level. This is the games version of "leveling up". The mutations are all useful, allowing you to increase your health count, change the speed of enemy projectiles or increase the number of item drops. It's a simple mechanic but one that can have a major impact on your run.

Depending on your skill level, Nuclear Throne either offers just enough gameplay or not enough gameplay. I can usually make it through the game quickly. But I also somehow managed to breeze through Hotline Miami without any trouble. But like that game, Nuclear Throne is just too damn enjoyable to not play through over and over. Without specific programmer-set challenges (think the boss rush or time trial modes in Super House of Dead Ninjas), you are kind of on your own to find reasons to play through the game again. I enjoy challenging myself to play through the game without picking up a second item (you are limited to two weapons at any one time) or without picking up any health. Until proper achievements are added to the game, this is as close as you’ll be getting to special incentives/goals for your play throughs.

Again, this is an unfinished game. Whether or not it will up to its full potential is a great, big unknown. Whether or not it will evolve into something different is a great, big unknown. But the base game here is great fun. Maybe still a little expensive at 13 bucks but a good investment for fans of bullet hell shooters and action roguelikes.

Interested? Follow the link: NUCLEAR THRONE

SHIVERS

SHIVERS contains a great deal of foreshadowing for the rest of the Cronenberg filmography. The direction isn’t there yet, though, as a first feature, you wouldn’t expect it to be. But it’s never been the look of Cronenberg’s films that gave them their distinctive feel. It’s always been the writing. More to the point, it’s always been the themes and metaphors. They’re all present here. The distrust of science, the twinned revulsion and attraction towards the human body (specifically towards the sexual organs), the dangers of repression, the allure of mutation… All of the myriad, almost obsessive, themes and metaphors that dotted the landscape of Cronenberg’s sci-fi/horror output, some of which leaked into his more mainstream films like CRASH and SPIDER, are here in full force. That makes SHIVERS an integral film for the Cronenberg faithful.

The film begins with a media presentation, a commercial of sorts, for the Starliner Towers, a large apartment complex, complete with shops and medical facilities, on the outskirts of Montreal. A self-contained, upper-class suburban city, if you will. As the commercial ends, we are shown a young man and woman being given a tour of the Towers. Intercut with this, an older man strangles a young girl to death. As the guide gleefully sells the young couple on the quality of life afforded by the Towers, the older man slices open the body of the young woman and pours a bottle of acid into her abdomen. The sales pitch concludes and the couple walks away impressed. The older man slits his own throat.

The film takes its time telling us why we witnessed this murder-suicide. The older man was a scientist, a rather brilliant but philosophically inept researcher, who had been trying to find an alternative to standard organ transplantation. He had devised a plan to use special parasites, biological organisms that could be bred for the purpose of mimicking the behavior of ordinary, functioning organs. Or at least that’s what his colleagues and financial backers thought he was working on. What he was really doing with his time was creating what could best be described as parasitic MDMA, an organism which could rewire the impulse control system of its host. The murder of the young woman wasn’t an act of brutality. It was an attempt to contain the parasite that he knowingly infected her with. Unfortunately, the young woman had been making her way around the Towers, having sex with numerous men, and the infection has already begun to spread.

As the film goes on, many of the inhabitants fall prey to the parasitic infection. As a result, they begin to rape (and sometimes murder) the people they come across. The parasite is usually seen being transmitted through physical contact though there are numerous instances of the parasites being vomited out and at least one instance of it bursting from someone’s chest. Free of the host, they go about their business of crawling along the floors and, in one memorable scene, through a drain pipe into a bathtub. The parasites, in typical Cronenberg fashion, appear both fecal and phallic in design, just long, slithering brown masses. Not really frightening stuff but SHIVERS makes up for the look of the parasites in its use of bladder effects, one of the first movies to use that kind of practical effect. Seeing the parasites move around in the stomachs of the infected never fails to unnerve.

Despite its somewhat heady material, SHIVERS isn’t as serious a film as RABID, Cronenberg’s follow-up feature. The two films are thematically similar, both concerned with sexual revulsion, scientific mishaps and the overthrow of 1970s excess by the remnants of the 1960s free love movement. In every way, they are sister films and are best watched back-to-back. They inform and complete each other, and although RABID is undeniably the better film, SHIVERS is easily the more enjoyable of the two to watch. “Enjoyable to watch” is not something one normally says about a Cronenberg film but SHIVERS, an under budgeted first feature shot in about two weeks, has all the energy of a good B-movie with the benefit of actually being about something.

The finale of SHIVERS looks remarkably like your average zombie film. I’m not aware of how much of an influence (if any) George Romero had on Cronenberg when he made this film but I would be surprised if he did not have NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in mind when he scripted and directed the finale. Having recently watched LAND OF THE DEAD, Romero’s much maligned but ultimately great zombie epic, I was reminded of SHIVERS. Both films are about revolutions of sorts. In SHIVERS, it’s a sexual revolution. In LAND OF THE DEAD, it’s a revolution of the “have none”s against the “have plenty”s. Both films feature hermetically sealed, suburban utopias. In SHIVERS, it’s the Starliner Towers. In LAND OF THE DEAD, it’s the commercial complex called Fiddler’s Green. In both films, we’re introduced to these utopias through painfully sappy commercials highlighting the static, almost naïve existence that these upper middle class fortresses have to offer. Both films end with the repressed aggressors laying claim to the buildings.

 

This may all be coincidence. I have no idea. I do know that SHIVERS was an acknowledged influence on Dan O’Bannon when he was writing ALIEN and it shows. But more interesting is how all the seeds planted in SHIVERS grew as Cronenberg continued making films. You may need to be one of the Cronenberg faithful to really appreciate SHIVERS. It may be the reason I enjoy the film so much. But even if you’ve never seen THE FLY or NAKED LUNCH, never heard of DEAD RINGERS or SCANNERS, you will still be able to enjoy the B-movie freakshow Cronenberg puts on here. It’s an ambitious, flawed, deeply troubling and ultimately exhilarating piece of film.

RIP Alexandra Bastedo.

"Actress Alexandra Bastedo, best known for her role in the 1960s television sci-fi series The Champions, has died aged 67 following a long illness."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25708277

JANIE

I once summarized the films of Jess Franco by stating that Franco is really just Jean Rollin without the artistic pretense. Many of Franco’s films exist solely for voyeuristic thrills. They’re narratively sparse pieces with no real stories to them. They are only concerned with female flesh. When I first heard of JANIE, I was told that it would fit into the oeuvre of Franco rather easily. Having watched it, I can say that statement is completely false. Yes, it does contain copious female nudity. Yes, there is no real story to be found. Yes, it is, like many of Franco’s mid-career (and late-career) films, terrible. But no matter how many terrible films Franco made, they still had an undeniable energy to them. They were never boring… unlike JANIE.

The film seems like a checklist for all the terrible elements of 1970s exploitation cinema. The soundtrack sounds like one long, extended jam band riff. Worse, it never stops. I don’t recall a single scene that wasn’t scored by the same generic sounding rock music. The sound is so terrible that 90% of the dialogue is inaudible. Many scenes are filmed indoors with the camera pointing at the sole light source in the room, an artistic choice that renders everything onscreen completely indecipherable. The acting ranges from terrible to abysmal with many of the "actors" looking at the camera, bumbling their lines or appearing completely uncomfortable on camera. There are many scenes of above-the-clothes masturbation obscured by a generous smear of Vaseline on the camera lens. Everything about this film screams Poverty Row.

The story, or what passes as a story, concerns Janie, a chubby-cheeked, blonde weirdo. Janie is in love with her father. Worse still, Janie is plagued by a never ending internal monologue (provided by the one and only Roberta Findlay) that convinces her to kill anyone she comes across, usually after watching them have sex or seducing them. After committing the murder(s), she immediately goes about the business of masturbating. This is all the film contains. Janie meets someone. Janie kills them. Janie masturbates. The film is largely shown in flashback with Janie’s sexual escapades with her father as the bookend device. At one point, the film brings up the possibility that all this murdering and masturbating is really just sex talk to get her father all hot and bothered. This possibility isn’t given much play throughout the film but does factor into the ending, so I suppose we should applaud the film for at least not dropping its sole plotline worth exploring.

Let’s not dance around the issue: this film exists as nothing more than spank bank material. In that way, it does resemble most of Franco’s output. But again, it lacks the energy of Franco’s work. Hell, it lacks the energy of Ed Wood’s work. It is incredibly lifeless and dull, and probably only worth watching as a curio piece. Yes, Mary Jane Carpenter, the actress playing Janie, is attractive and does have a palpable sexuality, but it’s difficult to imagine this film really turning anyone on. Even as a piece of softcore fluff, it feels remarkably tame. I was hoping, for a film that contains serial murder and incest, that JANIE would eventually just go into a state of full-on sleaze mania but it stayed comfortably in first gear, barely even revving its engines during its 65 minute running time.

Welcome to my brain.

Hello. My name is Dave Grant. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.

No? Well, FUCK YOU TOO! I don’t have to take this shit! GET OUT!

No, no, no, wait… Wait, come back. I’m sorry. Really, I am. I forgive you. Let’s be friends. Can I offer you a drink? Maybe a sandwich?

Anyway, about five years ago, I decided to start a website. Like every other egomaniacal, pretentious twat on the internet, I felt like my opinion mattered and damn it, I wanted everyone to hear it. So I started a website called Films That Witness Madness. It was a place where I could write about exploitation films, my own little internet home where I could openly trash people’s favorite movies and not have to deal with their hissy fits and hurt feelings. Over those five years, I put together close to 150 reviews. That might not seem like a lot to you (and you’re right) but I was damn proud of it. Well, proud of some of it.

Sometime in September 2013, I thought about shutting down the website. As it was designed solely for the purpose of reviewing exploitation films, I was limited in what I could write about. Sure, I could have expanded the site to include Bergman films and artsy-fartsy French films but then the name of the place wouldn’t fit very well. Films That Witness Madness doesn’t sound like the kind of place you’d go to read my brilliant opinions of Smiles of a Summer Night, does it? I mulled it over for a long time. Did I really want to scrap five years of work? Turns out, yes. Yes, I did.

I also run a Tumblr called exploiting Exploitation. As my webhost was all like “you can DESCRIBE the titties but you can’t SHOW the titties”, I decided to turn to what is, in all honesty, the most pro-pornography mainstream site the internet has to offer. The Tumblr is used to share adult movie posters and pressbooks for more mainstream fare and it allowed me a place to discuss things that would have made my webhosts a little nervous. Unfortunately, Tumblr isn’t the best place to start conversations and post reviews. That isn’t the purpose of Tumblr. So instead of just starting another Tumblr, I decided to come over here. So here I am. I closed one site and opened another.

I didn’t have to program a damn thing here, which was nice. It’s also free. You know what it costs to run a website. Like 90 bucks! 90 GODDAMN BUCKS!!! You know how much DLC I could buy for SimCity for 90 bucks? Neither do I and I’m not about to find out because that game is shit.

A-n-y-w-a-y… Here I am, ready to entertain the couple dozen of you who will periodically read this blog when I hound you on Facebook or start carpet bombing forums. When I left Films That Witness Madness to the dustbin of internet history, I was averaging 200,000+ views a month. I highly doubt I’ll top that here but honestly, I don’t care. Because here I can write all about whatever the hell I want. And I will. I’ll write about video games, comic books, movies, music… Just whatever I want. That’s a good thing. Because you desperately need to know what goes on inside my head. Believe me, it’s scary as fuck but entertaining in that David Lynch/crack addict kind of way.

So applaud me. I deserve it. And applaud yourself for finding this blog. You deserve it. Just applaud. Go ahead. Fuck it. Tell the universe you’re so damn grateful for it existing that you’re just going to slap your hands together for a few minutes while giggling like a psycho. You’ll genuinely feel better about life if you just take the time to clap more. I promise.

Posting will begin regularly starting Monday. Or Tuesday. One or the other. I can’t promise I’ll post every single day. I have important things to do, you know? The web isn’t going to surf itself. I’m sure at some point I’ll start getting comments and that’s cool. I’m a nice enough guy. I can get along with pretty much anyone. So feel free to drop comments. Follow me over to Tumblr and look at boobies and pressbooks. Follow me over to Google+ and give me a damn reason to use that sack of shit. Just stop by every once and awhile to say hi. I’ll say hi back.

And I guess that’s it for now. Nice to meet you. Hope to see you again sometime. You’re lovely. Your face is very symmetrical. And I like that in a person.