Sometimes I remember that burning fire in me that wanted to own a Theremin.

Hot damn, Nymphoid Barbarians!

So random that I encountered this, but the shlock (non)classic Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is on Hulu. Produced, funded, and distributed by Troma - the director resented Lloyd Kaufman with all of his being - in part due to the titling that was forced on him. Much like Chopping Mall has no chopping, Nymphoid Barbarian holds no nymphoids or sexual content whatsoever. Sadly this Hulu presentation does not have the director commentary, which is the true diamond in the rough that the DVD holds.

What am I watching? Chopping Mall!

Context!

Chopping Mall, aka Killbots - released in 1985, the same year as Short Circuit, one year before Robocop and giving neither movie a run for their money. Jim Wynorski, a director mired in crap 80s horror schlock, destined to make even worse exploitation flicks like “The Bare Wench Project”. I’ve only seen the third in that series, but.. oh.. dear god.. there aren’t enough bare wenches in the world to make that crap watchable.

This was one of those movies that were always forbidden fruit. I’d look at the box art in West Coast Video as I was thinking about what computer game I wanted to rent, dreaming about what it could be about. Cursed to never know what laid on that magnetic tape!

The budget is nowhere near allowing convincing miniatures or full sized animatronics. Apparently these ‘killbots’ consist of moving treads and three points of articulation in a rotating head, rotating torso, and clacking claw. What a far cry from the remote control masterpiece of Johnny 5 (although all the different aspects of Johnny 5 probably belonged to discrete animatronics used for different scenes).

The acting? Not horrible. After catching some stinkers like The Room, and Troll 2, this, in its adequacy, is almost Shakespeare in comparison. Nobody is chewing on the scenery or hamming it up too much.

Things I love about the movie:
- The sporting goods store is well stocked with shotguns, M-14s, Magnums, and plenty of easy access ammo.
- Iranian lessons that sexuality and promiscuity lead, not to earthquakes, but murderous robots that want to set you on fire. A common theme of 80s slasher films, but true all the same.
- This is essentially every Michael Crichton story writ small. Technology is going to turn on us and we’re all going to die! This would have been pretty amusing if it were dinosaurs running amok in the mall.
- Mom jeans used to be in fashion!

Disappointment in this movie:
- No chopping.

The plot doesn’t matter too much. It opens with a demonstration of the state of the art in mall security – “This will be the safest mall in the country!” Although who knows what kind of crime spree must be going on that mall security needs lasers, C4, tasers, and claws. Lightning hits the building and apparently turns the bots ED-209 lethal instead of Johnny 5 loveable. Isn’t this kind of how Robo Rally started?

A teenage after hours party at the mattress store starts to go wrong as the partiers are taken out one by one. Eventually the only ones left are the nerdy new couple that just met that night! To spoil the ending – who survives? THE GUY AND GIRL WHO DIDN’T PUT OUT. This movie has to be huge in Iran.

I feel like I’ve crossed one thing off my bucket list after having seen this. Aside from that there’s pretty much no reason for anybody to watch this movie. Ever.. Ooh, wait! Director and writer commentary! Guess who’s watching this again!

BONUS CONTENT:
Jim Wynorski, the director of this flick has gone on to the fresh new millennium with what have to be a series of further morality plays:
- The Bare Wench Project
- Busty Cops
- The Witches of Breastwick
- Cleavagefield
- Para-Knockers Activity

And a documentary - Popatopolis - made about Wynorski while filming Witches of Breastwick:

What am I playing? The Pinball (Mac, iPhone)

Pinball, the ancient and mystical art! Some would say it requires a deep and innate relationship with the table to truly do well. After all, how else could a deaf, dumb, and blind kid play such a mean pinball?

I love pinball and have even when the skill involved was completely beyond my grasp, as well as the buttons. Hard for a little guy on a milk crate to reach both buttons! I have even made pilgrimages to what has to be the current pinball Mecca – The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

It’s within that context that I can comfortably blame any dislike on my part towards ‘The Pinball’ to be related to the qualities inherent in the game and not any misunderstanding of the medium myself.

Gameprom has apparently made a name for themselves with three fully 3d, full physics pinball boards on the iPhone. I’ve seen countless rave reviews of these boards to the extent that I was convinced to purchase each of them even after I tried and was not impressed by the Wild West board. Sure, the physics are realistic, but the boards are uninteresting, provide no clear progression of game states, and boring flow.

Gameprom came up with a concept that really excited me at first. They released software for OSX that provided a full screen, full power rendition of their boards. That in itself, not so interesting, but the fact that the game was controlled by an iPod touch or iPhone.. That’s interesting!

While trying out the software I sadly was driven to ask myself ‘why am I doing this?’ I look down in my hands and I have this little interface that I’m mashing the hell out of to play some Wild West pinball, but all I could feel is that I wanted something else. I wanted to reach for the keyboard. I wanted to go to my Xbox to play some Williams Hall of Fame – arguably the best pinball simulator in existence. Instead I’m stuck with the requirement of using an external device for this pinball for a perfectly arbitrary reason.

It may stand to argue that they’re tying the experience through the iPhone app so that all of the board purchases can be handled through the pre-existing payment infrastructure. I can appreciate that. Kind of. But allow untethering after the board purchase!

It boils down to the boards. The free one – Wild West – remains uninteresting, even at higher resolutions. I know the others available aren't that hot either. In the end – try the free board out for the novelty, but don’t get sucked in. Too much hardware required for too little gameplay. Pinball can be magic, but this is almost as far from that as possible.

What am I watching? ESTATE OF PANIC!!

Estate of Panic! A throwback to when Sci-Fi channel hadn’t decided to get all edgy as SyFy. It’s like Fear Factor meets all those fun kids gameshows from the 80s and 90s like Finders Keepers, Double Dare, GUTS, and Fun House. It’s not anything you need to watch, but it’s fun to watch. I also for some reason snagged the six eps made off of iTunes when they were on sale at some point.

That’s about it. There’s 6 people at the start of the episode, tasked with entering environments and hunting for cash as the environments get more and more hostile. They can all spend as long as they like in there but the last person doesn’t get let out of the environment and the person that makes it out with the least cash is eliminated. Fun way to spend 42 minutes watching people deal with hydrophobia, arachnophobia, snakeophobia, electrocution, and rooms slowly closing in on them.

What am I playing? Zombie Driver

Oh, Zombies. Is there any situation you’re not good for?

Zombie Driver is an overhead drivearound, shoot-em-up game for the PC. Imagine the original Grand Theft Auto with 3d graphics and gore combined with Crazy Taxi and Night of the Living Dead.

Final verdict first? It’s a 10 dollar game, which sounds cheap, but not worth it. I picked it up at a promotional rate of 2.50 back when Steam was having their crazy sales in December.

The game is pretty for what it is – there is even some nice limb physics as zombies are mown down. There’s a nice progression of vehicles and a selection of weapons to choose from for taking out zombies. There’s some challenge in completing some of the secondary objectives.

However, the camera is just not all that great. It’s essentially a guess on how you actually get to your objectives. There’s no overhead map to help you or even any kind of gps system to show you good routes to take.

The combat is cool in theory, but only theory. In order to pick people up you need to kill all the zombies in a certain radius around the building they’re in. Sadly the combat boils down to accelerating through the crowd of zombies, then deciding if you’re just going to back through the crowd again or turn around to get up more speed. No real sense of skill adding to the possibilities.

17 missions gives the game some legs, but the ending is pretty throwaway. No conclusion to the ‘story’ and you forgot how horrid the opening art of the game was because you don’t see it again until the end. What I was really looking forward to was going back to the earlier missions with my souped up cars and seeing how much better I could do at them, but beating the game RESETS ALL OF YOUR PROGRESS. Failure..

What is it that's wrong with me?

My internet is disappearing!

All of my favorite things that populated my feeds have apparently been disappearing..  So between my pruning down to a small number of feeds, my existing ones have decayed.  And I am bored with the internet..

Or maybe I have too much time to plow through the feeds I have?

But digg and recommended links are not as good anymore, either..

This will take cogitating, pondering, and braining to sort out.

What am I watching? Drop Dead Fred

Oh, Netflix streaming.. You've taken the place of all the late night or off hour movie filler that tv used supply in spades.

Trying to watch through Drop Dead Fred partially because Phoebe Cates was really really cute and partially because the movie is bizarre(I've only seen her in Gremlins 1,2 previously).  Sadly, it's also freaking annoying.  At least the first half.  That's about where I had to turn it off the first time through.  It's just too screwball comedy except that everything can't just be cleared up with a simple explanation between the parties involved.  Phoebe's character actually *tries* to explain what is happening, it's just ridiculous.  Ah, well.  I can make it through.  I can be strong.  It's not as bad as Armageddon.

Weird part of the movie?  The younger version of the main character is a spitting image for my wife at the same age.

Random factoid when reading back on Phoebe Cates - she married Kevin Kline when she was 26 and he was 40.  Good god!  What an age difference!  No slight on either of them, I just can't imagine being married to what would, with the same relative age for me, be a 15 year old.

Yadda yadda.  The beat goes on.  And so it goes.

Still debating what I'm going to rate this movie.