The Comic Critic Reviews "The Creation of the Humanoids."

I really was very young when I saw The Creation of the Humanoids. It had a very lasting effect on me. Until then, I never considered what a thin line there might be between man and machine. How much of a person’s personality is nature and how much is nurture? What defines a creature as being biological? Is being biological a requirement for consciousness? It was all very heady stuff. It’s a good thing The Creation of the Humanoids didn’t have dazzling special effects, roaring chase scenes, or fireball explosions to distract me from those talking heads. My young mind was doing its best to keep up with the implications of their discussions. The acting in this film is very stiff. It’s not improved by the cinematography. Nearly all the scenes are unanimated people talking to each other. But as I watched The Creation of the Humanoids again, all these decades later, I was  struck by how many of the film’s predictions or concepts have came true. I’m also amazed at how the dialog, while a bit uninspiring, continues to touch on relevant social issues, such as surveillance, sexual freedom, relationships, and what constitutes a partnership. You might find The Creation of the Humanoids a clunky old sci-fi movie, but I challenge you to compare it to modern science fiction movies. See if current productions touch on as many social issues, or if they are just eye candy. 

The Comic Critic Reviews Matango aka: The Attack of the Mushroom People

I can’t help but wonder if Matango inspired Gilligan’s Island. You have a small crew of people with different roles in society cruising the high sea for jollies when a storm comes up and shipwrecks them. In Matango, the island on which they are shipwrecked has barely anything edible on it. Most of the movie is spent revealing the various crew members’ truly cruel and selfish natures as they struggle to survive starvation. It’s a dark and uneasy story compared to the kindhearted Gilligan’s Island, where everybody cheerily works together on their island rich in its bounty: bananas and coconut radios. It’s Matango‘s dark, brooding atmosphere that makes it so creepy. And also creepy is that the mushrooms’ poisonous nature is known, but never truly accepted (except towards the end of the movie). The mushrooms are more than an obvious physical metaphor on human society. Or maybe it’s the evil of peer pressure. Or it might be a bit of both.

Tonight I will be participating in a Pumpkin Carving Contest hosted by the CLAW. I'll be sure to post photos of the various pumpkins later.

The Comic Critic Reviews Food of the Gods

It is a scientific fact that human brains take a long time to develop. The frontal lobes that are in charge of reason and cognitive thinking don’t become fully formed until we reach our twenties. This explains why teenagers make lousy choices and show poor judgment. It also explains why, for years, I thought Food of the Gods was a great film. Perhaps part of it had to do with my favorite horror B-movie from earlier in my childhood being The Killer Shrews. I guess there was something about giant rodents that just spoke to me. Watching Food of the Gods as an adult, I’m more than a little horrified, not only at my youthful bad judgment, but also at the treatment of rats during this film. I must warn the would-be viewer that you’re most likely going to see footage of rat snuffage on an epic scale. As a kid, I was very into grisly carnage. As an adult, I only like grisly carnage if it involves latex and dyed Karo syrup.

Tonight I will be part of Tacoma's First Night celebration. The CLAW will be at Brooks Dental Studio, 732 Broadway, Suite 101 during the course of the evening. We will be drawing people as Snakes in honor of 2013 being the year of the snake. There were folks lined up last year. I'm hoping to make up for last year when I couldn't attend due to the flu.

The Comic Critic Reviews Bitten

The next time I get a movie recommendation from Netflix, I’m going to make sure that it’s not a straight-to-video production before I commit to watching it. I’m not saying that I dislike straight-to-video movies (most are crap); several of my friends have made straight-to-video movies (most are crap). I’m just saying that I need to do my due diligence so I know what I’m getting into. I had to stop watching Bitten five minutes in because my wife, a lover of vampire movies, couldn’t take watching another minute of it with me. I rescheduled it for a time when I could enjoy its, um, unique qualities all by myself. The part I liked most was the end of the movie. It had a lot of unmet potential. And I’m not talking about the script.

The Comic Critic Reviews El Orfanato

I enjoy reading other critics’ blogs. One of them featured a list of one hundred must-see horror movies. I was shocked that I’ve yet to see twenty-two of them, many made in the last ten years. As someone who considers himself a horror aficionado, I found that, well, horrifying. I’ve wanted to see The Orphanage for a while. My friend Pammy would enjoy it. She loves a good horror film to exercise her brain cells. I’m currently exercising my own brain cells, deciding which one hundred horror films I’d consider as must-see. I think The Orphanage might make the list.


Emerald City Comicon is coming soon! And once again I will have a table there. I will be selling my book, giant squid posters and Donnie Darko t-shirts! My table location is J-15. To get there from the Main Entrance walk straight to the back of the convention and I will be in the right hand corner. I know a lot of you missed the show last year and have been dying to go this this show. It's bigger than before! Look to see you there.

The Comic Critic reviews "Zombiez"

The movie Zombiez has all the fineness of a high school film project, minus the high school students. I was terribly disappointed. At first I thought the plastic weapons, repainted to look even more like metal, were a joke, but there is nothing funny in this project. Okay, the guy in the chicken suit is funny. But you die of old age before you get that far in the story. Wait, did I use the word real quote marks “story”? My apologies. No story here. And for the love of all that is gruesome, if you are going to produce a horror film, own up and invest in several gallons of stage blood and not cheap out and buy what I can only assume was a discounted off-brand bottle of ketchup. In a zombie movie, guts should fall “out” of people, not “off’” them. Hello! Prop Master? House keys don’t open handcuffs! You would think that all of these obvious low production disasters might bring a few laughs, but it’s just too boring. If you decide to pull this one off the bargain shelf good luck staying awake.