Is it Mad Max or is it Judas Priest?
This video was directed by Wayne Isham, who was another one of directors who did videos for almost everyone. You weren’t a real rock star unless both Wayne Isham and Nigel Dick directed a video for you.
This song appeared on Judas Priest’s 1986 album, Turbo. The album was full of songs designed to annoy Tipper Gore.
Enjoy!
Psychology student Richard (Eddie Bowz) wants to conduct a study. After getting permission from the head of his department, Dr. Arnold (Wes Craven!), Richard gathers together a group of students and takes them to his family’s cottage. He introduces the group to “Morty,” a life-sized wooden dummy who Richard has had ever since he was a child. Morty, Richard explains, was carved by a Native American shaman and was then stolen by Richard’s grandfather. Each member of the group is told to confess their greatest fear to “Morty.” Even Richard takes part, confessing that he was scared of Morty when he was growing up.
File this one under “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” because the weekend quickly heads south. Richard’s uncle (Vince Edwards) shows up unannounced with his new girlfriend, Tanya (Anna Karin). Members of the group start to disappear and one of them is assaulted at a Christmas carnival, leading the group to suspect that one of them might be the rapist who has been attacking women on campus. Morty starts to show up in an unexpected rooms in cottage and it appears that everyone’s fears are starting to come true!
The Fear is one of those films that used to show up on late Cinemax but I mostly remember it because it was one of those movies that always seemed to be on display at our local Blockbuster. The VHS cover featured Morty giving someone the side-eye and looking dangerous. Morty is the best thing about the movie. Just looking at him is unsettling. Why would Richard be stupid enough to tell people to confess their fears to Morty?
Morty is creepy but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. Sometimes, Morty is evil and can move on his own and even seems to be capable of possessing someone. Other times, the movie seems to suggests that everything that’s happening is just in Richard’s head and Morty is just a wooden dummy. The story becomes impossible to follow as every member of the group is revealed to have a secret and Richard is finally forced to admit that there is something that he’s even more scared of than Morty. (If, as the film suggests, Morty is mostly after Richard, why does Morty first waste so much time on the other members of the group?) The Fear is not without ambition. It takes the therapy scenes seriously and Eddie Bowz does seem like he’s trying to give a believable performance as Richard. It seems like the people involved wanted to make a good movie. But once everyone’s fears start to come true and the movie moves into a ridiculous subplot about Richard and his stepsister, the movie is too disjointed to work. It doesn’t help that most of the fears are too mundane to really translate into an imaginative death scene. By the end of it all, not even Morty’s that scary anymore.
Something has gone wrong with the world. For six days straight, the sun has not set and there are reports of a storm circling the globe and flooding everywhere that it hits. Europe and Asia are gone. You are driving down a road in Pennsylvania. You’ve been driving for three days and, during the entire time, the sun has been right ahead of you.
Your choices are simple. Do you keep chasing the sun? Do you listen to the radio? Do you think about your family and the situation that you fled when it became obvious that something had gone wrong with the world? Do you stop for gas or do you ignore the warning light? Simple the choices may be but they will determine how you spend your last few days on Earth.
Chase The Sun is one of the many recent games to deal with the end of the world. One thing that almost all of these games have in common is a fatalistic view of the end. In almost all of them, the end is inevitable and it’s just a question of whether you can go out on your own terms or not. Chase the Sun is no different but what sets this game apart from so many other games is that your choices actually do make a difference. This is not one of those games where all of your choices all circle back until each game reaches the same conclusion. Instead, there are multiple endings, depending on what you choose to focus on. You have the chance to find some happiness before the world ends but it’s going to require making some smart decisions. Make the wrong decision and your ending will be far less pleasant.
The game’s descriptions are vivid and, most importantly, it’s not a game that wastes any time. It’s a game that can be played and finished within 15 minutes but, because it has so many possible endings and branching storylines, it’s also a game that reward replaying.
When Iron Maiden released this song, they knew that their fans would try to find out who Benjamin Breeg was so they created a website about Breeg. According to the site, Breeg was a painter of disturbing images who later found work in a cemetery and then as a paranormal investigator. He disappeared in 1978. Of course, this was all fictional. There was no Benjamin Breeg. The “Breeg” painting that was displayed on the site was actually a painting of Eddie, the band’s mascot.
The video features footage of Iron Maiden performing mixed in with a montage of early band pictures.
Enjoy!
Six college students decide to stick it to the man by avoiding pricey dorm living and instead squatting in an abandoned hospital. That makes sense because we all know that college is too damn expensive and that student housing is rip-off. The students may have made a mistake picking the hospital, though. Guess what? That hospital was abandoned for a reason! Years ago, a “shrieking” murderer killed all of the doctors and the nurses. Some say the murderer was a crazed patient while others say it was a monster summoned by Satanists. No sooner has mathematics major Clark (Tanya Dempey) moved into the hospital than everyone starts to hear the sound of shrieks coming from the basement. Not only is there someone else already living in the basement but, somehow, the Shrieker has also been summoned! Once people start dying, the suspicion is directed at Clark because she’s the newest resident. But Clark thinks that, thanks to her skill with numbers and computers, she’s figured out who is actually responsible and how the Shrieker selects its victims. She may have even figured out how to defeat the Shrieker but will she be able to get anyone to listen to her?
From Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment, this is one of those low-budget direct-to-video horror films that used to show up on late night Cinemax. Unfortunately, it’s pretty tame, with none of the gore or anything else that we typically associate with Full Moon Entertainment. The Shrieker itself looks good but it’s never around for long and too many of its attacks are just filmed as a sudden close-up of the Shrieker’s face. The characters are all obnoxious but most of them die so it’s not a problem. Alison Cuffe plays the role of the token communist with a lot of relish but it’s hard not to wonder what Linnea Quigley could have done with that role. That would have been something to shriek about.
You are trapped in a maze. You’re not sure why you are walking through this maze or why it is so difficult to find a way out. At the start of the maze, a man named John Everyman offers to help you out but if he doesn’t think you’re being properly appreciative, he’ll leave you to figure it out on your own.
Try to make your way through the maze without getting lost. I’ve played this game a few times. It’s not easy. It’s even a little creepy. Stop and relax on a park bench but don’t fall asleep. Climb a tree and discover a homey place to rest but watch out for the rain and the lightning. Then there’s the graveyard. Three of the graves are filled. The fourth is waiting for you. Find some rocks. Break the security cameras and the LED signs that flash messages at you. It’ll make you feel better but it won’t get you out of the maze. At one point, you’re even given the chance to accept that the game is over. Will you accept or will you keep searching?
You May Not Escape! was designed using Inform and it’s a throwback to the classic text adventures that I used to play when I was a kid. Even the puzzle feels like a throwback. Can you navigate a maze? How many times to Scott Adams go back to that well? But You May Not Escape! is much more difficult and rewarding than the old games that it resmebles. This game requires some thinking. It requires some imagination. It requires that the player pay attention to what they’re reading. The game is well-written and I appreciated all the little details that made the maze so memorable. I especially liked the LED tickers the spelled out messages that were either menacing or encouraging, depending on how you read them. You May Not Escape! is challenging but rewarding.
This was the second Grim Reaper video to be watched and commented upon by Beavis and Butt-Head. The only difference was that, opposed to See You In Hell, the band actually requested that Mike Judge roast this video. They were definitely good sports about that whole thing, unlike a certain singer named Kip Winger.
Here are Beavis and Butt-Head, with their thoughts:
Enjoy!
Have you ever wondered how Herman and Lily Munster came to live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane?
No?
That’s too bad, because Rob Zombie is going to tell you anyways.
Rob Zombie’s The Munsters is a prequel to the 60s sitcom of the same name. It shows how Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) came to be created, how he became a Rob Zombie-style rock star, and how he overcame the opposition of the Count (Daniel Roebuck) and married Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie). It also shows how Lily’s brother, Lester (Tomas Boykin), tricked Herman into signing over the deed for the Count’s castle in Transylvania. There’s not much of a plot but there was never much of a plot when it came to the original sitcom either. Just like the show that the movie is based on, The Munsters exists to show classic monsters making corny jokes and freaking out at the prospect of dealing with what the rest of the world considers to be normalcy. Unlike the multi-faceted Addams Family, The Munsters have always been a one-joke family.
There have always been elements of satire and subversive humor in everything that Rob Zombie has done, as both a musician and a director. Those who claim that Rob Zombie does not have a sense of humor are mistaken. However, the comedy in The Munsters is deliberately broad and vaudevillian, like the show on which the movie is based. As a director, Zombie doesn’t always seem to know how to best present that type of humor. The Munsters is the rare movie that would have benefitted from a laugh track because the jokes are definitely sitcom-level. They were designed to be followed by canned laughter. Zombie’s affection for the material and the characters come through and the deliberately artificial production and costume design actually works better than I was expecting but, at nearly two hours, The Munsters often feels directionless.
Jeff Daniel Phillips and Daniel Roebuck do adequate imitations of Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis, respectively, but its Sheri Moon Zombie who steals the show, bringing a lot of mischievous energy to Lily. Of the principle cast, Sheri Moon Zombie is the only one makes her character feel like something more than just a tribute to an old sitcom. The camera loves her and she convinces us that she loves Herman, no matter how childishly he behaves.
One final note: Sylvester McCoy — the seventh doctor, himself! — plays the Count’s assistant, Igor. McCoy doesn’t get to do much but it was still good to see him. Igor was the type of role that Tom Baker used to specialize in before he was cast as the Fourth Doctor. By casting McCoy as Igor, it almost felt as if Zombie was keeping the role in the family.
Here you are, a member of the Repair Corps. When a spaceship docks at Space Station Omicron-5, your job is to repair the appliances and make sure that everything is in ship-shape condition while the crew relaxes and does whatever they have to do on the station.
It’s like they say in the song:
Just another face in a red jumpsuit.
He did a good job cleaning up the place,
But his bosses didn’t like him
So they shot him into space.
Except, in this case, it’s not your bosses who send you into space. Instead, it’s the fact that the space station explodes while you’re getting ready to leave the ship! Now, the ship is hurtling through space and you’re the only one who can figure out the proper way to stop it before it crashes.
Crash is a classic-style text adventure, programmed with my favorite Interactive Fiction development system, Inform. What that means is that you pretty much have complete control over what the main character does on the ship. Walk where you want to walk. Examine what you want to examine. Try what you want to try. Just know that time is running out. Crash is well-written but it’s also puzzle-heavy. That won’t be a problem for most people but, for someone like me who sucks at puzzles, it can be daunting. Fortunately, the game comes with a built-in hint system. Also, when you’re usually terrible at puzzles, that means you feel even more triumphant when you actually manage to solve one of them.
(Even if you did have to ask for a lot of hints.)
Be sure to ask the computer a lot of questions. This game has an in-depth backstory and it’s actually interesting to learn all of it. You’re just a repairman but suddenly, you’re in the middle of a galactic conflict. It’s the sort of set-up that has led to many classic sci-fi tales.
David Lee Roth, the greatest rock frontman of the 80s, is celebrating his 68th birthday! Here’s hoping that wherever Diamond Dave is right now, it’s just like paradise!
Through the Shattered Lens 