Brian and Richard step into the Digi-booth this week to discuss a small selection of titles of vastly differing sorts. They do some Witching & Bitching, go after Whitey, and enjoy a Last Supper. Brian also teases Richard for being British while Richard audibly contemplates murdering Brian. So, you know, your basic episode.
The two also host a TV bundle giveaway that will turn your head, but won’t have you turning the channel. Lock your doors, turn out the lights, and creep out the entire household by cranking up the Digital Noise!
Please do consider using our links below to make all your Amazon purchases! Much appreciated!
2) Tweet at us with what marginally supernatural, or kiddie supernatural entity you’d like to see get the dark horror film treatment and who would direct said film.
3) Add #AfterFleshGiveaway
4) We’ll select our favorite answer and contact that winner via Twitter (open to U.S. residents only).
Supposedly set to premiere at the end of next week’s Agents of SHIELD, the trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron has already been released online. Could Hydra be responsible for this recent leak? Ultron? In any case, the trailer is filled with many scenes that would make any Marvel fan squeal with anticipation. Just watch it already!
Jean-Pierre Desperois. Born a slave in Haiti in a voodoo ritual with the power to travel through space and time. Now lives in Tunis. Smuggles salt. On payroll: crooked cops and hard-to-manage employees. When local gendarme Michel du Prix tells him about some corpses found in the desert, Jean-Pierre thinks nothing of it. But when the bodies start piling up, Jean-Pierre is implicated. Armed with nothing but his “baka” and his “ku-bha-sa”, Jean-Pierre tries to get to the bottom of the situation. But he’s in for more than he bargained.
Season One is 20 half-hour episodes released bi-weekly.
SALT is a spin-off of The Intergalactic Nemesis, an adventure set in the 1930s and taking the form of comic-books and graphic novels, audio drama, a web series, and a live theatrical production that’s touring the world. For access to all of this, check out www.theintergalacticnemesis.com.
Written and voiced by Jason Neulander. Additional voices by Buzz Moran, Danu Uribe, and Julie Linnard. Sound effects, audio engineering, and production by Buzz Moran. Original score by Adrian Quesada.
Episode Seven: The Box
In which Jean-Pierre meets Makandal, discovers just how badly he’s been damaged by his experience in the box, interacts with another former slave, and recovers in a cave.
Greatest Clowns of All Time! Movie Licensed Food Goods! Deadly Voodoo Dolls! Podcasting makes us feel good – it’s Public Axis with the Ghostbusters SATX!
Recorded at the Public Axis F-Stop on October 16th, 2014.
00:00 Welcome to the F-Stop! This week, we welcome our local and proud branch of paranormal investigators, the Ghostbusters SATX. Representing the team is super pal and frequent guest, Bryan Ortiz, and improv performer, Brennan Loy.
29:59 Yeah, Imma Look Into Dat! Topic #1: Who is the greatest clown of all time?(Inspired by click and point indie title, Dropsy.)
1:01:01 Dad’s Corner(ed)! Topic #2: What restaurant should have the next movie themed snack? Based on what movie and what should it be? (Inspired by Krispy Kreme’s Ghostbusters donuts.)
1:19:18 Hey, That’s Not Funny! Topic #3: Who would you want to make a voodoo doll out of?(Inspired by this article dealing with why stabbing makes us feel good.)
1:40:16 What Did We Come to Know? Public Axis is an educational program and at the end, we always ask our guests and listeners, “What did you come to know?” Enlighten yourself.
Let your friends know about Public Axis on Facebook and Twitter and keep those Facebook comments coming at our Happy Campers group!
Ask any veteran comic book reader what they think of event comics and you’ll get a wide range of answers. Sometimes viewed favorably, and other times viewed with much trepidation, comic events are usually met with various degrees of excitement and hatred. Whatever the reaction to them might be, they still tend to sell extremely well no matter what. That’s why it comes as no surprise that Marvel has announced several comics for summer 2015 that focus on past event storylines.
As of today, the comic events that have been announced by Marvel include Civil War, Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies, Plant Hulk, Years of Future Past, Armor Wars and House of M. All of these events have had varying levels of success. While some of these event books have garnered strong critical praise (most notably Armor Wars, Days of Future Past and Planet Hulk), the other titles listed so far have received mixed critical reception at best.
As with most of these teasers so far, little to no information has been released as to how these comic events relate to another. A theory proposed by Marvel fans and IGN is that these comics are all tie-ins to a multiverse Secret Wars event. Announced by writer Jonathan Hickman (Fantastic Four, Avengers) at this year’s NYCC, Secret Wars will be written by Hickman himself and will focus on numerous battles between the Avengers and other heroes across Marvel’s multiverse. As with any comic book event, there will be numerous tie-in comics to go with it. Though not said to be the tie-in books by Hickman, it’s reasonable to guess that these announced comics are in fact the rumored Secret War tie-ins.
For those unfamiliar with the event, Secret Wars was a limited 12-issue comic crossover that pitted Marvel’s greatest heroes and villains against one another by the mysterious cosmic entity known as the Beyonder. Heroes and villains included Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, the X-Men, Dr. Doom, Magneto and Ultron. The event is perhaps most famous for the origin of the alien symbiote. Thinking he had acquired a costume made of a strange alien material, Spider-Man was later haunted by the fact that he was partially responsible for the creation of one of his most iconic enemies, Venom.
Comic events typically do two things. They either change the status quo of most books in a bid to attract new readers, or revert back to the original status quo that previous events might have screwed up in an attempt to regain the readers they might have lost. Often, comic events are usually plagued by simplified plotlines and massive battles with multiple characters dying only to be resurrected again in the next comic universe wide event. It’s simply a “rinse and repeat” process of storytelling that pretends to be the end all be all of comic book stories.
Sure, there have been a few occasional successful events. Days of Futures Past, Planet Hulk and Armor Wars are typically viewed favorably by comic readers. However, most of those storylines focused on a single hero or team. For example, Days of Future Past, often looked at as one of best X-Men stories in comics, was only two issues in length. Also, Plant Hulk has only recently been labeled an “event” comic. The book followed the Hulk as he became a gladiatorial hero of sorts on a faraway alien planet. Only a handful of Marvel’s heroes made a short cameo appearance in the book.
With the summer still months away, there are numerous event books that could be in the works. It is possible that Annihilation, Secret Invasion or Age of Apocalypse might join the ranks of titles announced to premiere in 2015? Hell, is Spider-Island a possibility? Only time will tell.
What about you reader? What do you think of all these recent event titles? Are you excited or exhausted by the prospect of the Marvel Universe being engulfed by a universe spanning storyline? Let us know in the comments below.
The schedule for the final slate of WWE televised shows for this year has been released. The December 8th edition of Monday Night Raw, featuring the 2014 Slammy Awards, will also see the return of the WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Brock Lesnar. In my humble opinion, there is no excuse for the top guy in the company to be off of television for as long as he is.
There are many people who are fans of Brock having the strap and I will concede that it was a needed change of pace as the title picture has grown stale ever since Daniel Bryan abdicated the championship due to an injury. But, and this is coming from a HUGE fan of Lesnar’s, this title run just isn’t working.
People look to Lesnar’s sound annihilation of John Cena two months ago at SummerSlam as proof point that the audience was behind the uber heel, Lesnar. But that pop was only due to the enormous anti-Cena sentiment. I am the furthest thing from a fan of babyface Cena, but a squash match at the main event of one of the four biggest pay-per-views of the year, where the top draw of your company is the one getting squashed, is the definition of blundering as far as booking is concerned.
The problem is compounded when you factor in the issue of scheduling. Lesnar’s contract, which he signed in 2012, was a part-time contract with only a limited number of appearances per year. This is not a huge problem, as others in the past such as Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels and even the Undertaker, have performed a limited number of shows per year. But their age, injuries and other personal factors went into them negotiating those contracts. Brock has seemingly recovered from the illness that sidelined him from competing in UFC. When you are carrying the championship, all major storylines begin and end with you. Much like Hulk Hogan’s title reigns in the 1980s, Brock’s limited number of appearances hampers storyline potential and almost makes it feel like the title is vacated. 2014 Money in the Bank winner Seth Rollins might not ever get another opportunity to cash in the precious contents of his briefcase until Brock loses the belt.
If the WWE actually made their other championships more significant and had maybe a best of seven series for the Intercontinental Championship, or a ladder match for the Tag Team Championships, the hole in the World Title picture wouldn’t seem so blatantly obvious. But these would only be minor fixes. Brock’s contract expires shortly after Wrestlemania XXXI next year. There has been no word of any negotiating going on. WWE was smart to cater to some of Lesnar’s demands as he is a huge draw and there’s no denying that. Let’s hope that if they do decide to re-up Lesnar’s contract, that World Wrestling Entertainment utilizes him in a more effective manner.
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With All Hallow’s Eve right around the corner, Vince turns his ghoulish gaze towards what the best recipe for a truly terrifying movie monster is. The answer: a pinch of the unknown, a dash of expectation violation, and just a smidge of evolutionary psychology.
A conversation that always seems to crop up around this time of year surrounds the question of what makes something scary. A good portion of the time, it boils down to a creator somehow condensing our inherent fear of the unknown (and of helplessness) into a singular expression. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt whether this General Theory of Fear is sufficient to explain the effectiveness of the best movie monster designs. The exception to this might be Cthulhu, but even so, it’s arguable that the Lovecraftian creation draws his power from that same abstract, conceptual fear than from his actual appearance.
Take away the fact that this is a being whose immensity is impossible to comprehend, and whose very existence breaks the minds of those who witness him, and he just becomes a guy with an octopus for a head and bat wings.
Not exactly bone-chilling.
So the question remains: when it comes to those creatures who populate the phylogenetic category labeled “nightmare fuel”, what is it about the way they look that causes such a reaction within us? The fact is, with so much of society’s creature comforts softening the blow of many sources of fear, in order to scare us creature creators must appeal to something much more primal and basic within us.
The Thing That Shouldn’t Be: Evolution and Horror
One of my favorite writers on the topic of psychology is Steven Pinker. A cognitive neuroscience researcher from Stanford, he’s most well-known for his books on the history of human cognition; in particular his book The Blank Slate.
It was there that Pinker contended that humans come into this world anything but blank; instead equipped with a variety of basic survival subroutines that allow us to do things like automatically recognize relevant stimuli in the environment (such as threats or food) and act accordingly without having to waste precious time and calories on conscious reasoning.
A lot of these subroutines (also called schemas) are based off of categorization of objects into groups we can recognize by signature characteristics. We see a creature with feathers, we automatically assume it’s a bird, for example. It’s not a perfect system by any stretch, as any parent will attest to who has had to tell their child not to run up to the ‘big doggy’ (see: horse) and pet it. However, in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA for short), erring in the direction of assuming that is in fact a tiger behind that shrub carries with it much less severe consequences (some acute stress, discomfort) than incorrectly concluding that it wasn’t.
“Aww, what a pretty set of drape-OH DEAR GOD WHY”
As a result, schemas and expectations following the form of, for example, “this is what a predator looks like”, have survived the evolutionary line because of their usefulness in evading predators and recognizing prey. We expect things like bilateral symmetry, and “know” (see: recognize) what a four-legged animal should move like, and very interesting things start to happen when you violate those expectations.
Let’s say for example that you’re walking in a crowd. Everyone has their own idiosyncrasies in their gait, but on average, people’s movement patterns fall enough into the box of “this is how a human moves” that they barely even register in consciousness. However, if someone’s gait is significantly abnormal (in the strictly statistical sense), such as if they have a bad limp, they’re stumbling drunk, or have a disorder such a muscular dystrophy, they stand out. You notice.
Our perceptual systems have no concept of political correctness, so the hindbrain that first encounters this unusual stimuli starts setting off alarms that “this doesn’t look right. Something’s up.” Typically, this is when our frontal lobes chime, giving us the context to the situation in order to make sense of unusual perceptual stimuli (“Oh, I recognize that. That’s MS. That’s why that person is walking so strangely”).
Now for the fun bit. This is footage of a man walking with muscular dystrophy:
That’s the kind of unusual gait that would stand out, were you to see it in public. Now look at this footage of the famous “Nurses” from Silent Hill: Homecoming
Pretty similar, right? The trick with making that shambling gate into something scary is partially by taking advantage of that violation of expectation. We see an unusual walk, and so we look for an explanation as to why. However, if a piece of disparate information is given to us in setting where nothing ELSE makes fucking sense EITHER like say Silent Hill, it creates this negative feedback loop of fear while our brain frantically scrambles to understand what it’s seeing, and finding no answer, edges closer and closer to full-blown fight-or-flight panic mode.
The assumptions about movement and appearance only make sense because they follow a certain set of “rules” about the world. Part of the reason setting is so important in horror is that it establishes that this is a world that does not follow the same rules as the one we inhabit, introducing that ever-important element of the unknown I mentioned earlier. Placed within scenarios like this (which perpetually keep our sense of reason off-balance), the unsettling effect of something that looks “wrong” gets amplified. Amplify it enough with a combination of tension, timing, and pay-off, and the result is terror.
The Hall of Fame
I think the best way to illustrate this effect is with a couple examples from (in my opinion) some of the best in horror. First, the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth.
THIS asshole.
On a practical level, there’s little to fear about him. He’s slow, he’s awkward, he doesn’t exactly look strong, and he has to choose between whether to reach for something or maintain depth perception. Despite this, it’s that same awkward, shambling gait (combined with eyes being where they shouldn’t) that sets of alarms in our brains about how biologically wrong this thing is, and by any natural law we know of, should not exist.
But the Pale Man’s power to inflict terror is partially tied to the context he is encountered in. Much like Silent Hill, the banquet hall where Ofelia encounters him is one governed by rules different than the ones that govern our world. Combine this with the fact that the movie is filmed from the perspective of a child, and that this is an enclosed space (the Pale Man would seem much less deadly in an open field), it helps to solidify that feedback loop that sends us spiraling into fright.
The best example of violating biological expectation to generate scares (in my opinion) is John Carpenter’s The Thing; a creature so iconic because it holds no specific, singular appearance. Furthermore, when the shapeshifting horror does take on a specific incarnation, Carpenter seems to take sadistic glee in wreaking havoc on our assumptions of how bodies are “supposed” to be built and function.
Whether it’s blooming tentacle dogs…
eye stalk head crabs…
or guillotine jawed rib cages…
…The Thing is so scary precisely because it gives exactly zero fucks about what body parts go where. The consequence of this is that the viewer has no idea what to expect from it from one scene to another, readily putting them in the same position as the characters in the film. In essence, this lack of knowledge turns the Thing into a living embodiment of the unknown that we find so chilling.
In a world where halogen lamps and gated communities have sequestered the dark we fear to the periphery of our lives, it’s techniques like these that play off of our most primal instincts. They remind us that no matter how diminutive the unknown is in our daily lives, it’s still there, lurking just out of the corner of our eyes; a reminder our mammalian hindbrains would happily do without.
After all. how can you prepare yourself for something that isn’t possible?
Vince Smith is a writer, podcast host, and dyed-in-the-wool geek of all trades. You can check out other articles and videos by him over at The Rogues’ Gallery, or drop by his Facebook Page, Vincent Smith: Writer, Scholar, Gentleman for other musings from the catacombs of the Internet.
-Written by Vincent Mendoza
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eye stalk head crabs…
or guillotine jawed rib cages…
…The Thing is so scary precisely because it gives exactly zero fucks about what body parts go where. The consequence of this is that the viewer has no idea what to expect from it from one scene to another, readily putting them in the same position as the characters in the film. In essence, this lack of knowledge turns the Thing into a living embodiment of the unknown that we find so chilling.