And a Gruesome Death It Was...

The Halloween season always helps us focus upon our interests of the macabre, the ghoulish and the grisly.

I know that I will spend a good portion of the season watching quite a few horror movies in which hapless victims meet their demise in what is usually quite a gory, blood filled state. The more movies I watch, the more I am starting to realize that Hollywood is running out of original ideas on how to kill off their characters. There's only so many buckets of fake blood, or even computer generated blood, that can be utilized that can still impress. In fact, you really don't need a lot of blood for a good old fashioned movie demise these days.

One film studio that has always delivered when it has come to dramatic deaths of their characters is the House of Mouse. Throughout the years Disney has dished out some nasty amounts of karmatic comeuppance for its villains of its animated, family friendly films.

After doing a little research on this subject, I've come across this video compilation posted by a YouTuber who obviously had the same thoughts of the darkness in Disney as I did.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a collection of Disney villains meeting an abrupt, and many times brutal ending.

There. Wasn't that just darkly scrumptious? We had some stabbing, some impaling, being dragged to hell, a hanging and quite a few falling to death from a great height.

Retake another gander at the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs falling to her death. Not only is it insinuated that the huge rock she is trying to dislodge falls down on top of her, it is also implied at that two hungry vultures descend down to the body to peck away at what is left of the old gal. How wonderfully morose. A lot of those princesses that little girls worship certainly earned their crowns off of the blood of others. Justly so, I suppose.

Let's leave these despicable masterminds to the abandonment of their mortal coils and do something a little more Halloween themed. I think another trip to a haunted attraction is just what the mad doctor ordered.

This time we're going to visit a wonderful little location near Atlanta called The Netherworld. This is from their walk through from 2009.

I love it when a haunt has a pre-show and a bit of a storyline as well.

I've got to get going as I'm going over to my sister's place to help put up Halloween decorations with the help of my my niece, "Lil' G". So that will be it for now. But keep you eyes open here for more Halloween themed posts!

I'm outta here like a Disney villain.

Zangz.

The Season of the Sinister Approaches!

I can't hold it in any longer!  My love for the Halloween season is just oozing out of all of my orifices.  It's getting quite messy and I'm all out of Resolve rug cleaner.  So I had to do something about it here on my blog!   

I know we are over a month away from the actual date, but as I have always believed, Halloween is far more than just one date on a calendar.  It is a whole season of dark magic the flows through the cold air.  All of the tell tale signs are about and in alignment.  We have all sorts of Pumpkin Ales and Octoberfest Lagers hitting the beer shelves.  Halloween costume and prop shops are popping up all over the place.  The local Haunted Attractions are putting together their final touches to their dark walkthroughs.  The night air is cold with mysterious energies from beyond.    IT IS TIME!

Of course I changed up the theme of the blog for the Halloween season as I have in past years.  You'll also notice a few more small esthetic changes, such as the font of the blog being bigger.  The small type was starting to get to me in my old age, so I made it bigger for easier reading.

Now on to more ghoulish delights.  Lets go full throttle into one of my all time favorite past times of the Halloween season, which would be Haunted Attractions!  I used to visit anywhere from four to eight of them a year and do reviews on them.  As time passes, people get married, have families and get mega-busy.  These days, I'm lucky if I can drag friends to one a year.  This is why I've started virtually visiting them on YouTube.  It may sound lame and sad, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  A Haunt junkie has gotta do what he's gotta do.  I need my Haunt fix and I'll get it anyway I can.

So, during this season of Halloween, I'd like to take you on a few virtual haunt walkthroughs of famous haunts all around the nation through the magic of YouTube.

The first one we'll be traversing through was located at the California theme park, Knottsberry Farm (aptly retitled, Knotts Scary Farms during the Halloween season).  The maze is called, VIRUS Z and was run in 2011.  It is 1950's kitsch meets zombie apocalypse.  ENTER IF YOU DARE!!!!

Now that was a heck of a lot of fun, wasn't it.  There isn't anything more nostalgic than fleeing zombies through a town of the 1950's.  It's kind of an alternate history walkthrough.  Pretty cool!

Since it's still early in the evening and we're already at Knotts Scary Farm, lets visit another haunted maze they have here.  This one is based on a twisted doll factory where the ghouls within make their lifelike dolls with very special parts.  Bruhahahaha!  Let's visit THE DOLL FACTORY!

How'd you like those freaky, doll faced factory workers?  Pretty creepy.  They also had some pretty interesting furniture in that one room.  I wonder if you can get them at Ikea?  The background music is wonderfully creepy as well.  Sadly, last year was the closing year for this attraction.  It will be replaced with something new this year.

Both of these video come from the YouTube channel, Theme Park Adventures, a website that features dark attractions at amusement parks.

Well, kiddos, that it for today.  Each of my blogs during Halloween will feature a different haunted Attraction walkthrough or featurette.  So you have that to look forward to.

Until next time, take this friendly advise.  Always check under the bed and in the bedroom closet before you go to sleep at night.  That way you can rule out those two locations for the undead when the inexplicable banging  starts up in the middle of the night.

Bruahahahahah!

zangz.

The Death of G4: Is this the beginning of the backlash?

We've been blessed to experience the renaissance of geek culture expand and blow up, integrating itself firmly into the progressiveness of what is considered pop culture.

I hate using the word "normal", because it is very limiting in its own definition when describing what the geek community is about.  Instead I'll say we've finally achieved some sort of place and comfort zone within the world.

One such cable channel that caters to that place within the world is G4.  The channel rose to fame within geek culture when it featured many special interest shows on technology and video games.  They spoke to gamers and geeks, not at them.

As years past by, their programming decisions became more and more idiotic and started to ostracize the G4 fans.  What programing guru decided to cancel a number of G4's shows and put in their place non-stop episodes of COPS?

And just recently there were a couple mysterious exits from two of G4's most popular hosts, Adam Sessler and Kevin Pereira.

Without much surprise NBC, who owns G4, announced a week ago that they are intentionally doing away with the only two shows that have anything left to do with geek interests and are "re-branding" for more of a D-bag crowd (or as they put it, readers of GQ).

Read an article on the subject HERE.

This comes as no surprise for anyone who witnessed the decline and downfall of what was once a pretty cool outlet for the geek community.  Their own stupid decisions throughout the years have lead to this.

I don't mean to turn this post into a eulogy for G4.  G4 has been brain dead for years.  What I am wondering is if this a harbinger of a backlash to the Geek / Nerd subculture that has been growing and moving forward for the last decade.

Trends come and go, and some seemingly wear out their welcome.  If you over publicize any one trend for too long, there tends to be a backlash against it.  Take for example the Heavy Metal scene of the 80's.  Sure Heavy Metal is still  going strong, but it is nowhere as popular as it once was back in the day.

Once the Grunge bands started to infiltrate the heavy music scene, there became a period where Heavy Metal had to retreat back underground.  I worry that the same may happen to geek culture.

After all, it is the elitist powers that control corporate America.  It is the frat boys and sorority girls (or "cool kids") that run the companies that turn the gears of America.  How many of them are going to understand or care about the geek culture and our importance within the consumer economy?

Just another dark thought that has been tooling around in my mind-skull for the last few days and I thought I'd share this little depressing morsel with the rest of you to ponder on about.


Speaking of DARK, you'll be seeing the changes of the annual Halloween make-over of my blog by the next post, because I can contain my excitement for the macabre holiday no longer!

Until next time, watch you back, because that shadow you thought you saw moving at night out of the corner of your eye was probably something undead and just waiting for you to fall asleep tonight so that it may pounce!

Zangz.

An AMAZING short film you all need to see!

This morning I awoke to that wonderful chill in the air that gets the creative juices squirting around in my mind.

It's a tell tale sign that my sinisterly spooky favorite time of year is just around the corner! I'm actually going to be starting to do Halloweenesqe activities later this evening when I take a Gothic Ghost Tour of the downtown area of Milwaukee.

I'll let you know how it goes once this blog ramps up it's annual celebration of Halloween in the coming weeks.

But, for right now I want to direct your attention to a magnificent little treat that someone drew my attention to recently.  It will take a mere 34 minutes of time to view this wonderful piece of work, but it will be well worth it.

The genre of Steampunk is a mashing up of an alternate history with fantasy and Sci-Fi thrown into the mix.  It revolves around a historical world that usually focuses on Victorian times where the machinations of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne actually exist and work.  Rather than progressing on into a full blown electrical future, society has advanced on the power of steam.  Usually there's great pulp adventure waiting to be had in the stories of Steampunk.

With the rise of the internet in our own time, we can go on-line and see fan made films as well as smaller independent movies that are available for mass consumption without being bogged down or stiffed by the corporate monsters that movie companies and the media can be.  Some people in Australia took advantage of this and came up with the little wonder you are hopefully going to take time to view.

 I could jibber jab on and on about this short film, but I think I'll just let you view it and soak it in.  I present to you, Aurora - A Steampunk Short Film....

Fan-fracking-tastic, wasn't it!  This is what you get when you have people with a creative and imaginative vision, who may not have the money that Hollywood does, but have the dream to make something happen.

Bravo.

I'll have a few more posts with other excellent fan films coming up on later dates.  We also have to look forward to the Halloween make over this blog usually gets during the Season of Screams!

So keep your eyes out for that.  And until next time, as a very wise sage once told me, Stay Vertical!

Zangz.