Nerd Girl of the Week - Alison Haislip

Another feature for this silly blog of mine that I'd like to make regular is Nerd Girl of the Week, where I take a look at a woman who is not only super attractive, but is also a nerd. For the first entry, I need look no further than G4 correspondent Alison Haislip.



The lovely Miss Haislip appears on the infinitely entertaining Attack of the Show, doling out geek news on The Feed and giving field reports on various awesome things. Nothing against regular co-host Olivia Munn, but I secretly hope for days when she is out sick so we get a whole episode's worth of Alison.

HERE are some EXAMPLES of Alison in ACTION

Whether bantering with Kevin Pereira, testing her mettle on a ninja obstacle course, or just informing the greater populous about the latest iPhone app, Alison shows she's more than a pretty face; She's a pretty face with a brain to match.

Thank you, Alison Haislip, for your contribution to nerdkind. I'd like to date you.

You're welcome.
-Kanderson

Wither Monsters?

About a year ago I went through a phase of watching all of the Hammer horror films from the late-1950s until the mid-1970s. They're a bit campy and melodramatic, but the environments are lush, the bosoms heaving, and the gore technicolor. Hammer Studios out of England made stars out of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing who collectively starred in 85% of the studio's output. Hammer began doing remakes of the Universal Classic monster movies and expanded to doing a brand of horror all their own, and even a little sci-fi. Between 1957 and 1974, they turned out 9 Dracula movies, 7 Frankenstein movies, and 4 Mummy movies. They also dallied with werewolves, zombies, phantoms, ghosts, and more vampires than you can shake a fairly large stick at. Hammer films represented Gothic horror at its most theatrical and were hugely successful for their time. A fair amount of the films they made were less than stellar, I'm looking at you "Satanic Rites of Dracula," but for all the stinkers, they made monster movies in the classic sense of the word.

The reason I bring up Hammer and their House of Horror is that for some time now I've begun to lament the dearth of acceptable monster movies produced in recent years. It seems to me like all of the classic monsters have been picked apart, dissected, analyzed, and cauterized until they aren't scary anymore. The post-modern horror movement has made forays into modern horror very passe. Most of the classics have been done to death and if one tries to revitalize it, it ceases to be classic. Yet, I ask: Can there be a truly original yet classic horror monster in this day and age? Let's run down the ol' favorites to see if they can be made relevant again.

Vampires. Vampires are dead. Well, yes, I know the creatures themselves are dead, specifically undead, but the monster as an entity in popular literature is dead, which is a shame. Vampires and their historical context could make for fascinating films forever. However, since the bloodsuckers got turned into tortured, brooding, lovelorn pansies, they have lost all their mystique. We've gone too far into the mind of the vampire and given him too much pathos. What makes Dracula such an interesting character is that he is despicable and yet still alluring. Vampires are now just sissies who happen to need to drink blood. Anne Rice is partly to blame, but I'm going to lay most of it on the Goddamned Twilight franchise. Vampires will no longer be scary until they can shake off the tween image and stop shimmering or sparkling or whatever the hell they do in those stupid books.

Frankenstein. Frankenstein is a very specific story, about a brilliant but arrogant scientist who thinks he's better than God and attempts to create life on his own. There is very little else to be done without it just being a rehash, so lets break it into its two base elements: the mad scientist and the man-made monster. Mad scientists have been around since science was first borne. There have always been those who sought to use science for nefarious purposes. Science is where it becomes difficult to use them in this day and age. As technology and medicine advance, so too would the mad scientists' aspirations. It's conceivable in today's world, but his evil plan would have to be pretty monumental and then it might run the risk of being silly. The man-made monster angle has been relegated to victims of nuclear fallout or chemical warfare. Usually now they're the product of an unseen group and not a particular person. For them to work in this day and age, it surely would involve some genetic test gone awry.

Mummies. There wasn't really much hope of making these monsters viable again, but after the increasingly crappy Brendan Fraser vehicles. After destroying Egyptian mummies and tainting Chinese terracotta army, the only ones left to ruin are Inca mummies from Peru and Chile. And lets face it, there are only so many ancient curses that can be unleashed upon unsuspecting adventurers.

Zombies. I love zombie movies. In many ways they're the punk rock monster, less a character than a force. They began as mindless drones controlled by voodoo, then in the late 1960s, thanks to George A. Romero, they became a unstoppable horde of flesh-eating corpses that represented a revolutionary society literally and figuratively devouring the old regime. Zombies lost their mojo in the 80s and 90s until "28 Days Later" revitalized the genre. Now, unfortunately, zombies are played out. The 2000s saw a barrage of Romero impostors and re-hashers, to the point where it seems every fourth horror movie is at least partially based on zombies. And with movies like "Fido," the zombie has again lost its potency. Once you slow dance with a zombie, it ceases to be scary. While the thought of a zombie apocalypse is still haunting, there isn't much more that can be done cinematically with this particular breed of shuffling ghoul.

Werewolves. Werewolves are the one classic monster I think could have a good turnaround. Since Universal's monster heyday, there've only been a handful of really good movies to discuss lycanthropy, the best in my opinion being 1981's "An American Werewolf in London," which achieved the rare distinction of being both funny and genuinely frightening. There, sadly, have been very few films in the cycle, and even fewer are worth watching. For instance, skip entirely any of "The Howling" films. The recently released remake of "The Wolfman," though I've heard good things from some people, remains a financial flop and a critical mess. Still, despite their connection to the "Twilight" realm, I think it's only a matter of time before a really good werewolf movie crops up again.

So out of four classic and one contemporary monster, only one is still a possibility for good, old school horror. That's a shame. I only hope one day, when the pigtails and acne cream set has gotten their fill of them, that these once noble figures of fear will regain their place as the Sultans of Scream. It might take a studio like Hammer to fully jump start their careers again, and that would definitely be a good thing.

Some Hammer films to check out:
Curse of Frankenstein (1957) dir. Terence Fisher
Horror of Dracula (1958) dir. Terence Fisher
The Mummy (1959) dir. Terence Fisher
The Brides of Dracula (1960) dir. Terence Fisher
Curse of the Werewolf (1961) dir. Terence Fisher
Paranoiac (1963) dir. Freddie Francis
Nightmare (1964) dir. Freddie Francis
Kiss of the Vampire (1964) dir. Don Sharp
Plague of the Zombies (1966) dir. John Gilling
Quatermass and the Pit (1967) dir. Roy Ward Baker
The Devil Rides Out (1968) dir. Terence Fisher
Scars of Dracula (1970) dir. Roy Ward Baker

You're welcome.
-Kanderson

Top 6: Pathetic Alien Threats

Today I decided to look at that time-tested movie trope of the alien invasion. Almost from the time we realized there was an outer space we've been dreaming about the life that might exist somewhere among the stars. And almost as immediately, we decided they were probably hostile and would kill us, the paranoid meat sacks that we are. However, some of these "threats" posed in popular fiction have been slightly less frightening than, say, a blender turned to frape. Whether too ridiculous, convoluted, or just plain timid, these are the alien invaders we could easily give a swirly to.


VI - WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953, 1988, 2005)
This one goes at the bottom (top) of the list because these aliens and their tripod spacecrafts actually do kill a great deal of people. It's the perfect plan: "Martians" attack us in order to use our planet as their own. They begin growing their vegetation and pretty much decimate the planet. The only problem, of course, is they couldn't get passed our first, best, and only line of defense... which is a germ. These sophisticated alien invaders must not have any immune system to speak of because they wither and die in a matter of minutes after catching some unnamed bacterial infection, leaving nothing but empty husks. When the novel was written by H.G. Wells in 1898, this was probably a viable answer to the problem. Now, on the other hand, it's kind of a cop out. I hope if the aliens do invade, they're this lame. I have a cold right now, let me cough on the fuckers.


V - THE BLOB (1958)
Similar situation as War of the Worlds, this little nugget features Steve McQueen as a teenage drag racer facing off against, well, the Blob. It's basically just that. An alien that is nothing more than an amorphous mass of red gelatin that engulfs whatever's in its path. It seems pretty horrible, until you find out that it can be easily stopped by a fire extinguisher. Apparently, the pressurized CO2 can render the entire thing useless and indeed freezes it utterly. Once it can't blob after anyone anymore, the military drops it in the middle of the arctic circle, which is great until the polar ice caps melt. So soon we're going to have to deal with global warming AND huge gooey alien things. Thanks again, military! If you get passed the silly horror, The Blob is actually a very thinly veiled warning against the growing Communist threat. A huge, seemingly unstoppable RED thing is sucking everything into itself and making good, honest Americans a part of its evil marauding. Not bad for 1958. All credibility does go out the door with the easier than necessary solution, and of course this hysterically out of place theme song.


IV - SIGNS
Here's a message to all you would-be alien invaders out there: If you're going to invade a planet and do the whole "gas them with your weird arm toxin" thing, maybe don't invade a planet made predominantly of the ONE THING THAT HARMS YOU!!! I do not dislike this movie, in fact as far as house/family under siege movies go, it's probably one of the best. M. Night Shamalamadingdong does a good job of keeping the aliens more frightening by only giving us small glimpses of them, like a foot in a corn field, or a hand under a door, but then the end of the movie comes up and the whole thing is ruined. Apparently, these aliens and their infinitely advanced cloaked spaceships and coded crop circles are harmed by good ol' H2O. Goddamned WATER brings about the death of these things. You know what planet has no water? Statistically, every other planet in the whole frigging universe. Pick one of them instead. Did you not do your homework at all? Way to fail so horrendously, aliens. I'm glad Joaquin Phoenix beat the tar out of you. You're stupid.


III - CRITTERS
The poster for this movie is a complete misrepresentation. If a group of things that looked like that invaded Earth, I would legitimately be afraid, but the critters are actually little, carnivorous balls of fur. It's like some Trekkies got high one night and said, "Dude, what if Tribbles could, like, eat you?" And his friend, undoubtedly said, "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude." That's the general conceit of this movie. But, we're lead to believe, these koosh balls with teeth are so dangerous that two shape-shifting alien bounty hunters need to be dispatched. Really, anyone with a nine iron should be able to take these things down. Or just, like, a ruler. I think it was really just an excuse to make a monster movie with hand puppets. I liked this movie the first time I saw it, when it was called "Gremlins."


II - INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
This is the saddest I've ever been in a movie theater, and I saw Spider-Man 3. A little piece of my childhood died in the summer of 2008 and went to join the part of me that used to like Star Wars. Apart from being just an all-around stupid movie, it also has the distinction of being the only Indiana Jones movie that proves that science is actually less believable than magic. Nazis seeking enlightenment from The Ark: Good movie. Commies seeking enlightenment from Mayan space aliens: Awful movie. The actual alien portions of this movie play like any other Aliens-Were-Always-Here flicks, and, sort of like Mission to Mars, don't make any sense. If the aliens were willing to give the ultimate knowledge in the universe to someone, why didn't they just go find that person instead of waiting for someone to find them? And then they have the audacity, nay, the balls to pass judgement on those that arrive? If I were Indiana Jones, I would have punched all of them in their weird, oblong crystal skulls.


I - PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
Let me see if I can understand this plan, known to the aliens as "Plan 9." Since the American government did not respond politely to your barrage of flying saucers, you will reanimate the corpses of the recently deceased to, what? Kill everyone? Terrible plan, right? Well, what you don't know is that the first eight plans from outer space were even worse. I happen to have access to the previous plans from these diabolical heathens and will share them with you now.

Plan 1 From Outer Space: Let loose a flock of angry sea turtles
Plan 2 From Outer Space: Throw lit matches at everyone
Plan 3 From Outer Space: Send a giant robot down to Earth and kick Brit Hume really hard in the shin
Plan 4 From Outer Space: Replace all the chocolate in the world with less-delicious chocolate substitute
Plan 5 From Outer Space: Miley Cyrus (this one actually worked)
Plan 6 From Outer Space: Act really aloof and sarcastic in hopes Earth won't know we secretly love it
Plan 7 From Outer Space: Tap everyone in the world on the shoulder and then run away
Plan 8 From Outer Space: Burrow deep into the Earth's crust and lie dormant for millions of years until such time as an expedition makes its way toward the core of the planet and then step out and tell them we're happy to take their literature but we're just not very religious

This is that movie Edward D. Wood, Jr is most known for, and with good reason. It makes no sense. Widely regarded as the worst movie ever made, though I would personally give that dubious honor to "Manos: The Hands of Fate," "Plan 9 From Outer Space," is that rare kind of bad movie that is so unbelievably atrocious that it has actually become entertaining. Made for about $.35, it shows that anyone can make a movie as long as they throw some zombies and flying saucers in there.

And there you have it. Aliens pose no threat.

You're welcome
-Kanderson