Category: Horror

Steve Niles’ Photo Blog

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Steve Niles at one time had a photo blog where he shared photos from his collection.  Some were behind-the-scenes pictures like the one above of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, still in costume, on a break from filming the original Star Trek tv series to check out the latest issue of Mad magazine.

Here’s Frankenstein taking a little “me time” for a smoke and a cup of joe.

And here we have one of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.  If you’ve read this far, my guess is you’ll dig Steve’s photos.

 

Moon Return: Forms, Zombies and Memories

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Did you know that when the first men to land on the moon returned to Earth that they completed a report for customs?  That’s right, NASA astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins completed a customs form upon their return.   A spokesman for NASA has confirmed the authenticity of the document and you can see a full-moonsized version at Space.com.

I was ten years old when we first landed on the moon.  I can remember watching black and white images beamed to us from 240,000 miles away as all of the adults in the room and Walter Cronkite on the tube got giddy.  It was is pretty cool stuff.

We were on the moon!  How long w0uld it be until we had flying cars like Nick Fury?  How long until astronauts were going to Mars and beyond? Perhaps even  a five year mission to go where no man had gone before was in order.

But getting back to the custom’s report, I never knew about it before a few days ago.  I do remember that when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to Earth that they had to wear special biological containment suits and  were kept in quarantine for three weeks to be sure that they didn’t bring back a virus or germ that could start a zombie-apocalypse.

Ok.  I made up the zombie-apocalypse part, but the astronauts were kept in quarantine and did have to wear the biological containment suits.  Even at ten years old, I remember thinking that the end of the human race would be like a cool episode of The Twilight Zone if the astronauts accidentally brought  back a virus or germ that killed us all.

Think about it, our greatest human triumph leads to our extinction.  Now that would be a cool episode for The Twilight Zone,  except it really wouldn’t be so cool in real life, would it?

 

Wrecked and Buried

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The last two movies I watched made for an interesting double feature. Both start out with the star waking up in a dangerous situation not fully aware of how things came to be. They then spend the remainder of the movies, on their own, trying to figure out how they can save themselves.

First up was Wrecked starring Adrian Brody. Brody wakes up in the passenger seat of a wrecked car precariously perched midway down a steep incline in rugged territory. There’s another passenger in the back seat who is dead. The driver, who was thrown from the car, is also dead. Although Brody is badly injured, he’s still alive. Whether he’ll remain that way will depend on his ability to free himself from the wreckage and then make his way up or down the ravine. Neither looks like a good choice. Brody will also have to deal with the weather, wild animals, and a wilderness man who wants the bags of money in the wrecked car’s trunk.

Buried begins when Ryan Reynolds wakes up to find himself buried in a wooden coffin. He slowly pieces together that he’s been placed there because he’s an American trucker in Iran, and his kidnappers hope to get 5 million dollars ransom for his safe return. The entire movie stays with Reynolds as he attempts to figure a way out with just a lighter, a flashlight, a pencil and a cell phone. But don’t think that this is going to be an uplifting movie about a rugged individual who finds a way to overcome with the simple things around him. Far from it. The movie is claustrophobic and relentlessly tense.

Wrecked rates a C
Buried rates a B