Mutants
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
Well, I just paused the movie to write this quick bit. It’s been half the movie- literally, and the only zombie so far has looked like Steve-O in his addiction days, especially so due to the maniacal mastication of some sugar-cane, or maybe it was bamboo, or some variety of rush… It doesn’t matter, ‘cause the bad guy Sikes shot the zombie’s head off after about 12 seconds. So… I can tell you I’ve wasted 42 minutes of my life so far on this. I’ll get back to you in another 42 minutes. It’s been that same waste of time and here’s the deal. The bad sugar company leaders want to make their sugar more addictive, and even though it causes people to get orange blisters all over them, bleed randomly, and run gnashing through the sugar cane, they still somehow shipped 7100 tons of it out already, and now 6 soldiers in black t-shirts are going to clean up the mess. Yes. This bullshit is really structured around the narrative of bad people want to make sugar more addictive, and good people take a moral stand against the big corporate bullies and team up to make a difference. Think about if Miami Vice had a not-picked-up spin-off about their inbred redneck cousins, and this pilot accidently mated with some Scooby Doo rejected bullshit off the cutting room floor… Feed the in utero a steady diet of Thalidomide, birth the sucker and move him on to lead paint chips… with extra-addictive sugar. And then consider- do you want to spend an hour and a half with THAT? No? Can’t say that I blame you. Like those fucking horrible fake Russians.
Note. There is exactly one saving grace to this entire debacle. Weaving the whole Cinderella theme through it- not the fairy tail, but the hair metal band? Operation “Nobody’s Fool”?? I love it.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Some girl named Hanna runs around some barrels being chased by bad guys
- A bald capitalist and his pet faux-Russian chortle about how evil they are
- Henchman Sikes spends far too much time stalking, harassing, and menacing the bird-lady.
- Henchman Sikes turns out to be Cinderella and actually a good guy and there’s a missing brother
- Some really Tubby Guy that reminds me of Troy Duffy shows up and starts killing people.
- Bad CGI, bad talking, bad sugar. Sugar bad, M’kay?
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Just like coocoo for Coco-puffs is a thing, now we’ve got crazy for sugar cane. As such, we no longer call them zombies. Now they identify as “Sugar Junkies”. Not to be trite, but that’d be a good thrash band name. But this is really the extent that this is a zombie movie. At the end, there’s some zombies attacking people, but that’s only because there was no sugar-cane present. These are fast, bloody zombies with pustules and blisters and shit that looks like a splash of Tabasco Sauce for the wound. The zombies here are just a fucking afterthought to some long, deep dive off the deep end into left field Flat Earth type bullshit about the addictive properties of sugar.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Galvanized sheet metal, since it’s what most of the sets are made out of. I think the rest of the money was misappropriated as part of some skimming or other accounting contortions. Lord knows they didn’t put it into the movie. I swear that half the scenes were shot on random vacant lots because the set description in the script was a mere “Near a gate” or “there’s a truck.” However, they spent good money on a set or two of “fake blisters”. That’s how we knew that someone had become infected. They suddenly had blisters on them. Orangeish blisters. Woooo.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
I have to give it to the good old length of metal pipe. At one point, I assume they ran out of money for special effects, because they shot 15 minutes of the good guys beating the shit out of the bad guys with metal pipes. And it was all done in the near-compete darkness of a deserted factory, so we really just had to take their word and the repeated “THWACK” sounds to know action was happening. But boy, howdy, was it ever! And they was using thems metal pipes to lay down some sugar-beet-sucking smack-down, that’s right there is!”
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
No. You can get some fucking Russian bullshit in your ear. I’m re-appropriating this section to write about how horrible the Russian scientist actor was. I made fun of bird lady, but she can’t help the way she looks and the fact that make-up hated her. You could have not been so soft with the women’s beard and the chin-line sagging two inches below where the hair ends. You spoke like Boris and Natasha in the old cartoons… you’re a cliché of pathetic-ness. Your accent sucked and you humiliated everyone associated with every scene you were in. You’re the weakest link.
That was new!
That was new!
Trying to make a movie about zombies who are addicted to sugar. That’s fucking new. But how’s this for a cat glitch? I watched a documentary about weed getting chemicals added to it; meth-like chemicals… and then I watch a movie about sugar, which is arguable more addictive than marijuana – Oh! Tiburon! That was the street name of the chemically enhanced weed! So, in real life, we got this Tiburon shit, which is weed sprayed with cheap-ass liquid meth, and then in the movie we have a sugar company conspiring to make their sugar more addictive… (drops mic, drops cat. Cat lands, startled by the sound of the mic hitting the floor, and runs off to squeeze itself under the sofa.)
Review Notes
Review Notes
This is really fancy. Watching this on my wife’s new computer in ultraHD or something. Coulndn’t get the Chromebook running.
Uh… Some kind of briefing. Operation Stalker.
Badguy Baldhead. Ironside.
Targets? We don’t need no stinking targets.
Gage? Shadowrock?
Period.
Lots of falling diamonds or ice or whatever.
“What’s the connection between a biochemist, an elite mercenary group, and a sugarcane mill?” Doesn’t this sound like one of those “Three guys walk into a bar…” jokes?
Oh, I get it. It’s one of those “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind…” type things.
Hanna. Something to do with…
A girl? Running from ATVs?
Around a bunch of barrels?
Is she a zombie?
Pretty nimble if so.
The bad guys are making Darth Vader sounds. They’re THAT bad.
Hanna, you really shouldn’t have answered.
Eww. Gross. And… Oh.
Well then. Fire. Lots of fire.
“This night doesn’t exist.” I think that’s called denial.
Bubba.
Is she a bird?
Bubba is a generous…
She’s cooking and… Stealing cigarettes?
Is that her dad or…
Umm… something about a new formula.
“Imagine… making sugar more addictive than… cocaine and caffeine combined.” They did. Actually designed and built the fucking stuff, too. It’s called Meth.
AHHHH!! HORRIBLE RUSSIAN ACCENT!! HORRIBLE BEARD!!
Even his co-actors are uncomfortable with this klutz.
Yes, we KNOW it’s more addictive.
Ah! IS that our narrator?
Erin. That’s the bird-lady.
And… now we a missing people’s poster, a flashback, a hooker?
“I thought you was gonna make us famous.” No, Anna Nicole Smith, you already got that covered. Somewhat.
Runaway junkies… in the slums.
Dart gun?
Horrible lingo.
A flash-back in the flashback?
Featuring the same Russian actor…
Gulag.
If he was BORN in the US, why does he have such a horrible accent?
This story… makes very little sense.
Fuck, I have no idea what part of this flashback we’re in.
The effects of this movie are like, fuzzy and green.
She’s a Crip!
It’s a big chase scene. A BIG one.
And… that’s done.
Everything is not fine, you liar, Ryan!!
We get it. You’re evil.
Erin’s brother got grabbed?
So she’s in Baton Rouge?
Oh! He’s the breakthrough! To making Sugar more addictive!
Are these people zombies? Or just horrible actors?
Oh! A plan!
You can only make so much of your set out of sheets of galvanized steel before it become obvious that’s all you got.
“I keep everybody away.”
“Deadline. It’s a funny word.”
Sikes… wastes apples.
HA!! Boss says “Have them hold their positions.” Guy radios “Ok everyone, flush him out.” That’s not holding your position. This script is garbage.
Ok… we got some sort of zombie lurching around and chewing on sugar-cane. Yeah. Sugar-cane.
Oh. Well, that was a good headshot.
Who is this guy?
Who is that guy?
Ok… a message from Cinderella?
A self-deleting email. That… doesn’t print for a bit?
What the fuck?
The old abandoned mill? Is this a Scooby Doo mystery?
A battle of the can’t acts…
“Anyway.”
She’s just taking that fax home. You know.
In her Freddy Krugar shirt.
What the fuck is this guy talking about?
“It’s good to be scared.”
I thought this was the narrator?
Not only is this confusing, but the only zombie so far has been into sugar-cane.
And now another car chase of mystery? Is this the Stalking?
Oh! He’s self-destructive!
Now she’s home.
Oh. That IS her dad. You two look the same age.
This is some pathetic soap opera shit.
Somehow she lost her mother, brother, and father? What, was there a car accident or something?
I’m so fucking confused.
A bribe and an apple.
I’m still confused.
Just Ritz. Is that a golf course?
Are you filming in abandoned lots?
Former Navy Seal? Where the fuck are they coming up with this shit?
“Shadow Rock” Someone sat around jerking off and making up dangerous sounding names for shit.
Back to corpse burning. Lots of them.
“You can’t party every night.”
“I wish.”
“You’re lying.”
Yeah. This is what they have the characters saying to each other to drive the plot.
“Where gas was a dollar and 30 minute guitar solos and power-ballads??” What, or rather, WHEN the fuck is this guy talking about?
“Most men are cowards. That’s a safe bet. If I were a betting man.” Oh, such devilish prose!!
Sikes is a wiked jerk.
Oh! Another mysterious email-fax-thingy!
Cinderella!
It’s funny that earlier I was ranting about E-waste and they managed to make an entire movie about it.
Wow! Racoons are fighting outside! Or cats? Or is that just the fan?
Lady, how old are you supposed to be?
And what is all this Cinderella shit?
He’s drinking Maple Syrup and contemplating suicide. That 1911 will do it!
The dad is in such self-destructive shape that his glasses are broken.
Back to something about the sugar-cane mill.
So he grabs his gun and they’re on the road.
2 minutes of driving and parking.
I know, right? Shut up!
There’s red lights everywhere in the grass? What the fuck is going on?
What does this man have against buttons?
Oh! A tour! The test lab! In due time! I give zero shits!
HA!! The dad is in different clothes now? What the fuck is going on? Who edited this shit?
And… your plan is to lock yourselves in a truck? Fucking idiots.
Who is that guy? Why do you need 26 pictures of Andy Samberg?
Face, meet foot.
This fucking Russian is horrible.
So, the virus is growing and eating the host.
We heard that. Eating host.
Ravaging host.
“We shipped out over 7100 tons yesterday.” Each ton is 2000 lbs. So… 7100×2000=14,200,000 14 million pounds. “Sugar has been consumed by human civilizations for thousands of years. Even with the inclusion of high fructose corn syrup products, sugar consumption remains high. Every year, the entire world consumes about 165 million tons of sugar. That’s a 23kg per capita average.”
Wait… we’re back to the original conversation. I have no idea what’s going on.
“You’ve got to wipe everyone and everything out.” I agree.
“We may have caused Armageddon. We’re blown.”
HAA!! The Russian pulls a fucking Lugar-looking toy gun.
Oh! The throwing knife! Right in the neck! Dude, go get it!
221… oh, he’s not well.
Wait… Sikes… is Cinderella?
Phase 4 doesn’t look fun.
What the hell is that thing?
You NEVER both run into the cell. Fucking idiots.
209 is off the chain!
Alarms!
Screaming! Red lights?
“What has to occur for a manual lockdown to happen?”
“All hell has to break loose.”
“Aw, great.”
That kid is looking a gift-Sikes in the mouth.
“It’s a sugar junkie. The reject ward must be open.”
Wow, they can jump.
Why… did that zombie clutch it’s neck?
Nice flip thingy. One-handed Judo. Or whatever.
Good old metal pipe. Solves a lot of problems.
All the good guys are soaking up bullets.
And now all the investors are soaking up bullets.
Mice in the wall!
What… who the fuck is this guy?
Oh! The brother IS sick!
So, Sikes/Cinderella is going to blow the place up?
But… a SUV full of bad guys shows up…
And then leaves. This is fucking riveting stuff!
The set in the second half will primarily be blue plastic barrels.
Very insipid zombie shooting.
Ironside is walking like he has a load in his pants.
Who is this fat guy?
Oh! There’s double-cross afoot!
Fake blisters and Tobasco sauce.
Who gives a shit about who owes who? End this fucking scene.
Kick the bird woman.
“Because. I’m my father’s son.” I’m… I’m too bored to be enraged, but if I had more energy, boy I’d be shaking my fist and turning apoplectic.
What? Why is she kissing Sikes?
Yeah. You just filmed that in a vacant lot with only a truck for a prop.
This fat guy snuck up on 9 people?
Now… we’re fighting over Shadow-Rock?
Knife-fighting? And cheating?
Who is in the white van?
Samsung?
“Protocol Nobody’s Fool”. Ok. I can appreciate that. I like that.
Oh, that was some BAD CGI…
This guy is intent on being corrupt and evil. Like Chicago politics.
Oh! A zombie got him! Poetic justice!
And… they walk off into the night.
Seriously, she’s old enough to be your daughter.
Oh, yeah, that’s right, there’s this “through the computer” guy…
Closing with people consuming sugar. A song about sunshine… and an ER descending into zombie apocalypse.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
Tonight we find ourselves writing about bees. Not Cluster B’s, but buzz-buzz bees. The kind that my friend got as a tattoo, and when I asked him why, he really intently replied “Because they STING! SSSSSSSSsssss!!” Yes, he actually made the hissing sound at me. That’s what all those S’s are about.
But I find myself thinking about bees due to a news article I read earlier, where a woman was being evicted from a house. I’m fuzzy on details, but I think that while the deputies or whatever were trying to get into the house, she showed up in her car with a full trailer of bee hives and wearing a beekeeping suit.
I assume she was is a beekeeper, these things aren’t found in normal households. But while the deputies were trying to get into the house to begin removing her possessions, she began knocking over the beehives in order to create swarms off pissed off bees for the police to deal with.
The report went on to say that when the deputies were able to get into the house (after getting stung a lot) she followed them into the building while holding handfuls of ruined hive in order to entice more angry bees into the dwelling to further disrupt the eviction process. My first reaction is twofold, it’s both sides of the same reaction: “It’s not stupid if it works”, and “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”.
I think that there are a special breed of people, a recessive gene of us, who were put here effectively as agents of chaos, but more importantly, to give other people stories to tell in their lives. The world can’t all be couch potato(es), and those of us with the energy and inclination to run naked and screaming through the streets give the slower, more placid cows something to think about while they ponder their nightly cud.
I have ran naked through the streets. I can’t say that I don’t suggest it. I’m also not suggesting it, unless it was already on your agenda. For the record, it never actually was on my agenda either, but one thrown birthday beach beer later and you’re sprinting down the sands, overtaking couples out for a night stroll, and then you’re hiding in the shrubberies of a gated community a half mile from your apartment, wondering how the fuck you’re going to get home. And how to best barricade the door and disable all electronic devices once there.
I exist to give people stories. As a story teller, but also as a story myself, a catalyst for adventure and an advocate of the Woo-Hoo! that I see so many people ignoring in their lives. How do you go camping with a friend who tells you that they want to do the backpacking thing, but that their husband feels anxious at the thought of being that far away from his car? How the fuck does that compute? (It must, somehow, since he’s a Theoretical Mathematician who holds patents on the concept of ideas since he’s the only person smart enough to articulate them to the degree that they can be captured and written down.)
This translates into being a millionaire, somehow. It involves being smarter than everyone else working at the computer company. I sort of picture his division at corporate with a shrine to him and holy offerings and burnings occurring on a scheduled basis. Like, goats and cantaloupes and incense and burning prayer scrolls.
I have a food habit; every time I take a liquid out of the refrigerator, I shake it. Vigorously. Three times. Things settle. I used to drink tons of orange juice, and I like pulp, so if you want any pulp in any glass other than the last one, you shake your orange juice up every time you take it out of the refrigerator. My wife must have been in a bit of a rush this evening when she left for work. She made herself a coffee, but she neglected to put the top back on the milk.
I just shake-splashed milk all over the kitchen and, to a lesser degree, myself. It’s ok, though, since something died under the pantry section of the house. We have a really cheap and overpoweringly strong air “freshener” that breathes like you’re waterboarding your nostrils with weaponized lemonized Kool-Aid.
So, you know, the whole impeding “milk gone sour” thing with all the carpets and rugs in the kitchen, well… now we got THREE bad smells competing for your nose’s bandwidth, so that’s gotta be some kind of win since they can’t all take first place on the podium. I’ve had the death in the walls smell in houses I’ve lived in ever since I was a kid, and I once tantrumed and a gallon of milk into the back of one of my vehicles, resulting in a horrible stink.
I was in my twenties, drinking, in a relationship with a drinker, and all we did was fight. It was one of those “continual struggle” relationships that everyone realizes is toxic, but you’re still stuck in because GodDAMN it, you’re going to WIN. (It would later take moving across the country and an attempted vehicular murder/suicide to break me out of it.) (And that’s not saying that things ended there- they picked up again, after some therapy, and they never got any better and finally geography of her going to grad school pounded the final stake into the relationship’s chest.)
But earlier on… earlier, when we were kids in undergrad, grocery shopping, getting into a fight in the middle of the frozen foods isle, attempting to shut down the conflict, attempting to disengage from the conflict, out into the parking lot and loading the back of the Pathfinder in a sullen silence… I had just taken the handle of a gallon of milk, and she spoke.
I don’t remember what she said, but it was nothing more than a re-starting of the conflict, and I was so upset that my hand with the milk reacted with such violent suddenness that I side-armed the carton of milk into the car, past the back seat, and against the rear driver’s door, where it burst like a shaving-cream filled water-balloon, or more accurately: It burst like a milk-balloon- and sprayed the inside of the vehicle more thoroughly than I could have done with a misting spray bottle and a full work-day.
My truck stunk of spoilt milk for months. The whole “milk rage” incident occurred in New England Spring, too, so for the first few weeks, things were mostly frozen. I didn’t truly come to appreciate the thoroughness of the soaking and the half-asseded-ness of the cleaning until when warmer weather set it and the carpets could milk-mildew: Milkdew.
I ate about 2 grams of the smallest of dried mushrooms, the shake that collected at the bottom of the air-drier. (As harvests of mushrooms dry, sometimes the smallest of the pickings shrivel so much that the resulting little kernel-thingy falls through the cracks of the drying racks and ends up in the bottom of the machine. I gathered up a bunch of those and ate them tonight, not really sure what to expect.
Last night, I ate a full eighth of mushrooms: 3.5 grams, but I fell asleep before anything really got cracking. Tonight, I was feeling like perhaps I’ve simply been consuming so much mushrooms that my tolerance for psilocybin has gone up. I’ve been wondering if I should take a day or several off, not because of any ill effects, but simply to reset my baseline.
It’s like when I stopped smoking marijuana for years, and then when I finally did smoke, even though it was only a little- a couple tokes and then pass- I went to the moon. I know it’s Addict talking, or thinking, but earlier this evening I was watching a Vice documentary about MS-13 in some foreign country having this new drug, called… shit. The name was in Spanish I think. I can’t remember. But it was just weed with chemicals added to it, and I found myself watching the users and thinking “Damn, I kinda want to try that.” And then they did a chemical analysis and found meth-like drugs were the “plus” that the weed carried. So, it’s meth weed. Meed.
Or, I suppose if you’re one of those renaissance weirdos, Mead. Which I don’t really understand either. Damn, these things got me yawning like I’m trying to unhinge my jaw. I finally got my gold cap on that tooth, so the liquid diet is over come tomorrow. The cement that they use to keep the cap on takes around a day to fully cure, so I just kept the liquid diet rolling one more day. But it’s good, I’ve lost about 6lbs since I bit into that damn burrito.
And yesterday at the gym I was able to run a 5k on the treadmill at 10 minute miles, so I’m feeling good about that. Mutants. “A mad scientist inadvertently unleashes the apocalypse while attempting to create an additive for a greedy manufacturer.” It’s never a simple accident. There’s always shame- these are GREEDY. They’re not scientists, their MAD scientists. That’s why bad shit happened to them.
Pretty religious way of thinking, if you ask me. Sort of a need to explain and justify it’s own existence, when it could simply say “Some scientists screwed up and the world went to shit.” Or is that too close to reality? Consider petrochemicals. I can’t think of another man-made material that’s doing more to kill us than the plastics and gasolines. One will be around forever, the other is gone way too fast.
At some point, if we’re still thriving at all, if this earth is not barren, the landfills of today will be the mining operations of tomorrow. If I had offspring that I’d want to provide for, I’d invest in landfills. Where else are we going to get the plastics to fuel our lifestyles, or the precious heavy metals that our technology requires?
Today, in second and third world countries, hell, probably in some areas of first world countries, there exist child workers to burn circuitry and motherboards from obsolete E-waste: computers that aren’t fast enough anymore- to burn these for the metals that don’t evaporate away with the toxic carcinogen fumes, they lay hidden in the ashes until someone desperate enough to waste their life poking through the char and ashes to harvest them.
This is the equivalent of burning bodies to harvest the metals of their medical implants, except that would be a natural burning fire for the most part, we burn away into carbon that the trees can eat, but the E-waste fumes that aren’t captured in those child’s lungs drift free, out as a cancerous soot, into and off onto the wind.
When ecologists talk about how we’re polluting the earth, words like “Mad scientist” and “Greedy manufacturer” are cause for slander. They’re subjective interpretations or iterations of what the norm is considered. History is written by the victors, but who writes movie summations?
I am so looking forward to this. I’m almost certain that it’s going to be a beautiful trainwreck of a horror-show falling down the stairs in slow motion. If I’m lucky, there will be a tray of beverages as well. I’m ready for this.
I really should listen to myself. If there’s anyone who has ever gave me consistently bad advice, it’s me, but I’m also surprisingly insightful and quite determined to find a peaceful existence. Knowing that, why do I disregard my own advice? Of head, heart, and stomach, which has led you astray the most?
One’s heart often finds way to betray our best interests, but I feel it’s my stomach that has cost me the most; fears and anxieties that kept me on the wall or sidelines while the dance played out. I ask this simply to determine: which of my guidance triad malfunctioned tonight?