Purple Rhinestone Eagle/Northern Swords/Forsorcerers
Fantasy Quest

What the fuck is going on in Portland, Oregon? I thought my recent discovery of Purple Rhinestone Eagle was rare, but it turns out the whole town is full of secret covens in hidden lairs amassing a cohesive army of high priestess power, steadying themselves to strike like a seething force of Joan of Arcs. Joining Purple Rhinestone Eagle on this particular battlefield (Poison Apple’s split seven inch, Fantasy Quest, from November 2009) are Northern Swords and Forsorcerers, and together they rock in the name of glory, freedom, honour, and death.

Purple Rhinestone Eagle kicks off Side A with “Don’t Want You (Like You Want Me),” viciously beating you about the ribs with a cudgel of fuzz, followed by Northern Swords’ twin metal guitar attack, “Huckleberry Egg and the Diamond Jewel (Pt. 1).” The split gains bloodthirsty momentum on Side B with Northern Swords’ “Huckleberry Egg and the Diamond Jewel (Pt. 2),” which thrashes around like an angry dragon, then gallops on home atop the horse of retro doom with Forsorcerers’ “Timekeepers.” So, it seems the sisterhood of metal is alive and well (in the Northwest at least), and this split is a small victory, albeit a triumphant one.

Head on over to Poison Apple’s site to listen to the songs from Fantasy Quest and buy the record!

As it turns out, the basement is where Quaid paints nude portraits of strippers he hires, but that’s not why he invited Stephen over. No, he wants to work with Stephen on a film thesis that will study people’s fears. Sure, why not. So Stephen brings in his film editing friend, Cheryl, and the project is a go. Pretty soon they’re interviewing test subjects, asking them about their deepest fears, when they first felt fear, etc. It didn’t seem like much of a study to me, and not to Quaid either I guess, because he starts getting antsy for some real exploitation of people’s dread. So that’s when Cheryl steps in front of the camera to reveal that she was molested by her dad, who worked at a meat packing plant, and now she can’t eat meat. Even the smell of it takes her to a terrible place. We also find out that Stephen’s brother died when Stephen was 15. He got drunk and crashed his car. Stephen, then, is kind of afraid of cars. Or drinks. I don’t really know. So what does Quaid do? He buys Stephen a car ($1,200 on Craigslist!) so he can face his fears. What a swell guy.

Stephen digs Cheryl, by the way, but there’s this girl, Abby, who works with Stephen and is kind of into him. Abby’s got plenty of fears herself, see, because she’s covered from head to toe in one hell of a birthmark. She offers to be interviewed by Stephen privately for the study, where she takes her clothes off and tries to kiss Stephen. He rejects her, but not because of how she looks, but because his heart belongs to Cheryl. That hardly matters to Abby at all who is now even more ashamed. Seizing on this wonderful opportunity to take advantage of Abby, Quaid, the wonderful guy he is, swoops in, says a few lines, takes her out to the club, gets her to pose for him (she asks if he can paint her “normal”), and then fucks her. In the meantime, the relationship between Stephen and Cheryl blossoms.

Ok, back to the study. Quaid becomes increasingly pissed off with Stephen and Cheryl for not taking the study seriously (it’s just a school project as far as they’re concerned), so he flips out and destroys all the equipment. Cheryl and Stephen have finally had enough of this crazy dude who they befriended for some reason and are out of there. Quaid soldiers on. He calls back a previous interviewee, some dude name Josh who was once deaf as a kid and now lives in fear of going deaf again, and knocks him out, ties him up, and shoots a couple rounds from a gun right beside the dude’s ears, popping his ear drums. His next move is to push Abby to the brink by wiring the tape of her taking off her clothes into the college’s communications system so that every TV in the place is playing her humiliating strip tease. Then the recording shows the painting Quaid did of her as he splashes red all over it to symbolize her birthmark, then he holds up a note that says she isn’t normal. Abby loses it and decides that a bucket of bleach and an SOS pad is the only way to rid herself of her horrible defect.

Quaid’s next target is Cheryl, whom he finds snooping around his basement, looking at all his portraits, which are all now covered in bloody gashes. So, he locks Cheryl into a room with nothing but a bucket, some flies, and a plate with a giant slab of meat on it. And he’s filming it all, of course. Then he heads off to find Stephen. He picks him up in his car and takes him for a ride. Oh, it turns out Quaid has been drinking. Time for Stephen to face his fear! Stephen manages to get out of the car after a bit of a hairy ride but he’s then thrust right into Abby’s horrible situation. After finding her raw and bleeding body, he gets her to the hospital, where he sees one of those in-case-of-emergency axes hanging on the wall. Time to go find Quaid and make him face his fears. So off Stephen goes, axe in hand, and arrives at Quaid’s house to scare the fuck out of him. Quaid bests him, of course, and has something wonderful in store for Stephen. He ties him up and forces him to watch the video of Cheryl, who after having been confined for about a week breaks down and eats the rotting, maggoty piece of meat. Suddenly Joshua shows up with bandaged ears, finds the axe, and…well, people die. I won’t tell you which people though. You’ll have to find out on your own. If you want to. This movie isn’t that great. Some gore, some tits, and the action picks up near the end when Quaid finally goes mental, but it took a long time for that to happen. Up until then it’s just a bunch of bad decisions and verbal nonsense.

Check out the trailer for Dread!

The House of the Devil

Samantha is a college student looking to move off campus. However, she’s a poor college student and needs some quick cash in order to pay first month’s rent at her new place. She sees a flier posted at school for a baby sitting gig, so she snags the number and rings it up. The man on the other end of the line is desperate and doubles the pay, so Samantha accepts the job even though the dude seems a bit weird. As I already mentioned, the babysitting gig just happens to be at some mansion in the countryside, and Samantha gets her best friend to drive her out to the house. They’ve got bad feelings already. Oh, and I should probably mention that all of this takes place during a lunar eclipse.

The two of them meet the man who hired Samantha, Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan), and he doesn’t exactly send out the welcoming vibes. In fact, he’s quite vague and shifty about the evening that lies ahead and he finally admits to Samantha that there is no child living at the house. Time for Samantha to leave, right? As it turns out, Mr. Ulman wants Samantha to look after his wife’s mother for the evening, but promises she won’t be a bother and that there’s no nursing involved. To convince her further, he ups the pay to $300 (Samantha negotiates for $400), and so it’s all set. Samantha sends her friend on her way, telling her she’ll be all right (the friend protests), and then Mr. and Mrs. Ulman (is that a skull brooch she’s wearing?) head out for the evening. Now Samantha is alone in the house with mother upstairs.

So, this is where Samantha spends the majority of the movie checking out the house — every dark room, every dark nook and cranny — and every once in awhile there are sounds from upstairs. Could mother be moving about? Again, so long as you don’t mind the pace, this nothing happens portion of the movie is effectively chilling. Soon Samantha discovers some things that shed some light on Mr. and Mrs. Ulman and the house, and panic sets in. Then more noises from upstairs, and just as she’s about to look in on mother, the power goes out, the pizza she ordered earlier (and stopped eating because it tasted awful) makes her feel woozy, and she hits the deck. She wakes up surrounded by candles and tied down atop a pentagram with Mr. and Mrs. Ulman standing over her in black robes. This is where the movie pace quickens and the blood starts flying, but unfortunately not much is explained and it’s over way too fast to digest. It all ends with a very unlikely, open-ended scenario that’s even more perplexing than what came before it.

I dug The House of the Devil for its retro thrills and honest, nostalgic spooks, but I would’ve liked to see more attention paid to the Satanic stuff. Wouldn’t we all, right? Overall though, a nice effort by writer/director Ti West, who is quickly establishing himself as a name to watch in the horror genre.

Check out the trailer for The House of the Devil!

Purvis first meets his sci-fi author hero, Chevalier, at Cletus Fest, a fantasy writers convention, where the good doctor tells the attendees that one of them will be lucky enough to earn a publishing deal if their manuscript is chosen by a panel of judges, including Chevalier himself. So Purvis submits The Yeast Lords to Chevalier who, mired in a creative downward spiral (his publisher has just rejected his latest book), reads it, likes it, changes a few things, and submits it to his publisher. The publisher goes crazy for it and Chevalier’s new book (now titled Brutus & Balzaak) becomes a hit.

In the meantime, Purvis makes some new friends, Tabatha and Lonnie, who run an amateur film company (basically Lonnie turns all of Tabatha’s French romance stories into trailers), and they give Purvis $500 to turn The Yeast Lords into a film. The film is screened right when Purvis discovers Chevalier ripped him off but Purvis and Lonnie are the ones who get accused of ripping Chevalier off. But don’t worry, it all gets sorted out in the end.

Like all of Hess’ films, this one has its share of weirdo characters, including the ones I’ve already mentioned, all of which are way out there (especially Lonnie and his mouth, who is to Gentleman Broncos as Pedro is to Napoleon Dynamite). There’s also Purvis’ mom, Judith, the over-bearing, quack fashion designer, and Dusty, Purvis’ snake-loving, blow dart spitting, half-wit with a mustache, guardian angel from church.

Gentlemen Broncos is mostly about the story within the story though. Actually, to get it right, there’s three stories within the story. The film we’re watching is always switching from its own story-line to the story-lines created in Purvis’ book, The Yeast Lords, Chevalier’s book, Brutus & Balzaak, and the movie Lonnie is making based on Purvis’ book. All of them are really bad, low-budget, and quite ridiculous, and two of them feature the great Sam Rockwell (as Bronco/Brutus). Oh, and they also feature cyclopes, lasers, jars of gonads, flesh pockets, yeast turds, and flying stags that shoot rockets. Normal sci-fi-fare, naturally.

Gentlemen Broncos works for me. I dig the subtle, odd ball humour, and Jemaine Clement is especially amazing. Sigh. Now it’s time for me to lament the loss of Flight of the Conchords.

Check out the trailer for Gentlemen Broncos!

While some of the plot details in this ’09 version differ from the original, the meat of the sandwich is the same: killing, raping, and revenge. So, in this one, the Collingwood family (dad John, mom Emma, and daughter Mari) head to their cottage for a relaxing vacation. Mari convinces mom and dad to let her take the car into town to visit her friend Paige (not to see the band Bloodlust, unfortunately, as in the original, but just to hang out at Paige’s work). Paige and Mari meet a reclusive young boy, Justin, who promises them some sweet pot if they come back to his motel room. So they do, of course, but it turns out Justin is the son of a crazy escaped convict and murderer, Krug, who is on the run with his brother, Francis, and his lady, Sadie. Party over.

The gang kidnaps the girls and continues on the lam in Mari’s car, but Mari and Paige put up a fight, causing the car to go off the road and crash into a tree. The killers are really pissed off now, so they drag the two girls into the woods, and after another escape attempt by Paige, they do away with her once and for all and rape Mari. Mari then makes a break for the lake, jumps in, and swims her way to freedom, even though Krug ends up shooting Mari as she is swimming away. Krug and his gang think they killed her, but as was established earlier, Mari is an excellent swimmer…even with a hole in her shoulder. Oh, and cue the terrible storm.

All of this takes place right near the Collingwood’s cottage, and just as mom and dad are settling in for a night alone, there’s a knock at the door. It’s the gang who just raped and “killed” their daughter, saying they’ve been in an accident and need shelter. John and Emma look after their guests, who can’t help but be a little creepy, and when the power goes out and the phone lines go down, it looks like the strangers will have to spend the night in the guest house. After the strangers have gone to bed, a half dead Mary shows up, and mom and dad scramble to save her life. Besides noticing the bullet hole in Mari’s shoulder, Dad also notices the bruises and blood on her thighs. Yeah, not good. Then when mom finds something left by Justin as evidence as to who exactly is staying in their guest house, the only way to handle things now out in the woods in the dark during a storm with no car and missing boat keys is to kill the motherfuckers who raped and shot your daughter.

So, hang on past the first five minutes because things really do turn out quite disturbing. There are some seriously uncomfortable scenes in this one, especially the rape scene in the woods, which is the most graphic rape scene I’ve seen since Gillian Anderson was gang-raped in Closure (aka Straightheads). It’s very tough to watch. Most of the best action — the revenge portion of the film — doesn’t come until the last 30 minutes or so, but it delivers some pretty harsh gore (and some tits). There’s a busted nose, a mangled hand in a garbage disposal, a claw hammer to the skull, a bullet through the eye, and an exploding face in a microwave. Not bad at all. I liked this one a lot, even if some of it was hard to stomach, but it was a very decent revenge/horror flick. And it’s a real plus if you can make me uncomfortable, that’s for sure.

Check out the trailer for The Last House on the Left!

Her day-to-day routines are now infected with sightings of that creepy kid from her dream and other strange hallucinations, and, of course, those around her, like her best friend Romy and her boyfriend Mark, play the skeptics. So Casey is left wondering if she’s starting to suffer the same fate as her dead mother, who went crazy when Casey was young and hanged herself in a mental hospital. Ah, yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Once Casey discovers the reason her eyes are changing colour, and what relationship Sofi Kozma, an old woman in a retirement home, had with her dead mother, it’s all gonna start to make perfectly horrifying sense.

I won’t go into most of that too much because I don’t want to give it all away, but from that point on its all about twins, Jumby’s identity, Nazi experiments in Auschwitz, dybbuks, broken mirrors, and increasingly severe hauntings and murders. After learning a lot from Sofi, Casey seeks out the help of Rabbi Sendak (Oldman) in the hopes that an exorcism might rid her of the evil that’s plaguing her, so they head to the hospital where her mother died to take on the creepy little kid and send him back from whence he came. The battle for Casey’s body ensues.

I don’t know, this movie is all right, I guess. There’s plenty of creepy scenes and it employs the standard horror fare that’s popular these days (heads twisting around, bodies crawling on all fours, creepy kids, distorted faces), so I guess if you’re into The Grudge and movies of that ilk you’ll find The Unborn comfortably familiar. Otherwise, it’s middle of the road stuff. I think the thing I liked best about this movie though was that a lot of scenes and images really reminded me of Lasse Hoile’s work, which I love. So, when the credits rolled, all I was thinking about was that Hoile should make a movie. Yes, he really should.

Check out the trailer for The Unborn!

As with all best-of lists, this one has its disclaimers. The big one here is that this list includes only the albums I listened to, so if I didn’t include Slayer’s new album or Immortal’s new album it’s because I haven’t heard them…yet. So don’t get your panties in a knot if there are some glaring omissions. And, of course, this list is exclusive to the music I listen to; it’s my favourites for the year…and hopefully some of yours.

Oh, and why 39? Because it’s one better than 40. If 666 is the number of the beast, think of 39 as the number of the beard.

All right, enough screwing around. Let’s get to it…

First I want to start with the honourable mentions. I like this stuff a lot, but for one reason or another it didn’t tickle my beard as much as the top 39 did. And it is with great sadness that I include The Wildhearts and 3 Inches of Blood in this list, but I was very underwhelmed by both bands this year, and their failure to meet my exceptionally lofty expectations for them both kept them out of the top 39. Sigh.

3 Inches of Blood – Here Waits Thy Doom
Baptized in Blood – Gutter Bound
Bastard Child Death Cult – Year Zero
Behemoth – Evangelion
The Black Crowes – Before the Frost…Until the Freeze
C.C. Voltage – A Touch of Class…Just a Touch
The Chelsea Smiles – S/T
Cherry Choke – S/T
The Gentleman Losers – Dustland
Goatwhore – Carving Out the Eyes of God
Hardcore Superstar – Beg for It
House of Broken Promises – Using the Useless
Luder – Sonoluminescence
Obiat – Eye Tree Pi
Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us-Death Unites Us
Sex Slaves – Wasted Angel
Steel Panther – Feel the Steel
Sun Gods in Exile – Black Light, White Lines
Valis – Dark Matter
Warbringer – Waking Into Nightmares
White Cowbell Oklahoma – Bombadero
The Wildhearts – Chutzpah!

Now, BEHOLD! The number of the beard!

#39 The Last Vegas – Whatever Gets You Off

The Last Vegas were the very first band I wrote about many years ago on Sleazegrinder. It was a piece called ‘Thunder Boogie in the Glitter Gulch’ and that pretty much summed up their sound at the time. No one at all knew who they were, but they were the band that all the rich rock stars wanted to be and sound like. Well, now THEY are the rich rock stars, and Nikki Sixx has sunk his heroin-laced talons into ‘em, bringing them out on tour with the Crue and signing them to his label. For that alone they should be kept off of this list, but they’ve still got that million dollar sound, even if it comes with a matching ego and tainted image. So chalk it up to my nostalgia if you want, but you also won’t find a catchier song than “Loose Lips” off any album on this list.

Listen to “Loose Lips” from Whatever Gets You Off!

#38 Riverboat Gamblers – Underneath the Owl

My wife loves owls. She collects them; pictures, needle works, jewellery, figurines, tattoos…you name it. That’s not the only reason this album made the list, but she really digs the cover, and that’s as good a reason as any if you ask me. Now, some people might say that the band has taken one too many trips on the ol’ Warped Tour and now their sound is as watered down as the fountain in the shopping mall, but I’ve yet to see a teenager with a shitty haircut wearing a Gamblers shirt, so their cred is still in tact, Jack. Sure there might be a few out there, but until I see one, I say the Gambler’s energy and attitude is still OURS. And dig that owl.

Listen to “Catastrophe” from Underneath the Owl!

#37 Wooden Shjips – Dos

Until the Wooden Shjips came along, I never knew what the hell kraut-rock was. Fuck, I still don’t what the hell kraut-rock is, but their latest fuzz n’ jam carpet ride is just dripping with repetitive, psychedelic geek rock. It oozes and drones like a clock blinking 12:00 and your ears are staring at it, waiting for time to move forward, but it doesn’t. It just holds you there. You know, sometimes it feels good just to be held.

Watch the video for “Motorbike” from Dos!

To be continued…