"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace."

One Gun to Rule Them All

Back on April 3, 2006, it occurred to me that it might be possible to transpose Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga into the Old West, the way Coppola set Heart of Darkness during the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now. Of course, LOTR being a trilogy, its retelling as a Western epic would necessitate its execution as three separate movies, thus:

The Fellowship of the Gun would tell the tale of a band of gunfighters, cowboys, rustlers, etc. who form a posse to find & kill Black Bob, a genocidal maniac terrorizing the Southwest with his army of no-good varmints, and by "terrorize" I mean terrorize, like really cruel & twisted shit à la Vlad Țepeș.

The Two Rifles would continue the story, with our daring heroes following Black Bob into Mexico, and Return of the .45 would wrap things up with a gigantic clash between our heroes, Black Bob & his gang, and the Mexican army - think Sam Peckinpah as produced by Joel Silver. Carnage galore!

Aimez-vous la pornographie?

I think it's time for a movie called The Republican Nymphomaniac, don't you? Sure, it probably wouldn't do too well overseas (especially in Albania), 'cause they don't have Republicans in other countries (except the British, who call 'em Conservatives) - then again, it might if you put enough T&A in it, 'cause they seem to like T&A more in foreign countries, or at least they're not as freaked out by & squeamish about it as we pretend to be in the U.S. I mean, Americans act all prissy & prudish about porn, yet we spend $4 billion a year on it, whereas in France they're like, "Yeah, I'm watching me some porn ce soir, 'cause I totally feel like it. Right after I eat a shitload of cheese, of course. Bye, mom!" Vive la France, man.

Go ask Alice, bitch...

I was watching Willow the other day and it occurred to me that in all the "high fantasy" and sword & sorcery stories I've read or watched (or even listened to: check out KISS's The Elder [Hoo-whee: stinkeroo!]), the dwarf always stays the same size. Why is that?

Not once in Willow or Lord of the Rings or Krull or Excalibur or the Conan movies or Conquest or The Devil's Sword or Four Weddings & a Funeral does a dwarf ever want or think to escape his/her bodily dimensions. All that magic lying around or stuffed into amulets or potions or suppositories, etc., and it never occurs to the dwarves (or hobbits or gnomes or Ewoks or whoever) to make themselves bigger, or at least conjure up some platform shoes or lifts. I don't get it.

Which is why, in my story The Giant Dwarf, the first thing the dwarf does is use Gandalf's wand or Merlin's shoes (whatever) to make his ass bigger. Not his "ass" ass; his self-ass. Because I'm a bastard, though, said dwarf overdoes it with the magicking and turns himself into a giant. A giant dwarf. Which admittedly comes in handy in the battle against extreme right-wing queen Taratha & her army of undead crewcut swordsman; later on, though, it becomes more of a liability, 'cause back home in the dwarf village, everyone's scared of him & his wife won't sleep with him & he keeps stepping on everybody's pumpkins, and it just keeps getting worse & worse, until he gets so depressed that he hangs himself from a giant redwood. The end.

And that's why dwarves shouldn't fiddle around with magic.

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz (except for the pictures & videos)

Interstellar Defecation

Stop or My Mom'll Go to Warp 9

If the talented & sexy Megyn Price ("Audrey" on CBS's affable Rules of Engagement) wanted to branch out into features, a good place for her to start would be in my Disneyesque comedy, First Mom in Space, which tells the story of an overprotective mom who follows her astronaut son into outer space and makes him wear his sweater. This movie would make people laugh, especially people who have mothers.

Later on in the story, mom & son & the rest of the crew come across a derelict starship floating in space and find its cargo hold jam-packed with endoparasitoids that impregnate their hosts through the anus (like the facehugger in Alien, except that these motherfuckers hug your ass, which'd make them "asshuggers"). Sure enough, one of the other astronauts gets "fertilized" by an asshugger and becomes a reluctant baby-mama, after which he shits out a hideous alien baby and then dies. I can imagine some people in the audience getting upset or grossed out at this point, and saying things like, "Oh, em, gee - did that alien thing just come out of that dude's ass?" and "I can't believe this is a Disney movie!" and "I'm never going to the bathroom again - colostomy bag all the way, baby!"

Freaked out of their minds but steadfast in their loyalty to the script, mom & son & crew corner the alien baby (which more or less looks like an angry turd) in the kitchen, where they throw things at it while screaming incoherent obscenities like "Fucking turd ass die fuck you!" and "Alien shit fuck goddamnit!" etc., all of which fails to make any sort of impression on their little visitor.

Understandably, the alien turd baby promptly slithers away into a conduit and starts wreaking havoc with the ship's systems. Propulsion goes down. Life support starts failing. The food in the refrigerator starts going bad. A crewmember says "I've got a bad feeling about this," to which another crewmember says, "That's no moon - that's a space station!" Huh?

It soon occurs to Megyn's son that they're handling the alien turd baby situation the wrong way. "It occurs to me we're handling this alien turd baby situation the wrong way," he says, and then explains that since the alien's a baby, maybe it'd be easy to win over (instead of kill) by mothering it, and who better to do so than his own mom? "Aside from your rampant overprotectiveness," he tells her, "you've always been a great mom." This brings tears to everyone's eyes. "Now be a great mom to that alien turd baby - like you were to me - and let's get the hell out of here!"

The movie'd end with everyone's safe return to Earth, including the alien turd baby (whom Megyn adopts and names "Crispus Wampanoag"). Disney would make a lot of money with this movie: it's got something for everyone!

Fill 'er up!

I'm not sure that every title I come up with is a movie title. Maybe some of the titles I come up with are short story titles, like "Here Comes a Kiss on a Helicopter" and "Funeral for a Grievance." Maybe some would make good titles for literary novels by writers like Ian McEwan and Paul Auster, like A Woman in the Dark and In the Fog of Infinity and The Agony of Lights and Cowboy Cannibal Blood Feast. If Mr. McEwan or Mr. Auster ever got stuck for titles, I'd sure help them 'cause I've got lots!

The Legacy of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Back on October 11, 2007, I wrote down the following titles in my notebook: The Living Smell, The Deadly Phone, Twitch of the Blood Beast and Island of the Lost Universe. These all sound like early Jerry Lewis movies to me (except the last one, which reeks more of things like Hawk the Slayer and Yor: The Hunter from the Future and, to a lesser degree, Atonement). Another thing these titles have in common is that the movies they'd designate would probably be greeted with more interest & curiosity in the 1970s  & 1980s, before everyone got "sophisticated" and started watching more high-brow stuff like Meet the Spartans and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Resident Evil: Afterlife. These days, it's like every regular Joe in the multiplex reads Cahiers du cinéma. I should buy a time machine, 'cause I could make a lot of money in the past (when audiences were more stupider).

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz (except for the pictures)

It's Raining Blood, Hallelujah

"Does your dog bite?"

From my XB71 file, sometime in 2003:

"ISLAND OF THE DAMNED (French Kiss + Zombie): J.C. DALTON calls his fiancée KAREN MILES from France & tells her he’s fallen in love w/ someone else; crushed but determined to win him back, Karen flies to France; on plane she meets ÉTIENNE CHAVAL, scruffy but charming Frenchman (duh), whom she immediately dislikes (or so she thinks); Chaval has come back to France to pay a debt to crimelord BRUNO LEFÈVRE but corrupt cops burst in & kill Lefèvre; Chaval then framed for murder; Chaval runs into Karen & hurriedly joins her – she’s going to Ile d'Ombres (Island of Shadows), private island near Sardinia, where Dalton & his new fiancée, ANTONELLA ROSSI, have supposedly gone to meet Rossi’s parents; Karen & Chaval arrive on island & are immediately unsettled by sense of desolation permeating the place; they hear sounds of struggle nearby & go to investigate: they see man w/ large head wound attack a fisherman – fisherman stabs wounded man in heart repeatedly to no effect; wounded man then tears fisherman’s throat open & starts eating him; Karen holds her mouth to hold in her scream, like in that Cure song ("The Kyoto Song"); eventually they’ll discover that Antonella & her parents are members of secret voodoo cult which is resurrecting the dead for purposes of world conquest & that J.C. is their latest convert; Lefèvre’s men follow Chaval to island and in turn are followed by police nationale & Interpol for big gore-&-bullets finale"

This is totally the kind of movie somebody would've made between 1970 and 1983. No one would make a movie like this nowadays. For many people, that's a good thing. I feel sorry for those people. They're stupid.

Pharaohs & Crackheads

Here's a title I came up with on January 15 of this year: Fatal Skull. Again, this'd be the kind of turkey that no one'd greenlight in these enlightened times (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, yes; Fatal Skull, no - alas, the happy consequence of more refined cinematic sensibilities). Which means modern audiences'd miss out on the story of a sexy female archaeologist who discovers the tomb of Zenotep, an Egyptian pharaoh (as opposed to, say, a Hungarian pharaoh) who according to some accounts practiced black magic & maybe colon cleansing. See? Already the story's kind of spooky.

Zenotep's sarcophagus is shipped back to the Metropolitan Museum of Ancient Antiquities in New York or maybe Chicago, where Zenotep's skull is stolen by a couple of crackheads who become the skull's slaves when it comes to life and starts talking to them in a metallic echoey baritone: "I am Zenotep, king of Egypt and lord of death! You are now my servants. Get me out of the rain, I don't like being wet."

Hot young coeds start disappearing all over the city. It turns out Zenotep's ordered his crackhead acolytes to perform ritual sacrifices to Set, who in return will restore Zenotep to life (life as more than just a talking skull [à la Larry King]). The sexy female archaeologist's sexy homicide detective ex-boyfriend is assigned to the case ("I have to find out who's killing these coeds, damn it!") and eventually has a Lethal Weapon 2-type showdown with Zenotep & his cult of goons - which has grown to over 100 dues-paying members - in a secret subterranean pyramid, like in Young Sherlock Holmes.

If they're not doing anything next year, I think Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green should play the sexy female archaeologist and her sexy homicide detective ex-boyfriend. These are the kind of roles they could play in their sleep, plus their working together on the same movie would be like when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton worked together on The Sandpiper. How romantic! I guess I'm a romantic at heart.

Blame It on the Brain

The title Brainwar is from July 23, 2009. It's the story of two disembodied brains who hate each other. One's in a bowl, one's in a jar. They each have a dim-witted henchman working for them, through which they prosecute a never-ending war of attrition. For example, bowl-brain sends his henchman to slash jar-brain's tires; jar-brain has his henchman steal bowl-brain's newspaper. Bowl-brain's henchman orders 20 pizzas to jar-brain's house; jar-brain's henchman pees in bowl-brain's aquarium, killing Milky Jim, bowl-brain's 15" platinum arowana. And so on.

Eventually, the two henchman discover they're brothers and move to Washington D.C. and become risk management specialists for the FDA. This leaves the warring brains powerless and brings their conflict to an end. The message of the movie would be: "If you're disabled, hate will make you more disabled." This is a powerful uplifting message for today's young people, which is why this movie should be made soon, before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan get worse. People like uplifting stories like these, so one more wouldn't hurt.

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz (except for the pictures)

Make $$$ Working From Hell...

À péter ou de ne pas péter...

Back on August 28, 2008, one of the titles I came up with during a particularly productive writing session was Apocalypse of Depravity. It's the story of a healthy young Republican from Orange County who marries his high school sweetheart, gets a job as an aerospace engineer, has 2 perfect kids, and goes on to live an uneventful but happy life (except for that one time in Mazatlán when he couldn't find his pants...or that other time when he was out of town on business and slept with a shemale). The end. I dig "feel good" movies like this. They make you feel good. No wonder they're so popular.

It's True: God Hates You

Another title I came up with that day was Brain Without a Head. I'm sure most of you (or your parents, or whoever your mother's sleeping with at the moment) have seen or at least've heard about the utterly seminal The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Chano Urueta's deplorably essential The Living Head, yes? I hope so, 'cause BWH would follow in that tradition, and you could have a nice triple feature at home once it's released (straight to DVD, of course ☺). Don't forget the popcorn!

It'd be kinda like Ordinary People in that a jizz-white upper middle class family is coping with a recent death in the family and everyone's sad & cranky and they're always fighting 'cause everyone loved Drew, the oldest son, who died, but unbeknownst to everyone, mom's been keeping Drew's brain in a jar in the basement ('cause she just can't let go). Mom talks to Drew's brain, plays Uno with it, has high tea at 4pm with it, etc., and eventually ends up seducing it, which'd be a reverent nod to Bernardo Bertolucci's forgotten masterpiece Luna (remember that one?) and Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, specifically that scene when the overwhelmingly weird Peter Bark starts breastfeeding on his mom, Mariangela Giordano. Mangiare!

Freakshow, Freakshow on the Dance Floor

In the same notebook entry for that day is Tequila Breakdance Party and also Skid Row Exorcist (the movie of which'd feature that song by Skid Row, "18 and Life," on the soundtrack, preferably during the end credits, even though it wouldn't really have anything to do with the movie) and also Spoontang and also Cannibal Christmas, which'd tell the tale of what happens when the holiday feast's been tainted with "super rabies" (think of it as 28 Days Later + I Drink Your Blood + White Christmas). I think people who like watching movies would also like these, especially Spoontang, the true story of a sigmoidoscopy tube repairman who became a porn director and blew all his money on cocaine during the Care Bears craze of the '80s. It's fun to watch movies!

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz (except for the pictures)

Kundalini Bloodbath

Alice Doesn't Die Here Anymore

Back on August 17, 2009, I came up with the title Kiss My Axe! which to me sounds like something that'd feature a Flo Castleberry-type waitress who goes insane after a séance (or after a surprise gang-banging by itinerant rodeo clowns) and then spends the rest of the movie hacking everyone to itty-bitty pieces. With an axe. This is the sort of movie used car dealers would make in the '70s for $20,000. I wish those days were here again.

My Boyfriend Isn't Macho, But My Burrito Is

The word "macho" is hardly ever used to describe people or systems of thought anymore, at least here in the U.S. (Austria-Hungary, I don't know). These days, the only thing that's "macho" out there is a burrito. Go to Del Taco, check out the menu. Macho.

Merriam-Webster defines "macho" as "characterized by machismo; aggressively virile." Now the Freudian aspect of this matter suggests itself, of course (ding!), because c'mon: a semi-phallic food item is trumpeted as "aggressively virile" in appeal to the über-hetero "manly" demographic out there (the toolbelt-wearers, the football fans, the auto mechanics, etc.). It's like they're saying, "C'mon, dude, eat this big meaty dick!" No one gets the irony, apparently.

Whatever. My point is: there's an entry in one of my notebooks, for April 16, 2009, which says Macho Exorcist. Which is exactly the kind of movie I want to see, in both theatrical & director's cuts, along with an hour's worth of outtakes (the "Muy Macho Edition" Blu-Ray'd come with a little bottle of fake holy water & a plastic crucifix).

In a delightful departure from his usual role of "Mexican bad-ass," Danny Trejo'd star as Father Escobar, a Mexican bad-ass priest who exorcises demons the way other people wash their cars or iron their clothes or floss. NBD. In Macho Exorcist, though, he'd take on the Dark One himself when said Dark One possesses the Pope's dog.

Monkey See, Monkey KILL!

On October 12, 2008, I whipped up the title Chimpanzero, which is precisely the kind of thing that makes people think Yikes, I'll wait for the DVD. Yay! Big screen, small screen - either way, the story's the same: a genetically engineered chimpanzee, dubbed "Test Subject Zero," goes insane after a séance (or after a surprise gang-banging by itinerant rodeo clowns) and then spends the rest of the movie hacking everyone to itty-bitty pieces. With an axe. This is the sort of movie George Romero made in 1988 for $7,000,000 and called Monkey Shines.

I guess Chimpanzero'd be similar, except that in Monkey Shines, the homicidal primate is a monkey (and also the protagonist's housekeeper), while in Chimpanzero, the homicidal primate is a chimpanzee (and employed by the TSA as a luggage screener at JFK: "That's it, Fufu, press the X-ray button. There's a good boy. Who wants a dehydrated banana treat?").

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz (except for the pictures)

Jingle Bells Pour Vous

Now Not Playing At Your Local Multiplex

It occurred to me on August, 31, 2008, that The Sexy Moron would be a good title for a movie with Rob Schneider in it. Not that Rob'd play the titular moron - maybe he'd be the guy who gets stuck with said moron instead. Now, I'm sure you've just put down your coffee cup or bong or Rabbit and've asked yourself, "Why would Rob Schneider get stuck with a moron, and a sexy one at that?"

Way to go, man. I like it when you guys ask questions like that.

How about this: Rob Schneider plays an FBI agent who graduated last in his class at Quantico and is considered a joke at the Bureau. He's assigned to a witness protection detail, guarding a blonde airhead supermodel (i.e. the sexy moron) who's supposed to testify against a Mob boss or corrupt government official or shapeshifting extraterrestrial, whatever. Of course, it turns out that loser agent Rob's actually expected to fuck up his assignment by his own boss, who's in cahoots with the aforementioned Mob boss or corrupt government official or vampire sperm whale, whatever.

I think it'd be interesting, however, to trample on the audience's expectations by having Rob actually fail to protect the blonde airhead supermodel, and fail spectacularly, e.g. they're both puréed in a slow-mo Wild Bunch-style shoot-out at the end; with his dying breath, Rob says "You bloody bastard..." to the Mob boss or corrupt government official or homicidal cyborg from the future, whatever, and falls on the firing mechanism to the Alpha-Omega bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which blows up the whole world. People would walk out of the theater saying, "I can't believe that was a Rob Schneider movie."

Say "No" to Augmentation Mammaplasty

The following day, September 1, 2008, my brain told me that Nightmare Under the Skin would be a good title for a movie with Patricia Heaton in it, about a psychotic breast implant surgeon (I'm sure they're out there) who kills blonde airhead supermodels like the Sexy Moron by using C4 instead of saline/silicone implants during the mammaplasty enlargement procedure; she then sets off the C4 with a remote control detonator, screaming "You were perfect just as you were! Oh God!" I guess an alternate title for this movie would be The Exploding Tits Movie, or in German: Das Explodierenden Titten Film. People would walk out of the theater saying, "This country's going straight to hell."

How to Give Head in Advertising

That same week, after coming up with titles like Meet Me on Death Island and Zombie Inferno and Blood of the Ingenue and From Hell's Heart, there was this thought in my head that contained within it the idea that Depravity's Rainbow would be a good title for a movie with Corbin Bernsen & Alyssa Milano (naked) in it, as a pair of intrepid Coast Guard investigators who find an island where Zaroff, a depraved Russian nobleman (played to perfection by Wayne Knight, also naked), hunts blonde airhead supermodels like the Sexy Moron for sport.

Zaroff throws the two investigators in his dungeon, where they meet Wingo, king of the pixies, who helps them escape. They come back to the island with a boatload of Coast Guard commandos. I think it'd be interesting to cater to the audience's expectations and have Zaroff get kibbled in a slow-mo Wild Bunch-style shoot-out at the end; with his dying breath, Zaroff says "You bloody bastard..." to the Coast Guard and falls on the firing mechanism to the Alpha-Omega bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which blows up the whole world. People would walk out of the theater saying "I want to join the Coast Guard!" the way young men said "I want to join the Navy!" after seeing Top Gun in 1986.

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

Art House Fodder

La Mariposa Amarga

As you all know, dear readers (all three of you), I have a bunch of notebooks full of titles, story ideas, obscene doodles, etc. The fruit of my writerly inclination + enough pens & paper to beget a stationery junkie's wet dream. Browsing through those notebooks now, I see that back on May 12, 2006, I came up with the title The Bitterfly. How or why, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 'cause I was sitting there thinking, "Hey, what if you take 'bitter' & 'fly' and put 'em together?"

Whatever the thing's origin, I'm sure it'd make a good title for a movie about these 8-year old twin boys whose father, a lepidopterologist, abandons his profession to become a stage magician after the boys' mother leaves him for the winner of TV Land's annual Magnum P.I. look-alike contest. The problem is that dad's not very good at magic - in fact, he stinks (which is two strikes against him, the first being the red & silver tuxedo he wears all the time now).

What with his wife's decampment and his perilously negligible skills in the art of prestidigitation getting him nowhere, the poor guy descends into madness à la Jack Nicholson in The Shining and ends up trying to kill the twins - with magic instead of an axe, which is fortunate for the twins 'cause as we've already indicated: dad ain't no David Copperfield (thank God).

From the Bottom of My Bard

The Merry Wives of Wilshire: Dominick DiNapoli (the Dom DeLuise character from Fatso) comes to L.A. to woo a couple of Mrs. Robinsons but is thwarted by Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Khorda (the Robert Quarry character from Deathmaster).

All's Well That Ends Dead: Helena Jekyll, daughter of the infamous Henry, is in love with Sir Ebenezer Scrooge, a despicable businessman. But Ebenezer shuns Helena, presumably 'cause she looks like Mohandas Gandhi.

So Helena studies her father's notebooks and learns how to make the potion that used to turn him into Edward Hyde, except she adds estrogen, cinnamon & nutmeg to it so she'll turn into a "hot babe" instead of a seething sociopath. Ebenezer's still not interested, though, 'cause it turns out he's gay. This upsets Helena so much that she goes insane and tries to kill him.

The Taming of the Killer Shrews: Patrick, a geneticist, falls in love with his boss's repulsively bitchy daughter, Katherine, as they work together on Project Lilliput, a plan to shrink humankind by 50% and thereby instantly "increase" the world's food supply (including chocolate).

Things get messy when the lab mice start getting bigger instead of smaller and go insane as a result, attacking their human overlords. In order to survive, Patrick'll have to tame both Katherine and the mice! (Surprise ending: we reveal it was Dracula who tampered with the mice in order to derail the project, 'cause if humans get smaller they'll have less blood in them by volume.)

And on screen # 2...

That Damn Cat!: a cat possessed by Satan sets its litterbox on fire just by looking at it.

The Vulcan Bitch: the story of Spock's secret short-lived marriage to T'Niqua, a hair stylist from South Central Gol.

Field of Screams: a destitute farmer discovers an Indian burial ground in his cornfield and turns it into a tourist attraction ("If you build it...we will kill you."); meanwhile, his son dreams of applying to the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

The Completely Bonkers Hunchback: Rollo Ditmeyer, a hunchbacked ophthalmic surgeon, is kinder than Mother Teresa but uglier than a Horta. He's in love with Esmeralda, a blind Mexican hottie who works in a taco stand near his office. He offers to restore her sight with a radical new surgical technique he's developed, in exchange for her hand in marriage. Esmeralda agrees, figuring she'll learn to love Rollo eventually, but when she finally gets a look at him after the operation, she starts screaming her head off (he ugly, man!). The marriage is called off, and Esmeralda hurries home to Quauhnahuac. Rollo goes insane with grief, despair, hurt feelings, etc. and follows her, kills her & her parents, then stays on as U.S. consul, slowly drinking himself to death. "No se puede vivir sin amar."

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

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Happy Gilmore in the House of Pain

Hollywood Hard-On

Hollywood's got a real hard-on for remakes these days, eh? Everything from Red Dawn to Drop Dead Fred (reportedly starring Russell Brand [who, if he's going to play Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, in a Robert Smith biopic, should do it now]).

So I'd like to propose a couple more, since the time seems ripe for it: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Hell, why not? I mean, if they're willing to redo Endless Love and The Black Hole...

Now, I'm thinking both of these remakes could be Adam Sandler vehicles ('cause he's a bankable star and we're doing this for the money; prestige we can work on later, when we've paid off the mortgage & all our credit cards).

Stinks or Sucks - who cares? YOU should!

We'd rename Salò something like Life Sucks, 'cause 1) it'd then have more multiplex appeal than fucking Salò, and 2) a few years from now, somebody'll send their spouse to Blockbuster to rent Life Stinks, that Mel Brooks movie from 1991, but they won't be paying attention and will inadvertently rent Life Sucks instead. Money in the bank, bitches!

So what'd it be about? Well, Salò's about a quartet of Italian fascists who rape & torture a bunch of kids just for kicks. The end. The Adam Sandler version could be about a quartet of American neocons who kidnap & brainwash a bunch of kids as part of some Manchurian Candidate-style scheme to stage a coup d'état and establish a Christian theocracy in the U.S. à la The Handmaid's Tale. 'Cause somebody's got to stop the liberals & the gays & the abortionists. And the Mexicans. And the zombies. And that's where the title kicks in, btw, 'cause life'd suck for the kids while they're getting brainwashed & beaten & fed nothing but Egg Beaters & tap water.

Adam Sandler'd play a pet store owner who stumbles onto the neocons' plot and reluctantly takes it upon himself to thwart their shit.

(This'd kick ass on a double bill with You Don't Mess with the Zohan, IMHO.)

Dr. Moreau pulls a boner...

Since Moreau's now an Adam Sandler movie, the first thing we'd do is change the name "Moreau" to "Murray," which'd give us The Island of Dr. Murray as the title, which'd make it easier for skaterboys in Illinois to pronounce & remember.

Then we cast Orlando Bloom as "Prendick," the hero of the story, and Megan Fox as Murray's sister (& Orlando's love interest), "Charlene," which'd be awesome 'cause then you could have a scene in which Megan tells Orlando she can never be with him again after their wild night of intense fire-lit fornication ('cause she just found out she's not Murray's sister but one of his experiments, cloned from an aardvark) and you could play that Gap Band song, "Burn Rubber On Me," as she walks away from him, breaking his heart, 'cause even though Charlie Wilson's saying "burn rubber on me, Charlie," it sounds like he's saying "burn rubber on me, Charlene," which is what most civilized people think he's saying anyway.

Next, we get Chris Tucker to play "Montgomery," Murray's assistant (ideally, he'd play this character the same way he played Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element, with that same high-pitched squeaky stutter & hyper-agitated mannerisms: "D-D-D-D-D-Doc! D-D-D-D-D-Doc! It's the beastmen OHMYGAAAD! That muthafucka Hyena-Swine's got 'em all riled up like a bunch o' muthafuckas OHMYGAAAD!").

And Adam Sandler plays Dr. Murray, formerly the most brilliant surgeon in America, now living in self-imposed exile on an uncharted island in the South Pacific after his sister's death, for which he blames himself: she died shortly after a failed attempt to replace her burned-out uterus with a chimpanzee's. Deranged by the experience, he now spends his days playing God and experimenting on his half-human / half-animal creations, the Beastmen, who spend their days confined in a hut called "Human School," learning to eat with utensils & relieve themselves in toilets, and watching movies like The Lion King and Serpico.

The movie'd end with Orlando, Megan & Chris escaping the island on jet skis as DeBarge's "Rhythm of the Night" plays on the soundrack.

(This'd kick ass on a double bill with Life Sucks.)

I amaze myself with these highly commercial projects I dream up.

Hasta la próxima...

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

Year of the Pig

Browsing through my notebooks, I see that 2007 was a pretty prolific year (maybe being single all 365 days had something to do with it). I remember sitting down and writing almost every night, usually right after a late-night shredded beef burrito from Del Taco, consumed with a hedonist's deliberate & tarrying delight while watching some shlocktronic favorite like The Creature Walks Among Us or The Reincarnation of Isabel, which is probably why I came up with a lot of titles like Brain Without a Head and Arousal of the Damned - this is what we call "obvious influence," 'though the less charitable (and probably more accurate) view would deem it "derivative crap." Either way, it has to be admitted that this sort of easy transubstantiation can yield some worthy results.

For example:

King Kong → A*P*E

Star Wars → Starcrash

Flashdance → Breakin'

The Terminator* → Lady Terminator

And as everyone knows by now: FernGully: The Last Rainforest → Avatar

See what I mean?

What a lesser world this would be, in my highly prejudiced opinion, were the bastard children of Mainstream Cinema denied their public life, their happy public flickering before the hungry eyes of millions. Derive away, I say, and keep them babies coming (except for The Island, which it's claimed was neither derived from nor influenced by Parts: The Clonus Horror but was in fact a straight rip-off thereof [read about it here]).

Case in Point

No doubt influenced by Stephen King's Cell and the movie The Signal, I came up with the following idea on May 21, 2007:

"a story about a mysterious pulse that blasts out of the TV while everyone's watching Fame Whores, an American Idol-type show; the pulse turns everybody into zombies except people who like Shakespeare; survivors hole up in a cabin in the woods where they're terrorized by a biker gang that's mysteriously escaped zombification"

Of course, I'm nothing if not eclectic in my alchemical approach to storytelling - sorry, kids, it's in my DNA. Which is why I'd have to say that the second part of the story would no doubt be highly influenced by (or flatteringly derivative of) such eerily appropriate source material as These Are the Damned, Mad Max and Straw Dogs, as well as The Day the World Ended, Panic in the Year Zero and Night of the Living Dead (not to mention Last Year at Marienbad and The Madness of King George - whew!).

"But, Diego," you say, "that's more than just an obvious influence or whatever - you're mashing shit up again!" Well, yes, I guess I am. (Didn't I just fucking say my approach to storytelling is alchemically eclectic, etc.? It's like I told the frog when I stinged him: "Sorry, dude, it's my nature." If you don't like it, stop reading this blog and go watch I Am Sam. Again.)

Hey man, I do get the difference - "obvious influence"/"derivative crap" (OIDC) is when you borrow various elements (including the storyline) from a single source and incorporate them at the genetic level in a fresh iteration, as in Play Misty for Me → Fatal Attraction, whereas a mashup is the conscious synthesis of two or more sources into a single entity but for which elements of said sources are directly & grossly constituent, like the Frankenstein Monster, or as illustrated by the following equation:

28 Days Later... + Escape From New York + The Road Warrior = Doomsday

There. Are you happy now?

Anyhoo, I think this "TV pulse" story idea could actually work - or could have, were it not for a) its two main sources of inspiration, Cell and The Signal, (hey, there's a title for you: The Cell & the Signal, kinda like The Agony & the Ecstasy [not really]) and b) the predictably prompt threat of a lawsuit for copyright infringement from one or both authors of those works. Best let this one lie low for a while, maybe deploy it a few years from now when everyone's distracted by the media orgy over Justin Bieber's divorce from Dakota Fanning.

In the meantime, I've got lots more material to develop.

Till next time...

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

* The Terminator itself is the product of this sort of transubstantiation, too - specifically 2 episodes of The Outer Limits: "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand." More info here.

What child is THIS?

It's now officially the most wonderful time of the year, my lovelies. Some of you are giddy, some of you are anxious, and some of you could give a rat's ass (bah, humfuck). Some of you are hoping Santa Claus'll finally bring you that divorce you've been restlessly waiting for, while others just wanna get laid this holiday season 'cause it's been like 6 months or so since your last encounter of the carnal kind and you've been having trouble concentrating on other things as a result. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? What am I, a mind-reader over here?

Whatever your holiday state of mind, though, remember: the Christmas season is here, so put away your guns & knives & weedwhackers, and stop trying to poison your neighbor's pets - and for Christ's sake, don't drink & drive between now & January 2nd; the last thing you want to do is plow into an oncoming car & grease a whole family at Christmas (whatever your faults & shortcomings may be [e.g. you actually paid to see Step Up 3D at the theater], you're not a homicidal maniac, are you?). Just drink your eggnog and leave the plutonian business of murder & mayhem to our government trained professionals.

Onward to this entry's offerings...

Dead Alone

All this'd be is Home Alone + Night of the Living Dead, thus:

Mischievous 8 yr. old Wally Brambles gets left behind by his family during Christmas. A pair of bumbling burglars breaks into the anthropologist's house next door to steal a copy of the Necronomicon and inadvertently wake the dead largely ignored by his family. Soon enough, Wally finds himself besieged by the living dead, and he's alone...dead alone...

Much Ado About Dracula

I came up with this one on April 18, 2006. The mashup is my natural state of mind, it seems.

Take Much Ado About Nothing + Dracula, then blend: Don Pedro & his companions Benedick & Claudio pay a visit to Leonato, governor of Messina. While there, Claudio gets a boner for Leonato's daughter, Hero, but is constantly cock-blocked by Leonato's mysterious & annoying house guest, Count Dracula, who wants Hero for his own. Things get messy when Van Helsing & Jonathan Harker arrive (disguised as interior decorators) to dispatch the Count.

A Nightmare of Their Own

On May 28, 2006, I thought it'd be a good idea to mashup A Nightmare on Elm Street and A League of Their Own. Simple. Freddy Krueger stalks an all-girl baseball team in the 1940s.

Unpleasantville

Two teen couch potatoes get sucked into a combo David Lynch / Lucio Fulci version of their favorite TV show. Pleasantville + Blue Velvet + The Beyond. You're welcome.

The Hills Have Elves

Jotted this one down on December 19, 2006. Now here's a Yuletide flick I'd like to see. The Hills Have Eyes + Elves = the dysfunctional Hurwood family's RV breaks down on the way to grandma's house for Christmas, while at a secret army base nearby, a government experiment to turn Santa's elves into deadly bioweapons has gone awry. I'm sure you can figure out what happens next (except for the movie ending with a wedding - didn't see that one coming, did you?). Ho, ho, ho!

Please Don't Eat My Time Machine

This one's from May 21, 2007. Had no story for it at the time, but thinking about it now I'd have to say the story for a title like this'd have to be about a kooky Doc Brown-type scientist who invents a dime-sized time machine. He's forced to hide the time machine in a birthday cake for some reason, and then the cake's delivered to some kid's birthday party, and the kooky scientist'd arrive just in time to watch the birthday boy or girl eat the slice with the time machine in it - this'd be the title scene, of course; in slow motion, the kid puts the cake in his/her mouth as the kooky scientist leaps across the backyard & cries out, "Please don't eat my  t i m e   m   a   c   h    i    n    e  !"

Too late, of course - the kid eats the time machine and now every time he/she burps or farts, he/she jumps in time; the scientist'd follow him/her back & forth across the timeline and then, once the kid's been apprehended, it'd be a simple matter of waiting for him/her to shit out the time machine so everyone can go home. If it helps, the scientist & the kid are surrounded by zombies.

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

It's time to give fangs...

The Man in the Street

People sometimes stop me in the street and ask me, "Hey, Diego, do you ever run out of ideas?" or "Hey, Diego, do you ever get writer's block?" or "Hey, Diego, do you always wear those stupid sunglasses? 'Cause they make you seem like you're really full of yourself."

To which I'll usually reply, "Um, excuse me - do I know you?" or "I'm sorry, sir/madam, but you have me at a disadvantage: I don't know who the fuck you are..." or "Mom, do you have to embarrass me in public all the time? How'm I supposed to get laid with you embarrassing me like that all the time?"

Actually, that never happens. The only people who stop me in the street are homeless guys; I usually give 'em whatever money I have in my wallet and/or the rest of my cigarettes if I have a pack on me. I appreciate it when the process takes no longer than 60 seconds, however: not 'cause I'm skeeved or grossed out or anything; more 'cause I usually have shit to do (like pick up my son from school or do laundry or write this blog).

It occurs to me, though, that maybe these homeless dudes'd be a great source of feedback & commentary on some of my movie ideas. Why not? I always listen to their life stories or their observations on contemporary society or their explanations of why they're for or against the death penalty; I'm buying the fucking coffee & providing the smokes, though, so shouldn't I get to say something, too?

Now, is it vile & inconsiderate of me to propose using the homeless as sounding boards for my cinematically-oriented narrative proposals? Would I be in violation of the Second Maxim of Kant's Categorical Imperative if I did so? And, more importantly, does anyone really give a shit?

Such considerations are both beyond the scope & outside the purpose of this blog. You don't come here for intellectually masturbatory philosophical analysis; you come here to read about (and, hopefully, someday buy) my ideas for movies & maybe a novel or short story or farm equipment catalog. So let's get to it, shall we?

Vampire Santa Redux

I know what you're going to say: "Diego, didn't we just cover the whole Santa/Dracula thing a few days ago?" Yes, children - on November 20, to be exact. But I was watching Taste the Blood of Dracula last night and was reminded of a couple of titles I came up with a few years ago...

Back in the spring of 2004, WB Home Video released Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and Taste the Blood of Dracula. Manna from Heaven Transylvania! At the time, it occurred to me that you could switch "Santa Claus" for "Dracula" and you'd have two awesome titles:

Admit it: you totally want to see these movies now...

Stay tuned: I'll pull a storyline out of my ass for these two soon enough. 

Random Bits

I haven't worked out a plot or story or characters for any of these titles yet, either, but they strike me as worthy of the effort. And because I know you'll be eagerly waiting for me to whip up something worthy of your attention, I promise to put my best men on this ASAP (i.e. as soon as I drive down to Home Depot and hire them).

Revenge of the Manitou (proposed sequel to William Girdler's masterful The Manitou)

Body of a She-Male (from the Amero/Findlay sexploitation classic Body of a Female)

and

Diary of a Shotgun

The Robot Who Broke My Heart 

Chainsaw Hitman

Leave Her to Satan

Story of a One-Night Stand

Curse of the Starry Night

Death Train to Phoenix

The Devil's Stepmom

Grand Theft Evil

Prognosis: Gay

Sword of the Cheerleader

Foot Meets Ass

Gestapo Starbeast

The Eternal Damnation of a Monkey's Uncle

Dr. Racist

Vault of Cataclysm

Any of these you want me to work on first? Let me know...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

I see London, I see France...

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All I Want for Christmas...IS YOUR BLOOD!

You know that movie, The Blood on Satan's Claw, Piers Haggard's cute little masterpiece from 1970 about witchcraft and/or Devil-worship in a 17th-century English village?

Wouldn't it be awesome if they made a movie called The Blood on Santa's Claw?

Now here's the part where you, as usual, jump in and go, "Yeah, Diego, but what would it be about?" Which some people may ascribe to impatience on your part, but I prefer to think of as a refreshing enthusiasm (and if it was impatience, I'd still give you a pass, 'cause I'd assume you have to go to the bathroom or something, 'cause maybe you're 68 years old and had a McRib meal for lunch).

In answer to your query, though, I'd say The Blood on Santa's Claw is about Santa getting bit by a vampire while delivering toys to a house in Eastern Europe one foggy Christmas Eve...and then becoming a vampire himself! Holy fucking shit! Ooo, maybe the vampire who turns Santa is Dracula, the Dracula, the Prince of Darkness himself, who's risen from the grave and whose blood we must taste (hmm...why's that sound so familiar? Oh, that's right...).

For reasons best worked out during that phase of Hollywood studio moviemaking known as "in development," the story's climax would take place at the North Pole, at Santa's village or castle or Fortress of Solitude or whatever, where Santa & his elves would stand off against Dracula & his vampire lackeys (vackeys?).

"But, Diego," you say as you lean back in your Garden Treasures aluminum-strap chaise lounge patio chair from Lowe's and take a sip of that boxed wine you like so much, "what about The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, specifically the 1-hour Christmas special, 'Billy & Mandy Save Christmas,' in which Santa Claus gets bitten by & becomes a vampire?"

To which I'd reply, "Fuck you! I had that same exact idea like a year before 'Billy & Mandy Save Christmas' was broadcast!" (Which is true, I really did.) And then I'd quote David Trottier: "Creativity is not creating something out of nothing; it's a new twist on an old idea. It's making new combinations out of old patterns. It's converting the Big Dipper into the Little Ladle." (The Screenwriter's Bible, 4th Edition, p. 89.)

If, at this point, you kept giving me shit, then I'd point out that Shakespeare "borrowed" the plot of Hamlet from the Ur-Hamlet & other sources (oh, you gonna get all up in Shakespeare's Kool-Aid now?), that Holly Lisle'd back me up on the notion of "borrowing" ideas and/or points of inspiration from other works, and that subsequently in history, "borrowing," "reworking" & "reimagining" are both widespread in practice and have yielded some worthy results (e.g. Romeo & Juliet → West Side Story; Parts: The Clonus Horror → The Island; Garfield → Garfield the Movie - you see? YOU SEE?).

And/or you might say (in an excessively whiny voice, for some reason): "But, Diego, isn't there already a movie called Satan Claws?"

"Good point," I'd say, and then refer to the contemporary phenomenon of dueling movie releases as an example of (to paraphrase David Trottier) a new twist on the same ideas (well, a hoped-for new twist, or at least the semblance thereof, for the sake of the box office; I mean, you don't have to work that hard these days to fool an audience into watching the same movie over & over, but it still involves some effort [like changing the title & all the characters' names {e.g. War of the Worlds → Earth vs. the Flying Saucers → Independence Day → War of the Worlds → Skyline → Battle: Los Angeles → ?}]).

So, yes, there is a movie called Satan Claws. So what? Let's face it, kids: "evil Santa" stories are by now almost on the verge of perhaps possibly becoming (maybe) a fringe tradition of the Christmas experience in America. To wit: Christmas Evil, Don't Open Till Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, the aforementioned Satan Claws, Bad Santa, Santa's Slay, etc. To me, the burgeoning nature of this sub-sub-genre signals a welcome to new expressions of its core values & tenets, a call to storytellers everywhere to bring their voices to the Evil Santa Party, and all I'm doing is RSVPing that my ass be attending. Me + 1 guest...will it be you?

And then you'd say, "Yes, Diego, I see your point. I'm really looking forward to The Blood on Santa's Claw now." To which I'd reply, "Well, this ought to tide you over till then, or this..."

¡Feliz Navidad!

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

Let's Hear It for the Demons

Back on November 8, 2009, I jotted down the title Evil Death in one of my notebooks (an Office Depot personal size vinyl cover notebook, 'though I've since switched to a Moleskine cahier). Imagine it on a movie poster:

EVIL DEATH

Now there's a title that just screams "I promise you nothing but trash!" Such sweet, sweet assurance...sigh.

"But, Diego," you say, "what'd it be about?"

Good question. Well, let's see...what kind of movie would Evil Death be? I think it'd be a good idea to start by asking: what exactly is an "evil death"? What does it mean if a death is "evil"?

The first thing that comes to mind is "death in an especially evil manner." Like, if a rhino bit your head clean off while you were getting raped by a mandrill, that'd be an especially evil death (you might say it's an especially nasty death, too, but the title's Evil Death, not Nasty Death, so stop interrupting, okay?). Or like when that Diaper Mafia dude gets his head shoved up his own ass in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. Or like when Elizabeth Taylor's cousin gets eaten by those Spanish kids in Suddenly Last Summer. That's some evil shit!

So, now that we've defined what an "evil death" is (more or less), it occurs to me that the story of Evil Death could be about troubled teen BRAD CORBETT, whose family has just moved from the Big City to some two-bit hick town in the Midwest where dancing's been outlawed, which is a major bummer for Brad 'cause what he likes to do most (after drinking, getting high, having sex, playing videogames, watching porn, and podcasting about how tough it is being a teenager these days) is dance.

With the predictably rebellious spirit of youth driving him on, Brad quickly rallies the local kids to the cause of getting the dread anti-dancing law repealed. The city council, however, is unimpressed with Brad's argument ("Leaping and dancing! Leaping...and dancing!") so Brad organizes an illegal prom across the county line, over at the old Dunwich house, a.k.a. Blood Mansion (which, if you think about it, could be another title for this turkey, i.e. Blood Mansion, but you're ingesting superheated cocaine hydrochloride [i.e. "smoking crack"] if you think I'm gonna whip up another epynomial justification for an alternate title).

It'd be explained at some point that Blood Mansion was the site of several unexplained but intensely gruesome deaths in the past; it'd basically be this story's Hill House but with a more depraved history. Our hero Brad, though, being both a charmingly flippant teen and a dismissive Big City outsider, would convince his dance fever-infected clique of bumpkin peers that Blood Mansion's ideal for their soirée and who cares about the house's reputation, it's all bullshit anyway so c'mon you sheepfuckers: LET'S DANCE!

Bad idea, Brad. Very bad idea.

So now the story'd follow the same narrative arc as Night of the Demons: aroused & awakened by the presence of so much nubile young flesh, the evil spirits of Blood Mansion would trundle up from the nether planes of their demonic slumber and right away start with their mischief, i.e. taking over the kids' bodies and slaughtering them, which'd consist of particularly atrocious modes of demise (e.g. forced inhalation of one's own penis, vaginal impalement on a bazooka, decapitation by rhino bite, etc.).

Meanwhile, you'd have some snappy-ass tunes playing on the soundtrack, like "Rude Boy," "Alejandro," and "Funplex," which wouldn't be considered "lame" or "kitschy" or "embarrassing to listen to" 20 years from now, unlike "Let's Hear It for the Boy," "Dancing in the Sheets," or "Footloose." 'Cause now we know better, right?

Anyhoo, if you've seen Footloose and Night of the Demons, you pretty much know how this whole thing's gonna turn out - except for this twist: you take the ending of Amityville II: The Possession and graft it onto this turkey, for an especially soul-chilling finale: say Brad gets possessed by one of the demons during the prom and starts wasting the farmer's daughters; then a priest shows up and performs an exorcism on Brad but ends up possessed himself; after Brad & the few kids who've survived the demonic attacks vacate the premises, the priest sits huddled in a dark corner of the mansion, waiting for the demon inside him to slowly take over...

Fade out. The end.

"Everybody cut, everybody cut!
Everybody cut, everybody cut!
Everybody cut, everbody cut!
Everybody cut footloose!"

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz

The January Man

I have a file in Word that I call "XB71," which serves as a kind of database of ideas & titles for movies, novels, instruction manuals, farm equipment catalogs, etc.

Poking around in XB71 today, I see that on January 7, 2004, I came up with Revenge of the Elephant Man, in which it'd be revealed that the Elephant Man and Jack the Ripper were actually the same person. As penance for Gamer and The Bounty Hunter, Gerard Butler should play the Scotland Yard investigator assigned to the case. And I don't know about you, but I think Richard Coyle (Coupling, Prince of Persia) would be perfect as John Merrick/the Ripper.

Five days later (January 12), there's this entry: "Superman vs. the Ice Demons: basically, it’s Superman & Lois Lane in bed, like in that scene in Superman II, and they just yak their heads off like in My Dinner With Andre; at the very end, a pack of ice demons breaks in and attacks, Superman blasts them with his heat vision, then he & Lois go back to their conversation." I don't know, man...to me, this sounds like the perfect date movie. 'Cause after the credits roll and everyone's walking back to their cars, all the women'd turn to their boyfriends/husbands and go, "See? Superman cuddles and talks after sex - why can't you?" Which'd then open a dialogue between significant others that'd last all the way home, after which all the boyfriends/husbands would be like, "Okay, fine: I understand why cuddling & talking after sex are important. Let's go fuck, cuddle & talk right now." But they'd end up falling asleep right after the sex anyway, and all the girlfriends/wives would be lying there all disappointed and thinking, "Fuck you, Superman vs. the Ice Demons..." (What am I, a marriage counselor over here? That's what you get for trying to use Superman vs. the Ice Demons as couples' therapy, dingus.)

It seems January of 2004 was a particularly fruitful month - there are hundreds of entries! For January 26, there's this: "Private investigator WALTER LUNCH is hired by Dr. SHELDON GRASP to find ANTOINE McBORIS, a world-famous poet who’s been missing for several days; rival poet ODIN PADILLA is a prime suspect; over the course of the investigation, Lunch discovers that Death itself is running the city of L.A.; that all the women in L.A. are actually transsexuals; that some people can teleport from one place to another through mirrors; that most people in L.A. have been possessed by the spirits of the dead & have lost their own identity long time ago." I'm thinking this kind of story'd best be told by someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Santa Sangre); my second choice'd be Takashi Miike (Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer). What do you think?

Later on that month, I came up with these titles:

Damien, Priest of the Damned - You can't go wrong with naming your protagonist "Damien" if you're telling some sort of "theological horror" story, right? Built-in subconscious associative factor right there, thanks to the (by now "ho-hum") Omen movies (and/or the story of Damien the Leper [1840-1889]).

The Diary of Figaro - Most people'd assume this is an opera movie, and I guess it could be, but really, you can do almost anything with this title - of course, this being Hollywood, it'd get shortened to just Figaro and the movie'd end up being this saccharine bildungsroman about a plucky CGI mouse named Figaro (no, really?) and his evolution from "zero to hero" over the course of 88 minutes or so. From the producers of Garfield, The Barbie Diaries, and Balto III: Wings of Change.

Terror of the CIA - Ooo, this is a good one! Not that anything with a title like this'd ever get made, but if it did, it'd probably be about the CIA creating Frankensteinian monsters for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then one of the monsters'd develop a conscience and refuse to keep doing the CIA's dirty work, so the other monsters'd be ordered to destroy him, 'cause a conscience is obviously a liability when you work for the CIA (or the U.S. government, for that matter). Hot diggity!

Ecstasy of the Swamp Creature - A Swamp Thing-like creature spends its days lollygagging in an idyllic bog (really? can a bog be "idyllic"?), just soaking up sunshine and playing with its cute forest friends. One day, a bunch of Mob goons dump a half-dead waitress in the swamp (for reasons of their own, heh heh). Our protagonist rescues & revives her, using his own "flesh" to heal her injuries; as she recovers, she begins turning into a swamp creature, too - OMG! They fall in love (bet you didn't see that one coming) and spend the happiest days - and nights (wink) - they've ever known just enjoying each other. Surprise, surprise: it all goes to hell when the Mob assholes come back to make sure there's no trace of the waitress left...

The Glitterbat - A lonely girl catches a bat, covers it with a glue and then sprinkles glitter all over it. Meanwhile, her parents get a divorce.

Exorcism at the O.K. Corral - This one shouldn't be too hard to figure out, right? You take the oft-told tale of the feud between the Earps & the Clantons and throw in an exorcist. During the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a haggard, foul-mouthed, whiskey-soaked priest performs an exorcism on the combatants, but instead of expelling any presumed demonic forces from the area, the ritual actually summons the spirits of the damned, who proceed to possess the people of Tombstone, Evil Dead-style! Which of course forces the Earps & the Clantons, boiling with hatred & contempt for each other, to set aside their feud and join forces to defeat the startlingly violent demons. The horror, the horror...

Gonna have dinner now. Thanks for stopping by!

Copyright © 2010 by Diego Baz