These Are Media Things

These Are Media Things
Articles by Kontributor

  • The Top 10 Worst CGI In Movies

    Since the dawn of computers, movies have used them to generate images. This happens because they are either too lazy to use practical effects or they are just making impossible things. These 10 movies have the worst CGI in the world of movies. But all of them are better than Eli Roth’s movie Ice Cream Man. Even the worst CGI is better than the use of generative AI in filmmaking.

    #10 Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

    The birds are gifs

    I introduced Birdemic: Shock and Terror to my children because apparently part of being a parent is exposing the next generation to important works of cinema. My son, Chicken, was genuinely scared by the attacking birds. He is a pathetic coward. My daughter, Alpha Dora, took a different approach and hit the television with a clothes hanger.

    Calling what happens in Birdemic “CGI” feels disrespectful to computers. The birds look like someone found an animated eagle GIF on a GeoCities page, copied and pasted it forty times, and slapped the resulting flock directly over the footage. They don’t interact with the environment. They barely interact with physics. There’s no convincing lighting, shadows, or attempt to make these creatures appear as though they occupy the same physical universe as the actors. Alpha Dora apparently understood the assignment better than anyone: while other children might hide behind the couch from menacing bird gifs, my child looked upon these digital abominations, grabbed the nearest available weapon, and attempted to physically defend our household from the visual effects. She saw the CGI in Birdemic and tried to kill it. I can’t criticize that decision.

    #9 – The Lawnmower Man (1992)

    I cut grass

    In the summer of 1992, I was an unemployed 12-year-old, so I did what any ambitious child would do: I started mowing people’s lawns for money. Naturally, when I saw a movie called The Lawnmower Man, I assumed it was a training video. The CGI was absolute dogshit, but that didn’t concern me. Employment training videos always look like shit. I just figured the floating chrome heads, primitive polygons, and psychedelic virtual-reality sex were somehow important information that OSHA needed me to know before operating a Craftsman.

    Unfortunately, The Lawnmower Man left me woefully unprepared for the actual lawn-care industry. Customers became disturbed when I showed up with a lawnmower and an entire VR rig. They became considerably more upset when I started shooting chimpanzees. Apparently you’re just supposed to cut the grass, collect your twenty bucks, and leave. Nobody told me that. Pierce Brosnan certainly didn’t tell me that. It was a terrible summer. I made no money, the chimpanzee situation got completely out of hand, and the CGI still looked like somebody had given a Windows 3.1 screensaver a $10 million budget.

    #8 – Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

    This is a shot from a movie that exists. I don’t know what’s happening.

    My daughter Alpha Dora is very interested in the martial sport of mortal combat and quite active on the youth MMA circuit. She recently won the Tri-State MMA Championship in the Girls 8-to-10 division, although her victory became somewhat controversial after she tore the heart out of her competitor. When horrified officials asked where she learned such a move, Alpha Dora proudly explained, “I learned it by watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.” As a parent, this was deeply embarrassing. Not because of the heart thing. Kids get competitive. I was embarrassed because now everyone knows I let my child watch Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

    Worse, it’s absolutely terrible instructional material. The CGI creatures look like unfinished PlayStation assets, the environments resemble screensavers, and the climactic animality battle is so spectacularly unconvincing that no responsible youth MMA organization should recognize any of its techniques. If Alpha Dora is going to rip out another competitor’s vital organs, I want her learning proper form—not studying a movie where the visual effects department couldn’t convincingly render a goddamn dragon. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation isn’t merely terrible CGI. It’s bad training for America’s next generation of youth MMA champions.

    #7 – Son of the Mask (2005)

    This man is evil and nothing can be done about it

    I never wanted to watch Son of the Mask. Unfortunately, one afternoon Jamie Kennedy entered our home carrying a gun and a DVD of Son of the Mask and informed us that nobody had appreciated “his masterpiece” in theaters, so we were going to appreciate it now. He even captured our miniature pinscher, Bark, and painted him green while forcing us through the movie. The experience was horrifying—and then the CGI started. The digital baby looks like an escaped medical simulation, the cartoon physics make everyone appear boneless, and the CGI dog somehow looks less convincing than my actual dog after Jamie Kennedy painted him green.

    When the movie ended, we smiled and told Jamie Kennedy it was wonderful. What else could we do? The man owns all the police. He’s a Kennedy, after all. He eventually left satisfied, and Bark was physically unharmed, although he remained green for several baths and still becomes visibly nervous whenever someone opens a DVD case. I learned two important lessons that day: Son of the Mask contains some of the most hideous CGI ever committed to film, and Jamie Kennedy takes criticism extremely poorly.

    #6 – Spawn (1997)

    Did Image comics ever make anything good?

    I was a terrible person in 1997. One afternoon, bored and apparently operating without anything resembling a conscience, I beat up a bunch of sixth graders and took their money. I spent my ill-gotten fortune on many different drugs and seventeen pounds of Red Vines, then headed to the theater with a gang of vicious sex workers to see Spawn. We were all spectacularly high, which turned out to be the optimal viewing condition, because Spawn has some genuinely cool practical makeup surrounded by CGI that looks like somebody tried to render Hell on a Commodore 64.

    And then we actually go to Hell. Thousands of identical demon soldiers cover the landscape like somebody discovered copy-and-paste, while Malebolgia resembles the final boss from a PC game packaged free with a box of cereal. The only way this CGI becomes remotely convincing is through an aggressively altered state of consciousness; the sort where you’ve completely lost track of reality and are no longer entirely certain whether you’re watching Spawn or experiencing a catastrophic neurological event. The only way this movie becomes tolerable is when you are snorting cocaine through a Red Vine off of a woman’s posterior. When the credits rolled, I knew two things: the CGI was fucking terrible, and I really needed to make some significant changes in my life

    #5 – The Scorpion King (2002)

    I think this is a thing that happened in the movie. I don’t know.

    I remember watching The Mummy Returns in 2001 and having a perfectly good time right up until The Rock appeared as that ridiculous CGI scorpion monstrosity. Apparently someone at Universal looked at one of the most hilariously unconvincing digital creatures ever put in a major studio movie and said, “Give that beefy man his own movie.” So when The Scorpion King arrived the following year, some friends and I prepared appropriately: we spent an entire Saturday day-drinking, got thrown out of several bars for our increasingly inebriated behavior, and eventually wandered into a movie theater.

    We somehow finished two large bottles of Jack Daniel’s during the movie and, according to witnesses, made quite a scene. I don’t remember the plot. I don’t remember leaving the theater. I don’t remember being arrested. I simply woke up the next morning in county jail with a pounding headache and one crystal-clear memory: the terrible CGI in The Scorpion King. Think about that. My brain discarded an entire night of drunken criminal misadventure, yet preserved those shitty digital effects in perfect detail.

    #4 – Green Lantern (2011)

    It sucks

    My daughter Alpha Dora absolutely loves Ryan Reynolds in the Deadpool movies. She wants to be Deadpool when she grows up. I made the mistake of mentioning that Reynolds had starred in another superhero movie before Deadpool. I didn’t think this information posed any danger because surely no respectable streaming service would still carry Green Lantern. Curse you, HBO Max!! Alpha Dora found it. She watched it. And she witnessed Ryan Reynolds flying around space in a glowing CGI onesie with a digital mask that looks like someone circled his eyes with a radioactive green Sharpie.

    My fiancée and I awoke in the middle of the night to find Alpha Dora standing over our bed holding a butcher knife. She didn’t attack us. She simply stared down at me and asked, “Why? Why did Green Lantern happen? Why was the CGI so bad? Why did you fail to set parental controls on your HBO Max account?” I didn’t have an answer. No parent does. All I could do was apologize and promise to be more responsible. Parental controls aren’t just there to protect children from sex and violence. Sometimes they’re there to make sure your eight-year-old never has to see Ryan Reynolds wearing a suit that looks like it was rendered by a Mountain Dew commercial.

    #3 – Die Another Day (2002)

    Don’t do this

    Remember when I woke up in county jail after The Scorpion King with the worst hangover of my life? Well, everyone knows the cure is a little hair of the dog that bit you. So I ate some dog hair, picked up a few bottles of booze, befriended some drifters, and drunkenly wandered into another movie theater. Not the theater where I’d seen The Scorpion King, obviously. I was banned from that one. We chose Die Another Day because James Bond was the guy from GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, which is the greatest video game ever made, so how could this possibly go wrong? Then Bond started driving an invisible car through an ice palace and parasurfing across a CGI tidal wave that looked like ass.

    And suddenly, through the alcohol-induced fog, I recognized Pierce Brosnan. THAT SON OF A BITCH! He was the scientist from The Lawnmower Man. The man whose shitty CGI training video had taught me absolutely nothing about mowing lawns and ruined my entire summer of 1992. Eleven years of suppressed trauma came roaring back as I watched his digital stunt double surf across an avalanche of visual-effects diarrhea. I became violently angry. There was shouting. There were accusations. Security became involved. I was subsequently banned from another movie theater. At this point, bad CGI wasn’t merely ruining movies for me. It was systematically ruining my life.

    #2 – The Mummy Returns (2001)

    Just because.

    #1 – Cats (2019)

    Sacrifice them all to the Dark Lord

    For the longest time, I believed cats were simply the furry little creatures I regularly sacrificed to the Dark Lord. Then one day, while scrolling through Netflix with the family, we discovered Cats. Apparently it’s based on a Broadway musical. Who the fuck is making plays about cats? We watched it, and every frame presented some fresh digital obscenity. Human faces float inside furry humanoid bodies. Their hands are sometimes paws, except when they’re hands. Their proportions constantly feel wrong. My daughter Alpha Dora had to be physically restrained from attacking the television again. My son Chicken, meanwhile, was delighted by the movie because that kid sucks. How did my seed create a human being who finds James Corden entertaining? Somewhere along the bloodline, something has gone terribly wrong.

    Eventually, some horrible CGI beast started singing about horrible CGI trains, and that’s the last thing I remember. I awoke the following morning soaked in blood, standing inside an animal shelter and muttering incoherently about Lawnmower Men, Scorpion Kings, and The Mummy Returns. Nobody would tell me exactly what had happened, but I was immediately and permanently banned from the shelter. Still, there was a silver lining: at least I wasn’t banned from another movie theater. That’s Cats: a film with CGI so catastrophically wrong that watching it apparently activated twenty-seven years of accumulated visual-effects trauma and sent me on a fugue-state rampage.

  • Ten Things About the Movie “Ballerina” (2025)

    Ten Things About the Movie “Ballerina” (2025)

    I went with my daughter Dora to see the movie Ballerina. My daughter hates ballet but she is a girl and is supposed to like it. I will force the gender role upon her and make her watch ballet. I will tell her all the time that she does not want to be a fighter, she is a GIRL and must do ballet. So I made her watch the movie Ballerina. She very much liked the movie, and so did I. But this movie was not about ballet.

    #1 – Ana de Armas is an Entire Meal

    I believe that her sweat would taste more sweet than salty… because of the ballet powers.

    Ana de Armas is the movie. She doesn’t just carry the narrative; she straps it to her back, pirouettes through gunfire, and serves looks so lethal they could kill on contact. She is the everything of this movie. Other people exist, but Ana de Armas sells this like it’s Shakespeare with a switchblade. Honestly, if the Academy handed out Oscars for “Best Actress in a Franchise Spinoff Whose Plot is Held Together by Lip Gloss,” she’d already have two.

    #2 – The Plot is there…. somewhere.

    I wanted Swan Lake but instead got the artsy tale of a Murder Woman

    You remember Rooney from John Wick 3, right? No? That’s fine, neither did the writers until they fished out a napkin with “ballerina assassin revenge arc???” scribbled on it and said, “MAKE MOVIE!” Imagine if someone choreographed a ballet while blackout drunk on absinthe. That’s the plot. It’s revenge, again, but with more eyeliner and fewer dogs. They tried to connect it to the John Wick mythos—bless their hearts—but it’s more like a fever dream in heels. There’s a backstory, but it’s whispered, mumbled, and shot through fog filters until you start wondering if you’re the one who got shot in the head. Still, the vibe is vibey, and let’s be honest—you weren’t here for a deep dive into Russo-Romanian assassin cults anyway. You just wanted to see Ana de Armas’ sexy sweat.

    #3 – There are scenes of action

    Her muscles have tone

    This is where Ballerina absolutely flexes. The choreography is so meticulously timed and fluid it feels like the camera’s dancing with her. You get hand-to-hand combat with ballerina grace, bullets flying in perfect rhythm, and the kind of violent elegance that made my daughter shout, “Forget about ballet, I crave krav maga!” Pure visual poetry—if your poetry has a body count. I wish there were more actual ballet dancing because the music of Tchaikovsky is more pleasant than bullet sounds.

    #4 – The Ballet School is Murder Hogwarts

    I posted the same image again because it is a very nice image.

    If Hogwarts had ballet, human trafficking, and a kill-or-be-killed final exam, it’d be this place. The Ruska Roma return to remind us that the John Wick universe’s HR policies are nonexistent. Every orphan is a potential assassin. It’s all style and menace, like a Soviet fever dream choreographed by Satan. You do not get a gold star here—just scars and maybe a cyanide pill in your pointe shoes.

    #5 – Keanu Reeves Briefly Appears

    He is existing like a divorced Dad picking up his franchise for visitation

    Saint Keanu appears like a wistful action ghost, mutters some backstory, does the brooding thing, and then vanishes back into whatever haunted dog park Wick lives in now. It’s more “cameo” than “crossover.” He wanders in looking tired, haunted, and vaguely unsure if he’s in Ballerina or a new Matrix sequel. He gives Rooney the usual Wick-verse cryptic pep talk—something like, “You know what you must do”—and then vanishes back into the shadows like a majestic, gun-toting raccoon.

    #6 – Norman Reedus Appears

    This week’s article is sponsored by AMC+’s hit series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. Did you ever wonder what happened to Norman Reedus’s gritty character, Daryl Dixon, at the conclusion of The Walking Dead? No? Me neither. Apparently, he went to France. Yeah, seriously, this good old boy is just going around shooting zombies and going all “oui oui monsieur” in Paris. You can watch both seasons of this show streaming on AMC+. What the fuck is Daryl Dixon doing in France? I dunno. What the fuck is Norman Reedus doing in Ballerina? I don’t know.

    #7 – Ballerina looks expensive but feels hollow

    Every single frame is dripping with rich color grading, slick lighting, and that high-art-meets-high-body-count aesthetic. Every shot has the delightful scene of Ana de Armas’s wonderful body sweat. The cinematography is so pretty you almost don’t notice how emotionally hollow it all is. There’s a difference between slow burn and just plain cold, and Ballerina occasionally falls into the latter. You’ll find yourself admiring the shot composition while asking, “Do I actually care what happens next?” Probably not. But at least it’s gorgeous.

    #8 – The script could have used a rewrite (or three)

    Speaking of three… here is that image for a third time. Just look at how toned her back is. I’m jealous.

    The dialogue often sounds like it was translated from Russian to English to Tumblr poetry and then back again. Characters drop lines like “Pain teaches us grace” with the kind of dramatic weight usually reserved for middle school theater. Monologues are cryptic, conversations are stilted, and when someone actually explains something, it’s either nonsense or it contradicts the last cryptic thing someone else said. It’s the John Wick universe, so sure, we’re not expecting Aaron Sorkin, but could we at least get complete sentences? Every time a character spoke, my daughter shouted at the screen, “Less talky! More shooty!”

    #9 – It’s Ferocious! Feminine! Flawed!

    Shooty shooty snowbunny!

    There’s something undeniably refreshing about a revenge thriller soaked in femininity. Rooney is graceful but ruthless, soft-spoken but savage. The pink hues, ballet motifs, and soft-focus moments don’t make her any less dangerous—they enhance her rage. This isn’t “girl power” in the slogan-on-a-Target-shirt sense. It’s raw, bloody catharsis wrapped in satin. But the movie sometimes mistakes ambiguity for depth, and not even Ana’s tear-filled stares can always sell it. My daughter Dora is a girl and she liked this movie, so this movie must be for girls.

    #10 – It’s Worth Watching—But Lower Your Expectations Like You’re Holding a Gun with a Broken Safety

    Her thighs are just solid muscle. It’s amazing. I bet she could kill a motherfucker with those thighs.

    This isn’t a genre-defining masterpiece, but it is a visually captivating, female-fronted action flick that deserves to exist. You’ll get style, spectacle, and one hell of a performance from Ana de Armas. Just don’t go in expecting to leave with your brain intact. Think of it as the cinematic equivalent of a glitter-covered switchblade: pretty, deadly, but not exactly practical.

    FINAL THOUGHTS

    My daughter may give this movie a 6 out of 5 because Dora lives for violence. She has killed before. I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It slays. It stumbles. It sashays away.

  • The Top 10 Chuck Norris Movies

    Chuck Norris is the action man. He is ugly like dog farts and just as deadly as dog farts. He uses his martial arts mastery with a tough-guy screen presence that made him one of the biggest stars of the history of the world. His films are packed with brutal roundhouse kicks, over-the-top roundhouse kicks, and memorable one-liners delivered with a roundhouse kick. Whether he’s kicking at terrorists, drug lords, or supernatural forces, Norris always delivers. Here are his top 10 films, along with my personal take on what makes them great.

    #10 – Hellbound (1994)

    The one where he roundhouse kicks ghosts

    Unlike most Chuck Norris movies, Hellbound takes Chuck Norris directly into the hell of Hell. He plays a Chicago cop investigating a murder connected to an ancient demonic force, which eventually results in Chuck doing what Chuck does best: kicking things. He kicks criminals. He kicks demons. He kicks supernatural entities that probably haven’t been kicked in several thousand years. Eventually he’s basically fighting the goddamned Devil, which is a fascinating tactical error on Satan’s part because if there’s one human being you don’t want arriving in Hell with his boots on, it’s Chuck Norris. The supernatural stuff makes Hellbound a wonderfully strange detour in his filmography, but don’t worry—beneath all the demons and ancient evil, this is still a movie about Chuck Norris kicking his way into our hearts.

    I first saw Hellbound on late-night cable when I was a kid, and I remember that night vividly. Mommy and Daddy were fighting again. Daddy had been drinking because he’d discovered Mommy was sleeping with another neighbor, Mommy was using meth again, dishes were breaking, and I kept turning up the television because the sound of Chuck Norris violence was better than the sound of real violence bouncing off the thin walls of our little trailer. The movie ended around the time the nice woman from Social Services arrived to take me away. I remember sitting beside her and asking whether she ever had to fight demons. Then I asked if Chuck Norris could be my foster dad. She said no. I cried. Anyway, Hellbound is a fun little supernatural action movie and an interesting change of pace for Chuck Norris. Worth a watch.

    #9 – Code of Silence (1985)

    The one where he is a quiet cop

    In Code of Silence, Chuck Norris is once again a tough Chicago cop, only this time he’s battling organized crime and corruption within his own police department instead of the goddamned Devil. He’s also much quieter because after the events of Hellbound, Chuck took a sacred vow never to speak of the demons he encountered. Mobsters try to make him talk. Corrupt cops try to make him talk. People shoot at him. Nothing works. Chuck Norris will take the secrets of Hell to his grave. Fortunately, a vow of silence doesn’t prevent you from roundhouse-kicking somebody through a window, and the movie delivers plenty of excellent action, including a remote-controlled machine-gun robot in the finale. It’s one of Chuck’s most well-rounded films—or, more appropriately, one of his most well-roundhouse-kicked.

    This was one of the first Chuck Norris movies I ever saw. I was still an infant, suckling milk from Mommy’s breast while Code of Silence played on television. Her milk was remarkably sweet and creamy, a flavor I still remember whenever I go to Shake Shack and pay nine fucking dollars for a vanilla shake. Normally feeding time demanded my complete attention, but I became mesmerized by Chuck Norris. I pulled away from the nipple, looked into my mother’s eyes and said, “Mommy, Code of Silence demonstrates an unusual degree of restraint for a mid-’80s action vehicle. Andrew Davis’s direction is assured, the pacing is economical, and Norris delivers one of the strongest dramatic performances of his career.” Mommy stared down at me in absolute horror and whispered, “What the fuck?” Then I returned to the breast. Anyway, if you want a more grounded Chuck Norris movie, Code of Silence is a must-watch.

    #8 – Nonconsensual Vengance (1982)

    The one in Kong Hong

    Set in Hong Kong, Nonconsensual Vengeance stars Chuck Norris as a casino security man whose boss gets murdered, making him the only employee in the history of employment to genuinely give a shit that somebody killed his boss. Most people would hear the news and think, “That’s terrible. Does this mean we’re still having the staff meeting at three?” Not Chuck. Chuck has tremendous respect for the corporate ladder, and if you murder somebody above him on the organizational chart, he will personally hunt you down and kill the motherfuckers responsible. The problem is that none of these people have consented to Chuck’s vengeance. He asks politely, they refuse, and Chuck is therefore forced to administer the vengeance nonconsensually. It’s right there in the title. Against a gorgeous neon-soaked Hong Kong backdrop, Chuck proceeds to roundhouse-kick his way through the local criminal population because nobody fucks with middle management on Chuck Norris’s watch.

    I discovered Nonconsensual Vengeance completely by accident. I was walking home one afternoon when a car slowed beside me and somebody shouted, “KONTRIBUTOR SUCKS!” before throwing a rock that struck me directly in the head. I became disoriented, stumbled into an alley and collapsed face-first onto a VHS copy of Nonconsensual Vengeance. I took this as a message from God. Or possibly a symptom of the concussion. Either way, I watched it that night and loved the raw, brutal fights and the Hong Kong setting, which gives the familiar American action formula an entirely different flavor. It’s like somebody served you an egg roll with a cheeseburger. Does that make cultural or culinary sense? No. Did I have a significant head injury when I came up with the comparison? Yes. Anyway, Nonconsensual Vengeance isn’t Chuck’s most famous movie, but it’s a hidden gem that deserves more attention.

    #7 – The Delta Force (1986)

    The one with a delta force

    Based on completely real events, The Delta Force is a documentary about one of America’s greatest heroes: elite commando Officer Delta Force, played in historical reenactments by Chuck Norris. When terrorists hijack a passenger plane, Officer Delta Force and his fellow Delta Forces are dispatched to rescue the hostages using all the sophisticated counterterrorism techniques available to the United States military in 1986: machine guns, roundhouse kicks and motorcycles with fucking rocket launchers attached to them. Some historians have questioned the documentary’s accuracy, particularly the motorcycle rockets, but those historians weren’t there. Chuck Norris was. The Delta Force remains an important historical document about the brave men who protected America during a dangerous period when apparently every international crisis could be resolved by putting more weapons on a dirt bike.

    This movie was a staple in our house because my dad was the actual Officer Delta Force whose life inspired the film. Most evenings Daddy would get drunk, pull The Delta Force off the VHS shelf and watch Chuck Norris reenact his greatest military accomplishments. Sometimes he would become very emotional and cry when the terrorists killed his friends. Other times he’d point at the television and angrily explain that Chuck was holding the rocket-launcher motorcycle wrong. Those are some of my fondest childhood memories. Daddy eventually went to prison for reasons unrelated to his service and died there a few years ago after being shanked during a dispute over several cigarettes. I like to imagine that somewhere up in Heaven, he’s riding that rocket motorcycle again. RIP The Delta Force.

    #6 – Hitman (1991)

    The one where he hits a man

    In this darker entry in the Chuck Norris canon, Chuck plays a man who gets hit so hard that he dies. But death cannot stop Chuck Norris. He returns from beyond the grave as The Hit Man, a vengeful spirit whose unfinished business is apparently hitting every man responsible for his death. And there are a lot of men. Fortunately, there is also a lot of hitting. Chuck goes undercover inside a criminal organization, identifies the various men who require hitting, and then systematically hits the absolute fuck out of them. It’s considerably darker and more violent than the average Norris movie, but the premise is refreshingly straightforward: there are men, and Chuck must hit them. Sometimes cinema doesn’t need to be complicated.

    I first saw The Hitman as a teenager while lying on the floor of the trap house I called home, shooting heroin with several homeless strangers. We were all impressed by the intensity of the hitting when the ghost of a dead child wandered into the room, watched quietly for several minutes and said, “Chuck Norris usually plays the clean-cut hero, but here he’s much more morally ambiguous.” We stopped what we were doing and nodded thoughtfully. The ghost child was right. Chuck was living a morally ambiguous life, and as I looked around at the needles, unconscious strangers and whatever the fuck was growing behind the radiator, I realized that we were living morally ambiguous lives too. Then the ghost child disappeared through a wall and we finished the movie. The Hitman remains criminally underrated and deserves more recognition, especially if you’re a fan of hitting or men.

    #5 Firewalker (1986)

    The one where he fire walks with me

    Firewalker sees Chuck Norris teaming up with Louis Gossett Jr. for a mind-bending adventure filled with mysticism, trippy imagery and a mysterious place called the Red Room. Chuck sits there speaking backwards and waiting patiently for Louis to arrive. Eventually Louis wanders into this ethereal plane and Chuck looks at him and says, “Hey, Louis. Come fire walk with me.” So they do. They walk across some fire together while a little man dances nearby and jazz music plays from nowhere. I don’t completely understand what any of this has to do with treasure hunting, but that’s the beauty of Firewalker. David Lynch refuses to explain everything to you. Sometimes you just have to accept that Chuck Norris exists simultaneously in our world and the Black Lodge.

    I have a soft spot on the top of my head because my skull never completely formed. One afternoon I was at the video store renting Emanuelle 4 for my little foster brother’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese when a VHS copy of Firewalker fell from a high shelf and struck me directly in the soft spot. Something happened. I suddenly knew everything. I understood quantum mechanics. I knew what happens after death. I knew exactly how many civilizations exist beyond our solar system and why mankind must never contact them. I also knew that Firewalker is an entertaining change of pace from Chuck Norris’s usual no-nonsense action movies. Unfortunately, a second VHS fell and hit me moments later, causing me to forget almost everything. But I still remember the part about Firewalker, so if you’re looking for something different from Norris, it’s worth a watch.

    #4 Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

    The one where he is a lonely wolf

    This film is essentially the prototype for Walking Texas Rangers. Norris plays a wolf that doesn’t get along with other wolves and goes alone against a ruthless drug dealing Wolf Lord, played by David “The Choke” Carradine. The final showdown between Norris and Carradine is one of the best martial arts fights of the 80s, making this a standout film in his career.

    This movie is pure Norris, and I love it for that. It has everything you want—fistfights, shootouts, and that classic Texas tough-guy vibe. It’s also the film that directly inspired Walking Texas Rangers, which makes it a key part of his legacy.

    #3 – Good Guys Wear Black (1978)

    The one where he wears black

    Made when Chuck Norris was still just a baby man, Good Guys Wear Black stars young Chuck as a little war orphan in Vietnam who uncovers a deadly government conspiracy. Most war orphans would probably be overwhelmed by this situation, but Chuck Norris had already mastered several forms of martial arts by infancy, so he begins kicking and punching his way toward the truth. The government quickly discovers that covering up a secret military operation is considerably more difficult when a furious baby Chuck Norris is investigating you. The highlight is his legendary slow-motion flying kick through a car windshield, which is especially impressive when you remember that his little baby legs had only recently learned to walk. Other children were learning their ABCs. Chuck was learning how to roundhouse-kick the federal government.

    I first saw Good Guys Wear Black when I was a young adult living in another crowded trap house, where privacy was impossible. Eventually I discovered that the viewing booths at the local porn shop were quiet, comfortable and perfect for watching movies, so instead of using the pornography provided, I’d bring VHS tapes from home and treat the place like my own private screening room. One afternoon I was deeply engrossed in Good Guys Wear Black when a stranger entered my booth and unexpectedly began performing a sex act on me. I probably should have said something, but Chuck was uncovering the government conspiracy and I didn’t want to miss anything. Eventually the stranger finished, politely left, and I continued watching. Five stars for customer service. Anyway, the political-thriller elements give Good Guys Wear Black considerably more substance than your average Chuck Norris action movie.

    #2 – Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

    The one where he invades U.S.A.

    If you love over-the-top ’80s action, Invasion U.S.A. is the ultimate Chuck Norris movie. Chuck plays a one-man invading army who decides to conquer the United States using every weapon at his disposal. The Army can’t stop him. The Navy can’t stop him. The Air Force looks at the situation and says, “Fuck that, that’s Chuck Norris.” America spent hundreds of billions of dollars building the most powerful military on Earth but apparently nobody prepared for the possibility that one bearded karate man might declare war on Florida. Chuck shoots people, blows up buildings and marches steadily across the country like a one-man coup of death. There are so many explosions that by the end I’m not even sure there’s an America left for Chuck to invade. He may technically be president now.

    Invasion U.S.A. is ridiculous, excessive, loud, exhilarating and probably terrible for your heart, which is why it reminds me so much of cocaine. I used to enjoy cocaine and I used to enjoy Invasion U.S.A., and eventually I realized they were basically the same thing. Both make you feel fucking incredible for about ninety minutes. Both convince you that you’re capable of defeating an entire terrorist organization by yourself. Both involve a lot of sweating, screaming and unreasonable confidence. And afterward you look around at the destruction you’ve caused and think, “Jesus Christ, I need to make some changes.” I don’t use cocaine anymore, but occasionally I’ll watch Invasion U.S.A. and remember the old days. Then Chuck fires two machine guns at once, something explodes for absolutely no reason, and I remember exactly why I quit.

    #1 – Way of the Dragon (1972)

    The one where he is a dragon

    Yes, Way of the Dragon is technically a Bruce Lee movie, but we’re not here to talk about Bruce Lee. We’re here for Chuck Norris in his unforgettable role as American Dragon Jake Long, the greatest martial artist America has ever produced. The movie builds toward the legendary showdown inside the Roman Colosseum, where Bruce Lee and American Dragon Jake Long settle their differences using the ancient diplomatic traditions of hitting and kicking each other. It’s one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed because these men possessed real-life hit-and-kick skills. No computers. No stunt doubles flying around on wires. Just Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris beating the absolute shit out of each other while a little cat watches. History remembers Rome for Julius Caesar, the rise and fall of an empire and two thousand years of Western civilization. I remember it as the place Bruce Lee ripped out Chuck Norris’s chest hair.

    This was also the first time I ever saw Chuck Norris. It was the day I was born, and Way of the Dragon happened to be playing on the television in my mother’s hospital room. As I emerged from my mother’s vagina and took my first terrified look at this strange new world, I glanced toward the television and saw Chuck Norris punch Bruce Lee. I didn’t understand language yet. I didn’t understand movies. I didn’t even understand that I had just been born. But somehow I pointed my tiny newborn hand toward the screen and whispered my first word: “Daddy.” The doctors became very concerned. Mommy started crying. My actual father left the room and didn’t come back for several hours. But none of that mattered. Chuck Norris had welcomed me into this world with a fist, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Way of the Dragon isn’t just the perfect introduction to Chuck Norris. It was my introduction to life.

  • Top 10 Batman Movies

    Batman is part man part bat but mostly man with some bat qualities but no bat DNA. Bruce Wayne’s millionaire parents probably did have sex with bats because rich people are weird, but they never created a bat person hybrid. Bruce Wayne is just a rich dude with a bat fursona that tosses on his bat costume to yiff crime. There are movies.

    #10 – Batman and Others

    Batman is part of a surprisingly large community of furries and cosplayers, and Batman and Others is the movie where director Joel Schumacher finally stops pretending otherwise. Batman attends what I can only assume is Gotham’s annual FurCon with his young partner Robin—the “we fuckin’, but we’re bein’ vague about it” kind of partner—a young man whose birdsona has nipples. They soon meet Batgirl, who has also decided that dressing like a flying mammal and beating strangers at night is a perfectly reasonable hobby. Unfortunately, she’s related to Commissioner Gordon, so she has to keep the whole thing secret. It would look terrible if Gotham discovered his family was attending conventions in fetishwear and inviting strangers to come explore her moist Batcave.

    Unfortunately, FurCon also attracts some real fucking weirdos. Poison Ivy shows up as a horny plant lady accompanied by some enormous dumbass doing the worst Bane cosplay I’ve ever seen. Then there’s Mr. Freeze, a man whose ice fetish has completely consumed his personality. He talks about ice. He makes ice puns. He freezes people. Every goddamn sentence somehow circles back to winter. Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly got paid $25 million for this movie, which means someone paid him roughly the GDP of a small island nation to say shit like “Ice to see you.” Meanwhile George Clooney spends the entire movie wearing a rubber batsuit with nipples. People say Batman and Others nearly killed the franchise, but I say Gotham FurCon simply wasn’t ready for mainstream audiences.

    #9 – Batman Furever

    Furries are some of the most oppressed people in the world. I know this because whenever I dress up in my rabbit fursona and have sex with my fiancée, people become incredibly judgmental. Suddenly everybody is screaming things like, “You can’t do that in Burger King!” and “Sir, not in front of my Grandmother!” Batman understands this persecution. Ever since watching his millionaire parents get murdered by a Crime Man, Bruce Wayne has struggled with his true identity as a bat. So in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Furever, Batman teams up with his suspiciously quotation-mark-worthy “partner” Robin to create a world where every furry can proudly put on $4,000 worth of foam and latex without fear. Standing in their way are the violently anti-fur Riddler, played by Jim Carrey with so much pelvic energy that I’m pretty sure he has an orgasm somewhere around the second act, and Two-Face, played by Tommy Lee Jones as a man with two faces. A left face and a right face. Presumably everything else is doubled too. I’m not going to draw you a diagram.

    Batman Furever is incredibly colorful, incredibly loud, and looks like somebody poured a barrel of radioactive Skittles directly into Joel Schumacher’s eyes, so you might mistake it for harmless family entertainment. DO NOT SHOW THIS MOVIE TO YOUR CHILDREN. Behind all the neon lights and Jim Carrey screaming is some of the most depraved hardcore fursuit fuckin’ ever smuggled into a PG-13 blockbuster. Batman and Robin are constantly rubbing rubber against each other, Nicole Kidman spends the entire movie visibly desperate to get inside Batman’s fursona, and Gotham itself appears to be one enormous fetish club that occasionally experiences crime. Watch Batman Furever responsibly. I don’t want to receive another email from an angry parent demanding to know why their eight-year-old is suddenly asking for a batsona.

    #8 – The Dark Knight Rises

    Like yeast

    Batman sometimes calls himself “The Dark Knight,” but I need to make something very clear: Batman is not a legally recognized knight. He was dubbed “The Dark Knight” by the king at a Medieval Times restaurant, and that man does not possess the constitutional authority to grant knighthoods. I learned this myself after an extremely expensive legal battle involving an incident at Medieval Times that my lawyer has advised me to stop describing publicly. Apparently being touched on the shoulders with a decorative sword does not make you a knight, you cannot demand that police officers address you as “Sir Kontributor,” and yelling “I HAVE DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!” while being dragged through a parking lot only adds charges. Batman hasn’t learned any of this yet, though, so he genuinely believes he’s a knight. He even finds a neighborhood girl named Selina who likes pretending she’s a cat, and together they hang out in his expensive treehouse playing The Knight and the Pussycat.

    Unfortunately, there’s also a man named Bane, and Bane is not fucking playing. While Batman and Catgirl are putting on costumes and deciding which one gets to pet the kitty, Bane is snapping necks, blowing shit up, trapping an entire police department underground and overthrowing Gotham’s government. This is the equivalent of two children playing cops and robbers in the backyard when an actual Colombian drug cartel suddenly comes over the fence. Batman nevertheless puts on his little rubber knight costume, Catwoman puts on her kitty ears, and together they decide they’re going to play pretend directly at the enormous terrorist built like a refrigerator. It does not go particularly well. Turns out the king at Medieval Times didn’t teach Batman shit about fighting Bane.

    #7 – Batman (1966)

    This is a very old movie from 1966, when bats had only recently been discovered and scientists were still trying to determine exactly what the fuck they were. Where did bats come from? What do bats eat? Why do they fly? Are they birds? What is bat? These were serious questions facing America at the time, and Batman bravely attempts to answer them through the story of one confused young man searching for his place in the natural world. Everyone around Batman already understands what they are. The Penguin knows exactly what a penguin is. Catwoman understands cats. The Riddler knows what a riddle is. The Joker has spent years studying the ancient art of jokes. But Batman? Batman doesn’t know shit about bats.

    So Batman spends the movie conducting experiments. Do bats drive cars? Apparently. Do bats own helicopters? Sure. Do bats wear utility belts containing an endless supply of highly specialized equipment? Science remains divided. At one point Batman is attacked by a shark and immediately produces a can labeled SHARK REPELLENT BAT-SPRAY, raising significantly more questions about bats than it answers. He wanders Gotham desperately seeking knowledge from everyone he encounters. “Please, Cesar Romero, tell me, what is bat?” But Cesar Romero cannot help him. None of them can. Batman must discover the truth for himself. Perhaps the real bat was inside him all along. Perhaps the bat was the friends he made along the way. Perhaps bat is not something you understand. Perhaps bat simply is.

    #6 Batman (1989)

    It is a bat

    Batman was the first Batman movie directed by Tim Burton, a filmmaker who is significantly more popular in Canada than he is in the United States. Canadians fucking love Tim Burton. They love him so much that there are thousands of restaurants across Canada called Tim Burtons, where citizens gather every morning to drink coffee, eat donuts and discuss whether Edward Scissorhands was an allegory for suburban conformity. Burton came south in 1989 to make a movie about Batman playing pretend against the Joker, played by famous comedian Jack Nicholson. Nicholson tells many jokes throughout the movie, all of which are solid because he is a professional comedian and Batman is required to stand there looking pissed off until he’s finished.

    Naturally, Batman became a massive success because playing pretend was incredibly popular in the 1980s. Americans played pretend that trickle-down economics would eventually trickle down. They played pretend that declaring a War on Drugs would make drugs disappear. Cocaine was everywhere, Wall Street was eating the country alive, and everyone agreed the solution was probably to give rich people more money and see what happened. So of course audiences immediately connected with billionaire Bruce Wayne, a man who inherited an unimaginable fortune and decided the best way to improve his crime-ridden city was not housing, education, healthcare or economic investment, but dressing like a giant bat and punching poor people from the roof of his custom military vehicle. Bruce Wayne never stopped the drugs and he sure as fuck never trickled down his economics, but he did have a cool car. That’s the 1980s.

    #5 – Batman Returns

    Batman returns. I don’t know what else you want me to fucking say. It’s right there in the title: Batman Returns. At the end of Batman, Bruce had to go home because it was getting late and Alfred said dinner was ready, so everybody was like, “Okay, Batman, thanks for playing. Return sometime and we can play pretend again.” And Batman said he would. Two years later, Batman keeps his promise. He returns. That’s integrity. That’s character development. Christopher Nolan needed three movies to tell you something Tim Burton accomplished with one verb.

    And Batman does a tremendous amount of returning in this movie. He returns to Gotham. He returns to the Batsuit. He returns to the Batmobile. Sometimes he leaves somewhere and then returns to that same place later. Fuck, Batman is constantly returning. Eventually Michelle Pfeiffer dresses like a cat and Danny DeVito crawls out of a sewer, but those are secondary concerns. The important thing is that Batman said he would return, and the son of a bitch returned. Then the movie ends and he goes home again. Presumably because it’s time for dinner.

    #4 – Batman is a Lego

    Ever since Batman movies were invented, companies have sold toys so children can play pretend with the play-pretend furry man at home. There were Batman action figures, Batman cars, Batman costumes, Batman lunchboxes and probably Batman-branded lead paint if you were a child in the 1960s. Eventually the toys became so popular that Hollywood realized they could eliminate the unnecessary middleman of making a movie and then selling toys based on it. Why not just make the toy itself the fucking movie? And so we got Batman is a Lego, a feature-length commercial in which Batman has finally achieved his ultimate form: a tiny piece of plastic you can buy at Target.

    I assume the movie was created when several ancient entertainment executives gathered around the Big Movie Table and asked, “What kind of pretend should Batman play next? Should he play with penguins? Scarecrows?” Then one wrinkled story elder raised his hand and said, “What if Batman poked you directly in the foot while you were walking barefoot to the bathroom at three in the morning?” Another whispered, “What if Batman got sucked into the vacuum cleaner and rattled around in there until you had to turn it off and dig him out?” Finally, an old woman who had not spoken in decades opened her eyes and said, “What if a toddler choked on Batman?” The room fell silent. They knew they had their movie. Warner Bros. turned Batman into a Lego, made hundreds of millions of dollars, and added it to the enormous treasure pile where movie studios sleep at night like dragons.

    #3 – The Dark Knight

    Batman gets to hang out with the Jokester again, except this Jokester isn’t funny at all. He’s extremely serious and keeps murdering people, which Batman finds confusing because that’s not what jokesters are supposed to do. Batman keeps waiting for the punchline, but the Jokester just blows up a hospital. Even professional clowns are horrified by this guy. Somewhere there’s a man named Bubbles wearing size-38 shoes and making balloon giraffes at a six-year-old’s birthday party who sees the Joker on television and thinks, “Jesus Christ, dude. You’re making the rest of us look bad.” The Joker says he wants to watch the world burn, which is a terrible philosophy for a clown.

    Batman realizes that defeating the actor from A Knight’s Tale will require him to play pretend harder than he’s ever played pretend before. If Heath Ledger was once a knight, Batman reasons, then Batman must also become a knight. So Bruce goes to the Gotham Medieval Times restaurant, orders the Royalty Package and gets ceremonially dubbed The Dark Knight by Lucius Fox, who works at Wayne Enterprises during the day but apparently plays the king on weekends for extra money. Bruce takes this ceremony completely fucking seriously. Lucius tries explaining that it’s just part of the dinner show, but it’s too late. Batman is already kneeling with his head bowed while Alfred takes pictures. This is how Batman becomes the Dark Knight, and—as we learned in The Dark Knight Rises—it will eventually lead to several arrests, an expensive legal battle and the devastating discovery that the king at Medieval Times isn’t actually the king of anything.

    #2 – Batman Starts

    Batman Starts is the weakest movie in the Dark Knight trilogy and therefore the weakest movie ever made. That’s just mathematics. Despite this, it’s extremely well written, beautifully directed and has almost the perfect tone for a serious and realistic interpretation of the Furry Crusader. This time we get to see how Batman actually started being Batman, back when Bruce Wayne was just a confused billionaire wandering around the world trying to figure out what kind of animal he wanted to be. Eventually he settles on “bat,” puts on the costume and begins the long journey that will eventually end with him mistakenly believing he’s a legally recognized knight because some guy at Medieval Times touched him with a sword. Every legend has to start somewhere.

    More importantly, Batman Starts introduces The Rizz Al Skibidi, one of Batman’s greatest villains, played to absolute perfection by Liam Neeson. The Rizz Al Skibidi teaches Bruce how to fight, how to disappear theatrically in the middle of conversations, and presumably how to obtain the rizz necessary to become Gotham’s most eligible furry billionaire. We also get Scarecrow, who puts a bag on his head and sprays people with fear drugs, making him one of the few Batman villains whose name and activities actually have some relationship to each other. Christian Bale is fantastic, Liam Neeson is fantastic, the story is fantastic, and it launched what I consider to be the greatest story ever told. Still the weakest movie of all time, though.

    #1 The Batman

    The Batman is the worst Batman movie ever made and possibly the worst movie ever made, which raises the extremely reasonable question of why the fuck I put it at #1 on my list of the Top 10 Batman Movies. I don’t know. The rankings have already been submitted. The ballots were certified. There’s apparently nothing we can do now. This movie shouldn’t even be on the list. You know that episode of Batman: The Animated Series called “I’ve Got Batman in My Basement,” where some kid basically finds Batman and keeps him in his basement? Put that here instead. Put Joker here. Put an episode of Paw Patrol here and tell me the German shepherd is Batman. Anything but this. Unfortunately, democracy has spoken, and apparently democracy thinks The Batman is the greatest Batman movie ever made. Fuck democracy.

    My biggest problem is that nobody in this movie commits to their fursona. There’s a guy called the Penguin, but does he look like a penguin? No. He’s just Colin Farrell wearing enough prosthetics to look like somebody who owns three failing Italian restaurants. Then there’s Catwoman, who puts some little ears on her head but otherwise makes almost no effort to behave like a cat. Does she knock a glass off a table while maintaining eye contact? Does she suddenly sprint through the apartment at three in the morning for no fucking reason? Does she ever lick her own butthole? Not once. These people need to understand that if you’re going to FurCon, you have to fucking COMMIT. Batman understands this. That lunatic built a car around his fursona. Meanwhile Penguin just waddles into Gotham looking like Fat Colin Farrell and expects us to play along. Absolutely disgraceful. Congratulations on being the #1 Batman movie. Get fucked, The Batman.

  • Top 15 Episodes of Tales From the Crypt

    “Tales From the Crypt” is a prehistoric TV show from a time when cavemen roamed the earth and lived with dinosaurs. The host of this show was an actual corpse brought back to life using the magic of an ancient curse. This corpse tells false cautionary tales to guide the uneducated masses to make the right moral decisions. The corpse was named “Aesop.” Here are the Top 15 Fables of Ancient Lore presented by the dead Aesop.

    #15 – Carrion Death (Season 3, Episode 2)

    Damn fine!

    The most brutal episode of Tales from the Crypt is “Carrion’s Death” from season three. Kyle MacLachlan plays Earl Raymond Diggs, a fugitive who is pursued through the Arizona desert by a police. Diggs kills the cop (because Fuck da Police!), but both cars are destroyed by an angry God, and they are handcuffed together, with the only key thrown away. While this is set up for a hot gay porn scene, the vultures chasing them will make sure that this gay action doesn’t happen.

    “Carrion Death” is neither funny nor sexy. My fiancée often watches really hot porn videos where guys are handcuffed together (of course we don’t let the kids watch them). This episode isn’t like two guys handcuffed together in the desert having wild sex to pass the time by sucking each other’s cocks.

    Kyle McLachlan’s performance becomes increasingly frustrating as Diggs quickly tires out, both physically and existentially. He never gets to suck the handcuffed guy’s cock – the desert drives him insane. Likewise, the violence on screen isn’t vicious or exaggerated, but it’s not sexy at all. For those who think Tales from the Crypt is a horror-comedy show about hot sex, “Death by Corruption” is a grim reminder that the show can be deadly serious.

    #14 – Dead Right (Season 2, Episode 1)

    “Oh yeah, baby, gimme some of that Substance”

    Bitches always think about taking a brother’s money. These money-obsessed hos don’t really care about men. All they want is some money to put in their money holes. That’s why I love my fiancée. She never wanted my money because I don’t have any. I’m unemployed and she is a stripper. She makes money by showing off her sexy body and rubbing it against rich men that pay her, but all her love is for me and we have two children. But she’s rare. Most women (on Earth at least) are like the money-worshipping slut played by Demi Moore in this episode – always chasing men for their money.

    In this episode, Demi Moore marries a hideous guy, played by Jeffrey Tambor, because she thinks she can get some money out of it. “Tales from the Crypt” always warns people to be careful of this type of woman and always makes society aware of the fate of these women. Not only do they have to have sexual relations with men who look like a bowl of old chef Boyardee Beefaroni left on the kitchen counter for a week, these women also become dead. Money-grubbing bitches not only fit a gross old wonton-shaped penis into their body, but they also die.

    #13 – The Man Who Was Death (Season 1, Episode 1)

    The very first episode of “Tales From the Crypt” is perhaps the most relevant to the current times that we are living in. While this story was told by the Dead Aesop in 500 BCE, it might as well be talking about what’s going on right now in 2025.

    William Sadler plays Niles Talbot, just your normal working-class guy. He holds down a blue-collar government job as an executioner. Most likely a conservative who probably thought he cared about his country when he voted against its best interests. I mean, Trump said that he really cared about the working class, and Niles Talbot was just dumb enough to believe that. But unfortunately for this hardworking, blue-collar man, DOGE comes in and starts eliminating government employees and poor Niles Talbot here ends up without a job.

    But he still has a sense of justice, still believes in the death penalty and starts freelancing. Sure, he believes criminals should get what they deserve, but he voted for a criminal. Sure, he voted for an administration that promised to fight hard against sex trafficking, and then this guy has to witness, in horror, as the Trump administration so gleefully lets in a notorious sex trafficker like Andrew Tate. Is it no wonder then, that Niles Talbot here will turn to murder?

    And in the end, he’s executed as well. You got what you voted for is the lesson to be gleaned here.

    #12 – Abra Cadaver (Season 3, Episode 4)

    I wanna reach out and grab ya

    In 1982, The Steve Miller Band based their hit song “Abra Cadaver” on this classic sibling rivalry legend. The episode stars Boo Bridges (“The Lesser” from The Bridges Clan) and Tony Goldwyn as the bickering Fairbanks brothers. Carl (played by Tony Goldwyn) plays a cruel joke on Martin (played by Boo The Lesser), whose medical career is stalled by the loss of his hands. Years later, Martin uses his medical research into the brain to get revenge. Martin uses Carl as a lab rat, leaving his brother fully conscious but unable to move because he has done something evil and deviant.

    It’s always nice to reflect on the lyrics to the Steve Miller Band’s classic song:

    “Abra Abra Cadaver
    I wanna reach out and grab ya
    And inject you with a mysterious liquid
    You will be paralyzed but still conscious
    I will do a fake autopsy on you
    But you will be dead
    Abra Cadaver”

    Indeed, one of the best.

    #11 – The Ventriloquist’s Dummy (Season 2, Episode 10)

    AKB48 is the best J-Pop group ever!

    All dolls are fucking creepy, especially talking ones. My daughter, Dora the Explorer, has an unknown number of creepy dolls that talk to her and promise to kill her enemies. Often, they keep their promises. This is so common throughout history that it is featured in the show’s second season episode, “The Ventriloquist Dummy.”

    The episode follows Billy Goldman (Bobcat Goldthwaite), a shy comedian and ventriloquist. Billy meets a friend, retired ventriloquist and J-pop idol, Mr. Ingalls (Don Rickles), who asks for his help to improve his act and learn the secrets of creepy doll talking. When they meet in person, Billy learns the dark secret behind Ingalls’ success in the cutthroat world of J-pop idols. And the real origin of his creepy talking doll, Morty. This is human nature. Now you know about scary dolls.

    Starring two big-name comedians, Rickles and Goldthwaite, “The Ventriloquist Dummy” is the show’s main attraction. Rickles, in particular, is clearly having fun in the role, playing up his established J-pop idol fame with a laid-back tone. “The Ventriloquist Dummy” is an episode that will make you smile. It’s the best shit Richard Donner ever did. Better than that The Goonies crap.

    #10 – What’s Cookin’ (Season 4, Episode 6)

    Eat the food

    Eating people is always dangerous but can be rewarding. In this episode, Christopher Reeves (the Dead Superman) plays Fred, the world’s most successful squid chef. Fred loves his squid and he makes all kinds of inspired and amazing squid delicacies. But then along comes Bender from The Breakfast Club to say “Hey, why don’t you start cooking up people too?” Nobody asked you, Bender! It was a banner fucking year at the ol squid restaurant, but Bender thinks they should start cooking up some long pig because human beings are the squid of the land.

    “What’s Cookin’” gives us the opportunity to see Dead Superman eat some food, and that is good. And Meat, frontman from the band Meat And The Loafs, shows up to be some food. So it’s a lot of fun. My children laughed and laughed all through this episode. Good times had by all.

    #9 – Top Billing (Season 3, Episode 5)

    It’s that guy!

    “Top Billing” is a good episode because it has this man, John Astin, who is the father of Samwise Gamgee. John Astin was also an actor and did some show in the 60s, I can’t remember what. Also, did you know that Samwise Gamgee’s mother was a woman named Patty Duke? She also did television in the 60s and was in a show that had some other-worldly name unpronounceable by human speech so historians only refer to it as “The Patty Duke Show.”

    This episode has that guy who played Jon Lovitz on “Saturday Night Live,” (can’t remember his real name. Adam Sandler? Phil Hartman?). Anyway, the guy that played Jon Lovitz on “Saturday Night Live” is an actor that wants to play Hamlet and Samwise Gamgee’s dad lets him but there is a twist. Because of course. “Tales from the Crypt” always did the twisty shit and here it is good.

    # 8 – Death of Some Salesman (Season 5, Episode 1)

    All of these actors were also in Muppet Treasure Island

    Not every episode of “Tales From the Crypt” was a darkly comic horror fable from the Dead Aesop. Sometimes the show would adapt famous works of literature as well. This Season 5 episode, “Death of Some Salesman,” is based on the 1949 play of the same title by Arthur Miller. It shows that the people who made “Tales From the Crypt” were also cultured people.

    In this story, Willy Loman (Tim Curry), is a down on his luck salesman living in Brooklyn, New York. His wife Linda (also Tim Curry), suggests that he try to find a new position where he doesn’t have to travel. He barely gets along with his kids Biff Loman (also played by Tim Curry) and Happy Loman (again, also played by Tim Curry). By the end, this unhappy salesman accepts the reality that his life fucking sucks and he should just die. Should have married a stripper, my man.

    #7 – Split Second (Season 3, Episode 11)

    “Do not insert”

    This episode has the legendary giant Brion James (that guy who played Salvador Dali in The Pterodactyl Women of Beverly Hills) as a lumberjack named Steve who has no chill. He marries a pretty lady, Liz (Michelle Johnson) and is way too jealous and possessive of her. If this girl is even in the same room as another man, Steve goes into a Hulk rage and screams: “Do not ever think of inserting yourself into the vagina of my wife!” and rips off heads.

    This fable gives us the lesson of how important it is to trust your spouse, which is very important. My fiancee is a stripper and I trust her totally, I know that she is not letting random men insert themselves into her vagina. I do not Hulk rage and hurt others out of jealousy. Okay, the woman in this episode actually IS inviting other men into her vagina, but that’s not my point. Steve the Lumberjack should have trusted his wife. And because of that distrust he gets chopped up into little bits. Do you want to be chopped up into little bits? No? Then you should trust your spouse. That is the lesson that Dead Aesop gives us here.

    #6 – The New Arrival (Season 4, Episode 7)

    “Better go into the fucking light, Carol Ann, because this is what happens to little girls that don’t.”

    Ah yeah, “The New Arrival” which gives us the legendary actor David Warner (you know, that dude from that episode of Star Trek The Next Generation that was all “there’s five lights, motherfucker!”) along with Zelda Rubenstein (princess of Hyrule, bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom). In this very entertaining tale, Mr. Five Lights plays Dr. Goatse, a talking doctor of kids. He goes to visit the castle of Princess Zelda to help her unruly child and is in for quite a surprise.

    My daughter, Dora the Explorerer, was very motivated about this episode and on the edge of her little seat because she thought for sure that this would end up being about a creepy doll. Unfortunately it turns out that the unruly child is just another stupid fuck dead body. Dora the Explorer raged and punched the TV. But I liked the episode.

    #5 – Forever Ambergris (Season 5, Episode 3)

    Got your nose!

    “Forever Ambergris” is a tale about two men of the sea who go out on their boat and harvest ambergris, a whale product used to manufacture perfumes. It is a dramatic tale of their adventures on the high seas and their pursuit of fortune as they harvest ambergris, bonding and becoming lifelong friends.

    Wait, no, that would be a story that would fit with a title like “Forever Ambergris.” What is this war photography bullshit here? Steve Buscemi and a dude from The Who are out in jungles taking pictures of wars and gettin’ diseases. Where’s the ambergris? Where’s the whales vomiting up that gold? What even is?

    #4 – And All Through the House (Season 1, Episode 2)

    You are a rather unkind man, Mr. Grinch

    The harshest lesson any of us learn as children is that Santa Claus does not exist. Realizing how badly you have allowed yourself to be lied to and accept this absolute unreality can be devastating. When I learned that there was no such thing as Santa Claus, I stayed locked in my room for days, crying. My children have yet to learn that lesson and I dread the day when they do.

    In this fable, “And All Through the House,” Dead Aesop does not dare shy away from the brutality of learning that Santa does not exist. There is murder and bloodshed and Dr. Giggles just being totally insane. I am considering showing this episode to my own children when the time arrives to inform them that there is no Santa Claus. Perhaps the utter horror of this episode will help temper their own rage as they discover the reality of the world.

    #3 – Television Terror (Season 2, Episode 16)

    Boo this man

    Morton Downey Jr. was a real piece of shit. Did you know that? He would say racist things when he was on TV. He got sued once by a woman because he said that strippers were “sluts” and had all kinds of diseases. I get VERY angry hearing about that because my fiancee is a stripper and she is a clean and decent woman and a wonderful mother to our children. I heard that the stripper sued him for a lot of money and won. Good for her. Morton Downey Jr. also attacked gay people, he got in fights and punched people and reporters. What a vile, terrible man.

    “Tales From the Crypt” decided once to show footage of that time Morton Downey Jr. went into a haunted house. He didn’t do anything different. He was the same shitty man just inside of a shitty haunted house. It is a very rewarding episode, watching that man in pain. Ghosts are trying to hurt him and he’s like “No, please don’t kill me,” but you watch and smile, saying “Fuck that man.” Morton Downey Jr. was a garbage human, I’m all for the ghosts.

    #2 – Yellow (Season 3, Episode 14)

    “Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you. And everything you do. Yeah, they were all yellow.”

    Based upon the Coldplay song of the same name, “Yellow” is a story about war and just how shitty it is. Not as shitty as Morton Downey Jr, but still pretty goshdarn awful. And we got Douglases Douglasing all over the place here. Kirk Douglas is here as a World War I general and he’s got his son Eric Douglas playing his son. Michel Douglas is just off camera fapping to Sharon Stone on the set of Basic Instinct and souting back: “You tell him, Dad, you let my brother know what’s up!”

    The moral that Dead Aesop delivers to the audience here is that you should always hold yourself accountable, even if you are a chicken’s shit. Did you run away from a battle and pee your pants while all your friends died? Admit it. Because if you aren’t honest and admit what a total fucking coward you are to the world, then your Dad will shoot you in the head.

    #1 – Cutting Cards

    Gambling Addiction is a very serious problem that affects 2.5 million people each year, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. In “Cutting Cards” we get a story that truly shows us the horror of such an addiction and what it can lead to. This a very special episode of “Tales From the Crypt” that deals with a very real issue affecting people every day. Whether it is your brother that just discovered the thrill of lottery scratchers or your grandmother that spends all of her retirement sitting in front of a video poker machine in Reno, gambling addiction is a crippling disorder that knows no prejudice. Perhaps you too have spent too much money on FanDuel and have put your family’s livelihood at risk?

    Gambling should never be seen as a way to make money or solve financial problems. It is a form of entertainment that carries a risk of losing money. You should only gamble with funds that you can afford to lose. If you find yourself unable to stick to limits, or if gambling starts to interfere with your daily life, relationships, or well-being, these are warning signs of a gambling problem. If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling addiction, it is crucial to seek help immediately. You can seek help or information by contacting the National Council on Problem gaming at 1-800-522-4700 or the helpline 1-800-GAMBLER.

  • Movie Review: Thanksgiving

    Movie Review: Thanksgiving

    Eli Roth really loves the color red. Cabin Fever was a very red movie and Thanksgiving is a very very red movie too. You might think I’m talking about blood, which I am, but there are other reds in this movie too. Just lots and lots of red.

    Eli Roth wears a red shirt in front of people wearing red jackets. Just so much red. Eli Roth loves red.

    Thanksgiving is a 2023 movie that takes place on the third Thursday of the year. That’s pretty specific I know. It takes place in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts but you wouldn’t know that because only one character has a regional accent. The people of Plymouth, MA celebrate a holiday where the pilgrims settled there; so they all dress up as John Carver and eat lots of turkey. Also shopping. Shopping is pretty big on a day that they call “Black Friday” (though if Eli Roth had his way it would be “Red Friday” and happen every single day).

    On one “Black Friday” at a movie stand-in for Walmart, there was a big sale on Thanksgiving and people died. It’s actually an amazing sequence that is wonderfully done. Of course, there is lots of red. People get stepped on and cut up and the angry lesbian from Showgirls is scalped. A year later, someone in the town remembers this horrific event and starts killing a lot of the people involved.

    He’s remembering.

    Thanksgiving is a slasher movie – which is basically a murder mystery with lots and lots of gory deaths. And I mean they are very bloody. Just insane amounts of blood. People bleed out more blood than is actually inside of a human body. I know from reading a science book one time that the average length of a human small intestine is 23 feet long – but this movie shows you all of that: all 23 feet of human intestines, MORE THAN ONCE.

    When I say that there is lots of red in this movie, I mean that it’s not just the blood, and it’s not just the red clothes people wear in the movie. You know how in murder mysteries there is a character that you are absolutely sure is the killer and everything points to them being the killer, but it’s false – just throwing you off. There is a term for that, I can’t remember it, Red Fish or something. This movie has a lot of Red Fish in it. Eli Roth loves the color red. Then, at one point in the movie, a couple of characters start speaking Russian. I don’t know what that was about.

    This woman is not wearing underwear.

    I really enjoyed the movie though. My children did not like it at all, not one bit. I should not have taken them to see Thanksgiving. Even when we were going into the theater people were like “Are you sure that you should be taking your kids to see Thanksgiving.” But I was like “Isn’t Thanksgiving a holiday for families? I don’t get what you are talking about.” Even the person selling us popcorn was like “You shouldn’t take your kids to see this movie,” and I was yelling, “Don’t you tell me how to raise my kids. Don’t you talk to me about movies, Popcorn Man, I have my own movie blog. I know what I’m doing.” Their popcorn tasted like pee anyway.

    Thanksgiving is a good movie. You should see it. Especially if you are like Eli Roth and like the color red. But do not take your children. The movie is rated R for Red.

  • Movie Review – “Sawx”

    Movie Review – “Sawx”

    Sawx is the latest movie in the very long franchise of Saw movies. There are a lot of movies in this never-ending tale of a man who is dying of cancer. All 18 of these movies (except for Sprial: Chris Rocks the Saw) take place in the last few months/days/years/whatever of Jon “Jigsaw” Kramer as he tries to help people by putting them in deadly traps and saying “Hey, if you die that’s all your fault, I’m just tryin’ to maim you.”

    Jigsaw and the young Lady Jigsaw take a trip to Mexico

    In Sawx, John Kramer and the Saw Squad take a trip to Mexico to go on an adventure. This is the Herbie Goes Bananas part of the franchise – they even get a little kid that helps them too. John is there to get a new cancer treatment from a shady group of doctors. They are going to give him “some surgery and a cutting-edge cocktail of drugs.” They say that a lot too – “a cutting-edge cocktail of drugs.” They have to hide out in the desert because Big Pharma is after them. They have guns and things to fight against the soldiers of Big Pharma. Yes, the Pfizer Footsoliders and Elite Legions of Eli Lily are a real thing, but we don’t really get to see them in this movie.

    But like the American medical industry, these people don’t do anything but steal a lot of money from John. John doesn’t like that so he assembles his crew, calling up Detective Jigsaw from Saws 4-6, and Lady Jigsaw, Amanda from all the movies. Lady Jigsaw and John capture all the people from this fake medical group and they, well, they do the Saw thing.

    Doin the Saw thing

    Nobody needed this movie. It is all the same as the other Saw movies. “Let’s play a game” and then lots of blood. The universe of the Saw movies is a long and complicated web with the most confusing timeframe – not as confusing as the Legend of Zelda timeline but pretty close. Sawx just fits snugly in between some of those movies, not totally sure where though. It doesn’t talk about things that happen in the other movies, so this doesn’t do anything for the vast web of Saw movies connecting to each other. Sawx just exists and it’s there. John and the Saw Squad are there but they don’t even say things like “Hey, you remember the time you chained those guys up in a basement?” or anything like that.

    The 100-year old cancer man: Jigsaw (aka John Kramer)

    Tobin Bell is very very old. In his 80s, and he’s been doing Saw movies all of his life. In this movie, I truly believe that this old man is dying of cancer. He is so old, so feeble. What will they do when this fragile old man dies for real? Will they keep doin’ the Saw thing with another old actor? Will frail, elderly Ellen Burstyn take over?

    Sawx is a movie but a totally pointless one. I give it 12 out of 42 stars – mostly because the gory stuff looks neat. Kontributor OUT!

  • Review – “The Exorcist Believer”

    Review – “The Exorcist Believer”

    Hello, it is me Kontributor with a review for a new movie called The Exorcist Believer. It is a sequel to the 1973 movie The Exorcist and it is the only sequel there is. That movie came out 50 years ago and since it was so long ago people began to believe that it didn’t actually exist. So the Blumhouse people decided to remind people that we should still believe in that movie by making a whole thing about The Exorcist Believer. I took my family to see this movie and, yes, we now believe that The Exorcist existed.

    Will this child believe in The Exorcist? Keep reading to find out.

    The movie has Aaron Burr being a single father raising his 13-year-old daughter, Angela. I know it’s been a struggle for Aaron Burr ever since he shot Alexander Hamilton dead in 1804 – but he’s come a long way and is acting in movies now. In this movie, his daughter Angela runs off with her BFF Katherine to summon ghosts in an open grave and they accidentally become possessed by demons. Aaron Burr has to team up with this other family, like 3 different priests, his fat neighbor, and an old church lady to do this all-out, no holds barred, tag-team cage match, multicultural exorcism.

    Aaron Burr and this old lady believe in The Exorcist

    I have a young daughter, Alpha Dora, and this movie did make me rethink how I am raising her. I’ve been so stupidly letting my daughter run around in cemeteries with her friends where they take off their shoes, do battle with crypt snakes, and talk to the dead. Now that I am a believer in the 1973 film The Exorcist, I know not to let my daughter do that every day of the week. Just on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The last thing I would want is for my precious Alpha Dora to accidentally get a demon in her.

    As Aaron Burr is trying to figure out why his daughter is all rotten looking and cussing at nice doctors, old Ellen bursts in and starts ranting about how her daughter, Ronald Reagan, was accidentally possessed by a demon. Only the power of believing in The Exorcist saved her daughter. We all know that Ronald Reagan died of Old Timer’s disease in 2004, but for the sake of the movie we have to believe this incredibly aged woman’s tale that Ronald Reagan was attacked by demons and survived.

    “I could not attend the exorcism of my daughter, Ronald Reagan, because of the patriarchy.”

    In the original The Exorcist, we had Jason Miller as the young hip & happenin’ Damian Karras and the incredibly aged Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin, a priest so old that he actually learned exorcisms from Jesus himself. In that movie, these two priests threw on their proton packs, gave each other a high-five, and blasted that demon right outta some little girl. But in The Exorcist Believer we got two girls that are posessed and those old priests are long dead. So Aaron Burr goes out there and, like in Ocean’s 11 makes a whole team of people do this exorcism.

    Who is on this exorcist hit squad? We got the parents of Katherine shouting abut Jesus. We have “ethnic Christian” there to do some kind of Haitian stuff. There is Ann Down as “Old Church Lady” to shout scripture and lecture these young kids about their misbehaviors. Old Ellen bursts in for a bit. Aaron Burr has his fat neighbor around, I don’t know what the hell that guy was doing. There is a Catholic priest, Father Maddox, who isn’t there right away at first because his boss said he wasn’t going to pay overtime for this exorcism happening outside of the church’s business hours. He does show up later in the movie in an amazing scene as he kicks in the door, dual-wielding rosaries and shouting “Our Father hail Mary compels you!” to kick some demon butt with his powerful priest-fu.

    Just a couple of fans believing in The Exorcist

    Overall I think it is a good and entertaining movie. Me and Alpha Dora had a good time. My son won’t sleep for awhile because I told him this is based on a true story of kids who don’t listen to their parents. I recommend this movie to people who can afford to see a movie that they would like to see. I give it 521 out of 605 stars. Kontributor out.

  • The Top 10 Summer Camp Movies

    The Top 10 Summer Camp Movies

    A great pastime, summer camp is always considered a good time in a child’s childhood. Since my kids are currently at summer camp, I decided to write about summer camp. My wonderful daughter Alpha Dora went to the jungle camp to learn Spanish. My idiot son, Chicken, was invited to space camp to test out a prototype rocket he appare. He is so dumb. Summer camp can be an intimidating experience for some kids. You’ll have to run all day to fight fire zombies or hide from giant mutant mosquitoes.

    #10 Ernest Goes to a Camp

    He wants people to look at his butt

    Jim Varney’s completely dysfunctional character, Ernest, has not aged well. In fact, he aged so poorly that he died in the year 2000. Since Jim Varney’s death, not a single movie has been made about Ernest because I guess no one liked the character or the movies. This movie also has the character of a shy Indian chief. My daughter, Alpha Dora, jumped at the sight of this bad Indian chief and screamed at the top of her voice: “This is apparently damned racist!” Ernest Goes to a Camp is the story of a worthless counselor who protects violent sociopathic children and prevents his camp from being destroyed by evil industrialists. This movie should be among those kind of entertaining stock movies. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an average rating of -15 out of 5, with a rating of “completely worthless crap.”

    # 9 Space Camp

    Well, it’s not a camp with woods and cabins and those bahs that the campers sleep in, but if you think about it, it’s a camp that kids go to in the summer. Poor children, not the best in life (even with developmental disabilities), find themselves in unexpected situations where they have to prove that they are functioning as humans. It happens that the most unwanted children of the Earth were thrown into space and left there to die. Everyone on Earth wanted to dispose of these ugly children. But somehow, despite their terribleness, the unwanted children of the world learn how to return to Earth. There are also deadly killer robots that save the protagonist. Also a classic camp movie.

    This year, my son Chicken was invited to space camp. It’s the dumbest kind of summer camp, but it works because he is the lamest kid. Look at my pathetic son in space camp.

    He smiles because he does not know how bad he is.

    # 8 Meat

    They are all so very very doomed and don’t know it yet.

    The violent summer camp movie Meat is now fully available on 4K in a new ‘director’s cut’ and thanks to all the terrible people involved. No one had thought of the concept of summer camp until this film was made. When Camp Blood, the only summer camp in the world at the time, runs into some local Mohawk Indians who love to scalp their victims, you’d think Camp Blood is so doomed that it must have a death curse on it. The residents of Camp Blood then shout, “It doesn’t matter! Everything that happens is just a metaphor! We’re all horrible, sanctimonious worms.” Of course, all the people at Camp Blood die. Children are scalped and dismembered while the counselors are violated and beheaded. It’s interesting to see Bill Murray (in his first film role) as the brutal Mohawk leader who led the massacre at Camp Blood.

    # 7 Wet Hot American Summer

    Did you know that celebrities Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Cooper, and Paul Rudd simultaneously fornicated in a massive pile of sticky, sweaty human flesh at summer camp? It really happened! Paul Rudd talks about it every time he appears on a television talk show and shows a video of when it happened. Here’s the clip Paul Rudd shows all the time on television. Caution! This is an extreme video and is not intended for young children (or anyone).

    Also, all of those actors appeared together in the true-to-life movie called Wet Hot American Summer. This movie details everything that happened during that massive summer sex act in which they all participated. There were dozens of other people in the pile of sex meat as well, but they were mostly character actors you’d recognize but can’t remember their names; Richard Kind was there, and John Carrol Lynch, plus Margot Martindale really outperforming even all the A-list actors. Plus there were just countless indie actors that aren’t even a part of SAGAFTRA because they are such unknowns. They also had personal assistants (and fluffers) to keep everyone wet and hot and American for all of the summer. Netflix also made an original docuseriesabout these events and every human dream they saw.

    #6 Heavyweights

    The fat children must be DESTROYED!

    Every summer camp needs a cruel counselor who hurts all the kids and wants them to feel dead. This is just a regular part of every child’s summer camp experience. Well, Heavyweights gives us the insane psychopath Tony Perkis. He is a fitness guru played by Ben Stiller who runs Camp Hope, a fat camp for fat boys, and drives the fat fighters crazy with his crazy fitness regimen. Of course Uncle hesitates. A fat kid locks Tony up and lets his Uncle eat all the pizza and let Cheeta’s strong hand hold his hand, but the good-hearted counselor urges him to fight childhoodfatness, and it’s really a personal responsibility. Maybe Michelle Obama saw the movie. She cares a lot about fat kids when the world is ignoring fat kids.

    My daughter is at summer camp but she is in absolute fighting form and excellent health. Here is a picture my daughter just sent me from her summer camp just before she battled many zombies and saved all of the younger children.

    My daughter is just the best. And she defeated so many evil zombies. Everyone loves Alpha Dora

    #5 Little Darlings

    Anyone who’s seen the movie knows that it’s about two teenage girls (child stars Tatum O’Neal and Christy) who fight to the death over who will lose their virginity first at summer camp. It’s a very detailed and civilized exploration of the emotions and complexities of virgin sex, rather than silly nudity like American Pie (the worst movie of all time). Maybe the girls are not ready yet and that’s a good thing this movie respects, something we all should respect. Unlike other summer camp films, this one isn’t about protecting and honoring childhood, it’s about the messy, exciting, beautiful transition into adulthood. Cynthia Nixon (daughter of Richard Nixon) and Matt Dillon (related to nobody) also star in this delightful movie.

    #4 But I’m a Cheerleader

    Did somebody say you weren’t?

    This feature-length film (shot in color) takes the theme of gay youth finding other gay youth to enjoy bedroom times with and turns it into a… well… a movie. Before she was sent to the best gay camp on Orange Is the New Black (a long-running Netflix series about an all-girl summer camp), Natasha Lyonne played Megan, a cheerleader who listens to Melissa Etheridge instead of kissing her defensive boyfriend. Her parents send her to an absolutely terrible gay reform camp, where she and other young gay people are forced to try to work their brains out to love the opposite sex. The camp is rub by a right-wing conservative woman (Marjorie Taylor Greene) who terrifies them all and makes all these young women look at naked pictures of Hunter Biden. Eventually, with the help of a few SuperGays (they look like the Avengers, but are gay), the kids are kids, this being a camp movie and all, they go back to school when autumn begins.

    #3 Moonrise Kingdom

    If there is any summer camp, I really want to go there. The movie Moonrise Kingdom is about Camp Van-of-Horus, Wes Anderson’s perfect preteen summer camp and home of the Khaki Scouts, a troop of war-trained natural-born killers who know nothing but proficiency and death. But Sam and Susie (the characters in the film) have little pleasure in killing innocent people. They make love one last time and decide to run away together. She goes back to butcher over the entire camp, her parents, the local police, and even the President of the United States. This is not a summer camp because everything is going right. Children usually die in death camps.

    #2 Camp

    It was after the movie Halloween that someone decided to cash in on the killer style and put it in a summer camp. Why would anyone watch the horror show Glee when you can get all the raunchy sex scenes, insane children, and fancy musicals in just two hours? The village atmosphere, the loneliness, the lustful youth, all were ready for the machete to slash them. When a group of theater lovers arrives at Camp Crystal Lake, it’s a hotbed of conflicting egos, emotions and divas who kill cats with violent dance moves and hissing insults. The creation of Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked villain who terrorizes Camp Crystal Lake, spawned a generation of people terrified of being alone in the woods, with thoughts on the “Kill Your Mommy” soundtrack. Young Anna Kendrick showed off her perfect glow before being introduced by singing about her lunch.

    #1 Addam’s Family Values

    She reminds me of my daughter

    Most of these movies compare different breeds of dogs to humans, but what do kids really do when they’re stuck in the rich snob camp? Naturally, they will burn it to the ground in a Thanksgiving game. Wednesday (Christina Ricci) is the biggest threat in his world because she literally takes everyone outside the camp to rally and toss salads. It’s the darkest revenge fantasy ever, and it’s perfect. I love this film.

  • The Top 10 Talking Cats

    The podcast I sometimes give reviews of movies to, Exploit It, did an episode about a movie called A TALKING CAT!?! That movie is terrible. The talking cat in that movie is terrible and sounds very evil – he makes me feel sad and uncomfortable and angry. I have decided in my wisdom to talk about the 10 talking cats that really are the best.

    #10 [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] from Hocus Pocus

    “I’m Uthagbuthumsndachkalla! I’m a talking cat!”

    [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] is a human-themed cat who has spent thousands of years protecting the home of the Hocus Pocus bitches. It’s an important job. Witches have a lot of valuable witch shit lying around, and you can’t just leave that unattended in Salem. Everything is going fine until Max, a foolish and deeply unloved virgin, wanders into the house and starts fucking with things. Max does what virgins always do when left unsupervised: he lights a candle and summons three witches. Now [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] has to save Max, save the other virgins, save Salem and somehow contain all the witchy-bitchy shenanigans before sunrise. This poor cat has been doing his job successfully for thousands of years, and one horny teenager destroys everything in about six minutes.

    What makes [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] one of the greatest talking cats is his attitude. Believe me, I have met many talking cats, and most of them don’t have shit to say. [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] has lived the cat life and the people life, so he understands both worlds. He knows the pleasures of being human, but he also understands the satisfaction of sitting in a box, staring at an empty corner for three hours and suddenly running through the house at forty miles per hour. Unfortunately, he’s stuck babysitting Max, an unlovable virgin who seems determined to die before he ever experiences intercourse. [UNPRONOUNCABLE NAME] deserved better. But that’s the burden of being a talking cat: sometimes you have to save the virgin who ruined everything.

    #9 Hat Cat from Hat Cat

    “I’m Hat Cat! I’m a talking cat!”

    Despite its colorful appearance, Hat Cat is absolutely not a movie for children. Hat Cat is simply too sexy. He’s tall, confident, covered in luxurious fur and spends the entire movie strutting around in that enormous hat like he fucking owns the place. It’s frankly irresponsible character design. But his personality is even worse. Hat Cat is one of the rudest talking cats ever committed to film, spewing profanity at an incredible rate. He says “fuck.” He says “damn.” Sometimes he says “shit.” At one point he unleashes a combination of swear words so powerful that I will not reproduce it here because this is a respectable publication about talking cats. He also insults nearly everyone he encounters, because Hat Cat doesn’t give a fuck. Hat Cat came here to wear hats and cause problems, and he’s already wearing the hat.

    Things eventually spiral completely out of control. Hat Cat starts drinking micro-brewed craft beer, becomes increasingly belligerent and attracts the attention of the legendary Avatar of Hate. This is a catastrophic mistake. Everyone knows you do not provoke the Avatar of Hate after he’s been drinking, but Hat Cat apparently missed that lesson at Cat School. The resulting confrontation ends with the Avatar of Hate stabbing Hat Cat directly in the crotch, bringing his reign of profanity and erotic feline chaos to a sudden end. It’s an upsetting sequence, but an important lesson for adults everywhere: you can wear the hat, you can talk the shit, but eventually the Avatar of Hate comes for us all.

    #8 Salem Saberweilder from Sabrina the Teenage Witch

    “I’m Salem Saberweilder! I’m a talking cat!”

    Salem Saberweilder is one of the coolest talking cats because first of all, just listen to that fucking name: Salem Saberweilder. That’s a cat who means business. Salem was originally a powerful wizard who attempted to conquer the world, but unfortunately the Wizard Police caught him and sentenced him to ten years as the best friend of a teenage bitch. Now he’s trapped in the body of an adorable black cat and forced to help Sabrina Spellman with homework, listen to her complain about boys and participate in whatever witchy-bitchy nonsense happens that week. Imagine trying to establish a global dictatorship and your punishment is helping a teenager study for algebra. No wonder Salem is pissed off all the time.

    But Salem hasn’t abandoned his ambitions. He’s playing the long game. Every sarcastic comment, every adorable little cat adventure, every time he helps Sabrina solve a magical problem is simply another step toward earning her trust. Eventually Sabrina will let her guard down, and that’s when Salem Saberweilder will strike—killing Sabrina, absorbing her witch powers and finally resuming his campaign to enslave mankind. That’s a fucking talking cat. I respect ambition. Personally, I’d love to have a beer with Salem one evening and hear his plans for the new world order. Would he eventually betray and murder me? Almost certainly. But that’s why I’d make sure he paid for the first round.

    #7 Anuslicker The Aged from Cats

    I’m Anuslicker the Aged! I’m a talking cat!

    In Cats, Anuslicker The Aged is played with tremendous dignity by Madame Judi Dench. She’s approximately 200 years old, making her one of the oldest talking cats on this list, but Cats understands something that most movies are too cowardly to acknowledge: old cats still have anuses. In fact, the anus may be the one thing that truly unites us all. Rich or poor. Young or old. Human or cat. Somewhere beneath all our superficial differences, there is an anus. Yet Hollywood rarely discusses this. Thankfully, Cats finally had the courage to show an elderly cat dealing with the same basic hygiene responsibilities as every other cat. Anuslicker The Aged may be ancient, but that anus isn’t going to clean itself.

    Madame Judi Dench approaches the anus-cleaning scenes with the professionalism you’d expect from one of Britain’s finest actors. There’s no vanity here. No attempt to make an elderly cat’s personal hygiene glamorous. Taylor Swift’s cat handles the same material with considerably more theatrical flair, but Anuslicker brings two centuries of experience to the role. It’s dirty. It’s unpleasant. It’s exactly what cleaning an old cat anus should be. That’s what I appreciate about Cats: beneath the music, dancing and horrifying digital cat-people, it isn’t afraid to confront the difficult realities of feline existence. Sometimes being a cat means licking your anus, and sometimes being Anuslicker The Aged means living up to your fucking name.

    #6 Kuybey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica

    I’m Kyubey! I’m a talking cat!

    Every magical girl receives a talking cat when she begins puberty. Nobody knows why. Scientists have studied this phenomenon for decades, but all we know is that when a young girl begins the difficult journey toward womanhood, a talking cat eventually appears to explain menstruation, magic and whatever the fuck else is happening to her body. Usually these puberty cats are helpful. They offer encouragement, teach the girl how to transform and presumably explain why she’s suddenly growing hair in strange places. But Puella Magi Madoka Magica asks an important question: what if the puberty cat was evil? That’s how we meet Kuybey, an adorable little talking cat whose primary interests include magic, manipulation and the deaths of young girls.

    At first Kuybey seems like any other responsible puberty cat. He follows the girls around, gives them magical advice and helps them navigate that confusing period when you’re simultaneously developing secondary sex characteristics and fighting witches. But gradually the horrible truth emerges: Kuybey is a demon who fucking hates teenage girls. Everything about him is a trap. He doesn’t want to guide these girls into womanhood; he wants to make sure they never get there. That’s what makes Kuybey such an effective talking cat villain. Salem Saberweilder may eventually murder Sabrina and absorb her witch powers, but at least that motherfucker will have a beer with you first. Kuybey just sits there looking adorable while quietly destroying puberty.

    #5 The Cheshire Cat from Alice is Tripping Balls All Up in This Bitch

    I’m the Cheshire Cat! I’m a talking cat!

    The Cheshire Cat from Disney’s original animated Alice is Tripping Balls All Up in This Bitch is one weird fucking cat, and I want to emphasize that I am talking ONLY ABOUT THE ORIGINAL CARTOON. Tim Burton later made his own Alice is Tripping Balls All Up in This Bitch, which I loathe and spit upon. Tim Burton is a hack and everyone in the world hates his movie. That’s not my opinion. That’s science. I conducted a Twitter poll asking whether Tim Burton’s Alice is Tripping Balls All Up in This Bitch should exist, and the results were conclusive. Every human being on Earth participated. Eight billion people. Babies voted. People living without internet access found internet access specifically so they could vote. Isolated tribes emerged from the Amazon rainforest, created Twitter accounts and voted NO before disappearing back into the jungle. The people have spoken.

    Anyway, actual talking cats are surprisingly unconcerned with human welfare, and the Cheshire Cat may be the finest example. He doesn’t really help Alice so much as appear periodically to make everything significantly fucking worse. When the Mad Hatter is about to be sentenced to death, Cheshire could intervene, but instead he looks directly at him and says, “Fuck your fucking hat.” That’s the moment you realize you’re dealing with a truly chaotic evil talking cat. He doesn’t care who wins. He doesn’t care who dies. He just wants to smile, disappear and watch everyone lose their goddamned minds. That’s why we love him. Unlike the computer fart masquerading as a Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton’s Alice is Tripping Balls All Up in This Bitch, a movie which—according to the democratically expressed will of the entire human population of Earth—SHOULD NOT EXIST.

    #4 Luna from Sailor Moon

    Hey, fat ass! I’m Luna! I’m a talking cat!

    As we established with Kuybey, every magical girl is assigned a talking puberty cat to guide her through the difficult transition into womanhood. Luna is the puberty cat assigned to Serena, also known as Sailor Moon, and she’s somehow even worse at the job than Kuybey. Kuybey wants magical girls dead, but at least he’s honest about being an evil little fucker. Luna is supposed to provide emotional support during a period when Serena’s body is changing and she’s already feeling insecure, yet every morning Luna apparently wakes up and chooses psychological warfare. “Hey Serena, you nasty fat bitch, lose weight.” “Serena, you disgusting fat snake.” Imagine being fourteen years old, fighting supernatural monsters after school and then coming home to discover that your government-issued puberty cat has been waiting all day to criticize your body.

    Luna’s cruelty even extends to Serena’s own theme music. Sometimes she follows her around singing, “Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon, disgusting fat trick,” which isn’t helpful and doesn’t even fucking rhyme properly. This raises serious questions about whoever regulates puberty cats. Is there a licensing board? Can Serena request another cat? Is there a number she can call? Because Luna should not be working with adolescents. Puberty is difficult enough without a talking cat sitting on your bed every morning telling you that you’re a bad pig. Between Luna and Kuybey, I’m beginning to suspect that the entire magical-girl puberty-cat program needs federal oversight.

    #3 The Aristocats from The Aristocats

    We are The Aristocats! We are talking cats!

    The Aristocats are a bunch of rich, mean, bourgeois fucking jerks. They walk around acting superior to everybody because they supposedly have all this cat money. Bullshit. Have you ever met a cat with money? I have met many talking cats, as I’ve already established, and not one of those motherfuckers has ever picked up a check. Cats don’t have jobs. They don’t pay taxes. They don’t understand banking. Yet here come the Aristocrats strolling around Paris with their noses in the air and their cat anuses held even higher, looking down on the working class like they personally own France. Where did the money come from? What labor did these cats perform to accumulate this wealth? Show me their tax returns.

    And they don’t just talk—they fucking sing. That’s how wealthy these cats are. Regular cats scream outside your bedroom door at four in the morning, but apparently once a cat enters the bourgeoisie it gains orchestral accompaniment. Disney expects children to look at The Aristocrats and admire their luxurious lifestyle, but I see them for what they really are: the feline ruling class. Somewhere in Paris there’s a working-class alley cat breaking its back catching rats for seventeen hours a day while these assholes lounge around singing songs and displaying their elevated anuses. Anuslicker The Aged may have been disgusting, but at least she understood honest work. The Aristocrats have contributed nothing to society. Damn them and their supposed cat money.

    #2 Fuck the Cat from Crumb

    I’m Fuck! I’m a talking cat!

    Fuck the Cat sits down and checks his phone, but nothing comes up. Nobody calls. Nobody texts. Every two hours he changes the channel. Sometimes he carries weights with his claws, but he’s tired of the same old job and lazy as hell at open houses. He mutters. He bites his lip. He closes his eyes and whispers, “Take me to heaven.” Fuck the Cat is blind as hell and boring as shit. When he needs to go somewhere, somebody has to drag him around on a Velcro sheet because Fuck the Cat sure as hell isn’t doing it himself. He feels like a summer dog stuck in a summer alley. He locked the cell door and lost the key. Where are his goals? There are no goals. There is no time. There is no motivation. Smoking is the trigger.

    Fuck the Cat sits down again and checks his phone. Still nothing. Call it pathetic. Call it whatever the fuck you want. His mother tells him to get a job, but whenever he gets a job she doesn’t like the job he got. So what’s Fuck the Cat supposed to do? He can’t keep living like this. Or maybe he can. Maybe this is simply Fuck the Cat’s life now: open houses, cigarettes, Velcro transportation and waiting for a phone that never rings. Somewhere a television changes channels every two hours. Somewhere Fuck the Cat is muttering again. If masturbation is not fun, you become a lazy person.

    #1 Duffy from A Talking Cat!?!

    “I’m Duffy. I’m a talking cat.”

    Fuck this cat with a bar. Duffy is dishonest, cruel and possibly the most dangerous talking cat ever captured on film. A Talking Cat?!? is a strange movie by Mr. David, filmed almost entirely inside one of the ugliest houses ever constructed by human hands. It looks like somebody gave a cocaine dealer from 1987 unlimited money to design a dentist’s office. Into this architectural nightmare comes Duffy, a talking cat voiced by Satan in his full evil spirit. Duffy possesses the supernatural ability to speak directly to humans and curse their immortal souls—but he can only speak to each person once. That’s all he fucking needs. One conversation with Duffy and you’re damned forever. No appeals. No second chances. No unsubscribing. STAY AWAY FROM THIS CAT.

    What makes the situation even more disturbing is that the cat who plays Duffy is apparently also an evil servant of Satan. Think about that. They already had Satan providing the voice, but Mr. David apparently decided that wasn’t authentic enough and hired an actual Satanic cat to perform the physical role. That’s method acting taken too fucking far. Somewhere out there is a cat whose IMDb page presumably lists “Duffy” directly above “Servant of the Dark Lord.” I have met many talking cats in my life. Some were rude. Some were evil. Some hated teenage girls. Some possessed enormous amounts of unexplained cat money. But Duffy is different. If you ever encounter Duffy and he begins speaking to you, DO NOT LISTEN. Your eternal soul depends upon it.