Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #80!

After catching Silent Hill the other night, I had the pleasure of chatting with one of its most impressive stars: Pyramid Head. Check out our brief interview with this fashionable monster in Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #80!  (4/27/06)

Again, apologies for the lack of updates as of late. Hope y’all are finding other reading material and stuff to keep you entertained. No Street Fightery goodness yet for you (patience, grasshoppers), but here’s a new Hot Flash based upon — holy fuck a cat just ran past my second-floor window. That’s crazy! — the Silent Hill film currently in theaters.

My SPOILER ALERT review: I kinda liked it, but this is not a good film. In fact, parts of it — including the beginning and the conclusion — are downright stupid. Now, I’m not familiar with the games, so I’ll grant that there may be additional backstory and such required to actually make sense of the story, but as a standalone film the critics are right to pan this movie. Mind you, it’s certainly not without its cool and freaky points. In fact, they make the film somewhat frustrating in that one can view them and imagine how they might have been utilized in a better film — a film that lacked the pointless and even more confusing subplot with Sean Bean or a scene that included a better rationale for a woman dragging her daughter to a haunted town that’s been closed off because of poisonous fumes rising from underneath it (DUMB). I mean, just a simple scene with a psychiatrist recommending taking the daughter to the town might’ve sufficed; at least then we could shift the blame from the principal character to this unnamed crackpot. The movie also plays out a little too much like a video game. At first it’s kind of cool to see the survival horror game framing and the camera panning about the stages and the way the characters follow the simple clues, but after a while it just gets boring.

And while I understand that some of the stupidity in the film is part of the games’ mythology, I really could’ve done without the fanatical townspeople and the witch burnings. That part could’ve played out better if there had been more emphasis on just how their actions had backfired — say, some rite involving the seal was misperformed, thereby opening the gateway to HELL — but I just wasn’t too keen on the whole thing being the result of some little girl’s nightmare fantasy. What the fuck was that little girl smoking to imagine shit like that? I guess having your flesh cooked will put extreme horror in your head. Not that Silent Hill was scary, mind you, because it wasn’t. At all. Certain characters were creepy, but any Clive Barker film has this film totally licked in that department.

Overall, I’d give Silent Hill a C/C-. On a scale of 1-10 stars, I’d give it 4 or 5. I didn’t hate it, but reading these orgasmic reviews on IMDb still makes me want to smack the shit out of the people that totally loved it. It may be the best video game adaptation to date (that’s gotten a U.S. theatrical release, anyway; tons of neat animes have been produced) — until a second viewing convinces me otherwise, however, I’m still giving that honor to Mortal Kombat — but that really isn’t saying much.

Pyramid Head is a really cool guy, though. 🙂

“Hazel Wheatkettle’s Dying Wish”

It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a so-called literary offering on Scary-Crayon, so here’s a short story I wrote a while back: “Hazel Wheatkettle’s Dying Wish”. We post all kinds of things on the good SC, yes we do.  (4/20/06)

Hello there, children! Still not ready with the Street Fightery goodness for you, but here’s an uncharacteristic something to hold you over in the meantime: a short story entitled “Hazel Wheatkettle’s Dying Wish”. It’s not part of the current project that’s been demanding my attention as of late, but they’re both fiction pieces and this was just kinda sitting there so I figured I’d post it. The piece is kind of serious and pretty sad (an old lady dies, hence the title), so don’t read it if you’re feeling down or if your pet mousey just got eaten by a rogue snake or something. Same goes if you’re in the mood for graphical splendor, as I didn’t even bother to include unrelated photographs with this one. It’s a totally textual experience.

On a lighter note, who’s been watching “Saved by the Bell” on Cartoon Network? I’ve always gotten a kick out of the show, but the caption and the wacky slowed down advertisements make it even funnier for some reason. Since then, Elizabeth Berkeley has gone on to star in the hilariously awful Showgirls and several not so hilarious but still quite awful direct-to-video films. Mario Lopez became one of the neutered men in the terrible “male” answer to “The View”. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen got all chunky with chipmunk cheeks and then locked herself in a closet after starring on “90210” during its shark-jumping years. Dustin Diamond beat up an old man on national television and then fell off the face of the earth. Aside from that short-lived WB series with Zack, I don’t even remotely know what happened to everyone else.

For some inexplicable reason, I’ve also been watching “Kingdom Hospital” on SciFi. Not religiously or anything — this show is fucking terrible — but it airs on Tuesday nights during a time when I’m not particularly doing anything so I’ve tuned in. And I don’t get it. It’s this incredibly long miniseries during which almost absolutely nothing happens, making you wonder why the hell they made it so long to begin with (and it’s worth noting that the original series on which it is based, “Riget”, is much, much shorter). But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, given that Stephen King handled its adaptation for American audiences. I like the guy, but he did write Sleepwalkers. UGH. I’ve been looking forward to the Silent Hill film, but knowing that the actress who played the horrible cat mother is in the movie makes me have second thoughts about it.

But like I was saying, the amount of pointless shit in “Kingdom Hospital” is exasperating. One of last night’s episodes (it airs in four hour blocks of four hour-long episodes each) kept cutting to a headless corpse dancing around in the shower while its head sat under a blow dryer. What? One such scene might’ve been mildly amusing (though still pointless and pretty stupid), but this was just ridiculous. There’s also this talking anteater thing that sometimes opens its mouth really wide to reveal freaky sharp teeth, which aside from my general boredom is about the only reason I keep watching because I want to know just what the hell it is. Well, that and the fact that one of the doctors looks a lot like Bud Bundy.

All for now. Ja!

A Crayon Haiku #50!

Although computer programs and subsequent program upgrades have simplified a number of tasks that were previously more difficult and time-consuming, sometimes subtle interface changes lead to confusion.  (4/16/06)

4+1 SCARY 39¢ EASTER CARDS!!!

In what’s becoming a holiday tradition on Scary-Crayon, we take time out this Sunday to look at four utterly terrifying 39¢ Easter cards and an additional offering from outside the Christian section. It’s scary stuff.  (4/16/06)

Apologies for the lack of updates last week — despite licking battery acid, I am alive and well. Well, alive, anyway. I’ve been working on some rather time-consuming projects as of late, but Scary-Crayon is still a go! As evidenced by today’s updates. In addition to A Crayon Haiku #50, we’ve got another foray into horrific holiday greetings with The 4+1 SCARIEST 39¢ Easter Cards. Pickings seemed slim at first, but once I got into it I found that these cards far surpass the subjects of our prior Halloween and Christmas outings in the fear factor department. But Easter and its Jewish coincident are by far the most fucked up holidays we’ve examined thus far, so I guess that’s to be expected.

In other news, here are a few videos that’ll be accompanying our next video game review. Natch, they’ll be included along with the article (along with other vids and even downloads of the full games themselves, which are incidentally about as big as these videos), but blog readers get the special sneak preview. Enjoy…

E. Honda vs. M. Bison (859 KB)
Zangief vs. Chun-Li (1.14 MB)
Ryu vs. Sagat (762 KB)

All for now, minna-san. Happy Easter! Take care of yourselves until next time. And remember: discipline, justice, commitment! 🙂

STREET FIGHTER JENN!!!

We’ve seen Capcom’s brawlers take on the SNK crew, but have you ever wondered how Chun-Li would fare against Mortal Kombat‘s Mileena? Back in the day, a game called Street Fighter Jenn allowed us to dream.  (4/6/06)

Today we’ve got another game review for you — a blast from the past known as Street Fighter Jenn, complete with a link for you to download the game yourself! You’ll need DOSBox to run it, though. (And hmmm, it looks like there’s a new version… gotta get me summa that!)

Also, many thanks to Jenn Dolari for making this awesome game waaay back when and all of her subsequent info about it (to say nothing of some other stuff that I’ll write about in later articles). If you download the game, you may notice that the characters are a little less likely to murder you with their super moves than I suggested in the review — that’s ’cause Jenn actually updated the game and made it so the CPU opponents are, well, less likely to murder you with their super moves. She’s also included a graphic that’ll give you a point of reference for changing the game options, which may come in handy. See? She cares. She’s also got a couple of webcomics (A Wish for Wings and Closetspace), so do read them if you get the chance. They might be filled with yummy candy. 🙂

Until next time, minna-san!

TMNT: THE NEW SERIES!!!

Okay, so it’s in its fourth season and thus isn’t all that new anymore, but here’s Scary-Crayon’s review of the current show. Then, while examining 4Kids’ DVDouble Shots, we check out the new Shredder’s first appearance!  (4/3/06)

FINALLY, Scary-Crayon is back to normal — or at least as normal as it ever gets around these parts. Here’s hoping y’all enjoyed this weekend’s April Foolery! 🙂 As promised, I’ve linked the layout in the content pages so you can always revisit the horrific Disney-Crayon if you feel the need. And speaking of April Fool’s Day layouts, here’s the one we did in ’05. It’s absolutely terrifying.

That said, today we take an in-depth look at the 2003- TMNT series. I admit that I wasn’t initially all that keen on the series — things started off kind of boring and there have always been far too many filler episodes for my tastes — but things have picked up in recent weeks to the point where I really can’t wait to see what happens next. I could do without the gimmicky 4Kids theme days and the cool contests that I’m sadly too old to enter (no fair; I want to win G.I. Joe figures and Winx Club dolls too!), but still. TURTLE POWAAA!!!! 😀

Until next time, minna-san. Ja!

WELCOME TO DISNEY-CRAYON!!!

For April Fool’s Day 2006, Scary-Crayon descended into horror and madness and became Disney-Crayon! Does anybody else remember when the stuff Disney produced was actually good? I really miss those days.  (4/1/06)

Sorry about the lack of articles as of late — I’ve been hard at work on this special Disney-Crayon layout. Hope y’all got a kick out of it! I’m thinking I’ll leave it up for the duration of the weekend and then maybe archive it as an article or something. I dunno. Hoping to have a new article up on Monday, too. Fingers crossed.

WELCOME TO APRIL, FOOLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😉