We’ll have a present waiting for all of you here on the site. Consider it an extra stocking stuffer.

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The Viking Queen

Tony and I take a look at a little seen Hammer sword-and-sandal flick starring Carrrrrrrriiiiiiiittttaaaaaaaaaaaaa……

By the way, the films we’ll be covering in January and February have now been added to the CCC page. Take a look.

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After finishing up my Worst of 2011 list, I figured I might as well give my Best Of list.

Best of lists are always more difficult than worst of lists. It’s easy to pick ten shitty movies, but not so easy when it comes to deciding which film sneaks into entry 8, 9, or 10. This year had a whole lot of movies that I dug. Stuff like Dream Home, Wake Wood, Cold Fish, and Evil Things all struck my fancy. I dug Stake Land and Troll Hunter. I liked the ideas in Yellowbrickroad, and was alright with The Thing prequel. Fright Night was surprisingly decent, as was the theatrical experience of Final Destination 5. And Rubber was fun in a “WTF am I watching?” sort of way. I’ve been saying for months that there is a lot of really solid horror stuff this year. It might not have been a year where stuff like Paranormal Activity and A Serbian Film sort of blow you away and dominate the discussion, but overall I would put this year up against any of the others in recent memory for overall quality. That doesn’t even count all the really top notch genre television that hit its stride this year. Even goofy stuff like Teen Wolf was better than expected (Granted, the expectations weren’t high). And marginal genre fare like The Killing was really interesting and got the watercooler abuzz each week.

Sometimes I think we look at Top 10 lists as “definitive”. They really aren’t. If I wrote this list yesterday, or even tomorrow, some of the films I mentioned above would certainly replace some of the films on my current Top 10. I think they are all worth checking out in their own ways. And in full disclosure, there are just some things that I didn’t quite get around to yet (Attack the Block, for example). But, that being said, my list reflects the stuff that really struck me this year. Stuff that, even months afterward, still seem fresh in my mind. I imagine there will be quite a bit of disagreement with some of my selections, but that’s a good thing! Who wants boredom?

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We have two new installments of DeadTrax posted on the site. First is Sonny Chiba’s The Streetfighter w/ guest elgoro of Talk Without Rhythm. Note: The Netflix Instant version is censored! The other is Zone Troopers, another fine specimen from Charlie Band featuring Julie of 19 Nocturne Blvd.

These shows are 100% Bryan of Drunken Zombie free

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If you’ve listened to the last episode of the Splattercast, you’ll know that we were sort of at a loss as to why our feed stopped working in iTunes. Well, we have fixed the problem.

Apparently, ampersands (&) kill feeds. The issue was with episode #257, in which we covered Rock & Rule. I was unaware that an ampersand could not be put in the title or description fields when I uploaded the show. Thanks to elgoro, Jeff, and others in the DLChat room, we discovered the simple error and have now fixed it (just changed it to Rock and Rule). My bad Everything should be working fine now vis a vis iTunes. Thank you to all who brought the issue to our attention.

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Another year in horror has about wrapped up and so it is time for the obligatory “Top 10″ lists to start appearing. Though lists are pretty much meaningless, they are fun nonetheless and as I’m making my final preparations for the Splatcademy Award nominees, I figured I’d make a brief return to the site and mention the properties I thought were unforgivably bad. As I explained with last year’s list, it’s easy to pick 10 direct to video shlock films, but this list is more representative of films that really had no business being as bad as they were.

In making this list, I realized that, surprisingly, I was having a tough time finding ten movies I really, really disliked this year. It’s been such a strange year for horror. Not a whole lot that stands out as being either really bad, or really great for that matter. A lot of the films sort of exist in this weird “could go either way, I guess” category. In some respects, maybe that’s a strength? I guess the genre must have done something right if I couldn’t immediately name 10 things I just despised. That, or maybe I just lucked out by missing the garbage. Whatever the reason, here are the ten properties I think stunk up the joint this year…..

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Download

Deejcember officially begins with a look at The Troll Hunter and Beware! Children at Play. We also comment on Tucker and Dale, Bag of Bones, Dante’s Inferno, and Night of the Living Dorks.

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Download the Manliness

Elgoro of Talk Without Rhythm podcast and horror director Rory Abel  (check out the site for his upcoming flick, Alone) join us this week for various discussions. This Round Table is comprised of five different sessions that comprised roughly 18 hours of recordings.  It’s an omnibus of short discussions. We’ll be back with more boobs in the new year. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, RONIN!

• Ronin hates on the attractiveness of Marilyn Monroe while Elgoro defends her honor
• Christina Hendricks in a milk filled bowl of Corn Pops
• Why is Paranormal Activity scary and can you separate “suspense” from “fear”?
• Are video games “scarier” than movies?
• Ronin hates on people who call Christmas Trees “Holiday Trees”

Give us a listen

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