Beast Within and Old Viscosity

This movie was a $2 buy that i haven't been that excited about.  The cover indicates that is a mix between Zombie 5:  Killing Birds and Day of the Dead (2008 Remake).  Meaning it's a cross between zombie birds (i hate zombie birds) and overly mutated zombies.  After a bit of googling it has two titles.  The other is "Virus Undead".  I decided not to go in alone.  I started with a bottle of Obsidian, chased it with a bottle of Old Rasputin, and before the opening credits were finished was popping the Old Viscosity.  A name like Old Viscosity is not likely to attract a novice beer drinker who is weary about stouts.  But for someone like me who is always looking for a high octane tongue stomper, it's perfect.

The movie starts off with some doctor talking about mutated avian flu (bird flu) and already I hate it.  The birds swoop in though the skylight and peck the doctors eyes out.  A nice thank you!  Oh doc thanks so much for curing the worst plague to ravage our species let us thank you by EATING YOUR FUCKING EYES!!!!  Birds, the nerve!  Don't worry because the plot moves from birds to humans pretty quickly.  It's amazing how terrible script is on this.  I don't want to blame the actors because it can't be all their fault.  Every character is just this terrible archtype.  For example the cop is the typical small town cop.  Pulls up to a fight and has a doughnut hanging out of his mouth, needs to put his club back into his belt, and gets pissed at this kid that left the small town to go to medical school.  "How dare you go to be a doctor, you could stay here and be a cop like me."  Okay he didn't say it but the dialog wasn't much better.  Who gets mad because someone moves out of their town.  I don't give a shit who comes and goes.  The bully is mad because our hero dated his girlfriend 10 years ago in high school.  With not a lot going on he still holds the grudge.  Just go down the line with all the typical characters; the trashy girl, the player, the nerd, the sweet girl, the bully, his subordinate minions.  It's all there covered in cheese.  Suddenly I feel like i need a drink.

The appeal of a viscous rich dark ale is something that takes some warming up to, especially if you drink it at cellar temperature like a real beer drinker would.  And i'm not some broke ass frat boy looking to guzzle yellow piss water....so cellar temp it is.  I pour this thick black son of a bitch into my sparkling clean 22oz snifter and it foams up a dark brown three finger head.  It's aroma is similar to Obsidian but softer and richer at the same time.  There's the dominant roasted malts, with roasted coffee and dark coffee.  The aroma is calming and wonderful but not overpowering.  It's soft but rich!  The flavor is superb.  First the thick oily liquid covers my tongue with a lightly carbonated  slap and it jumps right into the malt.  More dark maltiness where grain fights grain for the most dominant in the beer.  It's a wonderful collaboration of the biskety malt flavors, dark roasted malts, and an warm alcohol finish that leaves the drinker in a state of beer bliss.  With the rest of the bottle smiling at me invitingly i delve back into my film.

As our three main characters stop off at a gas station there's a lot of angry bird (not the game) foreshadowing and some sexual intercourse foreshadowing as well.  Yea our three heroes are on their way to our lead actors father's estate.  He's going to sort things out after the untimely death.  They decide to invite two gas station women to the estate they've never seen before for some sort of "my dad's dead make out party".  Shit starts getting really bad when the town bully shows up to dish out some pain.  He turns into a zombie!!!!  I forget the order but people are having sex, people are fighting zombies, and then someone gets bitten.  They do the token zombie movie mistake of keeping him around until they can find a cure.  Then pretty much everyone dies.  Accept for our hero who allowed his girlfriend to sacrifice herself so he could continue fighting friend zombie on the mansion tower.....classy classy classy.

Overall the movie  was only mostly shitty.  It's saved by the decent special effects and plenty of zombie action.  While i'm not a fan of the cross species zombie virus (dogs in resident evil, birds in several other movies) i think it almost works.  The beer (okay beers) makes this movie bearable and could be the sole reason that this movie is a 3 and not 2.5 zombie hands.  I don't see this one getting many more watches but it's in my collection so......i don't know.  It's there?

The Beer:

Aroma – 9/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 16/20

Palate – 4/5 

   Overall – 7/10

TOTAL= 39/50

 The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 2/5

Gore – 3/5

 Zombies – 3/5

  TOTAL – 3/5

House by the Cemetery and Pyramid Thunderhead

This week’s unpolished turd of a movie is Lucio Fulci’s House by the Cemetery.  I have this strange Love/Hate relationship with Fulci’s work.  Some of it is really good; City of the Living Dead (I don’t know why I like this movie so much).  Some of it is okay; Zombi 2, The Beyond.  And some of it sucks; Zombi 3 and The House by the Cemetery.  I got the movie and a case of Pyramid Thunderhead at the ready.  It’s time to plow through this shitty film.  Here we go.

I started my drinking an hour before during dinner.  I knew what projects I had on tap for the evening and I knew I couldn’t go in cold.  So I started with a couple of Thunderheads (love the name) and some turkey dinner.  BOOM.  Ready to go!  The movie starts out at a break neck pace (pun).  There’s a topless girl in a dusty, cobweb covered mansion (the ultimate aphrodisiac) getting dressed presumably after doing “the deed”.  She ties her shoes, buttons up her blouse (exit the movie's only nudity), and searches for her man toy who is playfully hiding from her…..or is he.  Dun dun dunnnnn!  She goes searching the house and eventually finds him hanging at the back of a door with his face removed.  She screams but it’s too late!!!  She takes a knife to the face!  I guess technically she takes a knife to the back of the head and it comes out her face.  It seems that Fulci has figured out that people don’t like stuff happening to their faces and exploits that.  I for one do not want to get stabbed in the face or have a tarantula eat my face/tongue.

Now that I’ve got a little nudity and violence in the bag I think it’s time to talk about Pyramid.  They have grown exponentially in the 27 years since their inception.  They began as Hart Brewing in Kalama, WA in 1984 (my birth year!) and eventually changed names to Pyramid (hefeweizen anyone) in 1996.  They have a wide array of beers but only a few “imperial” type beers, only two of which reach past 7%.  Not that alcohol is everything.  I don’t relish a high alcohol content for its intoxicative properties but rather for its indication of a thicker, fuller, more complex brew.  I know this isn’t always true but for the most part if you’re sipping on an IPA with a wimpy 5.3% (no names here) or a full 7.6% you’re drinking a very different beer.  I realize that I need to step down my misguided beer snobbery a bit.  I realize the value in a well crafted hefeweizen that’s only 5% or a guez that doesn’t reach 6%.  In fact I was inspired by Samuel Smiths’ low alcohol/high flavor English ales.  With that denunciation of my own misguided elitism I try to love the smaller beers.

Thunderhead is a respectable 6.7% abv and 67 IBUs.  This is significant because they use a textbook Gravity to Alcohol to IBU ratio which is supposed to help craft a well balanced beer.  As you know this type of blanket formula can’t work for all styles of beer and the distribution of the IBUs (between bittering, flavor, and aroma) is more important than the total number of IBUs in the beer.  That being said the ultimate  in IPA producers (Dogfishead) uses this formula (60 min IPA=6%abv and 60 IBUS, 90 min IPA = 9%abv and 90 IBUs).  The website says the malts used are 2-Row Barley, Munich 10L, Caramel, and Carapils.  The 2 Row is the base malt and makes up most of the beer.  The Munich malt adds the slight orange hue and imparts a nice malty flavor.  Caramel malt (crystal 10L probably) will give a light sweetness.  The Carapils is for mouthfeel and head retention.  The hops are CTZ?  Extensive googling revealed that this means Columbus also named Tomahawk or Zeus, and Nugget.  Now had I known these were the hops they used I probably would not have gotten this beer.  Nugget is supposed to be floral and resiny, used mostly for bittering.  Columbus (CTZ) is one of the big American C hops.  It’s citrusy and resiny but without that nice polished character that Centennial or Cascade have and without that biting bitterness of the Chinook.

Enough background.  Here’s the beer.  It poured a deep yellow with just a slight orange tint to it.  It was perfectly clear until I emptied the last bit of sediment from the bottle.  Now it’s a mostly clear beer with a little cloudy sediment.  It’s got a white here it is/there it goes head and a slight lacing that follows.  The aroma is mild.  Floral hops and slightly sweet malty notes are present.  Muted citrus, apricot mostly.  The flavor matches the aroma.  Nothing really going on here.  It’s an IPA for people that don’t like IPAs.  It’s mild mannered and not overly bitter.  Medium mouthfeel with the same old same old barley flavor and muted hops pushing on your tongue.  It’s calming and coaxing.  You have a few of these and say to yourself  “wow I think I might like IPAs!”  So you go out and buy a Stone Ruination and spend the rest of the night dry heaving into a bucket while your significant other cradles your sobbing head in her hands praying that it will pass.  Yea…..that’s about right.

As for the movie.  It’s a lot like the beer.  There’s a lot of drawn out suspense scenes where a door is squeaking or the floor is creaking and people are really scared but nothing happens.  There are also a lot of very long murder scenes which are signature Fulci.  But nothing is so new or so well done that you’re surprised.  There’s just a lot of flesh colored plastic being cut and torn from necks.  A solid effort, but at the end of the day its still flesh colored plastic.  The idea is that this family of three moves into this giant mansion that has a zombie living in the basement.  It was some doctor that was barred from the medical field for his unorthodox experiments.  That S.O.B. found the key to immortality!  All you have to do is wear a skin mask that covers your entire face and start eating people.  How am I not already doing this!  So yea three people (5 if you count the babysitter and realtor) all get hacked up by a skin face zombie.

Fulci focuses a lot on the neck in this movie.  Three big death scenes that I can remember.  All of them involved the neck!  One is a fire poker (I think that’s what that was) that after a couple jabs to the chest is sent deep into the neck artery.  Wow does that blood gush.  This was very well done!  It’s inspiring gore if I’ve ever seen any.  Next was the babysitter who is this weird mix of evil or not evil (it’s never really explained).  She gets her head cut off…..S-L-O-W-L-Y!  Then it rolls down the stairs.  Lastly and my least favorite, after accidentally cutting off the zombie’s hand then stomach stabbing it on purpose (the head damn it!), our main male character stands frozen with knife in hand as the zombie rips his throat out with his giant lizard hand.

Is this a zombie move?  At first I thought no!  It was a haunting movie.  But after a lot of consideration I think it is a zombie movie.  The fact that it only takes place in this house is a matter of convenience not some kind of ghost spell.  There is a zombie in the basement that need live flesh in order to survive.  It’s definitely dead and definitely eating people.  Check and check!  It’s a zombie movie.  Now I will say that for a zombie movie there sure is a lot of tools used instead of some teeth ripping action but that’s okay.  The plot of this movie jumps around more than my two year old.  And at the end I’m left baffled but not enough to really care.  Maybe some of it was lost in translation.  Those damn Italians.

The Beer:

Aroma – 9/12

Appearance – 2/3

Taste – 16/20

Palate – 4/5 

   Overall – 6/10

Total = 37/50

  

The Movie:

Production – 3/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 2/5

 Zombies – 2/5

  Overall – 2.5/5

Zombie Flesh Eaters and Russian River Damnation

Vinnie Cilurzo is an inspiration to us all.  Women want to be with him, men want to be him, and animals everywhere bow down to him with obedience.  He’s as close to being “The Beastmaster” as a man can be.  Anybody that’s ever thumbed through any kind of beer literature in the last ten years has heard of Vinnie Cilurzo.  Vinnie is the owner and head brewer at Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, Ca.  Located in a place where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a snobby half drunk wino, Vinnie has created a Mecca for the disciples everywhere.  It wasn’t until 2008 that Russian River (RR) began bottling and even then distribution was limited.  Vinnie has opened things up a bit allowing for some of his “special” beers to be tasted by those without the ability to make the trip out to wine country.  Of the 12 “-ion” beers that the website claims to bottle and distribute I have only seen 3.  These are expensive puppies.  $12 for a corked 12 oz bottle expensive.  It was a very hot Seattle day so I decided to start off with TEMPTATION leaving the other beers for a cooler evening.

There is a four pack of movies sitting on my shelf that I cringe every time I look at them.  It’s the Horror Rises from the Grave DVD set.  Film #2 was supposedly called Zombie Flesh Eaters.  That’s strange.  Any real zombie fan will know that that’s also the alternate title for Zombi 2.  When I looked into it more there are 2 or 3 English titles with just as many in Spanish, all with different cover art.  Several different titles on file for this bad boy "The Blind Dead 3," "The Ghost Galleon," "Ghost Ships of the Blind Dead," "Horror of the Zombies" and "Ship of Zombies".   It’s part of the blind dead series which I’ve never seen but heard good things about.  A dead giveaway that the movie is terrible is when you pop it into the dvd player and not only are there no previews but no extras of any kind.  The two options are “Play” and “Chapters”.  Hold on this is going to be a bumpy one.

I take off the wire cage, beside myself with anticipation.  What kind of concoction has Mr. Cilurzo dreamed up?  According to Beeradvocate (bastards) it’s a Belgian Strong Pale Ale.   Hmf?  Never heard of that one before.  It’s 7.75% (thanks for carrying it out to the extra decimal place) and just 25 IBUs.  It’s a vibrant yellow and just a little hazy with a brilliant white head that floats like a lily pad.  There’s some sediment swirling around in the glass but that’s okay.  It feels more authentic that way.  It doesn’t have the big nose that I expected from a Belgian.  There’s moderate Belgian yeast character, bread dough, and slight green apple tang.  The warmer it gets there is hints of oak and vanilla.  First sip reveals a light sweetness with some clove, slight banana and apple.  It’s highly carbonated and finishes dry with a spicy bitterness.  Very mild flavors on this one.  I would venture to call it delicate!  Very drinkable and enjoyable but not what I expected.  For me this beer doesn’t have the strong and distinctive character that I’ve come to expect from oaked Belgian Strong ales.  This beer has a place for sure, maybe just not with that price tag.  Quaffable but far from transcendent.

This movie is one big unpolished turd.  It was so bad that I finished the Damnation and had to pound a couple Dead Guys (hahah that sounds bad) just to finish it.  It’s nothing like the first movie on the disk (Horror Rises from the Tomb) which has tons of gore and lots of nudity.  Instead this movie has a lot of slow walking mummies and the constant threat of nudity (though it never comes to fruition).  The movie starts out with three women modeling bathing suits.  Several times they make like they’re going to undo their tops but…….never happens.

The whole premise of this movie is absolute doo doo.  The CEO of a sporting goods store decides to do this crazy publicity stunt where he sends two models into the Atlantic Ocean on a 16 ft boat.  I didn’t fully understand but I guess the idea is that they pretend to be stranded and then the two hotties get rescued and put on the news.  None of this ever happens because the two girls get hit by a 15^th century sailing ship.  Happens all the time.  Then there’s this weird thing where the boat brings fog and that makes the girls sleep?  Then they’re in another dimension?  Mr. Sporting Goods CEO, the head of the modeling agency, a weatherman (weird), and the missing models friend decide to rescue them in their sail boat.

So the zombies are more mummies.  They are the nights of templar?  No idea.  I was drinking heavily at this point.  What I can tell you is that the whole “They survive on the flesh of beautiful women” quote that was on one of the covers is total bullshit.  In fact when these undead nights get their skeleton like hands on the one girl they carry her across what seemed like the entire boat, just to throw her in the water.  That was the most terrifying thing the director could think of.  Just throwing her in the water?   Booooooooo.

Then for some reason a flaming cross made of pieces of the ship defended them from the zombies.  Then shit caught on fire.  Then they dumped the coffins (containing the zombies) into the ocean.  And decided to swim for it.  I don’t remember the ending expect that it sucked.  Whole movie is one giant piece of trash.  If it wasn’t for Living a Zombie Dream and I, Zombie I would have been really upset, but I know it wasn’t the worst movie by a long shot.

The Beer:

Aroma – 7/12

Appearance – 2/3

Taste – 13/20

Palate – 4/5 

   Overall – 7/10

Total = 33/50

  

The Movie:

Production – 2/5

Plot – 1/5

Gore – 1/5

 Zombies – 1/5

  Overall – 1/5

C.H.U.D. and Deschutes Obsidian Stout

Tonight’s movie is one I’ve never seen before.  I picked it up at FYE in the bargain bin (we currently have a truce now that I have The Mad) for just $3.  As the cashier, a dark haired and overweight teen with bad acne, rang me out he started laughing at my purchase.  And without me prompting him he went into why he was laughing (I don’t care).  He said “Man I’ve been waiting for someone to buy this movie.  I knew someone would!”  His excitement sickened me.  Without acknowledging his comment I grabbed my DVD and left.  I had a sinking feeling of doom as I left the store.  Had I just been duked in a horrible purchase?  We shall see acne boy!

Before talking about the beer or the movie plot I would like to talk about something I found out while on the C.H.U.D IMDB page.  It’s something I like to call three degrees of  Macaulay Culkin.  More specifically home alone.  Go ahead and try it.  Run through the actors in C.H.U.D. and you will see what I mean.  Just watch.

John Heard

George Cooper (C.H.U.D.)

Peter McCallister (Home Alone 1 &2)

Daniel Stern

The Reverend (C.H.U.D.)

   Marv Merchants (Home Alone 1&2)

And though I can’t find pictures of him from home alone, Christopher Curry is credited in both films.  He's Captain Bosch (C.H.U.D.) and Agent Stuckey (Home Alone 3).

This is unusual isn’t it?  Perhaps it’s something worth looking into.  At the very least it makes me want to have a beer.  Just thinking that people went through the effort to make 3 Home Alone movies drives me to the bottle.  And today’s bottle is Deschutes Obsidian Stout.  Black as my heart and richer than premium gasoline this beer is the best widely distributed stout you can buy.  Deschutes is famous for its Black Butte Porter but the real gem is the Obsidian Stout.  It pours black and slightly viscous with a full, fluffy dark brown head.  This is the best head on any stout…period.  It’s like a mini chocolate Duvel.  This beer oozes aroma that kicks your ass like the slime from Ghostbusters 2.  It’s thick with roasted malt, burnt toast, and warm oats.  It has a raw husky aroma that is pungent enough to cut through any meal.   For example I paired it with the hot wings I had for dinner and it was the perfect contrast to the hot and acidy buffalo.  It has a full and almost milky mouth feel that’s incredibly smooth.  There is a rich malty sweetness buried under the roasted and charred malt.  This beer lays brick upon brick of full roasted flavor.  Originally a Stout was called a Stout Porter.  This beer exemplifies the STOUT part.  It finishes clean and long and leaves a slightly oily luster on your tongue that comes back strong with each sip.  All this from a $8 six pack.  Money well spent.

 The movie on the other hand is not money well spent.  The lead in is a woman walking down the street with her dog when…..oh no!!!!!!!!!! Something reaches out from underneath a manhole cover and grabs her.  This thing can be assumed to be the C.H.U.D.  What is a CHUD you ask?  It’s a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller.  I’ll run through the entire movie in a couple of sentences.  A photographer (John Heard) familiar with the homeless (undergrounders), a grief stricken cop (Captain Bosch whose wife you might remember from the beginning manhole cover scene), and the homeless Barack Obama (Daniel Stern).  There’s some talk about toxic waste being disposed of underneath NYC and for some reason instead of the police having jurisdiction the head of the company has it.  And there’s this big power struggle as the company tries to cover it up.  Something something, flamethrowers…..mutant homeless people…..fill the sewers with gas…….explosion…..revenge…..poop poop poop.  Then it ends!

So there’s the film.  There were a couple of cool parts.  Did anyone else notice that the CHUDs looks just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon?  So the acting in this movie was absolutely atrocious.  In fact I had to rewind one scene and watch it again because I didn’t believe that directors and editors would allow that type of performance to leech into a final product.  I’m talking about the scene where the Reverend goes into a meeting with the heads of the company dumped the waste and he’s trying to convince them there are creatures in the sewer.  They don’t even bother to clean him up.  And he’s not just homeless, he’s 80’s homeless, which is way dirtier than any other homeless.  I mean these guys look like they just climbed out of a coal mine.  And in the 80s the most homeless of the homeless were in New York City.  It was like a giant homeless Mecca.  So Marv…I’m sorry wrong movie…the Reverend starts interrogating the company head demanding answers so that he can help.  When the company refuses to give answers to the homeless guy (a reasonable decision) he freaks out.  Did he think he was the homeless superman that could wipe out the mutated homeless population single handedly?  I’m not sure but it did make for a very comical scene.

A woman cuts one of the CHUDs heads off.  Green slime oozed from the neck…..awesome.  This picture isn't the CHUD head, it's just another severed head i thought was cool.  It's the cop's wife and when he saw the head it was more funny than sad.

Blood exploded out of the bathtub drain.  Never explained why.

I don’t buy that these were zombies.  They were cannibalistic as said in the title but that would imply that they are human.  It never specified the undeadness of them?  They were more mutants than zombies.

This movie was okay.  I’m glad I had a good beer to contrast with the shittiness of the film.  Oh and one last bash about the 80s.  Why is the goon always wearing a polo shirt and glasses?  The asshole boyfriend in Night of the Comet, C.H.U.D. and countless other movies all portray the tough guy as these funny preppy jocks.  The guy walks after the reverend, clicks the receiver (thus returning the quarter), then he fishes it out and eats it.  All without saying a word.  It was poetry for the steroid using, short shorts wearing, 80s good.  Why on why!!!!!!!!!!

Oh and i almost forgot.  Our hero George Cooper is talking to his girlfriend and she announces she's pregnant.  He thinks it's pretty cool but he's not really feeling it one way or the other.  In fact he asks her "so are you going to get rid of it?" in the same way someone would say "so are you going to finish you're pizza crust?"  She giggles..."no no i don't think I'm going to get an abortion.....oh my that is unless you want me to".  He replies with something like "naaa it's cool.  We'll just have it.  Whatever."  Amazing depth in the script writing. 

The Beer:

Aroma – 11/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 18/20

Palate – 5/5 

   Overall – 8/10

Total = 45/50

  

The Movie:

Production – 3/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 2/5

 Zombies – 2/5

  Overall – 2.5/5