Bigfoot Terror Tales Vol. 2: More Scary Stories of Sasquatch Horror
The Big Hairy Beast is Back! 16 authors bring you 16 terrifying tales of the Sasquatch and bring new meaning and fright to this mysterious hairy giant that lurks in the woods.
From Bigfoot battles to trying to outrun the muscular monster, to being caught by the creature or simply living in a world where these beasts exist, this second volume of Bigfoot Terror Tales is sure to fuel your imagination and make you reconsider the furry creature that has spooked so many and has inspired haunting treks into the woods where some have emerged with incredible stories and a new fear and respect for this ancient beast.
Featuring stories by: Larry Berreth, Rebecca Besser, A.M. Burns, Jason Rodimus Fowler, Paul A. Freeman, Keith Gouveia, Bryan Hall, Jack Hessey, Bowie V. Ibarra, S. Nycole Laff, Kevin Millikin, Greg Mitchell, Bruce L. Priddy, J.W. Schnarr, D.G. Sutter, and Sheri White, Bigfoot Terror Tales Volume 2 is a must-have read for your Sasquatch horror collection.
Bigfoot Terror Tales Vol. 1: Scary Stories of Sasquatch Horror
He is Mysterious. He is Legend. He is Bigfoot.
Enter the world of the Sasquatch through fourteen stories of Bigfoot Terror by writers with a deep love for this legendary creature that has captured the imagination of millions around the world, has inspired thousands of expeditions, and has been the substance of campfire stories for generations.
From small towns with a big problem, to a filmmaker aiming to shoot the ultimate Bigfoot flick, to even Ronald Reagan taking on a Sasquatch, and much more–these hairy tales that are sure to make your skin crawl, cause you to shiver with fright and think twice about the next time you want to go into the woods alone.
Featuring scary stories by: Janice Gable Bashman, David Bernstein, Tonia Brown, Francesco Collia, Eric Dimbleby, Bruce Durham, Eric J. Guignard, Jason Hughes, Giovanna Lagana, E.M. MacCallum, Christine Morgan, Suzanne Robb, R.J. Sevin & Rosalind Sevin, Franklin E. Wales, with an introduction by Eric S. Brown, author of the popular Bigfoot War series, Bigfoot Terror Tales is a dream come true for Sasquatch and monster enthusiasts everywhere.
Green Lantern (2011) Written by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg Directed by Martin Campbell Runtime 114 min. 3.5 out of 5
When dying alien and Green Lantern Abin Sur is discovered by brash and cocky fighter pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), Hal’s life is suddenly changed when the mysterious alien gives him a green power ring and matching lantern with vague instructions to “speak the oath.”
After finally unlocking the lantern, Hal is taken to the planet Oa where he learns he has become Abin Sur’s successor in the Green Lantern Corps and is also the first human to ever bear the powerful mantle of a Green Lantern.
As part of his training, Hal is taken under the wing of a powerful Lantern named Sinestro (Mark Strong) whose view of right and wrong is sheer black and white, and who has no trouble enforcing the law with lethal force. Turns out Sinestro wasn’t the first to feel this way as long ago one of the creators of the lantern rings—one of the Guardians of Oa—disagreed with the Oan Council and set off on his own, discovering a new power, this one the yellow power of Fear. Now the superpowered being Parallax, this former Guardian wishes to take revenge on those who banished him.
As Hal learns what it means to set aside his own pride and ego and live by the sacred Green Lantern oath—In brightest day, in blackest night . . . —he must come to grips with his newfound power and expel Parallax’s presence from the universe once and for all.
After the crazy success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers and DC Comics were in big need of another hit after Superman Returns failed to deliver at the box office, and so they went to another DC hero: Green Lantern. Good choice. He’s a kind of Superman/Batman hybrid in that Hal Jordan is human and has the qualities and struggles thereof like Bruce Wayne, and yet by wielding his power ring, his superpowers get up there right alongside the Last Son of Krypton in many ways. Whether this was Warners’ reasoning or not, I don’t know—probably not—but GL was certainly a good character to try and take to the big screen, especially since it had never been done before.
In a nutshell, the movie wasn’t bad. I liked it. It didn’t change my life, but it’s not the piece of garbage many folks make it out to be. It covered Hal Jordan’s transformation into Green Lantern, delivered awesome effects, created a sense of atmosphere both about the Green Lantern Corps and Oa, and came through on telling a simple story that got Hal Jordan from Point A to B in a reasonable amount of time.
People complained there wasn’t enough action or not enough stuff on Oa—but those kinds of things aren’t—and weren’t—supposed to be the focus of this movie. It was about getting the ring into Hal’s hands and teaching him the ol’ Uncle Ben motto of “With great power comes great responsibility.”
I like how it took time to get Hal used to using the ring and it wasn’t a case of him putting it on and suddenly becoming an expert on creating green light constructs. And once he figured it out, I enjoyed how his constructs were simple—the racetrack, machine guns, etc.—as opposed to something crazy or way too technical. Why? Put yourself in his shoes. You’d probably construct something you’re more comfortable with than trying to create some big complicated airship stocked with robot soldiers with a zillion weapons and stuff.
The love story between Hal and Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) seemed forced though it did provide a nice bridge between the realm of Oa and Earth. Clearly this relationship was introduced for sequel purposes because those who know the comics know Carol Ferris becomes the supervillain Star Sapphire down the line.
I think in the end, Green Lantern did its job. Could it have been better? Sure. Could it have been worse? Yup.
Regardless, I like popping this movie into the player from time to time, and if you’re a superhero fan, you should, too.
The Green Hornet (2011) Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Directed by Michel Gondry Runtime 119 min. 2.5 out of 5
Irresponsible and party-it-up guy Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is living the life as the son of the well-to-do publisher of The Daily Sentinel, but when his father is found dead after a fatal bee sting, Britt’s life is changed. Since he never liked his father, he goes to the cemetery and, meaning to sabotage his dad’s memorial, he and his dad’s mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou), end up saving a couple people from being mugged. Later, Britt convinces Kato that the two of them should pose as criminals so they could get close to real criminals and bust them.
Kato agrees and Britt adopts the identity of the Green Hornet. His target is Benjamin Chudnofsky, a Russian mob boss who is trying to unite the crime families in Los Angeles. Soon the Green Hornet and Kato find themselves neck-deep in the city’s underworld.
Sometimes it takes a criminal—or one posing as one—to catch a criminal.
I don’t know, man. I was super jazzed when I found out they were making this movie because I’m a big fan of the 1960s TV show starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee as the Green Hornet and Kato. I thought, hey, imagine doing an updated version where it could be a mob story with all sorts of intense drama, action and be a kind of Sin City, you know, with Green Hornet being an antihero and all?
Instead, I got a goofball comedy out of what was supposed to be a serious idea. I blame Seth Rogen, who I usually don’t mind. He was one of the writers on this movie so obviously wrote to his strengths versus what the character was really about.
The costumes were cool, the action was fantastic, Chou’s martial arts was aces—but they got the Green Hornet wrong and took the gist of him and then did their own thing. Too bad. This really could have been a hit had they done the original series justice and then tweaked it for a modern audience.
Maybe sometime down the line they’ll do another one and do it right. In the meantime, if a straight-up, not bad superhero movie is your thing, check it out, otherwise there are other lesser-known-superhero movies I enjoyed more like The Phantom and The Rocketeer.
Ghost Rider (2007) Written by Mark Steven Johnson Directed by Mark Steven Johnson Runtime 114 min. 3 out of 5
After having made a deal with the devil to save the life of his father when he was young, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is a cursed man. When the devil’s son, Blackheart (Wes Bentley), comes to Earth in search of a contract that would bring Hell to the planet, the devil makes Johnny the new Ghost Rider and tasks him with killing Blackheart. If Johnny succeeds, he can have his soul back.
Supernatural excitement and thrills ensue in this paranormal tale about a haunted man facing his own demons—both internally and externally—and what it takes to be the Ghost Rider.
There’re lots of ways of looking at this movie, everything from was it faithful to the comic to simple eye candy to story to themes to—well, you get the idea. For me, it was all right. I like Nic Cage because, well, he’s Nic Cage and usually just plays himself, it seems. Sometimes he steps outside that, but in Ghost Rider, he was Nic Cage. Ghost Rider did look amazing in this, looked real. That first transformation sequence was insane! It’s hard to sell the image of a walking, burning skeleton in leather, but they pulled it off here.
The motorcycle—trippin’. Can you imagine owning a hog like that? Know how many heads you’d turn? And if you could ride up a building like he did? Yeah, thought so.
The story’s pretty good and carries its own mythology and purpose. The elemental demons that Ghost Rider has to go up against were pretty cool and tough to beat, and the effects needed to portray them looked real. It’s amazing what Hollywood can do these days.
This movie got a lot of mixed reactions from fans. For me, it was okay. Wasn’t one of those superhero movies I could watch over and over again. At the same time, it did do its job in getting me interested in the sequel, which is on my to-check-out list, so that definitely has to count for something.
I’m a huge fan of Max West’s Sunnyville Stories, which are slice-of-life tales of anthropomorphic animals in a small town. He releases the comics issue by issue then, when he has enough, collects them into trade paperbacks. Presently, there are two trade paperbacks: Sunnyville Stories Vol. 1 and Sunnyville Stories Vol. 2. They are available both in print and eBook.
Fantastic Four (2005) Written by Michael France and Mark Frost Directed by Tim Story Runtime 106 min. 3.5 out of 5
Five people are endowed with superpowers after an accident on a space station. Four become a force for good. One becomes a force for evil. That’s pretty much it.
This is a fun movie and I liked it. It had a solid origin story, some good action, and pretty good SFX. Each character was clearly defined, even stereotypical, but that’s the Fantastic Four for you.
A lot of people griped on this movie. It was not bad. Wasn’t as “cosmic” or over-the-top as I would’ve liked, but it wasn’t a bad flick by any means. It was a great translation of comic book to screen and carried that vibe with it from beginning to end.
The invisibility effects of the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) were awesome, a sweet combination of complete I-can’t-see-you-at-all invisibility with the glass-like, transparent humanoid figure so we can see her enough to know what she’s doing.
The Human Torch (Chris Evans) looked like a man on fire, which he is, but animated enough so we can make out his actions, his costume, facial expressions and anything else we needed to in a given scene.
Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd): at some points he looked like a real-life stretchy dude, at others the CGI was very clear (i.e. that scene when he stretches his hand under the door to unlock it from the outside).
The Thing (Michael Chiklis), arguably the hardest costume because you didn’t want to run the risk of making him look like a cartoon character by going all CGI (as good as the Hulk looks even in The Avengers, there’s still an animated quality to it), but you also didn’t want bad prosthetics either. The Thing in this movie looked amazing and looked real. Well done.
Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) was fine as is, his costume something like an elaborate cosplay. I would’ve liked more detail in the cloak, some sort of pattern, but the whole how-he-got-his-armor thing was pretty cool.
What worked especially well was the dynamic of family and all the love, bickering and craziness that goes along with having one. There was real chemistry between all the main players and it added a dynamic to the team that made the whole scenario believable.
What also makes the Fantastic Four different is they’re public superheroes without secret identities, that is, though they have codenames, everyone knows who they are. While Iron Man did this, too, having a whole family who everyone knows who they are changes the game. It’s also different because, unlike Iron Man, they didn’t decide, “Hey, let’s be superheroes,” but instead it’s something that kind of happens and they discover how important it is they use their powers to help people.
For me, Fantastic Four was a good movie that I like popping into the DVD player now and then.
Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) Written by Don Payne and Mark Frost Directed by Tim Story Runtime 92 min. 4 out of 5
Galactus, a giant planet-eating alien, is heading for Earth and he sends the Silver Surfer to scout things out. When the Fantastic Four meet this herald of destruction, all bets are off and it’s a race to save the planet before Galactus can consume it.
What a great follow up to 2005’s Fantastic Four. I remember when news hit that the Silver Surfer would be involved and that Galactus would be the bad guy I was beside myself with fanboy joy. And that trailer? Man, sweet stuff and totally got me stoked. Did this movie live up to the hype? Not completely, but that’s not to say it was a terrible movie. It was every bit as good as its predecessor, but more exciting thanks to the Silver Surfer zipping around on his board and the Fantastic Four trying to track him down. That scene where the Human Torch meets the Surfer and the two quickly have it out? Yeah, sweet stuff.
This flick played up all the stuff that made the first one good, which was the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four, the bitter evilness of Dr. Doom, and then upped the ante by bringing in Galactus. Unfortunately, Galactus—while just fine as a concept—failed to deliver in terms of execution as comic book fans were really hoping for the giant space man with the purple helmet instead of the big haze of cloud we got. Some would argue that a big man that’s larger than planet Earth wouldn’t translate to film and a space cloud works better, but I disagree because Galactus is an all-powerful alien, can change size and could work as is if written well.
I totally dug Laurence Fishburne as the voice of the Silver Surfer. The guy can say anything and it’ll sound cool (i.e. see his dialogue as Morpheus in The Matrix and its sequels; the words themselves are ridiculous but he makes them sound awesome).
The story arc as suggested at in this flick would’ve better been the stuff of a trilogy, starting off with the Silver Surfer’s origin, how he got involved with Galactus, even a demo of him going ahead of his master to a planet other than Earth, the destruction of that planet then going to Earth, meeting the FF, and the whole planet getting ready to fend off this literally giant threat. So I feel we got the Reader’s Digest version of such a story in this movie. It still works, but it could’ve been expanded upon.
As always, the SFX were great and they tidied up Mr. Fantastic’s stretching abilities so they weren’t as cartoony as in the first movie.
I totally would’ve been up for them to make a third movie, but with Marvel’s Phase One plan no doubt in the works at the time this flick was released, we’re basically going to get a Fantastic Four reboot at some point in the future, probably sooner rather than later.
I’ll be there because I liked these movies and am eager to see how things will progress from here and if it’ll be an all-out reboot complete with origin story, or if they’ll sort of unofficially acknowledge these movies that came before.
Elektra (2005) Written by Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman and Raven Metzner Directed by Rob Bowman Runtime 97 min. 2.5 out of 5
After coming back from the dead and trained in the deadly art of Kimagure, Elektra Natchios is a killer-for-hire. Upon receiving her new contract, she goes up against a band of ninja assassins known as The Hand, who are also after the same target: a young martial arts prodigy with a potential for greatness. Elektra’s past meets her present as she seeks to protect this young prodigy while also facing demons of her own.
I was in the minority of people who liked Daredevil, in which Jennifer Garner also played Elektra. When I heard she was getting her own spin-off movie, I was really excited because, while I’m not an expert on the Elektra character, I know enough to know that a film version would be awesome. We didn’t quite get that with this flick, but that’s not to say it was utterly terrible. However, what audiences expected and what they got were different things.
Let’s see . . . I was happy that Elektra sported her famous red costume in this as opposed to the black one in Daredevil. Though technically totally impractical in real life, having her very-similar-to-comic-book-costume on screen was cool for fanboys and fangirls alike and, no, not for the reason you’d think. Just something about seeing a comic book character “as they are” on screen brings a thrill.
The fighting sequences were not bad and Hollywood’s version/perception of the martial arts is always interesting as they tend to add all sorts of legend and mystique to them as opposed to their reality.
They got the gist of the character but didn’t get hardcore into it, and it was clear this was just a way to cash in on the Daredevil movie that came out a couple years before. A solid story of Elektra’s assassin exploits—even if you want her to fight mercenaries with a similar agenda—would’ve been a great help, but this flick seemed more introspective and slower paced versus something that should’ve been geared toward the action-and-suspense genre (i.e. a high profile target, like a president or something, then have that person tie into Elektra’s mythology. Set her on the run while also giving her history and what it’s like to be someone who was supposed to be dead, some in-costume Daredevil universe cameos, and you’d have a solid story). Just ideas.
In the end, if they ever went back and rebooted the character, I’d definitely check it out as the potential is there, but wasn’t fully exploited with this outing.
Defendor (2009) Written by Peter Stebbings Directed by Peter Stebbings Runtime 101 min. 4.5 out of 5
Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) has a secret: when night rises upon the city, he takes to the streets as Defendor, a lone avenger on the hunt for the ever-elusive Captain Industry. Unfortunately for Arthur, he’s mildly retarded and the line between right and wrong sometimes blurs. Though he means well, sometimes he gets in over his head, especially when his search for Captain Industry takes him into the city’s underworld of drugs, guns and prostitution.
After saving the life of prostitute and drug-addict Kat Debrofkowitz (Kat Dennings), Arthur takes her in and, though at first exploited by her for money, the two eventually bond and he accomplishes one of his first objectives he had since donning the Defendor uniform: helping those who need it most.
Being a lifelong superhero fan, there are a few things, to me, that define a good superhero movie and Defendor had more than one of those things. It touched me on that very human level of seeing a sincere human being trying to make a difference regardless of what other people thought of him. Fear of man is one of the things I think holds people back from doing the right thing in real life. To at least see that attribute on the screen means a lot to me because it proves that people are still thinking about it even if it’s just in a movie.
The trailer for this flick makes it come across as more of a superhero spoof than a serious movie, and this was most definitely a serious movie. Sure, there were some funny moments, but this movie wasn’t about that, but instead was about a man who saw something wrong and did the best he could with what he knew how to do.
And he did. He showed us who Captain Industry really was: the villain that all of us have in each of our cities, the one comprised of drugs, guns and illegal sex that has ruined countless lives yet for some reason authorities refuse to do something about.
This movie makes me think of the real life superheroes that are out there, those real men and women who don guises of other personas and do what they can to help us. Lots of people mock them. Lots of people mocked Defendor, but when all is said and done, they, like Defendor, do the right thing and try to right a world full of wrongs, bring hope to those who need it, and set an example that we should all follow.
Defendor is a fantastic movie and I’m really glad Peter Stebbings went ahead and made this flick.
