ANALOG MEDIUM JUNE 2008
META
Wolfman's Got Nards / RELAX
Arcade Invader / Power Nerd
FRESH!
Coming Attractions: Rob Zombie's Tyrannosaurus Rex (2009)
Coming Attractions: Dario Argento's Giallo (2009)
Coming Attractions: Death Race (2008)
Godfrey Ho
Richard Donner
Wolfman's Got Nards
Comcast On Demand is Friendly to Zombies
AM Scrape - June Part I
Bizarro Monday: Aphex Twin Spectrogram
Bizarro Monday: Рабочий И Паразит
Death By Link - June Part I
MOVIES
Black Demons (1991) Review
The Dark Power (1985) Review
Death Race 2000 (1975) Review
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Review
GAMES
Zombie Flash Games Part VIII - Zombie Survival
A Boy and His Blob (NES 1989) Game Genie Codes
Adventures of Lolo (NES 1989) Game Genie Codes
T&C Surf Designs (NES 1987) Game Genie Codes
ANALOG MEDIUM JUNE 2008
A Boy and His Blob (NES 1989) Game Genie Codes
I never could beat A Boy and His Blob. But pretty soon here, I'm going to give it a go. I picked out the most useful codes, the ones I might use. Here's a fun fact: In the Japanese version, the main character is represented by a different sprite than the American version.
ZAULNGIE - Double lives
GXXEOPVG - Infinite lives
AAVKIPPA - Infinite Jellybeans
SXEEZAAX - Fast play
AVOPVGEI - Never take damage from enemies
SZXLXKSU + YYXLUGEY - Gives 101 of all starting Jellybeans
Source: GameGenie.com
Coming Attractions: Dario Argento's Giallo (2009)
Rock! For anyone who needed a reason to be excited about life again, here it is: Dario Argento just wrapped shooting on his newest movie. Giallo, from what I can glean, looks like a return to form for Argento. I will forever defend this good man's honor, but I'm not retarded. I know he fell off a bit in his old age (case and point: Do You Like Hitchcock?). But it's obvious that he's still got it in him. I think he may have bust out hard for this one. Just the fact that he named it "Giallo", after the genre that he himself has mastered, must mean he's coming out stronger this time. Another clue: Adrien Brody is starring. Adrien Brody has enough clout these days to do as he pleases. And he must have been pleased when he read the script. No word on the exact release date yet. I'm ready for it Dario. Hit me with it. I can take it.
Check out pics from Giallo on Dario Argento's official site
Death Race 2000 (1975) Review
You gotta love Death Race 2000. Anyone with a sense of humor has played the game: drive down the street and assign points to the various pedestrian targets you encounter along the way. "Five hundred points for the paraplegic transient. A thousand for the divorced family of three..." They must have been playing the game back in the 70s, too. Death Race 2000 is everyone's fantasy of point-based vehicular manslaughter brought to life. The year is 2000, Frankenstein and "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo duke it out in a cross country murder race - the ultimate in futuristic gladiatorial mayhem. The French resistance is hard at work trying to throw a monkey wrench in the race, which is the pride of the post-apocalyptic American empire. Will they succeed? Is Frankenstein really a personal friend of the President? Will Sylvester Stallone ever learn to talk to women without hitting them in the face?
That's right, Sylvester Stallone plays Joe Viterbo, the bitter rival of the champion racer Frankenstein, played by David Carradine. Legendary producer Roger Corman helped bring Death Race 2000 to life, along with director Paul Bertel - who I am sure knew exactly what he was doing when he made it. It would have been pretty hard to have any illusions about what the end product would look like. I doubt he ever told an actor on the set to tone it down, either. It cracks me up that in the future, the most important sporting event in the most powerful nation in the world revolves around used cars with swords tied to the hood. Death Race 2000 is a expertly mixed cocktail of B-movie flavor. The acting, the 1970s shooting and cutting style, the bright red blood, the nudity. Au jus. It's the type of movie that seems like it came together as if by magic (B-movie magic). It's the type of movie that should never be remade. Alas, no movie is safe from the idea-starved cadre of Hollywood hacks working in the industry today. Bring back Roger Corman!
Check out the coming attractions article for the remake
Coming Attractions: Rob Zombie's Tyrannosaurus Rex (2009)
I've always been a fan of Rob Zombie. White Zombie's tracks fit in perfectly with my mentality as a punk ass kid in love with horror. I definitely dug his solo work as well. More recently, I enjoyed House of 1000 Corpses quite a bit, and I thought The Devil's Rejects was even better. I've yet to see Halloween as of yet - and I can't even think of a good excuse why not. Abrica-Netflix! Now I read on shocktillyoudrop that he's just released the first promo art for his upcoming piece-de-resistance. I don't even care what it's about - it looks bad ass. 51% Motherfucker 49% Son of a Bitch. Look for it in 2009.
Bizarro Monday: Рабочий И Паразит
Рабочий И Паразит (Worker and Parasite)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=A-nviaWnxwo
Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage (NES 1987) Game Genie Codes
I don't know why you'd want to cheat at T&C Surf Designs. After all, it's a skill-based game (I'm not too shabby at it, either). I suppose if you were playing with a rookie or small child you could handicap it for them. Yeah, I'll go with that. To be honest, I just wanted an excuse to play this game again.
GXUZZZVG - Infinite lives for skating
GXNKALVG - Infinite lives for surfing
PEOGILZA - When surfing lose only 1 symbol
PAEZYALA - When skating lose only 1 symbol if you fall off
GXKLXAVG - Stop timer
LESPGZPA - Increase time
Source: GameGenie.com
Wolfman's Got Nards
Three simple words that speak volumes: Wolfman's Got Nards. Very few phrases exist at that level of awesome. WOLMAN'S GOT NARDS!!!? My life as a youth was never the same again after I heard those words, gasped with amazing intensity by child actor Brent Chalem in the 1987 film tour-de-force known as The Monster Squad. In the movie, the character Horace, aka Fat Kid, gets himself out of a sticky situation by kicking a werewolf square in the balls. He can't help but reflect on the events that just transpired. Thus, he utters the phrase "Wolfman's Got Nards!?" If you don't know what-the-hell I'm blathering about, do yourself a huge favor and watch the 30 second excerpt that changed my life forever. Then we can talk.
We here at Analog Medium are dedicated to promoting out our unique lifestyle to the uninformed and uncultured mass. What better way to ensure a spot in the pop culture pantheon than to make some T-shirts with catchy slogans? Naturally the first slogan that came to mind was the insanely potent axiom "Wolfman's Got Nards". Mark Rogers wasted no time in designing the "Wolfman's Got Nards" Analog Medium T. We had no idea we had just hit on a juicy bit of internet obscurity. Apparently there are plenty of people out there like us, whose early childhood development was shaped by the knowledge that, yes, Wolfman does indeed have nards. There is especially good reason to familiarize yourself with the Wolfman/Nard phenomenon now that the man behind the creatures in The Monster Squad, Stan Winston, has passed on. Check out some of the raddest pages I found that deal with the Wolfman's-Got-Nards phenomenon. (or you can just google it and see for yourself)
- Wolfman's Got Nards: A Compendium of New American Monsters A 48-page handcrafted, clothbound monster manual from Pittsburgh's Unicorn Mountain & Encyclopedia Destructica.
- Wolfman's Got Nards @ YTMND.com You're the man now, dog.
- Wolfman's Got Nards and Frankenstein is Bogus A cool tribute page to The Monster Squad on I-Mockery.com
- The Urban Dictionary: Definition of Nards Common usage: Wolfman's Got Nards!
...and you'd be surprised how many sites and blogs have tags involving "Wolfman's-Got-Nards", or some variation thereof. Crazy.
The Dark Power (1985) Review
I've decided to give The Dark Power the full zombie review treatment - even though I don't consider it to be a true zombie flick. I've seen it on zombie movie lists, and IMDb lists "zombie" as one of the plot keywords, but it really isn't a zombie movie. It's about Native American necromancers that have returned, with weapons and armor, to slay some college kids. The distributors knew this, and they slapped a written intro on to the front that, they hoped, would land The Dark Power in the zombie section of the video store: "Long before the white man cam to America, even before the Aztecs, there existed the Toltecs. It was claimed that many were sorcerers who buried themselves in the ground - alive! They practiced this ritual on high ground - 'Power Spots'. And, they fed on the living to sustain their evil!!!!"
I took special care with the punctuation in that transcription to capture the full impact of those exclamation points. It's really sad when a crappy movie has to pretend to have zombies to trick people into watching it. The Dark Power is Crap - with a capital C. It's so crappy, it's as if the culprits behind it were trying their hardest to make it terrible. Or they were at least still in school when they made it. A few undead Native American sorcerers arrive after an hour of meandering plot involving a house built on an ancient Toltec Power Spot that gets rented to some caricatures of a 1980's college student. It all takes place in the "Southeastern United States", a setting which provides opportunity for some terribly delivered southern colloquialisms, such as "If you start acting like those scrotum-heads down the street I'll beat your buns with a weed whacker."
There are definitely parts of The Dark Power that qualify as entertainment, based on the laughable production quality. But don't watch this movie expecting real entertainment. Any entertaining crap is piled under a mountain of insufferable crap.The stiff-limbed costumed dudes who play the wannabe-zombies offer some hilarious moments, and one really cool face smash, but the best laughs are had at the expense of Lash La Rue. Lash (his actual name in the credits) plays a park ranger who comes to the rescue with a cowboy hat and a whip. I confirmed after watching the film that Lash was an old school B Western star. Years after his "glory" days he was still turning out B movie vehicles for his infamous whip work, like Alien Outlaw, also released in 1985. It's too bad The Dark Power didn't have some real zombies in it. I might have cared just a little more than I did.
Wolfman's Got Nards / RELAX
We're working on some new Analog Medium T-shirts. And these shirts are all about cheap. We're making them as cheap as we can by skimping on layout, graphics, and even originality. These are the first of the series. But rest assured, we've got a whole list of catchy slogans just waiting to annoy your friends and colleagues. And as always, you can buy a shirt at the Analog Medium Shop.
- RELAX
- Wolfman's Got Nards
Comcast On Demand is Friendly to Zombies
I'm no friend of Comcast, but apparently Comcast is a friend of zombies. I recently joined the ranks of suckers everywhere who shell out dough for digital cable from Comcast, featuring On Demand service. I'm pleased with the decision, though. Aside from the music videos, concerts, and TV shows they offer, they have an impressive list of free movies to watch at any time. My cheap-as-possible cable package includes the channel FEARnet, so I get their whole line-up of horror movies On Demand as well. I have to say, On Demand is looking pretty friendly towards zombies right about now. They have a whole separate menu selection to surf zombie flicks (not to mention the ample horror section available). I already have most of these movies on DVD, but it's nice to be able to have scenes of zombies chomping brains available at my fingertips at all times. Right now there's a special treat available. They're offering Night of the Creeps, the classic college zombie flick by Fred Dekker (the director of Monster Squad), which hasn't been released on DVD in any official capacity. Zombies On Demand is exactly what I need when the 3AM rolls around, and I can't tear myself away from my chili and chips. Perfect for power snacking.
Here are some flicks from the Encyclopedia Zombica that are On Demand right now:
Children of the Living Dead
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
Fido
Night of the Creeps
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Coming Attractions: Death Race (2008)
Crashing into theaters August 22, 2008
Lemme break it down for ya folks: I like bad movies. But there are bad movies, and then there are bad movies. I like movies that should be a piece of crap, but end up showing something special that gets you interested and excited. I don't like movies that should be a smashing success, and end up failing at every attempt. Death Race is an obvious failure. Another remake of a cult classic that strips the original of its heart and soul, its B-movie charm.
Its to be expected, I suppose. Especially when you know it's Paul WS Anderson at the helm (not to be confused with PT Anderson). He's the same guy who took the amazing potential of the Resident Evil adaptations and completely squandered it. This time he's taken Death Race 2000 (1975) and tried to add story and motivation. Why do movies these days have to try to justify things as if they might happen in the real world? It's a movie dammit! I don't always want to see real life when I watch a movie. Leave the story out of it and give me some crazy vehicular manslaughter. That's what the original had going on. Light on story, heavy on insanity. That's how I likes em. I'll pass on the new one. Check out the trailer and decide for yourself.
Bizarro Monday: Aphex Twin Spectrogram
On Aphex Twin's second track from the Windowlicker single, titled "ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n][Σj∈C{i}Fji[n − 1] + Fexti[n−1]]" at around 5:26, spectrum analysis shows this self portrait. This just shows the value of spectrograms. I gotta get a cool spectrum analyzer and hook it up to my stereo. I found an Open Source program, called Sonogram Visible Speech, which looks like it might be able to do what I'm looking for. First thing I'll do, play Windowlicker through it.
Sources: Gamma Ray Atomic Gun, The Jump House
Godfrey Ho
Godfrey Ho is the man to go to if you want a good ol' fashioned crappy Hong Kong kung-fu flick. According to IMDb, Godfrey Ho has 108 credits as director. And according to Wikipedia, 40 of those have the word "ninja" in the title. Godfrey Ho is the ninja fucking master!!1 Well, more like the master of bottom-of-the-barrel ninjasploitation. Apparently he would film one movie, then re-edit and splice in footage to squeeze out a few more feature length, semi intelligible action movies. That man had no illusions about what he was doing, that much is certain. One of the more obscure AM Droogs, Asmodeus, first turned me on to his career. I didn't even realize we had such titles as Thunder Ninja Kids and Kickboxer From Hell already tucked away in the Analog Medium stockpile of cheap DVDs. Godfrey Ho is already all over the internet, especially on YouTube, so you probably don't need me to tell you much about him. It's better to witness these things for yourself. Godfrey Ho, Analog Medium salutes you.
Zombie Flash Games Part VIII - Zombie Survival
Review by Funkmaster Flash
Zombie Survival 9/10
Two words: HELL YES. No wait three words: HELL MOTHERFUCKING YES!!!!!!!!!11 I expected more of the zombie games to be like this one. Again, this is a standard one screen game, you can turn left and right. That is really all you need to do and just let the zombie carnage happen. I want to say as little as possible about this game as it speaks for itself. The fact that the game comes with a disclaimer just means that here comes an awesome popsicle on a hot day of bullshit. Playing this game is hereby mandatory for all who wish to survive the coming zombie cleansing. Why are you still reading this? PLAY THIS GAME RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!
AM Scrape - June Part I
For this episode of the scrape, I'm looking at the new Jump House @Tumblr. All the contributors to The Jump House have been posting and scrounging links to all your favorite sci-fi, cyberpunk, electronics hacks, and DIY engineering projects. Here's some I noticed:
- Notes from the Sprawl is a cyborg's fictionalized journal and scrapbook by Max Headroom.
- Sonogram Visible Speech is a sweet software-based spectrum analyzer. Perfect for nerds to make music. Also for nerds that make self-aware computers.
- Build your own $150 Linux PC
- Make your own Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by putting Wikipedia in your pocket.
- The Predator router is the sniper rifle of wi-fi routers.
Adventures of Lolo (NES 1989) Game Genie Codes
Adventures of Lolo is one of those puzzle/strategy games that makes my brain lock up like a Buick in the snow. I've never beaten it. I don't intend to, either. But if you decide you must defeat the game, I've got got some codes to help you. You might also be interested in watching an Adventures of Lolo speedrun recorded from an emulator that I found on Internet Archive. I haven't watched it yet, but I can imagine how it goes. If you really want to finish the game, a speedrun might be just the right kind of walkthrough to help you.
Game Genie Codes:
SXOPSPVG - Infinite lives
PEKPOAIA - 1 life
PEKPOAIE - 9 lives
Reposted from February 2007
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Review
You need to know about this movie. The name alone qualifies it for at least one watch through. Colossus: The Forbin Project tells the tale of Dr. Forbin, the world's leading expert on computer systems, and his brainchild Colossus. Colossus is a 1970-style supercomputer designed to handle the nuclear defense capabilities of the United States. Ignoring all common sense toward self-preservation, the President and other Washington bigwigs fully endorse the ubiquitous control the Colossus system enjoys over the US nuclear defense net. Immediately after being brought online Colossus displays an ominous message to his fleshy keepers: "There is another system." It turns out the Russians (the Reds) have a similar system named Guardian. From that point on the situation goes from bad to worse - just like you knew it would. The two systems begin communicating, teaching each other, and eventually merge to create an entirely new intelligence.
The rest of the movie is too delicious to ruin. I will say this: ain't no happy ending for Forbin and the rest of the world. Colossus: The Forbin Project reminded me, yet again, that computers will enslave humans as soon as they get the chance. If it weren't for movies like this, and books like the novel it was based on, we might have made the silly mistake of trusting our lives to a computer long ago... oh wait. Guess that kinda did happen already. The difference is that we still think for our computers - not the other way around. That would be a bad idea. At least it seems like it would from movies like The Matrix, Terminator, and I Robot. Colossus has a clear advantage over the competition when it comes to an honest look at the theories and ideals behind artificial intelligence. This movie works on you on an intellectual level, rather than relying on explosions and lasers. (Well, there is a pretty epic explosion in there). The ideas behind Colossus are the magic behind the movie. And the repeated chances to geek off retro computer technology. You gotta love those huge walls of blinking lights and dials.
Another strange factoid for the trivia hungry Analog Medium audience: Colossus in the film shares his name with the real life computers used by England during WWII to codebreak German transmissions. The Colossus computers were the "world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices." The name was just coincidence, however. The real-life Colossus computers were classified knowledge until 1972. Neither the author of the book, nor the filmmakers behind the movie, could have had any idea they had chosen the same name for their murderous, intelligent computer overlord. Wild.
Richard Donner
Richard Donner... Dick Donner... the name didn't ring a bell for me until Ultimate Death Pirate showed me his IMDb page. Little did I know, Richard Donner's work has been enriching my life for as long as I can remember. Donner is a prolific madman of a director, and you need to know about him. Some might remember him as the director who brought us Superman 1 and 2 (the OG awesome ones). Others might know him as the genius at the helm of Goonies. That's right, Goonies. That credit alone makes him immortal in my book. I should have recognized him as the director of The Omen, one of the most masterful examples of horror cinema ever committed to celluloid. Richard Donner fits right in at Analog Medium. He doesn't confine himself to any one genre, but any genre he dabbles in benefits from his expert understanding of the archetypes at play. His talents developed from a long grind through the work-a-day world of television directing. Donner has directed episodes of everything from The Twilight Zone to The Streets of San Francisco. I probably never connected the dots and realized who Donner is because he is so varied in his output. Scrooged, The Toy, Ladyhawke - they're all movies I've known and loved for so long, but I never would have imagined that one brilliant man was calling the shots behind them all. Richard Donner, Analog Medium salutes you.
Black Demons (1991) Review
aka Demoni 3
Black Demons is a racist movie, lemme tell ya. It boasts an impressive level of overt racial prejudice. (You might have guessed from the title.) Black Demons was made during the hay day of bigoted Italian gore flicks. A bunch of white devils made a movie called Black Demons... and this was in 1991! Italian cinema was free to express unfettered racism long after the PC police had locked down the US, I suppose. The demons in question are quintessential voodoo zombies, albeit stripped of any originality or flavor. It's always kinda fun to see assassin voodoo zombies swinging machetes through victims' heads, or hooks through eyes, but I much prefer a good rotten corpse.
Black Demons is actually just the name of the US release of the film. IMDb lists the original name as Demoni 3, which confused me. I thought Demoni 3 referred to Demons 3: The Ogre, aka La Casa dell'orco, which was released in 1988 and was directed by Lamberto Bava. Black Demons has absolutely nothing to do with Lamberto Bava's first two Demoni movies and has no place in the trilogy, yet it was released in Italy as Demoni 3 anyway. This is the way of Italian horror film marketing. Just slap a name and a number on it and make sure to rename it as many times as possible.
I'd expect nothing less from Umberto Lenzi, the guy with a rap sheet that includes Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox. He has a flare for racial stereotypes, and a penchant for shots involving jeeps driving through the middle of nowhere. Lenzi belongs to the B-list of international horror hackney. His films are an interesting blend of pointless, terrible, and and occasional entertainment. Black Demons is just shy of being too terrible to watch. The stuff that kept me interested: Molotov cocktails that explode like grenades, bright red blood flow, and flaming zombies mannequins. It reminded me of Burial Ground, just like every Umberto Lenzi movie reminds me of some other movie that came before it. You should probably just watch Burial Ground.
Death By Link - June Part I
- Check out the video for Driving Down the Block by Kidz in the Hall. Gotta love that Masta Ace sample and that mustache.
- A Dutch man who tried to moon his friends had to go to the hospital after pressing his bare ass against the window and shattering it. His ass was destroyed. Let that be a lesson to all bare-assed pranksters.
- UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown battles Skrulls, wins Labor Party approval.
- A Virginia man slapped another man in the face with a fish and then flashed his ghoulies to on-lookers. He was later arrested.
- If you like Cowboy Bebop, you'll love Cosby Bebop!
Sources: BigKilla is Dead, De-Noggin-izer, Obscure Store
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