So my first response is: Wow, this wasn’t absolutely terrible!

My second was: Goddamn, there’s no skin tight leather pants! AND it has (almost) nothing to actually tie it into the previous two!!

Underworld Trailer

So, we all know that the original Underworld movie was basically there to sell some amazingly cool boots… Oh, and blatantly rip off WhiteWolf Gaming’s amazingly popular Vampire and Werewolf franchises. But the third movie finally brings a bit of a point to all of them! Hooray! Rejoice! Finally we get to know why the vampires and werewolves were fighting!!

As it turns out, it’s an epic romantic tragedy between Lucian and Selene Sonja as R & J, and Viktor as Lord Capulet *cough* 

Aaaanyway, as it turns out, the Werewolves were all Jews, and the Vampires are slave drivers intent on building amazingly large edifices out of stone. There’s also pestielence upon the land, wild beasts, deaths of first nobles, and smothering darkness! The only thing really missing are some sticks to snakes and rivers turning to blood… Actually no, by the end of the movie, all non-major bodies of water are literally filled with blood. But there was no fiery hail, locusts or frogs!

 

Anyway, so the Werewolves have to escape with only the clothing on their backs, while a lot of them get speared through with ballistae bolts (don’t worry, no one actually got hurt. They’re immortals… or something). Then they have to wander for forty years three nights in the Wilderness because Lucian’s a fucking moron, and decides to be a hero… And heroes always manage to be the ones directly resposnible for the deaths of their loved ones… on crucifixes.

 

And that’s why we have Passover!

Rambling aside, the film’s pretty cool. 

The cinematography is very reminiscent of Dark City, and the costumes are pretty well done. Perhaps what is most specatcular is that money has clearly been spent on this film, and it’s the third part of a series without being directed by the original team (although it does have the same producers). No expenses have been spared on the set creation, basically looking like something out of Better Homes and Gothins magazine (no, not a real magazine sadly), and the interior design wet dream of every angsty 16 year old with eye liner and a NIN album. Where this money really shines through, however, is in the make up effects.

Now, this may have something to do with the director actually owning the animatronics/prosthetics company that made the Werewolf costumes, but I could be a tad cynical. What’s clear though is that whoever made the costumes is clearly passionate abouthigh quality horror and monster special effects. Even in the scenes that weren’t CGI enhanced, these Werewolves looked spectacularly real.

The final finishing flourish was to actually tie the last scene of the movie directly to the first scene of the original Underworld. A great ploy to get people to actually rewatch them… Which you can do if you go out and buy them… buy now! Gwailo you buy!

All in all, provided your brain is firmly switched off before the ads are finished rolling, this movie is thoroughly enjoyable.

This could not have come at a worse time for me. I’m already into my credit card a couple grand, and they’re closing down… So if I want the Tshirts, before some eBay hawks decide to rape the production line, order a shitload, and then sell them at a 100% markup next month, I need to buy some now.

What the fuck am I talking about? Tshirt Hell is closing by Feb 10th.

So I’m quickly getting myself a few shirts (shown below), and I recommend you do the same if there’s anything you want… because after Febuary 10th, the only place to get them will be from rip off merchants on eBay, or schmucks that just rip the designs off and stick them up on Cafe Press. Anyway, this is what I’m going to be getting.

And then there’s the Tshirt I’d love to get, except that I don’t think it’d go down well at family dinners, what with some relatives being survivors of the Holocaust, and others being Anzacs.

In the future, society will be run by goths that have to sing every time they experience strong emotions.

In all seriousness though, this is actually quite a good film.
I first heard about it with the line “…and it’s meant to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the Twenty-First Century”. Well, it’s not quite as catchy, but it definitely ends in nearly as pointless a manner, I’ll definitely give it that.
But don’t let a negative comment right at the beginning put you off. This is actually a rather good movie / musical.

It’s based on a stage production of the same name, and for the most part the changes are minimal, thankfully. Furthermore, unlike so many things that fall into this category, the original writer has actually stuck around to make sure it follows his original vision. In fact, he’s one of the parts that gets to sing (and does so quite well). You’ll spend most of the movie picking your brain trying to figure out who he is, and then just assuming he’s some random singer from a goth band… and you’ll be wrong.

Storyline wise, this film is pretty out there, but not too unpredictable. A dystopian future world (when was the last time you remember seeing the sun? I wanna go to Shell Beach!) in which a mysterious plague starts killing millions of people. In steps the evil medical corporation that enslaves everyone to payment plans that’d make Cash Converters look like a good deal. In comes legalised organ repossession. In comes people basically becoming slaves to the only company that can save their life. What I really don’t get about storyline like this is where the hell did all the people in coffee table B.A. degrees go? I mean, surely these anarcho-radicals would love to get some molotov cocktails on during happy hour? And PETA? Where the fuck are they in their “no animal reasearch” stance in this particular future? I’m kind of hoping they were the first to die in the plague, honestly, but you have to wonder if some people would really give up everythign they supposedly believe in just to live a few more days. Oh, and did I ask where the sun went? Why does nothing ever happen in daytime during these things?

Just a few ponderables. Now on to the review!

The musical numbers in this are pretty damn good for a rock-opera. Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near as catchy as the The Rocky Horror Picture Show tracks. With that said, they are still quite good.
Thanks to Buffy!, we all knew Anthony Stewart Head could sing… but as it turns out, so can Paris Hilton. No, really! Yeah, she’s still a slut, and it’s quite hilarious when her face falls off (literally) mid-number in one scene, but she does well, and actually deserves her part in this. Her acting is still at porno level, sadly.
Paul Sorvino’s got some pipes on him, and pulls off the baritone parts with amazing depth that even sounds like it wasn’t touched up much in the mix. You may remember him from Baz Luhrmann’s truly awful remake of Romeo & Juliet, where he was one of the few people actually looked like he had read the script, let alone the original play.
Finally, Sarah Brightman. While not the original choice for the character of Blind Mag, considering that she’s been in pretty much every London production of an Andrew Lloyd Webber production since ever, she was definitely a fantastic choice. It’s just kind of a pity she happens to go all Dr. Wier on us at the end.

The costumes for this film are pretty nice, although nothing you wouldn’t find at a slightly more upmarket goth club, where you’ve got more people in IT than generally unemployed, and are unlikely to quibble over the price of $3.50 champagne & cordial because they’re trying to figure out how to buy cheap speed that’s cut with the finest dish washing powder ALDI can sell.
Sorry, being negative again. The costumes are good. Really. But where this film really excels is in the costume effects. If you like gore, and people wearing each others faces, then you’re going to like this for no other reason.

Visually the film is quite impressive. More so because it wasn’t even shot on film.

The CGI fly arounds of a city that’s mostly a cemetery are pretty well done, although it gets hard to believe that any modern American city would become so small, and that people would actually bother to convert so much of it into a graveyard. Let’s face it, we all know yanks are lazy,a nd they’d probably just end up turning all the dead into protein bars.The sets really are something else though. Whilst no doubt done a budget similar to a singular episode of Buffy (there’s that A.S.H. reference again!), they are quite impressive, and have a fair bit of depth to them, looking realistic in a way that a lot of Sci Fi and Fantasy sets simply don’t, unless you happen to have the kinds of budgets given to Peter Jackson.

Honestly, I really quite like this one. I don’t think it’ll become ap arty favourite for karaoke, because the songs actually require people to have a bit of range, and be able to do a bit more than drunkenly go “mamamememarra AND BRING YOUR KNEES IN TIIIIIGHT!”, but I definitely think it is one for watching with friends over a couple of glasses of wine, and maybe playing a drinking game every time someone gets slashed or stabbed… Maybe even listening to a few of the tracks on your Mp3 player of choice.

You can buy it Repo! The Genetic opera from Amazon on Blu-ray or DVD. You can probably get the Mp3 and CD soundtrack from there as well, but I think I shilled this blog post enough for one review.

Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with some people?

 

I’m all for dressing up animals in ridiculous get up. It’s kind of cute. And you know what, if you really want to, you can goth / metal out your pets in a way that’s totally adorable, and fine, and after they get over the massive humiliation of you and all your friends laughing at them, the pets generally end up liking their clothes too.

But some people have to take that shit a bit too far.

There’s a couple of people who, just yesterday, got arrested for attempting to sell “goth kittens”.

Now, as cute as this may sound, it’s not just black cats, with adorably large heads, that cry a lot, and maybe write some bad poetry. It’s some lady piercing a living animal with jewelry that is quite heavy through cartilage that is too weak to support it (hence the floppy ears) and cutting off their tails, which cats actually require to balance correctly for running and jumping, and doing other things that happy (read stalky) cats do.

Now, this is not quite the same as putting your dick into a lamb’s intestinal tract. For a start, that lamb’s been dead a while, and the rest of it is most likely ina  haggis. 

This is a still living animal!

Although I begin to wonder who the real animals are… The good news is that the crazy bitch that was doing this has been charged and will face trial on animal cruelty charges. Because unlike a 12 year old child, pets don’t actually have the power to say no, so it’s not like they can even give consent in the first place.

If you want to “gawth” up your pets, just get them a spikey collar, and some little leather hats or something. If you want animals looking and behaving in a way that’s totally unlike how they should be, watch some fucking anime…

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