Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls

Don't pay attention to people who dis on the Eighties. The truth is, the Satanic should always make you panic. Marcus J. Trillbury will have to learn that the hard way, because he is a moron. He wants to escape his dead-end life through the occult. Unfortunately, that just might happen in Andrew Bowser’s Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, which screens nationwide this Thursday, via Fathom Events.

Trillbury wants everyone to call him Onyx the Fortuitous, but that is obviously ridiculous. It also is not very accurate, since he lives in his mother Nancy’s basement, constantly bickers with her second husband, and works at a cut-rate fast-food joint. He has applied to participate in a mysterious ritual hosted by his heavy metal icon, Bartok the Great, believing it will change his life. However, Bartok has a much different role in mind for the five lucky “sacrifices” he selects, including Trillbury.

The five are a strange group, including an academic (Mr. Duke), a grieving housewife (Shelley), a tattoo-artist-groupie (Jesminder), and a non-binary witchcraft experimenter (Mack). With the help of the resentful Farrah, a minor demon in human form, Bartok intends to raise the grand demon Abaddon and assume his powers on Earth. To do so, he must consign his sacrifices’ souls to eternity in the Talisman of Souls. However, Duke and Mack are smart enough to recognize Bartok and Farrah are not being straight with them.

Apparently, Bowser’s Trillbury character is the star of a popular series of viral videos. That kind of makes sense, because after three minutes, he becomes excruciatingly annoying. Onyx the Fortuitous happens to be over one hour and forty-five minutes. If Bowser had turned his persona down three or four clicks, it would have been much easier to spend all that time with him.

It is a shame, because Onyx the Fortuitous reunites Reanimator co-stars Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs as Nancy and Bartok. In many ways, this is an appealing satanic panic horror yarn, somewhat in the tradition of Chemical Wedding, featuring a number of colorful characters. Unfortunately, the Trillbury shtick simply does not wear well over time.

Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham

This is another example of how DC films have been much more rewarding than Marvel films. Most Marvel films build to an incomprehensible third act of whirling, swirling CGI, after foisting off meaningless character cameos, to establish films that won’t be released for months, if not years. In contrast, DC had The Batman, which is more like Se7en than a traditional superhero movie and Joker, which wore its Scorsese influences on its sleeve. DC animated films have been especially willing to break established molds and formats. Following in the tradition of Batman Ninja and Superman: Red Sun, Batman gets a Lovecraftian twist in Christopher Berkeley & Sam Liu’s Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham, adapted from Mike Mignola & Richard Pace’s limited comic series, which releases Tuesday on BluRay.

Prof. Oswald Cobblepot is not the Penguin in this universe, but his Wayne Foundation-funded arctic exploration turned out rather badly. By the time Bruce Wayne and his adopted orphans arrive to investigate, only Cobblepot and another crew member still survive, but they under the control of an ancient, cosmic demon. Wayne tries to bury the evil in the Arctic, but it remains hidden in the soul and body of his deranged prisoner.

Back in Gotham, Wayne receives a warning from Etrigan, the not-entirely evil demon, about the scope of the supernatural threat facing Gotham. It seems Ra’s al Ghul (the traditional occult supervillain of the Batman franchise) is trying to usher one of the elder gods into our world, via Gotham, of course. To stop him, Batman enlists the help of Oliver Queen, who is not the Green Arrow this time around, but he is a bow-hunter. He also shares a fateful connection to Bruce Wayne.

The way a lot of these alternate-world DC films reconceive their characters to fit a radically different context is often quite clever. In this case, it does not take much shoehorning to fit in Ra’s al Ghul, Jason Blood/Etrigan, and Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat. Probably, nobody is more greatly reinvented than Queen, but it is hard to imagine many hardcore Green Arrow fans objecting, because he is the film’s best character.

Creepshow—The Series: Bad Wolf Down & The Finger

Long before Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, horror had plenty of unreliable narrators. They were usually crazy people. That could well be the case for the narrator of the best story of the second episode of Shudder’s Creepshow anthology series, which premiered last night on Shudder.

However, this week the Creep first introduces screenwriter-director Rob Schrab’s largely conventional Bad Wolf Down. The Allies might be winning the war, but they are definitely losing the battle. Retreating from a particularly vicious National Socialist ambush, a rag tag squad of American soldiers takes cover in a French police station. Inside, they find weird scratches on the wall and a highly agitated women locked in a cell.

Basically, Bad Wolf Down is sort of like the start of the film adaptation of DC Comics’ Weird War Tales that nobody ever cared to produce. We immediately get where it is going, but genre fans will appreciate the splatterific practical effects and the scenery chewing of legendary Re-Animator actor Jeffrey Combs as a vengeful German officer.

The second story, The Finger written by David J. Schow and directed by showrunner Greg Nicotero is far more intriguing. Clark, a divorced and under-employed web-designer, narrates his brush with the uncanny with a resigned air of regret in retrospect. The nebbish loser was in the habit of salvaging cast-off junk. Somehow, that eccentric habit compelled him to pick-up and take home a sinister, Giger-esque looking finger.

Naturally, Clark’s dark shabby home provides the perfect environment for the finger to regenerate the rest of its small but lethal monster body. Clark rather takes a shine to the creature he decides to name “Bob” and the feeling is mutual. Despite his predator tendencies, Bob is not a threat to his host. In fact, he is eager to please Clark—too eager.

Lurking Fear on BluRay: Full Moon Does Lovecraft

Will the Social Justice Warriors just shut-up and let us enjoy Lovecraft? Sadly, his notion of racial distinctions is awkwardly antiquated by today’s standards, but he lived a short, sickly life of seclusion, profoundly dominated by a mentally ill mother during his formative years. He never had a chance to broaden his perspective. However, his macabre writings made him the most influential American dark fantasist since Poe. C. Courtenay Joyner took a stab at one of Lovecraft’s frequently adapted short stories, helming the Charles Band-produced the better-than-its-reputation-suggests Lurking Fear (trailer here), which is now available on BluRay from Full Moon.

If you are familiar with the Lovecraft story, maybe you should try to forget while watching Joyner’s “loose” adaptation. There are no reporters snooping around Martense Manor this time around. Instead, recently released ex-con John Martense has returned to his ancestral hometown of Leffert’s Corners, hoping to find the loot his father buried in the local graveyard. Unbeknownst to Martense and the gangsters on his trail, there are evil entities lurking (so to speak) beneath the church and surrounding grounds.

Martense happened to pick the one day a hardy band of villagers chose to rise up and strike at the evil beings. Unfortunately, Bennett, the spiteful kingpin, will largely undo their preparations, taking the desperate locals hostage along with their reluctant ally Father Poole and Martense, whom they do not know from Adam. Of course, Bennett is in for some cosmic payback.

Even by horror movie standards, Lurking’s budget constraints look unusually severe. Yet, despite the fakeness of the makeup and effects, the film sort of works. Largely, this is due to a great cast that chews the limited scenery with gusto. Most reassuring to fans, Lovecraft specialist Jeffrey Combs is back (reportedly, Lurking was initially developed with Stuart Gordon attached) as the aggressively alcoholic Dr. Haggis—you’d drink too, if you were related to Paul Haggis or had to stitch up a lot of people mauled by demonic Morlocks.

Jon Finch (Polanski’s Macbeth) wonderfully hams it up as the snide Bennett. Allison Mackie (the previous tenant of Sharon Stone’s Sliver apartment) also delivers some flamboyant villainy as Ms. Marlowe, Bennett’s gun moll (orc whatever). Paul Mantee (star of Robinson Crusoe on Mars and a recurring on Cagney & Lacey) brings some dignity to the proceedings as Father Poole, but not so much Blake Adams often appearing shirtless as Martense. Still, you cannot fault his appropriately over-the-top-and-out-there voice-overs.

You can say Lurking is Lovecraftian in spirit, even if it does not strictly observe the narrative letter of his source story. Whether you need it in BluRay or regular DVD is a question everyone must answer for themselves, but it is a fun film. Recommended for horror fans, Lurking Fear is now available in both formats from Full Moon Direct.