Here's the top MCS tags found for "star"

• Star Wars
• Star Trek
• Stargate
• Starcraft
• Star Wars: Episode 6: Return of the Jedi
• Star Wars: Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith
• LEGO Star Wars
• Star Trek: Into Darkness
• Starbucks
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Wars: Rebels
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• StarCraft II
• Star Trek: Nemesis
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Battle Beyond The Stars
• Dark Star
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• The Last Starfighter
• Star Wars: Episode 7: The Force Awakens
• Starship Troopers
• Fist of the North Star
• Homestar Runner
• StarTalk
• Star-Lord
• Stargate: Universe
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Star Fox
• Men Who Stare At Goats
• The Star
• The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek: Beyond
• The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
• Star Citizen
• Star Wars: Celebration
• Starfire
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Starry Night
• Stargirl
• Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Starsky & Hutch
• Star Trek: Enterprise
• Krystle Starr
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Wars: Episode 8: The Last Jedi
• Star Trek: Axanar
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite

Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite: Directed by Noel M. Smith. With Jane Wyman, Allen Jenkins, Tom Kennedy, Sheila Bromley. Torchy Blane and Steve McBride try to nab a gangster by tracking his moll.

New actors!

Jane Wyman as Torchy

Allen Jenkins as McBride

There’s another series of bank robberies, all by a bandit named “Denver Eddie”, and this time with no cave men to try to save the day. Torchy’s busy reporting on the entire situation and as she’s speeding from site to site, she gets pulled over and tries to use the “don’t you know who I am?!” card on a cop, but unlike the last time she tried this trick, it doesn’t go well for her. She’s arrested when it turns out she forgot her purse at the last reporting site, so she’s off to court to be tried and sentenced to jail for speeding, driving without a license, and about 5 other charges that the officer threw on for good measure. While she’ waiting to talk to the judge, a beautiful blonde lady is sentenced to 9 months in jail for shoplifting some unmentionables. Torchy doesn’t seem to be paying too much attention to that though and finally gets her time with the judge, who gives her Skipper a call and she’s released from custody.

When she’s back at her office explaining why she was pinched, she’s shown a picture of the robber, but he’s with a woman that she recognizes from her time in court. She concocts a plan to get back into prison to find the lady and buddy up with her to find out more about the robber. instead of just getting her buddies in the police dept to throw her in jail, she goes around town breaking fire alarms, sending the FD on at least eleven false calls. She finally gets caught by the police and FD and is sentenced to a year in jail!

She eventually gets her gal pal, and they make a break from the prison with the intention of meeting up with the robber, after a airplane flight and train ride later, they’re on the opposite coast and McBride and Gahagan are in hot pursuit, but don’t want to give the local fuzz any indication of what they’re up to, so they’re masquerading as a wrestler and his manager. Due to this they get roped into a wrestling match, all while Torchy and her gal pal finally meeting up with Denver Eddie, who’s then convinced to go watch a wrasslin’ event. It all ends with Gahagan being thrown out of the ring and onto our villains, and the heroes get their man.

Jane Wyman is definitely no Glenda Farrell, but by the end of the film I didn’t care, she did a great job as Torchy Blane and firmly believe she should have been given the role for a few more movies. Allen Jankins as McBride though, I didn’t like at all, he didn’t have the same gravitas as Barton MacLane, and seemed to physically be a smaller guy, so didn’t have the same sense of physicality

It’s a shame we never get to see Torchy and McBride actually get married, nearly ever movie ended with them going to get it done, but we never get that final payoff. Here we are, nearly 100 years after the series started, maybe it’s time we get to see those wedding bells?

Who am I kidding, I know any movie that would say it’s going to do that is really going to be a movie about a murderous gang that only Torchy Blane can put behind bars.

And I’d love to see it.

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Torchy Runs for Mayor

Torchy Runs for Mayor: Directed by Ray McCarey. With Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, John Miljan. Torchy conducts a one woman campaign against a corrupt mayor and crime boss, and when the reform candidate is murdered, she takes up the banner.

The mob has taken over city hall, and the local police are next, but Torchy Blane is one the case! She has an “illegally installed dictaphone” in the mayor’s office and she’s getting scoops like you wouldn’t believe. Unfortunately the mobsters figure it out and the games up for Torchy! She gets away by the skin of her teeth, just to get wrapped up in the shenanigans of trying to get the mayor recalled, get a new guy elected legally, all while contending with the mob shaking down the newspaper that she works for, not directly, but by going after the advertisers that pay the bills. There’s a murder by injection and Torchy is next, but McBride plays a prank on her, narrowly saving her goose. That prank? Putting her name on the recall election ballots to have her run as mayor!

This is Glenda Farrell’s final outting as Torchy and it’s a great one. They try one other actress in the Torchy role, but I’m assuming the studio just didn’t think it would work, so this is the penultimate movie in which we’ll see the character. It’s a shame that Glenda got pigeon holed into the “fast talking reporter” role for so long, but from what her IMDB page says, she had plenty of other opportunities to expand her career. I’m going to start buying her other films as I find them, when I can find them cheap!

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Till Death

Till Death: Directed by S.K. Dale. With Megan Fox, Eoin Macken, Callan Mulvey, Jack Roth. A woman is left handcuffed to her dead husband as part of a sick revenge plot. Unable to unshackle, she has to survive as two killers arrive to finish her off.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Megan Fox is in another great thriller, she actually had a good track record with these smaller projects. Till Death is a unique take on the “someone’s out to get me” in that it starts with her boyfriend killing himself while handcuffed to her in bed, and it all goes way down hill from there.

It’s fun and it wears it’s intentions on it’s sleeves.

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What’s Love Got to Do with It

What’s Love Got to Do with It: Directed by Brian Gibson. With RaéVen Kelly, Virginia Capers, Dororthy Thorton, Demetrice Cheathon. The story of singer Tina Turner’s rise to stardom and how she gained the courage to break free from her abusive husband, Ike Turner.

Tina Turner had a rough life, but it was only after she kicked her deadbeat husband to the curb that her life really took off, but the “taking off” part isn’t in this film, just the darker, more abusive parts of her story. It’s a well done movie, but yikes Tina, what a life!

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Black Friday

Black Friday: Directed by Casey Tebo. With Devon Sawa, Ivana Baquero, Ryan Lee, Stephen Peck. A group of toy store employees must protect each other from a horde of parasite infected shoppers.

Bruce Campbell is here, but this is definitely not a Bruce Campbell starring film, he’s just of many in a cast of employees forced to straight up murder black Friday shoppers when they’re infected with some form of a rage / “thing” virus. It’s a typical lower budgets but fun horror film, so if you’re into single location horror that includes Bruce Campbell, this might be right up your alley.

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Possession

Possession: Directed by Andrzej Zulawski. With Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen, Heinz Bennent. A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

Reportedly filmed during an ugly divorce of the Director from his wife, this is a fantastic mess of a movie that lets the horror of losing your mind linger on frame slightly longer than is comfortable, presents all sorts of questions, and answers nearly none of them. Would I suggest this film to just anyone? Nope. If you’re looking for some weird af body horror about the emotional violence of divorce, both of the marital and political kind, then maybe I would.

“I call it the most extreme film I’ve ever made, in every possible respect, and he asked of us things I wouldn’t and couldn’t go to now. And I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact.” —Sam Neil

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Pam & Tommy

Pam & Tommy: Created by Robert Siegel. With Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Nick Offerman, Taylor Schilling. Follows the story of their relationship going back to their whirlwind romance that started with them marrying after only knowing each other for 96 hours in 1995.

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Trump’s ire grows as DeSantis’ popularity with Republicans takes off

In a matter of months, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone from being a shining example in Donald Trump’s eyes of a MAGA leader molded in his image to an average politician who forgot his roots as he rose to Republican stardom.

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See Season 2

See: Created by Steven Knight. With Jason Momoa, Sylvia Hoeks, Hera Hilmar, Christian Camargo. Far in a dystopian future, the human race has lost the sense of sight, and society has had to find new ways to interact, build, hunt, and to survive. All of that is challenged when a set of twins are born with sight.

A second season come and gone, this show is increasingly better and better. It started with families torn apart and ended with a war of blind people waging battles in interesting ways that made the concepts seem new and fresh.

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Riverworld

Riverworld: Directed by Stuart Gillard. With Tahmoh Penikett, Mark Deklin, Peter Wingfield, Jeananne Goossen. Welcome to Riverworld, a place of strange, watery beauty and the current abode of a fascinating cast of the recently (and not-so-recently) dead. It certainly isn’t Heaven, but it just might be Hell.

This is the same story that was in the previous version of the film from six years prior, but all the fine details are different.
Instead of an astronaut, our main character is a reporter, and instead of space collision, it’s a terrorist bombing that kills him, in an extremely well lit club in which the people at the well lit bar are watching a news story about terrorism, you know, like normal people do. Tamoha Pinket gets the starring role, it’s a shame he never made the leap from televistion to movies, I think he’d be a fantastic leading man. Along side him is Laura Vandervort, who I only know because she was supergirl in Smallville.

The story is slightly different, but the main beats are all there, they die on Earth, get resurrected on some planet full of rivers, and they fight the people that were there before them, with a meta mystery of why they’re there and what their purpose on Riverworld really is. There’s some blue skinned aliens in fancy robes that pulling the strings in the background with some of the most gratuitous prime directive breaking you’ll find outside of Star Trek, and this time around, there’s a nuclear device in play that ends a couple characters rather definitively. That being said, apparently when you die on Riverworld you just get respawns down the road from where you died at, with little chance of being born on the other side of the planet. I have questions about the basic levels of technology, the afore mentioned planetary position for the respawn, and the reverance that this series seems to put on Mark Twain is just weird, but it all works for the most part. Unfortunately, this is again the pilot episode of a series that never launched, but it was structured better than the first one in terms of supporting itself as a stand alone movie. It does end on a “well, we’ll see what happens NEXT TIME!” emotional note, but there’s no payoff for that, so you’ll need to break out one of the 5 books to see what happens next. Spoilers: lots of killing.

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Torchy Blane in Panama

Torchy Blane in Panama: Directed by William Clemens. With Lola Lane, Paul Kelly, Tom Kennedy, Anthony Averill. Torchy, Steve, and Gahagan are on the trail of a bank robber aboard an ocean liner traveling from New York to L.A. via the Panama Canal.

Torchy is back, but this time without Glenda Farrall, the title role goes to Lola Lane in her only outting as Torchy. It was done well enough that Lola Lane (and Torchy in general) became the blueprint and inspiration for “Lois Lane” a reportor that’s a constant foil and love interest to Superman. The movie starts with a parade in which our dim witted but loveable Gahagan is leading a “Leopard Lodge” group of men, all of them in single shoulder leotards. As the group marches towards a bank, a man runs out, shooting back into the bank! He’s got a bag of cash, and he’s jumping into a car! The group of cavemen looking Lodgers go running into the bank and that’s where we find out that a teller was killed in the course of this crime. Gahana is still played by Tom Kennedy, but he’s one of the few returning actors, as both Torchy and McBride have new feet in those shoes. It took me a while to warm up to both of them, but I eventually got over myself and settled in for another classic Torchy tale. They figure out that the bank robber is going to be heading to Panama via the Panama Canal (and boat ‘natch), so McBride and Gahagan book tickets on the same boat, leaving Torchy in the lurch. She figures that she’s just as entitled as anyone to be on that boat, but as it’s already left the dock, she hires an airplane and parachutes into the immediate vicinity of the cruise liner, causing them to fish her out of the water. Hijinks ensue, and with the help of Galagan, they find the guy that doesn’t belong on the boat. There’s a couple attempted murders, a couple shootings, and some pajamas that I swear to god are completely see through on Lola Lane when she falls into a waterfountain, but I can’t find much about that situation on the internet, more because 1 – there was no internet when this originally came out, and 2 – there’s an active adult entertainer that seems to have taken over any kind of “Lola Lane” searches on both Google and Bing.

It’s a perfectly fine movie, but I do dearly miss Glenda Farrall in the role. I’m not sure if it’s different writing or just different delivery, but lines that used to feel like playful banter now feel mean spirited, with the main leads calling each other idiots or morons at various times. I was happy to see Gahagan’s terrible poetry show up at the very end!

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Riverworld

Riverworld: Directed by Kari Skogland. With Brad Johnson, Karen Holness, Emily Lloyd, Jeremy Birchall. Hale, an American astronaut dies and is reincarnated with other persons who have lived throughout all of human history and end up on a mysterious planet called ‘Riverworld’. The humans are left to their own devices and create tribal fiefdoms and succumb to brutal wars and raids. A mysterious race of hooded ‘beings’ oversee them – sometimes intervening, but their motives are unknown. Anyone who has ever lived and died on Earth comes here rather than ‘the afterlife’, even an extra-terrestrial call Monat, who had the unfortunate luck of dying on Planet earth in 2039. Hale leads a revolt and joins with others on a large boat to explore this mysterious new world.

It’s SyFy back when it was SciFi, which is after it was The Science Fiction Channel! This is an adaption of a book series, and it caught my attention because it was amazon at one point, but then was removed, and now it’s on IMDB-TV, which is a ad supported streaming service owned by Amazon. Note this is different from Amazon prime and having Prime gives you absolutely no benefits with IMDB-TV, you’ll have to sit through two minute ads every 15 minutes, just like all the other unwashed masses. What kills me about this is that the movie was made for TV and has obvious ad spots but IMDB TV isn’t using them, so they’ll jump to commercial in the middle of a scene, jump back to the movie, then a minute later the movie drifts to black in an obvious moment for ads, but no ads are shown there.

This is a rough adaptation, with made for TV special effects, a made for TV budget and a made for TV cast. The main character (Brad Johnson) gives me strong Bruce Campbell vibes, with a dash of Eddie McClintock vibes, but with an extra dash of hopefulness and goodness in his heart. The story follows his awakening in ‘Riverworld’ which seems to be an alien generated afterlife with people from every time period of humanity’s history being lumped in together, just to see what will happen. For the most part it works, but it does seem to be a “man out of time” story that was super popular in science fiction at one time, and authors still try to get back to those good ol’ days of Yankees time traveling, or civil war soldiers going to Mars. I should say that this was apparently supposed to be a series, but they only filmed this one pilot episode, then released it as a stand alone movie when the decision was made to not pick it up as a full season, and the ending makes it clear this was just the start of the story.

Now I need to find the 4 hour movie they did just six years later.

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Judge Terminates Britney Spears Conservatorship

After nearly 14 years of having no say over her own finances and personal life, the pop star is back in control

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Space Truckers

Space Truckers: Directed by Stuart Gordon. With Tim Loane, Ian Beattie, Olwen Fouéré, Shane Rimmer. A space trucker and his cute fiancee are on their way from a space station to Earth with an unknown cargo. When space pirates hijack them, 5000 disintegrator robots are found in the cargo.

Dennis Hopper and Debi Mazar in a 1996 film about a sorta cowboy space trucker doing his thing seems like the type of thing that would fall into hiliarious camp (looking at you Moon Zero Two), but starts out with some pretty heavy political stuff with corporations and private operators and how they’re constantly at each other’s throats. After that’s all done, that’s when the camp kicks in and is just stupid space trucker fun. Remember Charles Dance from Game of Thrones? He’s one of the main bad guys here! He chews up every scene he’s in, including one in which he’s attempting to fix his own rip cord started low amp electrical wang pulse.

Some of the effect are terrible, some of the effects are fantastic, and some of the practical stuff….well they left in the wire rigging that was holding up the actors in the zero gravity scenes, so it’s all over the damn place and feels like two different movies that had wildly different budgets that were mashed together. I particularly loved the design of the pirate ship, but the main hero ship seemed cheapy made and poorly designed.

It’s good if you’d like to check out some mid-90’s cheeseball science fiction, which was exactly what I needed today.

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Recent Comic Cover Updates For 2021-11-13

Click For The Comic Covers Uploaded This Week

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No Time to Die

No Time to Die: Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. With Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch. James Bond has left active service. His peace is short-lived when Felix Leiter, an old friend from the CIA, turns up asking for help, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

James Bond is initially presented as retired, washed up, past his prime, and just trying to live out the last few years of his life in seclusion. This of course is only slightly true and as the action starts up Bond proves that he might have been no longer an official Double “O” but he still has a taste for weapons play and witty one liners.

The music and sound design is on fucking point, it gave my surround sound a definite workout.

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Ryan Reynolds reacts to Peoples Sexiest Man Alive Paul Rudd Dont blow this

On the TODAY show, “Red Notice” star Ryan Reynolds reacted to Paul Rudd being named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2021 and talked about Blake Lively.

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My Twitch buddy is streaming with me, come check it out

I’m currently at 170 followers, which not the 200 followers I need to start raking in the HUGE dollars, it’d be totally dope if you’d follow me too!

The Joe Manchin Trolley Problem

It’s hard to live in the modern world without feeling like you should start committing some felonies

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Y The Last Man cancelled at Hulu

The tale of Y: The Last Man won’t be continuing at Hulu once its first season concludes. Both showrunner Eliza Clark and star Amber Tamblyn confirmed the news on Twitter. Both hope that the series – based on the comicbook by Brian K. Vaughan – will find a new home. The series airs on Star…

What a shame, the first season has been absolutely fantastic so far, and we waited so damn long for it, I really feel like it didn’t get the time it needed to find it’s legs.

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The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October: Directed by John McTiernan. With Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill. In November 1984, the Soviet Union’s best submarine captain, in a new undetectable sub, violates orders and heads for the U.S. The American CIA and military must quickly determine: Is he trying to defect, or to start a war?

My wife said she had never seen it, so I put it on. She still hasn’t seen it, but it was on in the same room as she was, so at least I tried.

There’s a lot to complain about with this film, but I forgive all of it’s bad accents, water waste on a boat, and crazy explosive physics.

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The Dance of Life

The Dance of Life: Directed by John Cromwell, A. Edward Sutherland. With Hal Skelly, Nancy Carroll, Dorothy Revier, Ralph Theodore. A vaudeville comic and a pretty young dancer aren’t having much luck in their separate careers, so they decide to combine their acts and in order to save money on the road, they get married.

I bought this at the same time that I bought “Lucky Boy” from the same questionable retailer, though I still don’t feel too bad about that since it’s a 100 year old movie. It has some audio sync issues, some wobbly frames, and some pretty bad hairs stuck in the gate (not biological hairs I assume), but for the most part this is an ok transfer.

It opens on a traveling performance group on a train to their next performance, where one of the just introduced characters named “Skid” is absolutely ripping into his boss and how much of a bum he is, just to find out that the boss was right behind him the entire time. This is a joke that’s over 100 years old! The guy gets thrown off the train and meets the gorgeous Bonny as played by Nancy Carroll, though it’s not love that’s on their minds, it’s pure survival, as they’re both starving, have no place to stay, and no homes to go back to. There’s some discussion about teaming up and the main guy really drives home that he has no confidence or ambition past where he’s been able to get now and has to be nearly forced by the lady to strike out on his own.

They end up finding a home with another circuit performance group, then get a headline gig at a smalltime performance hall. They have a pretty good thing going for them with some amazingly thick chorus girls, but it turns out that Skid has a creeping problem with alcohol, in that he’s not necessarily an alcoholic, and he’s a great guy, but just like any other self respecting alcohol consumer, it sneaks up on him and ends up being the only thing he cares about doing. One of the other performers warns Bonny of this singing a song that I googled and it’s called “The God Damned Dutch (autoplay audio)”. It was a catchy song, but I’m assuming there’s a blend of racism in there against the Dutch that I just don’t understand. Bonny’s the only thing that keeps him on the straight and narrow, and there’s a couple instances of his failing to keep the bottle out of his hand, but between the two of them they do what needs to be done to keep their jobs. They eventually fall in sorta love and decide to get married, saving them a buck or two in the process.

Fortunately for their pocket book, but sadly for his soul, Ski is scouted by a big New York City performance hall and is offered the gig of a lifetime. The only way they can make it work financially is if he goes off to NYC to work and she stays behind to work the old show, but without Bonny there to stop him, most of the extra money he would be sending back home ended up being used for hard liquors. This movie was released in 1928, so it was solidly in the middle of Prohibition in the US, so I can see how there’s a moral story being told here. The setting also lends itself to some interesting things, like when Bonny eventually comes looking for him, she finds him at a bar, but it’s behind two steel gates and the bar keep won’t let her in without a pass. She sees her man being smooched on by another lady, so she gives up on the marriage and petitions for a divorce. Since she’s in NYC she looks up and old friend, which wouldn’t you know it, Skid was heading there after the bar to drink and sing some more. While there, one of the hosts mentions he has some “pre-war scotch” which is obviously from before “The Great War” aka, WW1, and it was pre-war because it was grandfathered in with the prohibition laws.

To remind you, this is a film from 1928. All that above? That gets us to about half way through the movie! It’s two hours long! The second half of the film is a series of performances from Skid, starting with some absolutely fantastic performances, one that includes precursor to the Michael Jackson Lean, which now that I’ve seen this 100 year old movie, I know that plenty of people knew how MJ did that 60 years later, he just copied what was done here in this film and moved forward instead of left to right. Genius!

From there though, Skids performances start to decline, he’s got Bonny on the mind and no one there to stop him from drinking. During a performance of “The Matador” he’s too drunk to even stand up straight, so it’s Bonny to the rescue. She had been warned that he was off track, and she showed up and set him straight, sobering him up enough to be able to walk, then slowly get more sober as the performance goes on. We don’t get to see him during this time, which I think is a great way to do it, instead we’re shown the stage hands as they move set dressings, curtains, lights, and all that jazz, making bets on if he’s going to make it through the next performance or not. The final dance routine goes up and we finally get to see Skid somewhat sober and Bonny giving it her best, and they’re talking while dancing, and make a decision that she’s going to move to NYC and cancel the divorce petition. I’d say that at this point the credits roll, but like most movies at the time, only the people with voice parts get credited, and those credits were at the beginning of the film, so the film just wraps up super quick, then it’s over.

It’s an absolutely whirlwind of a film that I’m shocked I enjoyed as much as I did.

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Westerns in Online Video Games

Westerns in Online Video Games

Despite a definite decline in public interest in Western films, this has had little effect on the popularity of video games and free slot games of the same theme. There are many game developments offering to travel back in time to the Wild West, to feel like a real cowboy, sheriff, or outlaw bandit. Almost every year leading companies release from steampunk to action and strategy, but always with the Western. 

Previously demanded excessive cruelty and a sea of blood is no longer in trend, but the player opens up many opportunities in other directions: to develop battle tactics, develop their own lands, think through a turn-based strategy, to go on exciting adventures through the deserted prairies. 

We bring to your attention the most outstanding video games and slots that are admired by a wide audience.

Top 5 Western-themed video games

This selection includes both new and early developments that have become iconic in the world of genre inspiring developers to create new masterpieces.

Red Dead Revolver

The open world of the game is similar to GTA, only here the player will travel on horseback, wearing boots with cowboy spurs. The maximum balance between storytelling and action, which the development company Rockstar managed to achieve, ensured a stable long-term demand and a logical continuation in the next two parts.

The Oregon Trail

The pixel graphics of the game did not spoil it at all, and even, on the contrary, added to the curiosity of gamers and its further popularity. The 8-bit development was created back in 1974, and it is still popular today, especially when considering the increased interest in pixels. The journey along the famous American Trail will be filled with adventures and challenges that players need to go through together. The game includes educational elements but it did not make the game lose its charm.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath

One of the games in the series that particularly stands out among the others for its kind of insanity. The idea of the game is that you have to lead Wanderer, the character, through all the adventures and dangerous places to the bounty hunters. You can play both third-person and first-person options switching views at any time. The development of Oddworld Inhabitants has received many positive reviews from critics and gamers for:

• good draughtsmanship of weapons;
• ammunition;
• lively locations;
• engaging gameplay.

Wild West Online

Here the player has unlimited possibilities in the development of events. Whether you want to loot, kill, or extract resources on your own, no one is stopping you from choosing the strategy and traveling the open world. Multiplayer mode enables you to communicate with other users by teaming up. 

No desire to constantly wander the world? No problem – you can start your own farm and develop it, or go to the mine. But remember that there will be a lot of people who want to take away your belongings, so there’s always something to do.

A couple of years ago, 612 Games, the developer,  uploaded Wild West Online on Steam, which pleased a large army of fans. The game was released in 2017 and remains at the peak of popularity.

West of Loathing

A parody game in primitive drawn graphics has caused quite a stir among gamers. In spite of all its outwardly plain appearance, it includes many quests, tasks, and requires the use of tactical skills. People without a sense of humor have nothing to do here, otherwise, the crazy dialogues without any meaning, the rampant drunkenness of the main character will not be appreciated at the proper level. 

The game was released in 2017. The developer is Asymmetric. Players are in for a real crazy adventure, with irony, sarcasm, jokes, and turn-based battles.

Online slots inspired by the Wild West

The gambling industry is not behind in the release of products inspired by the Wild West, fueling interest gamblers with generous bonuses and one-of-a-kind characters. The most renowned brands such as NetEnt, BGAMING, and others present their unique developments with all the relevant attributes – revolvers, whips, boots, and stetsons – they can be used to collect prize combinations and get free spins.

Van Der Wilde and the Outlaws

The video slot by iSoftBet, presented in October 2021 demonstrates a typical cowboy theme with the heroes of his time. The five reels arranged in three rows have all the symbols that confirm – the machine was inspired by the Wild West. 

Spinning reels, the player can get acquainted with the four main characters, which are the most expensive symbols:

• Mad Dog;
• Buffalo Butch;
• Bonnie Cassidy;
• Van Der Wilde.

The game logo Outlaws Wild in a standard combination acts as the wild. To increase the amount of prize money, wild expands to the whole vertical replacing any other icons, and if there are three or more symbols, it works as a scatter. When you get scatter icons in three positions on the field at the same time, they trigger 8 free spins. The RTP of 96% with high variance and maximum winnings of x8,827 attract the riskiest players.

Money Wagon

The new product by Flipluck was released in 2021. The RTP of 94.58% and low volatility point out at profitable spins with minimal risk, which is suitable for hasteless gamblers who play at small bets of 0.6 euros. The Western-themed slot is filled with cowboy symbols:

• bags of gold;
• dynamite;
• interesting characters and other artifacts. 

The action takes place against the backdrop of a train traveling across the prairies. The playing field is on the carriage. Collecting the same symbols on five reels in three rows, the player receives the winning number corresponding to the payout table. 

The player has to protect the valuable cargo from the outlaws receiving a generous payout for the most expensive symbols. Collecting a complete chain of bonus symbols can bring x1,000 of the bet.

Wanted Dead or a Wild 

Another interesting western-themed slot by Hacksaw Gaming. The slot has a 5×3 grid with 15 paylines. The classic gameplay is complemented by profitable multipliers that can be added up to x100.

The slot displays a given theme very clearly; the reels have a lot of attributes that make it easy to recognize the genre of a harsh western: whiskey bottles, hats and scarves, a sheriff’s badge, and much more. By adding them to the active lines (there are 15 of them in the game), the player receives a well-deserved reward, which is instantly transferred to the bankroll.

There is everything required for dynamic spins – acceleration of spins, duel with rivals, bonus games, all that remains is to press the start button and enjoy the gameplay.

Dead or Alive

Having become iconic, the slot remains at the peak of popularity for several years after the release. In the classic western, you can earn up to 886,800 coins, which is rather a rare occurrence, and it attracts gamblers from all over the world. The playing field is set against the backdrop of a small town with a tavern and a windmill, and the reels are on the porch of the house. 

Every detail corresponds to the set genre. The slot atmosphere is dark, and dangerous, which makes it even more impressive. It immerses you in the game with your head. Winning combinations are valid from left to right. The sheriff’s badge is the most valuable symbol.

In general, the slot is dedicated to the search for criminals, so the sheriff himself is in the foreground. A wanted notice is a wild sign that can make combinations by itself or help other simple symbols in this. The scatter – two revolvers – gives you access to 12 spins, during which you can earn a substantial amount from sticky wilds and other valuable signs

Blood Quantum

Blood Quantum: Directed by Jeff Barnaby. With Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Kiowa Gordon. The dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi’kmaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.

Filled with beautiful cinematography and a fairly haunting soundtrack, the first half of the film is a sheriff from the Red Crow PD finding out what horrifying things were starting to happen in his community by responding to a series of quickly escalating 911 calls. There’s never a time that he falls to the stupidity that most zombie film people do and he takes the appropriate action every time he needs to, but damn if some of the scenes are difficult to watch.

There’s an unfortunate flash forward in time where we find that we’re in a nearly completely different type of film, just with the same characters. I’m not disappointed in the second half of the film, but it would have been nice to see the progression from “hey there’s zombies out there” to “oh, we’re immune, I wonder why, ok that’s why and here’s how we’re going to save everyone that doesn’t have this blood quantum”. Instead, we’re just plopped into a survivalist camp that’s been running for a while and everyone is ANGRY about the situation, which leads to the normal stupidity that zombies lend themselves to in zombie films. I’m particularly salty about the fact that they weren’t doing body checks on incoming visitors.

High point for me: a movie reference that I hope won’t go over your head.

Low point: shooting a hole in your boat because of dumb reasons.

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I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch: Directed by René Clair. With Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward. A beautiful 17th-century witch returns to life to plague politician Wallace Wooley, descendant of her persecutor.

Another nearly perfect clean up and release from the Criterion Collection, this is an entertainingly surprise to me, both that I hadn’t run into it on tv before and that I enjoyed it so much. She’s a truly evil witch, wanting to burn down entire hotels and kill everyone inside, then torture some poor sap that had the misfortune to be the descendant of a man responsible for her death 200 years prior. Tables are turned however when her poison concoction ends up in her belly instead of his and she falls desperately in love with a guy that she had previously wanted to watch suffer. Veronica Lake as the witch is enthralling, I do look forward to seeing more of her in the future, though I’ve read that she suffered a fair bit in her later years, dying at a pretty young age.

Some fun trivia for you, this was released in 1942, a full 3 years after Wizard of Oz and you can clearly hear the same style of music for her as the witch as you hear for the Wicket Witch of the West. Additionally, if my math works out, Veronica Lake was either 19 or 20 when this was filmed while her costar Fredric March was 45.

“Every man who marries, marries the wrong woman, True Suffering is when a man is in love with someone he cannot marry…”

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What Happened Brittany Murphy

What Happened, Brittany Murphy?: With Paige Westbrook, Alex Hodgins, Kathy Najimy, Lisa Rieffel. Presents an in-depth, intimate character portrait exploring the life and career and mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragic death of 90’s actress and rising star, Brittany Murphy.

This was less than what I hoped it would be, with all sorts of finger pointing and positing with youtubers that are pushing hoaxes and conspiracy theories. It’s only two episodes long, but it took the majority of their time to even point out that her husband had a previous relationship that nearly ended the same way.

There’s a lot of good material here, but none of it is from the creators of the documentary.

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Uncharted

Uncharted: Directed by Ruben Fleischer. With Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Tati Gabrielle, Antonio Banderas. The story is a prequel to the games, starring Holland as a younger Drake, showing us details of how he came to meet and befriend Sully.

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Queenpins

Queenpins: Directed by Aron Gaudet, Gita Pullapilly. With Kristen Bell, Lidia Porto, Joel McHale, Kirby Howell-Baptiste. A pair of housewives create a $40 million coupon scam.

Apparently, based on a true story, I see many flaws in their schemes, mostly that they immediately started spending the money as soon as they could in a truly reckless manner. Having watched a couple seasons of Breaking Bad, I know you gotta wash your money somehow and the best way of doing that is starting a couple cash based businesses, like a hot dog stand or car wash or even a website that people can go post random picture to and you can generate traffic and act like you’re getting many low amount donations for members to a site that’s all the bees knees.

or something like that, I dunno.

This is a fun movie though, it was nice to see Vince Vaughn on the screen again, he’s a very charming gentlemen.

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Surprise the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore

We used to think the Big Bang meant the universe began from a singularity. Nearly 100 years later, we’re not so sure.

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Woman in Motion

Woman in Motion: Directed by Todd Thompson. With Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Michael Dorn. Nichelle Nichols’ daunting task to launch a national blitz for NASA, recruiting 8,000 of the nation’s best and brightest, including the trailblazing astronauts who became the first Black, Asian and Latino men and women to fly in space.

Opening with a brief history lesson of who Nichelle Nichols was before she got to Star Trek, namely a beautiful singer and dancer born and raised in Chicago, and then went on to do work with Duke Ellington. The majority of this movie has less to do with her time before or during Trek, and more to do with the company she create and ran to promote women and minorities for the NASA shuttle program that was just getting started. She ran a four month campaign and went across the country and in such a short time was able to quadruple the applications. It’s a very emotional and inspirational story, highlighted by the fact that Nichelle is no longer doing public appearances due to her declining health.

it’s free on Tubi, so check it out if you’re looking for positive STEM stories!

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Hellraiser Inferno

Hellraiser: Inferno: Directed by Scott Derrickson. With Craig Sheffer, Nicholas Turturro, James Remar, Doug Bradley. A shady police detective becomes embroiled in a strange world of murder, sadism and madness after being assigned a murder investigation against a madman known only as “The Engineer”.

Released in the year 2000 in that awkward time of technological change from vhs physical media and flip phones, this is just barely a Hellraiser film, taking a full hour and twenty minutes for Pinhead to show up and start tearing people apart. This definitely has a ‘movie of the week” feel and I think would be right at home in the late 90’s version of Stars or HBO. The main character is a coked up cop who reminds me of a cross between David Boreanaz and Thomas Jane, he’s cheating on his wife with prostitutes, one of whom ends up dead due to some evil shenanigans that can be traced back to someone named “The Engineer”. I have no clue why they went with that name instead of pinhead, because as you can likely predict from the moment film starts, pinhead is going to be involved somehow.

It definitely feels like a movie that was half way made and someone made a decision to make it a Hellraiser film, but they had already filmed too many scenes mentioning the wrong bad guy’s name, so had to fix all that with a couple voice overs and clever editing in post. My biggest beef here is that there is no fire, and there’s no relation to Dante’s Inferno, so why the name? Another relic of it’s past life on Cinemax?

My one good comment on this film is that the soundtrack has some nice beats that show up from time to time.

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Hellraiser Bloodline

Hellraiser: Bloodline: Directed by Kevin Yagher. With Bruce Ramsay, Valentina Vargas, Doug Bradley, Charlotte Chatton. In the 22nd century, a scientist attempts to right the wrong his ancestor created: the puzzle box that opens the gates of Hell and unleashes Pinhead and his Cenobite legions.

Released in 1996, a long four years after the third movie that left the puzzle box in the foundations of a beautifully architected building, which led me to believe that this, the following movie, would take place in that building. Instead we’re in the far future of 2127 onboard a uniquely designed space station that has several orbiting satilites where we learn that Pin Head has been called by a non-soul having robot. This obviously dispeases pinhead, but we don’t learn about the actual level of his displeasure until nearly the end of the film. Instead the next step is to go back to the start of this whole thing to around 1727 with powdered wigs and face paint, where a very much out of place Adam Scott is helping to torture a misguided woman, killing her, then cutting off her skin and using her in a demonic summoning ceremony. They use a puzzle box that was designed by a talented but witless toy maker, who witnesses the horrible events, goes home and is promptly eaten by demons. This whole thing results in the first of the hell demons to be arrive on Earth, but it’s not pinhead, it’s a princess of hell, and she’s here to have sex with Adam Scott!

We then just 200 years to the 1990s where there’s an architect designing a building. He’s the descendant of the toy maker! This movie is about the bloodline of the toy maker! There’s a ton of really silly stuff that happens in the 90s time period, then we jump back to the space station where more silly stuff happens, we find out that Pinhead can terrify people from orbit and is looking forward to getting back to hurting people.

On the whole, when they use CGI, it’s that 90s stuff that’s super noticeable, there’s a scene of a robot figuring out the puzzle box that’s absolutely atrocious, but it’s about what could be done at the time. Also notable is the demon dog that shows up and looks super creepy, but never actually does much of anything until it dies, and then it’s dead. There’s some really bad lines in this outing, one that particularly stuck in my head was when Pinhead was saying there’s more people alive now than in all history combined, which really makes me want to sit down with the guy and have a discussion about what he’s referring to exactly. What’s his time frame? more people alive in the last 100 years than all the time before that? I doubt it.

I was rather pleased with the ending of this fourth movie, I truly didn’t see the space station’s connection to the bloodline story elements until they started to move into place. I think the franchise is about to shift into TV movie level of quality so I’m going to be putting on my “it’s just cheese tv horror” glasses for the next film.

“Perhaps I was a bit hasty”

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“Hellraiser III Hell on Earth” Review

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth: Directed by Anthony Hickox. With Kevin Bernhardt, Lawrence Mortorff, Terry Farrell, Ken Carpenter. An investigative reporter must send the newly unbound Pinhead and his legions back to Hell.

This wasn’t on Amazon Prime that I can see, had to find it on alternative streaming sites, so it was a cross between VHS and DVD in quality, which I think actually gave it more charm. Adding to that charm is something that I’ve noticed elsewhere: big stars getting roles in the 3rd or 4th part of a horror franchise, (Leonardo DiCaprio got his start in “Critters 3”!). In this case it’s Terry Farrell, who I know so well from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! I don’t think she has any relation go Glenda Farrell, but it’s funny that last name keep popping up in my movies lately.

There’s a ton to unpack here in the third Hellraiser film, I honestly think this is the best of them so far, with all sorts of unintended humor, like when the heart monitor is flatlining at a hospital all dramatically… after a guy’s head exploded! Then right after that, Farrell’s character says “tight stories not tight skirts” then the next scene is her in a thin nearly see through shirt and skirt at the “boiler room” looking for the owner of the club.

It actually wasn’t until about 30 minutes into the film during a scene in which a street urchin is burning breakfast that I realized the reporter was played by Terry Farrell, I think that’s the first time she let her hair down and looked more like the woman I’m familiar with. If you’re a recovering smoker, this is not going to be a fun ride for you, as absolutely everyone is smoking through the film, I think there’s only a few scenes where someone isn’t lighting up a cigarette. I have nothing against smoking in movies, but it was just super obvious that absolutely no one was compensated at all to smoke all these smokes. Nope, definitely not.

I also enjoyed the ending of this one much more than the previous two. The puzzle box ends up buried under a building in it’s foundation and now the building is decorated like the cube! It’s a great way to suggest that there’s an opening for sequels and an obvious dig at corporate culture.

“Demons aren’t real, they’re parables, metaphors” … “Yeah? Then what the fuck is that?!?”

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Hellraiser

Hellraiser: Directed by Clive Barker. With Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman. A woman discovers the newly resurrected, partially formed, body of her brother-in-law. She starts killing for him to revitalize his body so he can escape the demonic beings that are pursuing him after he escaped their sadistic underworld.

Every year for the last few years I pick a horror franchise that due to the parental limitations of my upbringing, I was never able to experience. This year I picked the Hellraiser series, even though it seems like it’s going to just be a torture porn series with limited cinematic value. After watching the first film on Amazon Prime, I’m here to tell you that’s exactly what it is with just buckets of gore and blood thrown around the screen and a very limited world built out. The basic premise is that this super hot and sweaty guy gets tired of sex and goes looking for a puzzle box that he’s heard will unlock unknown and unknowable pleasures and pain. Turns out that the pleasure part is just a myth, it’s all pain, because when he unlocks the box, some demons show up and rip him to literal pieces. A while later, through a series of impossibly silly actions, the guy’s brother moves into the house where all this happened and some blood is spilled on the spot where he died and this somehow resurrects him from the pits of hell that he was banished to. It doesn’t bring him all the way back, and I have to give them credit, the resurrection of his bloody skeleton was a horrifying and amazing scene to see. His half alive body then instructs a woman to kill more people to help bring him all the way back to life.

The house where all this is taking place is a real piece of work, with mold and blood on the walls, holes in the floor, and an exterior that looks like no one’s touched it in years. At one point they had been in the house for a while, but the mailbox was still sitting on a pile of bricks outside!

At the end of the day, this is just an adaption of an idea that’s been around for as long as demons have been around: demons enjoy torture and pain, and will come pull you into their world if you look too closely at them. The film’s one saving grace is how seriously it takes itself, so the film never falls into campiness.

“We have such sights to show you”

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Smart Blonde

Smart Blonde: Directed by Frank McDonald. With Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Wini Shaw, Addison Richards. Female reporter Torchy Blane teams with her cop boyfriend Lt. Steve McBride to solve the killing of an investor who just bought a popular local nightclub.

Back when I watched “Mystery of the Wax Museum” in 2018 I was enamored with Glenda Farrell, who I incorrectly thought was playing Torchy Blane in the 1933 film. Torchy is essentially Glenda, so I can see how I was confused on that point, but seeing her there made me put the “Torchy Blane Collection” on my amazon wishlist and I finally broke down and bought it for myself. It’s a collection of the 9 official Torchy films, starting with 1937’s “Smart Blonde”.

To start it off, I wasn’t able to find HD transfers of this collection, I think it was only released on DVD, and the transfers are absolute garage with the bare minimum done to get the films from celluloid to digital disk. Dust, hair, physical static, and all sorts of framing issues abound. It’s bad enough to get in the way of the film, but it’s a shame these haven’t been cleaned up and had an HD capture done.

The content of the film itself is just as witty as I was hoping for from Glenda Farrell, she’s a fantastically wise cracking investigative journalist with a razor wit and is able to figure out the mystery before pretty much anyone else on screen. There’s plenty of interesting technology things that happen throughout the film, as you might expect for a film that’s nearing it’s 100th anniversary, I particularlly laughed and marveled at this line:

“Works better with the switch on ” cars needed switches before you could turn the key?

The one huge distraction in the film was an absolutely unforgivably racist moment in which a cop is running up to a train station to stop a woman from getting out of town and he has a conversation with three black porters standing at the entrance. The DVD set is absolute bargain basement in terms of presentation and packaging, but it would have been great to have a WB style “hey there’s some stuff that was typical of the time on here, it was wrong then and it’s wrong now.” but alas, they were barely able to even get the list of films on the back of the dvd box.

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Out Today “Fan Fiction A Mem-Noir Inspired by True Events”

Out today is “Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events“, by Brent Spiner and Jeanne Darst.

From Brent Spiner, who played the beloved Lieutenant Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, comes an explosive and hilarious autobiographical novel.

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We’ve joined Twitter

I’ve made the grand decision to have the STBC join everyone on Twitter!  If you’re one of the Twits on Twitter, please give the STBC account a follow.  It’s pretty barren at the moment, but I hope to have content pushed from here to there relatively soon.

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I have reached 100 followers and to celebrate Goldy and I will be playing Lord of the Rings Online!

It would be cool if you swung by the Twitch chat and said hello, Twitch says if I have at least 100 active people in the chat at once they’ll give me a attaboy.

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