JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 - October 30, Horror Edition!
We can't be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we'll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix's Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Halloween looms right around the corner! In preparation for a spook-tacular weekend full of fun and frights, we present you with an all-horror edition of Joystiq Box Office. Although in all honesty, nothing tops Trick 'r Treat from a couple of weeks ago. You owe it to Halloween to check that out. Of course, being the geeks that we are, we'd also like to remind you that Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is now out on Blu-ray, DVD, PSN, and the Xbox Marketplace. It's not their best work, but hey ... it's more Battlestar Galactica!
Recommendation of the Week:
(Netflix Watch Instantly)
Yes, this is seriously a movie. A fugitive on the run accidentally falls into a sewage tunnel, which is also where a chemical company has been dumping their toxic waste. As a result, he becomes Monsturd: half-man, half-poop. I kid you not. There have been poop monsters in movies before, like the transformed Chet in Weird Science and the Golgathan from Kevin Smith's Dogma, but nothing compares to Monsturd. It's actually not a bad send-up of the classic 50s frightfilms, and the tagline for the movie is "Don't get caught with your pants down!" How can you go wrong?
A lot of you have been asking about the pricing on certain Xbox releases. For instance Red Cliff is 800
($10) to rent in standard definition, as opposed to the normal rental price of 320
($4) for SD. The reason for this is that it has not yet been released in theaters, and is exclusive to the Xbox 360, Amazon, and certain VOD outlets. The film actually opens on November 18, so the added price is for the benefit of seeing it early.
As usual, we'll see you at the popcorn sta -- well, actually, we won't see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you'll be watching, or what you've seen recently that bowled you over.
Xbox Live Video Marketplace (Xbox 360)
(480
($6) HD, 320
($4) SD to rent)
Granted, the logline for this movie sounds like it was ripped off from John Carpenter's The Thing, but it's actually a decent movie that hasn't received much attention. Val Kilmer stars as an environmentalist who leads a group of students on an expedition in the Arctic ice. They find a frozen woolly mammoth, along with some prehistoric parasites that start to thaw out. Whoops. There's a ridiculous message about global warming buried in here, but it's better than you'd expect. The flick was produced by Sam Raimi's Ghost House label, and they somehow got Kilmer involved. Probably by threatening to make him watch Batman Forever ... forever.
Netflix Watch Instantly (Mac/PC or Xbox Live, subscription required: starts at $8.99 per month)
Netflix has a lot of classic horror films available via Watch Instantly, including The Evil Dead and Phantasm, but if you haven't seen Chris Smith's documentary about one man trying to make his own horror movie entitled Coven, then you need to treat yourself. It's both hilarious and heart-wrenching, and it shows you that sometimes dedication goes a lot further than you'd expect. It's one of the best documentaries to come out in years, and will leave you fascinated with Mark Borchardt's life and wondering why he thought Coven was a good idea for a movie. He manages to convince his uncle to pony up his life savings to make the film, and you have to see the results to believe it.
PlayStation Store (PlayStation 3 or PSP)
Stan Helsing
($4.50 HD, $2.99 SD to rent, $9.99 SD to own)
Forget Scary Movie, Stan Helsing is one of the better horror movie parodies to come out in a long time, and it's a lot better than any of the other [Insert Phrase Here] Movies like Epic Movie, Date Movie, etc. A video store clerk finds himself facing off against classic slasher movie villains like Freddy Krueger and Leatherface, and only his knowledge of horror movies can save him. Steve Howey does a decent job as Stan Helsing, and the lovely Diora Baird is quite the hottie. Unfortunately they rounded things out with a cameo from Leslie Nielsen, who really should think about retiring from the parody film circuit.
Blu-ray Disc (PlayStation 3)
Night of the Creeps: Director's Cut ($24.95 MSRP, lower at many retailers)
Night of the Creeps features stolen bodies, space parasites, zombies and a low budget in an homage to 1950s horror films and was made in the middle of the 1980s. It's become a cult classic since then, and now it's ready to be experienced all over again in glorious high-definition. There's a bunch of extras tossed in, like deleted scenes and commentary from the cast and the director, but the real star is the movie itself. "The Good News Is Your Date Is Here, The Bad News Is ... He's Dead." They don't make them like this anymore, and it manages to capture both the horror of the '50s and the '80s in one fell swoop.
What are you watching?
