Kevin Strange’s Weird Movie Recommendation: Future World (2018)


Future World is James Franco’s love-letter to Albert Pyun’s Cyborg universe. And lucky for me, I absolutely adore Albert Pyun’s Cyborg universe (I’ve written many post-apocalyptic novel tributes to the man myself.) I consider Nemesis and Knights to be among the absolute best B-movie post-apocalyptic sci-fi flicks ever made.

Does Future World belong in that elite group of batshit insane robot flicks? No. But it was a damn fun ride and a great send-up to one of the coolest sub-genres of science fiction.

I don’t know the back story about this flick but it seems Franco called in some favors from some very talented friends to go out in the desert and shoot himself an Albert Pyun movie. He’s got A list actors like Mila Jovovich, Lucy Liu, Method Man and Snoop Dogg (Ok these last two might not be A list actors, but are certainly household names.)

He’s got freakin Werner Herzog’s director of photography doing amazing hand-held, long shots with complex interior/exterior action and even managed to score the lead from another weird post-apocalyptic flick in Suki Waterhouse who played the super-hot amputee ass-kicker in 2016’s The Bad Batch (which also featured A-list actors in a low budget B-movie.)

So what’s Future World all about? Not much, really. This sub-genre of sci-fi generally consists of dressing up a bunch of beautiful women in fetish-wear and then making them run, ride dirtbikes and drive dune buggies through the California desert for an hour and a half and that’s exactly what happens here.

James Franco takes on the role of the big bad in this one in the form of Warlord, a desert raider and leader of a gang of bikers who stumble upon a beautiful cyborg named Ash who has deactivated herself as a protest to the endless human war raging in the wasteland.

Franco’s Warlord reactivates her and makes her his sex/violence slave. Meanwhile, over in the lush, green Oasis, Lucy Liu’s Queen is dying from a terrible post-world disease and her son Prince has heard rumors that a cure exists on the other side of the wasteland.

Prince and his buddies ride to the Neon Forest AKA Snoop Dogg’s strip club for information only to run into Warlord and Ash. Prince’s friends are killed and Warlord forces Prince to take him back to the Oasis so Warlord can rape and plunder. Ash defies her new owner, saves Prince and heads deep into the desert where they meet Mila Jovovich’s Drug Lord, a psychotic meth cook who falls in love with Ash the moment she sees her.

What follows is some fantastic hammy acting from all involved. They know exactly what they’re doing here from the plot, to the character designs right down to the 80s throwback synth soundtrack from Toydrum. This isn’t supposed to be a great cinematic work. It’s supposed to be a fast, loose, cheap post-apocalyptic robot movie the likes of which were made over and over and over again in the 1980s after the popularity of Albert Pyun’s Cyborg.

In the end, I found Future World to be an absolute blast. There’s great and I mean GREAT action cinematography, cool costume designs, over-the-top action and violence and some very sweet subplots involving girl-on-robot-girl action that will surely satisfy Suki Waterhouse fans.

Future World is available now at Redbox and I’m sure it’ll hit everyone’s favorite binge streaming sites soon enough. If you’re a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, give this flick a shot. There’s a LOT worse out there. I give 2018’s Future World 4 out of 5 enthusiastic lesbian cyborg StrangeHeads!

Vampire Guts In Nuke Town Chapter 7

Vampire Guts in Nuketown was originally published in 2013. It is available to purchase in full via Kindle or paperback by clicking here. Before reading this chapter, catch up with chapter 0chapter 1chapter 2, chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5, and chapter 6.


Chapter 7

Guts knew it was far too late to save her. He only hoped there was still time to end her suffering. Just as he entered the cave, he heard his name called, and everything that made sense to him in this fucked up world came to an end.

At first, he thought he was hearing things, hallucinating from his extensive injuries and exhaustion. Perhaps from the massive dumps of adrenaline his body had been forced to feed his brain for the better part of the day. When he heard it again, his blood turned cold.

“Charles Bidmore,” the voice said. Clear as day.

The sound shook Guts to his core. No one knew his name; not anyone living. That name died when The Infestation took his family, took everyone he ever knew, took the entirety of civilization in the blink of an eye.

The voice had come from deep inside the cave. He stood still for a moment longer, dumbfounded, staring down the well-lit corridor in front of him.

Impossibility on top of impossibility. The voice he heard was human. There was no way a human was still alive down here, not in the heart of a vampire nest thousands strong. And yet… someone had called to him. Guts walked toward its source, down the long cavern, until he reached a sharp bend. He rounded the corner and lost all capacity for rational thought.

The scene before him made absolutely no logical sense. He was now inside a brightly lit white room. Its walls were plastic, the floors a nondescript cream-colored tile, and the drop ceiling contained harsh florescent light fixtures that were on. In front of him stood a white desk with two chairs placed in front of it. Across from him was a floor-to-ceiling mirror, showing him, mouth agape as he stared back at himself.

Guts was inside some impossible… office.

But more than that, he was standing inside an office seemingly built inside an underground cavern some two stories below the surface. This he could almost accept, however unlikely. What he could not accept was what sat behind the desk.

With its arms folded neatly across its chest, leaning back in a high-backed, white leather chair, was a vampire dressed in an immaculate white suit and red tie; the very same vampire with half its face burned off from their scuffle up in the motel room.

This was madness, pure and simple.

“Please, Mr. Bidmore,” the vampire said in a snobbish, aristocratic voice. “Have a seat. You look like hell warmed over.” The creature motioned with a hairy black-taloned hand toward one of the empty chairs in front of the desk.

Guts crashed down hard into the chair. His body felt like lead, the back of his neck pulsing harder than ever. Each beat exploded in his ears. Thump. Thump. Thump! He gripped the sides of his head, knowing finally that the madness of this radioactive world had closed in on him.

Scarface leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desk, hands clasped together, forming a steeple, his lipless, fanged mouth gently touching the tips of his taloned fingers.

“Now, Mr. Bidmore, I’m sure you’re wondering just what in the blue blazes is going on here. And rightfully so.”

Guts looked up at the creature, mouth hanging slack-jawed, disbelief painted on his face.

The vampire continued. “I assure you this will all make perfect sense in short order.”

Guts opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then started again. “How the FUCK are you sitting here in a fucking three piece suit, talking to me like English god damn royalty??? And how the fuck do you know my name? No one knows my name!”

“The short answer, Mr. Bidmore? The short answer is very simple. I am here, like this, speaking to you, because you willed it so.”

Guts stared blankly at the creature, then spoke. “You wanna know what I think, Fanger?”

“Certainly, Mr. Bidmore.”

“I think I’m a god damn raving lunatic, sitting on the floor of a vampire hive, having a polite conversation with an imaginary talking Fanger, just waiting for another one of those god forsaken breeder bitches to waddle her fat ass in here to pump me full of bloodsucker babies!”

“Come now, my dear Mr. Bidmore. I promise you, nothing of the sort is going to happen. Not now that you’re… aware.”

“Aware of what? And how the fuck do you know my name???” Guts was panting. Sweat poured from his face, his hands shaking.

“One question at a time, Mr. Bidmore. I know more than simply your name. I know everything about you. I know that before the plague you humans call The Infestation, you were a family man. A wife and two daughters, yes? You were a paramedic in San Diego, California, when such a place still existed. You earned your nickname Guts when a gangbanger that had been shot jumped off the gurney, gutted you with a knife the police had failed to find on his person, and proceeded to strangle you with your own intestines. Had you not been such an… imposing physical specimen, you’d have died.

“I know that during the final wave of The Infestation, when society collapsed, your wife and children were mutilated and left for dead. By the time you were able to navigate the chaos and return home, your wife had turned. She was eating your youngest when you burst through the front door, yes? You had to kill your own wife, Mr. Bidmore. And your oldest daughter; when she changed, you murdered her as well. That’s how you found out you were immune to the vampire virus, correct? You let your daughter bite you, but you didn’t change. You couldn’t join your family, so you murdered them to put them out of their misery.”

Guts stared at the paradox before him. In a small voice, he asked, “How?”

“How I know these things, how I, a feral beast motivated only by the primal urge to feed and to kill, can speak to you in this manner, is because you willed it so.”

“I don’t understand,” Guts said, slowly.

The creature stood, pushed its chair in, and began pacing with its hands clasped behind its back.

“What if I told you that all of this was your creation? The Infestation, the vampires, the nuclear mutations, all of it. What if the cause of The Infestation was not a virus, but a thought in your own mind? What if I told you, Mr. Bidmore, that you are God incarnate, experiencing life through living flesh, and you’ve just become aware of it?”

Guts sat for a moment longer before standing.

“I’d say you’d better be satisfied with that piece of shit story, ‘cause it’s the last one you’re ever gonna tell, bloodsucker!”

In a flash, Guts was on the vampire, slamming its head against the white wall. He gathered the beast up by the collar of its expensive suit.

“Mr. Bidmore!” the vampire squealed.

“Charles Bidmore is dead! You fang fuckers killed him! My name is Guts! Do you hear me? Fucking Guts!”

Guts choked the monster harder, causing its eyes to bulge. Weakly, it choked out words. “I-It’s true, Guts! You are the living God! You c-created this Hell on… Earth! You can kill me if you wish. I live only to serve you, my lord!”

Guts dropped the vampire and turned his back to it. His neck issued jolts of pain through his body. He reached up to discover that a bulge had formed just beneath the base of his skull.

“I’m God, huh?”

The beast stood, smoothing out its suit. It straightened its tie. “Yes, Guts. You chose to come back to this world, to end it for the grievous sins it has inflicted upon its people. You chose to take the form of a man to witness its end firsthand. You chose to wipe your own memory so that the experience would be pure, so it would be just. You brought me with you, so that I could guide you back to the heavenly paradise from whence you came.”

“And how,” Guts asked, “are you supposed to do that?”

The vampire looked nervous now. Glowing, opaque sweat beaded on its brown, wrinkled forehead.

“Sacrifice, my Lord.”

“Sacrifice?” Guts turned toward the creature.

“Yes, my Lord. You must perform a blood sacrifice. You must take the life of one you love to show your belief in your divinity, for death is not the end, not when you will it.”

“Everyone I love is already dead.”

Scarface gulped. “Only if you will it so, Lord. If you want it badly enough, someone you love will walk through that same door you entered.”

“It’s the eyes, you know.”

“Beg pardon, Lord?”

“It’s the eyes I hate the most.” Guts grabbed the beast by its ugly face, wrenched open its left eye, pulled out his knife, and stabbed down hard, impaling the red orb on the end of the sharp blade. The monster wailed in agony as Guts turned the knife, scraping the frontal lobe of its brain. He pushed it hard to the left, poking through the beast’s other eye from the back. Guts smacked the handle, pushing the eyeball and a torrent of black blood out of its socket, stuck to the knife like a piece of meat on a cabob. The vampire slumped to the floor, dead.

“There’s your fucking sacrifice.”

Guts wiped his hands on the ruined, brackish suit that only moments ago had been speckled white. He turned to walk back the way he’d come, back into the tomb of dead mutants, when he froze.

What stood in the doorway caused Guts to stumble backward and grab hold of the desk behind him. After everything that had happened today, this was an amazing feat. In the doorway stood Shelly and Nick, quietly watching the scene unfold, bemused smiles on their faces. Faces totally free of trauma. Not a scratch adorned them. They stepped into the room. Shelly spoke first.

“He was right, you know.” She smiled again, no sign of the ruined body, the torn face.

Impossibility on top of impossibility topped with paradox.

Guts looked at her, confused.

She continued. “You really are God here. This is your world, Guts. You made it. And we are here to serve you.” She dropped to her knees before Guts and unbuttoned his pants.

Guts’ head reeled. “How…? This… all of this… makes… no sense.”

“Scarface told you, silly boy. We exist because you will it so. You can kill us and resurrect us as many times as you want. Your wish is our desire.” She pulled his cock out of his pants and swallowed its length to its root.

Nick spoke next as he walked over to stand next to his sister.

“Hey bro,” he said from two mouths on his cheeks. “No hard feelings, right?” He pulled his dick out and began masturbating in his sister’s face.

Guts let out a maniacal laugh. All traces of sanity were gone. He was freefalling through the abyss of madness. “No hard feelings, right!?” Guts cackled another insane laugh. “Sorry I threw you down that shaft! Ahahahahaha!!!”

Nick dribbled pre-cum across the bridge of Shelly’s nose, causing her to spike out, once again. She smiled around Guts’ thickness as she continued to pleasure him.

“Don’t apologize,” Nick said. “You are my lord and master. I live only to serve you.” He reached down and unsheathed Guts’ knife from his boot. “And I’ll die for you as many times as you wish it.” He put the knife to his throat, slicing it slowly. Blood streamed down his chest onto his cock, acting as an obscene lubricant as he continued to work its length with his free hand.

As the blade crossed his esophagus, Nick began choking, sickly wheezing through the gaping hole in his throat. He ejaculated across Shelly’s cheek and mouth just before he collapsed to the ground, dead again.

Guts wept now, crying out in big sobs.

Shelly took him out of her mouth, her brother’s semen dripping from her lips. “Don’t cry, sire. This will all be over soon. Kill me and you can return to your Heaven. You can transform this place into anything you want. You can live with your family again there. Your wife and little girls. Or you can make things the way they were before The Infestation, just go on living like it never happened, even wipe this whole memory from your mind once again. Bliss, Lord. Just kill me and it’s all yours.”

She pried the knife from Nick’s dead fingers and handed it to Guts.

“Do not fear death, my Lord. This is the beginning of forever! Let me show you.”

She took his cock back into her mouth, working him with both hands, bringing him closer to climax.

Guts’ eyes rolled in his head. He grabbed Shelly by the hair. She lifted his hand to her throat. He began screaming as she used his hand to saw through her tiny neck.

He came in her mouth as her body fell limp to the floor. He felt the lightness of her severed head as the final ropes of his orgasm blasted down her gaping throat onto the floor.

He raised her head up to meet his gaze, but he was no longer holding Shelly’s head. It was her face, cut off and covering the severed head of a Pog.

“Woooop! Woooooooop!” it said.

Guts dropped it and backed up against the wall. The corpse of Scarface stood slowly. Eyeless and covered in gore, it reached behind its head and… unzipped it.

“Woooop!” it said as it peeled its true Pog body out of the ruined suit of vampire skin. “Wooooooop!”

Nick stood next. “Woop!” It peeled the fake human body from its squat form. “Woooooop!”

Guts screamed again. Suddenly, he was aware of the painful, pulsating lump on the back of his neck. This time he felt something, just under the skin. He raised the knife and violently hacked at his neck. He dug his fingers into the bloody mess and found… a zipper.

He pulled it up, feeling his head and face fall against his chest. Turning to the mirror hung against the far wall, he saw his own hideous Pog face staring back at him.

He tried to scream again, but all he heard come out of his wide, silly mouth was, “Wooooop! Woooop! WOOOOOOP!”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was not in Heaven.

***

What he saw made no sense at all (but little did after what he’d just witnessed, so he didn’t get upset about it). Madness has a way of calming the nerves. He opened his eyes and saw, not his own face as a Pog staring at him, but instead a grimy ceiling. The motel room ceiling he’d woken up in that morning.

A throbbing pain in his extremities caused him to look down and see a vampire latched to each of his wrists and both of his ankles, eagerly feasting on his life’s blood.

He tried to turn his head, but found that something was holding it firmly in place. Panic finally seized him when he became fully aware of his situation. He was disoriented, yes, but his memories came flooding back into him like water through a broken levy.

No, a voice said inside his head: the voice of Scarface the vampire. Go back to sleep. Dream of your family. Dream of anything you want!

He closed his eyes, and Karen was there. And the girls. They waited for him at the front door of their house. Human. Safe. Little Emily waved to him.

“No!”

False memories. He opened his eyes. He was back in the room, restrained, still being fed on like a living steak. His eyes sagged again. He bit his tongue as hard as he could. He bit until he tasted blood. The pain brought him back to full consciousness.

He remembered everything.

***

Check back next month for the next exciting chapter of Vampire Guts In Nuke Town, or click here to buy the full novel via Kindle or paperback on Amazon.com.

WWS 07: A Boy And His Dog

We’ve got a weird one for you this week, gang! Watching With Strangers returns for the first week of March 2017 with a review of the Harlan Ellison classic A BOY AND HIS DOG.

If you haven’t seen this Don Johnson flick and you love weird movies, you’re Definitely missing out! As far as post-apocalyptic movies go, this one is totally bonkers. Not in a nonsensical action sort of way, more like batshit crazy story telling.

You just have to see it to know what we’re talking about. OR just listen to Kevin and Travis prattle on about it for an hour! Either way, let’s celebrate A BOY AND HIS DOG together, as only Strangers in Strangeville can!