War Rocket Ajax #134: Halloween With Benito Cereno

It is time once again for the War Rocket Ajax Halloween Special, and to that end, this week's podcast features our annual Halloween guest, Benito Cereno! The writer of The Tick and Hector Plasm, Benito joins us to share his thoughts on horror movies, ghost stories, and all manner of other spoooooky topics -- and you can listen to the whole show right here at ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #134: Trick Or Hot Wings with Benito Cereno

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

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In this week's episode, Matt and Chris are getting into the Halloween spirit with horror movies and horror video games, but with the films of Uwe Boll in the mix, it proves to be pretty difficult. Fortunately, they're able to have a long conversation about the flaws of a Joss Whedon project, which is sure to win them plenty of friends on the Internet.

When Benito joins us, we turn to our listeners for a round of Halloweenish questions, including one about the worst horror movies we've ever seen:

CHRIS: Are we just going to discount Mystery Science Theater movies?

BENITO: Is it something that's made by somebody who's completely incompetent, or something made by somebody who's supposed to have a level of professionalism, and then it's bad? You guys have talked about that, right? The worst song has to be some song a baby sang or something.

MATT: Here's the way I think about it, and this is especially true of the horror genre: The worst thing a horror movie can be is boring. There are plenty of terrible, awfully made, incompetently made, ridiculous horror movies that are incredibly enjoyable to watch. They surpass being bad into being comedy, like your Trolls 2 and your Leprechauns In The Hood. Those movies are enjoyable to watch, but when you talk about a movie like, say, 13 Ghosts, which just commits the sin of being horribly boring and kind of sterile...

CHRIS: You and I just recently watched Bloodrayne, and Bloodrayne is bad, but it's not boring.

MATT: It's not boring, and it's got this kind of... I hate to use the word "charm," but it's the only word I can think of.

CHRIS: It's not a difficult movie to watch. I mean, it's a difficult movie to watch for eight hours on a Sunday, which is what we do so we end up more angry about it, but its worst sin is that it just doesn't make any sense.

MATT: But that's part of what's charming about it! If it made sense, I might be bored, but since it doesn't, I have these moments where I'm like "what? What?" And it's kind of entertaining.

BENITO: I'm going to go with the movie I found most disappointing. House of Frankenstein promised Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman together in one movie, and then none of them appear on the screen at the same time and it's not Lugosi as Dracula and it's not Karloff as Frankenstein's monster. But it is sad sack fatass Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman, and the movie is primarily about him, but not as the Wolfman because he's only Wolfman for about 15 seconds in the whole movie. Dracula's only alive for the first ten minutes before he gets killed in a horse cart accident, and then the Frankenstein's Monster is literally only brought to life for the last 30 seconds of the movie before he's destroyed, and that's it. It had the most potential to be the awesomest thing, and then it's so disappointing. There's a sequel to it, House of Dracula, which I haven't even watched because I know it's the same thing. It's the same guys in the same roles, except I think Karloff's not even in that one. Karloff is in House of Frankenstein, but not as the monster. He's a scientist who's not Frankenstein who finds the monster in a cave, so I think House of Dracula doesn't even have him in it at all. But it does have a lady hunchback.

Show Notes:

Follow Benito on Twitter!

Benito and Nate Bellegarde's Hector Plasm is a great Halloween read that's available digitally!

Chris's Treat: Cabin in the Woods

Matt's Treat: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Comics Reviewed:

Bravest Warriors #1: "You get a great impression of who these characters are right away, and the first issue is just them sitting around trying to scare each other with trailers for horror movies. It's really fun."

Journey Into Mystery #645: "The six hundred and 45th part of Kieron Gillen's epic run on -- wait, what's that? No? It's 31st? Okay, that's fine, that's still a lot."

Batman Incorporated #4: "This comic's awesome. I love Creepy Talia." "Creepy Talia is terrific, I love the way this issue ends. It's what Grant Morrison has been building to since 'Batman & Son.'"