The Digital Dread Report for August 6th

It's another quiet week on the Home Video front for us, as only 2 titles are making us open our wallets today.

That's alright, because starting the last week in August, the "Must Have" floodgates open, and don't let up until mid October.

We can definitely deal with a few purchase-light weeks until then.

The only releases we absolutely have to but this week are both non-Horror, but are worthy of our $$$, none the less.

Mud is a great flick that I originally thought would be in the Horror-Thriller vein, but instead turned out to be more of a drama than anything else. Matthew McConaughey is aces in this, and he'd better get some awards recognition for his work here, or else! If you haven't seen this flick, you should. It's a good one.

Strike Back is an action show brought to us by Cinemax, that by all accounts we should hate; mainly because most shows like this tend to be cheap and cheesy, and aren't really worth a damn. While this show may not be Masterpiece Theater or anything, it's fun as hell, and boasts a pretty good bunch of actors that get to shoot shit, have sex with shit, and blow shit up, all in liberal amounts. We love this show, and are happy to add Season 2 to our collection.

The rest of this week's releases are rentals for us.

People who love all things Old School should be happy with A Boy and His Dog, Battlestar Galactica, Tower of Evil, and Swamp Thing. Oblivion, Antiviral and Aftershock are all worth a rental as well.

There's plenty of decent fare to be had this week,  so get out there and grab yourself a movie or two.

Vera Farmiga is a Horror Hottie!

Who ever thought that Norma Bates could be so crazy and creepy... and yet so downright sexy at the same time? We surely never did, but thanks to the talents of Vera Farmiga, we have ourselves a little MILF complex going on now. We're not trying to sell her short here. On the contrary, she's a hell of an Actress that picks great roles to lose herself in, it's just that seeing her "too close" relationship with her on screen son (Norman Bates), triggers our taboo alarms. What's disturbing about that is that Bates Motel is a show that deals with rape, incestuous over/undertones, sex trafficking, sex, murder and violence... all of which should and does disturb us, but it also leaves us saying "Damn Vera, you look good even when you creepy."

I guess it's fair to say that Norma Bates wants to snuggle her son Norman with her mouth. It really is some edgy subject matter, and thank God they at least cast someone as hot as Vera to tackle it... which kinda sucks at the same time, because we're all like "Vera, you dirty girl... wait, that's your son! Stop!... or go on... no!"

It messes with our heads, man. Since that's probably the point of the whole thing, all we can say is well done, Bates Motel creators. Well done.

"Mother is going to hug you with her mouth now, Norman, and this time I want you to cry."

Sexy, sassy Ukrainian-American Vera Farmiga seems to play Mothers a lot. She adopted a creepy midget in Orphan, and she saw her son go crazy and try to kill/drive his whole family insane in Joshua... combine those movies with her Motherly role on Bates Motel, and it's fair to say that she has issues as a fictional parent. Sometimes, those issues are really creepy.

"That's right, baby, rub your snake on Mommy's face..." Oh come on, Vera!

At least she played a kick-ass Mom that takes up for a helpless little neighbor kid in the VERY underrated Running Scared. When she gets a call in the middle of the night from said kid, in which he claims he's being held hostage by a rapey, child-molesting couple, Vera hightails it over there, forces her way in the house, and blows everyone the fuck away!!! It's a brilliant, creepy scene that you need to see if you haven't already. Just get yourself a copy of Running Scared, you won't be sorry.

A hot chick showdown for the ages.

Bates Motel is not the first great Cable TV show that Vera has starred in; she first aroused our proverbial loins way back in 2004 on the short-lived USA Network show, Touching Evil. We loved the hell out of that show when it first aired, which meant of course that it was destined to be cancelled way too soon (thank you, shitty American TV audience), but at least it gave us Vera. In all fairness, she had been in a bunch of stuff before Touching Evil, but we just never noticed. Shame on us, I suppose.

Plenty of FBI agents look like this. Plenty of them.

Oh yeah, and she also starred in this creepy little movie called The Conjuring, that has pretty much made the Box Office its bitch this Summer. So with that, and her Emmy Nomination for Bates Motel, it's fair to say that she's having herself a banner year.The Oscar/Golden Globe nominations for Up in the Air were probably nice for her too, but just not as cool.

She's so pretty when she screams.

I guess for fans like us, it just doesn't get better than a hot, talented Actress that isn't afraid to dip her dirty toes into the deep end of the genre pool. It's even better when that same Actress has no issue with getting naked, and is able to tackle some pretty tough subject matter with her roles... I mean, incest and child molestation aside, Vera Farmiga will kill some people on screen like it ain't no thing.

She's so brave, and we most def love her for that. We also love her for DAT ASS, but that's neither here nor there.

Someone out there on the internets (4chan to be exact),  made this wicked little collage of the many faces of Norma Bates. It's  so cool that we just had to share. Click to enlarge this bad boy, and enjoy.

This Ukranian Hottie has been nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and an Emmy, and yet she's still right here with us, doing awesome genre work. We love our sexy Norma Bates, and this Halloween Season we will be checking out The Conjuring and Orphan again, because they both fit the mood of the month perfectly. *Running Scared is still our favorite Vera flick, though.It's just seriously awesome.

Oh, and let us not forget that the sexy and talented Vera has an equally versatile little sister who is destined to become the 2nd Farmiga Hottie to grace these pages... yes, Taissa, we're talking about you. You're 18 & fair game now, so look out for us!

More of Vera Farmiga...

... because why the hell not?

Hell Baby (2013)

There's really not much that I can say about Hell Baby other than it was just painfully unfunny.

I really expected a lot more from the creators of Reno 911!, because that show was funny as hell, and at times, side-splittingly so.

The amount of quality comedic talent gathered in this movie is kinda crazy; Rob Corrdry, Thomas Lennon, Kumail Nanjiani, Keegan Key, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, Michael Ian Black, Robert Garant... this movie is over-populated with truly funny people, and yet I struggled to laugh more than a handful of times.

That makes me sad to even say.

Here's the official synopsis of the film:

"An expectant couple who moves into the most haunted house in New Orleans call upon the services of the Vatican's elite exorcism team to save them from a demonic baby."

Sounds like it could be a funny premise, right? You take a look at the cast list on IMDB, and suddenly it sounds a ton more promising. Then you sit down and check out the trailer... and it doesn't look all that funny, rather it comes off as being a bit bland. No worries though, because sometimes trailers suck, and yet the movie ends up rocking... but not this time.

A movie that boasts this much talent has no business being so bad, or at the very least, this disappointing.

Corrdry has a few funny lines, and Keegan Key was pretty solidly funny here, but aside from a few solid moments from other random cast members, the whole thing just feels too forced and almost slapsticky... it's really not slapstick, but it just came off feeling like it was. Maybe it felt more like schtick, I don't know, the whole thing just felt really off to us. I think I have to blame the script on this one, because I honestly don't know what else to blame here, especially since the talent involved is usually on their collective comedic game.

There is some pretty gratuitous nudity in this one, which I guess was kinda nice, but we wanted to laugh, not see some cute blond chick get out of the shower and show us everything she's got... wait, what the hell did we just say? Good lord, we're losing our minds.

Keegan Key's "You gon' get raped" face.

This movie gets a D instead of a DO NOT WANT! simply because the cast tried their asses off, and they gave us some funny bits here and there. Overall though, Hell Baby underwhelmed the living hell out of us, and left us feeling a bit bummed for the on screen talent involved... because we're normally big fans of just about all of them.

We'll gladly be waiting for the future projects of these various cast members, because you can't keep truly funny people down for long. For us though, Hell Baby was one big misstep that just didn't work.

Who knows, you may end up liking it. It could just be us, and a majority of peeps that check this movie out may get what we didn't. Just don't say we didn't warn you if you do end up hating it, because we did warn you. So don't say we didn't, capisce?

D

Gotta give credit where credit is due and say that these Hotties definitely committed to their roles, despite the lackluster results. Thanks for trying, girls. We still lub you.