"Or maybe that black gas is a fart from the ass of God."

It has been a hellacious week, faithless readers, and my schedule is only getting busier as we roll toward Halloween.

First off, Lemmy crashed my Segway trying to recreate his entrance in the Killed By Death video. Now I can't ride it at the Louisville Zombie Walk, at which I intend to unleash thousands of the undead and a few rock bands on to Bardstown Road on Saturday, Aug. 27. Plus, I'm only weeks away from The Devil's Attic opening back up.

Busy is an understatement, but I'd be lying if I said I don't take the occasional moment to enjoy the fruits of my labors. The international audience for Thursday Thrillers is ever-widening, and I pick up clicks from a new country or two every time I post. Views from the U.K. have surpassed 100, and Germany isn't far behind. I even seem to have a following in Russia, but to be honest, it's probably just a couple of hackers trying to find the dirty love letters Mrs. Clinton's been e-mailing me for the past eight years.

In light of my progress toward worldwide domination of the cult film criticism industry, I decided to throw an international horror film festival, but then I remembered I'm too busy, so this week's Thursday Thriller is The ABCs of Death.

This 2013 anthology film comprises 26 shorts by directors from around the world. Each short details a different way to die that starts with its respective letter of the alphabet. For example, A is for Apocalypse, B is for Bigfoot, and so on. I'm not going to give you the complete rundown, because the titles appear at the end of each short and sometimes reveal a poignant comment on the preceding work, and I'm definitely not about to summarize all 26 chapters. In the time it takes me to write them up, you could be watching them. To fit 26 shorts into one feature-length film, they have to be music-video short, sometimes shorter.

I will say, though, that some of my favorite moments included D, L, and X. If you'll indulge me one spoiler, the alphabet ends in Z, wherein Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshihiro Nishimura presents a grand finale of gratuitous sex, violence and Nazi iconography that will have you wondering all weekend what the fuck you just watched.

How good is this movie? It's so good, that if you showed it to a bunch of high school kids, you would go to jail. The ABCs of Death is an international horror film festival you can throw in your own living room. It streams on Netflix and Shudder.

"Feed her! Feed her!"

Of all my side projects going on this year, The Devil's Attic, The Louisville Zombie Walk, and the American presidential election, I'm pretty proud of this movie blog. I think I'm doing well for my first year as a film critic. 

Have I made mistakes? Sure. Sometimes I review sequels before the original movies. Usually it's because the first movie isn't streaming anywhere I can find it, but last November I got so excited that Netflix posted the final sequence of a certain trilogy that I just skipped over the first two. I guess I assumed if you were following this blog, you'd seen them already. 

Maybe you have. Maybe you haven't. Either way, I'd like to correct the oversight. This week's Thursday Thriller is The Human Centipede (First Sequence).

Whatever you may have heard, this 2009 work by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six is nothing more, nothing less than a traditional European folk story, a fairy tale of sorts.

Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are two young, beautiful, American tourists on their way to a party and they get a flat tire somewhere in the German wilderness, which we all know was once a favored stomping ground of the Big Bad Wolf. After wandering around in the woods they find a house and they are momentarily so relieved you'd think the place was built out of candy. Instead of a witch inside, there's a mad surgeon named Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), the world's foremost separator of conjoined twins to hear him tell it, and instead of eating the girls up, he wants to sew Lindsay's mouth to the butthole of Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), another man he's kidnapped. Then he wants to sew Jenny's mouth to Lindsey's butthole to create one long digestive tract. Whatever the Katsuro eats, he then feeds the girl's behind him. Lindsay has to be in the middle for trying to escape. 

So it's pretty much exactly the same as Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. 

Although it has been thoroughly maligned by a solid consensus of film critics, I found The Human Centipede (First Sequence) to be a decent shocker, well worthy of its two sequels. It streams on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Shudder.

"I will become the king of murderers! I will unite this country!"

Readers, as my power and influence grows worldwide, I hope you're learning I wouldn't waste your time telling you about a movie I don't love. You can trust Ole Scratch, at least as far as finding you a cheap, pre-weekend entertainment option. 

Every week, my research across four paid streaming subscriptions and YouTube yields something worth watching. If I can't always guarantee you'll shit your shorts, any discerning viewer can agree the movie I pick has its moments. 

But the movie I'm about to tell you about holds a special place in my flinty heart. It may or may not be the weirdest movie I've reviewed to date, but it's definitely the bloodiest.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tokyo Gore Police. 

What I love about this 2008 extreme action flick by Japanese director Yoshihiro Nishimura, with all its mutilations, amputations and resultant Wham-O Water Wiggle-like fountains of blood, is that it's cartoonishly outlandish.

I hate to disappoint those who click over here every week for some topical jabs, but this movie is too strange to relate to anything you might have seen on the news lately. There's a maniac trying to crush society under his heel, a highly militarized police force takes to killing people indiscriminately so as to wipe out an undesirable segment of the population, and toward the end, a man blames a woman for her own rape. At the heart of it all is a conspiracy to protect corporate interests. Everything about this movie is far-fetched and blown way out of proportion.

Tokyo Gore Police seems to get misclassified as horror. Yes, there are chainsaw fights, but the story itself has more in common with the original Robocop than any Texas massacre I've ever seen. It even features little breaks from the action in the form of commercial parodies, my favorite being the one for Wrist Cutter G, the cute razor for the stylish teen who just wants to feel something. Or did I laugh harder at the PSA urging people to "stop the harakiri"?

The story is about a police officer named Ruka (Eihi Shiina) who is assigned to hunting down engineers, deranged killers who are genetically altered to grow weapons wherever on the body they suffer a wound. For example, when an engineer's arm gets lopped off in the opening fight sequence, he sprouts a chainsaw in its place. If you were curious, yes, this deadly regeneration can also occur in the genitalia.

In the course of Ruka's duties, she discovers clues that lead to the identity of her father's murderer. I don't want to give away any more of the mystery than that. Tokyo Gore Police streams on Hulu and Shudder. 

"...you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them - no more rules."

What a week it has been, America! Half of you have spent the entire week yelling at each other about who to vote for and what would be good for your country.

You know what would be good for America? You getting a job!

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Mist.

This 2007 Frank Darabont adaptation of a Stephen King tragedy dares to ask what might feel like too relevant a question in these chaotic times: If you've only got a short time left anyway, do you stay indoors to get carved up by a bunch of religious whackos, or do you take your chances outside where it's very likely you will get eaten by gigantic, trans-dimensional, Lovecraftian bug-monsters designed by legendary horror illustrator Bernie Wrightson?

As amazing as the creatures look, the story focuses more on the human drama that might occur if a bunch of people are trapped inside a grocery store as a dense fog swallows a small New England town. They soon learn that the fog is just swimming with terrible monsters that will rip people to shreds or even use their bodies as nests in which to lay thousands of eggs. David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is one of the cooler heads who try to find a rational solution to the problem while the town Bible-thumper Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) whips the other yokels into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

The Mist is a good, solid creature-feature that relies more heavily on good character development than guts and gore. In fact, one of the scariest moments in the first act includes almost a full minute of character close-ups while an air raid siren blares.

The Mist streams on Amazon Prime.

"Your weiner looks like Frankenstein's."

Congratulations, America! You have survived until the final day of the RNC (The Reptilian National Convention). Once you've read about the movie I've picked out for the week, people will have moved on from plagiarism and its accusers and have started gearing up for the next great outrage, which will undoubtedly occur at next week's DNC (The Other Reptilian National Convention).

I honestly don't know which I find more hilarious -- the unmitigated gall with which these alien slimeballs convince you that they are representative of your species (you have to consider on par with dolphins a pretty honorable distinction) or the repetitive-to-exhaustion way you keep believing them.

One bunch of assholes says the only way to create jobs is to tax the rich. The other assholes say the only way to keep jobs is not taxing the rich, plus hunting homosexuals for sport is a good way to build a strong, healthy bond with your son. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Blah. Blah. Blah. Do you need a job? Click here.

America's volume has been up so loud this year that I need a two-hour break from hearing the English language.

That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is Gozu.

A simple, two-sentence plot summary will not do this film justice, but here goes, anyway:

A yakuza named Minami (Hideki Sone) is charged with putting his deranged brother Ozaki (Sho Aikawa) out to pasture when the latter's psychotic outburst makes their boss uncomfortable. Complications arise when Ozaki's body goes missing before Minami can dispose of it.

Sounds pretty cool, right? On those two sentences alone, you can tell it's going to be at least as good as Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead or In Bruges. Who knows? In the hands of a Quentin Tarantino or a Guy Ritchie you might have yourself a Trans-Atlantic cult hit.

But Tarantino and Ritchie had their hands in the completely wrong hemisphere. This surreal and horrific 2003 mystery was directed by Takashi Miike, also known for Audition, Ichi the Killer, and As the Gods Will. Miike doesn't make movies that will fit easily into a TV Guide description of what happens.

For example, expecting a conventionally gritty, Western crime-drama, you might not be ready to see Ozaki swing a pomeranian around by its leash before smashing it against a diner window. You might not know what to make of it when Minami calls his boss to tell him Ozaki's body has disappeared and the boss conducts the entire conversation whilst having sex with a woman, a gilded ladle hanging out of his ass. "This is certainly uncharaceteristic of the genre!" you may exclaim, when you learn that the staff at the hotel Minami stays at in the busted, hick town of Nagoya is so dedicated to service that its aging proprietress tries to seduce Minami by demonstrating that her large breasts still lactate on his first night. She just wants her guests to be happy.

Later in the movie some weird stuff happens.

Gozu is so strange it must be a work of genius. It streams on Amazon Prime.

...and now a special message from The Devil Himself.

"They're just shitting bricks because they're no longer top of the food chain."

I've said it before: Hell is supposed to be crowded, but when its overcrowding causes me personal inconvenience, I have to clean house. 2016 has been a banner year for Death, but all the excess souls I'm receiving are in the way. For example, just this afternoon Alan Rickman kept following me around studying me as if he's got a big role coming up. Two days ago Kimbo Slice and Schneider the handyman from One Day at a Time chewed through my Internet cable and just to post this blog I've had to borrow Purgatory's unsecured Wi-Fi. I don't want those jerks over there knowing which Web sites I visit. It's time to thin the horde.

At 8:29 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27, I will personally unleash legions of the undead on Louisville, KY. At Eastern Parkway and Bardstown Road, I will bang the gong, signalling the Derby City Roller Girls, in full corpse-ified regalia, to lead the procession of thousands of bloodthirsty ghouls toward Highland Ave. I might bring my Segway.

Speaking of segues, this week's Thursday Thriller is Blade II.

If you need a refresher, Blade (Wesley Snipes) was born half-vampire because his mother was bitten while she was pregnant. She died and he grew up with a fanatical hatred of vampires. Blade is based on the Marvel Comics character that first appeared in Tomb of Dracula in 1973.

Because of  his human side, Blade has less problems with the sun than his paler vampire counterparts. They call him The Day Walker. Kris Kristofferson plays Whistler, a sort of Q to Blade's James Bond, supplying him with cool gadgets to arm him in the fight against vampires. Whistler keeps Blade's car running and his guns full of silver bullets. He also shows Blade how to control his thirst for blood.

In this 2002 Guillermo del Toro sequel, Blade rescues his old friend from the vampires and brings him back to the base where Scud (Norman Reedus) has been filling in. Pretty soon, there's a security breach -- two messengers from the Vampire Nation have come to offer Blade a truce because they need his help to destroy the reapers, which are super vampires with mouths like Georgia O'Keeffe paintings.

Their vertical smiles are almost enough to put anyone off vagina -- which might explain why this is one of the most sexless vampire movies you will ever see. It's more about kung fu and exploding skeletons than overflowing corsets and close-contact neck sucking. At one point Whistler suggests Blade is getting too lovey-dovey with the vampire Nyssa (Leonor Varela), and it's important that he does because you would have no idea otherwise.

All in all, Blade II is a gory, action thriller with lots of badass special effects and fight sequences. It is so full of twists and double crosses the viewer is never sure who to trust or if it actually makes any sense, but so what if it doesn't? Norman Reedus blows up!

Blade II streams on Netflix.

"Everything is true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live."

Have you ever watched a movie where at the end you said, "Well, they killed the monster. What a bunch of assholes"?

It's not uncommon to empathize with the denizens of horror cinema. For a lot of folks, it's easy to feel for Frankenstein's monster -- outcast, unloved, unable to express himself except through fits of violent rage. What about the Wolf Man, cursed with an irrepressible dark side that must be kept secret or destroyed, and hair that's always matted in blood?

If you've ever found yourself rooting for the monster, maybe even wanting to be the monster, I have two suggestions for you.

First, maybe you ought to consider acting work at a haunted house during Halloween. If it pays anything at all, it won't be much, but it's a lot of fun. If it sounds even remotely interesting to you, now is the time to start looking. Those of you who live in the Greater Louisville Metro Area might want to pop over to http://jobfair.louisvillehalloween.com/ and sign up for the all-haunts job fair on Aug. 6. Who knows? You might even end up working for me.

Second, you should watch this movie I'm going to tell you about.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Nightbreed.

 
This 1990 film was written and directed by Clive Barker, who has created such other dark fantasies as Hellraiser and Candyman. Craig Sheffer plays a leather-jacketed, cool guy called Boone, Anne Bobby plays his sweetheart, and David Cronenberg plays his creepily emotionally-blank psychotherapist.

But the real stars of the movie are the monsters, each character a unique, detailed and memorable design. The movie is not as scary as it is a festival of eye candy, especially during the explosive third-act, an all-out war in the graveyard between the monsters and the townies.

While you get your fix of blood and explosions, you may find Nightbreed is as much for the mind as the eyes. While looking for a scare, you're likely to wind up asking, what is scary? Is scary a bunch of gnarly ass-looking monsters who live in a secret city under the cemetery, or is it the psychotherapist who feeds his patient hallucinogens so he can frame him for serial murder? Maybe what's really scary is that so many of you humans are so eager to rain death and hatred on those who are different, and all you need is the words of a passionate madman to motivate you.

Nightbreed streams on Netflix and Shudder.