Tag: sci fi

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Visual White Noise Theater: Will “Jesus Show You the Way to the Highway”(2019)?

I never thought I’d see a movie shot in Ethiopia by a Spanish director, set somewhere in mid 21st century in a virtual world, the only thing is this movie was meant to look like it was shot in the mid 1980’s and is a prediction of what 2035 is gonna look like, so there is retro virtual reality machines and goggles, dial rotary phones, 1970’s furniture etc. In a word this movie is a mind fuck, you’ll want a cigarette after you watch this movie.

Where to start with a movie this insane? Well two CIA agents DT Gagano, played by a dwarf Ethiopian actor Daniel Tadesse and Palmer Eldritch played by Spanish actor Augustin Mateo, both contrast to each other in looks and personality, they are working in “Beta Ethiopia” which is the Ethiopia of the 2030’s as imagined by a sci fi film maker in the 1980’s. The Cold War is still on and the Soviet Union is trying to put a virus in the computer system called, what else? “Soviet Russia”. In this bizarre virtual reality everything is in stop motion and everybody wears the masks of famous actors, comedians and politicians. DT’s wife is a hot BBW blonde named Malin played by Gerda-Annette Allikas and she looks forward to him retiring as a secret agent so she can open a Kick Boxing studio. Your reading this saying WTF?! I did when I start watching this.

DT wants to start a pizza restaurant by the ocean but these dreams get derailed when he gets stuck in the virtual world and he needs to find a way to get out. In this stew you get a satire of 1960’s spy movies, including the incidental music, 1970’s and 1980’s action and kung fu films and B level sci fi. This movie is like a cross between  1980’s James Bond flicks and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s art movies not to mention the audio is badly synced to the lips on purpose. Seriously, this god damn movie is so insane it can’t be classified.

“Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway” is also philosophical, it doesn’t look like it on the surface but there is so many layers in this movie you’ll question whats reality, whats a dream, whats a fabricated reality etc. This movie is hilarious, some of the over the top absurd stuff will have you laughing until you are out of breath especially when one of the characters is watching TV and on it there is a man dressed like 1960’s Adam West Batman licking the feet of a man in a swimsuit, somebody yells at him “Stop watching that communist propaganda and get your ass over here!” Not only that, the president of Beta Ethiopia is dressed as 1960’s Batman and he wants to kick all drug dealers out of Beta Ethiopia. And believe it or not it gets crazier.

Most of the old computer technology that is seen in the movie was borrowed from the Estonian Computer Museum. “Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway” is a movie that hit me in the sweet spot, I literally stumbled across this movie by accident while searching for the movie “Highway to Hell” which I am gonna review next, I saw the poster and it looked like a grind house movie I’d never seen, and at first seeing the date it was made I was very skeptical, I dove headfirst into this roiling and boiling sea and I got the shit thrashed out of me. This is one newer movie I will repeat view and I am sure there is stuff I missed. There is so many Easter Eggs and little tid bits, the name alone should draw you in. I am sure a lot of religious folks searching for some religious movie about Jesus were confused when they watched this movie for the first time like I was, except in a different way, they’ll wonder what a fully clothed black midget is doing in a shower with a naked, statuesque, BBW blonde goddess and what any of this has to do with Jesus. The movie was partly funded by people on Kickstarter which is cool, Llanso’s first movie was the awesome post apocalyptic film “Crumbs” also starring the diminutive Daniel Tadesse, another one I will review later and you should watch and that one was made on a show string budget in Ethiopia and its just as weird.  “Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway” is one highway you don’t want to drive by.

To get the silver pizza pie Arrow has done a bang up job: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/jesus-shows-you-the-way-to-the-highway-blu-ray/FCD2009

To get on the highway digitally go here: https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Shows-You-Way-Highway/dp/B0893NT9V9

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Short (S)hit list: Welcome to “Futuropolis” 1984

Space is certainly the place. Animated space you can live in, you’ll fly in cartoon space ships, eat cartoon hotdogs, everyone of your movements will be herky jerky and you will get turned into kitsch, retro toys by villains with aluminum helmets. If all this sounds appealing to you than you will like…

Smashing animation against live action like a really violent car wreck, this 38 minute short film will snap your spine and make whatever brains you have in your head bloodily leak out of your ears.

“Futuropolis” is a short film I repeat view numerous times, its in its own, whacky, low budget world. I can tell that the creators were paying homage to and making a parody of the 1930’s serials like “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers”. With what budget they had they designed an impressive space opera adventure. The theme song is pretty catchy with the common refrain “Fly Rangers Fly” and looking at the credits they also wrote all the tunes for this movie.

Alot of the effects in “Futuropolis” remind me of a lot of the special effects laden videos on 1980’s MTV, herky jerky live action actors pasted onto some form of animation. Some films I wish would be shorter and they’d have more power but this one I wish was longer. I wanted more exploration into this universe, sadly there is no “Futuropolis 2”.

The Space Cadets (take of that what you will) are Spud, Lieutenant Luna, Cosmo and Captain Garth, they are sent to find out why there is violent mutations of various species on different planets. The source of the mutations is Professor Egghead, a guy who looks like a reject from the band Devo, he has a silver helmet and has a machine that mutates people into animated gaseous clouds or retro toys. Yeah this thing is insane and stuff like this makes me very happy, don’t expect logic out of this short because if you do you’ll be disappointed.

Not only do you get cartoon food, cartoon alien villains, cartoon guns, cartoon saws etc. you also get cartoon farting alien dinosaurs. Go back and read that, yes you read that right, anyways, info on this short is very scant it was directed by Phil Trumbo and Steve Segal (no not the “acting like a stone in every movie he is in” Segal, a different one) Segal also plays Mutcho, one of Professor Egghead’s henchmen. Segal also did the special effects for the end part on a Commodore 64!

The directors of “Futuropolis” went on to work on “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” which makes a lot of sense they go from this short film to that show. This would be something Pee Wee would watch, do his weird pedo chuckle and clap his man boy hands. Steve even worked on “Toy Story”. Apparently this was shot over 9 (!) years in a basement under the Broad Street Station that is now the Science Museum of Virginia.

I can’t tell that this was shot over 9 years, the actors don’t look like they aged at all in 9 years. The dialogue is badly synced, like this could’ve been a foreign movie brought over and dubbed over with bad, stale English. I think that was the effect they were going for.

So do you want to board this animated rocket and shoot into animated outer space? Well you are in luck you can do it here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/Rf3sTLEwc4yM/

If you want to get on a actual flying saucer, your gonna have to get a fake one because there is no official release of this in dvd, you can get it here: https://dvdlady.com/dvd/futuropolis-1984-starring-tom-campagnoli-on-dvd/

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White Noise on Paper: Welcome to “The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn”! GRRRRRR!!!!

Open this comic compilation and the smell of cheap gin, cigarettes and even cheaper perfume wafts right off the page. You know exactly where you are: “The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn”. Welcome to a world where the 1950’s to mid 1960’s pop culture is mixed together with no blurring lines, its a place where space travel and alien visitation is normal. A four eyed detective, Lloyd Llewellyn, hangs out in a bar “The Big White Dot” with his diminutive side kick, Ernie. Together they chase alien dames, beat up Ed Big Daddy Roth monster teenagers from Jupiter, battle man eating Beatniks etc. This was Daniel Clowes first foray into doing his own comic book.

Daniel says all up until the point of Lloyd Llewellyn he had only done 25 pages of actual comics and single illustrations until he sent an Lloyd Llewellyn page in color to Fantagraphics, Fantagraphics gave him his own comic, except it was in black and white, the cover and back being colored which fits the whole aesthetic of the magazine and the time period its paying homage to. Its like reading a black and white sci fi noir film.

Dan says he isn’t particularly proud of his work in “The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn” it was one of his first projects and he says he was working himself up to “Triple A Baseball”. He said writing Lloyd Llewellyn was a way of exorcising pop culture demons and trivia he’d gathered, pop culture from 1948-1966. He thought there was a market for comics that referenced “Dragnet” and Mickey Spillane novels, he said the target audience turned out to be ex hippies who thought it was a satire of the pre 1967 culture they hated and younger kids who were into “Hep Cat” culture and hated anything post 1966.

The series lasted from 1985 to 1994, in it he pays homage to various pop culture relics from the 1950-1966 period including  Red Sovine and Burl Ives lyrics, DC comics of the early 1960’s, characters that are similar to Lee Hazlewood, Esquerita, Alfred E. Newman, Sylvester P. Smythe, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth monsters, 1950’s “Super Duck” and “Plastic Man”, movies like “Detour”, “Devil Thumbs A Ride”, “Touch of Evil”, “Brainac”, “Thrill Killers”, “Homicidal”, “Straight Jacket” and “Psycho” and TV shows like “Dragnet”. Despite what Clowes says (and his later stuff is better) I wasn’t bored one minute with this thing. I loved this world, I’ve read worse and won’t review those on here.

In this book is the foreword and afterward to the first version of this collection called simply “#$@&! Parts one and two”. This book is a must for Daniel Clowes fans, problem is this book is out of print and rare. While “Fantagraphics” is one of my favorite companies out there, their refusal to republish past stuff, even in limited quantities makes me insanely mad. The prices are utterly fucking ridiculous, I was lucky to get this copy for 150 bucks from Australia. Utterly ridiculous. From “Fantagraphics” point of view they probably wonder why they should reprint something barely anybody knows or cares about but the problem is they do it all the time. I wish they’d give Lloyd Llewellyn the same treatment as Dan’s other work like “Velvet Glove Cast In Iron” and “Eight Ball”. There is stuff released that is selling on ebay and various sites for insane amounts of money I would never pay, no matter how much I want it. Until I started searching I didn’t think I’d ever read “The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn” and I despaired of ever seeing this visual white noise. There is a lot out there I want to see but never will because of insane fucking collectors and sellers who drive the price of something way the fuck up, sure scarcity causes the costs to sky rocket but c’mon, some of these sellers are just ripping desperate schmucks off. (RANT OVER. LOL!)

“The Manly World of Lloyd Llewellyn” was released in a limited print run of 2000 copies, wish they’d do another so all of you out there could experience Clowes’ strange noir, sci fi, retro world. If you want a copy I say do a search on your favorite internet search engine, the physical copies like I have are gonna straight up rape your wallet raw, and on amazon right now the cheapest available copy is 727 bucks! EEEEK!!! When I searched I could find no download links, if you want to search for a copy good luck to you and good luck hunting!

 

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Visual White Noise Theater: Its “Baron Against the Demons” (2006) tonight, folks!!!

Its always refreshing for me to see practical effects, I know when it comes to movies I sound like a broken record but I can’t stress enough how much I hate CGI over saturation, unless your doing a straight CGI animated movie, if I see your movie has too much CGI there goes my popcorn at the screen and there I am walking out the door. Now when a movie comes along and uses 50/50 practical/CGI or better yet mostly practical (I know CGI can’t really be avoided, my ideal modern movie would be one that uses practical and optical effects through the whole thing). “Baron Against the Demons” is one of those 50/50 movies that is low budget, uses practical and green screen effects. Its a “Heavy Metal” comic strip brought to life and “Heavy Metal” also had a majority of European artists working for it, “Baron Against the Demons” is from Spain, and its unlike anything I’ve seen. Its jaw dropping: scantily clad women, spurting blood, a maniac sword wielding albino, foam rubber puppets, and Catholic fanatics in space. Uh yes tickle that white noise funny bone.

“Baron Against the Demons” was written by Ricarod Ribelle and is a expansion of a short film he did “Exocorio Deus Machine: La Mision”. When watching the movie its kind of hard to figure out the plot, the thing is a bit of a mess, visually its jaw dropping, for a low budget b movie they do get the best for what little money they had. I guess back in the mid to early 2000’s it was still kind of cheaper to use practical effects. From what I gather this takes place at the end of the 21st when demons either from outer space or hell have taken over the world.

A Catholic religious organization called “Exocorio Deus Machine” fight them to gain back control of the earth. The Baron is an fanatical, albino whirlwind of righteous violence, one of the new Crusade’s best warriors, he gets taken prisoner by a witch queen named “Lady Pervertum” she has sex with the Baron unwillingly and tortures him until he gives up his semen to inseminate the Ragnarok beast to breath into existence the anti Christ. This movie is a Gwar concert and a Heavy Metal comic strip rolled up in one.

The creatures and costumes are really Tokusatsu like, this seems like a “Power Rangers” for adults. The funny thing is, the only real nudity shown in the movie is the sex slaves carrying mutant babies and all those sex slaves are big titted foam rubber chicks in leather S and M get ups. In fact “Baron Against the Demons” plays on the pleasure/pain thing a lot throughout the movie. Also there is clown androids who laugh constantly and work for Lady Pervertum, the androids start to evolve, becoming religious, burying each other and worshiping the Baron as their messiah. Yeah this fucking movie is insane.

The Baron is bad ass, after being shot at, beaten, and tortured he still fights like a banshee not caring if he literally bleeds to death until all evil is exterminated off the face of the earth. He is a fanatical Catholic neo crusader but he finds out that there is much more going on with himself than just serving his Catholic war organization. Maybe its a language barrier but again this movie is all over the place, there is so many different elements, creatures and characters just thrown in a huge blender. Depending on what your tastes are like this movie will be the best thing you ever tasted (me) or you’ll spit it out and rinse your mouth out with salt water.

In “Baron Against the Demons” Satan shows up as a giant, red eyed worm waiting for the anti Christ to be born, it looks like a practical effect creature filmed and put into a computer to make it see through. One thing this movie really excels at is the various costumes and creatures in this movie, really the whole look and aesthetic of the movie overpowers the scattershot story, again this really reminds me of a “Heavy Metal” magazine comic strip. Its European, its erotic, its violent and it makes no sense.

So would I recommend this? Hell yes I will, this is one I wish more people watched and talked about. I’ve looked for more info on this movie and it was very bare bones when it came to finding info. The cast is all Spanish, there is supposedly a region 2 DVD out there with English overdubbed that was released, it isn’t streaming anywhere on any platform. Damn shame, this would be up Prime’s and/or Tubi’s dark, b movie alley.

This movie can’t make up its mind if its a weird S and M movie, a sci fi movie, a post apocalyptic movie, a horror movie etc. Its all those god dammit!!! “Baron Against the Demons” is a experience you won’t yet forget. Guaranteed, even if you hate it. So where do you experience…uh this thing on a physical plane? Well try here: In non existent.

But if you want to take a trip on the astral plane to experience it you can go here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/C0mTsBi4KZmD/

Your Welcome.

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Web Site Spotlight: Bleeding Skull

If “Bleeding Skull” was an archeologist, they’d be the type who specialize in digging up something nobody really cares about. They’d be that weird archeologist who doesn’t go looking and digging for rare dinosaur bones, treasure laden tombs and forgotten cities that would wow the world and get them a show on “The History Channel”, instead they go looking for dinosaur dung and broken shards of pottery from a tribe nobody gives a shit about. But you see, they serve a purpose, sometimes that dung is the dung of a dinosaur that hasn’t been discovered yet and that pottery might have veins of gold in it, though thats very rare. “Bleeding Skull” serves that purpose in the world, they dig up these movies that some crazy high school student or dad who wanted to be a film maker made using a cheap camcorder. The “Shot-On-Video” i.e. “SOV” movies, no budget travesties that are white noise to the nth degree, visual white noise that will have your eyes popping out of your head. Some of these movies actually saw distribution and ended up on the racks of video rental stores and some, like “Boarding House”, were actually fucking released to theaters. In other words, movies nobody gives a shit about. They also dig up really low budget movies with has been actors or wannabe actors. I prefer these weird archeologists, God speed their mission!!!

I discovered this web site through their first book “Bleeding Skull: A 1980’s Trash Odyssey”, it was a recommended book on Amazon because of my likes. I was automatically interested, to be honest the first SOV movie I saw was “Black Devil Doll From Hell” because it was in the “Psychotronic Film Guide”. “Black Devil Doll” rended my consciousness, and I couldn’t get it out of my head, it was like a black, carnivorous slug that bored its self into my brain and started to suck. It was a train wreck, it was offensive, dirty, nasty, no budget sleaze I wanted to hate it but couldn’t. I needed to find more like this, and “Bleeding Skull” ran to the rescue.

“Bleeding Skull” was founded by Joseph A Ziemba in 2004, to review these movies barely anybody knew existed. Again the archeologist digging deep in the ground for dinosaur poo hoping to find a new species. Dan Budnik was also involved in the beginning, reading his old reviews and articles in the book and web site always kept me in stitches, hope he is writing jokes for some show now. I  love “Bleeding Skull”, however, the site is what I call a “wallet emptier”, they find movies all the time that I have to see. Most of them are impossible to find on youtube or as a torrent. The chase is actually better than the catch most of the time, when I see some of these movies I am kind of like “Ehhhh” but then I will find that new species of dinosaur and gold veins in that broken pottery and I’ll slap myself silly thinking, “why didn’t I find out about this earlier?!” Joe is a pretty cool guy too, when he reviewed “The Book of Bloody Stories Trilogy” I looked all over for it to no avail, in desperation I messaged him not expecting a response but I got one, he directed me to where it could be found all if which I document here: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2020/11/24/das-buch-der-blutigen-geschichten-translated-the-book-of-bloody-stories-aka-bloddy-curse-1987-1991/

“Bleeding Skull” also teamed up with Mondo Video, a branch of the Alamo Drafthouse to release a few of these hard to find movies, I recommend “Blonde Death” and “Night Feeder” all of which I will review at a later date. Now they’ve teamed up with AGFA and re released even more of these impossible to find movies. All of this is on their web site, reviews, features (some of which dig into new loads of visual white noise), where to buy copies of their first book, the second one “Bleeding Skull: A 1990’s Trash Odyssey” is set to come out this summer and I’ve already pre ordered it. So if movies with titles like “Satan’s Blade”, “Black Devil Doll From Hell”, “Alien Predator”, “Cards of Death” etc. than go right fucking now to this web site: http://bleedingskull.com/

Tell em’ noisepuncher sent ya!

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Visual White Noise Theater: Rated “PG: Psycho Goreman”.

Kids, I am really fucking sick of CGI over saturation, if you comb through my posts one thing that disqualifies a movie in my mind forbeing awesome visual white noise is over reliance on CGI when it should be a tool. That is why I don’t like a majority of super hero movies, it becomes too much and I can tell its fake. Now I know I sound like that crazy old man that lives down the street, yells at you for throwing your baseball by accident in my yard and curses at the clouds. I don’t care, yeah I am old and will continue to have mostly old man tastes. I am damn sick of movies that have no punch and have stupid fucking ridiculous CGI monster battles at the end. I will pick a SOV (Shot on Video) movie like “Black Devil Doll from Hell” anytime over CGI saturated Marvel shit like “End Game”. So whenever I hear that somebody is doing a movie with mainly practical effects I get rock hard and jizz in my jeans. “PG: Psycho Goreman” made me sticky down stairs.

Every kid’s dream is to be able to command a killer alien, which is pretty much the basis of the movie. Psycho Goreman is exiled to earth by a council of aliens because he destroys whole populations and planets. Two kids find PG’s gem which makes kids the master of him, when the council finds out he is awake they want him dead. Pretty cut and dried, and all those aliens are made by hands not on a fucking computer. Latex, rubber, red corn syrup, animal entrails. Burn baby burn.

“PG: Psycho Goreman” has kid actors in it, of course that will turn off a lot of my followers since most kid actors can be fucking annoying and ruin a movie. In my opinion these kids don’t, the girl who plays Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) is “freakin” hilarious (watch the movie you’ll get the “freakin” part). How I found out about this movie was I was a huge fan of the film collective “Astron 6” their special effects expert on their short and feature length films was a man by the name of Steve Kostanski, whose previous special effects work was on the  the great “Manborg” (director also), “Father’s Day”(director also), “The Editor”, the awesome, Lovecraftian “Void” (director also) and “Leprechaun Returns”(director also), granted all of his movies have a smattering of CGI but in almost all of his movies its mainly practical effects and in “PG: Psycho Goreman’s” case, as well as “Manborg’s”, stop motion. Anybody who uses stop motion these days goes in the gold book.

This movie is really fresh off the boat, it hasn’t even rotted yet and it doesn’t stink. As of today its a couple months old, truth be told I don’t know how to describe this movie, I’ll take a shot at it, its like a cross between 1990’s era “Power Rangers”, “E.T.”, “The Guyver” and one twisted Rob Zombie music video. This movie is just fun and while a lot of you will get really mad at the jokes and throw your cheap beer at your big screen TV, I was rolling all over the floor laughing. This movie made me happy, sometimes I want something that makes me think, be angry, be sad etc. Then there is movies like “PG: Psycho Goreman” that are just fun and stupid.

Take it from Steven in this interview with Mashable: “It’s mostly inspired by my experiences as a kid, I grew up in the video store, constantly going to rent movies with my family every weekend. There were a lot of scenarios where I would rent movies that were not suitable for kids, and so ‘PG’ is a bit of me working through some of those traumas.” Gotta love childhood trauma. So get traumatized and think me later.

To get hacked to pieces by alien god go here (and yes you have to pay for it, dammit, more visual white noise like this needs to be made): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwDGB214hM8

If you want to get physical like I prefer (and I will end up eating your soul) go here: https://www.amazon.com/Brooks-Alexis-Hancey-Nita-Josee-Hanna/dp/B08Q9VZRDV

The full mashable interview here: https://mashable.com/article/pg-psycho-goreman/

Update: “Psycho Goreman” is available in blu ray!!! Highly recommend going over to the distributor, Raven Banner, and picking up the limited edition sets of the movie, I got the one with the action figure and there is one with an O card here: https://ravenbanner.store/search?q=Psycho+Goreman

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Visual White Noise Theater: Re “Possessor” (2020) of bodies.

Identity Crisis. Confusion. Body Changes. Mind Melding. Sounds like a Cronenberg flick, and you’d be right about that except this is a different Cronenberg, this is sonny boy Cronenberg who is a chip off the old block. Brandon takes after his old man in all the right ways, I am very picky about new and modern films. I rely heavily on people, and web sites I trust who have the same tastes as me to point me in the right direction. I am not a movie snob who only watches flicks from 1910’s to the early 1990’s (well that is mostly what I watch but take from that what you will) There is still good films and film makers out there, you just have to search them out. “Possessor” proves that beyond a reasonable doubt, I rarely post negative articles about things because if it wastes my time I don’t in turn want to waste yours. Money you can get back, time you can’t unless you have a time machine that can make you younger and take you back in time, if you have something like that drop me a line. Anyways I am going off on a tangent here, maybe a “Possessor” has taken over my body, that would be a good excuse for some of the shit I write on here.

Andrea Riseborough (who played Mandy in “Mandy”) plays Tasya Vos who works for a shadowy agency whose clients hire them to take over the minds of certain people who get forced mind implants for various reasons, and then the person with the implant is made to commit suicide by the person who takes over their mind via a machine. This all smacks of “Videodrome” to me. Problem is, as the assassin takes over different minds the assassin starts to lose their bearing in their own body and their own reality starts to deteriorate. Tasya Vos’ handler, Girder (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, if you don’t know who she is you should have your head examined) is concerned about Tasya’s attachment to her family and  slow mental deterioration. Despite this she agrees to take a job killing a CEO, John Parse (played by Sean Bean, again you know who he is don’t bullshit me, he’s been in everything) by taking over the boyfriend of his daughter. I am just gonna leave it there. Things go shit whack crazy really fast, your gonna be mind fucked so hard you won’t be able to think straight for a week. It will call into question your perception of yourself, reality and the universe, yeah that was pretentious and yeah I typed that. I can be pretentious sometimes too. Anyways, I recommend this one, this one is relatively new, Brandon did one other movie before this that I want to check out called “Antiviral” about people who buy the viruses of famous people and get infected by the disease their heroes were infected by. Again “Antiviral” seems to play with different identities.

 

You can watch this on Amazon Prime. I’d highly recommend it, Brandon isn’t completely like his dad but he is very close to the good things. Can’t wait to see what else this guy has in store for the future.