City of the Living Dead and Stone Sublimely Self Righteous Ale

So when I was a kid and began watching horror movies I remember being wowed by the first Final Destination movie.  I thought it was the first movie that really focused on each death scene.  I had been used to movies that relied on cut away shots and the idea of gore instead of in your face gory fun.  Then I saw my first Italian zombie movie and found out that gore existed well before Final Destination.  City of the Living Dead is a okay zombie movie and an AMAZING horror flic.  Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.  I have seen this movie once before.  Knowing how amazing this movie is I needed to pair it with an equally amazing beer.  In the perfect pairing of dark and soulful beer and zombies I chose Stone Brewing Company’s Sublimely Self Righteous Ale.  It is strong enough to punch you in the mouth with awesome flavor yet gentle enough to settle your stomach after watching all the gut wrenching horror in the film.

WHAT IS THIS FACE!!!

This movie starts out like so many other awesome/horrible zombie movies…with a séance.  This group of crazy kooks is sitting around having a séance when one of the women gets a vision of the end of the world (all originating with a priest hanging himself thus opening the gates of hell).  She gets so scared she dies!  There is some real comedic gold as the cop questions the other members of the séance after her death.  He’s convinced they’re all on drugs and he’s hell bent to prove it….even if balls of fire emerge from the floor for no reason at all????  “WHERE’S THE STASH!  IS IT IN THE TOILET!!!!” I love it.  Then we introduce the other three characters from which this movie revolves; a reporter who’s determined to discover the truth, a crazy woman, and her shrink.  The reporter actually went to the cemetery to snoop around and ask questions about séance dead girl’s death.  He’s the hero as he hears her screams and rescues her.  “But I thought you said she was dead?” you ask.  Well that my friends….is the magic of Italian horror.  They do whatever the fuck they want and don’t apologize for it.

The beer!  The website claims they use Chinook, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops.  I’m a HUGE Chinook fan.  They fight where other hops roll over and play dead.  Amarillo is another wonderful that’s interchanged with the famous Cascade quite a bit.  I like them a lot.  The beer pours a DARK almost opaque black with hues of brown at the edges when held to the light.  A nice thick creamy brown head floats on top.  It’s a lot more than I expected from such a strong dark beer.  Bottle says 8.7% abv and website claims 90 IBUs.  That’s a lot!  LOVE IT.  Have your wife put the kids to bed it’s time to drink!  The aroma has a punch of hops.  There’s loads of citrus and pine, pulpy fruit and dark sweet malts.  It smells slightly burnt and pretty well balanced for so many IBUs.  The first sip leaves my head spinning.  I don’t wait the required few seconds for taste buds to fully appreciate the beer before I’m gulping away again.  This beer is irresistible.  It’s a perfect balance between a crisp dryness, and a deep complex sweetness.  There’s the hop bomb that you expect with the maltiness and roasted character you didn’t think you could have. Stone really does….have their cake and eat it too.  A nice full mouthfeel with slightly above average carbonation rounds this beer out and makes it much more drinkable than you would expect from 8.7% and 90 IBUs.  For all the boasting Stone does they really do back it up.  Budweiser as the king of beers?  That’s delusional.  Stone as Sublime and Self Righteous….they really do deserve it.

There moto should be…Stone beers.  Making life suck less, one beer at a time!  Or something like that.  Here's their rant that they put on the back of the beer.  IT'S AWESOME!!!

The plot jumps around more than a fifteen year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.  This movie has something to do with Salem which burnings but the town that this takes place in isn’t Salem….it’s Dunwich.  They never really explain why the witches have anything do to with this but it’s okay.  We’re not watching this movie for the plot we’re watching it for the best gory gem Lucio Fulci has ever shit out.  Let’s go through some of my favorite scenes.

Trapped – So the young physic that was temporarily dead (Mary) came to inside of her coffin as she was in the process of being buried alive.  She claws at the coffin and gets really bloody.  Then our hero reporter decides the best course of action is to start slamming into the coffin with a pick ax.  He connects several times right next to her face.  It’s wild.

Guts – The dead priest has my all time favorite superpower.  Just by staring at someone he can make them vomit out their guts.  This is by far one of my favorite horror movie scenes.  The amount of guts that push through this girl’s mouth is inspiring.  You can even see the stomach and the liver at the end.  AWESOME.  It goes something like this....

Look into my creepy eyes.  I'm a dead priest!

Oh my god my eyes are bleeding but i can't look away.

Oh now I feel so sick.....like my guts are....AHHHHHH.  AHHHHHHHH...blwohsod  FUCKING AWESOME!!!!

The Drill – Creativity is important to me.  I can only watch the same shot of a person ripping away a fake plastic neck piece so many times.  In this scene a young pervert boy suspected of murdering another girl (the dead priest did it) is caught talking to some guy’s daughter.  He flips out and ends up running the kids head into a big drill bit at an incredibly slow speed.  It’s hard for me to understand his motivation given all the facts surrounding the event.  I love the way you get to see the drill bit coming out the other side of his head.  Well done!  This one goes like this......


I heard you were a pervert!!!!  That girl you were dating threw up her guts!  You made her throw up her guts!!!!  Now i'm going to push your head into a drill.......really........really.......s....l.....o.....w....l....y!!!!!

Maggots – At one point all four of our character sit and chat it out at some apartment.  But at the end of the talk, when the all realize the weight of their situation, the windows fly open and maggots are flying into the room.  Thousands of them.  They stick to the faces of our characters.  I would have ducked or turned away, but all they did was squint and take it in the face.  Real troopers these guys.  The extras have a funny bit about that.

Oh my god i'm getting pelted by thousands of maggots.  What did i do to deserve this?!?  Oh sweet lord no!!!!

Oh wait someone's calling....hello.....oh yes i'll have to call you back i'm being pelted by maggots.  Oh yes i know horrible.  Okay i'll call you after.

Head Busting – The key here is forearm strength.  If you do enough gripping exercises then someday you too can grab the strange budging back of somebody’s head and smush it!!  If the movie is anything like real life the result will be the brains pouring out but the person still able to scream somehow.  I guess the screaming portion of the brain is still intact.

No cool pics for this but just imagine a hand grabing the back of a head till the fake back part comes off.  That's pretty much it.

This movie doesn’t make sense but its still really good.  There are a lot of small scenes of overacted gold that really make this movie worthwhile.  Re-watching this movie makes me think I should go through my top 25 list and reorganize a bit, because this deserves to be in it.  And the beer makes it even better.  It's a get drunk and laugh type of movie.  You need to watch this film.  But not on a full stomach.  It's really really gory.  I have a picture of the last guy that watched this  movie.

Great beer, great movie,.....great life.  Keep drinking.  Until next time!

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/12

Appearance – 2/3

Taste – 18/20

Palate – 3/5 

   Overall – 8/10

Total = 41/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 5/5

 Zombies – 4/5

  Overall – 4/5

Quarantine 2 and Southern Tier's Oak Aged Unearthly Imperial IPA

 (While walking through the DVD section of a Barnes and Noble with my family)

Me: Oh wow!  I didn’t know Quarantine had a sequel!!!......and already on DVD?.....I didn’t hear about it going to theaters.

Wife:  Maybe because it’s too awesome for theaters.

Me:  I think I’m going to get it.

Wife:  How much is it?

(here I bend low to the bottom shelf to take a closer inspection of the sticker)

Me:  Holy shit TWENTY SIX dollars!!!!

Wife:  There’s always santa.

My son: Santa!  Oh I love Santa.  Santa’s always good.

Me:  Oh yea?

My son:  Yeah…Santa make me so….so…..SO happy!
Me:   Me too.......me too.

Three months later Santa came through like Regan for Iranian Hostages.  I had my two favorite gifts under the tree; zombie movies and beer!  There was a pair of sequels; REC 2 and Quarantine 2, oh joy!  It was a few weeks later before I found a free night to drink and watch the carnage by myself.  I sat down with a big bomber of an absolute favorite of mine, Southern Tier’s Unearthed Oak Aged Imperial IPA!

The movie begins and I’m immediately confused.  I expected this film to be done in the same fashion as the first one, but it’s not!  I expected a shaky hand held camera.  Instead they start off with a half shaky/half not transition to a normal shot movie?  It was like the director said “okay people are going to be expecting shaky so go ahead and don’t wear your camera straps and just sort of floppy floppy through the set for a while.”  The result…..terrible!  The acting is absolutely atrocious.  These people need to be taken out and shot.  Were these homeless people who acted for sandwiches?  Really people?  Really?  This movie is just patched together pieces of other movies?  It’s Flight of the Living Dead with a dash of Resident Evil: Degradation and a hint of every zombie movie you’ve ever seen before only worse.

The opening attack scene is the worst for me.  A big fat guy (always funny right?) gets bit by some lab rats in another passenger’s luggage.  During the flight he falls ill and eventually turns into a frothy mouthed maniac.  But in a most unbelievable manner the guy gets up and rushes the cockpit.  At which point it takes several people to restrain him.  Then he slams his face into a steward’s and she goes all coma on us and eventually gets infected (from a rage infected head butt?).  It’s so horrible and such a letdown that I find myself desperately grasping at the bottle beside me.  I need something to take the edge off this terrible movie and I need it quick.

Within seconds I have the top off of the Unearthly and I pour the clear copper/light brown liquid into my small snifter.  I dive in quickly.  I don’t even take the traditional first and second pre-sip smell.  Two gulps in and it hits me.  There’s a smooth but forceful bitterness that pokes at my tongue and slows my rate of swallow.  This is a sipping beer and it’s letting me know that.  The taste is unbelievable.  I’m hit all at once by the massive American hop burst.  It’s lemon grass and grapefruit, but with a pronounced malt background of caramel malts, vanilla, soft toasted oak and flowers.  The label says that it's 11% abv but fails to tell the exact IBU count.....shame.  The malts used are 2-row pale, cara-pils, and red wheat.  They added hops in 3 various stages; kettle hops (chinook & cascade), hop back (styrian golding), and dry hopped (cascade, centenial, & chinook).  I believe it because there is a LOT of hop flavor in this beer.  Now I take the time to properly smell this masterpiece.  It’s pleasant and not overpowering.  With some Imperial IPAs they really hit you, this one doesn’t.  It gently coaxes you into doing things you didn’t think you were comfortable doing….figuratively of course.  I take another sip and this time I pinpoint that delightful oak flutter.  That is the thread that really ties this beer together for me.  It’s slightly to moderately oily with nice resiny sticky pull.  There’s a bite at the back end of it.  The beer has medium carbonation and a slightly heavy mouthfeel that keeps you sipping and feeling satisfied.  I could drink this beer for dinner.  What a beauty.  I think I just drooled on my keyboard.

Back to this awful shit show of a movie.  Despite my best efforts to remain non biased I can’t help but let my disappointment leech into this review.  I expected more of Quarantine not a completely different movie with a variation of the original title.  The only thing that connects this film to the first is the main character who pretends to be an innocent passenger on the flight until he’s revealed as the man who started the virus in the first movie.  He was transporting the virus via his lab rats to be dispersed through the US.  The special effects are terrible and then they use terrible camera effects to try and pull off the same shit that other movies have.  Like when they’re going through the ducts using night vision (which for some reason shows grey scale) just like they did in 28 Weeks Later.  This movie is nothing more than a mosaic of all the movies that have come before it.  Don’t waste your money.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 18/20

Palate – 4/5 

   Overall – 8/10

Total = 43/50

The Movie:

Production – 3/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 3/5

Zombies – 3/5

  Overall – 3/5

Quarantine and Dogfish Head's Midas Touch

Welcome to the review of the biggest “one watch” movies I own, Quarantine.  What’s a “one watch” movie you ask?  Well, it’s a term I invented to describe a movie that’s pretty good the first time you watch it, but you never really want to see it again.  This term can cover all genres.  Perhaps there’s a Mr. Bean movie that you giggled at and sat through but would never watch again.  Or maybe more realistically it was the time you decided to get more cultured and watch Schindler’s List.  Beautiful movie.  You were in tears.  But you’re not going to pop that one in on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn and a beer.  Such is Quarantine, the American remake of the Spanish movie REC (see last blog post).  It casts Angela Vidal (Dexter’s sister) as the lead screamer…ahem…character….in a very close remake of the Spanish version.  The lucky beer for tonight’s movie is Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch!!!  Due to the high cost and availability of Dogfish beers (other than the 90 min IPA which is everywhere) I haven’t reviewed many of their beers.  So here is one of the best genre breaking beers out there!

I saw Quarantine in an EMPTY theater in Virginia when it came out.  Some scenes were so scary that I literally jumped out of my seat!  And that never happens.  But the scary parts were all “one watch” scary.  Like a guy slamming into the floor in front of you after a three story drop.  It’s only good for one go around.  Like that damn youtube video where you watch the car driving along a country road and some shit pops out at you.  I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  So starting the same as REC the news crew is following a group of fireman on a normal night of work when they’re called to assist a medical situation in an apartment.  The American version of this movie was a little more obvious with the sexual tension than the Spanish film.  Us dirty Americans are real classless dogs.  Regardless…when they enter the apartment things get wild.  There’s some fighting, biting, throwing people off balconies, and then angry cops being angry cops (shooting people and going to blows with local media).  After the initial horror the next few minutes are a lot of people arguing and a cop telling everyone to be quiet and calm down and stay in the entryway in one group.  As things take a lull I’ll get into the beer.

Dogfish Head Brewery is one of my favorite breweries in the world.  I would drink lots more of their beer if I was Mit Romney but because I don’t have millions I’m forced to indulge only on special occasions.  Dogfish Head has grown from a tiny brewery run on a 10 gallon system to the #19 largest brewery by volume (Beerinfo.com).  I mean....they've got a fucking TREE HOUSE!!!  LOOK!!!

And that’s going up with the big guys (Bud/Miller/Coors).  I try to stick it to the man by supporting local businesses rather than the giant conglomerate, but what do I do when the little guy becomes “the man” I’m trying to stick it to?

Maybe it’s okay to be big….as long as you keep your soul!  From everything I’ve seen that’s exactly what Sam Calagione has done at DFH.  He has a great business giving full benefits to happy employees, and produces some of the highest caliber beer on this rock.

Midas Touch Golden Elixir is said to be crafted from an ancient recipe that was scientifically derived from ingredients found in 2,700-year-old drinking vessels from the tomb of King Midas.  The label says the beer was brewed using barley, white Muscat grapes, honey, and saffron!!  It’s 9% ABV and a low12 IBUs.  I gently poured the beer into my Great Divide chalice and admired the absolutely stunning gold color.  It pops like a mini sunshine explosion in my glass.  It’s definitely the most brilliant colored beer I’ve ever seen.   But I don’t really care about appearance.  It could look like a cup full of dead cats as long as it tasted good.  The beer definitely has a grape aroma in the front.  It’s like a chardonnay or a Riesling with a sweet malty hue.  Slight hints of honey and at the end there’s a flowery smell I can only believe is the saffron?  And the taste…..oh boy oh boy!

It’s full and sweet.  Elixir is a fitting label for this.  It’s sweet but it doesn’t fall flat on its face.  It’s not flabby and oily like some high alcohol sweet beers.  This one has a light crispness to it.  There’s grape and honey in large doses with a smooth clean yeast finish.  There are flowers and bits of fresh baked white bread.  There’s a high alcohol slap on the tongue that rounds everything out and slams it down your face.  It’s like getting dunked on by Shaq, like fighting a “pre-Lennox Lewis” Mike Tyson.  This beer is one of a kind and original in a way that few are.  It’s like reinventing wheel, only this wheel is not just a wheel, it’s a luxury muscle car that drives itself while pouring you a beer and giving you a little pat on the ass.  It’s like that.

Now the movie is really good.  Now that I’ve had some beer I’m going to elaborate on why exactly this film missed the mark with me.  It’s Angela.  I’m sorry lady but there’s a limit on how much screaming you can put in a horror film before people start rooting for the monster to kill you.  You sped by that line like a drunk Lindsay Lohan.  I think at this point we can just say Lindsay Lohan and assume the drunk part is understood.  There’s so much screaming in this movie that you’ll have a headache.  And it’s the hysterical crazy.  There’s no turning point where the woman finds her inner strength and triumphs over evil.  No this movie is following a hysterical, screaming white girl for an hour and a half until she’s finally dragged off into the dark.  At which point you probably cheer, pop a couple of aspirin and burn the dvd.  I feel bad she’s driven me to this extreme because other than that the characters are very believable and relatable,  the zombies (rabies infected people) are terrifying, the special effects are top notch, and the story is original (other than the fact it’s a remake).  If they muted fifteen minutes of her audio on the final cut of this movie it gets 4.5 dead hands.  But with screaming intact I just can’t justify that kind of score.  It was a valiant effort and a great film, you just need to watch it with the volume on low.

The Beer:

Aroma – 11/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 19/20

Palate – 5/5 

   Overall – 10/10

Total = 48/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 4/5

 Zombies – 4/5

  Overall – 4/5

REC and Great Divide's Espresso Oak Aged Yeti!!!

This is the Blair Witch of zombie movies.  The real one.  The best one.  I had heard rumblings about this Spanish film that was lighting fires in horror movie and indie film festivals.  I had to wait an incredibly long time before I could find a Region 1 format dvd.  In fact it took me so long to find it that I had already seen Quarantine in the theater before I found it!  So I was kind of working backwards so to speak.  I’m pairing this awesome movie with an equally awesome beer…Great Divide’s Espresso Oak Aged Yeti!!!!  This is the beer that keeps me up at night.  I worry that I’ll miss its seasonal release or that maybe Great Divide will be overwhelmed by high demands and won’t be able to get any!!  It’s terrifying…..like the movie!  Okay not like the movie but it’s still pretty scary.  Just to be sure I would get my fair share I bought every bottle my local beer store had.  No joke.  I made it rain.

It’s hard for me to talk about this movie without talking about Quarantine.  It’s hard not to compare the two films and all of their uniqueness or un-uniqueness.  But I will try.  You’ll have to wait for the Quarantine review for their subsequent comparison.  After searching through my own blog I’ve discovered that I have yet to review any of the Great Divide beers!!!  This is something I sincerely apologize about.  Espresso Oak Aged Yeti is one of five Yeti beers.  There’s Yeti the original Russian Imperial Stout, Belgian Style Yeti, Oak Aged Yeti, Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti, and then the mother of them all Espresso Oak Aged Yeti.  Not quite as expansive as the Southern Tier Russian Imperial Stout selection but I think Yeti is of even higher quality.  Great Divide prides itself of full flavored ales such as;

Fresh Hop Pale Ale

Scotch Ale

Farmhouse Ale

Belgian Golden

Double IPA

Baltic Porter

Wood Aged Double IPA

Oaked IPA

English Old Ale

And a wonderful Rye Lager

That’s a pretty wide selection of styles.  It’s something I really appreciate in a brewery.  It’s substantially more expensive for breweries to use different yeasts instead of recycling the same strain over and over on all its different beers.  I appreciate them going the extra mile.  Before I even get the DVD into the player I’ve got my glass ready and I’m pouring the beer.  It’s hard for me to express how beautiful it is.  It’s one of the blackest beers I’ve ever seen (second only to Black Albert).  It’s thick, opaque, and viscous with a dark mud brown head.  The head itself is darker than some stouts I’ve seen.  It’s full of dark roasted malt, French roast coffee, and bitter chocolate.  The aroma is delightful.  I can say delightful and still be “Jack Bauer” manly with this beer in my hand.  You can pretty much do anything while drinking this beer and still be lumberjack manly.  The flavor matches the aroma.  It’s thick and deep with so much malt that I’m a little overwhelmed.  Tons of bitter coffee mix with the high alcohol heat to give the perfect blend of flavors.  The oak mutes it all and brings it all together with the slightest hints of vanilla.  It has low carbonation and a sweet finish that lingers.  This beer is meant to be sipped and savored.  If you see it then buy all you can find.  It’s worth it.

The movie is frightening.  The idea is that a news crew is following their local fire department out on a routine call to an apartment when all hell breaks loose!  Soon they find themselves trapped with feral possessed people as the building is quarantined.  The first person camera work makes this movie feel real without making you sick like Blair Witch.  Because it’s a news team also means that there is a professional camera so there’s no cutting corners with special effects.  The characters are instantly believable and relatable.  Even though you’re reading subtitles!  It’s one of those movies that after the first couple of minutes you forget your reading.

It’s such an original spin on an old genre.  Everywhere the characters turn there is danger.  The movie keeps your heart pounding the entire time.  I’m going to go ahead and give some spoilers so if you haven’t seen this movie you should shield your eyes.  If you’re like me and was watching this movie with the sound way up then when the firefighter got thrown down the stairs you screamed like an eight year old girl.  That shit made me jump!  The coordination to make all of these effects work without cutting from scene to scene and using multiple cameras must have been incredible.  My favorite scene in the movie was only a quick flash when the firefighter used his sledgehammer to explode a demon’s (possessed person’s) face.  He slammed down and blood exploded all over the wall.  AWESOME!

I know I said I wouldn’t do this but a few comparisons have to be made with Quarantine.  First off, REC is way better.  The acting is more believable (there’s considerably less screaming from the lead actress).  And REC is more gory than the toned down Quarantine.  It’s not Dead Alive gory but it’s a classy gory like Pontypool.  Just watch this movie.  It’s a 5dead hand award winner.  This is one for the collection.

The Beer:

Aroma – 12/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 20/20

Palate – 5/5 

   Overall – 10/10

Total = 50/50

The Movie:

Production – 5/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 5/5

 Zombies – 5/5

  Overall – 5/5