The Horror Geek - News, Rants and Reviews From The Horror Geek!

I started the Horror Geek site a few weeks back as an experiment–I wanted to see if I could make something I’d be happy with using WordPress, and I wanted to see if people would actually come to it and read what I was writing. My good friend Josh from VariedCelluloid was kind enough to set all of this up and give me space on his site to try it out.

Now, three weeks later, I’m pleased to announce that the site is moving to its own domain. From here forward, you can find all my rantings, ravings, reviews, and news at TheHorrorGeek.com. I hope you’ll all follow me over to the new URL–update your bookmarks, sign up for the new feed, and hang out with me at the new site. It’s exactly the same as this one, just with my old URL.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Welcome to the Jungle (2007)

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh

Starring: Sandy Gardiner, Callard Harris

Horror Geek Rating: 2 out of 5

When it comes to horror cinema, there are two types of films I love above all others: zombie films and cannibal movies. Zombies have been harder to love over the course of the past decade-a renaissance of walking dead flicks (many of dubious quality) have nearly killed the subgenre. Gone are the days when Fulci and Romero were king and blood and brains threatened to turn theater screens crimson. I miss those days-give me the original Dawn of the Dead over the remake any day. The cannibal film (a distinctly Italian cinematic construct) has fared much better. Given the taboo subject matter (and while horror filmmakers will spend all day telling you how they love to “push the envelope”, most of them don’t), the cannibal film has long been relegated to the annals of European exploitation cinema-coexisting with the zombie film through the ‘70s and into the early ‘80s and then vanishing back into the jungle just like their savage antagonists. Cannibalism has turned up in films over the years, but there’s never been a full-fledged jungle epic like Ruggero Deodato’s seminal Cannibal Holocaust or Umberto Lenzi’s uber-sleazy Cannibal Ferox…until now.

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I’m Mike Bracken, a 35-year-old bohemian living in Oakland, CA. You might know me as The Horror Geek from the two seasons I spent working on Comedy Central’s Beat the Geeks.

BtG is long gone, but I’m still alive and kicking and writing about film (mostly horror, but I’m really into a lot of Asian cinema, cult movies, and other weird crap). I’m putting the finishing touches on my first book: Sick Flicks: The Horror Geek’s Guide to the Greatest Gore Movies of All Time. I also penned the weekly horror film column, The Horror Geek Speaks, at IGN.com. Here’s the URL to some of the older columns: http://filmforce.ign.com/horrorgeek.html

When not writing I’m a weekly guest on the Big O and Dukes radio show in Washington DC. Every Friday night I do a segment with the guys talking about current and upcoming film releases. If you’re in the DC area, you can check out the show from 10AM to 3PM on 106.7 WJFK. If you’re not in the area, I believe you can hear it on the web or via free podcast. These guys are great–if I lived closer to the nation’s capital, they’d have to get a restraining order to keep me from loitering around the studio.

When I’m not on the radio (or watching a movie), I’m usually playing a videogame, reading a book (lots of horror, generally), or listening to some music (old school hip-hop, but I do enjoy some other stuff as well).

I have a wife (Laura), a daughter (Jasmine), two stepkids (Monica and Gabe), a dog (Bear), and way too many cats. The cats weren’t by my choice–everyone else was.