Lord Samper's Library

I love going to the cinema but these days (what with the cost, my being a grumpy middle-aged man and oh yes, my job coming to an end), I don’t go as often as I’d like. Basically, if I am going to go, it has to be the kind of movie where you can’t imagine watching it on the TV without having seen it in the cinema first. You know what I mean ;o) I’ve been pretty excited about the new ‘Masters of the Universe’ film but it didn’t quite meet the threshold for a cinema trip; don’t ask me how I came to that decision, it just didn’t. What I wasn’t expecting though was for the movie to end up on Prime (and free to watch) quite so quickly… I don’t follow the numbers too closely but I had heard that the movie didn’t do too well at the box office; was Amazon trying to claw a little extra revenue back by dropping it into Prime early? Or was I just overthinking it when I could have been watching the movie…? Either way, I thought I’d give ‘Masters of the Universe’ a go, so that’s what I did last nigh...

Sorry it has been quiet here these past couple of days… I’ll be honest, the mixture of medication that I’m on (and the heat) left me absolutely shattered and in no fit state for work, or blogging. So, I did neither :o) Took a couple of days off sick (back into work on Monday) and didn’t even think about blogging. I have been up to other things, mostly cat-sitting (the girls and my ex-partner are away) and all the ‘fun’ that entails – no pun intended ;o) At the time of writing, the cat ‘most likely to do a runner’ is snoozing on a chair; the cat ‘most likely to snooze on a chair’ legged it after dinner and hasn’t been seen since. I’ve got another week of this :o) What I also have though is access to my ex-partner’s Disney+ account and I’ll be using it, over the week, to catch up on, well… I don’t know :o) Any recommendations? I do know that I am way behind with my ‘MCU watching’ so yesterday, I figured I’d put a little dent in that list and... ‘Thunderbolts*’ (2025) When a group of spec...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that while it's never too cold to curl up with a good book (or I'm assuming, a bad one), it can definitely be too warm. Well, we're in the middle of another heat-wave over here and yep, I've got very little reading under my belt this week. I mean, I have managed a couple of books but you should see the pile of books where I've either read a few pages or picked the book up, only to put it straight back down again. Oh well, there's always next week etc ;o) So, what have I been doing in the meantime? I've been watching movies of course ;o) Nothing too demanding (no surprise there...), just good fun to watch, that's all I'm good for at the moment. Lets take a quick look at them then... 'Slither' (2006) Something falls out of the sky and crashes in the woods outside Wheelsy, South Carolina; local resident Grant Grant finds it but it also finds him... Soon, local pets are going missing and then, the residents of Wheelsy...

  It was a lovely ‘late spring/early summer’ (I honestly don’t know when one ends and the other begins…) kind of evening, last night, so you can guess what I did after I’d dropped my daughter off with their Mum… The title, of the post, kind of gives the game away but still, give yourself a bonus point if your first thought was, ‘I bet he went straight home and watched the first two Hellraiser movies’. Because that’s exactly what I did ;o) I’m going through one of those phases where whatever book I pick up, it doesn’t work for me and I have to move onto something else (which kind of puts paid to that TBR Pile I put together the other day…) I know what I’m like, and I know what I like, so it’s not a case of every single book in the flat suddenly becoming a crap read. This is a reaction to work stress, mental stress and a couple of other stresses that I won’t mention here (all sprinkled with a little ADHD). I can’t concentrate on a book so on went the telly for a little ‘Hellraiser’, ...

Yep, it’s ‘Movie Time’ again. I haven’t done too badly on the reading front, over the last week, but there have been a couple of occasions where, for whatever reason, it didn’t happen so I watched a movie instead. Most of these were ‘re-watches’, the kind of thing you have on in the background but don’t pay too much attention to, but I did manage a few that I’d never seen before. Let me tell you about them, one sequel and two examples of my ability to watch any movie if the title is daft enough. Oh yes, and a ‘Killer Chimp’ movie as well… All high-brow viewing here ;o) ‘Night of the Demons 2’ (1994) Six years after the last party thrown at the Hull House funeral parlour, another group of teenagers decide that it’s way past time for another one. Good idea? Not when the original host is back from from Hell and determined to put in an appearance… I had a quick re-watch of ‘Night of the Demons’, the other day and while I’m still not a hundred percent convinced , I had enough fun with it to...

I really almost did... :o)  Reading has kind of stalled over the last few days (mostly work but I’ve also developed an annoying habit of falling asleep the second I turn my work laptop off…) I’ve got no plans for today so hopefully I’ll be able to do something about that, fingers crossed ;o) In the meantime? I’ve had better luck staying awake for movies over the last week (although I still managed to sleep through a good chunk of ‘Shin Godzilla’, dammit) so let me quickly tell you about some of those… ‘Rammbock: Berlin Undead’ (2010) For better or worse, I’ve never been what you’d call an ambitious man but I do have things that I want to do, one of those being to watch as many zombie movies as I possibly can. Not your ‘standard ambition’ but it gets me through the day ;o) Anyway… ‘Rammbock’ is a zombie movie that I seemed to keep finding in various ‘zombie movies you should watch’ YouTube videos but never managed to track down the film itself. That changed the other day when it su...

Yesterday ended up being a little bit of a bonus for this Graeme… :o) My daughters wanted to spend some time with their Mum and I had nothing urgent to take care of (or if I did, I’d totally forgotten what it was, that happens more often than it should) so… I slept in for as long as I could (I didn’t beat any records but it was a good attempt) and spent the rest of the day either reading, watching TV or prowling my flat, trying to satisfy a craving for a particular food that I still can’t quite identify. Tell me I’m not the only person who does that? Anyway… I settled for a couple of Bao Buns in the end (I had to eat something…) but that doesn’t really make for much of a blog post here so, let me tell you a little bit about some movies that I watched... ‘Thrash’ (2026) I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for ‘Shark’ and ‘Croc’ movies, at the moment, so when ‘Thrash’ popped up on Netflix, it was an easy decision to make for a little Saturday afternoon viewing. But… Is it just me or do most Ne...

My reading has kind of stalled over the last few days; there’s a few reasons for it but honestly, nothing that you’d be interested in hearing about. I’m just going to dust myself down and take another shot at it this week instead; that’s all you can do sometimes ;o) As is often the case here; when I’m not finishing books, I tend to watch more movies instead. That’s what happened over the last week and it ended up being a bit of a mixed bag. Let me tell you all about it… ‘Society’ (1989) A Beverley Hills teen feels increasingly alienated from his wealthy family but there’s far more to it than even he realizes. I love ‘body horror’ and I’ve been meaning to watch ‘Society’ for years now, so when I saw the movie was on ‘Shudder’, watching it was inevitable ;o) Now that I’ve seen it, I have to say… erm… You watch ‘body horror’ movies for the practical effects (well, I do) and ‘Society’ does not disappoint. I got what I came for, that’s the bottom line. Plot-wise though, that’s where the fi...

Last night, I turned off my work laptop and settled down in my chair, ready to get stuck into ‘Old Moon Quarterly Vol. 8’ and… The next thing I knew, I’d woken up and it was far too late to read anything, let alone post about it here. I should clarify, it wasn’t ‘Old Moon Quarterly’ that sent me to sleep, it had just been a really long day. I’m getting old... Luckily for today’s post, I’ve got a few more movies under my belt and they weren’t bad ones either. That made for a nice change ;o) ‘Dark Match’ (2024) A small time wrestling company accepts a well paying gig in a backwoods town, only to find that they’ve been hired by a mysterious cult leader with his own plans for their match… The other night, I was having one of those evenings where I really wanted to watch something but it was taking far too long to make my mind up so… I figured I’d give ‘Dark Match’ a go, otherwise I’d watch nothing at all. And… A few days later, I’m still not a hundred percent sure what the point of it was...

I spent a large chunk of yesterday trying not to fall asleep at my desk so I didn’t even try to read anything last night, know your limits and all that… ;o) Nope. I sat down, in the comfy chair, instead and watched a couple of movies; mostly because that was all I was good for but also because I’ve gone through a spell of watching disappointing films, just recently, and I really wanted to break that streak (it had gone on far too long). And you know what? You can consider the ‘Bad Movie Streak’ well and truly broken :o) A zombie movie is more or less guaranteed to always do that (apart from if it’s ‘Hard Rock Zombies’) but there was still room for another movie that I was pleasantly surprised by. Lets start with the zombie movie. ‘We Bury The Dead’ (2025) After an experimental EMP weapon is accidentally detonated off the coast of Tasmania, the populace of the island is utterly wiped out and the Australian government mounts a massive clear up operation with volunteers flown in to collec...

I’ve been more about the books just recently but at the same time, the flat has been a little quiet as well so in the evenings, I’ve had a few movies playing, just for a bit of background noise (and also to drown out the singing from the pub over the road…) The movies weren’t brilliant but that’s ok; I wasn’t after ‘brilliant’, just something to occupy my eyes when I wasn’t reading ;o) Even so, I still managed to find a movie that I really shouldn’t have bothered with. Lets start with that one first… ‘Evilution’ (2008) When an alien life form resurrects the dead and turns them on the human race, a young scientist must fight to contain the catastrophe and eradicate the alien menace. One of those films where I wish I’d paid a little more attention, just so I knew what was going on, but at the same time, it was so dull that my attention kept sliding. That will teach me for insisting on watching every single zombie movie I find… :o) All I’ll say is… If the young scientist really wanted to ...

Well, maybe not that positive, one of these films wasn’t actually that great, but the next week and a bit is (hopefully) going to be a pretty big deal for me so I wanted to start it off on the right note. Well, try any anyway ;o) Anyway… I did manage to get a little reading done over the weekend, there’s nothing like a long bus ride to make some headway in a ‘Siege of Terra’ book, but I started things off with a movie and ended up just continuing from there :o) And here’s what I watched… ‘Predator – Badlands’ (2025) In which a young Yautja warrior (I believe they answer to ‘Predator’ as well) is cast out from his clan but finds a new family on his journey to confront the ultimate adversary… I’ve got to admit, I was a little wary of what I think is the first ‘Predator’ movie to carry a ‘12’ certificate; I mean without the horror, gore and flayed bodies hanging in the jungle, is it really a ‘Predator’ movie at all? On the other hand though, my eldest daughter and I love to hang out and...

After my first full week back at work, in a good three months, yesterday was always going to be one of those days where it wasn’t even worth trying to make solid plans; just wing it and anything achieved counts as a win. So that’s exactly what I did, just got through the day (with my kids so not exactly a chore) and rounded things off with a couple of movies before bed ;o) I’ve tried to focus a little more on reading, just recently, but that was never going to happen yesterday, and I did have a couple of movies in mind. The title, of the post, probably gave the game away but neither movie was that bad to be fair. Not every film has to be a winner (unless you invested in it, of course), so long as they do their job, that’s the main thing. And with that said… ‘The Evil in Us’ (2016) Run time: 90 mins. Six friends celebrate July 4th on a small island but by July 5th, only one of them will be left alive after some recreational cocaine has some unexpected side affects… This was a re-watch a...

I’ll be honest, I did an awful lot of ‘re-watching’ over the holidays and it was just what this Graeme needed, a large dose of ‘comfort’ movies and TV shows. I wasn’t a lot of good for much else anyway but it was nice to have something on in the background while I did things like wrap presents and so on ;o) I did manage to watch some stuff that I hadn’t seen before though, and because my reading plans absolutely went down the drain over the weekend, this post (right here!) is where I’ll tell you about it. Lets start with the obvious one… ;o) ‘Stranger Things’ (Season 5) My eldest daughter and I have been working our way through the series, over the last few years, and while I wasn’t too bothered about watching ‘Stranger Things’ back in the day, watching it with my daughter has been brilliant fun. Now, we really need to finish watching ‘The Walking Dead’ :o) Anyway, there was never any question that we wouldn’t finish it and… I’m not going to go into it loads (the internet has done that...

I’m now officially into the last week and a half of my sick leave and it has done me a lot of good; I didn’t expect to be off this long but I’m glad that I made that appointment with my GP back in September :o) Just one more meeting with Occupational Health and, fingers crossed, I should be good to go back to work next month. All of which is a round about way of saying that once again, I did very little yesterday; literally just what the doctor ordered. I did watch a couple of movies though, and read a couple of short stories, because well, of course I did ;o) Let me tell you all about it, movies first… ‘Good Boy’ (2025) Not to be confused with the 2022 horror movie of the same name (not a bad movie at all, just a whole different relationship between a man and his ‘dog’…) but to be honest, there’s very little danger of that happening. Everyone (and their dog) has been talking about ‘Good Boy’, this year, and I finally got the chance to watch it yesterday morning. Todd suffers from a ch...

I read absolutely nothing yesterday, it ended up being a mix of ‘Warhammer 40K’ with my youngest (her Tyranids rolled over my Space Marines, repeatedly…) and ‘Walking Dead’ night with my eldest. I regret nothing though; well… apart from some truly atrocious dice rolls that is… Anyway :o) I spent this morning with a couple of movies that are worth mentioning here. Let me quickly tell you about them. ‘The Hitcher’ (1986) Jim Halsey is delivering a car, from Chicago to San Diego, and thinks that picking up a hitcher will help him stay awake on the long drive. Staying awake will soon be the last thing on Jim’s mind however. Once the hitcher makes his plans known, all Jim wants to do is stay alive… It has been such a long time since I watched this movie (roughly thirty years) so when I saw it was available on ‘Shudder’, it was definitely time to give it another go :o) It had been long enough, since that last viewing, that I thought it would be like going into it fresh but it ended up being ...