Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

What happens when best selling horror author, dreamweaver, visionary (plus actor), Garth Marenghi turns his power to terrify to the small screen in true auter fashion?



Darkplace. That's what happenes!

https://static.squarespace.com/static/5155e966e4b0fc0d9466068c/t/5320e9e7e4b0c16d0730ee9a/1394665961620/

Sadly, Marenghi's magnum opus was simply too terrifying to viewers to watch and retain their sanity, and he, and producer/publisher Dean Learner, we're cut off in their creative prime. Audiences (except for those who saw the small run in Peru) would have to wait over 20 years for the series to see the light of broadcast, complete with interviews from the key players.

So what is Darkplace?

Darkplace Hospital, Romford, is no ordinary hospital. It it home to the gates of hell (in the canteen), telekenetic rage and attacking office equipment, mutants, ghostly tartan mists, and space brocolli. But only one man can take this in his cowboy-booted stride, and fix it with his magnum .44. Dr Rick Dagless, MD (Marenghi).

Ever under the watchful gaze of Thornton Reed (Learner), the hospital's manager, Dagless must battle the forces of darkness, and be the world's most best surgeon, while raising money to complete the kiddie wing.

Rounding out the cast are Todd Rivers, as Dr Lucien Sanchez, Dagless' good buddy, and Madeline Wool as a... woman.

If you needed any reassuring of the horrificacity of Darkplace, here's a mutant eyeball raping a man...


No expense was spared on high calibre actors


special effects


and slow motion.


Darkplace is a must for any true horror fan.

At least that's what it appears to be.

Darkplace (2004) is, in fact, a comic masterpiece from Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade. A perfect parody of preachy, pompous perversity. Garth Marenghi is part Stephen King, part Ramsey Campbell, part James Herbert and completely terrible. He is a comic misanthrope almost on par with Basil Fawlty, albeit in a very different mold. His fauxlosophic narrations, casual bigotry, and constant explanation of foreign words have endless comic possibilities - French for possibilities...

Coupled with this is the sub-plot of Dean Learner's apparent psychopthay, and, in the DVD extras Darkplace Illuminatum and Horrificata Illuminata, Todd Rivers (Matt Berry) alcoholism (and apparent fact that he's never actually watched the show).

There is also a loving devotion to all the bad soap operas, cheap horror series, and so on, and so many background jokes, that rewatches are mandatory - each new viewing uncovers a new, hilarious detail - particularly look out for the continuity, lip-synch, sound dubbing, and so on - and pay special attention to the music - there are a few recognisable horror influences in there.

It is a loveletter to trash, TV, pop-culture, and epic horror and so, belongs right here on Trash Epics.

The thoroughness of the homage, and the skill with which it has been put together are marvelous. Sadly, for TV channel related reasons, Darkplace only lasted for one 6-episode series, but perhaps that's for the best. I think more would simply spoil the joke. So enjoy it for what it is, and also seek out the spin off series "Man to Man with Dean Learner" from the same team.

Luckily for you, Darkplace is available in its entirity on YouTube.


So sit back, be it on your sofa, armchair or beanbag if that's how you choose to live your life. Dim the lights (or switch them off if you don't have dimmers), put conventional logic to oneside and prepare yourself to enter the world of Garth Marenghi.

Enjoy. I say enjoy...



#Comedy

Jim Parsons, in The Signal (2007)

This movie really runs the gamut, from really demented and disturbing to really demented and hilarious. The Jim Parsons scene was the funniest, I thought. You could definitely argue about that, because there are several extremely funny scenes, but this is the one that my mind goes back to the most, as the one that cheers me up and just makes me laugh. It might not be funny unless you have watched the scenes leading up to it, because there's just so much carnage and mayhem in the preceding scenes that it makes this hapless, cheerful, horny partygoer just ten times funnier than he might have been otherwise.

Electric Boogaloo (2014)

Anyone here seen Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films yet? If not, you must! It's quite the excellent documentary on Cannon Films and Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the two men who ran it. Sure, a lot of what they distributed was considered trashy and their repuation in Hollywood was poor, but the doc makes apparent their love and passion for film and the industry as a whole. While Golan and Globus themselves aren't featured in it, a lot of people who worked with them are and they give a lot of insight into Cannon Films and how the bubble burst with them so to speak.

Trash Epics Rec Challenge?

Word up, homos. With the rec challenge nearly finished over on IMDb, I was wondering who'd be up for something similar here? You'd be up for it, that's who.

There's a couple of advantages to having a challenge here rather than IMDb:
1. Less participants. Prolly only a half dozen or so of us would join in. Dat means, with 5 or 6 recs each, there'd only be a max 25-30 movies to watch over the span of a year. Easy peasy.
2. We all have fairly similar taste, meaning a high hit-rate for movies you enjoy. I mean, we all love boobs and gore and rape and trannies, right? So long as we all keep our recs trashy and epic, it's a guaranteed good time for all.

Sounds amazing, right? Hell, you'd have to be a weak-willed, syphillis-riddled, dog-fucking loser to not take a shot at a challenge this awesome. You're not one of them, are you? ARE YOU?

So if you're interested, say so here. If there's enough interest, then we'll probs kick off around mid January, so's everyone can get their recs in. If noone's up for it, that's cool. I'll just edit this post and thread title, and turn it into a thread full of piccies of Japanese chicks pissing on each other. Win-win!

Who the fuck knows what God wants?!?

I was just thinking, over the past few days, what a great line that is. Most of you probably already recognized it, from.... wait for it... the Aileen Wuornos movie Monster, in which Charlize Theron proved that she is not merely a paltry, run of the mill mega-babe, but one hell of an actress.

Seriously, isn't that a great line? It is under-appreciated, I think. There should be t-shirts and coffee mugs with that line, all over the place, even now, 12-14-ish years later, or whatever. In fact, maybe there are, in communities where that sort of thing is tolerated. I would get a lot of LOOKS if I walked around in a t-shirt like that, where I live. But, whatever.

Lethal Weapon 5 - Extended Version



I'm so glad I found this. It's a movie made by the characters in "It's Always Sunny". A real piece of trash!

My Top 25 Horror Movies.

Dead and Buried 81
City of the Dead 60
Martin 77
Alice Sweet Alice 76
The Thing 82
Possession 81
Rabid 77
The Brood 79
Dawn of the Dead 78
Black Christmas 74
American Werewolf in London 81
The Haunting 63
The Innocents 61
Messiah of Evil 73
Let's Scare Jessica to Death 71
Blood on Satan's Claw 71
Shockwaves 77
Suspiria 77
Cemetary Man aka Dellamorte Dellamore 94
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (71)
Spiderbaby (67)
Carnival of Souls (62)
Scanners (81)
TCM (74)
Grapes of Death (78)

Fav Horror from the year you were born.

1975 (yes I am old)

David Cronenberg's Shivers.

#jungly

Never Sleep Again: The Elm St Legacy (2010)

Has anyone scene this, I can't believe I watched the whole 4 hour Doc. A lot of interesting stuff.

#anightmareonelmstpus

Chainsaw Awards

Are anybody else voting for the Chainsaw Awards over at Fangoria?

I actually think the nominees looks pretty good, it's not just the same mainstream movies, that are nominated in all the categories, like you see most times, when people can vote for these things.

I've decided to take it pretty serious and see all the movies, that are nominated in any of the categories, I have already seen many of them, but I haven't seen Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Similars, Baskin, Under the Shadow, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, I Am Not a Serial Killer, Antibirth, The Love Witch, The Neon Demon, Pet and The Mind's Eye.

Link to how you vote:
https://www.fangoria.com/new/never-mind-oscar-heres-the-2017-fangoria-chainsaw-awards-nominees-ballot/