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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Apr 30, 2018
- 4 min
The JAWS Rip-offs: Barracuda - 1978
SPOILER ALERTS: This is a review of the 1978 B-movie and JAWS rip-off Barracuda. If you, for some reason, don't want spoilers about this then stop reading here. Of course, with the success of JAWS (and it was a tremendous success), that meant a lot of other movies immediately tried to cash in on the idea of sea creatures attacking people. The rip-off movies came from all over the world. For example, from Italy, came the killer octopus movie Tentacles. From bad-movie auteur Di
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Bryan Alaspa
- Apr 23, 2018
- 4 min
Enjoy the Silence: A review of 'A Quiet Place'
Possible SPOILERS ahead: This is just a review of the terrifying new horror movie A Quiet Place, and I will try not to give too much away. However, if you are one of those oddballs who prefers to know nothing about a movie before you see it - stop now and come back later. 'Kay? Have you ever really sat in silence during a movie? I mean, really, really, total and utter silence. You may think you have, but until you see the new movie A Quiet Place, you have not actually sat the
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Apr 16, 2018
- 5 min
Why the horror of "Jaws" still works on me (part three: the movie)
SPOILERS: I cannot believe I have to write this about a movie that came out in the 70s, but if you haven't seen the movie Jaws (what is your problem?) then there are spoilers ahead. Like, big ones. The movie rights to the novel Jaws were sold very quickly. The publishers knew they had a hit on their hands even before it shot up the bestseller list. The question was, who the heck was going to direct it? How would it be filmed? Also, how did you translate this novel that had so
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Mar 25, 2018
- 3 min
A healthy respect for spiders
It's a funny thing how life works sometimes. Not too long ago (keep in mind, I still think the 90s were "just a few years ago"), I wrote a blog about how I hated and feared spiders. I killed spiders left and right anywhere and anytime I saw them around. I especially enjoyed spraying them with things so that I could see them crawling around before dying. Yeah, I was a spider serial killer. Then I started working for, of all things, a pest control company. Yeah, my day job invo
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Mar 2, 2018
- 1 min
Reminder: Audiobooks and reviews
Just a quick update folks! I am busy working on a freelance gig and the third Elementals novel - as well as trying to promote my new novel S.P.I.D.A.R. That one is available as an ebook, in print and audiobook version. So, you can get S.P.I.D.A.R. as an audiobook as Audible, but I also have seven other works there available for you to listen to from a variety of voice talents. They were all amazing to work with and if you just never have the time to read, listening to a book
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Feb 26, 2018
- 3 min
Audiobooks: Listening to the horror
The first time I listened to an audiobook it was way back in the late 80s when my family and I were about to hit the road for a long roadtrip. It was a huge box of cassette tapes to listen to on my Walkman of Stephen King reading The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. As a fan of King, I had heard of this novel, but knew it had only been released in a limited release and this was the first time I had seen it made available in any format to the public. Riding in the car across the mo
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Feb 22, 2018
- 3 min
The Real Life Whittier Alaska
For my new novel, S.P.I.D.A.R., I decided it would be fun to set it in a place cut off from the rest of the world. A place where it would almost be feasible that the actions taking place within the novel could happen. That meant creating a place totally cut off - perhaps one where pretty much the entire population lived in one very large building. Well, for inspiration, I turned to the real-life town of Whittier, Alaska, then named my own fictional version after it and filled
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Bryan W. Alaspa
- Feb 21, 2018
- 3 min
Spider Facts: the Black Widow
There are few spiders in the world with a more fearsome, and undeserved, reputation than the black widow spider. They are just the epitome of "evil" to a lot of people. They are a shiny black with the bright red hourglass markings. They are notorious for being deadly poisonous and for eating their mates - giving rise to the idea of wives who kill their husbands being labeled "black widows." There was even a movie out in the 80s with that as a title about a vicious woman who d
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