Oh, and there are spoilers below.

Some grad student somewhere has written a foot-thick dissertation on Fortress, the dystopian prison movie directed by Stuart Gordon (who also brought us many horror classics such as Reanimator, plus crazy science fiction classics Robot Jox and Space Truckers.)

Fortress is like a weird parable about the state trying to control your sexuality — Lambert is in prison because his wife, Loryn, became pregnant a second time, violating the state's one-child policy (even though the first child died at birth.) Now he's sentenced to 31 years in a corporate-run facility, where they won't even let him fantasize about heterosexual sex (but gay sex is apparently quite common, judging from some of the jokes.) Later on, the cyborg director of the facility — the one who's spying on Lambert's sex dreams in this clip — tries to get Loryn to divorce Lambert and marry him instead. When that doesn't work out, he sentences her to have her baby by lethal cesarian section. In the end, the married couple gets away, but an exploding truck crashes into the building where Loryn is giving birth — so she has to give birth while simultaneously outrunning an explosion. Hard fucking core!

There are so many great scenes in Fortress that deserve inclusion in found footage-land, including the bit where Jeffrey Combs probes the other inmates' intestines and gets the intestinal pain device out of them. (It also explodes if they try to escape.) And then the scene where the cyborgs are going to slice open Loryn's pregnant stomach, and Combs races against time to install a virus on the evil corporation's mainframe — one of the most unrealistic hacking sequences in movie history. But the "wet dream = pain" sequence is probably the most classic. [IMDB]

After secret military scientist Combs is killed by punks with ice picks in a nightclub, it falls to his motorcycle-lovin' girlfriend to save the titular Cyclone motorcycle. I love this early scene where the now-dead Combs has left her a videotape explaining how to use the motorcycle. For some reason, it includes a brass knuckle knife and a bunch of rockets. OK, the rockets make sense.

But then we have to wait through the whole damn movie, watching Thomas get tortured and then lectured by Martin Landau, before she actually uses the damn bike to blow anything up. In the meantime, she's chased by the punks in a series of old cars, shocked repeatedly with jumper cables, and wears indescribably awful skin-tight jeans which don't even flatter the infinitely lovely form of Thomas. When she finally escapes, rescued by the one non-corrupt person in the movie - a butch older cop lady in an awesome jumpsuit - she finally lets the Cyclone rip in this awe-inspiring scene. Here's the sad part: The true breakthrough technology isn't the Cylone, it's the power source for it. The power source is an infinitely renewable form of infinite energy that can replace fossil fuels and make the Earth green. But we wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands (i.e., the Chinese! Or maybe the Japanese! Or maybe just, you know, Them Orientals!). Why it would be bad for anyone to have a power source that replaces fossil fuels is never explained.

But luckily, before the bad guys can start cleaning up the planet or something dastardly like that, Thomas throws it into the flames created by Cyclone. Thank goodness that evil technology is gone, where nobody can get to it! Ah, the 1980s. Good times.

Cyclone via IMDB

Chadam Voice-Over Exclusive from io9 on Vimeo.

The trippy little web series, soon to have a home at the WB.com, is being created using Unreal Engine (which is responsible for such gorgeous video games as Bioshock). The story follows a blockheaded boy, Chadam, who has the glandular power to change the world with his super-imagination. The amazing Jeffrey Combs plays the evil villain, Viceroy. The creep-fest of delightfully spooky characters comes from the mind of Alex Pardee, and we can't wait to see more. Until then, this video, and a screenshot from the actual series, will have to do.

Luckily, the rat gets his chow. Or will the chow fight back? After all, once you're a zombie, all your body parts take on a life of their own.

It won't surprise you to find out that this brilliant movie is the brainchild of my personal deity Brian Yuzna, with special effects provided by Screaming Mad George. They're the same team who provided you so much pleasure several weeks ago with this NSFW scene from Faust where a lady's body parts suddenly get a little . . . out of proportion. Basically, you always know you're watching a Yuzna flick because there will be lots of creative gore mixed with foot fetishism and weird sex.

I highly recommend Beyond Re-Animator — this scene hardly does justice to a movie where one of the bad guys spends most of the movie as a severed torso swinging from bar to bar through the prison. And of course, the zombie rat and zombie penis meet again several times . . .

Beyond Re-Animator

I resisted the temptation to include people like Katee Sackhoff, who's only done two shows: Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman. Or Scott Bakula. Or half the cast of Firefly, who've gone on to be on other things. I also decided to leave out Bruce Willis and Cilian Murphy, who have been in a lot of scifi but aren't really "scifi actors" in the way that Will Smith is. Who would you have included on this poll?

In any case, you needn't feel guilty about voting for a good actor in this poll. Everyone here is a good actor, but maybe one of these people should work in other genres for a while. (Which, to be fair, Smith did for a bit.)

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The 4400's crack team of mutant-wranglers are watching a movie made by a 4400 named Curtis with the best mutant power ever: he uncovers conspiracies by writing B-movies. Here he pitches his latest, The Marked, which tells the (true) tale of how future dudes who don't like the 4400 have also traveled back in time to stop the 4400 from saving the world. Yes, everything had gotten really complicated and byzantine by the fourth season, but it had also gotten psychotically rad.

Jeffrey Combs, star of Re-Animator and TV ham extraordinaire, played a mad scientist who invented promicin, a glowing green drug that could make anybody into a superpowered 4400 mutant. (His mind-controlling girlfriend was played by Summer Glau, from Firefly and soon to be in the Sarah Connor Chronicles). Meanwhile, a very Scientology-esque religious leader from the 4400 had taken over Seattle and was making everyone take promicin to bring on the mutantastic future. Plus, there was a lot of weird mutant sex and angsting.

I've always guiltily enjoyed 4400, in part because it cheerfully stole from everything: X-Files, X-Men, TimeTrax, Heroes, and even Scientology. It was always fun and melodramatic, full of culty mutant enclaves, secretive pseudo-government agencies, mad scientists, superpowered babies who grow to adulthood overnight, and a lot of unnecessary hair gel. Plus, the fourth season cliffhanger — now the show's finale — was utterly insane. Everybody in the world was about to get their hands on promicin and go mutant. 4400, you were never afraid to go over the top. I'll miss you.

Scott Peters Announces the 4400 Canceled [4400 Guide]

The latest idea is too on the nose, because it's about a vice president who has a heart attack and dies, which is terrible, because he runs the country, and a kind of Karl Rove-ian character brings Herbert to the White House to revive him. All is well for a little while, and then, of course, havoc has its day. A lot of people they took the idea to didn't want to touch it. And, of course, the real power in it would be to get it out before they are out of power.

OK, why the fuck did Uwe goddamn Boll get to direct a gory political satire (the wretched Postal), but Stuart Gordon - who actually has a brain and some writing ability - doesn't? What the hell, people? I think the problem is that Hollywood doesn't want progressive politics in movies to offend the delicate white liberal sensibility. Politics should be sanctimonious, and no bodily fluids should be involved. Somebody like Michael Moore gets to make "funny" political movies because he's actually an irritating dogmatist who is boring to watch, but Gordon - who threatens to entertain us - is being told zombies are just too political for the B-movie crowd.

Famous names: Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, Connor Trineer, John Billingsley, Dominic Keating, Linda Park, Jeffrey Combs, Brannon Braga, Rick Berman

Crunchy goodness: 2

Stunt casting: Quantum Leap's Bakula as the intrepid captain, who never quite loses his dazed look, as if wondering where he's ended up this time.

Life lesson: Humans may be new to interstellar travel, but our ballsy shoot-first-ask-questions-never attitude is worth way more than the Vulcans' hundreds of years of experience.

Deadliest spoiler: Trineer sacrifices his life so Captain Archer can survive to give a speech to the new Galactic Elk's Club.

StarTrek.nl - News, Episode Guides & More.

Famous names: Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs

Crunchy goodness: 5

Sight you'll never unsee: After West decapitates and reanimates his rival Dr. Hill, the headless undead doctor carries his head around in a bowling bag and kidnaps a young woman he's taken a fancy to. Hill strips her, straps her to a medical table, and then - well, let's just say he gives new meaning to the phrase "giving head."

Sequels: Followed by Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator, both directed by Gordon pal Brian Yuzna, who memorably includes a zombie rat vs. zombie penis sequence in Beyond Re-Animator. Gordon returns to the franchise in 2008 with House of Re-Animator, starring William H. Macy as the president, who gets involved in re-animation shenanigans.

Most memorable product tie-in: In The 4400, Jeffrey Combs (our beloved Herbert West) plays a mad doctor who invents a glowing green serum that he injects into people with a giant syringe to give them mutant powers. The glowing green syringe is a near-replica of the one he uses in the Re-Animator movies.

Reanimator - Fansite with many extras including the original short story.