Cerberus Exploitation: A Grindhouse Triple Feature by Patrick C. Harrison III, M. Ennenbach, and Chris Miller, Narrated by Daniel Caravetta

August 31, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

In Cerberus Exploitation: A Grindhouse Triple Feature, Patrick C. Harrison III, Mike Ennenbach, and Chris Miller nail the storytelling aesthetic of grindhouse exploitation cinema with a Troma flair. It’s particularly appropriate that I mention Troma since this book begins with an introduction provided by none other than Lloyd Kaufman. Like proper triple-feature experiences, the book contains trailers, film credits (with dream casting choices from the authors), and everything a fan could hope for…aside from the popcorn.
Electro-Satan Comes To Wolfe City introduces us to a group of kids hoping to enjoy a summer camping trip, only to have everything disrupted by mutant hillbillies. Ennenbach’s contribution to this collection gets the reader/listener’s attention almost immediately with a musical performance that should have anyone in stitches. From there, it’s a barrage of violence, humor, and all the splattery goodness fans of the genre adore.
Patrick C Harrison III then hits us with his twisted take on the women in prison genre with Vampire Nuns Behind Bars. Replete with lesbianism, sadism/torture, scientific experimentation, rebel uprisings/prison riots, and–of course–vampires. Terrible things are taking place at this women’s prison, where political dissidents and troublemakers–and a handful of nuns–are swept under the rug and channeled into one of two secret chambers where horrors await. When a prison break’s attempted, the balancing act that kept the facility functional gets disrupted hugely, and the halls and cell blocks become a slaughterhouse.
And finally, we arrive at Chris Miller’s Sons of Thunder, focused on a military recovery mission in the dystopian Hellscape outside of the “safely” bubbled cities owned and operated by corporations. Escape From New York and Assault on Precinct 13 come together, producing a malformed and grim, action-packed adventure. Mutants, terrorists, and doomsday cultists stand in the way of an elite team and one man bent on revenge at any cost.
There’s no point in trying to describe the escapades these authors have assembled. It’s something one just has to experience for themself…and I recommend doing so as soon as possible.
Daniel Caravetta’s narration is spot-on, capturing the lunacy and low-budget mayhem of grindhouse cinema in a way only a fan of the films could manage.

Dead End Job by Christopher Ridge

March 9, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Beggars can’t be choosers. But there are more than a few red flags when the homeless man accompanies the ridiculously wealthy man to his palatial home for a million-dollar payday. When one bears a sign indicating they will work for food, there’s typically an implicit limitation to what sort of work they’re signing up for, and the room filled with tools and evidence of horrific undertakings is almost enough to terminate the agreement…almost.
The wealthy man offers his repeated assurances that everything will be fine, despite all appearances to the contrary, and the homeless man agrees to perform the tasks required of him.
Everything is most certainly not fine, not by the loosest definition of the word, but a million buck is a million bucks, and I don’t know that I’d turn down that offer for the gruesome and peculiar requests of the employer.
Christopher Ridge provides readers with a surprisingly strange and entertaining tale with Dead End Job, subverting our expectations every step of the way and leaving us wondering what the hell we just experienced as we reach the conclusion.

You can read this story for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Dead End Job by Christopher Ridge

Bluebeard by The Professor

March 9, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

The folktale of Bluebeard is a particularly awful and gruesome one–as many such tales happen to be–but in The Professor’s capable hands, the story gets molded into something of exceptional and sublime perversity. Gone is the greed and duplicity of the new wife, replaced with lust and a single-minded desire for the titular husband.
Knowing that this is a retelling by The Professor should be sufficient to warn you that this does not arrive at the expected conclusion for those familiar with earlier iterations of the Bluebeard story. There are no antiquated morals associated with woman’s obedience to men in this adaptation. At the same time, there’s none of the Pandoran punishment for a woman’s curiosity at the root of this story. Instead, The Professor deftly casts aside that old world, parochial mentality and empowers the woman by allowing her to embrace the cruel sensuality of her discovery and subsequent abuse.
Naturally, you would benefit from listening to the narration of this title as provided by your purchase on Godless. The soothing, hypnotic cadence of The Professor’s relation of Bluebeard perhaps provides us some insight into why the new wife experienced such a sudden change of heart in her abrupt dedication to Bluebeard as a courter and husband.
Was she caught in some spell?
Are we tangled up in a similar sort of magic when listening to The Professor’s voice?
Do we care?

This title is available through http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Bluebeard by The Professor

Time by Todd Love

January 20, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

It can be difficult living in the shadow of one’s father, especially if that father is particularly successful and celebrated in certain circles…or maybe pentagrams.
Time is a quick and brutal story of a son determined to show his father that he’s not only ready to take over the family operation but that he can be both inventive and innovative in doing so. By the time the story reaches its satisfyingly grotesque conclusion, it feels like we’ve been there for a while, but that’s the nature of forever, I suppose. Time loses all meaning when there’s no end to it.
Choosing a pedophile as a victim is an excellent choice, as it makes it impossible for the reader to sympathize with his plight. It guarantees that we’ll be in it for the long haul, regardless of how vile and cruel the punishment becomes. We’ll be cheering at the sidelines, hoping to see more suffering.
By the time all is said and done, I’d certainly say this son has met or exceeded his father’s lofty expectations. It’s not every day a father and son celebrate by spit roasting a pedophile on their cocks, but in a Todd Love story, one really shouldn’t be surprised.

This title is to be released through http://www.godless.com on January 31st, 2022. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Time by Todd Love – JANUARY 31st

Platinum Blondes: INXS by Todd Love

January 2, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

INXS picks up right where the first Platinum Blondes concluded, though we’re first introduced to Tony and provided with awful glimpses into a childhood from which no one would walk away undamaged. As much sympathy as we might have for the young boy, he quickly erodes that goodwill as we get to know him further, and especially the man he’s become. It similarly doesn’t take long to discover that Tony is no stranger to Tina, the protagonist we became achingly familiar with during the first installment.
The tangled web of connections and intrigue doesn’t end there, and the reader’s exposed to new revelations that paint everything we’ve read before in a different light. Previous sentiments have to be adjusted as new facts become available and more details become clear.
We also learn more about Gwen and Patricia Tobin, the Platinum Blondes orchestrating everything and manipulating the protagonists to achieve their sinister goals. Unfortunately, the more we learn about the two women operating The Platinum Blondes Agency, the more questionable everything becomes, including their judgment.
Todd Love answers questions we had from the first story in this series while providing us with all new questions to be answered in future installments. He leaves us wanting for more but satisfied for the time being.
Violence batters the reader from almost every page, and the story is positively soaked with blood, semen, and other fluids. Monsters elicit sympathy as we witness their development, and those who initially seemed like victims begin to appear more like monsters themselves. In all of this, Love reminds us to leave our preconceptions at the door when we enter The Platinum Blonde Agency.

You can obtain a copy of this story for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Platinum Blondes: INXS (Book 2) by Todd Love

Platinum Blondes by Todd Love

January 1, 2022 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Tina lost everything in one careless, stupid action of a drunk driver. Her husband, her two children, and their chocolate lab all lost their lives in a spectacularly awful fashion. As if she didn’t have enough indignity to suffer through with all of that, she also has a fat, leering pastor to deal with when setting up the funeral arrangements.
When the stranger with platinum blonde hair approaches Tina at the funeral, offering closure and peace, she takes the nondescript business card and forgets about it for a little while. Closure, in the world of Todd Love’s Platinum Blondes, has a way of hammering its way into one’s imagination and searing itself in the reader’s memory.
Love dedicates a significant portion of this narrative to the cruel task of ripping the reader’s heart out and stomping on it as if it were an offending cockroach scurrying across his kitchen floor. He also spends a fair amount of time shoring up our disgust for the drunk driver who stole everything from Tina with his carelessness and disgusting behavior. Then, when we think he’s done screwing with us, Todd Love delivers a twist that Holmes wouldn’t have seen coming.
This first installment of Love’s Platinum Blondes series of shorts is at turns gripping, heart-wrenching, perversely satisfying, and shocking. Platinum Blondes is a short story the reader wishes to continue reading beyond the final sentence, and thankfully there’s more.

This short story is available through http://www.godless.com and you can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Platinum Blondes (Book 1) by Todd Love

Night Shift by Lindsay Crook

October 2, 2021October 3, 2021 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Lindsay Crook tells us a tale that’s a little bit Hostel, a little bit Nightcrawler, and a whole lot of unpleasantness. Does that sound amazing to you? It really should!
As important as it is to love what you do, Hank loves his job perhaps a little too much. As a guard in the high-security facility where the most depraved desires are fulfilled, Hank witnesses atrocities that would shatter the spirit of most people. He is not like most people.
What happens when watching simply isn’t enough?
We’ve all taken liberties at work. There’s no sense in pretending we’re innocent of that. Unfortunately for Hank, his employers are far less forgiving than most. One might expect such a thing from a shadowy, secret organization that caters to only the ultra-wealthy and decadent when legal pleasures are no longer sufficient.
Come walk the halls with us and tune into the monitors as we watch horrors unfold.

Day 2 of 31 Days of Godless brings us this fantastic title from Lindsay Crook. You can pick it up for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app. The link is below:

Night Shift by Lindsay Crook

Fun With Haiku

May 23, 2021May 23, 2021 / MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I saw a call for Canadian writers to submit horror haikus the other day. Unfortunately, I am not Canadian…because it sounded like fun. I was between newscasts–I direct newscasts for our local ABC affiliate Monday through Friday–and I decided I should see just how dark and awful I could get with the haiku template.