The Bad Penny (beta)

Two months in, we’re still savoring the delicious drivel dealt by death-metal band Dying Remains via Merciless Suffering following its mid-September release. We’re also grateful to have recently connected with the Maggot Stomp band and chatted up vocalist/guitarist/bassist Damon MacDonald about its debut LP.

While we had MacDonald on the horn – or the Zoom, or the whatchamacallit – we picked his brain about movies, as we were armed with the knowledge ahead of time that he’s a fan of horror movies. Here are his choice picks:

1. The Thing (1982)

“The first movie that comes to mind is John Carpenter’s The Thing,” MacDonald said. “That was one of the first couple of horror movies I saw when I was young. I think I was 7, and my old man showed it to me, and I was like, ‘This is so cool.’ [My love of horror movies] started there.”

When asked whether he believes in the notion publicly proffered by notably untrustworthy director John Carpenter that there’s a way to determine whether the two guys at the end, MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David), had become The Thing, he replied:

“There was a game that came out tied to The Thing on PS2 and Xbox in 2002 – and it’s been stated that it’s canon – and Carpenter made a jab by having MacReady alive at the end of the game. But it’s still just one of those things that are open to interpretation. You’re never going to figure it out. [There’s also the theory that] the whiskey [the characters drink at the end of the movie] was actually gasoline, but it’s like I don’t know if I buy it.”

When asked to identify his favorite scene in the film, MacDonald said: “The defibrillator scene when [a] stomach opens up and rips [the] hands off [another character is] so sick. It’s gnarlier than the [first] Alien scene with the [chest burst].”