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  1. <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:blogger='http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573</id><updated>2025-07-08T19:45:04.838-05:00</updated><category term="horror"/><category term="lsd"/><category term="sex"/><category term="pre-code"/><category term="Science Fiction"/><category term="drugs"/><category term="roger corman"/><category term="feminism"/><category term="racism"/><category term="acid"/><category term="Comedy"/><category term="psychedelic"/><category term="violence"/><category term="surrealism"/><category term="zombies"/><category term="Italian"/><category term="John Carpenter"/><category term="Richard 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term="rock"/><category term="rock comedies"/><category term="rollerball"/><category term="rome 78"/><category term="ronnie"/><category term="roost"/><category term="rose hobart"/><category term="rourke"/><category term="roy abramsohn"/><category term="roy batty"/><category term="roy scheider"/><category term="royalties"/><category term="rubbernecker"/><category term="rustic horror"/><category term="ruth gordon"/><category term="rutledge"/><category term="rutting"/><category term="sacrificial"/><category term="sadcore"/><category term="sade"/><category term="safari"/><category term="salieri"/><category term="salli sachse"/><category term="sam wood"/><category term="satyriasis"/><category term="sauron"/><category term="savagery switchpoint"/><category term="scenery chewing"/><category term="schlock"/><category term="schneider"/><category term="scimitar"/><category term="scopophilia"/><category term="scrooge"/><category term="scythe swipe"/><category term="self-help"/><category 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farmiga"/><category term="vertigo"/><category term="vice"/><category term="video games"/><category term="videotape"/><category term="vintage TV"/><category term="virgin suicides"/><category term="virtual reality"/><category term="vitaphone"/><category term="vivien oakland"/><category term="volcanic ash makes everyone the same metaphor"/><category term="wallies"/><category term="walter barrymore"/><category term="walter huston"/><category term="warner&#39;s"/><category term="warriors"/><category term="wartime horror ban"/><category term="watchmen"/><category term="weapons"/><category term="web-based horror"/><category term="weirdness"/><category term="white christmas"/><category term="white slavery"/><category term="white-washing"/><category term="wiccan"/><category term="widescreen"/><category term="wild duck"/><category term="wild woman"/><category term="wildman"/><category term="william castle"/><category term="winter soldier"/><category term="witch"/><category term="witching and bitching"/><category term="women&#39;s lib"/><category term="wonderwall"/><category term="world war I"/><category term="wrestler"/><category term="writing"/><category term="wrongslayer"/><category term="wuxia"/><category term="x"/><category term="yoda"/><category term="youth problem"/><category term="zaguarramurdi"/><category term="zeppelin"/><category term="zodiac"/><title type='text'>Acidemic - Film</title><subtitle type='html'>Cleansing the doors of long-haired film criticism since 1987</subtitle><link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/'/><link rel='hub' href='http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/'/><link rel='next' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default?start-index=26&amp;max-results=25'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><generator version='7.00' uri='http://www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>962</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4162924542413554410</id><published>2024-12-26T20:08:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2024-12-26T20:08:21.989-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Waxing Gibbous: Luigi Cozzi&#39;s BLOOD ON MELIE&#39;S MOON (2016) </title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsF0frLXKjREXSuXYC86WrYwlotVhd76q6EmiDGzO4NTaQHPMmbul0wWvPh1h6-xR9ydiSSufbnH7s8uhJT2U3-cVQMgWAqJrkzW7Ait1TTTNFhLE2N6x80e4KEuiUK_Ip9tdu8PpC1QSnrtG27x6KNFmQklLoDMYkmDs6KkgYfCcE5bLsvg/s1880/bkood%20on%20melies%20moon.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1036&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1880&quot; height=&quot;352&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsF0frLXKjREXSuXYC86WrYwlotVhd76q6EmiDGzO4NTaQHPMmbul0wWvPh1h6-xR9ydiSSufbnH7s8uhJT2U3-cVQMgWAqJrkzW7Ait1TTTNFhLE2N6x80e4KEuiUK_Ip9tdu8PpC1QSnrtG27x6KNFmQklLoDMYkmDs6KkgYfCcE5bLsvg/w640-h352/bkood%20on%20melies%20moon.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Once the psychic fell out of her seance chair, and threw up green ectoplasm that turned into a book after white-masked magician zapped her through her crystal ball, and she knocked over a small framed picture of HP Lovecraft on her way to the floor as a fireball came through a door in space to destroy the Earth, and a space oracle named Sylvia narrated a short history of mirror/film magic, from Aristotle up to a 19th century magician from another dimension zapping psychics across time--and dimensions--only then I knew things were going to be OK.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I was home, the Cozzi of &lt;i&gt;Starcrash&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Hercules&lt;/i&gt; hadn&#39;t let unlimited access open source CGI stock footage, license-free music, endless time, and and Final Cut HD video color-style change his insane ways.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;Here,&quot; says the psychic passing the book to her client, played by the actress who played Olga in the original&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Suspiria&lt;/i&gt;, &quot;I believe this is for you.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Yes, Luigi Cozzi&#39;s DIY HD video labor of love, &lt;i&gt;Blood on Melies&#39; Moon, &lt;/i&gt;is meant for me. I&#39;m even quoted on the back of the Blu-ray. To paraphrase Maria Montez in &lt;i&gt;Cobra Woman&lt;/i&gt;, his people are my people.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But until that book, man I&#39;d been holding my breath. He hadn&#39;t made a film in 30 years. &amp;nbsp;People change after 30 years. &lt;i&gt;Anything&lt;/i&gt; might have come along and ruined his artistic voice in 30 years. He may have learned how to write realistic dialogue, or read &lt;i&gt;Story &lt;/i&gt;by Robert McKee, or raised children who &quot;wanna be in the pitcher&quot; as WC Field&#39;s kid says in &lt;i&gt;The Bank Dick. A&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;crabby new wife might have tried to fix his &#39;flaws&#39; and so push him into the hack vortex that has claimed so very many others.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I knew from the trailer that &lt;i&gt;Melies &lt;/i&gt;is&amp;nbsp;a kind of meta-fiction Cozzi capstone, depicting him going about his working day at Profundo Rosso, talking to his wife in bed, hobbling around to visit friends, the stuff legends do when they have nothing but time and Final Cut to make one last statement.&amp;nbsp; And what if he lacked screen charisma? Not every director is convincing when playing themselves. You may lose half your loyal fanbase if they&#39;ve seen you in close-up and you don&#39;t know your angles. They no longer see themselves in you, they just see you--you stole their spot. You made it awkward, like ruining a platonic friendship by hooking up one dfunk night - no matter what kind of &#39;just this once&#39; talk,.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Part of why fans like me love Luigi is his total lack of self-awareness, it&#39;s so endearing and honest, never self-important, never laboring to seem better than he is, never trying to elevate his material and his genre into bourgeois respectability. He attacks a film the way my brother and I used to attack sandcastles with rubber monsters, HO scale army men, and UFO shovels. We grew out of that rich imagination, but not Cozzi. Watching his films, our inner child--patiently sleeping--wakes up like a sad dog when his owner comes home from the war. You forgot he was even still down there in your subconscious menagerie, but he was just sleeping until his best weird friend came over. Watching Cozzi movies, I can feel my inner dig wagging his tale excitedly, in that machine gun style rapidity that signals total joy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwIVa0JJtIqRkPxNlHtbV-cZgxTxQHkfs4_KAYwRIeO_vmhARtip0YuhRKDKoEz2getrLINWJ7tQ828Ud4aZZPwvNBM9Q0vrEybGlydb2f_9sBnAWGVmXONgnxeoy9rCHaOoH66wJZ-5P0DVrsKjRg1Rc1bfQUOE9JTjn13wDrbZRysn6ZJWq/s3069/Louis%20le%20Prince.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1731&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3069&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAwIVa0JJtIqRkPxNlHtbV-cZgxTxQHkfs4_KAYwRIeO_vmhARtip0YuhRKDKoEz2getrLINWJ7tQ828Ud4aZZPwvNBM9Q0vrEybGlydb2f_9sBnAWGVmXONgnxeoy9rCHaOoH66wJZ-5P0DVrsKjRg1Rc1bfQUOE9JTjn13wDrbZRysn6ZJWq/w640-h360/Louis%20le%20Prince.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;BLOOD ON MELIES&#39; MOON&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;(2016) Written/produced/directed by Luigi Cozzi&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Looking&amp;nbsp;sharp for any century in his natty red bowtie, Cozzi starts out the post-credits main body of the film walking down the busy overlaid streets of Rome, opening his store &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.profondorossostore.com/en/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Profundo Rosso&lt;/a&gt;, and wobbling through his day in a kind exaggerated portrayal of himself, short and mystified, muttering to himself looking at old movie stills, as if he&#39;s trying to discreetly introduce us to the world of vintage European sci-fi films while doddering through his day. Neck forever craning back, as if in the front row of the cinema of life, agog at the magic of movies even as his neck hurts There&#39;s a cringe beat when he surprises his wife at home by walking into their kitchen in a tacky red mascot costume, no doubt meant to convey his childlike whimsy. We agree with his wife, it&#39;s tacky. He&#39;s starting out a real square--he even refuses the call to adventure by ushering an agitated guy babbling about mirror dimensions out of the store, not even listening to what he&#39;s saying--just another weirdo. Later, behind the register, he&#39;s so distracted by a phone call to his wife he lets the girl&amp;nbsp;with the book from the seance sneak downstairs to the Argento Museum of Horrors (1) to be murdered by the waxwork/mannequin killer from the&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Blood and Black Lace&lt;/i&gt; exhibit, everything already so drenched in tin can horror he doesn&#39;t even&amp;nbsp;hear her screams, or the blaring non-diegetic royalty-free rock music. He only sees, cleaning up before closing, that she wrote a cryptic note on the telltale mirror from Argento&#39;s seminal&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Deep Red,&lt;/i&gt; and now he has to wash it off and grumble about kids today.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Then later she calls out to him in his dreams from beyond mortality&#39;s dimensional border.&amp;nbsp; Wake up, Luigi! Your particiapation is demanded by the weird interdimensional drama to come.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Even with all that, it&#39;s going to take some big 4 AM staring into bathroom mirror, wondering&amp;nbsp; about which Cozzi is the real one, and being attacked by a dream werewolf, to jolt him into the mystery, especially when the other girl from the seance shows up looking for her slaughtered and interdimensionally-sucked in sister, and mentioning that book. Bro. It&#39;s all connected; and now they&#39;re working together to solve the mystery - each going a different direction! Finally!.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;For Cozzi that means bopping from one friend&#39;s book-filled apartment to another, also stopping by make-up and effects studios, soundstages, film schools, and scientific institutions. Everyone knows him or knows his work, and doesn&#39;t genuflect but gives his legendary status its due. Lamberto Bava makes Cozzi and his wife dinner and then shows him how to use the internet;&amp;nbsp;Maria Cristina&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Mastrangeli (that foxy bassist who dies too early in&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/gettin-ripped-luigi-cozzis-paganini.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Paganini Horror&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), is a make-up artist (she dies too soon here too). There&#39;s a photo of a young Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone chillin&#39; like villains on the wall of the Italian Film Institute along with a dozen other signifiers of past legends in Italian cinema, Cozzi walks past it all in a slow-mo hobbit strut, some of the faces I didn&#39;t quite know or get, which is fine. As a film person, it&#39;s refreshing actually.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3wsXdbeEfX_3fUlHI7vPhTWJlfQdqw4uZppBY6CdlvzpsnvGzRVrq2AkVoJ0EfcF1ZBxuotRfgaANI_p0kp3QUq9mMDq0x0WwxA9lpASCExRWI-jpW0_H3yX9tM_5Mm_QX4291QmBcRTMu19Kc6TX-GbrAZoz7Hn4PYzyWvOwx_5cmGniebo3/s3092/Screenshot%202024-08-13%20at%2012.25.15%E2%80%AFAM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1710&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3092&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3wsXdbeEfX_3fUlHI7vPhTWJlfQdqw4uZppBY6CdlvzpsnvGzRVrq2AkVoJ0EfcF1ZBxuotRfgaANI_p0kp3QUq9mMDq0x0WwxA9lpASCExRWI-jpW0_H3yX9tM_5Mm_QX4291QmBcRTMu19Kc6TX-GbrAZoz7Hn4PYzyWvOwx_5cmGniebo3/w400-h221/Screenshot%202024-08-13%20at%2012.25.15%E2%80%AFAM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;ooh ooh! I know the answer&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The vibe of all his hustling around, actually, reminded me of visiting a buddy in a foreign land and having him show you the sights while taking you from friend to friend, dealer to dealer, to help you find drugs (since you didn&#39;t want to bring any thru customs),&amp;nbsp;Each person you drop in on is so cool you wish you spoke Italian to understand what they&#39;re saying while you look around at their cool book and art collection and can only manage to say &quot;&lt;i&gt;Cosi fantastika, eh? Ciao!&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;And you&#39;re off again.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Eventually you&#39;re so high from classic Italian sci-fi/horror&#39;s&lt;i&gt; fumi collaterali&lt;/i&gt; you forget all about the drugs. When a giant steampunk spaceship comes out of a book and takes you on a shortcut from Rome to Paris--normally a two-hour flight--that involves leaving the Earth and traveling all the way around the galaxy, looking at UFOs from classic science fiction out of the porthole, you wonder if you took the kind of drugs so good you forgot you took them. In fact maybe you forgot the last 30-40 years of life, and are back to being a wild-eyed ten year old, frothing at the mouth with excitement over space ships and stop motion monsters, the wonkier the b.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And maybe I sound like a Cozzi apologist (Cozzipologist?) but the man himself maintains a dry deadpan veneer that stops his Shrooms 101 pontification and DIY home movie travelogue-in&#39; from ever getting &quot;silly.&quot; or self-indulgent, or becoming a midlife dadsploitation &#39;vanity&#39; project.&amp;nbsp; And it&#39;s hard not to smile, just as it&#39;s hard for him not to smile, when he gives himself several of those Spielbergian slow &quot;awestruck&quot; dolly zooms, looking up at some amazing sight behind the camera. You never get the impression he&#39;s quite able to visualize anything other than a glowing green screen, rather than whatever effect Adobe can muster from its PD bin; he keeps a straight face (most of the time), avoids looking into the camera (some of the time), and never gets campy or self-conscious at the absurdity of it all (aside from that bit with the furry red mascot suit).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And as the film trudges along, he becomes way more believable as himself, modulating his performance to compliment the energy of each of his scene partners, which is what many of us do naturally in life, leaving them to set the tone of each interaction, counter-mirroring their extreme temporal shifts, overplaying when they underplay (his cool wife is sublimely low-key and&amp;nbsp;kinda steals the show by not stealing anything); underplaying when they overplay (Philippe Beun-Garbe, who has a habit of looking at Cozzi like a cobra trying to hypnotize a hamster) and allowing conversations to kind of peter out before he says something like &quot;OK - so I guess I&#39;m going this way, &lt;i&gt;arrivederci.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbHTq98dB8msaQpE0o-Ke93gVOTjBZ13wDtegg1VMbcAX_IxCyXGvmJdrK7K9PVvtwwUDwvU4v_tjdM9BumFEWkYQkNCLnBy7Xh6ATUYkZ2aLgcykzeEXftCIFXaQpWeOn5wmQUz1uoICOKqkA1EgN60Va3TdyUP4ZEHTFocwWUYDeLqwZIMnP/s1168/Screenshot%202024-08-13%20at%2012.23.01%E2%80%AFAM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1168&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1154&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbHTq98dB8msaQpE0o-Ke93gVOTjBZ13wDtegg1VMbcAX_IxCyXGvmJdrK7K9PVvtwwUDwvU4v_tjdM9BumFEWkYQkNCLnBy7Xh6ATUYkZ2aLgcykzeEXftCIFXaQpWeOn5wmQUz1uoICOKqkA1EgN60Va3TdyUP4ZEHTFocwWUYDeLqwZIMnP/w316-h320/Screenshot%202024-08-13%20at%2012.23.01%E2%80%AFAM.png&quot; width=&quot;316&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;This is not to say any stretch of &lt;i&gt;Blood on Melies Moon &lt;/i&gt;is at any time un-janky. Watching anything shot on video, even HD video, for more than an hour or so can sometimes be an ordeal, especially if it plods through a linear story&#39;s polite bourgeois beats like PBS&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Mystery&lt;/i&gt;, or if gets all tawdry with endless showers and sax-spurred satin sheet rustling. Cozzi has too much imagination for either of those dull extremes. Convention and exploitation have no purchase within the Cozzi ouevre. There&#39;s no pandering in a Cozzi film, he rarely even shows a completed kiss before looking away, like any normal person in real life, especially a child (or senior) for whom such things are quite gross.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And that&#39;s because Cozzi is making the kind of movie Cozzi would love to see but no one else ever makes. He assumes you&#39;ve seen a lot of other movies, like Quentin Tarantino, he&#39;s like the antithesis of banality - rather than follow the heard over its familiar courses like the rest, he takes stock and realizes which tracks aren&#39;t being run, which ways aren&#39;t being followed, there&#39;s no real focus group shit involved with that kind of thing, unless you&#39;re a hack whose film knowledge begins with last week&#39;s edition of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Variety.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;That&#39;s because you&#39;re making movies for yourself, the movies no one makes and you know because you&#39;ve seen all theirs, and they&#39;re all not that.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;With Cozzi, for example, he never lets a moment just lay around. Even if he&#39;s just standing outside the store monitoring the autograph line for Dario Argento&#39;s book signing, he&#39;s overlaying deep rich color fields under planetary smash-ups; marching Italian war veterans; skies full of stars, fireworks, close-ups of fans in weird masks and Freddy gloves; camera men looking at the monitor in their van, dlowing out to the seance lady&#39;s TV. Macabre Italian movie posters from the 20s-80s, short clips from his or Argento&#39;s oeuvre; famous landmarks awash in &lt;i&gt;Cozzilla &lt;/i&gt;colors; his wife&#39;s home movie shots of standing in front of the Mexican pyramids; gothic buttresses and looming gargoyles; outdoor dance classes; cemeteries; twisting piazzas wreathed in deep reds and greens; solarized shots of Italian Film Institute exteriors; a fake blood slicked onto glass; a quantum theorist in her (real) lab, talking the plurality of worlds; a big empty dark soundstage with weird giant alien puppets standing around, waiting for some holiday parade yet to come; the Roman night sky blazing deep red, blue, or dark green; all the weird sights of his Profundo Rosso and its downstairs attraction, The Argento Museum of Horrors. Every cool, creepy, strange or mystical free attraction his zero sum budget can buy, all as stops in a long journey towards early film education and interdimensional doorway closing. Meta-Mecha-Mental.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And just to keep things edgy, that evil masked magician is always sticking his neck out of passing mirrors, slashing up anyone who might be even remotely involved with that book (shades of Argento&#39;s&lt;i&gt; Inferno &lt;/i&gt;-in that&amp;nbsp; he never thinks to just take the actual book). The attacks are never scary per se; the blood looks fake abstract; but the throat opening up make-up shots are first rate and the blood is more realistic when it&#39;s not spattered on white walls or glass. And the sudden heavy metal makes it seem like a tribute to Argento, especially in one beautifully lit and composed scene in the shiny white make-up department, evoking of course &lt;i&gt;Tenebrae.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6AZQp09o7ZH7b6MiZ1z9oRXFs4tUWEdfl1ChgoKzNY6b3VRjLaU9h7w78B5bEC_dzsWbOJ1AfI6qaq-zsVzMIj2ye9IjnuBGqMcQGo_kwcC9bRejYyB-igwB5AbMPKOrQMDenswHqzE2GrGzZt6oxLDEk31nhC3YwxQEoouIPWQmonJlr7w/s1830/Screen%20Shot%202023-02-06%20at%2012.31.02%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;990&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1830&quot; height=&quot;346&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6AZQp09o7ZH7b6MiZ1z9oRXFs4tUWEdfl1ChgoKzNY6b3VRjLaU9h7w78B5bEC_dzsWbOJ1AfI6qaq-zsVzMIj2ye9IjnuBGqMcQGo_kwcC9bRejYyB-igwB5AbMPKOrQMDenswHqzE2GrGzZt6oxLDEk31nhC3YwxQEoouIPWQmonJlr7w/w640-h346/Screen%20Shot%202023-02-06%20at%2012.31.02%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In sum: never before has a film about science fiction film history, told&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;as&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;a science fiction movie starring the director&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;as&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;himself been able to pull off the difficult hat trick of not lapsing into trite self-congratulation within the first two minutes, irritating meta smirkiness after ten, excruciating neorealism after twenty, and switched to something else by thirty. Sure I miss the classic Cozzi signature analog effect collection, But surprisingly, even with CGI that magic is not completely lost. I don&#39;t know how he did it, but Cozzi has even snuck in that same ingenious amateur analog tactile outsider DIY purity to green screen CGI, open source effects, FCP color styling, and royalty-free stock footage.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Above all, he overcomes the risks of directing himself as himself by his keen love of dead pan wit. That kind of thing can&#39;t be taught. You either get it or you don&#39;t. You can count the actors who can do it on one hand: Charlie Sheen and Richard Crenna in &lt;i&gt;Hot Shots Part Deux&lt;/i&gt;, Sterling Hayden in &lt;i&gt;Dr. Strangelove,&lt;/i&gt; Richard Burton and James Coburn in &lt;i&gt;Candy&lt;/i&gt;. If you think of any others, do let me know...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Perhaps Cozzi&#39;s secret for skirting around all the &#39;feels,&#39; the folksy pastorale &quot;movies are the wings of your dreams, grandson!&quot; cringe, is the way he avoids any kind of situations ever getting real, or heartfelt, scary or tragic-- indeed, Cozzi avoids&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; kind of sustained emotion of the sort that critics love about his bigger budgeted peers, like Benecio del Toro and Tim Burton. In fact, if he finds an emotion, he runs from it even faster than we would; he does this by always dialing outwards, enlarging the scope the more dramatic transpersonal intimacy becomes, going galactic when most go the opposite. In space no one can hear you cry, so Cozzi learns how rocket above exosphere at the slightest lip tremor. By the end of &lt;i&gt;Melies &lt;/i&gt;there&#39;s been at least six brutal murders, severed heads talking on the phone, etc, but somehow all that&#39;s forgotten; the ladies looking for&amp;nbsp; their slain sister melt away in the distance once the aperture dilates to astral scope, to the Silver Age Marvel comic&#39;s Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko-verses: Gods and monsters riding giant surfboards, Dr. Strange and Galactus standing on flat-topped asteroids floating through the quantum realm while debating the foolish strivings of the humans trapped in the space/time continuum.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;CLOSING FAST&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Sure, some things have changed in the 30 years he&#39;s been away: analog special effects like the Lite-Brite disco ceiling star fields, solder-patched lady Telos, and erector set hydras--and sure I miss&amp;nbsp;the thunderous major key scores he scored from people Nino Rota and John Barry--all replaced here by major key, royalty-free (presumably) tracks ranging manically from blaxploitation to electronica to French rap to old school 80s synths, to mainstream Goldsmith-style sweep.. Sure I miss those colorful&amp;nbsp;crazy costumes, all the glitter, leather, huge Ghost of Xmas present robe/coats and gold Versace armor. And sure I miss the old-school cape-twirling super-villainy of films past, but you got to love an ending where everyone still living goes home fulfilled, to whatever dimension they started with.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And most of all, you got to love that after 30 years, Cozzi hasn&#39;t changed, grown up or mellowed out or &#39;matured&#39; one bit. He&#39;s far from an old grandpa spinning yarns for a dewey-eyed grandson about how &quot;movies are our magical dreams.&quot; we get in something like &lt;i&gt;Hugo. &lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Movies are magic for Cozzi, too, but presumes you already know that, so there&#39;s no need to spark the self-satisfied glow of the dewey-eyed bourgeois Academy, reminding them once again how they&#39;ve spent their lives lifting up the proles with the wings of dream.&amp;nbsp; Cozzi is beyond class, beyond awards and humble-sheathed grandiosity -- he is the grandson &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the grandfather,&amp;nbsp;or rather the cool uncle. He&#39;s the complete unit, all ages of creeds and classes, merged into one unhinged maniac. His reach for the stars is more the symbiotic relationship between eye and screen, all the unions and signatures edited out. His message isn&#39;t magic of fantasy for the downtrodden but that when you look at the image and the image looks at you. It sees the same you as you see when it&#39;s not you, that comforting dip into the dark anonymity has hatched like an egg and there you are, awake and asleep at the same time, rolling in the dream rather than being the dreamer. You can see it in every little smile that comes over Cozzi&#39;s face as he does his little dreadlocked&amp;nbsp;dance around the store to royalty free Italian rap at the end. He&#39;s no longer grumbling to some invisible version of himself that even he barely notices. He&#39;s gone &#39;full circle&#39; like Siddhartha, Dorothy Gale, or Michelle Yeoh, he&#39;s justified the madness of the artist off in the weeds, he&#39;s the Father McKenzie who doesn&#39;t need more than one or two people to hear his sermon, so f--k off, Paul! We&#39;ll put our faces by any old door we want.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;That man in the mirror, the mad magician on whose blank mask we all project the world... and vice vera That thing out there, Morbius, it&#39;s &lt;i&gt;me!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXDm5kAX-PXPJ_cz6_bsVC4XJ9H17zo16NvSRFrDNaAWsldJYlwvrSzXlArzTwUOulkjklmH8ofEZwqn6ok4M5aYnbjEcvdtArI6Z4JuXwRMU4ZzCeVdlmza0lq9vsWtMMxp9lKsLnyijM1J-xhIr_aM2QlflF89oDJTYR_pVpV81KFYdIwA/s1948/Screen%20Shot%202023-02-06%20at%2012.42.19%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1118&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1948&quot; height=&quot;368&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXDm5kAX-PXPJ_cz6_bsVC4XJ9H17zo16NvSRFrDNaAWsldJYlwvrSzXlArzTwUOulkjklmH8ofEZwqn6ok4M5aYnbjEcvdtArI6Z4JuXwRMU4ZzCeVdlmza0lq9vsWtMMxp9lKsLnyijM1J-xhIr_aM2QlflF89oDJTYR_pVpV81KFYdIwA/w640-h368/Screen%20Shot%202023-02-06%20at%2012.42.19%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Mr. Cozzi Surmises&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;MORE from Acidemic&#39;s COZZI Collection:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/happy-birthday-luigi-cozzi-hercules.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hurrah for Luigi Cozzi!&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;HERCULES&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;(1983) &amp;amp; the Mighty Coates Canon!&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;(Sept 7, 2019)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/02/cozzi-takes-cake-black-cat-1989-aka.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Cozzi Breaks the Cake:&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;THE BLACK CAT&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1989)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(Feb 9, 2022)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/gettin-ripped-luigi-cozzis-paganini.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Gettin&#39; Ripped: Luigi Cozz&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;PAGANINI HORROR&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;(1989)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;(March 20, 2020)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/04/13-great-films-for-week-x-of-pandemic.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;13 Films for Week X of a Pandemic:&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;CONTAMINATION&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1980)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(April 5, 2020)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/01/six-dope-analog-sci-fi-nugs-1978-87-now.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;7 Choice Star Wars Nugs:&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;STARCRASH (1978)&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;(Jan 23, 2019)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/11/cozzilla-10-reasons-luigi-cozzis-1977.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;10 Reasons&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;COZZILL A&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;(1977)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;(Nov. 6, 2022)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitcqh8_CQNAMzHwKjJ_onsf-eyFMr73rBcJ3LdqtLe-dYK4EjjtUPZxJTrkUITFl3RIhjruz-DenCAnYc__LmERKy2uVCLNhNXBxIAuhfjGgH_Gu3tysTwr53LToye617E79QYhFs02t5UdB46wwfYWWMAcNaJANETzPc9g9bE9NpkNVMGKA/s1811/demoni%20.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1005&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1811&quot; height=&quot;178&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitcqh8_CQNAMzHwKjJ_onsf-eyFMr73rBcJ3LdqtLe-dYK4EjjtUPZxJTrkUITFl3RIhjruz-DenCAnYc__LmERKy2uVCLNhNXBxIAuhfjGgH_Gu3tysTwr53LToye617E79QYhFs02t5UdB46wwfYWWMAcNaJANETzPc9g9bE9NpkNVMGKA/s320/demoni%20.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4162924542413554410/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/12/waxing-gibbous-luigi-cozzis-blood-on.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4162924542413554410'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4162924542413554410'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/12/waxing-gibbous-luigi-cozzis-blood-on.html' title='Waxing Gibbous: Luigi Cozzi&#39;s BLOOD ON MELIE&#39;S MOON (2016) '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsF0frLXKjREXSuXYC86WrYwlotVhd76q6EmiDGzO4NTaQHPMmbul0wWvPh1h6-xR9ydiSSufbnH7s8uhJT2U3-cVQMgWAqJrkzW7Ait1TTTNFhLE2N6x80e4KEuiUK_Ip9tdu8PpC1QSnrtG27x6KNFmQklLoDMYkmDs6KkgYfCcE5bLsvg/s72-w640-h352-c/bkood%20on%20melies%20moon.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4884290263113941736</id><published>2024-11-09T16:00:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2024-11-13T16:22:50.204-05:00</updated><title type='text'>King Devil says Go for It: DR. SATAN (1966), DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC (1968)</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0GP4IHOIXQZiRyf-EUq4FBZbTaNPAUTuxLsjglSq4bvQHzEiQ5EBkit_M7dw5nDgmde-qtL0sfozxerXcxaeXxzbH2_q-RxoWx8JQb-MZWmAxE4Vi1f3BBiR3WUhn43EAEfTB36IckCip-wLXrUzsQTzU1d3ihrJtdqTkqm2bUPg5yNJdg/s1278/dr%20satan%201%20.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;975&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1278&quot; height=&quot;488&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0GP4IHOIXQZiRyf-EUq4FBZbTaNPAUTuxLsjglSq4bvQHzEiQ5EBkit_M7dw5nDgmde-qtL0sfozxerXcxaeXxzbH2_q-RxoWx8JQb-MZWmAxE4Vi1f3BBiR3WUhn43EAEfTB36IckCip-wLXrUzsQTzU1d3ihrJtdqTkqm2bUPg5yNJdg/w640-h488/dr%20satan%201%20.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&amp;nbsp;(&lt;strike&gt;Famous&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strike&gt;Monsters&lt;/strike&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;Medical Mephistopheles of Mexico III&lt;/b&gt;)&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Viva la Dr. Satan,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;discipulo numero uno di Rey Diablo!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;A lot of classic Mexican horror emulates the classics of other nations, movies, TV, and comics. Ther original contribution is mainly&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;lucha libre&lt;/i&gt; movies, their main monster is la Lorna, of course, and....well, Dr. Satan. Wait, &lt;i&gt;who?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Thanks to our draconian censors, the master villain antihero has no real equal in the US. Other countries get enigmatic good bad guys like Diabolik (Italy), Satanik (Turkey), and, of course Fantomas, and Irma Vep (France). On the good guy side may be an equally intelligent police chief, or the cops may be klutzy comic relief, outwitted at every turn. The free world was in that sweet spot between &lt;i&gt;Thunderball&lt;/i&gt; and Charlie Manson. Our censors insisted the bad guys be totally bad, the good always win - lest kids grow up believing crime is &#39;cool.&#39;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Down in Mexico, well, you had to have a completely accepting attitude towards the devil to stay &#39;balanced&#39;. You can work to expel him, exorcise him, but hating and fearing him just made him stronger. You go to the local bruja and get a charm of protection, make a prayer to the blessed virgin, and you send the devil on his way with a few pesos for his trouble. He&#39;s just one of the figures revolving tower clock neither more powerful or less than any other--it&#39;s all about the bout, the match, and for that to be engaging, the sides have to be even. To love lucha libre is to understand this, the match may be fixed, the &#39;narrative&#39; set, but the emotions are still engaged. For our collective unconscious, there is no faking it, as long as you commit. And it&#39;s ultimately our collective unconscious that all this for. And deep down in there, a man for his time, cometh the inimitable.....&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdw_J8MR7Sf_yHHSMNy5EubWdGN-EnsrS70UHIC8-w8gSBSOM7YoBtAC57CSxDTWZZs8sjT92YJ7RHP6KxrIDF5vq5FohbZWYfp8eCUZBvxI7Jb0s_pfNX5QkBP-V6K1sIjc3I4oO-tcdyhgFfZBqfJPvWP6C0ymxN4NW2XhMzBKMayJkq9g/s1304/dr%20satan.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;956&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1304&quot; height=&quot;470&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdw_J8MR7Sf_yHHSMNy5EubWdGN-EnsrS70UHIC8-w8gSBSOM7YoBtAC57CSxDTWZZs8sjT92YJ7RHP6KxrIDF5vq5FohbZWYfp8eCUZBvxI7Jb0s_pfNX5QkBP-V6K1sIjc3I4oO-tcdyhgFfZBqfJPvWP6C0ymxN4NW2XhMzBKMayJkq9g/w640-h470/dr%20satan.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;DR. SATAN&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1966) Dir. Miguel Montoya&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Wreathed in a nice haze of Satan summoning smoke and artifacts from the slightly blurry print, Mexican &lt;i&gt;pelicula/telenovela &lt;/i&gt;leading man Joaquin Cordero is at the peak smolder as Dr. Arrozamena (aka Dr. Satán - accent on TAN), and that means peak smolder, period. Crazy arched (painted?) eyebrows on a face that&#39;s a blend of Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson: eyes that don&#39;t even need the light shining in them to glow with cunning, connivance and chaos; a masterly demeanor; a smile that&#39;s never more than a slight curve; a low measured lion king hypnotist. hypnotist of a voice--f you get an instant mancrush on Dr. Satan, you&#39;re not alone. The film refrains from scenery chewing, pushing his egomania too far, or hamming, cackling over torture devices, and dying in a burning lair. Our Arrozamena is a team player, asking permission from &#39;King Devil&#39; every time he needs to harvest a soul. The devil doth appear in a huge cloud of evil smoke, on a hill with a leafless tree (&lt;i&gt;above&lt;/i&gt;),&amp;nbsp;barely speaking except to grant his request with a surly &quot;so be it!&quot; before disappearing again in a puff of smoke. Arrozamena&#39;s traps their souls in little box, so their bodies may be raised by his secret formula, as zombie henchmen.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It&#39;s hard to place Dr. Satan in the context of his time or place. Are we supposed to root for him, or against him? Casual summarizers lump him in the &#39;mad scientist&#39; and &#39;sorcerer&#39; camps, but they just don&#39;t get it. He&#39;s neither, he&#39;s just himself--totally unique. And the quest for global domination only enters his mind when his new lady friend suggests it. His measured calm is almost hilariously deadpan and the film blessed by simplicity, a small but capable cast, good editing and freedom of cliche. It&#39;s short, it hums with a unique score of thumping timpanii and what sounds like the &lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet s&lt;/i&gt;core forced through a flanger and slowed to an industrial screech. Hell yes.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnbu-mxqxwBGc8l2Vq7sUzM9eJDUMLVW3NcNKeC9tfR_5mqN_OKuNofEqWOJY3tco9cWnAzAJGVGHqJliPfKBwywQTZH2hE-EMMULFXPkBeKo15dv7IFF34g0YWUlV5r-6SQWDouXwA_VWC_46gYJzq7YlKBTHLm12JEvnIWbt7J4nllCB575j/s1952/Interpol.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1428&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1952&quot; height=&quot;293&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnbu-mxqxwBGc8l2Vq7sUzM9eJDUMLVW3NcNKeC9tfR_5mqN_OKuNofEqWOJY3tco9cWnAzAJGVGHqJliPfKBwywQTZH2hE-EMMULFXPkBeKo15dv7IFF34g0YWUlV5r-6SQWDouXwA_VWC_46gYJzq7YlKBTHLm12JEvnIWbt7J4nllCB575j/w400-h293/Interpol.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvYiYrG-7Ms5dEyGhu6JFlhPZGO5NcyDQ2qK647GMiL6BCNlaiiDhKj55daXJceCn1pZ9xlSLd4BzE-lv-ivPcKBGJE5r-ahDRMnPG6-BiBCWpzroEEs2FYVm9yVR3n_sYspbk1QHUuGIB85KMMNVtWTadyd0RU2yhrULkkss979gnaB7kD7Sf/s1869/satan%20and%20luisa.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1409&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1869&quot; height=&quot;301&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvYiYrG-7Ms5dEyGhu6JFlhPZGO5NcyDQ2qK647GMiL6BCNlaiiDhKj55daXJceCn1pZ9xlSLd4BzE-lv-ivPcKBGJE5r-ahDRMnPG6-BiBCWpzroEEs2FYVm9yVR3n_sYspbk1QHUuGIB85KMMNVtWTadyd0RU2yhrULkkss979gnaB7kD7Sf/w400-h301/satan%20and%20luisa.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;everybody&#39;s clockin&#39; Rodriguez (top: Interpol /bottom: Satan Inc.&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And most of the rest of the cast are women, good and bad, all professional, capable, and not objectified. Say, whaaa? Notably there&#39;s the intense Gina Romand, so sublimely evil as &lt;i&gt;Frankenstein&#39;s Daughter&lt;/i&gt; in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Santo meets Frankensteins Daughter&lt;/i&gt;), is dynamite as an agent sent by the leader of a shadowy international crime ring to check in on the doctor, their man in Mexico, to let him know a box of counterfeit money is coming in, and also he needs to kill Rodriquez, an agent&amp;nbsp; INTEPRPOL has been shadowing. He suggests in that low measured rumble, never moving his head or taking his eyes off of her, he takes her out and show her the town, they can knock off Rodriguez on the way. Her blonde &#39;changed her mind halfway up a beehive&#39; hair endearingly out of control, her eyes and voice on maximum smolder. These are actors very good at that close talking seduction stuff; they&#39;re like a pair of cats in a staring contest who stop looking at each other only to silently clock a clueless nearby squirrel, i.e. their target, his back to them at the bar. Keeping their conversation golf tournament quiet, except in the most innocuous and slick cocktail bar manner, he calmly rolls a cigarette but is really loading up his discreet blowgun with a posion pellet, looking for all the world like he&#39;s just rolling a spitball, or some other cocktail bar napkin futzign spitball dugout, nailing him&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But there&#39;s another cool couple, the INTERPOL agents, Nora (Alma Delias Fuentes) and Mateos (José Gálvez) they&#39;re at another table at the bar, never even noticing when the dart hits the back of his neck. Neither side knowing who each other are yet, but they are, it&#39;s genius, two wild cool and capable couples begin to wind their way towards each other, inexorably.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;So that makes three capable women characters, when you factor in the connect, which is Arrozamena&#39;s secretary, taping his diabolical conversations, making a clay impression of the key to his secret lab,&amp;nbsp; and make tapes for INTERPOL. He seems to be a good and balanced boss, never being grabby or overbearing.&quot;I&#39;ve always treated you with the respect due an employee,&quot; he declares at the climax, almost hurt at the reveal, probably the closest he comes to a dismayed register. And we believe it. Even his zombies seem to like him when he gives them their salt tablets once the jig is up - as if to say, thanks boys, for your fine work, we&#39;ll see each other soon, if King Devil allows.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbUSHfKcKkR89pHxCFkyncsL_2w-oTdL4Ms22_-w_aCmfnI_is5KmZ94hId0lOmHNmdGOhgnZsE-HnboniLyZdeTmLZCjZUsa1p2p0gC08X1959XZQn1LsDj367zUcpi_YkKtSc2o08AZcSnt-iighYJkl3N0ALmfelDFpmNtQjZ_gfYqvptWr/s1918/Screenshot%202024-11-08%20at%205.40.30%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1410&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1918&quot; height=&quot;294&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbUSHfKcKkR89pHxCFkyncsL_2w-oTdL4Ms22_-w_aCmfnI_is5KmZ94hId0lOmHNmdGOhgnZsE-HnboniLyZdeTmLZCjZUsa1p2p0gC08X1959XZQn1LsDj367zUcpi_YkKtSc2o08AZcSnt-iighYJkl3N0ALmfelDFpmNtQjZ_gfYqvptWr/w400-h294/Screenshot%202024-11-08%20at%205.40.30%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;I mean you could say on the one hand here is a Jess Franco/&lt;i&gt;fumetti neri-&lt;/i&gt;style horror/master thief caper, cheap and disposable, but on the other hand Franco never dealt in absolute archetypal iconography (he&#39;s astonishingly irreligious, a true Sadean). Dr, Arrozamena does though; he doesn&#39;t have to sacrifice people or a chant or anything-- he just gives a few unholy hand gestures and viola..&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Putting it over the top into perfect Erich heavy rotation, the &quot;music&quot; score at times wanders close to the Ed Wood library score rotation, and times like the Beebe&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;tonalities dredged through a flanger and a wet sponge--and I hope you don&#39;t have to be told that&#39;s a very good thing. At time it&#39;s almost on the level of the fusion of slowed-down strings and Mancini stings in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Hellish Spiders --&lt;/i&gt;my other big &#39;find&#39; of 2024. But you&#39;ll hear about that in the next installment.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;You&#39;d think it would be the opposite but&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;the usual sexism we get in films from Europe and North America is totally absent in these &lt;i&gt;peliculas fantasticas&lt;/i&gt;. I know and love at least three movies where, when the monster breaks in on them in the dead of night, the endangered lady whips a gun out of her night table and start blasting. Most times in these scenes the woman needs a man to rescue him because killing is unladylike and if unless she&#39;s a Russian spy, if she does kill a person has to cry and moan and act traumatized. But not these &lt;i&gt;flacas fuertes&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;--just the gun scares them off but she still shoots after them, blat blat blat. in the back, or after they&#39;re already backing away, and more than one shot, often. The bullets may have little effect because there targets are spider aliens, or vampires, or zombies. It doesn&#39;t matter - it&#39;s the capability, the fury and quick action, that makes Mexican women, if I can sweeping generalization, so frickin&#39; badass.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHfrt2VG6tuLyy3c5fzoHVG4XiBKhxOtIz2jlhnOYDjQ3Hhazv3jF0YREFmcoMSOgDmdOCCZqTkoDZjs3m2xy1nTwglJN8_eOjtqvD47yaBE30T0NqT_SqFk7d4FhAfToZ63fdSp7KAFoCc5pzGblEd9CBpmDGeUPoFrLPp_xBH5zk_d0Jyg/s1264/satan77.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;926&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1264&quot; height=&quot;468&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHfrt2VG6tuLyy3c5fzoHVG4XiBKhxOtIz2jlhnOYDjQ3Hhazv3jF0YREFmcoMSOgDmdOCCZqTkoDZjs3m2xy1nTwglJN8_eOjtqvD47yaBE30T0NqT_SqFk7d4FhAfToZ63fdSp7KAFoCc5pzGblEd9CBpmDGeUPoFrLPp_xBH5zk_d0Jyg/w640-h468/satan77.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(Dr. Satán y la magia neg&lt;/i&gt;ra)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1968) Dir. Rogelio A. González&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;When one is at their top of their game like our Dr. Satan was before he got nabbed at the end of the last film, well, there&#39;s nowhere to go but down, quite literally in his case. When we last saw the doctor he had disappeared, if that makes sense. This is filmed only two years later, but it&#39;s in color, with a kind of &#39;owning&#39; it cheap &lt;i&gt;Batman &lt;/i&gt;TV show &lt;i&gt;mise en scene&lt;/i&gt;, and our Cordero just doesn&#39;t quite look the same, a little bloated and ragged from taking a long nap on a comfy rock in his own wing of hell (or is it just his man cave, quite literally, in his case). Now it&#39;s time for King Devil to ask -&lt;i&gt;him &lt;/i&gt;for favors. Sleeping on his spacetious&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;slab, he first lazily tries to weasel out of it. Arrozamena, what happened to you, man?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTNlLj0Bf2P0Vham8piWmT-rhFNOP5f2hvg75VPkXO9wLIlxJtLFGTQQSXFcVOu-gLb8AB6Of90p84zaolVFKZ-kQEo-uPte9u8aNllwjbCU8KN5AE3WsSJnvjdleSboRlRcVBOCXaUD-Oj4NRwaGx7mHwSRTGhs9wIFFhTn05Z1ZOitehL6v/s1867/updifr%20foen%20vtod%20s.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1426&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1867&quot; height=&quot;244&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTNlLj0Bf2P0Vham8piWmT-rhFNOP5f2hvg75VPkXO9wLIlxJtLFGTQQSXFcVOu-gLb8AB6Of90p84zaolVFKZ-kQEo-uPte9u8aNllwjbCU8KN5AE3WsSJnvjdleSboRlRcVBOCXaUD-Oj4NRwaGx7mHwSRTGhs9wIFFhTn05Z1ZOitehL6v/s320/updifr%20foen%20vtod%20s.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What&#39;s even weirder is that King Devil needs him to go up there to the land of the living and kill an evil Asian vampire named Yei Lin (Noé Murayama) with a criminal outfit and genius connivances to rival the doctor himself and planning to steal a formula that can turn any metal into gold, thus working even better than Arrozamena&#39;s counterfeiting in the last film. If Yei Lin gets a hold of that process, it&#39;s implied, he&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;will&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;out-devil the King Devil, so our Dr. S better work. That&#39;s a bit confusing- you would think any evil is good even as far as the King Devil is concerned. Think again. King Devil wants that formula for himself. Say whaaa!? Is hell short of funds? I mean, it&#39;s great if that&#39;s the reason. Hail, King Devil!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFXoFsFDoW1ME_CvJ21CHE6Z315MztMjXlQPdsxPuZZ-jgn4vdAadx5M7j4g7FYYy91oaG4nxo8Jpt0iXQeX-yZWvBcvR6s_f46KAckRB3qTNyge1Cw3O17Wi-KcCu-FFcIm-2Dwgf4jYg7E1GB_67x1edgknekAD2d079yM8ijn5iNVPeQ/s1150/satan2.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;938&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1150&quot; height=&quot;163&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFXoFsFDoW1ME_CvJ21CHE6Z315MztMjXlQPdsxPuZZ-jgn4vdAadx5M7j4g7FYYy91oaG4nxo8Jpt0iXQeX-yZWvBcvR6s_f46KAckRB3qTNyge1Cw3O17Wi-KcCu-FFcIm-2Dwgf4jYg7E1GB_67x1edgknekAD2d079yM8ijn5iNVPeQ/w200-h163/satan2.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeFXoFsFDoW1ME_CvJ21CHE6Z315MztMjXlQPdsxPuZZ-jgn4vdAadx5M7j4g7FYYy91oaG4nxo8Jpt0iXQeX-yZWvBcvR6s_f46KAckRB3qTNyge1Cw3O17Wi-KcCu-FFcIm-2Dwgf4jYg7E1GB_67x1edgknekAD2d079yM8ijn5iNVPeQ/s1150/satan2.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;h&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;For this mission, Arrozamena magically gets his lair back up on the surface and takes as his zombie slaves a pair of cute women who he finds via a want-ad, then hypnotizing them into his power. Though they seem zombified, they&#39;re just as capable as the men if not more so, able to sneak around and spy on the other side with ease, and easily survive knives thrown into their backs. They wear complimentary comic book colors, will make any weird film fan think they may have wandered into a Jess Franco spy movie (it&#39;s better) and the nights glow deep blue or olive green over flat shades of light blue (no checkered socks), and everything kind of beams with that flat TV lighting, comic strip framing. It&#39;s so chill it almost seems like it could be the pilot to a &lt;i&gt;Dr. Satan&lt;/i&gt; TV show and man, what a wonderful world it would be with such a series in it.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jZQOr-c_SCNirCGf-VjQ8tqLbwcfOy1B2hyRvhIWdYoSsQd6rpTDLrVMSIeUeP0W8ep7VOIADRKCwv2axoWzHWYa8RtG1I0sAi1EJTha9sXnHMujoF0L79TcTxZ8gMnK0A7o8d5roHzlrFWFx1Q0Os4kuIiQZNXywwjWsvPJYC0RbA0Udw/s1264/satan54.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;954&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1264&quot; height=&quot;242&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jZQOr-c_SCNirCGf-VjQ8tqLbwcfOy1B2hyRvhIWdYoSsQd6rpTDLrVMSIeUeP0W8ep7VOIADRKCwv2axoWzHWYa8RtG1I0sAi1EJTha9sXnHMujoF0L79TcTxZ8gMnK0A7o8d5roHzlrFWFx1Q0Os4kuIiQZNXywwjWsvPJYC0RbA0Udw/s320/satan54.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Naturally it&#39;s not at the level of the first film, suffering from a kind of flat TV budget, but there&#39;s a lot to love especially if, like me as a small child watching &lt;i&gt;Speed Racer&lt;/i&gt;, you&#39;ve always rooted for the bad guys, hoping they&#39;d win just this once. Here they do, more or less.&amp;nbsp;Once again we kind of like all the characters on both sides, even if they kill each other a lot; the arch enemies are each loyal to their women, not pervy etc. We root for Satan just because he&#39;s the home team but Yei Lin, is cool, nice to his girlfriend crime partner (though she shoots a cop in the back before sitting down to finish her tea) but stern with his henchmen (he blames them when the formula they stole doesn&#39;t work). Our doctor would never do that. He&#39;s such a good boss even if he programmed normal girls into becoming automaton zombie killers, it&#39;s not in a pervy way, and when it&#39;s time for the old salt tablet farewell, they seem legitimately sad to be breaking up the team or at least as sad as a zombie can be. &quot;Maybe we will meet again, if King Devil allows it,&quot; says Arrozamena. Even when the girls use crosses to subdue the vampire, they hold them inverted, yet it still works. And thus doth evil conquer evil in the name of evil. For some of us weary sinner cineaste&#39;s souls, grown so tired of bland heroism and knee-jerk Christian backtracking always bringing everything to a fiery halt just when it&#39;s getting good, just so the heteronormative couple can escape to propigate their irritating lack of evil.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m also a sucker for when the good guys are just slightly less bad guys, and I hate the years of censorship programming that made movies like these so unique and forbidden for American audiences. It wasn&#39;t until 1994, year of &lt;i&gt;Pulp Fiction &lt;/i&gt;and &lt;i&gt;Last Seduction&lt;/i&gt;, that the old moralistic bad faith resolutions finally blew up, never to be seen again. No more needing to drive off a cliff to atone for thy crimes, Thelma! But with Dr. Satan we learn Mexico was 28 years ahead of us. &lt;i&gt;Viva el&#39; Diablo Rey!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBlfvNj5sckTKXMNd44e_tPFr0Qq21Fg9-2NieIQPm4R_sA8fSEo2XyjSPtLWnHNaQvTgVeTqJfcZcC0jra2d9TRriIFwM5yT6Ie9VXl6avDe7chGDNjyROhkoV967bKmW0SOfFdpDXKsoxZI8-4_fidA4IxGz8AJg1VWUgXkX6_xyyG1Pg/s1256/satan.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;950&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1256&quot; height=&quot;303&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBlfvNj5sckTKXMNd44e_tPFr0Qq21Fg9-2NieIQPm4R_sA8fSEo2XyjSPtLWnHNaQvTgVeTqJfcZcC0jra2d9TRriIFwM5yT6Ie9VXl6avDe7chGDNjyROhkoV967bKmW0SOfFdpDXKsoxZI8-4_fidA4IxGz8AJg1VWUgXkX6_xyyG1Pg/w400-h303/satan.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;See also:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;For More Mexi-Monster Madness&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-DuooMGReDpGw2iu-FlkNN&quot; style=&quot;color: #940909; text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Mexico De Macabre,&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;(YouTube list)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/famous-monsters-of-mexico-i-el-vampiro.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #940909; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Famous Monsters of Mexico 1:&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;El Vampiro, The Vampire&#39;s Coffin&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/famous-monsters-of-mexco-part-1-ship-of.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #940909;&quot;&gt;Famous Monsters of Mexico II:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;Curse of the Crying Woman, Black Pit of Dr. M&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/02/hair-of-dogmatizer-brainiac-1962.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #940909; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hair of the Dogmatizer: The Brainiac (&lt;i&gt;El Baron del Terror&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/slide-vaquero-ship-of-monsters-1960.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #940909; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Slide, Vaquero!&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Ship of Monsters&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4884290263113941736/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/11/king-devil-says-go-for-it-dr-satan-1966.html#comment-form' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4884290263113941736'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4884290263113941736'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/11/king-devil-says-go-for-it-dr-satan-1966.html' title='King Devil says Go for It: DR. SATAN (1966), DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC (1968)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0GP4IHOIXQZiRyf-EUq4FBZbTaNPAUTuxLsjglSq4bvQHzEiQ5EBkit_M7dw5nDgmde-qtL0sfozxerXcxaeXxzbH2_q-RxoWx8JQb-MZWmAxE4Vi1f3BBiR3WUhn43EAEfTB36IckCip-wLXrUzsQTzU1d3ihrJtdqTkqm2bUPg5yNJdg/s72-w640-h488-c/dr%20satan%201%20.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4701515946568338388</id><published>2024-10-31T09:22:00.011-05:00</published><updated>2024-10-31T14:20:50.247-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Famous Monsters of Mexico II: CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN, BLACK PIT OF DR. M</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZEXF6jEux32dRfzIbLsfuaU2hu2nET6NHsVOmQpSgw7bqPITxISlyl0911vm4_CYWYG6g4TJVFF_KXffc1-Zg2gvvboc2UY2Qg4jcr-YaukN2xDnoSoA9W9dFoEG6BPIpLRVEkND9WAMiOKwED4lTy4kpH895GCCSSA5i4nlwk-OsBgabFkw/s1725/mujer%20be%20crying.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1309&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1725&quot; height=&quot;486&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZEXF6jEux32dRfzIbLsfuaU2hu2nET6NHsVOmQpSgw7bqPITxISlyl0911vm4_CYWYG6g4TJVFF_KXffc1-Zg2gvvboc2UY2Qg4jcr-YaukN2xDnoSoA9W9dFoEG6BPIpLRVEkND9WAMiOKwED4lTy4kpH895GCCSSA5i4nlwk-OsBgabFkw/w640-h486/mujer%20be%20crying.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg82jVXtGrKNVuNXgOBRwN2URkxL6aRpbvDYEeGMgfk8kFTQywI7upC_g0nKVtjETKbJVAEEwdgcfa2uUADKD1iyQ0D7flSf3trZnbWPSEHHKDNgsuXR-uw4ma4QwRN7AP0M9z4Iintu24Rl0Ehuv1rQwQqxVWEelJSyFfgyitmUJOc3vqjAMbh/s1698/maladora%20le%20mujer.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1289&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1698&quot; height=&quot;152&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg82jVXtGrKNVuNXgOBRwN2URkxL6aRpbvDYEeGMgfk8kFTQywI7upC_g0nKVtjETKbJVAEEwdgcfa2uUADKD1iyQ0D7flSf3trZnbWPSEHHKDNgsuXR-uw4ma4QwRN7AP0M9z4Iintu24Rl0Ehuv1rQwQqxVWEelJSyFfgyitmUJOc3vqjAMbh/w200-h152/maladora%20le%20mujer.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;October may not be the time when you look to our neighbor Mexico, but,&lt;i&gt; mi hombre raro cinéfilo&lt;/i&gt; maybe you should start. They got crazy masked wrestlers fighting vampire women, la Lorna, a vengeful ghost who drowned her babies and then wails in grief and kills people; a middle aged female insane asylum patient with the strength of ten men; a dueling pair of sisters one an evil vampire, the other a &lt;i&gt;beuena fuerte flaca con a cruz grande&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;who ends up being the one who stakes the male vampire, not the hero, and frequent scenes where a monster breaks into a woman&#39;s boudoir while she&#39;s sleeping and rather than fainting she reaches into her nightable drawer, grabs her gun, and fires at them, scaring them off and sometimes wounding them -then going back to bed like it ain&#39;t no thang. And etc. Strong matriarchal through line, is what I&#39;m getting at. Oodles of atmosphere, no frills, and if you love the 1931&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dracula,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;but have you&#39;ve seen so many times you can do a&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF3qYSOIzIY&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; one man show&lt;/a&gt; of it without even needing a script, (Bela is &lt;i&gt;finally &lt;/i&gt;artist of the month on TCM!) and wish they stayed at the castle instead of going to London, then viola! And if you love Mario Bava, double viola!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Even when these mid-60s Mexican horrors were good, they were a blast. But when they were bad, sublime. I collated a YouTube playlist,&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-DuooMGReDpGw2iu-FlkNN&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Mexico De Macabre,&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;so there you are/&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9bb2T5MQ8Iyg6AlBBHj7c1R4Cqsd5UQ78r3w2A8Ez32_Ol1tzjhYhKP03rWlbeilfmMQ48P_xh9iLtTAMyldh-VKxI1Ce_55eDGgFBtEFnZenLDugWv_dVEU1ME54OScsBjvBZ-6SmK-NFnwZiimTLVmcDRPlbWcu8Sh0jzt1fhDjWC4LuKK/s1739/curse%20of%20the%20crying%20woman%20wheel.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1300&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1739&quot; height=&quot;478&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE9bb2T5MQ8Iyg6AlBBHj7c1R4Cqsd5UQ78r3w2A8Ez32_Ol1tzjhYhKP03rWlbeilfmMQ48P_xh9iLtTAMyldh-VKxI1Ce_55eDGgFBtEFnZenLDugWv_dVEU1ME54OScsBjvBZ-6SmK-NFnwZiimTLVmcDRPlbWcu8Sh0jzt1fhDjWC4LuKK/w640-h478/curse%20of%20the%20crying%20woman%20wheel.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
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  3. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(La maldición de la Llorona)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1963) Dir. Rafael Baeldon&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Film adaptations of the &quot;la Lorna&quot; legend often bog down in costume soapiness or colonialist regret, but this 1963 definitive version says &#39;no one wants to see or shoot that shit,&quot; and just jumps, into the obsidian abyss of pure atmospheric horror, elements of Black Sunday and Dracula fused in with a nod to the legendary Crying Woman just the first in a while matriarchal lineage of &lt;i&gt;brujas malvadas&lt;/i&gt;, whose eyes go jet black under the full moon, when they kill random people, for kicks. The the first time we see Selma (Rita Macedo), she&#39;s all in black, wreathed in fog, holding the leashes for three Great Danes, as Barbara Steele did in a nod to&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Black Sunday&lt;/i&gt; (above) is silently crying/laughing/orgasming while her servant kills most of the passengers in a passing stage coach, before siccing her the Great Danes on a fat guy in a huge hat, and rolling over the young girl passenger with the coach wheels. And now tonight at midnight, her newly arrived nieced Amelia (Rosita Arenas), to fulfill her destiny, pulling the spear out of the desiccated body of their great great great &lt;i&gt;abuela,&lt;/i&gt; the original la Lorona, at the stroke of midnight --which is in a few hours! Amelia feels the destiny in her blood. She can&#39;t resist &quot;In our world,&quot; Selma tells her, &quot;nothing begins or ends.&quot; To prove it, Amelia almost strangles a passing coachman before a streak of eyes swirls down through the fog and her own eyes go jet black.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But one thing wasn&#39;t in the cards: Amelia brought her new husband, Haime (producer Abel Salazar), who is never without a giant erect cigar in his mouth, hinting perhaps at their&lt;i&gt; luna de miel interrumpia. &lt;/i&gt;Seriously, that cigar, and his perfectly pressed clothes, is kind of ridiuclous but it works on that lievel&amp;nbsp;Instead of a nice honeymoon, Amelia is realizing her destiny is to pull a spear out of her great great-great&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;abuela&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s chained, desiccated corpse (&lt;i&gt;above&lt;/i&gt;) at the stroke of midnight--which is in a few hours! She can&#39;t fight&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;destino.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;And in this case,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;destino&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;means her eyes going jet black whenever the moon is full (and not obscured by clouds), flashing back to a solarized tour of their lineages evil via clips from&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;El&amp;nbsp;Mundo des vampires&lt;/i&gt;,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;la Momia Azteca,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and the next two films in this post:&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;El Hombre y la Monstruo;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and almost strangling a passing wagoner as he rolls through the fog and gnarled trees on the road past the hacienda. Seriously, does anyone ever make it past that place? You&#39;d think the local &lt;i&gt;policia &lt;/i&gt;might hear the dogs growling and the evil aunt flying around, and the deformed clubfooted servant (she rescued him from the gallows, so he&#39;s very loyal) and finally they knock on the door, and are immediately torn to shreds by the dogs, which for some reason the cops with their guns out, are too slow to shoot. They froze! They&#39;re dead. End of. the cops.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4lmFZCQ1zeEyu2fvLDs3zUlw7ZTjk9iZ9RPlB7OYnCYLMJxP8g3oE5WBRHYpHYw0uVc66au7Z0zLEYSv1ApRHSRq3SAtGmmiOf6qCuW5HyfwmNgyjmJMB8_3dZRDM3ugPCdD-t4e3-T6LTETONO9LubH38s37mMxbqBpGDCBOtsDR0ewk7RP/s573/voodoo%20.png&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;436&quot; data-original-width=&quot;573&quot; height=&quot;243&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie4lmFZCQ1zeEyu2fvLDs3zUlw7ZTjk9iZ9RPlB7OYnCYLMJxP8g3oE5WBRHYpHYw0uVc66au7Z0zLEYSv1ApRHSRq3SAtGmmiOf6qCuW5HyfwmNgyjmJMB8_3dZRDM3ugPCdD-t4e3-T6LTETONO9LubH38s37mMxbqBpGDCBOtsDR0ewk7RP/s320/voodoo%20.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;This &lt;i&gt;Lorona&lt;/i&gt; everything I love about classic horror: big atmospheric soundstage forests full of dry ice fog and twisted branches, a lineage of powerful, evil women villains; and a short &#39;all in a night&#39; time tick-tockable (1) time span; haunted mirrors, voodoo dollas &lt;i&gt;(right)&lt;/i&gt;, a clever use of overlay (the la Lorona ghost appears over her corpse like she&#39;s merging in and out of her shell); a soundtrack of almost constant ethereal howling, whispering wind and weird slide whistle/theremin as if the wind sliding up a long twisty drain pipe; spider webs; big rubber bats;&amp;nbsp;an evil knife-throwing servant pretending to have a club foot, so he always looks like he&#39;s walking upstairs, and who has to squint to keep his scars on, and nary a trace of realism, daylight, last second patriarchal wrap-up morality, religion, lite opera, or any of the other stuff US censors would have demanded. Horror movies should all start at sunset and end at dawn, if ya ask me! And this one doesn&#39;t even take that long - it&#39;s practically real-time with crosscuts from the dysfunctional boys upstairs with their insanity, deformities, and tobacco addictions, and hilarious fighting, crosscutting with the three super powerful witches down in the basement, about to take over the world. In the northern devil movies, matriarchal lineages of witches are generally destroyed by one brave hombre with a cross and a smug patriarchal attitude by the end, while the devil women are all either devouring mothers (Shelly Winters) or sexy &#39;recruiters&#39; (ala Linda Christian). With&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Curse of the Crying Woman&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;there are neither. The male gaze isn&#39;t indulged&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;or&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;challenged, or even exploited, but totally ignored.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1274&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1668&quot; height=&quot;244&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinFD7sHNr9Nfot-LckmC1-p9le9Zc8dy0rPGQKYD2L2gQG35gvwyKzf0-lYjE36XFqGW56SrbMDjHHqIrmrRQRr78h9o7bSV9e0PqdslO_AVhlE_uNfugp-eR4-hGmoyLD0qwzeJz6ZIMsOyhhY_SPL3Ae3Hm6pKc5F3j6JJb8Uf8OIwO3YSZt/s320/ojos%20en%20la%20noche.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;There&#39;s a big thing going on with eyes -- Selma&#39;s eyes turn jet black in moonlight; a failed attempt by the make-up artist to seem inky, but she just looks like she&#39;s wearing black eye patches or closed eyes with lids painted black. It&#39;s not convincing but is unnerving. She seems truly unhinged. Ask a Latina to play amok evil and you get a force of nature out of reach of most other actresses, great as they may be. It&#39;s just a whole different level of emotion. You can totally see the way the original La Lorna could kill her kids in an jealous rage, and then lament their loss so loudly she&#39;s heard clear around the world. The results are far grimmer than anything we&#39;d get in North America or Europe--and we never quite recover from the blunt force shock of that opener. Even the flaws are creepy.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;The matte colored black eyes, the soundstage insolation clearly visible behind the rickety stairs to the top of the tower, the wagging tales of the dogs in the rapid cuts of dog mouths slobbering on glass panes, screaming gendarmes, and happy dogs out for treats, all snapped together in a howl of quick cuts--the results manage to magically becomes an unnerving Dionysian sparagmos and humane endearment distancing.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-BXQVAO3jJIq0oI-XS4VtWOKq4uJlCsun4llm_kDcHo1wSaTGfR7KUnupdzRXWLWo8nJiCeZRsPACC6Q8UOvjecG42ULRUgCGE3sn561X1JP9WDGSjH4eE0rGgmc1NwCZ3au-e_1ZVTpsp77AsozDnHTuT9uaA8TAJRQdhEK7y4xn4x8HiTs/s1693/mujer.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As Selma, Rita Macedo avoids extremes without ever straying from her unrepentant evil stance, which is hard to do. Neither young nor old, stridently witchy, wanton or feigning innocence, she has a look that&#39;s snobby rather than sinister. It&#39;s like she saw how restrained Gloria Holden was in &lt;i&gt;Dracula&#39;s Daughter--&lt;/i&gt;her closest relative in classic horror,&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;and&amp;nbsp;got so disgusted she vowed not to make the smallest feint towards censor-placating regret or longing to be good instead of evil and to love some smug patriarchal shrink, eager to give up her power in favor of a &#39;traditional&#39; role as a housewife. And yet, she&#39;s very low-key haughty mixed with soapy sanctimonious faux emotion, a habit facing downwards and away from her scene partner, that Mexican soap opera cheating out which was once probably her doing &#39;demure&#39; at the advance of a landowner or his son and now it just seems stuck-up/haughty, saying, almost boasting she rescued her deformed servant from being hanged for murder, or multiple murders that he did do, with the same bourgeois disregard as she might say, &quot;my dear, the party was filled with the most &lt;i&gt;common&lt;/i&gt; kinds of people&quot; in a &#39;normal&#39; movie. We can scarcely believe her evil as we&#39;re so used to the extremes of denial/deception or evil overacting, when someone gives us full evil while staying demure and aloof is so fresh it takes a few beats to react. The whole movie is kind of like that, which is why we&#39;re still getting over that opening shock during the rest of the movie, and getting over the rest of the movie never, but hey, we can go back and try again, and visit all the other Mexican horror films seen in the solarized tour of la Lorna&#39;s cursed lineage via a history of Cinematographica ABAS&#39; other/earlier films:&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;El&amp;nbsp;Mundo des vampires&lt;/i&gt;,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;la Momia Azteca,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;El Hombre y la Monstruo &lt;/i&gt;and..&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
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  5. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyW1EnIFeYiE1ZxLkmORKiHUrORNvBrLENrnBmN9V2l06CfMmNZac4ycBGkpPk_lEzpdEoAhpalZLMQeTI_eR4dPcTma3c1lDQ8iEiT7LQrocuAmVLlF5T8BOOxaG5BnJ20KgY/s1600/black+pit+of+dr+m.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;300&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;480&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyW1EnIFeYiE1ZxLkmORKiHUrORNvBrLENrnBmN9V2l06CfMmNZac4ycBGkpPk_lEzpdEoAhpalZLMQeTI_eR4dPcTma3c1lDQ8iEiT7LQrocuAmVLlF5T8BOOxaG5BnJ20KgY/s640/black+pit+of+dr+m.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Misterios de ultratumba&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1959) Dir. Fernando Méndez&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;A movie both quiet and bombastic, a score rife with pounding timpani, a very large and empty expressionist dance/cafe, and a lush hacienda insane asylum --what could go wrong? Dr. Aldama lays dying in one of the rooms, while the tactless Dr. Mazali (Rafael Bertrand), the owner/director demands he follow up on their mutual promise that the first to die will arrange a means by which the other may experience death without dying. While a priest and colleague look on aghast, Mazali makes sure the last words he hears are Aldama&#39;s declaring his soul not rest in peace until this agreement is fulfilled. A pretty difficult thing to ask a dying man, especially as tactlessly and urgently as Masali does. But hey - a graveyard shovel shot later, his colleague’s spirit speaks through a medium during a seance to give him the date and time at which &quot;a door will close in front of you, opening the way to the beyond&quot;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0b7dL5Z9GWYNGjK3fWTJ0kcYa4Bffx4zCv-ggTn1GPKJa05oUfTdp7wGL_TWku44VGs7ROyfziF2cwfC2PrlGhRSuwkzk9p9bqd5ybrIwxqg5-6-v023mKVCnSwL_kRx-EVWApmmCfSSFsPkYga5JNbcbeY7UXuJLfn41bszFDu9GBZkb3qmA/s613/M.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;425&quot; data-original-width=&quot;613&quot; height=&quot;222&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0b7dL5Z9GWYNGjK3fWTJ0kcYa4Bffx4zCv-ggTn1GPKJa05oUfTdp7wGL_TWku44VGs7ROyfziF2cwfC2PrlGhRSuwkzk9p9bqd5ybrIwxqg5-6-v023mKVCnSwL_kRx-EVWApmmCfSSFsPkYga5JNbcbeY7UXuJLfn41bszFDu9GBZkb3qmA/w320-h222/M.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;There&#39;s no pit to be found unless you mean symbolically, or consider a grave a pit, or that big well/fountain in the center of the lush atmospheric garden sanitarium, the standing soundstage hacienda here it&#39;s at its most invitingly fecund and ultra-spooky under evocative high-contrast Stanley Cortez-style black-and-white cinematography of Victor Herrera.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Aldama&#39;s ghost&#39;s first stop: Patricia (Mapita Cortés) the&amp;nbsp;daughter he abandoned, now a beautiful modern dancer at the cavernous, underpopulated dream cafe--- a perfect example of liminal space), telling her of a box she shall inherit hidden in the sanitarium, sending her towards destiny in an elaborate chain of coincidence that will fulfill his colleagues the macabre request and lead her to love with some handsome young doctor caught in the wheels of destiny. First, Dr. Mazali must contend with as seriously deranged a female mental patient as you&#39;ve never seen before or since, a justifiably embittered acid-scarred orderly, and his own gnawing love for the comely dancer daughter of the man he wouldn&#39;t let die in peace. &lt;i&gt;Pobrecito!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq9Tsq86-oPiPuK314lGL4etneJv7bACYnMEvIlXQTCRBOAsKNROj8NfQz8kPs7f0VtuxdFZpLamphFMUU6Ed9cHgibwP5AkC1oFZYm3VptzN7i_uv-YI5zxjFylSelAth5XAW/s1600/BLACK-PIT-OF-DR.-M2-512x300.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;300&quot; data-original-width=&quot;512&quot; height=&quot;117&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq9Tsq86-oPiPuK314lGL4etneJv7bACYnMEvIlXQTCRBOAsKNROj8NfQz8kPs7f0VtuxdFZpLamphFMUU6Ed9cHgibwP5AkC1oFZYm3VptzN7i_uv-YI5zxjFylSelAth5XAW/w200-h117/BLACK-PIT-OF-DR.-M2-512x300.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Everything is all part of a long circular inevitable chain of events involving seances, a dropped locket, a secret key, dreams, coincidence, falling glass, a lost locket, a strange murder, malpractice , a monogrammed dagger, a music box that calms an insane gypsy schizophrenic with the strength of ten men, soul transference, unrequited desperate woo-pitching, frenzied violin self-identification, and the tall, caped figure of Dr. Aldamaa appearing at every step to kick Rube Goldberg the can of coincidence down the grim EC comics-esque twist trap.&amp;nbsp; Kind of sucks people had to die and an innocent orderly by disfigured by acid thrown in his face, all just to fulfill a macabre promise, but that&#39;s the medical profession for ya, and hey! We get to watch a middle-aged woman terrify a whole room full of orderlies and doctors, sending them all running out of the room. As with &lt;i&gt;la Lorona,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;a strong matriarchal through line is off-a the chain. In Mexican horror, young women may start out innocent, yes, but once they age enough they become forces to be respected and feared. Good luck finding broads like la Lorona and this crazy gypsy in a yankee movie.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What a movie...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfpB3bBpQo26m6fcRPsmYF3qFu1G-VGP0ta1KEjx6TTIUWSPdtx3i-btL7p0y628gUlybF5tv2NP71FytOq_c20mYX41pVFfx5mj4MpVh9qxRSglZHwFb_BPx7fFKHRS4wUzMixJybmHc0HGRgwJ_ftzJHM7UIiCZp41dyBW7lvgfZGt1VStfR/s612/crazy%20eyes.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;464&quot; data-original-width=&quot;612&quot; height=&quot;152&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfpB3bBpQo26m6fcRPsmYF3qFu1G-VGP0ta1KEjx6TTIUWSPdtx3i-btL7p0y628gUlybF5tv2NP71FytOq_c20mYX41pVFfx5mj4MpVh9qxRSglZHwFb_BPx7fFKHRS4wUzMixJybmHc0HGRgwJ_ftzJHM7UIiCZp41dyBW7lvgfZGt1VStfR/w200-h152/crazy%20eyes.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Take back one kadam due to the overuse of Gustavo César Carrión&amp;nbsp;bombastic score (that big timapanii roll and thunderous Da-&lt;i&gt;da&lt;/i&gt; DA!! (&lt;i&gt;Zarathustra&lt;/i&gt;-esque timapani roll). Da...da-&lt;i&gt;DA!&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;i&gt;Zarathustra&lt;/i&gt;-esque timapani roll) is great the first 20 times, but after that....) Another kadam taken due to a bland&amp;nbsp;daylight pastorale scenes of Masali walking to a nearby church with Patricia, and her budding love for the age-appropriate new intern (the old triangle..), But soon enough all of them, and everyone else, are swallowed up by that screaming, dark, hushed mood, expressionistic lighting and ultimately satisfying, frenzied climax --you can almost visualize it as a final splash page panel in an old EC comic, the other doctors saying &quot;&lt;i&gt;gasp&lt;/i&gt;!&#39; and &#39;&lt;i&gt;choke&lt;/i&gt;!&#39; as the full measure of ironic horror is unveiled.&amp;nbsp; Best of all is that high-contrast black-and-white cinematography, which wraps it all up in so many inky shadows and twisty fecund corridors, It&#39;s so clear that Mendez and Herrera have seen and loved the early Freund-shot Universal horrors as well as the Tourneur-Lewtons, honoring them in their devotion to thick Halloween-ready atmos. And remember: &quot;science and art are equal!&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxcDxOJUegz9Rn-okkM5ikRMkBdxjG8obOPK-RPGOcZpn5n5TT1Ofe6UgOVm1hyphenhyphenzoklBN_9GeujGxOdC5UBecESEXBuVT7Kq0DdZ9LROIKIP_E6ZGjzvRZKU5CCahYso6mTHIB11b_cEnWettqajqY6EdyQVkaF44V-47lfICCZJgRJa2Rxy3k/s1704/curse%20of%20the%20crying%20woman.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1274&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1704&quot; height=&quot;299&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxcDxOJUegz9Rn-okkM5ikRMkBdxjG8obOPK-RPGOcZpn5n5TT1Ofe6UgOVm1hyphenhyphenzoklBN_9GeujGxOdC5UBecESEXBuVT7Kq0DdZ9LROIKIP_E6ZGjzvRZKU5CCahYso6mTHIB11b_cEnWettqajqY6EdyQVkaF44V-47lfICCZJgRJa2Rxy3k/w400-h299/curse%20of%20the%20crying%20woman.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;See also:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;For More Mexi-Monster Madness&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-DuooMGReDpGw2iu-FlkNN&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Mexico De Macabre,&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;(YouTube list)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/famous-monsters-of-mexico-i-el-vampiro.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Monsters of Mexico 1: &lt;i&gt;El Vampiro, The Vampire&#39;s Coffin&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/02/hair-of-dogmatizer-brainiac-1962.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hair of the Dogmatizer: The Brainiac (&lt;i&gt;El Baron del Terror&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/slide-vaquero-ship-of-monsters-1960.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Slide, Vaquero!; &lt;i&gt;Ship of Monsters&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;1. &lt;b&gt;Tick-Tockability&lt;/b&gt; is an all too rarely used horror trick of slowing time down and having the film occur in a single night or short period of time, where a five minute scene crosscut from three perspectives takes 15 minutes instead of 5, etc. First used by Carpenter in &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt;, though Griffith might have invented it back in the day, like he did damn near most everything else.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  6. &lt;/div&gt;
  7. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4701515946568338388/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/famous-monsters-of-mexco-part-1-ship-of.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4701515946568338388'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4701515946568338388'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/famous-monsters-of-mexco-part-1-ship-of.html' title='Famous Monsters of Mexico II: CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN, BLACK PIT OF DR. M'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZEXF6jEux32dRfzIbLsfuaU2hu2nET6NHsVOmQpSgw7bqPITxISlyl0911vm4_CYWYG6g4TJVFF_KXffc1-Zg2gvvboc2UY2Qg4jcr-YaukN2xDnoSoA9W9dFoEG6BPIpLRVEkND9WAMiOKwED4lTy4kpH895GCCSSA5i4nlwk-OsBgabFkw/s72-w640-h486-c/mujer%20be%20crying.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-6373116296245696996</id><published>2024-10-23T19:54:00.005-05:00</published><updated>2024-10-23T22:23:31.733-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Famous Monsters of Mexico I: EL VAMPIRO (1957), THE VAMPIRE&#39;S COFFIN (1958)  </title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulh2o8iU314OKKIEpG4esJXFa7oUO_uMJHQe81l_S7xH3QOf1o0GHVvva6bfTu0htWPGbyunIKs4pxbW-PpT6tn-iaLHCGO4dfzqBZy38erG2tcf5ah6Rk4_guF9-uH3CwWDxFAq7hxACjUBL9O7Uqwk7L5a97kRVTSc-nH7YEUdR_dBdzyYM/s1743/Screenshot%202024-10-16%20at%207.44.21%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1321&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1743&quot; height=&quot;486&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulh2o8iU314OKKIEpG4esJXFa7oUO_uMJHQe81l_S7xH3QOf1o0GHVvva6bfTu0htWPGbyunIKs4pxbW-PpT6tn-iaLHCGO4dfzqBZy38erG2tcf5ah6Rk4_guF9-uH3CwWDxFAq7hxACjUBL9O7Uqwk7L5a97kRVTSc-nH7YEUdR_dBdzyYM/w640-h486/Screenshot%202024-10-16%20at%207.44.21%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hey Classic Mexican horror fans, this is &lt;b&gt;Mil Errores&lt;/b&gt;,&lt;i&gt; escritor que lucha libre de adicciones y ego monstrouo&lt;/i&gt; y, here to offer this October a whole series &quot;Famous Monsters of&amp;nbsp;Mexico&quot; - because all of it is, if nothing else, imaginative and just plain crazy AND with a strong matriachal through line thanks the numero uno monster of Mexico being la Lorona, the Crying Woman, Mexico&#39;s big crossover horror icon, recurring again and again in one form or another -- evoking a very strong matriarchal through-line - devouring aunts and mothers luring her niece to the hacienda for a sacrifice, to inhale her youth and/or drown and kill children, to keep the devil happy. Yes, queen... of evil!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Repetitious, threadbare movies, the same passages of bombastic score over and over, endlessly recycled sets and props--sound familiar!? but unlike Monogram or PIC North of the border, the imagination on display is pretty jaw-dropping. So let&#39;s get in on the madness! Starting (according to some half-memory of a documentary extra seen ten years ago).,&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OKOx0T_wR1dVvHoSoiCBbrVV1zeVF8yt7ItWbFZJCcIXofQOyzXqstVW6Uy2MtkgTmQFB4UQvkQv4uKJC4uwv2Zx0FpmvB6-aOxA7dWDozeuKI1A8CigHtWn4b5G__pixbxmmsPh8IE_0aVrw0EXB_gDyBQ0YvXNM-QzK0IT-hilZbBApEea/s1764/salazar.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1306&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1764&quot; height=&quot;237&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OKOx0T_wR1dVvHoSoiCBbrVV1zeVF8yt7ItWbFZJCcIXofQOyzXqstVW6Uy2MtkgTmQFB4UQvkQv4uKJC4uwv2Zx0FpmvB6-aOxA7dWDozeuKI1A8CigHtWn4b5G__pixbxmmsPh8IE_0aVrw0EXB_gDyBQ0YvXNM-QzK0IT-hilZbBApEea/s320/salazar.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Kicking things off we salute Abel Salazar (&lt;i&gt;left)&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the Mexican Carl Laemmle Jr, if Carl was also an ex-matinee idol, with a more than passing resemblance to Sheldon Leonard. He generally shows up as the good lead in the thankless role of hapless husband, passing stranger, etc. the shaky heteronormative alternative to the evil seduction of the heroine&#39;s maternal ancestors, i.e. the ultimate wicked stepmother/s, but with his name as producer in the credits as well, so you can understand why he might come off a tad distracted&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The big notable differences between these Mexican horrors and ours, besides language/dubbing involves the big soundstage standing set of a hacienda, which appears over and over in many many Mexican movies of the era: it looks great, with front gate, a well in the center of the courtyard, a row of balconies like a motel, all visible and overlain with big soundstage surrealist atmosphere, and a strong matriarchal through line thanks to the power wielded by older Mexican women in the social structure, and Mexico&#39;s big crossover horror icon, recurring again and again in one form or another, devouring aunts and mothers luring her niece to the hacienda for a sacrifice, to inhale her youth and/or drown and kill children, to keep the devil happy. Yes, queen... of evil!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Yes, Mexico is &lt;i&gt;muy viejo&lt;/i&gt;. America can&#39;t find its own la Lorona, or Inquisition, rather than just wipe out the native inhabitants, the Spanish had children with them, Catholicism making it all OK in a way super-racist America never understood --and that&#39;s how Mexicans, LatinX-ers were born and that&#39;s the root of la Lorona, the Native mistress and the Spanish nobleman who fathered her children, but then mistreated her and triggered a Medea reaction. In the US horror movies if we do luck out and get a woman monster, she has to fall for some bland young white cipher who prefers Evelyn Ankers or something, to appease our uptight racist censors. We have to set our films in Europe to evoke ghostliness, but Mexico... it&#39;s gotta go nowhere - it&#39;s already home. And the monsters are in their blood, in the sand, in the bull ring, the wrestling mat, the spooky hacienda engulfed by evil...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Px2Z97DVZy0jUe0hWnvCSFX9uZS2LMyQZgwZv0JKCHiIHRhdXy9MYuvSgr7-NVOXgKN6qBwr1JM6hAxCGbfhm9jKtnCjE7sFlx7ON4iRFc2uZGC3nv-oU21o4uvOk48B0cd5/s1600/vampire+coffin.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;473&quot; data-original-width=&quot;620&quot; height=&quot;488&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Px2Z97DVZy0jUe0hWnvCSFX9uZS2LMyQZgwZv0JKCHiIHRhdXy9MYuvSgr7-NVOXgKN6qBwr1JM6hAxCGbfhm9jKtnCjE7sFlx7ON4iRFc2uZGC3nv-oU21o4uvOk48B0cd5/w640-h488/vampire+coffin.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE VAMPIRE (EL VAMPIRO)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1957) Dir. Fernando Méndez&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Producer Abel Salazar is the nominal mortal hero here, playing the super skittish and inconsistent psychiatrist Dr. Enrique, who&#39;s been called to the Sicomoros, a remote, crumbling, spooky villa way out in Sierra Negra, under the guise of helping fellow traveler an all-around clueless naif Marta (Ariadne Welter) get &#39;home&#39; safe after they get off the train (they hitch a ride on a wagon with a big coffin full of earth, so you know whassupa. She hasn&#39;t been there since she was a kid, and it was sunny and normal--now; she find the whole landscape is twisted and foggy and dangerous; the hacienda is rundown, cobwebbed and twisty tree roots and fog. Servants have all fled or bled-&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Oh dios mio. &lt;/i&gt;She&#39;s been working in a shop, now&amp;nbsp;called back because the good aunt who raised her-- Maria (Alicia Montoya)--is sick, or crazy; and actually dead, or at least has a funeral procession to Sicomoros&#39; atmosphere drenched crypt. She is the one who Enrique was called in to diagnose since she was raving about vampires --now she&#39;s dead, and the medical association is pretty strict about psychiatric diagnoses once the patient is dead. On the other hand, the bad sister, Eloisa (Carmen Montejo) is alive, but not really. She hasn&#39;t aged a day since Marta left. Now she sleeps all day, dresses all in black, can&#39;t be seen in mirrors, is averse to crosses but--you know, the idea of vampirism is scoffed at. In between, a milquetoast uncle Emilio (José Luis Jiménez) tries to stay out of it. Salazar&#39;s shrink however just can&#39;t leave without diagnosing&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;someone&lt;/i&gt;, so spends his time trying to put his clumsy flirt moves on Marta rather than letting her grieve.&amp;nbsp;But vampiros?!&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Dr. Enrique would much rather commit the dead body of Amelia to the sanitarium than risk his standing in the scientific community by believing his own eyes. Any layman can easily to diagnose a vampire--and in case he forgot there&#39;s a book from the library that the not-dead Maria pushes out from her hideout behind the bookshelf, to catch him up. But he only thinks it&#39;s fiction; leaves Marta foolishly exposed to Eloisa and her urbane, hip vamp novio Count Duval (the amazing German Robles), then promptly pronounces her dead after she drinks drugged wine, and declares its &quot;impossible&quot; when her finger moves. This guy is really a terrible doctor! Marta&#39;s aunt is less than 48 hours dead but he doesn&#39;t want to believe she might still be alive in her crypt, either. He pronounces Marta dead but &lt;i&gt;she&#39;s &lt;/i&gt;alive too, and he thinks Eloisa is alive, but she&#39;s dead!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLWjlXQaEr1UD7MPCpdkr-TwWGCpYmiBYGVSvUWI9ubDtLTvh83O5WM8IIl3guF_R5pT5wNcCIQ0gCS4o0HagLvsI_qrdDPBjolK0AyNCz1EtqAuL0hmVS6YKZPqjahF10aDNGfdbSHXockRYDLP4pCl98woNP5mAo52LecZ0d5O7AoxEE8hJ/s1631/hacienda.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1183&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1631&quot; height=&quot;232&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLWjlXQaEr1UD7MPCpdkr-TwWGCpYmiBYGVSvUWI9ubDtLTvh83O5WM8IIl3guF_R5pT5wNcCIQ0gCS4o0HagLvsI_qrdDPBjolK0AyNCz1EtqAuL0hmVS6YKZPqjahF10aDNGfdbSHXockRYDLP4pCl98woNP5mAo52LecZ0d5O7AoxEE8hJ/s320/hacienda.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The atomsphere is great, though, when you&#39;re in the Halloween type of mood. The problem with this film alas is that we spend way too much time with the fussy Enrique--Salazar vacillating between trying to be romantic lead and Van Helsing at the same time, regularly giving the distraught Marta a kind of super lame &quot;let&#39;s see a smile&quot; come-on, saying she shouldn&#39;t cry over her aunt because he thinks it makes her less attractive--one can&#39;t tell if he&#39;s meant to be so creepy about hitting on her, invading her space. One really appreciates Bob&#39;s tact and light touch in &lt;i&gt;The Cat and the Canary &lt;/i&gt;all the more after this.&amp;nbsp; And Marta isn&#39;t any better. Her crazy scream seems uncalled for, and refusal to believe her own eyes--over and over, stretches credulity and patience to the limit. Vampires are pretty easy to spot, so you really need to not think about it too closely. Just how old is she supposed to be?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And thus it&#39;s hard not to root for Eloisa and her Dracula-esque&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;novio&lt;/i&gt;. Soaking up the night vapors, standing very straight and still deep in the great soundstage forests wreathed in fog, webs and twisty branches, her black scarf whipping out behind her like the lady version of a cape, staring out at nothing and then slowly vanishing or turning into bats, what a kind of a love story! He bit her first (before the credits) and now wants to own the Sicomoros and has made a good offer, all&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;just so he can visit his brother&#39;s crypt (Duval backwards!) which adjoins the property and maybe disinter him. I&#39;m not sure why he doesn&#39;t just marry Eloisa and not have to deal with real estate taxes.&amp;nbsp;Instead Duval puts the bite on Marta and maybe Eloisa suspects he won&#39;t be the freshest nest in the roost, or whatever. But hey, dig his crazy mirthless laugh where looks like Richard Devon as Satan in &lt;i&gt;The Undead&lt;/i&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Luckily, all those dumb little narrative points vanish in the bat-filled breeze once Aunt Maria appears, creeping&amp;nbsp; in and out of her niece&#39;s bedroom via secret panels to plant little straw crosses on her pillow and otherwise save the day. She&#39;s the only cool, good person and she&#39;s been driven half-mad from fear and&amp;nbsp; trying to convince the glass-eyed normals around her that vampires are real. There&#39;s a fine line, as we learn in our undergraduate feminist lit courses, between being driven crazy by no one listening to you and no one listening to you because you&#39;re crazy. At a certain point, even that fine line is gone.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfu5DRb2sK4PvuxM1WRZbKo3r-ICokVzeJQRkO4xESFB7OmqwurGqQljk16TRvOhMnxoftSdWFzTaBC0KOFQkH1I0HoqSCCBk1_MdDDOrjoBYXsg05kyjalz7LT0VYwFmLguuwVAFrtYfWFX_KQ3JfEZ5IuWkv0y5bA2h2-R3Zqxv-WxLGpDU_&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1273&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1695&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfu5DRb2sK4PvuxM1WRZbKo3r-ICokVzeJQRkO4xESFB7OmqwurGqQljk16TRvOhMnxoftSdWFzTaBC0KOFQkH1I0HoqSCCBk1_MdDDOrjoBYXsg05kyjalz7LT0VYwFmLguuwVAFrtYfWFX_KQ3JfEZ5IuWkv0y5bA2h2-R3Zqxv-WxLGpDU_&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Sights of the aunt wafting around closed-off bedroom clutching a giant cross to her chest, her hair long gray hair and grey dress taffeta trails flowing behind her like ghostly afterburn, her huge eyes wide, stricken with having to behold too much horror-- it all gives her a kind of &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/04/cinemarchetype-11-wild-wise-woman.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;wild/wise woman&lt;/a&gt; sex appeal one-off archetype: the good undead Christian spirit who wields the cross instead of fears it. I&#39;ve always wondered why being entombed alive seems to automatically turn people into monsters once they escape&amp;nbsp; (ala Corman&#39;s Poe films,&amp;nbsp;Lewton&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Isle of the Dead,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;etc.), so I&#39;m glad Maria stays nice, if still a a little rattled and unworldly. We need more of these vampire fighting eccentric aunts with long hair and big crosses and huge eyes, countering each vamp machination from behind her secret passages.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;In the end it&#39;s all about real estate -- and, take it from me in the 90s: after a long night of decadence and potent potables, a conveniently located crypt you can reach before dawn is worth any price.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMW11T_bJDeSdmu0h2VMC8cIvXZ-cvnJlNliUV22h4Y1LbjZAS1bH6cp3i1idwRnOzZTO_XvCLoETixS1TH_-r-6LFnGOkjG6rxYDBFwYT9_EY2orTS3tqNRwyi7DEzMmcoCoY/s1600/The+Vampire+collection.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: black;&quot;&gt;\&lt;/span&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1500&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1055&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMW11T_bJDeSdmu0h2VMC8cIvXZ-cvnJlNliUV22h4Y1LbjZAS1bH6cp3i1idwRnOzZTO_XvCLoETixS1TH_-r-6LFnGOkjG6rxYDBFwYT9_EY2orTS3tqNRwyi7DEzMmcoCoY/s200/The+Vampire+collection.jpg&quot; width=&quot;140&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Though he gets star billing and positioning as &quot;The&quot; vampire,&quot; Spanish actor German Robles only shows up about 1/3 of the time, but what an entrance he makes, arriving in an ominous black carriage that rolls through the mist-shrouded villa gates with ominous fanfare. Dressed to the nines in prime Lugosian formal finery, he&#39;s like a brooding and sublime mix of Christopher Lee and George Chakiris. After the ineffectual&lt;i&gt; tio &lt;/i&gt;being the only other man to counterbalance Salazar&#39;s light-footed ineffectual doctor, it&#39;s nice to have someone with some swagger. While the doc runs high and lo, hands waving in a perpetual tizzy, struggling to believe his own eyes as he vacillates between Van Helsing savvy, skepticism-masked denial, and Lou Costello&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;st-st-&lt;/i&gt;stuttering, Roble&#39;s poised charismatic Duval majestically arrives in full award ceremony regalia, replete with badass hypnotic pendant, manages to loom over everyone else even while looking up from the ground floor. Would that we spent more of the film&#39;s running time with &lt;i&gt;him &lt;/i&gt;and Eloisa, perhaps in some kind of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Addams Family-&lt;/i&gt;style Morticia/Gomez macabre courting ritual, or back in the shadows with the good aunt. But you can&#39;t have everything. And the score is pretty epic, booming and hissing like some Mexican Max Steiner (it would be recycled frequently in the films to come); the idea of the good vs. evil aunt thing is relatively original, and there&#39;s misty, gnarled tree and spider web atmosphere coursing through, in and around the hacienda in the best Halloween perennial sort of way. Fans of the Spanish language version of the 1931&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dracula&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;may rightly wish Robles had been old enough back then to take the role away from the miscasted Carlos Villarías. Now&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;that&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;would be a classic. But this is definitely worth your time anyway. Maybe I&#39;ve been too hard on it. Truth is we have to love it because its success launched the Mexican horror mini-boom of late-50s-60s; many of which showed up on US TV thanks to K. Gordon Murray and his Florida dubbing team (whose voices one grows quite fond of as the films accrue). And dig the short diegetic time period - it&#39;s over in the course of two nights and a day ... and it&#39;s the good old lady does the stakin&#39; - and you got to like that.&amp;nbsp; &lt;i&gt;Es verdad!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;You can find this on Blu-ray, usually paired with&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;El Vampiro&#39;s&lt;/i&gt; goofy sequel....&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipIM-cqOfDw6qQEB6Ds_hfFZI97HAJ12ga2NXidWpDIpnWZY-HNEcGpvZ4dOITBZfr4kXY38U2dSSXtyOMccL03blA7Ti9Mmbt-JuDUka5AS82rzF43KiWeF7NTheLJlcJdVjydqeVo5ZhzQ4WfctuNuZTKgzYbnEbhmrdtD2gK17GVIZ9GpAz/s639/salazar%20and%20company.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;472&quot; data-original-width=&quot;639&quot; height=&quot;472&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipIM-cqOfDw6qQEB6Ds_hfFZI97HAJ12ga2NXidWpDIpnWZY-HNEcGpvZ4dOITBZfr4kXY38U2dSSXtyOMccL03blA7Ti9Mmbt-JuDUka5AS82rzF43KiWeF7NTheLJlcJdVjydqeVo5ZhzQ4WfctuNuZTKgzYbnEbhmrdtD2gK17GVIZ9GpAz/w640-h472/salazar%20and%20company.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;THE VAMPIRE&#39;S COFFIN&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(&quot;El ataúd del Vampiro&quot;)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1958) Dir. Fernando Mendez&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;One issue with having Salazar as a producer&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;a star: who&#39;s going to tell him to stop hamming? Or that his romantic co-star Amelia from the previous film shouldn&#39;t be playing a professional dancer as she seems pregnant and it&#39;s a marked deviation from her goody-two-shoes from last film. Both actors seem determined to unveil their weak areas but Salazar is especially insufferable. Determined to wreak every last drop of comic tic-indulgence from his nervous l-l-l-line readings, he tries to convince his now hospitalized &lt;i&gt;novia&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;that everything from the last film was entirely her imagination. Why he deliberately endangers her life by not even giving her a cross and some wolf bane or something, even after his idiot fellow intern (?) steals Duval&#39;s coffin to run some scientific tests (he finds out that, among other things, that when a vampire is staked you can see his skull in a mirror rather than nothing.... &lt;i&gt;that&#39;s&lt;/i&gt; science!).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;What the idiot intern doesn&#39;t bank on of course is that the thug he hired to help steal the coffin (Yerye Beirut, i.e. the Mexican Marc Lawrence) sneaks in later to pull out Lavud&#39;s stake in order to get at his jeweled hypno-necklace. Big mistake, Yerye! Unless of course you like being a Renfield/ henchman to a vampire who wastes no time launching a reign of terror at the hospital Marta is staying at, appearing and disappearing, putting the bite on a small kid just like the last film(irregardless of the giant cross above her bed) and angling to make Marta his bride - as fate suddenly decrees. Why he should fall in love with &lt;i&gt;her&lt;/i&gt; of all people, remains a mystery, outside of script convenience. Wasn&#39;t he all up in her evil aunt? Make up your mind, Duval!&amp;nbsp; Fans of &lt;i&gt;Halloween 2&lt;/i&gt;, and I hear there are some, might note the obvious similarity in plot points - heroine in hospital cuz the last film&#39;s trauma, now has her justified fears smugly disregarded by overconfident staff, the killer wiping out the whole hospital in an effort to get to her -- and it makes a good comparison in quality as well as, while both sequels are fine in their own right, they&#39;re rather inferior to their antecedents.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSaX60P8xIGHUUeMIppgvdIZ8dHBu5LRsC_mXC6KlzMNM3EBZ0ewAyvksAfF8GqHrsoejPQhPbukKa-tWK8qSv7ebFcDWWD8MeDwLX2n4ZN-M0cgnCR_r5Z8EpKBOq8B6Lg3apWVVieKpj_hg7MIGqi-xNdW4UHeQk8XtEUFSudBA1U945ZA/s934/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-07%20at%209.02.34%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;689&quot; data-original-width=&quot;934&quot; height=&quot;295&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSaX60P8xIGHUUeMIppgvdIZ8dHBu5LRsC_mXC6KlzMNM3EBZ0ewAyvksAfF8GqHrsoejPQhPbukKa-tWK8qSv7ebFcDWWD8MeDwLX2n4ZN-M0cgnCR_r5Z8EpKBOq8B6Lg3apWVVieKpj_hg7MIGqi-xNdW4UHeQk8XtEUFSudBA1U945ZA/w400-h295/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-07%20at%209.02.34%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Furthering the disconnect, Abel Salazar dyed his hair blacker and lost some weight for this film, making him seem younger than he was in the first film (just as he&#39;s now an intern instead of a psychiatrist), and if you can get past his senseless gaslighting of Marta you&#39;re bound to despise him for trying to rat out his vamp-stealing fellow intern to the head of the hospital&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(say what you will about Abbot and Costello, they weren&#39;t narcs). Eventually, he realizes he&#39;ll come off like a tattletale, even to the hospital director, so he takes full blame (&quot;I stole a corpse last night,&quot;) then ups the ante (&quot;it was a va&lt;i&gt;mpire&lt;/i&gt;.&quot;) Jesus Marta and Joseph! What is a stressed Mexico City hospital director supposed to do with that information, aside from firing you and/or locking you up, tonto? With the count using his hypno-necklace to get her under his will on one side, and the overacting hysteria of Salazar&#39;s amorous doctor trying to overprotect/gaslight Marta, one wonders if this competing &#39;control&#39; of the &#39;feminine agency&#39; is a backlash from last film&#39;s relative matriarchal strengths. A jumpy gaslighting narc convincing you it&#39;s all in your mind, or a sophisticated urbane necrophile who has to anesthetize you before busting a move--what a choice of suitors for a young lady! Hell you&#39;re better off with Claude Rains in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Notorious.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;At least she gets a big comfortable king-size bed.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Further rubbing in the patriarchal revisionist agenda, the coolest, strongest character from the first film, the cross-wielding, wild-haired wild woman archetype Maria (Alicia Montoya) gets the short shrift. She follows the coffin to the hospital and starts running high and low and carrying on about the danger, only to be prevented from visiting Maria by Salazar, still in full denial - and then after bravely stalking Yerye to the wax museum, meets her fate, unheralded and forgotten, in the iron maiden before the movie is halfway over and no one ever wonders where she is or if she&#39;s OK --she&#39;s just totally forgotten about. Does the doctor&#39;s &#39;treatment&#39; include pretending she doesn&#39;t even &lt;i&gt;have&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;an aunt? Seriously between him and Charles Boyer in &lt;i&gt;Gaslight&lt;/i&gt;, you&#39;re better off with -&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;But all that aside, once again the cool Halloween horror atmosphere is in abundance thanks to a weird interiority dream space where hospital, theater, outdoor cafe, wax museum, all seem linked as if on a giant soundstage, all of it connected by weird ladder systems and twisty stairs leading up to the light rigging rafters. When Duval whisks Marta away from her dance troupe, and up to the rafters, he only has to cross a few ladders to come down into his wax museum hideout. The almost empty all-night indoor/outdoor (?) cafe where one of the dancers goes to relax between rehearsals has a weird expressionist Edward Hopper glow, with the welcomely ominous deep black shadows offset only by high-contrast diegetic electric light sources; streetlamps, stage lights, hospital nighttime track lighting, all of it barely holding back the dark thanks to the Stanley Cortez-esque work of cinematographer Victor Herrera. Compare that to the comparably banal &#39;every corner of every room must be visible &#39;somehow the old castle is all lit up with no visible light source&#39;-style look of Hammer and Corman (and even post-code Universal) and you realize how precious that inky black is. It must be savored and celebrated. It helps fill in the empty spots in the sorriest looking wax museum you&#39;ll ever see. It just seems like damaged mannequin storage space. The bit where Yerye lurks and poses like a waxwork to evade discovery evokes Marc Lawrence in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;or Bronson in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;House of Wax. &lt;/i&gt;They even bring out the old&amp;nbsp;guillotine demo gag and the one&amp;nbsp;where the killer stands next to his uglier wax image, you have to take their word for it they look alike. They missed the opportunity to replace the figures with real actors holding very still, a trick very well implemented in the original 1935&lt;i&gt; Mystery of the Wax Museum,&lt;/i&gt; and in &lt;i&gt;Tourist Trap. &lt;/i&gt;Mostly they&#39;re all mannequins whose heads were melted and reshaped or just given a head made in &lt;i&gt;papier mache&lt;/i&gt; by a blind five year-old. In case you can&#39;t tell, that means I love them.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7dee4xHQ2dHxZIea8I_jYjZ79EEyunIhbbzj1LyGal1t5glAyI1dYBWjs8MifQ32FjnL-4EcEQTjh1yhAaVNSLoLgIxJY-7kpAykmAE_WxlhOxjd-q2E7uaEruwjQX9ZNnkZu8AZXuxPwUWLaMfhxOTBvRSFVPWtEGCEm8T7ycyawgK9TA/s941/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-07%20at%209.03.36%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;676&quot; data-original-width=&quot;941&quot; height=&quot;288&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU7dee4xHQ2dHxZIea8I_jYjZ79EEyunIhbbzj1LyGal1t5glAyI1dYBWjs8MifQ32FjnL-4EcEQTjh1yhAaVNSLoLgIxJY-7kpAykmAE_WxlhOxjd-q2E7uaEruwjQX9ZNnkZu8AZXuxPwUWLaMfhxOTBvRSFVPWtEGCEm8T7ycyawgK9TA/w400-h288/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-07%20at%209.03.36%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Performances other than Salazar&#39;s are all pretty choice, too. Nobles is back, as Lee/Chakris-hybrid charismatic as ever and Adrianne Welter&amp;nbsp;is a much more animated Marta this time, except onstage, where she&#39;s shockingly half-assed as the lead dancer. She&#39;s strong, too -- she even shoves Duval at one point and he goes spinning into the opposite wall. Those same thunderous library music cues from the last film may repeat endlessly, but I love that, in the big climax, though I&#39;ve been hard on him, Salazar gets to demonstrate his athletic side. That he can full-on fight with a giant bat without getting tangled in its visible strings indicates some nimble dexterity to balance out his hamming, never missing a chance to show off his fencing or bannister leaping, and I love the weird final ending (&quot;Those stairs lead to the roof,&quot; says the incredulous police chief after Salazar and Marta try to walk up into the sunlight ala the end of 1931 &lt;i&gt;Dracula&lt;/i&gt;.) When they take the front door, it&#39;s still night out, and the diner across the street still has its noirish ambient Hopper&#39;s Nighthawks kinda vibe. You can see them cooling off with a drink at the outdoor cafe before going home. It&#39;s a pretty good, meta way to end things, with the flippant attitude of Salazar finally making contextual sense. Well, like they always say, you don&#39;t come to Mexico for the meta resonance or lush production valies, you come for the oomph, the imagination, the shock to the senses. In Mexico, the power of myth is right there, in full form- alive like a fire that&#39;s never gone out. It may not give much of a flicker at times, but it never has to be re-lit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdX998PDuW61LOK1T_5P99F8NOgiPLDcfNEjSVc2mYxM5hrnYsTNOtXbPsRV32WhO0ORg7VJUf2f57XRRKyF39hH3vrQQsSQY7XErC_VXXh8T2MCjlkjSW32xTjw-Ehfmm6v2153srQOkN4p_Q0gw5BdA2y3dq7O4ZY87g_mk3333MhMnZisHb/s1692/vampiro.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1292&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1692&quot; height=&quot;244&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdX998PDuW61LOK1T_5P99F8NOgiPLDcfNEjSVc2mYxM5hrnYsTNOtXbPsRV32WhO0ORg7VJUf2f57XRRKyF39hH3vrQQsSQY7XErC_VXXh8T2MCjlkjSW32xTjw-Ehfmm6v2153srQOkN4p_Q0gw5BdA2y3dq7O4ZY87g_mk3333MhMnZisHb/s320/vampiro.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/6373116296245696996/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/famous-monsters-of-mexico-i-el-vampiro.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/6373116296245696996'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/6373116296245696996'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/famous-monsters-of-mexico-i-el-vampiro.html' title='Famous Monsters of Mexico I: EL VAMPIRO (1957), THE VAMPIRE&#39;S COFFIN (1958)  '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulh2o8iU314OKKIEpG4esJXFa7oUO_uMJHQe81l_S7xH3QOf1o0GHVvva6bfTu0htWPGbyunIKs4pxbW-PpT6tn-iaLHCGO4dfzqBZy38erG2tcf5ah6Rk4_guF9-uH3CwWDxFAq7hxACjUBL9O7Uqwk7L5a97kRVTSc-nH7YEUdR_dBdzyYM/s72-w640-h486-c/Screenshot%202024-10-16%20at%207.44.21%E2%80%AFPM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4060330466500208915</id><published>2024-10-09T09:43:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2024-10-09T09:53:21.736-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Telly on the Plane /  Telly on the Mountain / Telly on the Train: LISA AND THE DEVIL, HORROR EXPRESS, ON HER MAJESTY&#39;S SECRET SERVICE</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3u2jDf35u1aIQBFZEiieU1G6oVQLafIbpZDsOLPh2FRaFrr8SpB3FfWMLFPhOhw7VsMNSB1EvbydlTI599JoVEYvVnHDtP9lys_i16ZCY0ffOkzEPAibRKh9XG6kUkJmVs8f0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-07-10+at+9.08.54+PM.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3u2jDf35u1aIQBFZEiieU1G6oVQLafIbpZDsOLPh2FRaFrr8SpB3FfWMLFPhOhw7VsMNSB1EvbydlTI599JoVEYvVnHDtP9lys_i16ZCY0ffOkzEPAibRKh9XG6kUkJmVs8f0/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-07-10+at+9.08.54+PM.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;I&#39;m not saying times are tough, I&#39;m saying now more than ever we could use a man like Aristotle &quot;Telly&quot; Savalas to toss us a shiny lollipop and/or a cigarette and regale us with that marvelously sonorous &lt;i&gt;poli kala &lt;/i&gt;voice, that deep octave Greek zest for whatever comes along, that signature oral fixation. And ain&#39;t it our good luck he didn&#39;t just do &lt;i&gt;Kojak? &lt;/i&gt;That show was and is a little too rugged for my taste, but I&#39;m a fan of the man from Garden City, NJ, especially a&amp;nbsp;bunch of wild and wooly films he made in Europe during the early 70s. Sometimes he just pops in for a few scenes, but he always leaves an impression. He steals the show and sometimes saves it from the abyss. Like an actor version of the counterpoint melody in an Ennio Morricone theme, he instinctually recognizes dead areas on the spectrum and fills them in, and always without seeming to ever act at all, at least not in any other role but himself.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Who could forget his sonorous cooing (&quot;remember when you came here? How you &lt;i&gt;hated &lt;/i&gt;chiggens? &quot;) as the best of all Blofeldts in maybe the best of all Bonds?&amp;nbsp;How about his swaggering Cossack officer in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Horror Express&lt;/i&gt; (&quot;Who are da killers? &lt;i&gt;Who&lt;/i&gt;? Who are da troublemakas?&quot;)? And of course, the the mannequin-toting mephistophelean butler in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Lisa and the Devil&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(&quot;Very little escapes me&quot;)? Those films are all classics in their respective ways, largely, or at least partly, because of that charismatic bald-headed, chain-smoking, stuffy nosed Greek-American with that wonderfully sonorous boom of a voice. Paradoxically debonair and earthy, larger than life yet hardly a ham, he&#39;d be perfect doing one man show about the Russian revolution, oscillating between Rasputin, Czar Nicholas, Lenin, Marx, Stalin and even Peter III, crushing every part without even needing a wig. Regardless of whether he&#39;s supposed to be Italian, Russian, or Swiss, his characters all disappear into his oceanic vastness. He encompasses them, devours and forgets them without so much a waiver in that groovy New York accent.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Every moment in his company is a treasure. I can&#39;t really watch &lt;i&gt;Kojak (&lt;/i&gt;too gritty) but man do I want to hang out with him every moment he&#39;s in Europe, gluing cracked mannequins back together with him while knocking back cognac and cakes at his fog-wreathed Italian villa, knocking back cognac and cigarettes in his wintry Alpine mountaintop fortress, or knocking back vodka and cigarettes in a cozy Trans-Siberian train station.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;On that note, here are the troublemakers.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTZt7TuUa1nY4lu6fgcJipYFAD4P2MDQ2qeMVZdfx8o5s-HcLLYPIiW7q9jV4wyonaIxdfDcr5yc2Vat3aKDvGmPhk7dMDBVY-cPeUl8foKt__uQsJ1FIvtw2oy_v039vRIJgX-rfiXkXHY87TS8F6nDgIDOmAs8yEzro5Rqd_EGewpYbZn7l/s400/lisaandthedevil1.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;225&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTZt7TuUa1nY4lu6fgcJipYFAD4P2MDQ2qeMVZdfx8o5s-HcLLYPIiW7q9jV4wyonaIxdfDcr5yc2Vat3aKDvGmPhk7dMDBVY-cPeUl8foKt__uQsJ1FIvtw2oy_v039vRIJgX-rfiXkXHY87TS8F6nDgIDOmAs8yEzro5Rqd_EGewpYbZn7l/w640-h360/lisaandthedevil1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;LISA AND THE DEVIL&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1974) Dir. Mario Bava&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Lisa (Elke Sommer) is a German tourist on a bus tour in Spain who gets left behind after getting lost at one of the stops, a maze-like small Spanish town. Her time is thrown of of joint after spying a jolly demon in a Middle Ages fresco that looks just like Telly Savalas. Then she sees a swaggering man in a natty beret who looks just like him buying a mannequin at an antique shop. The dream symbolism has.... &lt;i&gt;begun.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;She can never find her way back to the bus. She&#39;s thrown into what Carlos Castaneda might call &#39;non-ordinary reality&#39; and what&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Lisa&#39;&lt;/i&gt;s director Mario Bava might call&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;purgatorio,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;but what we, today, call &#39;surreal 70s Euro-cult heaven...&#39;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Or hell, of course. It is the same.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9T7unhhnv4pFCq10bNQoAh6tel6CTJvn2mBko5HI9-DVCRPe8ubN-9fWbyqE4dr7aIW56qEDzxi8Yz94j-mAY3HgcMkOZtcC2517_L8dIEXOwrzwsEgSMAHQkUFe3T3hbluY1r6Yk0wVsUnoOqm86iT9Groja53MB1ZCd0TzVF3RnDd-Q7Wi4/s1738/telly.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;964&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1738&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9T7unhhnv4pFCq10bNQoAh6tel6CTJvn2mBko5HI9-DVCRPe8ubN-9fWbyqE4dr7aIW56qEDzxi8Yz94j-mAY3HgcMkOZtcC2517_L8dIEXOwrzwsEgSMAHQkUFe3T3hbluY1r6Yk0wVsUnoOqm86iT9Groja53MB1ZCd0TzVF3RnDd-Q7Wi4/w400-h221/telly.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Obsessed by a little musical carousel of macabre figures chronicling the looped procession of love and death and back around, Lisa begins to wake into that special nightmare we&#39;ve all had wherein you turn around on a cool autumn afternoon and suddenly its dark and you&#39;re all alone and lost in an empty narrow streeted maze in a foreign land, all the windows shuttered and no one in sight. You finally catch a ride in old car from a rich couple (the younger wife having an affair with the chauffeur, the older husband too world-weary to care) But then their car breaks down near a weird old villa where you run up against a cockblocking Hitchcockian matriarch played by Alida Vialli (&lt;i&gt;Suspiria, The Third Man&lt;/i&gt;) keeping her deliriously John LaZar-eyed son Maximillian (Alessio Orano) from hooking up with you. And he&#39;s..... so lonely. And of course, emceeing the show is Telly as their mephistophelean butler, replete with white gloves and a lollipop since Madame doesn&#39;t like smoke in the house.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHr9_t5vjzr_7XrEorY9buaqowrPCdM92md2QWcoSiYVzBvDBvplC3B_ZJQpXOLfUYiGm6kFii2fRsTOCzAZvLNgVhIUPxm-jNbk_N9_SJESB2bXPmydoWrjpOU1pmswnq6qXl4V1RMslXgTSzqCtqiJA5P98DvBYI8gASrat9E3O2BUtmh3hc/s1727/lisa.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;939&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1727&quot; height=&quot;174&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHr9_t5vjzr_7XrEorY9buaqowrPCdM92md2QWcoSiYVzBvDBvplC3B_ZJQpXOLfUYiGm6kFii2fRsTOCzAZvLNgVhIUPxm-jNbk_N9_SJESB2bXPmydoWrjpOU1pmswnq6qXl4V1RMslXgTSzqCtqiJA5P98DvBYI8gASrat9E3O2BUtmh3hc/s320/lisa.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Naturally, Lisa looks just like Alessio&#39;s dead wife and--when he later corpses her in the same bed as his dead wife&#39;s sleeping skeleton, his lonesome kinkiness gets so creepy on so many levels you just have to laugh a mirthless mocking laugh. Then it&#39;s like he hears you, and thinks it&#39;s his dead wife&#39;s ghostly mocking, ringing out at what was probably his inability to get it up with a girl who could look back at him; eventually she takes a lover, who of course ends up cracked in the head, and of course he&#39;s also the cracked mannequin she sees in the beginning.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Yes, this is a zone where mannequins come to life and play the parts of long dead lovers or whomever is needed, and the killer kills them. Funeral marches are held on the spot, as the latest body is wheeled around on a serving cart through the vast semi-decayed mansion, around in an endless procession, life to death, two by two, in procession, crib and corpse cart all bound up in one ornate dessert tray. So much death being around, a whole lavish room of the mansion has been converted to a wake/funeral parlor, which Alessio later tries to change into a marriage chapel by kicking over the plethora of decaying wreaths. Of course for him it&#39;s really all the same, but he&#39;s too far gone to see the music box procession tightening around his neck with a song i&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;n its black heart. And that song is of course Rodrigo&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Concerto of Aranjuez.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Depending on your affection for that &#39;giant pointed 70s collar out over smoking jacket lapel&#39; look Alessio sports you may not like the fashions. And if the score was Morricone twang instead of lush, endlessly repeating orchestrations of Rodrigo&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Concerto of Aranjuez&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;or if Bava was his own cinematographer and giving us his usual deep painterly colors instead of the twinkly romantic haze offered by DP Cicilio Panaqua (union rules dictated the film needed a Spanish DP), this would be Bava&#39;s best 70s work, but hey, there&#39;s interesting giallo-esque sing-song motif playing under all the broken clock cutaways, of which there are enough to rival Bergman&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Wild Strawberries.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And I almost forgot, whether macking on a lollipop the color of Elke&#39;s raincoat, dropping double meaning Satanic inferences like &quot;very little escapes me,&quot; sneaking one of the chauffeur&#39;s cigarettes before loudly admonishing him for smoking indoors when the blind Madame complains, or wryly talking to himself and having a good time drinking cognac and repairing mannequins, Telly loves the screen, and he loves you, baby, and the screen loves Telly.&amp;nbsp; Devil or not, he&#39;s divine.&amp;nbsp; Some say his performance swamps the rest of the film; it becomes the Telly show. But you can&#39;t blame the devil for doing the devil&#39;s work.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpzeh7jFhxAMUMH6qWjOR5yQ_etJA_SSe0NLeh0_G41abw1PsV383IbwiaUS0Sn7Yc5yKXgECflJi_O-MwLHieIIleOmNMkdo39tZJDipIFu1W4MBFhHBS_2OmzbgGfeWa9-Cuy2XitigFNRu_kUzhuXdymeeyE_99ekKOei29hfl6E2UeGSsf/s1845/slavals.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;784&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1845&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpzeh7jFhxAMUMH6qWjOR5yQ_etJA_SSe0NLeh0_G41abw1PsV383IbwiaUS0Sn7Yc5yKXgECflJi_O-MwLHieIIleOmNMkdo39tZJDipIFu1W4MBFhHBS_2OmzbgGfeWa9-Cuy2XitigFNRu_kUzhuXdymeeyE_99ekKOei29hfl6E2UeGSsf/w640-h272/slavals.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/06/illusion-of-competence-ode-to-fathers.html&quot; style=&quot;background-color: transparent; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;HER MAJESTY&#39;S SECRET SERVICE:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1969) Dir. Peter R. Hunt&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;George Lazenby&#39;s first and last Bond is also the one where he goes undercover as a posh British snob and then later gets married and then cries when he loses her. He also goes undercover as a poncy genealogist to infiltrate Blofeldt&#39;s top of the Alps allergy clinic. Between the crying and the poncy airs, and all falling in love and showing weakness, Lazenby was derided as a weak, bland, snobby Bond. But criticizing Lazenby for having range isn&#39;t really fair. I can&#39;t even imagine Connery being vulnerable or actually dimming down his swagger and actually turning dull, stiff and pompous to go undercover as a dull genealogist or falling in love, not in a tacky way, but in a real way. Especially in the 60s, for some reason, the public rejected a good actor as Bond-- they want a handsome mannequin tough guy to project themselves on. So Pierce Brosnan is picked over Timothy Dalton, and it&#39;s not really until Daniel Craig that we finally get both, and then some. But for Craig&#39;s era, men were allowed to cry. We&#39;d all gone WEAK!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Lazenby&#39;s Bond has since been reappraised in today&#39;s more socially enlightened clime, and we can&#39;t help but admire how he fearlessly puts on a posh droning bore professor demeanor that--on closer viewing--is a dead-on impression of the posh genealogist who briefed him. So rather than label Lazenby dull, why not blame Salzman and Broccoli for daring to expand a working, beloved formula into something more meaningful. I guess it&#39;s like if Michael Myers started talking, or Groucho Marx decided to do a serious dramatic role, sans mustache and cigar and glasses. Even if they nailed it, and the movie was great, maybe later on hailed as a masterpiece, the damage to the characters cohesiveness would be done. Fans would consider it a betrayal. And rightly. The movie is not made for them, but for the future audiences to finally appreciate. 1969 was a year of major upheavals, of course, so Bond was simultaneously an imperialist relic for the hippies and a source of macho comfort for the hard-hats. This sensitive Bond was a source of alarm for a core audience whose idea of a swinging sexually-satisfied super-hipster was being directly threatened both onscreen and off.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And another one who got slightly drubbed is Savalas, who for some makes a funny Blofeldt. And he is, but there&#39;s no way you can say a line like &quot;to begin with, I was born without ear lobes&quot; and keep a totally straight face and yet let you know he&#39;s cracking up deep inside?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Me, I always crack up when Bond&#39;s mountain fortress conquest throws herself to sleep at the sound of Telly&#39;s voice booming out with mind control tape and color lights: &quot;You remember when you first came here? How you hated chiggens?&quot; Savalas&#39; nicotine perma-cold nasal voice can&#39;t do the hard-K but he makes up with it by turning the cooing Telly magic on full blast. It&#39;s just so random ---no chickens have even been mentioned up to now. Nor are any ever seen. Filthy things. But Telly gets the ladies over that hump: &quot;But all of that is over now.. I&#39;ve taught you to love chickens.. to love their flesh, their voice...&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But I love that he doesn&#39;t put on any phony airs--he&#39;s already bald so that&#39;s covered but rather than get all feline like Dr. No or Donald Pleasance&#39;s or Charles Gray-ish like Charles Gray, he just stays himself but with more of a self-satisfied air. You get the impression he could be launching this cockeyed &#39;Vida Omega&quot; scheme, or speeding along in his luge, or doing any other macho cool thing Bond can do as well as, in the end, getting the ultimate revenge by sten gunning Bond&#39;s bride and then making him cry like a little bitch!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And though she&#39;s nowhere near the level of Lotte Lenya, Ilse Stepatt&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;comes off like Divine crossed with a German shepherd as Blofeldt&#39;s butch administrative assistant/enforcer. Together they&#39;re as tenacious and relentless as Bond in that justifiably renowned downhill skiing to parade to ice rink, to car chase sequence, the grim shadow to Bond and Emma Peel - who does some great defensive driving to show she&#39;s just as capable and cool as anyone else, and so there&#39;s a much more even match between them, which is refreshing, as it&#39;s almost always Bond and his target gallery while the villain just boasts of his master plan and then maybe blows up.&amp;nbsp; Savalas is more like a gypsy than royalty, but unlike so many others in his role, he seems at ease and believable as someone who &lt;i&gt;enjoys &lt;/i&gt;being evil for the sake of it, like a true megalomaniac, which explains why he&#39;s so quick to brag out his plan to Bond, that&#39;s what those guys do - they can&#39;t not do it. Yet he&#39;s also legit believable as a leader--the type who wouldn&#39;t throw a lackey to a shark just for failing some difficult task&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyenArNGE7Rv1McYEfWncaPokVL6uO53VSDQMmftfT7CtqIySceS8tSmOJ6TpLnXMjQJae5p1-WgOMqCnj7fJ_KmnMl9FfMmkD-WJdUl-JyWc3U6TNERsL2rlz9GF0DOGrYb36/s1600/Horror-Express8.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; color: #940909; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;380&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyenArNGE7Rv1McYEfWncaPokVL6uO53VSDQMmftfT7CtqIySceS8tSmOJ6TpLnXMjQJae5p1-WgOMqCnj7fJ_KmnMl9FfMmkD-WJdUl-JyWc3U6TNERsL2rlz9GF0DOGrYb36/s640/Horror-Express8.jpg&quot; style=&quot;background: transparent; border-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot; /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;blockquote style=&quot;border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;HORROR EXPRESS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Original title: &lt;i&gt;Pánico en el Transiberiano&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1972) Dir Eugenio Martin&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br style=&quot;background-color: white;&quot; /&gt;This Spanish-British horror union of &lt;i&gt;Horror Express&lt;/i&gt; (1972)&amp;nbsp; is really the best of everything--the best pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (as posh scientists), Alberto de Mendoza as a superstitious priest playing the Rasputin to a bemused young countess (Silvia Tortosa) and her older inventor husband), and the best &#39;frozen ape man/alien defrosts aboard the Orient Express&#39; film ever. &lt;i&gt;The Chariots of the Gods&lt;/i&gt;-savvy script zips along most pleasingly and in addition to the countess there are several strong female characters, including Miss Jones ((Alice Reinheart) the droll older assistant to Cushing who wryly sizes up the other women and delivers acidic bon mots: a sultry corporate spy (Helga Liné) and a lady passenger, friend for the countess (Faith Clift)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I love train films in general but when they switch tracks as deftly as this one, like when a drop of ocular fluid from the ape man&#39;s eye is seen under the microscope revealing images of dinosaurs and what the earth looks like from outer space. But that&#39;s not the reason that superstitious beady-eyed monk steals it off the tray and offers it to its new host, the detective investigating the first murder, now possessed, flipping over to worship him as the devil (&quot;thy will be done as it is in Hell!&quot;). Hey, he plays the favorite, you can&#39;t blame him. Or can you?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As a fan of classic Mexican horror I also notice a lot of weird similarities between the &lt;i&gt;Horror Express&lt;/i&gt; alien and its habid sucking brain contents through the victim&#39;s eyes and the comet-riding, brain-sucking baron in &lt;i&gt;The Brainiac&lt;/i&gt; (1961). They even both drink the brain of an inventor of a new steel that can withstand a flight to space, so they can each presumably build a rocket to finally leave this shitty brain-dead planet, if they ever get a chance. The alien may be relentless here, hopping from body to body, but his possessed characters hint at the intense centuries of loneliness it&#39;s gone through and we also feel for it. Crash-landed here long before life even began, working his way up from single cells up to the caveman he was then frozen in since the last Ice Age; it&#39;s bound to make anyone a little desperate.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;All that is rather marvelous, but then comes the final perfect late-inning addition as scene stealer Telly Savalas and his Cossack crew come barging onto the train once it stops on the Siberian border, rocking his usual awesome ridiculous hamminess after receiving orders to board the train and take charge, rounding up everyone in first class in the dining car and giving them the collective third degree: &quot;Who are da killas!? WHO!??&quot; he shouts at them, waving his gun and whip around. &quot;Who are da trubble makers!?&quot; We love you, Telly!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY4o9qAz4wha95oKUu2v87K_ab69DElRe_pE6J8mIrh9bVKb4De-Cju2MJ6Q3zYn2JkdtIMVYlemS8HMlYJquf6NG16XjU5NBdLSXkUoRz-AOhg2W8VKXgqJFVWCati7FtUgFaiAePXDM8T8wCEoUJLGentJc0ghskqsJfFfUGzc6wbJEKwGOT/s1719/horror%20expres.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;975&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1719&quot; height=&quot;228&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY4o9qAz4wha95oKUu2v87K_ab69DElRe_pE6J8mIrh9bVKb4De-Cju2MJ6Q3zYn2JkdtIMVYlemS8HMlYJquf6NG16XjU5NBdLSXkUoRz-AOhg2W8VKXgqJFVWCati7FtUgFaiAePXDM8T8wCEoUJLGentJc0ghskqsJfFfUGzc6wbJEKwGOT/w400-h228/horror%20expres.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;You&#39;re excellency,&quot; says the possessed cop, &quot;I&#39;m a police inspector.&quot; He shouts back &quot;Everybody here Is UNDER ARREST!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;And there&#39;s so much else to love, especially if you grew up watching this on TV all panned, scanned and truncated into oblivion and you &lt;i&gt;still &lt;/i&gt;loved it. Now it&#39;s like you pinch yourself to see if you&#39;re dreaming, because what a beautiful world to have such clear, anamoprhic pictures. . Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing make an engaging Holmes-and-other-Holmes style duo (aided well by Tortosa&#39;s countess) and the Orient Express makes a perfect setting for a tale of existential steam-powered escape, where the steady movement of the train makes a fine metaphor for the ever-increasing momentum of early 20th century progress, with an alien who has spent so long trying to guide life on earth into a form that can build a rocket so he can escape at last, after all these billions of years. His devouring red eye pairs poetically with the train&#39;s lone guiding red light, hurtling through the snowy Siberian tundra like the Ice Age is still in effect; the train whistle&#39;s scream perfectly folded blended into John Cacavaslectric guitar score, and the whistling refrain that passes from one character to another like &quot;Isn&#39;t it Romantic?&quot; &lt;i&gt;Love Me Tonight,&lt;/i&gt; is an ingenious way to remind us where the alien is now (he picks it up from the baggage car guard who picks it up from the Countess playing piano in their private car, and whistles it through the rest of the film, even from his frozen ape form. And it all makes a perfect metaphor for human evolution on this fickle earth--roaring through the cold vastness, blazing across the aeons, ripping through time and space like a steam-powered mega zipper.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The alien red eyes sucks up information way fast, especially the count&#39;s knowledge of metallurgy, but we get a tragic and profound sense of science still having a long way to go before we can escape the gravity of these archaic bone machines, and return to our true home... out there, in a galaxy far away.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;With plenty of droll humor, lush atmosphere, nonstop action, no wasted time on pathos or some lame romance, instead there&#39;s this liberating feeling that everything that happens is quickly disseminated through the passengers and crew, taken as fact rather than scoffed at, &quot;you mean to tell me a two million year old ape man is alive on this train, killed the baggage man and locked him in the crate all neat and tidy!?&quot; / &quot;YES!&quot; and all of it building to its apocalyptic finale as Telly&#39;s men get their brains wiped out by those glowing red eyes (but that&#39;s just the start of it, once the light goes out. The result of all this makes &lt;i&gt;Horror Express&lt;/i&gt; a shining jewel in the Euro-horror crown. And Telly, you bald-headed bounty of badass bliss, who loves ya? Europe, since it&#39;s smart, and me of course &lt;i&gt;(don&#39;t ya think ahm smaht?!&lt;/i&gt;). You&#39;re the walking talking equivalent of a warm fire, ready to burn you or save your life if you need thawing. And damn do we ever.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4060330466500208915/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/telly-on-plane-go-telly-on-mountain.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4060330466500208915'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4060330466500208915'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/10/telly-on-plane-go-telly-on-mountain.html' title='Telly on the Plane /  Telly on the Mountain / Telly on the Train: LISA AND THE DEVIL, HORROR EXPRESS, ON HER MAJESTY&#39;S SECRET SERVICE'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3u2jDf35u1aIQBFZEiieU1G6oVQLafIbpZDsOLPh2FRaFrr8SpB3FfWMLFPhOhw7VsMNSB1EvbydlTI599JoVEYvVnHDtP9lys_i16ZCY0ffOkzEPAibRKh9XG6kUkJmVs8f0/s72-c/Screen+Shot+2015-07-10+at+9.08.54+PM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-1071233871809765604</id><published>2024-06-21T10:23:00.018-05:00</published><updated>2024-07-30T21:05:58.387-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Hairs of the Incoherent: AFTER BLUE: Dirty Paradise (2021)</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmrzH7qtmpJMfjpDEdz_pv7Uv77aW1gH3tXJsnbVBOMAF7y7psSqnuCDGwR41kvCELo471b0NKHVdWDoQJ-GnTPMp4AdUuKMyGOLWo5sRpbkhNDdjbXRi7W4Xb-g4npBvbFK7Do4O7ZmM8zzsEZDHjdfAqHstdhT3mXPFsMa2EvzyoRa6W-L8/s1662/abbrebe.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;637&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1662&quot; height=&quot;246&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmrzH7qtmpJMfjpDEdz_pv7Uv77aW1gH3tXJsnbVBOMAF7y7psSqnuCDGwR41kvCELo471b0NKHVdWDoQJ-GnTPMp4AdUuKMyGOLWo5sRpbkhNDdjbXRi7W4Xb-g4npBvbFK7Do4O7ZmM8zzsEZDHjdfAqHstdhT3mXPFsMa2EvzyoRa6W-L8/w640-h246/abbrebe.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;French women, &lt;i&gt;ah,&amp;nbsp;mon ami, ils sont sauvages&lt;/i&gt;! Their five main differences from American women? &lt;i&gt;O Monsieur! &lt;/i&gt;They speak the language of love and fine wine; they stay fierce and cool into their 40s and 50s; they find male artists and writers sexy more for their talent than their success; they treat premarital and extramarital sex (&lt;i&gt;Le cinq à septs&lt;/i&gt;, etc.) as a necessity rather than an offense; and they let their lady hairs grow wild and free, where they wilt. If you&#39;re an American girl and are bristling with indignant umbrage reading the previous sentence, then your own extreme reaction proves the sixth difference: they don&#39;t take the childish generalities of men as something worth a single bristle. And I didn&#39;t mean you anyway, obviously, since you&#39;re cool enough to be reading this.&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In short, give me a fierce middle-aged, art-loving Frenchwoman any time, or give&lt;i&gt; me&lt;/i&gt; to &lt;i&gt;them&lt;/i&gt;, for they belong to no one and take what they want. I&#39;m a dilettante aesthete of no common rankness; I stand, however wobbly, a man undaunted by menstrual blood, DSM-IV-charting madness, beaucoup hair, or if she&#39;s already married or seeing other people--especially if it means I don&#39;t have to go out to dinner with her &lt;i&gt;petit-bourgeois amies.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Vive la France! (oui, mi amor, Rormandy aussi).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I burden you with all this so you know I&#39;m the ideal audience for&amp;nbsp;the gender-broken films of Bertrand Mandico (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/12/isles-of-lowensohn-wild-boys-let-their.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;T&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/12/isles-of-lowensohn-wild-boys-let-their.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;he Wild Boys,&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/i&gt;Don&#39;t go into see his films thinking they&#39;re suitable for the whole family, or anyone who isn&#39;t at least somewhat debauched &lt;i&gt;a priori&lt;/i&gt;. If you are, on the other hand, so debauched, and you love&amp;nbsp;vintage European science fiction, and are fond of cursing, smoking, blue fire and azure skies and &lt;i&gt;éros sans la érotique &lt;/i&gt;- welcome to&lt;i&gt; After Blue,&lt;/i&gt; your &lt;i&gt;Dirty Paradise.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Of course it&#39;s not really paradise. And it&#39;s dirt is more literal. A crystalized embodiment of&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/favorite-critic-series-camille-paglia.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Camille Paglia&lt;/a&gt;&#39;s infamous quote&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt; (1)&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;i&gt;After Blue&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s matriarchal council is determined to keep science and technology off their all-woman planet so they live in grass huts, and import horses instead of flying cars (and reproduce via cloning and imported sperm sample). But these are French women, the category that produced Isabelles Huppert and Adjani, and la&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Beatrice Dalle,&lt;/a&gt; so they&#39;re rougher than any &lt;i&gt;Harvest Home&lt;/i&gt;-style matriarchy. Turns out, surprise surprise, human savagery thrives on whether men are around or not. The only difference is that the savagery is more theatrical, glam-ham sinister, catlike, and includes way more shouted dialogue and glowing jewel-lined Meiko Kaji/Jordorowski-style black hats.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;To reiterate, to drive the point home: adult French women, ranting and raving in all their screaming, moaning, tripping, swigging, swinging, overacting, flirting and not giving a shit about your stupid feelings, their neck and arm hairs growing, abound on the planet called After Blue. It&#39;s a planet where--even in the wilderness of unsettled &#39;Poison Mountains&#39;--starving for food and forced to eat hallucinogenic moss--they somehow never run out of cigarettes or whiskey.&amp;nbsp; And the skies roar pink; the fire burns blue; surrealist set design gaps the bridge between statue and landscape (sculptures halfway to becoming rocks or vice versa); dreamy artificiality eschews realism (frond silhouettes against wild-colored rear projection and dry ice evokes forests), and every shot is a perfect overload of originality from eight different directions.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Half a century ago, &lt;i&gt;After Blue&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s mix of sex and psychedelia would need a thick shellac of cutesy camp (ala&lt;i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/05/psychedelisexploitation-of-virgin-whore.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Barbarella&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;)&amp;nbsp;to avoid critical circumcision (and the dreaded &#39;X&#39; rating). Times have changed; sex is no longer cute or campy, and Mandico is nothing if not of his time. As it wriggles through the tight hallways between all genres and styles, you can&#39;t find camp anywhere on &lt;i&gt;After Blue&lt;/i&gt;, making it&amp;nbsp;much more of a piece with Paris&#39;s 20s-30s surrealists (Bunuel, Cocteau, Clair) than the post-68 Parisian dream eroticists (i.e. Rollin, Metzger, Vadim). Somehow it out-obscenes and out-dreams all of them.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;In fact it&#39;s so unique it needs its own film movement just to have a place to belong. In meta echo of the luddite matriarchy of &lt;i&gt;After Blue,&lt;/i&gt; Mandico and some peers (like (which includes Yann Gonzalez, whose adorable&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/revive-wind-you-and-night-2013.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;You and the Nigh&lt;/i&gt;t&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;I&#39;ve written about earlier) have formed&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://internationalincoherence.blogspot.com/2013/03/international-incoherence-manifest-1.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Incoherence movement&lt;/a&gt;. Some tenets include: shooting only on expired film; keeping&amp;nbsp;all special effects in-camera (rear-projection rather than blue screen, etc.); using found objects for set design; post-syncing all sound but adding no post-production; and avoiding anything resembling a familiar trope or narrative &#39;act&#39; structure. After Blue is probably the zenith, the cultural peak,&amp;nbsp; of this movement. In the age of the mood-altering gummy, it&#39;s the perfect post-dosed park picnic or party pick.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpFVisve9_mXnoD1LUKFO8cFddQM_sEWO1lHXjE6PeQCN8KPOD7xffKKqXkGnk1Z3l40MSIgZA42YUg3ROWHMqBQO1Q-GMMT9vQx5hG_5jEGG3feTCMdILkKH5vqbM8Ta3MKGO5OOQMmJ3Vj3Yeh2s6_CGFLN2U8l3QjsnbJEoUDnMjTtN-y6i/s1860/After-Blue-HERO.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1044&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1860&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpFVisve9_mXnoD1LUKFO8cFddQM_sEWO1lHXjE6PeQCN8KPOD7xffKKqXkGnk1Z3l40MSIgZA42YUg3ROWHMqBQO1Q-GMMT9vQx5hG_5jEGG3feTCMdILkKH5vqbM8Ta3MKGO5OOQMmJ3Vj3Yeh2s6_CGFLN2U8l3QjsnbJEoUDnMjTtN-y6i/w640-h360/After-Blue-HERO.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;AFTER BLUE&lt;i&gt; (Dirty Paradise)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(2021) Dir. Bertrand Mandico&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a mythic story kind of sourced from Androcles &amp;amp; the Lion, or Aladdin, a young bullied gamin named Roxy helps free a wild-eyed, glitter-covered naked woman named Kate Bush who she finds buried up to her neck in the sand. But that&#39;s where all familiarity ends. Freeing the wild Kate turns out to be a catastrophically bad idea; she starts blasting everyone in sight. Then, she turns the gun on Roxy; and then, turns &lt;i&gt;on &lt;/i&gt;Roxy and soon Kate Bush is riding naked on a horse with a Nordic crown and sword through Roxy&#39;s erotic dreams while drenched in gold glitter, while three of Kate&#39;s victims haunt her nightmares, tearing Roxy apart in a perfect illustration of Lacanian &lt;i&gt;jouissanc&lt;/i&gt;. And now, since she freed the demon, Roxy has to pack up her hairdresser mother and&lt;i&gt; le cheval&lt;/i&gt; and set off to the poison mountain to kill.... Kate Bush.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so begins Roxy&#39;s call to adventure, kicking, puling, licking, and sulking all the way while her wide-eyed mom, Zora (Elina Lowensohn) slowly goes mad from hunger and motherhood. So ushers forth a hypnogogic haze of frond-shadowed alien landscapes, blue fire, azure beaches, blue forests, filthy Dickensian outlaw vagrants sniffing around their saddlebags in search of food and/or a new wife; a gaggle of local inhabitants, easily colonized triffid shamblers with crystal cave mouths who can become your dreams (everything is fluid here, not just gender but between animal, vegetable and mineral).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once the arrive, Roxy finds plenty of distractions: trees to climb, holes to hide in, nightmares to scream to, and an enchanted grotto with phallic little monsters to kiss. Zora runs into a very cool and sexually slithering expat artist (&quot;The second avant-garde&quot;) Sternberg (Vimala Pons) who lives &#39;next door&#39; with her dog and android-male lover/muse Olgar 2 (Michaël Erpelding) and loves to drink and shoot everything in sight with her designer gu. If Kate is a new high of wildness in the wild woman archetype, Sternberg is a new quintessential aesthete, a libertine, alcoholic, rich, decadent, and ultimately both supportive and unhinged. She kind of steals the picture, even though everyone else more than holds their own. I love her. And Kate. Roxy is a whiner; Zora is a wide-eyed sad sack, but the other ladies, &lt;i&gt;beaux sauvages &lt;/i&gt;for the revisionist fairy tale ages.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#39;s all very colorful and helped immensely by the electronic score by Pierre Desprats: an eerie electronic/ambient mix of Morricpme western grandeur, spiked with well-timed deep pitch shifts dropping the bottom of almost Vangelis&#39;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Bladerunner-&lt;/i&gt;style cathedral Hell elegance (helligance?), like we&#39;re plunging way way down over Deckard&#39;s rainy 10th floor parapet. It&#39;s in French with English subtitles, but don&#39;t worry about having to read while your pupils are still micro-dilated,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;tu monolinguiste analphabète américain lâche fils de pute! &lt;/i&gt;Words&amp;nbsp;can&#39;t hurt you if you pretend not to read them. Listen instead to the musicality of the&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;le&amp;nbsp;langage de l&#39;amor; &lt;/i&gt;don&#39;t even look at the subtitles until first trying to decode the words and be grateful. French art movies never work in English dubs. The pretentiously unpretentious poeticism of lines like &quot;you like my hat? It is an extension of my thoughts&quot; or &quot;I&#39;m just a woman... as inoffensive as the wind&quot; might wake you from the hypno-erotique spell in a fit of cringy twitching. But in French, with English subtitles,&lt;i&gt; c&#39;est adorable.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Even the occasional overdone nod to contemporary chic, like giving all the guns names of designers (Guccis and Chanels instead of Lugers and Colts) is forgivable as its exotified by the musicality of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtDW6UyMVJFEx6X9lXXiXWFqJqgtGhTgLnGplulSXVnbEVHZXP86md6-oMwXRhfNSPgvbIMObeoL_jZD6XI4pNNt_G8yiZX3SVCuv6BjREsSeO2M9gsVAk0y5QfnZfsXL-9f3Zp8tKp2kQUZFumLwKUa0AO6i5APqF_xXy5KGV1I8a-MJPAkl/s1000/afterblue_1_0.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;389&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1000&quot; height=&quot;124&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtDW6UyMVJFEx6X9lXXiXWFqJqgtGhTgLnGplulSXVnbEVHZXP86md6-oMwXRhfNSPgvbIMObeoL_jZD6XI4pNNt_G8yiZX3SVCuv6BjREsSeO2M9gsVAk0y5QfnZfsXL-9f3Zp8tKp2kQUZFumLwKUa0AO6i5APqF_xXy5KGV1I8a-MJPAkl/w320-h124/afterblue_1_0.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;But be warned: this is a world where everyone is almost always&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;almost&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;kissing and any actual kisses must drool comically with secretions; any fondling is done with clawed fingers that tear clothes and skin. We&#39;re not in some foamy Venusian clamshell anymore, honey; this is Red Riding Hood&#39;s wolfblood-baptized honeymoon nightmare, evoking a&amp;nbsp;whole network of weird &lt;i&gt;femme-fantastique&lt;/i&gt; gender-devouring mythic revival. Think Angela Carter (&lt;i&gt;Passion of New Eve,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/10/fresh-picks-13-newly-added-horror.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Company of Wolves&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;),&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/12/best-of-2014-movies-and-tv.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Maleficent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Alice in Wonderland,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/11/kristen-stewart-in-snow-with-poison.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Snow White &amp;amp; The Huntsman&lt;/a&gt;, Wizard of Oz, &lt;/i&gt;only with props scrounged at&amp;nbsp;Cronenberg&#39;s post-&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/12/great-acid-movies-11-naked-lunch-1991.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Naked Luch&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;yard sale (phallic alien protuberances and smokable caterpillars), a setting from the&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/01/moon-cat-women-and-thou.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Cat Women of the Moon&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;/&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/03/vanishing-caloric-density-queen-of.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Queen of Outer Space&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;all-woman planet tradition, and awash in Jean Rollin &#39;two girls in a weird world&#39; dreaminess. That&#39;s not to say Mandico is not also checking in with the more sophomoric French sci-fi ancestors (i.e. &lt;i&gt;Gandahar, &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/05/psychedelisexploitation-of-virgin-whore.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Barbarella&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/05/psychedelisexploitation-of-virgin-whore.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;, just that the target demographic isn&#39;t horny16 year-olds but experienced adult libertines, as debauched as Zorg in &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Betty Blue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;. It may have the second (sub?) title&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dirty Paradise&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;but rest assured, the&amp;nbsp;&#39;dirty&#39; is real dirt, or rather gold glitter; we&#39;re no longer ripping beamers with your little brother&#39;s friends in the basement on Sat. night cuz we ain&#39;t got girlfriends; we&#39;re upstairs snorting lines with Maria Louise von Franz and Tennessee Williams (&lt;i&gt;After Blue&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;would make a good double feature with&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/08/acids-greatest-14-suddenly-last-summer.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Suddenly Last Summer&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/i&gt; for all the right&lt;i&gt; and &lt;/i&gt;wrong reasons).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VVY5-ioDWq7MgRaFaO0iiiQes6K3hwpbuI-KE1zCFkKHz-tSXDPvEJ7dL42DKplxhwuEFg0IBFIo_qMqRe0oZhmxCgJReVOGnCW2XPhF9NOwmGxvOXB81ZozbHSNJJt9-TmGbVtMjzPU3wwxI5PzuYnKpfcUCzAF9mUcTj8djy8EkD4Bnnfj/s1200/after-blue-movie-review-2022.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;500&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VVY5-ioDWq7MgRaFaO0iiiQes6K3hwpbuI-KE1zCFkKHz-tSXDPvEJ7dL42DKplxhwuEFg0IBFIo_qMqRe0oZhmxCgJReVOGnCW2XPhF9NOwmGxvOXB81ZozbHSNJJt9-TmGbVtMjzPU3wwxI5PzuYnKpfcUCzAF9mUcTj8djy8EkD4Bnnfj/w640-h266/after-blue-movie-review-2022.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;RETURN OF THE (REALLY)&amp;nbsp;WILD WOMAN&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Above all, forget about that stacked broad in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Heavy Metal,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and remember&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;Kate Bush!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;Kate gives Anita Pallenberg&#39;s horned dictator in Barbarella, Beatrice &lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white;&quot;&gt;Dalle&lt;/span&gt; (in&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;everything)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and all of the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://brightlightsfilm.com/sex-drugs-german-terrorism-6-hidden-gems-of-netflix-streaming/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Baader Meinhof Complex&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;a sound trundling. Hairy-armed, heavily clawed, jagged of teeth, this wild sandy blonde runs rampant through the mist and the wild fantasies of our young Roxy; gleefully shooting down anyone she pleases, disguising herself and harnessing the local &#39;Indians&#39; to ride. Assertive and carnally violent as Tura Satana.&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;wilder than Marsha Quist in&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Howling,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;there&#39;s no woman capable of undoing&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;After Blue&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s snippy power structure as singlehandedly as she.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the masculine spectrum of&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/04/cinemarchetype-10-wild-man.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;wild man&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;Jungian archetype is a vivid neighbor to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/05/cinemarchetype-12-sage.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;sage/senex&lt;/a&gt;&#39;who represents the wild man energy absorbed into the hero/soul and thus acquiring the best of both worlds - outside of the social sphere but able to step in and out of it easily. For my&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/01/acidemics-collected-cinemarchetypes.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; CinemArchetype &lt;/a&gt;series I found plenty of both to choose from, so tried to pick as wide an array as I could. For female characters I could only find a handful wild&amp;nbsp; (Un-absorbed) examples, hence the categories were merged &#39;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/05/cinemarchetype-12-sage.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Wild/Wise Woman&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Even within fairy tales that have female protagonists, the wild element is usually a male for girl&#39;s myths, i.e. the animus (think &lt;a href=&quot;https://brightlightsfilm.com/someone-to-fight-over-me-feminism-sm-and-the-daemonic-in-twilight/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Edward in &lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://brightlightsfilm.com/someone-to-fight-over-me-feminism-sm-and-the-daemonic-in-twilight/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Twilight&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Hannibal Lecter, or the Big Bad Wolf/Woodsman), so bringing in a voraciously homicidal wild&amp;nbsp;woman archetype/shadow into a girl&#39;s story (where the female villain is usually a &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/05/cinemarchetype-12-sage.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;devouring mother/stepmother&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;- a gatekeeper of a social sphere out of balance, rigged by hypocrisy and patriarchal fear, or &#39;the Red Queen&#39; - an evil narcissit&amp;nbsp; rather than a true outsider of &#39;Iron Jane&#39; style magnitude.) is truly revolutionary; Kate is agressive enough to shatter any old Grimm&#39;s fairy tale paradigm. You can almost hear Jung wake up and start clawing footnotes on his coffin lid, excited to contextualize her within the pantheon, and maybe use her in an paper trying to update his theories to the #mefirst movement.&amp;nbsp; There&#39;s only like three or four women in her archetypal class in all of cinema, which is so outrageous it should make any Frenchwoman reading grab her scissors and cut Willem DaFoe&#39;s genitals off instead of her own in &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/11/acids-greatest-1-antichrist-2009.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Antichrist&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;We need more! But &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/02/andrzej-zulawskis-dead-acidemic-tribute.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Zulawski&lt;/a&gt; is dead (one of the other best examples is in &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-ancient-she-shaman-and-her.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Szvamanka &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;(aka She-Shaman). Figures both Kate and Zulawski are Polish. Polish women be like French woman on angel (mountain) dust/&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;The real name of Kate Bush (Agata Buzek) is Katarzyna Buszowska -as there are Polish settlements on &lt;i&gt;After Blue,&lt;/i&gt; and it was the Polish militia who buried her originally) and in her way she&#39;s the female equivalent to &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2007/07/performance-that-changed-your-life.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Manny in&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2007/07/performance-that-changed-your-life.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Runaway Train&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;or the thing in &lt;i&gt;Where the Wild Things Are. &lt;/i&gt;It&#39;s the kind of role Beatrice Dalle could have played a few years earlier, but luckily Buzek is there to carry the blazing out-of-control (laughing even as it catches her dress on fire) torch!&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQVutud1ExY1IUxRmNPxgc2AmB8Y9jrM3jYoJf1Tlu_4MBKk0rYjZ-YED6uMhmV6KK2JhD9baOXyl0D0BzIuL-9Nu7_h88nSotJtTqrWEn-2PZ2eocnVMx5ZDLTGSMAXx55zYHr82JAJB5n91v6UAf8kTJPkA-u3zHZHtW-ykJgnpMRx6lKp2/s1200/after_blue_01.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;600&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;160&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQVutud1ExY1IUxRmNPxgc2AmB8Y9jrM3jYoJf1Tlu_4MBKk0rYjZ-YED6uMhmV6KK2JhD9baOXyl0D0BzIuL-9Nu7_h88nSotJtTqrWEn-2PZ2eocnVMx5ZDLTGSMAXx55zYHr82JAJB5n91v6UAf8kTJPkA-u3zHZHtW-ykJgnpMRx6lKp2/s320/after_blue_01.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Obscenity - who Really Cares? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span&gt;(answer - AMERICA)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, mainstream (RT) US (where sex is too esteemed in theory to be anything but degrading in practice) have been mixed. That&#39;s OK. Employed ($) movie writers don&#39;t often get to pick the films they see a week So when they may not wamnt to wade into&amp;nbsp; some weird morass of pre-Oedipal confusion and shouting&lt;i&gt;. &lt;/i&gt;On which set of criteria can they judge&lt;i&gt; After Blue? &lt;/i&gt;What template in their secret file can they use for tone, structure and genre analysis? How can you even judge it after one viewing? You don&#39;t even know what&#39;s going on!. I&#39;ve seen four times and &lt;i&gt;I don&#39;t know either!&amp;nbsp; &lt;/i&gt;How can a film be funny without slapstick; artsy without depth; erotic without titillation; stylish without campiness? Are the effects meant intentionally to be artificial? Are we supposed to find it Brechtian, Godardesque (if intentional) or Woodian (if not)? I hope to god there isn&#39;t an answer.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if the viewer is either micro- or macro-dosing. I might be confused and annoyed too if I was a critic on the clock on some cold screening room; but if you can visit it in 20 minute spurts, with long breaks in between, it&#39;s amazing; I&#39;ve watched it, three times over 12 different viewings. Never in one sitting, unless showing it to friends in an &#39;altered&#39; state.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Mandico demonstrated in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/12/isles-of-lowensohn-wild-boys-let-their.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Les&amp;nbsp;Garçons Sauvage,&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;only after you clear out all the stale genre tropes, getting down to the nitty gritty, can eros chew its way out of the softcore bower, to burst forth flashing&amp;nbsp;the R-rated fangs of some Zulawski cocaine withdrawal nightmare. Once it calms down it bursts forth into gaudy peacock strut of an Almodovar or Jarman fashion show/Pride float.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What a gift we have in the&lt;i&gt; nouveau&amp;nbsp;Incoherence. &lt;/i&gt;And in Mandico,&amp;nbsp;a new luminary of dangerous Parisian surrealist transgression. If he keeps it up we can slide in next to De Sade, Huysmanns, Batailles, Genet, Corbiere, Baudelaire, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. There&#39;s surely a reason Americans like Terry Southern, Hemingway, and Henry Miller all had to go to Paris before they could unleash the full gorgeous obscenity of their human howls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get over it, America! it&#39;s just hair.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJR92shgUJSddoPaAr5VA_XbOuTG1ZwubyC12MvAWmYblP-CPxo4OIA4ieuFesI9gQlJDONZOQFZVdR3yYrGB2OOAA-YGdH3_IIejNIDHH3U2_s2jnOD8EP4LXhioxhjJc1leK_QKsiB3Z2_xpawXnQAjhGscHjdT3rW1gvsTpe7AfQNnXFeJQ/s4311/Book%20of%20Rituals.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1600&quot; data-original-width=&quot;4311&quot; height=&quot;238&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJR92shgUJSddoPaAr5VA_XbOuTG1ZwubyC12MvAWmYblP-CPxo4OIA4ieuFesI9gQlJDONZOQFZVdR3yYrGB2OOAA-YGdH3_IIejNIDHH3U2_s2jnOD8EP4LXhioxhjJc1leK_QKsiB3Z2_xpawXnQAjhGscHjdT3rW1gvsTpe7AfQNnXFeJQ/w640-h238/Book%20of%20Rituals.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(above) &lt;/i&gt;from Mandico&#39;s newest, &lt;i&gt;She is Conann&lt;/i&gt; - a gender revisionist &lt;i&gt;Conan the Barbarian &lt;/i&gt;if played by seven different female actresses of different ages, slashing their way into legend. &quot;What if there was a talking dog,&quot;&amp;nbsp; you ask? Let it be so. Your cannibalized artist&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;souffle de violence glam punk prétentieux &lt;/i&gt;is ready.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;NOTES&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;1.(&quot;If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.&quot;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;FURTHER RELEVANT READING:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/12/isles-of-lowensohn-wild-boys-let-their.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Isles of Löwensohn: THE WILD BOYS, LET THE CORPSES TAN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/revive-wind-you-and-night-2013.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Unbreak the Wind: YOU AND THE NIGHT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hey Betty Blue, Come Blow Your Mind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-ancient-she-shaman-and-her.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Ancient She-Shaman and her Shrooming Exhumer: SZAMANKA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/1071233871809765604/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-hair-of-incoherence-after-blue.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/1071233871809765604'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/1071233871809765604'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-hair-of-incoherence-after-blue.html' title='Hairs of the Incoherent: AFTER BLUE: Dirty Paradise (2021)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmrzH7qtmpJMfjpDEdz_pv7Uv77aW1gH3tXJsnbVBOMAF7y7psSqnuCDGwR41kvCELo471b0NKHVdWDoQJ-GnTPMp4AdUuKMyGOLWo5sRpbkhNDdjbXRi7W4Xb-g4npBvbFK7Do4O7ZmM8zzsEZDHjdfAqHstdhT3mXPFsMa2EvzyoRa6W-L8/s72-w640-h246-c/abbrebe.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-7392772049822546660</id><published>2024-05-26T03:14:00.016-05:00</published><updated>2024-05-26T14:48:38.308-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Derek Love vs. the Buzz Killer: TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;475&quot; data-original-width=&quot;603&quot; height=&quot;504&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIE8F9MLrq-mujyd9FUxXOsCLxFfQTvoyMUSsa2qYtc6vjpK0ThUWKE4__2M0klDH89kRieYAJTEfC76qSOiV6qauTjaJWNiDVkHaaFaN1cdkcIV-1UlOfQMM6sniH4O0n7cQ9/s640/teenagers+fro+outer.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  8. &lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Tough GenX SWMs like me were confused when we first saw James Dean in movies.&amp;nbsp;He looked badass enough on the posters that adorned our dorm walls, smoking with his feet kicked up over his steering wheel in the one from&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Giant, &lt;/i&gt;or his loafing against the wall with his red windbreaker and cigarette for&lt;i&gt; Rebel&lt;/i&gt;, or smoking in his big black coat up in a rainy Times Square for Dennis Stock-but who had seen his movies? No one. So when Rebel without a Cause came to our college&#39;s revival house we were psyched for a dash of serious cool.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Instead we got goddamned crybaby narc!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;This&lt;/i&gt; doe-eyed gentle little greaser faun who cries cuz his parents are too easy on him? Who snivels at the cops&#39; office because his dad &lt;i&gt;doesn&#39;t &lt;/i&gt;hit his mom? This kid was worse than a narc, he was a jinx. Such a coward over a friendly little knife fight he gets three people killed?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1JQ7OuNs9KjWz3OEwC5Fp2Efgp-VAb6m47M2mo0hFpRRSdNffDLYaus3GXx-7oGXic2PdB2MGtOrLTWiCJjuTivB8zYkJPgrMNv2PDdquorm3ZDjXfksnw6HhM4yUecEPh2iZU91-Ewo6W05n8wEbmYxjZIuH3sEpDAKZIRY-oxZsr14naA/s824/widdiw%20dean.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;662&quot; data-original-width=&quot;824&quot; height=&quot;257&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1JQ7OuNs9KjWz3OEwC5Fp2Efgp-VAb6m47M2mo0hFpRRSdNffDLYaus3GXx-7oGXic2PdB2MGtOrLTWiCJjuTivB8zYkJPgrMNv2PDdquorm3ZDjXfksnw6HhM4yUecEPh2iZU91-Ewo6W05n8wEbmYxjZIuH3sEpDAKZIRY-oxZsr14naA/s320/widdiw%20dean.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&quot;If he&#39;d just... &lt;i&gt;belt &lt;/i&gt;her one, occasionally.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;You doubt me? Consider the facts: No sooner has he arrived at his new school than he&#39;s stomping on the school seal, befriending a craven puppy killer, and trying to crash the A-list with his stupid planetarium &quot;Moo!&quot; The A-list, a rowdy gang of toughs (that include Dennis Hopper!) give him a chance to audition for the gang, a friendly invitations to gentlemanly switchblade duel. Outside the planetarium on a nice sunny LA day, what a pleasant way to get to know the boys. Sure maybe a few little cuts, punctures, but that&#39;s hazing, Jim! You want in, you gotta play be the rules, not run to momma. It takes so long to goad Jim into that by the time he&#39;s finally started his stick and move routine, the afternoon is over--the astronomer in residence is yelling at them to stop. That kind of leaves everybody hangin&#39; as they say, so they have to reschedule for an evening chicken run instead&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;He&#39;s a jinx, that&#39;s the thing. Picked up on a public drunkeness? What did he get a little sip of a beer somewhere? A weensy little pint of Wild Irish Rose? Crying like a little bitch in a cop&#39;s office because his dad&#39;s not &lt;i&gt;mean &lt;/i&gt;enough, trying to give his jacket to a little wuss hauled in for&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;killing puppies!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Screaming at his parents like a hissy fit-throwing neurotic because mom and dad can&#39;t decide how to punish him.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;This&lt;/i&gt; is the guy with the cigarette on the posters in our dorm rooms!???&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Rumors were Dean was bi, into sub/dom shizz, would go to gay bars and ask guys to stamp their cigarettes out on his chest. This was the 80s -- we couldn&#39;t believe it. Right up there with Richard Gere mouse rectum scandal - &lt;i&gt;maybe &lt;/i&gt;just a rumor. That was enough back then.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;We couldn&#39;t know just how brave it was back in the early 50s for a young man too be gentle and faun-like. It was a time when men had to pose and posture in studded leather straddling hogs to indicate they &lt;i&gt;weren&#39;t &lt;/i&gt;gay. Times change, but one thing that &lt;i&gt;doesn&#39;t &lt;/i&gt;is the behavior of Jim Stark in this movie--separate from Dean&#39;s sensitivity--makes him not only a literal (as well as figurative) Buzz kill, but a little bitch--in a sense that has nothing to do with feyness or tortured posturing, but everything to do with being a narc. In other words, Jim is no better than that blonde hash slinger in &lt;i&gt;Over the Edge.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;He had a pool, too.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;That&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Rebel &lt;/i&gt;has all the postures and JD rites of cool makes Dean&#39;s narc attitude especially problematic. This is a Nicholas Ray&#39;s film, after all, a man who never met a drug he didn&#39;t want to get at least an ounce of, or a person he didn&#39;t want to either fight, borrow money from, or have an affair with, a filmmaker second only to John Ford as far as violence to denote and enhance rites of masculine passage. Only with Ray, who came a bit later, that violence was no longer accepted, or was being drained of its ceremonial initiatory function, either by laws or draggy moms (moms seldom factored into Ford&#39;s equations--if anything they rooted from the sidelines while the men tried to block their view). In fact, if you couch &lt;i&gt;Rebel&lt;/i&gt; with Ray&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Bigger than Life,&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and &lt;i&gt;In a Lonely Place, &lt;/i&gt;you get the full spectrum of male dysfunction- the rites of Ford run smack into the iron mom of Hitchcock.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The tragedy with Ray is in the matriarchal obstacle: We could have easily overlooked Dean&#39;s many &lt;i&gt;faux pas&lt;/i&gt; in the police station, and even the planetarium because that night at the chicken run he&#39;s all of a sudden cool as McQueen. It&#39;s his one big moment of &lt;i&gt;Wild One&lt;/i&gt; moxy, and he does it all real good, but then after Buzz goes over the cliff, he undoes it all by trying to rat out the attendees after everyone runs home.&amp;nbsp; Jim, the jinx. And now the narc. You&#39;ve got one person killed already through your bad decisions, through trying to do the right thing (according to your overbearing mom). But the night is young, isn&#39;t it Jim? And don&#39;t blame your mom, either! Even your mom is cooler than you! After Buzz&#39;s death she wants him to just shut up about it, never say a word to anyone, and go to bed, like all the other kids who were there. He snivels and demands his dad back him up in his desire to throw himself at the feet of strong police men, no matter who else he drags down with him.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnWYfnjROZKiRqpBrbyVYL0U10dfwIonIKBBT9pnS5kE640BbijOpUPaETioitJbAY7q_mhG-fsYAt_7lLTvVQE-gSRn5AIMbQEY044QltxOfSdXK-A-I0SSn7_kiY5JWHRnwXfuVM-GutvRjBfxSkjYfKWYnQJKSwfU8fd-1WqS0ZWLGgqaOy/s980/13b669_17c1355408c14bf3b254131f1ac07065~mv2.webp&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;580&quot; data-original-width=&quot;980&quot; height=&quot;236&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnWYfnjROZKiRqpBrbyVYL0U10dfwIonIKBBT9pnS5kE640BbijOpUPaETioitJbAY7q_mhG-fsYAt_7lLTvVQE-gSRn5AIMbQEY044QltxOfSdXK-A-I0SSn7_kiY5JWHRnwXfuVM-GutvRjBfxSkjYfKWYnQJKSwfU8fd-1WqS0ZWLGgqaOy/w400-h236/13b669_17c1355408c14bf3b254131f1ac07065~mv2.webp&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Son, both parents think you should forget about it and go to bed. That&#39;s what you call a&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt; &#39;free pass&#39;!!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The gang sure made the right choice by scorning him. Imagine if he was accepted by the gang and someone gave him a puff of a reefer, you know, Mary Jane?&amp;nbsp; He&#39;d probably freak out, and demand the gang drive him to the ER, shouting: &#39;Sorry, but just this once I wanted do something &lt;i&gt;right!&#39; as&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;everyone at the party is led past him in a handcuffed row... for their own good. So they don&#39;t get hooked, right Jim?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmk5FnvDVKjr38KxAqlZZKCYY-h7QgojgYx-Lo8DQIqjFP2wpeEUwAR_KVq4IsDx-K0jecZKy8XBwsIOMDgl8RP5_FdB6V33c7fa82pLhFfSNiSPEU5Co2rkZS0Bt2x-5xD1MdtvZNIT57NnPS7U2oX5STAetQDFgd2Mp5XB3obUtBFMeaQ/s1202/dean.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;660&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1202&quot; height=&quot;352&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmk5FnvDVKjr38KxAqlZZKCYY-h7QgojgYx-Lo8DQIqjFP2wpeEUwAR_KVq4IsDx-K0jecZKy8XBwsIOMDgl8RP5_FdB6V33c7fa82pLhFfSNiSPEU5Co2rkZS0Bt2x-5xD1MdtvZNIT57NnPS7U2oX5STAetQDFgd2Mp5XB3obUtBFMeaQ/w640-h352/dean.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And just imagine who Jim would want to bring around to gang meetings if he was in.&amp;nbsp;Considering his new best friend is a super needy rich kid&amp;nbsp;who just killed a whole boxful of puppies the night before, which is the slam dunk hat trick of red flags.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;God help your cat, Jim, if you ever cancel a playdate.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And man was he getting close! Luckily three guys from the gang found him first - So Plato shoots one, then hides out in the planetarium (where the days trouble began). Our bright &#39;right&#39;-doing Jim Stark decides to save the day by racing past past the cop&#39;s cordon and into the planetarium to try and talk Plato into coming out, without even explaining his intention to the cops. Think, Jim! How can they know for sure you&#39;re not bringing Plato ammo rather than taking it away!?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Then, in a final jinx move, staggering in its idiocy, Jim gets Plato to give him the gun, then takes the bullets out, but then&lt;i&gt; gives him back&amp;nbsp;the gun!&lt;/i&gt;! You should have just given him the bullets, Jim. The cops don&#39;t shoots kids who wave bullets at them, as you will soon find out.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Dean&#39;s big acting moment, the one that almost made him live up to the hype as a powerhouse actor, is his great slur-shout of &quot;I-got-the-BULL-ets!&quot; after Plato falls dead. Waving them ineffectually, as if trying to shoehorn his own roaring teen angst into Plato&#39;s big Buffalo Bill butterfly moment, I think we&#39;re supposed to &#39;feel&#39; for his chutzpah at this juncture, and even rail against the callousness of the Big Bad World. But I say if its big and bad, its to protect itself by &#39;heroes&#39; like Jim Stark.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;Jim, next time, just shut the fuck up when people make animal noises. You&#39;re worse than Tony in &lt;i&gt;West Side Story&lt;/i&gt;, who gets two people killed just because a girl he&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;met a few hours ago&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;tells him &quot;any kind of fight&#39;s no good for us.&quot;&amp;nbsp; Well, at any rate, Jimbo my lad, now now you don&#39;t have to worry about your cat.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I know it&#39;s not a popular trope these days, but as a deep tissue Jungian I&#39;m partial to the idea of masculine rites of passage. I think it&#39;s imperative for masculine identity to make a social rite out of the brave facing of fear, pain, death and humiliation, and above all, most importantly, cuts and bruises (women&#39;s reproductive system includes built-in rites, they don&#39;t need any more).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;John Ford gets it. Nicholas Ray gets it, Colonel Blimp and Crocodile Dundee get it. Apollo Creed every boxer in the world gets it. Tyler Durden, John Wayne eventually gets it, and all of Ireland.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Luke Skywalker, squares, Maria, Jim Stark don&#39;t get it. Cops and school principals don&#39;t get it but they&#39;re not supposed to, so it&#39;s OK (they&#39;re the referees)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;If we&#39;d all just&lt;i&gt; belt&lt;/i&gt; each other occasionally.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;You got to do &lt;i&gt;something.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUpr6nP4ETPJ9cSBT4adbGPM_mkrVWD0MbLVBUawwifiA5hsTmCfqUb0RySJ7iEKkliDOgmgh6YBEDjYdwjShARaKHkdZiJ9H0bRScR2T44sXJod9sQwjsqH-W_Fkj-0jL-f4R2fnCVYjptdehHv-ZhTSmiKPE8rOER_7vezIwGE11T-CXSTT3/s1584/Derek%20Love,%20if%20that%20is%20your%20real%20name.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;991&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1584&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUpr6nP4ETPJ9cSBT4adbGPM_mkrVWD0MbLVBUawwifiA5hsTmCfqUb0RySJ7iEKkliDOgmgh6YBEDjYdwjShARaKHkdZiJ9H0bRScR2T44sXJod9sQwjsqH-W_Fkj-0jL-f4R2fnCVYjptdehHv-ZhTSmiKPE8rOER_7vezIwGE11T-CXSTT3/w640-h400/Derek%20Love,%20if%20that%20is%20your%20real%20name.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;I used some color screenshots, as I generally don&#39;t like colorizing, but in this case it&#39;s by a fan on YouTube for &lt;br /&gt;their own amusementand in Teen&#39;s case the purple/green schemata adds a weird sense of dislocation&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  9. &lt;span&gt;&lt;i style=&quot;font-size: large; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Teenagers from Outer Space&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1959)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;does plenty -- it&#39;s the rampaging Yin to Rebel&#39;s puling Yang.&amp;nbsp; Dean might get all the posters can&#39;t hold a candle to the endearingly Dumbo-eared Derek (David Love) as one of the....TEENAGERS. Almost totally emotiionless, he gives an actually lovely demonstration of how a man might be sensitive, and decent, and nice yet no coward, kibbitzer, or narc. He&#39;s not some &#39;rebel&#39; against middle class conformity, to him middle-class conformity&lt;i&gt; is&lt;/i&gt; rebellion. The planet he comes from is void of things like comfort and emotion. So when he winds up in a perfect small town,&amp;nbsp;as warm, inviting as &lt;i&gt;Rebel&#39;s&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;is dour and lockstep, in soothing b&amp;amp;w instead of &lt;i&gt;Rebel&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s garish color (Natalie Wood&#39;s garish lipstick makes me shudder just to think about). But after that the similarities are striking.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;For example: both&amp;nbsp;occur within a single day/night. Both involve a new guy in town who finds himself protected by a girl who likes him and pursued by a gang of boys who want him to stop trying to change the Way Things Are. Both involve puppy killers who pay for their crimes, alas, indirectly. In&lt;i&gt; Rebel&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;the black sheep is surrounded by perfectly into their small town 50s conservative (heteronormative) social structure; he finds a small group of fellow outcasts, who like him are unable to sublimate their dysfunctional daddy issues.&amp;nbsp; Meanwhile a runt with a gun tags after him, demanding full attention -i.e.trying to Jim into &lt;i&gt;his &lt;/i&gt;daddy.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Derek comes to a new town from a lockstep conservative but all male (structured around one big daddy issue) social order where being an outcast means longing for small town heteronormativity, and finds one in a friendly 50s social structure where there is no daddy &lt;i&gt;at all &lt;/i&gt;just a friendly old suspenders-wearing Harvey P. Dunn, and you know he&#39;s harmless and gentle because just the sight of a girl with long nails nearly kills him in Ed Wood&#39;s NIGHT OF THE GHOULS, and his cool granddaughter, just about Dereks&#39;s age.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;If only Jim and Derek could trade places!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhvRWs-R2aYVQ8jcXEDWDCKUl5Trk4ghGBoHBHscxBU3s7O1htVxBifzKONreD7dOy5qBW3LfXZ0opCaMlgm1YlmT0JVM6hXQXtitsrBMFtUfSh-OP1GwGWQPylUZrhwTzu5o/s1600/teenagersfos9.JPG&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;550&quot; data-original-width=&quot;731&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhvRWs-R2aYVQ8jcXEDWDCKUl5Trk4ghGBoHBHscxBU3s7O1htVxBifzKONreD7dOy5qBW3LfXZ0opCaMlgm1YlmT0JVM6hXQXtitsrBMFtUfSh-OP1GwGWQPylUZrhwTzu5o/s320/teenagersfos9.JPG&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I&#39;ll grant you, Derek really lucks out when he stumbles onto friendly gramps and his nerdy-cool granddaughter. Unlike Jim Stark, he doesn&#39;t need to be all &quot;you&#39;re tearing me apart!&quot; whiny about feeling alienated from his assigned-at-birth tribe. Derek never freaks out, just flatly asserts his preference for a warm, emotional environment. But you know how that team can be when you try to jump ship and who can blame them?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I love a lot about&lt;i&gt; Teenagers from Outer Space &lt;/i&gt;(though the title put me off seeing it until only a few years ago): I&#39;m a big fan of&amp;nbsp;post-sync dubbing with these lower budget numbers as it lends them a weird dreamlike unrealistic air--&lt;i&gt;Carnival of Souls&lt;/i&gt; wouldn&#39;t be half as surreal without it, and it&#39;s a perfect vehicle for Derek&#39;s flat emotionless (in character) delivery, he&#39;s like the anti-Dean. His rebellion stems from realizling his peers are going to bring in the &#39;gargal&#39; (indestructible giant shadow lobsters) and turn Earth into&amp;nbsp;kind of giant pasture / feed lot / lobster bed. How does it feel to be thought of as food for someone else&#39;s food, America? Probably not very good. You might ask the third world how they cope. You migth ask the buffalo... or Black Elk.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The hypocrisy here comes not from American society but from the aliens. They&#39;re not &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to bring the gargans to an inhabited civilization-havin&#39; world, but Thor, his psychopathic saucer mate, decides a zapped dog&#39;s tag is not sufficient evidence to halt the plan. As far as Thor goes, they&#39;re not &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to wipe out sentient beings, the way the US Cavalry is not &lt;i&gt;supposed &lt;/i&gt;to massacre&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; the Native Americans, including unarmed women and children. In other words, the powers that be want &#39;plausible deniability&#39; in order to get rid of the problem once and forever, therefore the underlying (nonspoken) orders are carried out (&quot;with extreme prejudice&quot;) contrary to the written &#39;official&#39; order.&amp;nbsp; Feigning empathy with those you kill in order give your country&#39;s liberals are a panacea for their guilt is the bedrock of &#39;colonization.&#39; Thor--jealous and bloodthirsty, trades on the friendliness of the townsfolk in his pursuit of Derek, but repaying kindness with merciless zapping as he goes, like any good &#39;civilizing&#39; influence might wipe out the indigenous population of a land they were claiming for the crow after first getting to know them, maybe taking some pictures, directions, gold... and then, almost as an afterthought, wiping them out on your way to the next.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But Derek, true teenager in his liberal phase, undoes the hidden meaning in a reverse counter-revolution --sticking to the letter of the law, using the oppressor&#39;s law against the unwritten (he even gets the press involved, symbolically at least). You go, Derek! That&#39;s the kind of teenager rebellion that works - a rebel &lt;i&gt;with &lt;/i&gt;a cause.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Take a lesson, James Dean / Jim Stark, Derek rebels against his corrupted order via its own strict guidelines, like a boss.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHggVOhKtQsgsJ5PgfZm-muZevxzmZJDHXm2hT9ZbXOtSkBInSRQ0C9ApiaGqkUAqJqoXsM5v2dMuQ4L1PxthrWP0A5ldG5VMXK2hoAHOZ1VIslJTs3rGAC64f1oMtyoSFjarizItVWpLwZDEky9UD87emmm4hCCKDvlMgPlvtIpSRlGtpOucc/s1537/alice%20gets%20flirty.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;942&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1537&quot; height=&quot;245&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHggVOhKtQsgsJ5PgfZm-muZevxzmZJDHXm2hT9ZbXOtSkBInSRQ0C9ApiaGqkUAqJqoXsM5v2dMuQ4L1PxthrWP0A5ldG5VMXK2hoAHOZ1VIslJTs3rGAC64f1oMtyoSFjarizItVWpLwZDEky9UD87emmm4hCCKDvlMgPlvtIpSRlGtpOucc/w400-h245/alice%20gets%20flirty.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWRZSEmesdDsMBS8u_v_dajHwFU3V7CVdVetH3B2mTYF-K65C1f6LepLcbt96ddvNfH42NbNSFww7LhUBLKjUx5a12xdMy-eND66mB3JnChN44RhWVIb0efw1dhjbOC3l931O7p3cOC5heAiBQJj_dkTDvsC384jUIV0zH3ULsTnr12FLinIUh/s1576/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-23%20at%203.25.06%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;972&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1576&quot; height=&quot;394&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWRZSEmesdDsMBS8u_v_dajHwFU3V7CVdVetH3B2mTYF-K65C1f6LepLcbt96ddvNfH42NbNSFww7LhUBLKjUx5a12xdMy-eND66mB3JnChN44RhWVIb0efw1dhjbOC3l931O7p3cOC5heAiBQJj_dkTDvsC384jUIV0zH3ULsTnr12FLinIUh/w640-h394/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-23%20at%203.25.06%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;WHEN STRAIGHTNESS WAS A BIG TENT.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Luckily the more rabidly homophobic the society the less gaydar they seem to have. Dawn Bender surely doesn&#39;t have any--all but chasing Derek around and instructing him to make decisions based on her interpretation of things she doesn&#39;t understand, clueless her new man&#39;s alien orientation. She uses her old boyfriend-friend (i.e. the equivalent of that guy who loves her unconditionally, even under the condition he&#39;s relegated to &#39;friend&#39; status, so common to movies even today, though the &#39;gay bestie&#39; has now taken his place), a reporter played by Graef himself, to do the legwork so we can easily go from q) to z) as far as getting the whole town to back Derek up as Thor comes blasting. It&#39;s a refreshing switch from the tedious swaths of parents and cops not believing the teens in the more conventional (i.e. straight shot) films, perhaps reflecting a kind of &#39;grass is always greener&#39; along the outlaw divide effect, where the outcast fantasizes about communal acceptance and vice versa. Meanwhile, in her naive moral certitude, Dawn becomes a kind of saint /&amp;nbsp; heroine / representative of all Anytown USA has to offer. She and gramps become kind of a fantasy for lonely orphans--- instant love and acceptance, as if they&#39;d been waiting all this time just for them. For St. Sebastians lashed to the wheel of intolerance, they are the ultimate heteronormative/tolerant backup, the solace they dream of. Meanwhile, someone like Ray Stark has to go to all sorts of ugly lengths to escape the accepting arms of his own family, clumsily lashing himself to whatever wheel he can find, invariably leaving one arm free in case he needs to itch, or take a selfie of his anguished struggle.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZzAKvETvxTBwWAX7bAsU9_Tn-Afjkij3a6RrUYGUiKFfc_rvvvL24tlZQk_44avraooRK-b5KL8J2JvwTTaSDFL0ghKoQLEsKF8MTGhsAasxsPtNvjCQJ-Dq81sadmumQpr5WieLFaXRXgHWFY09hdErnyqUG7iSnRqwYNhacBVcjaIuQpf3/s282/download-2.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;179&quot; data-original-width=&quot;282&quot; height=&quot;203&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZzAKvETvxTBwWAX7bAsU9_Tn-Afjkij3a6RrUYGUiKFfc_rvvvL24tlZQk_44avraooRK-b5KL8J2JvwTTaSDFL0ghKoQLEsKF8MTGhsAasxsPtNvjCQJ-Dq81sadmumQpr5WieLFaXRXgHWFY09hdErnyqUG7iSnRqwYNhacBVcjaIuQpf3/w320-h203/download-2.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;NEITHER AWAKE NOR ALEEP NOR DEAD&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As with a lot of post-sync films from the era, the air itself seems different -- eerily still. There is no wind, very few birds, everything is muted, the voices all right up front, the way people&#39;s talking sounds when you come to from a concussion, the way&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Carniva&lt;/i&gt;l&#39;s small Kansas town becomes when Candace Hiligoss is suddenly plunged into an in-between place where no one can see or hear her. The difference here is that the weird quiet is benevolent. Before this film I didn&#39;t think a benevolent alienation was remotely possible. There&#39;s something for everyone here in town! There&#39;s even a foxy and sexually assertive single girl down the street-- with a &lt;i&gt;pool&lt;/i&gt;! I mean, I suddenly wouldn&#39;t want to leave either. Too bad his jealous ex is stalking him, disintegrating everyone he meets--all of whom are too nice and kind to realize what he threat he poses, including the pool girl. It breaks my heart every time. Why not leave her alive, Thor!!!?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Like Jim in&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Rebel,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Derek is a stranger in a strange world, but unlike him, Derek is no narc. In the end he makes the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity in general and the small town in particular, and he does so without any browbeating, giggling, grandstanding or adult-shaming.&amp;nbsp; Even after the boys send for his sugar daddy, his hairy-chested biological papa, the leader of their planet, he stands firm. I don&#39;t think Jim Stark would be able to. For him and his daddy-starved friends, Derek&#39;s papa would be like a gift from god.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;--&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
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  11. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJKQVybAsfVYdDk_f5YJhdHReRUVQb2c6sgHtbLNpo2ehjPFLJB43tTkxCgT5dcFyQwHeQ77RxQxpibbIkiky5UCFeG4O1rWYjXoqPZ-n0kyTCa8Nk1dG4znj1Q7WZNADkDwIC/s1600/Bender+Shmender+aybeigbs+I%2527m+the+cat+that%2527s+in+the+know.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;428&quot; data-original-width=&quot;568&quot; height=&quot;301&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJKQVybAsfVYdDk_f5YJhdHReRUVQb2c6sgHtbLNpo2ehjPFLJB43tTkxCgT5dcFyQwHeQ77RxQxpibbIkiky5UCFeG4O1rWYjXoqPZ-n0kyTCa8Nk1dG4znj1Q7WZNADkDwIC/s400/Bender+Shmender+aybeigbs+I%2527m+the+cat+that%2527s+in+the+know.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  12. &lt;br /&gt;With those hooded Peter Lorre eyes, Bette Page bangs, Edith Massey teeth, &#39;Bette Davis whispering into the ear of a sleeping Val Lewton&#39; vibery, and that starchy retro-hipster dress, Dawn Bender is a totally unique presence in movies. It&#39;s like a whole new category of &#39;types&#39; has to be invented to support her her.&amp;nbsp; A whole new kind of &#39;small town cool&#39; is born. Perhaps it&#39;s the queer perspective of the film that she--the only woman with any real skin in the game--is the most unique and thoughtful character, a &lt;i&gt;true &lt;/i&gt;lead and not just another endangered love interest / lab assistant. In yet another of his innovative but weird editing choices, Graeff lets all her scenes play out a few seconds longer than an ordinary editor would, letting his camera keep an eye on what she does after the action in the script is completed, how she fills out the gap between the end of the scene and the actual cut. She uses the time by wistfully gazing through windows as if she&#39;s Lilian Gish on the lonesome prairie&amp;nbsp;after yet another day with no mail from her far-flung fella in a DW Griffith silent. It&#39;s archaic yet ahead of its time. It wouldn&#39;t matter if she just shut down emotionally at the end, like a robot; we&#39;d still be with her all the way, enraptured and confused by her weird charisma. (As in so many films by gay auteurs, the women are as handsome as the boys are beautiful.)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Regardless of which tent you currently live in, Dawn&#39;s gentle sewing needle and Dunn&#39;s folksy business can patch the tears, reminding us--regardless of how we perceive its perception of us--not all small towners are intolerant. And even if some are, all they need to change their minds is the right alien boy, the right Bronson Canyon cave mouth, and the right stock volcano explosion. Proof that innocence and sincerity &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; thrive without sacrificing difference. At least in this one film. This one time.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Oh, also in Charles Laughton&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Night of the Hunter.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/i&gt;Just these two times.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I forgot about&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Night of the Hunter--&lt;/i&gt;another movie about the strength of innocence in the face of hypocrisy&amp;nbsp; that was made by a gay man? And the only movie that man directed? And recognized as a cult classic only long after that man was dead?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What is wrong with this f--ed up world?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Less then a decade after making &lt;i&gt;Teens&lt;/i&gt;, Graef would kill himself with car exhaust. Seven years after the critical and box office failure of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Hunter,&lt;/i&gt; Laughton died of cancer, or a broken heart.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;God bless little children. They abide.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Eventually.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbhKYbnQ0BJpUo_u4I97vRr91xc5TARVXx2anLqEM_z2s9zUex9zntNVie-zIK8G9_36HPe6_6F3ouIaG2BnlIFNKHQCo5lwFMWNZNaN2NleFvfEYzU5G3TRggmnPYKytXJBPIAVgr8UUaSvBuR-FpICktnvZQjeVbNkILQvOJnmNlkXW82iT0/s1711/Screenshot%202024-04-27%20at%2010.08.19%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1280&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1711&quot; height=&quot;239&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbhKYbnQ0BJpUo_u4I97vRr91xc5TARVXx2anLqEM_z2s9zUex9zntNVie-zIK8G9_36HPe6_6F3ouIaG2BnlIFNKHQCo5lwFMWNZNaN2NleFvfEYzU5G3TRggmnPYKytXJBPIAVgr8UUaSvBuR-FpICktnvZQjeVbNkILQvOJnmNlkXW82iT0/s320/Screenshot%202024-04-27%20at%2010.08.19%E2%80%AFPM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73noZewvyshnHQXMAzCFXU31ahk9pos0rZVCeqTNC7MnSXPSUiCF_ZXcbvnRJXqwiehddrnqu4sXrh637Xvklvr7dzTH4qh6E3T0CchunX2wrs50pziZzw458mnsuyjo1GgJ9N3my2FA95i-Uvq8mqZ4161KshUooLLJG0Y4irvbXDXAQQu7L/s285/download-1.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;177&quot; data-original-width=&quot;285&quot; height=&quot;124&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73noZewvyshnHQXMAzCFXU31ahk9pos0rZVCeqTNC7MnSXPSUiCF_ZXcbvnRJXqwiehddrnqu4sXrh637Xvklvr7dzTH4qh6E3T0CchunX2wrs50pziZzw458mnsuyjo1GgJ9N3my2FA95i-Uvq8mqZ4161KshUooLLJG0Y4irvbXDXAQQu7L/w200-h124/download-1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/7392772049822546660/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/i-lobster-teenagers-from-outer-space.html#comment-form' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/7392772049822546660'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/7392772049822546660'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/i-lobster-teenagers-from-outer-space.html' title='Derek Love vs. the Buzz Killer: TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIE8F9MLrq-mujyd9FUxXOsCLxFfQTvoyMUSsa2qYtc6vjpK0ThUWKE4__2M0klDH89kRieYAJTEfC76qSOiV6qauTjaJWNiDVkHaaFaN1cdkcIV-1UlOfQMM6sniH4O0n7cQ9/s72-c/teenagers+fro+outer.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-3870528612135479813</id><published>2024-03-02T18:06:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2024-03-31T09:31:48.751-05:00</updated><title type='text'>The Joy of Recycling: THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8qzIsJveGt9TjwRhAhQvyzzfuqPdX2jy_6I9Bm3-EACJw-BLQAxBQAcy8lVjFc9Iegwlc6YLkAl5ucOkLPHHjKq3We5W5EZonz70FqeGH7WUxZm2vAUjJ2R96PxGx6Z9T91PhRGPWIsyHV-0EwtgEEUL1c3pizLzyUMOQl-DYR6PWodty8aM4/s920/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.37.00%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;670&quot; data-original-width=&quot;920&quot; height=&quot;466&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8qzIsJveGt9TjwRhAhQvyzzfuqPdX2jy_6I9Bm3-EACJw-BLQAxBQAcy8lVjFc9Iegwlc6YLkAl5ucOkLPHHjKq3We5W5EZonz70FqeGH7WUxZm2vAUjJ2R96PxGx6Z9T91PhRGPWIsyHV-0EwtgEEUL1c3pizLzyUMOQl-DYR6PWodty8aM4/w640-h466/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.37.00%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;If your idea of endlessly re-watchable half-asleep outsider gold /accidental surrealist multi-meta collage is the same as mine--which seems almost impossible--viddy well the THE WHITE GORILLA (1945), streamable everywhere. and don&#39;t even bother trying to figure out what&#39;s going on with all the flashbacks and animal reaction stock footage cutaways. It&#39;s better that way. Just find the best transfer you can, wait until you&#39;re nodding off in your easy chair with&amp;nbsp; slippers, loyal wolfhound, glass of port, and unlit pipe at your side, and stream away (you can find it on my YouTube mix&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-ebbHDWyjQDDQZR1yFthdv&quot;&gt;Vintage Jungle Madness&lt;/a&gt;). Why? Low stakes, a pleasing narration, and the gorillas, and the liberating sense of &#39;seeing the seams&#39;, whereas the tools of covering lack of budget are revealed. Stock footage, foreign releases, public domain classics, home movies, silent documentaries--whatever is in the fridge, so to speak, can become integral to some story tellable only by the few actors and sets you have at your temporary disposal. When it &#39;works&#39; it&#39;s priceless, that sense of found object outsider art you might get at the gallery show at a mental hospital.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Ed Wood validating his cross-dressing via blue collar conversation heard over industrial footage of steel girders pumping white hot out of the forge, or building a movie around a home movie of Bela Lugosi sniffing a flower outside his house for &lt;i&gt;Plan Nine--&lt;/i&gt;it&#39;s like poetry structured from whatever word magnets happen to be on the fridge.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;And what about the way 1981&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2021/12/way-of-coffin-flop-game-of-death-ii-1981.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Game of Death II &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;composites a Bruce Lee performance out of classic footage (stretching back even to when Lee was a child actor), outtakes from &lt;i&gt;Enter the Dragon&lt;/i&gt;, and even Lee&#39;s actual funeral? Ingenious, even if it, or especially because, it never quite gels. And Curtis Harrington &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/retro-futurism-was-sure-to-go-10-cool.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Queen of Blood&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;with young pre-fame John&amp;nbsp;Saxon and Dennis Hopper as astronauts encountering a a martian queen conjured up via footage from a Russian sci-fi film?&amp;nbsp; Sublime! Peter Bogdanovich making&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/retro-futurism-was-sure-to-go-10-cool.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/02/retro-futurism-was-sure-to-go-10-cool.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;from a different Russian sci-fi film by folding in new scenes of&amp;nbsp;Mamie Van Doren in a blonde wig and glittery silver hip huggers&lt;i&gt;? &lt;/i&gt;I&#39;m floating on a lava sea of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Lady from Shanghai &lt;/i&gt;references.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;And like&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2021/12/gorilla-mon-amor-ed-woods-bride-and.html&quot;&gt;Ed Wood&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Bride and the Beas&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;t&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/11/cozzilla-10-reasons-luigi-cozzis-1977.html&quot;&gt;Luigi Cozzi &lt;i&gt;Godzila&lt;/i&gt; Redux&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;, &lt;/i&gt;of late, two composite gems I keep on my emergency dial, so to speak, made eminently hypnotic by the ingenious methods they use to match footage from disparate places. I&#39;ve recently found a new favorite... alas it&#39;s barely an hour long. Would it was a million.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkAbPcONLhBduqi2fK7VieAEMdEXi6OXpZmYarny3yoQSCIC_M1SwU08pVuGqRHCe-2_yrFfAxn3Dc_aK-ncyaMzyChR2PezZKRQa1MSk8fQr2juzDhOystGM68H2LgKNeabu1aSVZEcTA6akohRMilks_K2rFNYu3X9qBb9g2GD5V0_H4XEi/s941/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.35.18%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;664&quot; data-original-width=&quot;941&quot; height=&quot;283&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkAbPcONLhBduqi2fK7VieAEMdEXi6OXpZmYarny3yoQSCIC_M1SwU08pVuGqRHCe-2_yrFfAxn3Dc_aK-ncyaMzyChR2PezZKRQa1MSk8fQr2juzDhOystGM68H2LgKNeabu1aSVZEcTA6akohRMilks_K2rFNYu3X9qBb9g2GD5V0_H4XEi/w400-h283/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.35.18%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE WHITE GORILLA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1941) Dir. Harry L. Fraser&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Starring&amp;nbsp; Ray &quot;Crash&quot; Corrigan&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&quot;The jungle.... weird....&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;Godardesque meta manna cascades like a waterfall, thundering library stock music crashes and recedes in glittering harp glissandos over the credits proudly kicking off the post-modern edge with a credit that says &quot;An All-Star Cast.&quot; We know right away that the normal handrails of narrative are going to be coming and going. And then there is Ray Crash Corrigan&quot;--usually inside a gorilla suit or doing stunts-- stars, narrates, and probably fights himself. He&#39;s kind of got an Ed wood drinking buddy vibe (I hear they were). He&#39;s no milquetoast. He&#39;s played gorillas in every movie ever made, and here is in a gorilla movie, as a human, (and probably also one or both gorillas). We&#39;re off and walking! We cut through the usual roster of dangerous African animal stock footage as his narration sets the scene, and the result: magic. Flashbacks are composites of three sources: animal footage, which silent film characters react to but was clearly shot in a totally different place (sometimes it even seems like a zoo) and then Steve in a separate frame as well, shot later--each in turn reacting to something it can never share a frame with - leaving us watching suddenly feel eyes on us: god watching us watching Steve watch silent serial stars watch even older safari footage. We feel seen, at long last.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And hurrah for Corrigan, mostly underplaying as Steve Collins, a chewed-up guide who stumbles out of the African jungle and into the trading post (the actual only non-stock set) where three white guys are drinking and kvetching about jungle noise. Naturally after a drink to steady himself he starts with his tale of the doomed safari he was guiding, and how his client, Bradford &quot;wouldn&#39;t listen&quot; to him. And would always camps near a stream (&quot;always near a stream,&quot;--an odd detail, he&#39;ll mention again, though we never see one, or even a camp). And so we flashback to the meat of the movie, highlights lifted from the only known s&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/fYIWgezutyQ?si=-PzPOg2bRvXpC-Eh&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;urviving chunk of an old silent serial&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Perils of the Jungle &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;(1927).&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Silent Tarzan Frank Merrill is Bradford, sporting an arm band tattoo (or claw mark) and getting into all sorts of scrapes with animal footage while searching for &#39;the Cave of the Cyclops&#39; (just a statue, alas). We get lots of lions try to break through the cabin door, while sad-eyed apes look on, or charging elephants, angry natives running hither an yon, a little jungle boy (it&#39;s all good cuz he&#39;s fiercely Hawksian deadpan rather than Sheffield cutesy) who does all the &lt;i&gt;deux ex machina&lt;/i&gt; rescuing, including operating the arm of the cyclops statue so the tiger men think his crazy mother--who wears horns and rattles a skull stick--speaks for the gods.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh52j4N9-QhQyarwQunHIyWzlX57GgryonIsEJ6ybhgO4TLrgOjjVIGs49JHKN38MDYxyIIPoTKZYvcRsRtzlrSoF5lX6emcjYA3XyK_rtUYSPWrV2L9yyxd2na6lJVb3uMKDJ6K4n784DkmuebnMr7EXmgGfAIKk6-iI2bKCaiYgDEcmb2qEYe/s932/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.35.39%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;673&quot; data-original-width=&quot;932&quot; height=&quot;231&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh52j4N9-QhQyarwQunHIyWzlX57GgryonIsEJ6ybhgO4TLrgOjjVIGs49JHKN38MDYxyIIPoTKZYvcRsRtzlrSoF5lX6emcjYA3XyK_rtUYSPWrV2L9yyxd2na6lJVb3uMKDJ6K4n784DkmuebnMr7EXmgGfAIKk6-iI2bKCaiYgDEcmb2qEYe/w320-h231/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.35.39%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Steve, wishing he could help&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;These scenes are all narrated by Steve and peppered with regular cutaways of him peeking out from behind bushes or up in trees, periodically offering rationalizations like &quot;with the lions between my hiding spot and the endangered party, I was powerless to help&quot; to explain why he never shares their frame.&amp;nbsp; Like a good guide that he is, he merely bears witness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Yes, he&#39;s less of a fighter and more of a rationalizer, and Corrigan does his weirdest bit of acting when spying his nemesis the white gorilla through the trading post window back in the present, while about to take a shot of whiskey. Instead of pounding it to steady his nerves like a real man he lets it slip through his fingers in the most ridiculously forced manner, and starts this intense little pule / whine of &quot;there it is,&quot; almost like he&#39;s&amp;nbsp;in a long bathroom line. Then he&#39;s back to narrating derring-do with lions always trying to break down thatched huts (&quot;as the lions continued their attack, I thanked my lucky stars for my decision I made never to be caught too close to Bradford...&quot;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Since Corrigan is usually the one growling and snarling (he plays every gorilla in 40s movies), it&#39;s surprising to hear his soothing, masculine and low-key voice that fits him perfectly. He&#39;s kind of a beefy, normal looking guy, but the lyrical language and conversational way he speaks (in a kind of repetitive hypnotic style where the key word of the previous sentence is the first word of the next) creates a pleasant kind of trance. Distant jungle noises outside the trading post, the nature footage, and the rich music, and foley for the silent film flashbacks, all run under his voice, like soothing &#39;green noise.&#39; It&#39;s mostly seamless, even if they sound recorded on vastly different equipment.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX9_mdXYpwSbO_PWmcYTmg1pRZ5GNIZusKv-VZo5rL4pMBBN_JeRq6XE02lZS56LXKG8yH0HdpPVp0FcXv-UX5kxmNfqTC4kfjoPVArepZpeIol-r9nda1_OX8VLVPEX1pff4Uz3bF1sjECb5J8kpDHA4nGUeMKoZpb_PiqdddbES7s3qJ-HGP/s906/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.37.47%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;664&quot; data-original-width=&quot;906&quot; height=&quot;235&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX9_mdXYpwSbO_PWmcYTmg1pRZ5GNIZusKv-VZo5rL4pMBBN_JeRq6XE02lZS56LXKG8yH0HdpPVp0FcXv-UX5kxmNfqTC4kfjoPVArepZpeIol-r9nda1_OX8VLVPEX1pff4Uz3bF1sjECb5J8kpDHA4nGUeMKoZpb_PiqdddbES7s3qJ-HGP/s320/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.37.47%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Furthering the pleasant sense of dislocation is the use non-spatial distance and tribal relations in this part of the jungle (&quot;jungle where the natives hated the white man.&quot;) Steve says he and Bradford stayed at he old man&#39;s camp &#39;for months&#39; while coming ever closer to finding the treasure via his coveted map. So they trek all day and then turn around and trek back? The inner jungle turns out to be almost two-dimensional, with native villages overlapping each other and the camp in a foggy blur where no shot seems aware of its connection to the one that precedes it. It turns the camp of Bradford, and the trading post are all no more than few miles the Cyclops cave (which is where Steve leads Bradford and co about to to be fed to a pair of anachronistic tigers--clearly stock footage of them trying to climb up the concrete wall in the zoo enclosure-- as a sacrifice). When the other guys at the post go off to check it out they&#39;re back the next day, it&#39;s just long enough to give Steve just time enough to face off with his deadly alabaster foe, and rescue the girl. Her strategy: shoot once, scream three times, throw the gun to the ground and pass out at the white gorilla&#39;s feet (Steve notes &quot;as I passed her rifle laying on the ground, I knew something had happened&quot;).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The climactic highlight is a battle with the much larger black gorilla, who slaps his own face and conks the white one with a big stick from behind his back. The likely grim fate of Bradord, the jungle boy, his horned mom, Bradford, and the daughter of the blind treasure hunter better left unsaid. The other men return from checking it out and note there were only bones and the two tigers. Since that&#39;s where the &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/fYIWgezutyQ?si=-PzPOg2bRvXpC-Eh&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;surviving chunk of &lt;i&gt;Perils&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ends too, Case closed! So Steve is going home to America with the rest of them, rationalizing once again in his conversational, muffled tone:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;After all, we have no right to the jungle. It belongs to the natives, and the animals, not the white man. It was theirs before we came, it should be theirs now.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;All is right with the jungle, the white outsiders are all gone--even the little jungle boy--and Steve has learned some important things.&amp;nbsp; Even as they walk away his narration continues, no longer bearing witness, but just imagining the jungle&#39;s denizens giving the gorilla a kind of moment of silence as a sign of belated respect.&amp;nbsp; Considering the blithe unconscious colonial racism and animal mistreatment on display in 99% of all other jungle movies from that era, it&#39;s almost woke. Not that you&#39;ll be by then, if you watch it late at night in bed like I do, almost every night, always near a stream.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW_H5HLAjpaCaXlnKx5Opq7iMQ28h99LZJ75qyM8f6e3j0YeMTYWoUmozFgWDi0d6vWTc7a1oU0aTGkfGRDAKcLitW-AR0YEEql2jyb-HUqVgw3Xli5-6a65P8Ix56gJQ42IU65YNF6kXXJvIe_vQWFGaoSWz9TB5VBJDDOnm9q2BgVJ2hW0fx/s914/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.38.13%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;660&quot; data-original-width=&quot;914&quot; height=&quot;289&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW_H5HLAjpaCaXlnKx5Opq7iMQ28h99LZJ75qyM8f6e3j0YeMTYWoUmozFgWDi0d6vWTc7a1oU0aTGkfGRDAKcLitW-AR0YEEql2jyb-HUqVgw3Xli5-6a65P8Ix56gJQ42IU65YNF6kXXJvIe_vQWFGaoSWz9TB5VBJDDOnm9q2BgVJ2hW0fx/w400-h289/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.38.13%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/3870528612135479813/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-joy-of-recycling-white-gorilla-1945.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3870528612135479813'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3870528612135479813'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-joy-of-recycling-white-gorilla-1945.html' title='The Joy of Recycling: THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8qzIsJveGt9TjwRhAhQvyzzfuqPdX2jy_6I9Bm3-EACJw-BLQAxBQAcy8lVjFc9Iegwlc6YLkAl5ucOkLPHHjKq3We5W5EZonz70FqeGH7WUxZm2vAUjJ2R96PxGx6Z9T91PhRGPWIsyHV-0EwtgEEUL1c3pizLzyUMOQl-DYR6PWodty8aM4/s72-w640-h466-c/Screenshot%202023-08-19%20at%203.37.00%20PM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-361363502539905182</id><published>2023-11-27T16:26:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2024-01-25T09:30:14.034-05:00</updated><title type='text'>CinemArchetype 28: The Elemental </title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5t8Kr1BhyphenhyphenuHWNVN7l3MKj2LJtHKQg-faYmrC0mMjf0eVOKapf6EH2_9Jxy5_KS7ha1VT3lI6fPyNcRZvz6TkFAjVmhZbWsnVWmLbep40TgCT18Z8kI8HWbZjJWknJdfXXbw0G/w640-h479/Windomdies.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot;&gt;Getting into the pagan dark magic of the earth, air, fire, and water is as easy as doing almost nothing.... and as hard as doing less. Just like the truth about alien involvement in our evolution is--despite the mountains of evidence (19 seasons of the History Channel&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Ancient Aliens&lt;/i&gt; and counting--almost impossible to fully accept consciously, our unconscious won&#39;t let go of it-- no one can stay truly neutral, truly objectively &#39;skeptical&#39; (in the original definition) on the subject. That&#39;s because our unconscious--the basement of our mind--has connections... to the anima mundi. And the mundi has an airport.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Same way our phones handshake with the cloud, the deepest level of our dream basement connects to all other basements via this hub. And to the earth itself, filtering its blinding high-speed flashes through the lens of myth, rusheth other realities, McKenna&#39;s &quot;high strangeness.&quot; Through this deep dream spelunking thou mayest widen the girth of your soul until it&#39;s a big as all outdoors. This is how you float to heaven; the demons cannot grab you when you&#39;re empty air, nor drown you when you are the ocean.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We haven&#39;t really discussed the anima mundi here in the CinemArchetypes, and that&#39;s as it should be. We&#39;ve been wrapped up in the Self&#39;s little whirlpool smokestack of archetypes, and now it&#39;s time to look at the world&#39;s gnarled, breathing roots. There is a tree we&#39;re all tendrils of, and one by one, its own archetypes appear in dreams--the elementals.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like a sock puppet slipped onto the hand of Gaia, so too slips a persona onto the amorphous shape of the natural world&#39;s unstoppable forces. A beautiful illustration can be found on a classic SNL sketch where&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc7qJE9Nzo8&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Christopher Walken plays a &quot;man who&#39;s very scared of plants&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and so puts googly eyes on them--essentially creating earth elementals, showing--in a sort of emblematic sense--the reason for elementals in the first place. Which came first? Wrong!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saying these personifications are all in our head is forgetting we have barely a handful of breadcrumbs by way of proof we&#39;ve ever probed our inner forests. Our ego wants us to forget those woods are down there. Like a jealous lover trying to alienate us from our biological family, the ego wants to keep us home nights. With science being so logistical, it&#39;s understandable why its acolytes would consider &quot;all in your mind&quot; grounds for dismissal of any phoenomena. They&#39;re scared of their own darkness, a force which nags at them that the world view they&#39;ve embraced may be just a case of forest denial.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I say &#39;we&#39; generate sentient autonomous energies through our belief in them, science scoffs, but exorcists and snake oil salesmen understand. We&#39;ll never know which came first, the demons or the humans whose fear gave them names and &lt;i&gt;raison d&#39;etres&lt;/i&gt;. But if they&#39;re not &#39;real&#39; then neither are we. And as for faith healing, the snake oil heals all ills if the the salesman did a good job of pitching it. Placebos are the true miracle drug of our age, &lt;i&gt;if &lt;/i&gt;you believe in them--which means you need a charismatic pitchman with the power of persuasion at their disposal, a kind of placebo reiki.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  13. Thus these forces are the basics, the root chords, the pigments from which our (cinema)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;archetypal world is painted.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;They&#39;re all in the world&#39;s head, of course.&amp;nbsp; Luckily there&#39;s a cure for that --and it&#39;s only a dolla.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;
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  16. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7wBJzCxnjJY7aA4Ip5e182EpCgOVYMi1fKVf9RzZASvkLkDvVOcwX2-Faqq1SGzPj3xN5Lg64bBaUoSWmhEjSVy40Gt1IvX3m0jubdrGzWLN0u1usJDBW4KURqLquZyQIkyb/s1600/Excalibur_2.jpg.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;664&quot; data-original-width=&quot;925&quot; height=&quot;229&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7wBJzCxnjJY7aA4Ip5e182EpCgOVYMi1fKVf9RzZASvkLkDvVOcwX2-Faqq1SGzPj3xN5Lg64bBaUoSWmhEjSVy40Gt1IvX3m0jubdrGzWLN0u1usJDBW4KURqLquZyQIkyb/s320/Excalibur_2.jpg.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  19. &lt;/div&gt;
  20. &lt;span&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;font-size: xx-large;&quot;&gt;WATER&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;Both sympathetic and terrifying, like children of a certain age, these oceanic elementals can be temporarily captured and harnessed but never broken. Cage them and you rule the waves but gain an immortal enemy. Release them and you bring on yourself the mercurial mood swings of weather systems and underground earthquakes. Love them and be one with the sea, a drowned sailor slowly turning into both a jaunty skeleton and part of the sea itself. Now that&#39;s amore.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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  22. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPTQ5sUwVTTWm3VFCuWPZGK9kFOIsw-gtgatmy2tcbqAQjOQS1IXYB39M4HcjF4713CZYmKGiHv9XhCX9twN0IPIiJ-R99LppeSvdyI4KaT8cXiU7iFLUF5HA0TFGx9jvB-ag/s1600/calypso.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;236&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;302&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPTQ5sUwVTTWm3VFCuWPZGK9kFOIsw-gtgatmy2tcbqAQjOQS1IXYB39M4HcjF4713CZYmKGiHv9XhCX9twN0IPIiJ-R99LppeSvdyI4KaT8cXiU7iFLUF5HA0TFGx9jvB-ag/s640/calypso.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  23. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  24. 1. Naomie Harris - Tia Dalma / Calypso&lt;/div&gt;
  25. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  26. &lt;b&gt;PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  27. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  28. (series, starting w/ &lt;i&gt;Dead Man&#39;s Chest&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;- 2006+)&lt;/div&gt;
  29. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  30. Dir. Gore Verbinski&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  31. &lt;br /&gt;
  32. Say what you want about how exhausting these films get by their belated ends, Verbinski&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Pirates of the Caribbean &lt;/i&gt;series is packed with termite imagination, ingenious art design and keen little details, all of which are impossible to absorb in one sitting (I like catching them on network TV already in progress, watching them in about one hour increments on idle channel-flipping weekend afternoons, often drifting off before the last reel from sheer overstimulation.)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And for me a big selling point is the cosmic archetypal romance between the ocean-floor bound Davy Jones--a truly virulent and mind bogglingly well animated character whose octopus head is covered in breathing bivalves (an under-appreciated bit of CGI mastery)-- and the sultry Calypso (Harris), the ocean elemental long kept bound to land by some magic spell that has been allowing men to sail her surface without being crushed by her stormy wrath when it&#39;s &#39;that time of the month&#39;, lunar-tidally speaking. And so she runs a cafe/bar where everyone hangs out when not aboard some ship or stranded on some desert isle.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Harris&#39; Calypso speaks in this sultry Jamaican accent where she kind of grabs the backbeat of normal conversational tones, so that her voice becomes like warm tea or whiskey, filtering in through the cracks of sailing man&#39;s bluster, suddenly turning the world a little more full and magical through her voice alone. The sequence in &lt;i&gt;Dead Man&#39;s Chest,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;wherein the pirates free her from her chains, to allow her to return once more to the sea (so she can wipe out the advancing British armada), is full of questioning: will a water elemental, long-imprisoned, feel bound to any bargain with pirates?&amp;nbsp; Why &lt;i&gt;would &lt;/i&gt;the ocean keep a promise to the mortals who&#39;ve long enslaved her? It&#39;s certainly a unique situation.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  33. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But maybe if you learn to love the hurricane, your own elemental immortality may result. It&#39;s about letting go of the mast and, with a hearty yell, plunging into the maw of the kraken with the free abandon of a trusting infant being thrown into the air and caught again and again by their giant, loving father, never once entertaining the idea dad&#39;s hands may slip.&amp;nbsp; Thus cavorts Depp&#39;s Captain Jack, feyly staggering to and fro with ingenuity and immorality. And what water elemental can&#39;t help but smule?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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  35. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzzGnfMuFpgdiaRJ5qsrmevXgdKCTNXsYknFubh3mjUQtT6_UZd7w7aFkxFgqUTJTYUzy_kHhBLN1pk2h6_nf1ZKT5dugOM1oHqTcweM2QwkgUxZghZHT0ochrxTsLak4WljQ/s1600/night+tide+.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;409&quot; data-original-width=&quot;728&quot; height=&quot;214&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzzGnfMuFpgdiaRJ5qsrmevXgdKCTNXsYknFubh3mjUQtT6_UZd7w7aFkxFgqUTJTYUzy_kHhBLN1pk2h6_nf1ZKT5dugOM1oHqTcweM2QwkgUxZghZHT0ochrxTsLak4WljQ/w382-h214/night+tide+.jpg&quot; width=&quot;382&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  37. &lt;/div&gt;
  38. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  39. 2. Linda Lawson as Moira&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  40. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  41. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;NIGHT TIDE&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  42. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  43. (1961) Dir. Curtis Harrington&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  44. A sense of desolate loneliness runs through Harrington&#39;s debut feature that makes it--watching it alone and sad at 5 AM--a little too close to home for comfort, yet comfort comes anyway, thanks to the lure of the sea. Harrington--hip to the power of elementals as part ot the California magick crowd--lets the sandy&amp;nbsp; isolation find solace with the caress of cold, lapping waves. So it is a a beautiful sideshow mermaid Moira (Linda Lawson) connects with a shy sailor on leave (Dennis Hopper)--the only other solo wanderer in all the deserted Santa Monica Pier, an eerie late night locale that feels like a NYC side street rolled up and smoked by the inky ocean. Harrington gradually let go of mer-perso mhystique as we realize another seafarer, a retired captain, is responsible, maybe for filling her head with whatever blarney will keep her tied to him. So will this Calypso find a new Flying Dutchman or stay landlocked with her retired captain semi-father?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Fortunately the film&#39;s unique spell is so strong (Harrington was/is all into magic with pals Kenneth Anger and&amp;nbsp; Marjorie Cameron --who has a small role as the film&#39;s equivalent to Elizabeth Russell&#39;s strange cat lady &quot;sister&quot; in &lt;i&gt;Cat People&lt;/i&gt; - a clear inspiration&#39;) that any amount of sober explanation in the denouement doesn&#39;t detract from the archetypal spell.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In the end, the young Harrington&#39;s lonely drifting &quot;we&#39;re all ghosts here at the fair&quot;-style poeticism captures well the personification of the ocean elemental (his style of occult magick gets most of its energy from these kind of forces, so it makes sense). Ask not if she&#39;s real or a wave morphed by pareidolia, just listen and hear her siren lure heard faintly in the roar of ocean wind passing ghostly through the sea snail coils of your cochlea. Yea, though she may be the corrosive effect of long term salt air exposure on your rum-soaked neurons and the prolonged sexual frustration of being too long at sea, that that doesn&#39;t make her any less real. She&#39;s the mystic crossroads where your desire and the Anima Mundi intersect, the phallic beam of your film projector giving shape and substance to the formlesss/all-forms silver screen ocean.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;She&#39;s the point of infinity wherein you may well disappear, for it is said no drowning man ever feels alone again. Wrapping you up in her permanent warm embrace, she&#39;s all you ever took to sea for.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  45. &lt;/div&gt;
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  48. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjewPSgS-mcMjBxNhjhSfBMOq3IrEM1EtcPmaPCMzchQLy6l7lPCFFuS35TrJtgTTrU5powjhaSyZ3KU7cHQJ0UoLd7wSfvjnwNI8yE9KezEZEVosgC9WqDG-B9OBMIAKA7mj0n/s1600/jennie+haniver.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;855&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1146&quot; height=&quot;297&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjewPSgS-mcMjBxNhjhSfBMOq3IrEM1EtcPmaPCMzchQLy6l7lPCFFuS35TrJtgTTrU5powjhaSyZ3KU7cHQJ0UoLd7wSfvjnwNI8yE9KezEZEVosgC9WqDG-B9OBMIAKA7mj0n/s400/jennie+haniver.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  49. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;4.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/til-human-voices-wake-us-bermuda-depths_18.html&quot;&gt;Connie Seleca as Jennie Haniver&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  50. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  51. &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/til-human-voices-wake-us-bermuda-depths_18.html&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE BERMUDA DEPTHS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  52. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  53. &amp;nbsp;(1978) Dir.&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;Tsugunobo Kotani&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  54. &lt;br /&gt;A kind of oceanic ghost story, the delectably weird and Jungian archetypal 70s TVM, &lt;i&gt;The Bermuda Depths&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;sails the same lonesome sailor&#39;s anima currents as &lt;i&gt;Night Tide&lt;/i&gt; and even &lt;i&gt;Beach Blanket Bingo&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s touching affair between Bonehead and Lorelei. It&#39;s such a perfect illustration of the anima (i.e. a sexually frustrated sailor&#39;s desperate paeredolia-spiked mirage, so seals, even rocks, take the form of beguiling women in the oceanic haze) it&#39;s practically emblematic. But we&#39;re discussing the elemental aspect as well, which is much stranger and more unknowable and she functions this way too. We may think she belongs to us, our personal anima, but she is the ocean&#39;s anima, not ours.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Maybe it&#39;s because I&#39;m a Pisces, but I love this weird TVM, I&#39;m even haunted by the theme song, &quot;Jenny&quot; (&quot;Have I only imagined her?&quot;) I was dissatisfied with the end but, aren&#39;t we always dissatisfied when we wake up from dreaming about her? I watched it while switching back and forth to hurricane Dorian on the Weather Channel. Man, what a perfect symbiosis to my sailor psyche. I couldn&#39;t stop thinking about.... Jennie-- with her raven hair, perfect olive tan, waterproof no-smudge eyeliner and the ability to reflect light from her eyes so they glow like an inhuman fish, or like Dorian&#39;s twirling eye, which was heading towards Bermuda as I watched. What are the odds? It was like she and her giant turtle were letting me know they knew I knew this synergy was no accident.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  55. &lt;br /&gt;
  56. Though this literal dream girl trope (&quot;have I only imagined her?&quot;) often irritates me in other films, it works here as there&#39;s plenty of evidence she&#39;s more than just a fantasy or a psychotic hallucination. The men who don&#39;t believe she&#39;s real are--after all--trying to catch a turtle the size of a Victorian mansion in a rinky dink tug boat-- so they&#39;re not reliable arbiters of reality. And besides, she&#39;s real to Magnus (Leigh &quot;will soon play the dick EPA guy in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Ghostbusters&lt;/i&gt;&quot;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;McCloskey)&amp;nbsp;and to us. And she goes&amp;nbsp;goes with the turtle, we learn, and the turtle might be the devil. Weird choice, Satan!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;No matter how far down the bizarre &lt;i&gt;Bermuda Depths &lt;/i&gt;goes, it never loses its Jungian &quot;on-the-one&quot; beat. The film itself is a dream within a dream, and there is no waking, thankfully, only a renouncement of one layer of the dream for another, which may or may not be a transition to adulthood but is certainly a tragic end of innocence and a smart adios to the ocean. Only the sailors yet to be, not yet castrated by their entry into the social sphere, are naive enough to think there is any difference between the sea, the sun and the land, or between dreams and &#39;reality.&#39; Hopelessly enamored and ever risking being dragged to hi death, Magnus does what I had to do with alcohol. He turns his back on the one thing he loves most. He chooses not to drown in the arms of his warm oblivion. He self-beaches. One a mythic level, this is more than the usual castration needed to enter the social order--this is fishing out that which was cut away (the Lacanian &lt;i&gt;objet petit a&lt;/i&gt;) feeling whole for a brief minute, then throwing it back into the ocean. The alternative? Drowning, in all it uncut glory.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnX85ps-IyVFXYjlE7kXAxh-T4MzcO1q95AMTrLaF9cv2pTSLKbWuDakJoKDTLvj9I8choDylFO1iPG-Ua4cSd_oft_nFKIWVLMRHxYOtXd6e7YrISNXSgfzK9HrY2-lHr-A5iTo9M1Qnrl6CB5SomHjDRGGYYcBBtunrjbnsxhT3gLBMW1g/s1200/jubilee2.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;723&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;241&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnX85ps-IyVFXYjlE7kXAxh-T4MzcO1q95AMTrLaF9cv2pTSLKbWuDakJoKDTLvj9I8choDylFO1iPG-Ua4cSd_oft_nFKIWVLMRHxYOtXd6e7YrISNXSgfzK9HrY2-lHr-A5iTo9M1Qnrl6CB5SomHjDRGGYYcBBtunrjbnsxhT3gLBMW1g/w400-h241/jubilee2.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  57. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  58. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;AIR&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The Anima Mundi&#39;s most abundant and strangest element. It&#39;s&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;neither here nor there. Bullets cannot harm it, only H-Bombs, &quot;exploding even the air itself&quot; (-Eros) --the ultimate cheat/imbalance thrower. The Air controls the birds of the field, and wraps the earth in its love embrace.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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  60. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd3n6hDR44TQrPzdDyduCSCJoA1eOUUkLt7edTZBeHpA7GromZfWbBqmTZfngQVkBqAmxZi_pK1wBh3YEGa4K-xF4tWrj0ucWhVLyZlOgqgG38fxBh5MO97e4NUGzYlUID7zXZ/s1600/tippi-hedren-universals-birds-547451.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd3n6hDR44TQrPzdDyduCSCJoA1eOUUkLt7edTZBeHpA7GromZfWbBqmTZfngQVkBqAmxZi_pK1wBh3YEGa4K-xF4tWrj0ucWhVLyZlOgqgG38fxBh5MO97e4NUGzYlUID7zXZ/s400/tippi-hedren-universals-birds-547451.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;352&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  61. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  62. &amp;nbsp;5. Lydia/Melanie&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  63. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  64. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE BIRDS &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;(1963)&lt;/div&gt;
  65. &lt;br /&gt;
  66. Sure it&#39;s an oblique connection, but that&#39;s the beauty of Hitchcock&#39;s film. In going to Bodega Baty--leaving the toy shop (as they say)--Melanie brings the birds with her, but it&#39;s Lydia&#39;s sky. Everything you bring to it will be used against you. in this case to create a poltergeist-style crypto-incestuous manifestation of crypto-incesteuos&amp;nbsp; anxiety. Strong pre-Edenic human emotions,--the ones kept way down where Cronus eats his young--are the only fuel a &#39;Mother Nature&#39; elemental manifestation needs to shriek its way into existence&amp;nbsp; When it reaches its apotheosis you can even hear&amp;nbsp;its Michael Myers-like breathing / killer POV up in the sky, gazing down at the flaming Bodega Bay gas station.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Notice that once Melanie is reduced to hysterical child--in shock and powerless--the birds are calm. Lydia doesn&#39;t have to worry about Mitch remaining in her nest, the threat has been neutralized.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The air elemental has a similar elusive quality. It both is and isn&#39;t in any particular place at any particular time. When it inhabits a body, or any electromagnetic non corporeal matrix, it can always lift or melt away. Similarly the bird attacks are mostly terrorizing rather than deadly. They can get lucky and peck out some eyes or break the skin in enough places the victim bleeds to death (like Melanie&#39;s potential rival Annie) but basically it&#39;s the uncanny sudden surplus of them that&#39;s unnerving, that they can appear and disappear and choose their moment. The sudden surplus of Melanie&#39;s presence, too, in this very settled town, unnerves the locals who tie her to the disturbance, rightly, even thought they&#39;re not sure how. The beast&#39;s exitence isn&#39;t her fault, though, she&#39;s only the father.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  67. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOxcmoFcY545cSXLTnlsDwklwFzfGKEBSC8VP19qeAG_7MlvrPvy6dn8CwIMsbC5OZaW9DNsypfTm8kr9tPd2CBqjlZQ1Fx28AygfXi7o1iiNir2HDWh8aiuth4colUUsC-u_/s1600/anita+louise.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;685&quot; data-original-width=&quot;900&quot; height=&quot;486&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOxcmoFcY545cSXLTnlsDwklwFzfGKEBSC8VP19qeAG_7MlvrPvy6dn8CwIMsbC5OZaW9DNsypfTm8kr9tPd2CBqjlZQ1Fx28AygfXi7o1iiNir2HDWh8aiuth4colUUsC-u_/s640/anita+louise.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  68. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  69. 6. Anita Louise - Titania&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  70. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  71. &lt;b&gt;MIDSUMMER NIGHT&#39;S DREAM&lt;/b&gt; (1935)&lt;/div&gt;
  72. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;With that crazy proto-glam sparkling outfit, Louise shows a dancer&#39;s grace, waving and moving her hands as if she&#39;s the same density as the air around her, alight with night-tripping changeling stealing, breeze riding elegance. It&#39;s almost a relief that her falsetto voice is so annoying, maybe two registers above Louise&#39;s normal speaking voice, almost causing feedback in the recording equipment, but if she hit a low Hawksian woman register, like, say, Lauren Bacall or Margaret Sheridan, I&#39;d probably have to kill myself to stop the pain of my ardor. Oberon, the king of the night, is also a night elemental but I just wrote about him in my &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/08/its-jory-time-paging-all-you-jory-heads.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Victor Jory appreciation.&lt;/a&gt; He the absence she fills, the black of the sky while she is the moon and/or stars. They are as one.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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  74. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkn4Rt8oW0cJPpOTXHyKcoQPAYJ6A5yTByRJTawwLstlW4xe56FCWDBqFWMF90BGZAVDhVO8JHSfEHLe-ftUlqUam9m170yLdi9ELX3NsnvbjZUYE1u9VzwOLAlV75x5x1K6x/s1600/ingram.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;250&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkn4Rt8oW0cJPpOTXHyKcoQPAYJ6A5yTByRJTawwLstlW4xe56FCWDBqFWMF90BGZAVDhVO8JHSfEHLe-ftUlqUam9m170yLdi9ELX3NsnvbjZUYE1u9VzwOLAlV75x5x1K6x/w640-h320/ingram.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  75. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;7. Rex Ingram - the Genie&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Thief of Baghdad&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;1940)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  76. &lt;br /&gt;
  77. The more times I see him as God in &lt;i&gt;The Green Pastures&lt;/i&gt; or Lucia, the Devil&#39;s son, in &lt;i&gt;Cabin in the Sky&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt; the bigger my awe of Rex Ingram. For&lt;i&gt; Thief, &lt;/i&gt;he&#39;s a terrifying but ultimately good-natured &#39;chaotic neutral&#39; genie or djinn- no Robin William pally-wally stuff for Rex&#39;s genie, so don&#39;t mistake his boisterous good nature for allegiance beyond those obligatory wishes. And if one of those wishes &lt;i&gt;is &lt;/i&gt;to set him free, like Calypso in the above, you have to just pray this nonhuman force decides to keep its word. So it is, perhaps, that dealing with elementals is like putting the gun down first in a stand-off- we can only &lt;i&gt;hope &lt;/i&gt;we don&#39;t get blown, burned, drowned or buried as we step out of our magic safety circle and contend with the mercurial unknowable forces of the world.&amp;nbsp;We take their love for granted at our peril. From a Jungian angle, keeping humble and granting them autonomy is a way to give yourself your wildness back. Without that kind of lunatic trust in wildness, life gets mighty stale, and then symptoms of hysteria break out -- a numb arm here, an earthquake there, hysterical blindness here, floods there--and fire always waiting to burn you out of the equation.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEbojUKZZ8ts-24uPJIIomZcJQ7_QPSWj-oO9pXRKjlHpSFtUNGvAg811x3q57V3ApbKDJnhl9djd-JE_pCNNRLbI_mItanX8wCB2hRX49wYApSrUt-z-kKkAy1IwKoTi_6jr/s728/air+elemental+knight.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;409&quot; data-original-width=&quot;728&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbEbojUKZZ8ts-24uPJIIomZcJQ7_QPSWj-oO9pXRKjlHpSFtUNGvAg811x3q57V3ApbKDJnhl9djd-JE_pCNNRLbI_mItanX8wCB2hRX49wYApSrUt-z-kKkAy1IwKoTi_6jr/w400-h225/air+elemental+knight.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lSysmv8HtyLFa3Bnn03XYTbtxtEvlvmjo3toiuAhzly-hdxpNjjlxraZL2Og422plYDWJVkZF6LJGAC_eMB0sJdynMZNONz4el488tfdHBHv3oxancGrdMOyvv2Xq-gjdiwq/s650/terror+2.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;366&quot; data-original-width=&quot;650&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lSysmv8HtyLFa3Bnn03XYTbtxtEvlvmjo3toiuAhzly-hdxpNjjlxraZL2Og422plYDWJVkZF6LJGAC_eMB0sJdynMZNONz4el488tfdHBHv3oxancGrdMOyvv2Xq-gjdiwq/w400-h225/terror+2.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;8. Sandra Knight - &quot;The Girl&quot; - &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;THE TERROR (1964&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  78. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  79. While the Hellman style wasn&#39;t yet a recognizable &#39;thing&#39; in 1963, after seeing his more acclaimed features (TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, THE SHOOTING),&amp;nbsp; you feel that innate &quot;Hellman-ness&quot; in THE TERROR&#39;s dreamy &#39;edge of forever&#39; iconography: tidal pools, spinning compasses, crashing Big Sur waves., ambiguity of relationships, and the fluidity of feminine identity (they tend to be nameless, billed in the credits as &quot;the woman&quot; or &quot;the girl&quot;). Such&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/01/12-animas-in-descending-ghost-order.html&quot;&gt;anima&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;ambiguity perfectly fits the ghostly figure played by Sandra Knight in THE TERROR, who is, like many of these elementals, also functional as anima. She can appear as a hawk, swooping or circling overhead amd/or swooping down on someone to kill them.&amp;nbsp; or wandering around the cemetery ether. Depending on which of the film&#39;s many directors was at the helm, she&#39;s an elemental hawk/girl spirit, a local girl possessed by a vengeful ghost, or a normal human girl who thinks she&#39;s a ghost thanks to hypnosis coordinated by the mother of the son who the Baron killed when he found her in bed with Ilsa, his young wife, or--as Wonka would say--reverse that. If that melange of identities seems unclear remember that Hill and Hellman were coming in for the second half of a project begun by Corman as a straight Poe-ish Gothic, and continued by Coppola as a folk horror tale of hypnotism and revenge. Rather than twisting further toward Corman&#39;s Karloff Gothic or Coppola&#39;s folk horror, Monte and Jack came along brought it farther out, turning Helene into an enigma reflecting transmigration of souls, the transitory nature of the flesh and the relentless ocean tide whiplash reframed as a mirror to eternity&#39;s corrosive caress --in other words, bring on the Hellman, and bring out the best. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/03/young-jack-in-post-poe-po-mo-pub-dom.html&quot;&gt;full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBVXeLkPMVah8Goq-IGs6hM7o5VAObDxzuD3rN5L-ZvFCXvppgDyNzhnFe7L-tFstq9zGmVFeyDSpuUECXgCshODLgm747mwctXDjywMiIpWzI37VDRsm2P46zXlf1xLvzYm-IPgpuMecxsqnLhFibgJARrf8JnVPQW2nHz0te-sr3FGtHQ/s1066/ghidorah.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;600&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1066&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBVXeLkPMVah8Goq-IGs6hM7o5VAObDxzuD3rN5L-ZvFCXvppgDyNzhnFe7L-tFstq9zGmVFeyDSpuUECXgCshODLgm747mwctXDjywMiIpWzI37VDRsm2P46zXlf1xLvzYm-IPgpuMecxsqnLhFibgJARrf8JnVPQW2nHz0te-sr3FGtHQ/w640-h360/ghidorah.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  80. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  81. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;FIRE:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  82. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  83. &lt;/div&gt;
  84. &lt;br /&gt;
  85. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;600&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEs5iTu6BZ_fF3VIzOuYenebKqNzYgzhWqDA_DUuWM2d4nyn6JUkOaGH3Uqw08dRaYtWwjJaHehRtwbwfFm7eoQcFZcrkpGL4uk16AHs7IHKxAnYLooADJyP8Gu0POUc-O9lyV43LhQVPP-Sd8-obVwEU1VbN3bytt5lJvd-Gn7dXTc96_yd4x/w640-h320/backdraft-review-kurt-russell-crazydiscostu.webp&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;9. The Fire Itself - BACKDRAFT (1991)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ron Howard is too earnest for me a lot of the times, but he&#39;s a solid director, a kind of William Wyler of his time, and Backdraft has one great aspect, the portrayal of the fires these guys go against as a kind of conscious entity, eagerly surging ahead to, well, who could top Owen Glienerman&#39;s masterful succinction:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ew.com/article/1991/05/31/backdraft-2/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;In Ron Howard’s Backdraft, fire comes roiling across the top of a room in billowy, black orange waves. It gets sucked behind the walls, like a genie pouring back into its bottle (for a few seconds, the film seems to be running in reverse motion), and then, fueled by a surge of air, it explodes outward with ever-greater lightning force. During a climactic inferno in a chemical warehouse, it seems to come at the fire fighters from every imaginable angle — an elusive, shapeless hydra with a thousand incendiary heads.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Owen! You ruled the 90s, at least for me, with my free EW subscription and the world so much simpler.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;
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  87. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLH0TdhpXdJwZY6R39SKfVhyphenhyphenL0G2PMLQTIZsTrzgjAPNjrFqeKQblvSpI59tEVjkKkpB5mcmTmgcKclB_KOBBI34c40-st-jtAINB6i56NN332lkCoPntRC1r-ezGjTbG15sp6/s1600/hqdefault.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;360&quot; data-original-width=&quot;480&quot; height=&quot;480&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLH0TdhpXdJwZY6R39SKfVhyphenhyphenL0G2PMLQTIZsTrzgjAPNjrFqeKQblvSpI59tEVjkKkpB5mcmTmgcKclB_KOBBI34c40-st-jtAINB6i56NN332lkCoPntRC1r-ezGjTbG15sp6/w640-h480/hqdefault.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  88. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;10. Bob -&lt;i&gt; Twin Peaks&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;(1991)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are several ways the dimensions between worlds--the dream abstraction of the Black Lodge, and regular mundane Twin Peaks, Oz and Kansas--can be bridged - one is deep meditation and/or DMT opening the usually closed halls and tunnels of the mind so that your consciousness can finally meet itself--another, is FIRE. Fire crosses over--if you look deep into the flames while listening to a story at night, the flicker acts as a kind of organic stutter-stop in a film projector, blocking the transition from frame to frame out of our vision. Bob then moves through those black shutters, jams up the sprockets so the film, whose images are so fleeting that, if one stays under the blazing lens for more than a few extra seconds, it starts burning a hole in the film. Isn&#39;t that what trauma does? It splits the film in two. This is how the &lt;i&gt;Eyes Wide Shut / One Eyed Jacks&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;crowd--also very big in Oz symbolism---use incest to turn young girls into normal people by day, sex slave assassins by night? To gain power you must corrupt the innocent, that corruption is the spark that starts the fire that--as the Log Lady warns Laura in&lt;i&gt; Fire Walk with Me-&lt;/i&gt;-is hard to put out once it starts consuming goodness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so Bob is always burning--Lynch often glazes him in fire overlays---a fire elemental--but is trapped in the void where fire must wait, dormant, contained until he&#39;s able to enter the minds of those who allow him to, from there to corrupt and kill like the fire he is. Putting him out to take a whole season, as we learned in &lt;i&gt;Twin Peaks: The Return. &lt;/i&gt;But fire walks with us whenever a match is struck, ready to light a cigarette or burn down half of Nevada. And anyway, you got to have him to keep warm, and to make the slain creatures you consume taste good.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PLPVEI7uIgX0WzKyfByVcr40YrzdkOgfb5cMPTR5jQTA-AWbvvdGRnwXiZIJDHECwTrhipjtCDlUUhCRcxVCIvLUDMm8R7RHiSYoWGLE5Yd767ppYZvh16i_xmB3-FQuMroeMPulG25bcWy9ZEp1y9tjKURfQKZ1y2jAaBPByOLlRRAZrvOT/s700/549303bb6da8119a6a47ada6.webp&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;350&quot; data-original-width=&quot;700&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PLPVEI7uIgX0WzKyfByVcr40YrzdkOgfb5cMPTR5jQTA-AWbvvdGRnwXiZIJDHECwTrhipjtCDlUUhCRcxVCIvLUDMm8R7RHiSYoWGLE5Yd767ppYZvh16i_xmB3-FQuMroeMPulG25bcWy9ZEp1y9tjKURfQKZ1y2jAaBPByOLlRRAZrvOT/w400-h200/549303bb6da8119a6a47ada6.webp&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Smaug (voiced by Bennedict Cummberbach)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;- The Hobbit &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;movies&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;More than some abstract monster in the giant lizard vein, Smaug speaks, has a great sense of smell, and a tremendous lot of gold to horde. In Jungian terms, he&#39;s the anal chakra, that sense of power and control when infants first learn to hold in their poopies. As a fire elemental he materializes the full empty obession of greed, the way greed can run amok, destroying everything in it&#39;s --&#39;ahem&#39; ---past, determined to burn the world down to save the gold it ultimately has no actual use for, aside from a bed. The mountain he sleeps in is the perfect model for what we might imagine contains fire, keeps it out of sight--fire sleeps in the mountains.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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  92. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;Earth:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&quot;These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; - &lt;i&gt;Walt Whitman&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span face=&quot;Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #242d35; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; text-indent: -25px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  100. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;12.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;In case you can&#39;t tell --I love WC Fields. Top Five: NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, BANK DICK, YOU&#39;RE TELLING ME, BOIG BROADCAST OF 1938.&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;P&lt;/a&gt;oison Ivy - &lt;b&gt;BATMAN &amp;amp; ROBIN&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;13. Deborah Reed -Creedence&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Leonore Gielgud&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;-&lt;b&gt; TROLL 2&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Bottle cap glasses-wearing, hair-in-a-bun, horticulturists by day, sexy wild-eyed wild Earth elementals by night--each using their beauty, evil and chemistry to greenify an undeserving world--sounds like your kinda gal? Well, rejoice! One is a cult classic that just gets better with repeat viewings.and the other--shot at about 100,000x the budget--is unendurable, but in each they transcend in the earth elemental sorcerous hotness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;In BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997) Uma Thurman plays a bottle cap glasses-wearing horticulturist, hair-in-a-bun horticulturist by day, who becomes a sexy, wild-eyed Earth elemental by night, using psychoactive plant powders to create a green inflatable-muscled henchman (a way more fun Bane!), and to &#39;greenify&#39; Gotham by eliminating its pesky human residents into mulch for her beloved plants. The rest of the film is awful as hell but she&#39;s great&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Batman &amp;amp; Robin was&lt;/i&gt; poorly received with good reason--marred by terrible casting choices (Alicia Silverstone and Chris O&#39;Donell are all wrong for Robin and Batgirl, like Sophia ----- as X-Men Phoenix). Hell, I walked out after the first ten minutes, to sneak into the movie next door (as one does at multiplexes). But now, later, catching it in a Sunday afternoon stupor on cable after seeing the infamous and much beloved&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;TROLL 2 t&lt;/b&gt;he night before, I officially love some of it it in all its terrible glory. The two actually make a great and terrible outsider fantasy double feature, especially when one considers the similarities between&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Batman&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s&amp;nbsp;Uma Thurman (channelling Mae West) as Poison Ivy with - (channelling a tripping Margaret Hamilton) as Melora Cregar in Troll 2.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;ALL THAT aside there&#39;s clear references to both the 1934&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Black Cat&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and the 1932 &lt;i&gt;Blonde Venus.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;And though her sub-par Mae West double entendre dialogue is badly written (&quot;my garden needs tending&quot; / &quot;some lucky boys are bound to hit the honey pot&quot;), pulsing with missed opportunities, Thurman seems to be having fun&amp;nbsp;and looks great in her Miss Jolly Green Giant couture. Rolling her eyes, carrying on about Mother Nature having her day, and &#39;greening Gotham&#39; after ridding herself of the feathered and furry caped crusaders, Uma alone finds that perfect balance between the high camp of the TV show (borrowing a page from Julie Newmar) and &#39;blockbuster&#39;-style acting. As someone who always felt guilty over the purposeless murder of evergreen trees at Christmas, I applaud the tru-baller anti-veganism, which makes her the&amp;nbsp;spiritual earth elemental sister of Deborah Reed in &lt;i&gt;Troll 2&lt;/i&gt; (1990)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;And for TROLL 2, Reed is the bomb- overacting more than &lt;i&gt;Batman and Robin&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s entire cast put together, she&#39;s truly a sight with her terrible teeth and wild hair as both the climactic full-on witch and the sinister-sweet librarian gardener of Nilbog. But she does have one scene where she sashays all sexy into the TV and trailer of one of the last morons standing and makes his cob pop something fierce. The bro just stands there, terrified, erect and immobilized, leaving us to wonder: is he waiting for a direction from off camera, maybe trying to hide his erection or not blow his first opportunity by saying or doing something awkward? Either way, his popcorn is soon so ready he&#39;ll want another bag.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7GealRH2ETrKZCt9ZhQ8tTCP1Q6QUFF1fYIGy0sKTBL62E0bTr1bJvRZrThst1ud4J2i1bypfvE6Tt7H1cxAEARKXzad8_PAZZi-6K-y0kezhTI4WgRviQqtGD-75zlzzBMRGtA/s640/8945526-3x2-940x627.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;427&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;428&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7GealRH2ETrKZCt9ZhQ8tTCP1Q6QUFF1fYIGy0sKTBL62E0bTr1bJvRZrThst1ud4J2i1bypfvE6Tt7H1cxAEARKXzad8_PAZZi-6K-y0kezhTI4WgRviQqtGD-75zlzzBMRGtA/w640-h428/8945526-3x2-940x627.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;14.&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-acid-cinema-special-mother.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;MOTHER!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Jennifer Lawrence is an idealistic pregnant Mother Nature who just wants to be with her man and have a quiet night at home while she works on fixing up the house and he labors on his poetry in the sky, or upstairs. But of course an out of control violent human population, driven mad with religious devotion to their poet hero, end up mobbing the place for an impromptu party that burns all out of hand, zigging up from the Old to New Testament. The way Aronofsky films the mounting chaos via going from room to room as J-Law tries to get these ragers from destroying her plumbing will ring eerily true for anyone whose ever had to call the cops on their own party to get the ravenous hordes of strangers out of their house before it&#39;s completely destroyed. Some critics and audience members can&#39;t handle certain scenes but anyone familiar with Catholic and pagan iconography surely won&#39;t object to seeing their symbols concretized. Lawrence has been very hit-or-miss lately but here it&#39;s a definite hit as she goes organically from happy wife to annoyed host to terrified home invasion victim and beyond into thunderous avenger of her own lost abundance.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-acid-cinema-special-mother.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(full)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDu1MRxMBy9An5ByUnl6CM0zNGCAl5ElV9fZ035MMLc-fhxGPYl0Fgni5DuJva0L6rfnFoooTqqeNVJDC70m1_dGO3PEEgsyevSYXehmIgaWR8YEgdefO1UYPw_s3iD1w0nOqgxxW6mqZn2F5GnqoBIuiVihvtvFvxg5NsK4FPqqKn4w7ur65/s2518/eyes%20of%20fire%2032.png&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1379&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2518&quot; height=&quot;350&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDu1MRxMBy9An5ByUnl6CM0zNGCAl5ElV9fZ035MMLc-fhxGPYl0Fgni5DuJva0L6rfnFoooTqqeNVJDC70m1_dGO3PEEgsyevSYXehmIgaWR8YEgdefO1UYPw_s3iD1w0nOqgxxW6mqZn2F5GnqoBIuiVihvtvFvxg5NsK4FPqqKn4w7ur65/w640-h350/eyes%20of%20fire%2032.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;15. Skinwalker / Evil Tree Spirit -&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;EYES OF FIRE &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;(1983)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Films like this highly uniquely otherworldly and long-unavailable episodic folk horror film is one of those regional recent rediscoveries, like &lt;i&gt;Blood Beat, Death Bed, The Child, Lemora, The Witch Who Came from the Sea&lt;/i&gt;, and&lt;i&gt; The Bogey Man&lt;/i&gt; that reminds us how startlingly weird and fresh 70s-80s horror could be--the trick was finding them in the endless sea of hack cheap slashers. This one is drenched in horror-adventure period piece magical realism along the same general plot and time frame as&lt;i&gt; The Witch &lt;/i&gt;--i.e. late-1600s America, when the wilderness was still largely the domain of Native Americans, a few British or French military-maintained outposts, wandering fur traders, and small, remote religiously uptight enclaves. And--of course--earth and fire elementals are around, luring and devouring the wee ones roaming unchecked in the woods. The elemental here is a witch doctor earth spirit hypothesized to be made from the blood of innocent creatures, killed to give life to other less-innocent monsters, pooling in the earth until it takes the shape on an avenging earth spirit. As with &lt;i&gt;The Witch&lt;/i&gt;, we have a a delusional preacher patriarch of the kind that essentially made the laws privileging white males so deservedly obsolete--in this case an itinerant preacher who takes up with the wife of a long-absent fur trader and her gaggle of kids. They end up needing to escape downriver when the town tries to hang a redheaded girl stepchild just because she knows how to speak with the trees. Sailing on a wooden raft, shot at by Native Americans, they end up finding a place of their own in a patch of woods the local Shawnee fear to tread, haunted by a malicious soul collecting tree spirit magus who is soon sucking them all down to his web of interlocked roots and shroom filaments til all that&#39;s left is their faces jutting out of trees. Gradually the survivors barricade themselves into their fort walls defending against the ghost band of past settlers and Native Americans turned into a naked bunch of Woodstock style mud dancers, glowing with lysrergic red energy, and even an evil changeling shuttled into their midst that the preacher takes as his own.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And hey -- the 20th century brought us new elements to personify, most notable HEDORAH, the pollution elemental, and....&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;oops we&#39;re out of time.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But check out this full list of all of Erich&#39;s &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/01/acidemics-collected-cinemarchetypes.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;CINEMARCHETYPES!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/361363502539905182/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/01/cinemarchetype-28-elemental.html#comment-form' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/361363502539905182'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/361363502539905182'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/01/cinemarchetype-28-elemental.html' title='CinemArchetype 28: The Elemental '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5t8Kr1BhyphenhyphenuHWNVN7l3MKj2LJtHKQg-faYmrC0mMjf0eVOKapf6EH2_9Jxy5_KS7ha1VT3lI6fPyNcRZvz6TkFAjVmhZbWsnVWmLbep40TgCT18Z8kI8HWbZjJWknJdfXXbw0G/s72-w640-h479-c/Windomdies.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-8878306029026945580</id><published>2023-10-29T18:49:00.024-05:00</published><updated>2024-08-25T17:02:52.190-05:00</updated><title type='text'>10 Reasons PARANORMAL: CAUGHT ON CAMERA has Your Collective Unconscious Ripped Wide Shut</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy7pv21XNX0JXtvd0dqmmXbwqT9njrprwMzNeSa6aw_lFyfkwQUTaB8SPECptJOw2HNcq6YPTKKlr6Q7faxepkQDujNk2Rg9iDGMf7W0G_-fj0m_CGydCN-AVUvYnv_jUPQP-02ULbkvlvgsbpQF75FSQmFxij0IB2A9RPjAkS5rWIeK8qU8E-/s1024/IMG_5161_8ca21a5a-9ab2-4cf0-bd18-99a2a44d1a85_1024x1024.webp&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;704&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1024&quot; height=&quot;442&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy7pv21XNX0JXtvd0dqmmXbwqT9njrprwMzNeSa6aw_lFyfkwQUTaB8SPECptJOw2HNcq6YPTKKlr6Q7faxepkQDujNk2Rg9iDGMf7W0G_-fj0m_CGydCN-AVUvYnv_jUPQP-02ULbkvlvgsbpQF75FSQmFxij0IB2A9RPjAkS5rWIeK8qU8E-/w640-h442/IMG_5161_8ca21a5a-9ab2-4cf0-bd18-99a2a44d1a85_1024x1024.webp&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;A staple of the game shelf of every 70s rec room closet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you&#39;re no longer afraid of being scoffed at for not scoffing at it, when you can let go of the borders between de-classifying known phenomena back into monsters and magic, masterful deep-cover short form found footage, deeper into deadpan-meta than a double Heidecker, a kind of retrogressive folk horror &quot;return to subjective reality&#39; movement (i.e. a future where anyone dressed slightly vintage seen otherwise deserted forest, graveyard, or tourist trap&amp;nbsp; can become a black-eyed child when seen in an otherwise ordinary video), NY&#39;s hottest club is:&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Paranormal... Caught on Camera. &lt;/i&gt;Only on the Trvl Channel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can surrender to its paranoid free association panel of experts, weird videos, stock footage and old time illustrations; if you can pretend the goalpost of conventional reality has been moved waay back; if you can be cool with intentionally believing yesterdays superstitions were never shamed into the Jungian shadows by conventional psychology., you can feel archaic primal electricity&amp;nbsp; roaring back through your neurons.&amp;nbsp; Jung has partnered up with the Travel Channel to usher those skittish superstitions back out into the sun of the &#39;visible&#39; world. Come to the agrarian cult of the paranormal and get a taste of how wild and weird the world around s before stupid science came along with their stupid-ass naming and classifying and magicidal quest to bust up our myths. Take our diseases and ignorance, but leave us our myths, man. We need them. Disney can only string us along on fairy tale fentanyl for so long, if we don&#39;t get a hit of the real Grimm stuff soon, our roster of Jungian archetypes will rise up and drag us down to the mire, and probably take our place at the helm. Someone.... or some &lt;i&gt;thing&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt; knows where they&#39;ll take us - but we know we&#39;ll end up beaching on the rocks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Luckily then, for&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Paranormal: Caught on Camera, &lt;/i&gt;which rips a hole open in the floor and let loose the accumulated pressures of archaic folklore, giving the archetypes the access to fresh air they were craving. They roar to life, erasing years of science from our blackboards. Familiar animals are made strange again. Videos invariably show something that could be taken at face value (aka pareidolia) with a little effort. Thus our eyes are restored to those of children to whom the world is a wild, unknowable place. Tall black rocks seen from far away are possibly Bigfoot staring at the camera; ropes covered with ice chunks drifting down the winter river are sea serpents, misfired rocket boosters are strange UFOs. Just because a flying shield might actually be the sun doesn&#39;t mean you will die in battle against ancient Rome. Our beliefs make this world into what we see it as. So even if we know from other TV shows that a paradigm-shattering sign of the apocalypse may also be a bunch of silver balloons, or a dead sea serpent blob thing actually a chunk of whale blubber, or a flying witch a spider traveling by web parasail, we should keep it to ourselves, like religious views at Thanksgiving, you&#39;re not going to convert each other, so just let there be two answers. It&#39;s not going to make a difference to your daily life unless they&#39;re asking you for money. So if it gives some people the thrill of mystery and the return of myth, why bust their bubble like some third grade Santa-truther? If we&#39;re ever going to avoid Civil War II, we have to begin with this mutual respect of each others&#39; realities along the conscious/unconscious divide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And besides taken as a whole as an object/record of folklore, not unlike an Alan Lomax recording library, the show offers the perfect fusion of past and future, of living myth.&amp;nbsp; Everyone now has cameras at the ready, along with infrared, and all sorts of ghost hunting apps - and they&#39;re using them to unearth glimpses of what before could only be relayed as campfire anecdotes. These videos which &quot;catch&quot; the uncatchable, make visible a small shard of our collective unconscious&#39; broken dream mirror--even if we&#39;re just seeing what we want to see, we can at least see what that is, and just who inside us wants to see it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At any rate. we can interpret--along with the assembled and very colorful group of talking head experts-- but we&#39;re can never see enough to get the whole picture. We&#39;re always so close, but, season after season, we never get closer. Maybe it&#39;s important to keep it that way. Knowing &lt;i&gt;none &lt;/i&gt;of it is real would be too sad, knowing&lt;i&gt; all&lt;/i&gt; of it is real would be too scary.&amp;nbsp; But&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;not&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;knowing either way, we&#39;re like a cat chasing god&#39;s red laser pointer--if the cat gets frustrated that he never seems to catches it, well, he&#39;s looking at it all wrong. If he realizes the futility, gives up and goes back to loafing around, he&#39;s missing good exercise for his ancient hunter faculties. But if he suspects it&#39;s all an illusion, but still chased anyway, recognizing the benevolent hand of their owner behind the curtain but not letting on, that&#39;s myth in action. So even if you think you know the whole story, one way or the other, keep it to yourself, act &#39;as if&#39; and don&#39;t ruin it for the younger kids!&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBvSvWyRfMIlCEX_2x8Fo_DL55R_b76JMSHwFQNLqBvXUjFzdgOTKY0gq_RJSQAzZqM9pbVLq-O3s7XfOBHk312UDd0pYaNSWXpUHHTk2BMxNcxGgoRJKuNtT5ZC80hoKetIBbvYrY8i9B_muyEPPgeBIEOaXf3FrYLGH3Hr016pFuxgnSYSR/s299/download-2.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;168&quot; data-original-width=&quot;299&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBvSvWyRfMIlCEX_2x8Fo_DL55R_b76JMSHwFQNLqBvXUjFzdgOTKY0gq_RJSQAzZqM9pbVLq-O3s7XfOBHk312UDd0pYaNSWXpUHHTk2BMxNcxGgoRJKuNtT5ZC80hoKetIBbvYrY8i9B_muyEPPgeBIEOaXf3FrYLGH3Hr016pFuxgnSYSR/w640-h360/download-2.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote style=&quot;border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large; font-weight: 700; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1. JUNGIAN MYTHIC RESONANCE:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;I cannot explain as a fraud.&quot;&lt;i&gt; - Jung&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Ouija board: there is perhaps no better illustration of Jung&#39;s collective unconsciousness and its ability to manifest autonomous threads into the fabric of (conscious) reality. With everyone&#39;s hands on the planchette--presuming no one is consciously trying to consciously move it--the combined unconscious energies fuse together to generate an autonomous spirit, a combination fictional collaboration wrought by our inner children, and perhaps some real incorporeal spirit that&#39;s been waiting for just such a surplus of electro-magnetic energy to cohere into 3D time/space reality (the invitation of the ouija users being the equivalent of removing the password on your combined WiFi.) Sure, the answers the resulting &#39;it&#39; gives may be nothing more than a fiction generated by our combined unconscious desires. Then again, it&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;may &lt;/i&gt;be disembodied autonomous spirit, a shared ancestor / past life, or even a nonhuman intelligence, like a demon, using your combined unconscious energies like modeling clay to sculpt itself into a form you&#39;d recognize in your collective memory. Be the demons that manifested at the dawn of civilization (daimons), personifications of the repressed energies that allow modern civilization to properly function (demons) or even elementals dredged up from the slumber of nature (elementals), these beings may transcend the boundaries of self, reality, expression, tine, space, and consciousness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then again they could be ghosts of people who lived in the area, or portions of their souls that never quite found the white light exit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then again, it could just be a lot of giggling and saying &quot;you moved it!&quot; &quot;No I didn&#39;t! You did.&quot; and then moving on to some other game. That&#39;s my memory of it. And that&#39;s just as valid, in its way--that&#39;s what Jung&#39;s mythic archetypal landscape is all about. Sure it&#39;s your own inner journey translated into narrative myth, but it&#39;s also &#39;just a dream.&#39;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But like all good myths, the Ouija board has evolved with each new generation of telephone game mythic improvisation. What was once a harmless spooky slumber party pastime has become the paranormal version of a loaded gun left in the dresser where your kid can find it. To the ghost hunters and psychics who&#39;ve come to help you with your haunting, admitting you used one in the past has become the myth equivalent telling your doctor you still smoke three packs a day even though you have COPD. The look in their eyes says &quot;you f**ked yourself&#39;.&quot; Because you see, in today&#39;s world, demons are the ultimate catfish, the psychic internet predator to whom all prey--no matter what their age--are children. And everyone who ever used one, it seems, forgot to lock the front door before going to sleep.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHMeog_-2loGHCn-6gqE17ZT3fMhFVbnQ35eF02a9bFuOxHDXJ9BhwPhxQ2YLbu9tsb2vsZMLQot4mlckqXR19orcu5DppSl5jkvml9F_Gouf8cYTlvg3-tLIxXMKnUEmpR9n2kVI43EJ0Dz2U73iFNIDknIgrG2jQZKkP1IJDvp8_jPMH6uLs/s640/360.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;360&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHMeog_-2loGHCn-6gqE17ZT3fMhFVbnQ35eF02a9bFuOxHDXJ9BhwPhxQ2YLbu9tsb2vsZMLQot4mlckqXR19orcu5DppSl5jkvml9F_Gouf8cYTlvg3-tLIxXMKnUEmpR9n2kVI43EJ0Dz2U73iFNIDknIgrG2jQZKkP1IJDvp8_jPMH6uLs/w400-h225/360.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Note figure running in distance&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. LEGIT Creepines:&amp;nbsp; Shadow People, Skinwalkers, Orang Bunian, Gnomes, Duende &amp;amp; Black-Eyed Children, Kuntilinaks, Reptilians,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can take or leave all the videos of unsightly &#39;paranormal researchers&#39; breaking into abandoned properties in search of subscribers to their YouTube channel. It&#39;s funny when they start yelling at ghosts to get a reaction, then running away shrieking in a panic when the ghosts oblige. And I can take or leave the nighttime UFO sightings - they could be anything from that far away. BUT those maybe-accidental captures of shadow people, poltergeist action, trail cams, security cams, and shaky stuff shot by quick-thinking normal people who suddenly see something really weird and remember to film it. Favorites include a strange naked woman/dog thing running around in the jungles caught by accident on some jungle snake expert&#39;s nature show; a sleeping panther/human caught on Skinwalker Ranch; a Belgian cyclist&#39;s glimpse weird lizard man dropping down into a creek bed in Thailand; a pair of deformed, shadowy orang bunian lumbering out of the darkness towards a foolish ghost hunter in Indonesia (lots of terrifying stuff coming out of Indonesia!); black-eyed children in the background of videos of some kid dancing around the living room&#39; jet black shadow people suddenly peering around the corner or standing in the dark of the basement, darker than dark; babies and dogs reacting to some unseen thing in the corner; weird little monsters captures accidentally running around behind cupboards or reaching out to touch the hand of a kid playing in the closet, or appearing in a basement stairs doorway like some evil little black imp. I&#39;m getting pleasantly scared just thinking about some of this stuff! And I&#39;ll take scared of the unknown vs. scared of some real thing.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also love what I think may be legit ghost when there&#39;s an orb shooting by right before something weird happens, and it sometimes elongates or takes a kind of shape before melting away into some action. If any of this shit is real, it&#39;s these--and if these are real, than goddamned we live in a crazy world with dimensions far beyond what our human eyes can normally see, an&#39; shit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;3. Earnest witnesses who are either great actors or legit scared out of their skulls&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sure there&#39;s a plethora of scabby dirtbag ghost hunters, a most unsightly lot in general (the American ones in particular, no offense) which casts--bearing their yen to acquire YouTube subscribers in mind--doubt on their findings-- but then something happens to them in their videos and they&#39;re scared out of their minds, running out of the room, shrieking in a high register nobody would ever intentionally fake. I mean, it &lt;i&gt;not &lt;/i&gt;a good look. And either way, horror film actors should really take a good listen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the witnesses though are normal people from around the world who just happen to catch really weird shit almost accidentally, like little hands reaching out from corners to touch the child they&#39;re filming playing in a cupboard; shadow people peering around corners; people on motorbikes in India who pass some bizarre glowing white sheet wearing figure or large naked lady in the rain walking backwards - it sends them driving past, screaming at the top of their lungs. Nothing can stop the involuntary high-pitched shout and exhale screams that come roaring out of their mouths before we lose sight of the thing and the picture goes all chaotic as they race for their lives down the road, or stairs or back to their cars.&amp;nbsp; I especially love the Muslin djinn hunters&#39; in the Middle East, their panicky but rather lovely prayers when things get weird, all translated with subtitles on the show almost like poetry: &quot;I seek refuge with the complete word of god, from the evil which He has created.&quot; one man shouts when things get weird. &quot;In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful &quot; all rattled off in this mounting panic as they hear doors slam shut. It&#39;s worth its weight in gold.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then again, they freak out over a smudge on a window because it&#39;s almost a face and they never think twice about pareidolia, which throws everything into question.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtPp_ZcmKYdQohQdFIt_CakjGsGxGpa1tKyhuMg1Ea2V1gtMRxAMdJmmEBgMShXnBR1RA9ASZ1Iba3zL0-OW0EFFOra5LaOuWzZ9BMHy52XrBgZtosC3K6xikbmdDfPB80WMJrbGAubfGhLJZag1taH5XFC4yzbF7uzMv7CT5jkZGhScFTwrcL/s1200/1200x675.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;675&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtPp_ZcmKYdQohQdFIt_CakjGsGxGpa1tKyhuMg1Ea2V1gtMRxAMdJmmEBgMShXnBR1RA9ASZ1Iba3zL0-OW0EFFOra5LaOuWzZ9BMHy52XrBgZtosC3K6xikbmdDfPB80WMJrbGAubfGhLJZag1taH5XFC4yzbF7uzMv7CT5jkZGhScFTwrcL/w400-h225/1200x675.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;4. Folklorist Lynne McNeil&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here is the kind of folklorist/paranormal expert I like: Lynne regularly espouses the correct dualistic approach towards the paranormal, recognizing that a perceived phenomenon may eventually have a scientific explanation without losing its mythic heft. In a landscape marred by reductionist either/or-ness,&amp;nbsp; McNeil brings this eternal paradox into the mainstream. She gets the fluidity of meaning, so concentrates instead on gut reaction, the relevance of folklore&#39;s eternal function as the sonar we use to sound the abyss of our collective and personal unconscious. And she knows just what to say that makes the video scarier, even while slyly placing it in the context of folklore rather than conventional reality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;She has the best understanding of how beliefs affect reality as well as vice vera (&quot;You actually draw things to you with your attention to them.&quot;) as anyone I&#39;ve heard, outside of Jung, Patrick Harpur, and Graham Hancock, because she&#39;s not afraid to seem like a flake rather than professor, and at the same time is clearly vice versa. G&#39;head, Lynne, keep this shit grounded in a mythic folklore contest, even while treating it all as possibly real as well as psychically symbolic. It&#39;s all three, and more.. &quot;We romanticize an openness to belief in children, and we pathologize a belief in adults--we think adults should be over that by now, and that&#39;s incredibly unfortunate that we do that because belief is one of the most therapeutic tools we have - if we could get over this inclination to either totally oversell it or totally over-pathologize it, we might actually be able to do something really important and useful with it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well put, sister. Belief in a higher power is endemic to survival if you&#39;re an alcoholic--fight it as ye may--and the tighter mainstream science circles its wagons, the closer they get to the church that used to burn them. Getting the two to work together--like Col. Potter pitching placebo pain killers in MASH after the drugs run out--and almost nowhere else.... except if ya like to get campfire urban legend-style scared!!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFUjMoRNCzvmEaK6JZuZppaDu8TvWegk_kuGug29W3KkJWNW05g5p5Snlbu4j8-5QoX_sfXq8Qw0YJE9OenXhQp0ALAE9KZm1ljrB0ucs1ZkgZcbi05N_ReV-7NVpHd3CgNbecRPOD6jolg6Lf8tKoLhg8WoWTbwcdgyXBPH_Ql11HAXfdspk/s3429/What%20Can%20Cano%20Do%3F.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1946&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3429&quot; height=&quot;228&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFUjMoRNCzvmEaK6JZuZppaDu8TvWegk_kuGug29W3KkJWNW05g5p5Snlbu4j8-5QoX_sfXq8Qw0YJE9OenXhQp0ALAE9KZm1ljrB0ucs1ZkgZcbi05N_ReV-7NVpHd3CgNbecRPOD6jolg6Lf8tKoLhg8WoWTbwcdgyXBPH_Ql11HAXfdspk/w400-h228/What%20Can%20Cano%20Do%3F.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;5. Brian Cano&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stoic, slightly wistful, Cano&#39;s gently measured brand of freeform sincerity and soul-eyed extempore is the gentle heart of the show. To paraphrase one of his own comments, he makes me question my skepticism. He talks like the camera like he&#39;s working the Burning Man chill-out tent, distracting some dosed-out 16 year-olds with supernatural wisdom so they don&#39;t start screaming again. (In other words, America).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s important to remember that all the paranormal expert talking head reactions are presumably unscripted and with Brian it sounds like it, but that just works to his and our benefit, as he lets each para-phenomenal gust of air lift his Socratic wings aloft. Most of the pundits keep it pretty real, not ever-reaching for some kind of profound summation of the human experience but Cano &#39;goes for distance&#39; and that&#39;s why he--so quietly--rocks. I wrote out three my favorite Cano-isms to give you an idea:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a Loch Ness video:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Why are people fascinated by lake monsters and things of this sort? Because it infuses wonder back into our world .... The thought that, all right.. there&#39;s something out there... that maybe something is eluding us and evading us, and maybe that means all our other hopes and dreams... are possible.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a UFO video:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Unidentified flying object: it just means there&#39;s something in the sky and I don&#39;t know what it is... but I feel like &lt;i&gt;someone &lt;/i&gt;knows what it is --and even if I&#39;m not aware of the explanation and.. even if it&#39;s not something for public consumption... someone &lt;i&gt;has &lt;/i&gt;to know... what that is.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And on a unicorn video:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;While this video isn&#39;t definitive proof unicorns exists, it does raise.... &lt;i&gt;questions&lt;/i&gt;. And where there are questions there has to be follow up. Maybe someone will want to follow up on this video and go &#39;you know what? Let&#39;s see if we can track down this unicorn...&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I hope if he reads this he doesn&#39;t think I&#39;m being snarky. My own freeform talking head style is not too far off. To do it right you have to trust your inner self -- just leap into the air of a thought and hope there&#39;s. another there to catch you... it&#39;s high wire stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmeEoHPbc-XT-7wy8_K1EKj-SQ7RSXFJkTNhd4lYqHClHlXS2NlWB37wAY3mI_U6ymjGp2Nse97byf9rRkFSAjI3bXk1kMmGBVWJ7Ak4glUhcm472rxEpPt9iOIw-gS5RzqWXlz7uhJlp3EFzd3abji7Bc1LzjPnP1AWRMVh_p0Tk8oftrZEC/s1280/maxresdefault.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;720&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1280&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmeEoHPbc-XT-7wy8_K1EKj-SQ7RSXFJkTNhd4lYqHClHlXS2NlWB37wAY3mI_U6ymjGp2Nse97byf9rRkFSAjI3bXk1kMmGBVWJ7Ak4glUhcm472rxEpPt9iOIw-gS5RzqWXlz7uhJlp3EFzd3abji7Bc1LzjPnP1AWRMVh_p0Tk8oftrZEC/w400-h225/maxresdefault.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Aaron Sagers &quot;are we ready for that?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;6. ALL THE&amp;nbsp;OTHERS&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;They&#39;re all well edited together to brainstorm all the wild theories they can within the brackets of commercials, for the oddness they&#39;ve seen, to deliver a smorgasbord of opinions, precedents, past folklore and modern phenomena. With those ring lights surrounding their pupils like some otherworldly intelligence marker, casually talking at or past the camera in a way that&#39;s not alienating (unlike the experts in the British version, &lt;i&gt;Unexplained: Caught on Camera&lt;/i&gt;, which does everything wrong that&lt;i&gt; Paranormal &lt;/i&gt;does right). Aside from when they sometimes use &quot;spirit&quot; as a singular name/noun even for plurals (like &quot;deer&quot; or &quot;fish&quot; ) there&#39;s no one amongst them I don&#39;t like. I like especially Aaron Sagers, for his sharp sartorial sense, calm but not cuck-y demeanor; the always visceral and funny Ghost Brothers (in the later seasons, when Travel starts cross-promoting/synergizing) who&#39;ve been in many recent seasons and provide the unashamed total fear response, and the sweet Susan Slaughter, the blonde babe of the show--i.e. the one with bleached feathered blonde hair, substantial but expertly applied eye liner, and beguiling matte lipstick-- prosaic but informative--especially about cryptids in Central American (her area of familial origin). Saphire Sandalo is the hot brunette, sweet and full of gorgeously gruesome details about the vast and lurid lexicon of cryptids from her own ancestral home of the Philippines. Derek Cayman is the grounded facts-relaying guy, with his podcaster hat and another fine beard (these guys all have jet black beard stubble) Mark Moran with his pale, shaved countenance and ever-present black (Civil War?) infantry hat gives us a measured, thoughtful analysis. Rachel Evans is the one with the quirky glasses and seems to have the most natural, intelligent reaction and seems genuinely amused, genuinely into it in a way that she makes kind of vivvid by contrast to the others who labor a bit towards professorial seriousness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Taken as a whole, they&#39;re all either endearing for trying to sound like an authority at a lecture, pointing out good mythic anchor points, or expressing their natural reactions, it&#39;s like a whole camp-out campfire of people with cool stories their grandmothers told them about their own encounters back in wherever, and endearingly flaky insights... and...this being the age it is, they have their videos on their phones to pass around, making everything seem twice as possible.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SEitMJbRC_KD6hvi4nTzsz2KQ326Fv2hLFW86zWROgyQ7PDhR-BbKD9cGxF7Y2-Co9YK9LKN4KmY6t00z7V8A80vPwAfCi3wNV0keAmm0QbJsG6Xp1RGtjlXWKw3Cu3mONMnfIk4gdZ9T53VkBrY9im1OhhUkHEu3ylgdZXNnqZsGjXDaGi8/s1194/big_foot_pic_08252022.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;672&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1194&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SEitMJbRC_KD6hvi4nTzsz2KQ326Fv2hLFW86zWROgyQ7PDhR-BbKD9cGxF7Y2-Co9YK9LKN4KmY6t00z7V8A80vPwAfCi3wNV0keAmm0QbJsG6Xp1RGtjlXWKw3Cu3mONMnfIk4gdZ9T53VkBrY9im1OhhUkHEu3ylgdZXNnqZsGjXDaGi8/w400-h225/big_foot_pic_08252022.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;7. NO BUZZKILL COUNTERPOINTS&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;I imagine there are some people who get a smug satisfaction when a video later turns out to be a hoax, or misidentified natural phenomena, or pareidolia but those types have been mostly weeded out of the paranormal TV landscape. The powers that be finally realized no one is watching these shows to hear that ghosts aren&#39;t real, or the UFOs are swamp gas. And now that UFOs are finally destigmatized, &lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2012/06/zealots-of-anti-zealotry-or-why.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;those rubes look especially foolish and dogmatic&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and can ghosts be far behind? One gets the idea we&#39;re never gonna know for sure either way, so let&#39;s ride on it being real--it&#39;s more fun. As long as the hoaxers are willing to fully commit to the story, and it looks realistic, it&#39;s real enough to get the shivers we want, which are the reason for watching it, then let&#39;s do it. I&#39;m in.&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/happy-20-year-anniversary-blair-witch.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; It worked with &lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/happy-20-year-anniversary-blair-witch.html&quot; style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Blair Witch&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/happy-20-year-anniversary-blair-witch.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(see my piece in&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&quot;Frightened Male Monthly&quot;)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;And if any of it is real, which I mean centuries of eyewitnesses and mountains of evidence can&#39;t be &lt;i&gt;all &lt;/i&gt;wrong, then this is the frontier!! Just don&#39;t spoil it, science!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just like civilization mows down the forests in its expansion, so too science crowds out the mythic and magical by incessant investigation, and the magicidal urge to name things, to file them away in phyla and kingdoms and trace their DNA until all their mystery and monstrousness is gone. They ask for a hair from a Buddhist relic of a yeti scalp, so they can find out it&#39;s from a bear and just ruin the party for half of Tibet. The doofus mythbusters find the secret water supply inside the weeping virgin Mary statue out behind the church, thus rendering a thousand hopes and dreams dashed. Placebos can work miracles, but not when these buzzkills are around.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And hey, they aren&#39;t around... on &lt;i&gt;Paranormal: Caught on Camera.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhOmA1-h-kGAwcv9Qq227uYkLPcpA-6fK5w5nxhj60wS19k01eYeNv-LddQS8TOVbTScpMKAjYlEt2kX7qGgHGrt3IyhaWsFqgI3YcNC1MEZmlp_U3F3OYKawJ8D2lR-b8YW_DRnvJiwtUxsivPZTSAevUstgVqRXFdqWTHuDJwC-F9KW32Rx/s259/download-3.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;194&quot; data-original-width=&quot;259&quot; height=&quot;300&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhOmA1-h-kGAwcv9Qq227uYkLPcpA-6fK5w5nxhj60wS19k01eYeNv-LddQS8TOVbTScpMKAjYlEt2kX7qGgHGrt3IyhaWsFqgI3YcNC1MEZmlp_U3F3OYKawJ8D2lR-b8YW_DRnvJiwtUxsivPZTSAevUstgVqRXFdqWTHuDJwC-F9KW32Rx/w400-h300/download-3.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;8. The Wry and &#39;on it&#39; Stream-of-Consciousness Editing and Music&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ability to zip up and in and provide almost everything we think we want to see to back up the theories espoused and witnesses testimony, showing the clips&#39; over and over, zooming in on the creepy parts and freeze framing, each segment opening with a big red blob plopping down over its place of origin; masterful cuts of movement editing, slow-motion zooming in and out of the frame, inserts of TV static between shots, closeups of lights and outdoor security cameras. A lot of stock footage images of helicopters, hospital staff, computer screens with shadowy tech guys, close-ups of newspaper clippings, friendly dogs gazing lovingly at their owners, plenty of old paintings woodcuts, cave drawings, old time sketches of Native Amrericans beholding grey aliens, drone footage of the region,&amp;nbsp; sketches, Northwest forest tracking shot, mountains, volcanoes, dragons, olde historical photos, magic marker illustrations of weird cryptids, enough to keep a dozen interns busy searching for royalty free images off the internet and enough to make each segment so much more than just the video and expert reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not necessarily a fan of their constant use of spooky music even during scenes where we should be straining to listen for creaky footfalls. But generally they do quiet down if we&#39;re listening to some EVP or crackle in the attic. And they know just when to insert some Carpenter-style piano, Hans Zimmer-style coxic-buzzing drones, and grinding surges of drums, string samples, and mounting synth tension.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm5NT_9kdW6Zn6RWSgPmxv0BMwr1z4xnm3CwLmi4IOR63jETrPiOLJHswRjHckigpXn_lqx-3raDPwvdVVcbPyJ_OKjTETS7_gIfuqw-sH6IUJo759itjZ_PBmp6eu4uN8OIeHCFXVUJ7NZGVV9Z45nFFWOcLQExKHUHFFcqAvNaJ4pykkk3Zt/s1280/e990430c-1277-4e5c-9184-aee5c36a64f8-VPC_WASH_DOT_BIGFOOT_WIDE.webp&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;720&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1280&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm5NT_9kdW6Zn6RWSgPmxv0BMwr1z4xnm3CwLmi4IOR63jETrPiOLJHswRjHckigpXn_lqx-3raDPwvdVVcbPyJ_OKjTETS7_gIfuqw-sH6IUJo759itjZ_PBmp6eu4uN8OIeHCFXVUJ7NZGVV9Z45nFFWOcLQExKHUHFFcqAvNaJ4pykkk3Zt/w400-h225/e990430c-1277-4e5c-9184-aee5c36a64f8-VPC_WASH_DOT_BIGFOOT_WIDE.webp&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;9. THE MYTH-REVIVING MIRACLE OF THE BLOB-SQUATCH&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another great illustration of the collective mythic unconscious in action - &#39;Blobsquatch&#39; - how so many videos seem to just show a black blob in the distance, as if the Squatch has the ability to blur out his own image on tape, like the producers do for T-shirt logos. Similar to the night time UFO lights - these can have the feel of a &#39;RORSCHACH BLOTS - CAUGHT ON CAMERA - with the experts all talking about what they see and think it is, letting their pareidolia run wild and free.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sure it&#39;s hard to believe the skunk ape video where he looks like a skinny guy in a black sweatshirt, so waterlogged it sags dow in the arm inseam, trying to run through the swampy muck (it&#39;s no easy thing to be blurry and indistinct yet &lt;i&gt;still &lt;/i&gt;unconvincing) but in general I like to give them the benefit of the doubt (i.e. that they&#39;re not just hoaxing it to sell skunk ape keychains) but that&#39;s genius or pareidolia, we have no control over it--our brains will try to make a recognizable face out of just about anything.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But I also believe Sasquatch is real--on some level-- because when I accessed the Akashic records back in 2008, they told me so -- he&#39;s the descendent of the nephilim, who live for over hundreds of years. They&#39;re hiding from the greys who had a mandated from their extinction via the Great Flood, from back five or six thousand years ago. The ones who survived fled to the mountains where the water never reached or underground in vast caverns full of oxygen-producing moss and trippy mushrooms. Don&#39;t think they are ancient just because we still see the same ones that survived the flood (antediluvian people, like Enoch. father of Noah, lived for hundreds of years). They are actually only a few hundred years old since they avoid the greys by skipping through time via alternate dimensions. (When making us, their replacements, they de-activated the DNA strands that let us hop time and space, and also gave us--not unlike that bastard in &lt;i&gt;Blade Runn&lt;/i&gt;er, a shorter life span, lest we become a threat through our accumulated power). That&#39;s why even though they are more primitive in a lot of ways, they&#39;re still way more powerful than us. We&#39;ll never catch them because they were never really here, or there-- yet they&#39;ve always been here, more than us.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yet they are hungry or encroached on they will you and your pets. So if they visit your backyard, leave them some apples or leftovers. Maybe the blobs will come to enough focus you can get a close-up, like this bad boy:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0q9hrRkwJyNpAynuspqB67sYQWa4jIOdExxYB-3HDYMw5VrebDIeW691xdpewjZJUCC3H-mNkvdlRC3scRI6wbbzj4pV7rSxRk75dN8Sa7xF9PUsTeUPwqXwK7xvg6TvkMSpVWEtbDs5eDJEhmW5RqWposXlqIvNfxTAY0zDoCeS0VWamTXrD/s960/6t5pp77wwgab1.webp&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;826&quot; data-original-width=&quot;960&quot; height=&quot;344&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0q9hrRkwJyNpAynuspqB67sYQWa4jIOdExxYB-3HDYMw5VrebDIeW691xdpewjZJUCC3H-mNkvdlRC3scRI6wbbzj4pV7rSxRk75dN8Sa7xF9PUsTeUPwqXwK7xvg6TvkMSpVWEtbDs5eDJEhmW5RqWposXlqIvNfxTAY0zDoCeS0VWamTXrD/w400-h344/6t5pp77wwgab1.webp&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;I believe in this pic - caught by a guy who says they&#39;re more human than ape. I think people&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;confuse them with guys in gorilla suits ala the old dark house movies, or 2001, showing the difficulty&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;we have with imagining a true missing link. But they&#39;re just as much hairy&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;giant humans as they are apes. I might be wrong, but this pic is so outside the expectations&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;we have&amp;nbsp; I feel like it might actually be real.&amp;nbsp; This and the recent&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQUE8Xr-cc&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Colorado train sighting &lt;/a&gt;--&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;where he&#39;s taller than Chewbacca and blends in&amp;nbsp; so well one wonders if his hair changes&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;to golden brown during droughts.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s the Pisces dualism in me: I&lt;i&gt; believe &lt;/i&gt;it&#39;s all a pareidolia hallucination but I &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; it&#39;s real --more real even than &lt;i&gt;we&lt;/i&gt; are. Us trying to trap one is like a sketch of an orange trying to trap a falcon. Or vice versa.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;10. &lt;b&gt;Paul Kaup&#39;s Narration.... is always..., dependable&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sure he always phrases everything exactly ..... the same way, with that build up...and then.... the point. When he says &quot;Whether it&#39;s &lt;i&gt;someone&lt;/i&gt;...&quot; you know he&#39;s going to pause then add &quot;or some&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;thing.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;After awhile you can finish... his sentences,&amp;nbsp; while you fold... laundry. And though I miss the kind of voiceovering that was over-the-top ala the old &lt;i&gt;Scariest Places in America&lt;/i&gt; show, which ran on the Travel channel 10 years ago-ish, and was awesome in a totally chintzy, Impact font-using melange of tour guides, B-roll, weird insert shots of screaming interns in cheap wig and period costumes--or the grave importance of the guy who does &lt;i&gt;A Haunting,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;I accept and enjoy his more hinged delivery and less..... hammy... speaking style. Kaup, you&#39;re all right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;IN CLOSING&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case you think I&#39;m a flake for loving this show, you&#39;re right. But I&#39;m also a die-hard Jungian. and fascinated by the sociologic need this show fulfills. I know Jung and fellow comparative myth analyst auithors influenced by him like Joseph Campbell, Bruno Bettelheim, Maria Louise von Franz, and Robert Bly would all dig it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;These days we don&#39;t necessarily get grandparents and nannies sharing the weird folk tales and cryptic encounters told them by their own old country grandmothers the way we used to. Cable TV has stepped in to fill the gap and man is it coming through. Its cup runneth over by rolling with the &quot;it might be real&quot; half-fulls rather than the &quot;but it&#39;s probably fake&quot; half-empty skeptics. Sometimes you feel like you&#39;ve taken crazy pills sometimes when the talking head gallery doesn&#39;t roll their eyes at things that are clearly projector images on clouds, box kites covered in foil, big silver balloons running out of air and attracted to the cooling asphalt at night so it looks like they&#39;re walking down the street, video artifacts, or barn owls peeping over roofs, possums with broken tails, and so on, but that&#39;s just part of the myth-building. This is a zone where the demystifying classifications of science are undone, so known animals are returned to their phantom monster status.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Magicidal (if it&#39;s not a word it should be) science is like the gaggle of pinch-faced moral majority bitties running Claire Trevor&#39; chthonic mythic archetypal prostitute out of the town at the start of John Ford&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Stagecoach.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Luckily there&#39;s a border (1) these prim types will never across, to a place where we can be &quot;safe from the blessings of civilization,&quot; Those rancid rationalists and false skeptics (1) may pretty brave in town, but dare not follow us into the Geronimo country where truth and reality fall away from each other like amok booster rockets, and found footage horror fiction, analog horror creepy pastas, and&amp;nbsp; real phenomena (which is which?) all swirl together for the ultimate TV equivalent of telling true ghost stories by the fire, PARANORMAL CAUGHT ON CAMERA!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhNoBCBbJuOG7rsnQKMSms25qQAzmMxt7rBREOe_kZUaMCd9y8CChfV5GzCiaDyZeW2Cpgmhl2UGjEg7WVSPdfdXZfLjfwPlUCY_yzUrQOcPL8Qwvs57ONndbDhCCltJbUwwl/s450/frightened.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;150&quot; data-original-width=&quot;450&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhNoBCBbJuOG7rsnQKMSms25qQAzmMxt7rBREOe_kZUaMCd9y8CChfV5GzCiaDyZeW2Cpgmhl2UGjEg7WVSPdfdXZfLjfwPlUCY_yzUrQOcPL8Qwvs57ONndbDhCCltJbUwwl/s16000/frightened.jpeg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;\Further Reading:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-guide-to-scariest-paranormal-ghost.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;Erich&#39;s 2012 Guide to Cable&#39;s Paranormal Ghost Shows&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/happy-20-year-anniversary-blair-witch.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Frightened Male Monthly:&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;Blow out the flickering student in celebration!&amp;nbsp;&lt;span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Blair Witch Project&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s &lt;/b&gt;20th&lt;i style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2012/06/zealots-of-anti-zealotry-or-why.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Zelots of Doubt: Why Skeptics are the New Cranks&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2013/08/where-demon-meets-sheets-sleep.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Demon Sheets: Sleep Paralysis Theories&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/05/bigfootage-blobsquatch.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Bigfootage: Blobsquatch (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;NOTES:&lt;br /&gt;1. (the paranor&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;mal is alive and well in Mexico)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/8878306029026945580/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/10/truth-vs-reality-10-reasons-paranormal.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/8878306029026945580'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/8878306029026945580'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/10/truth-vs-reality-10-reasons-paranormal.html' title='10 Reasons PARANORMAL: CAUGHT ON CAMERA has Your Collective Unconscious Ripped Wide Shut'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy7pv21XNX0JXtvd0dqmmXbwqT9njrprwMzNeSa6aw_lFyfkwQUTaB8SPECptJOw2HNcq6YPTKKlr6Q7faxepkQDujNk2Rg9iDGMf7W0G_-fj0m_CGydCN-AVUvYnv_jUPQP-02ULbkvlvgsbpQF75FSQmFxij0IB2A9RPjAkS5rWIeK8qU8E-/s72-w640-h442-c/IMG_5161_8ca21a5a-9ab2-4cf0-bd18-99a2a44d1a85_1024x1024.webp" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-484265073442094178</id><published>2023-09-29T15:04:00.005-05:00</published><updated>2023-10-09T20:00:51.985-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Kubrick Variations / The Acidemic Stanley Kubrick Conspiracy Reader</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  101. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG91nPW9tDtjETWGCMlyhb2-5MsZM5LpBQu2vDm6rnPPMhOsXA8XZPDyccWQCkRhWyji7h4wONhmn6sGbq-_Gwtj7hVnE0sjU4SQqgVL31FRrLxnHCFEQ0gYS43uY8qGFApDpAWQ/s640/guuu.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;376&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;480&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG91nPW9tDtjETWGCMlyhb2-5MsZM5LpBQu2vDm6rnPPMhOsXA8XZPDyccWQCkRhWyji7h4wONhmn6sGbq-_Gwtj7hVnE0sjU4SQqgVL31FRrLxnHCFEQ0gYS43uY8qGFApDpAWQ/s640/guuu.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  102. &lt;br /&gt;Facebook reminded me I posted the above collage 10 years ago--they must really want me to write about it. I made it, and many others, after being bowled over by Rodney Ascher&#39;s &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;ROOM 237, &lt;/a&gt;for my gushing and very paranoid review of same (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Apparently, my unconscious drive really admired it for he was all over making weird collages bringing numerous Kubricks together. Like the above, called &#39;The Ultimate Trip&quot; is about the realization that when we no longer have eyes, we cannot shut them. Or open them either. The Ludivico Technique can&#39;t harm you now. There is no shocking the third eye--it sees everything all at once and and so you shouldn&#39;t open it until you are &#39;prepared,&#39;&amp;nbsp; The twins are the last thing reflected in your soon to be plucked pupil.&amp;nbsp; Taken before Anubis by our murdered twin psychopomps. Forever and ever, Danny!&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;So here&#39;s a round-up of my best Stanley Kubrick pieces over the years. Any conspiracy theory stuff--please note the dates--precede the Q-Anon phenomenon (I&#39;d never write about that stuff now, so as not to enflame the already out of control fire.) It&#39;s dangerous stuff. Extreme paranoia does weird things to reality. And what of Stanley&#39;s real intent, his veiled message? .&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;I think for aa movie or play to say anything really truthful about life, it has to do so obliquely, so you avoid all pat conclusions and neatly tied-up ideas.&quot; .... When you tell people what things mean, they don&#39;t mean anything anymore... As a member of the audience I particularly enjoy those subtle discoveries where I wonder whether the filmmaker himself was even aware they were in the film&quot; - Kubrick&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;I posit the above quote as an introduction to my first piece on this list, a praiseful awe for ROOM 237. I was going to add some quotes of the &#39;if the filmmaker didn&#39;t intend the message to be there, then your interpretation is wrong!&quot; kind of thing. But why not just link it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  103. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  104. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-trbsCivA-fiv-BGnzmIrbM95UEo6i_N7_qS_CDG23t-5War451LW8Vvnb0clxqCY7mxtC4zjvyltuebK7TWf8i1yWsZX-iWNVVnB3_g75QuKPKsqsP8UmO_Ja3ekMeZKGpM/s1600/theshining_wide_editedb-1.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;295&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;295&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-trbsCivA-fiv-BGnzmIrbM95UEo6i_N7_qS_CDG23t-5War451LW8Vvnb0clxqCY7mxtC4zjvyltuebK7TWf8i1yWsZX-iWNVVnB3_g75QuKPKsqsP8UmO_Ja3ekMeZKGpM/w400-h295/theshining_wide_editedb-1.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  105. &lt;b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Caretaker Sparkle: ROOM 237&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(original post title:&lt;i&gt; Room 237 Ripped Off Little Danny&#39;s Decal&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;--Oct. 3, 2013)&lt;/div&gt;
  106. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  107. Call the critics and theorists in ROOM 237 paranoid, overreaching, seeing too deeply, perhaps paranoid schizophrenic on some level. Go ahead! But don&#39;t mind me if I leave with them (We Pisces adore a lucid crackpot) and vamoose from your presence (we loathe a reductionist. I don&#39;t have to think they&#39;re &#39;right&#39; if I don&#39;t see what they&#39;re talking about. But that&#39;s art, man. &amp;nbsp;I prefer an engaging crazy theory over a dry Bordwell-ian analysis any day. I don&#39;t think filmmaker Rodney Ascher is making fun of these lunatics or encouraging them to die on dangerous hills. The film would just be a snarky bore if he was. The film just illuminates how deep Kubrick&#39;s rabbit hole goes if you watch it 100 times. Which you should. Never the same film twice, that&#39;s the dream.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(full)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  108. &lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  109. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2-SEUp8sQswNw4irgU5j4U5t90n5eyGxD2OLZyKRGf8UEcpB9xzsoaJMZr6EynkpIJrIOcLK_J_FkIe4OsqCM5UwEWm2QzlIU9xsDNNND5JXqfyXfs_gJx5BUYPqxB-TPOqwEg/s400/3149633022_0a4e0a8003.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;299&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;478&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2-SEUp8sQswNw4irgU5j4U5t90n5eyGxD2OLZyKRGf8UEcpB9xzsoaJMZr6EynkpIJrIOcLK_J_FkIe4OsqCM5UwEWm2QzlIU9xsDNNND5JXqfyXfs_gJx5BUYPqxB-TPOqwEg/w640-h478/3149633022_0a4e0a8003.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  110. &lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  111. &lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/10/shining-examples-pupils-in-bathroom.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #920101; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;SHINING Examples: Pupils in the Bathroom Mirror&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/10/shining-examples-pupils-in-bathroom.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #920101; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(from 10/11)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Anyone who&#39;s been to the psychedelic mountaintop, transcended space and time, and/or archeived the &#39;Absolute&#39; as per the Gateway Process will surely have some chills of recognition in room 237. The room &lt;i&gt;itself&lt;/i&gt; has cabin fever (shorthand for losing touch with consensual &#39;reality&#39;). Room 237 has slipped loose from the bonds of linear time, warping the perceptions of those who enter it like an innocent needle finding itself on a skipping record. Without a &#39;majority&#39; rule of perception (during the tourist season) to block the infinite with their tunnel vision reality, 237 bathroom opens its black hole. That black can envelop you in its ink and you will be flushed down the pipes of Aboriginal &#39;dream-time&#39; into the sub-basement of the sleeping anima mundi before slowly spiraling out of Marian Crane&#39;s open dilated pupil in PSYCHO, or out of the pistol barrel fired into the camera of Mick Jagger&#39;s brain at the end of PERFORMANCE. Viola, you&#39;ve wormholed from one movie to another. The drain&#39;s small black hole slows down the world around it in an inescapable clockwork pentameter--hypnotic in its steady unwavering mechanical rhythm. It is the earth, the sun, and the wheels within wheels revolving in Ezekiel&#39;s or 2001&#39;s spaceship. The vocalizing drones on the soundtrack work to achieve this revolving sense of hypnosis, as does the slow, dreamlike movement of the camera and actors. The whole film up to that point has been a slow hypnosis. The banal pleasantries of the beginning convey the inadequacy of language to sum up non-ordinary experience (&quot;that&#39;s quite a story,&quot; Jack tells the Overlook manager, a parallel to Heywood Floyd&#39;s &quot;looks like you fellas really found something&quot; in 2001) but that just paves the way for the break from space/time that&#39; coming. But first, the spell. Notice the way Jack continually winces at his wife&#39;s banal pleasantries throughout the film--for her language is just a thing to say to make sure the other person knows you&#39;re there--the words have no meaning. But with his mantra-like repetition of certain phrases--&quot;Gimme the bat!&quot; or &quot;Danny! Danny, boy!&quot; or &quot;My responsibilities!&quot; (or the &quot;dull boy&quot; thing, of course) Jack shows the best use of language is to use it to step outside the structural limits of language and into some kind of gone catharsis.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And what a good student is little Danny - chanting &quot;Redrum!&quot; over and over until his Jack magically comes out of the box. Kubrick is justifying why he&#39;s so OCD with take after take after take.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObAn1o6Hg2YnJWqDVHRkFFfUh0ELHEnGuM3DcTUxZwSeuEAS8ouSchCbrF5_ZvmXFBhN5f7mt6toC_73ZwY3HF6L4Hp92LOwXRDdoAYuu-qeHf5h94tyulBYVm4bkFCb_xxk39w/s400/eyesfull3.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;300&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObAn1o6Hg2YnJWqDVHRkFFfUh0ELHEnGuM3DcTUxZwSeuEAS8ouSchCbrF5_ZvmXFBhN5f7mt6toC_73ZwY3HF6L4Hp92LOwXRDdoAYuu-qeHf5h94tyulBYVm4bkFCb_xxk39w/s16000/eyesfull3.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/make-up-your-mind-control-333-ways-to.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #920101; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Make up your mind control: 33.3 Ways of Reading EYES WIDE SHUT&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(10/13)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It might seem like I&#39;m saying the Monarch 7 and SRA conspiracies don&#39;t exist, but to me it goes beyond something so trivial as &#39;reality.&#39;&amp;nbsp; The tribal initiation, the paranoid schizophrenic fantasy, the Salem Sabbath, and the the Illuminati mind control conspiracy are all part of the same &lt;i&gt;collective &lt;/i&gt;subconscious--which it isn&#39;t the same as &#39;reality&#39; since it &lt;i&gt;feels &lt;/i&gt;even more authentic than reality itself.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;There is a vast wilderness beyond what our ego and mainstream liner science allows as &#39;fact&#39; (a term the ego doesn&#39;t even like to examine, as like&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/01/cinemarchetypes-ego.html&quot;&gt;HAL 9000, it refuses to see itself as it truly is --an illusory construct&lt;/a&gt;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;If you saw the screen you&#39;re reading this on &#39;as it really is&#39; for example, solid matter would just be low frequency light-energy emanating from closely interwoven buzzing atoms. And that&#39;s no way to go through life. Our ego is our blinders that lets us avoid distraction from all the pretty sparks, but we shouldn&#39;t kid ourselves which side of the blinders lurks &#39;hallucination&#39;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seeing ROOM 237 last week (&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt;) is what set me off on this tangent. If you see that film you naturally have to see THE SHINING right afterwards, and then keep going, applying the paranoid deconstructions from 237 to Kubrick&#39;s other films. But I warn you, keep out of EYES WIDE SHUT with your ray of paranoid layer uncovering! Just stay out! A few luridly detailed &#39;recovered memories&#39; of trauma-based ritual programming later and--whether they&#39;re true or just paranoid fantasies-- you might be wishing you could put those blinders back on and get back to your relatively Edenic cud-chaw pasture. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/make-up-your-mind-control-333-ways-to.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzig1vjtNx2pDCms2sa6T729hhXqgPXsIOjxhjFHXZXdUx4VDfPnuAdnB7VA-2XryDfyw5v3607KulupzWj01caTdSpmp7AQw_R2wvyvFCjBsxgrAeOvxFeSEVs0CJSRXwFD0-pn-qdwiz6AvcxgMGfQ5cz68hHo_oZJw5oTelxWs3KMDUdeG9/s1200/FzUFDVDagAEOhgq.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;677&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1200&quot; height=&quot;226&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzig1vjtNx2pDCms2sa6T729hhXqgPXsIOjxhjFHXZXdUx4VDfPnuAdnB7VA-2XryDfyw5v3607KulupzWj01caTdSpmp7AQw_R2wvyvFCjBsxgrAeOvxFeSEVs0CJSRXwFD0-pn-qdwiz6AvcxgMGfQ5cz68hHo_oZJw5oTelxWs3KMDUdeG9/w400-h226/FzUFDVDagAEOhgq.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  112. &lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/03/paters-horribillis-harvey-hookers-and.html&quot; style=&quot;color: #920101; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Paters Horribilis: Harvey, Hookers, and a Man Called Pollack: EYES WIDE SHUT (from 3/10)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  113. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  114. ...Pollack is brave and focused as an actor, especially for his willingness to play with moral ambiguity, to use his own aging, hairy bourgeois Zionist paranoia-engendering monstrous &#39;anal father&#39;-ism as an example of what William Burroughs once described as &quot;the cold, dead look of heavy power.&quot; Tapping into a common racist/classisct/ageist phobia that rich old (semitic) Svengalis are stealing off our shiksa Trilbys through the use of their gypsy magic. Like Christophe Waltz in BASTERDS, Pollack uses deep, relaxed but heavy nasal breathing to make you feel very close to him, as if he&#39;s leaning over your shoulder, and you don&#39;t want him to be; you feel like he&#39;s stealing something from you and you&#39;re afraid to ask for it back, or even what it is. There&#39;s something incestuous about the way we&#39;re conditioned to accept him as a &quot;good guy&quot; via his ease with signifiers of wealth.  He seems to turn the viewer into a prostitute through his nostrils and through his use of anonymous but gorgeous younger women for sex, the way most people wearily order pizza, &quot;again&quot; for a dull dinner. (contrast with him talking about a prostitute &quot;with a mouth like velvet&quot; and dating a younger woman (!) in Woody Allen&#39;s (!) &lt;i&gt;Husband&#39;s and Wives -&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;coincidence? Not to conspiracy paranoiacs (who might be &#39;right&#39;) like David Icke!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhbK_XLStKMY4hWXgMoqn9Tkuw313WYeTsyCxjWvshbAjhuSUialzBDr6GCSHBNZ0hI3UmiiQRD9EaStPBYth1XzTX_hp6Uuw636pWNJsu9pd1yr_JAX6peeHkYrUMae8wYq-/s554/husbands-pollack-woody.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;400&quot; data-original-width=&quot;554&quot; height=&quot;231&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhbK_XLStKMY4hWXgMoqn9Tkuw313WYeTsyCxjWvshbAjhuSUialzBDr6GCSHBNZ0hI3UmiiQRD9EaStPBYth1XzTX_hp6Uuw636pWNJsu9pd1yr_JAX6peeHkYrUMae8wYq-/w320-h231/husbands-pollack-woody.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;But with that heavy serpentine weariness comes the knowledge that as a representative of the power elite (the modern equivalent of the monstrous cannibal incest father of old, killed by Zeus, wiped out by the flood), it&#39;s his&lt;i&gt; job &lt;/i&gt;to posit himself as &quot;the one who enjoys,&quot; to situate the rest of us as outsiders in the fantasy realm so that we can keep ourselves in a distracted orbit around the real and thus preserve the gravitational field by which society functions (Slavoj Zizek.... will explain). This is a man who lives his pleasures close to the hairy surface; he&#39;s tactile. He forces us to imagine him having sex via his physical looseness, his hairy chest exposed. Cruise by contrast is repressed, i.e. &#39;normal&#39; - he&#39;s not used to being touched unless it&#39;s in a mundane sexual way by his wife (and really he just wants an excuse to get off to himself in the mirror and have it not be gay or narcissistic), and like us, he worries the whole world is a continual orgy the moment his back is turned. He can&#39;t help but feel that he, and he, alone, is the odd man out, the one everyone hides their stash of libidinal enjoyment from, even when they&#39;re fully undressed in his doctor&#39;s office. The truth is, he keeps getting offers to go &#39;over the rainbow&#39; but he continually chickens out.,&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/03/paters-horribillis-harvey-hookers-and.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(full)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNjF6dmWmbU_kw3BkZj2wgBccTsuRGm-kyciPcFOoqSKu2JP3zJA07yosS_ZR5jxPTass0sXp8VINb28j1fVtMjR9DDGHccWN44FlB6-ntRnVrnZ9Z9hhPNZC7zdGKpyxodW1EzA/s640/secretsocietyscribes.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;321&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;322&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNjF6dmWmbU_kw3BkZj2wgBccTsuRGm-kyciPcFOoqSKu2JP3zJA07yosS_ZR5jxPTass0sXp8VINb28j1fVtMjR9DDGHccWN44FlB6-ntRnVrnZ9Z9hhPNZC7zdGKpyxodW1EzA/w640-h322/secretsocietyscribes.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-illuminati-hypnosis-paranoia.html&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;The Illuminati, Hypnosis, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Kubrick, and Tom Cruise&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;(Divinorum Psychonauticus - May 19, 2016)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&quot;... A key aspect of the fantasy-traversing orbit is the desire to &#39;retrace one&#39;s steps,&#39; to find the fork where you and your fantasy parted ways (for we always feel that we were once living within the fantasy rather than orbiting outside it, even though we never really have, nor can we, no matter how convincing our maskies). In EYES, this is what Cruise&#39;s Dr. Bill does the next day after his orgy dismissal; the return is always built into any orbit, with the illusion of linear time transcended. Danny retraces his steps in the Overlook maze snow; the star child returns to earth, presumably to drop down into the lap of the very same ape who had tossed the bone up at the start of 2001; Alex re-encounters all the people he hurt in the first part of the film; Humbert&#39;s visit to the pregnant, bespectacled, de-sexualized Lolita mirrors his visit to her mother in the beginning, and the shooting of Quilty both opens and closes the film. Kubrick loves a long orbit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is why the ultimate realization scene for Dr. Bill is when the &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/primal-father-cinemarchetypes-8.html&quot;&gt;odious Ziegler&lt;/a&gt; begins to back up over his &#39;charade&#39; story and he realizes he&#39;s met a man even more of a fake than he is. That&#39;s what nails him, more than the mask, which is just another reminder of these rich elite&#39;s powerful omnipresence, but that it could be Ziegler himself who is the mastermind of all the things, right down to the call girl O.D, which may be fake anyway to scare him off. Is anything real at all? In clouding the issue Ziegler shows Dr. Bill the very painting of his fear, the refractions created by falseness and the empty cold of his cocksure grin, which its smug wearer presumes sweetens any amount of evasive bullshit.&lt;a href=&quot;https://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-illuminati-hypnosis-paranoia.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; (Full)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGHeh5ZygKZ24zEBNiPkHNkWZlqprjv4LXVaVR2QP9a2zj2wkCte7nKW43fZ-l9e-AItjTldObBZqb7F3dH8ypaVLdqpGLKUJ0Q3awetpioqi3v6YtjTjRTzXuxWKaMhZYgLS1OQ/s500/PHOTO_4990199_66470_8954968_main.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;299&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;382&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGHeh5ZygKZ24zEBNiPkHNkWZlqprjv4LXVaVR2QP9a2zj2wkCte7nKW43fZ-l9e-AItjTldObBZqb7F3dH8ypaVLdqpGLKUJ0Q3awetpioqi3v6YtjTjRTzXuxWKaMhZYgLS1OQ/w640-h382/PHOTO_4990199_66470_8954968_main.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  115. &lt;a href=&quot;http://brightlightsfilm.com/65/65lolita.php#.UksiFGT8nDU&quot; style=&quot;color: #920101; text-decoration-line: none;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;All Tomorrow&#39;s Playground Narratives: Stanley Kubrick&#39;s LOLITA&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(from Bright Lights Film Journal, 2009)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Like most of Kubrick’s work, &lt;i&gt;Lolita &lt;/i&gt;(1962) reflects this gradual rotation ever further into the simulacrum but from an earlier epoch; going from the refinements and closeted perversities of old Europe to the postmodern “no tell” motels of modern America. There are three levels of time passing in our filmic discussion: the span of time since &lt;i&gt;Lolita&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the film was released, the span of time of the actual movie (2 ½ hours) and the time spanned in the movie’s &lt;i&gt;mise en scene &lt;/i&gt;(as in “3 years later”). Kubrick in this case ingeniously unites all three. As the film progresses, it moves from shrill bedroom farce to tense Freudian scenes of insane jealousy, the film gets darker, moodier. The progression is similar actually to another of Mason’s roles, that of the cortisone-maniac dad in &lt;i&gt;Bigger Than Life.&lt;/i&gt; The monstrousness of his actions becomes apparent only later, when he’s struggling to keep his mask on in the face of all the subterfuge and self-fulfilling jealousy. Simultaneously, &lt;i&gt;Lolita &lt;/i&gt;the film heralds our movement&amp;nbsp;as a world into a sexual revolution, using its heavy bourgeois rep to smash through weakened small town idealism, and rockieting the male libido into a simulacrum fog.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY-M2c7kR-zn3xTbhlEbbdIAkUCKjw4vd5Kj2UBt9KvhCEYWt50Rnvbfo0xaJlRHvRKVEZDyX_8o5CFuxUwmKkoePgFjGTzvmV4UGZO7c9B4PLwQ81uuXgPm1HKT2Uw6p2GAReA/s640/heil.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;397&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;398&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY-M2c7kR-zn3xTbhlEbbdIAkUCKjw4vd5Kj2UBt9KvhCEYWt50Rnvbfo0xaJlRHvRKVEZDyX_8o5CFuxUwmKkoePgFjGTzvmV4UGZO7c9B4PLwQ81uuXgPm1HKT2Uw6p2GAReA/w640-h398/heil.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/11/lyon-in-winters.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Lyon in Winters: LOLITA&#39;s Immortal Porpoises&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(Nov. 2010)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;color: black; font-family: Times; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/11/mid-life-crisis-superstar-humbert-lo.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Midlife Crisis Superstar: Humbert, Lo, and the Bait-Switch Cycle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;color: black; font-family: Times;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(Nov. 15, 2010)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Over the passing decades this film&#39;s been many things to me, but this last viewing it seemed to be about art vs. censorship and the way the promoters of &#39;childhood wonderment&#39; and the Peter Pan &#39;if you can dream&#39; aesthetic--the Norman Rockwell fishing boy logo of Dreamworks and the mouth agape wonderment of E.T.-- are the both the exploiters of children and culprits who bring us the hyper-awareness of the dangers of pedophilia. The two are entwined, a double exposure of exposing, like a cobra with the head of a tail-eating mongoose. The more you pine for and prize a &#39;perfect nuclear family&#39; the more pressure-cooker force you put on those latent incestuous, pedophile dark desires. Cronus is ever ready to devour those foolish enough to believe in a perfect unity. Pedophilia--which is a key element in SRA conditioning according to your neighborhood Monarch 7 conspiracy theorist. It makes sense, for it&#39;s a short cut to creating the desired split personality, that which will then prime them to grow up as Manchurian candidates. In reality it&#39;s even more vile--to the point even hardened criminals feel the need to stomp on pedophiles in their midst. It makes sense, it goes deeper than Oedipus, down into the murky swamp behind the Bates Motel,, and it&#39;s always just a trigger phrase away. It&#39;s what lies beneath our modern trend towards the deification of children and their &#39;innocence.&#39; Is it any accident that the two main architects of this hypocritical saintly children-izing in the early 1980s were Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg?&amp;nbsp; Maybe I&#39;m just spoiled, having grown up in the 70s when kids were treated like wild animals, running amok in unsupervised packs, with ambivalent parents with social lives of their own. When I was a kid, it was considered far worse to be overprotective than permissive. Today it&#39;s the reverse. Parents drop off and pick up their kids every day, like some kind of terrified chauffeur. know why, don&#39;t we, Gen X-ers? We were the ones that ruined it for future kids maybe, by running wild --but we had great 70s dads, who regarded their progeny with both fierce lion-like love and complete disinterest.&amp;nbsp; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/11/mid-life-crisis-superstar-humbert-lo.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;full&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;---&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;coda;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9gUtKWpWOW8dGM-mLlsA0aXndil8Y5HzDrJElwsOb1xTCyRbC1g8a-g5dc20Z-p6GrTuuUqd01NWMto50AGj3ovzJhOVTnvvfn4Ko21N7mrWwZidUPxlA4upXnOFtv20fzE3u_A/s320/6aebr84dbijz-niger-tm.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;214&quot; data-original-width=&quot;320&quot; height=&quot;214&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9gUtKWpWOW8dGM-mLlsA0aXndil8Y5HzDrJElwsOb1xTCyRbC1g8a-g5dc20Z-p6GrTuuUqd01NWMto50AGj3ovzJhOVTnvvfn4Ko21N7mrWwZidUPxlA4upXnOFtv20fzE3u_A/s320/6aebr84dbijz-niger-tm.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;subj-link&quot; href=&quot;http://erichk.livejournal.com/78929.html&quot; style=&quot;background-color: #141414; color: cyan; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; text-decoration-line: none;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;A Way to Win is to Not Play or is that Losing?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;(From Divinorum-Live Journal 2009)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My granny is cruising through her 90s in a warp that sucks me in by number.&lt;br /&gt;All through the long visits I felt death pull me like gravity, like time pulls the meat off a chicken bone, like it pulls the planets along behind it as it sucks and roars along,&lt;br /&gt;like stringed tin cans on a baptism-cum prom-cum wedding-cum-funeral car, or a chained together lineage on a pirate ship, condemned and chained in order of age, with the eldest thrown overboard, their children watching the disappearing link of chain, powerless to stop its disappearing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt; and then all just raw conscious thoughtlessness - a dull roar of white static, in which you may at times think you hear the ocean, or vice versa... all voices that you hear are your own, you realize, in this &lt;b&gt;2001-Kubrick &lt;/b&gt;room of the self &lt;i&gt;[you knew I had to shoehorn that in here-EK 2023]&lt;/i&gt;, and outside that, the serpent swimming through the blue veins of your aging relations, swimming both towards you and away, towards you and away...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to leave the house, no matter where I go. (EK - 2008)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/484265073442094178/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-summer-series-stanley-kubrick.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/484265073442094178'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/484265073442094178'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-summer-series-stanley-kubrick.html' title='Kubrick Variations / The Acidemic Stanley Kubrick Conspiracy Reader'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG91nPW9tDtjETWGCMlyhb2-5MsZM5LpBQu2vDm6rnPPMhOsXA8XZPDyccWQCkRhWyji7h4wONhmn6sGbq-_Gwtj7hVnE0sjU4SQqgVL31FRrLxnHCFEQ0gYS43uY8qGFApDpAWQ/s72-c/guuu.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-7737073248767519051</id><published>2023-09-07T08:01:00.005-05:00</published><updated>2023-09-17T19:24:40.890-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Sex Negative: Lucio Fulci&#39;s THE DEVIL&#39;S HONEY (1986)</title><content type='html'>&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;919&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1717&quot; height=&quot;342&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHzxpmbhkiNcbJZ5UlBAju27c1M9ufgSgEtQjaTbJ6J1tAZJL63RgwUv9r9zuzqTL5UcpSqd0Lh5MmOrACujrQbEuYopliCBKxLnagPgFgC5c8QXKL9nEHg8RD3gl0B77LH5eF7NNvbIatO8hH347wj_vL3EEEOIe6eoCWA1wiW41nn273Q/w640-h342/honey%20glass.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&amp;nbsp;&quot;Sex is nostalgia for when you used to want it... Sex is nostalgia for sex.&quot; -&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Andy Warhol&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“The male has to will his sexual authority before the woman, who is a shadow of his mother and of all women. Failure and humiliation constantly wait in the wings. No woman has to prove herself a woman in the grim way a man has to prove himself a man. He must perform, or the show does not go on. Social convention is irrelevant. A flop is a flop.” &lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;-- Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;War does something to a man, (it) takes away the gloss.&quot; - (&lt;i&gt;film-within-film dialogue overheard while a sadistic sax player shocks his girlfriend by getting fellatio from his fey music producer in a Venice Cinema&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;i&gt;-&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Devil&#39;s Honey&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can only an emotion as strong as grief wake you up to the emptiness of a love based on debasement and humiliation---even if that sex is super hot (and takes away your usual baseline suicidal ideation), in the way only sex with a crazy sadistic-abusive super freak can be?&amp;nbsp; Lucio Fulci knows. And he&#39;s using a distributor&#39;s brief to deliver another&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;9 1/2 Weeks&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(a big-ass hit in Europe) to answer the kind of tough questions&lt;i&gt;9 1/2 &lt;/i&gt;director Adrian Lyne would pee himself in fear if you ever asked him. In short, if 9 1/2 Weeks is a naughty couples-only dip into Sandal&#39;s &#39;bondage night&#39; (safe word posted on the wall in case you forget), Fulci&#39;s The Devil&#39;s Honey is a hard pistol butt thwacked in your face, followed by a little waterboarding in the romantic beach side surf. And not a lifeguard or a safe word for 5 kilometers in any direction.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Don&#39;t say &#39;it&#39;s just sex&#39; like you&#39;d say &quot;it&#39;s just leprosy.&#39; Sex is &lt;i&gt;serious.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our sex drive, it seems is &lt;i&gt;itself &lt;/i&gt;a crazy sadistic-abusive super freak,&amp;nbsp;demanding ever greater risks of safety, self-esteem and sanity just to get the same old rocks off. Safe words kill the fantasy as sure as condoms kill our &#39;sweet sensations.&#39; With the intrusion of &#39;sanity&#39;, it&#39;s just play-acting.&amp;nbsp; like sooner or later an opiate addict needs too much for his body to handle, stranding him on the shrinking sandbar between the overdose abyss and the encroaching tide of withdrawal, so too the sex addict thrill seeker has to resort to &lt;i&gt;Hellraiser-&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;style &quot;Jesus Wept&quot;-style agonies for the same old kicks. Our common sense kicking and scream to be let off the ride,&amp;nbsp;even as our subconscious paralyzes us with aroused excitement with every clank up the ramp. The alternative in each case is the hell of boredom, of safe healthy relationships and responsible bed times, wherein every life-affirming smile of your boring ass spouse, their big box of prophylactics and safe word rolodex ever at the ready, makes me want to rip your own genitals out and nail them to the front door.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But wait, is that danger seeker even really us, or have we been taken advantage of by some sadistic lover who allies with our unconscious sex/death drive against our ego&#39;s judgement? On some level we know a lot of this abuse is all being done to please us. We forget how quickly our comfort zones shrink to noose size if left unassailed. And so we learn to hitch ourselves to loose canons, only to then complain when they roll all over our decks, crashing into mizzenmasts and crushing our toes?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other words, is it still rape if you call them for another date the next night? That question has been legally answered since the 80s, thank god, but there&#39;s a whole other line of moral questioning, posed only in brave films like &lt;i&gt;Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Duke of Burgundy&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Belle du Jour&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;The Devil is a Woman -&lt;/i&gt;- films which carry a lot of Criterion cred, that go all the way around to the back door of the same thorny issue, and are all considered art. But add a Lucio Fulci film like &lt;i&gt;The Devil&#39;s Honey&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;to their midst and those film snobs start sneakin&#39; away, quietly striking your name from their bourgeois opening invite lists. AND I&#39;M FINE WITH THAT! You can take those lists and stick &#39;em in your undiscovered country.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmYOSKQHHYGUp3R-9N33OsZ8Vinx2bqEsx5HTyX9bt1naQumdTFI_1RMuuslRdPUL0h8mp1E3HBTzcaVN6Vp0RjFbYIl03KOhuFJtz1ec5c7Z2OCqqQHiXNNRURDXeva4gkSenLEekMSevAY2Oqs4xYeAvyyVEJRMsclHn22FOXW5--1GstuD/s1105/Devil&#39;s%20honey%20copy.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;603&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1105&quot; height=&quot;219&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmYOSKQHHYGUp3R-9N33OsZ8Vinx2bqEsx5HTyX9bt1naQumdTFI_1RMuuslRdPUL0h8mp1E3HBTzcaVN6Vp0RjFbYIl03KOhuFJtz1ec5c7Z2OCqqQHiXNNRURDXeva4gkSenLEekMSevAY2Oqs4xYeAvyyVEJRMsclHn22FOXW5--1GstuD/w400-h219/Devil&#39;s%20honey%20copy.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes &lt;i&gt;Honey, &lt;/i&gt;like much of Fulci&#39;s work,&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;is too tawdry to the bourgeois types to give the same leeway they give to Bunuel or Fassbinder. And yes, it&#39;s a film where a saxophone solo is blown between a sexually supercharged girl&#39;s naked thighs in a red sound booth while his producer and engineer are out having lunch. And yes it&#39;s guilty of things that were having a last gasp back in the mid-80s, when every European filmmaker was chasing the elusive butterfly of&lt;strike&gt; 60 Shades of Grey, &lt;/strike&gt;&lt;i&gt;9 1/2 Week$&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;but it&#39;s Fulci, not some perfume ad-music video hack. His genius stretches deep no matter what the assignment. He started out in dated sex comedies of the sort America has been largely spared (it has plenty of its own). And I think after cranking them out for the first Promise them &lt;i&gt;Fatal Attraction&lt;/i&gt;, give them&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Guantanomo Beach.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If Bunuel or Von Sternberg were around today, would they know what to do without the heavy breathing hypocrisy of the censors lending their every cryptic gesture a portent at once sophomoric and heroic? When forced to bury sex under mountains of respectability, that you get sex through somehow anyway is heroic, the way drinking during prohibition was considered patriotic by many of the writing class (&#39;&lt;i&gt;hic&lt;/i&gt;&#39;) I have the same problem now with marijuana, when you could go to jail for having a single joint, being part of the in-crowd carried outlaw cachet. Now, you&#39;re just another consumer, so who cares? A Fulci special isn&#39;t going to shock with sex when sex isn&#39;t shocking. He&#39;s too &#39;gone&#39; for that- he&#39;d rather bypass sex altogether, to get at the ugly truths not of love but of &#39;what it takes to keep your partner&#39;s interest, and your own&#39; - the sex drive is, as Camille Paglia point out, very un-PC. Nature observes no moral code aside from might makes right, it&#39;s the whole reptilian cortex kind of shit, domination and sublimation. The only way out is through awareness, real Lacanian confrontation with the hideous staring eye at the center of horror of raw, undiluted existence, where Kali rips heads off of soldiers with one set of arms, and screaming babies out of bloody wombs with the others. So. much screaming and yelling - the only way to drown it out is to scream yourself. Fucli says, hey - go ahead.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because you see, gore and eyeball mutilation are the specialty of la Casa Fulci. Sex is something for Jess Franco or Jean Rollin, or even Joe D&#39;Amato. Fulci wants no part of it. You can call some of his films misogynist, but he never fetshizes female suffering or the female body (beautiful faces and hair, yes, shapely figures, no) he presumes instead upon a Carol Clover kind of &quot;Her Body Himself&quot; projection.&amp;nbsp; There&#39;s no objectification of the female form with Fulci since in nightmare logic there can. be no &#39;satisfaction&#39; or cuddling. Lust is a prison where the only release from your cell is enough gratification to stop the biological belittling for a little while, it buys you some time, like a $10 tray that at least takes your gorilla jones away, to paraphrase &lt;strike&gt;Girl Scout Heroin&lt;/strike&gt;&amp;nbsp;Gil Scott-Heron It&#39;s sex as a hungry ghost pining for the time before it mattered.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Fulci it&#39;s all just a dead end to the path of the &#39;stare&#39; - not the &#39;gaze&#39; but the &#39;stare&#39; back at the gazer. Someone like De Palma emulates Hitchcock but Fulci &#39;one ups&#39; that kind of scopophilia by emulating Dali instead - i.e. going right for the eye. Like Oedipus, Fulci knows that that the smallest of return stares can snowball into the murder of children (&lt;i&gt;Don&#39;t Torture the Duckling&lt;/i&gt;) or lesbian neighbors (&lt;i&gt;Lizard in a Woman&#39;s Skin&lt;/i&gt;). So the safe move for all humanity is if we just gouge those offenders out right now. Ah, but what movie do you see when that cloud editor&#39;s knife ravages your one good moon like a Melies rocket? You already know the answer.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fulci makes movies for the post-envisioned, forging a detour through the dream pineal pipeline, the dreamer&#39;s magic box, wherein we can behold our own blindness with rueful amusement, fully aware of the paradox but just not giving a shit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;WITHOUT CENSORSHIP, SMUT IS NOT SEXY.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For someone like Hitchcock, the handcuffs and short leash of censorship and his own Catholic guilt, keep him &#39;peeping&#39; through keyholes to the end. For him and his disciples, Catholic repression is the ultimate aphrodesiac.&amp;nbsp; Hitch could funnel acres of sex into a single drag on a cigarette. With Fulci, the funnel spills out on the ground, the soggy cigarette explodes and the smoker vomiting ever last acre of sex back up and all over the floor. For Fulci, if a naked woman is presented for our gaze it&#39;s scary because she&#39;s looking back at us--to use &lt;i&gt;Rear Window &lt;/i&gt;parlance, it&#39;s as if &quot;Ms. Torso&quot; suddenly whirls around and stares back up through Scotty&#39;s zoom lens in a way that would make Lars Thorwald pee his big boy pants.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUrBARiCgmosNo1RQnkNpYGTeyrQlAyCXwswybn4ePs-V2VNuqtdqXCaC7wfyn_TgMe67aczol8r6CKRbfby-EGTxPBwHUyXyOLRHzC__LolJXlKzs5TMrmcUs818aASS4qckqlJhdLjVrIXqOAvNOhbk00xLgC7ArsAg80w2J09SJUZdqg/s1748/devil&#39;s%20honey.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;927&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1748&quot; height=&quot;341&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheUrBARiCgmosNo1RQnkNpYGTeyrQlAyCXwswybn4ePs-V2VNuqtdqXCaC7wfyn_TgMe67aczol8r6CKRbfby-EGTxPBwHUyXyOLRHzC__LolJXlKzs5TMrmcUs818aASS4qckqlJhdLjVrIXqOAvNOhbk00xLgC7ArsAg80w2J09SJUZdqg/w640-h341/devil&#39;s%20honey.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;THE DEVIL&#39;S HONEY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1986) Dir. Lucio Fulci&lt;/div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;There isn&#39;t any reason, and I wouldn&#39;t want you to go around thinking that there was.&quot; - Ned Beaumont to the DA, &lt;i&gt;The Glass Key &lt;/i&gt;(Dashiell Hammett)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the sordid psycho-sexual chamber piece that is&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Devil&#39;s Honey&lt;/i&gt;, the two male characters in the film&amp;nbsp;straddle the disinterested whore of time, as if two aspects of the same man - one the tired, middle-aged male surgeon (Brett Halsey) with the stricken look of men my age when we finally see what lies at the bottom of the hill we&#39;re finally over (and we realize the car we&#39;re locked in has no brakes, or reverse, or door, or seatbelt, or steering wheel), and the younger, sadistic adrenaline junky colossus of the lite jazz saxophone scene who flies into a rage if his girlfriend ever wants to cuddle. In other words, he&#39;s on the upside of the hill, where the top is all he can see. He considers himself immortal, a god. Sex has made him into an ogre, the sadist, but is he like that because he &#39;gets&#39; his girlfriend, knows how she sexually responds to being a &#39;piece of meat&#39; to him?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other side there&#39;s no doubt the burnt-out (Fulci-stand in?) surgeon played almost too well by Halsey, is trying to treat his hooker like a piece of meat (1t) , or at any rate she treats him like a temporary annoyance that&#39;s over before she can figure out if she even likes it, peeling her still-warm chewing gum off the mirror on her way out - no sense wasting it, and he treats her roughly the way a crippled kitten might play at being a lion for a few seconds before shrinking back into a world of consumptive coughing. His wife meanwhile longs for some sexual contact, wishing he&#39;d man up. She&#39;s forced to say embarrassing things like: &quot;Treat me like a whore,&quot; and, after she leaves him: &quot;There&#39;s no use coming back unless you take me to bed,&quot; He&#39;d rather mope, and never thinks to take his phone off the hook long enough to get her where she needs to be.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Though he&#39;s extra stricken by her departure, he&#39;s stricken like Florence Pugh&#39;s boyfriend in &lt;i&gt;Midsommar,&lt;/i&gt; cowed by some ego ideal he feels he needs to embody even while every fibre of his being is struggling to rid himself of her.&amp;nbsp; After she leaves and Halsey&#39;s eyes say it all - he&#39;d rather be abducted and brutalized by an unhinged hottie than deal with Corinne Clery and her big haunted pleading eyes. Needless to say, he never goes home after this,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh_NGSe9Xy44njd8a9BlXIGi54033JF2WT-R2VZftfSUbTYMkz35ncUxXjWHQc6spHqSSJq0D0sLM_-IE0srEwAW-nPQiE9bxleN1XhjSXxTAl9n8ezFdn7plTkFWu4wHPrJRdJK1RvdoT1l0ctYaP9lNgLyKchymZjkdu569wpVNUFLucmz90/s640/5ae2fe_291816426f49424bbac403d373d9b416~mv2.webp&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;360&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;180&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh_NGSe9Xy44njd8a9BlXIGi54033JF2WT-R2VZftfSUbTYMkz35ncUxXjWHQc6spHqSSJq0D0sLM_-IE0srEwAW-nPQiE9bxleN1XhjSXxTAl9n8ezFdn7plTkFWu4wHPrJRdJK1RvdoT1l0ctYaP9lNgLyKchymZjkdu569wpVNUFLucmz90/s320/5ae2fe_291816426f49424bbac403d373d9b416~mv2.webp&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Fans of &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/retreat-to-move-forward-yor-hunter-from.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;YOR! &lt;/a&gt;(and who isn&#39;t?) know exactly how this feels; Clery does the insecure possessive clinging GF almost too well. She&#39;s got all the goods in all the right areas, but there&#39;s something about her that makes you want to chew off your own arm rather than wake her up and there&#39;s no clear reason why other than her neediness. Halsey is maybe a little too adept at seeming world weary and flaccid to the point we viewers long for his delivery from feeling obligated to feel bad about her wanting out.&amp;nbsp; Nothing is more tiresome in a movie than a character halfheartedly trying to stop a girl from leaving him that you feel deep down he wants her gone too, but can&#39;t admit it, because he&#39;s told himself he&#39;s not that kind of a guy. We saw this most recently in &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/hallucinatural-midsommar.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Midsommar&lt;/i&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; but it goes back to the start of Antonioni&#39;s&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;L&#39;Eclisse&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1961) where we watch the morning after some apparent all-night breakup, as some lame dude lopes miserably after Monica Vitti, until we finally rejoice when she closes the gate on him.&amp;nbsp; Antonioni knows we hate this guy on principle, just like we hate the guy in &lt;i&gt;Midsommar,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;that he drags us through it all anyway shows us that, like Fucli, he&#39;s a sadist in ways not quite associated with pain or mastery.&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Above all he plays against expectations, and every camera move or line is &#39;off&#39; in a telling way. There&#39;s the absurd idea that there could ever be a lite-jazz sax player with a groupie (in the US especially). Eve&amp;nbsp; shot of Jessica walking outside, mourning him by wearing his sweater, seems unreal. A long tracking shot as she glides down a line of white fencing on her way to the doctor&#39;s car, in the rain, is given a surreal gleam, as we seem to be gliding along after her. And when she pulls out a knife to threaten our abducted doctor - the music doesn&#39;t get predictably ominous but surges into big guitar stings and jangly 80s air rock.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkYuOkHsosc7S5_SEpXp8-8OUxqYubIqrXBRw69B7CbAH2b3aAlEgJSsH1A4aFzyaeOMrFKIZ9jcN9a2uz4a6QEhFlZBVRiizdo-SCVVmwGDAOnJFlZkuM2C8-9BuTXXMdRn2G0WOjHR_-LrIntt_fWfzRxzqIY0dJdHsnLrTd2OLnUaor6v3F/s1600/The%20Devil&#39;s%20Honey%20-%201.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;900&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1600&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkYuOkHsosc7S5_SEpXp8-8OUxqYubIqrXBRw69B7CbAH2b3aAlEgJSsH1A4aFzyaeOMrFKIZ9jcN9a2uz4a6QEhFlZBVRiizdo-SCVVmwGDAOnJFlZkuM2C8-9BuTXXMdRn2G0WOjHR_-LrIntt_fWfzRxzqIY0dJdHsnLrTd2OLnUaor6v3F/w640-h360/The%20Devil&#39;s%20Honey%20-%201.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;The Opposites Subtract Effect&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if we saw&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;change in Halsey&#39;s tired demeanor after this drastic turn of events. But aside from the dog scaring him so much he pees his pants, or when he watches her smash up his car with a hatchet, there&#39;s not much he offers in the way of reaction-- his eyes have that stricken sad guy look, the kind of mid-age crisis where you&#39;re over and start going down the hill - and see the spikes at the end, and there&#39;s no brakes or steering wheel, no way to unfasten your safety belt. All you can do is stare in that stricken way - and let it come.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixqa7gLig4VFCzj4WadCaYODpVurRqIsU3dZjJRJb4gyTi4EkTp3YN3ztn3AjrdEoG7U9X_zGx-zD3_8y9vmjUWMYPhOptqGpWnMYIBtz7XjBdFh2T4NfnT6vuDK5nlMcWdebEKltRVzDOzLXjShSXQfPc957ys59VFDgw6fTKH_NQ6XFgxpiR/s1920/tt0090903-3-1.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1028&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1920&quot; height=&quot;214&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixqa7gLig4VFCzj4WadCaYODpVurRqIsU3dZjJRJb4gyTi4EkTp3YN3ztn3AjrdEoG7U9X_zGx-zD3_8y9vmjUWMYPhOptqGpWnMYIBtz7XjBdFh2T4NfnT6vuDK5nlMcWdebEKltRVzDOzLXjShSXQfPc957ys59VFDgw6fTKH_NQ6XFgxpiR/w400-h214/tt0090903-3-1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;I tell you what though, Blanca Marsillach is rather amazing as Jessica. Singing and laughing to herself, eyes wide, staring - staring at him saying &quot;Why did you let him die?&quot;&amp;nbsp;over and over, smiling gleefully - laughing (&quot;so the great surgeon has peed in his pants.&quot;), Marsillach, you&#39;re one for the ages!!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I can look straight into your eyes,&quot; she says&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As she walks around the beach house, moments from her past with Johnny seem to be happening at the same time. He seems always around the corner, coming down the stairs or out from the beach; the only difference is in lighting filters. When he says &quot;You know I always come back,&quot; we wonder if he&#39;s a ghost, until he says &quot;I can&#39;t live without you.&quot; Dude, I wouldn&#39;t worry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unless we&#39;ve seen some Argento movies we may find it strange she&#39;s made so violent by the death of the man who treated he so meanly. But we who&#39;ve seen&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Stendahl Syndrome, Bird with the Crystal Plumage&lt;/i&gt;, etc., we know better. We also may know if we found ourselves adopting some of our ex-lover&#39;s habits after we separate from them, drinking their brand of whiskey, etc. We unconsciously move our habits around to accommodate for the sudden absence. Here it&#39;s forcing the doctor to eat dog food. Forcing him to operate on a doll she got from Johnny that he later broke in a violent rage. (&quot;I love you I love you. Can&#39;t you say &lt;i&gt;anything else&lt;/i&gt;?&quot; he shouts, as if her string is broken). Eventually her memories stray from the house into Venice, made &lt;i&gt;Don&#39;t Look Now &lt;/i&gt;uncanny, with Fulci once again making things super weird without half trying, through the simplest of close-ups - such as the sudden appearance of a smiling Nicky.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I won&#39;t spoil the end. But of course they are in a Venice cinema, with a movie in English playing (we never see it only hear its stilted &quot;WW1 vet coming home to find wife with another man&#39; kind of British drawing room drama.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6XyRnHAqVDe-qS5RhPwra7_i5PE4BKvnRU-MzEzk5IFh3QSUDcAAQetBNTw4u6qN0LGfQwD6KiXEMjYYeaEUWQWB36_8hHmzQnWpmm63-Rse4NzsNxgitrrPxjRZCLmXmcZBXirznNpLncHiAqsA-Te92cVnK7mR1w2sXIdPG2lrIXkVlfG9/s343/images-1.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;147&quot; data-original-width=&quot;343&quot; height=&quot;137&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6XyRnHAqVDe-qS5RhPwra7_i5PE4BKvnRU-MzEzk5IFh3QSUDcAAQetBNTw4u6qN0LGfQwD6KiXEMjYYeaEUWQWB36_8hHmzQnWpmm63-Rse4NzsNxgitrrPxjRZCLmXmcZBXirznNpLncHiAqsA-Te92cVnK7mR1w2sXIdPG2lrIXkVlfG9/s320/images-1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As someone who&#39;s suffered from depression all my life, in one way or another, and had a lot of bad psychedelic trips as well as good ones, I can vouch that nothing snaps you out of a funk and into the moment like pain and fear. Thus masochism is often a remedy for depression, and the pain of one thing can be transmuted to ease the pain of the other, a kind of focusing/exorcism. And no pain is worse than severe depression --cutting, etc. is a relief. And if all it takes to forget your marital and malpractice troubles is to suffer a massive head wound, or wake up in some strange house with a naked psycho hottie named Jessica giving you the full Guantanamo, then hey where do I sign?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;And if you&#39;re Jessica, suffering to the point of madness because your now dead thrill-seeking dom boyfriend kept you constantly in that state of the &quot;now&quot; through abuse alternating with love and affection (like how Fulci treats the viewer), how natural it would be to spread the love/anti-love by subjecting the doctor--whose depression indirectly killed the man who was killing&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;her&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;depression (because the doctor was failing to cure&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;his wife&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s depression he couldn&#39;t concentrate)--to an even more violent and domineering extended session of abuse.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Is this Fulci&#39;s way of looking for some kind oar artistic underpinning to his life&#39;s work, as if his art itself is waking up to the abusivness of its &#39;total&#39; self? A kind of apology by way of Italian art as espoused by Camille Paglia.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;By the end, the meat treating will be almost completely purged from both grieving objectified girlfriend (sifting through her memories of his behavior and gradually realizing which came first, the chicken &lt;i&gt;d&#39;Sade&lt;/i&gt; or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;l&#39;ouvo de Masoch&lt;/i&gt;) and the ennui-crippled midlife crisis special called Halsey-- whose wife shouted she&#39;d rather he let his patient die in the OR than miss date night (in the end he does both)--will find himself still caught in his premature ejaculation problem (never mentioned but c&#39;mon- you can count the amount of thrusts he gets --pants still on--with one hand, so to speak --at his age there&#39;s no excuse for that) but maybe at last - he&#39;ll have some idea how to enjoy sex without all the sub/dom booolshit..&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;THE FEMALE GAZE WRIT LARGE&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEX3WqlL9hcPsMZraxZbinmnz1tL4wJYdQSP2Ti-cAlFc9bjcyq-PoFzUGZT0DMdxmnFChRtTSZQYhjNw50MueE9LHLWnX_LnfckpDHQ_ebY8qitm8LUvUw9X4eOo3xQbgOcwXl8ZesJHCovluL17q73a_FTM2WgSjkpJxJbGXINO_JumOMpT2/s1920/DLjwRmMU8AAo7IL.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1067&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1920&quot; height=&quot;223&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEX3WqlL9hcPsMZraxZbinmnz1tL4wJYdQSP2Ti-cAlFc9bjcyq-PoFzUGZT0DMdxmnFChRtTSZQYhjNw50MueE9LHLWnX_LnfckpDHQ_ebY8qitm8LUvUw9X4eOo3xQbgOcwXl8ZesJHCovluL17q73a_FTM2WgSjkpJxJbGXINO_JumOMpT2/w400-h223/DLjwRmMU8AAo7IL.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;That&#39;s really the point though of Fulci&#39;s feminine orgasm, perhaps and a sick kind of capstone. The outrage, the onus is on the woman and the complex web of her attraction and repulsion to the constant forcing of anal sex, thrusting at her from behind while she fumes and fusses as if always ready to try and surrender (&quot;no, please, it hurts!&quot;) but determined to resist and fume. The idea of whether a masochistic part of her responds - they really need a safe word, but what are you going to do?-- feeds into the eroticism is, in Fulci&#39;s clever handling, always open to interpretation (does even he know?) Either way you can tell this lite jazz colossus doesn&#39;t really give a shit about her orgasms. He can&#39;t afford to, if he&#39;s to keep &#39;em coming. What a delicate dance, if that&#39;s what it is.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And maybe it is, since the moment he&#39;s not pushing or pulling, she sulks. She sulks if he abuses her and she sulks if he doesn&#39;t.&amp;nbsp; She&#39;s sulking even on the ferris wheel. When he tries to be nice she pouts and fumes, angry that she had to leave him even just so he could finish recording his album, so desperate for him she hurls herself against the soundproof glass of the recording studio as if his horn&#39;s magnetic pull overpowers her, crotch first. And yet, if he does anything to please her, she&#39;ll lose all interest, like the secretary in Fassbinder&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. &lt;/i&gt;Without the cycle of anger/abuse/make-up sex (and as Camille Paglia always points out, that&#39;s why abused women often stay -- after he&#39;s all contrite and sweet later one, the make-up sex-- sharpened by all that fear and dopamine)-is almost worth it (ala the &quot;Stella! Stella!&quot; sequence in &lt;i&gt;Streetcar&lt;/i&gt;).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;By the end, the cycle of abuse will be almost completely purged from both grieving objectified girlfriend (sifting through her memories of his behavior and gradually realizing which came first, the chicken al l&#39;abuse or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;l&#39;ouvo de Masoch&lt;/i&gt;) and Halsey&#39;s ennui-crippled midlife crisis special. As if any doubt is still in your mind, when his needy wife shouted she&#39;d rather he let his patient die in the OR than him miss date night (in the end he does both) she loses all sympathy (get that lady a pool so she can have a pool boy, bro). Free of both of their misguided guilt (Halsey&#39;s real guilt comes from refusing to admit every fibre of his being is screaming to escape Clery&#39;s claws; and Johnny&#39;s girl&#39;s guilt over accidentally killing her animus projection before any closure can be attained), maybe they stay together out of a kind of shared post-traumatic paralysis. Maybe they&#39;ve burned out each other&#39;s mopes, both realized they don&#39;t even really want the heavy trip of their previous love&#39;s insecure brutality. If abuse overrides depression, then maybe exhausted release of past self-perceptions overrides the need for any kind of resistance to the initial depression in the first place. Few negative emotions live for long when you no longer fight them.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And yet, our poor doctor will still find himself still caught in his premature ejaculation problem (it&#39;s never mentioned but c&#39;mon) and at his age there&#39;s no excuse for that. Physician, heal thyself (you know what I mean).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2pA412_P56aLWZGc4aqYwEMs6namWSfndGWClOG29jejUVAon5NU9H6fjdRVc-pC7BjC3i-2K2Dalc-QVZgev0SQPtKGKUCQPI3IMPCqxab0Y5_tjKE2N4NFyO20wKzf8PnxRDl4eFfjKfAaT5zkksU3rgClu7SHp3pu4yJ3nwN01hC6qhs6/s290/images-2.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;174&quot; data-original-width=&quot;290&quot; height=&quot;174&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2pA412_P56aLWZGc4aqYwEMs6namWSfndGWClOG29jejUVAon5NU9H6fjdRVc-pC7BjC3i-2K2Dalc-QVZgev0SQPtKGKUCQPI3IMPCqxab0Y5_tjKE2N4NFyO20wKzf8PnxRDl4eFfjKfAaT5zkksU3rgClu7SHp3pu4yJ3nwN01hC6qhs6/s1600/images-2.jpg&quot; width=&quot;290&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/7737073248767519051/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/09/sex-negative-lucio-fulcis-devils-honey.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/7737073248767519051'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/7737073248767519051'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/09/sex-negative-lucio-fulcis-devils-honey.html' title='Sex Negative: Lucio Fulci&#39;s THE DEVIL&#39;S HONEY (1986)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHzxpmbhkiNcbJZ5UlBAju27c1M9ufgSgEtQjaTbJ6J1tAZJL63RgwUv9r9zuzqTL5UcpSqd0Lh5MmOrACujrQbEuYopliCBKxLnagPgFgC5c8QXKL9nEHg8RD3gl0B77LH5eF7NNvbIatO8hH347wj_vL3EEEOIe6eoCWA1wiW41nn273Q/s72-w640-h342-c/honey%20glass.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4905405785997812242</id><published>2023-08-21T10:36:00.014-05:00</published><updated>2023-09-07T08:03:29.271-05:00</updated><title type='text'>It&#39;s Jory Time! </title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyzy-fQDNiF0SYJVA-t71m7LczHfGHrzW7pbi7dh8dy6wpDk9VWgv2TF9V6vA-VSrh0aX25qflmy16p0so1lNAYKtfMbRhLI9UDOams2_7vPc1-QL8miwiMShpLmiZI21zpRbEChM6uDI1R3Q3kd2IGxV1GTG-l5gnkdEXbTPiXbZXGQpocxUL/s260/download.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;194&quot; data-original-width=&quot;260&quot; height=&quot;476&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyzy-fQDNiF0SYJVA-t71m7LczHfGHrzW7pbi7dh8dy6wpDk9VWgv2TF9V6vA-VSrh0aX25qflmy16p0so1lNAYKtfMbRhLI9UDOams2_7vPc1-QL8miwiMShpLmiZI21zpRbEChM6uDI1R3Q3kd2IGxV1GTG-l5gnkdEXbTPiXbZXGQpocxUL/w640-h476/download.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confession: I&#39;m a late-blooming Joryhead, what the kids all call a &quot;Joryphile,&quot; or a Jory Doodie, or a Jory Rider. A lot of film snobs won&#39;t even know who I&#39;m talking about, but they&#39;ll notice him every time, but then not think about him. He just does his job, so the character gets the credit, not him. Taking over scenes with an effortless depth of delightful evil, he can radiate a sullen abrasiveness but his irrepressible intelligence crackles like electricity out of his occasionally crazy blacker-than-black eyes. That deep melodic nicotine voice, totem pole posture and vulture nosed visage made for a perfect Lamont Cranston/Shadow (in the 1941 serial --easily the best of all adaptations, which isn&#39;t saying much, alas). He could bring dripping racist venom to a Tara overseer in &lt;i&gt;Gone With the Wind,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;or do a crippled bitterly racist Tennessee Williams&#39; cuckold as easily as he could radiate stoic steady-burn decency as a half-breed fisherman getting the Bellamy treatment by a flinty little grifter who barely comes up to his belt buckle. He could bring baritone ethereal majesty to a night-tripping fairy king with head-to-toe black glitter glam, rocking stag horns and black lipstick like he was to mid-70s androgynous alien glam rock spectacle manor born. And when times were tough, he could bring aggro peevishness as a petty cash astronaut whose idea of battling cat women on the moon is to sulk in a corner and then pitch furious woo to his &#39;by the book&#39; commander&#39;s girlfriend! What a range!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In real life, he was born way up there in the frozen Yukon at the start of the century, this Coast Guard boxing league champ, this trodder of the Broadway boards, this &quot;A-list Charles Middleton&quot;, this king of men. The glint of a keen madness sparked often in his jet black eyes, making them hypnotic and full of delightfully macabre implication. His aquiline nose evoked a totem pole hawk that was coming alive at the sight of a passing muskrat. Unpredictable, never quite over the top, but ever perched there, he made even ludicrous characters seem grounded and grave, all while goosing the movie ever forward with that smoldering smokestack engine of a voice. Imagine him as Rasputin, Ming the Merciless, or Abe Lincoln, or anything calling for a tall, dark and strange characrter, Jory would crush them all, and have some left over for Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein his monster, and Prospero of &lt;i&gt;The Tempest &lt;/i&gt;OR &lt;i&gt;Caliban&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s Victor Jory, honey! His birthday is August 15, 1945, so we just missed it. But to make it up to his deserving legacy, let us make every day a VJ day. And demand TCM honor him with a Summer Under the Star retrospective!!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzE1X1uEPqYC7fvK14Ocjza2jGsJqLo3D2wMaW-fg6WaCnJvPitcoIlkCIroBnwiujRUIIhxvcFv_JV917B_ZAnKH_6AuQkMK-lDKgHeOf1Zf370GoU3xUhffb5JDyoWDk9DGbZs-GZ5mPwLm9walg_-k-eF49e4yZN0NEtO068ZyMiD3NCgd/s420/oberon.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;315&quot; data-original-width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;300&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzE1X1uEPqYC7fvK14Ocjza2jGsJqLo3D2wMaW-fg6WaCnJvPitcoIlkCIroBnwiujRUIIhxvcFv_JV917B_ZAnKH_6AuQkMK-lDKgHeOf1Zf370GoU3xUhffb5JDyoWDk9DGbZs-GZ5mPwLm9walg_-k-eF49e4yZN0NEtO068ZyMiD3NCgd/w400-h300/oberon.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;1. Oberon - Midsummer Night&#39;s Dream&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;1935&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I love about 4/5 of this film to pieces, and 1/2 of it unto death and another 1/4 of it is just painful. I refer to Weimar expat Max Reinhardt&#39;s wild imagining of the enchanted, fairy-filled night and the truly wondrous and archetypically resonant performances and costumery of Jory&#39;s Oberon and Anita Louise&#39;s Titania. My feminine unconscious/anima has chosen her for its projection (it used to be a girl on a Virginia Slims billboard in Seattle, so she&#39;s moving up in the world) and when I need solace or to commune or to ask her to stop tormenting me, or just need to see her, I pop in the &lt;i&gt;Midsummer.&lt;/i&gt; Her voice is way too high and shrill, almost causing microphone hiss in its high register, but she looks marvelous, and the unconscious is nothing if not images (sound a distant second) and one has to suffer to be with the anima. That&#39;s why there&#39;s Mickey Rooney as Puck.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s the thing about the movie. You can tell this was a stage show and--sometimes an issue when a play is put on film--by the way the actors project way too loudly and intensely, as if forgetting they&#39;re in a film and not still roaring to be heard way out in the far tree-lined picnic areas of the Hollywood Bowl. Mickey Rooney&#39;s Puck for example is so over the top you can&#39;t help wondering if you should call an EMT as someone spiked his water dish with enough amphetamine to kill three ordinary children. and the braying hamminess of Cagney seem imported wholesale from the stage (he makes it work though, cuz he&#39;s goddamned James Cagney and his character (Bottom) is supposed to be bursting with good working class scamp cheer. And then when he&#39;s all ass-headed and in Louise&#39;s enchanted lap he reins it in, making a fine contrast- as if being an ass (he&#39;s not called Bottom for nothing) humanizes him, delightfully introducing himself to Titania&#39;s armada of little people fairies.. But then there&#39;s the constant tittering of Herbert over everything anyone says at rehearsal, as if words themselves were inherently naughty.. I&#39;m okay with the rest of the laborer team, even Joe E. Brown as Flute, the Bellows Mender, is all right with me.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But Jory doesn&#39;t have to strain or pierce or bray -- that booming voice comes with its own echo chamber, from deep in the vast&amp;nbsp; caverns where the titans wait, chained, for their chance to rise from the volcanoes of the world--that&#39;s where Oberon&#39;s voice picks up its timbre.&amp;nbsp; My favorite moment is when he&#39;s just standing and leaning back on his horse, the changeling by his side, his huge black cap trailing out behind him as the curtain of night over the slow procession of his daimonic bald dancers and their amours, a curtain protecting them from the first pink lip of the dawn, all of them stately and walking riding towards the camera, Erich Korngold letting rip every ephemeral nuance of that gorgeous Mendelssohn music, Jory somehow manages to access some deep reserve of godliness for this sequence that&#39;s truly otherworldly. Holding that pose, staring of into, past and through the camera, his face alight with full awareness of that sweet sadness that always comes at the end of one of those perfect, magic nights. That&#39;s why it&#39;s so important he shows back up with Titania at the very end. Last night&#39;s magic won&#39;t come again, but why mourn when we can just fly ahead of the dateline and stay in night forever?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;God knows I tried, Oberon. God knows I tried. (see also The Hold Steady&#39;s &quot;First Night&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvy5vGOK4oyTsXTHU89LiEOFfHuGFPzj3kJLQLmmuE_YVP2eFGWH1Qm_jc3KZdijOM2TUq5Ku7Qtv0VEIKcoMWCbB7vhoHA16u8jqGqbFD5RhtxzEdjgHTBawJ3Hs7cqox6S42u1chLJsNf4FnxVHNBe6tSi8bs_a8r9YzFYmMAGmggZotOr6w/s701/Jory%20hurtin%20the%20Windsor%20-%20cat%20women%20of%20the%20moon.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;517&quot; data-original-width=&quot;701&quot; height=&quot;295&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvy5vGOK4oyTsXTHU89LiEOFfHuGFPzj3kJLQLmmuE_YVP2eFGWH1Qm_jc3KZdijOM2TUq5Ku7Qtv0VEIKcoMWCbB7vhoHA16u8jqGqbFD5RhtxzEdjgHTBawJ3Hs7cqox6S42u1chLJsNf4FnxVHNBe6tSi8bs_a8r9YzFYmMAGmggZotOr6w/w400-h295/Jory%20hurtin%20the%20Windsor%20-%20cat%20women%20of%20the%20moon.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;2. Kip - Cat Women of the Moon&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;1953&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We&#39;re in a rocket that looks like a garden shack cum amateur radio operator&#39;s man cave, replete with several hammocks, set up for his buddies. The crew seems culled together from a neighborhood personal ad: Doug, a callow radio operator; Walt (Douglas Fowley), the capitalist hustler engineer, whose every line of dialogue is related to monetization (he&#39;s thinking of bottling moon mist, plugging motor oil on spec, stamping letters from the moon--he&#39;s out of control!); there&#39;s a woman navigator, Helen (saucer eyed Marie Windsor), and clo-pilot Kip (our boy of the moment, VJ); Laird (Sunny Tufts) is their cranky commander, and he&#39;s Helen&#39;s boyfriend; and--sulking peevishly for one reason or the other, Kip can&#39;t help but go for her in a big way, passive-aggressively one-upping the commander every step of the way.&amp;nbsp; Questioning his orders, refusing to leave his .45 automatic in the ship, sneering at Laird&#39;s weak assertion that everything be done &quot;by the book&quot; and coming onto Helen every chance he gets, Kip is kind of a jerk but he&#39;s our hero, and Tufts--a drunken &#39;star by wartime default&#39; he seems tailor-made for dupe status, even before he started to pass out on sidewalks and bite ladies on the thigh, and be really excoriated by the Medveds in the needlessly snide but undeniably influential &lt;i&gt;Golden Turkey Awards.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes, yes it&#39;s CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON: a movie too cheap to wake up to its own absurdity, which is why it rules the outlier places wherein self-conscious camp imitations like &lt;i&gt;Queen of Outer Space&lt;/i&gt; can&#39;t even get past the doorman. Though it casts a soothing spell, the occasional presence of a giant horned spider on strings pops up to wake you if you fall asleep. You could laugh at the spider&#39;s strings, but why? As Louise Bourgeois proved, big spiders is ART. Sure it&#39;s shitty, but there&#39;s something poetic too, something that comes from some cavern of unconsciousness far deeper than even your wildest dreams can reach, aided no end by the moody music of a then-just-starting-out Elmer Bernstein.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;Yeah, it&#39;s all about Jory here, like it was in &lt;i&gt;Midsummer.&lt;/i&gt; He can be just a supporting player but--like any one of us--his characters act like it&#39;s their movie regardless. Note: this is not the same as hamming. Someone like Mickey Rooney or Jerry Lewis try to steal their scenes, radiating the kind of neediness that can&#39;t stand to see anyone else getting applause, but Jory just inhabits his character to the point that character just becomes interesting, even if the character is just sulking in a corner.Very few people live their lives like they&#39;re supporting players. It&#39;s their life after all, and that what Jory does--his&amp;nbsp;Kip is so beside himself with love over Marie Windsor he reacts with the news the cat women are out to kill them like a sarcastic school boy. Then he remembers that literally twisting her arm breaks the cat women&#39;s spell sos she finally tells the truth! &quot;Don&#39;t let &lt;i&gt;go, &lt;/i&gt;Kip!&quot; Once again macho domination breaks the sisterhood qua-lesbian spell (I can only imagine the excited spit-takes if this film is ever shown in a feminist film studies class).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;Hilariously, one truth he gets out of her is more important (to him) than any news about Alpha&#39;s (Carol Brewster) grand plan to kill them all: whom does she really love? It&#39;s you, Kip! Then he uses the opportunity to make out with Helen passionately, right in front of Laird, even as the cat women are making their move--as if determined to make Laird&#39;s humiliation complete. It&#39;s so unimportant to him by then he kills them all offscreen and just shouts earth&#39;s victory from off camera. Oh that Kip!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoX8eI1F_Y2s9CYm97JQ-Rzoao95s0I2889gpmwBZuLlzSatbTIeAIsdoB3ZpdxIhYvmkb5p7iDqVsVSLJwKeiwU7mtCLciKrBnZR1rJ-iDG6CwfBEWeac5kdj5jDf0TrEz-o1yhAJCX_KEYK5TADsdRQppg7WIUaE-OWAapbQPve9Puc-ioo/s900/jory%20kind.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;506&quot; data-original-width=&quot;900&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoX8eI1F_Y2s9CYm97JQ-Rzoao95s0I2889gpmwBZuLlzSatbTIeAIsdoB3ZpdxIhYvmkb5p7iDqVsVSLJwKeiwU7mtCLciKrBnZR1rJ-iDG6CwfBEWeac5kdj5jDf0TrEz-o1yhAJCX_KEYK5TADsdRQppg7WIUaE-OWAapbQPve9Puc-ioo/w400-h225/jory%20kind.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;3. Jabe - The Fugitive Kind&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1960&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: justify;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;As the racist morphine addict bedridden husband of Anna Magnani in&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The Fugitive Kind&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;, Jory overflows the banks of bitter redneck opiate-addicted patriarch cliche and steals the picture right out from under Brando&#39;s reshaped nose. He even steals the film from Joanne Woodward, the sole source of light in the whole place, as a drunken libertine (i.e. town tramp). She&#39;s great but stays within the limited borders of her stock character (she tries to save him by leaving with him, but he only pats her head and smiles). But Jory&#39;s invalid junky husband Jabe is&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;alive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;Sweating and speaking very slowly, and deeply, with coded-homophobic (kinda) slow burn rage, he&#39;s more of a man than anyone else in the film, and that goes double for Brando&#39;s pontificating coded-bi/gay Christ figure, moving heedlessly towards his crucifixion with a warm resigned smile. Even fans of Williams, such as myself, may roll our eyes at all this, but Jory takes what could easily have been an over the top performance of spiteful venomous drug-fueled malice and turns him into a human cobra.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;As far as vivid Tennessee Williams adaptions go, this is strictly bottom of the shelf as far as clearly was written when he was much younger, and more flowery and poesy-prone (ala &lt;i&gt;Glass Menagerie&lt;/i&gt;) and Lumet foolishly tries to have it both ways, both nitty gritty and waxy poetic, but he can&#39;t find the through line. He&#39;s too much of a city boy to depict southern hostility with any measure of complexity. Sydney, you best stay in the city until you&#39;re ready to bring a Philadelphia cop back down there to straighten things out, rather than leaving all these ladies (including a hypnotized Maureen Stapleton) trapped in the orbit of Brando&#39;s Christ on a Quaalude (he&#39;s name is.... Valentine) and Lumet&#39;s NYC actor&#39;s studio rage against the Jim Crow/homophobic goof ole boy machine. What a shock you&#39;d take offense at them, Sydney!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, a guy as gorgeous as Brando is here-all a shimmer in Boris Kaufman&#39;s black-and-white photography--should be New York or San Francisco, or at least New Orleans where he can find what a local magistrate calls&quot;mixed&quot; parties, why he decides to linger in the podunk town when he&#39;s able to leave, is a total mystery. Unless he&#39;s got a masochistic yen for tree branch noose-a-fixion, to coin a phrase it&#39;s a big leap to think he&#39;s staying around for Magnani&#39;s ever-unsmiling general store owner, who married one of the pricks who destroyed her life, ala Lady Anne, Duchess of York, or Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. But hey, say what you will, Jabe is a &lt;i&gt;man. &lt;/i&gt;And like the other film in this post, Jory has that rare ability to make you feel like his character exists prior to his scenes, like he&#39;s been talking and setting shit up while you&#39;ve been downstairs, following handsome Brando acting all far away but transfixed by Magnani&#39;s weirdly sexy frumpery.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good thing Jory is there. His Jabe may be a sweaty junky monster but he&#39;s still the only one cool enough to chopper out of Lumet&#39;s self-righteous hick inferno when the time comes. In the meantime, excuse him if he upstages Brando and Magnani even from upstairs and off-camera. Seething a fine gothic menace, he&amp;nbsp; runs refreshingly against the grain of the typical &#39;jealous cracker going loco&#39; stock Karl Malden ushers into &lt;i&gt;Baby Doll, &lt;/i&gt;and/or Ed Begley&#39;s hypocritical air-hog blustering name in &lt;i&gt;Sweet Bird of Youth. &lt;/i&gt;Jabe is not a cypher or a type, Jory croaks him into real life, a man tortured by jealousy and the constant flow of misery tempered by narco-bliss that is&amp;nbsp;drug high / opiate withdrawal cycle that his whole soul is warped by the poison. (more:&amp;nbsp;&lt;b style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/04/tennessee-williams-at-mill-of-rubes.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Tennesse Williams at the Mill of Rubes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVQtdWfYusWG5F5FkLk0lvE4oBFXHki9aLyY9mZFL-pn_ehwGLvg5QJr2kJVZ6cBHoY7rGutSy_Ib2MPRHvIbWt6UpUlhFy5YbSOEQ6QO9G2x2NR3tRpW2m6W_-FF_rDEkOLTa-jWhhB60EHsNxPHzs7CCOplFUbyInHa8OUsqsis7Bi6J0Sv/s297/he-was-her-man-still1.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;240&quot; data-original-width=&quot;297&quot; height=&quot;323&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtVQtdWfYusWG5F5FkLk0lvE4oBFXHki9aLyY9mZFL-pn_ehwGLvg5QJr2kJVZ6cBHoY7rGutSy_Ib2MPRHvIbWt6UpUlhFy5YbSOEQ6QO9G2x2NR3tRpW2m6W_-FF_rDEkOLTa-jWhhB60EHsNxPHzs7CCOplFUbyInHa8OUsqsis7Bi6J0Sv/w400-h323/he-was-her-man-still1.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;4. Nick: He Was Her Man&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1934&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jimmy Cagney and Joan Blondell do their Warner Brothers grifter schtick in this half-good WB drama. It&#39;s pretty familiar stuff: hustling and flowing from the Turkish baths of NYC, to the running afoul of mobsters in Chicago, to hiding out on the shores of Marina Del Rey, to the seeking safe harbor in a small Portuguese immigrant fishing community (the kind of Podunk town that &quot;showgirls&quot; go for their second chances in countless Warner commodities). One wonders what the censors had to do with Blondell turning respectable to marry some terminally decent, slow-witted townie (see also: &lt;i&gt;Tiger Shark, Anna Christie, The Wedding Night, &lt;/i&gt;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Purchase Price&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;,&lt;/i&gt; to name merely a few) whose lunkheadedness is almost like one last dig at the sanctity of--as Blondell&#39;s heart-of-gold whore puts i--&quot;good honest decent hardworking people, which you wouldn&#39;t know anything about, Dick Jordan!&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Eventually screwball comedies would poke fun at this kind of thing, using the censor&#39;s own dopey creed against him, but for now, with the Breen office settling in to ruin movies for everyone but the kind of stern frowning women who run Dallas out of town at the start of&lt;i&gt; Stagecoach,&lt;/i&gt; the good honest guy gets the girl. She&#39;s reformed, Dick Jordan!&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, the big surprise here is Victor Jory as the chump. With his deep voice, looming height, the stoic poise of a stock company Sitting Bull, and gravitas that belies his then-lean years, he might have a bizarre accent and mangled fisherman syntax, and Cagney might talk faster and hustle more but Jory&#39;s tortoise wins the race, legitimately, and we don&#39;t roll our eyes the way we would at Ralph Bellamy in years to come. While such a result certainly pleased the censors (then looming ever closer), the film&#39;s subtext never sides with the forces of small town decency: the sanctity of marriage may prevail, but as Cagney walks off into the sunset, arm-in-arm with his killers, it&#39;s him we follow, even if that means going straight over the cliff to the briny marina credit depths.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;---&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And that&#39;s the Jory!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Til next time, Jory-heads, keep the Jory in!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4905405785997812242/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/08/its-jory-time-paging-all-you-jory-heads.html#comment-form' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4905405785997812242'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4905405785997812242'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/08/its-jory-time-paging-all-you-jory-heads.html' title='It&#39;s Jory Time! '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyzy-fQDNiF0SYJVA-t71m7LczHfGHrzW7pbi7dh8dy6wpDk9VWgv2TF9V6vA-VSrh0aX25qflmy16p0so1lNAYKtfMbRhLI9UDOams2_7vPc1-QL8miwiMShpLmiZI21zpRbEChM6uDI1R3Q3kd2IGxV1GTG-l5gnkdEXbTPiXbZXGQpocxUL/s72-w640-h476-c/download.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-8190619360566238871</id><published>2023-05-25T12:10:00.014-05:00</published><updated>2023-08-09T18:04:54.597-05:00</updated><title type='text'>All-Seeing Blindness: THE BIRDS&#39; Omniscient POV and the Oedipal &quot;Gaze&quot;</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNioLrFyEeca__NJRmu5nVlDYDeKAtru_bQE9a9V0GAy9YfKyF0qwyDVOXewC7ICkKe5wwi0hnBkiOK6sNn-98hoN_nZnFOcFlVcao7Ah1mMx4P6MxI70wmzAP_BvAK_VJso3H/s852/0561.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNioLrFyEeca__NJRmu5nVlDYDeKAtru_bQE9a9V0GAy9YfKyF0qwyDVOXewC7ICkKe5wwi0hnBkiOK6sNn-98hoN_nZnFOcFlVcao7Ah1mMx4P6MxI70wmzAP_BvAK_VJso3H/w640-h360/0561.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Today we&#39;re using a single shot in Hitchcock&#39;s 1963 classic THE BIRDS as a jumping off point for a fusion of Freud, Jung, Paglia, Wood, and Zizek that will catch HALLOWEEN, FORBIDDEN PLANET,&amp;nbsp; PSYCHO, even SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER in its devouring maternal phallus beak / knife / impossible tree sloth claw maw. Have you done your homework and seen all five? More than once?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good, then together we will FIGURE out the connection between the weird domestic drama and the bird attacks. Turns out, it&#39;s Lydia&#39;s fault! I take it you&#39;ve met Lydia?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvaJwg_xn0ScgQ3NpYcA43RcBn9oNDb6DOmMzqzSOrmLJZFPkcK8011ldC84KZ9Ooji_kHi9AIPxip2EuJ6Q_0qajwvaV5fbt9LgfGS3oBBd7jO3-c7-iOAitPVemN-dU3IKKn/s852/0286.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;180&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvaJwg_xn0ScgQ3NpYcA43RcBn9oNDb6DOmMzqzSOrmLJZFPkcK8011ldC84KZ9Ooji_kHi9AIPxip2EuJ6Q_0qajwvaV5fbt9LgfGS3oBBd7jO3-c7-iOAitPVemN-dU3IKKn/s320/0286.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;I saw the BIRDS after a long walk in the trees, just cuz it was on Showtime when I got home. This bit of info is important. Like a &#39;random&#39; spread of tarot cards, the unconscious sometimes finds a functional mythic common language in the images the conscious mind takes in, life finding figures and faces in clouds or rock formations.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This symbiosis betwixt the personal subconscious (i.e. the viewer) and the collective consciousness (i.e. the film)&amp;nbsp; might otherwise be denied when the&lt;i&gt; conscious &lt;/i&gt;mind &#39;picks&#39; the film. I wouldn&#39;t have chosen THE BIRDS on after getting home, all exercised and starved for TV, it was just on. That&#39;s the collective unconscious at work, alive in the randomness of chance, the feeling god or something is always communicating with you through some medium or image, be it a random bird call, the passing cop car siren, the dog food commercial, your unconscious is always watching &lt;i&gt;you &lt;/i&gt;somewhere in the field of your vision. Can you spot him/ her / it? That&#39;s (the) UNCANNY, bro!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere is this more vivid than THE BIRDS (1964); its icebergs go so deep their edges cut through the outer hulls of waking sanity. Like any enduring classic, it continues to make more and more sense the longer you watch it (i.e. for me, 40 years of seeing it regularly at least once every couple of years). As a kid I was just irritated waiting for birds to finally attack -then it rocked. Now as an adult whose read Paglia&#39;s indispensable BFI book on it, as well as the writing of Robin Wood, Zizek, etc. - it&#39;s Lydia&#39;s parts that rock me. The bird attacks can get indulgent, but Lydia is always watching.... us&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the unrelated (or so I thought as a child) connection between the human drama and the bird attacks becomes clearer and clearer until a certain awareness of nature as a reflection of the human unconscious (or vice versa) takes shape. We don&#39;t see the link until the link sees&lt;i&gt; us&lt;/i&gt; first.&amp;nbsp;Watching &lt;i&gt;Birds&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;as a child with my own parents, we used to bemoan the boring subplots of Melanie and her facile would-be screwball flirtation. (&quot;Get to the birds already!&quot; my dad would shout). If there&#39;s a direct link between the domestic drama part- the strange love quadrangle going on between Mitch, Melanie, Annie, and Lydia of Bodega Bay--and the birds attacking, it eludes most casual monster-craving viewers, maybe for good reason. And for the first dozen viewings I didn&#39;t see it either; I still felt it was all more akin to the obligatory qua-romantic sidebars of things like &lt;i&gt;It Came from Beneath the Sea&lt;/i&gt;,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Beast from 20,000 Fathoms&lt;/i&gt;, or&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Tarantula,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;rather than the deep dish Id dive of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s the connection so key to this post: When you remember woman shares her elemental subconscious with nature itself, and that Lydia is a quintessential &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/cinemarchetype-9-devouring-mother.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;devouring mother archetype,&lt;/a&gt; suddenly the bird attacks make perfect connection with the drama.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you know classic cinema of the late 50s-early 60s you have probably gleaned just how big a cocktail party talking point was our Dr. Freud. He was mainstream in a way that is impossible to understand in our streamlined &#39;talking down&#39; artless popular cinema. Maybe it&#39;s because without censorship, sexual repression and open homophobia, there&#39;s less &#39;sub&#39; to rise up like a monster in the popular consciousness. The last monster who took off with nearly everyone in this way was Hannibal Lecter. But now even Hannibal has been homogenized. Censorship no longer represses sex; instead it represses repression itself.&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;As we&#39;re clearly learning in our modern age, it&#39;s nowhere near as fun. Rather than gaining pressure like a clogged whiskey still and then exploding, modern repression kind of implodes on itself, finally realizing just how empty niceness can be. Also, we&#39;re more stupid. The idea of the middle class reading Freud on their own time, as entertainment, is totally absurd, Yet when I was in Buenos Aires a few years ago, Freud was everywhere. Everyone was talking about him. He was once on the bookshelf staple of every liberated couple, alongside the Kinsey Report, The Joy of Sex and Erma Bombeck&#39;s Life is a Bowl of Cherries so what am I doing in the Pits. Today even the academics have dismissed him. All his ideas are out, purely because they are sexist. Sensitivity and tolerance, rather than genius, is what we want in our cinema. People who don&#39;t know anything about his work proudly sneer at him as being outdated, parroting the en vogue academic posture.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But in the 50s, Freud was even handed to us children on a PSYCH 101 platter, via&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Psycho&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet&lt;/i&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The latter&amp;nbsp;offers the&amp;nbsp;explanation of the monster from the id in a way that makes sense no matter what your age. Kids are amateurs at repression, their&amp;nbsp;hormonal desires seeping through the fabric of society and into the natural world. We can imagine our own monster tearing up our grade school, mean teachers, bullies, and even some girl for no reason we yet understand, while we sleep, sort of glad we never have to take responsibility for our desires coming true the way Morbius does. But if we woke up to find everyone all ripped limb-from-limb, we might get a guilty feeling without knowing quite why we should. &lt;i&gt;We &lt;/i&gt;didn&#39;t have anything to do with it, and that&#39;s true in a way. Should Jekyll be punished for Hyde&#39;s crimes? When we realizae that the crux of the ego and its centered &#39;consciousness&#39; is just the loudest voice in the room, and when it finally quiets, strange beings living downstairs in our brain basement creep up the stairs, all drenched in the vile shit you&#39;ve been dumping down the laundry chute, the bathroom pipes, and under the floor.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And there&#39;s someone else down in there too, even below the basement selves, boy, and they resent being locked down in the fruit cellar.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you think they&#39;re &lt;i&gt;fruity, &lt;/i&gt;boy?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnzWPqF4G7tG3Bqf_CrD75h1QlhFMA5SsbzemYp8kbEZZG6FqNYqxIRa0aVMLagS0nZe029yCnXbR_KUJHKj28XNRz1K9s-eHQRzl159qhw1NNQKHct4UjnGVGpVsS5Gt4lzVK/s852/0356.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnzWPqF4G7tG3Bqf_CrD75h1QlhFMA5SsbzemYp8kbEZZG6FqNYqxIRa0aVMLagS0nZe029yCnXbR_KUJHKj28XNRz1K9s-eHQRzl159qhw1NNQKHct4UjnGVGpVsS5Gt4lzVK/w640-h360/0356.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;Part I - MOTHER! THE BLOOD!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;No matter how many times we get that oft-belittled Freudian epilogue lecture in PSYCHO, for example, the implications of Norman and his mother complex stay mysterious. The elemental subconscious doesn&#39;t suddenly become &#39;solved&#39; just because we&#39;re given a first-rate cinematic example, explained patiently by a learned psychiatrist.&amp;nbsp; The idea of &quot;mother&quot; transcends our own psyche, envelops and devours us, and if we don&#39;t hack our way out of the apron string morass, we drown. Mother fills in for us.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The psychiatrist shows us the ladder down into the hole but only guides us far down as the censor will allow. There&#39;s still an endless abyss waiting below even the fruit cellar. And even there, mother is. And she&#39;s clawing her way... up through your own morass of macho boys&#39; club sexual boasting and posturing, refusing to stay down, yelling its your bed time in your ear of ears, right as you&#39;re on--as we say in hooking up terms--the ten yard line.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If she can reach...up... and hijack &lt;i&gt;our&lt;/i&gt; unconscious id monster, maybe she can hijack the natural world&#39;s as well... The birds can become her own id monster/ She&#39;s connected to the turnings of nature the way&amp;nbsp; men can never be, consciously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As with Morbius&#39; Id monster, Lydia can&#39;t be blamed for the bird attacks. It wouldn&#39;t / couldn&#39;t be a conscious connection. She wouldn&#39;t even be aware she&#39;s causing it. There&#39;s no one to tell her either. No PSYCHO psychiatrist inhabits Bodega Bay to explain the link. There&#39;s&amp;nbsp; no Krell brain boost equivalent that would allow Mitch to guess the origin of the bird attacks (i.e. paraphrasing &lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&quot;Mitch, the birds are your mother&#39;s fear! Tell her you don&#39;t love this girl! Tell her you&#39;ll never leave home!&quot;).&amp;nbsp; No one in Bodega Bay understands poltergeist activity, nor do they know of animal familiars, elemental manifestations of unconscious drives, or the dangers when the &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/04/cinemarchetype-11-wild-wise-woman.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;wise old woman&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;natural magic is&amp;nbsp;misappropriated by the her&amp;nbsp;jealous savage&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/cinemarchetype-9-devouring-mother.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;devouring mother&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;unconscious (inside every Athena is a Medusa trying to get out). Lydia can&#39;t quite control her powers--or even be fully aware of them--any more than could Morbius, or Norman. Each kills--or tries to kill--all younger rivals, be they Leslie Nielsen or Melanie or Marion. to keep their child at home, to foil attempts to empty their recessive egomaniac remote planet / small town kingdom. Empty nest syndrome has its roots in some vile pre-Promethean mire of incest and human sacrifice, Cronus eating his own young, and all that shit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMUadlts2yzn4AQioeLww1dxKtHt09Gwr4X-SH__ZY_NpE3DUE02fd52i4r-lwZBmuxUFjyOk6fg1ZZb_mk-XEJzDzSUds_S9tO6pFnU3xx7mKtCioznYGRk6coCCUQBWwh3mV52XKx9xFEa6DT2R7YG9vqq80CN2Pyy2obwYZzLxnkSNXLg/s844/maxresdefault.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;651&quot; data-original-width=&quot;844&quot; height=&quot;247&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMUadlts2yzn4AQioeLww1dxKtHt09Gwr4X-SH__ZY_NpE3DUE02fd52i4r-lwZBmuxUFjyOk6fg1ZZb_mk-XEJzDzSUds_S9tO6pFnU3xx7mKtCioznYGRk6coCCUQBWwh3mV52XKx9xFEa6DT2R7YG9vqq80CN2Pyy2obwYZzLxnkSNXLg/s320/maxresdefault.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8yCTKZioNLORsbqVwC8OGumpn0If-w64zVbc3gDFsFFqqISIPDiOZWjkuuxgbVwRfDFWmeBlnjE9Y8QSeqyc8CqgiK-_BnUGymRjZSzu-FpVvkNJDx3VSLaAYvuVa7iajKoqpTHrXm8eDbm_5CJ4mmhe5PVIOVTqlQfmxkz1TQFp1BKTurQ/s1024/id%20id%20id.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;459&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1024&quot; height=&quot;179&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8yCTKZioNLORsbqVwC8OGumpn0If-w64zVbc3gDFsFFqqISIPDiOZWjkuuxgbVwRfDFWmeBlnjE9Y8QSeqyc8CqgiK-_BnUGymRjZSzu-FpVvkNJDx3VSLaAYvuVa7iajKoqpTHrXm8eDbm_5CJ4mmhe5PVIOVTqlQfmxkz1TQFp1BKTurQ/w400-h179/id%20id%20id.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Autonomous Oedipal Expressions - Bob (&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primal-scenesters_25.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Twin Peaks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;) Morbius&#39; Id (&lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet)&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primal-scenesters_25.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;,&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primal-scenesters_25.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: justify;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;After a few dozen viewings of each of the three films, after age and insight and the human mind&#39;s need to find meaning even in random coincidence, it all makes sense as if some GRE series of associative thinking questions:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: justify;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Norman &amp;lt;--&amp;gt; Mother&amp;nbsp; --&amp;gt; Knife--&amp;gt; Janet Leigh&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Alta &amp;lt; --&amp;gt; Morbius--&amp;gt; Monster --&amp;gt; Leslie Nielsen&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Mitch &amp;lt;---&amp;gt; Lydia --&amp;gt; Birds--&amp;gt;-Tippi Hedren&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;For&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Psycho&lt;/i&gt;, the mother in Norman&#39;s mind is a horribly blurred version of the superego&#39;s harnessing the Id to manifest the phallus of the mother (the knife) before the phallus of the Norman gets to experience enough pleasure/power to escape the poisonous incestuous bond. Norman killed the mother and her lover the way Lydia tries to stuff Mitch, like some ornithological specimen, in her living room and keep any interested females in Bodega Bay blinded by her flying monkey gulls and kept where she can keep an &#39;eye&#39; on them. When Melanie devolves into a child after her bird attack, her voice gets a note of hysteria, all high and whispery in a kind of super demented child kind of way, indicating she&#39;s regressed and is no longer a threat; Lydia instantly relaxes her grip (note that the birds don&#39;t attack after that).&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;The borderline between Norman and his mother and the (phallic) knife; Mitch and Lydia and her birds, (or the opposite version, Morbius, Alta and the Id) all become startlingly clear once they&#39;re all compared and filtered through your Penguin Freud. How could we have ever missed them?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s no idle accident the kids are watching &lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet &lt;/i&gt;on TV in &lt;i&gt;Halloween. &lt;/i&gt;The equation is one slightly altered since there&#39;s no strong parental figure therefore, aside from Dr. Loomis and the sheriff. Here the instigator is biology and the forceful peer pressure of Jame Lee&#39;s friends.&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Jamie lee Curtis &amp;lt;----&amp;gt; virginity // Michael --&amp;gt;sex&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtpCcDDxoqQIh7fg8lvkREUT7rnZGLfuoV_OQBgXpZOWjUAsBrBLAO5sBepKr1bWy3Kd1SzAez4KAe4wLQf3r5wJtKXfeET8LE8cG2STmh5HjVz2pGKUubVDY4K-QYVfb4pnlMdjZrA2S5YdpngFXUtnzibLaC_IwRbcF2uxm50OaIAcnF8g=s1021&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;453&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1021&quot; height=&quot;284&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtpCcDDxoqQIh7fg8lvkREUT7rnZGLfuoV_OQBgXpZOWjUAsBrBLAO5sBepKr1bWy3Kd1SzAez4KAe4wLQf3r5wJtKXfeET8LE8cG2STmh5HjVz2pGKUubVDY4K-QYVfb4pnlMdjZrA2S5YdpngFXUtnzibLaC_IwRbcF2uxm50OaIAcnF8g=w640-h284&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;FORBIDDEN PLANET on TV (left) in HALLOWEEN at left: The approaching (invisible) id monster&#39;s footprints onscreen go unnoticed by Nancy Loomis and her babysitting charge; heightening subliminal associative chills.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let&#39;s take a deep look at one very telling shot that makes the &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt; parallel&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;clear:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Part II:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;THE SHOT OVERHEAD LOOKING DOWN ON BODEGA BAY AFTER THE GAS STATION EXPLODES.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaxuW7LZxyAfUmX7muivHn6Dp7ut75iGqTzzjeHfelPxBslXdZr2Y6tleVCcyAZRfzjvZkiJv842wHytPtxdHmMWaD9bd3B7fMczl4uBabpx5_RvQHMc0SPXgwxYR5YN_E4P4/s852/0771.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaxuW7LZxyAfUmX7muivHn6Dp7ut75iGqTzzjeHfelPxBslXdZr2Y6tleVCcyAZRfzjvZkiJv842wHytPtxdHmMWaD9bd3B7fMczl4uBabpx5_RvQHMc0SPXgwxYR5YN_E4P4/w640-h360/0771.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&quot;an anthill at the foot of a bridge&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s an extraordinarily eerie moment, giddy and exciting: we go from the noise of the cafe--the doubting ornithologist with her dry, chirpy lecturing; the hysterical mother frightening her own children (a clear case of maternal projection in microcosm to lend a shadow to the larger one outside); the old drunk repeating &quot;it&#39;s the end of the world!&quot; - it all instantly stops with the cry of &quot;LOOK!&quot; and a rush to the window.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Outside, the gas station attendant is hit by a gull and falls over, dropping the gas nozzle; the gas leaks in a fast downhill pool towards the feet of the traveler trying to understand the panicked noise from inside the cafe. He drops his cigar match... BOOM&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWFZC8cYUm7S2DmMQIVOUUUPT4Dgt_VaqrUbvEYaFmncVpBa9GwirHr2c5oQz2hfsQspu2MkJaKSTf1JHUZxtyT2Z1KoBW78tIbC3A53TD4hxXFgBXV61h7mjU9bNj-JYJj4W/s710/a-still-from-the-fourth-halloween-movie-set-in-michaels-pov.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;388&quot; data-original-width=&quot;710&quot; height=&quot;175&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWFZC8cYUm7S2DmMQIVOUUUPT4Dgt_VaqrUbvEYaFmncVpBa9GwirHr2c5oQz2hfsQspu2MkJaKSTf1JHUZxtyT2Z1KoBW78tIbC3A53TD4hxXFgBXV61h7mjU9bNj-JYJj4W/s320/a-still-from-the-fourth-halloween-movie-set-in-michaels-pov.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Halloween (1978) Killer POV&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;It&#39;s like the explosion knocks our POV into the sky.&amp;nbsp;After all the noise and action below, up here in the sky it&#39;s quiet and peaceful. We feel strangely safe for a moment. It&#39;s as if we just joined the winning side so all our worries are over&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;But something is off. The camera isn&#39;t floating or swaying in the air currents. The POV camera is just &lt;i&gt;standing still&lt;/i&gt; up there. It&#39;s not a bird&#39;s eye view. Birds don&#39;t usually stand stock still, neither do helicopters, usually. And weirder still, we hear a muffled but heavy breathing, as if through a thick heavy mask, or from inside a snorkel.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;Seeing it this time, after the walk, by chance, I was reminded of &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s opening tracking shot with POV clown mask as young Michael mounts the stairs. Here it&#39;s the same sense that &lt;i&gt;we&#39;re &lt;/i&gt;wearing the mask. This arial god&#39;s eye / bird&#39;s eye view comes with breathing that sounds like we&#39;re a kid in a snorkel&amp;nbsp;looking down hundreds of feet through clear turquoise water/sky to the ocean floor/fire, people scrambling like tiny crabs in the sand below.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Even then we wouldn&#39;t be able to hang suspended in place, not this Steadicam smooth.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;This shot in &lt;i&gt;The Birds &lt;/i&gt;though, this high up, the person whose eyes we&#39;re looking through seems to have his feet firmly planted on some invisible ground. Can it be Lydia, up there, like Marcello Mastroanni in the beginning dream of &lt;i&gt;8 1/2&lt;/i&gt;? while asleep back at home, shuddering from the sight of her eyeless neighbor Fred, her elemental unconscious soaring skywards above the damage her id is causing, but connected to her death driving instinct while asleep, forced to look down through her rending harpy bird of prey eyes at the carnage below, like Faye Dunaway forced to see the killer&#39;s POV in&lt;i&gt; Eyes of Laura Mars&lt;/i&gt;? But she&#39;s not bobbing in the wind as she&#39;s also grounded in her bed?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAiu-jXXonL0ihobNJliW3vwdFUG9hbzoLep9yuif-pVq8GVArL6ex09U305KpkXJ_nxmbhTfGkdhGJbkXnHLsirOQ2vFwvS7Div5402eqXGNXPrKAVXjFpBPKBKqeBhlS2g9/s852/0421.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;180&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAiu-jXXonL0ihobNJliW3vwdFUG9hbzoLep9yuif-pVq8GVArL6ex09U305KpkXJ_nxmbhTfGkdhGJbkXnHLsirOQ2vFwvS7Div5402eqXGNXPrKAVXjFpBPKBKqeBhlS2g9/s320/0421.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;At the time, the first viewings, we may not even notice how odd that is, that weird breathing and sense of motionlessness, such odd choices go unnoticed in the chaos of the scene. We&#39;re too busy enjoying what we assume is the &#39;bird&#39;s eye view.&#39; The change in shot helps us even out our sympathies. Rather than the sense of eerie dislocation and unwilling complicity we get from a killer POV in a good slasher film, we&#39;re allowed a kind of lordly relaxation. Now we&#39;re running with the flock, so we can size up our own target for the dive bombing. The killer POV implicates us and scares us with its &#39;too close for comfort&#39; mortality. The bird / Lydia POV is so abstract it frees us from responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dozens of viewings over the years later, and the odd details start to accrue in our minds but this motionless, heavy breathing arial shot refuses familiarization. The sound of muffled breathing is eerie. This is certainly&lt;i&gt; not&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;meant to be a bird&#39;s eye view in the traditional sense, Hitchcock would not miss even one key detail of this sort by accident. He brings us somewhere way outside normal space, some giant deer-stand or motionless Ferris wheel from which to peer down on all those scurrying, burning ants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;How did Hitch get such a still shot? It&#39;s not a photo, (maybe a process shot) as we can see the flames burning below; even as the birds gradually circle down around and into the frame in front of it, there is no movement from the camera. The birds come in on all sides of the camera but the camera doesn&#39;t even flinch, as if it is representing some out of body experiencer, ordering her minions down into the scene like the wicked witch directing her monkeys from a bomb sight in the belly of a frozen in time B-17 while lying in bed at the same time.... Lydia... is that you?.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMIrqzUUZkkV2HusrzNgEKxVajZRuB-hD1gKboP3H6BWyalrOUA1qWJkdUo22bDtnKTGAnh8k5PG_xSCz-Jt0xIl2_3lc4xfbHJMWh4oeEt0Nt_xP4xii-TyrBopyWAvle9Vik/s852/0419.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMIrqzUUZkkV2HusrzNgEKxVajZRuB-hD1gKboP3H6BWyalrOUA1qWJkdUo22bDtnKTGAnh8k5PG_xSCz-Jt0xIl2_3lc4xfbHJMWh4oeEt0Nt_xP4xii-TyrBopyWAvle9Vik/w640-h360/0419.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;III. BLIND JELOUSY&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;In grand Oedipal style, wherever Lydia&#39;s goes with her animus bird force, she leaves only blinded reflections, henpecked children, and symbolically neutered adults in her wake--the anti-sighted. The male gaze, the female gaze, all gazes are snuffed out, the bird claws and beaks act as the censoring scissors; Medusa, turning men from gazers into inanimate portraits or pajama wearing eyeless corpses. Amok maternal instinct creates a legion of blind, hobbled, castrated men, ala the men who crash the matriarchal corn king crowning in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Dark Secret of Harvest Home&lt;/i&gt;, or the remake of&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Wicker Man.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But as the snapping biting birds rage out of control, children too are symbolically violated, like an out of control once-benign victorious army &quot;looting and pillaging&quot; a defenseless civilian population, one that poses no threat at all to Lydia&#39;s maternal empire; and finally spilling over and threatening even Lydia herself (just as Morbius is threatened by his own id).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even Melanie is guilty of this, noting proudly of her nonprofit: &quot;We&#39;re sending a little Korean Boy Through School.&quot; sounds almost like their keel-hauling him through the sky somehow, or floating through the belly of a whale: &quot;After that we&#39;re sending a German girl through a jet engine.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even the daughter, Cathy is guilty of this: she has the two imprisoned love birds, as trapped in their cage as Lydia wants to make Mitch and Cathy in Bodega Bay. The two imprisoned birdies, forced to shelter in one spot while all around the fellow creatures are flying loose and free, attacking their former oppressors and jailers (one can see them flying up to SF to blind the pet shop owner from the first scene&amp;nbsp; on her way home from work).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaeSxcb0LjtxWQoeE86uya6x-9bkrzIG15KSWhaneFrtPdQr5ygUs-hg6y4r9iUMSyL8c9VmvBvQYFVchBnSsL-6CR_XkAkZAv4-_4cUGAFk0m9G86ukkGZMdU9B7x_OMuPP_1/s852/the+blind+leading+the+oedipus.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaeSxcb0LjtxWQoeE86uya6x-9bkrzIG15KSWhaneFrtPdQr5ygUs-hg6y4r9iUMSyL8c9VmvBvQYFVchBnSsL-6CR_XkAkZAv4-_4cUGAFk0m9G86ukkGZMdU9B7x_OMuPP_1/w640-h360/the+blind+leading+the+oedipus.jpeg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;By the presence of the blinded father (above) in the upper left portrait (the darkened eyes is no coincidence), we realize the return of the blinding agent (the maternal phallus - beaks, knife, etc) is inherent in this dynasty. Note the arrangement of the scene: Lydia, sitting, cuddled with Cathy, denotes her new place as another child of the Lydia, or at any rate, subservient. Mitch seated below the portrait, uncomfortable on a bench, as if waiting in line for an Oedipal &quot;haircut&quot; (his eyes darkened beneath his heavy brow) and Lydia, centered, organizing the table as if arranging a tea party for her stuffed animals. The father&#39;s expression in the painting is one of bland eyeless contentment - death has allowed him to escape the predicament the others are in; being dead and blind means he&#39;s paid for his escape already --he&#39;s out of Lydia&#39;s reach. This is the aspiration of Mitch - an escape from Lydia&#39;s clutches, from the rending scissor talons of the enucleating barber. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But the father&#39;s blindness is more than just a symbolic castration in the Lacanian sense. In joining the social order, submitting to symbolic castration, one gains a third eye vision not limited to any one POV. In a way it&#39;s like the privileged position of the viewer. We have no visible representation in the film, so can move our sympathies everywhere and nowhere. Most of the time our action is squarely centered on Melanie, but then Lydia goes by herself to Dan&#39;s farm; we even get the omnipotent POV the master of the birds. We&#39;re free.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; And we still have our eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_XOkducEiz3DDf_eDD-syGupb-6Ar7yn0zAfAttax-9mM5xxGfsQnBvYgIcMCXdoG65kOY2gL_zgFWPwf8Fip4F15p1OTG0VlmZ2c5heCKHjj2AqM4ias34H7kNLAhIOI_DY/s970/X-Man-with-the-X-Ray-Eyes.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_XOkducEiz3DDf_eDD-syGupb-6Ar7yn0zAfAttax-9mM5xxGfsQnBvYgIcMCXdoG65kOY2gL_zgFWPwf8Fip4F15p1OTG0VlmZ2c5heCKHjj2AqM4ias34H7kNLAhIOI_DY/s320/X-Man-with-the-X-Ray-Eyes.jpeg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKGGqhzjmndB2SS3C5CVoocTRky7BN0g5bJi9m9AHZT7bhCcxNzQYbA8jnSh2M6A1Tl_KMmRLXYi88Sl_COilvu7PMYeEPu1COFgX_XBYehlb1tKy7TA9hbmnLstStjvmFqP0/s702/HWeen1.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKGGqhzjmndB2SS3C5CVoocTRky7BN0g5bJi9m9AHZT7bhCcxNzQYbA8jnSh2M6A1Tl_KMmRLXYi88Sl_COilvu7PMYeEPu1COFgX_XBYehlb1tKy7TA9hbmnLstStjvmFqP0/s320/HWeen1.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghHGTMwpSHXU-JBLkmXB6ARqseykmawZ6lVCISNzCKgEGVzEfcIpAcYUp8UKuKYOZcoUlsRtO37_WVC5ZECv6iaExh-_nWdBpBAP57yt5UaJrNN2wSguUr7zF6fa-I3TA1EQNxhyw74j228CJnHHDMPjjQU0UmuuA41GPz_UV5E_sWQpmayQ=s359&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghHGTMwpSHXU-JBLkmXB6ARqseykmawZ6lVCISNzCKgEGVzEfcIpAcYUp8UKuKYOZcoUlsRtO37_WVC5ZECv6iaExh-_nWdBpBAP57yt5UaJrNN2wSguUr7zF6fa-I3TA1EQNxhyw74j228CJnHHDMPjjQU0UmuuA41GPz_UV5E_sWQpmayQ=w196-h200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0vBd4BrzSCmv7bEAYzhgnXyAOWSiLE5EG_cAmUbtT_ci4001VNV1S4mQac21dngHqOeSBR6zqFXtoy_V7AO_6t33BpgWLnpk8mt0McA27XluC4K0JD1ROVJ4BJygFqP7SwpoiETCTQwn0QurwuMwU55gTw65gFCdj-xiPe7FsrWeAexK3CQ/s837/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%2010.53.26%20AM.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0vBd4BrzSCmv7bEAYzhgnXyAOWSiLE5EG_cAmUbtT_ci4001VNV1S4mQac21dngHqOeSBR6zqFXtoy_V7AO_6t33BpgWLnpk8mt0McA27XluC4K0JD1ROVJ4BJygFqP7SwpoiETCTQwn0QurwuMwU55gTw65gFCdj-xiPe7FsrWeAexK3CQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%2010.53.26%20AM.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOLbj9FMA7sYe9vhgcpo7QSkvEDIHvIa9p8qelTPG34EVvD6dzJ5-LX08uiLhVsmZkKOH5tKEPYjZRiLnf93hCd7YY1-6ooydR6PBoLt6pGpZTgVUa2zqNIQS9aTw8nreSnap7/s852/0939.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOLbj9FMA7sYe9vhgcpo7QSkvEDIHvIa9p8qelTPG34EVvD6dzJ5-LX08uiLhVsmZkKOH5tKEPYjZRiLnf93hCd7YY1-6ooydR6PBoLt6pGpZTgVUa2zqNIQS9aTw8nreSnap7/s320/0939.jpeg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(above: X, Halloween, The Birds (dad&#39;s painting), Jaws, Psycho)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#39;s not just that Michael never speaks in Halloween that makes him scary, it&#39;s that you can&#39;t see his eyes. The black socket effect we get from Mrs. Bates or Dan with his broken tea cups, may be &#39;actual&#39; rather than merely hidden, but the omnipresent aura is the same. Note that Michael&#39;s eyes are not hidden by, say, sunglasses or even a more recognizable mask, something that would bring a distinct symbolic identity - i.e. sunglasses, an Italian giallo killer ski mask, a rapist-style nylon over head, a motorcycle helmet, a clown mask etc.) The features or identifiable marks of the mask of Myers are stripped away, even the skin pigment of the original (William Shatner) mask is removed. The lack of identification of those images by which we detect a soul&#39;s presence, is what creates the uncanny chill - the blinded person is made tragic yet free- the movie can&#39;t &#39;get&#39; them now. They see no evil. Forever.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Of all the imitators that came after Halloween, only Jason --the first Jason, with the sack cloth mask-- in Part 2, understands the importance of the banal / nondescript in a facial covering, something to drain every last possible attachable symbolic reference from our pareidolia lexicon. Our egoic consciousness is revealed as a desperation--to the point of panic-- to label and therefore dismiss the as yet unidentified possible threat. Any attempt at humanization therefore comes via the &#39;window to the soul.&#39; Michael is rendered at least 50% less terrifying in the original Halloween once his mask is torn off and we briefly see a vaguely mongoloid young man with glazed-eyes and a slack-jaw. Jane Addams is terrified by a savage cry in the jungle night is terrifying until smarmy David points out it&#39;s a &quot;guarana monkey&quot; (in &lt;i&gt;Creature from the Black Lagoon&lt;/i&gt;). A photo of a strange beast in the water is freaky and exciting--is it the Loch Ness monster!!?!!-- until someone points out it&#39;s an &#39;Irrawaddy dolphin.&#39; Hey, stop ruining this for us, science!&lt;br /&gt;=&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCpzJZGNWwBH77R_yY_pz5RhZGl9qdteFOowzjA584DnXoaNyE8w-pPCNHHMoWOubImHo1flACXPCJMJXVsTVbDP3Xh0zyuapdrMFTNptiOZXA49JudJ627lf_ISuhuWxhURlyLmZPRYjzVvUfWpZjkWdfjIoG7hGpFpjnrHYw2DoslDksQ/s1430/not%20nessie.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCpzJZGNWwBH77R_yY_pz5RhZGl9qdteFOowzjA584DnXoaNyE8w-pPCNHHMoWOubImHo1flACXPCJMJXVsTVbDP3Xh0zyuapdrMFTNptiOZXA49JudJ627lf_ISuhuWxhURlyLmZPRYjzVvUfWpZjkWdfjIoG7hGpFpjnrHYw2DoslDksQ/w640-h232/not%20nessie.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The dolphin, is still the same uncanny monster but now it&#39;s suddenly &#39;friendly.&#39; as someone calls it a dolphin. The cry is still the same bit rendered banal by knowing it&#39;s a monkey. The mask of Michael cannot be quantified or safely ensconced in the symbolic rolodex however. We can know it&#39;s a Capt. Kirk mask, but it&#39;s at best an uncanny variation. The lack of features helps it resist personification.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Acid trippers know this too well. Staring into the bathroom mirror to check your pupil dilation (proof your dose has &#39;kicked in&#39;) is a time-honored tripping tradition. You lean in to check your pupils for the tell-tale in-out dilation, but then you&#39;re pulled through into the inky void inside your own pupils. You too, in your deepest core - the black hole in your being-- are a shark, or a killer, or a doll--emptiness finally recognizing its total lack of distinguishing features. At your core you are the black pool deep inside the electric well from which all perception flows. To have perfect vision would be for the whole eye - and beyond-- to encompass the black of the pupil... an eternal stare in the mirror void. All is else is transitory, shadows and light. The blackness of the pupil, beholding its own darkness, the void staring into the void, this is our eternal truth --it cannot be qualified or labelled. The self and the emptiness of space are one; suddenly you are like a cloud finally realizing you were only ever water and air; you&#39;ve never been permanent - just a sudden locus of perception through which the I AM tries to understand its own black vastness. The dark of the dark is technically blindness - but it is all-seeing. You are seeing through its porthole right now. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The concept of &#39;all-seeing blindness&#39; can expand to the merely limited rather than blind outright: a killer in a full head latex mask has their vision and hearing substantially curtailed, making them easy to evade in real life; but in the case of Michael Myers, he crosses past human associations and into the god/dead zone (the lofty arial perch we &#39;see&#39; from above Bodega Bay). Even with obscured eyes, this chthonic devouring god &#39;sees&#39; the total picture, i.e. Oedipus&#39; full realization of who killed his father and just who Jocasta really is (or Sebastian in Suddenly Last Summer, seeing &quot;the fact of God&quot; by watching the sky fill with hungry black birds swarming down on baby sea turtles). &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Even Dan, the neighbor friend of Lydia&#39;s, who is the first killed by the birds is granted a kind of lewd all-seeing power in the jagged jump cut close-ups as Lydia sees him (top), as if he&#39;s sitting up in bed to receive an early morning lap dance. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Or as Ray Milland originally said in &lt;i&gt;X-the Man with X-ray Eyes &lt;/i&gt;after he had blinded himself, &quot;I can still see!&quot; - a line considered too horrible for mid-60s audiences to contemplate so was edited out of the final cut.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Our unconscious selves--the monsters from the id included--after all, see without benefit of our open eyes (i.e. we&#39;re usually asleep when they come) and they see and know way more than us. And its their job to process things we&#39;ve seen that are so shocking our conscious selves can&#39;t even admit they happened. We black it out. But something in us still has to have seen it, the thing that has no eyes of its own, only the plates, the films, it reviews and stores after our eyes finally go dark.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot;&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3R4Mxgxg_kd0uUlGNx8pf0eaT6379tAQnApDAnfP0x3ZAWy6ifr3uATBL747xmqywiL5Uy1iTqBLos1292lMh1IPk4tb3UuPUlq4Q-LdBdH3VejU6Q_mR8J2HVgOYhyphenhyphenza7iUe/s402/Screen+Shot+2021-09-23+at+4.00.10+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;316&quot; data-original-width=&quot;402&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3R4Mxgxg_kd0uUlGNx8pf0eaT6379tAQnApDAnfP0x3ZAWy6ifr3uATBL747xmqywiL5Uy1iTqBLos1292lMh1IPk4tb3UuPUlq4Q-LdBdH3VejU6Q_mR8J2HVgOYhyphenhyphenza7iUe/w400-h315/Screen+Shot+2021-09-23+at+4.00.10+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER -&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Violet Venable (Devouring Mom #3)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/cinemarchetype-9-devouring-mother.html&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;See also CinemArchetype 9--- the Devouring Mother&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmFrSpO110ASYXHgDqR9FtU6uMe8F8A4WEGg2TZlGLjMBBlgqg7Bxwe0juHIZ6E5hyphenhyphenBy5LzswQFYv3A5ePHdogqaTqxkYN7segOgzdomHegmUc0cey6iqVlONaLITvQur5N7Kc/s852/0273.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;font-size: x-large; font-weight: 700; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmFrSpO110ASYXHgDqR9FtU6uMe8F8A4WEGg2TZlGLjMBBlgqg7Bxwe0juHIZ6E5hyphenhyphenBy5LzswQFYv3A5ePHdogqaTqxkYN7segOgzdomHegmUc0cey6iqVlONaLITvQur5N7Kc/w640-h360/0273.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;IV: &quot;With all due respect to Oedipus&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of the Birds&#39; id-generated carnage is Mitch Brenner&#39;s fault.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If he was stronger--less a mama&#39;s boy--he would have shacked up with Annie Hayworth regardless of his mother&#39;s machinations, and they would have escaped Bodega Bay, Lydia&#39;s fledgeling bird volleys crashing harmlessy against their windshield.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now it&#39;s too late: the combination of Lydia&#39;s grief over her husband, plus the supportive presence of Annie Hayworth ensures a kind of continued arrested development for Mitch (does he sneak over to Annie&#39;s house for booty call quickies after Lydia and the censors go to bed? If so, does Lydia sense it, and is that part of why the birds eventually kill her?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coded Sex references abound in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Birds.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;They&amp;nbsp;&quot;strike, disappear, then start massing again&quot; not unlike an erection during an extended sexual bout,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lydia does some massing herself, gradually working herself into panicked frenzy worrying about what will happen if the birds--her own monsters from the id--get into her house--or consciousness--penetrating her Krell steel shutters, so to speak, &quot;like tissue paper.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKXeTIA0ZwkUG9CFjd3VjavKnEUKn3zscsvKBLKCmvpszhldDeSXBm4kCEQ_H6bQTUtLrI8GCSJuOn6PiSDUr3IljeiT45aR6p_K_bTuuUAfDjG365GWeKN2eU8SXVXJmjMCWTwB7lKEC6LmQDh77OTE5buK8Yvk-Ih6nLK4IKkPWzpW28Q/s852/%22and%20now%20this,%20harm%20my%20own%20daughter!%3F%22.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;225&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKXeTIA0ZwkUG9CFjd3VjavKnEUKn3zscsvKBLKCmvpszhldDeSXBm4kCEQ_H6bQTUtLrI8GCSJuOn6PiSDUr3IljeiT45aR6p_K_bTuuUAfDjG365GWeKN2eU8SXVXJmjMCWTwB7lKEC6LmQDh77OTE5buK8Yvk-Ih6nLK4IKkPWzpW28Q/w400-h225/%22and%20now%20this,%20harm%20my%20own%20daughter!%3F%22.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNh0wDK6yk3rWrf59IwO9-vzujbx51I4LNJSf5XTPScBPMk6jgd26DKqP66o53fOcyoPx6H8xAKarv_hB8QieHg0ukZL1sghpVdAZrPlcNr-Lbt4eKEY3aB1F3IxhbFtyFi9e9m0Owps6R52ahZMwiByzN2wylSXiD2g-G6y1U0gsMrQG57w/s696/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-14%20at%2011.34.06%20AM%20(2).png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;259&quot; data-original-width=&quot;696&quot; height=&quot;238&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNh0wDK6yk3rWrf59IwO9-vzujbx51I4LNJSf5XTPScBPMk6jgd26DKqP66o53fOcyoPx6H8xAKarv_hB8QieHg0ukZL1sghpVdAZrPlcNr-Lbt4eKEY3aB1F3IxhbFtyFi9e9m0Owps6R52ahZMwiByzN2wylSXiD2g-G6y1U0gsMrQG57w/w640-h238/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-14%20at%2011.34.06%20AM%20(2).png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&quot;And now this, too? Harm my own daughter??&quot; - Morbius and Lydia realize their amok unconscious drives are breaking into the real world, threatening their own children (ala Bob in Twin Peaks).&lt;i&gt; Gulp! It&#39;s the end of the world!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now that we&#39;re so deeply engaged in the Freudian reading of the film, I think the ending, having a radio announcement that the birds have risen up all across the west coast, maybe even the world, is unneeded and undoes the psychiatric relevance by &#39;making a federal case out of it&#39; so to speak. The radio announcer says &quot;the reason for this does not seem clear as yet&quot; - but if Hitch is going to go there, the psychiatrist treating Lydia should phone in and explain the reason originated with a domineering mother on Bodega Bay. The shrink&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Psycho&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;explains how Norman &lt;i&gt;became &lt;/i&gt;his own mother, for &lt;i&gt;The Birds&lt;/i&gt; it would be the reverse. In &lt;i&gt;The Birds&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the mother &lt;i&gt;becomes&lt;/i&gt; her dead husband&amp;nbsp;in a weird attempt to become the &lt;i&gt;non du père&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and thus keep Mitch from achieving maturity. She wants to become a good &#39;pack leader&#39; (to use the &lt;i&gt;Dog Whisperer &lt;/i&gt;vernacular), but she is too scared and full of self-doubt, so a demonic air elemental (ala Ariel in &lt;i&gt;The Tempest&lt;/i&gt;) from her repressed chthonic unconscious (repressed even by her own animus, locked into the form of her dead husband) takes over the job. And, like Morbius&#39;s monster from the id, makes Lydia&#39;s most perverse unconscious desires, her repressed-libidinal paternal phallus burlesque-- come true, like some base incestuous desire, long buried under the floorboards of consciousness, spilling out into the real in a furious harpy whirlwind of claws, beaks, blood, and fire, trying to blind everyone around at the time (or lobotomize them ala&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/08/acids-greatest-14-suddenly-last-summer.html&quot; style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Suddenly Last Summer&lt;/a&gt;), lest they bear it witness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once Melanie is &#39;broken&#39; like a wild mustang by Lydia&#39;s rending avian animus, she too is no longer a threat, and the mother assumes matriarchal dominance. Mark her relieved smile as she cradles Melanie&#39;s head once Lydia is reduced to a state traumatized childlike dependence. The birds are calm. Lydia has what she wants. She&#39;s gained a child rather than lost one. We can only assume now that Melanie will need to stay monosyllabic traumatized PTSD sufferer, dependent on Lydia&#39;s care, if the birds shall disperse, the maternal panic that overwhelmed their avian drives now dissipating, their baseline orientation restored, they can go back to peaceful living there in the Bay.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the captain had decided to stay on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-dream-some-impossible-tree-sloth.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Forbidden Planet&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;to marry Alta and start a family, giving Morbius some grandchildren, it&#39;s likely that monster from the id would gradually dissolve in force, going down to maybe some poltergeist dish rattling when Morbius felt too ignored or unappreciated. The couple will know by the broken coffee cups they need to spend more time with him. The planet, no longer forbidden, shall become only Altair-IV. Until he dies - then... hmmm will the Krell boost ensure his total consciousness lives on with all electric power at his command?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;No one Can Argue with a Dead Father.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Probably always a bit controlling to begin with, the death of Lydia&#39;s husband triggers the demonic bird version of the Krell brain boost from&lt;i&gt; Forbidden Planet&lt;/i&gt;. Lydia lies there for &quot;a night and a day&quot; (grieving her husband) and then emerges from her cocoon with a psychic power too harpy/chthonic for her consciousness to handle, but not her repressed shadow, which sends massive wild signals into the ether, tuned to the same frequency the birds use to relay migration and approaching hurricane or earthquake but the psionic equivalent. In order to clear the airwaves and stop the buzzing in their brains they need to attack the source of Lydia&#39;s anxiety. Granted almost unlimited signal strength by her unconscious psychic energy, the range of her unconscious fear and rage signal spreads farther and farther out from the Bodega Bay center. And it won&#39;t stop until Lydia and Annie both are safely blinded, bled, and still.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consciously neither Morbius nor Lydia can&#39;t recognize this force as their other self, the sustainability of their overdeveloped egos hinge on not being able to recognize their complicity in anything evil. In fact, like Oedipus, their dominating egotism us what causes the &#39;hysterical symptom&#39; in the first place- a build up of repressed psychic energy that the Id sees you&#39;re not using, so it steals it all before you even know it&#39;s there, so you can go back to your little ego fiefdom, (3). If either Lydia or Morbius--king and queen of their respective islands, so to speak--were able to recognize their complicity--the murders wouldn&#39;t happen in the first place! This is one of the reasons therapy is so effective. The therapist is able to hold a mirror up to the ego and show it all the things it cannot or will not see about itself (i.e. the ugly back of its own beautiful head). The ego may lash out, announce they&#39;re blind and that&#39;s it, no matter how hard the therapist pries their clamped-shut eyelids, BUT if the patient is worn down enough to interrogate that knee-jerk response within themselves, they finally realize that, as I once said to my own therapist, &quot;I know you&#39;re right because what you just said makes me want to yell at you and run out of the room and never come back.&quot;&amp;nbsp; With confession, and self-acceptance, the ability to recognize and resist one&#39;s own egoic panic, the bottle repressive energies that have been fueling the outbreaks of beaks or claws and (hysteric or not) blindness dissipates like opening a well-shook soda bottle only tiny tiny bit, so the air can gradually leak harmlessly out rather than explode all over your lap and the cinema floor.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In short, if Lydia had a therapist, there wouldn&#39;t be a bird problem in Bodega Bay. This is the miracle of our modern age, and a perfect place to stop. Until next week then, and here&#39;s your bill. Just a dab. And if the rage returns, remember to just crack the bottle top a teensy bit....&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEyrtDeZE_F8TTyq4eBRY_6vIbvc1uVCHKYltHF7XhOD0j1pAfmzK3Fq9cLU24ds0byl7bZFHVnN2SYmU8AWE9sStFB2g9oCBmVL34W9azp4c43nIPaFqH6YGRKQ9oFY5qrqxs/s852/2222.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;480&quot; data-original-width=&quot;852&quot; height=&quot;180&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEyrtDeZE_F8TTyq4eBRY_6vIbvc1uVCHKYltHF7XhOD0j1pAfmzK3Fq9cLU24ds0byl7bZFHVnN2SYmU8AWE9sStFB2g9oCBmVL34W9azp4c43nIPaFqH6YGRKQ9oFY5qrqxs/s320/2222.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;SYMBOLISM!&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;NOTES&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;1) If you read certain passages of the Old Testament, you know which god I mean. It&#39;s the god that puts the Jews through hell with painful prolonged rituals, and animals with endless sacrifice (each new member must bring 20 doves and a sheep, letting their blood washes over the altar before they&#39;re nailed to the church door, etc. It&#39;s the god of the Aztecs and Mayans and maybe the Picts and Romans, a god recognizably bloodthirsty, who spares you his wrath when you throw him someone or something else&#39;s soul torment, their life energy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;3. i.e. like Poltergeists!!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;RELATED POSTS:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-slashological-strata-of-fate.html&quot;&gt;The Slashological Strata of FATE: HALLOWEEN, TERMINATOR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-dream-some-impossible-tree-sloth.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;To Dream Some Impossible Tree Sloth: FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primal-scenesters_25.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Primal Scenesters: TWIN PEAKS&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/08/acids-greatest-14-suddenly-last-summer.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Sparagmos a-Go-Go: SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/cinemarchetype-9-devouring-mother.html&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;CinemArchetype 9--- the Devouring Mother&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/11/x-is-for-xanax-thats-good-enough-forx.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;X is for Xanax: X- THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES (1966)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;Are You Lonesome, Automaton: Terminator and Halloween vs. Hugo / or Woman is the Father of Horror&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Are You Lonesome, Automaton: TERMINATOR VS. HUGO / or: &quot;Woman is the Father of Horror&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/8190619360566238871/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/05/all-seeing-blindness-birds-omniscient.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/8190619360566238871'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/8190619360566238871'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/05/all-seeing-blindness-birds-omniscient.html' title='All-Seeing Blindness: THE BIRDS&#39; Omniscient POV and the Oedipal &quot;Gaze&quot;'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNioLrFyEeca__NJRmu5nVlDYDeKAtru_bQE9a9V0GAy9YfKyF0qwyDVOXewC7ICkKe5wwi0hnBkiOK6sNn-98hoN_nZnFOcFlVcao7Ah1mMx4P6MxI70wmzAP_BvAK_VJso3H/s72-w640-h360-c/0561.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-3078302424343598939</id><published>2023-05-24T10:40:00.009-05:00</published><updated>2025-01-25T14:15:17.458-05:00</updated><title type='text'>It&#39;s Only an Apricot. It&#39;s Only an Apricot: &quot;MANOS&quot; &amp; Myth </title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHxKVZaXWet0iSxW0wlxdkUuzb0VxNzKguHlHGB_C1TZZ_IJY9PpjByplTMDe33QBNelELOaAWBdWPdbTDQTYiM5zUjHExvKjOLBieP2-HfiXEEtNfLy2a8aH9l_T62AebmtKWGRvCJgiZSZhjY71P3CtV4wM0LAytDvgYJZO4QpWHDlGzqA=s1899&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;991&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1899&quot; height=&quot;334&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHxKVZaXWet0iSxW0wlxdkUuzb0VxNzKguHlHGB_C1TZZ_IJY9PpjByplTMDe33QBNelELOaAWBdWPdbTDQTYiM5zUjHExvKjOLBieP2-HfiXEEtNfLy2a8aH9l_T62AebmtKWGRvCJgiZSZhjY71P3CtV4wM0LAytDvgYJZO4QpWHDlGzqA=w640-h334&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Trash that contains the element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art&quot; -&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;---&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt; Douglas Sirk&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Some of us love &#39;bad&#39; movies for different reasons than the hooting at it with an audience at midnight, or snarking over brewskis. We find joy in the aesthetic arrest of true myth. We love the vast gaps between normally filled brickwork that let us look into the depths of our own unconscious, where archetypal myth and drive-in movies collide. We get some of that with the appeal of &lt;i&gt;Drunk Histor&lt;/i&gt;y on Comedy Central. But mostly we get it in very intellectual Brechtian exercises (Godard, Resnais) or very agog accidental geniuses (Ed Wood, Luigi Cozzi). It&#39;s a matter of taste, and pretense, perhaps: would you rather be told a story by an excited ten year-old delinquent, so enthusiastic he can&#39;t keep his words straight, or some boring, well-rehearsed little mama&#39;s boy who delivers every line with emphases calculated for various emotional end points?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Yo, f--k those end points, man. In case you can&#39;t tell which side of that I fall under, rest assured I love the bad films, mainly the older ones, of course. I can&#39;t connect with the recent yen for vanity projects by people like Tommy Wiseau and Neil Breen. They&#39;re too sad, and maybe hit a bit too close to home as far as my own amok egotism. Even the thing Gen-Y has for 80s VHS that makes fans of things like &lt;i&gt;Miami Connection &lt;/i&gt;and Deadly Prey is lost to me - the 80s weren&#39;t an easy time for me as a sullen teen so the associations are of a depressive funk from watching too many movies, spending too much time mulling through rental aisles, instead of going outside to play or having a girlfriend. That&#39;s why I go for the stuff I saw on TV at 5 AM as a kid waiting for Saturday morning cartoons to start, sneaking around to not wake my parents, and finding my Rosebud in something awesome like &lt;i&gt;Plan Nine from Outer Space&lt;/i&gt;, a film I could understand every word of, even at five years old, finally - an adult film that made sense!! I didn&#39;t care if it had mismatched shots or unconvincing doubles, I just loved it gave me both the classic horror pantheon (vampires staggering around pitch-black graveyards) and science fiction (UFOs and deflector guns, a strange UFO that&#39;s shiny and round from afar and black and square up close.) And no way to get lost as there&#39;s the trilling wonderment of Criswell&#39;s narration (&quot;death the proud brother...&quot;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It tapped into why I loved monster movies, and I still hunt that thrill, I find it mostly in little moments peppered throughout (older, from 30s-70s) bad movies, where sublime poetry and mythic realness is served, reminding us that before TV we stared hypnotized into the nighttime fire while stories were spun by elders, the radio, or our own imaginations. Without a nonstop barrage of images saturating the sponge of our brain, our imaginations were vivid, ready to fill in the blanks so we could be watching our own dreams while awake.&amp;nbsp; Extreme-hunger-spiked paraedolia met the flicker of the fire, not unlike the flicker of a strip of film through the projector (with the shutter blacking out the transitional moments) creating the illusion of movement. Calling movies the flicks is no idle association with fire.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We don&#39;t realize it, perhaps, but bad films can bring us back to that, they strip away the illusory dross to get down to archetypal performative basics. They remind us that CGI and 3D are the bane of our imagination. Our unconscious archetypal energies, from which we are cut off from communicating directly with by waking consciousness, want desperately to reach us - and they always do so with images. Images are their flesh and blood, their voice and echo. Like Harpo doing his charades bit to get across some urgent plot point, they rely on &#39;sounds like&#39; anagrams, and projection. These days it&#39;s only when we&#39;re insane, sleep-deprived, tripping, or enlightened, that the veil parts. The dream maker tendrils finally break up through the locked cellar door and go twisting out all over our tight-ship dinner party, clutching and coiling, breaking plates, and carrying on. My they are an unruly bunch!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But mostly, we only occasionally get a note or a postcard passed up through the floorboards. And then, since the unconscious can watch what we watch, we get a pure jolt of ecstatic delight when an archeytpal elelment below wants us to know they relate to something enough to project themselves onto it. Thus my heart soars every time I see George Barrows&#39; post-swig shiver while they pass the bottle around in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Mesa of Lost Women,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;or the strange nocturnal dance in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Cat Women of the Moon,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;or&amp;nbsp;Tor Johnson rising from the tomb in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Plan Nine&lt;/i&gt;; or the titular&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Astounding She Monster&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;jumping through Robert Clarke&#39;s cabin window like a big bodystocking-clad she cat; or Lou Ferigno and and Circe riding a rock-propelled chariot past the moon in the 1985 Cannon/Cozzi masterpiece &lt;i&gt;Hercules, &lt;/i&gt;because all the elements are there. Arguine its unconvincing is like arguing against a Tarot reading for having dogeared cards. The reading is even more potent for the aging process... any sage projecting itself up onto a passing Yoda T-shirt knows that...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Something about these peak weird moments in the cheap, wild, meta-enriched films really speaks to a deep well in my soul, reflecting the cheap look of my b&amp;amp;w dreams. When these oasis moments happen, it&#39;s like finding a well-stocked bar on a seemingly deserted island.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Anyway, all that is the long way around to saying woe is he who comes to &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot; The Hands of Fate&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;(the quotation marks are part of the title),&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;for such priceless whiskey womb moments. Do so and your happy place GPS might lead you all the way around the world rather than admit there is no &quot;there&quot; there. But it&#39;s so &lt;i&gt;almost &lt;/i&gt;perfect that finding something to love within it&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;becomes a challenge to every outsider film fan. It&#39;s a maze that promises all sorts of gifts, but leads you only to fever dream dead ends.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Maybe you know the fever dream I mean: where you hear a snatch of some song you heard in passing or while watching TV in your bed, and it just repeats over and over on a loop in your brain (2). You will get that with the score of &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot; &lt;/i&gt;which means that if--even with that score--you can enjoy &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos,&quot; &lt;/i&gt;you can enjoy&amp;nbsp;hell itself. That means, to you, heaven is right here on earth.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But know ye this: the enlightened one asks for the dirtiest jobs, lives the most spartan of lives, gives up the endless chase for nirvana, even the pursuit of gettin&#39; wasted, or living &quot;the fine life, baby&quot; as Snoop Dogg would say in those Corona ads. In doing so, pleasure chases &lt;i&gt;him. &lt;/i&gt;Pain runs from him. Pain is scared, it has no power anymore. Free of all judgement, recused from the bench, such a man is to be feared only by fear itself. For him All is connection and bliss. He moves beyond duality. At last he is the one hand clapping. He is the noise of the tree falling in the woods when no ears are around.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;Manos&quot; can deliver the final blow to the door betwixt duality and its transcendence, all you gotta do is walk on through the wall, headfirst.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;----&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;PS - SORRY FOR THE EXTREME LENGTH OF THIS PIECE. I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IT FOR TOO LONG (&lt;/b&gt;and actually it used to be twice as long with a long preamble about surrealist art and the joy of paredolia and campfire stories as a kind of mental TV. - Some other time). As always, I&#39;d suggest just scrolling around, reading any paragraph that starts interestingly, and stopping when it starts to get all Joycean. ) I&#39;m working on it.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;----------------&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt; People like Ed Wood are revered today because they put their heart and soul into their cheap-ass outsider films, and you can tell that they&#39;re weird people trying to make a normal, quality best film they can, but their fractured sense of reality shows through every armor chink. Ed proved he was perfectly capable of making a boring &#39;normal&#39; if cheap B-movie,&amp;nbsp;where the &lt;i&gt;mise-en-scene &lt;/i&gt;could be threadbare without drawing attention to itself (as in &lt;i&gt;Jail-Bait&lt;/i&gt;) but it was when he tried to make big personal statements while moving into horror to both help out and exploit Bela Lugosi that his imagination took wing, leaving his ability far in the dust and earning his place in the cult pantheon, making him the saint of all outsider or &#39;folk-art&#39; filmmakers.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But when normal people make films that are intentionally &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; to be weird or bad, it&#39;s only ever &#39;quirky&#39; in that blando calrissian tradition.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;is a little different from both. Its director is a normal person but he isn&#39;t &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; to be weird. He isn&#39;t trying &lt;i&gt;period.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;First/last-time director, full-time Texas fertilizer salesman Hal Warren barely achieves the rudiments of what a feature film should be--but he won the bet he&amp;nbsp;made with fellow Texan and renowned screenwriter Stirling Silliphant (it probably went along the lines of: &quot; Making a film is easy, Stirling, slinging fertilizer is way harder.&quot; / &quot;If it&#39;s so easy, Hal, I bet you can&#39;t make one!&quot; / &quot;Yer on!&quot;&lt;i&gt;).&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;In the end, Warren proves himself a master of slinging fertilizer, no matter what he does.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Yessir, Hal Warren shows just how easy it can&#39;t be.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Being contemptuous of shit-slinging is one thing, but does contempt for the craft of filmmaking alone make a film interesting or rewarding? It depends, I guess, on who you invite over for your &quot;beer and pizza night&quot; to watch it. That&#39;s apparently the best way to enjoy &lt;i&gt;&quot;Manos&quot; --&lt;/i&gt;with buds, brews, and pizzas, according to the comments on imdb. If you&#39;re sober and alone though, &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&lt;/i&gt;&quot; is perfect for being tripped out on SSRIs, at 4 AM, alone, in the dark. Wondering if life in the simulation is really like this movie - a kind of fly in amber trap in which all movement circles back to itself.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What Warren hath wrought is as a God making a world in one night, only to later realize it doesn&#39;t revolve, and therefor has no gravity, so all the shit on it is just floating away. And mighty glad of it it is.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;On the seventh day, Hal rested.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Looks like he rested the first six days, too.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Wake up, Hal!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUwoqP7sBrOeKTQwbcTvlTtppM7lNDvWG-1FgwDorVyY0NvVP-WavKVmMrV5cDk_1eSYinNH7R2QvQLTesVwUenwj0ccQB1HsqLQaqxcl9eigGZaMTPgtghoGt3VAvmiT0n70tHPfmSfgXq-iUtdfGoCMc94-Cm2UJPB9lIAiyaLZ0tGBaVw/s1870/manos%20copy.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1449&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1870&quot; height=&quot;310&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUwoqP7sBrOeKTQwbcTvlTtppM7lNDvWG-1FgwDorVyY0NvVP-WavKVmMrV5cDk_1eSYinNH7R2QvQLTesVwUenwj0ccQB1HsqLQaqxcl9eigGZaMTPgtghoGt3VAvmiT0n70tHPfmSfgXq-iUtdfGoCMc94-Cm2UJPB9lIAiyaLZ0tGBaVw/w400-h310/manos%20copy.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;But despite that whiskey womb happy place GPS pointing us far from &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&#39;&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;reach as we can get, there just might be a happy place gold mine in this thar abyss.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://teleport-city.com/2009/02/12/manos-the-hands-of-fate/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Teleport City&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;says,&amp;nbsp;&quot;When you dedicate a portion of your life to the pursuit of obscure cinema existing beyond the limits of mainstream film, a movie like&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;is both exactly what you’ve been looking for as well as the ultimate instrument of your destruction.&quot; Bill Gordon at&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://worstmoviesevermade.com/manos-the-hands-of-fate-diane-mahree/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Worst Movies Ever Made&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;summed up its (lack of) appeal thus: &quot;Give it any amount of stars you wish, or don’t give any (...)&amp;nbsp;they are all accurate.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt; lives on the tape splice of the bad movie Möbius strip, a zone where infinite plentitude and absolute absence connect. With &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&lt;/i&gt;,&quot; emptiness at last has a mirror to behold itself,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;If you stare back at yourself through the mirror long enough, zooming right into your own pupils, you just may realize that, when the black of your pupils zooms in on the blackness of their reflection for long enough, you&#39;re gazing into two empty black holes through which you can peak into the abyss of non-being. Such is &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos,&lt;/i&gt;&quot; an empty void, with some nice 16mm color photography now that it&#39;s been restored for Blu-ray.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTUb8UwvnTG938Gb8VkOMc7oKNN4I4mCbxDh0FCTHpqbSg9sEROENkw_zA9mu4ZLwd-iethtX2mjIkUnaJHbVFVd1WxPzNe_b4KICWgG-twMgMtX1wms2pGfadfNRZHMPki6Gnrsxjk5RbsA2iVU5ir_ESdeU4ob9QiXmcFb8mcVQJtTuTJw=s1874&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1213&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1874&quot; height=&quot;259&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTUb8UwvnTG938Gb8VkOMc7oKNN4I4mCbxDh0FCTHpqbSg9sEROENkw_zA9mu4ZLwd-iethtX2mjIkUnaJHbVFVd1WxPzNe_b4KICWgG-twMgMtX1wms2pGfadfNRZHMPki6Gnrsxjk5RbsA2iVU5ir_ESdeU4ob9QiXmcFb8mcVQJtTuTJw=w400-h259&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The plot&amp;nbsp;could not be simpler or more familiar: a family road trip gone awry. The difference: the car is lost in the empty scrubland of nowhere Texas instead of the usual Jason woods or&lt;i&gt; Eyes&lt;/i&gt;-hilled desert. It seems easy and yet impossible to get lost out there, but with dad at the wheel, anything&#39;s not only possible but inevitable. His MILF wife riding shotgun; daughter&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(the only good actor)&amp;nbsp;in the backseat, oblivious to the mounting tension, distracted continually by her doll and puppy They&#39;re driving around in circles, not thinking to ask directions from the cops they pass, or the couple making out by the side of the road. They eventually find a hand-made sign that points the way to a lodge where dad hopes they can stay the night. A sinister, obviously chemically impaired confederate uniform-sporting goatish caretaker named Torgo stands in front of the door (we never really see the building behind him), squinting and staggering under the magic hour glow. He tells them-- in a kind of drunken hiccup-style--and like all the voices, dubbed in after the fact, that they can&#39;t come in. The owner won&#39;t like it and they&#39;re closed. But the dad, afraid of driving under all that afternoon sun, bullies his way in.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Things are pretty weird in the lodge. It&#39;s not even a lodge. There is a room with a couch and a big wet painting and a small ratty bedroom--replete with double bed against a wall and a footlocker for furnishing--leading to a small ratty kitchen--replete with small ratty sink--leading to a giant back porch--replete with floodlights and yard spreading off into the open desert). After the wife pleads and nags for an hour or so and the child&#39;s dog is mysteriously killed (off camera), dad finally decides to leave. But they never do get to leave. Somehow, the car won&#39;t start. Or something. The dad can&#39;t fix it, nor make decent life decisions (at least he&#39;s armed, not that it will do much good). Though Torgo is apparently hobbled and suffering from St. Vitus&#39;s Dance, the hale and hearty dad keeps insisting the poor guy bring their bags in, then out, in, then out. It&#39;s pretty funny to imagine would it would be like if some random family barged into your small house and demanded you load and unload their luggage while complaining every minute about your furnishings.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And then, out back, night falls and... the &#39;Master&#39; awakens. He&#39;s a pale ectomorph whose only masterful quality is a fierce stare and thick black eyebrows. He does a lot of standing, spreading out his crazy &#39;red hand on a black background&#39; cape/shawl a lot--rightly proud of it. A thick black smoke, rising from a small fire pit at his feet, surrounds him, as if he&#39;s outlined in black sharpie drawn onto each frame. &quot;Manos,&quot; he screeches, &quot;must be &lt;i&gt;served&lt;/i&gt;.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Just to be &#39;clear,&#39; though he is the &quot;Master&quot; he &lt;i&gt;serves &quot;&lt;/i&gt;Manos.&quot; But what or who &quot;Manos&quot; is never does get explained. The difference between them seems uncertain from scene to scene. We &lt;i&gt;do &lt;/i&gt;know this cult likes hand sculptures. And hand symbolism. Did you know &lt;i&gt;manos &lt;/i&gt;means &#39;hands&#39;? So the title translated is: &quot;Hands: Hand of Fate?&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As the film spins on, Torgo has taken a shine to the wife after watching her undress in the mirror (down to her slip), and asks the Master if he can keep her for himself. But the Master wants her to join &lt;i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; own harem of undead-style brides, all of them wearing &lt;i&gt;wayyy&lt;/i&gt; too much cheap make-up, and these iill-fitting diaphanous gowns. Most of the time, they&#39;re rolling around in the sand in endless catfights while the Master sits there, vexed... but obviously used to it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Needless to say, things don&#39;t end well.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;They didn&#39;t begin well either.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still, all the elements for a&lt;i&gt; schlectesklassisch&lt;/i&gt; are there: the fractured pacing, the dream logic, the loopy editing; the canned post-sync dialogue seemingly beamed in from beyond the grave; the dead space before and after the lines (which should have been snipped off by an editor rather than someone who only knows how to tape strips of film together); the unhinged performances, the almost passive-aggressively threadbare sets. The actor who plays the dad. Oh wait, that&#39;s Hal himself! A real hack of all trades.&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;SCORING THE BARREL&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But there is one very important element for successful bad film bliss missing though: a good&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;score.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Post-sync sound cheapjack movies like &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&lt;/i&gt;&quot; usually have royalty-free music playing almost nonstop to help excuse the lack of dialogue and sound effects. BUT for that &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to suck (in a genuinely bad way) we need either the right (or totally wrong) kind of music-such as that ominous, bombastic library music used for&lt;i&gt; Astounding She-Monster, Plan Nine&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;u&gt;and&lt;/u&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/04/bronson-canyon-blues-beast-from-yucca.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Beast of Yucca Flats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;)- and/or totally crocked narration (Criswell being the ultimate example&lt;i&gt;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Warren waives both of these easily procured things, perhaps afraid of their power. He post-syncs the dialogue fairly well for such a cheap suit production...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt;, for music, we&#39;re treated to the magical lite jazz of Russ Huddleson and Robert Smith, Jr. (Soundtrack available on Spotify!)&amp;nbsp;a duet of modern piano and flute (or sometimes alto sax) that is the height of mood-killer.&amp;nbsp; Jazz is perfectly fine in its way, even elevator jazz like this, but no, no, no, &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;here&lt;/i&gt;. Imagine if Kenny G. did the score for &lt;i&gt;Suspiria&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Halloween!&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Think, Hal Warren! Think what &quot;Manos&quot; could have meant to the world had you pumped it up with low- end ominous dread or pounding bombast! Even those piano mashes and frenzied Spanish guitar moments in &lt;i&gt;Mesa of Lost Women&lt;/i&gt; and&lt;i&gt; Jail Bait &lt;/i&gt;would have been perfect.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal, come clean: did you just grab the closest, most royalty-free-looking stock jazz album from your grandma&#39;s attic?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Actually, the music is fine... for awhile. It casts a nice languid, slightly melancholy, almost romantic summer&#39;s idyll kind of mood when the family is just driving around, but then, when the menace should be building, ye olde flute keeps going. Songs and riffs repeat as if Warren merely started the record over again, utterly unaware it&#39;s permissible to actually edit &lt;i&gt;to&lt;/i&gt; the music rather than just using it as wallpaper. Did he think that was cheating? As it is, the space between tracks on the album occur right in the middle of suspenseful actions, it doesn&#39;t bother old Hal.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But us? Oh yeah. Just try to hear the whole movie all the way through in one sitting and that recurring, melodic little refrain will drive you nuts. It repeats and repeats, goes away and comes back again, pausing only so Hal can flip the record over, and eventually grows so irritating it will make you either surrender to it or go totally insane. Things like that are what keep me disengaged from so many of those 1960s black-and-white nudist and softcore Wishman style movies touted by Something Weird / Vinegar Syndrome / AFGA. If the library music the editor uses is good, like the robust Germanic jazz of&lt;i&gt; Horror of Spider Island&lt;/i&gt;, or the retro-futurist loungecore or&lt;i&gt; Nude on the Moon,&lt;/i&gt; it&#39;s something to cherish in the bad/weird movie desert island collection, the &#39;falling asleep or coming down from panic&#39; section. If it&#39;s bad, like the royalty-free Phillip Sousa marches and Joplin ragtime traditionals in things like&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Monster of Camp Sunshine&lt;/i&gt;, it gets alarmingly tedious.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And yet. With some effort, can a happy place still be found in the hands of &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt;, lite jazz flute be damned? Or celebrated? Can we make a heaven out of muzak hell?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE TEMPLE DRAKE OF TEXAS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIogPEjtmxyiWA28LovxwAU-C8BC_hXaDUDYHAKD37hRImSVqhruuCKnmyuVECqIsUvJuaHntH8bFBkbiAbWDyX1Pz8r-AFZpI3dO1Q6k2q3hC_QKF9iPvQGFUt72WlIv6q9YoDfi6MEchXcGiDORTMcUWVZPdqTTmnK6GCPo_RTsd-Ac7cA=s1797&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1337&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1797&quot; height=&quot;238&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIogPEjtmxyiWA28LovxwAU-C8BC_hXaDUDYHAKD37hRImSVqhruuCKnmyuVECqIsUvJuaHntH8bFBkbiAbWDyX1Pz8r-AFZpI3dO1Q6k2q3hC_QKF9iPvQGFUt72WlIv6q9YoDfi6MEchXcGiDORTMcUWVZPdqTTmnK6GCPo_RTsd-Ac7cA=w320-h238&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Maybe. But succumbing to the anti-charms of &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;requires an embrace of that eerie feeling of when you feel a banal dream slowly turns into a nightmare the harder you try to wake up and you realize you&#39;re catching the flu. You&#39;re trapped in some restaurant foyer, waiting for your parents to pick you up, but they never come. Eventually you get stuck to the floor, time stops. Resistance to the miasma just gets you more and more stuck, like a mammoth in a tar pit, or Miriam Hopkins stuck in a bootlegger&#39;s shack in&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/01/first-david-lynch-movie-story-of-temple.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Story of Temple Drake&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Actually you should see them both as a double feature as they&#39;re alike in weird refractive ways.&amp;nbsp;While &lt;i&gt;Drake &lt;/i&gt;is about a terrified rich girl trapped in a bootlegger&#39;s disheveled farmhouse in the middle of a swamp, unable to get a lift or walk thanks&amp;nbsp;to the lateness of the hour, the pouring rain, and her date&#39;s drunken stupor; in &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;we have a mom trapped at a &#39;lodge&#39; (i.e. three dog-eared rooms) in the middle of the Texas scrub,&amp;nbsp;by the late afternoon sun and her husband&#39;s dim bulb thinking. Instead of the pull of dangerous roughie sexuality that is Jack La Rue&#39;s hooded eyes, it&#39;s the&amp;nbsp;angular jet black eyebrows and furious glaring of Tom Neyman and his big black dog, enveloped by black smoke from a small fire pit.&amp;nbsp; Instead of a well-meaning idiot man child handyman getting shot trying (and failing) to protect Temple Drake from being raped, in &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt; we have an idiot man child having his hand burnt off for molesting the wives and ogling the mom. Instead of the Trigger bringing the in-shock Temple back with him and setting her up in a brothel, here we have the Master enfolding the wife and even daughter into his harem of sleeping undead. Instead of a solid eerie pre-code drama about deep south class prejudice and sexual violence, we have a shitty mid-60s &#39;horror&#39; film endeavoring to be about the danger of letting your husband make important decisions. Both movies show how a probably smart, sexually alive, good, sexy woman might wind up trapped in no-exit patriarchal purgatory thanks to a dysfunctional male companion, become unsuccessfully protected by a useless idiot man-child handyman, and bent to the will of an unsavory dark-haired stranger with piercing eyes looking to expand his stable, so to speak. It&#39;s like a procession of male dysfunction, from the merely weak, to the mentally disabled, to the truly villainous.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3AshaGWxXgMuNAW9vFlYzeq-E8txONSWu9_aZqseGn3jxFlXipdjHw11SqYhIzPuoujBio153_8O3Fc_IXnPAOGO3sumVq7cXadFpV6eQDXnaiQoMFxzoVS6SdGM_5uyFLajMl7NVNEJUGgpv-c8zsI2yuotK21GwimHgoZGTPG41sjc0tQ/s640/the-story-of-temple-drake.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;333&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;334&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3AshaGWxXgMuNAW9vFlYzeq-E8txONSWu9_aZqseGn3jxFlXipdjHw11SqYhIzPuoujBio153_8O3Fc_IXnPAOGO3sumVq7cXadFpV6eQDXnaiQoMFxzoVS6SdGM_5uyFLajMl7NVNEJUGgpv-c8zsI2yuotK21GwimHgoZGTPG41sjc0tQ/w640-h334/the-story-of-temple-drake.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Another saving grace of &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; other bad movies: charmingly bankrupt art direction. Outdoing them all to the point of absurdity are the weird random set decorations in &lt;i&gt;&quot;Manos,&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;so spartan and run-down they become like a passive aggressive jab by or at the director (who, by all accounts, was an incompetent tyrant - but hey, it&#39;s for art). There are some cool &quot;manos&quot; sculptures and a painting of The Master and his dog that looks like it&#39;s still wet; there&#39;s a single empty beer bottle; a yard of rope hanging on the wall; a random white gown hung up like a curtain; a ratty trunk; a shitty couch; a small twin bed in the corner. We spend a lot of time looking at &quot;all&quot; these things, since nothing else is going on. We get to know them pretty well. It&#39;s not the kind of place anyone in their right mind would want to stay in. But what can you do? It&#39;s still light outside so dad is afraid to keep driving. And it&#39;s not like mom ever even tries to take over. Well, she could demand the keys and drive away with the child.... but not her. She&#39;s too conditioned by the mores of the day.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdrnoHl0BUjIN0TlavgO0ZHAa7r1w18nlSlUt4T2v63k0UICzB-UsGCkxAqs_5sMWwZTngdf8uRP2FtH_vXUd1tM7siw55GbTIwZeeKnFPr50FK6Z-YotxjAdEdrIKV3kJiapOyoc263TWF5Am0c3lxZ4J4I3Gh2BCon479EVOpLFhoou4Yw=s1869&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1343&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1869&quot; height=&quot;230&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdrnoHl0BUjIN0TlavgO0ZHAa7r1w18nlSlUt4T2v63k0UICzB-UsGCkxAqs_5sMWwZTngdf8uRP2FtH_vXUd1tM7siw55GbTIwZeeKnFPr50FK6Z-YotxjAdEdrIKV3kJiapOyoc263TWF5Am0c3lxZ4J4I3Gh2BCon479EVOpLFhoou4Yw=w320-h230&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Yes,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot; &lt;/i&gt;slides&amp;nbsp;you a stealth-feminist critique of bland nuclear family patriarchy, maybe right in under Warren&#39;s own nose. Despite its worst efforts, a sub-basement subtext is there for the digging. While still in the car Margaret (Diane Adelson - who is quite lovely and well-photographed --&lt;i&gt;left)&lt;/i&gt; keeps insisting they don&#39;t stay, but it falls on husband&#39;s deaf ears:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Torgo: &lt;i&gt;&quot;You can&#39;t stay&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Mike: &lt;i&gt;Well Torgo, are we coming in or not!?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Margaret: &lt;i&gt;Mike! I don&#39;t want to stay here!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Torgo: &lt;i&gt;You can&#39;t come in.&lt;/i&gt;&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Mike:&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;Well&lt;/u&gt;, Torgo? In or out?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Margaret:&lt;i&gt; Mike!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Is that how you sell fertilizer, Hal?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I imagine the patented Hall Warren sales pitch goes something like this:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal: &lt;i&gt;So what do ya think, I send over six bags of this fertilizer to start with?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Store owner: &lt;i&gt;I don&#39;t think so, our shelves are already stocked.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal: &lt;i&gt;Well, do we have a deal or not? The six?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Store Owner: &lt;i&gt;I said NO.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal: &lt;i&gt;Make up your mind, do I leave the six bags or not?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Store owner: &lt;i&gt;Get out of here!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal: &lt;i&gt;I have other places to be so please let me know about the six. I have them right here.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Store owner&lt;i&gt;: Get out!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal:&lt;i&gt; Come on, just make up your mind. You won&#39;t regret it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Store owner: &lt;i&gt;Ugh, fine! Just leave them and go.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal:&lt;i&gt; OK, come get them out of my car.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;There&#39;s a nice meta-parallel between Margaret&#39;s sense of futility--unable to prevent her own looming doom due to gender codes that require &lt;i&gt;him &lt;/i&gt;to do the decision-making--mirrored in the anxiety an actress like Adelson might feel being in a film with a director like Warren. Here she is, finally landing a starring role in a film, only to discover it&#39;s being directed by an artistically-challenged &#39;idiot manchild&#39; incompetent, who&#39;s sooner or later going to ask hwe to take her dress off. Whatever performance you turn in, his wrongheaded judgments are going to ensure your name is forever blighted (or, more usually, forgotten) as the film is either booed off the screen or shelved. Tainted by its bad rep, you&#39;ll never work again, or you will be back where you started, unknown.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Young married women of the era would find this same trap at home: totally dependent on some man to provide money and lodging from now until the end of time; a man she maybe barely knows, as it turns out, once the flower of love and sexual attraction begins to fade. (The moral codes of the day being what they were, you had to buy before you could try). Adelson, perhaps unknowingly, seems to tap into this frustration, she uses her actorly misgivings to convey the sense of &quot;too-late&quot; realization that her keen sense of danger--her feminine instinct--will always be dismissed as nonsense by the logical, blinders-on men around her.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Meanwhile dad is struggling in his own gender straitjacket--the awful responsibility of calling &lt;i&gt;all &lt;/i&gt;the shots producing judgement-impairing stress--almost as much as she is from having &lt;i&gt;none&lt;/i&gt;. He&#39;s conditioned to ignore her intuition and she&#39;s conditioned to only try and influence her husband&#39;s decisions, rather than taking the direct action herself, seizing the reins of her own destiny (i.e. leaving dad at the lodge if he so badly wants to stay and driving away without him).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Thus the subtext: adherence to outmoded gender norms expose the entire family to cult machinations. He&#39;s obligated to take charge whether he knows what to do or not; she&#39;s obligated to never take charge even though she does. She only has an &quot;I told you so&quot; locked and loaded in her heart by way of protection when the shit inevitably flies through the fan; but is it all the man&#39;s fault for being wishy-washy or hers for not being more assertive?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Blame their parents&#39; parents&#39; parents&#39; parents&#39;! They should have done more rebelling!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Considering the era this movie was made in, we can hardly be surprised at how much the patriarchy is creaking and groaning with the pressure that will soon explode it from within. Movies like &lt;i&gt;The Cracker Factory &lt;/i&gt;and &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://brightlightsfilm.com/dizzy-from-the-altitude-happy-to-plummet-pre-code-cinema-and-the-post-code-shock/#.Yi9o2hDMIqw&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;An Unmarried Woman&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;were still a decade away, but their nucleus had been forming and throwing the horrors of this gender slavery into sharp relief/&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;This &lt;i&gt;Temple Drake&lt;/i&gt; nightmare, this &quot;the guy who brought you is passed out or otherwise unable to accurately assess the looming danger to your honor&#39; sense of dread, the forlorn gender-specific nightmare endangerment that opens up the broken heteronormative pair bond to outside influences and makes these movies &#39;scary&#39; on at least some horror movie level. So to escape the situation her husband has put her in, she has to change masters, so to speak. She latches onto the first strong male or group that comes along that offers security, and that&#39;s usually either the church, a cult, a commune or a pyramid scheme (and really, what&#39;s the difference?).&amp;nbsp; It&#39;s all MANOS.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4fv4_7Gw41NUQb6bXjAyGB6dRmoKtiCCRnDsa5U7C4Egb0FFj7xoGPfSICYtj07S3aRvBA6mzyMeZYIgkWWGHlRoRUZP4h0wiyJSIkZcuSfanQpw06Ts8RC-jhQqGtWT6D2XW4-w1vy4Rs-pw2UBqVoIzfOBnoo-Z-cqNl0ZToxI9FXjASw=s1952&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1439&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1952&quot; height=&quot;236&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4fv4_7Gw41NUQb6bXjAyGB6dRmoKtiCCRnDsa5U7C4Egb0FFj7xoGPfSICYtj07S3aRvBA6mzyMeZYIgkWWGHlRoRUZP4h0wiyJSIkZcuSfanQpw06Ts8RC-jhQqGtWT6D2XW4-w1vy4Rs-pw2UBqVoIzfOBnoo-Z-cqNl0ZToxI9FXjASw=s320&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Aside from Adelson, feminist subtext continues into the date rapey accusations of the Master re: Torgo&#39;s presumable molesting of the Master&#39;s brides during the day while they are asleep / immobilized; (&quot;The women remember everything you say to them, Torgo. And they remember everything you&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;to them.&quot;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Of course we only ever see them sleeping at night, which makes the &#39;dream logic&#39; or &#39;inconsistency&#39; even more palpable, since they presumably are awake at night but sleep in the day. (The whole movie goes down basically from dusk to dawn in a single nigh--at least that&#39;s in its favor). On the other hand, it&#39;s less spooky to imagine them all immobilized like dead statues all through the afternoon Texas sun, (what do the neighbors think? It&#39;s like if Karloff in &lt;i&gt;The Black Cat &lt;/i&gt;kept all his dead wife trophy cases out by the mailbox)&amp;nbsp;it makes sense on a tactile if not logical level that we only ever see them sleeping at night.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As for the brides of Manos, there is at least some unity going on with their embracing of new female blood--the argument being whether to kill the child or prep her for a life as a (hopefully future only) bride of the Master. They all agree the man should die. There is an &quot;us&quot; with the wives that speaks of a common consensus (&quot;jealousy is not part of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;us.&quot;) &lt;/i&gt;On that level, at least, there is a strong matriarchal current. At most the &quot;Master&quot; seems rather fey kind of shrieking totem, a mix of Franklin Pangborn,&amp;nbsp; Nick Cave, Tom Skerritt if he was playing the dept. store clerk on the &lt;i&gt;Jack Benny Show &lt;/i&gt;(and drunk), and Lux Interior (from The Cramps).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;MANOS AND MASTER&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;All that aside, there isn&#39;t anything compelling going on in &quot;&lt;i&gt;Manos&quot;: The Hands of Fate. &lt;/i&gt;There isn&#39;t a whole lot going on, period. And maybe that lack of things going on is, in the end, what is, in fact, going on. Like &quot;the Black Lodge&quot; in Twin Peaks, this Manos &quot;lodge&quot; is allegedly somewhere in a dirt road maze of Texas scrubland, probably where a nuclear test ripped a hole in the membrane that separates dream and reality. There is no sign-in desk here, no food or drink service, no keys, hallways, or more than one ratty looking twin bed. The expansive luxury of the columned back porch and its weird Giacometti ash tray-kind / brazier kind of thing for an open flame make a pointed and surreal contrast with the impoverished rooms of the lodge itself, as if a&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Gone with the Wind&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;slave shack had the Tara&#39;s wraparound veranda.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;Once it&#39;s so dark out it&#39;s time to wake, the Master (Tom Neyman) with his thick black eyebrows, groovy black mustache, pale skin, thin frame and ultra-groovy &quot;Manos&quot; cape/robe/gown/ outfit &quot; must be&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;served&quot;&lt;/i&gt;!&amp;nbsp; With toxic-looking black smoke enshrouding him, he lets loose with a lot of spontaneous praying and orating in the name of Manos.&amp;nbsp; The black smoke is interesting as it&#39;s so dark it becomes like black magic marker rectangular halo, obscuring his pale face and those jet red fingers from us like he&#39;s being &quot;X&quot;-ed out with a black crayon by a frenzied ADD toddler. It accentuates his uncanny stare straight into--and through-- the camera, as if he&#39;s about to call you by name through the veil of time and meta-textual distance. In the one moment we &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; is supposed to be funny, his dozen wives awake and&amp;nbsp;immediately start bickering about whether or not to kill both the man and the child or just the man, and of course to indoctrinate the wife as one of them of if there are already enough wives for the coven all while he sits on the slab, looking down at them balefully, used to it, like having a nagging wife x 12, am I right, fellas?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/30487573/3078302424343598939#&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhE0yRjzcveLvWVbdkumQ1NTZwjocm5dvXdaj5TluUQOPOhDZXtCgGyqIXR-Sm0arFwfUiRuv2KBrCXXC7-DsagunSA0M7ROndTi9xej1NjgF3ynhKGGAngpolzjqz1LbKK-caqe8k-idcE4AYVTfj9IBN1y2Vrc9ScKkaP4M5ZXNnPRyUWAw=w320-h237&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Manos&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;may not be much but it is good for when you are really high or otherwise out of it, if you want to be totally confused and a little amused, made aware of the mechanics of film narrative now that they are not being obeyed. The usual signifier chains are disrupted, the cinematic language reduced to a cosmic slur pitched somewhere between the mescaline high notes of nightmare logic (part Bunuel / part Fulci) and the agape jaw/droopy eyelid/post-sync Remeron cushion lows (part Doris Wishman / part Coleman Francis). Actors stand around before going into action, as if waiting for a cue that never comes; 60s period photography (appreciable thanks to a recent upgrade) captures a nostalgia for your parent&#39;s (or grandparent&#39;s) home movies, vacations in purgatory; occasional bouts of intentional humor (the bickering, brawling brides, rolling around forever on white sand as swirling alto sax plays); constant surreal bits (the back and forth of the luggage); strange dead-end reaction shots, all cohere to get you past the first soothing, then irritating score, and the long driving scenes, pointless go-nowhere cuts. Nothing really connects or makes sense, but then again, neither do a lot of things in life, bro. Actions are repeated over and over as if the director is saying &quot;again! again&quot; to the actor without stopping the camera (the way directors sometimes do to save time, repeating a line or action inside a single take, planning to only use the best one and cut the rest out, but sometimes --as in &lt;i&gt;Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,&lt;/i&gt; keeping the repetitions). It&#39;s as if Warren shot ninety minutes of film and used it all, letting intentional and accidental comedic incompetency occur naturally.&amp;nbsp; Since it&#39;s all post-synced it doesn&#39;t seem to matter as much. People make some some movement or say something as if presuming--not unreasonably perhaps-- the ends of their shot will be scissored, as they would be in normal hands. So we get moments of stillness before or after movements, the actor all but looking at the camera man after the action and waiting to hear &#39;cut.&#39;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The only natural performance comes from the little daughter, who at least seems genuinely into her doggy and then her little doll. The rest of them seem like aliens from some drug-drenched cosmic waiting room, the kind of dead in-between zone that used to haunt my dreams when I had a bad fever as a child. Trapped in loops, groped by demonic giant mental patients and creepy old women while the parents dismissed my fears as nonsense. The actors feel trapped too, perhaps hoping, reel after reel, for something in the script to come along and give them a cue as to what to do with their hands (of fate) until it&#39;s finally time to go home.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;TORGO NO GO&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh98XdeSXXHtQDx7Z6-jXr9QA0aB5LnXHSSEdXkHm7pCFg0U-Vfb6y7JvdYvouwkgfYhJo8g8G3zU8UiAeUuUmfV47FoJiFsCywELZjzzhPGSWsej2Z5wwHgF0d7rhbKZEyKtxHBy-_1T48nIY2RJy2wIn4nzQmIKeP65jyoN93bNw5Gpf4HA=s1788&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbE08SJ6COCBRs9I9sbtCkeLZerVhXFsQt8PKGf4L3VbqKXDOlCPTfUAMvqApk1OG98pOxRqUms4U_bljpeTDZCgcdiwDsIUzLzFd9bDyZ_y_UFjEr6OZdB1NO-qiWy8CYhPAgy-NjwD-zfY1sx8T-ZrTLDBBW4vNHBG7fLQOKaUxdQW_s_A=s1793&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1304&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1793&quot; height=&quot;233&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbE08SJ6COCBRs9I9sbtCkeLZerVhXFsQt8PKGf4L3VbqKXDOlCPTfUAMvqApk1OG98pOxRqUms4U_bljpeTDZCgcdiwDsIUzLzFd9bDyZ_y_UFjEr6OZdB1NO-qiWy8CYhPAgy-NjwD-zfY1sx8T-ZrTLDBBW4vNHBG7fLQOKaUxdQW_s_A=w320-h233&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Special mention too to&amp;nbsp;Reynolds, who&amp;nbsp;was allegedly on acid throughout the shoot (this was 1966 when it was still quasi-legal). He seems legitimately out of it, but at least that&#39;s a direction. That&#39;s a choice. He reminds me of when I had the DTs, back in 2016, shaking and moving with a kind of panicky wobble to the ER or the liquor store, as if every time one of his feet left the ground his body tensed as if he was about to fly upwards or blow away. When he lands on the ground again he has to begin the whole process of re-balancing. Dude. Whether suffering from either alcoholic, opiate or methamphetamine withdrawal, or all three at once, Reynolds definitely has &#39;the look.&#39; The legend goes his character was supposed to be half-goat at one point, so he put braces on his legs to give him a goat-like walk. Warren never asked him to do that, nor bothered to tell him the goat idea was nixed. In some scenes he even shows up with drawn-on angry eyebrows (&lt;i&gt;upper lef&lt;/i&gt;t), ala, an angry goat. What a character! In voice and manner he seems to be doing an impression of Dennis Weaver&#39;s &quot;night man&quot; in&lt;i&gt; Touch of Evil&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;crossed with Walter Brennan&#39;s rummy in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;To Have and Have Not.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWHSjAj-sH9z-Qw9gtAyNJ2TEP7Dik02ex-Q15QLV0PAgq_T5eu8MzeUKYi-NTwuy6Dh890CzpQfwv3Qop35qrTPrfei6_Fba5f0WcgxGOWiJBqiDHM0wYAAAbzxyKCCpA0p129pe30yMONpl7aLfpktDKx-LKneP3pw1Goc2ZSZ2NeiMPw/s1884/mr%20manos.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1109&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1884&quot; height=&quot;376&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOWHSjAj-sH9z-Qw9gtAyNJ2TEP7Dik02ex-Q15QLV0PAgq_T5eu8MzeUKYi-NTwuy6Dh890CzpQfwv3Qop35qrTPrfei6_Fba5f0WcgxGOWiJBqiDHM0wYAAAbzxyKCCpA0p129pe30yMONpl7aLfpktDKx-LKneP3pw1Goc2ZSZ2NeiMPw/w640-h376/mr%20manos.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I guess, in the end, we&#39;re all Torgos here, all the nightman for a party we can only paw ineffectually at the window while shivering outside. We can only endeavor to not have someone draw devilish eyebrows on us before someone burns off one of our hands and we &lt;i&gt;exeunt &lt;/i&gt;into the desert night-&lt;i&gt;-&lt;/i&gt;an endeavor Reynolds&#39; Torgo has clearly failed at. But that&#39;s OK Torgo, nothing to get hung about.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Poor Torgo is doomed for many reasons, but the most egregious sin, where he crosses the Torgo line even to us, his champions, is when it&#39;s revealed he&#39;s been molesting the wives while they sleep. Manos decrees his wives &quot;Keel! Keel!&quot; him, a long overdue revenge. This consists of kind of grabbing him around the shoulders and fake slapping him around 100 times. Not even worn out by his slapping, he finally has his hand held over the fire until it becomes a crispy skeleton hand, then he staggers out in the desert. Presumably never to return. But the Master doesn&#39;t need to worry, as he shouts to no one in particular, &quot;I am permanent! Manos has made me &lt;i&gt;permanent&lt;/i&gt;!&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjg9TN72_bJ_u9UASWmDrip_JayQL4adVKFAS95PRFzmtEMkExrNLkt7RvOqn1-VUeuRnvOJesVvHyLPDRrDspHsHHNRR4GPdqzCS5UyVEA0MgTy_SlWPDLriV97yHV4Djl_JKjF9H5rQuR6OIhG1umPFj_JrBslrnzZ42uxw_4esEIF8MLPw=s1995&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1444&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1995&quot; height=&quot;290&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjg9TN72_bJ_u9UASWmDrip_JayQL4adVKFAS95PRFzmtEMkExrNLkt7RvOqn1-VUeuRnvOJesVvHyLPDRrDspHsHHNRR4GPdqzCS5UyVEA0MgTy_SlWPDLriV97yHV4Djl_JKjF9H5rQuR6OIhG1umPFj_JrBslrnzZ42uxw_4esEIF8MLPw=w400-h290&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;Permanent&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Over too quickly yet seeming to last years,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Manos&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;has earned its wings in the long haul as some rare artifact both uncanny and tediously banal at the same time. And on a personal level, that sense of being trapped in the amber of strange nothing jibs perfectly with nightmares I remember from childhood, wherein my parents would leave me in a restaurant foyer, me unable to get through the revolving door, and being stuck waiting for them for years and years, in total isolation, to the point even an evil witch moving slowly towards me across the empty restaurant, was a welcome reprieve from the nothingness. Now that there&#39;s a nicely restored print with good colors, giving it all a home movie, Lana del Rey video vibe, there&#39;s a nice Lana Del Rey-ish tone of lost America, of an America that only ever existed in memory, in postcards, and in movies - and maybe not even then -&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/06/america-of-ghosts-why-lana-del-rey-is.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; the America of Ghosts.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;THE COUPLE of MUGS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Take for example the side plot with a harassed couple necking in a convertible, presumably nearby, hidden in the emptiness of the scrubland. The only car present besides the cops and the families. They just want to park and make out, no one around for miles and miles, but the cops have nothing better to do than drive all over a series of winding desert dirt paths in the middle of nowhere just to repeatedly harass them. Who was there to complain? A committee of jackrabbits? At least the cops don&#39;t even care that they&#39;ve been drinking. How did the cops even find them? If there&#39;s nothing going out out there, why are the cops even patrolling? And just how&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;did&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the cops know the family car had its tail light out, since it&#39;s the middle of the day?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6cLcQFrYcNJoWQ9SsiAg64vjDtDDgUdd48R4PdKF4WKpE56RD7jjtzRLjy_HBZ4JZTw-5iQLXqayQOahUzrLHqV4HZfHMbjAYyrHvCCyNx-m_a-raKGmMhSNvskHybItCTeh3KWkYH7L2zcbpkheZ1RwyyrMgvL-UnhGPcFFlIXTWDewDGQ=s1901&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1176&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1901&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6cLcQFrYcNJoWQ9SsiAg64vjDtDDgUdd48R4PdKF4WKpE56RD7jjtzRLjy_HBZ4JZTw-5iQLXqayQOahUzrLHqV4HZfHMbjAYyrHvCCyNx-m_a-raKGmMhSNvskHybItCTeh3KWkYH7L2zcbpkheZ1RwyyrMgvL-UnhGPcFFlIXTWDewDGQ=w400-h248&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;You can ask these questions, but just like that fever dream, you&#39;re not going to get answers. Nothing adds up in the equation of the unconscious. It&#39;s there for its there-ness.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But even in dreams, alcohol and drugs can provide relief. The lovers have a pint of something or other, and--a big credit in my book--when they drink they wince and shiver like one does when actually drinking liquor straight from the bottle (but one seldom sees in films, Barrows&#39; shiver in &lt;i&gt;Mesa of Lost Women &lt;/i&gt;accepted).&amp;nbsp; It&#39;s the sole moment of warmth, of recognizable humanity, outside of the puppy-girl relationship - doomed as it is.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;OK - TIME TO TWIST AND UP OUT&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Regardless of where you fall on the bad film lover matrix, &lt;i&gt;Manos&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s strange mix of inconsistent logic and deep-rooted malaise keep it intriguing, revealing in their absence, the million common sense decisions most of us don&#39;t even notice have been made in the finishing of a feature film. Every edit, every line reading, every sound effect, every prop is off. The painting isn&#39;t even dry. And it&#39;s kinda weak.k The vintage metal hand sculptures are actually cool, they use one for a fire out on the back veranda, a kind of giant brazier/ash tray/sculpture, lit ablaze with a burning kinda Giacometti-esque man in the dead center, like a giant hardened slag icicle in reverse. Props to that... prop. But the rest is a bit like that random piece of rope on the wall, or the shirt. Why? This isn&#39;t a matter of Lynchian &#39;big fish&#39; surrealism; this is a matter of incompetence and obliviousness finding grace in the randomness of life.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hal Warren probably lifted the hackneyed &#39;twist&#39; at the end from a stray copy DC&#39;s &lt;i&gt;House of Secrets&lt;/i&gt;, sure. H&amp;nbsp; had no idea how to stretch it out to feature length, granted. But like someone who needs fertilizer but doesn&#39;t know it, Warren won&#39;t get his foot out of your inner door. Determined to win his bet, to send Sterling Siliphant sailing home in shame, he came up with an economical solution to get to the needed minute count. Never say action. Never say cut. Just let it run and see if the actors realize it and decide to begin the scene rather than standing around waiting for direction. You can see the &quot;oh are you filming now? Okay, I knew that,&quot; passing across every actor&#39;s face. That&#39;s fine.&amp;nbsp; Keep all the dead moments before or after an action in the final cut. It&#39;s good enough for Warhol, it&#39;s good enough for Texas.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;Manos &lt;/i&gt;writer-director-star Harold P. Warren&amp;nbsp;may be guilty of a lot of things, but cheating with &#39;day-for-night&#39; exposure tricks? Sometimes. Not even the script knows what time it is when the family first pulls up in front of the &quot;lodge&quot; (which we never see the front of). In the shots of Torgo swaying indecisively there in the doorway, decked out like a Confederate officer ghost haunting a Salvation Army, it&#39;s clearly twilight: the setting sun beams in his eyes, turning his face a healthy orange. Thus the needing to stay there rather than driving in circles makes some kind of sense. But in reverse shots of the family it&#39;s clearly mid-afternoon. A smart no-budget filmmaker gets around these types of issues by shooting mostly in-doors or by just moving the camera around in a single take, or just being real fast. Despite the ridiculous convention that it&#39;s too late to keep driving and they need to stop for the night even though it&#39;s clearly the middle of the afternoon, night does eventually come and to his credit it&#39;s real night, an inky all-consuming blackness that looks great in the new HD remastering.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And unlike Grefé&#39;s core competency with&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Tartu&lt;/i&gt;, Warren&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Manos&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;never exhibits for a moment anything that feels remotely conventional or coherent.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;It glides like an eagle straight through the sliding door of its own set of limitations, sending a whirl of glass and feathers and Zapruder-style early-60s home movie grain through the ratty living room of conceptual art. Come to it naked of expectations, alone, and thou wilt be astonished, mildly amused, maybe even relaxed. And Manos will be pleased you finally shuckered loose from your snarky robot pals (1) He&#39;ll be served either way, but he hates humor, and rightly. Evil thrives in its absence, unless its mirthless, like in the monologues of the overdubbed master of Manos... and the best manure in Texas.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi-iVgsRxMNnqj9smTeJsm-e_6-BIFxOE2VWg-mSVHEcj_mC8BWgk8dRKW-6XM7Q10sEbVnQx5QnTKPIAHGouhrvXu-jaJrq90r5fTh2B8yM8TjLDfRW1R0D43Co0LilT3OCR1UeKIF4_S_2FtfzPAp_pSUN87o545bBMKYdgqCXA_EjQky7w=s1877&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1425&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1877&quot; height=&quot;486&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi-iVgsRxMNnqj9smTeJsm-e_6-BIFxOE2VWg-mSVHEcj_mC8BWgk8dRKW-6XM7Q10sEbVnQx5QnTKPIAHGouhrvXu-jaJrq90r5fTh2B8yM8TjLDfRW1R0D43Co0LilT3OCR1UeKIF4_S_2FtfzPAp_pSUN87o545bBMKYdgqCXA_EjQky7w=w640-h486&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;NOTES:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;1)&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt; I recently came around on MST3K after watching nearly all of the first ten seasons while recovering from shoulder surgery over Xmas. I was all delirious so was talking to the screen and robots too, making wry jabs even if there was no one but AI to hear, and rest assure it was listening.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;O&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;n a tragic note, Reynolds killed himself a month after filming this, I hope not because of some weird acid-fueled voice in his head told him to. He should have tried alcohol first! That&#39;s what worked for me, for awhile. And in 1966 Prozac was still 22 years away. God knows how many poor souls that drug&#39;s saved. God bless you, Pfizer, god bless you, Eli Lilly.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/3078302424343598939/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/05/its-only-apricot-its-only-apricot-manos.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3078302424343598939'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3078302424343598939'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/05/its-only-apricot-its-only-apricot-manos.html' title='It&#39;s Only an Apricot. It&#39;s Only an Apricot: &quot;MANOS&quot; &amp; Myth '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiHxKVZaXWet0iSxW0wlxdkUuzb0VxNzKguHlHGB_C1TZZ_IJY9PpjByplTMDe33QBNelELOaAWBdWPdbTDQTYiM5zUjHExvKjOLBieP2-HfiXEEtNfLy2a8aH9l_T62AebmtKWGRvCJgiZSZhjY71P3CtV4wM0LAytDvgYJZO4QpWHDlGzqA=s72-w640-h334-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4104672185049498323</id><published>2023-05-15T14:21:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2023-05-20T23:52:38.441-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="afro-surrealism"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Bikers"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="cinderella"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Dick Miller"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Gene Corman"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="George Armitage"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="New World"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Trina Parks"/><title type='text'>Camptown Ladies F--k You Up: DARKTOWN STRUTTERS (1975)</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  116. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU33WBdy9sUbs-j5Nx86QEZa6RdoiD3moWT6m1JdepslvUGHoeCP3T3SMT2xQ9FyjwldgsSi0OLugdRz9EjeBmOO_Knzx9yicXy7BuGb7syvT5BlXcuiXfCAItW0kwW7_brn0a/s1600/DARKTOWN_ee_2_758_427_81_s.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;427&quot; data-original-width=&quot;758&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU33WBdy9sUbs-j5Nx86QEZa6RdoiD3moWT6m1JdepslvUGHoeCP3T3SMT2xQ9FyjwldgsSi0OLugdRz9EjeBmOO_Knzx9yicXy7BuGb7syvT5BlXcuiXfCAItW0kwW7_brn0a/s640/DARKTOWN_ee_2_758_427_81_s.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;As an addendum to my previous post, let me sing the praises of one of the weirder catches in my endless trawl through the YouTube depths-- DARKTOWN STRUTTERS (1975).  Written by wild George Armitage, &lt;i&gt;Srutters&lt;/i&gt; is so weird and off-the-cuff it&#39;s hard to describe except maybe as a satire of AIP-style biker, sci-fi, blaxploitation and beach blanket movies. Set in a fantasy land Watts, it&#39;s got lots of smooth, cool r&amp;amp;b on the soundtrack (courtesy Stax Records) and a plot wherein a subliminally literal white devil ribs magnate has invented a black cloning machine and the whole neighborhood has to jump on their motorbikes and ride to his Tennessee plantation to stop him. Yes. How can you not be in, cautiously at first, then riotously?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Best of all, aside from its anti-white devil posturing,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Strutters&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;is free of specific social agenda,&amp;nbsp;taking its crazy 1970s plumage and lots of countercultural (drugs and anti-police mostly) zeitgeist with a grain of salt, instead satirizing AIP&#39;s biker movie and blaxploitation interpretations of America, rather than America itself. Zipping along in a way that should delight fans of the fast-paced basement aesthetics of early Corman black humor comedies like&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Creature from the Haunted Sea&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;a&amp;nbsp; Bucket of Blood.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In other words,&amp;nbsp;if you saw&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Get Out&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and it reminded you of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Thing with Two Heads,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;where Ray Milland gets his head grafted onto Rosie Greer&#39;s body, and you thought to yourself, &#39;damn I need to see that movie again!&#39; Then you did, and then you said, &quot;damn, maybe I shouldn&#39;t have bothered.&quot; The movie you should have seen is &lt;i&gt;Darktown Strutters!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trina Parks stars as Syreena, leader of a gang of colorfully dressed female &#39;trikers&#39; (as in on those three-wheel dragsters) called &#39;the Strutters.&#39; No sooner have these Strutters rolled into town than they&#39;re rumbling with a bevy of white Marines on R&amp;amp;R at the hot dog stand, and then cops show up (their gigantic UFO siren really kicks the shrooms in, so to speak) to harass the ladies for no real reason, while a color-coordinated bunch of flashily-attired (probably white) bank robbers, armed with a bazooka, among other things, storm out of the bank right across the street. Figures, man. &quot;Watts is a shooting gallery,&quot; Syreena warns &quot;and &lt;i&gt;you&#39;re&lt;/i&gt; the ducks!&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Arrested anyway, she tricks her way out of the precinct in high but wondrously deadpan but shockingly violent Bugs Bunny fashion-- getting the chief of police shot to death by his own men (she convinces him to dress up like a blackface drag queen and go undercover, so he&#39;s shot right in the vestibule by the men looking for her) Meanwhile she dons a cop uniform and strolls cockily out! What? Can you imagine a scene like that ever even being written today?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Then the detective story elements kick in: Syreena learns her abortionist mom has been missing for weeks &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; prominent black men have been abducted all over town! Incognito in her signature orange suit and a yellow feathered helmet, our heroine begins a search that leads her all over cartoon versions of the usual AIP haunts: a groovy faux-Arabian bordello; a rib shack; an igloo where the ice cream bicycle &#39;pot-cicle&#39; man keeps his frozen stash (I really wanted the 50/50 LSD peyote bar, but couldn&#39;t get my money through the screen); and of course a rundown club wherein a stone-cold pimpin&#39; detective named Philo Rasberry (Sam Laws) feels left out the kidnappers didn&#39;t try to abduct &lt;i&gt;him&lt;/i&gt;, too (&quot;Maybe it&#39;s like rape,&quot; Syreena suggests, &quot;you have to ask for it&quot;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Most of the cast (alas)) are unjustly obscure ere a few recognizable faces: Syreena&#39;s would-be suitor, the biker Mellow is played Roger E. Mosley (a name beloved by &lt;i&gt;Magnum PI&lt;/i&gt; fans); Otis Day (of &lt;i&gt;Animal House&lt;/i&gt;-fame) is V.D. (he carries around a spray bottle of penicillin in case anyone touches him) and Christopher&amp;nbsp;Joy (the &quot;straight from Turkey&quot; weed dealer&amp;nbsp;in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Up in Smoke&lt;/i&gt;) is the perennially shaky &quot;Wired&quot; (he has a permanently wind-blown bandana around his neck). Why, the cast is just brimmin&#39; with characters, overlapping dialogue, and little bits of business so fast and deadpan droll it takes a few viewings to appreciate it all.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Produced by Gene Corman (Roger&#39;s brother); shot from the hip by an old western serial director (William Witney). Hipster maniac George Armitage wrote it in three days and once said &quot;the entire script is one sentence.&quot; The shocking mix of sociopolitical satire and savage comic anarchy is pure Armitage, reminiscent his work on 1970&#39;s  &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/03/5-awesomely-psychotronic-films-on.html&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;GAS-S-S-S-s-s-&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but with some changes-for-the-bette: trikes and bikes instead of dune buggies; the harmonies and deep soul of Staxx label artists instead of endless twang of Country Joe &amp;amp; the Fish; and set in Looney Tunes version of South LA instead of a Looney Tunes version of Palm Springs; and best of all, Trina Parks instead of that entitled little pisher Bob Corff in the lead. It&#39;s also the one and only time Armitage delves into blaxploitation (then all the rage), tweaking, broad sight gags (in the tradition of then-popular variety shows), and the satire of Terry Southern or George Axelrod but sudden violence substituting for their dated leering.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  117. &lt;br /&gt;
  118. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  119. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_CKfJqVvq_cfaCW5b2MvTBXit2NIRMcmGMMg6Zhy6uEEXp4ciE3LLM_oSd8hQibPTT0DBOr7F29cBGC0T3k85gQ0tZhB1dM7SJ_rAEfZMsahHe4hgKZULxu_Z71Z_YjuoRTz/s1600/Darktown+Strutters+4.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;514&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1600&quot; height=&quot;204&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_CKfJqVvq_cfaCW5b2MvTBXit2NIRMcmGMMg6Zhy6uEEXp4ciE3LLM_oSd8hQibPTT0DBOr7F29cBGC0T3k85gQ0tZhB1dM7SJ_rAEfZMsahHe4hgKZULxu_Z71Z_YjuoRTz/s640/Darktown+Strutters+4.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  120. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;Darktown&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s bargain basement chic requires a certain surrendering of expectations to get past. If you come spoiling for something to &#39;cancel&#39; and judge for its unconscious micro and macro aggressions, you are sure to find what you&#39;re looking for, but once you lock onto its goofy kinetic off-the-cuff mix of good cheer (everyone seems to having a great time), improv layered chaos, and black humor, you&#39;ll forgive its trespasses (if you can forgive Tarantino--who&#39;s a fan of this movie--you can forgive Armitage) (1) .&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBF4M1a7YNoLjpjT40iJQ6ySUpEBiFW8U_k-xKiqaSevjLNxJAdQQyThG4x1-dCHhb8UT9jr6lWB2iND6LN3RXOGAElja9F_ITCh8FD28RPqLUWnFZJzp4XRtm_yMW64px4Uc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+9.25.57+AM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;747&quot; data-original-width=&quot;985&quot; height=&quot;303&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBF4M1a7YNoLjpjT40iJQ6ySUpEBiFW8U_k-xKiqaSevjLNxJAdQQyThG4x1-dCHhb8UT9jr6lWB2iND6LN3RXOGAElja9F_ITCh8FD28RPqLUWnFZJzp4XRtm_yMW64px4Uc/w400-h303/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+9.25.57+AM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(literal) White devil sublimation delicately intended&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;Now, that&#39;s not to see he doesn&#39;t run the risk of being&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;too&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;hip, and all in all&lt;i&gt; Darktown&lt;/i&gt; ain&#39;t perfect: the short running time is padded with long chase scenes (here it&#39;s an extended dirt bike chase around some vacant lot trail for five minutes), but when it works it works. Shucks, we don&#39;t get irritated if Syreena stops her dungeon escape to dig the sweet sound of&amp;nbsp; act the impatient poppa as the first of &quot;Sky Hog&quot; rib magnate Commander Cross&#39;s artificial clone baby is about to be born!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  121. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXqXVyOQgckYV4VR1U9sFyq33FIAeQvgP8FYCFxTybSh7oPG8Kyl1Kg_RhURjpyq7X_4qNW9U0ckkQbU9YYAWuOBIBp3MeI0_f0aAw9zWLKPGxd2rK-4QnTIGdvoISsurZRrIX/s1600/darktown+strutters+.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;834&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1109&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXqXVyOQgckYV4VR1U9sFyq33FIAeQvgP8FYCFxTybSh7oPG8Kyl1Kg_RhURjpyq7X_4qNW9U0ckkQbU9YYAWuOBIBp3MeI0_f0aAw9zWLKPGxd2rK-4QnTIGdvoISsurZRrIX/s320/darktown+strutters+.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  122. The element X that makes the whole thing work is the great time Parks seems to be having/ Whether disguised as a motorcycle cop, a nun, or just her yellow Apollonian charioteer costume, Parks surfs the madness with a wry shrug, a slinky ease-in-her-own-skin luxuriance, and deadpan approach that clearly keeps the rest of the cast eager to match it. As Hal Horn puts it, Parks&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hornsection.blogspot.com/2007/02/film-review-darktown-strutters-1975.html&quot;&gt;&quot;has to be wonderful in order for this unpredictable hodgepodge to work and fortunately, she is.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hornsection.blogspot.com/2007/02/film-review-darktown-strutters-1975.html&quot;&gt;&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;She doesn&#39;t run and dodge as she escapes, she doesn&#39;t &#39;shuck and jive&#39; as they used to say, she&amp;nbsp; walks like a graceful, plugged-in panther; she stays in the narrative tension without losing her sense of ease in her own skin. When she stops her prison rescue to dig the sweet sounds of The Dramatics, who woo Syreena from their tinsel-lit disco cell (with one of the few credited songs, &quot;Whatcha See is Watcha Get&quot;) after she finds her chained-up mother, has a little moment, then forgets to unshackle her as she sashays away but it&#39;s WB cartoon funny rather than&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Tank Girl&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;upsetting.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Not every actor is a good fit for Armitage&#39;s unwieldy mouthfuls of acerbic hipster counter-anarchic&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Laugh-In &lt;/i&gt;gag-spiked dialogue but Parks knows the best way is to just grab the ball and sashay away with it. With so many black films seem to feel obligated to include urban blight, poverty, the minutiae of dirty awnings, dirty streets, some kind of sermon on injustice, a screed against those that don&#39;t give a shit about everything that&#39;s wrong, those who just stop and smell the equivalent of roses, which here is the .&quot;&lt;br /&gt;
  123. &lt;br /&gt;
  124. &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  125. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipQBdUsD0Id_P1U9iPHYJcYpP_Ea6xyw_a9rM1Jdgp6Y4Vbf9yx-8swozcl6TryOQKCLQCe0kpEpTZiuMrH-QZ54WxNtEYfI0Oi3xULiqD1as3_0k-fN5VYREu4l4Xne-LlvVS/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+11.23.00+AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;733&quot; data-original-width=&quot;956&quot; height=&quot;306&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipQBdUsD0Id_P1U9iPHYJcYpP_Ea6xyw_a9rM1Jdgp6Y4Vbf9yx-8swozcl6TryOQKCLQCe0kpEpTZiuMrH-QZ54WxNtEYfI0Oi3xULiqD1as3_0k-fN5VYREu4l4Xne-LlvVS/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+11.23.00+AM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  126. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Syreena considers Mellow as a possible breeding mate.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  127. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  128. &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  129. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLVPglzpT-T7cCMjR-u7Mv_YhOZ88rchvuNTJeTpqtjcoJdinacdIYcZ6xd4gxuUUpRAiaD3bY70-iMOmwvs3VgyMIyUQNusZKYOkcdrIqgB0ZJv-kXHM8lZk1Wbool1RUspAA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+11.23.30+AM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;751&quot; data-original-width=&quot;996&quot; height=&quot;241&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLVPglzpT-T7cCMjR-u7Mv_YhOZ88rchvuNTJeTpqtjcoJdinacdIYcZ6xd4gxuUUpRAiaD3bY70-iMOmwvs3VgyMIyUQNusZKYOkcdrIqgB0ZJv-kXHM8lZk1Wbool1RUspAA/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-02-05+at+11.23.30+AM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  130. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Then four guys on bikes show up&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  131. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  132. Seeing this online in its rundown video transfer quality (not sure if there&#39; an HD remaster floating around) and recognizing genius in it, well your mileage may vary especially if you have a hard time with &#39;jive&#39; slang as written by white people (or, like in a Russ Meyer script, made-up ratatatat slang no one ever said in real life) or layered improv dialogue that doesn&#39;t always connect and action not always decipherable in the mucky mix (luckily whatever the platform you see it on, you can usually access subtitles, and you should), then... why did you read this far?&lt;br /&gt;
  133. &lt;br /&gt;
  134. And coolest of all, as with&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Gas-s-s-s,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;one is free to wonder if the non-sequiturs and tripped-out combo slang are what was in the script or just jumbled together on the spot by the &#39;game for improv&#39; cast&amp;nbsp; (Corman and Armitage are both heavy proponents of it). Either way, no matter how much of it is accidentally offensive, accidentally brilliant, intentionally stupid, or just plain inept, you can&#39;t very well argue that it&#39;s unique, hilarious, stirring, and divinely scored with a bunch of rich Stax staple soul you&#39;ll never have heard before or since.&amp;nbsp; Wherever you fall on the unconscious racism (as we&#39;ve recently learned on social media, satirizing racism doesn&#39;t automatically exempt you from it), &lt;i&gt;Strutters&lt;/i&gt; is a relic from the time when racial stereotypes and blaxploitation tropes could be affectionately kidded without fear of cancellation. It&#39;s a time that may not come again, so dig. Dig this roster of warm, larger-than-life black talent, and modestly over-the-top layered lunacy. Dig. Dig like you&#39;ve never dug before.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  135. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  136. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4VzX-5_r3ff8viCCejFxAaPzdUIMdBbQEJ-qsG61Yqk-gRhIUa8L5PtyhGNfkR14hlgz0GzjWw_7B2CSkBbGoRiNQZVQympOSjvv0roQyJIMfiOcg4ribytgZ3SCv_p1SrS8G/s1600/Darktown+Strutters.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1226&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1600&quot; height=&quot;489&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4VzX-5_r3ff8viCCejFxAaPzdUIMdBbQEJ-qsG61Yqk-gRhIUa8L5PtyhGNfkR14hlgz0GzjWw_7B2CSkBbGoRiNQZVQympOSjvv0roQyJIMfiOcg4ribytgZ3SCv_p1SrS8G/s640/Darktown+Strutters.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  137. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;
  138. PS - If you&#39;re wondering, of course the late, great Dick Miller shows up in this one, too -- as a cop. As always, he does it well, capturing the anarchic 3-Stooges over-the-top spazzing the role requires and cementing this to brother Corman&#39;s canon.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  139. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;SEE ALSO GEORGE ARMITAGE&#39;S OTHER CLASSICS:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/05/harpo-out-of-hell-miami-blues-1990.html&quot;&gt;Harpo out of Hell: MIAMI BLUES (1984)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt; (posted May 2015)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/03/5-awesomely-psychotronic-films-on.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;5 Movies for a New Trumpmerica: GAS-S-S-S-S&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(posted 3/31/16 so don&#39;t get mad at me, I was sure he&#39;d never win or I wouldn&#39;t have been so cocky)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4104672185049498323/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/camptown-ladies-f-k-you-up-darktown.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4104672185049498323'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4104672185049498323'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/07/camptown-ladies-f-k-you-up-darktown.html' title='Camptown Ladies F--k You Up: DARKTOWN STRUTTERS (1975)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU33WBdy9sUbs-j5Nx86QEZa6RdoiD3moWT6m1JdepslvUGHoeCP3T3SMT2xQ9FyjwldgsSi0OLugdRz9EjeBmOO_Knzx9yicXy7BuGb7syvT5BlXcuiXfCAItW0kwW7_brn0a/s72-c/DARKTOWN_ee_2_758_427_81_s.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-4202483000991571640</id><published>2023-03-28T09:13:00.011-05:00</published><updated>2023-04-08T15:56:35.644-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Badass Ladies too Dangerously Cool for DVD: 9 Should-be Classics Held Back by a Scared Patriarchy</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjK1x8IAquUxstg23rl9WflPzckg7nCd5T785-mqUyZkCF3JrjruoGuBayYMyZE3DRYhwWYHGOqNaiZAuGp85_E-Y0Xu-l9MYpWhpBPalJ8amvrbGobjWsEk2zmqYFGmNse73GWs3eEaQgyPrdBsLk9Z-IL48hNCtcETLnb_f7tFyJM6uRkg/s1729/temptress.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;705&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1729&quot; height=&quot;260&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjK1x8IAquUxstg23rl9WflPzckg7nCd5T785-mqUyZkCF3JrjruoGuBayYMyZE3DRYhwWYHGOqNaiZAuGp85_E-Y0Xu-l9MYpWhpBPalJ8amvrbGobjWsEk2zmqYFGmNse73GWs3eEaQgyPrdBsLk9Z-IL48hNCtcETLnb_f7tFyJM6uRkg/w640-h260/temptress.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In honor of Women&#39;s History Month, here&#39;s a list of films you may not even know about as they feature morally ambiguous, powerful women, which means maybe they are a threat to patriarchy; I can&#39;t fathom why else the below films aren&#39;t easily available on disc or (legit) streaming sites or Blu-ray. It&#39;s a crime against classic genre cinema that most of them haven&#39;t been put out on Blu-ray, or DVD, or--for some--even VHS.&amp;nbsp; Probably because patriarchy is scared. They&#39;d rather rerelease some super generic thriller no one cares about, so long as it&#39;s a man who&#39;s in charge.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that&#39;s why, up here in my crib--even though we have Prime, HBOMax, Hulu, Disney, Arrow, Criterion, and Kino-Cult and Tubi at our fingertips here in my house (it pays to live with a media critic) not to mention all the DVDs/Blu-rays I have laying around (they, Kino-Cult and Arrow and Criterion are mine of course)--I spend the most time watching YouTube. These 10 films (well 9 and a 70s science fiction show from British/West German television) can all be found on my curated YouTube list (see below) &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA_3wYZc9Fcn7EZI2SzSPSWj&amp;amp;feature=shares&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Badass Ladies Too Dangerously Cool for DVD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7m3fnOFMx3YUNQe-5wz63xZnGw8TnkcN8sH8GmKGZgN2_02ubQ8xEfXP-UwuWS5oO1TWv9pX_GoSbbHAkMKDznxgxHvM0LJpfNf_m5I7pndPgVcmkpVNNB2x-eo7-4Act5H4Ej2k3A2Tb3FSl3Zy0bU19-REhcCt5viPmPuOTfcGh5wduA/s1753/temporess.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;723&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1753&quot; height=&quot;264&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7m3fnOFMx3YUNQe-5wz63xZnGw8TnkcN8sH8GmKGZgN2_02ubQ8xEfXP-UwuWS5oO1TWv9pX_GoSbbHAkMKDznxgxHvM0LJpfNf_m5I7pndPgVcmkpVNNB2x-eo7-4Act5H4Ej2k3A2Tb3FSl3Zy0bU19-REhcCt5viPmPuOTfcGh5wduA/w640-h264/temporess.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh YouTube, how I love thee! Let me count the ways: 1) You carry tons of otherwise unavailable or indecipherable international films, often subtitled into English for the first time by committed fans. 2) Your screen/browser gives me the ability to scroll and search around while watching things - so I can check something out while looking for something else; 3) We can make &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA_3wYZc9Fcn7EZI2SzSPSWj&amp;amp;feature=shares&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;numerous playlists&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;like on Spotify. 4) I can fall asleep watching one movie and wake up and my list is still playing. That means I know how llong I was out based on where I am on the list. (Which I do every night, on my&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-uNyESq9E1tUKuZQO4TsXh&amp;amp;feature=shares&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Old Dark/Sci-Fi&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA-uNyESq9E1tUKuZQO4TsXh&amp;amp;feature=shares&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Tranquilizer: Movies to Fall Asleep to.&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;mix).&amp;nbsp;6) The weird shit just keeps coming --every day something new. And in the age when so much new stuff is being released that one can&#39;t possibly keep up, disappearing into the pre-CGI past is the safest way to travel, patriarchy be damned. And damned it certainly is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnCPsmyWKidOe6V2DTW5wZbX4dwLvtigDzZxnU_gpWI324Ca8fP3UbuMP7cRzZkAmC0ujbmjIRelpABQz7NSttaDC9RumNanlqhxeEjKK7tya8Vx-5kjE-mwVY9c0hW9KgMKx8eymQzp12kWyZEcAW8V79ljlo9UzWP6ZqJVjtqpVffS9Yw/s1692/miwa%20black%20lizard.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;616&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1692&quot; height=&quot;234&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnCPsmyWKidOe6V2DTW5wZbX4dwLvtigDzZxnU_gpWI324Ca8fP3UbuMP7cRzZkAmC0ujbmjIRelpABQz7NSttaDC9RumNanlqhxeEjKK7tya8Vx-5kjE-mwVY9c0hW9KgMKx8eymQzp12kWyZEcAW8V79ljlo9UzWP6ZqJVjtqpVffS9Yw/w640-h234/miwa%20black%20lizard.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeluo-sXyD4S41nJRwdddpeqVXZ24jMyjs3yQZgoDaeeXc0OLOz5YdEQ6GpSE7NF7KRGbCbNzcOo0YD9G_8Eotl7Tkpm3bI6If-sz02d1iCDvdYLuzTMESEn1LWbBJmieRdCOXzHYYavl6tDlj5hquh9c1eWN-cTJqbUvo8XWqdMfg0pzoA/s1644/black%20lizard.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;663&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1644&quot; height=&quot;258&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeluo-sXyD4S41nJRwdddpeqVXZ24jMyjs3yQZgoDaeeXc0OLOz5YdEQ6GpSE7NF7KRGbCbNzcOo0YD9G_8Eotl7Tkpm3bI6If-sz02d1iCDvdYLuzTMESEn1LWbBJmieRdCOXzHYYavl6tDlj5hquh9c1eWN-cTJqbUvo8XWqdMfg0pzoA/w640-h258/black%20lizard.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fdtYl6QBH32nTdYoYUFwzhFtevKG9hBrXgmfUyJPX-blFyC8VTuDjf-mucVI0fgmlIz_TSSzaUjwCJLW-kYyrb1ljSnaWQ-T05S5MHxrXLatuYgtB4uGgi20rsP2UBFBYDINxZ03nMCpScRx7mG9Rzk1255Sq6_S3ChMjUnQvdu0jwMYNw/s1709/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-27%20at%202.19.49%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;743&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1709&quot; height=&quot;278&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fdtYl6QBH32nTdYoYUFwzhFtevKG9hBrXgmfUyJPX-blFyC8VTuDjf-mucVI0fgmlIz_TSSzaUjwCJLW-kYyrb1ljSnaWQ-T05S5MHxrXLatuYgtB4uGgi20rsP2UBFBYDINxZ03nMCpScRx7mG9Rzk1255Sq6_S3ChMjUnQvdu0jwMYNw/w640-h278/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-27%20at%202.19.49%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1.&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;BLACK LIZARD&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1968) Dir. Kenji Fukasaku&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqsUVBr6GDRoGYLyszDHFmAwie4Wx_8hKP3nx2ENqr_pT7U9G_l3149pmA0RDKCI7vgDjiHUDWb5RMjSGtN1Fqyu-MI0LjkyUVb8vLIjIDm_hlYWeAN2YqHSyIhnlQhGTd56hSmMXyLZBnQHlytVmb5hycTY9ZTEbUhYc29qTc6HdgOMeGaw/s1735/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-27%20at%202.21.33%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;773&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1735&quot; height=&quot;143&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqsUVBr6GDRoGYLyszDHFmAwie4Wx_8hKP3nx2ENqr_pT7U9G_l3149pmA0RDKCI7vgDjiHUDWb5RMjSGtN1Fqyu-MI0LjkyUVb8vLIjIDm_hlYWeAN2YqHSyIhnlQhGTd56hSmMXyLZBnQHlytVmb5hycTY9ZTEbUhYc29qTc6HdgOMeGaw/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-27%20at%202.21.33%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Dazzling in its dark green color scheme, sinuous and lithe in its poetry-infused high crime&amp;nbsp;punch, irresistibly sheathed in Isao Tomita&#39;s mix elegant harpsichord and slinky bass,&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Fukasaku&#39;s&amp;nbsp;1968 Japanese spy/crime film&amp;nbsp;is camped out high on the luxurious side of Stylish Caper Mountain. Imagine a Josef von Sternberg/Dietrich collaboration on a late-60s European spy caper, then replace Dietrich with a Japanese drag queen (Akiro Miwa) and make her a master criminal in the Irma Vep mode, squaring off against a smolder-eyed master detective named Akechi. Duelling throughout while winning each other over with their brooding poetic flair, they fill their exchanges with perceptive and moving poetry (well translated for the subtitles). It&#39;s based on a play by Yukio Mishima (Japan&#39;s answer to Jean Genet/Antonin Artaud) story by Edogawa Rampo (Japan&#39;s answer to Edgars Poe and Wallace) and enriched with the sublime poetry (&quot;the law, my brother&quot; &quot;the prison cell, my gift&quot;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;From the wall-size Aubsrey Beardsley-esquw illustrations at the Lizard&#39;s dark green psychedelic dance club / bar hideout--rich with red and green gel lighting, twinkling lights, day-glo drawings on the black walls, and lots of ornate iron work to pose behind--to&amp;nbsp; the beautiful Bava-esque hideout, with her doll collection, preserved human displays she keeps next to her white feather fluffy bed, the settings are never less than sublime. As are Liizard&#39;s costumes, from victorian lace to black scales to white fluffy feather wraps over which her long black tresses cascade most bewitchingly.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYBH5Lzg64WsAdslGeP8rwzFEhqYX3rzWIVlT2n844SYKwLHHSK1WGN24gjjx0x2I80It6kh96f4yjjwk3m7G_kN70RYti4EI7Hvv6H9CmJYU7GmUngQzJBhJukuzOWi2pcyn5vBtxOanuMItTohP3Mebplr_O6aqP5j5v2mTyPEaJKPcuRw/s1779/Black%20Lizard.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;752&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1779&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYBH5Lzg64WsAdslGeP8rwzFEhqYX3rzWIVlT2n844SYKwLHHSK1WGN24gjjx0x2I80It6kh96f4yjjwk3m7G_kN70RYti4EI7Hvv6H9CmJYU7GmUngQzJBhJukuzOWi2pcyn5vBtxOanuMItTohP3Mebplr_O6aqP5j5v2mTyPEaJKPcuRw/w640-h270/Black%20Lizard.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;1968 was a time when James Bond and&amp;nbsp;master criminals like Kilink, Diabolik, Fantomas and Satanik, were all the high camp rage. Still, aside from Mario Bava&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Danger: Diabolik &lt;/i&gt;and maybe the 1964 French &lt;i&gt;Fantomas&lt;/i&gt;,&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;not many films from that era have aged well.&amp;nbsp; Let the &lt;i&gt;Lizard &lt;/i&gt;come to the front of the class! Its every moment is packed with zip and cool comic strip details, avoiding the ponderous filler, travelogue B-roll, broad scenes of frustrated cops, and overly hammed government officials demanding action, and tacky bumbling comedy, endless stripteases and cars driving around for no real reason, and smug leading men who cockily bust lame moves at the bar.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUUzCErpL4P1jDkGZnaKXXI02PHiJ1uPEdfNF1ggFVszQuwiyrkklMs_ITXeuvgB0hZQG7Pmu37BrCw3burHOd1_lVJYraBLupzIZHJmfbQ3-rPJu6Aj_0ce4E0izMWHCtHP5jSYv3sanBY2HzBMkoGHIarN3SB5wehuqCbQuMNlT-FbNoA/s1670/black%20lizard.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;704&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1670&quot; height=&quot;169&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUUzCErpL4P1jDkGZnaKXXI02PHiJ1uPEdfNF1ggFVszQuwiyrkklMs_ITXeuvgB0hZQG7Pmu37BrCw3burHOd1_lVJYraBLupzIZHJmfbQ3-rPJu6Aj_0ce4E0izMWHCtHP5jSYv3sanBY2HzBMkoGHIarN3SB5wehuqCbQuMNlT-FbNoA/w400-h169/black%20lizard.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Instead, Fukusaku&#39;s camera is always right where it should be, calmly, assuredly- trained squarely on the amazing Miwa in the title role. Wielding a sword with the buccaneer dash of prime&amp;nbsp;Errol Flynn one moment and collapsing on her luxuriant bed it in a swooning whirl of girlish infatuation he next, she&#39;s is the perfect amalgam of drag styles: high camp without winky self-awareness; classic glamor without studied pageant queen self-importance; larger-than-life charisma without histrionic&amp;nbsp; self aggrandizement, and above all, richly sketched oscillating moods and emotional extremes, veering from cold criminal glee (she loves crime) to impassioned infatuation, poetic rapture, and sudden fury. She even gets a first class death scene. &quot;I knew ot all along; your hearts was a genuine diamond. &quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I love too that she&#39;s never held up to any&lt;i&gt; Crying Game&lt;/i&gt;-type gender unveiling, nor are there any jokes or cryptic allusions to gender.&amp;nbsp; We&#39;re never sure if she&#39;s supposed to be recognized as in drag or not. We &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; know that when she disguises herself as a man at one point to escape a hotel, it&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;then &lt;/i&gt;she seems like she&#39;s in drag! A man who can seem like a woman in male drag when he dresses like a man --that&#39;s the mark of a master. And stick around for the end credits which give her a big Bond-like TV movie send-off, somwherwerwe between a fashion show and the Avengers. There&#39; nary a foot put wrong. Even Mishima himself shows up as one of the dolls, showing off his physique (lots of lean, striated muscle)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9okdHvxhNtNdrOMNLMxmIgkXKiO-ZjUkNfxqtFbfhsFR0bZU85WLl2xZXc10xGvWxd_6DwAx78uEwUUncO3cDKcbiScifje6YsTpiM7j21uHwFstuoXifCQ1pWkn80bL4rdF1DlOz25HXkZ-Qcl-lZe4ror1N3y6VYIvdIp0WGnOKKKWeQ/s1194/temptress%20of%20a%20thousand%20faces.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;508&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1194&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9okdHvxhNtNdrOMNLMxmIgkXKiO-ZjUkNfxqtFbfhsFR0bZU85WLl2xZXc10xGvWxd_6DwAx78uEwUUncO3cDKcbiScifje6YsTpiM7j21uHwFstuoXifCQ1pWkn80bL4rdF1DlOz25HXkZ-Qcl-lZe4ror1N3y6VYIvdIp0WGnOKKKWeQ/w640-h272/temptress%20of%20a%20thousand%20faces.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrmtuWdsgg0chQmaUxfRORFeSedJpYx1k1W5EJe_Zl_B9POWZzwLqvf4GXZsD0vgc4ZwNZKyU6etM2IuXwFdB7Mz4A2H3QOvn0vh4w5D9TpHzH_bO1h-dNDUs_ggrNZdqKC_h_oY6Dah_TWaoRy1k_mjCfH2ynrmt3WGEKpEcjL2DaaCctg/s1191/temptress.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;493&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1191&quot; height=&quot;132&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrmtuWdsgg0chQmaUxfRORFeSedJpYx1k1W5EJe_Zl_B9POWZzwLqvf4GXZsD0vgc4ZwNZKyU6etM2IuXwFdB7Mz4A2H3QOvn0vh4w5D9TpHzH_bO1h-dNDUs_ggrNZdqKC_h_oY6Dah_TWaoRy1k_mjCfH2ynrmt3WGEKpEcjL2DaaCctg/s320/temptress.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;2.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;TEMPTRESS OF A THOUSAND FACES&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1969) Dir. Chang-hwa Jeong&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the average person thinks of Shaw Brothers cnon, they usually think of shirtless bald guys smacking the shit out of each other in big indoor/outdoor restaurants, Buddhist monasteries, and palace foyers; but there was so much more to them than that, like atmospheric wuxia, the kinky horror, swooning romance, war movies and spy films as well.! Especially now that most of them seem to have been remasered on beautiful HD, to dismiss them as those baldheaded slap downs to miss out on a wealth of wonder. In addition to their flowing misty soundstage cherry blossom orchards and vast secret lair sets (see my praise here), they score well on the Bechdel, with plenty of female fighters, sorceresses and--as in &lt;i&gt;Temptress of a Thousand Faces--&lt;/i&gt;master criminals with armed armies of adoring underlings. A mysterious master criminal with a huge mask collection that lets her impersonate just about anyone to pull of high-end jewel heists, Temptress operates out of a vast, trap-filled, very cool underground cavern lair that would give Dr. No, Fu Manchu, Diabolik, or Fantomas a run for their money. The only one who has a prayer of catching her is Chi Ying (Tina Chin-Fei), female detective several levels smarter then the men around her--police chief included,. The whole film becomes, essentially, their duel of wits, fighting over--amongst other things--Chi Ying&#39;s man, who--once the Temptress wears Chi Ying&#39;s face, has only their kiss and sexual performance to tell them apart&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZCs_M3WIugm1VO8HYPmSQXG8jO3pUt5lkxq7hkV0p2MApH1owrcDAHeSfDKnfLvsQDtOl3bvLyj8F4gCAzRWIMHh-d-dm0sgyi5OPlKfdZFNzho4ZG1c29i2U66ijJ5r2hO6Si3eXwonsjcXgPA_ZPuWXcpT208pSDzEjFzxjj852nJs9Q/s1711/temptress.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;718&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1711&quot; height=&quot;168&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZCs_M3WIugm1VO8HYPmSQXG8jO3pUt5lkxq7hkV0p2MApH1owrcDAHeSfDKnfLvsQDtOl3bvLyj8F4gCAzRWIMHh-d-dm0sgyi5OPlKfdZFNzho4ZG1c29i2U66ijJ5r2hO6Si3eXwonsjcXgPA_ZPuWXcpT208pSDzEjFzxjj852nJs9Q/w400-h168/temptress.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;To remind us of its Shaw heritage, the highlight here are plenty of long, well-choreographed fights, including Chi Ying sliding down a water pipe on a ten story building to avoid capture; and a long chase from the street outside the precinct up to the top of a tall building, over several rooftops and down a drainpipe on a ten story building.&amp;nbsp; The climax starts with a great knockout brawl between the two Chi Yings (after the real one escapes her cell where she&#39;s being forced to watch her boyfriend get seduced by what he thinks is her). Sure it&#39;s a pretty cliche&#39;d situation, but the way these girls through each other through doors and windows and walls of Ying&#39;s small apartment- is a sight to behold, foreshadowing the badass trailer fight between Uma and Daryl Hannah in &lt;i&gt;Kill Bill Vol.2.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And dig the big Bond style climactic gun battle in the secret lair, as Ying and her boyfriend manage to shoot a hundred bullets out of their pistols, decimating most of her vast army. And woe to the weird ending, which implies sexual abuse at the hands of horny low-ranking cops grabbing up the Temptress&#39;s concubines and carrying them off kicking and screaming into the sunset, while the cops and prisoners all laugh before striding off, leaving the Temptress&#39;s body lying there, bullet-ridden, on the ground, forgotten. Oh you Shaws! For every sixteen strides forward, one small kick in the shins to send you home smarting.&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KDK5oZOLm1Rlh7jDN_4XPM_-zKG3xuZRe8qjXl1I97rVVS9VddyfFgenKqWNRxvvu7a4ox6qEeK8SnfP4Ev6RlzAT7pRCnUSKMQe0VwlGVr9G_XP4Xfy46Q-72FPrWNHmPPxDuTcyrKCakRhbbdf7I6DlKDjyefBwIUUMh0n0uS9Zdwk0w/s1327/fraulein%20doktor.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1001&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1327&quot; height=&quot;482&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KDK5oZOLm1Rlh7jDN_4XPM_-zKG3xuZRe8qjXl1I97rVVS9VddyfFgenKqWNRxvvu7a4ox6qEeK8SnfP4Ev6RlzAT7pRCnUSKMQe0VwlGVr9G_XP4Xfy46Q-72FPrWNHmPPxDuTcyrKCakRhbbdf7I6DlKDjyefBwIUUMh0n0uS9Zdwk0w/w640-h482/fraulein%20doktor.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;3.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/04/morphine-cappucine-and-dino-de-fraulein.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;FRAULEIN DOKTOR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1969) Dir. Alberto Lattuada&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Man, I&#39;m seeing a trend as, like the last two films on this list, this one is from the late, late-60s, as time when women&#39;s lib was on everyone&#39;s mind, and people were taking chances that maybe are still ahead of their time. Is that why this big budgeted lesbian junky spy WW1 Zhivago-esque pulp epic from the Dino Di Laurentiis international juggernaut production company still hasn&#39;t received an HD or digital release of any kind? With a thunderous Ennio Morricone score and a bona fide reckless awesome Suzy Kendall performance as the lead---supposedly real life &#39;other Mata Hari&#39; WWI sex spy (, i.e. the same character played by Marlene Dietrich in &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/dietrich-set-review-part-1-morocco.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Dishonored&lt;/i&gt; &lt;/a&gt;and Myrna Loy in &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2014/08/pre-code-capsules-stamboul-quest-man-in.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Stamboul Quest&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;nearly 40 years earlier. This is way more adult than those though, with lesbian seduction, drug abuse, unspeakable chemical warfare, and dangerous seductions right and left, all marketed to associate with &lt;i&gt;Dr. Zhivago&lt;/i&gt;, as an epic of historical sweep, with Kendall subliminally evoking Julie Christie, and the big trench warfare climax evoking all the Russian revolution and WW1 footage of Lean&#39;s masterpiece.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmH9eeNZdsWDW2sxSkz84pJflBjmzrHHOA9yTyJd8ua_zbj2TbobXfTDJqPWgA2RfyQOQwy4dTDjG2emAPW1wNJ8qBq3Yntgo7Yve17UcnAxHWqLzOAfYbBmA7HUiyWE9z0MSimMb7jufG61Q8u2BiKlOur01uNb7LBcogCov73fFrwgfCew/s1084/fraulein%20doktor%20in%20opiate%20stupor.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;825&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1084&quot; height=&quot;244&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmH9eeNZdsWDW2sxSkz84pJflBjmzrHHOA9yTyJd8ua_zbj2TbobXfTDJqPWgA2RfyQOQwy4dTDjG2emAPW1wNJ8qBq3Yntgo7Yve17UcnAxHWqLzOAfYbBmA7HUiyWE9z0MSimMb7jufG61Q8u2BiKlOur01uNb7LBcogCov73fFrwgfCew/s320/fraulein%20doktor%20in%20opiate%20stupor.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;gettin&#39; high after a job well done&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, this ain&#39;t your mom&#39;s subliminal&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Zhivago&lt;/i&gt;, unless your mom is a lesbian junky super spy working for WW1 Germany (i.e. the bad guys). Epic ambitions or not, this is from Di Laurentiis, the epic-scoped European Roger Corman, who gave us &lt;i&gt;Conan, Dune, King Kong, Orca, The White Buffal&lt;/i&gt;o, and so many other essentials. That means thrills and lurid entertainment takes center stage with the sweep as a backdrop (as opposed to the reverse in Lean). &lt;i&gt;Fraulein&lt;/i&gt;&#39;s Ennio Morricone score delivers an irresistible concoction of avant-garde frisson and emotional sweep, trumping (in my opinion) Maurice Jarre&#39;s endlessly repeated peasant carnival&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Zhivago&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;waltz theme, especially when he pulls out his swooning big guns for the Capucine/Kendall hook-up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dipping its toes in a druggy kind of debauched super genius amorality that, personally, I adore, our &lt;i&gt;Fraulein&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;prides herself on her chameleonic efficacy and seductive ease with role playing, moving from London trollop to imperious master spy striding past the crew of her assigned U-boat, giving orders while looking through the periscope, to super demure, shy French maid, shyly acquiescing to the lesbian vibes of her French poison chemist employer (a seduction so central to the film it makes it on the original movie poster which may have a hand in it being so unavailable/unreleased on DVD - a little ahead of its time).,&amp;nbsp; The only time we sense we&#39;re seeing the &lt;i&gt;real &lt;/i&gt;her is when her eyes dilate at the sight of morphine being given to a wounded soldier, or in the back of the sub, shooting up in celebration of wiping out her target ship. With the London counterintelligence spy master (Nigel Greene) and his turned German spy / Doktor&#39;s occasional lover asset in hot pursuit she deftly stays one jump ahead all the way. Based on supposedly real events, this Poison Ivy-style woman Capucine plays is allegedly based on a real person, supposedly (a kind of variation can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2017/12/best-of-2017-rise-of-woman.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;2017&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Wonder Woman&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). Which is just so weird it&#39;s got to be true.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHgF6-aZfswQ0fo-L5PpgXfMBZvKnr5YANrg8A2-0qTgcvLxSRBUxDqGOTxW7LCULKNVbzql8JPh9vG0O8lWmRJr9o8l_Y1fMtK8Pji-n43fAd3iIOxZDqrtKafd0MwPfQEMJc5wa7R6kUHxNN2TghyLx1dP3oruP6lHJ3iQwT4lBRJdunQ/s400/doktor.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;302&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;242&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHgF6-aZfswQ0fo-L5PpgXfMBZvKnr5YANrg8A2-0qTgcvLxSRBUxDqGOTxW7LCULKNVbzql8JPh9vG0O8lWmRJr9o8l_Y1fMtK8Pji-n43fAd3iIOxZDqrtKafd0MwPfQEMJc5wa7R6kUHxNN2TghyLx1dP3oruP6lHJ3iQwT4lBRJdunQ/s320/doktor.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Lesbianism was present in movies from 1968 of course, but still handled with sordid quotes around it, so we knew the filmmakers considered it perverse. Such things were either debauched displays for male consumption or lurid tableaux of deviancy meant to disgust us, i.e. what would be lurid and degrading in the hands of someone like Aldrich (ala his same year&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Killing of Sister George&lt;/i&gt;)&amp;nbsp;becomes--in Lattuada&#39;s hands--tasteful and enticing and even a little sad (we feel Capucine&#39;s gratitude at finding someone in this age of closets and fear who is open to her overtures; and are saddened knowing it&#39;s all a lie) Ennio Morricone delivers some amazingly, mythic, quiet, non-judgmental romantic balladry for their first kiss, giving it a way more of romantic sweep than that between the Doktor and her reverse double agent confederate (James Booth, refreshingly practical, cast and coiffed probably to subliminally evoke Omar Shariff&#39;s Zhivago, the way Kendall evokes Christie - just a theory of mine).&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, if this is a historical romance, more than with Booth or Capucine, it&#39;s a romance between the Doktor and morphine-when she stares lustily at the soldiers in her Red Cross train (she&#39;s disguised a nurse) you know it&#39;s because they&#39;re being given morphine and she can see the vials, not because she&#39;s horny (though you may have to be an addict of one stripe or another to pick up on that - it&#39;s not spelled out). Alas, the filmmakers miss a good ending by having her not shoot up in the back seat of her limo to celebrate, maybe with a big box of stolen from the French hospital train she helped set up while disguised as an altruistic Italian noblewoman,, crosscut with the nurses back on the train, overwhelmed by the influx of soldiers dying from the gas attack she helped into being, realizing the box holding their morphine ampules is missing so the boys are just going to have to bear the pain.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, I forgive them. It&#39;s so rare in a movie like this you would feel that junky longing, have drugs and lesbianism be part of our antiheroine&#39;s story, but not the focus, neither one defining her chameleonic character, that they can be forgiven almost any oversight.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvsCViVOgwZRCMx8QH7DJnoUlEz5JRk0vWNsEF1LrINysroCy6SkxvZA6UMDQcBj_2hKlX_bZBdlEBU90YhdpmVMIPlrDkzIAqAW_w6fxKOWqFwk_sVS2VkbOh7wueygaZKSDGwrinAAIjmxU1bg1exz2MbrmL_H_ECIyP6egVMe-JbFGZA/s1231/fraulein.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;916&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1231&quot; height=&quot;238&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvsCViVOgwZRCMx8QH7DJnoUlEz5JRk0vWNsEF1LrINysroCy6SkxvZA6UMDQcBj_2hKlX_bZBdlEBU90YhdpmVMIPlrDkzIAqAW_w6fxKOWqFwk_sVS2VkbOh7wueygaZKSDGwrinAAIjmxU1bg1exz2MbrmL_H_ECIyP6egVMe-JbFGZA/s320/fraulein.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And with Dino&#39;s other production it may be packed with extras, vistas and sweep, but it also zips along, high on the joy of forward momentum. Only the end, a muddy sea of extras in gas masks with helmets too similar to tell if they&#39;re German or French, all climbing over each other trying to escape or capture various trenches and roads, does it get a little Lean-ish--i.e. got to get your money&#39;s worth with those thousands of dying and gooey French soldiers-- but by then we&#39;re at the climax, so a little sweep isn&#39;t going to kill &lt;i&gt;you.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh Capucine, a chemist like you should have known: never trust a junky.&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;(full review&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/04/morphine-cappucine-and-dino-de-fraulein.html&quot; style=&quot;font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;here)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIusXlXI9rYLsE-Fyi0xGZqAlpGi3AUifxb3KxRwivcEod1RMfpUQIVcjA_b4KaI2doS_Tz4bBX9OQN2ZWgHxe5AzX0pst6b0vCalddcvykzkBWhs2exszQlkMpTwK8LKoo1zGMyZgZptjGARdChUK8i0ePeHRAZXPlWC476_iHltf8YA7g/s1917/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-05%20at%201.11.20%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1030&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1917&quot; height=&quot;344&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIusXlXI9rYLsE-Fyi0xGZqAlpGi3AUifxb3KxRwivcEod1RMfpUQIVcjA_b4KaI2doS_Tz4bBX9OQN2ZWgHxe5AzX0pst6b0vCalddcvykzkBWhs2exszQlkMpTwK8LKoo1zGMyZgZptjGARdChUK8i0ePeHRAZXPlWC476_iHltf8YA7g/w640-h344/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-05%20at%201.11.20%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;4.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;GUNSLINGER&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;(1957) Dir. Roger Corman&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Executing a deft outflanking maneuver around all the liberal guilt-tripping, corny sentiment, and labored symbolism that usually dampens the mood in any 50-60s &#39;revisionist&#39; western, director Roger Corman keeps the tale lean, sexy and over fast, i.e. his specialty. Easily the best of AIP / Allied Artists&#39; handful of westerns, this&amp;nbsp;gender-reversed, mud-soaked saga of two strong women facing off to the death over the right to keep bars open past three AM (!), is&amp;nbsp;criminally unavailable on DVD, or Blu-ray. Why? Is it because there are two deadly strong women locked in violent struggle and the patriarchy is basically portrayed as either cowardly, craven or conflicted? Beverly Garland stars as Rose, the wife of a murdered sheriff of Oracle, TX, who pins on his badge since the men in town are too cowardly, especially the lily-livered mayor.&amp;nbsp; Alison Hayes is Erica, the saloon owner/madame behind the killing, out to corner the real estate market by buying land then sending her smitten runt bartender (Jonathan Haze) to steal back the money. In addition to making her close at 3 AM, Rose also orders her three prostitutes out of town by the end of the week, and that&#39;s just going too damned far. Erica brings in the titular gunslinger Cane (John Ireland) to take Rose out at the end of the week; but he ends up falling for her! Considering Erica and he used to have a thing back in the day, that doesn&#39;t go over so well.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;It may sound pretty trite yet in Corman&#39;s hands, and courtesy Charles B. Griffith&#39;s and Mark Hana&#39;s typically tight script, this romantic triangle is actually pretty perceptive and even mature. Rose and Cane fall for each other but are both professionals who won&#39;t bend from their duties, making it doomed from the start. The countdown clock as the week ticks down to zero hour is ingenious (Erica is waiting for the telegram that will announce if the railroad is coming through, and will make her a wealthy woman, or if she&#39;s just going to start blastin&#39;). Can you guess what the telegram is gonna say!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjquq2PU43Ijuzn3bXcO0VnFUptjkBCEYN4SNy_SJP-pYD96a-wZoQAAayI8PfemV-aWCcotTG_dHyDEfI9sH9S0FRduqHgjCl-fVeK21eTn9q_8IBsRM0bYK1RKDPZJNehy9ekdoImvak5g4oJcoUUR7d_tB4zfptF9dHIW08YKWAoOrqdw/s1088/Alison%20Hayes%20as%20Erica%20in%20Gunslinger%20(1957).png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;878&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1088&quot; height=&quot;258&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjquq2PU43Ijuzn3bXcO0VnFUptjkBCEYN4SNy_SJP-pYD96a-wZoQAAayI8PfemV-aWCcotTG_dHyDEfI9sH9S0FRduqHgjCl-fVeK21eTn9q_8IBsRM0bYK1RKDPZJNehy9ekdoImvak5g4oJcoUUR7d_tB4zfptF9dHIW08YKWAoOrqdw/s320/Alison%20Hayes%20as%20Erica%20in%20Gunslinger%20(1957).png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Perhaps the only reason &lt;i&gt;Gunslinger&lt;/i&gt; isn&#39;t more widely regarded (it rates a lowly 3.7 on imdb with barely a review link to its name) is that western fans are threatened by the gender revisionism. I usually roll my eyes at lady gunfighter movies as they&#39;re either campy and overwrought (&lt;i&gt;Johnny Guitar&lt;/i&gt;), brooding and overproduced (&lt;i&gt;The Quick and the Dead&lt;/i&gt;), or winky-dink and cutesy-poo (&lt;i&gt;Cat Ballou&lt;/i&gt;), but Corman does everything right, and doesn&#39;t waste a second on filler.&amp;nbsp; People get shot right and left and die in the mud (Corman was plagued by rain so this is far from your usual desert setting) with no fanfare or drawn-out showdowns. Rose has no problem--no tears or misgivings--about racking up an impressive body count. I think Corman gets at a real truth about gunfights here that few others really do, i.e. the killer instinct is everything: the resolve to fire while the other person is still working up the steam it takes to violate nature with such quick, irreversible finality, fully cognizant of the fact that by raising your gun your chances of getting shot rise past the point of no return - this is what wins battles.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;But man oh man, Roger! If your film is about a battle between two strong, inflexible, beautiful, deadly women (who have one of the best female-on-female bar fights in film history) why give it such a generic title as &quot;Gunslinger&quot;? I.e. why presume the most interesting character is going to be John Ireland? It sounds like its deliberately hiding inside a thick herd of generic westerns, hoping no hungry critic spots its creative weakness and lunges.&amp;nbsp; I wouldn&#39;t have ever even seen it myself if I wasn&#39;t assigned the whole Corman oeuvre back when I wrote for the Muze Search Engine way in &#39;99. Man, am I grateful I did, grateful I lived next to an UES video store that had it (duped) and grateful to the understandin&#39; soul who uploaded this &#39;un to yonder &#39;Tube. Keep the faith, ladies. All aboard for Oracle!&amp;nbsp; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/04/that-hayes-woman-disembodied-undead.htm&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;full review)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6RC9nu53CNL9BsvdOlSUxPZ0hh1TJpbNmNI0oagkhXuROuc3VKD4Kf4ImDr2gJ6YLE3maOiwD0Rsz7dtVwCyBqBbAx7dPmbLVVmFqgSG70iAz4UE9FWnVnTcVGfo_RJLLeZNLEYW15asa2g18l-42Q-BXAr5Rj-PDKujM5lz119I_0OY0g/s1620/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.02.47%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;874&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1620&quot; height=&quot;346&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm6RC9nu53CNL9BsvdOlSUxPZ0hh1TJpbNmNI0oagkhXuROuc3VKD4Kf4ImDr2gJ6YLE3maOiwD0Rsz7dtVwCyBqBbAx7dPmbLVVmFqgSG70iAz4UE9FWnVnTcVGfo_RJLLeZNLEYW15asa2g18l-42Q-BXAr5Rj-PDKujM5lz119I_0OY0g/w640-h346/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.02.47%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicLsz3JC7gBHShXI6EcVxw9IhKP0oAeCYit-ykWKtK_M4YgucftEM4o6yvDQLsrLQ2djhCoxo-pVzJhZNw5okVK_bho0UPz1tXaAVA5ZULcRtW3uNddw-fUMNC9KZ7kPO_6D1RJLhPRktZHEinpSyr6gMsNiNvykc-v_Fdo9f80FYhssnT9g/s1606/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.02.49%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;887&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1606&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicLsz3JC7gBHShXI6EcVxw9IhKP0oAeCYit-ykWKtK_M4YgucftEM4o6yvDQLsrLQ2djhCoxo-pVzJhZNw5okVK_bho0UPz1tXaAVA5ZULcRtW3uNddw-fUMNC9KZ7kPO_6D1RJLhPRktZHEinpSyr6gMsNiNvykc-v_Fdo9f80FYhssnT9g/w400-h221/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.02.49%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgbe5ZiiWFMnQeSDqthTjMTBD9o0oE3JzFvhCaXiZrYrlcJgoBGbr42nZuHx0QI1Sz09zMvMMII7FFctY5qMuSLz9GSBypDzLgcEwC1OfRGsDzxH6bHBbEwNMP0Ip-wjKQzJI_8kdXRW43li6hv8OZsisBbMmH7tPoIW4HWu6rZF0EoBF9mw/s1585/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.01.05%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;883&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1585&quot; height=&quot;178&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgbe5ZiiWFMnQeSDqthTjMTBD9o0oE3JzFvhCaXiZrYrlcJgoBGbr42nZuHx0QI1Sz09zMvMMII7FFctY5qMuSLz9GSBypDzLgcEwC1OfRGsDzxH6bHBbEwNMP0Ip-wjKQzJI_8kdXRW43li6hv8OZsisBbMmH7tPoIW4HWu6rZF0EoBF9mw/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.01.05%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW_HkwzWMy0STozDcqGCjJx3lTz2O1DN14WC_OugjHKjmp3wfFvIhjJtg7O0KWmuACbQ_ZgvJ-NHTkp8bTWz7dwvEqVF-bkjgkm04I8YPSvBNAyLUtLtMfjPwRSFs4mJ4GaCtlVpqORDZw9-XdkD1sBsX4DAgnQedBXbWkcyWa20qcMoQZtA/s1313/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.15.11%20AM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;732&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1313&quot; height=&quot;178&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW_HkwzWMy0STozDcqGCjJx3lTz2O1DN14WC_OugjHKjmp3wfFvIhjJtg7O0KWmuACbQ_ZgvJ-NHTkp8bTWz7dwvEqVF-bkjgkm04I8YPSvBNAyLUtLtMfjPwRSFs4mJ4GaCtlVpqORDZw9-XdkD1sBsX4DAgnQedBXbWkcyWa20qcMoQZtA/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-08%20at%2011.15.11%20AM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;5 .&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt; HEARTS AND ARMOUR&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;(1983)&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Dir. Giacomo Battiato&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here&#39;s an Italian epic of swirling pre-Raphaelite beauty full of line-crossed lovers and knightly battlin&#39;, a kind Eschenbach &lt;i&gt;Parsifa&lt;/i&gt;l version of the Crusades. Edited down to a feature length from an Italian TV mini-series (like&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2020/03/retreat-to-move-forward-yor-hunter-from.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;YOR&lt;/a&gt;, yo!) and seen in America--if at all--mainly idling on the shelves of early mom and pop video stores (in one of those early oversize cases). Never released on DVD or Blu-ray (yet) it&#39;s a movie that might be too romantic for the&lt;i&gt; Conan&lt;/i&gt; crowd (unless your favorite part is the trysting with Valeria)--and too overwrought for the&lt;i&gt; Excalibur &lt;/i&gt;crowd (unless your favorite part is handsome Lancelot getting it on with Arthur&#39;s wife in the misty glen) yet too action-driven and semi-sleazy for the Harlequin romance crowd. The plot finds a small cadre of noble Muslim knights ride around scrapping with the a similar number of Christians, occasionally rescuing fair maidens or getting cats out of trees and having a nice bloody time of it, until they fall in love with a maiden from the other side. Naked trysts in the lush and misty bower make it hard to go back to the usual Jetts/Sharks falderal.&amp;nbsp; But back they must go! Tanya Roberts--the fairest Moorish princess of all--bowers it up with a tow-headed Christian knight who rescues her from a mid-creek ravaging. Lovely Barbara De Rossi is a Christian maiden rescued from a (different) mid-creek ravaging by an invincible suit of armor which she then wears until the bower and a handsome Moorish knight doth beckon. Meanwhile a Muslim warrior women who actually looks remotely Muslin is shunted to the side. Uncool! But with De Rossi in that armor and all, what choice do you have, eh, blondie? There&#39;s also a stone that turns you invisible if you put it in your mouth. A sleazy monk uses it to start a temple-side ravaging but this time Tanya rescues herself (you don&#39;t need to see them for your knee to find a perp&#39;s balls - always remember that, girls) - and grabs that precious ring, I mean magic stone.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;With its lush cinematography making fine use of the deep shadows created by old growth forests (dig the pre-Raphaelite evocation in the screenshots above),&amp;nbsp; with high-fashion Italian armor designs (dig that rooster comb helmet!) and with her wild, long hair straying down u in lovely wisps over her gleaming armor, De Rossi is a real vision, like the knight and maiden in J.W. Waterhouse&#39;s 1893 &quot;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://byronsmuse.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-pre-raphaelites-and-john-keats/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Belle Dame sans Merci&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&quot; rolled into one. It won&#39;t make your sword &amp;amp; sorcery top ten, but it&#39;s still a nice addition to the post-&lt;i&gt;Conan&lt;/i&gt; sword and sorcery boom. Aside from a few hairy situations, it goes down easy as a Sunday morning mimosa at an East Village brunch with all your prettiest hussy friends.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rfzXH5lXRuGY-Xfme_8k8-vtwrLP-SaIJIIfUEfEHUqexS00652qqI4tHkMVMXUviDy95rSKFTFF1qQG9zGhv5IU77RX4H5J3al9o57FihhA4KlebqVdQPyIX221vFmZXyNlv_mrpKPEOWLLprmm8fSrVjghCsglETTcIZp7JmODYqWL1A/s1683/green%20snake.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;706&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1683&quot; height=&quot;268&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rfzXH5lXRuGY-Xfme_8k8-vtwrLP-SaIJIIfUEfEHUqexS00652qqI4tHkMVMXUviDy95rSKFTFF1qQG9zGhv5IU77RX4H5J3al9o57FihhA4KlebqVdQPyIX221vFmZXyNlv_mrpKPEOWLLprmm8fSrVjghCsglETTcIZp7JmODYqWL1A/w640-h268/green%20snake.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;6.&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt; GREEN SNAKE&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;(1993) Dir. Tsui Hark&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Tsui Hark is definitely--like fellow Hong Kong auteur Stephen Chow--an acquired taste for a lot of mainstream American audience, wizzing by so quickly, veering crazily from one emotional height to another: romantic hijynx, crazy myth-building, sudden flashbacks, highwire action, HK music video-style sex, Steadicams zipping around like hopped up taxis, practical and--sometimes--CGI effects, soapy love story, comic interludes of bumbling scholars, horror/gore shocks, etc. it all flits by like shuffled cards, made all the more confusing thanks to often too literally translated English subtitles that--at best--provide a kind of avant-jazz counterpoint or koan-style poeticism to the action rather than clarifying events (you have to kind of trust yourself to understand the plot on faith as you don&#39;t get time to process; if you pause to unpack you&#39;ll get even more lost. His big crossover hit was 1987&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;A Chinese Ghost Stor&lt;/i&gt;y, and its love story between a naive young human and a sexy spirit, threatened by a soul devouring androgynous forest demon. Here&#39;s kind of an inverse variation, adapted by Chinese novelist Lillian Lee from a popular Chinese fairy tale. HK superstars Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung star as two sisters water elementals, serpent daemons who get to come onto land as humans during a big festival, setting up shop in beautiful empty house perched along a floating lotus-filled pond, leading off to the sea. The younger Green Snake (Cheung) is mischievous, curious, a little wicked, eager to experience the strange emotions of love (even faking crying at one point); Wong is the more mature White Snake who ends up falling for naive Buddhist scholar Hsui Xien (Wu Hsing-Kuo) and learning all about sex (her orgasm floods the river); and heartache (after he finds out who she is and bails in fear)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuzEAEeELKKuzRVWZj1Esd3eIOhtLtNwxGtHBJHzZQcQqYRcw33tuFCr8_dq7gqHAIuSU3Fnq-dBwIaVxDwkXxkwKfJ28F_noBN_Rh286C8E1rFREmJjAEOn76M73YSsLuL5FS_qV5I_fF_wzFq8W2-G8t1raPScd3EkbsVsG6ZP4wT7XATw/s1700/greeensnake.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;699&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1700&quot; height=&quot;165&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuzEAEeELKKuzRVWZj1Esd3eIOhtLtNwxGtHBJHzZQcQqYRcw33tuFCr8_dq7gqHAIuSU3Fnq-dBwIaVxDwkXxkwKfJ28F_noBN_Rh286C8E1rFREmJjAEOn76M73YSsLuL5FS_qV5I_fF_wzFq8W2-G8t1raPScd3EkbsVsG6ZP4wT7XATw/w400-h165/greeensnake.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;There&#39;s no doubt the Buddhist monk Fat Hoi (Vincent Zhao) has mad power; when he meditates, rainbows shoot out o fhis head &lt;i&gt;(left) &lt;/i&gt;but he&#39;s very inflexible in his need to imprison any demon who crosses his path in his demon-trapping bowl, even a spider spirit turned devoted monk whose glowing prayer beads prove a hunting reminder to him that he can be wrong. With clarity of purpose being a pre-requisite for enlightenment, this muddying of moral waters threatens to undo him. When the beads wind up in the hands of the snake spirits he&#39;s forced to let them go, but that doesn&#39;t mean he wont try to break it up the White Snake/Hsiu Xien romance, spiriting Hsui off to a rocky island monastery full of dead chanting monks, determined to keep the snakes away from him at any cost, regardless of what&lt;i&gt; he&lt;/i&gt; wants, neither of them knowing White Snake is giving birth to Hsiu&#39;s son.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOsCdK_oV0N-l_VHzSCqAMwJtNHQ2m1djXRaDA4hcuaCk1EXLJn_vcr4Zb9BqoNdCvSUoI-a--xb3MlYST17WNos75r63rvQ1pIdpAO8L1Bsw-GAMhp4sUvC66NWwbtRnXsWJoEqJGcKY7-j6EOgm69hiIFP_h1Zoa_RizWuN14dkK99IE7A/s1730/dangerous%20cheung.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;705&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1730&quot; height=&quot;163&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOsCdK_oV0N-l_VHzSCqAMwJtNHQ2m1djXRaDA4hcuaCk1EXLJn_vcr4Zb9BqoNdCvSUoI-a--xb3MlYST17WNos75r63rvQ1pIdpAO8L1Bsw-GAMhp4sUvC66NWwbtRnXsWJoEqJGcKY7-j6EOgm69hiIFP_h1Zoa_RizWuN14dkK99IE7A/w400-h163/dangerous%20cheung.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The cool thing with Buddhism-based horror and fantasy is that the monks and Buddhas have just as many if not more magical powers as the evil ones do. In Catholicism-based demon movies God is usually silent and basically impotent. His faithful are left alone against the overwhelming force of the demon until the very last minute, usually martyred for their troubles.&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;If &lt;i&gt;The Exorcist &lt;/i&gt;was made in Hong Kong, for example, Max von Sydow would be shooting lasers out of his mudras and spinning chakras and light sabre cross, and so it is here, with the taoist monk clearing out the flood waters with a wave of his stick and bringing about a magic rainbow- or shooting vast lengths of cloth out of his sleeve to trap spider spirits. Only gradually does he realize his inflexibility --labeling all demons as bad --is turning him into the villain. Things reach a climax when he becomes determined to deliver ------ from the two snake spirits that have him bewitched. Whisking him off to an ancient temple full of dead monks chanting and trying to save him - converting him from his love into the way of the boddhisatva, or whatever, while Green and White snake try to rescue him by eroding the temple into the sea, not realizing their blasts of water are flooding the town nearby - things build and build to a head and one wishes American films were this Jungianly complex. It&#39;s a bit like Mozart&#39;s &lt;i&gt;The Magic Flue &lt;/i&gt;but with the queen of the night and her daughters the good guys and Sarastro and his monks the bad, with Parsifal caught in the middle. What, you don&#39;t get that reference? The Buddhist scholar is like Hopsy in&lt;i&gt; the Lady Eve,&lt;/i&gt; with Jean an Emma (1) rolled into one (thus &quot;snakes are my life&quot; can continue to be his motto while still being a devoted spouse)&amp;nbsp; That better?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As with Sturges&#39; film, we in the audience are &#39;in the know&#39; &lt;i&gt;The Little Mermaid, The Lure&lt;/i&gt; - it all goes on the same mythic frame - the woman spirit/unconscious/water/anima and her ultimate surrender as she comes into the light of marriage with male consciousness. - Ideally they merge totally - as in the union of Prince Eric and Ariel where the father from the sea is present at their wedding to wield his triton - i.e. land and sea unified. At its worst, she&#39;s screwed over patriarchy, ends up dying for a worthless man who the wilder sister--the one who never sold out--promptly and quite rightly kills (as in &lt;i&gt;The Lure.)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;One thing though - the translation on the YouTube video I saw is the typically abstract. Especially when the monk and the snake sisters--the girls eroding the monastery rock from all sides--the monk shooting out giant rolls of red cloth at them-- it gets really wacky:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;This spell? I accept it,&quot; says the monk when they launch mojo his way &quot;You guys! The cassocks.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;Come out and he want to make us in,&quot; shouts Green Snake. &quot;Sister who can still go.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;Cassock - have you thought about my cassock?&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And my favorite, a parting jab at the monk&#39;s manhood: &quot;What magic weapon do you have when I am out of the shower?&quot; If you can translate what those subtitles mean, and you kind of can if you&#39;ve ever taken a poetry class or tried to communicate in a language you barely know, or both at the same time, and there you are. The Cassock is you.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It&#39;s spiritedly acted (Cheung twisting and undulating and crawling along surfaces or swimming silently through the water in an unforgettably delightful sight), swooningly romantic (yet perceptive about human relationships), spirituality profound, Jungian, and exhibit A in how sublimely alike are western fairy tales and eastern fairy tales/myths - pointing at profound truths of Jungian archetypal psychology no amount of fractured subtitles can obscure. The patriarchy can obscure it though - so cherish yonder YouTube upload while ye may. You never know when Green Snake could slither back into the murky river and never be seen again outside of some OOP Tai Seng non-anamorphic, faded DVD.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2n_eG7-BBYl5bUEOH3smEyrAUAb3qoSlqYWPKvvumHnswrUUIIFeffelZwDzLAvJfnWB-FRu5cjBjt9ECRsN2JFqkPmsn-H9Pkt_Hn5QGBjg__DO3gtpf60x9eTLLQxfMv0-iFiBMf9nw_LsnLkoKQ6NT6KD2Q-oLrMrA4he2_VsAPV4EgQ/s1552/nadja.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;970&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1552&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2n_eG7-BBYl5bUEOH3smEyrAUAb3qoSlqYWPKvvumHnswrUUIIFeffelZwDzLAvJfnWB-FRu5cjBjt9ECRsN2JFqkPmsn-H9Pkt_Hn5QGBjg__DO3gtpf60x9eTLLQxfMv0-iFiBMf9nw_LsnLkoKQ6NT6KD2Q-oLrMrA4he2_VsAPV4EgQ/w640-h400/nadja.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: transparent;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;7.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;NADJA&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: transparent;&quot;&gt;(1994)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: transparent;&quot;&gt;Dir. Michael Almereyda&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A loose unofficial hipster downtown NYC b&amp;amp;w remake of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dracula&#39;s Daughter&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;(1936), with Elina Löwensohn in the Gloria Holden role? Am I in heaven?&amp;nbsp; Our antiheroine is in town to steal her father&#39;s (Dracula&#39;s) body from the morgue and burn it (so he can&#39;t come back) after Van Helsing (Peter Fonda!) stakes him shortly before the film begins. The zonked &#39;love child of Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy&#39; Galaxy Craze plays Lucy, the drifting wife of Van Helsing&#39;s nephew (Martin Donovan in an early role as perhaps the most unconvincing boxer ever), here doubling for Jonathan Harker once Lucy falls under Nadja&#39;s spell. Could it be that-- a&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/05/we-seem-to-go-way-back-lady-eve-bell.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;s in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Bell, Book &amp;amp; Candle&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Bringing up Baby&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;--there&#39;s some kind of archetypal feminine magic at play in their chance meeting?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSDuCvsMO_Dk3vyjbzSqA8_cOFw164-C6_VF3QgaAJ6qv7VH1-sQe9Q_WwlwwSxObyPwLCZxwtBNI9ai8pGCTPm36rQQr3uTV_x4LE6hUHVaRrr-PT2NeCnfwBTnk40oNhqrS88vmIPZsm_qwt0U4YWSZXkn1rNP8omsu95tn_6d7ioVw8Q/s799/Nadja%2044.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;495&quot; data-original-width=&quot;799&quot; height=&quot;198&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSDuCvsMO_Dk3vyjbzSqA8_cOFw164-C6_VF3QgaAJ6qv7VH1-sQe9Q_WwlwwSxObyPwLCZxwtBNI9ai8pGCTPm36rQQr3uTV_x4LE6hUHVaRrr-PT2NeCnfwBTnk40oNhqrS88vmIPZsm_qwt0U4YWSZXkn1rNP8omsu95tn_6d7ioVw8Q/s320/Nadja%2044.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Director Michael Almereyda proves himself quite adept at overlaying classic noir and Universal horror elements over familiar beats of black-and-white hipster downtown young people conversation, i.e. Jim Jarmusch peanut butter crashing into Todd Browning chocolate.&amp;nbsp; Nadja have a great round of expository meet-cute dialogue that mixes poetry, exposition and dark humor, all mixed together rather marvelously if faux-pretentiously. You can get an idea of it in the following exchange at the bar: Nadja tells Lucy she wants to see her brother (Jared Harris!) even though h wants to destroy her.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&quot;Does he live in Carpathia,&quot; Lucy asks.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;&quot;No,&quot; Nadja eyes her coldly, as if the answer is far more remote, &quot;Brooklyn.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;The score is always on point (nearly every track is something I had in my CD collection at the time)--Portishead, Spacehogg, the works--and the black-and-white photography is luminous. You don&#39;t have to have been a nocturnal druggie hipster poet in 1990s NYC&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;and a&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;classic horror &#39;monster kid&#39; who can pretty much quote the entire original 1931&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dracula&lt;/i&gt;, but it helps. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF3qYSOIzIY&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Have you seen my &quot;&lt;i&gt;Ten Minute&amp;nbsp;Dracula&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;one man show&lt;/a&gt;, recorded before a hip audience on an East Village rooftop in 1999?).&amp;nbsp;See it with&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Addiction &lt;/i&gt;(which came out the same year, is also in black-and-white, starring a hipster vampire, but is set in the West instead of the East Village and more about drug addiction than love),&amp;nbsp;and then add&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;for a&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/04/druggie-vampire-women-of-b-city-girl.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Black-and-white druggy downtown vampire triple feature!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;And also check out Almereyda&#39;s similar unjustly forgotten hipster update of&lt;i&gt; Blood from the Mummy&#39;s Tomb,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/04/comes-iron-age-irish-bog-mummy.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Eterna&lt;/a&gt;l,(1998),&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;post-body entry-content&quot; id=&quot;post-body-2991973608255488039&quot; itemprop=&quot;description articleBody&quot; style=&quot;line-height: 1.4; orphans: 2; position: relative; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; widows: 2; width: 664.176px;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCLagyyoUwAYjKBSRhBwdA9QnWKYXOas1HCMgnVP5DpIv2uZx4uXV3qlTIuyHQDoUlzfKjiLQKzstPYj54u9RSWOgZOECTl8CusK4Np-VXu7oGi1NfjjnQqkz8Zx2ICiMP20uoM_mnUU887KGcRgVT6CaxZ16hnD-sf9Q1wkPm83W2PytNw/s1319/murder%20by%20the%20clock.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;967&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1319&quot; height=&quot;294&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCLagyyoUwAYjKBSRhBwdA9QnWKYXOas1HCMgnVP5DpIv2uZx4uXV3qlTIuyHQDoUlzfKjiLQKzstPYj54u9RSWOgZOECTl8CusK4Np-VXu7oGi1NfjjnQqkz8Zx2ICiMP20uoM_mnUU887KGcRgVT6CaxZ16hnD-sf9Q1wkPm83W2PytNw/w400-h294/murder%20by%20the%20clock.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWoGqxL4plcAdbD9U2KPfauhVvVjKmQOPVDI7vwtb2H9QeVKlMwtlqzoQRWoQ-DntUxc9xuUQ3aSoqIjPYLsgm8m454h_QGdyTgD569qdh--u2P5ZzbG2oXvWegtuhNs3db9PHgqLCjgbOetSvT61fiiA1ob8yGvp-bPxi-3_cHb9yqqqCQ/s1310/the%20evil%20Mrs.%20Endicott.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;979&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1310&quot; height=&quot;478&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWoGqxL4plcAdbD9U2KPfauhVvVjKmQOPVDI7vwtb2H9QeVKlMwtlqzoQRWoQ-DntUxc9xuUQ3aSoqIjPYLsgm8m454h_QGdyTgD569qdh--u2P5ZzbG2oXvWegtuhNs3db9PHgqLCjgbOetSvT61fiiA1ob8yGvp-bPxi-3_cHb9yqqqCQ/w640-h478/the%20evil%20Mrs.%20Endicott.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKWzcHj9vHiuurolDTRoAtoQrAdwQS9A0Ux-oHHRRRHqUzNYtnYzOs44nuoHa1RgH1wcwusmokWioSAf8LjisWpjEHPRzAIVaKIpUhZ0a1G83e7yHA0SnTMP9558sKAliAri53fnza6suF0xXUyT9fL2iKYjTMJ49CFnYoAjiH3exy_kG_KA/s1281/murder%20by%20the%20clock.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;963&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1281&quot; height=&quot;301&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKWzcHj9vHiuurolDTRoAtoQrAdwQS9A0Ux-oHHRRRHqUzNYtnYzOs44nuoHa1RgH1wcwusmokWioSAf8LjisWpjEHPRzAIVaKIpUhZ0a1G83e7yHA0SnTMP9558sKAliAri53fnza6suF0xXUyT9fL2iKYjTMJ49CFnYoAjiH3exy_kG_KA/w400-h301/murder%20by%20the%20clock.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI0bWr82yLpzeWJcgNI7Pju0tj4hrFNpFAQWCs0TeQjpMZ48RheN2keQgD8Ek06Ahpm_easeMmt8kUiTQ_Rs5ZIOpZBfHzN2BWs9N-jqyTeHANcDYFpRbZ0ySCFxMwNTrxGY8ef3604rVASlXZy1ABRheXQ9OCfZayh9VzjNJNW5Hz7fZiUQ/s1309/murder%20vt%20t.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;988&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1309&quot; height=&quot;303&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI0bWr82yLpzeWJcgNI7Pju0tj4hrFNpFAQWCs0TeQjpMZ48RheN2keQgD8Ek06Ahpm_easeMmt8kUiTQ_Rs5ZIOpZBfHzN2BWs9N-jqyTeHANcDYFpRbZ0ySCFxMwNTrxGY8ef3604rVASlXZy1ABRheXQ9OCfZayh9VzjNJNW5Hz7fZiUQ/w400-h303/murder%20vt%20t.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;MURDER BY THE CLOCK&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1931) Dir. Edward Sloman&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Thanks to decades of unavailability (never even on VHS), very few critics and classic horror and mystery fans have given themselves over to the pre-code lurid greatness of &lt;i&gt;Murder By the Clock&lt;/i&gt;, nor waxed sufficiently euphoric over the gleefully homicidal performance of Lilyan Tashman as Laura, the conniving and super-evil wife of lily-livered Herbert (Walter McGrail) who stands to inherit a fortune once his irascible, locked-in-the-past, bitter, premature burial-fearing aunt Julia (Blanche Friderici) kicks off.&amp;nbsp; Living in a giant super dark Addams-esque house with only her totally deranged, inhumanly strong simpleton son (Irving Pichel) and his no-nonsense housekeeper/caregiver for company, it&#39;s going to be pretty easy to sneak in and speed that process along. That is, if Laura can browbeat him into enough homicidal submission.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;We know what&#39;s coming in the third act, because in the first scene we see Julia, her son and his caregiver visiting the family crypt to check the &#39;alarm horn&#39; inside; she can let everyone know if she&#39;s entombed alive. After Julia makes the mistake of announcing she&#39;s changed her will over to leave everything to Herbert, you can guess who&#39;s going to put her in there.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWL63gL4jbZM4jiQKc4UPR2HqMyh7YjnPwuVBnySna84b2A2xzr2T8YZoTya1UEX-77u9kM5Ks3WQd99PoQGZFsfYgOKCYKP1ceJsaljsc-W5A8iP1TdhSqQdfP8YRaESsX-J2RLSFPuEHJf35i9tHHUTsf5Vm7xuhKMw4aKVfCFlT490OA/s1312/mmurder%20vy%20the%20cock.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;972&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1312&quot; height=&quot;237&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWL63gL4jbZM4jiQKc4UPR2HqMyh7YjnPwuVBnySna84b2A2xzr2T8YZoTya1UEX-77u9kM5Ks3WQd99PoQGZFsfYgOKCYKP1ceJsaljsc-W5A8iP1TdhSqQdfP8YRaESsX-J2RLSFPuEHJf35i9tHHUTsf5Vm7xuhKMw4aKVfCFlT490OA/s320/mmurder%20vy%20the%20cock.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Man, like&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Night of Terror &lt;/i&gt;(1933), the filmmakers make full use of the temporarily lax production code to throw a lot of high weirdness into the mix. It would be a good enough old dark house movie just between Julia&#39;s morbid rantings, Pichel&#39;s lunatic laughter, the eerie expressionist graveyard across the street, and all the midnight creeping around. But then....here comes Tashman, grinning ecstatically when watching her husband get strangled. Oh! Oh, that Lilyan! Oh! what a gal!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Plying her strange, ugly/sexy seductive &#39;charm&#39; with all the subtlety of a punch in the face, Tashman proves one thing ably: shy, backwards, and horny men will always let themselves be manipulated by sexually forward women no matter how unpleasant said women may be. It can be oh so tough for shy guys to resist an assertive girl, even (or maybe especially) if--like Tashman-- she&#39;s only slightly attractive. It&#39;s sex as a coarse but palpable fact; you can practically smell it. First, she manipulates her husband into killing Julia; then manipulates her sculptor lover into killing her husband; then, after Pichel is jailed on suspicion for his mom&#39;s murder, she lets him all but molest her through the bars while convincing him to break out and kill either the husband or her sculptor lover, whichever is still alive by then! So she&#39;s got every man killing every other man to be with her. Whoever survives is who she&#39;ll turn on, claiming all sorts of coercion to ensure they get the hot seat, especially with her damning testimony (probably while shooting hungry looks at the male jurors) and now that she&#39;s basically inherited her way into being the wealthiest widow in town, the chief of police isn&#39;t about to accuse her of anything.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-OuSZLrCwSAZmuXqQu8sneK98q0KjDRmLxEcfm1BFENYYo5M_FmTSSuG2vIWifGEcVvb0kOoMt5AxKoy1A2yzA8ByJsYaA9LFm3wBU5JeGiCSeKD_rhOploTGb3_3Vs1G1NPxpVob_M_c4tBVcn8zupgqRbEdssqzZfO1UbtEh9j3ImHGdA/s1312/clocks.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;959&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1312&quot; height=&quot;293&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-OuSZLrCwSAZmuXqQu8sneK98q0KjDRmLxEcfm1BFENYYo5M_FmTSSuG2vIWifGEcVvb0kOoMt5AxKoy1A2yzA8ByJsYaA9LFm3wBU5JeGiCSeKD_rhOploTGb3_3Vs1G1NPxpVob_M_c4tBVcn8zupgqRbEdssqzZfO1UbtEh9j3ImHGdA/w400-h293/clocks.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;So, cops aside, all the men are easily seducible murderers, the women either bitter, manipulative, or dead. Only the homicide cop on the case, William Boyd, has any integrity or suspicion of Julia. She may have the other guys cowering, drooling, or at each other&#39;s throats, but Boyd rejects her advances with practiced ease. Still, he seems to admires her relentless confidence. He even admits--before hauling her away-- he&#39;s genuinely impressed.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What a gal! They don&#39;t make &#39;em like that anymore, and maybe this film shows why, even while making us wish they would. Tashman&#39;s Laura is so unique in the annals of evil femme fatales and horror monsters she should have a&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;Famous Monsters of Filmland cover to call her own (maybe a painting of that gleefully homicidal look, her claws bared, &lt;i&gt;above&lt;/i&gt;).&amp;nbsp; Her brand of aggressively carnal pre-code horror seems strong even today.&amp;nbsp; Tashman is like the evil mirror image of Mae West, as sexually subtle as a bag of hammers and just as damaging.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;504&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1h4HBGk6APgONxmNl-LHyt_unf3FbIBnIOmNO0lzi5VA9a4kKRS7D72L_ZJxKgrqh41Ud12U0YBx8Ve4LXcYrk6A0meDQ-UPSaiKtO5BS6DlpJcyixc8R0a8bX14-WwD98Vfsbg/w640-h504/sm2.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;9&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;STAR MAIDENS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1976) British-German TV&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;From the start of this very 70s very Europen sci-fi TV show we know we&#39;re in a world very far ahead of our own. `Over cool worldbuilding effects and a pumping loungecore theme song, a female narrate announces we&#39;re on tthe planet Medusa, a world far ahead of our own on almost every level. Their secret: women rule and men are considered inferior so kept as &#39;male domestics&#39;, &#39;nursing fathers&#39;, or labor.&amp;nbsp; As a result violence is almost totally abolished (men are kept in check via a harmless freeze ray. Earth is considered too backwards and &quot;disease-ridden&quot; for them to visit; and they worry their &#39;illegal men&#39;s movement&#39; may hear the rumors that&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;men &lt;/i&gt;rule over there and want to escape. That fear is not unfounded! Soon Adam. a handsome rebel and his nerdy tech geek buddy Shem are escaping Medusa in Adam&#39;s mistress&#39;s pleasure craft! &quot;It is said the Earth is a male paradise where women are kept subservient!&quot; Adam crows.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;If you&#39;re already wincing at the thought of Wynorski-esque camp parody at the inclusion of that last line rife with cleavage and blonde perms, you can unroll your eyes. After all, this is England! And West Germany! In the 70s! A rare perfect storm of progressive ideas, the show occasionally veers close to dopiness but overall never gets too strident or campy.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisiV4j2FkzypBJTEdygSDrt4KU3sLRVoKB7mrhIDr3ZKM9DHVUSmRCGPJSzkaJeDUK9hG8izxq23Fz5Vdpb-cIbPLADw7PBm_l1AyrUmg-Co1mXAY1W1rTpsdz_ep1wIj2hBXSBzfj_POS0glm9ECT5n3xmkCEGiA88YPgAE-xw9q14Wh6Gg/s450/star%20maidenz.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;341&quot; data-original-width=&quot;450&quot; height=&quot;242&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisiV4j2FkzypBJTEdygSDrt4KU3sLRVoKB7mrhIDr3ZKM9DHVUSmRCGPJSzkaJeDUK9hG8izxq23Fz5Vdpb-cIbPLADw7PBm_l1AyrUmg-Co1mXAY1W1rTpsdz_ep1wIj2hBXSBzfj_POS0glm9ECT5n3xmkCEGiA88YPgAE-xw9q14Wh6Gg/s320/star%20maidenz.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The clothes are an amazing--but relatively functional--brand of 70s Euro fantasia: thigh-high leather boots, tastefully kinky choke-collared shirts, flowing dresses, and elaborate long hair. There&#39;s one great main Medusa set, a kind of very dangerous looking bi-level mall style main area, and a few cool intergalactic crafts.&amp;nbsp; acting stays deadpan.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Retrofuturist to the hilt, it&#39;s an invaluable record of the decade that&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;his used to be on PBS over here - which is how I first saw it as an impressionable ten year-old. So you know, it&#39;s got class and--unlike most Brit sci-fi of the time--it seems to be shot on 16mm rather than video tape. To make this a joint operation we have a Fulvia (Judy Geeson) an elaborately coiffed member of Medusa&#39;s elite, and the frowning and suspicious German chief of security, Octavia (&amp;nbsp;Christiane Kruger) they&#39;re worse than we every were to women, well... in the first and second worlds anyway... in the last 100 years or so. Women even get to vote over here! At least, in the western world... now.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;The sets and costumes off the Planet Medusa are great, prime retrofuturism; there&#39;s no liveable outdoors there (due to asteroids), so the vibe is--as in &lt;i&gt;Logan&#39;s Run&lt;/i&gt;--a kind of harbinger that the entire future world would be all indoors., one giant mall. This was back when malls were something new (I remember the afternoon I first saw this show on TV, my dad was watching it when mom, my brother and I got back from the Montgomeryville Mall in PA. That was also the day that Dan Fogerlberg&#39;s &quot;Sometimes when we Touch&quot; premiered on the radio. Between that song, and the show, and the mall, the whole ethos of masculinity I grew up in (i.e. where if you&#39;re a man, crying is the ultimate shame) seemed to crumble like an impacted colon after a warm saline enema. All I remember about it was that the idea of being a kind sexual slave to Judy Geeson seemed very appealing, to the point I remember that afternoon so well, even we though we never saw that show again, and I never even knew its name--and no one I knew had ever heard of a show like that--for decades. On the Scarlet Street message boards, they tried to make me think I imagined it!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs8JLIowHTuq6FM_0K-PklnF4X7MExMSyttazsHK2c0uiVYZkX9gI5_H-EpPDbt6HIVOb0gcU8K3ggqN9EdVo_oawpZkB7kLdjMx1awaS2Rd6399E2FHsFzZ2H-q66o43bTZO1oAcbk6SxKqsHlRNuA2LM5VUNa5t4IuhO2pbL_yJsn2IHWQ/s1230/maids.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;930&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1230&quot; height=&quot;242&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs8JLIowHTuq6FM_0K-PklnF4X7MExMSyttazsHK2c0uiVYZkX9gI5_H-EpPDbt6HIVOb0gcU8K3ggqN9EdVo_oawpZkB7kLdjMx1awaS2Rd6399E2FHsFzZ2H-q66o43bTZO1oAcbk6SxKqsHlRNuA2LM5VUNa5t4IuhO2pbL_yJsn2IHWQ/s320/maids.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Anyway, alas, Medusa is only where about 1/3 of the action is, the rest of the time bulk of the film is spent on Earth, set in and around bucolic castle of the sort the BBC has been Masterpiece Theater-ing since the dawn of time. But that&#39;s OK - it&#39;s so very British, so Dr. Who-esque that the Brits--a geriatric scientist, his female assistant, her fiancee, a French scientist under the old guy, and a line of bobbies--barely raise an eyebrow over the arrival of the boys, offering them political asylum even as the girls show up in their big floating patched silver inner tube saucer, demanding their men&#39;s return. The girls start bossing around the men at the precinct, and address all their questions to the female assistant, which is awesome. To them, Earth is no threat and --since this is not America--no one shoots at them or reacts with violent knee-jerk hostility. Fulvia is a bit of a pill: &quot;There&#39;s only one thing I can teach you about our civilization,&quot; she tells the curious elder scientist, &quot;it does not suffer the pomposity of foolish little men, that&#39;s why we are more advanced than you.&quot; But it&#39;s&amp;nbsp;pretty fun watching them boss around the bobbies and researchers with imperious authority.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As for the men, it&#39;s endearing to watch them freak out and run when a young girl threatens to call her mom. Little lines like &quot;the ship controls are too hard for a man&quot; float by so dryly you have to find them for yourself. Little bits like Octavia smirking when the minister is unable to turn on a megaphone when yelling up at the hiding males up in the castle; the lads worrying the castle&#39;s sole elderly security&amp;nbsp;guard will call his army to stop Shep and Adam, so they zap him (&quot;the castle is ours! Lock the gates!!&quot;) Their childlike glee at feeling like they&#39;re breaking loose from their maternal prison is something every older boy goes through; the way it&#39;s done so low-key with funny bits just flying right and left under the radar of the director and composer who might try to underline them with comic stings, (wah wah waah)&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;and sitcom pauses.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Another fascinating element is how it seems to anticipate wireless remotes and the internet. Everything the aliens do is via devices connected to a remote mainframe computer, which lets them access information and even control earth cars remotely. Say what now? And I also like that the nightmare canon produces images of what the boys fear most, which turns out to be their mistresses.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;You think all men have a subconscious fear of women?&quot; asks the doctor.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;On Medusa, naturally,&quot; says Octavia &quot;Isn;&#39;t that the way true of earth?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;no&quot; he says&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;I was talking to&lt;i&gt; you&lt;/i&gt; Dr. Becker&quot; (his female assistant) she says ignoring the scientist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;I wouldn&#39;t know&quot; she says, surprised and almost protective of her relative subjugation.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;Pity,&#39; Octavia says.&quot;It&#39;s the key to good government.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;243&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRtGQ1IBvMgZPWPkh3Rrv42qSLQLrvSmClTcLVpLB6UUt35O9HNI6oG7vpHzb0BOAsamQBo0LOFPyZNv_HlDwPa7MyCLuQegdKCJ_dbEfck1fx9Yd4OVo5iTKIkbvcvM7aI8XfA/s1600/riff.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;It&#39;s not perfect and critics whose voices I respect chide me for recommending it. The last episode is kind of hard to accept, i.e. hat some predatory space ship rolls up on the girls and all they can do is meekly acquiesce since they&#39;ve never learned to fight back or strike first. Dude, we&#39;ve watched these girls use their freeze ray on men all over the livelong day, and now they&#39;re just meekly surrendering --to robot-coded&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;men! &lt;/i&gt;Even Fulvia orders Adam&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;not&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;to fight back, which makes no sense, like Gandhi beating his&amp;nbsp; followers with a stick for fighting.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fulvia is the most eager to have her man back after he escapes to Earth, a little &#39;too&#39; eager. But she&#39;s awesome when she protects the frightened prime minister as if he&#39;s a five year-old. Octavia is less interested in her man and more in the big picture: She doesn&#39;t want earth&#39;s barbaric patriarchal social structure infecting the purity of their own planet. Together they&#39;re a bit like a female version of Spock and Kirk, though by the second half of the season Fulvia (the Kirk) is on Earth dealing with the runaway men and Octavia is on Medusa dealing with typical sci-fi hazards like a berserk cold storage computer, an alleged assassination, and crazy meteors. Both planets get their share of humorous moments but nothing really tops the scenes of the escaped men running around with their puffy shirts open, shouting &quot;I&#39;m frightened!&quot; Or when Fulvia soothes&amp;nbsp;a rattled male politician like a fireman talking a kitten down from a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But all in all, what a strange, crazy, highly advanced show this was. Now that I&#39;m watching it again, I find that, in light of its subversive gender power switch, its unavailability is most suspect. On a post-feminist level its absence is downright conspicuous. It still stands alone in daring to imagine women not just in positions of authority usually (at the time) reserved for men, but as masters of a society that&#39;s evolved far past what we usually imagine. By switching the usual gender bias, suddenly the whole usually invisible patriarchal blueprint is suddenly illuminated. Damn, isn&#39;t that what all art is&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;to do, dearie?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;iframe allow=&quot;accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA_3wYZc9Fcn7EZI2SzSPSWj&quot; title=&quot;YouTube video player&quot; width=&quot;560&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;See Also:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFH6HUMTCy3yCPqIxqTav0wlH6Au-UPkw0AlbCG7R30D9rO0Dg1hbAJ7WOH6Pox4yIz1utuTLNfQLju1lg9KNsAc7Bgp0SQA-V0ud8vYx1M9VYysWjY3VDyktCbcrRBFOxA4q/s1600/angel+.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGu1mbZJeaen-5sndNvRWZMu-XRdusbOwOtV3WsX_xzOOua0ax7tayFBYd9Lm60R-a9NPRUPuCPjI6BeFbRgf0NJse6xg3vZeCMq7ajWONUTEAF-wlBt9sx0Z_ZzkF2l7DWhkT37Y7lBw55Vzlv9FRwD0DHhQEN2UycWSGpT2Dv55CcV6oQ/s1265/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-06%20at%2010.12.08%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;961&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1265&quot; height=&quot;243&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGu1mbZJeaen-5sndNvRWZMu-XRdusbOwOtV3WsX_xzOOua0ax7tayFBYd9Lm60R-a9NPRUPuCPjI6BeFbRgf0NJse6xg3vZeCMq7ajWONUTEAF-wlBt9sx0Z_ZzkF2l7DWhkT37Y7lBw55Vzlv9FRwD0DHhQEN2UycWSGpT2Dv55CcV6oQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-06%20at%2010.12.08%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFH6HUMTCy3yCPqIxqTav0wlH6Au-UPkw0AlbCG7R30D9rO0Dg1hbAJ7WOH6Pox4yIz1utuTLNfQLju1lg9KNsAc7Bgp0SQA-V0ud8vYx1M9VYysWjY3VDyktCbcrRBFOxA4q/s1600/angel+.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;I. &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFH6HUMTCy3yCPqIxqTav0wlH6Au-UPkw0AlbCG7R30D9rO0Dg1hbAJ7WOH6Pox4yIz1utuTLNfQLju1lg9KNsAc7Bgp0SQA-V0ud8vYx1M9VYysWjY3VDyktCbcrRBFOxA4q/s1600/angel+.jpg&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;ANGELS OF DEATH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/02/great-women-of-horror-acidemic-top-ten.html&quot;&gt;II: Great Women of Horror&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/07/angels-of-death-summer-viewing-list.html&quot;&gt;III: &lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/07/angels-of-death-summer-viewing-list.html&quot;&gt;Badass Brunette Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/08/angels-of-groovy-death-iv-lynn-lowry.html&quot;&gt;IV: Lynn Lowry Special Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/10/angels-of-death-list-v-magic-slut.html&quot;&gt;V: Magic Slut Split/Subject Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2017/11/angels-of-death-v-girl-mummies.html&quot;&gt;VI. Girl Mummies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/08/angels-of-death-special-edition-vi.html&quot;&gt;VII: FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-favorite-angels-of-death-vol.html&quot;&gt;VIII: The Good, the Bad, and Beyond&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/01/angels-of-death-ix-gold-diggers-of-1935.html&quot;&gt;IX: Lullaby of Broadway (special)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/jennings-ballin-jack-truck-stop-women.html&quot;&gt;TRUCK STOP WOMEN (1974)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://brightlightsfilm.com/wp-content/cache/all/a-half-hour-honey/#.W5p29GRKjSx&quot;&gt;HONEY WEST&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/12/camille-paglia-defends-charlies-angels.html&quot;&gt;CHARLIE&#39;S ANGELS (1976-79)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/square-in-maenads-68-kill.html&quot;&gt;68 KILL (2017)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot;&gt;Salute to Beatrice Dalle (Hey BETTY BLUE, come blow your Mind!)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/12/babes-of-wrath-dangerous-women-of-new.html&quot;&gt;Babes of Wrath: Dangerous Women of the New Depression&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/07/star-spangled-salute-to-americas-most.html&quot;&gt;Top Ten Acidemic Women 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/07/bolling-straight-bonnies-kids-triangle.html&quot;&gt;Tiffany Bolling!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/03/argh-matey-witch-who-came-from-sea-1976.html&quot;&gt;WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/06/queen-of-daze-pj-soles-in-rock-and-roll.html&quot;&gt;PJ Soles in ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/crazy-cool-and-catty-sue-cabot-sorority.html&quot;&gt;Catty-Cool Susan Cabot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/dietrich-set-review-part-1-morocco.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Pure Ladanum: Marlene Dietrich&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-red-queens.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;In Praise of Red Queens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-red-queens.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Prepare for the Coming of the Matriarchy:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-red-queens.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN, DARK ANGEL: THE ASCENT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-red-queens.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;THE LAST SURVIVOR, DAGON, DEMONS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/05/5-psychotronic-gems-on-netflix-badass.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;5 Babes for the Bernie Nation: BOUNTY KILLER, HARDWARE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/05/5-psychotronic-gems-on-netflix-badass.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;THE LAST SURVIVORS, CENTURION&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;NOTES&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;1. I hope I don&#39;t have to remind you who Emma is in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Lady Eve.&lt;/i&gt; Do yourself a favor and watch it this instant!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/4202483000991571640/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/03/held-back-by-spooked-patriarchy9-should.html#comment-form' title='5 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4202483000991571640'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/4202483000991571640'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/03/held-back-by-spooked-patriarchy9-should.html' title='Badass Ladies too Dangerously Cool for DVD: 9 Should-be Classics Held Back by a Scared Patriarchy'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjK1x8IAquUxstg23rl9WflPzckg7nCd5T785-mqUyZkCF3JrjruoGuBayYMyZE3DRYhwWYHGOqNaiZAuGp85_E-Y0Xu-l9MYpWhpBPalJ8amvrbGobjWsEk2zmqYFGmNse73GWs3eEaQgyPrdBsLk9Z-IL48hNCtcETLnb_f7tFyJM6uRkg/s72-w640-h260-c/temptress.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-3449499420929610133</id><published>2023-02-01T13:06:00.012-05:00</published><updated>2023-02-27T18:04:42.821-05:00</updated><title type='text'>The Mystical Dissociation of Lucio: AENIGMA (1987)</title><content type='html'>&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Fjpv04sWERW0AU1mtPZ8h4QkIbWASsjq8c4ECVF9niSgOcvfJtv3BGMaBdINt-Z7x9wwYp3o1JQ5Tnh3oPEEmfklSI79YSL9biC_qGUV0aHjSXRfNlb1qpTDW86S0hiHzm6NFEx2mdSd_UzOT_T1kzNxKM1klRtnywtQh0Dl4j6jgozjig/s1232/aenigma%20.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;544&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1232&quot; height=&quot;282&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Fjpv04sWERW0AU1mtPZ8h4QkIbWASsjq8c4ECVF9niSgOcvfJtv3BGMaBdINt-Z7x9wwYp3o1JQ5Tnh3oPEEmfklSI79YSL9biC_qGUV0aHjSXRfNlb1qpTDW86S0hiHzm6NFEx2mdSd_UzOT_T1kzNxKM1klRtnywtQh0Dl4j6jgozjig/w640-h282/aenigma%20.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;No eyes were harmed during production of this picture&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Every professional performer I&#39;ve ever seen always does the exact same thing in the exact same moment in everything they do.... They know when the audience is going to laugh and when it&#39;s going to get interested. What I like are things that are different every time. That&#39;s why I like amateur performers and bad performers--you can never tell what they&#39;ll do next.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;- Andy Warhol&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;&lt;/i&gt;How does a girl that&#39;s braindead experience a violent emotion?&quot;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp; -- Dr. Anderson&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Launched (presumably) as a belated&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Carrie&lt;/i&gt; /&lt;i&gt; Patrick &lt;/i&gt;/ &lt;i&gt;House on Sorority Row&lt;/i&gt; cross-pollinated direct-to-video fading grindhouse flower, Lucio Fulci&#39;s 1987 opus&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Aenigma &lt;/i&gt;is secretly a&amp;nbsp;deadpan stealth surrealist reverse jack-in-the-box. IF you BELIEVE. All the elements of those films whose box office success Fulci and his producers clearly hoped would trickle down are there: the naive innocent turned comatose vegetable; the vicious prank gone too far; the twisted, messy-haired mom; the supernatural one-by-one ironic vengeance. But rather spiral down in flames, hitting the ususal downbeats, spelunking occasional gory jewels into an otherwise bland narrative river, Fulci drains the water out, replaces it with ether, and throws those jewels right through the camera lens into the post-modern affect eyeball of the viewer (his favorite target). The result, as a horror film it&#39;s confusing, but as an artsy concept album with all the usual &#39;filler&#39; scraped out, it&#39;s all peak weird moments, interspersed with a bunch of skips, jumps, and needle scratches. If something seems cliche and familiar, just look a little deeper. Calling it a &lt;i&gt;Carrie / Patrick&lt;/i&gt; retread is like calling Buueil&#39;s&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Simon of the Desert &lt;/i&gt;a Passolini-esque biblical allegory or &lt;i&gt;The Shining &lt;/i&gt;an old dark house mystery. You may have a hard time putting the difference into words the ways all the material is there but the banal narrative &#39;story&#39; meaning has been erased, replaced with....well....an (a)enigma-- the deeper you look into it the more you realize how much deeper it goes. In not choosing an explanation, except that which one might glean from the evidence (order of shots, zooms, eye close-ups, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s genius born from post-modern accidental Brechtian affect. Stilted, canned dubbing gives the strangely off-kilter dialogue (&quot;you prefer older men? / Let&#39;s put it this way:&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;anything&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;in pants&quot;) an almost Wooster Group-level post-modern affect: subverted expectations (using &#39;fake out&#39; signifiers) flail against the electrified fence of Carlos Maira Cardios&#39; sinister, mystery radio organ score. Meanwhile the set and setting reflect its Eastern-European milieu (filmed in Romania) and evoke my own 1987 college experience, at Syracuse University, a pleace where old world exteriors and cavernous hallways bump up against a nondescript world of grey/white concrete block dorms, classrooms, and galleries, spattered with posters and kids clad head-to-foot in gray college sweats (you could still smoke there, and serve wine at your art openings).&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;In the oppressive anonymity of the interiors may remind adventurous viewers of Andrzej Zulawski&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Possession. &lt;/i&gt;While that film focused more on insane, excellent hysteric-style acting, here the acting is almost anonymous, a combination of stilted, canned voices and onscreen actors that merge purely in an indulgent viewer&#39;s imagination. Rather than snicker and jeer, let the post-modern affect wash over us and we waken from the usual&amp;nbsp;narrative hypnosis, exit the Platonic cave, stand in the cloud-covered sun and marvel at just how crudely fashioned are the puppets whose shadows used to wow us. In the end, like Joe Politano&amp;nbsp; in &lt;i&gt;The Matrix,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;we may decide to go back in to the cozy dark of the cavern and take a break from the merciless global warming sun of True Perception, but for now... agape jaws please. The AENIGMA has done its thing on you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Casual film lovers may not like this enigmacsism (?) but for film addicts who&#39;ve developed Cassandra-style abilities to predict every beat of a new movie they see, a weird &#39;off&#39; movie like &lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt;--where the signifier and the signified, like a pair of amateur mid-air acrobats, never quite connect-- is exhilarating. To go back to the Warhol quote above, there&#39;s no way to anticipate what it will do next. That powerless Cassandra apprehension (i.e. the dread that sinks into a viewer&#39;s stomach when an innocent girl climbs into a strange older man&#39;s car) evaporates. Suddenly we have no dread of anything; we&#39;re too busy marveling at the discordant dubbing and odd details to even consider what will happen next.&amp;nbsp; It&#39;s just like being a tourist in a strange land where you don&#39;t speak the language. You&#39;re too busy trying to navigate to worry yourself over the local political in-fighting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QIYxc-SosUl2MMfcZEEiraak_1wAmGWNfzJMLcS8mWwy__YUwZJV7rZ6iCbXhX8wU-rXimMh9cI2Izh8OXFJULmvzh_C3vDwAeSln2zClk-ITNiJ-hAkqQIjLbF9ijnDiBT-5X_H8M9JlmR9sf4uabq1k73EQDc3DjWts9zIqrAupLMk7g/s1876/1016CARRIE1-superJumbo-v2.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1028&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1876&quot; height=&quot;175&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QIYxc-SosUl2MMfcZEEiraak_1wAmGWNfzJMLcS8mWwy__YUwZJV7rZ6iCbXhX8wU-rXimMh9cI2Izh8OXFJULmvzh_C3vDwAeSln2zClk-ITNiJ-hAkqQIjLbF9ijnDiBT-5X_H8M9JlmR9sf4uabq1k73EQDc3DjWts9zIqrAupLMk7g/s320/1016CARRIE1-superJumbo-v2.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shit, If you haven&#39;t seen it already I hope I didn&#39;t ruin it for you. I went in with really low expectations, which always helps. Know that even Fulci&#39;s fanbase aren&#39;t particularly fond of &lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt;, probably for the same reason I love it&lt;i&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confidentially, I like it way more than&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Carrie. &lt;/i&gt;For me &lt;i&gt;Carrie &lt;/i&gt;(left), which I admit is the &#39;better&#39; film,&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;is one long mounting attack of Cassandra-style anxiety. Maybe if I had no idea what was going to happen next, and had good memories of high school, and hate William Katz&#39;s hair, but between the crazy/abusive mom and the rabid tampon-pelters at school, and then knowing the big prom date, her first chance at happiness, is going to end, it&#39;s just a stone drag. Also, it doesn&#39;t fit together: Piper Laurie is hammy to be repressed, Spacek is too pretty to be a wallflower, and the whole blood bucket prank has way too many moving parts for a gang hormone-crazed delinquents to engineer (it&#39;s more believable that they&#39;d just throw some red paint on her lawn late some drunk Saturday night). And what&#39;s up with Amy Irving&#39;s character, who goes from convincing her boyfriend to ask Carrie to go to the prom so the prank can happen, to forgetting it&#39;s coming and basking in her good deed, to then noticing the bucket and trying to stop it? What? Did she forget or is she just covering her bases, trying to fool even us? Did De Palma forget how this whole prom queen thing got started?&amp;nbsp; It still deserves its classic status, but who wants to see it 100 times and quote it at parties? Once or twice is enough. If it happens to be on HBO and the prom has already begun, I generally stick around. Otherwise, no thanks. I&#39;m depressed enough already.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s why&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt; is sooo much better for being not as good. And moving things to college. The prank is more believable, easier to believably orchestrate, and it&#39;s successfully sprung and over in the first &lt;i&gt;SIX MINUTES!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Don&#39;t believe me? Come along on this deep dive into...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04pczGqQFFACIsWsl4OP6PWjOx2xmUH3G1CKylboJsj_fyzf1Ta4hTbAtVk4lpMBlmFw6Ruizux_CcOseulDLMeYawFKQ_jwO2Bp9GE79F9n2PiIsyXRCRev4YcFFcZAa69yiAgwadzcGivCWpNuWsOS30MSnthP3PCvo3xz3MNR_QefWag/s1290/college.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;558&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1290&quot; height=&quot;276&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04pczGqQFFACIsWsl4OP6PWjOx2xmUH3G1CKylboJsj_fyzf1Ta4hTbAtVk4lpMBlmFw6Ruizux_CcOseulDLMeYawFKQ_jwO2Bp9GE79F9n2PiIsyXRCRev4YcFFcZAa69yiAgwadzcGivCWpNuWsOS30MSnthP3PCvo3xz3MNR_QefWag/w640-h276/college.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;AENIGMA -&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;THE FIRST SIX MINUTES&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;The first shot &lt;/b&gt;is a close-up on the words &#39;St. Mary&#39;s College - Boston&#39; all in grey -- etched on a plaque or against a grey stone step. The camera pulls back to reveal a black-and-white photo of, presumably, the population (apparently) of said college--about 26 female students and teachers, standing arrayed on the stairs of an old building, flanked by stone lions. Horror fans of course instantly think of the last shot of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Shining&lt;/i&gt;, so presume most of the people in this picture are, or will soon be, dead, coupled to an evocation of lost innocence, enhanced by a a&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Picnic at Hanging Rock-&lt;/i&gt;esque wooden flute, mixing with the sound of chattering girls and a low drone like a flatline EKG crossed with the bell between class periods.&amp;nbsp;So tragic.... we&#39;re feeling it. The loss of innocence, probably. So much promise...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But look closer: the girls&amp;nbsp;are all unsmiling; their arms crossed, hands buried in their sleeves (as if in strait-jackets), looking into the camera with grim, set faces as if to warn the viewer not to enroll in this joyless academy. With these strange little details subliminally tweaking our perception, we begin to sense these girls are &lt;i&gt;complicated&lt;/i&gt;. You can&#39;t call them innocent, or evil. We&#39;re not sure what even to call them, now. But then the camera zooms slowly towards one of the windows, so it begins to seem like we&#39;re sneaking in through a dorm window.&lt;/p&gt;We suddenly jump cut from the slow zoom in on the window to a close-up of a girl&#39;s eye (&lt;i&gt;top image&lt;/i&gt;)- which then closes to receive a thick application of gold eye shadow. A Christopher Cross-esque lite FM style pop theme song starts. A male&#39;s dreamy high register croons &quot;You&#39;ve got a feeling / deep inside.&quot; We must be in a St. Mary&#39;s College dorm room. We pull back from the eye to see the face and black frizzy hair and straggly body of an insecure young brunette getting ready for her Cinderella debut, with a pair of playful blondes, one a girl, one a guy, doing fairy godmother duty. Clad all in white college sweats, like grinning angels, they smile and exchange glances with each other, holding up an array of nighties and underwear up against themselves while giving fake coy laughs and throwing them on the bed. The girl they&#39;re dressing is not smiling, She doesn&#39;t even look nervous. She&#39;s just standing there frozen; she seems totally blank as if not sure of what&#39;s going on. The credits come up in a cutesy font all lowercase. We hear almost no diegetic sound except their occasional muffled laughter as the song goes on.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It&#39;s a montage we&#39;ve seen a hundred times: the familiar friends helping a girl try on clothes until she finds just the right look (usually as the song ends). At one point they look at an outfit, then each other, and shrug, cutely in unison, to indicate no, not this one. Finally, they nod in unison- the look is just right. Their Cinderella is ready for her--presumed--first big date. The song reaches a zenith of emotion and its chorus, &quot;Falling head over heels / And I just can&#39;t stop.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-fhBTKx4etgA3eYT_sU8CFRhar8K5aqYrQ0ZxKgYuu1V_cO0UgdGTylPFgwBzItLfzR8qVEduGaUke6k5OaRGaFYwd72RTePg8rAz1PCVsleK3xpLnXrT1wODKDlstLOWBirlam8F_qqbiT1VVDoswgrnlOjtW6IPJE3o0UYnQqEMgcbwg/s1405/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-21%20at%2010.42.00%20AM%20(2).png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;667&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1405&quot; height=&quot;190&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-fhBTKx4etgA3eYT_sU8CFRhar8K5aqYrQ0ZxKgYuu1V_cO0UgdGTylPFgwBzItLfzR8qVEduGaUke6k5OaRGaFYwd72RTePg8rAz1PCVsleK3xpLnXrT1wODKDlstLOWBirlam8F_qqbiT1VVDoswgrnlOjtW6IPJE3o0UYnQqEMgcbwg/w400-h190/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-21%20at%2010.42.00%20AM%20(2).png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;it&#39;s spelled &quot;meals&quot;&lt;/i&gt;!&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;In the mid-80s especially, those montages and tacky songs were everywhere, not yet recognized at the cliche they&#39;d become. And if we&#39;ve seen a few mid-80s rom-coms, we&#39;re bound to think we&#39;re about to see a treacly John Hughes coming-of-age prom-com.&amp;nbsp;The only thing &#39;off&#39; is the make-up she&#39;s wearing, but that only makes us presume we&#39;re watching some tacky European 80s version, and that the most we&#39;ll get as far as suspense is a nervous first kiss. Maybe some danger with a boy who won&#39;t take no for an answer, and then the geeky kid comes to her rescue. All the signifiers are there. We got our weary Cassandra picture in our mind, the plodding pic touching every boring base to get to the horrors we know are coming and &quot;just can&#39;t stop&quot; ( or speed up for that matter).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;And yet, something feels very off. The brunette girl, small and gawky, is so stiff and awkward with such. blank expression she looks like a mannequin come only halfway to life, eyes showing she&#39;s desperately trying to move but can&#39;t quite work her limbs. She&#39;s wearing so much eyeliner and gold eye make-up and cheek rouge it&#39;s like she just crawled out of an 80s Egyptian disco. But that might be just us, our taste. Maybe the ancient Egyptian prostitute look was big in Romania (where this was filmed). My very first date ever, circa 1983, came out with me looking that bad and she was--come to think of it, Romanian (like this actress).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Intentional or not, it begins to dawn on us that our familiarity with cliches may be being nonchalantly used against us. Certainly there&#39;s no foreshadowing evidence to suspect foul play ahead. American producers would be irate - worrying they&#39;d confuse the audience, and so fill this scene with ominous strings and evil glances.&amp;nbsp; But Fulci gives us nary a &lt;i&gt;shred&lt;/i&gt; of portent. We&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;think&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;we recognize a slightly evil look in her &#39;friend&#39;s&#39; eyes but can&#39;t tell for sure.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The temptation of course is to accuse the film of being &#39;bad&#39; since it&#39;s not giving us any expected signals we&#39;d associate with a late-80s horror film, one given fairly bad marks even by the director&#39;s devotees. It&#39;s also not an &#39;art&#39; film by a recognized genius like Lynch, Antonioni, or Polanski, so we can&#39;t be &lt;i&gt;sure&lt;/i&gt; it deserves praise and admiration for the surplus of alienating affect.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;It shouldn&#39;t matter. What matters is that our Cassandra of Troy precognitive anxiety and impatience is no longer oppressing us. When we can&#39;t recognize the sign posts we no longer feel we have to drive. We&#39;re safe out to to sea, totally lost, swirling around in the tributary between the river of genius and the ocean of boneheaded crap on an oarless raft. We can kick our feet up and let the wind be our tour guide.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcoPeVQeTNMwyM1Ium8N6Y6sdTt9315gAnzM-Gv_UYBQcIYp6r0CEC-DPlVA2QOGq3UcP3h5LcY1IuVuUyRsxqU7K4MXbmqSBgpuvSe5w4E_K7CCTtEKoVBQXpo1Wj3jF20XuPSJxduUeKl2GuNWreAZ-C-fCkza4Ip62XvsI_bbDQ7yQV1A/s2654/just%20fred%20-%20AENIGMAx.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1153&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2654&quot; height=&quot;278&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcoPeVQeTNMwyM1Ium8N6Y6sdTt9315gAnzM-Gv_UYBQcIYp6r0CEC-DPlVA2QOGq3UcP3h5LcY1IuVuUyRsxqU7K4MXbmqSBgpuvSe5w4E_K7CCTtEKoVBQXpo1Wj3jF20XuPSJxduUeKl2GuNWreAZ-C-fCkza4Ip62XvsI_bbDQ7yQV1A/w640-h278/just%20fred%20-%20AENIGMAx.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;As the credits end, the music stops. The next shot starts with a sudden surge/stop of a car brake. The girl, we now learn is called Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) is in the front seat with a handsome but evil looking older man named Fred (Riccardo Acerbi). It&#39;s pitch dark night outside, no streetlights or anything. We know where he&#39;s parking. She seems nervous, calling him by his surname, and &#39;sir&#39;--making us assume he&#39;s her teacher or a doctor or something (&quot;I&#39;m not sir to you Kathy, Just Fred&quot;). She mentions, voice trembling with shyness--that they were supposed to go dancing. He waves that away, &quot;did you &lt;i&gt;really &lt;/i&gt;want to go dancing?&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Instead he basically attacks her, as Italian men in these movies tend to do when with a girl alone in a car.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;We grit our teeth, prepared for the usual screaming and threatening, scratching and clothes ripping. The innocence of the last sequence, all that gussying up for the big date, now comes into place as a kind of brutal irony:&amp;nbsp;it&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Pretty in Pink&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;turning into Bergman&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Virgin Spring &lt;/i&gt;right out of the gate.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But--instead, Fulci&#39;s camera moves outside the car looking through the rear windshield, we hear her moan in ascent. &lt;i&gt;She&#39;s into it!!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span&gt;And she won&#39;t shut up about how into it she is (&lt;/span&gt;&quot;I&#39;ve dreamed about you so many times!&quot;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It&#39;s now that the awful canned effect of the dubbing really hits us and we recoil, up out of the narrative moment and back into our seats. She starts a flow of moans mixed with nonstop babbling about how much she wants him. Unlike most people, she can&#39;t shut up and get in the moment, so neither can we. She goes on and on (&quot;so big, so strong.&quot;) She&#39;s clearly inexperienced and very horny, and just doesn&#39;t know how to go about not revealing either thing too soon. She&#39;s already tipping her hand, as we--the sexually experienced--call it. We laugh at her because we&#39;re experienced enough to be quiet when fooling around.&amp;nbsp;So now, once again, we have shifted our identification locus -- and we still don&#39;t quite know if any of this is &lt;i&gt;supposed &lt;/i&gt;to be what we&#39;re feeling.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;To sum up: we went from wistfully remembering our nervous first dates of the mid-80s, to amorphous anxiety on a naif&#39;s behalf (wondering if she&#39;s being set up to fail, or if the make-up woman is blind, or that caked on look was cool for 80s Romanian night life), to dreading her impending assault by an older Italian macho sleazebag, to shock and relief at her response, to post-modern shock due terrible dubbing to sneering at her annoying babble, all in the first five minutes.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjijypazoIvVFBoZRPbXYJ2sD-Rme0GHsSDmMC_KYprSjvovd-t9T4LuWZ7PSC35gqNsID8_fXeUem1VIfoS0aQ4dYrGRX2sAFA3kCrcpKxlfMSSbn1PUCYOgoxFdt6L41ur_UELzV7bVG6iBSyiTtra4Izl-7R0n8GCwgQ1mB9EcDIfaG9TQ/s1262/bad%20kids.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;532&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1262&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjijypazoIvVFBoZRPbXYJ2sD-Rme0GHsSDmMC_KYprSjvovd-t9T4LuWZ7PSC35gqNsID8_fXeUem1VIfoS0aQ4dYrGRX2sAFA3kCrcpKxlfMSSbn1PUCYOgoxFdt6L41ur_UELzV7bVG6iBSyiTtra4Izl-7R0n8GCwgQ1mB9EcDIfaG9TQ/w640-h270/bad%20kids.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;OK, now we find out why Fulci&#39;s camera was outside looking into the back window of Fred&#39;s car.&amp;nbsp; Suddenly - we reverse shot to a row of cars parked hidden in the shadows just out of sight in the darkness. Fulci zooms up to the windshields of each one to find several fellow students laughing inside. We see the couple who dressed her during the song in one of the cars, too.&amp;nbsp; We can&#39;t hear them through their windshields, but when we cut to inside their cars we still hear Kathy. Fulci moves to Fred&#39;s car to show a microphone pinned to his dashboard. We presume they&#39;re listening in on the shortwave radio, like they&#39;re at the drive-in.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The meta effect is instantaneous. We&#39;ve come full circle on our identification with Kathy and now find ourselves implicated in the prank due to our laughing at her declarations uttered in that flat dubbing. We&#39;re one of the bad kids now, laughing at the terrible performance and&amp;nbsp; Fred&#39;s car parked in the row in front of them and on the screen, both the viewer and the viewed.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In tricking us into laughing and sneering at Kathy and her naive babbling dub, Fulci has implicated us in the prank. We&#39;re part of the evil kid contingent. Fulci, you devil. What have you done to us?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Soon the kids start their engines. The row of sudden headlights blind her through the back window; Fred breaks the clinch and laughs in her face, sadistic mirthless, mocking (Remember, this is supposed to be her &lt;i&gt;teacher&lt;/i&gt;). Horrified, she gets out and starts running into the darkness, illuminated in the slowly following car headlights like a&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Wake in Fright&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;kangaroo, the kids leaning out of the windows, roaring with exaggerated evil glee...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;With more of his strange, deadpan pacing, Fulci drags this chase out to the point of absurdity. We go from feeling embarrassed for her to just hoping she either turns around and stops looking behind her every few steps, or just gets hit by the car we know is inevitably coming. Instead, she keeps trying to run while looking over her shoulder, but it&#39;s hard to do that. The more she looks back, that the slower she runs. Fulci drags a series of shot/reverse shots of her running/looking back--illuminated in the headlights--to the evil kids in the row of pursuing cars, leaning out of the windows like college sweatshirt-clad &lt;i&gt;Road Warrior&lt;/i&gt; stunt men, laughing with merry glee. Eventually her running kind of slows in with that voluminous red dress blowing in the breeze and her clumsy gait and bad make-up she evokes some kind of clumsy-footed flightless bird, her round eyes alive with a mix of fear and embarrassment.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Then, she &lt;i&gt;finally &lt;/i&gt;runs out into the road and the path of a screeching car.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbDSQmVlINRRqgsS1sOC-WzZbDJfSP-AK2lHeq5Jib5cSfbt8AYZsnq1Et_hPdNv7_4v___qKEE_N7fZXz48R1VvrOE_hmFcsn2uZM5K0uzOJxvxcWWMoIRGSbSzfTl_QYWM8ZagoSwtOtYnWqxMVPhKvNJeI-FBxbcwQrkep7w8_lomm2A/s1359/kathy%20in%20traction.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;580&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1359&quot; height=&quot;274&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbDSQmVlINRRqgsS1sOC-WzZbDJfSP-AK2lHeq5Jib5cSfbt8AYZsnq1Et_hPdNv7_4v___qKEE_N7fZXz48R1VvrOE_hmFcsn2uZM5K0uzOJxvxcWWMoIRGSbSzfTl_QYWM8ZagoSwtOtYnWqxMVPhKvNJeI-FBxbcwQrkep7w8_lomm2A/w640-h274/kathy%20in%20traction.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Ever the practical minimalist, Fulci knows there&#39;s no need for a shot of her body hitting the pavement (actually I&#39;m sure he would have had one, in grisly detail, had his budget allowed or there been good Romanian FX artists handy); no need to cut to the horrified faces of her pursuers, nor capture the shocked look on the drivers&#39; face. Nor show an ambulance, or the bad kids&#39; cars all scattering after the crash,&amp;nbsp; before the cops come; nor the one girl who wants to confess bullied into silence; the weary detective yawning knowingly; a passing motorist calling 911 while their spouse urges them not to get involved; the hit and run driver speeding away; ye olde patient POV gurney blasting through the ER doors flanked by EMTs, and so on. That&#39;s the genius of Italian cinema, of Fulci particularly, to use the stuff we&#39;ve already seen somewhere else as part of its narrative weave (we might even have false memories of seeing these scenes in the film later) , sparing us the kind laborious exposition, connectivity and world-building someone like Richard Fleischer would use insist on. Instead we breathe a sigh of relief as Fulci&#39;s shot skips right to the respirator.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Within seconds of the hospital shot beginning, Kathy&#39;s EKG flatlines and a high-pitched monotone beams in over the soundtrack. Vibrating and piercing, it&#39;s as if the space between two realities is opening in the form of feedback squall. As the doctors talk next to her bed--their voices grow faint-- the camera switches to a fisheye POV hovering over her floating up and away from her bed.. up out through the window while a wave of ingenious overlapping whispers blend with hospital noises, sirens and EKGs make a disorienting soundscape. We hear amidst the muffled din, Kathy speak, saying&quot;I don&#39;t want to die&quot; over and over as her/our POV floats back in, out and up through the storage room above her bed, trough the roof of the building (a miniature obviously from some other movie as it looks like twin oil refinery tanks), and then over the miniature treetops and around the corner, the cardboard city line behind her aglow with &#39;distant&#39; lights in the night). We begin to descend down to the school, where a new student just happens to be arriving in the school van, someone (presumably) easy to possess. Someone stunningly pretty and looking very wary. No one&#39;s going to dare set&lt;i&gt; her &lt;/i&gt;up in a prank. Atop the steps, three stern looking matrons stand atop the steps, waiting, as if she&#39;s coming into a girl&#39;s reformatory; a few are girls looking balefully down at her from the tall windows above like ghosts.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRR3SA4M_TGn3s8XkQbMQPDB0CqJQytgk02ykUKjrJp68qVbMzRXVAw8oejQhM-mkvx3EVOGP8HkymIyoIEQ5MVRPZggJh1ReJR5uNrKLLhyJovAKkZ24U7Z0zo6bAo-SZ38vYSqHAkkDpqB0S7VXGXuOZNLjVVSZt7BcQdhxhjiMa2PckA/s2439/miniature%20aenigma.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1286&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2439&quot; height=&quot;338&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRR3SA4M_TGn3s8XkQbMQPDB0CqJQytgk02ykUKjrJp68qVbMzRXVAw8oejQhM-mkvx3EVOGP8HkymIyoIEQ5MVRPZggJh1ReJR5uNrKLLhyJovAKkZ24U7Z0zo6bAo-SZ38vYSqHAkkDpqB0S7VXGXuOZNLjVVSZt7BcQdhxhjiMa2PckA/w640-h338/miniature%20aenigma.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;And thus pass the first SIX MINUTES!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;Carrie&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;is still crying in the girl&#39;s locker room after her tampon pelting at six minutes (I checked).&amp;nbsp;But Fulci has already pulled the big prank, had the tragic result, reversed our expectations five times, drawn us into meta-textual liberation, given us out of body experience, set up the rest of the movie. All without the events feeling rushed or confusing. Everything happens naturally, one action following the other. But every gram of dead space and familiar cliche is either pared away or turned back on itself.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;-----&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrZMscvew_LyzHriwOi3LkaqASYQfc7SO9ATuUEag84DhAfGaTxyDceFqxUG7OoqccYThgNIisy6MEtcsIN7JcncIVQdIsPCXGDTVtWxOFy3VNm_Waxuqc1dvjzDGqYTf6-WKaAdGbKQ2jT-m4lY70RmsBQS7jYM536KFsP4xHbK0m_NR8g/s2626/the%20girl%20can&#39;t%20help%20it%20-%20AENIGMA.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1307&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2626&quot; height=&quot;199&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrZMscvew_LyzHriwOi3LkaqASYQfc7SO9ATuUEag84DhAfGaTxyDceFqxUG7OoqccYThgNIisy6MEtcsIN7JcncIVQdIsPCXGDTVtWxOFy3VNm_Waxuqc1dvjzDGqYTf6-WKaAdGbKQ2jT-m4lY70RmsBQS7jYM536KFsP4xHbK0m_NR8g/w400-h199/the%20girl%20can&#39;t%20help%20it%20-%20AENIGMA.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;POST-META/MODERN AFFECT, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;FULCI-&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;style:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The parallels with ghost and film watchers is always right there, in every movie, whether elaborated on (as in European art cinema) or ignored (America). The key to enjoying art films often rests on realizing this, and that the camera POV and soundscape are everything, that characters are often unspoken amnesiacs, adrift in strange worlds, that our sense of alienation is a result of post-modern intent rather than a sign the film isn&#39;t &#39;doing&#39; what it should, i.e. hypnotizing into a cathartic response via an engaging narrative.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, the camera is following behind someone running through the park at dusk, in an art film (like &lt;i&gt;Birth&lt;/i&gt;) it could evoke in us the feeling we&#39;re a ghost chasing after the runner; but in a non-art (most American) film, unless particular attention is called (via breathing noises, as in &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt;) the tracking just means the person we&#39;re identifying with/watching is running - so &lt;i&gt;we&#39;re&lt;/i&gt; running. The camera POV is meant to be invisible. We&#39;re not identifying with the camera but the actor. In art films, we sense that while we can vicariously thrill to the events onscreen, we are, like a hungry ghost, forever shut outside of the image, able to access it only in fantasy. In non-art films, there is only fantasy. POV is meant to be invisible.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trick to savoring the weirdness of Aenigma, and Fulci movies in general, is to read them as both high art and &#39;so bad they&#39;re good&#39; at the same time. Taken as intentional affect, Kathy can be read as the desirous viewer, lusting after the &#39;hottest guy in the school&quot;, Fred. We late learn she followed him around a lot, annoying everyone, so they arranged the prank to put a stop to it. In her proletariat identity, it&#39;s clear Kathy is &#39;outside&#39; the image even when she&#39;s onscreen. And it&#39;s clear too she&#39;s now in a coma because she wanted to literally be in the big picture. Her debut, her screen test is her big date with Fred. She blows it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But you have to be onscreen, to open yourself up to the masses, to realize the awful downside: you&#39;re now open to all sorts of derision from the trolls and critics, and jeering idiots the world over. Unless you&#39;re an Adonis or a Perfect 10, someone&#39;s going to find something to laugh at about you; every incel nerd and slimeball can feel superior from the safety of their moms&#39; basement. If your make-up is done by someone deliberately trying to sabotage you, like a friend of the rival for your part, you don&#39;t have a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And thus, exposed and humiliated, Kathy is booed off the screen, shooed back into the cozy darkness, the anonymous audience, the sexually frustrated &#39;average&#39; people.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;But &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;she never quite makes it back to her seat. The accident knocks her loose between screen and audience, fantasy and reality. Her body is trapped in the real, immobilized, but her spirit can now enter the fantasy and possess a girl who &lt;i&gt;is &lt;/i&gt;hot and popular, who&#39;s sexually experienced, everything Kathy wanted to be but now never can, except by this hot proxy. On one plane she&#39;s a vegetable; on another, an avenging, horny spirit. That we know they&#39;re connected is because her comatose face still smiles or has an EKG spike when she kills her persecutors as a spirit, or gets it on as Eva.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once we accept that we&#39;re basically seeing much of the movie through Kathy&#39;s eyes (or she&#39;s seeing through ours), the disconnect of the dubbing enhances the doubling and perception through another&#39;s eyes. I argued in a post post that if people have a problem with &#39;whitewash&#39; casting of Scarlet Joannson as an Asian-eyes robot in&lt;i&gt; Ghost in a Shell&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(which sadly has become a meme for Asian representation rather than being recognized the very well constructed and beautiful movie that is) they should watch it in a Korean or Japanese dub language track, so that the idea a Japanese/Korean woman is inside an white &#39;shell&#39; would have greater meta resonance. Since in a way &lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt; is very similar to that film in basic premise (someone&#39;s ghost in another person&#39;s shell) the presence of the bad American dubbing - and the way an international cast of Italians, Romanians, and one American, are all supposed to be in Boston instead of Bucharest- finds a perfect metatextual justification for its sense of artificial dislocation.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Furthering the disconnect, one of the main reasons this movie rocks so much is the use of miniatures for her POV floating scenes. The roof of the hospital and fake skyline definitely have an air of a dream, of not quite being in a real world. None of it is convincing (why the hospital exterior is a twin refinery storage tower is never explained--though obviously because it was made for an earlier film), but damn is it endearing.&amp;nbsp; And damn does it further our sense of dislocation, drifting from the diegetic reality of conventional film tropes like a balloon in the winds. Folksy and lovely in their analog playfulness, following the POV of Kathy&#39;s disembodied spirit over the train set-like cityscape is like digging William Cameron Menzies&#39; miniatures and disembodied floating camera in&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Svengali&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;(1931)&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Bat Whispers&lt;/i&gt;. (1929).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbChAZUOK2nGXCcinnftPw9vtLLO9n8MF_9JMTQJvYXoTVaSH336uEJA6tu1POoTGHyVYVy3MdDXAz87S1IgQ8ESKc7sU_Xjrq61HYuA1zVXr009NFImqH-QyALENwMOvcEGKZzK3uR243s48vyrsD5ld6oiXg_QmEUbYsXW1nMJG2cVxMw/s1908/aenigma%204.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;984&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1908&quot; height=&quot;330&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbChAZUOK2nGXCcinnftPw9vtLLO9n8MF_9JMTQJvYXoTVaSH336uEJA6tu1POoTGHyVYVy3MdDXAz87S1IgQ8ESKc7sU_Xjrq61HYuA1zVXr009NFImqH-QyALENwMOvcEGKZzK3uR243s48vyrsD5ld6oiXg_QmEUbYsXW1nMJG2cVxMw/w640-h330/aenigma%204.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;SEXY COLLEGE DIALOGUE DECONSTRUCTED: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;b&gt;(Or The preceding scene proceeds successfully in setting up subsequent scenes exceedingly speedily)&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;&quot;&gt;Trying their best, a familiar roster of English dubbers from Italian film try their best to both match the lips of their characters and lend some finesse, failingly, to the corny &#39;sexy&#39; dialogue, clearly written--almost mockingly--by repressed older Italian men trying to write for young American women in a style based on American films they&#39;ve seen&lt;i&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;The resulting combination is a kind of stylized, performative burlesque of savage female sexual aggression, ala John Waters or Russ Meyer, but with the slang and hysteria replaced by a kind of flat, straightforward, comic book-style lack of subtlety. Perhaps its Kathy&#39;s horny naiveté finding id-unleashing power via Eva&#39;s hot mess nymphomania (&quot;you really prefer older men?&quot; / &quot;Let&#39;s put it this way, anything in pants&quot;) and the joy of being&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;the target of the girls&#39; strident put-downs. With the canned flat dubbing making everything abstract, defensive answers to probing dour school mistresses questions are interrupted with sudden non sequiturs (&quot;I had a breakdown, Ms. Jones. A mild nervous breakdown&quot; /&quot;Who&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;smoking&lt;/i&gt;!?&quot;). The effect is sort of&amp;nbsp; like every line was lifted carefully from some other American film and then spoken by someone who doesn&#39;t really understand the movie or the dialogue, and recorded out of sequence. No fully-fledged motif or plot rationale is able to come to completion. Something always interrupts, or steers things away. For example, when Eva first meets her new roommate Jennie she plops onto her bed and says rather strongly, &quot;OK Jennie, let&#39;s get one thing straight. For me a successful year means making out with as many cute boys as possible&quot; it sounds strange, starting out almost defensive and ending with a&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;Happy Days-&lt;/i&gt;level declaration and forced giggle.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;It&#39;s such an odd switch from how that declaration began, it takes a few viewings to realize she&#39;s answering the cold declaration of the head mistress who&#39;s just deposited her into her new form room and, on her way out the door, coldly says &quot;I hope you&#39;ll have a successful year.&quot; In other words, there&#39;s some motivations behind every seeming act of madness, which is why the whole thing survives such repeat viewings. Each line&#39;s meaning varies each time you see it. With such unconvincing inflection, the words are totally open to each viewer&#39;s projections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next day (or sometime) after the accident, Eva and the girls are in aerobics class, taught be Fred, and he says in his familiar voice (we&#39;ve heard this dubbing artist in a million other Italian imports), measured out in a manner no one would ever talk like: &quot;come on ladies, you don&#39;t want a fat ass to get in the way when you get with your boyfriends tonight,&quot; as he says this he slaps the ass of a student he&#39;s passing. She retorts in an equally measured voice, &quot;I may have a&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;fat&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;ass but if you touch it again I&#39;m gonna slap your&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;face&lt;/i&gt;.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;FAKE OUTS:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Eva, proving her sexual aggressive clout, feigns an injury after class to get Fred to come and massage it. Her new roommate, Jennie tries to warn her: &quot;Fred can be a little.. dangerous,&quot; but Eva waves it away. &quot;I mean it, Eva--he has a pretty&lt;i&gt; unhealthy&lt;/i&gt; reputation.&quot; &quot;&lt;i&gt;Good&lt;/i&gt;,&quot; Eva snaps back, &quot;so do I&quot;. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Again, Cassandra viewers may begin imagining Eva not realizing how much more unhealthy Fred is; that she was not warned needlessly. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But after all that build-up, this portent goes nowhere. Instead, the next scene is Fred in his darkened studio, primping before the mirror in his manly body stocking after hours while Mary, Kathy&#39;s mute, bug-eyed, possibly brain-damaged mother, who works as cleaning woman (we learn she got her daughter Kathy admitted to this otherwise prestigious school as a special favor) mops up in her drab Romanian frock, almost a mocking satire of his sexy expectations. Her straggly-haired presence is not conducive to his sexy plans or his Adonis reflection, so he rushes her out before she can even gather her bucket and mop. Yet no sooner as she left than he&#39;s worrying about her bucket which is left in the middle of the floor, cramping his sexy/unhealthy&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;feng shui.&lt;/i&gt; He moves it to the side, but after he looks into the mirror awhile, he finds it back where it was.  (&quot;Mary,&quot; he shouts, &quot;your &lt;i&gt;bucket&lt;/i&gt;!&quot;)  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Once again, none of this is bucket business is underlined or spelled out with cutaways or ominous cues. But we see Mary glower from around the corner and her pupils turn a digital colorized red. We get the feeling comeuppance is headed his way.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MklminRoyBrNg2bj2a-7XNHXACV40ky1NQAjPEBIMW36cvnuby6w6IviSrxWHmatSwAcx5qgyJuYvszEA5AJ4hDoinWrtNpRQU8kEj3Y0Y8NFAohcEiWXsxMHWVtoJSuJpxX-mRbNisPlhgq1EguocBboqz-1-71FQqSerp-bczAqXaNxQ/s2635/mary%20aenigma.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1364&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2635&quot; height=&quot;166&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MklminRoyBrNg2bj2a-7XNHXACV40ky1NQAjPEBIMW36cvnuby6w6IviSrxWHmatSwAcx5qgyJuYvszEA5AJ4hDoinWrtNpRQU8kEj3Y0Y8NFAohcEiWXsxMHWVtoJSuJpxX-mRbNisPlhgq1EguocBboqz-1-71FQqSerp-bczAqXaNxQ/s320/mary%20aenigma.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZgFVGPJ1TMj-u1eNloz97f38Aomc064ceQhFtW7GYaNvQY7_ONzYsvPlK9Y3Yak1VlvNoy5q5SDWjMNhuqMriekS4YPZKUDBQGlC277u5TZGMnP8NUlcx6loJWCO_RQPbyBgj9-VHS4iTSe_cHyuGFJaHa05JsExugRo3_KLm77xYDfzvA/s2614/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-22%20at%208.20.33%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1339&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2614&quot; height=&quot;328&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkZgFVGPJ1TMj-u1eNloz97f38Aomc064ceQhFtW7GYaNvQY7_ONzYsvPlK9Y3Yak1VlvNoy5q5SDWjMNhuqMriekS4YPZKUDBQGlC277u5TZGMnP8NUlcx6loJWCO_RQPbyBgj9-VHS4iTSe_cHyuGFJaHa05JsExugRo3_KLm77xYDfzvA/w640-h328/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-22%20at%208.20.33%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mary, Kathy&#39;s muter &quot;retarded&quot; mother, &quot;Crazy Mary&quot; who works as the sole janitorial staff of the school, has sallow eyes and straggly hair, like her daughter, played by a Romanian actress, like the woman who plays Kathy,&amp;nbsp; seems both otherworldly and totally earthbound, that drab dress and defeated but wild-eyed look common to Eastern European character actors, offset by a keen knowingness that makes the westernized pretty people seem especially vapid. As she&#39;s always mopping somewhere in earshot of whatever&#39;s going on, it takes awhile to notice her. There&#39;s no scene of her at the hospital - she gets no time off to visit her daughter&#39;s side - no one sends her condolences. She&#39;s an afterthought, at best. But though mute and supposedly a moron, she seems to know what&#39;s going on. The question is always what is the connection and who is doing the comeuppance spells, Mary or Kathy or Eva/Kathy? And why doesn&#39;t Mary notice Kathy is in Eva the first time, when serving her snails and hearing her talk about eating them in New Orleans (where Kathy and her mom are from, not Eva).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoRZX8720FcVEXd4Mkrs3uIXkOSegUuZIHV6gQirMxPTUd1SUS4Pn62mCKucLo6-86uer23tH0_SpnLcS11wvfKROqWyqrRY5ztSJQkjjUNHwWkY3sJATxv38q7sdZwIy9NTk2f6SOXSAKYmFfColC3RxuFl_3Llrwpfz4UVANWl0dI2NGw/s1885/Aenigma%2055.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1013&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1885&quot; height=&quot;344&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinoRZX8720FcVEXd4Mkrs3uIXkOSegUuZIHV6gQirMxPTUd1SUS4Pn62mCKucLo6-86uer23tH0_SpnLcS11wvfKROqWyqrRY5ztSJQkjjUNHwWkY3sJATxv38q7sdZwIy9NTk2f6SOXSAKYmFfColC3RxuFl_3Llrwpfz4UVANWl0dI2NGw/w640-h344/Aenigma%2055.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;PAGING&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;DR. ANDERSON&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Doctor Robert (&quot;Don&#39;t call me Bob&quot;) Anderson (Jared Martin, an American TV and Italian movie regular) is presiding over Kathy&#39;s case, and seems rather obsessed. He also called over to start ministering to Eva after she throws all Jennie&#39;s clothes on the floor and starts flogging her with a raincoat in a weirdly cut scene with mismatched eye lines, before passing out. Ever the scrupulous ethical-minded physician, he slyly shoots her up with, presumably, some really good drugs, causing her to wake up and start making out, rather forcibly, with him. Rather than gently rebuffing her, asking for a nurse to be present, and standing out of reach, he blushes and stammers, and looks behind him to make sure no one is watching. We&#39;re watching a man wrestle with the idea that it&#39;s one thing to make a pass at your patient, and another to merely not push her away when she latches onto you with rough kisses like a foxy lamprey.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Martin does this very well --(you see his face actually redden) and doesn&#39;t really protest beyond mentioning he&#39;s not in the &quot;habit&quot; of kissing his patients.&quot; Hah! A lot of professional men learn a lot about themselves when a hot young girl throws herself their way and they find themselves going along with it, outvoted by the &#39;little man&#39;, the willful girl, and thousands of years of evolution. In short, kissing his patients has now become a &#39;habit.&#39; The next day she&#39;s waiting in his convertible when he gets out of the hospital. Rather than resist, he just drives off with her. After all, no sense arguing with a damaged hottie, especially if you&#39;re still young, virile and in an Italian movie in the mid-80s. These were still the days when sex was just sex, healthy, rewarding, free of the sleazy male aggression signifiers it would carry now.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As with all the strange things going on, these deft sleights of hand where it&#39;s up to us to form an opinion of our own, we never quite learn if Fulci feels we should find Robert&#39;s behavior as shocking as we do. The scene is played in a light screwball vein -- a handsome shy man and an aggressively sexual, unhinged young girl who won&#39;t take no for an answer - shades of &lt;i&gt;Bringing Up Baby, Something Wild&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;or the Nicolodi / Hemmings hook-up in &lt;i&gt;Deep Red.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;And&amp;nbsp;their strange trysting isn&#39;t even the subject of the film! It&#39;s not even commented on, not even the doctor&#39;s relatively cool fellow doctor bats an eye. It&#39;s incidental. As far as the film is concerned, we &lt;i&gt;should &lt;/i&gt;be paying attention to his attempt at figuring out why Eva has Kathy&#39;s memories. And why Kathy&#39;s EKG spikes wildly whenever another murder happens next door. He doesn&#39;t see that Kathy smiles and giggles when getting it on with her handsome coma doctor via Eva as he&#39;s not there. Anderson thinks he can figure it out. We&#39;re too busy being thrilled, shocked, and in awe at his getting away with such an outrageous breach in ethics. We can wonder if Kathy developed a crush on him while he hovers over her in the ICU. That Kathy&#39;s end game for possessing Eva is more to seduce him rather than wiping out her enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicHTqFB-IZ2gkWkH7ntgL743KyP5coVmrbDq3Zxld_VZ-7TDFHxyyRUvbx00SpwdqzkX2cEoQWHg7BWxg9qsA_vBUe4-56bVi0EUKOZAEPJRYguZarT-Aj1d5GuUZ_yFZ2on7DDy7Qo0gZuwTeScmAPUtm4nru16jEn06aLgEWx8UHWmrnvg/s1895/Aenigma%2044.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1033&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1895&quot; height=&quot;217&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicHTqFB-IZ2gkWkH7ntgL743KyP5coVmrbDq3Zxld_VZ-7TDFHxyyRUvbx00SpwdqzkX2cEoQWHg7BWxg9qsA_vBUe4-56bVi0EUKOZAEPJRYguZarT-Aj1d5GuUZ_yFZ2on7DDy7Qo0gZuwTeScmAPUtm4nru16jEn06aLgEWx8UHWmrnvg/w400-h217/Aenigma%2044.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sex, as it always is with Lucio, is a pretty savage affair. None of his best films have any kissing let alone sex. &lt;i&gt;Aenigm&lt;/i&gt;a has only one sex scene but it&#39;s all bathed in red lights against black backdrop, and glazed with sweat, and it quickly turns in a cannibal maenad nightmare. The rest of the sexy time we see is only heavy petting, along the &#39;second base&#39; high-school type, reflecting--perhaps-- Kathy&#39;s arrested sexual development. Eva kisses him violently, hungrily. She&#39;s almost a rapist. But the sex happens only in his nightmares (at least as far as we see).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In between surrendering to her rough caresses, Dr. Robert continues his vain attempt to discover how or why Eva has Kathy&#39;s memories. He never thinks of bringing Eva into Kathy&#39;s room at the ICU to see what happens. Instead he tries to get her to play word association games. &quot;Tell me the first thing to come into your head when I say.... &#39;Charles is a mystic.&#39;&quot; he says That leave us puzzled. The post-modern affect of the canned dubbing makes these surrealist digressions and mentions of Charles, whoever that is, uncanny. He&#39;s figured out Eva has Kathy&#39;s memories, regularly saying she&#39;s from New Orleans when Eva is from Boston, but that&#39;s the least interesting aspect of the film, except as a post-modern rationalization for the stilted dubbing. But we never see Eva even arrive outside the door for the date. It&#39;s like she disappears. Before anything can happen, Fred&#39;s reflection in the the dance studio mirror, presses its face, looking terrifyingly gleeful look in his eye--through the glass until it shatters sending shards flying in all directions as he lunges through to strangle himself. And there&#39;s Mary&#39;s bucket - right there again.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What&#39;s up with that mystical bucket, Charles?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The film gives us cues that it&#39;s &quot;Crazy Mary&quot; (she&#39;s mute but may be a witch) bumping off the people who put her daughter into her coma via her crazy magic. We see her eyes flash red as she stares balefully from around corners when she overhears someone talk disparagingly of her daughter, but we can&#39;t be sure if it&#39;s her or Kathy via Eva doing the strange magic deaths. There seems to be at least three different underlying culprits: does Kathy leave Eva to go facilitate these strange hallucination deaths as a disembodied, curtain rustling spirit or is it &#39;Crazy Mary&#39; and her red eyes? Either way we never see Eva arrive at the door, making the death of Fred before Eva even comes kind of shocking - what was all that set-up for about his bad reputation?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKMGgvnxkaTka_maLhCKfkGwcKieOsGRSCzwnDAJWokZpC5uT9Wc2V3R4xwc66vOk0XaIc0q2-VjUyIGpacdO97gaRr9eUjhoM5AuQ-YnSdvNEL-bz9JXj0Q8hFaN1iczfmljD2-D8SgVMNBU1s3HgkoKZpH8thSZtKv1-rH8_k0RKzcofrg/s1571/aenigma%20eva%20fits.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;780&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1571&quot; height=&quot;159&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKMGgvnxkaTka_maLhCKfkGwcKieOsGRSCzwnDAJWokZpC5uT9Wc2V3R4xwc66vOk0XaIc0q2-VjUyIGpacdO97gaRr9eUjhoM5AuQ-YnSdvNEL-bz9JXj0Q8hFaN1iczfmljD2-D8SgVMNBU1s3HgkoKZpH8thSZtKv1-rH8_k0RKzcofrg/s320/aenigma%20eva%20fits.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Eva and Kathy presumably wrestle sexily for control&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;The next day at class someone hears Eva call him a &quot;bastard&quot; for not answering his door, and another of the girl says &quot;Did you say &#39;bastard&#39;? You must be talking about Fred.&quot; But nothing more is said about whatever he&#39;s done to them in the past to earn that title. And then when they learn he&#39;s dead, they all cry and bemoan how unfair it is that Fred &quot;kicked the bucket,&quot; and Kathy gets to still be alive in a coma and it&#39;s not the other way around. Meanwhile, the teacher seems indignant they&#39;d interrupt the class; just because one of their teachers was just murdered. It&#39;s hard to imagine anyone being as casually cruel and callous as these people, making vicious fun of the mother of the girl they put in a coma when she&#39;s right there in earshot openly lamenting how unfair it is that the old-enough-to-know-better probably dangerous presumed rapist (that &quot;unhealthy reputation&quot;) is dead while the innocent girl he pranked into a coma, gets to live on as a vegetable. And yet, thanks to the canned effect and the innuendo-free mania of the dialogue, the girls&#39; callousness is so over-the-top it fails to cause any anger or shock in the viewer. Instead, it&#39;s kind of thrilling, the same way it would be in, say, a movie by Russ Meyer or John Waters. This bears no resemblance at all to our own high school and college memories, whatever they may be, as no one is this childlike and open about expressing their horrible inner pre-empathic emotions. There is no filter. Even in a coma, Kathy is still a bitch who deserves to die for the crime of trying to fit in, a greasy-rizzy-haired Romanian (Eastern Europe never discovered conditioner, apparently) trying to make it in a pretty Italian girl world.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhJ5rTrqcuJ8eZNImZJZuRjzwRmikY8LSmjOODDdPDPxN5qlirzRSunHJiBgmn8PZJ_F1idlHCFtb_T4xxO7bDQGQsav6cjAxea3DCWr1hr0cpyPwxSidPtNY2gGh7yIIHn22HAw_AJPjIo5l5fUXi_9o9a9vWvOoW7A-gjfJZwJl9IZmcg/s1584/%22Fred%20kicked%20the%20bucket%22.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;767&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1584&quot; height=&quot;194&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIhJ5rTrqcuJ8eZNImZJZuRjzwRmikY8LSmjOODDdPDPxN5qlirzRSunHJiBgmn8PZJ_F1idlHCFtb_T4xxO7bDQGQsav6cjAxea3DCWr1hr0cpyPwxSidPtNY2gGh7yIIHn22HAw_AJPjIo5l5fUXi_9o9a9vWvOoW7A-gjfJZwJl9IZmcg/w400-h194/%22Fred%20kicked%20the%20bucket%22.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the choices of directions seem arbitrary, in the moment. Small toss-away lines are revisited, emphasized, foreshadowed, forgotten. There&#39;s a conversation between all the girls while they smoke a joint in the dorm room--one of them sneers that Crazy Mary is a &quot;retard,&quot; so Kathy was the daughter of a retard. &quot;But who&#39;d want to get with a retard?&quot; another girl says. &quot;Another retard,&quot; is the reply &quot;.... or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;worse!&lt;/i&gt;&quot; It&#39;s just a toss-away line (and forgive me for repeating it) but suddenly Jenny gets worried about the &quot;or worse.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs_OuQcHakQVmodXZBQZ0BDohW8OiUr1CFlyqPLzDXiB5wMIudQjBGcp6iniV7YTFgeHNW06I3DjySRN2oqzMnEo71hy-0jjiRi8iU8PMHa30Cf3VNTtVf_jOBHtRaz86g1H4-DXEtWemmr6yyk7BK8Ad2AWWVQrlnizjIZvgauazh5PZ79w/s2637/aenigma%20romanian%20asylum.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1428&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2637&quot; height=&quot;216&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs_OuQcHakQVmodXZBQZ0BDohW8OiUr1CFlyqPLzDXiB5wMIudQjBGcp6iniV7YTFgeHNW06I3DjySRN2oqzMnEo71hy-0jjiRi8iU8PMHa30Cf3VNTtVf_jOBHtRaz86g1H4-DXEtWemmr6yyk7BK8Ad2AWWVQrlnizjIZvgauazh5PZ79w/w400-h216/aenigma%20romanian%20asylum.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;T&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;he huge Romanian buildings make the girls seem very small,&lt;br /&gt;a reference to the high doorknobs in&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Suspiria&lt;/span&gt;?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What did you mean by worse!?&quot; (&quot;I don&#39;t know,&quot; comes the reply, &quot; but Miss Jones and Miss Fitzpatrick, and Mary lock themselves in her room and I&#39;ve heard some really weird noises.&quot;) And at one point we hear chanting behind closed doors. And Mary&#39;s eyes regularly flash a tacky, digitized red when she&#39;s doing a witchy stare at a future victim, but the connection, if there&#39;s any, between her and Kathy and Eva and Ms. Jones and Ms. Fitzpatrick as far as the murders&amp;nbsp;just hangs there, like the strange picture of the presumed school&#39;s founder, whose pursed lips and... curlers (?) beams down from the back wall. Fulci has all these signifiers laying around if the viewer wants to try and piece a familiar story together out of them, but he&#39;s already in the next room, so you may as well drop them and keep up.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSuWl5or9UqfALbTUf_XfSSyr1k6tsVK5CLR00RHf2mTFjHzhSPuYBvX-1DvakXbaRFW2Y6MH9zyRNDfi1-6TBgLn7p1uGVat2MN4ID-tzHXrqfSi8sb_EawdxXJ-MznBBTBpVcst7KU7pYpqPsIVm4WKrSbvzLTLqH1gSGgdiyx5eE8xhCg/s2416/bring%20m%20the%20head%20of%20Michael%20Jackson.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1379&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2416&quot; height=&quot;229&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSuWl5or9UqfALbTUf_XfSSyr1k6tsVK5CLR00RHf2mTFjHzhSPuYBvX-1DvakXbaRFW2Y6MH9zyRNDfi1-6TBgLn7p1uGVat2MN4ID-tzHXrqfSi8sb_EawdxXJ-MznBBTBpVcst7KU7pYpqPsIVm4WKrSbvzLTLqH1gSGgdiyx5eE8xhCg/w400-h229/bring%20m%20the%20head%20of%20Michael%20Jackson.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, little details are thrown in to keep it interesting, especially at the museum where Eva tricks one of the girls into going after hours. Eva disappears leaving the girl scared as the art keeps changing from to reality - paintings of mass murder bleed (kind of sidewise? or at an angle? it&#39;s hard to get the orientation); a severed hand drops out of the painting; an anaconda slithers on the marble floor after Grace sees the marble snake at the feet of a statue; and then instead of Medusa&#39;s head in Perseus&#39;s hand it&#39;s Kathy, all made-up with the gold eye-makeup and hyper clown cheeks from the beginning, (actually, with all that stuff one, she looks like Michael Jackson--&lt;i&gt;above,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;clearly they just smeared all that make-up from the opener on whatever head the Romanian prop guy had lying around&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;). Finally a Rodin thinker reaches out to strangle her in the crook of his elbow. Once again, Eva has vanished.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;THE ARRIVAL OF MALE &quot;AUTHORITY&quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the murders accrue, the police and school board insert themselves into the periphery of the flow, adding to the deadpan comical bipolar gear shifting. At Fred&#39;s studio the morning after his &#39;murder&#39;, the coroner bends down and puts a stethoscope to Fred&#39;s chest. After listening carefully for some time, he stands up, drops the stethoscope out of his ears, and diagnoses cause of death as a &quot;heart attack.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rather than wonder at the medical illogic of expecting to hear&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;anything&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;from a dead heart, the cop merely notes &quot;the same thing happened to the guy who invented jogging.&quot; Meanwhile Dr. Robert has strange conversations with his nurse that remind you he was once in medical school (&quot;she shouldn&#39;t have any brain activity,&quot; / &quot;naturally.... She&#39;s... in a coma&quot;).&amp;nbsp; A&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;mort par beaucoup d&#39;escargots (&lt;/i&gt;a gross needlessly lengthy scene where that poor actress lay there with real snails crawling all over her face) is dismissed by the detective the next day as the girl suffocating herself with a pillow. Italian horror fans will instantly think of&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Kill Baby Kill,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;in which the spirit of a dead child is used by her psychic old mother to cause anyone who talks about her into killing themselves. Is that the origin of the Kathy-Mary connection? But that lead too goes nowhere. Since none of it is addressed, none of it is resolved, the meanings proliferate, wash ashore, then dissolve onto the sand or back into the&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;mise-en-scene&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;like waves.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5zcO8CXLX2JEcDUFpjZGU9tTmIx4VE-sFdGrgT-7lvsJiShX47sirlSggb8crxBSU3iNy-9bAD_eTZza-kwT5vfF0Cx46Uct8R1nvhblQ6O9wGjCHrTdwY37qbPU-Goeni0wkvoriABYew2LwClSWEuZKpzCHXGx7r_nGmZJPjaBqM8olw/s1550/aenigms%2044.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;794&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1550&quot; height=&quot;205&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5zcO8CXLX2JEcDUFpjZGU9tTmIx4VE-sFdGrgT-7lvsJiShX47sirlSggb8crxBSU3iNy-9bAD_eTZza-kwT5vfF0Cx46Uct8R1nvhblQ6O9wGjCHrTdwY37qbPU-Goeni0wkvoriABYew2LwClSWEuZKpzCHXGx7r_nGmZJPjaBqM8olw/w400-h205/aenigms%2044.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Whenever Eva hooks up with the doctor, we see Kathy&#39;s satisfied coma smile&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZeiS9U-31wwZvONwPLd4YpsrhriLOk55EXh2SadwvCRk2Ph0VQKQmnLT8G_uR_mEE1ehOGbUxccGEfOt_6Iust2U23oRA1rXazYEuU3U8e7Chi_MVEvs5NFKOeZeRhksvzc9An_098nOYBCdclWDtxlr28E21cB8FkySbKvfNghl0aDbfw/s1547/AENIGMA%20MAn.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;754&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1547&quot; height=&quot;195&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZeiS9U-31wwZvONwPLd4YpsrhriLOk55EXh2SadwvCRk2Ph0VQKQmnLT8G_uR_mEE1ehOGbUxccGEfOt_6Iust2U23oRA1rXazYEuU3U8e7Chi_MVEvs5NFKOeZeRhksvzc9An_098nOYBCdclWDtxlr28E21cB8FkySbKvfNghl0aDbfw/w400-h195/AENIGMA%20MAn.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;The authority even washes onto Dr. Anderson and Eva&#39;s shores in an amusing fake-out scene that makes us wonder if we&#39;ve overestimated the looseness of the time and place. There&#39;s a scene shortly after the montage of necking with Eva begins that we get a fake-out &#39;busted&#39; from Ms. Jones, when she asks Dr. Robert to walk with her in confidential conference about Eva.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;She comes from an important family,&quot; says Ms. Jones,&amp;nbsp; &quot;You must understand, I must think of the reputation of the college.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;We instantly feel his guilt/anxiety on his tomcat behalf, like the next words will be &quot;so I therefore have to report to your unethical and amoral behavior to the medical review board.&quot; or at least &quot;I insist you stop seeing her.&quot; Instead she asks him to discreetly take over her case personally, and to spend a lot of one-on-one time with her!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: right;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiCviJiOe4BDHzT4l4_vXEEb5Rpw7qzTLWr5dtiu07Nw-0Yy2XBLlsTfrIMEnqQh5A8YaLQM219leWaQmX2slT9v3ry5d5GhrzBFJFgJur3TFE1kpH2gFuNz9MU0ORv1lWt6dBZA7_FosRi4giI_IkmQQfNhzNDPBPoLQAmszW5Ya7NbXsog/s1852/aenigma%205.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1046&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1852&quot; height=&quot;181&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiCviJiOe4BDHzT4l4_vXEEb5Rpw7qzTLWr5dtiu07Nw-0Yy2XBLlsTfrIMEnqQh5A8YaLQM219leWaQmX2slT9v3ry5d5GhrzBFJFgJur3TFE1kpH2gFuNz9MU0ORv1lWt6dBZA7_FosRi4giI_IkmQQfNhzNDPBPoLQAmszW5Ya7NbXsog/s320/aenigma%205.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;She&#39;s all yours, doc&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Phew!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Literally, he&#39;s already on top of that, so we breathe a sigh of relief. But again, none of that is spelled out the way it would be in an American film. Even a Quentin Tarantino movie would underline and enhance this little moment, so even the squares had a chance to feel the dread and relief. But with &lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt; we&#39;re not even sure if &lt;i&gt;Fulci &lt;/i&gt;notices it. It works, though, as yet another modernist fake-out, pulled off so deadpan it&#39;s easy to miss.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next time Dr. Anderson encounters the head mistress is some unspecified day later when he comes to visit Eva at the school as always (he&#39;s even been conspicuously making out with her in her dorm room, like some college sophomore) Then, one day he cruises up to her dorm room door, whistling a happy tune, but the door is locked and Jennie is passing by. She informs him she&#39;s been sent away to a &#39;deluxe rest home&quot; by her parents. It turns out they&#39;ve been trying to call him but he&#39;s been out tooling around. Jennie seems like the adult in this exchange. Throughout the scenes of unethical dorm room necking, she&#39;s been there soberly doing homework, making Eva threaten her violently more than once.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jennie is a true naif; when she smokes she holds it wrong, barely puffs then exhales in that cute way innocent girls do when trying to seem worldly.&amp;nbsp; In sum, she seems both younger than the others in experience and looks and older in maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But she&#39;s the Amy Irving moral compass.... about to spin out herself.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLlEhIydj-B38zZy62UjhEoZ0EqzDUnzM6yLBy59psNEGL2Xo9x6hb-3z9RLolm407ENJSO4pLacgGsJUoPKqJIyn_TZFRyIGMGfq-XpRQVGasttBWAllGQN8VMM_pMuURg2qRqafDH3O6bx_yd-wyZRn5jX2DR3Dlgw_sgVHosO9bHlLJw/s1910/Aeigma%2033.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1015&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1910&quot; height=&quot;341&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLlEhIydj-B38zZy62UjhEoZ0EqzDUnzM6yLBy59psNEGL2Xo9x6hb-3z9RLolm407ENJSO4pLacgGsJUoPKqJIyn_TZFRyIGMGfq-XpRQVGasttBWAllGQN8VMM_pMuURg2qRqafDH3O6bx_yd-wyZRn5jX2DR3Dlgw_sgVHosO9bHlLJw/w640-h341/Aeigma%2033.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;JENNIE TAKES EVA&#39;S PLACE&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so begins a lovelorn voiceover from Eva to Dr. Anderson. We never see him reading it, but we do see as she writes it outside at a table on the asylum grounds, the hospital behind her, as indicated by a handful of men in white leaving a building. The scene is very familiar to anyone with movie-watching experience, though there&#39;s usually a nurse pushing an old man in a wheelchair around in the background, or a group of joggers entering and exiting the frame, the day&#39;s physical therapy.&amp;nbsp; The letter continues, pining and yearning and fantasizing for him, and so when we see a gaggle of girls jogging in the park, we can&#39;t help but think, ah either they&#39;ll jog past her sitting at her table, or she&#39;ll jogging with them, as per the ususal rehabilitation montage; next we&#39;ll see her in a circle of chairs for group therapy, all while the letter voiceover continues. BUT though the joggers are there, and the letter is continuing, we&#39;re not seeing Eva anymore.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s Jennie. We&#39;re not at the rest home at all! We&#39;re with the remaining bitches from St. Mary&#39;s, running through the park (their gym class probably, now that Fred&#39;s too dead to lead the aerobics) and back to the school van to get their backpacks and towels, to lay out on the grass. As the letter continues, ever increasing in its perturbed longing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Lk1h4Qp-2V19f6D6BDP5FqbLb00trfGdanwjtE707Ra22POMNiOyj1kw97xT9m0JeryzxG5Ty_yld6FFYEH-2DF0KQ75JCLtPHv4UVGG0IfMerZuUIJ8bSwowirq8FJqt-h9NF95I0qeIbHIvIaoA-UlyMgD7rjdHtbGDhhdyvdAl4uUVw/s2397/neigtmam.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1350&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2397&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Lk1h4Qp-2V19f6D6BDP5FqbLb00trfGdanwjtE707Ra22POMNiOyj1kw97xT9m0JeryzxG5Ty_yld6FFYEH-2DF0KQ75JCLtPHv4UVGG0IfMerZuUIJ8bSwowirq8FJqt-h9NF95I0qeIbHIvIaoA-UlyMgD7rjdHtbGDhhdyvdAl4uUVw/w640-h360/neigtmam.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ4rZllXl3nZ3z-sfPLdCMP-psYU4diYV3NO4PKqDyy07PWMIAZ1piWT7dgg2_2Rvgf5o-QxERinyqWGZ8P5kLHLrM4SEQXcib4CVi-oFhv9WrAW7b7AMFNrB5J_EBD0W9Hthsi0yUBKEwfNW5C-IWctlmaqiwmyLmbRQnFldxpZfCyzbrw/s2257/dr%20anderson.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1265&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2257&quot; height=&quot;224&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ4rZllXl3nZ3z-sfPLdCMP-psYU4diYV3NO4PKqDyy07PWMIAZ1piWT7dgg2_2Rvgf5o-QxERinyqWGZ8P5kLHLrM4SEQXcib4CVi-oFhv9WrAW7b7AMFNrB5J_EBD0W9Hthsi0yUBKEwfNW5C-IWctlmaqiwmyLmbRQnFldxpZfCyzbrw/w400-h224/dr%20anderson.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;And lo and behold whose pulling up in his red convertible.... Dr. Robert Anderson, the focus of Eva&#39;s obsessive letter. He smiles and Jennie turns and smiles back, and runs up and climbs into his car, all while Eva&#39;s letter pours it on int he voiceover --making it seem like it&#39;s &lt;i&gt;her &lt;/i&gt;getting into the car in her fantasy. We see her in her room at the asylum, like the dorms only narrower, the round outdoor table she was writing on earlier is now in there with her, tablecloth and all, making there, almost no room between her chair and the twin bed. It&#39;s a totally Bunuelian bit of surrealism that just streaks right by.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eva&#39;s letter continue on, and the yearning and sexual hunger increases in its manic possessive intensity. The montage of romantic scenes (between Robert and Jennie) underneath it make a surreal contrast that comes into sense when we hear Eva threatening to remove any girl who steals him away.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What we find weird is that, yeah, Eva we could understand, especially if we once had or still have a yen for the damaged/insane hottie archetype (most iconically embodied by Angelina Jolie in &lt;i&gt;Girl, Interrupted&lt;/i&gt;). But even for debauched older men, Jennie seems way too young and naive. Eva looked like she could be in her early 20s, and mature for age at that, but Jennie looks easily just 16. And their petting reflects this chaste&lt;i&gt; Lemon Popsicle&lt;/i&gt; kind of romance: French kissing and hand holding is the order of the day, in theaters and in the convertible, the camera tracking in close. It&#39;s Eva describing passionate sex in her letter, it&#39;s Jennie doing a PG version in montage reality.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eSPxVLgzsDRSnb5KsQtoCYy1fePfFzidZuxL7p_5N71rwxGpUfp-ikC77g-fQaxVMkKy63kyqdHzPwTjkKhbEci2vZDWnQaTojVbuVB8umNV3o-X8D9vLEpfydFiEZRwS7vV2avonh5HAHQSpFE3056iclj4wucFIuvwCo1UJ2ikBch0EQ/s2436/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-31%20at%203.27.28%20PM%201.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1365&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2436&quot; height=&quot;224&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eSPxVLgzsDRSnb5KsQtoCYy1fePfFzidZuxL7p_5N71rwxGpUfp-ikC77g-fQaxVMkKy63kyqdHzPwTjkKhbEci2vZDWnQaTojVbuVB8umNV3o-X8D9vLEpfydFiEZRwS7vV2avonh5HAHQSpFE3056iclj4wucFIuvwCo1UJ2ikBch0EQ/w400-h224/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-31%20at%203.27.28%20PM%201.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;BUT THEN! The letter ends, the POV has zoomed up to them making out in the car (above) suddenly, the POV cuts to the hospital and zooms up to Kathy&#39;s eyes opening in her green sheeted ICU bed --only now she&#39;s not smiling; she looks heartbroken, those big saucer eyes betraying a kind of resigned hungover disappointment / Cut to a zoom up to Eva&#39;s eyes in her room, snapping open as well. It&#39;s like she&#39;s/they&#39;re only now realizing it&#39;s not them (Kathy / Eva) making out with Robert in her epistolary reverie, but Jennie in After School Special reality, a reality that excludes her. The meta POV angle comes kicking back in the way it did at the drive-in/prank. We may dream we&#39;re experiencing it, but it&#39;s via someone else now, not even the someone else we&#39;ve been dreaming through.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watching for the first time it takes us awhile to notice this switch.&amp;nbsp; We&#39;re so used to the montage of physical therapy, group therapy, art therapy, under a letter-reading voiceover we don&#39;t think twice.&amp;nbsp;Unless we&#39;re very good at remembering faces, we can&#39;t be sure Jennie is not Eva. The first time I saw it I was thinking that maybe the original actress playing Eva had to leave early, ala the girl in Bunuel&#39;s &lt;i&gt;That Obscure Object of Desire&lt;/i&gt;. So he just replaced her and made it an artistic choice that two girls play one role.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjanjyPx5K91zbqjQYQEVg9qeXPc_lpIYz_CuHjzMWhoOxz6Nwf_PuFDzDg_EIkNqgq3jpPaiWtBoP1UvCHmw74kodI-7xil2NldyVCS1xPb_3aGifqMg13B7GN2pIhsg4e9JiynkOgFm7gfjmtrBMz4x3KePu1KVeFBS4zyQvSnGQn7VwPeA/s2565/Aenighma%20shot%20sewq.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1363&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2565&quot; height=&quot;170&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjanjyPx5K91zbqjQYQEVg9qeXPc_lpIYz_CuHjzMWhoOxz6Nwf_PuFDzDg_EIkNqgq3jpPaiWtBoP1UvCHmw74kodI-7xil2NldyVCS1xPb_3aGifqMg13B7GN2pIhsg4e9JiynkOgFm7gfjmtrBMz4x3KePu1KVeFBS4zyQvSnGQn7VwPeA/s320/Aenighma%20shot%20sewq.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSr_NP_V-XeznN8xwUDkDF6vZgq6K5--D_X_bGrZLFx38jipddIABTjYxV7M753yYHgTej_VEhH5PRwRAxvlqeNvMMmI2C5U6P7uZbw-LmIW6sSjQn4sPLR76Ixa21pKJxYMvXVELQ6NSTYkff-Jt1LHnqc5ClY8m05-_aaTx-vikCUunhg/s2536/Aenigma%20shot%20sequence%202.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1402&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2536&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSr_NP_V-XeznN8xwUDkDF6vZgq6K5--D_X_bGrZLFx38jipddIABTjYxV7M753yYHgTej_VEhH5PRwRAxvlqeNvMMmI2C5U6P7uZbw-LmIW6sSjQn4sPLR76Ixa21pKJxYMvXVELQ6NSTYkff-Jt1LHnqc5ClY8m05-_aaTx-vikCUunhg/w400-h221/Aenigma%20shot%20sequence%202.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDzIzXp-uUmQqijUudj-5UgtBhcBSdx5XUMvRiUDV4_HsS7kruVDm4cybhVjz_WMuIQ0-r47SRdljvlg_I2DZmznr43mN-sr69PWvpVIJ5gXN0f-7bA5kfaNqLkHwBi16WjD76gDVNIVQFJrA_EiO8eaiB3Bj1031ZDhNWG3-WPonvQ5lzqw/s2560/aenigma%20shot%20sequence.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1397&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2560&quot; height=&quot;175&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDzIzXp-uUmQqijUudj-5UgtBhcBSdx5XUMvRiUDV4_HsS7kruVDm4cybhVjz_WMuIQ0-r47SRdljvlg_I2DZmznr43mN-sr69PWvpVIJ5gXN0f-7bA5kfaNqLkHwBi16WjD76gDVNIVQFJrA_EiO8eaiB3Bj1031ZDhNWG3-WPonvQ5lzqw/s320/aenigma%20shot%20sequence.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY7AXUDh24WowqXEKyLdEQvrtXEr0_K2Ev9PTYbw8_UUnJKR0HeiED9HYtW2Q0gGsB-t8ByrCjd6if0Hkc9rOIAhacTGEt2ikRi6OtHvhoo8nt-PNtH9mNqnNIAkE9uhpqw482cYftwcsgICZH5oq2wHQM79ZXignro6Uv0psIPcJb7FAo5w/s2534/shot%20sequence.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1380&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2534&quot; height=&quot;217&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY7AXUDh24WowqXEKyLdEQvrtXEr0_K2Ev9PTYbw8_UUnJKR0HeiED9HYtW2Q0gGsB-t8ByrCjd6if0Hkc9rOIAhacTGEt2ikRi6OtHvhoo8nt-PNtH9mNqnNIAkE9uhpqw482cYftwcsgICZH5oq2wHQM79ZXignro6Uv0psIPcJb7FAo5w/w400-h217/shot%20sequence.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;blockquote style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;This shot sequence, &lt;i&gt;top to bottom,&lt;/i&gt; shows Fulci&#39;s genius with using quick edits to move the narrative along, with Eva&#39;s obsessive VO letter ending in a declaration he must be hers alone, ending as we slow zoom in on Robert and Jennie making out in his car / to Kathy&#39;s eyes bugged open in the hospital / to a zoom up to Eva&#39;s eyes flashing open -indicating Kathy&#39;s astral POV has noticed it&#39;s not her avatar with Robert but her avatar&#39;s goody two-shoes back-stabbing roommate. A smash cut to the sound of breaking glass as the organ swells / quick pan across a darkened exterior street finds Eva, cooly dressed in all black shirt and slacks, almost Bruce Lee in &lt;i&gt;Enter the Dragon&lt;/i&gt;-cool, already snuck out and headed, obviously, back to the school. In order to understand this progression you have to take for granted that these aren&#39;t random shots&amp;nbsp; but lead one to the other; as we&#39;re dealing with metaphysical high strangeness, like remote viewing, witchy magic, girl emotions, and betrayals.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Nothing is ever spelled out in a Fulci film: we have to &lt;i&gt;presume&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the order of the edits is telling a story, that each cut to a pair of eyes is seeing the previous image. So a cut to Kathy in her bed with eyes open, unsmiling, means she &#39;sees&#39; and is not happy, then Eva &#39;sees&#39; - the information hitting her with the zoom force of Kathy&#39;s thought. She&#39;s not only pissed but able to do something about it. Fulci spares us all the connectors and explanations and boom - we&#39;re out of an asylum we never even saw.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Nope. Somewhere along the way, probably in a scene left on the editing room floor or x-ed out of the script, Robert has been &#39;consoled&#39; by Eva&#39;s roommate --the tale as old as time. What is up with girl roommates always having to two time each other by sleeping with the other&#39;s boyfriend when he comes over and she&#39;s not there? Clearly it&#39;s happening at St. Mary&#39;s as well as with me up in Syracuse &lt;i&gt;(twice!).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sure, we know the whole Jennie thing is in the film purely as a&amp;nbsp;trigger for Eva/Kathy&#39;s homicidal jealousy. That&#39;s natural enough, but what&#39;s not is that it&#39;s never verbally commented on. Robert and Jennie barely even talk outside of the one scene in his office, when she needles him about the cot in his office in the following nonsensical exchange&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;Jennie&lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;:&lt;/i&gt; &quot;Do you mean you never had a pretty patient, or nurse, on this bed?&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Dr. Robert:&lt;/b&gt; &quot;So far, no.&quot; &lt;i&gt;(they kiss)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Jennie:&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&quot;But I&#39;m&lt;i&gt; not &lt;/i&gt;a patient or a nurse.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;Dr. Robert:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&quot;Then you qualify.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;They never even mention Eva. To them it&#39;s like Eva no longer exists, maybe she never did. But Kathy still does, and she&#39;s looking in from the TV monitor (maybe), perhaps her jealous spirit weighs on Jennie to the point she leaves, feeling like it&#39;s not right somehow. Only to turn around halfway and go back.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Back in the school, it&#39;s the dead of night in the school, Crazy Mary hears her daughter&#39;s disembodied voice in her head--a kind of echo of Carrie&#39;s in De Palma&#39;s film: &quot;They all tricked me, mama! And all because I&#39;m your daughter. The &lt;i&gt;crazy &lt;/i&gt;maid&#39;s daughter,&amp;nbsp;This is the first time we&#39;ve heard Kathy&#39;s actual voice since those first six&amp;nbsp;minutes with Fred. Mary knows instantly that she&#39;s standing there in the shadows, inside Eva (why hasn&#39;t she noticed Kathy&#39;s presence inside Eva sooner, such as when she served her snails?) Now Eva&#39;s eyes are glowing a soft red too, but softer and Mary&#39;s eyes seem softer red too, as if the red has disseminated between them kisses Eva&#39;s hands and speaks telepathically for the first time, (&quot;My...child&quot;) but before she can continue (Lamberti does some great acting here just with her softening expression in a close-up, but her head cocks at sound of evil laughing, distracting Eva as it&#39;s the same laughter she heard during the prank. It&#39;s Grace and her boyfriend, (the grinning blonde couple who dressed Kathy up for her date with Fred) sneaking into the building. When we cut back to Eva&#39;s close-up she now is just radiating a mix of childlike hurt, embarrassment and confusion, as if reliving the prank all over again, her eyes narrow as if trying to nurse vindictive rage into being, but for the moment her mom reunion has softened her.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, we already more less know what&#39;s going to happen next. The curtains will rustle, some lame canned sexy dialogue will occur, and some people are going to lose their post-coital heads. Once again Mary and Eva are nowhere to be found - disappearing from &lt;i&gt;mise-en-scene&lt;/i&gt; temporarily so they can engineer creative deaths in the ether. Is it one or both? Since this is the first time they&#39;ve &#39;spoken&#39; since her accident, I&#39;d guess they weren&#39;t collaborating on these poetic deaths on the astral plane, but Fulci doesn&#39;t care to decide exactly who is engineering what.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeU9lACYucHcymfpoZJo4ktw3EQmkmURsKmTGQeq3OJVQmXjxHZzng9fkQP8sIAjNs-kTodVkQe9mwSBLpuxrX6RAz1tbMum4hSSU9u2yCy8WAYqtSn8COTEmoAT-JmbH561CXqk5mO-ZxHzbJGux9-88yZIP4mSODRlilPYV5P1xY_dIMbg/s1880/aetna%206.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1028&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1880&quot; height=&quot;175&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeU9lACYucHcymfpoZJo4ktw3EQmkmURsKmTGQeq3OJVQmXjxHZzng9fkQP8sIAjNs-kTodVkQe9mwSBLpuxrX6RAz1tbMum4hSSU9u2yCy8WAYqtSn8COTEmoAT-JmbH561CXqk5mO-ZxHzbJGux9-88yZIP4mSODRlilPYV5P1xY_dIMbg/w320-h175/aetna%206.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;AENIGMA, you really &lt;i&gt;are...&lt;/i&gt; an Enigma&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;OK, I&#39;ll end my deep dive here. The ending is kind of unsatisfactory--as if they realized time was up so just pulled the plug, so to speak. But it&#39;s always nice to see one of Fulci&#39;s space age morgues --all done up in honor of PHANTASM, maybe, the morgue as airport to the beyond, and there&#39;s a deep scalpel wound (at last!) and you can always keep the enigmatic Fulci kick alive by watching something like&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/10/nightmare-logic-lucio-fulcis-house-by.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; House by the Cemetery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(1981) or &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/05/brokeback-barbarians-vs-metalheads.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Conquest &lt;/a&gt;(&lt;/i&gt;1983) or &lt;i&gt;The Devil&#39;s Honey&lt;/i&gt; (1986) after this.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In short (haha), I love &lt;i&gt;Aenigma &lt;/i&gt;as much for what it leaves out as what it leaves in: there are no cliche&#39;d young snickering horndog males (no boyfriend even gets a line of dialogue) there&#39;s really only two male main characters, a teacher and a doctor, and both are sleeping with students. There are no montages of time passing, no Boston travelogue B-roll filler,&amp;nbsp;no pointless connecting scenes (arriving/departing, opening doors, no going to sleep, no engaging in predictable &#39;character development&#39; and no predictable, bland orchestration. There isn&#39;t any &#39;norm&#39; --if there is its used sardonically, ala the &quot;Head over Heels&quot; montage, so there&#39;s nothing to deviate from. There are no children or animals, no pointless tracking shots through asylums. No parents. Only two vehicles: Robert&#39;s red convertible, and the school van. The interiors are all old white Romanian architecture, cavernous with twin circular stars going up to a second floor balcony so students can gaze ruefully down at others. The museum is almost empty &lt;i&gt;except &lt;/i&gt;for violent art; we never see any food &lt;i&gt;except&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;snails. And when Grace hallucinates the rows of beds on the ground floor, we realize this museum may be in the same building as the school with a few changes in set dressing (like an escalator instead of twin winding staircases) ditto the hospital, aside from the elevators and the cool morgue.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;What it DOES have are bitchy, sex-crazed girls saying outrageously mean things in marvelously stilted dubbed voices while pretending they know how to smoke; Crazy Mary, her eyes glowing red while listening around corners as soon-to-be-dead students disparage her and her daughter; frowning school teachers irritated by the slightest display of emotional vulnerability &lt;i&gt;or &lt;/i&gt;lack thereof; 80s-mandated aerobics; bait-and-switch fake-outs; Carlo Maria Cordio&#39;s slinky and spiraling organ score; the Menzies-evoking miniatures; Eva&#39;s savage Russ Meyer-style amok carnality; the usual creative Fulci death scenes; plenty of psychedelic WTF detours like blood raining sideways out of a painting; snails slowly suffocating a (presumably paralyzed) girl who wasn&#39;t paid enough (those are real snails!); the doctor and Fred with their never maligned or mentioned penchant for extracurricular student activities. Ain&#39;t that enough?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjWr3aRRWLTUrgB6zJQwHASFliviZwyX1EaN86kY_3HGXfpzdCHQmSk4TUQKM03LgNtfxf-dfxdOcwucNX2cysJbFgwsJFPVZXVsO8FAYK5tgEV34zItrJHKX8gzvjvtRBUDvm4GL6Re7y6R-sZiynoYuMHEAmQgSNSkoiAr_UWnfGUxhDQ/s1977/aenigma%2019.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1036&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1977&quot; height=&quot;336&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjWr3aRRWLTUrgB6zJQwHASFliviZwyX1EaN86kY_3HGXfpzdCHQmSk4TUQKM03LgNtfxf-dfxdOcwucNX2cysJbFgwsJFPVZXVsO8FAYK5tgEV34zItrJHKX8gzvjvtRBUDvm4GL6Re7y6R-sZiynoYuMHEAmQgSNSkoiAr_UWnfGUxhDQ/w640-h336/aenigma%2019.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But it&#39;s the wealth of post-modern ambiguity is what really sells it. It&#39;s why you can see&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;over and over and never see the same film twice. We never know if any of these meanings I&#39;ve just ascribed to it in this novel-length dissertation are intended or accidental. Like Schrodinger&#39;s cat-as long as it stays in the box--neither alive or dead, true or false, accident or intent, genius or stupidty--it&#39;s perfect, it&#39;s mythic, it&#39;s endlessly intriguing. On the other hand, if the box is opened and the cat is dead,&amp;nbsp;i.e.&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Aenigma&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;is a hack job inconsistent mess perfect to be hooted at during a drunk movie night but any subtext is BS, then what a short-sighted drag of an impression. Why even watch it? And if we open the box and know for sure the cat is alive, it&#39;s shuffled off behind the velvet rope of bourgeois respectability and can no longer be enjoyed as a &#39;so-bad-it&#39;s-good / WTF/ outsider gem of accidental Brechtianism.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But while still in the box, the cat neither alive nor dead, there can be no set response. No &#39;true&#39; figuring out whether it&#39;s Mary and her coven or Eva/Kathy orchestrating the deaths. As a result, the beer-crushing bad movie lovin&#39; plebes and the snifter bourgeois critics, each desperate to define themselves by their likes and dislikes, might not trust the ambiguity, i.e. they don&#39;t get that there&#39;s no &quot;it&quot; to get. Neither true or false is what true myth is all about. The &#39;could be&#39; is what counts.&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Aenigm&lt;/i&gt;a is like an eternal Xmas eve where morning never comes; or an alien or bigfoot documentary, as long as we don&#39;t know the answer, it&amp;nbsp;stays relentlessly intriguing. Once all the meaning is ascribed, it&#39;s just a banal grey concrete, poster-covered dorm room mess, and aren&#39;t we all?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Hopefully you never read this.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;FURTHER with FULCI&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/10/nightmare-logic-lucio-fulcis-house-by.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Nightmare Logic: Lucio Fulci&#39;s HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/05/brokeback-barbarians-vs-metalheads.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Brokeback Barbarians Vs. the Metalheads: CONQUEST (1983)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;h3 class=&quot;post-title entry-title&quot; itemprop=&quot;name&quot; style=&quot;font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/creature-double-feature-night-4-baffled.html&quot; style=&quot;font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: small;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: normal;&quot;&gt;Creature Double Feature Night 4: BAFFLED! (1972); CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980&lt;/span&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/absolute-october-10-weird-atmospheric.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Absolute&quot; October- 10: THE BEYOND&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/08/way-of-locust-exorcist-ii-manhattan-baby.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Touched by a Locust: EXORCIST 2: THE HERETIC, MANHATTAN BABY&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/3449499420929610133/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-mystical-dissociation-of-lucio.html#comment-form' title='6 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3449499420929610133'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3449499420929610133'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-mystical-dissociation-of-lucio.html' title='The Mystical Dissociation of Lucio: AENIGMA (1987)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Fjpv04sWERW0AU1mtPZ8h4QkIbWASsjq8c4ECVF9niSgOcvfJtv3BGMaBdINt-Z7x9wwYp3o1JQ5Tnh3oPEEmfklSI79YSL9biC_qGUV0aHjSXRfNlb1qpTDW86S0hiHzm6NFEx2mdSd_UzOT_T1kzNxKM1klRtnywtQh0Dl4j6jgozjig/s72-w640-h282-c/aenigma%20.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-1264483013321350744</id><published>2022-12-21T12:14:00.011-05:00</published><updated>2023-02-01T09:06:33.652-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Unbreak the Wind: YOU AND THE NIGHT (2013)</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhou1iEoVjYMEz6r5zBSq3wwKzYp-oKjw6R6jaPLBipGDFqis6Mxw2uBqHKRwdqfpS-ty6maROvB9JmQIJY8lP2UnAjHAJ0jnng6p-zrkVJXrbHUGHpebPr1H_6FvRNha9O0fJB/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-07-12+at+2.47.21+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;392&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhou1iEoVjYMEz6r5zBSq3wwKzYp-oKjw6R6jaPLBipGDFqis6Mxw2uBqHKRwdqfpS-ty6maROvB9JmQIJY8lP2UnAjHAJ0jnng6p-zrkVJXrbHUGHpebPr1H_6FvRNha9O0fJB/s640/Screen+Shot+2015-07-12+at+2.47.21+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;You and the Night (2013&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;) aka &quot;&lt;/i&gt;Les rencontres d&#39;après minuit&lt;i&gt;&quot; Dir &lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Yann Gonzalez&#39;s tale of an orgy magically turned into a winter bonding session, has such a &quot;alone and slutty on Xmas&quot; vibe I felt I hard to post this full version of an older review. Viola!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;You&#39;ll either love it like a new crush or think it&#39;s&amp;nbsp;too &lt;i&gt;jejune et naïf&lt;/i&gt;, or--like me--do both at once, in alternating currents of cringe and swoon, but you&#39;re bound to agree: if Jean Cocteau was doing a contemporary film about a Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) meeting on snowy Sunday midnight, inside a soundstage spaceship, and everyone (i.e. gorgeous men and handsome women, a Cocteau signature) was feeling especially vulnerable and lonely (for only the desperate come out on a night like this) and the meeting was small enough that everyone got to share at some length, and then they all went out to the diner afterwards and walked and talked til dawn, all bonded close by abject loneliness and the perfection of the moment --&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;You and the Night&lt;/i&gt; (aka&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Les rencontres d&#39;après minu&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;i&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;t&lt;/i&gt; )&lt;/span&gt;is exactly the film you&#39;d have.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Or if you want to go the other way, if Radley Metzger was doing a contemporary film about a late-night after-the-bars-close party at the futuristic apartment of a pair of MDMA-dealing swingers; and the cast were feeling especially vulnerable and lonely, and they all wanted some kind of experience, and so they all dropped (everything from ecstasy to inhibitions) and, instead of having an orgy, wound up bonding and confessing and just passionately holding hands (as one is apt to do on it) and then--their group bond cast in stone, and then, born anew in each other&#39;s esteem-- went mentally swooning and swirling across the Parisian night as one giant loving phantom until dawn (and if there was any signature Metzger sex, it had been snipped out long ago by censors),&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;You and the Night &lt;/i&gt;would be exactly the film you&#39;d have.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;They thought they wanted an orgy, but what they found was &#39;connection.&#39;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Don&#39;t laugh! Why do Americans laugh at these things!? Why do they fear the openness of the heart?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKv31RNXyaODo5Nj78n_POQz6W2jPSazM5GOB1RSyv3DgU68P6wLnBr2EzuEWO16FNgEmgDCwakmpuCDlg3EHBn3EJusE8jkBeTGQf6YW7kPRzI8DJ_rqlHEnu8Ek9pp8DRn2NobssYfpiZhaMiq5NU83SB19uXZ9sox0ZBnnnn2aHgF8DOQ/s1464/you.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;909&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1464&quot; height=&quot;398&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKv31RNXyaODo5Nj78n_POQz6W2jPSazM5GOB1RSyv3DgU68P6wLnBr2EzuEWO16FNgEmgDCwakmpuCDlg3EHBn3EJusE8jkBeTGQf6YW7kPRzI8DJ_rqlHEnu8Ek9pp8DRn2NobssYfpiZhaMiq5NU83SB19uXZ9sox0ZBnnnn2aHgF8DOQ/w640-h398/you.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Kate Moran and Niels Schneider play the beautiful rich jet-set hosts (they have a kind of deadpan debauched sophisto Bela-Edward rapport) aware of, and encouraging each other&#39;s rampant sexual appetites like only an open-marriage-having pair of jet-set swingers can (shades of &lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/10/and-thats-how-you-play-get-guests-score.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Score!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;) with a love-in/live-in drag queen maid (Nicholas Maury,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Call Your Agent)&lt;/i&gt;. The guest all represent certain beautiful people types common at these soirees (uh, presumably): Alain-Fabien Delon (Alain Delon&#39;s even more gorgeous son) is the &quot;Teenager.&quot; He left his parents because they were &quot;too afraid of life.&quot; A runaway hustler with his own loving code, he found himself there on the lonely benches of the Parisian parks in the midnight hours. Fabienne Babe is the &quot;Star,&quot; insisting the hosts turn out the lights before she comes in, so no one can see how old she is, and they oblige, and she comes slinking into the scene, kissing each one in turn with the lights off, before getting comfortable enough to even later take off her wig.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;All of them have their story. The Star dives into the tale of her beautiful sexy son, with whom she had a Kay Parker-esque love affair.&amp;nbsp; Eric Cantona is &quot;the Stallion&quot; -with his horse cock ever proudly out at half-mast, lamenting that his sexual desirability derailed his destiny.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;His destiny? He wanted to become a poet.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Sexual vigor somehow prevented him from writing poems.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The cast continues: Julia Bremond is &quot;the Bitch,&quot; a gloriously unhinged nymphomaniac with bad bangs and a need for constant verbal provocation. She goes on and on about her preference for orgies that have rooms full of masked &quot;rednecks&quot; with their cocks out and ready (&quot;they come all over me and I love it!&quot;).&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Strange as it is to say,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Les rencontres d&#39;après minuit&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;works because it is French, and only the French could deliver (or hear) lines like &quot;my cock became my obsession--I forgot poetry&quot; or &quot;I curse the cock that tore me from my destiny!&quot; with a straight face. Since we&#39;re reading it in subtitles it&#39;s somehow OK).&amp;nbsp; In the US, upon hearing you&#39;ve decided to be a poet, everyone--your parents especially--roll their eyes, but should you go to France, they revere you! They still may not show up to your open mic night debut, but they&#39;re proud to know a real live poet.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;If you waste that talent on just being a stud, &lt;i&gt;monsieur &lt;/i&gt;you will never endure the ages.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;As the gathered orgiasts&#39; individual, and quite fanciful, tales, stories, and dreams are unfold, they are reenacted through a colorful whirl of pretty intensely minimalist artificial backdrops and mythic costuming. We see very stylized vignettes wherein the terrors of self-doubt and loneliness strike even in the thick of orgiastic fantasy. The Slut&#39;s recurring&amp;nbsp;dream: the &quot;armada of cocks&quot;&amp;nbsp;at her &quot;disposal&quot; is depicted in a &lt;i&gt;Suspiria&lt;/i&gt;-esque orgy hall, but populated with a series of exhausted middle-aged and elderly men, naked with masks on, slumped against the red and black striped wall, and as she crawls forward past them, her face aging and sagging as she goes. We&#39;re told the story of the hosts&#39; love affair via painterly tableaux, presumably, some fictionalized version of North Africa. His saying goodbye to head off to war in some ancient/timeless past, with his fine Arab charger at his side; she later finding out he&#39;s dead and digging up his coffin with the help of a magical black-winged gypsy angel (Maury) whose price to bring him back from the dead is to always be around them as a lifelong threesome, that he might bask in their gorgeous love and join in as the mood and moment strikes. She agrees and her man comes back to life, though sans an eye (he has a very fetching scar and eye patch). Moran is awed of Maury&#39;s power: &quot;You&#39;re like Jesus!&quot; (&quot;Oui,&quot; Maury says, &quot;only worse.&quot;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;They live happily ever after.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Or do they? Why does death seem to be looming so near Schneider&#39;s side? Things seem so perfect, yet her one-eyed war vet never really lets go of that comfy coffin.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSQQzTaF0IF_CFw9_T42F5YrrG6q8preuxaSveHxI0427bgT0O8YUdCOBlsAf92pHby80Tt1Kxc4ey-GEkAdG8OZxAMjkrjjpI28h1e-C7L31EwlN4Q6xL8Q7iFbiZagR9bxbUCx4caJka88Hjq05X5WYjokrxR4zCqV6P2hq0GY4ddojpw/s1565/you%20and%20the%20Dalle.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;877&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1565&quot; height=&quot;358&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSQQzTaF0IF_CFw9_T42F5YrrG6q8preuxaSveHxI0427bgT0O8YUdCOBlsAf92pHby80Tt1Kxc4ey-GEkAdG8OZxAMjkrjjpI28h1e-C7L31EwlN4Q6xL8Q7iFbiZagR9bxbUCx4caJka88Hjq05X5WYjokrxR4zCqV6P2hq0GY4ddojpw/w640-h358/you%20and%20the%20Dalle.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Other tasteful, surreal vignettes include he Stallion&#39;s brush with the &quot;Komissar,&quot; a whip-smacking Russian officer played by Beatrice Dalle (see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Betty Blue Come Blow Your Mind&lt;/a&gt;!). In a block box theater version of a Russian prison, she orders him to crawl on fours in his BVDs while she snaps the whip, and says embarrassing things like &quot;Stab me with your pork sword!&quot; and drives herself to climax. The prison is a model of economy in soundstage art direction worthy of Ulmer: we see the bars of the cell they&#39;re in; we hear the sounds of other prisoners in the darkness; we see the hands reach out to him through the bars, pleading for release; through the miracle of light and shadow the prison seems to extend for miles in all directions, a giant &lt;i&gt;Shining&lt;/i&gt; cell bar maze of men trapped in the mental prison of their own kinky desires.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;But now, here he is, safe and free and in the company of this rarefied orgy. &quot;The Stud&quot; confesses he thought he&#39;d never get out of there. &quot; I&#39;d still be in that cell, frozen with terror and paralysis....like all those who long to revive the wind.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Revive the wind, Stallion! Sheathe thy sword and hoist the notebook paper sails, that they may be filled with gusty couplets!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqpyIzgZiOc4HvoTaAHnRkxsFsRfnKecAjtx874IS7bRRdl-7ApBJ7xEfFSSplMh8GqTQODB1u8Be3iLky_KtcuNkzKYiV6DnOhMjPTntnyNcrzih0KD_jtbJnZeyR2Cv7yh_lsKwsHTmjsKaY9PWA87CbUfqD8eXxnmhKLRmQjG5VUbYrw/s1548/pu%20and%20te%20night.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;912&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1548&quot; height=&quot;236&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqpyIzgZiOc4HvoTaAHnRkxsFsRfnKecAjtx874IS7bRRdl-7ApBJ7xEfFSSplMh8GqTQODB1u8Be3iLky_KtcuNkzKYiV6DnOhMjPTntnyNcrzih0KD_jtbJnZeyR2Cv7yh_lsKwsHTmjsKaY9PWA87CbUfqD8eXxnmhKLRmQjG5VUbYrw/w400-h236/pu%20and%20te%20night.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The French have a far more poetic cinema from which to dig for inspiration and reference than we&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;vulagares&amp;nbsp;Américains, &lt;/i&gt;who only have the&amp;nbsp;films of John Cameron Mitchell (i.e.&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Hedwig, Shortbus, How to Talk to Girls at Parties&lt;/i&gt;) as proof we&#39;re inclusive and occasionally capable of nonjudgmental drug-and-music assisted love and acceptance. Perhaps this why only the French and French film fans and weird cult movie enthusiasts will be predisposed to love this film as much as I do, despite its ridiculous theatricality.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/user/ur5197347/?ref_=tt_urv&quot;&gt;Mme Jannings&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;notes on imdb:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;This is a movie that cannot be seen with the eyes of evasion. It is a movie that needs to be watch it&amp;nbsp;(sic)&amp;nbsp;with the eyes of the soul as well as the physical eyes, without prejudgments, and without taboos.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;Oui, mademoiselle! &lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Can Americans (and Brits) feel these genuine sincere and warm emotions, even as they roll their eyes and sigh &quot;oh, brother!&quot; just to cover their bets, as I am now doing?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Sure, &lt;i&gt;You and the Night &lt;/i&gt;has a pleased-with-itself, breast fed-til-18 sense of entitlement, but it&#39;s somehow not as offensive coming from pretty young European aesthetes as it is from America&#39;s nepo-babies. Sure, it&#39;s so much like a theater group performing a SAA meeting in a science fiction bubble where qualifications come alive as surreal vignettes, but it&#39;s got such a warm and inclusive heart underneath its art school posturing it&#39;s hard to resist. It&#39;s the supreme abstract style of, say, Anna Biller welded to the open heart of John Cameron Mitchell.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6EUt5f3ofEuNcB1QlSCI6CCaWeyXkdYTSpg4D3I56sM4ZSdPPv_1qRRkm-u-mnqGLMtTdJjclzcdW20BYHpoL7bptkdN2rLwxt6_m5jgFczSWfu69cDI6c67bXrdpU5glROErkphrARnGqV4xqHFw_HDF-cxxHomDr9PhmQ61UHGD_LInA/s1546/maury.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;915&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1546&quot; height=&quot;189&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6EUt5f3ofEuNcB1QlSCI6CCaWeyXkdYTSpg4D3I56sM4ZSdPPv_1qRRkm-u-mnqGLMtTdJjclzcdW20BYHpoL7bptkdN2rLwxt6_m5jgFczSWfu69cDI6c67bXrdpU5glROErkphrARnGqV4xqHFw_HDF-cxxHomDr9PhmQ61UHGD_LInA/w320-h189/maury.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;And most importantly, if you wish to understand Cocteau, which is to understand France, and you wish to understand Radley Metzger (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/10/and-thats-how-you-play-get-guests-score.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Score&lt;/i&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; in particular), and wish to understand Herr Mitchell (i.e. Hedwig), you must appreciate that--once you are no longer ashamed or frustrated--sex is no more dangerous underneath its leather studs than a little puppy. Once embraced with total acceptane, magic can happen. We&#39;re talking Apollonian Kenneth Anger-via-Max Reinhardt magic ritual-fairy dust settling like snow (which also falls at one point). It&#39;s a magic that amply compensates for its overall...eh, ow you say, eh.., self-indulgent wankery? Just say yes and magic happens. I&#39;m as cynical as any of my fine American brethren but I was in tears by the end the first time I saw this...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;and the second...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;and even the third.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY8Qwid4zlRtQcl3ZlMqB5l5oSRmgqjPJVr31jz6aLiefIlpJ0_vkRYQMKZpHJhQyUB-UHNaMl9vSWOfWlZLprtod5LtJShg2mdSsmMv5jThM3rGdotpG9oq_Z68U0Ydj-COIM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-07-12+at+3.54.26+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY8Qwid4zlRtQcl3ZlMqB5l5oSRmgqjPJVr31jz6aLiefIlpJ0_vkRYQMKZpHJhQyUB-UHNaMl9vSWOfWlZLprtod5LtJShg2mdSsmMv5jThM3rGdotpG9oq_Z68U0Ydj-COIM/s400/Screen+Shot+2015-07-12+at+3.54.26+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Director Yann Gonzalez would continue his polyamorous erotique-cum-Argento style/structure (albeit with far more graphic sex and the introduction of brutal violence) for the neon-drenched&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Knife + Heart, a&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;nicely surreal post-giallo about&amp;nbsp;an aging alcoholic lesbian director of gay porn (well-played by Vanessa Paradis) trying to win back her ex-lover (Kate Moran!). It&#39;s set in the 70s, so she keeps calling her from filthy phone booths, pleasing for another chance. I don&#39;t blame Paradis&#39; porn director for wanting her back, as I&#39;m kind of enthralled by after her&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;You and the Night, &lt;/i&gt;wherein her&amp;nbsp;final tearful proposition in the dawn&#39;s early light had me bawling and happy the way I hadn&#39;t felt watching a French movie since the first half of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Betty Blue, &lt;/i&gt;which I used to drink and cry to obsessively back in the early-90s.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And then there&#39;s the great chillbient (is that still a thing?) M83 score (i.e. Yann&#39;s brother, Anthony), a perfect choice for amping the intensity of 21st century ecstasy-tinged post-club emotional all sunrise bonding. If it all adds up to a nice bunch of parts rather than a movie, well, what of it? Love leaves a new hole for every old one it fills (that line is mine, but you can use it, for we&#39;re all one.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;Even more importantly than all these little perks, &lt;i&gt;You and the Night&lt;/i&gt; is a&amp;nbsp;unique film but one that shouldn&#39;t need to stand alone, unloved and in the snowy night. Not anymore.&amp;nbsp; It&#39;s every loner&#39;s dream to find a readymade clique of like-minded good-looking outcasts to call a family or artistic collective. For libertines such as these, it&#39;s a love far rarer than the carnal or romantic. If you find it, you have to drop everything and run with it all the way, to the grave, and--especially if you&#39;re a debauched French poet--even beyond.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Don&#39;t laugh at them.... not now. Just come in, come in.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRoV2DjM4lRMW_5qR2rlhgDKOfWG7TPoFj-aY45rgNaV8QP5pHUKe-hkw-3Xaj9J73562EHzwR03L9QLywZlsfg7OTsUflkvtWjTkLLa155TVPY5Pi4Y8bNhhp4ebeSGShlwzkgRF8fz0LJDx_XV_tZ4lc788k1RFAZ21Jr-zoiM2IVp7J2A/s1523/you%20and%20the%20eyepatch.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;915&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1523&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRoV2DjM4lRMW_5qR2rlhgDKOfWG7TPoFj-aY45rgNaV8QP5pHUKe-hkw-3Xaj9J73562EHzwR03L9QLywZlsfg7OTsUflkvtWjTkLLa155TVPY5Pi4Y8bNhhp4ebeSGShlwzkgRF8fz0LJDx_XV_tZ4lc788k1RFAZ21Jr-zoiM2IVp7J2A/w400-h240/you%20and%20the%20eyepatch.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/1264483013321350744/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/revive-wind-you-and-night-2013.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/1264483013321350744'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/1264483013321350744'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/revive-wind-you-and-night-2013.html' title='Unbreak the Wind: YOU AND THE NIGHT (2013)'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhou1iEoVjYMEz6r5zBSq3wwKzYp-oKjw6R6jaPLBipGDFqis6Mxw2uBqHKRwdqfpS-ty6maROvB9JmQIJY8lP2UnAjHAJ0jnng6p-zrkVJXrbHUGHpebPr1H_6FvRNha9O0fJB/s72-c/Screen+Shot+2015-07-12+at+2.47.21+PM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-5914984371218126825</id><published>2022-12-13T19:05:00.006-05:00</published><updated>2022-12-16T00:10:30.587-05:00</updated><title type='text'>ONCE YOU KISS A STRANGER (1969) + Selections for Acidemic&#39;s Chthonic Lady Series</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8QFaVeUqzBhWQ-zDcdBIvv-N-e7f-jxXt08iiSnypCIcNXqbX7nVSqx-pG6K47EU9pezbRhczJ6hqPbqUOUYekelM5UjoCMCEPdcNy68laV91oMdE805paIHvwG0hBTI_s8P_Mn4JDhEgfs9LRp36ag9bVNAHntE_MwY5AzWO-IYuL8e6_A/s512/carol%20lynley.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;288&quot; data-original-width=&quot;512&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8QFaVeUqzBhWQ-zDcdBIvv-N-e7f-jxXt08iiSnypCIcNXqbX7nVSqx-pG6K47EU9pezbRhczJ6hqPbqUOUYekelM5UjoCMCEPdcNy68laV91oMdE805paIHvwG0hBTI_s8P_Mn4JDhEgfs9LRp36ag9bVNAHntE_MwY5AzWO-IYuL8e6_A/w640-h360/carol%20lynley.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Hey ho, just a note to let you know I&#39;m still writing, just not posting as much as my brain&#39;s too foggy to keep on topic (I keep drifting, like a Tennessee Williams heroine). Still, I may be blocked but I&#39;m writing all sorts of in-progress pieces for next year, even trying to cobble a book together so don&#39;t despair (any more than the fate of the earth already demands).&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime in honor of Kat Ellinger&#39;s new chthonic podcast&lt;a href=&quot;https://open.spotify.com/episode/3clT5tz7O3ie1UimswM58t?si=aae86a39280547d3&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; &lt;b&gt;To the Devil a Daughter&lt;/b&gt; &lt;/a&gt;(on Spotify), the first episode which is about Russ Meyer&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Faster Pussycat &lt;/i&gt;and &lt;i&gt;Vixen&lt;/i&gt;. As a committed &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/03/favorite-critic-series-camille-paglia.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Paglian&lt;/a&gt;, I am a huge fan! Here&#39;s a Deadly Women round-up, including a&amp;nbsp; piece I meant to publish earlier but accidentally deleted. Patiently transcribed from an old preview screenshot, you&#39;re welcome! Kat has kind of made me realize my &#39;amok chthonic&#39; feminism hinges on my finding the badass femme attractive, so apologies if I slant that way. Know too for me it&#39;s also largely in the performance. Are they going for broke, pushing the envelope past the point of cutesy or posey? I mean are they possessed of the maenad gnashing frenzy wildness at the core of the fully sexually voracious, Meyeresque, goddess? If so, argh, I be for ye.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXCTI38793_vtwZEABEn36ETqQZEQ9YE0p4jvR0Y9vLyKl10jdDk_m2DkwVNFWHOszi6xsDmWO7r5-5mQhDZ67nCfjpGXxFnwYeF29IMr8N_hN28k7lOjoqf60RlorQA3ANWtfL2CoJM-T3-fJtX0BwNE4_zmpFkIzeyjQv8xoU5J614n8g/s1140/lyney.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;623&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1140&quot; height=&quot;350&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXCTI38793_vtwZEABEn36ETqQZEQ9YE0p4jvR0Y9vLyKl10jdDk_m2DkwVNFWHOszi6xsDmWO7r5-5mQhDZ67nCfjpGXxFnwYeF29IMr8N_hN28k7lOjoqf60RlorQA3ANWtfL2CoJM-T3-fJtX0BwNE4_zmpFkIzeyjQv8xoU5J614n8g/w640-h350/lyney.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Caroly Lynley as Diana Granger in&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;ONCE YOU KISS A STRANGER&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1969) Dir. Robert Spahr&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether harpooning little girls&#39; beach balls, kissing fat mental patients while grinding her heel into their toes, or seducing and then&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Strangers on a Train-&lt;/i&gt;ing some dissolute golf pro after he loses a match and goes off the drunken midlife crisis deep end, Carol Linley &lt;i&gt;owns &lt;/i&gt;every moment she&#39;s onscreen in &lt;i&gt;Once You Kiss a Stranger &lt;/i&gt;(1969). She even one-ups (if such a thing is possible) Robert Walker&#39;s Bruno in Hitchcock&#39;s original &lt;i&gt;Strangers on a Train&lt;/i&gt;, a film &lt;i&gt;Stranger &lt;/i&gt;makes no bones about imitating ( Linley&#39;s character is named Diana Granger, last name of the star,&lt;i&gt; Train-&lt;/i&gt;stranger Farley, whose memoir&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Include Me Out &lt;/i&gt;saved my life once) by virtue of being one of the homicidal minxes so beloved by this blog. What middle-aged, still-handsome, slightly drunken-relapsed golf pro (regularly kept from the top prize fee by a better/douchier golf pro on the same tour) played by TV mainstay Paul Burke, lonesome, awash in self-pity, and semi-suicidal, could resist?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;float: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRkC6d8SZOUO2eO5EPEgg0M3UO1rw-f7BIZLnB11ppxi_Y9Rem_5azOuDZ_nKecLuymnZGFelR-deoi5jffmwg-JipRWTSu4BHJtYMTt7XRKaRGF9rUKcmoehssp5_iR9vpyXwQc8Q_rPcJwN7Sf9fTulQtKoBooyx7qbliGO_b5LExgg43A/s1099/sometimes%20there&#39;s%20a%20buggy.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;562&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1099&quot; height=&quot;205&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRkC6d8SZOUO2eO5EPEgg0M3UO1rw-f7BIZLnB11ppxi_Y9Rem_5azOuDZ_nKecLuymnZGFelR-deoi5jffmwg-JipRWTSu4BHJtYMTt7XRKaRGF9rUKcmoehssp5_iR9vpyXwQc8Q_rPcJwN7Sf9fTulQtKoBooyx7qbliGO_b5LExgg43A/w400-h205/sometimes%20there&#39;s%20a%20buggy.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small;&quot;&gt;Sometimes there&#39;s a buggy&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;Bearing all the hallmarks of being not-quite-a-TV-movie nor a big screen feature but something lost between (like, say, Aldrich&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Killers &lt;/i&gt;remake), &lt;i&gt;Once You Kiss a Stranger &lt;/i&gt;doesn&#39;t really work as a thriller. The pacing is off and it&#39;s way too quick to tip its hand. But boy howdy does Linley have a field day. She doesn&#39;t ham it up or overplay, just enjoys her character&#39;s toothy malice in a way that&#39;s most infectious. She&#39;s a lot like Carmen Sternwood in &lt;i&gt;The Big Sleep, &lt;/i&gt;whose own father admits she&#39;s &quot;still a little girl who likes to pull the wings off flies.&quot; If you know that film as well as I do, then you know in the code-enforced ending, Bogies says &quot;we&#39;ll have to send Carmen away... from a lot of things. Maybe she can be cured, it&#39;s been done before.&quot; Dude, that&#39;s not what happens in the book! But you can almost look at this movie as&lt;i&gt; The Big Sleep 2: Carmen Returns, &lt;/i&gt;if--after she&#39;s sent away from those things--she&#39;s presumably cured and released and then set up with her own Malibu beachside bungalow by her trust fund.&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And if she&#39;s still expected to report in to her shrink every week to avoid going back to the funny farm, and if she was secretly still homicidal, manipulative nutcase, only now endowed with more Patricia Highsmith cunning and less Raymond Chandler laudanum-fueled impulsiveness, well you would have Diana Granger. And what a lucky soon-to-be-framed man you&#39;d be!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcP9wWIzmp9KQQM5X4XA6huwSZa-Y-FMKx-01uaAkiwPO5F_8NE1l35AOzKQ9iwIVOf4S2ltOjAqbrLGQB4pzqeobi0lRnsWi6ODANRSAPl6Vwcb2k63w5iBHBdxJRTUxH5sS2LZZE0r2E8Oiu4x4pnjiMWFekh-2wVQ9OA1ZvZuYaoWSZhw/s1587/sometimes%20a%20buggy%202.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;902&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1587&quot; height=&quot;182&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcP9wWIzmp9KQQM5X4XA6huwSZa-Y-FMKx-01uaAkiwPO5F_8NE1l35AOzKQ9iwIVOf4S2ltOjAqbrLGQB4pzqeobi0lRnsWi6ODANRSAPl6Vwcb2k63w5iBHBdxJRTUxH5sS2LZZE0r2E8Oiu4x4pnjiMWFekh-2wVQ9OA1ZvZuYaoWSZhw/s320/sometimes%20a%20buggy%202.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;We can&#39;t all be like Phillip Marlowe and instinctively know not to have anything to do with such a hot mess. In the right midlife crisis frame of mind (&lt;i&gt;glug-glug&lt;/i&gt;), any man can lapse into something he&#39;ll almost instantly regret. Sexual allure, an open invitation, and a moment&#39;s weakness have combined to topple presidents, kings, queens, despots evangelists and even TV stars, so why not a highball-sodden pro-golfer moping through a midlife crisis? Why not, indeed, Paul. All your better judgment is hereby suspended!&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But though Diana is wild and able, and everything seems ducky for some sexy hijinx, &lt;i&gt;Once You Kiss... &lt;/i&gt;is. not unlike their hook-up itself, wondrously staged (the real thrill of these kinds of &lt;i&gt;Fatal Attraction/Misty-for-Me&lt;/i&gt;-type pics is the first third, but just as Diana&#39;s scheme falls apart as it unravels in the story, so too does the film fall apart since the writers don&#39;t know how to parcel out information to keep us guessing and worried over Paul&#39;s now shaky fate. Both Lynley&#39;s parents already know she&#39;s insane (vs. Bruno&#39;s in-denial parents), and she has already been committed once before, which kind of weakens her testimony. The fact that the guy &lt;i&gt;she &lt;/i&gt;wants dead is her shrink (the ever-sane White Bissell). There&#39;s no reason to think some random golf pro, breezing through town, clean record, is going to want to kill some random shrink, as opposed to the shrink&#39;s psycho gamin patient who she knows was about to re-commit her. It&#39;s already basically a no-brainer who the cops will believe once you sober up long enough to tell them, Paul. What&#39;s worse, Diana even undoes the solid fake evidence she created from tape recording their manipulating the tape him into agreeing the criss-cross, by manipulating and splicing the tape to the point of obsessiveness, making it all too easy for the cops to discern. All this hastens to lessen the suspense as Diana basically becomes her own worst enemy before anyone else even gets a crack at it, destroying her chance at the sort of spooky credibility Robert Walker&#39;s Bruno kept almost to the bitter end. That&#39;s likely because his in-denial artsy mom and ever-disappointed tycoon dad would rather think their son is just a loafer or a delightful eccentric rather than admit to societal taboo of congenital insanity (i.e. he hasn&#39;t been violent enough in the past to be committed).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;But all that&#39;s quibbling. And why do that? There&#39;s Jimmy Faggis&#39; super cool jazzy scoring throughout-- nothing too fancy but nothing you wouldn&#39;t enjoy snapping your fingers to and feeling like a kind of post-beatnik jazzbo. And like all the best films of this period, there&#39;s a catfight between too crazy blondes armed with spearguns and a dune buggy chase along the day-for-night beach. Nothing quite tops the sight of Linley, in her cute minidress, lifting herself out from under a flipped-over dune buggy in the surf, all slow, sultry, and Venus-from-the-clamshell-like. Though you might think she&#39;s just playing a male fantasy coquette, Lynley makes the most of every gesture, the groovy bass-front-and-center jazz score races along like a down and dirty wind under her mean girl sails and she just takes off. There&#39;s no big set piece like Hitchcock&#39;s amok merry go-round, but the film makes up for that in sheer brevity. And at the end the symbolic beach ball is patched; the child neighbor looks slightly older, and, just like Guy in &lt;i&gt;Strangers on a Train&lt;/i&gt;, Paul really does luck out, perhaps proving once and for all that straying with murderous coquettes can prove immensely profitable: at the end he gets his wife back, has a sexy memory that doubles as aversion therapy for future straying, and is destined for top prizes as his only tournament circuit competition has been left literally dead in a sand trap.&amp;nbsp;Fore!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;---&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9jZgFHCToBGwvmpXQmU8s7K3O5PaTUyI-6dnxj4ldqWcuDnWxaF0IjP0zjCjiyG-mb_rY0GgdPgPv2KmffkIFgPzg8KHfiNt9G1DG8qpTMRuqQTz1Zv1K5IYNvVfesXFRJWhZoTtW6Yt5GY44lHGjwPYjmV8GEoIug1g5mV2YB-pCJsfQA/s640/68%20Kill.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;285&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;179&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9jZgFHCToBGwvmpXQmU8s7K3O5PaTUyI-6dnxj4ldqWcuDnWxaF0IjP0zjCjiyG-mb_rY0GgdPgPv2KmffkIFgPzg8KHfiNt9G1DG8qpTMRuqQTz1Zv1K5IYNvVfesXFRJWhZoTtW6Yt5GY44lHGjwPYjmV8GEoIug1g5mV2YB-pCJsfQA/w400-h179/68%20Kill.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/square-in-maenads-68-kill.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Square in the Maenads: 68 KILL! (2018)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&quot;I can&#39;t say more, for to spoil even one twist or turn on this wild ride is to lessen its blunt force impact. Suffice it to say, for we fans of strong assertive women (those who score along the Hawks-Meyer GF spectrum rather than the &#39;strong-willed mother-type&#39; Ford-Spielberg curve), this bonanza of badassery is--especially in the time of plunging markets and collapsing governments--something we desperately need. Why wait for a normal woman to be brutalized before turning savage? That, to me, is sexist, inferring a woman needs a man&#39;s cruelty to light her inner bomb&#39;s fuse.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/square-in-maenads-68-kill.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;more&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0bhhP3FzoDryMD8XhcEZwwqrd2GTDj8q-bcnzkQstlldCnJuCROHuj98jRYwGDNsohoKaSzyMNmOEUDCpt9EFcx28kIten1ib59_WubKzSZ7n3CmyLxfy-a32Lg67KKrr_lZ/s500/Lynn-Lowry-16_zps004c7476.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;280&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;179&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0bhhP3FzoDryMD8XhcEZwwqrd2GTDj8q-bcnzkQstlldCnJuCROHuj98jRYwGDNsohoKaSzyMNmOEUDCpt9EFcx28kIten1ib59_WubKzSZ7n3CmyLxfy-a32Lg67KKrr_lZ/s320/Lynn-Lowry-16_zps004c7476.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/08/angels-of-groovy-death-iv-lynn-lowry.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Angels of Groovy Death: Lynn Lowry Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;The Partridge Family&lt;/i&gt; vs. &lt;i&gt;Brady Bunch&lt;/i&gt; dichotomy provided parameters for our collective 70s pre-sexual psyche, and maybe that&#39;s partially the idea a Susan Dey archetype untethered from her prim bitch overprotective mom and ginger brother, running away with a Satan-worshipping boyfriend and winding up rabid (ala 1970&#39;s&lt;i&gt; I Drink Your Blood -&lt;/i&gt;-her first movie role) or foaming at the mouth thanks to some new STD (&lt;i&gt;Shivers&lt;/i&gt;), chem warfare agent &lt;i&gt;(The Crazies&lt;/i&gt;)--or just really speedy acid--rang so many popular unconscious gongs. The times demanded a girl who could slice off a woman&#39;s hand with an electric carving knife and come off as an innocent, a free spirit, cranked to eleven, a girl so pure the needle spins all the way around to the other extreme- batshit homicidal, with no stops in between. And no hysteria or hamming. If you&#39;ve ever known and partied with the type then you know how rare and intoxicating they are, the sweet sudden shock of dread when what was once a feeling of smitten love and devotion to her sweet beauty becomes sickening blood-chilled dread, the realization you were so far on cloud 9 you made the mistake of letting her get between you and the exit.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/08/angels-of-groovy-death-iv-lynn-lowry.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCS-4vch2gBuKNdOvn0MO_W7nyI7LompbrlGTlK10k88NTcdqlYVsgF7Erya-SYsZQhBnqHOko0WhBYBZAl5_IbKkd7N4DVdW1AbN66jloELShaLMVbyqpY19JtTR8yZxeLqgNi7CzV2jDQJYbfAP8EDBv_n4domZdL4-WP_nuUPgiA44TCQ&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;311&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCS-4vch2gBuKNdOvn0MO_W7nyI7LompbrlGTlK10k88NTcdqlYVsgF7Erya-SYsZQhBnqHOko0WhBYBZAl5_IbKkd7N4DVdW1AbN66jloELShaLMVbyqpY19JtTR8yZxeLqgNi7CzV2jDQJYbfAP8EDBv_n4domZdL4-WP_nuUPgiA44TCQ&quot; width=&quot;309&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/12/camille-paglia-defends-charlies-angels.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Camille Paglia Defends Charlies Angels (the original series)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2015/12/camille-paglia-defends-charlies-angels.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;+ my episode-by-episode guide to the first three seasons&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEird8a29fIHrS5MyOcFct8W44IJuensvauXFM6oq-GZc0CucGE5hh2w-8ytiunPN0bf5NZzelYEm5L6W78AWfdNuk6-VNaEvtIVNf6rysQdWoDcr0BY3IK7W9NrL0U31MMLKZVurPVPbowimCSC7LojEcw1QaOZf1VY5Du5lq39gAuEwRdKbA&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEird8a29fIHrS5MyOcFct8W44IJuensvauXFM6oq-GZc0CucGE5hh2w-8ytiunPN0bf5NZzelYEm5L6W78AWfdNuk6-VNaEvtIVNf6rysQdWoDcr0BY3IK7W9NrL0U31MMLKZVurPVPbowimCSC7LojEcw1QaOZf1VY5Du5lq39gAuEwRdKbA&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh7lr2RYaCTKBJZomKC6wUAWmZBlawgbVfiTALjalFUzUoP51AgG3xTpe20HDyn0bz2WWdUOI1K9-yCCNTu_naCrhz3-5Ne1wCImE6y06i4jKrM-vicSV-JwgoYEF4OwteQSSSEGxu2rSwTEm7lwjMRSJbPm40Ii7vD3v_CQTllL_ifmyhB2g&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;320&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh7lr2RYaCTKBJZomKC6wUAWmZBlawgbVfiTALjalFUzUoP51AgG3xTpe20HDyn0bz2WWdUOI1K9-yCCNTu_naCrhz3-5Ne1wCImE6y06i4jKrM-vicSV-JwgoYEF4OwteQSSSEGxu2rSwTEm7lwjMRSJbPm40Ii7vD3v_CQTllL_ifmyhB2g=w400-h200&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2017/11/angels-of-death-v-girl-mummies.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2017/11/angels-of-death-v-girl-mummies.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Girl Mummies: (the many adaptations of Bram Stoker&#39;s &quot;Jewel of the Seven Stars&quot;&#39;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&quot;If you look gamely into the rubble of collective abuse heaped on this year&#39;s MUMMY a true fan may find a true treasure in the form of lithe Algerian dancer/actress Sofia Boutella. As the warrior priestess assassin Ahmanet, Boutella (in the prologue) kills the pharaoh&#39;s baby or some lovely thing and is mummified alive in an unmarked tomb. Naturally she astral travels, tracing the seams in the fabric of time and space, riding the centuries like a surfboard until she&#39;s found just the right sky cult-brainwashed, Illuminati orgy-crashing, aging A-list actor to exhume her and see her safely ferried across the channel to jolly England. Damn right I&#39;m talkin&#39; bout you, Tom! &quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #280202; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, &amp;quot;Palatino Linotype&amp;quot;, Palatino, serif; font-size: 14px;&quot;&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2017/11/angels-of-death-v-girl-mummies.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_-cCiICTulnQzbIwG-tnvbgpfYnRPOPAbazcaq9Hu97hPUxvJIT-dKN0qsw-BgnJxhawGrDQAnLxZqb4DvKIbYu7_QYmMOQEukyDXAhZTWbXbJhHMSZHIVDPVjpo09SM6AQCCyeLIpvtGTBRhSMN3qOvv-2-Ao7PQDXNi3LnJdDMVoaKLaw&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;344&quot; data-original-width=&quot;500&quot; height=&quot;275&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_-cCiICTulnQzbIwG-tnvbgpfYnRPOPAbazcaq9Hu97hPUxvJIT-dKN0qsw-BgnJxhawGrDQAnLxZqb4DvKIbYu7_QYmMOQEukyDXAhZTWbXbJhHMSZHIVDPVjpo09SM6AQCCyeLIpvtGTBRhSMN3qOvv-2-Ao7PQDXNi3LnJdDMVoaKLaw=w400-h275&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/08/angels-of-death-special-edition-vi.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;The Danger in Emptiness; &lt;b&gt;FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL!&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&quot;The film&#39;s been compared to &lt;i&gt;Texas Chainsaw Massacre, &lt;/i&gt;and indeed there&#39;s a kind of bent similarity but Texas&#39; qua-feminist throttle isn&#39;t all the way open the way it is with Faster. The buzzing you hear isn&#39;t Leatherface&#39;s chainsaw threatening Marilyn Burns but Varla&#39;s wheels crushing &#39;the Vegetable&#39;. They&#39;ll have to send him away &quot;from a lot of things&quot; and we imagine suddenly that Carmen Sternwood would be a great candidate for this gang, to take Billie&#39;s place after she dies, as would Claudia Jennings from &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/jennings-ballin-jack-truck-stop-women.html&quot;&gt;Truck Stop Women&lt;/a&gt; (1974). Well, we can&#39;t have everything, unless we want to make a movie ourselves.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hmmm I&#39;m not trying to put any ideas into anyone&#39;s heads, but it seems to me a badass girl gang crashing a lot of different genres would be just the thing. A lot of folks have tried and they end up being the usual overwrought nonsense with one too many well-scrubbed thugs locking overly siliconed strippers in trunks, in between lugging bags of cash in and out of hotel lobbies, shots of sunglassed douchebags smirking into rearview mirrors, abusive backstory, flashy meaningless over-editing (you know the ones I&#39;m talking about - no names) and female violence done with &quot;this hurts me more than it does you&quot; anguish in their eyes rather than sadistic relish.&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/08/angels-of-death-special-edition-vi.html&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;more&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVjbkFYdkH5A51qVyL5y5zHc1ILkik0BFf2BFv2fGVFxC0UV8CgEKYmqTtUrKqhBFnUkMdXZN9kk8MJIwhrR92SYNebAF4I1INOvyLH-jWJJquQ8q9xpc1kH0QzEUyB9DHGazruOatCXZonY3tTVoXaH0PAzCW-R8TlXG31E1djseoeWAvFg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;270&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVjbkFYdkH5A51qVyL5y5zHc1ILkik0BFf2BFv2fGVFxC0UV8CgEKYmqTtUrKqhBFnUkMdXZN9kk8MJIwhrR92SYNebAF4I1INOvyLH-jWJJquQ8q9xpc1kH0QzEUyB9DHGazruOatCXZonY3tTVoXaH0PAzCW-R8TlXG31E1djseoeWAvFg=w640-h270&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Terry Liu as Princess Dragon Mom&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-favorite-angels-of-death-vol.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;INFRA-MAN (&lt;/b&gt;1975)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-favorite-angels-of-death-vol.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(from Angels of Death VIII: The Good, Bad &amp;amp; Beyond)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All hail Princess Dragon Mom! Arggggh! Grrr! A shape-shifting, whip-snapping, go-go boots wearing master of monsterdom! A Shaw Brothers version of Japanese Kaiju kids movie, INFRA-MAN is wisely wrought with a vicious villainess or two (Many of the Shaw Brothers&#39; films are remarkably feminist - with badass females on both sides and in the middle of their sagas). Dragon Mom is so cool all other evil supervillains of kaiju movies pale in comparison. Sending out her spies, monsters and hypnotized sleeper agents over to Infra-Man HQ to steal away their big scientific genius for her own nefarious ends, Liu projects real menace, and a refreshingly direct approach to her evil deeds. At the same time you can see her chasing some Buggle around a Sid and Marty Kroft- style evil lair one minute, chaining Batman to a water heater after stunning him with poison lipstick the next, then blowing /herself up to Godzilla-size and becoming a dragon to level Hong Kong after that. She&#39;s versatile! And her monster minions are great too, all of them in a row, waving their appendages around in great paroxysms of relish in their own evil while she issues orders from her grand psychedelic throne.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;And when it&#39;s time for her to fight, she just turns into a flying monster to make it less awkward for our gallant hero to kick her, which is good because by then he&#39;s starting to sag along his sponge foam shoulder padding so it&#39;s time to call it a day. If she wasn&#39;t enough, Dragon Mom has compatriot hot female with a dinosaur skull helmet and big eyes painted on her hands that shoot lasers. &lt;i&gt;Sigh&lt;/i&gt;, If we had DVDs in the 70s growing up, I would have watched this every single day after school and love it more than &lt;i&gt;Ultra-Man,&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot,&lt;/i&gt; and&lt;i&gt; Space Giants c&lt;/i&gt;ombined, and I&#39;d be having all sorts of &#39;phallic stage&#39; sadomasochistic daydreams over Princess Dragon Mom and her snake-like whip arm. All I can do now that I&#39;m all old, discovering this in vivid color on Amazon Prime, is wistfully hit &#39;play from beginning&#39; one more time (I watch it at least three times a year). Either way, sharp, abrasive voice or no, Dragon Mom rawks.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/09/acidemics-favorite-angels-of-death-vol.html&quot;&gt;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDkq9w7Rin4eK9-_C_dkWHaNZ2gmtMmJt9S4C_TPKXV8k5JgNc7AGKPsLVpXL71wXnleksy-5WRh71nw8mp132BlGTjI1sFFz3YQQtyIJeJRIrL4I7Z32naxwajJWgbatz1pZ9A0JkLtleRmHSweMsB5jy3G0UxQcVJlosAnqt0NzRCyF25Q&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;523&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;327&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDkq9w7Rin4eK9-_C_dkWHaNZ2gmtMmJt9S4C_TPKXV8k5JgNc7AGKPsLVpXL71wXnleksy-5WRh71nw8mp132BlGTjI1sFFz3YQQtyIJeJRIrL4I7Z32naxwajJWgbatz1pZ9A0JkLtleRmHSweMsB5jy3G0UxQcVJlosAnqt0NzRCyF25Q=w400-h327&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/03/argh-matey-witch-who-came-from-sea-1976.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;ARGH, Matey!: &lt;b&gt;THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA&lt;/b&gt; (1976)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&quot;Millie Perkins stars as Molly &quot;The Mermaid,&quot; a single barmaid at a seaside dive on the beach of Santa Monica, &quot;The Boathouse,&quot; owned and operated by the pleasantly grizzled Long John (Lonny Chapman). She&#39;s not just great babysitter to her two adoring nephews, beloved of clientele and employees, but she has the ability to &#39;get&#39; good-looking men as if fishing them out of the television. Aside from headaches as her brain struggles to keep the lid on her buried incest childhood by cloaking it in all sorts of nautical imagery and oceanic sound effects, she&#39;s perfect. Maybe she&#39;s mad as a hatter, and has a weird thing for good-looking men on TV, as if they can see her from the screen, and are propositioning her. Maybe she keeps talking about her lost-at-sea captain father as some kind of omnipotent hero despite her more grounded sister who assures her kids he was a monster. But she&#39;s not &#39;victim&#39; crazy, not a cringing trauma victim or a twitchy mess. She&#39;s crazy in a way that encompass sanity within itself. When a bubbly blonde actress (Roberta Collins) at the bar bemoans not being liberated, which is now a requirement for TV she glances over at Molly in her patchwork denim and declares she could be in commercials: &quot;You look liberated.&quot; The older barmaid Doris (Peggy Furey) adds that &quot;Molly is a saint, a goddamned American saint.&quot; Later when her nervous welfare-collecting sister Cathy (Vanessa Brown) shows up to try and convince them of the truth, &quot;you think she&#39;s just about perfect,&quot; she says to Long John. &quot;Yeah,&quot; he snaps back, &quot;why not?&quot;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/03/argh-matey-witch-who-came-from-sea-1976.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRe-OmuyDKLd28MuqN1AGU2uQMQRX-d3cpDxgLdMVDIvAfarHufkQcqbAsbxmTOeWPAuQU1Z005onUMFcixX2PE4jAUFPYZcwZZULv45xBR_teNiBSPb0CX9aHkeCrrd9uISyGpgkg7Ftjc1yb4ubgibHlL1Ho-cFOTiitiBTqZWmfE0B26Q&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;214&quot; data-original-width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;214&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgRe-OmuyDKLd28MuqN1AGU2uQMQRX-d3cpDxgLdMVDIvAfarHufkQcqbAsbxmTOeWPAuQU1Z005onUMFcixX2PE4jAUFPYZcwZZULv45xBR_teNiBSPb0CX9aHkeCrrd9uISyGpgkg7Ftjc1yb4ubgibHlL1Ho-cFOTiitiBTqZWmfE0B26Q=w400-h214&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/06/queen-of-daze-pj-soles-in-rock-and-roll.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Columbine Queen:&lt;b&gt; ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL &lt;/b&gt;(1976)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&quot;Unafraid to be infectiously goofball rather than dully sexy, Soles, who so often played the best friend whose goofy, strident, horniness made ber blond danger (such as in HALLOWEEN)--lets fly as Riff. Her little lithe body bouncing around covered in the bright shiny colors that had not yet come to signify the encroaching 1980s, is sexy in its utter lack of sexuality. Her tendency to make funny faces, bug her eyes out, tighten and purse her already thin lips all help to keep her vivid as real-life teenager rather than jail-bait. Never adding more smarts than a normal teen would have, and twice as much heedless momentum, she&#39;s a tangle of sincerity, giggles, self-satire and genuine ferocity. I&#39;d be scared to date her. But I&#39;d want to be at parties she was at. That&#39;s the kind of girl every high school needs. And her kind would not come again.&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/06/queen-of-daze-pj-soles-in-rock-and-roll.html&quot;&gt;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0PUlQpfh_27kug7rOO5B7dgL2TMlG-HndB34diV_SxG5fflL_lstU99BSmx-3hTRuCH5UQJsP6iYvVJK2DSxc_dCLgF9LbvOO1LMjXxVvgRKM8k_riFo8XR_FhXmTMOivhHl71v2OPA42jDoPl-ERgPZO1l3lZpuGYni8UjjL9c--NoPzlw&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;343&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;215&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0PUlQpfh_27kug7rOO5B7dgL2TMlG-HndB34diV_SxG5fflL_lstU99BSmx-3hTRuCH5UQJsP6iYvVJK2DSxc_dCLgF9LbvOO1LMjXxVvgRKM8k_riFo8XR_FhXmTMOivhHl71v2OPA42jDoPl-ERgPZO1l3lZpuGYni8UjjL9c--NoPzlw=w400-h215&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot;&gt;Hey Betty Blue, Come Blow Your Mind!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Dalle doesn&#39;t need a reason to kill or castrate- you don&#39;t gotta be a rapist or nothing-- it just comes naturally. Thus her crazy sexual frenzy in TROUBLE EVERY DAY is truly terrifying and sexy at the same time; she puts the softcore sleaze of BASIC INSTINCT&#39;s ice pick murders to shame. The guy she eviscerates in TROUBLE isn&#39;t even that bad of a guy, just broke into the wrong house and didn&#39;t run when he had the chance, not unlike the poor string of sods falling victim to doe-eyed Marilyn Chambers in RABID.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2011/03/hey-betty-blue-come-blow-your-mind-or.html&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-2-RBU8SjneRYbWvA0ebPqOcMgCAmZVd0YMsj_K55Ru6d07zaxoWr6T69nULklH_d-kCNymbSJKnO3AKE10LcguX1CoK5qqravREcqzkThEJrLGVut1PRI8XGrvtdDpgxWvCN8_4kR9_ChXq1LQoJijVVM1jlWrmKbTYSfzdxkiz2qDzkWw&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;248&quot; data-original-width=&quot;640&quot; height=&quot;155&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-2-RBU8SjneRYbWvA0ebPqOcMgCAmZVd0YMsj_K55Ru6d07zaxoWr6T69nULklH_d-kCNymbSJKnO3AKE10LcguX1CoK5qqravREcqzkThEJrLGVut1PRI8XGrvtdDpgxWvCN8_4kR9_ChXq1LQoJijVVM1jlWrmKbTYSfzdxkiz2qDzkWw=w400-h155&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/jennings-ballin-jack-truck-stop-women.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Ballin&#39; the Jacks: &lt;b&gt;TRUCK STOP WOMEN&lt;/b&gt; (1974)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&quot;What really sells it all though is the aliveness of Jennings, so good as the restless morally bankrupt Rose it makes it all the sadder to realize she&#39;d be dead in just five years --victim in an accident off the Pacific Coast Highway (at age 30). Here she finds a good match in John Martino as the mafia-dispatched goodfella &quot;Smith&quot; for whom she serves as combination hostage, conspirator, and lover. He should be recognizable as one of Clemenza&#39;s button men in the first &lt;i&gt;Godfather.&lt;/i&gt; Here he brings far more wit and character than you&#39;d expect, even earning our sympathy on occasion. Best of all, he has some great chemistry with Jennings. The pair know just how to play a kind of villainous love scene, making it always just a little ambiguous whether they&#39;re really falling in love or just playing each other for a shot at all the marbles. There&#39;s a magical scene in their motel room together in the morning after some indefinite period of late night boozy conjugal bliss: they&#39;re getting leisurely dressed and drinking tumblers of breakfast whiskey on the rocks, and we realize maybe there is no difference between acting smitten for a (criminal) purpose and being smitten for real with a criminal. Either way, we want their love or whatever to survive, despite all our best judgment.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2018/02/jennings-ballin-jack-truck-stop-women.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;(more)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/5914984371218126825/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/carol-lynley-in-once-you-kiss-stranger.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/5914984371218126825'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/5914984371218126825'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/12/carol-lynley-in-once-you-kiss-stranger.html' title='ONCE YOU KISS A STRANGER (1969) + Selections for Acidemic&#39;s Chthonic Lady Series'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8QFaVeUqzBhWQ-zDcdBIvv-N-e7f-jxXt08iiSnypCIcNXqbX7nVSqx-pG6K47EU9pezbRhczJ6hqPbqUOUYekelM5UjoCMCEPdcNy68laV91oMdE805paIHvwG0hBTI_s8P_Mn4JDhEgfs9LRp36ag9bVNAHntE_MwY5AzWO-IYuL8e6_A/s72-w640-h360-c/carol%20lynley.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-3549962954379613583</id><published>2022-11-06T16:12:00.017-05:00</published><updated>2023-08-09T14:14:05.002-05:00</updated><title type='text'>CozZilla! - 10 Reasons Luigi Cozzi&#39;s 1977 GODZILLA Remix</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0gdd8gjXLSVel5LbL1pOsdLnqZPweO_wLs-obWARegeTJoe2XCBke_vdHSbLDVoUcI6I0BfbWj6RpAGjtGFe2ThVtg2T-YlH4IOok_Y8BDurMgdmdFwhly9oUGIeG_CeRY9dSnPLjZD9JBLldAltAe0iCpKFH4gCQ0HcHSh5BQy2HTu8Rw/s1481/cozizlla.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;923&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1481&quot; height=&quot;398&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0gdd8gjXLSVel5LbL1pOsdLnqZPweO_wLs-obWARegeTJoe2XCBke_vdHSbLDVoUcI6I0BfbWj6RpAGjtGFe2ThVtg2T-YlH4IOok_Y8BDurMgdmdFwhly9oUGIeG_CeRY9dSnPLjZD9JBLldAltAe0iCpKFH4gCQ0HcHSh5BQy2HTu8Rw/w640-h398/cozizlla.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In honor of Godzilla&#39;s 68th birthday (Nov 3) here&#39;s my praise and love of my favorite version of that original classic. It&#39;s a truly one-of-a-kind--colorized, bastardized, anti-pasteurized, lionized and ionized--remix from 1977 by Italian cult luminary&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/happy-birthday-luigi-cozzi-hercules.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Luigi Cozzi.&lt;/a&gt; Impossible to find anywhere these days but on a YouTube or Internet Archive stream culled from a VHS dupe, its sound and image warped by the ravages of time, you&#39;d think it something to be ignored and forgotten except as a strange footnote in the Godzilla Wiki. But no! Even mangled and re-duped, dubbed, and dumped for dead, COZZILLA still flows like a psychedelic special report from your coziest monster kid nightmare.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just to give you the meta-meta origin- alpha &amp;amp; Omega: There is a Japanese original monster film (inspired by &lt;i&gt;Beast from 20,000 Fathoms&lt;/i&gt; and, of course, their nation&#39;s tragically atomic history). This version is very cool yet somber and kind of a bummer; then &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;version is imported to the US where it&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&quot;Americanized&quot; as we&#39;re xenophobic and also hate to read subtitles--with the critiques of Hiroshima edited out and a plethora of footage of Raymond Burr added. He stands alone or with one other actor or two, reacting and interpreting/narrating the film proper so we don&#39;t get too alienated. We almost never hear any Japanese actor speak unless it&#39;s to him, hence in English.&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;That &lt;/i&gt;is the version most Americans had seen, that and only that version, until around 2005 or 2006 when the original Japanese version made the rounds of the art houses (I saw it at the ------), Cozzilla is the Italian remix of the American remix, transferred onto VHS transferred onto YouTube. The end result packs a whole cubist wealth of post-modern goodness, all while kicking ass, entertaining like hell, and kind of lulling you into a trance, espcially if you&#39;ve seen the original (either version) more than a few times as a kid.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strangely, when Cozzi got the rights to do his &lt;i&gt;Godzilla&lt;/i&gt; redux in 1977, the Japanese gave him the the Burr&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;version. Burr and the rest of the cast were dubbed into Italian, and Cozzi put his own Hiroshima / Anti-American subtexts back in, with a vengeance. The sound was remixed, with a partially new score, and the end result was drenched it in strange psychedelic color, and shuffled in artsy Hiroshima stock footage, especially in the opening, which begins with stylized high-contrast, color-drenched, slow-mo stock footage of everyday Japanese life promptly obliterated by the A-bomb, followed by long pans over the wreckage, and--cleverly--footage of a bomb-blasted Berlin (if I know my WW2 documentaries, and I do) all set to a wild ominous, irresistible contemporary electronic score.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Its new colors are not &#39;colorizing&#39; as you and I understand it today, but colorizing branches far and wide, adding extra strange patina to the strange images, merging perfectly with the tracking problems and other image issues that &#39;plague&#39; the streaming version. With the already weird soundtrack wobbling and wavering, accompanied often by the sound of a whirring projector and near constantly blowing wind, and you have a kind of found object accidental Brechtian re-paradise for late-night dozers and dosers.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&#39;s four layers of meta and three different directors, with credits to match. They begin with Ishiro Honda, then Terry O. Morse (director of the American version), then Luigi Cozzi. The combination of the three, like some 30 story exquisite corpse, results in the best, the ultimate, the only version that feels truly &#39;complete.&#39; Not only profound, but moving and elegaic without wallowing in late-inning histrionics like we get in Honda&#39;s version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span face=&quot;&amp;quot;Open Sans&amp;quot;, sans-serif&quot; style=&quot;background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.95); color: #36312d; font-size: 15px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dQzMnGE4W-HIrpON3Zzh1BDz77FVlqEM_T50fRoYa23jZwywm6htgoGgFuNlvljwJtlcXR-L8lvSuBmfzN4RkH0aXTvYD8SOHNZ9nD6WB_MdBxq1mo8zqljRdAZ8c6I4yj0jsofZC6t5MxxDf0jrjgQbaelHyJnTVRoQWt3PJbzRAbEaHw/s1494/Cozilla.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;911&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1494&quot; height=&quot;244&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dQzMnGE4W-HIrpON3Zzh1BDz77FVlqEM_T50fRoYa23jZwywm6htgoGgFuNlvljwJtlcXR-L8lvSuBmfzN4RkH0aXTvYD8SOHNZ9nD6WB_MdBxq1mo8zqljRdAZ8c6I4yj0jsofZC6t5MxxDf0jrjgQbaelHyJnTVRoQWt3PJbzRAbEaHw/w400-h244/Cozilla.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Just to preface: I&#39;m a huge Luigi Cozzi fan (see my gushing appreciation of his other films &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/happy-birthday-luigi-cozzi-hercules.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). His imagination and love of the genre is so all-consuming it brings his work way past the boring and familiar things that hold up other directors, i.e. pacing, classical-style narrative, character arcs, romantic arcs, and heartfelt dialogue. Instead, Cozzi gives us everything great about Italian versions of America sci-fi movies, with an endearing primitivism that captures the essence of why we want to see a movie in the first place, especially one we want to watch over and over and never get bored, the way children never get bored of their favorite bedtime story - because myths never age, and are never fully known, never fully consumed.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of which is to preface this: my adoration of his 1977 &lt;i&gt;Godzilla&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;redux hinges on a developed love for his unique and endlessly rewarding sensibility, combined with not being a&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;huge &lt;/i&gt;fan of the Japanese version of the film &lt;i&gt;or &lt;/i&gt;the Raymond Burr-insert Americanized version. The whole endless fight to get that one-eyed scientist to use his oxygen destroyer is the kind of hyper-emotional Japanese romantic triangle soapiness that frightens a lot of Americans away with its tearful, prolonged, over-the-top histrionics. But the Burr footage drags too --inserting way too many shots of him watching events (if an American didn&#39;t see it, did it really happen?) and way too much narration. Cozzi goes for broke in the opposite direction, removing more footage from both version than they ever would, none of it, as it turns out, worth keeping, then padding the remix with footage of radiation burns, slow-mo PTSD, and-- realizing it&#39;s the most important element of the picture--expands the climactic monster scene outward, splicing in a full naval bombardment adding overkill to overkill, and letting everything else--the parts that make getting there a bore--go dissolving into the sea--keeping only the skeleton, which no mere convention can e&#39;er burn away.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would have loved to hear this in a theater wired for Sensurrround or whatever it was called in Italy (yo&lt;a href=&quot;https://bandsaboutmovies.com/2020/03/30/cozilla-1977/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;u can read up on its history here)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;, with Godzilla&#39;s thundering stomps (some of which appear only in the Cozzi version) making the floor shake. I know that will never happen, &lt;i&gt;but &lt;/i&gt;the meta refractions of its current only surviving &#39;print&#39; give Cozzi&#39;s flawless nutcase instincts just the sort of contexutalizing they needed, the final post-modern boost to make &lt;i&gt;Godzilla&lt;/i&gt; finally not only resonant, but a work of found art.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For best results watch at 4 AM in a Remeron and CBD trance after you&#39;ve tossed and turned in bed for a couple hours before finally giving up, getting up, moving to your big easy chair in the living room.... pouring some kind of a stiff one..... bombs away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFRiDF9xvs3NGAz4yneRiVJbUbTpTlMeJk2XeVIQ7JjjkeU7dd3jRAjnuc3TQerhcYnc9k7_kk7NmQu8pNw5J8lmrTjTXzsTRcLOyHPLrKwChBMOudil7nXJpCcRKzejh-cQF0GCCH8q8W1Eh2-Yc1VrMaOc0ZlGrBp2XhYk1Thhk9SskmA/s1400/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.06%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;917&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1400&quot; height=&quot;263&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFRiDF9xvs3NGAz4yneRiVJbUbTpTlMeJk2XeVIQ7JjjkeU7dd3jRAjnuc3TQerhcYnc9k7_kk7NmQu8pNw5J8lmrTjTXzsTRcLOyHPLrKwChBMOudil7nXJpCcRKzejh-cQF0GCCH8q8W1Eh2-Yc1VrMaOc0ZlGrBp2XhYk1Thhk9SskmA/w400-h263/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.06%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;10 REASONS COZZILLA&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1.&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;MUSIC&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For some reason Cozzi can get the very best composers and scores that rival the classics: John Barry does the score for&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;his&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/happy-birthday-luigi-cozzi-hercules.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; &lt;i&gt;Starcrash&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and gets Nino Rota for&lt;i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/09/happy-birthday-luigi-cozzi-hercules.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hercules.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;And here, he&#39;s got the amazig Fabio Frizzi and Franco Bixo (aka &#39;Magnetic System) to kick things off for the grand and disturbingly lovely Hiroshima opening, immediately launching viewers into a hypnotic trance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then Vince Tempera adds synths in there and under it all is a wise and perfect remix of the best parts of Akira Ifukbe&#39;s origial score (that incredible &#39;Elegy&#39; that only plays over the TV shots of the carnage towards the end, here comes at the beginning too and at the end of the carnage).&amp;nbsp; This haunting music adds just the right mix of comfort, tension and grandeur as we find Burr under the rubble. And when our man is on the stretcher, asking for water, trying to be heard over the din of suffering along the rows of other survivors, the music and color makes it strangely comforting. After being buried in rubble even a stretcher on the floor can be paradise, thirst or no. Ifukube gets that with his elegy, Tempera gets it, and most of all Cozzi gets it. If only Hollywood got it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxBSPAMNOACTdwc0Ja5dJ8zHwbOPMGf6IGFdsdgz6Z7U9OCkF4l-oshUwNaPPbhj8dXnkSTElAGsV6TuX2zxX3eMVieGUzzsEBXi2ddpLEm970qJfxerAxgrMn55qrVdLcF885y1meZEDJzdLFZDGOV40qmuxBAfw77mOYIhVHPcmfqyYVw/s1484/gozizi.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;821&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1484&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxBSPAMNOACTdwc0Ja5dJ8zHwbOPMGf6IGFdsdgz6Z7U9OCkF4l-oshUwNaPPbhj8dXnkSTElAGsV6TuX2zxX3eMVieGUzzsEBXi2ddpLEm970qJfxerAxgrMn55qrVdLcF885y1meZEDJzdLFZDGOV40qmuxBAfw77mOYIhVHPcmfqyYVw/w400-h221/gozizi.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. THE HIROSHIMA PROLOGUE&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You would think expanding the running time by throwing a reel of hand-colorized Hiroshima stock footage up front wouldn&#39;t work. It does. We get the before (daily life of the civilians), the explosion (pretty, from a distance), and the after (radiation burns, long tracking shots over the endless grid of rubble). And it&#39;s all drenched in weird colors and rendered occult and bizarre by the deliciously ominous Bixio and Frizzi synth music. Even the sky is given a poetic resonance, bleaching out when the sun or bomb get too bright. The result seems like the bomber has flown past the color swaths. When the bomb drops, it looks like a splash of white amidst a Rothko color field. As if draining the warmth and life from the city. When the new credits come up they are over a beautiful, hypnotic sped-up motion of gathering and roiling and dissipating cloud formations which, with the music and the sound of roaring wind, creates an undeniably hypnotic and almost pre-infantile state of rapture.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The combined effect is totally unique. It may be purely the result of necessity (stock footage = the cheapest way to pad), but whether intentional or not it winds up being so much more. Rather than just a document of the global tragedy, the music and colors add intriguing depth. Even today the name Hiroshima still has archetypal power wherever you are so it&#39;s not like it&#39;s &#39;stale&#39; or fully &#39;absorbed&#39; or maybe will ever be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;It helps perhaps Cozzi is not American, so bears no national guilt over its use, Italy being the one country to &#39;switch sides&#39; and, perhaps to its credit, quickly surrender rather than stand and die for a cause they didn&#39;t believe in. Thus we see facets of it through his Italian eyes that we usually cannot when seeing through either Japan&#39;s or America&#39;s (they&#39;re too close to the problem)--that America is the father of Godzilla in more ways than one - we&#39;re the Nick Nolte to Godzilla&#39;s Eric Bana in Ang Lee&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Hulk &lt;/i&gt;so to speak.&#39; That&#39;s why having an American in the mix is so essential and why it works better that..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGs48WvLvohxQvFQo4Y97v8ZmcxGSpWurXEmZjvEvuk70Qr1BqopTnPS8PGiVJKDRqwW6jvp1k-NWppetlgC23PTrUUGwHdbsh_uFPAuXy-Rw3KNSx-RssdxXg-0sctRUiDq33TTrBMwWe_5OrahLSvky2XhDAkaqTjk_mSmnCs5mPpGHXWw/s1111/Burr%20color%20zilla.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;682&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1111&quot; height=&quot;245&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGs48WvLvohxQvFQo4Y97v8ZmcxGSpWurXEmZjvEvuk70Qr1BqopTnPS8PGiVJKDRqwW6jvp1k-NWppetlgC23PTrUUGwHdbsh_uFPAuXy-Rw3KNSx-RssdxXg-0sctRUiDq33TTrBMwWe_5OrahLSvky2XhDAkaqTjk_mSmnCs5mPpGHXWw/w400-h245/Burr%20color%20zilla.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;b&gt;3. Raymond Burr Speaks Italian&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The insertion of Burr into &lt;i&gt;Godzilla&lt;/i&gt; prior to its American release can seem racist, but once he&#39;s dubbed into Italian and we&#39;re reading what he&#39;s saying via subtitles (i.e. translated back again), all that bad taste goes away and the whole thing becomes post-modern sublime. With the warping wobble of the VHS source giving the voices a strange echo quality that takes him (and the Japanese around him) out of the &#39;present,&#39; his narration (welcomely truncated for Cozzi&#39;s version) echoes through the action like a dream. Welcome everywhere, always up front thanks to his big time news service press credentials, he merges into the post-modern warp in a way that&#39;s definitely cool. The weirdly calming deep tones of the Italian actor dubbing him makes us automatically re-interpret what we hear as, not just monster movie junk, but an art film ala Antonioni. We&#39;re safe inside his cavernous voice, like the dragon in &lt;i&gt;Excalibur.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;4&lt;b&gt;. The use of Ifukube&#39;s &quot;Elegy&quot; in the opening sequence of Raymond Burr under the rubble and later after the main attack, and the last part&lt;/b&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the original American version, the first act has Raymond Burr is unearthed from the rubble, features just a mournful, plodding minor key oboe (or bassoon?). Dull, then it stops for endless exposition and seldom returns. In Cozzi&#39;s, the best parts of Ikfube&#39;s score, such as the &#39;elegy&#39; heard only towards the end via TV in the original version, add a grandeur and marvelousness that situates the film right off the bat as something that&#39;s emotional, even strangely operatic, especially after the Hiroshima prologue. When I see and hear this first section of the Cozzi film, I think instantly of where I was the evening after 9/11 (watching from across the river in Brooklyn Heights, eating ice cream on the boardwalk--finding it hard to pick an emotion other than a kind of surrealist shock). &quot;Elegy&quot; fits that so perfectly I don&#39;t even have to remember it to feel it. Rather than just play for the broadcast, it plays from the rubble slow pans and flows right up into the ocean with the O2 destroyer. Rather masterfully, too. Watch for example the Burr version of the attack - there&#39;s no music - no real noise almost - aside from Burr it&#39;s quiet for huge stretches until he starts stomping on train tracks and finally omitting a loud growl.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfljIrVudyMVbsCdfoOOGnwGcbjpgZ7z--DXddjA7lVyF6tyXxBqgakjGLgKT52XDROlFX04Jcg2jrPs9xDPnFxb3XmKWdG_LuT7K4LvPRknaszV_z8U8gYxqzXdddzpALfL2HzDrxt83JrSVW0xC9b6k1QUFDCPNCrsvCzvUjKPe8xs2sMQ/s1309/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.58.06%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;792&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1309&quot; height=&quot;243&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfljIrVudyMVbsCdfoOOGnwGcbjpgZ7z--DXddjA7lVyF6tyXxBqgakjGLgKT52XDROlFX04Jcg2jrPs9xDPnFxb3XmKWdG_LuT7K4LvPRknaszV_z8U8gYxqzXdddzpALfL2HzDrxt83JrSVW0xC9b6k1QUFDCPNCrsvCzvUjKPe8xs2sMQ/w400-h243/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.58.06%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;b&gt;5.&amp;nbsp; PSYchEdelic ColLORs&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly every frame was hand tinted but as it survives on the streaky VHS the effect seems like the tinter/colorizer was hittin&#39; the pipe, so to speak. Sometimes the color is effective (the red skies during the fires) sometimes it seems to wash around but it never quite fades out altogether. The key scenes of Godzilla trashing Tokyo are the most conscientiously colored, and that&#39;s what&#39;s important, making the surreal presence of the big reptile and its destruction into something so transformational and shocking/strange/all-consuming it changes our perceptions of color.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;6. RE-RE-EDITING&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cozzi wipes out whole dull exposition, and connecting and establishing shots of the Americanized and original version, especially with the phone calls, customs, standing around while narration explains things, and door entrances and romantic triangle sudsiness, and instead stretches out the attacks, the devastation, and the retaliation. He &#39;Cozzifies&#39; it. Whittling it down to the basics, he then had to add footage to get it to feature length but he Cozzified there too, instinctively knowing just the right passages to expand, such as the climactic Tokyo trashing (adding to the aftermath by a section of post-Hiroshima footage intercut with short inserts of Godzilla breathing his radioactive fire breath and the &quot;Elegy&quot; music again. and the final O2 Destroyer ending, which becomes a slow-mo death dance of bubbles and a prolonged surfacing wherein Cozzi tries to goose up the wow factor by intercutting stock footage of naval ships firing all their guns on Godzilla as he surfaces. In the original it&#39;s just a quick pop up, followed by a sad sinking, Cozzi replays and slows down the surface death rattle so that he seems to take forever to die, the O2 destroyer below, the naval destroyer above.Instead of all the preparation, the bubbles and the destroyer and all that seem to take forever - it&#39;s like the whole movie blends into a blur or white blobs, pink and turquoise sky wipes, slow-motion bubbles cascading past a doomed Godzilla. He knows what makes an emotional, strong image and how to give such images time to resonate, to envelop us in ways too deep to analyze.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;7. &lt;b&gt;SOUND RE-MIXING&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cozzi and Co. creates a nonstop melange of every kind of sound that lulls me to sleep;-- there&#39;s rushing wind, all bubbling and whooshing, the Italian dub sounding like it&#39;s being heard outside a shrill Roman theater before the main feature. The din of conversation and busy Tokyo streets becomes a comforting white noise, alongside what sounds like the whirr of a projector, or brisk wind. When the roar of Godzilla comes along it occupies the low end, but is drowned on on the top. Meanwhile the sound of a dance band playing the night Godzilla first attacks Tokyo has a kind of ghostliness reminiscent of hauntologic music of &#39;the Caretaker&#39;, The (post-dubbed) loud pounding of his footsteps (even when still in the water) sounds like Marley&#39;s ghost hammering at my chamber door; the blur of crowd noises, Ifukube&#39;s music (sometimes it seems like two different passages are playing at the same time), the ocean roar, morse code-style telegraph beeping (to convey urgent news), the explosions and also.... almost of it almost inextricably tied up with...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;8. META-SOUND ARTIFACTING&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At times you can hear what sounds like grinding sprockets, and the sound wall kind of wobbles as if going through a flanger. Is it the projector screening the film for the video camera, or the sound of the fire of Serizawa&#39;s burning o2 destroyer notes and the whooshing of his lab equipment? Are these intentional or the result of age, transfers, the sound recorded for the VHS in a sloppy duping.&amp;nbsp; When Dr. Serizawa&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;is down underwater delivering the O2 Destroyer for example, the wobbling of the reels seems like the film in the sprockets is shifting as the tracking issues persist at the same time, as if the water and bubbles were leaking into the camera and microphone. Some spots are slowed down to stretch out scenes, which gives the sound and extra warping weirdness. The line between accidental and deliberate effects is wiped away. For the climax, for the underwater climax, for example, the warping and waving of a comforting wall of soothing sounds, with layers of that unforgettable Ikufube &#39;Elegy,&#39; under bubbling, ocean sound effects, muffled roars, dialogue up on deck and through the oxygen tube, static from the recording transfers, including the whirr of a projector, all laid in front of each other in layers to form a comforting wall of white atmosphere that then warps and wavers from the video tracking issues&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compare it to the original or the Burr version and the soundscape is much more austere. The early scenes of Burr under the rubble and working his way to the Tokyo press room are generally silent, with maybe an oboe or a distant crowd noise. In Cozzi&#39;s version a weird radio plays constantly in the background, along with ringing phones, telegraph beeping, the rush of conversations, traffic, and the projector itself; elsewhere morse code bleeps echo in successive layers - the&amp;nbsp; frenzied gull like voices of concerned family members for the crew of the missing vessel. It&#39;s a roar in itself, in a good way&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;9.&amp;nbsp; META VIDEO DISINTEGRATION&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At one point we see the reel run out and an &lt;i&gt;End of Part One s&lt;/i&gt;ign flashes; we see the film running out. Elsewhere the images buckle and jump, and echo! Interestingly, the print waits until about 50 minutes in to really fall apart with tracking problems that happens to be during the big centerpiece of the film, Godzilla&#39;s rampage in Tokyo. It&#39;s as it the sheer size of the monster and the vehemence of the military response is breaking apart film as we know it. It&#39;s one thing to have the image jump around when say, showing a couple on the couch, but with rapid edits of explosions and raging fires as a monster the size of a ten story office building beats the shit out of some electrical wires, before snacking down on a train? That makes perfect sense. Even when the screen goes completely dark, before wobbling back, making the monster scenes harder to see, it fits--as if we&#39;re watching it live on TV and the camera signal is breaking up. Sure, eventually it gets pretty annoying but then, the problem dies away... for awhile when the attack is over.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did the high contrast and rapid editing have anything to do with the problems of this transfer?&amp;nbsp; I don&#39;t know but I do know watching the HD version on Criterion, the monster is very unconvincing - we can see the scenery better, admire the details of the cityscape he tramples through, savor the detailed craftsmanship that went into each building, but it&#39;s clearly a man in a suit in the long shots and --in some others-- clearly a hand puppet. The apocalyptic images of the crumbling press building, as it slowly collapses floor-by-floor is truly impressive in the original. And, of course, one should watch that version often. But it lacks the strange post-modern poetry we get from tbe Cozzi version - the way the melt-down of film and of tape seems to suit the gravity of the scene better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here&#39;s an example - the attack in the Burr film starts at 50 mins in, ends around&amp;nbsp; 101; in Cozzi&#39;s, it starts at 50 mins but then ends - ends 101:12 - so like double the length.&amp;nbsp; Then the end underwater climax in the Burr verison last 6 minutes but the Cozzi version expands to 12, but then goes back to slow motion the explosion and the anguished roar go godzilla - his pathetic rise from the deep only to be mercilessly shelled by the boats, howling and then sinking back down. Cozzi spatters into a full on military assault at the head as if target practice, before it sinks down to the slow motion depths, the sound warped and flangered with the music carrying through a sea of bubbles, almost Wagnerian and triumphant. The beast takes forever to fall back down to the depths. He finally sinks and the sea dissolves again into a sea of bubbles.... We only see a few cutaways to people on the boat but Cozzi doesn&#39;t care about them and knows we don&#39;t either - we don&#39;t even care about Serizawa&#39;s brave suicide (cutting his air hose). We&#39;re glad to be rid of him and all his crying and tantrum-throwing.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;I don&#39;t know but when you add the washes of pink, yellow, orange, and green blurring into each other, somehow it all comes together as...&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3F3mpWjofHqITkxIIioInNEcrOubViYFArLh87ag8mErWa8QztR8VEeT7UPt3ECBmMgUDn5eXTDR2O7AoegTjWyVgJTMMNT6pq-NE0CCWUbt2pa56nQjfuQ8Fn4_9x8q375mJ0UDvSHbfrZfbESuJBlmDyNCnplfxY0S2uVTQ-cEi8LNLNA/s1448/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.19%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;894&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1448&quot; height=&quot;198&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3F3mpWjofHqITkxIIioInNEcrOubViYFArLh87ag8mErWa8QztR8VEeT7UPt3ECBmMgUDn5eXTDR2O7AoegTjWyVgJTMMNT6pq-NE0CCWUbt2pa56nQjfuQ8Fn4_9x8q375mJ0UDvSHbfrZfbESuJBlmDyNCnplfxY0S2uVTQ-cEi8LNLNA/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.19%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;10. HIGH EXPERIMENTAL FILM ART!&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The original Japanese version of &lt;i&gt;Godzilla &lt;/i&gt;was a metaphor for America&#39;s radioactive warping and altering of the Japanese psyche ala the firebombing of Tokyo and nuking of Hiroshima. That version that was then warped and altered by America to suit itself, editing out the Hiroshima references to suit itself, That version then warped and altered, with loads Hiroshima footage added in,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Italy&#39;s mid-war conversion from Japan&#39;s side to America&#39;s have any subtextual effect on Cozzi&#39;s artistic choices? Either way, he created most astute yet warped meditation on Hiroshima that you&#39;re likely to see, especially when the media you see it on has been warped and altered many times over itself. And hopefully so have you!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Thats 10 -- BLAST OFF!&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgog2TAP024fVRrPFhOSq4YcyHZfN96RuB3_CO4G9PcDRAi4PM5wwYa8fCymi9cR6wBxIzyliciT1h1Qd-pHZWpD6FbgwGib7S5s7y50BCJLmJ-TsI8uOQ4-grtxn-hH5jQK4U97zMDFlgpXc7aN9Pfo4ebCGE90KSH_3TyUjrg-EfMQVflag/s1390/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.13%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;802&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1390&quot; height=&quot;370&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgog2TAP024fVRrPFhOSq4YcyHZfN96RuB3_CO4G9PcDRAi4PM5wwYa8fCymi9cR6wBxIzyliciT1h1Qd-pHZWpD6FbgwGib7S5s7y50BCJLmJ-TsI8uOQ4-grtxn-hH5jQK4U97zMDFlgpXc7aN9Pfo4ebCGE90KSH_3TyUjrg-EfMQVflag/w640-h370/Screen%20Shot%202022-11-02%20at%208.57.13%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But the cumulative effect of these 10 reasons isn&#39;t a downer, it&#39;s a great narcotizing embrace, like sinking down to an eternal sleep. The bubbling noises of the surf, the bellowing of the ships. the scratchy vibe, the haunting Ikufube music, the weird washes of cool colors, it all flows and swirls&amp;nbsp;into some wild light-sound extravaganza that satisfies the soul, keeps the spirit engaged and brings frazzled nerves into a pre-natal warm, pulsing tide. Godzilla&#39;s oxygen gets sucked out of himself at the end but it flows into us like the cool breeze from a projector&#39;s whirring fan when the bulb is off. Protected against the onslaught of man&#39;s blind folly for another night, we drift off secure in the arms of Cozzi and his crew, Burr and his crew, Honda and his crew, the Italian dubbers and the English subtitlers, and the signature of time itself (always something that can be stopped or otherwise manipulated in Cozzi films), slowly warping and ravaging its way through a Russian doll-style chain of decomposing media upgrades. It delivers exactly what I want out of a film I&#39;m watching at some godforsaken hour of the night, technically trying to fallsleep, but kind of enjoying that I&#39;m half-awake, nodding in and out, until I&#39;m never quite sure if I&#39;m watching the film or not... did I black out for certain sections or are they just not there? Seen while fully conscious during the day I can find myself frustrated by the lengthy parts of over-the-top tracking issues during God&#39;s all-night stomping and torching of Tokyo. But late at night, eyes lidded over, it&#39;s truly sublime.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We shouldn&#39;t be surprised, it may be Ishiro Honda&#39;s baby but Cozzi raises it as his own and teaches it who it really is. Before it only knew it was Vishnu, the destroyer of worlds, now it knows it&#39;s Robert Oppenheimer, and it&#39;s here to send us to sweet oblivion. .&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/l1qRxEY0USQ&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/3549962954379613583/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/11/cozzilla-10-reasons-luigi-cozzis-1977.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3549962954379613583'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/3549962954379613583'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/11/cozzilla-10-reasons-luigi-cozzis-1977.html' title='CozZilla! - 10 Reasons Luigi Cozzi&#39;s 1977 GODZILLA Remix'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip0gdd8gjXLSVel5LbL1pOsdLnqZPweO_wLs-obWARegeTJoe2XCBke_vdHSbLDVoUcI6I0BfbWj6RpAGjtGFe2ThVtg2T-YlH4IOok_Y8BDurMgdmdFwhly9oUGIeG_CeRY9dSnPLjZD9JBLldAltAe0iCpKFH4gCQ0HcHSh5BQy2HTu8Rw/s72-w640-h398-c/cozizlla.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-6913865102966613611</id><published>2022-10-31T10:43:00.023-05:00</published><updated>2023-06-15T17:40:12.158-05:00</updated><title type='text'>&quot;Absolute&quot; October: 10 Seasonal, Classic Picks: Atmospheric, Uncanny &amp; Re-watchable. </title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot;&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievWCpxgBJVRM-SRyQMbQjsnbFfhXU0N0URgqR4dWf-GWNrwG___oQHs73wW226RFaOrsnjwviErkefiApCNb80jILofp3hQu0k_cKNMABoY3I7l5fvW6F5t5VpYLBfWE84jcvR9XHUHYk1L84Iwoggku01_NiaCnF7_F05aBz59DrkJp-7g/s2174/nihht%20of%20the%20werewolf.png&quot; style=&quot;font-family: times; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1458&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2174&quot; height=&quot;430&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievWCpxgBJVRM-SRyQMbQjsnbFfhXU0N0URgqR4dWf-GWNrwG___oQHs73wW226RFaOrsnjwviErkefiApCNb80jILofp3hQu0k_cKNMABoY3I7l5fvW6F5t5VpYLBfWE84jcvR9XHUHYk1L84Iwoggku01_NiaCnF7_F05aBz59DrkJp-7g/w640-h430/nihht%20of%20the%20werewolf.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;October - the time when the old classics should come out, and old horror fans like me dust off the gems that do it for us every year, the grand perennials, some since we were knee-high to Zuni Fetish doll. I&#39;ve already written about mine in past Halloween lists, But there&#39;s always others. Always new ones. Some are great but don&#39;t have &#39;repeatability&#39; - the layered gems you can watch over and over. For me it&#39;s important they have atmosphere! Gothic vapors! Scary synth music! Ghosts! Action! lots of wind and swirling mists. So if you&#39;re wondering what else is there besides AMC&#39;s same-old&lt;i&gt; Halloween&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;marathons and the same-old TCM classics (&lt;i&gt;Kwaidan, Eyes Without a Fac&lt;/i&gt;e, etc.) If you got Prime, Shudder, Tubi, Arrow, whatever, let these be yours. (All the films listed are streaming on Prime and/or Tubi unless otherwise noted)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDSa6U9kwmdbQmWK43AvlEquaHKVuBaKvVmF0wKsWbyLaS2loBDfKlWr-nzE2U0waTW54iiZTarUtiZjTUbagZtD_9PAisp_0vWMi4DssfnqoNtHge14rQznyBcqAUXyApKSwtGHIY5cnBpKVvvE0aDF6ORQoehr9xnLhRO7rD82F-femVoA=s2048&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1120&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2048&quot; height=&quot;350&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDSa6U9kwmdbQmWK43AvlEquaHKVuBaKvVmF0wKsWbyLaS2loBDfKlWr-nzE2U0waTW54iiZTarUtiZjTUbagZtD_9PAisp_0vWMi4DssfnqoNtHge14rQznyBcqAUXyApKSwtGHIY5cnBpKVvvE0aDF6ORQoehr9xnLhRO7rD82F-femVoA=w640-h350&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;BLACK SUNDAY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1959) Dir. Mario Bava&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;streaming on Prime&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;The king of Italian horror, maybe even of horror, &lt;i&gt;period&lt;/i&gt;, maybe even king of cinematographers his painterly warmth and lighting complexity making him kind of Italy&#39;s answer to Josef Von Sternberg) Mario Bava&#39;s films are almost all amazing but as far as spook show Gothic chills perfect for October, nothing can beat his directorial debut&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Black Sunday&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(except his later&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Black Sabbath, &lt;/i&gt;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/10/let-right-one-kill-baby-kill-1966.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Kill Baby Kill&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/i&gt;of course).&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Sunday&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;not only&amp;nbsp;introduced Bava (the film was an influential smash hit around the world, released by Roger Corman and AIP in the US) it introduced Barbara Steele to the world as the first bonafide female horror star, fit to join the ranks of Lugosi, Karloff, Lorre, and Price. She plays an evil witch, accidentally revived when a curious doctor&#39;s fight with a bat causes blood to fall into her eye-socket; and she plays that witch&#39;s &#39;good&#39; descendant, destined to be possessed or whatnot --it&#39;s all lining up (shades of Jewel of the 7 Stars transplanted to the 1800s.. ) Lots of creepy castle tracking shots, with Lewton-like walks to the barn in the dead of night, undead rising from graves as wind blows ominous. In terms of sheer rewatchability it is so without peer one has to look all the way back to the 30s pre-code Universal horror films to find a worthy comparison and--truth be told--it&#39;s better than most of them. It basically ushered in a whole wave of European supernatural Gothic horror films, most starring Steele, a few of which were good, that reverberated well into the 70s.&amp;nbsp;Get over the dubbing and occasionally schmaltzy score, just imagery, the pacing, the lurid touches, the thick delicious atmosphere, and the unique formula of sexy and terrifying that are the wide eyes and heaving chest of Barbara Steele; the nods to Val Lewton and James Whale. And Steele, and Steele again. Afterwards, forever transformed, you should immediately seek out &lt;i&gt;Black Sabbath&lt;/i&gt; and&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;lots of rats crawling over a body while some tacky orchestral pomp and a fake ass full moon eclipse interweave with disorienting close-ups of cat eyes and fangs; &quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Kill Baby Kill&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheXme-OxvmL_1aASXavZvL7rMRSM303tpOO3S2EPm5ipkJ_AXb3irz-wVRF_prVxeyt2J_L_sN5ghnYhtlRegXDxhAi-tnqLv7f4Dm9QLdTmJf5SVMzsAW0W7BKi0iMzRas7J5tzlQVgl-C_VrtJVx9NAjsfyvN8RvN_Y0NIPjcfJySeS45A/s2725/vampire%20women!.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1472&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2725&quot; height=&quot;346&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheXme-OxvmL_1aASXavZvL7rMRSM303tpOO3S2EPm5ipkJ_AXb3irz-wVRF_prVxeyt2J_L_sN5ghnYhtlRegXDxhAi-tnqLv7f4Dm9QLdTmJf5SVMzsAW0W7BKi0iMzRas7J5tzlQVgl-C_VrtJVx9NAjsfyvN8RvN_Y0NIPjcfJySeS45A/w640-h346/vampire%20women!.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;2.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1981) Dir. Paul Naschy&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;streaming on Tubi&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy recounts seeing&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man &lt;/i&gt;in a matinee&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;as a small child and finding his life&#39;s purpose. And you can see he wasn&#39;t kidding with &lt;i&gt;Night of the Werewolf, &lt;/i&gt;Not only does it pit classic monster against monster, he redressing many of the wrongs committed by Universal in that film (the title monster fight lasts barely 30 seconds before a flood ends the movie, hgere it goes on long enough you don&#39;t feel cheated, and it&#39;s with a woman!. This redresses the sexist wrongs of other Universal horrors, like &lt;i&gt;Dracula &lt;/i&gt;(whatever happened to those three hot wives? They get only two brief scenes and no dialogue and are never seen again, ditto the Bride of Frankenstein).&amp;nbsp; Not so with the women in Naschy&#39;s &lt;i&gt;Night of the Werewolf!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Women vampires are all over the place (it&#39;s a remake/update of his first success, &lt;i&gt;Werewolf vs. the Vampire Wome&lt;/i&gt;n). They&#39;re sexy, powerful, smart and strong, with great hair and skin. Instead of fighting Frankenstein, this wolf man is fighting with a super-powerful undead Elizabeth Bathory and her assorted coterie.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaEdmTMTthcTbVtmH5imNqiz-SVijW-BZF4WuiN-QVYfBIhC7TSll5DPTOUoI2wjVkcFuc0i-SaLZOTO_v03LXay5h6pznc4TyhoFtVVG2-cG787qL_PvFxGNff-LlCZDtprdVp5zdjNcRWMvI6zy9N7BXe0ziXDbG2QfTZF5vYO-Zy2aHyw/s2322/night%20of%20the%20wolf.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1430&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2322&quot; height=&quot;197&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaEdmTMTthcTbVtmH5imNqiz-SVijW-BZF4WuiN-QVYfBIhC7TSll5DPTOUoI2wjVkcFuc0i-SaLZOTO_v03LXay5h6pznc4TyhoFtVVG2-cG787qL_PvFxGNff-LlCZDtprdVp5zdjNcRWMvI6zy9N7BXe0ziXDbG2QfTZF5vYO-Zy2aHyw/s320/night%20of%20the%20wolf.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;In short, Paul Naschy, over the course of his countless &quot;Valdemar&quot; movies, became the werewolf we never really got from Lon Chaney Jr., who spent all of the sequels trying to die, chasing the scientists who inevitably bring &#39;the Monster&#39; back, movie after movie, making us all wonder why he doesn&#39;t just jump into the nearest threshing machine instead of moping around like that guy who&#39;s always threatening suicide if you try to break up with him. For some reason his brooding Edwardian emo persona attracts all sorts of smitten gypsy girls. And there&#39;s a full moon tonight!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I mention this as Naschy talks about falling love with horror after seeing F&lt;i&gt;rankensstein meets the Wolfman &lt;/i&gt;in a matinee with his father as a child. His whole werewolf journey seems designed to redeem that movie. Always sensual and ready to fondle and make-out with anyone, burly body-builder Naschy&#39;s squat, ruggedly handsome physique and even-keeled manner imbues his Valdemar with a romantic nature that&#39;s inherently aristocratic yet sexually proletariat at the same time. He&#39;s the werewolf we always wanted, even if his make-up is nowhere near as elaborate. (though I&#39;ve never been a fan of Chaney&#39;s wolf face - too pouffy and poodle-like; I much prefer the less extreme but scarier version in the underrated &lt;i&gt;Werewolf of London. &lt;/i&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The focus here isn&#39;t on Naschy though. He&#39;s great but the focus is on three super gorgeous tourists coming to a remote tomb on a holiday, wanting, for some reason, to revive,Elisabeth Bathory (we see her and her minions put to death in the Middle Ages opening, as was the style of the time). The leader of the trio is totally evil (ala Tura Satana in &lt;i&gt;Faster Pussycat&lt;/i&gt;) while the other two girls seem rather naive, along for the ride. One can&#39;t help but admire their brazen self-assurance in their mission, despite all the warnings from locals. Plunging fearlessly into a vast cave network to find the tomb of the most eveil serial killer ever, Elizabeth Bathory, they&#39;re set on becoming her vampire handmaidens. The &#39;good&#39; one amongst them falls for Vlademamir but will she be able to kill him when the time comes?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#39;s another interesting echo of FVTWM that Valdemar has a deformed servant in love with him (ala the hunchbacked gypsy girl turned on by Chaney&#39;s emo vibes). Half her face is burnt, but her hair is great. In fact all their hair is great, the same color, long brown and more or less straight. Clearly Naschy has a type. But it&#39;s a good type, and these women are strong and self-reliant. Not only that but there are way more in the cast than men, making&lt;i&gt; Night &lt;/i&gt;reminiscent of the films of Luigi Cozzi! And Jack Hill!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other words,&lt;i&gt; Night of the Werewolf &lt;/i&gt;is revisionist classic Euro-horror heaven for the Universal and Euro horror fan. And the cinematography--thanks to a wondrous recent restoration--glows with lots of candle and torchlight golds, deep inviting shadows and swirling luminous fog. It&#39;s lovely to look at, and aside from the sex and gore, is fit entertainment for the whole family if the kids are too old to trick-or-treat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8V3LWrLFCum6fbhDXd2JF-VxUa4bbrqFKn7Kg0kqGx-PF7LRsXdbmU92p4m5UQ-cGSyqm1NMDUyWC8939QX14CcNWYbrZuoRqk6WyhwM8dm9Be0PveSG1npH3qhyhglPWK6Bj/s1280/chiild.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;694&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1280&quot; height=&quot;348&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8V3LWrLFCum6fbhDXd2JF-VxUa4bbrqFKn7Kg0kqGx-PF7LRsXdbmU92p4m5UQ-cGSyqm1NMDUyWC8939QX14CcNWYbrZuoRqk6WyhwM8dm9Be0PveSG1npH3qhyhglPWK6Bj/w640-h348/chiild.jpg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;3.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;THE CHILD&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;(1977) Dir. Robert Voskanian&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;A once nearly-forgotten cracked emerald in the American rough, recently given a fancy upgrade by the folks at Arrow,&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Child&lt;/i&gt; may be set in some remote 30s-40s corner of woodsy mountainous American folk nowhere, but its real location is the dream nebula where childhood nightmares rattle bedroom shutters in the still of the October night in the land of super quiet, super black nights only cloudy country nights provide (that kind of darkness and dead silence are why I live in the city and sleep with a white noise machine) and unearthly squawking moans seem to come from the air itself.&amp;nbsp;Shoehorning themes and moods from&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Night of the Living Dead&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Omen&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;in amidst its folk horror ominousness,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Child&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;tells the&amp;nbsp;story of a strange but sweet young woman, with period length long straight black hair and strange silver eyes, who arrives to nanny a bratty 11-year old sociopath named Rosalie (Rosalie Norton) after the apparent death of her (bi-polar necromancer) mom. Rosalie&#39;s dad is only a shades less demented than the dad in&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Texas Chainsaw Massacre.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;Luckily, the adult son is tall, chill, and sane, thank God, and there&#39;s not much to do there in the dark at night, so they just may hook up, or he might turn into a scarecrow while she dances through the misty front lawn dream on Halloween night after freaking out at the sight of a jack-o-lantern seemingly moving on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;There&#39;s a masterful use of real darkness here that&#39;s rare in horror films (that jack-o-lantern seems to come out of nowhere). Yessir,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Child&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;radiates a&amp;nbsp;real country dark, the kind that seem to swallow the world around you, so that someone could be standing mere feet away from you and you&#39;d never see them, so you strain to hear any sound of breathing in the silence, the kind of dark of&amp;nbsp;where only candles and oil lamps make little bubble sancturaries of warmth and light in the surrounding inky opaque emptiness,. (1)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Fzk5AhvWIOxinLYSrgC33TtRvbF3KWMUAvj1AseQAyBluW-NjxoeTjWr901Hey57EDciOl9_ALSb6KUi9OJe71jGn2VsUqd4nGgBML7RckAs4nIzpAKdiwGczPNrV4-hK7tD2f7Af7AwnmZHHuWlbsvK2wuEBRzEMLT3FcUbKzNQ_-x9WQ/s836/chile.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;556&quot; data-original-width=&quot;836&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Fzk5AhvWIOxinLYSrgC33TtRvbF3KWMUAvj1AseQAyBluW-NjxoeTjWr901Hey57EDciOl9_ALSb6KUi9OJe71jGn2VsUqd4nGgBML7RckAs4nIzpAKdiwGczPNrV4-hK7tD2f7Af7AwnmZHHuWlbsvK2wuEBRzEMLT3FcUbKzNQ_-x9WQ/w400-h266/chile.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Then there&#39;s that score! Splitting the difference between&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;avant-garde&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;dissonance and soap opera style angst, Robe Wallace&#39;s&amp;nbsp;score pushes the sound effects and echo-canned dialogue out in front of what sounds like a grand piano being pushed down a hill. Do the characters hear those strange echo-drenched honks ever in the distance/foreground). The post-dubbed voices of the actors seem as if they could be part of the score too--unheard of by each other, pushing the foggy-wind leaf blow folk horror imagery into the uncanny world between waking and sleeping, that zone when half-heard sounds are freed from signification and even innocuous objects create deep uncanny chills.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;And like all the best uncanny folk horror-style films (the film it probably resembles the closest is &lt;i&gt;Lemora; A Child&#39;s Tale of the Supernatura&lt;/i&gt;l) it&#39;s both warmly familiar, genuinely disturbing, relentlessly surprising and super strange. No matter where you think&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;The Child&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;is headed, it&#39;s never goes there, not until the last act, in which it suddenly drops everything and bolts out the door in one long careening climax of zombie horror, It&#39;s as if the truck that rescued creaming Marilyn Burns at the end of&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Texas Chainsaw Massacre&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;crashed into a &lt;i&gt;Night of the Living Dead&lt;/i&gt; construction site run by a Rhoda Penmark/Murder Legendre hybrid. In short,&amp;nbsp;God--or something far more ancient--bless &lt;i&gt;The Child!&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4NVKAvGaPS5ox8FOm1feUI9wraBVQe9Chp4JODQNGFD6c26K81XC0bdCTyvEdgzI8bCxUZYZfCpVyuaeKDOYBVOOlFQ9s_UqHkFl36TRuZeqjWZjcGePEafW8aTbaiSfE26oj/s1255/Beyond+.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;513&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1255&quot; height=&quot;262&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4NVKAvGaPS5ox8FOm1feUI9wraBVQe9Chp4JODQNGFD6c26K81XC0bdCTyvEdgzI8bCxUZYZfCpVyuaeKDOYBVOOlFQ9s_UqHkFl36TRuZeqjWZjcGePEafW8aTbaiSfE26oj/w640-h262/Beyond+.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;.. 4.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE BEYOND&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;(1981) Dir. Lucio Fulci&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;streaming Prime, Tubi&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;It took me a long time to warm up to this weird gem, being too cool for what I believed was misogynist gore as a teenager, but after catching the other films in Fulci&#39;s undead trilogy,&lt;i&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/creature-double-feature-night-4-baffled.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;City of the Living Dead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/creature-double-feature-night-4-baffled.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt;(1980)&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2016/10/nightmare-logic-lucio-fulcis-house-by.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;House by the Cemetery &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;(1981) on TCM, I knew I was wrong. There was so much more here than that. And so much less. Now, thanks to the miracle of streaming, a beautiful HD remastering is ours for the clicking. Sure, it defies narrative cohesiveness and seems to exult in gore for gore&#39;s sake, but it&#39;s so atmospheric! It&#39;s what Fulci meant by an &#39;absolute&#39; film. A pumpin&#39; Fabio Frizzi synth and pianocore, a script that&#39;s just cohesive enough to make the weirdness continually &#39;dream logical,&#39; ambiguous expressions that seem to imply pages of strange suspicion never written. It&#39;s so &#39;in the moment&#39; it forgets all about the future, leaving us constantly on our guard. Everything is just off. There is &#39;normal&#39; moment we expect having seen hundreds of horror movies, the foreshadowing is its own uncanny effect with no pay-off, and vice versa. The result is that even minor details seem that&#39;s not imbued with the uncanny. From the start with a period prologue of Shrike the warlock painter&#39;s torture crucifixion (nailed to a wall, doused in lye, flogged with chains (we never learn why) and walled up in the basement of the &quot;7 Doors Hotel&quot; thus opening one of the seven doors to Hell), all the way to contemporary times, as Liza (the perfectly-cast, instantly iconic Catriona MacColl) inherits the crumbling edifice and sends Joe the plumber down to the vast, flooded basement to stop the leak. The painting the warlock was working on when he died is gathering dust on the ground floor, a strange hellscape that looks like the surface of some macabre moon, dotted with corpses covered in dust. Workmen fall off the roof, Joe busts through a crumbling wall allowing the warlock&#39;s decaying hand reaches from the crumbling wall to crush his face. Joe has a funeral minutes later. There is never a police investigation nor a single cop in the whole movie; we never see anyone even find Joe&#39;s eyeless body - it just shows up in the morgue. Shrike&#39;s eerie painting is hung in the foyer where its strange power seems to take over those who look at it. At one point it bleeds. For some reason the intern in the space age morgue puts an EKG meter on Shrike&#39;s long dead corpse which is now laid out next to Joe&#39;s; again no explanation - none needed. Shrike waits til he&#39;s alone to activate the EKG. Oh, he&#39;s in there, all right. To have some tired rationale would lessen its majesty. Hell-that&#39;s all you need to know, a hell where the undead shamble through hospitals with their heads down, shambling slow, like the workers in &lt;i&gt;Metropolis &lt;/i&gt;after a long shift.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Liza scoffs at the idea of the hotel leading to Hell, even though the service buzzer mysteriously sounds for the warlock&#39;s old room at odd times and she almost literally runs into a willowy blind blonde psychic Emily (Cinzia Monreale)&amp;nbsp;with greyed over eyes and a seeing eye dog standing in the middle of straight bridge the goes on for miles over the swamps. Emily plays the ominous theme song on the piano, while regaling Liza with the story of the seven doors (which we never really hear or need to) we move onto other things and then come back. We never quite do find our way back anywhere, except this one time. When Liza arrives back at the hotel dimwitted handyman and his mom get the hotel almost ready to open. The painting is still there leaning against the wall. There is no &#39;normal&#39; to ground us, yet nothing seems weird for weird&#39;s sake like so many 80s horror and sci-fi films. Instead &#39;the frame of things disjoint&#39; (to quote Shakespeare. The doctor (David Warbeck) alone is the sole voice of patriarchal head-shaking; he worries Liza is losing her mind, or a witch, but not for long. The book shows up in a bookstore then disappears. Tarantulas take about a real time hour to eat a guy&#39;s face. The lady housekeeper has her head forced onto one of those Shrike nails by the handyman who arises from the muddy water in the bathtub. Space collapses. Nothing is the same or ever really was.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Don&#39;t ask. Don&#39;t tell. Just dig the unforgettable shots: Emily standing with her dog and white eyes; the blasted surface of the Sea of Darkness; that strange all-white morgue; the masterfully creepy zombies shattering a opaque glass wall; the strange glances, the gore, the guts, the gusts and the gusto; the crisp atmospheric photography of Sergio Salvati (perfectly brought out by the HD remastering), and Fabio Frizzi&#39;s eerie synth music and strange piano refrains. Let it swirl together like a film that&#39;s spun off its reel and is wrapping itself around your neck, dragging your eye closer... closer to the hot light inside the proector. Allow it to sync up with your unconscious rather than your conscious expectations and it will all make perfect non-nonsense. You&#39;ll either want to vomit and gouge your eyes out or immediately cue up Fulci&#39;s other films. There is no middle ground. All hail the... whatever.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYlpwG775PMptShZuKfgZddp8Hy7xmS60nJbaRGVmAI93p7CroSba-kT6tx6gS5ybbRPSRAt9MhZLK1ZizW4KKV2U5PMo6CpJfyrDD3Sn_Ij1MAapeYmR7ZjRBgjMP38VrNN5/s1116/phantasm2.png&quot; style=&quot;color: #940909; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;609&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1116&quot; height=&quot;343&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYlpwG775PMptShZuKfgZddp8Hy7xmS60nJbaRGVmAI93p7CroSba-kT6tx6gS5ybbRPSRAt9MhZLK1ZizW4KKV2U5PMo6CpJfyrDD3Sn_Ij1MAapeYmR7ZjRBgjMP38VrNN5/w625-h343/phantasm2.png&quot; style=&quot;background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;&quot; width=&quot;625&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;5.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;PHANTASM&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1978) Dir. Don Coscarelli&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;i&gt;streaming Prime, Tubi&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;When hack directors rushed to imitate &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt;, ushering in the slasher boom at the end of the 70s, only one or two filmmakers looked carefully at the structure of the shots Carpenter used, paid attention to the tick-tockality of the time frame, really listened to find what was so effective about the score, instead of just thinking &quot;guys in masks stabbing teenagers, got it.&quot;&amp;nbsp; and going off to make bland copies of content rather than form.&amp;nbsp;Coscarelli didn&#39;t need the content, as he got the music right, the vibe, the use of cloaking darkness and the power of twisting old trees and drive-ways. Then Coscarelli went on did his own, highly original film. His previous works had all been children&#39;s films (another seldom-written about genre for 70s independents) and it pays off here as he treats the kids with respect and compassion (more &lt;i&gt;Over the Edge&lt;/i&gt; than&lt;i&gt; E.T.&lt;/i&gt;) Centered around a young lad terrified his brother will leave him behind when he takes off after their parent&#39;s funeral, &lt;i&gt;Phantasm &lt;/i&gt;ushers in what I call &#39;older brother&#39; films, all but forgotten these days, but in the 70s cool kids like Jackie Earle Haley played kids with older brother figures who let them sip their beer, smoke a cigarette, shoot guns, (&quot;No warning shots. Warning shots are bullshit.&quot;), carry knives, drive before they were legal, and generally do their own thing. The kid here gets to do most of that and at one point throws the kid the keys to his gorgeous Plymouth Barracuda at one point. Gotta love a kid who has his own dirt bike and knife, knows how to shoot real guns, and isn&#39;t afraid to go out to investigate a funeral parlor in the dead of night with nothing but a knife taped to his leg. No wonder this movie has become a classic. When your older brother tells you, we &quot;We gotta snag that tall, dude and we got to kick the shit out of him,&quot; It&#39;s like paradise for any red-blooded 70s American boy of the era. Every time Mark leans out of the speeding Barracuda to fire a shotgun at the tall man&#39;s hearse while Mike drives, I&#39;m enthralled like a ten year-old hanging out with my best friend&#39;s cool older brother all over again. It goes deep into the archetypal masculine oomph. Oh there&#39;s also a girl, whose blind grandmother is a psychic and who runs an antique shop with her older sister, a scene I wish went on forever.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;What a movie - a genuinely original dark fairy tale plot hinging on a totally original metaphysical / ancient alien theory, a boy&#39;s fantastical perception of the strangeness of graveyards and mausoleums, the line between dreams and reality, and the way living in central-Portland is like living inside an abandoned tomb gone ruined with old growth and sinister shadows, enhanced by that familiar (1) but super creepy synth music, Plus the plot tweaks &lt;i&gt;Plan Nine,&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;to be about our worst fear -our dead parents coming back as crushed dwarfs trying to kills us and that we die will be crushed stuffed into big beer kegs and launched through a tuning fork gateway to another dimension. It could still happen!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU8r3T8AhJCN2n3Rpk3JeZuTDvOssJAdPbtIQygoDLfcFMff5jM4vuSBT1zsp7M_o2iAvPmCPWKlu0nPt0BnGAGzrb11DKExMzkKoYCQ22n5x4PwFWI4doqr-DPAeyFeKqsp2/s2048/Next+o+fKin+44.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1084&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2048&quot; height=&quot;338&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU8r3T8AhJCN2n3Rpk3JeZuTDvOssJAdPbtIQygoDLfcFMff5jM4vuSBT1zsp7M_o2iAvPmCPWKlu0nPt0BnGAGzrb11DKExMzkKoYCQ22n5x4PwFWI4doqr-DPAeyFeKqsp2/w640-h338/Next+o+fKin+44.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;6.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large; font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;NEXT OF KIN&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1982) Dir. Tony Williams&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Streaming on Prime, Tubi&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This 1982 Aussie thriller has been seldom seen or mentioned until recently&amp;nbsp; Perhaps its bland poster and generic title is to blame? It&#39;s got a unique plot, friendly characters, vivid deep dusky cinematography, very cool wallpaper, and a sublime Klaus &quot;Tangerine Dream&quot; Schulze score adding the perfect mix of otherworldly eeriness to the homey surroundings. The sliding camera and dark furnishings keep us always on guard, even when things are all in order and sweet.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jacki Karin stars and brings a mix of steely energy and frazzled nerves to the role of Linda, a woman who inherits her recently deceased mom&#39;s old folk&#39;s home somewhere in Australia&#39;s vast outback, so drives in to both take over and figure out what&#39;s going on with all the deaths. Reading mum&#39;s journals she can&#39;t decide if the mom is insane or covering up or trying to solve a decade&#39;s long murder spree. At night the camera prowls the dark moody hallways, as Linda has pull-focus slow motion POV memories of being a traumatized child. What horrifying thing did she see in the steamy bathroom?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;With Schulze percolating his eerie but synth drum-inundated score as the wallpaper and lighting making it all feel like some splendid hybrid between Kubrick&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Shining&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;and Nicolas Winding Refn&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Only God Forgives.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The strange goings on get stranger. Good thing her old friend and ex-lover Barney (John &#39;&lt;i&gt;Wolf Creek&#39;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Jarrat!) is around to keep her grounded! To say much more about it would be doing you a disservice but suffice it to say this film evokes a kind of warm-blooded&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Shining&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;if it was an active old folks home about to collides nto a kind of four alarm&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Chainsaw&lt;/i&gt;-ish&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;whirlwind of strange and ingenious moments, captured with beautiful dusky cinematography. See it with the lights off, dead sober, alone, your nerves dilated and screaming with alcoholic withdrawal. You will be changed.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZf7QWnYdDf2XOmwdB5VB3MYWECMIsmvktIi3MPxv0JHwa51xV719CAu0tzYo7rV2jkR3hwhk8pB-w0mhOB-XgSmJwHrPNoAYtKRQbu4Th7c8A5XWEyWSsqBZzACrvwZ1VUIOf/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-07-13+at+9.42.29+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;381&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZf7QWnYdDf2XOmwdB5VB3MYWECMIsmvktIi3MPxv0JHwa51xV719CAu0tzYo7rV2jkR3hwhk8pB-w0mhOB-XgSmJwHrPNoAYtKRQbu4Th7c8A5XWEyWSsqBZzACrvwZ1VUIOf/w640-h381/Screen+Shot+2015-07-13+at+9.42.29+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlla3KVIMNMJ9Z_sJEqMTAN-Ir3PzoRbVZZFV098XPTIR71omk98bw5cN_SXnI8WFDvv0ILncThWs9zqiXAP01_KPB5i41-rQgfHt4D02fZu5TatFyWE_1IuHKQY3lNvm6JPyZHxy25754M2cmDbl_-d1YLKUw1KPAp-pqijHgihtlzPxug/s2393/shiver%20of%20the%20vampires32.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;11.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;THE IRON ROSE&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;La Rose de Fer&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1972) Dir Jean Rollin&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Streaming on Arrow&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;The French love their poets the way Americans love TV actors. Poetry for the French is normal and respectable, not something for your girlfriend&#39;s parents to passively sneer at when you tell them your post-graduate plans. They French love Romantic proto-punk French poets like Baudelaire, and that luminous centerpiece the Symbolist &#39;dead before 30&#39; dozen, Brittany&#39;s own Tristan Corbière. To say this, is to say too that they love those who can locate the beauty buried deep in in the ruins of death, and, too, the macabre ruins of death at the core of youthful beauty. They don&#39;t need Halloween there, as far as I know, for they have Corbiere, and they have Jean Rollin.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I&#39;m not sure which part of Françoise Pascal&#39;s final monologue/ voiceover during her climactic nude cross-bearing is from him, but I do value that it&#39;s hard to tell since all Rollin&#39;s best death-poetry-drenched classics reek of his spirit. This is maybe the most reeky of all, rank yet sweet with the fragrance of autumnal wet graveyard bouquets and freshly upturned earth. I also value the ominously mist-wreathed black train parked in the weeds in some overgrown train depot (when the couple stand atop the engine, with its painted black former iron flag trimming it evokes the angel of death looming behind them like some doting father). I value also the dilapidated look of the small town; the opening working class wedding feast (at which both characters seem to clearly not belong --as if already ghosts). Mostly I value that the film takes place over one late afternoon-into-dawn. Slowly, in real time, their Rohmer-esque idyll turns darker, moving from unease after hooking up too long in an open crypt, coming up to find the gates locked not knowing the way out, running through the graveyard in a slowly mounting surreal escape nightmare. Suddenly the distracting noises and peering eyes they were escaping down there are gone. It&#39;s as if they climb out into a whole different dimension. Dark falls fast in autumn.And the cinematography doesn&#39;t rely on noticeable artificial light, allowing this fascinating, huge, old, creepy, sad and beautiful graveyard to become a character in itself. Thanks to the beautiful Redemption label restoration, you can see their figures, (the red and yellow sweaters were a good idea, providing haunting contrast against the dark olive greens and withering old marble stones) even as darkness chokes the corners of the frame like its slowly blacking out from asphyxiation; the graveyard seem to be closing in around them, choked in vines and meandering fences, twisted vines and crumbling crypts. There&#39;s no glaring spotlights or day-for-night nonsense, making Jean-Jacques Renon&#39;s photography all the richer for being so dark without going completely murky or artificial.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Then, when the sun finally comes up and the the conqueror worm&#39;s snacktime looms you can feel your pupils contracting yet this does nothing to dispel the Corbière-sy darkness, even as it illuminates the dank far corners and cobwebbed shadows of eternity like a thousand watt bulb in your grandparent&#39;s attic.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Finally, a few seconds before you&#39;re even starting to get irritated, it becomes a surreal mournful cry for death; it becomes a love song, a longing for the loving embrace of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;la mortalité, finalité et l&#39;éternité.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;One of them survives, and returns to that old familiar Rollin rocky beach his fans know and love like their own backyard&lt;i&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;More poetry?! Please, monsieur. Then it&#39;s over - barely 70 minutes long, yet feels like forever.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;table cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44kytfnWh5JLyPFpXS1gYIuz9w2PdNR9yyXvDWuj6iPgS2gRkSeJhGWk0wjPW7a4fE-K4a_F6oTRNN_v9nxImpR04-KkoSBCjZHHG_bynUxJ0GRGOxVldlc4uRMIGAv9tX3eW/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-07-11+at+12.37.58+AM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;246&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh44kytfnWh5JLyPFpXS1gYIuz9w2PdNR9yyXvDWuj6iPgS2gRkSeJhGWk0wjPW7a4fE-K4a_F6oTRNN_v9nxImpR04-KkoSBCjZHHG_bynUxJ0GRGOxVldlc4uRMIGAv9tX3eW/w400-h246/Screen+Shot+2015-07-11+at+12.37.58+AM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;&quot;&gt;Q -is there any image more quietly under-the-skin creepy than this? A-&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: xx-small; font-style: italic; text-align: justify;&quot;&gt;Non.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2MnBAY8ntL4dGA6_ooGlD1E5eNqEhaIJ1ZFu00zN0E7gQLZBm_ZbqKafJ3pGRwc4uWXQr0i1LJknF2NQhPFaPjZiWzZ5xq4wFUgnvLse6FVHdDYwFRIO1eArE6iYs12bwc-RukblDIibkWrar0nv1DsCc6i5XmkD4L2_UT_6XDj7a2s5nw/s1979/undeadsd.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2MnBAY8ntL4dGA6_ooGlD1E5eNqEhaIJ1ZFu00zN0E7gQLZBm_ZbqKafJ3pGRwc4uWXQr0i1LJknF2NQhPFaPjZiWzZ5xq4wFUgnvLse6FVHdDYwFRIO1eArE6iYs12bwc-RukblDIibkWrar0nv1DsCc6i5XmkD4L2_UT_6XDj7a2s5nw/w640-h382/undeadsd.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;8. &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;THE UNDEAD&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(1957) Dir. Roger Corman&lt;br /&gt;streaming Prime, Tubi&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;My favorite Corman movie, this loopy black and white tale of reincarnation, hypnotism, knights, witches both good and bad, devils and Satanic graveyard dancers zips by in an hour and leaves my jaw agape every year or more, since it finally showed up on streaming (it was MIA for an eternity). I love everything about it. Charles B. Griffith&#39;s and Marc Hana&#39;s droll script, and Corman&#39;s speedball econo direction, the array of sexy, over-the-top, or otherwise awesome performances, the feeling of flowing poetic weirdness that it can only come from being shot in sequence over one long night in an empty supermarket full of black toxic mist to disguise the lack of backgrounds and of course the perfect pair of &#39;dueling witches&#39; the shazam-smokin&#39; Alison Hayes in the sexiest dress of her career, and Dorothy Neumann as the bent and hook-nosed good witch (don&#39;t be fooled by appearances! In this Middle Ages Oz only bad witches are lovely).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;I love the casual way the good witch Meg Maud (Neumann) asks the stranger at her door &quot;Are you from this era or from a time yet to be?&quot; as if hypnotists from the future were not uncommon. Or her explanation of how she got her powers from the same evil place Livia did, but managed to keep her soul at the expense of her looks, and how Livia and Meg Maud size each other up and admiringly realize &quot;you will make a good opponent&quot; in a wager for the life of Helene and love of Pendragon (Richard Garland), Helene&#39;s super-boring handsome idiot knight.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmrw1sNuD9PhqtHSODMHMm-utju8Irnu88QwszlpWxNP2Tb20UR66-BNTOhRGfEy6f11ZmFfUJbZ_n4-eaCA78Kb9R-B-AfSU3aAo0299KA8b1mZtZoAonaQ0gPmd4L2h2WuQ7YgaEAPa6uaVu87klPYX7BJXcR-36X4Q8quCxH4t9ENV60w/s1872/helene.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;250&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmrw1sNuD9PhqtHSODMHMm-utju8Irnu88QwszlpWxNP2Tb20UR66-BNTOhRGfEy6f11ZmFfUJbZ_n4-eaCA78Kb9R-B-AfSU3aAo0299KA8b1mZtZoAonaQ0gPmd4L2h2WuQ7YgaEAPa6uaVu87klPYX7BJXcR-36X4Q8quCxH4t9ENV60w/w400-h250/helene.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;I saw UNDEAD when very young on TV and the scene were Duncan seeks shelter at the witch&#39;s house is to me the eternally definitive Halloween moment, it&#39;s archetypal in the best of ways, for I fell instantly in love with the whole shebang, a monster movie fan from then on. ) and dimwitted lover).Meant to tie in to the then-craze for reincarnation (set in motion by the popularity of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridey_Murphy&quot;&gt;Bridey Murphy&lt;/a&gt; story) the story quickly throws logic and even metaphysics to the wind, and ends up derailing the &#39;Grand Scheme of Things&#39; when Lorna Love is able to whisper survival tips to her about-to-be-beheaded for witchcraft Middle Ages incarnation, Helene. Whoa! That&#39;s not how hypnosis works, but hey -- go for it! It&#39;s very clear throughout that Corman had his mind blown by Bergman&#39;s THE SEVENTH SEAL. The idea that archetypes like Death, the Devil, the inght and the Witch could be directly represented as if straight out of a woodcut, this redefined &#39;so old it&#39;s new&#39; and it fit Corman&#39;s loose ballsy style like a glove. Besides, what else is intuition and spirt guidance if not hypnotized selves of the future shooting us tips and cautions from their future psychiatrist&#39;s space couch? And what else are the voices one hears in one&#39;s head that-- if you answer --either means your schizophrenic or a witch depending on the century?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtThHC-S6lbrPkI-Pzq15cYTjPAhLSL0FP4DN0Hdz0Per0XhRYzfyhcMCbMC6MkL-IB1Qms__AiPJJPgm67NM165wauL5ckX-4rEBXD07ljL21byExPCWTytskXJvP_5kXayMakeXSWEsBkhllZqkwmQMo4Dca3X2F5YrByRVozl9L5mLBw/s2013/Inferno.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1086&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2013&quot; height=&quot;346&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtThHC-S6lbrPkI-Pzq15cYTjPAhLSL0FP4DN0Hdz0Per0XhRYzfyhcMCbMC6MkL-IB1Qms__AiPJJPgm67NM165wauL5ckX-4rEBXD07ljL21byExPCWTytskXJvP_5kXayMakeXSWEsBkhllZqkwmQMo4Dca3X2F5YrByRVozl9L5mLBw/w640-h346/Inferno.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;9.&lt;b style=&quot;font-size: x-large;&quot;&gt; INFERNO&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;(1980) Dir. Dario Argento&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Streaming on Tubi, Prime&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;Submitted for your aghast confusion, Dario Argento&#39;s Inferno, i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/10/bad-acid-70s-part-iii-drive-in-dream.html&quot;&gt;Suspiria&lt;/a&gt;&#39;s imperfect but still essential sequel. It is, as Lucio Fulci would say, &quot;an absolute film,&quot; i.e. a piece of textural 4D art that defies the parameters of conventional narrative to move into a world of image, sound, and sensation, wherein dream logic, surreal color-drenched atmosphere and nerve-piercing intensity need serve only themselves and our own semiotic grasp of cinematic codes is used against us--there is no need for dream sequences because reality and nightmare have bled inextricable ; where wherein close scrutiny yields no insight, but where you come in halfway through, aren&#39;t sure what film it is you&#39;r watching, or finally get back from the snack bar, you don&#39;t need to know what you missed. Start anywhere, it&#39;s all going the same direction. The end credits scroll have to bring you back from the abyss and tell you &quot;you have been watching INFERNO&quot; since by then it&#39;s impossible to tell.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv1T_sOaLjVDZ0vcWPgBYyQ6MIyVNvs2ssTMwffN3g7KrziPiclfTfULIfMMXmFvzl5JeVvpXiskG5DlHEb5XkCfcwZJdCnRlybSlIeVPjuRHEQiMh4mqfxWBigHEdClESsEabEZKEg7iLkEt7EWChYEIQswPs4cOuQShkxrzUQkZsnbk8g/s1267/Inferno.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;211&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv1T_sOaLjVDZ0vcWPgBYyQ6MIyVNvs2ssTMwffN3g7KrziPiclfTfULIfMMXmFvzl5JeVvpXiskG5DlHEb5XkCfcwZJdCnRlybSlIeVPjuRHEQiMh4mqfxWBigHEdClESsEabEZKEg7iLkEt7EWChYEIQswPs4cOuQShkxrzUQkZsnbk8g/w400-h211/Inferno.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The story is straight out of a dark fairy tale, wherein a curious resident of a Satanic old building in NYC finds a book about her building and learns of &#39;the three mothers&#39; (mysterious old witches whose power and malice know no bounds). One supposedly lives there &quot;under the soles (souls?) of your shoes&quot; The building is full of secrete entrances and crawlspace, holes in attic roofs where the rain gets in and floods ballrooms seemingly under the basement. When the exploring sister drops her keys down into the flooded hole and--in prime dream/fairy tale fearlessness--jumps in to retrieve them, you know you&#39;re not awake. Later she sends her brother a letter about the mothers and her suspicions and, for some weird reason, the mothers are determined to stop him from reading it or learning about them.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;But whither Goblin? Dove sono i Goblin?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Rather than the mean old &quot;Goblins&quot;, the score is instead a distracting, very un-scary melange of Switched-off Humperdinck tuning his baby grand, &quot;Switched-on Verdi&quot; at Chipmunk speed, cliche&#39;d orchestral suspense cues, all of it scary only in their ability to make us lose our faith in Argento&#39;s artistic judgment. Was he blinded (or deafened) by his love for ELP?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh65sc7CKzSFRZcy1JFJAQToX-gV6PruvYUIUrmxfJtwpx6kZUujBK7CIW2z7TGJKFL0WVTsAcxrS-8SSIj6JOpkLc0YMdSEmVZCAPgcrf-sM6MvuFwf8ggHxAcY1grOczWvePyWQQVI-rydULLFtvmk71Mlapiu8X7iN-m7LtNMUT5YZElLg/s1246/Inferno%202.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;164&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh65sc7CKzSFRZcy1JFJAQToX-gV6PruvYUIUrmxfJtwpx6kZUujBK7CIW2z7TGJKFL0WVTsAcxrS-8SSIj6JOpkLc0YMdSEmVZCAPgcrf-sM6MvuFwf8ggHxAcY1grOczWvePyWQQVI-rydULLFtvmk71Mlapiu8X7iN-m7LtNMUT5YZElLg/w400-h164/Inferno%202.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Luckily, even when making strange ill-advised steps, the overall mise-en-scene plunges so far into occult symbolism and strange fascinations it makes up for it with brilliantly and somewhat intentionally abstract 30s pulp cover compositions, as if a tripping Edward Hopper was painting Raymond Chandler book covers in early two-strip Technicolor. Inside the frames lurks un unpredictable web of archaic symbology and (possibly kinky) obsession: broken glass door-knobs, elemental magic (fire, water, and air especially), arcane tarot and elemental symbolism, bibliophilia (&quot;our lives are governed by the words of... dead people&quot; intones the Satanically eyebrowed archaic bookseller) grisly killing (of course), and secret rooms and floors that seem to be like black box gallery spaces for contemporary art impressions of broken support beams and attic storage; a surreal visit to an old Roman library late in the rainy dark (the cab interior at night, cocooned in color-drenched pouring rain) and its secret basement re-binding room, demonic hands stirring the glue pot; an enigmatic young witch (Ana Peroni) showing up in a music lecture to stare at Mark (Leigh McCloskey) chanting under her breath words he can&#39;t hear because he&#39;s got headphones on; Mark meeting neighbor Dario Nicolodi whose whispers he can hear inside the walls; a creepy butler shooting her up with he pre-bath opiates, using a special thermometer to get the water just right inside her undeniably strange blue/red-lit apartment (I can&#39;t tell if living there would be a dream or nightmare come true); inevitable hands covered in hair with a knife to cut the suffering short when the animals fail the coup de grace. On and on....&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;As Mark says on the phone to his wet sister, &quot;a lot&#39;s happened.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Watch it again, it&#39;s a different movie. I actually reviewed this already (as well as the following film) and forgot I did! That&#39;s how enigmatic and ever-shifting a perennial can be. Never the same film twice, never any better, never any worse. As haunting to superstitious minds... as a ghost.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOCEM2YpAJrudivoNDFf9U1rO_nglpNwub77UyOwdm686yI7afHk74ONZkN3udzADrN2Tb4ve5UlU7_iXL-IOSxVVzklmytVgW9ROqoP7cYwNenoCPrY4xpGuUoC5yz5DPxOYX/s1600/The+Nightmare+3.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;537&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1278&quot; height=&quot;268&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOCEM2YpAJrudivoNDFf9U1rO_nglpNwub77UyOwdm686yI7afHk74ONZkN3udzADrN2Tb4ve5UlU7_iXL-IOSxVVzklmytVgW9ROqoP7cYwNenoCPrY4xpGuUoC5yz5DPxOYX/s640/The+Nightmare+3.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; clear: both; color: #280202; font-family: georgia, utopia, &amp;quot;palatino linotype&amp;quot;, palatino, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;10&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;THE NIGHTMARE&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(2015) Dir. Rodney Ascher&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-family: times; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Streaming on Prime&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The director of&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/10/room-237-ripped-dannys-dopey-decal-off.html&quot;&gt;Room 237&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;tackles another deep weirdness, this time it&#39;s sleep-paralysis. During&amp;nbsp;interviews with a series of troubled but erudite sufferers, Asher gives us&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;suuuuper&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;creepy re-enactments of their sleep paralysis experiences. With the infamous shadow people (one of the strange common threads) rendered in inky with spooky HD blacks against blue/red color scheme evoking Argento, each sleep paralysis moment is so vividly recreated the film transcends mere &#39;documentary&#39; to become something truly new, twisted, meta, and deeply illuminating. For me the creepy highlights are the alien figures composed of TV static, a subject&#39;s recollection of a night when his weird hippie girlfriend at the time conjured a blue lightbeing while on a hike (the actress playing the girl is truly uncanny), and a meta moment where we see&amp;nbsp; bedrooms of the interviewees all connected by a common interdimensional soundstage/sleep study, where the beings move between rooms, conjuring&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Monsters Inc.,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;that &quot;Girl in the Fireplace&quot;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Dr. Who&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;episode and other things that cause a sudden jolt of uncanny epiphany. Have we seen this in-between place ourselves.... in dreams, or like secret passages in Argento movies? Either way, it&#39;s short, illuminating, creepy in the best and most Halloween of ways.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;(For more on sleep paralysis on Acidemic&#39;s sister site Divinorum Psychonauticus, see:&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychonauticus.blogspot.com/2013/08/where-demon-meets-sheets-sleep.html&quot;&gt;Demon Sheets: Sleep Paralysis Theories&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; font-style: normal; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-size: medium; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbfiBhy2Js9vW0uovy8aJ-91dGM4n6y2PtwETt7Wbaw1cc-UjjNQmfPfSvazhhEIR148vNWFSWlmrA5cV2hjcYJuH-Cl2KjQouOonv2h8sRIPWTmfx8FDlxYNXOGlkPQj2eAWundjZ5mTuX3CiIc-T55EEpv-Hn3ooOTJS4eFhCkEo_6xR3A/s2534/af.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;br class=&quot;Apple-interchange-newline&quot; /&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1200&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2534&quot; height=&quot;304&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbfiBhy2Js9vW0uovy8aJ-91dGM4n6y2PtwETt7Wbaw1cc-UjjNQmfPfSvazhhEIR148vNWFSWlmrA5cV2hjcYJuH-Cl2KjQouOonv2h8sRIPWTmfx8FDlxYNXOGlkPQj2eAWundjZ5mTuX3CiIc-T55EEpv-Hn3ooOTJS4eFhCkEo_6xR3A/w640-h304/af.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Bonus.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;ZOMBI 4: AFTER DEATH&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;(1989) Dir. Claude Fragasso&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Fairly terrible opening narration (mispronounces &#39;humanitarian&#39;) but then there&#39;s a great 80s Italian faux-Journey song &quot;The Wild Life&quot; and I&#39;m in. All the way. Zombi 4-Eva. Snob zombie circles turn their blue-painted noses up at&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;Zombi 4: After Death, &lt;/i&gt;but not me, Fragasso is the man.&amp;nbsp;And this one&#39;s got everything I want in an Italian 80s&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;apocalyptic horror film&lt;/i&gt;: gore, dark, moody cinematography (lots of&amp;nbsp;deep greens and dusky reds and inky blacks); endless backlit fog, light shafting through forest, expressionistic boards over holes and broken out windows, dusk-til-dawn timeline, vivd photography capturing the fine flicker of light in the darkness, cool characters who don&#39;t waste time with histrionics and sexist or class-conscious bickering and an apocalyptic ending. Fragasso made some turkeys in his day but this one starts strong, bouncing along on its feet, and it never slows down except to try and get some sleep in the wrecked makeshift missionary-run field hospital (i.e. shades of Fulci&#39;s indelible&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Zombi 2&lt;/i&gt;) while an armed and reliable mercenary crew stand watch. One strange update though, his undead buddies are out there, and they can talk, and still shoot their M-16s.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLj85Q3QcaWfZOG572UBzE8L70ph1YcOT4Trj5fp7U8VnvoakeIBvbf9H--_3vS4UwwnnfuaTArXz96pgD2ERqNYUaHSfMGVsQRpwpCNwGs-f4GdR7xyuYHVGpgWCXAo6wkaV-zTAYP6t7U7aFga6_eiNbJrm8QfiYaPj4Gc8nFECaPhErog/s2214/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-31%20at%206.11.57%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1334&quot; data-original-width=&quot;2214&quot; height=&quot;193&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLj85Q3QcaWfZOG572UBzE8L70ph1YcOT4Trj5fp7U8VnvoakeIBvbf9H--_3vS4UwwnnfuaTArXz96pgD2ERqNYUaHSfMGVsQRpwpCNwGs-f4GdR7xyuYHVGpgWCXAo6wkaV-zTAYP6t7U7aFga6_eiNbJrm8QfiYaPj4Gc8nFECaPhErog/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-31%20at%206.11.57%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;This time the outbreak is confined to a single remote jungle island, the result of a witch doctor&#39;s levied curse (left). Whatever, man, who needs a reason when there&#39;s a beautifully-lit cave with a doorway to hell and a woman with sandy blonde hair trying to stop the zombies by putting her medallion in the center of a table full off lit candles?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;I can&#39;t stress enough: there&#39;s a big difference between Fragasso&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;Zombi 4: After Death&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(this one) and his marginally better&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;Hell of the Living Dead,&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;AKA&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;Virus &lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;AKA&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;font-style: normal;&quot;&gt;Zombie 4. Their both awesome, when you&#39;re in that &lt;/i&gt;misty, chilling jungle atmosphere, gore, steady propulsion, careening momentum, good dubbing and the typically dynamite 80s synth score by Goblin (recycled, but still awesome). So same director, same score, same numbered sequel, but two different movies.&amp;nbsp;Scripted (and co-produced) by Rosella Drudi (Fragasso&#39;s wife and writer of the inoperable&lt;i&gt; &lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;Troll 2&lt;/i&gt;) so it&#39;s got some sensitivity in its female characters&#39; dialogue and--as usual for Druidi&#39;s scripts--it&#39;s laden with deadpan absurdity that may or may not be intentional. May we never find out! (Tubi)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/6913865102966613611/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/absolute-october-10-weird-atmospheric.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/6913865102966613611'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/6913865102966613611'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/absolute-october-10-weird-atmospheric.html' title='&quot;Absolute&quot; October: 10 Seasonal, Classic Picks: Atmospheric, Uncanny &amp; Re-watchable. '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievWCpxgBJVRM-SRyQMbQjsnbFfhXU0N0URgqR4dWf-GWNrwG___oQHs73wW226RFaOrsnjwviErkefiApCNb80jILofp3hQu0k_cKNMABoY3I7l5fvW6F5t5VpYLBfWE84jcvR9XHUHYk1L84Iwoggku01_NiaCnF7_F05aBz59DrkJp-7g/s72-w640-h430-c/nihht%20of%20the%20werewolf.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-963752965541543115</id><published>2022-10-28T14:42:00.010-05:00</published><updated>2022-10-30T16:28:24.627-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Calling All Macabre Bakers: Netflix&#39;s Callously Canceled CURIOUS CREATIONS OF CHRISTINE MCCONNELL </title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhODj_fqkHKXQ8UFM5Q7uqEX6pSFXxnQfgAR7nesUznFaubQHMY9nLhAEX-Jpbm_YTIWN-a4MWIkLh5fdPPe75KY4cTWk70B7UrYSVD2vNwLMQFKNUGI0_v-D5jvYJgi3Zhv9Y01gCuoFgaFcCfugzhlxt8Y6BLPsPJwJq1K-g5Y7IYFDXTQQ/s656/curious%20creations.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;409&quot; data-original-width=&quot;656&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhODj_fqkHKXQ8UFM5Q7uqEX6pSFXxnQfgAR7nesUznFaubQHMY9nLhAEX-Jpbm_YTIWN-a4MWIkLh5fdPPe75KY4cTWk70B7UrYSVD2vNwLMQFKNUGI0_v-D5jvYJgi3Zhv9Y01gCuoFgaFcCfugzhlxt8Y6BLPsPJwJq1K-g5Y7IYFDXTQQ/w640-h400/curious%20creations.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;Netflix only gave us one short season of this very curious mix of deranged muppets, how-to naking, macabre decor, and the elegant McConnell, showing us step-by-step how to make perfectly realistic tarantulas out of cookies. Fans of her Youtube (?) channel and those like mem who just tumbled onto it during a 4 AM search for some chill baking show to fall asleep to, were amazed, enthralled, confused. But not enough people came, so it got canceled after six episodes.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;It&#39;s understandable -&lt;i&gt; Curious Creations of Christine McConnell&lt;/i&gt; doesn&#39;t fit any easy category. There is no row for what it is, neither this nor that, a macabre kids show aimed at the Addams children. It would have perfect home on local TV, at 5 AM on Friday night/Saturday mornings in the 70s,&amp;nbsp; before the golden hour between late-late show broadcasts of class horror movies and early morning cartoons. The only way I can describe it might be, if Tim Burton produced a puppet show from hell, starring a steady-handed, elegantly dressed, staggeringly talented fusion of Morticia Addams, Martha Stewart, and Bob Ross if he hung out with muppets. Christine has a mummified cat full of Waldo Lydecker-ish&amp;nbsp;put-downs, a stray raccoon she rescue - wearing a pink bow (a real bane of the cat&#39;s existence) a big wolfman kind of a thing and monster in the basement who actually does eat one of the more obnoxious guests, and even a human male love interest who might be a serial killer. And he&#39;s &lt;i&gt;not &lt;/i&gt;annoying! Clearly this isn&#39;t for kids, unless they&#39;re cool with monsters and easy-bake ovens.&amp;nbsp;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4tUR73Dr_Z0kBrI5P1S1VfQfO0kabW5xzvkCwMG91OLOoWZ3EnTK9kOXB68VBIu4kQPEYlwR0r4ydDBhAQ1LL7TJqBwvPaO5Vj71q74vIHUTiYaUC3-3ivvF217AcfaLccthUb608ITKAA6cyaOowOa5sbzdlqGXkXcY7t5wi0YhISqYQRg/s1500/christine.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4tUR73Dr_Z0kBrI5P1S1VfQfO0kabW5xzvkCwMG91OLOoWZ3EnTK9kOXB68VBIu4kQPEYlwR0r4ydDBhAQ1LL7TJqBwvPaO5Vj71q74vIHUTiYaUC3-3ivvF217AcfaLccthUb608ITKAA6cyaOowOa5sbzdlqGXkXcY7t5wi0YhISqYQRg/s1500/christine.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1500&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1036&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4tUR73Dr_Z0kBrI5P1S1VfQfO0kabW5xzvkCwMG91OLOoWZ3EnTK9kOXB68VBIu4kQPEYlwR0r4ydDBhAQ1LL7TJqBwvPaO5Vj71q74vIHUTiYaUC3-3ivvF217AcfaLccthUb608ITKAA6cyaOowOa5sbzdlqGXkXcY7t5wi0YhISqYQRg/s320/christine.jpg&quot; width=&quot;221&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;That&#39;s why it was canceled perhaps - just too brazenly itself. People might go on the baking row or horror row or wherever and look for something random and see that thumbnail image with its fancy font (at right), and it might frighten the gentle folk in search of family values fun, yet makes its ideal audience (the weird ones) dismiss it as ye &lt;i&gt;another &lt;/i&gt;PG-rated show of the &quot;Sabrina/Hermione sleuth and her quirky friends at a Disney-style haunted school&quot; variety, its hackneyed score coked with Elfman whimsy, its cast bursting with hot young guys and old character actors with mysterious pasts). BUT in this one the Sabrina/Hermione&amp;nbsp;bake cakes between adventures, or maybe runs a small bakery--OMG, 2&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Broke Girls&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(-1) crossed with &lt;i&gt;Sabrina the Teenage Witch.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;In short, it practically begs you to scroll past.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Christine is nothing like any of that, so how to advertise it escapes Netflix&#39;s PR people. The executives should have had patience enough to let its weirdness slowly accrue a cult. Rather than let it accrue it was cut off after one season. Ironically all those aforementioned teenage witch shows are about staying true to yourself, even if you don&#39;t fit the available molds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Truth be told, it&#39;s a weird show. I almost gave up on it myself. I watched two episodes still in a WTF kind of mood. Was this too twee and faux-quirky? Maybe, but when the serial killer guy arrived, and the monster in the basement, I kind of came around.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What&#39;s unique is the the vibe is in total rapport with the super mellow Christine, whose steady surgeon hands making this big elaborate cakes and cookies in the shapes of tarantulas, skeleton fingers, huge haunted mansion cakes, and are a sight to see. I also like her kind of sand mandala Zen approach to it all. These baked creations take hours but usually within minutes after finishing it, she just digs in and passes pieces around -- all without a second thought. For a girl who has amazing. clothes, furniture, and stuff (she has a popular Youtube how-to channel showing off her elaborate place settings and gorgeous Victorian mansion) she is remarkably free of the kind of materialist furor that can possess artists afraid to let go of their work.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it can be tough to read if her type are just doing the macabre thing as a way to stand out and hook a certain demographic, i.e. Elvira or Lana Del Rey, or are legit oddballs, like Dame D&#39;arcy or Melora Cregar. The cartoon-Victorian art direction or period gowns can seem marketed by male producers to draw in lonesome horror fans, or it can seem like a legit artist with strange tastes honed it just right to her weird liking. &lt;i&gt;The Curious Creations of Chritine McConnell &lt;/i&gt;(the whimsy of the name is also a red flag) seems the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So don&#39;t let the Burton-esque decor fool you into thinking she&#39;s all goth-posturing, this McConnell&#39;s weird Martha Stewart meets Morticia Addams vibe can throw you off at first, until you realize it&#39;s not going to go to all the hack places you expect it to. There is no single predecessor, no other such animal. It&#39;s like those orange frosted cookies with jack-o-lantern faces put out by the local baker on Halloween enhanced and perfected to the point of art, to the point they are indistinguishable from real pumpkins. There is no need for Halloween to justify this - the occult is every day. Thus a weird &lt;a href=&quot;https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Scarfolk &lt;/a&gt;air of genuine weird&amp;nbsp; hangs over the familiar elements, and it can feel dangerous, even threatening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrb0GpiXd02j2PL1P4F16NiQxtC88S35CJUE1kq3hBm9N_-WCGAVBGG4qYKXtO15R7Up74_IcKUATmHNxi-TtwtWjN2AHU4rLcI8hiFSBT1LOVd_6AbGXwC96P2AB7YG3tiaPR-cgDiUZJWZocrxFDJkBdDqYh-PPRoFX6Zi9CDVpIF0lxRQ/s736/curious%20creation.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;406&quot; data-original-width=&quot;736&quot; height=&quot;221&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrb0GpiXd02j2PL1P4F16NiQxtC88S35CJUE1kq3hBm9N_-WCGAVBGG4qYKXtO15R7Up74_IcKUATmHNxi-TtwtWjN2AHU4rLcI8hiFSBT1LOVd_6AbGXwC96P2AB7YG3tiaPR-cgDiUZJWZocrxFDJkBdDqYh-PPRoFX6Zi9CDVpIF0lxRQ/w400-h221/curious%20creation.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Too many original shows have died this way, but petitions by a slowly growing cult fan base brought &#39;em back. Maybe if you sign the one for Christine,, on&lt;a href=&quot;https://chng.it/jx4YxNgSVN&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;change.org,&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;you&#39;ll wreak a magic miracle. Me, I would love to get invited over for more baked tarantulas and severed human fingers, but I&#39;m the demo. I watch the &lt;i&gt;Great British Baking Show&lt;/i&gt;, to fall asleep or de-stress and I was in love with Morticia Addams as a kid, aspired to be Gomez, watched Dr. Shock (a Philadelphia TV horror movie host, ala Ghoulardi) every weekend. I hated&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Muensters &lt;/i&gt;as as much as I loved&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;The Addams Family. &lt;/i&gt;I&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;always dreamed Wednesday and Pugsley would kill that little Eddie Muenster, and maybe Danny Partridge while they were at it&lt;i&gt;, &lt;/i&gt;And also I grew up watching &lt;i&gt;Sesame Street&lt;/i&gt; like every other 70s kid. In short I get the vibe of &lt;i&gt;Christine McConnell.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/963752965541543115/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/calling-all-macabre-bakers-netflixs.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/963752965541543115'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/963752965541543115'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/calling-all-macabre-bakers-netflixs.html' title='Calling All Macabre Bakers: Netflix&#39;s Callously Canceled CURIOUS CREATIONS OF CHRISTINE MCCONNELL '/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhODj_fqkHKXQ8UFM5Q7uqEX6pSFXxnQfgAR7nesUznFaubQHMY9nLhAEX-Jpbm_YTIWN-a4MWIkLh5fdPPe75KY4cTWk70B7UrYSVD2vNwLMQFKNUGI0_v-D5jvYJgi3Zhv9Y01gCuoFgaFcCfugzhlxt8Y6BLPsPJwJq1K-g5Y7IYFDXTQQ/s72-w640-h400-c/curious%20creations.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-581865673853662866</id><published>2022-10-27T08:11:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2022-10-27T08:13:35.782-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Hauntology for Red October: SPOTIFY PLAYLIST for Walking through the Windy Parks at Twilight</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS0tIysoizSYf_U7bp_bqhlnIGhoIxVSGt0t6Ivce_omvbFwUA8dJm791jfF8OfgZJNV7Qrfdft1AcrAg1SU3s7H5OXywbx9HlxFCk4V_CozSc9mbJWFOcbA1xZ4s8bOHyEW9SVCQIFy6Q5xc6kBNQ657LBFZboYJPciZNbTyov7DW-lr6xg/s1284/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-20%20at%202.32.32%20PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;563&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1284&quot; height=&quot;280&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS0tIysoizSYf_U7bp_bqhlnIGhoIxVSGt0t6Ivce_omvbFwUA8dJm791jfF8OfgZJNV7Qrfdft1AcrAg1SU3s7H5OXywbx9HlxFCk4V_CozSc9mbJWFOcbA1xZ4s8bOHyEW9SVCQIFy6Q5xc6kBNQ657LBFZboYJPciZNbTyov7DW-lr6xg/w640-h280/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-20%20at%202.32.32%20PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hey man, Halloween is a week away so I wanted to share my weird mixes.&amp;nbsp; Acidemic is so much more than just weird and accidentally or intentionally artsy/psychedelic movies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check out these groovy and mystical analog synth-pumping hauntological and wondrous scores and sounds, perfect if you want that chill October vibe and grew up on 60s-80s TV horror films, classroom filmstrips, and the weird vibe of a post-trick-or-treating movie double feature rental. If you like them, press like so I can crack two digits!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;iframe allow=&quot;autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;380&quot; src=&quot;https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6sKmgbQ83Xnsfb7IERcVnn?utm_source=generator&quot; style=&quot;border-radius: 12px;&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  140.  
  141.  
  142. Next up - Old radio shows. These stand the test of time and are great for Halloween chills if you still have a functioning mind&#39;s eye and need something to listen to while you sit in the dark staring at your lit up jack-o-lantern or flickering fire.&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  143.  
  144. &lt;iframe allow=&quot;autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;380&quot; src=&quot;https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/5sfwUzZxzgJq4btYkp4eEH?utm_source=generator&quot; style=&quot;border-radius: 12px;&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;
  145.  
  146. And then some Demonic Soundtracks and Scores for Non-Existent 70s-80s horror films&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  147.  
  148. &lt;iframe allow=&quot;autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;380&quot; src=&quot;https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/7DldvDH7ZqsjSRuyfTBvSM?utm_source=generator&quot; style=&quot;border-radius: 12px;&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
  149.  
  150. And don&#39;t forget my Youtube List if you want to tune in deep to the late-night weird, guarnteed to get you in the crispy mood.&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&amp;nbsp;
  151.  
  152. &lt;iframe allow=&quot;accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLxfo2NAyhWA_nAHTIGSWvBWMS0ybvFFQm&quot; title=&quot;YouTube video player&quot; width=&quot;560&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/581865673853662866/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/hauntology-for-red-october-spotify.html#comment-form' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/581865673853662866'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/581865673853662866'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2022/10/hauntology-for-red-october-spotify.html' title='Hauntology for Red October: SPOTIFY PLAYLIST for Walking through the Windy Parks at Twilight'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS0tIysoizSYf_U7bp_bqhlnIGhoIxVSGt0t6Ivce_omvbFwUA8dJm791jfF8OfgZJNV7Qrfdft1AcrAg1SU3s7H5OXywbx9HlxFCk4V_CozSc9mbJWFOcbA1xZ4s8bOHyEW9SVCQIFy6Q5xc6kBNQ657LBFZboYJPciZNbTyov7DW-lr6xg/s72-w640-h280-c/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-20%20at%202.32.32%20PM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-5961014961071846859</id><published>2022-10-22T14:45:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2022-11-07T18:34:36.828-05:00</updated><title type='text'>HALLOWEEN (1978) - A 10-Step Deconstruction of Carpenter&#39;s Secret Recipe</title><content type='html'>&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyTzkxoWCZxFYjMm9db5x7oOHpTuzy443I1R-5eOQ-SzQ6o47lnmypjSVJagagIgOOU_z3sf7aafK6pLvtJqxDad_67TxvgEOpz-Fg4-cFntS9weUa4JXmJHs3dbwP9kxJxT-DoA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.34.42+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyTzkxoWCZxFYjMm9db5x7oOHpTuzy443I1R-5eOQ-SzQ6o47lnmypjSVJagagIgOOU_z3sf7aafK6pLvtJqxDad_67TxvgEOpz-Fg4-cFntS9weUa4JXmJHs3dbwP9kxJxT-DoA/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.34.42+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  153. &lt;br /&gt;(&lt;i&gt;updated from orig. 2012 version&lt;/i&gt;)&amp;nbsp;Every time I&#39;ve seen HALLOWEEN it&#39;s been in a different visual format. I was only 12 when it hit theaters and transformed my grade school cafeteria into a never-ending whisper orchestra of giddy ever-mounting dread. That tagline (&quot;the night &lt;i&gt;he &lt;/i&gt;came home&quot;) and that image of the butcher knife pumpkin were slowly sandpapering our coccyx down to a sense of bottom chakra vertigo. We too terrified by the credits and of course that theme song, even the font, to watch the actual movie when came on late-70s/early-80s network TV. But we kept hustling through the living room while our parent&#39;s watched it, catching just enough of a glimpse to overload our dread before retreating to the empowering solace of DC war comics. It was, of course, pan and scanned, and edited, and different material inserted to pad the time and change the meaning of the whole film. And even&lt;i&gt; then, I&lt;/i&gt; could never stay in the same room with it for more than the space between two commercial breaks.&amp;nbsp;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  154. It wasn&#39;t until college that I saw the whole thing through to the end, the original version on VHS, panned and scanned, and me immune to slasher fear through the even stronger empowerment of whiskey. Once afraid only of murderers I was growing up to be afraid only of cops.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;First, we must note Carpenter has never made a film remotely like it since. There&#39;s no other non-supernatural horror movie in his catalogue. And despite Dr. Loomis&#39;s rantings about Michael being the boogeyman, death itself, darkness&quot; etc., in this first and best-by-far film, he is still just a maniac. There are no &#39;slasher film rules&#39; yet, the virgin can&#39;t be certain she&#39;ll even&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;the final girl or what that even means. These future archetypes are all being created with this film. Carpenter is writing directly on the primordial subconscious. The only imitator to really pay attention to the actual style and substance of Carpenter&#39;s film is Sean S. Cunningham in the original Friday the 13th. Everyone else kept the subject &#39;killer stalking teenagers&#39; but missed the trees for the forest - not examining the variations on cinematic language that made the original HALLOWEEN so scary.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;
  155. &lt;br /&gt;
  156. Carpenter is a stubborn iconoclast who does his own thing so never chased the cheap bucks of the slasher film he and wife/producer Deborah Hill invented. Thus, HALLOWEEN stands alone as a modern film classic that might be sidestepped by some film deconstructionist/analyst writers due to its unseemly progeny and Rob Zombie remakes. But here, at last, I&#39;m old enough, and have gone so very long without ever being stalked by a killer that I can watch this movie and have only pleasant goosebump fear and not the queasy proto-feminist anxiety and Satanic Panic headline dread of auld. And I&#39;ve noticed some ingenious aspects of Carpenter&#39;s framing and story I wish to share. Attention all future horror filmmakers! Don&#39;t just have a killer with a knife and wonder why your film sucks and Carpenter made it look so easy. Pay attention to blocking, lighting, and above all, realness and in-the-moment termite art observance.&lt;br /&gt;
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  159. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikC2DF3MHCq8p_mq0vvFmz2qlhHAbGoC7JgxbhAVDeWvFoiPkFlXLF2i3SxazpBJFHPBn6K5XPqN4tw98b6j34BWAsh5OSNBSYxcn0TJCKjo_3sfz1y77iMk6NTF1qJRU83Nafw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.30.06+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;278&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikC2DF3MHCq8p_mq0vvFmz2qlhHAbGoC7JgxbhAVDeWvFoiPkFlXLF2i3SxazpBJFHPBn6K5XPqN4tw98b6j34BWAsh5OSNBSYxcn0TJCKjo_3sfz1y77iMk6NTF1qJRU83Nafw/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.30.06+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;1.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: large;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;Tick-Tockality&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;: (AKA tick-tock momentum)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;a. Cross-cut Time Melt:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;Carpenter subverts cross-cutting in order to slow down &#39;real-time,&#39; doubling or even tripling the length of scary suspenseful moments so they seem to melt and suspense becomes almost unnaturally intense. Tick-tockality (I coined the phrase in cinema criticism before the advent of the app, so I get to keep it) means a small narrative/diegetic time drawn out via cross-cuts that don&#39;t imply simultaneous movement. In this way the climax of the film takes up like 20 minutes but it&#39;s really all occurring over 5-10 minute period of actual narrative/diegetic time. So if you&#39;re watching Michael come slowly after Laurie as she pounds on the front door trying, to wake up the kids to let her in, the scene seems to go on forever. How can anyone walk that slowly? When we cut between them, we pick up where we left off. If Michael was walking past the neighbor&#39;s mailbox right before we cut to Laurie pounding on the door, screaming for Bobby to let her in, when we cut back to Michael he&#39;s still right next to the mailbox. The other &#39;side&#39; freezes when not seen. It&#39;s an effect we&#39;re not used to as viewers, except in our nightmares wherein scary moments seem to stretch out and melt time. It&#39;s very effective, and rarely used. Mostly cross-cuts are used to avoid jump-cuts, allowing for easy trimming of undesirable moments in a shot.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSW25pC5gFhPJfhyphenhyphenAGMzAfWVc7F_F20yJrtuXzj6MMqAclcJYViELLS8sHYn0kZ-llplDmHqKVOphotfIm3mdUMhiaSDabpwOockMMYgUBGpKT1GWxdyo2LJmYQ1eeS6mDDTSifQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.35.10+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;171&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSW25pC5gFhPJfhyphenhyphenAGMzAfWVc7F_F20yJrtuXzj6MMqAclcJYViELLS8sHYn0kZ-llplDmHqKVOphotfIm3mdUMhiaSDabpwOockMMYgUBGpKT1GWxdyo2LJmYQ1eeS6mDDTSifQ/w400-h171/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.35.10+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;b. &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Concentrated Time Frame - single night: magic hour-to-darkness&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;/b&gt;There&#39;s a palpable fear of the oncoming night suffusing the first 1/3 of &lt;i&gt;Halloween, &lt;/i&gt;from walking to school to driving towards babysitting jobs, smoking weed in the car and talking about Mitch Cramer.&amp;nbsp;There&#39;s a long scene of Laurie and Annie driving, shot from the backseat, as if we&#39;re one of the babysitters or children, watching the sun go down through the front windshield. It being autumn, the darkness falls fast, so we go from late afternoon to early night in a shocking but beguiling jump cut. Any kid squriming with delight waiting for the night to fall so we could go trick-or-treating, or the drive-in movie, or fireworks, to begin, now finds that goosey delightful feeling coupled to insurmountable, roller-coaster climb dread.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;c.&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp; In-the-moment observed (the mundane-rendered uncanny) detail -&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;The sequels to &lt;i&gt;Halloween &lt;/i&gt;go the wrong way, making Michael an unstoppable killer, turning all the victims into the audience, imagining progressively more destructive deaths for the killer, trying to ensure he&#39;ll never come back, the cast of victims grows obsessively large, the death scenes, black comic relief characters and other cliches abound, and their gore takes over from suspense. The bigger they get the less scary they are. The sense of the unstoppable killer begins with Michael, but never ends across the spectrum. No one keeps bleeding when their stabbed or sliced. Everyone&#39;s blood has great clotting ability., not just Michael&#39;s.&amp;nbsp; Instead of, say, drawing out the scene of say, finding yourself locked inside the back yard-separated laundry room in your underwear while trying to wash the spaghetti sauce off your pants, or being on the phone and hearing the dog die outside, thinking only of it&#39;s &#39;getting lucky&#39; - the banality of the conversations rendered uncanny via the external threat, of drawing out every moment of entering a house, yelling the names of your presumed friends inside, wondering with mounting dread why all the lights are off, finally coming in a side door, walking through the rooms, finally walking slowly up the stairs, the tension ramping with every step, we rush heedlessly to sudden death. Take the sequel for example, with the focus on naughty nurses and their asshole EMT lovers in the hospital jacuzzi in the hydrotherapy room, then suddenly bam - a syringe crammed into the dude&#39;s neck. No slow drawn-out deaths, no suspense, nothing but creative deaths, i.e. what people remember from the movie rather than the slow functioning engine that gave the deaths palpable fright. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The combined effect of &lt;i&gt;a&lt;/i&gt;,&lt;i&gt; b&lt;/i&gt;, and &lt;i&gt;c&lt;/i&gt;, is a sense of inescapable existential dread of what&#39;s coming and/or unseen, imbuing even innocuous details with uncanny unease.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Part of the success of this strategy may stem from our familiarity with historical epics, like &lt;i&gt;Gone with the Wind&lt;/i&gt;,&amp;nbsp;for example, wherein whole decades fly by between busy but static real-time tableaux of eventful key moments in both the life of the heroine and the South as a whole: In the narrative structure: coming-out parties wherein the news of war first breaks out, and Scarlett and Rhett first dance. We become familiarized to the idea that we wouldn&#39;t see something, some closely observed detail, if it wasn&#39;t foreshadowing and advancing to the story. With this &#39;training&#39; of our ability to &#39;read&#39; a film, slower movement within a single &#39;ordinary&#39; scene --where nothing special seems to be happening (such as Rhett&#39;s daughter&#39;s riding her pony around on the track while her parents watch)-- fill us with mounting dread.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;In this way, &#39;tick-tock momentum&#39; subverts our familiarity with this epic tack. Just keep showing foreshadowing details, each slow step building the suspense with a progression of possible foreshadowing so that even innocuous minor details, keys, pumpkins, beers, TV, become imbued with uncanniness and anxiety about the coming of the night. You can do this forever, dragging the night forward until we begin to relax our mood; but when we keep feeling the lurking menace, this focus on mundane detail helps us appreciate what may be our last moments. We suddenly cling to our moms and dads, aware of all the dangers they&#39;ve saved us from; thanks to them, we considered ourselves immortal; thanks to Carpenter, we realize this is not so.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRavdwMawByDXSJrg2P_Tn51St4XQgM8LtQfVQb91NpEc2FoN9c5P-X9cnSOe2fymUdjmTKB9KMu-6kcOCmi_j8xnezVlweJukJl9FQz0ePS56L7Xg7-rHVTCnG-jpM1Lh38_IKQ/s1600/Hallowdistance.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRavdwMawByDXSJrg2P_Tn51St4XQgM8LtQfVQb91NpEc2FoN9c5P-X9cnSOe2fymUdjmTKB9KMu-6kcOCmi_j8xnezVlweJukJl9FQz0ePS56L7Xg7-rHVTCnG-jpM1Lh38_IKQ/s640/Hallowdistance.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  161. &lt;center&gt;
  162.  
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  164. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58nZV0TfaM8pFsrB1KfmskbE5Koz79VTVZcfkgvtlbPbGsozK3GilV2bODG4wnPOBQhWSpvLaBJzNxKCt4nj0GHh5_bPSoBhNRjGl-dcO9MImCeFOmo6CZHAyjrVa7txjtVvdyg/s1600/dfdsf.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58nZV0TfaM8pFsrB1KfmskbE5Koz79VTVZcfkgvtlbPbGsozK3GilV2bODG4wnPOBQhWSpvLaBJzNxKCt4nj0GHh5_bPSoBhNRjGl-dcO9MImCeFOmo6CZHAyjrVa7txjtVvdyg/s640/dfdsf.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  165. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  166. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6GuyffiXDkVQV8BkwvMqtARzwxlfceqzFwaACIDYqNEO0Jm9N0U1vBglMy82zq_ADwwiN4vwiP5VwlBPgZ4R00U9vXCZCKtQBk8W9bk6MxGvM_Z0XNIHEJSMFUpSpY9Fx0Kjkg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.17.02+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;282&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6GuyffiXDkVQV8BkwvMqtARzwxlfceqzFwaACIDYqNEO0Jm9N0U1vBglMy82zq_ADwwiN4vwiP5VwlBPgZ4R00U9vXCZCKtQBk8W9bk6MxGvM_Z0XNIHEJSMFUpSpY9Fx0Kjkg/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.17.02+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  167. 2. &lt;b&gt;Bleeding Darkness -&lt;/b&gt; The edges of Carpenter&#39;s wide screen are always either black or tending towards darkness or some offscreen vanishing point, bleeding through and erasing the difference between the screen and the dark of the theater, or the room where you&#39;re watching the film (which for &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt; should definitely be in the dark). The darkness of the screen makes for many places to hide, and the innocent kids seem always about to be swallowed up. The early scene of the nurse and Dr. Loomis and the nurse driving to the asylum is so dark it seems like any minute they&#39;ll crash into a wall or be swallowed up by the black. Eventually you can begin to think the screen extends all around you, and the immersion into a state of delirious paranoia springs to life; on the old fashioned pan and scan TV the slasher was effectively boxed in, trapped. But on the true masterly Panavision rectangle, there are no edges to stop him from flowing out like a nightmare baby with the bathwater darkness.&lt;br /&gt;
  168. &lt;br /&gt;
  169.  
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  171. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjayl9fOJxLwgiufVEEseJw7h8-U06-iipodpFDoil-wUS-XoI3LppUZNC6Pp1XAlEt1ceFn5fPV9_LFq5ED-03kyQngFQN3rDT4fLOIUDkVP9joDBPhw4ZMjLP9LwQYOO_3QtoZQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.29.21+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjayl9fOJxLwgiufVEEseJw7h8-U06-iipodpFDoil-wUS-XoI3LppUZNC6Pp1XAlEt1ceFn5fPV9_LFq5ED-03kyQngFQN3rDT4fLOIUDkVP9joDBPhw4ZMjLP9LwQYOO_3QtoZQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.29.21+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  172. &lt;table align=&quot;center&quot; cellpadding=&quot;0&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;tr-caption-container&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;
  173. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTpFmscVWs06jUHrioNL5MfoRqpv2DIsBI0MuXuCb5m3_AaqXcGHWXd7PE7UZQpFdiwD4JCHgONf_3ST7t38GfLqVGd_6iObrzWMKsAPZloI5DpSDKua3peqCWHYZDY_9Ux3bVjA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.29.46+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;290&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTpFmscVWs06jUHrioNL5MfoRqpv2DIsBI0MuXuCb5m3_AaqXcGHWXd7PE7UZQpFdiwD4JCHgONf_3ST7t38GfLqVGd_6iObrzWMKsAPZloI5DpSDKua3peqCWHYZDY_9Ux3bVjA/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.29.46+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  174. &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class=&quot;tr-caption&quot; style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  175. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn-590c1nNAT_u93YpluOc4mqpZjVuyGL_soNO7kepdqjM_0hgoQGv7416egfUMJ1UIY1xW09pj4U3PUHxAw6COV5U5Rti5qDDeXKwzgSyq3Obee_9hEVM5YfNjO7r-eVTNBEzvQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.28.29+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;304&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn-590c1nNAT_u93YpluOc4mqpZjVuyGL_soNO7kepdqjM_0hgoQGv7416egfUMJ1UIY1xW09pj4U3PUHxAw6COV5U5Rti5qDDeXKwzgSyq3Obee_9hEVM5YfNjO7r-eVTNBEzvQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.28.29+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  176. &lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  177. &lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
  178. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  179. &lt;/div&gt;
  180. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  181. 3. &lt;b&gt;Forbidden&amp;nbsp;Sound&lt;/b&gt;- The viewer&#39;s relation to the image onscreen when watching any movie is generally associative dream-like narrative immersion. Unless there&#39;s a distraction in the theater, or we suddenly have to go to the bathroom, chances are we&#39;re completely absorbed. This absorption is something Carpenter deliberately disrupts by leaving us way behind or far from the action. The muffled voices of the people talking far away from our POV killer perspective is very unusual in any other film: we can hear them just enough to understand what they&#39;re saying, but not be sure we&#39;re meant to. If you&#39;ve ever heard Blue Note jazz records on a really good pair of headphones you know you can sometimes hear people whispering or talking very low in the studio - whispers - maybe the producers talking over lunch orders - you can&#39;t tell if you&#39;re hallucinating or not. It&#39;s the same way with &lt;i&gt;Halloween.&lt;/i&gt; The break with golden rule sound mixing throws us off balance. Are we supposed to hear their words amongst the breathing and ambience? Maybe, probably, but the result is a feeling of privileged, eavesdrop information unusual in cinema, especially horror cinema which exploits the voyeur impulse but not the eavesdrop impulse.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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  183. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  184. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6-5uN1i0fvXDa1srfhXdvICdS4bng_3EIWR4BwO_-XCYD8ujX9kM5AJFgJ_Xl323xEeTP1dmfbO8jbYUXo8Ms8dQl1MUsTnkD3aFqZrhfNDZQ8CrSS_h3pxWPm_qRLmCEazlpQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.30.30+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;276&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6-5uN1i0fvXDa1srfhXdvICdS4bng_3EIWR4BwO_-XCYD8ujX9kM5AJFgJ_Xl323xEeTP1dmfbO8jbYUXo8Ms8dQl1MUsTnkD3aFqZrhfNDZQ8CrSS_h3pxWPm_qRLmCEazlpQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.30.30+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  185. &lt;div style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  186. &lt;br /&gt;
  187. 4) &lt;b&gt;Vanishing Point-of-View (VPOV)&lt;/b&gt;:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span&gt;Carpenter gives master-worthy class on how to generate maximum dread from just a series of long shots down tree-lined suburban streets. Carpenter popularized the killer POV at least in the suburban setting, but did more than just that - he made&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;every&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;shot seem threatening. Note the use of big dark trees in the post-opener daytime tracking shots around the neighborhood..&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;At the right of the image above we see the road disappearing into the distance, to the left and middle is a big dark spot of bushes. The shadows are rich and deep (at least on my Anchor Bay DVD) on both sides, with the car and house fronts in the center like a lonely outpost flanked by Edward Hopper-style darkness. The darkness almost seems to be sucking the light parts towards it like a black hole, thus we get the feeling of movement without really moving (unless we&#39;re watching this in a car).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  188. &lt;br /&gt;
  189. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  190. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3v3IiJMXHSgO4EPYKodQVPpdLWytrHXZvqdJbz4PvanD6GNDa5cpJS4jWhWzrqKZVDYE6LwomRNf0JZ1jHF5cvIkY5aeKbAwvhoKcm_d6lqyofgIbgsbevKpaCxvuEbH5_M1Vhg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.33.25+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;278&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3v3IiJMXHSgO4EPYKodQVPpdLWytrHXZvqdJbz4PvanD6GNDa5cpJS4jWhWzrqKZVDYE6LwomRNf0JZ1jHF5cvIkY5aeKbAwvhoKcm_d6lqyofgIbgsbevKpaCxvuEbH5_M1Vhg/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.33.25+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  191. &lt;br /&gt;
  192. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;5.&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;Reverse Angle Denial&lt;/b&gt;: As Sheldon Hall notes in his essay &quot;Carpenter Widescreen Style,&quot; we never see Michael &lt;i&gt;see&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/div&gt;
  193. &lt;blockquote class=&quot;tr_bq&quot;&gt;
  194. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  195. &quot;(W)e are often positioned along or beside Michael but we are denied the reverse angle cut which would show us his reaction if he were not wearing his mask: the necessary pre-condition for empathy as both Hitchcock and Carpenter have noted.&quot;&lt;/div&gt;
  196. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  197. &lt;blockquote class=&quot;tr_bq&quot;&gt;
  198. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  199. &quot;We are however given just such a reaction shot when positioned with Laurie at the several points where she becomes aware of being followed. At these moments --such as when Laurie watches as the car Michael is driving passes her and Annie (Nancy Loomis) and comes to a momentary halt, or when she looks out from her bedroom window at Michael standing below--suspense derives in part from the fixed distance between Laurie/the camera/us and Michael: she is not close enough to identify him clearly, to recognize or dispel the threat, and the camera does not close the gap. A variation of the device is Carpenter&#39;s manipulation of the distance of the camera from Laurie and her friends. It does not always stay with them as they traverse the sidewalks of Haddonfield, but will sometimes hold a fixed position as they walk into the shot&#39;s depth. In refusing to be prompted into movement, to be motivated by the action happening before it (as is customary in classical cinema), the camera&#39;s objective autonomy suggest Michael&#39;s subjectivity even in his absence, and again increases our anxiety for Laurie. (2)&lt;/div&gt;
  200. &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  201. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  202. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7lqPMUqJt9uh8dvbCGDJ8zDzUFrii0y5n1_mq-m2LjeKfFOw09R8HClhWIw9r_c86tyNs52gQzfMm_2AtpEDDf6D7o2EqDOZz8gzqg4FV86Rt93iG321f8j1siWife7j2CgVaSg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.39.30+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7lqPMUqJt9uh8dvbCGDJ8zDzUFrii0y5n1_mq-m2LjeKfFOw09R8HClhWIw9r_c86tyNs52gQzfMm_2AtpEDDf6D7o2EqDOZz8gzqg4FV86Rt93iG321f8j1siWife7j2CgVaSg/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.39.30+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;. &lt;i&gt;6.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Hawksian Seige Dynamics&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 700;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  203. Carpenter is a huge Hawks fan, and Hawks&#39; films are all about the dynamics of group action, with the camera situated to represent one of the people in the group as people argue and layer their dialogue, so that no matter how grim the action we feel involved and comforted by a sense of belonging to the group. This overlapping dialogue draws us in. It comes too fast for us to think, just like real life, we can only follow the thread. We never see what they don&#39;t see. We&#39;re with them all the way. We feel connected and competent and brave in their presence. Even the &quot;Winchester Pictures&quot; logo in the beginning of &lt;i&gt;The Thing&lt;/i&gt;, with the crossed rifles denotes a kind of rock solid safety - strength and solidarity in firepower, frontier-style&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;.&lt;/b&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;But&lt;/i&gt; soon enough that image burns away as &quot;&lt;i&gt;The Thing (from Another World)&lt;/i&gt;&quot; begins. It&#39;s surely no accident that even when I was too scared to watch HALLOWEEN I had already seen the THE THING around 100 times, it was like a security blanket, it always &#39;worked&#39; its magic, but in HALLOWEEN the film is metatextually swallowed by the darkness, as if a screen barrier suddenly slammed down between me and this beloved 1951 classic. Cutting back and forth to the kids watching, the overlapping dialogue momentum in the background, between babysitter phone calls,&amp;nbsp;becomes trapped in the slower-than-time amber dream drip of Haddonfield, IL. It&#39;s a reminder of normal life&#39;s warmth, exiled,&amp;nbsp; reaching towards us through a fence.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  204. &lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;In &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt; that warm Hawksian feeling exists, but it&#39;s only a by-product of ignorance; the babysitters are too wrapped up in their boyfriend issues to even notice the ample warnings. Hawksian framing (middle range, waist-up) occurs but Carpenter inverts the sense of security, as in the shot below where Nancy and Laurie flank the kids watching TV inside the room. Though we would hope they&#39;d be aware of the onrushing menace, protecting the kids and able to handle danger, the dialogue is all focused on Annie teasing Laurie about Ben Tramer, continually interrupted by ringing phones, requests from the kids, and noise from the TV; instead of overlapping dialogue ala Hawks it&#39;s overlapping cacophony. It could almost be like a Hawksian comedy--&lt;i&gt;Bringing up Baby &lt;/i&gt;or&lt;i&gt; Monkey Business&lt;/i&gt;- certainly in her way Nancy fashions herself a vivacious wild child like Ginger Rogers or Katherine Hepburn, except that there is a devouring &#39;shape&#39; coming to eat them, a devouring giant leopard of a figure (to use the iconography of BABY -- see more on that &lt;a href=&quot;http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/05/we-seem-to-go-way-back-lady-eve-bell.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;here)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The fundamental difference between Hawk&#39;s comedies and dramas lies in a similar lack of perspective: comedies occur when the the hero &lt;i&gt;thinks&lt;/i&gt; he&#39;s in danger (but he&#39;s not); in the dramas the hero&lt;i&gt; knows &lt;/i&gt;he&#39;s in danger so he can &lt;i&gt;pretend&lt;/i&gt; he&#39;s in a comedy. In &lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt; the heroine thinks she&#39;s in a drama, which should mean she&#39;s actually in a comedy, however it&#39;s we who know she&#39;s in danger, not her. It&#39;s like the end of the climax at the jail in&lt;i&gt; Bringing up Baby,&lt;/i&gt; wherein Susan brings in the killer leopard thinking she has the tame one, if that two minutes was stretched to a full hour.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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  206. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEf_D-CDviHD-ZNMR5s8G50DBblIyfMOn544BEGiaggiJ8zoRtzp06nhcUbeyFem6-r8giBpWeH8KTZDdSiPP2rFCtYg1jhyphenhyphenbNHtsaPVrLGVXBABx7MISo7bvr-q3VVqd5r9xbng/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.25.33+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;280&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEf_D-CDviHD-ZNMR5s8G50DBblIyfMOn544BEGiaggiJ8zoRtzp06nhcUbeyFem6-r8giBpWeH8KTZDdSiPP2rFCtYg1jhyphenhyphenbNHtsaPVrLGVXBABx7MISo7bvr-q3VVqd5r9xbng/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+1.25.33+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  208. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjCyjHFF4vWvjGr1vtQkv1HrjaC4LXtzkAiTs3fWYZwvQkHzvds17j6ycANJI06_Lhvc3MiPiF7eBpyssh2mnAPpiA-PbDV3Nmz4Vq_qN49AfbRFUDrd9gMxWRAjjD0Pypu2Yfw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.32.11+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;324&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjCyjHFF4vWvjGr1vtQkv1HrjaC4LXtzkAiTs3fWYZwvQkHzvds17j6ycANJI06_Lhvc3MiPiF7eBpyssh2mnAPpiA-PbDV3Nmz4Vq_qN49AfbRFUDrd9gMxWRAjjD0Pypu2Yfw/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.32.11+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  209. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  210. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;7.&lt;/i&gt; Emptiness:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;What makes the film terrifying is the emptiness - the lack of reliable adults. There&#39;s a single cop (Charles Cyphers), a shaky Ahab of a criminal psychologist (Donald Pleasance, in a career-defining role), a nurse in the rainy darkness of a car, the rainy darkness of the front lawn of the asylum; then just the encroaching darkness of the suburbs. Except for one or two shots in Laurie&#39;s English class, we seldom see more than one or two people in any given shot. Always the emptiness remains. Imagine being part of the team in THE THING and taking a nap in the coffee room and waking up and everyone is gone!&lt;/div&gt;
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  214. Note the deep ornate shadows falling all over the street as the sun sets in the shot below. You can barely make out the three figures walking down the sidewalk at right. This is hardly a conventional shot. It&#39;s something Martin Scorsese might do, and maybe Robert Altman, but Altman would keep their dialogue at a higher level. They&#39;d be far away but sound up close. It&#39;s no wonder both Altman and Scorsese love rich sound mixes and overlapping dialogue.&lt;/div&gt;
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  218. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRavdwMawByDXSJrg2P_Tn51St4XQgM8LtQfVQb91NpEc2FoN9c5P-X9cnSOe2fymUdjmTKB9KMu-6kcOCmi_j8xnezVlweJukJl9FQz0ePS56L7Xg7-rHVTCnG-jpM1Lh38_IKQ/s1600/Hallowdistance.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;270&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRavdwMawByDXSJrg2P_Tn51St4XQgM8LtQfVQb91NpEc2FoN9c5P-X9cnSOe2fymUdjmTKB9KMu-6kcOCmi_j8xnezVlweJukJl9FQz0ePS56L7Xg7-rHVTCnG-jpM1Lh38_IKQ/s640/Hallowdistance.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  220. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58nZV0TfaM8pFsrB1KfmskbE5Koz79VTVZcfkgvtlbPbGsozK3GilV2bODG4wnPOBQhWSpvLaBJzNxKCt4nj0GHh5_bPSoBhNRjGl-dcO9MImCeFOmo6CZHAyjrVa7txjtVvdyg/s1600/dfdsf.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;272&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58nZV0TfaM8pFsrB1KfmskbE5Koz79VTVZcfkgvtlbPbGsozK3GilV2bODG4wnPOBQhWSpvLaBJzNxKCt4nj0GHh5_bPSoBhNRjGl-dcO9MImCeFOmo6CZHAyjrVa7txjtVvdyg/s640/dfdsf.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  224. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJIqkuuu8J8gnvBMBzznP527aD5n1cTmzOb75sEEHBVNvYanDvsOGJNG8sV2Ri9kmYSLMbPuYsgRTSE-Iw3DBl__PvN6jrUZNOG_fnfGe6vcMCITezUV57AjrRAkhLae4fiFw35g/s1600/thalwoess.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;278&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJIqkuuu8J8gnvBMBzznP527aD5n1cTmzOb75sEEHBVNvYanDvsOGJNG8sV2Ri9kmYSLMbPuYsgRTSE-Iw3DBl__PvN6jrUZNOG_fnfGe6vcMCITezUV57AjrRAkhLae4fiFw35g/s640/thalwoess.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  225. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;8. The Eternally &#39;On&#39; Television&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Movies that try to depict a threatened middle class existence tend to omit one key element, probably because a) licensing issues and b) the difficulty of avoiding &#39;streaks&#39; from the diegetic recording of a recording. People live and work in place where the TV just isn&#39;t. But if you look at the truly scary films of threatened middle class teenagers, you see a through line from&lt;i&gt; Halloween &lt;/i&gt;(where they watch a double feature Forbidden Planet and the Thing, the bulk of the movie seeing to occur over the length of both those films) to Scream (watching Halloween) to &lt;i&gt;The Ring&lt;/i&gt; (cursed video) to&lt;i&gt; It Follows &lt;/i&gt;(watching &lt;i&gt;Killers from Space&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/i&gt;and so forth. Having a TV on in the background hits really close to home. Do producers not know that? Are Hollywood filmmakers not aware of what the rest of the world does all night? Either way, this is a godsend to smart filmmakers as the presence of a TV, obliquely commenting on the action like a Greek chorus, is an element that hasn&#39;t been done to death. So use it, future horror filmmakers!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  226. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5czLhDu3MouU5LDkEGfag8yYD24vDwFxUHT0kT-oweF9p15ER3uBHcZ5xAJbqyY2DZgx0PkQG4PRg1Tma72vgIkWX_RM7sj1pcXVBS9bpQAwcsIH9sp9rGX43xdmn7KE8_fjyg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.31.51+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;280&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5czLhDu3MouU5LDkEGfag8yYD24vDwFxUHT0kT-oweF9p15ER3uBHcZ5xAJbqyY2DZgx0PkQG4PRg1Tma72vgIkWX_RM7sj1pcXVBS9bpQAwcsIH9sp9rGX43xdmn7KE8_fjyg/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.31.51+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  227. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;8) &lt;b&gt;The Teenage Hormonal Spike&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;I know of a lot of people who resent having to grow up and face the wearying demands and pressures of adulthood. All actions have consequences, and for someone as emotionally arrested as Michael the consequences add up only to bodies for disposal and use in creepy tableaux. He seems to have a point, as sexual excitement over boys so overwhelms these three friends that it shuts out all the warning signs coming their way. Watching them from the illusory security of our living rooms, we all have a tendency to try and get ourselves off the squirming hook by thinking &#39;ah they get what they deserve for not locking the door or closing their car door or letting the dog come in, the way narrow-minded parents will look for some reason their kids are lying when they say they&#39;ve been abused by an uncle or a priest. It&#39;s a vain attempt to avoid the crushing sense of powerless anger. Annie especially is guilty of ignoring danger signs -- first by the barking dog--which in her self-absorption she thinks is growling at her even though it&#39;s clearly growling at something else. She sees it only as an inconvenience as--what else?--she&#39;s on the phone. Later she hears a potted plant crash on the porch, and the yelp of the dog being strangled; all she can presume is the dog is getting laid. She&#39;s blind to anything and everything unless it&#39;s related to sex and boys.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Whether we remember it or not we&#39;ve all been babysat and we&#39;ve all had to deal with the sudden arrivals of horny boyfriends, anxious to take advantage of a temporarily parent-free space. Maybe we&#39;ve also, once in high school ourselves, taken advantage the same way. As kids our budding crushes on this older but not yet adult girl are dashed by this coarse brute&#39;s arrival. Is this not also a fine metaphor for our own sense of powerlessness? We can&#39;t stop the boyfriend and we can&#39;t stop getting old and having to one day get a job. And we can&#39;t stop the night from falling. Michael terrifies us because he represents an alternative too dark to consider consciously. We can just disappear down the rabbit hole into an eternal &#39;Other.&#39;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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  231. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiizyDMSaZ5DY6Y_pMOR-lwdWdGWQ767WxzZqLfnOk70LDkrGTVZewEFjjYaCT7EpkEynXshbdG8st407dzlOa14GhK3pTaqm4TC381WNb7FSAguV5CWzI2UeN63cFJmnyTm-Kc4A/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+7.02.22+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;276&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiizyDMSaZ5DY6Y_pMOR-lwdWdGWQ767WxzZqLfnOk70LDkrGTVZewEFjjYaCT7EpkEynXshbdG8st407dzlOa14GhK3pTaqm4TC381WNb7FSAguV5CWzI2UeN63cFJmnyTm-Kc4A/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+7.02.22+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  234. 8.b -&amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;Tele-Cocooning &lt;/b&gt;- Even Laurie is guilty of this, while on the phone with Annie she ignores Tommy&#39;s excited ranting after seeing the Boogeyman across the street because she&#39;s appalled after learning Annie told some Ben Tramer that Laurie liked ho, Look at the way Jamie Lee twists the phone cord and twirls her hair in overwhelming anxiety at Annie&#39;s matchmaking gambit. This fear causes her to miss the sight of the boogey man across the street and dismiss Tommy&#39;s anxiety the way her friends have dismissed hers earlier when she spied Michael peering behind bushes. Much has been written since the dawn of cell phones about this bubble of security and separation a phone call brings, leading us into traffic or down deserted muggy streets, etc. This effect is as pervasive as TV in real life but again, most slashers and horror movies fail to pick up on it.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
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  237. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWmNHwPkxSRX0YN-Bq8yTrWjmOGp-KmCkHKriHU8WAsRcSSQ1P9DkfNVbT9CEMfSkL3iHFADi9cy7z7l1RHiXBN-ekxl6SH6hO0zl8DVasYKTtvxMGK3vMymhMYAqSzaU9SQrbA/s1600/top10_1950s_the_thing.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWmNHwPkxSRX0YN-Bq8yTrWjmOGp-KmCkHKriHU8WAsRcSSQ1P9DkfNVbT9CEMfSkL3iHFADi9cy7z7l1RHiXBN-ekxl6SH6hO0zl8DVasYKTtvxMGK3vMymhMYAqSzaU9SQrbA/s1600/top10_1950s_the_thing.jpeg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  239. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;8c.)&lt;b&gt; Focus up! -&amp;nbsp;&lt;/b&gt;Imagine if Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) was so wrapped up in the issues with Nikki (Margaret Sheridan, above) that he ignored the danger in&lt;i&gt; The Thing&lt;/i&gt;? If he just told everyone they were hallucinating after the ice melts and not to bother him as he and Nikki canoodled upstairs? Maybe that&#39;s maybe why Carpenter&#39;s remake is all men. It&#39;s not the women&#39;s fault, men just aren&#39;t as strong multi-taskers as Hendry anymore, at least not in the movies. Women confuse them. They can&#39;t navigate a woman and a monster at the same time. One will always get away.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;
  240. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7gIeyfhF_EiMVCBB36ydr4wmrE-P3b9NqncPKJDMPiCx2wQqAadtGYMLMUGLRnpl_h4HDP9QVcoHPd2ct09PayBHwCGVhMNAOxRV3QW0Uq_hEBtLXyqSa3gLGjooFMH4szvYd7Q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+7.03.45+PM.png&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;264&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7gIeyfhF_EiMVCBB36ydr4wmrE-P3b9NqncPKJDMPiCx2wQqAadtGYMLMUGLRnpl_h4HDP9QVcoHPd2ct09PayBHwCGVhMNAOxRV3QW0Uq_hEBtLXyqSa3gLGjooFMH4szvYd7Q/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-07-26+at+7.03.45+PM.png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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  242. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  243. 9) &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Music&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The music of Carpenter is so essential to the film&#39;s success you would think his imitators would try for something similar, hiring Carpenter to score their works, for example, or reaching out across the sea to Goblin, or Ennio Morricone. Instead, they lean back on the same-old / same-old orchestral cliches we&#39;ve heard so much of we either roll our eyes or never even notice it. Even Manfredini&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Friday the 13th &lt;/i&gt;score only has the &quot;keee-kee-kee ya-ya&quot; cue to differentiate it from the usual Hermann-string aping banality of a thousand other films just like it. (The real scary music in that film is the sound of rain beating down on canvas). The only American-made post-&lt;i&gt;Halloween&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;(early-80s) movies made in the US (other than those made by Italians) I can think of offhand to use eerie synths and odd time signatures are&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;Phantasm&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;The Bogey Man.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Let me know if I&#39;ve forgotten any others. Today they are much more common, as in &lt;i&gt;It Follows.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  244.  
  245. &lt;br /&gt;
  246. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  247. 10) &amp;nbsp;&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Escape&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;I knew quickly that when left alone at home during my circa 80-81 slasher squirrelly phase how to fight the monsters. Turn the lights on, check the doors and windows, and then turn the TV on loud so you don&#39;t hear the scratching of the branches against the shingles outside. I&#39;d always turn on something nonthreatening but playfully spooky from the desert island video collection - FORBIDDEN PLANET? THE THING? If you&#39;ve read this far I&#39;m pretty sure you know I own both on DVD, and had them on tape before them, and I know they can protect you from fear like only a competent group of quick-thinking, heavily armed officers on your side can, the guys in THE THING will even make sure you get a cup of coffee no matter how busy they are. If you&#39;re on Altair IV, maybe the captain will let you sneak out and hit Robby up for some genuine Rocket bourbon. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;
  248. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  249. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  250. &lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;
  251. Of course when both films are on the TVs in HALLOWEEN that sense of security is just a fleeting memory -- faded color, washed out images-- the kids only marginally paying attention, as right behind them, gathering in the darkness of our gaze --they&#39;re about to be devoured. And now the killer is leaking out of the screen and into the surrounding darkness of the theater or your living room. All you can do now is make sure your back is against a sturdy wall, far from any window where a hand can crash through and grab you by the throat. Stay alert, with porch light on and guard dog, knife and baseball bat by your side, and keep watching... keep watching THE THING.&lt;/div&gt;
  252. &lt;br /&gt;
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  254. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYL8T4UVDNykblLX-BWsdP3noF3atkf6rv-KAmGOFHCDwmdFBInQspRWg3E3MYWQfy4Zp6JdUHv6fjGEtfPSKC4K-RE1bNja8UGQadEImzjWpxOXGxtfazo2OnvV9fE0cbJqaVg/s1600/5412466996_b35dc25b0e_z.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYL8T4UVDNykblLX-BWsdP3noF3atkf6rv-KAmGOFHCDwmdFBInQspRWg3E3MYWQfy4Zp6JdUHv6fjGEtfPSKC4K-RE1bNja8UGQadEImzjWpxOXGxtfazo2OnvV9fE0cbJqaVg/s400/5412466996_b35dc25b0e_z.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  255. &lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
  256. &lt;/div&gt;
  257. &lt;/center&gt;
  258. &lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/feeds/5961014961071846859/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-clockwork-darkness-halloween-1978.html#comment-form' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/5961014961071846859'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/30487573/posts/default/5961014961071846859'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://acidemic.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-clockwork-darkness-halloween-1978.html' title='HALLOWEEN (1978) - A 10-Step Deconstruction of Carpenter&#39;s Secret Recipe'/><author><name>Erich Kuersten</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmovsnZoMDsGKIHniItKKmEEVN8X5si5AM541pyFH91vSkZizDU8oOdyOSP8wGbSEJ-qFokiXWRpsrRXM0u3ACtotuUe1RQnPh2iqrEGqOu0JvwkvcFxmTFH4D9nMMQ2U/s220/IMG_1606.jpg'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyTzkxoWCZxFYjMm9db5x7oOHpTuzy443I1R-5eOQ-SzQ6o47lnmypjSVJagagIgOOU_z3sf7aafK6pLvtJqxDad_67TxvgEOpz-Fg4-cFntS9weUa4JXmJHs3dbwP9kxJxT-DoA/s72-c/Screen+Shot+2012-07-25+at+6.34.42+PM.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry></feed>

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