I love lights, so Christmas is fun for me. I used to just go for how many lights can you cram in! But as I get older and tired, I’m going for theme instead. The wife likes red and white, so I go with that. My lights are nothing compared to others, but they please me, and yes….. I have a snow machine. The grandkids love it, and the colder it gets the better it sticks, leaving a beautiful scene. Desert snow, I have seen it, but not in upland. And because I live on a major street, people trip out on the whole scene. Fun times! The neighbors are doing some pretty things, so our neighborhood looks outstanding, and we are on the white trash side of the street. Fuck off, slavers!
Show your stuff, trees, lights, silliness. Open thread and Merry Christmas!
The Auld Syte may be the best band you never heard of. Formed in Los Angeles during the Summer of Love, the five-piece was influenced, of course, by the psychedelics of that summer, but also by something darker that haunted LA’s urban canyons. Guitarist Carlo Lentini (ex-Doorknobs) and bassist Sal Zummo (ex-Cymbians) met at an acid party at legendary producer Kim Fowley’s Laurel Canyon pad. The two musicians shared a love of psychedelics, and also shared the love of singer Lauren Huitema. The Auld Syte added rhythm guitarist Alan Paris and drummer Blair Brinsley, and by Autumn of 1967, they were a fixture in the clubs of Sunset Strip. Playing alongside contemporaries Sagittarius, and Arthur Lee, The Auld Syte combined baroque pop three part harmonies with acid edged guitars and sometimes sinister song subjects. Played live, the twelve-minute long “Apollyan” was a crowd favorite with its rhythmic chant that produced a locust swarm on more than one occasion. Another crowd favorite was the psychedelic rocker “Man’s Son”, featuring the mamba-like intertwining of Lentini and Zummo’s guitar and bass.
However, by late Spring of 1968 tensions within the band began to tear The Auld Syte apart. Lentini and Zummo came to blows over the love for Huitema. Tragically, Lentini shattered every bone in his left hand when he punched Zummo, and was never able to play guitar again. Zummo and Huitema were married in a pagan ritual in Big Sur in the Summer of 1968. Huitema left Zummo three days later and opened an occult bookstore in Sherman Oaks. Zummo continued to play music in the San Francisco scene and became a successful floor refinisher. Alan Paris later formed the soft rock duo Paris and Rome with wife Sylvia Rome. The duo had some minor success with their 1974 adult contemporary hit “Blue for You”. Brinsley joined a cult located in the Mojave Valley and was implicated in a number of bank robberies throughout the Southwest.
The Auld Syte never recorded in a studio, and any live recordings of their sets have yet to surface. Here are some songs from The Auld Syte’s contemporaries:
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.
Cold Mountain. Dir. Anthony Minghella. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Jude Law. Mirage Enterprises, Bona Fide Productions, 2003. DVD.
This novel, and the well-received movie based on it, can safely be said to belong to the canon of antiwar literature, though Frazier is enough of a storyteller that the lives and stories of his characters always hold center stage. This is no didactic Ayn Rand novel. As a civil war obsessive, I’m going to be giving some attention to the historical angles, but my review won’t capture the finely-crafted human story created by Frazier, and also by the film adaptation, which remarkably manages not to totally screw up the author’s vision.
Frazier comes from Western North Carolina, where not only does half the action take place, but it’s the longed-for destination of the male protagonist.
Let’s go back a bit and try to provide some setup. To put this story in Hollywood pitch-meeting terms, it’s like The Odyssey
Ulysses, by Anna Chromy, Monaco Harbor, 2011
meets bizarro Gone With the Wind meets a chick flick.
W. P. Inman (Jude Law in the movie)
Jude Law
is a Confederate soldier from, of course, Western North Carolina. He’s fighting at the Virginia front, defending Petersburg, Virginia from Union besiegers. Inman is homesick for his sort-of sweetheart Ada (played in the movie by Nicole Kidman).
Nicole Kidman
It’s complicated – at least in the novel the two aren’t formally committed to each other, but he’s managed to stick with the war, until he participates in the Battle of the Crater. This is an actual battle (July 1864) where the besieging Yankees manage to undermine the Confederate position and create a crater penetrating the Confederate front. For some reason, the federals then rush in to the steep-walled crater, as if they’re chivalrously giving the Confederates a chance at target practice. A nasty and bloody business, in which Inman is wounded. He’s sent back to a Raleigh military hospital to recover, and he decides, “screw you Confederates, I’m going home.” (In the movie, he gets a letter from Ada begging him to come home, a realistic touch since many wives, sweethearts and family members wrote soldiers begging them to desert so they could come home and help on the farm and preserve the family from starvation).
Then begins Inman’s treck west, back to his home county. He has to keep on the lookout for Home Guards – state troops who, exempt from going to the front themselves, are supposed to chase down deserters and draft-evaders and send them to the front (or sometimes just kill them). The organization generally referred to as the Home Guard was established by the state legislature in the middle of the war, though in the movie the Home Guard has been set up at the war’s very beginning. Hollywood has to do its part to avoid strict historical accuracy.
To be fair, the English Home Guard in WWII didn’t show the same cruelty to draft-dodgers, probably because there weren’t as many as in Civil War NC
In many parts of the state, including the mountain West, deserters and draft evaders “lay out” in the woods, or in holes in the earth. A lot of them just objected to fighting, period. But some thought they were being called on to fight on the wrong side. Many young men with such views navigated the mountain trails to Tennessee to join loyalist Southern units of the U. S. Army. North Carolina had a good number of Union sympathizers (“Red Strings” or “Heroes of America”), and a peace movement (trying to get the South back into the union with slavery intact), and a state government which distrusted the Jefferson Davis administration and insisted on protecting states’ rights against the Confederates (the Confederacy weren’t actually as states-rights-ish as one might think given their rhetoric).
Jefferson Davis in 1874
But getting back to the plot –
Not knowing where Inman is, Ada makes do as best she can in Appalachian North Carolina. And at first she doesn’t do very well at all. She grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, apparently with slaves to attend to her needs, until her minister-father went on a mission trip to this rural Tar Heel community, taking Ada with him. When Dad dies, Ada is alone on a farm which she doesn’t know how to care for.
Then some sympathetic neighbors ask a young woman named Ruby to take care of Ada. Here is where the movie had every opportunity to screw up embarrassingly. The movie’s Ruby, played by Renée Zellweger,
Renée Zellweger
is a sharp-tongued, no-nonsense rural Southern woman who had to learn self-reliance when her father was too busy drinking and playing the fiddle to raise her properly. Normally, Hollywood would find an actress to do a cringe-worthy performance with a character like this. Somehow, Zellweger manages to do a more or less convincing job in her role. It probably helps that she grew up in Texas (according to Wikipedia). Zellweger manages to remember at all times that her character has a Southern accent, something which sometimes slips the minds of the other actors.
So Ruby teaches Ada how to manage the farm and its livestock and grow crops. We get a bit of a training montage in the movie. Meanwhile, the two women try to keep away from the local Home Guard, with its commander, Creepy Bearded Fad Dude, and CBFD’s top aide, Scary Blonde Guy Who Wished He’d Been Born Later So He Could Have Joined Hitler’s SS.
“Is true, blondes haf more fun, ja?”
The pro-Confederate Home Guard are the main bad guys. But just to underscore the point that this book and movie show the dark side of war itself, not just the evils of one side, there is a scene of federal soldiers behaving very badly.
The movie has a scene where –
BEGIN SPOILER
– the Home Guard kills a farmer and tortures his wife in order to make her reveal where her deserter sons are hidden. They put the woman’s thumbs under a fencepost and Scary Blonde Guy stands on the fence to make the pain worse. Scary Blonde Guy shoots the sons dead when they run out of the barn where they’re hiding in order to rescue their mother. This scene is based on actual incidents in North Carolina during the dirty war between Confederate forces (regular troops and Home Guards) and draft-resisting “outliers.”
END SPOILER
Neither the book nor the movie has a lot of black people in it. Those who make brief appearances don’t have real speaking roles, and one of them is unconscious. Given Hollywood’s awkward and embarrassing record on race, we can only imagine the sensitivity and delicacy with which they would have treated black characters if they had more screen time and more lines – which was no excuse not to try, of course. In any case, the limited number of black characters is arguably reflective of the comparatively small black population (whether slave or free) in North Carolina’s mountain counties during this time. To many nonslaveholding whites, the war was fought by slaveowning planters who wanted to keep their slaves but not to fight for that privilege, given the wide availability of draft exemptions which rich planters, but not poor subsistence farmers, could take advantage of. “A rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,” many called it. To be fair, some rich planter types rushed to join the Confederate army without being drafted – chivalry and all that. They were generally able to come into the army as officers, though, not as lowly privates.
Inman’s journey back to home and to Ada has plenty of echoes of Ulysses’ journey back to home and Penelope.
Penélope Cruz
Inman does Ulysses one better because he doesn’t wait ten years before coming back – It only takes about three years before he realizes that his duties to his home community override his duties to a collapsing slave republic. Like Ulysses, though, Inman meets plenty of monsters on his homeward journey.
As if to balance out Ada’s dad the good minister, the narrative introduces an evil preacher – Veasey – whom Inman meets on the road. The wolf in sheep’s clothing is played in the movie by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
BEGIN SPOILER
Here is where the movie is a disappointment compared to the book. In the movie, Veasey has gotten a slave girl pregnant. Seeking to cover up his behavior, Veasey is about to throw the girl into the river to kill her when Inman comes by and puts a stop to Veasey’s evil. In the book it’s the same set-up, but the pregnant girl is a white woman named Laura Foster. This is sort of an Easter egg which Frazier, the novelist, planted for folklorists and aficionados of the ghoulish. Laura Foster was a real person in western North Carolina. One of her real-life lovers, Tom (“Tom Dooley”) Dula, was hanged for her murder soon after the Civil War.
END SPOILER
So, like a modern Ulysses, does Inman reach home and Ada? I’ve done enough spoilers, so I won’t add another.
But I’m not gonna lie, this is not the feel-good hit of the summer. Whether in book or movie form, though, it is a compelling story.
Welcome once again fellow aficionados of the absurd to another round of your favorite thing on the Information Superhighway, REVIEWS YOU’LL NEVER USE! This week, we’ll do something a bit unusual, and review a sequel to a film instead of the original. Why? Because this movie came in one of those four-movie $10 DVD multipacks when I bought it several years ago, and I had no idea it was a freaking sequel until I was doing my preliminary research for this column, so fuck me I guess.
To be fair, it’s only a sequel in the loosest sense of the word. The film is Class of 1999, by veteran action director Mark L. Lester. Middle name starts with an L, huh, and last name is Lester. I never liked that. I don’t like alliteration in names, or even using the same beginning letter. I don’t know why, it just rubs me the wrong way. I dislike it just like I dislike it when people have two first names, like Clippers roundball player Chris Paul. Chris Paul? FUCK…YOU, get a last name! Be Chris Paulson, or something like that. Anything, just don’t have two first names! I hate it SO MUCH! I hate you for not changing your name, I hate your parents for having that name, just fucking die!
Stacy Keach, menacingly eating a banana. The crudely stereotyped gay jokes write themselves.
Anyway enough about my hang-ups. Mark Lester directed such endearing childhood memories as Firestarter and Commando. Lately, however, his IMDB reads like the resume of a director only someone like me could love. Dragons of Camelot? Poseidon Rex? Dragon Wasps (the cover art is of a giant wasp breathing fire)? Sand Sharks? Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon? Game of Swords? Holy shit man, I’ve hit the junk cinema jackpot. Oddly, he’s credited as a producer for all of these things on his IMDB page, but if you actually go to the links for the movies themselves, he’s the director. I wonder what that’s all about. Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure it’s the fault of a progressive.
Our three killbots. For some reason one of the military robots was designed to look like an old professor, complete with smoking a pipe. FFS.
Moving on, apparently in 1982 he directed a film called Class of 1984. I’ll not link it, in case I run across it and review it someday. By not linking directly from here, I have thereby prevented any of you from being able to access any information about this film on the World Wide Web on your own initiative. But the gist of it seems to be another one of those, “The kids aren’t alright” movies about an inner-city high school overrun by gangs, new teacher comes in and has to get shit done, yada yada yada.
In 1990, still not satisfied that society wasn’t spiraling downward into an inevitable collapse, he trotted the idea back out and directed Class of 1999. Only now instead of an inner-city decay theme, he decided to make it an action movie about street gangs vs. killbots. It was the right, nay, only move. No shit, this movie stars Pam Grier, Stacy Keach, and Malcolm McDowell as The Principal! Well, they all have supporting roles, but significant screen time, even if the titular stars are the teenage gang-bangers (not people in gangs, but rather, people who regularly engage in gang-bangs).
The film was produced by Vestron Pictures & released by Vestron Video, and had only a very limited theatrical release, but really, check out those links. I thought it sounded familiar, and I immediately saw why. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the gems this company produced back in the day. Great low-budget awesome crap like Street Trash (which I wouldn’t have seen without the recommendation of one of the original H&R schismatics, who unfortunately left prior to the website launch) and Chopping Mall, all the way up to Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing! I had completely forgotten about these guys, but reading through this company’s history brings back a lot of fond memories. Do check out both, as the films for the two branches of the company don’t entirely overlap.
So our film opens with some lazy exposition detailing how by 1999, gangs had taken over the city cores of most major American urban centers and turned them into “free-fire zones” where cops were scared to enter (HA, if only! -ed). In response to the crisis not of apparently ceding sovereignty to gangs but of the fact that the damned gangs aren’t going to school, the gubbmint creates the Department of Education Defense. They’re like hyper-militarized truancy…divisions. One would think that it would be a better use of resources to regain control of the cities first and then run the schools like normal, rather than simply run military ops in no-man’s land for the sole purpose of getting kids to and from schools over which no adults exercise any control, but what would I know, I’m not the visionary director of Dragon Wasps.
This is what upper-class white people thought gangs looked like. Shit, maybe in Seattle, it *is* what gangs look like.
The former gang-leader of the Blackhearts gang, “Cody” (because badass gang leaders are always named that), is let out of prison to resume school in his free-fire zone of Seattle as part of a pilot program. The Blackhearts, by the way, all have this dumbass little tattoo of a black heart on their cheeks to show their affiliation. It doesn’t make me afraid of them, it just makes me want to help them sign up for HIV screening. Cody acts like he wants to lay low to not violate his parole, but bizarrely insists on driving home through the turf of the Blackheart’s rivals, the Razorheads (this is what middle-aged white people actually thought gangs were named). A firefight ensues, and he makes it home only to find his friends, younger brother, and mother all living in decrepitude and addicted to drugs.
Going to school, he meets the new principal’s goody two shoes daughter, Christie. They bond over his bad-boy image and not wanting to be in a gang anymore. We’re introduced to evil corporate CEO Stacy Keach’s trio of new teachers, two of which are people you’ve never heard of, and one of which is Pam Grier. They’re androids programmed to teach, and to be able to physically handle the violent students.
Well of course since Stacy Keach is the head of a profit-making kkkorporation, it turns out he’s evil and only in it for the money, without caring about killing kids, because hey, what’s a few (dozen) dead kids when there’s a buck to be made? THAT’S HOW CAPITALISM WORKS. You see, the three android teachers are actually reprogrammed military robots, and this whole setup is a test run to see how they’ll work in urban combat environments. Unfortunately when Malcolm McDowell finally gets wise, he gets his throat punctured for his troubles.
Robo-view camera angle. Notice there is a selection for unspecified, “Karate Moves”. That’s Grade A schlock for you, right there.
So the androids first discreetly kill a few troublesome kids, then for some reason flip their shit and decide to spark a war between the Razorheads and Blackhearts. While this war of many people firing automatic and semi-automatic weapons at each other from like 10 meters apart with nobody hitting anything rages, the androids sneak behind the lines and go on a murder-spree. There is one rather delightful scene of a kid being pulled backwards through a small hole in the wall, snapping the kid’s torso in half. Afterward, they kidnap Christie and take her to the school, trying to lure the competing gangs into a trap to restart their earlier battle. The gangs figure out what’s up, heroically join forces to defeat the androids, and after a bloodbath battle in the school, literally only Cody & Christie remain alive at the end. At one point, Cody also hilariously accurately hurls a fire axe across a classroom. Seriously, like 50 kids are killed over the course of this movie – it’s like Total Recall only with teenagers.
The effects are workable for being a low-budget grindjob. At the end, when the androids are showing more of their robot parts, it isn’t too hysterical. Also you get to see a fake Pam Grier titty after her chest rips open. There is a gratuitous enough amount of violence to satisfy most people watching this who went into it with eyes open for what they were getting. Unfortunately the writing and directing are where this falls short (the director of Commando not being particularly adept? Gasp!). It suffers from something all of the movies of this particular subgenre suffer from, in a wildly unrealistic depiction of gangs, how gang members interact with each other, what gangs are named, what symbolism they use, etc. It’s more like what worried parents imagined in their heads when the first Hot Topic opened in their lily-white suburban mall and they saw their kids with a Dead Kennedys CD, which, as you probably know, bears precisely zero resemblance to actual gang members and activities. Movies pull shit like that all the time though. What bothers me more is that the robots really go off the reservation, and begin making stupid, witty remarks. At one point, one of them with a drill-hand (which seems much less useful on the battlefield than the other robots’ flamethrower hand and rocket-launcher hand) is drilling into a kid’s head, and he says, “I love to mold young minds!” while grinning manically. They’re robots, dude. They don’t get a boner for killing and make puns. The stupid killbots even slaughter their own support staff. During an earlier chase scene when the robots are driving after Christie & Cody after the teenagers broke into the robot’s shared apartment looking for clues, as they’re flying off a dock into the ocean, one of them says he hates getting wet. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I really think the whole Terminator approach to killbots is preferable to the hokey-jokey variety you see here.
Pam Grier finally shedding her limiting human outer shell to reveal the foxy killbot beneath. Notice the look of rapturous joy on her face? I don’t think Mark L. Lester knows what robots are.
Also the guy who plays Cody sounds oddly like Corey Feldman. It was bugging me the whole time.
So to sum up, if you’re not looking for much except a mildly amusing way to kill 90 minutes, it certainly isn’t that bad. Christ knows I’ve seen a lot worse. But don’t let the somewhat interesting premise trick you into thinking you’re getting anything particularly great here, some overlooked low-budget gem. Those movies exist, but this isn’t one of them. It’s one rung above a made-for-TV SyFy Channel Saturday Night Special, which is apparently what Mark L. Lester is churning out these days. The real waste is seeing three good-to-great actors slumming it here.
And oh yes, lest I forget: there is a third film in this series. But that’s a tale for another time.
Greetings once again, my fellow luxuriants of the ludicrous, to another edition of Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, let’s dip our toes into another great and underappreciated genre of film, Hong Kong wuxia (kung fu) films of the 70s & 80s. Today we’ll be taking a look at 天龍八部, or as you round-eyed devils have dubbed it, The Battle Wizard.
Magic thigh-bone gun of ultimate devastation!
I must profess to having a soft place in my heart for old trashy kung fu movies. Those of you my age or a bit older probably remember these as being staples on late-night cable, when they were just trying to fill air space. The silly dubbing, ham-fisted acting, convoluted story lines, and most importantly, the high-flying martial arts action are ambrosia for the aficionado of trash cinema.
And brother, The Battle Wizard delivers on all these fronts. It’s a Shaw Bros. production, which may not mean anything to you, until I tell you that if you ever saw a fucked up cheesy Technicolor kung fu movie on tv at 2 a.m., it was probably from this production company. This particular film is based on a serialized novel whose title variously translates as Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils or Eight Books of the Heavenly Dragon. The novel deals in archetypes based on Buddhist cosmology, so it’s all a bit complicated to explain in a blog post.
Pew pew!
The film opens with a guy getting caught in bed with his mistress, by her husband. Rookie mistake. Of course they immediately fight, but it turns out the philanderer has mastered the ancient martial art technique of shooting lasers out of your finger. He shoots the husband in the knees, and then as he tries to flee, injured, he gets shot again by the finger laser, which results in both of his legs falling off below the knee. Somehow the husband disappears over the roof, running away on his stubs. Back inside, the philanderer’s wife reveals to his side-piece that he’s actually a prince and could never marry gutter trash like her. Take THAT, bitch!
Reptile laughing uproariously. Seriously, if you watch these movies, the bad guys are *constantly* laughing their assess off for no reason. It’s really weird.
Twenty years later, we cut to an underground cave. The cuckold has built extendable iron bird-legs for himself that can destroy rocks, because of course he has. He’s hanging out with a half-human reptile-man of some sort, whose provenance is never explained. Through the magic of exposition, we learn that Prince Philanderer is now king, and has a boy. Killing the son should be just the revenge Iron Bird Legs is looking for, so he dispatches Reptile to the surface world to enact his revenge labor for him.
On the other side of the street, Gutter Trash’s daughter by Prince Philanderer is all grown up, and has mastered the ancient martial arts technique of firing lasers out of the end of an oversized novelty thigh bone. Her mother sends her out into the world to enact her revenge labor, on Prince Philanderer’s wife. She also tells Bone Shooter to always veil her face, because all men are worthless scum. See, SJWs aren’t new, they even existed in China 1,000 years ago.
MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE, sonny-boy is moping about because his old man, now King Philanderer, is trying to make him study kung fu. All the boy wants to do is read old Chinese sages and be a scholar-philosopher. After fighting with his parents over it (who claim that no one can govern unless they can also kick ass), he sullenly runs away to prove that you don’t have to be Chuck Norris to make it in the world.
Ambush by Iron Bird Legs, who it turns out 2/3 of the way through the film can also breath fire!
Here’s where shit really starts to get weird. Deep breath: he meets a woman who can mind-control snakes and kicks his ass because she knows kung fu. They’re captured by bandits, but Snake Woman uses her powers to help Pacifist Son escape. She sends him to find a particular woman that can rescue her. Pacifist Son asks several wanderers in the forest, and eventually learns that the chick is a hated witch. Heart in throat he approaches her hideout to beg for help for Snake Woman. Turns out, the witch is Bone Shooter. What a twist! So Bone Shooter shows up, kills the bandits, frees Snake Woman (who promptly fucks right off until near the end of the film), and has to allow Pacifist Son to see her face because he sucked poison out of her wound sustained during the fight with the bandits. They’re then ambushed by Reptile, but survive because it turns out a giant red snake lives in the river and because it ate nothing but ginseng and deer antlers it’s whole life, it somehow grants magic super martial arts powers to anybody who drinks it’s blood (I swear that is the exact explanation given in the film). So in desperation Pacifist Son bites the snake and drinks it’s blood, sending Reptile scurrying back to tell Iron Bird Legs about this intriguing development. Pacifist Son and Bone Shooter go back to the palace because they want to get married, but find out they’re half-siblings through King Philanderer. Iron Bird Legs springs an ambush and captures Pacifist Son and Bone Shooter, throwing them into a pit (after an awkwardly weird scene of Reptile stripping and fondling the woman) where they have to fight a super-strong man in a cheap gorilla costume. Pacifist Son uses his snake invincibility to eat a magic poisonous frog that Snake Woman had given him earlier; this somehow makes him go Super Saiyan, and he defeats the magic carnivorous gorilla and escapes from the pit. There’s a final show-down with Bone Shooter, Snake Woman, Reptile, Pacifist Son, and Iron Bird Legs, where everybody shoots a shit-ton of lasers out of their hands at each other. Eventually the good guys kill all the bad guys, the end.
Seriously, lasers everywhere.
This is an amusing diversion for a variety of reasons. The effects are, of course, garish and silly by today’s standards, but I profess a certain fondness for the earnestness of the efforts of people burdened by a lack of both money, and skill. The plot is simply marvelous. Everyone trying to get revenge on everyone else, magical beings all over the place, the most crowded fucking forest I’ve ever seen in my life. The most interesting aspect to me, though, is the explicit turning of the usual trope of the weakling Chinese valuing faggoty scholarship in the classics over the vigorous manly martial valor that we value in the West. In this movie, the protagonist explicitly tries to be the very model of a perfect Confucian ruler, and is ridiculed for it, and basically gives up on it like 15 minutes into the film when he first agrees to let Snake Woman try and teach him kung fu.
Carnivorous gorilla of doom. I hope Iron Bird Legs takes revenge on a lot of people, because that seems to be the only way the ape gets fed.
If you’re already partial to this kind of film, you’ll love it. It’s got everything you could ever want from a 1970s low-budget Hong Kong import, including a hilarious scene of a horse falling to it’s death over a cliff. If you don’t already like this kind of film, it has nothing for you that would make you change your mind. I rate this film 3.5 Glowing Hands out of 7. Props to anybody who can name the movie this image is from without looking it up.
Greetings one and all, and welcome to an unusual installment of Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, I shall recount to you, my reluctant audience, my adventures, foibles, and heroic deeds during this past weekend’s Texas Frightmare Weekend. This will follow a slightly different format, with all wordy word words up front and then all the photos at the end. I tried sprinkling them throughout but thought it looked too cluttered. Also, some quirk of the site makes it very difficult to line photos up next to each other when captioned, so they’re just all in a vertical line, which also looks weird. Sorry.
My favorite weekend of the year. Now I have to bide my time until October, when shit gets real for me again.
This was TFW’s 12th year, and the convention continues to grow. They’re going to have to change locations again soon, methinks. The Hyatt Regency DFW’s entire bottom floor is a convention center, but on Saturday especially, it’s just wall to wall, to the point it’s barely fun and you can’t move. The logo doesn’t lie, however: this is the southwest’s premier horror convention. People come from all over; in Ted Raimi’s panel, he asked who was from out of state, and fully half the room raised their hands. I spent time standing in various lines with a lovely couple from Montreal, a man who claimed to hail from San Francisco and yet quizzically was not a gayhomofag, and some boisterous fellows from Monterrey, Mexico.
The wife and I always stay at the hotel from Friday through Sunday, as there is simply too much to see and do for a single day, and it’s much more conducive to drunkenness to be able to just go up to our room, rather than get an Uber back and forth to our house, about half an hour away. Friday night we dedicate to signature hunting and finish that task on Sunday because the lines during Saturday are just unbearable. Also, if you’re reading this, Hyatt, your $15 breakfast buffet is barely passable as food, and a lot of places don’t charge for that shit, particularly when it is of such low quality. Literally, the only good thing is that the bacon is made thick and soggy, just the way I like it. I am not a fan of crisp bacon, and if you are, I hate you, because people like you make restaurants think it is not only acceptable, bur desirable, to make crispy bacon. Seriously dude, fuck you.
There are always lots of guests, lots of interesting vendors selling interesting things, lots of costumes, panels, and film screenings. There’s a theme party on Friday night, a VIP party for people who pay more on Saturday, and a free Saturday night option of karaoke. I’ll let you peruse the guest list yourself rather than listing them all here, but this year we had quite a good haul of signatures and bought a few fun items. We attended the Friday night theme party (the theme was an Antarctic research post from The Thing), but Saturday I’m afraid we were simply too drunk to participate in any of the other festivities. The Friday night party was crowded but boring, so we broke open the glowstick necklaces laying about and made an art project on the tablecloth. We really only went because the decor and props were done by our friends at Dark Hour haunted house, and it would have been shitty of us not to show up to support people we hang out with. Seriously, we have season passes to this haunt, and had our 10th wedding anniversary there last month.
Saturday we managed to sit through a midnight screening of Karate Kill, with director Kurando Mitsutake in attendance to field questions afterward. I pointed out to him that the Texas flag was upside down the two times it appeared in his movie, which I’m proud of myself for having caught, it being 2 in the morning and my being drunk. Somebody asked him the budget of the film, and he said he wasn’t supposed to say prior to US distribution, but fuck it, he’d had too much whiskey, and he spilled the beans. Don’t worry, Kurando, I won’t tell. The film was a welcome re-introduction to actress Asami’s titties, which I had seen in previous films. She was in attendance at a TFW a couple of years back, and we got her signature. She was dressed conservatively in traditional Japanese female clothing. I wanted to tell her it was no use since most of us had seen her have fake sex on screen, and seen her boobies, but I suppose it made her feel better. Seriously, check out the movies she’s been in. Read that list and revel in its awesomeness. I have a couple of those movies and may review them in future.
One of the commenters, it may have been Suthen, mentioned The Legend of Boggy Creek once before. Well they had a screening of a 2016 sequel, Boggy Creek Monster, but unfortunately it had an early (8 pm) start time, and I was still getting blasted at the bar. But just know that it’s out there, waiting for you to see it : )
I only caught three panels this year: first was The Thing, which featured Keith David, Wilford Brimley, the guy who played Windows, and the cinematographer. Turns out Brimley is a hilarious dirty old codger with a lot of crusty old man stories, which is awesome. I also got his signature this year, and you’ll never guess the photo. The dude actually had an 8×10 of an old Quaker Oates advert featuring him. I couldn’t believe he’d be that cool. So of course that’s the one I got signed.
The second panel was Suspiria. This was the big one. Dario Argento doesn’t make it to stateside cons very often, and often cancels appearances. We had him, Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Barbara Magnolfi, and, one of the founding members of Goblin, Claudio Simonetti. Dario’s limited English made it difficult for him to articulate complex thoughts, and Barbara and Claudio had to step in to translate for him increasingly as the panel wore on. The most interesting audience question, to me, was a person who asked the great director what he thought of the current generation of Italian horror directors. Argento responded that there was no current generation; just a bunch of retards mindlessly mimicking the giallo masters (specifically himself, Bava, and Fulci). Claudio chimed in his agreement with that assessment. They all thought Italian cinema had one glorious moment in the sun, and then decided it would retire as champion and never do anything innovative ever again.
Also, it turns out that while my full name is a common enough one to Italians, my nickname is a purely English diminutive. The first two Eye-ties I had sign things stumbled over it, and they spelled it out in block lettering, before adding my wife’s name in more natural-looking handwriting. It looks like we just crudely added my name onto all the photos after the fact. So for the last two pasta-eaters, I just gave them the Italian version of my name.
They were all hilariously stereotypically Italian. Overly expressive, waving their arms about as their spoke, everything was Brava! this, and Grazie! that, with several of them telling us in the audience that they loved us and each other a thousand times over the course of the panel, and while speaking with them while getting autographs. I did get the guy from Goblin to sign one of their LPs, which is better than a photo I think.
The last panel I went to was Ted Raimi’s. He didn’t have a moderator for some reason, so spent the whole time engaging the audience, running about, and is one of those guys who is always, “on.” When I asked my question, he asked me what was on my shirt. Of course, it was a Warhammer reference, so I had to explain to him in one sentence about the Skaven. I had two other people in the audience whoop in support of the Great Horned Rat. The audience respectfully (mostly) stuck to questions about him and his career, rather than only asking about Bruce Campbell and Ted’s famous brother.
We also secured Keith David’s signature, Amanda Bearse (she was there for the Fright Night panel), Ric Flair (why was here there? Who knows. But he did write, “Woooo!” under his name when he signed the photo, so I’m happy), and Michael Berryman. Mr. Berryman, as you may not know, has had to overcome tremendous physical obstacles in his life to become a successful actor, and he gathered all of us in line around his table to tell us stories of perseverance and positivity. He invited anyone who has a positive image, video, or story to post it on his Facebook page, so I’m relaying the good word to all of you.
We also got Chris Sarandon this year, of course as Prince Humperdink. He’s a humble guy if you talk to him. Or at least he says humble things. He claimed to not know whether any of his characters will stand the test of time. I think Humperdink is already pretty well there. He’s also much smaller in person than you’d think from seeing him in Princess Bride or Fright Night.
We also picked up Dee Wallace, who has been in so many classic films (E.T., The Howling, Critters, Cujo, et al) that she was kind enough to have a photo montage of them all, to keep me from having to chose. Rounding out the list was Ken Page, voice of Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.
There were a few others that are repeat guests, so we had snagged their signatures in previous years. Udo Kier, Meg Foster, Malcolm McDowell, and Tom Savini all fell into that bucket.
A lot of the cast from Bates Motel was there and had huge lines, but I don’t watch that show so who gives a shit.
Oh and last but not least, Misfits guitarist Doyle was there, looking menacing and still with a great devillock. Except he probably wouldn’t want me to associate him with the Misfits, because I heard from several others that I spoke to while waiting in different lines that he just talked trash about the band, about how it was entirely his talent that drove them, Danzig is lucky that Doyle made his career, etc. Seemed kind of bitter. Oh well. Looks like the kind of guy Warty would like.
Ultimately it was a sad drive back to the casa on Sunday, as this, our big weekend of the year had come and gone. I love the experience, and my wife gamely tags along. There’s a wonderful buzz in the air, and you’re surrounded by people who dress like you, think like you, act like you, who understand every one of your obscure references, and who are just as passionate about the Dark as you are. The whole thing is a shrine dedicated to group worship of Death, in His manifestation on film. I get to spend a whole three days walking around with people who have fake intestines spilling out, fake eyes hanging by plastic nerves, t-shirts with catchy pictures and slogans, neon hair styled every which way, tattoos like you wouldn’t believe. Not to mention the occasional sluttily dressed hot chick, to compete with the fatties that seem to make up half of the female contingent of horror fandom. This is our fourth year, and we’re already looking forward to the next go-round.
Alright, some words about the photos. A lot of the guests charge extra for a photo op with the signature. I don’t care about any of you that much, so sadly many of the people I got to meet, I don’t have photos of. At first, I tried creep-shotting them, but my complete lack of skill with phone cameras, combined with the crowds, soon showed me the folly of this approach. So there aren’t as many pics of celebrities (or in some cases, “celebrities”), as I would have liked. This leads me to my next point: most of the photos are of very poor quality. What you see below probably doubles the number of photos I’ve ever taken in my life. I have never had any desire to visually document anything for any reason except insurance purposes, and so never take pictures, and have no facility with this. I don’t even have a picture of my wife. Why would I? I know what she looks like, and it’s not anybody else’s goddamn business. Nothing grinds my gears more than people who have photos of their own family. It tells me that either, 1) you frequently forget what they look like, or worse 2) you think I give a damn what they look like. Protip: I don’t. Anyway, I’ve never taken pictures at any previous TFW, and only did this year to have content for the site, so they’re terrible. The only time that sucked is when William Sadler looked genuinely deflated that we didn’t want a photo with him after getting his signature a few years back. If I mentioned meeting a guest up above, but don’t have a photo of them below, it’s because they upcharged for it. The only creep shot I kept was of Argento since I promised that one. You can see from how bad it is why I deleted the other attempts. Most all of these were taken late Friday night or Sunday afternoon. I had a lot more from Saturday, but the crowds were just too thick and the pics were all even worse than the ones you see below. You’ll also notice I stand somewhat awkwardly – I have some chronic lower back pain from a pretty bad motorcycle accident a few years back, so I have to stand pretty ram-rod straight if I’m going to be on my feet all day to mitigate it. Just thought I’d address it before somebody else brings it up because I agree, it looks weird. Anyway, you have been warned.
Our art project at the Friday night party. Several of our friends noticed this and stopped by our table to take part. The staff kept giving us the stink-eye, but hey, you work in the service industry, so fuck you.
Some kind of Alien Freddy family, who the fuck knows.
One of the many fantastic shirts available for sale. I thought about buying this and having Brimley sign it, but couldn’t resist the Quaker Oats poster instead.
People dressed like the ice necromancers from Game of Thrones. Actually I think the littler one is one of those green people who grew the tree up Max von Sydow’s ass.
This is my good friend’s daughter, who also works at Dark Hour haunted house. The character is from something called Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is bizarrely *not* a Nightmare on Elm Street property. The robot hand is actually battery powered and articulates. This was on Saturday, but thankfully since I was assisting I was able to get the shot before general admission opened, after which she was swarmed the rest of the day.
One of the set pieces created by Dark Hour haunted house for The Thing theme party on Friday night. You can’t tell in this shot, but it glows from within and pulsates. It’s the kennel dog-monster thing. They also had the head spider thing, of course, but I wasn’t able to get a good shot of it.
Yes, they set up a tattoo area, so you can immortalize your weekend with a flash tattoo. The dude is from LA, which he advertises prominently on his banner. I guess that makes it trendier somehow. Fuck people who live in SoCal.
The Suspiria panel. From left to right: douchebag moderator; Barbara Magnolfi, Stefania Casini; Udo Kier, Dario Argento, and Claudio Simonetti.
Great t-shirt. If you don’t know what A Serbian Film is, kiss your wife and children while you still have your innocence and watch it. Or just read the summary and see why it’s awesome to have a shirt that says this.
My buddy Alex belting out Country Roads on the accordion wearing his normal flayed human face mask and utilikilt. He is the owner/operator of Reindeer Manor haunted house, which is quite good. His lovely wife is also possibly the best dessert baker I’ve ever met.
My wife really wanted the crocheted nosferatu because it’s unique. I thought he looked lonely, so bought him a plush Godzilla to play with. The day we got home our fucking mastiff chewed up the vampire’s head. He is currently out with some old woman for repairs.
Great Americana melting pot moment. You can’t see the mom as she’s off-camera to the right, but she was in full Muslim woman-be-gone hidey dress, but with a grin plastered on her face as her kids took pictures with all the various monsters and seemed to be having a great time. Good feelz all around. Welcome to the States, young horror fans.
MacReady and dog-monster wife at The Thing theme party on Friday night.
This guy makes weird shit out of bones. This is a Little Shop of Horrors homage that cost like $1,100. The mouth is a big turtle shell.
Great horror themed kids shirts for sale. Spawn of the Dead, I Don’t OBEY My Parents, Escape from School, and The Monster Squad Founding Member. We bought a few for the nephews.
Myself and mystery woman with Stefania Casini.
Myself and that damned mystery woman who kept following me around with Barbara Magnolfi.
Myself and mystery woman with Keith David. She’s wearing a t-shirt that’s a reference from Monster Squad, I’m wearing probably my favorite shirt: Skeletor trying to drink wine from the bottle but it’s just pouring through his bottom jaw and running down his chest. I think this may be the only other shot here from Saturday.
Myself and mystery woman with Claudio Simonetti. We got him to sign a limited numbered Goblin LP, which now I have to buy a record frame for.
Myself and mystery woman with Dee Wallace. She was a real sweetheart; besides Meg Foster, probably the single nicest lady I’ve met at this con. Look at her IMDB link up above, she’s been in a lot of great horror films, and I was excited to get to meet her.
It’s hard to tell in this shot, but this guy dressed like Groot has an axe in his back for some reason. He did awesomely only speak through a voice box built into the helmet that just said, “I am Groot”. Kids loved it.
Another great t-shirt for sale that I bought for my buddy who couldn’t make it this year.
If this is the cover to your movie, if this is the box art and that is the name of your films, I will buy them, no questions asked. It’s like heaven for a person like me; there are tables and tables covered in this kind of shit.
I doubt the efficacy of these gas masks.
Dude and chick dressed like at the beginning of the film Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
This was just laying on a table as a centerpiece in the middle of one of the rooms, as decoration. Because this is the kind of thing that counts as decoration at Texas Frightmare Weekend, which is why I love it so.
Creep-shot of Dario Argento. He’s signing an endless array of rare large posters brought by the people directly in front of me in line, a nice couple from Montreal. The dude put me to *shame* in obscure low-budget horror knowledge, and that ain’t easy to do.
Cinco de Skeletor. Plus it was a black dude, which is super weird, because 1) there’s like a dozen black dudes at this convention, total, and 2) they sure as fuck don’t dress up.
Chick dressed as Chucky. Child’s Play and Fright Night director Tom Holland was in attendance, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to meet him/get signature.
Part of what I love about conventions. You find the weirdest shit. This one guy had a whole series of little painted Chinese porcelain figurines, that just came in orange boxes that said “Myths and Legends Series” and labeled, “God of Luck”, or “God of Prosperity”, etc. No other info. He said a customer traded them to him at his physical shop, which he accepted because he thought to sell them at DragonCon, but no such luck. So we picked up the God of Luck and put him on our shrine to Guan Di once we got back to the house. Just a nutty little piece of the universe.
Prom Night Carrie.
Beetlejuice when he has the spikes sticking out of him. I’d hate to try and navigate a crowded con with… protrusions like that.
Sugar Free sent this my way, but don’t let that scare you off: “Romance novel cover model wanted in Connecticut robberies is arrested in San Diego” David Byers (mildly NSFW) of the (very ritzy, I’ve been there) Solana Beach, CA has apparently been robbing banks (three of them! or one of them twice the story seems muddled) and a gas station in…Greenwich, CT. As far as I can tell he started his life of crime in SD when he stole a rowing machine from his apartment complex gym. Honestly, I’m thinking Zoolander sequel: male Instagram models gone rogue while Derek and friends overcome their increasing irrelevance at the democratization of beauty and save the day. Anyway, Byers randomly resurfaced in NY, PA and AZ before making it back to San Diego where he was driving around applying for jobs while driving a stolen vehicle and of course because he’s a model, he was arrested shirtless (autoplay video warning).
Something SFW, and something less SFW. Now don’t get me wrong, I would, without question, stick it in crazy in this case, but only with an assumed name and at a hotel. One doesn’t want crazy following one home.
When SF sent this my way, the fact that he was a Michael Stokes (mNSFW: man butt and implied nudity) model immediately pinged something in the back of my brain. When I saw the guy’s pictures I realized immediately what it was. Stokes has a type (muscles, bad tattoos) and a style (shiny, bold, uncanny use of HDR) that’s very distinctive and a few years back he did a series–and companion coffee table book–on Veterans who had lost limbs while serving, which began with him shooting Alex Minsky. This launched Minsky’s career as an underwear model, and also a fully clothed model who cleans up well, but where’s the fun in that? The Daily Mail has some fine examples from the book. There’s also a 2017 calendar…because of course there is.
If there’s someone to whom we could truly and nearly universally apply the descriptor “beloved,” it would have to be the late, great Jim Henson. His creative puppetry and voice acting charmed several generations, influenced thousands of other artists, educated millions of children, and entertained the hell out of everybody. In his personal life, he was by all accounts kind, caring, generous, down-to-earth, and an all around good guy.
So of course, I can’t resist bringing up the dark side. Unless you’re of a certain age and grew up in the Baltimore-DC area, where Henson went to school and got his start on local TV, you’re likely unfamiliar with his early work. Which was… interesting.
I’ll start with something bright, charming, and quasi-hallucinogenic, the commercial for Cloverland Dairy. Ask any elderly Baltimorean what the phone number was, and they’ll sing it to you. The puppetry is crude, fun, and creative. But note the lighting, with its suggestion of ominousness. It presages what is to come.
The real breakthrough was Wilkins Coffee… You can clearly see something like The Muppets take shape here. But Muppets gone terribly wrong. These short commercials were the violentest things on TV, even outdoing the Itchy and Scratchy shows. Every one had the same story arc: puppet doesn’t like Wilkins coffee. Other puppet kills him.
Greetings once again, my fellow travelers in the transgressive, to another installment of Reviews You’ll (Probably) Never Use.
Last week as you’ll recall, we explored a little of the background of the wonderful Italian crime and horror genre called giallo. This week, before getting to our feature review, we’ll explore three of the main personalities which shaped and defined the giallo over the years.
Barbara Steele in the original, and still best, “Black Sunday”
Undoubtedly the father of giallo, and indeed of Italian horror in general, is Mario Bava. Born in 1914, Bava got his first taste of directing in 1956 when, as cinematographer for I Vampiri, he was asked to finish the film when the hired director walked out on the project. He later went on to direct the gothic horror masterpiece Black Sunday(not the one about the football game, this one is better) and began directing what are widely considered to be the first true giallo films in the early 60s. Bava’s start as a cinematographer and special effects man provided the early shape of the genre as being primarily concerned with the immediate visual impact on screen and the relegation of other aspects to subsidiary status. His son also made films, but aside from a promising turn with Demons, has utterly failed to live up to his old man.
Next, we have the great Lucio Fulci. His film Zombi 2 was the subject of last week’s review (not linked here because linking to my own posts seems weirdly like masturbating), and if you watched or read that, you know his game. While his wonderful Don’t Torture A Duckling showcased a fine directorial ability, in general, he became known as the king of Italian gore. Despite getting his start in comedies, eventually his films were watched with a grim fascination by folks eager to see just how much brutal violence someone could get away with putting on screen. Seriously, if you have a problem with a slow close-up shot of an open eyeball having a straight razor dragged across it, don’t watch The New York Ripper. But really you should to you know, not be a pussy. His Gates of Hell trilogy (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery) are all good to excellent and worth watching for any serious fan of horror. The Beyond is probably my personal favorite Italian horror film from this era.
Finally, we come to the director of tonight’s film, one Dario Argento. He managed to have both a prolific and influential directorial career and to produce a pretty decent-looking daughter. He will be appearing at Texas Frightmare Weekend, and I will share a photo of the gentleman after I obtain my signature and regale him with stories of how much I love his movie because fuck knows he hasn’t heard that a thousand times from rando overweight white bald misanthropes. He started off as a screenwriter for Sergio Leone on spaghetti westerns but came into his own when he moved to giallo. In fact, his nearly flawless masterpiece, Deep Red, is considered by many critics to be the supreme expression of the giallo form. No less a personage than John Carpenter has frequently cited its influence on him when making American slasher innovator, Halloween. He’s fallen off recently (seriously, I bought his Dracula starring Rutger Hauer sight unseen, and returned it, it was that fucking bad), but man, when the guy was in his prime, he could make a fucking great movie experience. One thing I’ve always thought a bit off, however, was his willingness to direct his own daughter in nude scenes. How does that go? “OK sweetie, that was a good take, but now I want to see your titties a little bit more to the left, and rub that nipple a bit more sensuously. Yes, that’s the way…rub it slowly for daddy.” I mean, I know they’re Italian, and so their mores are going to be less “the corporation bought us lunch today so we can meet a deadline” and more “fuck it, let’s hit this bottle and sportfuck until the sun comes up,” but shit man, there are limits.
WHY DO OUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS HAVE TO BE SO DAMN BRIGHT?
Anyway, that brings us to our feature tonight, Argento’s Suspiria. The film was inspired by Suspiria de Profundis, a series of short essays by English author Thomas De Quincey. Argento thought to make three films out of the three Sorrows recounted in the essay: “Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears,” “Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs,” and “Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness.” Argento would indeed go on to complete his plan with Inferno in 1980 and The Mother of Tears finally in 2007, but let’s not digress onto those paths and ruin future reviews.
The film follows American dance student Jessica Harper as she attends a prestigious academy in Freiburg, only to discover that it’s a front for witches, just like all Arthur Murray Dance Studios in real life. Suspiria is pretty much the only famous thing Harper did, though she apparently was in Minority Report in a role I don’t recall just from reading the name.
She’s feeling a little blue.
Jessica’s introduction to the academy is seeing a student flee from it while ranting during a storm. The fleeing student is then murdered in most satisfying fashion. She goes to her friend’s apartment, and a random hairy-armed intruder stabs her so damn many times in the sternum that her heart is exposed, then we get a nice close-up shot of the knife being stabbed directly into the beating heart. Then she’s hung from the skylight, the shattered debris of which falls and buries itself in her aforementioned friend’s skull. It’s easily the best opening to any movie ever made, and if you disagree, you can fuck right off with your incorrect opinions which can be disproved mathematically.
Seriously, how can you not love a movie that ostensibly takes place almost entirely at night, but is still so full of glorious colors?
So Jessica meets the various eccentrics who staff and study at the academy. Creepy things happen, people die, and she starts to get suspicious. There’s a great scene where the blind pianist’s guide dog is possessed and rips out his owner’s throat, and tears chunks of meat out of him until a couple of polizei come running over to chase him away. Her friend Stefania Casini tries to run away from an unseen murderous fiend with a straight razor, only to fall into a storage room filled entirely with razor wire. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK? It’s giallo, it doesn’t matter or need any explanation! But seriously as she’s struggling with the razor wire and getting cut up she gets her throat slit with the straight razor. Very tragic.
Oh shit, I jumped into a room full of razor wire! I hope that guy with the straight razor who was chasing me doesn’t take advantage of this situation and come slit my throat!
Eventually, Jessica discovers that the academy was founded by an old evil witch, and after parsing out the meaning of the opening runaway’s rant is able to find the secret passage where the academy staff congregate to perform black magic. The main baddy animates poor Stefania’s corpse, crucified on a coffin and now with needles in its eyes for some reason, to attack Jessica, but our brave Final Girl is able to see through the witch’s glamour and kill her, which causes the other witches to apparently suffer cranial bleeding and migraine headaches while the whole house tears itself apart.
Honestly, the plot isn’t as convoluted as some critics make it out to be. You do have to pay attention and give the usual allowance for a giallo film’s somewhat blasé attachment to narrative flow, but that just comes with the territory. The real sparkle of this film is in the visual realm. The entire thing is shot in imbibition Technicolor, which was seen in films such as The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind but was no longer widely used at the time. It produces a more vibrant, vivid color palette, almost to the point of garishness, though of course, that’s only a good thing in certain circumstances, of which this happens to be one. There is heavy emphasis on strong primary colors as the background in many scenes – the academy walls are deep blue and red velvet, and in a scene where sheets are set up as a screen so the ladies can sleep without a horde of maggots falling on them through the ceiling (watch the damn movie), as soon as the lights are out a nightmarish red backlight pulses through everything. Even in a bedroom, at night, there will be what looks like bright green or blue spotlights shining onto the actor’s faces. The damn skylight the initial victim is hung from is an enormous mosaic of bright colors. The entire thing is like a kaleidoscope given form and is really quite remarkable, and I can’t recommend it enough. Lord only knows how great it would be to watch it blazed (note to self: what am I doing this weekend?). Maybe the best part is what I have lovingly dubbed the Disco Peacock in the main witch’s bedroom. I desperately want one of these, and it also would be suitable for extended viewing while blazed.
I wasn’t kidding. I present to you: Disco Peacock.I also wasn’t kidding about the camp-out sheets having glowing red backlight. And nobody comments on this or thinks it sinister in any way.
Again, though, this is very much in the realm of art for the sake of art, so don’t go expecting some kind of Tarantino-esque dialog or Oscar-nominated stories of black folks overcoming oppression. It’s all enhanced with a great soundtrack by Goblin, long-time collaborators with Argento, and mentioned in my previous post. It’s less accessible to a standard horror audience than Zombi 2, but is ultimately superior. I award Suspiria 13 Sexy Witches out of 15.
I love lights, so Christmas is fun for me. I used to just go for how many lights can you cram in! But as I get older and tired, I’m going for theme instead. The wife likes red and white, so I go with that. My lights are nothing compared to others, but they please me, and yes….. I have a snow machine. The grandkids love it, and the colder it gets the better it sticks, leaving a beautiful scene. Desert snow, I have seen it, but not in upland. And because I live on a major street, people trip out on the whole scene. Fun times! The neighbors are doing some pretty things, so our neighborhood looks outstanding, and we are on the white trash side of the street. Fuck off, slavers!
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