DAILY CALL SHEET: DECEMBER 11, 2025

The Human Vapor (1960) Ishirō Honda takes a break from directing the Big G to helm this smaller scale thriller in which the police find themselves baffled by a series of seemingly impossible bank robberies. It turns out the thief/murderer is a librarian who, thanks to a well-meaning scientist's experiments, can assume a gaseous form. His reason for pilfering the depositories and leaving a trail of bodies? Love. He wants to use the money to help further the career of a talented Noh dancer he is besotted with, even though she herself is horrified when the source of his funding is revealed. Can the authorities find a way to nab hold of a man who can't be grabbed, or is a woman's touch needed? The Human Vapor is a nifty little sci-fi treat with a surprisingly touching performance from its female lead. If only the subtitles in the version I watched didn't keep referring to the titular character as "the gas man."

TIL: Say what you want about "the gas man," but at least he had good intentions, right? Yeah, well. Intentions are one of the three constitutive elements that determines if a human act is a sin. However, as the Catechism points out, a good intention (for example, that of helping out one's beloved advance in her art) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered such as murder or robbery, good or just. In short, the end does not justify the means. This is because sin is not a matter of subjective motive but an objective offense against truth, reason, and love for God and neighbor. Now, good intentions can sometimes influence the degree of responsibility or gravity of a sin, but they cannot change the fundamental moral quality of an act. As for bad intentions, like deliberately intending to commit a grave sin, that kind of speaks for itself.

Queen Kong (1976) If you thought gender flipping in movies started with the 2016 version of Ghostbusters, you've never met Queen Kong. In a world where women are macho and men are meek, movie producer and captain of the good ship Liberated Lady, Luce Habit, kidnaps small time con artist Ray Fay to star in her next adventure flick to be set in deepest, whitest Africa. Once on site, however, Ray catches the eye of a giant amorous ape who eventually ends up chasing him throughout London. The twist is, he sort of likes being chased. This attempt at feminist comedy was only allowed a limited release in Italy and Germany due to lawsuits from Dino De Laurentiis, who inexplicably thought it might hurt the box office of his own King Kong remake. Of course, this just guaranteed Queen Kong a certain cult appeal, but whether it deserves it will likely depend on if you find its Z-grade versions of Benny Hill jokes funny or not.

TIL: The Church holds to the truth that, while equal, men and women are distinct in their masculinity and femininity by divine design, with complementary differences that enrich human relationships and reflect the relational nature of God (as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). That's why, as Pope Francis explained in Amoris Laetitia, the Church rejects ideologies that view gender as fluid, self-determined, or detached from biology, as such views erase essential human differences and the anthropological basis of the family. However, despite the necessity of the difference between the masculine and feminine, the Catechism notes that men and women share a common vocation to stewardship of creation, work, and service to others, with no inherent hierarchy based on sex. So, there's no problem with a woman being the ship's captain or a man being the "damsel" in distress, just as long as the inherent gender differences are still recognized.

DAILY CALL SHEET: DECEMBER 7, 2025

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984) Guys dressed as Santa Claus are being offed in various ways, and Scotland Yard seems helpless to find the masked killer. As the body count escalates, the police decide to send a bunch of undercover Santas onto the streets. The killer isn’t biting, though, and instead kidnaps a stripper to be the supreme sacrifice to all the evil that Christmas is. This distraction works, allowing the maniac to resume his Santa-slaying ways. Can nothing stop him? And what’s it all got to do with the mysterious package the lead investigator received marked “Don’t open till Christmas”? With all the head-spearing, face-grilling, and castration, this British attempt to replicate American slashers is actually more sleazy and brutal than many of its Yank counterparts.

TIL: Some Christians, particularly from evangelical, Reformed, or fundamentalist traditions, oppose the modern figure of the all-knowing, all-seeing Santa Claus (distinct from the historical Saint Nicholas), arguing that it can subtly erode faith rather than build it. Pope Paul VI was a little kinder. In a general audience on December 15, 1976, the pontiff noted, "Truly, there is something else that brings us to the threshold of the world of fantasy and poetry: the Christmas tree, 'Santa Claus,' and finally, for those who want to see into the historical and religious reality of Christmas: the nativity scene." The hope was that the childlike joy inspired by the former traditions would lead people to look into Christmas's true profound meaning represented by the latter.

London After Midnight (1927) Despite the protestations of his family and staff, Roger Balfour's death is ruled a suicide by Burke of Scotland Yard. Five years later, a sharp-toothed, wild-maned man in a top hat and his extremely pale female companion take up residence in Balfour's mansion. Oddly, the deathly-looking duo's lease bears the signature of the deceased Balfour, prompting Burke to reopen his investigation. All signs point to vampirism, but things may not be as they seem. One of the holy grails of missing films, the only way to "watch" London After Midnight now is either through slideshows of film stills and production photos organized based on copies of the script, or, more recently. through attempts to add some motion to the existing images with the aid of A.I. Sure, it would be nice to have the original film, but what we do have is enough to get the intentions of the movie across. The results may not be quite as visually astounding as some of its expressionistic horror peers, but Lon Chaney's acting and makeup are excellent and creepy as always, and it's a good dry run for Tod Browning before taking on Dracula.

TIL: If you think it's useless to invest time in something composed of pieced-together fragments, then you may as well toss out your Bible. As the Church attests, we don't have access to the original documents. What we do have are copies of copies whose contents are verifiable through fragments recovered piecemeal over the centuries. For most modern translations, the Old Testament draws heavily from bits and pieces found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from 3rd century BC to 1st century AD. As for the New Testament, it's confirmed mostly from the tattered remains of 2nd–3rd century papyri. The good news is that there are literally thousands of these fragments and more being discovered from time to time, which has allowed translators to accurately assemble a text that reliably reproduces the original biblical authors while weeding out transcription errors or later additions that may have creeped into individual snippets.

DAILY CALL SHEET: NOVEMBER 13, 2025

The Running Man (1987) Falsely accused of crimes against humanity, Arnold Schwarzenegger is forced to participate in a government-sponsored game show in which contestants must avoid being hunted down and killed on live television. His pursuers consist of outrageously themed assassins such as Dynamo, an opera singer clothed in Christmas lights who has the ability to toss lightning, and Fireball, a jet-pack wearing firebug armed with a flame thrower. The film has little to do with Stephen King's original novel of the same name, but it does have a nifty synthesized score by '80s stalwart Harold Faltermeyer, dance choreography by Paula Abdul (not joking), a pitch perfectly cast real life gameshow host Richard Dawson as the smarmy antagonist, and Arnie at his wisecracking prime. This is celluloid comfort food, nothing more.

TIL: Written around 200 AD, Tertullian's treatise De Spectaculis (On the Spectacles) pretty much summed up the Church's position on sports involving death, particularly gladiatorial combat. Among his criticisms were that such games promoted cruelty over compassion, eroded Christian virtues by inciting rage and bloodlust, and encouraged hypocrisy by applauding murder in the stadium while condemning it elsewhere. The Romans brushed off such complaints until around 404 AD, when a Christian monk named Telemachus barged into the Colosseum and inserted himself between two gladiators, urging them to stop what they were doing. The audience quickly stoned him to death. Despite this initial reaction to Telemachus' protest, however, Emperor Honorius was inspired by the monk's sacrifice to issue an edict banning gladiatorial combats across the empire.

The Faculty (1998) The teachers at Herrington High don't just act like they're from another planet, they are from another planet. At least, the slug-like alien parasites infecting them are. Fortunately, the freaks and geeks amongst the student body are able to figure out the invaders aren't too wild about caffeine and are able to convince the resident "drug" dealer to donate his stash to the resistance. What, didn't the suppliers at your high school deal exclusively in powdered caffeine? Anyway, just because the kids have a weapon doesn't mean the war is over. For that, they have to identify the queen parasite, but the growing number of infected aren't going to give up her location without a fight. For a post-Scream angsty teenage take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this is actually pretty entertaining, even considering its bad guys could easily be killed off with a case of Monster energy drinks.

TIL: While some breakaway sects like the Mormons and the Seventh-day Adventist Church have a problem with some drinks containing caffeine, traditionally Christians have embraced them, at least since the late 1500s. Now don't tell the Protestants, but if you're a Christian and you enjoy a cup of joe in the morning, you owe some thanks to Pope Clement VIII. You see, because coffee made its way to the western world from Muslim countries, it was considered by many Christians at the time to be Satan's beverage of choice, and the Pontiff was eventually asked to forbid its drinking. However, being reasonable, Clement thought it best to taste the stuff first. After a few sips, the Pope declared the devil's drink too delicious to be left to the infidels, and "baptized" it with his blessing. Within 50 years, the first coffee house opened in Rome, and spread throughout Christendom from there.

DAILY CALL SHEET: NOVEMBER 11, 2025

 

Pajama Party (1964) Teen-aged Martian Go-Go is sent to Earth to act as an advance scout for an invasion. As so often happens, though, Go-Go becomes enraptured with beach babe Connie, and decides to put off his duties to help save her aunt from being swindled by the terrible trio of J. Sinister Hulk, Chief Rotten Eagle, and the statuesque Helga, who apparently owns little clothing other than bikinis. As if that wasn't enough plot, surfer-hating biker Eric von Zipper shows up once again to do the things he does. If you're a fan of AIP's other beach party movies, there's no reason you won't find a little something to like in this one, though Tommy Kirk is a definite step down from Frankie Avalon and musical guests The Nooney Rickett 4 shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as Little Stevie Wonder. Really, most of the fun is simply spotting all the appearances of stars from Hollywood's heyday.

TIL: Pajamas as the two-piece sleepwear we think of them today really only emerged during the Victorian era. They certainly didn't exist in Biblical times. Back then, the tunic which served as the primary undergarment for men and women both was worn night and day, and worked just fine for bedtime. If things got a little chilly, folks might keep their daytime cloaks on as well. This all-purpose clothing was so important that both Exodus and Deuteronomy contain demands that if a poor person surrendered their cloak as collateral for a loan, it still had to be brought back to them before sunset so they wouldn't be vulnerable to the cold while they slept. Not doing so was considered an unrighteous act in the eyes of God. Even when it comes to something as mundane as pajamas, God expects us to treat others charitably.

Faces of Death (1978) This pseudo-documentary follows a phony pathologist as he travels the world gathering footage of "real" deaths. His finds include a guy getting eaten by an alligator, Nazis dying in battle, parachuting accidents, lots of animal slaughter, an electrocution, and decadent diners beating a monkey to death with tiny hammers so they can eat its brains. Most of the gross stuff in the movie was eventually admitted to have been faked, but the real things like footage from an actual autopsy will still be too much for many. It's hard to explain to the YouTube generation what a big deal this collection of clips was in the pre-Internet days, especially since the whole exercise is pretty dismal in hindsight, but back then Faces of Dearth was a must see for curious teens. My friends and I even skipped class to watch the VHS once we found a copy. Of course, we also skipped class to watch Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but the point remains.

TIL: If you want a more adult, less sensationalist way of looking death in the face, the Church recommends the spiritual practice of memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning "remember you must die." Based on the advice of Ecclesiastes 7:2 where it says, "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting," memento mori is the act of meditating on the reality of death, not as a source of fear, despair or cynicism, but as a catalyst for living a holy, purposeful life detached from materialism. Practical ways of doing this include praying the Litany of the Dead, contemplating the Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, hell), or wearing a memento mori medal. If you want to go a little more extreme, you can always copy St. Charles Borromeo and sleep with a skull next to your bed. No matter how you engage in memento mori, though, remember the end goal isn't just to remember you will die, but also memento vivere, to remember to live.

DAILY CALL SHEET: NOVEMBER 8, 2025

Magic (1978) Let's get this straight. We've got the director of Ghandi and A Bridge Too Far, the screenwriter of The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the composer of the scores to Patton and Chinatown, and a cast full of award winning actors like Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, and Burgess Meredith, and they all came together to make a movie about … a mentally ill ventriloquist who wants to find a way to be free of his murderous, trash-talking dummy and thinks true love will do the trick? Yeah, that's exactly what they did, and they were all dead serious about it, too. Hopkins even learned ventriloquism so his performance would be authentic. Yes, the plot is better suited to some B-movie schlock fest rather than the typical prestige films this crew is associated with, but go with the flow and you'll be rewarded with some top tier acting.

TIL: Not all Saints were genteel stoics. St. Simeon Salus, aka Simeon the Holy Fool, often feigned madness to bring attention to Christ's teachings. Some of his tactics included tripping strangers in the street, pelting women with nuts, and dragging himself around on his bottom. And don't even bring up the dead dog incident. Nobody seemed to mind, though, because when there was no audience, Simeon was busy feeding the poor, exorcising the possessed, and teaching the Gospel. One of the more memorable things Simeon liked to do was carry around a puppet which would harangue passers-by about their sins and shortcomings, at least that's what it did when it wasn't busy insulting Simeon himself. If it sounds like modern ventriloquists ripped off Simeon's act, they did, which is why he's now considered the patron Saint of ventriloquists and puppeteers.

Frightmare (1974) If you think your family has problems, imagine being poor Jackie. Both her father Edmund and stepmother Dorothy have just been released from the mental asylum where they've been confined for almost 15 years, Dorothy for being a cannibal, and Edmund for covering up his wife's diet. Dorothy's not quite cured, though, so Jackie has to start slipping her animal brains to munch on. However, that may not be enough satisfy Dorothy's hunger for human flesh, nor that of Jackie's stepsister Debbie, who it turns out might just be a chip off the old block. The Times of London called this flick "nasty, foolish and morally repellent," so naturally it's something of a cult classic these days.

TIL: With her little brown packages full of animal brains, Jackie means well, but you can't just let family member's problems slide. As the Catechism notes, "charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction." This means if you truly love a family member, you won't have a passive tolerance of their sins but an active concern for their spiritual well-being, particularly when grave (mortal) sins that could endanger their soul are involved. I'd say cannibalism falls into that category. That being said, fraternal correction doesn't always mean direct confrontation in every instance. Use a little prudence, keeping in mind that correction must serve amendment and healing, not judgment or conflict.

DAILY CALL SHEET: NOVEMBER 6, 1925

 

Frightmare (1974) If you think your family has problems, imagine being poor Jackie. Both her father Edmund and stepmother Dorothy have just been released from the mental asylum where they've been confined for almost 15 years, Dorothy for being a cannibal, and Edmund for covering up his wife's diet. Dorothy's not quite cured, though, so Jackie has to start slipping her animal brains to munch on. However, that may not be enough satisfy Dorothy's hunger for human flesh, nor that of Jackie's stepsister Debbie, who it turns out might just be a chip off the old block. The Times of London called this flick "nasty, foolish and morally repellent," so naturally it's something of a cult classic these days.

TIL: With her little brown packages full of animal brains, Jackie means well, but you can't just let family member's problems slide. As the Catechism notes, "charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction." This means if you truly love a family member, you won't have a passive tolerance of their sins but an active concern for their spiritual well-being, particularly when grave (mortal) sins that could endanger their soul are involved. I'd say cannibalism falls into that category. That being said, fraternal correction doesn't always mean direct confrontation in every instance. Use a little prudence, keeping in mind that correction must serve amendment and healing, not judgment or conflict.

Now Showing at a Blog Near You: For Aleteia, I take a look at Triumph Over Evil: Battle of the Exorcists, the first Vatican approved documentary on the ritual of exorcism and those who perform it.

VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN

Back in 1962, the Russians made a pretty nifty film called Planeta Bur about a group of astronauts and their robot who run into a brontosaur while exploring the surface of Venus, and then have to escape as the planet's weather goes nuts. Thanks to the heroic sacrifice of the robot, who gets left behind, most of the astronauts make it back home. It's enjoyable and brisk, running a mere 72 minutes. However, when the rights for the U.S. distribution of the film were acquired by American International Pictures, they decided Roger Corman could somehow make two movies out of the footage. Which, of course, he could.

The first film, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, was a fairly faithful dubbed version of the original, with a few new scenes featuring Basil Rathbone thrown in for good measure. Think Raymond Burr in Godzilla. It was marketed directly to TV stations and became a Saturday afternoon staple. The second movie, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, is a different beast altogether. According to screenwriter/director Peter Bogdanovich (who wisely asked not to be credited), Corman came to him saying AIP might give the film a limited theatrical run, but only if they found a way to stick some chicks in it. Well, in Hollywood, a job's a job, so Bogdanovich called in Mamie Van Doren and a gaggle of blondes, dressed them in sea shells, and rewrote the story so their presence would almost make sense. Almost.

What you get with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is the story of a group of astronauts and their robot who run into a pterodactyl while exploring the surface of Venus and immediately kill it. Unfortunately, it turns out the flying reptile was the object of worship by a matriarchal society of telepathic Venusian women who like to hang out at the beach. Using the awesome power of being female, the ladies call upon their planet to punish the invaders with floods and volcanoes. The male invaders are chased off, but the robot they inadvertently leave behind inexplicably becomes the women's new god. It might all be okay if the men and women weren't so obviously in two separate movies and voiceover narration wasn't required to make it all halfway understandable. As it is, the movie's enjoyably silly, but it's undeniably a hunk of junk.

It's funny how so many of these types of movies have male astronauts running across matriarchies. There's Cat-Women of the Moon, Queen of Outer Space, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and so on. I guess it's because you have to go to space to find such arrangements, as earthly matriarchal societies—defined as those where women hold dominant political, economic, and social power over men in a mirror image of patriarchy—are widely considered by most anthropologists to be mythical or unattested to in historical records. Sure, there have been matrilineal societies (descent and inheritance through the female line) and egalitarian systems with strong female influence (the Iroquois or Mosuo come to mind), but real matriarchies have been difficult to identify outside of feminist revisionary texts.

There have been a few reasons speculated for this. Some suggest that men's evolutionary physical advantages gave patriarchal systems an edge when it came to territorial expansion, especially through warfare. Others think that as economies shifted from domestic horticultural setups to movable wealth (e.g., cattle, tools, trade), they played more into the strengths of male hunter-gatherers than they did female nurturers. And, of course, some point to the boogeyman of religion, especially those pesky Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) which are accused of emphasizing patrilineal descent and male authority. Some, in a fit of wishful thinking, even like to imagine that these patriarchal religions crashed the ancient matriarchal party, killing off the female deities and leaving a male-created God in their place like some robot abandoned on Venus.

Fantasies aside, whether or not monotheism encourages patriarchy is arguable. However, at least when it comes to Catholicism, the male-female dynamic is a bit more nuanced than just saying men are in charge. As St. Pope John Paul II notes in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, the Church affirms that while the sexes have distinctly ordered, though complimentary, roles, women still have an essential equality with men in personhood, grace, and mission. This complementarianism results in a unity of the masculine and feminine that enriches each other in mutual self-giving, elevating both sexes rather than one oppressing the other. So, the Church's view is definitely not matriarchal, but neither is it egalitarian, as the role of the sexes is not identical, nor is it patriarchal in the oppressive sense, as men are called to recognize and serve the dignity of women. Because of this, JPII explicitly states that any type of patriarchal domination, even those times it may have occurred in a Church setting, is a post-Fall distortion of what God actually intends for men and women.

Not that AIP, Corman, or Bogdanovich were thinking about any of this when they churned out Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. They just wanted a movie with some chicks in it. By that measure, they succeeded.

(By the way, if you'd like another take on this old clunker and what it has to do with Augustine and paganism, check out the guest review from reader Xena Catolica from a while back.)