Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
OUTTAKES #034
The clips come from the loopy horror western Teenage Monster starring the quite expressive Anne Gwynne. Rest assured, the real movie is 100% masturbation free.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: THE CRAWLING HAND
June 12, 2011: Pentecost Sunday (Year A)
Hmmm, let’s see… Alan Hale before he was the Skipper, Peter Breck before he made it to the Big Valley, Alison Hayes years after she made it big (quite literally) in Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, all working off of a script by veteran B-movie writer/director Herbert L. Strock (Blood Of Dracula, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein). Yes siree, Bob, The Crawling Hand is that bad! So terribly, fascinatingly, wonderfully bad!
Which is actually a recommendation of sorts, because the movie could easily have been just plain old fashioned terrible. After all, The Crawling Hand has all the ingredients of a cheap quickie drive-in movie from the late 50s (which should immediately be a warning since it was made in the early 60s). There’s tons of inane dialog (“What does it mean that I’m stacked?”), a baffling plot (the hand can strangle full grown human beings but is apparently powerless against irritated housecats), and absolutely no budget for special (or even ordinary) effects. And I mean NONE. I’m guessing they were unable to afford to build models, because the opening sequence in which the spaceship runs into trouble is actually animated in the same style as South Park or the old Space Angel cartoons. And as for the crawling hand itself, in the few scenes where it’s not obviously a mannequin arm being pulled by a string, you can often see the head and shoulders of the guy who the ‘severed’ arm is attached to.
Fortunately, the movie’s got some charm to offset the stink, mostly due to all the loopy characterizations. Not necessarily the main girl, whose sole qualification for the job consisted of being an ex-Miss Iceland who was willing to disrobe for the international version of the movie, or the main guy, who apparently saw a film still from Rebel Without A Cause, mimicked James Dean’s facial expression from it, and called that acting. No, not them, but the other folks playing bit parts. There’s the “is he mentally challenged or just drunk” sheriff as played by Alan Hale, who seems to have made a decent non-Gilligan career for himself in such roles (see The Giant Spider Invasion for further evidence). And then there’s the crotchety old soda shop owner who serves ice cream floats to his teenage customers while telling them, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” Not to mention the landlady who constantly walks around her boardinghouse wielding a pistol… just in case. Or the ambulance drivers who come to collect the landlady’s corpse, only to decide to raid the fridge because, you know, women like THAT always keep a house stocked with beer. Every person in this film is just a tad bit off their rocker, and it rescues the film from what could have been an otherwise tedious and silly waste of time. I mean, come on, the whole concept is silly. A demonic alien force taking control of a severed arm? What could be goofier than that? It’s not like it could happen in real life.
Or could it? (Dom Dom Dommmmm!!!)
Well not literally, of course. But metaphorically, that’s another story. Take for example the fairly new Christian community in Corinth as depicted in in St. Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians. They were only just getting started as a community, and yet they were already beginning to experience a divisive factionalism over a variety of issues such as the picking and choosing of doctrine, misuse of the Eucharist, and arguments of the nature of marriage. To address the situation, St. Paul fired off a letter which, in the part covered by this week’s second reading, reminds the Corinthians that “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” Basically he was reasserting the rather common sense notion that certain parts of “the body” shouldn’t try to creep off and do their own thing.
You know, it’s been almost 2,000 years since St. Paul wrote that, but he could probably send out the exact same letter to local parishes today without changing too many of the words. Except instead of just calling what the Corinthians were up to ‘sin’, he might possibly adopt our modern way of breaking our indiscretions down into more specific categories and call it individualism. The old Catholic Encyclopedia interprets religious individualism as “the attitude of those persons who refuse to subscribe to definite creeds, or to submit to any external religious authority. Such are those who call themselves freethinkers, and those who profess to believe in Christianity without giving their adhesion to any particular denomination. In a less extreme sense all Protestants are individualists in religion, inasmuch as they regard their individual interpretation of the Bible as the final authority. The Protestant who places the articles of faith adopted by his denomination before his own private interpretation of the teaching of Scripture is not, indeed, a thorough-going individualist, but neither is he a logical Protestant. On the other hand, Catholics accept the voice of the Church as the supreme authority, and therefore reject outright the principle of religious individualism.” Well, Catholics do that in theory anyway. But it’s probably safe to say that today, just like back in the time of the Corinthians, there are plenty of parts of Christ’s body who want to ignore what the head is saying and crawl off to pursue their own agenda.
Part of the problem, as Archbishop Francis E. George notes in his recent book, The Difference God Makes, is that “In the United States, individualism as an ideology is so closely associated with creativity and personal freedom that the Gospel's injunction to surrender oneself to Christ and to others in order to be free has become largely incomprehensible.” And that’s mostly due to a misunderstanding (or intentional reinterpretation) of what freedom truly is. Deacon and Prof. of Philosphy Doug McManaman explains that, “Freedom does not mean creating my own nature. Rather, it involves both knowing how I ought to choose so as to fulfill my nature which I have in common with every other human person, and having the habits (both the virtues and divine grace) that will enable me to make those choices. In other words, freedom is an achievement. In this light, authority can be seen to exist for the sake of my freedom, not as an enemy of it. The authority of a parent, for example, exists for the benefit of the child. This is true because what is beneficial for one person is beneficial for all, for we are all of the same nature (human nature). And so if my father, as a result of his life experience, has a better grasp of the goods of human nature than I do, it is in my best interest to listen to him. For the more I listen to him, the more I learn about myself… This relationship between freedom and authority is especially intensified in the context of the Catholic faith, which is an ecclesial faith, not something private and individual. For the faith that we appropriate is the faith of the Church (Eph 1, 15-23; 3, 1-13). A person is baptized into the Church, that is, into Christ's Mystical Body (1 Cor 12, 13). Now this Mystical Body is not merely an association or an impersonal institution that exists outside of us. It is a living Body through which we receive the life of grace (Jn 15, 1-7). If the Catholic lives in the Person of Christ, he does so as a member of his Mystical Body.” And as a part of the body, he doesn’t go crawling off after his own destructive pursuits. That kind of false freedom may make for an entertainingly crappy drive-in movie, but it ain’t no way to live in real life.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: GOR
June 5, 2011: Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Year A)
Recently over at John C. Wright's Journal, the noted sci-fi author could be found wringing his hands over the uncomfortable admission that, yes, as a youth, he was quite entertained by the first six or so of John Norman’s Gor novels. I can’t help but imagine that while typing out that confessional, Mr. Wright’s expression looked something like Mark McKinney’s did in this Kids In The Hall skit wherein a politician learns just exactly who he has awarded first place to in the local jam contest…
Alright, to be fair, the Gor series doesn’t come anywhere near the level of child molestation, but the S&M cesspool the stories eventually descended into is still enough to make most people hesitate before admitting to reading them. Alas, like Mr. Wright, I must admit that I too read the first four or five Gor books at the age of eleven after running across a box set at a flea market. What can I say? I was a raging bag of hormones, the box art featured an incredible combination of testosterone and cheesecake by Boris Vallejo, and I got the whole thing for a couple of bucks. Completely irresistible. And to be honest, the first few novels (from what I can remember) were pretty enjoyable. There was an alternate Earth full of sword wielding men flying atop giant birds and human-sized insectoid Priest Kings who ruled over things from the hollow core of the planet. Sure, it wasn’t Tolkien or anything like that, but I hadn’t read any John Carter or Conan books at the time, so it was a fresh genre for me and I gobbled it up. But even at the age of eleven, by the time I got to the fourth book in the series, I started to notice things were getting a bit weird. I hadn’t even been on a date yet, but I was pretty sure I knew enough about women to suspect that the mentally healthy ones weren’t secretly longing for a rippling he-man to beat the crap out of them until their inner slave girl awakened.
Now, I mention all of that just to point out that there are things about the Gor books which make them both interesting AND infamous. And you should know that because… none of it is to be found in this movie. Holy crud is this thing an abominable combination of dull and bad. There’s not a giant bird or alien insect to be found. Actually I’m not even sure there was a regular sized bird or insect in the movie. They probably couldn’t afford to pay for a wrangler. They certainly didn’t pay for a script. Or a fight choreographer. This movie has the most anemic sword fights I’ve ever seen. We fought harder than this with sticks on the playground in elementary school. Actually, if I had to guess, I would say the majority of the budget was probably spent on the voluminous amount of alcohol necessary to drown Oliver Reed’s shame at appearing in this fiasco.
Still, none of that would probably matter to the books’ devoted fans if the more exploitative aspects of Gor had been left intact. But beyond an overabundance of pasty butt cheeks peaking out from beneath the flimsy Party City quality costumes, Gor the movie is completely devoid of shocks. Tarl Cabot, the flame haired meat eating misogynist of the books, has been changed into a vegetarian weenie, while Talena, the stuffy freewoman turned willing slave, has been converted to a generic 1980s big haired bimbo with a balsa wood sword. No one was more aghast at the changes in the story than the psuedonymous John Norman himself, who wrote shortly after the movie’s release, "I did have a consultancy with the films and sent the producer something like 160 pages of single-spaced comments, suggestions etc. It would seem, however, that very little of this, if anything, went into the movie… Those who see the films, I gather, if they are not acquainted with the books themselves, may find it difficult to understand why the Gorean books have been best sellers for over twenty years." And it’s true. About the only thing they managed to keep from the first novel, beyond a few character names, was the central idea of a man taken to another world where he experiences some incredible things, and then at the end is returned home a changed man because of them.
Oh well. That idea, at least, should hold some interest to us Christians, as it calls to mind this week’s first reading in which the Apostles are watching Jesus’ ascension into Heaven. “While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” It’s kind of a funny scene in a way. It’s almost like the disciples are getting the angelic version of “move along, folks, there’s nothing more to see here.”
And it’s a fitting passage for the end of the Easter season. “In the liturgical year the various aspects of the one Paschal mystery unfold.” the Catechism explains. “This is also the case with the cycle of feasts surrounding the mystery of the incarnation (Annunciation, Christmas, Epiphany)” And of course there’s Easter, which “is not simply one feast among others, but the "Feast of feasts," the "Solemnity of solemnities.” But after this month, the time for staring up at the sky in wonder is over, at least for awhile. We’ve spent our moments with the miraculous and they have shaped us. But just as it was with the apostles, tempus per annum, Ordinary Time, is approaching, and it’s time for us “new creations in Christ” to venture out into the doldrums of regular living and put our transformations to the test. Most human beings have the tendency to rise to the occasion when there are fireworks going off, but it’s in the dull times where we often get to prove we are the people we claim to be.
So embrace the “dullness” of Ordinary Time. The dullness of Gor, however, you can (and probably should for sanity’s sake) safely pass right by.
(Oh, a word about the trailer for Gor. The only one I could find has a non-English voice over, but you know, it really doesn’t matter one little bit. The badness transcends all language barriers.)
Sunday, June 05, 2011
LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE: INVISIBLE HANDS
A little while back a package arrived in the mail which contained a small surprise…
Actually, the surprising thing wasn’t so much the contents of the package (you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that appears on my doorstep), but the fact that I hadn’t ordered them myself. They just kind of showed up out of nowhere. And because of that, I couldn’t help but immediately think of this…
Pretty easy to spot the connection, huh? I’ve always loved Invisible Hands. Back when the folks at MTV only spent about 80% of their time being a corrosive influence on the culture of the world rather than making it a full time pursuit like they do these days, you could still run across the occasional worthwhile program such as Liquid Television, an animated series showcasing the works of various artists whose works were a bit off the beaten track. Invisible Hands, a loose adaptation of Richard Sala’s comic book Thirteen O’Clock, was one of my favorites, capturing as it did both the language of noir and the lunacy of giallo. The whole thing’s only about 10 minutes long, so here’s the entire serial if you’re interested…
EPISODE 1, EPISODE 2, EPISODE 3, EPISODE 4, EPISODE 5, EPISODE 6
Now, not to worry, the eyeballs which mysteriously appeared in my mailbox turned out not to be connected to a cult of one handed assassins in any way, but rather were part of an advertising campaign for a computer repair and data retrieval company (which, now that I think about it, is almost just as weird). So, I’m relatively safe as far as that goes, unless there’s some other reason a cult of one handed assassins might take an interest in me that I’m not thinking of (maybe the Free Will Baptists are still ticked off I joined the Catholic Church).
But just like any other time some odd little thing like this happens to me (more times than you might suspect), it did make me think. Just because no masked killers were involved, that didn’t necessarily mean there was no hidden message for me. After all, just how often do you receive a pair of eyes in the mail? Has to mean something, right? Well, within a few minutes of opening up the package, the thought that popped into my head was the number of verses in Psalms which reminds us that “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but speak not; they have eyes but see not; They have ears but hear not; no breath is in their mouths. Their makers shall be like them, all who trust in them.”
Well, I had definitely been given a pair of eyes. Was there something I wasn’t seeing? The Catechism warns us that “It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection.” So maybe my special delivery was telling me it was time for a quick “examination of conscience made in the light of the Word of God. The passages best suited to this can be found in the Ten Commandments, the moral catechesis of the Gospels and the apostolic Letters, such as the Sermon on the Mount and the apostolic teachings.” That’s a whole lot of reading, so it’s fortunate I was able to find plenty of websites out there with good premade lists of questions for conducting an examination of conscience. (Catholic-Pages.com has a pretty decent one to get started with.) Perhaps I was reading too much into an advertising stunt, but hey, better to be safe than eternally sorry, right?
Now, what to do if a jewel encrusted hand shows up tomorrow…
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: DAGON
May 29, 2011: Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year A)
Oh sure, Stuart Gordon’s made more than a few notable B-movies (Dolls, Robot Jox, Space Truckers. No, seriously, Space Truckers, look it up.) in his time, but in the end it’s his Lovecraft inspired films (Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak) which have earned him a throng of lifetime devotees. So it was no big surprise when Gordon returned to the tentacle ridden tomes of ole H. P. again in 2002 with Dagon, a story based mostly on The Shadow Over Innsmouth. No, the big surprise is that, after two decades of mining the same territory again and again, Dagon actually turned out to be one of the director’s best.
What Dagon manages to accomplish that other attempts at adapting Lovecraft have failed so miserably at is to capture what The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana: A Guide to Lovecraftian Horror describes as the essence of the author’s work, the cosmic horror of the unknown. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t deliver its fair share of fishy monsters and gooey puddles and the peeling off of flesh (not a scene you’re likely to forget any time soon) that one would expect to find in a Lovecraft movie, because it certainly does. But more importantly, what Dagon has in abundance is an overwhelming sense of doom for what might be coming next.
Shot on location in what has to be the oldest creepiest seaside village in all of Spain, the movie has an atmosphere so wonderfully thick you could latch onto it with a boat hook. Gordon films the town (of course) in a perpetually dark never ending downpour, and you can’t help but get a little case of the willies as the various deformed fish-men lumber and drag themselves through the shadowy waterlogged cobblestone laden back alleyways.
That doesn’t really sound like the kind of town you’d want to visit, does it? That’s why the script wisely has Barbara kidnapped almost immediately, so it gives the character of Paul good reason to stick around and explore the town even after he starts noticing gill slits on the locals and hearing the moans of "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" In a way, Paul’s situation calls to mind this week’s first reading in which “Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ to them. With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing. For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people” Which might make you ask, just what kind of place was this Samaria to be so overrun with possessed people and why would Philip purposely want to spend any amount of time there?
Well, according to the Ask A Rabbi website, which seems to pretty much gel with what Josephus' reported in his Antiquities of the Jews, “The Samaritans were non-Jews brought to Israel by the Assyrians to populate the North after the exile of the Ten Tribes. They ostensibly converted to Judaism, but in reality they continued worshipping idols, save for a period when they were mistakenly considered genuine converts; hence the Samaritans were not considered Jews, neither by Jewish law nor by the Jewish people. They did not accept the Oral Tradition, which forms the overwhelming bulk of Jewish law. They also did not accept any books of the Bible except for the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua… The Samaritans often acted as enemies of the Jewish people. They tried to destroy the Temple and to inform against the Jews to Roman authorities.” So ancient Samaria was basically a place populated with psuedo-Jews with some paganistic influences which might possibly account for the high possession rate. So it’s no wonder the ancient Jews wanted nothing to do with the place.
Except for Jesus, who stubbornly kept showing up in Samaria time and time again, even when He wasn’t all that welcome (the apostles pretty much wanted to burn the place to the ground in Luke 9). So really, Philip was just following in his master’s footsteps. And so must we. Which means sometimes we have to cut off the computers and deal with unbelievers face to face, maybe even on their own hostile turf. As Pope Benedict XVI put it at the Vatican’s World Day of Communication a few months back, "Entering cyberspace can be a sign of an authentic search for personal encounters with others, provided that attention is paid to avoiding dangers such as enclosing oneself in a sort of parallel existence, or excessive exposure to the virtual world… It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.” So let’s get out there and talk to people. I promise, only a handful of them are devolving into slimy fish-men.
