Brain Twisters (1991) Something happened in this Cronenberg wannabe, but darned if I can remember what it was. Some brains got twisted... I guess. TIL: The soul is present in its entirety in every part of the body, so even if a brain does get twisted, the soul is still there.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983) - "Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke." - Will Rogers
Chariots of the Gods (1970) If ancient aliens did visit Earth, they would surely be bummed the result was this snoozefest of a "documentary." TIL: Oddly enough, a 2015 study showed Catholics and ‘nones’ to be the two groups most optimistic about discovering extraterrestrial life.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of The Deadly Spawn (1983) - "Never open a can of worms unless you plan to go fishing." - John C. Maxwell
Future-Kill (1985) Frat boys in clothes from Chess King battle splatter-punk mutants. Nowhere near as cool as it sounds. TIL: In 1889, Catholic students founded Phi Kappa because other fraternities wouldn't accept stinking Papists. Phi Kappa Theta is still going strong today.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of The Awakening (1980) - "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle." - Benjamin Franklin
And finally, this week for Aleteia, I'm tracking down some of the Vatican's recommended "important" films which are currently streaming. Sadly, there’s not as many available as you might think.
The Burrowers (2008) Wouldn't The Searchers have been better with underground monsters? Okay, probably not, but this wild Western isn't bad though. TIL: The West was "wild" mostly because religion was missing Once the missionaries showed up, the settlers became much more settled.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Swamp Women (1956) - "A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion." - Alfred Nobel
Hellbound (1994) How in the name of all that's holy do you go wrong with Chuck Norris vs. The Devil? Sigh. You make Hellbound, that's how. TIL: Actually, to defeat Satan, what you have to do is avoid sin. But, hey, go ahead and roundhouse kick him if it makes you feel better.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of The Bad News Bears (1976) - “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” - Leo Durocher
Grabbers (2012) Irishmen discover that staying drunk is the only way to defeat invading aliens. Yes, an Irishman wrote this. TIL: John Waters claims the Irish love of drink is "a spiritual placebo... a longing for heaven, a thirst for return to the embrace of the Almighty.”
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of House III: The Horror Show (1989) - "Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out." - Benjamin Franklin
Graveyard Shift (1990) Temp workers charged with cleaning the world's filthiest basement discover a really, really big rat problem. Not the worst Stephen King adaptation. TIL: Work, no matter how lousy, is a continuing participation in God’s creation, and therefore has dignity.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator (1989) - "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month." - Theodore Roosevelt
The Bride and the Beast (1958) Love triangle between newlyweds and a gorilla reveals secrets about past lives. Hey, you can't fault Ed Wood for a lack of ideas. TIL: No past lives in Christianity. The nice thing is that makes every moment this one time around very important.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Slap Shot (1977) - “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” – Plato
From Beyond the Grave (1974) One of Amicus' best anthologies highlighted by a quietly creepy turn from the Pleasance family as the world's weirdest guardian angels. TIL: Yeah, God answers prayers in His own time and way, but I',pretty sure murder isn't one of His go-to options.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of The Eternal Sappho (1916) - "You don’t need scores of suitors. You need only one… if he’s the right one.” - Louisa May Alcott
And finally, This week for Aleteia I visit The House With A Clock in Its Walls. It’s spooky for kids, but adults may hit snooze.
Assault of the Sasquatch (2010) Skunk ape gets lost in the big city, much to the misfortune of any mook who crosses his path. Okay, but there are better Bigfoot movies out there. TIL: The existence of cryptids would change zilch about Church teachings. It would be cool though.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) - “Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.” - J.B. Priestley
The Black Cat (1934) Crazed pre-code horror features skin flaying, implied necrophilia, and Bela and Boris playing chess to the death. Satanists are weird. TIL: Actually, most modern satanists are just flamboyant atheists, worshiping nothing but themselves. Kind of lame really.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) - "Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish." - Ovid
Lady in White (1988) Boy witnesses ghostly reenactment of a murder, bringing him to the attention of the killer. Old fashioned fun for the non-cynical. TIL: The purpose of true apparitions is to recall and emphasize some aspect of God's message. If that's missing, it ain't real.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Boogie Nights (1997) - “The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures” – Democritus
Braindead (1992) Monstrous materfamilias makes life hell for her milquetoast son. Comedic gorefest is proof Peter Jackson was a legend long before LOTR. TIL: Guess Mom missed the part in Scripture that explains the parent-child relationship must eventually take a secondary role.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of High Anxiety (1977) - “No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.” - Alan Watts
And finally, does Sean Bean die in the excellent and award winning BBC miniseries Broken? Read my latest for Aleteia and find out.
Bloody Birthday (1981) Three tykes born bad go on a murder spree for their 10th birthday. Decent entry in the killer kid genre. TIL: Parents are responsible for a child's health, well-being, and moral/spiritual education. If the kid is still rotten after that, that's on them.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Maniac Cop (1988) - “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.” - Anne Bradstreet
Cannibal! The Musical (1993) Pre-South Park effort from Parker and Stone via way of Troma. I think you know exactly what I mean when I say it's a shpadoinkle movie. TIL: Music may be said to be the speech of angels, but some angels are fallen. Not every song is worth a listen.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Revolution (1968) - “This is the choice before us: either try to revolutionize the world and break under it or revolutionize ourselves and remake the world.” - Fulton J. Sheen
Dementia 13 (1963) Coppola's first film is still his best... movie title. Other than that, it's a pretty bumpy start to a career. TIL: The family is meant to be a domestic church, a community of faith, hope, and charity. Axe murdering each other shouldn't really be on the table.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of The Monster Club (1981) - “Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” - Ernest Hemingway
Big Man Japan (2007) Z-grade kaiju fighter disappoints family, fans, and pretty much everyone else. Mondo mockumentary delivers laughs and loads of national self-loathing. TIL: Aquinas considered patriotism a form of piety because love of neighbor is inseparable from love of God.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (1990) - “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” - W. Somerset Maugham
Remember all of those meaningful moments of character development in the original Predator from 1987? Sure you do. How can help you but recall all of those deep, revealing conversations between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers? And when Jesse Ventura joined in, it was almost enough to make the heart melt, wasn’t it? Oh, and that plot! The mind boggles at the labyrinthine intricacies of the storyline, doesn’t it? Who to this day isn’t still trying to unravel all of the twists and turns the narrative took? And, oh my Lord, the eternal existential truths contained in the Predator’s final words, “What are you?” That’s stuck with you your entire life, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it !?!
Okay, that’s enough. You get the point. Almost every man alive with an ounce of testosterone in their body loved Predator when it came out and I can’t think of one who cared about its lack of artistic merit. So, as I exited the recent screening for 2018’s The Predator and listened to my fellow critics bemoan the film’s lack of defined characters and its overly simple narrative, I’m not sure what movie they came to see. I mean, come on, you know how they defined characters in the original Predator? One guy was Arnold, one guy carried a big knife, one guy incessantly shaved his dry face with a disposable razor, and one guy was a girl. That’s it!
Apparently, Shane Black and I are the only ones who remember this. To that effect, Mr. Black has crafted a sequel that defines characters the same way its progenitor did. One guy is Boyd Holbrook, one guy is a psycho who likes ‘yo mama’ jokes, one guy has Tourette’s, and one guy is a girl. The only difference is that it’s 2018, so the girl is a scientist. Also there’s a kid with Asperger’s who’s smarter than everybody else, even the girl if you can believe that. But that’s almost all you get to know about these characters because Shane Black actually watched the original Predator and understands nobody cared about those character’s motivations or childhood traumas or whatever else my fellow critics would have shoehorned into the story.
Similarly simple, the plot of The Predator is as follows. The world’s best covert soldier runs across an alien hunter and takes some of its equipment as proof the encounter happened. Naturally, the alien hunter wants his stuff back and comes looking for it. So does an evil government agency and a much larger second alien hunter and his alien hunting dogs. Intent on staying alive, the soldier teams up with a band of Section 8 misfits, a girl scientist, and his own autistic son to put the hurt on everyone who would do them harm. Much bloody destruction ensues.
If you need more than that, avoid The Predator like the plague. If you can handle intentionally dumb fun with all the character and plot development of a cheaply made Saturday morning cartoon, then by all means buy a bag of popcorn and have a seat. But please, if you do, don’t go on afterwards about how you expected anything else other than what the movie delivers. Don’t become the kind of critic G.K. Chesterton derided in his Defense of Penny Dreadfuls. Instead, recognize as Chesterton did that simple, stupid, and sometimes even vulgar pulp stories more often than not “express the sanguine and heroic truisms on which civilisation is built; for it is clear that unless civilisation is built on truisms, it is not built at all.”
The Predator is pulp trash, but it’s fun pulp trash wherein the good guys, with some necessary sacrifice, beat the bad guys and have a happy ending. Sometimes, that’s enough, at least for G.K. Chesterton and the rest of us peons. Let us enjoy it please.
Tale of Tales (2015) Intertwining Italian fairy tales chronicle the desperate stupidity of the unsatisfied. Could use more John C. Reilly, but then again, so could everything. TIL: As C.S. Lewis noted, if you're dissatisfied in this world, perhaps you were created for another.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Graveyard Shift (1987) - "I think that anybody's craft is fascinating. A taxi driver talking about taxi driving is going to be very, very interesting." - James Lipton
Blood Hook (1986) Muskie tournament is terrorized by a mad slasher with a fishing pole. Guess all the good weapons were taken, huh? Don't take it seriously, nobody making it did. TIL: This is most definitely not what the good Lord meant by becoming fishers of men.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of House (1986) - "Opportunity tends to knock once, then it's gone. Temptation, however, likes to stand there and lean on the damn doorbell!" - Sarah Moores
Berberian Sound Studio (2012) Working sound on a scary movie unnerves a nebbish. Can we just put Toby Jones in every horror film from now on please? TIL: "All writers on the spiritual life uniformly recommend nay, command under penalty of total failure, the practice of silence."
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) - “No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.” - Elizabeth Peters
At the Earth’s Core (1976) Poor Peter Cushing does his best fighting bird-lizards in this half-baked Jules Verne knockoff. TIL: What, no Hell at the center of the Earth? Just bird-lizards? As St. Chrysostom said, "We must not ask where hell is, but how we are to escape it."
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) - "For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all." - Aristotle
The Beast Within (1982) a.k.a. I was a teenage cicada. Great old school practical effects highlight this tale of hormones gone haywire in the sweaty south. Bonus points for Ronny Cox. TIL: Going through changes as a teenager can be miserable. Having a spiritual anchor can help.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Evil Town (1977) - “Doctors are great--as long as you don't need them.” - Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum
Curse of the Undead (1959) Preacher Dan must save his beau from a hired gun who sleeps at high noon and seems allergic to crosses. Good thing he happens to have a piece of the crown of thorns laying around. TIL: See, you never know when a sacramental is going to come in handy.
Your daily dose of culture courtesy of Ghost Town (1988) - "The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." - C.S. Lewis
