DAILY CALL SHEET: JANUARY 26, 2025

 

Vice Squad (1982) Unable to break the glass ceiling, a businesswoman changes her name to Princess and turns to the oldest form of entrepreneurship to make ends meet. Her new job goes okay until a fellow hooker dies following a savage rape and beating from her own pimp. Princess does her best to stay uninvolved, but soon finds herself coerced into helping the police track down the culprit. This could have easily slid into 80's exploitation obscurity except for one thing, Wings Hauser. The man is legendarily slimy as the world's most vile pimp, Ramrod, and his mere presence forces everyone else to bring it up a notch.

TIL: Victory over Vice was a series of talks given by the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (and, like most of his stuff, eventually turned into a book) in which he used the seven last words of Christ on the Cross as a counter to the seven deadly sins. For example, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” is a perfect antidote to the vice of anger. Basically, his method boils down to four steps to overcome vices; introspection, avoiding sinful opportunities, willpower, and a right philosophy.

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) An American detective tracking a serial rapist/murderer through Venice discovers she has the titular disorder, a mental condition which basically causes the brain to short circuit when viewing great works of art. Once her prey learns of the detective's weakness, he uses it to plot against her. Mind games and super weird plot twists ensue. Certainly nowhere near Argento's best movie but, notwithstanding some questionable character decisions (and kind of icky given the film's star is the director's daughter), it's probably his last really decent one.

TIL: Speaking on the effects of art, Jem Sullivan, Ph.D. notes, "There are many, many stories of people who are not believers, who are atheists, perhaps, or just secular people, and something about the beauty that they encounter either in nature or in a work of a beautiful work of art, a piece of beautiful music, brings them closer to God in some way that was unexpected. That’s the interesting thing about beauty: It takes us by surprise and has a hold on our attention for however long we’re engaged in the encounter with beauty. But it leaves us changed. It leaves us transformed."