DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 28, 2025

 

Time Barbarians (1990) In an age long past, super-buff King Doran gives a magic amulet to his wife for protection, so naturally she's murdered by his worst enemy Mandrak almost immediately. Using the amulet, Mandrak escapes to L.A. circa 1990, but Doran finds a way to follow. There, Doran meets his wife's future doppelganger and the two team up to take down the bad guy. I'm pretty sure the word 'inane' was invented for movies just like this. It's hard to name a favorite facepalm moment, but the one in which a guy looks at his obviously dead friend lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his head and asks, "Are you okay?" is a strong contender.

TIL: Most of the time the word barbarian comes up in the New Testament, it's simply referring to non-Greeks. It turns out those with a Grecian education like St. Paul and St. Luke had a hard time understanding the rougher sounding language of some foreign peoples and so referred to them as "bárbaros", or babblers. Not very scary. However, in the letter to the Colossians, he does also apply the word to the Scythians. With their generally uncouth and savage behavior, these guys were more along the lines of what we think of when we use the word barbarian these days and nobody liked them. Even so, Paul makes a point that Christ came for the barbarians as well.

Beginning of the End (1957) Scientist Peter Graves leads the battle against giant grasshoppers, which is fitting since it's partially his fault there are freaking giant grasshoppers to begin with. It's impossible to review this Bert I. Gordon riff on Them! without mentioning that the "special" effects consist of real grasshoppers crawling across blown up photographs of buildings. Then again, why wouldn't you mention it since the movie's cheesiness is part of its charm.

TIL: Lots of dieticians point out that the Kashrut in Leviticus had health benefits over and above the religious and tribal reasons for its list of culinary do's and don'ts. For instance, grasshoppers, which were approved for eating, are about 40% protein, 43% fat, and 13% fiber. Basically, they're good for you. But, healthy or not, being allowed and being required are not the same thing, so you'll be hard pressed to find the little buggers on too many kosher menus these days.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 22, 2025

 

The Food of the Gods (1976) On a remote island, farmers feed their chickens some mysterious stuff which bubbles up from the ground, because why wouldn't you, and they start to grow enormous. So do the bugs, bees, and rats who get into the food as well. Soon, the whole island is in danger of being overrun by the big beasties who've gotten a taste for more meaty meals. While there's only a little bit of H. G. Wells to be found in this adaptation of his novel, there's a whole lot of Bert I. Gordon, and that brings with it all the good and bad you would expect.

TIL: In ancient Greek mythology, the food of the gods was called ambrosia and it is said to be the stuff that granted them their immortality. For the Jews and Christians, of course, God is conceived of as an unchangeable, immaterial spirit, meaning he has no body and therefore needs no food. As Irenaeus explained, “Far removed is the Father of all from those things which operate among men, the affections and passions. He is simple, not composed of parts, without structure, altogether like and equal to himself alone. He is all mind, all spirit, all thought, all intelligence, all reason.”

Final Exam (1981) After a couple is butchered at the local lover's lane, students at Lanier College spend the last day of exams talking about it. They also pull some pranks, cheat on tests, question their relationships, consider the future, read some books, try to make a drug deal, eat lunch... Eventually the killer gets bored with lurking in the bushes watching all of this and pops out to massacre the majority of the cast in the last 15 minutes. You would think a slasher film which bends over backward to flesh out its characters would be a welcome change of pace, but if you think that then you've never watched Final Exam. The movie spends over an hour of its brisk 89 minutes letting you get to know the characters, and yet by the end we still just get the jock, the geek, the slut, the stoner, etc., the same tired stereotypes that have shown up in countless slashers. And yet I still really enjoy Final Exam because something's wrong with me I guess. Sigh.

TIL: As the Catechism notes, “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of Heaven– through purification or immediately, – or immediate and everlasting damnation.” There's a second judgement coming at the end of time, though, a sort of final exam for all of creation where those still living will get their failing or passing grade, those still in detention in Purgatory get to graduate to Heaven, and the earthly campus of the old world will be shut down for good to make way for something new. Since everyone is destined to face one or the other of these exams, best to do the homework assignments beforehand so you're prepared for either.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JUNE 6, 2025

 

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) Crickets contaminated with toxic waste are fed to the various arachnids residing at an exotic spider farm, causing them to grow to the size of a mini-van. At first the freaks are content to hang out in the closed mines beneath a small Arizona town, but soon the temptation to catch a bite at the local mall becomes too strong to resist. Lots of familiar faces like David Arquette and teeny-bopper Scarlett Johansson never take any of the sketchy early 2000's CGI seriously and neither should audiences. For lighthearted fun only.

TIL: Some Ukrainians put spider web ornaments on their Christmas trees in honor of an legend about a poor widow and her children who had no money to decorate the tree which had grown in the middle of their cabin. However, while the family slept on Christmas Eve, a spider covered the tree with webs. As the sun rose on Christmas morning, the Child Jesus appeared and turned the silken threads into gold and silver, providing the family with beautiful decorations and a ticket out of poverty. Some claim this story is where the custom of putting tinsel on Christmas trees comes from.

Now Showing at a Blog Near You: For Aleteia this week I take a look at the latest exorcism film ‘The Ritual’. Al Pacino as a priest? I guess he's doing penance for playing the devil that time.