Things I could do Without

I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to pop culture, literature, and movies and a lot of people know realize that about me, whether or not it's true. Because of this, I can sometimes be consider a nerd or a geek or whatever -- apparently things like knowing all the lines to STAR TREK II carry a stigma. Go figure.

Anyway, because of these things combined and my own pursuit of my own interests, I often find myself face to face with little portions of pop culture or nerdiness that people assume I'd care about, but really I could do without. So here's a list.

ANIME

There was a time, back in high school, where I tried to get into Anime. Back before the Internet got super awesome, it was hard to get your hands on good Japanese Animation unless you confined yourself to the handful of popular flicks the video store might have or were willing to pay top price at Suncoast. So, I saw a couple of the ones everyone claims are great (they were okay) and soon realized each of them had ten million derivative sequels with increasingly dumb names that I couldn't keep track of and I gave up. The exception to this is the Miyazaki stuff, which is mostly aimed at kids, so it doesn't have all the creepy stuff in it that makes me feel weird. I mean, the Miyazaki flicks ARE creepy, but they don't make me feel weird. Now thanks to the Internet, this crap is everywhere. They even made a big budget Hollywood flick out of SPEED RACER (which no one saw).

MARTIAL ARTS FLICKS

I know I'm supposed to be into martial arts movies, but they're kinda like porn as far as I'm concerned -- you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. None of them have any plot to speak of, so unless you REALLY like the star of the movie or you REALLY like watching the fight scenes, there's no reason to watch. Look, I like ENTER THE DRAGON as much as the next guy but let's be honest -- even that flick you have to take with a grain of salt and it's the best one ever made. Right? I know, I know, all these new ones are supposed to be super amazing with their wire fu and all that crap but I tried to watch a couple of the ones that came out in the wake of CROUCHING TIGER and guess what -- all the same. No thanks.

ANYTHING ASIAN (except food, Akira Kurosawa and Ozu)

At the risk of sounding like an asshole (too late!), why not just admit it -- I can do without Asia. I'm sure the continent is full of great people but I can't get into their entertainment. I don't really like big rubber monsters, I don't like Anime, I don't like martial arts, I don't like weirdo porn, and I don't like non-martial arts Asian action flicks where dudes fire two guns at once. Again, there was a time back in high school where I tried to like John Woo, and sure, THE KILLER and HARD BOILED are pretty cool, but what has he done for me lately other than ruin Hollywood? Nothing, that's what. Oh, RED CLIFF, you say? Get back to me when there isn't a million different versions of it for me to keep track of and then maybe I'll watch it. But probably not. Oh, and give me a break with your "horror" movies, too, please.

LUC BESSON

Speaking of ruining Hollywood. I can do without this guy. Early on nerds were supposed to like him because of THE PROFESSIONAL. All right, again, I was suckered in on that one back in high school. But you know what THE PROFESSIONAL and a bunch of other nerd stuff has in common? Sexualizing young girls. I mean, watch THE PROFESSIONAL today and TRY not to get creeped out by Natalie Portman. She's great and all, but I think there's some nerd wish fulfillment going on here (and in Anime) stemming from the general nerd inability to get chicks, and therefore presenting sexuality as something you can take advantage of because it doesn't know any better. But that's just a minor complaint, pun intended -- Besson went on to make. . .

THE FIFTH ELEMENT

. . . which I can also do without. Holy Christ. What a loud, obnoxious mess. And everyone loves it for some reason. Not me. After that he went on to do a bunch of increasingly insane action movies, defined by how implausible the action sequences got and how many guns the heroes could hold simultaneously. Okay, two, but still. I've had enough of guys holding two guns. Oh, that reminds me, I can also do without

MOVIES WHERE CHARACTERS ARE JADED, CYNICAL PROFESSIONAL KILLERS WHO ACT LIKE MURDERING PEOPLE ISN'T A BIG DEAL EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE SUPER-NATURALLY GOOD AT IT

The one exception is Tarantino flicks -- he does it the best, so he gets a pass. Everyone else can go screw. I know before I even see these movies that I'm not going to like them, and sometimes I get tricked into going anyway, just in case. Anyway, I think these appeal to nerds, too, for wish fulfillment purposes -- they want to be the best at everything, and these flicks are about people who are not only the best at everything, but don't even care that they're the best at everything. Here's a trick -- if a movie has to tell you how cool it is, you know it has already failed at being cool. If white guys in their twenties swear it's the best movie ever made (BOONDOCK SAINTS), run the other direction.

VIDEO GAMES

I mean, what are video games these does other than a giant amalgamation of everything I've listed above? They're all trying to be too cool, make the players think they're experts at stuff they know nothing about (warfare, survival, etc), feature mindless cynical killing and violence, martial arts, and they're all made in Japan (kinda). Also what's the deal with making systems hard to get and pricey? All it does is make me not want one anymore. There was a time I wanted a Wii. They were impossible to get, so now I don't want one, out of spite.

ONLINE VIDEO GAMES

Even worse. Nowadays, you have to get online and play video games with strangers. And grown men do this. Grown men with wives and kids. Maybe I'm behind the times, but if I was a chick and I was looking at marrying a guy and he was obsessed with WORLD OF WAR CRAFT, I would head for the hills. To me, that's a giant red flag. You don't need that shit. There's plenty of perfectly great guys who don't know shit about video games. Why marry a dude who's going to sit on the couch or office chair all day (or night) playing let's pretend? Speaking of which. . .

ROLE PLAYING

I've never been into it. Never played DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS or any of that other stuff. A little too obsessive for me. I can hardly play Texas Hold 'Em without getting confused, I don't need dice with more than six sides or giant graphs with lots of numbers and stuff. I'm too dumb and slow and easily confused to be into that stuff. Which reminds me. . .

POKER ON TV

Thanks to the geniuses who ran out of shit to show on sports channels and turned to poker for programming, everyone thinks they're a pro. Ten years ago you never heard anyone talking about Texas Hold 'Em. Now everyone talks about the river and the flop and all that bullshit. Once again, people acting like they're experts on things they barely understand. Or maybe I'm projecting. Maybe just because I don't understand it doesn't mean other people can't. Maybe that's worse.

U2

Everyone loves U2. Not me. I think U2 is okay. Normally that'd be fine, except whenever I tell someone who asks that I think U2 is okay, they misinterpret me and go, "You HATE U2? How can you HATE U2? Hey, everyone, look at this douche over here, thinks he's too good for U2." No, thinking something is okay is different from hating it. Look, I just don't love U2 the way everyone else does, all right? Maybe if all their songs were as good as "All I want is You" I'd change my tune but until then they're just okay.

THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

I don't know how I missed out on this one. Seems like everyone my age and background LOVES this band. Even my own sister LOVES this band. Where was I? Again, I don't dislike them or anything, it's just kind of beyond me -- I couldn't name any of their albums, have never really found myself sitting around and listening to them. I somehow just missed it. Kind of like how I missed

THE CHICKEN DANCE

Somehow everyone knows and loves the chicken dance and busts it out at weddings and shit. Where was I when everyone learned this thing? And why does everyone like it? It's annoying and stupid.

I'm getting a little off base here. My premise was pop culture and nerdy stuff you'd think I like that I actually don't like. Now somehow I'm talking about the Chicken Dance of all things. All right, let's reign it in a little. How about. . .

TRON

In your face. I never saw it all the way through as a kid and I don't care that there's a sequel now. There. I said it.

THE DARK CRYSTAL and LABYRINTH

I thought both were boring and never want to watch them again.

SHORT CIRCUIT

Guess what? When you're not 7 years old, it sucks.

WATCHMEN

I never read it and I'm never going to. And it's not a graphic novel, it's a COMIC BOOK.

BELIEVING ALL SOURCE MATERIAL IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN WHATEVER ELSE IS BASED ON IT

That's for the birds. Come on, the novel JAWS is nowhere near the classic the movie is. And that's only one example.

BELIEVING DARKER IS ALWAYS BETTER

Every time a sequel or remake or whatever comes out, nerds wet themselves gushing about how "dark" this interpretation is going to be, or how "dark" the original source material was and how it'll only be done right if it's done "dark" and how it better be rated R or else and blah, blah, blah. Enough.

RANKIN BASS HOLIDAY SPECIALS

Come on! These things are tacky, loud, obnoxious, and ugly. The only one even halfway good is RUDOLPH, and it's still tough to watch as an adult. I firmly believe most adults who claim to love these haven't watched them within the last 2 decades.

HATING KEANU REEVES, KEVIN COSTNER and TOM CRUISE

They're not that bad, and you love a bunch of their movies. Admit it -- it's not in SPITE of them. It's BECAUSE of them. Man, I could write an entire book about this one.

AYN RAND

Look, I'm sure she's the deepest philosopher who ever lived and everything but I'm never going to read any of her books so you can stop telling me how amazing she is. When a movie like DIRTY DANCING illustrates what a douche a character is by showing that he's into THE FOUNTAINHEAD, I cross it off my list of shit to read.

Anyway, there's a lot more where that came from. But I'm off topic again. Rand's not really a nerd thing. This is getting too negative. I started writing this to hopefully feel better and now I think I feel worse. What's some stuff I love?

Westerns, The Who, my iPhone, Star Trek, Steven Spielberg, Ed Wood, Charles Bukowski, my record player, Bettie Page, my recliner, the Laurelhurst, steak, beer, stand up comedy, podcasts. . .

And there are dicks out there like me who could do without all that stuff.

Okay, I feel better.

I Know Why the Porn Star Sings

Growing up, I had no older brother so I grew up without many things, chiefly among them R-rated action and horror flicks and pornographic magazines. I never even found porn among my parents' stuff. I was aware of stuff like PLAYBOY, and I remember asking one time what could possibly be in a PLAYBOY that's simultaneously so great, so forbidden and so accepted by society.

My mom couldn't answer, so instead she said to my dad, "Can we just get him a PLAYBOY and show him?"

"No," my dad said.

Linda Hamilton's boobs were probably the first ones I saw when I was old enough to know I was seeing something sexy. I'm sure I'd seen nudity before THE TERMINATOR, but it never really mattered until then. In retrospect the sex scene in TERMINATOR is more romantic than it is sexy, and only lasts about thirty seconds (if that). Still, when I was 12 (or whatever) it was pretty amazing. Now, if I'd had an older brother, chances are I would have seen TERMINATOR 100 times already by the time I was 12. But, I didn't.

I did have an older sister, though. That meant VICTORIA'S SECRET catalogues and lots of fashion magazines like COSMOPOLITAN and VOGUE were around the house. Back in the mid-90s, before the Internet got super awesome, that was enough for me -- a provocative Kate Moss ad here, a lingerie spread featuring Laetitia Casta there.

One time my mom caught me reading COSMO and, catching a glimpse of the smutty ads in the back of the magazine I was staring at, asked, "Is that a girly magazine?"

I had never heard the term before and had to think for a moment. COSMO was definitely girly. So I shrugged.

"Yeah," I admitted.

There was also cable. Of course, my family didn't have cable, and even if we did have cable, we wouldn't have had any premium channels, which meant -- no boobs. But, I did have a friend who had cable, and before I'd go spend the night at his place on a Friday or Saturday I'd check the TV guide to see what was playing that night. The back of the TV Guide had a listing of every movie and why it was rated whatever it was rated -- so you could tell the R-rated flicks WITH boobs from the R-rated flicks WITHOUT boobs. Before I even went over to my friend's house, I had an entire map of what I'd be watching that night. He always fell asleep first and the dirty movies didn't come on until late, so no one was the wiser.

This way, I ended up seeing low-rent cable flicks like THE OTHER WOMAN and BIKINI SUMMER 2 as well was recycled 80s teen comedies like SPRING BREAK. But the best of all was BLOWN AWAY. Not to be confused with the main stream action flick starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones. No, no. This was BLOWN AWAY starring Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and. . . Nicole Eggert.

I knew Nicole Eggert from BAYWATCH, the other porn substitute besides chick magazines that I was able to see in my non-cable household. She was the younger, more girl-next-door version of Pamela Anderson, even though she was still way too hot to actually live next door to anyone. Still, she got totally naked and had simulated sex scenes in BLOWN AWAY, which, to my young teenage mind, was the best thing ever.

Later, I went through a phase of attempting to rent every video in the comedy section of the video store with the word "Hot" in the title that came out in the 1980s and was rated R. I figured all of these would feature boobs. The 1980s were a glorious decade when boobs were allowed in mainstream films. These days, good luck finding boobs in a mainstream flick outside of the arthouse.

So, I saw shitty movies like HOTS, HOT SUMMER, HOT MOVES, HOT DOG and HOT RESORT, which had the extra benefit of starring pre-fame Bronson Pinchot. Almost all of these were about a group of four dudes trying to get laid during some kind of vacation. There was usually a hot dude with no scruples, a good looking dude with a heart of gold, a total nerd, and a fat dude. The main character was always the good looking dude with the heart of gold, and all the guys usually got really close to getting laid only to face horrible embarrassment or injury. Eventually, one or all of them would get laid. Along the way, you'd get a few boobs here and there, if you were lucky. AMERICAN PIE went back to this formula in the late 90s but left out the fat dude and dared to have (relatively) three dimensional female characters.

At this age I was also into movies for artistic reasons. That was convenient, because it meant I could rent otherwise seemingly harmless foreign flicks, classics and cult films that were all more free-wheeling with nudity than your average multiplex fare. This way I saw everything from the worst of the worst that made me ashamed to be human (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE) to the best of the best that made me proud to be same (BELLE DE JOUR), all in the name of boobs. Well, not ALL. I mean, I was legitimately into flicks.

It was interesting the seemingly harmless places you could find T&A if you were desperate and obsessed enough. For instance, around this age I became obsessed with 50s pin-up queen Bettie Page (pictured above -- isn't she lovely?) who was having a resurgence in popularity. This had the benefit of seeming innocent, since she was antiquated and from a bygone era. That meant you could easily see naked pictures of her, because everyone these days pretends naked chicks didn't exist back in the 50s. I could have a pin-up of Bettie Page in my locker at school and it would look harmless, then go home and look at totally nude pictures of her in totally legit books for film nerds. Meanwhile it would have seemed suspicious if I was suddenly into Anna Nicole Smith.

Speaking of Anna Nicole Smith, when I was in Junior High a (kind of) buddy of mine stole her PLAYBOY video from the video store and let me borrow it. I call him a kind of buddy because I never really hung out with him outside of school, and met him for the first time in 3rd grade when he held his cast against my throat and stole my Chips Ahoys. For some reason, though, he respected me after stealing my Chips Ahoys, and became kind of a loyal follower. I guess it was kind of like a prison thing -- he stole my Chips Ahoys, I didn't rat him out. Respect.

Anyway, I took the Anna Nicole Smith video home and feigned illness while my entire family went to Izzy's to feast, popped the tape into the VCR and checked it out. It was the most female nudity I'd seen since TERMINATOR, but it was as alien to me as it was hot -- for instance, thanks to the giant (and artificially enhanced) boobs of Anna Nicole, veins were more prominent than my imagination had previously allowed. It was simultaneously more fantasy than I'd ever seen and more reality than I'd ever seen. Since it was a PLAYBOY video, there wasn't any actual sex and only a tiny bit of simulated sex, and focused a lot on where the girls were from and what they liked to do in their spare time. I didn't really get it.

I wanted to give it right back to the dude who stole it in the first place, to wash my hands of it, but I remember him rejecting my attempts. He didn't want it on him, either. I don't remember what ended up happening to it, but I only had it for a week or so.

Where was I? Oh yeah. High school. In high school, about a year before I actually turned 18, I started getting real bona-fide porn from various sources. One was a buddy of mine (a real buddy this time) who wasn't afraid to yank stuff off of magazine racks. That's how I got my first PENTHOUSE, and my first couple PLAYBOYS. I realized at this time that porn had many faces. There was innocent stuff, just featuring the sheer joy of naked ladies. Then, there was more prurient stuff, that seemed to appeal to more sinister impulses including violence, misogyny and perversion. Unfortunately, a lot of times, all this stuff would be in one single magazine. Or, if not, there would at least be graphic ads for this stuff throughout.

I would hide the porn and then wonder what my mom (or anyone else) would think of me if they found it. I knew what I liked and what I didn't like -- the pages I lingered on, and the ones I skipped over. But, to outside prying eyes, they'd just see this magazine full of terrible stuff and assume I was into every single page no matter what, and I'd look like a monster. That was the problem with porn when it was contraband -- there was no quality control. You took what you could get, and the people who produced it and sold it knew that. It's what they call a "vice" product. They know you're going to pick it up one way or the other so the actual contents don't really even matter, as long as they can sell it to you. So, you had to take the good with the bad.

Quick example: PENTHOUSE went through a phase where they were really into chicks peeing. I, however, did NOT go through a phase where I was really into chicks peeing. Still, in every pictorial (or at least once in one pictorial per issue) there had to be a chick peeing in at least one shot. I don't know who made this editorial decision or why, but there it was. Now Bob Guccione's dead, so we may never know the truth.

Around this same time, I was also able to have friends older than me buy the stuff for me. Sometimes even chicks bought it for me. My favorite place to get it was the Greyhound Station, which was nothing more than a convenience store that the bus happened to stop at, because they had the stuff on a rack that was NOT behind the counter, so you could kind of look through it and didn't have to ask for it. Just plop it on the counter. Everywhere else in town you'd have to be like, "Uh, could I have that one? No, not that one, THAT one," while the clerk rolled his or her eyes at you and I couldn't blame them.

One time a chick bought me a copy of CLUB INTERNATIONAL and a copy of something tamer -- I can't remember what, off the top of my head. Either a PLAYBOY or PENTHOUSE, I guess. Anyway, she was looking curiously through the magazines and commenting on the artistic merits of them.

She was disgusted with the CLUB INTERNATIONAL but thought the other one, whether it was PLAYBOY or PENTHOUSE, was more acceptable.

"See, I don't understand what's so great about this one, I mean, it's just big close up shots of this chick's privates," she observed. "But this one, at least there's some good photography and it's interesting to look at."

What she didn't know was that I didn't really care. You don't buy a magazine like CLUB INTERNATIONAL because of its artistic merits, you buy it because it's refreshingly, unabashedly and unreservedly true to what it is -- naked chicks. Naked, naked chicks. Brightly lit, super naked chicks. No imagination required.

Soon after that I turned 18 and was old enough to buy porn, which is one of the first things I did. My friends took me to see LASER FLOYD around midnight, and on our ride home we stopped by the adult video store I'd seen a thousand times on the side of the road growing up. Most of them weren't old enough to go in, so they loitered outside while me and a buddy went in to check things out.

First thing's first: brand new porn is expensive! I didn't have $40 or more to throw away on a VHS tape of dubious quality. So, I went straight to the used wall and found a flick called DESIRE FOR SEX for $19 (or something). Again, quality control was out the window. I wouldn't know until I got home if I had bought a lemon, but hey, half the fun and novelty was in buying it, anyway. And, I guess, I could have tried it out in one of the booths, except 1) I never quite understood how those booths work and 2) that's the most disgusting thing ever.

DESIRE FOR SEX turned out to be a quaint little story driven affair starring Asian-American beauty Stephanie Swift. At the time, she was an up and comer. Since then she's had a double mastectomy. No, she didn't have implants. Anyway, the flick was about a sex therapist and her porn producing husband. They start the day out by having sex, then each go to work. Before the sex therapist can get to work, her secretary shows up, impersonates her, and has lesbian sex with a patient. The sex therapist fires the secretary, then has sex with her next patient, who is having trouble getting it up. The fired secretary goes to try out for a porn flick and guess what? It's being directed by the sex therapist's husband. Anyway, they have sex. Then, the erectile dysfunction patient goes home and has sex his girlfriend (or wife, whatever) who happened to be the chick who says, "Is there any coke at this party?" in BOOGIE NIGHTS before overdosing. The end.

Later, in college, I'd see more porn -- compilation tapes with all kinds of starlets from the 80s and 90s. The interesting thing about being penniless and watching porn is you ended up being about 5 years behind the times, no matter what. So, the chicks you considered current stars might be out of the industry or all washed up at the actual time you were watching them. The current ones, you'd never heard of. It was kind of comforting to know that, no matter how much porn I saw, I was never up to date on whatever was new. I was always behind. That meant I could pat myself on the back and assure myself I wasn't too far gone. Only the real perverts were up to date. Not normal guys like me.

Right?

The older I got, the more mainstream porn became. I guess on one hand this is kind of to be expected. After all, the older you get, the more accessible it is. Once you're past the age of 18, you can go into any adult shop or strip club you want, or rent whatever video you want at the mom and pop video store. Still, it seemed to get more mainstream even outside of all that. Regular cable seemed to have more T&A on it, quasi-celebrities Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian used sex tapes to help become household names and pursue otherwise non-porn-affiliated careers, even video games got more and more risque.

The only entertainment sector that seemed to get more uptight was my favorite one, movies -- despite what conservative watch dogs would have you believe. Trust me, as a student of cinema, I can assure you, nudity and graphic sexual situations are far less common these days in mainstream flicks, even R-rated ones. Used to be, every R-rated action flick or comedy guaranteed you at least one set of boobs. These days the only boobs in EXPENDABLES belong to Sylvester Stallone, and even Sly wouldn't take off his top in RAMBO IV.

I guess part of this is thanks to the Internet. My first Internet porn experience was before the Internet was really good for porn, in a friend's basement. We sat and watched pictures download for what seemed like hours. Maybe it was hours. That was the olden days. We'd click on a picture, then go off to do something else while it downloaded. Check back in a while, it'd be half done. It was so suspenseful -- the pictures would invariably start downloading from the top to the bottom, so you always had to wait in suspense to see the interesting parts, almost in the order you'd get in real life -- first the chick's face, then slowly the boobs would be unveiled, and FINALLY you'd get her pants off.

That same basement also housed a book that was a treasure trove for my young imagination -- a big red picture book called, simply, THE BOOK OF SEX. Or was it THE SEX BOOK? I can't remember. It was like one of those books adults in the 70s got for themselves so they could feel all enlightened and edgy. It was a pseudo-educational book -- a kind of dictionary of slang and non slang sex terms, with big black and white photos to illustrate. It worked as porn insofar as the pictures were very graphic -- unabashed shots of genitals and boobs and couples in the middle of knocking boots. The book had plausible deniability, though, because all the pictures were in black and white and basically depicted normal-looking people instead of porn stars or models, and gave about as much attention to male anatomy as it did to female.

Still, when you're in your early teens and the hottest thing you can get your hands on is the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED SWIMSUIT EDITION, the big red book of sex was pretty awesome. But it was also frightening. As much as I wanted to see naked chicks in sexual situations, I didn't particularly want to read antiquated text about out-of-date slang terms, let alone imagine the circumstances under which this book found its way into my friend's house via his parents. Shudder.

These days you can watch full porn movies via streaming video for free at the click of a button. People have been saying for the last decade and a half, or so, that porn is readily available on the Internet and all that stuff, but I don't believe it was really that big of a deal until streaming video was perfected. Basically, as soon as YOUTUBE took off around 2005 or so, that was it for Internet porn -- the thing that had always kept me at arms length was basically the same thing that had always kept me away from adult shops in general, which was, the act of actually paying for and owning porn. As soon as streaming porn became available, there was no reason to download anything, pay for anything, or own anything. It was basically as easy as turning on your TV and checking out whatever was on, except, again, you didn't have to subscribe to anything. It was just there!

So, suddenly, quality control didn't matter anymore. You could peruse as much as you wanted, totally free, and if you stumbled across something good, bonus! If not, no harm no foul. And there's nothing for you to leave behind to falsely incriminate you of being a worse pervert than you actual are. Of course, the only thing you have to waste is time, which, I guess, is at least as valuable if not more so than money.

Here's the thing, though. Given unlimited access to porn any time I want it, I have learned that the selfish search for the perfect piece of pornography is never-ending. It really is like "chasing the dragon" as a heroin addict would say. Back in the day, when I was forced to watch late night HBO, I'd think, "This is what I'm stuck with." Later, PENTHOUSE in hand, I'd flip the pages looking for the best pictorial and never find it. Now, given infinity, I've still never found the One Porn to beat all porn.

The lesson? There's no such thing! It all sucks. Sure, some is relatively better than others, and of course everyone has their own likes and dislikes. But nothing will ever be as good (or bad) as whatever it is you're looking for. In fact, sometimes I'm envious of my younger self, who could be satisfied with the clothed chicks in VICTORIA'S SECRET or a short scene in TERMINATOR, or especially back when I had a love affair with Bettie Page -- partly because I didn't know any better but also because of the fantastic promise of something better down the line.

I guess maybe I'd rather live in a world with unforeseen potential possibilities than a world with infinite access to definite limits.

Or, maybe it's just that I'm not a virgin anymore.

Either way, high five!

There's Nobody Holmes

"Some famous people come to the dance studio I work at," my friend said.

"Like who?" I asked.

My friend named a few names that didn't interest me and then ended with, "Katie Holmes."

About halfway through high school I fell in love with Katie Holmes. She played Joey Potter, the hottest chick on DAWSON'S CREEK. I loved it when she rolled her eyes and smiled her half smile and wore really short shorts to show off her kick ass legs. I'd often think Dawson was a tool for not being into her and being into Michelle Williams, instead. I mean, Michelle Williams is great and all, but she's no Katie Holmes.

This was before she married Tom Cruise, and I gotta say, I never quite understood what the big deal was about the Oprah / couch-jumping thing. I could kinda see where Cruise was coming from, because if Katie Holmes had ever married me I imagine I would have probably done something way stupider than that. Like pissing my pants, for instance. Or crying.

"You work the front desk, don't you?" I asked.

"Yes," my friend said.

"Then you have access to everyone's contact information?" I asked.

"Yeah," my friend said.

"Then you could get me Katie Holmes' phone number?" I asked.

"Maybe," my friend said. "I guess. I don't know if I should."

"Yeah," I said. "You're probably right."

Later that night, when I got home, there was a voice mail waiting for me, and it was my friend leaving a message.

"I got the number," she said. Then, she reeled it off. I nearly pissed my pants. Then I nearly cried.

I wrote it down. I couldn't believe it. I woke up that morning just my normal self. A few short hours later I was in possession of Katie Holmes' telephone number. I sat in my room alone and stared at the scrap of paper with the number on it. Then I stared at the phone. Then I stared at the number some more.

"What do I do?" I wondered. Let's examine:

1) It's annoying to call anyone out of the blue and bother them, let alone a celebrity.

2) It might not even be her number.

3) Even if I get her on the phone, what am I going to say to her?

4) Are there any legal issues here? I mean, is this stalking? What's the deal?

I mulled these questions over in my mind and pondered them in my heart. What Uncle Ben told Peter Parker in SPIDER-MAN was true: With great power comes great responsibility. Sure, I had the number. Now what? Decisions, decisions. Do I use my powers for good or evil?

Then, of course, there was the fantasy world of possibilities the phone number represented. Maybe it was Katie Holmes' number, or maybe it wasn't. If I never called, I'd never find out. If I never found out, I could always walk around believing I might have Katie Holmes' number and I could potentially call her any time I felt like it, whether it was actually her number or not. What was better -- a fantasy world of possibilities, or the truth?

I finally decided there was no way I could possess Katie Holmes' number and NOT call her. I knew even if it was her there was no chance anything cool was going to happen. I figured, I'd just call, see if it was her, make some excuse, and back out of the call. Or, if I got her machine, leave a message and see if she called me back.

So, I dialed. The phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Suddenly, it picked up! My heart stopped.

"Hello. . .," a voice said.

It was an answering machine. I breathed a sigh of relief. The best of both worlds -- I called, but I don't have to deal with any actual humans. I can simply confirm whether or not it's Katie Holmes' number and call it good.

". . . you've reached the DAWSON'S CREEK production offices. . .," the voice continued.

I hung up. So, Katie Holmes, realizing the girls who work behind the counter at the dance place would give her number out to their pervy friends with questionable motives, had left the number for the DAWSON'S CREEK production offices.

Well played, Katie Holmes.

Mirror, mirror

There's an alternate universe out there that consists of stuff I almost wrote on this blog and then decided not to for whatever reason. I'm reminded of this fact every time I go to edit a post I've just written. A big list of posts comes up and it includes the ones I started but never published, and in some cases never finished. They're always things I totally forgot about.

Anyway, here's a list of things I almost wrote about but then didn't:

1.) My love of Jim Henson, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as a kid -- three white dudes with beards.

2.) How I always thought Duckie from PRETTY IN PINK was a homosexual individual, so it surprised me there was an alternate ending where he hooked up with Molly Ringwald.

3.) How much I loved getting my wisdom teeth out, thanks to drugs.

4.) More small talk at the u-scan, this time about the check out clerk getting dumped by his girlfriend.

5.) More stuff about JON & KATE PLUS 8, this time about how I saw a promo where Kate harshly scolded her kids for using the word "paparazzi" (really, Kate?).

6.) The making of the (never finished) VIVA EL DIABLO POLLO trilogy

7.) People (including me) mistaking other bands for Nirvana

As I read these over, I kind of love all of them. I wonder why I didn't hit "publish post"? Oh well.

Your love is like playing spit with a new deck on a hardwood floor

The last release from The Charming Fixtures was a little bit of a disappointment. After years of rumors about the epic double concept album that would some day be released, we got a small selection of mostly previously released (via bootleg) material on an EP called "Moon Base Outpost 300."

This was a lackluster follow up to The Charming Fixtures' original burst onto the scene with the insane (and genius) concept album "Claw Foot Bath Tub" about an alternate universe in which Rod Serling became an interior decorator to the stars, including both George Reeves and Adam West with Bettie Page making an appearance as a pizza delivery girl.

Now The Charming Fixtures have bounced back with an amazing new album that will forever change the face of music, a "concept love story" sonically evoking the pain, nostalgia and excitement of young love. The first Charming Fixtures album recalled "Pet Sounds" with the sheer amount of musicians on the record who weren't actually in the band. This new album evokes "Pet Sounds" in every other way possible.

Accomplished actor, art department assistant, cinematographer, boom operator and author Ryan Gorman guests on most vocals and almost every instrument, with the exception of drums. Drums by The Charming Fixtures.

The track listing is as follows:

Your Love is like playing Spit with a New Deck on a Hardwood Floor

a concept love story by The Charming Fixtures

Side A

1.) Song for the girl who kept a secret from herself part I

2.) Your hair gets in my kiss

3.) The ending writes itself

4.) You're the only one like you I think I've ever met

5.) Maybe I'm your mistake

6.) Like scrambled cable porn at 2:00 am

7.) Your love is like playing spit with a new deck on a hardwood floor

Side B

1.) It's not what my neighbors can hear

2.) Portland is holding onto fall

3.) Rain falls like plucks on a harp

4.) Play in someone else's yard

5.) You (thousands of miles from anything you call home)

6.) Song for the girl who kept a secret from herself part II

Horrorfest 2010: Phantasm

I first heard of director Don Coscarelli in connection to the horror comedy vehicle for Bruce Campbell, BUBBA HO-TEP. That movie was well intentioned and good enough, but not the masterpiece many Bruce Campbell fans would have you believe it is.

Still, I remembered the name and saw it again when Showtime was running that anthology series, "Masters of Horror." I noticed I didn't recognize a lot of the names of the so-called "masters" but I did recognize Don Coscarelli.

So, it was only a matter of time before I saw his real claim to fame, the late 70s indie horror flick, PHANTASM. Told from the point of view of 13 year old Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), PHANTASM is the story of unexplained deaths in a small town that seem to be centered around a funeral home presided over by a creepy undertaker known only as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Mike's also dealing with the recent deaths of his parents, and his worries that his brother and guardian, a musician in his mid-20s, Jody (Bill Thornbury) is on the verge of leaving town. Jody's band consists of ice cream man by day Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and the recently-found-dead Tommy (Bill Cone). This was apparently a suicide, but we, the audience, know a mysterious blonde woman (Kathy Lester) lured him out to the cemetery and killed him.

This is one of those flicks where young Mike runs around trying to convince everyone that something messed up is going on, but no one will listen. Eventually, the bodies start piling high enough and the mayhem gets crazy enough that people start to come over to his side. By the end of the film, it's an all out fight for survival as Mike and Jody team up to battle the Tall Man and his undead dwarf minions. There's even a cool MACGUYVEResque scene in which Mike has to break out of his bedroom using only a shotgun shell and a hammer.

The film is pretty inventive, doing a lot with a little -- the interiors of the funeral home are big expensive looking sets apparently done on the cheap, there are some sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure that make the whole thing a little more epic than it could have been, and the music is groovy.

I liked how the horror story, worthy of comic books, was scene through the eyes of a kid. I also liked the relationship between the kid and his brother, and their friend Reggie. It was unexpectedly touching. And, I liked the sci-fi elements.

Still, the ending fell apart a little bit for me and the middle dragged some. I read that the movie was originally 3 hours long and was cut down to its current 90 minute length. That might be a little apocryphal, but it still feels a little long. Maybe it's the pacing -- I don't know. On one hand it kind of helps with the dream like quality of the whole thing but on the other I could kind of do without the dream like quality -- why not just have this be the straight forward telling that you can tell it wants to be?

So, Horrorfest 2010 comes to a close. I've successfully watched 31 horror movies I'd never seen before in 31 days, and written about each of them. In fact, I watched more than 31, but only 31 of them were actually on the top 100 list that I was working off of. So now, by my count, adding the ones I had already seen with the ones I saw this month, there are still around 26 from the list I need to see. So, that's a little short of the 31 I'll need for next year, but a good starting point.

Happy Halloween.

Horrorfest 2010: Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People

The list of 100 best horror films I'm working off of has THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE listed, but it doesn't list the movie it was a sequel to, CAT PEOPLE. I found this odd and double checked the list a couple times, because I've been meaning to watch CAT PEOPLE for several years now as I've seen it pop up on several best-of lists, not limited to best horror films but including best films in general of all time. I've also increasingly heard producer Val Lewton's name mentioned as a genius filmmaker, and CAT PEOPLE was his first horror film.

The DVD I ended up with had both movies on it, and both movies are pretty short, so I decided I'd watch both -- THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE will count towards my mission to watch 31 movies off of this list in 31 days, and CAT PEOPLE will help satisfy my need to see the films widely regarded as the best ever.

Both movies were produced by Val Lewton, who delivered a very different version of horror from what audiences were used to with Universal up until that time. Lewton headed up RKO's B-horror department in the studio's attempt to make a quick buck after their financially disastrous dealings with Orson Welles on CITIZEN KANE and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

Lewton's low budget horror films delivered more psychological thrills and chills instead of outright monster attacks. RKO studio heads would come up with marketable titles like CAT PEOPLE, then Lewton would turn in something far from the obvious -- a mixture of his own story-telling interests and what might appease the studio as at least a passing resemblance to what you might expect from a movie called CAT PEOPLE.

CAT PEOPLE stars Simone Simon as a fashion designer who falls in love with an all around good guy (Kent Smith). As they get closer and eventually marry, Smith's character becomes disillusioned with the distance Simon's character seems to keep from him. Apparently, childhood stories from her native Serbia have convinced her that if she becomes physically close with a man, she'll transform into a cat person and destroy him. She likes to lurk around the zoo, checking out the panther cages, animals in the pet store freak out when she's around and her pet bird eventually turns up dead.

Smith's character turns to his female co-worker (Jane Randolph) for comfort, and Simon becomes jealous. A psychologist (Tom Conway) is brought in to help Simon but it might be too late.

In the sequel, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, we follow Smith's character who is now married to Randolph's. Their seven-year-old daughter (Ann Carter) is withdrawn and unpopular with her friends at school, so she turns to an imaginary world for comfort. Smith, disturbed by his daughter's reliance on fantasy that reminds him of the late Simon's issues with childhood stories, attempts unsuccessfully to draw her out. Meanwhile, neighbors in a creepy house down the street indulge the little girl's imagination and tell her tales of Sleepy Hollow, which originated in their town.

These neighbors are the eccentric aging actress (Julia Dean) and her contemptuous daughter (Elizabeth Russell). Russell had a brief but effective cameo in the original CAT PEOPLE as a sinister diner at a restaurant who approaches Simon possibly as a fellow cat person before disappearing in the night.

Finally, Simone Simon herself shows up, reprising her role as Irena from the first film, appearing in ghostly fantasy visions to the young girl who views her as an imaginary friend who has come to save her from her loneliness and boredom.

Both films do what horror films do best, which is to highlight every day fears and neuroses by exaggerating them and focusing in on them. CAT PEOPLE deals with the fear people have that there might be a monster inside of them waiting to do something evil, but it also deals with the difficulties of establishing a relationship with a stranger. At first, she may seem exotic and interesting, but then the dark issues start to surface and even the best guy begins to wonder what the hell he's supposed to do. Of course, it's always tricky because the one with the issues so clearly needs love and acceptance that the other half of the relationship doesn't know what to do -- head for the hills, or dig in and try to get this solved. Here, we have the benefit of shorthand and broad strokes -- the girl's tragic past is literally haunted by evil monsters. In real life, these evil monsters are just as bad, or worse, but come in a much more mundane form and are therefore harder to understand and deal with.

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE deals with childhood insecurities -- being left out on the playground, the power of imagination, the gulf that exists between the adult world that surrounds kids and the limited understanding a kid has about what's really going on.

Both are tragic but somewhat beautiful tales. CAT PEOPLE is more tragic, CURSE is more beautiful. In fact, CURSE has more in common with great literary stories like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GREAT EXPECTATIONS than it does with traditional horror. In many ways, CURSE reminded me of the simultaneously sinister and fairy tale atmosphere of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER in which children are sidelined from an adult world and become potential victims of it.

CURSE is helped along by one of the best child performances I've seen. Little Ann Carter is in almost every scene of the movie and pretty much carries the movie. Some of her delivery might be what you typically expect from a child actor of the era but the depth of emotion and feeling on her face is unique and special for someone so young.

CURSE was co-directed by Robert Wise, who directed THE HAUNTING, which I watched yesterday. He's also directed plenty of other great films, but it's interesting to compare these two because he's been quoted as saying THE HAUNTING was his tribute to Lewton, and he directed CURSE under Lewton's mentorship. I can see where Wise is coming from -- THE HAUNTING is similar to Lewton's film in the way it avoids special effects, puts most of the horror in the minds of the characters, implies things more than explicitly coming out and showing them. Still, I feel like THE HAUNTING is a bad example of all of this, and CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE are both great examples of the old saying, "less is more."

Horrorfest 2010: The Haunting

I was looking forward to THE HAUNTING because I'd read some good things about it, not least of which was a list composed by the great Martin Scorsese of what he thinks are the scariest movies of all time.

Sadly, I was disappointed. THE HAUNTING suffers from some of the same problems as THE AMITYVILLE HORROR as characters are determined to deem a house haunted regardless of what actually happens (or doesn't happen) during the course of the film.

I'm sick of movies where cold houses or loud noises at night count as ghosts. I understand why this stuff counts as ghosts in real life. In real life, there are no ghosts, so people are forced to use their imaginations. You'll never see a ghost, so you have to assume bumps in the night or mundane things like cold spots in your house are super natural. It's still dumb, but it makes more sense than the world of fiction where anything can happen that you can imagine. So, why should a film about an allegedly haunted house adhere so strictly to the type of stuff that can be so easily written off?

I guess you could argue that the film is more of a psychological thriller -- maybe director Robert Wise is trying to make a point about super natural phenomena and how it can all happen in your head. If so, the movie makes a good point. Still, the film is about paranormal investigation and the resident experts never explore this possibility. They go into the house knowing it's haunted, and attribute everything they experience to the haunting.

The story involves the miserable main character Eleanor (Julie Harris) a middle-aged woman who has spent her entire life taking care of her aging mother. Now that mom is dead, Eleanor has moved into her sister's hosue where she's treated like a child. She also acts like a child, though, and we see how whiny and self centered she is in the endless opening sequence in which she demands to borrow her sister's car. We really have to sit through all this? It's 45 minutes before we get to anything ghostly.

Now, this is kind of a double standard -- after all, plenty of great horror movies wait nice and long before the actual monster makes an appearance. Take KING KONG and JAWS, for example. But those movies do a few things right that THE HAUNTING does not. One is, they have likable characters you can identify with. Eleanor is not likable. She's an old spinster who complains about everything, is obsessed with herself, and even her goddamn voice overs take over most of the soundtrack. Secondly, flicks like KING KONG and JAWS manage to entertain during the long passages of suspense leading up to the first "incident." THE HAUNTING does not. Instead, we sit through boring passages of unlikable, inhuman characters sitting around.

Anyway, Dr. Markaway (Richard Johnson) is a paranormal investigator who invites several people to a haunted house with a tragic history of death to see if the house is really haunted or not. The guests include the afore-mentioned Eleanor, a supposed psychic named Theo (Claire Bloom) who never seems to use her powers or even possess any powers during the movie's run, and the only dude I could identify with, token skeptic Luke (Russ Tamblyn).

Markaway's supposedly scientific investigation of the paranormal gets off on the wrong foot when he announces to everyone that the house is haunted. So, we start off with a little poisoning of the well. The first night, there's pounding on the door to the girls' bedroom. They freak out. I don't get it, though. If Theo and Eleanor are in a room together, and there's pounding and foot steps in the hall, couldn't it just be Markaway and Luke? When you know there are other people in the house, this kind of stuff shouldn't be freaky. It's freaky when you're supposed to be alone.

Later, they find some chalk writing on the wall, but still, anyone could have done it. And, they find a "legitimate cold spot." Dr. Markaway says, enthusiastically, "I bet it wouldn't even register on a thermometer!" as if that's any kind of proof. First of all, go get a fucking thermometer and find out! Secondly, if it doesn't register, maybe you're just wrong. Maybe you just THINK it's cold, and it's not. Maybe since you've told everyone the place is haunted, everyone's freaking out for no reason.

There's other explainable stuff, like doors opening and closing on their own, and Eleanor goes increasingly crazy but we know from the opening scenes that she's a huge drama queen who can't get over herself, so even our main character can't be trusted (or liked).

Look, the movie is beautifully shot and well acted. Technically, it's good. But it's boring as hell and I don't get what the big deal is.

NEXT!

Horrorfest 2010: Basket Case

Now, this is more like it. BASKET CASE takes a weird premise and totally runs with it. And that's with zero budget. So, suck it, AMITYVILLE HORROR.

BASKET CASE is another example of my favorite combination -- horror and comedy. The premise is so bizarre, the filmmakers have to acknowledge the sheer ridiculousness or else the movie would lose most of its power. So, they embrace the idea and it pays off for the viewer.

The story involves likable and naive Duane (the equally likable Kevin Van Hentenryck) arriving wide-eyed in Times Square. His only possession seems to be a large wicker basket, padlocked shut. He always carries it with him, akward as it might be, and never quite gives a straight answer when people eventually get around to asking, "What's in the basket?" It's inherently funny, and never gets old, the way Duane sits there with his giant basket, attempting to stay unassuming and under the radar, but unable to avoid looking super weird.

Do I tell you what's in the basket or not? It's too good not to. Stop reading if you don't want to know. See, Duane was born with a deformed conjoined twin named Belial growing out of the side of his body. His abusive father (Richard Pierce) wasn't very tolerant of the deformity and ordered it cut off in a traumatic surgery scene presided over by unethical, corrupt doctors and thrown into the trash. But, Belial survived, now just a lump of flesh with a face and two deformed arms, able to live on his own and crawl around at will. He even has the power to communicate telepathically with Duane, who speaks back to Belial vocally.

So, Duane and Belial arrive in New York, Belial in the basket, and systematically visit the doctors that have done them wrong, for revenge. Meanwhile, the tenants of the sleazy hotel they've moved into become suspicious of the goings on in Duane's room, and Duane starts a tentative relationship with the receptionist at one of the doctors' offices (Terri Susan Smith). Turns out aside from being filled with murderous revenge-fueled rage, Belial also has a nasty jealous streak and can't stand that his relatively normal brother has chances at regular social relationships while he has to sit around in a basket all day.

As I mentioned before, the movie has basically no budget and I think that works to its advantage. Shot on the streets in New York in the early 80s, the movie gets a lot of built-in production value just by embracing the filth of the natural surroundings. The littered streets and dingy interiors set the tone for this dirty little story. The special effects aren't great by major Hollywood standards but are pretty amazing for such a small production -- the distorted lump of flesh known as Belial is actually able to emote some human qualities and project emotions that even some actors in similar low budget films can't manage. Belial is sometimes a puppet, sometimes stop motion animation, but I think what really helps is the sound design -- his tortured screams and belabored breathing give him a tragic personality.

The main thing that makes this movie work is that everyone involved in it seems to be having a good time. The actors, while not perfectly professional in all cases, are loose and willing to go all the way. Even background throw-away characters have vivid personalities, whether we're talking about the colorful tenants of the low-rent hotel or cranky patients in waiting rooms.

They're headed up by Kevin Van Hentenryck in the lead, who, again, isn't perfect, but does a great job of being vulnerable, naive, and likable. You get the feeling if he was born under different circumstances he wouldn't have necessarily been the most popular guy, but he would have been one of those guys that everyone could really count on. Instead, because of his deformity, he's grown up shy and tentative, but you can see, despite his actions, deep down he'd rather just be a good guy.

This movie is endlessly inventive and likable. Is this because of or in spite of the low budget, bizarre premise, and over the top violence? Who cares, as long as it works.

Horrorfest 2010: The Amityville Horror

Boy, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR sucks.

It's the fairly well-known story of a young family, the Lutzes (dad James Brolin and mom Margot Kidder) who move into a house in Amityville, Long Island with their three kids. The movie opens with flashbacks to a brutal murder that occurred in the house a little over a year before the Lutzes moved in. Seems the father of the family living there took a shotgun to everyone in the house. So, it isn't long before weird stuff starts happening and the Lutzes decide the place is haunted.

The first red flag is that the movie is marketed as a true story. I mean, it's based on a book called "The Amityville Horror: A True Story." But this isn't like BLAIR WITCH or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY where the marketing eventually ends and the fiction begins. No, there's actually a George and Kathy Lutz out there, they actually lived in a house in Amityville, and they actually claim it was haunted. They still do, to this day.

The problem with all this is that ghosts are pretend. So, it can't be a true story. Whether the Lutzes are liars or honestly believe in ghosts, they're still wrong. There goes the premise of the movie. A more interesting movie might have been about the aftermath of the so-called haunting. How did this get from a house in Amityville to the big screen? I want to see the Lutzes pitching this one in Hollywood. Now, that would be a story.

Instead, we get a series of events that aren't even that freaky. I don't get it. It's kind of like in THE OMEN where Biblical prophecies are reduced to boring politics and economics. Your premise is the house is haunted -- why not make it scary and weird and fantastic? I guess the thought process might be that the more mundane the so-called haunting is, the more believable it is? Well, sure, I guess the house being cold is believable, and doors slamming on their own is believable, and a swarm of flies is believable, and the fact that the windows on the outside of the house resemble glaring eyes is believable (if a little heavy handed). But we're asked to believe a ghost is doing these things. And that seems to be just a little bit of a stretch.

What would be believable is if a ghost walked across the front room and the whole family saw it happen. See, what makes better movies like POLTERGEIST scary is the fact that the viewer has proof that this stuff is definitely going on in the fictional world of the movie. The viewer buys into what the movie is saying and believes it. Instead, when the toilets back up and that's supposed to be ghost evidence, the viewer thinks, "Bullshit."

Another thing that would make this movie more believable would be if we could relate to the characters a little more. That's another thing POLTERGEIST gets right -- it's also about a haunted house, and deals with a suburban mom and dad with kids. But you get to know the family. They have three dimensional personalities. They're likable. They deal with fantastic and weird situations the way you might think a real person would. They have likes and dislikes and habits, the house looks lived in, the neighborhood appears to have other people in it. It's the little stuff like that that connects an audience. If they audience isn't connected, they're not going to buy anything you try to sell them.

Perhaps worst of all, the movie is boring. It was hard to keep my eyes open during this one. That's even with constant dog barking, thunder crashes, and priests screaming at the top of their lungs. I took a break watching the movie last night and watched the last half hour today and STILL started to fall asleep, and that was during the supposedly thrilling climax.

The movie was a huge hit and has spawned an entire franchise, so it must have done something right, I guess. Was there anything I liked? The score was good, I guess. Before the climax kicks in, Margot Kidder does her damnedest to rise above the material by acting human when the script seems to have been written by someone who has never met a human before. James Brolin has a killer head of hair and a sweet beard. The first scare, where a disembodied voice hisses, "GET OUT!" at a visiting priest is legitimately creepy.

Speaking of priests, why are movies like this always crawling with Catholics? I guess because they're all ripping off THE EXORCIST. This one has no less than four priests screaming at each other, at heaven, at whatever, trying to get to the bottom of the ghost thing. THE OMEN was full of them, too. How come no one ever goes to a Protestant pastor or a Rabbi for this stuff? Or an exterminator. If I had flies all over the place I'd call the exterminator. Or, the plumber, for the toilet.

Speaking of plumbers, this flick kind of reminded me of that "reality" show GHOST HUNTERS where plumbers by day become paranormal investigators by night, responding to distress calls from haunted houses and filming their "skeptical," "scientific" investigations. That show also relies heavily on stuff like cold spots, sounds of the house settling and doors moving on their own. But, that's because it's real. Since ghosts are pretend, the GHOST HUNTERS will never find any, so they are forced to fill their show with bullshit -- the only way they can get results while hunting something that doesn't exist is to overreact at every little sound. The makers of AMITYVILLE, on the other hand, settle for the same bullshit when they were only limited by their imaginations. They could have made something awesome.

Like POLTERGEIST.

Horrorfest 2010: Audition

AUDITION is the first Japanese horror film of horrorfest. I have to admit, in the early 2000s I got kind of sick of Japanese horror flicks. There was a big movement where basically everything from Japan was adapted into an American movie. People claimed the Japanese originals were superior, but they always seemed to kind of suck to me. Most of them were about creepy ghost kids, painted white with stringy hair making funny noises and lurching around awkwardly.

AUDITION, on the other hand, takes place in the real world -- basically. There are no ghost kids here, no curses, nothing supernatural. Just torture. Which, unfortunately, brings up another fad, this time of the latter half of the first decade of 2000 -- torture porn. You know, SAW, HOSTEL all those flicks where instead of horror you just get torture. Which, I guess if you're into torture, is cool. If not, it blows.

Luckily, AUDITION, despite being known for how extreme it is, takes a relatively restrained approach to the horror genre and, in fact, most of the first hour plays like a straight drama. Sure, there are some thriller elements and you can tell that not everything is quite right, but you really get engrossed in the story and genuinely wonder where it's going to go. You know it's not going to go well. You just don't know where it's going to go wrong. Or how.

That's why it's good to go into AUDITION without knowing too much. Unfortunately, the movie posters and box art feature images that kind of give some core elements away. Still, even with a basic idea of what was going to happen, I was surprised with the way AUDITION was able to string me along anyway.

AUDITION starts off as the tale of a widowed father (Ryo Ishibashi). His well-meaning teenaged son (Tetsu Sawaki) recommends he jump start his love life so he's not alone when the kid goes off to college. His filmmaker friend (Jun Kunimara) comes up with an ethically questionable scheme -- they'll stage auditions for a film production that's never going to happen, and the widowed father can use these auditions to find himself his next wife.

During the audition process, Ishibashi's character is quickly won over by an ex-ballerina (Eihi Shiina) who seems to be the picture perfect version of the demure, reserved, respectable Japanese wife. She's young, pretty, quiet, and smart. There are some early hints that something is a little off beneath the surface, but that draws Ishibashi's character in even more. He loves her and wants to be there for her. She seems to need him.

Without giving too much away, after a weekend getaway, the girl disappears. Ishibashi's character attempts to retrace her foot steps using her resume, but this only leads to several more mysteries and dead ends, each hinting at a more sinister past.

Here's where I have to stop describing the plot. Needless to say, it takes a couple twists. To the movie's credit, some of the last few sequences are strung together in a dream like manner, owing a lot to stream of consciousness. This way, you're never quite sure what's real and what's not -- what's happening now, what happened before, what's going to happen? The best way to view it is to take it basically literally -- let the images and instances speak for themselves. If Ishibashi's character seems to be taking a dream-like tour through the girl's chaotic past, then let him.

Again, I don't want to give anything away, but I do want to let you know what kind of images await you going into this film. There's a recurring image of a bag, apparently with a human stuffed inside, writhing around on the ground; a scene where a dog bowl of vomit is fed to someone; graphic use of a wire saw to sever limbs; the sinister application of painful acupuncture needles.

I'd say of all the movies I have watched this month, this one probably kept me on the edge of my seat the most. What's going to happen next, what is the truth, how horrible can this get, will the victims ever get out of this -- all that kind of stuff. As much as the ultra-violence was repulsive and totally backfired in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, it works here. This is because you sense director Takashi Miike is not messing around with you. He doesn't cheat. Sure, the torture scenes are arranged with a fetishistic attention to detail (just check out Shiina's costume as an example), but by the time they arrive, the movie has totally earned them. This is not cheap.

Perhaps the movie's greatest strength is that it plays on very common fears, the way the best horror movies do. In this case, the root fears aren't even necessarily commonly associated with horror. Most of it has to do with relationships. The fear of being alone, the difficulty of meeting new people, dealing with trust issues, dealing with the past -- it's all here and instead of falling into the realm of romantic comedy or drama, it's uniquely used in the service of horror.

The main thing is, you can totally identify with Ishibashi's character. Okay, sure, maybe you wouldn't hold a fake film audition just to find a wife, but who doesn't feel lonely? Who doesn't want love? When faced with someone you love who's clearly damaged, who doesn't want to try to make it work? Who doesn't look the other way when a relationship you want to work so badly seems to be going south?

And, finally, who doesn't blame themselves for being deluded?

Horrorfest 2010: Cannibal Holocaust

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST -- what a shitty film.

In my teens, when Tarantino was just bursting onto the scene and a new interest was developing in ultra-violent cinema, I read a lot about the subject and watched a bunch of movies ranging from the great LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to the terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. At the time, I also read about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST but never got around to watching it.

These days, I don't have much stomach for this kind of stuff. I think part of it is once you've satisfied your curiosity, you've seen it all. One disgusting, depraved shock film is as good (or bad) as another. There's no reason to watch a bunch of them. You've seen one, you've seen them all.

Still, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was on the list of the 100 greatest horror films I'm working off of, and I hadn't seen it before, so I checked it out. Unlike some of the other ultra violent horror films that snuck their way into cult status in the early days of VHS, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST has a little bit of a legacy. The controversy generated by the film in the first place is partially due to the pseudo-documentary style employed by the filmmakers, and it is that same approach that has led to a little bit of a renaissance for the film as it has been mentioned as inspiration for the huge 90s hit THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

The premise will seem familiar to anyone who has heard of BLAIR WITCH -- a group of young filmmakers disappears in the wilderness. Their raw footage is discovered and examined to find out what happened to them. Their fates turn out to be gruesome. Like BLAIR WITCH, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is pretty much set up as a true event, though, unlike BLAIR WITCH, the film itself breaks the fourth wall almost from the first scene, establishing it as clearly fictional to anyone who is even halfway familiar with filmmaking techniques. At least, I guess that's by today's standards. Maybe back when this stuff was cutting edge audiences were less savvy. My guess is the movie seems more real and more disturbing when viewed on an old abused film print, or on a watched and re-watched shitty VHS copy. This is one case where a meticulously restored DVD probably hurts the film's impact.

Or, maybe the pristine film format on DVD betrays the film's inherent cynicism as a direct result of robbing it of some of its power.

Anyway, I've said so much without saying anything. In this case, the young filmmakers are a documentary crew hired by a news organization to document indigenous tribes of the Amazon. They disappear into the jungle and an anthropologist (Robert Kerman) is sent to track them down. He finds that they've been brutally murdered and eaten by a cannibal tribe, is able to recover their lost footage, and returns to New York where he's assigned to help the news company make the footage palatable for broadcast. The story is sensational enough that the news organization just sees ratings and dollar signs. The anthropologist, having been to the Amazon, met the tribes, and viewed all of the footage in question, knows it's unsuitable for broadcast and makes his case.

The film has a strange structure -- even though the "raw footage" element is hinted at from the beginning, and even though most of what you'll read about the movie is about its unique pseudo-documentary style, the first half is firmly planted in the realm of traditional cinema. All the stuff involving the anthropologist traveling to the Amazon and tracking down the footage is clearly straight narrative -- we're not meant to believe this is real. Then, suddenly, when the anthropologist returns home with his "found footage" we're presented with the raw footage in an amateurish "real" and "unedited" format as the last half of the film unfolds, showing the fate of the lost film crew almost from a "first person" point of view, as if you're there with them in the middle of the horror. Even though we're told that these filmmakers are amazing professionals, most of the footage is shaky like no one ever learned how to hold a camera still.

To be sure, this is a revolutionary approach, especially for a low budget exploitation flick like this one. And, this is probably the primary reason why people remember the movie to this day. It was certainly influential. But is it any good?

I'm inclined to say no. Again, maybe 25 years ago before reality television and before other similar movies, this one had more power. Maybe viewed on a damaged print or abused video tape, it added to the voyeuristic snuff film allure of the thing. I don't know.

All I know is what I saw. From what I saw, the filmmaker's betrayed their own cynicism at almost every turn in the film, and that undermines any power the movie might have had. When you get the feeling that the people behind the camera have some kind of prurient interest or ulterior motive, it becomes difficult to take them seriously. So, even if they try to make some point about the influence of media on the third world, or the influence of media turning supposedly civilized cultures into savage ones, or even if the film ponders who the real savages are -- the cannibals in the jungle, or the Western media -- it's all totally shot to shit when you don't believe the filmmakers are being honest with you.

The same can be said of the violence -- extreme violence can be powerful. This ranges from gore, even to staged rape scenes -- see A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PULP FICTION, etc. It can work. But not if you suspect the filmmaker is trying to trick you. In Kubrick or Tarantino's flicks, you always feel like the filmmakers are being totally honest with their intentions. With a film like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, all the gore and sexual violence is rendered hollow and exploitative by the obscured, dishonest intentions of the filmmakers.

What makes me think director Ruggero Deodato and writer Gianfranco Clerici aren't being totally honest with me as an audience member in their intentions? There are too many examples in the film for me to list, but one easy metaphor for what I'm talking about is the animal cruelty in the film. Yes, the real animal cruelty. You know you're in trouble when you pop the DVD in and it asks if you want to see the film in its "theatrical" version or "non-animal cruelty" version. Sheesh.

I opted for the "theatrical" version because I wanted to see what made this movie so controversial and famous in the first place, and part of that is the animal cruelty. Here's the thing -- the movie is called CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. You expect some man on man violence, some extreme gore, people eating each other. You get some of that, but it's interspersed with random acts of violence against animals -- real acts of violence. Now, I don't want to get into a larger ideological discussion about whether or not it's okay to kill animals. After all, I eat meat. I can't pretend to be some moral, upstanding human who would never hurt an animal or would never want an animal to be hurt. I understand slaughter houses are awful, and I eat steaks anyway. So, I'm not doing any moral grand-standing here.

But here's what I'm saying: why the animal cruelty in the film? What's the point? The director put it there on purpose. What's his reasoning? I can only speculate, and my line of reasoning while speculating is what convinces me the movie is nothing more than cynical exploitation.

Here's what I came up with: torturing animals is easy. Special effects are hard, and you can't torture and kill humans on film. So, take it out on the animals. You need some easy shock that you don't really need to work for or be creative about? Fine, shoot a 10 minute scene where you slaughter a giant turtle and play with its body parts. There, it's nice and gross, all you had to do was haul a turtle out of the water. You didn't have to create anything or do any actual work. Just force your actors to cut it up and play with it, and you've got an automatic shock scene. Same with chopping a monkey's head off, cutting a snake in half, shooting a pig. Worried you can't deliver the shocks that the word "cannibal" suggests? Fine. Take it out on the animals.

Now, some would argue that the REAL slaughter of the animals blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and that's what the film is about. If you see an undeniably real animal slaughter, then maybe the next scene of depravity against humans seems more real. I guess. But it seems very convenient. These animals can't complain, no one will miss them. I don't know, any time something has one pretentious explanation and one super convenient one, I suspect the convenient one might be more accurate and the pretentious one might just be post-mortem rationalization.

Similarly, the graphic sexuality and violence against women serves to expose the filmmaker's prurient interests. The first sexual assault occurs early in the film as a helpless native woman writhes naked in the mud while a native man assaults her. The anthropologist observes, "This looks like a ritual punishment for adultery!" Other similar scenes follow. The one female member of the filmmaking expedition (Francesca Ciardi) is photographed nude or in compromising situations as often as possible, involving one sex scene with her filmmaker boyfriend (Carl Garbiel Yorke) and then her eventual dismemberment. There's also a scene in which the filmmakers stumble upon a native girl, capture her, and take turns raping her, again, rolling around in the mud.

Now, none of these scenes are titillating. But, butting up against scenes of faked violence and real animal cruelty, what are we supposed to think? What's the point? It's hard not to think the filmmakers are slipping this in specifically to serve the audience members looking for some tits and ass. I'm not sure the filmmakers care that the tits and ass are served up next to and along with violence. If they do, it's only at the benefit of being more extreme -- you get the feeling the sex doesn't exist in spite of the violence, but because of it. Like the animal cruelty, it's easy. Just convince a woman to get out of her clothes and roll in the mud, and you've got 10 minutes of exploitation without having to work or be creative.

In fact, after watching the film I noticed it had a director's commentary and I wondered what a scum bag director can possibly say during a scene in which a female actor is dragged naked through the mud. So, I went back through the film and listened out of curiosity. The director commented that the woman was the costume designer and she was very nice. He then praised the musical score of the movie and pointed out how nice the sky looked during the sexual assault. Very insightful.

Apparently the director ended up in some legal trouble in the mid 80s when the film was deemed too real. Again, I have the benefit of hindsight, but that's simply giving the movie way too much credit. It's all so clearly cynical and contrived from the beginning, I have to assume the courts that prosecuted the director were simply offended beyond rational thought into the realm of blind rage and didn't actually believe Deodato had shot a genuine snuff film.

As I alluded to before, the film tries to make some higher philosophical point or moral observation on the state of the media today, and whether the civilized world is really the savage world. Part of this point is dramatized through the depraved actions of the missing film crew. Their footage reveals that they were glad to contrive situations for sensation at the expense of the natives, sometimes costing lives.

But what about the actual film crew, not the fictional one? What did they do, out in the wilderness, without anyone watching? Did they take advantage of natives and animals? Did they even take advantage of actors who should have known better? Did they brow beat these poor bastards into participating in depravity for the sake of exploitation?

The positive reviews of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST say it's a social commentary. I say it's nothing more than a commentary by director Ruggero Deodato about himself.

Note 1: Re-reading this, I realize I totally neglected to mention the rampant racism. So, here: the film's unforgivably racist. There.

Note 2: Also, I was mystified by the fictional film crew's tactics. They were happy to stage atrocities, like burning down a native village, herding the natives into a hut and setting it on fire. But they film themselves setting it up. Why not set the hut on fire and THEN turn on the cameras? How come all the clear shots are the incriminating ones, and the "sensational" shots of the villagers burning are all shaky and confusing?

Horrorfest 2010: Black Sabbath

Hey! It's another Mario Bava film.

BLACK SABBATH is a horror anthology -- three unconnected short stories bridged by tongue in cheek introductions starring none other than Boris Karloff. Phew. That was a close one. I was afraid I'd go all October with no Boris Karloff, but here he is, being all Boris Karloffy.

The biggest weakness this film has when you watch it (almost) back to back with BLACK SUNDAY (or MASK OF SATAN) is the color photography. It's not a badly shot film -- not at all. Much like Bava's other flick from Horrorfest, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, BLACK SABBATH makes great use of bold colors. Still, when it comes to horror, I feel like color somewhat detracts from the proceedings. As BLACK SABBATH unfolded, I kept wondering what it would look like in black and white and couldn't help but think it might be scarier.

Part of this is probably just because of the context I'm watching it in -- maybe if I saw the film at the time it came out, the color would seem like an audacious and original choice, instead of kind of a tacky excess.

Here's how it goes:

The first story, THE DROP OF WATER, is a story about a woman who steals an expensive piece of jewelry from a corpse and is then haunted by the corpse, or guilt, or both, all night. The second, THE TELEPHONE, is probably the first stalker-by-phone movie, where a glamorous woman has to deal with perverted and threatening phone calls from an ex-lover. The final story, THE WURDALAK is probably the most traditional horror store, basically a retelling of vampire lore taking place in 19th century Russia. This one also stars Boris Karloff as the title monster.

Of these stories, the third one is the most naturally shot. This is probably because it has the most exterior shots and relies more on sunlight than electricity. The rest of the film is rooted firmly in studios. Still, the first 2/3 of the film are probably the most effective, I guess because they're more offbeat stories. The last 1/3 is the kind of story you'd expect from this type of movie, so it's rendered a little less effective, despite the presence of Karloff.

Reading up on this film, it seems I watched the American version -- apparently the original Italian version shows the stories in a different order, has different Karloff intros, and includes more controversial details, like a lesbian sub plot in THE TELEPHONE.

Going into Horrorfest, I was kind of dreading all the Italian films, I guess because I'd already seen ZOMBIE by Lucio Fulci and didn't care for it too much. As Horrorfest has unfolded, it has become clear that I was unfairly prejudiced against an entire country's worth of horror films, since most of the Italian films I've seen have been quite good. Let's rank Italian directors:

DEEP RED is the best Italian flick I've see this month, so Dario Argento wins top spot.

BLACK SUNDAY or THE MASK OF SATAN was the second best, so Mario Bava comes in second even though I have mixed feelings about BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and BLACK SABBATH.

Finally, Lucio Fulci comes in last with the terrible THE BEYOND.

It's almost not fair to rank Fulci 3rd after the likes of Argento and Bava. There should be roughly 100 spots between the directors, with Argento and Bava close to the top and Fulci all the way at the bottom.

Horrorfest 2010: The Pit and the Pendulum

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is another horror film I've read about and seen pictures of over the years but never got around to watching until today. I was looking forward to watching it today because I knew it stars Vincent Price.

That's one of the unexpected joys of setting out to do something like this -- one of the main reasons I make arbitrary rules for myself like, "I'm going to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days" is to force myself to write. The secondary reason is that these are all films I'd like to see anyway, so it's nice to give myself an excuse to do it systematically. But, other benefits sneak in while all this is going on -- I might notice I like a director or star I've never really been exposed to before. The more Vincent Price movies I see, the more I realize I'm a Vincent Price fan.

Vincent Price is one of those guys that is so famous that he permeates pop culture. Even if you've never seen a Vincent Price flick, if you're any kind of movie fan you can probably hear his voice or picture his pencil mustache. It's kind of like when I realized Barbara Streisand's greatness last February -- sure, the entire world says she's great, and I grew up hearing that, but you never really realize how great she is till you check out her flicks. Same with Vincent Price.

Price is from the old school of acting where you don't treat anything like it's shit. Even if you're in the shittiest movie of all time, you read the lines like it's Shakespeare. Admittedly, this still won't turn shit into greatness. But, it can turn mediocrity into greatness.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM opens in 16th century Spain with Francis Barnard (John Kerr) riding to the castle of his late sister (Barbara Steele -- hey, she was in BLACK SUNDAY!) and her husband via stage coach. Damn, there sure are lots of horror movies where guys are heading towards castles in stage coaches and then the coach stops and refuses to take the guy the whole way. They're always like, "Woa, no way, this is as far as I go. Sorry, dude." And then they take off, and the dude has to stand there with his bags all alone in the barren country side. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd count how many times this has happened in Horrorfest so far, but it seems like roughly 1/3 of the movies feature a similar scene.

Anyway, Barnard is visiting the castle to investigate his sister's death. His brother-in-law, Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is clearly hiding something. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate how much he loved his late wife, but also mysteriously won't let Barnard into certain blocked off parts of the cobwebbed castle. Creepy.

The family doctor, Leon (Antony Carbone) shows up and lets some vital information slip -- he says Barnard's sister died of fright. Barnard's suspicions are fueled even more and finally Medina has to reveal the family's deep dark secret -- an elaborate torture chamber in the castle's basement. Leon reveals to Barnard that Medina witnessed his own mother's torture and live burial in this chamber at the hands of his father (also played by Price in flashbacks), and now suspects he may have accidentally buried Barnard's sister alive, as well. Medina even hallucinates that her ghost is out to get him.

The movie has a couple twist endings, so I don't want to describe too much more except to say when the last 20 minutes or so kicks in, the whole thing moves along at a breakneck speed and keeps on gaining its own momentum in a way that kind of clicks everything that went before it into place. This is clearly a low budget production, but with Price in the lead role and a snappy narrative, you barely notice -- sure, it could be lit a little moodier, and the sets, as great as they are, could be a little less wooden, and Spain could look a little less like Southern California, but that's all beside the point because the story works.

I'll admit -- this movie kept me guessing. I didn't know what the twist was going to be, before there was one, and I didn't even necessarily realize there was going to be one in the first place. Lesser movies telegraph their twists in advance. Sure, this was a mystery, so I knew there had to be a solution. But, I had no idea what the solution would be.

The pit and pendulum of the title make an appearance in the film's last act and serve as a fitting climax, expertly kept off screen and out of the dialogue until the last moment by director Roger Corman, who could whip these things off in 15 days precisely because he knew what the hell he was doing.