...Because, Let's Face It, Cows Deserve It

And Now A Word From a Girl in A Crowd...

The Hitch-Hiker

These three actors are transfixing in one of those noirs that gets out of city limits and into our collective thoughts. Talman is disturbing as an original serial killer. The “good guys,” the hostages with families at home in Arizona, are not where they are supposed to be because they were planning on slipping down to Mexico to enjoy the prostitutes. Their desire to escape their suburban middle class lives is contrasted with Talman’s criminal freedom, a freedom doomed by being hunted by society. Who is worse off? Who lives more intelligently? Who is really sane? The device of Talman’s bad eye, which doesn’t close even when he’s sleeping, is distinct.

1953, directed by Ida Lupino

The Title Tells You All You Need to Know

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Two Wongs

Our bad boys of Halloween, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, have much in common, including, - well-duh-ishly - their status as icons of the early days of horror. While their most famous early roles are at Universal, they also made films for poverty row studio Monogram, and both played characters named Mr. Wong. The similarity in the two characters ends in the name, as Lugosi's Wong is kind of a small scale Fu Manchu, an Asian mastermind, while Karloff's Wong is a heroic detective in the mold of Charlie Chan, albeit more genteel, not as judgemental and less full of syntactically-challenged aphorisms.

Many reasons are given for Lugosi's loss of career momentum after his early Universal roles, but I would say one is that he never really got to play heroes. He seemed to always play unsympathetic villains, even alienating viewers in potentially sympathetic roles such as the mad scientist in the later film he made wth Ed Wood, Bride of the Monster. He delivers the famous "Hunted...despised..." soliliquy with such a palpable disdain for humanity that it is fascinating to watch but also genuinely frightening. Karloff, delivering a similar speech, would have evoked compassion. Partly this would be due to our own learned reception of a soft English accent versus a harsh Hungarian delivery. But only partly. It might be just in how they elected to play their characters. Karloff's Frankenstein monster, even when killing, seemed without guile. His habitual expressions are confusion and desperation. But for me the most lasting image of Lugosi's one foray into that role, in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, is his face slowly turning to the camera with an expression of pure malevolence. Delightful Lugosi malevolance, but it is a chilling leer. Some would argue that's what a horror movie should contain and I can't argue against that. But it's that horror aptitude that made a transfer into other genres and other types of characters less feasible for Bela than it was for Boris. That being said, as demonstrated in One Body Too Many, Lugosi could play comedy. What would have been difficult is for Bela to present a mad scientist as sympathetic as Karloff's in The Ape, as one example.

As for the two movies in question, both directed by the gifted William Nigh, both are very entertaining and much of that value is due to other players as well as Nigh's ability to create palpable comic strip atmosphere on the thread of a shoe string.

In The Mysterious Mr. Wong, Lugosi is seemingly mild mannered shopkeeper by day, but by early evening to night, depending when he gets off work, he is avidly pursuing relics known as the Coins of Confucious. This of course reminds us of our own lives as collectors with day jobs, though presumably none of us murder for it. Wallace Ford is the hardnosed, nosy, nasal-voiced reporter in pursuit of the story he smells as bodies start to pile up in Chinatown. He gets a lot of the best lines, and plays it with flair as he also purses the affections of office girl Arline Judge. One very clever shot is of the two of them in a tight frame with a third wheel, another suitor that Ford schemes to get rid of. We are looking at the three full on as they sit at a lunch counter. It's a simple shot but just think how impossible telling a story that way would have been just ten years earlier in the silent era, never mind before film. Eventually Ford and Judge come upon a secret passageway in the back of Wong's shop, natch, leading to cobwebs, one-liners, and the thrilling conclusion. This recalls to me how, as a youngster, I felt it was inevitable that I would end up in a similar adventure with various girls I had crushes on. No doubt I was at least in part under the influence of the climactic cave scenes in Tom Sawyer. And suddenly now I'm recalling a M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye is looking into the back of a patient's throat and says he can still still see Becky and Tom wandering around back there. In many ways, that patient's throat is my mind.

Be that as it may, and it may, we then come to Karloff's Mr. Wong movies, and this one in particular. This series mixed together the Asian sleuth genre with the girl reporter genre, ie Torchy Blane, to what I think is great effect. In this particular one, the blonde girl reporter's intrepidness is able to save Wong's life, as he is embroiled in the mysterious murder (of course it's mysterious, wouldn't be much of a movie without that), of a Chinese princess, leading to much skulking around in beautiful fog. Ah, fog, nature's secret passageway. Well, um, except for caves.

Karloff is charming as Wong, but it is really Marjorie Reynolds, and Grant Withers as her hardnosed cop antagonist/love interest that puts this one over.

Proto Disney Teen Noir Hamlet: Strange Illusion

1945, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Ulmer has a permanent place in horror and noir history for The Black Cat and Detour respectively. But his lesser known Strange Illusion has much to recommend it, including a mixture of noir conventions with bizarre dream sequences and a plot involving teens trying to foil crooks that foreshadows such future Disney teen adventure masterworks as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. The lead is played by James Lydon, surely the forties' precursor of Tommy Kirk. Lydon is perhaps best known as the Young Man in Love character in The Time of Your Life. The plot of this movie is Hamlet-esque, as Lydon is bothered by a dream that tells him that the man his mother is now involved with was the killer of his father. One advantage the Melancholy Dane never had in his pursuit of the king's true killer was a crack team of teen sleuths and one kindly older doctor. Strangely, another actor that Lydon retroactively reminds me of is James Franco in the similar role of Harry Osborn of the Spider-man movies. The look of glazed obsessiveness as a son pursues the true killer of his father is similar, and I got to wonder if Franco looked at this film, perhaps at director Sam Raimi's request or suggestion. Certainly much of the style of the Spidey films, from acting to scoring, channels forties movies.

Special mention should got to Jimmy Clark, as the friend of Lydon's character. With spunky good humour he steals every scene he's in and is unfortunately absent a lot of the time, as Lydon goes undercover at a mental institution. One of the many factors that makes this film interesting is hearing some teen lingo of the forties as teen culture was only beginning to exist. It would still be a few years until the appearances of Catcher in the Rye and films like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause.

Come Out To Play

A&M Records, 1979
This record is a stone cold lava lamper, a fitting addition to any cat's collection for the groovy theme music and score composed by Barry De Vorzon as well as most of the other tunes, including an epic song performed by Joe Walsh called In the City, which is definitely I tune I want to hear when emerging from a subway at the crack of dawn. The only tune I could never get with is the cover of "Nowhere to Run", but even the original is one of those Motown moments I couldn't quite get with. What does work for me is the last tune, "Last of an Ancient Breed", credited to Desmond Child, which sets the tone for much of the closing credits songs of eighties action movies.

Also present are some sound bites from this classic flick, but some may be disappointed that "Can...you...dig it?" is not included; however, its other most quoted line, "Warriors!...come out to plaaaay!" is, with sound effects of those ominous bottles clanging together. Wow, that guy must have had tiny fingers.

Reason # 12,386 Why 1966 is the Coolest Year on Record

Nancy Sinatra and Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) duet on Man From U.N.C.L.E.!!!

Doomed Delambre

The only problem I have with this movie is really a strength, in that there is something so genuinely tragic about it. It sort of goes beyond those movies where you just watch as a monster is created and sit back and enjoy the ensuing craziness.

Occasionally there are movies , the ones that come to mind are Black Christmas and Devils Rejects, where I end up feeling more for the victims than normal in a horror film. You get a sense of Dr. Delambre having made such a terrible, irreversible mistake. He had high ideals but was too ambitious, did not proceed with due caution. It's another one of those fifties sci-fi movies, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that tells much about the anxieties of people living in the middle of the twentieth century. The Fly goes beyond sci-fi to express a universal human theme. As Cormac McCarthy put it, "Doomed enterprises divide lives forever into the then and the now."

The Bad Boys of Halloween

...And Now a Word From One of Our Patron Saints and Founding Fathers, Jimmy Drake aka Nervous Norvus

Lest we ever forget the non-rallying cry of Hepcat Hermits in every Groovy Pad around this great sub-culture of ours: "Be Zorch, Daddio, Go Ape!" is the word! We all must strive for the Nervous Norvus level of Dementia. Well, we're actually probably all there already or we wouldn't be on this page! So good for us! Let's keep it that way! Thanks to the man codenamed watchinshadows for posting this classic with a montage of the things that HH-ers live for.

BORGNIIIIIIIIINE!!!

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. The second greatest was transforming Ernest Borgnine into a goat-man.

If you like, I mean really like, lots of melting faces in a movie that's full of potential sound clips for a Rob Zombie album, this is the one for you. For some reason, on a lot of the materials related to the film Tom Skerritt gets completely jerked. He's responsible for much of the action but hardly gets mentioned. He definitely gets more screen time than John Travolta, who makes his film debut but may be hard to recognize under lots of flesh coloured wax and a neat, short hairstyle unbecoming of a Sweathog.

Shatner Shatners it up as only he can. Borgnine is almost having too much gleeful fun as the high priest of a group of Satanists, so much fun that I'm a little worried about him. When he utters an incantation and the thunder cracks, and suddenly he has a kooky-looking Borgnine goathead, that's when you know you got what you came for.

1975, directed by Robert Fuest

Beards in Space: Legion of Super-Heroes #306

No, that isn't the head of a sixties GI Joe action figure floating in space, it's Star Boy in his newish costume. He always knew he'd be one of the glitterati.

In case you were wondering what Star Boy did with his old costume, the splash page of "Born Under A Lucky Star" shows us that he cut off the sleeves and turned it into a casual T-shirt, thus anticipating the "Casual Age" of comics we are currently still in.

Well, this issue gets off to an interesting start as Star Boy, aka Thom Kallor, sits around complaining about his "bad luck" to Wildfire. Kind of insensitive of him, since Wildfire is a former human, now just energy contained in a suit, whereas Star Boy's current "huge problem" is that his gorgeous, always scantily clad girlfriend Dream Girl is a bit distracted by her duties as Legion leader and not paying enough attention to him. So Thom's hoping that the new election, which we now join in progress, sees her opponent Ultra Boy win so Thom can go back to his grueling schedule of cuddling, which may or may not necessitate shaving.

By the way, I do like the beard, I'm just chafing. Even if it means a 19 year old can grown more facial hair than me. Not that I mind, I hate shaving what I do have. And there's the rub. I don't really have enough to grow a proper looking beard, so that option isn't open to me.

But enough about me, even if it is in keeping with this issue's theme of self-absorption. Fortunately for LoSH fans, in comics self-absorption means flashbacks, and this story's chock full of doozies in that they are drawn by none other than Silver Age Legion artist Curt Swan. Swan, in between the framing narrative illustrated by then current LoSH artist Keith Giffen, gets a chance to retell and expand upon some Silver Age classics: Thom's origin, his first meeting and falling in puppy love with DG; his accidental killing of an assailant that led to his expulsion from the Legion and his subsequent joining of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. There's a wonderful splash page of the Subs, including a bouffant-adorned Night Girl kayoing an opponent. Finally, the thrilling tale of Star Boy and Dream Girl going undercover as Sir Prize and Miss Terious, perhaps not the best-chosen code names for an incognito assignment, but hey; the 2960's were a crazy time for everybody. And the scheme led to Thom getting back into the real Legion. So long, losers! I kid, the Subs rock.

In the end, good fortune visits Star Boy as Dream Girl is not re-elected, with surprise write-in candidate Element Lad winning. So it's no doubt back to the cuddling. Yes, politics makes strange beardfellows.

That ish came out in 1983, the next year Madonna released this song. Coincidence or conspiracy?

A Beat Poem About Sean Bean

Sean Bean's names look

Like they should rhyme

But they don't.

Weird, man.

Weird.

House of Several Weirdos: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks, 1974

Who among us can truly say we haven't been out robbing graves at night in the company of a lascivious dwarf? The dwarf in question played by none other than Michael Dunn, probably one of the finest actors among the little people, beloved to audiences for his roles in such films as Ship of Fools. He is perhaps best known for his immortal Dr. Loveless on Wild Wild West, a show which I have only recently begun to watch thanks to Hepcat Honey Numero Uno giving me season 2 DVD's.

This is a movie for any of us who have ever found ourselves living in a house full of weirdos. It serves up full helpings of fun freakishness, with not only a Frankenstein monster named Goliath, but also a caveman named Ook. It is marred only by some unpleasantness that is not surprising in a seventies European horror movie. Dunn is a good enough actor that as sadistic as his character is, he also conveys some real pathos, which is a fancy way of saying I can't resist his puppy dog eyes.

The Time Travelers

It's always the best to turn on the TV and see an amazing film starting. Such was the case today, as I switched on Silver Screen classics in time to see this 1964 wonder beginning. A very tight hour and twenty minutes, of time travel, mutants, androids, a rocket ship and a special appearance by Forrest J Ackerman.

Three scientists and one maintenance man in a lab, which is apparently moments away from a funding cut, switch on an experimental time viewer, which turns out to be a time portal, natch. Some bumbling by the wacky maintenance man, and soon all are trapped in the 2071, where we learn that a nuclear war has meant a virtual ceasing of all human advancement, particularly in the area of women's hairstyles.

Its a sixties sci fi visual feast, including beautiful effects which maintain their power to amaze. The androids are wonderfully creepy. Some nice twists in the plot, little character development to clutter up the proceedings, and there's an interesting subtext of futuristic free love.

The Thought Provoking Theme of Polanski's KNIFE IN THE WATER:

When there's a groovy girl in a bikini around, guys act like idiots.

Most Other Bands Suck Compared To Gravy Train!!!!

Every so often you come upon a band that when you hear them it feels like you've had a void in your head waiting for that music to come along and fill it.

Void, meet Gravy Train!!!!

They're like a napalm enema for pretentious boring indie music. Sorry for the graphic image but I'm afraid in this case it is absolutely necessary.

Some of their songs are shockingly filthy, but the sort of filthy shock that zaps the listener to attention. Some songs are plain silly. All are fun. And underneath many is a subtle emotional core, as in "Burger Baby" in which lead singer Chunx, in a deceptively humourous manner, reveals struggles with weight gain and food addiction, or in "Jody" where the devilishly handsome Hunx talks about a new love in his life. Gravy Train!!!! is for those of us who feel most indie music that is trying to be intelligent and emotionally compelling is actually tediously beating its listeners over the head with the artlessly overt whining of spoiled kids. In GT the spoiledness is acknowledged and garishly satirized. The personas of the band, particularly of Hunx and Chunx, are so aggressive in their flamboyance it becomes genuinely poignant. That perhaps is the real art of a band that never comes off as artistic but which is so smooth in its creativity you don't notice it. Possibly the best comparison is the Beastie Boys on Licenced To Ill, but GT is its own thing.

Hunx has apparently branched off in another act called Hunx and his Punx with a similar sound and similarly deceptively simple, clever lyrics. I enjoy the twist ending of this song. I can safely say this is my favourite gay romance video, though under normal circumstances I don't need to see a guy wearing sexy tights. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just happen to enjoy our possibly arbitrary but nevertheless fun culturally assigned costumes. But I'll let Hunx off the hook because he's awesome, I dig the rest of his clothes and I love the amazing CGI animals at the beginning. My kind of effects!

Harrison Ford's "American Out of His Element" Trilogy Part One: WITNESS

Having slammed my idol Harrison's latest movie in the last entry, I feel I must now redeem myself, or at least use it as an excuse to rave about some of his underrated films. Well, the first one we'll be looking at is hardly underrated, having gotten HF an Oscar nomination, quite remarkable for a guy just coming off the success of two major popcorn franchises. Having appeared the previous year in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as the invincible archaeologist, it is a comment on his own versatility and the popular audience's occasional intellectual flexibility - yes, the film industry is certainly a social laboratory - that Witness, perhaps the most realistic cop thriller ever made, and one in which HF plays a highly vulnerable police officer, could gain acceptance.



As I've often said, the word "realistic" gets thrown around a lot these days to describe any film or work where characters don't use magic or have special powers, and sometimes even supernatural stories are considered "realistic" if, say, characters talk on cell phones or we are given some other reminder of the mundane world with which we identify. Witness however unfolds much more like a police case gone wrong might conceivably happen in our world. We are not given a shootout with bullets flying everywhere and a hero miraculously escaping and managing to kill every one of his assailants. We are shown a confrontation between the hero and one man in which the hero is shot, leading to his wound becoming more serious and his convalescing on the brink of death for days. Then at the end he again does not confront an army, instead a mere three men. He nails one by having the much greater upper hand, he successfully gets the drop on the second, and then the third loses his nerve. Ford's survival is plausible.

Don't get me wrong. There's no one who enjoys fantastical entertainment more than I. And yes, I understand that some obey a kind of telegraphed internal logic which makes them more convincing. I get that. But if you want to talk about a cop drama where it is actually believable in almost every sense, Witness is the one. Bullit might stand up to that acid test, but even The French Connection starts to look pretty splashy, though what film buff would want to live without that great chase scene? Not I.

That's just an opening to the main topic, this being the first in HF's "American Out of His Element" Trilogy, of which The Mosquito Coast and Frantic comprise the remaining parts. Witness comes at that theme from a good introductory slant, in terms of the character Ford is playing. John Book's values are as simple and straightforward as his name. He goes through life somewhat unconsciously, in the sense that he has received the sense of what is right and wrong from his upbringing, presumably, and enacts those values as best he can within the police force, probably without much reflection. His tragic flaw, in fact, ends up being a certain qualified optimism about the other police officers. When he discovers that another cop, played menacingly by Danny Glover, is corrupt, he is not very surprised, but he does not for a moment suspect the same corruption in his mentor and friend, a superior officer who it turns out is the plot's ringleader.

Despite his basic optimism, Book is quite familiar with the sleazier side of urban America. He has street smarts. He realizes all is not paradise, but clearly feels his own actions on American soil can help to solve the problems, in contrast with Allie Fox of The Mosquito Coast who will feel it's hopeless. That is why, when the action of the story brings him to a small Amish village where he must hide out, Angel and the Badman-style, we can sense he would like to leave the idyllic calm to go back to his urban life, such as it is. He takes the bad of the USA with the good.



Witness is a wonderful movie, but not flawless. I am always puzzled by the scene early on when Book grabs a suspect and, for identification purposes, pushes his face against the window of the car where the "witness" Lukas Haas is sitting in clear view of the suspect. I choose to believe the window is more tinted than it appears and Haas is not visible from the outside. I also never need the portions where Ford and Amish girl Kelly McGillis are finally unable to resist the compelling passion of their passionate desires and run passionately into each others' passionate embrace. It would be the same, and a possibly better, movie without that scene. Much more interesting to me is the earlier scene where Book gets the radio in his car working and they dance to a Sam Cooke song which lyrically works as an anthem for Book's basic nature. I am more intrigued by the fact that this Amish woman catches heat from Jan Rubes' authoritarian father figure for simply dancing to music; after that, the idea that premarital sex is also forbidden is not exactly a barn burner. But speaking of barns, the other classic scene is the barn raising, which gives us an idea of how the Amish community cooperates; and in which Book likely begins to see a side of the village that he, much to his surprise, can identify with. He likes things that work, but lurking behind this idyll is the fact that no community on this earth is truly safe, as the climax will demonstrate. It is a great strength of Witness that it neither condemns nor idealizes the Amish way of life, but takes a very balanced approach.



On a final note, I have read elsewhere it cited as a flaw that the boy Samuel does not appear to react much to having witnessed a murder. I reject this as being a flaw, because his seeming lack of a reaction is likely due, at least in part, to his restrained Amish conditioning. Someone raised in more conventional Western society would understandably go into histrionics, but how can we say how someone who can not even really understand what murder is would react? Many children are known to go blank, outwardly, after witnessing this type of event. The problems surface years later. It is difficult to say what he goes through internally, but to me, when he is shown first of all being intrigued by Book's gun, and then his chilling confession to Jan Rubes about how he would like to punish bad men, it is demonstrated that he has gone through a process. He is quite disturbed, he just doesn't show it through most of the film.

The last shot is of Book's car driving over a hill, out of the Amish village, back to America as he knows it. All three films in the trilogy will end with a similar scene, a vehicle taking its traumatized occupants back to familiarity.