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on November 12, 2012

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I don't know not enough not to buy weird things...

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The Animal Review - The Metaphysical Terror of Nature

We begin Walter Ungerer’s The Animal (1976) with a long shot of a railroad station. At first we can’t see the figure in the distance. But the camera moves closer, then closer. Soon we’re looking at a woman dressed in black. Her expression is one of fear, trepidation, and anticipation. She’s waiting for something or someone. Already we’re ill at ease. Why is she waiting? Why does she look so nervous? We find out that she’s in some sort of undefined relationship with the man whose car she enters a short while later. The woman is Jo (Jo Moore) and the man is Paul (Paul Ickovic). They’re renting a house somewhere in rural Vermont. Ostensibly, they’re there to relax and do some cross-country skiing, but it’s clear early on that this trip is some sort of last-ditch attempt at reconciliation. They’ve long since grown weary of each other, or at least Jo has grown weary of Paul, who is a self-absorbed bore. Besides Paul and Jo, nature itself is the third main character, and its prese...

Oddly Cultured: The Night Sgt. Slaughter and Pat Patterson Tried To Murder Each Other

Oddly Cultured is an occasional series in which I investigate the wild, weird, and wonderful side of pop culture. The 1981 Sgt. Slaughter vs Pat Patterson “Alley Fight” match is largely regarded as one of the best World Wrestling Federation matches from the early 80’s. It might also be one of the best wrestling matches of all time, at least as far as the American style goes. Which makes it a shame that the match isn’t available to watch on the WWE Network, where it would certainly look and sound a lot better than the stuff on YouTube that looks like it was taped off of grandpa’s VCR. And maybe some of it was. Not that the low quality is all bad. It makes the match that much more forbidden, like a relic from the tape trading era, where you had to be keyed into a clandestine network of wrestling nerds to find access to rare bootleg videos. Anyway, it does help add to the legend. Slaughter and Patterson’s 1981 feud was short, but intense. And the no-holds barred “Alley Fight” ...

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed: A Worthy Sequel to the Hammer Original

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is the fifth film in Hammer’s Frankenstein series. Directed by Terence Fisher from a script by Bert Batt, the film continues the mythology that made Hammer Horror a cult favorite film factory. Peter Cushing plays the good doctor for the penultimate time. The movie came out in 1969, during the waning years of gothic horror. The film’s producers thought that the movie didn’t have enough explicit sex and violence, so after the film was already shot, they ordered a rape scene be inserted. Cushing and Veronica Carlson, who played Anna, the female lead, were both extremely uncomfortable with the gratuitous act, but complied anyway. Luckily, the scene is about as tasteful as these things go, although it makes absolutely no sense in terms of plot. We begin as a thief finds Frankenstein’s lab, which has somehow remained a secret, despite being filled with bodies and a severed head. I suppose none of this made any noise or aroused any suspicion from the nei...

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2011, Patrick King