We're finally going to record but first From Hell it Came!

I was in a very odd mood last night and ended up watching "The Curse of the Faceless Man" "From Hell it Came" and "Manos" all in one go - what scares me a bit is aside from now knowing there is no point to life, it's just an absurd farce, I'm okay.

Anyway about - From Hell it came –

And as per the New York Times “And back it can go”.

Good god what a horrible film – horrible acting, bad cheap sets, and oh lord the walking tree monster sets a new low. Add to that the latent racism/sexism that inflicts the picture and what may be the worst Australian/ cockney accent ever to make it on film you have a recipe for junk.

Briefly stated a native on one of the faker South Sea Islands is unjustly killed by a knife to the heart and buried after pledging to return to seek vengeance. Meantime there is a scientific survey team on the island treating the natives and looking for any effects some H-bomb fall out that fell on the island. One of the scientists is having a love affair with what looks like scotch and the other is brooding cause the girl he loves is a doctor as well who would rather work than marry him and raise babies and he’s on this island. We also meet a widow who runs the trading post (she is the one with the fake accent) – we don’t care. We really don’t care.

Some toing and froing go on, and it is necessary for the brooding doctor’s lady love to return to the island and help out. The couple talks and bickers and argues about marriage and all that while treating some of the natives for plague. What kind of plague? I don’t know and I don’t care. You won’t care either, I promise.

Very jarring to cotemporary ears is the assumption by both the brooding scientist and his lady love that if she marries she will give up medicine. Nowadays you’d figure hell they are both doctors for a while at least, DINK (double income no kids) heaven awaits, But no, both sides assume she will put down the lancet and take up the apron upon pledging her troth to the brooding scientist (I’m not giving any names cause I don’t want to).

Meantime a tree stump with a face and knife exactly like the one that killed the wrong native sticking out of it starts growing out of the grave of the wronged native. A Connection? Nah. After two days it’s fully grown into a 7 foot bad prop (things grow fast in the South Seas but really) the scientists dig up aid tree and take it to their lab. There after another pointless argument between the happy couple, the lady doctor decides to give the tree some kind of drug to help its heart beat (please don’t ask it isn’t worth it) then assured that the tree won’t do anything they all leave (Yes they are scientists and doctors but they are not bright scientists and doctors). Some hours later the Tree Monster (called the Tobonga) is on the lose. It kills the woman who done it wrong (after the woman was in a pointless cat fight – not that it matters much but for the cat-fight the camera was so far away from the ‘action’ you could have used stunt doubles). The Tobonga kills her by dropping her in the quicksand – actually it looks like the quicksand wading pool but no matter – none of this matters. The monster then roams the island at a very very slow pace (the poor bastard inside was probably roasting to death in the sun and afraid that if he went any faster he’d topple over) killing the others what did him in – you won’t care other than to wonder why running away from something that the creeping terror could beat in a sprint didn’t pop into the mind of the victims.

At some point the white people get in the act – and shortly after that the Tobonga takes off with the lady doctor – to toss her in the quicksand wading pool. I have to note here that the lady doctor has the worst scream I have ever heard in a monster movie. Really it sounds more like some kind of bird call like for a crow or a raven – I can only assume there was no money for dubbing during post production. As they race to save her, the brooding scientist hits on the way to kill the Tobonga, shove the knife that is sticking out of its chest all the way in. Now considering how slowly the Tobonga moves and how clumsy it is, you’d think it would be a simple matter of walking up, avoiding what ever clumsy attack it made and just banging on the dagger handle with either the flat of your hand in karate like move or just use the butt of a rifle but instead, in order to add suspense – that’s not right – to try and add suspense they decide to try and hit the dagger with a bullet, not an unchallenging shot. Well they manage to kill the beast, it falls into the quicksand wading pool and everybody in the film who are left alive are happy – the brooding scientist and the lady doctor are going to get married and the rest well the rest do okay as well. It’s the audiences that have suffered through this mess that bear the permanent damage.


In other news we will finally hit the studio tuesday night and with luck will have an ep for the masses on the 15th - tenative song list "Have Sex with Me"; "Someone Else", "People with Insect Heads", "I'm sorry" and "Stacy" due to time and budget constraints this will have to be pretty raw but we will go back in put the cello solo in later, never fear. I promise.

Working on "Bomb Iran"