Oh my Captain, Oh my Ape

The enemy below - who follows comics closer than I do – he knows about the current Marvel Civil war story arc while I kind of know what’s up but don’t know the details – is not surprised at the death of Captain America – “They’ve been leading up to it for a while” he told me – well live and learn.

I’m willing to bet that for a while Steve Rogers is going to be hors de combat to quote le bug of blue (“I am most saddened by zee death of le American Captain. I weep.” – fine bug just leave me alone – god in heave if it’s not Tim the folksinger, bizarre white house fantasies, it’s Le Bug – really someone tell the voices in my head to shut up – I have things to do). But somebody else will take the role of Captain America – while Steve lies in a coma.

On another topic one of the main differences between the right wing and everybody else is that there nothing and I mean nothing that they won’t try to use to ride their own hobby horse. Take for example the current mess in Walter Reed – after their first tack – attack the people saying that there was a mess at Walter Reed (including in an example of just utterly despicable (to quote daffy duck) behavior the wounded troops themselves) , they tried to suggest that saying it was going to embarrass the administration (so we shouldn’t say it? Katrina didn’t embarrass this administration) and now that that didn’t work and the conditions are shown to be a national disgrace and maybe even worse than that all across the system - they are trying to blame this on government run health care when Walter Reed was being run by a private firm owned by a former Halliburton (that name again) VP.

If anything good is going to come of these last 6 bloody years of greed madness and death, at least one thing is they will have proven why we have a civil service in the first place. It was to prevent well connected (Halliburton) firms or people (ex-vp’s of Halliburton) get sweet heart deals and loot the treasury.

Well never mind all that. To the Mighty Gorga.

I was going to blog A*P*E today as well but we have this time and tide thing and I’m not sure my nerves could take looking at my notes for both films at the same time.

Anyway. The Mighty Groga was made – for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom – in 1969 – for about a buck seventy.

Really for the life of my I can’t figure out what the hell was in the mind of the people who put this together – who did they think was going to watch it. After much though the only conclusion I could come to was that they needed a ‘b’ picture for a double feature package the producer was going to sell – and the cheaper the film the better.

The film begins showing a woman tied to a frame. She screams as The Mighty Gorga reaches in for her – Faye Wray she ain’t. But that’s alright Gorga ain’t no King Kong.

Gorga – played by the director of the film by the way – David L. Hewitt – is played by a man in the worst APE suit I have ever seen in a movie – I mean somebody who delivers gorilla grams would be ashamed to be seen in this thing. For one thing – it is not a whole suit – it looks to be only the top half of the ape suit – either they lost or didn’t have the bottom or, when viewed as a whole it was even worse looking than half an ape. No matter what we see – (the bugger is cross eyed in several shots) is bad enough.

After we see Gorga (and we don’t have the sense god gave a rabbit to hit stop on the DVD player and flee) we see the most depressing lion taming act in the history of film - this is a circus and we see the owner who walks from the lion taming act to the camel ride , taking the receipts, and in his office confronting the evil owner of the big circus who-has-taken-male-lead’s-best-act and to prove he is even more eviler took the last of the coffee in the coffee pot.

You know I have a bit of a problem with the idea of an evil circus owner – it’s really been years and years since there was big money in a circus – even Ringling Brothers and if you are an evil greedy bastard there is so much more money to be made in more pedestrian things like stocks or just fucking robbing banks that it’s a little hard to deal with the evil circus owner.

So in order to start to movie going forward (instead of circling the drain like it is now) the evil circus owner shoes the Male lead a bank note that he signed a while ago – the only thing it lacked was the bad guy twirling his moustache (which he didn’t have) and saying “maw ha ha!”

The bottom line is that in 6 months the note comes due and since he doesn’t have the money for it he will default on the note and lose the show to the evil circus owner – who will, what? I still can’t get my head around this evil circus owner stuff – a developer who wants the land the circus is on yeah I can get behind that – people do stuff like that all the time. But he wants to buy the circus on the cheap? Why? For the lousy Lion act? For Mort the clown? (He’s a clown he spends all of his on screen time taking off his make up) I just don’t get it. The few folks in the audience in the film look like the sort of folks that would pay to watch the amazing drying wall of paint so it’s not like they are picking and there aren’t that many of them in the first place.

After some really pointless bickering between the male lead and the Evil Circus owner – the male lead accuses him of stealing away his best act again (we never learn what the best act was –not even a hint. Naked women tightrope walkers? A good Lion taming act? What? Come on give guys). The evil Circus owner promises to be back in 6 months and leaves.

Desperate men do desperate things – and in this case it’s a case of desperate men will chase after giant apes – as the Male lead reads from a letter from an animal trapper in Africa who has heard rumors of a giant Ape. So he lights a cigarette (he does that a lot) and tells his younger brother that he will be running the circus (whit the able help of Mort the clown) while he goes to Africa.

We then see stock footage of planes – a shot of the Male lead smoking and then he is driving a land rover while the beat of drums is in the background – we must be in Africa.

I hate to do this kids but I’m going to have to stop here – I’ve got a ton of things to do and more things are coming as the day goes on. I will finish this tomorrow.

Peace, Love, Monkeys