Brains and stuff

Sometimes I do think I have a real problem - for example I recently sent back to Netflix White Heat with Jimmy Cagney and Sunset Boulevard with William Holden – fair enough that’s what you do with films once you’re done.

Except that I had not watched Sunset boulevard and realized I had no wish to watch Sunset Boulevard - because I have only limited time to play my guitar, muse on song lyrics finish reading Havana Nocturne – a history of Mob controlled Cuba – which explains a lot about US Cuba relations and none of it good (I mean when Castro taking over is an improvement things are pretty bad) also do research on pod casting – make dinner from time to time, exercise and keep the apartment from looking like the result of an explosion in a library/DVD CD Store/Laundromat.

No I had no interest in watching Sunset Boulevard.

Because I wanted to watch Fiend without a face again.

Let me type that again.

I wanted to watch Fiend Without a Face Again.

The film was made in 1958 and features well - fiends without a face – It’s a British film set in Canada where an American Air force base is experimenting with Atomic Powered Radar. Major something or other is in charge of security/intelligence/civilian relations which at the start of the film are none to too good as the jets are scaring the local cows and the milk yield is down. They are also mutterings about the atomic power plant that is powering the radar. There is also a female lead whose brother is the first victim of said fiend without a face. She and Major Something or other end up a couple – of course they do it’s the 50’s.

Anyway the story is silly – and for the first half of the film the fiends (there are more than one) are invisible – now there are two ways to do invisibility – on is the careful and well done way of say the original Invisible Man, the other is do it because it’s cheap and saves money – which is how they did it here.

As said for the first half the victims are killed by the invisible fiends – which consist of the actors doing a kind of weird pantomime by grabbing their neck and screaming and then falling to the floor.

Anyway that’s not why I want to see it again. What happens – after a long exposition by some scientist type who uses the atomic power plant to zap his mind to do some kind of telepathy which somehow created the fiends – is that creatures become visible – they are brains with antenna and a spinal column that they use to move about with. It’s done in stop motion in case you’re wondering and explains why the beasts were invisible the first half or more – stop motion isn’t cheap.

So then the brains are all over the woods surrounding the house our heroes who board up the house and fight the brains. Each brain, when it’s shot, makes a noise that sounds something like glug glug glug and then leaks what looks like Jam from the hole with a small steam like whoosh. It’s great fun to we get to see it a lot. I swear the last 10 minutes of the film goes Bang bang glug glug glug whoosh over and over again – with the odd scream when one of the spear carriers goes down.

In the end, the hero blows up the Atomic Power plant that the brains are using for energy and instead of a Canadian Chernobyl we have the end of the film with all still alive well still alive and looking forward to a new day.

And this is the film I want to see again – mainly for the glug glug glug bit – instead of watching a film Noir masterpiece.

I need help.

Peace Love glug glug glug