Sick Day Movies.

Wasn’t feeling well yesterday.

You know that seems to be the intro to the typical self absorbed blogger BS. “there I was x, y and z and you know what happened?”

We’ve all read them. I’ve written them. And frankly these days unless X, Y and Z are interesting as in “there I was getting my costume cleaned and repaired after the last furry convention” (don’t know what a furry is – check the web. Honestly some of the things that people will do to get off just boggle my mind. You have to wonder what the hell happened to screwing. It reminds me of an old Doonesbury strip where Uncle Duke is being driven to lecture some young republicans by Zonker. As they are driving along Duke is taking some kind of drug “what’s that?” Zonker asks. Duke says something like “The penal glands of rocky mountain goat” and there is a moment of silence.
“What ever happened to grass?” Zonker asks at last.
“I don’t know. You can’t even get busted for it anymore.”
That’s the sense I get trolling the web. What you’d take as really weird is now just vanilla baseline perversion these days.

Ah – that wasn’t what I was going to write about but there you are.

anyway back to yesterday – I have been promising myself that I would write about how fantastic Argoman from the movie of the same name is a dick but alas I find that movie was so unpleasant and so nasty in spirit that writing about it was just too damn painful. It’s not like an insult to my intelligence like a lot of films such as Cloverfield was, those I can write about until the cows return to their domestic abode, no this was just painful to watch and write about so I’m just going to give up, unless there is a major request for my review of an obscure Italian superhero film there is no point in putting me through that. I’m sure MYST3K looked this over and opted instead for Puma man.

So as I was saying I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and ended up when I wasn’t sleeping – sitting on my couch staring at some bad movies that all come in this package of 50 films called Nightmare Worlds. I’d paid about $15 for it and frankly I was over charged.

Still I did learn some things.

Fred Williamson made some god awful films in Italy in the 80’s one of them was something called Warriors of the Wasteland – dreadful acting dreadful special effects and a story line that was – well I fell asleep on this (I told you I wasn’t feeling up to snuff) and after rewinding to see what I missed realized that had I managed to stay awake I’d still be as confused as I was when I woke up. The story such as it is involves Fred and this other guy named Scorpion who fight against some white clad guys after a nuclear war. The only thing I remember well from the film was the Scorpion character spent the last 1/3rd of the film wearing a Plexiglas breastplate. Something for the ladies I guess.

Then I fell asleep to Werewolf Woman which you wouldn’t think I would given the amount of nudity and gore in the film but well you know 1970’s gore is well 1970’s gore and these days not that scary or even gross. The story a woman is raped as a young girl and as a result has issues with men that are resolved by her tearing their throats out – it’s albeit a more complicated than that but that’s about it. There’s a real film lurking in there somewhere as the woman deals with the horror by becoming convinced that she is possessed by the spirit of her ancestor who was said to be a werewolf.

The thing is – nowadays werewolves and vampires just aren’t scary anymore – crazy people remain scary but the whole truing into a beast thing has lost its zing at least movie wise.

The last film was a 1950’s relic called The Unknown World. The story consists of 5 scientists (one a woman) and a playboy ner do well who go deep into the bowels of the earth to seek a place where humanity can survive the coming atomic war. (as I said very 50’s – I don’t mean to scoff as we dodged a damn big bullet there – I mean terrorists earthquakes tidal waves yada yada yada are all rotten but the day after day over hang of 1,000’s warheads ready to go on minutes notice with the promise the nobody survives this can warp people in ways we will never really understand because it happened to us).

The film runs into the problem that a lot of films set underground in the bowels of the earth have – once you get them down there isn’t a lot that can happen baring discovering of a lost civilization in the depths – and apart from that all of it does happen – cave ins – bad air, no water, fighting among the crew but you kept thinking – why was this film made? – okay there is the anti-war or more accurately anti apathy message (in the end we can’t run away from this) but really you can almost feel the writers desperation “what the hell do we do now?” “How about giant bats? They live in caves.” “Nope we don’t have the budget for it.” “Damn” and it all ends with survivors re-emerging into the light of day and their problems solved – except for the dead folks.

Well – I’d do more but I have to learn this song. That’s in Spanish. I have to remind myself not to have these really good ideas anymore.

The picture is from a series of Godzilla Hykius - all of them are wonderful go see them at http://godzillahaiku.tumblr.com/

Peace, Love, I really should have paid more attention in High School when I was taking Spanish.