The VVitch (screencaps)

 So I couldn't resist screen capping the hell out of this one. Unfortunately, the copy that was uploaded was not the best and was so dark that I had to do some shitty HD tweaking on my lame-ass editor, and a lot of it still looks like the inside of a woodchuck's asshole. Several couldn't be saved, so into the trash they went. I should have waited for the BluRay but I've never been known for my patience. Sorry, did my best.

Green Room

I have not seen Green Room yet.

Hence, this post shall not be a review of the film Green Room.

However, my brutha from anutha mutha and podcast sidekick Erik has thrown together a mini-podcast show of his very own in which he cusses and rants and plays a shitload of anarchic punk tunes as an unofficial soundtrack for Green Room.

Also, while I'm slaving away at work all weekend, Erik and my buddy Derrik Carey will be joining forces on Astro Radio Z to discuss Green Room this Saturday night, as in tomorrow, as in get real, we all know you have nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, so sit your ass down and tune the fuck in.

And in the meantime, click this:

The Unofficial Green Room Soundtrack

Cat Person VS. Cat People

So my best buddy Erik and I sat down last night and recorded a brand spanking new hour of us rambling on (and on, and on) about shit nobody cares about in our sad "I will eventually die alone, covered in Cheeto dust" nerdy way. We talk about the Tank Girl comics, the new Radiohead album, Foul Play, plaid shorts and cheap hair dye. You should really tune in and listen to it if you have an hour to kill and are feeling particularly masochistic.

Fear Of a Dork Planet

(click it, bitch)

We also discussed the 1942 horror noir classic Cat People, but as we only allot ourselves approximately 15 minutes per subject so as to cram as much pointless shit into an hour as humanly possible, we really didn't have time to hit on all of the subtle nuances and underlying metaphors of the film. So I'm gonna do it now, the way I like to do, by pitting original against remake. And here we go.

Cat People (1942)

Directed by: Jacques Tourneur

Starring: A bunch of people who probably had stars on the Walk of Fame at some point, but inevitably got replaced by Kardashians and Grumpy Cat. See what I did there?

Jacques Tourneur was the master of horror noir, a conductor of shadows and fog, a painter of mood and blood - not of the frantic, arterial spray variety, but rather the dark, slow spreading, thickening puddle which leaves the body only after the soul has departed. His films were dreamy, gauzy ballets of subtle, quiet horror. As films go, it's weak in comparison with Tourneur's later films: I Walked With A Zombie and Curse of the Demon. Clocking in at an hour and eighteen minutes, it's a swift and to-the-point little film about a young, sweet faced girl from Serbia who comes to America and finds a very different land than they gloomy, superstitious one she left behind. She's a unicorn in a metropolis; she shouldn't exist, but she does. And no one can see what she really is because they've forgotten how. 

As the new world closes itself to the old, Irena opens wide, a transplanted poisonous orchid blooming in its new garden. But guilt is a powerful anchor and there's still ancient earth clinging to her roots. She hesitantly enters this new world with its promises of sexual freedom and liberation, but her Old World shadow - in the shape of a cat - keeps looming up behind her to swallow her and drag her back. Irena is so conflicted that she literally splits in two. Demure, polite, starched and ironed wife material on the outside VS. sultry, mystical, full blown PMS bitch kitty on the inside. And it doesn't take much for the claws to come out and the fur to fly. Anger, jealousy, lust... any and/or all of these emotions, deemed unladylike even here in the Brave New World of America, will transform Irena into a sleek, savage, ivory fanged monster should she allow them to overtake her rather than reining them in as a lady ought to do. Cue bitchy *meow* noise here.

This must have been some heavy shit back in 42. I mean, they were actually talking about S-E-X! in this flick! Or rather the lack thereof. Irena does not have sex with her husband, ever, and likely never will. We have to wonder why her husband Oliver loves her: she's an ice queen, wound up and corseted and withdrawn so tightly that it's a wonder she can pee. Does he really love her, or was his marrying her the Young Professionals version of purchasing a Dresden doll for his mantle? There's no warmth there, no real intellectual stimuli, nothing. So why does he love her? 

Obviously he's confused idolatry with love. He likes looking at Irena with her perfect little face and trim, tiny figure, but not as a person. We all know that he'd be better off bonking his secretary, a lively little minx with her own interests and ideas who has no trouble at all expressing her feelings and desires.

Oh, and let's not forget the smarmy mustachioed headshrinker, whose A#1 goal in life is to fuck Irena, Hippocratic Oath be damned. Oh yeah buddy, yous gonna get fucked by Irena all righty. He's quite the smug prick, David Nivening all over the damn place. He strikes me as the sort of man who would probably leave his socks on while he screwed - fussy, black dress socks made out of the finest silk, no less. In summation, he's really oily and creepy and gross and icky and I can't help but think that he's the kind of guy who wears his grandma's underthings and smears himself with Crisco before doing a naughty little German dance hall routine in front of the full length mirror.

But he pushes his white man entitlement too far and gets disemboweled by Irena the Kitty so haha good riddance.

Cat People (1982)

Starring: Klaus Kinski's snake fucking daughter, that guy who always gets mistaken for John Hurt but isn't, that redheaded chick who used to be married to Lenny Koznowski, Malcolm McClockwork Orange, Ruby goddamned Dee, Ed Begley Jr. who gets his arm ripped off by a panther and I didn't care, Lynn Lowry!!! and the city of New Orleans. Oh, and David Bowie's lovely voice singing the film's theme song "Putting Out Fire (with gasoline)."

Okay, 40 years have gone by, it's 1982 and SEX. Sex everywhere, everyday, on every available surface in every imaginable position. Truckloads of sex and more on the way, with sexberry syrup on the side. Everybody is having sex while they're having sex...well, everyone except for Irena Gallier, newly arrived from some distant country where baobab trees grow out of red dust and black leopards get room service.

Irena, an orphan, has come to New Orleans to meet her long lost brother Paul, whom she has not seen since childhood. Irena has been raised in a foster home and seems like a totally normal, well adjusted young lady. Paul has been in and out of prison and eschews shirts. He enthusiastically welcomes Irena into his grandiose Nawlins mansion and almost immediately takes over the role of the pervy psychotherapist in the original. He has obviously installed Irena in his home to serve as a fucktoy. But you can't rush a relationship like that, so Paul bides his time by venturing out into the red light district, turning into a black leopard and attempting to maul a prostitute.

Meanwhile...

Irena, sketchpad in hand, fucks off to the zoo and spots a black leopard in a tiny little cage which she is inexplicably drawn to. We of course know that it's her brother, caught in his cat incarnation. You see, in this version, cat people only turn into cats after they've had sex. If they wish to turn back into humans, they must kill. Paul failed to kill the whore, so now he's the newest attraction at the zoo...until he yanks an unlikable Ed Begley Jr's arm out of its socket, escapes and returns home in human form to tell Irena all about their sordid family history. Their parents were brother and sister and werecats can only have normal, non-cat-changing sex with each other. A grossed out Irena flees, not wishing to carry on the family tradition of incest...even though she grew up with Klaus Kinski so you wouldn't think this would be such a big deal for her.

She moves in with Oliver, the nice zoo boss who caged her brother, and doesn't have sex with him. She wants to, but she's scared. Her virginity is an object of total disbelief and fascination for Ollie's coworker Alice, who wants to know all about the times that Irena didn't get laid. Weird chick. She also has the hots for Ollie, but steps aside with only a slight grumble when Ollie's preference for Irena becomes clear.

Paul tries to kill Ollie in leopard form.
Alice kills Paul.
Irena takes a train to Hallucinatory Africa, where she meets her dead leopard mother.
Irena returns to New Orleans.
Irena terrorizes Alice in a public swimming pool.
Irena fucks Ollie.
Irena changes into a leopard.
Irena kills somebody and turns back into a hot chick.
Ollie ties her to the bed and has kinky bondage sex with her.
Irena turns back into a leopard.
Ollie locks her up in the zoo cage left vacant by her brother.
Ollie and Alice start bonking, because they're normal and they can.
Ollie visits Irena with some pork shoulder and ear skritchies to show that there's no hard feelings.

The end.

Moral: Sexy, exotic foreign women who come to our country, take our jobs in zoo gift shops and steal our white Aryan men are sluts in heat. You can maybe fuck them once or twice, but seriously - cage those whores up tight and be fruitful and multiply with genuine American girls with no accents. The end.

The Sound and the Fury

Music. Much like paintings, a single song can conjure up different emotions and images for a vast amount of people.

I'm laughing at clouds.
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love.

For instance, my mom associates the classic song Singin' in the Rain with Gene Kelly, cheerfully tap dancing his way through a rainy cobblestone street, partnering with lampposts and creating sunshine with his voice. For me, the mere mention of the song title Singing in the Rain invokes the unwelcome mental image of Malcolm McDowell in plague mask and freakishly oversized codpiece prancing around the living room of a house he's just broken into, snipping anatomically select holes in the red jumpsuit of the home owner's wife as he merrily belts out his tune. And then rapes the holy shit out of her while her husband is forced to watch. Yeah, I can't hear Singin' in the Rain anymore without feeling all of the caustic fluids in my gastrointestinal tract start to churn sourly, worming their way up my alimentary canal, threatening to hurl themselves projectile from my body in a hot jet of half digested microwave burritos and Cosmic Brownies unless I turn the radio/TV off ASAP.

There's something infinitely awful about songs of innocence and wonder, written by happy-go-lucky lads and lassies in chipper moods, and then used as a backdrop for something ugly and devastating. It forever alters the song for me, and I can no longer hear it without making that unpleasant association.

It's not too hard to figure out, you see it every day
And those that were the farthest out have gone the other way
You see them on the freeway, it don't look like a lot of fun
But don't you try to fight it, an idea whose time has come
Don't tell me that I'm crazy.

Like Huey Lewis's bouncy, quirky little ditty Hip to be Square. It's a silly, stupid little slice of pop cheese, but harmless enough, self deprecating enough to make even the most cynical goth crack a ghost of a smile.  I was never a huge Huey fan, but the song never annoyed me to the point of wanting to stick the author's face deep into a vat of french fry medium. (However, Steve Miller is still on my shit list for The Joker, a song that rubs against my nerve endings like cat claws down a chalkboard.)

But then here come an unnervingly Tom Cruise-esque Christian Bale, with his frisky little white boy dance in his sleek, see-through rain coat and chrome axe so flawlessly shiny and pretty that he could almost drive it to work. And suddenly, Hip to be Square becomes a vicious, meat-cleaving, arterial slicing, high-pitched murder screaming anthem for fastidious serial killers everywhere. Whenever I go over to a guys place, and I see a single Huey Lewis CD on their rack, I'm the fuck out, date over.

Yes, I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, and I'm all over the place

Some songs just float quietly through the years and decades, familiar as an old flannel shirt in the back of the closet. You don't own the album and probably wouldn't be able to name the band for 50 points on trivia night, but when it comes on the radio you can sing along with it and know the tune by heart. The 70s were stuffed full of songs like that, one hit throwaway wonders by bands that broke up 30 years ago and were never heard from again. I mean, how many people would know who the fuck I was talking about if I said Stealer's Wheel? *crickets* Yeah, now what if I said "Remember that song that Michael Madsen was dancing around to when he cut off that cop's ear in Reservoir Dogs?"

Histories of ages past
Hung in light and shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

Or hey, how about Donovan? Remember him? Groovy, delicate featured Scotsman with love in his eyes and flowers in his hair? Wrote a sweet little song about a magical man spreading love and enlightenment through the land. It's a hypnotic, psychedelic little kaleidoscope of a song with a pinch of Hindu spice, weaving stars and flowers out of midair. It also makes a great soundtrack for a slo-mo murder in David Fincher's Zodiac. The Hurdy Gurdy Man of the song's title, originally intended as a wise and loving yogi, is now the Boogeyman, pumping bullets into a parked car and watching as flesh shears away, arteries explode and blood droplets careen through the air to impact upon the interior like thick tears, all in hyper vivid slow motion so you don't miss a single thing. Happiness and peace and the innocence of the 60s suddenly becomes dark and sinister, and you will never again hear Hurdy Gurdy Man without thinking of shadows, muzzle flashes and death.

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand?
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land?
Please take my hand.

Speaking of the groovy sixties, remember Iron Butterfly? They were the precursor to Led Zeppelin, heavy and funky and trippy, and acid rock anthem about love and lands of milk and honey which nevertheless would appeal to a serious group of headbangers. Their one hit song In A Gadda Da Vida is a straightforward love song, but its bottom heavy thump makes it a dark and serious dirge, a profession of love sung perhaps by a disturbed man who is considering taking up stalking. It just needs the slightest push to send it over the edge from Rockin' Love Ballad to Head Slamming Serious Heavy Metal Threat, and that push comes in the form of Francis Dollarhyde, aka Tom Noonan, aka The Red Dragon killer of the film Manhunter, an 80s neo Noir thriller about an obsessed cop, a manboy maniac and a dragon tattoo that is not on a girl. Francis, the films killer, descends into his final abyss of insanity to the tune of In A Gadda Da Vida, and you just know that the survivors of his last rampage will always associate that particular song with Hell Itself.

Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn't go on...

And hey, nothing says "This is your last night on Earth, and soon you will die at the hands of a crazed maniac" like a song entitled "Don't Fear the Reaper", a bleak and nihilistic 70s epic which chronicles the inevitability of death, which has no regard for age or innocence. So when Jamie Lee Curtis climbs into Nancy Loomis' (Kyes) aircraft carrier sized car about half an hour into the film, and pot is smoked as the daylight wanes, and the news that someone has broken into a hardware store and stolen ropes and knives sails right over their marijuana soaked skulls, and Blue Oyster Cult's biggest hit "Don't Fear the Reaper" plays endlessly on the car radio between them...yeah, they're fucked. May as well have T-shirts made up for the two of them which read "Victim #1" and "Final Girl." That's how fucked they are.

(and no, I'm not commenting on fevers or cowbells - deal with it)

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you.

And last but not least, that one goddamned song that dances around your head for days and flits away before you can fully identify it. It's like a fruit fly in the soupiest heat of July: buzzing right in your face, refusing to be waved away, divebombing you every five fucking seconds and you just know the goddamned thing is laughing at you mockingly at a sound level just out of range of your pathetic human ears. You never really see it - maybe a blackish blurry dot dancing at the edge of your vision. You slap at the air and curse loudly and everyone looks at you like maybe you've lost the last speck of your sanity and you're about to flip all the way the fuck out and go totally postal. Yeah, there are songs like that - snatches of lyric, familiar riffs that loop in your subconscious, and if you don't remember what the fuck the name of that goddamned song is pretty fucking soon, you are going to kill everyone within a five mile radius.

In Kevin Bacon's case, it's The Rolling Stones Paint It Black, a song about untimely death and the grief that accompanies it. It's a perfect choice for Stir Of Echoes, a movie which got lost in the shadow of the vastly more popular but seriously inferior ghost flick The Sixth Sense. The name of the song and its connection to the ghost of a murdered girl elude Bacon, and it's a dilemma we can identify with, with or without the murdered ghost girl part.

The Harlot Shall Be Burned With Fire

I dedicate this post to that guy in Sacramento who - without being asked one fine, sunny day in 1998 - informed me that I would never marry, and even if I did, all of my sons would be homosexual because I was "too strong" a woman. Kiss my ass, you fat fuck.

Forbidden Planet (1956)
Starring: Robby the Robot, Mr. Naked Gun, Earl Holliman (who did NOT star in Attack of The The Eye Creatures) and Anne Francis stars in (ooh ooh ooh) Forbidden Planet at the late night double feature picture show...

Directed by: Fred M. Wilcox
Based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Basic plot: A bunch of manly, horny, smug white guys go to another planet and discover some old guy, his super hot teenage daughter and their pet robot gadding about, doing as they please. Time to civilize this shit. Except there's a monster lurking about.

Why it's Sexist: Alta, the aforementioned hot teenage daughter, has never known another person except for her father. She's utterly innocent and has been raised in an environment free of limitations and/or shame. She runs around in tiny little dresses because she can and why the hell not? But here come The Penis Squad, and Captain Leslie Nielsen is quick to lay all of the blame for his horndog crew's pervy behavior squarely on Alta, saying she deserves to be raped for running around so scantily clad.

"Well, what'd you expect? Don't you understand, Alta? No? Well, look at yourself. You can't dress like that around men, especially not a space wolf like Farman. I'm in command of 18 competitively selected super-perfect physical specimens with an average age of 24.6 who have been locked up in hyperspace for 378 days. It would have served you right if I hadn't... and he... oh go on, get out of here before I have you run out of the area under guard - and then I'll put more guards on the guards!"

Nice.

Straw Dogs (1971)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, that guy who was in Titanic, some slut and a lot of icky scumbaggy guys.
Directed by: Sam "I hate women" Peckinpah.

Every female in this movie is a whore. For no reason other than that they were born whorey and like being whorish. Susan George walks around with no bra on, nipples entering rooms before she does, even though she's married to dweeby Dustin Hoffman and should be acting like a proper dowdy hausfrau. She shows her tits to whomever wishes to see them and not only encourages but enjoys the rape bestowed upon her by her brutish ex boyfriend. She doesn't care too much for the sodomy forced upon her by some other guy, though. But she's dumb and slutty and not very nice, so she deserves it. Also deserving it is the vapid teenage girl who is George's Whore-In-Waiting and, because of the lack of doable guys in this small, manure-encrusted town, tries to seduce the village idiot, who "accidentally strangles" her to death one night.

Seriously, I hate Sam Peckinpah. I'm not saying he wasn't a master filmmaker with an awesome vision, but he was simultaneously a deeply perverted scumbag. That's my opinion and I'm sticking with it.

Bellflower (2011)
Starring: a really badass, souped up, flame belching, apocalyptic muscle machine named Mother Medusa. Also, some totally average people.
Directed by: the same average person who stars in it, of course.

Basic plot: Two totally unlikable slacker asshole douchebags with no jobs and no class bum around a small California town, thinking they're badasses and preparing for the imminent apocalypse by tricking out their car Mad Max style. For some reason, a totally hot blond hooks up with lumpy loser Woodrow, who stumps around like an ambient dumb pudding, displays zero charm, a void where his wit should be and the overall personality of burnt toast. Utterly shocked when hot blond dumps his ass, Woodrow retaliates by fucking his best friends longtime crush (because he's that hot, apparently = *eyeroll*) and turning into super amazing asshole man, dreaming himself into an alternate universe where girls are willing to die if they can't have him, and hot blond will tolerate his escalating abuse if it means fucking him just one more time because he's obviously so amazingly Sex God Cock Endowed. Yeah. Right.

The car is the absolute best part of this movie. The rest is a lot like listening to some drunken, unemployed douchebag at the bar rant and rail about how everyone else is to blame for his own assholism.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Starring: several hundred pounds of Play Doh.
Directed by: some guy

Basic plot: Donner the Dickhead knocks up his long suffering wife, who subsequently gives birth to a mutated freak named Rudolph. Donner is horrified and things get worse when his boss - an evil corporate tool named Santa - makes it clear that Rudolph will not score a spot on his sleigh team because he's so fucking ugly. Donner's constant verbal abuse drives Rudolph out of the house. Both Rudy's mom and girlfriend want to go find him and bring him home, but Donner tells them to stay put because "this is man's work" and girls with their stupid ovaries will just fuck everything up. Needless to say, the girls don't listen and don't get five feet before they need rescuing. Santa sees a way to exploit Rudy's deformity and cashes in, and all was merry and bright.

Jurassic World (2015)

That's right, woman. Kneel before me, eyes downcast.

Starring: Opie's daughter, Indominus Rex, some beefy guy, a couple of annoying kids, some Velociraptors and an assload of shitty CGI.

Directed by: some guy

Basic plot: Cute, adorably klutzy little corporate Miss Priss in white skirt and high heels just can't resist the Neanderthal charms of He-Man Velociraptor trainer and gets all blushy and stammers when he chests up in her face. So she sends her nephews out into the park on a suicide mission so she can play damsel in distress and get her scrawny ass saved by Mr. Beardy Alpha ChestHair McHighSpermCount.


Die Hard (1988)

Allow me to preface this one by saying "I love this movie." I really do. It's a load of fucking fun and I will never not watch it if it's on. But let's be honest: it's sexist as shit. John McClane comes to California to visit his estranged wife for Christmas, only to find that she's gone back to her maiden name. He's none too pleased with that bullshit. Then some bad guys start blowing shit up and taking prisoners, and wifey now needs rescuing. And the best way to save her skinny ass is by undoing the clasp of her Rolex (a gift from her boss and a symbol of her "unfaithfulness" to John by choosing her career over him) and allowing it to fall from the top of a high rise along with the bearded baddie who was going to kidnap her. And wifey decides, in the end, that McClane suits her better after all.

The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Starring: Bruce Willis, a cat puppet, Halle Berry in her pre diva-bitch days, Damon Wayans.
Directed by: Tony Scott. No wonder he killed himself. 

Brucie again, ditched by yet another wife and taking no responsibility. Wife in question is a cheating bitch. Teenage daughter is boy crazy. It's okay if a whore drowns in a jacuzzi because that's her job. Nice girls die. Brucie makes pussy jokes in front of his 13 year old daughter. Here, let's let the script speak for itself, won't we?

[Joe has just found out that Mike was sleeping with his wife]
Mike Mathews: It just happened, Joe. It...
Joe Hallenbeck: Sure, sure, I know... it just happened. Coulda happened to anybody. It was an accident, right? You tripped, slipped on the floor and accidentally stuck your dick in my wife. "Whoops! I'm so sorry, Mrs. H. I guess this just isn't my week."

Alley Thug: All right, you want it in the chest, or the head?
Joe Hallenbeck: Yeah, that's what your wife said.
Alley Thug: Hey, would you stop with the wife shit?
Joe Hallenbeck: Ask me how fat she is.
Alley Thug: Fuck you, man! How fat is she?
Joe Hallenbeck: She's so fat I had to roll her in flour and look for the wet spot. Motherfucker, if you wanna fuck her you gotta slap her thigh and ride the wave in. Now I'm not saying she's fat, her high school picture was an aerial photograph.

Jimmy Dix: You don't like women much do ya Joe.
Joe Hallenbeck: [about his wife] At least I liked the guy she was fuckin'. He was my best friend.

True Lies (1994)
Starring: AHnuld, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, the Babe from Wayne's World, Tom AHnuld, some vaguely mideastern looking terrorists and Charlton "I Am A Big Man With A Gun" Heston.
Directed by: James Cameron, what the fuck were you thinking?

Ugh. This film is fucking vile. A guy showed me this film on our second date, claiming it was his all time favorite film. I dumped him immediately afterwards. Jackass.

Super cool secret agent man AHnuld suspects his mousy little wife is cheating on him, so he fantasizes about murder, incarcerates his wife, terrorizes her, humiliates her, damn near rapes her and wins her love back by doing so. Teenage daughter is on verge of becoming slut. Wayne's World Babe loves her terrorist boyfriend so much that she doesn't mind much when he beats the shit out of her and stands beside him to the bitter end. AHnuld kills everyone, saves all the wimminfolk and they love him so much because he's so cool, the end.

I would rather vomit up everything I've ever eaten, and then re-eat it, before watching this misogynistic pile of feces again. Also, I just really fucking despise AHnuld. The man is a finger sniffing, reptilian, disgusting, creepy,  STD riddled, steroid skeevy, smarmy, piggy lecherous old fart.