Dan Schneidkraut Double Feature!

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The Least Worst of MST3k

I know what bad movies are. I feel that I am qualified to judge what makes a movie merely bad, and what slams it down into the bottom of the wet, fungoid covered barrel of pure masturbation booth splooge. After 40 odd years of watching everything from big screen blockbusters to burned discs from weirdy pervo directors with the title printed right on the disc itself in sloppy handwriting, I know a bad movie when I fucking see one. I've seen thousands. Shit, maybe tens of thousands by now. I'm not even bragging. Some of those movies hurt my soul. There are bad movies that are bad, but not terrible. They're silly, fun, perfect as an excuse to stay in your pajamas on that rainy afternoon and blow off doing the laundry. Then there are movies that do damage. Neural damage, emotional damage, irreparable damage to your capacity for trust - all wounded and maimed and forever scarred. I've thrown movies across the room is disgust, stomped away from my screen after flipping it off and calling it horrible names, burned discs in the fireplace until they were nothing more than a drippy silver puddle, gotten drunk beneath a scalding hot shower and cried afterwards, all in vain.

Some of them - like The Wild World Of Batwoman, Castle of Fu Manchu and others made their way onto MST3k. Most - shit bearing titles like Mr. Jingles and Hellweek, and whatever that pseudo-snuff film by that asshole porn director was called - did not. Thank god.

The point is this: yes, the movies on MST3k are bad. But some of them - when compared to the festering pus puddles of diarrhetic wretchedness that I've had to sit through in my admittedly short but packed career as a "professional" film reviewer (whatever the fuck that means) - are quite good. Enjoyable, even. They're decently paced, reasonably well shot and at least look like they were edited by someone who wasn't a brain damaged monkey missing one arm.

For example:
Danger: Diabolik

Ironic that the last film to be shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was also probably their best one. Not that Danger: Diabolik is going to go down in history as the Citizen Kane of Italian psychedelic action flicks. Still, Diabolik has several things going for it. #1 - it's directed by Mario "Black Sunday" Bava. #2 - it stars leggy Marisa Mell, a sleek and golden ponygirl in barely-there mini dresses and loads of eye makeup. #3 - The Beastie Boys spoofed it in their 1998 video for Body Movin', using a ton of actual film footage for the majority. It's a fast paced and silly, 007 groovaliffic, tripping balls acid warpy Funkadelic shagfest that you can't help but enjoy.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

Yeah, I'm prejudiced. I loved Ray Dennis Steckler with all of my strange little heart. I had all of his films on tape - clamshell VHS, bitches - and half of them were signed by the man himself. Because I met him and he was awesome and called me "dear" and seemed utterly shocked that I owned any of his films at all. Yeah so maybe the plot is a mess, but who the fuck cares? Watch the dancing girls, enjoy the carnival, sing along to "Shook Out Of Shape" (I have the single on my iTunes - envy me) and keep in mind that this was only one of many many MANY Steckler/Flagg films, and not even the best of the lot. The Thrill Killers would have to be his best, with Rat Pfink A Boo Boo not far behind Creatures. It clips along at a decent pace and is surprisingly coherent, despite its core weirdness and cautious toe-dips into the shallow end of 60s psychological psychedelica. This is the gritty, grungy, scratchy, kitschy, sordid, tiki-loungy, tacky, starting-to-wilt 60s in all of its Kodachrome glory, stuffed to the rafters with beehive hairdos and urban despair. Dig it, man.



The Girl In Gold Boots

Fast forward four years and Ray Dennis Steckler's somewhat nostalgic look at the early 60s has become a tired, boozy, cigaretty whore in the hands of director Ted Mikels. The story seems tame and almost childish now, but back in the late 60s, this was some shocking, seedy shit. Strip clubs, drug dealers, criminal underbellies, fast times with bad pills and worse folk music. It's like Go Ask Alice, only with go go dancers. Can fresh faced Michelle be saved from a slow descent into marijuana addiction? Will the idealistic Critter finally man up and join the Army? Did the go go dancers of the 60s and 70s ever dance this badly? It's a sticky, oily, scary world, but the outfits are cute.


Tormented

Come on, admit it. We all have That One Ex that we'd totally kill if we could get away with it. Somewhere in Sacramento, there's a bloated, narcissistic film director whom I'd like to harpoon. But nevermind that now. The love triangle in Tormented isn't all that bad really, considering it was 1960 and the world still a pretty innocent place. It manages to combine a ghost story, a noir Whodunnit and a psychological drama all into one: is Tom Stewart going crazy, or is he really being haunted by the ghost of his psychotic ex girlfriend Vi, whom he did not kill, but did not rescue from death either. Lets call it The Tell-Tale Lighthouse.

Earth VS. The Spider

Look, it was the 50s. Big bug movies were mandatory. We like to think we're the first truly jaded generation of film fans, but imitation was a machine that was well oiled and running at full steam even 60+ years ago. Tarantula and Them! were such smash hits that everyone jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to squeeze a little milk money out of the Hollywood teat before it ran dry. Earth Vs. The Spider could have been a lot worse. But it's not. It's even kinda cute. It's got a real live rear-projected tarantula, rock and roll music, full skirts and letter jackets, big squirty handfuls of pomade, giant sticky spiderwebs and life sized skeletons laying around all over the place. The scene in which the spider goes crawling around downtown is a highlight.

 Marooned

Seriously, this film is drier than burned toast, duller than cold oatmeal, pick your bland food metaphor. But hey, so was Apollo 13, quite frankly. I'd rather watch Marooned than sit through Gravity again. Lets face it: there is simply no way to make a movie about astronauts trapped in a spacecraft and forced to sit and wait to be rescued into riveting, action packed, on the edge of your seat fare. Okay? There's no chase scenes, no monsters, just a gradual depletion of oxygen and a lot of sweating down in the Cape. Still, with its all-star cast and an Academy Award under its belt, it's probably the "best" film ever shown on MST3k, as far as superficial Hollywood accolades go.

The Beginning of the End

Another big bug movie, this one about grasshoppers. Someone had to do it. Grasshoppers are destructive little fuckers, man. The Dustbowl? Yeah, you can pretty much pin the entire blame for The Great Depression right on those hoppy little fuckers. Fuck you, Jiminy Cricket, you are not cute. Referred to en masse as a plague, it was only a matter of time before someone made a movie about them, munching on humans like crunchy blades of grass, rubbing their legs together and chirping up a deafening storm, flying around and shit.The bigger the bug and the more legs it has, the ickier it is. Fact.

The Leech Woman

Wow. This movie was pretty far ahead of its time. It was the 50s, a time when women stood in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant preferably, and made their men some damn dinner. Women were still pretty much window dressing. Oh sure, they could vote and stuff, but they still had to wear dresses and know how to make meatloaf. It was the era of June Cleaver, ironed and starched and sanitized. And here comes another "June" - emotionally abused and belittled by her husband for decades, she's become a soggy boozer with no future, until she meets a saucy (and not at all stupid) African queen named Mala who shows her the magic elixir of eternal youth and gives a speech about how society favors men and casts its women aside, and so deserve to be killed to provide the elixir's key ingredient. Yeah, girlfriend! Can I get a hallelujah? June starts killing and fucking, fucking and killing, backstabbing both sexes - literally! And who can blame her?  Her husband was a dick and men are pigs. May as well wallow in the mud before it dries up.

The Rebel Set

Hip, groovy little Oceans Eleven-esque, great train robbery and murky murder movie with a cast of coffeehouse beatniks who have clearly never picked up a single book by William S. Burroughs, nor know what it is to be starving, hysterical or naked, let alone all three at once. Still, it's a nifty little plot, carefully choreographed and pulled off rather well. Our hero Johnny is spectacularly unlikable and dumb, and sadly, the girl featured on the film poster, dancing wantonly and swinging her ponytail lasts all of three seconds in the film and has no dialogue. Instead, we get dumb blonde Karen, who ditzes off about a quarter of the way in and never returns. Shame really. She was the best actor in the whole damn thing.







Revenge of the Creature

The Creature From the Black Lagoon was an utter classic. Brilliant, spooky, slimy and creepy, memorable in every way and offering us an actual sculpted monster rather than a shadow puppet or a rear projected insect. The sequel is no great shakes, but it at least tries, taking the monster out of the lagoon, transplanting him to Florida and then letting him run amok around suburbia. Mr. Black Lagoon (Creech to his friends) has cooled off on doll-like brunettes and moved on to cool blondes, targeting Lori Nelson the moment he catches sight of her ringside at his new aquarium. From then on, it's a weird, fishy triangle between Lori, Creech and John Agar, with the usual underwater stunts and skimpy bathing suits for our cast to romp around in.

Κωκυτός

So I think it's been well established by now that my older sister is a complete fucking bitch cow with whom I have nothing more to do. If you want to know more about her, scroll down and back a bit. I can't even be fucked to provide a link back to that narcissistic cunt-cork.

Anyway, this isn't about her. But back in 2003 or 2004 (I really can't remember and it's not pertinent anyway, so fuck it) she bought her husband two tickets to see Tool for his birthday. Pretty sure it was Tool. Yeah. Pretty sure it was Tool and not A Perfect Circle. Look, fuck you. I'm old and my memory is like a half erased chalkboard. The point is, my brother-in-law had tickets to go see Maynard James Keenan and I was asked to accompany him. Because my sister wouldn't go. Because she thought Tool was stupid.

She couldn't stand the song Schism, claiming it sounded like an ADD riddled child throwing a tantrum over a jigsaw puzzle. "Those are the stupidest, most pointless lyrics I've ever heard." she informed us in her usual too-loud, contemptuous tone. And then she proceeded to mock screech: "I know the pieces fit!" over and over whilst miming trying to force two invisible puzzle pieces together. She really thought she was clever. I saw the pained look on my brother-in-law's face and wondered for the 347,895th time why the fuck he'd married her. It's not like she was a great catch: dumpy, humorless, dull as burned toast, dressed like an Oompa Loompah's spinster aunt and about as deep and meaningful as a stale rice cake. But then, he was no great shakes either, resembling a Big Boy statue without the hair. But hey, at least he liked Tool.

Obviously, socio-sis couldn't be bothered to delve beyond the repeated refrain of Pieces Fitting. She homed in on what was most prominent and discarded the rest, just like she did with relationships. And so she wasn't aware of the rest of the lyrics, of which the following is but a small excerpt:

There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting.
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing.
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication.

Those are not disposable, brainless, throwaway bubblegum lyrics, sis. That's some multisyllabic mutherfucking poetry right there, bitch. Written by a man. A college educated man, no less. My sister prizes nothing more than education, and continues to collect degrees and certificates and Bachelors of Shit Nobody But Me Knows About to this day. The more education she gets, the better than everyone else she truly thinks she is. But she doesn't get Tool, and so she fails at life.

A primary purpose of Keenan's lyrics for Tool involves a desire to connect with the listeners on a personal level; to encourage them to look within themselves for self-identity, understanding and reflection. Tool does not include lyrics with any releases as Keenan believes most people "don't get it" and it is not a priority of the band that people do. However, after each release Keenan has eventually published his typed lyrics online via the semi-official fansite, with the exception of "Lateralus", which was published on the official Tool website. Despite Maynard's aversion to promoting the lyrical content of Tool's work to its audience, lyrical arrangements are often given special attention, such as in the lyrics to "Lateralus", wherein the number of syllables per line correspond to an arrangement of the Fibonacci numbers, and "Jambi", in which the metrical foot iamb is used. Keenan's lyrics on Ænima and Lateralus focused on philosophy and spirituality—specific subjects range from evolution and Jungian psychology in "Forty-Six & 2" and transcendence in "Lateralus".

^^ I cut and pasted that shit directly from Wikipedia. Because fuck you. It says what I wanted to say, so why should I bother plagiarizing it?

The first I ever heard of Tool was in 1996, when my best friend at the time made me a tape (a fucking cassette tape, yo! Goddamn I am old!). Side 1 was some album or another by some post-grunge group that was popular at the time. I don't even remember who the hell it was now, but it was the album I'd initially asked her for. Side 2 contained Tool's Ænima, for no other reason than that my friend didn't want to give me a tape with a whole empty side on it. She'd heard her brother listening to it and thought it sounded pretty cool, so on the tape it went. I think I listened to Side 1 once. I listened to Side 2 and everything in my life changed. I was an instantaneous Tool fan.

It was the song Forty Six & 2 that did it. I mean, the whole fucking album blew me away, but that song in particular was a goddamned baptism. I'd gravitated towards metal music at a young age, drawn by the nihilism and the great equalizer that is the looming specter of eventual death. How's that for profound? But no, really - I was a puny, sickly kid, picked on and ultra-sensitive, devastated to learn long before the age of ten that people weren't always who they presented themselves to be. I had no grasp of duplicity. I couldn't fathom manufactured enthusiasm. I detested being spoken down to. By the age of 9, I'd learned to loathe old ladies who bent down to tell me in syrupy tones how precious I was, how pretty and sweet. Get the fuck out my face with that shit, gramma. I'm not buying it. I had a vocabulary that got me in trouble - for instance, I once used the word mysterious in front of two friends in grammar school and was subsequently accused of being pretentious by same said two friends. Not that they used the word "pretentious." I think they said I was "trying to be all big" which, in grammar school-ese, translates to pretentious.

Wait, where the fuck was I going with this? Oh yeah... I was amazed that Keenan wrote with intelligence. He wrote about fears and failures and feelings. He had an extensive vocabulary and wasn't afraid to utilize it. For so fucking long, I'd thought I was the only one who had fully articulated inner dialogue running constantly through her head. To utter it aloud was to proclaim yourself an uber-dorky pariah. But Maynard was doing it and he was cool! Maynard taught me not to give a shit what anyone else thought, and speak however the fuck I wanted to, hence the pretentiousness of this wordy article.

There was no debating that the sounds produced by Tool were galvanizing. Powerful chords, bone-jarring bass, riffs as intricate as lace and as complicated as the Mandelbrot set. Keenan's vocals were (are) astonishing. Have you ever seen that cartoon depicting Visible Tom Waits? Hold on, here...

Yeah, there needs to be a Visible Maynard James Keenan.

Brain: Here Haunts the Anti-Zeitgeist, draped in the chains forged by organized religion and shame.

Tongue: Nahash, Ouroboros, the bringer of forbidden wisdom and the serpentine symbol of the eternal return.

Throat: Full Boar exhaust pipes, reverse angle cut, cast in pure chrome.

Heart: A seven chambered abbey, descending through the  color spectrum and leading at last to the ebony clock standing alone in the obsidian chamber with the dreaded scarlet paned window, where Darkness and Decay and the Red Death holds illimitable dominion over all.

Lungs: Nine Concentric Circles, from the blissful peace of Asphodel Meadows to the frozen torments of Cocytus. Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.

Listening to Tool is a lot like reading Dante's Inferno, or maybe having a really thorough colonoscopy: it forces you into places that you'd really rather not see - deep, dark, infected places filled with shit and pus and demons, places that sodomize you with acid memories and eviscerate you with regrets. Sure, it's easier to avoid those places; never look within, never learn from the past, never reflect on anything you've ever said or done. But if you finish the journey - force yourself through the misery and despair and ugliness - you'll find yourself free of Purgatorio and staring up at the starry sky in Paradiso. And if you're too fucking lazy to read the Divine Comedy, try this for a metaphor: an open wound will never heal if you ignore it. Rip that bitch sore wide open and look inside. Poke around in there. Find the source, drain the pus, cauterize it with salt and lighter fluid until you scream in agony. Healing is supposed to hurt like hell. You can only appreciate feeling well if you fully immerse yourself in the illness.

You know why my sister really hates Tool? Because the thought of looking inside of herself scares the shit out of her. Because it's so much easier to blame all of her problems and disappointments on others than to take responsibility for her own actions. Because she maybe knows that Keenan - with his deep seated hatred for pseudo-celebrities, his contempt for shallow narcissists with ostentatious agendas - would fucking hate her as much as I do, and would most likely call her out on it in front of her whipped husband and all of her "professional, cutting-edge" friends whom she simultaneously envies, longs to impress and be accepted by and yet scornfully disdains. Because she is a fucking tool. And she just doesn't get it.

According to Green's Dictionary of Slang, tool has several meanings. In the current context it would probably mean "a stupid, useless or socially inept person". The first citation for this dates from 1656.

PS - The concert I was supposed to attend with my brother in law ended up getting cancelled. Maynard was sick. Oh well...

The Sounds of Autumn

Why does Christmas get all the music love? Everyone from Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby to William Hung has a fucking Christmas album. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but I’ve also worked retail for 20+ years and I absolutely fucking dread the holiday season, during which the PA mercilessly pipes in the cheesiest and most nerve-grinding Christmas music ever recorded. One year, a supervisor of mine actually ripped a CD containing an incredibly annoying version of “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” out of the changer and ordered me to make it disappear. I threw it up on the roof where it may very well still sit, covered in pigeon shit and half melted into a silver puddle by the sun.

Music for Autumn and Halloween remains limited and pretty unimaginative. If you own one Midnight Syndicate CD, you pretty much own them all. And yeah, of course I love The Monster Mash, but come on – you can’t play it on a loop all night and not expect to get murdered by your party guests sooner or later.

Do yourself a favor. Inject some fresh blood into that stiff, embalmed corpse you call a “party mix.” Try throwing some of these autumnal inspired albums into the player this season.

Album: October Rust

Artist: Type O Negative.
The late great Peter Steele loved autumn so much that he wrote an entire album dedicated to it. His synesthetical visions of autumn’s flaming beauty and cold, bitter grimness just can’t be fully appreciated in the heat of summer. I know many people who will wait for the onset of autumn with an almost religious reverence before blasting this CD at the highest possible volumes. It’s a seasonal treat, right up there with candy corn and pfeffernusse.

Best Track: Picking just one track off of this flawless album is difficult, to say the least, but I’m going to have to go with In Praise Of Bacchus closely followed by Love You To Death and Wolf Moon.

Album: A History Of Horror.

Artist: Various.
A two disc collection of every major main theme from most every major horror movie, from the instantly recognizable (John Carpenter’s “Halloween”) to the obscure and nearly forgotten (“The Devil Rides Out” and “Peeping Tom.”)

Best Track: Goblin’s Suspiria. I used to play this one over the PA system at my old job. Freaked everyone the fuck out. I was accused of playing “Satanic Disco” by one curmudgeonly shrew, but she listened to Rush Limbaugh every morning so she deserved the assault on her ignorant eardrums, as far as I’m concerned.

Album: The Purple Knif Show, by Lux Interior.

Artist: Various.
In 1984, legendary Martian shapeshifter and escaped sideshow freak Lux Interior (aka lead singer of The Cramps) recorded a little radio show deep in the steamy bowels of Los Angeles. The month was July, but the music reeks of late October, boasting a collection of rare 45s, spooky singles and weirdass transmissions from the funkiest depths of space. Okay, I might have made part of that up.

Best Track: I can't possibly pick just one, the range is simply too vast. Everything from The Addams Family theme to kitschy skullwhackers like Baby Brother and onto the tiki lounge standard Cafe Bohemia. The whole album experience could only be duplicated by riding an acid soaked timewarp wave into a velvet Shag painting on a psychedelic surfboard with a scorpion bowl in each hand and a punk version of every Universal creature giving chase right behind you.

Album: The Devil’s Music.

Artist: Various.
An exhaustive compilation of the scariest, most frightening and blasphemous classical music ever recorded. Get your baroque on, mutherfuckers.

Best Track: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. You simply CANNOT have horror without Bach’s Toccata and Fugue! It’d be like sex without bruises!

Album: Høstmørke. Literally translated: “Autumn Darkness.”

Artist: Isengard.
One of the many, many side projects of Gylve Nagell, aka Fenriz, aka “The Boss in Darkthrone” this has been categorized as black metal, folk metal and Viking metal. I’m not even going to try and shove it into a category. I’m just going to say that Fenriz has snow in his lungs and pine tar in his blood. This cold and spooky half hour long cacophony fairly reeks of wolf hair and wood smoke.

Best Track: Over de Syngende Øde Moer. YouTube it up and prove me wrong. Gylve’s thunderous “Oofs!” and growly “Heys!” make me all orgasmy fangirly and stuff.

 

Album: Closed On Account Of Rabies.

Artist: Various.
An ode to all things Poe, featuring his short tales and poems read aloud by the likes of Marianne Faithfull and Iggy Pop. Every Goth worth their dyed black salt must own this double disc set. No excuses.

Best Track: Obviously the popular vote is for Christopher Walken’s recitation of Poe’s most famous poem: The Raven which suffers not at all under Walken’s heavy Noo Yawk accent. My personal favorite – for obvious reasons of vanity – is Gavin Friday’s hauntingly lovely For Annie.





Album: Projekt: Gothic.

Artist: Various.
The Projekt label has been putting out some of the best underground gothic music for years. Anything that says “Projekt” on the cover is worth your while if you’re a fan of the bleak and melancholy.

Best Track: Mysterium by This Ascension, closely followed by Lycia’s Excade Decade Decada.

Album: Vampire Themes.

Artist: Various.
This is a collection of vampire inspired punk/goth/darkwave music recorded by some of the most iconic bands ever to be totally ignored by My Chemical Romance worshipping Neo-Goths. Do yourself a favor kiddies – try some Leather Strip, Electric Hellfire Club and The Damned.

Best Track: The iconic Bauhaus goth staple Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Duh. Close behind it is Razed In Black’s weirdass technogothic Salem’s Demise.

Album: Evidence Of Heaven.

Artist: Faith & The Muse.
Edwardian parlor games, Ouija boards, seances and silken ectoplasm: the spirit of the late 1800s/early 1900s is perfectly captured on this severely underrated album by criminally overlooked goth band Faith and The Muse. From 17th century ballads to modern metal, this entire CD is chilling and ghostly.

Best Track: Plague Dance, a scratchy black-metal-esque wailfest punched up by Monica Richards banshee-like cries.

Album: Hellbilly Deluxe (13 Tales Of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside The Spookshow International)

Artist: Rob Zombie.
The carnival freakshow barker’s metal homage to all things horror couldn’t get anymore Halloweenie if you rolled it around on the sticky floor of a movie theater and stuck it inside of a rotting pumpkin. Rob Zombie is Halloween incarnate as far as his music goes and far surpass his remakes of the popular franchise.

Best Track: Return of the Phantom Stranger, closely followed by Living Dead Girl and Dragula.

Malevolence

I finally got around to watching Maleficent last night.

It's rare that I venture outside of the horror genre into actual "Hollywood Film" territory. Rarer still that I'll approach anything even remotely connected with Disney. I fucking hate Disney and everything it stands for: sanitized fantasy, commercialistic reality, all that plastic crap. I truly don't understand how anyone who has passed through the gates of puberty can actually enjoy Disney. It's like saying that you truly prefer those individually wrapped slices of processed (and unnaturally orange colored) cheese food to an actual wheel of Havarti straight from Copenhagen. Disney - to me, anyway - personifies the blackest emptiness of the loneliest soul. How's that for fucking profound as fuck? Huh? You smelling the existential shit I'm stepping in over here?

I watched Maleficent for three reasons, and three reasons only.
#1 - I like Angelina Jolie. I give no fucks what you think about that.
#2 - I would totally fuck Sharlto Copley.
#3 - I love fairy tales. Real fairy tales. I'm talking Grimm as shit, not the squeaky clean super-kiddified shit that passes for fairy tales these days. You ever read an actual fairy tale? Like Sleeping Beauty, the tale upon which Maleficent is based? Yeah, ain't no prince kissing that bitch out of her coma. In the original tale, the Handsome Prince fucks Sleeping Beauty while she's asleep. Straight up whips his cock out and fucks her while she's just laying there, unable to say Yes, No or Bitch, buy me dinner first. She only awakens from her coma after giving birth to Prince DateRape's twins.

But the hour is late, and I am tired, so I'm not going to linger on this subject. Lets get straight to the review.

Maleficent - the short review: It was okay.
Overall, it was a tad too pretty for me. A little too whimsical, a touch too fluffy.
After having watched it, I found myself a trifle irritated by the lack of character development. Sure, Aurora is a sweet girl, but what the fuck are her interests? Does she even want to marry a prince? Maybe she would prefer a career as a Key Grip or something? And who the hell was her mother? Leila lasted all of, what, seven minutes total on screen? Who the hell were Maleficent's parents and where are they? Why is the most powerful fairy in the world all alone, and by what right does she claim herself to be Queen? And what about Stefan, the peasant boy who betrayed Maleficent? What were his motivations? Did he ever really love her? Does he...wait.

Wait just a fucking minute.
Do I really need Stefan to have an excuse?
Is it possible that we've finally reached a point in cinematic adaptations that we've stopped trying to create sympathy for the male asshole?
Maybe Stefan is just an opportunistic, self-absorbed, narcissistic jackass with zero compassion, an utter inability to take responsibility for his actions and a big fat fucking void where his goddamned heart should be.

It was at this point of realization that I appreciated Maleficent just a little bit more.

Stefan is an Absolute. He doesn't have a backstory. He doesn't need one. Anything he'd tell you about himself would probably be a lie anyway. Oh sorry, does that sound bitter? Tough shit. Stefan's introduction to the audience is as a thief. He's stolen something - I forget what - from fairy land and is forced to return it by little Maleficent. From that point on, he steals everything: Maleficent's trust, her first kiss, her innocence and finally her wings. Yeah yeah, we all know that the wing cutting scene is a metaphor for rape. That's been established. What I was more interested in was the complete and utter ruination of Maleficent herself. He murders her soul. The light in her eyes is utterly extinguished. She darkens, literally and figuratively. All of her joy has become sorrow. A warped filter is draped over her vision. Every person becomes suspect, every motivation questionable. Even the adoration of a toddler is seen as a cunning ploy to a woman destroyed. Surely no one seeks out her company for any good reason. Always she is wondering: "Well, what do you want? Why are you here? And how long before you hurt me too? Maybe I'll hurt you first, because I cannot bear to be broken again."

William Congreve coined the phrase Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd. And frankly, I've never seen it better personified than by Jolie's Maleficent. I think every woman who has ever been dumped by a man she truly loved, and believed loved her in return, can relate to the hollow look on Malficent's face upon discovering just how coldly she has been used and cast aside. It's the silence that follows that gnaws at us the most, that feeling that not only doesn't he care, but he never did to begin with. And whenever we hear of him scorning yet another woman, blaming them en masse for all of his troubles and/or dismissing them as a species completely unrelated to him, we wonder how someone could possibly be so heartless. How can they live with themselves? Why can they admit no wrongdoing? There will never be an admission of guilt, or an apology forthcoming, because guys like Stefan have already exonerated themselves and excused their actions. You are the bitch for reminding them of just how truly flawed they are. And that, dear children, is the tale of true evil in the world: not the destruction itself, but the imprint it leaves behind.

Drunk on ego
Truly thought I could make it right
If I kissed you one more time to
Help you face the nightmare
But you're far too poisoned for me
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber
That I could actually heal you..

People Who Don't Pay Their TV Licenses Against the Nazis!

Happy Labor Day, mutherfuckers. I just worked an eight hour shift, came home and slammed two beers on an empty stomach and am now drunk off my fat girly bottom. In fact, I am far too arseholed to come up with a clever segue into this article. I just really love The Young Ones. I've loved The Young Ones since 1985, when they started showing episodes on MTV, in the olden days before MTV became a void of empty commercialism and vainglorious self-masturbation. Do they even show music videos on there anymore?

Anyway, I don't even remember how I hit upon the idea of writing an article about The Top 10 Most Gross Out Moments of The Young Ones, but I did, and I'm doin' it and you can't stop me. So here it is.

The Top 10 Most Gross Out Moments of The Young Ones

In no particular order at all...

#1 - Rik Hates Rats, Okay?
Episode 1 - Demolition

In this pilot episode, Rik spots a pair of filthy vermin just chilling in the soon-to-be-demolished flat he shares with lentil-obsessed hippie Neil, violent punker Vyvyan and Mike Thecoolperson, and does what any terminal wally would do: he grabs a guitar out of the refrigerator - a guitar that was made entirely out of matchsticks by Neil's grandfather who was on his deathbed at the time - and proceeds to beat one of the rats to death with it, leaving the remaining rodent to cannibalize the remains. Adding insult to injurt, Rik flicks a triumphant V at the mutilated remains once he's done.
 
#2 - (pffft! number twos!)
It Was Bound to Happen Sooner or Later
Episode 2 - Oil

The gang moves into their new flat, which looks like a gigantic lavatory, and Vyvyan promptly gets bored. When playing "Murder in the Dark" proves unsatisfying, he heads down to the cellar and starts smashing his head against the floor, discovering an untapped vein of black gold in the process! Forcing Neil to mining detail, the stupid bloody hippie accidentally slams a pickaxe through the back of Vyvyans skull, permanently nailing both his crash helmet and a stray boulder to his head in the process. Vyvyan is surprisingly forgiving of the faux pas, but doesn't die immediately, staggering to his feet just long enough to eject a mouthful of rancid bile in protest of the "Passage Of Time" gimmick.

#3 - You can't do acupuncture with 6-inch nails
Episode 11 - Sick

The guys are all ill. Horribly ill. Even SPG is all covered in snot. There's nothing left for anyone to wipe their noses on, and Rik's shouting isn't helping at all. Neither is Neil's volcanic sneezing, every expulsion releasing a projectile avalanche of thick green snot. Even sealing him up inside of Rik's laundry bag comes too late as Neil's bogie flood has already ignited a street riot. Mike fails to return from the chemists with The Cure so Madness is forced to perform instead. Worst of all, Neil's parents are coming round to tea in thirty seconds!


 #4 - So I took my dungarees off, and...
Episode 10 - Time

Rik wakes up after a wild party and finds a girl beside him in bed. The thought of him actually having maybe engaged in sex is disgusting enough, but then he fumbles out of bed and stumbles to his feet, revealing the nastiest, stankiest, poo-stained, farted-up, semen-soiled, piss-crusty pair of worn out underpants in the known fucking universe. Maggots would barf upon encountering this wasteland of masturbatory despair. It's shocking that Helen the Completely Mad Murderess didn't die gagging on the fumes, dutch-ovened as she must have been for even a brief second. The thought of the scabby balls, flaky skin and lice-infested pubes which surely must lurk beneath that rotting shroud is stomach churning horror in its purest form.

#5 - I think I'm going to be violently and copiously sick.
Episode 10 - Time

Vyvyan - suffering from a violent hangover on the same morning that Rik's leprous underpants are revealed for the first time in all of their brown smudged glory - echoes our sentiments when, already nauseated and forced to listen to Rik's total bullshit story about the sex he didn't have the night before, suddenly leans forward in his chair and vomits all over Rik, spraying out a chunky, yellowish mess that looks downright appetizing compared to Rik's Y-fronts. Thank you, Vyv.

#6 - What's Domestos?
Episode 11 - Sick

Neil makes the appalling suggestion that Mike fetch something with which to clean the toilet while he's at the chemists. Mike, Rik and Vyvyan are outraged. After all, all that Blue Loo scene is for squares. When Cliff Richard wrote "Wired for Sound" no way was he sitting on a clean lavatory! Intent upon keeping the character that the toilet has thus far possessed, Mike refuses to entertain the notion of purchasing a cleansing agent. However, upon witnessing the bowel splattered bowl cannibalizing the brush, he has second thoughts.

#7 - Being rude first thing in the morning is a terribly trendy thing to do!
Episode 4 - Bomb

Rik has got a lecture today and he thinks his appearance is going to be rather important. Which is why he's popping a very real looking zit right into the camera at the start of the episode. I swear to god that had to have been a real zit that cropped up on Rik's face just prior to filming, because it looks angry and appears to be truly bleeding as he forcibly pokes at it. Knowing the Late Great Mayall, he probably woke up, spotted a spot and thought: "I have got to work this into the show somehow! That'll make the kids love me!"


#8 - Do Not Lean Out of the Window.
Episode 7 - Bambi

Vyvyan learns a very important lesson about travel safety when he foolishly ignores a sign posted on the train to Manchester imploring him not to lean out of the window. Which he promptly does. Just seconds later, his spotty, mohawked head is clipped from his spinal column at 200mph, and Vyv retracts a blood-spurting stump from the window with a horrible disembodied scream. Furious at himself for being such a dumbass, he commences to kicking his own severed head down the railroad track like a lopsided soccer ball in true British punk fashion.


#9 - Next time, throw that paper out as well!
Episode 2 - Oil

It's their first night in their new flat and the boys are relaxing after setting Neil's bedroom on fire. Vyvyan is downstairs playing murder in the dark, Rik is attempting to go to bed but it's been turned into a roller disco, Mike is practicing his golf game and Neil is taking a colossal dump in the toilet, which Vyvyan has considerately thrown out of the window. Mike's golf ball plunks right on target, between Neil's legs and into the mess below. When Neil throws it back, Rik conveniently catches the feces slimed, sopping wet object in both hands, and promptly begins screaming in disgust.  It can't be all that bad though, considering Neil is a vegetarian.


#10 -It's the toaster for you!
Episode 4 - Bomb

Vyvyan's pet hamster SPG (short for Special Patrol Group, which is a really stupid name for a hamster) attempts to electrocute Vyv by plugging in the TV set that Vyv has just digested. In violent retaliation, Vyv stomps his hamster to death beneath his Doc Marten boots and then proceeds to stuff SPG's pancaked corpse into the toaster, shouting "BURN!" as the rodent audibly sizzles. It's alright though: SPG was basically the "Kenny" of The Young Ones. Vyvyan killed him several times during the series, and the little fucker always came back.

Put a Period on That

I got my period a few days ago. At work. In the middle of a rush. And I forgot to slip a tampon in my purse. And nobody else had one to spare. So I stood at the bench, counting pills into bottles and answering the phone and squeezed my thighs together and hoped for the best. Thank god I always wear navy blue/black scrub pants.

Right now, I can literally hear a million male faces squinching up in horror and retracting like a cats anus. Look, deal with it assholes. I've had to deal with it since I was 10 years old and, quite frankly, if any man within reach dares make the "never trust anything that bleeds for a week and still lives" joke, I will snap their nuts off like bottlecaps and ram them up his own asshole. It's about goddamned time you guys knew how much we women suffer once a month: it's not just blood flowing out of our ladyholes smooth as Karo syrup and food coloring. It's chunky. It's blobby. It stinks. Every time we sneeze we feel a huge, thick squirt into our panties, as if our vaginas had suddenly become giant hot glue guns. Inserting tampons is like trying to shove a size ten matchstick into a size four drinking straw, and pulling them out again is akin to pulling your own small intestine out of your navel. I live in fear that someday I'll tug that swollen cotton finger out of my cooch and all of my insides will come shooting out right behind it like thick, blood-foamy champagne released from a bottle when the cork is pulled too suddenly.

Listen, if you can watch neo-grindhouse torture porn, Italian gutmucnhing/Japanese Pinky Violence horror movies, you can hear about a girls period in vivid detail. Man the fuck up, pussies. At least I spared you the details of the organ crushing cramps and the torrential diarrhea.


Anyway, onto the list of films which accurately depict the menstrual cycle in all of its squishy, flowy, stinky nastiness.

#1 - Carrie

Duh. Like I wasn't going to pick this one? This is THE menstrual horror film. The period on the period at the end of the sentence. It is every teenage girls worst nightmare: getting your period at school and everyone knows because you bleed right through your designer jeans and left a blood puddle on the seat in Calculus. And knowing your luck, you left your hoodie at home and have nothing to tie around your waist with which to hide the miniature murder scene that is spreading on your ass. This film reinforced the belief that getting your period was shameful, and to allow anyone to find out about it was unforgivable. Honestly though, the book did a far better job of delving into the connection between Carrie's first period and her latent telekinetic powers. In the movie, it happens, it's over and is never mentioned again. The book starts with a period, climaxes with the mother (pun intended) of all periods, and ends with a period (Sue Snell, who is either having a miscarriage or has simply miscalculated her menstrual cycle. Either way, she ends up the same as Carrie: covered with blood in public, screaming in horror and scarred for life.)


#2 - Ginger Snaps 

Brigitte: Are you *sure* it's just cramps?
Ginger: Just so you know... the words "just" and "cramps," they don't go together.

No, they fucking don't.

Ginger's reaction to her first unwanted and unasked for menstrual period was much the same as mine: disgust and mourning. Because unlike Ginger, I was not ready to be a woman and had no desire to grow up just yet. I kept it a secret from my schoolmates for as long as I possibly could, because I knew once the word was out, I'd be expected to start wearing a bra and shaving my legs and buying perfume and tacking up those fold-out posters of the cast of The Outsiders that came in Tiger Beat magazine up over my bed and daydreaming about being Mrs. Ponyboy. Yuck. Actually now that I think about it, my actual reaction to my first period was less like Ginger's and more like Sarah Conner's: "I didn't ask for this honor and I DON'T WANT IT! ANY OF IT!"

#3 - The Company Of Wolves

Nobody really considers this a menstrual horror film until I point out this line of dialogue in the early scenes:

Mother: Where is she? Did she miss tea again?

Sister Alice: She said she had tummy-ache so she's sulking in her room.

They're talking about Mother's youngest daughter and Alice's little sister Rosaleen, who has indeed shut herself in her attic room and locked the door, restlessly sleeping off what is probably her first bout of cramps. Like me, Rosaleen isn't ready to leave childhood behind just yet either. But the wolves give her no choice. She's one of the pack now whether she likes it or not, and they drag her - kicking and screaming amid her broken dolls and worn out teddy bears - into hairy, savage, blood soaked adulthood.

#4 - Janghwa, Hongryeon

Better known as A Tale of Two Sisters, the original title of this Korean tale translates into Rose Flower, Red Lotus. How better to personify a young, menstruating virgin than with a red flower? Unspoiled and pure, but still somehow sexually aware. Young Su-Mi's blossoming is poisoned by the death of her mother and the cruelty of her stepmother, and the sudden appearance of a menstruating ghost and her sisters sheet-staining period showing up in the middle of the night seem to be the catalyst for all of the violence which soon follows. A single ribbon of crimson running thin and delicate down an ivory inner thigh quickly becomes a metaphor for the butchery of innocence and the deliberate murder of sanity, like a rose on the edge of its first blooming throwing its petals open to reveal a core of corruption and rot.

#5 - Valerie & Her Week of Wonders

So here we have a daisy instead of a rose, virgin white purity stained by the first drops of blood falling from Valerie's lacy skirts as she walks through the garden one night. Upon awakening on her first full day as a woman, Valerie finds that her impending womanhood has attracted the means: a cadaverous vampire who might also be her father, a lecherous priest, an amorous boy who may also be her brother and an endless parade of buxom, wiggly girls who love nothing better than squirming on tree branches and kissing each other. Valerie is as confused as we are, but soon finds her place in the weird world of adults, where people's emotions seem as backwards as Alice's Looking Glass world, and seemingly upstanding denizens commit unspeakable horrors in the name of love/lust.

We don't bleed once a month and live.
We bleed, and cramp, and shit, and writhe, and suffer blinding headaches and violent mood swings, and somehow we still manage to go out into the world the whole entire time, walking around with cotton stuffed up our lady holes, in pain, working, going to school, running the usual errands, and most of you never know when it's That Time Of The Month because we are experts at hiding it, and dealing with it, and sucking it up and going about our business, for a whole week.

If you ask me, that's pretty bad ass.
I'd like to see a guy do it for a single day.