persona non sequitur

a review of media by a slightly jaded baby boomer.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

SEX IS LOTS OF FUN is not the name of this e zine, though someone else could have used it by now.
What I mean about Bad films, are not attempts to be bad or a smug recreation (such as THE LOST SECRETS OF CADAVERA 2005) of period films.

Take THE GIANT CLAW. Directed by Fred Sears, starring Jeff Morrow (later of RAT PATROL fame), up to the point the monster is seen by the audience, seems to be a fairly straight forward monster movie. Once the giant Beaky Buzzard creature is seen, all the life and tensions and logic and sympathy are sucked out and shot into whatever kind of black hole you can think of. You just can't deal with the film as even entertaining except on the level of "Gawd, how stupid!" Bill Warren in his KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES Vol #1, says that Morrow was watching the film premier in his home town. When the giant flying Dodo hit the screen, the shrank into his chair and wanted to leave the theater , unseen. The studio didn't even let the stars see it before it was released.

And there's even a scene where film footage of a New York City sequence has a flying Saucer, since Fred Sears directed EARTH VERSUS FLYING SAUCERS (and I like that one), and was recycling.

This is what I mean about a bad film: good intentions and planning and work gone horribly wrong. And in this case, the special effects were farmed out to a studio in Mexico. And these days we all know about that kind of outsourcing.

By the way, Bill Warren's two books, KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES Vol. 1 and 2 are still available in a pricey omnibus volume from McFarland books. It covers all (then) known SF films the author saw from 1950-1965. It missed a few like THIS IS NOT A TEST, and covers a few really obscure ones I never saw, like THE SPACE CHILDREN. Warren doesn't seem to be doing any further updating, and no further volumes seem to be forthcoming. I keep reading the titles because of the complete sense of content.

WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT CHOCOLATE COVERED MANHOLE COVERS?

That they just might be the favorite food of THE IRON GIANT.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

BARN OF THE BLOOD LLAMA directed by Kevin L West (1997) is supposed to be funny. I think when someone tries too hard to be funny, you wind up like Dom DeLuise, laughing at his own joke because no one else will lend him their own voice. A lot of the things tried in this "film" have been done before--intentionally and unintentionally--with better results. Years back, a film maker did a flick called IT CAME FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE, which does all the same sort of things done in BARN, but the IT is a bit better. Sort of. It has the usual shtick of shifting from black and white to color and people wearing different clothes in the same sequences and people arriving on the scene and leaving, not adding anything to the movie. Etc.
And people spontaneously explode in it, so there's no time wasted in getting rid of people who would clutter up the film with needless explanations.

IT CAME FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE has a good write up on the box "May be too graphic and intense for children or small dogs." or mentioning "The actors cannot deliver the jokes." which is a big problem in BARN OF THE BLOOD LLAMA.

Possibly, what I mean by bad films are those which had good intentions of story telling, but just fudged over other matters because details got in the way. BLOOD FREAK was intended to have a message about drug use, not to be a home DVD where guys would smoke joints and laugh themselves sick over its content. The DVD extra where the director is trying to explain his Christian message and the symbolic importance of the turkey is just mind numbing.

DISCO BEAVER FROM OUTER SPACE doesn't qualify as a film, as it was a cable TV special and it was only an hour long. Bootleg copies of it can be located on the Internet.

I misspelled the film title of one film (not seen) and it should be OVERSEXED RUG SUCKERS FROM MARS.

The hideous but well intended STAR WARDS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL has a charm of its own. I mention it once in a while to place rampant Lucas fans from trying to dominate a conversation about science fiction films.

Of course, one of the great bad films is THE GREEN SLIME.

More to come on this topic...

And I agree with Ned Brooks on his assessment of BARN "stirred with a chainsaw".

Sunday, October 15, 2006

DOES DR DEMENTO STILL PLAY THESE?

Just wondering.

"Kinko the Clown" by Ogden Edsel. About child molestation
" The Homecoming Queen Has Got a Gun" by Julie Brown. Funny or prophecy?
"Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al Yankovic. No comment needed.

The Good Doctor D will still play "They're Coming to Take Me Away", but despite being number one for a brief period of time, it was yanked from airwaves after it hit big airplay, as being demeaning. I still maintain demeaning listening is putting Jessica Simpson records on the air. One recent auditory assault was listening to Rod Stewart "singing" "Stardust" and he was missing the notes.


STUFF AND PAUL KRASSNER

***

My son asked the question "when I popped pimples did they squirt"?. I asked if he and his friends were trying for distance. No, He was just curious.

Maybe there's a future for a products that squirt when you pop them. Zit wrap.

***

News about odd Florida drivers was sounded on the radio. I recall someone telling me that Florida has the most elderly set of drivers. And a number of them just give up the ghost behind them wheel. What had been a short drive --die and the car plows off the road, has been replaced by a prolonged drift because the driver has engaged the cruise control and the car continues on for as long as the road remains without a curve.

ªªªªªªªª

I once wrote about this among a few friends. Still is weird. I used to listen to the radio in my car. The driving around Delaware has many bridges and under passes. The radio would dim and fade.

I no longer bother to listen to the radio. I play tapes. But the sound still dims when I go under the bridges and under passes, as my hearing has turned into a Pavlovian reflex.

™™™

Paul Krassner dropped me a note, in order to inform me that the Wally Wood "Disney Orgy" poster was available again. I had one, but it seems to be missing, what with a few sticky fingered ex housemates lurking about. I told him I mentioned him on my blog, sent the URL, ... Just scroll down...he wrote: I scrolled down on your blog and it was bizarre to see something made up about me, when that's what I do to others."

I didn't make it up. I read it. --Uh--Somewhere. Yeah, that's it... check out PAUL KRASSNER.COM for information on the poster and some of his books. And CD's.

µµµµµ

Sunday, October 08, 2006

WE ARE THE WORMS by The Worms is on my iPod. I became aware of this song during a Dr. Demento Concert I attended, which The Good DD played a few choice songs that had lawyers arrive at his door to say "We'd like it if you wouldn't play that song anymore." On the air at least. I spent a few years tracking down the 45, but only found it through a CD compilation on eBay.

Starting with thunderstorm sounds, a high huh huh huh giggle, it winds out:

"We are the worms
out on the sidewalk
we are the ones that make a squishy mess
so watch out where you walk".

It's sung in a squeaky voice --engineered and speeded up vocals--and is anonymous. Probably so that Micheal Jackson's lawyers can't seek him out to sue his pants off. Not that Mr Jackson would mind seeing that.

This was in 1983, at a combo Weird Al Yankovic concert, with Dr. D and Benny Bell (who sang his song "Shaving Cream". They discovered he was still alive...), a present given to me by my then fiance and still wife, who understood the nature of wanting to twist stuctures around.

GOING POSTAL: THE POSTAL ZONE: Working with Idiots:

Quite frequently rumors flow through the post office. And about two years back, the was one about proposed layoff and employee consolidation.

So a Supervisor, dubbed Mr Stupid by many, gathered his crew together, and announced that
"As for the rumors we have heard passing though this office. Be aware that nine times out of ten, seventy percent of these stories are not true."

Must be new math.

Mr Stupid generated a lot of eye brow raising when he couldn't tell two employees apart. Both of them are named Brian. But one is thin, and one is a little pudgy. The bulky Brian had a mild leukenia, and was under going chemotherapy, which caused him to miss more than a few days of work.

Mr Stupid called the thin Brian into his office and told him that he had better not miss any more time, or there would be consequences.

Typical.

***
BAD MOVIE UPDATE (sort of): Watched GASSSSS, the last film Roger Corman directed. It's a flat rambling movie with no suspense, or motivation. Fifteen minutes of the film were interesting and one was the songs by Country Joe and the Fish, and a eroticly charged light show (easily the best part of the movie). 95 percent of the film was shot out of doors, in the early morning in Texas, or something standing in as Texas. Parts of the film that took place indoors did not have a sound check, so these scences sound vastly different (and bad). One strange perk: Cindy Williams whoring around, making deals with three guys who initially wanted to rape her, but she asked if she could pick who would be first...

Plot? Taking place off stage and illustrated in the credits is the release of a gas that killed everyone over the age of 25. Then it turns into a road chase, some of our heros are driving and Edsel, with a horse mounted to the hood. LOGAN'S RUN it isn't. (And that's not much of a flick either.) It dribbles down to Hippies versus College Jocks. No mention or concern for anyone under age ten. No bodies, no answers.

Oh well.

This was Roger Corman's last directed movie, and I assume after he saw the crap job he'd done, decided it was time to hide under the mantle of production and give interviews to people asking about the good old days, when Jack Nicholson would work for peanuts and he tried to avoid unions by shooting his films any where any time...