While this is not an official holiday nor does it have a stamp of approval by the states, my friend Brandon Gardner and I always made it an event to gather snacks, soda and watch 20 somethings playing teenagers being systematically slaughtered like pigs in the Friday the 13th sequels.
Greetings mortals!!! I trust that... hey, that is a flaming bag of dog feces on my porch!
As there are more than a few superstitious folks out there that do NOT even want to journey on the road, go for a walk at night or head to the store for an item. I say no worries. Those twinkies you wanted will be there tomorrow... unless the ax murdering loony from beyond the grave has a certain spongy goodness sugar rush, mauled the clerks and claimed them for himself. I'd suggest calling the cops on the mass homicide scene, leave your statement and just go to another store.
Howdy all and as promised we begin our late week with a 1951
Sci-fi classic brought to us from the pulp Sci-fi novelist Harry Bates (Farewell to the Master, Space Hawk: The
Greatest of Interplanetary Adventurers, Hawk Carse, The Affair of the Brains,
The Bluff of the Hawk and The Passing of Ku Sui) this humble black and
white mono recorded number about a humanoid visitor from another world bringing
with him a large and powerful robot and a message for all mankind. So prep the Army, check your weapons and
vehicles and by all means shoot profusely at the unknown. This is The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Wow Gort, they drop some clams on this set, huh?
Klaatu: You must go to
Spoiler. You must then recite these three words. Klaatu barada nikto.
A flying saucer lazily approaches the Earth and eventually
lands in Washington, D.C. Naturally the
US military completely encamp around it awaiting any sign of life and/or
trouble. A hatch and gangplank opens
from the ship and a tall humanoid name of Klaatu (Michael Rennie of The Robe, The
Third Man, The Lost World, Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel) exits the
craft announcing that he comes in peace, but as he just jets down from the gangway
he draws a small cylinder from his side which a twitchy soldier mistakes for a
weapon and shoots him. Yeah we are off
to a fine start of intergalactic representation. Without any warning a large robot name of
Gort (7’7” Lock Martin of Lost in a Harem, Lady on a Train, Off Limits,
Invaders from Mars and The Snow Creature) pops out of the ship and
proceeds to disintegrate every weapon around him with a ray of awesome power
from his head visor Cyclops style.
Optic blast...fire.
Klaatu gets him to cease the destruction and goes on to explain the
device he held would allow the President to see other worlds; a sort of an inter-dimensional
View Master full of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff.
Rushed to the hospital he floors the Army medical by
applying some healing salve that heals the wound instantly while the Army
attempts to get inside his spaceship to no doubt reverse engineer the
thing. So blasting the guy wasn’t insult
enough they now move on to the lesser crime of breaking and entering.
After escaping military personnel, Klaatu
snags a suit and calls himself Mr. Carpenter to better blend in and learn of
this primitive backwater world that still think atomic power is a neat
idea. Staying at a boarding house under
this alias he befriends the residents and listens with great interest on his
fellow boarders’ opinions of why the alien is here on Earth.
From petty fear to typical kneejerk reactions to the
unknown, Klaatu is then attacked by the Army yet again as he flees off world
stopping his servitor from killing the lot of them and leaves the assembled
scientists with these thoughts how the penchant of humanity’s blood lust,
harnessing the power of the atom and the exploration of space that the Earth
will be viewed as savages of the cosmos and to tread carefully for it could
very well mean the end for the planet.
From the paranoia of the Americans only six years after
World War II and the Cold War coming to affect; this really is an excellent
example of human behavior large and small.
Showing the military’s standing on zero tolerance to the innocence of a
small boy befriending a total stranger, director Ray Wise (The Body Snatcher, Born to Kill, The
Haunting, The Andromeda Strain and The Hindenberg) and crew go the
message across that the jumping to conclusions without clear thinking or
rational behavior could lead to devastating consequences.
I formally greet and rejoice for the return of my readers
and welcome you back to Horror Grab Bag Week for a tale that is both bizarre
and twisted. A deranged man who prior to
the Nestle plunge into sanity was a superb mechanic but the little voices in his
head told him he would be far happier if he simply went mad. Traipsing through the swamps of this man’s
mind will be a tricky thing so grab your rubber boots and hip waders and
everyone stay together in a group. This
is Bloody Wednesday.
Better than the magic covers any day!
Teddy says you should
be punished you piece of spoiler!!
Say hello to Harry (Raymond Elmendorf of Cuba Crossing, The
A-Team and Project X), a mechanic of some renown and in general a
decent guy until he gets bullied by virtually every big hair band…er…um I mean
gang in town. Victimized by these little
Tony Danza/John Stamos clones, Harry retreats into a safe world of his own
creation after a horrendous divorce and his boss thinking he was less stable
than nitroglycerin is let go.
Oh no, I fell into a Kim Wilde video!!!! AHHHH!!!!
Harry starts to lose his grip on reality and wanders into a
church during evening mass stark naked.
He is then shockingly committed to a psychiatric hospital where his
doctor Emily Johnson (Pamela Baker of I Want to Live and Through
Naked Eyes) truly wants to help Harry but because she has a vagina all
her Cro-Magnon colleagues view Harry as harmless and release him due to
overcrowding at the wacko basket. Out on his butt Harry shacks up in an abandoned
hotel where he starts hallucinating…or does he?
Is he really going crackers or are people taunting him, tormenting every
night and day and making him crack under the strain like a delicate china cup?
Check...please...ugh.
Harry’s only friends are this bellhop he converses with and
his oversized teddy bear. The walls of
reality and fantasy come crashing against one another; Harry is finally fed up
with all this nonsense and somehow gets his hands on a submachine gun and
brother is he locked and loaded.
What is fascinating about this film is seeing Harry through
the eyes of the other characters. This timid
and mild-mannered man probably never stood up for himself at any given time,
threatens and forces a gang of thugs on their knees with a .44 while he decides
what to do with them. He is literally
arguing with his teddy bear on whether or not to ventilate them. His responses, body twitches and shrieks of
horror in the night may be…a little over the top but it does not detract this
performance in my opinion. Also the
askew worlds bouncing back and forth give the kiddy ride equivalency of an acid
trip or a bipolar disorder in full swings of his highs and lows to the severity
I have never heard of.
No I don't want to visit Tigger and Owl!!!
Dr. Johnson tries desperately to locate Harry before he can
do anything that may harm him or others but has no idea where to look and
ultimately has no choice but to give up.
35mm Spherical captures more than a fair share of zoom pans,
a fish eye lens and decent hand held throughout this warped imagery. A very surreal mood is cast over you from
this flick it almost has the feel of homage to Polanski’s The Tenant just not
as refined. Not an amazing film but
certainly not mundane either.
