This Week in Rixflix #13: June 2-8, 2017

Boy, did my movie count dip the week of June 2-8, and if I had not watched a slew of films those first four days (13 of the 18 films overall), it probably would have been even less. The reason? The buildup to the James Comey testimony, then the actual sessions, and the discussion in the aftermath ate up so much of my spare time on the weekdays that it was really hard to think about anything else.

This year has been so dominated by news about He-Who-Must-Be-Orange that it is no wonder that I have smothered my senses so intensely in movie after movie after movie. It's not the real reason that I watch so many films, but an outsider, knowing at the least of my political leanings, could only surmise that the continued presence of President Rage Toddler has me in such a deep depression that I can only find solace by immersing myself in film history. Well, he does not. He annoys the hell out of me every time I even think about his voice or face, but he has no effect on my film viewing habits. Except when there is the possibility of hearings that will hopefully lead to exposing his criminal ways once and for all on legal grounds – not just on social media, though he does a fine job of that himself – that will – hopefully – eventually get him and his graceless family expelled from the White House.

No, I just naturally watch film after film – I have done this for most of my life, and will continue to do so because for me it is simply a part of breathing. I wake up, I put on a movie, I watch a big chunk of it, maybe I will stop it to write for a while, grab some breakfast, watch another 40 minutes of the film, or maybe I finish watching it instead and then write... it really depends on where the day takes me. Not having regular work has made it even easier to immerse myself in these activities, but even when I did have a solid gig, I still managed to average 2-3 films a day. As I said, it's how I breathe...

[Note: the above was written today during the news of the Washington shooting at the baseball field. There is a lot of talk about how deeply divided we are today, and I have always agreed that bipartisanship is the only way to get things done for this country. However, the White House is going to use this opportunity to try to distract us and pave over the investigations going on currently involving Drumpf and his toadies. However much I want peace and harmony in this country and especially the world, I also want the Angry Orange permanently away from any shiny, candy-colored buttons in the War Room. This must be achieved lawfully and correctly, and without any violence, as the use of violence in our democratic process degrades us all.]

The Numbers:

This week's feature-length film count: 18; 12 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature film: Shark Babes (2015) – 2/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.37
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.0063
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen: 177

The Reviews:

The New Land [aka Nybyggarna] (1972) Dir.: Jan Troell – A couple of years ago, I watched the first of two films by Jan Troell about Swedish immigrants in the United States trying desperately to survive as they traveled through a strange new world in the mid-19th century. That film was called The Emigrants, and it was a remarkably vivid portrayal of people who could lived hardscrabble lives that were likely quite similar to those of my own Swedish ancestors at the same time. That the location of the land where the main characters set up their farm in Minnesota is less than an hour by car today from the county where my father grew up just across the border and north a bit in Wisconsin drives the point home even harder. The follow-up film, The New Land, based like The Emigrants, on the same series of novels by Vilhelm Morberg, is like its predecessor in that it is intricately and lovingly detailed with period touches and also glacially paced. (Both films are well over three hours in running time, so the easily bored should endeavor to avoid this pair.) But slow going does not mean the films weren't completely spellbinding to me, if not a little off-putting at times in how the immigrants react to their new surroundings and its inhabitants. This film in particular has the main characters, played by Bergman regulars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, learning to deal with the native Sioux in the area. The use of indigenous peoples in The New Land is certainly far different than most American portrayals on film, and it will prove most effective when the story contains elements of the Sioux Uprising of 1862, which leads to some of the more jarringly graphic imagery in the film. I am not sure that I would wish to take this journey on film again, though if I did, I would prefer to watch both films back to back. And maybe with some of my older relatives to dig into their memories of our ancestors' corresponding experiences. Fascinating films overall.  – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Yentl (1983) Dir.: Barbara Streisand – There has not been a moment since 1983 where I haven't been prone to suddenly singing in mock fashion the words "Papa can you hear me?" And yet, I have never actually seen Yentl, the film musical directed, produced and starring Barbara Streisand from which the song that carries that line is derived. I had tried to watch it on VHS and cable back in the day but always pulled out of it, and in recent years had recorded it on DVR a handful of times but never quite watched it. Now, I tell you this because your first thought is going to be "Well, yeah, you're a guy (and presumably straight)... why would you want to watch a Barbara Streisand film, especially where she sings?" Well, I grew up with Streisand played in our house, and one memorable evening, I watched a network TV showing of What's Up Doc?, her 1972 Peter Bogdanovich romantic comedy with Ryan O'Neal. The film became a favorite, I came to understand that she was a terrific comedienne and actress, and accepted her from that moment onward. Sure, her music is not my thing normally, but she has that incredible voice, which is featured prominently in Yentl, though I found the music to really be secondary to the story in the film. It's big and brash and lovingly filmed (the heart is quite apparent in the storytelling), but wondered if maybe the musical portion of it wasn't really necessary. Of course, if you take the music out of it, then there is really no reason for a then-40-year-old Streisand to be in the film playing a teenage girl posing as a boy, but if you take her out of it, then the movie doesn't get financed. (The production history is quite convoluted, and really, the more you know about it, the less it looks like a Streisand vanity project in casting herself.) The film is at a tad overlong, and my patience for it actually ran out late in the film, but still I stuck around. It's a pretty film, has some lovely moments, Mandy Patinkin really is a force of nature, and Streisand does just fine despite the whole age thing. And I have checked off another Oscar nominee.  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Joyride (1977) Dir.: Joseph Ruben – I sometimes wonder if people who actually live in New York and L.A. get upset these days when so many productions are filmed in Vancouver, even when the shows and films sometimes take place in N.Y.C. and L.A. Do they gripe about the minutiae as much as people in other places? Ah, studio filming... Me, I grew up in Alaska, and have had to deal most of my life with things being not quite right in the details when productions filmed elsewhere are supposed to take place in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow, or some other (often fictional) Alaskan town. While trying to track down a different film from 1977 a couple of weeks back, a search on YouTube gave me a list of other productions from that year, some of which I had never heard before. One of those titles was named Joyride. Seeing that the film had Robert Carradine, Desi Arnaz Jr., and a young Melanie Griffith in it, a quick look at IMDb revealed that the film is supposed to be about three teenagers taking a literal joyride on the lam as they head up to Alaska. Count me in, if only to see if they actually get anywhere near my home state. Nope... I should have just assumed it was so. Joyride was instead shot in Washington, much like Northern Exposure and many other things with supposedly Alaskan locales. I was expecting typical teen prank antics and low grade sleaze, but the film was far grittier than I expected, with some surprisingly dark turns hidden inside. The watch, however, was lessened by the low quality version that I had found. Still, there was enough that I found of interest that I came away knowing I would like to track down a decent copy in the future. So, did anything in the film seem like the actual Alaska at any point? Only fleetingly, but I figured it was probably accidental, though I am not going to hold it against the film. You do what you can with what you've got...  – TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Dir.: Lewis Gilbert and For Your Eyes Only (1981) Dir.: John Glen – Roger Moore died recently, and while he has never quite been my favorite Bond (I was too influenced by the Connery films early on), Moore had been a constant presence in my life beyond Bond. I grew up watching Moore on two different series: Maverick, where he filled in for a season as Beau, the smooth English cousin of the Maverick brothers after James Garner left the series in 1960, and as The Saint, Simon Templar, on repeats of his 1962-1969 British series. By the time I was twelve, Moore was already established as the new James Bond, having appeared in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun by that point. As I did with the Bond films with Sean Connery, I grew up seeing the films on the occasional Sunday night on ABC, where they were all regularly shown in the '70s. But it wasn't until 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me that I saw a Bond film in the theatre. With my parents' going through their divorce and me at the age where I was incessantly annoying about everything, but going to see movies was becoming most special of all to me (once more, we did not have a movie theatre in our small Alaskan town and had to drive to "big city" Anchorage to see them), my mom left my still too young little brothers with my dad and took me to see Bond on our own. It was showing in a double feature with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (more on that at another time), and we sat in the front row with a Ziploc bag of popcorn that we popped and buttered at home, Doritos that my mom sneaked inside of her bag, and a can of spray cheese in a can to load up the Doritos. It was magnificent!

Moore's death a few weeks ago coincided with the 40th anniversary celebration of the release of The Spy Who Loved Me, which served as arguably the high water mark for his series of seven Bond films at the time (I prefer Golden Gun overall now). I knew it was the anniversary, but hadn't really considered that I might have the chance to see it again on the big screen. Surprise! While we were at the AMC Dine-In Theatres getting ready to watch Wonder Woman on the day it opened, there was a special event advertisement for a double feature showing of Spy and For Your Eyes Only, but the first date (May 31) had past, but the second was in two days (June 4). I didn't really think about it that moment, but by that evening, I had determined that I was going to get to that double feature rain or shine. It meant going by myself since Jen worked, but nothing would stop me. That Sunday, I found myself in Orange, settling in for an afternoon double at the AMC at the Block, and had a terrific experience with the dozen or so other people in the theatre. 

A big thing for me was that these were two of the five Bond films that feature sharks in them (and Spy also has Richard Kiel as the metal-mouthed assassin "Jaws," who quite literally bites a shark to death in the film), but halfway through Spy, while Moore and the gorgeous Barbara Bach are wandering around the Egyptian pyramids, the projector totally stopped, and my fellow patrons and I found ourselves cloaked in darkness for almost 15 minutes. Part of the time, we discussed the film lightly – everyone was greatly enjoying seeing these films on a big screen again – but of course, a couple of us, myself included, ran out to talk to the management, and finally got someone to check on the problem. After the second film was over, the manager was standing by the side as we were exiting and handed each of us a free entry pass for another film, telling us that they didn't know what happened except that the projection system just completely shut down. I will take a free movie ticket any day, and since we saw the whole of the film regardless, no harm, no foul. I got two Bonds, I got Jaws, and most especially, I got tiger sharks. I also saw Alien: Covenant again right before the Bond flicks. That's a full, grand day at the movies for me. – "Spy" TC4P Rating: 7/9; "Eyes" TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Dir.: James Whale – No review here, just some quick editorializing and plugging. My love for the Universal Monsters films goes back ages to my very youth, when I saw most of the original films in my early teen years (with a few exceptions, like the later Mummy films featuring Kharis). I have also owned many of the films on VHS, all of them on DVD, and jumped a good portion of them up to Blu-ray a few years ago. That they are a constant presence in my life is to never be doubted. So, why is it that I still watch them on television every time that they cross my path? I don't mean just on Turner Classic Movies, where a handful of Frankensteins may show up from time to time, and not necessarily just in October when they usually hold special events for horror films. I refer to when something like The Bride of Frankenstein – arguably the most accomplished, giddiest and purest example of the Universal monster film – pops up on MeTV on the Svengoolie show on Saturday nights. 

Well, the answer is that I rarely skip out on watching ol' Sven even if I have seen all of the films he shows dozens of times outside the show. It is no surprise that I have a great fondness for horror host shows (especially if at least mildly professionally executed) and while I did not grow up with Svengoolie as a regular showcase like many others in different parts of the country did, I certainly wish to take advantage of him now, especially since Elvira's latest series only played for a short period and we have to wait a bit for the next MST3K season. (Yes, it has mostly sci-fi trappings, but I still count it in the same vein; they do show a lot of movies with monsters in them.) Me, I don't mind the commercials (if you DVR it, even better, but I like to watch it live) and the 12-yea-old in me still enjoys the intentionally lame jokes and interruptions. I am just happy knowing that someone is still putting Dracula, Godzilla, Frankenstein, and the rest of the gang on TV so that newer generations can discover and enjoy these films for themselves like I did as a kid. And when Rich Koz stops doing the show (he is now 65), hopefully someone else will come along to take up the cause. The monsters must live on!   – TC4P Rating: 9/9

The Monster's on the Loose!!! Non-Chaney, Pt. 3: Were-Rik? There... There Rik!

[This is the third part of a trilogy in my The Monster's on the Loose!!! series concerning my fascination with wolves and werewolves in my youth, none of it due directly to the influence of the Universal Monsters series and its Wolf Man character as portrayed by Lon Chaney, Jr. (He had already entered my life in comedy form through Topps Creature Feature trading cards, but we are discussing scares and not laughs here, not intentional laughs anyway). To read the first two parts of the series, visit either Non-Chaney, Pt. 1: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad... Something? or Non-Chaney, Pt. 2: Werewolves Along the Wall.]

The universe of my youth was rife with werewolves in flicks, books, comics, and television. Even with a mere four channels at my disposal, television continued to prove to be my main source of lycanthropic thrills. I have already recounted some of the early cartoon meetings with those of the furry set, but there were even more characters such as the hippie-styled Weirdo Wolfie on Filmation's The Groovie Ghoulies, Ruby-Spear's titular werewolf Fangface, Buck Kartalian as Bruce W. Wolf on the live-action Saturday morning show Monster Squad (with a pre-Love Boat Fred Grandy), and Howler, the youthful offspring of the Wolfman who fight crime with the Drak Pack.

While young, if there was any show or movie on that had the slightest whiff of monster mayhem, I was there. And I did have a sharp eye for werewolf antics. I was lucky enough (if that is how you wish to see it; I certainly do) to run into such titles on television as The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973), Moon of the Wolf (a 1972 ABC Movie of the Week with David Janssen), Deathmoon (a CBS-TV movie in 1978 with a werewolf loose in Hawaii), and The Legend of the Werewolf (1975, with Peter Cushing). And while not really a werewolf title, the ABC television series, Lucan, was about a orphaned boy raised by wolves who grows up and then roams about seeking out the mystery of his birth parents. Over in the funny books, Marvel Comics had a regular series called Werewolf by Night, of which I only got to read a few issues, but Marvel also had a character called the Man-Wolf, who was the monstrous alter-ego of J. Jonah Jameson's astronaut son, John. The Man-Wolf headlined Creatures on the Loose for the last few issues, and was featured in a pretty cool double-issue story in Marvel Premiere as well, but was most prominent in my life for battling Spider-Man on several occasions.

So, far before I truly ever got to see Lon Chaney, Jr. play his most famous character, I was not hurting for source material to fuel my werewolf fears, nightmares, and obsession. This obsession caused me to write one of my stupid songs as a kid – alongside such classics as I'm an Elf and The Anaconda – that I titled The Monster's on the Loose!!! You might notice that the title of the song matches the title of this ongoing series of posts about my monster obsession stemming directly from my youth. And get this, it had a chorus that went – the soft-skulled amongst you may wish to brace for impact – "The monster's on the loooooooo-oooo-ooo-oose! The monster's on the loooooooo-oooo-ooo-oose! The monster's on the loooooooo-oooo-ooo-oose! The monster's on the loooooooo-oooo-ooo-oose!" You get the idea. There were actual lyrics for a pair of verses, of course, but the main point was so that you could practically howl while singing along with the chorus.

But there were three prime titles that influenced my fears the most in those early days: two movies and one episode of a quite famous but short-lived television series.

Kolchak: the Night Stalker: Werewolf (1974)

Dan Curtis' Kolchak: the Night Stalker TV series should never be underestimated as to its influence on me as a growing horror fan of a certain age. From my first time seeing an episode, where the intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak battles a swamp creature in the sewers, I was hooked. When The X-Files came along, my attraction to it from the start was from the residual effect of having seen the few Kolchak episodes over and over and over again, and having long wished I had another such series that could fill the void. To find out that X-Files creator Cris Carter had drawn his own inspiration directly from his love for The Night Stalker (to the point of eventually hiring star Darren McGavin to play a Kolchak-type character in seclusion late in the series) did not surprise me.

For the werewolf episode of the series, Carl ends up taking over at the last minute for his editor Tony's long-anticipated working vacation aboard a luxury liner promoting a singles cruise. Naturally, something weird is happening onboard. After a series of gruesome deaths, Kolchak gets caught up in not just trying to stop the creature (played by a sleazily perfect Eric Braeden) but also doing battle with the captain (good ol' Henry Jones) and crew who are trying to downplay the murders and keep the press from getting the information. And, of course, even though he gets a terrific confederate in this adventure – Nita Talbot as movie-mad Paula Griffin is a riot – Carl is the only one who ultimately believes that Braeden is an actual werewolf. Or at least the only one willing to go on record saying that is what he encountered (which is the basic thrust of the series).

Like most episodes of the show, it is alternately funny (apropos of its subject matter, the show has a consistently dark sense of humor) and silly (many of the filming effects are pretty dated). The attack scenes are mostly of the creature throwing people overboard (it seems to be his M.O.), or tossing multiple crewmen about in group fashion, but as a kid, the POV attacks and the quick flashes of the werewolf's intense strength and fury still gave me the willies. I saw this episode numerous times as a kid (like all of the show's mere lot of twenty, along with two introductory television movies that drew massive ratings). While my estimation of the series might be a good deal higher than most and heavily dosed with nostalgia, my more practiced eye still thinks the Kolchak series as a whole holds up not just as being pretty haunting today, but also as solid entertainment, its chief attribute being Darrin McGavin, arguably one of the more underrated actors of his day.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Hammer's more historical attempt at the genre, The Curse of the Werewolf, directed by Terence Fisher in 1961, was a revelation to me. I was already a big Oliver Reed fan thanks to seeing Richard Lester's Musketeer films and Carol Reed's Oliver! quite young. My mother had told me that Reed had played a werewolf at one point, and staying up past midnight one Saturday to watch the local World's Most Terrible Movies program on our ABC affiliate, KIMO, I was granted my first opportunity to see him play the role. By then, I had already been introduced to the Hammer Studios style (my first such film was Frankenstein Created Woman), and was fascinated by the fact that the Hammer films were both classier than most of the other horror films I was encountering to that point, but also far more gruesome, sadistic, and bloody. Curse goes for an epic feel from the start, trapping its tale of lycanthropy in a Spanish fairy tale setting. The werewolf plotline almost gets swallowed up for a large portion of the film, but gradually builds to a terrific climax, the thrills becoming larger and larger on the way.

As a kid (and even now), I wished that there was a bit more of the monster in this film – you really have to wait for the payoff – but when it comes, it's a doozy. Reed looks fantastic as the creature, with a torn, billowing flouncy shirt as he climbs up and about the roofs and bell tower of the village. Shots of Reed in his werewolf guise are seen quite often in monster and horror books, and that is with very good reason. The film was the first to show a werewolf character in full color, and the added touch of being able to show bright red blood smeared on his face and dripping from his fangs is fabulously rendered. It is astounding to me that Hammer never did a follow-up to this film, when they seemed to have no problem expanding their Frankenstein and Dracula series well beyond reasonable limits. In a perfect world, there would at least be five or six Hammer werewolf flicks to choose from; sad to say, there really is just this one, but they did a magnificent job with it.

The real Big Bad: My imagination...

While I had seen the Kolchak werewolf episode already, I had not quite run into that first viewing of The Curse of the Werewolf just yet. The Reed version of the werewolf was just around the corner, as were the rest. But I was still wolf-haunted. To be sure, after the image of Maurice Sands' Les Lupins entered my brain as a grade schooler, my every walk home from the bus stop through the mid-to-late afternoon of Alaskan winter dusk became a genuine task in terror for me. While I was fine walking along the far end of the street on which our house was built, with a couple of houses and a trailer along one side while nothing but dark woods lurked along the other, the fear would grow over me as I made my way towards our neighbors' house. The Wachsmuths' house was built close to the road's edge, with a simple driveway area in which to part cars, and while it was surrounded by trees like every home in the area, it's nearness to the street meant that approaching the house was never foreboding and sometimes stopping there even served as a temporary refuge when I couldn't quite work up the gall to get to my own door (which happened on occasion).

Directly across the street was the Woods' house, and while we were friends with Mr. Wood's kids, it had become harder and harder to go over there to play after his wife had committed suicide a few years earlier. It was probably one of the first times in my life where I became expressly attuned to human tragedy, and certainly the moment where the act of suicide, which I barely even understand when used in a movie or TV show, became a reality to me. The Woods and the Wachsmuths were our nearest neighbors; everyone else lived a couple of acres away or more, always with forest, other roads or both between us, and the hilly terrain was not always conducive to plotting out quick getaways to a safe space when monsters were on the rise in one's backyard... or mind.

From the moment that I took that first step off our street and onto our driveway – usually a dirt road covered with rocky gravel, but taking on an occasional more precarious texture when snow and ice came along due to the season – my nerves would seize up at the same time that the goosebumps sprang into full industry along my arms. My eyes would dart back and forth to the trees on both sides of the long, sloping driveway that sunk down into our property. To say the trees lined the driveway would be a misnomer, since that would imply they were planted in some form of designed precision; rather, the driveway was cut naturally into the woods that were already there, and so the word "surrounded" is far more of an appropriate term. For surrounded I was, tree after tree with who knows what lurking behind them, awaiting a taste of my supreme deliciousness.

Each forward step would bring a slight crunch of snow, which would cause me to stop and listen hard, because anyone knows that a werewolf is crafty enough to only move closer to its prey when the intended victim is making too much noise to hear anything else. When I say "anyone knows," I mean, "Because I made that up myself when I was a kid". But that is exactly what would happen. My journey down my driveway each afternoon after school that winter (and the next) would begin with a series of small steps and hesitations, listening for anything that might move in the woods around me. One would think, despite the darkness, that I could easily see most of the ground was just snow because the birches and other deciduous trees and plants had lost their leaves already. But since when does logic rule the life of a sixth grader? The spruce trees, which were still fully covered in needles and therefore vast green curtains of terror, hid unimaginable horrors behind them, and were the chief cause of my distress. After moving perhaps five or six feet down the driveway in this manner, I would finally get up just enough nerve to shoot forward, running as fast as I could the rest of the way down the driveway, through our parking area, up the grass along the edge of our yard, and under the stairs where we kept the key to the house hidden for my use.

In my head, I was running a thousand miles an hour each time, but I always new that if an actual werewolf wanted to get me, there was no way for me to stop him. Because I knew that simply running fast was not one of the werewolf rules. I had no silver bullets, let alone a gun, and knew that I was pretty defenseless. My previous fear of dealing with the Big Bad Wolf, which you might recall was centered around the lower driveway and stairs on our property, was frightening enough but he could be dealt with by cartoon pigs by simple trickery. I was pretty tricky myself, so I knew that if it came down to it, I could handle him; I just wished to avoid the situation altogether. But werewolves were different. They were usually supernaturally based, and had to be dealt with using arcane magicks and herbs and very specific elements.

And when I finally got inside my house, what was it that I would do? Would I hit my homework like a good boy (and like I was supposed to do)? Would I do my few chores, because I was the oldest and given some responsibility, and which was why I was allowed to come home early instead of staying at the babysitter's house a couple of streets away with my brothers? Or would I pray to Jesus to protect me from the werewolves that were surely after me? Most of the time, none of the three. Sometimes some homework would get done, and sometimes some chores would, but most of the time, I would turn on the local CBS-TV affiliate, KTVA, and watch whatever chunk of that afternoon's matinee monster movie was left. In the summers, I got to watch the entire movie, but in the winter, I would just tune in and see what movie it was and catch the second half of the film. This was fine, because that was usually where most of the good monster action was anyway – the second half – or where all the big monster reveals were if the film depending on them.

I don't remember the name of the program or if it even had a title. This is strange because the films it showed were never to be forgotten by me. The program aired classic (or non-classic, depending on your viewpoint) horror and science-fiction movies – mixed with the occasional Sherlock Holmes mystery or film noir adventure – and of the monster flicks, they were chiefly from Universal, AIP, and Toho. As a result, this is where I got my basic education on the films from those studios. It's where I finally got to see those Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolf Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon films I was reading about in the then-waning days of the original run of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. I also was able to catch the bulk of the original Showa period of Godzilla and other kaiju films from Toho. Other favorites which I would first see on this program were The Manster, The Monster that Challenged the World, Fiend Without a Face, It Came from Outer Space, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Black Scorpion, The Deadly Mantis, Son of Kong, The Green Slime, This Island Earth, and most importantly, The Thing from Another World. And yeah, this is where The War of the Gargantuas became such a glorious, ridiculous obsession for me.

However, mostly due to timing of when I started watching this afternoon monster matinee show, Universal's acclaimed House of Horrors, filled to the rafters with its famous monsters, would not show up on the program for me until later in my viewings. The Wolf Man, as a film and not just mere pictures in books or on trading cards, would not come fully into my life for another year or so, nor would other films in which the Chaney Wolf Man character appears, like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, or Universal's own preceding film in the subgenre, 1935's The Werewolf of London. But there was one film that aired on this matinee program that, with very furry fingers of its own, touched a quite specific nerve with me. And stuck with me for years...

The Werewolf (1956)

Fred F. Sears' The Werewolf nearly did me in as a kid. Seen today, it's a pretty enjoyable, quick little thriller (only 75 minutes, like many similar films), almost as much science fiction as it is horror, but I didn't care about such distinctions back in those days. I also didn't know that Mr. Sears directed, in the same year as The Werewolf, what would be one of my favorite science fiction films, Earth vs. Flying Saucers (though that was mainly due to Ray Harryhausen's still immensely appealing and famous special effects sequences). He also directed another film that would become of my "so bad, it's good" faves to this day, The Giant Claw, a ridiculous giant bird flick that features effects that serve as the complete opposite to Harryhausen's sublime animation in his other, better sci-fi film.

But The Werewolf doesn't rely on flying saucer or giant monster effects; the monster is human-sized in this film, and it isn't necessarily the title creature. It is a detail I would not realize until the second time I encountered the film, but while there is indeed a werewolf at loose in this film and by almost any definition he could be described as a monster, the true evil in this film is via the hands of a pair of mad scientists attempting to track down their creation, as well as the majority of townspeople who go over the top in their attempts to shoot down and kill what is, for the most part, a very sick and unarmed man in this film. It might seem too easy to you that I would take the position of declaiming a large group of humans in the film as "the real monsters" – especially since it is how I tend to view most of the unthinking proportion of the human race – but the film itself makes this distinction in having a smaller group of good guys trying to find and help the poor man to safety.

My first viewing (and therefore, earliest memory) of the film was near the halfway point of its running time, since I turned on the television mid-afternoon after having just battled my werewolf fears to find myself face to face with one of those same creatures on our now (in hindsight, given the current standards) ridiculously tiny television screen. I was seeing a transformation scene that made my blood run cold for not just the remainder of the winter, but for quite a time afterward.

A nervous and clearly brain-addled man, Duncan Marsh (played by Steven Ritch) stands inside a cave confronted by another man, a mad scientist dressed as a hunter, bearing a rifle. In the woods outside, a posse led by the local sheriff (Don Megowan) is trying to track Marsh down, seemingly for a series of local deaths, both human and animal. Marsh doesn't understand what he has done, and begs the other man to tell him why his pursuers wish to kill him if he hasn't done anything to them. Suddenly, as his anxiousness and fear grows, Marsh starts to hyperventilate, and then his deep breathing noises turn into a series of growls. He transforms before the eyes of the scientist, in what was to me one of the most frightening things I had seen on television at that point in my young life.

The effect is not particularly smooth or well-done (Universal did it a bit better), but his face gradually becomes hairier. Where this werewolf has it all over Chaney, Jr. and others, perhaps harkening back to Mamoulian's version of Dr. Jekyll, is the look of pure bestial terror and then confidence in Marsh's eyes as he changes, and then the sickening way he drools out of his mouth and over his chin as he advances on his would-be attacker. Marsh is far more frightening to me mid-transformation than when he is fully transformed, for when he staggers out of the cave, his attacker fleeing, his once tight, shorter wolf hair is much shaggier and fairly ridiculous looking. Honestly though, just about anyone dressed as even the simplest, even silliest, version of a werewolf could have sent me running for shelter back in those days. I was eleven years old, living in the woods, and frightened to death of werewolves and Bigfoot. A plastic Ben Cooper Halloween mask could have done the trick on me.

Aside from the mostly effective makeup, there were several elements of The Werewolf that clearly forced the film to stick in my cranium as much as it did. The first was the fact that most of the action in The Werewolf takes place in the light of day. There is no full moon affecting Marsh's behavior. He can change into his wolf form by merely being angered or scared. Most importantly, there is no silver bullet to cure his condition; a regular bullet will do. It is an important note to make, though I doubt that I took notice at the age of eleven, but there was nothing supernatural at all about this version of the werewolf. His condition was brought upon him, like the monsters of many a film from the 1950s, from exposure to radiation; in this case, after Marsh showed signs of amnesia after waking up from a car accident, two scientists gave him a dose of irradiated blood from a wolf. Why wolf's blood? Well, they had it on hand, having one of the creature's caged for study. And did I mention that the main scientist is just a bit mad in nature, being not just thoroughly committed to his study, but also absolutely intent on saving his own hide by murdering Marsh before the authorities can catch the poor man.

The setting, too, was instrumental in my fascination with the film. While so many monster flicks took place in far off places like jungles or Transylvanian villages or in big, thriving cities that I could only dream about visiting, The Werewolf was in a world recognizable to me. Shot in Big Bear, California, The Werewolf takes place in the mountains, with homes and buildings surrounded by forest, not necessarily the same types of trees that I had in my mountain area home in Eagle River, Alaska, but the mood was the same. Likewise, the opening shot in the film of a small town street lined with bars, restaurants, and pharmacies could have been a crawl through Anchorage's then grungy downtown area – namely 4th Avenue – of my memory. Additionally, some scenes rely on the werewolf's tracks being seen in the snow, which was also a new touch for me, and instantly reflected upon my own walks home from the bus stop, where the snow became a most willing participant in giving away my whereabouts to the creatures lurking about me in the trees.

While The Werewolf takes place in the 1950s, it it not a 1950s of sock hops and teenagers, fast cars and girl chasing. The men are hard drinking (the very first scene takes place in a bar and eventually ends up in an alleyway mugging), their basic clothes are not much different from the working class people of my Alaskan neighborhood not quite twenty years after the movie was lensed. At the very least, the men in the film looked like the photos of my relatives that I saw in family photo albums, where several deer would be tied across the front of an automobile while men and sometimes women stood stiff-armed and awkwardly for the picture. Most of our own neighbors were at least weekend outdoorsmen, if not consistent in that behavior. My own parents loved fishing, and my dad hunted occasionally, and so the gear that went with such a lifestyle was as apparent in our lives as it was in the people populating this film. And while seeing a car from the 1950s on the street today is an indescribable pleasure (for the most part, depending on condition), 1975 was not so far removed that I didn't see cars from that then slightly older decade pretty regularly both on the road and in surrounding neighborhoods. The world of The Werewolf, with some minor differences in behavior and dialogue, was close enough to my own forest and hill-filled town to add an extra layer of verisimilitude to its "B" movie plotline.

Something that would come to me on my second showing of the film that I rather missed in the first was the sympathy that the picture has for its lead character. The first time around, I pretty much just entered the story with the transformation that I described, and then the rest of the picture is Marsh being captured, the scientists breaking into the jail to do away with him, his escape from the jail, and then the pursuit and stopping of the werewolf. What I missed was the large amount of character work that goes into establishing Marsh, his wife and small boy who feared him dead, the local doctor, the evil scientists, and others. Marsh is completely sympathetic, and even some of his actions as the wolf are him fighting against this uncommon nature that has been thrust upon him. Certainly there is much about the picture that is patently ridiculous, but it is played so straightforward, and the drama is never allowed to be anything but true to its characterizations, that – perhaps apart from some of the werewolf shots (and this depends entirely upon the viewer's tolerance for such things), the film never truly comes off as campy.

Piling a viewing of The Werewolf on top of the book of werewolves with the picture of Les Lupins was nearly a deadly combination for me. If I was scared to walk home because of werewolves having just seen the Maurice Sand's picture, I was practically crapping my pants after seeing Duncan Marsh drool in the cave and then tear apart two evil scientists in a jail cell. (Luckily, I never actually crapped them.) Les Lupins, with its grouping of werewolves lounging about in sinister suggestion in front of that cemetery wall may have overtaken my imagination, but that scene suddenly had a companion: The Werewolf's full, cinematic close-up of a werewolf's face – however silly the makeup might seem today – and it took just that single look at half the film for me to springboard my fears to even greater heights.

If you are among those who think that growing up and getting past such irrational feelings is easy to do, keep in mind that I have been a lifelong pedestrian. I catch rides where I can, and take the bus as often as I am able, but walking about is usually my main means of transportation. Sure, it is by my own design, and I could be locked comfortably behind the wheel of a car in scary situations like the rest of you if I only changed my habits. So in most ways, it is my own fault that I have often found myself in some pretty dark, secluded places in my meanderings, in some fairly awful neighborhoods by accident, and sometimes in situations where I have gotten more of the night world than I really wanted to get. My life has actually been threatened a couple of times but I managed to get out of them. 

But even with that, finding myself all alone on a quiet road, at dusk, with the moon peeking through the trees along the sides of the road, is something that still triggers those childhood fears, albeit for a brief moment or so. It is in those moments where often a stray thought of Duncan Marsh from The Werewolf, snarling and drooling, desperate in action and quick of claw and fang, will enter my mind. However, as time has passed for me, most often those thoughts have receded from the primeval fear of the monster and drifted instead to identifying not just with the monster, but as the monster. Just another lost, lonely creature who must keep fighting, howling in rage, and running constantly to distance himself from an increasingly senseless and uncaring world.

Sure, such thinking is maudlin and counter-productive, and it's not like my life isn't filled with both love and long-standing friendship. Sometimes, though, I can't help it. One cannot always control one's emotions, and one cannot help but let irrational fears sneak in from time to time to subvert one's worldview. Such slips can affect any one of us, or even masses of us, as we have seen recently in how our country seems so split apart right now. For my part, almost without noticing it, I slowly grew past my ridiculous, early fears of such imaginary things as werewolves (though I have still maintain a healthy respect for Bigfoot, just in case he actually does exist). I have new fears now, some brought on by a prolonged and unwanted spell of unemployment (which is only in recent months starting to break down) and money concerns, and others brought on by political upheaval and uncertainty in the bonds of certain close relationships. I'm a grown-ass man, as one variation of a current popular catchphrase goes, and as such, I can't worry about werewolves anymore.

But, goddamnit, I am going to snarl and claw and fight like one when the time calls for it. Who says I never learned anything from all of these silly cartoons and movies?

RTJ

The Psychotronic Video Guide: Straight to Video but a Long Time to Letterboxd

[This post has been published simultaneously here and on my new film book website – V for Voluminous, C for Cinema. To read this post on that site instead, go to https://vforvoluminous.wordpress.com/.]

The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film

by Michael Weldon
St. Martin's Press/Griffin | 1996
Trade paperback | 646 Pages

1st U.S. edition

My love for Michael Weldon's 1983 book, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, is well-known to my friends and longtime readers of my websites. Much of the early drive of my original blog, The Cinema 4 Pylon, was dedicated to playing catch up (in a series of posts that went by the title "Psychotronic Ketchup") in trying to see all of the films within that book, a volume which contained roughly 3,000 film titles of the not exactly middle of the road variety.

If there is a book within my library that I consider to be a "bible," though not in a truly religious sense of course, it is Weldon's Encyclopedia. As rough hewn and lowbrow as it is, for a fan of so-called "trash" cinema, it is indispensable. Before that book, which was published by Ballantine Books at roughly the same time I started working for a book chain in Anchorage, Alaska, Weldon put out a fanzine (that I never saw back in the day) called Psychotronic TV. After the Encyclopedia came out, he transformed his fanzine into a more widely distributed publication (though still pretty much tied to its fanzine roots in its sporadic publishing schedule and DIY aesthetic) titled Psychotronic Video. I grabbed a copy any chance that I got, and sure enough, just like with the book, I was always certain to read about films that made my head spin. I couldn't fathom that some of the titles could even be considered, let alone actually filmed and put into theatres or on video.

The magazine ran until 2006, when Michael Weldon finally closed the doors on the psychotronic world for good, but before that he put out a sequel to his first book. In 1996, Weldon published The Psychotronic Video Guide, an even larger book than the Encyclopedia in dimensional size, but it has a couple of hundred less pages and the rough movie count comes out around the same (at least according to Weldon's foreword) to somewhere around 3,000 films.

Since the Encyclopedia was published, the home video market really blew up throughout the eighties and into nineties, and straight-to-video titles became a really big seller, especially in the genres in which Weldon specialized: science-fiction, horror, martial arts, and action... tons and tons of action films. The Video Guide came out just before DVD hit the United States and started to slowly take over as the primary video format within the next few years. Like the first volume, which concentrated heavily on the '50s through the '70s – the prime years of exploitation and drive-in classics – the Video Guide does a fairly thorough job of snapshotting the bulk of the '80s output up through the mid-'90s. A big difference this time, though, is the inclusion of actual video compilations in the mix (many of them by Johnny Legend and Rhino Video, for example), once video started to become a home for original content and not just a second-run arena for former theatrical titles. Hardcore porn titles – well, a good handful or two of them, when they have content that goes beyond just bedroom antics – are represented as well.

Weldon also took the time to class things up just a little bit with the inclusion of certain directors who were renowned for their flirtations with genre form, even when they were considered general masters of film itself, e.g., Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. Weldon did a similar trick in the first volume by including nearly every film starring Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre, whether or not the films were genre flicks or not. The assumption was that the very inclusion of these actors within any cast placed that film automatically within the psychotronic category.

Something I have noticed that is a slight difference between this book and the first is that Weldon seemed more intent on actually reviewing many of the titles on the second go around. In the Encyclopedia, he seems mostly content with saying "This film is loaded with zombies. And Nazis. And tons of gore and blood. And Christopher Lee is in it!" and leaving it at that. (That is a completely made up example, but it strikes the tone of many an entry.) Very rare is the paragraph that really rips into a film, though there are a handful of entries where either his disdain or his high regard for a film is pretty clear. In the Video Guide, he seems more comfortable with telling his opinion on whether not a film stinks, and really lets go on many films. It is an attitude that I really wish the first book had, and perhaps he was less comfortable with striking such an attitude when he was younger and more freshly excited about the "B" genre.

Now, because my life turned to one of married discord for many years in the late '80s and early '90s, when the second book came out, I was freshly divorced in my early thirties, and suddenly not worrying so much about watching 37 movies a day. As a result, even though I really enjoyed going through the Psychotronic Video Guide when I first bought it, I have never really used the second book as much as the original volume. It is odd for me to say this, but movies, for a brief period, went to the back-burner as I readjusted myself to single life, and so the Weldon books went by the wayside for a good while. And unlike the first book, where the enjoyment I experienced as an 18-year old was in playing catch up with psychotronic history up to that point in time, the bulk of the films in the Video Guide are titles that came out after I had just reached my (presumed) adulthood. So, when this guide was released, by my own misguided accounting, I had pretty much seen the ones listed in it that I really wanted to see (with a few glaring exceptions), and so never really pressed myself to play catch up (at the time) like I did The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

Then Letterboxd came into the picture...

When Letterboxd started up online a few years ago, after my initial flirtation with Flickchart (another movie site that I love), I created an account and started using Letterboxd to maintain my regular film diary, something I was already doing (and still do) via spreadsheet (there are still many titles, mostly shorts and cartoons, that I watch that do not show up in Letterboxd.) The site allows you great flexibility in creating lists of any size, and after they have been published, it shows you the percentage of films that you have seen and fades the title images as well, so you can focus on what remains to be watched. Pretty groovy function and the site looks nice as well. 

One of my first goals was to transfer the titles from The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film to Letterboxd so that I could not only easily figure out what I still needed to see, but so that others that might happen upon the list could use it for their own guidance through the "B" movie world. It took me a while to build those lists and when I was done, I sat back and thought, "There is no way that I could do this again." And then I started up on The Psychotronic Video Guide. I got a quick early start on the first couple of letters... and then let it sit for a year or two. Maybe even three. 

I kept getting remarks from users who liked the other Psychotronic lists begging me to create the rest of them. Finally, I decided to start using the last hour or so before bedtime to knock in a few more pages each night, and then took the giant book with me on my Alaska trip, knowing that I would have several hours each morning before my friends were up and ready to do things where I could make a pretty severe dent in the book. And now, two months after returning from that trip, I just put the finishing touches on the final letter, "W", and the entire book, save for a handful of titles not yet on Letterboxd under each letter (which are recounted in my notes), is now live on the site.

My Lists for The Psychotronic Video Guide on Letterboxd.com:

• Films Beginning with "A"
• Films Beginning with "B" 
• Films Beginning with "C"
• Films Beginning with "D"
• Films Beginning with "E"
• Films Beginning with "F"
• Films Beginning with "G"
• Films Beginning with "H"
• Films Beginning with "I"
• Films Beginning with "J"
• Films Beginning with "K"
• Films Beginning with "L"
• Films Beginning with "M"
• Films Beginning with "N"
• Films Beginning with "O"
• Films Beginning with "P"
• Films Beginning with "Q"
• Films Beginning with "R"
• Films Beginning with "S"
• Films Beginning with "T"
• Films Beginning with "U"
• Films Beginning with "V"
• Films Beginning with "W"
• Films Beginning with "X,Y, and Z"

And if you enjoy using these lists, feel free to leave a comment on Letterboxd or follow my page there if you decide to join yourself. It's a really wonderful website.

What It Is, My Man, and What It Will Be...

If you are the sort of person who is nice and polite and checks back regularly with websites you enjoy and wonders sometimes why a website for which you retain a particular admiration doesn't update more frequently, then this post is for you.

Of course, I would not dare to presume that my humble website might be counted amongst those sites for which you hold particular admiration, but on the off-chance that it is to be counted within that group, then please let your eyes drift downward.

I have not posted on The Cinema 4 Pylon since July 10, and that post was Part 1 of what was meant to be a multi-part excursion into the world of straight-to-video action thrillers, a genre which I have largely avoided in recent years. The post was triggered by an impromptu and cheap DVD purchase in a Wal-Mart in my then just-completed holiday trip up to my home state of Alaska, and there was never meant to be a two-month gap between the first part and even the merest mention of the second part.

The last thing I posted before that was on the day after I returned from my trip to Alaska on July 7. It too was Part 1 of what was meant to be a multi-part excursion into something completely different, this time into a personal history of Disneyland and how my sense of the place was completely warped by a seemingly innocent children's book in my youth. The Part 2 and the Part 3 to that Part 1 were already written by that point – in fact, were written even before I left for my Alaska trip at the end of June – but I started to rethink the piece after I posted Part 1, and so has now been sitting in limbo until I have time to revisit it again. But it is the same story as with the first Part 1 I mentioned... it was never meant to get to this place.

So, why have I not been posting on here?

Well, a myriad of reasons. I can give those reasons in a list, but such lists turn into excuses, and then it just becomes a case of lying to myself. Basically, what I am saying in the end is that the Pylon became less important to me than everything else in my life. 

That isn't true, of course: the Cinema 4 Pylon is meant to be a representation of my mind, and my mind is all that I have going for me when all is said and done. What has happened is that I split that mind into too many fragments in recent months, and some of those fragments have taken on a life of their own unexpectedly.

THE SHARK FILM OFFICE

Most important to me of late has been the success I have been having in getting The Shark Film Office to finally take off its water wings. The Shark Film Office has been around since 2006, but I just never committed to it back then, and kind of wrote it off altogether, especially when I went through my darkest period a few years ago and almost completely stopped writing. When I turned the engines back on the Pylon last September, however, I then followed suit on my animation blog, the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc. Once the Cel Bloc was up and running again to my satisfaction, I started to think seriously about The Shark Film Office and whether to revive it or not. There was a moment or two where my cursor hovered over the "Delete Blog" button (I, of course, had saved out all of my text elsewhere), but doing so seemed to trigger something in my head. I started thinking more and more about how I would do the site if really, truly committed to the shark site.

Knowing that Syfy had a full week of shark movies coming up at the end of July with six brand new premiere films was the kicker, and just before that was the latest edition of Discovery's Channel's Shark Week, which allowed me to expand to documentary reviews as well. But something happened on Google+ for me that allowed me to rethink my whole plan. I was getting a ridiculous amount of views on my Google+ page, far more than any of my friends on there were getting, and it was all happening since I started up the Pylon again last year. I don't know what triggered it, but now my Google+ posts were showing up high in search results for any subject on which I posted, most often in the Top 10 results. Sure, I would rather that the actual articles would show up in the search results instead – but, hey, a link is a link, and these results were translating into Rik-diculous numbers of views and in turn getting people to visit my websites.

THE DYNAMIC DUO

In this mix are a couple of other projects that my writing partner and erstwhile pal, Aaron Lowe, and I have been bashing out over the past few months that have also proven to be a lot of fun and get us a little notice lately: Visiting and Revisiting with Rik and Aaron and We Who Watch Behind the Rows: Stephen King in Print and on Film.

I have written about both of these projects on this website already, and you can find out more on both by visiting the links to them above or going into my bio page. Of course, we have run into some difficulties in not just maintaining both of our own original sites (his is Working Dead Productions) when we spread ourselves out a tad thin with not just extra blogs, but also in maintaining a working life and a family life. In my case, I had been out of work for well over a year, which has allowed me a lot of free writing time and given me an opportunity to revive the blogs and get my shit together in that regard. Additionally, I have a wife who works, but our only charge is a small cat. In Aaron's case, he has a regular job and a wife and daughter, though they expanded recently with the addition of a second newborn daughter. So, now his writing is often done with baby in one hand.

We have really enjoyed the first response to our first few attempts on both sites (the first several articles for each, you might recall, were split between our respective pages before we decided to build new sites for each title), and have big plans moving forward. Aaron and I are always throwing around ideas for a podcast, either audio or video, though I seem to be the one really holding us back in that regard.

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN

Coming up first though, is the annual Countdown to Halloween in October, something in which both Aaron and I have taken part in recent years, and plan to continue this year. Countdown to Halloween is a handy site which allows people who run Halloween-oriented blogs, or blogs related to horror, toys, candy, masks, costumes, etc., to gather in one place and have people who are into any of those topics easily find websites of interest. Taking part in the Countdown gives bloggers access to badges they can display on their site and allows them to expand their audience.

I don't know what Aaron has planned for his own site, but here is what I can tell you about two of mine and We Who Watch as well:

The Cinema 4 Pylon – Semi-regular posts throughout October on various monster toys in my collection, more about monster trading cards, Halloween music posts, and a couple more editions in my relatively new The Monster's on the Loose! series, where I discuss the horror-related films, shows and cartoons that were most instrumental in developing my interest in the genre when I was but a wee lad.

Cinema 4: Cel Bloc – I have articles on several cartoons planned for October, all with spooky themes (naturally), with a concentration on Walt Disney cartoons this time. Scheduled shorts to include Lonesome Ghosts (1937), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949), Sicque! Sicque! Sicque! (1966), Spooks (1930), and Trick or Treat (1952).

We Who Watch Behind the Rows – Aaron and I are spending part of September reading Stephen King's first officially published novel Carrie (1974) and then watching the four film projects derived from it: Brian De Palma's seminal version (1976), the rather belated and unnecessary sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) with Emily Bergl, the unnecessary TV remake (2002) with Angela Bettis (who makes it watchable, of course), and the still unnecessary theatrical remake (2013) with Chloe Grace Moretz. Then we will post about all of them throughout the month of October. Sorry to tip my hand on the films, but I haven't rewatched them yet; those are just my opinions going into this process, having seen all of them before. [There is also a Filipino version of Carrie, though I doubt we will find a copy in time for this series.]

We have not discussed plans for a Halloween film or two on Visiting and Revisiting, but that may be because it is hard to find horror films that neither one of us hasn't seen already. The next film we plan to cover there is Miracle Mile, which we will hopefully get to in the next week or two.

BACK 2 THE BASE

The robustness of our combined plans, of course, are always going to be hampered and/or enhanced by what we do personally. Speaking for myself – and really, I probably shouldn't even be that bold – I have told you all of this without relating to you the good fortune of recent weeks: that I have started to pick up freelancing work. Yes, this means money, which is alway a good thing to have, but it has also meant a reduction in the amount of free time that I have at hand lately. It started out small, as a mere handful of hours that has blossomed into a great many more than I was anticipating, and it has been nice to be able to work completely from home and at my own pace. And now a second project has landed in my lap at the same time, so I am now having to learn how to balance this along with everything else. But I feel productive in a societal and monetary sense again, and this will helpfully keep the wolves at bay for a short period.

In the end, I will be posting here on the Pylon again regularly, I just need my schedule to align with my goals a little more. For now, blog-wise, I remain focused on the shark site online, but there is another contender for my time of which I have yet to speak except to a small handful of individuals. Even with this utterance, I hope that they shall remain mum as to its details in the public venue, especially in response to this posting.

I have committed myself to a personal writing project offline that will hopefully turn into a completed book over the next year's time. Knowing that I am a few months into the project will also give you another idea as to why The Cinema 4 Pylon has suddenly been relegated to second class citizen status within the universe of its own creation. More details will be released in coming months. Or not at all, if the entire thing goes kablooey on me. In which case, forget you ever read this...

RTJ