We Who Watch Behind the Rows: Graveyard Shift, Pt. 2

[This is Part 2 of our discussion of Stephen King's short story, Graveyard Shift, and its 1990 film adaptation. To read the first part of this discussion, in which my partner Aaron Lowe and I dive deeply into the short story, visit Aaron's website, Working Dead Productions, here.]

*****

The Film: Graveyard Shift 
[1990, Paramount Pictures; directed by Ralph Singleton; screenplay by John Esposito]

Rik: I saw the film version of Graveyard Shift in a movie theatre in Anchorage, Alaska in 1990. I was fully excited to watch the film, as I was then still quite hopeful that cool flicks could be built out of King’s stories. At that point in time, the hit-or-miss ratio for King films was still decidedly (at least in my opinion) on the hit side, thanks in part to filmmakers such as De Palma, Kubrick, Hooper, Cronenberg, Carpenter, and Reiner each delivering big on the entertainment front early on in the sub-genre. And yet, the overall quality had started to slip for me, with duds like Firestarter, Creepshow 2, and the King-directed Maximum Overdrive, so the ratio was bound to even out eventually.

And to say that we, as a group, walked out of the theatre entertained by Graveyard Shift would be an outright lie. It was a solid disappointment at the time, especially since we had fairly recently been thrilled pretty well by Pet Sematary, though the Tales from the Darkside film that came in-between was somewhat of a letdown. Graveyard Shift was more than a letdown for me; I hated it. Perhaps ignoring the fact that a film filled with rats and bats and mutant varieties thereof should make me feel like this, the film physically repulsed me. By the setting, by the acting, by the general sliminess of the thing… I was repulsed. I never recorded it off of cable as I did other King adaptations over the years, and I never watched it again until I just did for this conversation.

Aaron, what was your first experience with the film version of Graveyard Shift like? Do you remember how it affected you?

Aaron: As with the short story, I can’t tell you exactly when I saw it, but I can pinpoint where I was first introduced to the film: Video City on Jewel Lake Boulevard in Anchorage, Alaska. My family had a pretty regular routine at this time; every Friday my mom and siblings would drive over to either Blockbuster or Video City (Video City was closer, but Blockbuster often had a larger selection of the new releases) and rent one film each. Of course, the goal was to find something that everyone would be interested in, so no one had to suffer in boredom for their turn with the VCR, but I was the oldest and so I knew I had the luxury of staying up later than anyone else and having the TV to myself as long as I could keep my eyes open. As my love of film bloomed, I would often make solo journeys to Video City on my bicycle and peruse the selection for the umpteenth time, even if I wasn’t able to rent at the time. The one section I kept going back to was, of course, the horror section.

At the time, the horror section was its own tiny room with a saloon door dividing it from the kids’ section just outside. There were no racks in the center of the room; everything in the horror section was kept on the walls. The lights were dimmer in here, the walls were painted black and festooned with cotton spider webs. In the center of the room was a black pedestal upon which a glass case rested. Inside the case was a miniature coffin, and inside the coffin was an animatronic Dracula puppet about the size of an eight-year-old boy, hooked up to a motion sensor so that whenever someone entered the room he would pop up and say something in a thick Romanian accent. I do remember being startled by it early on, but eventually the room became a comfort to me, its relative isolation and emptiness (I’m surprised, looking back, how few people entered that section) always made me feel at home while I looked over the horrifying scenes on display.

VHS cover.

One of those scenes was the cover to Graveyard Shift, which was burned into my memory much more strongly than the movie itself (though, as it turns out, I remembered the movie pretty accurately). It’s not the most inventive of covers; just a grinning skull in a miner’s hat, but to this day the sight of it conjures positive associations. The movie itself did not exactly set my world on fire, but it’s eternally mixed up with the emotions and sensations of that time in my life, and as such I think my opinion of it remains higher than yours. Logically I know the movie isn’t very good, but in my memories I always enjoy it more than it probably deserves. Not that I think it’s a bad movie; there’s actually quite a bit in here that I think is great. 

You recounted feeling repulsed by the film on your initial viewing, and that’s certainly understandable. The characters are almost uniformly unlikable, and the film is almost oppressively grimy, but I think that’s actually one of the movie’s greatest strengths. The short story gives the aura of sweaty nights doing dirty work with dirty people, and the film version translates that pretty accurately. It also grasps the concept of the ‘Stephen King small town’ better than most filmed versions of his works. Graveyard Shift was filmed in Harmony, Maine, with certain location shots made in Bangor, and the decision to film in the actual places Stephen King was writing about pays off great dividends. What we see of the small town in this film straddles that line between quaint and rundown that I associate with all of the small towns in Alaska I’ve visited or lived in. It’s also a pretty good representation of the background I always imagine when reading Stephen King’s books (from what I’ve seen and read, Maine and Alaska share many similarities, at least on a surface level).

The film goes a little overboard at times with the hostility of the locals towards Hall, but I think I can excuse that the same way I can excuse the broadness of the character work in some of King’s own writing. Giving the local mill employees anger towards Hall is a bit odd, given that in the story they seem to be friendly with him, and there are signs they actually respect him (certainly more than they respect Warwick, at least). There’s a bit where Hall orders food at the one diner in town, and someone has a dead rat delivered on his plate. Beyond being senseless, I just thought about how that restaurant would immediately be shut down for an inspection if someone were throwing around dead, possibly disease-ridden rats.

The one place the film really fails for me, though, is in the depiction of the rats. Once, while working a nighttime security job, I happened upon a rat large enough that at first I thought it was a kitten, or a puppy (certainly it seemed larger than the rodents I had been around at that point), and only as I drew closer did I realize what it was. This rat was crouched in shadow, and as I passed within two feet of it, it refused to budge. It just stared at me with its beady eyes. That was honestly unnerving, and made me understand how some people can fear rats. It’s what came to mind while I was reading the story, but in the film they just seemed cuddly. In the story, the rats are described in disgusting terms, and make for some squirm-inducing reading. In the film, however, they’re forced to use domesticated rats, and as someone who has owned rats in the past, I had trouble finding them imposing. Even when they gathered by the dozens and surrounded characters ominously, I couldn’t stop thinking about how cute they looked perched atop rafters. They use the usual tricks of filmmaking to make them look wild and scary; basically, they matted their fur with various liquids, but it was to no avail; those rats were just too adorable to find menacing. 

Leaving aside, for now, the larger vermin we’ll meet later on, how did the rats do for you in the film? Did they give you the heebie-jeebies, or the warm-and-fuzzies?

Original U.S. movie poster

Rik: Neither. My heebies weren’t jeebied and my fuzzies weren’t warmed. I have far more limited rat experience than you do, but I have held a few of them through my years. My brother, as a young adult, had a pet rat, and I did have the opportunity of getting to know him a bit on a personal level (got to know the rat as well). There was also a swell rat named Willie in a biology class in high school of whom I was fond. Because I had a dispute with the teacher over another matter, I was accused initially by her of the rat’s death when it was murdered – along with numerous fish and other creatures -- during the school year. I was totally innocent, and the true culprits were found out and expelled. But I still hated that teacher. (When she ran for city government a few years later, I voted against her, even though we were politically similar.) Taken on their own terms as individuals, I am as open to rats as any creature; I am not sure how I would react, though, in a situation where I was alone with a wild one in the dark, let alone being surrounded by hordes of them. I grew up with rat movies like Willard and Ben, along with assorted others, though I tended to side with the people who were friendly to the rats, and not to their victims. The rats in Graveyard Shift were just rats to me, and posed no real menace in my eyes. But I also knew that there was something bigger underneath the mill, and so that was the direction of the true horror of the story. Rats were really just the appetizers for the horror enthusiast’s palate, so to speak.

And rats had nothing to do with what repulsed me about the film. It was just a general, as you suggested, griminess that wore me down and kept me at arm’s length from the thing. This was at another decidedly more immature time, however; while I am no more grown-up when I wish to be, it is necessary now for me to try to automatically accept a film’s general setting and mood (when I indeed feel it is appropriate to the story) and not let my personal obsessions or denials affect the viewing. But in my younger days, an unappealing setting or even a detail such as costuming could turn me away from films at their outset (though this was a very inconsistent device that I employed, and I think that I often used it as an excuse to just not see certain films).

Setting aside my initial feelings towards the film, having seen it a couple times more now recently, I absolutely agree that if anything works about this film, it is the setting and atmosphere. The hot, fetid air of the textile mill and its denizens, both townies and ratties, and eventually, the presumably even worse conditions of the sub-basement, is tangible and unpleasant, but adds immeasurably to the film. 

Getting back to your first points, what did turn me off from the film far more than in the short story was indeed the overly pushy and often disgusting behavior of the small town's inhabitants towards Hall (except the ladies, of course). Even though I shouldn't do this, I often place myself in the same situation when I watch a film and ask what I would do when confronted with such behavior. The answer is almost always, "Get the fuck out of that town right now. Catch the first bus and just head out." Again, I know that this is an impossible stance in relation to watching simple characters in a simple movie entertainment, but as I have tried through much of my life, I feel it is just best to avoid people who are outright assholes in the first place, and have found that the most obvious way to avoid them is to not go to places that they frequent once you have discovered they are there.

But Hall sticks around. And they tease him and try to get him to react in some way to their assholery, and then they try to feed him a rat for dinner. I too had thought about the health board coming down on that bar/eatery, especially in a story where the plot hinges around a county ordinance to have the basement of the textile mill cleaned up or else. If they are so gung ho about a small town textile mill having safe working conditions, you would think they would be equally hardcore about a place that serves food. But the bartender/owner is likely to be on good footing with the assholes pulling the prank on Hall, and he’s not going to talk. Old boy networks, you know. They may not wish to shit where they eat, but you can sure serve a rat dinner to an out-of-towner who will likely have no one to back up his story if he chose to “rat” anyone out at city hall. To be sure, it is a weird, off-putting scene, one that I found personally disgusting due to the still-shocking memory of seeing the original Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in my youth.

Mr. Subtle as a Crutch, Brad Dourif.

Speaking of adding atmosphere to a killer rat movie, the always creepy Brad Dourif has a small role in Graveyard Shift as a professional exterminator. The role is not in the story, and he seems to have simply been added to give a little more horror street cred to the film. While Dourif, a personal favorite since Cuckoo’s Nest for me, has an extremely over-the-top manner to his acting most of the time, he does nicely fill the role of the probably unhinged but oddly dedicated (perhaps too dedicated) exterminator. The role almost seems inconsequential to the rest of the film, however, and feels almost like filler, meant to distract from the general plot just enough to throw us off from the film’s true direction. What are your thoughts on Mr. Dourif?

Aaron: Brad Dourif was the source of the largest disconnect between my memories of the film and the actual film itself. In my memory, “The Exterminator” (as he is billed in the opening credits) was a larger part of the movie, and I had vague recollections of him leading the surviving cast members through some subterranean tunnels. In fact, The Exterminator never interacts with anyone from the main cast outside of Warwick, and it’s entirely likely that Dourif never even met the rest of the actors. This happens a lot in low budget films that snag a recognizable name for their cast; the film can’t really afford to have the name actor on set for the entire shoot, and so they film a bunch of scenes with an often reduced crew and maybe one or two other members of the cast over a couple of days. These scenes rarely, if ever, intersect with the main plot in any meaningful way, and it’s always super-noticeable when a production is basically getting an actor to do them a favor. 

As for your question, my thoughts on Mr. Dourif remain the same every time I see him; he is a supremely welcome presence. Odd, intense, and watery-eyed, Brad Dourif brings a jolt of unpredictable energy to every scene he appears in, and genre filmmakers should thank the deity of their choosing that he apparently attacks even the most minor role in the most off-brand film with the enthusiasm of a stage actor tackling the works of Shakespeare. He can and does go over the top frequently, but there’s always a passion behind it that extends beyond mere scenery chewing. There’s always something unsettling and unwholesome about Brad Dourif (it’s no coincidence he’s known primarily for playing killers and slimeballs), and I can easily see him adding to the general sense of unpleasant griminess that soured you on this film way back when.

You mentioned already that his character and plotline are new to the film, and have no analog in the source material. I believe his involvement signifies the largest alteration of the source material. His efforts to rid the building of rats are especially notable, as the characters in the story quite pointedly don’t care about getting rid of the rats, but rather they just desire to get away from them. His scenes also add an oddly literal meaning to the short story’s title, as he meets his fateful end while searching for the source of the rats in a nearby, shockingly ruined cemetery.  You could say that the story also contains zero women, and certainly no love interests or feuds inspired by sexual jealousy, but their creation for the film is no great stretch of the imagination. It’s easy enough to imagine Hall becoming involved with a woman in the town, or that Warwick is a sexist creep.

Original DVD release.

It may be this very invention that heightens the sense of disconnection in Dourif’s scenes, because aside from them and the aforementioned female characters, Graveyard Shift stays pretty faithful to the source material. The film feels very much like a natural extension of the original’s 26 pages. Whereas many Stephen King adaptations seem to throw out most of the original plot and invent out of whole cloth a new story to support the ‘hook’ of the project, Graveyard Shift’s alterations seem to actually extend naturally from the original story. Sure, characters and plot details are created, and events in the story are expanded or heightened, as would be required for a feature film, but everything seems to build off of the short story’s skeletal structure. This is true in regards to details both small (most of the belligerent townies bear the names of people mentioned in the story) and large (Warwick mentions in the story that lights have been strung in the basement, while in the movie we actually get to see the poor man stringing those lights up, and the dismal fate that awaits him).

Not all of this works, of course. I never felt really involved in the struggles Hall faced in the town, for many of the reasons you already listed. Hall should just move on, there’s absolutely no reason he should stick around that grimy little town. When we meet him he’s just arrived in town and is met with open hostility from the male population and smug disdain from, apparently, the only person in the entire town who is hiring. Plus I never cared about who was sleeping with whom and who was jealous because of it. Clearly drama needs to come from somewhere, but none of this was very interesting or unique. In fact, just having seen the film recently, I’m finding it hard to remember the details of these plotlines. All of these films feel like what they are; time fillers to keep us occupied until the next death scene.

There’s one other big change to the story, of course, which is the ending. In the short story, we get Hall urging on Warwick to his death, only to succumb shortly thereafter to the attentions of a mutated bat. In the movie there is, apparently, only one large mutated rat/bat creature, for which the rats we’ve seen so far are merely harbingers. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they seem to hang around the large creature in hopes of getting at the leftover scraps of whatever it happens to kill. In the film, the ending starts out following the one in the story, but diverges pretty strongly once Warwick seems to enter a ‘Nam flashback and begins painting his face with mud from the tunnel floors. In the film neither Warwick nor Hall react the way they do in the story, and the film ends in one of those mad dashes through byzantine caverns while trying to avoid the killer. 

I know you weren’t creeped out or charmed by the rats in the films, but I’m curious how you felt about the final monstrosity on display; the giant bat/rat. It’s a practical effect, and plenty gruesome looking, but it also failed to excite my more discerning adult eyes. I don’t actually remember being wowed by at as a kid, either, but I certainly remembered it being more distinct and, well, cooler than it is. It’s a bit too asymmetrical, and rubbery, like the entire puppet was melted a bit before being put in front of the camera. Of course, it is a monster, and in concept I think it’s pretty cool, so it’s not a total loss for me. But how did it stack up with you?

Rik: Speaking of Warwick’s ‘Nam flashback (which I didn’t really pick up on until you mentioned it) – I just thought he was doing what jerks consumed with their own testosterone do when put in such a situation – The Exterminator has a line in reference to his own Vietnam experiences that might be my favorite line in the film. He yells, “I ain’t talkin’ one of those burning babies fuck-ups played by Bruce Dern!!” It’s exactly the sort of line that you would give to somebody like Brad Dourif to knock out of the park (though I do wonder somewhat if it came out of an ad-lib).

The giant mutant bat-rat indeed looks very much like an oversized puppet at nearly every turn. As a puppeteer, I appreciate that it appears to be pretty functional and generally well designed; but how good is that design if it never truly attains life of its own for the viewer? But as a monster guy of long standing, I can appreciate it a bit more. It makes its rounds and has a couple of decent attack scenes. But the giant mutant bat-rat does seems to roam about outside of the sub-basement and attack people in the early parts of the film, even in the upper levels of the textile mills, so it does make me wonder exactly why it was important for the lock scene to be included in the film, beyond adding to the atmosphere. If it is not keeping the creature in, then surely it is to keep others out? So was the person who put it there even aware of the creature? Without the Varney reference that is included in the story, does anything about the revelation of the sub-basement mean anything, beyond giving the character a watery, nasty tunnel system to run around and die inside?


Closing Statements

Aaron: Honestly, this story did not need to be told in feature length. Not only does the expanded length sap some of the grisly energy of the short story, the film completely shies away from the one true source of mystery that should have been explored further: that strange lock and the mysterious Elias Varney. However, if you were to edit this down to an hour-long episode of an anthology show, I think you’ve got a pretty great short film. Cut out almost everything not happening in the mill, because it’s garbage, and stick with the disgustingly sweaty work environments and the revolting mutated vermin, and you’ve got a winner.

Your contextualizing of the bat-rat monster in terms of your love of puppeteering and monsters strikes me as a decent and more forgiving lens through which to view the film. It occurs to me that Graveyard Shift functions pretty much as a throwback to third-tier monster flicks of the ‘40s and ‘50s. It’s no Them!, but maybe closer to Tarantula. The type of film I’m generally more than happy to spend a lazy afternoon with. So why, then, don’t I afford Graveyard Shift the same status? As it turns out, after some reflection, I do.

I do not own Graveyard Shift, and I doubt I’ll ever pay to rent it again, but it’s not a movie I would turn my nose up at watching again. If it came on cable or streaming on whichever service I have at the time, I’d probably sit down for it again. If I view it as a faintly retro monster flick, with a melodramatic story I don’t care about (seriously, we’ve barely mentioned the non-rat plot, and I can’t muster the energy to discuss it any further) but a cool monster with some adequately bloody kills, Graveyard Shift becomes a pretty decent horror movie. Nothing amazing, nothing I’d really recommend to most people, but worth your time if you’ve set your expectations accordingly. In the meantime, however, I’ll stick to the story, which is at least brief enough to enjoy in just a few minutes.

Rik: I don’t know if I am ready to commit to calling Graveyard Shift a "pretty decent horror movie," but it is certainly better, on monster terms, than I remember it. The movie overall is also certainly far better than some of the films we will be tackling in the months ahead in this column. But on a level with Tarantula? Heretic… I would go more for The Woman Eater or Zombies of Mora Tau.

Aaron: I felt Tarantula was a good example, because it’s got a great monster (though superior special effects to Graveyard Shift), and a melodramatic plot that I cannot begin to care about. But again, it seems I might have slightly more positive associations with this film than you do.

Rik: It is indeed strange how we managed to avoid discussion of most of the sub-plots and shenanigans (apart from the rat dinner plate) going on in the movie that are not really related to the original story elements. They are by far the least interesting bits of the film, and so perhaps it is fine we have glossed over them, except there is one thing I would like to mention. As I hinted at much earlier, it is interesting that the character of Wisconsky in the story, a male, has not only been given a gender switch in the movie, but has also been made the love interest of Hall. The relationship goes far enough that Hall is protective of her until near the end of the film, but still seems to be a half-hearted element and not nearly as developed as it should be.

The equally subtle apple-eating stylings of Stephen Macht.

I will say that after seeing it anew a couple of times, I have had a turnaround on the acting of Stephen Macht in Graveyard Shift. I knew who the actor was coming into the film the first time – I was and am a massive fan of The Monster Squad, where Macht plays the policeman who likes to watch drive-in monster movies with his kid from their roof – but Macht’s forced New England accent annoyed me so deeply it pretty much made me write the film off immediately and probably made the film more of a disappointment to me than it probably would have been without The Monster Squad floating through my head. Now, however, I kind of like Macht in the role; he seems at one with the film’s atmosphere, and as far as a committed villain goes, he is certainly up to the task. I still think some of the character’s motivations are not thought through enough at screenwriting level, but as far as acting is concerned, I am at peace with Macht in the role.

One last thing: the song over the closing credits. The 1980s and 1990s were a glorious time if you liked really shitty closing credits songs, often using remixing, scratching, or hip-hop styling. Graveyard Shift closes with a remix using ridiculous quotes from the body of the film, tumbling haphazardly over a bubbling bass line and bursts of other instrumentation. I suppose that if you actually got caught up in the movie by some miracle, this might be a fun digestif, but I find it very silly and that, like many such songs, somewhat damages whatever atmosphere the film did manage to build. (Then again, maybe I am just taking everything a bit too seriously.)

Aaron: I cannot believe I forgot to say something about that shitty song. That song leaves me fairly speechless; it’s so ridiculous, and so divorced from the preceding movie’s tone that I can’t imagine the discussion that went into its inclusion. I can’t imagine who it was for, or what the intention was. It seems to belong to a different movie altogether. Tonally it makes no sense, because the preceding movie is fairly light on humor, but then the song isn’t very funny either, and doesn’t seem to be trying for humor. It has the appearance of a joke, but it isn’t really. It sort of fits with the film’s final shot, which is a sign for the textile mill saying ‘under new management’, but the film up to that point hadn’t indulged in any of those winking Tales From The Crypt-style flashes of humor (although, clearly, the film would have been much more memorable if it had had a sense of humor about itself). In fact, up until the literal final second, the film is a pretty grim affair, and the ending is dark enough that a quick joke and cheap novelty song feels like a vast misunderstanding of the material.

This is such a minor story, and such a forgettable film, and every time I think we’re done talking, something else comes up. Am I going to spend the rest of my life writing only about Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift? Will I begin working on our next piece, only to look up hours later and discover I’ve written seven pages on the wonders of Kelly Wolf’s midriff baring shirts? This movie and story have actually risen slightly in my estimation, yet for my own sanity I think I’m ready to be done with both of them for the foreseeable future.

*****

Rik: Thanks for checking out our first edition of We Who Watch Behind the Rows. Next time, we will be discussing another Stephen King story from his Night Shift collection, Night Surf. While Night Surf has never been turned into a feature film, it has been adapted numerous times into short, independent films through King's unique Dollar Babies program. We will review a few of those adaptations as well as dig into the story's surprising connections to his later classic novel, The Stand. See you then!

What's Up, Docs?: Twisted Foxcatchin' Sister and Mister

We Are Twisted Fucking Sister (2014)
Dir.: Andrew Horn
Cinema 4 Rating: 7/9

In the last installment of What's Up, Docs?, I lamented the fact that an HBO documentary about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- Kareem: Minority of One -- however excellently done throughout, ended its story too early in his life. I knew the subject's story up to the point of the film's conclusion, and I wanted to know far more about what Kareem has been up to in the years since he stopped being in the spotlight of everyday professional basketball life. For me, Kareem had all but disappeared, and I would only see him in fleeting cameo appearances on shows like The Colbert Report. For a man who writes books, makes music, and seems to have a flourishing artistic and spiritual life, this seemed a mistake to me. The film largely skipped over the many years since his retirement, and I felt this was a mistake in letting the viewer get to know its subject more intimately.

And now we come to the opposite case: We Are Twisted Fucking Sister, a documentary about the flamboyantly attired heavy metal band that dominated MTV in its early days. Everybody knows We're Not Gonna Take It and a good chunk of that "everybody" probably still remembers I Wanna Rock, their other major hit. Twisted Sister broke up for many years, but picked the guitars up again in the 21st century, still touring and rocking and smearing makeup on their faces. Lead singer Dee Snider often makes the news with outrageous statements or when he takes stands on various issues, and the band continues apace with most of their most famous lineup intact.

But I knew nothing about the band before they made it big. While I am certainly within the proper age range for the Twisted Sister fanbase, I was on the complete other side of the country in their club touring days, and never heard of them at all until MTV blew them up for the world. And their music was never really for me anyway. I ran through a short metal phase in about the same amount of time as my disco phase (which included zero dancing, just a brief like of the music in my tween years). I never discounted metal, and have many bands in the genre that I appreciate, but it was more in line with my general interest in rock overall, which takes in every genre and every shtick equally.

Now, I will admit to one thing about Twisted Sister that I truly love. I am a big fan of We're Not Gonna Take It, their most iconic song and their biggest hit. For me, the song is a distillation of every component that made for some of the greatest songs of The Who, and it is not hard for me to connect Dee Snider's wailing growl of the song's lyrics with those of Roger Daltrey in his youthful heyday. (Hell, the song even has a completely Xeroxed title from a song off of Tommy, even if the intent of the songs are dramatically different.) Snider thumbs his nose at society and its hangups with exactly the right combination of disdain and satiric purpose, and the taunting guitar solo at the song's center serves to back up his points. While I may have never become an actual "fan" of Twisted Sister, nor did I ever buy any of their records in the '80s, I will never deny that I (not so secretly) love We're Not Gonna Take It. As a document of its time, and even as a bona fide rock classic, I think the song still has what it takes. (I even think the video is still quite entertaining and holds up pretty well too.) And I always sing along when it comes on the radio.

Andrew Horn's documentary on the band is fully cognizant that we know who Twisted Sister is by this point, and that we know their biggest hits without ever having to really bring them up in a 135-minute film about the band. Yes, We Are Twisted Fucking Sister is quite long for what many might initially perceive as being a film about a not especially intriguing subject, especially when you consider that the story cuts off at the point that they get their big record deal with Atlantic Records and finally start getting promoted the way they believe they should have during their long tenure in the New York City area club scene.

The story starts off in typical film bio fashion with a recounting of how the band started, sans Snider, with original member Jay Jay French both running and managing the band. Like many bands that have lasted far beyond the time they probably should have, Twisted Sister had a revolving door that saw numerous permutations of the group come and go like clockwork, until finally settling upon the core that would lead to their success. It is well over an hour into the film before the fifth member of this core, drummer A.J. Pero (who died a few years ago) even gets mentioned, so you can see that director Horn was really intent on telling as much of their early story as possible, and never really worried about getting the whole story into the film.

And this is what fascinated me about We Are Twisted Fucking Sister. In most documentaries about a particular artist or band, you kind of glide through the early content until you finally arrive at what you would consider the meat of the story: when the hero makes it big, the bucks are there, and the party and success is nonstop for many year. You then ride that gravy train until the inevitable point where either there is a gradual easing into middle or older age, or there is some tragic circumstances looming for the subject that stops the party cold. In this film, the early years of struggle and frustration, of filling giant halls with sold out shows but receiving little to no support from producers and record companies, of being perceived as faddish or silly because of their stage antics, is the story. Horn knows we know Twisted Sister; he is fascinated with how they got to be Twisted Sister.

I have to admit, I found all of the club stories and the series of bizarre incidents that briefly forestalled their careers and the battles with record company heads too much fun. I loved the footage of their stage shows in dark, sweaty clubs in the late '70s, and hearing them pump out old Lou Reed and Judas Priest songs was pretty cool. The story (and footage) of their early British TV appearance where Snider brings Lemmy Kilmister and Brian Robinson of Motörhead onstage was also a highlight, and brings a unifying moment to their struggles over the years. The documentary only mentions their success in a tag at the end, and declares that it is "a story for another movie". If Horn intends to make a follow-up, I have no way of knowing, but I would certainly watch it after having seen this one.

I am unsure from the way that they talk about each other during their individual interview segments whether French and Snider are actually friends by this point -- they don't exactly rip each other, but it seems they have their differences -- but something has kept them together all of these years. It's probably the money, but if it's just the rock 'n' roll, then that's good enough for me.


Team Foxcatcher (2016)
Dir.: Jon Greenhalgh
Cinema 4 Rating: 7/9

I think that the major failing of the film Foxcatcher -- as good as I thought it was when it came out -- is that nose on Steve Carell. In trying to approximate the schnoz of murderous philanthropist John Eleuthère Du Pont, the filmmakers gave me a focal point I couldn't get past. No matter how terse the drama around the characters, and the fine acting of all involved, including the Oscar-nominated Carell, the fact is that the nose was just too much of a character of its own in the finished film; the way it added to Du Pont's thousand-yard stare, and the way it caused Carell to breathe through his mouth oddly. The entire time I was watching Foxcatcher, I kept telling myself, "Wow... Carell is really trying to disappear into this role," when the truth is that he really hadn't. His false nose, while done excellently on a technical level, had taken over the film, in much the same way that Nicole Kidman's did in The Hours.

Looking past the surface, the real truth is that John Du Pont was simply a weird guy. Yes, he had a nose that jutted out like his face like a patrician sculpture, but it wasn't that strange of a nose. It did give him an odd look, but in reviewing home movies and news footage of his philanthropic activities, what comes across more is the distant look in his eyes that never seems to really connect with anyone in the room, and that serves to make him seem like he is thinking of twelve other things that have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone around him. 

By most accounts, Du Pont was a lonely soul, who found friendship through his sports-related concerns, including building a training facility for amateur wrestling that would determine the course of his later life in tragic ways. He longed to be a successful athlete on his own terms, but what those terms were seemed to bend with the way in which others either treated him or were accepted by him, or with how far they would allow him to display his increasingly erratic behavior. That he was paranoid to a major fault is without a doubt, but how can one not be so when you don't really know if people like you or not? And when you are the one holding up the checkbook?

In Team Foxcatcher, a new Netflix documentary, the intent seems to be to tell the full story of Du Pont and the events that lead up to his eventual 1996 murder of Olympic champion wrestler Dave Schultz, whom he had befriended and brought to Foxcatcher Farms to train and coach the future stars of American wrestling. Not just American wrestling; he also had a deep fascination with a Bulgarian wrestler named Valentin Dimitrov; so deep that Du Pont (of reliably French lineage) proclaimed that he was actually Bulgarian at a certain point, when there is not a lick of proof that he was. But despite his, er, let's call them dalliances, with various wrestlers over the years, at the center of the story is his seemingly solid friendship with Schultz, a gold medal winner who came to live with his family at Foxcatcher with tragic results. 

The documentary downplays the angle involving Dave's younger brother, Mark (shown as the solid third point on the triangle in the film version), and concentrates more on the background and character of Du Pont himself: his mistrust of others, his isolation from the world on a two thousand acre paradise where he pretty much had carte blanche to operate any way he saw it, and the various characters who spun in and out of his circle. We also come to know Schultz's wife and children, all now grown, and hear their tales of living on the Farm around this oddball king of their world. 

The most fascinating part was the reaction of one of Schultz's daughters, who shows remarkable empathy for Du Pont after he died in prison in 2010 from chronic pulmonary disease, lamenting the fact that Du Pont died so alone in the world, even after murdering her father. It added an angle that I had not considered, that even in tales that have become so well documented as the Team Foxcatcher murder, we still might not understand fully all of the motives of the parties concerned or what drove them to their tragic ends.

Classic Sesame Street: Pinball Number Count

Epic number counting goodness from the early days of Sesame Street. Some of the funkiest music ever used on a children's program (with vocals by the Pointer Sisters) and some incredible pinball graphics made this truly memorable animation.

Sure, the segments are not very good at actually telling kids anything about the corresponding number other than repeating it over and over. There are some conceptual links, such as having the action around the number "9" take place on a baseball diamond, but in most cases, there is little connection. But who cares? 

Kick back for 12 minutes and 12 seconds and have your mind blown...

What's Up, Docs?: Electric Big-Bird-Kareem-a-Loo...

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
Dir.: Mark Hartley
TC4P Rating: 7/9

In the mid-1980s, after I had become a legitimate member of the working class and was sitting not so comfortably in my place at the bottom rung of the ladder, I still held starry-eyed dreams of film glory; of someday being discovered for my obvious but unrecognized talents, and that I would someday be feted as a great writer and director. That I didn't have the actual drive or knowledge (let alone talent) to become that person didn't matter. I was going to be the next Spielberg simply by the fact that I was just as much a movie nut as he was. I was compelled by the same obsession... who needed to do the leg work? 

In my day job at a news agency, I found out early on that we carried in our chain of bookstores, but only a particular couple of locations, the film industry journal, Variety. Not the daily version; we were in Anchorage, Alaska after all, and our pubs at the time were already so delayed by shipping woes that daily sales of the publication would have been ridiculous. But we did carry the weekly version, a thick chunk of tall newsprint that was still a couple of weeks behind when we carried it. 

For a few years, I would purchase my weekly Variety faithfully, and then play the absorbed media fanatic as I sat in hot dog shoppes and fast food restaurants perusing every single page of every single issue, scanning each ad, blurb, obituary, and chart, in trying to figure out the industry and exactly how I would make my inroad. I became wise to the Zack Norman mentions in each issue, an actor mostly known now for his supporting role in the Romancing the Stone movies alongside Danny De Vito, who laboriously purchased his own ads in Variety for many years to promote himself. (As MST3K would mock at one point, "Zack Norman is 'Sammy' in 'Chief Zabu'!) But mostly, from those bygone days reading through Variety in the '80s, I remember Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli producers who ran (mostly amok) promoting the "achievements" of their film studio named Cannon Films. It was hard to miss their ads in Variety. Like their movies, the ads for Golan-Globus productions practically screamed for attention, even when the product was a complete junker. But Golan-Globus at least knew how to get their movies made.

As a young film fan of that time, I was prone to seeing just about every big (and even low) budget action, science fiction, martial arts, and horror flick that happened across the big screen. And the Cannon Group was behind a whole hell of a lot of those flicks. Sly Stallone, Lou Ferrigno, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Sho Kosugi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, John and Bo Derek... they made 'em with Cannon. Masters of the Universe, Bloodsport, The Wicked Lady, Sahara, The Delta Force, Invasion U.S.A., Street Smart, Alien from L.A., and Cyborg? All Cannon. Hell, even Highlander started out as a Cannon production. Many of them were shitty, most of them were overrated, but all of them were crammed down the world's throats relentlessly by Cannon Films. 

Cannon started in the late '60s -- making their first huge American hit with Joe in 1970 -- drifted through the '70s making tons of making churning out low budget hits loaded with sex and horror, and then finally achieved its full terrifying form in the coke-fueled spit take that was the '80s. (My personal favorite of the Cannon oeuvre is Tobe Hooper's nekkid vampire opus, Lifeforce; in second place, Barfly) By the time they produced Runaway Train in 1985, they found they finally had an Oscar-nominated film on their hands, and for a short period, Cannon had a little cachet to pull in bigger name actors and talent. The ride went until the flops overcame them in 1988 (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace being a particular noticeable problem) and the money ran out. There was the threat of bankruptcy, a corporate sale, and the team of Golan and Globus finally broke apart over creative and monetary differences. (The pair even had competing films based on the lambada dance craze in production at the same time, one from Cannon with Globus as a producer, and the other based on a story by Golan and distributed by Columbia.) With its two frenetic leaders no longer together, Cannon sputtered along until it died quietly in the mid-'90s, releasing its last theatrical film, Chuck Norris' Hellbound, in 1994.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is a perfect encapsulation of that time. It is just as wild and over the top as the films of Cannon themselves, punctuated with hard to believe (but very true) stories and perfectly timed film clips from Cannon's still very impressive arsenal. The tale behind every would-be massive Cannon masterpiece is detailed, especially when those would-be hits turn into flop after flop after flop, and yet Cannon would not die. I wish it played with the currently popular documentary form a little more, and I wish the final result were a bit more slapdash, as the doc betrays a smoothness you could never apply to a Cannon film. But it is still a marvelously fun portrait of exactly how you can get films (and money) made if you don't really care about the end product. 

And it was chiefly because of the "never die" spirit of Cannon's two chief architects, Golan and Globus, relentless pushers of film mediocrity who didn't care so much if a movie made any sense as long as it had the potential to blow open people's wallets. Or care if they were actually making films that Americans want to see. (Most of the time, we didn't.) Thoroughly lacking in taste, a factor absolutely missing in the makeup of its two heroes, Electric Boogaloo (named after the second of the Breakin' series that, yes, Golan and Globus foisted upon the public) is a very American dream brought to life (and brought down eventually) by two out-of-towners who never truly connected with the public's interests.

There is an interesting postscript to this documentary where they mention that Golan and Globus, who never appear personally, turned down the filmmakers because they decided to make their own film about Cannon. The tag says their version -- titled The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films -- beat Electric Boogaloo to theatres by three months, but of course, the film is not available online or on Region 1 DVD as of yet. I doubt that I would ever shell the necessary bucks out to get their Region 2 import disc, and so my relationship with Cannon remains the same: I might watch it for kicks, but who wants to spend money on that crap?

I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story (2014) 

Dir.: Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker

TC4P Rating: 7/9

As an amateur puppeteer -- and a lifelong puppethead besides -- it is no surprise that I love the Muppets. Jim Henson and Frank Oz are personal heroes, and I watched Sesame Street far, far beyond my need to watch such a show. While others moved on with their Muppet love to The Muppet Show once they grew up (and I certainly watched it fanatically myself), I still stuck with Sesame Street, if only because most of my earliest memories of Jim Henson's genius stemmed from that show. Somewhere along the line, Elmo became too abrasive a factor, the original Muppet characters were relegated to smaller and smaller roles, and I started tuning in less and less. But I still return time to time (even in the new HBO version) to see how the Street is being maintained and to see old pals. Two of those pals still continue to appeal to me: Oscar and Big Bird.

I had known for years, like many of course, that Oscar and Big Bird were played by the same actor, Carroll Spinney. There since the start of the show in 1969, Spinney was recognizably the voice of both characters; even when he was never seen at all, as kids we knew the same person played each one. While the characters were miles apart in temperament and voice, there was a sweetness in the portrayal of each that came through to the viewers, which probably is a large reason why they have made such a lasting impact of children and adults over a couple generations. But Spinney's beginnings on the show set him somewhat apart from Henson's other puppeteers, not having the years of developing the Muppet style the others did as a team.

I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story does a glorious job of letting us finally get to know the man inside the feathers... or the trash can, as it were. Also a lifelong puppet fan, Spinney worked as a cartoonist and animator before he joined Henson's corps, and maintained his fiercely independent spirit slightly apart from the rest of the team as his eight-foot, two-inch tall bird character ended up becoming the true heart and soul of Sesame Street. Through Spinney's talent, Big Bird became one of the most iconic characters in the world, even eventually serving as a cultural ambassador to China, a story related in fascinating detail in I Am Big Bird.

Of the two main Spinney creations, I must admit that I have always preferred the prickly Oscar the Grouch many times over the sweeter, more childlike Big Bird. That is probably more reflective of my nature than anything, but for many years, I kind of bristled anytime that I was stuck with a Big Bird segment. Not because the result was bad, but simply because I preferred the funnier, more manic Muppet moments. I would probably just have been just as happy if this film was titled I Am Oscar the Grouch, and I likely would have thought little of it.

But I would have been wrong. Spinney's very private nature would seem to lend difficulty to getting to know him intimately, but he is also more than open once the cameras get on him, and we feel his pain as he struggles hard to keep up the pace of filming new segments as he continues to play the characters now into his eighties. We ultimately get to see that he is very much both Oscar and Big Bird, but that no matter how guarded he may be, the bird's characteristics win out overall. He is Big Bird after all.


Kareem: Minority of One (2015)
HBO Sports
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Kareem: Minority of One makes one major mistake in my opinion: It stops too early. 

I grew up knowing not just about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but also the basketball legend's birth name that he dropped upon his conversion to Islam in 1971. I was a sports nut as a child, and delighted in memorizing trivia bits from all of sports history and then spewing them back out, whether requested or not. One that I learned early on was the name Lew Alcindor. A few years later, when I got the chance to snag a couple of Kareem's early Topps basketball cards before the name conversion, I leapt at the opportunity.

Kareem never played for a team for whom I held a rooting interest. I was a SuperSonics and 76ers fan early on in my life, and then when Larry Bird, Robert Parrish, and Kevin McHale came into the equation, I became a Celtics fan for life. And Kareem was always there battling those teams that I loved. That did not mean that I disliked him. I knew people who were solid Lakers fans that, for whatever reason (possibly mostly racist), hated Kareem. Not me. I kind of admired him and his drive. His need to be his own person who operated solely on his deeply held convictions was well-documented in the media, and I rather liked that as well. He also had that infuriating, unstoppable skyhook, a shot that my friends and I loved to spoof when we played ball. He tried acting and even showed up on a favorite show of mine in my youth, The Man from Atlantis. And when he showed up in the comedy classic Airplane!, perhaps not doing a great job of acting but perfectly willing to satirize his image in the media (and pick on his critics at the same time), I kind of grew to love him.

Kareem: Minority of One sticks to the standard ritual of the bio film, and never veers far from that path. It is what you expect from a sports bio; no more, no less. It shoots from childhood to school to college to the pros in swift succession, never pausing too long at any one place, allowing us to know the man in increments, while also tracing his personal history in the expected ways. In the interview segments, we get to see an inkling of his mind at work and we fully understand his unwillingness to kowtow to idiots, his intellectual development, his spiritual strength, and his need to always speak his mind. Like all public figures -- and indeed, all of us -- Kareem has his pluses and minuses, but you could do far worse in finding someone to admire than Kareem. (And believe me, people are finding some terrible inspiration in recent months...) 

But then the film falls far short of what I was expecting. Following his retirement at the end of the 1988-1989 season, in which the Lakers failed to repeat as NBA champions, Kareem fails to get the coaching jobs he was expecting to be offered, and so he frustratingly shifts away from basketball towards the next stage of his life. And this is where the film failed me, stingily closing off the subject where I wanted more about the man and what continues to make him tick. I was hoping to find out more about what Kareem has been up to in the intervening years, beyond the handful of public forays and statements he has released in the interim. In a narrative type of film this would not be a bad thing, but here the dearth of new information is frustrating. If the film's title is meant to convey, beyond the obvious racial implications, that Kareem is not just in a class by himself, but also an unceasingly private individual, it also left me feeling that way: disconnected from the subject, and wanting far more than I've been given.

Or maybe Kareem is just someone we are never meant to know fully...

"My Jurisdiction Only Extends to His Navel...": Kong vs. Bob [The Ballad of Kong Pt. 10]

At every stage of my life, Bob Newhart has been there. First with seeing him on numerous variety and talk shows in my youngest days; his years on his own sitcoms: The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, and finally, Bob (all of which I consumed heartily, even the last one); appearances in films as diverse as Catch-22, The Rescuers, Elf, and Horrible Bosses; acclaimed appearances on shows like ER, The Simpsons, and Desperate Housewives; and even now when he is one of the few actors that could convince me to watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory (sorry, like most of Chuck Lorre's shows, I find the humor forced and too obvious). But no matter what type of show or film, Bob has been there throughout my life, his gentle (though often agitated) take on low-boiling comedy keeping me amused through even the hardest of times.

It is my belief that his assumed gentleness and quiet nature has served to cause the world to grow complacent about Bob Newhart. We came to just accept him too much. I feel that Newhart is a monumentally underrated performer, not just on television and in film, but especially in his stand-up comedy years early on in his career. It is easy to forget, but Newhart was the very first comedian to top the Billboard charts with a stand-up comedy album. 

This happened in 1960, when he released The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, a landmark in comedy, which not only won the Album of the Year award at the 1961 Grammy ceremony, but also earned Newhart a Best New Artist award. It was the only time that a comedian (or at least an intentional comedian) has won Best New Artist, and it was also the first time a comedian won Album of the Year (though impressionist Vaughn Meader would win Album of the Year two years later with a parody LP of the Kennedy clan called The First Family. Coincidentally, Newhart starred in a film called First Family, also about a presidential family in the White House but no relation to this material, in 1980. And yes, I saw that film in a theatre.)

The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart established the comic's simple but astoundingly effective persona: that of a man, often a cog or subordinate in somebody's machine somewhere, who finds himself in an odd situation, and then has to explain his actions over the telephone with the unseen and unheard receiver of his call (sometimes even Abraham Lincoln, years before the telephone was invented). Bob would usually begin with a set-up of the situation, and if you have ever heard a comedian say, or even mock, a sentence like, "And I think it might go something like this...," such a line was likely inspired by Newhart's comedy.

This formula worked remarkably well for Newhart throughout the sixties. While his first album was still on the charts, he released The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back, and the two albums sat at #1 and #2 on Billboard at the same time. He won another Grammy (this time for Comedy Performance - Spoken Word). And then, throughout the Sixties, he continued to release album after album.

But while I saw Newhart perform many times on TV in my youth, I did not hear any of his comedy albums until I was well into my teens. I was barely cognizant of this particular stage of his career, and I came upon his stand-up material in the same manner that I discovered most of my favorite bands: by accident. A friend's house, in fact, where I happened upon a couple of old LPs of his. They were not in the best shape, but my friend had listened to them hundreds of times, according to how much he used to recite sections of Newhart's routines to me in our spare time. (This was roughly the same manner in which I discovered most of the early Bill Cosby stand-up albums, but the less said about that for the moment, the better. I will reflect upon it in time.)

And there was, naturally for me, one routine that stood out above the rest amongst the tracks that my (then) friend would play for me. It was called King Kong (Something Like This). If ever there was a comedy routine -- perhaps even more so than Abbott and Costello's famous Who's on First? bit -- that was squarely within my comic wheelhouse, it was this one. The track appears on Newhart's 1965 album, The Windmills Are Weakening, and is a perfect summation of the Newhart style: succinct, precise, and with the absurdist details sold by Newhart's perfectly timed stammer and responses, imparting to the listener that the oddball situation -- that of a newly hired night watchman dealing with the arrival of King Kong on the Empire State Building -- was very real indeed.

Here is the track:

If this is not your type of stand-up comedy, I do not apologize for making you listen to it. Newhart's style, much like his sitcom persona, is measured and methodical, and serves the strangest lines up with absurdist glee. This is a comic style that has served him well in his late '80s, where he is still making comedy tours today.

And with Newhart, it all comes down to precise details, that not only comment on the situation and the participants, but on the underlying fabric of the American landscape. One of my favorite bits in this routine is how the unheard boss nags the new Empire State Building guard to strictly follow company procedure even while faced with what has to be the most ridiculous story he has ever been told:

"I know how you like the new men to think on their feet, so I went to the broom closet and I got out a broom, without signing out a requisition on it....I will tomorrow, yes sir..."

Of course, the boss cannot help but to comment on the guard's efforts, but naturally, once again, the company's rules forbid such actions from being truly successful:

"Did I try swatting him in the face with it? Well, I was going to take the elevator up to his head, but my jurisdiction only extends to his navel..."

And once more, the boss' main concern is not so much the safety of the guard or the girl in the ape's clutches or the residents of the building, but the very reputation of the place:

"Well, sir... the first thing I did was I filled out a report on it. Well, I don't want to give the building a bad name either, sir, but I doubt very much if we can cover it up, sir. The planes are shooting at him, and people are going to come to work in the morning and some of them are going to notice the ape in the street and the broken window, and they will start putting two and two together."

The payoff comes with a double gag. The first is the boss' asking of a truly goofy question and the guard's response: 

"I doubt very much if he signed the book downstairs."

And then finally, the guard's idea to coax King Kong away from the Empire State Building:

"You don't care what I do. Just get the ape off the building. Well, I came up with one idea. I thought maybe I could smear the Chrysler Building with bananas..."

Brilliant...

A Different Type of Haunting [A Prologue to The Monster's on the Loose!!! #2]

Before we move on to the second installment of The Monster's on the Loose!!!, a bit of a prologue is slightly necessary.

When I started The Cinema 4 Pylon eleven years ago, it was meant, as it is now, as a collected notebook of my ongoing writing adventures. Whatever topic upon which I chose to discourse, no matter how wide a net I cast, whether fiction or non-fiction, the resulting articles or stories would be found here. Naturally, given my inclination towards monster, science fiction, and horror films, the bulk of materials found on this site relate to those subjects. And that was pretty much decided straight from the outset, when my very first extended postings (beyond the simple introduction in 2005 that still serves as the inaugural activity on the Pylon) were a five-part rant about the "Film that Changed My Life".

The five-part rant, in fact, was just that, simply a rambling rant, set off by what I perceived at the time as a never-ending (and completely unconnected) series of celebrity interviews where the hallowed set talk about a particular film or director that "changed their life". I cast suspicion upon such statements as perverse cinematic armchair quarterbacking, thrown in my face by people so carelessly content with their careers and fattened backends that they can so specifically to pinpoint a specific moment when it "all came together for them". Or maybe I was just unflinchingly jealous of their success. It was most likely the latter, because I am, at heart, a most jealous asshole. 

The other main detail I found in these celebrity profundities was based around the further notion that the film they invariably chose would be a bona fide classic like The Wizard of Oz or The Godfather or All About Eve. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such a notion -- favorite films of mine, all three -- but the influence was always seen as a happy moment that served to inspire the celeb into action on their parts or to solidify their internal feelings (always positive) towards the movies, and thereby using that moment of inspiration to project themselves towards their eventual careers in the industry. 

My sideways response was to choose a film which pissed me off in my youth, which left me feeling that my time and attention had been ripped off by an inferior product, and which taught me a lesson regarding cheapened expectations from a generally uncaring industry. I decided to serve up my own particular brand of cheekiness by subverting such pretentious mumblings from these privileged ones by choosing my own lowbrow, horrid choice for such an inspiring film, if only to solidify my notion that my life has been essentially, in the words of Woody Allen, "a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham." That film, seen when I was but a lad of twelve years old, was a 1956 Universal Studios jungle/"monster" potboiler titled Curucu, Beast of the Amazon.

And the results were... middling, at best. 

Though I left the five-part article up on the site for a decade, I never liked it. I was never content with the finished product. The article did serve to set up my general intentions of focus for The Cinema 4 Pylon, but my point was muddled and the basic premise was not thought through as fully as I would have wished. For years, the article tormented me, and I reminded myself time and again over a full decade that someday I was going to do a rewrite of the entire debacle.

It is only recently, in doing a full edit and cleanup of the entire site in preparation for recommitment to my original focus, that I pulled down all five parts of the article. There is much that I have published on The Cinema 4 Pylon where I wish that I had given the piece an extra edit, or taken a few more minutes (or even days) with the words before foisting them upon an unsuspecting public, however small that may be. (I prefer the term, "hand-picked".) But nothing on my site has haunted me as much as that initial foray into online genre film analysis and celebrity satire.

So, with the original piece (all five portions) tucked away for good, and with a new feature started on the Pylon recently titled The Monster's on the Loose!!! (named after a song that I wrote, and that my brothers and I used to sing when we were but wee lads), the time has come to write anew about Curucu, Beast of the Amazon. A monster picture that really isn't, that continues to disappointment me even into middle age -- now mostly because it is hard to find a decent copy, let alone finding a station that will air it -- but did indeed have undue influence upon me at a most impressionable time. Whether it comes out any better than my initial attempt will be up to me to decide.

RTJ

[To be continued in The Monster's on the Loose!!! #2: Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)...]

But Don't Give Yourself Away...

I'm not a big fan of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- hell, they didn't even see fit to call it "rock 'n' roll" -- but I do find it hard to resist watching the ceremony each year. Especially the last couple of years, with Joan Jett and Stevie Ray Vaughan being inducted in 2015, and with Deep Purple and the biggest band of my teenage years, Cheap Trick, going in this year.

Despite all of their offstage drama in the past decade, the room got a little dusty for me when all four Tricksters took the stage together to perform I Want You to Want Me and my favorite song of all time, Surrender. Trick did not disappoint me. Guitarist Rick Nielsen (one of three reasons my name is what it is today) played the room just like he does a small club or an arena, throwing guitar picks into the crowd, mugging for all he is worth, and filling the air with his trademark riffs and between lyric fills. The band sounded as tight as ever, which is not surprising since they have rarely stop touring over 40 years. 

It was likely the last time that drummer Bun E. Carlos will be on stage with the other three (he is still an "official" member of the band, but doesn't record or tour with them since he sued the other three), so it was somewhat appropriate that Cheap Trick went right from their performance into the all-star jam session closer with their Top 40 cover version of Fats Domino's Ain't That a Shame.

Some Hall notes:

• I don't care what happened offstage that pissed off the Hall rank and file, Steve Miller's onstage comments were appropriate (among them, that the Hall needs to be more inclusive). The main thing I took away from his segment is that Miller looks like a doppelgänger for Russell Crowe (as he looks today).
• Besides Cheap Trick, the most energetic and dare I say "rockin'" performance came from, of all acts, Chicago as they they played their classic 25 or 6 to 4. Another band that never stops touring, even with past members included in the mix, Chicago seemed to relish the moment and made sure the crowd didn't forget that they at least started out as a rock band. (A rock band with horns, as was pointed out at least twice.)
• As much as I was glad Deep Purple was included, there was too much in the way of backstage politics as play to allow the classic Mark II version of the band to play in their slot (in other words, no Ritchie Blackmore there at all). And, of course, a deceased Jon Lord. The sound was uneven for their first song (Hush, the Mark I classic) and truncating Smoke on the Water to the point of taking all of the air out of it (however hot that air was in the first place) made for a lukewarm showing.
• It was upsetting that N.W.A. chose not to perform, especially since the four remaining main members finally got back together onstage at Coachella a couple of weekends later. After Ice Cube's marvelous explanation of exactly why rap and hip-hop ARE rock 'n' roll, the group chose to not have their music represented live on stage at the show, which cuts against his remarks as far as I am considered. Deeds, not words, my friend. Show 'em why you should be in there. On the other hand, Cube dissed Gene Simmons on the show, and that was pretty fucking great.
• Kimbra, I don't know your music (yet), but damn, you were annoying. Almost ruined getting to hear David Byrne sing Bowie's Fame.
• Sheryl Crow is 2-1/2 years older than me, and dammit, I still want to marry her.
• When I was younger, I knew Steve Morse from a very underrated  and quite experimental rock/jazz fusion band called the Dixie Dregs. He was a remarkable guitarist in his own right. He joined Deep Purple in 1994, twenty years after the band's true heyday, so I understand why he was not included in the eight members of the band chosen for induction. (David Coverdale was included, though I feel he should be discounted because of Whitesnake. But he is now in nonetheless.) But it does bring up the issue of bands being upset -- especially bands that have continued touring and recording for decades, as Purple has done -- when their most recent members are not included. Where is the cutoff point? Should only the "classic" period be considered, even if the band has continued apace?
• Perhaps avoiding some cries of foul from sensitive music fans (i.e., most of the stupid internet), the producers saw fit to include a post-credit tribute to Prince, who died a short while after the ceremony was filmed. They included about a minute of his performance at the 2004 ceremony, probably the best they have ever had on the show, of His Purple Majesty owning rock 'n' roll with his massive solo on the George Harrison tribute version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Which made me look at the set design and wonder, did they not even try for the 2016 show? How drab everything looks onstage this year. Basic black may be timeless, but the show lacked visual punch.
• Can we have a moratorium on Kid Rock being onstage at these things? And of shots of Tom Hanks (one of the executive producers) in the audience? I think there were about 14 of them, maybe more. (And was that Peter Scolari at his table?)
• And, goddammit, put The Monkees into the Hall!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rock-hall-of-fame-induction-set-for-hbo-with-n-w-a-cheap-trick-more-20160429