The Curator of Schlock #195: Life

08 Friday Sep 2017

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Ariyon Bakare, Daniel Espinosa, Hiroyuki Sanada, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeff Shuster, Life, Mars, NASA, Olga Dihovichnaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #195 by Jeff Shuster

Life

More like death, lots and lots of death.

Welcome to week two of the Museum of Schlock’s Relativity Series, a range of exhibits that dare to ask what’s really out there. Each year Hollywood gives us some inspirational movie about NASA. Whether it’s Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian or The Arrival, these movies teach us about the triumph of the human spirit in the perils of space. 2017 has given us Life from director Daniel Espinosa, a film about a group of scientists discovering the first definitive proof of life outside of planet Earth.

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The title of this movie gives me hope. What’s more hopeful than life itself?

So these scientists are stationed on the International Space Station. You have two Brits, two Americans, one Japanese, and one Russian. I guess that’s international enough. Ugh. I hate movies with too many characters!

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We’ve got six scientists here. Let’s see. Rebecca Ferguson plays Dr. Miranda North, an officer with the CDC.

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Ryan Reynolds plays Rory Adams, an engineer of some kind. Hiroyuki Sanada plays Sho Murakami, another engineer. Olga Dihovichnaya plays Ekaterina Golovkina, the Mission Commander. There. I think that’s it. Crap. I’ve got two more characters. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dr. David Johnson, a medical doctor who used to serve in the American military. Finally, you have Ariyon Bakare playing Dr. Hugh Derry, a genius exobiologist who is paralyzed from the waist down, but enjoys free movement in zero gravity.

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The space station recovers a probe NASA sent out to Mars. It contains dirt. Martian dirt! Dr. Derry is especially excited when he discovers a dormant cell in one of the samples. Dr. Derry manages to wake up the cell after some poking and prodding. A media circus ensues. A little schoolgirl wins a contest where she gets to name the organism. She names it Calvin after her elementary school, no doubt named for Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President. Calvin keeps growing in size and forms tentacles. For some reason, this doesn’t alarm anyone. A lab fire causes Calvin to go dormant again much the dismay of Dr. Derry.

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He starts poking at it with a dental scraper. Suddenly, Calvin springs to life wrapping its tentacles around Dr. Derry’s rubber gloved hand. It starts crushing Dr. Derry’s hand until every bone is broken. Only then can Dr. Derry slide it through. He passes out shortly after. Calvin then uses the scraper to puncture the glove, slipping out into the lab to devour a captive gerbil. Okay. Screw Mars!

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Things go from bad to worse. Rory rushes in to rescue Dr. Derry. He pushes Dr. Derry out, but Calvin latches onto his leg. Rory uses some kind of blowtorch on the creature, but it evades and evades until he runs out of fuel. Sealed inside with nowhere to flee, Rory is defenseless as Calvin slips down his throat and begins to devour his insides. Rory slowly coughs up globules of blood before expiring. Calvin escapes through the sprinkler system. This crew is screwed. Yes, I know I used screw twice in this review. It’s that kind of movie.

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NASA, just leave Mars alone. Please!

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #194: The Earth Dies Screaming

01 Friday Sep 2017

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The Curator of Schlock #194 by Jeff Shuster

The Earth Dies Screaming

I guess this one doesn’t have a happy ending.

I was at the Orlando Science Center a couple weeks back. While I busied myself with building a tall Popsicle stick tower, I tried selling a couple of visiting school children on The Museum of Schlock. Their response was not kind. I heard such gems as “We don’t care about schlock!” and “Go take a long walk off a short pier.” Now I should make the point that we’re all about science down here at The Museum of Schlock. We flippin’ love science! In fact, this month The Museum of Schlock will introduce our relativity series, a series of science-themed films for your education and enjoyment.

Orlando Science Center by Marc Averette.

Tonight’s feature is 1964’s The Earth Dies Screaming from director Terrence Fisher. I’m familiar with Fisher from all of those gothic horror movies he made for Hammer Studios, so it was interesting to see him take on a science fiction film set in modern England.

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The movie begins with what looks like a train conductor falling asleep on the job. The train crashes a moment later. Another man driving a car falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a brick wall. A pilot falls asleep and crashes his plane. People all around the world are passed out. Oh wait. They’re not sleeping. They’re dead. Everyone is dead! The whole world is dead!

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But there are still survivors. An American pilot by the name of Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker) meets Quinn Taggart (Dennis Price) and his wife, Peggy (Virginia Field). Jeff is the hero because he’s an American. Quinn is the villain because he pulled a gun on Jeff the moment he saw him and just comes off as weasily. Peggy is the romantic interest because she’s the last single woman on Earth (that bit about her being married to Quinn a lie). We also have a drunk named Edgar (Thorley Walters), his wife, Violet (Vanda Godsell), and a young married couple, Mel and Lorna. We have seven survivors against the world.

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Jeff determines that there must have been a gas attack, based on where everyone was when the rest of the world died, screaming I assume. The only thing coming through on the radio and the television is a strange signal. The band of survivors notices a group of men in silver space suits walking about the town. Maybe it’s the government come to look for survivors. Violet runs off to greet one of them. He turns around and what we see isn’t a man, but a robot! And this is one creepy looking robot too, not the sort you’d have a game of chess with while discussing your feelings. The robot kills Violet by touching her with its glowing hand.

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If that wasn’t bad enough, these robots have the ability to raise the dead. Violet comes back to the group, only her eyes are all puffed out and glazed over. So we’ve got robots and zombies and who knows what else.

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I assume the robots belong to some evil alien race that wants to use the Earth to create some giant space spa. This is what Stephen Hawking keeps warning us about, NASA. Stop sending those satellites out into space with those gold plated Elvis records. You’re just sewing the seeds of our destruction!

Jeff_Robot
Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #193: The Perfume of the Lady in Black

25 Friday Aug 2017

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The Curator of Schlock #193 by Jeff Shuster

The Perfume of the Lady in Black

It ain’t CHANEL No. 5!

We’re in week four of Giallo Month here at The Museum of Schlock. Tonight’s movie is The Perfume of the Lady in Black. And it makes no sense. I watched a Fellini movie once. It featured a large, naked Italian woman singing opera in a cemetery in the middle of the night. I think. My memory is fuzzy on that. I remember the movie not making any sense. Kind of like tonight’s movie. I got to break this up to keep my own sanity.

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The Basics

1972’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black was directed by Francesco Barilli. It stars Mimsy Farmer as a chemist named Silvia.

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Mimsy’s credits include movies such as Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Hot Rods to Hell. The movie also stars Maurizio Bonuglia as her boyfriend, Roberto. Oh, he starred in The Fifth Cord. I don’t remember what that movie was about. I think it involved Franco Nero dancing on some giant piano keys a la Tom Hanks in Big. I liked that movie. Whatever happened to Penny Marshall?

Witch Doctors

Silvia, the chemist, has cocktails with her boyfriend and some engineers from Africa. A Professor Andy (Jho Jenkins) points out that his ancestors used to eat their enemies. Andy goes on about how witch doctors in Africa still practice black magic, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. It’s just done in secret now. He laughs maniacally, making everyone, myself included, very uncomfortable. He then says it’s all a joke, but this does nothing to ease my suspicions.

Foppish Neighbor

Silvia has a foppish neighbor named Mr. Rossetti (Mario Scaccia) that likes to take pictures in the park on sunny afternoons. He runs out of tea frequently, knocking on her door at odd hours for a spoonful or two. He also feeds his cats ladyfingers as in fingers that belonged to a lady. Nope. I’m not talking about the sweet British biscuits. Why do the British call cookies biscuits? Maybe they don’t have biscuits in the UK. No biscuits? No biscuits! No biscuits! No biscuits! No biscuits!

The Woman in Black

She’s not really wearing a black dress. It’s black, but it’s covered with polka dots.

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Sylva keeps seeing her everywhere. It might be the spirit of her dead mother. She also keeps seeing a young blonde girl running around that may be her as a child. She goes to a sweet shop and buys out their stock of blackberry jam. That’s the little blonde girl’s favorite.

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Why am I watching this movie?

Cannibalism!

So Sylvia falls to her death at the end of the film. Roberto, Andy, and Mr. Rossetti bring her body to a morgue where they cut her open and start feasting on her organs. You’d think they’d at least cook them first. Other characters from the film wait in line, each dining on a little piece of Sylvia. This is a sick movie! You don’t see The Way We Were ending with a cannibalism scene. Not as I remember it, anyway.

Jeffrey Shuster 3
Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #192: Crimes of the Black Cat

18 Friday Aug 2017

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The Curator of Schlock #192 by Jeff Shuster

Crimes of the Black Cat

There should have been a clown in this one.

Okay. I’ve got a beef with whoever is streaming these Italian movies on Amazon. Stop cropping the picture. I know some of these movies were shot in scope. Knock it off! HBO does this too. Drives me crazy.

Crimes of the Black Cat

It’s a shame too because tonight’sfeature is 1972’s Crimes of the Black Cat from director Sergio Pastore, a pretty damn good Giallo. If this ever gets released on Blu-ray, the distributer can put “A pretty damn good Giallo”—Jeff Shuster, the Curator of Schlock right on the back of the box. Just send me a free copy of the Blu-ray. I like free stuff.

Crimes of the Black Cat is about a psycho serial killer who murders fashion models. How does the killer accomplish this? By dipping a feral cat’s claws in curare and setting them loose on his victims. In a way, this murderer isn’t really a murderer. It’s the black cat that’s committing these crimes, but the local police don’t see it that way. I guess getting a cat to do your murdering for you won’t absolve you of the crime.

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Our sleuth this time around is a blind pianist by the name of Peter Oliver (Anthony Steffen), a dapper English gentleman who gets involved when he overhears a conversation in a swinging nightclub. What’s the conversation about? Can you guess? It’s about MURDER! The killer is instructing his assistant on where to deliver the cat. Peter hears the assistant walk past him and presses one of the waiters for a description. The waiter saw a woman covered in a white hood and cloak leave the club, but he couldn’t see her face.

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Another murder happens. While being chauffeured around by his butler Burton (Umberto Raho), Peter hears the footsteps of the exact same woman from the other night. He orders Burton to tail the woman, hoping he’ll get a photo of her. Burton loses track of her. She gets on a bus. Burton races across the street, but gets stopped by a traffic cop for jaywalking.

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Wouldn’t it be interesting if the mystery ended there? The murders stop and they never find the mysterious woman again. They never catch the murderer. Peter spends the rest of his life in self-doubt, his career as a pianist in ruins. Burton leaves his side, unable to deal with Peter’s addiction to cocaine. One day Peter befriends a neighbor kid, a gifted prodigy, another Mozart. He gives him piano lessons for free. Though his encouragement, the kid enters a piano playing tournament and wins! Cue the Rocky theme! It’s at this point Peter meets the kid’s mother, the same woman who committed those cat murders so many years ago! Duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuh!

Okay. That’s not how this movie ends. I think Peter uses his deduction skills a little too well, spooking the actual killer. At gunpoint, he’s driven to a bottle making plant. We watch as Peter maneuvers around trap after trap, his walking cane his only guide. The whole scene is quite chilling, a reminder why I take risks and watch obscure Italian Giallo movies on Amazon Prime.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #59: Othello (1951)

23 Sunday Jul 2017

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Micheál MacLiammóir, Orson Welles

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 3

59. Orson Welles’s Othello (1951)

Othello poster

Orson Welles’s Othello opens with some weird music by Alberto Barbers and/or Angelo Francesco Lavagnino that splits the difference between a Modernist march and Gregorian chant during the funeral march of the Moor and Desdemona, with Iago brought along, caged in captivity, like some dolorous triumph. The tragic destinies are foretold rather than having any opening credits.

The film is in black and white, which may have turned off 1951 audiences. The restored version, however, makes the scenes look crisp, and so the black and white adds an antiquarian touch rather than just making the film look moldy. While I would have adored to see more of Venice, since the Venice scenes take place at night, perhaps black and white is just as well.

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I say this with hesitant irony, since Othello is a play in part about the uses made of the color of a man’s skin. White actors who portray the Moor these days forgo the unpleasant tradition of blackface. Ideally, since there are only two black parts in Shakespeare (Othello and Aaron in Titus Andronicus), the parts could be reserved for black actors, even in these times of color-blind casting.

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While I shrink from the practice of blackface, though, I don’t find it dreadfully offensive in the case of Welles. In black and white, it looks natural enough, and doesn’t impart direct associations with minstrelsy, although again I might have preferred to see Welles tackle Iago and grant the Moor’s part to a black actor. As weird as the casting of a white man in black make-up might seem to us now, the practice was considered totally normal in Welles’s time.

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And Micheál MacLiammóir as Iago brings to mind the importance of Iago’s lack of something, some lack of charisma despite being eloquent and shrewd in the ways of Machiavellian political intrigue. I don’t mean that MacLiammóir is a poor actor, for that is certainly not the case. But physically, MacLiammóir looks rather skinny and average, bland compared to Othello and Michael Cassio. Kenneth Branagh as Iago is too handsome for us to sense that his private griefs are that compelling. Branagh makes us believe that Iago’s lies feel like truth to him, as a compulsive liar begins to have difficulty recognizing the difference. Butit’s difficult to believe he didn’t get what he wanted in the first place. MacLiammóir’s Iago is harder to root for, but easier to empathize with. It makes the tragic destructions of Othello feel less wanton and more tragic.

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The sense of Othello’s testimony before the council regarding his courtship of Desdemona comes off poignantly in Welles’s mouth. Othello declares,

Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace:
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field,
And little of this great world can I speak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver
Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration and what mighty magic,
For such proceeding I am charged withal,
I won his daughter.

Othello seems to be protesting the rudeness of his speech too much since his tale does not seem especially “unvarnish’d.” However, addressing these white Europeans with whom he serves, Othello seems to understand that his audience may hear his speech as rude, and is ingratiating them against their presumed racism. (I think of Trump supporters who feel like he has made the executive office “classy” again. Institutional racism means that there is a sliding scale for judgment.) This seems all the more enhanced from Welles’s amazing instrument of a voice. (Lawrence Fishburne’s Caribbean accent as Othello made the speech seem potentially rougher in tongue to Europeans, even though Fishburne’s instrument is excellent as well.)

For textual purists, the director was perhaps too rough with the cuts. Welles has added expository voiceovers to speed the play along, allowing the story to reach its conclusion within about ninety minutes.

Sizanne Cloutier makes for a taut Desdemona. She looks uncannily like a Disney princess in such Renaissance attire, and successfully conveys both a strong, clear will and a heartbreaking innocence.

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The fortress at Cypress, abutting its geometry against the ocean, looks stark, adding to this antiquarian flair.

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One of the later sequences occurs at a sauna. Iago convinced the lovesick dupe, Rodrigo, that he may win Desdemona after all if he will only kill Michael Cassio. Welles has a mandolin playing a gypsy-like tune, and added an essential ingredient to this scene: a poodle. I am not making this up. The scene is so uncanny as to be wholly believable.

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When Iago kills Rodrigo through the floorboards of the sauna, the effect is goofy, yet psychedelically terrifying. Indeed, as the film dispatches its climax, the effect is that of a classic horror film, in which nearly everyone left alive is a monster, imprisoned in the ancient jails of their psyches.

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The gazes of the dying and the damned.

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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

Pensive Prowler #8: Alienating the Alien

19 Monday Jun 2017

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Pensive Prowler #8 by Dmetri Kakmi

Alienating the Alien

Let’s not mistake this for a review of Ridley Scott’s Alien Covenant. It’s more of a free-wheeling jazz improvisation on what went through my benumbed brain as I watched the vaudevillian pantomime. It’s also full of spoilers. So I recommend you read it and save your pretty pennies for a rainy day.

I am obliged to add that I love Alien (1979) and I’m a hesitant admirer of James Cameron’s overlong and over-militarised Aliens (1986). The subsequent sequels are whipping a dead clotheshorse, particularly the prequel Prometheus (2012), Scott’s poncey incursion into the wrung-out franchise.

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The first thing that must be said about Alien Covenant is that it’s supremely boring. It’s so dull and un-engaging, I felt as if the life was being sucked out of me by a paucity of ideas as I sat in a half daze, barely able to comprehend or care about what was happening on screen.

The words flatulent and pompous drifted around my head like the moons of Uranus during the opening scene. You know you’re in for a slog when a film opens with what appears to be an outtake from Prometheus.

‘Get on with it,’ I mumbled as Guy Pearce and Michael Fassbender had a chinwag about creation and god and music and mortality and tea in minimalist space adorned with great works of art. Prominent among them is Michelangelo’s David, his butt cheeks dangling before our eyes in the foreground of one shot as if he’s about to sit on Michael Fassbender’s face. Better than copping a face-hugger any day.

In the next scene we meet a bunch of starry-eyed colonists going off to ruin another planet. The problem with them is they’re so generic you don’t remember them seconds after they’re shredded by CGI monsters. The usually reliable Billy Cruddup in particular is so like-yeah-whatever he can barely articulate his lines, let alone bring some oomph to his chest-buster scene. Though the lead up to his big moment is genuinely funny.

I fell asleep at one stage and woke up during the best bit: Michael Fassbender performs a kind of G-rated self-suck by kissing himself. Or rather he kisses his android double, before pronouncing the film’s best line:

‘They don’t deserve to start again and I’m not going to let them.’

He’s talking about humans and he succeeds, thankfully.

Actually, that’s not the best part. The best part is James Franco’s early demise. This irritating man-child doesn’t even get a chance to step out of his cryogenic crib before he’s vaporised and jettisoned into outer space. The only time we see his smug mug is when his wife, a second-rate Sigourney Weaver tough-girl type, blubbers to hubby’s video messages. She dodged a bullet is all I can say.

From there on Alien Covenant announces its major theme. Turns out it’s not about something as lowly as slavering monsters munching on people. It’s about male procreation, free of women.

Très très homosexuelle, no, monsieur et madame?

I’m serious. Think about it: Ageing man (Guy Pearce) creates buff male android (Michael Fassbender) in pleasingly tight body suit that shows off perfectly sculpted glutes and pecs. Android bases himself on the homo par excellence, Lawrence of Arabia, turns against big daddy, regurgitates alien eggs and promises to be mother to a loathed and despised species.

If that’s not a queer parable, I don’t know what is. We’ve gone back to sky god Zeus giving birth to Athena by projecting her fully formed from his brow.

In space, it seems, no one can hear women become redundant.

The men in this film reminded me of self-fertilising worms. Or the ouroboros snake that swallows its own tail. No wonder the aliens resemble globular white slugs. There’s even two gay men in the crew. Living up to Hollywood tradition one is mangled early on and his partner gets acid blood sprayed over his face, as if he’s encountered an Islamist in deep space.

So much for diversity and inclusion.

As for the much-talked-about twist ending … well, it’s so lame only Ridley Scott won’t see it coming. The android Walter masquerades as the android David. Too spooky for film school. Oooh, the shiver that didn’t run down my spine. What I want to know is where did Fassbender find a barber and hair dye on that Vidal Sassoon forsaken planet?

I forgot to mention that I laughed aloud when a hooded figure appears out of nowhere to rescue the stranded journeymen. It was as if Alien had suddenly glommed onto Lard of the Rings and Legolas had come to save the film from itself.

You can tell I hated this, can’t you? The first Alien works because of the simplicity of the idea and the purity of execution. Covenant is so busy it forgets it’s a shriek-fest. Scott occasionally remembers and goes, ‘Oh, fuck, we better show the creature before the audience falls asleep.’ Too late!

An early teaser poster showed the alien with the word RUN under it. YAWN would have been more appropriate.

Anyway, I wrote to Ridley Scott and offered some suggestions for improvement.

Dear Ridley,

Alien Covenant would be a better film if you consulted me.

My version is called Alien Convent. Instead of being about planetary settlers fighting hostile aliens (as if we haven’t seen that before), it’s about nuns versus aliens.

You heard right. The reboot needs naked nuns with guns.

Picture it: Ripley is Mother Superior in a convent for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. She’s trying to put the past behind her by settling down with Sister Bertrille from the The Flying Nun TV series. Things are going well until a new devotee arrives. But she is not what she appears. Turns out she’s Sister Ruth, the hot-pants nun from Black Narcissus (look it up) and she carries inside her a xenomorph bambino from a close encounter of the fourth kind in the Himalayan jungle. All hell breaks loose when the alien bursts out of Sister Ruth’s nether lips during a Sadean flagellation session in the basement and it’s on for young and old.

Tarantino could make a good fist of it, in more ways than one.

Love,

Dmetri xx

alien-convent

dmetri-kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

The Curator of Schlock #179: Lust for a Vampire

12 Friday May 2017

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The Curator of Schlock #179 by Jeff Shuster

Lust for a Vampire

Don’t lust after a vampire, kids!

So we’re continuing Hammer Month here at The Museum of Schlock. Tonight’s entry is a vampire picture called Lust for a Vampire from director Jimmy Sangster. If memory serves, lust is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I was taught to avoid the Seven Deadly Sins because the Seven Deadly Sins will lead you to do stupid things. Like lusting after a vampire. Why is lusting after a vampire so stupid? Because vampires eat people!

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We’ve got some truly evil vampires in this motion picture. They kidnap this barmaid in broad daylight. They then bring her to some ruined castle and start performing some kind of Satanic Mass. They slit the girl’s throat and pour her blood all over the desiccated remains of Carmilla Karnstein, a dead countess or something. Tendons and muscles form on the bones and before you know, there’s a beautiful, young, blonde woman sitting up the coffin.

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Oh, and she has fangs because she’s a vampire. Looks like vampires can be resurrected with black magic by other vampires. Kind of puts the kibosh on the whole stake-through-the-heart solution.

Enter the movie’s hero, Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson), writer of horror stories and heir to some title. While visiting the town of Styria, Austria, he happens upon a finishing school for young ladies. The prim and proper Miss Simpson (Helen Christie) runs the academy and she does not approve of the kinds of stories LeStrange writes, but she still allows him to lurk about the campus since he’s royalty. Let’s see. There’s also a creeper history teacher named Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) who always seems to linger around the girls while their doing their Roman jazzercise sessions. These sessions are lead by another teacher, Janet Playfair (Suzanna Leigh), who would be a potential love interest for LeStrange if not for the arrival of a new student, Mircalla Herritzen (Yutte Stensgaard). Yeah, she’s the vampire we saw get resurrected at the beginning of the film.

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Mircalla manages to capture the obsessive eyes of a few characters in this movie. First there’s an American student by the name of Susan Pelley (Pippa Steele), who has a passionate affair with Mircalla. You could say she lusts after a vampire. Mircalla sucks her blood and kills her. You know, there’s something I just don’t get about the vampires in these movies. Whenever they bite someone, they only drink a little bit of blood and just leave the rest of the body to rot in a field somewhere. That’s a lot of blood going to waste. Can’t they get someone to drain it for them, store the blood in some milk bottles somewhere?

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Anyway, the creeper history teacher finds Susan’s body and dumps her in a well. Through research, he’s discovers that Mircalla is vampire. When Barton confronts Mircalla on this, he tells her that all he wants is to serve her. Mircalla bites Barton and leaves him behind to die while he screams her name. What a maroon? Didn’t anyone tell him that nerdlingers never get the girl, vampire or no vampire? Next up is the dashing LeStrange who manages to capture the heart of Mircalla. There’s even a cheesy song that accompanies their love scene. And the two of them live happily ever after. Not really.

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There are more deaths. A castle is set on fire by a mob of angry villagers. Mircalla gets a stake through the heart. The end.

_______

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #178: The Reptile

05 Friday May 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #178 by Jeff Shuster

The Reptile

Because The Amphibian just doesn’t sound as sinister.

Your Curator of Schlock is back from his one month hiatus that everything to do with planning hard for the future of schlock curation and nothing to do with visiting Disney theme parks in the Orlando area. I know. I know. Liar. Liar. Pants on fire. Some observations. Those spinning toys that spew out soap bubbles need to get banned before some kid gets soap in someone’s eye. Still, no TRON ride, but I did get a glimpse of the super cool TRON ride they’ve got in Shanghai Disneyland. I’m going to cry now. At least, the Carousal of Progress is still in play. There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow…

But I’m not here to yack about great, big, beautiful tomorrows. I know many of you have been asking why haven’t more Hammer movies been covered on this blog and to that I say, “I don’t know.” May is Hammer movie month over here at the Museum of Schlock. Tonight’s entry is 1966’s The Reptile from director John Gilling.

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This is pretty good one. I’ll never say that every Hammer movie is a gem, but as a studio, the films are collectively great. Just look at the poster. It’s got a half-snake woman hissing and baring fangs. That gives me the willies!

This movie starts out with some bearded guy getting attacked by something or someone in this old dark house. Before I can figure out what’s going on, his skin is turning black and blue and then the guy starts spitting out white puss. That’s a fairly horrible way to die. Anyway, this gentleman had a brother named Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) who is married to Valerie (Jennifer Daniel). Harry’s brother wasn’t a rich man, but he did own a quaint little cottage in a town called Clagmoor Heath. Not much of an inheritance, but a free house is a free house. I’d like a house.

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Apparently, people have been dropping off like flies in Clagmoor Heath, all due to a mysterious disease the locals call The Black Death. Ummm…yeah. It’s the snake woman.

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Harry Spalding and his wife find the cottage ransacked. Harry then goes down to village pub and starts accusing the locals of trashing his brother’s place. They don’t take too kindly to accusations and I half expect the scene to devolve into some sort Straw Dogs fiasco, but they just leave the pub, insulted over the accusation. Harry befriends the pub owner, Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper) and the town crazy person, Mad Peter (John Laurie). They invite Tom Bailey over for breakfast and Mad Peter over for dinner. A good time is had by all. Until Mad Peter gets bitten by the snake woman and dies!

The Reptile (1966) Directed by John Gilling Shown from left: Jacqueline Pearce, Jennifer Daniel

Tom Bailey helps Harry dig up his brother’s grave and, wouldn’t you know it, there are two fang marks on his neck. Harry has a neighbor named Dr. Franklin (Noel Willman) that Wikipedia describes as sinister, but that I would only describe as unpleasant. Dr. Franklin has a beautiful young daughter named Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) that plays the sitar and turns into a snake woman at night to kill the townsfolk.

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I think we find out that it’s some kind of curse a cult from India placed upon her. I think if a cult placed a curse on me, I’d turn into a duck-billed platypus man. The movie could be called The Platypus.

Duck-billed Platypus
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Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #177: Resident Evil Retribution

31 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock, Zombies

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The Curator of Schlock #177 by Jeff Shuster

Resident Evil: Retribution

Zombie simulators and evil computers.

We’re in week five of Resident Evil month and I am dead-dog tired. Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Perhaps. The fact that director Paul W.S. Anderson could keep this zombie extravaganza rolling through six movies is nothing short of incredible. The fact that I was able to wade through this zombie extravaganza is nothing short of amazing. Do I deserve a pat on the back from you, my faithful readership? Yes. Yes I do.

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Resident Evil: Retribution picks up where Resident Evil: Afterlife left off. Alice (Milla Jovovich) was fending off an attack by the evil Umbrella Corporation on the freighter known as Arcadia. Oh, I forgot to mention in my last review that Alice owns a gun that can shoot quarters at her enemies. That’s pretty nifty. Anyway, the attack is being led by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) from Resident Evil: Apocalypse. She’s possessed by one of the red beetle robots, the same kind that were possessing Claire Redfield in the last movie.

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Did you remember the last movie? No need since Alice gives the audience a recap of the first four movies. I wish other movie series would do that, give recaps. I can’t keep anything in those Marvel movies straight. Hell, I couldn’t keep anything in Avengers: Age of Ultron straight. I thought it was going to be a movie about superheroes fighting killer robots. Instead, I got to see Iron Man and Captain America hang out at Hawkeye’s ranch, talking about their feelings while Thor waded around in a wishing well. I don’t get movies sometimes.

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Anyway, Alice gets knocked off the Arcadia, falls into the Pacific Ocean, and wakes up in some kind of suburban housewife fantasy. She’s married to Carlos (Oded Fehr) and has a deaf daughter named Becky (Aryana Engineer). Zombies break into their house and kill Carlos. Interesting. Wait a minute! Didn’t Carlos die in Resident Evil: Extinction? She runs into Michelle Rodriguez on the street, too! Didn’t her character die in the first movie? Something fishy is going on here.

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Alice then wakes up in a glowing white room. Jill Valentine is interrogating her, asking why Alice betrayed the Umbrella Corporation. We learn later that the Red Queen, the evil computer that looks and sounds like a little English girl, is controlling Jill. Ada Wong (Li BingBing) helps Alice navigate an Umbrella complex in the middle of Russia that contains domed theme-park versions of New York, Tokyo, and Moscow.

See, the Red Queen can create clones of sixty Umbrella employees, give them basic memories and personalities, and then let loose the zombie hoards on them. This structure was created to simulate the effects of a zombie apocalypse so the Umbrella Corporation could sell their bioweapons to the highest bidding superpower.

Ada Wong works for Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) who is now one of the good guys. Huh? He was so evil in the last movie. Wesker has sent a squad in to rescue Alice. Unfortunately, this squad runs into to some Soviet zombies, driving tanks and brandishing machine guns.

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I think there’s a super zombie version of Michelle Rodriguez at the end of the movie. I’m tired.

Your Curator of Schlock is and will be taking the month of April off. He will return in May. Big things are in store for the Museum of Schlock this year. Can’t say anything just yet. You’ll have to wait and see.

Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #176: Resident Evil Afterlife

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock, Zombies

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The Curator of Schlock #176 by Jeff Shuster

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Still no kung Fu zombies!

Was it too much for Paul W.S. Anderson to cast Donnie Yen in a Resident Evil movie, have him get zombified, so we could have a kung Fu zombie fight scene with Milla Jovovich? Was that too much to ask? We’re four movies in and I have yet to see that scene! You don’t even need to have Donnie Yen play a character. Just have him play himself and then he gets zombified. And don’t have him do one kung Fu scene for like two minutes and then have him sit around for the rest of the movie like a certain Star Wars movie that I won’t mention.

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Okay. Enough with my nitpicking. I’d say the first eighteen minutes of Resident Evil: Afterlife are just about the most awesome thing I’ve seen in a long time. Resident Evil: Extinction ended with Alice warning the evil chairman Albert Wesker that she was coming for him and the rest of the Umbrella Corporation. Resident Evil: Afterlife begins with Alice (Milla Jovovich) infiltrating Umbrella’s massive underground facility in Tokyo, Japan. She’s using ninja stars and a samurai sword, lopping the heads off of Umbrella guards left and right.

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She even uses her psionic powers to waste even more guards. And then she gets three bullets in her back. No more Alice. Until three more Alices show up sporting machine guns. Milla Jovovich times three?

That’s right. I forgot Alice had freed hundreds of clones of herself at the end of Resident Evil: Extinction. And they’re all here, killing tons Umbrella officers! This is awesome! The evil Chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) makes a quick getaway with his tiltrotor plane, smirking as he triggers a bomb from his cell phone that destroys Umbrella headquarters, killing all of the Alice clones and leaving a rather large crater in the middle of Tokyo. I really hate this guy!

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Unbeknownst to him, the real Alice was hiding inside the plane. She sneaks up on Wesker, gun in hand, but he’s too fast for her. Wesker sticks a needle in her neck, releasing an antivirus that kill the T-cells in her bloodstream, removing her powers and turning her into a normal human being again. Wesker makes some speech about the Umbrella Corporation reclaiming their property and how he’s going to kill Alice. Maybe he should have focused his attention on piloting the plane, which is about to crash!

Alice survives and heads over to Alaska where the survivors in Claire Redfield’s convoy were supposed to be holding up. She searches Alaska for months, finding no sign of them or the town they were supposed to go to, Arcadia. Eventually, she finds Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), but she’s not herself. Claire acts like a wild animal, attacking Alice with everything she’s got. Alice knocks her out and removes a strange, robotic red beetle from Claire’s chest. Claire comes to, saner, but has amnesia, obviously. Claire doesn’t remember her own name.

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They fly a plane to Los Angeles, where they run into a ragtag group of survivors like former basketball star, Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), and former Hollywood producer, Bennett Sinclair (Kim Coates). They tell Alice they’ve been receiving broadcasts from a huge ship named the Arcadia, which offers safe haven to survivors. Alice figures the rest of Claire’s convoy is on that ship.

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They just have get through the zombie hoards to get to it. And let me tell you, the zombies are worse this time around. Their faces open up like Venus flytraps. Plus, there’s this giant super zombie with a burlap sack nailed to his head walking around, wielding a huge axe he made from a streetlight.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Fortunately, Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), brother of Claire Redfield, joins up with them. He knows how they can get to the ship. But what horrors await them onboard? I’m not going to tell you. I’m really digging this series.

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