Quoth the Movie - 141st Edition

-- Beth

1978

A Chorus In Training

by Jesse David Young

Going Green

“Keep always this dim corner for me, that I may sit while the Green Hour glides, a proud pavine of Time. For I am no longer in the city accursed, where Time is horsed on the white gelding Death, his spurs rusted with blood.” -- Aleister Crowley

Greenabomber

I spent Christmas morning talking to a self-proclaimed nomadic green anarchist. He has spent the last few years traveling all over North America, staying off ‘the grid’ and avoiding technology, taxes and the fascist propaganda of ‘the man’ that is ‘subverting the true nature of this great land.’

He was a hoot.

At one point, he said he considered joining a group of similar people in Oregon. Tickled by the irony of organized anarchists, I asked who was in charge. He actually gave me a name. I wondered out loud where this group stood in the hierarchy of American anarchist organizations. He said they were independent. I told you, he was a hoot. In fact, he didn’t catch on to my amusement at all until later, after he had defended the actions of Ted Kaczynski at some length. I said, “Well, his bombs were eco-friendly—I’ll give him that . . . and we all know corpses are biodegradable, so I guess I see your point. He was like Mother Nature’s emissary . . . and ruthless assassin.”

He didn’t think I was funny.

I think I’m funny.

Quoth the Movie - 140th Edition

-- Prince Prospero

When I think about making new props for Halloween, these wax-drizzled heads are always among my first thoughts. Gorgeous, eh?

1964

Sharing time. This won't be structured - or proofread - or very interesting.

For better or worse, my introduction to Edgar Allan Poe was not through the written word but through the films of Roger Corman. The Pit and the Pendulum was the first horror film I ever saw and the first film I ever loved. The Masque of the Red Death was the second. Both star Vincent Price and, together, are the foundation on which I've built my house of ever-loving horror. Pit established Barbara Steele as a goddess of terror in my young mind and Vincent Price as the voice that pervaded my nightmares. Masque elicited a different kind of reaction from me.

I've often wondered where my deep affection for adorable redheads comes from. My dating resume (sparse as it may be) is full of Irish girls. Sure, there's nothing wrong with that but I've never been one to have a favorite type of anything and I rarely find fault with any woman I meet anywhere in any shape or size (love ya, ladies). Watching this film again made me realize that this attraction all started with Jane Asher. Where else, right? I must have been eight or nine when I saw this movie on TV and didn't even understand what I was feeling but when I saw Jane Asher on the screen yesterday, it all came rushing back. Boys, you know the rush I'm talking about [wink]. Girls, you just pretend I'm talking sports and tune out, you know, so I feel less icky as I wet my lips and whisper longingly, "Honey, honey, honey."

It makes me wonder how many of our predilections are established, not deliberately during the peak years of our intellectual cultivation, but serendipitously in the maelstrom of impulse and perpetual awe that is our youth.

Quoth the Movie - 139th Edition

"This is too damn crazy." -- Paul

1978

Quoth the Movie - 138th Edition

-- Claire

1974

Saint Nicholas

Died December 6th, 346

Bob was a Badass

In the 1970's, politics in Jamaica became violent.

Bob Marley scheduled a free concert for December 5th, 1976 called "Smile Jamaica" to promote peace between the parties.

On December 3rd, they shot him.

He played the concert anyway.

Bob was a badass.

Death, To the Dead for Evermore

Death, to the dead for evermore

A King, a God, the last, the best of friends -

Whene'er this mortal journey ends

Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;

Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore

Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn

Disturbs the eternal sleep,

But in the stillness far withdrawn

Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.

For as from open windows forth we peep

Upon the night-time star beset

And with dews for ever wet;

So from this garish life the spirit peers;

And lo! as a sleeping city death outspread,

Where breathe the sleepers evenly; and lo!

After the loud wars, triumphs, trumpets, tears

And clamour of man's passion, Death appears,

And we must rise and go.

Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears

Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;

Soon, racked by hopes and fears,

The all-pondering, all-contriving head,

Weary with all things, wearies of the years;

And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;

And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.

by Robert Louis Stevenson

died December 3rd, 1894

A Shipwreck

by Claude Joseph Vernet

Died December 3rd, 1789

My Favorite Joke

Why did Maison cross the road?

To savagely ang gleefully dismember everyone that wouldn’t stop talking to him about the Twilight series.

Ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! MWA-HA-HA-HA!

Thirst

Thirst!

Not the thirst of the throat

Though that be the wildest and worst

Of physical pangs—that smote

Alone to the heart of Christ,

Wringing the one wild cry

"I thirst!" from His agony,

While the soldiers drank and diced:

Not the thirst benign

That calls the worker to wine;

Not the bodily thirst

(Though that be frenzy accurst)

When the mouth is full of sand,

And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears

Trick the soul till it hears

Water, water at hand,

When a man will dig his nails

In his breast, and drink the blood

Already that clots and stales

Ere his tongue can tip its flood,

When the sun is a living devil

Vomiting vats of evil,

And the moon and the night but mock

The wretch on his barren rock,

And the dome of heaven high-arched

Like his mouth is arid and parched,

And the caves of his heart high-spanned

Are choked with alkali sand!

Not this! but a thirst uncharted;

Body and soul alike

Traitors turned black-hearted,

Seeking a space to strike

In a victim already attuned

To one vast chord of wound;

Every separate bone

Cold, an incarnate groan

Distilled from the icy sperm

Of Hell's implacable worm;

Every drop of the river

Of blood aflame and a-quiver

With poison secret and sour—

With a sudden twitch at the last

Like certain jagged daggers.

(With bloodshot eyes dull-glassed

The screaming Malay staggers

Through his village aghast).

So blood wrenches its pain

Sardonic through heart and brain.

Every separate nerve

Awake and alert, on a curve

Whose asymptote's name is "never"

In a hyperbolic "for ever!"

A bitten and burning snake

Striking its venom within it,

As if it might serve to slake

The pain for the tithe of a minute.

Awake, for ever awake!

Awake as one never is

While sleep is a possible end,

Awake in the void, the abyss

Whose thirst is an echo of this

That martyrs, world without end,

(World without end, Amen!)

The man that falters and yields

For the proverb's "month and an hour"

To the lure of the snow-starred fields

Where the opium poppy's aflower.

Only the prick of a needle

Charged from a wizard well!

Is this sufficient to wheedle

A soul from heaven to hell?

Was man's spirit weaned

From fear of its ghosts and gods

To fawn at the feet of a fiend?

Is it such terrible odds—

The heir of ages of wonder,

The crown of earth for an hour,

The master of tide and thunder

Against the juice of a flower?

Ay! In the roar and the rattle

Of all the armies of sin,

This is the only battle

He never was known to win.

Slave to the thirst—not thirst

As here it is weakly written,

Not thirst in the brain black-bitten,

In the soul more sorely smitten!

One dare not think of the worst!

Beyond the raging and raving

Hell of the physical craving

Lies, in the brain benumbed,

At the end of time and space,

An abyss, unmeasured, unplumbed—

The haunt of a face!

She it is, she that found me

In the morphia honeymoon;

With silk and steel she bound me,

In her poisonous milk she drowned me,

Even now her arms surround me,

Stifling me into the swoon

That still—but oh, how rarely!—

Comes at the thrust of the needle,

Steadily stares and squarely,

Nor needs to fondle and wheedle

Her slave agasp for a kiss,

Hers whose horror is his

That knows that viper womb,

Speckled and barred with black

On its rusty amber scales,

Is his tomb—

The straining, groaning, rack

On which he wails—he wails!

Her cranial dome is vaulted,

Her mad Mongolian eyes

Aslant with the ecstasies

Of things immune, exalted

Far beyond stars and skies,

Slits of amber and jet—

Her snout for the quarry set

Fleshy and heavy and gross,

Bestial, broken across,

And below it her mouth that drips

Blood from the lips

That hide the fangs of a snake,

Drips on venemous udders

Mountainous flanks that fret,

And the spirit sickens and shudders

At the hint of a worse thing yet.

Olya! the golden bait

Barbed with infinite pain,

Fatal, fanatical mate

Of a poisoned body and brain!

Olya, the name that leers

Its lecherous longing and knavery,

Whispers in craving ears

The secret spell of her slavery.

Horror indeed intense,

Seduction ever intenser,

Swinging the smoke of sense

From the bowl of a smouldering censer!

Behind me, behind and above,

She stands, that mirror of love.

Her fingers are supple-jointed;

Her nails are polished and pointed,

And tipped with spurs of gold:

With them she rowels the brain.

Her lust is critical, cold;

And her Chinese cheeks are pale,

As she daintily picks, profane

With her octopus lips, and the teeth

Jagged and black beneath,

Pulp and blood from a nail.

One swift prick was enough

In days gone by to invoke her:

She was incarnate love

In the hours when I first awoke her.

Little by little I found

The truth of her, stripped of clothing,

Bitter beyond all bound,

Leprous beyond all loathing.

Black, the plague of the pit,

Her pustules visibly fester,

Cancerous kisses that bit

As the asp caressed her.

Dragon of lure and dread,

Tiger of fury and lust,

The quick in chains to the dead,

The slime alive in the dust,

Brazen shame like a flame,

An orgy of pregnant pollution

With hate beyond aim or name—

Orgasm, death, dissolution!

Know you now why her eyes

So fearfully glaze, beholding

Terrors and infamies

Like filthy flowers unfolding?

Laughter widowed of ease,

Agony barred from sadness,

Death defeated of peace,

Is she not madness?

She waits for me, lazily leering,

As moon goes murdering moon;

The moon of her triumph is nearing;

She will have me wholly soon.

And you, you puritan others,

Who have missed the morphia craving,

Cry scorn if I call you brothers,

Curl lip at my maniac raving,

Fools, seven times beguiled,

You have not known her? Well!

There never was a need she smiled

To harry you into hell!

Morphia is but one

Spark of its secular fire.

She is the single sun—

Type of all desire!

All that you would, you are—

And that is the crown of a craving.

You are slaves of the wormwood star.

Analysed, reason is raving.

Feeling, examined, is pain.

What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it!

Life is anguish, insane;

And death is—not a way out of it!

by Aleister Crowley (from Diary of a Drug Fiend)

Died December 1st, 1947

Oops, I Dropped My Acid

As everyone knows, the best way to cleanse a blog's palate after any kind of Palooza is with a Psychedelic Freak Out Dance Party. Go ahead and groove - no one's going to judge you.

Party Hosts : Something Weird Video

Quoth the Movie - 137th Edition

-- Norman

1998

THREE NICE THINGS THAT I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE

Nice thing #1 is . . . um . . . well, now, what was that? It'll come to me. . . .

Nice thing #2 is . . . uh . . . there was that one thing . . . or maybe. . . .

Nice thing #3 would have to be . . . you know . . . ah, forget it. I tried.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Thus ends Remakapalooza. I learned a lot. Alright, I learned nothing. I figured before I started that my enjoyment of a remake would be inversely related to my love of its original and that held true. I figured I’d be petty and over-critical of every little thing in these remakes and I was. I figured I’d give up and throw in a bunch of films that I already knew I liked and I did. Oh well, chalk it up to another ill-conceived foray into self-flagellation.

I can’t say I really found any gems along the way. I love Slither, The Thing and The Fly but those films were already familiar to me so they don’t count. Rather than track back through thirty films and over-analyze my feelings toward them, let’s just do this:

Five Remakes I Would Watch Again (not including the three I just mentioned)

House on Haunted Hill

The Haunting

The Uninvited

Thirteen Ghosts

Ultraviolet

Five Remakes I would Never Watch Again

Black Christmas (never ever)

Psycho (never ever ever ever ever ever – this gets the Gouge My Eyes Out award) (if you want to see Vince at his murderous best, watch Clay Pigeons)

The Wicker Man (had none of the pith and weirdness of the original - it was like drinking a second cup of tea made with the same bag as the first cup)

Tool Box Murders (sorry Tobe)

Village of the Damned (sorry JC)

I would like to say that just because I didn't enjoy a film, doesn't mean it was a bad film. Certainly, the worst film in all of movieland is still better than anything I could produce. I have great respect for the people that devote themselves to putting these things together and it hasn't been my intention to convince anyone to avoid a single film that was mentioned here in the month of November. Most of my favorite films are unpopular, unknown or heavily criticized. Still, you could never convince me they are anything less than golden. So, don't let my opinions sway you. This was all just an attempt to get myself on-board with the remake trend in horror movies, since they seem to constitute the bulk of what will be available in theaters over the next few years.

Catch you in the shadows,

Maison

Quoth the Movie - 136th Edition

-- Brenda & Bill

2006

Let's see, how do I classify Slither? Slither is kind of an homage / parody / mash-up. It takes elements from Night of the Creeps (a parody itself), Shivers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Plan 9 from Outer Space, several other similar B-movies and every zombie movie you've ever seen. Fun, fun movie. I know, when I started all this my intention was to just watch movies I swore I'd never see but I wouldn't have survived without including a few of these favorites along the way.

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS FILM

I love everything about this film.

Everything.

Seriously, everything.

Quoth the Movie - 135th Edition

-- Ferris & Burke

2009

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE

#1: It's in 3-D. I'm a sucker for 3-D movies. I know, I know, they're cheesy and gimmick-driven but, hey, aren't we all?

#2: Jaime King.

#3: Gas masks. Love 'em. I have a couple myself that I use in my Halloween display.

Quoth the Movie - 134th Edition

"These moments, as beautiful as they are, are evil when they're gone." -- Violet

2006

While certainly not a traditional remake, UltraViolet takes the salient points of a great little mob movie by John Cassavetes called Gloria and uses them to construct a fun, futuristic fantasy. I dug it. Still, if you haven't seen Gloria (1980), you should see it. The kid in that movie is way more fun than the kid in this movie.

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE

01. Violet's hair and clothing color-coordinating themselves to the various environments was cool.

02. Violet putting out the flame on the flame-thrower with her own blood was cool.

03. Death by hair-pulling - you know that was cool.

Quoth the Movie - 133rd Edition

-- Father Brennan

Children always make me feel the same way. Creepy little animals. . . .

2006

Rather than name three things, I'm going to just say that the actors were fantastic in this movie. First off, I love Mia Farrow. People always laugh at me when I say this but I love what I love. She was great. Liev Schreiber is always great and that held true in this film. I'm not very familiar with Julia Stiles but she was great in Edmond and she was great in this. Pete Postlethwaite and Keith Jennings were great. The kid was great. Everybody was great.

Quoth the Movie - 132nd Edition

-- Clark

1982

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS FILM

Nice thing #1: Mac pouring his drink into the chess computer when he loses.

Nice thing #2: Antarctica. I said it before with The Hills Have Eyes, I love an extreme situation in an extreme environment.

Nice thing #3: the Thing. Awesome monster. Way to go, Props & Special Effects.

Quoth the Movie - 131st Edition

-- Mr. Martin

2003

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE

I liked Willard's mom spontaneously changing his name to Clark.

I liked Willard carrying Socrates on his shoulder like a pirate with his trusty parrot.

I liked Willard putting the cat in the house with thousands of angry rats and just walking away.

Quoth the Movie - 130th Edition

-- Richie

2009

THREE NICE THINGS I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE

Nice thing #1: Jason checking himself out in the mirror. It made me chuckle. I like to chuckle.

Nice thing #2: creepy dolls. Always a classic.

Nice thing #3: Bree making Chewie burn his lips. It made me chuckle. I like to chuckle.

Quoth the Movie - 129th Edition

-- The Sign

2009

The big bad wolf can gobble up all the grandmas he wants but my entertainment hinges on Little Red skipping out of the woods with her basket intact.