MUSINGS, PONDERINGS, RUMINATIONS AND FANCIES

[laffite]

I was just teasin' with "Bless your heart", trying to be "clever" (and always failing, lol) I watch a fair amount of the QVC Home Shopping Channel and host David Venable (from North Carolina) always says it in fun to vendors he is really fond of. I live in South Florida which is actually a suburb of New York City. The farther north you go in the Sunshine State, the more truly Southern it is. (think THE YEARLING)

Yes, Phil was very talented! LOL

Life is too short to sleep -- You must stay up (or record) PLAN 9! Which NJ are you from -- "Joisey" (i.e. Hoboken, etc., Frank Sinatra home turf; and I did forget about him as a club "member") or the more countrified, "picturesque" areas with the upscale farms and country clubs? I am proudly from da Bronx. (we had no upscale anything but I haven't been back in quite a long time -- my neighborhood is probably gentrified and filled to the gills with Starbucks, heaven forbid)

I missed Plan 9. Not normal fare for me but would accept recommendations. And I missed it! I have a jaundiced attitude towards Horror and would fain find one I fancy. I missed Plan 9, is there a Plan B. So if there is another recommendation out there, I would crave to know of it.

Or is P9 scyfi? Well, recommend one those too , if so minded. My fav SF is Alien.

[Swithin]

I was just teasin' with "Bless your heart", trying to be "clever" (and always failing, lol) I watch a fair amount of the QVC Home Shopping Channel and host David Venable (from North Carolina) always says it in fun to vendors he is really fond of. I live in South Florida which is actually a suburb of New York City. The farther north you go in the Sunshine State, the more truly Southern it is. (think THE YEARLING)

Yes, Phil was very talented! LOL

Life is too short to sleep -- You must stay up (or record) PLAN 9! Which NJ are you from -- "Joisey" (i.e. Hoboken, etc., Frank Sinatra home turf; and I did forget about him as a club "member") or the more countrified, "picturesque" areas with the upscale farms and country clubs? I am proudly from da Bronx. (we had no upscale anything but I haven't been back in quite a long time -- my neighborhood is probably gentrified and filled to the gills with Starbucks, heaven forbid)

I missed Plan 9. Not normal fare for me but would accept recommendations. And I missed it! I have a jaundiced attitude towards Horror and would fain find one I fancy. I missed Plan 9, is there a Plan B. So if there is another recommendation out there, I would crave to know of it.

Or is P9 scyfi? Well, recommend one those too , if so minded. My fav SF is Alien.

Plan 9 is known to be the worst movie ever made (which is of course ridiculous). If you want an example of a good horror film, I would suggest something like Witchfinder General (1968). It's about the pure evil that lurks in all of us. It might be a good place for you to start, because it's British and period, taking place in Cromwell's time. In fact, Oliver Cromwell makes an appearance in the film. If you do try it, be sure to get the British print. As a music lover, you might appreciate it more than the American print, which for some reason has a different music track laid on. The British score by Paul Ferris emphasizes the beauty in the midst of such ugliness and cruelty. I first saw this film at the Museum of Modern Art.

Here's a brief excerpt from the love theme from Witchfinder General.




Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer in Witchfinder General

[Andree]

Number 9....Number9......Number 9......the Watusi.....the Twist......El Dorado.

That's 79 minutes I can never get back. Plan 9 is still kind of funny though. First up, how could a decrepit old vampire
and a woman with a 15 inch waist kill Torman, the human block of concrete. Yet they do. Plan 9? Nothing to it, it's just
Plan 6 turned upside down. Thankfully it fails. As a card carrying Earthling, I wouldn't want to be conquered by a race
with such a god awful fashion sense. Those uniforms, yuck. I used to think Vampira was kind of sexy, but now she just
looks kind of gross. And one does feel sorry for Bela, looking very old and forlorn. I will give them credit for the cockpit
set, so realistic and high tech. It looks just like a real airplane cockpit. Yeah, there's still some laughs in the old movie.
Wiki has a fairly extensive entry on Plan 9. The house that Bela is walking around was the real house of Tor Johnson.

[Bronxgirl48]

"Visiting? That would mean visitors"

I do love the shower curtain cockpit.

It has been documented that Bela's stand-in was a neighborhood chiropractor.

[Andree]

Yeah, I got a kick out of the cockpit set. They are only shown seated in chairs so that they didn't have to spend a
cent on the controls for the airplane. Yes, I believe the stand in was either Wood's chiropractor or the chiropractor of
one of his friends. I wonder if it was a god idea for someone to hold their arm in that position for any length of time.

I forgot to mention Criswell. The future is where we all live. No kiddin' guy. I guess the Criswell hairdo never caught on.
He should have been able to foretell that.

[EP Millstone]

. . . If you want an example of a good horror film, I would suggest something like Witchfinder General (1968). It's about the pure evil that lurks in all of us . . .

Well, that's your interpretation.

To me, Witchfinder General (or when I saw it, The Conqueror Worm) is about almost 90 minutes of nasty, explicit, gruesome sadism and brutality. Personally, I would hesitate recommending it to anyone without knowing his/her tastes . . . and tolerance for extreme, gratuitous violence. Heed the warning on the American movie poster! Witchfinder General is not your grandfather's scary Vincent Price horror film! Although it is in my movie collection, Witchfinder General is not among my favorite horror films.

". . . the most persistently sadistic and morally rotten film I have seen. It was a degrading experience by which I mean it made me feel dirty." -- Alan Bennett

"Surely the most immoral thing in any form of entertainment is the conditioning of the audience to accept and enjoy violence . . . Violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. Insofar as one is going to show it on the screen at all, it should be presented as such—and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts the better. I wish I could have witnessed Mr. Bennett frantically attempting to wash away the 'dirty' feeling my film gave him. It would have been proof of the fact that Witchfinder General works as intended." -- Michael Reeves

[laffite]

I will certainly eschew that one. Horror is one thing but hopefully they don't entail rank cruelty. My least favorite film of all time is Funny Games (the French one and presumably the English-language version, this latter i have not seen and will not touch with a 10-foot ball). Haneke is the most sadistic director ever, I'm sure of it. His primary victim is his audience. But I have still liked some of his less "extravagant" movies.

[Swithin]

I will certainly eschew that one. Horror is one thing but hopefully they don't entail rank cruelty. My least favorite film of all time is Funny Games (the French one and presumably the English-language version, this latter i have not seen and will not touch with a 10-foot ball). Haneke is the most sadistic director ever, I'm sure of it. His primary victim is his audience. But I have still liked some of his less "extravagant" movies.

I was playing to your love of English period pieces. Witchfinder Genera is a deeply intelligent film about the capacity for violence and horror in all of us. Not gratuitous. As I said in an earlier post, horror films are today''s myths and fairy tales and are an important part of human expression.

C.G. Jung lamented the inability of Christianity to come to terms with the grotesque and sinister side of the unconscious, hence the obsession with violence, particularly in countries where evangelical religion thrives. When I was 21, I spent part of one summer at the Edinburgh Episcopal Theological College in Edinburgh. I mentioned to one of the minders there that I would be home quite late. He told me to be careful. He said when Scots get drunk they take out knives; when the Irish get drunk they go to sleep. (The school was part of the Anglican Communion, not part of the more evangelical Scottish Presbyterian Church, which had been inspired by John Knox.)

"If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he
encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful,
good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman?
How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead
himself attends only to one-half of him?"
-- C.J. Jung

So that's Jung's way of saying, Lafitte, that you have to watch horror films!

[LiamCasey]

Watched Black Adam (2022) last night on HBO Max. This recent DC superhero movie is set in the fictional country of Kahndaq. And, at about 30 minutes into this movie, a character is watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) on television. And in the lower-left corner of the television screen is the logo "KCM" (with "Kahndaq Classic Movies" under it in much smaller letters) using the same font as TCM. I wonder how much of their target audience they expected to catch that corporate tie-in.

[scsu1975]

. I guess the Criswell hairdo never caught on.

Sure it did. It was the inspiration for Mister Softee.

[LawrenceA]

Not gratuitous. As I said in an earlier post, horror films are today''s myths and fairy tales and are an important part of human expression.

[EP Millstone]

. . . Witchfinder Genera is a deeply intelligent film about the capacity for violence and horror in all of us. Not gratuitous . . .

Say "WHA . . .?!"

One person's definition of "gratuitous" is . . . one person's definition of "gratuitous."

"All of us" don't have a capacity for violence and horror. To assert that "all of us" do is to cynically tar Mankind with a very broad brush.

I love horror movies. But, I don't love horror movies for some of the, IMO, crackpot, half-baked, and lunatic philosophical, psychological, sociological, and anthropological reasons and rationalizations that I've read and heard. To wit, I don't watch horror movies to:

• Misanthropically identify with a monster or murderer to embrace my inner psychopathic killer.
• Get an exhilarating adrenaline rush from being terrified.
• Vicariously and safely experience danger and the threat of death in the comfy, cozy confines of a movie theatre or my living room.

I watch horror movies strictly and simply for escapist entertainment. I watch horror movies because -- for reasons I don't feel the need to analyze or explore -- I enjoy them.

I love horror movies -- but not all horror movies. I prefer "fantasy horror" (involving monsters, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, and Things That Go Bump in the Night) to real-life horrors (serial killers, sadists, psychotics, torturers -- human monsters such as Matthew Hopkins).

. . . C.G. Jung lamented the inability of Christianity to come to terms with the grotesque and sinister side of the unconscious . . .

So that's Jung's way of saying, Lafitte, that you have to watch horror films!

Nobody has to watch horror films -- or any other types of films.

C.G. Jung needed to pull his Godhead out of his Godass (as did/do many psychologists and psychoanalysts) . . . in my philosophical opinion.

[Swithin]

. . . Witchfinder Genera is a deeply intelligent film about the capacity for violence and horror in all of us. Not gratuitous . . .

Say "WHA . . .?!"

One person's definition of "gratuitous" is . . . one person's definition of "gratuitous."

"All of us" don't have a capacity for violence and horror. To assert that "all of us" do is to cynically tar Mankind with a very broad brush.

I love horror movies. But, I don't love horror movies for some of the, IMO, crackpot, half-baked, and lunatic philosophical, psychological, sociological, and anthropological reasons and rationalizations that I've read and heard. To wit, I don't watch horror movies to:

• Misanthropically identify with a monster or murderer to embrace my inner psychopathic killer.
• Get an exhilarating adrenaline rush from being terrified.
• Vicariously and safely experience danger and the threat of death in the comfy, cozy confines of a movie theatre or my living room.

I watch horror movies strictly and simply for escapist entertainment. I watch horror movies because -- for reasons I don't feel the need to analyze or explore -- I enjoy them.

I love horror movies -- but not all horror movies. I prefer "fantasy horror" (involving monsters, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, and Things That Go Bump in the Night) to real-life horrors (serial killers, sadists, psychotics, torturers -- human monsters such as Matthew Hopkins).

. . . C.G. Jung lamented the inability of Christianity to come to terms with the grotesque and sinister side of the unconscious . . .

So that's Jung's way of saying, Lafitte, that you have to watch horror films!

Nobody has to watch horror films -- or any other types of films.

C.G. Jung needed to pull his Godhead out of his Godass (as did/do many psychologists and psychoanalysts) . . . in my philosophical opinion.

But EP, old man, I think Lafitte has the capacity to reach a higher plane, and get to the place of appreciating the films on many levels; although your entertainment level is of course fine. And, if you say that you don't watch horror films to embrace your "inner psychopathic killer," what does embrace your "inner psychopathic killer?" Because he's there Blanche, he's there!

And btw: The most terrifying thing about Witchfinder General is not Matthew Hopkins. It comes at the very end, when sweet, handsome, kind Trooper Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) is driven so far that he pulls himself away from his chains and starts hacking Hopkins to pieces. At that point, Marshall's friend comes in, shoots Hopkins and says "God have mercy on us all." A by then crazed Trooper Marshall looks at his good friend and shrieks: "You took him from me, you took him from me!" Meaning he wanted to do more hacking. And the audience at MOMA, when I saw the film, was totally with Marshall. That is the tragedy of the film, which ends with Hilary Dwyer's primal screen. The corruption of everyone, even the audience.



Director Michael Reeves died, at the age of 25, a few months after the film was completed. Some think his death was a suicide.

[Andree]

Sure it did. It was the inspiration for Mister Softee.

That's the price I pay for not being familiar with certain food franchises. I've heard of Mister Softee but that's
about it. And after having seen a picture of Mister Softee, I don't think his 'do looks very much like Criswell's.

[Andree]

I saw Witchfinder General on YT a number of years ago. I suppose it was a little more graphic than was usual for
horror films of the time, but nothing too out there and besides it's only a movie. I like The Blood on Satan's Claw
better. It's more subtle and spookier than WG.

While God has the attribute of perfection, his supposed creation, humans, do not. They are sinful and imperfect
and tend toward bad and violent deeds, like......Cromwell for instance. Then there's also the devil, who is supposedly
constantly tempting God's chillin to evil deeds. So the rather simplistic division of good and evil deeds has always been
right there in Christianity, it's really one of its basic themes--the goodness of God versus the sinfulness of man, conveniently
leaving out areas of gray.