Street Trash (1987)

This had been on my IMDB watch-list for at least ten years, before we finally turned it on the other night. To be fair, "the other night" was over three weeks ago now, so unfortunately this gem is already starting to fade from my mind. It was, however, quite entertaining; our movie criteria had been "something fun and 80's, with gore and a simple plot", and on that front, Street Trash delivered.

The premise is simple: a liquor store owner comes across a nondescript case of what appear to be liquor bottles in his cellar, labeled "Viper". Seeing an opportunity to profit from the large homeless population, he decides to sell it to the local hobos at $1 a bottle. Unbeknownst to him, the bottles are actually toxic waste.

We meet our homeless anti-hero, Fred (Mike Lackey), as he sneakily steals a bottle of Viper. The first-person camera angles in the beginning are well-done, and very typical of the era. Fred ends up being chased, and as it progresses, he accidentally wrongs more and more people along the way, leading to a comical mob on his heels. Fred appears to be a bit of a jokester, dressed like some sort of filthy poet-type with a velvet burgundy hat.

The view of the city is that it too is filthy, and overrun by bums. There is a good scene involving a few bums washing a car against the will of the young couple inside; "Bronson" (Vic Noto), a hulking Vietnam-vet bum emerges, and proceeds to yank a young man out of another car nearby. The camera work here is great, as the man's glasses move with the camera as his face gets smashed into a windshield.

Meanwhile, Fred has given his bottle of Viper to another bum, who slinks off to a mostly-mostly demolished building to drink it. Perched atop a toilet, the effects on the bum are pretty quick; he melts into a surprisingly decent-looking pile of blue paint.

As though the Viper isn't trouble enough for the local bums, Bronson appears to be prone to some pretty ridiculous war flashbacks, and bouts of murderous rage. Bill (Bill Chepil), a brash and avant garde cop, is hot on his trail, seeking to piece together these recent deaths.

Bill tries to get some intel out of a passing bum, who then promptly climbs a fire escape and opens his own bottle of Viper. He drops some good one-liners on a black cat observing him, before downing the bottle. The cat looks on indifferently, as the bum oozes and drips onto a business man passing below. The drippings here look like canned pineapple sauce, but in a good way. It would be unfair to say the effects in this movie are bad; I loved it.

A large number of the local bums populate a city junkyard. Bronson rules it and his rag-tag group of homeless vets, from atop his makeshift throne of trash, while Fred and his kid brother Kevin (Mike Sferrazza) try to lay low and avoid the junkyard's owner. Wendy (Jane Arakawa), an Asian employee of the junkyard, has taken to caring for the younger kids like Kevin. Fred doesn't seem to like it, and has a few choice words for Kevin; it is easy to say Street Trash is pretty racist, and the dialogue supports this, but there is a surprising underlying message in this movie. Fred opens up to Kevin about how he was too young to remember dealing with their father after he came home from the war, and was unable even to "watch Godzilla without yelling 'Gook alert'".

Fred and Kevin are products of the social effects of the Vietnam War, as are Bronson and the whole slew of other vets that came back too screwed up to reintegrate in society, and this movie highlights the lack of realistic support available to these individuals. They were greatly ignored and swept under the rug, to go live on the streets.

The middle of the movie is short on toxic waste deaths, but despite the depressing commentary on Post-Vietnam war era America, the comedy keeps rolling. It is hard to say whether they meant to make a social statement with this movie; one could argue the commentary is just there, like the vets and their families were, their situations so prevalent at the time that we are desensitized to it. The real focus here is probably the humor, and the excellent deaths.

Bronson does have a flashback/dream about the war, where he was apparently a big-shot soldier; some pretty stereotypical Vietcong vampires (as they are referred to in the credits, which are worth reading through) attack him. It is a pretty funny sequence, if not a little dark and offensive.

More humor: another bum, Ed (M. D'jango Krunch, is that his real name?), heads to a local store to steal some chicken; besides looking like James Harden, he drops some pretty racist comments to the store clerk after an old white lady rats him out. He asks the old lady if "this is junior high" since she is such a tattle-tale, before pulling a paper bag over his head, stomping through a front window, and waddling off down the street with raw chicken falling out of his pant-legs.

There is another good sequence, during which Fred comes across a very drunken woman on his way home. He takes her to the junkyard, where they have rough sex. Some other bums watch, before dragging her off to gang rape and kill her. She turns out to have been the girlfriend of a mob boss, which leads to a side plot with our overly zealous Bill the Cop and the doorman/kid that let Fred wander off with the girl. Again, some solid one-liners ensue.


Bill the Cop ends up having an inevitable show-down with Bronson, the human femur-bone knife wielding PTSD-having vet; this more-or-less sets off the chain of events that lead up to the finale.


A couple more good Viper fatalities play out, and someone gets his block knocked off by a pressurized air tank. It is hard to find fault with this movie, unless you hate profanity and the overblown racist tendencies of some 80s movies... watch it and see for yourself. If for no other reason, than to see Bronson hack off the weenie of a bum that almost pees on him, and the subsequent game of keep-away the bums play with it.

Apparently the writer, Roy Frumkes (who had a cameo as the melted businessman), wrote a memoir/making-of type film about Street Trash almost twenty years later, The Meltdown Memoirs. It's on my watchlist, we will see if I update this later.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

"Freedom is obedience; obedience is work; work is life." Before Dead End Drive-In, Brian Trenchard-Smith gave us Turkey Shoot, a deliciously violent Australian cult film. It has a plot very similar to The Most Dangerous Game, but with a few twists and a heavy Orwellian feel.

The opening credits, stock footage of rioting and attacks, alludes to the film taking place in a near future- a very near future, given that nothing is very "futuristic". Society is under the control of a totalitarian government, and anything less than total conformity in this dystopian state is punishable by imprisonment and reprogramming in a work camp.

I've always been a big fan of dystopian stories; it's interesting that we seem to fear these futures so much, yet we as a society try so hard to march toward them. Maybe that is why they are so scary: they seem to be inevitable. We tell ourselves technology is all for the greater good, that we are happy our phones, watches, etc. track our every move. So many get their news from memes on Facebook, and believe everything they see on the Internet; we seem willing to give up our privacy and freedom for the sake of a cute photo filter or free Pepsi sweepstakes. If a dystopia isn't our future, it is because we are already living in one.

Anyway, I digress. Early on in Turkey Shoot, we learn there is of course a resistance movement, of which Paul Anders (Steve Railsback, Helter Skelter) is a major figure. In arresting him, the police drag poor shopkeeper Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey, Black Christmas and It) in as well, for sympathizing with the accused. The two are then shipped off to Prison Camp 97, along with a blonde suspected prostitute, Rita Daniels. We learn that the camp is run by the militant Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig), who makes very clear he intends to break Paul Anders for his history of escapes from other camps.

The three new prisoners quickly get a taste of what the prison is really like. The film is delightfully heavy on the 1970s-80s exploitation and extreme violence, with the naive Chris almost getting raped by a guard immediately after getting dumped off at the camp. Anders comes to her rescue (women all need a man to take care of them...), earning himself some torture. The main muscle at camp is Chief Guard Ritter (the imposing Roger Ward, Mad Max), who proceeds to beat a young female prisoner to death in spectacular fashion as a warning to the rest of the wards. And no prison movie would be complete without the requisite nude shower scene, on which Turkey Shoot delivers.

Akin to The Most Dangerous Game, Thatcher offers a deal to four of the inmates (the newest three, and a long-time member of the camp by the name of Dodge), one which they cannot refuse: they are to participate as the targets in a hunt for Thatcher's guests. If they survive the absurd chase in the surrounding jungle until sundown, they will win their freedom. Thrown in as a bonus for Thatcher, is another prisoner by the name of Griff (Bill Young), whom he intends to simply execute.

We are introduced to the rest of the hunters: Secretary Mallory (Noel Ferrier), Jennifer (Carmen Duncan), and Tito (Michael Petrovich). It is suggested that Jennifer and Thatcher have a history, and Tito comes off as ridiculously decadent in a Freddy Mercury way. Their mannerisms are very bourgeois, and the massive quantity of native artifacts, etc. in the main house give off a very colonial vibe (think 1900s British colonization of Africa). Tito promises to do something excessive for the hunt, and he doesn't disappoint: his "weapon" is a werewolf-freak he picked up in the circus by the name of "Alph" (Stevie "Crusher" Rackman, a well-known Australian wrestler and "Donk" in Crocodiile Dundee).

The film takes off from here in rather intense fashion, with the hunters pursuing our yellow-jumpsuited prisoner friends in various extreme vehicles (and a horse for Jennifer, the marksman/lesbian bow-huntress). Over-the-top explosions and gunfire ensue: the werewolf gobbles a toe, one victim is agonizingly shot with arrows before being crushed under an ATV, and the poor werewolf is eventually bisected by the tractor/dune buggy he rode in on. The maybe-prostitute Rita meets a gnarly fate, but unfortunately we do not get to see it carried out. There are a couple good scenes with a machete, which is almost mandatory if you are going to do a movie set in a jungle. Further chaos ensues, but it's nothing our hero (and his lady, who, despite being a "wilting flower" the whole movie, manages to man up in the end) cannot handle in the form of a full camp mutiny.









Turkey Shoot is intense at times, and a lot of fun; despite some poor dubbing in places, there are some fairly big Australian names in this one, and it seems to have had a decent budget given the gratuitous explosions and blood effects. Steve Railsback is amusing as the scrappy revolutionary who gets to blow up the big boss with a machine gun (cheesy effects, entertaining scene nonetheless); oddly enough, all of the characters more-or-less came across as likable to me, even the malicious guards. You have to just accept this one and not judge it too harshly, and you'll have a good time. Fittingly, the movie ends with an H.G. Wells quote:

"Revolution begins with the misfits."

The Howling (1981)

When I hear "werewolves", I've always pictured the Howling werewolves, specifically from the first, second, and fourth installments of the franchise. Growing up, my mother had a healthy appreciation for horror movies and the occult; if she wasn't trying to get us to dance naked for the solstice, we were probably out hiking- and she could put any 4X4 to shame in whichever clunker car we had at the time, mind you- in the mountains to find bird skulls or fulfill something we read in some old dusty book from Dragon's Marsh. The rest of the time, we were probably at home watching the best horror the 70's and 80's had to offer.

These adventures led to a fairly colorful imagination for a child, and arguably some pretty intense night terrors if I'm being honest, but that is a story for another time. The Howling and its werewolves left a mark on me, for better or for worse, and I cherish the nostalgia.

Only last year did I finally read the Howling novels by Gary Brandner; I never knew they existed. On a whim, I asked the lady at the book exchange to keep an eye out for them, and within a week or so she'd procured me copies of all three. There is something deeply satisfying about an old, yellowed paperback: it smells and feels delightful, and I enjoy the mystique of where it might have been and who might have read it before me.

The first installment, The Howling, bares some similarities in plot to the first novel by Brandner, but ultimately is quite different. Dee Wallace plays Karen White, a doe-eyed news anchor who has been receiving communications from a serial killer. Her husband Bill (Christopher Stone, with whom Wallace goes on to star in Cujo two years later) is understandably worried when Karen participates in a sting to catch the killer. The whole thing goes badly, and Karen, after witnessing the death of killer "Eddie Quist" in a porn booth, is ordered to take some time off work and go recuperate at a community known as "the Colony". The community is owned by her psychiatrist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick MacNee).

Karen forebodingly hopes the people at the retreat "aren't too weird"; we are introduced to everyone at a beach BBQ, and, not surprisingly, there are some creeps in the bunch. The late John Carradine looks like he might have been a crotchety old werewolf in real life, and does a marvelous job here. We also meet "Marsha", a vampish gypsy woman in black leather. She makes a blatant pass at Karen's husband, and is described as being of very elemental, natural energy by the doctor. Someone else puts it more bluntly: she's a bitch.

While Karen and Bill are unwinding at The Colony, Karen's coworkers Terry Fisher (Belinda Belaski) and Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan, nice alliteration in these two) are working to decipher who exactly Eddie Quist was. Halloran, Karen, and Marsha's names are directly from the book, despite their characters being modified slightly. Terry and Chris stumble upon Eddie's rented room, full of bones and sketches of wolf-men, as well as a landscape scene of an as-yet unidentified beach. To make matters worse, when they go to see his body at the morgue, it is gone, the metal door where he was being held now badly mangled by what appear to be claws.

Karen's husband goes on a hunt with the local men to try and catch whatever has been killing cows, and in the process kills a rabbit; he is told it would be a sin to kill something you don't eat, and heads to Marsha's to ask her to cook it for him. Marsha, whose wildly erotic energy is acted well, tries to kiss Bill. He rejects her and leaves, but the look on Marsha's face is anything but rejected. It is clear she is the hunter, and is only toying with him. Shortly after, Bill is attacked in the forest by what can only be a werewolf.

After getting patched up by the doctor, Bill cannot sleep, and leaves Karen in bed to wander the woods. He unsurprisingly meets up with Marsha; the two strip down intensely by a bonfire, and proceed to consummate their new bond. Much saliva and howling ensues, along with a seductive transformation. When Bill returns to the sleeping Karen, he seems afraid to touch her, and unsure of what has happened to him.

By now, Terry and Chris have done some research on werewolves, and Terry has headed to The Colony. She recognizes it as the location of the landscape they found in Eddie's room, and in the process of searching Marsha's shack, is attacked by a werewolf herself. She manages to hack off its arm with a hatchet, and runs to the doctor's office to phone for help.

Relaying everything to Chris over the phone, they put the pieces together: a search of the doctor's files confirms that Eddie was his patient, and the doctor was well-aware of Eddie's condition. Unfortunately for the inquisitive Terry, Eddie hasn't gone far, and Chris must listen helplessly over the phone as his lady is brutalized. This is the first time we get a good look at one of the wolves, and the scene does not disappoint. They are immense and vicious, and quite terrifying even 35 years later.

When Karen arrives at the doctor's office soon after, she finds her friend Terry's body, her throat torn out and her eyes full of blood. She does not have time to mourn, as Eddie is on her tail, and he is not pleased with how their last encounter ended. Her reaction to Terry is one of devastation and horror, Wallace doing quite well in expressing Karen breaking. Eddie torments her further, and a prolonged transformation from man to beast follows.

Karen manages to wound Eddie and escape, unaware that Chris has procured silver bullets and is on his way to avenge Terry. He too comes upon Eddie, who isn't prepared for the bullets. What follows is a final showdown between Chris and Karen, and the doctor and his fellow wolves. The doctor has apparently been the voice of reason for the rest of them, trying to help them adapt to a new way of life that didn't involve murder. Unfortunately for him, "You can't tame what's meant to be wild, Doc... It ain't natural." Chris and Karen manage to trap the lot of them in the barn, and proceed to set fire to the whole thing.









As Chris and Karen flee, their car is swarmed by the wolves who managed to break out of the fire in what is a fairly intense scene; the wolves appear demonic as they claw and bang on the car to get at its inhabitants. Just when it appears they have made it, a wolf breaks through from behind and manages to bite Karen. She cries out in pain and devastation at knowing what this bite means, and we learn the wolf was Bill.

In a final act of defiance in the face of her fate, Karen and Chris devise a plan to tell the world of the werewolves among them: they broadcast her transformation over the news, before Chris mercifully ends Karen's life. Her transformation is the most disappointing, as is her wolf, which looks more like a small house-dog, but the pain on her face and agony at knowing it is the end makes up for it.









Unfortunately the world is just too used to being lied to on TV, and most people don't take what they have just seen very seriously; Karen's sacrifice means nothing to them.

Throughout the movie, there is discussion of "the beast in all of us" and who we really are. Dr. Waggner refers to lycanthropy as "the gift", but it is Karen in her final pleading expose to the world that says the true gift is our birthright as humans to choose between what is kind and peaceful in our natures, and what is cruel and wild. This choice "differentiates us from the animals". Karen warns that choice has been taken from some, but she fights back by opting to end her life rather than live as a beast. This is in opposition to Waggner's opening words to the film, where he preaches that we as humans should never repress our impulses or deny the beast within us, and that perhaps in the course of our evolution and civilization we have lost something important.

The Howling is well-done in both acting and effects. It leaves you with an uneasy feeling of wonder and dread at what might be out there, and what you might think or do if it was presented to you on a platter. Would you have believed Karen's broadcast? Are we as a world too cynical to help ourselves? Could it be that if werewolves existed, they might just want to be left alone? Either way, I know I will always come back to this one.

Cujo (1983 movie, 1981 novel)

Years ago, while perusing a used book store in Yucaipa, I procured a well-loved 1st edition copy of Cujo. At the time, I was the custodian of a kind and gentle soul named Paris, who happened to be a Saint Bernard. The plot of Cujo is very well-known, in crude summary a woman and child are trapped by a rabid Saint Bernard for a few days in her broken-down Pinto.

Paris patiently awaiting some ham

My sister has never been a big fan of Stephen King; she can't stand his penchant for placing children in peril (or simply offing them in violent ways). I don't care much for children and therefore don't hold this against King, but I did notice the common thread after she pointed it out. Case in point, it isn't every day you get to watch a little league team get decimated by an automatic pitching machine and a steam roller (Maximum Overdrive, bless your heart, even if King himself thinks you were foolish).

Anyway, despite my vague appreciation for King, I just couldn't bring myself to read or watch Cujo for years. I like dogs too much, I loved Paris, and didn't want to have to see or read anything happen to poor Cujo. I'd seen clips on tv as a kid, and knew the plot; I didn't see how things could play out in a way that wouldn't cause me distress (don't tell me it's only a movie, if you like seeing animals suffer you're off). Is it wrong that I can watch little Gage get pancaked (or at least the implication that he gets pancaked) circa Pet Sematary, but I just didn't have the will to see Cujo lose his mind?

This all changed on the eve of a four day weekend, when I finally dug out the novel. It is short in comparison to some of King's works, so it only took me an afternoon to get through it. My fears were realized; the novel at times tells things from Cujo's perspective. The poor guy just wants to be a good dog, and yet he is sick, and slowly goes mad. It was painful to read his last encounter with his human boy: "The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it." "He broke into a lumbering run, hoping to outrun the sickness, but it ran with him, buzzing and yammering, making him ache with hatred and murder." There are also times when Cujo laments his intense hunger and thirst, which he cannot remedy due to his disgust and hatred for food and water, and how he would kill sounds and smells if he could.

The novel shows us from Cujo's eyes his growing agony and madness, and we see him look to those around him for the source of his pain. Through his confused thoughts, we see Cujo try and make sense of budding feelings to hurt people, which culminates in the intense battle between Cujo and Donna (Dee Wallace, who I kept picturing from her role in The Howling); he is sure she is responsible for his misery and wants to destroy her. Donna in turn feels the dog is pure evil, truly looking inside of her.

In reading the book, I found myself almost rooting for Cujo; I knew he was beyond repair, but it was difficult to accept that he had to die. The point that he was a really good boy is driven home throughout the book (with a nice final nail in the coffin in the end, when we are reminded again), and he truly doesn't understand what has happened to him.


King's work hashes out very thoroughly just about every character in the book; conversely, the movie is very truncated. It's cliché to say this, but I felt the book was superior to the movie. Obviously some modifications must be made for the sake of run-time, but the story was modified in large ways. With the novel, we can justify the behaviors of most of the characters, and understand their motives. In the movie, I found myself feeling sorry for no one; none of the human characters were really given any redeeming qualities or explanation. Donna is an adulterer in both story-lines; in the novel, however, we know her thinking, as well as the husband's. In the movie, she's just a hussy; granted, she breaks it off with her lover, but we don't get much of a why beyond a flippant "Oh, my husband's actually a nice guy." The result is that I ended up hoping she'd die, along with the insanely annoying "Tad" child.

In the book, the "other man" plays a critical role in delaying the police locating Donna (albeit unintentionally). In the movie, it was almost as if his antics were included as an afterthought, as they were very glossed over.

One change in the movie, the decision to greatly truncate the story-line of Cujo's family (the Cambers, although I love Ed Lauter), seemed to make sense; it was much-ado in the book, when really we just needed to know that by a series of coincidences 2/3 of Cujo's people would be out of town. In addition, the glaring omission from the movie of the Frank Dodd (from Stephen King's other novel, The Dead Zone) background we get in the novel made me realize it actually felt somewhat hurried in the book. We get a lot of build-up in the beginning, but he's really just a phantom at the back of the minds of some of the Old Timers. It was a good concept though, and gave those characters another level of fear to work through. King likes to allude to evil as a common theme in his works, a monster that never dies. At least in the novel, the reader gets to decide if Cujo is just rabid, or if there is a bit of Frank Dodd afoot. This includes the incidents with Tad and his closet in the beginning of the novel.

The movie's ending was extremely disappointing for me, and felt much more rushed than that of the novel. King did right by Cujo (if not the poor bunny) in the novel's final notes, while the movie leaves you feeling he was wretched. I probably should say this more often, but, spoiler alert: the little abomination of a child gets a reprieve in the end of the movie despite being a dreadful character the whole time. Oh, and no Stephen King cameo.

 I had to hit the Googles to find out what King himself thought of Cujo: apparently he was at the height of his alcoholism when he wrote it and doesn't remember much. Cujo truly is a tragedy; where the movie fails in portraying this, the novel excels in presenting the downfall of a gentle giant, and it is agonizing to watch his dog mind try to make sense of what is happening to him.

Dead End Drive-In (1986)

For some reason that was surely beyond reproach, we decided Sunday was a good day to watch Dead End Drive-In. I'd been wanting to watch this dystopian gem for a while now, but kept ending up watching something else instead. It was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (Turkey Shoot, which is actually playing at the drive-in in this film, Night of the Demons 2, Leprechaun 3 & 4), a cult favorite.

The premise seems novel enough: in the near future, the government has turned drive-in movie theaters into makeshift concentration camps for society's unmentionables. It has a post-apocalyptic feel to it; after a series of disasters, the world is in the midst of a food shortage, financial crisis, and severe unemployment. The backdrop is very rough and industrial, with a distinctive 80's "New Wave" punk stylization.

When the movie kicks off, we meet the movie's protagonist "Crabs" (Ned Manning) as he jogs through dangerous streets, a seemingly fragile figure in a hostile environment. Manning plays an excellent "hero", he isn't the typical lead role type and comes across as an Everyman who just wants to rise above the shitty situation he's in. The first bit of the film seems to give us a bit more of his home life and back story than we really need, since it doesn't really go anywhere, but it does serve to build up a sense that he just can't catch a break. It's bad luck that he ends up in the drive-in.

The aesthetics of this film definitely evoke fellow Ozploitation film Mad Max; youth gangs terrorize the streets looking to rob and pillage.



We are treated to a bit of gore, in the form of a car accident; this comes early on in the film, and I'd hoped it would set the tone for more to follow. The rest of the film is decidedly tame in terms of blood and guts. It would be base to say a movie has to have gore to be good, but I felt the overall style of this movie demanded more carnage. There are however some well-executed car chase scenes and explosions, that would rival a higher-budget flick.

Once Crabs and his girlfriend find themselves trapped at the drive-in, we start to learn that most of the others there have no desire to get out; they are plied with all the junk food, movies, and shenanigans they could dream of. Everything is purchased with a weekly allotment of vouchers- not unlike a welfare system. Fast food and cheap entertainment are in abundance, but Crabs is unable to obtain anything very healthy; this is akin to an impoverished class in society, oppressed by the powers that be and given no real opportunities for betterment. Keep them distracted and compliant, and they won't rise up.

The social commentary is glaring in this flick. We have a society that wishes to lock up those it finds unsavory, out of sight and mind; this drive-in concentration camp holds not only the rancorous youth, we see people of Asian and Indian descent being "bussed in", which causes some strong xenophobia and racism among the White punks. The punks would rather marginalize the other ethnicities, than acknowledge their common plight and band together to better their chances. They immediately begin to create fear amongst themselves, scapegoating the Asians and Indians for all sorts of imaginary crimes.

Crabs' desire to persevere and escape the drive-in is met with confusion, anger, and frustration by the others in the encampment; for many, the world outside was worse. In the end, he must decide whether to accept his fate and settle in, or rise above and fight for his freedom. Overall, it's a pretty decent flick; there is a lot to read into, or you can just enjoy the action and over-the-top 80's nostalgia.

I learned Dead End Drive-In was loosely based on a short story by the name of "Crabs", by Peter Carey. I haven't read it yet, but ordered the collection of short stories on Amazon and look forward to checking it out. Another review on this movie, Crabs, Cars, and Peter Carey, was very insightful.

Carrot Ginger Muffins (Paleo)

I spent the last four days playing the harbinger of plague; thanks to coworkers who refuse to stay home ("It's just allergies..."), I found myself succumbing to a wicked cold, pleading softly for death to come and take me.

Death didn't come, and I missed several days of workouts, but Murdoch and I did manage to find time to bake some muffins on Saturday. They were based closely on Savory Lotus' Carrot Ginger Muffins. We got lazy and only grated half the ginger, and omitted the raisins, but they came out pretty good. These would be even better with a lot more ginger; next time, we might quadruple the amount (4 tablespoons!). Being that we are a lazy duo, we didn't take any photos.

We also triumphed in getting the second dog door installed, granting Murdoch VIP access to the house at all hours. This resulted of course in no small amount of guilt: Loki never got VIP access. We will see how it goes, if I come home just once and catch him watching John 5 and the Creatures videos, or, Lord forbid, "Doggy Bounce", he's getting his privileges revoked.

The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971)

The middle entry in Dario Argento’s “animal trilogy”, Cat o’ Nine Tails follows a reporter by the name of Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) as he attempts to unravel an elaborate series of crimes, with the help of the blind retired journalist Franco Arno (Karl Walden). The leads in the case are numerous, “a cat of nine tails.” There is so much to unpack in this classic, and so much that has already been said over the years, that I don’t intend to try and cover everything here. Watch the movie.

The visuals in this work have held up well for being over 40 years old; I read that this was Argento’s least favorite of all his films, which surprised me given some of the more awful installments in his later years. I would stress that Cat o’ Nine Tails is rife with suspense throughout, without a dull moment coming to mind.

Argento weaves a complex chain of events and characters, with the viewer unable to determine what is connected for certain and what is mere coincidence until intended. Each character is given adequate time to flesh out and develop a presence, as well as their own level of suspicion to the viewer.

The movie does at times seem to try and do a bit of everything (car chases to romance to crime drama); I would argue it is well done, and did not detract from my experience.

As serious and dark, yet beautiful, as the set pieces are, the film does not take itself so seriously as to avoid any humor. Giordani and Arno bring an excellent chemistry, and deliver some excellent lines at times both serious and sarcastic.

While by no means the first to use POV camera angles, Argento is masterful with their timing and placement; the viewer is drawn into the scenes, adding to the incredible suspense and conveying great detail in each shot and location. The juxtaposition between the opening burglary, where we see via the culprit’s eyes as he kills a guard and breaks into the Terzi building with flashlight and pry-bar, and the later scene where Giordani tries in vain with flashlight and screwdriver to escape a possible death in the crypt, leaves the viewer to feel like an accomplice to both. It blurred for me the idea of right and wrong: Giordani had essentially broken into a crypt, albeit with good intentions, and then looked as though he might die for it. Argento is careful to not give away who is truly the villain until the very end.

The end shots as the cops and Giordani storm the Terzi building, coupled with the excellent score, do well in keeping the uncertainty and interest high, the viewer doesn’t know how this is going to end. I must say that I was thoroughly enthralled with the angles and lighting of the ensuing chase; the shadows from the men, the beautiful corrugated roof, and the score all flow wonderfully. There are also some excellent shots in the staircases.

The gore is not extraordinary in the murders that take place, but the effects have stood the test of time adequately. A death by train looks a bit dated, but is acceptable. The murders by strangulation feel violent and personal, and look as though the characters are truly drawing their last breaths. A fall down an elevator shaft is made all the more intense by the victim grasping in vain at the wires, slashing his hands as he falls to an inevitable doom.

There are some points in the plot that seem a bit farfetched, but in fairness, you enjoy a movie- and life- more if you have a bit of imagination and don’t nit-pick. It seems as though Arno may be psychic in the first quarter of the movie, appearing to get visions of things as they occur. Argento does do well in “showing the math”, as it were, when a character deduces something that might seem like a bit of a stretch. The viewer is kept in the loop with Arno and Giordani’s thought processes, rather than left to make heads or tails of what is going on. There is a great deal of foreshadowing along the way, with very few shots in the movie being without a purpose.

Perhaps one of the most awkward sex scenes in the history of cinema occurs in this film, between Giordani and the beautiful Anna Terzi (Catherine Spaak); their exchanges add an element of interest to the film nonetheless, and it is hard to pinpoint Anna’s true nature until almost the very end. It would also be unfair not to mention the absurd come-on Giordani uses on her, and her calculating response.

My obsession with the modern show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia results in my seeing connections between it and pretty much everything. Watching this movie was no different; I managed to come across three things that seemed like vague parallels. For one, after the awkward sex scene between Anna and Giordani, they plan to drink milk; this was McPoyle for me through and through. When Giordani meets with Dr. Braun, he does so in what is essentially a gay bar. Giordani starts to question Braun, who instead tells him, “You know, you have very beautiful eyes…” Giordani responds, “You really think so?” Braun follows up with, “Stupendous. Blue with a touch of red. Very rare.” Giordani’s response of, “Very rare? I hadn’t noticed” could suggest a bit of sarcasm, and perhaps he was just being patient so as to get the information he wanted from Braun, but it reminded me of episode one of It’s Always Sunny. Dennis gets hit on by a man while working the bar, and is for a second appalled, but then the man tells him his eyes are beautiful and “so blue.” Granted, this movie and It’s Always Sunny are vastly different, but Sunny is known for both covert and overt homages to other programs.

My third It’s Always Sunny reference came when Giordani was talking to Anna for the first time. The exchange itself, I found to be quite evocative of a bygone era, when women were often portrayed as children who needed to be “reined in by a man”. When Carlo goes to leave the Terzi’s home, he hears Anna laughing pointedly in the study, clearly summoning him. He is not fooled by her overly confident demeanor; when she informs him mock-haughtily that she doesn’t like his manner, he says “[he] doesn’t care if [she] doesn’t like his manner. [He’s] had complaints before; doesn’t seem to do any good.” He calls her out for posing like an aristocratic child, to show off her legs, “they’ve very nice legs; please to make their acquaintance.” I read that some of this coincides with the novel The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. I haven’t read said novel, so I cannot confirm, but I can say that I liked the scene in the movie. I want to say they overacted it, but they really didn’t. I might be alone in this, but I thought it was just the right amount of tension; it reminded me of the Dominique-Howard dynamic in The Fountainhead. The It’s Always Sunny similarity comes from the episode with Fatty Magoo/ Ingrid Nelson. At one point, Dennis breaks into her office to try and sell her something. She asks him to please stop, to which he responds that “those words have never worked on [him]”. It’s a stretch, but Giordani telling Anna that complaints on his character do no good reminded me of this.

Despite Argento writing this one off, I would argue it is one of his best; truly worth a watch for anyone that is drawn to suspense. The acting- dubbing aside- is not bad, and viewers are treated to a wealth of beautiful imagery and masterful use of plot devices.