Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Title: One Way or Another
Song: One Way or Another by Blondie
Source: Slasher movies (1974-1982)
Length: 2:50
Warnings: Violence, gore, some flashing lights, minor drug use

Password: jamielee



Download 19.8MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click and "Save file as...")

This is a terrible vid. I had the idea in the shower and it was probably not well-conceived, but I had a week-long vacation and very little to do, so here we are. Originally it was supposed to be for slasher movies 1974-1989, but I narrowed the timeframe when it became clear I was getting everything I needed (mostly) out of one eight year stretch.

I went through a lot of bad slasher movies so you didn't have to.

Thanks to sol_se who kept cheering me on.


( Full list of sources )

Last week was crazy busy at work, so I didn't have the spoons to post. So here we are with a double feature! I'm feeling kind of down right now, so no life updates or commentary.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Creep (2014)
Free Guy (2021)
Jakob's Wife (2021)

Rifftrax: Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare
Best in Show (2000)
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)

Sorry, running late on this. I just completely forgot this was a thing this week until I went to open Dreamwidth and I went, "Oh yeah, wasn't I supposed to do something with this."

Once again, I spent most of my time playing Mass Effect. Right now I'm playing a male Shepard named Shepard Shepard who is romancing Jack and will probably romance Kaidan in ME3. I'm playing the games as completely as I can in this run (I skipped two missions in ME1, one because it was annoying and one because I just forgot).

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Rifftrax: The Last Shark
In the Heights (2021)
Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

The Last Shark was a delightful Rifftrax.

I saw In the Heights in the motherloving theater. With Junior Mints and Dr. Pepper! I was masked when not eating/drinking and the theater had social distancing in place. I was honestly lucky to get a seat because it was a very last minute decision to go. Lin-Manuel Miranda certainly has a style and it serves him well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Didn't even notice it was over two hours long. I did miss the post-credits scene, so I need to go back into HBO Max and look into that.

On a whim I bought the Universal Monsters complete Blu-ray collection with 30 different monster movies. sol_se and I watched Ghost of Frankenstein because it was the only film in the Frankenstein series she hadn't seen yet. Not a great film, but it does have some good moments.

On Wednesday, sol_se and I celebrated the third anniversary of our first date. I took the day off and we ate Cheesecake Factory and watched movies and Project Runway All Stars.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

One Dark Night (1983)
Speed Racer (2008)
Rifftrax: The Amazing Mr. X
Rifftrax: Radical Jack
Rifftrax: To Catch a Yeti
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)

One Dark Night is weird. It's about a dead psychic messing about in a mausoleum terrorizing high school girls who are there as part of an initiation. It sets up a particular twist ending pretty clearly and then just... doesn't do it. Apparently the distributors cut the original ending? I didn't love it.

We watch Speed Racer every year because it's the first movie we ever watched together. It was nice to actually watch it on the anniversary this year, as last year we were delayed by the pandemic and the move.

I typically wake up earlier than sol_se so I watch Rifftrax and catch up on Twitter. Sometimes it's more Twitter than Rifftrax, as when I slogged through The Amazing Mr. X. Sometimes I'm practically stapled to the Rifftrax though, as with Radical Jack. Overall, the Rifftrax Friends subscription is paying for itself.

We're still working through the Heisei/Versus era of Godzilla in order. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is one of my favorites, as it really decides to work in all the goofy stuff and isn't shy about it.

Working through some Christmas-y movies with sol_se for the most part.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek Deep Space 9 (2019)
MST3K: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Bell Book and Candle (1958)
The Howling (1981)
WW84 (2020)

I cried like a baby at the end of IaWL once again. Never fails.

The DS9 doc was weird, but ultimately enjoyable. I thought it was a little odd that it was put together by the show runner, though.

I stand by my assertion that A Muppet Christmas Carol is a top-tier Dickens adaptation and Michael Caine is one of the best Scrooges.

Bell Book and Candle starts on Christmas Eve, so it counts. It's that other film about Jimmy Stewart's obsessive love for Kim Novak.

sol_se bought me The Howling on Blu-ray for Christmas (as well as the special edition of Curse of Frankenstein) because she loves me and wants me to be happy. Still a great movie. Very formative for teenage me.

I think I liked WW84? They spent more time on the emotional beats for Maxwell Lord than they did for Diana, which is an odd choice. There's nothing to approach the battlefield scene in the first one. I think this is probably one that's going to get worse in my mind as time goes on, but for the 2.5 hours it was playing, it kept my attention.

It was Turkey week!

Movies I've seen before are in italics

The Black Cat (1934)
Addams Family Values (1993)
MST3K: Carnival Magic
Village of the Damned (1960)
MST3K: Night of the Blood Beast
Jason X (2002)
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The Final Girls (2015)

Thursday for Thanksgiving, sol_se and I alternated between the MST3K Turkey Day marathon and movies.

We finally finished the Friday the 13th series, on a relative high note. Jason X is as fun and stupid as I remember it being and Freddy vs. Jason is probably one of the better films in the series (although admittedly, it's really a Nightmare on Elm Street film featuring Jason).

To cap that off, we watched The Final Girls. If you'd told me that morning that I would be crying to a woman doing a striptease to Bette Davis Eyes, I would've told you that you were clearly mistaken. Oh more fool me.

This week was interesting for a number of reasons beyond the election and Destiel. sol_se started a new job that is... not aligned with my job time-wise. She's also set-up in the living room on video, so I have to stay out, which is interesting because we only have the living room and the bedroom (and the kitchen and bathroom, but these are not really hangout spots). So I'm basically waking up three hours earlier and then fucking around without access to video games for 4-5 hours. On Fridays, when she works and I don't, it's 8 hours (9 less her lunch). Luckily, I had an old TV lying around that I wasn't using. Combining sol_se's Fire Stick and a new, very sketchy DVD player (the box doesn't say DVD anywhere), I have myself a little entertainment center in the bedroom. I'll be watching a lot more movies solo now, I think.

Movie I've seen before are in italics.

L'assassin habite au 21 (1942)
Piranha (1978)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Alucarda (1975)

L'assassin is an early Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique) film. It's a lighthearted romp about finding a serial killer! I found it very amusing.

The new DVD player is Region-free, which I tested out with my Region 2 Piranha disc. Great fish-ploitation from Joe Dante.

Sol_se expressed some interest in revenge-horror, so we watched the Phibes duology. They are both very strange films and Vincent Price is clearly having a ball.

We recently gained access to HBO (not HBO Max) and Death Becomes Her was on. I could have sworn I'd seen it before, but as it turns out, I had not. It's a lot of fun.

Alucarda is a film very dear to me, so I showed it to sol_se. I think this might have been a mistake. Watching it with her, I could only see all the things that were wrong with it. She didn't really care for it, either. Oh well.

Finished The Good Place Season 4. I think I expected more of an impact out of it, given how other people responded to it. I still liked it a lot, but it didn't really eff me up or anything.

Voted on Thursday! If you're an American citizen and you haven't already voted, do so. Make a plan to vote. Go to IWillVote.com. Nothing is more critical than this moment.

Oh, also, sol_se and I have handily met our 31 spooky movies in 31 days goal for October. Everything after this is gravy.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Masque of the Red Death (1964)
It's Alive (1974)
Evil Dead (2013)
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)
The Blob (1958)
Beware! The Blob (1972)
Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
Suspiria (2018)
Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

As you can see, I'm starting sol_se on the Corman/Price Poe movies. We'll see if we can work through the rest before Halloween. These were very formative for me. Of the three we watched, I think we both agree that Pit and the Pendulum is the most enjoyable. This is one of the very first horror movies my mother ever showed me, incidentally.

I really like It's Alive, but man, they needed to replace their sound guy. So much dialogue was unintelligible or too quiet. Still, it's very effective for being a killer mutant baby movie.

I didn't know what to expect out of the Evil Dead remake. I knew there wasn't going to be an Ash character (although there kinda-sorta was). I didn't agree with all the choices made, but overall it was pretty good. It's certainly the most disgusting film I've seen in a while.

A quibble: Criterion Channel listed the Nosferatu remake as Nosferatu the Vampyre, but then showed Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht. These are two different movies! Not substantially different, but the film was shot in separate English and German versions, so there are subtle differences between the two. I don't have a preference one over the other, but I did tell sol_se we were getting the English version before, lo and behold, German. In either version, this is a very ponderous movie and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. It's incredibly deliberate and takes its time saying what it wants to say.

The Blob remains a very workmanlike movie about killer jello. It doesn't add a lot of flair, but it knows what it's about and gets the job done. The same cannot be said for its execrable sequel Beware! The Blob (directed by Larry Hagman(!)). This was mostly a series of loosely connected unfunny sketches that all ended with someone getting eaten by the blob. I kept getting thrown off by the male protagonist, played by Robert Walker Jr, who may be better known as Charlie X from the Star Trek episode.

I do not know if I liked the Suspiria remake. I can definitely say I did not understand it.

Lots of movies this week, as sol_se and I were able to pull ahead of our 31 horror movies in October goal.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

The Wicker Man (1973)
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Brides of Dracula (1960)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Grizzly (1976)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

I love The Wicker Man (I vidded it after all) and it was a joy to show it to sol_se for the first time.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death is... not what I expected. I think I expected teenagers from the title, not vaguely hippie adults. The movie is about the effect of supernatural happenings on the mind of someone who recently experienced a breakdown. It's very weird and I'm not sure how much I liked it.

I've been running around singing "Twenty days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Twenty days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock!" I eventually had to let sol_se in on the reference. As a movie, it's Fine. It's really not game changing enough to justify the temporary shift in the Halloween series.

We started on Dracula: Prince of Darkness because it's my favorite in the Hammer Dracula series, but then we just fell down the rabbit hole. The films generally decline in quality after Prince of Darkness. You can also sum up Dracula's motivations thusly:

Horror: Lust
Prince: Lust
Risen: Revenge
Taste: Revenge
Scars: Sadism
1972: Revenge
Rites: Megalomania?

I buy lust, but revenge became a really tired touchstone to come back to over and over again. Also, Dracula should never be driven by base sadism, what the hell is that crap?

Grizzly is Jaws with a bear, but it doesn't hew as closely to Jaws as my memory of it indicated. Still, it's a fun little animals attack movie with some funky bear effects.

I played through Until Dawn again, unfortunately getting three characters killed (to be fair one of them is really hard to keep alive). I played Kingdom Hearts 3 up until a point, but there's a whole section that requires you to deftly maneuver your basically un-manueverable spaceship and I'm not doing that. Probably. We'll see where I am in a week.

We also finished Legend of Korra Season 4. What a good show.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Housebound (2014)
Dracula (1931)
Blood on the Moon (1948)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
I Married a Witch (1942)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)

sol_se found Housebound on Tubi and was really eager for me to see it, so we did. It's a neat New Zealand horror with comedic touches about a woman under house arrest, but the house might be haunted. There are multiple twists and it's very tightly edited and paced. I liked it a lot.

Then she wanted to see Dracula's Daughter, but we got about three minutes in before I remembered that it followed directly from Dracula (1931) which she had also never seen. So we watched that first. We watched the sequel the next day. Lugosi is excellent as the Count in Dracula, but you can see director Tod Browning basically giving up for large sections of the England-set portion of the film. Dracula's Daughter is dark and foreboding, but suffers from a lot of talking head scenes. It does have a couple scenes of (accidental, probably) lesbian desire.

I made a resolution to start using my Criterion Channel subscription more, as it's basically been on the wayside since sol_se moved in. So, Saturday morning before she woke up, I caught Blood on the Moon, part of their Western noir collection. I was mostly drawn to it because it's directed by Robert Wise. I don't know how noir it is, but it is a satisfying oater with a complex leading character (played by Robert Mitchum).

I Married a Witch was on sol_se's To Watch list, so we checked that out. I've seen it before, but I was happy to watch it again. Veronica Lake is great fun as the titular witch, weaving a spell on Fredric March (who is much too old for her). It's a delightful comedy.

Since we were already watching lesbian vampire movies, we absolutely had to go to Daughters of Darkness. Such a lush horror film, with some very weird death scenes. Delphine Seyrig is divine.