shivers (1975 movie), eight belles, cults that molest, guam, the whizzball report #1 & #2 all after the break…
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shivers (1975 movie)…
when you have a whole lot of movie channels, it kind of makes you feel guilty if you don’t actually use them a lot. so, on occasion, i watch a movie just to watch a movie & pretend that i’m getting a bang for my buck.
“shivers” is a 1975 comedy-horror film that, i’m guessing, was actually supposed to be just a straight horror film. yeah, that’s how good it turns out to be.
the film starts promising enough – a luxury, secluded apartment building nestled on an exclusive island is subject to a science experiment gone awry. a retired doctor, experimenting with parasites, kills his lover & former student before taking his own life. unfortunately, the former student was a slut & slept around with more then just the retired doctor. the slut, infected with some sort of mutated parasite, has infected a whole boatload of people who, in turn, infects a whole boatload of people which, in turn, infects a… well, you get the idea.
the real kicker of this film is that these parasite-influenced zombies don’t want to kill you… they want to have sex with you! a doctor at the apartment building & his faithful nurse (although she wants to be more then just ‘faithful’ with him) struggle to stay platonic as more & more apartment dwellers succumb to the parasite-induced orgy.
this film was lame. there’s just no other way around it. ok, i appreciate the female nudity as much as the next heterosexual male. honest. however, let me put it to you this way – there’s singing as though you’ve just had a few shots of hard liquor before taking the stage to belt out a lame kareoke hit & then there’s singing on a professional level that actually sounds really good. i’m sure that all women think that they’re sexy & that’s fine – good for you if you think that you’re sexy. the reality, though, is that most women look bad in their birthday suits & i think that most of them secretly realize this. why can’t filmmakers pick women who, when called upon to be in their birthday suits (or realistically close enough), can actually look good in front of the camera when doing so?
as soon as the film veers into the psycho-sexual lane, all pretenses of it being a horror movie are just wasted. up until that moment, where the film trades it’s horror for soft-porn, there is a serviceable set-up for a decent horror movie. who is infected? who will be next? what are the effects of the parasites? are they evolving? that film is interesting, that film has some momentum to it.
oddly enough, for a film not modest in the least bit, a lesbian encounter seems mysteriously truncated. perhaps some 1970’s morals finally did kick in but given all of the nudity prior, i’m hard pressed to understand why at a moment when nudity is all but given, the filmmaker pulls back. really. that’s peculiar restraint for someone who, just scenes prior, had a phallic-shaped parasite implicitly implied having entered a female though an NC-17 rated orifice.
this is one of those “evil ending” horror movies, the ones where no one gets out “alive” but, of course, not too many people are killed & the only adverse side effects of having one of these parasites is eventually wanting to spread them through sexual contact covertly. if a parasite can radically & permanently increase a person’s mojo, you don’t have a crisis on your hands, you have a multi-million dollar enterprise.
all in all, this film is not enough horror for the horror buffs & not enough skin for the porno buffs. while it was still a horror movie, it had the potential of being a cheap but effective time waster. as soon as it becomes soft-porn, you might as well just mute the sound & fast-forward to the bits of nudity sprinkled throughout the remainder of the film.
update : so, there’s all this high-fallutin’ talk on the interwebs about how the apartment building is supposed to represent the ivory tower of society & that the parasite isn’t a parasite but really is an allegory towards… stop. just stop. you can kid the latte-sippin’ crowd all you want. you ain’t foolin’ me. it’s a schlocky b-movie that starts horror & then veers soft-porn.
eight belles…
i’m not a huge fan of actual horse races. horse races is tied to the hip with gambling & anyone who knows me know that i’m not much of a gambler. therefore, i’m not huge on the whole horse racing thing.
i know about the kentucky derby, the preakness & the belmont races. there are literally hundreds of thousands of horse races every year but those three races are it – they are the superbowl of horse racing with the kentucky derby being the biggest one of all. yeah, yeah, there’s something called the steeplechase & i’m sure every nation’s ‘big’ horse race wants to be considered a big horse race – don’t go all politically-correct on me. i’m sure there are some horse races bigger then others but, at the end of the day, the kentucky derby is the biggest one. sorry. that’s just how it is.
so, it’s with a bit of morbidity that hillary clinton’s choice for winning the kentucky derby yesterday, eight belles, had to be killed on the track after breaking both front ankles after the race was over.
my thoughts & prayers go out to the trainer & owner & jockey & everyone even remotely connected to eight belles. life’s tough – crap happens & when it does, ain’t no one wants to smell the dung pile regardless of whether you have to clean it up or not.
that aside, however, this is just absolutely ripe with analogy. two broken ankles… north carolina & indiana… the filly (aka hillary clinton) being put down… wow. the political types are going to eat this story alive if obama actually wins both north carolina & indiana. the horse ‘big brown’ (oh, guess how that will be fit into an analogy?) winning… the filly coming in second…
i’ve never understood the whole “we must kill the horse because it broke it’s leg” story. what’s with horses & legs that make it so that they need to be killed whenever they break a leg? that seems a little… primitive, don’t you think? aren’t we advanced in medicine & stuff? where’s all the research going into horse technology if it’s not going into “let’s see if we can save horses who break their legs”? you’d think they were tackling the aids virus or something…
anyway, just my little observation.
cults that molest…
there’s been a lot in the news about cults that molest children or, more specifically, young teenage girls.
the new tactic of government is to go in & accuse the cults of molestation. molestation is one of those “blatant” crimes that is kid-tested, mother-approved with the public. over in america, everyone gets their panties all knotted up in a bunch whenever you accuse a religion of anything. no matter how heinous the religion gets on it’s followers or others (*cough*scientology*cough*), it always appears that its the government who is the big bad wolf & the religion being the doe-eyed innocent lamb being brought out to the slaughter. the attitude is always, “yeah, [fill in heinous incident involving religion] was bad but that was only one time. most religions are harmless.” right.
i actually enjoy these religions getting their butts handed to them. it’s about time.
the only difference between a cult & a religion is that a religion is bigger. all religions want to control you because the concept of control was the earliest form of power. if i can get you to place a tree in your house for some silly reason, i can get you to do something even dumber. once i can get you to believe that 2+2=5, your brain is in my back pocket to do with as i please.
if we’re ever going to truly get to an advanced future, we’re going to have to be rid of these silly notions that we live forever in some sort of ghostly form, that the world was created in days & not millions of years, that there are these evil spirits who do nothing but tempt us, that there is a predetermined “end of the world” date…
unfortunately, there’s always going to be weak-minded people who will believe anything to be a part of something that is actually nothing. it is just human nature to want to “fit in” &, unfortunately, there are truly evil people out there who won’t even blink when they try to exploit you.
so, to the government, i say – raid away! the sooner we can get people to see reality, the better.
guam…
in a parallel universe, i grow a pair & move to a remote pacific island like guam where it never dips below 75 degrees (that’s fahrenheit, not centigrade) & you have a chance of finding a chick who’s actually half-decent looking who’s also not a psycho. after all, how many ugly psycho chicks could there possibly be on guam?
guam is voting today to bring just a hint of sanity back into the democratic primary. odds are, obama will win but it’ll be ignored by the media because obama won. the media is on hillary’s side now, probably because a lot of bitchy wives started bitching at their husbands who work in the media & when the bed is cold, you warm it up anyway you can. ergo, all of the sudden love for hillary despite the fact that she’s mathematically out of the race.
i’m beginning to think that hillary is just fcuking with obama with the full realization that she’ll run in 2012. really, why else would she be committing political suicide? she’s screwing up his run so, when he finally does become the formal nominee, he’ll lose & that’ll clear the way for her in 2012.
the whizzball report #1…
start = 346. end = 343. net gain = +2.
the whizzball report #2…
start = 343. end = 340. net gain = +3.
Tags: barack obama, big brown, cults, eight belles, guam, hillary clinton, indiana, kentucky derby, north carolina, shivers, whizzball
