Art of the Odd

“My dear Dr. Foster, you talk like a lovesick shopgirl. We all rot away in the end. But not all of us for a purpose!”

Having recently discovered the joys of watching B movies while I work out, I’ve run through a fair number of them in the last few weeks. NovySan asked me last night if I was going to do something like Will and Annika’s 200 Westerns; I said I probably should, but I’m not at all sure I’m that organized. There’ve been a few highlights, though, that I’ll try to hit, at least briefly (Carnival of Souls, which might have been more interesting if A) I hadn’t already seen The Sixth Sense, and B) I hadn’t also read How to Survive a Horror Movie;The Lady from Shanghai, which didn’t need to be a B movie, but was; The Bad Seed, which isn’t really a B movie at all; the brilliantly creepy Spider Baby…)

But this post isn’t about any of those films. This post is about the Blood Island Trilogy, and I probably should have saved it until I’ve watched the third film, but they’re just too brilliant not to share.

Shot on shoestring budgets in the Phillipines, these are classic Man in a Rubber Suit Monster Movies with more blood and boobs than comparable Hollywood films could have slipped past the censors, even on a platter of entrails. There are man-eating plants (and a beautiful woman who screams and writhes under a puppet tentacle in a way that should have earned her an Oscar for screaming and writhing under a puppet tentacle); there’s the truly horrifying premise of Brides of Blood, that a native god called “The Evil One” is satisfying his lust on the women of the island, and tearing them to pieces in the process; there are atomic mutations that come and go, and somehow affect the island air; there’s a man poisoned by chlorophyll – the doctor’s instructions? “When he comes to, just give him some hot soup – and no green vegetables, of course.” There’s a young woman who “became a whore for love.” (Isn’t that something you wish you’d done yourself?) Oh, and there’s a very scary butterfly cut-out on a string, and a lot of orgiastic dancing. Because we all know how those exotic island women love to dance.

If you’d like a more coherent review, David Zuzelo’s done great write-ups on all three films here (with screenshots!), but if you’ve got an Internet connection and a few hours to kill… Just go wallow in Blood.

One of the Boing Boing posts I got excited about yesterday was Xeni Jardin’s note about her Fancast review of Food of the Gods. I love B horror movies, and I haven’t seen nearly enough of them. Hulu‘s helped with that, as has Archive.org, but I’m thrilled to find another source, and this looked like it was right up my alley.

I told NovySan, “I’m going to work out and watch bad sci-fi.”

And I did. And oh, man, was it good.

This movie’s got everything. A heroic football player who’s attacked by a giant rooster. Ida Lupino as a meek (and in some scenes, apparently brain-damaged) farm wife. Flesh-eating larvae. Cultural commentary, in the form of a plucky female bacteriologist (though why, exactly, a bacteriologist is needed to evaluate a possible source of animal feed is never fully explained) and a pregnant hippie chick who’s refusing to marry the father of her baby (and who, remarkably, doesn’t die for it!). It’s also got great special effects (okay, the giant wasps, not so much – but the optical and miniature work on the flood is excellent), surprisingly high production values, and much better acting than you might expect.

That’s not to say it’s immune to the hallmarks of B-grade filmmaking – breathtakingly bad decisions (“No, leave the closed car here; we’ll take this open Jeep and explore the island”); failure to notice the most obvious clues (“I wonder what happened to Mr. Skinner?” You mean you didn’t notice the blood-soaked Volkswagen on your way to the farm?); animal cruelty as a shortcut to realism (there’s at least one obviously dead, drowned rat in a shot near the end; one of the commenters on Fancast noted that the scenes of giant rats being shot are, in fact, scenes of real rats being shot, presumably with BB guns); and one of the clumsiest set-ups for a sequel I’ve ever seen. I also had several opportunities to reflect, while I rowed and later worked my legs and abs, that allowing the hero character to do the voiceover dilutes the drama, because obviously the person doing the voiceover isn’t going to die. (Unless, of course, he’s dead already, or you suspect the director of being clever and/or cruel enough to defy your expectations and let the voiceover character die, taking his voice with him. See American Beauty for the former, Australia for the latter (but in the case of Australia, keep in mind that I’m a sucker for an epic, and probably more than usually susceptible as a result).)

And now, given my Santa Monica food adventure earlier today, I’m going to hit the NordicTrack and work my upper body. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to watch while I do it.*

*Update: Yes, I have. I’m going to watch The Oblong Box, because I’m in love with Vincent Price, and with Edgar Allan Poe, and with Christopher Lee, and it’s got an awesome title, too.**

**Update to the Update: Unfortunately, the Fancast video was just too glitchy – I argued with it for awhile, then gave up and loaded up a Pandora station. This morning, though, I discovered that the movie is also available as an instant download on Netflix – in a double-feature with Scream and Scream Again, no less!*** So I’m watching it (in Firefox, thanks to IE Tab) while I work. (And for that, I thank DeskPins, which lets me run it in a window set to stay always-on-top.)

***And an update to the Update to the Update: Scream and Scream Again isn’t an instant download yet. Darn.

It’s funny how quickly I forget the energy that comes from working out first thing in the morning. “Oh, I don’t want to work out,” I whine. “I’m too sleepy. I’ll eat some breakfast first. And work a little bit. Then I’ll work out.” And then, of course, I don’t. But if I do, then I’m juiced for the rest of the day.

Today, I did work out. And since I didn’t have a DVD I particularly wanted to watch (The Bellydancers of Cairo looks amazing, but I wasn’t up for it at 8:30 in the morning), I threw in a CD. (Duran Duran’s Greatest, if you must know. Very inspiring.) And while I rowed, I stared at the cat tree in the corner. The one I’ve been saying for months I was going to get rid of. The one I haven’t gotten around to posting on Craigslist or Freecycle. The one the cat doesn’t even look at, though she does like to lie on the windowsill behind it. “I should do something about that,” I said.

So I did. And while I was at it, I did something about the two boxes of magazines that have been cluttering up various corners since before I decided to get rid of the cat tree. Out to the curb, all of them. Well, not the curb. The lawn, to be precise. Which was the plan all along, but somehow I thought I needed to do it on a Saturday, and I never remembered Saturday morning. Or if I did, I thought it seemed like too much trouble. About an hour later, the doorbell rang. “Are you selling that cat tree?” asked the middle-aged woman on my porch. “No,” I said. “I’m giving it away.” And so she went to get her son’s truck and she took it away. The first box of magazine disappeared a little while later. The last box is slowly being nibbled away. I’ve got two corners back, six cats get a new cat tree (and a scratching post and spinny toy to go with it), and some unknown number of persons get a whole lot of Cooking Light and a few Hot VWs.

I should work out every morning.