Cthulhu give me strength, my review of Satanico Pandemonium : La Sexorcista (1975) is now live over at my 366WeirdMovies gig. There’s no taking it back now. What’s worse, I actually half-liked it. It’s got great locations and cinematography, and moves at a brisk enough clip that the batty plot will fly right by you without too much grief.
Oh, and here’s a film still that didn’t make the review’s cut:
My clients get a little squeamish about posting borderline images, but here in the gutter on my own site I put on no airs of propriety. You’re already reading a post with “Nunsploitation” in the title; it’s a little late to pretend you have standards now.
Of course, I’ve been up to a lot more film-related devilment lately…
Upon the passing of both Ian Holm and Joel Schumacher within days of each other, I revisited both careers which were central to geek film culture. Of the two, we all naturally miss Ian Holm more. He was in my personal favorite movie, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, which I finally got the chance to review here.
Beyond that, Iam Holm was part of so many blockbuster films in the geek movie canon, from Alien to The Fifth Element to The Lord of the Rings, that it’s impossible to overstate how much influence he had on geek culture.
Hey, I also took the occasion to defend Joel. I’m not here to say the Batman movies were actually misunderstood works of genius, but you people kicked him around entirely too much.
Within both geek culture and the weird movies category, I also got around to addressing Fantastic Planet, the cultiest of cult sci-fi films which was also reviewed at 366Weird by Greg himself. It makes the list at #120. Myself, I needed to review it because I have zero patience for philistines who just look at a movie like Fantastic Planet and dismiss it as drug-addled psychedelica. It is a political movie with an important message about diversity and tolerance, a movie with something to actually say, as well as being immediately relevant to present news.
I have a whole, separate, other rant about how geek culture’s cornerstone founding content is based on the Civil Rights movement, in total. That one got some notice.
Here the social problems which antagonized the George Floyd riots in the first place are being completely ignored while we run around cancelling maple syrup asking “Does this fix the problem?” CNN interviews the family to tell us how they think George Floyd would like to be remembered, and then over at my DabConnection gig they hit me with this black market THC vape cartridge:
It’s things like this that give me my misanthropist streak.
What a sick world.
Anyway, Fantastic Planet (he said, suppressing his rage) is another story about a sick world and its outcome when its inhabitants are forced to examine it. It’s an important film, and dismissing it as “DooD TrIIppY!” makes it so we can’t be friends.
Speaking of getting a rise out of people, your humble author received some validation recently confirming that I am still a burr in the saddle of despots, an enemy of Nazis, and a general pain in the taint to the wanton trolls of this pestilent land. So Magic: The Gathering purged its own Aunt Jemima, with seven cards banned for being projecting racism. And I said “That’s a good start, but you have a whole mountain of offensiveness where that came from and a toxic culture around your game that rivals cockfighting rings.”
Well, let me tell you, that just did not sit well with the Nazi Incel movement, which posted a link to my thesis on Reddit’s own “unmoderated” Alt-Right MTG sub. Yes, MTG culture is toxic enough that it has its own Nazi subculture with a safe space where they can hate out loud in public. While playing Magic.
What else has the world’s angriest blogger been kicking at? On the cannabis front, I documented why you really should stop trying to handle butane at home, because it tends to make your house go boom-boom and put you in the hospital with third-degree ouchies. I also began my campaign to take out Alibaba Group, the Chinese eCommerce company responsible for most of the black market and counterfeit merchandise you’ll find in the US.
Alibaba is not just an online store. It is a conveyor belt of damaging, fraudulent, unsafe merchandise flowing into the US. It is choking out American commerce, and exporting US dollars back to China, which probably spends it harvesting more organs from political prisoners. Alibaba Group is economic terrorism, as well as being the primary channel where all the black market boof vape carts come from (see: George Floyd’s cartridge, above), which is still killing kids who die with lungs scorched from inhaling acetate cut at 400+°.
My only ray of hope on the cannabis front is a list of US states where some progress towards cannabis legalization is happening, with the promise of another primary election boost to cannabis freedom.
You don’t have to believe me, because I’m just another random guy with a blog on the Internet, but thus far I have yet to so much as puff one pot plant, nor vape one sip of THC oil, throughout this entire gig. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve smoked the stuff and think it’s great (hell, I’ve smoked a lot worse!), especially for the medical applications, but just because I favor something doesn’t mean it’s my lifestyle.
Even if I hated the stuff, I would still fight to the death for people’s right to use it if they like it. That’s my integrity.
If only integrity weren’t so wasted in this post-apocalyptic hell.
