Today's Post: Hosted by Dancing Meats

Sometimes I forget what a obsessive personality I am. That might be a disorder in and of itself, forgetting you're obsessive or not realizing it until the weekend is passed and then realizing all I did all weekend long was watch movies. And think about movies. And read books and magazines associated with movies.  We all gotta like somethin' and us horror movie folks tend to reeeeeeaaaallly like our horror movies, so much so that we basically lock ourselves away for days at time to devote necessary hours to movie watching. Thus the weekend unfolded. 

I began Friday evening after my 12-hour waitressing shift with Jan Svankmajer's latest, albeit from 2006, Lunacy. I'm pretty much a casual Svankmajer fan. I enjoy the stop motion stuff because it looks kewl, and I marvel at the patience the stop motion artist must possess, myself  possessing little to no patience really. I can hardly do a paint by numbers that I bought at the craft store to inspire myself to be more 'crafty' without abandoning for something else, so I am amazed at the things a guy like Svankmajer can do with inanimate objects making them seem animate. Stop motion seems like such a grueling, time consuming process, I can hardly blog post on a weekly basis. I like his stuff though, and have seen and enjoyed Alice and Faust. I really enjoyed Little Otik a few years back, as well, and figured it was time to get around to Lunacy. I can sum it up as follows: Dancing meat mimicking human interactions interspliced with a real time story about Jean, a guy that gets mixed up with a sort of Marquis de Sade type character who has overthrown a mental asylum to enact his perversions with another dude and a pretty girl named Charlotte. There's some Poe in there, too, namely Premature Burial, and some other weirdness, dream imagery, and set pieces. And a little perverted sex type things too. Voila, Svankmajer. If we're going to get all philosophical and whathaveyou, you could say, oh, well, aren't we all meat? Which brings us to the next endeavor of the weekend German outing, Otto; or Up with Dead People. 

Yeah, yeah, I get it, Otto is an unapologetically campy riff on zombie movies, offering us gay zombies, gay sex, a movie within a movie, and an attempt to make fun of pretentious art-house type filmmakers. It's an irreverent take on zombies that is ambitious and never really quite succumbs to the level of movie in which it is spoofing, however it wasn't really all that entertaining. I feel sorry for Otto, the undead protagonist searching for someone to love, rather than someone to eat, but I only feel sorry for him for so long. At an hour and a half running time, I don't know, something about it just falls short. It's funny at times, poignant at others, yet boring nonetheless. Antony and the Johnsons is on the soundtrack though. 

Then we left the house, but it was only to see Friday the 13th in the theatre. I had some drinks before we went, and I had some drinks whilst in the theatre, don't tell, so by the time it was over, I was yelling about how we all need to go home and watch a GOOD Jason movie (namely Jason Goes to Hell, my personal fave) and WTF was THAT! but I really didn't hate it all that much. I did have a problem with the fact that Jason kept a hostage. To my knowledge, Jason never was one to keep a hostage. He was always all off with their heads, next victim please. He has no reason to keep a hostage. Revenge killing and quick killing at that. Yeah, he might stalk ya through the woods for a pace, but he's gonna kill you when he gets close to you, lest you kill him first. So I thought that was a little weird and a little out of character. At times, it's a great movie, you do feel like it's 1987 and you're watching the same shit, but at other times, it's just stupid. And Jason moves really really fast in this one. He doesn't lumber, he's leaner, and he can seemingly be in two places almost at once. This was Christian's main prob with the movie, and I wouldn't hasten to agree with him. Fun times were had nevertheless. I always love to see my beloved genre movies in the theatre, sucky or not, and this was no exception. 

Then, no weekend, or couple of days, or truly, every few hours, would be complete without seeing Paul Naschy's mean little face in some sort of cinematic atrocity. Let's face it, Paul Naschy movies are at times wonderful, wonderful bits of Spanish horror movie history, but the plot lines are often effin' terrible. So we sat down to continue our education in all things Naschy with Horror Rises From the Tomb. And while I will have to cut this kinda short because I need to wash the dye from my hair, let's just say this, I hope I am not becoming tired of Paul Naschy movies because I love the man, sometimes Christian thinks I love him more than I love him, we

ve seriously had that discussion more than one time, but I was so bored by this movie. There isn't really any horror rising from any tombs, at least not enough to warrant calling the movie that, and when it does start to rise, I was in the kitchen freshening our cocktails. Quick, Christian says, Zombies. Do they look cool, I asked. Yeah, they look alright. Do they

 as good as that one in Night of the Werewolf? No, not really. Okay, I 'll be right in. Please tell me this is just a one-off and the next Naschy vacation I take off on will be better. I mean, this one was more boring than Crimson, and at least there's a vampire and satan-worshipping going on here. Naschy is playing like three different characters and one of them is a severed head returned from the grave and it sounds cooler than it actually is. I wouldn't say Naschy is phoning it in in this one, he's not, but something about it didn't peak my interest. Maybe it was the cocktail consumption or something else. But I hope it passes. I don't like talk smack about my man. 

Okay, then we tried to watch the Blood of Fu Manchu, with Christopher Lee (!) but I passed the eff out. It happens. I watch too many movies, become drunk with their power, and pass out. That or I felt imminent doom on having to return to work the following day. I think we may have watched something else, but now the hair dye might be effecting my delicious brains. More later, I hope, if I'm not too lazy.