Weird Movie News

[thehefner]

First: have you ever been scarred for life by seeing something as a child that really fucking disturbed or upset you, but in reality was just something silly or stupid, not really scary at all? Then check out this great essay, written by a guy who was scarred by an episode of "Too Close for Comfort." It's hilarious because it's so true.

For my part, I've never gotten over that episode of G.I. JOE where Shipwreck is brainwashed and starts dreaming of all his friends and family melting and merging together as a blob monster to drag him away as he screams in abject my-melted-friends-and-family-are-dragging-me-away confusion/terror. I have Bloo to thank for dredging that little memory back up. *shudder*

EDIT: Oh God, Steve Gerber wrote that episode? No wonder it was subversively fucked-up.



Secondly, here are two bits of the goddamn weirdest movie news I have heard in recent memory.

So I've never seen BAD LIEUTENANT, Abel Ferrara's infamous NC-17-rated Harvey Keitel nude sleazefest exploitation indie, but it's certainly preceded by its reputation. Well, apparently the sixteen-year-old film is already getting remade.

With Nicolas Cage. Of course, Hollywood, way to fuck everything up that you t--

Wait. It's also being directed... by Werner Herzog.

...

That... it...

No, wait, before you process that, have you heard about the film of NINE, the film adaptation of the Broadway musical adapted on Fellini's 8½, which originally starred the great Raul Julia? Yes, it seems they're making a film of NINE, and they originally had Ewan McGregor in the lead role. Well, he dropped out. So who did they get to replace him?

Javier Bardem.

Until he dropped out too. Holy fuck, you had Bardem to replace McGregor (who's hardly chopped liver, but come on), and you lost him. Well, shit, who can we possibly get now?

Daniel Day-Lewis.

...

How... it... if Daniel drops out as well, what're they gonna do next, summon Charlie Chaplin from the dead?!

Brain... melting... too much... bizarre and inexplicable... movie awesomeness...

Comments

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

I think watching Angel Heart as a kid ruined me. Dunno if you've ever seen it, but it's definitely not something a child in the formative years should experience. At all.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

What, with DeNiro as Louis B. Cypher (har)? I never have, but I probably will one of these days. Especially now that I'm keeping this in mind.

God, I'm surprised no one's mentioned RETURN TO OZ yet.

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

That's the one. It's not billed as a horror flick so much as a noir detective bit with the Devil thrown in for good measure, but bloody hearts being tossed around and perhaps one of the most horrible ways someone can be murdered kinda did it.

I never saw Return to Oz until I was like, in college, so it wasn't so much scary as just plain weird, heh. I liked it.

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

Ahh! No! Bad Heffie! Nobody is to mention Return To Oz in my presence. The scene of the headless wicked witch chasing Dorothy down the corrisor of screaming heads Scarred Me For Life.

It did not help that the actress who played little Dorothy looked remarkably like me, age 7, down to the pigtails and deadpan expression.

Things the also scarred me: Worzel Gummidge (fear of scarecrows, age 2), Max Headroom (fear of CGI, age 4), Brother In the Land (fear of being left alive after nuclear holocaust, age 8).

The Daddy of scarring comes from an Australian show called Round The Twist which featured a mute killer scarecrow dressed as a clown. You...you can't actually get anything more scary than mute killer clown scarecrows.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

God, y'know, I never got that far; Dorothy getting electro-shock and the untouchable desert (that would turn you to sand, and then you'd crumble) was enough for me. I didn't watch the whole thing until a year ago, and even then I thought, "This is some fucked-up shit right here. I love it!" The heads... oh god, the heads.

ROUND THE TWIST? Never heard of it, but dear lord, that just sounds wrong.

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

Round The Twist was actually a really, really entertaining show. 3 kids live in a haunted lighthouse with their dad & weird shit happens every week, generally kind of silly/disgusting stuff, like ghost birds (with real bird poop), a remote control that can make real events Fast Forward/Rewind, but sometimes it was kind of eerie.

Plus, it had the catchiest theme music ever. Even now I can still sing it.

And it's just reminded me of another scarring TV programe. Do you remember "Eerie Indiana"? It was on in the very early nineties. The final episode of that show was about the main character discovering that he was actually in a TV show (much like Buddy Baker in Morrisons' Animal Man.) It scared the bejesus out of me.

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

Oh shit, I remember Round the Twist! The remote control episode grossed me out (three words: spaghetti eating contest).

Also there was an episode featuring a boy who turned into a mermaid and part of his transformation featured him growing scales on the back of his hand. Except instead of scales, they were fingernails. Yeah, that show was pretty fucked.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

My childhood trauma came from the remake of The Blob.

And yeah, I saw that thing about Nine. I was tempted to go all oh my god have you heard at you but figured you'd know way before me.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

YES, my god, we've talked about that, haven't we? I'm *still* wigged out like fuck from that film. I haven't watched the whole thing since. When I do catch pieces on cable, I'm torn between my adult geek love of awesome 80's horror with gooey effects and stuff asploding... and the five year old child in me that's *still* wary of all sink drains.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

We totally did! Back when you were conveniently located. :p I haven't seen any more of that movie than I did back then, but for years I would jump whenever something dripped from the ceiling.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

Wait, it's all okay! I decided to go look for clips on YouTube to see if it was as traumatizing as my youngchild-brain remembered it being (yes, I really am that stupid) and as it turns out, Kim Possible can save us anyway. Or at least one of her family members.

[gore-whore-5.livejournal.com]

I've been scarred for life from The Brave Little Toaster. I was so guilty about neglecting my baby blanket, hated vacuum cleaners, was scared of air conditioners blowing up, and was deathly afraid of ovens. It took me years to be able to reach into an oven and not panic. Oh, clowns and forks were bad too, but not as much as ovens.

Also, I don't know how to process the movie news, so I'm not even going to attempt to comment on it. Wow.

[bimmin.livejournal.com]

Gaaahhh? Bahhhhh? Whaaaa? Haaaa?

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

I saw an old-school Doctor Who episode called The Green Death when I was small that featured giant radioactive maggots that scared the shit out of me. So much so that I refused to watch another episode of the show until its revival, years later. I later found out that the production team used over-inflated condoms to make some of the maggots. I'm sure that has screwed me up in another way.

Also, Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was about five or so. You can probably guess which part. And yet my grandmother thought it would be appropriate for me and my toddler brother to watch. Thanks Grandma! (I also held a grudge against the Indiana Jones series for a while, but it didn't last very long, thankfully)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

DOCTOR WHO: scarring children for life since 1963.

Actually, between snakes, things with multiple legs, and meltings, I have a hard time guessing with part of RAIDERS that would have been!

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

Mostly the face melting. When it comes to creepy crawly moments it's pretty hard to beat Temple of Doom in that respect.

Frightened by Something Silly? Ohhhh, Yes, Definitely.

[jcsbimp.livejournal.com]

For me it was Anna Russell's book, "The Power of Being a Positive Stinker." The picture you see on that link was not the picture on the cover of the original book (although it appeared therein), which had a yellow cover with a black-and-white image of her making an even more contorted, stretched face than that. I found it very frightening at the age of 5, but kept being drawn to it over the years by the fact that the other pictures were quite humorous to me, and also because we had one of her 45rpm comedy records. But it always gave me the creeps, just a little chill. I guess others might have felt that as well, since the reissue changed the cover picture and I cannot find the original cover on Google image search.