Men With "Dirty Macs"
Now Playing: New Pornographers--"Execution Day"
Sunday's Cinema Guild showing was Mario Bava's 1971 "classic" Twitch of the Death Nerve, shown under the title of Bay of Blood. The plot is incredibly simple--people show up to a deserted house, where they are all messily butchered by a variety of knaves and rascals. Twitch was the primary inspiration for the slasher genre "as we knew it" in the late 70s and 80s, which means that it was responsible for a whole truckload of awful movies. After Five Dolls the week before, this was a real letdown. If you're young and pretty and have sex, you basically deserve to die, was the message here. It reminded me of last year's midnight showing of Psycho at the Michigan Theater, part of that excruciatingly pretentious New Yorker "tour." I'd been prepared to enjoy it, but a whole lot of slasher-flick aficionados showed up towards the front of the seats, and the creepy, unwholesome simian hooting during Marion Crane's "big scene" really turned me off the genre for a while. We had a few newcomers show up who were apparently huge Bava fans and say in so many words "well, if you don't like it, you just don't get it." Fair enough, although lack of understanding won't stop me from criticizing. For me, that whole way of thinking's kind of a weak ploy to weasel out of narrative accountability. I think after shows like "Doctor Who" and movies like The Wicker Man, I've been spoiled for interesting writing and intriguing plots, and now expect those in all my movies and TV shows. I recently saw Shaun of the Dead (2004), a British comedy about a 29-year old retail worker forced to cope with an onslaught of zombies. Brilliant writing, terrific acting, wonderful characters, and not a wasted moment in the entire movie. I'd seen that the day before Twitch, so maybe that spoiled it for me. What an elitist prick I am.

Speaking of "Doctor Who," I finally get to see the new show tomorrow night on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which we get from Windsor, Ontario. There's already been a great deal of discussion on the British Horror Films forum as to the new series' relative merit--some of it acrimonious, probably forcing away a much beloved poster, sad to say. I haven't gotten that excited about it yet, although I'm sure I'll be squawking a different tune tomorrow evening.

The weather's getting a lot nicer, and I think I'm starting to feel a little better about life. A long walk sounds like an excellent idea.