p e n g u i n d e v i l

Inspired by coming across a copy of Making Mischief: The Cult Films of Pete Walker, I decided it was finally time to watch one of his movies. Due to its easy availability (and catchy title), I selected The Flesh and Blood Show! Starting off with the credits and some bad fake blood in the water, we move to an apartment with two young ladies sleeping, as it is a quarter to three in the morning. Suddenly, someone starts banging on the door! To get a hint of how this movie is going to go, the one girl who is stark naked is the one who gets up to answer the door… Without donning a robe or anything. At this point you know it’s either: Europe, the free love era, one of those kind (the easy nudity type) of movies, or these people are portraying actors. Well, you would be right on all four counts! The story is fine but not remarkable and there are some rather big holes in what goes on. But the cast is pleasant enough, all quite Britishly hip, as in you could imagine them at a party with the ‘Stones, back in the day.

The Flesh and Blood Show is a 1972ish UK movie about a group of actors (most of whom don’t know each other) who are all hired for a performance outside of town, in a creepy abandoned old theater at the end of a pier! Though to me it doesn’t look like a place that someone would have people go to get ready for a performance, the actors go along with it anyway. Even though they don’t really know who has hired them and even though they are left to sleep on the floor in their caveman costumes and such (yes…). Not too comforting, as the place is dark, old, dusty, filled with crap and has a creepy basement (with a guillotine). But this is the perfect place for some hooking up, some people disappearing and some really terrible stage antics!

But while the pier and theater are quite dirty and forbidding, the town itself seems nice enough. They wander over during the day and friendly locals invite them over for tea and nice conversation, including telling them stories of the mysterious disappearances that ended the theaters last run a couple of decades back. But why listen to talk such as that? When the screaming starts and the disappearing starts, they find little help from the disbelieving locals police, and questionable help from each other, as they don’t really know each other… Is someone playing tricks on them? Is one of them stalking around creepily? or is there someone else altogether here.

As one would expect, there lots of milling about, plenty of bad acting, lots of excuses for some nudity (European style) and lots of false scares. All in all, pretty standard. I found it to be more entertaining than any of those Italian Giallo films I’ve sat through, but it had sort of the same feel to it. A slow and rather uninteresting “Slasher” film. Billed (on the dvd) as “an appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality”, it sadly was certainly none of that, not even for its time. Though it is certainly watchable.

Also there is a warning at the beginning that the ending scene was shot in 3-d, so “Please colored viewer provided by the theater”. Well, this darned dvd didn’t come with any colored viewer!

Ah, fear and loathing… Though the Airport is the only contact that I have with The Department of Homeland Security (could they have picked a more fascistic term?) and I don’t fly often, I still find the DHS to be annoying. All of that ridiculous stuff about water bottles and no liquids or nail files would be funny, if it wasn’t so funny. But I’ve been thinking about this stuff as I am in the process of getting a security pass for the airport, for work reasons, and I am somewhat wary about giving such a dubious organization access to about the only personal information I have that isn’t already on file somewhere, my fingerprints. I didn’t even know until today that fingerprints are taken directly by
scanning, ugh.

But then, to continue the practice of making matters worse, my always reliable new source, Slashdot, directed me to this unsavory piece of information today:

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

This bracelet would:
• take the place of an airline boarding pass
• contain personal information about the traveler
• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage
• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

That’s really great. Wearing control/shock bracelets just to take a plane ride. I don’t know why they don’t just make passengers unconscious and store them naked in locked caskets for the trip. Think of all the potential problems that would solve!

Anyway, you can read all about it here at the Washington Post:
Want some torture with your peanuts?

Not that I am completely anti-security… I think that metal detectors and lockable armored doors for cockpits are reasonable measures, but that’s about where I draw the line. All of this cataloging of people and excessive control measures can’t be leading us in a very good direction.