cynicschism

     Being Halloween, being the sun is starting to set, being there is a little chill in the air, how about a short list of some of my favorite scary movies. Of course, like comedy, scary is in the eye of the movie beholder. These are some that scared me or are maybe just entertaining stories with a little extra goosebump quotient.

Dead of Night (1945)  Mervyn Johns, Sally Ann Howes, Michael Redgrave.  Perhaps the classic British supernatural movie.  Five stories are woven together with a surprise ending. There is one comic tale, but the rest are understated, but seriously weird. Especially spooky are the story involving a mirror with a strange effect on its newest owmers, and a tale of a children’s party with a strange guest from the past. Nice work all around. It was on TCM a few nights ago, and was as spooky as ever.

The Thing(1951) Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite.  Human beings are usually more scary in everyday life than monsters from outer space. The latter might be scary in a movie, but is anyone likely to meet one? But the space alien in The Thing is pretty spooky, even if he is from anothr planet. This is a great sci-fi classic with a claustrophobic setting at an Arctic research base where an alien craft lands. The otherworldly pilot goes on a killing spree, and is only stopped using the cleverness of the scientists and Army.

Diabolique(1955) Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse. A French masterpiece of suspense. The story takes place in a seedy provincial boarding school for boys. The dictatorial owner is having an affair with one of the teachers, but it seems his wife and the teacher have decided to kill him, or so it appears. The wife, who suffers from a weak heart, is in store for a shocking surprise. As much as the actors, one of the stars of the film is the run-down school itself. The black-and-white film captures every dingy corner of the school, as well as the dingy lives of the main characters of the film.

Psycho(1960) Tony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin. What list of scary films could be complete without the granddaddy of all the slasher films and a Hitchcock movie? Psycho may be less scary after you’ve seen it a few times, but the first viewing is still a shocker. Before Jason or the umpteen crazies who came after him, there was the very, very weird Norman Bates, who had a little apron-string problem with his mother. Hitch takes his time in setting up the action as we slowly get into the mind of Norman Bates. There are many classic scenes that everyone can repeat almost word for word. ‘My mother’s an in..invalid.’ No kidding. Or the car that sinks slowly into the swamp out back, finally going down into the ooze. Some people gave up taking showers for a while. If you’re driving late at night, tired, and looking for a place to spend the night, skip the Bates Motel.

Halloween(1978) Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nancy Loomis. Yes, knife-wielding wackos in strange getups may be scary, but after you’ve seen them a few times, they just get to be same-old, same-old. But Halloween was one of the first and best, before the slasher film became a repetetive bore. The story is well plotted, and things take their time to get going. And what could be better than folks sitting around on Halloween, watching scary old movies on TV, who might become part of the spooky action? The atmosphere makes the movie, and Jamie Lee is good as the teenager who fights back against the forces of madness. The gore is kept to sensible limits, so the focus is on the story, not the body count. After so many sequels and knockoffs, the original is still one of the best scary slasher films.

So, it’s Halloween. Sit back, dim the lights, and watch one of these fright classics. If there is a knock on the door, maybe it’s best not to answer.

     An interesting fact came out a few days ago when Joe the Plumber appeared on the Hannity-Colmes program. There they were, two acknowledged experts on socialism, discussing the old spread the wealth question, when Joe let it casually pass that both he and his parents had been on welfare. Huh? Joe, the working-class hero, the real American deal, the future plumbing millionaire, had been on welfare? His parents had been too? Yup. Do tell.

     Funny. In all his previous discussions of the spreading the wealth kind, he never mentioned that some of that wealth was spreading down to him in the form of, horrors, a welfare check. But that’s what he said. No evil leftie media discovered it. Joe came right out and admitted it. So JTP, who despises what he calls socialism, doesn’t despise it enough to excuse himself from the trough when the welfare slop is doled out. Well, what do you know. Joe the plumber is officially now Joe the socialist. Can a small niche in Lenin’s tomb be far behind?

     Ever since he became an instant celebrity, it’s become clear that JTP is a little bit of a scam artist. A minor and charming one no doubt, but still he does seem to stretch the truth just a little. One rumor has it that JTP might run for the House in 2010. He certainly seems to know how to play the game.

    Well the old maverick is still down in the polls and things don’t look too good for Election Day. Lord knows he’s got a lot of factors contributing to his poor showing, but one of the main ones is his pick of newcomer numbskull Gov. Sarah Palin as his VP.   

      At first glance, Palin looked like she might help Grumps make it right into the White House. She had an overflow of Caribou Barbie energy that gave the McSame camp a lift. Then she hit all the right nutjob notes in her speech at the Republican Convention. Some democratic columnists thought McCain might be crazy for picking such an inexperienced person, but they seemed to be proven wrong in the first few weeks after Palin’s debut. The GOP had a new airhead star. Or so it seemed.

     Then the media took a second look, Palin opened her mouth, and things started to go downhill from there. First, it appeared Palin wasn’t quite the reformer she said she was, then came her disastrous TV interviews, in which she was less than overwhelming. Up in Alaska investigations were  going on, and when the results were released, it seems Palin had a little abuse of power problem, and ran her governor’s office like a family business with a tilt toward vindictiveness. The main rule seemed to be: Don’t mess with the Palins. Now Palin is giving a deposition in another investigation of her administration, and has recently been outed giving a favorable deal to political cronies in a prospective natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

     All in all, Palin has been busy dragging the Republican ticket down, down, down. Now the democratic pundits who orignally wondered if McCain had lost his mind in selecting Palin are starting to look very prescient. The Barbie doll is starting to look like a loss leader, and McSame like the big gambler who blew it. Priceless.

      A few days ago, I blogged about the McCain/Palin (Dumb and Dumber) yard signs that had slowly appeared in the neighborhood over the last month. At the time there were four signs up, growing like a small plague. But today, there are only three.

     Yesterday, driving by the yard where the first sign took hold, I noticed something. The sign was no longer upright, but had been uprooted and was lying on its side in the yard close to the road. Taking a quick glance over, I saw there were a number of dents in the sign. Definitely a deliberate move.

     The other three signs are still up, and who knows who or why the first one was struck down. If signs had the vote, McCain would win in our part of the country. Fortunately, they don’t, and I have the feeling that, come November 5, the McCain/Palin signs will be coming down for good, and on their own.

     The story so far: As a student at a certain college in the southeastern U.S., I rented a room in an old semi-Victorian house. The house, by sheer circumstance, happened to look out on an L-shaped two-story apartment house, and I do mean looked out. I discovered my first-floor back room had a partial view of the bedrooms in some of the apartments. And when the lights went on after a busy day, the show began.

     The first voyeuree was a young woman with a weight problem, which she often took a look at in her mirror, in her birthday suit for a complete view. She may have thought she was the only one watching, but she would have been wrong. From across the bush-hidden way, I and a buddy would observe her closely, though without taking notes. Our vantage point was on a twin-size mattress and boxspring, in a small back room of my apartment. It was quite comfortable and well suited to our evening’s occupation. College students take classes during the day and, after all that brain usage, need a little time for relaxation and rest. We found our nightly viewings provided both.

     After a few nights of this usually regular weigh-in and show, we started to grow tired of the spectacle. Repetition, even of the unclothed kind, grew somewhat wearying. And we noticed our overweight friend was not making any progress in her personal battle of the bulge. We started to turn out eyes elsewhere. And after a couple of dull evenings, a new bedroom light and a new person hove into view. She too was a young woman, but she was, unlike our first subject, in very trim shape, and, like anyone else, changed her clothes in her bedroom. And we were due for a change in scene and scenery. To be continued

        On the road where I live, a sudden sign surge has been happening lately.  The now familiar blue and white McCain/Palin, aka Dumb and Dumber, signs are cropping up all over the place.

     The first one turned up at the beginning of October, just after the finish of the Republican convention. Since there was only about a month to go until Election Day, these folks didn’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about McSame.

     But then a strange thing happened. About two weeks after the first sign appeared, a second popped up in a house down the road, close to a small intersection. Hmmm, now there were two Dumb and Dumber supporters. After that ,things went into overdrive. A third sign appeared right next door. And only a few days ago, a fourth sign went up across from the neighbors. Now there are four McCain/Palin signs in this small neighborhood. We’re surrounded!

     We do live in the conservative region of a  light red state, so that there are so many McCain signs going up is no great surprise, but their sudden  appearance is. It’s a political version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We’re holding at four now, with no Obama signs in sight. If signs voted, Obama would be in trouble.

     There is one more thing to remark. The worse McCain does in the polls, the more signs have sprung up. These folks may not know much about politics, but they sure are a loyal bunch.

     Just a little under two weeks to go, and everybody will be glad when it’s over, or at least one of the candidates will. Right now, it looks like Obama has the edge, but you never know. There are a number of things that could happen that might be a game-changer.

     I’ve seen three possibilites mentioned by various political columnists. One-a sudden unexpected outside event, most likely some type of domestic or foreign terrorist attack. This would probably help McCain, given his national security credentials. But Obama is now getting better marks on this, so it might not be the big changer it would have been a few months ago. Two-a huge political gaffe by Obama. Possible, but unlikely. Obama’s had a few of these already: the videos of Jeremiah Wright, and the comment about people clinging to their guns and religion. These hurt Obama temporarily, but have not dealt a serious blow to his campaign. It could happen again, but doesn’t seem very probable.

     This brings up the third possibility. Folks haven’t been telling the truth about their support for Obama in polls, and come Nov. 4 racists will turn out in greater numbers than expected and vote against Obama because he is African-American.  This is the most reliable possibility. No one really knows how many racists will turn out to vote against Obama. It probably won’t be enough to change the election outcome, but if any of the three possibilities does happen, this is the one most likely to occur. Well, in a dozen days, we’ll know for sure.

     In a recent post, I recommended The Alfred Hitchcock Hour for those who enjoy classic mystery programs.  Granted, not every one of the 93 episodes is great, and there are a few dogs in there too, but the majority are solid suspense entertainment. The program is currently running on the Chiller network, Channel 257 on DirecTV. It is on at 12 noon each weekday, and I also believe it runs earlier in the morning.

     There was a recent episode entitled The Second Wife, that was one of the better episodes of the series. It concerns the arrival of Martha (June Lockhart) to a small town to marry Luke (John Anderson) who she met through a lonely hearts correspondence club. Luke is on the reserved side, but as they get to know each other, he seems like a good husband.

     Then Martha makes a discovery while talking to some local women. Luke had a first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. She starts to wonder. She comes home to find Luke in the basement and notices there is now a large hole in the always damp basement. A hole just large enough to bury a human body. Martha grows even more suspicious. She slowly begins to suspect that Luke is planning to do her in, just as he might have done to his first wife. To go further would be to give away the ending, which turns out to be a tragic result due to miscommunication.

     The Second Wife unfolds at a nice leisurely pace, and does a good job of showing the two characters getting to know one another. It takes time to tell the story. It also paints a detailed picture of the atmosphere of small-town life, where everybody seems to know everyone else and their secrets. Usually in the Hitchcock series, when the husband starts to dig a hole in the cellar, he’s up to no good. That isn’t necessarily so in this case, and that gives the story its depth and interest. It also gains from being a little more subtle than the usual mystery fare. If this episode pops up again, be sure to catch it. It’s quite well done.

     In the 2007 ALCS, the Boston Red Sox made a heroic comeback against the Cleveland Indians, returning from a 3-1 deficit to win the AL pennant. But that was last year.

     This year, Boston was back again, and a similar scenario seemed to be unfolding. After going up three games to one, one won by a 13-4 score, the Tampa Bay Rays blew a seven run lead in the seventh inning. The Red Sox went on to win that final game at Fenway Park, sending the series back to Tropicana Field for the decisive game(s). Would it be 2007 over again? Would the Rays blow it like the hapless Indians? Nope.

     Things did look dicey for a while. Even though the Rays had an off day to get back on stride, and take advantage of playing at home, they lost game 6 to Boston by a score of 4-2. So it all came down to one game. Unlike some of the slugfests in the series, the final game was a low-scoring affair. The Rays did manage to build a fragile 3-1 lead in the late innings. Then it suddenly looked like Boston might come through. They put two men on base in the 7th, but weren’t able to bring either home. The 8th was even worse, with the Sox loading the bases.  But Rays’ reliever David Price stepped up and struck out J.D. Drew to end the inning. And then he came back in the ninth and retired the side, giving Tampa Bay its first AL pennant.

     Those who are as tired of the Red Sox as they are of the NY Yankees can now celebrate. The Red Sox won’t be coming back this year, and hopefully, for many years to come.

     The Steelers beat up on the pretty wretched Cincinnati Bengals this afternoon, the final score being 38-10.  Some “experts” thought this might be an upset special, perhaps with the Steelers not focused on a team with an 0-6 record. Didn’t turn out that way.

     The first half was fairly close, as the Steelers looked for a while like maybe they weren’t too focused. The Pittsburgh defense let the Bengals drive 92 yards for a touchdown at the end of the first half, cutting the Pittsburgh lead to 10-7 when the half ended. Hmmm, maybe this would be a close one.

     I had to go out, and missed the third quarter and some of the fourth. By the time I got back, the Steelers had already scored three touchdowns, and would add one more. The Steeler defense must have been working too, because they shut the Bengals out in the second half. So after a mediocre first half, the Steelers came charging back in true form, with backup running back Mewelde Moore filling in for the injured Willie Parker, and running for 120 yards.

     Yes, the Bengals are pretty pathetic, but sometimes better teams let their guard down against losers like Cincinnati, and pay the price. The Steelers didn’t.  Things look good for the now 5-1 Steelers. And yes, being in the weak AFC North division doesn’t hurt. Still, a win is a win.