Beauty & the Beast
AIDS Metaphors and Other Things
* Gaston’s story
* The Beast’s story
* Belle’s story
* Le Fou’s story
Once upon a time, Walt Disney Studios released a daring animated film into our movie theaters that was, in fact, secretly about AIDS. That film, Beauty & the Beast, was a metaphor for the epidemic that appeared to be sweeping the land back in 1991, and it is a message that is still good today, as the scourge has only gotten worse around the world.
Some telltale signs are obvious: the film is dedicated to Howard Ashman, the song lyricist and creative genius behind it, who died of AIDS before the film was released. Then there was that song “Kill the Beast,” which seemed like an indictment of the vigilante mentality that had taken root in America in the early 90’s as parents lashed out at the AIDS-afflicted children in their neighborhood schools. And what was the Beast’s affliction exactly? He wasn’t a werewolf. And what about Gaston, that hyper-masculine figure who seemed to satirize the vain, gay bodybuilder and bathhouse culture of the 80’s? Finally, there was that evocative red rose, with its petals falling, that seemed like the life blood ebbing away in the lives of AIDS and HIV patients in our communities.
AIDS as a phenomenon and how society responded to it were very much on people’s minds back then, though only a few commentators made the connection with the movie and fewer still are aware of it now. Yet there we were, late in the 20th century, and the dark shadowy figure of the vampire was with us again in the fear of an epidemic, in the scapegoating of the gay community, the blood superstitions, the warnings about sex without love.
In those days of deadly diseases of the blood, you went out on a date and you wondered whether a blood test was required before progressing to the next stage, especially if you were gay or bisexual. Should it be over a glass of wine and the entrée or perhaps later over coffee, or could it wait for the bedroom? The danger has always been there really – for fear of the unknown has been part of the thrill of the chase. Schubert died of syphilis at the age of 31, the year after Beethoven, and they are buried next to each other in Vienna. Nietzsche went insane and it is generally attributed to the syphilis he contracted in his youth. The dilemma today is, if everyone else seems to be promiscuous, should you be too? Fear of the blood diseases appears not to have significantly diminished sexual activity but, along with the other sexually transmitted diseases, it has played its part in the mechanization and commercialization of sexuality today and the diminishing Western birthrate. Sex and death are linked once again and forever, giving new meaning to the line Till death do us part. Is there an unlikely upside to all this: can such fears about AIDS and STDs result in the rebirth of romance? After all, isn’t romance proportional to unfulfilled desire? Can romance make a comeback?
GASTON’S STORY
Beauty & the Beast is a darkly cynical story that is designed to show that we live in an age without heroes. The real hero does not get the girl and dies instead of a broken heart. Gaston was that hero. He was a martyr, a sacrifice on the altar of political correctness by a rotten society that has elevated the beastly and the perverted and that does not respect family values anymore.
The villain, of course, was the Beast, for everyone was corrupted by his contagion. His disease, which was purely physical at first, soon spread to the mental plane, driving him nearly insane, and this only encouraged Belle’s natural maternal instincts in the wrong direction. Worse, she turned into a feminist. If Gaston had been allowed to sort things out, he could have had her locked up in the asylum with her father until she recognized her foolishness. Essentially the ending of the movie is all wrong because Gaston is killed off. One can only think of John Smith getting a bullet in the stomach at the end of Pocahontas to rival it for pusillanimity.
This film is about masculinity, or it ought to have been. It has an Oedipal story -- Mr. Bruno Bettelheim says so -- where Belle is supposed to transfer her love for her father onto Gaston as her future husband. That is why there is such a strong emphasis in the film on body-building, hunting, drinking, and joking around so she can transfer her affections from her wimpish egghead father Maurice to the more manly pursuits represented by Gaston. Indeed Gaston recommended that the story be updated and called “Gaston and Belle” but he was informed by the Studio that everybody knew the original title and they couldn’t change it for marketing reasons. Anyway Gaston buffed himself up for the role and he was very disappointed with Disney for how it turned out. They had promised him a role in a later picture about Tarzan but Eisner reneged on that deal too.
Gaston was sure it had something to do with the fact that his prior friendship with the Beast had somehow got out. He thought they had kept it a secret, so how did the Studio find out? Hollywood has codes for this sort of thing and secrets are not supposed to be revealed, yet somehow they knew and now they blamed him for it. Gaston did not consider himself responsible for the Beast’s affliction, but he knew the shadow would hang over him until he had rid himself of the stigma. It had been an indiscretion from an earlier time and he was ready to move on. He had thought about litigation but he had seen what they had done to the Winnie the Pooh people.
Gaston was surprised that no one had yet commented on how badly Disney had messed up the story. For years the feminists had hogged the debate, obsessed with finding negative “femininity” all over the place – the peelaway bathing suit worn by Ariel, the Pocahontas cleavage -- while conservatives howled about the phallic symbols on the Little Mermaid poster, the topless woman in The Rescuers and the word SEX in the sky of The Lion King. Even Gaston thought this absurd, but he saved his real venom for those who would argue that a white male dominated studio like Disney had let the white male imagination colonize women’s bodies all over the world. Imagine that! Gaston thought it had escaped most feminists that white men found women from other parts of the world more sexually exciting anyway. There were good reasons for this, not the least of which was that white women had become boring. Just look at Belle, for God’s sake. Western women were too critical, too predictable, too brittle and the only men they tolerated were feminized men like the Beast who sulked a lot and didn’t fight back. Gaston had the feeling he knew what most women were going to say before they said it. The fact that they wrote about femininity all the time only reflected their desperation. Feminist writing was self-therapy, reassurance, making the world right through writing. It was a total waste of time.
Another thing that riled Gaston was that Disney had been successful in persuading everyone that its version was the one and only, the authorized version. Just as all earlier storytellers were successful in pushing aside the previous ones, this too was Disney’s triumph, and it had been rewarded with an Academy Award nomination. Gaston wanted his revenge. He mused over the possibility that in the future there would be new videogame technologies available to him that would lead to new narrative forms whereby he could completely transform Beauty & the Beast into “Gaston and the Beast” perhaps. Forget Belle. He would like the opportunity to design an ending more fitting to the story, where he would win the “girl,” whoever she was, and he would kill the Beast or ensure he stayed a Beast, or even turn him into a kept man again. Well, why not? There was nothing new under the sun, after all. Weren’t plagiarism and parody the sincerest forms of flattery? Now, if he could just figure out C++.
THE BEAST’S STORY
As Beauty & the Beast begins, the young prince is transformed into a Beast because of an act of arrogance and unkindness toward a woman old enough to be his grandmother. She turns out to be a beautiful young enchantress and she retaliates. The strange affliction she gives him transforms his shape, his being, his soul. The pustulence grows with his despair, like lava erupting across his skin, working itself through the seam lines and into the bloodstream. The ugliness prevents anyone from seeing any original beauty that may have remained. It becomes a mask, more animal, less human.
Metaphorically, one might say that the Beast is contaminated by the viruses of pride and vanity, of believing that since he is young he can live forever. One moment of bad luck; that was all it took to sweep it all away.
Beauty is a horrible concept anyway. It is a curse. From earliest times it was a gift from God, like wealth or a title. In the ancient epics and medieval fairy tales the heroines were beautiful, the heroes were handsome and noble in nature. The fairy wands in Sleeping Beauty, you will recall, bestowed the gift of beauty and the gift of song. Perfect beauty, however, was always stalked by the horror of disease. The fairies conveniently forgot, as they do every time, to add perfect health to their gifts, deliberately one suspects, in case they need to control us later. Malificent paralyses Aurora like a poisonous spider, the evil Queen poisons Snow White with the ripe red apple of sexual temptation. Circe’s magic wand strikes down Odysseus’ sailors… These stories are about the revenge of the fairy world upon humans, for humans, it turns out, can experience the sexual pleasure that the fairies are denied. They rage that human heroes and heroines have become the center of these stories, pushing the fairy world to the margins, to playing the villains. For the fairy world is all that survives of the great pagan universe of the gods and goddesses of the ancient world that were thrust aside by the successive invasions of Christianity, Islam and Disney animated movies. Humiliated and domesticated, all they have left is revenge.
The prince reflected on his snub of the enchantress. He felt it was more than simple spite. Had she perceived it as a rejection of her sexuality, her heterosexuality? Had she decided that his affliction, his Original Sin, was his essentially homosexual character? Was she some kind of anti-gay religious fanatic? Did the religious right have that kind of power? True, he could see that the metaphor worked to some extent. The deformity he now saw in the mirror and his isolation in this castle with the other disfigured furniture pieces resembled AIDS patients everywhere as they fled from human sight into hospices. His castle had become a private darkness that shut out the world but kept the soul somewhat intact, filled all the while with impotent rage and despair. Waiting, waiting, but for what? For Belle to arrive? To be his guest? What did that mean? He wished he knew.
Was perfection just a skin condition? It had always been so really. To be beautiful was to have escaped the smallpox scars and the rotting teeth of the commoners, but now humans had the opportunity to cheat fate through surgery. In the past humans always preferred that others did their suffering for them – they preferred to hear about it in stories. If once we were all aristocrats under the skin, nowadays we could all be aristocrats on the surface of the skin, no matter what was hidden beneath.
The prince knew that plastic surgery and liposuction wouldn’t affect his inner person. For the Beast was now at the other extreme where the ugly surfaces of his affliction reflected rather than masked the greater horror inside -- the invisible virus. What was most frustrating about today’s culture was not that there was no physical cure. That could be taken care of by protease inhibitors and other chemical paraphernalia. What mattered was the implications of such a powerful link between sex and death. It disturbed him profoundly on a spiritual level. Why should the act that bestows life also be the act that bestows death? Was there some terrible cosmic irony to all this?
Let the doctors and researchers continue to find their miracle cures. What the prince felt was needed was a new aesthetic where, if AIDS was not exactly beautiful, then it could be ennobled, just as the suffering Madonna and the Magdalene became spiritual metaphors fashioned out of the pain and suffering of life in the Middle Ages. It was not just a miracle cure that was needed but a mythology that satisfied the imagination, that provided an explanation, no matter what Dr. Sontag from the asylum had to say about its inadequacies. It was not that we have difficulty accepting that the natural curve of our lives ends in death. What we seek is an explanation for all this suffering – an explanation that has nothing to do with Original Sin!
The prince knew that the hatred Gaston felt for him had little to do with his desire for Belle. Gaston wasn’t even interested in women. His decorating with antlers surely tipped you off? His ultra-masculinity produced a homophobic sexual energy that was also profoundly anti-feminine. When he sought to kill the Beast, he not only sought to kill the sexuality within himself, he was attempting to deny that he too had AIDS. Ever since he fell to his death from the castle walls, the media had written him off as a buffoon, but they never guessed the truth. The prince, for his part, assumed Gaston had committed suicide, the moment the HIV had progressed to full-blown AIDS. Of course he would be back; you couldn’t kill a cartoon character.
But the prince himself was still alive. With recent advances in medicine, he could not say if he would die soon after Gaston, but all those scenes of redemption at the end of the movie, while very charming, had been a polite lie for a mass audience. Gaston had been a handsome man but his had been the beauty and vanity of the male figure before the ravages of AIDS. For the Beast, what mattered was the discovery that we live with death circling around us and howling at the gate, asking, threatening to come in. Belle, he knew, believed in the power of romantic love and the moral and physical transformation that it brought, to keep death outside the walls. But the Beast could not bring himself to believe in this. He didn’t know any men who did. It was a sentimental cop-out. Did he plan to sleep with Belle? Condoms? No, the idea was too psychologically debilitating -- sperm as poison -- and anyway desire was stronger when it was unfulfilled. There was some spiritual comfort in that at least, in abstinence.
For the prince, as for all agnostics, for those without religious faith, one had to rely on the magic of the arts and sciences. Artists had the ability to capture memories of what has passed and what might have been and give them resonance. Scientists made them concrete. Along with regret and a sense of loss, there was also a sense that life is what it is and that there is romance in every moment of it if we only know how to enjoy it. We know as we get older that those moments are gone forever, except in memory, so why worry oneself about it? And there was always tomorrow.
BELLE’S STORY
Belle had begun teaching the village children at the local school after their former teacher was killed in the attack on the castle. She had been surprised to hear the teacher had helped lead the attack. If schoolteachers could so easily join in the hysteria, what hope was there for society? The children, curiously enough, wanted to hear more about the Beast and his story. Belle wondered whether she should address the subject of his disease directly. They did not understand TB, leprosy, cholera, let alone AIDS – these diseases that kill – but she thought perhaps they should understand them. The children did not even remember what it was like to have chicken pox or the measles. But they did understand when she told them that the Beast was sad and lonely because he felt ugly. They could even understand the fundamental unfairness and randomness of it. Not one child in the class condemned him for his homosexuality. Belle knew most of their parents felt otherwise.
The original writers of the story, Villeneuve and Beaumont, understood that the Beast suffered from much more than pride and vanity. They knew that physical ugliness also takes its toll, eating away at self-respect, destroying the spirit along with the tissue. This was why French filmmaker Jean Cocteau was drawn to the story: he made his La Belle et la bête in 1945, with a tormented tragic Beast. Homosexual, Cocteau felt an outcast many times in his life, but it was his disfiguring facial eczema that linked him so personally with this story. During filming he wore a black veil over his head with holes cut out for his eyes and his mouth. Truly a Beast mask, yet film historians rarely mention it. No doubt the same sentiment inspired Robert Louis Stevenson when he wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for Stevenson was ravaged by tuberculosis, the poison inside transforming him into Mr. Hyde whenever he suffered a relapse, and he would be gone eight years later, in 1894. Did Milton feel the same way as he went blind; did Goya and Beethoven as they lost their hearing? Did Edgar Allan Poe as he watched Virginia Clemm fading away from tuberculosis? The same pessimism pervades Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis -- their authors deteriorated from the same disease. Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective has psoriasis and the musician Seal, whose elegy “Kiss From a Rose” can be interpreted many ways, still bears the scars of lupus on this face.
Belle knew that these writers, like Howard Ashman, fought their killers heroically, transcending the pain and the despair through their art. The only other way, it seemed, was through religious faith. That was the path Belle had chosen, for she considered herself a teacher, not an artist. While she knew that the Beast despised religious solutions, she felt that women better understood religious faith than men. Religion was, after all, just a cluster of fairytales that expressed the ineffable. It had a certain wild magical power that defied the limits of reason. From the beginning of the l7th century, most women had not been allowed to study religion, philosophy and the law, and so they had developed an interest in fiction instead, especially fantastic and romantic writing. Ironically, that fiction upended the rules and laws dreamt up by the male authorities. When aristocratic and upper middle class girls were told the ancient folk tales by their nurses and maids, these tales were often violent and sexual, quite at odds with what the men would have had them learn. These tales were forerunners of what all women would encounter in their adult lives when they had to contend with forced marriages, unwanted pregnancies and disappointing husbands. The wild magic enabled women to look past the ugliness of men. Today, Belle wondered why so many women retained their interest in ultra-masculine heroes, the ones who longed for unattainable feminine heroines. Belle hoped that women would avoid the vain and spiteful Gastons and even the self-pitying and abusive Beasts of this world. Yet she understood and sympathized with those many women who saw their primary mission in life as changing men’s behavior. She was sure that men did not see it as their mission to change women, but unless women wanted to change men for the better, then things would never change.
Belle was interested in sexual fables not simply to define herself in relation to men and to other women, but to enjoy the open horizons that these stories provided, as the getaway for the imagination. Beauty & the Beast was a woman-centered story and it contained the wild magic that flows through all the best stories in unpredictable and startling ways, breaking down doors and transforming everything inside. Belle could still see the appeal of the “fixed” metaphors -- the door and the rose beyond the door. These were metaphors of space and time and they were at the heart of the film. Belle courageously entered the Beast’s fearsome castle and broke into his private rooms where the rose dropped its petals. These images give Beauty & the Beast much of its emotional power because they are meaningful spiritually. Of course they only sadden most of the men, as they seem to have saddened T.S. Eliot, who had converted to Anglicanism by the time he used them in the beautiful and nostalgic Burnt Norton from The Four Quartets: “Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose-garden.” But women felt differently and saw these images as transformational. It was Eliot’s poem that inspired Agatha Christie when she reworked Beauty & the Beast into her Mary Westmacott novel The Rose and the Yew Tree: “The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree are of equal duration.” In other words, anything is possible, doors can always be opened, roses may grow again.
For Belle, these metaphors and the wild magic taken together are the closest that most of us can get to making sense of the meaning of life, short of a full-blown religious conversion like Eliot’s, and Belle felt there was still room for doubt in her religious beliefs. Doubt allows us to celebrate the importance of strategic ambiguity in everyday life and in art while faith allows us to seize the important moments when they appear and appreciate them. You have a split second sometimes to decide some things, such as conceiving a child. How extraordinary is that? Yet even these metaphors only go so far. For Belle this was the meaning of life itself. Life is the intersection of faith and doubt. It opens up and continues to expand in every direction just as the Universe does.
Some say that the Disney animated version of this story threw away all this when it ended up with a very conservative and paternalistic message -- very sentimental, very heterosexual, very limiting -- but you can’t have everything, can you? It is just a narrative contrivance after all, a utopian vision. We all know that no one lives happily ever after in real life, but we can believe in the healing powers of love, even if death is always final. Belle believed in love. In itself it was just a cliché that stood in for many things that are not cliché; they are unexplainable and better left that way.
LE FOU’S STORY
Sometimes a rose is just a rose, and a movie is just a movie. That’s all there is to say.
~::~
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Vampire Beast Of North Carolina
The Vampire Beast Of North Carolina , What Is It And Where Did It Come From.
What ever the Vampire Beast is it can approach large Pitt Bull Dogs and kill and drain them of blood with out making a sound.
There must be more than one of the Vampire Beasts because it has made kills 100 miles apart on the same night.
It apparently killed a Pony just outside of Lincolnton NC so it is killing in a much bigger area than it did back in 1953. It started back killing in 2003 and it has not stoped yet. Why did it not kill from 1953 to 2003. Biologists have studied animals it has killed recently and they have no answers. It kills the animals apparently by smothering them and then it drains their blood. One strange thing is that other predators that usually eat dead animals won't touch one of the Vampire Beasts kills. Tracking Dogs brought to animals killed by the Vampire Beast have refused to approach the dead animals or attempt to track it. What are they so afraid of.
Police are often called by people in the Bladenboro area when people hear a woman screaming over and over but no woman is ever found. It is the Vampire Beast they are hearing doing the screaming is the only answer.
What ever the Vampire Beast is it can approach large Pitt Bull Dogs and kill and drain them of blood with out making a sound.
There must be more than one of the Vampire Beasts because it has made kills 100 miles apart on the same night.
It apparently killed a Pony just outside of Lincolnton NC so it is killing in a much bigger area than it did back in 1953. It started back killing in 2003 and it has not stoped yet. Why did it not kill from 1953 to 2003. Biologists have studied animals it has killed recently and they have no answers. It kills the animals apparently by smothering them and then it drains their blood. One strange thing is that other predators that usually eat dead animals won't touch one of the Vampire Beasts kills. Tracking Dogs brought to animals killed by the Vampire Beast have refused to approach the dead animals or attempt to track it. What are they so afraid of.
Police are often called by people in the Bladenboro area when people hear a woman screaming over and over but no woman is ever found. It is the Vampire Beast they are hearing doing the screaming is the only answer.
The Vampire Beast Of NC
The Vampire Beast Of NC
What is it and where did it come from. No one knows for sure. And why did it kill and drain animals of blood in 1953 and then disapear until 2003 when it made its return and went back to killing animals and draining them of blood in the Bladenboro area of North Carolina.
Bladenboro is located at the southeastern corner of the Piedmont of North Carolina and the small town is surrounded by Pine Woods and Swamps. Bladenboro was also the scene of the greatest Monster story ever in NC, In 1953 something was killing dogs in the area and the really strange thing was that when the dogs bodies were found they were drained of blood. Some residents claimed they saw a really strange beast with the body of a bear and the head of a cat. And they said it screamed just like a woman.
After the story appeared in the Bladenboro Newspaper around Christmas of 1953 hunters came from as far away as Arizona to try to get a shot at the beast. But even though the hunters brought whole packs of blood hounds trained to track anything nothing was ever found. And the people of the area slowly forgot about the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro.
But then in 2003 it was back. Goats and dogs started showing up again dead with very few marks on them. Again the really strange thing was the fact that even though the animals had been killed there was no blood around the dead animals or in the dead animals. And people in the area quickly came to the conclusion that the Vampire Beast of North Carolina had returned. And return it had. Only this time it was killing animals in a 120 mile radius of Bladenboro and this time no one has seen it.
But people are finding tracks that not even experienced wild life biologists can explain. They say it is the strangest most unusual tracks they have ever seen and they can't say what it is. They do say it appears to be killing just to kill even though in almost every case the animals blood is gone.
And one thing it has done this time it did not do back in 1953 is it has killed dogs chained on chains in peoples yards. It has even killed Pitt Bulls while their owners slept in the house a few yards away. People just can't figure out how it walks up to a Pitt Bull and drains it of blood with the dog putting up no fight. How could it be doing this.
It has the people of Bladenboro on edge and people are watching their children closely. Scout Troops have canceled camping trips in the area because they fear what the Vampire Beast might do if it had the chance.
What is it and where did it come from. No one knows for sure. And why did it kill and drain animals of blood in 1953 and then disapear until 2003 when it made its return and went back to killing animals and draining them of blood in the Bladenboro area of North Carolina.
Bladenboro is located at the southeastern corner of the Piedmont of North Carolina and the small town is surrounded by Pine Woods and Swamps. Bladenboro was also the scene of the greatest Monster story ever in NC, In 1953 something was killing dogs in the area and the really strange thing was that when the dogs bodies were found they were drained of blood. Some residents claimed they saw a really strange beast with the body of a bear and the head of a cat. And they said it screamed just like a woman.
After the story appeared in the Bladenboro Newspaper around Christmas of 1953 hunters came from as far away as Arizona to try to get a shot at the beast. But even though the hunters brought whole packs of blood hounds trained to track anything nothing was ever found. And the people of the area slowly forgot about the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro.
But then in 2003 it was back. Goats and dogs started showing up again dead with very few marks on them. Again the really strange thing was the fact that even though the animals had been killed there was no blood around the dead animals or in the dead animals. And people in the area quickly came to the conclusion that the Vampire Beast of North Carolina had returned. And return it had. Only this time it was killing animals in a 120 mile radius of Bladenboro and this time no one has seen it.
But people are finding tracks that not even experienced wild life biologists can explain. They say it is the strangest most unusual tracks they have ever seen and they can't say what it is. They do say it appears to be killing just to kill even though in almost every case the animals blood is gone.
And one thing it has done this time it did not do back in 1953 is it has killed dogs chained on chains in peoples yards. It has even killed Pitt Bulls while their owners slept in the house a few yards away. People just can't figure out how it walks up to a Pitt Bull and drains it of blood with the dog putting up no fight. How could it be doing this.
It has the people of Bladenboro on edge and people are watching their children closely. Scout Troops have canceled camping trips in the area because they fear what the Vampire Beast might do if it had the chance.
Yost milking Vampire Beast for all it's worth
Yost milking Vampire Beast for all it's worth
July 03, 2008
Well, the folks at the News & Record are still licking their wounds over getting beat so badly on the Billy Yow/vampire beast story that I broke in The Rhino last week – probably the most important story I've done in my six-plus years here.
So I'm feeling pretty confident about my job security this week. If the Hammers or anyone else complain to me about anything, or try to come down on me about something this week, I'll be like: "Hey, wait a minute; a question just randomly popped into my head. The question is: Who was it that broke the Billy Yow/vampire beast story? I can't remember. Was it News & Record county reporter Gerald Witt? No, that's not it. Hang on, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Was it The High Point Enterprise's David Nivens? No, it wasn't him – oh wait, I remember now; it was me, Scott D. Yost of The Rhino Times."
And then I'll say, nonchalantly, "Oh I'm sorry – I interrupted you, you were saying something …"
You know, it's like they say: Every chance you get, rest on your laurels. It's something like that that they say.
Also, the county commissioners just arrived at a budget, and that's the time of year when we all kind of kick back a little and take a breath.
Anyway, what all that means for you this week is that I don't have any really long involved column on the meaning of life or how to save your marriage (so, by the way, if you're thinking about getting a divorce, hold off at least a week) – instead, I just have a few things I'd like to say.
Exxon is usually the most expensive gasoline you can find and the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center is usually pretty good about its prices. So I was surprised the other day when I passed the Exxon at Lawndale Shopping Center and I noticed that regular gas there was $3.99 a gallon, while, when I passed by the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center, it was $4.09 a gallon – and I couldn't figure out at first why Exxon was cheaper because Exxon is never cheaper.
But, then, a couple of days later, after mulling the problem over for a while, a light bulb went off in my head and it hit me what had happened. Here's the solution to the riddle: It had taken me about seven or eight minutes to drive from Lawndale Shopping Center to Golden Gate Shopping Center, and I'll bet that the price of gas went up while I was driving down Cornwallis. I'll bet that, when I passed the Exxon on Lawndale, gas at the BP was lower than at that Exxon. But then, while I was driving down Cornwallis, the price of gas must have gone up 20 cents a gallon, and so I'll bet BP had just changed the price right before I got there. I'll bet if I had turned back and driven to the Exxon, it would have been like $4.19 a gallon by the time I got there.
Or actually, I guess it would have been more than that because that wouldn't have allotted for the amount gas would have gone up in the seven or eight minutes that it took me to get back to the Exxon.
I had a couple of beers at Speakeasy last Sunday with Jim Capo, who is a friend and fellow Libertarian – though Jim takes it more to the extreme than I do. Jim works for the John Birch Society and they send me their magazine, The New American, every month, which I frequently find informative – but often I think they're a little too oriented toward conspiracy theories.
However, the magazine does let you know things, like, for instance, that the government just put polar bears on the endangered species list even though the polar bear population has been rising for decades.
I like the polar bears as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that that is an interesting fact to know about polar bears, and there is a lot of stuff like that that I find out from Jim and his magazine that you don't get from the mainstream media.
But, like I said, a lot of the time he'll give me a DVD or send me something that makes it look like he's a little too quick to jump toward a conspiracy theory.
This week, Jim gave me a DVD. I haven't watched it yet, but I swear to you this it the exact title of it: "The European Union, could it happen here?"
No, Jim. It couldn't.
I feel highly confident, even before watching the DVD, that the European Union cannot happen here. I feel quite safe in saying that the only place anyone has to worry about a European Union happening is in Europe.
I once told Total Package Gift-wrapped in Hotness Roxanna "She puts the fox in Fox 8 News – so good luck trying to turn the channel when she's on" Haynes that "No one watches C-SPAN" (she used to work for them), but I did watch C-SPAN for three hours straight the other night and it was an eye-opening experience.
I made it a point to watch that night because they had on the heads of the top five oil companies testifying before Congress about high gas prices, and I was floored.
Before I watched that testimony, every time I filled up my gas tank, I always thought the high gas prices were due to the oil companies, and due to things like the fact that Exxon, for instance, last year literally made more profit than any company in the history of the world. I thought high gas prices were due largely to stuff like the fact that former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, when he retired, got, according to ABC News, a $400 million retirement package.
So I always thought that those profits, the ones that were the largest since the existence of the planet Earth, and that the compensation for executives, also as far as I can tell the largest in the history of the world, had something to do with the high price at the pumps, but the oil executives explained who the real culprit was that was giving us high oil prices, and I was floored. Do you know who the real culprit is that is giving us sky-high gas prices?
It turns out it's not the oil executives at all – it's the caribou in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It's like this. There's plenty of oil there that would bring our prices down but the evil caribou who don't care about us get in the way of us going to get it.
So who would have guessed it, but when you fill up your gas tank, you can thank the arctic caribou for the high prices because they're the ones doing it – not the oil executives with the $400 million retirement packages given by the companies that made more money last year than any other companies in the history of the world's existence.
Speaking of gas prices, everyone is always talking about saving gas by going to a four-day workweek, but that whole idea just baffles me. How in the world are you supposed to save on gas by extending the workweek by two days? It just doesn't make any sense. For one thing, you'd have people driving to work twice as much.
OK, but ignore that for a second and suppose, just suppose, that some how, some way, they found out that a four-day workweek really did save gas. Uh, hello? Do they not think that there would a massive worker revolt when employers tried to double everyone's workweek? I don't get any of that at all. I swear, sometimes I think I'm living on a different planet.
Also, speaking of the high gas prices that the arctic caribou are giving us: The price of gas is driving the price of everything else up too. I was at an outdoor basketball court the other day, and I overheard two teenagers talking and – I'm not joking – they were complaining about how much the price of drugs had gone up in the last few months.
I've been getting some good suggestions for the Rhinoceros Times Great 2008 Jail-naming Contest Extraordinaire as to what to name Sheriff BJ Barnes' new jail. Send your entries to Yost@rhinotimes.com.
The one I like the most so far is from Cindy Martin, who actually works in the Sheriff's Department from what I can tell. Here was Cindy's suggestion …
BJ's Bed and Breakfast.
So keep those entries coming.
I hope everyone has a nice Fourth of July – except for the evil caribou causing me aggravation at the pump. They can have a terrible week for all I care
July 03, 2008
Well, the folks at the News & Record are still licking their wounds over getting beat so badly on the Billy Yow/vampire beast story that I broke in The Rhino last week – probably the most important story I've done in my six-plus years here.
So I'm feeling pretty confident about my job security this week. If the Hammers or anyone else complain to me about anything, or try to come down on me about something this week, I'll be like: "Hey, wait a minute; a question just randomly popped into my head. The question is: Who was it that broke the Billy Yow/vampire beast story? I can't remember. Was it News & Record county reporter Gerald Witt? No, that's not it. Hang on, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Was it The High Point Enterprise's David Nivens? No, it wasn't him – oh wait, I remember now; it was me, Scott D. Yost of The Rhino Times."
And then I'll say, nonchalantly, "Oh I'm sorry – I interrupted you, you were saying something …"
You know, it's like they say: Every chance you get, rest on your laurels. It's something like that that they say.
Also, the county commissioners just arrived at a budget, and that's the time of year when we all kind of kick back a little and take a breath.
Anyway, what all that means for you this week is that I don't have any really long involved column on the meaning of life or how to save your marriage (so, by the way, if you're thinking about getting a divorce, hold off at least a week) – instead, I just have a few things I'd like to say.
Exxon is usually the most expensive gasoline you can find and the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center is usually pretty good about its prices. So I was surprised the other day when I passed the Exxon at Lawndale Shopping Center and I noticed that regular gas there was $3.99 a gallon, while, when I passed by the BP at Golden Gate Shopping Center, it was $4.09 a gallon – and I couldn't figure out at first why Exxon was cheaper because Exxon is never cheaper.
But, then, a couple of days later, after mulling the problem over for a while, a light bulb went off in my head and it hit me what had happened. Here's the solution to the riddle: It had taken me about seven or eight minutes to drive from Lawndale Shopping Center to Golden Gate Shopping Center, and I'll bet that the price of gas went up while I was driving down Cornwallis. I'll bet that, when I passed the Exxon on Lawndale, gas at the BP was lower than at that Exxon. But then, while I was driving down Cornwallis, the price of gas must have gone up 20 cents a gallon, and so I'll bet BP had just changed the price right before I got there. I'll bet if I had turned back and driven to the Exxon, it would have been like $4.19 a gallon by the time I got there.
Or actually, I guess it would have been more than that because that wouldn't have allotted for the amount gas would have gone up in the seven or eight minutes that it took me to get back to the Exxon.
I had a couple of beers at Speakeasy last Sunday with Jim Capo, who is a friend and fellow Libertarian – though Jim takes it more to the extreme than I do. Jim works for the John Birch Society and they send me their magazine, The New American, every month, which I frequently find informative – but often I think they're a little too oriented toward conspiracy theories.
However, the magazine does let you know things, like, for instance, that the government just put polar bears on the endangered species list even though the polar bear population has been rising for decades.
I like the polar bears as much as the next guy, but you have to admit that that is an interesting fact to know about polar bears, and there is a lot of stuff like that that I find out from Jim and his magazine that you don't get from the mainstream media.
But, like I said, a lot of the time he'll give me a DVD or send me something that makes it look like he's a little too quick to jump toward a conspiracy theory.
This week, Jim gave me a DVD. I haven't watched it yet, but I swear to you this it the exact title of it: "The European Union, could it happen here?"
No, Jim. It couldn't.
I feel highly confident, even before watching the DVD, that the European Union cannot happen here. I feel quite safe in saying that the only place anyone has to worry about a European Union happening is in Europe.
I once told Total Package Gift-wrapped in Hotness Roxanna "She puts the fox in Fox 8 News – so good luck trying to turn the channel when she's on" Haynes that "No one watches C-SPAN" (she used to work for them), but I did watch C-SPAN for three hours straight the other night and it was an eye-opening experience.
I made it a point to watch that night because they had on the heads of the top five oil companies testifying before Congress about high gas prices, and I was floored.
Before I watched that testimony, every time I filled up my gas tank, I always thought the high gas prices were due to the oil companies, and due to things like the fact that Exxon, for instance, last year literally made more profit than any company in the history of the world. I thought high gas prices were due largely to stuff like the fact that former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, when he retired, got, according to ABC News, a $400 million retirement package.
So I always thought that those profits, the ones that were the largest since the existence of the planet Earth, and that the compensation for executives, also as far as I can tell the largest in the history of the world, had something to do with the high price at the pumps, but the oil executives explained who the real culprit was that was giving us high oil prices, and I was floored. Do you know who the real culprit is that is giving us sky-high gas prices?
It turns out it's not the oil executives at all – it's the caribou in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It's like this. There's plenty of oil there that would bring our prices down but the evil caribou who don't care about us get in the way of us going to get it.
So who would have guessed it, but when you fill up your gas tank, you can thank the arctic caribou for the high prices because they're the ones doing it – not the oil executives with the $400 million retirement packages given by the companies that made more money last year than any other companies in the history of the world's existence.
Speaking of gas prices, everyone is always talking about saving gas by going to a four-day workweek, but that whole idea just baffles me. How in the world are you supposed to save on gas by extending the workweek by two days? It just doesn't make any sense. For one thing, you'd have people driving to work twice as much.
OK, but ignore that for a second and suppose, just suppose, that some how, some way, they found out that a four-day workweek really did save gas. Uh, hello? Do they not think that there would a massive worker revolt when employers tried to double everyone's workweek? I don't get any of that at all. I swear, sometimes I think I'm living on a different planet.
Also, speaking of the high gas prices that the arctic caribou are giving us: The price of gas is driving the price of everything else up too. I was at an outdoor basketball court the other day, and I overheard two teenagers talking and – I'm not joking – they were complaining about how much the price of drugs had gone up in the last few months.
I've been getting some good suggestions for the Rhinoceros Times Great 2008 Jail-naming Contest Extraordinaire as to what to name Sheriff BJ Barnes' new jail. Send your entries to Yost@rhinotimes.com.
The one I like the most so far is from Cindy Martin, who actually works in the Sheriff's Department from what I can tell. Here was Cindy's suggestion …
BJ's Bed and Breakfast.
So keep those entries coming.
I hope everyone has a nice Fourth of July – except for the evil caribou causing me aggravation at the pump. They can have a terrible week for all I care
The Vampire Beast Craves Blood
The Vampire Beast Craves Blood
I know, I know. Everybody and their dog Spot knows this flick by its original title, The Blood Beast Terror. But in the legend of my life, it looms large as this, it's 1968 re-release title - it was another movie, like I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin, that got away.
Living in a smallish town in south Texas, I was limited to two theaters: a movie house and a drive-in (there was a second movie house, but it showed exclusively Mexican films, and I have never had the Gift of Tongues). This means that while a fair amount of stuff came through town - I was not wanting for crap movies to watch - not everything did. Since for some reason my parents subscribed to either the San Antonio or Corpus Christi newspapers (SA being the clear favorite), I got to find out what I was missing, including those delirious five-movie all-night-long crap movie marathons, the above-mentioned eating & drinking double feature, and The Vampire Beast Craves Blood.
Oh, it was on a double feature with something else, but the luridness of the title and the impressiveness of the accompanying graphic (a Vampire Beast seeming to reach out of the page) has effectively blotted out the memory of the opener. I remember thinking, It's finally happened... they've run out of titles. Then I thought that it was a pretty cool title; after all, it's one of the very few movie titles that forms a complete sentence. And Mike Weldon, in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, lists it under this title, not the comparatively more prosaic The Blood Beast Terror. So there.
Goodness, I'm certainly taking my time getting to the movie itself, aren't I? There's a reason for this. Some years later, I was told by a friend that The Vampire Beast in question was actually a large murderous.... moth. Yes, moth. Not a big honking Mothra city destroyer, but some sort of human-sized were-moth. Oh come now, said I, that is entirely too stupid. You're right about that, replied the friend. Pooh pooh, I pooh-poohed him and his misguided antics. I owe him (and his antics) an apology.
We open with a young man (William Wilde) being canoed down a river in Africa by two natives. We know it is Africa because not only are the natives black, but the man wears a pith helmet, instantly identifying our locale as the Dark Continent. We also know that we are likely in for a rough ride, as the sequence is poorly shot (apparently the crew forgot the tripod that day), and I had no idea that the jungles of Africa are composed of deciduous trees, much like those in, say, England! Well, the young man finds what he is looking for, and begins placing things in his specimen bag. We will later find out that these are the chrysalises (chrysali?) of moths; quite large ones, about the size of bananas. As we are not told this until later, we can only surmise what these objects are, and given their shape and size, several things come to mind... but I am attempting to keep this page in the PG-13 realm, so we shan't be listing those.
Oh, SHITE!No, let's just go to our equally-jarring credit sequence, where the camera is mounted atop a Victorian horse-drawn cab, driving down a country road on a sunny afternoon as scary music plays. After the credits, the cabbie hears a scream, and stops the carriage in a convenient spot of nighttime to get out and investigate. He finds a young man bleeding to death in the woods, his throat torn by monstrous claws. Hearing the beating of great wings, the cabbie looks up, and sees a cartoon of an enormous moth's silhouette, so he gets to scream, too.
This cavalier, Ed-Woodian disregard for the difference between night and day is something that will plague us all the way through Vampire Beast; filming at night is very difficult, and at the time, there were basically two ways to shoot day-for-night. One way was to simply crank away, and add some blue filtering in the post-production phase. A more common way was to back the iris of the camera off a couple of f-stops, darkening the whole enterprise. This seems to be the method employed for much of Vampire Beast, but not employed very well, as shafts of sunlight peeking through the treetops make it seem as if the Moon has drawn to within perhaps a mile of the Earth.
Anyway, the poor fellow bleeding in the woods is victim #6 of the "Slasher", and Inspector Quannell (Peter Cushing) is having a tough time of it, as his only witness, the aforementioned Coachman (Leslie Anderson) is now stark raving mad (or not, as what he is raving about is something with enormous wings). Quannell decides to visit Dr. Mallinger (Robert Flemyng), who lives at the edge of the heath where the murders have been taking place - and the last victim was one of his students.
"This is no boating accident!"We find Mallinger lecturing some University students about the various forms of moth (ooh, what a giveaway!), and in a nod to realism, this lecture is every bit as boring as one in the real world. Afterwards, the young men are served a snack by Mallinger's pretty daughter, Claire. The evening is interrupted by the arrival of another Slasher victim. Quannell asks Mallinger to attempt to save the young man, but, out of sight of the Inspector, Mallinger instead kills the unfortunate fellow.
Searching the general area the next day, Sergeant Allen (Glynn Edwards) points out to Quannell the murder scene, and gives him a handful of what appears to be sequins; they're scattered all over the crime scene. When Quannell shows Mallinger the objects, he reacts very suspiciously and tries to keep all of them; Quannell leaves him with only a few and continues his investigation.
Arriving in town is the young man in the prologue, a chap named Brightwell, who has brought Mallinger the requested moth specimens of large size. After being quizzed by Sgt. Allen, Brightwell is shown to the doctor's house. Mallinger is quite enthused by the quality of the specimens, but becomes irritable and abusive when Brightwell starts poking around his lab. Claire is enthused by the very presence of Brightwell, and inveigles to meet him on the heath that night. Too bad for Brightwell, as she metamorphoses into a human moth thingie, and proceeds to drink his blood.
Complicating matters is the fact that Quannell is out patrolling the heath personally, and Brightwell's screams bring him running. Brightwell manages to gasp, "Deathshead" before succumbing. Quannell drags the wounded man to Mallinger's house, but too late. Mallinger looks at the corpse and swears, "I have never seen this man."
The next day, Quannell prepares to pack his daughter Meg (Vanessa Howard) off for a holiday (yeah, we didn't know she existed until now, either), and postponing his own vacation for the sake of the investigation. On his way to the rail station, he mentions to Sgt. Allen that he needs to find the identity of the chap killed the previous night; why, I can tell you that right now, answers the sarge, and relates all the info he had gotten from Brightwell the day before, including the fact that Brightwell was on his way to the Mallinger house. Time for a quick detour to the Mallinger estate, the Inspector tells his protesting daughter.
"Bad skull! Bad skull! Get down! Oh, sorry - wrong movie."Alas, after breaking into the locked house, Quannell finds that the Mallingers have shut everything down and escaped; worse yet, in a room adjoining the doctor's laboratory, Quannell finds a room strewn with enormous webs and human bones. The Inspector tells Meg the holiday will just have to wait, and heads back into town. Employing actual detective work, Quannell finds out the Mallingers have split for a nearby secluded hamlet, known mainly as a fishing retreat. Assuming the role of an overworked banker and his daughter, Quannell and Meg make a working holiday of it.
As luck (and a screenwriter reliant upon coincidence) would have it, they share their inn with two more early vacationers, a chap named Warrender (John Paul) and his son, William (David Griffin). In yet another example of colossal luck, Williams is a budding entomologist, and eventually supplies Quannell with the two missing clues he needed: the sequin-like objects found at the murders are scales from the wings of an enormous moth, and not only that, the cryptic final words "deathshead" referred to a specific species of moth.
Where Quannell's detective work fails, though, is that on their previous trips to the hamlet, the Warrenders made the "Rome!"acquaintance of a certain Mr. Miles, who is also an entomologist, not to mention the fact that he's the missing Dr. Mallinger! We finally find out what Mallinger has been up to, all this time... he's trying to make a mate for his daughter, another giant moth, but this time male. This isn't going too well, however, as the Mate needs blood to continue developing... the blood of a young girl! Hmm.... now who has a daughter in the vicinity?
Well, it's not long before Meg winds up on a table, mesmerized and hooked up to a blood transfusion device(I'm not kidding about this - the movie wisely -but a bit jarringly- skips the scene where Meg is hypnotized). Demonstrating himself to be a true renaissance man, Mallinger gives her a post-hypnotic command to forget everything and come back to the house the next evening. Claire, meantime, in true Lady Chatterly fashion, has found a strapping young groundskeeper to ply her affections upon. And to make a tasty snack of, later.
When Macrame goes terribly, terribly wrong.Discovering the groundskeeper's corpse, Mallinger disposes of the body and then has a moment of clarity. He destroys the male moth, but makes Stupid Movie Mistake #12, in that he informs Claire that he is going to destroy her, too, when he's finished with the male. Never ever tell a monster you are going to destroy it (alternately, never tell the Mad Scientist you're going to the authorities). Mallinger inevitably finds himself wrapped in the scaly wings of death.
Things move rapidly from there on. The groundskeeper's body is found, Meg somnabulently arrives at the Mallinger hideaway, only to be shocked to her senses by the sight of Mallinger's corpse, and William arrives at the front door to ask Mallinger's opinion on a moth he had captured and killed earlier in the day. Of course, only Claire is alive to answer the door, and William doesn't realize he is bragging about his new Deathshead specimen to another, two-legged Deathshead....
Quannell, having finally found out about the existence of Mallinger/Miles, makes his way to the estate just in time to find his daughter and hear William's screams. Thinking quickly, Quannell sets a bush on fire, and being a moth, Claire has no choice but to fly into the flames and goes up in a smoky foof! The End.
Yes, yes, I know you're getting tired of this, but the Victorian trappings and Peter Cushing aside (and the mandatory goofy I said no comment, can't you hear? TURN OFF THAT CAMERA!"Morgue Attendant, played by Roy Hudd), this is not a Hammer flick. It's Tigon. (I'm starting to sound like a margarine commercial here.) Tigon attempted to become a genre powerhouse like Hammer, and I must credit them with this: along with their other entries, like Doomwatch and Blood on Satan's Claw, they did not go the easy route, and simply imitate Hammer, they tried to do movies that were decidedly different, even original; it's a shame that in this case different does not necessarily mean better. A bloodthirsty were-moth is a hard sell in any case; the fact that the story is so fragmented, and its execution so lackluster, means that the beastie has any number of strikes against it at the onset.
For instance, it is never made clear whether Claire is actually Mallinger's daughter and the unfortunate victim of his mad experiments, or if she has always been a big moth masquerading as a human. And how the hell do you go about creating a human-sized (and bipedal, to boot) moth? There is a subplot about Mallinger's scarred manservant, who is always torturing the Master's pet eagle - after the eagle gives the butler his inevitable comeuppance, the bird proceeds to vanish from the movie entirely. Why do Claire's predations seem to begin so suddenly? And how does a woman wearing a gold dress complete with corset and bustle change so effortlessly into a killer moth in a black body suit?
The story also seems obsessed with telegraphing every possible plot development. A leisurely (albeit doomed) manservant Sean Penn is surprised by yet another papparazzi.walks through a room of furniture covered with sheets, long before it has been discovered Mallinger and Claire have escaped. Claire moves the groundskeeper away from his pile of burning leaves, because "I don't like fire," clumsily foreshadowing the end. Quannell's discovery of the horror within Mallinger's lab gives us some nice rising action, the sort of thing that is usually reserved for the final act, close to the end. Unfortunately, the scenes are neither filmed nor scored with any real drama (the music sounds borrowed from Dark Shadows) and these events occur in the dead center of the movie. This would be a gutsy move if the follow-up were not so languidly paced. The ending, which weaves together several separate plotlines, should pitch forward like a runaway carriage. Instead, it just seems to trot along like a cute but moronic dog: Eager to please, but not sure how. The fact that the Claire-Monster's descent into the fire is represented solely by out-focus shots of bat-like wings merely tightens the screws on the movie's coffin. And the creature, flying overhead while Allen uselessly shoots at it, seems to do so to a drum roll - whether this is the actual score, or it is supposed to be the sound of her flapping wings (it is the same sound Yogi Bear makes when running, after all), I don't know. Don't particularly care, either.
Peter Cushing is yet another sorely-missed actor who serves, by his very presence, to raise the rating of another otherwise "Sink me, sergeant, but this is a bad movie."dismal outing. His innate dignity and intelligence always showed through in his roles, rendering him instantly recognizable and likable, which is good since his Quannell (like so many other of the man's roles), just seems to be the same damned character Cushing did a hundred times before, only with a different hat. One source reports that he considered this to be his worst film - the man was on ground zero, I'll respect his opinion.
For the most part, the script plays fair by Quannell. We get to see him solve the mystery, piece by piece. He seems truly puzzled by the murders, while each investigative step he takes is well-considered and, incredibly, realistic. Another nice bit involves Mallinger's University students using his parlor to put on a play. It's some sort of neo-gothic claptrap (complete with a tin sheet for thunder) about a mad scientist using his electrical equipment to bring his dead daughter back to life (the daughter is played by Claire, in a torn dress revealing far more leg than would have been allowed in the Nice scenery, lads.period). At one point, Quannell, taking a break from patrolling the heath, peeks in the window, sees this obvious Frankenstein rip-off, and has what appears to be a genuine laugh at the proceedings. The fact that it is Cushing, who (arguably) owed his fame to the Hammer Curse of Frankenstein, makes it an unusually rich cinematic in-joke.
It's also interesting to see how Cushing and the British handle the Dirty Harry Speech (you know, the one where they try to Take Him Off The Case). The Chief Constable suggests that Quannell is due for a vacation, and suggests that he take one. "Sir, are you taking me off the case?" "No, I just thought you might be too close... a little distance might do you good." "If you don't mind, sir, I'd rather continue on the case." "Ah, very well then. Carry on." No yelling, shouting, or sneering. Quite British. Quite.
"Bring out the gimp."Also, as I drag out the few nuggets the film actually offers, I have to mention that their attention to detail in Mallinger's equipment was very good, including a few pieces of "galvanic" equipment I recognized from a documentary (not to mention bio lab, what with the kicking frog legs). Seeing equipment like that, rooted in the technology of the times, was quite refreshing. Even though I still have no frickin' idea what galvanism has to do with growing giant moths!
Overall, The Vampire Beast Craves Blood reminds me of a paint-by-numbers set unearthed after several years with some of the paints missing; the end product is an echo of earlier pictures, but with a brush stroke so uninvolving and a palette so limited, that placing it on a wall provides only a disservice to the wall.
I know, I know. Everybody and their dog Spot knows this flick by its original title, The Blood Beast Terror. But in the legend of my life, it looms large as this, it's 1968 re-release title - it was another movie, like I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin, that got away.
Living in a smallish town in south Texas, I was limited to two theaters: a movie house and a drive-in (there was a second movie house, but it showed exclusively Mexican films, and I have never had the Gift of Tongues). This means that while a fair amount of stuff came through town - I was not wanting for crap movies to watch - not everything did. Since for some reason my parents subscribed to either the San Antonio or Corpus Christi newspapers (SA being the clear favorite), I got to find out what I was missing, including those delirious five-movie all-night-long crap movie marathons, the above-mentioned eating & drinking double feature, and The Vampire Beast Craves Blood.
Oh, it was on a double feature with something else, but the luridness of the title and the impressiveness of the accompanying graphic (a Vampire Beast seeming to reach out of the page) has effectively blotted out the memory of the opener. I remember thinking, It's finally happened... they've run out of titles. Then I thought that it was a pretty cool title; after all, it's one of the very few movie titles that forms a complete sentence. And Mike Weldon, in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, lists it under this title, not the comparatively more prosaic The Blood Beast Terror. So there.
Goodness, I'm certainly taking my time getting to the movie itself, aren't I? There's a reason for this. Some years later, I was told by a friend that The Vampire Beast in question was actually a large murderous.... moth. Yes, moth. Not a big honking Mothra city destroyer, but some sort of human-sized were-moth. Oh come now, said I, that is entirely too stupid. You're right about that, replied the friend. Pooh pooh, I pooh-poohed him and his misguided antics. I owe him (and his antics) an apology.
We open with a young man (William Wilde) being canoed down a river in Africa by two natives. We know it is Africa because not only are the natives black, but the man wears a pith helmet, instantly identifying our locale as the Dark Continent. We also know that we are likely in for a rough ride, as the sequence is poorly shot (apparently the crew forgot the tripod that day), and I had no idea that the jungles of Africa are composed of deciduous trees, much like those in, say, England! Well, the young man finds what he is looking for, and begins placing things in his specimen bag. We will later find out that these are the chrysalises (chrysali?) of moths; quite large ones, about the size of bananas. As we are not told this until later, we can only surmise what these objects are, and given their shape and size, several things come to mind... but I am attempting to keep this page in the PG-13 realm, so we shan't be listing those.
Oh, SHITE!No, let's just go to our equally-jarring credit sequence, where the camera is mounted atop a Victorian horse-drawn cab, driving down a country road on a sunny afternoon as scary music plays. After the credits, the cabbie hears a scream, and stops the carriage in a convenient spot of nighttime to get out and investigate. He finds a young man bleeding to death in the woods, his throat torn by monstrous claws. Hearing the beating of great wings, the cabbie looks up, and sees a cartoon of an enormous moth's silhouette, so he gets to scream, too.
This cavalier, Ed-Woodian disregard for the difference between night and day is something that will plague us all the way through Vampire Beast; filming at night is very difficult, and at the time, there were basically two ways to shoot day-for-night. One way was to simply crank away, and add some blue filtering in the post-production phase. A more common way was to back the iris of the camera off a couple of f-stops, darkening the whole enterprise. This seems to be the method employed for much of Vampire Beast, but not employed very well, as shafts of sunlight peeking through the treetops make it seem as if the Moon has drawn to within perhaps a mile of the Earth.
Anyway, the poor fellow bleeding in the woods is victim #6 of the "Slasher", and Inspector Quannell (Peter Cushing) is having a tough time of it, as his only witness, the aforementioned Coachman (Leslie Anderson) is now stark raving mad (or not, as what he is raving about is something with enormous wings). Quannell decides to visit Dr. Mallinger (Robert Flemyng), who lives at the edge of the heath where the murders have been taking place - and the last victim was one of his students.
"This is no boating accident!"We find Mallinger lecturing some University students about the various forms of moth (ooh, what a giveaway!), and in a nod to realism, this lecture is every bit as boring as one in the real world. Afterwards, the young men are served a snack by Mallinger's pretty daughter, Claire. The evening is interrupted by the arrival of another Slasher victim. Quannell asks Mallinger to attempt to save the young man, but, out of sight of the Inspector, Mallinger instead kills the unfortunate fellow.
Searching the general area the next day, Sergeant Allen (Glynn Edwards) points out to Quannell the murder scene, and gives him a handful of what appears to be sequins; they're scattered all over the crime scene. When Quannell shows Mallinger the objects, he reacts very suspiciously and tries to keep all of them; Quannell leaves him with only a few and continues his investigation.
Arriving in town is the young man in the prologue, a chap named Brightwell, who has brought Mallinger the requested moth specimens of large size. After being quizzed by Sgt. Allen, Brightwell is shown to the doctor's house. Mallinger is quite enthused by the quality of the specimens, but becomes irritable and abusive when Brightwell starts poking around his lab. Claire is enthused by the very presence of Brightwell, and inveigles to meet him on the heath that night. Too bad for Brightwell, as she metamorphoses into a human moth thingie, and proceeds to drink his blood.
Complicating matters is the fact that Quannell is out patrolling the heath personally, and Brightwell's screams bring him running. Brightwell manages to gasp, "Deathshead" before succumbing. Quannell drags the wounded man to Mallinger's house, but too late. Mallinger looks at the corpse and swears, "I have never seen this man."
The next day, Quannell prepares to pack his daughter Meg (Vanessa Howard) off for a holiday (yeah, we didn't know she existed until now, either), and postponing his own vacation for the sake of the investigation. On his way to the rail station, he mentions to Sgt. Allen that he needs to find the identity of the chap killed the previous night; why, I can tell you that right now, answers the sarge, and relates all the info he had gotten from Brightwell the day before, including the fact that Brightwell was on his way to the Mallinger house. Time for a quick detour to the Mallinger estate, the Inspector tells his protesting daughter.
"Bad skull! Bad skull! Get down! Oh, sorry - wrong movie."Alas, after breaking into the locked house, Quannell finds that the Mallingers have shut everything down and escaped; worse yet, in a room adjoining the doctor's laboratory, Quannell finds a room strewn with enormous webs and human bones. The Inspector tells Meg the holiday will just have to wait, and heads back into town. Employing actual detective work, Quannell finds out the Mallingers have split for a nearby secluded hamlet, known mainly as a fishing retreat. Assuming the role of an overworked banker and his daughter, Quannell and Meg make a working holiday of it.
As luck (and a screenwriter reliant upon coincidence) would have it, they share their inn with two more early vacationers, a chap named Warrender (John Paul) and his son, William (David Griffin). In yet another example of colossal luck, Williams is a budding entomologist, and eventually supplies Quannell with the two missing clues he needed: the sequin-like objects found at the murders are scales from the wings of an enormous moth, and not only that, the cryptic final words "deathshead" referred to a specific species of moth.
Where Quannell's detective work fails, though, is that on their previous trips to the hamlet, the Warrenders made the "Rome!"acquaintance of a certain Mr. Miles, who is also an entomologist, not to mention the fact that he's the missing Dr. Mallinger! We finally find out what Mallinger has been up to, all this time... he's trying to make a mate for his daughter, another giant moth, but this time male. This isn't going too well, however, as the Mate needs blood to continue developing... the blood of a young girl! Hmm.... now who has a daughter in the vicinity?
Well, it's not long before Meg winds up on a table, mesmerized and hooked up to a blood transfusion device(I'm not kidding about this - the movie wisely -but a bit jarringly- skips the scene where Meg is hypnotized). Demonstrating himself to be a true renaissance man, Mallinger gives her a post-hypnotic command to forget everything and come back to the house the next evening. Claire, meantime, in true Lady Chatterly fashion, has found a strapping young groundskeeper to ply her affections upon. And to make a tasty snack of, later.
When Macrame goes terribly, terribly wrong.Discovering the groundskeeper's corpse, Mallinger disposes of the body and then has a moment of clarity. He destroys the male moth, but makes Stupid Movie Mistake #12, in that he informs Claire that he is going to destroy her, too, when he's finished with the male. Never ever tell a monster you are going to destroy it (alternately, never tell the Mad Scientist you're going to the authorities). Mallinger inevitably finds himself wrapped in the scaly wings of death.
Things move rapidly from there on. The groundskeeper's body is found, Meg somnabulently arrives at the Mallinger hideaway, only to be shocked to her senses by the sight of Mallinger's corpse, and William arrives at the front door to ask Mallinger's opinion on a moth he had captured and killed earlier in the day. Of course, only Claire is alive to answer the door, and William doesn't realize he is bragging about his new Deathshead specimen to another, two-legged Deathshead....
Quannell, having finally found out about the existence of Mallinger/Miles, makes his way to the estate just in time to find his daughter and hear William's screams. Thinking quickly, Quannell sets a bush on fire, and being a moth, Claire has no choice but to fly into the flames and goes up in a smoky foof! The End.
Yes, yes, I know you're getting tired of this, but the Victorian trappings and Peter Cushing aside (and the mandatory goofy I said no comment, can't you hear? TURN OFF THAT CAMERA!"Morgue Attendant, played by Roy Hudd), this is not a Hammer flick. It's Tigon. (I'm starting to sound like a margarine commercial here.) Tigon attempted to become a genre powerhouse like Hammer, and I must credit them with this: along with their other entries, like Doomwatch and Blood on Satan's Claw, they did not go the easy route, and simply imitate Hammer, they tried to do movies that were decidedly different, even original; it's a shame that in this case different does not necessarily mean better. A bloodthirsty were-moth is a hard sell in any case; the fact that the story is so fragmented, and its execution so lackluster, means that the beastie has any number of strikes against it at the onset.
For instance, it is never made clear whether Claire is actually Mallinger's daughter and the unfortunate victim of his mad experiments, or if she has always been a big moth masquerading as a human. And how the hell do you go about creating a human-sized (and bipedal, to boot) moth? There is a subplot about Mallinger's scarred manservant, who is always torturing the Master's pet eagle - after the eagle gives the butler his inevitable comeuppance, the bird proceeds to vanish from the movie entirely. Why do Claire's predations seem to begin so suddenly? And how does a woman wearing a gold dress complete with corset and bustle change so effortlessly into a killer moth in a black body suit?
The story also seems obsessed with telegraphing every possible plot development. A leisurely (albeit doomed) manservant Sean Penn is surprised by yet another papparazzi.walks through a room of furniture covered with sheets, long before it has been discovered Mallinger and Claire have escaped. Claire moves the groundskeeper away from his pile of burning leaves, because "I don't like fire," clumsily foreshadowing the end. Quannell's discovery of the horror within Mallinger's lab gives us some nice rising action, the sort of thing that is usually reserved for the final act, close to the end. Unfortunately, the scenes are neither filmed nor scored with any real drama (the music sounds borrowed from Dark Shadows) and these events occur in the dead center of the movie. This would be a gutsy move if the follow-up were not so languidly paced. The ending, which weaves together several separate plotlines, should pitch forward like a runaway carriage. Instead, it just seems to trot along like a cute but moronic dog: Eager to please, but not sure how. The fact that the Claire-Monster's descent into the fire is represented solely by out-focus shots of bat-like wings merely tightens the screws on the movie's coffin. And the creature, flying overhead while Allen uselessly shoots at it, seems to do so to a drum roll - whether this is the actual score, or it is supposed to be the sound of her flapping wings (it is the same sound Yogi Bear makes when running, after all), I don't know. Don't particularly care, either.
Peter Cushing is yet another sorely-missed actor who serves, by his very presence, to raise the rating of another otherwise "Sink me, sergeant, but this is a bad movie."dismal outing. His innate dignity and intelligence always showed through in his roles, rendering him instantly recognizable and likable, which is good since his Quannell (like so many other of the man's roles), just seems to be the same damned character Cushing did a hundred times before, only with a different hat. One source reports that he considered this to be his worst film - the man was on ground zero, I'll respect his opinion.
For the most part, the script plays fair by Quannell. We get to see him solve the mystery, piece by piece. He seems truly puzzled by the murders, while each investigative step he takes is well-considered and, incredibly, realistic. Another nice bit involves Mallinger's University students using his parlor to put on a play. It's some sort of neo-gothic claptrap (complete with a tin sheet for thunder) about a mad scientist using his electrical equipment to bring his dead daughter back to life (the daughter is played by Claire, in a torn dress revealing far more leg than would have been allowed in the Nice scenery, lads.period). At one point, Quannell, taking a break from patrolling the heath, peeks in the window, sees this obvious Frankenstein rip-off, and has what appears to be a genuine laugh at the proceedings. The fact that it is Cushing, who (arguably) owed his fame to the Hammer Curse of Frankenstein, makes it an unusually rich cinematic in-joke.
It's also interesting to see how Cushing and the British handle the Dirty Harry Speech (you know, the one where they try to Take Him Off The Case). The Chief Constable suggests that Quannell is due for a vacation, and suggests that he take one. "Sir, are you taking me off the case?" "No, I just thought you might be too close... a little distance might do you good." "If you don't mind, sir, I'd rather continue on the case." "Ah, very well then. Carry on." No yelling, shouting, or sneering. Quite British. Quite.
"Bring out the gimp."Also, as I drag out the few nuggets the film actually offers, I have to mention that their attention to detail in Mallinger's equipment was very good, including a few pieces of "galvanic" equipment I recognized from a documentary (not to mention bio lab, what with the kicking frog legs). Seeing equipment like that, rooted in the technology of the times, was quite refreshing. Even though I still have no frickin' idea what galvanism has to do with growing giant moths!
Overall, The Vampire Beast Craves Blood reminds me of a paint-by-numbers set unearthed after several years with some of the paints missing; the end product is an echo of earlier pictures, but with a brush stroke so uninvolving and a palette so limited, that placing it on a wall provides only a disservice to the wall.
The Vampire Best Of Bladenboro
ladenboro is a small community surrounded by pine forests and swamps at the southeastern edge of the North Carolina piedmont. It was also the setting for the greatest monster flap North carolina has ever seen.
On Decmber 29, 1953 a local farmer reported a large, cat-like creature had attacked one of his dogs and dragged it into the underbrush. On New Year's Eve two more dog carcasses, reportedly completely drained of blood, were found. The next day, two more dogs were attacked. Something was hunting animals in Bladenboro.
Residents reported seeing an animal "Like a bear or a panther" that was "three feet long, twenty inches high, with a long tail and a cat's face."
Police Chief Roy Fores organized a hunt for the beast in the swamps, but came up empty handed. It was when Mayor W.G. Fussell called the papers that things really took off. Fussell, who also owned the local theater, was later quoted in a 1958 edition of the Carolina Farmer magazine as saying "A little publicity never hurt a small town." Bladenboro certainly got its publicity.
Hitting the papers in the slow news week after Christmas, the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro gained an unusually large amount of attention. Hunters from as far way as Tennessee descended on the small town to see if they could get a shot at the beast. Newspapers from Arizona to New York ran coverage of the hunt for the creature. The town was engulfed in chaos, with men with guns walking through the forest shooting at anything that moved.
Deciding that things were getting too dangerous, Mayor Fussell and Chief Fores called an end to the hunt, taking an unusually large bobcat that had been killed by one of the hunters and running it up a flagpole in the center of town. They posted a sign underneath stating "This is the Beast of Bladenboro." After a week or so, things settled back to normal.
So what was the Beast of Bladenboro?
It's probably a little more than a coincidence that Mayor Fussel's movie theater happened to be showing a film about a giant cat stalking the English countryside. I'm also intrigued by the possible role of Bladenboro native Dick "The Half-Man" Hilburn in the affair. Hilburn, who had been born with no legs and only one complete arm, made his living as a banner painter and tattoo artist, and ran a sideshow with his partner Carl "The Frog Boy" Norwood. From what I can gather, Hilburn was also in Bladenboro at the time, using his painting skills to turn out license plates and other memorabilia with the vampire beast painted on it. Did the presence of a mayor who loved his town, loved promotion, and had a movie to sell, along with a carnival promoter contribute to the legend of the Vampire Beast? Probably.
Do we even know what caused the original attacks? Bobcats were still easily found in the woods of Southeastern NC at the time. There are also, to this day, reports of animals resembling the supposedly extinct Carolina Panther that come from those woods.
Whatever the Beast of Bladenboro was, the story lives on as a time when all eyes focused on a usually quiet little town. But it's one of my favorite North Carolina legends, so if anyone reading this remembers the flap, or has more information about Dick Hilburn or the other players in the scare, please email me, I'd love to hear from you.
On Decmber 29, 1953 a local farmer reported a large, cat-like creature had attacked one of his dogs and dragged it into the underbrush. On New Year's Eve two more dog carcasses, reportedly completely drained of blood, were found. The next day, two more dogs were attacked. Something was hunting animals in Bladenboro.
Residents reported seeing an animal "Like a bear or a panther" that was "three feet long, twenty inches high, with a long tail and a cat's face."
Police Chief Roy Fores organized a hunt for the beast in the swamps, but came up empty handed. It was when Mayor W.G. Fussell called the papers that things really took off. Fussell, who also owned the local theater, was later quoted in a 1958 edition of the Carolina Farmer magazine as saying "A little publicity never hurt a small town." Bladenboro certainly got its publicity.
Hitting the papers in the slow news week after Christmas, the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro gained an unusually large amount of attention. Hunters from as far way as Tennessee descended on the small town to see if they could get a shot at the beast. Newspapers from Arizona to New York ran coverage of the hunt for the creature. The town was engulfed in chaos, with men with guns walking through the forest shooting at anything that moved.
Deciding that things were getting too dangerous, Mayor Fussell and Chief Fores called an end to the hunt, taking an unusually large bobcat that had been killed by one of the hunters and running it up a flagpole in the center of town. They posted a sign underneath stating "This is the Beast of Bladenboro." After a week or so, things settled back to normal.
So what was the Beast of Bladenboro?
It's probably a little more than a coincidence that Mayor Fussel's movie theater happened to be showing a film about a giant cat stalking the English countryside. I'm also intrigued by the possible role of Bladenboro native Dick "The Half-Man" Hilburn in the affair. Hilburn, who had been born with no legs and only one complete arm, made his living as a banner painter and tattoo artist, and ran a sideshow with his partner Carl "The Frog Boy" Norwood. From what I can gather, Hilburn was also in Bladenboro at the time, using his painting skills to turn out license plates and other memorabilia with the vampire beast painted on it. Did the presence of a mayor who loved his town, loved promotion, and had a movie to sell, along with a carnival promoter contribute to the legend of the Vampire Beast? Probably.
Do we even know what caused the original attacks? Bobcats were still easily found in the woods of Southeastern NC at the time. There are also, to this day, reports of animals resembling the supposedly extinct Carolina Panther that come from those woods.
Whatever the Beast of Bladenboro was, the story lives on as a time when all eyes focused on a usually quiet little town. But it's one of my favorite North Carolina legends, so if anyone reading this remembers the flap, or has more information about Dick Hilburn or the other players in the scare, please email me, I'd love to hear from you.
Today's Popular Super Anti- hero, The Vampire
Today's Popular Super Anti- hero, The Vampire
Fear and Admiration
I think there are lots of subtle and not so subtle reasons that vampires have become a hit in our popular culture. They have truly become The Anti-hero" to which other anti-hero's aspire (this would include other undead and revenant corpse types, such as zombies and those filthy shaggy werewolves). Let's consider the modern vampire myth and what it offers, primarily to the young.
1). Vampires are sexually attractive and charismatic.
2). They have superhuman intelligence and powers, such as the ability to fly and to crawl through tight spaces.
3).They can use mind control and telepathy with humans to get what they want.
4). They inspire fear and nobody messes with them without suffering dire consequences.
5). Vampires have pretty much conquered death and achieved immortality. Modern vampires have even developed a remarkable vaccine which allows them to function as normal humans during the day and to hide their true vampire identity (dude!).
6). Vampires can also use their powers to enslave other lowly creatures, such as wild animals and werewolves to do their dirty work for them.
7). Vampires are really starting to come around and to form loving relationships with humans. It is now the opinion of many, that vampires have been grossly mistreated and misunderstood in the past and that they have endured centuries of cruelty and wooden stakes through the heart, from ignorant humans.
Of course there is also a downside to being a modern vampire as well.
1).The vampire is still a symbol of fear and evil and no one wants to be on their dinner menu.
2). Drinking blood is still considered pretty gross and disgusting and most would cringe at a 100% blood diet.
3). Killing other people, even for food reasons, is unpleasant and still totally unacceptable in modern society.
4). It's also still a fact that vampires have few real friends and have to stay constantly on the move to avoid the zealous vampire hunters wishing to send them to eternal hell!
Vampires are interesting symbols which have truly come alive and evolved through literature and the gothic romance. A great escape from everyday life where real danger and evil are not always so apparent or interesting. The real fear and superstition of vampires has been transformed into an impotent but entertaining media genre in little more than 100 years time.
Fear and Admiration
I think there are lots of subtle and not so subtle reasons that vampires have become a hit in our popular culture. They have truly become The Anti-hero" to which other anti-hero's aspire (this would include other undead and revenant corpse types, such as zombies and those filthy shaggy werewolves). Let's consider the modern vampire myth and what it offers, primarily to the young.
1). Vampires are sexually attractive and charismatic.
2). They have superhuman intelligence and powers, such as the ability to fly and to crawl through tight spaces.
3).They can use mind control and telepathy with humans to get what they want.
4). They inspire fear and nobody messes with them without suffering dire consequences.
5). Vampires have pretty much conquered death and achieved immortality. Modern vampires have even developed a remarkable vaccine which allows them to function as normal humans during the day and to hide their true vampire identity (dude!).
6). Vampires can also use their powers to enslave other lowly creatures, such as wild animals and werewolves to do their dirty work for them.
7). Vampires are really starting to come around and to form loving relationships with humans. It is now the opinion of many, that vampires have been grossly mistreated and misunderstood in the past and that they have endured centuries of cruelty and wooden stakes through the heart, from ignorant humans.
Of course there is also a downside to being a modern vampire as well.
1).The vampire is still a symbol of fear and evil and no one wants to be on their dinner menu.
2). Drinking blood is still considered pretty gross and disgusting and most would cringe at a 100% blood diet.
3). Killing other people, even for food reasons, is unpleasant and still totally unacceptable in modern society.
4). It's also still a fact that vampires have few real friends and have to stay constantly on the move to avoid the zealous vampire hunters wishing to send them to eternal hell!
Vampires are interesting symbols which have truly come alive and evolved through literature and the gothic romance. A great escape from everyday life where real danger and evil are not always so apparent or interesting. The real fear and superstition of vampires has been transformed into an impotent but entertaining media genre in little more than 100 years time.
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