Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Kwaidan!

Theme: Transcendence - Crimson Glory

The most lavish and impressive horror production of all time actually shares something in common with video nasty Unhinged: both films are at times so languorously paced that you practically start to nod off before something jarringly frightening happens to shock you back into wakefulness. There, though, the similarity ends, because Kwaidan is more like Kurosawa's Dreams, and not just because both are Japanese anthologies, but also because they approach the Platonic form of cinéma. Entirely filmed within a huge warehouse set made up to look like all manner of locations interior and exterior, Kwaidan's constructed dream-world is as stylised and incongruous as it is hypnotically convincing. But then again, a third comparison suggests itself: like South of Heaven, Kwaidan uses obvious backdrops throughout, producing the same superreal dissonance as the painted shadows on the sets of Caligari.

No movie lends itself so hard to making those cinegrids they post on /tv/ sometimes.

Kwaidan is set variously in periods of Japanese history I couldn't possibly name or profess any knowledge of at all, and seems to be based on traditional folklore of that most obsessed-over country. Some instalments are quite straightforward morality plays in which a protagonist's pride or folly leads him to some paranormal ruin, while others are more whimsical, even comical ghost tales with cryptic or file-not-found meanings, but the three-hour whole runs entirely on atmosphere. Its ghostly apparitions probably seem spookier to western audiences with no frame of reference for why they take the forms they do or what the fuck is going on half the time, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Moreover, Kwaidan features the best battle sequence of all time of the week, and probably the best naval battle ever filmed:

You guys, I think I'm a weeaboo now.

I think it's fair to say that Kwaidan is every bit as objectively the best horrorkino as The Road Warrior is the best actionkino or Apocalypse Now the best warkino*. You could compile a more-or-less objective top ten (or so) just by taking those GOATs from each genre, and it would be both more interesting to read and far more fun to watch than all those lists with Citizen Kane at the top you always see. But then, your list should be your list, which is to say it should be my list, because you have all the discerning taste of a village idiot. Watch Kwaidan.

*The theatrical cut, of course; French plantation scene apologists go back to r/criterion and kys.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Chopping Mall!

Theme: Mallrats - Wax

Don't be disappointed that the best parody slasher movie title you could wish for was bestowed upon a movie with no masked killer, nor any chopping to speak of; rather, be thankful that it was bestowed upon the 80s' greatest killer robot and exploding head kino, which thereby mogs into irrelevancy Terminator and Scanners at a single stroke.

Sadly, my DVD boasts a resolution of 1p, which is so low it doesn't even exist.

Besides this hapless young lady (Suzee Slater, spelled like that), Mall stars such A-list artistes as John Terlesky (Deathstalker 2) and Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak). The plot is simple, in the euphemism-for-retarded sense: the owners of a mall replace Paul Blart Mall Blart with killer robots. Shenanigans ensue when horny redshirts* get stuck in the mall overnight and are hunted by the killer robots, which malfunction by using their deadly weapons to kill people! I have the same problem with my garage door remote all the time.

The sensible tank treads and low centre of gravity make them much harder to knock down than goofy bipedal killer robots. One does get upended at one point but it has an inbuilt jack for righting itself. They thought of everything, except not having them sped out and kill people.

In the top ten robots of entertainment, I rank the Paul Bot Mall Cops third only to Robby from Forbidden Planet and Robert from Fireball XL5. The fact I can't even remember any other cool robots should do little to minimise the pedigree of this auspicious distinction.

Actually, now I think of it, these guys from the Star Wars prequels were kino af and probably the coolest-looking things in that entire franchise.

But our heroes don't go down without a fight, and much fun is had with them looting stores for props and weapons to use against the robots. The enclosed nature of the mall setting would make it close to a Die Hard ripoff as well, only it predates Die Hard by a year (though, fun fact, the Die Hard script was in development hell for so long it was originally set to star Frank Sinatra). Not only should you watch Chopping Mall, but you should write to the studios and castigate them for their stupidity and worthlessness in failing to produce kinos of this calibre on a regular basis**. The continental United States is now filled with abandoned malls; chop chop!

Average mall in 2025 (colourised).

*Several characters are waitresses employed at the mall who wear a red uniform, which is possibly deliberate Star Trekian foreshadowing of doom, but then again possibly not.

**And for all the rape.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Creature from the Black Lagoon!

Theme: Dragon's Child - Iced Earth

The Universal classic monster movies have been more endearing than unnerving since about 1950 at the latest. I can't tell you late entry Creature from the Black Lagoon is any exception, but it's my favourite and the best regardless. The design of the titular Creature, more often referred to as the Gillman, is so GOATed it makes me unreasonably mad that Universal didn't make more horrors based on original treatments over the well-worn sources of Victorian novels and folklore.

The Gillman rocks 16-pack abs. Personal trainers HATE him. What's his secret? Click to find out!

Creature dropped in 3D back when that was cool (1954, and not a year later). While 3D would become synonymous with B-joint schlock and, worse, Avatar (2009), in 1954 it inspired a more kino grandiosity. You don't open a picture much bigger than this:

Based.

We then flash forward a bunch to the 50s, when the good ship Rita explores the waters of the Amazon, where dwells the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)! Tormented!'s Richard Carlson leads the cast beside Julia Adams, who becomes the locus of the Gillman's foreveralone affections. In a curiously poignant sequence, he observes her from below in the act of not-quite-synchronised swimming:

Fortunately Julia at no point looks down, prompting you to wonder who's just out of your own field of vision right now and for the next few weeks.

The most hilariously dated aspect of this movie is the Creature's bombastic leitmotif, which goes (and this is highly technical musical notation) "Dahn-dahn-DAAHN, dahn-dahn-DAAHN", etc. whenever the Creature or, more often (likely to spare the stuntman who played him donning the entire elaborate kit all the time), his hand appears.

I'm tempted to make an Airplane!esque parody in which he reaches through people's windows to grab popcorn and stuff, yelling "dahn-dahn-DAAHN" the entire time.

I feel like it wouldn't be too hard to make a proper R-rated horror remake of Creature that was actually scary. Images like his webbed footprints in the sand seem like they would lend themselves well to found footage, if anyone still makes those, though with the coolness of the costume maybe you'd want proper camerawork and lighting to show it off to its best effect.

Working title: The Black Lagoon Project OC DO NAHT STEAL

Like Bride of Frankenstein, the Creature's story was redundantly extended through two sequels, neither of which are particularly essential viewing and, given that they extend his streak of striking out with human women, seem a bit like piling on. My version would give the Gillman the happy ending he deserves: after being arrested for mauling the explorers who rudely interrupt his daily swim, Ol' Gil is sentenced to life in Seaworld (this is more or less the plot of the second one, if memory serves), but his trainer (Sidney Sweeney) is won over by his amphibious charm and they escape together on the back of that orca from Free Willy, then kill and eat it because fuck orcas, they murder seals for fun.

Gamers rise up.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Shining!

Theme: Hotel California - The Eagles

Which clues did you overlook?

Stanley Kubrick's kinos are the most talked-about in the history of the medium, in large part because, like his mutual influence David Lynch (Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the Shining cast to put them in the right mood), he was a cryptic son of a bitch. The Shining might even edge out his own Eyes Wide Shut for the most theorised-upon of films, with each viewer convinced it has some deeper meaning than the surface-level narrative suggests. Is it about the gold standard? Generational abuse? Occult themes? This is hilarious because it makes Stephen King seethe; he wanted everyone to appreciate his deep takes on alcoholism (bad) and white peephole (worse).

"And then the spooky ghost said...THE HECKIN EN WOOORD NOOO HELP ME NІGGERMAN I'M GOING INSAAAANE AAAAAGH" - Stephen King, The Shining, page 1.

Personally, I suspect Kubrick's real deeper meaning was specifically to mock King: I'm reliably informed the wrecked car in this scene is the make and model driven by Jack in the novel, in a cheeky visual metaphor for Kubrick smashing King's sophomoric vision beneath his own weightier take:

Yeah, I'm not going to look it up. I'm pretty sure Rob Ager confirmed it, but he has four hundred and twenty billion videos about The Shining so if you want to find which one, happy hunting.

Not content to limit his trolling to King alone, Kubrick further ridiculed the characters and plot with subliminal details like having Wendy dress like Goofy, and the cast by demanding ludicrous numbers of identical takes for random line readings. But whatever hidden meanings may have been intended, it's the hypnotic mood of the picture that makes it one of the most rewatchable of kinographs. To be honest, I never found it scary at all, but really funny, but I don't think that's a problem or even altogether unintentional. Nicholson's famous "here's Johnny" line was an ad-lib that Kubrick kept in despite his reputation for autismal micromanagement, most likely because it's a great laugh line and Kubrick found the material funny and the fact most of the audience were baffled by it funnier. He also hated furfags ahead of the curve:

"Yiff in hell subhumans" - Kubrick in the editing room, doing the Kubrick stare.

But if we're to put on our serious hats, the most persuasive theory about The Shining to me is the pedo one: Jack reads a Playgirl magazine with an article about incest, which has been widely interpreted to mean he's fucking little Danny, and quotes Lolita (the novel about a guy trying to justify fucking a 12-y/o girl, which Kubrick adapted in the 60s) when attempting to talk down Wendy from trying to fend him off with a baseball bat. This is by no means incompatible with my fuck-Stephen-King interpretation, because King later wrote a child orgy in It, so it's entirely possible Kubrick was calling King (the author with the drinking problem) a nonce via his literally-him stand-in Jack.

Pedos in the glamorous world of entertainment? Well now I've heard everything.

Just for fun though, here's a wildly different theory that makes you go hmm in an altogether contradictory direction. Perhaps the fact the same movie can be spun off into what seem like endless variations of interpretation is what makes it so perennially fascinating. You'll be watching it forever...and ever...and ever.

RANKED: The Top Ten Moar Animals! (Nudibranch Edition!)!

Theme: The Mollusk - Ween

It's that time of year again: Tuesday.

Spanish Shawl Nudibranch

Nudibranchs are psychedelic-looking sea-slugs that eat small cnidarians, absorb their stinging nematocysts, and repurpose them for their own defence against larger predators, sort of like you with donuts, minus the last part. The Spanish shawl one is purple and orange, and kind of looks like Sanic the Hedge Hog OC.

Blue Sea Dragon Nudibranch

The blue sea dragon is also a nudibranch, despite looking nothing like the Spanish shawl. This is a recurring theme with nudibranchs, which come in many shapes and sizes, from four millimeters to 23 inches long, according to the summary of the first result on Bing. They are also found all around the world where there are oceans. Nudibranchs can't swim for shit and simply drift where the tide takes them.

Anna's Chromodoris (Nudibranch)

This one is blue and yellow. The orange things on the front are rhinophores, while those on the back are gills, or vice versa; idk.

This one

Found off Dahab in the Red Sea, this one looks really cool. IDK what it's called though.

Opalescent Nudibranch

This one has perhaps the coolest name of any animal. I want to use "opalescent" more in conversation, but I'm not sure how. Enter the opalescent nudibranch; problem solved.

Green one

Some nudibranchs can photosynthesise. Note that this is in stark contrast to you, who can't do anything right.

Blue Velvet Nudibranch

No doubt named for David Lunch's kino of the same name, the Blue Velvet (1986) nudibranch also appears to be impossible to photograph in focus. I went through like three pictures of this thing on Bing Dot Com Image Search and it's a point of principle I never click a fourth.

Hopkin's Rose Nudibranch

This one makes the cut in part because it doesn't even look like a sea slug at all, looking more like an anemone unless you catch it at the right angle to spot the rhinophores. Hopkin must have been so stoked to coin this rose, holy shit bro.

Variable Neon

This lil bro kind of reminds me of the dragon on the Welsh flag, which is by far the best flag and prompts the question: why don't more flags have cool dragons on them instead of lame blank slabs of colour like some bullshit you'd go see in the Tate Modern?

Vexillology is a solved game, you can all go home.

Cole's Nudibranch

All nudibranchs are hermaphroditic. Some have been known to eat one another. Most live in shallower waters but deep sea ones have been known. I hope you've learned something today, because you sure haven't reading my takes on B movies and shooting whipped cream directly down your gullet.

Supermarionation Tuesdays: Fireball XL5!

Theme: Fireball - Barry Gray

Mommy rudely interrupts my sacred gaming time to ask if I want tendies. STUPID mommy shouldn't have to ask (2025, colourised).

Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's followup to Supercar began as space opera but largely lapsed into sitcom by the end. The adventures of space Chad & Stacy Steve Zodiac and Doctor Venus, backed by Robert the Robot (every relation to Robby) and Dr Beaker clone Professor Matthew Matic, were the stuff of every schoolboy's idle daydreams in the back of class, but for no clear reason the focus shifted overwhelmingly to side characters like Commander Zero, Lieutenant 90 (possible relation to the later Joe), and Zoony the Lazoon, who mostly bickered away in Space City (whence Fireball launched weekly on railtracks, at the trivial cost of its rocket-powered sledge, which sailed off a cliff).

A good gag would have been to reshoot just this shot with a mountain of these wrecked sledges poking up into frame whence they've accumulated at the bottom of the cliff. I'm in the mood for typing "whence" this week.

This was a tooty move if you ask me*, but those early episodes still slap. It's obvious the puppet-makers had great fun coming up with designs for Star Trekian ayylmaos, most of which were recognisably humanoid, like the Bogdanoffs here:

Whamen: this is what you actually look like when you get that buccal fat removal shit.

The Bogdanoffs prepare to give Venus the Goldfinger treatment.

But other designs were more wildly inventive, like the sinister PLANT MAN:

Oh no look out he's got a syringe! Note that the Plant Man built a model of the Space City tower out of Lego on his workbench. Aww.

Even though the space setting gives pretty much unlimited scope for stories, sometimes the team got bored and wanted to do another setting, like a circus or a western, so they just did. Matic invented a time machine just so they had a pretext for a western episode, which nodded heavily to their OG work, Four Feather Falls:

Sadly, they didn't rig up a squirty flower from a prank shop to the puppet's mouths so they could spit in a spitoon, so you'll just have to pretend they did.

Fireball also introduced a trend of dream episodes that allowed the creators to blow up all their key buildings and vehicles without having to permanently bum out and/or traumatise their little kid viewers, but if you're feeling mean you can always shut the TV off before the reveal so they think that's just how the series ended.

Now, son, what did we learn from the horrific 9/11ing of Space City? That's right: violent death can come for you at any time. Now, off to bed! You've got preschool in the morning.

*"Tooty" is space slang for whack/crazy in the show, and possibly in the 60s when it was made.