Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Operation Mindcrime!

On the album art, Dr X resembles Lenin or Castro. In the "Eyes of a Stranger" video they cast a dead-ringer for Charles Manson, suggesting a deep insight into the parallel cult dynamics at play.

Queensrÿche might have ripped off "Comfortably Numb" with their shameless bid for radio play "Silent Lucidity", but I'd argue they own Pink Floyd's entire discography anyway because their signature album, 1988's audacious concept-driven Operation Mindcrime, mogs The Wall so hard in its sonic rampage through alienation, sex, drugs, guilt and radicalisation that it makes Geoff Tate legally Roger Waters' daddy. We could talk about the stellar sequencing of rapid-fire bangers or the insanely cinematic production, but it's the fact the psychological depth of the character study stays with you as long as the melodies that makes it both a 10 for album and for concept. Queensrÿche understand the process by which their resentful, TV-addled malcontent falls into the nihilism and murder of an antifa-type revolutionary movement, penning fever dream screeds as on point as they are incoherent to reflect his scrambled worldview. Compare and contrast how Nikki slips from jaded loser to fanatic to desperate renegade with the way Waters' Pink becomes a natzee because Waters wants you to know how much he hates le natzees and for not a reason more*.

It's no mistake that Nikki first asserts "Just watch the television/Yeah, you'll see there's something going on", then follows up with "I'm tired of all this bullshit/They keep selling me on TV/About the communist plan". Nikki is one of those super-sleuths we all know who's figured out that Fox News is propaganda but earnestly believes every word out of CNN. It doesn't matter nor occur to him that it's the same little box in his apartment selling him both lines: like Plato's cave-mates, he perceives only symbolic reality. He rejected his old conviction that "only America's way was right" and now rants and seethes about everything that he imagines is American in character, like a borderline engaged in splitting. He reveals the stark gulf between libtard self-delusion and actual character with lines like "Educate the masses/We'll burn the White House down".

I'm not even exaggerating when I say that Nikki is as well-observed and developed a protagonist as something out of Dostoevsky: the addictive personality that craves the needle and the dopamine rush from the confirmation of his delusional beliefs is both a plot point and a timeless, devastating metaphor. Nikki sneers at politicians and evangelists caught up in sex scandals but pitifully orbits a prostitute. His abjection feeds his narcissistic fantasies, with characteristic lack of insight: "Religion is to blame/I'm the new Messiah". He's a ticking time bomb and the perfect useful idiot for Dr X's scheme. But it's not just the lyrics that paint such a stark picture of this unhappy soul: there's a strange pseudo-harmonic effect at play between the plaintive angst of Tate's tormented vocals and the squealing guitar tone that buries any "oh, that's dated" brushoff of the classic metal operatic vocal style and guitar tuning; imagine a death or numetal band sounding half as raw with twice as rough production. That's right, you can't; retvrn.

*Waters now wants to stop the genocide in Gaza. Hey asshole, maybe you shouldn't have made ziolatrous agitprop for the boomer truth regime facilitating it? Food for thought, had you the palate.

Sword and Sorcery Tuesdays DOUBLE BILL: Deathstalker! and Deathstalker 2!

Theme: Deathstalker - Tower Hill

The original Conan, as written by Howard, might have seemed a tad amoral at times: he was variously a mercenary, conqueror, destroyer, pirate, thief, kidnapper, loiterer and public urinator, but he had his own code, as complex and inscrutable as it might have been. Deathstalker (whose name is actually Deathstalker) has no code whatsoever, overtly disdains the notion of heroism, and at one point tries to rape a woman who is actually a man transfigured by the villain's sorcery. This isn't really a problem, since the movie never pretends he's a good guy, but it's kind of funny just watching a complete asshole slash and burn his way through the typical hero plot beats.

Me to the suspiciously glowing egirls in my DMs.

The core of the story is a gladiatorial tournament, sort of like what you'd get in a Street Fighter game, only instead of M. Bison, the villain is Douchar the Magnificent, whose dickhead face tattoo switches sides in one of the more glaring continuity errors in flickstory, but no matter. Douchar (yeah, I forgot his real name. This ain't Ozu) brilliantly schemes to have the strongest fighters in the land off one another to remove any troublemaking competition to his reign.

Douchar looks like the world's #1 consumer of Doritos and XXL T-shirts with inverted pentagrams and Baphomets on them.

Sensing that our protagonist might be a tougher prospect to control than the rest, he troons out his sidekick with a spell to make him resemble the captive princess Douchar himself intends to wed, then sends him to Deathstalker's bedchambers to seduce him and stab him while his defences are lowered. It does not seem to occur to Douchar that promising Deathstalker his own betrothed in front of everyone makes him look like a literal cuckhold, nor that he probably could have simply recruited Deathstalker into his fold because Deathstalker doesn't give a shit about morality.

"GTFO tranny janny, YWNBAW" - Deathstalker. Personally I felt Raimi was just a little on the nose here.

Fortunately for Deathstalker, he realises something is amiss before actually raping the hapless stooge, but his lust interest (Lana Clarkson, Barbarian Queen) is not so lucky and gets rekt trying to comfort what she thinks is a distraught princess. At least she didn't get strapped to a rack or raped this time!

This could be us but you playin'.

You'd think her untimely demise would be the motivation for Deathstalker to win the tournament and avenge her on Douchar's face-tattooed ass, but instead our antihero forgets all about her and proceeds to fight-to-the-death his friend who betrayed him but had a change of heart and confessed his betrayal, which is sort of like if Hank Solo merked Lando Calamari in Revenge of the Jedi (based). Again, don't bother trying to discern a moral message from this; Deathstalker likes violence, simple as.

"I have the power!" - Kull the Conquerer.

Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (not to be confused with Clash Thereof) is less a sequel and more a lighthearted parody of the original, and of sword and sorcery flicks in general. It also has the classic B-movie trait of recycling random footage from its predecessor (and, I think, Amazons!).

"I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jests, of most exquisite fancy" - Hamlet.

John Terlesky replaces the much taller and rippeder Rick Hill and his version is more charming rogue than DGAF Gigachad meme. While this makes him and the movie more likable, paradoxically it also makes it less hilarious, because Deathstalker just doing whatever the hell he wants because he rocks the He-Man build approaches peak hilarity. But II is nonetheless a broadly charming comedy, and wins instant points with me because it actually does the maymay:

ebin XDDDD

Monique Gabrielle costars as the dubiously psychic princess, ousted by her evil twin, who nudges Stalker into saving the land from Evil David Bowie, fighting a checklist of guards, zombies and Amazons along the way, including this chick who is credited as "Queen Kong":

Happily, Mr & Mrs Kong were confident their little angel wouldn't have to worry too much about bullies making fun of her given name.

"Freak out in a sun-age night-dream ohh yeah" - Evil Bowie.

There's not a joke that isn't cornier than Centeōtl's stool, so the viewer's goodwill sinks or swims on the chemistry of the two leads. Fortunately, I'm about 90% certain these two were fucking IRL between takes, besides having so much more fun with the material than it warrants that they drag it up to 8/10 territory, vindicating yet again my conviction that casting Chads and Stacies and excising grimdark pretensions is just the most basic foundation necessary for entertainment to thrive.

You just know.

Deathstalker received at least two more sequels (presumably also in name only) but none of the cast seems to have returned for them and I don't get the sense they have the same cult following as the first two, but if I ever get around to watching them I'll throw out an update. Until then, do whatever it is you were planning to do anyway!

Supermarionation Tuesdays: Supercar!

Theme: Supercar - Barry Gray

Gamers will be shocked to learn that Supermarionation is not a strategy game starring Nintendo's Italianest plumber, but instead refers to a process of filming puppets in sci-fantasy action shows for kids' TV invented by Bri'ish madlads in the 1960s. While the most famous of these was Thunderbirds, the journey of refinement that led up to it saw various prototypes aired, including this week's showcase: Supercar!

What would you do for the flying car?

The premise is simple: German Professor Popkiss and Bri'ish Doctor Beaker have invented the titular vehicle, piloted by nominal protagonist Mike Mercury. All the Supermarionation protagonists had these space-age cool-guy names: Fireball XL5 had Steve Zodiac, while Stingray had Troy Tempest. None of the protagonists really did much except be easygoing Chads, except for Captain Scarlet, who was more of a sarcastic dick Chad. In fact, Mike Mercury barely did anything at all, since Supercar could be piloted remotely by the Professor. Nor had they quite figured out the Chad phenotype later modelled by the Tracy family marionettes: Mike had gap teeth, a gargantuan proboscis, and the browline of an archaic hominid.

Mike looking like he's about to club the Professor with a bone.

Just as Mike served as a prototype for later heroes, the Thunderbirds fan will see early sketches of stern-to-cantankerous patriarchs like Jeff Tracy and Commander Shore in the more genial Professor, and of stuttering savant Brains in Doctor Beaker, with his catchphrase "satisfactory, most satisfactory". "Don't have a cow man" it ain't.

Beaker rocks the world's most optimistic combover.

Another trend they wisely phased out in the later shows was the "cute" animal companion: Supercar's Mitch the Monkey begat Fireball's Zoonie the Lazoon, both of whom were more annoying than cute, though the fault always lay with their human costars, who would gift them free run of the labs and control rooms, which they would invariably trash. These were toned-down into the more endearing seal from Stingray, and finally dropped.

Science genius Doctor Beaker asserts authoritatively that Mitch is a chimpanzee, which is wrong. Chimpanzees have black fur, no tail, and are not known to make good pets or roommates, because they're insanely violent.

Another motif that made it as far as Fireball was the evil yet inept eastern bloc spy duo: in Supercar, Master Spy and his hapless sidekick Zarin; in Fireball Griselda and her hapless husband Boris. Master Spy followed the classic trajectory of recurring villains, at first being somewhat credibly menacing, but quickly becoming a joke after his failures began to stack up too high. Fortunately, the Supercar crew went easy on him: each appearance would end in his capture, but then they seem to have just let him go in between episodes, as he would always show up again later with a new whacky scheme.

A good way to subtly disguise yourself is to dress like a pirate from the neck up.

But the most perplexing thing about the show is that the opener has Mercury & co. rescue little Jimmy, Mitch, and Jimmy's pilot brother from a raft after they bailed out of their crashing plane, only for the older brother to disappear from the show, never to be mentioned again, while Jimmy and Mitch are basically adopted and tag along on missions for the remainder of the show. What became of Jimmy's brother? Did our heroes whack him and harvest his organs? Is he in Jon's basement with Lyman? You decide!

Lyman is still missing since his last sighting in 1983. If you have any knowledge of his whereabouts, leave a comment and subscribe to Heavy Metal Classic Albums on You Tube Dot Com.

While Thunderbirds was mainly focused on rescues and Captain Scarlet on stopping the Mysterons' schemes against Earth, Supercar alternated freely between rescues, treasure hunts, crimefighting and the surreal: the final episode concerned Mitch swapping places with a giant ape who played drums in a band he saw on television. While it's obvious that Supercar was more of a stepping-stone to greater things, it's still fun to revisit 470 years on. From these modest beginnings, Supermarionation was to reach heights still unmatched in small screen action entertainment.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Tabu!

Theme: Leah - Roy Orbison

Hipster objections aside*, Robert J. Flaherty invented the documentary with his Eskimokino Nanook of the North and F.W. Murnau cut such all-time classics as Faust (but is better known for accidentally ruining vampires with the death-by-sunlight gag, which later halfwits would play literally, in the biggest nerf ever suffered by a stock monster). It may come as no surprise then that when these two titans of silent cinéma teamed up, they unleashed a kino for the ages. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, set on Bora Bora, is the best movie of all time you'll see this week, and concerns the doom incurred by two young lovers who breach a Tabu (1931)!!!

>tfw no etc. etc.

Reri (Anne Chevalier) is the young maiden selected to replace a late vestal virgin on a neighbouring island. I'm not sure if this was a real tradition but the Society Islands did have an elite caste of Arioi, who were permitted sex but not children; any that were born to them were ritually killed. Anyway, this de facto abduction-in-tribute of a daughter of Bora Bora is framed as a great honour by the foreign emissary, which I find hilarious. But Reri's bf (Matahi) is heartbroken and defies the Tabu (1931) to run off with her, prompting sinister old fart Hitu to hunt them down as they seek refuge among sailors on another island, where this dude does the best dance of all time of the week:

>ywn bust these sick moves why live?

WILL our young lovers outrun their destiny? CAN Hitu recapture Reri? IS the Tabu (1931) a lazy metaphor for Murnau being a bumboy? Fortunately, NO to the last one: whatever the great filmmaker's extremely dubiously alleged proclivities, he had the Tolkienian taste to avoid clumsy allegorising in favour of a nonspecific but endlessly applicable and thus timeless idea. Tabu doesn't even stipulate whether the Tabu is meant to be a good thing or a bad thing. It's the one-in-a-zillion film that's actually content to let the viewer ponder it over for himself. Perhaps Murnau shed his didacticism as he did his intertitles: all the text in Tabu is artfully framed as actual writing in-story.

There's no intertitle for what this kid yells so you're free to assume it's the funniest slur.

Also, Murnau was said to be exceptionally tall, with heights from 6'4" to 6'11" variously cited, so even if he did rail dudes that's basically like a normal guy railing bitches, but in this house, Murnau was a STRAIGHT king.

The wet dresses, topless chicks and Baywatch bounce per reel of footage tells a distinctly hetero story, and for 1931? Forgetaboutit.

Flaherty only directed the opening sequence and seems to have become quite disillusioned with the project and ceded it mostly to Murnau, but it was his familiarity with the locale and love of the world cultures first ignored and then homogenised away by the steamroller of libshit modernity that fired the project and made it viable to begin with. None of these cultures can exist on their own terms anymore, as every manifestation of them is now filtered through self-consciousness and anticolonialist self-righteousness, like when those Māori assclowns do the goofy haka dance in the New Zealand parliament while wearing suits**. Only le problematic shitlords like Flaherty or Mel Gibson can pay authentic tribute to the great and terrible cultures of the world that was.

"Check these dubs" - Bora Bora anon.

*Waah, waah, he broke the rules of documentary filmmaking that were made up after the term was first coined to describe one of his own films! Shut up, bitch!

**The Māori eagerly adopted European technology from the off, specifically muskets, which they immediately used to murder one another en masse, most egregiously the pacifistic Moriori of the Chatham Islands. You'd think this would make them by far the least sympathetic anticolonialist hypocrites, but the same sort of thing happened throughout North America too, so they're more or less average in that ignoble regard.

Sword and Sorcery Tuesdays: Barbarian Queen!

Theme: Warrior Queen - Visigoth

Perhaps the most cheerfully tasteless of the brief sword and sorcery cycle of the 1980s was Barbarian Queen, whose first rape scene takes place in its first minute of screentime.

Wow, that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast.

If The Warrior and the Sorceress was the first sword and sorcery western, Barbarian Queen is probably the first sword and sorcery rape/revenge flick, which concludes the plot summary. Deathstalker's Lana Clarkson stars as the titular heroine, who leads three more barbarian women (not to be confused with Amazons!, I guess) to avenge the raid on her village that saw randos slaughtered left and right, her groom-to-be captured as a slave for the gladiator pits, and everyone else raped by a faction of generic goons and also Karl Marx:

"A spectre is haunting Euraaaagh not my neckerino noooo pleeease help meee *gurgle* *sob*" - Karl Marx (Berenstein timeline).

In the flick's most haute-trash sequence, Clarkson finds herself bound in a torture dungeon to be raped by, to put it as diplomatically as possible, the happy merchant:

*balding movie analysis YouTuber voice* you see, the rack represents the casting couch, and the Jew represents err, umm, please stand by, we are having technical difficulties.

Was this the first flick written by /pol/? Astonishingly, yet not astonishingly at all, no! For the credited screenwriter is named Howard Cohen, making this drooling pervert his self-insert, making this one of the more damning cases of:

HOW will our heroine escape this average Hollywood screen test? If you guessed "by squeezing the torturer's dick with her barbarian vag muscles, forcing him to free her hands, then shoving him into a vat of acid he carelessly left directly behind him", you might just share the sadomasochistic paraphilias of Mr Cohen.

There are like twenty jokes I want to make here that my lawyers have advised me not to make.

Barbarian Queen may be the graveyard of good taste, but (therefore?) it was a hit and spawned a very nominal sequel (it has nothing to do with the original besides Clarkson returning) in which Cohen fails to beat the allegations by having her strapped to yet another rack. Hilariously, the sequel actually tries to pretend to be a stronk womyn empowerment flick, which I doubt even the densest gendyr stydies majyr bought for a second. Clarkson's career may never have escaped the bargain-bin ghetto of these flicks, but you may have heard of her for an even sadder reason: she was fatally shot by Phil Spector in 2003, in the most evil act of his career since producing John Lennon's Imagine.

RIP to this Farrah Fawcett tier hair game.

This is a true story.

There I was, fired again. This time from the hospital after replacing your newborn with a dwarfìsm baby, then a phocomelia baby, then a tetra-amelia baby so you'd think its limbs were slowly receding into it.

And I'd have gotten away with it too, if I could find four the same hue.

Penniless and destitute, I moved back into my uncle's crawlspace, where the rats and cockroaches were plentiful and free. I had my fill of food and friends, yet, somehow, it just wasn't quite the same. They say you can't stand in the same river twice, and that holds true for laying down in a crawlspace filled with piss bottles and skeletons. "I'm 46!", I guessed out loud, "it's time for me to make my own way in the world".

Filled with energy anew, I set out to discover my dream job and purpose in life: municipal ratcatcher? Homeless bum? Movie critic? The possibilities were endless. But where to start? Foolish question: you can only start where you are now. But where to make my next step? First, I looked at my CV: four years making Stephen McDaniel edits, eight years defeating minors in /tv/ debates, twelve years not learning the guitar, and two and a half weeks at the hospital, where I took the initiative of promoting myself from assistant janitor to chief surgeon. With a bit of creative license, that was twenty-four years of freelance video editing, combat experience and self-care expertise. Armed with this cornucopia of qualifications, I marched into the Job Centre Plus, for I am in the Yookay.

The chief matriarch of the Job Centre Plus gave me the Kubrick stare over thick-rimmed glasses. "Mr Bastard", she intoned (which is a feat for a wahman), "I'm afraid you've squandered your life, such as it is. Let me guess: at school you were gifted-but-lazy?"

"Half-right", I affirmed, ambiguously, but, with the low cunning you must expect from these functionaries, she saw through my artful word choice. "Look, Mr Bastard, I'm afraid we don't have any jobs for you, because every company in the city has called us unprompted with requests to blacklist you in particular, because everyone hates you". This, however, I had anticipated.

"So you'll slap me on the dole and furnish me with a council house?"

"No", she replied, halfway through "so".

"Squirrel!" I shrieked, pointing past her in a valiant effort to distract her and steal a pen from the unwashed mug of pens gathering dust on her desk. No dice - someone had tipped her off that there was no window behind her.

I had no choice: I had to turn to crime. But where to source a crew to rob the bank? The parole directory would furnish me with the information I sought! "To the phone book!" I cried, standing up, giving myself a head rush. Dizzily, I slumped back into the chair, further nonplussing my Job Centre caseworker.

A cheesy sitcom transition later, I was in the phone box, but no yellow pages were to be found; doubtless lifted by some vagrant. Undeterred, I sought to call the operator to demand the parole office, but I couldn't remember the number for operator. Deterred, I went back to the crawlspace where I wrote this bløØ☼*g.

Would you like more of my Dickensian prose? No??? Well, who asked you? Leave a comment, and subscribe to Disparu.

Sword and Sorcery Tuesdays: Amazons!!

Theme: Song of Women - The Hu

Actual character in Amazons!.

A clear precursor to Xena Warrior Princess, but R-rated and sans the cringe Three Stooges humour (Xena had its moments; it's just that they were all Ares or Callisto scenes), Amazons! stars nobody you've ever heard of and does it wrong by being somewhat competently made and having its two female leads get along (I know it's fantasy, but there are limits).

This sounds like something wahmen ask each other at the end of yoga class or whatever it is they do when they're not having pillow fights and purging.

Queen Budget Judy Dench As M sends Amazons! (1986) to find the only magic sword that can save their people from doom, for the queendom of Whateverland is menaced by Evil William Shakespeare:

"O, that I wore a glove upon mine wang, that I might clap thine cheeks" - Evil Shakespeare.

Bad Will Hunting has a pet lioness, which at first I surmised was just a nod to the curious Frazettaism of leaving big cats lounging around places, but it turns out it's actually a shapeshifting woman, or werelioness(?), whom he despatches to hunt down our heroines and bring him back the magic sword.

I aim to furnish my pad with a big cat just as soon as I can procure one.

I can't remember any of the characters' names, but I think you'll agree it doesn't matter. There's an evil traitor Amazon who sends her young-Britney-Spears-looking daughter along with our main protagonist to backstab her and steal the sword, but the two bond and become history's first genuine female friends. Will Brit Brit be able to slay her new bestie, or will guilt cause her to hesitate at the climactic moment???

"People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth. But the question is, can you handle mine? They say I'm crazy, I really don't care. That's my prerogative."

"That is so deep."

If you remember Wonder Wahman and Captain Marvel releasing in more recent years, you will recall being amazed that the first ever action movie to star a wahman dropped twice in your lifetime. It must then be more astonishing still to learn that movies like this were commonplace and unremarked-upon decades prior. The Amazons! (1986) fight both against and alongside men, have their own internal conflicts, and never have to clap back epic style against a strawman secksist. Sure, it's pure cheese, but compared to the sovlless, sexless turboslop of the enlightened 21st Century, this disposable wad of fluff might as well be Good Shakespeare.

"All's well that ends with a happy ending" - Good Shakespeare.