Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Nightmare Returns!

Theme: Second Coming - Alice Cooper

Note: I know this is a Halloween post, but I ran out of buffer articles to post bc lazy, but in any case it's been a whole winter since Halloween, and we deserve another.

You may be /fa/, but are you /fa/ enough to rock this bright red codpiece? I didn't think so.

Can a concert film be greatest movie of all time of the week? Why not, if it's Alice Cooper's 1987 comeback showcase The Nightmare Returns? For, from the psychedelic 60s inception of the OG band to the present, perennial Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5 favourite Cooper has injected off-kilter narrative and imagery into the rock show format, transforming it into a visual spectacle with a classically theatrical throughline, from scene-setting start through rising action to knuckle-biting eucatastrophe to ecstatic catharsis. Groucho hailed it as the last stand of vaudeville, while the Dalí praised it as musical surrealism. Personally, I've been to see the great man twice, back when he was a mere boy of sixty-something, and can report that he still stage-mogged bands a fraction of his vintage.

Unlike Sir Mixalot, Alice actually has an anaconda to back up his boasts*.

Yet the narrative behind the scenes lends even more satisfaction to this triumphant moment: Coop himself describes how the old Alice of the OG band days and the classic Welcome to my Nightmare was society's whipping boy, cringing, stumbling about the stage, as pitiful as he was dastardly. Like so many rock stars, Cooper felt the pull of addiction and collapsed personally even as his career lurched erratically from one creative peak to another. From the Inside turned personal misfortune into top tier songcraft, with each tale inspired by fellow inmates in the nuthouse where he spent his first rehab, but it was cocaine masterpiece DaDa where the master hit rock bottom personally even while the unchained forces of his shadow wrought his finest art.

This is exactly how I look when dreaming up my firest b╙og posts.

But then something happened to shock everyone anew: Coop ditched the coke and booze, retvrned to Christ and stormed back into the public's nightmares as he took his rightful place at the head of a brand new wave of rockers who had cut their teeth on his material, pacing and leading like the genre godfather he was. And he was no longer the whipping boy: this Cooper owned the stage. No longer was it his nightmare; this time he was yours.

The pro wrestling energy in this entrance is off the scale.

Alright, the actual Constrictor album this tour promoted kind of sucked, minus the GOATed opener and closer ("Teenage Frankenstein" and Jason Lives theme "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" respectively), but this hardly matters because only two of the blah tracks are in this show, while all the justifiably overplayed hits you know from radio benefit measurelessly from the added muscle of the metal treatment ("Go to Hell" sounds like it was written with just this overhaul in mind). Speaking of muscle, the more elaborate axework on display comes courtesy of Kane Roberts, who played up to the Rambo image his physique implied, making this even more of an 80s time capsule experience. He even has a machine gun guitar that shoots flames:

Sorry Marty, this is what peak cinéma actually looks like.

The rampage continues in crowd-pleasing style, with Alice duelling this dominatrix who shows up on stage, as dominatrices are wont to do:

Thot patrolled. I repeat: the thot has been patrolled.

The Coop then aims his righteous malice at a cameraman who's been foreshadowed getting too close in a couple of shots, laying the groundwork for his well-deserved demise:

Vlad III poses with Ottoman invader (1462, colourised).

But all good things must come to an end, and so our hero sadly finds himself restrained in hospital, where he laments his lonely life in classic "The Ballad of Dwight Frye". Of course, no hospital can keep /ourpsycho/ down for long:

REKT.

Further shenanigans include a bit of practical magic, in which the Coop constructs a monstrous automaton...

And "Sick Things", in which Coop is adored by these dudes that kind of look like the Toxic Avenger:

I love how he poses like a rapper with his bitches and/or hoes, except they're drooling mutants. Don't worry; I feel the same way about you guys.

Finally, it looks like he must pay for all his crimes. But even a murderer is entitled to his last words, in this case tender fan favourite "I Love the Dead":

"Before I go, I just want to say one thing: I love fucking corpses. Thanks!" - A. Cooper.

Even in death the spirit that inspired every subsequent shock band from the Sex Pistols to Mötley Crüe shows its defiance of society in general. As the executioner steals a triumphant kiss from the Coop's severed head...

Oh, like you've never had a faceful of fluids before.

But then, as though the clouds suddenly part, the spiral into madness and horror gives way to the jubilant strains of "School's Out", which I'm fairly sure even yak herders in the ruralest hamlets of Nepal have heard, and what's better still, after the journey you've been on, it hits like you're hearing it for the first time.

Now that's entertainment.

It's masterful sequencing of a sort the OG band used to good effect on Love it to Death, with the bleak "Dwight Frye" giving way to the reassuringly Zen "Sun Arise". You could also liken it to the end of Fantasia, when the first rays of light put paid to all the devil's bullshit. Generations of imitators have come and gone and tried to top the spectacle with more lavish productions, ostentatious pyrotechnics or tryhard shock antics, but that showman's grasp of narrative and the immortal songs have yet to be surpassed.

*Yeah, I know it's a boa constrictor. Everyone's a herpetologist.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Philosophy of the World!

Lady, I think the pertinent question is what is Foot Foot?

Austin Wiggin may be the Tommy Wiseau of music: an eccentric visionary whose obsessed dream shaped an oft-lampooned yet widely beloved project with all the authentic quirkiness lo-fi hipsters strain with zero self-awareness to attain. The legend goes that Wiggin forged his family of four daughters (Dorothy, Betty, Helen and Rachel) into an inept, amateurish, but extremely compelling and charming band, whose elliptical compositions defied all known music theory but work as unintended comedy and warm the listener's heart with their earnest, innocent and searching Philosophy of the World (1969).

Because we live in an age when authenticity is largely suppressed by the cringe-compilation panopticon effect of knowing everything you do is scrutinised by millions of strangers with untreated personality pathologies, and today the Wiggins would be cruelly derided as lolcows, 21st Century NPCs have devised countless alternative explanations for the Shaggs phenomenon: is the record an intentional joke? Was Austin an evil paytriarchy against whose overbearing designs the daughters subtly rebelled by playing poorly on purpose? Are the sweet sentiments of "Who Are Parents" and "We Have A Saviour" really le ironic social satire? All these fevered inkblot readings can be dismissed with a curt "go back to reddit", because even if there were any truth to them, you'd still be a boring douche for reducing the actual record to such trite crap, like the sort of autofellatio maestro who wants you to know that ackshually Holden Caulfield is Just a Whiny Privileged Kid or that you're Not Supposed to Root for the Joker.

But even to acknowledge the revisionism is to grant it more consideration than it merits: the original liner notes are clear: "Their music is different, it is theirs alone. They believe in it, live it [...] perhaps only the Shaggs do what others would like to do, and that is perform only what they believe in, what they feel, not what others think the Shaggs should feel". As music, it's unorthodox, but I'm still jamming it in my head rn (right now). As philosophy, it reaffirms Confucian notions of filial piety, faith in Jesus Christ, and a cheerful fatalism about human nature: "You can never please/Anybo-ody/In this world". That's actually much deeper than anything evil slime like Lennon or Cobain ever wrote. On the first listen you might have a condescending laugh that mellows to affection. Subsequently, though, you're going to find that there's a lot of wisdom and real humour in these songs. The strange whimsicality of "My Pal Foot Foot" and twist ending of "My Companion" are perennially fresh and beguiling. Pretty soon you'll find you're laughing with them.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Dracula Untold!

Theme: Béla Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus

Spoilers ho:

1979's Vlad Țepeș was as exciting a work of entertainment as it was a thoughtful and compelling historical drama, making 2014's accessible capeshit spin on the material just a little bit redundant, but if Hollywood revisionists are going to ruin every female villain with a le sympathetic origin story (Wicked, Maleficent, fucking Cruella, of all things), then it's only fair the lads get to reclaim pop culture's preeminent prince of darkness, setting the record straight on everyone's favourite vampire and neatly bridging the historical and fictional Draculas (Draculae?). Also, it's kind of a remake of the start of Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, focusing in on the 15th Century setting and skipping over the events of the 1890s novel, which thereby neatly lets that be its own thing.

Least cinématic Tuesday of Vlad's life.

Voiceover narration gives a brief summary of Vlad's past in the Ottoman janissary corps and his return to the throne of Wallachia, except they call it Transylvania, which is a different part of Romania, but, hey, if you court the capeshitter audience you have to take great pains not to confuse them. Things are going well for Vlad (Luke Evans) and his wife (Sarah Gadon) for about two minutes before the Ottomans are back demanding moar boys to be child soldiers (and rape slaves, but they left that part out). Vlad fights back to protect his kid, but knows he'll need more power to repel the giant pedo empire at his door, so makes a Faustian pact with Charles Dance's elder vampire, who grants him super strength and the ability to transform into a flock(?) of bats.

Apparently acceptable collective nouns for groups of bats include "colony", "swarm" (boring) and "cauldron" (much more patrician).

The twist is that he can return to human if he makes it three days without drinking blood, so it's not like a dumb deal-with-the-devil because he can have his cake and eat it too, providing there's no tragic plot contrivance where he has to drink the blood and become Dracula Untold (2014) forever. Even when he does, he willingly kys's himself, except a second tragic plot contrivance brings him back, but you can't fault his intentions the whole time, making him by far the easiest Faustian sucker (lol) to root for in the movies. If you walk yourself back through the plot beats point by point, he made all the choices that seemed to make the most sense at the time, and that's all I ask.

True to life, /ourboi/ did NOTHING wrong.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is otherwise a dumb flick packed with dumb vampire movie clichés, like death by silver (literally everyone forgets that's werewolfs) and the hilarious, risible death by sunlight which makes being a vampire an extended game of the-floor-is-lava:

"Whoah! Almost fucking died again, ahaha, whoops!" - a very terrifying creature of the night.

But no matter! It wins points for set and costume design, for its correct portrayal of Mehmet as an evil shithead, and for fighting revisionist fire with fire. The action may be of the CG-heavy capeshittoid variety, but it's still kind of fun, and the sequel-hook nonsense easily dismissed. No one anywhere on Earth remembers this, but in the 2010s someone at Universal Studios was obsessed with trying to jam the square peg of the Classic Monsters into the round asshole of the loathsome Cinematic Uuuuniveeerse trend popularised by Marvel.

Did someone say uuuuuuniveeeeeerse? I'm gonna...I'm gonna consoooooooooom!!!

The idea was that Dracula Untold, the Tom Cruise Mummy and (I think?) the someone or other Wolfman would form the basis of a heckin universerino in which monsters would do boopin snootin Marvel Team Ups, so presumably the Charles Dance character was meant to be one of the "villains" they would face. Naturally the Dark Uuuniveeerse (yes, that is what they called it) never happened, so we'll never see the showdown between Drac and Dance. I know you're devastated to learn that, but let's just assume /ourlad/ wins quickly and goes on to retake Constantinople, in a sequel worthy of the great man.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Time Immortal Wept!

Theme: Return to Fantasy - Gamma Ray

This dude shows up on all their album covers. I wonder if he has a name, like Vic or Eddy. In the meantime, let us call him Wes.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to metal: one is that it should be characterised by safe-edgy fedoraisms, unreadable band name logos, and fat guys in corpse paint going horgy-porgy-porg into a microphone. The correct one, though, is that it should be van art in musical form: grandiose, unapologetic lucid daydreaming of ripped barbarians, distant mountains with nameless secrets, and evil sorcerers sacrificing busty hotties to Lovecraftian monsters, with wanky yet ineffably narrative guitar soloes and evocative, elevated lyrics like J.R.R.R.R.R.R. Tolkien and Clark Ashton Smith jammed out a literary Desert Sessions of a weekend.

Fortunately, this patrician understanding of the telos of the genre has survived and thrived long past the hallowed heyday of X Caliber and Medieval Steel, despite all efforts to replace it with rap-rock and deathslop. Utah's Visigoth has all the irony-free genre-love and epic sound you could shake a fist at, while Eternal Champion drops Howard references like they've actually read him. But for my money the crowning jewel in the dragon's hoard of retro epic metal must be Legendry's GOAT Time Immortal Wept. Not only does it boast straight bangers and transportive lyrics, but it's utterly unashamed to invoke every production flourish in its modest budget to set the cinematic scene: the album opens and closes to the crackling of a campfire, and instrumental "The Winds Between Worlds" features sound FX of steel sharpening and a forboding gong.

But still more revelatory is the lead guitar tone, which reaches back in time to the genre's ever-more-forgotten psych roots but maintains the muscle needed to power its momentous and frequent workouts. The climactic title track is an 11-minute powerhouse with all the vital velocity and majestic momentum of the best 3-minute single, while "The Prophecy" hits on a jubilant groove seldom heard in metal. But you might as well check out the whole album: it won't last half as long as you'll want to soak in its dungeoneering ambience.