Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Phantom of the Opera!

Theme: Five Cellars Below - Blitzkid

SPOYLORZ

"Is there a leak in here, or are you just glad to see me?" - actual dialogue.

Before it was a popular West End musical, The Phantom of the Opera was a novel of no small Frenchness. In between, however, it was chiefly known as Lon Chaney's most celebrated silentkino, which is still the best version of it of all. Like your humble blôggueriste, our titular protagonist just wants to be loved by the qt3.14 opera singer and can't understand why she can't look past my hideous countenance and rat-infested subterranean lair to see the sensitive young elderly millennial within, Lacey.

This is my go-to opener at speed dating.

While most horror literally-mes are low-functioning specials like Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, our Erik is a genius composer, much like me with my poasts, not to say engineer, whose labyrinthine cellars are bedecked with deathtraps of proto-James Bond villain scope and vision, which brilliantly serve to trip up our bumbling would-be Captains Save-A-Hoe but, alas, are not quite equal to preventing the enormous lynch mob that rampages through his tunnels at the end.

Just once I'd like to be in the mob instead of chased by it.

For the original ending followed the book in having Christine make out with /ourboi/, thus rendering him fakecel and redeeming him in the moral calculus of, I guess, those "reylo" fat chicks(?), IDK. Fortunately test audiences said "fuck that" (verbatim) so we got a much more realistic and satisfying ending in which the uggo patrol savagely beats him to death and dumps his mangled carcass in the Seine.

Average 1925 test audience member (colourised).

Naturally the great joy of this centenarian kinematographeme lies in its grandiose sets and gothic imagery. Setpieces of note include the chandelier attack and masked ball, but Chaney's makeup effects have garnered even greater notoriety, to the point where even if you are a blind homeless man in Papua New Guinea you will have seen his iconic Phantom face at some point, totally ruining the scene in which Christine just has to take off his mask because she can't decide whether she's horrified or wet af for him until she sees, which is hilarious, but at the time the hitherto-unspoilered reveal was said to send shockwaves of fainting anxiety throughout the 1920s audience. Of course, the same was said of later horror movies such as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Exorcist, so take it with a grain of salt, but I like to imagine /ourboi/ scared the hoes fr fr.

Remember: a wide berth is the same as aura.

The Littlest Dipygus

Theme: Sad Toys Factory - Mimmo D'Ippolito

The following was recovered from the diary of the renowned and oft-resented hoax-finder Marshall Hemming-Webster, on his decision not to publicise his findings in the case of Mary Ellen Lydecker of the Wexley Brothers' Itinerant Sideshow. We publish it here pursuant to his wishes that his private matters be made public not more nor less than one hundred years from the date of his passing.

Mary Ellen Lydecker was so beloved not only of her public but among the carneys too that when she fell pregnant not even the most niggardly of money-men could be heard to utter a word of complaint for the considerable cost incurred in her upkeep during the months she was unable to perform; nor did a single member of the company question the child's paternity, though not a word was shared among them nor any contract made toward that end. Indeed, so sweet was her demeanour that no question of her character was raised, and when she passed, among the little that she left behind was found a wedding band unadorned save for an inscription bearing her name and that of the man to whom she had been wed in secret, and whose testimony I later extracted to my satisfaction that both had believed her barren prior to the union, for it was thought that one so small could scarcely deliver a child under the best of circumstances; circumstances fate, in the event, did not see fit to bestow.

For on the night of Mary Ellen's labour, a great storm blew in from the east, unaccounted for, and in the hastened disassembly of the great tent a pole came loose and struck Delmer Cosgrove, the sawbones who attended to her care the length of her pregnancy, and killed him stone dead upon the instant. It was scarcely more than an hour hence that Mary Ellen's water broke, and she was hied in great haste to the medic's trailer, whereupon it fell to the grief-stricken nurses to do all they could for the delivery. And it was said by those who recalled their attendance on that mad night that the young dwarf's howls accompanying each contraction were as sweet and as melodious as ever was her singing in the carnival, and harmonised with the howling of the gale without; though in my years I have heard many a tale embellished with romantic flourishes of similar fancy.

In the event, however, it can scarcely be credited that aught but a cacophany of wailing must have greeted the reality of that ill-starred labour; for it transpired to the great sorrow of the sad world that the baby was misoriented and could not be righted, such that, however coaxed and prodded with forceps and sundry implements, the little legs descended first amid a stream of blood and water, and then nothing, for the little girl asphyxiated even then as one hanged, her umbilical cord wrapped noose-like around her little throat, so that the lifeless little legs descended between her mother's own in the manner of a dipygus; a striking connexion with which the sideshow folk were well acquainted. And it was perhaps a mercy to her that that poor unhappy mother passed from this world in that moment, whether overcome by grief or horror or from loss of blood or other medical complaints unknown; for no autopsy was permitted, for reasons that became clear.

For the company with one unspoken thought amid the flurry of emotions saw the grim sight and, acquainted with what costs had been sunk into their beloved star, knew only, as a beaver knows to build its dam, that the show must go on despite all the horror of the world, and they began to whisper "don't they look like...?" and "how long might they be thus preserved?". And so, under the blanket of black night and darker calculations and contrivances, the little bodies were spirited hence to still another sideshow, where they gathered quite another audience in their macabre suspension. Thus it is I can confirm, though I should scarcely dream of telling, that the much-discussed exhibit purporting to show the body of the world's first confirmed comorbidity of dipygus and dwarfism was not altogether a conventional hoax, but came of a far bleaker and more melancholic provenance.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Static Age!

Theme: The Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett

The hairstyle came later.

The Misfits might have been through any number of lineup, sound and image changes over time, but I don't care about any of that; they got it right the first time. Static Age was cut in 1978 in a handful of takes but never released until 1997 (though most of the songs were re-recorded for the inferior Legacy of Brutality), in a decision as inexplicable as any in the lengthy history of popular music, since it was first recorded at the height of the punk rock phenomenon and contained most of the band's most sledgehammer of bangers, including catchy jingle "Last Caress" and the last word in B-movie tributes "Return of the Fly".

This historic blunder could have easily served to strangle the nascent institution in its crib, since debut mark 2 Walk Among Us, while containing some fine songs, sounds like it was recorded in about eight different locations on variously archaic machinery, which is endearingly chaotic but distracting even to my utterly inexpert ear. It's a wonder the band caught on at all, for which we can only thank Danzig's underrated songcraft and some canny image-crafting over time. Misfits tees are fourth only to Nirvana, Iron Maiden and the Ramones in the is-it-a-band-or-a-brand sweepstakes, but, like the Ramones and Maiden, it doesn't matter because cool is cool (Nirvana is not cool; MTV lied to you).

The OG Misfits have aged better than any of their punk contemporaries because their music is principally about B horror flicks and being edgy bois, as opposed to laundering your teachers' ideology through a veneer of rebellion, which became the purview of the genre retrospectively and then increasingly intentionally as the years wore on. Even admirably ill-meaning edgelords of yore like Fear and the Anti Nowhere League would drop the odd cringe boomerism like "fuck religion" or "we don't care if you're black or white", which can only give any self-respecting thoughtcriminal of today what wahmen call "the ick". No such reflexive cucking can be found in laugh-out-loud wifebeatercore like "Attitude". Sure, "Come Back" drags on too long and sounds like Danzig trying to ape Jim Morrison, but if that's the worst thing I can say about a record, it's a keeper.

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 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.