Farewell Robert Forster

I've been an admirer of Robert Forster since I first saw him in Banyon, an early 70s TV series about a Depression Era private eye, a formula almost calculated to fail with the viewing public (it got clobbered in the ratings by Love America Style), but likewise guaranteed to tickle my peculiar, age-inappropriate interests. I remember being impressed by his intense, but low-key demeanor and his cool naturalism, and from then on Forster's presence in a film could make me sit through just about anything.

Even this thing.

The Black Hole (1979)
Directed by Gary Nelson
Written by Jeb Rosebrook and Gerry Day

Tagline: A journey that begins where everything else ends!

Starting with your patience.

The Black Hole gets a lot of crap for being just another Star Wars rip-off, which I consider unfair, since it’s actually a rip-off of Disney’s own 1954 picture, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but with two crucial differences: this version is set in space rather than at sea, and instead of Nemo being a tortured genius using ruthless means to achieve a noble end, he’s just an asshole.

Another criticism of the film is that nearly every performance is lifeless or just plain bad. No surprise with that talking wig-stand, Yvette Mimieux, but even normally fine actors like Anthony Perkins and Robert Forster sound like they’ve been roofied, possibly because they were forced to go back and re-record all their dialogue, something unusual for a studio film shot on a stage.  But in all fairness, if I’d been working on the that movie, I’d have been drinking too.

It’s the Year 2130. NASA has launched the spaceship Palomino (which, as my friend Jeff points out, looks like a butt-plug on a camcorder tripod) and sent it on a mission to boldly go and wander around for a while. It’s a harsh task, because the Palomino is no Enterprise; it’s cramped, filled with fey robots, and has a zero-gravity environment which is tough on the wardrobe. Fortunately, it’s the future, so everybody’s double-knit leisure suits have memory. Also helpful is the fact that the crew is aggressively middle-aged, and prone to simulate weightlessness by standing on an off-camera plank while sweaty Teamsters pump it up and down like a teeter-totter. The exception is Joseph Bottoms, who really throws himself into the zero-g effect, joyfully and repeatedly dangling from wires in his tight jumpsuit with his pert, shapely buttocks aloft, and which has inspired me to invent a drinking game. Every time he does it, yell “Bottom’s up!” and take a shot.

Anyway, we join the Palomino as it executes an unscheduled course correction, which makes the entire crew irritable, because now they’re going to be late for work. They demand an explanation from their GPS device, V.I.N.CENT, a highly sophisticated Coors Party Ball with the voice of Roddy McDowell and the eyes of that Kit-Cat Clock, but less expressive. He explains that the ship has encountered a black hole, “a rip in the very fabric of space and time,” so they’re going to have to take an alternate route.

Anthony Perkins, the ship’s astrophysicist, stares at the black hole (which is depicted as a constant swirl of fluid blue energy that kind of looks like a toilet in mid-flush) and pronounces it, with attempted awe, “the most destructive force in the universe,” although he sounds so bored he might as well be declaring it, “the most disappointing cheesesteak I ever ate in Philadelphia.”

Surprisingly, there’s a ship parked in the Black Hole’s driveway, a massive experimental craft called The Cygnus (the first time I saw this movie I thought they were calling it “the Sickness,” and an hour and 38 minutes later, I realized I should have taken the hint and snuck into an adjoining theater to see one of the many other, better films that came out that year, including H.O.T.S., C.H.O.M.P.S., Roller Boogie, or Caligula).

By an amazing coincidence, Yvette’s father was on The Sickness, which she tells us was sent out some years ago to find “habitable life.” Personally, I’d be satisfied with a habitable planet, but I guess the first step in space exploration is to find aliens big enough that we can live inside them like maggots, or immature marsupials. (Frankly, if this movie had been about the search for an intelligent race of giant space kangaroos, I probably wouldn’t have left in the middle to go buy Junior Mints.)

Newspaper reporter Ernest Borgnine, who’s embedded with the crew, tells them that The Sickness was commanded by mad scientist Maximillian Schell, who “talked the Space Appropriations Committee into the costliest fiasco of all time – and refused to admit failure,” a technique he learned from the cryogenically preserved head of Dick Cheney.

The Palomino trips and plunges headfirst into the Most Destructive Force in the Universe, which causes their muffler to fall off, so Captain Robert Forster orders Joseph Bottoms to land on the Sickness, which Joseph takes as a cue to stick his butt in the air.

Cheers!

The Sickness abruptly turns on the porch light, and we get the full sense of her size and majesty. A mile-long rectangle of glass and steel, it looks as if NASA just decided to launch the West Edmonton Mall into deep space. The crew takes the jetway and emerges into what looks like a Frontier airlines terminal – lots of uncomfortable plastic chairs, but no passengers -- and Robert tells Joseph to stay with the ship. Joseph responds by pouting, then pulling out his ray gun, sticking out his butt, and posing like the silhouette from the opening credits of Charlie’s Angels.

(glug-glug-glug...)

The Palomino crew arrives at CNN Center in Atlanta, where they discover the ship is being operated by “robots” dressed in Mylar hockey masks and roomy space muumuus. Suddenly, the mad-eyed Maximilian Schell, whose shaggy beard and unbelievable bouffant makes Lon Chaney’s Wolfman look like Pluto from The Hills Have Eyes, pops up to announce that Yvette’s dad is dead and to backfill the back-story. Like every spacecraft in virtually every space movie ever made, The Sickness had the crap kicked out of it by a meteor shower, so Max ordered the crew to abandon ship. Meanwhile, he stayed behind, and has spent the last twenty years alone, building robot companions and making fun of bad movies.

For some reason, the incredibly secretive and paranoid Max lets the Away Team wander freely around his ship, collecting spare parts to repair their butt-plug. They snoop in closets, admire the matte paintings, and desperately try to avoid stunts or action. At one point, Ernest Borgnine’s suspicions are aroused by a robot with a bad limp, and he gives chase, but he’s on a slightly raised platform that looks a little slippery, and he runs so gingerly, with his arms flailing to maintain his footing, that you can almost hear him chanting, “Don’t break a hip, don’t break a hip…!”

Mad Max and Anthony Perkins get flirty, and Max invites them to dinner in his wood paneled formal dining room, lavishly appointed with chandeliers and candelabras, making The Sickness the only faster-than-light, interstellar space craft to be decorated by Liberace.

Meanwhile, VINCENT makes friends with B.O.B., a levitating beer keg with the voice of Slim Pickens, and we get to watch the robots play a video arcade game. It’s a slow sequence, and sadly, putting your quarter on the machine doesn’t speed things up any.

Let’s cut back to the dinner party, because what action-packed space adventure is complete without a leisurely soup course? Max announces that he’ll be flying The Sickness straight into the Black Hole, confident he can open a portal to another universe, one which is sorely in need of a Camp Snoopy and a Wet Seal.

After dinner, the crew is served mints and exposition, when B.O.B. reveals that all the robots are really the former crew of The Sickness, whom Max lobotomized, using a special automated lobotomizing assembly line. It seems unlikely NASA included this feature as factory standard equipment, so Max would have had to get the crew to build and install it for him, and frankly I would’ve loved to have been at the staff meeting where he assigned Action Items to Team Automatic Lobotomizer.

Captain Robert snaps into action and decides to take over The Sickness! Or maybe just leave. It’s kind of unclear. Then he reads ahead in the script and sees that he’ll be spending the last twenty-two minutes of the film running from blue screens and matte paintings, so he decides he’d better conserve his energy and just do nothing. Maybe have a Gatorade and a Power Bar.  Anthony Perkins, however, announces that he has decided to stay aboard The Sickness with Max, because he finds that he really enjoys being only the second most creepy person in a movie.

Unfortunately, Max’s senior robot, Maximilian, a recycled Cylon that somebody painted the color of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, gets jealous or something and uses his juicing attachment on Anthony’s lower intestines. Then Mad Max decides to lobotomize Yvette, because it’s not like anyone would notice.

Meanwhile, Robert and the Party Balls sneak around the mall some more. Since the movie was released in December, I can only assume they’re looking for Santa. Instead, they find Yvette, who has been stuffed into a quilted, full-body oven mitt and had her head covered with aluminum foil. Seriously, her scalp is wrapped up like a rump roast; apparently, this is the exact point where the Special Effects department said, “Fuck it,” and cracked open the Harvey’s Bristol Cream.

Anyway, Max’s man-bots are using Lasik surgery to burn their initials into Yvette’s pre-frontal lobe, but Robert shoots the machine with his plastic laser horseshoe. Was he in time to save her from being lobotomized? There’s no way to tell from her performance, so we’re just going to have to wait and see if her insurance company sends her a bill.

You know what? We could really use a big action sequence right about now. What we get are repetitive shots of our heroes as they squat behind those big pastel colored pipes that kids crawl around in at Chuck E. Cheese, and take pot shots at a row of immobile robots who appear to have all malfunctioned in mid Conga Line.

Robert, Yvette, and the Party Balls are pinned down by hostile fire. Joseph, who’s been sitting in the butt-plug the whole movie, runs to save them. Ernest tags along, then decides, “aw, screw it,” and fakes a leg injury like an Italian soccer player. Then he steals the Palomino and blasts off, leaving the others behind. Immediately, however, he loses control of the ship when he starts sweating, grimacing, and needlessly crouching; in other words – and I’m just going by his performance here – he has a suddenly attack of diarrhea, and crashes into The Sickness, taking out the Fashion Bug and a Cinnabon.

Our heroes decide to escape in “the probe ship.” Yeah, whatever. Meanwhile, as promised, the next 22 minutes consist of B-list actors jogging in front of cheap sets and back projection, interspersed with SFX shots as The Sickness is slowly – let me rephrase that: SLOWLY! – pulled into the Black Hole. On the bright side, we learn that V.I.N.CENT ’s large, telescoping testicles can be used as offensive weapons (try that, Jackie Chan!), when the Party Ball deploys his party balls to coldcock Mad Max’s garage sale Cylon.

Now let’s rip off the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with five minutes of half-assed psychedelic effects as the probe ship penetrates the Black Hole, played at this performance by five gallons of strawberry Jell-O flushed down a john.

But what about Max? Well, he’s just floating in the vacuum of space without a pressure suit, apparently none the worse for wear, although his hair is extremely staticky and tangled from the event horizon, and in need of a good cream rinse. He bumps into his burgundy Cylon which – spoiler alert – is filled with the brain and guts of Yvette’s lobotomized Dad. They do a touching Bro Hug, then suddenly Max is inside the robot himself! Because, irony! He looks confused, a feeling we immediately share when the camera pulls out and we see that he’s standing atop the Matterhorn ride in Disneyland.

Wait. No. Pull out a little farther, and…Oh! Hey. We’re in Hell. Flames, demons, and dozens of skull-faced penitents in black hooded robes. Okay, thanks, Disney.

Cut back to our heroes as they pass through the Black Hole and emerge in another universe, ready to begin life anew and populate a virgin world, like the story of Genesis. Except it’s Robert Forster, Yvette Mimeaux, and the dewy, fresh-faced Joseph Bottoms, so it’s like Adam and Eve and the twink hustler they picked up for a threesome on Sunset Boulevard.

R.I.P., Robert.

Farewell, S.Z.'s Dad

Please join us in a moment of silence for Van H. Zollinger, a good man who, among his many other achievements, fathered one of the best people it's ever been my pleasure to know, the wonderful Sheri Zollinger:

Van Howard Zollinger, 86, passed away peacefully at his home in Providence, UT. He left behind his loving wife of 61 years, Helen Burton Zollinger. He is also survived by his sister Rosalind (Henry) Astle; his 6 children, 12 grandchildren and 1 great-grandson. He was preceded in death by his brother, Don Zollinger. 

Van and Helen are the parents of Sheri, Jeff (Merla), Linda (Randy) Larsen, Marc, Michelle (David) Walker, and Scott (Laurie). Van loved all of them, and was so happy that he got to spend time with them this year. He was especially glad that Jeff, Michelle, and Scott and his family traveled to see him during these last months. Linda and her husband Randy were always a support to Van and Helen. Van was very proud of his 12 grandchildren: Darci, Coltin (Amy), Jaden, Connor (who is currently serving an LDS mission in San Diego, CA), Robert, Jacob (who just returned from the Hawaii Honolulu mission), Matthew, David, Savannah, Dallin, McKay, and Tate, and great-grandson Ty.

Click here to read Van's obituary. Click here to send flowers.

Our very deepest sympathies to Sheri, who has helped so many people and pets through so many difficult times, and to her family. Crappers represent.

Don't Come Around Here No More

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers may have been the first album I ever bought with its shrink-wrap still intact. Money was tight when I was a kid, so I usually rummaged in the cut-out bins for used LPs (the first record I ever bought was a scratchy old copy of The Ventures' Guitar Freakout that had lost its cardboard sleeve). But I was flush with birthday money and eager to shop in the front of the store for once, and while I don't recall exactly why I singled out Tom Petty for this honor, it was probably a combination of "American Girl" and his skinny frame and straw-colored shag, which reminded me fondly of every beach town bum I knew with a garage band. Or at least, Funky Winkerbean.

R.I.P., Tom. I'll always remember you from that triumphant shopping trip to Licorice Pizza, and for your eccentric performance in The Postman.

The Postman (1997)
Directed by Kevin Costner
Written by Eric Roth, based on the novel by David Brin.

Tagline: “The year is 2013. One man walked in off the horizon and hope came with him.”

Yes, the movie takes place in 2013, and if you start watching it now you just might be done by then. It may not be the best movie ever made about a nameless drifter who restores hope to a post-apocalyptic world by pretending to be a mail- man, but it’s certainly the longest.

We soon learn that there was a big catastrophe about 15 years previously (which would have been right about when this movie came out—not that we’re implying anything). This disaster brought plagues and pretentiousness in its wake, and led to the collapse of the United States Postal Service.

In this desperate and desolate future, our mythic hero, Kevin Costner, and his mule Bill go from town to town, performing one-man-and-a-mule versions of Macbeth in order to get free soup. The three branches of the federal government are gone, but somehow the NEA is still managing to fund highly offensive art.

Following one such performance, the town is invaded by the Hardasses, a White Supremacist militia led by General Bethlehem (Will Patton), a former Xerox® salesman who went over to the dark side (Cannon). The Hardasses, a group apparently based on the Amway plan, terrorize the Pacific Northwest with their post-apocalyptic protection racket. The wimpy people of the future don’t dare fight back, for they lack regular mail delivery.

Kevin and Bill are forcibly enlisted and taken to Hardass Headquarters, where Kevin is made to play “musical chairs” and exchange shower gifts with the other recruits, and Bill is pureed and served for lunch. As part of freshman orientation, Bethlehem explains “The Law of Eight,” which has something to do with Dick Van Patten, then he forces Kevin to recite some Shakespeare for the group, which is so moved by his performance they immediately send him on a suicide mission.

Kevin escapes, and eventually takes shelter in an old mail van. Mindful of how badly he was upstaged by the mule, Kevin spends the next five minutes acting with a human skeleton, and barely manages to steal the scene. He also steals the skeleton’s uniform, hat, and sack of mail, and heads out to live the dream of every boy since time immemorial—impersonating a postal carrier.

Kevin approaches the nearby town of Pineview, and tells the citizens that the U.S. Government has been restored, and as its first act, Congress has reestablished the postal service. The people are rightfully suspicious, since everyone knows that Congress’s first priority would be giving themselves pay raises. But Kevin demands entrance, citing U.S. Legal Code requiring that everybody give mailmen sanctuary, food, and women.

That night at the You’ve Got Mail dance, Kevin meets Abby, a comely young woman who asks about his height, IQ, and semen. It turns out she wants a baby, but her husband had “the bad mumps” and so they want Kevin to be the child’s “body father.” Of course, the one-time bedding is successful and she becomes pregnant—proving that while FedEx may have a better on-time record for package delivery, the U.S. postal service is still your best bet for delivering sperm. (A better title for this movie might have been “The Postman Cometh.”)

Kevin visits the town’s abandoned post office, where he meets Ford Lincoln Mercury, a teen with one burning desire: to be a mailman! Kevin reveals that only another postman can make you a postman (just like vampirism), and he reluctantly swears Ford into the club. Kevin knows the whole postal service thing is a scam, much like a chain letter, but Ford is intrigued by the new overnight semen delivery service, and his guileless idealism inspires Kevin to press on with his route. 

As Kevin heads out of town with his sack of Visa bills and Valu-Paks, there are numerous shots of the hopeful faces of the crowd. A little blonde girl (played, in an utterly bizarre coincidence, by Kevin Costner’s real-life daughter) sings “America the Beautiful.” The whole ceremony makes you proud to get junk mail.

However, shortly after Kevin’s departure, General Bethlehem shows up, and spies Abby. “First class piece of ass,” he declares, which is crude, but much nicer than calling her a “bulk mail piece of ass.” He claims Abby as his concubine, invoking droit de seigneur, then hand-delivers the point of his sword to her husband’s liver. The little Costner girl is present at the murder; the camera cuts to her face, and we can plainly see she is horrified by the brevity of her close-up.

Meanwhile, Kevin is distributing mail in some town somewhere else. Everyone applauds. Crowds are much easier to please after the apocalypse. One woman wants to know if New York City survived the plague. Kevin tells her Broadway is up and running, and Andrew Lloyd Webber is playing! So, no, the plague is still with them.

About then, Bethlehem and his troops arrive. The town refuses to pay tribute, now that they have mail. But Kevin realizes that while mail is nice and all, the Hardasses have guns, so he sweeps Abby away on his horse, and they gallop off into a blizzard, even though it was July five minutes ago.

They set up housekeeping in a deserted barn and wait for the pass to clear. Like many couples, Abby feels that Kevin doesn’t do his share around the place. She’s pregnant with his body child, but still has to chop the wood. She has to gather the snow. She has to shoot the horse and make it into soup. Kevin responds that he would help out more, but he got shot in the stomach during that last battle, and the horse isn’t agreeing with him. Now, at last, the disparate threads of this movie are finally pulling together: We’ve got an axe-wielding woman in the throes of pre-partum depression sharing a snow-bound, isolated cabin with a gut-shot whiner, and we’re all set for a highly satisfying homage to Stephen King’s Misery. Unfortunately, Abby just burns the barn down, and then it’s spring.

On their way back to Pineview, Kevin discovers that Ford has declared himself Postmaster General, and recruited all the teens to deliver mail in a post-apocalyptic pony express. Kevin is touched by their plucky endeavor, and joins in, taking all the really dangerous routes, for he is...The Postman.

In the scene that encapsulates the whole movie, another of Costner’s small, blond spawn writes a letter, but doesn’t get it out to the mailbox before The Postman canters past. The kid is crestfallen. This is clearly a turning point in his young life, for he has learned that sometimes, even though you try your hardest, your letter just doesn’t make the 5:00 pickup. However, the Postman senses a disturbance in the Force, and turns around to gaze at the lad. For a really long time. The kid holds up the letter. For a really long time. You’re thinking Kevin might just decide to trot back the ten yards and get the letter, but instead he thinks awful long and awful hard. Finally, he turns his horse around and gallops towards the boy. He snatches the letter from the boy’s hand, then thunders off, a hero who was not too big to ride a horse full speed past a six-year-old kid for no reason whatsoever.

Meanwhile, General Bethlehem hates the Postal Service, because they represent the spirit of resistance to his tyrannical rule, and because they’re always late with his monthly copy of Sassy. So, Bethlehem starts killing the people of Pineview, and Kevin and Abby flee to a town ruled by Tom Petty. 

"I know you," Kevin marvels at Petty. "You're famous." Petty bashfully demurs, but later points at Kevin, grins goofily, and says: 

"I heard of you, man. You're famous," illustrating how the apocalypse reversed humanity's traditional definition of fame, with rock stars on the bottom and the guy who stuffs Kroger circulars into your mailbox now reigning supreme.

Kevin is ready to give up, but Abby pleads with him to re-don the Postman outfit, for he is Oregon’s last, best hope for getting their Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes notifications. She tells him passionately that he “gives out hope like it was candy in your pocket,” meaning that it’s hope softened by body heat and flecked with lint. So Kevin challenges Bethlehem for leadership of the Hardasses, under “The Law of Eight,” which allows for the replacement of Diana Hyland’s character with Betty Buckley. Kevin wins, of course, for he is...The Postman. He then institutes a new law: Peace. Everyone nods in appreciation. What a good idea—why didn’t anybody think of this sooner? We probably could have avoided that whole apocalypse thing.

It’s now 2043 A.D. A new civilization based on Martha’s Vineyard has arisen, and, thanks to regular mail delivery, Mankind has rediscovered the ability to order pink Polo shirts from J. Crew. Kevin and Abby’s daughter is present for the dedication of a statue to The Postman. It is an exact replica in bronze of the scene where Kevin snatched the letter out of the hand of little Anakin Skywanker. A man in the crowd says, “That was me!” And how nice that a sculptor was there to capture the moment. But hey, let’s just replay that “letter grabbing” scene one more time, shall we, and let it tug on your hearts some more. The End.

But wait, who is that singing a duet of “I Didn’t Have to Be So Nice (I Would Have Loved Me Anyway)” with Amy Grant over the closing credits? Why, it’s The Postman himself! Don’t leave your seat or you’ll miss that great, heart-swelling moment when The Postman mounts his horse one last time, gallops through the recording studio and snatches the sheet music out of Amy Grant’s hand for no reason whatsoever.

To sum up: In The Postman’s vision of the future, the survivors live in isolated fortifications, ignorant of the outside world, and regressing to a pre-industrial state of technology. Fortunately, it is still possible for one man to inspire hope by gadding about in clothes filched from a decayed corpse and foisting 15-year old Lillian Vernon catalogues on the apathetic masses.

So what lesson can the average viewer draw from this film? Well, if you’re planning to rise from the ashes of Armageddon and become a beacon of light to a world swathed in darkness, you should probably start thinking now about what sort of federal, state, or municipal employee you plan to impersonate. 

Forget being a letter carrier—Kevin’s got that sewed up—but perhaps you could be...The Sanitation Worker, bringing new life to a devastated world by restoring regular trash collection. You could impregnate the women on your route, battle evil bands of nomads who indiscriminately kill and litter, and “hand out hope like it’s garbage from a can.” Or perhaps you could be...The County Department of Weights and Measures Compliance Auditor, shattering the gloom like a bolt of lightning by ensuring the accuracy of commercial weighing and measuring devices, and verifying the quantity of both bulk and packaged commodities. Think how many women would want your sperm then! 

Of course, these are just suggestions; in fact, there are countless job possibilities for post-apocalyptic saviors. You could be...The Mosquito Abatement Program Coordinator, or...The Fictitious Business Names Registration Clerk, or...that guy at the County Department of Agriculture who issues permits to have disabled livestock euthanized.

The thought of a world-ending cataclysm is certainly terrifying. But as we have seen, virtually any clown can yank Mankind back from the brink of utter extinction, so long as he’s willing to wear an ugly polyester uniform, donate sperm, and subsist on a diet of mule soup. 

[The above is excerpted from Better Living Through Bad Movies. Now available as a audiobook.]

Farewell John Heard

John Heard turned in a multitude of fine performances over the years (as witnessed by the fact that Sheri and I only wrote about one movie in which he appeared, and he wasn't even the star), and I always thought it was too bad his career didn't start earlier in the 1970s, when mainstream movies were riskier and more indie-like, and better equipped to take full advantage of an actor I like to think of as the WASPy Richard Dreyfuss.

Anyway, please take your seats; the service is about to begin...

Ahem! Our reading today comes from the book of Better Living Through Bad Movies. Chapter 6: Chick Flicks vs. Ick Flicks...

Beaches (1988)
Directed by Garry Marshall
Written by Iris Rainer Dart (novel) and Mary Agnes Donoghue

Bette Midler is rehearsing for her big concert at the Hollywood Bowl when she gets a message that causes her to abandon the gig and head to San Francisco. As she drives and cries, we flash back twenty or thirty years (depending on how old we are supposed to believe Bette Midler is); voila, we’re at Atlantic City, and Bette is TV’s Blossom. Back then she was a foul-mouthed, histrionic, whiny show business brat—and a much more interesting performer. She’s smoking under the boardwalk when she meets a lost little rich wuss named Hillary. Blossom forces Hillary to watch her bump ’n grind version of “Glory of Love” before she’ll take her back to her hotel. Hillary likes Blossom’s singing. Blossom likes it that Hillary likes her singing. So, the two girls become friends for life.

They are the best of pen pals until they’re 21, when Hillary turns into Barbara Hershey and comes to New York to escape her sheltered life. Bette invites Barb to share her squalid apartment, and it’s a festival of sisterhood as the two women dye their hair together, sing Christmas carols, do each other’s laundry, and synchronize their menstrual cycles.

To pay the rent, Bette dresses up like a killer rabbit from Night of the Lepus and delivers singing telegrams to John Heard. He is so impressed that he invites her to audition for the play he’s directing. Despite the fact that John’s production is so off-Broadway it’s actually in the Hudson River, Bette falls in love with him. But he only has eyes for Barb (actually, his character seems kinda light in the loafers, but the movie claims he’s smitten by Barbara). Following Bette’s triumphant debut in John’s weird musical about evil mimes, Barbara helps John celebrate by sleeping with him. Bette shouts at Barbara, “So much for you and your feminist principles!” and tells Gloria Steinem to revoke Barbara’s NOW membership on account of hussiness. Barbara explains that she couldn’t help herself, since John Heard was “the most attractive man I’ve met in my life.” It seems she really did live a sheltered existence.

Barbara returns to San Francisco, so, it’s back to letters and over-dubbed narration to let us know what’s happening in their lives. Bette becomes a Broadway star. (It seems surprisingly easy—one day she just is one. I don’t know why more people don’t do it). Barbara becomes a socialite and marries a jerk. Bette counters by marrying John Heard.

Barbara visits New York to see Bette’s musical about the invention of undergarments, and to be bitchy. John Heard is still attracted to Barbara, which infuriates Bette, but since he is also suffering from “A Star is Born Syndrome,” we already know this marriage is doomed. The two women have a shouting match in a department store, and the friendship is over.

Life goes on. Bette goes home to mother because John wasn’t paying attention to her. Mother tells her that everybody is tired of paying attention to her, and she should just get used to it. (No, this doesn’t mean the filmmakers realized that the audience is bored and ended the movie—it just means that you have Bette’s mother’s permission not to pay attention to Bette anymore.)

Bette’s career goes down in flames when she punches a director who says she has a fat ass, and she’s reduced to singing at a boarded-up disco. Barb finds her and apologizes; she explains that she was just jealous because she can’t yodel. (Really.) Bette’s still mad until Barb confesses that her husband left her and she’s pregnant. So, with Barbara’s life officially worse than Bette’s, Bette forgives her and the two have a baby-prep montage.

But when Bette’s agent finds a role for her, she’s outta there! The two women scream at each other, but a diva’s gotta do what a diva’s gotta do and Bette returns to New York. She learns that the job is in John Heard’s new production, and he gave it to her out of pity. So, now she is James Mason and he is Judy Garland! But then Barb has her baby, which makes everything okay for everybody. (Remember, babies solve all problems—have one today!)

Barbara’s daughter, Victoria, is now about six. Bette is a Broadway star again (as demonstrated by doormen congratulating her on her Tony wins). Barb is a noble lawyer (as demonstrated by other lawyers chiding her for high morals). Everything is going great when Barb gets dizzy and has trouble with drinking fountains…

Yes, she has a fatal disease. Bette volunteers to accompany Barb to the beach for her last summer (she just didn’t know how long this summer was going to be). Bette and Victoria don’t get along at first, because they’re both bossy, self-involved drama queens, and they’re both six. But Bette teaches Victoria how to smoke, cuss, and sing in bath houses, and the two bond, leaving Barbara feeling left out and unloved. Barb tries to get back at them by looking pale and sickly, but they don’t notice. So, she escalates her aggressive dying by refusing to speak, move, or bathe. She and Bette have another fight, which causes Barbara to snap out of it (the moping, I mean—not the dying), and they braid each other’s hair, play cards, and do other girly stuff for the rest of the summer. Bette even agrees to not sue Barbara for failing to die as scheduled, and goes back to being Bette Midler, Super Star.

She is preparing for her Hollywood Bowl concert when Barbara finally starts to get somewhere with the dying (this is where we came in). When Bette gets to the hospital, Barbara tells her that she wants to die at the beach in order to make the whole movie so gosh-darned poignant that nobody will be able to stand it. So, Bette sings “Wind Beneath My Wings,” we see some lovely sunset ’n surf images from a K-Tel commercial, and Barbara finally bites the sand.

The film seems to heave a sigh and wipe a tear as it treats us to a final flashback of the 11-year-old girls vowing eternal friendship while Bette belts out another musical tribute to aerodynamics.

Here Comes the Spider-Man! And a Couple Dead Guys. And a Lady Time Lord

Welcome back! Sorry for the delay -- there have been a multitude of weird, inexplicable, possibly curse-related injuries and illnesses plaguing the staff lately -- but we hope to make it up to you today with a pretty good show.

In Part I, Scott and Jeff chat about a couple of fun geeky things, and a whole lot of death (alas, if we'd only had time to consult with Romero expert Doc Logan....). Then Jeff Holland, Man-Baby Hunter, paddles upstream against the tears of male Doctor Who fans who are squeamish because the incoming lady time lord might find a new, off-label use for the Sonic Screwdriver, and it could totally void the warranty! Don't you even care?

Then it's time for the Unknown Movie Challenge, where the whole New Movie Crew goes back to high school for Spider-Man: Homecoming. Please join us for this rockin' sock hop, and visit the refreshment table for Hi-C fruit punch, Razzles, Clearasil, and self-loathing.

[Click here to subscribe on iTunes]


[Cross-posted to The Slumgullion]

No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To...Oh. Sorry.

Cheers and farewell to Roger Moore, my second-least favorite Bond (okay, maybe it's a dead heat with George Lazenby, but that seems like an insensitive use of the idiom). He did entertaining work on Maverick, as English cousin Beau, and hit just the right tone in The Saint, before his tenure as 007 got off to a prophetically ludicrous start in 1973 with Live And Let Die, where the producers chased hipness and social currency by surrounding Bond with the trappings of a blaxploitation film. Still, it was no stupider than Diamonds Are Forever, which is basically a two hour commercial for Zales and Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage, and I remember being surprised that I didn't hate Moore in the role (that would come later).

He was, by all accounts, a fine person, a philanthropist who dedicated his last years to humanitarian efforts as an ambassador for UNICEF, and I'm sure he'll be lovingly remembered by all who knew him. I didn't, of course, so all I have to go on are some crap films he made; and in that spirit, let's get the remembrances going with this look back at the nadir of the Bond series, Octopussy.

R.I.P. Sir Roger Moore, dead at 89.

[The following is taken from the spy film chapter in the upcoming sequel to Better Living Through Bad Movies, a chapter that is, perforce, heavy on the Roger Moore films.]

Octopussy (1983)

Directed by John Glen

Written by George MacDonald Fraser and Richard Maibaum & Michael G. Wilson

We open in a fake Latin American country which the filmmakers picked up cheap at a Mission: Impossible estate sale. Roger Moore arrives at the world’s most listless steeplechase event (nobody’s moving fast enough to call it a race, so I presume it’s some sort of occupational therapy for depressed horses on Thorazine), accompanied by the first of our nubile Bond Girls. She doesn’t make out with the 56-year old Roger, because that would be gross, but she does glue a pencil mustache to his lip so he looks more like a child molester.

Bond tries to sneak into a high security military hangar, the kind full of top secret fighter jets that’s usually located next door to a race track, and plant a bomb. He’s immediately caught by Fake Latin Americans, but saved by Nubile Bond Girl, who’s not only smarter than Bond, she’s smarter than the us, because she gets the hell out of this movie during the pre-credit sequence, while we just sit here. Anyway, Bond’s horse trailer turns into a flying horse trailer and he escapes, and also accidentally blows up the hangar he was trying to bomb while trying to evade a missile, but he burns up all his fuel, so he crosses the Latin American-Appalachian border, lands at a gas station, and asks a confused hillbilly to “fill ‘er up.”

BAH DAH DAH DAH!  As pre-title sequences go, it’s no Goldfinger, but then we never got to see Sean Connery arguing with a pump jockey about how his purchase should entitle him to a full page of Green Stamps.

After the theme song (“All Time High” [no it isn’t], sung by Rita Coolidge, who delivers it with all the sexy abandon of Calvin Coolidge) we cut to East Berlin, where a clown attempts to flee a circus (but not a flea circus). He’s pursued through the woods by twin assassins (sadly, not conjoined twin assassins, because how awesome would that be?) in what quickly begins to resemble an All-Bozo remake of The Most Dangerous Game. But when his position is betrayed by his floppy clown shoes and bouquet of constantly popping balloons, the twins throw knives into him until he falls into a river. The pin-cushioned clown crawls up the muddy bank, crashes through the French doors of the British Ambassador’s residence, drops a Fabergé Egg on the carpet and dies. Because it’s funny!

Cut to London, where Bond and Moneypenny indulge in a bit of senile flirtation. I don’t want to say they’re perhaps a shade too old for their roles, but it does start to feel like a production of The Gin Game.

Bond meets with some other elderly gents who are fussed because Fabergé eggs are flooding the market, which smells like Communism. Store Brand “M” (just as good as the national brand “M” because he’s dead) confesses that he assigned 009 to go undercover as a clown, but that didn’t seem to help, and now it’s 007’s turn. So stand by for action as Bond attends an an auction at Sotheby’s. Sure it doesn’t sound exciting, but there’s always the chance he’ll make rude gestures to his friends like Dick Van Dyke did in that one episode where he accidentally bid on a hideous clown painting. (Coincidence? I think not).

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, General Orlov is playing Risk with the Politburo in the hopes they’ll get distracted and accidentally invade Western Europe, but he keeps getting heckled by General Gogol (who made a career out of playing the Reasonable Russkie role in these movies), winds up putting too many game pieces on Irkutsk and gets totally reamed on his next turn.

At Sotheby’s, Bond gets in a breathless bidding war with Louis Jourdan (in that they’re both old and wheezy  – okay, I’ll stop). Louis wins the auction, but before he can collect, Bond switches a fake egg for the real egg, which means – I’m not sure what, but I guess someone’s cholesterol count will be going down.

Bond follows Louis to India, where he finds him cheating at backgammon the way Goldfinger cheated at gin rummy, but they switch things up this time by making the villain a stylish Frenchman in a black silk Nehru jacket instead of a stocky German in a terrycloth onesie.  Credit where credit is due.

Bond and Louis play a tense board game, then Bond flashes his egg, and Louis’ turbaned henchman crushes a pair of dice with his bare hands.  007 wins a huge bankroll from Louis and hands it to his local contact, saying, “Here, that should keep you in curry for a few weeks.”  Sadly, the Indian agent doesn’t peel off a few rupees and say, “Here, that should keep you in Liver-Spotted Dick.” Then we get a chase scene between a couple of motorized rickshaws through the streets of Downtown India, which are crowded with snake charmers, sacred cows, and men walking on fire and sleeping on nails. Fortunately, the rickshaws are only going about 7 mph, so no racist clichés were killed in the making of this film.

Q shows up with a bunch of crap from the Sharper Image, including “the latest liquid crystal TV” (Bond uses the camera to zoom in and out on a buxom secretary’s cleavage, making me think that Austin Powers wasn’t actually a parody of these films, just a reboot).

Louis’s girlfriend, Miss Bonestructure, invites Bond to a formal sit down dinner with double entendre to follow. Cut to his hotel room, where the two are naked in bed and drinking champagne. Miss Bonestructure says, “I need a refill” in such a sultry way that Bond does a take to the camera that seems to ask, “How many times does she think I can ejaculate?”  Instead, he quizzes her about the cephalopod tattoo on her back. “That’s my little octopussy,” she coos. Wow. Koalas only have two vaginas; no wonder Bond looks so tired.

Bonestructure steals Bond’s egg, and Hench-Turban knocks him out. He wakes up at Louis’ palace just in time for dinner, where we’re served stuffed sheep heads and aimless dialogue. Realizing the scene is going nowhere, Louis plucks out a sheep’s eye and ostentatiously gnaws on it like a hardboiled egg, obviously hoping this movie will lead to something better, like a part in a John Waters film.

Back in his room, Bond slips into an action leisure suit and uses his acid-squirting fountain pen (25¢ plus 3 Proof of Purchase seals) to dissolve the window bars, just as General Orlov drops by the see how his plan to conquer the world through fake Fabergé eggs is progressing.  Bond does a lot of sneaking around and eavesdropping, making me wish they’d replaced Roger Moore with that lady who played Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched, because she had real flair for this kind of thing.

Bond escapes the palace by pretending to be a corpse, but Louis’ henchmen catch on, since he’s basically pulled this same ruse in every other scene of the movie.  Louis mounts an elephant and proceeds to hunt 007 through the jungle, but Bond evades him by swinging from vine to vine while bellowing a Tarzan call. 

No. No, I’m not kidding. Not even a little.

Bond infiltrates the private island of Octopussy, which is kind of like Themiscrya, or Lesbos, as it’s occupied solely by women, some dressed as sexy harem girls, some dressed in bright red unitards like William Katt’s character in The Greatest American Hero.

Bond confronts Octopussy, who suspects he’s come to assassinate her for being the world’s leading jewel smuggler and circus owner, but Bond doesn’t really know why he’s there, and the script is certainly no help. Happily, they discover they have something in common, since it turns out that ten years earlier, 007 made her father commit suicide, so naturally they start to party. But Louis interrupts their tête-à-tête to utter the immortal line, “You have a nasty habit of surviving” (by the way, this is the answer to that age old bar bet, “What do James Bond and post-apocalyptic cockroaches have in common?”)

Bond and Octopussy do the nasty (habit of surviving) but they’re interrupted, again, this time by hatchet-wielding pirates in diapers, and a guy who uses a circular saw like a yo-yo.  007 does a competent job of fighting them off, but then he falls out a window and gets swallowed by a crocodile. Presumably the rest of the film will involve Bond just trying to find ways to amuse himself with Captain Hook’s hand.

Turns out, he’s okay, because it was a fake escape crocodile made by Q, and Bond wants Octopussy to think he’s dead so he can go to the circus.  Cut to East Berlin where Bond watches a guy get shot out of a cannon, then skulks around a bunch of boxcars like a hobo with helmet hair.

General Orlov and Louis have also come to the circus, in order to sell Octopussy some costume jewelry and hide an atomic bomb in the funnel cake wagon.  Bond, using his License to Kravitz, overhears a day player in a Russian uniform explain the whole plot, and takes it as a cue to skulk around some more.

Orlov plans to smuggle the bomb onto a U.S. Air Force base in Germany and detonate it, making the world think American negligence is responsible. Western Europe will instantly become a Nuclear-Free Zone, and the Red Army can just waltz in and take over. Fortunately, Bond has a chance to stop the plot when he corners Orlov in a circus train car. Unfortunately, he’s so busy triumphantly monologuing about how he figured out the General’s scheme that Orlov easily escapes.

Bond tries to catch up to the train with the bomb, but the Russians shoot out his tires. Surprisingly, his sedan is the exact same gauge as a railroad car, and he somehow gets his rims onto the rails, and drives along the tracks, and ordinarily something this stupid would piss me off, but the filmmakers have cleverly spent the last 90 minutes building up my tolerance by gradually exposing me to greater and greater doses of stupidity, until now it doesn't even faze me. I’m like a heroin addict taking a Tylenol.

Bond manages to get on board the train and hide inside a gorilla suit (honestly, I’m fine. Can’t feel a thing). Hench-Turban sees Bond’s eyes behind the mask, and begins to suspect there’s someone in there, especially when Bond clumsily shuffles around in his big ape feet and bangs into a bell. Hench-Turban grabs a sword and decapitates the costume, but fortunately Bond used those precious few seconds to teleport onto the roof.

There’s a dull and inconclusive fight on top of the train with Hench-Turban. Then one of the deadly knife-throwing twin assassins appears, and it looks like the end for 007. But the producers apparently won’t let him throw a knife for fear of tearing the rear projection screen, so he and Bond just engage in a bit of roughhousing and spirited horseplay until they fall off the train.

Well, so far it’s been a festival of fail for 007. Fortunately, General Gogol shows up and plugs Orlov, and even though Bond doesn’t even get to kill the villain, I feel pretty good that at least somebody accomplished something today.

Meanwhile, at the Air Force base, the atomic circus is in mid-performance (apparently it takes about ten minutes to set up one of those big top tents; I don’t know why more people don’t take them camping) and the bomb is counting down to detonation. Bond steals a car and races to the base, but manages to get the whole West German Polizei chasing him, so instead of heading straight to the commander and saying, “We have to defuse a nuclear device!” he skulks around, then spends twenty minutes applying elaborate clown make-up, leading to the one line I personally never wanted to hear spoken about James Bond, “The suspect’s wearing a clown suit!”

007 runs into the big top shrieking about a bomb, kicks a cop in the crotch with his clown shoe, and panics the audience. Fortunately, Octopussy shoots the lock off the trunk holding the bomb, and Bond defuses it at the last second, barely justifying his existence.  Unfortunately, there’s still fifteen minutes to go. Let’s see…Gogol killed the big bad, so I guess that only leaves Louis. True, he was just a middle management villain, but Bond’s got to kill somebody or he’s going to have a very tough time getting his expenses reimbursed.

Cut to India. Louis is already there (apparently he can teleport too). But then so is Octopussy, and she was back at the circus with Bond, so I’m thinking maybe a TARDIS is involved.  Anyway, Octopussy and her highly trained girls infiltrate Louis’ palace, taking out the guards with ruthless efficiency in a scene that’s exactly like the climax of The Dirty Dozen, except everyone’s dressed like a belly dancer.  (I’m sure Bond would have liked to be a part of this operation, but he had to take off his clown makeup first, and someone borrowed his Neutrogena Cleansing Towelettes and didn’t put them back.)

So anyway, it’s Girl on Henchman action, but then after awhile Bond and Q dodder onto the scene in a hot air balloon, having apparently drifted away from their breathtaking tour of wine country.  Louis and Hench-Turban grab Octopussy and try to take off in a airplane, so 007 switches to a horse, because that makes sense.

Bond rides up behind the plane as it races down the runway, jumps out of the saddle, over the head of his horse and onto the tail of the moving aircraft, causing the laws of physics to just say "screw it" and leave the universe in a huff. Louis takes off, Bond and Hench-Turban have a knife fight on the roof of the aircraft, and…

Okay, this is the stupidest scene yet, but you know what? Thanks to the mithridatic effect of the previous scenes, my liver is handling it just fine.

So Bond pulls some wires out of the fuselage and makes the plane crash, but on the way down he and Octopussy jump onto the edge of a cliff so they’re fine, but Louis doesn’t have the presence of mind to step out and keeps crashing, so he dies.

Now for the sexy coda. We’re back on Octopussy Island, and for once the grim toll of Bond’s injuries is realistically portrayed – his arm is in a sling, his leg immobilized and elevated. But Octopussy is horny, so Bond flings off all this therapeutic impedimenta, says, I was just kidding about the traction! Psyche!, and then they smooch while Rita Coolidge again warbles “All Time High,” which I now realize wasn’t a theme song, but a prescription.

Oh, and James Bond Will Be Back in A View To A Kill.  I, however, won’t be here when he gets back, and I’m not leaving him a forwarding address either.  He can just keep my LPs. And that five bucks he owes me.  But I want my mother's Pyrex casserole back.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get all time high.

Farewell to Fred

By Hank Parmer

I first met Fred, the Maine Coon cat, a couple of weeks after his family moved in across the alley.

Something in the bushes by our shed caught my eye, as I exited from my car on that bright, early autumn afternoon. With his "classic" tabby markings in shades of ash, Fred blended in with the hatchwork of light and shadow under the honeysuckle so flawlessly that it took me a moment to realize I was being intensely scrutinized by a pair of yellow eyes, belonging to a fairly large and strikingly handsome cat. I said "Hello", to which he responded with neither an "Eek! I've been seen! Run away!" nor a "Feed me, long-lost buddy!" glomming-on, only a complacent narrowing of his eyes. He obviously felt he belonged there. So I said "See you later" and went inside.

We became better acquainted over the next few weeks, as he'd supervise us while we were doing yardwork, or join us while we were sitting on the porch. He may have nominally resided with the family across the alley, but they weren't really cat people. I think it was more at their six-year-old's insistence that they'd taken Fred in a couple of years previously, when he was a kitten. (And a devastatingly cute one, I'll wager.) But he was full-grown now, and they were clearly more attached to their two dogs. While Fred, even though we hadn't been feeding him, preferred to hang out around our place.

Sometime in that period, Fred made up his mind to check out our house. We had two indoor cats then: Puck, the elderly Turkish Van, and Smudge, the fierce little salt-and-pepper calico who at that time was about five or six.

Whether it was jealousy or simply calico cantankerousness, she absolutely detested this newcomer from the first. To the end of her days, she mercilessly bullied him -- a diminutive seven-pound termagant who took a fiendish pleasure in tormenting this big, amiable fuzzball. Her favorite trick was to run up to him while he was sleeping, hiss, smack him on the nose and then stalk away, leaving him blinking groggily, with this "WTF is her problem?" expression.

Puck, on the other hand, immediately took to this inquisitive stranger. Which was only to be expected, for he'd had always been a serenely amicable little cuss. He was about 16 years of age then, our benevolent feline overlord, who ruled the roost through the sheer force of his adorableness. As you can see, the two quickly formed a mutual admiration and snuggling society.

I often wished the two could have spent more time together. Fred's fondness for the old man must have outweighed Smudge's hostility, because he soon became accustomed to banging on our door to let us know he'd dropped by for a visit. If we didn't hear him the first time, he'd bang the door with increasing emphasis until one of us let him in.


Eventually I was able to talk to Fred's people about having him vaccinated for rabies and feline leukemia, and started on heartworm preventative. (We lost a cat to feline leukemia long ago, before it was generally known there was such a thing, and by this point -- as I'm sure you'll have guessed -- we'd grown fond of the furry goof.) I offered to take him to the vet and pay for his vaccinations. Fortunately, they were okay with that. I'd have done it anyway, without their permission, but still ....

To make a long story short, when the family left a few months later, they asked if we'd like to keep him. Although this was only acknowledging what was by then a fait accompli, we still appreciated the gesture: So many assholes seem to think nothing of moving away and leaving an inconvenient pet behind to fend for themselves. Thus Fred officially took up residence at our home for wayward pets. We kept the name their boy had bestowed upon him. Somehow, it seemed to suit him.

Fred remained an indoor/outdoor cat for the next twelve years. This wasn't so much our choice as due to the fact that by the time he joined our household he was thoroughly set in his free-roaming ways. Whenever we had to keep him inside against his will, let's just say he made our lives ... difficult.

He spent the major portion of his time outside, particularly after Puck passed on about three years later. He'd come inside to eat, for some attention or to crash out, and to avoid the worst of the heat and cold -- although sometimes he stayed out all night even when the temperatures dipped into the lower teens.

Though it was a constant worry for us, in all that time he managed to avoid being hit by a car or carried off by a coyote -- not uncommon fates in our neighborhood. Ironically, what finally did him in made those other alternatives in retrospect seem far kinder.

So what words come to mind, when trying to describe Fred's personality? Well, "solidity", for one. If your household has been graced with an example of his breed, you'll know what I mean. Although he wasn't one of those monster Maine Coons, at between 17 and 18 pounds he was nonetheless a substantial presence. He was a low-slung beast, built like a tank, with the broadest chest I've ever seen in a house cat. When he'd conclude his regal progress across the yard with a sudden burst of speed as he galloped up our front steps, it wasn't with that typical feline bounding lope, but a motion more like a dry-land version of the breast stroke.

Maine Coon cats are sometimes described as "vertically challenged" and Fred was no exception. He was very much a ground dweller. Although once, while we were outside seeing off some visiting friends, he must have overheard us remarking to them that he wasn't a climber. Of course Fred had to give us that day's lesson in Cat Zen by immediately scooting over to a tree and swarming up it like a champion lumberjack scaling a mighty Scots Pine. But for that one instance, though, I never saw him up in a tree, or for that matter, anywhere which would have required much of a leap or a climb to reach.

He was a quiet cat, except on those occasions when he felt it necessary to make his extreme displeasure at being kept inside known to us. Despite his friendly and curious nature, Fred was fortunately never a lap kitty. His thing was to park himself on the flat wooden arm of my mission-style recliner to demand a neck, chin, ears and chest scratch. (His deep, resonant purr always reminded me of Baby, the eponymous leopard in Howard Hawk's screwball comedy.) That arm of my chair also doubled as a convenient ledge on which he could stretch out and do his "boneless filet of kitty" act. He was big enough to cover it completely, with his chin and a paw or two dangling off the edge.

When he wasn't in one of those gracefully flung poses at which he so excelled, catching up on his beauty sleep, Fred had an immense sense of his own dignity, as you could see from my post here riffing on his reaction to the big (for these parts, anyway) snow back in the winter of 2016. Which made his kittenish moods all the more hilarious. There are few things as endearingly comical as the sight of a big, fuzzy, roly-poly cat gleefully wrestling with a little catnip mouse, pausing occasionally to glance your way, to make sure you're watching. It's one of the many things that I miss about him more than I can possibly tell.


The end began in late June of last year. Fred would occasionally absent himself for a day or two, even three days, so at first we weren't too concerned about him. After he'd disappeared for five days straight, though, we were getting a bit frantic and about to start posting "Lost" signs and checking with the shelter, when to our great relief he showed up that evening. He ate a few bites of his food -- and vanished again. Joan then had a hunch, and walked over to the apartment complex at the head of our street. It turned out that some of the tenants had been feeding him because they thought he was a stray. A stray, mind you, who was wearing a new flea collar, and had a collar with a rabies vaccination tag and a name tag with our phone number.

Fred allowed her to carry him home, which in itself was a major tell he wasn't feeling up to snuff: His typical reaction to being picked up and held was to wriggle and kick like a fractious toddler. He'd lost weight, too. Ominously, among other problems, he'd picked up an intestinal parasite which the vet informed us normally only affects kittens, before their immune systems are up to speed. We were able to cure him of the parasites, though, and he began to fill out again.

As you might guess, Fred wasn't at all pleased about having to be confined indoors. Every morning I went through this routine with him where he would sit beside me on the arm of my chair and stare out the window, complaining loudly and bitterly, because I just couldn't seem to get it through my thick human skull that he should be let out nowwww! We could tell he still wasn't up to his usual self, though, because he was neither as vehement or persistent about it as he normally would have been. Still, it tore at my heart to keep the big guy cooped up.

In early August, Fred began sneezing frequently, and we noticed a slight swelling between his nose and his right eye. At first the vet thought it might be a type of fungal infection, which would have been easily treatable. But the tests showed it wasn't. It was cancer. There was simply no way we could afford to consult a veterinary oncologist, much less pay for the surgery and then the chemotherapy. Especially since by that point we were already into our own vet for almost a grand from the tests and treatments he'd needed earlier in the summer, including a teeth cleaning which also involved a couple of extractions.

(Fortunately, we are blessed with a veterinarian who'll let us pay them off over time when we run up a big bill, and they won't even charge interest. Of course, it didn't hurt that Fred was one of their favorite patients.)

I'll spare you the details of the next few months, as the cancer grew and that disastrous year dragged to its close. Just that it made a sad, horrible time exponentially more awful. It seemed a particularly cruel thing to happen to such a handsome creature.

If you've ever dealt with a pet's terminal illness you'll know what I mean when I say one of the worst parts of it is determining when it's time to end it. Fred was the one who let us know the unavoidable had come when he stopped eating. Nothing we tried could tempt him, and we weren't about to let him starve himself to death.

Fred took his last trip to the vet in the grey, chill afternoon, on Friday the 13th of January. That morning, I sat on the floor beside him, because by this point he was growing weaker and could no longer hop up onto the arm of the recliner. He leaned his chest against my leg and rested his chin on my thigh, while I petted him for so long that afterwards my arm was sore for a couple of days. Clearly, he was ready for this to be over.

The knowledge that fourteen years is a pretty good run for a cat, particularly an outdoor cat, is a small comfort. It's been over a month-and-a-half since we took him on that final journey, and months since he was last allowed outside. Yet even now, whenever the north wind rattles the screen door in back, I still find myself thinking I should drop what I'm doing and go let the big guy in. He had me just that well-trained.

"But We Don't!...Want!...the Irish!"

Mary and I just got home from seeing Suicide Squad (which we'll be talking about this Saturday on a special edition of The Slumgullion. Check your local listings), where my many Facebook friends who have a Brony-like devotion to character actors informed me that David Huddleston has recently perished at the age of 85.  If the name doesn't ring a bell, you've undoubtedly seen one of his movies: Blazing Saddles, The Big Lebowski, The Klansman, Bad Company, Brian's Song, or multitudinous TV appearances: Then Came Bronson, Room 222, The New Temperatures Rising Show, The New Perry Mason, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Kung Fu, Petrocelli, and Blansky's Beauties, with time out for an ABC Afterschool Special (Amy & the Angel).

Unfortunately, the only David Huddleston joint I've ever given the Better Living Through Bad Movies treatment to is the seasonably inappropriate Santa Claus: The Movie, which is scheduled to appear in our upcoming sequel. But time waits for no man, especially the dead ones, and attention must be paid to such a person. So we present Christmas in July, with...

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc

Written by: David Newman (screenplay) David & Leslie Newman (story)

Tagline:  Seeing is Believing.

Santa Claus was produced by Alexander and Illya Salkind, at a time when the legendary team was at the height of their creative powers; that is to say, between Supergirl (1984) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).  Suggested tagline:  You Will Believe a Movie Can Suck.

Now, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, kids – this film takes a hard and uncompromising look at the hand-made wooden toy industry, and exposes us to some harsh truths about Santa; but I believe that in the end, we’ll be better or bitter people for it.  One or the other.

The budget was reportedly $50 million (in 1985 dollars), and no expense was spared in creating an otherworldly realm of enchantment.  We open in medieval Scandinavia, which at this performance will be played by a plastic log cabin inside a $9.99 musical snowglobe from Spencer’s Gifts.

It’s Christmas Eve, and inside the snowglobe, a Jessica Fletcher impersonator dressed like a Pilgrim is telling a rambling story about ice to a group of children whose immobile, slack-jawed faces suggest they have each been lovingly and individually stunned with a blunt object.   Suddenly, we hear a jingling of sleigh bells, then portly, middle-aged fur-enthusiast Claus bursts into the lodge.  The sole supplier of wood to the village’s entirely wood-based economy, the boisterous Claus still finds time to make crappy gifts for the stupefied moppets out of bark and sawdust.

A storm is raging, but Claus must still deliver his burlap sack full of crudely carved horse figurines and vaguely disturbing birchwood Voodoo dolls to the remaining children on the other side of the Village.  Since the conditions are potentially deadly, he decides to drag his wife along with him; but not to worry, for Claus’s faithful reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, can pull his sleigh through any weather.  They set off with a merry jingle and a twinkle in their eyes and immediately become lost in the blizzard, while the reindeer drop dead.

Realizing their lives are in danger, Claus hops out of the sleigh and delivers a tongue-lashing to his recently deceased draft animals.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Claus begins pissing and moaning about the cold while her core temperature drops.  Claus grabs hold of her just as she loses consciousness, and quickly but calmly takes action.  Although by now he’s half-obscured by the driving snow, I think he cuts her open and tries to climb into her abdominal cavity; but he’s too slow slicing through her many layers of doeskin undergarments, and he freezes to death too.

Merry Christmas, kids!  The only thing you’re going to find under the tree this year is Santa’s autopsy report.

Suddenly, a brilliant star appears above the pile of dead bodies, glowing ever brighter, and we realize that somewhere on this magic Christmas night, a supernova has obliterated an entire solar system.

But the star has amazing powers, for its ethereal radiance resurrects the reindeer, and turns them into overpriced puppets from FAO Schwartz.  Then Claus is revived by the stellar defibrillator, and nudges awake his deceased wife just as a vast army of torch-wielding lawn gnomes shamble toward them.  In the vanguard is Dudley Moore, who identifies himself as an elf, and adds, “I’m the one called Patch.”  And while this hardly comes as welcome news, it could’ve been worse, I suppose; he could’ve been Patch Adams.  The rest of the elves are named things like Boog, Honka, Vout – basically they all sound like things that were hawked up into a Kleenex.

Mrs. Claus is visibly uncomfortable to find that her lifeless body has been reanimated by Travelocity mascots, but Patch urges her not to feel “elf-conscious.”  It seems the elves live in a vast, mystical ski lodge, and they have been observing humanity for centuries, waiting for “the Chosen One,” a man with a heart so pure he could see the invisible elfin realm, as if through the eyes of a child, and so stupid he doesn’t know to come in out of the blizzard.  It’s all a little overwhelming, but the important thing is that Santa is dead, and his corpse enslaved by imps so he can work in their toy fulfillment operation.

As they drag Claus and his wife toward their new, gingerbread-encrusted prison, the elves remark that he seems very jolly for a Shanghaied cadaver, while Patch admits to “a real feeling of elf-confidence.”  By the way, I hope you’re enjoying the elf puns, because the screenwriters have about 317 more of them.

The Clauses enter the intricately carved wooden lodge, which is both the elves’ home and their workshop, a whimsical wonderland that resembles a Vietnamese sneaker factory crammed inside a Black Forest cuckoo clock.  As Zombie Santa gazes about, marveling  at the abundance of toys lovingly fashioned from Scots pine and Norway spruce, aspen, birch, alder, and Siberian larch, we realize that elves are a serious cause of deforestation.  We also realize that all the gnomes are male, and really hope this fairytale doesn’t end up with Mrs. Claus downing too much mulled wine one night and pulling an HO scale train.

The gnomes play dress-up with Santa, finally settling on the red suit because it nicely matches his rosacea, then they give him a magical sleigh, and six reindeer to go along with his team of two undead ones.  Suddenly, a visibly confused Burgess Meredith wanders onto the set, and starts muttering about how Claus is “the Chosen One,” (I thought we’d covered this already), then explains the physics of his new powers:  “Time travels with you.  Indeed, the night of the world is a passage of endless night for you.”  Well, that sure sounds like damnation to me.  Thanks, Mick.

He dubs the confused walking corpse “Santa,” then wanders out of the room again, dragging eight yards of beard behind him.  I never did get his name, but since he has the power to declare people saints, I presume it was the Pope.

The elves feed each reindeer a glowing mixture of crank, Pop Secret, and PCP, which allows them to fly, and to punch their hoof through a windshield and not even feel it.

Santa takes off, but almost immediately Donner gets airsick, and Claus has to bank sharply to dodge all the reindeer puke in the slipstream.  The rest of the trip is a montage of wooden toys, bad blue screen flying effects, superimposed letters to Santa (although he never existed before tonight, so you have to admire the elves’ viral marketing) and one shot of a depressed adolescent dressed like a harlequin and moping on his mandolin.

The years pass.  Much like a kidney stone.  In the 18th century, a little girl writes a letter to Santa, ratting out her brother for being mean to the cat.  Mrs. Claus declares that from now on, only good children will receive crappy wooden toys, and the Naughty List is established.  Unfortunately, Santa can’t depend entirely on snitches, so the elves initiate an illegal surveillance program of the world’s children.

Then we get another montage of kids getting slightly more modern, but still incredibly crappy presents (a plastic abacus?  Really, Santa?), while a horrible, keening childrens’ choir shrieks lyrics like, “Santa really knows the way to live…!”

Now it’s the 20th century, and a street urchin who resembles Jack Wild in Oliver! is dodging the police, when he suddenly glances into a townhouse, and locks eyes with a Poor Little Rich Boy or Girl (the Prince Valiant haircut is a little ambiguous).   From across the street, they exchange long, lingering, unmotivated and intensely uncomfortable glances.

Back at the North Pole, Santa has gotten used to his slave name, but not the workload, and has begun passing out in his pea soup.   Patch connives to be appointed Dick Cheney, and immediately reorganizes the artisanal workshop along industrial principles, and introduces innovations like toys made on an assembly line, before being hand-dipped in bright, lead-based paint.

It’s Christmas Eve again, and Santa takes his load of gifts to New York City, which is the only place he ever goes in this movie.  Meanwhile, the Artful Dodger is gazing through the window of McDonalds, salivating as extras gorge themselves on product placement.   Suddenly, he teleports to a window outside Pageboy’s townhouse, and peers at her for awhile.  Deeply touched by his plight, Pageboy gathers scraps from her dinner table, and steps out back, clucking her tongue and calling “Little Boy!  Hey Boy…!”  She puts the plate down, then steps back inside.  The Artful Dodger creeps out from under a bush, and ravenously feasts on her leftovers; then, while he’s groggy from the dinner roll, chicken skin, and residual salad, she traps and neuters him.

High above the city, Santa is ho-ho-hoing it up, declaring, “Tonight there’s not a child alive who’s not bursting with happiness!”  Then, in the alley below, he spies the Artful Dodger – a child with no home, no parents, no testicles.

Santa teleports to the Dodger’s side, but the boy thinks the jolly old man is just another one of those winos who ring the bell beside the Salvation Army kettle, or a pedophile, or maybe both.  Santa confirms this suspicion when he says, “wanna go for a ride?”

But Claus changes the Artful Dodger’s mind when he takes the grimy urchin on a glorious rear-projected tour of New York City; a thrill-ride that almost ends in disaster when Santa tries to pull an outside loop and nearly rams the sleigh deer-first into the World Trade Center.

He drags the kid along on his route, where they accidentally wake up Pageboy, and they have another oddly sexualized stare-down while Santa eats cookies.   Coincidentally, it seems that Pageboy is the only child to get presents this year, since Santa is ready to knock off for the night.  He drops Jack Wild off in the alley and says, “See you next Christmas Eve!”  Naturally, the homeless child is thrilled, and promises to meet Santa again one year from tonight, providing he doesn’t starve to death, die of exposure, or get shanked in a culvert.

Meanwhile, all the wooden wagons and hobbyhorses turned out by Patch’s assembly line are breaking down, and overnight Santa gets a global reputation for giving out “shoddy, cheap toys.”  Patch is demoted from Dick Cheney to Assistant Scooter Libby, so he throws a hobo bindle over his shoulder and trudges off across the tundra.  Perhaps heading toward the Island of Misfit Toys, although with any luck, he’ll elf-destruct.

Cut to Capitol Hill, where Congress is holding hearings on John Lithgow’s toy company.  The committee members read Lithgow the riot act for manufacturing baby dolls that combust like flash paper, and adorable pandas that are stuffed with nails and broken glass, but they still vote him a 34 billion dollar bailout.

Patch goes to Lithgow’s office, and introduces himself as an “elf-taught” toymaker with skills that are “elf-explanatory.”  He’s got a stash of stolen reindeer crack, and wants to lace lollipops with it and deliver it to all children all over the world on Christmas night, thus becoming Santa himself!  (The original title of this film was Kringle White Female.)

Patch creates a whimsical rocket sled powered by Christmas lights in a plastic tube, and delivers his highly addictive confections all over the world, while Santa, as usual, meanders around New York City.  Suddenly the jolly old Zombie remembers that homeless kid from last year, and lands in a urine-scented vacant lot.  Amazingly, the kid is still alive, and Santa presents him with a hand-carved wooden elf effigy.  The urchin is naturally excited by this gift, because as soon as Santa dumps him again, he can burn it in a trashcan to stay warm.

The repurposed reindeer crack is a huge hit, and Patch becomes a media darling.  Meanwhile, back at the North Pole, Santa is having a mid-immortal life crisis, and wondering if he should just eliminate Christmas altogether, since he’s getting underbid by treacherous former employees who are flagrantly violating their non-compete agreements.

At Lithgow’s factory, Patch is having second thoughts about going mano a mano with Santa Claus, and spends a good 30 seconds moping in the giant dresser where he sleeps.  Then he sighs, grabs a copy of Sleighboy magazine and retires to his drawer for a little elf-abuse.  (If you can’t beat ‘em…)

Back in the Big Apple, the Artful Dodger climbs into Pageboy’s bedroom so he can share his tuberculosis and dangerously high fever.  The Poor Little Rich Boy/Girl is again touched by the plight of this friendless, destitute orphan, and insists that he stay and recuperate in a damp storage closet in her basement.

Cut to the North Pole, where the new Dick Cheney tries to cheer up Santa by making dolls that pee, but the old man, despite his Germanic origins, seems to have lost his taste for water sports.

Cut to Pageboy’s townhouse, where the kids are eavesdropping on her step-uncle, John Lithgow, and his plans for a hostile takeover of Christmas.  It seems the reindeer crack, which they’re planning to distribute again, is explosive, and will blow the heads off their prepubescent demographic.

Lithgow catches the Artful Dodger, but Pageboy escapes and writes an emergency letter to Santa, explaining the asinine third act complications.  Santa tells the elves to hitch up the reindeer, because he’s going to kick ass and rescue that homeless kid he keeps ditching.  Tragically, two of the reindeer are on the DL, but Santa gives the remaining members of the team a pep talk.  “Now listen,” he says.  “I know we’re two men short today, but this time you’ve got to fly like the wind.  Can you do it for me?  Can you do it for that homeless kid I keep ditching?  Sure you can!”

As inspirational speeches go, it’s not exactly St. Crispin’s Day, but then, he’s a zombie trying to rabble-rouse ungulates.

Patch finds the Artful Dodger tried up in the basement, and immediately enlists him to help distribute his deadly explosive candy canes.  They take off in the Fisher Price Rocket Sled of Death, with Santa and Pageboy in hot pursuit.

Back at the toy factory, the police pull up outside, and Lithgow reaches into his desk just the way Bob Gunton did when he committed suicide at the end of The Shawshank Redemption.  Sadly, though, he doesn’t pull out a gun; instead, he takes an overdose of reindeer crack and floats away into the sky like a mylar Happy Birthday balloon, except he’s wearing spats and screaming.

The candy crack in the trunk of Patch’s sled is about to explode, and Santa realizes his only hope of saving his turncoat elf and that grimy homeless kid is to perform a completely senseless outside loop, which he does.  And somehow everything is fine now.

Back at the North Pole, the urchin decides to join the gnome fraternity, because they have a damp spot in the basement where he can sleep, and Pageboy decides to hang around until next Christmas, when Santa can drop her off at home, even though it’s likely someone would have reported her missing at some point, and Fox News would be running nightly updates about the Missing White Girl with the Prince Valiant Hair, and Nancy Grace would be showing composite sketches of Santa, who would die, tragically, in a police crossfire when he attempted to return the girl to her townhouse.

Our movie ends as John Lithgow floats above the atmosphere, into outer space, and we cut away seconds before his lungs rupture and his eyes burst from their sockets.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

And R.I.P. to David Huddleston, who left behind a distinguished body of work -- if not necessarily in this film, then certainly in that one episode of Barnaby Jones. Or The Fall Guy. Or Supertrain! So join us in lifting a drink to one of the last of the classic character actors. who spent a career bringing an artists' touch to assembly line product and making the mundane moments between the commercial breaks funny, scary, disturbingly off-beat, but always his own.

Anyway, we're gonna need a new Santa next year, so somebody should get right on that...