COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTERS (1963)

"Kirk Morris" as pseudo-Hercules Maciste. "Wha???"

Last night's dull movie-as-sleep-aid was COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTERS (1963), one of the seemingly endless number of Italian muscleman fantasy epics released during the 1950's and 1960's to cash in on the unexpected international box office success of HERCULES (1958) and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959) starring legendary bodybuilder Steve Reeves.

This one stars Kirk Morris (born Adriano Bellini) in the fourth of his six films as shirtless, oiled-up Herculean strongman Maciste (he is never referred to as "Colossus"), as our hero rescues refugees from an island devastated by a volcanic explosion, only to immediately encounter a land in turmoil whose queen is being forced to marry the traitorous asshole who blinded her father and lusts for both her and the throne. Needless to say, our beefy protagonist lends his burly aid to the queen and her people, but the usurper asshole has aligned himself with the local tribe of bloodthirsty headhunters, so saving the day will put Maciste to the test. As dubbed Pastaland tits 'n' togas flicks go, this one's pretty tepid, and hero Maciste is as bland as dishwater, possessing no discernibly interesting traits such as drunkenness, an unbridled libido, or even much by way of personality. In short, he's a cookie cutter slab of beef with styled Frankie Avalon-style hair who runs around in a short skirt and a primitive pair of Ugg boots. 

 

This film is perhaps best known in the U.S. for the truncated version seen on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 back in 1994, and that version, while still dull, at least had the decency to be mercifully short. The full-length iteration moves like a Brontosaurus on a cocktail of Gabapentin and Doxepin — trust me on that one — and features only the thinnest of plots, punctuated by lots of aimless seafaring, sword-wielding combatants clashing and running around, women in super-tight and/or skimpy outfits, bad dubbing, and one of the worst dance sequences ever committed to film.

 

 Bob Fosse rolls over in his grave.

 

In a bid to add more "production values," aka tits and ass, nearly every movie in this genre at some point features a dance number that brings the proceedings to a screeching halt, and COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTERS subjects us to a truly dire example of the trope. I cannot believe that the actress who performs the film's dance sequence was an actual dancer, as her movements appear to have been made up on the spot, literally whatever she could think to do, and her terpsichorean skills are about on par with those of a six-year-old who just donned her first Danskin. We're talking hopping around on her tippy-toes — nothing resembling trained en pointe — falling to the floor and sticking a leg up in the air, gesturing with her shoulders as though trying to spontaneously sprout wings, and shaking like she's experiencing a seizure, all while maintaining the most un-emotive of facial expressions. It's an embarrassing display that will make you feel bad for her at first, but it overstays its welcome by being three minutes long and by its end you want to hurl an unopened can of corned beef hash at her skull. And, as previously stated, it stops the story dead.

 

In other words, this movie offers absolutely nothing not seen before elsewhere and done to more entertaining effect. If you're suffering a night of insomnia, as many of us do, COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTER is available on YouTube in a grainy print. That print lends the film a snuff film aesthetic that only heightens its cheesiness, be ready to doze before the first half hour is over.

 

Poster for the U.S. theatrical release.

A JARRING BIT OF APARTMENT ARCHAEOLOGY

While digging through the stacks of stuff in my apartment, I found the manuscript to my mother's abandoned book on "firm but loving" parenting that she wrote sometime in the '90's or early 00s. It's 22 pages long and she gave me a printout of it for me to proofread and edit. I had completely forgotten about its existence, but I'm glad I still have it.

It's basically her manifesto on rearing an adolescent, with some examples culled from my teen years (only framing it as experiences related to her by a mother who was one of her patients during her family counseling years), coupled with the rigid, robotic emotionlessness of her own mother's horrid  parenting, a doctrine that damaged her early and the repercussions of which affect her to this day. It reads like an android writing a book on parenting based on an iron-clad philosophy that treats the child as a specimen rather than as a human being, and reading it again now, it's just sad. And I think she abandoned it because I told her straight up that it read like a book by and for robots.

I'm going to save that manuscript for posterity in my box of secret artifacts — old letters from long-ago girlfriends, "candid" photos that they gave me, rare porn, etc. — as it will serve as an actual written reminder of her ways after she's gone. It's a lesson book that bolsters my approach of doing the opposite of how she raised me when I deal with my friends' kids whom I love as my own.

 

The manuscript.

Looking over the manuscript again, I also note that it's clearly written by an individual who came of age over seven decades ago and who, even at the time she wrote the piece, had zero understanding of then-modern adolescence and could not relate to it as anything other than something to study, or as something she read about in textbooks and articles in magazines aimed at the mental health industry.

Also, bear in mind that once my father moved out, my mother began rebuilding herself as a stronger person, and her experiences with him left her with a deep hatred of men in general, so having her child growing her her doted-upon little boy into a young man was something she could not handle. She so did not understand male adolescence, genuinely thought I was mentally ill, and shipped me off to two psychiatrists starting when I was 10 and again during high school, when I knew there was nothing wrong with me. Coupled with her being a world-class gaslighter (something she only copped to as of the past few years, and she brought it up with no prompting from me), it all did a real number on me, and it took leaving home for college for me to truly be allowed the freedom to evolve into my own person and not her unrealistic fantasy of rigid perfection, and also to be happy for the first time since I was old enough to fully understand what was going on around me.

My mother's family deeply and irreversibly damaged her from early on. Just some of the stuff that shaped her includes being thrown into a sack in the middle of the night and kidnapped by her father when she was two or three, an incident that gave her severe claustrophobia for life (she still cannot sleep without a night light), and, because they were bored and had nothing better to in their rural Alabama isolation, some of her immediate family regularly tortured her with electricity because they thought it was funny. She only told me all of that — and worse — as of the past twenty years, which caused a lot to make start to make sense, and the contemplation thereof drove a stake through my brain. I had to leave the apartment earlier this afternoon and walk around Park Slope for an hour to calm my thoughts.

Anyway, this grimoire of maternal dysfunction is now relegated to the large ENTER THE DRAGON special edition VHS box on this shelf, where it shall forever be imprisoned.

AN INTERESTING BIT OF VINTAGE BAT-TRIVIA

 

 

Richard Widmark as Tommy Yudo, cinema's first version of the Joker (sort of).

Just found out that Richard Widmark's performance as his Tommy Udo character in the classic KISS OF DEATH (1947) was modeled after the 1940's original iteration of the Joker, and being familiar with the Joker of the comic's first couple of years, I totally see it. Widmark was reportedly a fan of Batman comics, so there you go. Even crazier, when Frank Gorshin essayed his legendary manic turn as the Riddler on the 1966-1968 BATMAN television series, borrowed (and exaggerated) his famous giggle from Widmark's Tommy Udo.

THE BATMAN (2022)

Myself and Michele at THE BATMAN.

So, THE BATMAN. I won't go into the plot details, other than to say that it's basically a modern day noir for grownups that involves the mystery behind a string of connected murders, which intersects with a mob story, with both featuring a rookie Batman (he's only been at it for two years, and he's still sorting himself out) in a police/detective procedural.

Let's cut to the chase. This is hands down my favorite live-action Batman movie (I don't care for any of the previous ones; Adam West gets a pass because his was a comedy, and I'll grant you Heath Ledger's chilling Joker), as it's as serious as a heart attack, it's violent as hell, Batman actually does detective work, he's in the batsuit for 98% of his time onscreen, this version of the Batmobile would be right at home in a Mad Max movie, the Batcave makes sense, Catwoman steals the movie (though she is never once called Catwoman, but she does once refer to herself as "the Cat"), Jeffrey Wright is superb as JIm Gordon, Paul Dano does for the Riddler what Heath Ledger did for the Joker, an unrecognizable Colin Farrell works a miracle as the best Penguin ever (not at all what is expected of the character, and it works beautifully), its three hours just fly by, and it's totally for grownups. In short, this is the anti-BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. 

 

Oh, and don't bother staying for a stinger at the end. There's something brief, about three seconds long, and it is in no way worth putting off hitting the can for a long-held leak.

100 YEARS OF NOSFERATU

PUNCTURED AND PATCHED

  

My arm, after taking off the bandages from a dialysis session. The center has some new trainees, and one of them, 6'8" Ifani, wraps the bandages painfully tight, along with a medical-grade plaster over each puncture wound, a thickly-folded piece of absorbent wadding is applied, and then the nurse comes in and tightly tapes it up. I then wear a compression sleeve over all of that, in order to keep pressure on the area and allow it to heal and seal before I go to bed for the night. That's all well and good, but Ifani, who's a really nice guy, applies the medical tape as tight as a tourniquet, and that is highly unpleasant after having two huge and very sharp needles jammed into your arm and taped into position for just shy of four hours three times per week. Also, with my history of skin issues, my skin does not like the adhesive on the tape, so when I take it off my arm resembles that of Imhotep (Boris Karloff version).

THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS

Today's dialysis was a trial.

Yesterday my appetite came back with a vengeance and I was able to keep all food down (a rarity of late), so my body was craving solid sustenance. I ate everything in sight, but I made sure to watch my fluid intake. (Late stage kidney failure patients are allowed only thirty-two ounces of drinkable fluids per day, and that's it.) Nonetheless, when I weighed in this morning my weight was 6.5 kilos over what it should be (100 kilos), most of which was food weight. (I had not deuced-out yesterday or this morning, so there you go.)

I got a new Russian nurse today, as Shaunda, my favorite nurse, had the day off — girl deserves a month, and an all expenses paid vacation at Club Med — and when she heard my weight and compared it to my departure weight from my last session, she was shocked at the gain. At first she was about to scold me about fluid intake, but I politely cut her off and explained what I just outlined. She considered what I said, and then she called Olena , the hardened veteran nurse whom I adore, over for a consult. Olena absorbed the information, and I asked her what was the maximum amount of fluid that could be taken from me that would be safe. My usual max is four kilos, but five was possible, depending on my blood pressure, but that much can cause painful cramping, so it is mostly advised against for patients. Considering how much I came in with, I asked her if we could see how well I take the removal of five kilos. As I trust Olena without hesitation, and knowing that she was around should something go awry, I agreed to give the removal of five kilos a shot.

The treatment went fine four the first three hours, and I slept through much of it. But then, during the final forty minutes, the tendons of my lover legs began to cramp, and some of the muscles in my torso, and let me tell you: if you have never experienced dialysis-related cramping, it is like medieval torture. The tendons tighten, causing the feet to contort as well, and is extremely painful, painful enough to make me yell in agony. The new nurse and Olena kept an eye on me, but there was little they could do, as the session was almost over, so I just had to ride it out. As my legs grew taut from the cramping, I attempted to keep my legs and feet straight, or bend them, depending on the ebb and flow of the cramps. When the session's time was finally over, my chair was adjusted to the upright sitting position, and the new nurse asked if I was okay. I was still cramping, so I had to sit there for a while as she administered saline into my system to equalize my blood pressure. It took about ten minutes before I could properly function again, but it was physically and mentally exhausting.

When I got home, I got some minor grocery shopping done, picked up a takeout order of chicken wings and French fries from the dirty Chinese takeout joint (I was able to keep it down), and though I wanted to stay awake and get to tidying up my apartment, I instead crawled into bed and crashed hard, deeply sleeping for a couple of hours. I feel relatively fine now, though some residual pain from the cramping in my legs remains.
 

RED DAWN OVER BORO PARK - Part 2

For today's ride home from dialysis, the car service sent the driver I mentioned a couple of months back, the Russian in his late 60's who was dressed from head to toe in a bright red track suit with USSR emblazoned on it, a matching red military cap with CCCP across the forehead, and Soviet military music playing on the car's radio. Today he was not dressed like a propaganda caricature, but he did have music playing that brought to mind images of Cold War-era troops marching in Red Square. I suppressed laughter as I videoed this.

BUH-KACK!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This questionable Black History Month meme reminds me of a long-ago night during downtime at the barbecue joint, when a huge, bald, dark-skinned black dude was seated at the bar, kicking back shot after shot of whiskey and enjoying an order of our smoked 1/2 chicken. The brutha's mouth navigated that bird like it was a fondly-regarded lover, his eyes occasionally closing in sensual bliss, and when he was done he turned and directly addressed myself and one of the place's black regulars. With a deep and authoritative voice, he stated, with zero trace of irony," Gawd made chicken for US, for the black man. When I eat me a piece of chicken, my brain and body say 'This was made for ME.'"

Yeah, I like chicken too, but come on...

THE SLOW BURN OF MADNESS

 

Other than for absolute necessities like seeing my girlfriend, obtaining provisions, prescriptions, and going in for dialysis, I have been very diligent about staying in during the pandemic. Believe me, I get why one should stay in as much as possible while all of this is going on, especially when one has already a serious health issue like I do, but I miss having regular contact with my friends who are my chosen family.

I can't speak for you, but the lockdown has conditioned me for extended periods of existence minus human contact, so during the rare instances these days when I do manage to get some time with friends/family, it's like being in a dream, only to wake up too soon, once more in my apartment that at times feels like a cell with amenities. It just goes on and on and on, with no end in sight, and, coupled with my treatment while on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, its interminable nature is weighing heavily on my brain. There are days when I feel I am legitimately going nuts.

Any of you feeling the same way?