31 DAYS OF HORROR 2024 - INTRO

It's the best month of the year again, so I once more clutter the internet with my musings on horror in general and scary movies and television in particular.

You know the drill. All areas of the genre are fair game, so I hope to bring to your attention items that you may know nothing about, plus looks at entries that have stood the test of time to become classics (for better or worse). So, don your witch's hat and dance nekkid in the local desecrated indigenous burial ground under the full moon while blasting the Ramones' "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement." It's a 31-day party, and you are cordially invited!

-the Dark Lord Buncheula

A NEIGHBORHOOD STORY

A fun memory:

I moved into Park Slope in the summer of 1997, during the ass end of when the area was still kind of sketchy. There were loads of dodgy elements at the time, but the memory that's bringing a smile to my face comes from when I was still drinking way too much beer on a daily basis (which led to me weighing around 270 pounds; these days I am about sixty pounds lighter).

There was one afternoon where I realized my fridge had no beer, so I went to a now-defunct bodega to stock up. I was a regular at the place and the owner/shopkeeper knew me on sight. I went to the cooler and picked up a case of Budweiser (not great, but cheap and it got me where I wanted to go), but when I went to the counter to pay, the owner was nowhere to be found. Instead the counter was manned by his adorable daughter, who was all of maybe six years old. I waited for her dad to return but something held him up, so, being quite aware of exactly how much a case of bud cost, I gave the little girl exact change, which she put away into the cash register like a pro, and then I departed. Yes, I bought a case of beer from a six-year-old girl. That was how it was back then. Today, in modern boujee Park Slope, one of the most desired neighborhoods to live in in NYC, that would be unthinkable.

Side note: Though I swilled Bud with abandon from high school through age 42, I bet if I tried to drink one now I would spit it out in disgust. Back then I had no palate. I simply wanted to numb myself with what was decent enough to afford in bulk, and Budweiser was my cheap stuff of choice. That said, if I could have afforded sixers or cases of it in bulk, my beer of choice would have been either Grolsch or Bass ale.

JACKPOT! (2024)

A winning lottery ticket unleashes complete and utter greed-fueled homicidal madness against the winner in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles.

I just watched JACKPOT! (2024) on Amazon Prime. Think IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD set in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles, with Awkwafina as Latie Kim, a wannabe actress who's the winner of a ten-billion dollar lottery, and the wrinkle in the rules of the game is that she has to make it to sundown to win the loot, but it's open season on her until then, as the person who kills her before sundown wins the lottery prize. Thus, the entire city loses its collective mind and literally every adult person is out to kill her. Pursued by hordes of greed-crazed maniacs, armed with pretty much anything they can grab, our heroine tries to survive a citywide relentless gauntlet of homicide with a mile-wide target on her back and her location tracked and broadcast by a drone. Her only chance of survival is the aid of Noel (John Cena), a hulking badass whose profession is keeping lottery winners alive so they collect on the prize.

It's a ridiculous movie, punctuated with endless mayhem and chases, and as such it's a fun enough live-action cartoon. I usually cannot stand Awkwafina, but I really enjoyed her in this, and the same can be said of Simu Liu as Louis Lewis, a rival professional protector of lottery winners who has a history of bad blood with nice guy Noel. John Cena is as lovably goofy as ever, and he solidly delivers with both the comedy and the ass-kicking.

 

Not a classic, but definitely worth a watch.

 

Promo image for the Amazing streaming release.

FOUR YEARS

 Today marks the fourth anniversary of my ongoing dialysis journey kicking off with a visit to the ER for difficulty breathing. While there, my nephrologist's predictions came true and I had to begin emergency dialysis via a catheter installed in my carotid artery. I had to have dialysis performed via the catheter until the fistula in my left forearm matured enough for the regular treatment via needles in my arm, and let me assure you that having one of these goddamned things sticking out of my neck for a few months was quite uncomfortable, but I eventually got used to it. And once I graduated to the fistula, the worst was yet to come...

Hours after the emergency surgery that installed a catheter into my carotid artery.

KYOSHIRO NEMURI: IN THE SPIDER'S LAIR (1968)

 

Anti-hero ronin Kyoshiro Nemuri (Raizo Ichikawa) confronts one of the most vile bitches in samurai cinema history. (I would call her the "hard C-word" and she would deserve it, but I am too much of a gentleman.)

After decades of hearing it touted as an all-time classic, I finally saw KYOSHIRO NEMURI: IN THE THE SPIDER'S LAIR, and maybe it was due to all the hype, but I have to admit that I was underwhelmed.

Also known as THE HUMAN TARANTULA, this 11th in the "Sleepy Eyes of Death" samurai series pits titular wandering anti-hero Kyoshiro Nemuri (Raizo Ichikawa), the red-haired son of a black mass conducted by Portuguese priests who raped his mother as part of the ritual, against a brother and sister pair of unspeakably sadistic sociopaths who keep a dungeon full of innocent villagers whom they haul out and murder in cruel ways for their amusement. Nemuri is a particularly nihilistic take on the samurai protagonist, as he owes allegiance to no one and basically doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything, so little that he does is noble or heroic. He's a rather unlikable sort, but even he recognizes that the evil siblings need killing, and the path to that ultimate resolution features a very high body count indeed, though not punctuated with spewing gallons of arterial spray like in the LONE WOLF AND CUB or HANZO THE RAZOR flicks. 

The film is well-crafted and acted, but somehow I just could not connect with Nemuri or really care about anything in the narrative, other than seeing the bad guys get what was coming to them, and when they finally do meet their well-earned fates, it was nowhere near as cathartic as their deaths deserved to be. The brother and sister are two of the worst villains in a genre that's packed with utter scumbags for antagonists, so them being as nasty as they are and standing out as exemplars of soulless cruelty as much as they do is really saying something and may be a key element to why this entry is so revered. And make no mistake, Nemuri is a slayer who litters the landscape with bodies, so there's certainly no skimping on the sword-slashing action. It may just be that between the time I first heard about this film and its lofty rep and the present, I have seen perhaps 200 samurai films of wildly varying quality, several of which are all-time favorites that I will eagerly revisit, even the ones that concentrate more on drama than sword fights and gory violence (1960's BENTEN KOZO being a prime example) involved me way more than this one did. For me, it was worth sitting through once, just to see it. 

I have previously seen the first entry in the series, but it was a long time ago and its details have faded from memory, though I do recall finding Nemuri's inaugural adventure to be an interesting character study of a protagonist who is pretty much the antithesis of the heroic ronin ideal. My lukewarm response to IN THE SPIDER’S LAIR notwithstanding, I am quite willing to give the rest of the Kyoshiro Nemuri outings a chance. In fact, I welcome the opportunity.

 

Poster from the original Japanese theatrical release.

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976)

 Boys will be boys: an attempted gang rape in an empty classroom. 

So, after first hearing about it some 42 years ago, I finally saw MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976)

Somewhere in southern California, David (Derrel Maury), a new student, comes to Central High and reconnects with Mark (Andrew Stevens), an old friend whom he once helped out of a bad situation. Mark seeks to repay that kindness by bringing David into his clique, but David immediately discovers his old friend's crew are the school bullies, a trio of rich, entitled bastards who keep the entire student body in check via relentless intimidation, cruelty, and violence. Over the course of a few days, David observes both the oppressors and the oppressed and makes up his mind to steer clear of Mark and his buddies.

The bullies take umbrage at David's disrespect of them, but before they can do anything about it they decide to rape two female classmates whose close friendship leads the bullies to believe they're lesbians, so the lads decide to "teach them something." The girls get hauled into an empty classroom and are about to be brutally assaulted when David arrives, already brimming with anger and hatred for the bullies, and he hands the trio a righteous clobbering. (Mark, sensing what his cronies were planning, opted out.) Butthurt over their beating, the bullies plot revenge against David, lest word get around that he handed them their asses in no uncertain terms. The bullies cripple David by dropping the car he was repairing on his leg, thus ending his anger-managing hobby of running.

After a stay in the hospital, David returns to school with a pronounced limp, and it is revealed that he didn't implicate the bullies in his hobbling, for which the leader of the bullies thanks David, to which David ominously responds with "Ratting people out isn't my style." In short order, David cleverly assassinates the three bullies in ways that appear to be accidents, so he will not be suspected by the authorities. 

 

Assassination Number 1: a clipped control wire sends a bully's hang glider into live high tension wires. ZAP!!! 

Assassination Number 2: a bully high dives into the school's swimming pool in the dark, not realizing that the pool was drained for maintenance. CRUNCH!!!

Assassination Number 3: the remaining bully is trapped in his surfer van and the van is rolled over a cliff, from which it tumbles to its explosive doom. KABOOM!!!

However, it's obvious to all of his schoolmates that David was the author of the bullies' gruesome demises, and they are grateful for being liberated from their serial tormentors. But now that the power dynamic has shifted, several of the formerly-victimized now seek to fill that vacuum themselves, proving that they are just as bad as those who tormented them. Nerds, the handicapped, hippies, and. even some of the girls all approach David to join with them as the figurehead of what they seek to establish as the school’s new order, but all David sees is a new group of vicious assholes replacing the previous, so all that’s left to do is exterminate the lot of them, which he does, again in ways that will not implicate him, with the demolition of the school serving as his final measure to end the bullshit once and for all…

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH is a movie that could never get made today, for obvious reasons, and it enjoyed a heavy cult reputation during the ’70’s and ’80’s. Though bearing the look and feel of a made-for-TV movie from its era, it features enough cursing, sex and nudity, and R-rated violence to make it a grindhouse perennial, and it surprises by having more of a brain in its head than one would think. The main bullies are all dead by the end of the second act, so the third act examines how the student body vies for power in the wake of the bullies’ deaths, and it also makes it clear that we should not be rooting for mark, no matter how satisfying his kills are, because he’s very obviously shown to be a calm and methodical merciless sociopath who will kill without a shred of remorse. Oh, and look for appearances by exploitation stalwart Bainbeaux Smith, whose elfin blonde nudity is always a welcome sight, and a young pre-REVENGE OF THE NERDS Robert Carradine.

It’s all very bleak stuff, but I have to say that I would have loved it if I had seen it anytime during my years in grades 7-12. I endured bullying from some sadistic kids during those years, and as Black kid in Westport I could not fight back without risking litigation from my bullies’ parents or ending up thrown in jail by the town’s racially profiling cops. The last thing my already stressed-out mother needed was me going to jail, so I just had to take it until the eventual graduation released me from my education system jail sentence. A movie like this would have been my vengeance fantasy writ large, and I'm kind of sad that it took me so long to finally get around to seeing it. Good stuff, and it’s available for uncensored on YouTube Premium and Amazon Prime Video.

Poster from the original theatrical release.

200 WEEKS

Today marks my 200th week on dialysis. Oh, joy...

ON SEEING THE BEASTMASTER (1982) 42 YEARS LATER

Autographed photo of Marc Singer, aka Dar the Beastmaster. He was one of the nicest and mostpersonable of the many celebrities I met over the years. A solid dude.
 

Last night I watched THE BEAST MASTER (1982) for the first time since seeing it in the theater when it came out. Back in '82 I found it to be merely passable, with a hero who came across as a tad softer than testosterone-fueled beef slabs like Ah-nuld or Dolph Lundgren, and I found that a welcome change of pace. The story was a by-the-number sword 'n' sorcery yarn that offered little or nothing out of the ordinary, save for the protagonist's ability to communicate with and command animals, but it was a decent enough way to kill a needlessly overlong two hours. (The story could have been told more briskly if edited down to 90 minutes.)

 

Unlike most folks who know of this movie, I never watched it during its years of ubiquity on HBO — that cable network ran the film so often, its initials were snarkily referred to as "Hey, Beastmaster's On!" — and other platforms, but over the decades I discovered that it has a massive cult following among those who watched it over and over again starting from childhood. I was seventeen when it came out and I had already seen far superior sword 'n' sorcery flicks, plus a few really bad ones that I love for their hilarious cheapjack awfulness (I'm looking at you, SORCERESS), so for me experiencing that one time in the theater and not being all that impressed by it was all that I needed. Nonetheless, THE BEASTMASTER endured in the hearts and minds of its fans, and nine years later it spawned a sequel, BEASTMASTER 2: THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME, which I saw on opening night during the dying days of Times Square's plethora of grindhouse movie theaters, and I recall enjoying that followup considerably more than the original. A made-for-TV third film, BEASTMASTER III: THE EYE OF BRAXUS, followed, and after that a syndicated series. Such is the power of post-theatrical cable-driven cult afterlife.

 

And now, after sitting through it again over forty years later, I still think THE BEASTMASTER is middling at best, but this time around I also noted that save for a few shots of exposed tiddies and a couple of scary moments, It's pretty much a barbarian movie for kids, which goes a long way in explaining why it's held with such fondness by those who grew up with it in the same way that I cherish ULTRAMAN. It's not bad, but kids are famously forgiving of a film's shortcomings if it's giving them a genre or concepts that they'd never previously encountered, so there you go.

"HOKUTO SHINKEN WA MUTEKIDA!!!"

While sorting though my stacks, I unearthed a classic. 

Back in the period when I was buying untranslated tapes of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR from Tokyo Video as it was airing new episodes in Japan, I edited together a VHS tape of highlights from the show's second year — arguably when the show really began firing on all cylinders and earned its reputation — and that tape was screened countless times between my final year of college and when I left Connecticut to start working in the Marvel Bullpen. The usual suspects would gather in my college domicile or my mother's TV room in the basement, and we would watch the anime's post-apocalyptic kung fu mayhem splatter across the screen while we swilled adult beverages and smoked roughly a Borg cube's mass worth of kind buds. It was untranslated but we did not care, as it was colorful, lively, and completely out of its mind. A real revelation for American viewers at the time. If you were there for any of those screenings, please stand up and be counted and give a shout out in the comments section.

Anyway, at some point in the '90's I took that beloved tape to a Manhattan camera store that transferred VHS tapes to crude DVD's, and when I handed it to the clerk, he watched a little of it, asked "What the fuck is this?" and "I'm not duping anything illegal, am I?' I assured him that it fell into the vague parameters of the international "gray market," and he soon handed me a DVD transfer. The tape had by that point been through nearly a decade of serial of repeated viewings, so its race was pretty much run, and the new format would allow it to go out with cherished dignity. Then, sometime in the mid-2000's the entire TV series got a proper subtitled translation and was released to the US market in four big boxed sets, thus rendering the old VHS tapes superfluous (though the tapes off of the Japanese airwaves did contain tons of entertaining and baffling commercials). Nonetheless, this self-made highlight package shall always have a place of honor among my video distractions.

LATE NIGHT REALITY CHECK

Posted at 3:48am

Well, this week is getting off to an auspicious start.

Over the past ten days or so, my right big toe and its joint have been painful in a familiar arthritic/gout way, so I asked the center's doctor to prescribe me Colchisine to alleviate the pain. It brought the pain down by a good margin but it continued to be painful, so I assumed the Colchisine needed more time to really do its job.

But tonight I could not sleep, so I got up, did some tidying around the apartment, and went outside to dump a bag of trash for morning pickup. When I came back inside I again readied for bed, and for some reason I gave my toe a once-over. The skin on its underside was swollen and it gave like a balloon when pinched between two fingers, and what at first looked to be dirt was in actuality the pad of the toe being dark from what appeared to be a large blood blister. (I had showered an hour earlier, so my feet were squeaky clean.) Upon close examination, it did indeed appear to be an infected blood blister, so my mind shifted into "taking care of medical business" calm mode, and I gathered the implements of pro-level care that I have here at home, items provided by my podiatrist for just such situations.

I cleaned the swollen area with alcohol and a surgical towel, then I hit the surface with Betadine solution (the brown fluid that's applied to sterilize skin ahead of surgery). I then opened a fresh Number 10 surgical blade, pinched a section of the stretched skin, and made the tiniest of nicks, barely a pin prick. Even that slight opening caused a thick, pressurized spurt of dark, thick, likely infected blood, which continued for a bit as I applied pressure all around the area, and along with the blood a semi-solid chunk of what looked to be infected material was expressed from the incision. Once that was cleaned away and the the toe fully drained, I opened the incision further, freeing the loose balloon-like section of skin and trimming it away to reveal healthy pink toe flesh beneath, swabbing it with sterilizing fluid the whole while. Once that area was opened up and no more blood/crud flowed, I did a bit more cosmetic trimming of dead skin, some of which was connected to a now-useless hardened callus, so in a few minutes the toe, though raw, was clean and healthy-looking, so I again applied Betadine, swabbed the area again with a surgical gauze square, and then applied a layer of medi-honey, as I had been instructed to do when battling the issues I'd had with the toe in previous months. Once the hoey was packed firmly into the raw area, I covered it with a gauze square and tightly wrapped the toe with a stretchable surgical bandage that tightly takes on the form of whatever it's wrapped around and holds the shape until whenever I change the dressing.

All of that took perhaps fifteen minutes for cleanliness and precision care. My podiatrist taught me well.

I get picked up for dialysis in around five hours, so I will now attempt a few hours of sleep. Once I arrive at the center I will call my podiatrist's office and see if he is available to see me later this afternoon, post-dialysis. His usual hours at the office near me are on Thursdays, but he's a resident at Presbyterian-Methodist, which is also close by, so I hope to catch him. If he's not available, I will hightail it to the urgent care, just nine blocks down 5th Avenue, between 7th and 8th Streets, and let them check me out and give me a professional cleaning and dressing. I will also request a prescription for a strong antibiotic and I will follow whatever care instructions they give me. After that, we shall see what transpires next.

I'm concerned about this because I would prefer not to lose my remaining big toe but, to my admittedly untrained eye, it looks like I spotted and dealt with the current issue before it got too far along and went out of hand. That said, I await the word of a qualified medical professional before I fully relax. But having already been through the amputation of one great toe, I am not fearful if it should come to that again. I certainly hope not, but I am ready to do whatever it takes to keep the remaining big piggy.

Very much in "medical taking care of business" mode right now, and I will maintain that state of mind and focus until I see a professional this afternoon. I hope to be attended to in a little less than 12 hours.