#busting 1974

[marthammasters]

Elliott Gould in Busting (1974)

#bloodied….. stays silent #Elliott Gould #busting #busting 1974 #peter hyams #lee postz #💌💌💌 #Robert Blake #film #movies #stills #cinema

[wintercorrybriea]

Busting (1974) dir. Peter Hyams

#Busting (1974) #movies i like

[dirtychainsawconfessions]

you know I'd probably use the chainsaw for knifeplay with Bubba, and then fuck him silly ngl

#notsafe #confession #Bubba Sawyer #Leatherface #The Texas Chainsaw Massacre #tcm #Texas Chainsaw Massacre #tcm 1974 #slashers #slasher fucker #That's some serious knife play when you start busting out the chainsaw 🔪🔥

[tavroasticus]

day 19872 of wishing i could draw actual humans and not vague just humanoids

#i just want to be able to draw other peoples interpretations of non-shadow billy #without them looking like utter trash . #is that too much to ask for ?? fhcfgxtyvu #im glad i can draw shadow billy at least #hes just fluffy hair . a single eye (with a mouth occasionally) . and a green sweater #in bust drawings that is #aaaanyhoo #billy lenz #black christmas 1974 #stupid little tav ramble 🐇 #<- because of the tags

[hellish-cruelty]

Who are you callin' busted, buster?

Blade Runner 2049 (2017), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Hereditary (2018), The Darjeeling limited (2007), Chinatown (1974), Breaking Bad (2008 - 2013), Titane (2001), After Hours (2020), L.A. Confidential (1997), Brick (2005)

#blade runner 2049 #ryan gosling #emma stone #the weeknd #after hours #a clockwork orange #hereditary #ari aster #darjeeling limited #wes anderson #chinatown #titane #la confidential #brick #joseph gordon levitt #harrison ford #film aesthetic #current mood #toy story #cinematography #movies #tv shows #music #walter white #netflix #such a mood #blinding lights #save your tears #heartless #alone again

[the-boney-rolls]

It was New York, around 1974, and I think it was around the first time they had gotten back together again. I got a knock at the door at the Pierre Hotel where I had taken over a suite for months and months…. About three in the morning there’s a knock on the door and John was there, and he had Paul with him! The two of them had been out on the town for the evening. He said “Can we come in? You won't believe who I've got here,” and I said, “Wow I thought you two had…” and he said, “No no, all that's going to change.” It was great! We just spent the evening talking. It was kinda a strange thing between them, there was a little bit of distance every now and again. But that must've been the first time they were back together since the big bust-ups. They actually asked me if I'd join the two of them and become a trio with them, and we'd change the name to something like David Bowie and The Beatles because they liked the idea of it being DBB. But, you know, the next morning it just never came to anything.

David Bowie on BBC 6 Radio Music in 2004

#presumably linda and may were there but he doesn't mention them so I'll choose to imagine they were having a boys night #and also that by “the next morning” he means they slept over #fic idea please #also i can't tell if this is just a more positive spin on the story may tells in loving john #about john and paul being sort of stand offish about young americans #but again i'll choose to believe this happened just as he told it #john lennon #paul mccartney #david bowie #the beatles #mclennon

[vintagerpg]

This is Shannon Appelcline’s indispensable Designers & Dragons. The set is four volumes, with each book tackling the history of publishers founded in a given decade (so, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s). Thus TSR’s history is entirely contained in the first book, the ‘70s, even though the company survived through the ‘90s. It is primarily a business history, too, which is nice because that’s the sort of material that is hardest to dig up and it tends to be less subjective than pondering the various threads of game design evolution over the years. So if you want to get insight into just how miraculous the survival of Chaosium as a company to the present day is, or to get a sense of the terrifying cycle of boom and bust that besets the industry at large is, this is the series for you.

That isn’t to say there’s no insight into the way tabletop RPGs have developed creatively since 1974. There is plenty to learn on that front, Appelcline just favors the lens of the nitty gritty business side of things here. That makes for fascinating reading, since I can think of no other industry that routinely turns large numbers of amateur hobbyists into legendary professionals. Even the glossiest productions are only separated from the field’s DIY origins by a couple of degrees.

The big takeaway from these books for me was just how massive the RPG industry is while still being fairly niche. There so many publishers, both alive and defunct, with massive product lines, the idea of getting a handle on all of it is daunting. I’ve been seriously attempting just that for several years now and the main lesson I’ve learned is that there is ALWAYS another thing to discover. It’s crazy.

Needless to say, this was a crucial set of books to have on my shelf while writing Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground.

(Repost from May 1, 2020; lightly revised)

#rpg #d&d #dungeons & dragons #tabletop rpg #ttrpg #roleplaying game #Shannon Appelcline #Designers & Dragons

[midchelle]

Pattie Boyd in Ossie Clark | 1966 - 1974

People say I was Ossie’s muse. He liked to make clothes for women who looked like women, with busts and waists, narrow hips and long legs—and I had all of those. He used to say I had “glass ankles” and some of the designs were called “Pattie.”

Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me 

#pattie boyd #ossie clark #Celia Birtwell #quorum #Wonderful Tonight #Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison Eric Clapton and Me #pattie #midposts #fashionposting

[seat-safety-switch]

We both know that, at some point in the past, you’ve been to a town that was enjoying a carving competition. Lumber, ice, marble: it’s human nature for some incredibly talented individuals to carve a statue out of another material, and then have their fellow cattle appear to gawp at it. Recently, I was in a small town, and they were doing a chainsaw carving competition. Artisans were busy hewing classical art out of broken trees, and it really got my creative juices flowing.

When I got back home, the only thing I could think about was making art of my own. Of course, I don’t own anything as clumsy as a chainsaw, and the municipality in which I reside has only recently removed their “no tree zone” bylaw, enacted after a particularly bad weekend in 1912 in which several beavers invaded City Hall. In their place, respectively, I chose an angle grinder, and the three-sixteenths of a 1974 Chrysler Newport that had been clogging up the corner of my yard for four presidents.

Of course, as with any art form, my first attempt at it was clumsy. Inexpert. I became frustrated at not being able to get my emotions into my work. I also went through a lot of AliExpress’s best “Holy Shit Very Sharp!” brand carbide wheels, some of which fractured even as I was loading them into the white-hot grinder. I persisted. My second production would be better, I told myself, and threw myself into it. Days turned into nights, and nights turned into days, because otherwise that would be kind of weird.

There is a name for the phenomenon which I was now experiencing. “Outsider art” is the polite way that the art community refers to anyone who had not received any classical art training (I never even learned finger painting, because my pre-school teacher, Ms. Ellersly – who I cannot remember the face of, but who drove a 1958 DeSoto Adventurer in puce – got busted for pot that day) but still manages to make art. Well, bitches, I got a whole gallery full of it now, and every tuned-in patron of sculpture was lining up to tell me how brilliant I was and how I should be asking millions more.

Well, I stopped doing it shortly after that. They say you should always leave your audience wanting, but that wasn’t it at all. Between you and me, I’d probably be making more, but I got bored of the whole thing. And I definitely didn’t want to cut up any more cars. At least, not any cars that I owned, and something about the high-boron steel superstructure of the Kia Sportage that keeps parking at the end of my driveway on weekends is not conducive to my particular muse. Oh? You’re right, I can keep it on hand in case I need some rust repair panels in the future.

[vintagegeekculture]

“Ultraman Leo” (1974) is an Ultraman series that is notable in that it was deeply influenced by one of the biggest forces in pop culture at the time: the rise of the Kung Fu movie. It was, after all, only a year before that Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” came out. In addition to Bruce, there was another name was associated with action and karate fighting in Japan and elsewhere hugely influential on the show: Sonny Chiba, who had already made two of his best movies, the Executioner and Street Fighter by the time of this series. As a result, it is the first Ultraman series to be a martial arts series, very much like i the style of Kung Fu films of the 70s. 

Ultraman Leo is certainly the first and only Ultraman thus far to bust out nunchaku (a weapon that was mostly unknown prior to Bruce Lee making them famous). 

Here’s the plot of every episode. Ultraman Leo finds a monster, and it uses a strange, complex move or special technique that absolutely defeats and floors Ultraman Leo. Ultraman Leo realizes he has to find some martial move to counter this technique and answer it, so he trains intensively with his Kung Fu teacher, over and over and over, persisting until he sweats blood. And, in a moment familiar to anyone who has ever tried skateboarding, and spent two weeks doing one trick over and over and failing for days and days and days....after a bit, it “clicks,” there is a “eureka” moment, and he can pull the move off. In other words, the series is about the training and the learning experience: the ways someone learns, as all good Martial Arts stories are, as opposed to merely the fighting by itself. It’s significant that our hero is only able to defeat a villain not just by mastering a karate move, but by internalizing some value of the martial arts. The real victory is achieved by this moment of self-mastery, and the finale is almost a formality at this point: Ultraman Leo uses the special technique he spent the episode mastering to defeat the monster. Like Spider-Man, Ultraman Leo only wins on the rebound. 

You see, Ultraman Leo is the first Ultraman thus far to not actually be a “true” Ultraman assigned to earth from the Planet of Light.  He’s a young guy (the youngest looking Ultraman thus far, significantly) from the Constellation Leo who is still learning how to fight monsters, and his status as an Ultra is a courtesy and not official. His youth is a part of who he is, it means he’s got a lot to learn. So for that reason, the second major person in the cast is Dan Moroboshi, Ultraseven himself. Robbed of his Ultraseven powers by an injury, he devotes himself to showing this non-ultra-kid the ropes, how to pull off the sleek move and cool technique that wins the day. In other words, Ultraseven is the new kid’s Kung Fu master, stern, emotionally distant, and authoritarian, but kindly and fatherly when he lets the mask crack a little. This is the first time a previous Ultraman was a permanent member of the cast of a later show. And it’s no coincidence it’s Ultraseven, who even in the 70s, had a reputation as being the best of the Ultraman shows, and certainly the one with the most credibility. Who else but Ultraseven, then, to serve the role of Kung Fu Master, ? 

It’s kind of stunning how any major screencap of training from this series looks like it’s from a Chiba-style action series (like his excellent Shadow Warrior), instead of a show about a superhero wrestling rubber dinosaurs. It looks like a martial arts action series because it is one.

Ultraman had always had some martial arts in its DNA from the beginning. He is, after all, best known for a trademark cross-arm karate stance (one that you probably have done yourself and will probably do right after reading this, now that I’ve put the idea into your head). The first actor to ever portray him in the silver suit, way back in 1967, was a well known Judoka, and for that reason, Ultraman fought differently from every other superhero, with judo over shoulder throws and ground grapples. Nevertheless, Ultraman Leo is unique for being entirely a martial arts series centered on training and self-mastery, and it doesn’t often get credit for this. 

Ultraman Leo, like nearly all the Ultraman shows, is on Tubi for streaming. 

#ultraman #ultraman leo

[marthammasters]

Elliott Gould in Busting (1974)

#my husbands who’s 5 pixels & needs to be in gay bars more #Elliott Gould #busting #busting 1974 #peter hyams #lee postz #film #stills #movies #cinema

[retrosofa]

Here's trivia for Cutie Honey episode 23: “The Bewitching Scorpio Woman.”

Screenwriter: Keisuke Fujikawa

Art Director: Eiji Ito

Animation Director: Masamune Ochiai

Director: Masamune Ochiai

The title of this episode is a reference to Kenichi Mikawa’s 1972 hit song, Sasoriza Onna or Scorpio Woman. 

Despite what the credits say, Scorpion Panther was not voiced by Toshiko Sawada, but rather by the legendary Masako Nozawa. While best known for voicing Son Goku in the Dragon Ball franchise, around this time she was voicing Hiroshi in The Gutsy Frog and the titular character of Dororon Enma-kun. 

Nozawa also voiced the unnamed young student who announces the Paradise Academy pig race.

The name of Naojiro’s pig, “Abashiri Hope”, is another reference to the Abashiri Family manga. The name “Abashiri” likely comes from the Abashiri Prison located in Abashiri, Hokkaido prefecture in Japan. Or more specifically, it’s probably in reference to the popular 1965 film inspired by the prison called Abashiri Bangaichi.

During the wrestling match Naojiro refrains from announcing Honey’s measurements. According to the January 1974 issue of TV Magazine, Honey’s measurements are:

Height: 158 cm 

Bust: 84 cm 

Waist: 49 cm 

Hip: 85 cm 

Weight: 43 kilos

The heavyset student who’s excited to see Scorpion Panther enter the boat race was originally from the Devilman manga. He’s one of the bullies who harasses Miki and Akira. This same character later appears as a police officer in the fifth episode of New Cutey Honey.

In this episode only, Seiji claims he works for a newspaper called the "Modern Times", which is possibly a reference to the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. In the beginning of the series, he was a reporter for the real-life Tonichi News.

See you next time for episode 24!

#cutie honey #cutey honey #trivia #go nagai

[creature-wizard]

You're never gonna guess how Cisco Wheeler and Fritz Springmeier explain how the Illuminati has so many people willing to torture tens of thousands of children.

Brace yourselves...

It's gender essentialism.

How does the Network get sadistic men to torture little children? Three different respectable studies (Harrower, 1976/ Milgram, 1974/ & Gibson 1990) show that essentially all human males can be taught to engage in sadistic behavior. There may be a few exceptions, but the point is that sadistic people are not in short supply for programming. Some of the alter systems have extremely brutal sadistic alters. In fact, the Mothers of Darkness alters are an important balancing point to prevent the sadistic male programmers from killing more of the children they are working on. These sadists get a laugh at hurting little children. The more pain, the more charge and excitement they get out of it.

Also, the Milgram experiment was shown to be heavily flawed, so calling it a "respectable study" is a stretch. Same goes for the Harrower experiment. Can't find anything about the Gibson experiment yet, but given that the first two are busts, I don't have much faith for it.

#the illuminati formula #gender essentialism #sra #satanic ritual abuse #satanic panic #cisco wheeler #fritz springmeier

[kittythelitter]

I've just been ping-ponging back and forth between Stranger Things and Batfam obsessions so here's a very self indulgent combination.

Au where Steve Harrington is Jack Drake's slightly older first cousin. They were close until Steve's parents disowned him and then reconnected sporadically when Jack was a young adult, but when Steve and Eddie got married, Janet severed ties claiming she thought Steve and his loser rockstar husband would be a bad influence on Tim. Jack reconciles with him when he wakes up from his coma, and asks Steve to take care of Tim if anything happens to him(Jack). When Jack is killed Steve and Eddie become Tim's guardians.

Rough Timeline.

1966 - Eddie is born

1967- Steve Harrington is born

1974- Jack Drake is born

1980- Bruce Wayne is born

1982- Clark Kent is adopted by the Kents

1983-6 -ST seasons 1-4

1987 - Upsidedown Closes for the last time + the Wayne's are killed in front of their son.

1990- Dick Grayson is Born

1995- Jason is born

1996- Cass is born

1999 - Tim is born/the Batman starts his stuff

2001 - Flying Graysons/first Superman sightings

2004 - the Justice League is formed, Boston legalizes gay marriage.

2005 - steddie marriage. Janet Drake throws a hissy fit and Jack and Steve stop speaking.

2007- Dick Quits Robin, Damian is born, andJason becomes Robin

2010- Jason Dies

2011- Tim becomes Robin

2013- Janet dies, Jack is in a coma

2014 - Jack wakes up. Wants to reconnect with his family (including Steve and Eddie), titans tower ™️

2015 - Damian arrives, Jack finds out. Steph is Robin and "dies"

2016 - Jack dies and Steve and Eddie get custody of Tim. Kon and Bart die temporarily.

Tim is going thru it and also suddenly has two VERY attentive guardians who have been dealing with weird bullshit longer than even Batman. They find out about Robin and lecture Batman and insist that if Tim's gonna pull a Dustin then Steve gets to babysit (be on comms).

Steve insists he's too old to be a vigilante but he is on comms all the time and on more than one occasion busts into a scene hitting goons with the batmobile and rescuing Bruce and Tim. He also basically forcefully adopts Jason after he finds out about titans tower. Eddie just laughs, but Jason used to be a big fan of Eddie's band so he is automatically the cool dad.

Somewhere in here Steve and Eddie kind of adopt Dick, Damian, Cass and Steph

Barbara and Max meet and it's Chaos.

Bruce tries to complain that Steve and Eddie are stealing his kids and Eddie's like. Alfred do you want some coparents? We'll adopt a full grown man. We've got kids older than Bruce that we consider to be ours. And Alfred is like. I'd love the help. He's a handful.

Anyway when Bruce "dies" and Tim's like. He's not dead! Steve is like. Yeah. I've seen weirder. Let me call supergirl- not Kara. My supergirl. Eleven. Yeah. You remember her right? She might be able to find him with her mind powers. No she's not a meta. She's had powers since before metas were a thing.

And El finds him and with her help the Justice League can get Bruce back pretty quickly. They offer her a position and she's like. I'm retired. But I'll always help a friend in need, so keep my number.

Anyways the ST crew are all adults and Tired because they thought when the justice league came around they'd be done. But Steve just keeps acquiring children who insist on getting themselves in trouble so even though he is fifty and Tired with chronic migraines and tinnitus he is still going to be the Best Damn Babysitter there is, and none of his friends/kids will let him do it alone.

Steve managed to keep it all from them before he needed to ask El for help but once the dam breaks they're all in and out of Gotham and meeting the Justice League and causing trouble left and right.

Lucas and Will both try to keep out of it and maintain their quiet lives but end up becoming emotional support/therapists/mentors to young heroes.

Dustin somehow gets to do some work on the Watchtower.

Erica, despite being in her early 40s, is trying to get the Teen Titans to unionize.

Nancy has access to guns she really really shouldn't.

Jonathan and Clark get along really well. Argyle can somehow understand the Flashes when they're talking at almost full speed.

And when Robin (Buckley not Batman-and-) meets Wonder Woman she cries.

#strange things #batman #tim drake #steve harrington #steddie #eddie munson #steddie are tim's guardians #jack drake and steve harrington are cousins #Jack Drake #Steddie adopt the whole batfam #Steve Harrington is a good babysitter #best damn babysitter #yet another Batman crossover #stranger things

[honourablejester]

While we’re on this topic of old films we watched and enjoyed, some random movie recs from the 1910s through to the 1970s based on the things that popped into my head fastest. Warning in advance, I like horror, noir, swashbucklers, dark comedy and dodgy fantasy films.

1910s

Fantômas serials (1913/1914) – As I said in the previous post, if you ever get a random hankering for silent-era pulpy French crime thrillers, these are an excellent start.

1920s

Metropolis (1927) – the imagery in this movie is absolutely stunning, even if the morals are extremely heavy-handed. Worth it for the Robot Maria transformation sequence alone. Also, and I feel mean for thinking this, because the poor man’s going through hell, but there are moments where Freder is truly hilarious. And also, Batman: The Animated Series owes so much, visually, to this movie. It single-handedly shape a vision of what cities and the future and architecture and transport could look like.

Nosferatu (1922) – imagery. The Germans were so fucking good at imagery in early cinema. Admittedly the movie does some very strange things to the Dracula mythos, and is probably the source of a lot of later ideas of him that have nothing to do with the novel (the sunlight thing), but it’s so cool.

1930s

M (1931) – Peter Lorre is incredible. And actually the whole set up of this movie is so creepy and tense and enthralling, and then the court scene busts it wide open. Deals with some heavy things, including child murder, vigilante justice and mental illness, but it’s so good. And you will never hear ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ the same way again.

The Thin Man (1934) and sequels – they’re half hardboiled noir and half screwball comedy, but they’re not a parody, because they predate most of the noir genre, so this is more of a funny hybrid precursor series. And they’re really funny. If you just want some pep and jazz in your life, a good time for an hour or so, totally watch these, they’re adorable.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) – Okay. I just like a good swashbuckler? You will see Zenda several times on this list, because I enjoy a lot of versions of this, but of all of them you need to start with this one, because Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. No one else will ever do Rupert of Hentzau like him. If you like your charming, snarky villains, if you like your Lokis, Rupert of Hentzau. Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. If you also like your villain and your hero to have powerful sexual tension and lean very close to each other while crossing blades, again. Rupert of Hentzau. Just watch. You’ll see.

Son of Frankenstein (1939) – I’m not going to lie, I watched this movie purely to see where Young Frankenstein (1974, also very much worth a look) was getting a lot of its in-jokes and gags from (Inspector Kemp in YF is riffing off Inspector Krogh in this movie). But it is worth watching wholly on its own merits. Among other things, Inspector Krogh is a genuinely cool and compelling character (as a kid, the monster ripped his arm out during its first rampage, and during this movie Krogh fully stands up to that childhood nightmare and has a cool moment with his prosthetic arm), and if you have any interest in Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi, this movie is fantastic. Lugosi in particular as Igor does so much in this movie. If all you picture when you think of him is Dracula, try this. (And The Black Cat (1934), which also has Karloff and Lugosi, but is significantly more intense).

1940s

The Mark of Zorro (1940) – Okay. I like swashbucklers. I like movie sword fights. This movie has the best movie sword fight ever. Basil Rathbone vs Tyrone Power. No contest. And, I mean, yes, the rest of the movie is also good. But watch it for the sword fight. Perfection.

The Wolf Man (1941) – This movie and Casablanca between them gave me a bit of a thing for Claude Rains. I don’t know, he’s just really compelling to watch. Very soft-spoken, but very there. And if you want the tragedy of the werewolf curse, this is the movie that started it all. This is not a monster movie. This is a psychological horror story of one man breaking apart under the burden of a curse. It’s so good.

Casablanca (1942) – I mean, it’s everyone’s answer. It’s stereotypical, the classic movie. But it is very, very good. Extremely quotable. I wish to punch Rick in the face several times over. And Claude Rains as Renault is so sleazy, but also so compelling.

Arsenic & Old Lace (1944) – If you ever wondered what the deal with Cary Grant was. This movie. His face. The whole movie just rides on his face. His reactions, his body language. I mean, the movie does a lot of things spectacularly. If you enjoy dark comedy, this is the pinnacle. Hiding bodies in window seats, kill count competitions between a psychotic criminal and his maiden aunts, the extremely morbid running gags of ‘yellow fever’ and Teddy charging up the stairs and the elderberry wine. But really it’s all Cary Grant and his fucking expressions. There are several points in this movie where I can’t breathe. For a man with so many suave, serious leading roles, his physical comedy was incredible.

The Big Sleep (1946) – This was the movie that introduced me to noir. Not the Maltese Falcon, not Double Indemnity, not Sunset Boulevard. This one. The Big Sleep. And you can argue that it’s not the best of the noirs, it’s a bit too caught up in itself, the plot if you pay attention has some big holes in it, and if you compare it to the book one female character in particular got rather cheated. But. As an introduction. It does land, very definitely. Bumpy Go-Cart (sorry, Humphrey Bogart) and Lauren Bacall are all that and then some. If you want to pick a noir, you can do a lot worse.

1950s

The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) – Mostly I like this as a compare/contrast to the 1937 one. It’s damn near a shot-for-shot remake, and while that could be a bad thing, it’s fascinating what differences and interpretations show up because of that. Watch the ’37 one first, and then watch this one. It’s just cool to compare them. And, you know. It’s still a really fun swashbuckler.

The Court Jester (1955) – Just the best time. The best. I have an unreasonable amount of fondness for this film, this gentle send-up of previous swashbucklers and period dramas in the vein of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and basically every movie Basil Rathbone ever made. Watch it for Danny Kaye, watch it for the tongue twisters, watch it for a baby Angela Lansbury, watch it for an absolutely hysterical duel scene, watch it for Maid Jean being the single most competent character there. Just watch it. I cannot entertain criticism on this point. It’s excellent, and I’m not sane about it.

Some Like It Hot (1959) – Jack Lemon is going to show up again later in this list, and for good reason, (as is Tony Curtis, but we don’t care as much about him), but Some Like It Hot is also, for a 1959 movie, a really gentle, funny, interesting look at gender roles? I mean, the premise is two dudes going undercover as female musicians with an all-female band to avoid mob hitman, and one of them keeps getting hit on by rich man while the other struggles to get it on with Marilyn Monroe in his male persona while trying to hide from mob assassins in a female persona, so it could be such a hot mess, but it actually … It’s quite gentle. Marilyn’s Sugar gets to talk about what men expect when they see her and, because he’s pretending to be a woman, Tony Curtis’ Joe has to listen to her, Jack Lemmon’s Jerry/Daphne gets to get genuinely swept up in the feeling of being romanced as a woman to the point that he’s semi-seriously talking about marriage, and in the end, when Jerry reveals he’s a man to Osgood, the rich old idiot who’s been trying to romance ‘Daphne’, Osgood famously just goes ‘well, nobody’s perfect’, and still appears perfectly willing to marry ‘her’. I mean, it has its issues still, but there’s such a lot of gentleness in it for a comedy movie made in 1959.

1960s

The Innocents (1961) – One of my two all-time favourite horror movies, on raw atmosphere alone. It’s so eerie. SO EERIE. It’s horrible and twisted and goes heavy places (child death, a child acting ambiguously sexually while possibly possessed, strong questions of sanity), but it’s done so gracefully and gently and eerily. If Gothic Horror is of interest to you as a genre, if you enjoyed Crimson Peak, try this. It is all beautiful sunshine and sprawling lawns and twisted desires and paranoid terrors and the single eeriest scene I’ve ever seen in anything ever. Watch the lake scene. It’s stunning.

The Raven (1963) – Pivoting back to comedy horror, this time with added fantasy. Vincent Price has been in a lot of better movies, but I’m not sure if he’s been in many funnier ones. Him and Peter Lorre just own this movie. Wall to wall ham. Just. Just go in, just watch it. There’s a loose frame plot of duelling magicians, vague references to Poe’s ‘The Raven’, Boris Karloff returning as a villain, animal transformations, and the obligatory young romance getting embroiled in their sorcerous parents’ plots (although, jarringly, the young romantic lead is a baby Jack Nicholson, which sure gives it a weird vibe), but honestly? You’re here for Vincent Price and Peter Lorre and the wizard duel.

The Great Race (1965) – Jack Lemmon is back, as is Tony Curtis, but we only care about the former of those, because Professor Fate (obligatory shouting). Okay. I don’t know how many people remember the old Hanna-Barbera Wacky Races cartoons? Am I aging myself here? But this is the movie they were based on, and Professor Fate is who Dick Dastardly was based on. The premise is a 1910s global car race between Curtis’ Great Leslie (you will want to punch him, and that’s perfectly natural) and Lemmon’s Professor Fate, an exaggerated eccentric conman and cheater and over the top cartoon villain of man, and you will love him. He’s the best thing in it. But there’s also Natalie Woods as the reporter who also enters the race, and a young Peter Falk as Fate’s sidekick Max. That’s a baby Columbo as the ‘villain’s more competent henchman. AND. For me, for bonus points, a huge section at the end of the rest is basically a whole-plot Prisoner of Zenda reference in which Professor Fate is the hero. Look. Look. Do you ever want to watch a live-action cartoon? This is that movie. Trust me. It’s fantastic. The romance has aged terribly, you will want to throw Leslie off a cliff, it has several extremely sixties tropes in it, but it’s that movie. Watch it. Have fun.

1970s

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) – Right. So. 70s fantasy movie. Not politically correct in the slightest, and some extremely unfortunate choices were made in it. But. Ray Harryhausen. Stop motion fantasy effects of awesome. And, also, I just really enjoyed the character of the Vizier. He doesn’t really get to do anything, he’s kinda just set-dressing, but he is the horrifically maimed advisor to the king who fell afoul of our sorcerous villain, and he has a cool golden mask to cover his scars, and you think he’s going to turn out to be treacherous but no, he’s rock-solid calm and noble and helpful the entire way through, and I just really really like him. The image of him stuck in my head for years.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) – My other all-time favourite horror movie, and again it’s the eeriness. Pure eeriness. Nothing happens in this movie. There’s no monsters, there’s no explanations. 3 girls go missing on a rock in early 1900s Australia, in the midst of baking heat and sunshine and the looming shape of a volcanic geological formation, and the movie just follows their society unravelling in the aftermath. No one knows what happened. Grief and terror and unanswered questions destroy people. Reactions, prejudice, respectability and hidden flaws, loss of innocence, the unpredictable reactions of people unstrung by grief and fear, all of it snowballs in the wake of the disappearances, and over it all looms the sunshine and the rock. The score and the cinematography of this movie work so well to create this pervasive, eerie, unreal mood, this sense of something watching, this ancient force presiding over the unravelling of the false civilisation layered over top of it. I fucking love this movie. It’s stunning.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – A rather big jump in genres, we’re back to crime thrillers here, which we haven’t really touched since the 1910s on this list, but the sustained tension in this movie is par excellence. The opening half hour. A theme for the seventies movies on this list is going to be sunshine and drifting tension, and Precinct 13 does it so well. Heat, claustrophobia, urban isolation, siege mentality. And the character relationships that develop inside that siege mentality, the alliances and bedrock life-or-death trust that evolves between enemies, and then are brutally cut short by the re-establishment of the outside world at the end, the rude reintroduction of law and connectedness and social consequences, is just … amazing. The movie is a heat dream, a bubble of disconnectedness and violence and blood and faith, and then the ‘real’ world slams back down at the end. It’s good. It’s so well paced. Watch this movie.

Nosferatu (1979) – Just to, again, tie things back to the earlier entries on this list. Werner Herzog’s 70s remake of Nosferatu was actually the first version I saw, as it was considerably easier to get hold of. And it stuck. Even after seeing the original. And a lot of that, I think, was because of the opening, which is just spectacularly eerie. The drifting, eerie music, the monastic chant, the heartbeat under it, the panning shots of the mummies in the catacombs (which are from Mexico, but howandever). I mean, there are a lot of problems with this movie, Werner Herzog is not exactly the most upright and sensitive of dudes, (and it added some more questionable elements to the Dracula mythos), but for sheer imagery and tone-setting, this opening was incredible. And the movie does keep that tone, that eerie drifting, especially once Dracula starts bringing the plague behind him. Again, the 70s theme of sunshine and eeriness. It’s worth a look.

#movie recs #classic movies #1910s #1920s #1930s #1940s #1950s #1960s #1970s #horror #swashbucklers #crime thrillers #fantasy #noir #comedy #random selection based on my idiosyncratic memory

[breakerwhiskey]

002 - TWO

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

Transcript under the cut.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, WAR1974 on the line currently eating some jerky on the side of I-76. 

[click, static] 

It occurred to me that I won’t actually be East of the Mississippi much longer. I’ve officially crossed over into Ohio and have no plans on stopping so– I don’t know, do people change their handles when they move around? No way, right? That’d be useless. Then again, the FCC also probably doesn’t give out the current year as a call sign number, but I wanted to feel more official. And, you know, “War 1974” rhymes so…

[click, static]

I don’t know what I’m doing, clearly! This is the longest I've been alone in six years and I may already be losing it. 

But I don’t know, it can’t be worse than having only one person for company for that time, right? I have to think that if other people are out there, they’ve been in a similar bind. You guys get it. 

[click, static]

I’m gonna try a new channel tomorrow I think. Because I really am just…speaking into the void here. Hello? Anyone out there?

[click, static]

I don’t know what I expected. I think I expected someone. Or something. I knew the electricity was out pretty much everywhere, I mean, we barely scraped together a working generator. And even then, we couldn’t run it all the time. I haven’t taken a hot shower in, I mean, god who-

[click, static]

If anyone is out there, would you mind tuning in just to tell me if there’s a working gas station in this state? I’m…acquiring gas just fine at the moment but I’d rather not have my first encounter with the world in half a decade be getting busted for siphoning-

[click, static]

Probably shouldn’t talk about that kind of stuff on a public frequency, huh?

[click, static]

If folks are nervous making themselves known to a stranger, I get it. Trust me, I get it. But I’m safe. I’m a good person, I just…would love to know what the hell has been going on. I’ve got plenty of food and I like to think I’m a pretty good conversationalist so. Just. Please. 

[click, static]

Alright. Second verse, same as the first–I’ll be on this frequency all day. Signing off. 

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