Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Good-bye, Tura Satana

If you say you like movies and don't know who Tura Satana was, you have been watching the wrong movies.  


I was trying to capture the voice of Varla, Tura Satana's signature character from Russ Meyer's 1965, girls gone wild masterpiece, Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!  but I am hopeless at recreating Varla's sassy, nihilisism.

Tura Satana was a strong, outspoken woman who approached life with a (literal) no holds barred attitude that she infused into her characters.  Varla, the homicidal, invective hurling, Go-Go dancer, was chaos personified.  She dished out the attitude she wouldn't take from anyone else and anyone who tried, did so at their own risk.  Both Kali the Destroyer and Kamakhyer, goddess of love, passion and desire, in one, she shook, shimmied, and cut down anyone or anything that got in her way.  Tura played the role with such gusto that Varla became an icon of American cinema.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

What I (Half) Watched Last Night: Godzilla v Hedorah

I haven't been posting much lately because I just can't seem to stay awake long enough to write anything.

The other day I came across the classic, Godzilla v., Hedorah  at crackle.com, a HULU type streaming site. Here is what Crackle has to say:
     "One of the grooviest and weirdest of all Godzilla flicks thanks to a hippie-rock soundtrack and a terrifying toxic foe."  Psychedelic Gojira?  I love Godzilla movies, always have, ever since I was a kid.
I didn't make it through the whole movie, but what I did see was pretty typical until the nightclub scene.   To set the stage, the seas around Japan are beset by a mysterious monster that seems to feed on industrial waste-who knew? When the creature first slithers onto land to feed and fight with Godzilla, Yoshimitsu Banno, the director, cut in scenes of a psychedelic band playing in a nightclub, complete with a liquid light show:





Thursday, December 9, 2010

30 Years Ago Today

Wednesday, December 8, 2010 10:41:02 AM

30 years ago, I was a freshman in high school. on Monday morning December 9th, 1980my clock radio clicked on and I heard for the first time, “Our fife together is so precious together, We have grown - we have grown” It was the first lines to “(Just Like) Starting Over,” the first single from Double Fantasy John Lennon first album of new material in five years.

My older brothers and sisters had left a pile of Beatles' 45's as a testament to their appreciation to the lads from Liverpool. There had always been the idea of John, Paul, George and Ringo in our house. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was one of the first albums I bought (along with Joe Walsh's But Seriously Folks). Taking it home and listening to it put flesh and blood to that idea that I had known the Beatles all my life.

At age fifteen, John Lennon was only a former Beatle to me, I knew almost nothing of his work after the Beatles broke up.  On December 9, 1980, my joy at learning that John Lennon was still making music turned to sadness and horror as the details of his murder by a mentally ill young man became known. Stalked, hunted, and shot in the lobby his home, The Dakota, in New York City the previous night, Lennon's murder was irony at its cruelest to the excitement he sang about in that first single.

A nurse and I were talkng yesterday about him; she wondered where he would be if hje hadn't died.  I was thinking that world would be a better, less scary place if he were still with us. I thought of some of the things he had said:  "Imagine there's no countries,   Nothing to kill or die for,"  "Give peace a chance,"  "There's nothing you can make that can't be made, No one you can save that can't be saved, Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time- It's easy..."

All we need is love.







Thursday, December 9, 2010 05:31:32 PM

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Child Molester

Wednesday, December 1, 2010 09:35 AM

This is the complete version of a post I sent over to Kindertrauma.  The following story is true.  The names have been changed to protect me from libel suits, but you know who you are!

Something so frightening happened to me as a child that for most of my life I  wondered  it was real or not. I was in a strange school's cafeteria with my mother. Instead of the happy, playful atmosphere that I had associated with places like this, it was grim and foreboding.There were other kids and mothers there, but no one I knew.  Mom kept me close to her side and I felt very alone.

Part of my anxiety came from the fact that I had no idea why we were there. The other part was from the look on Mom's face.  She had her “You're in trouble” look on her face.  Had I done something wrong?  Was I going to be punished in this frightening place?  

I was half right, I hadn't done anything wrong, but what I was about to experience was so frightening that it would seem like punishment. I think  Mom was concerned about what we were both about to go through and it showed on her face.

We were there to see a movie about two little girls who took candy from a stranger and got into his car.   A fat and greasy man kidnapped two little girls while they played by enticing them with candy. He took them to the woods and after satisfying his monstrous desires, killed them. The ending was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen; the girls' bodies lay, sprawled on the ground, looking like lumps of bloody meat wrapped in children's clothing. The tiny actors were dressed like real murder victims, whose bloody crime scene photographs were used.  The bloodied children's corpses drove home the point that THIS WAS NOT JUST A MOVIE, it was real.

This was why our  mothers were there, to calm the hysterical children after the most frightening experience of our young lives.  Although I am certain many of them had nightmares themselves.

I was never sure if this actually happened or was one of the frightening dreams I was prone to, until I found it by accident on the Internet. My recollections were correct, even down to the clothes the children wore. The movie was called The Child Molester, a public service announcement made by the Highway Safety Foundation in 1964, the year I was born. What I attended with Mom was evidently a traveling roadshow, where the film went from town to town to educate parents and children about the dangers of talking to strangers.

Just what every six-year-old needs to see.

The movie had one major flaw, its purpose was to frighten children away from a phantom terror.  Most children are abused by someone known to them, a relative or trusted family friend.  It makes national news when a stranger does it. When it is Mr. Battles on Linwood Avenue, it barely gets a mention on the local news, so great is the community's shame.

The Child Molester did its job well; forty years later, I am still queasy about taking candy from strangers on the street and I seldom allow myself to be driven to isolated places in the woods by them. If any parents are worried about these things happening to their children, they may want to consider showing it to them.

I found the movie at the Internet Archive, where it can be streamed or downloaded for free.