The Halloween Spirit appeared, for the first time this year, on Friday night when Adrienne and I went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a loving tribute to many of the movies I saw as a kid. This was the first time in (way) over two decades that I had been to a "live" RHPS showing. Fortunately it wasn't at midnight because there is no way I could have stayed up that late.
It was a great show; in addition to the antics in the audience, there was a fairly well choreographed stage show. Many of the men and woman in the audience wore jaw-droppingly revealing costumes, often made up of bustiers, lingerie and thigh high stockings held in place with a garter belt. I was hoping to see amongst the usual Playboy Bunnys, sexy nurses, maids, stewardesses and pirate babes, some serious female role model type costumes like Slutty Secretary of State or Supreme Court Dominatrix.
Today was a beautiful fall day, high around 70 degrees. There is a definite advantage to living in southern Georgia. I am taking it as pay back for the crushingly hot summer. How did I choose to celebrate this beautiful gift of a day? By stretching out on the couch in my big fluffy bathrobe and watching Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008).
I just came from watching (the prequel to) 1982's The Thing, confusingly enough also called The Thing and I am giving it a 3/4 jar full of change (I am looking for an original icon to use to rate movies) of terror.
Last night, my cat Olivia and I watched Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance (1988), and wow, what a blast. I can't think of any director I have been as devoted to as Ken Russell. Looking at his IMDB page, I have watched ten of the 19 feature films listed.
Just like his earlier film, The Boyfriend (1971, with Twiggy and 6 foot, 6 inch dancer Tommy Tune), Salome's Last Dance presents itself as a story within a story. However, instead of focusing equally on the actual setting of the play, Salome is almost solely about a performance of Oscar Wilde's banned play, Salome, for it's author, by staff and customers of a brothel.
Russell's love of literature was also featured in 1988's Gothic, about the famous, 19th century, horror story writing contest that produced both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John Polidori's The Vampyre. Experienced as a laudanum induced hallucination, the viewer gets to
see, among other things, breasts with eyes for nipples and Henry
Fusell's painting, The Nightmare, come to life as the Shelleys, Lord Byron and other guests attempt to outdo (and undo) each other
Russell's flamboyant, visual style was completely unleashed in 1975's The Who's Tommy, which took viewer on an insane, psychedelic trip. Resist the urge to watch this movie under the influence of drugs, the film is hallucinogenic enough. Tina Turner's performance of "The Acid Queen" will tear your soul apart. And you will never forget Ann Margaret, all in white, writhing on on the floor in front of a television screen, ejaculating baked beans (an allusion to the cover of an early Who album).
Tommy starred Oliver Reed. Reed is best know (to me) as the hairy chested Leon in Hammer's 1961 Curse of the Werewolf. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Ridley Scott's massively overrated Gladiator ( I know it is a great film, but believe that sometimes the weight of sadness that must crush Russell Crowe is so overwhelming that many nights, he goes in his study, stares at his Best Actor Oscar and weeps in shame, knowing that it belongs to Chow Yun Fat for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)
Reed played Urban Grandier in Russell's 1971 The Devils, a stew of sex, religion, political intrigue, hysteria, and lesbian nun sex. Clearest memory, besides the big orgy wherein a statue of Christ is sexually assaulted by a bunch of "possessed" nuns, is the arrival of the witch hunter, who leads his entourage onto the scene like a rock star complete with long hair and purple tinted glasses.
Anyway, Salome's Last Dance is a visual treat as the lounge in the bordello becomes transformed into the setting of Wilde's play. Wilde's prose, mostly unadulterated, flows from the mouths of the elegantly costumed whores and johns in a delightful cadence. Imogen Millais-Scott, as Salome, captivates the viewers eyes as she prances around the stage, the petulant teen-ager whose desires lead to her undoing.
I am tired of people forwarding me emails or exhorting me to copy-and-paste their facebook status to mine, espousing the fallacious belief that America can be saved from its debt crisis if I and my family would buy only American products from locally owned businesses. Even more so tonight when I got one that promised "if every American spent just $64 more than normal on USA made items this year, it would create something like 200,000 new jobs" after reading about John Boehner walking away from President Obama's "grand bargain" due objections over raising revenue by "removing tax breaks for oil companies, corporate-jet owners, and hedge-fund managers." ("No 'grand bargain' on the debt ceiling," from The Week, the Best of the US and International Media, July 22, 2011, volume 11, page 2).
