WE'VE ALL DONE IT

Choreography For Copy Machine AKA Photocopy Cha Cha Cha, d. Chel White (USA, 1991)

Relentless and brilliantly animated, like a jollier version of the unforgettable and disquieting title sequence of The Tomorrow People.

PENNED INSIDE

 

Police Lieutenant Jim Corrigan finds himself in trouble in The Spectre #6 (DC Comics, 1968). You must know it, it's the issue in which he and his supernatural lodger The Spectre battle against a horde of reanimated devil worshipping Pilgrim Fathers. More on The Spectre soon.

MEANWHILE, IN LYNCHLAND...

Absurd Encounter With Fear, d. David Lynch (USA, 1967)

David Lynch's enigmatic debut film is a mere two minutes long, but manages to be packed with his characteristic mix of horror, humour and unknowable oddness. In it, a blue faced man lumbers across a meadow towards a frightened looking girl. Drawing close to her, he fiddles with his fly and pulls out handfuls of dandelions. The girl is oblivious to what he is doing. When he is finished, he turns to gaze directly at the viewer, and he then collapses, presumably dead. 

Lynch died on the 16th of January last year. This world is lousy without him.

DANCE AWAY

 

Hepcats get hip in The Horror Of Party Beach (1964), a genuinely terrible film made all the worse by having some quite good elements, not least some of the music and the editing, which is excellent. 

In it, a radioactive waste spill on the ocean floor turns the skeletons of long dead sailors into rubbery looking monsters with big googly eyes and a grudge against teenagers. As there are hundreds of them constantly frugging on the beach, the monsters assume someone has laid on a buffet and proceed to kill as many as they can. Only sodium can stop them, and lots of it. It's quite gory, really, but the monsters are made unscary by looking exactly like our old mate the Soup Dragon from The Clangers.

Anyway, there's a lot of dancing (see above).

REMEMBER!

 

Happy New Year, whatever that means. I genuinely wish you all the best.

HE WHO WEARS ME SHALL COMMAND THE WIND AND THE SEA AND HIS DESTINY

 

Mastery of the elements and self-determination? 59 cents well spent, I'd say.

NIGHTMARE FUEL

Menacing children in terrifying costumes take part in occult ritual in the gripping 1971 US TV Movie Black Noon, a horror western in which an idealistic Preacher finds himself at the centre of a Satanic shit show.

IF I COULD TALK TO THE ANIMALS, WOULD I EVENTUALLY COME TO RESENT IT AS JUST MORE NOISE I WISH I COULD IGNORE?

 

Garages have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years in terms of sophistication, no longer being just jumble sales that sell petrol. I still think they should essentially serve as way-stations on a journey, providing provisions for genuine travellers rather than just locals in their pyjamas who can't be bothered to go to a proper supermarket. Modern garages are, in my opinion, inconsistent in terms of providing either a small shop or big shop experience, so it's all a bit confusing. I very much like a Slushy while I'm on the road, for instance, but can't envisage under what circumstances I might attempt an in-car Pot Noodle. 

What I most regret about the loss of the gleeful chaos of the old model is the disappearance of media, particularly wire baskets piled high with an eclectic, incomprehensible selection of discontinued VHS tapes, all marked at discount prices, and covering such subjects as Great Golf Goofs, Secrets Of Female Erotic Ecstasy, David Carradine's Tai Chi Workout and Telepathic Communications With Animals. These haphazard and totally unpredictable delights made great presents for whoever you were on the way to see.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and my best wishes to all who don't. 

See you in (checks chart) 2026!

EVERYDAY ELECTRONICS

 

018: Cable & Pipe Locator

AN APOLOGY

In my last post about Quest, I referenced a cosmic chess playing alien gorilla, but neglected to share a screenshot of this entity. This was wrong, and I can only apologise.