I don’t know if, in the back of my mind (yeah, I figure my mind is a place), I was planning on doing it this way all along. People have a way of doing things, little things maybe, that show how they really feel about you, underneath all the smiles. “And Jim here, Jim would like a drumstick, isn’t that right?” said Carl, and I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t want no drumstick. That’s for kids. I wanted a breast, or a thigh.
Carl was smiling, yeah I saw that smile, his wet lips pulled back so I could see his big sharp yellow teeth, teeth that, if thought he could get away with it, would gnaw me down to naked bone. He and old Bob were pretty brave now, in the kitchen, drinking bourbon while Carl’s wife fried up something to eat. It was a different story, I’m telling you, back at the bank. Now I could see them looking at each other, secret, like maybe they’d already come up with a way to cheat on the count.
Numbers, you see, man, have a kind of life of their own. And when you get into Division, it’s like, well… Divided by three, divided by four…that’s a whole lot different than divided by one. There’s a lot of sense in divided by one. That’s what I was thinking, and maybe I’d been thinking it all along. If I didn’t trust them, they could probably see it, and then they didn’t trust me, and that’s no good, you can’t leave things like that, drive everybody nuts.
Carl’s wife, Suzanne, stayed over by the stove, she didn’t want to look at me, I could tell. It was hot, and there were a couple of flies in, past the hole in the screendoor, and I was sweating, smelling the strong, dirty smell of all that chicken grease, and I was afraid if I got greasy fingers I’d never get anything done. I took a bite of potato salad, and said, “This is some fine potato salad, Suzanne.”
Carl and Bob both laughed, and it was that laughing — I don’t know what was so funny — made it real easy to pull out my second gun, a .32, out from my armpit under the leather jacket they’d said something about me wearing in the heat.
“Hey, kid…” began Carl, he was always talking, always had an expert opinion on everything — then right after I shot him in the face Suzanne swung the skillet of hot grease so I shot her and then Bob, who’d caught himself most of the chicken fat and was making some kind of noise, I shot him dead. Twice in the heart. Shit, I could always shoot.
I was all jacked up then, and Suzanne didn’t seem too bad, she had an old butcher knife and just about nailed me, she tried to stick it in me and just nicked me through the leather jacket as I put the last few bullets into her and jumped away, I was trying to keep from stepping in a lot of blood. I never had anything against Suzanne, she made a sandwich for me once when I came over and on one else was home, but what was I supposed to do? She knew there was nothing left to talk over, no way I could leave her be.
I got what I needed then, some weaponry, the money, and some other stuff, like hitting the medicine cabinet just in case, and I walked out of that house chewing on a piece of chicken — a breast, in case you’re interested — that so far as I was concerned needed some salt. I wasn’t about to go back inside after a salt-shaker, though, you can bet. It still tasted pretty good.
Bangkok – A Thai teacher used a real pistol to start a primary school sports event and accidentally shot dead a six-year-old boy on the running track and seriously wounded a girl, police said on Tuesday. Seven pupils, all aged six, raced from the blocks for their sprint on Monday started by their teacher who fired a pistol into the air instead of a starting gun. But it was a false start and the teacher waved them back to the line. It was then that his pistol went off accidentally and the boy fell dead, shot in the head. The same bullet hit a girl next to him, seriously wounding her. The teacher fled.
Man uses electric saw to… Well, you read it
Tampa, Florida – A Florida man said he cut off his penis with an electric saw this week because he always wanted to be a woman. Doctors at Tampa general hospital were unable to attach the organ, a hospital spokeswoman said. Bill Sconyers, 23, of Arcadia, Florida, performed the crude surgery on himself, later saying to reporters: “I always wanted to be a woman.” Because of the flood of phone calls, doctors ordered his hospital phone be turned off, so Sconyers was not available to elaborate. Doctors say he is in fair condition.
Three encounters of the close kind…
Barcelona, Spain – A driver and passenger escaped alive after their truck collided with a car, fell onto a railway track and was crushed by a train. The truck driver sustained minor injuries, his passenger and the car driver suffered broken bones. Rescue workers took four hours to free the truck, which was pinned between the train and the railway embankment. The accident happened near Arenys de Mar, north of Barcelona.
The Rise & Fall of “The Ren and Stimpy Show” by Jim Swallow
Cartoon; to me, the word has always conjured images of Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, the raucous crazy slapstick created by Fred Quimby, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. In today’s TV paradise, you’ll find that proud tradition is almost non-existent, replaced with Disney-fed moral pap or cheap, heinous and vacuous dross… There are a few challengers, but sadly one of the greatest has been absorbed by the very forces it meant to gross out: The Ren and Stimpy Show.
This toon of toons sprang from the mind of Spumco Animation creator John Kricfalusi, as a fragment of another show pitched to the MTV-owned Nickelodeon children’s TV network. Originally, Ren Hoek, the Asthma-hound Chihuahua with the Peter Lorre voice and Stimpy, the kitty-litter-eating doofus cat were just wallpaper characters in a series concept called “Your Gang”. When they were spotted on the proposal by executive producer Vanessa Coffey, the germ of the idea began (the proposal to Nick also contained the seed for ‘Jimmy the Hapless Boy’, Spumco’s current project). From these humble beginnings came the shambling beast that became The Ren and Stimpy Show, dogged by machinations behind the scenes and outrageous tales of censorship, overspending and other backstage tomfoolery.
The show’s basic tenet was a simple one; a mis-matched ‘odd couple’, one pseudointellectual and borderline psychotic, the other grotesquely stupid and flatulent, but both best pals. In each story we would find dog and cat engaged in adventures of varying idiocy; out of this simple framework, Kricfalusi and his writers at Spumco spun cartoons the like of which had never been seen on Saturday morning kidvid. John K himself was a fan of the older toons from before the made-for-TV generation, especially the work of the legendary Bob Clampett. He took the classic weirdo slapstick and blended in a 90’s edge of such utter surrealism that at times it’s scary. While the kids would enjoy the blatant pie-fights and fart gags, adults tuning in would find themselves confronted with violent weirdness and disturbed humour. Whatever the execs at Nick thought, ‘Ren and Stimpy’ wasn’t just for children.
What it was, was crazed, dynamic and utterly hilarious in the most insane fashion. The show shot to instant cult status, even getting it a guest appearance for the leads on Fox’s “The Simpsons”. Head-twisting oddness abounds throughout the series, whether you’re talking about the Shaven Yak and his Enchanted Canoe, the ear-mangling ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’ song, or the Bloody Head Fairy.
In terms of story content, at its weakest, Ren and Stimpy veers close to the more outrageous episodes of Tiny Toons, but more often than not it goes off the deep end of utter psychosis – witness Ren’s bathtime monologue in ‘Space Madness’. If you like your comedy twisted and your cartoons bizarre, you’ve found it here.
But these story elements helped cause the eventual ‘death’ of the true Ren and Stimpy. Creator Kricfalusi argued with the Nickelodeon suits about the plot content, reportedly yelling and bugging his eyes to make points, answering requests to drop the most lavatorial moments by demanding even more in their place. The aforementioned executive producer Vanessa Coffey was quoted as saying that she did not want Nick to become known as “the network of boogers and farts”, and after skyrocketing budget problems and missed program slots, John K and Spumco parted ways with Nickelodeon, leaving voice actor Billy West (who provided Stimpy’s dulcet tones) to step in and speak for Ren, as Kricfalusi had done since the show began. It’s still airing on Nick both here and in the US, and surprisingly (or perhaps not), the Spumco-created are the faves. John K may be gone but the Network of Boogers and Farts lives on…
It’s been a very fraught couple of months for genre fans. I’m sure I need not go into precisely why, nor bother arguing against Alton’s amendment to the Criminal Justice Act. [If you need any convincing, then kindly return this magazine. You won’t like the rest of it] However, instead of preaching to the converted, I thought it might be nice to cover my encounters with some other “nasties” – namely, the inhabitants of the Palace of Westminster…
Alton’s bill wasn’t all that unexpected. I’d heard various rumours of ‘something’ in the wind after the Jamie Bulger and Susan Capper murder trials, but the first confirmed sighting of a torpedo approaching the good ship S.S. Video Tape came via ‘Time Out’, saying that Liberal MP David Alton had proposed legislation to create a new certificate for cinema releases, “Unsuitable for Home Viewing”.
Before long, Alton and the tabloids were feeding off each other like sharks in a frenzy. The best example of gutter-speak appeared in the Daily Star at the end of January. Under the banner headline of “Snuff Out These Sick Cartoons” was a classic of exaggeration, misrepresentation and down-right inaccuracy. No prizes for guessing it was about Manga Video, who must have been delighted to read things like “many show vicious gang warfare among teenagers in a futuristic society”, a description that only fits ‘Akira’ – unless the definitions of ‘vicious gang warfare’ includes supercharged schoolgirls battling for the attention of an alien princess. This climaxed in a description of them as “snuff cartoons”, which I assume means real hand-painted animation characters getting killed…
All this fuss was strange, given that the horror genre is at its lowest ebb for years – when was the last film you saw that could compare with ‘Videodrome’, ‘Re-Animator’, ‘The Thing’ or ‘Hellraiser’? But what this article had in common with virtually all other such pieces, was quotes from David Alton, saying he was outraged/disgusted/sickened/whatever, and was going to do something about it. After reading and seeing this man spew out totally nonsense, time and time again, finally it was too much for even this apolitical animal to take. Something had to be done. And it was: I sent a letter to Mr. Alton, politely pointing out the errors in his logic and suggesting he do something to attack the real causes of crime. In due course, a reply arrived.
The words “form” and “letter” spring to mind. Any connection to my original communication was purely coincidental; I suspect exactly the same letter would have been sent to someone writing to tell Mr. Alton what a wonderful person he was for saving us from filth like “Heathers”. He also enclosed an article. written for Catholic magazine ‘The Tablet’ – which says a lot about where Alton is coming from. Is he the nearest Britain has to someone like Pat Robertson, with this combination of politics and religion?
This mass-market reply was annoying. Had he ignored me, I would have accepted it as typical politico behaviour. Had he sent a defence of his views, I would have been impressed. But to be…fobbed off in such a manner was enough to get my ire well and truly riled.
Phase two. Attempt to arrange an interview with Mr. Alton – as you can see, the headed notepaper gave his telephone number (I’m sure he’d welcome more calls). At the first attempt there was no reply: this seemed innocent enough at the time but conspiracy theorists may like to note this was the very afternoon before Stephen Milligan was found dead in stockings and suspenders, with a plastic bag over his head and an orange in his mouth. Where was Mr. Alton? Enquiring Paranoiacs Want to Know! [There’s a film in there somewhere, about a serial killer MP, except it would undoubtedly be banned as providing “inappropriate role models” – though I’d argue MP’s were just as inappropriate as serial killers].
I tried again later, and eventually spoke to his personal assistant, who offered to give me some background before fixing details. I accepted. A mistake. As soon as it became apparent that I was intending neither brown-nose powder-puff nor piece of tabloid hysteria, the atmosphere grew chilly – I could hear nitrogen condensing with a crackle onto the telephone line. In short, no dice. It appeared that while Mr. Alton was readily available to give quotes to the liars who write for our tabloid newspapers, he is less willing to defend his views to anyone more critical.
However, it wasn’t an entirely useless conversation. I discovered the terms they were seeking to use to define “unsuitable for home viewing”. Afterwards, I skimmed through my top 20 all-time favourite films: fourteen were plausible candidates for termination. The imminent prospect of 70% of my video collection going onto the nasties list concentrated my mind somewhat.
Say what you like about Mr. Alton, at least he made a vague attempt to create the impression that he gave a damn (even if the execution was utterly screwed up). As for Ms.Currie, seems that she doesn’t care a toss about freedom, save the freedom to have anal sex with 16-year olds. Though given the rumours about certain of her fellow Conservative MP’s, this should perhaps not be too surprising.
After this, I drifted into cynical mode. Restrictions on the films I could rent were brought into sharp perspective when I realised it’s been three years since I last rented a film. So who cares? At least on a totally selfish level, life would go on, with the habitual methods of bypassing censorship merely becoming more frequently used. There were other important fish to fry, such as Guinness deciding to drop Rutger Hauer from their advertising campaign.
So I gave up my short, glorious life of political activism. I’m probably on the computers of MI5 as a result, but then, if I wasn’t there already, I’d be slightly disappointed – and also rather worried about the security of this country… Politicians are pond scum. The lowest of the low. Somewhere beneath estate agents, and even rating below financial advisers in my humble opinion. This had always been my opinion, though I hadn’t exactly had much contact with them (or pond scum, come to think of it). My views, if anything, had not been improved, but at least now I am able to state them from a position of personal experience.
POSTSCRIPT
For some time I’ve known that this country is not a democracy. However, the Alton affair convinced me this view should be supplemented with “…and a bloody good job too”. David Alton came close to punching through a law, which I suspect he only suggested as a starting point from which to bargain down. But after he deftly mugged the moral high ground, there was a stampede of MP’s rushing to join him, and before you could say “lynch-mob”, it was a 200-strong posse, bearing a rope with the video industry’s name on it. It’d have been very interesting to see what would have happened had it come to a vote. How many normally spineless Tory MP’s would actually have had sufficient balls to disobey a three-line whip?
The press coverage was generally about as grim as you’d expect. The only bright spot was an editorial in the Evening Standard, the day before the debate was due to take place. Now, the ES is not a paper noted for libertarian tendencies, so reading it was sort of like discovering your school headmistress moonlighted as a hooker. Below are reprinted both it, and ‘highlights’ from the Daily Mail editorial from April 13th, which represents the far more common viewpoint seen depressingly often in the press:
The worst was the ‘Daily Mirror’, which trumpeted “BANNED!” on the front over a ‘Child’s Play 3’ cover, completely ignoring the fact that there was no way it could be un-certificated. But this didn’t stop them – hell, when do tabloids let facts get in the way? Their story started “Horror videos like Child’s Play 3 are to be banned – thanks to the Daily Mirror”. Wrong again. The Mirror also published a hit list of the films they most wanted to see pulled, thereby guaranteeing they flew off video shelves in following weeks – albeit to customers, rather than Trading Standards officers. See if you can work out what titles they listed, given their synopses for the titles in question; answers are at the bottom of the page:
a) Homicidal doll Chucky possessed by the spirit of a mass murderer
b) Four youths turn to violent crime to win respect in the ghetto
c) Mad professor experiments on neighbours. A husband is attacked by his wife’s placenta
d) Killer’s butchery is filmed so he can watch it later
e) Zombie heroine eats her boyfriend
f) Woman bitten by monkey develops a taste for raw meat
g) Non-stop violence that ends in a 30-minute shootout
h) Horror genetics in tale of gore and revenge
i) Prostitutes lure victims to chainsaw death
j) Savage cannibal punks
The subject of video nasties has had it’s day, as far as the media is concerned, and is now as dead as all their other hyped-up out of nowhere problems: remember pit-bulls and flesh-eating bacteria? I predict that at some point soon, they’re going to discover the Internet, and when they do, watch out for more banner headlines – kiddie porn and bomb-making information will undoubtedly be mentioned.
So what’s been the actual effect of the new legislation? The refusal of video certificates is well documented, but so far, the titles affected have almost all been urban thrillers like ‘Reservoir Dogs’ or ‘Menace II Society’; movies with more fantastic elements seem to have been scarcely touched. What it has done, of course, is to hand the video pirates a gift: I’m willing to bet there are more copies of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ in circulation, than you could shake a Harvey Keitel at.
It has also been interesting to note the fragmentation of protest against Alton’s amendment and the other proposals put forward in the Criminal Justice Bill. The rave crowd have been opposed to a measure that would stop them dancing all night in fields (personally, I feel they should thank Michael Howard), but were not present when my rights were threatened. This “someone else’s problem” reaction is understandable in some ways, but is also worrying. ‘Divide and conquer’ seems to be the order of the day, with our freedoms being carved away in such thin slices that there are never sufficient people opposed to any one restriction.
“…and when they came for me, there was no-one left to speak out…”
a) Child’s Play 3 b) Juice c) Body Melt d) Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer e) Return of the Living Dead 3 f) Braindead g) Hard Boiled h) Death Warmed Up i) Hollywood Hookers j) The Hills Have Eyes
The Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies – (Rick Baker/Toby Russell – Eastern Heroes, £11.99, pp315) – EH
Asian Trash Cinema – The Book – (Thomas Weisser, Asian Trash Cinema Publications, $19.95, pp187) – ATC
Typical, wait ages for a book on HK films, then two come along at once. No problem: with an empty field, two books are scarcely going to saturate the market. So, getting to the conclusion first, both are unquestionably worth buying, and are indispensable sources of information.
Having said this, which is “better”? This is to some extent an unfair question for what are basically collections of reviews, but technically, they have different strengths and weaknesses. For ease of use, ATC wins out. Want a film, look it up, alphabetical order, no problem. EH is divided into separate sections such as Modern Day Action, Heroic Bloodshed or the ubiquitous Fantasy/Erotic/Horror; to find any given movie, you first have to guess which part it’s in, which increases the search time.
This problem is exacerbated by the lack of an overall index, each section has one, but this is useful only for hunting alternate titles. I yearn for a comprehensive list cross-referencing people to films, though appreciate the effort that would involved. ATC makes some effort with a directorial index, but otherwise, they’re fine only for finding films by name.
Both are reasonably comprehensive; EH wins out for kung fu movies, while ATC does well in the fantasy genre. However, neither contain ‘The Magic Crystal’, an excellent movie released here by VPD, or ‘License to Steal’, a battling-babe film whose omission in EH is doubly surprising as Rick Baker has sold it to me, both on tape and laser-disc! In the picture department, EH is the undoubted winner, with lots of great photos, and a useful section at the back which puts faces to names for a lot of the main stars. It also has more extensive credit listings than ATC, which is terse in the extreme.
The reviews themselves are obviously not comparable; it’s all opinion. However, of 500+ movies in EH, only a handful rate under two stars. This over-enthusiasm is especially apparent under ‘Heroic Bloodshed’. no films are less than ‘ok’, and the relentless superlatives – one sequence has nine straight rated ‘top-notch’ or better – make it seem like a sales catalogue. While I know it is written by fans, more detachment would have helped. The problem with the ATC reviews is more one of familiarity: the book is an expansion of issue 1 of ‘Asian Trash Cinema’, which was itself a revision of an issue of “Naked! Screaming! Terror!”. Those who bought earlier versions may be justifiably peeved at paying again for the same text.
You’ve already got the conclusion. Neither of these two are perfect by a long way, but they’re both solid pieces of work. Readers with a fondness for flowery similes may care to think of them as like two search-lights probing into the pitch-black night sky. Till dawn breaks, we need all the help we can get…
The Crime Studio (Steve Aylett, Serif, £7.99, pp156)
This drifted into TC Towers with no enclosures save a telephone number on the inside cover. Never got round to calling it: didn’t see much point before, and afterwards…well, much of the book had a rather too cheery psychotic edge to it. I got the feeling the author had seen one too many John Woo movies, or Tom and Jerry cartoons. Mind you, the same could be said of me.
It’s a slim volume – more on which later – of tales about Beerlight, a neo-apocalyptic urban jungle populated by larger-than-life characters with larger-than-life weapons (wasn’t sure whether to review it, or pass it to TC’s gun correspondent, Jim Swallow). There are many cracking lines, guaranteed to have you snorting into your angel dust i.e. “Aggie Swan had perfected the ‘wasted angel’ look to such a pitch that people shielded their eyes against the expected atomic blast of her ascension”. Nice. The only complaint is that they may be too good: some stories seem written expressly to let Aylett use a really cool turn of phrase he’d just thought up. However, as none of them are of ‘War & Peace’ duration – or even ‘W’ duration – this is entirely bearable, in the same way that few TV adverts are actively worth zapping (except the American Express one with bloody Anita Roddick).
This is, above all, cool. However, should a book barely thicker than TC (and with less nice illos) cost eight quid? I know how much we pay for printing, and someone, somewhere is making a healthy profit from ‘The Crime Studio’. I hope it’s Mr. Aylett. So, shoplift it. Or, in the spirit of the book, drive a tank into the bookshop, massacre the entire staff, and then shoplift it.
Invasion! (Darren Jones et al, £7.00, pp208)
Shunted from the ‘zine section to the books comes this quadruple issue of ‘Invasion of the Sad Man-Eating Mushrooms’. 15 months in the making, and with a price to match, this benefits from a lot of good writing, but is a tad let down by the presentation; some early copies rapidly converted into a loose-leaf format, though I’m informed this has now been rectified.
If you’ve seen the ‘zine, you know what to expect, brash and cheerful, covering a wide range of exploitation material from porn to Euro-horror to the ‘joys’ of getting raided. This last piece was as fascinating as a road accident, though left important questions unanswered, starting as it did with the police arriving. There’re also interviews with people such as David Warbeck & Stephen Laws.
It’s hard to fault the writing, a generally nice, relaxed style that I enjoy. However, there were a couple of reviews, such the ‘Tower of Evil’ review which goes on about breasts a lot, where I’m unsure whether the writer is being post-ironic, or very sad. A downside is the physical appearance. Things like the photo reproduction would be fine for a fanzine, but when you’re paying book prices, you expect something a little better. It may or may not be a problem, depending on your demands.
This thick creature represents a growing trend for fanzines to become larger but less frequent (cf Shock Xpress, and this humble creature). The effort involved is known: Jones and his colleagues certainly deserve a pat on the back for this solid hunk of pleasurable reading.
