Sunday Cinema
As we can tell from all of the Christmas merchandise in the stores, Halloween is only five weeks away. So, time to bring out the scary movies! However, since a reader reported that she had nightmares after we discussed those Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise movies, we'll just present some movies with giant spiders and killer apes and such.
We'll start out with the intro to the Subliminal Cinema chapter "It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Scientist" (a chapter about which the Claremont Institute is rumored to have said, "Provides valuable advice to young conservatives who are considering a career in the field of evil"). Then, we'll review a movie that shows what Rush Limbaugh's life might have been like if he been a character in a 1940s horror movie instead of a present-day horror. (Hint: for one thing, he'd get hooked on spinal fluid instead of opiads. Also, he'd kill his guests instead of just yelling at them to "shut up, shut up!)
Scott C. authored this section, so I know you'll enjoy it -- if you know what's good for you.
It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Scientist
Like Hollywood filmmaking, scientific research has grown prohibitively expensive over recent years; and mad science, once a quaint cottage industry, is now the sole province of evil multinational conglomerates or shadowy government agencies. This means that without grants or corporate sponsorship, the criminal misuse of basic and applied research is now beyond the reach of the average small businessman.
As a result, today’s mad scientist is no longer an outcast visionary, no longer a demented genius laboring in secret to avenge himself upon the world. Now he’s just an employee with a 401k. But there was a time, not so long ago, when the typical mad doctor worked out of a one-man laboratory; occasionally assisted by an unpaid university student from Wittenburg or a hunchback on flex time. In that far simpler era, it wasn’t necessary for the fledgling mad scientist to labor in a high-tech facility a hundred feet below Area 51. All he needed was a finished basement, a 220-volt outlet, and the aspiring madman was ready to jump in and start reanimating corpses.
Sadly, those entrepreneurial days are over. In 1940's The Devil Bat, Bela Lugosi had only to clear the snow shovels and the old Highlights magazines out of the garage, and he was free to start mutating rodents. But by the year 2000, in Hollow Man, demented physicist Kevin Bacon required a Pentagon appropriation and a high security subterranean laboratory complex before he could even think about tampering in God’s domain.
In this chapter we will follow the evolution of Mad Science, from the Golden Age of rugged individualism, when any broken-down old Magyar with a death ray and a dream could conquer the earth, to today’s world, where the military-industrial complex spends billions of dollars to protect our national security with transparent Kevin Bacons.
The Ape Man (1943)
Directed by: William Beaudine
Written by: Karl Brown, Barney A. Sarecky
Tagline: "No one is safe from the cruel desires of this inhuman fiend!"
Agatha Brewster, world famous ghostbuster, arrives in New York after winning the Whistler’s Mother Look-Alike Contest, and is met by the winner of the annual Neville Chamberlain Separated-At-Birth Competition. Neville reports that her brother, James Brewster (Bela Lugosi) has conducted weird experiments upon himself, and warns Agatha (who apparently wandered away from Budapest at an early age and was raised in the wild by a pack of Margaret Dumonts) to prepare herself for a shock: Bela has transformed himself into a monster!
Meanwhile, a mysterious figure lurks in the shadows. Tall, skeletal, with a pencil-thin mustache and a porkpie hat, he combines the sinister aspect of the Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu with the fashion sense of Eb from "Green Acres."
Arriving at Brewster Manor, Neville slides back a secret panel in the laboratory and reveals Bela, asleep in a cage, his limbs tenderly entwined around a gorilla. Noticing the sister’s horrified expression, the great ape coughs discreetly and nudges Bela, his hurt, plaintive eyes seeming to say, "I thought you told your family about us."
As he turns toward the camera, we see that Bela has hideously transformed himself into an Amish farmer! With a bushy beard, but no mustache, and a hairpiece shaped like a bike helmet, Bela’s appearance suggests the results of cold fusion between Abraham Lincoln and Curious George.
The only thing that can return him to normal is an Epi-Lady, but they haven’t been invented yet. So Bela falls back on an old Mad Science favorite, and starts coveting spinal fluid. Unfortunately, none of his selfish friends will let him drain their spines, and Bela, in a fit of animalistic rage, flings beakers and test tubes at the wall, then flings his own feces at a family of Canadian tourists when they try to snap his picture.
Whistler’s Sister gasps, "James, are you mad?" Considering he’s spent the last three months injecting himself with "ape fluid," Bela sensibly regards this question as rhetorical.
Later, giggling like a pair of 12-year olds, Bela and his gorilla sneak over to Neville’s house to soap his windows, TP his shrubs, and steal his butler’s spinal fluid. The injection proves a success: Bela still looks like C. Everett Koop wearing Ted Danson’s toupee from "Cheers," but he can now straighten his back. Alas, the effect is only temporary, and Bela takes to the needle like Kurt Cobain; before long he’s hooked. Strung out. Got a monkey on his back.
He and the gorilla go on a killing spree, tapping the townsfolk for their spinal fluid like it’s maple syrup season in Vermont.
Meanwhile, the mysterious specter from the first scene has returned, and is peering through the laboratory window. His wraith-like form and delicate, spider-like hands strike fear in our hearts. His luminous, hypnotic eyes recall the evil mesmerist in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, while his turned-up hat-brim and chuckle- headed drawl conjure a chilling image of Goober from "The Andy Griffith Show.".
Bela prepares to visit Neville Chamberlain again, perhaps hoping to siphon his pool boy for a quart, but Whistler’s Sister won’t let him leave the house until he’s been groomed for nits. In a rage, Bela strangles his sister, crushing her windpipe and letting her lifeless body slip to the cold dungeon floor before fleeing into the night.
But like a defiant kid who refuses to fall down when he’s killed fair and square in a game of Cowboys and Indians, Whistler’s Sister leaps to her feet the instant Bela leaves and starts performing step aerobics. Then she runs a 10K over to Neville’s house, but is nabbed by the cops before she can finish the biking and swimming legs of the Ironman Triathlon.
Meanwhile, Bela has called upon his old colleague with a request that he shoot him up. But Neville refuses, unwilling to implicate himself in murder, and because the needle-tracks around Bela’s hairy coccyx are really starting to gross him out. So Bela strangles Neville too, but lacking the manic athleticism of an elderly spinster, Neville takes the hint and actually dies.
Bela goes home and discovers a fat newspaper reporter and a plucky girl photographer sneaking around his house. Naturally, he starts sneaking around after them, and pretty soon everyone is sneaking around after everyone else, creeping so slowly in and out of doors that it looks like a Feydeau farce performed by a cast of ground sloths.
Suddenly, Bela realizes the girl is blonde, and he’s dressed like an ape. He picks her up and carries her off, struggling mightily not to drop her or smack her head against a piece of furniture as he lopes awkwardly around the tiny set. At this point, the audience’s sympathy shifts decisively to the hideously deformed and half-demented Dr. Brewster. True, he’s a serial killer, and he’s involved in an unsavory domestic partnership with a primate. But at least--unlike the director--he’s never forced an elderly morphine addict to risk a hernia.
Bela and the blonde perform the Forbidden Dance. The gorilla, in a jealous rage, breaks free and basically does to Bela what Eric Roberts did to Mariel Hemingway at the end of Star 80.
Think the movie’s over? You wish. In a touch worthy of Pirandello, the skinny lurker pops up and finally introduces himself. "I’m the author of the story," he says. Then he leaves us with an insoluble existential riddle by asking: "Screwy, wasn’t it?"
Well . . .yes. With an aging Hungarian ham made up to resemble a Mennonite and loping around a sound stage like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, this does appear to reach the generally accepted threshold of "screwy."
* * * * * * * *
As we see from this example, in the first part of the 20th century, mad scientists were much like modern day bloggers—they worked from home, which allowed them to set their own hours, avoid long commutes, and sleep with large, muscular, hairy beasts (a tradition kept alive today by internet sensations Matt Drudge and Andrew Sullivan). Back in the day, all scientific equipment, no matter how complex, dangerous, or world-shattering, could easily fit into your basement, and still leave room for the washer and dryer, the ping-pong table, and your Nordic Track.
But what happens when your schemes for global hegemony exceed not only the limited grasp of your mental inferiors, but also the square footage of your bonus room? Tune in next week for the shocking answer ...
1:15:47 AM 
|
|
