The Schwarzenegger Project 1: END OF DAYS

Savvy observers of the political scene have been quick to note that Arnold Schwarzenegger -- bodybuilder, movie star, and freelance breast-tester ("I tink dis tit has zufficient tensile strength. Now I squeeze da udder one…") -- managed to get himself elected governor of California without offering a single idea for dealing with the state’s manifold problems.  This makes it difficult for pundits to evaluate Schwarzenegger’s plans, since he doesn’t seem to have any.

However, one sure method of predicting a person’s future actions is to examine their past.  Surely we can guess how Arnold intends to approach record deficits, legislative gridlock, and a catastrophic energy policy by examining how he has previously dealt with murderous aliens, narco-terrorists, shape shifting robots, and Jim Belushi.  Therefore, in the interests of promoting an open exchange of views regarding the challenges facing the largest state in the union, we are hereby announcing The Schwarzenegger Project.

So, as a public service, we will deconstruct a different Arnold Schwarzenegger film. For it is our belief that the way in which the governor-elect deals with, say, a blood-thirsty warlord in CONAN THE BARBARIAN will likely presage the approach he will take in dealing with the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

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For many people, the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California was a sign of the End Times. Specifically, the rear rend times, an era foretold in scripture in which a man with the strength of Samson would come from the East, and fondle the buttocks of day players and production office secretaries. As LaHaye and Jenkins, authors of the Left Behind series would agree, all signs point to our living in such a time, an era when one can look to the horizon and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Nipple Tweak, and Hell followed with him.

End of Days (1999)

Directed by Peter Hyams
Written by Andrew W. Marlowe

It’s December 28^th, 1999 and Jesus Christ…I mean Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an atheistic, suicidal former cop. His disdain for life is evident when he picks up old pizza off the floor, mixes it with coffee and raw eggs, and blends it into a nutritious shake (one in the morning, one for lunch, and a sensible dinner out of the McDonald’s dumpster at night). These days Arnold works as a bodyguard, protecting scummy investment bankers. As bad as that sounds, it gets even worse, as his latest client, "The Man" (Gabriel Byrne), is Satan.

It seems that Lucifer hath risen from hell on a matter of cosmic importance—he’s got a hot date. See, it was predicted that at the end of a thousand years (starting a thousand years ago, conveniently enough) a woman would exist who could bear the devil’s child--and Christine (Robin Tunney) is That Girl! If her EPT strip turns blue, it will usher in the End of Days, which is not only the prophesied End of the World, but also a switch in the cosmic power structure, with the Devil becoming the Supreme Being and everybody on Earth going to hell. Left unexplained is whether everybody in hell comes to Earth. And if so, does that mean that horned demons, and scorched, flayed, brimstone-scented souls in torment would be driving busses, selling insurance, and working the counter at Subway? (This whole premise was spawned by the misinterpretation of a sentence by the apostle John--we would hazard that our screenwriter has never actually read the Book of Revelation, but still thought it might make a good action movie.)

So, the Prince of Darkness, using the body of Gabriel Byrne, must impregnate his foreordained bride or lose his chance to take over. But to make it a challenge, he has to get busy and fertilize her deviled egg between the hour of 11:00 PM and midnight on December 31, 1999. Talk about performance anxiety!

Christine, as we learned earlier, was born in a public hospital with the loving assistance of a Satanist obstetrics staff. Immediately after her birth they made her suckle snake blood (the reason for this is never explained—maybe because it tastes better than Similac). Then they killed her parents and raised her in a gorgeous brownstone in the lap of luxury, where she was lovingly cared for by a demonic au pair who made sure that Christine did her homework, ate her vegetables, and drank her snake blood.

Meanwhile, as Arnold is protecting The Man, a frail old priest named Thomas Aquinas tries to mow him down. In an action sequence that endangers almost everyone in the city, Arnold barely manages to overcome the 90-year-old cleric, and desperately hopes he isn’t called upon to face even more fearsome assailants, like Grandma Moses, or Lambchop.

For the rest of the movie, everyone tries to either kill, kidnap, or rescue Christine, to variously prevent or further her little tryst with Satan, and the Unblessed Event that will result from it. But everybody is so intent on stopping the sex that apparently they forgot about birth control as a way to foil the devil’s plan. (Yes, this is the Catholic Church we’re talking about, but we doubt even the Pope would advocate the Rhythm Method when Lucifer turns up as your Mystery Date).

Then a lot of action-y stuff happens, most of it involving explosions, fires, and noise. In the course of all the violence we learn that all members of the NYPD are Satanists (big surprise).

The Man gets shot, burnt, thrown off a subway, etc., but it doesn’t really bother him because he’s made of liquid metal. Eventually, though, the bullets give him a rash, or he just gets tired of being Gabriel Byrne, because at 5 minutes before midnight, while Arnold and Christine are holed up in a Cathedral and Arnold has just gotten his faith back, Lucifer possesses him. He still hasn't given up on making the Beast With Two Backs and is going to use Arnold’s body to do it (but it's going to have to be a quickie, since he doesn't even begin to rip her clothes off until about a minute before the deadline). But wait—the movie told us that the devil had to father the child using Gabriel Byrnes' pre-ordained body—so having Arnold rape the girl would make no sense! However, I guess it’s anything for a climax (no double entendre intended).

Just when it looks like we’re all going to hell, the girl tells Arnold to not give in to Satan and to just say no to drugs and stuff, and in a stunning deus ex machismo, Arnold manages to impale himself on the bric-a-brac. Having failed to get a date for New Years Eve, the Father of Lies returns to hell, where he spends the rest of the night sulking on the couch in his boxer shorts, knocking back tallboys of malt liquor and watching Shannon Tweed movies on Cinemax. Meanwhile, Arnold, who began the story as an atheist with a history of unsuccessful suicide attempts, has traveled a long, hard road to redemption, and is now a believer with a successful suicide under his belt. He goes to heaven, even though suicide is a mortal sin, thus proving that there’s an exception for people who commit suicide to avoid having sex. Unfortunately, this means that Arnold will be spending the rest of eternity with Norman Fell from Three’s Company.

So what can the California electorate expect from it’s new governor, based on this film? Well, it’s clear that while Arnold will molest waitresses, personal assistants, and random women he meets in elevators, he draws the line at raping someone in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. So thank goodness someone has finally restored honor and integrity to the Governor’s Mansion. Also, it seems that if Schwarzenegger is faced with an intractable legislature or an insoluble budgetary crisis, he’ll just snuff himself, freeing us from the trouble of organizing another recall election. So frankly, we’re feeling pretty upbeat about the future.

However, since this is the autumnal, Ray Bradburyesque season of Halloween, we thought we would take a brief detour from The Schwarzenegger Project, and share with you our afternoon of true-life horror in . . .

First, some background. During the Crusades, the local abbot brought back some dirt from the site of the Crucifixion, and from then on Kutna Hora (a village in Bohemia) was the place to be buried. And by the 19^th century, the monks had a basement, attic, and rental unit full of human bones, and were running out of storage space. So, they turned the skeletons into lovely bone candle holders, darling skull pyramids (topped with cherubs), a striking eight-foot-high bone chandelier ringed with skulls, and even a whimsical bone bird, its beak fashioned from a split ulna, said beak poking inquisitively into a skull. All in all, the church at Kutna Hora is decorated with the skeletal remains of 40,000 persons.

Some years ago when we were visiting the Czech Republic, our guide dropped us off at an old building, saying only, "It used to be a monastery," and "I’ll wait in the car." We strolled around with that blasé attitude of world travelers who, if they’ve seen one elderly pile of stones, have seen them all. But after a few moments we realized…hey, this place is built from human bones! And then we began to speculate about what kind of people would have constructed a monument like this. Were they satanic monks, who invited pilgrims to retreats, and then killed them so they could use their blood for diabolic black masses, their bones to make bread and/or bibelots?

Of course, they might not have been satanic monks per se--maybe they just had a different notion of the monastic ideal. Instead of a life dedicated to asceticism and self-denial, maybe they were dedicated to aesthetics and design. Maybe they were Martha Stewart monks.

("Look, Brother Matthew, I know it's an ossuary, but that doesn't mean it has to be so Spartan and unfriendly. Look at this--limestone boxes full of bones, stacked from floor to ceiling. It might as well be a shoe store! As long as we've got these old bones lying around, why can't we do something kicky and fun with them? We could use some of the phalanges and metatarsals for a sort of filigree effect along the molding--sort of like Victorian gingerbread. We could use cracked ulnas and ribs to make decorative sconces. And what about taking some of the major bones--your femurs and skulls, say--that are just lying around taking up space, and using them to make a beautiful, functional, but oddly chilling chandelier?")

Whatever the explanation, it’s clear that Kutna Hora represents a rather extreme dichotomy--the holiest of consecrated ground, containing soil filched from Golgotha, overlooked by a church filled with the desecrated remains of thousands. Talk about going out of your way to appeal to every demographic!

And that is what we learned from End of Days. And it made us better people and gave us some great ideas for what to do with grandma’s remains.

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