five more songs and poems from tv shows

A while back I posted clips of five songs and poems from TV shows. That post was here. It's time for five more. Because I say it is.

To review, I noted that these have to be songs that exist within the show's universe. And I am not considering songs from shows such as The Monkees and The Partridge Family. Let me also add the caveat that these have to be songs or poems that are acknowledged within the show to be songs or poems. I am adding that rule with a mind toward musical theatre wherein songs are sung with the conceit that what's going on is normal conversation. For this reason I won;t consider Kyle's "A Lonely Jew on Christmas" from South Park.

Now, having yammered on, let me present these five songs and poems

1) "Night After Night" from Laverne and Shirley

Generally speaking, I hate talent show episodes of sitcoms. It's a cheap way for the writers to avoid coming up with a full script. I assume the actors love it because it gives them a chance to show off talents that don;t get used in the show. I've also wondered about how it is that the whole cast gets involved in the talent show. Laverne and Shirley is a case in point. The ladies get roped into putting on a staff talent show for the brewery where they work. It makes sense that Lenny and Squiggy perform, since they do work for the brewery, But Laverne's dad? Shirley's on-again/off-again boyfriend? Their landlady? That makes no sense.

Having said all that, I am willing to forgive this instance because I love this clip. Lenny and Squiggy are, far and away, my favorite characters from the show. And here they show off some real talent -- especially Lenny, who goes, seemingly effortlessly, between vocal parts.

2) "Time to Change" from the Brady Bunch

Spoiler alert. Greg decides he's a songwriter, and pens an environmental protest song called "We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter." The kids scrape together the money to book studio time to record it so they can become rich and famous. But then, one evening as they're rehearsing it at home, Peter's voice starts to change, and his singing is reduced to a warble. Because, when boys hit puberty, they suddenly go from being able to sing well to being completely unable to sing better than a croak. 

Anyway, the kids face a conundrum. The deposit for the studio is nonrefundable. They can't go in and have Peter ruin the recording. But they're a family and they can't leave him out of the act as they become stars. If it were up to me, they'd have recorded without him, but kept him as part of the act once his voice settles. But, hey, no one claimed the Bradys were brilliant.

Greg to the rescue! He locks himself in his room and writes a new song -- this one about embracing change. It's complete with a line about boys' voices changing, and parts for Peter to show off those fluxing pipes. They go into the studio, sing their hearts out and all is well.

I had a hard time deciding which song to include here. Each one is an odd combination of awful and awesome. The first is totally insipid. But the second has an odd Mr. Rogers tone to it. I decided on the latter because, in the show, they sing with full instrumental accompaniment (including great use of a wah-wah pedal).

As a sidenote, both of these songs were included on the truly dreadful record, Meet the Brady Bunch. When I was a kid and my sister bought it, I found that "Time to Change" had been subtly changed to remove all the Peter's-voice-is-changing schtick. And the line "It's even true for voices when boys begin to grow" was replaced with "clouds may turn to train and then it just might snow." That was a bitter pill to swallow.

3) "Ode to Spot" from Star Trek: The Next Generation

One of the more annoying ongoing storylines in the second series was Data's yearning to be more human. In this episode he presents some original poetry. It brought me down.

4) "Korean War Song" from M*A*S*H

Father Mulcahey decides that, what the Korean war needs is a good song. And, damnit, he's gonna write one. So he spends the whole episode trying out different approaches, all of which are jaunty and happy. Finally he realizes that, since war is no fun, the song should reflect that. Personally, I preferred one of the earlier ideas. I forget the exact words, but I remember he rhymed "eyeful" with "rifle." Something about how that picture you sent was such an eyeful / I taped it to my trusty rifle. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that clip on Youtube.

5) "I'll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind" from Bewitched

Sabrina's cousin Serena wrote a song and she wants Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to record it. The song used for the episode, one of several sitcom episodes to feature the singing duo, was an actual Boyce and Hart number. To be honest, I'm not sure if the song was written for this episode or if it had a life of its own beforehand. So including it here may be a cheat. But enough of its history was fictionalized that I'm willing to go with it.

10 songs about famous people

A friend asked me to name five songs that name real people in the titles. Three comments about the groundrules as decided by me.

• I accept as true that biblical characters are real.
• I am also willing to go with a first name if that first name is actually a reference to a real famous person, and not just a generic use of that first name. Thus, I used "Elvis is Everywhere" by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, but I wouldn't use "Your Auntie Grizelda by the Monkees.
• I am willing to accept pseudonyms that were well known.
• No two songs by the same artist
• No two invocations of the same person.

1) "John Brown" by Rank and File

 

One of my favorite cowpunk bands wrote a song about the famous abolitionist.

2) "(I Just Wanna Be) Your Steve McQueen" by Eytan Mirsky

Possibly my favorite song by the Bard of Forest Hills

3) "I Want to Be Your Davy Jones" by Freddy Monday

I met Freddy at a house concert on Long Island. Janey Street was performing, and the event was hosted by the local chapter of Nashville Songwriters of America

4) "יחזקאל" by החלונות הגבוהים ("Ezekiel" by the High Windows)

I-Pop from the 1960s.

5) "Elvis is Everywhere" by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper

When I was in grad school, I loved Mojo. And this was the song that got me intro him.

6) "Joe Meek" by Wreckless Eric

I've been a big fan of Eric's since high school. This song was from after his peek (popularity-wise), but he was still making damn good music. One thing about this song -- At about 1:45 he starts the line "The talented, the hopeful the hopeless and just plain starstruck." Every time I hear this song, my mind expects him to sing "...and just plain stupid"

7) "Roll Over Beethoven" by Chuck Berry

What's there to say about Chuck that hasn't been said already?

8) "Dancing with Joey Ramone" by the Dahlmanns

It's actually an Amy Rigby song, but I picked the Dahlmann's version so I could use Amy's other celebrity-invoking song.

9) "Like Rasputin" by Amy Rigby

There's a guy in my cinema history class who hates any movie about Rasputin. Maybe he'll like songs better.

10) "Jello Biafra" by Wesley Willis

Is it cheating to resort to Wesley? He's done like 40 bajillion songs about celebrities.

cinema history -- we find the lost world

I have to hand it to Joe from the cinema history class. For the  Bring Your Own Movie session, the rest of us all dutifully choose a film that matters to us. We bring it, show it and lead the discussion. But Joe, for the second year in a row, surpassed expectations. He didn't just show us a movie. He turned it into a presentation.

Last year, instead of a movie, he showed us episodes of two 1960s shows. The ckhop was that he chose episodes that guest-starred horror movie icons. So we saw "The Deadly Dolls," an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, starring Vincent Price as a puppeteer whose puppets are (if memory serves)  alive and in the service of a space alien who plans to take over the ocean. And we saw Boris Karloff as the titular gangster in "The Mother Muffin Affair," an episode of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E..

This year, Joe started us off with Irwin Allen's 1960 production of The Lost World, an adaptation of a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ("both great!") story. He closed the circle with "Turn Back The Clock," an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. This time, he chose the episode not because of who was in it, but because of the subject. "Turn Back the Clock" was, essentially, a remake of the The Lost World. And, since both were Irwin Allen properties, a lot of the footage from the movie was repurposed for the TV show. Seeing them back to back, it was it was interesting to see and recognize shots from the movie. And that included long shots of characters, even though the cast was different. So, at points, we could see characters in the distance, and say "See that -- that's Jill St. John." Then there was a closeup of the Yvonne Craig screaming. Then a cut back to the long shot.

The fact is that a lot of Joe's favorite stuff -- stuff that caught his attention and imagination -- isn't my favorite. So, while he loves the Irwin Allen movies, I merely enjoy them. But what made this great was the chance to see the repurposing of footage from one movie to the other. I think that's connected to the fact I love cover tunes that sound very different from the originals. I just find it interesting to see how one thing can be used in different ways.

One interesting thing, is that we discussed the question of why no one watching the show said "Hey! I saw that before." The consensus was that it's because at the time people didn't have DVDs. So people may have seen the movie in 1960, but a few years later they hadn't seen it again and the footage was no longer on their minds. Makes sense to me.

Kudos to Joe for, once again, thinking outside the box.

shock treatment: gotcha jumping like a real live wire

I'll admit to a little apprehension about presenting Shock Treatment, the sort-of, kind-of sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, to my cinema history class. I'll assume that anyone reading this is familiar with the background, since I wrote about it here.

While I love Shock, I was a bit wary as to whether the rest of the guys would. I already knew Ethan didn't like it. Joe and Dave both like a good story, and Shock Treatment crams five minutes of plot into an hour and a half movie. Scott, new to the class, is still a wild card. At least Keith told me that he liked it when he saw it -- 30 or so years ago. But it was the natural followup to Rocky Horror, and I had committed to it. So the show had to go on.

After Dave told us what celebrities died this week -- don't ask -- I started my intruductory remarks. The post I linked to above has a draft, so I'll not reproduce it here. I wasn't expecting to read or recite those remarks verbatim. Which is good, since I didn't. But I did hit all the major points I wanted to hit. And, along the way, We went off on a whole bunch of tangents, but it was a good, loose conversation.

The movie itself didn't go over particularly well. The weak plot, and the fact that it was hard to follow exactly what was happening really hurt it. T here was, however, near unanimity that the music was great. The exception was Ethan, who doesnt care for music.

Having said that, I think that the post-screening conversation was great. Joe did get in some digs that, when he's on his death bed he'll tell his wife of (by then) thirty years that the only time during their marriage that he regrets is the 90 minutes spent watching Shock Treatment. Dave gave the mpovie an eight -- surprising given his complaints that the movie was hard to follow -- on the strength of the music. Keith gave the film a spirited defense, noting how prescient it was in predicting reality TV and our culture of instant fame.

In some ways, I think that this choice made for a particularly interesting class and discussion. Dave's choice of Creature from the Black Lagoon was a strong one. Likewise Ethan's choice of The Horror of Dracula and Scott's The Exorcist. But Shock Treatment, by virtue of being a bit out of the mold for this class (which is centerred around horror, fantasy and science fiction) served to shake things up a bit. And it made for a more interesting discussion.

Since I posted the Shock Treatment trailer a couple weeks ago, this time I'll go with an online review.

i was a middle-aged flower show clerk

Entries waiting to be checked in and placed

I'm a bit late on this, but last Sunday was the Long Island Daylily Society's annual flower show. This was my second year of helping out with the show. And it was an exhausting weekend. More details about my involvement will come later, but first I'd like to provide a bit of background.

The main part of the flower show consists of judging flowers (duh). These are single daylily (possibly with some buds, possibly not) blooms on scapes. They are judged and awarded ribbons (or not). Then "Best in show" is selected from among the best. There are other competitions -- for best floral arrangement, best place setting, best flower off-scape. After the judging, the public is allowed in to walk around and ooh and ahh over the pretty flowers. There are also various displays -- photos of daylilies, descriptions of daylilies and how plant them. And, of course, the big moneymaker -- a flower sale.

Same as last year, I signed up to be a clerk."Clerk," in this context, means "assistant to the judges."
The judges are grouped into teams of three, and each team has to judge a specific subset of the flowers. The teams are each assisted by two clerks. The judges are looking over each flower, considering a host of factors including:

• how well-groomed the scape is
• how well-formed the flower is
• whether the flower has tears or blemishes
• whether the flower appears to be of the proper size and form for its category
• whether a bid is pushing against the flower



No one entered Spider Man, but it's my favorite daylily, so here's a picture.

I assume that, in theory, the judges are supposed to consider how closely the flower matches the cultivar's official description. To illustrate, let's consider my favorite cultivar, Spider Man. Spider Man's color is described as "bright red self with chartreuse throat." If an entry is labelled as Spider Man, but is, say, solid red, then I believe it should lose points. Note, that I haven't had that confirmed. But with something like 40,000 cultivars, it's kind of hard for the judges to know e very one that they're likely to see. I suppose, in theory, they can look up the descriptions. But with a few hundred entries to judge, time doesn't really permit. The way things worked, I suspect that one could find some random daylily in the yard, groom it, name it "Cantor's Diagonal Argument"and enter it. No one would be the wiser. I can only assume that such shenanigans are not ocurring. But I can't say for sure.

As a clerk, my job was to follow my team of judges, not talk (unless the judges asked me a question), follow their instructions ("Marc, please rotate that one so we can see the other side" "Marc could you move that forward" "Marc, go check that this is enterred in the right category? It looks too big"), and mark the tags as appropriate after the flowers are judged. The absolute best flowers, get purple ribbons and the chance to be considered for Best in Show. Those not quite that good get blue ribbons. Then red. Then yellow. My co-clerk put the ribbons on the tags while I used a hole puncher to indicate what type of ribbon was won. Those with purple ribbons also got a numerical grade (from 95 to 100) written down to help with the final judging. Those deemed unworthy of even a yellow ribbon are simply declared to be "judged," and I had to write "judged" on their tags. I presume that's to make it clear that they were in fact judged, and the absence of a ribbon doesn't mean that they were overlooked.

The Turkiews with their winnings

I assume the reason the clerks have to maintain silence -- aside from not annoying the judges -- is that a clerk can have entries in the show (I didn't), and it's important to be sure that the clerks don't say anything prejudicial. In fact, my co-clerk had a bunch of entries in there. At one point, when the judges were discussing a flower -- Jackie Canner -- that I knew was one of hers (because I had seen her son grooming it), I was amused to watch as she tried to maintain her poker face. It was even more interesting as one of the judges started commenting about how beautiful the cultivar is, and she has to find out who entered it so she can ask about buying a plant or two of that variety.

Before the show, Blair and I had agreed to come early to help with placement -- putting the flowers on the table arranged by category and cultivar. This was a tedious process because each entry had to be looked up to determine category. Blair hadn't signed up for any specific task, as she prefers to show up and be put to use wherever she is needed. In the event, she spent most of the time outside helping withe the plant sale. This proved invaluable. The plants being sold were daylilies dug up from members' gardens and potted. Each had the cultivar indicated, but they weren't in bloom, so potential buyers couldn't tell what they were in for. Enter Blair with her phone. She spent a whole lot of time looking up cultivars and showing customers the pictures.

Best in Show: King Kahuna

In the end, Best in Show was won by King Kahuna, which was entered by the Turkiew family (father David, mother Rachel and son  Elliot). Rachel had been my co-clerk. It should be stressed that "Best in Show" does not mean prettiest. It basically means the flower that lost the fewest points for flaws. The Turkiews also won three other competitions. I suppose, entering more than 50 flowers helped their odds.

I did learn a couple things that may come in handy in the future. First of all, if you're clerking, don;t wear long sleeves. I purposely dressed reasonably nicely. Not a tux, mind you, but clean jeans and a long-sleeved sport shirt. But the sleeves make my arms wider, which makes it harder to carry out the judges' instructions without touching any of the flowers. Touching the flowers is a major faux-pas. The other thing is, when entering a daylily show, don't enter a scape with multiple flowers. Two really pretty flowers may look better on the scape than one. But you will be judged by the worst flower on the scape. So removing a flower can help you do better, and won't make you do worse.

Finally, when you order a cake for a daylily show, make sure they spell the message correctly.

Can you spot the typo?

i liked the creature better than i thought i would

In cinema history class, Dave got BYOM month in style with his presentation of Creature from the Black Lagoon (in 3D!).


Creature is one of those iconic movies that I've heard of many many times, but never actually seen. So this was a treat. And it was even better for the fact that we saw it in 3D -- the way it was meant to be seen when it was released in 1954. So I have to hand it to Dave -- he came through in style for a second straight year (last year he showed Attack of the 50-Foot Woman). I have to admit that Creature is quite good, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising since it is considered a classic.


The filmwork was well ahead of its time, and the creature costme was pretty impressive -- again, for its time. Now they would have used CGI and somesuch, so it would have looked more realistic, but it would lack the charm. I especially enjoyed the long synchronized swimming sequence wherein the creature swam underwater while watching and mimicking Julia Adams.


Part of what I find intriguing is the fact that the creature is actually a very sympathetic monster. The fact is, he was just minding his own business when the scientists and their expedition invaded his lagoon to try to capture him. You really can't help but feel sorry for him. I found myself wondering if the movie was intended as some kind of far-left metaphor for the US meddling in other countries' affairs. Had this been made 15 or 20 years later, I would be sure of it, but this was 1954, before Vietnam. It was post-Korea, but that war was never the quagmire that Vietnam was. Eh, it was probably just a movie.


The one thing that bothers me -- and I realize I shouldn't be such a stickler about this kind of thing -- is that it doesn't make sense that the creature would have a crush on Julia Adams. As beautiful as she was as a human female, it strains credulity that she would be attractive to whatever he was.


In honor of the movie, let me share this music video (of "Creature from the Black Lagoon"). Because Dave Edmunds.

i want to record an album

So I'm thinking of recording an album.



The fact is I'm not a competent singer and I'm not a good guitarist (way to manage expectations), but I'm basically figuring why not? And, yeah, I know I answered the "why not" thing at the beginning of this paragraph, but you get the idea.


Anyway, I'm not entirely sure of the entire motivation. I guess it's part that I still want to do some songwriting, and this would give me an excuse to work on that. I want to work on the many half-finished songs I have, but demos are expensive. This can take me in a slightly different direction. Another thing? I was listening to the early demo of "Five Missing One" which I posted in an earlier entry. Here it is again for reference.

That's my guitar playing. I realize it's not great, but as basic strumming it's not terrible. And, of course, it's not like Bob Dylan (l'havdil) can sing well. I'm also partially motivated by my friend, Meep, who self published a book on Amazon. It's a free download -- I blogged about it here. If she can self-publish a book for free download, then why can't I do an album.



I'm not sure where to start. A friend suggested Audacity as the software for recording and mixing tracks, so I guess I'll start fiddling with that. In the meantime, I'll figure out material. I don't want to use songs that I cowrote with others, since I don't know how the royalty issue works on recordings made for free download. So I have a couple of finished and several mostly-finished songs.


Tentative tracklist (not in order):

• Music No One Else Can Hear
• Write a Song About Me
• You Don't Kill a Man Twice
• Funny in My Head
• Five Missing One
• Bleed Me a River
• Jackpot

Any advice, thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

a question about a big hit

One bit of 1970s cheesy pop music was Vicki Lawrence's hit, "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia," an icky tale of faithlessness, revenge and injustice. I love it. It's solid pop music, and it's part of the soundtrack of my youth -- or at least my teenage years. By that I mean, I don't have any memories of hearing it when it was current. But when i was in high school and got my first Walkman* it was on the first cassette that I bought. That cassette was "Top Hits of the '70s, Volume 2," which was sold at Radio Shack. Another thing in the song's favor (as far as I'm concerned) is that it's got such a pleasant sound you'd never realize how dark its subject matter is unless you pay attention to the lyrics.



For the sake of brevity I am assuming that my reader knows the lyrics and not reproducing them here.**


I have a question about this song -- something I've been wondering about for years. In today's world, in the United States, my understanding is that a person convicted of a capital offense has many appeals available before execution. But in this song that doesn't seem to be the case. Here the main character fires his gun to flag down the police, gets mistaken for a murderer tried and hanged all in very short order. It almost sounds like it happens in one day, since the narrator (who committed the murder (two, actually) didn't have a chance to speak up. Maybe it wasn't all the same day, but it couldn't have been a very lengthy process.


Was the process so different in 1970's Georgia that this could have happened?


*Technically, it wasn't a Walkman; it was a Toshiba portable cassette player.


**OK, OK. In case anyone doesn't know the lyrics, here they are, courtesy of lyrics freak. There are some minor mistakes, but they are immaterial and I am not going to try correcting them.


He was on his way home from Candletop.
(He'd)Been two weeks gone and he thought he'd stop
At Webb's and have him a drink 'fore he went home to her.
Andy Wardlow said, "Hello."
And he said "Hi, what's doin', Wo?"
He said, "Sit down, I got some bad news that's gonna hurt."
He said, "I'm your best friend and you know that's right,
But your young bride ain't home tonight.
Since you been gone she's been seein' that aimless boy, Seth."
Well, he got mad 'n' he saw red.
And Andy said, "Boy, don'tcha lose your head,
'Cause to tell ya the truth, I been with her myself."

[Chorus]
That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia.
That's the night that they hung an innocent man.
Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer
'Cause the judge in the town's got blood stains on his hands.

Well, Andy got scared and left the bar
(And went) Walkin' on home 'cause he didn't live far.
(You) See, Andy didn't have many friends and he'd just lost him one.
(And) Brother thought his wife must'a left town,
So he went home and finally found
The only thing Papa had left him, and that was a gun.
And he went off to Andy's house,
Slippin' through the backwoods quiet as a mouse--
Came upon some tracks too small for Andy to make.
He looked through the screen at the back-porch door,
And he saw Andy lyin' on the floor
In a puddle of blood. And he started to shake.

Well, the Georgia Patrol was a'makin' their rounds,
So he fired a shot just to flag 'em down,
And a big-bellied sheriff grabbed his gun and said, "Why'd ya do it?"
And the judge said, "Guilty," in a make-believe trial,
Slapped the sheriff on the back with a smile,
And said, "Supper's waitin' at home and I gotta get to it."

[Chorus]

Well, they hung my brother before I could say
That the tracks he saw while on his way
To Andy's house, out back, that night were mine.
And his cheatin' wife had never left town;
And that's one body that'll never be found!
See, little sister don't miss when she aims her gun.

That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia.
Oh-oh-aah
That's the night that they hung an innocent man.
Ah-huh-unh
Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer

'Cause the judge in the town's got blood stains on his hands.

the drill till: a product review

I recently had the chance to beta test a new garden tool called the Drill Till. I was asked to do so in www.drilltill.com.

using the Drill Till

exchange for feedback. I was not asked to write a product review, but I was not discouraged from doing so when I brought up the possibility. For more information, check their here.




The Drill Till is designed to make weeding and aerating easier. It consists of a long rod (that you attach to a power drill) and several circular "heads" that you attach to the other end. Using drillpower, you till the soil (hence the name -- duh), or break up weeds, etc. You save effort in two ways (or at least two -- two are obvious to me). The drill does the work of tearing up the soil
or weeds, and you save yourself the effort of bending down with a trowel.


So how did it work? Long story short, the DT (at least the version I tested) is good enough that I want it to be better.


First the good. I have raised tomato beds, and the DT was great for aerating the soil in those beds and for mixing tomato food into that soil. Also, the DT was reasonably good for killing weeds (including dandelions with the special dandelion killer attachment) as long as you're working with soil that doesn't have plants you like.

the dandelion head

But you have to know the limitations. The DT is good for preparing soil for planting. But once you already have your plants growing you can't use it as a weeder, since it's really not designed for fine touches. Also, when I was preparing the tomato beds there were dried pulpy tomato stems from last year's crop. I was hoping that the DT would make fast work of them, mulching them back into the soil. No such luck. The old stems got tangled up in the teeth of the tiller, and I had to pull them out, then get down on my hands and knees and pull up the rest by hand.

The other drawback of the DT is a design issue. On the model I tested, changing heads was a pain. It involved screws with hexagonal heads, and wrenches, and having to hold one side in place with one wrench while turning the other side with the other wrench. That alone is enough to keep me from making good use of the tool. I have been told by the developers that they have modified the design to make changing heads easier. A change like that could, in my mind, make all the difference.


While I'm here, I would like to mention something else about using the DT. I find that the long stick part tends not to stay straight as I use the tool. At that point, the head starts making a small circle around the point where it should stay. I found I could mitigate that by  holding the shaft steady with my hand (maybe six inches down from the drill). Of course, that's probably against all advisable safety rules, and I doubt they'd recommend such reckless behavior.

shock treatment: my plans for film class (including my draft comments)

This month begins my cinema history class' BYOM (bring your own movie) session. To explain, let me describe how the class is structured. Keith runs the show, and groups the class in sessions of four classes each. Each session has a theme (e.g., Alien ripoffs, Peter Cushing movies, werewolf movies). Keith selects the films. In each class, he starts things off by discussing the film of the week. He talks about the personalities involved, or the historical context. Whatever he deems appropriate. We watch the film. Then we discuss it. We have a longstanding annual tradition (this will be the second year) of having one BYOM session during the summer. In this session, each of us picks the movie for one class. He introduces it and leads the discussion. There are five of us in the class, so technically this session lasts five weeks instead of four. Mere technicality. Keith gives us pretty wide latitude in terms of our choices. His guidance is that it should be a movie that speaks to us or gives a window into our interests. Last year, I showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Dave chose Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Ethan showed Battle Royale, Steve (who is no longer in the class) chose The Sixth Sense. Joe, in an out-of-the-box move, showed two television episodes -- one of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (with Vincent Price as guest star) and one of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (with Boris Karloff as guest star).

This year I am planning on showing Shock Treatment, the 1981 semi-sequel to Rocky Horror. The following is the current draft of my prepared remarks. Despite the fact that they are written as a speech, my plan is not to read these comments verbatim. Rather, they are to serve as my guide so I will remember the key points I want to hit and in (roughly) what order.


The reason I am posting this draft before the showing is that I am hoping for feedback. Specifically, actionable criticisms that can help me make it better. But first, here's the trailer.

Last year I showed you Rocky Horror, Richard O'Brien's satirical take on American drive-in horror movies of the 1950's, sexual mores and rock'n'roll. This time around, I am going with a movie that is often called the sequel to Rocky -- though O'Brien himself prefers the word "equal" -- 1981's Shock Treatment.

Last year, some of you noted that Rocky was very gay. Whatever one might say about Shock Treatment, it's not gay. Though it almost was. In 1978 O'Brien wrote a script titled Rocky Horror Shows His Heels. In it, Frank and Rocky are resurrected, Brad and Dr. Scott are gay, and Janet is pregnant with Frank's baby. But Jim Sharman didn't want to revisit the material, and Tim Curry didn't want to play Frank again. So O'Brien kept the songs he'd written and reworked the script, but there were further casting and technical issues, including a Screen Actors Guild Strike. So the filming locations were moved from Denton, Texas to a studio in England, and the entire thing was reworked to take place within what seems like a hybrid of a TV station and a town. The movie they ended up with was a prescient indictment of American TV culture. It was a portrayal of an entire town turned into a collection of reality TV shows. Whereas sexuality was a major theme in Rocky, it's not really a major factor in Shock Treatment.

Since it's the subject of some debate, let's start with the question of whether this is, in fact, a sequel to Rocky. For the sake of brevity, I'll assume everyone here is familiar with the earlier film. Brad and Janet Majors are the protagonists of Shock Treatment, just as they were in Rocky. Only now, instead of being newly-engaged, they are a married-but-bored couple, still living in Denton. The Hapschatts (the couple that had just gotten married in Rocky), are in this as well, though they are now divorced. Based on that, it sure seems like a sequel. But the fact is there's no real thread to connect Rocky and Shock. Brad and Janet could just as easily have been Jeff and Andrea, and the Hapschatts could have been the Delfoogys. And it wouldn't have made any difference. And consider the casting. Barry Bostwick was unavailable to play Brad, and Susan Sarandon was too expensive to play Janet, so those roles went to Cliff De Young and Jessica Harper. Ruby Wax played Betty Hapschatt (who had been played by  Hilary Labow in Rocky). The only character to appear in both movies, played by the same actor in both was Ralph Hapschatt, who was played by Jeremy Newson. But much of the cast of Rocky is back, but in different roles -- Richard O'Brien and Patricia Quinn once again play a pair of siblings who work and, uh, play, together. Little Nell is back and so is Charles Gray. And, of course, many of the Transylvanians from Rocky are back as members of the studio audience in Shock. Tim Curry was considered during an early stage in the development. But he backed out for fear that he couldn't do a convincing American accent. Also noteworthy is the role of TV show host Bert Schnick, played by Barry Humphries. The character evolved from that of Dr. Scott after Jonathan Adams declined to reprise that role. So, returning to the question at hand, is it a sequel? That's a semantic issue, and honestly I don't care.

Now, while Rocky was a huge -- albeit surprising -- success, Shock Treatment was...not. So what went wrong? I think there were a few factors at play:

• They tried to recreate lightning. Rocky was successful because of the midnight movie circuit. So Shock Treatment didn't get a full theatrical release. Rather, it was put out as a Halloween midnight movie in 1981. That had to hurt its box office take, and it also has the feel of forced kitsch, which is always a bad thing.
• Rocky had the benefit of Tim Curry. Curry's charisma and presence carried it. Shock Treatment didn't have anything comparable to him.
• As much as Rocky was odd, it still told a simple story in a traditional way that audiences could get a handle on. Shock Treatment was much more nonlinear and nontraditional in its storytelling, and I think that hurt it.
• To the extent that it was marketed as being related to Rocky, this was bound to disappoint fans of the earlier film. The recasting, the absence of Tim Curry and the plot that was totally disconnected had to leave them feeling betrayed.
• The plot itself is very weak -- weaker even than that of Rocky.

Having said all that, I think it's only natural to ask why I like it and why I picked it to show here (other than that it's a natural followup to last year's showing of Rocky). I'll admit that the first time I saw it, I was unimpressed. I was in college, I loved Rocky Horror, and found out that there was a sequel. My friend, Vinny, and I -- I forget if Angry Bob was with us -- rented it one Friday night and watched it at his place. But I was expecting a movie in the same vein as Rocky. I couldn't help but be disappointed. Add to that the fact that the VHS copy we rented was well-used and the color was washed out. I'm hoping that this DVD copy that we're about to watch (Thanks, Christina for arranging the interlibrary loan) is better. And, of course, I was sleep deprived enough that I had trouble staying awake. That made it difficult to follow what little plot there is. So, for years -- decades, actually -- I had no interest in this movie. Saying I hated it would be inaccurate, since I didn't care enough about it to hate it.

So what changed? Around 1990 I bought a four CD set that had been released for Rocky's 15th anniversary. On that set were three songs from Shock Treatment. And damn if they weren't catchy. In recent years I took to YouTube to see if I could hear any other songs from the movie, and I stumbled on the entire film. I didn't think I'd like it, but I wanted to hear the other songs. And this time, years later, when I was fully awake, watching it in crisp vivid color, and having no false expectations, I enjoyed it. And I have watched it (courtesy of YouTube) many times since. The music is, I think, the strongest thing it has going for it. In my humble opinion it's better than the music in Rocky, though that may be a result of it being contemporary (at least contemporary for when it was made), rather than a collection of self-consciously retro compositions.

The plot is still weak, I admit, but I can forgive that. In another hour and a half you'll tell me if you can too.

werewolf woman in the afternoon

If the werewolf in a werewolf movie isn't really a werewolf, but thinks that (and acts like) she is, is it a werewolf movie? That's the question that comes to mind after watching Werewolf Woman in my cinema history class. This was the final installment of werewolf month. Keith had said he was going to eschew the classic werewolf movies in favor of some oddball fare. And he came through in spades! Warning: The trailer below is both NSFW and NSFL.

In this installment, an Italian production, we meet Daniella Neseri, a woman who believes herself to be a werewolf. That belief is the result of three things:

• the fact that her ancestor is rumored to have been a werewolf;
• the fact that she looks just like that ancestor; and
• the continuing emotional trauma that resulted from her childhood rape.

Suffice to say she's confused. And violent. And sexual. And angry. I would really rather not give away too much of the plot, but it's fascinating to think about the scope of this bit of trash. It's part horror movie, part crime drama and part soft-core porn. There's even an extended sequence that reminds of spaghetti westerns.

I will say that I found the ending to be disappointing and muddled, though they did manage to tie it up in a neat little parallel to the beginning. I was also puzzled by the voiceover which indicated that names were changed to protect the innocent and that all similarities between the characters and real people are coincidental. These are two standard notices. But taken together? It's saying that the movie is based on real events. But it's purely fictional. How's that for some great parsing?

A few random notes:

• I impressed even myself, correctly predicting that Joe would rate this a 9.8.
• I may have ruined the whole thing for some of the class by noting that one of the characters was a doppleganger for Ted Cruz
• There was a peculiarly American quality to this movie, in that female characters seemed to have to suffer for having sex. Or at least for enjoying it.
• Joe and I had a little bout dueling references. I hear the title and think of the Spinal Tap song, "Sex Farm." At that point, I feel an urge to sing that chorus, but substituting "Werewolf woman" for "Sex farm woman." Joe has an analogous association with the Doors' "L.A. Woman."

 Starting next week? Our annual sequence of class-chooses-its-own screenings. For my week, I'll be going with Shock Treatment, the pseudo-sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show