September 25th

Cropsey (2009) directed by Barbara Brancaccio & Joshua Zeman

In the back of my mind, as I clicked on the link to this in Netflix, I remembered that this was supposed to be pretty good documentary that had something to do with an urban legend in New York.  I was expecting something along the lines of an exploration of the Jersey Devil myth, but what I got was something much more grim.  Cropsey investigates a rash of child disappearances and murders in the 1970s and '80s on Staten Island, interviewing those affected and following the trial of the primary suspect.

The most interesting part of the documentary to me was the fact that there were still people absolutely convinced the cause of the disappearances were satanic cults.  Some claimed a vast conspiracy of Satanists on the island whose rituals demanded child sacrifices.  Some were so scared of these imagined Satanists -- even to this day, 20 to 30 years later -- they refused to expand further on their theories or outright refused to be shown on camera.  It's a perfect example of the theme of this documentary: when an unexplainable evil happens, people need something to pin it on.  When that evil happens, repeatedly, to children, the scapegoat doesn't even have to make sense.

I can understand.  Becoming a parent changes you.  My greatest fear used to be amputation; I couldn't imagine anything worse than losing a limb.  Now, I would gladly jump feet-first into a wood chipper if it would save my kids from harm.  Children have this horrible power over their parents.  Your own happiness is directly connected to their well-being.  When something bad happens to them, it's very difficult to stay rational.

Do I think Staten Island put the right guy in prison for these crimes?  Based on what was shown in the documentary: yes.  It seems plausible that an already unstable Andre Rand was so affected by his two years working at the notoriously hellish Willowbrook that he decides to pick off local mentally disabled kids.  Do I think he got a fair trail?  Absolutely not.  From the documentary, it seems as though he was convicted based solely on 20-year-old eye witness testimony.  Am I glad he's in prison, anyway?  Yep.

A really well put together documentary, thoughtfully exploring the underbelly of Staten Island and the psychology of a community afflicted by evil.

Watched: stream on Netflix.

Inhumanoids 1.06: "Cypheroid" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
Probably the weakest episode of the series.  The sample Bright cut from Tendril's foot a few episodes ago grows into a new Tendril, which they quickly capture.  The government, not realizing Tendril is a moron, places a supercomputer next to his cage in the hopes of translating his speech.  Unbeknownst to the government, the supercomputer is both sentient and evil.  Basically, this episode exists to get the ball rolling on the post-"Evil That Lies Within" storyline.  By its end, Metlar and Tendril are free, the evil Blackthorne Shore has escaped from prison, and Blackthorne's cellmate Dr. Mangler has drown in toxic waste.


Inhumanoids 1.07: "The Surma Plan" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
Earth Corps vs the Ruskies!  It's the Cold War, Saturday morning cartoon-style.  The USSR decides to drill a hole to the Earth's core and flood it with water, hoping to destroy Metlar's domain.  When anyone tries to explain that this plan will likely crack the Earth in half, the Russian military leadership starts questioning loyalties.  As over-the-top as this is, it actually reminded me of the K-19: The Widowmaker, in which the radiation-poisoned Soviets refuse help from a nearby American ship for fear of giving up their technological secrets.

The best part of the episode, easily, is Dr. Mangler's resurrection.  Blackthorne recovers Mangler's skull from the toxic waste-polluted swamp he drown in and brings it to D. Compose.  D. Compose agrees to resurrect the good doctor and the result is... well, even D. Compose is not sure he made the best choice here:

Got to love how crazy this show is.  Mangler -- re-dubbed Nightcrawler -- has a skull for a face, some kind of weird robot torso, and a giant earthworm for one of his arms.  Creepy.

Inhumanoids 1.08: "Cult of Darkness" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
Tackling the then-hot issue of teen cults seems natural for this show.  Blackthorne, dressed in a mask and black robe, sets himself up as a cult leader and manages to attract a throng of teen worshipers.  It's all just a front, though, and a touch from D. Compose turns the cult into a zombie army that terrorizes the city.  Kids: don't join a cult or you may be turned into a zombie by giant undead-dinosaur-thing!  Also, it'll help you beat up bullies and get girls:

Inhumanoids 1.09: "Negative Polarity" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
A accident with a super-magnetic rock turns Magnokor evil and Metlar good.  This also, somehow, weakens Earth's magnetic field and threatens to bring the Van Allen belt down to the surface, irradiating all life.  Even if Inhumanoids' science is ridiculously awful -- traveling from the surface to the core seemingly takes only a few hours of driving through caves -- I have to give the show props for at least trying to be more science-y than its contemporaries.  If it were possible for the Van Allen belt to get low enough to touch the Earth's surface, it would be pretty bad for life on the planet indeed.  I bet a bunch of kids looked up the Van Allen belt it their encyclopedias (to you kids: this was Wikipedia in book form) after this episode aired.


Inhumanoids 1.10: "The Evil Eye" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
This is the episode I vividly remember from childhood.  Nightcrawler and Blackthorne discover a creature called a gagoyle.  It's kind of a squat, blue dragon with a see-through belly that eats anything in its vicinity, including, in a gruesome scene, all of its siblings.  Nightcrawler somehow establishes control over the critter and uses it to really, really screw with Blackthorne:

Yep.  One Saturday morning when was 9, I watched a toothy, blue monster eat a dude and then puke him up again under the orders of a skull-guy with a worm arm.  Unbelievable!  Nightcrawler later takes the gagoyle to visit D. Compose.  The two monsters fight and the gagoyle bites off D. Compose's arm and swallows it.  Holy crap!  When D. Compose promises to help Nightcrawler, the gagoyle pukes the arm up and D. Compose pops it back on.  But, still... wow.  As a kid, this absolutely blew me away.  Even the non-organic Transformers weren't getting their arms ripped off at this time.

Inhumanoids 1.11: "Primal Passions" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
After the incredibly screwed-up episode from the week before, Inhumanoids goes way, way in the other direction with this one.  "Jaw-droppingly silly" is how I might describe this ep.  Dr. Bright makes a concoction that he thinks may help fight the Inhumanoids and sprays it on the trio of monsters.  Whoops!  It was actually a love potion!  The fierce Inhumanoids monsters are now crushing on any female they come across.  D. Compose falls in love with Sandra, Tendril falls in love with a robot Tendril from a movie set and Metlar... Metlar steals the Statue of Liberty and brings her to life.  Unfortunately for Metlar, married life isn't what he imagined:

Yeah, who knew Lady Liberty was such a ball-buster?  And this is just one of half-a-dozen scenes in this episode that elicited a verbal "WTF!?" from me (see also: D. Compose waltzing and Tendril nearly crying).

Inhumanoids 1.12: "The Masterson Team" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
Corrupt Senator Masterson leads an expedition of blimp (?) vehicles into the center of the Earth on a mission to recover the Statue of Liberty from Metlar.  Things don't go their way and it's up to Earth Corps, temporarily teamed-up with Nightcrawler, to rescue them.  As it turns out, the expedition wasn't necessary at all.  Metlar reaches his limit of nagging and returns Lady Liberty to her rightful place on the surface.


Inhumanoids 1.13: "Auger… For President?" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano
A good send-off for the show that ends with a massive battle between the forces of good and evil.  Metlar and his statue army, D. Compose with his zombies, and Tentril with his weird bug-guys face-off against the combined might of Earth's armies, Earth Corps, the Redwoods and the Granites.  One of the more epic battles in Saturday morning cartoon history.

September 24th

The Cat and the Canary (1927) directed by Paul Leni

Inspired by fellow Six Weeks-a-teer Kaedrin's positive review, I decided to stream this silent horror-comedy.  I don't think I'd actually heard of this one before, but it was a nice surprise.  It's kind of the granddaddy of "stay the night in a creepy mansion" films, but also quite funny in a similar vein to Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Best. Intertitles. Ever.  Admittedly, I've only seen a couple dozen silent films, but none have ever had as dynamic of intertitles as this one.  Text that scrolls for suspense.  LARGE CAPS for shouting.  WiGgLy letters for fear.  Even a  Scooby-Doo-like "G-g-g-g-host!"  It all really adds to the film and makes me wonder why no one else was doing the same at the time.

Similarly dynamic was the shooting style.  It's rare to see a silent picture have this much fun with the camera.  There were low-angle shots, super-impositions of skulls, the creepy silhouette of the mansion, a warped shot of Aunt Susan's screaming face, lighting tricks to make Cousin Paul's glasses look creepy.  It all keeps the film very entertaining.  Well worth the watching.

Watched: stream on Hulu.

Inhumanoids 1.01-05: "The Evil That Lies Within, Parts 1-5" (1986) directed by Jim Graziano

Iron Maiden cover or kids' show?

It was the fall of 1986, I was just 9-years-old, and both this show and The Real Ghostbusters debuted as Saturday morning cartoons.  Wham!  Just like that, a horror fan was born.  These series blew my mind as a kid, offering a tantalizing glimpse of just what kind of weird and scary and grotesque and unique things horror could offer.  Horror, these two shows made clear to me, was not at all like the stuff other kids liked.  It was special.

Reaction to an Inhumanoid.

Inhumanoids was one of several Marvel/Sunbow/Hasbro cartoons produced in the mid-80s.  Their Transformers was for sci-fi geeks, G.I. Joe for action fans, Jem for girls and Inhumanoids was for people like me.  I can't say I'm terribly surprised it only lasted 13 episodes, but, for my money, it was the best of the bunch.  For one, it had the best animation of the lot and a unique look that featured lots of heavy shadowing.  It also was well-written for what was, let's admit it, a 22-minute-long toy commercial.  The episodes were truly episodic, building on what came before, and the plots involved such things as corrupt senators, nuclear winter and discussions on the morality of first strikes.  Heavy stuff for a 9-year-old to observe.  Still, this was all placed into the mold of an '80s cartoon, with its breathless pacing and "just because it looks cool" decision-making.

The show was also incredibly, incredibly messed-up for something ostensibly aimed at little kids.  The titular main villains look like they walked out of a D&D campaign or a Lovecraft story.

D'Compose (center) was especially gory.  Not only did he have an exposed rib cage, he could open it like a cabinet and trap hapless people in his chest next to his pulsating and oozing organs.  Added to that, anything he touched would turn into a zombie.  In these first five episodes, Sandra, the female main character, is touched and turns into this:

Sandra, not having a good day.

That's right: the equivalent of Scarlet or Arcee is turned into a hideous monster for a couple of episodes.  Hell, even the good guys were scary.  Here's the friendly Redlin, a sentient redwood tree:

Take one step closer with that chainsaw, bub.

Years later, when asked about this craziness, writer Flint Dille said in an interview: "Hasbro just did not care. I mean, you couldn’t kill people unwontedly, but inside that little concern, they didn’t care."  What's cooler: the show gets even more utterly screwed up in the final 8 episodes, which I plan to watch next.  Goddamn, Inhumanoids was cool.