Buttered Pop Culture

  While Dracula might be his best known work, it is not the only thing Bram Stoker wrote. And it's not even the only thing to get a movie adaptation. Ken Russell is known for making horny,deviant movies, so of course his 1988 loose adaptation of The Lair of the White Worm is both. Featuring a rape scene of a convent full of nuns against a psychedelic backdrop, a snake woman who dresses in vinyl dominatrix boots and slinky lingerie, a human sacrifice where the ritual involves a giant strap on dildo (even Russell apparently got cold feet occasionally, as no attempt was made to employ said dildo), and a weird throwaway pedophilia joke. A couple of future stars are in there (both Peter Capaldi and Hugh Grant have ties to Dr. Who, as well as having worked together again in Paddington 2). And there are some on the cheap 80's special effects that look pretty good all things considered. The movie begins with archeology student Angus doing an impromptu dig at a bed and breakfast run by

  Before reading this book I didn't know that "adult" western was an ongoing genre in books. I thought I had purchased a good old fashioned western shot 'em up story. I was in for a bit of a shock. I'm no prude, but boy, this book was vulgar. And seemed to revel wallowing in it. It makes sense for the time period for many of the characters to be racist (excpet the title character who seems to be the only non-racist in the west), but there are times when it seems like the author was trying to win a bet about how many times he coulod include the "n word" in his book. And not only is Longarm, the protagonist, not racist, he is a superhuman sex machine as shown by his ability to bed every woman who crosses his path and spend hours pleasuring them over and over again in every position known. Less explicit, and only slightly more believable, Longarm also can read multiple books while spending an afternoon in court watching proceedings, and knows all the real d

  Wild Eyed Southern Boys was released in January 1981. The band was fronted by the brother of Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zandt, and the southern rock roots show through a little on the album. Mostly though, it sounds like typical 80's radio rock. It's mostly unspectacular except for a few gems that continue to heard daily on classic rock radio. Hold On Loosely is the best song the band ever recorded. It kicks off with a great guitar riff, has the catchiest chorus, and has the biggest impact. There's a reason this is the one that ended up on all the compilation albums. First Time Around is dull by comparison and suffers by following directly after it on the record. The title track is okay, a little corny but not bad. It's catchy. Back Alley Sally is forgettable and doesn't impress much either way. Fantasy Girl is another classic rock radio staple. It's a good song, though not as good as a lot of songs that have been forgotten by radio programm

  If you are a fan of classic "golden age" Hollywood, names like Cary Grant, Gene Lockhart, Rosalind Russell, Howard Hawks, and Ralph Bellamy will ring an instant bell. You will also be familiar with "screwball" comedies. And if this is the case for you, His Girl Friday is a movie that you need to see. Based on a hit play titled The Front Page , which had been adapted into a movie once with the same name as the play, His Girl Friday came out in 1940. It was directed by Hawks, and was about newspaper reporters. The film is careful to mention with an opening screen card that it portrays reporters of a vague earlier time, and is not indicative of the behavior of newsies of the time. It doesn't quite mention what earlier era the movie is supposed to be set in. Rosalind Russell plays former ace reporter Hildy Johnson, who is leaving her job at the paper run by her ex-husband and ex-editor Walter Burns played by Cary Grant. She has fallen for and plans to

  In 1931, two movies were made by Universal Pictures that created the genre of the horror movie. The first was Dracula , starring Bela Lugosi. It made a boatload of money—a $700,000 profit at the height of the Depression—so of course the studio wanted to make more movies like it. So they made Frankenstein . The original intent was to cast Lugosi as the monster since he was now a bankable movie star. However, Lugosi didn't like the character. In the original version of the script, the monster was imagined as a savage killing machine and not the sympathetic creature we ended up getting. Lugosi passed, and the original director was taken off the project because the studio promised James Whale any property he wanted—and he wanted Frankenstein . Whale reworked the script and also found Boris Karloff. Thus, while Bela Lugosi lost his chance to be the king of the monster movies, the world was gifted with the talents of Mr. Karloff. He went above and beyond for Frankenstein ,

  The movie begins with some goofy slapstick scenes showing a woman walking down a sidewalk. But this is not just any woman! As is proven by her not being fazed at being shot at point blank range by a bank robber, there is something strange about this woman. After this encounter, she goes into a restaurant and proceeds to drink a glass of milk, presumably only to show off the streams of milk that then leak from the bullet holes in her body. Thus Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine sets the tone and lets you know exactly the kind of movie you are in for. See, the woman that we follow in the opening scenes is a robot. She and several others were created by Dr. Goldfoot (Vincent Price, who is fantastic as always) to seduce rich men and then convince them to sign over all of their assets. Only there is a slight snafu during this inaugural mission. Goldfoot's bumbling assistant was supposed to program the robot to go after wealthy Craig Gamble (played by Frankie Avalon). I

I love old horror novels. I especially love when I can find an old horror novel that's not written by Stephen King or Dean Koontz (seriously perusing the horror section at most used book stores you'd think those two guys are the only people on earth writing horror fiction sometimes). So I was excited to read this book. My quick, no spoilers summary is, this book is problematic in parts, murky in others, and has an ending that feels like the author wasn't sure where he was going so he just wrapped it up real quick. That being said, the book is immensely readable. Yes I know, murky usually means the opposite, but in this case both are somehow true. The author obviously wanted to bust some of the tropes of the period, and does so in ways that are still a little upsetting to this day. He is also ill informed about things that serve as major plot mechanics, but in the end it doesn't seem to really matter. Even while in my head I was yelling at the book for all the things it