The Sporadic Curmudgeon

Have you seen those commercials for the hand-cranked machine that lets you stuff your own teddy bears? Three words: ground bear meat.

Without going into gory details, would a few damned hours of simple peace of mind be too much to ask? Any delusions of optimism I ever harbored have been kicked out of me. I know I’ve done some bad things in my life, and I’m sorry for them, okay? If the universe isn’t actively trying to kill us all, I call uncle. I give up, okay? Leave us alone. Please.

antidepressants
i’d like to see tom cruise walk
a mile in my brain

I just found out from Ain’t It Cool News that Roger Corman’s longtime screenwriter Charles B. Griffith has died.

Griffith wrote some of the most entertaining low-budget movies of all time, and the best of them have a gleefully dark, intelligent humor that makes them a surprising pleasure to watch.

In It Conquered The World, Peter Graves has to battle a Venusian Pickle-Crab bent on world domination that his friend and fellow scientist Lee Van Cleef put the welcome mat out for. Plus it has Beverly Garland in her magnificent prime, and a climactic blowtorch battle that takes place in the VERY SPOT I’m planning to have my ashes scattered after I die, Bronson Caves!

Little Shop of Horrors, you probably know about: maneating plant, Jonathan Haze, Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient, and all shot in less than a week on a second-hand set.

Death Race 2000 features David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone and Mary Woronov racing across the country in themed and heavily-armed cars mowing down pedestrians for points. Toward the end there’s a joke about a grenade that’s so bad it’s nothing short of genius.

And of course, my personal favorite, A Bucket of Blood. My wife and I gave out about a dozen DVDs of this nasty little movie for Christmas a few years ago. A hilarious slap at the Beatnik art scene, it has wall-to-wall Dick Miller, the amazingly beatiful Barboura Morris and cameos by Bruno VeSota and Burt Convy. Even though it’s not as well known as Little Shop of Horrors, A Bucket of Blood has been very influential. Miller has reprised his character Walter Paisley in a number of films for different directors over the decades, including The Howling and Hollywood Boulevard.

Other than Miller’s amazing performance, what really stands out in Bucket is Griffith’s writing. Here’s a sample of the drivel spouted by the pompous Beatnik poet who dominates the coffeehouse where most of the movie takes place:

Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.

And this:

..alley cats and garbage cans and speeding pavements and you and I and the Nude Descending the Staircase and all such things with soul, we know that Walter Paisley is born. Ring rubber bells, beat cotton gongs, strike silken cymbals, play leaden flutes! The cats and cans and you and I and all such things with soul, we shall hear Walter Paisley is born in the soul and the flesh: Walter Paisley is born!

Indeed. Walter Paisley is born. And Charles B. Griffith is dead, and it’s a poorer world for it.

Special morbid note: I’m serious about wanting my ashes scattered near the caves in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. They have been in almost every fifties B-movie ever made and several Star Trek episodes, and the one facing away from the canyon was the entrance to the Adam West Batcave.

So after I’m gone, and you see bad acting and rubber monsters being perpetrated in front of a cave in some crappy old movie, remember that they’re probably doing it on my grave. And I’ll be having the time of my life.

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