Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005 at 12:15 p.m.
The Hubster and I watched this 1975 flick called A Boy and His Dog, from the original story by Harlan Ellison, starring Don Johnson and taking place somewhere in the vicinity of Phoenix after WWIV in the year 2024. According to the story, WWIII lasted from 1953 to 1983, whereas WWIV took place in 2007 and lasted 5 days. Essentially long enough for all countries to unleash every single WMD in existence, even the ones that reside purely in Bush�s imagination. Vic is 18 years old and interested in 2 things: eating and getting laid. Sounds about right to me. His companion, Blood, is a telepathic dog who communicates only with Vic. From what I�ve read, the dog is the same dog who was Tiger in The Brady Bunch. Blood also has this �radar� ability that allows him to seek out females for Vic. All the women in this time are seemingly hunted down, killed, or in hiding. Which begs me to raise the question again:
Why are most Sci-Fi writers complete misogynists? Women seem to be nothing but pawns, rape and/or murder and/or kidnap victims, or background fodder with enormous gravity � defying garbonzos.
Vic laments when he finds a dead girl: �Why�d they have to kill her? She coulda been used 3 or 4 more times!�
Anyhoo, he does find a girl to �use�, and it turns out she was a sentry from �Down Under� to find a male capable of artificially inseminating their female population because it seems that men who live in the dark underground have low sperm counts, despite the lush greenery that grows regardless of lack of light. I think it had to do with the creepy mime makeup everyone wore.
In the end, Vic escapes, taking the girl with him. Blood doesn�t like her, though, and in the final scene, he pronounces that �She didn�t have good taste,� as Blood and Vic walk off into the sunrise.
You figure it out.
Anyway, this movie won a Hugo award, among other things, and it actually is a rather good movie, misogyny aside. It made me want to go and read the original Harlan Ellison novella, which, in my mind, means the movie did its job.
Also on the agenda was a 1980-ish German film called Christiane F. which is based on a series of interviews given by Christiane, a teenaged drug addict and prostitute. The story centers mainly around the Bahnhoff station and the Sound, THE discotecque of Berlin. Think Studio 54 � dancing, sex, drugs, rock and roll, etc. 13 year-old Christiane starts by taking acid and then gets mixed up with this bloke named Detlev and she eventually gets into heroin and begins to prostitute herself to maintain her habit. Very graphic and grisly. Features music by David Bowie (Christiane is a huge fan) which includes a wonderful version of Heroes in German which plays under Christiane and her friends running amok in a shopping center.
I had actually seen this several years ago, and I was looking forward to the DVD release to hopefully see the film in German and learn more about what happened to Christiane. I had actually found more information on the internet � she�s still living and has been on and off heroin since her teenage years. There was the original German track on the disc, but for some reason it wasn�t subtitled. I�ve studied German, but it�s not that good. In fact, my command of German is terrible.
Ja? Ja. Das ist schade.
So the disc did have any extras on it, which was disappointing, so I didn�t end up watching the whole movie � I don�t need to subject myself to that kind of misery, as the film doesn�t have ANY humor -- don�t watch if you�re expecting Trainspotting. From what I understand, the Sound had been working on cleaning itself up once these interviews came out. I�m not even sure that the club still exists. Ya gotta think, though, that a club that has a downstairs bathroom with an �H� spraypainted on the door has gotta know what�s going on in there.
Moving on, I�m expecting a slew of teenage 50�s angst movies, like You�ve Ruined Me, Eddie!. I think a Mamie Van Doren festival is in my future. I know I�ll have all new flicks for when the Hubster is off stomping around the woods on Saturday teaching a land navigation class.
Anyway, I think that people who are jackasses about being vegetarians because �Vegetables don�t feel the pain that animals do� haven�t seen THIS PICTURE:
TA!