charles lamb

Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras -- dire stories of
Celaeno and the Harpies -- may reproduce themselves in
the brain of superstition -- but they were there
before. They are transcripts, types -- the archetypes
are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of
that which we know in a waking sense to be false come
to affect us at all?

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such
objects, considered in their capacity of being able to
inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all!
These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond
body -- or without the body, they would have been the
same... That the kind of fear here treated is purely
spiritual--that it is strong in proportion as it is
objectless on earth, that it predominates in the
period of our sinless infancy--are difficulties the
solution of which may afford some probable insight
into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least
into the shadowland of pre-existence.

G O J I R A

THE THEME OF THE FILM, FROM THE BEGINNING, WAS THE TERROR OF THE BOMB. MANKIND HAD CREATED THE BOMB, AND NOW NATURE WAS GOING TO TAKE REVENGE ON MANKIND. - Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka

technology: monster or savior?

http://planetark.org/wen/57254

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS

Hi All: This is from a crabbed genius I know...

Under that beast-man makeup designed by Wally Westmore we may find uncredited Buster Crabbe, Duke York, Randolph Scott and Alan Ladd. Also Joe Bonomo, the famous strongman who later produced Turkish Taffy from a factory in Coney Island (today the welfare office next to the DMV) and came to work there every day until he died at his desk at the age of 104. Whereupon the brand ceased to exist.

Also please note that Montgomery's "medical indiscretion" is implicitly understood to mean abortion and that Wells was horrified by the undercurrent of bestiality inserted into the story by Kenton.

I think young Laughton's giggling, nutty Moreau is superb, one of the greatest Mad Scientists ever!

http://www.westgate-works.com/Charlie/charlie_gemora.htm

Well, that was most of the voice-over-comments content I use when I screen it. I cannot identify those bit players appearing as beast-men in my print, maybe you can spot them in a good full-density original. Just two more bits you can use. That gorilla person who appears in the cave tunnel as we enter the island is Charlie Gemora, the Philippino gorilla-suit actor known for playing the most expressive and comedic ape in film, he's the one blocking Laurel and Hardy on the rope bridge over the chasm in Swiss Miss (which I also have, it's a real turkey with the most horrible musical interludes imaginable).

http://members.shaw.ca/gorillagallery2/gorillamenclassic/cg_word_from_gmen.htm

Kathleen Burke, the Panther Woman, was the non-actress winner of the "girl with animal magnetism" beauty contest held in advance of production as a publicity stunt for the movie. Sure is cute; makes me purr...

THE GLEANERS AND I

Hey All,

Agnes Varda's playfulness (behind and in front of the lens) in no way betrays lax filmmaking.

I call your attention to her line: "I am an animal that I do not know."

There's an intense compression here that may need some unpacking.

A paper topic?

-D

Okay Everyone,

I'm trying to borrow a 16mm print of Chomon's EL SPECTRO ROJO for next week.

(To be followed by GOJIRA...)

Make sure to get there at 9 -- my hope is to convince you that there are even greater films to come (greater than MALAKAPALAKADOO, SKIP 2).

-D

"If the arrangement of society is bad (as ours is), and a small number of people have power over the majority and oppress it, every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression. This is what is actually happening." It is nearly half a century since Tolstoy wrote these words, and what was happening then has gone on happening ever since. Science and technology have made notable advances in the intervening years -- and so has the centralization f political and economic power, so have oligarchy and despotism. It need hardly be added science is not the only causative factor involved in this process. No social evil can possibly have only one cause. Hence the difficulty, in any given case, of finding a complete cure. All that is being maintained here is that progressive science is one of the causative factors involved in the progressive decline of liberty and the progressive centralization of power, which have occurred during the twentieth century. -Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty, and Peace (1946) Hey Everyone: Please feel free to draw on this source material. We are moving into the "science as monster" phase of our theme... -D