HULU SNOOZE



Giddy Up, Oom Poppa, Oom Poppa, Mow Mow

I thought I'd try Hulu's Plus option since they're so confident about it they give you ONE WHOLE WEEK to check it out. My personal opinion? Skip it - if you can watch it for free, go for it. If you have to pay for it, go somewhere else. Even in the 'paid' mode, the buffering is horrible (if you dare do anything on your computer at the same time prepare for a crash, no matter how good your system), there's rarely any close captioning, and the final insult - commercials. 

I understand having them if you're watching something for free but why the hell would I pay to watch insipid commercials, 1/4 of them about Hulu? The only chuckle I got out of that was when they gave me the CHOICE between watching a commercial about Stayfree pads or watching Jennifer Aniston hawking Aveeno products. Hmm, what to choose...

So I start this horror (mostly horrible) fest with a marathon of Elvira pics and picks. Remember her guys? Big hair, big boobs, not much else? The choices range from her 80's shows and then skip up to 2010 and 2011. What's the difference? Well, besides the height of the aforementioned boobs, the content of the movies. Seems in the 80's she got to keep movies intact with language, nudity and all. It all gets sanitized in the 2010 and up versions and she 'riffs' more during the movies, trying to be like MST3K I guess. So I perused as many of her offerings as I could handle and this is basically what they were:

The House That Screamed (1970): The alternate titles - The Finishing School aka The Boarding School aka La Residencia (You can tell now that this is Spanish, right?). The title it should have had? Watch This For A Glimpse Of Boob Or If You're Into S&M. The headmistress is a slobbering mess of a meany and the girls have fun rebelling even though it means getting whipped - all the while being watched secretly by her pervert of a son who's supposed to have asthma but has no trouble in the dusty, coal drenched and cobweb covered passages he squishes into in order to get his peek on. Girls die. Twist: The son is not only a pervert but a psycho, he's been killing the girls and cutting them up to make the 'perfect' girl just like mommy. Eww.

The Devil's Wedding Night (1973): Boobs galore in this one. In fact the most interesting part of the movie was how the hell they found all those girls the same height and the same cup size. No joke. Dracula is a woman in this one (also the one with the biggest boobs) who can't act a lick but has a scene where it shows her nipple being basically the size of a Volkswagon. 'Nuff said.

Beast From Haunted Cave (1959): A little too old for boobage or language, this movie that was so cheap it couldn't afford a 'The' in the title was a Corman fest set in the snow with a monster who looked like Cousin Itt and included a subplot with gangsters 'cause let's face it - this was a snore fest no matter how many people you packed into it. This was on Elvira's 2011 show which is another reason why it probably had nothing bouncing in it - and also had a cameo of Jack White doing her 'rim shots' (he produced her new-fangled theme song and is mentioned in all 2010 and 2011 credits).

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966): Again on Elvira's 'clean' version of her show, this movie's title more than tells you what kind of movie this is. So I'll pass. <sigh> Yes, I had watched it when her show was on late night TV... you really don't wanna know.

Blue Sunshine (1978): Back in Elvira's 'R' rated days this little weird piece is about acid trips gone bad - ten whole freaking years later. Talk about flashback! Yeah not much in the way of nudity, just language and drug talk. And a mention at the end that 'not all the acid tabs have been found'. Let that be a lesson kiddies - if your acid was made in 1968 or before, flush it or you may find yourself first going completely bald just by touching your head and then murdering your loved ones. Just sayin'.

Frankenstein's Castle Of Freaks aka Terror! Il Castello Delle Donne maledette (Terror! The Castle Of The Damned Women) (1974): This Italian crap fest in Elvira's 'R' period has plenty of boobage since hey, why else watch this crap, right? I mean they call him 'Count' Frankenstein (Isn't he supposed to be a Baron?) and among his collection he has a caveman? Really? Only interesting part (to me) is an appearance by Michael Dunn, a man with dwarfism (SED) who starred in a ton of stuff in his brief life (he died at 38) including an episode in the original Star Trek series. Oh and the caveman Frankenstein captured apparently wasn't the only one as Michael's character 'Genz' later discovers - others live in a cave. Duh.

Count Dracula's Great Love aka El Gran Amor Del Conde Drácula (1974): Made by the International Amusement Corporation (that made me giggle more than the whole movie) this mainly focuses on serious horror issues - boobs, sex and stupidity. Yup. Oh and Dracula has to get a girl to honestly fall in love with him without tricks or he dies. Again. Still. Whatever.

Legacy Of Blood aka Blood Legacy (1971): Not much in the way of nudity I'm afraid - but lots of John Carradine looking as evil as possible. His character dies and his greedy misfits of kids come together to gloat and collect - but they have to stay in the house for a week. Where they die of course. 'Causes John's character isn't really dead and we aren't really surprised. They have a servant named Igor for crying out loud - played by Buck Kartalian and really the only reason you'd want to waste your time with this garbage. But the final gotcha is caused by the maid who eventually gets it all - and breaks the fourth wall to say to the audience 'And you thought the butler did it!' Umm no, actually I didn't even care to guess.

Whoops... how did this one get in here?

The Werewolf Of Washington (1973): My lord, Dean Stockwell starred in this stinker and STILL had a career afterward. This self-described horror-comedy was such a stinker it SHOULD have had some boobs bouncing around just to even out the yawning... it was supposed to parody some of the government's official's including some joker who apparently kept saying 'Let me make this perfectly clear....'  Okay okay no writing me please I know who that is, gah! The only part that was remotely giggle worthy was another appearance by short-stature Michael Dunn playing a doctor, uh, I guess - he had some guy strapped to a table in the bowels of the White House for... some reason - Dean as his wolfy self apparently liked the little doctor and happily sniffed his... uh yeah. What dogs sniff. 

Aaaand that's enough Elvira for a lifetime.


                           

OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT






William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet (2009)

This had to be the scariest thing I've seen this year. Netflix put this on display as an April Fool's joke and like a fool I dared someone to dare ME to watch it. I should have held out for the double-dog dare.

How to describe this? Well, it's 50 minutes long.

Oh, not enough? All right, actually it's NOT the ballet itself. It's worse. It's the creators of the ballet describing how it came about. Really. For 50 minutes. That's 3,000 seconds worth of William Shatner pontificating how he allowed his album 'Has Been' to become a ballet - even if he wasn't going to get paid for it. It was performed by an actual ballet company, with music provided in part by Ben Folds and some spoken lyrics (you know Shatner can't sing) provided by.... uh.... provided by.... <face reddens> provided by Henry Rollins.

There were examples,  both of some of the - you really can't call them songs but I guess since they're on an album Shatner thinks they're songs, plus snippets of the dancers doing their interpretation of Shatner's great wisdom and pithy observations. Excuse me, I'll be right back <sounds of violent vomiting>  eh, must have eaten something bad, sorry about that.

I think I need to lie down.



                                

COULDN'T MIA FARROW GROW HAIR?




Full Circle aka The Haunting Of Julia (1977) Canada/UK

Although this movie was made almost ten years after the abysmal Rosemary's Baby, it seems that Mia Farrow still couldn't grow any damn hair - she looked exactly like she did in the previous movie, eyes like deer caught in the headlights and all. Geez. They should have left the title as full circle but I guess back then they couldn't know just how many movies were going to start with 'The Haunting Of' just like a ton of movies now are titled '... Of The Dead'. I don't know why, but the US didn't get this gem until 1981. They could have kept it longer, really.

Mia can NEVER be happy in a movie I guess. In this one, she's unhappily married and right off the bat her little daughter chokes to death on a piece of apple. No that's not quite right - even though the Heimlich maneuver was relatively new in the 70's it was still used but oh no, not in this movie - Julia (Mia Farrow) decides to go the 'easy' route of a tracheotomy because we all know how easy those are. The kid bleeds to death. Massive duh but a necessary start to this dumb movie.

Realizing she was miserable anyway she moves away and buys a new house (Geez where do all these people get the money?) and tells her husband to... stay away. That'll teach him. One of the rooms has a bunch of kids toys, including a creepy clown that is one of those damn things that claps cymbals together. Whose freaking bright idea was this for a child's toy? The cymbals are sharp, she cuts her finger and puts it down. Of course it does what these creepy things do - it starts up by itself. Straight to the compactor I say. She just puts it back. DUH.

Annnnd let the hallucinations begin. She starts seeing what she thinks is her daughter, hears strange noises, things creak, footsteps are heard, massively dull things fill the time. Finally people around her start to die. She doesn't know it or maybe she'd act a little smarter (no she wouldn't). She even has a seance in her house. Oh yeah, that's always smart. Afraid of evil spirits? Just invite them in, they won't bug you - massive DUH on anyone's part.

So we finally get to the meat of the movie - a boy was killed in her neighborhood - of suffocation. Uh huh, must have been an epidemic. Oh but it gets better. The boy was bullied and the ringleader, a girl that looks a hell of a lot like Julia's dead daughter (duh) had the neighbor kids hold him down and dirt was shoved down his throat 'til he died. Nice kids, think I'll have a dozen or two. So why is she seeing the ghost of a little girl? Her mother, who is now in a looney - sorry, a mental facility is visited and confesses she suffocated the girl herself 'cause she realized she was evil. And killing her wasn't? She's hiding out even though she's not really mental so her daughter's ghost can't find her - but thanks to Julia, she sees her daughter and just that causes a fatal heart attack. So there.

Now the whole sordid (sounds better than boring) story is out, for some dumb ass reason Julia feels for the little girl - to hell with the fact that she killed a kid. She arrives home, goes to the girl's room and sees the ghost, standing there with that damn clack clack toy. Thinking all you need is love (I know, copyright infringement, come and get me) she holds out her hands to the child telling her the toy is too sharp and takes it... typical cutaway as all we hear is a clack and then see a dying and very bloody Julia - apparently the little dickens used a cymbal to cut her jugular. Ahh, isn't that sweet.


At least it was a lot shorter than Rosemary's Baby.








                                

OH DAMN, ANOTHER MENTAL ASYLUM MOVIE



Greystone Park (2012)

<Gags> Inspired By True Events. That means there are hospitals and dollies and little girls. Aaaaand that's about it. Why oh why oh why, you might ask, would I torture myself over and over with movies about stupid young people I hope die quick breaking into abandoned psychiatric hospitals only to endure (in this case 82 minutes) of shaky hand held cameras, night vision, people screaming obscenities at each other (Gee, aren't they supposed to be friends?) and the ultimate thump thump thump as each fall off the screen until the credits roll?

Well, you have to kind of look at it the right way - don't take any of it seriously. Have some fun with it, because you don't even have to have my patent pending movie review checklist for these kinds of movies. You know they're gonna start as friends, panic every time they hear a squeak, eventually something happens (Ooh! A door closed!) and finally towards the last 10 minutes of the movie something happens that kills them all, finally. Or you can look at the historic aspect of the supposed place this 'true' movie comes from.

Oh yeah, I'd trust my life to this guy...

This actually doesn't claim to be true to the letter - just in general theory. A lot of the history was facinating. Mental health care in the beginning of the 1900's was positively barbaric. There were some good doctors who tried to press the issue of caring for the patients as humanely as possible, but that usually crumbled under too many patients, too few staff and beds, the tuberculosis epidemic that dumped thousands on their doorstep, and just the general cruelty of people who have no business being in the medical industry to begin with.

OMG! It's... a chair... in a room... by itself!!!

Greystone Park is a real place. Hell, it's a TOWN. Not officially, but the place they're basing this movie on is in New York or New Jersey - it kind of looked like they were using shots of several different buildings (remember Long Island used to be all farm land and looney bins to pardon the phrase) and because of it's massive size, there were neighborhoods to house all the doctors and staff, stores, electricity generators, dairy farms as well as agricultural - everything they basically needed to be self-sustaining. The worst (or should I say hardest) labors were usually done by the patients - it was the consensus that hard work would only help the mentally ill feel better about themselves. And hey, they didn't have to pay them.

Okay who's the joker playing Gundam Style?

And the doctor they mentioned - Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride - he's also real. He was a pioneer, both in the design and construction of mental hospitals (they eventually used his floorplans as a kind of standard for many hospitals) and he also was a believer in compassionate care for the unfortunate. Not a perfect guy, granted, but not a monster.

I was going to post a bunch of photos and stuff about some of these places but instead, if you're interested, some great sites I was interested in and showed some of the ups (and many downs) of mental care especially around the 1930's. 

Site about Kirkbride: 

http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/about/kirkbride.html . 

Site about the huge complex that supposedly the movie is based on: 

http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/greystone-park-psychiatric-hospital/ 

Others with some interesting (and kind of depressing) footage of treatments done there:

http://www.opacity.us/site23_pilgrim_state_hospital.htm 

Hmm? Ohhhh, the movie - screw that. It didn't even pan out the story it was hinting at about, depending on who you listened to, a woman ghost that kills or the ghost of a kid born and raised there who kills - does it really matter? Instead, here's a drinking game (again, please use soda or you'll get totally blitzed) with the phrases used for oh, about 85% of the dialogue:

A big drink (or if a friend is unfortunate enough to be watching this with you, a punch on the arm) if you hear:

• Get me out of here!
• Let's just go!
• Did you see that?
• There's nothing there, man.
• F### you!
• It's okay, it's okay...
• What, did you see something?
• We have to leave RIGHT NOW!

So... was THIS the killer?

Oh and to the idiots who made this movie - despite what you see in every other damn psycho hospital movie, shaky cameras that cut out constantly, night vision, and disjointed images supposedly coming from past experiences at the hospital does NOT make a horror movie, okay?

Or was THIS the.... ah, skip it.

Sigh. You all know as well as I do that right now there are probably a dozen new movies exactly like this one in post-production as we speak...




                              

YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND H.P. LOVECRAFT



The Resurrected aka Shatterbrain (1992) Direct To Video

Any attempt to make a movie based on H.P.'s work can go either horribly wrong and boring, or wonderful. Personally I haven't seen wonderful yet. However this movie did try and some things about it were pretty good, some pretty awful. This is a movie where the Netflix 'reviewers' (all anonymous) either gave it 5 stars and raved about it or gave it one star saying it was a total piece of garbage and all the 5 star reviewers were involved with making the movie. 

Uh, I don't think people who make movies bother with Netflix, do you? If so, that would be really, really sad. The more I watch these movies though... I personally liked the title Shatterbrain a whole lot better but it has nothing to do with the movie at all, so I understand why they changed it. It is a lot cooler though. And, sadly, Jeffrey Combs is not present.


This is NOT based on an H.P. story - I would say they took ideas from a story and tried to make a movie around that. The story was called The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, a short novel published after Lovecraft's death. The basic story is that Charles Ward, young, rich but not particularly smart, learns that one of his ancestors was considered a wizard of sorts, into the black arts. This man, Joseph Curwen, performed experiments trying to find the secret of eternal life (a recurring type theme in H.P.'s work). Ward finds a portrait of Curwen who looks exactly like him (or vice versa, whatever) and decides to try to 'raise' him first. Duh move on his part 'cause blood is NOT thicker than water...

So the movie starts in a detective agency as John March dictates the strange case he has just been involved in and hopefully will soon forget. They format the movie like the typical gumshoe story - he's in his office when SHE walks in... the blonde who makes him nuts and do anything she wants. She tells her story - she's the wife of Charles Ward who, after finding out that his ancestor was not who he thought but a man named Curwen who was into black magic becomes obsessed and tries to recreate his experiments. The main aspect apparently is the stink. They make a big deal of the huge stink this whole experiment creates - whether that's supposed to represent the wrongness of what he's doing or it's just because... well, let's continue.

She's gorgeous, she's rich, and he wants the money. He uses his assistant Lonnie (known to most as Mike Damone from Fast Times At Ridgemont High - funny 'cause in a recent Family Guy Peter 'calls' Damone for a favor using a scene from that movie then breaks the fourth wall and says something to the effect of 'And he was never seen again.') to check the place out since March has moved out to his family's country, uh, dump to continue his experiments. 

Talking to Ward (Chris Sarandon) himself, March notices some strange things - his skin is discolored, he's much thinner, his perfect teeth are now dark and almost looked like they've been filed down to points, and he talks as if he was born several hundred years ago. Yeah, it's one of those duh moments where the audience has the gist of it but the movie takes forever to catch up.



If you're looking for blood and guts, this movie provides plenty. Apparently, Ward has found the means for eternal life, but as March puts it, 'It's messy'. SALTS. Oh, sorry... that means 'smiled a little then stopped'. As March has guessed, eternal life involves sucking out the life of others to keep alive yourself - kind of a really smelly smart zombie. Kind of. Ward is really now Curwen (something everyone except the movie already figured out) and he needs blood (or bloody raw meat, whatever) to keep his form.



There's protracted scenes where March, Ward's wife and his assistant find a huge underground labyrinth and we see where all the money for special effects was spent. It is the place that Curwen does his experiments, and includes his/Ward's 'mistakes' - misshapen horrid things from the oopsies made with a mysterious elixir and the human remains smuggled to his, uh, lair? After fighting with things that really aren't alive anyway and therefore can't die, two make it out and blow the place to kingdom come - but not before March learns a secret, pocketing the elixir before leaving.

He takes Ward's wife to the hospital and goes to visit Ward/Curwen. He of course now knows that Curwen, once raised by Ward, uh, consumed him? Absorbed him? Something icky. But Curwen, who already has gotten the whole modern justice system down pat knows that he just needs to be a good boy for a few months even if he's accused of murder and he'll be considered 'cured' and let go. One immediate problem though - he's really, REALLY hungry. And March is conveniently made of meat. Sorry, but the movie began to seriously fall apart and you really just want this to be over by now. Curwen breaks out of his restraints and attacks March, biting him in the shoulder.

Hmm, Curwen got his teeth fixed before he bit the big one...

March breaks out his secret weapon: Ward's suitcase, which contains, somehow (not possible but oh well) the complete skeleton of the hapless Charles Ward. It scatters on the floor and he brings out the elixir, throwing it on the skeleton. He had read notes in the lab, conveniently, that said if one consumed another, and the other was given the elixer... well, long story short (way WAY too late) since Curwen, uh, ate Ward, Ward's reconstituted skeleton pulls the flesh from Curwen. At this point they got pretty gory and I thought this was going to be a great payoff but then they cheapened out and we get all these where-the-hell-did-these-come-from sparks that cover the two, uh, things and they explode. Or implode. All that's left of both is a blackened spot on the floor. Umm, okay.

March stumbles out of the hospital before the mess is found, leaving Mrs. Ward and her unborn baby (bum bum BUMMMM!) to believe that Mr. Ward simply escaped from the hospital and hoping not to think about any of this anymore. Hmm, I was having that same thought myself.

I LOVE SURPRISES



The Factory (2013)

Netflix appears to be having some fun for April Fools Day this year. If you looked at the choices you might have found topics like, 'Nephrotic Adventures Featuring Very Tiny Children', 'Reality TV About People With No Concept Of Reality', 'Movies That Are In English But Still Require Subtitles', and 'Movies Featuring An Epic Nicolas Cage Meltdown'. Bravo Netflix, now quit doing my job for me!

Still unable to face the movies I'm supposed to be reviewing (hey I said I review movies, I didn't say I was consistent) I picked out of nowhere this movie simply because it had John Cusack in it - another actor on my list of people I will watch in anything. You have to make sure you have the right one so make sure it's the one he's in - apparently there's several with this title all made within a year or two of each other.

And hey, this would have been a good one just 'cause of Cusack but so much duh was crammed into it, you might watch it for the twist, but not 'cause it's a smart flick. And I realized I practically wrote the whole damned movie down so this review actually has been shortened from its original form.

I kind of wish John could write some of his own scripts because although he does an excellent job, he seldom has stellar material. This had the death knell at the beginning 'inspired by actual events'. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!  Ahem, sorry about that. Once I got into the movie and saw what it was basically about I remembered the incident it was kind of copying (I've got several hundred true crime paperbacks - no exaggeration).

When I read the book I remember that the cases was unusual and sick enough to, well, write a book about it. Now new cases are all over the news and not just done by psychos to total strangers - it's happening within families! My twisted and horrid childhood is getting paler and paler by comparison to these loonies and what they do to their kids... I'll explain in a bit.

We start with the basic every-detective-story-in-the-world scenario: Mike Fletcher (John Cusack) is a detective that works long hours, neglecting his family in the process, as he tries to work a case of a serial killer (a man who's a dead ringer, pardon the expression, of the late, great John Ritter) who takes prostitutes. He's been working on it about non-stop on the mean streets of New York for years. Apparently, the killer mainly works during the winter so... yeah, this is your typical isn't-New-York-a-lousy-place-to-live kind of movie, mostly a slap in the face for the quarter million people who live, probably mostly contentedly, in Buffalo.

Anywho, he has a partner who's been helping every step of the way, in fact she specifically wanted to work this case with him, her name is Kelsey. She's also a close friend of the family and enjoys being with his kids, one reason is she can't have any of her own.

Do we see an obvious story forming boys and girls? 'Cause if you don't, you need to go back to horror story 101 and get a refresher course on the DUUUUUH of obvious set ups and plodding story lines that lead to obvious endings.

Ahem. Anyway our detective team learns their case is being shut down because the killer has 'gone to ground' which is a term meaning he's stopped killing and is probably either hiding or has moved on to a different state or country. Suddenly they hear of an abduction that can only be one of his - after three years he's started again. Phew, I thought this movie was going to be really short. Duh. Nope, you're gonna be subject to this crime for 104 minutes so settle back.

Mike (Cusack) has a teenage daughter Abby who, like most teenagers, hates her parents, hates her life, hates her school, hates her responsibilities, but loves an older boy who's just looking for jollies with a high school girl. She has something very serious to tell him but he stops her and basically says it's been swell but the swelling's gone down and dumps her. She's so upset she runs out of the cafe' he works in without her coat or phone. He sees it, goes to the window and she's talking to someone in a car. The next time he looks before going out, she's gone. Any guess as to who took her and why? Well, let's see - she's dressed in hardly anything (she left her coat behind) and she's willing to get in a stranger's car.... that's a head scratcher.

She disappears. Any real questions as to who took her and why? No? Good for you. The serial 'killer' isn't killing the girls - he's keeping them in his basement in little cubicles, grooming them to become mothers of his children. Ick. So Abby, Mike's daughter is movie stupid and so the first words out of her mouth is that her dad is a cop. Oh, that's going to scare him. Not. Now that Mike is aware that Abby has been taken by the same sicko he's been pursuing he kind of loses it.

Meanwhile Abby has been beaten, chained and told by the other girls her fate - she's going to bear this psycho's child. Mike is frantically putting together the pieces, knowing there must be something right in front of his face that he's missing and knowing if he doesn't hurry, he'll never see his daughter again.

Finally putting the pieces together he and his partner Kelsey rush to the psycho's house. Mike finds him first and... from this point the movie does this stupid cut-away-from-the-scene-so-you-don't-know-what-happened which they repeat annoying several times for the rest of the movie.


After finding a room with several babies in incubators, Mike shoots Gary (the psycho) who all the girls had called 'daddy'. Kelsey comes to the scene. Mike tells her Gary's gonna die - she turns and shoots Mike. Wait, what? Ohhhh, of course, the twist. See, Kelsey can't have kids - and she had been the very first girl Gary had picked up. When she couldn't have kids, she became a cop so she could help him find others to abduct. 

Kelsey, losing her 'daddy' is ready to kill Mike until Mike tells her Abby is pregnant, hoping to keep her occupied until he reaches the gun at his ankle. We get another annoying cutaway, then a flash of a gunshot. Uh, fellas? Nobody outside the house (or inside for that matter) is going to see a bright 'flash' from a gun, okay? D-U-H.

After the inevitable massive emergency vehicle scene where everybody's taken out of the house (and the magic blankets are put on the survivors) we find out that Kelsey is a faster shot and Mike is dead. Ahhh.

Hmmm? What are magic blankets? Oh sorry, it's just that with every horror movie (and other genres too) whenever an ambulance shows up, what is their first line of treatment with every patient no matter what the circumstances? Check it out for yourself... bet you a quarter it's gonna be a blanket.

Okay the movie was obvious, a lot of duh moments and what-the-hell twists that made it irritating. But such things do happen, the movie was well acted if not planned out well, and John Cusack could make the cruddy The Asylum movie company look good if he had to.



                         

TRUTH IS MORE BRUTAL THAN FICTION







I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

I had heard of, long long ago in the primitive time that was the 80's that a certain band had written a song and it was popular for a whole month and that it was based on a tragedy. I don't know how they got away with that, maybe because they were a UK band and the tragedy happened in the US, but nevertheless I had heard it on MTV (that was when a music channel was actually FOR music) and while I didn't like the song anyway, I certainly didn't like the fact that they took what was a shameful first (it was said) for America and made money off of it.

I have had absolutely no energy or desire to continue with movies (temporarily, thank goodness) and so was perusing Netflix's selection of TV series, among them crime series certain channels had offered. When this story came on it was very familiar and I finally got to learn some details. It is supposed to be the story of the very first schoolyard shooting in the United States. 

It is not pretty and it is not something to be proud of and Bob Geldof should be extremely ashamed for reaping profit off of others' misery. For someone who starred in Pink Floyd's The Wall, a movie that was anti-establishment, and claimed to be so humanitarian (he DID create Live Aid after all) he certainly didn't flinch about having this song hit the charts and stay there for a month (in the UK) and have it become his biggest song with The Boomtown Rats in 1979. They even made it into a video. 

Before 1979, shootings at schools were unheard of. At least no one ever spoke of them. While the program claimed this was the first, they were very, very wrong. Actually, there have been shootings at schools in the US dating back into the 1700's and that the incident of 1979 was far from the first in United States history. How they figured it was the first I don't know - didn't do their homework? 

The most recent before this incident (And HOW THE HELL was this permitted?) was in May 18, 1978: In Austin, Texas John Daniel Christian, 13, son of Lyndon B. Johnson's former press secretary George Christian, shot to death his English teacher, Wilbur Grayson, 29, with his father's .22 caliber rifle in front of approximately 30 classmates. John Christian was never prosecuted and is now a practicing attorney in Austin, Texas. How's THAT for American justice?

But as usual I digress. In January 29, 1979, kids were arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego as usual, chattering with each other and playing, and since it was southern California, it was warm enough that no one was in a hurry to go inside. Until the first child grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. Adults inside the building describe the sound as the typical 'pop' sound of a firecracker but until kids started screaming no one thought to go outside. 

In the end, miraculously no children died although eight were injured. But one police officer was also injured and both the principal and a custodian, who had rushed out with blankets to bravely try to grab the injured kids and bring them in, died. Why?

Brenda Ann Spencer. She was 16, she was a loner and she was tired of being dumped on by the world. She lived with her father in a small house across the street from the school, and although it states they lived in poverty, and that she was most likely abused (her father says not), she had a new .22 rifle. Why she was given a weapon when she basically had nothing else no one knows. But she was a crack shot. And that morning she decided that her life was miserable enough that she needed to spread the misery around. 

This was not a girl just shooting aimlessly at kids. She chose her targets, some say based on her favorite colors but that's heresay, and carefully aimed before bringing each one down. And she was not going to stop, even when the police started showing up. Eventually, someone thought to park a garbage truck in front of the house to block her view and her shots, and she was arrested without incident.

But during the shooting, the local press was looking for anyone to give information and started making calls, including to her house. When asked why she was committing this heinous act she said blithely, "I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day."

It was that statement that proved to be her ultimate downfall as far as any mercy or leniency went. She was only 16, an outcast. Because of past behaviors and severe depression, she was recommended to be remanded to a mental facility in 1978 (her father objected). For Christmas in 1978 her father gave her the .22 rifle instead of the radio she wanted (she felt her father wanted her to kill herself). She was bullied, abused and certainly messed up (sane people do NOT shoot living beings for kicks). But the fact that she so flippantly gave that statement to the press (and committed this horrible crime against little kids) led to her being tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 years to life (the maximum at that time).

She has applied for parole four times and been denied each time. In 2009 she applied yet again and was denied, this time the board determining that she would not be able to apply again until 2019.

Oh, and gun control would not have stopped her or any of the others before her - that's a fact whether you want to believe it or not. And will the justice system protect you? I don't know, why not ask John Christian?