GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME... MORE LIBERTY

A Brief Conversation About Freedom And Yes, We Still Have It

Living in the US, personal freedoms have always been a given. We have a Constitution. We have rights. We pay for those rights with our money and our obedience to the laws of the land. But what happens when the obedience to those laws start infringing on our freedoms? If you have watched or listened to the news at all, you realize people get furious. They polarize. Suddenly we're not a united nation, we're 50 states with different opinions and laws. It's not just about race. It's not just about whether we have the right to own weapons. It's not just about what information is becoming available to the government. It's us and how we live.

So we've learned that our email, our phone conversations and other data may be in the hands of people who will... what? Use it against us? Snoop on what we're doing? I thought that was called the internet. Think about it. Whatever social network you happen to use, you are giving up certain freedoms to use it. You have to give them your real name. Your email. Your address and phone number. You may be able to hide certain facts from the public (Some have 'user names' that are not their real names. My name is real, my profile picture, obviously, is not.).

So why do some things make us so angry? Yes, our government screwed up by collecting info without our knowledge. But do you know how many times sites on the internet do that same thing - and have even more of our information than you may know - often selling them to third parties which is why we get an email address full of spam. I have a good computer system. For security we got top notch software that protects us from those dreaded viruses that we keep hearing about that can wipe out our hard drive in seconds (pffft). But you know what? Through a trusted source I found a little program that does one thing - it blocks any, ANY site that tries to 'track' you, gather your info, see where you're going and what you're doing.

And you know what? So far (and I haven't had it very long) it has blocked sites from 'tracking' me (as of this date) 183,263 times. And I'm no computer addict spending 23 hours of my day online. This is just from the little I can get on here. Who tracks you? Did you buy a song from iTunes? Tracked. Go on Facebook or your Google + site? Tracked. Buy a book or ??? from Amazon? Tracked. Look at your personal and supposedly secure (mine is through my phone company) email account? Tracked.

We can get as mad as we want that the NSA want the billions of pieces of electronic information from us for whatever reason they tell themselves but the plain truth is - our stuff is already out there. As for me, although I never use a picture of me or my family online, it's on my driver's license and a national database, including my fingerprints (no, I've never been arrested). They have everything on me. They have almost everything on everyone already. What more could they possibly use? And what good would it do them?

And for those yelling their opinion in our faces - be quiet and go home. Especially celebrities who think that they are much smarter than the rest of us poor stupid people. I'm thinking of one particular actor with dual citizenship who recently starred in a very violent movie (I should know, I saw the first one and was pretty disgusted.) and NOW is screaming that certain rights we have should be removed 'cause we're all stupid and all we want to do is go around killing people. Oh, and he hates his new movie. 

Okay for the record here's the timeline: There was a tragic shooting with understandable outrage from the public. One year and 7 months go by and there was another tragic shooting with understandable outrage from the public. Four months after THAT, this actor made his movie. One month after THAT was a tragic shooting with understandable outrage from the public. NOW this actor says his film was wrong, us having our rights is wrong (and quietly went to the bank and cashed his check).

Is there any wonder there is shouting from both sides accomplishing nothing? So far in this Country we still have the rights we've always had. Now there is arguing on both sides on whether that should change but the point right now is that NOTHING HAS CHANGED. The NSA got caught doing what the internet has been doing to us all along probably since the first day they hooked up. And as long as we obey the laws and protect those laws, nothing they see will matter one little bit.

People can scream all they want about what certain groups WANT to do to change our world but those changes haven't happened. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the violence has not changed a whit - what has changed is how fast news travels and how many people take facts and present them in whatever way they choose. It makes things seem worse, but let me end this with some facts that I will not comment on:

Despite news media impressions to the contrary, there are not many murders in the United States that are committed with rifles or shotguns. Combined, it is under 1,000 per year---more people are murdered with knives. FBI data shows that most murders are done with handguns. Random killings are very rare, most are between people who know each or rival gang members. In other words, stay out of areas, such as parts of Rahamland (Chicago), and your chance of being killed by a stranger is very, very slim. Further data to contemplate: In 32% of the murders in 2010, no firearm was used.

Weapons	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Total	15,087	14,916	14,224	13,752	12,996
Total firearms:	10,225	10,129	9,528	9,199	8,775
Handguns	7,836	7,398	6,800	6,501	6,009
Rifles	438	453	380	351	358
Shotguns	490	457	442	423	373
Other guns	107	116	81	96	96
Firearms, type not stated	1,354	1,705	1,825	1,828	1,939
Knives or cutting instruments	1,830	1,817	1,888	1,836	1,704
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)	618	647	603	623	540
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)	841	869	875	817	745
Poison	12	10	9	7	11
Explosives	1	1	11	2	4
Fire	117	131	85	98	74
Narcotics	48	52	34	52	39
Drowning	12	12	16	8	10
Strangulation	137	134	89	122	122
Asphyxiation	106	109	87	84	98
Other weapons or weapons not stated	1,140	1,005	999	904	874

Peace and love to you all.

REMEMBER YOU CAN'T HAVE SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER




Killjoy 1-3 (2000, 2002, 2010)

Let's talk briefly about the lack of ethnic diversity in horror. I say brief because, for some reason, they still do not get enough great parts in today's horror genre, and no matter what I say or how I say it someone's gonna think I am prejudiced or, (duh) reverse prejudiced. I am particularly disturbed that there is a genre called urban horror, I kind of find that offensive and I'm not African American. Other horror genres have labels (such as Asian horror), but those movies are foreign and simply refer to the countries they come from. 

I guess I'm wondering why horror is not just that - horror. The need to scare and be scared is not limited to certain races and certainly by now in this society this discrepancy should be corrected. Curious, I looked up on one site called The Urban Daily to see what was considered good horror movies with AA actors or actresses in them.

There was House On Haunted Hill (1999) with the gonna-be-gorgeous-forever Taye Diggs, yes he was great. Other than that, there were only a couple they could mention that had an AA actor/actress and not necessarily in horror films. They were actually listing 13 movies that they SURVIVED in, not necessarily starred in. That's... not good. 

I tried to think of one and came up with Jada Pinkett in Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) where both she and CCH Pounder not only had solid roles in the movie, but Jada becomes the heroine who saves the world and survives at the end. 

George Romero broke all the rules with his 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, having Duane Jones play the main character (and Tony Todd in the 1990 remake), bossing the others around, even striking a 'white' woman - but unfortunately despite this great addition to horror history the attitude toward race did not change much as the years went on. Look at Somebody Help Me 1 & 2 - although they technically are TV movies, they're still described the same way - urban horror. They're in a cabin alone aren't they? How is that urban?

If I have missed some really important ones, that's my fibro fog brain covering stuff up again but I think we can agree that there is really not an even representation of all the races of our Country. It's getting better, but the fact that they still make a scary movie with mostly AA actors and call it 'urban horror' is just... wrong.

So, I guess I have to talk about the 'urban horror' Killjoy movies. Made by Full Moon, they had made the first two, and then the third eight years later when the company attempted to revive several movie franchises (which, to be frank, they really REALLY shouldn't have). I saw they made another in 2012 but thankfully (so far) it is not available to stream. So here we go and yeah, it's gonna be short 'cause there isn't much to them and they repeat themselves pretty closely and remember, all language and descriptions are from the film itself, not my interpretation so... yeah:

Killjoy (2000): A loner named Michael likes a girl named Jada. But Jada goes with a gangster named Lorenzo and his boys T-Bone and Baby Boy. They beat the crap out of Michael on a regular basis. Michael attempts in his bungling way some voodoo with a clown doll he calls Killjoy but it doesn't work - at least not in time. Michael is grabbed by the thugs and they're messing around, pretending they're going to shoot him and darn it, the gun WAS loaded so Michael dies.

Skip ahead skip ahead and Jada is with someone else and so is Lorenzo. While Lorenzo is, uh, busy with his girl his boys go for ice cream (WTH?). The clown in the truck says he's got drugs so they climb in. Ah geez. They suddenly find themselves in a warehouse somewhere and try to find their way out - but Baby Boy gets squished against the wall by the ice cream truck. T-Bone finds a blunt and smokes it - but then it smokes him. Sorry folks, that's as good as this gets. Lorenzo goes to find his boys, finds the clown instead and fills him full of lead - which the clown absorbs and returns the favor, killing Lorenzo.

Then a homeless man comes into the picture, all full of voodoo wisdom. He gets Jada and two of her friends together to defeat the dumbass clown. Sorry, but this was really REALLY stupidly offensive. The power of love is the only thing to defeat the clown since Michael loved Jada. Uh huh. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. Whoa, that was a flashback.

So they fight, they win, they lose, they win again, and finally Killjoy is defeated thanks to some stinky homeless guy who disappears when it's all over. The movie description says that means he was an angel. Uh huh. Black angels are stinky hobos? Is there anything that can put a positive spin on that? It ends with Jada and her boyfriend doing the nasty until the boyfriend turns into Killjoy. The end. Not.



Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002): Lather, rinse, repeat. This time it's about delinquents being taken to a detention center where they work their time off. Of course, they break down where there's no cell phone reception because apparently cell phones only work if you're not in trouble and are near a Starbucks. The group of young people (Do you REALLY care what their names are?) grumble about the primitive conditions but then again they really didn't have it so great anyway - what do they have to complain about? Oh yeah, they're slated to die.

Things get... weird. And that's never good in a horror movie 'cause it means they really didn't have a clear script before they started filming. I mean they find a cabin, and a white redneck female (remember I'm using their words) who shoots one without warning so she's shot dead. Sounds fair. The shot teenager is taken back to the van but there's no medical kit. Looking for help they find ANOTHER cabin (should have found this one first) with a voodoo mambo (priestess) and my eyes started to really hurt from rolling so much. 

Her name is Kadja and gives them this barely intelligible speech on how their friend will live if he WANTS to live. Whaaa? Screw it. Luckily (or written into the script just now) one of the girls has a grandmother who told her about Killjoy and that she can raise him to help the wounded boy. Umm, wasn't he for vengeance? I don't remember him being the spirit of first aid. So they do their own mumbo jumbo without the mambo's help.

And they start to die and that's a good thing - it means the movie will be over soon. One dies in an outhouse (no comment). Killjoy is back... and he's now white. I mean under the makeup. Why? Pffft... never mind. He impales the next kid on a water pump for absolutely no reason. The already wounded kid is dead 'cause the mambo says he didn't want to stay. Smartest kid in the movie. The next one kills himself with his own knife. 

Now the mambo decides to help (NOW?). But mambo does not necessarily mean smart, and she's the next to go. Now we've got three, let's get this finished. Killjoy is vanquished BY HOLY WATER. Okay, I'm not even going to try to explain that one. It melts his head (didn't know he was a vampire) and he's dead. Again. Not. The remaining three are taken away by a ranger and since they thought this was the last one there's no setup for a third but...

Killjoy 3 aka Killjoy's Revenge (2010): Like some other horror franchises, they kind of give up trying to make it scary and inject it instead with a ton of silly (a la Chucky films) and stupid to try and revive interest in a killer clown. Yeesh. This time Killjoy is 'summoned' by a guy who uses his own blood and Killjoy uses it to make minions (kind of like Demon Knight) called Punchy (the sad clown copy), Freakshow (copying Kuato in Total Recall but with an obvious plastic doll glued to him) and Batty Boop (she's naked but with so much body paint it really isn't an issue). Oh, and all four are obviously white under the makeup. The guy making the pact breaks it before its finished so Killjoy is pissed.

So we've got college kids (mixed races this time) staying at a professor's house while he's out of town because that's what happens in no college with no professor ever. There are four so how long could it take to kill them? Actually only 78 minutes, although it seems much longer. One kid finds a package on the doorstep and so of course they open it - it's an uglier than hell mirror. They promptly hang it up because that's what no college kid would do ever. So of course it makes perfect sense for this movie. We're not going to ask where the mirror came from, okay?

The mirror is, of course, a direct line to wherever Killjoy is in this movie (sort of looks like his bedroom to me). One falls in, gets the crap beat out of him before he can get out. Not dead? Damn. Oh but now there's a barrier over the house so none of them can leave so... what? Why should anything make sense?

So one gets captured, Killjoy shows up and tells them if they don't come through the mirror, he'll kill the captured one. Meh. Oh, like I said, this one is played for laughs so we see some interaction between Killjoy and his, uh, creations - the naked one was badgering him and he said she was acting like a queen and she tells him 'Well you dress like one.' Ha. That was not laughter, I just needed to breathe.

So the idiots do it and each try to convince the dummy clowns to their side by various means too stupid to print. And the professor comes home, sees the mirror and, grabbing some ancient book because in this movie Killjoy isn't just a stupid doll brought to life by voodoo, but an ancient demon (of course) who's secret name (is it Rumpelstiltskin?) will defeat it and send it back to.... uh... wherever.

The professor comes back with a secret ancient book (with Killjoy on the cover - uh, wasn't he supposed to be a demon of another name?) and goes into the mirror. Like the true gentleman he is, he allows Killjoy to murder a couple of the students before he steps up. Nice of him. It is revealed that he is Michael's (From the original, remember?) father and is looking for revenge for his son. Killjoy convinces him that he is made of the souls he takes, and Michael appears to his father and tells him he loves him. Awww. Then Killjoy whacks his head off with a giant mallet. I almost applauded.

This time Killjoy is destroyed with salt (Salt? Holy water? Try acid next time idiots!) when the two remaining alive start laughing at him and distract him - but not without him killing one of them first. The one left alive gets back through the looking glass but can't stop laughing - all the way to the insane asylum where, we presume, she spends her life (or at least the time until they made the fourth one). The freakin' end.

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AN EXPLOITATION RE-VISITATION



The Big Doll House (1971)

If you remember, a short time ago I did a series about exploitation movies, particularly those directed by Jack Hill. There were two almost identical movies, one by Jack Hill, one by another director in the same year using most of the same people, the same basic story, hell, even the same sets. The other was Women In Cages which I found but I couldn't find this one - until now.

By now if you read the series you know how this movie goes: Women who go to prison in a jungle slave labor camp usually because of something done to them by men try to get by with pairing up (if you know what I mean), mud wrestling, food fights, whatever Mr. Hill thought men would want to see - which includes lots and lots of clothes being ripped off. Oh, and Pam Grier and Sid Haig, have to have them or it's just not complete. And for this one Pam Grier got to sing the title song Long-Time Woman (I won't comment on that).

Of course the lead guard is a sadistic psycho named Lucien (played by Kathryn Loder who also played the heavy in Foxy Brown. She was mostly known for her Broadway performances but sadly died young from complications of diabetes). In fact if you look around the movie you'll notice (besides Grier and Haig of course) that most of the faces you've seen in at least one if not several exploitation films.

After the obligatory scenes of torture (including an electric lactation machine which looked very interesting - uh, that's a joke - it was apparently some sort of titty electrocution device) involving whips, chains, being cooped up in a small bamboo cage in the sun all day, sent to a sauna for days at a time, and some sort of Rube Goldberg device for slowwwwwly lowering cobras to prisoners to bite them (instead of just, you know, grabbing one and shoving it at them) the girls decide to rebel and escape. And if you've seen one of these films, that's never good. 

Haig and his partner are recruited to help since they have a truck. Somehow they get weapons and off they go - without Pam Grier, who gets killed by her junkie girlfriend.

Worst. Plan. Ever. That's what you could say about all of these movies, 'cause in all the prison ones I found they never survive. Hell, they seem to bring armed military guys out of the woodwork by the dozens and always fall under a hail of gunfire. One survives, the main character of this particular movie to walk by herself down the road. She's picked up by a guy driving a jeep. When he asks her where she wants to go she says, 'Anywhere you want.' He says, 'Good 'cause we've been looking for you all day - you're going back to prison.'

What amazes me are the people who complain (now) about these movies as being 'sexist'. Uh, duh - it's an exploitation flick? It was a THING in the 70's, just like there's a THING for movies with psychos that can't die, a THING for Paranormal Activity movies in an endless supply, a THING for creature features... it wasn't a direct arrow at the heart of the women's rights movement, it was a bloody cheap movie for crying out loud. They made 'em in bulk BECAUSE they were cheap, easy and very very popular.

C'est la vie.

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I HATE CREATURE FEATURES - GIMMIE ZOMBIES AND PSYCHOS EVERY TIME



Crawlspace (2012) Australia

I'm not supposed to be doing this movie, I'm supposed to cover another creature feature (actually several) with Tim Forston who's wit is almost equal to my own (heh heh) - a little flick called Tremors. Buuut, you know, life happens, we get sidetracked, more life happens and here we are months later. Whoops. 

I kept passing this movie over since I was sure I'd already seen it until I noticed the year of the movie. Remake? Ah crap, does it have Colin Farrell in it too? (I'm probably one of the few women in the world who shudders with disgust when I see him) and since the movie I think I saw from 1986 wasn't good enough to see what they'd done to it.

Fortunately this is a whole 'nother movie, made in Australia who's not really known for great horror. Unless they have killer dingos or something. No, I'm not being racist, it's just that every one I've seen takes place in the outback with some sort of rabid... whatever.

This is about a bunch of commandos who have to penetrate a secret military base that's been 'compromised' but they're not told how or why. If you see this movie I say prepare to see a lot of Species, Splice, or any other movie where they're messing with the human genome trying to make something 'better' than human. And they always fail. Duh.

So they show up not having any idea what they'll find and they start dying by the handful right away. And most of them by their own hands or their buddy's. The lead team comes upon a woman and are prepared to waste her as she's marked as one of the 'prisoners' they keep there but the lead man, Romeo (oh that's original) stops them because she's his dead wife. He thinks. Pretty positive. Maybe. 

She, in turn, has no memory at all but she gets 'flashes' of a life with him so she follows the team as it becomes apparent (and hope your not claustrophobic 'cause a lot of this movie occurs in ventilation ducts) that the military have been doing naughty things down in this hole.

They lose more people fighting a mutant gorilla (duh) that just won't die. And Romeo is trying to find out how his wife, Eve (ah come on!) could be here, participating in this experiment when she's supposed to be dead. Very dead. He's 100 percent sure because... wait for it...

They encounter the remnants of the scientists who were running the show and we get our typical and totally non-original idea - they were attempting to take people who already had a bit of psi talent and make them into total weapons. The leader even asserts that such people are already around important world leaders to keep other people from messing with their minds (can we have some here 'cause I think.. well that's not important). 

How do you know when one of these super-psi's are controlling you? In the same dull way movies always show - the affected person's nose starts bleeding. Duh. Oh and she makes a weird noise - the CC called it a 'purring sound'. Not quite but whatever - oh yeah and her eyes go black. Massive duh on lack of creativity here.

The scientists on the Genesis project (okay they weren't even trying with the names, were they?) try to convince Romeo that the woman he's protecting was a powerful psi who was also totally psychotic and chose experimentation over prison. She will do anything to protect herself - including posing as Romeo's wife. Besides, he remembers what happened to her, why she died. right?

Okay this movie isn't worth going on and on so let's get to the punchline: Eve is not Romeo's wife (duh) and when he concentrates REAL hard (you can almost see the smoke) he realizes his wife looked totally different, besides she's dead - 'cause he killed her. She was marked as a traitor and he was ordered to kill her to prove his loyalty. They tell him she was innocent (how they know I have no idea). So all eventually die except for Romeo and Eve. 

Eve wants to see the engagement ring he was going to give the REAL woman he loved and, realizing that she's a monster (finally!) he pulls out a ring - on the grenade on his vest. He blows up but she escapes 'cause hey, we've got one more little twist that's so tired it's almost funny. She gets out of the compound as it explodes and NOW remembers that part of her brain was removed and part of a brain belonging to an alien life form was put inside. Now she just needs to remember the line; 'My name is Alice. I worked for the Umbrella Corporation.' and she's good to go.

Sorry, that's how dumb it was and you had to get through the whole movie to find that out. Yikes.

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