Tonight's movie was still "Les Vampires", at it will be for most of the week. I am loving this film and am feeling that even seven hours won't be enough. I am hooked on the Vampires and I'm gonna miss them when they are gone. Tonight I only watched a single episode (#4) because that was all I had time for, but it was a great one, once again featuring the devious Irma Vep. Director Louis Feuillade should have been given a posthumous Lifetime Oscar just for coming up with that name!
In this episode, The Grand Vampire sets up a scheme to steal 300,000 Francs from a bank, where Irma Vep has gotten a job as an assistant under an assumed name. The Grand Vampire himself is posing as a real estate broker, and he leases a flat to a Spanish businessman who has specifically requested an apartment with a safe. Ahh, of course! There are always Apartments With Safes available for rent. :)
And in this case, the apartment in question has already been remodeled by The Vampires so that the Safe is only a false front. The Spanish businessman places his valuables inside and closes the door, but behind a wall, The Vampires simply remove a flimsy particleboard backing on the phony Safe, and steal whatever the businessman has placed inside. This works out well for Irma and crew, until one time when they open the back of the Safe and a body falls out.
The Spanish Businessman is not a businessman at all! But has he outwitted Les Vampires?
Don't be too sure of it. The only one who stands a chance of that is our Intrepid Reporter, as mentioned last night. He has now discovered the location of the Vampire-remodeled apartment that is rented out to unsuspecting tenants, and he is staked out inside.
There is so much creativity and plot in "Les Vampires" that I am gonna have to watch it a few times to get a firm handle on the extent of what is taking place. That will be a pleasure, as this is a show that invites repeat viewings just from it's originality alone, but also because of it's wonderful sets and the tricky, "shocking-but-fun" criminality of the Vampires themselves. The Silent era acting is first rate, and the actress named Musidora steals the show as Irma Vep. Two Thumbs Up of the Highest Order for "Les Vampires"! :)
The only other news is that I am reading "The Ultimate Evil", the late Maury Terry's famous book about the Son Of Sam case, in which by his own investigation (as a newspaper reporter) he blew the NYPD's "official story" out of the water. Officialdom always wants to close cases. To close a case seems to be, throughout modern American history, much more important than using diligence to discover and report the truth to the public. In major crime cases, as in assassinations, the tactic used is often to simplify things, to identify a Lone Nutjob, like Lee Harvey Oswald or in the Sam case, David Berkowitz. To do this, to identify and then collar a single individual takes the heat off of the police department, because then they can say "we got the guy".
But as history has shown, in many cases they only got "one of the guys", or "the wrong guy", a patsy. But by the time the newspapers print their headlines, it is "mission accomplished", because by then the public sees the story in the papers - that the Bad Guy has been caught - and by and large they are pacified, even if Other Bad Guys Involved In The Same Crime Spree are still at large, and known only by the cops, who then either ignore it or cover it up.
"Case Closed! We caught The Son Of Sam, we caught Berkowitz". End of story.
Except for one thing. Sometimes, there are heroes like Maury Terry, who actually give a darn about the truth. I had heard about his book in the course of my own investigative reading, and when I saw the cover I remembered it as a controversial best seller in the late 1980s. I myself would not have paid much attention then, as Son Of Sam was a New York Thing to me, far away and - hey! - the case had been closed, right? I felt the same way in 1993 when the media convicted Damien Echols and his two friends in the horrible child murders in Arkansas. Those guys spent 18 years in prison, until they were set free because they didn't do it. But the Arkansas cops and District Attorneys didn't care one whit about that. All they cared about was Closing The Case, so that They, as The Authorities In Charge Of Protecting The Public, would be Off The Hook.
"Hey, lookie here! We got the guy".
Except for, a lot of times they haven't Got The Right Guy, but they don't give a flying you know what.
Now, in The Son Of Sam case, they did have the right guy in David Berkowitz. He was one of the shooters in the Son Of Sam case. But as Maury Terry uncovered, the police in New York were well aware of a ton of evidence that led to an accomplice, or more than one accomplice, and even more strong evidence in several of the shootings that pretty much proved that Berkowitz could not have been the shooter in that particular event. In other words, there had to be a second gunman at the very least.
But that didn't matter to the NYPD, and other people eventually died because of that decision, to "close the case" by nabbing and blaming a single person and then identifying him as a Lone Nut, a crazy guy.
It took Maury Terry and then finally Berkowitz himself, who will never get out of prison, to set the record straight, that he was part of a cult of killers. This story may be well known to some, and it is generally well known since the early 90s, but I am just reading Terry's book now.
It is very inspiring to me, despite the awful horror, because the author cared about what really happened. By his own impetus he solved the case, with help, when an enormous police department (NYPD) buried it by blaming it on one man, the first guy they caught, and then proclaiming "case closed". Yes, David Berkowitz was guilty and part of the Son Of Sam case, but it was not "case closed" as the NYPD told the public in 1977.
So - you know me - I am inspired by people who care about the truth. It's a hard slog to care, and to keep digging, when high-powered official forces sweep the real story under the rug, or bury it altogether. To do that in The Son Of Sam case was so negligent and downright rotten that it bordered on criminality. So, in reading the book, I am saying "thank goodness for Maury Terry, and others like him".
That's all I know for tonight. Elizabeth, if you are still out there, I hope all is well. Things seem different these days, but I just wanted to let you know I am thinking about you as always. :):)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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