This blog was begun Monday night, October 19 2020 :
Well, I had to do it, and if you've been paying attention to the list of recent movies, you might've even been expecting it, but yeah : Tonight (Monday) I watched "The Toolbox Murders" (1978), the notoriously bad horror/exploitation shocker that starred Cameron Mitchell and was filmed in Canoga Park. Back in '78, a bunch of us went to see it when it opened, and when it was over, Grimsley drove us to the apartment complex that was the film's main location. Yep - years before the "Seven Seas" building, located at Saticoy and Tampa, was made famous by "The Karate Kid", there was the Camelot Apartments, also on Saticoy, just past DeSoto. As the credits rolled, Grimsley said, "I know where that is", and he drove us there straight away. Within fifteen minutes of the movie ending, we were pulling up at it's main murder site. Oy.
I don't know what it was about the 70s. On the one hand, it was the decade that brought you the Smiley Face, economy cars, ecology and "Happy Days", but on the other hand, it also brought you an endless brigade of sicko serial killers. That was mostly toward the end of the 70s, but anyhow, these weirdos would roam the freeways in their cars and vans, and as their number of victims rose, the newspapers would give them nicknames. There was "The Freeway Killer" and "The Hillside Strangler", and then there was a nutjob named Lawrence Bittaker who was the worst of them all. He and his partner became known as "The Toolbox Killers", for reasons that you can Google if you want to but I suggest you don't. Bittaker was so evil that when he died last year it made the local headlines, forty years after his conviction. His prosecutor called him "worse than Charles Manson", and he is no doubt burning in the fiery flames as we speak.
So of course they made a movie about him, and of course it was a low budget exploitation flick, and of course we went to see it. Hey, we were teenagers and it was the 1970s.
So why would I re-watch it now, over forty years later? Well, for one thing it's Halloween. For another, we kind of got on a roll there, beginning with "Blood On Satan's Claw", where we began watching truly horrific movies (and it's true that the 1970s was the pinnacle of terrifying horror), but then we segued into semi-gruesome stuff like "The Town That Dreaded Sundown", and finally we ended up with "Don't Go In The House" and now "The Toolbox Murders", just because I wanted to watch some of the absolute "best of the worst" exploitative horror movies of the era, to see how they held up (or "held down", as it were), and how I would feel about them now that I am 60. "Toolbox", though it was based on the Bittaker killings, was actually a hybrid. Because they had Cameron Mitchell, a very good actor who starred in "High Chaparral" for many years, the director tried to branch out into "Psycho" territory, only instead of being fixated on his mother, Mitchell's character was focused on his deceased daughter. It's a sick and twisted movie, but it was filmed in Canoga Park, so that saves it, sort of. But to answer my own question, again, it turns out that my opinion of all of these movies hasn't changed one iota. What I thought of them as a teenager, I think of them now.
Prior to watching "The Toolbox Murders", I tried to find a Youtube copy of "Don't Answer The Phone", but someone still owns the copyright to that one and is paying close attention, cause all you can get are short scenes and trailers. So "Toolbox" it was...... //////
The next part of the blog was begun last night, Tuesday October 20 2020 :
Well anyhow, tonight (Tuesday) Grim came over and we watched a movie called "Arlington Road". Whenever Grim visits, it's because he's brought a movie he wants me to see. I told him I'd already seen "Arlington", sometime around 2003, but because it was so scary and so well made I said I'd watch it again. It stars Jeff Bridges as a college professor who comes to learn that his neighbor (Tim Robbins), a seemingly middle class architect, is in reality a domestic terrorist on the level of Timothy McVeigh. Man oh man will this movie give you The Willies. It was directed by a guy named Mark Pellington, who only made two movies in his career (he was mostly a video director), but both films he made were knocked out of the freakin' park. One was "The Mothman Prophecies", which is certainly among The Scariest Movies Ever Made, and the other is this one, "Arlington Road", which - while technically a thriller - has undertones of latent horror in the machinations of terrorism, and conspiracy, and possible government complicity, and not really knowing who is who. Not since "The Manchurian Candidate" has a film gone so deep into this type of double-crossing stuff, and I think maybe that's why Mr. Pellington hasn't been invited back to make more films. Maybe the two that he's made have struck a little too close to home if you get my drift. I highly recommend "Arlington Road" if you haven't seen it, and of course "Mothman" is a must-see for horror fans. Mark Pellington, where are you? ////
And finally, this part of the blog was written just now. We are back live, in other words :
Tonight I needed something in a pinch. I'm still scouring Youtube cause the libraries are closed (and I've begun watching movies again), so anyway I went back to the old standby search terms from earlier in the year : "black and white sci-fi movies from the 1950s". And, I got lucky because a film came up that I'd been trying to see back in April and May, when the pandemic began and we were pounding old sci-fis. It was called "I Married A Monster From Outer Space"(1958). If you recall, we learned that such "statement" titles, similar to the "Don't" series of the late 70s, but starting in the First Person ("I"), were not necessarily as juvenile as they sounded. Witness "I Was A Teenage Frankenstein" for instance. It sounds like a movie made for kids, and it is, but it's also very well produced and has other, more subtle messages in the script, such as child neglect.
"I Married A Monster From Outer Space" is of the same ilk; cheesy title, serious undercurrent. Or as serious as it's budget and format will allow. It's basically a spin on the "Body Snatchers" motif, except here, what's being stolen is love and the institution of marriage, such as it was in the 1950s, when it was the bedrock of the American family. The movie stars Gail Talbott and Tom Tryon, whose name was bugging me, so when it was over I IMDB-ed him, and sure enough : he is the same Tom Tryon who later went on to become a writer, and as "Thomas Tryon" he wrote the bestselling novel "The Other", which was made into One Of The Scariest Movies Ever Made, and I'm not joking. Watch "The Other" and see for yourself. But in "Monster From Outer Space", his body and soul are taken over by an alien, and his wife (Talbott) spends the movie trying to figure out what's wrong with him, until it's almost too late.
I mentioned above that I'd wanted to see this flick back in the Spring; that's because it kept popping up in my "recommended for you" list on Youtube. But every time I tried to watch it, it was copyright protected. This time, however, the guy who posted it must have snuck it in under the radar, and not only did he post it but it was a Blu-ray, or so he said. Do they Blu-ray black and white movies? Well anyhow, it certainly looked razor sharp, and on that score we've been having good fortune during our run up to Halloween, All of our most recent Horror Shows have been of "picture perfect" quality, quite a blessing indeed.
"I Married A Monster From Outer Space" is a little slow, even at 77 minutes, but it's got excellent cinematography and was partially shot on the Paramount back lot, so it has the look of a studio film rather than the bare bones production values of some of the movies we watched earlier this year. For what it is, it's a serious film. Give it a shot, and watch all the other movies mentioned in this blog, too. After all, it's Halloween! ////
That's all for tonight. Before I go, a quick message to Dave Roberts (the Dodgers Manager) : Please, Dave, don't outmanage yourself yet again, especially with your pitchers, which you seem to do every year. Please don't keep pitching Dustin May. If a fan such as myself can see he's a disaster, shouldn't you be able to see it?
So please don't pitch him anymore, or you're gonna lose yet another World Series, even though this one is not as real as a normal one in a full 162 game season. But still........please don't screw it up again. Thanks. ////
See you in the morning. Only 12 more days to go. Don't forget to watch the David Lynch weather report and Today's Number. I've finally guessed a correct number, in fact I've guessed three since we last mentioned it.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox :):)
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