A few descriptions and FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (92)

I'm a little blank today. I don't know why, but I've got really almost no observations or absolutely fascinating gems of wisdom to force in to your computer screen. I just feel a little standard this morning/afternoon.

Luckily for me this city is full of the strange and amazing and I thought I might just jot down a few of the people and things I've been privy to around town.

- I was at the ballpark last night for my first Giants game and the woman in front of us absolutely hated Alex and I. She had children, and a husband, and I guess on occasion the combination of Alex and I can be a bit crass or a bit inappropriate for children under the age of ten or so, but this woman glared at us as if we were hitting her children when she was in the bathroom. Okay, so I did spill a bit of beer on her child's seat (I swiped at it with my bare hand), and Alex, once a little tipsy and riled, was voicing a few less friendly observations ("It's the highlights in her hair that really do it for me"), but this woman was staring us down like some sort of demon spawn.

- Baseball games are strange when you're an adult and you're attending a baseball game involving two teams you could care less about. The magic of the ballpark isn't as present as when you're a kid. You're not staying up past your bedtime, the snacks aren't free (in truth they're ridiculously overpriced) and you notice the small things (empty seats, trashy people, etc.) that sort of wear at the magical feeling you had when you were a kid. Sure, it's still enjoyable to venture out to the park and watch a couple of pitchers duel. I still got excited when homeruns were hit, but the most exciting part of the night for me was just hanging out with Alex. We just sat there and chattered about whatever (almost none of it related to baseball), and the game sort of just slipped on by. The other thing you realize about baseball when you're living in an uber-liberal city like San Francisco is that it's a conservative sport. The people crowding the stands, throwing back beers, hooting and hollering were people I never see in San Francisco. I don't know what woodworks they hide in, but they are out in force at a baseball game and I was a bit shocked by it. Maybe it's just getting older, maybe all the finite details just start to pop out in everything.

Just a few thoughts.

These 1950s horror films are kind of a riot. Where The Blob (91) was a sort of gee-shucks poke at middle America, Fiend Without A Face (92) is a full-forced attack on Communism and brainwashing and the fear of the Red Tide creeping over the good people over the United States as well as the threat of the proliferation of nuclear power. The titular Fiend Without A Face is a unknown entity, a sort of crawling, shuffling, invisible beast that slips around in the dark, killing those when they least expect it. A military base in the podunk Winthrop wilds is the setting for most of the film, as the non-existent creature starts dining on local and GIs alike.

What's interesting is the subtext. This is the time in America where everyone was scared of there neighbors and Russia and Cuba dropping bombs on us. Nobody trusted anybody, everyone built nuclear-proof shelters in their backyard, the radio released dire news of an upcoming strike on US soil seemingly weekly. The Fiend Without A Face embodies these fears, this unseen force that penetrates our military forces, killing without warning. The military base in the film is of course testing nuclear weapons in an attempt to protect the states, and the townsfolk turn against it, blaming them for the deaths and the downturn in their cows milk. The fiend is the Russians, and the seeping, silent death that comes with a nuclear attack. Nobody can predict it, or plan for it, not even the strong-jawed, fast-talking might of the military.

People were scared in the 1950s and thus Arthur Crabtree, the director of the film, plays against these fears.

I'm halfway through, and I'll give a little wrap-up on the film tomorrow.

Wednesday: Fiend Without A Face (92)

Six days on, one day off and THE BLOB (91)

Seemingly this is how things work:

1. I hate my job. I work in a fancy mall where ferries putt-putt bedraggled masses of wealthy tourists from the Midwest and beyond to-and-fro. Sometimes actual San Franciscans enter this pointed building, but this are the type wearing suits, talking shop about numbers and developing countries, the type who wear North Face and full spandex bike outfits and debate the amount of pounds lost in the last few days. It is a horrible place of endless lines and Disneyland coffee machines and it has over the two months I've worked their slowly worn away at my body and soul. Two weeks ago I decided I needed to find a new job.

2. Alex and I decide to eat lunch at a small, delicious Italian restaurant near our house where a friend of mine makes coffee. It is delicious and the neighborhood is small, but up-and-coming, and there's a real sense of community in the area. I am pleased enough that our food is delicious and I get to spend an afternoon with my lady friend.

3. On the way out I inquire to the small, wiry, spunky waitress if my buddy is working. He is not, but perhaps in compensation she instead offers me a job in the coffee shop. I stutter, exhausted and sort of shocked at the way life work and except.

4. For the next two weeks I will work six days in a row, then fumble through a pseudo-day off, and then jump back in to another grueling stretch of six days. But after that, after that, the hellish world of the Ferry Terminal will be a thing of the past. I might not head down that a way for a long long while.

And that's how life works I guess, you think of something you want, and it suddenly appears in the form of a tiny little restaurant in Dogpatch. You should try it.

The Blob (91) ended up like so many of those cheeky 1950s horror films you've seen bits of on television and what not. Sure it starts out with a big rolly jelly bean of a creature killing old people and rolling it's soggy self down the streets of small-town America. And sure, there's that classic dispute between the young and the old, because don't we all know the young can't be trusted and the old are bastions of wisdom. And there's good-natured police and mistrusting other police and again that slimy ball of ooze killing things left and right.

Sure, that's how they always start.

But in the end, just like the rest, the young and the old join together to find a handful of fire extinguishers and put that gooey beast down for good. Sure there's a near death, and a child with a cap gun, and a squishy mess in a movie theatre, but c'mon 1950s, can't you just get a little bit more creative with the whole "old and young come together to save the day" thing. I want gang wars in the street, and King Blob ruling small town America from a chocolate throne atop a hill. Not this gee-shucks, don't you know darn it crap.

Mark this one off as a piffle. A tiny gust of perfumed air that I will not be revisiting.

Tuesday: Fiend Without A Face (92)

What to say and THE BLOB (91).

I staring off in to space right now at a bro-y coffee shop near my house, my brain still a little clogged with mucus, surrounded by equally disconnected laptop zombies, and I can't think of a single interesting thing to start this blog with. It's just one of those days.

Perhaps I could attempt to scrounge something from this sort of booze-soaked brain of mine, really dig deep to enlighten you with some sort of golden nugget from this hallowed brain pan. But, I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to speculate a bit on The Blob (91) and call this a short one.

It's a strange jump for Criterion to move from Kwaidan (90), the sort of end-all-and-be-all of 1960s Japanese horror films to The Blob (91), easily one of the more American films made in the pleat-pants death throes of the 1950s. Where Kwaidan (90) is nearly a think piece, a quiet, spooky, immaculately pieced together bit of psychological horror, The Blob (90) is a small, dumb, gee shucks wedge of Americana that just doesn't exist anymore. It's a drastic change, but there's something really interesting about seeing what a few thousand miles and decade can do to the way we perceive horror.

A few thoughts on The Blob (91):

- Steve McQueen is in this film. Yes, that Steve McQueen. The crease-faced hero of films like Papillion and The Getaway and Bullitt, a sort of defining male icon in Hollywood for many years. And in this film he plays a slump shouldered, honest to goodness, American youth who just can't make those darn adults believe him. McQueen had been in a handful of television shows before this, and one movie, but this was one of his first starring roles, and it's an absolute shock that in the constricting land of 1950s Hollywood he was ever able to find a way out of that role.

- This film, as it was marketed, was less a horror film and more a film about teen angst and rebelling against your parents. It's awesome, Steve McQueen and his sweetheart (whatever her doe-eyed name might be) keep telling parents that there's this rolling jellybean of death picking off the townsfolk, and they keep failing to listen and the barbeque bag that is The Blob continues to kill people, old people that is. Lesson to you old-timers: believe the children or face death by a gelatinous mass.

- I'm enjoying the shit out of this old, stupid little film. Criterion, my faith in you grows with each day. I will build you an alter, a gigantic alter that features stacks of your film glued together with, er, super glue, and there will be a frilly liner made of shaved troll hair in a variety of neon colors. I will stand in front of this alter and I will scream out loud each day the name of my favorite Criterion films and hopefully you, sweet Criterion Gods, will look down on me and smile ... and give me free shit.

Friday: The Blob (91)