The best of the worst: Zwei Teil
Last weekend, I cranked out a Sounds of the Underground preview that focuses on headliners As I Lay Dying, which can be read here along with recent reviews of "A Scanner Darkly" and the new Mr. Lif disc. I somehow managed to write that AILD thing around a whirlwind camping adventure in Michigan City, Indiana. This was the first camping I'd done since Billy Boy Clinton was in office, and it was a pleasant experience aside from the close quarters (the campground was obviously overbooked for the holiday weekend - the bastards made us pay for four sites although we only used about two and a half of them). I discovered that the family tent has seen better days, that sleeping on ground littered with berries will make you look bruised in weird places and that mojitos taste much better served in huge steins. Laughs, music, controlled mayhem... it will be a long time before I forget my introduction to the "Too Much Fun Bunch," a stars-n-bars-clad subset of the Brothers of the Third Wheel.
Awright, here are three more profoundly terrible movies from which you'd be remiss to tear your eyes, all of this batch ostensibly found in the "horror" section of your favorite video source and featuring monsters which make the infamous El Mofado look professionally constructed. If any of these groaners actually frightens you, you have problems with which I cannot assist you. The final four flicks will be covered in the next post, whenever I get around to it. Things are crazy busy these days.
"Blood Freak"
(1972)
This is not to be confused with the last post's "Blood Feast." That classic was also shot in Florida, that humid death metal fount so heat-warped it has its own FARK category, and is also available on a deluxe DVD under the loving auspices of Something Weird. Director Brad Grinter only made one other horror movie, "Flesh Feast", which I am sad to say I have never seen but understand was Veronica Lake's final film, in which she played a mad scientist using maggots for a skin regeneration procedure who ends up killing a client when she discovers he's actually Adolf Hitler. "Blood Freak" came two years later. Grinter met up with a pompadoured Eastern European bodybuilder named Steve Hawkes (born Sipek), who was hanging out in Florida getting skin grafts after sustaining burns over 90% of his body while filming a Spanish Tarzan knock-off. They put their heads together and came up with the tender story of Herschell, a beefy 'Nam vet biker with sweet mutton chops who finds Jesus after a hippie chick turns him into a "pot addict" and he consumes experimental farm fowl, thus becoming the turkey-headed monster of the title. Rumor has it that Herschell was named after Herschell Gordon Lewis, director of "Blood Feast," its recent sequel, "Jimmy the Boy Wonder", "BOIN-N-G!" and dozens of other cinematic marvels. It's no doubt that Lewis was in some way responsible for a film like "Blood Freak" coming about. It's packed with filler sequences, atrociously acted, inadequately lit, difficult to hear, morally confused... and a guy gets his leg hacked off by a table saw.
During the film, Grinter intermittently cuts to himself sitting in a room with snazzy wood paneling on the walls, where he philosophizes and moralizes at the camera, obviously reading from a script on his desk. In one sequence, he pauses mid-sentence to light a smoke, and by the end of the picture, he's choking on his cigarette fumes while trying to rail against putting chemicals in your body. But the main picture follows Herschell (the thickly-accented Hawkes, who's so important the opening credits say "Starring Steve Hawkes" twice - just like the title card in "Devil Fish"!) after he picks up a hitchhiker who is subtly named Angel. She turns out to be a Jesus freak, but her sister Ann is a saucy, raven-haired libertine who takes a fancy to the big lug. Unfortunately, when Ann tries to get him to smoke pot with her, he tells her, "No, thank you. That's not for me." He also refuses to sleep with a skanky blonde swinger who happens to be married to the local middle aged drug dealer, saying, "I just don't go for a girl who acts like a tramp." Burn! She tells her husband, Guy, and he strokes his novelty trucker moustache while saying he'll teach Herschell a lesson. Guy gives Ann some reefer, and she gets Herschell to smoke it by calling him a coward. (Herschell doesn't have a last name, but $10 says it's McFly.) The lightweight is totally baked off his ass after about three hits, and the couple giggles maniacally like they're auditioning for "Reefer Madness". They also have a tame sex scene, which is super gross because Hawkes' arms are all scarred and burned. Soon, he's convulsing and going fetal because he doesn't have any cheeba, and he gets pissed at Guy for getting him hooked, telling him, "If you don't keep me supplied, I'm gonna break every bone in your miserable body!" So, according to Grinter and Hawkes, if there's anything more realistic than someone becoming physically addicted to marijuana, it's a stoner who becomes violent after he's fiended all day and then smoked a free joint that was delivered to him by his dealer.
A dude from Angel's prayer group hooks Herschell up with a job at his poultry ranch. For unexplained reasons, a pair of shady doctors who forget their dialogue a lot is employed there (one wears a hospital gown). They tell Herschell they'll get him weed if he eats some turkey meat pumped with experimental drugs, which he does, smearing his craggy mug with grease from a cold turkey straight out of the roasting pan. Then he goes into a tryptophan coma, passes out, convulses, and his head turns into that of an ugly papier-mâché turkey beast. This leads to an incomprehensible series of scenes where either Ann is sitting around fretting about her stud muffin or Turk-schel is nabbing various junkie girls and stabbing them in the carotid so he can drink their blood. Guy tells his cranky drug supplier he can bang Ann, which is news to her since she's sleeping, and the dude attempts to force himself on her until Blood Freak shows up in the window, chases him into a workshop and performs the aforementioned delegging, which results in a big hole spewing fake blood like a GWAR concert. Every time he kills someone, the same looped scream will play over and over until it becomes sort of avant-garde. Then it degenerates into a ludicrous trip sequence where a real turkey is decapitated (chances are the crew ate it) and a bunch of hands tear hunks of meat from a roast turkey which is set on a table next to the turkey monster mask. Herschell finally wakes up looking normal, and it's implied that the Blood Freak business was all a hallucination brought on by the experiment. He admits he'd been hooked on painkillers after getting burned in The 'Nam, but despite this and the fact that he'd eaten all that fucked-up drug turkey, he blames the devil's weed. Angel gets Herschell to pray for strength, and after he does, he's cured of his marijuana addiction. It's nothing but blue skies and cozy sweaters for this guy, who meets Ann on a pier, assuring her all is forgiven as the bloody credit font reading "The End" spoils whatever redemptive mood this sappy, left-field ending had going for it. Today, Hawkes/Sipek runs an animal sanctuary in Florida, and I regret to inform you that he continues to have rotten luck. The guy seems like a genuine animal lover, and I think his efforts more than make up for all the meat wasted during this, probably his best-known film. After all, the guy's doing some good for mistreated jungle cats, and he really wasn't much of an actor, anyway. See below for the trailer, a hyperbolic hard sell in the beloved exploitation tradition.
"Troll 2"
(1990)
The first "Troll" was one of those "little creature" kiddie horror movies that came out in the mid-'80s to capitalize on both the success of "Gremlins" and the new PG-13 rating. It had June Lockhart and Sonny Bono in it, and was made by Empire Pictures, who gave us "Re-Animator" and later turned into the Full Moon grindhouse. "Troll 2" has absolutely nothing to do with "Troll," but is actually a retitled Italian job from the bumbling hands of writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who retitled himself here as... uh, Drake Floyd. A frequent collaborator of "Rats: Nights of Terror" maestro Bruno Mattei, Fragasso's also responsible for the foggy rock n' roll werewolf picture "Monster Dog" starring a dubbed Alice Cooper (hunt it down if you're an Alice fan) and the forgettable zombie snoozer "After Death" starring fully-clothed gay porn icon Jeff Stryker. Nothing in Fragasso's portfolio could properly prepare a viewer for the catalog of strange, stupid things "Troll 2" delivers. But where to begin? Probably with Joshua, a snot-nosed, freckle-faced little brat whose bewhiskered Grandpa Seth comes to him at night and tells him stories about goblins. You'd think a kid of Josh's age (he looks in the 8 to 10 range) would have heard of a freaking goblin already, but he acts so scared it's like Grandpa Seth told him he has pinworms. I like to think he's just confused; like the audience, Josh probably expected a movie called "Troll 2" to be about trolls, not goblins. And, yeah, Grandpa Seth has been dead for six months - this is his magical, omniscient ghost who shows up to provide exposition and other convenient plot points when the obviously intoxicated Fragasso sobers up and remembers to include them. Josh asks his mom about goblins, but she gets all flustered like he discovered a dirty secret and tells him they don't exist. She shrugs him off, but I imagine she was just stressed from trying to keep her freaky huge eyes from blinking, which most of the film's actors seem to be doing in many of the shots.
Maybe Mom was just worried about Josh's teenage sister, Holly, who likes to work out and do dance routines in the mirror wearing a pink Garfield nightshirt. Holly is played by Connie Young, who my fellow bad movie enthusiast The Wizard of Gore contends is the worst actress he's ever seen. Even among a cast so overloaded with ham and cheese, Connie is indeed stupendously bad, often overemphasizing to hilarious degree but reserving a dull monotone for when she's supposed to be emotive. (According to the IMDB, she teaches acting in Salt Lake City, so if we notice a lot of shitty Mormon actors popping up in the near future, she's probably behind it.) Holly's dating a chump named Elliott whose clingy male friends are apparently the source of her dad's dissatisfaction with her choice in men. Dad, he comes off like a redneck Tim Thomerson. He's a principled guy, demanding that Holly's "beau" - he actually refers to Elliott like that - stop hanging out with his bros and spend all his time hanging out with Holly's family. (The boys are apparently so close, they sleep together in the same bed - as I hear people who are "just friends" sometimes do.) Dad tells Elliott, "I don't talk to people who arrive late and upset their girlfriends." Whoa. Dad's all jazzed about taking a family vacation to Nilbog, a podunk town where they can get back to nature or some inane bourgeois shit. Of course, these idiots don't figure it out until Josh sees a street sign in a car mirror: "'Nilbog' is 'goblin' spelled backward!" The townspeople are goblins in human disguise, and they constantly goad outsiders to ingest cake and Kool-Aid and unrefrigerated milk and ears of corn smeared with what looks like green cupcake frosting. This will make them bleed green muck from their foreheads and turn into a pile of slimy vegetation and flesh, a concoction which is the goblins' favorite food. When our protagonists arrive, such a spread is laid out for them, but naturally Grandpa Seth appears and warns Josh not to let them eat it. Through his supernatural legerdemain, Grandpa Seth stops time for thirty seconds so the kid can come up with a plan. After standing around with his thumb up his ass for about 28 seconds, Josh decides not to grab all the food and dispose of it, but to get up on the table and unzip his fly... cut to the family angrily washing dishes and Dad scolding Josh: "You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"
The goblins' leader, Creedence, is my favorite part of the movie. She's a humanoid witch living in an old mansion who frequently hisses threats straight at the camera, all the while competing with Josh and Holly's mom to see who can open her eyes the widest. Creedence reminds me of the sexiest G.L.O.W. wrestler, Dementia, so I guess I would find her attractive if it weren't for her nasty cracked lips and rotten teeth. In one particularly weird scene, she uses her Druid magic to sex herself up and seduce one of Elliott's friends with an ear of corn; they start making out with the corncob between their mouths and get pelted with popcorn. The other people of Nilbog include a creepy sheriff who looks like an inflated Bob Rohrman and a vegenazi preacher who looks like a deflated Ted DiBiase (his sermons to the herbivorous Nilbogians rail against meat eaters' "smelly bladders" and "clusters of hemorrhoids"). These lunatics throw the family a party in their own rented house, stocked with evil goblin pastries on which "Eat Up!" has been helpfully written in the icing. Joshua and Grandpa Seth hatch an anti-goblin plan which involves touching a mystical stone from which Creedence derives her power - a wall with a smoky crevice which somehow helps grow her hand back when it's chopped off - and utilizing a bag enchanted with Grandpa's special brand of convenient plot contrivances. The latter will provide whatever Josh needs to save the day, but only when he really needs it. So, what does the bag give the little shit when the climax hits? As Josh exclaims when he opens it: "It's a double-decker bologna sandwich!" Apparently, there's nothing that scares the beasties more than an extra helping of processed sandwich meat, as they retreat screeching into the ether. Of course, when the family gets home, Mom immediately eats an apple and sets up the "shock" ending - the goblins have followed them back, and Josh ends the flick watching a group of midgets in cheap Halloween masks slurp lime Jell-O off of his mom's melted boobs, ensuring that she will never force him to sing "Row, Row Your Boat" during a road trip again. Available with Empire Pictures' original on one low-priced DVD, "Troll 2" is a perfect convergence of ridiculous plot, gross overacting, silly horror movie contrivances and dialogue that will have you rewinding to confirm that your ears aren't deceiving you (Elliott, during an argument with Holly: "Hey, they're my friends! You just keep your own friends!"). This trailer doesn't do Fragasso's crap-terpiece much justice, but at the very least should give you an idea of how goofy the monsters look.
"Night of the Bloody Apes"
(aka "La Horripilante Bestia Humana," 1969)
OK, stop me if you've heard this one before: Dr. Krallman, a brilliant and respected Mexican surgeon, is worried about his son, Julio, who is dying of leukemia. When conventional medicine fails, the doc and his hobbling, homoerotically obsequious assistant Goyo sneak into the zoo, shoot a guy wearing a monkey suit with a sedative, and then cart the "ape" back to their private basement lab. Krallman naturally believes that a gorilla's blood is more powerful than a human's, and that if he gives Julio a transfusion, it will cure him. Continuing from this logic, he also needs to replace the young man's heart with the gorilla's, because his heart is too weak to survive the transfusion of strong blood. All goes well with this daring plan, except the ape heart/blood combo proves too powerful for his brain. Julio develops a habit of periodically rising from his sickbed, turning into a grotesque Cro-Magnon man-beast who likes to tear women's clothes off and scratch them to death with his nasty ghetto talons. This murderous masher is pursued by a cop who's dating a lady luchador, who is herself caught in turmoil involving an opponent she inadvertantly put at death's door. The doc, who is conveniently treating the injured wrestler, steals her from the hospital by walking in through the room window. He sticks her heart in Julio, hoping it will stop the transformations. The young man responds to this new surgery by growing even ape-ier, pulling Goyo's head off, menacing the lady wrestler and absconding with a little girl to a hospital roof, where he is shot and dies the same "at what cost?" death as 1,000 more endearing movie monsters.
First off, it should be mentioned that "Night of the Bloody Apes" is a misnomer; the film takes place over several nights, and there is only one ape. Its inclusion on the DPP's "video nasties" list, where you can also find "Blood Feast" and many other titles from my DVD/video/laserdisc collection, is further proof that the British censors were dolts. Does the above description sound like something that needs to be banned, pronto, lest The Children's minds be polluted beyond redemption? How about if I told you that the heart transplant scene includes footage of what is allegedly real surgery? That's right, real human gore was inserted into a fictional film in 1969 - in Mexico. Topping it off, the surgery footage doctors seem awfully cavalier about what they're doing. It looks like they're just hacking at tissue to get the old heart out, and they flop the "gorilla" heart around like it was made by Nerf. I don't know where, but I believe I once read that the footage was actually from director René Cardona's very own heart transplant, but I have yet to see that factoid again, so I'm going to say I made it up. Speaking of Cardona, he was perhaps the greatest of all Mexican exploitation filmmakers, best loved for his slew of wrestling-themed monster mashes starring El Santo and other popular luchadors. Cardona also made the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" favorite "Santa Claus", a demented children's picture where the title Northman, his team of nightmarish mechanical reindeer and Merlin the Magician team up to battle Satan. That one actually manages to be more ludicrous than "Bloody Apes," but it doesn't have all the blood and nudity, which, as an American, I happen to find more entertaining than "Santa"'s room full of children dressed up as cultural stereotypes from various parts of the globe.
Of course, the dialogue is great fun, and the stiff, serious dubbing helps. The show-stoppers are Krallman's medical theories about why he's pulled this stupid monkey/man stunt and why it went wrong. His mystical understanding of experimental medical procedures is certainly curious. And did you notice how I tossed around "ape" and "gorilla" and "monkey" thoughout this? If so, you'll notice that this respected medical pro does it throughout the movie, too. The only problem I have with the flick at all is that I think the Bloody Ape rapes his first victim, although it's ambiguous because he keeps his sweatpants on and the ravaging is confusingly filmed. A rape scene can kill an otherwise entertaining junk flick - it's the only common tactic of exploitation movies that ever bothers me, because anyone's intentions behind depicting rape in extreme detail are much more troubling than filming a cantaloupe filled with jam getting crushed to simulate a head-wrecking. (Outside the surgery, that's the sort of fakey homemade gore this movie applies.) At any rate, the violence in "Night of the Bloody Apes" is obviously sexualized, since just about every woman in the film, gorilla grist or not, gets naked at least once. But hey, I may be making a bigger deal about it than you might, because as I said, the scene's saving grace is Cardona's clumsy staging. Did I mention that the ape-man makes hilarious growling noises all the time? Or the film's outrageously loud '60s color palette? Well, the following trailer contains most of the best non-dialogue parts. As the opening shot should tell you, it is NOT safe for work, unless your monitor is concealed well.
This post's typing sessions were accompanied by Persuader's bracing "The Hunter", Absu's spiteful "In the Eyes of Ioldanach", Editors' moody "The Back Room", Death SS' bizarre "Black Mass", Cenotaph's mournful "Epic Rites", Iron Savior's rocking "Condition Red", Nile's masterful "Annihilation of the Wicked", Lyrics Born's funky "Later That Day...", Fireaxe's terrible "Lovecraftian Nightmares", Camel's smooth "Rain Dances", Therion's idiosyncratic "Beyond Sanctorum", Cellador's energetic "Enter Deception", Explosions In the Sky's hypnotic "How Strange, Innocence" and Kool Keith's underwhelming "Nogatco Rd." What? It takes a long time to do these. Oh, hope you had as nice a 7/4 as I did... much better fireworks than last year.
Awright, here are three more profoundly terrible movies from which you'd be remiss to tear your eyes, all of this batch ostensibly found in the "horror" section of your favorite video source and featuring monsters which make the infamous El Mofado look professionally constructed. If any of these groaners actually frightens you, you have problems with which I cannot assist you. The final four flicks will be covered in the next post, whenever I get around to it. Things are crazy busy these days.
"Blood Freak"
(1972)
This is not to be confused with the last post's "Blood Feast." That classic was also shot in Florida, that humid death metal fount so heat-warped it has its own FARK category, and is also available on a deluxe DVD under the loving auspices of Something Weird. Director Brad Grinter only made one other horror movie, "Flesh Feast", which I am sad to say I have never seen but understand was Veronica Lake's final film, in which she played a mad scientist using maggots for a skin regeneration procedure who ends up killing a client when she discovers he's actually Adolf Hitler. "Blood Freak" came two years later. Grinter met up with a pompadoured Eastern European bodybuilder named Steve Hawkes (born Sipek), who was hanging out in Florida getting skin grafts after sustaining burns over 90% of his body while filming a Spanish Tarzan knock-off. They put their heads together and came up with the tender story of Herschell, a beefy 'Nam vet biker with sweet mutton chops who finds Jesus after a hippie chick turns him into a "pot addict" and he consumes experimental farm fowl, thus becoming the turkey-headed monster of the title. Rumor has it that Herschell was named after Herschell Gordon Lewis, director of "Blood Feast," its recent sequel, "Jimmy the Boy Wonder", "BOIN-N-G!" and dozens of other cinematic marvels. It's no doubt that Lewis was in some way responsible for a film like "Blood Freak" coming about. It's packed with filler sequences, atrociously acted, inadequately lit, difficult to hear, morally confused... and a guy gets his leg hacked off by a table saw.
During the film, Grinter intermittently cuts to himself sitting in a room with snazzy wood paneling on the walls, where he philosophizes and moralizes at the camera, obviously reading from a script on his desk. In one sequence, he pauses mid-sentence to light a smoke, and by the end of the picture, he's choking on his cigarette fumes while trying to rail against putting chemicals in your body. But the main picture follows Herschell (the thickly-accented Hawkes, who's so important the opening credits say "Starring Steve Hawkes" twice - just like the title card in "Devil Fish"!) after he picks up a hitchhiker who is subtly named Angel. She turns out to be a Jesus freak, but her sister Ann is a saucy, raven-haired libertine who takes a fancy to the big lug. Unfortunately, when Ann tries to get him to smoke pot with her, he tells her, "No, thank you. That's not for me." He also refuses to sleep with a skanky blonde swinger who happens to be married to the local middle aged drug dealer, saying, "I just don't go for a girl who acts like a tramp." Burn! She tells her husband, Guy, and he strokes his novelty trucker moustache while saying he'll teach Herschell a lesson. Guy gives Ann some reefer, and she gets Herschell to smoke it by calling him a coward. (Herschell doesn't have a last name, but $10 says it's McFly.) The lightweight is totally baked off his ass after about three hits, and the couple giggles maniacally like they're auditioning for "Reefer Madness". They also have a tame sex scene, which is super gross because Hawkes' arms are all scarred and burned. Soon, he's convulsing and going fetal because he doesn't have any cheeba, and he gets pissed at Guy for getting him hooked, telling him, "If you don't keep me supplied, I'm gonna break every bone in your miserable body!" So, according to Grinter and Hawkes, if there's anything more realistic than someone becoming physically addicted to marijuana, it's a stoner who becomes violent after he's fiended all day and then smoked a free joint that was delivered to him by his dealer.
A dude from Angel's prayer group hooks Herschell up with a job at his poultry ranch. For unexplained reasons, a pair of shady doctors who forget their dialogue a lot is employed there (one wears a hospital gown). They tell Herschell they'll get him weed if he eats some turkey meat pumped with experimental drugs, which he does, smearing his craggy mug with grease from a cold turkey straight out of the roasting pan. Then he goes into a tryptophan coma, passes out, convulses, and his head turns into that of an ugly papier-mâché turkey beast. This leads to an incomprehensible series of scenes where either Ann is sitting around fretting about her stud muffin or Turk-schel is nabbing various junkie girls and stabbing them in the carotid so he can drink their blood. Guy tells his cranky drug supplier he can bang Ann, which is news to her since she's sleeping, and the dude attempts to force himself on her until Blood Freak shows up in the window, chases him into a workshop and performs the aforementioned delegging, which results in a big hole spewing fake blood like a GWAR concert. Every time he kills someone, the same looped scream will play over and over until it becomes sort of avant-garde. Then it degenerates into a ludicrous trip sequence where a real turkey is decapitated (chances are the crew ate it) and a bunch of hands tear hunks of meat from a roast turkey which is set on a table next to the turkey monster mask. Herschell finally wakes up looking normal, and it's implied that the Blood Freak business was all a hallucination brought on by the experiment. He admits he'd been hooked on painkillers after getting burned in The 'Nam, but despite this and the fact that he'd eaten all that fucked-up drug turkey, he blames the devil's weed. Angel gets Herschell to pray for strength, and after he does, he's cured of his marijuana addiction. It's nothing but blue skies and cozy sweaters for this guy, who meets Ann on a pier, assuring her all is forgiven as the bloody credit font reading "The End" spoils whatever redemptive mood this sappy, left-field ending had going for it. Today, Hawkes/Sipek runs an animal sanctuary in Florida, and I regret to inform you that he continues to have rotten luck. The guy seems like a genuine animal lover, and I think his efforts more than make up for all the meat wasted during this, probably his best-known film. After all, the guy's doing some good for mistreated jungle cats, and he really wasn't much of an actor, anyway. See below for the trailer, a hyperbolic hard sell in the beloved exploitation tradition.
"Troll 2"
(1990)
The first "Troll" was one of those "little creature" kiddie horror movies that came out in the mid-'80s to capitalize on both the success of "Gremlins" and the new PG-13 rating. It had June Lockhart and Sonny Bono in it, and was made by Empire Pictures, who gave us "Re-Animator" and later turned into the Full Moon grindhouse. "Troll 2" has absolutely nothing to do with "Troll," but is actually a retitled Italian job from the bumbling hands of writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who retitled himself here as... uh, Drake Floyd. A frequent collaborator of "Rats: Nights of Terror" maestro Bruno Mattei, Fragasso's also responsible for the foggy rock n' roll werewolf picture "Monster Dog" starring a dubbed Alice Cooper (hunt it down if you're an Alice fan) and the forgettable zombie snoozer "After Death" starring fully-clothed gay porn icon Jeff Stryker. Nothing in Fragasso's portfolio could properly prepare a viewer for the catalog of strange, stupid things "Troll 2" delivers. But where to begin? Probably with Joshua, a snot-nosed, freckle-faced little brat whose bewhiskered Grandpa Seth comes to him at night and tells him stories about goblins. You'd think a kid of Josh's age (he looks in the 8 to 10 range) would have heard of a freaking goblin already, but he acts so scared it's like Grandpa Seth told him he has pinworms. I like to think he's just confused; like the audience, Josh probably expected a movie called "Troll 2" to be about trolls, not goblins. And, yeah, Grandpa Seth has been dead for six months - this is his magical, omniscient ghost who shows up to provide exposition and other convenient plot points when the obviously intoxicated Fragasso sobers up and remembers to include them. Josh asks his mom about goblins, but she gets all flustered like he discovered a dirty secret and tells him they don't exist. She shrugs him off, but I imagine she was just stressed from trying to keep her freaky huge eyes from blinking, which most of the film's actors seem to be doing in many of the shots.
Maybe Mom was just worried about Josh's teenage sister, Holly, who likes to work out and do dance routines in the mirror wearing a pink Garfield nightshirt. Holly is played by Connie Young, who my fellow bad movie enthusiast The Wizard of Gore contends is the worst actress he's ever seen. Even among a cast so overloaded with ham and cheese, Connie is indeed stupendously bad, often overemphasizing to hilarious degree but reserving a dull monotone for when she's supposed to be emotive. (According to the IMDB, she teaches acting in Salt Lake City, so if we notice a lot of shitty Mormon actors popping up in the near future, she's probably behind it.) Holly's dating a chump named Elliott whose clingy male friends are apparently the source of her dad's dissatisfaction with her choice in men. Dad, he comes off like a redneck Tim Thomerson. He's a principled guy, demanding that Holly's "beau" - he actually refers to Elliott like that - stop hanging out with his bros and spend all his time hanging out with Holly's family. (The boys are apparently so close, they sleep together in the same bed - as I hear people who are "just friends" sometimes do.) Dad tells Elliott, "I don't talk to people who arrive late and upset their girlfriends." Whoa. Dad's all jazzed about taking a family vacation to Nilbog, a podunk town where they can get back to nature or some inane bourgeois shit. Of course, these idiots don't figure it out until Josh sees a street sign in a car mirror: "'Nilbog' is 'goblin' spelled backward!" The townspeople are goblins in human disguise, and they constantly goad outsiders to ingest cake and Kool-Aid and unrefrigerated milk and ears of corn smeared with what looks like green cupcake frosting. This will make them bleed green muck from their foreheads and turn into a pile of slimy vegetation and flesh, a concoction which is the goblins' favorite food. When our protagonists arrive, such a spread is laid out for them, but naturally Grandpa Seth appears and warns Josh not to let them eat it. Through his supernatural legerdemain, Grandpa Seth stops time for thirty seconds so the kid can come up with a plan. After standing around with his thumb up his ass for about 28 seconds, Josh decides not to grab all the food and dispose of it, but to get up on the table and unzip his fly... cut to the family angrily washing dishes and Dad scolding Josh: "You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"
The goblins' leader, Creedence, is my favorite part of the movie. She's a humanoid witch living in an old mansion who frequently hisses threats straight at the camera, all the while competing with Josh and Holly's mom to see who can open her eyes the widest. Creedence reminds me of the sexiest G.L.O.W. wrestler, Dementia, so I guess I would find her attractive if it weren't for her nasty cracked lips and rotten teeth. In one particularly weird scene, she uses her Druid magic to sex herself up and seduce one of Elliott's friends with an ear of corn; they start making out with the corncob between their mouths and get pelted with popcorn. The other people of Nilbog include a creepy sheriff who looks like an inflated Bob Rohrman and a vegenazi preacher who looks like a deflated Ted DiBiase (his sermons to the herbivorous Nilbogians rail against meat eaters' "smelly bladders" and "clusters of hemorrhoids"). These lunatics throw the family a party in their own rented house, stocked with evil goblin pastries on which "Eat Up!" has been helpfully written in the icing. Joshua and Grandpa Seth hatch an anti-goblin plan which involves touching a mystical stone from which Creedence derives her power - a wall with a smoky crevice which somehow helps grow her hand back when it's chopped off - and utilizing a bag enchanted with Grandpa's special brand of convenient plot contrivances. The latter will provide whatever Josh needs to save the day, but only when he really needs it. So, what does the bag give the little shit when the climax hits? As Josh exclaims when he opens it: "It's a double-decker bologna sandwich!" Apparently, there's nothing that scares the beasties more than an extra helping of processed sandwich meat, as they retreat screeching into the ether. Of course, when the family gets home, Mom immediately eats an apple and sets up the "shock" ending - the goblins have followed them back, and Josh ends the flick watching a group of midgets in cheap Halloween masks slurp lime Jell-O off of his mom's melted boobs, ensuring that she will never force him to sing "Row, Row Your Boat" during a road trip again. Available with Empire Pictures' original on one low-priced DVD, "Troll 2" is a perfect convergence of ridiculous plot, gross overacting, silly horror movie contrivances and dialogue that will have you rewinding to confirm that your ears aren't deceiving you (Elliott, during an argument with Holly: "Hey, they're my friends! You just keep your own friends!"). This trailer doesn't do Fragasso's crap-terpiece much justice, but at the very least should give you an idea of how goofy the monsters look.
"Night of the Bloody Apes"
(aka "La Horripilante Bestia Humana," 1969)
OK, stop me if you've heard this one before: Dr. Krallman, a brilliant and respected Mexican surgeon, is worried about his son, Julio, who is dying of leukemia. When conventional medicine fails, the doc and his hobbling, homoerotically obsequious assistant Goyo sneak into the zoo, shoot a guy wearing a monkey suit with a sedative, and then cart the "ape" back to their private basement lab. Krallman naturally believes that a gorilla's blood is more powerful than a human's, and that if he gives Julio a transfusion, it will cure him. Continuing from this logic, he also needs to replace the young man's heart with the gorilla's, because his heart is too weak to survive the transfusion of strong blood. All goes well with this daring plan, except the ape heart/blood combo proves too powerful for his brain. Julio develops a habit of periodically rising from his sickbed, turning into a grotesque Cro-Magnon man-beast who likes to tear women's clothes off and scratch them to death with his nasty ghetto talons. This murderous masher is pursued by a cop who's dating a lady luchador, who is herself caught in turmoil involving an opponent she inadvertantly put at death's door. The doc, who is conveniently treating the injured wrestler, steals her from the hospital by walking in through the room window. He sticks her heart in Julio, hoping it will stop the transformations. The young man responds to this new surgery by growing even ape-ier, pulling Goyo's head off, menacing the lady wrestler and absconding with a little girl to a hospital roof, where he is shot and dies the same "at what cost?" death as 1,000 more endearing movie monsters.
First off, it should be mentioned that "Night of the Bloody Apes" is a misnomer; the film takes place over several nights, and there is only one ape. Its inclusion on the DPP's "video nasties" list, where you can also find "Blood Feast" and many other titles from my DVD/video/laserdisc collection, is further proof that the British censors were dolts. Does the above description sound like something that needs to be banned, pronto, lest The Children's minds be polluted beyond redemption? How about if I told you that the heart transplant scene includes footage of what is allegedly real surgery? That's right, real human gore was inserted into a fictional film in 1969 - in Mexico. Topping it off, the surgery footage doctors seem awfully cavalier about what they're doing. It looks like they're just hacking at tissue to get the old heart out, and they flop the "gorilla" heart around like it was made by Nerf. I don't know where, but I believe I once read that the footage was actually from director René Cardona's very own heart transplant, but I have yet to see that factoid again, so I'm going to say I made it up. Speaking of Cardona, he was perhaps the greatest of all Mexican exploitation filmmakers, best loved for his slew of wrestling-themed monster mashes starring El Santo and other popular luchadors. Cardona also made the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" favorite "Santa Claus", a demented children's picture where the title Northman, his team of nightmarish mechanical reindeer and Merlin the Magician team up to battle Satan. That one actually manages to be more ludicrous than "Bloody Apes," but it doesn't have all the blood and nudity, which, as an American, I happen to find more entertaining than "Santa"'s room full of children dressed up as cultural stereotypes from various parts of the globe.
Of course, the dialogue is great fun, and the stiff, serious dubbing helps. The show-stoppers are Krallman's medical theories about why he's pulled this stupid monkey/man stunt and why it went wrong. His mystical understanding of experimental medical procedures is certainly curious. And did you notice how I tossed around "ape" and "gorilla" and "monkey" thoughout this? If so, you'll notice that this respected medical pro does it throughout the movie, too. The only problem I have with the flick at all is that I think the Bloody Ape rapes his first victim, although it's ambiguous because he keeps his sweatpants on and the ravaging is confusingly filmed. A rape scene can kill an otherwise entertaining junk flick - it's the only common tactic of exploitation movies that ever bothers me, because anyone's intentions behind depicting rape in extreme detail are much more troubling than filming a cantaloupe filled with jam getting crushed to simulate a head-wrecking. (Outside the surgery, that's the sort of fakey homemade gore this movie applies.) At any rate, the violence in "Night of the Bloody Apes" is obviously sexualized, since just about every woman in the film, gorilla grist or not, gets naked at least once. But hey, I may be making a bigger deal about it than you might, because as I said, the scene's saving grace is Cardona's clumsy staging. Did I mention that the ape-man makes hilarious growling noises all the time? Or the film's outrageously loud '60s color palette? Well, the following trailer contains most of the best non-dialogue parts. As the opening shot should tell you, it is NOT safe for work, unless your monitor is concealed well.
This post's typing sessions were accompanied by Persuader's bracing "The Hunter", Absu's spiteful "In the Eyes of Ioldanach", Editors' moody "The Back Room", Death SS' bizarre "Black Mass", Cenotaph's mournful "Epic Rites", Iron Savior's rocking "Condition Red", Nile's masterful "Annihilation of the Wicked", Lyrics Born's funky "Later That Day...", Fireaxe's terrible "Lovecraftian Nightmares", Camel's smooth "Rain Dances", Therion's idiosyncratic "Beyond Sanctorum", Cellador's energetic "Enter Deception", Explosions In the Sky's hypnotic "How Strange, Innocence" and Kool Keith's underwhelming "Nogatco Rd." What? It takes a long time to do these. Oh, hope you had as nice a 7/4 as I did... much better fireworks than last year.
posted by SoulReaper at 9:31 AM
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As I Lay Dying step out of the Shadows
In only five years, As I Lay Dying moved up from community hall gigs to headlining one of the year's biggest heavy metal tours. For a band composed entirely of forthright Christians, their catapult to fame is even more noteworthy.
The San Diego quintet performs at this summer's Sounds of the Underground tour, which stops at Tinley Park's First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre on Sunday. Now in its second year, SotU is the only festival touring outdoor sheds this season on which no major label acts appear.
As I Lay Dying tops a line-up heavily slanted toward their brand of melodic metalcore, including Trivium, The Black Dahlia Murder and Through the Eyes of the Dead. Adding their own flavors are genre-bending Swedish icons In Flames, death metal stalwarts Cannibal Corpse, muscular hardcore merchants Terror and Poland's black/death juggernaut Behemoth. The local date’s special performers are especially idiosyncratic: Converge, revered for fusing harsh metalcore with a progressive sense of rock n' roll, and HORSE the band, plying keyboard-laden songs that reference video game sequences to comment on real-life struggles, a singular approach that has coined a new subgenre tag - "Nintendocore."
But the Sounds of the Underground band with which AILD share the most ideologically is The Chariot. Both are products of the flourishing Christian metalcore scene. Here, the dueling guitars and thunderous rhythmic breakdowns sound much like that of their secular counterparts, but the vocalists growl lyrics advocating hope, tolerance and morally-guided decisions.
While heavy metal has long been associated with negative imagery, the hardcore punk scene traditionally stresses positivity and personal integrity. That makes the currently popular fusion of metal and hardcore a natural place for Christian bands to fit in, even if those who only like the darker, rougher stuff will often scoff at their affirmative intentions. Along with bands like Norma Jean (on Ozzfest this summer), Underoath (on Warped Tour), ZAO and Extol, the movement helps to reclaim the image of heavy Christian music from the gimmickry of Stryper.
Vocalist Tim Lambesis founded As I Lay Dying in 2001, nicking the moniker from a William Faulkner book. The band's 2003 album, Frail Words Collapse, was wildly successful, with memorable guitar harmonies and relentless touring gradually earning fans from both metal and hardcore circles. Last year's Shadows Are Security followed, as did a prime spot on the Ozzfest second stage, and cemented AILD's place among the new breed of American metal superstars like Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage.
Most recently, their label Metal Blade Records released A Long March: The First Recordings, compiling AILD's first album and split EP with new re-recordings of the EP's tracks. The disc shows the young band's quick evolution from a groovy, atonal metalcore sound to today's melodic intensity.
Between filming an appearance for MTV2's "Headbanger's Ball" and preparing for a brief trip to Europe, Lambesis took some time to discuss his music and his message. Following is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Q: How did you score the headlining slot at Sounds of the Underground?
A: We went out and did a headlining club tour in November into December. It was a really successful headlining tour, and the guys who were putting together Sounds of the Underground came out and saw us. They really felt like our live show would be the perfect closer for the event.
Q: The two bands who closed last year's Sounds of the Underground (Lamb of God and Poison the Well) were both on major labels, but this year none of the bands are on majors.
A: As far as the major label stuff goes, I don't think that really matters a whole lot, especially for a tour like Sounds of the Underground where the name itself is almost anti-major label. As far as record sales, where Lamb of God were last year when they headlined Sounds of the Underground, we've actually done more than that. Lamb of God have sold a tremendous amount of records since Sounds of the Underground, but where they were at when they were confirmed as the headliner and where we're at definitely justifies us being the headliner. As well as In Flames, they’re doing really well. As main support to the headliner, I think they're much bigger than Clutch was last year.
Q: You were pretty high up on the Ozzfest second stage last year. Do you anticipate this tour to be a much different experience than what you had there?
A: I think Sounds of the Underground is more intimate because there's only one thing going at one time, there's not a bunch of carnival booths and all that kind of stuff. People are there to see the bands they want to see, whereas Ozzfest, some people I think just go in general for the experience, they might not remember the bands they saw on the side stage. This is the main attraction, and some of the venues are indoors. Overall it has a more intimate feel and I guess a community, rather than... I think Ozzfest used to be sort of a celebration of Ozzy [Osbourne], I don't know what it is now.
Q: At Sounds of the Underground, people will be coming out to see AILD, whereas Ozzfest was more of an exposure thing. You guys have become very popular over the past couple of years. To what do you attribute that?
A: I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that we haven't really stopped touring. We've constantly been promoting each record that we have out. With our first Metal Blade release, Frail Words Collapse, it took us a long time to build our fan base. I'd say about a year and a half straight of touring. We ended up selling over a hundred thousand records, but it took us a very long time to do that. When you build a really gradual foundation like that, I think it turns into a very die-hard fan base. Then when the new record came out, everything kind of clicked all at once. Everybody was able to get the record at the same time, so it was very immediate compared to our last record's cycle.
Q: Do you think the success of Shadows comes from the momentum you built or the record itself?
A: I think it's a combination, because our last record sold over 150 thousand, so I think the initial 150 thousand people that bought this record were fans, and I think they were maybe willing to buy it regardless of whether it was our best record to date or just a decent record overall. Then I think why we've been continuing to sell records is because the record is actually a great record and a big step forward for us. All those people who came out to support us from the last record, the word of mouth has been spreading: "Hey, not only do I love As I Lay Dying, but the new record is better." I think if you have continuous sales, that really shows that the record itself is a great record.
Q: From a non-sales standpoint, how do you feel you've improved from your earlier material?
A: I think there's a lot more technical guitar playing. There's a stronger sense of melody throughout the guitars because we're better musicians than we were when we first signed to Metal Blade. We're such a young band, we definitely recognize the areas where we need to grow and we've been working hard at those. Drumming-wise, Frail Words Collapse is so drum-driven, that's something I think will never go away. I think this record has that driving force behind it. I think the record is maybe a little more balanced, not strictly drum-driven, but has that strong sense of melody throughout the guitars as well.
Q: For people who are unfamiliar with the band, can you describe what you sound like?
A: We have metal melodies through the guitar that are very influenced by classic metal stuff all the way back to Iron Maiden, and riffs like all the original riffy bands like Megadeth or something like that. But our music is different and much more modern in the way that the drums are ultimately the backbone of our music. It's not just some riff that carries through the song, there's this driving force of drums, this kind of stop-start, unexpected force behind the drums. Of all the bands I've ever played with, or just been involved with in the local San Diego scene, [AILD drummer Jordan Mancino] is by far my favorite drummer. I'm honored to be playing in a band with him.
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the new compilation A Long March? Is all the stuff on there out of print?
A: The first five songs are re-recorded. Some of those had appeared on previous records, and one of them had never been released until A Long March. Then the other 17 songs, those were all out of print. We wanted to make sure we weren't causing our fans to pay overpriced used prices to get these old records on eBay or things like that. We wanted to make sure we put everything together on one CD. The only reason anyone would have to go buy the originals is more as a collector's item rather than to actually hear the music for the first time.
Q: Now that it's out, do you plan to add more old songs to the set?
A: We'll be playing three songs from that CD this summer. But even with an hour to play, there are really only so many songs you can play. We're always biased toward our newer songs because they're more exciting to us, but we try to keep it balanced.
Q: All of you guys individually are Christians, but do you consider As I Lay Dying a Christian band?
A: Yeah, that's fine. A lot of Christians deal with that question kind of weirdly, in my opinion. I think that if five people are Christians, that should in fact change their lives in many, many ways. It almost, in my opinion, necessarily makes you a Christian band, because if you really and truly believe something, how would it not translate into the music that you write? I definitely consider us a Christian band, and I'm really curious to hear other bands explain when they say, "Oh, we're five Christians, but we're not a Christian band." I don't know how that's possible, really.
Q: Well, your lyrics are not your typical CCM praise lyrics. Reading them over, it seems that you have a strong moral standpoint, a worldview to put forth. But it's not preaching, praise and worship stuff, it's more of an application of those beliefs to everyday life.
A: Ultimately, as musicians, we're involved in what in the greater picture would be considered art. I don’t think it's very artistic to just come across telling people how to live their lives or what to believe. I think that our music is a little more poetic than that, a little more thought out. I think change has to start with me, personally, so most of the songs that deal with change and forgiveness and all those things are really me writing about myself and the ways that I want to change. I would never write a record that's strictly geared toward how I want the rest of the world to live and not point the finger first at myself.
Q: A lot of Christian bands have a higher profile these days, particularly in the metal and hardcore scenes. Why do you think this is?
A: That's kind of a tough question to answer because I think there's so many bands who have given Christianity a bad name in the past that there are a lot of stereotypes against Christian bands, a lot for Christian bands to overcome. Now, I think the perception of Christian bands is different because a lot of bands like Norma Jean or Underoath or ourselves have really changed the way people do Christian music. I think Christian music is more accepted now than it was ten years ago.
Q: Likewise, metal and hardcore in general is now a strong market force, even opposed to when you guys were starting out, when most of the popular hard rock was still rap-rock and industrial stuff. There's been a major change, going more toward underground styles mixing melody, extreme vocals and a harder guitar sound. As you've been coming up, have you noticed something to which you would attribute that change?
A: I think the mainstream has warmed up to heavier music in general, but I don't think it will ever fully warm up to a screaming or yelling style of vocal. They can handle it occasionally, but even the heavier bands that are breaking into the mainstream, they always have radio edits and things where they take out a bunch of the screaming. That's also a tough question because, say, some of the older Metallica stuff that was on the radio, musically it's not heavier than something like... not to point any fingers, but some of the bands that are using the singing/screaming formula now. The actual music itself was maybe even heavier back then, but the vocals were always singing for the most part. It's the screaming vocals that I don't think will ever be accepted.
Q: You use a little bit of singing here and there. Is that something you're thinking of using more in the future?
A: We'll keep the ratio similar to what we've done because for us, we're looking for songs with energy and a certain amount of intensity to them. We try to use the vocals that best fit the part. If singing best fits the part or actually brings the song to another level energy-wise, that's why we’ve chosen to use singing. But in general, the way we write, a lot of our riffy ideas don't really work with singing. I guess also, when I say that I don't think screaming vocals will ever do extremely well on radio, I think within the underground there are certain shows that are more specialized. For instance, I know that we're played on the radio in certain markets, and I really appreciate that. I don't want to come across like I think our music should played on the radio, I just think regular "active rock" radio will never accept screaming the way that I wish it would. I think that some bands try to force singing vocals into a song because they think that's what they should be doing. I really support using regular singing vocals if that's what the song calls for, but I wouldn't want to force it and try to get something in that doesn't necessarily fit the instrumental part of the song.
*******
Why do you think they call "A Scanner Darkly" dope?
"A Scanner Darkly" may look like a trifle of sci-fi eye candy, but beneath its arresting visuals lies the most earnest anti-drug flick since "Requiem for a Dream."
Don't let the commercials or the presence of star Keanu Reeves fool you. One should not enter "A Scanner Darkly" expecting hovercar chases, laser gun battles or explosions, because it's nowhere near an action movie. Rather, it often resembles writer/director Richard Linklater's early slice-of-life movies like "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused," mixed with some edgy post-"Fight Club" identity confusion.
Reeves, apparently the new go-to guy for stories about oppressive future societies, stars as Fred, a cop in a time when the wars on drugs and terror have conveniently dovetailed. Fred and his colleagues use surveillance technology to spy on citizens suspected of using illegal drugs, especially the popular, paranoia-inducing Substance D.
Problem is, Fred's also working an undercover identity as drug dealer Bob Arctor. This involves hanging out and doing lots of D with a group of addicts that includes Jim (Robert Downey Jr.), Ernie (Woody Harrelson) and Donna (a barely recognizable Winona Ryder). Their interactions seem real and unrehearsed, and unexpectedly provide many of the movie's most affecting moments.
Ernie and Jim come off as the sort of fun, paranoid dopehead characters that typically carry college stoner comedies. On the other hand, Donna's more tragic, having done so many drugs in the past she can't even bear to be touched by Bob, who is ostensibly her boyfriend.
Bob/Fred knows he has to do something about his dual lifestyle, especially when he learns that one of D's side effects is inducing a split identity in heavy users. And here is where the film's thriller aspect comes in: Under the strain of the drug, our protagonist cannot be sure if he is still who he believes he is, or if he's second-guessing himself, or what.
Based on the 1977 book by Philip K. Dick, "A Scanner Darkly" employs a process called interpolated rotoscoping, which Linklater first utilized for 2001's "Waking Life." As in that film, Linklater achieves a dreamlike state by "painting over" digital video footage with computer animation. This lends a surreal feel, one that mimics a real image but distorts it slightly. A far-off building looks like it's shot on actual film, but a cat's fur resembles pixilated porcupine quills.
Downey's Jim steals every scene he graces; his twitchy, know-it-all babbling will amuse anyone who's ever been cornered at a party by an annoying, coked-up hipster. Reeves is typically wooden, although when he dons the holographic suits worn by cops to disguise their identities, his voice is distorted so that he sounds less like a surfer and more like a dull video game voice-over.
"A Scanner Darkly" ends with a dedication from Dick (who struggled with addiction for years himself), listing all the people he knew whose lives had been shattered by their habits. It's fitting, since the movie isn’t so much a clever conspiracy thriller or a prescient political allegory about loss of privacy as it is a unique parable about the dangers of drugs - especially those dangers which users cannot recognize for themselves.
*******
Mr. Lif, Mo'Mega (Definitive Jux)
Imagine a cross between Gang Starr's Guru and A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip, and you'll have a good idea of Mr. Lif's voice. Shove enough war, racism, poverty, supersized value meals and superficial hip-hop in that smooth-tongued rapper's face, and you'll have a good idea of his lyrical stance.
Yes, Boston MC Lif throws down political rhymes with the vengeance and frustration of Chuck D or KRS-1, but his mellow/militant approach is his own. As he blasts the Bush and Clinton administrations for ignoring crises in Africa on the incendiary "Brothaz," his relentless rhymes intertwine with El-P's industrial funk, working as both a dense head-nodder and as a formidable display of lyrical skills with a burning social conscience.
Mo'Mega is not all political, but it's generally positive of mind. Lif riffs on everything from fast food ("The Fries") to women with poor hygiene ("Washitup!"), the latter delivered with a playful Jamaican accent. The fact that none of the guest MCs - all labelmates, from Aesop Rock and Murs to his Perceptionists partner Akrobatik -manages to overshadow the host proves once again that Mr. Lif is one of the underground's most vital rappers, one who deserves some of the attention that is slowly starting to trickle down to brainy MCs.
I'm going to have nightmares about pinworms.
Dammit.
I finally thought of one good movie with a rape scene: A Clockwork Orange. Also, I found that mail-order Russian bride catalog. So, to sum up: I know where you can get good rape scenes and Russian brides.
Oh, and also Thelma & Louise. Did he finish raping her in that one? I can't remember. I was going to write a terrible joke here about remembering "who shot first," but I've refrained.
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