New Low Cut Connie, out today! Buy HERE.
Watch:
Happy July 3rd, everyone! Also known as Return of the Living Dead day!
I'll be watching this tonight in celebration and jamming the vinyl soundtrack while I type this.
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In other viewing news, I rewatched Gavin Polone and Andrew Kevin Walker's much-maligned Psycho Killer the other night. I love this flick; no, it's no SE7EN, but holding it up against that film is like holding everything Shamalamadingdong does against Sixth Sense.
I do think I figured out the elements that caused many in the Horror community to lambast this film.
1) The egregious-as-hell scene with the tank semi that flips onto its side, takes out the fleeing female and then explodes. It's fun, but it's a bit much for a film that otherwise holds itself in a dead serious repose.
2) The pregnancy subplot. Not needed AT ALL.
Other than that, man, this one swings so fucking big and, I think, hits it out of the park with such an ambitious third act. Georgina Campbell is always fantastic, and James Preston Rogers is the stuff of nightmares. Oh yeah, Malcolm McDowell is fabulous as a sort of modern Aleister Crowley/Anton Lavey stand-in.
Read:
I am just now, three months into the publication run, getting to read the unearthed and completed finale to Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli's Swamp Thing run from 1988/1989, published nearly 40 years later as Swamp Thing: 1989.
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| Original proposed Michael Zulli cover for issue #88 |
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| Cover to the recently released issue #88 |
Full disclosure: while I've been aware of the Veitch/Zulli run since I read the Moore run that Mr. Veitch penciled some of back in the early 00s, I've never sought it out and, in fact, I don't think I knew that Veitch walked away due to censorship by then newly combined Time/Warner entity that owned DC Comics, or that those issues never saw the light of day and, in some cases, went unfinished. This reminds me more than a little of that Warren Ellis Hellblazer issue with the school shooting that finally came out back, oh hell, a long time ago now.
So why was DC so worried about Swamp Thing meeting a certain historic carpenter in 1989? Five words for you:
The. Last. Temptation. Of. Christ.
Here's Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay adapting Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, talking about the blasphemous aspect of the story:
The effect the film had on Swamp Thing is the big takeaway I have after reading Stephen Bissette's afterward in Swamp Thing 1989 issue 88, and it makes a ton of sense, even if it is still deplorable. I was thirteen in 1989, but I remember the nightly news hullabaloo surrounding Martin Scorsese's film featuring Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot and David Bowie as Pontius Pilate. I wouldn't see the film until the early 00s, but I remember that people did not like the way Christ was portrayed, so while absolutely nothing blasphemous occurs in Veitch/Zulli's comic, no corporation was going to publish a comic with the cover above so soon after Scorsese's film.
So what did DC publish instead of the original Swamp Thing issue 88? Well, it's a bit confusing, but apparently Veitch/Zulli's issues 88-91 were shelved and never finished and instead, Doug Wheeler and John Totleben stepped in and continued the course of events that had played out through the early issues of Veitch's run, where Swampy is lost in time. Wheeler's 88 deviates by omitting the Elemental's meeting with Christ, which, again, really only treated the Christ man with the utmost respect.
Funny that, as far as we've come to see this finally published, they still did not use that original Zulli cover.
Playlist:
Melvins/Helms Alee - Controlling Data for a Better Feeling Future
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 2: Philosophy of Beyond
sunn O))) - Loser
3Teeth - EndEx
The Dillinger Escape Plan & Mike Patton - Irony is a Dead Scene
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Two of Swords
• Page of Wands
• Queen of Cups
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