2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 9

Classic Horror Movies

Okay, the category is one of those inconsistent constructs.  Why not call them classic monster movies?  How do you define classic?  What is the allowable chronological range?  Are silent movies included?  Well, I’m fudging all of these and just selecting what I want to, no matter that logical consistency probably goes out the window.

Let’s look at my list.  Basically, it’s the Universal monster movies in their heyday along with “Nosferatu,” “Island of Lost Souls” and “House on Haunted Hill” thrown in for dubious reasons (basically because I like them).  I’ve left out a dozen Universal films that could just as easily have been included and I’ve included “The Invisible Man” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which really belong in a list of early science fiction stories.  But that probably applies to the Frankenstein movies too.  So, the whole thing is incredibly subjective and personal in nature.

So, I won’t belabor the point any longer and will instead chalk this up to a labor of love.  As a little kid I thoroughly enjoyed these movies and hundreds more that provided a similar thrill.  List your favorites in the comments.  If you want my detailed reviews of most of these movies do a search on the site by title.

  1. NOSFERATU (1922)
  2. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)
  3. DRACULA (1931)
  4. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
  5. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931)
  6. THE MUMMY (1932)
  7. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)
  8. THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)
  9. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)
  10. THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)
  11. THE WOLF MAN (1941)
  12. HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

 

UPDATE

War Pig’s picks:

Black Sabbath 1963

Black Sunday 1960

Night o/t Living Dead

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde 1931

Psycho

The Birds

Phantom o/t Opera 1925

Last Man On Earth 1964

Incredible Shrinking Man

Curse o/t Demon

Island of Dr Moreau 1932

Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Tingler

M (also under film noir, crime, etc.)

 

 

 

Unburdened By Yellow School Buses

Well, they finally did it.  They either bribed or frightened or just plain exhausted Joe Biden into withdrawing from the race.  My guess is cash.

Now we have Kamala Harris as Democrat candidate.  Okay.  This is the same Kamala whose job it was to control the border.  Well, wait a minute.  That didn’t go very well, did it? Wasn’t there some kind of problem with all of her staff quitting because she is a toxic witch that can’t get along with anybody and can’t get anything done?  Okay, that could be a problem, maybe.  What else have we got?

Well, there is the thing where she likes to talk about yellow school buses.  And she likes to make up what she thinks are deep, impressive statements but other people find to be vapid and laughable.  Like when she adopted the tag line, “I can imagine what can be, unburdened by what has been.”  There Is a YouTube montage video where someone collected dozens and dozens of times, she has said this or very close versions of this.  Watching them one after the other is a daunting task.  Eventually this mantra begins sounding like a slogan to sell sneakers or a sports drink and the one saying it begins to sound unhinged.  And there are any number of videos out there documenting her propensity to belabor the obvious and try to pass it off as “deep thinking.”

It seems then that Kamala babbling incoherently will just be substituted for Joe Biden babbling incoherently in the Republican commercials targeting her in the fall.  But who knows?  Maybe Kamala has come on the scene just as the American IQ has crashed into double digits.  Maybe the voting population has gone down the same road as Kamala and they can imagine what Kamala can be unburdened by the fact that she’s an idiot.  In fact, maybe an idiot is exactly what they want.  If they can couch her pitch in terms of pseudoscientific psychobabble and feminine emotionalism and top it off with woke appeals to racialist and feminist grievance arguments then maybe she can get enough crackpots to make her election seem almost plausible.

But honestly, she suffers from the same problem that did in Joe Biden.  After all, he was always in the hole, even before he broke out into tongues at the debate.  He was behind in the polls because his economy stinks and the country is flooded with illegal aliens, drug addicts and other homeless people who are causing a crime epidemic.  So even if Kamala’s version of Tourette’s Syndrome is slightly less off-putting than Joe’s she still has to convince voters that four years of Biden/Harris isn’t Harris’s fault.  And that’s a pretty hard sell.

An additional challenge will be for her to explain how she kept telling anyone who asked her that that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack and running rings around his staff making America run like a Swiss watch.  That one isn’t going to fly.  Just like all of the rest of the liars in his inner circle they saw the Vegetable in Chief regularly and she knew that he was essentially a dementia patient with his finger on the button of the nuclear football.  That is going to be a very difficult question to answer.  I’d love to see her unburden on that little beauty.

22JUL2024 – Quote of the Day

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

Michel de Montaigne

Say It Ain’t So, Joe! We Lost Biden.

Dementia Joe punks out and withdraws from the presidential race.

Sigh.

Well, We don’t have mush-brain Biden to kick around anymore.  Now we’ll have to kick Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Kamala Harris around.

Goodbye Corn Pop.  Goodbye Dog Faced Pony Soldier.  Goodbye Uncle Bosie.  Goodbye Cannibals that ate Uncle Bosie.  Goodbye Dr. Jill.  Goodbye Hunter Biden.  Goodbye to the hair-sniffing sidle.  Goodbye to untranslatable mumbles from the podium.  Goodbye to falling down on everything.

Goodbye Joe.  Don’t think it hasn’t been fun.  Because it hasn’t.

Update:

Quote from Medicaid after hearing the news, “We finally beat Biden.”