HOLIDAY GEEK GIFT RECOMMENDATIONS: CYNTHIA PETAL'S REALLY FANTASTIC ALIEN SEX FRENZY! (1993)

Let's face it: dirty comics are nothing new. They've been around at least since the days of those nasty eight-page "Tijuana Bibles" that depicted celebrities and popular comic strip characters getting their hump on with grossly exaggerated genitalia running rampant, and were further popularized by the underground comics boom of the 1960's, particularly the fleshy, sweaty and at times downright filthy spewings from the febrile pen of Robert Crumb. I have loved Crumb's work since first sneaking issues of ZAP COMIX and other such forbidden treasures into the house when I was thirteen, and as I got older and gained more wisdom in the area of the couplings that he delineated, I appreciated his stuff for the simple fact that he was a geek, and in case you didn't know it, we geeks tend to be a sex-obsessed lot. As such, Crumb's interests fueled his illustrations with a realistic animal lust never before seen in the medium; to put it bluntly, the reader could feel the urgency in the character's parts, and those black & white cartoon pussies appeared to be every bit as humid and inviting as the real thing. But the one aspect of Crumb's work that rendered his pornographic efforts somewhat offputting to many (myself included, depending on the story in question) was a pervasive sense of fear and even hatred of women, something that Crumb's later-period works seem to have grown past, but it's a real shame that his unmatched talents could not have been channeled into a work that celebrated sex with the detailed eye and sense of humor that he freely displayed in almost everything he created. Only Richard Corben has come close to equaling Crumb in the arena of squashily-rendered torsos engaging in the skin-to-skin bossa nova, while far lesser "talents" crank out unpleasant dreck like HORNY BIKER SLUT and VEROTIKA. But then guys like Dave Cooper pop up from out of nowhere and breathe a breath of fresh air into the fetid atmosphere of the sex comics seraglio.

Cooper has brought readers many oddball concoctions over the years — most notably the uber-surreal, perverse Mother Goddess yarn SUCKLE — but nothing prepared me for CYNTHIA PETAL'S REALLY FANTASTIC ALIEN SEX FRENZY! The setup is simplicity itself: Cynthia Petal returns home from work one night only to find a trio of bizarre, telepathic aliens from another dimension hanging out in her apartment. The creatures are benevolent and tell her that they are "here only to bring you pleasure," which they do by first amping up her natural pleasure receptors, spurring an impromptu session of showerhead masturbation with a cucumber chaser. From that point on her every wish is made reality thanks to the aliens plumbing her subconscious for erotic/pleasurable fodder and in short order her home becomes the setting for a spectacular and visually ludicrous orgy involving booze, music video stars, superheroes, close friends, and anyone Cynthia happened to find attractive. There's no violence, no bad vibes, just a bunch of characters enjoying each other without fear of any negative consequences (the aliens can handle anything), and that's what makes CYNTHIA PETAL'S REALLY FANTASTIC ALIEN SEX FRENZY! so much fun. The good feeling conveyed in the story is infectious and the incredibly graphic content is never offensive; oddly, it is actually very charming. In fact, with a good budget and a creative team that actually gave a shit about what they were doing, this would make for one hell of a fun porn flick!

Just a minor taste of the wacky and free-wheeling orgasmic smorgasbord found between the comic's covers.

So scour the back issue bins of your favorite comic shop or search the Internet and track down this unsung gem of comix erotica. No shit, this treasure deserves a place on your naughty bookshelf, right next to the waaaaaaaay raunchier YOUNG WITCHES Volume 2, a collection that needs a serious lesson in class, which CYNTHIA PETAL is more than capable of giving.

THE BURNING (1981)

There used to be a camp not far from here, just across the lake. It was called Camp Blackfoot. No one goes there anymore. Everything burnt down. This camp had a caretaker, and his name was Cropsy. Now, this Cropsy was a drunkard... a sadist, and he got real pleasure out of hurting... scaring. And he had these garden shears. The kind with long, thin blades. He carried them all the time, wherever he went. And he had this kind of demonic way of looking at you. One time, Cropsy really went after this kid from Brooklyn, followed him around night and day. He made this kid's life a living hell. But this time, he chose the wrong guy, 'cause the kid and some of his buddies had planned a little prank. Only problem was, the gag went wrong. The next thing anybody knows, Cropsy's trapped alive and burning in his bunk. They try to get him out, but the fire's so fierce, they can't reach him. All they can do is stand outside and listen to him cry out in agony. They say his smashed his way through the bunk room door in just a mass of flames. And as he burned alive, he cried out, "I will return! I will have my revenge!" They never found his body, but he survived. He lives on whatever he can catch. Eats them raw, alive. No longer human. Right now, he's out there. Watching, waiting. Don't look; he'll see you. Don't move; he'll hear you. Don't breathe; you're dead!

-The legend of Cropsy, as retold in THE BURNING

Those of us who are of a certain age no doubt recall (fondly or not) the age of the "slasher" movie, a period in our youths that enjoyed a heyday between roughly 1980 and 1984. The genre was kick-started by the unexpected success of the independently shot, major studio released FRIDAY THE THIRTEEN (1980) and from that cheap and gory template exploded a seeming avalanche of like-minded and mindless "body count flicks" with absolutely nothing on their minds other than making a quick buck by projecting as much Karo syrup blood and naked tits across the screen as possible. Sex and violence are both obvious box office draws so the fusion of them would theoretically ensure a lucrative take, thus filmmakers all over the place sought to rake in some of that cash by churning out shitty, by-the-numbers gore-fests, most virtually indistinguishable from one or the other.

During this flourishing of sanguinary cinema, FANGORIA magazine would feature cover stories chronicling each new slasher flick to issue from the pipeline, and one of the most intriguing-looking was 1981's THE BURNING. The magazine article gave gorehounds page after page of outrageously gory images that certainly piqued our curiosity and got us very interested in seeing the film, but shortly before THE BURNING was due to come out the backlash against slasher movies began in earnest and the genre was forced to knuckle under to censorship complaints in order to keep an R rating and avoid earning the dreaded X, which would have kept out all moviegoers under the age of eighteen. (Anyone who has ever been an enterprising teenage fan of material that's allegedly "adult" enough to earn a movie an R can tell you for a fact that it's pretty easy to get in to R-rated movies because the staff at most movie theaters simply do not give a fuck, just so long as cash crossed through the ticket window's threshold.) This pointless backlash essentially ended up cutting the balls off the slasher genre by preventing the films from being seen as intended, with many being released to screens with such thorough sanitizing that the movies became frisson-free parades of terrible acting by clearly overage "teenagers" that may or may not have provided even the requisite bare tits (which, back in those days, were refreshingly all-natural), so audiences were not satisfied and the genre inevitably shriveled up and died when the money stopped rolling in. All of which is a long-winded way of providing some background leading up to a discussion of THE BURNING, a film that was a glaring casualty of the backlash and released worldwide in several heavily-edited versions, each reportedly being an almost complete waste of the gorehound's time if not for some truly lovely actual boobs gracing the screen.

Now available on DVD in its uncut form, THE BURNING surprised the hell out of me for a number of reasons, including the fact that it's the brainchild of the Weinstein brothers and is in fact the first film from Miramax. As you no doubt gathered from the legend at the top of this piece, the movie has to do with the accidental and utterly horrible immolation of a summer camp janitor/groundskeeper named Cropsy, only the narrative proper deals with the tragic aftermath of that prank gone wrong and opens five years later, once a hideously burn-scarred Cropsy is released from the hospital. A rotten asshole of a human being in the first place, the now monstrous Cropsy has had five years in which to stew over what happened to him and to allow thoughts of gruesome vengeance to twist his mind, so after killing a whore almost immediately upon hitting the streets, Cropsy makes his way to Camp Stonewater in upstate New York (the summer camp just across the river from Camp Blackfoot, the site of his immolation), where he gets down to the business of viciously and randomly murdering innocent teenagers.

If this sounds like the basic outline to a garden variety slasher opus, it pretty much is, only this time around the movie actually takes time to flesh out its psycho-fodder cast for about forty-five solid minutes that are never boring and features a cast of very recognizable young actors, most making their screen debuts, including:

• Fisher Stevens-from the SHORT CIRCUIT films and many other roles
  
• Holly Hunter-of RAISING ARIZONA, BROADCAST NEWS and THE INCREDIBLES renown
• Brian Backer-instantly recognizable as nebbishy and virginal Mark Ratner from FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
• Leah Ayres-unforgettable — and not in a good way — as the ultra-annoying reporter in the Jean-Claude Van Damme martial arts semi-classic BLOODSPORT

But by far the most well-known cast member is Jason Alexander (age 21 when the film was shot), aka SEINFELD's George Costanza, complete with a full head of brown hair, in the unlikely role of an under-18 camper. He looks every bit his age and it took me a while to realize that he wasn't supposed to be playing one of the counselors, but the familiar delivery and comedic chops were already in place and firing on all cylinders.

Yes that's SEINFELD's Jason Alexander in the number jersey, complete with hair and playing someone who's supposed to be a camper, not a counselor. FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH's Brian Backer sits in front of him, while SHORT CIRCUIT's Fisher Stevens sports a happenin' striped shirt.

If the film eliminated the slasher angle entirely, what remains would have made for a passable summer camp teen comedy, depicting as it does the most irresponsibly-run place one could ever send their kids to for the summer. There's a certain amount of supervision, but the counselors take absolutely zero notice of the fact that that campers play poker for cash stakes and smoke and drink right in front of them, to say nothing of very obviously engaging in sex in the woods, but then again the counselors are engaged in exactly the same activities themselves, sometimes with their underage charges, so I guess it's all okay. (Where was Camp Stonewater when I needed it, namely during my awful and unwilling stay at Camp Hi-Rock in the summer of 1979? Not a hope of beer or pussy, goddammit!) But while such activities often serve as the direct cause of teen mutilation in the majority of slasher flicks and unintentionally (?) drive home a puritanical lesson that having sex, indulging in mind-altering intoxicants and having fun of damned near any kind in one's all-too-fleeting youth is "bad," THE BURNING treats such common teen adventures as simply being a part of life as it was back in those days, leaving Cropsy's motivation as being purely revenge-driven.

The plot is obviously nothing worthy of great literature, but as an E.C. Comics-style horror yarn it's simply perfect. After the first forty-some-odd minutes of character development, two counselors take a decent-sized group of campers downriver on an overnight camping excursion, and upon arrival at their destination Cropsy gets to work on his agenda of retroactive abortion, stealing the party's canoes and stranding his victims in a situation reminiscent of the old "fish in a barrel" setup. By that point we've gotten to know the characters well enough to care about most of them, so when Cropsy kills them off one by one you won't necessarily be happy about it (unlike the majority of these movies, wherein the teens are such a bunch of obnoxious assholes that you actually end up rooting for the killer and want to award him a commendation and the key to city when his deadly job is done). Particularly tragic and horrifying is the utter massacre of about six campers as they attempt to paddle upriver on a makeshift raft in search of help, only to meet their untimely demise on the business end of Cropsy's ever-present hedge-trimming shears. That sequence is particularly nasty and quite memorable, especially when Fisher Stevens attempts to shield his face with his hand, only to lose all his fingers in a fountain of gore as Cropsy deftly snips them off.

The whole story feels like a properly told scary campfire yarn and it brought me right back to my fondly-remembered years as a camp counselor, when Camp Mahackeno's director instructed us during training that we were not to tell the kids scary stories of escaped, hook-wielding, disfigured maniacs for fear of traumatizing the living shit out of them. It made me think of the days when the usual outdoor activities got rained out and we'd retreat into the large utility barn to watch projected VHS movies that would offend no one, and oh how I longed to be able to delight the kids with movies like THE BURNING and other such shiver-inducers...

So the bottom line on all of this is that THE BURNING is definitely worth the viewing time of the seasoned gorehound and the curious NetFlix renter. Unlike many of its contemporaries, it's never boring, it delivers on the graphic violence, and reminds us of why the days before the plague of breast implants were sacred indeed. TRUST YER BUNCHE and check this one out, especially now that it's finally presented in the way it was meant to be experienced. Sheer brainless fun, and definitely better than most of the tepid so-called shockers that scarcely merit an R these days.

IT WAS TWENTY-NINE YEARS AGO TODAY...

Dear Vaulties-

here's a re-run from last year, complete with the title change to render the accurate number of years. Bear with it, because this may become an annual fixture...

NOTE : every word of the following story is true (or rather remembered as exactly as humanly possible given that nearly three decades have elapsed since it happened), and if you find some of it offensive at this late date, imagine being in my shoes at age fifteen!

December 8th, 1980-

It was the start of my tenth grade school day morning and I was disgruntled (as usual) at being denied sleep and instead being herded along with the rest of the cattle at Staples High School into yet another inane class. The first item of regurgitation/education of the morning was English with Mr. Dyskolos (not his real name; changed for reasons soon to be apparent), a late-forty-something red-headed guy who then looked like what Danny Bonaduce looks like today who was also among the minute handful of teachers whose classes would keep students awake because he was genuinely interesting, did not talk down to the kids and had not allowed the thankless teaching system to beat him down and force him to consider his job a mocking reminder of wage-slavery (I'm the son of a teacher, so I speak with a working knowledge of such things).

As the students took their chairs we all noticed that Mr. Dyskolos's usual laid-back manner seemed somewhat "off" that morning and after nearly a minute of total silence as he stared into space as though contemplating some cosmic truth or inevitability, he suddenly focused himself, looked at us and said, as serious as a heart attack, "By the look of you, you haven't heard what happened this morning. I'll just get right to it. John Lennon, de facto leader of the Beatles, was shot dead by some lunatic fan." Most of the class had indeed not heard about Lennon's murder, and those of us who hadn't, myself among them, were stunned. But before the horrible truth could fully set in, Mr. Dyskolos continued. "You kids probably know a lot about the Beatles from what your parents or maybe your older brothers and sisters played for you, but you can't even begin to imagine the worldwide pop culture impact those guys had at the time. Obviously I was there for the 1960's and can tell you firsthand what it was like, but I'm gonna spare you that nauseating, self-indulgent trip down memory lane. I guarantee you that all your other teachers are going to suspend actual teaching for the day and drag you along for their reminiscences of their flower-power salad days, but I'm not gonna do that to you. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a few truths that you won't hear anywhere else in this school, or damn near anywhere else, on what's gonna no doubt be a day of worldwide mourning."

He leaned forward in his chair, his face a mask of utmost solemnity, and uttered words that blew the minds of the roomful of privileged suburban white kids (and me): "The Beatles sucked. They were a bunch of marginally talented 'heads' who started out ripping off the work of their black American influences and made a hell of a lot of money for no good reason, killing real rock 'n' roll in the process and unleashing legions of even less-talented imitators in that godawful British Invasion nonsense. And then they went to India, supposedly to gain 'enlightenment' or some other George Harrison-inspired bee-ess, but if you ask me all it did was make their music more annoying." To emphasize that point of criticism, Mr. Dyskolos began making a nasal and high-pitched "neeeeeeer neeeeeer neeeeeeeeeee neeeer" sound by way of approximating the tones of a sitar.

By this point in his diatribe you could have heard an amoeba fart. Young eyes practically bugged out of their sockets and jaws had fallen into laps. This was rock 'n' roll blasphemy in the extreme, and on the morning of the senseless slaughter of a man held by most in the room to be a hero of peace, love and great music, no less. Our worlds were shaken to the core. And then Mr. Dyskolos continued, still looking solemn, but his mouth betrayed a slight half-smile as he was very obviously enjoying his class' speechless outrage.

"Then they put out that asinine White Album that had exactly two good songs on it — 'Birthday" and 'Back in the U.S.S.R.,' and those two were good because they sound like actual rock 'n' roll! — and had the fucking unbelievable nerve to include that 'Revolution 9' horseshit! What the hell was that? (assumes comedic Liverpudlian accent) 'Noombuh nine? Noombuh nine?' What a load of crap! I'm telling you kids right here and now, remember how 'deep' that bullshit is when you decide to give acid a try!" (NOTE: this was the first time I ever hear a teacher curse when not discussing some of the content in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.)

Before he could say another word, Mr. Dyskolos was cut off and drowned out by an aural assault of irate dissenting opinion, his every word being tarred as the rantings of an anti-peace & love curmudgeon who "just didn't get it." "Who do you think you are???" shrieked several of my classmates. "The Beatles were the most important band in history! John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two of the greatest songwriters who ever lived! Are you crazy?" Dyskolos responded with a sneer that would have done Vincent Price proud and uttered my favorite comeback heard in all of my teenage years, whether I agreed with him or not: "What the hell did they ever write that was worth a goddamn? 'We all live in a yellow submarine?' Puh-leeeeze. The only reason you kids enshrine those hacks is because of nostalgia filtered down from parents who were barely your age when the Beatles showed up and absorbed by the general public and your older brothers and sisters who used that garbage as a soundtrack for when they'd sneak off to smoke weed in the back of a van. Which also explains how anybody could ever find the stomach to listen to those Doors assholes! Face it, kids. For some of what are supposed to be this country's brightest young minds, you sure are a bunch of programmed parrots!" And when one of the students blurted out that John Lennon was a symbol of "give peace a chance," our sage teacher batted that one aside with "You've obviously never heard about the time when Mr. Give Peace A Chance went to some club and hung out with a Kotex stuck to his forehead," a then-shocking truth that only elicited more teenage keening.

That was the real meat of it but the back and forth ranting went on for the class' full hour, with order barely being restored with the ringing of the bell marking the rotation to the next class. Each of my classmates and I zombied off to the next class and swiftly discovered that Mr. Dyskolos had been correct in his auguring; indeed, each and every teacher I had to endure for the rest of the day derailed the planned curriculum in favor of rose-colored reminiscences of "a more innocent time" full of free love, "the people getting together, man!"and how the Beatles were the troubadours that saw them through all of it and changed to reflect the time. That was all well and good in theory, but not for hours on end as heard from speakers of wildly varying levels of eloquence (to say nothing of interest), with lunch being the only respite from what was essentially the same story only with the most minor of variations.

When the day finally ended I headed downtown to do my volunteer teaching of a cartooning class at the local YMCA and the journey allowed me some time to process the events of the day and the "truths" imparted. I'd grown up liking the Beatles quite a lot but didn't own any of their albums thanks to their many hits being available in endless rotation on some of the nascent stations that played what would come to be known as "classic rock," and as the seventies ended I avoided the agonizing repetition of disco and such by listening to the excellent oldies station WBLI out of Long Island, a radio entity that served to plant the seeds of my passion for pre-1970's rock that was either primitive and raw or bizarre and very much off the beaten path. WBLI played some of the standard Beatles hits, but they also threw stuff like "Dig A Pony" and "Rain" (nowadays my favorite Beatles tune of all) into the mix and showed me just how much the classic rock stations played the same Fab Four songs over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum, and taking into account the espoused theory — voiced with absolute certainty of its veracity — that myself and my fellow students may have been a bunch of programmed drones, I began to wonder if Mr. Dyskolos had in fact done his young charges a favor by showing none of the rote reverence extended to the favorite sons of Liverpool by all who drew breath. He had effectively "killed our idol," on the day when one would expect nothing but 100% adherence to the party line, and that greatly intrigued my punk rock-influenced sensibilities.

As I pondered these thoughts, I wandered past Westport Record and Tape, one of the town's most accessible record stores, and greeted Jean, the sweet Southern proprietor. I asked her if the shooting of John Lennon had affected her sales that day and she said, "Honey, look over at the Beatles and John Lennon sections. Whadda you see? Tumbleweeds 'n' cattle skulls, that's what! Folks came in and cleaned the place out like they were a bunch of vinyl-eatin' locusts! On sales of Beatles and Lennon records alone, I could close early today." And it was true. Every single Beatles/Lennon platter had vanished into the Westport ether, bought up by fools who believed those perennial best-sellers (okay, maybe not SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY) would become instant collector's items.

Later that night as I lay there in my bed staring up at the white stucco ceiling, I listened to my cassette tape of SERGEANT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND and experienced it in a way that I never had before. I'd listened to it about two dozen times since acquiring it a couple of years previous, but now it served as a poignant grave marker for my favorite member of the Beatles and its words took on a whole new timbre. No one would be "fixing a hole" in Lennon and ensuring he would live to see sixty-four and beyond. He would not be getting better and there would be no more good mornings for him. Yet tragic though it was, this was just another day in the collective life, and that life would go on without John Lennon (though obviously not "within").

I remember the hue and cry when Elvis Presley, the so-called King of Rock 'n' Roll, gave up the ghost and people acted as though the world had come to an end, and I frankly didn't get it. I liked some of Elvis's music but it didn't really speak to me in the way that the Beatles had, and I now chalk that up to the Beatles happening during what could arguably be considered the most pivotal period of the twentieth century, a time that redefined much of American culture and into which my generation was born. We didn't grow up with Elvis, whose music helped set the template of rock 'n' roll, but we did come along during the rise of the Beatles and reached early sentience while under the influence of their sound. We couldn't know at the time just what their contribution meant, but we did know that we liked it. Obsessive poring over the minutia of the whys and wherefores of their lives, art and careers would come later. At that point in our young lives love was indeed all we needed, and in the wake of the plastic disco era and what small impact punk had in the U.S. at the time, that wasn't a bad thing.

So today marks the twenty-eighth anniversary of John Lennon's senseless slaughter and for me the day that it happened becomes ever more remote, so I figured I'd jot down my experience of it before age robs it of what clarity remains. If any of you have tales of that day, please write in and share.

HOLIDAY GEEK GIFT RECOMMENDATIONS: BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY VOL. 0NE (1929-1931)

Ho, ho, ho, dear Vaulties! Since my home computer has gone tits-up and I am at a loss for stuff to report on at the moment, I've decided to delve into the Vault's archives and dredge up some old reviews (some featuring necessary updates) that can serve as a guide for possible gifts for fellow geeks or anyone else you know who may enjoy this stuff. So put on yer red leather Santa hat and assless chaps and print this stuff out as potential seasonal shopping list!

-Yer Bunche

The sci-fi comic that started it all, finally collected from the very beginning.

When I was but a wee Bunche of seven, my dad gave me the enormous coffee table book THE COLLECTED WORKS OF BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY and I fell in love with it immediately. Loaded with breakneck adventure and amazing sci-fi concepts, that book fed my young imagination for years and inspired me to draw my own primitive attempts at planet-hopping adventure, but unfortunately it only gave a sparse look into the series' then-forty-year-plus run, focusing mostly on the first few years. I longed to read these wondrous old school stories in their unexpurgated form, and now the kind people at Hermes Press have answered my pleas by launching a series of volumes reprinting the entirety of the sci-fi landmark in gorgeous hardcover volumes. When I saw the first of them laying there without fanfare at Manhattan's St. Mark's Comics I almost swallowed my own head and surrendered the $39.99 cover price without hesitation, and, brother, am I glad I did.

The issue of the pulp sci-fi mag that introduced Buck Rogers to the world.

Having its roots in the August 1928 issue of AMAZING STORIES as a novella entitled "Armageddon — 2419 A.D." and seen by many to be the most important science-fiction comic of all time thanks to it setting off shock waves of interest in the genre way back in the days (1929 to be precise) that have continued unabated ever since, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY can be considered Ground Zero for the science-fiction genre as we know it, and this handsome edition collects the seminal series from the very beginning and will probably surprise readers with its initial post-apocalyptic setting and total lack of space adventure for nearly the entirety of its first year. Although very quaint to modern eyes, Buck Rogers was loaded to the gills with breakneck adventure and heroics that kept readers glued to the pages and gave their imaginations free rein to roam the uncharted cosmos with its heroes.

While surveying the lower levels of an abandoned mine near Pittsburgh in 1929, Buck Rogers — a typical all-American Joe with military experience during WWI — is trapped in a cave-in and, thanks to the effects of a strange radioactive gas, plunged into a state of suspended animation for five centuries. Upon awakening after the shifting of strata allowed ventilation into the mine, Buck's first experience of his new environment is that of an attractive young female soldier crashing to the earth after falling from the sky while trading fire with hostile "half breeds." Picking up the unconscious girl's strange-looking pistol, Buck kills her pursuers and rouses the comely soldier, who tells him that it's the year 2429. An understandably shocked Buck is then thrust headlong into a conflict between the "Orgs" of America (and what remains of the free world) against the gravity-repellor-equipped airships of the Mongols (translation: evil Asians, aka "Yellow Peril"), a heartless race that has conquered the world with their devastating disintegrator beams. His soldier companion, one Wilma Deering by name, fills him in on how the Mongols reduced American civilization to near stone-age levels that it took several generations to claw its way back from, all the while decent Americans being hunted like wild animals by the Mongol scum, so, being the decent American that he is, Buck joins the cause and begins his tempestuous partnership with Wilma, the woman who would become both the love of his life and an unfailingly "female" pain in his ass.

Buck Rogers wakes up 500 years in the future to discover some things haven't changed as much as one might think.

But while Wilma may display many of the sexist tropes common to female characters of her era, the depiction of a woman as a fully-capable soldier with considerable knowledge of weaponry and vehicles of many varieties must have been revolutionary in the mass media and gave the little girls in the audience someone of their own to root for and pretend to be in their play — to hell with Cinderella, Wilma had atomic rayguns, a jumping belt, a rocket-pack and spaceships!!! — and I think that's pretty damned cool. (I plan to give a set of this stuff to my niece, Cleo.)

This first chunk of the series spends about 98% of its time dealing with the Mongol threat and the eventual restoration of humanity to its proper level of whiteness (with a tribe of helpful techno-savvy Injuns thrown in for good measure), but while that storyline is an entertaining introduction to the future landscape and its technology and helps us get to know the protagonists (and douchey recurring antagonist "Killer" Kane), the whole Yellow Peril thing gets old rather quickly, so it's like the series got attached with electrodes to a four-million-volt power source when the outer space angle is finally brought into play with the arrival of a hostile interplanetary survey craft and we meet the Tiger Men of Mars. From that point BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY took off like one of its myriad rocketships and deservedly became a classic.

Artist Dick Calkins' art style and design of everything in the strip, from scientific hardware down to the style of clothing, reflects the jazz age from which it all stemmed, so Wilma looks like a 1920's flapper transplanted to a more "used"-looking future than the pristine metropolises of STAR TREK, and the assorted vehicles look rather clunky and rivet-festooned, all of which lends the series a great amount of retro/industrial charm that's diametrically opposed to the lush and (if truth be told) much better-illustrated romantic vistas of Alex Raymond's FLASH GORDON, which came along about five years later. And while both strips share a certain amount of common ground, it should be made clear that FLASH GORDON is more of a swashbuckling operatic romance set against a fantastic deep-space backdrop, while the adventures of Buck and Wilma feature a cast driven by exploration and a semi-militaristic flavor that felt kind of like its heroes were enlistees in some kind of outer space Air Force. While both could be enjoyed as seminal space adventures, odds are if you dig BUCK ROGERS you may not cotton to FLASH GORDON and vice-versa, so keep that in mind.

BOTTOM LINE: this first volume in the series is a fun intro, though the stuff with the Mongols gets a bit tedious, but once the Tiger Men show up it's off to the races and things only heat up with each subsequent collection. I love this stuff and I will most assuredly return for subsequent volumes (volume 2 is out and the third is set for release the week after this Christmas)..

THE 68TH (AND 19TH) ANNIVERSARY

Today is the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl harbor, a day that will live in infamy. It's also a day I will personally never forget because it's also the date when I moved away from Connecticunt for good, ditching it for New York City nineteen years ago. True, I lived in Brooklyn on a couch and in a sub-let for ten months previous to the move, but it was on Pearl Harbor Day 1990 when I moved the majority of my books, records and other stuff into an apartment on West 96th Street in Manhattan. Doesn't seem so long ago...

THE GREAT MST3K QUESTION CONTINUES

So last night I finally got around to seeing the episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 where Joel and the 'Bots riffed on 1969's horrendous CASTLE OF FU MANCHU, starring a decidedly non-Asian Christopher Lee as the famed stereotypical "yellow peril" mastermind. I missed that one when it first aired back in 1991 and I'm currently in the process of checking out all the ones I missed, so I was especially intrigued by CASTLE OF FU MANCHU because an old friend has sworn up and down for years that it was the absolute rock-bottom worst film the show ever ran. Now that's quite a statement since both MONSTER A GO-GO and MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE both got the treatment, and having seen the film for myself I have to say it doesn't even come close to the aforementioned celluloid atrocities. It may qualify for the Top 10 All-Time Worst anti-pantheon, but #1? No fucking way.

That said, I once more pose the question, "What is the all-time worst film ever aired on MST3K?" I got a smattering of answers a while back, but this time really put on your thinking caps and give that query scholarly consideration. This is a question that must be answered, and let's face it, MANOS is damned near impossible to compete with. Write in today!

"KISS MY AXE!":THE COLLECTED SLAINE VOLS. 1-4

Bloodthirsty Celtic warrior Slaine Mac Roth, as beautifully delineated by the one and only Glenn Fabry.

There is much to love in Britain's venerable weekly sci-fi comics showcase 2000 A.D., especially during its "classic" period. JUDGE DREDD's futuristic cop-on-the-beat exploits, STRONTIUM DOG's "Sergio Leone in space" stylings , heavy metal robotic action with THE A.B.C. WARRIORS, tense deep-space warfare with THE V.C.'S, a curious blend of science-fiction and the occult in NEMESIS THE WARLOCK, intergalactic fun with sociopathic alien juvenile delinquents D.R. & QUINCH... The list goes on and on, but perhaps the most unexpected and unique series to crop up during that era was SLAINE, a major break with the magazine's established sci-fi format in that it was a more or less straight-up sword and sorcery yarn. (There was an earlier Two Thou strip, BLACKHAWK, that kinda went there, but with far more of a sci-fi flavor to it.) Anyway, 2000 A.D. is slowly putting out collected editions of its major series and SLAINE is among the chosen, so here's one SLAINE-fan's assessment of what's up with the current wave of reprints. (Much of the first few years-worth of SLAINE have been reprinted in various formats since the mid-1980, starting with issues of THE BEST OF 2000 A.D., so keep in mind that this is the first time the run is being collected in sequence in trade paperback form.)

VOLUME 1: WARRIOR'S DAWN

The foundation from which the entire SLAINE series springs is laid out in this first volume, therefore making this book vital to really "getting" the series. Despite being rather visually uneven due to the series going through inevitable growing pains and a run of three artists whose talents suit the strip in wildly varying ways (a state of affairs that could cripple a 2000 A.D. strip in that era, most notably and unfortunately THE A.B.C. WARRIORS), SLAINE gets off to a very entertaining start by introducing us to its protagonist when he's a nineteen-year-old drifter, making his way back to his tribe, the Sessair, following three years in exile for committing a grievous breach of tribal etiquette. Accompanied by Ukko the dwarf — a seriously unscrupulous and unwholesome companion if ever there was one, but somebody had to chronicle Slaine's adventures — Slaine wanders from one misadventure to the next, acting like a complete asshole the whole time, and Mills rescues the narrative from what could easily have been yet another rote barbarian story by injecting it with liberal and legitimately funny doses of levity. What makes that angle work is that the art is rendered totally straight, supplying the perfect counterpoint to the series' considerable goofiness. But the initial "comedic Conan" feel gives way to a rich mining of Celtic and other endo-European myth bases (which would later be run into the ground to disastrous effect) and plants the seeds for plot complications that would rear their heads a few years down the line, most notably the introduction of Drune sorceress Medb (who carries a bitter grudge against Slaine for rescuing her from being ritually sacrificed, a process that would have made her a full-fledged goddess of evil).

Massimo Belardinelli's balls-out crazy visualization of Slaine's ultra-bizarre "warp spasm."

This volume's art chores are handled by Angie Kincaid (series co-creator who was on board only for the initial installment) and 2000 A.D. mainstay Massimo Belardinelli (who turned in an utterly inspired, completely balls-out mental/insane visual for Slaine's warp spasm, a supernatural berserker fury allowing him to channel the power of the earth goddess, Danu), but the real kudos here belongs to Mike McMahon, formerly best known for his seminal work on JUDGE DREDD during that strip's glory years ("The Cursed Earth," anyone?). Using a heavily textured and sketchy style that veers far afield of his earlier work, McMahon grants his SLAINE installments a legendary quality that is wholly right for the series in a way that has not been seen since, with each panel looking like its subjects were either carved into stone tablets of ancient woodcuts relating the story's heroic events.

An example of McMahon's woodcut-like SLAINE visuals.

Sheer genius, McMahon's SLAINE work could rightly be judged the finest of his already impressive career. McMahon's SLAINE output is a relatively scant eighteen chapters but its quality ensured classic status, especially the breathtaking "Sky Chariots" and its stunning imagery of flying longboats brimming with heavily-armed warriors engaged in savage combat.

More of the excellence of Mike McMahon.

VOLUME 2: TIME KILLER

Having gone from an entertaining barbarian actioner to full-blown epic in virtually no time, SLAINE's scale only increased from this volume onward. Slaine's path back to his tribe continues apace, but that journey becomes totally beside the point when our hero gains a fearsome dragon as his flying steed and takes on trainee druid priestess Nest as a traveling companion just in time to become embroiled in a battle against the Cythrons, a pack of other-dimensional Lovecraftian wigglies who seek to subjugate our world and feed off of the human energies of hatred and violence (read "war") throughout the ages. This conflict proves quite a test for our hero's well-honed martial ferocity and his goddess-given super-powers, bouncing him back and forth through time and unleashing scads of inhuman carnage and brutal violence. For sheer unbridled thrills and completely out-of-control action that barely gives the reader a moment to breathe, this arc ranks among 2000 A.D.'s finest hours and will leave you wondering just where the hell the creators could take Slaine and his companions after they faced a threat that would have given the most powerful of superhero teams pause. The art here starts off with Belardinelli doing the chapters introducing the Knucker (the aformentioned dragon), but "Time Killer" proper gave readers the bone-crunchingly violent and visceral borderline-"underground" artwork of David Pugh, which was more than good enough, but then they handed us Glenn Fabry and all bets bets were off. Let me put it this way: Glenn Fabry is one of the comics biz's best illustrators and his art on this arc kicked in the skulls of all who witnessed it when it came out. His ultra-detailed, imaginative-yet-realistic style was just what a fantasy epic like SLAINE was calling for, and to this day I don't think anyone has come within light years of injecting the series with the visual charge Glenn provided (though Pugh comes in at #2 for me), and I very much doubt anyone ever will again. (There are those who champion Simon Bisley, but more on that shortly.) What's really amazing is that Fabry was just getting started here, and with a debut like this a legendary status was assured.

VOLUME 3: THE KING

After the ultra-violent (for a kid's comic) events of "Time Killer," the battle against the Cythrons continues in "The Tomb of Grimnismal," in which Slaine and his companions must make their way into a deep stone sepulchre where a vastly powerful and totally evil elder god is regenerating. If they fail to kill Grimnismal, the horrifying Lovecraftian thing will destroy all life on Earth before going on to once more conquer the stars (which previously happened in some long-ago era and led directly to Grimnismal's imprisonment), so failure is definitely not an option and the skills and powers of Slaine and friends get put to the test like a sunavabitch during this adventure that reads like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign (I mean that in a complementary way). Following "Tomb" comes "The Spoils of Anwynn" — drawn in a serviceable but somewhat generic style by Mike Collins and inked by the now-famed Mark Farmer — , a spiritual quest that tests our hero's wisdom (?) and other qualities as he makes his way to the book's main attraction. After being told by the half-Cythron/half-human wizard Myrddin (Merlin) that he is destined to rule his people, Slaine embarks on a journey of enlightenment and tests of worthiness that will prepare him for his inevitable role, but a thick-headed and violence-driven barbarian lout is not exactly the ideal candidate for teachings, so it's up to druidess Nest to guide him. After that the series returned to a much more down-to-earth setting, but lost not one iota of its legendary/mythical punch in the balls. In "The King," following his mystical quest, Slaine finally returns to his tribe but finds his people under the heel of the Fomorians, repulsive land-walking sea monsters who have all but extinguished his people's fighting spirit. As the tribe's leader falls under the baleful spell of his creepy bride, Megrim (actually the evil Medb from Volume 1, now in disguise), it becomes apparent that he is no longer fit to rule and must be ritually sacrificed so a stronger leader can take his place. As Medb prepares to take the throne, Slaine returns and a blood-omen indicates that it is he who should lead the Sessair. Once approved for his role as ruler, Slaine wastes no time in putting his boot right up the ass of his Fomorian enemies and revives the Sessair's gumption, but he also comes face-to-face with the reason why he fled years earlier and is shocked by what he finds... "The King" sets up everything that followed in its wake for the next two-plus decades, but that should not be held against it; Glenn Fabry's labor-intensive artwork here is the main selling point and it's the kind of piece that would deservedly and instantly elevate its creator to the highest ranks of comics illustrators (or illustrators of any kind, if truth be told), and as such it's a must-read for comics readers. It's simply stunning and I cannot praise it enough, so if you have no interest in reading the overall run of SLAINE there are several collected editions of "The King" dating back to the 1980's, so if you're willing to pick it up I would recommend the hardcover version that came out a few years ago under the title SLAINE: THE KING.

The highly recommended hardcover edition, including just "The King" and skipping both "The Tomb of Grimnismal" and "The Spoils of Anwynn."

VOLUME 4: THE HORNED GOD

Okay, here's the arc that serves as a milestone for several reasons, among which being that this is considered widely to be not only the creative high-water mark of SLAINE's entire run, but also for the entirety of 2000 A.D. (an opinion that I do not share!). First of all, "The Horned God" was perhaps the story most representative of 2000 A.D.'s period of shift in format from square-shaped and printed on newsprint (or as Garth Ennis puts it, "bog roll") to regular magazine dimensions, as well as the whole mag going from gorgeous black & white to occasionally dodgy color. Those of us who consider ourselves hardcore 2000 A.D. fans almost universally agree that the magazine's classic period lasted until the switch to full color and tend to cite this story in particular as sounding the death knell of the once-kickass sci-fi weekly. "The Horned God" was blessed with some initially alluring painted art by Simon Bisley, who seriously channeled his obvious Frazetta influence straight onto the canvas and added threw in a dash of Richard Corben and animated cartoons for good measure (Bisley's version of Ukko the dwarf is a triumph). But what started out as major eye-candy swiftly devolved (in my humble opinion) into an overblown exercise resembling a combination of by-the-numbers HEAVY METAL-style illustration and the stuff rendered in high school by metalhead kids who found inspiration in the rather sophomoric albums of Saxon and Manowar.

Is it the cover of the new Manowar album? No, it's the "groundbreaking" art of Simon Bisley on "The Horned God."

As for the story, this is where Pat Mills begins his long descent into neo-pagan claptrap that would try the patience of even the most tolerant of mythology buffs and pan-theists (like Yer Bunche). What starts out as promising grows lugubrious, pretentious and turgid with each turn of the page, and it appears that Mills forgot that all of this was supposed to be fun. Sadly, that state of affairs has pretty much continued unabated since Bisley's run and not even a brief, painted return engagement by Glenn Fabry could restore SLAINE to its former glory. Since "The Horned God," the series has plodded along endlessly and inexplicably remains one of the magazine's most popular recurring features despite murky and nigh-illegible computer-manipulated artwork, and considering how completely excellent the first few years-worth of SLAINE were, that's a goddamned shame.

The bottom line on all of this is that the first three books are indispensable and should be added to the shelves of any serious comics collection as soon as possible. The import prices can be a bitch, but believe me when I tell you they're absolutely worth it. Now if only 2000 A.D. would settle things with Grant Morrison so they could publish the complete BIG DAVE...

THIS YEAR'S "CHRISTMAS EVIL" CD PLAYLIST

As you probably already know, I fucking hate Christmas music. But what you may not be aware of is that each year I put together a CD of questionable Christmas fare just to get all the other endlessly-played Yuletide crap out of my head. Over the last week I've scoured my collection and as of yesterday afternoon I've narrowed down this year's "Christmas Evil" CD to the following candidates; there are some repeat offenders present, but oh those new additions...

Santa Says...-Santa A brief opening greeting from the fat guy himself, in which his hearty "Ho ho ho" is swiftly reduced to a wracking smoker's cough.
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town-Joseph Spence A favorite of myself and my buddy John Bligh for over a decade, this is a live track and I'm not certain but I think the singer was bombed out of his mind.
Fuck Christmas-Eric Idle This song sums up exactly how I feel about the season, although rendered palatable enough to be enjoyed even by Christmas fans.
Christmas Is A-Comin'-The Shitbirds Another favorite from the past decade or so, with vocals by the underrated April March, whose excellent and rather bizarre "Chick Habit" is heard over the closing credits to Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF.
Daddy Drank Our Christmas Money-TVTV$ Another perennial fave of mine and one of the greatest songs about seasonal family dysfunction, the sheer misery of this is given upbeat counterpoint by its punk rock accompaniment.
Christmas Witch-The Lucky Nightsticks I don't know about you, but there's something about the season that makes me want to track down an honest-to-goodness witch and get my hump on with her.
You Ain't Getting Sh*t for Christmas!-Red Peters The genteel-faced vileness of Red Peters makes its the first of two appearances on this list with this narrative about an old man's sentiments when his family decides to ditch him (and their surprise gifts of $10, 000 each) and spend Christmas in a tropical clime.
Deck The Halls-The Kickin' Kazoos If put on endless loop, this will drive you insane.
Meth Lab Christmas-Acoustic Front Christmas and crystal methamphetamine. A classic seasonal combination!
We Wish You A Merry Christmas-Aaron Tucker An awesome Arnold Schwarzenegger soundalike "vishes" you a merry Christmas. Short and very much to the Teutonic-accented point, what's not to love?
I Farted on Santa's Lap (Now Christmas is Gonna Stink for Me)-The Little Stinkers I can't wait to teach this one to my adorable little nieces, Cleo and Hannah. (You have not been left out, Sadie-Rain; you're old enough for far worse material.)
No Presents For Christmas-King Diamond The ultra-Satanic lead singer of the seminal Danish metal band Mercyful Fate gets in on the Christmas music bandwagon.
Christmas When You're Dead-Ralph Sinatra- An excellent seasonal ditty as sung from the point of view of Frank Sinatra's corpse, this is hands-down my favorite Christmas recording of the past twenty years.
Holy Shit It's Christmas-Red Peters Simply put, this is Red Peters' answer to "The Chipmunk Song."
Stomping Through A Pillaged Wonderland-Vykyng A fantastic Christmas song from the point of view of a band of marauding Vikings.
A Merry Jingle-The Greedies A fun little punk rock carol that resembles the musical stylings of Splodgenessabounds, only minus the aggressively Cockney vocals of Max Splodge.
Jingle Bell Cock-Blowfly Sing along, Vaulties: "Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell cock. Jingle bell prick that's hard as a rock!"
Blue Xmas-Bob Dorough The southern-accented "Schoolhouse Rock" guy, showing you what he was all about before he got into kiddie songs. Next to Eric Idle's "Fuck Christmas," this one best sums up my feelings on the holidays.
Christmas is a Pain in the Arse-The Accelerators See above.
A Wee Little Christmas Ditty (Drunken Stupor) A completely tasteless and hilarious song pondering the holidays from the point of view of victims of drunk drivers and the family members who survive them.
Homo Christmas-Pansy Division Self-explanatory.
Don't Mess With My Tequila-Backstreet Girls Holidays and booze, a natural and sometimes necessary combination!
Jack Shit-John Valby "The white Blowfly" strikes again with this charming ditty about how a very naughty little boy ends up on "the fat guy's shitlist," thus getting "Jack shit" for Christmas.
My Mother Gave Me A Gun For Christmas (Waltz Version)-Pork Dukes A charming holiday dance tunes from the creative geniuses behind such non-chart-toppers as "Makin' Bacon," "Telephone Masturbator," and the deathless "Tight Pussy."
Christmas With Bazooka Joe-The Fleshtones While I love several of this band's songs, especially "The Girl from Baltimore," this one leads me to ask just how someone even comes up with the concept of sharing Christmas with the disturbing one-eyed mascot of bubble gum that could also double as insulation on the space shuttle.
Can I Please Crawl Down To Your Chimney?-Kenne Highland & His Vatican Sex Kittens Basically, Santa's horny and he ain't goin' nowhere.
A Christmas Warning-El Privates Considering how twisted most of the songs in this collection are, it's no mean feat to rank as the most morally reprehensible of the lot, but this one succeeds with flying colors for being an upbeat and allegedly humorous ode to getting anally-raped by shopping mall Santas in stretch pants. I wrestled long and hard with putting this one in here, but bad taste inevitably won out.
Frosty-John Valby As long as I make these yearly discs, this ultra-filthy version of the adventures of everyone's favorite animate snowman will always have a home.
Feliz Navidad-Christmas With Beer A more of less straight version of the Jose Feliciano classic, only with the Spanish language sections mumbled because the singers don't know the lyrics.
Merry F'n Christmas-Denis Leary Not to be confused with SOUTH PARK's "Merry Fucking Christmas," this contribution from Dennis Leary says it all in one short and sweet package.
A Message From The King-Bob Rivers This seasonal from-beyond-the-grave greeting by Elvis is a gem, depicting the King offering merry platitudes while stuffing his fat dead face and continuing to pontificate through mouthfuls of turkey, mashed potatoes and other Christmas feast artery-cloggers.
Donny the RetardLarry-The Cable Guy Nine seconds of political incorrectness to the tune of "Frosty the Snowman."

That's what I've got. Can you suggest anything else? Merely comedic won't fit here, so think as vile and offensive as possible. I'm talking stuff that will get you excommunicated from the family Christmas gathering for the next five years, so put on your thinking caps and send in your recommendations!

WHEN IT FUCKING RAINS...

As if I didn't have enough shit going on, my home laptop finally gave up the ghost last night after nine years of commendable service. I've started saving for a newer, much more up to date electronic beastie, but I mourn poor dead Clarabelle because she was my first computer and my frequent savior during my frequent spells of insomnia.

Anyway, rest well old friend. Your contribution to my life cannot be overstated.

TURKEY DAY ROUNDUP

Jodorowsky's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN: perfect change of pace viewing for the holidays!

Dear Vaulties-

I'll be back fairly soon after the Thanksgiving break, ready to once more regale you with pop culture drivel and such, and hopefully I'll be feeling better by then. For me being in Connecticut is a boring ordeal, but here's the breakdown on my holiday thus far:

• In an unusual and welcome change of pace, there was none of the long-standing family dysfunction that regularly mars my time visiting the place where I grew up. I have no way to explain why this year was different, but I definitely enjoy being at home without tension, relentless criticism and recrimination hanging in the air. Let's hope this keeps up as a standard state of affairs.
• This year's Turkey Day feast was a mouth-watering, stomach-filling, five-pound-turd-producing triumph that saw my mom at the very top of her culinary game. We're talking a perfectly-cooked and juicy Butterball turkey, exquisite sausage stuffing, noodles cooked in rich turkey stock, homemade cranberry sauce, and perhaps the finest green bean and dried onions casserole I have ever had the pleasure of eating. This year I managed to devour three helpings of this excellence over the course of several hours, the kind of holiday-appropriate eating I used to be able to accomplish in my youth as a matter of course, and damn my burgeoning Turkey Day girth if it didn't fill me with near-erotic pleasure.
• In anticipation of how weak this year's holiday television marathons would be (they get worse every year) I brought a number of DVDs with me that my mom and I would most likely enjoy, and my choices proved sound. We saw THE COURT JESTER (1955) with Danny Kaye (one of my favorite movies), the surprisingly good NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, and the Wanda Sykes comedy performance video, SICK & TIRED. That last one came as a real surprise to my mom, an aging Southerner whose tolerance of raunchiness and vulgarity decreases at an alarming rate as each year passes (yet she somehow spawned me, so go figure), and she nearly laughed until she puked when exposed to Wanda's singular take on the world at large. Many of the sentiments espoused jibed with mom's viewpoint (although the segment about how the girls in porno look like they're on FEAR FACTOR when they eat each other's pussies touched on things of which she has no knowledge and that she adamantly seeks to keep it that way) and the bit about the "detachable pussy" caused my mom to shriek with unbridled laughter like I have not witnessed since I can't remember when. Consequently, my mom now counts herself as a full-fledged Wanda Sykes fan and eagerly awaits Christmas, when I'll be running another of her concerts in the TV room. My mom had a rough life and as she gets older she's a tough audience for comedy, so seeing her totally lose it over a comedian was quite gratifying and I intend to find stuff to make her laugh as often as possible from now on.
  
• Thanks to a very bad chest cold that reared its ugly head on Wednesday morning and escalated without mercy thereafter, I was up until well past 5AM this morning barking like a goddamned dog and coughing up things that I swear bounced when they hit the tissues. Things are clearing up slowly, but of course it would be my luck to get sick during what's supposed to be a four-day holiday. Oh, well...

Anyway, I'll be back soon with all manner of stuff, including a long-overdue review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's ultra-lysergic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973), the film that served as my personal palate-clearer after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and some of the more treacly programming that I was forced to endure. It's one of the most balls-out bizarre movies ever made and rife with symbolism and religious imagery that is guaranteed to make you scratch your head in confusion until you gouge a deep, bloody furrow into your scalp. Seriously, where else can you see a re-enactment of the conquest of Mexico featuring hundreds of bullfrogs and lizards in period costume as Aztecs and Spanish Conquistadors?

So with that in mind, we'll soon cross paths again.