Subdural Hematoma in the Decline of Randy Quaid

"Well, don't you see, he's typical of the man who has married a whore--" Anatole France, reimagined.

Boris Karloff goes without saying, but then came realism, Randy Quaid's temper, De Niro's ferocity coupled to Branagh's need for succor, Peter Boyle's hilarious send up, Jennifer Beals and Sting, Aaron  Eckhart's  relatively recent fizzled attempt. The Revenge of Frankenstein, with Peter Cushing, is a transitional knock-off of Shelley's novel, more minimalist than the time stamped Karloff, it's outer-lying framework, as written by Sangster and James, combines a whiff of vampirism and perpetual reconstitution, with Cushing emanating a false humility and ruthless process, some years before directors suddenly had to display fealty to the Enlightenment transitioning into early Victorian anxieties, treating the novel like scripture. The book endures because Mary Shelley annihilates domestication. Scripts may give Dr. Frankenstein a feminine halter in a tug of war with the hubris of the God complex, but Shelley doesn't dwell on doomed love for long in her fast paced death chase.

Quaid's trappings in the role are of menacing sympathy. Such a creature would be developmentally challenged. What Wickes tapped into in 92 isn't so far removed from Quaid turning dodger of justice across the border today; even when actors snap, they still tap into their greatest strength which now makes them difficult to bridle. There is a wee bit of Frankenstein as creation myth in Vanilla Sky too.

The Cushing reprisal points to where science fiction went after such adaptations, in the analog age: transplantation. It might be far simpler to stay with this macro-biological grafting than manipulating gene switches toward the transhumanism of Weiner's uneven study. Weiner's main problem as an author is he attempts to fuse too many choices.

Blame Game

I am heating up a sparse omelet, which was consumed and eaten in the time it took me to write the descriptive terms of the omelet being sparse, and now I am fighting malaise and my shin and feet discomfort. I may lie down for an hour and try to return at seven my time, and this time stretches out like salt water taffy. My film analysis will also be sparse, for the time being. I could muse about Peter Cushing's camp in the 1968 Corruption which runs the mad doctor meme on the cheap, but is more interesting for its New Age subtexts, in the way that all British era films of this period have a curious Amicus-land quality to them that make them distinctive, with a metallic glint that doesn't quite capture the terminology which eludes me, whether or not these films are more spoofs than true horror films. Something like Paper Mask (1990) is actually much more chilling, and took me a bit of sparring with Google to dredge up from the depths: and shall be kept in reserve for the future.

Gear shift, with the reassurance of smoked trout oiling my fingertips of my typing hand, I had made a mental notation much earlier about the journalists Will Self and John Kaplan, and here is Self's much better promotional web log than I have the resources to do for myself:

His highlights on British rail only turn my thoughts to the British cripples who have to get around on these faded, gloried isles, but it is his essay in Granta, "False Blood", which compensates me for my Stephen King disdain; if my mind wasn't screaming bloody hell for coffee, I'd dive in this instant.