Walter White: The Post-Post Modern Santa Claus

PART I It’s too late for this shit.  I can’t smoke in the house so my beer is getting warm.  England is dead wrong.  Beer is NOT GOOD lukewarm.  Especially when it’s nighttime and 100 degrees FAHRENHEIT in upstate New York.
Better grab another one.
DING DING DING.  There’s the buzz.
In recent days I’ve become an absolute Seinfeld junkie.  Yesterday I watched 12 episodes in a row and have no regrets or apologies or frank damns to give.  It was great PLUS I made nachos.  What could be better?  But Seinfeld (much like my other favorite sitcom Frasier) is a thinking man’s show.  You watch it and if you have any intelligence at all, you get your intellectual rocks off.  I can see why it was a generational and cultural phenomenon; who goes into something and right off the bat claims it’s about nothing?  Hipster before hipsters.
Not Walter White.
Does our generation have that?  A generational voice?  A flagship TV show?  The 90’s had it all: Smells Like Teen Spirit for an anthem, Pulp Fiction was THE movie, and Seinfeld changed it all.  “Post-Modernism” is what they called it.  Where the fuck does that leave us?
With Walter White.
… Goddamn that’s a scary thought.
What happens when you leave the “post” world?  What’s it look like out there?  With Seinfeld we were in the bustling city fretting and poking fun at the mundanities of “modern” life.  How people eat a Snickers a big deal.  Formality insanity calamity motherfucking JANE.  The West was deader than disco.  A whole generation of 30 somethings who didn’t care and had a completely chic disregard for humanity because humanity didn’t care about them.  But we’re younger now.  Smarter, cleaner, more technically proficient, drunker, wilder, sicker, yadda yadda yadda.
But Walter White?
The mad men left the West to come East and do stand up.
Except Walter White.
The world after post-modernism is sick and desperate.  We have no generational figure that can stand up and give culture a couple snide remarks behind a microphone.  We have no unholy roller in a tweed suit and a frizzy pomp.  We have the survivor who NEEDS to survive.  Where would Jerry be without Superman and low-talkers?  Where would Jerry be when there’s ONLY Superman and low-talkers?
With Walter White.  Staring down the black metal chamber wondering why his wife is in love with a cripple.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with that).
But enough rambling.  Let’s get down to brass tacks.
Hold on, I think I’ll have myself a COLD beer. PART II

SHIT!  It’s my last one and I’m too drunk to go to the store!  WHAT A WORLD! OH THE HUMANITY!
Anyway
We live in a time of paranoia we don’t see or feel because we don’t need to nor do we see any reason to be scared.  You gotta know where, when, who, what, and how everybody is.  We’re dumbed down, dressed up, chewed to pieces, tuned in, and zoned the fuck out.  The picture perfect funny, mundane city full of Soup Nazis in puffy shirts has given way to the New New West; a post-apocalyptic wasteland where winners lose and losers win by being worse than the winners.
To finally get to the point (because these intoxicated rants are too much for sensible, mortal/moral beings), I’ve re-re-written a (thus rendering it a post-post modern) poem. 

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE FESTIVUS

By Dylan Merrick

'Twas the Night before Festivus

And somewhere in Albuquerque, New Mexico

A bald guy in Ray Manzarek’s spectacles (keyboardist of the Doors)
Was getting gas at a Texaco

He was filling up his RV

And I know that wasn’t him AND it’s from another episode

But fuck you this is my poem

Don’t like it?  (Something that rhymes with Texaco)

He just blew up an old guy,

Some black guy, and a Chilean national

Scared the shit out of his wife

Hey wait; have you ever heard the J. Geils Band song Centerfold?

(Anyway)

The meth bags were stashed

Inside the glove box so tightly

This lunatic white boy

Was none other than Walter White ysee?

He makes Archie Bunker look decent

And Hitler look mannered

But all us Millenials

Have him in our Facebook banners.

He’s killed more people

Than Bundy, O.J., and Manson

I only liked Cheers

For Frasier’s cameos and also Ted Danson.

“Mr. White” as Jesse Calls him

Is a complex tour de force

But we don’t want him to have remorse

This television program (like this poem) has gone way off course

We fear that when he goes inside to pay

Something bad will occur

IT’s like Mad Max meets Mr. Rogers

I don’t where I was going

Long live Biggie and Tupac Shakur.

I could weave a story but why should I?  The truth is I don’t know where the hell Breaking Bad is going besides Nick at Nite right next to Kenan & Kel and All That.  It belongs with those and all the other surreal, wacky shows we remember so fondly because it takes the concepts to the extremes.  If Tommy Pickles is our Indiana Jones and Pokemon is our Darwin, Walter White is our Santa Claus.  No show besides Mad Men captures the sentiments of our born-deranged generation.  But they kick it back to the 60’s.  We wanna see ourselves, we’re vain like that and that’s okay.  White stalks and prowls the same collapsing Byzantine Empire dreams we wander, looking for some truth and he found it: good old fashioned rugged individualism.
We were all inundated with the idea that we need to love each other for our differences when we were children.  

Walter White doesn‘t distinguish.  

We were told to be ourselves.

Walter White does things his way because he says so.
Jerry Seinfeld sat back and laughed and joked amidst the chaos.  That doesn’t fly round these parts.  He was above it.  But like any good post-post modern profit, Walter White makes or breaks the chaos.
Alright.  He just makes.  That’d be too puntastic.
Like elves making toys for all the good little girls and boys, he reaches into his haunted chemistry textbook and gives what he sees fit to those whom he sees fit.  Where Seinfeld shrugged while he was up there on the cross he was nailed to as the generational spectator, Walter White stands upon his crucifix with an outstretched arm.  When the camera follows down that arm you see that jet black .38 Special clenched in his skinny fast, half dreading what he may do and half hoping he blasts the next thing to come in his way to smithereens.  

Liz Lemon, Ron Swanson, and Abed are great, but they don’t rile us up with the way we really feel.  They make you laugh and feel, but Walter White makes you dream.  

He’s the New Age pioneer; a bloody Picasso who just blew up a nursing home.

There’s no doubt about it folks and fair readers; we’re not the spectators of the 90s like Generations X and Y.  We’re the go-getter helicopter parent Millenials on a mission from Hell with no map.  We’re not the dazed and confused, jaded slackers who think surf music is cool and the inescapable white collar prison is still lame.  We saw where the red pill takes us.  We know Tyler Durden well and we know the Titanic sank.  It just doesn’t do it for us anymore.  We need it fast-paced; a million mile an hour freeway generation who doesn’t care if you don’t like it.  We’re looking to forge beyond the comedy of the American Dream’s grave.  We’re looking for the resurrection and we know it’s gonna be a real Guignol Horrorshow.

This is why we NEED Walter White - he who knows or figures out everything all the time in the nation under surveillance.  Rather than laugh to feel liberated we want someone who CAN liberate and who WILL liberate us.  If Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos are the modern and post-modern revolutionaries, Walter White is the post-post modern Che Guevara.  He’s come to deck the sullen halls in the wreckage of his Pontiac Aztek sleigh.  He’s our reaction; our backlash; Richie Cunningham All Grown Up.

I don’t mean to ramble again and put in a bunch of weird, obscure references and allusions, but there are times to be a douchebag.  These are those times.  A baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do killer tofu.  Hipster is as hipster does.  Think about Walt’s place somewhere in our political circus spectrum.  Think about us.  Do we care about the young folks?  Do the young folks care about the young folks?  Maybe too much.  Is he the ringleader or the painter on the flying trapeze?  Some whacko with a snub nose hidden in his Dickies or the patron Saint of the post-post modern American landscape?

I don’t know.  I’m out of beer.

                             ~Viva amigos,

~D. Merrick

Op-Ed Column from the New York Observer Gazette Herald Times

DISCLAIMER:       

The views and opinions expressed in this post belong to NO ONE.  Literally everyone in this is completely fictitious except the good people of the island Nikumaroro in Micronesia who I deeply apologize to.

WAR DECLARED ON MICRONESIA AND MAINE, "WATCH OUT NORTH DAKOTA.  YOU'RE NEXT" SAYS BAD CRAZINESS

NEW YORK, NY      On May 15th, 2012, Dylan Merrick, vice president and co-founder of Bad Craziness International Studios was executed at the word of a Micronesian military tribunal on the island Nikumaroro.

"Bad Craziness" or "BCIS" is a major media conglomerate that until now has generally kept knowledge of its activities very limited.  What we here at the New York Observer Gazette Herald Times have been able to find out is that it houses as many as 10,000 separate departments with an equally sizable staff.  Its exact HQ whereabouts are unknown but we have deduced that it is somewhere between Louisville, Kentucky and the capital of Sri Lanka on either side of the globe.

Since Merrick's execution the company stated in a newscast that war is coming to the islands of Micronesia and the State of Maine.  Victor Denkum, lead anchor of the program Bad Craziness International News from HQ, stated in a broadcast that North Dakota's "ass is grass".

We've also taken the liberty of including the final film review/cultural critique that is believed to have landed Merrick in prison in the first place.  The recording was originally featured in the BCIS broadcast, but we ripped the audio onto a podcast for length and convenience.

 

Since the declaration, several pineapple extract factories in Abemama and Boutaritari have been evacuated following a carnivorous mole rat and scarab infestation.  In Maine, couples on "Make Out Hill" in Bangor have fled to Portland after a group of armed young males wearing togas, Scream masks, and tutus known as the "Bad Craziness International Nonsense Society" shot Super Soakers full of lead paint and battery acid and caused a general "ruckus" according to one victim who has asked to remain nameless.

In North Dakota nothing happened as of yet mostly because nothing generally happens in North Dakota.

An international war between a corporation and a series of nations and locations has never happened before, at least to the knowledge of this publication's staff.  Someone tried to argue Halliburton, but we decided to let that one slide for now.  The precedent is being set out there in the Pacific and the Northern New England area as we type up this post.  Questions have been raised of the plausibility to wage war on regions and individual states, but the president has decided not to give an opinion on the subject or a retaliation on the corporation.  At a recent interview, when asked about BCIS, the president said: "I've literally never heard that.  Nope, I'm almost positive that that's not even true".  The only thing known for sure in this entire situation is that BCIS means business.

~Herb Nutsaplenty

A Modest Proposal (A Message from the Fat Cats)

We here at Bad Craziness have been off the job for far too long folks.  With the upcoming film (principal photography begins in a week and a half so keep those eyes of yours peeled but firmly in their respective sockets!), the upcoming radio program in conjunction with our pals over at 88.7FM WRHU, our final steps towards a combination cure for the common cold/cold fusion, and a documentary piece to premier this summer, we've been rather busy behind the scenes here at Bad Craziness International Studios.  Since we're all about being so secretive it makes Dick Cheney looks open (like his various heart surgeries), all 3.6 billion employees here at Bad Craziness International Studios have been instructed by contracts to keep their mouths shut.  Whoever opens their mouths about our work here will be flogged, flambeed, marinated in a chipotle dressing courtesy of Bobby Flay, drawn and quartered, and fed to a pack of our very own genetically modified, carnivorous water buffaloes.  Don't think we're screwing around, just ask our very own employee James Franco (not the actor); wait... you can't!

We're currently working on a new project here at Bad Craziness International Studios to try to get back into the swing of things with ease.  We've been in the talks of making a short documentary piece on the making of our upcoming narrative film Waltz of the Eggs, but decided such incestuous nepotism was for Judd Apatow and the cast of the Brady Bunch.  Instead we're proposing to you, fair readers, an innovation in film criticism.  To often when people critique movies it's simply text by a pretentious elitist OR a sad, strange little man hunched over in front of a cheap webcam complaining that Zack Snyder wasn't involved in the film at all.  What if, fair readers, one were to combine the two forces?  Instead of keeping these two absolutely annoying forces separate, one would fuse them and make a cinematic force so positively wretched that people can't bear not watching it.  A pretentious elitist propagating their ideas in front of a cheap webcam!  Sounds pretty genius and futuristic right?  Well, we here at Bad Craziness International Studios feel that it is not at all a vision of the distant future, NO SIREE BOB!  We see this as the somewhat immediate future because it'll probably take about a week to put it up here on the Interne.  THE FUTURE IS HERE FOLKS!  THE FUTURE IS NOW!  THE FUTURE IS BAD CRAZINESS INTERNATIONAL STUDIOS!

That's about all we, the Management, have to say but we recommend (for fear of your own lives) you pay close attention to all the raw, extreme stuff that's gonna be flooding out of Bad Craziness over the next few weeks and months.  In the words of the great Jay-Z it will indeed be "cray". From all of us here at Bad Craziness International Studios, stay vigilant folks and as always!

~Viva amigos,

      ~Management

A Press Release from the Bad Craziness Management

ATTENTION FAIR READERS!

We here at Bad Craziness International have been down for a few weeks due to renovations.
A few weeks ago, a terrible accident occurred that claimed the lives of 10,000 Bad Craziness Interns.  The Bad Craziness Central Aerospace Engineering Department built the first completely operational and inexpensive hovercraft based off of Syd Mead's spinner model in Blade Runner approximately 2 weeks ago.  Suddenly, an army of rabid mongoose busted through the door completely befuddling Bad Craziness' own Lloyd Dunn, John Lautner and Karl Benz.  Suddenly, the mongoose army let out a blood curdling war cry and destroyed everything in the room.  The sheer force of the savage mongoose rebels was too much and the jet propulsion systems erupted in a wild science fiction-y rage, destroying a solid 4% of our HQ.  It was a sad day, and we send our condolences to the families of our loyal employees.  But we are returning with a vengeance!
We would like to announce a brand new addition to our HQ.  A bigger, better department that we're surprised we've never had before.  OFFICIALLY, Bad Craziness International is now acquiring a film studio department!  We here at Bad Craziness International are proud to announce our newest addition to the Bad Craziness family: Bad Craziness International Studios.
There will be plenty of films being churned out by Bad Craziness International.  The debut film will be directed, written, and produced by our very own Dylan Merrick and his crack stock team (also employed by Bad Craziness) and we will announce the title in a few weeks once it goes into production.
Be prepared fair readers!  We hope this will be a bountiful journey but it will take your viewership which we are not afraid to gain using brute force.  Just saying.
So fare the well fair readers and welcome to Bad Craziness International Studios!

A word from our founder and creator

~Viva amigos
      ~the mgmt

Bad Craziness' Morning Coffee with Richard Pendergast: Alfred Hitchcock

A casual morning with Alfred Hitchcock

Bad Craziness' own Richard Pendergast (Dylan Merrick's twin brother, don't ask questions about their last names) sits down with newly resurrected zombie director, Alfred Hitchcock, for an exclusive interview!  You don't know Alfred Hitchcock?  Check yourself before you wreck yourself; here are a couple links.  AS ALWAYS!


~Viva amigos

 

The Shower Scene in Psycho (1960)

 

 

The ending of The Birds (1963)

 

Jimmy Stewart's nightmare in Vertigo (1958)

 

 

The Surrealist delusion sequence in Spellbound (1945)

Designed by Salvador Dali

Spring Movie Season: A Public Service Announcement from Bad Craziness

A small bit on the spring movie season.  We just installed the new Bad Craziness Central Audio/Audio Department here at the HQ, so now we're seeing how it does!  The picture is the head of the Bad Craziness Central Telepathy & Paranormal Department, Gustaav Smenhoultz.  Happy spring folks!

~Viva amigos

ROLL THE REEL: THE CINEMA DUST BOWL - 1933

Groucho Marx once said he doesn't know how the elephant got in his pajamas.  We here at Bad Craziness have no idea what that has to do with this post we were just wondering if someone could clear that up for us.  We'll confer with the Bad Craziness Central Philosophy & Ethics Department and get back to you on that one fair readers.


WAIT!  Besides the philosophical implications, I know what that quote has to do with this post.  It's a quote from a film by some of the guys in this post and it explains what 1933 was like in cinema. 1933 was one of those strange years that snuck up on everybody in the film world and left them confused as to what would happen next.


I.      ECSTASY (JANUARY 20th, 1933)

Directed by Gustav Machaty

      What good is life without a little nudity?  Maybe a couple orgasms now and again?  If you think life is better off without these things I a) recommend you never watch Ecstasy and b) stop playing World of Warcraft you strange little person.

     Most of the films that challenged the censors in the U.S. were crime films.  Back in the '30s, sex was REALLY taboo.  Besides drugs, sex was so taboo the censors felt the need to make an entire film about it.  Ecstasy challenged the Hayes censors and lost a battle it knew it couldn't win.  If it's 1933 and your film contains a naked Hedy Lamarr having an orgasm, consider yourself dead in the water compadre.  The film faced an extremely limited release in a few art houses in major cities and the word of mouth grew from there.

    Ecstasy's legacy is undisputed as one of the most controversial films to hit the silver screen.  Along with the being the first non-pornographic films to show full frontal nudity, it's also one of the first films to be condemned by the Legion of Decency.  Ecstasy's tale of a suicidal love triangle, divorce, and sexual frustration rocked the Breen Office and the general population like they were the goddamn Casbah and is still pretty risque for the modern day.

II.     DUCK SOUP (NOVEMBER 17th, 1933)

Directed by Leo McCarey

      Here at Bad Craziness International, these zany gentlemen reign supreme.  Outside our main headquarters (as well as a few of our thousands of satellite grounds scattered about the globe/solar system) there is a 30 foot, solid gold statue of the "mirror scene" that was made famous by this film.  This film is by far the finest piece the Marx Brothers ever did, and it brought stream of consciousness/political satire to the forefront back in the '30s.

      Duck Soup revolves around the life and times of the citizens of "Freedonia" (which on a side note was the name of America directly following the American Revolution), namely the new ruler Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), Chicolini (Chico Marx), and Pinky (Harpo Marx).  Firefly is a cunning but absent-minded autocrat who doesn't care for the citizenry at all but instead cares about his own affairs.  Needless to say, the film's anarchic style of comedy became renowned for its fast-pace, quirky delivery, and ridiculous quality.  A joke could range from anywhere between a joke about Mrs. Teasdale's (Margaret Dumont, a Marx Brothers staple) taste in men to serious jabs and discourses at the nature of fascism and totalitarian states.  This sparked controversy back in 1933 when 4 Jewish guys were cracking jokes about Hitler and Mussolini, who, as you may not know folks, were in fact vehement anti-semites.

      Duck Soup has influenced every great comedian and comedy group that you can think of (and believe me, Bad Craziness knows EXACTLY what you're thinking, even before you do).  Woody Allen, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Dave Chappelle, Mel Brooks, the writer of this blog, etc.  The Marx Brothers have a hand in almost every bit of comedy that's come out since their ferocious reign as the kings of comedy, especially in terms of political humor.  They were able to make political humor extremely dangerous because even when they didn't mean to make political comedy (like Charlie Chaplin), they managed to do it.

III.      KING KONG (MARCH 2nd, 1933)

Directed by Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

      "It was Beauty killed the Beast".  King Kong is easily the most messed up love story ever told.  Not only does it argue in favor of bestiality, it caused riots outside of theaters for its gruesome and extremely sexual content.  This piece of cinema history from RKO Radio Pictures shook the world with its innovative special effects (done by Willis O'Brien who also worked on The Lost World and I don't mean Jurassic Park although Jeff Goldblum does everything justice) and subversive subtext.

      America loves itself some religion.  Every Sunday, a vast majority of people head on down to the local steeple and cook them up a heaping helping of Jesus Stew.  What's one thing that pisses off these Bible-thumping patriots more than gay marriage?  Sex.  Weird sex.  Homosexuality isn't weird.  Sex with animals is weird.  At least to the highly religious of all denominations and variations, not just Christians.  We here at Bad Craziness don't care what you do in the bedroom or barnyard (or couch or public bathroom or what have you), but religious people care where your pants lance does the dirtiest dirty dance.  Aside from the violence in King Kong that originally involved a decapitation and graphic depictions of people being crushed, there is a sexual subtext in the film that disturbed many in the audience: bestiality.  In one controversial, legendary scene, it is implied that King Kong gives a virtually naked Fay Wray a little "tickle" off screen that makes her giggle and moan.  So if the blood and vicious sound effects weren't going to bother the faint of heart with more religious conviction than the Grand Rabbinate and Pope Urban VI combined, then the implied interracial gangbangs, overt bestiality, and idea that women have sex for reasons other than childbearing might.

      King Kong in many ways is the first slasher film with its subversive themes and grisly presentation, and its legacy will live on forever.  From the classic Claymation to Fay Wray's legendary screams, this is one of our favorite movies and one of the most important films to come out of the cinema dust bowl.

1933 was in a way the last straw to the censors before they signed the Hayes & Breen Code of 1934 and these three movies tell you why, folks.  Next time we're hitting up the "greatest year in cinema history"

1939!

For a better look at 1933 check out these bad muthas:
The Private Life of Henry VIII

42nd Street

Flying Down to Rio

She Done Him Wrong

The Devil's Brother

Follow me on Twitter (DylanMerrick6) and like the Bad Craziness Facebook Page to learn so much about movies, you'll never need to speak to your friends again!  Happy Thursday hombres and as always!

~Viva amigos,

      ~D. Merrick

ROLL THE REEL: THE CINEMA DUST BOWL - 1932

The Thirties are often marred by an image of homelessness, abject poverty, the rise of fascism in Europe, civil unrest all over Asia, etc.  We here at Bad Craziness don't particularly care for that type of stuff.  It really just doesn't matter to us because it's all obviously over.  Nowadays we are lucky to live in a world without homelessness and poverty and civil unrest and tyranny, but it's nice to look back at the Thirties and laugh.


Wait, what am I talking about?  The Thirties were awesome if you weren't unemployed or starving!  It was the Swing Age!  Goodman, Charlie Christian, Glenn Miller, Django Reinhardt, Sir Duke, Billie; it must have been pretty grand.  The music was happy and jumping and so were the movies.  Movies rarely dealt with the Depression and with the exception of some subversive humor (The Great Dictator and Duck Soup), the only talk of dictators and fascism came from Disney cartoons and propaganda films, and they loved it.  People wanted distractions from their bleak horizons, so to keep the morale high all around the world, movies tried their best to be simple sources of entertainment.


This is what historians who don't know anything about movies will tell you.  Movies were just as deep and thought-provoking as they were back in the day and still are now.  The Hollywood System was strong as ever but foreign and independent films were also keeping pace.  The Thirties are often looked at as one of the greatest periods in film history (even after the Code was established) and we here at Bad Craziness want to give credit to all the different types of movies that came out in this wild, wild decade in cinema.  Originally we were going to do 5 years, but our Screening & History Department needed to get quarantined due to an Ebola outbreak, so we were only able to screen 3 years in time for print.  Sorry folks!  But to start things off we've got

1932!

I.      SCARFACE (APRIL 9th, 1932)

Directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson

      "Say hello - to my little friend!"  That's from the Brian De Palma 1983 film Scarface.  This Scarface inspired that one and is even more gritty and violent.  This one makes the 1983 remake and many other gangster/crime films to come out after it look like a walk in the park with Barney the Dinosaur dressed as a unicorn in a tutu.

      Scarface broke new grounds in terms of what you could show on screen.  The main actors (Paul Muni and George Raft) built their performances off of real gangsters like Al Capone to make the film seem more realistic and dangerous.  Their personas in Scarface became the archetypes that characters like Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, the MacManus Brothers in The Boondock Saints, and every Humphrey Bogart role would come to emulate and work off of.  The brutal ending (which I won't give away because it's too brilliant to rob you of the experience, fair reader) shocked and appalled executives to the point that they ordered an alternative ending be filmed and used.  Good thing they scrapped the alternative ending because it would make the movie lose some of its swagger.

      Along with The Public Enemy and Little Caesar, Scarface made those evil animals in the Hayes Office decide to create the censorship codes that wouldn't be broken until 1968 by films like The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde.  More than that though, these Pre-Code crime films and especially Scarface blurred the line between judgement and glory, right and wrong, hakuna and matata (alright maybe not that last one) with gritty screenplays, grisly violence, and shadowy, almost horror-esque feel to them that would influence every film noir and neo-noir to come.

II.      FREAKS! (FEBRUARY 20th, 1932

Directed by Tod Browning

      If you think any of the Saw films or The Haunting in Connecticut are scary, you obviously haven't seen Tod Browning's Freaks.  Using actual circus sideshow "freaks", Tod Browning's film is one of those subversive films we mentioned before that apparently didn't exist in the '30s.

      Why do people forget about this movie?  Perhaps because it was banned for 30 years due to its horrifying content.  The original cut of the film featured graphic castration, mutilation, and even someone getting their arms and legs melted down to look like the wings and feet of a duck.  The screenplay was lauded by most of MGM's executives and director Tod Browning wasn't allowed to use big name actors to help sell the film.  Executives also cut over 30 minutes of footage so that audiences wouldn't run in fear every time they saw a dwarf.  One woman even sued MGM for the movie because it apparently caused her to have a miscarriage.

      Freaks is undoubtedly one of the most controversial films ever made and thus has become a midnight movie/counterculture icon.  But perhaps instead of just being an interesting film to see while in the throes of an acid trip (which it is if you're into absolutely terrifying experiences), Freaks is one of the first films to preach of tolerance and the loosening of control by governing bodies because the freaks can always rise up and turn them into hideous duck people.

III.     THE MUMMY (DECEMBER 22nd, 1932)

Directed by Karl Freund

      The '30s were the heyday of the Universal Horrors.  Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, and of course, our feautre here: The Mummy.  Before the Ebola outbreak in the Screening & History Department's multiplex claimed the life of our Horror expert, Bela Lugosi (of no relation to the famed actor, but of relation to The Mummy's star Boris Karloff), we were going to do a feature on all the big Universal Horror monsters.  But alas, without a mind like that it would be a boring, ill-informed piece not worth your time, fair readers.

      What separates The Mummy from the other Universal Horror pictures?  Is it the advanced camera work and cinematography?  Is it the in depth research that went into making the complicated storyline?  Is it the intricate costuming and set design that made all the actual filming happen at night?  The answer is yes. It is all these things.  The slow, creeping camera put the film into Imhotep's point of view as opposed to the other Universal Horrors that spoke specifically from the protagonist's point of view.  What about the themes of the film?

      The Mummy is one of the first horror films that showed what a horror film is supposed to be: scary as hell and even more subversive.  The dead Pharaoh; the specter of the past haunting the ever so curious archaeologist?  SOUNDS LIKE A FIGURATIVE MEANING!  There are a million ways to analyze The Mummy and that's what makes it the first "modern" horror film: every piece of the production contains layers, some that are just plain creepy and some that stay in your brain so you can think about them and wonder why they're there, like that weird 45 year old guy in the trench coat at the back of the bar.

It's not a coincidence that these highly subversive films came out during the year of a presidential election, folks.  Cinema can be creepy and all conspiracy-theorist-y too.  There's a lot more to 1930's cinema than happy little musicals and guys in Frankenstein masks.  However, the movies we put here are nowhere NEAR the entirety of even 1932, they're just a couple of our favorites.  For a better look at 1932, try these on for size:

Horse Feathers

Shanghai Express

Grand Hotel

Vampyr

Rasputin, Damon der Frauen (Rasputin, Demon with Women)

Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But...)

Next time right here in Bad Craziness IT'S!

1933!

More to come from all of us here at Bad Craziness folks!  Follow me on Twitter and like the Facebook Page for simply TOO MUCH about movies!  Happy Tuesday hombres, go outside and get some sunlight (just kidding it's raining) and as always,

~Viva amigos,

       ~D. Merrick

FOR THE LADIES

In honor of International Women's Day, we here at Bad Craziness wanted to make a post to recognize some of the coolest ladies in cinema.  Some of them you know, some of them you may not know, others are obscure/foreign because some people on our staff listen to Bright Eyes and Dan Auerbach's solo album.  ROLL THE REEL, JOHNNY!

BAD CRAZINESS' ROUGHENEST, TOUGHENEST, LADIENEST, LADY ACTRESS

BETTE DAVIS
 Bette Davis did for the world and art of the actress what Brando did for actors.  She added a new element to what a female could do on screen.  As opposed to being an object of sex, a weak, fragile creature who needs a man to keep her afloat, or a a weak, fragile object of sex who needs a man to keep her afloat, Bette Davis decided she would be smacking guys and running off on her own.  If a producer told her to tone down her "radical feminist" approach to acting, she'd just tell him that she wouldn't do the part.  She used her power as an actress to be one of the first real strong business ladies in Hollywood and got her parts by her own accord when people were still slaves to the Hollywood System.  Davis took care of herself and that's why we here at Bad Craziness think she's one of the roughenest, toughenest, ladienest ladies in the history or cinema.

BAD CRAZINESS' ROUGHENEST, TOUGHENEST, LADIENEST LADY OF DIRECTING

AGNES VARDA
 In a time where women were still trying not to go completely insane from being locked in a house 24/7, Agnes Varda decided "Nah, I'm gonna be one of the biggest names of the French New Wave Movement instead".  Of course, she said it French because she's French.  This stone cold wild woman is still making movies and although she claims The Beaches of Agnes would be her last movie, we hope she keeps on making movies forever.  She was one of the only filmmakers along with Robert J. Flaherty and Mira Nair who has been able to successfully combine elements of Documentary and experimental narrative film in a way that doesn't seem like The Devil Inside.  Keep on keeping on Ms. Varda, the real Queen of France.

BAD CRAZINESS' ROUGHENEST, TOUGHENEST, LADIENEST LADY OF WRITING

KRISTEN WIIG
 That's right.  Bad Craziness loves Bridesmaids.  It was one of the best written films of last year PLUS it gave a new legitimacy to comedy that has been lost since the days of SOB, Fritz the Cat, Annie Hall, and Clerks.  Kristen Wiig is not only one of the funniest ladies alive, she's one of the funniest people alive.  Our Surveillance Department overhears a lot of conversations about Wiig being "like the new Tina Fey".  We've sent out contract hits on those people because they are dead wrong.  Kristen Wiig is a monster all her own and she's venturing into the grounds of comedy screenplay writing where no lady has gone before and nobody has been able to do consistently for a while.  No one expected that Oscar nomination but we all know they deserved it just the same.  Kudos, Ms. Wiig!

Happy International Women's Month everyone!  And from all of us here at Bad Craziness, happy Monday and as always,

~Viva amigos,
      ~D. Merrick