Regular visitors to the Weather Stations know about Tony Pucci. He’s a friend down Minnesota way, a writer, poet, musician, podcaster and cold-cuts engineer. I always get a kick out of Tony’s output. His newest release, though, is what I want to talk about today.
Songs for Jenny came out last week. It’s a compilation CD of songs written by Pucci and others (Ricky Maymi, Stefan Horlitz, Shane Pex, Mark Moldre and Tim Powles of The Church), with a whole lot of talented guest vocalists. There’s no doubt it’s a good album. But what’s important is why it was made.
Tony put it together as a fundraiser for ALS research in his home state, Minnesota. It’s personal for him. His sister Jenny had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and lost her battle with it last year.
We live in a stupid world. America is spending billions on two wasted wars, while children are living with illnesses that threaten to cut their lives short. Public funds for disease research are tough to come by, and the agencies that work to help people fighting these deadly diseases are worked to the bone. This is why I like seeing individuals taking it upon themselves to reach out with a helping hand, doing it in a new way.
The title is terrible; this film is also known as A Candle For The Devil, which is slightly better, but has nothing to do with the movie. The only devil in this movie is whoever edited it.
This is one of those public domain jobs with multiple versions floating around out there. I have the 1974 cut, which is about 70 minutes long and features one very blatant and very grating scene slice. The rest of it fares all right, I’ve always thought; the violence is minimized, thus accenting the dread. As a result of this editing, there is more on-screen violence in this commercial than in the actual film.
It Happened At Nightmare Inn is a Spanish film from 1970 that has suffered hard in its years in the public domain. It’s scratched and faded and worn, but like I’ve said before, that adds to its appeal to me. This is the story of a small pensione in a tiny Spanish village. The two sisters who run it are sickened by the loose morals of the tourists who stay there, and decide to do something about it. When an English visitor learns her sister has mysteriously vanished from the inn, she begins to investigate.
It’s better than it sounds. The lead, Judy Geeson, is a busy character actress (Mad About You, Star Trek: Voyager, lots of other stuff) and the sisters are played with the exact amount of self-righteous creepiness by Esperanza Roy and Aurora Batista, veteran Spanish actresses.
This movie works because it reverses the stranger-menaced-by-locals formula. Laura is the English tourist, but most of the story is told through the eyes of the sisters as they watch tourists cavort in miniskirts and swim in the nude (this is the scene that is truncated; Esperanza Roy watches the swimmers, but in the next shot she’s dirty, disheveled and half-naked, and we’re left to wonder what happened). Telling the story from the sisters’ point of view is tricky, but director Eugenio Martin handles it just right; we see their story but we never sympathize.
There is one particularly shocking scene in this film, which is just as powerful in the edited version. It involves the fate of a young mother who visits the inn. I won’t say more. But it works, and it’s a real kick in the kidney.
You’ll see elements of Psycho in this, and later, you’ll see things that might have migrated into Suspiria. Overall, you’ll see a lot of very familiar things. But you’ll see them presented in an unusual way. And once you get past the 70s cheapie-film conventions (endless crowd shots of random people, for instance), you’ll find an engaging quick hit of free horror.
While his distant cousins are fuelling their eight-legged selves on flies, moths and bugs caught in their webs, a newly discovered Central American spider prefers a different diet. He’s a vegetarian, the first known vegetarian arachnid.
Considering there are roughly 42,000 types of spiders in the world, this is a major discovery. And Weather Station 1 is the first news source to track the spider down and land an interview.
WS1: I understand you have been given a proper name by scientists.
Spider: Yes. I am to be known as Bagheera Kiplingi.
WS1: That sounds familiar …
Spider: Of course it does. One of the scientists was watching Disney’s The Jungle Book Exclusive Collector’s Edition DVD. It won’t be in stores long.
WS1: I’m not sure I understand why you’re named after a movie.
Spider: It could have been worse. Right before that, he was watching American Pie: The Naked Mile.
WS1: What was your name before that?
Spider: Josh.
WS1: Okay, Josh. A lot of fuss is being made over the fact that you’re a vegetarian. Was that a conscious choice?
Spider: Totally. I used to web up mosquitoes all the time. Loved it. I’d get off work on a Friday and spend the weekend chugging back nectar with the guys and eating ladybugs. Sometimes I miss that. But I got to a point where I started questioning the whole process. So this one night, I’m about to eat a fly, and it was putting up a real fuss, so I looked it in the eye and the eye and the eye and the eye and the eye and the eye and the eye and the …
WS1: You were having an epiphany.
Spider: No, it was a regular fly. Anyway, I decided to eat a blade of grass, and the rest is history.
WS1: How did your life change as a result?
Spider: Well, the guys had a problem with it, and eventually kicked me off the soccer team. They couldn’t deal with my new look, I guess. Long hair and hemp sandals aren’t too popular with jocks. But that’s okay. I made some new friends, and now we play together in a folk band. We hit a lot of the coffee houses, and people are digging us, man. We’re called World Wide Webless. I play guitar, bass, banjo and piano.
