A Tale of Two Tones

Batman Forever (1995)
Dir. Joel Schumacher
Warner Bros. Pictures
Rating: B- (B+ including deleted scenes)

"Riddle me this, riddle me that...."

    Continuing on the subject of movies I watched a dozen times on VHS as a kid is 1995's Batman Forever. I unapologetically like this movie. I like all of the first four Batman films in their own unique ways. (First five if you count the Adam West one.) Hell, Batman '89 has been my favorite film for the last fifteen years of my life. Batman Forever is the flawed emerald of the series; it's pretty, it's gaudy, and in your mind's eye you love it for what it could be instead of what it is.

- - -

    The film follows Batman / Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer) as he ineptly tries to apprehend the villain Two-Face / Harvey Dent (Tommy Lee Jones) who in turn spends the entire runtime ineptly trying to murder Batman for having failed to prevent the incident that turned him into a bifurcated neon pink freak. For some reason the writers chose to forego adapting the exceptional backstory these two share in the comics of being former allies and the deep seated guilt Bruce feels for having failed to prevent Harvey's marring by presenting it as barely touched upon background lore. Two-Face is one of the surprisingly few Batman villains (the others being the Penguin, Black Mask, and post-'Heart of Ice' Mr. Freeze) that actually works as a proper dramatic foil to Bruce Wayne and for some reason we're just not gonna take advantage of that here. Their loss.

Tommy Lee Jones, who'd make a great Two-Face if they were playing the character straight like almost every other adaptation does, somehow still manages to make a great Two-Face while having to play the character like a raving comedic lunatic. Accurate to the source material? Hell no. Entertaining in its own right? Very much so.

    Bruce also has to deal with obsessive Wayne Enterprises employee turned tech startup guru Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) who moonlights as The Riddler to enact his hyper-fixation on destroying Bruce Wayne after being snubbed by him during a routine factory inspection. Two-Face and The Riddler quickly team up to go on a crime spree to fund Nygma's startup company; a business partnership that turns out to be mutually beneficial when they learn that – shock of shocks – Bruce Wayne and Batman are in fact the same person. I do love it when supervillains pal around with one another like goobers.

Jim Carrey's acting is alright. Tolerable. It's neither as good as The Mask (1994) or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) nor is it as painful as The Cable Guy (1996) or Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) where you spend half the sit just wanting to smack him across his ridiculously angular canuckistanian head and tell him he should actually try hanging around human beings for a bit if he insists on pretending to be one for a living. There are a handful of moments where he goes too over-the-top but he mostly fits in with the comic book feel of the movie. I'm never gonna bash a comic book film for actually feeling like a comic book – I am a better man than Doug Walker is – but I will criticize Jim Carrey for being a nutjob who needs to tone it down. I dunno what kinda white boy designer drugs he was on during this period but he needed to halve his dosage.

For whatever reason Nygma is presented in this tale as an obsessed Bruce Wayne fanboy. A weird facet of the character that is carried over into The Batman (2022). I suppose it makes more sense for a one-off story than to have him be a rando puzzle / video game designer like in the comics and jump through the narrative hoops of explaining how exactly that ties into Bruce's personal life (Spoiler: it doesn't; not every supervillain needs to have one degree of separation to the hero, only the ones that actually matter).

The Riddler's villain origin in this movie always struck me as being a tamer version of the Mad Hatter's as shown in the exceptional Batman: TAS episode "Mad As A Hatter". Nerdy Wayne Enterprises employee with social issues who specializes in brain manipulation goes off the deep end when he's rejected and dons the costume of an established fictional character to go on a crazy spree. Yes, I said established fictional character. Between the bobble heads, statuettes, and creepy as all hell full sized animatronic that Nygma keeps in his apartment, it's safe to say the Riddler is a preexisting and recognizable character / mascot in this universe that Nygma simply appropriated the look of for his crimes. I actually kinda dig it. In typical fake smart guy fashion he's actually a performative loser who cannot come up with his own original ideas.

"eh-hehe-hehe!"

Special passing mention should go to Nygma's obviously put-upon supervisor, Fred (Ed Begley Jr.), who perfectly sells the shame and embarrassment of having to wrangle Jim Carrey on a daily basis and may well be the best performed role in the movie despite his very small part. The poor man gets thrown out a window during Nygma's villain origin for his efforts.

    In addition to all that, Batman meets up with abnormal psychologist Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), who is horny on main for Bats and makes sure he knows it. This leads to a rather funny scene in which she tries to seduce Batman and Val Kilmer fails miserably trying to sell disinterest at Nicole Kidman circa 1994 feeling him up while wearing black negligee. It's like one of those softcore Twokinds Patreon exclusive scenes that Tom Fischbach posts to make his fans edge.

...not that I'd know anything about that.

Chase eventually enters the ol' superhero love triangle with Bruce Wayne and Batman. It gets to the point where Bats is fully willing to go to town on her while wearing the full rubber batsuit... only for her to ruin it by saying she's developed the feels for Bruce Wayne instead. Women. Getting cock blocked by yourself is a plot point that occurs surprisingly often in superhero media. Mary Jane Watson is the best love interest because she avoided this trope altogether by discovering Peter Parker's secret identity way back around, like, Amazing Spider-Man #6 and then couching that information for twenty years, including shooting down a marriage proposal from him in the seventies because dumbass Peter still hadn't told her he was Spider-Man yet.

I don't care if that was a retcon – it still counts.

    I rather like how they use Dr. Chase Meridian in this movie even if she's not so much a character as a prop for Bruce's personal drama to play off of. Her surname is not incidental as she symbolically acts as the dividing line in the tug-of-war between the Bruce Wayne and Batman sides of Bruce's life: a totem that both parts of him covet but neither can have unless he can find a compromise between them. It's never stated outright in the series but the inability for him to be either Bruce Wayne or Batman to an adequate extent is implied to be why his relationships with Vicki Vale and Selina Kyle fell through in the gaps following the previous two movies. Chase even gifts Bruce a dream fetish doll – which of course is split right down the middle like Two-Face – sensing he might need a little smack on the ass to work through his mental issues. The doll doesn't play a direct role in the plot, but he does give it back to her at the end and states he won't need it going forwards.

She also keeps this around her room and is surprised when Bruce sees a bat in it.

    Caught in the crossfire of this typical Gotham nonsense is young-ish traveling circus trapeze artist Dick Grayson (Chris O'Donnell), who moves in with Bruce and his butler Alfred (Michael Gough) after Two-Face murders his family during a performance. Dick is a rather likable character despite the writing snarl of his ambiguous age – the character is written to be somewhere between fifteen and nineteen years old despite O'Donnell visibly being a grown-ass adult with sideburns and piercings in his mid-twenties, and that's not even getting into Grayson being twelve in the comics when his parents get aced.

Dick Grayson bonds with Alfred and Bruce pretty quickly but his pesky teenage(?) compulsions lead to him discovering the Batcave and joyriding the Batmobile, after which he demands that Bruce let him become his partner so he can wreak bloody vengeance upon Two-Face. They have a conversation about the cycle of vengeance; specifically how hollow it leaves you to kill a person who's killed your parents. This is obviously a holdover from when Keaton was supposed to reprise the role as this lacks any real dramatic punch if he hasn't deep-sixed Jack Napier already.

Dick Grayson's situation causes Bruce to flash back to the death of his parents at the hands of a young Jack Napier, pearls and all. The reminiscing carries along to his parents' wake where he comes across a red book and his eight year-old self reads it... and that's all the explanation we're ever gonna get for that. Even though it gets mentioned again when Bruce briefs Dr. Meridian on his parents being murdered in front of him. Almost like it's a very important element of the story that does not get resolved. In the theatrical cut, anyway.

    Eventually everything comes to a head when Wayne Manor is assaulted, the Riddler destroys the Batcave, Chase is kidnapped (right after realizing Bruce is Batman) and Bruce Wayne gets SHOT IN THE FUCKING HEAD. In the theatrical cut this doesn't mean a damn thing as he kips up in the next scene totally fine but in the deleted scenes it's a totally different animal. In the proper version of the tale, this results in Bruce getting a temporary case of amnesia and Alfred jogging his memory by sending him into the caves underneath Wayne Manor. ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS IN THE ENTIRE BATMAN FRANCHISE then occurs as therein he finds the red book he keeps seeing in his flashbacks – his father's journal – and reads it to discover he's been repressing the memory of having been the one to badger his parents to go see a movie the night of their murder, setting in motion the entire event. Bruce's memory comes flooding back to him as a metaphorical giant fucking animatronic bat arrives and stands face-to-face with him. Bruce mirrors its pose and symbolically merges the two sides of his personality – Bruce Wayne and Batman; not two separate entities sharing the same body but in fact one man with one goal. He then emerges from the cave and confidently tells Alfred that he knows who he is: he's Batman.

YEAH, I DUNNO WHY YOU'D CUT THAT OUT EITHER.

There is absolutely no excuse for them leaving the entire dramatic climax of the film on the cutting room floor despite keeping in all the buildup and post-script to it. That'd be like if someone made a Lord of the Rings film adaptation and left in all the foreshadowing to the Scouring of the Shire but then completely cut out the ending of the story because they spent too much time on the Battle of Helm's Deep instead, didn't even do it correctly, and only succeeded in fucking up the pacing in the process.

That's right – I'm calling you out, Ralph Bakshi.

    Bruce, having settled his personal troubles, then willingly takes on Dick Grayson as his partner. Grayson adopts the nom de guerre Robin in reference to a touching story he tells Alfred about his parents. They then lay siege to Nygma's enormous laser powered blender looking fortress to save the day.

Despite spending the whole movie telling Dick that revenge is a fool's game, Batman reminds us all that this is supposed to be canon with the Tim Burton flicks when he outright murders Two-Face by throwing a handful of quarters at him while he's standing on a wet girder (that he's somehow managed to teleport eighty feet down a sheer metal elevator shaft within eight seconds to be on), causing him to fall screaming to his death on a pile of jagged rusted metal spikes eighty feet below. Robin initially reacts with shock at seeing Bruce blatantly go back on his word... but then he smiles. He's tasted blood for the first time. Homicides, as we all know, are like McNuggets – you'd kill to have more than just one.

"Oh yeah, I could totally get into this."

There's a very nice narrative three beat – literally one of the oldest storytelling tricks out there – of dramatic handgrab saves; the first being Dick's father catching him during a trick at the circus, the second being Robin saving Batman from being buried alive (which doubles as an homage to Tim Drake's introduction story from the comics, “A Lonely Place of Dying”), and the third being Batman saving Robin from the deathtrap at the end of the film and symbolically taking the place of his father in the process. Planting. Reminder. Payoff. It sucks that I live in a day and age where this kinda basic narrative structure is impressive to see done correctly in a film, but oh well.

Nygma gets overdosed with brainwave energies as his giant Box explodes (giggity). As Batman approaches him he hallucinates the giant bat from Bruce's dreams swooping towards him. Completely bereft of proper context for this, Nygma shrieks like a bitch and has a total mental breakdown. Now that's how you pay off a motif, kids. The Riddler spends the rest of his days rotting in Arkham Asylum, Bruce gets a goodbye kiss from Chase, and we cut to credits on a nice little homage to the '60s Batman intro with Batman and Robin running towards the camera in silhouette.

FIN

- - - 

    Gotham City in this story is a hellish cocktail of neon, dutch angles, art deco, and German expressionism in which the lightning is always inexplicable and even the lowliest of street toughs can afford top shelf leather drip and 2002 Jeff Hardy glowstick bodypaint. I love it. The titanic art deco inspired buildings and beautiful internal decors of the upper class business districts being offset with the '80s neon hellholes beneath them creates a beautiful styles clash that makes for great visual shorthand of this proud, powerful city decaying from the bottom up. In a move that I'm gonna chose to interpret as intentional, Nygma's nouveau riche status is communicated in a scene where he hosts an upper class fundraising shindig in the penthouse suite of one of these skyscrapers but gaudily chooses to adorn the room with the same kinda neon naff he lived in just a couple weeks prior while wearing a suit that's obviously the poor person's idea of what rich people dress like.

I know I'm in the minority when I say this is my favorite take on the setting in any medium.

In addition to that we've got some truly outlandish set and costume designs. They... mostly work. Special mention goes to the street gang of bodypaint enthusiasts, the silver action figure look of the second batsuit, and the goofy as hell Batmobile design which I know has its fans but to me, in the words of the prophet Chad Warden, it looks like a dildo.

    Elliot Goldenthal produces a very good original score, which I associate with Batman almost as much as Danny Elfman's music. A perfect blend of campy big band nonsense and brooding atmosphere. While the score is great the soundtrack is gloriously schizophrenic and deserving of a future review in its own right. You've got Method Man and Nick Cave on the same album. Even I'm not crazy enough to square that circle. This is truly a snapshot of that bygone golden age where we Americans were culturally untouchable and knew neither fear nor shame.

    I love this film more for what it could have been than what it was. Mix in the deleted scenes and give this script one more pass in the writing room to square up all the themes and tone and you'd be looking at a possible A-tier Batman movie. As it stands it's a victim of a bipolar desire to be both a deep dive into Bruce's psychosis and a campy, colorful popcorn flick. It almost makes it work. In fact, it's just this side of being unintentionally genius since duality's a major theme of the story itself, from the choice of villain down to the struggle the protagonist is going through trying to make sense of his two divergent careers. A happy accident. Sadly, the whole is more than the sum of its parts and the finished product doesn't quite stick the landing. It remains a flawed, if pretty gem.

- - -

FAVORITE QUOTES

TWO-FACE: Fortune smiles. Another day of wine and roses – or in your case, beer and pizza!

CHASE: Let's just say I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent.
BATMAN: [mildly offended] Bats aren't rodents, Dr. Meridian.

NYGMA: [after dropping Fred out the window into the comically oversized and improbably placed civic waterfall on the side of the Wayne Enterprises building] Ooh! Nice form but a little rough on the landing. He may have to settle for the bronze.

 
RIDDLER: [to Two-Face] Very few people are both a summer and a winter, but you pull it off nicely.

[Batman dramatically rises out of a deathtrap]

TWO-FACE: [exasperated] WHY CAN'T YOU JUST DIE?! [shoots at him with a grenade launcher; repeatedly]

[deleted scene]
BRUCE: The night of my parents' wake, Alfred, I remember running... falling... the bat. There was something else... or was it just the bat? What was I running from? Is that all this is - a little boy being afraid of a monster in the dark?

BATMAN: [to Riddler] Release Chase. This is between you and me.
TWO-FACE: And me. [turns cheek] AND ME!

My Name is Ozymandias: Chief of Chiefs

 

The Indian in the Cupboard (1995)

Dir. Frank Oz
Paramount Pictures & Columbia TriStar
Rating: C+

No thoughts. Brain scampled egg.

    Ah, that span of time from the late eighties to the early aughts when the noble savage trope became the default media portrayal for an entire race of human beings. This was thanks in no small part to Gen X rebelling against the honestly more grounded portrayal of natives by the previous generation's films such as The Searchers (1956) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972). You couldn't swing a dead cat between the years of 1986 and 1998 without hitting the Obligatory Native American Token Character. They were everywhere. Didn't matter if it was X-Men, Power Rangers, or that one Star Trek show I still haven't watched – the red man cometh. It wasn't malicious. In fact, quite the opposite.

If you went through the U.S. public educational system during the latter half of the 20th century you were programmed to see Native Americans as this one congealed, homogenized mass of folks who were so peaceful and pure their culture was neither morally nor technologically changed for thousands of years until the white man arrived and stole their land through trickery. Native Americans were framed as the anti-heroes of history; fighting the good, politically correct fight against the (conveniently enough) current societal boogeymen of pollution, colonialism, and that damn evil United States Army who are always implied to be stodgy conservative types motivated by sheer materialistic greed, never left-leaning nanny statists who want everything on earth regulated and think they know better than everyone else. White folks of all stripes adored them and wanted to be like them. We used to trace our ancestry so we could brag at dinner parties about being one eighteenth Apache despite not knowing the first thing about that tribe or its history. Everybody working a nine-to-five wanted to be a working class anti-hero in the '90s and the less of your skin you had to risk to achieve that title, the better.

Sure, Geronimo straight up admits in his autobiography that his band murdered and robbed scores of innocent Mexican peasants and he has no regrets about it 'cause he doesn't view them as people, but I guess you can't be an anti-hero without the anti part.

    Based on a book series you've never heard of (by Lynne Reid Banks) and sold for home release in a clamshell VHS you definitely remember, The Indian in the Cupboard is cut from that same safe '90s kids film cloth that most kids films were back when the film industry made movies aimed at more than just the emotionally stunted thirty-something “adult” demographic. Ya see, way back before TikTok or even WiFi our parents would rent out or purchase VHS tapes and sit us in front of the TV for two hours whenever they needed us to shut up long enough to itemize their deductibles on their one afternoon off. Thus there was an entire sub-industry in Hollywood dedicated exclusively to children's entertainment with only a proximal interest in appealing to adults on the grounds somebody's gotta be old enough to drive the rugrats to the cinema. I certainly watched this flick enough times growing up.

This movie, The Swan Princess (1994), Jumanji (1995), Toy Story (1995), Aladdin (1992), The Little Mermaid (1989), The Lost World (1997), Batman Forever (1995), and TV rips of Jurassic Park (1993) and both Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) were in frequent rotation on the family VHS player between the years of 1997 and 2003. I didn't watch the original Star Wars until many years later. My younger brother, for his sins, was a mark for both Monsters, Inc. (2001) and The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Scared Silly (1998). By then I'd moved on to more intellectually stimulating works of art such as the Brendan Fraser Mummy trilogy, which I thought were the peak of cinema at age nine despite having access to the Indiana Jones trilogy and the whole filmography of James Cameron at the local library I walked by at least twice a week every week as a teenager.

Enough disjointed stalling. It's been twenty years since I've seen this thing and I've been waiting since high school for the Nostalgia Critic to review this and he still hasn't. If you want something done right....

- - - 

    Our protagonist is the stupidly named Omri (Hal Scardino), who gets a surprise party for his ninth birthday. We get a rare full usage of the 'Happy Birthday' song, which is probably what most of the movie's $45,000,000 budget went to. Omri's two brothers (Vincent Kartheiser & Ryan Olson) gift him an old cupboard they found in the alleyway that they've mercifully cleaned up and their mother (a very underutilized Lindsay Crouse) finds a key to fit it that belonged to her mother. This is apparently the only thing she kept from her mother for whatever reason. So likely the key has some unexplained cosmic significance. You just don't point something like that out without it meaning something. Turns out I'm right. The key is outright stated to be a magical artifact in the book series.

Omri's got friends, is doing well in school, isn't being bullied, is perfectly physically healthy, has a surprisingly well-adjusted and loving middle class nuclear family... hell, his dad (Richard Jenkins) even makes a point to kiss him goodnight every night whenever he's not working on a skylight or calling him out of the room at plot convenient times. The kid's got no real problems aside from living in NYC and having a space between his front teeth large enough it could be mistaken for an impact crater. I cannot decide if it's refreshingly realistic or bad fiction writing. Apparently I'm a bloomer given how all of my reviews thus far have been glowingly positive so I'm gonna side with refreshing.

The next day at school Omri's friend Patrick (Rishi Bhat, whom I remember starring in way more movies than he did; I blame his really expressive eyebrows for this) gifts him an admittedly shitty plastic Indian figurine that he probably filched from the random plastic Indian display they have in the hallway for some reason. Omri puts the figure inside the cupboard overnight and locks it, waking up the next morning to discover it's been transformed into a very much alive (if four inches tall) Iroquois named Little Bear (Litefoot).

Turns out the cupboard is in fact a highly advanced magical device which turns plastic toys into real flesh-and-blood people and their accessories into functioning technological devices, seemingly summoning their real life counterparts from out of history and / or alternate dimensions parallel to our own. How? Why? No explanation given. Nor is one required.

Because Omri is a kid this automatically leads to the most memorable scene in the film in which he experiments to see if it's the cupboard that's magic or specifically just his crappy plastic Indian toy by dumping a bunch of his action figures inside and turning the key. After witnessing Darth Vader throwing down with a t-rex while a Cardassian gets in a firefight with RoboCop, Omri realizes that magic is in fact terrifying and should only be used sensibly. Such as when Little Bear gets pecked by a bird and he uses the cupboard to summon up WWI British combat medic Tommy Atkins (Steve Coogan), whom he easily convinces is dreaming, to patch him up.

    Little Bear initially views the gigantic-ass mouth-breathing preteen as a god of some sort and pals around with him out of a sense of religious awe. This thankfully doesn't last long as Little Bear has more than two brain cells to rub together and he realizes that Omri, despite being two hundred feet tall and magic, is just a kid. Then he starts paling around with him 'cause hey, magic giant kid who's just as scared of all this as I am. This switch occurs when Omri uses the cupboard to summon up an old Mohawk warrior for the sole purpose of yoinking a properly sized bow for Little Bear from him. The shock of seeing the eight foot gap between Omri's front teeth gives the old man a lethal heart attack. Little Bear correctly chews him out for toying with forces he doesn't understand while revealing he was in the process of taking his nephew on a rite of passage camping trip when he was plucked out of his reality into this one. It's the best bit of acting in the whole flick and a solid bit of writing.

    Omri's equally stupidly named older brothers Gillion (Vincent Kartheiser) and Adiel (Ryan Olson, I assume anyway; his name is never spoken in the film and I haven't read the book so I'm having to go off of IMDB for this one) get interested in Omri borrowing random shit from around the house to give to his tiny friend and sneak into his room one day to look for their missing junk.  

Omri responds sensibly and PUNT KICKS HIS BROTHER'S CUTE LITTLE PET RAT LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHOPATHIC ASSHOLE, CAUSING IT TO VIOLENTLY DRIBBLE ALL THE WAY DOWN THE STAIRS IN ITS HAMSTER BALL WHILE SPINNING WITH THE CENTRIFUGAL FORCE OF AN F2 TORNADO. This is played for laughs. Omri's brothers prove to be better men than I when they politely leave the room without throwing him down the stairs after the poor critter which is, mercifully, unharmed. Hell, these are about the chillest older brothers I've seen in fiction. They only seek sibling vengeance upon Omri when he later hides the hamster ball and do so by hiding his magic cupboard in turn... which they then readily give back after the hamster ball is returned to them. The fiends! The perfectly reasonable fiends!

Seriously, there's next to no real conflict in this movie. Unless you hate pet rats for whatever reason. 
You monster.

    Omri eventually tells Patrick about Little Bear and his magic cupboard. Patrick then makes the 1000 IQ play of putting a cowboy figure into the cupboard against Omri's wishes which then comes to life as an emotionally distraught miniman named Boone (David Keith, who I incorrectly remembered as having been played by Owen Wilson thanks to Night at the Museum). Little Bear and Boone eventually bond over their love of children and their shared manlet status after the expected initial conflagration. I mean, over a century of time separates them (Little Bear drops 1761 and the French & Indian War while discussing when he comes from and Boone outright states he's from Texas in the year 1876) so there's really no reason for them to be beefing aside from the pure aesthetic of cowboys versus Indians.

During this sequence Little Bear mentions he's been north to the land of the Mi'kmaq. 
I wonder if he's seen their famous Pet Sematary.

    I should also note each time Omri or Patrick take a plastic Indian from this random plastic Indian school display they replace it with a wildly unfitting action figure that goes unremarked upon by any other character – the first time around an Aracula Skeleton Warriors figure and the second time one of Limburger of Biker Mice From Mars fame. I can guarantee you haven't thought of either of those franchises in a long, long while if at all. Why yes, I did pause this movie midway through to watch the Biker Mice From Mars intro four times on repeat.

I was more of a SWAT Kats kid but damned if this isn't the exact kinda stupid shit I love.

 One night Little Bear gets war wacky and accidentally shoots Boone thought the chest with an arrow while the gang watch a particularly violent western on television. The same thing happened to my buddy Eric once. Little Bear then has to shimmy down between the floorboards to retrieve the fallen key to the cupboard. Therein he faces... the rat! The monstrously evil, confused, chubby, adorable pet rat that somehow escaped from its cage. Thankfully he doesn't kill it. That poor rat has been through enough. They then use the cupboard to resummon Tommy to patch up Boone. This incident is enough to convince the boys that having tiny men with functioning weaponry as glorified pets is in fact a bad idea and resolve to send them back.

But first Omri offers Little Bear a wife in the form of a plastic lady he stole from the school's random plastic Indian display, which is a plot detail getting a lot more mileage than I expected it would. Little Bear refuses on the grounds that he'd be magically kidnapping some random chick who very likely already has a husband and kids. Aside from being a superstitious goof, Little Bear is obviously a very morally upright dude contrasted with Omri and Patrick being dumbass kids dicking around with magic they do not understand. This apparently becomes the major point of conflict in the book's four sequels, in which the kids forget the moral of this story and totally fuck over the timeline in Little Bear's world by trying to play god. In other news, cannot wait for the Dune movie sequels.

Little Bear does a ritual to become Omri's guardian... stepfather... bloodbrother... tribesmate... something or another before getting put back in the cupboard along with Boone and becoming toys again. Omri fictionalizes the events of this week into a short story his teachers like and the music swells really obnoxiously as if something profound was learned.

FIN

- - - 

    The child acting is average. Rishi is a smidge better than Scardino, who tries his best but is just too reserved and inexperienced to carry a movie. They can't all be Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore. Litefoot likewise gives it the ol' college try and turns in a serviceable performance. He is by far the best part of the ensemble and he does it while freezing his ass off in buckskin chaps with sharpie scribbles all over his body. That said, I'm sure he's better at rapping than acting. After all, his official website does proudly claim he won the “Best Male Artist” and “Artist of the Year” honors from the Native American Music Awards. I should mention that I recently won the “Best Blogger” award at the 54^th Annual Balding White Guys Who Wear Jean Jackets and Live in Upstate Georgia Awards. The BWGWWJJ&LUG association is very prestigious and I'm honored to be recognized by them.

Update: Shit, he's actually got good flow! I apologze, Litefoot. Please don't scalp me. I have a bad enough hairline as is. As far as mid-nineties west coast rap goes it's not bad. Touch underrated, even.

The film score by Randy Edelman is rather good but is kinda rather very extremely overused to the point it becomes grating. I get that you're dealing with child actors and you need to do a lot of heavy lifting to support them, but after a certain point it just becomes blatant you've got no faith at all in the actors to carry the emotion of the scene and are giving them a set of crutches.

The VFX are (on the whole) incredibly good and hold up to this day. Big surprise, Industrial Light & Magic know their shit. Seamless composite shots and the utilization of forced perspective with oversized sets and props will do that. Things tend to look the best if they're actually there. The use of tight close-ups and blurred backgrounds as a cheat in some scenes is noticeable but forgivable.

    This movie ba-bombed at the box office and came up ten million short of meeting its budget, which means it came between fifteen and twenty million shy of turning a profit. Much like its contemporaries Balto (1995) and The Swan Princess (1994) it almost made up for this be having a very good run on VHS and TV. If you were a kid during the nineties there's a strong chance you've seen this flick at least once. Seems this one's really fallen by the wayside in the decades since. I can kinda see why. It's a solid movie with occasionally great VFX but there's really nothing that sticks with you. It's one of those “you had to be there” kinda movies that encapsulates one specific tonal vibe from a bygone era that just comes off as quaint to those reminiscing and outright kitsch to those without context.

    Disney's Pocahontas (1995) was released just a couple weeks before this movie and doubtless ate into its profitability. In addition to the usual expected Disney dirty pool and bastardry with distribution tactics, the films overlap thematically and Pocahontas does everything this flick does but much more aggressively and memorably, delivering a product that's simultaneously better and much worse. Kids nowadays would not understand the deluge of Native American guilt posting from back then. Maybe that's a good thing. It was like if you took blaxploitation but removed all the humor, satire, and badassery that made it work. That and blaxploitation was at least current – all the stereotypes in these Indian flicks were outmoded by at least a century when they were released. It's almost like they were never really about Native Americans at all and there was some other message the people making these products wanted to get across and this whole race of people acted as a politically convenient, easily disposable figurehead for them.

But hey, I could always be wrong.

- - - 

FAVORITE QUOTES

OMRI: [practically tweaking in class waiting to get back home] I love the Indian. He's so great.
PATRICK: ...why?

OMRI: Thank you.
TOMMY: Only doing my duty.
OMRI: Would you like to wake up now?
TOMMY: No, I never wanna wake up. Mud, German shells, awful bloody rats. They eat at wounded men. Ugh. Still, can't desert. Even in a dream.

OMRI: [after getting mugged by some kid with a mohawk] YOU DON'T DESERVE THAT HAIR!

BOONE: [after spending all morning sitting in a fanny pack with Little Bear, bonding while listening to Omri attend school] ...damn.
[Boone and Little Bear both start laughing at the sheer absurdity of their situation]

Day Drinking on the Job

 

The Destroyer vs. Rikidozan

NWA International Heavyweight Championship

Two Out of Three Falls match

Japan Wrestling Alliance (Association)

2nd December, 1963

Rating: A+

    Yanno what I love? Professional wrestling. Why? Because I just do. I'm not some emasculated eurotrash or never-made-it-never-will indie geek with a podcast who feels the urge to justify his likes and dislikes to total strangers 'cause I'm trying to convince myself they have some higher artistic merit. I know it doesn't. It's pro-wrestling. It's total brainless low-commala entertainment in which grown men in stupid costumes pretend to beat one another up while grifting for money and sometimes beat one another up for real. I like it 'cause it's cool; the same way some folks like cars and other folks like sports they're naïve enough to think aren't worked. Anyone who tries to peel the layers back and dive deeper in has an agenda to push.

That said, wrestling kinda sucks nowadays. You've got two whole generations of malnourished, left-leaning twinks who are more concerned with recreating moves they've seen in video games and bitching about low ratings on Twitter than putting in the work to get halfway decent at their chosen profession. We live in an age where people unironically believe Bryan Danielson is one of the best to ever lace up a pair and Hulk Hogan is an embarrassing relic of the past. Gimmie a break. The ultimate red pill is that based god Kevin Nash was absolutely right about everything - the majority of guys under 6' and 230lbs are not believable main eventers; being entertaining is more important than being athletic; characters sell tickets, not matches; the top draws have every reason to selfishly protect their spots as they're the ones earning the troupe their pay; the moves in the ring don't mean a damn thing unless you train the audience into thinking they do; and the ultimate goal of every pro-wrestler should be to make as much money with as little physical effort as possible. 

We must RETVRN.

    A little over sixty years ago, one of my favorite matches took place. The Japan Pro-Wrestling Alliance (or Association according to the brain trust at Cagematch.net) was Japan's first of many, many wrestling groups. With some places like Mexico and Europe it's hard to pinpoint exactly when the concept of pro-wrestling crystalized but it's very cut-and-dry with Japan as it was imported post-WWII by the likes of Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz and caught on rather quickly as soon as native hero Rikidozan (ironically Korean by birth) was established as the local star to beat back the evil gaijin Americans currently occupying their land in a much needed escape valve for collective cultural tensions. Sorta like how the Hogan era in the WWF was all about America defending itself from the looming threat of nuclear annihilation through the power of bulging muscles and rock 'n roll and the Austin era was all about a collection of surly individuals kicking back against the rise of an increasingly bland, corporatized, politically correct America that seemed to have a hate-on for the common working man.

But socio-economic conditions and larger political ramifications don't mean a damn thing if the art in question cannot stand up on its own in a vacuum. And that's how I judge wrestling matches. Are they fully functional stories taken on their own from bell to bell? A great crowd and a hot angle can give a real boost to a bout but once you step through those ropes and are given eight-to-sixty minutes to tell a story, whether or not it succeeds or not is up to how good you and your partner are at pantomime.

Rikidozan's villain-of-the-week is Dick Beyer, under his most popular guise as The Destroyer. Dick Beyer is lowkey one of the best pro-wrestlers to ever do it. The man understands how to work a live crowd better than most performers ever dream of. Terry Funk and The Rock are the only two off the top of my head who are in the same league... and he might honestly smoke them both by way of doing so while wearing a mask and relying almost exclusively on body language. He's the Lon Chaney of the squared circle. How good is Dick Beyer at his job? He's the only heel to ever receive a national award for his performances. 

Describing the beats of the match is unimportant as the real action is what happens between the moves. The flawless way that they play with the audience. The way that The Destroyer is always moving, chatting, engaging the crowd even if locked in a legscissors. The way Rikidozan teases his big overhead chop finisher. Everything is logical. Everything is built up. It's a perfect blend of realistic sport and exaggerated theatrics. You could know nothing about these men going in and understand them both perfectly by the time it's over. And of course the biggest bump is saved for the finish.

It was just plain better back then.

- - - 

Spyder! Spyder! burning bright

 

Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt / Fearful Symmetry

Writer: J.M. DeMatteis

Illustrator: Mike Zeck

Marvel Comics Group

Web of Spider-Man vol. 1 #31-32; The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 1 #293-294; Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 1 #131-132 (Oct. - Nov. 1987)

Rating: A+

    Despite a lot of my favorite pieces of media being overtly dark and cynical and my favorite genre of entertainment being grown men kicking one another in the face until one of them can no longer stand, I myself am not a cynical person. Darkness, I reason, only exists to contrast and frame the light. The great artists always understand this, either intellectually or instinctively as a matter of observable fact - Homer, Rembrandt, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Akira Kurosawa, The Ramones, et cetra. As such I'm not really a fan of the "Dark Age" of comic books - that period from the late '80s through the early aughts in which American superhero comics (most notably D.C. and Marvel) overindulged in the occasionally grim overtones of the preceding Bronze Age and thereby lost the context as to how and why those darker moments worked. They were exceedingly rare and always had long-term character consequence. Heroes are supposed to win. If not physically, then always morally. Any piece of fiction in which the villain manages to eek out a W against the protagonist in both columns is to be regarded as nothing more than an occasionally interesting curiosity bereft of any true artistic merit. All "high" art is morally informative and makes a clear statement. All "low" art either lacks a moral foundation, subverts a preexisting one, or is "up for interpretation" as to its meaning.

Yes, I am telling you there is an objective right and wrong way to tell stories.

Do it incorrectly and you end up with the last 25 unreadable years of Marvel Comics.

Do it properly and you end up with something like Kraven's Last Hunt.

It's an Excedrin(TM) evening.

    

    The story of Kraven's Last Hunt is a simple one, though perhaps not as simple as the back of the trade paperback declaring it "THE ULTIMATE TALE OF REVENGE!" A newlywed Spider-Man reflects upon the dangerous nature of his vigilante work and the multiple friends, allies, and enemies he's lost along the way. He's ambushed by perennial B-lister Kraven the Hunter - who's totally off his tits on jungle herbs - and subsequently blasted with a rifle and buried alive. This is only the third or fourth worst thing to happen to Peter Parker that afternoon. Kraven then dons a copy of Spidey's black suit (this takes place after the original Symbiote storyline - fans just loved the look so much that Peter for some reason keeps wearing a spandex replica of the alien parasite that almost killed him) and proceeds to beat the sauce outta street thugs so badly he puts them in traction. In his quest to prove himself superior to his foe, Kraven hunts down and single-handedly subdues the cannibalistic serial killer Vermin, whom Spider had previously only beaten with help from Captain America. Spider-Man awakes after TWO FULL WEEKS have passed and PULLS HIMSELF OUT OF THE GRAVE in an iconic moment. Spidey reunites with Mary Jane and then confronts Kraven, who is so mentally gone by this point he refuses to fight and instead siccs a captured Vermin on him. Kraven witnesses a weakened Spidey get his ass kicked by Vermin and only intervenes when it's obvious even to his depressed, drug-addled mind that Spidey is not so much fighting for sake of vengeance or self-defense as he's fighting to keep everyone else in NYC safe from Vermin possibly escaping. In one last morally uneven move, an utterly deflated Kraven unleashes Vermin back into the streets of NYC before leaving a confession for the police to find and blowing his brains out with a hunting rifle. A heavily roughed up Spider-Man is left to track down and capture Vermin on his lonesome. Which he of course does. Then he goes back home to his wife. Kraven is subsequently buried right next to the grave he dug for Spider-Man.

He's home.

    The synopsis does this tale an injustice. The plot itself is good. It's the execution that makes this one of the all-time great comic storylines. There isn't a single panel wasted across all six issues and all of them are gorgeously rendered by Mike Zeck, Bob McLeod, and letterer Rick Parker. The persistence of rain, sludge, and lightning in this storyline is perfectly utilized as are the small little rat and spider motifs. Every character servers a purpose both narratively and - in a rare move for a superhero comic - symbolically as well. Spider-Man, Kraven, and Vermin compliment one another in poetic ways. 

Kraven is the man who believes himself to be a beast; a man not unlike the Conan the Cimmerians of latter fiction who feels constrained and defeated by the modern world and its trappings, wishing to exercise control both over it and himself by flaunting the savage part of himself. He is a man who wishes to be a beast and wishes to see others as such. He fails in this endeavor and is broken by it as that is simply not the way the world works and his fellow men are not how he wishes them to be. Defeated, unable to accept that he has been wrong about the world and unwilling to change his mindframe to match, he takes himself out like a coward, falsely believing there to be dignity in it. 

Vermin is a beast that was once a man. A monster not unlike a Gollum who's more pitiable than fearsome. He also probably eats babies not unlike a Gollum or a sasquatch. Much like Kraven he's ill-equipped to fit into society. However, whereas Kraven merely believes himself to be incapable of fitting in with the modern day and longs to be more of an animal, Vermin is that wish come back upon itself. He was a man. He became a beast. The world terrifies and confuses him - as it does Kraven - but the tiniest bit of his humanity still wishes to connect with his fellow man. But he cannot. He is a monster. A beast. Something whose very nature is functionally antithetical to the civilized world. He is the inverse and extreme of the Hunter. Still, though he is captured and constrained, it never once enters his mind to kill himself. He's an animal. An animal only wishes to live, by any means necessary.

Spider-Man is our protagonist and, as is fitting, possesses what the antagonists do not. He is not a beast. He does not perceive himself as being a beast. He is a man, through and through. In the most poignant moment of the entire storyline, as Peter is dragging himself out of the grave with nothing but the love of Mary Jane to carry him through the fear, he mocks the very idea that he's some mythical spider being - he's just a man who is doing what he thinks is best the best way he knows how. There is no spider; there is only Peter Parker, human being. Kraven's failure to understand this - how any man would wish to simply be a man with a wife and normal responsibilities - is what defeats the antagonist in the end. Peter's ability to not be cowed by fear and to think two steps ahead is what allows him to capture Vermin in the end. And his reward for all this? To go home to his wife. To be Peter Parker, human being, loving husband, for one more day. And that's honestly the best any of us can hope for in this life. 

Just a shame that nobody in Marvel Comics has apparently read this storyline and we've been dealing with interdimensional spider totem crap and multiverse theory for the last twenty-odd years. 

I could go on and sing the praises of this book for hours and not properly relay just how amazing this storyline is. This is not so much a superhero saga as it is a poem in the form of one. Every line, panel, page break, and box format is constructed in such a way as to nail home the overarching themes of confinement, fear, and, ultimately, the triumphant love between a normal man and his wife. Absolutely essential reading both for Spidey fans and people who are looking for a happy medium between dark subject matter and nuanced execution.

Why yes, there are several collected graphic novel reprints.

QUOTES

"There is no Spider-Man. He's a mask. A myth. A lie. Oh, sure, it'd be great if putting on a costume could miraculously change the man underneath. But it can't. I'm not Spider-Man. I'm just... Peter Parker." - Spider-Man, giving us the real shit

"yum. yum. yum." - Vermin, after eating some poor chick

"He's beautiful. He's vile. He's mine." - Kraven, stalking Vermin

"All these years you've misunderstood me. You thought I was larger than life. You thought I was magic. You thought I was madness. Some creature that crawled and spun and hid in shadows. That mocked and tormented and reveled in darkness. Idiot! There is no spider! There's just me! Just a normal guy - who got tapped on the shoulder by fate. Just Peter Parker: That's my weakness. That's my strength." - Peter Parker, reiterating for those who didn't get it

"I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I am not afraid. Yes, I am. But there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong - as long as I don't turn back. As long as I do what's right." - Spider-Man, defining heroism

- - - 

The Passion & All The Pain Are One

 

W.A.S.P.
W.A.S.P.
1984
Capitol Records

Rating: A

I dunno what this has to do with entomology but ok

    Have other people reviewed this album? Why yes. RazorFist's Metal Mythos episode on the band in question goes more in depth than I care to. I'm neither a journalist (perish the thought) nor an expert on the group in question. In fact, I find the entire premise of doing a text review of a purely auditory artform to be an exercise as pointless as, say, making a film adaptation of a story that only works because it's a commentary on the medium it's originally presented in. But I'm of the mind that I'm a better human being than Zack Snyder. Failing to clear that low hurdle I'm merely some goblin jerk with an opinion. And that opinion is that W.A.S.P. rules ass. One of the best metal bands out there, period. Up there with Accept as one of the most consistently great, too. The first five albums these guys dropped are all essential listening; a feat matched only by the immortal genre codifiers that are Black Sabbath. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the first album my favorite band produced. Expanded addition, with originally planned intro track, of course.

1) 'Animal (F**k Like a Beast)'

I'm on the prowl and I watch you closely, I lie waiting for you

Well, I'm the wolf with the skeepskins clothing

I lick my chops and you're tastin' good

I'll do whatever I want to to ya, I'll nail your ass to the sheets

I'll power-thrust 'til the sweat starts to sting ya:

I F**K LIKE A BEAST

    Originally left off the album due to being too risque for the general audience and sold as a limited release international single in one the more brilliant marketing bids the metal genre has ever seen, this infamous track is... honestly one of my least favorite the band has done. It's overexposed and honestly just not as catchy or heavy as the other stuff on the album. It's a meme. A novelty. Blackie Lawless seems to agree with me as he hasn't performed it live since the Bush era, following his spiritual rebirth into the second or third most unfathomably based Christian metal act out there.

Three guesses as to who the most based of the bunch is

That and it's just plain overplayed. Ironic, huh? You'd think this is the only song these guys ever recorded according to some fools in the metal scene. Well I hate to break it to you but these guys aren't RATT. They're not Cinderella. They're not Velvet Revolver or Buckcherry any of those other dweebs who stumbled upon one catchy tune and ran it into the ground - they're W.A.S.P. and they rule ass.

This same tune would be later reworked - in my opinion to immensely better effect - on their fourth album The Headless Children in the form of mid-album killer track 'Mean Man'

Song Rating: C

- - - 

2) 'I Wanna Be Somebody'

You say you don't wanna starve

Or pick the table crumbs that fall

You don't wanna beg or plead at all

You don't want no nine-to-five

Your fingers to the bone

You don't want the rock piles - bloody stones

Oh, you've just got to be

Up high where the whole world's watchin' me

'Cause I, I got the guts to be somebody

    The superior lead single to this album. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. It's punchier, tighter written, and leaves the listener feeling better than they came in. Overplayed? Oh, absolutely. But if you're gonna be a killer band that only has one song that gets consistent radio play, you could be much worse off.

It could also be the worst song your band has ever produced.

Very solid track. Also not my favorite.

Song Rating: B

- - - 

3) 'L.O.V.E. Machine'

What can I do for you?

Am I your wildest dream?

What do I move in you?

Am I what I seem?

My eyes, the lie and you cry;

Love brings you pain

And if you try to love me

You'll not be the same

L.O.V.E.

All need's my love machine, your

L.O.V.E.

All need's my love machine, your

L.O.V.E.

All need's my love machine, your

L.O.V.E.

All need's my love machine tonight, tonight

    An exemplary hair metal track. As in it does what it does so well that it's practically a stereotype of the genre. You could play this to any set of people between the ages of seventy-five and eleven and they'd be like "Yeah, that's definitely an '80s hair metal tune." Then they'd ask you to crank it again. If they had taste. If they don't they're not worth the effort and cannot be trusted to manage money or carry simple tasks to term. Use this to vet dates and business partners. It's a foolproof method.

Song Rating: B+

- - - 

4) 'The Flame'

Show me a place where love is sweet

I ain't gonna fake it

And hey, little girl, if you want my love

Now's the time to take it

Before the flame burns out

Before the flame burns out

Before the flame burns out

Before the flame burns out

    Solid album filler track. Honestly not wild about it one way or the other. Your standard sex-drugs-rock-n-roll anthem. Narrowly avoids the pitfall of becoming a lame rock-n-roll song about rock-n-roll by not listing it by name. Rock-n-roll songs that are explicitly about rock-n-roll have a 95% chance of being utter garbage. I have no idea why that's the case but it is. If I had to guess it'd be the diminishing returns of nostalgia and the seemingly perpetual state of all good music existing solely in the past because of it. Hell, even Family Guy landed an uncharacteristically accurate joke at the expense of this phenomenon. 

Song Rating: [piano riff] WOO!

- - - 

5) 'B.A.D.'

You hear the cries of love - a sad tune

And feel the salt lick stingin' - love's wound

Those tears that you cry leave a blood stain

They fall to the ground like a sweet rain

'Cause bad girls, they do

B.A.D. - Bad

Make your mom and daddy sad

B.A.D. - Bad

It's the bloody fix ya do

    Okay, so we've established that W.A.S.P. can S.P.E.L.L.. It seems to be one of their favorite things to do. I'm glad that this new generation of scumbag bad boy dropouts take their vernacular exercises so seriously.

Hard for me to really rate this one. The tune and lyrics individually are decent enough but put together they have this really dirty, awful vibe. It just makes you feel like a total dirtbag in a way that usually only Bryan Adams manages to pull off on accident. And I don't mean a vaguely suave Razor Ramon type dirtbag who hangs out at bars to pick up easy slatches either. I mean the kinda dirtbag who haunts his old high school parking lot in his beat up Firebird despite having dropped out three years ago. Utter, unrepentant douchebag music. 

I kinda love it.

Song Rating: (Not) B(.A.D. - Bad)

- - - 

6) 'School Daze'

A blackboard jungle - toe the line the rulers made

A homework hellhound screams at me: MAKE THE GRADE

Tick tock, three o'clock - I'm sitting here and countin' off the days

A fire bell is ringin' hell and I'd sure love to see it blaze

(BURN IT DOWN)

(School daze) School daze, I'm here doin' time

(School daze) School daze, my age is my crime

(School daze) School daze I'm here doin' time

(School daze) School daze, I'm attendin' Hell High

    Every child who's ever gone through the American public education system can attest that it sucks. It's too long, half of the teachers have no idea what they're doing, you get forced to do homework almost every night, and you learn nothing practical after age fifteen unless you take a shop or home econ class. Honestly, Thomas Jefferson was on to something. Basic education like being able to read and write? That should be for everyone. Anything that requires tutoring above a ninth grade level? A kid outta show some initiative to deserve that. The world is full of overeducated idiots nowadays who'd better serve themselves and their fellow man by picking vegetables or tarring driveways than opining on concepts they clearly do not have the faculties to comprehend, let alone examine with any depth.

But enough about me, time for the music.

It rules. Everything about this song works. The introduction with the Pledge of Allegiance comes back in one of my favorite bridge drops this band has ever done:

I pledge no allegiance and I bet

They're gonna drive me crazy yet

Nobody here is understandin' me

I pledge no allegiance and I bet

They're gonna drive me crazy yet

I'm dyin' here and tryin' to get free

Song Rating: A+

- - - 

7) 'Hellion'

Hell hound, hot leather on your legs

That smokin' powder keg you're riding on is 

Hellbound

And you're the one they claim

Is going down in flames

You're riding Hades' rails 

(Hellion)

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLION

THE DEVIL'S HELLION CHILD

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLION

WILL NEVER HAVE TO DIE

    Truly this is what the word "banger" was meant for, Gorilla. Brings a tear to my eye. Absolutely perfect. A masterpiece of metal from start to finish. A truly immaculate hunk of evil, dirty metal. I love it. I love it. I love it.

The gods you worship are steel

At the altar of rock-n-roll you kneel

A slave who forever rocks 

Is chained in the devil's locks

And slain by the bloody axe I wail

Also totally headcanon Loona theme.

Song Rating: A+

- - - 

8) 'Sleeping (In The Fire)'

Taste the love, the Lucifer's magic

That makes you numb

The passion and all the pain are one

You're sleeping in the fire

    Oh crap it's a ballad. And a great one at that. Blackie Lawless gets to show off more traditional pipes in this one. Kinda seductive, ngl. I'd have sex with Blackie Lawless if he sang to me like this. Even though he's explicitly trying to twist my soul to the dark side with this tune. 

You'll begin to notice that this album is very bottom heavy. Pear-shaped, if you will. And I mean that in a good way. This album has a fat, strong ass. It's a bold Latina woman who ain't never gonna leave you once you get married and insists she make the taco shells at home in the toaster oven instead of buying them in the store like the senseless gringas do. A bold, daring, but all the same uniquely sensitive Spanish speaking werewolf woman who always waits for you to get home from work with

I forgot what point I was making.

This tune is great.

Song Rating: A+

- - - 

9) 'On Your Knees'

On your knees, that's where you all shall be

Well, I bid you come taste your first deadly sin

Ridin' the wild wind and the door to submission

Will open and you shall fall in

"...what the fuck was that?"

- Blackie, hearing something as the song closes

    Thrash metal time. I physically cannot stop from headbanging when this one comes on. It's one of those. 

I know they're going for demonic energy but it honestly comes off more like goblin energy. Impish, petty evil. That's honestly the reason why most of W.A.S.P.'s lame rock-n-roll songs about rock-n-roll work. They're explicitly about scummy, bad behavior and they very seldom glamorize it. These are songs about things you should not be doing. It'll become really, really obvious come their fourth and fifth albums that you are not supposed to emulate their behavior. 

Song Rating: B

- - - 

10) 'Tormentor'

I am

the Lord

of Liars

And I

command

the force 

of fire, fire, fire

    The tune from RAGEWAR. Bask in it, folks. Bask it its glory.

Again, note how it never actually glamorizes any of the demonic imagery.  Expressly told from the POV of a terrible force that you'd be a fool to idolize. A lot of lesser metal acts fail to maintain that distinction. This is what puts W.A.S.P. above a Motley Crue, Warrant, or Ghost in that regard. And I like all those bands to some extent - they're just not thematically even album to album (or even track to track) with their presentation.

Song Rating: B

- - - 

11) 'The Torture Never Stops'

And you, you cry but no-one hears (or cares)

And hope's the rope that keeps you tied in knots:

THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS

THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS

    I'm a mark for this song. A mark for this whole album, really. It's just something I like. Do I have any groundbreaking insight upon it or any witticisms set aside for each individual track? Not really. Which is probably why I'm gonna change the format the next time I attempt an album review. There's really only so many ways you can say "This works well as a piece of music. It is fundamentally sound and the lyrics meet with the instrumentation in such a way as to enhance both". Perhaps going track-by-track in detail is not terribly feasible. Because getting however many pages in and realizing you're just gonna start repeating yourself is a type of torture. And the torture never stops. 

Song Rating: A

- - - 

12) 'Show No Mercy'

White Anglo-Saxon

A violent reaction

Fire is my fuel

Steel and iron rule

Ride on wasteland

On madman's badlands

Ride on wasteland

And I will survive

To show no mercy

    The b-side to the 'Animal (F**k Like a Beast)' single. Definitely a b-side. Yup.

Nothing wrong with it, nothing outstanding. A solid filler track. Rolls off nicely. It's like a toothless version of future W.A.S.P. great 'Restless Gypsy'.

Song Rating: Filler

- - - 

13) 'Paint It Black' (The Rolling Stones cover (doy))

    That's right folks - two decades before Ghost started doing excellent metal covers of random tunes as hidden tracks on their albums, W.A.S.P. did the same. It's a gimmick that I'm glad is making a comeback. Bands that actually do have a unique sound should do covers. I do wanna hear what different artistic takes on the same material sound like. Maybe one day I'll even do an entry where I compare versions of 'The Great Pretender' or 'House of the Rising Sun' to see which is my favorite. (Spoilers: it's Dolly Parton and Joan Baez's versions respectively.)

This is almost a perfect cover.

I have no bloody idea what handcuffs have to do with this song, though. Really should've left that little aside out of the final product, guys. Takes it down a full letter grade for me, honestly. It's almost as pointlessly egregious as Limp Bizkit's additions to 'Behind Blue Eyes'.

L... I... M... P...    L... I... M... P...   L... I... M... P...

Song Rating: B

- - -