More Than One Monkey Assassination

Let me start off by saying this: I really, really hate monkeys. Really.

No, really.

I hate monkeys so goddamn much that if I was locked in a room with a 6-shot revolver, a monkey, and Zombie Fucking Hitler, I'd fire all 6 bullets into the monkey and take my chances clubbing Hitler to death with the empty gun. Monkeys are highly intelligent, vicious, stronger and faster than us, and totally not averse to scooping handfuls of fecal matter out of their asscracks and hurling shit-missiles with near lethal precision. Fuck chimps, fuck howlers and fuck rhesus macaques.

What did these furry little creatures do to become the object of my ire, you ask? Well, let’s review a list:

Chimps have a tendency to break out of captivity and disfigure people. Some dude a couple of years ago had his face ripped off by a chimp that escaped from a New York zoo – I don’t even have a joke for that, it’s too fucked up.

Howler Monkeys, well they haven’t done anything other than have a completely horrifying name (as do spider monkeys). That and the fact that they’re goddamned motherfucking monkeys are enough to make me want to wipe them off the face of the planet. At this point I realize that I sound kind of like a bad guy, perhaps one of the antagonists in Rise of the Planet of the Apes or some shit, but in my defense, remember what happened in every other Planet of the Apes film? So, why the fuck are we rooting against the zookeeper any damn way?

Oh, by the way, FUCK RHESUS MACAQUES.

Let’s talk about the rhesus macaque, before folks start getting all worked up about my anti-monkey sentiment. The rhesus macaque is a small, highly intelligent quadripedal omnivore, suited to pretty much every climate found in Asia, which if you weren’t sure, ranges from rainforests to desert to snow-capped mountains, so pretty much all of earth. Rhesus macaques can survive anywhere, and their diet is identical to ours. Because of that reason, rhesus macaques have been steadily moving en masse out of the rain forests and into industrialized regions of China and India, increasing exponentially their raid on crops and general propensity for mayhem.

How bad is it, you ask?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7055625.stm

(Bet you didn't think you'd see a compsagnathus riding a skateboard today, did you? Well you were wrong.)


In 2007 a group of macaques invaded a condominium development in Delhi, resulting in the death of one man as he fell from his terrace fighting off the monkey horde. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the average rhesus macaque is about a foot and a half long and weighs in at 15 lbs. So this was a lot like that guy in Jurassic Park 2 who got killed by the little compsognathuses, (Compsognathi? Compsognatheese?) except that it really happened. Oh yeah, and this guy happened to be the Vice Mayor of Delhi.

This event was the nadir of what officials in India have described as a “plague of monkeys” that has been, well, plaguing major metropolitan areas in India for several decades. The phrase “plague of monkeys” is a direct quote from the BBC article, and not my own words. It also happens to be a pretty fucking God-awful group of words to see lumped together like that. The fact that the second most well-connected figure in the city was still easy prey for coordinated monkey assassins should be a fluke, a one in a million thing, right?

Nope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_of_Greece_(king)

In 1920 the King of Greece died of “complications due to multiple monkey bites”. He had been touring the National Garden of Athens when a pack of monkeys attacked his dog. King Alexander stepped in and got his hand good and mauled for his efforts, and a few days later (remember this was 1920, a good 8 years or so before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin) his wounds grew infected and he died. As horrible as this is, if you’re going to go out, defending your dogs from a marauding monkey gang is a pretty fucking honorable way to go. King Alexander, I salute thee.

Oh yeah, going back to the Delhi incident -The absolute worst thing about this whole situation is the fact that the Delhi government has deemed that the best possible solution to this is to train teams of larger, more vicious Langur Monkeys to exterminate the macaques. I can only presume that the next step in the plan involves importing baboons to get rid of the langurs, and so on and so forth until every square inch of India – from shores of the Bay of Bengal, to the borders of Bhutan and Bangladesh, are awash with a seething mixture of blood, tears and boiling monkey shit.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale monkey
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him

More Sources:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/monkey_attack/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7055625.stm

The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.
SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys

The Most Terrifying Dystopia Ever Conceived

Just about every sci-fi flick that pits the Human Race against our robotic AI overlords show that humans still have a fighting chance, and that as long as there’s a few of us left it will stay that way. Certainly there isn’t a film that depicts what Earth will be like after not only every human has been liquefied, but every living creature? (We'll get back to that...)

Oh yeah, that one. Evidence points to the fact that the events in Cars are in fact, playing out on Planet Earth. They are speaking English and their Judicial System is quite similar to our own.

Perhaps more damning is the repeated mention of Dinoco, a chain of gas stations also appearing in the Toy Story films. The Dinoco Cup is the cup sought after in the racing circuit that Lightning McQueen is a part of. Their 1st race takes place in an ambiguous raceway somewhere in the south. You see sentient cars racing against each other, while being tended to by smaller sentient vehicles in a fully automated pit-crew. Cheering the race on is an audience made up entirely of sentient cars. You get the picture.

Only if you look really closely, somewhere about 5 minutes into the movie, as the cameras pan about the 'Speedway of the South,' you see two rest rooms, clearly marked "Men" and "Women."

Do these cars need to go relieve themselves every once in a while? More likely than, this is a relic of the times before the machines grew self-aware and wiped out every trace of mankind.

Because once the 1st race is over, all ambiguity over what planet this is taking place on is wiped away as the location for the next race is revealed: The Los Angeles International Speedway, which they make quite clear is in that
Los Angeles, California. We see several location shots to further cement this home, of famous LA landmarks like the Hollywood sign, and Mann's Chinese Theatre.

Evidence that they've wiped out all animal life is hinted at by McQueen and Mater's "tractor-tipping" escapade, where they sneak into a field to spook the farm equipment that keeps the grass from growing too tall, now that all the cows have been exterminated as well. The tractors moo like cows, and later in the movie, stampede into town, only to be rounded up with relative ease by the more intelligent machines, proving that their system is more manageable than the sometimes messy dynamic between us humans and our bovine counterparts.

However, the true pinnacle of horror occurs as Sally takes Lightning to the Wheel Well Ruins, and he sees an old pair of gas pumps, replete with a small cloud of buzzing flies. Take a real close look at those insects boys and girls... They aren't flies - those are tiny winged cars

So, either sometime after becoming self-aware, every automobile in good working order decided to wipe out any trace of animal life on earth, or we have a Richard Feynman-style alternate universe thingie going on – which basically presents us with the debate of whether it’s better to have existed only to be extinguished, or to never have existed at all.

Meanwhile, back at the Bat Cave... (Plus, Felonious Meese!)

Holy crap! (I never could get the hang of coming up with something better than that, the way Burt Ward always seemed to.) August is almost over and I haven't posted single goddamn thing here. To the literally dozen of people who come check this place out from time to time, I'm sorry. In my defense, my 1st book is supposed to come out at the end of this month, and so I've been a little nutty.

Actually I've been straying dangerously close to shit-house rat crazy territory, staying up for days at a time and popping Klonopins and Xanax like tic-tacs just to get the fear flutters from bursting into flight like a colony of rabid bats. Not everyday, mind you, but that's happened once or twice this month. I'm pretty sure if Poe were alive today, he'd have a pretty bitchin' time with Xanax. (Don't mix that shit with booze, boys and girls - that's how rock stars die.)

So what else is new, you ask? Well for one thing, the wonderful people over at Cracked.com posted an article I co-wrote with a really funny and talented guy named Gabriel Oliver. Here's a link to said article, in case you want to check it out:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19934_6-people-who-defied-gravity-and-then-kicked-it-in-nuts.html

I still haven't figured out how to properly link stuff on this blog. Maybe someday. Anyway, here's some dark stuff about our moose brethren that you may not know about.


Felonious Meese

According to the Finnish tome The Kalevala, Lempo was the equivalent of Loki, with several notable exceptions. One of them is that Loki was considered more of a prankster, while Lempo was more of the bloodthirsty psychotic Lord of the Underworld types. Lempo’s idea of a good joke was to find a warrior in the middle of battle, and send one of his demon minions in to possess the warrior’s sword so that he might cut himself to pieces in front of his men. Hilarious, right?

Oh yeah, Lempo also had a legion of moose. Fire-breathing moose.
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/finnish-mythology.php?deity=LEMPO

We probably should have known then that there was something wrong with those creatures, but between the PR department over at Whatsamatta U, and their constant presence on the label of many excellent beers, we’ve gone and dismissed the Moose (or European Elk, if you prefer) to be a gentle giant of sorts. A somewhat quirky, fey beast that aside from being a nuisance if you happen to live in Cicely, but otherwise no harm, no foul.

The truth is a little more sinister. Turns out that these enormous, steam chuffing, razor antlered beasts can be more than just quirky. They have a taste for alcohol, a penchant for violence, and about as much respect for human weaponry as Godzilla had for Japanese tanks.

The Misdemeanors: (Yeah, I could have called them "moosedemeanors" but when it comes right down to it, puns suck.)

1 - Drunk and disorderly

We’ve all been there at one time or another, you’ve had a few too many, and find yourself stuck in a tree, waiting for the fire department to get you down. On a dark and windy night (is there any other kind in Sweden?) farmer Par Johansson (I’m pretty sure that if you live in Sweden, your surname is either going to Johansson, Johansen or uhh…Chef) heard what he described as something “screaming with a very dark voice”. Naturally he went to check it out, because when farmers (read: real men) hear unearthly howls undulating from their creepy-ass orchards they don’t piss themselves and run screaming for the nearest safe-room, they investigate, damn it. And what did Farmer Johansson find for his troubles? A 1200 lb bull moose had decided to tell both Mother Nature and most of the laws of Newtonian Physics to go take a flying leap, and then it climbed into a fucking tree. Apparently, the moose had figured out that by eating fermented apples it could catch a pretty good buzz, and perhaps grew maudlin after listening to too many Opeth albums. No one knows how much time Per Johansson spent denying the existence of a beneficent and loving God once he laid eyes on the unholy sight of a drunken, gimlet-eyed, half-crucified moose screaming its lungs out while dangling from an apple tree, but at some point he did manage to come to his senses long enough to contact Swedish Emergency Moose Services – or whomever one might have to call in such a situation.

(Source)

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-08/world/sweden.drunken.moose_1_moose-apple-tree-johansson?_s=PM:WORLD

(Quote:"It was raining really bad. In the wind I heard something screaming with a very dark voice," Johansson told CNN. "At first I wondered if it was the crazy neighbors, but then I heard it again and went and checked. I saw something really big up in a tree in my neighbors' yard and it was a moose. It must have been drunk after eating fermented apples and as it was reaching out for more fruit it must have slipped and fallen into the tree.")

2 – Inciting a Riot

It’s not always easy to meet that special someone. The single life is difficult enough, and now that women have figured out that they can make a pretty fast buck simply by meeting desperate men, drugging them and then harvesting their organs on craigslist, dating has only gotten more complicated. At least in the wild, animals have it easy, and can pretty much mate with whomever they want, right? Well, if you’re a moose, then the answer is a resounding “Hell no, sucker!”
Much like the African Lion, moose are polygynous, which means that dominant males collect their own harem of females, who once pinned, are their bitches fo’ life. Sounds pretty good, except for the smaller males, who not only don’t get a chance to find a mate, but also get the added humiliation of having the females cry out “protest moans”. A protest moan is the moose equivalent of a rape-whistle, crossed with a snotty girl in a nightclub doing a massive eye-roll at the poor dweeb that just tried to pick her up. This mechanism impels the larger males to come on over and stomp the living shit out of the wimpier would-be suitors. Which is understandable in a certain light, given the evolutionary imperative is to find the most suitable (in mooseland, that means the biggest and strongest) mate. However, it turns out that the females are employing a Delilah-like cunning in some cases, and using their feminine charms to incite several males to engage in spectacular, bloody brawls. Winner gets the lady, loser goes home.

(Source)

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/science-loose-moose-mating-habits-female-moans
http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail9/story6229/female-moose-provoke-fights-between-male-competitors-by-moaning.html

(Quote:While it was already known that female moose make “protest moans” in response to courtship attempts, scientists now believe that females moan more when approached by smaller males in order to trigger aggression in larger male moose suitors and start fights, the BBC reports.)
No big deal for us human-folk, only that sometimes when a bull-moose decides to take up a life of crime, it can lead to some pretty ugly behavior, like…


The Felonies

3 – Home Invasion

Living in Northern Europe is bad enough. Half the year, you’re depressed and starved for vitamin D, and in some places during the summer you can fester in a state of near-schizophrenia as a result of the sun sometimes setting for less than an hour each day, and sometimes not at all. Oh yeah, and then there’s the danger of moose attacks. Yep, you read that right, apparently it’s a real thing there. Several years ago a man in Loftahammer Sweden was accused by murdering his wife, only to be cleared some time later when DNA evidence lifted from trace amounts of saliva on the woman’s body revealed that the attacker was indeed European Elk, AKA Moose DNA.
Side note: careful linguistic studies have shown the name Loftahammer to be the most bitchin’ name for a town, ever.
But that’s okay, you say, the woman was out in the forest when she was murdered. As long as you stay inside, you’re safe from moose attacks, right?
Only, you already know the answer to that, don’t you… It’s that icy feeling in your gut, the hairs that are prickling on the back of your neck.
Turns out that moose have nothing against wandering into town, or even raiding your house.

(Source)

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=1989
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19890526&id=1t0eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=09QEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4982,34597700523&id=2mcsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lM4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4261,3524789
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8384143.stm
HELSINKI, Finland – A 450lb moose wandered into a Helsinki suburb Thursday and destroyed a ground floor apartment after crashing through the bedroom window. Police shot and killed the yearling, which was bleeding to death from its cuts from jumping through the window of a three-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Pukinmaki, about 5 miles from the city center, newspapers said)
Now, on the bright side, this was a ground floor apartment so if you stay up high, you should be safe from the great thundering beasts, I mean it’s not like they can climb trees – oh, wait a minute… Damn.

4 - Looting

And it only seems to be getting worse. The animal kingdom seems to be growing less and less respectful of mankind’s lofty position on top of the food chain. While the bull moose (aside from the one troublesome little murder in Loftahammer) hasn’t exhibited a taste for human flesh per se, they have acquired a thirst for our delicious, delicious beer. This time, the break-in occurred in the Norwegian city of Kongsvinger, where a moose tore into the local market, destroying floral exhibits and sampling the baker’s goods before hearing the siren song of the liquor section, apparently no longer satisfied with chewing up fermented apples. Unlike the home invasion some 20 years ago in Pukinmaki, the aborted beer run took place in a crowded store in broad daylight.

(Source)

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/07/13/m
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/moose-on-the-loose-in-nor_n_648309.htmloose-mayhem-at-the-market/
(Customers at a grocery store in the southeastern Norwegian city of Kongsvinger got quite a surprise on Tuesday, when a moose calf marched into the market and made quite a mess.
The moose first made its way into the local shopping center called Sundehjørnet, making a stop at the flower shop and the bakery before barging into the Kiwi grocery store.
Moose are not an uncommon site in the area, but the young male ox’s shopping trip was entirely unexpected.
“I was very shaken when it was all over,” Inger Lise Moss of the flower shop told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).)

Our Feathered Friends in the Wild

First, a bit of parrot-related trivia:

The following is a list of average life-span of various exotic birds that are popularly bred for captivity.

Macaws 50 - 100 +

Cockatoos 40 - 60 +

Amazons 50 - 70 +

African Grays 50 - 60 +

Eclectus 65 - 85

Conure 12 - 30

Lories and Lorikeets 13 - 25

Caique 30

Senegal 50 years

Cockatiel 12 to 20

Parakeets 7 to 18 years

Lovebirds average 15 to 25

Canaries average 10 to 15 years

as you can see, one of the defining characteristics of these birds is that they live, a really, really long time - Provided that they don't meet their end either from assholes with pellet guns, or dimwitted cats with speech impediments. They're remarkably hardy creatures, and can flourish in just about any climate. I've also enclosed a map (the red zone) illustrating suitable habitats for the above listed birds (I know, I know, just trust me I'm going somewhere with this).

And finally, I went over to Craigslist to see what I could find over there.. I chose Pensacola, Florida, at random, and I found four birds for sale: 1 African Gray, 2 Cockatoos, and a "Bluw Bird of Paridice" which I'm thinking is either an illiterate tweaker looking to sell their macaw, or they were attempting to book a transvestite from the Adult Services Page and got mixed up somehow.

So what, you ask? What's the point of all of this rambling about exotic birds. I say to you: evolution, and in this case, a truly awesome form of evolution is taking place. You see the only thing idiots enjoy more than buying really expensive birds that they cannot take care of and eventually just set free, is buying really expensive birds that they can't take care of...

...Then teaching them a bunch of really foul language...

...And then setting the birds free again. What's making this even better, is that studies have shown that the foul mouthed birds released from captivity are now teaching their wild brethren all sorts of obscenities and racial epithets to be called out all over the world. So you could be hiking somewhere in the wilds of Borneo someday, when all of a sudden a 4 foot long Macaw starts screeching F-bombs at you, only to have a myriad of birds begin to repeat the call, all across the rain forest.

Think this sort of thing sounds impossible? Heh - it's already begun,

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/Parrots-and-other-wild-birds-able-to-talk.htm

The Origin of the Bat

Sunday evening I took the kids to go see The Dark Knight Rises, but only after spending the afternoon trying to convince them that the movie had been sold out for the day, and that we were in fact, headed out to go watch Tyler Perry's newest Madea movie. It was funny, but when the younger kids started to cry I only kept the charade up for like fifteen more minutes.

One of life's greatest pleasures is having kids, raising them and providing for them, and occasionally really screwing with them. To be perfectly fair, once a year, my own parents used to co-conspire with one of my uncles (my favorite uncle, Robert) to pull variations of a prank involving locking me and my cousins in the basement level of this sprawling 200 year-old manor owned by my great aunt Abbey, and then strategically placing shredded clothes covered with fake blood, large soup bones festooned with strips of meat, and in one case not long after my 11th birthday, a large bloody axe that had been buried into a sheet of drywall, with more blood splattered in a corona pattern around the point of impact. I'm seriously not making that shit up, they used to do that, and I love them for it, all of them, so very very much.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but my .point was that the kids got to see the Batman movie, and all was forgiven. My thoughts on the movie...



...Are completely irrelevant. I dug it, I considered it money well spent, I'll watch it again soon. If you need more of an endorsement than that, either you're not that much of a fan of the franchise or perhaps you're one of those types that pay really close attention to minutiae, and you'll probably walk out of this unhappy, as you do for so many, many things. I'm going to shut up about TDKR now, before I piss off everybody, and focus on what I'd originally wanted to write about this week, and that was an attempt to give the original on-screen Batman his due.

No, I meant the original Batman, lets try this again...

Well, we're getting close, but not quite there yet. The original Batman serials came out in 1943, and the character of Bruce Wayne was played by a guy named Lewis Wilson, the unsung hero of the Batman Film Legacy.

Now, to be perfectly fair, while the cape and cowl get-up depicted in the original series could perhaps be best described as "slightly adorable," these early serials were relatively straightforward for their time.

In the original series, Batman was more government contractor than vigilante, and his primary task was to locate, close with, and destroy a nefarious mad scientist by the name of Dr Daka.

Not exactly as terror-inducing as Bane or The Joker, but remember who we were sending up against him

Yeah, so at least they were an even match on paper. As you can see, Robin was also in the earliest film version, as was Alfred. Interestingly enough, there was no Batmobile. Instead, Alfred usually chauffeured the dynamic duo to the scene of the crime in a black Cadillac. We can only hope he dropped them off a block or so away, quiet-like, so they could, you know, make like a dramatic entrance or something.

So, if you're interested in checking all this out, here's a link to the original Batman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRgfipzWmo0

It ain't bad, there's like mad scientists, mind-control rays, zombies, casual racism (the serials came out right after Pearl Harbor, so there were a couple of references to the "Yellow Peril" - nothing we wouldn't forgive Walt Kowalski for, and he didn't even have a costume), and a crocodile pit. Spoiler alert: somebody does fall into the crocodile pit, and is naturally therefore eaten by the aforementioned crocodiles.

Anyway, that's all for now. Happy Sunday, Will

William Castle, Part II

Like a lot of people, I believe that the kid you started out in life as doesn’t ever really go away. He or she might have a greater or lesser degree of influence on the decisions that you make later in life, anywhere from trusted consultant to helpless spectator. I also believe that the happier people in life, and in many cases the most successful, are the ones with inner children holding the former position rather than the latter. I believe that the happiest people are the ones who keep their covenants with their inner children; they honor their bargains and live true to those dreams.

When William Castle was 13 years old, he went to see Bela Lugosi perform Dracula live on Broadway. He was transfixed by the performance and begged/borrowed/scrounged additional ticket monies to watch the play again, and again, and again for two straight weeks. After seeing the play a dozen or so times, somehow young Castle was able to bluff his way backstage and meet Lugosi. The two of them – bright eyed youngster and Master Thespian – talked for the better part of the afternoon well into evening about acting and directing and the creative process. Castle’s remarkable insight and charm enthralled Lugosi and the two of them struck an unlikely friendship that would lead to Castle’s first job in show business, as the assistant stage manager for the touring production of Dracula.

Filmography, Continued:

Mr Sardonicus (1961) – It’s perhaps somewhat telling that while this is perhaps one of Castle’s greatest films, as promotional gimmicks went, it was one of his more restrained efforts.

That’s perhaps because instead of humiliating the audience, dropping fake dead bodies on them or zapping them with government surplus joy-buzzers, Castle decided to torture his cast for a change. Case in point, one Guy Rolfe – he of the titular role – who was forced to sit through an agonizing series of facial prostheses so uncomfortable he was only able to wear them for up to an hour at a time.

The story is a good one, one of those 18th century period pieces made popular by Roger Corman, who cranked out lurid reimaginings of Edgar Allen Poe’s masterpieces starring Castle’s one-time go-to, Vincent Price. In fact, the role of Sardonicus may well have suited Price, if not for the terrible facial mauling that froze Rolfe’s face into such an excruciating state that he had trouble sleeping at night.

Sardonicus starts out the story as Marek Toleslawski, a humble farmer who finds out his father has won a local lottery and then dies in his sleep, just like that dumbass Alanis Morisette tune. Anyway, Marek decides to dig up his father’s grave to retrieve the winning ticket (because, you know, some people actually do try to take it with them), only the sight of his dead father’s face sends Marek into a fit of paroxysms that culminate with his face actually freezing into the horrible rictus pictured above. While he manages to retrieve the ticket, the ol’ missus can’t stand the sight of him anymore and throws herself off a cliff or something. Marek transforms into an Evil Baron, renaming himself Sardonicus, and then spends the rest of his life doing Evil Baron deeds like killing the doctors who fail to cure him and torturing people with leeches and stuff.

The hero of this tale is one Dr Cargrave, whose former lover Maude is now the Baron’s wife. He comes to the Castle Sardonicus to attempt to cure the Baron, and Mayhem ensues.

William Castle’s gimmick with this film involved something called a “Punishment Poll,” which occurred roughly 3 minutes before the film’s conclusion. The film actually stops, and cuts to William Castle in the director’s chair, smoking his trademark big-ass cigar and grinning like an alligator at the audience. He informs you, the viewer, that it’s up to you whether or not Sardonicus should die for his offenses, or be allowed to live out the rest of his life. Castle makes no bones about which way he thinks the film should end, and gleefully eggs anybody viewing the film to choose punishment. Several versions of this break were filmed, one for theaters in which glow in the dark cards with a picture of a hand sticking out its thumb (thumbs up: he lives, thumbs down: well, you’ve seen Gladiator), the other was shot for drive-ins, with the instructions for voting based on flashing the headlights once or twice.

Obviously, nobody wanted to see Sardonicus not die, and so in every instance the “Punishment” ending was chosen. The funny thing about the promotion is that to this day, no alternate ending to the movie has ever been located, and even the actors don’t remember ever shooting scenes in which Sardonicus lived.

(1962 – 1964)

Over the next couple of years, William Castle cooled off on the promotional gimmicks. He made several notable films, branching out into comedy with the lighthearted espionage spoofs Zots!

and 13 Frightened Girls!

His next foray into horror would be in 1963, when Castle shot a semi-comedic remake of the 1932 Boris Karloff vehicle The Old Dark House. But for all of these films, Castle chose to forgo his usual style of outrageous gimmickry, with the exception of issuing plastic replica coins to the Zotz! audiences.

Strait-Jacket (1964)

For his next film, Castle was able to snag none other than Academy Award winner Joan Crawford, fresh off of her stellar portrayal of Blanche Hudson in the chilling masterpiece, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? While Castle originally planned on eschewing once again any sort of promotional gimmicks for this more somber film, he found he could not restrain himself and at the last minute, ordered thousands of cardboard axes to be made up and distributed to audience members for opening night.

Strait-Jacket is a slightly more somber effort than Castle’s earlier films, a surprisingly effective psychological thriller (largely due to Crawford’s performance) about an older woman who is released to the custody of her family some 20 years after chopping her husband into hamburger meat with a large axe. Castle’s sense of playfulness is still evident in many instances, most notably in the closing frame of the film in which the Columbia Pictures Torchbearer is shown decapitated, with her flame snuffed out.

Overall the film was fairly successful and well-received, and led to William Castle collaborating with the Oscar-winning actress a second time, the following year.

I Saw What You Did (1965)

This is one of the final films in which Castle attempted one of his signature promotional efforts, in this case distributing fake plastic phones to the audience. For whatever reason the phone companies had a problem with the idea and threatened to sue if Castle went through with this. Another plan was for something called a "fright row", where viewers were strapped into their seats for the duration of the film, although this idea was soon abandoned as well. The film is about a couple of teenage girls who amuse themselves by prank calling random strangers and whispering “I saw what you did, I know who you are,” and then hanging up in a fit of giggles. As luck would have it, one night they run afoul of an actual psychotic killer, mere minutes after he’s quite brutally dispatched his loving wife in a violent stabbing which manages to pay homage to Psycho while at the same time doing something fairly fresh and original. I won’t actually give away how the scene plays out, because if you ever get a chance to see this movie the opening frames will give you quite a jump. Joan Crawford gives another solid performance although it seems her whole purpose in the film seems to simply be Joan Crawford.

(1966 – 1967) Over the next two years, William Castle completed a triptych of the most bizarre comedic offerings this side of Robert Rankin.

Let’s Kill Uncle (1966) is about a couple of annoying orphans, their scheming homicidal uncle, and a bunch of sharks.

The Spirit Is Willing (1967) is a haunted house comedy based on Nathaniel Benchley’s not-funny-at-all-and-actually-kinda-scary novel The Visitors.

The Busy Body (1967) is a… Well it’s got gangsters and a mix-up involving a dead body and some other stuff. Richard Pryor’s in it, so there’s that, but it’s just an odd film overall.

But while Castle worked on these films, he was sitting on a powder keg, and he knew it. That powder keg was the rights to a novel by an up and coming writer by the name of Ira Levin; a script that would go on to be one of the most influential horror movies ever made, and the subject of the third and final entry on William Castle…

…Coming Soon!

8:30 on a Sunday Morning

Despite my predilection for fermented hops and barley and sour mash I'm one of those people who tend to bounce right out of bed most days and start doing stuff just as soon as ol' Mr Sun comes peeking up over the Eastern Horizon. I've been told by many people that this is one of my more irritating qualities. Occasionally they throw things.

Seeing as how the rest of my family is still out of town, this morning I was kinda bored. I therefore found it fortuitous, if not downright providential (no pun intended) when my doorbell rang. I sprang to the foyer like fucking Batman (the description is apt, I say, if for no other reason than I was still wearing my Batman underwear at the time, and little else) and opened the door to find two well-intentioned young folks blinking at me like moles.

The chick looked sorta like she crawled out of a Lane Bryant catalog from the mid-1970's and the guy was a dead ringer for Buster Bluth from Arrested Development - remember him?

Yup, that's the one.

Anyway, neither of them are saying anything for a full couple of seconds and the whole situation is starting to get weird, so I start in with a hale and hearty "Good Morrow!" and a courtly bow, which spills a little of the beer I was drinking on their shoes. They step back a bit.

"Really sorry about that," I say. "Hang on a second, let me get you guys a beer. Do you want to come in?"

"No thank you," says Buster. "Actually we're here to talk to you about the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

"Love that guy," I say. "So are you guys Mormons?"

"No, we're," he says, but I cut him off. It's not out of rudeness or anything, it's just that the house has been abnormally empty for a few days and I'm bored.

"My family's in Utah," I say. "I came back early for work but it was pretty awesome up there. The beer was a little watered down but if you drank like 8 or 10 of them it did the trick. Anyway, I thought the place was gonna be like, Mormon Central but I didn't hardly see anybody riding around on bikes or anything. Hey - where's your bikes? Did somebody steal your bikes - That's fucked up, man. This is usually a good neighborhood, and stealing bikes from Mormons is about as low as you can get."

Lane Bryant speaks up. "Sir, we're not Mormons."

"Well, that's a shame. The Mormons are always good for a couple of chores. Hell, last time they were here they went ahead and fixed my back gate - I was in the middle of screwing a new latch into the frame, on account of my dogs got a little rambunctious... Hey, you wanna see my dogs?"

Buster puts his hands up, a little defensively in my opinion and says "We don't do chores, sir."

I grunt and take a swig of my beer. "I guess that's alright. I'll go get you guys those beers anyhow." Ignoring their protests, on account of I'm always a good host and people will always tell you they don't want a drink or a snack or whatever the first time you offer them one, I turn from the front door. It's at this point that my dogs decide to burst from their upstairs perch and greet our visitors.

I have two pits that I adopted from rescue shelters. One of them is as deaf as a stone and the other one has severe emotional issues, but they're still totally fucking awesome. Their names are Spanky and Gizmo. Here's an actual picture of them playing around.

Now, while I agree they can look a little rough around the edges at times, there really was no need for all the high pitched screaming from Buster - I swear to God, they didn't do much more than circle him a couple of times and maybe try to give paw. In my opinion, if you're going to go knocking on stranger's doors all day you should be a dog person, too. Anyway, I shoo my dogs back inside and crack open two more beers for Buster and Lane Bryant, as I've come to think of them, and a third for myself.

"Sir," says Lane, "We don't drink."

"Oh right," I say. "Because of the whole Mormon thing."

"We're not Mormons!"

"Okay, whatever man. There's no need to get all peevish about your, like, nomenclature or whatever, I got it. But dig, these aren't even like normal beers. It's called a Summer Shandy - they're like half beer, half lemonade. So it's like, totally cool or whatever."

"That does sound good," says Buster. Lane shoots him a look that would have frosted the top layer of my blood if I was on the receiving end of it, and he adds quickly, "But I better not."

"That's alright, I can put them back in the fridge for later." As I run back into the kitchen I hear Lane Bryant calling out something about maybe I should put some pants on, but I don't catch the whole thing so maybe I didn't hear her right, and besides all of my pants are upstairs.

As I come back outside, still in my underwear, Lane Bryant has a copy of The Watchtower in her hand and she's trying to thrust it into my chest as if we're running a West Coast Offense fake pass. I grunt from the blow and unfold it.

"So you guys are Jehovah's Witnesses? Man, that's far out. Do you know Prince?"

"I'm sorry?" says Buster.

"Come on, man" I say "Prince! You know, of like, the Revolution and shit. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to curse in front of a lady or anything, it's just that Prince was like the greatest R&B funk artist of our generation. I mean I mostly listen to like, metal and stuff, but Prince is still the fucking coolest. Damn, I'm sorry - and Damn! I did it again. Have you guys ever seen him or anything? Wait!!! Can you get me his autograph?!! Maybe just the little symbol-doodle???!!!"

(How badass would it be to have one of these scrawled across a copy of the Watchtower, by the Man himself?)



At this point Lane is dragging Buster away from my door and snarling over her shoulder at me: "Just read the literature!" as Buster is doing that guy thing where you apologize with your eyes about your girl because you don't want to say anything because... Later, she'll have a thing or two to say to you about that shit.

Poor Buster. He looked like he would have stuck around for a bit, maybe had a beer or two. Maybe some other time.