(BP)

I didn’t think it was slow, but as a 90s kid I think I tend to mentally frame lucha or junior heavyweight stuff on how much I would’ve lost it seeing it as a random match thrown on an episode of Nitro. This would’ve killed on Nitro.

From a cursory read on Wikipedia, I got the sense that the production of Manhattan Baby broke Fulci’s spirit and he became disillusioned with filmmaking. The budget was halved during shooting and he never worked with the producer, whom he’d often collaborated with, again. I tried to watch New York Ripper again last year, and it was too grotesque and miserable for me. I definitely don’t have the same tolerance for that level of sleaze and violence that I did in my early 20s when I first saw it. It’s remarkable that the same person who made that directed Don’t Torture a Duckling, which is the most empathetic and earnest giallo I’ve seen. Whenever New York Ripper comes up I must mention the season 6 giallo episode of Smallville where Lana is being stalked. At this point the show was routinely doing filler episodes based loosely on movies (there’s a zombie episode around then too) and the stalker is doing the Donald Duck voice when he calls her. It’s unreal.

The landmark decision in Rowboat v. Stream clearly established that life is but a dream, hence this is a dream match.

I watched Manhattan Baby today because it’s one of Fulci’s I haven’t seen. It’s a neat curio because he leaves the corn syrup at home for the bulk of the picture and focuses on making a mostly bloodless occult suspense thriller, but it’s incomprehensible and narratively unmoored even for a Fulci movie. At the same time, he’s doing some great stuff with the camera and it’s cut together well, plus there’s some nifty location shooting in Egypt and New York. It’s a bad movie, but watching him build atmosphere out of such a rickety screenplay is fun. It also has the little boy from House by the Cemetery, and that little creep can make anything eerie.

I was unimpressed by the resolution of the mystery, but Only Murders is still very funny, and I thought the setup for next season was fantastic.

In a better world, Damon Wayans would currently be promoting Blankman Beyond, the reboot follow-up to the divisive Blankman IV: The Quest for Sheets.

TCM: The Next Generation introducing the concept that the family is acting as low-level agents for some kind of Elitist Satanic Cult was certainly a choice. It was too late for the 80s satanic panic and way too early for Pizzagate, so I’m not sure what they were even doing. I guess Halloween had gotten into that around the same time too with the Cult of Thorn. Debra McMichael is also inexplicably in it as a police officer for thirty seconds.

Big Al was just a friend of Tank’s, but he mistakenly got a rep for being his corner man because Tank let him walk out with him for his fights. I think he knew as much about MMA as he did about pro wrestling.

I think the best thing they did with The Crow property after the first movie was the tv show, Stairway to Heaven. I’m a sucker for 90s syndicated garbage, and I liked that his powers and appearance kind of worked like The Incredible Hulk. Plus, Mark Dacascos was the ideal discount Eric Draven.

It’ll never make sense to me that he was in his mid 30s when he filmed the first Rocky. Anyway, here he is being badass on The Sopranos (NSFW.)

Toni Storm is a better actress than Mrs. Wayne, but they both deserve bath bombs, perfumes, and pearl necklaces…

Creepshow season 4 is solid, maybe the most consistent. A couple of the stories felt like they could’ve been on Are You Afraid of the Dark, which isn’t really a complaint. There were also plenty of EC-inspired darkly cynical comeuppances. I caught most of Leatherface (2017) the other day. It wasn’t awful (or good), but it’s weirdly a lot closer in tone to Corman’s 70s Depression-era crime dramas than any Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor are both very good in it.

I miss Emi on Dark and all of those awesome chaotic 6-woman tags. I miss Dark.

Fletcher and Nick Wayne teamed together doing Fortnite dances on their opponents after beatdowns and cutting promos you can only understand if you’re chronically on Tik Tok would be so sick. Gimme that intergenerational resentment heat!

Dustin cut a pre-tape promo about the battle royale on Collision. That was the only other one I saw, so they’ll probably be the final two.

TKO has seemingly been holding the knives out towards Vince the entire time. They referred to him as a liability in filings. I’m pretty certain he’s the only major stockholder whose shares were set up in a manner where he can just sell and walk away immediately. Maybe he was optimistic about maintaining some creative input, but I think his primary focus for the past couple of years has been becoming wealthy enough to insulate himself from ever being held accountable for anything he’s ever done. I get taking some joy in this stuff, but the real stake in the heart was last year when the WSJ story broke. That’s when things changed irrevocably and his options became much narrower.

Fletcher needed a win between the Danielson and Omega matches. It would’ve made more sense for him to be paired up with Daniels though.

My armchair booking theory is that Starks and Bill join Christian and Sons in a stable for the fall/winter. Once Cope wins the blowoff with Christian, Starks and the rest of the group Conchairto Christian out of the group and Starks assumes control, bringing to fruition Cope’s warning to Christian in the first promo. Christian returns to save Cope during a Starks beat down, and we get the reunited E&C chasing Starks and Bill for the tag titles.

Never Hike Alone 2 was released today, and it’s the best fan film I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how I’d rank it among the Friday films, but it’s legit enough that I’d consider the question in franchise conversations going forward.

It doesn’t get much better than the main event, but the ending fell flat for me. I knew there’d be a run-in, but I really want Starks and Danielson to move on from each other.

I just finished V/H/S 85. These got so much better when they stopped bothering with the wraparound stories. There really aren’t any bad segments here, although I think the overall length of the film kind of drags it down a bit. Shudder should just make it a series, but my stopping to do chores between every couple of segments is the same difference I suppose. We watched the first episode of the Disney Plus Goosebumps series. They totally Riverdaled it, which is fine. I knew it would be a more mature interpretation, but it’s a lot closer in tone to the Netflix Fear Street movies than any Goosebumps IP that’s come before. The kids like the movies and the old shows (my son’s a huge Slappy fan), but this took more parental guidance than I was expecting.

The last two pages reminded me of when Hunico used to beat the shit out of everyone backstage in WWE. That was pretty neat.

Creepshow season 4 dropped today on Shudder. I’ve watched an episode and a half, and it’s great so far. The first segment in episode one is a bit more thoughtful and heartfelt than a typical Creepshow story, but it’s very good.

The YouTube clip I saw showed him forcing rotten eggs down a woman’s throat. The clientele seemed to be people into getting abused. Lots of ick. As far as the carny part, he supposedly offers a large cash prize for completing the challenges. No one has, but there are stories of hardcore former military types going in and getting kicked out before finishing when the guy realized he wasn’t going to break them.

Hasenpeffer Incorporated was a CIA cutout.