2003 May 22

Pollen and zombies

Allergy season has been utterly kicking my ass this year -- you know it's bad when you take the antihistamines before you go to bed and *still* wake thrashing at 3 am with eyes that feel like they're about to explode. This has happened twice this week. I think the pollen spores are drilling their way into my brain through my tear ducts, turning me into a deranged zombie recruit for the evil army of the Plant Men.

Speaking of zombie armies, I watched "Return of the Living Dead" the other night -- not a sequel, but a mid-80s knockoff 'starring' Clu Gulager. Heh. Rawk, dude. I was especially taken with their clever solution to the eternal "how are we going to get one of these chicks out of her bra?" question. No problem! Just make her a psycho riot-grrl and let her decide to strip down in some combination beer-blast/striptease/weird Goddess-worshipping Beltane ritual and tapdance naked on a crypt right before the acid zombie-animating thundershower forces everyone to flee to save their lives, or at least their hairdos. (Oh, it's a hard rain that's going to fall.) Then she's forced to spend the rest of the movie wearing nothing but a bandanna and a torn jacket: it's genius! It's a wonder more movies haven't done it this way.

Meanwhile, speaking of Dan O'Bannon movies, James Lileks has an even better review of "Lifeforce":

I never quite figured out what the movie was about, only that the final apocalyptic scene was like nothing I'd seen. And it had spaceships, too. I'd never caught the entire movie, so when I saw it at the video store this weekend I thought hey, this should be good!

Then the credits start to roll, and you see the words "Based on the books 'The Space Vampires'" and you think *perhaps I have overmisunderestimated this one*. The movie was 'Lifeforce,' and I have a crick in my neck from ducking the chunks it blew. Everybody in the movie was miscast, except for the woman who spent the entire film walking around naked(*), and for Patrick Stewart. You can't miscast him, because he always plays Patrick Stewart. The credits should just be honest, and say:

Prof. Patrick Stewart . . . Patrick Stewart

It goes on from there.

(*) Sounds like Dan O'Bannon is not above reusing a plot device or two.

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