The Theme to Cannibal Holocaust

Last post, I wrote that even though Cannibal Holocaust was banned, I didn't feel like going back and watching Cannibal Holocaust for the third time in recent years to do a full review. However, it will be a whole year until Human Centipede 3 comes out and probably a week and a half until my copy of The Burning Moon comes in the mail. I will rather than watching the entirety of Cannibal Holocaust again address one aspect of the film as an angle in. That angle will be the highly unusual theme music that was used for the film. I've heard people say that whoever chose that soundtrack for the film should have been fired. I disagree. I think it is a highly effective soundtrack by Riz Ortolani. This is a score to a film about total annihilation made illegal in many countries. The theme has an early synthesizer on it, but is really a highly orchestrated piece of 70's easy listening. However, in the film it comes off as an ironic foreshadowing of total annihilation. It's extremely distinctive. Parts of the film do use incidental music of a more conventional horror film nature. But it is really the theme that evokes true dread, true annihilation, mass death. It is truly sick and truly ominous. It's the most perverse aspect of the film, the theme music signaling perhaps through irony rape, mass death and cannibalism.

Coming Soon, Olaf Ittenbach's The Burning Moon!

Burning Moon is a German "film" (it was shoot on video) released made in 1992 by Olaf Ittenbach in Germany in 1992 and originally released on VHS in 1997. It has apparently been banned in Germany for roughly 20 years. It so happens that it is being released in the United States by Severin films next week and it so happened that I have pre-ordered a copy. From YouTube clips and the fact it was banned It was clear that this is a film that I could not resist the opportunity to review. Along with the recent bans on films like the Bunny Game, A Serbian Film, and Human Centipede 2, which I've written on here and on the Jerry Magoo webpage, there are a number of older European horror films that were banned such as Cannibal Holocaust and Nekromantiks. Cannibal Holocaust is a good film but I've seen it twice in recent years and I don't feel like sitting through it again. Nerkomantks Ive seen I believe twice in college, I don't recall it being an especially good film. I wouldn't say I'm offended by or that it should be illegal but it's really gross and I don't feel like watching it again, which I would have to do in order to give it a fair critique. The Burning Moon I'd never even heard of, but once it came up, I knew this was a film that had to be examined quite closely especially. I can guarantee to bring you a review as soon as the DVD arrives.

Ted Bundy's Final Interview and the Detective Magazines he Mentions in it...

I've been sort of curious about this detail for a while, and since it's the kind of excrement that gets on the text blog, I'm going to go ahead with documenting it. The final interview with world famous serial killer Ted Bundy was conducted by Evangelical figure James Dobson (Bundy found Christ in prison). The content of the interview largely concerns his addiction to pornography and the ways in which he was influenced by pornography. He made enigmatic reference to Detective Magazines and I was somewhat curious about what he was talking about. Apparently, it was this decrepit fecal matter that Bundy got off on- Images of women bound and/or gaged for purposes of rape, in some cases murder, that presumably went along with some sort of true crime or pulp crime writing type material. I suppose that answers my curiosity. I wouldn't say that it surprises me at all. It is unclear whether of not this was the causality of his sickness or merely symptomatic of it. My guess is that it is actually more so a mere symptom rather than a cause. I don't see the fascination with these detective magazine covers. Too me, these are just some dirty pictures. I'll move on to reading up on something else tomorrow, surely. Bundy seemed to feel it was an important factor, although at points in the Dobson interview he seemed to contradict himself by saying he did not blame pornography for his crimes. I've decided to include some of these images here along with the Dobson/Bundy interview.

Raped and Impregnated by a Monster Back in the 80's Part 5: Redneck Zombies

Monster impregnation by means of rape was used as a plot device in so many low budget 80's horror films, that I've done 5 blogs on the subject. It is also the case that these have been generally among the more successful blogs I've done in terms of hits, in so far as there would appear to be a lot of people out there looking for pornographic images of women being raped such as we would find in Japanese tentacle hentai, the genre of Japanese animated pornography focusing on females begin raped by creatures with tentacles. If someone wants to watch the "film" (it was shot on video) Redneck Monsters for that reason alone they are likely to be disappointed. It's only at the end that a character is raped by one of the redneck zombies, and the radioactive fetus is shown glowing, but we never witness a monster birth in this film as we do in films like Inseminoid. This is to say that it was only ever used as a minor plot device in the film, a gag at the end. Redneck Zombies is more likely to appeal to fans of gore, and fans of horror films that are intentionally stupid for the sake of laughs. Giving the film plot synopsis is attributing the film with more analysis than it deserves or even wants. A military officer accidentally looses a barrel of toxic nuclear waste, it ends up in the "redneck" characters moonshine. These "rednecks" are purely regional stereotypes of the white rural underclass. They turn into zombies. There's a couple of campers that get slaughtered. Probably the funniest bit is this part in which the "black guy" character amidst the campers starts tripping on some LSD he took earlier without telling anyone and is expected to perform an autopsy. This probably the highlight of the entire film.

Academic Hackery: Occupy, The New Atheism, Speculative Realism

Occupy I have already discussed on this blog a lot, and would like to save discussion of for my Blog talk radio show WheatonLeaks where discussion of it would actually have an audience. I don't like Occupy at all, I don't care for David Greaber. I'm not a leftist at all, but rather a member of the Libertarian Party and a proud gun owner. David Greaber is an annoying pedant, and his followers have taken up the most bureaucratic and pointless cause of late, which is that they protested the Whitney Biennial in New York. It is extremely telling, as I have noted, that the F.B.I is currently more concerned with the Sovereign Citizens movement than with Occupy. Occupy is a real non-revolution in a lot of ways. I discussed the New Atheism yesterday on here yesterday. As I've noted, I hate the New Atheism. They are angry, bigoted, nasty people who do not simply disbelieve in the existence of God, but hate people who do believing in God with a deep rooted fanaticism. I've been continuing to see it argued and argued well, by the Christian analytic philosopher William Lane Craig as well as reviewers in mainstream publications like Harper's, that New Atheists like Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens are poor philosophers. The best thing about the New Atheists is watching William Lane Craig take these guys on, which is a lot of fun. Of course William Lane Craig is absolutely right, the New Atheism is an ugly excuse for "thought". Then there's also speculative realism. I could see some of the writing that I do lumped in with this movement in a way, but this would be deeply deceptive. Some of them have a thing for writing on the black metal phenomenon like I do, but I think that's where the similarities end. I've tried to look into speculative realism, it doesn't really work for me or interest me that much. Probably even William Lane Craig actually does a lot of what the speculative realists are trying to do with a greater degree of success. That's my hunch.

William Lane Craig and the New Atheism

In my view, the New Atheist movement espoused and developed by people like the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins is an ugly, bigoted, hateful movement. I just kicked a New Atheist off my Facebook page for attacking the Mormon faith constantly, being as that I live in a city which is something like 15-20% Mormon. What I didn't understand about the New Atheist movement is that it is not just that they don't believe in God it is that they hate the belief in God and by extension hate religious people. Our military is filled with Evangelicals, our Federal Bureau of Investigation is filled with Mormons. In fact, the F.B.I was once subject to a discrimination lawsuit due to the dominance of Mormons within it. Regardless of what Evangelicals in the U.S. military or Mormons in law enforcement believe or don't believe, I feel it is irrational to hate such individuals or to disrespect such individuals. They New Atheists are not like that. These are obsessive, angry, bitter individuals driven by an obsessive need to feel that they are smarter. A New Atheist is smarter than a large chunk of the F.B.I. because they agree with Christopher Hitchens? I find that hard to swallow. I was deeply surprised to see where some of their more vocal intellectual opponents came out of. I was not in college especially a fan of anglo-american "analytical" philosophy, associating it with an overly rational, cold, logistical world view which favored the disciplines of math and science. I've been very much wrong in my assumptions. Analytical philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote book called "Why I am Not a Christian" many years ago. However, a lot of these analytical philosophy folks are now into Christian theology. One such figure, William Lane Craig, is into debating the New Atheists. He maintains that they are inept and juvenile philosophers. Where I can say with the most sincerity that I agree with William Lane Craig is the assertion that these New Atheists are not the intellectual elite that they might have us believe. Again, I hardly believe some undergraduate philosophy major is smarter than a good chunk of F.B.I agents that ascribe to the Mormon faith. That's a fairly absurd thing to believe, and I just don't buy it. For those who will attack William Lane Craig, it is worth my noting that the review of Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion was utterly banned by a non-Evangelical author in the mainstream publication Harper's, the author also claiming that it was juvenile thought.

This Week In the Absurd: School Shooting and the Occupy Protests of The Whitney Biennial

There was another school shooting this week in Ohio. One T.J. Lane in Chardon Ohio let out ten shoots with a .22 caliber handgun and killed three fellow students. The shooting probably means that we're going to get another round of gun control hysteria in the media. I'm a NRA Certified Firearms Instructor and a registered member of the Libertarian Party of Nevada, so of course I hold the contrary opinion. This time around, I saw a statistic today about this particular shooting that made my jaw drop, however. This is CBS news quoting the U.S. Secret Service. This is one of the most absurd statistics I've ever read. "According to statistics from the U.S. Secret Service, which started compiling data on school shootings after the attack at Columbine High School in 1999, at least one other person had some prior knowledge of an attacker's plan in 81 percent of incidents. In 59 percent of incidents, more than one other person had some prior knowledge."- I generally see the number of American homes with guns in them cited at about 35%, including, of course, my own. The number of people who commit violent crimes is obviously minute in comparison. The above static would suggest that the problem with school shootings is something else. That is to say, most of the time with school shootings at least one person and more than half of the time more than one person knows that the attacker plans to attack before hand. Most of these attacks transpire because people in our society know about mentally disturbed and dangerous individuals, don't report them and do absolutely nothing about it. It's right up there with the parole officers who never checked the sheds in Phillip Garrido's backyard. You can't really blame guns for that. A gigantic mass shooting accured recently in Norway, which has much stricter gun laws than the U.S. does. This school shooting won't cause any changes to U.S gun laws anyway. Moving along to matters equally stupid, another news item this week struck me as especially absurd. This is a strange one involving a faction of Occupy Wall St called Arts and Labour protesting of all things the Whitney Biennial. Quoting Arts and Labour- "We object to the biennial in its current form because it upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers. The biennial perpetuates the myth that art functions like other professional careers and that selection and participation in the exhibition, for which artists themselves are not compensated, will secure a sustainable vocation. This fallacy encourages many young artists to incur debt from which they will never be free and supports a culture industry and financial and cultural institutions that profit from their labors and financial servitude." I've heard Occupy leader David Greaber admit that many to he members of Occupy got out of liberal arts schools and couldn't find jobs or pay off their college debts. It Kind of seems like OWS are the victims less of Wall St. and more of the liberal arts system, doesn't it? I think the Arts and Labour protest of the Whitney bespeaks to that. These are people that thought having something like a degree in something like film or gender studies would give them financial stability, and it didn't, which would help to explain why they are deeply concerned with the labour rights of artists. The reasoning seems to be "we got out of college and have no jobs...but we can spout leftist dogma...which has no market value... so the problem is the market...not the liberal arts school system…". I think there's a flaw in that reasoning. I also don't think protesting the Whitney Biennial is going to change a whole lot. I don't even know why they care. Are they angry because they're not featured in the Whitney Biennial? Exactly how bureaucratic does these Occupy people intend to become? Does anybody really want a board of Arts and Labour composed of Occupy members looking over art exhibitions to determine if they adhere to party line? Certainly one advantage of the number of guns in the United States is that it would make very difficult for a movement like Occupy to gain real power in this country. Not only do 35% of American homes have guns in them, gun owners in the United States tend to belong to demographics who would not submit easily to the rule of leftist extremists- conservatives, libertarians, Mormons and Evangelicals, military. In the case of Occupy, I'm not losing sleep over that happening. I don't even think they're going to be able to effect the Whitney Biennial.