Novak

Coming To A Screen Near You

Yes, the truth must be told.... somehow. Dig, if you will, the picture: an elderly gent sits in warm chair, cold drink beside him, flipping channels. He finds an old movie, and it is remotely interesting. It's a Western, say.... nothing spectacular or special. No big stars. Starring someone like John Payne, for instance, or someone like him. The gunfighter wrestles the bad man to the ground. Indian aims his Winchester with deliberate stillness. The Mexican comic-relief is drunk again as gringos chuckle knowingly. The lawman's horse outsmarts the incredulous Negro stablehand. The blonde virgin swoons into the hero's fatherly embrace. The elderly gent gently laughs as he sips his cold gin.

Such are the simple and insidious joys of Fascist Cinema, your North American version. Not your sturm und drang Triumph of the Will Facsism, shiny, crisp, black, and aesthesticized like a campy drag ball. It's a bit homelier than that Hitler shit, not so skull and crossbones and hell-bent for leather. It's Fascism, if not with a human face, then one you wouldn't mind having a beer with. Fascism you can shoot the shit with, trade recipes and baseball cards with. Fascism that will buy you drinks and nod approvingly as you eye the comely young lady by the billiards table. Fascism that laughs at your stupid racist jokes.

It's a friendly kind of cinema, but not one that you would generally want to be friends with, if you catch my drift. New Fascist Cinema is not really new, and not outwardly fascist either. Lots of happy endings in New Fascist Cinema. Lots of crowd pleasing effects and circus-style laughs. Essentially, it's Hollywood without soul or even body (body would signify a certain heft, yes?). It's light and thin as a nasty crepe and it's 98 percent of what's produced nowadays. Probably your favorite movie of all time is fascist, but you don't even know it.

More to come, maybe....

A Man Dies While Watching Horror Film

There is a story that an old man paid admission to the old Royal Theater in Laredo, TX, just to get out of the diabolical heat. Thisfine film was apparently playing. He sat in the back of the theater, took off his shoes and socks and wriggled his tired and hot toes as he lit up a Raleigh (smoking was illegal in theaters, but the owners of the Royal looked the other way).
 

This man, in his seventies, had never seen a horror film in his life. At first, he thought the story was a classic charro film, but the suspense and terror began to overwhelm him. He began to pant and groan. Never had he experienced such fright! He started grabbing his chest and initiated an eerie moaning. But he could not turn his face away. Children (the main audience for this type of movie) thought the man was acting clownish and began to laugh. The kids didn't particularly care for "El Charro de las Calaveras" and thought the horror hackneyed and dull. Watching the old man writhing in apoplexy was much more entertaining. As the "Lobo Humano" appeared on the screen and battled the hero, the old man cried out plaintively and lost total control of his bodily functions. The kids laughed even harder as he pissed himself. Then with a sudden arching of his back, the old man's body stiffened almost upright and then fell back to his wet seat with a violent heaviness. He had finally succumbed to cardiac arrest and died.  The kids, now totally uninterested in the movie, began throwing popcorn and soda at his  still corpse, laughing like little hyenas.

Hours passed and other features played, and other patrons came and went. Most thought the dead old man was sleeping off a drunk, a very common occurrence in Laredo. At closing time, when the theater manager finally and grudgingly checked on the old man after the last show of the evening, the old man's face, frozen in a grimace of abject fear, was sticky and littered with candy and greasy salty popcorn. The manager felt his pulse, and feeling nothing, walked to the main office and called the police. The manager was surprised by how nonplussed he was by the entire incident. This was the first time anyone had ever died in his theater and he thought he would at least be a little more emotional about it. Instead he just smoked and sent one of the kids for a couple of six-packs of beer. Might as well relax while he waited for the cops.

The police finally came, checked the old man out and called for the morgue wagon. It made the Laredo Times the next day, but no one ever claimed the man's body. No one ever knew who the old man was.