Monster of the Day #3384

Following La Marca del Muertos we watched Wheels of Fire, a pretty generic Italian post-apocalypse rip-off of Mad Max, of which they made like a million. This one was fine, although really, these things sort of run together. There’s some cars with welded on armor, guns with weirdly lots of ammo, dubbing, still acting, boobs, some rape (I mean, you know, Italy), blah blah. You could do marginally worse, you could do marginally better. It was fine, but I wouldn’t want to watch several of these in a short timespan. If you like this sort of thing, though, more power to you. On a Blu Ray double bill of Raiders of the Lost Sun.

Then 13 O’Clock, an unfortunately boring and confusing episode of the completely unconnected Friday the 13th TV show. This week’s demonic artifact was a pocket watch that could stop time for an hour except for the person holding it. They added a few drawbacks to make it a bit much monty, but presumably it stopped time throughout the universe since astrologers didn’t freak out about the moon and stars changing position. Of course you had to kill someone to charge the thing up, and luckily the cops couldn’t be bothered to investigate all the deaths. I have to say, if you could charge a universal time-stopping device with one human life, that’s one impressive bit of conservation of energy.

Finally, as we had visitor and horror movie scholar Sophie visiting from over the pond, we watched The Manster, which she had never seen. We could really use a top-notch transfer of this, but it remains, of course, cheesy lurid fun with some literally eye-popping nightmare visuals.

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The Rev.

Having a learned film scholar who hadn’t delved much into trash cinema as a guest was a delightful excuse to rewatch some favorites over the weekend. (For example, before I got there, Sandy had made sure to show Sophie Mr. Vampire.) And she was a delightful young woman, to boot. (Also a redhead, which means we have an unusual number of them in our movie group. Not a problem, just an observation.)
Rock Baker

I’ve always been fond of this one. Seems like I finally found a good print on one of those bargain collections from Treeline or Mill Creek.
NathanShumate

It’s not so much stopping all time universe-wide, as propelling the watchholder alone into a higher temporal dimension which works at right angles to our common timestream. Much lower energy requirements.
Gamera977

Guess it’s okay unless you run into those pesky Hounds of Tindalos… I’m guessing Sandy would know how to throw them off the scent though.
Gamera977

If you think the astrologers would freak out about the moon and starts changing positions I figure the astronomers would freak out a lot more though…
Eric Hinkle

This reminds me of some comments in a tabletop RPG book for Hero Games where they discuss using a power called Time Stop, which does exactly what it says. They warn you that doing it in a limited area rather than everywhere in existence at once can lead to things like the universe starting to break down. “So really, must your player’s characters have this power?”
Eric Hinkle

I actually remember liking the old Friday the 13th show, or at least some episodes. The highly attractive lady playing Micki Foster helped mightily.

But it did bother me how every single time someone found one of the cursed artifacts, which were always powered by murder, they’d go straight from horrified at the implications to willing to kill their own mother for black magic power in what seemed like minutes. I mean, did the show writers feel that most of humanity was just that vile?
Galaxy Jane

I think it was supposed to be more that the artifacts were inherently corrupting to the holder rather than they all were murder hobos to start with. I really liked the show when it was on and episodes are (or were) on YouTube. For some reason, my dad liked this one too, not generally much of a (then) modern horror fan, but he’d watch this with me on Saturday nights (Robey definitely may have been a factor). He also turns out to like The Lost Boys, which I don’t ever remember him watching when I was wearing out the VHS in high school.
Eric Hinkle

That idea works with the artifacts being inherently corrupting. Someone else once suggested to me that they may have also been guided to people desperate or foolish enough to use them, too.
Ken_Begg

Hey, I wake up for work at 3:30 in the morning and whip these out before I leave. What do you want?
The Rev.

There was definitely some of that to certain episodes. I recall one involving a cursed baby crib, where the mother was driven to desperation to try and save her sickly child with its powers. It was one of the more powerful episodes due to her plight, hence why it’s stuck with me.
Gamera977

My apologies Ken. I meant that as a humorous sort of petty comment, it came off a lot more mean-spirited and rude than I’d intended.

Sorry…
Eric Hinkle

I remember that one too. It was one of their better episodes, as well as one of the more tragic.
Ken_Begg

Dude, you will have to try a *lot* harder to offend me than that, believe me. My rejoinder was meant to be light and airy as well, not aggrieved. So there you go.

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