JABOOTU the bad movie dimension

The Gruesome Twosome Part 2

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Komedy Alert! We cut to a drive-in movie theater, much like the very one we’re in right now, watching Gruesome Twosome! The movie at the drive-in pretty much summarizes HGL’s opinion of other people’s films, and consists of one guy stuffing his face with potato chips and fruit while his female companion archly asks him if he loves her.

This goes on for a really long time. Basically, what HGL is doing (I think) is trying to create humor by showing a bad movie, and thus mocking it. Art mimics life, eh? I will say that the snippet of film he created for his “bad movie” does seem like it might, in fact, be more painful to watch than an HGL gorefest, so I suppose he achieved his purpose.

Cathy and Dave are sucking face in the front seat of their car. Cathy breaks for breath in order to tell us that they are on a double date. But why would we care? Anyway this scene keeps cutting between the car and the movie and nothing happens to advance the plot. I guess I’m supposed to be kissing my OWN date during this sequence. My conclusion? HGL can kiss my ass. We’re 40 minutes into a “gore” movie; we’ve had one single shock scene in the pre-credit sequence. Here I am forced to endure HGL’s attempt to deride other movies.

ARGH – now Cathy embarks on a deep philosophical discussion. “What are all these people doing? How are they thinking? Are some of them nuclear scientists?” Holy crap. It’s as profound as the ravings of Bela Lugosi in Glen or Glenda and far less entertaining.

Meanwhile, the couple on the big screen drink Michelob, apparently HGL’s idea of a classy beverage. In the drive-in movie, we never see the actors’ heads. Just their hands, and sometimes the boy’s mouth while he’s disgustingly chewing. Probably this means something – maybe HGL is mimicking a specific directorial style that I’m not familiar with, since I only watch cheap exploitation flicks. Thank the Lord.*

[Editor Ken: Weird. I can't think of anything he might be referencing. If I had to guess, I'd say he shot this at the same time with Gruesome Twosome cast members and thus didn't want to have their faces appear onscreen?]

Finally this awful scene ends and they get ready to leave. Then (bum, bum, BUM!) Dawn, who is in the back seat, drops the bombshell that she has an appointment in the morning to look for an apartment. OH NO! Someone warn her about Mrs. Pringle! Oh … wait. This is actually good – perhaps something will progress the plotline. Maybe we’ll get to see Rodney’s electric knife in action. I can hardly wait.

In one last bit of lame byplay, just before they drive off, the kid in the back seat says “Oh, my coke!” and reaches onto the hood of the car to grab his soda. What purpose did this serve? Perhaps it’s stream-of-consciousness reality film. ART!! Or maybe the actor just really wanted his soda.

The happy couples depart the drive-in.

Back to Mrs. Pringle’s sitting room. Napoleon stands guard while she reads a book and eats a chocolate. I note in passing that Mrs. Pringle’s grand piano has a portrait or some damn thing sitting on top of the closed keyboard cover, so it cannot actually be played.

Dawn shows up. Little does she know that her hair is on the agenda! She does have nice long hair, so Mrs. Pringle eyeballs her delightedly, and discusses the girl’s beauty with that damn stuffed bobcat. Again we pause to admire the wigs in the Little Wig Shop. Then to my immense displeasure Mrs. Pringle pauses to make a speech and quote Longfellow. Kill me now.

At last Dawn is hurled inside the Death Attic (yeah I know it’s on the ground floor), and Rodney makes his move. Hmm. Rodney is wearing a green shirt –a mystery solved! Remember way back in the opening murder scene, I noticed that Rodney mistakenly wore a green shirt in one of the cuts. This is the scene from which the continuity error originated. Now we know. Rodney applies the electric knife to the neck of the curiously acquiescent Dawn (she just lays there) and she seems to instantly die, while he saws away in a desultory manner.

This murder scene is even less “satisfying” than the previous one. It’s shot so that the top of the girls’ head is aimed at us, so we can’t see any wound Rodney makes. Blood doesn’t spurt – or even ooze. She is lying on the white sheet Rodney apparently uses for all his killing and a few bloodstains are visible. That’s it. Red-tinged corn syrup soaks into sheets, but no wounds. What kind of lame gore flick is this? Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the special effects of craftsmen like Tom Savini and Rick Baker, but I didn’t go to see this turkey just for fake blood. I demand fake injuries as well!

Rodney keeps applying the knife, then stops to admire his blade. FINALLY we get an extremely brief moment of gore, which might even be a severed neck (presumably a goat or sheep, which is usually what HGL worked with). Don’t worry, animal activists – HGL used only pre-deceased animals, which he picked up dirt-cheap at the supermarket. I notice that the first girl was scalped. Here, the second girl has her head cut off. I wonder bleakly if is a progression, meaning the third girl will be chopped in half even lower down her body.

[Future Sandy – Yep.]

A cut to the beach where the kids are holding a mid-day shindig. Several people have guitars. The only skilled players are a pair of kids standing in the back, who look about 12 years old. Not sure why they’re hanging with college-age losers. This time at least boys AND girls dance together.

Cathy is playing with a pail in the water (?) She is without a doubt the least attractive girl here. Not saying she’s particularly homely, but the other girls are clearly better-looking, at least in swimsuits. This was also the case in Color Me Blood Red, where four different girls were swimsuit-clad, and the one who filled out her suit the worst was the heroine. I wonder if this means *shudder* that Cathy was, in fact, the best actress among them?! It boggles the mind.

Legs!

Cathy pours water on Dave, and runs away like a little girl. He catches her and they lay down on the grass (instead of the nearby sand). Dave feels romantic, but Cathy worries about Dawn, who has gone missing. Dave gripes, and Cathy heroically tells him that maybe she’s made a mistake if he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

Yay, Cathy! All Dave has done the whole movie is grumble about how Cathy doesn’t do what he wants and it’s about time she told him off. Unfortunately, I’m sure it’s only a temporary spat and eventually they’ll be friends again. For one brief moment I can dream.

Back at Mrs. Pringle’s, an unfamiliar girl appears. She wants to sell her hair for money so I’m thinking we probably should not get too attached to her. She has a bare midriff, which in other HGL movies has meant an upcoming disembowelment. It depresses me that I am able to predict the form a particular gruesome murder will take based on a girl’s costume.

Mrs. Pringle solidifies my depression by informing Rodney that it’s Thursday, and “Napoleon always has liver on Thursdays.” Then she shoves the hapless victim into the Death Attic.

The spacing of these murders is terrible. The first murder is 7 minutes into the movie. Second murder is a looong 40 minutes in. Now we have a third murder only a few minutes after the second.

At last T-Fest, the second most-hated movie was Big Man Japan. It was extremely dull, but every 20 minutes, the monotony was broken by giant monster action. The monsters showed up like clockwork, just enough to almost hold our interest. HGL could take a lesson from that –space your killings out so that we aren’t stuck with 40 solid minutes of cretinous actors befouling the screen. Break up the boredom!

The real victim is me, because I can see by the clock that I have over 20 minutes of movie left and if I know my HGL, this means no more murders. Instead, HGL will (finally) menace the heroine, but not kill her. Maybe Rodney and/or Mrs. Pringle will die in an exciting manner.

[Future Sandy – Nope.]

Well on to our last murder. Maybe it will be a show-stopper. Rodney jumps the girl, with an enormous machete – seriously, it’s bigger than Jason’s – and whacks her right across the belly button.

The girl grips her stomach, conscientiously squeezing fake blood out of the bulb in her hands, but forgets to scream. Rodney picks her up (she helpfully puts her hand on his shoulder to steady him), and then she is supposed to be dead, I guess. She left the hand with the fake blood on her tummy so Rodney has to move it out of the way while he’s pretending to slice with his machete.

So far I’m unimpressed. Rodney sawed away at her sideways. But the wound for the disembowelment is vertical. HGL did go to the trouble to manufacture a fake tummy from which to pull the animal guts, which is more than he did in Color Me Blood Red. The fake tummy makes our actress look much chunkier than before. Rodney plays in the guts and then remembers he has to get her liver.

The girl’s wound is just above the belt on her low-slung slacks. Rodney reaches into the wound, aiming his hand down below her belt – about the area that her “naughty bits” might be, except his hand is inside so I guess it’s okay. From here he withdraws what is obviously a liver. Anatomy 101, HGL style.

The girl, who has not struggled a bit (which is why I thought she was supposed to be dead), now squawks and grunts a little when the liver is pulled out. So now she’s dead. The liver is tiny, by the way. You call tell she’s no boozehound. Maybe it’s an emergency back-up liver, located in the position of a normal person’s bladder.

The girl is, again, atop a white sheet. My theory is that HGL had to promise not to get fake blood on someone’s wooden floor, so did all his murders on that sheet.

Cut me some slack.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present a full-grown human being’s liver.

The camera pans over the hapless girl’s piteous dead face. Awesomely, she blinks. Seriously, this is like the high point of the movie for me. Here we have a tasteless scene of grue, accompanied by continuity errors (wound changes shape), biology blunders (liver located below the belt), acting gaffes (blinking corpse), and aggressively bad special effects. People whisper of the legend of William “One Shot” Beaudine, but he’s got nothing on H. G. “One Shot” Lewis.

Suddenly the light around me darkens. I hear the flutter of celluloid batwings. I smell a fetid, popcorn-scented breath on the nape of my neck. Filled with dread, I realize the terrible truth … I am now dangerously deep within Jabootu’s lair. Jabootu’s dripping claws draw ever closer. AAGGH! I am forced to turn off the film. I’ll come back tomorrow and finish it.

[The next day]

For some time now the movie has followed a format. Basically, there is a non sequitur scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the film, then it cuts back to Mrs. Pringle. Sometimes we see a murder (not often). Then we cut back to a random scene, then Mrs. Pringle, and so forth. It’s like someone is inserting random clips into a film short about Mrs. Pringle’s family. One of the girls who was killed happened to attend the drive-in with Cathy, but that’s about the firmest connection we’ve seen so far. The girl who just got gutted, for instance, never appeared before her tragic and sudden demise, and is never referred to afterwards either.

So as Rodney just killed someone, it’s time for another random cut. This time we’re watching an evening NASCAR race, of all things. It’s kind of cool to see mid-60s cars racing around the track. A lot of the cars are yellow, making me wonder if they are converted taxicabs. We watch the cars drive around for a long time, but I’m not complaining – it’s far more entertaining than the rest of the film. Occasionally we cut to Dave and his buddies watching the race. In a feeble effort to clarify away his dateless situation (note that none of his friends have dates either) Dave explains that he has a “mutual disagreement” with Cathy.

To the tune of 60s sitcom music (it’s impressive how inappropriate it sounds), Dave wanders off to the telephone booth to ring his former girlfriend. Cathy’s not at the dorm, and no one seems to know where she went. This conversation is great, because we only see the dorm-side of it.

The girl who answers the phone pauses exactly 1 second between each of her responses to “Dave’s” supposed remarks, no matter how long and involved it seems “Dave’s” explanations had to be (quite long, in some cases). After Dave hangs up, the girls carefully elucidate to each other that Cathy must be seeking the murdered girls. And Cathy might be in trouble. Maybe she’s going to be killed. The girls call the cops.

Consider just how much exposition HGL foists on us here, and how much worse it makes the film. Instead of just showing us Cathy in danger, we listen to her roomies worry. How does that heighten tension? The girls decide to call the cops. How does THAT heighten the tension? If HGL wants to explain why the police show up later on, why not just have the girls say something like, “Maybe we should call the cops”. At least that way we would have some doubt, some worry about whether Cathy will be saved. This way we know for sure if Cathy can just last long enough she’ll be rescued. It’s like HGL is trying to reassure is that Cathy is in no real danger. What a lame-ass so-called thriller.

Cathy’s car drives up to Mrs. Pringle’s house, using exactly the same shot and time of day as the very opening scene.. I’d be worried for Cathy if in the immediate previous scene HGL hadn’t explained that Help Is On The WayI Cathy steps suspiciously up to the darkened front door, and then enters the Lion’s Den, so to speak. Or at least, the Bobcat’s Den.

The finest  thespian in HGL’s troupe.

Cathy clunkily explains to Mrs. Pringle about Dawn, who came to look for an apartment. She even shows Mrs. Pringle a note with her (Pringle’s) address on it. Wasn’t Cathy supposed to be a highly suspicious amateur girl detective? She was scared of Mr. Svenson.

Yet here she spills her guts to Mrs. Pringle at a moment’s acquaintance (sadly, only figuratively). Mrs. Pringle mewls and minces around the screen but I really don’t want to spend any more time on her antics. Every time she talks to that fool bobcat it makes my hackles rise on end.

Then Cathy vocally realizes that Mrs. Pringle was the lady who sold wig to Cathy’s friends. Cathy’s conclusion? Obviously she got her notes mixed up – maybe Mrs. Pringle wasn’t the apartment lady after all. Some sleuth. Mrs. Pringle stonewalls, and doesn’t seem interested in murdering Cathy at all. This despite the persistent “ominous” violin riff that keeps playing in the background.

I’m sure everyone has watched films where the background music and cues were just perfect. This is a terrific counter-example. I have literally not heard a single musical theme here that wasn’t trite or completely inappropriate. But this is not unique to The Gruesome Twosome. Really, it’s one of HGL’s signature touches.

Cathy gives up and actually leaves Mrs. Pringle’s place, but then she has second thoughts.. Is Cathy to be spared? It boggles the limited amount of imagination I have remaining.

Mrs. Pringle returns to the house and discusses (with Napoleon) the challenge she faces. “Whatever could have possessed that child to write our address down?” she wonders. Is it that unusual to write down an address? If Mrs. Pringle’s murderous plan depends on people never writing down her address, it would appear to have a few holes.

She has some more homely wit for us “If things go wrong, don’t go with them, I always say. Don’t I, Napoloeon?” Actually to properly reproduced Mrs. Pringle’s speech, take the last six words of the last quote, and append them to every single thing she says. You will have an excellent approximation of her speech, I always say. Don’t I, Napoleon?

Cathy is almost back to her car, but keeps looking over her shoulder. Then she puts the pieces together.” Something is wrong,” she thinks, “and I’m going back to find out what it is.” So she gets in her car (?) which is parked in the driveway. Then she drives it backwards literally six feet (!), and gets out. Her car is not one whit better concealed. Well, I guess the rear wheels are now shadowed, but the whole front of the car is still obvious.

This is almost aggressively inane – is HGL trying to rub our noses in how stupid he thinks we are? Or did the actress not understand her instructions re: driving the car and he didn’t bother to make her redo it? In full “sneaky mode” Cathy steals back to the house.

She picks her way gingerly through the weeds. Her idea of “sneaking,” by the way, is to bob up and down like a feeding duck. Despite the fact that the music when she was talking to Mrs. Pringle was ominous, now the music is jolly again or, at least, definitely not sinister. Go, go, HGL!

Cathy sneakily picks her way up the front steps. What is her plan? Surely she’s not going to sneak in the front door to the sitting room? Even HGL must know how stupid that would be. She doesn’t, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Instead she snoops around the outside of the house, while the background lighting keeps changing almost randomly. She comes to a window which amazingly opens from the outside, and enters the Little Wig Shop. Snooping around the shop, she sees … bum bum BUMM … wigs. She opens the Death Door to Rodney’s lair, and sneaks inside. I can hardly wait.

It took me several viewings to determine why the next scene seems so weird – it’s because HGL is filming part of it in a mirror. So when he cuts between shots, the whole screen flips left-to-right. Well done, HGL.

Suddenly, Mrs. Pringle steps in and gloats over Cathy’s impending victimization. I share her joy. Mrs. Pringle jumps back out, shutting the door, while Cathy pounds helplessly like every other victim and we now await Rodney’s next move.

While waiting for Rodney, Cathy inspects a wig atop a Styrofoam head. It still has the gold barettes that Cathy loaned Dawn nearly an hour ago (in the film). Since we are too stupid to remember the scene, HGL helpfully provides a flashback voice-over for us.

Cathy’s face distorts with terror at this proof of her friend’s gruesome demise.

Rodney shows up with his giant machete, still stained bright red from the last murder. (I guess just like Color Me Blood Red, blood in HGL-land never clots or darkens.) Lest we panic, we now see a cop car roll up, siren wailing, and two of Florida’s Finest clamber out. Will they be in time? Judging by the speed of past murders, the answer ought to be “no”.

Oddly, Dave accompanies the cops, and in fact outraces them to the front door. When did he get involved with the police? Last we heard, the girls were calling the cops, and he was still at the NASCAR race. I’d complain that it makes no sense, but this film has way bigger problems than this minute mystery.

Another small enigma is the fact that only one of the two cops is in uniform – the other appears to be a plainclothesman. Did HGL only spend enough money to rent one cop uniform? The cops politely knock at the door, and wait for Mrs. Pringle to answer.

Mrs. Pringle tries to distract the intruders by offering them some iced tea, and then asks them to stay for a while, despite the fact that her son is murdering a girl right this second in the next room. I note additionally that NONE of the other murders have been silent, so what does Mrs. Pringle expect to happen?

Dave, showing that perspicacity that has made him so unloved by me, asks her if a girl with “long blonde hair” has stopped by. Cathy has reddish hair, by the way. So I guess he just forgot.

They walk into the sitting room, and Dave gets aggressive (verbally). The cops just stand around and don’t say anything for a while. I guess it’s SOP to let a random civilian do all the talking during the early stages of an investigation. Finally the cops decide it’s all a mistake, but suddenly a crash is heard in the next room. Mrs. Pringle says her son is “hammering” to defuse the cops’ suspicions.

Meanwhile Cathy is struggling with Rodney. And by “struggling” I mean they hold hands and twist back and forth, then move somewhere else in the room, then twist back and forth again. If it was set to dance music, you’d think they were rocking out.

Rodney has evidently dropped his machete, too, so it’s not clear how he plans to kill Cathy. He isn’t trying to strangle her or beat her, and he makes no real attempt to recover his blade. I guess he just wants to wrestle around and maybe cop a feel. It doesn’t seem like a very effective murder technique to me, but maybe that’s because I’m not retarded.

The commotion has awakened both the cops & Dave, and they make a break for the door, while Mrs. Pringle looks vigilantly for her next cue. Dave goes to the back door of the Wig Shop (Rodney’s lair), and … hey. Where are the cops? They were like one step behind him, but now he’s wrestling with the Death Door, and they are nowhere in view. Did they decide they wanted Mrs. Pringle’s iced tea after all?

Ah, NOW they come after a short delay. But their entrance is still bungled. When they left the living room to enter the Wig Shop, we clearly see the cops follow Dave, while Mrs. Pringle follows after a short delay – she even stops to pet the damn bobcat before giving chase. But now that we’re IN the wig shop, Mrs. Pringle shows up before the cops. Nice continuity, HGL.

Dave tries to open the door, but can’t. The cops helpfully threaten Dave, ordering him not to open the door. They are plainly on Mrs. Pringle’s side.

Inside the Death Attic, Cathy is squealing, but I guess it’s not that loud, because Rodney has his hand over her mouth. But Dave hears it anyway, after a moment in which he is clearly waiting for the camera to start. The plainclothes cop begrudgingly says, “well I guess we could take a look.” This after he actually hears a girl crying for help inside the room. What a maroon.

Cathy grabs a hairpin out of the wig and jabs Rodney with it – we see this from Rodney’s POV. At last the cops, Dave, and Mrs. Pringle head on into the Death Room (yes, the cops let Mrs. Pringle enter before them –I am inspired by their skill as police).

We see Cathy standing over poor Rodney’s form. He clutches at the pin, which unintuitively proves to have completely gouged his entire eye from the socket, so it’s hanging down on his cheek. Yuck, but also one last point to Lewis, for giving us some gore, even if minor.

Cathy gloats over her latest victim.

Mrs. Pringle feels no sorrow over Rodney, but is sad that her “lovely mattress is all ruined.” The one Rodney is bleeding on, I guess. Please someone shoot her. I think I said it earlier, but Mrs. Pringle is the very worst, most arch actress in this entire film – and none of the others are any good. Fade to black.

We’re not quite through yet though. We get to see the long arm of the law escort Cathy and Dave, who snuggle a bit – I guess they’ve reconciled. The cops apologize for not believing them right away. The cops then carefully explain that Mrs. Pringle and Rodney will go to the state mental hospital. Hold on here … there were only two cops on the scene. They are both stepping outside with Cathy and Dave. Where are Rodney and Mrs. Pringle? Weren’t they taken into custody?

Anyway the scene switches to daytime, and we see a pair of co-eds walking along the street to the sound of the ominous kettle drums that HGL usually uses for his “scary” music. Though not in this film, except now at the end. The girls walk up to the Little Wig Shop and are sad that it is closed. I guess the murders weren’t in the news.

They gawk at Napoleon, who is now the porch, and suddenly, with a terrifying musical blare of trumpets, we see a Styrofoam head stuffed into a garbage can. Huh? Then the camera pans up over Napoleon’s fixated snarl. I assume that HGL is implying that Napoleon will continue the murder spree.

And in a move cheap even for HGL, he doesn’t even feature the words “The End” on the final fade. What a guy.

IS H. G. LEWIS ACTUALLY WORSE THAN ED WOOD JR.?

This is a question worth exploring, in my opinion. Ed Wood has the name – he is a byword for badness. On the other hand, H.G. Lewis is experiencing a renaissance. His movies have had remakes (2001 Maniacs, starring Robert Englund, and Blood Diner are both based directly off Lewis’s films), and some madman has even started letting Lewis helm his own films again (Blood Feast 2, The Uh-Oh Show).

But Lewis is really stunningly bad. His works are poorly filmed and lit, demonstrate appalling acting, and are rife with continuity gaffes, nightmarishly bad humor, and unsavory special effects. In every way I can notice, Lewis is easily as incompetent as Wood, in his technical lack of talent, and his slipshod approach.

However, in the end, I must agree that the “worst director” prize, in fact, does belong to Wood, because of Wood’s inane viewpoint. H. G. Lewis was only ever in it for the money – he is strictly trying to separate southern yokels from their wallets at the drive-in. He has no pretensions, and no dreams.

So, I ultimately must agree that Wood’s retarded artistic “vision” puts him over the top in badness, but just barely! Ed Wood also has the advantage that people of any age and background can “enjoy” Wood’s oeuvre, but Lewis’s films are so violent that they need to be restricted to aficionados.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

This film has the most cast members of any HGL movie I have seen. The main stars are Rodney Bedell, Patricia Davis, Chris Martell, and Gretchen Wells.

Rodney Bedell (Dave) appears in a couple other HGL epics. He perhaps is best consigned to the dustbin of history.

Elizabeth Davis (Mrs. Pringle) has two non-HGL film credits to her name, one of them 20 years later. Her other films are so obscure that even I had never heard of them.

Chris Martell (Rodney) is the closest thing to a “real actor” insofar as he made appearances in several other non-HGL movies over the course of the next few years. Eventually he dropped into well-deserved obscurity.

Gretchen Wells (Cathy) was only ever in this. Her last name is variously spelled Wells or Welles, but I’m going with the movie’s title credits, as I assume she would have seen them and been able to complain about any misspellings. Of course Lewis may not have repaired them.

A NOTE ABOUT SO-CALLED “TORTURE PORN”

Censorship works. Just ask Ho Chi Minh, Chairman Mao, Josef Stalin, or Fidel Castro. The population is controlled when the mind is controlled, and this is what lies at the dark heart of the will to censorship – the desire to control what other people are thinking.

I have had direct experience with this as a professional game designer. CSI:Miami has had shows which exposed the “evil” that is video gaming. Even Michael Medved, prophet of bad movies, once focused on the evils of video games for an afternoon show. My personal games have been condemned publicly by members of Congress.

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s usually the left wing that gets after me, complaining of the moral evil of my games. Medved (who is right-wing) didn’t care that the games were violent – he was concerned about their addictive nature.

Now, a new phrase has appeared which I detest: “torture porn”. Coined by David Edelstein, it is a phrase that both Republicans & Democrats can join in condemning. But “torture porn” is meaningless. I don’t get sexually excited when I watch Hostel. Who does? How is it “porn”? Even a movie like Saw is not really about torture – it’s about character reactions under pressure and plot twists.

And we have plenty of older movies which feature human pain as central themes. Are classics like Bava’s Baron Blood or the suspenseful Korean film Say Yes “torture porn”? In my humble, but experienced-with-censorship opinion the overarching reason to tar a film with the title of “torture porn” is to make it clear that the film has no redeeming value. That in your opinion the film is prurient and disgusting and fans should be ashamed for watching it. That it ought to be banned and no one allowed to see it. That it ought to be vigorously censored.

All too nearby, at the far end of the road of censorship, lies North Korea, its citizens only allowed on the internet in special rooms, with minders watching over their shoulders.

(Note to outraged readers – I am fully on board with restricting access to underaged viewers, and with banning films whose very creation involves criminal activity. Duh.)

*******

Meet the Author:

Sandra “Sandy” Petersen, self-described in a letter to myself as “the statuesque Ms. Sandy Petersen,” is a game designer who created the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and was instrumental in developing the video games Doom, Doom II and Quake. She has her own Wikipedia page, although jealous gaming rivals sometimes mess with the pictures and info there. In any case, she thus is more famous than the people who made 28% of the movies reviewed on this website.

Sandy has also informed me, several dozen times while I’ve stayed at her house, that she also in fact invented the board game Mystery Date, but that Milton Bradley (not the supposed “ballplayer”) climbed in her window one night and stole her notes.

However, while telling me–and anyone else in the area–this tale, she tends to be rolling steel balls in her hand and muttering about strawberries (which apparently Bradley also stole). Also, her husband Wendell always rolls his eyes and makes finger circles next to his head during this. Thus I’m not sure if the story is completely true. Also, Mr. Bradley died in 1911.

You might consider the picture above (which Sandy provided) an affectation. However, it should noted that Sandy’s daughters are named Loana, Nupondi, Ahot, Tohana and Loana Jr. I’ve met them, though, and they’re all more or less sane and perfectly nice ladies anyway.

by Sandy Petersen