YOU CAN'T PUSH IT UNDERGROUND [494]

Lately, I have come to feel that I am always running out of time. I may start the day with a to-do list in my mind, and the best of intentions, but deadlines abound: what do you need to get done, or have ready, before you leave home, start work, or before you go to bed? What free time does a working day leave you, and how much drive you possess to use that time productively as well? Or should you wait until the weekend, and will you have the energy to do anything about it then?

This predicament nearly derailed my attempts to put something out this week. For the record, and in case I ever change it, I put out a social media message every Friday to say what I will be writing about for the coming weekend - this is a practice I picked up from old 1950s drive-in films, particularly Ed Wood films like “Glen or Glenda” and “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, where the poster would be created first to generate the interest, and hopefully funding, to make the film. This time, I realised that at no point during the preceding week, I had given any thought, or put aside any time to think, what I could possibly be writing about next.

When I first thought of squaring the circle, of addressing the problem by making it the subject, I initially dismissed the idea as a pathology that needed to be worked out in its own time, and not as a discussion to be reasoned with towards a conclusion. For me, it boils down to a feedback loop: an anxiety over not being productive enough with my own free time, and the linear nature of time itself, where every moment is a moment you won’t have again, which creates anxiety. In terms of addressing it, this will again be something to ringfence time to properly address it – ironically, that might also be the answer.

Two resources have been sent my way to address these from different angles: “Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing” by Robert Boice, a book with comprehensive diagnostic tools to assess productivity problems, and to build and maintain – I got a laugh from randomly opening at a page where someone had told Boice, “My God, you’re asking us to change our whole lifestyles!”, only to be told that they were the ones in control. The other was an article by Oliver Burkeman titled “The unproductivity challenge”, attempting to address the “completionist urge” by setting aside time to do nothing at all: “You’ll be claiming your right to exist, and to enjoy existing, regardless of your productivity.”

I may not be able to shake off the feeling that everything I have written here is a placeholder where a better idea for an article would have been, but this is the problem when you have an obligation to yourself to produce something new each week.

FORGETTING YOU IS A THING THAT I CANNOT DO [209]

In the bad movie canon, because there is one, the 1966 film "Manos: The Hands of Fate" is dubiously cited as the worst film ever made, even over established dreck like "Plan 9 from Outer Space," “Troll 2,” and “Myra Breckinridge.” It is one thing for industry professionals to produce a film that ultimately fails, as the successes will write off their costs. However, the notoriety of “Manos,” a film mostly spoken about to highlight its mistakes, may have helped it to survive and, having watched it, the film’s ongoing story may now have brought closure to the people that made it.

“Manos: The Hands of Fate” is the very simple story of a family getting lost on their way to a holiday home, and stumbling upon the lair of a cult. All human life is here - the innocents, the "Master", his henchman, the followers / wives / concubines, and the guard dog. Add eerie imagery, darkness, a creepy portrait, and many images of hands – the title is literally “Hands: The Hands of Fate” - and that should be enough of a diversion at the cinema on a Friday night. It has everything you expect to find in a horror film, but it is not clear if the production knows why these elements form a genre, and why you would include them.

The film was made in Texas, by people outside of the industry... well, mostly. While Harold P. Warren, the writer / producer / director / star of "Manos," is often described primarily as a fertiliser salesman, he also appeared in bit parts on television shows like "Route 66," and the film's cast and crew came from the amateur dramatics group of which he was a part. Having a drink with Stirling Silliphant, the writer of "Route 66" and later the film “In the Heat of the Night,” Warren made a bet that he could make a horror film himself.

The actors’ names have now been saved for posterity, with Warren and Diane Mahree as Michael and Margaret, parents to daughter Debbie, played by Jackey Neyman, whose-real-life father Tom Neyman played “The Master,” and whose art direction for “Manos” utilised many sculptures of hands he had already created independently. However, it is John Reynolds, who sadly did not live to see the film’s release, who has been immortalised as the jittery, leery, Igor-like henchman Torgo, later “massaged” to death by the Master’s concubines - Torgo was meant to be a satyr, but his prosthetics were worn the wrong way around, giving his character gigantic knees.

While he clearly won the bet, Warren’s involvement in bigger productions would have made clear of the limitations in doing it yourself, that problems with the picture cannot be fixed "in the lab," that actors need clear direction, and that more time should have been spent editing the film into a coherent whole, papering over the very obvious cracks. Going beyond the usual complaints of  wooden acting and an incoherent script, there are shots that go on too long, particularly long driving shots that perhaps were meant to have the opening credits over them, but help the film to achieve feature length; few, if any, sound effects; actors that look like they are waiting to be directed; bad editing, symptomatic of an entire hour-plus film being assembled in only FOUR HOURS at a local TV station; the colour film stock not being suited to night shooting; shots being out of focus; HAIR BEING CAUGHT IN THE GATE OF THE CAMERA; the dubbing of all the characters by a group of three people, with one woman playing all the female parts, as no sound equipment was used during shooting...

However, the jazzy music, completely out of place for a horror film, is brilliant.

The premiere was a disaster, with the cast leaving before the end, due to the gales of laughter at a horror film that was played straight. "Manos" did have a short run in local cinemas around El Paso, Texas, where it was made, before fading into obscurity, never having made back the $19,000 it cost to make, and it lapsed into the public domain, making it a very easy choice to be discussed in television and online, with no-one to answer for copyright, although the script is copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress. Its reputation exploded when featured on the US comedy series "Mystery Science Theater 3000," where it was played in full, and mocked mercifully throughout. Finally, in 2011, the work print was discovered in a sale of film rolls bought on eBay by a cinematographer, leading to a restored print now available on Blu-Ray, featuring commentary and interviews with the surviving cast and crew. 

Watching my copy of the Blu-Ray, and the special features detailing its production, it is heartening to see that, behind the derision, there are actual human beings, that did the best job they could, and who are now getting proper recognition and recompense for what they did. They knew they were not getting paid back in 1966, as everyone involved was to share the (non-existent) profits but, unlike so many exploitation films lumped together with "Manos," the people that have been exploited are no longer those that are in it, with Jackey and Tom Neyman producing their own sequel, “Manos Returns,” which premiered in May 2018 - it is the happiest ending this saga could possibly have.

I AM SOMETHING THAT YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND [193]

At the time of writing, a week has passed since the animated special “Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling” was released on Netflix. To those that used their smartphones to whine and wail online about their childhood being ruined yet again, when the show revealed that the cane toad Ralph Bighead, creator of the show-within-a-show “The Fatheads,” had transitioned into Rachel in the intervening twenty years, they couldn’t have done that without the work of a transgender woman: Sophie Wilson, of Acorn Computers, developed the instruction set for the first ARM processor, and worked with colleague Steve Furber to produce the first chip. Be more like Rachel, Sophie and Steve.

I was happy to be reminded about the Dada-like nature of Rachel Bighead’s show: The Fatheads themselves, two green creatures hitting themselves over the head with parking meters, or being showered with pineapples, the smarmy narrator asking what will happen next, the line “did you eat another solicitor,” and a laugh track consisting of just one person, laughing really hard. However, what came to mind later was that one time someone tried to make a film that tried to earnestly portray the struggle of transgender people, but came across as more randomly batshit than an episode of “The Fatheads.”

“Snips and snails and puppy dog tails...”

Until "Manos: The Hands of Fate" was rediscovered, the worst film of all time was generally agreed to be "Glen or Glenda," written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr, the “auteur” behind disaster works like “Plan 9 from Outer Space” (1959) and “Bride of the Monster” (1955). In “Glen or Glenda,” Wood makes an earnest, but bizarrely explained, plea for understanding of transvestites, in a film half-disguised as an exploitation of the recent story of Christine Jorgensen, a soldier that underwent sex reassignment surgery in Europe.

As told in the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp biopic "Ed Wood" (1994), the film producer George Weiss, who in 1948 produced an exploitation film titled “Test Tube Babies” (also known as “Blessed Are They,” and “Sins of Love”) simply wanted to exploit the story, but after Jorgensen turned down offers from Weiss to star in a film, Wood used his own transvestism to persuade Weiss he was the best qualified to make the film – inevitably, Wood stars in the title role, under the pseudonym Lyle Talbot. 

“Glen or Glenda” a schizophrenic mix of melodrama and the supernatural, made in just four days, which is mostly about transvestism, with a transgender story stuck on the end, “Alan or Anne,” to meet the original request for a sex-change film. A dream sequence in which Glen has to decide to tell his fiancée about "Glenda," which is really all the plot is for the film, features both clamouring hands and a literal Devil. Some bondage scenes, unwittingly making their own commentary on gender roles, were added by the producer, mostly to pad out the running time to just over an hour. Throw in lots of asides about opinions on gender from different times, or people talking over stock footage, and pepper it further with Bela Lugosi, a perennial staple of Wood’s films, talking about being beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep, because he eats little boys.

"Glen or Glenda" comes from a man whose wish to tell a story is blighted by his actual ability, but succeeding in grabbing your attention, as portrayed by Depp in the biopic. But, when taken seriously, the film succeeds in attempting to discuss a complicated issue, even if it then talks about how tight hats make men bald, providing a motive for making women's clothing fit better for women, or something like that. What this film says turns out to be amazing. Bela Lugosi, as "The Scientist," plays an over-arching narrator, albeit one who sounds like he is in the wrong film: 

"Man's constant groping of things unknown, drawing from the endless reaches of time, brings to light many startling things. Startling because they seem new...sudden...but most are not new to the signs of the ages. A life...is begun! People...all going somewhere. All with their own thoughts, their own ideas. All with their own personalities. One is wrong because he does right...one is right because he does wrong. Pull the strings! Dance to that, which one is created for. A new day is begun. A new life is begun. A life...is ended." 

Just like Glen has to cut through prejudice, you have to give "Glen or Glenda" the proper attention to see past the surface, and find something unexpectedly brilliant and brave. Just as Glen's sister said his brother's transvestism is hard to believe but, her co-worker tells her that it may just be hard for you to accept - it doesn't mean you choose not to understand. For the good of everyone, let's simply agree with Glen's fiancée, because it is the most human thing to say - "I don't fully understand this, but maybe together we can work it out."