Since we’re all about bad writing prefaces here at Film Miasma, we should just go ahead and get on with this thing –

First writing piece to come: I don’t know shit about 1944 Essex or anything called Borley, so advanced pleas for forgiveness

Middle piece: I didn’t like anything about this movie at all whatsoever for even one second

Third piece: expect something about rectums

Finishing piece: I am fully prepared to conclude that this will be the second ever entry into the famous Englishman Attempting To Single Handedly Irritate Thoroughly ^TM production

So let’s just get this over with –

I’m not at all afraid to make fun of myself so: I’m stupid. Further, for the sake of this and multiple other posts, this is what I know about England (or Britain) (I remember once getting yelled at for calling someone British): Tom Baker’s Doctor Who created England, Tegan Jovanka or Nyssa or Peri Brown should win everything, The Queen, bollocks, arses, wankers, tossers, Men Without Hats, boot sales, it’s always cloudy or rainy and cold, Peter Davison, soccer, cottages and that’s where werewolves are (Me guts, Coop!). And everyone lives in London or out in a house on some enormous estate built with rocks with sheep everywhere. And probably pitchforks.

(I mean, I’m smarter than that. Right?)

When I was looking up posters for this thing, it seems like there might be some other shit out there about something called Borley House or Borley Manor or something and I saw Julian Sands’ name somewhere and crumpets and biscuits and something or other and maybe this was just some cheap knockoff movie someone made for a couple of shillings like people do when something else looks good and suddenly there are ten knock-offs popping up everywhere all over the place and someone picks it up and distributes it and someone like me doesn’t have anything else to do and thinks “maybe this is a good haunted house movie about the most haunted place in England but what’s with that fucking nun I hope this isn’t shite”.

So maybe I just picked the wrong one because this particular one was real arse.

As it goes, this American dude is fighting in the war over in Italy when he gets strafed by some airplane – just to make sure you get the picture, they show this scene maybe forty times over and over fyi. He winds up in some house that looks NOTHING like the one in the poster at the top and goes about trying to intercept and decode German radio signals – because he’s ‘good at language’. The property guy is a real weirdo who shows up unannounced and regularly interrupts his intercepting and the girl who brings him his daily groceries doesn’t seem to be enjoying her time in the movie. See, sometimes she waves hello when she’s coming up the path and sometimes she waves goodbye going down the path, sometimes in the same couple of minutes and all the while she’s afraid to talk about what she saw there at the rectory, when it burned down way back when she was little.

“I saw a nun who gave me the whispery finger.” she explains, adding, “I’m not allowed to say that because of the whispery shush finger so now I’m doomed.” and leaves.

Other than that, she doesn’t do much but walk up and down paths and open a gate. There’s also some recurring bit involving some lady who looks Italian but it was so lame and boring I already forgot what her part was all about and don’t care. So, some guy knows language and some chick opens doors. I mean wooden picket gates. There’s also another character who walks from somewhere hundreds of miles away in his tweed coat to talk to someone else about his bad dream. I think. And as soon as the guy in the tweed gets there he wants to leave right away because he doesn’t care about the bad dream after all. Or something. He reminded me of that uppity English professor from that movie where Rodney Dangerfield owns the “Suits For Fat Guys” clothing line and does trick diving at his son’s college.

But let’s get on with our rectum bit, shall we? All this talk about arses and shite really has me going today.

I don’t know about you at all or how you grew up but when I was a kid and I got in trouble for doing vile things like touching the dismantled carburetor, farting in church or even not brushing my teeth correctly, I would ‘get my ass whipped’ by way of a wooden paddle with holes drilled into it in the shape of [MY NAME] BE GOOD so it would hurt more and thus teach me lessons to not do those things or even forget my church pants when I went over to places that weren’t my grandparents’ for weekends. As I got older and made friends we would use terms like “I’m gonna beat your ass!” when doing threats or even things like “I’m gonna shove my fist up your ass!” for such crimes as throwing dog poop at me, bending my comic books or breaking my Men Without Hats record. Here’s a good example of things:

Friend comes over to do things: Oops, sorry I just stepped on this record. It really shouldn’t have been on the floor.
Me, crying and enraged: I’M GONNA STICK MY FOOT UP YOUR ASS!!!!
Mother overhears: When your dad picks you up I want you to tell him what you said! And tell him I need my alimony!!
Later, at dad’s, Dad: YOU SAID WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!? (pause for effect): Go get your paddle. This one’s gonna hurt.

Where I’m leading with this is that when I / we got into high school and started hearing or saying things like:

“I’m gonna shove this beer bottle so far up his butt he’ll shit out of his mouth for weeks!”
“Go get some mayo, I’m shoving me fist so far up his colon you’ll be able to drive a Datsun through it!”
and
“That motherfucker looked at my girl??? I’m gonna go pound his fucking rectum like Sherman through Atlanta!!“

And I just always thought it all meant the same thing – the asshole. I guess I knew it wasn’t because I’m actually kind of intelligent but there’s a difference, you see. “The anus is the hole in the middle of your buttocks. … Many kids and adults are more likely to use a slangy term like butthole or bunghole when discussing their anus, but if you’re speaking to adults or writing a paper, anus is the word you want.” And then “The colon’s job is to dehydrate what’s left of the food and form it into stool. It does this by slowly absorbing water and electrolytes as its muscle system moves the waste along. Meanwhile, bacteria living in your colon feed on the waste and break it down further, completing the chemical part of the digestive process.”

For all of that, in the end, the shit has to form in the colon then pass through the rectum and out the anus to get to us. Much like The Haunting of Borley Rectory has passed through the rectum of haunted house movies, so has this post about it.

FILED UNDER: E.A.T.S.H.I.T.