I like that poster – for one I think it’s very modern, meaning re- released with a new poster maybe, or it seems so compared to the other things I saw when I went looking for one. A lady in black and white, holding a book! Is she reading it or looking at the waiter in the diner so she can order a club sandwich and a lunch martini? She also seems to be holding that book very loosely, almost like it could fall to the greasy, piss covered floor of the bathroom she’s sitting in right now. Maybe she’s pooping and not wanting anyone to know. Or maybe she’s glancing away and hoping no one notices the strange little man that’s actually coming OUT of the cover of the book! Is that some sort of beret? Is he French? A Greek? He also appears to want to stick a knife in a scantily clad model to his left! But the eyes on the lady in the bra look unreal! Or did he use that knife to tear the book cover?? Aaahhh! Maybe she just farted and hopes no one noticed?? She looks devilish – smirky. “Silent. But violent.” she whispers calmly, seductively. Alluringly. Hungrily.

I’d never heard of this movie until some time ago when Michi @ Random Movie Musings did some writing about it and it sounded good to me and I actually really liked it for the most part. Superficially it has a lady from Near Dark in it that I actually saw in the theater when I was a kid and did not like even though everyone seems to love it these days. It also has a guy in there that looked really familiar and I apparently saw him in Just One of the Guys or April Fools Day. More importantly though, I think, is this: will your body rest without absolution if you don’t see this? Maybe our virtuous and pious staff at Film Miasma can help eternal – ok enough.

A lady reads a book! She’s pretty! She wears glasses! She reads books on her couch in only her slip and underwear. Spicy! Behind her, her window is always open; below, a man restores pianos and plays them at night, seemingly every night. These books give her waking nightmares, she is full of dismay and unrest! Her boyfriend is a cop and he thinks she’s full of shit! Nevertheless, she brings him a beer from the fridge AND an ice cold mug from the freezer! He unbutton – *tires screech in our brains during our reading / writing of this blog* Wait. What? We should stop and talk about that for a second because we must.

A frosted mug?

Hey. Now that’s fucking classy. How many of you have a frosty mug in your freezer just in case someone comes over and would like a coldie? I don’t and I’m a beer drinker. How many of you even have room in your freezer for anything other than what’s crammed in there? In the one in the house here it’s pizzas and frozen french fries and tator tots and some sort of easy-make chinese food and limeade concentrate and a bag of flour and hamburger patties and sausage links and i think some sort of ice cream, probably Klondikes, and who knows what else was bought at the grocery and mashed in there and never cooked. and probably a LOT of ice buildup. But – nothing to drink out of. Going back to all of those years I lived by myself (well, with my cat) you know what I had in my freezer? Jack shit. Well maybe some whiskey and a half filled ice tray. Where was I going with this? I don’t really remember. Stay classy lady. Nice script.

So this lady reads a book and then reads another one written by the same guy. But this guy is no normal guy, he’s crazier than fuck and his fiction is actually a kind of a self biographical work as these grotesque and heinous murders are happening for real in the real world of ladies in their nightwear and piano restorers. But that’s not possible, right?? Because this batshit crazy man died and all of his stuff is locked in an old steamer case the used bookstore bought from his estate sale – the same steamer case that housed the atrocity he concocted in beakers (?), before, in his first book! Shit!

And – all of these murders consist of, well, murder so he can cut other people’s faces off and build himself a new one so the lady reading his books will fall in love with him??? My lord! Shit the bed! Make a movement! Release your cargo! I said it.

Aside from that silliness, there are some really good parts in this. That extended – uh movement – with the guy chasing the girl with the needle was great. I loved the whole bit with the guy just down there playing the piano every night. For a while anyway. The guy that buys the sex book. That guy that makes the smut movies. The chick who tries to smoke but very very very clearly does not – I thought it was all great, honestly. I even liked the exploding book but everything was kind of hampered around the front and back ends like a poorly executed, scratchy and unwelcome reach around.

Maybe that’s what kept this from being more popular? I don’t know shit anyway but this guy was rather bothersome:

And it’s not just his poor rendering. In the opening, in some sort of old looking hotel I thought must be the one where that girl was murdered in the water tank, a bellman gets a complaint of noise from some lady in a room. He’s afraid to go upstairs so his manager with giant balls goes up there and sees a steamer trunk with air holes shot into it. And some beakers here and there. And soon this monkey thing is hopping around in old CGI and my hopes for this movie were in the shitter. Then it turns out the whole thing was a scene from a book this other lady is reading, on her couch, in only her slip and underwear (spicy!), with a guy playing piano down below. Ok. Good deal I guess.

After that, things are relatively great and everything’s cooking along and there’s some of this and some of that and whizz’s whizz’s whizz’s flap flap and then all hope seems lost!! and *SPOILER* she reads a quick couple of pages in a book and the claymation dog thing comes back into the movie and he fights the bad guy with the pieced together face and they struggle and fall out of window and then they EXPLODE into a million pieces of paper from a book and the camera pans out over the city and it’s over. Yum! Makes sense!

But no matter what happened there, or ever for that matter, anything is better than this werewolf transition from The Howling 7:

FILED UNDER: HEY I LIKED IT

P.S.: we never answered the question about forgiveness of your guilt. My simple answer is that I don’t know but, thinking about Howling 7, maybe you can always choose to end up in that intermediate place, doing some line dancing in between the realms of the light and the dark.