Everybody is a secret scumbag

Nearly every holiday has an element that fits awkwardly with my soul, causing my enjoyment level to drop down to the ninetieth, or god forbid, eightieth percentile.

For example, every Thanksgiving I'm hit at least once with what I can best describe as clouds of uninvited mantras blocking out the sunshine in my mind for minutes at a time. Mantras like: Somewhere There Are People Starving -- Somewhere There Is Someone Going To Work That Day For A Bullshit Pre-Black Friday Sale -- Somewhere There Are People Who Can't Spend Thanksgiving With Their Families.

Christmas? Forget about it; I think of all those people working their asses off to make enough money to get their kids some presents only to come up short. Or the poor fathers dressing up as Santa to surprise their children only to break their necks coming down the chimney. I think of them, and I think of Uncle Alfresco dead under the Christmas tree, shot through the back of the head. Plus, no bicycle.

But I don't get that way with Halloween. I'm not even sure Halloween is a holiday, but for the sake of my rant, let's say it is. I love Halloween and everything about it. On my way home tonight from work, I passed three houses that went All-In on the decorations: orange lights, black streamers, cobwebs, spiders, skulls, bats, rats, African-American cats, Jack-O-Lanterns, spooky ghosts, and that's the magic of the season right there.

There is no ninetieth or god forbid, eightieth percentile. I get to enjoy Halloween in its one-hundred percent pure uncut form. I'm sure if we give it time, someone will find a way to ruin October 31st for everybody, but until then, there is little to none to get bummed out about. For one thing, this holiday is friendly to all income levels, it can be as much fun for those with a lot as it is for those with very little. Let's say you can't afford to give out candy, then you can just turn off the lights and close your window blinds -- and if you're lucky, you'll have plenty of free toilet paper waiting for you in the morning to stock up on.

On the costume end, you can pull out all the stops and wear whatever you want or you can go trick-or-treating with no costume at all. Now if the reason you're not wearing a costume while standing on my front porch is because you can't afford one, I understand. But if poverty is not your reason and you're just some entitled pre-teen asshole in street clothes with nothing but a pillow case looking to score one of my fun-sized Snickers bars, bitch, you're getting a fun-sized stink-eye instead. You could've at least cut a couple eye-holes in that pillow case, put it on your head with the pointy-end up and go as a motherfucking Trump supporter, but no, you chose to put no effort into your lack of effort.

I'll say it again for the cheap seats: I love everything Halloween -- even the Rob Zombie remakes. Speaking of which, I also like to watch as many horror movies during October as my schedule will allow. One of which is a request from a reader by the name of Kris Wallace; he's requested my ramblings on the 1995 film Demon Knight aka Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight aka Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight aka The Cruelest Story About The Saddest Man.

You're asking me who the saddest man is and if you give me a couple seconds, I'll tell you: It's Wally the small town postal worker, played by Roger Rabbit himself, Charles Fleischer. Wally's recently been fired because of some bullshit about not being able to steal other people's mail, which I don't get. It's not like anybody is using the post office for anything but voter registration anyway and what little mail is going around is probably junk and ads and what not. If he wants to stock up on coupons to Pizza Hut and Subway, then it ain't nobody's business but his own -- and those whom he's stealing mail from. So Wally's fired and now he's at the local hotel doing the Feel Sorry For Me shuffle to local hooker Cordelia (played by Brenda Bakke) and she's listening to it all because it doesn't cost anything to listen. A sucker move on Cordelia's part, if you ask me.

I bet you Wally has been doing this shit to Cordelia night after night after night -- at the hotel or the local watering hole or wherever else she happens to be. Every night he's talking about the shitty day he's had while Cordelia sits there doing touch-ups on her make-up, brushing her hair, looking in her mirror. I'm pretty sure she knows Wally is sweet on her and if she wanted to she could probably charge him a few bucks for the privilege of flapping his lips at her. Not hooker prices, just a few dollars. Five bucks for every 20 minutes, something reasonable like that. And Wally -- sad fuck that he is -- would absolutely pony up the dough.

But no, Cordelia actually considers throwing him a fuck for free, never considering that beneath Wally's schmucky exterior is the demon of male entitlement. If Cordelia were to do the right thing and tell him "You know what, Wally? I'm fully booked tonight. I have a cocksucking coming up at eight o'clock and a pegging at eight-fifteen and I just don't have time right now to listen to how bad you're getting fucked in the ass. So how about I take a rain check on your bitching for later", if she were to say that, rather than let him hijack her time yet again, Wally's pent-up nerd rage would come bubbling up to the surface and he'd grab Cordelia's arms way too hard and respond: "You know what, Cordelia? I've always been nice to you. I don't know why you go out with asshole jerk types like post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church who treat you like shit while I treat you like a queen!"

He'd never consider that maybe Cordelia goes out with post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church because post-"Wings"/pre-Sideways Thomas Haden Church pays her for her time. Instead, Wally would force himself onto her and feel justified because of his self-perception as a wronged nice guy.

"I had so many other things I could've done with my life. I could've taken that job programming movies at the repertory theater, I could've been writing fuckin' movie reviews for a website, I could've been a movie producer and get all that actress snatch! But no, I zigged instead of zagged and now I'm a fuckin' postal worker, and all I have to get me by is the few minutes I get to be near you. I carried your guacamole-stained bedsheets up to your room with no complaint! I worshipped the ground your well-worn hooker shoes walked on! I carried an M-16 and you, YOU carry that -- that -- that -- purse! Who are you? Where do you come from? Are you listening to me? What do you wanna do with your life, you fucking cock-teasing bitch!"

Sorry about that. I couldn't help but sprinkle a little topicality on that rant back there, because the news this past month has really been ramping up with almost daily updates on yet another new member in the public chapter of the Sexual Offender Club - Entertainment Division.

Look, I'm no paragon of virtue. I know I'm a creep and yet I've never had the balls to even remotely entertain the iota of a germ of an idea of sending a woman a text about how she can "have my vienna sausage anytime" like that scumbag Harry Knowles did.

And what the fuck -- OK, look -- back in high school, I spent my Friday nights watching "Friday Night" on NBC. While my contemporaries were out on dates pouring Stacy Joslin and Laura Sandoval paper cups of Cisco wine, I was at home raising my glass of Dr. Pepper to my television date Rita Sever. From back then to right now, my confidence levels remain in the negatives. But I'm pretty sure I'm better looking than Harry Knowles. At least I smell better, I'm sure. And yet he's rubbing up against ladies and giggling with no sense of shame. Me, I accidentally brush up against a woman in a crowded room and I immediately drop to my knees and cover my face and go "OY LAY-DEE PLEEEASE DON'T HIT ME IN DA FAAAACE!"

I recently wrote a comment on a female friend's Instagram and about a minute later I thought "Fuck, I might have just sent a creepy comment" and suddenly I could hear the faint sounds of "U.N.I.T.Y." by Queen Latifah from a distance. I began to panic and I sent a personal message to my friend, apologizing for what I wrote, all the while the song was getting louder and louder, and I knew in a few seconds my front door would be kicked down and in would walk Lexi Alexander like some Chris Hansen of Internet movie feminism. I started to sweat and my fingers fumbled all over my phone until I finally, frantically, repeatedly hit Send -- and then the music stopped, and I exhaled in relief.

So I don't feel I'm some kind of saint, I have the asshole gene too. But is it really that fucking hard -- OK, wrong choice of word there -- is it really that fucking difficult to not unapologetically over and over again be a piece-of-shit to the ladies? Or does the difficulty level in being decent get higher and higher the more power one gets, and maybe it's my lowly position in life coupled with a fear of people that keeps me in check.

Maybe that's why I think Wally would lose his shit to Cordelia, because as nice as he is to her, he probably still thinks in the back of his mind that even an unemployed postal worker is higher on the food chain than Cordelia the prostitute, and therefore, she is in no position to be what he would perceive to be ungrateful.

Not that any of that matters. Because they don't even get close to any of the bullshit I've been spewing, because everybody in the hotel is dragged into some bullshit involving William Sadler and Billy Zane, because this movie is called Demon Knight and not The Cruelest Story About The Saddest Man, like I was bullshitting you guys earlier. OK, so Sadler's a mysterious leather jacket-wearing dude named Brayker and Zane is some good-looking motherfucker in a duster and a cowboy hat known as The Collector, and these two assholes are facing off at the hotel over a key-shaped relic that contains the blood of James Caviezel among others and this key the, uh, key to controlling all of eternity for either better or worse.

Yup, we're talking some Good versus Evil, Heaven and Hell shit, and you know it's serious business because their tale begins with that rockin' song by Robert Patrick's brother I used to hear on the radio all the time in the mid-90s and before you can say "Oh man, Billy Zane can totally rock the bald look", this chrome-domed motherfucker is outside the hotel pouring neon green blood from his hand all over the ground and out come these impressively nasty-looking demon creatures and they all want In.

In addition to our hero Sadler and our couple Wally and Cordelia, there's Irene the hotel owner (played by CCH Pounder), my man Mr. Dick Miller as the town drunk, Wings Sideways as an asshole named Roach, Philbert from Powwow Highway as the deputy, and last but not least, Jeryline, the ex-con on work release played by Jada Pinkett (before the Smith, before the Xenu, and before their goofy son who will probably end up becoming President of the United States, given the way things are going in this goddamned country).

Oh and there's a little boy with little girl hair.

Let's talk about hair. According to the audio commentary by director Ernest Dickerson, Ms. Pinkett showed up with short blonde hair much to the surprise of the producers, who had been expecting her in her usual medium-length brown hair. The filmmakers had another hair surprise when Billy Zane showed up to their offices completely bald and carrying a small case containing an assortment of wigs. Zane, it turned out, had been losing his hair for quite some time and was giving Dickerson and company the choice as to which hairpiece they wanted him to wear. In the end, Dickerson felt Pinkett's new blonde look and Zane's naturally hairless pate were the way to go for Demon Knight.

So what we have here is one of those "people trapped inside while outside hostile forces are trying to get in" movies, or a "siege" movie, if you want to be that way. (On the commentary, Dickerson brings up Night of the Living Dead, Prince of Darkness, and Assault on Precinct 13 as major influences on this film.) I'm a sucker for siege movies, maybe because as a shut-in, my life is a siege movie with all you motherfuckers on the outside trying to get at me with your fun activities like talking to people and having barbecues and checking out live music and going out on dates and all that bullshit.

Anyway, in between the sequences involving the skinny freaky demon crackheads getting inside the hotel to fuck everyone's shit up on a permanent level, you have scenes where Zane is going about it another way by trying to sweet talk these innocents into giving him that key (and their souls, I reckon) in exchange for a better life -- or in the case of that asshole Roach, just the mere opportunity to live his asshole existence because Roach is a fucking asshole.

I mean, shit, you have Brayker telling you that these things -- these creatures! -- that shoot green lightning out of their eye sockets after you shoot their eyes out are demons from Hell who want that key to bring Darkness back to all of Creation, and you're still going to be like "Nah, that's bullshit. I'm gonna go give that key to that evil Collector and I'm sure he'll let me move on while the whole universe turns to shit"?

Fuck, man. You tell me that the green lightning coming out of those slimy crackheads is their tortured souls and I'll believe you. I really will. I see that shit and I'm ready to believe ANYTHING. You can tell me the lightning is the evil engrams being purged from the now-clear thetans of these beings and I'll fuckin' believe it and I'll buy every fuckin' copy of "Dianetics" and give it to my relatives and all two of my friends while apologizing to Tom Cruise. I'll apologize to all of them. I'll be like "John Travolta, you and Kelly Preston are the gold standard of heterosexual marriages." I'll blow that creepy fuck David Miscavige, I'll do all that shit, if I see some shit like that, some fuckin' crackheads with green lightning.

They went old-school practical with the effects for this movie, but it's not like they had a choice. They shot this in 1994, after all, and they certainly didn't have the budget for CGI -- and thank the maker that they didn't, because I like the old-school shit. There's lots of old-fashioned prosthetics and real fake blood and latex and all of that shit for nice helpings of gore here and there. The opticals are just that -- opticals; we're talking matte paintings on glass, models being blown up, and footage being shot in reverse only to be played back forwards to complete the effect. There's another audio commentary on the Blu-ray by the special effects team and it's fun to listen to them talk about the nuts & bolts, pointing out the difficulties of setting up these old school effects and stunts on what was pretty much a 24/7 schedule. But judging by the satisfied tones these gentlemen have while watching it all over again, the end results were well worth the trouble. Also, they mention that William Sadler was the kind of good dude given to buying the whole crew pizza on occasion, just because. Fuckin' A, Mr. Sadler.

I felt the performances in this film made Demon Knight better than it really is. First, let me talk about our boy Billy Zane. The Phantom here is having himself a good time playing the villain; his Collector character is clearly from Hell but Zane mostly plays it goofball-style with lots of funny lines that I found out later were improvised, my favorite being:



While he's doing his "in on the joke" thing, everybody else is playing this on a more serious tone with only the occasional moment of levity when it's called for. Sadler does very well in the role of Brayker; he has this mix of uneasy & weary that he pulls off. The more you get to know his character, the more his performance makes sense; he has the weight of the world -- of all worlds, on his shoulders. He's running the mother of all relay races and knows it's a matter of time before he loses his step and has to hand the baton to someone else. If I have any complaints, it's that I feel his role was sorely lacking in doing some naked tai-chi like in Die Hard 2.

Pinkett slowly gets better and better throughout the film, which I feel says more about the way her character was written rather than her performance. You couldn't really do more with her character without ruining the "who is gonna survive?" feel to the movie, so for most of it she's mostly relegated to reacting to all the blood and slime being thrown about.

And then there's the great Dick Miller being awesome as always just by being Dick Miller -- which is not to say that he's not acting, it's just that by simply being Dick Miller he exudes enough awesomeness. His face tells a million stories and there's a moment late in the film where he has this look that tells you one more: a story about a man who can't overcome his weakness even if it means making the most terrible decision of his -- and everybody's else's -- life. So don't ever let anybody tell you Dick Miller isn't that good of an actor, not unless you're gonna give them a backhand to the face in response.

The film looks good, as I suppose is expected when you have a talented cinematographer like Dickerson behind the wheel. He had just finished his second film Surviving the Game, when he got the gig for Demon Knight, and I'm guessing he got this job because anybody who's worked with Gary Busey is clearly a master of horror.

Dickerson and director of photography Rick Bota manage to use colored lighting, canted angles, and stylish shafts of light to convey an elevated EC Comics look throughout the picture; Bota was a regular cinematographer on the "Tales from the Crypt" series, and he definitely succeeded in carrying that look over to the big screen.

And I guess this is where I mention the film's connection to the television series; I'll be honest, the Crypt Keeper sequences that bookend Demon Knight were my least favorite parts of the movie. There's nothing particularly wrong with them, I mean, you do get to see tits and John Larroquette in the opening -- and as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to John Larroquette, I'd throw myself on the mercy of his night court anytime -- am I right John Larroquette's wife?

The plan was to make three of these "Tales from the Crypt" movies; at the very end of the end credits, the Crypt Keeper pops up to do one of those "James Bond Will Return" deals to the audience by telling us the title of the next film, Dead Easy, which as we all know, never came out in this particular timeline. I've heard two stories about that film: the one that gets told the most is that after many rewrites to nobody's satisfaction, the film never went past pre-production.

The other, more interesting story I heard in a couple places is that they actually shot the film but it was never finished because producer Joel Silver freaked out over how racially insensitive it was coming off, so it got shelved. I highly doubt the second story to be true, but holy shit, how cool would it be to know that there's an unreleased "Tales from the Crypt" joint languishing in some secret vault.

Instead, they made Bordello of Blood starring Dennis Miller, babe, and after that bombed, a third film called Ritual starring Craig Sheffer went straight to video in the U.S ten years later -- and that's your "Tales from the Crypt" trilogy right there, what can I tell you, I'm not King Hollywood, I don't make the rules.

Demon Knight is at heart a low-budget drive-in programmer, but because drive-ins don't really exist anymore, this almost became a straight-to-video feature for Full Moon Pictures when Charles Band and company had their hands on the screenplay. If it had gone that way, I bet you the demons in the film would've been 12 inches tall and Tim Thomerson would've played Brayker. Instead it was given big studio attention and bright Hollywood sheen and the end result is not the most original movie, nor does it really feel or encapsulate the Crypt comics and television series. But for what it is, it does it well and it makes for a dependable viewing choice during Halloween season.

Well, I have nothing else to say about this movie, so I'll close it out with this: I read somewhere that you are never more than a few feet away from a spider.

Upon reading that, two thoughts came to mind, the first being:

AIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!

My second thought was, Wow, I guess that means every time I see someone in a movie brush away cobwebs, like they do in Demon Knight, there must be a spider watching this from a few feet away, and the spider's thinking "GODDAMMIT!"