Tuesday

Last night's after-midnight October film fest screening in my den was Fiend Without a Face*, an independent British production living in the hysterical landscape of technophobia during the Cold War. In 1958, US theaters were showing the Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman and the Blob, so Fiend opened in a market saturated with the like-minded radioactive nightmares somewhat under-addressed in contemporary British sci-fi. Near the US border in Canada, a fictional Army base is conducting joint defense radar experiments (fictionalizing NORAD, which also premiered in '58). The movie opens with a natural documentary feel, possibly using stock footage, lending ominous gravitas to spinning communications dishes and towering steam pressure vents. Soon, during an experiment to boost global radar effectiveness through the use of their nuclear power plant, things start to get a bit shlockier around the base. An invisible Fiend, for example, begins attacking the medullae oblongata of the local citizenry, killing them off and leaving behind their brainless husks. Priceless for it's extensive portrayal of stop-motion brains inch-worming around on prehensile spinal cords, the movie is also notable for its amazingly satisfying dialogue: "if it wasn’t crazy, I'd say this looked like the work of some... Mental Vampire!" This movie doesn't stop at the horror of technology, but goes so far as to demonize intellectual thoughts themselves. Recommended. Around the house today: the G8 plus 5 summit landed in Monterrey and San Pedro yesterday* after several months of location obfuscation rumored to be defensive posturing against the inevitable organized protests.* Exciting. And people tired of losing US jobs to Mexicans may want to consider a bill to build a two-layer security fence around Whirlpool Corporation now that they have decided to lay off employees in Arkansas and Indiana, and are expanding refrigeration manufacturing in México.* Damn immigrants. [Cavin]