Lurid Tales

Trailer till Lurid Tales: The Castle Queen från rstvideos trailerarkiv.

Pay attention to the critic below, and save yourself a rental.

NOTE: TRAILER SLIGHTLY NSFW.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Cromwellian Trollops On Parade, July 16, 2004
By Robert I. Hedges

I have one word to describe this movie. That word is "awful."

This is an almost unbearable drama about a college student transported via a time travel headband in an arcade to the days of Oliver Cromwell's England. I watched it because it sounded amusing, but the reality is that it smells like a wet dog. The three main plot points are essentially time travel, Cromwell's England, and animal husbandry (of sorts.) The student is played by the fetid Shannon Dow Smith (yes, he's the hero) who teaches the ladies of Dorset to run a castle full of illicit trade amongst the Puritans. Needless to say there are bad costumes, really bad English accents (The movie was filmed in Romania, and most of the smaller parts were played by Romanians who learned their lines phonetically!), and incredibly moronic plot twists.

Technically the movie is quite poor. Lots of camera jitter can be seen on occasion. At least once the sound and film were not in sync, resulting in people speaking with no words being heard. My biggest overall complaints, though, were the music and the editing. The editing was so choppy, that it was actually offensive to watch; frequently scenes were stuck in where they made absolutely no sense, and only serve to confuse the already muddled plot. The music is "smooth jazz" type piano music that is about 100 decibels louder than the rest of the soundtrack, so have your thumb on the volume control on the remote. As a final affront to the audience, the cast is listed in the credits, but the character names are not, meaning you have no clue who was who, except in the extremely unlikely event that you had heard of any of these actors before.

There are very few highlights to discuss. They are Betsy Lynn George and the girl who played the waitress near the college in the frame shots. Betsy Lynn George is beautiful, and is probably the only actress in the film with actual thespian talent. She is better known for her superior starring role in "Petticoat Planet" which I recommend only in preference to this film (marginally). I am unsure who the waitress is (thanks to the credits) but believe it is Christi Harris, although I am not positive of that. Whoever she is, she is also decent in her role and is very attractive. Beyond this minor praise, the rest of the film is a mess.

I can't imagine any reason I would ever watch this again unless threatened with grievous bodily harm. Shame on you David LeCoteau for directing this piece of drek (under pseudonym "Ellen Cabot"), and shame on you Vlad and Oana Paunescu for producing something so artistically and morally bankrupt.

Shock Asylum

One of my college courses this year is called "Posthumanism in Science Fiction" (it actually counts towards the core classes needed to graduate). The instructor, Dan Dinello, used to work with Stephen Colbert back in the 1990s, and recently he decided to show the class one of the short films he made with Colbert, a strange dark comedy called Shock Asylum. Like everything else, it happened to be on YouTube (though this version is shorter than the one I saw), so enjoy:

Flexi Discs

Vinyl records maintain a certain level of popularity these days. But I don't think anyone plans on reviving the Flexi Disc, which ceased production in the year 2000.

Visit this great site for a history of this odd phenomenon. Be sure to look at the Flexi Disc stamps from Bhutan!

Times Have Changed #2

Today's episode: the Multimedia Notebook.


(from the November 1993 issue of Popular Science)

Nirvana, With Sock Puppets

One of Kurt Cobain's most famous songs, as reinterpreted by Polyphonic Spree with sock puppets.

Need I say more?

Get Down Goblin

And now, in response to MohawkWarrior's comment: "Sometimes it seems less and less like WU and more like 'music to irritate people by.'" And thanks to the keen eye of Kingmonkey, we have an "extra" video for the day.

The Riverbank Carousel

It seems to me that the Riverbank Carousel should be a must-see for all WU-vies. It's designed from children's drawings, as you'll read if you follow the link above.

Teenage Catgirls In Heat

I have not yet watched this 1997 film from infamous Troma Studios, but I could not resist putting up this trailer.

Have any WU readers actually subjected themselves to this one?

NOTE: clip is very mildly NSFW.

She Doesn’t Have to Shave

Following up on Alex's "Couvade" post: here's a musical exegesis of the eternal tradeoff between daily facial shaving for men, and monthly menstruation for women.

God, I miss Squeeze!

New CPR Technique

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.