04/10/2007: "The horror..."

*cough*
So... you guys like, um... stuff?

It's amazing how a couple... um... how 3 or 4 months can just slip right by a person, y'know? Especially as odd as the last month or so has been. Not that I have a lot to say about that, it's just been one of those times where the equilibrium has been punctured and not all things are as they once were, at least with regards to some of our friends.

But that's not why I'm blogging. Or at least that's not the impetus that actually pushed me over from the thinking-about-blogging-but-not-actually-doing-it state into the actual blogging state. The thing that has pushed me over that particular precipice is a shiny little gem of abomination from 1934 called "Fétiche" or, as it was called on the version I just saw, "The Mascot".

We had just finished innocently watching the early cinema classic Vampyr when all of a sudden something... unexpected... came on the dvd. Fétiche: the... ahem... heartchill warming story of a little toy dog who um... well, he was trying to get an orange for a little girl, basically.

And ok, it has its charms... kind of. But it's stop motion animation done with... stop and think about this for a second... 1930s era toys and puppets. I can't be the only one who finds toys from the 1930s like, some of the most disturbing objects ever to claw their way from the psyche of mankind. You know you see those eBay auctions from time to time and it's this hideous mouldering grinning death-mask monkey-thing or something and you're just like kind of horrified and sickened? And part of you thinks, well, you know, maybe that thing just didn't hold up well and it was actually cute back then. No. It wasn't. I think they had totally different sense of aesthetics back in those days. A sense of aesthetics culled from some blasphemous realm of outer darkness where sits the idiot Chaos, grinning in darkness listening to the aphonic piping of mad flute players. And those hideous mouldering things were animated and dancing and cavorting. And there was some sort of strange Walpurgisnacht-esque party going on with the devil (who was actually the least frightening puppet out of all of them, oddly) and a monkey and this really creepy hoodlum-with-a-knife puppet and... man. This thing was like... ok, on MST3k they used to often refer to things as "good old-fashioned nightmare fuel"... well, Fétiche is the nightmare equivalent of jet fuel. I mean, here I am watching this perfectly innocent 1932 vampire movie and then this comes in out of the blue? They ought to put a warning label on that thing. What if a child put that on? And yeah, I realize it was probably originally intended for children, but that doesn't prove much... I mean, have you seen the 20th century?

Anyway, I've gotta go play video games or drink or do something to get that thing out of my head cause... damn. Of course, on the other hand, the part of me that isn't reeling in terror can't help but think, "Man, that was awesome."

Replies: 1 Comment

It was rather frightening, although not enough so that I could stay awake for the end.

Really the woman sewing up the little dog while it was wiggling around was the creepiest part.

[lynnea] on Tuesday, April 10th