junk
It’s the kind of movie you see on Telemundo at the age of 15, and puzzle over, watching with rapt attention and fascination. A real classic of Mexican film making.
Then later see references here and there and feel like you’re in on some joke.
Surely there are movies of quality, but given one’s dunthers, I’d end up watching this one.
Looking it up just now, I see that MST3K ran with it. I don’t know why I’m disappointed to learn that — I’d rather it float around Telemundo, in its original language, without the silhouette wise-cracking distraction. I didn’t take any narcotics, but I imagine those would be overkill.
It’s playing at the Hollywood Theater.
SANTA VS. SATAN—Santa ain’t right in the 1959 Mexican trash film Santa vs. Satan. He lives in space, battles Lucifer, and his reindeer laugh maniacally. Also he might be a friend to the great wizard Merlin. Join Filmusik as they provide the live score, sound effects, and voice cast for this skewed Christmas flick. I’m going to root for Satan. CF
Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, 10 pm, $10-12
It may be that if you threw me in the year 1959 and showed it as some straight-forward flick to observe, I wouldn’t be particularly interested. Context makes the track flick. Kitsch!
I am told that GSN is running the late night black-and-white episodes of What’s My Line? and I’ve Got A Secret for two weeks…so enjoy ’em while you can.
The show is entirely uninteresting outside an anthropological context. There is an actual game show on NBC during prime time, and I wouldn’t watch it unless you paid me enough to watch it. But I watched a 1950s episode of “What’s My Line” and saw… Betty White.Â
Also Fred Allen, who I don’t really know except as the partner for George Burns. (Who died at the age of 99, and then had his death announced a few months later for marketing purposes — a thought I had to bite my tongue on when some oldsters discussed his passing at a church breakfast, like a lot of things I always bit my tongue on.)
I’ve seen Fred Allen’s particular contribution for this episode of “What’s My Line” play out any number of times on, for instance “Whose Line Is It”. He tripped into studio audience laugh explosion at a question, “Would my Uncle war this?” — and then went back to the well again and again on the suggestion that his Uncle was a cross-dresser. It’s all very familiar, and all very tedious.
Also I hadn’t a clue who the celebrity contestant was, which was interesting in its revelation moment when the panel pulled their blinders off and realized it was “Oh! Him!” Of course. That guy. How obvious. To be sure there is a pretty good chance here in the year 2010 that you can drop a well known celebrity in front of me, and I won’t know who is s/he.
It’s not anything that I would find interesting in the 1950s or 1960s, when it aired. But it’s interesting 30, 40, 50 years later. Particularly with the transcribed across technologies effect of a distorted image at the edges of the screen — that’s probably the most entertaining part of the show.