Or at least entertained.

Keep warm peeps, with love, blankets or bourbon!

Child pornography is illegal and perverted and obscene and worth fighting against. People who film it, sell it, and buy it to watch need a good long stay in PMITA prison and perhaps some of their most favourite body parts should be fed to hungry badgers without cutting those parts off their bodies first.

Pornography with consenting adults is legal entertainment (and a serious money making industry, I might add), and not to be confused with any illegal perversions people may want to do and film for money.

Should kids have access to pornography? Technically they should be 18A or Restricted, yes? But really, sex is such a natural part of life that it would make more sense to let a kid sit through a porn film with a parent to explain why it has very little to do with the very real and natural art of lovemaking. The kid in this scenario would be horribly embarrassed to watch it with a parent and would probably get ill at the thought of trying to watch another one alone some other time. A past experience will always flavour future experiences, after all. A little education can go a long way.

Porn Awareness Week was suggested by f-ckingc-nts.com to counteract WRAP’s attempts to stamp down on pornography in general. It’s part of a Morality in Media movement, apparently. From a recent news release on that site, two thirds of U.S. adults claim internet porn is immoral and not harmless entertainment.

Morality in Media president Robert Peters had the following comments:

“There is a perception held by many that hardcore adult pornography has become acceptable in American society. But the perception is false. This is not to say that there isn’t a market for hardcore adult pornography. There is. But what primarily fuels the market is sexual addiction, not casual viewing. Furthermore, just because a person experiments with this material or on occasion succumbs to the temptation to view it does not mean he approves of what is viewed or of all pornography, especially when online hardcore adult pornographers often promote their products aggressively and deceptively.

No definition is provided for what constitutes “hard core” pornography, just that “most of” what’s commercially sold would be considered hard-core. If the telephone survey takers didn’t provide a definition, or description for that matter, then it would have been up to the person who answered the phone to independently decide what “hard core” meant. I don’t know what would classify as hard core. I’ve never watched a whole porn film and I suspect many of the people who were called could claim the same.

“Those harmed by the proliferation of hardcore adult pornography include women (many of whom are still in their teens) who ‘perform’ in this material, individuals of all ages who become addicted to this material, women whose husbands are addicted to this material, women who are raped, sexually assaulted or sexually harassed by males addicted to this material, children sexually abused by men who use this material to arouse themselves and to groom their victims, children sexually assaulted by other children who act out what they have viewed in this material, and females trafficked into prostitution to gratify the sexual desires of men who act out what they have viewed in this material.”

And the following is also true:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after only two days.
12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

Is bread why people commit crime? Probably not. Is pornography? Probably not. Does pornography alter how people view women? Probably. But a guy who’d abuse a woman would still treat a woman like shit whether he watches any porn or not. Abuse is all about having power over people. The people who only feel powerful when they bully or assault someone else are going to be drawn to entertainment that glorifies that distorted world view and helps them justify that behaviour.

But here’s the thing sites like Morality in Media keep missing – it’s all about choice and letting people choose for themselves what they will and will not see or do. There’s more than porn on hotel televisions. Don’t go looking for the porn just so you can complain that there’s porn to be had and write complaint letters to the Marriott about how much porn they have on tv (which Morality in Media did). Cosmo is not the only magazine for sale at supermarkets either (which they also complained about).

Magazines and TV are optional entertainments. You don’t like what’s in it, don’t watch it, or make your own stations and publications for people instead. And if they don’t want to watch or buy it, they won’t. The choice will always be the consumer’s.

I don’t particularly care for how overtly sexual advertising has gotten, either, but I think it’s just as damaging (or worse) for kids when adults hide sex away and treat it as sinful to enjoy it, to experiment with it, and to crave it with their partner, married first or not.

Consumers don’t have to put up with it with all the advertising. We can picket if we want, write letters. Complain about content, write articles about obscenity laws and immoral hellishness all we like. It’s also up to the maker of that product to choose whether or not to care about what the people think. If enough people stood up and said they didn’t want to see or buy it anymore, and if sales tanked enough to prove people were truly fed up and serious, then maybe they’d change some things. But while sex sells, they’re gonna sell it.

It’s been a beef of mine for some time, that the gospels don’t have enough information about Jesus’ early years. This is not quite the fault of the writers, as none of them ever met the man. All they could write about was what people decided to tell them about the man. If it was covered in any other writings back then, they never made it past the cut when it came time to assemble the New Testament as it stands today. Whether or not he had siblings, or a wife or children, and where he might have gone to school, weren’t as as important as creating a mythology around his birth and death that was similar to other gods and therefore an easy tale to pass along as truth of divinity (because all the others were a total sham, you know that right? We’ve got the only true one…).

I’ve heard suggestions that Jesus may have spent time away learning the tenets of Buddhism to bring home to his people, but education via Glastonbury druids is a new one on me. A new film has come out suggesting it’s possible Jesus made it all the way to what is now England. The title of the picture comes from William Blake’s poem Jerusalem.

And Did Those Feet explores the idea that Jesus accompanied his supposed uncle, Joseph of Arimathaea, on a business trip to the tin mines of the South-West.

Whilst there, it is claimed he took the opportunity to further his maths by studying under druids.

Unsurprisingly, the documentary stops short of concluding the visit did take place, noting ‘Jesus’s shoe has not turned up’. However, the makers insist that while the visit is unproven, it is possible.

The theory is that he arrived by sea, following established trading routes, before visiting several places in the West Country.

In the film, Dr Gordon Strachan, a Church of Scotland minister, says it is plausible Jesus came to further his education. The country is thought to have been at the forefront of learning 2,000 years ago, with mathematics particularly strong.

Ted Harrison, the film’s director, said: ‘If somebody was wanting to learn about the spirituality and thinking not just of the Jews but also the classical and Greek world he would have to come to Britain, which was the centre of learning at the time.

And how would a young man, a carpenter’s son, discover that and have the means to seek it out? It’s a nice story, but can’t be proven any more than his rising can, no matter how much money gets thrown toward filmmakers.

But anyway, this is a good reason to put in an Arrogant Worms video – Jesus’ Brother Bob (because you can’t prove there wasn’t one)!

So, a creationist film crew went to Galapagos this year to film a movie that can completely debunk Charles Darwin by showing just how wrong Darwin was when he made some very astute observations about that small archipelago cut off from the rest of the developing animal world.

“The subtitle of Darwin’s landmark book is often overlooked: “the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,’” Phillips observed. “Darwin’s ideas should not be celebrated on the anniversary of his book, for they have contributed to the dehumanization and murder of millions through the rise of Nazism, the proliferation of racism, Marxism, widespread abortion, and the horrors of eugenics.”

Favoured by natural ability, or an environmental/geological niche, not Aryan breeding processes. These ignoramuses need to stop preaching that tired fallacy but I know it’s the only argument they have, which is why they keep bringing it up. If they really want to freak out over the nature of eugenics, they should take it up with dog, cow, sheep, and horse breeders who manually designed every single one of those and tweaked traits for skill, milk, wool and power. Darwin looked at animals that had been isolated on those islands, away from the gene pools on the continent and marveled over the various ways each species adapted over there, in terms of food sources, etc.

You don’t even have to be alive a million years to see species adaptation in action. Richard Dawkins reports on an interesting thing in his recent book, The Greatest Show on Earth, about guppies. Back in the 1970s, a biologist by the name of John Endler studied the ones in Trinidad and the work was later redone and added upon by others to find links to sexual behaviour , and how adaptation and evolution are linked to mortality rates. In waters where death was likely, the females matured sooner and had a lot more young and the males were duller in colour to blend in with their surroundings more. In waters where risk was minimal, the females selected the best and brightest males to mate with since they didn’t need the camouflage to survive. And the differences between generations is noticeable within months when the risks are altered.

So anyway, about this movie.

The Mysterious Islands, a cinematically beautiful adventure film, was shot earlier this year and examines the same unusual creatures Darwin saw while on the Galapagos Islands and shows where he erred. Told through the eyes of 16-year-old Joshua Phillips, the documentary presents a remarkable quest to “Darwin’s Eden” with Joshua, his father, and a team of scientists and investigators, including Dr. John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research.

Says Doug Phillips about the location itself,

“The Galapagos Islands are a showcase of God’s creation, not a laboratory for evolution, as Darwin claimed,” noted Doug Phillips, executive producer of The Mysterious Islands. “Our film captures the wonder of the intriguing flora and fauna of the Galapagos, even as it shows where Darwin went wrong in his observations. And we are excited to be able to show this contrast to audiences around the country through our new film.”

I wonder if any of them read Origin of the Species before going. I haven’t even read the book but I’m sure Darwin’s conclusions are far more accurate than anything these dunderheads are claiming.

With monstrous churches all over the place, huge crosses, huge hissy fits over loss of crosses and rights to be the top dog of the holiday season every damn year since whenever, they’re not letting “humility” get in the way of self promotion?

When have they ever!?

But I digress.

The article, A grand studio dream runs headlong into reality, is all about starting a TV and movie studio in Massachusetts. The attempt to bring Plymouth Rock Studio to fruition has been wrought with scandal and lawsuits and big money problems, much of that due to the “help” they got from a group called Good News Holdings and David P. Kirkpatrick, a man with a very poor financial track record.

Kirkpatrick’s former partners in the sprawling Plymouth plan – a group of prominent businessmen who hoped to use films to project their Christian faith – allege in a 2008 lawsuit in Los Angeles that he stole the proposal from them during a time that they were in financial distress. The group, called Good News Holdings, had set up a field office in Plymouth, but, when Good News ran out of money, Kirkpatrick split and formed a new studio company. Plymouth Rock officials deny wrongdoing, but, in materials for potential investors, they warn that they may face more lawsuits over ownership of the studio.

Kirkpatrick blew a chance to film Anne Rice’s “Christ the Lord” because she actually expected to be paid some money for the rights to it but he’s also been taking credit for input into major screen gems and admires Tim Robbins’ role in The Player, if any readers recall that movie. Robbins played some studio sleazeball, apparently.

In the midst of bankruptcy, Kirkpatrick began working with a group of Christian businessmen who were eager to offer an antidote to the shallow values of Hollywood. Kirkpatrick, who said he once considered the seminary, told his new collaborators that he wanted to share their vision of spiritually uplifting books, movies, and even cellphone messages. “Spiritainment’’ they called it.

Which is where Plymouth Rock and Anne Rice come in. His grandiose promises to bring the world better (read: Christian) movies resulted in broken dreams and financial flub ups. But, still people were willing to buy in, like a woman who believed God wanted her husband to invest $200 million toward the project. Bobbit turned out to be a guy who already went to prison for misappropriation of investment funds, but Kirkpatrick kept that little secret from his Good News partners for as long as possible.

It goes on. If they wanted to make a movie out of this attempt to make movies, it could be a blockbuster. Read the rest. I’ve only told the story up to page six.

First, a quote from Keats’ 1820 poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn:

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I was reminded of this poem after viewing a movie written, directed and produced by one of the first women in the industry, Lois Weber. She directed between two hundred and four hundred pictures, most of which are probably lost for good. The Library of Congress, however, has made a point of preserving what it can for future generations, which is why I was able to watch Hypocrites this week, a silent film from 1915.

Basic plot to the movie: a priest is finishing a Sunday sermon about hypocrisy (Matthew 23:28) aimed at a very bored congregation. After the congregation leaves we get a quick glimpse of some well dressed men (Deacons?) who were bothered enough by the tone of Gabriel’s sermon to suggest his resignation. Inside the church, Gabe has confiscated a newspaper from one of the choir boys that a couple were reading during his sermon earlier. He asks God’s forgiveness on behalf of the dumb lunkhead, but before he can do much else, he’s interrupted by a girl from the choir that might have a crush on him. He rolls his eyes at that, at least, then sits down to mull things over. The paper’s headline catches his eye:

It’s both a foreshadowing technique, and a nod to news stories coming out of Paris at the time. It may even (I’m guessing here) be related to the wicked tango in Paris which was a hot issue before the first World War. The Vatican went so far as to describe the dance and its popularity as, “offensive to the purity of every right minded person.” A low key version of the dance was performed for Pius X who later stated with derision that if it were ever decided to use the tango as a penance for sins, it would be “sheer cruelty.” It became known as a “whore’s dance” and it was thought that the doing of would lead to drunken “murderous brawls” and gross indecency by even the most proper of women. And, anyone who admitted to dancing this way but who was unwilling to quit the practice would never be allowed to absolve their sins. No forgiveness of sin by men of God. I found no mention of how many of God’s men may have learned the steps on their own time, though.

Back in the movie, the style of it changes and the priest’s costume turns to a Monk’s robe. Perhaps the priest has fallen asleep and is now dreaming. The rest of the movie is devoted to Gabriel the Ascetic who seeks the Truth of the world to show everyone. A noble gesture, I must say, but considering what happens to him later, not the wisest move he could have made.

Weber provides us with these quotes first.

Milton may have been referring to freedom of the press in terms of politics at the time, but we’ll let that slide. The point is, Truth is seen as a woman. Weber chose to film Truth as a beautiful naked woman whom the monk pursues. She also makes a visual point while filming that anyone can aim for the same goal if he or she is willing to make the effort and the sacrifices. Few do.

The idea of “The Naked Truth” is hardly recent. There is record of a pamphlet of the same name from 1675 that condemns the primitive church. It came out the year after John Milton died. In it is proof that Protestantism was the only approved belief in town; the Roman Church is likened to a place full of superstition which priests don’t mention until they’ve snared a new believer. This was also prior to James II’s pointless attempts at a Declaration of Liberty of Conscience and the (limited) Act of Toleration which allowed schisms of Protestantism the right to worship, but those who followed the Catholic ritual of transubstantiation or the trinity were not allowed the same luxury. (Keep that in mind for the next time you catch someone whining about persecution.)

Aren’t digressions fun? Anyway, the monk is so enamoured by Truth that he tries to sculpt her image and show off what he has found. Sadly, most of the town freaks out over the nakedness and refuses to fully appreciate his efforts. The Abbot mobs them all up into a religious fervor, I guess, and they kill the monk for even daring to assume he could bring them the truth. He doesn’t fight them at all; he martyrs himself to the greater Truth.

They didn’t really want to see Truth, not the way the monk did, anyway. She’s too naked and obvious and innocently shows her true and whole self without guilt or shame, something people are fearful of or incapable of doing.

Truth begins showing the spirit of the monk evidence of hypocrisy everywhere (Truth hurts, baby); “honest” politicians taking bribes; people acting decent when they really want to booze it up or take all their clothes off; accepting Truth only so far as it fits their own ideals.

Even love falls victim to hidden desires from both sides as neither side owns up to their true ambitions, or expectations. Truth even expects the monk to look inside his own self before he try to judge others of failing to uphold Truth. (Matthew 7:1,5 come to mind). He also has to admit to liking the girl who had a crush on him earlier, or liking the attention. Both are equally bad in Truth’s eyes since he’s be en avoiding the acknowledgment of it and thus not putting the poor deluded woman in her place, which will never be with him. Everyone’s putting an image out there that hides what’s really going on.

And as the movie ends, some of the congregation that Truth revealed as hypocrites in politics, modesty, love, or family dysfunction find the priest dead in the church and still clutching the newspaper. Then they call him a hypocrite in the next edition.

End credits.

I have nothing more to add, but if you want to read more about Lois Weber and the significance of this film, read this article. It’s so interesting, I don’t have to offer up any tantalizing quotes ahead of time to prove it.

Also known as Mitt liv som hund in the original Swedish, it was filmed in 1985, but takes place in 1959. It’s about a young boy named Ingemar who goes to live with his uncle in some strange little Swedish village when his mother gets ill. Ingemar can’t take his dog with him but the neighbour (or doctor?) arranging his trip tells him they’ll “kennel” it. Yeah right.

Ingemar loves his dog at least as much as he loves his mother but feels the lack of the dog’s company a lot more than he misses his mum. We aren’t treated to many scenes where the two of them are happy together. We do see one beach scene about seven or eight times though, as it’s the only real happy memory he has of her laughing. His attempts to connect with her at other times in the picture are pretty sad because she’s frail, off her rocker, and more likely to be reading or screaming than paying attention to what he has to say.

I think it’s fair to say the story is not about a boy’s life, but life through a boy’s eyes. We see Ingemar’s cute forays into sexuality without anything becoming awkward or trite. There are some hilarious scenes of him reading lingerie descriptions to an elderly house renter, among other things. We see him making friends and coming to grips with a strange situation and even stranger neighbours. He learns to box, bonds with his uncle (while endlessly listening to a Swedish version of “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts” — had I been Uncle’s wife, I would have snapped it by day three) and becomes a young tomboy’s confidant and probably her first serious attraction.

As to what the title means, I think I figured it out. There are a few instances where Ingemar pretends to be a dog, but I think the title has more to do with Ingemar’s feelings of abandonment and fears of being unwanted, like his own dog turns out to be. In his flashback narrations he mentions Laika a lot, often wondering how she felt about being wired up and launched into space, and how the scientists might have felt about the one way trip.

Documents were released in 2002 that finally revealed the results of the Sputnik 2 experiment. Turns out that Laika only survived a few hours up there due to stress and intense heat. They figure an equipment malfunction had something to do with it but the whole thing burned up during reentry some months later, thus rendering the debate moot.

Laika was an abandoned mutt that gained a family, albeit briefly. No doubt Ingemar realizes by the end of the film that he has gained one, too.

It’s a sweet little movie. I was actually sad to see it end. That doesn’t happen with movies very often. The only others I can think of where that’s happened to me would be Return of the King and High Fidelity.

I was hoping to invite some strange creature to join my movie-watching exploits tonight but how could I have known I’d find the perfect way to round out this Cheezy Drive-In Movie series? I overheard this monster head mumbling to itself on a store shelf. Intrigued, I purchased it immediately. But what is it saying?

Drrrrurr*
Durrrrurrrr.**
Drrrurrrrrer. Durrurrereerrr…***

I wondered what the worst movie of this Cheezy Movie collection would be and I finally found it. Dracula vs Frankenstein sounds like it should be the best of the bunch, but wrong. Oh so wrong. It’s so poor, I’m not even wasting much time explaining it, nor caring if I get the plot of it right. Two quotable moments from the Doc at the beginning:

“The greatest mysteries in the world are not mysteries at all, when we take time to get familiar with them.”

“They want to see illusions. What they don’t realize is reality itself is the grandest illusion of them all.

If only the movie had gone in that direction, it might have been entertaining and thought provoking. Instead, the mad doctor runs an amusement park freak house and as a hobby he works on a serum that might rejuvenate him and give him back the use of his legs. He has a mute, murderous lunk doing his bidding and the serum’s main ingredient seems to be the blood of recently beheaded girls, which the lunk provides. He then puts the girls back together as props for his freak house or something.

Dracula arrives to tell us all (in a strange tinny echoing voice) about how the mad doc is a descendant of Doctor Frankenstein and how he, Dracula, has Frank’s monster, a mute and murderous lunk who is also willing to kill on demand. It’s hard to tell why Doc would need him, unless he can sic this monster onto the scientists who tried to have him committed and broke his legs with sledgehammers when he tried to run away. Am I making that up? Maybe, maybe not. I dare you to watch this movie and find out.

This is supposed to be the monster, so it’s clear they had no support from Universal when it came time to design the make-up.

Of course, Dracula did dig him out of a grave and who’d look pretty after that?

According to information at imdb.com this film was meant to be a sequel to some motorcycle gang flick and when that plan fell through, they kept filming anyway. The addition of hippies on parade and a cabaret singer searching for her beheaded sister do nothing to improve this movie. Is this the worst bad movie ever made? Apparently that title is still coveted by the Star Wars Holiday Special, a show I’ve only seen brief portions of.

Better to be had in movie number two, if only by default. Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.

Maria is continuing her grandfather’s artificial brain work at an old abandoned mission in the American south-west while brother Rudolph longs for the non-stormy skies of Vienna, even though they aren’t welcome there anymore. The superstitious Christian locals in the town down the hill have left, scared of a “plague” that’s killing their kids. Juanita would rather blame the scientists than God for losing her brother, though. It’s not God’s will at all, she tells her parents before they leave town. And she looks to be right.

Here we see Maria eager to bring the young dreamboat brother back to life. Maria does all the science-style techie work while Rudolph stands around looking worried. He also decides to poison the young man instead of giving him the precious digitalis that might keep him alive.

Maria takes the blame for lack of success there and stops to consult Granddad’s work. It turns out she HAS been missing a vital step – the body must be connected to a living brain in order to give an artificial one any vibrational benefits. She needs someone else to experiment on. Rudolph asks a pertinent question here: what good would it do to succeed? It turns out she wants a guy she can order around and kill off when she gets bored of him. Taking kids and raiding graves just isn’t good enough anymore. She needs a real man. A powerful giant of a man. And she has only one artificial brain left from Granddad Frankenstein. If she fails in the next attempt, she’s willing to end her own life. This chick is a serious perfectionist.

So enter the perfect victim – Jesse James.

Or at least his shirtless pal, Hank Tracy, who just won a fight here. After a failed heist attempt, Jesse and Hank make a run for it and soon find Juanita and her parents hiding out in the woods. Juanita realizes the only hope Hank has of surviving his gunshot wound rests with those damned European doctors. Her folks try to stop her from leaving with them, but fail. Gotta love the girls in this one. So bold, so daring, so willing to do whatever they have to, no matter how good or bizarre the reason.

Juanita sends them to the mission as soon as they reach town and Rudolph has a bit of a panic, thinking Juanita brought the law to their door. Maria gladly lets them in, though, delighted by Hank’s bloody shirt and all the big hero body under it. Maria’s even more thrilled when she realizes Jesse James is under her roof, too. They’re both good looking fellows.

A Marshall and some Wild Bunch guy out for vengeance come to town looking for the pair of outlaws and after Jesse spurns Maria’s advances (he and Juanita have a thing) she jealously sends him into town to get medicine captured. That plan backfires, but Jesse returns too late to save Hank from getting Igorized. Maria controls Hank/Igor now and commands him to kill her brother, attack the Marshall, and club Jesse over the head so she can tie him up. But when she tells him to kill Juanita, he can’t, and turns on Maria instead. Hank likes the girl as much as Jesse does. He’s still willing to strangle Jesse (jealous of him getting smoochie with Juanita?) but Juanita figures out how to use a gun just in time and saves the man she loves. Aww, how sweet.

And that’s that. Eleven cheezy movies. There is a twelfth in the collection, but I didn’t get Robot Monster in time to include it. Also, it seems a version of this set includes Battle of the Worlds and Horror Planet, instead of Shark, and She Freak. Ah well, I suspect I’m not missing much in the way of quality entertainment. I’ll end this with DVD Verdict’s take on the “appeal” of these films.

In this post-millennial, everyone’s a movie expert pandemic, criticism is chaos. Everything’s classic, everyone’s a misunderstood genius, no previous oeuvre can be discounted for being the results of amateurish production values or subpar skill. In the mind of these messageboard Eberts, everything’s been done before, simply repackaged to take advantage of a demographic unaware of a film or filmmaker’s past proclivities or paltriness.

The truth is, most of the offerings here were contemplated and created to do one thing—swindle the passion pit populace out of a few isolated petting zone make-out dollars and then quietly disappear into the entertainment ether. Instead, geekdom has given rise to zombie like celluloid that never dies, but slowly rots whatever gray matter your socially stunted cranium has left.

Speaking of craniums:

* “I have an owie.”
** “I can’t find my pants.”
*** “Don’t think and jive. My body is moving without me…”

“Dah duh….Dah duh…Dah duh”
“Da dumb is more like it. What are you doing with a rock on your back, Lloyd?”
“I’m a shark, Floyd.”
“Worst looking shark I’ve ever seen. Minion has tonight’s movie all set up. Are you going to watch it or not?”
“I have my shark costume on, don’t I?”
“Whatever.”

I’ve saved the best for last. This isn’t it, though. Double feature fun comes tomorrow night as a grande finale (or at least, a great relief). Tonight it’s just Shark, filmed in 1969 and based on a book called His Bones are Coral, not on a Japanese movie of the same name from 1964. You’d never guess who “stars” in this one – Burt Reynolds. Before Cannonball Run, before Smokey and the Bandit, even before Deliverance.

It starts underwater as a diver searches a sunken ship. A shark silently approaches and giving the diver just enough time to shit his gear before the inevitable. He dies of his shark wounds so now the boat owners have a job opening. But never fear, a very young Burt plays the gun runner, Caine, and is about to solve all their problems.

Professor Dan and his associate, Anna, need a new “assistant” so Anna offers the position to Caine. Caine would love to steal a boat and get the hell out of Sudan so he gladly puts up with her flirtatious slow-dance “interview.”

her: how much do you know about diesel engines?
him: As much as I know about women.
her: How much is that?
him: Ask me
her: Can you handle a winch?
him: Honey, I was delivered by one…

Caine runs the equipment for Dan while he searches a sunken wreck, although Dan claims to be diving for other reasons. The sound is too poor to figure out what he said about the accident – either the first guy died in the world’s greatest laboratory, or world’s greatest lavatory. Both would be accurate, I think, since fish never get out to pee.

Dan nearly becomes shark bait after cutting his shoulder but manages to swim to the surface in time. Caine had been “testing the engines” and I think Dan’s fear of being left down there made him careless. Later (after beach sex with Caine, and a talk about how she loves Dan, but as a mentor only, and some more guilt-free beach sex presumably) Anna and Dan argue over what to do about Caine. He’s an “enigma” but they know the cops are after him so Dan suggests getting rid of him. Anna disagrees, suggesting they use him for what they need him for first, and then do that.

Caine enlists the help of a young street urchin he befriended earlier to find him a small boat he can use and steals some of Dan’s gear to check out Dan’s dive location for himself. All Caine finds is the Victoria and after what seemed like a useless chat with the drunk doctor about that ship, Caine confronts Dan and Anna about their cover story and sets himself up as a partner in their scam. Since their plan required only the pair of them knowing what was going on, Caine’s really expendable now.

Some more brawls happen and I admit to losing focus on the reason. The little street urchin gets injured, Caine blames Dan and later Dan meets with the local Fed who’d love to catch Caine and deport him. Dan claims Caine knows too much about his research and needs him and the cop appears to buys it.

Anna and Dan take Caine out to sea again and both guys head for the ship below. There’s a locked box worth opening because it’s filled to bursting with gold bars. A real one weighs 27 pounds, so the guys have at least 200 pounds of it in their little wire basket but they’re waving them around like styrofoam as they fill it.

I’ve never gone diving so I don’t know what the likelihood is that two people could heave that much out of the water, plus their own gear, plus their weights (which I don’t see them drop), and still avoid the sharks with any chance of success. But that’s what the winch is for. Right. They just need to lug the basket to the hooks and Anna will bring it up for them. And how much do they trust her not to take off with the boat and leave them to the sharks? That’s always the risk with partners in crime, especially when partners aren’t getting along.

Fish chunks are falling on their heads, and they know that’s worth worrying about. Dan goes down fighting but Caine manages to get back on board. He’s surprised by the gun-toting Fed who admits to hatching the whole plan. He wanted to claim the gold for himself but needed a group of patsies to get it for him. After forcing Caine to wreck the boat, Caine makes the only sane choice and flings the Fed into the water. His mild attraction to Anna fades when she points a gun on him next and forces him to board the Fed’s little police boat alone. She takes off, leaving Caine completely broke but standing on the only usable vessel in the area. We see him grinning as he watches Anna’s golden parachute start sinking. Sadistic prick.

It’s worth mentioning that the movie is dedicated to the stunt guys who actually went down into shark water so this stuff could get filmed. We forget that with movies today, but it used to be completely necessary to be on location and at risk. Even if they just borrowed the sharks in a big aquarium, it’s still pretty bold to swim around beside them.

Tomorrow night is devoted to two creature features of the Frankenstein persuasion, so check back.

those responsible for the Kirk Cameron “hit” called Fireproof are almost ready to announce their new project.

During the National Religious Broadcasters Convention earlier this year, Fireproof Director Alex Kendrick said the yet-unnamed Sherwood Pictures film would have an expected budget of $2.5 million–five times larger than with the pro-marriage drama. Kendrick and his Fireproof movie-making brother, Stephen, recently told Christian Retailing that scriptwriting of the new project was to start soon, with production due next year and a theatrical release planned for early 2011.

“The leaders of Sherwood Pictures–Michael Catt, Jim McBride, Alex and Stephen Kendrick–have been praying about the story for the next movie,” Sherwood officials said. “Their prayer hasn’t been for a good movie; it’s been for a God movie. As was the case first with Flywheel, then with Facing the Giants and most recently with Fireproof , they believe God has answered their prayers.”

I bold that which explains everything. Great budget with no intention on making it good? Must be the Christian version of Transformers 2, but with less boobs and explosions and no cool robots. Ah well, they can make it. They can beat their flocks over the head with the God message until they’re too dazed to notice how shitty the film actually is, and they can pray they’ll still break even.

And I can thank my lucky stars I’ll never be forced to see it.

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Edit November 16, 2009: It’s announced, it’s called Courageous and it’s all about fathers needing to take an active role in the lives of their children and remain faithful to their wives, but mostly to God, I suspect. God doesn’t actually want you to do what he said to do to so many other children…