Tom Moody

tom moody

Thunderhead, on the way to Padre Island. Note evidence of
reckless driving in center.

Indianola. Once-thriving gateway to German immigration in Texas, reduced
to near-ghost town by a couple of big 19th Century hurricanes.

- tom moody 8-31-2003 7:38 pm [link] [1 comment]

Texas, Day 3. At the AMC theatre at Westheimer and Dunvale in Houston, I watched Jeepers Creepers 2 on the screen the size of a battleship. The theatre complex is a theme park-like extravaganza--newish but already heat-faded. This is the air-conditioned outdoor ticket kiosk, protecting a single taciturn clerk from the 90-degree heat. Matinee: $6. Concerning JC2, I have a friend who's boycotting the director Victor Salva's movies because of a certain incident in the '80s. Well, the filmmaker did his time--maybe not enough, I don't know the whole story--and now he's displaying his vivid (albeit NAMBLA-leaning) imagination onscreen with mind-boggling cinematography, tortured religious imagery, and barely-hidden homoerotic themes (at one point the monster looks into a schoolbus full of buff football players and licks the window). It's hard not to think of "the Creeper," a sexualizing if not sexual predator who is repeatedly impaled and crucified by straight hicks but simply can't be killed, as an amped-up cinematic stand-in for the director. More on all this later. See the movie, though--it's poetic, scary, Satanic fun.

Oh, yeah, here's a review of the first Jeepers worth reading (popup warning). The author describes the movie quite intensely (if inaccurately) because he or she is looking so hard for evidence of Salva's criminality. Sample paragraph:

There is also the scene were the monster has captured the teens and is deciding who it should take. After a prolonged moment of sniffing both teens in a very sexual manner, the monster then licks the girl and decides to keep the boy throwing her aside and pulling the boy close to him. At this moment the cops burst in and attempt to fight the monster. The creature starts vibrating violently while holding the boy in front of it. The scene recalls rather eerily some sort of s0domy sex sequence. Moments later the monster sprouts wings (the reason for the vibrating movements) and flies away.

Gosh, is that what happened in that scene?

older posts...