Looky, Looky, Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   Judging by my blog posts, lately, film viewing has been under a dry spell.  Yes, we saw "The Wizard Of Oz," and on March 3 we are going to "Gone With The Wind" (also 80th Anniversary!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but I am here to tell you, I am excited about the upcoming series of films at the Film Forum called "Forbidden Fruit--The Golden Age Of The Exploitation Picture."  It is running on a carefully calibrated schedule between March 1 and 30 on weekend dates.

                                     But before going further, I LOVE the campy poster about Chinatown.  You know, my paternal grandmother always told me that most Chinese restaurants there have trap doors, which is where the cats are dropped down, then cooked, and fed to customers.  And, to this day, a bit of me believes it.  I mean, when I descend downwards into a place like Wo-Hop, do I really know what I am eating, even though everything tastes so good?  And the atmosphere reminds me of the opium den Anne Baxter was in, during her Oscar winning downward trajectory as Sophie MacDonald, in 1946's "The Razor Edge."  Honestly, girls, when I visit a place like Wo-Hop, I feel just like her!

                                    However, let us examine of the highlights of what is being featured!  I cannot wait!  This is going to be a hoot!

"Narcotic" (1933)--This gem, released the same year as "King Kong," and the Oscar-winning "Cavalcade" (not to mention Katherine Hepburn's "Little Women, how about THAT, darlings), featuring Harry Cording and Joan Dix, shows how people descend into degradation through drugs and alcohol.  The aforementioned Chinatown opium den is to be featured in all its campy glory, but what I can't wait to see is the sequence showing a woman's stomach being sliced open, like a watermelon, and a baby's head popping out!!!!!!!!!!!!  That is because this is probably done, using a real watermelon, and a Jack-In-The-Box head!

Join me for campy fun, darlings!  Sounds like a foreshadowing of David Lynch's "Eraserhead" (1976) to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Child Bride" (1938)-- A feast of fun, wherein a super virtuous, and spinster, school teacher, returns to the mountain town she was raised in to educate the heathens she did not want to turn into herself. The residents of the town all look one step removed from Tod Browning's "Freaks," and the title character is played by an actress named Shirley Mills, who, I swear, looks like she is channeling Dorothy DeBorba, from "The Little Rascals!!!!!!!!!!!"   The town is awash in ugly, lustful men yearning for child brides--the town should have been named Pedosomething--with the nastiest bloke, Jake Bolby, casts his lustful eye on Miss Mills' Jennie!!!!!!!!!!  Will he succeed? Or will purity and virtue prevail??????????????

Darlings, this could be more fun than a "Final Destination" movie!  Baby Gojira, sitting alongside me, as I write this, is just laughing his head off!  He and I both hope you join me, for this hilarious fun!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                         "Mom And Dad" (1945)--The decade has changed, but not moral codes in America, where a good girl can still end up in the gutter!  This is some kind of early sex-ed film, where the parents are SO puritanical, they refuse to discuss matters of "personal hygiene"--which is what sex ed was call back then; in my day it was upped to "social hygiene."  Of course, the poor, naïve girls gets pregnant by her boyfriend, and somebody dies!  I cannot figure out if it is the girl or the boy; if the girl, then she is sort of like Jane Ball as Nora in "The Keys Of The Kindgom," back in 1944, only Nora commits suicide, having a child out of wedlock, but unwilling to marry a man she does not love!  If the boy dies on this film, she is left to raise the baby!

                                             The whole thing is to scare young girls, and make them beware!  In fact, I am surprised the parents let her have a boy friend!  Or maybe they did not know.  And forget talks about sons having their own boyfriends, or girls having girlfriends!  This was still the era when such matters were strictly confined to "The Well Of Loneliness," by Radclyffe Hall, which should also have been entitled "The Spinster's Mantra!"  Baby Gojira is reading it right now, and laughing his head off!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               "Sex Madness" (1938)--This is one I have GOT to see!  Oh, my God!  Wild parties, burlesque shows encouraging carnal sex, because, after all, the girls are probably prostitutes, an actress who contracts syphilis from the casting couch--and this is DECADES before Harvey Weinstein!!!!!!!!!!!--and (GAAAAAAAAAAASP!) lesbianism!!!!!!!!!!  I say, hey, what about homosexuality?  Don't the boys get equal time?

                                                  I guess this film places the blame for sex on women!  That was pretty much the thought, I guess, back in 1938, but anything shown as driving people to madness here, will have the Baby Boomers and beyond laughing uproariously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This film sounds guaranteed to drive one mad--with comedic ecstasy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                   Hope to see you there, dears!  We will have a drink, and laugh ourselves, silly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                      Just one last thing, girls?  Where the hell in this lineup is 1936's "Reefer Madness" and 1955's "Dementia," aka, Daughter Of Horror?"