Today is the last day of the B&N criterion collection sale. Here are my five recommendations if you still haven’t decided to get:
Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman. Starring Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. Spine Number 1227.
Risky Business is one of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. In it, Cruise plays a high school student who seems bored with his everyday Suburban life. He meets Lana, who is involved in some interesting ordeals.
Sid and Nancy is directed by Alex Cox and starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. This movie is based on the rocky relationship between Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
Claudine was directed by John Berry and starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. Claudine is a hard-working single mother with six kids in New York City and trying very hard to make life work. While trying to hold everything together, she meets a man in the least likely place.
The movie of the day is Tourist Trap, from 1979, directed by David Schmoeller and starring Chuck Jones, Jocelyn Jones, and Jon Van Ness.
Tourist Trap is about a bunch of kids driving in two separate cars in the middle of California when one of the cars starts experiencing car troubles. One of them decided to seek help and came across a gas station. However, he is met with bizarre supernatural forces when he enters the gas station.
This is one of my favorite summer movies. I tend to revisit it every now and again, thanks to the fantastic soundtrack by Pino Donaggio. The soundtrack does not take over the movie but mixes well with the eerie vibes that these groups are experiencing. Throughout the film, you explore why there are so many wax figures and literally no human beings in sight.
Some fun facts about the film:
The writers of the script wanted John Carpenter to direct the movie.
David Schmoeller changed some of the concepts of the script from the original script because he had some inspiration from watching the movies of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Luis Bunuel.
He also was inspired by watching the mannequins at JCPENNYs.
The entire movie took about 24 days to film, and a huge part of it was filmed in an abandoned house that was scheduled to be demolished.
The production designer of the movie was Robert A. Burns, who also worked on films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Hill Have Eyes (1977)
Director and writer David Schmoeller convinced composer Pino Donaggio to work on the movie’s soundtrack because he happened to be in town working on another soundtrack, Piranha, directed by Joe Dante.
Linnea Quigley had an uncredited role as a mannequin in the movie.
Jon Van Ness did all of his own stunts in the movie.
Gig Young and Jack Palance were offered the role of Mr. Slausen.
This movie is available to watch on Tubi, Shudder, and Youtube.
Sources: YouTube, Wikipedia, and Internet Movie Database.
Lights, camera…mummy??! In December 1976, when filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man:
The crew was on set on a laff in the dark ride in California. The director on set told a crew member to move one of the dummies in the funhouse scene.
However, when the crew member went to move the dummy out of the scene. One of their body parts broke off while it was being pushed, and you could see human bones from the broken part. The dummy was an actual dead human being named Elmer McCurdy, who died almost 80 years old.
Elmer McCurdy was born on January 1, 1880, and died on October 7, 1911. He was part of a gang of outlaws who robbed. They finally got unlucky when they were planning to rob a train with loads of money but instead robbed the wrong train and got only 45 dollars, a watch, and some alcohol. A couple of days later, another group attacked McCurdy’s gang, and he died in a shootout with them.
McCurdy’s body was taken to an Oklahoma funeral home called Johnson Funeral Home located in Pawhuska. The funeral home embalmed his body, and he was left there for six months, waiting for someone to claim the body, and unfortunately, no one did. The mortician turned this into a money-making opportunity. He decided since Elmer was perfectly embalmed, he nicknamed Elmer the “Embalmed Bandit” and dressed him up in cowboy gear, put a gun in his hand, and charged a nickel for anyone who wanted to see Elmer.
In 1916, a group of carnival promoters passing by Pawhuska pretended to be relatives of Elmer. It took him to the Great Patterson Carnival Show as part of their human curiosities sideshow.
In 1922, the head of an entertainment company from California named Louis Sonney got Elmer only because the Great Patterson Carnival Show put up Elmer as a security deposit and could not pay back a $500 loan they took out. Louis Sonney, in turn, put Elmer as part of his traveling show and also in the Museum of Crime. Elmer was on tour up and down the West Coast of the United States until 1940. He was even part of a movie from 1933 called “Narcotic.”
However, when Louis Sonney died in 1949, the hype about Mummy Elmer died down, and he was stored in a Los Angeles warehouse for about 20 years. In 1968, Elmer was sold to the Hollywood Wax Museum and renamed the “1000-Year-Old Man.” However, the museum closed after only a year, and somehow, Elmer got grouped with the other Wax Museum dummies, all sold to the Nu-Point Amusement Park in Long Beach, California. The people who owned the part naturally assumed that Elmer was a Wax Figure, so he was painted in fluorescent colors and hung in the dark ride Laff in the Dark.
That is how, in December 1976, a crew member from the show The Six Million Dollar Man came to find Elmer. Elmer was then taken to the Los Angeles Corner’s Office, where he was researched and was found to have the bullet that ultimately killed him still in his chest and an embalming fluid that was commonly used in the early 1900s. Elmer even had carnival ticket stubs stuffed into his mouth. With additional aid from Oklahoma historians, the LA Corner matched the remains with Elmer McCurdy.
In February 1977, the City Council in Gurthie, Oklahoma, had a burial plot in Boot Hill, part of Summit View, where other outlaws had been buried, and offered Elmer a chance to be buried alongside them. Finally, after sixty years of Elmer’s illustrious after-life career, he was laid to rest.
Source: Youtube, Library of Congress blogs: Elmer McCurdy: traveling corpse.
(Pic1. “My little sister, Jaclyn, our Mom and Me.”)
“As a child in the 1980s, I loved growing up in Orange County. There was the sunshine and beaches, Disneyland, and my favorite Mall -The South Coast Plaza. Everything was new, the homes, schools, roller skating rinks, movie theaters, shopping centers, and the man-made lakes. It was where my Mom, a stylish, blond, valley girl, drove her daughters around in a burgundy Datsun 280zx blasting Madonna and Heart. When it was just the three of us, we were happy, and that’s how I liked it. Also, the 80’s just slayed. One cool 80’s thing my mom had was a glass brick. It had a hole at the top. She put transparent glass pebbles at the bottom and stuck pens inside. She displayed it on the kitchen counter next to our cordless landline phone.
At school, the cool things for kids to collect and display were pencils with toppers- a little toy or charm at the top of the pencil. Kids kept their pencil collections on top of their desks held inside a clear, plastic, rectangular container. Most of my classmates went to this stationary store called “LMNOP” to buy their pencils and containers. A talented woman with a steady hand customized your container by writing your name on it with paint pens and adding Sandylion or Mrs.Grossman stickers of your choice. I loved seeing my name written on my container adorned with a Palm Tree sticker. I loved my pencils. Each one was a personal, special treasure.
(Pic 2.“Some of my 80’s nostalgia collection surrounding an illustration of what our plastic pencil containers looked like. The font of the child’s name was written in a connecting dots font using two colors. The stickers were minimal to showcase the pencils inside. In writing this article, I discovered that these boxes still exist and are called “Amac plastic containers”. I will be ordering a few a.s.a.p.!”)
My favorite kinds of novelty pencils were by Russ. Russ pencils had a name or phrase engraved on them with a cute or interesting topper. My Mom would give me one on every occasion like. For Halloween, I got the pumpkin, ghost, and black cat. I had a purple “Good Luck Troll” and a Santa Claus Pencil. The “Ted D. Bear ” pencil had a brown, flocked bear wearing a red bowtie. He was exquisite. I also loved “Putt Putt Putt ”. It had a yellow, flocked car on top with plastic red wheels. My favorite pencil had an actual mini spinning pinwheel on top. My second favorite had a flexible pink hand on top. The fingers could bend to sign “Hang Loose ” and of course “Fuck You”. The Russ pencil designs were so clever, and I got so much joy staring at them because life had been hell. In 1988, my Mom, sister, and I had just moved to a hip apartment complex called Vista Del Lago. We had spent the year before living in a house with her long-term boyfriend, who I hated. In a word, he was “Putrid,” and that’s how I refer to him because if I actually said his name, it’s like what Stewie Griffin says “I would not stop throwing up!” For some reason, no matter what nasty, mean, or violent thing he did, my Mom would always take him back. Maybe she was attracted to him because he was the opposite of my Father, who was a Mensch and the perfect Dad. But even when I was 5, I knew Putird was no good and that we would never be safe or happy as long as he was in our lives.
Finally, when I was eleven, my Mom came to her senses and broke up with Putrid. He stayed in the house we had shared and the three of us ladies moved into Vista Del Lago. It was way better. One school night, my sister and I were excited because our favorite Aunt from L.A. was over to give us dinner and stay the night while our mom went on a date with her newest boyfriend. While my little sister watched TV and played, I had to convince myself to do my math homework. I always hated math, but I hated the feeling of showing up to school without my homework completed even more. I sat at the counter in one of the barstools and forced myself to get it done. When I finished, I placed the papers inside my Supershades folder with a graphic of a toucan wearing sunglasses in the corner. I zipped up the folder and my Math book inside of my acid-washed denim backpack, ready for the next day. Then I joined my sister and aunt to eat tortellini and watch TV until bedtime- feeling relieved and proud of myself.
In the morning, my Mother was back. I went downstairs to give her a hug. She had a stack of developed pictures to show us of where she had just been. It turns out her date had been a 24 hour trip to visit a 100-acre ranch in Texas. She smiled while she showed us pictures of the animals, goats, swans, and a llama, the two lakes, the wooden bridge, and an enormous white house which sat at the top of the property. Then she asked in her soft, calm voice, “Do you girls like this place?” My sister and I were like “Yeah, it looks nice.” “Well”, she continued, “that’s going to be your new home. And we’re going now. So go pack some things because a limousine is on its way to take us to the airport!” My sister and I were shocked and disturbed. We didn’t want to go to a ranch in Texas, even if it was in a limousine. And now? Why now? Our Mother’s behavior, the smile, the pictures were just a ploy to introduce her next bad idea revolving around a man. I felt betrayed. Our Mother had found a rich boyfriend who wasn’t Putrid. But rich or not, why did she think it was a good idea to impulsively rip me and my little sister away from everything we had known to be with him? I was angry, but I was a compliant child. I had learned that my opinion or feelings never mattered when it came to adults. They were going to do what they were going to do. My Mother would consider me ungrateful and ridiculous if I told her how I really felt. That this was wrong. That I had heroically forced myself to finish my math homework the night before, for what? What about turning in my homework? What about my school? What about my friends? What about my Dad, my Step-mom, and my baby brothers? What about our clean, fresh start at Vista Del Lago? On that random weekday morning in 1988, I left California without a word to my friends, school or Dad- with only a few belongings in a bag. My heart ached. And my precious pencil collection sat abandoned on my desk at school. When we made it to the ranch in Texas, we saw the land and the animals and picked out our bedrooms in the humongous house. Then our Mom and her boyfriend had us come into the office with a Marlin Hanging on the wall to call our Dad. They told us not to tell him where we were. Not just because it was against California Child Custody laws to take a child out of the state without permission but because this was all so wrong on so many levels, and they knew it. I spoke on the phone cautiously to my father, and I felt like a liar and an obedient child at the same time. But when my little sister got on the phone, she couldn’t help herself. She was brave and took the only chance she could to tell our Dad we had been taken away to Texas. She got on the phone and said, “Hi Daddy! We’re in Texas!” The events that followed after that phone call were filled with so much confusion, heartache, and trauma that my sister and I only need to refer to this time in our lives as “Texas.” In Texas, our Mom and her boyfriend constantly fought, partied, and left us for days on end with strange people who were not fit to look after children. And while I was there, I felt the child in me die. I couldn’t play pretend anymore. I didn’t remember how. I started having panic attacks on
the way to school, but I didn’t know what they were. I just knew I had to handle it. I started daydreaming. Maybe that was my new form of play, but it wasn’t for fun. It was for survival.
(Pic 3. “Me, age 11, dissociating on my Mom’s Texas boyfriend’s yacht in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico”.)
After a few months in Texas, we were taken back to our apartment in California, just as abruptly as we had left. It was scary to leave the small amount of stability I had known in Texas whether it was stable or not, but I was relieved to go home back to California. I returned to school the next day, to everyone’s surprise. My teacher had me come inside before the rest of the class to speak with me. She said “Lauren, unfortunately we didn’t know if you were coming back, so the class auctioned off all your pencils.” I just stared at her face processing the information. What was she saying? An auction? We never had an auction in class before. How did that even work? Like rabid scavengers they bid on my special pencils? I couldn’t find the words to express my feelings because I had never really done it. Inside my mind I was thinking very clearly, “Ok, so then I should be given my pencils back, right? Because I’m back. Give the kids back their money or whatever they used to bid on my stuff and return my pencils to me!” My teacher just gave me a dumb look like “Gosh yeah, they’re gone. So… sorry.” But they weren’t gone. They were at different desks in different pencil containers around the classroom. My heart was honestly broken. Those pencils were mine. They were one of the few things left that made me smile. Objects I loved had become my home, a focus. After all I had been through they represented the last of any happiness I had left inside me to feel. My teacher did not have the students give back my pencils and none of the students even offered them to me. There was just an awkward silence at my return. Things only got worse before they got better. After school I was disgusted and extremely disappointed to find my Mother and Putrid together in the car. I had thought we had gotten rid of him. They took me and my sister to Frozen Yogurt. As we sat there, I told my Mom about my pencils. “Oh well, honey. I’m sorry.” was all she said. And Putrid, who had no business being there anyway just stared at me, observing me with his smarmy self-satisfied smile. He never smiled out of joy or kindness, always when someone was feeling badly. I felt so alone. The injustice of everything was beyond my scope of rationalizing. I imagined an invisible grown up there in the yogurt shop with me. She knew this was totally fucked. She knew I was right about everything and everyone. That all of these adults who never had my best interests at heart were completely messed up. I wasn’t the ridiculous one. My feelings about wanting my pencils back were valid. Feeling livid and defeated at Putrid being back in our lives was valid. Feeling traumatized about having to leave my Daddy to go to Texas was valid. Feeling ostracized at school because I was now “the girl who disappeared and returned mysteriously” was valid. I was amazing and I didn’t deserve any of this. Over the next year, our Mother bounced back and forth between Putrid and her Texas boyfriend, dragging me and my little sister along. Every departure was abrupt, fueled by my Mother’s passionate love or anger towards her partner. She took us back and forth to Texas twice before she finally got rid of her Texas boyfriend. After that we moved to Los Angeles for my Middle School years. Then one night in L.A. he came back- Putrid. Our Mom told us she was taking us back to live with him in the same house we had escaped years before. I felt like I was slipping down a slide into a sea of lava. But this time, I couldn’t hold my emotions or words back. I was 13, but I screamed and sobbed like a 3-year-old. I begged, and pleaded. As I sat in my chair, my legs shook and bounced up and down, tears and mucus dripped down my face, and I did not care. I didn’t care that Putrid was observing me and smiling sickly. I didn’t care if I was going to be called ridiculous or if I was disobedient. I could not live with him again! And like all the times before and what I had already known was that crying, screaming, and begging did not change things. Grown-ups were going to do what they were going to do.
Finally, one day, I became a grown-up too. A grown-up who is so effing rad! My Mother and I have since made peace, and she’s grown a lot. She left Putrid years ago. I’m so grateful for the relationship we have. I’m also grateful for the grown-up I turned out to be. I got a Film degree from Calarts and I love to make movies with my Best Friend. But my day job, my career is being a Nanny. I get to be the person I always wished was there for me, like the invisible person I imagined supporting me in the yogurt shop when I was eleven.
(Pic 4. “Me as a rad, grown-up who understands kids. I am an Auntie or have been a Nanny to all of these children!”)
Last year, I was looking at vintage pencils on eBay. Surprisingly, I found my old favorites. Ted D. Bear, The Pinwheel, My Good Luck Troll, Putt Putt Putt and the rest. I hesitated about spending money on pencils, but then I spoke to my sister. She said, “Lauren, if it’s going to heal a part of you that you lost, Treat Yo’self!”
My sister gave me permission to buy my pencils back. So I did. When I finally had them all collected, I put them in a glass brick with transparent glass beads. My heart swelled. Unlike other nostalgia I’ve collected that simply made me happy to look at, these 1980’s Vintage Russ Pencils represented justice. Justice I never got. That I now have given to myself.”
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