The Amazing World of SPRINGHEEL

THE SKULL STRIKES (1926 Sampson Studios) starring Cecil Westbrooke, Mary Sedgewick, Natalia Nazimov, Clive Pritchett, W.G. Morehead and Reginald Runion
Film play written by Donald MacDonald and E.M.F. Munroe
Directed by Jack Springald

In this eerie and exciting follow-up to Springald’s PHANTOM OVER LONDON, Westbrooke returns as The Skull plotting to destroy London with his giant, bomb dropping zeppelin. The film begins with a lengthy flashback sequence where we learn the origin of The Skull. Once know as the dashing aviator hero Arthur Shaw, he returns from the Great War with a great hatred for the rest of humanity and, leading a double life as criminal mastermind The Skull, is murdering London’s wealthiest men to gain their fortunes. When his secret is discovered by his fiancé Elsa, he attempts to strangle her but she turns the tables, slashing his face with Shaw’s prized Mystic Chinese Dagger. Donning the mask that he left on the faces of his victims, he skulks underground where he plots his revenge.
He meets his undoing at the hands of Ben (Clive Pritchett), fiancé of the lovely Victoria (Mary Sedgewick), who he has kidnapped in an attempt to gain control over her father’s fortunes. The Skull inadvertently falls in love with the calmly Victoria and, blinded by his feelings for the girl, allows himself to be killed in the climactic sword fight.
THE SKULL STRIKES was the very first film to feature “reimagining”, i.e. taking an original film and making a sort of remake sequel hybrid (a standard practice in today’s films). The flashback sequence at the beginning is, in reality, a larger scale and more exciting version of the first film PHANTOM OVER LONDON, with the rest being a continuation of that film’s plot.
THE SKULL STRIKES shows Springald in top form. Visually impressive, wonderfully acted, with tightly edited action sequences that even modern filmgoers can enjoy, it shows that even at this early stage of his career, Springald was a force to be reckoned with.
Review taken from A CENTURY OF SPRINGALD: The films of “Mad” Jack Springald by Evan Newhouse

We’ve all heard the old cliché about how people should never discuss religion and politics at a dinner party (although I’d rather be stuck between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Joseph Lieberman at a pulled pork church barbecue than have to be at one more dinner party where an old German man wanted to discuss his genital piercings) and yet, people just love to tell you all about which side of the bullshit pile they rest their ass on.  Turn on the television, log on to the Information Superhighway, sit in the ball pit at Chuck E Cheese; doesn’t matter when, doesn’t matter where, there will always be some hippie or square getting all up in your grill about fucking politics and religion like the dudes with disco hair coming one at a time to get their asses beat in a back alley in a Bruce Lee movie.

I keep most of my thoughts about this crap to myself, mostly because I don’t really think about it.  As I age, my brain is running out of thinking room and if it comes down to having memory space for either fury at bank bailouts or coming up with elaborate sex fantasies involving Megan Fox, a barrel of pitted black olives and the seal tank at the Toledo zoo, my Lefty Facebook friends will just have to make due without me.


I wish I could say the same of dick joke machine/marijuana vacuum Kevin Smith because then I could be sitting on my fat ass playing Assassin’s Creed instead of beating the shit out of his “political horror movie” Red State.  But he did and I can’t because I hate it and him and I hate when I hear people talk about how great he is and how great this movie is so tighten yer Bible Belt cause this is about to get political and religioulousy.


Red State starts off in some sort of Southern state that looks for all the world like New Jersey just paler and with one extra mullet.  Jared, one of the many people in this film who resemble a lesser clone variation of Joaquin Phoenix, is late for his first hour class at Plot Exposition High where the Andrea Dworkin-esqe teacher engages in a 10 minute MSNBC lecture about Abin Cooper, the film’s version of that vomitously horrible Fred Phelps.  After that nonsense, Jared and his two Phoenix clone friends become the three most repugnant 25 year old high school students in modern films as they puke out a scheme to have group sex with a woman that one of them has been talking to online for two weeks. 


On their way out to this lovely romantic getaway, they ram into a car parked on the side of the road while they were busy arguing about sex positions.  They panic and drive off when the driver leaps up and they don’t see the other dude who sits up who was obviously going down on the driver.  I actually spent several minutes trying to figure out how the guy blowing the other guy didn’t bite the first guy’s dick off when the Joaquin trio side-mashed them. (I’d love to see MythBusters tackle that one)

They finally make it to Le Ménage à Trailer and meet the spooky drunk housewife they almost killed two men (one of which was the sheriff!) to get to and after saying one of the greatest lines in film history (“I don’t let no man in me unless he’s got at least two beers in him”) she sends them off to the bedroom where they all undress, shout like idiots about her tits and then collapse on the floor.  One of these idiots (I’m not lying when I say I couldn’t tell which one) wakes up in a cage that’s getting wheeled in to a church service lead by our pal Abin Cooper who proceeds to preach…

and preach…

AND FUCKING PREACH…

FOR 25 FUCKING MINUTES


All about his views on morality and sex and America and his God and…well, lets face it, you know what this guy says without even seeing the film.  They then reveal that they have the sheriff’s boyfriend strapped to the cross with Saran Wrap, shoot him in the head and dump him in a trap door where the other dipshits are.  They grab the kid in the cage and start to wrap him up when a deputy sheriff with eyes like the fucking Terminator spies the car that rammed the sheriff waaaaaaaay the hell in the back of Cooper’s property so Cooper has to go sweet talk the big dope and no one notices that one of Joaquin trio breaks out and is running all around the basement.  The big mulleted moron stumbles into the church’s arsenal room and manages to kill a dude who looks just like the “Son, I Am Disappoint” guy just as the guy shoots him.  This tips off the deputy and so, logically, Cooper kills the deputy and makes gay blackmail threats on the radio to the sheriff. 


So its right about here that you’re thinking, “You know, I really don’t feel comfortable with this film sooooo, hey look!  Monsters Inc. is on Family Channel!  How about we just forget all this sleazy Hostel wannabe nonsense and settle into the warm embrace of John Goodman, what do you say?”  I look at you, nod and smile in relief.  “Yes”, I sigh, “that sounds like a wonderful idea!  I don’t have to do this stupid review!  I just love John Goodman and I…oh wait, that’s my phone, hang on a minute…..hello?”

Goddam it


John Goodman shows up as the unholy spawn of Leslie Nielsen and Chewbacca that grew up and became an ATF agent who spends 10 fucking minutes yammering away on a cell phone to his boss at the Department of Backstory.  Meanwhile back at the Westboro Lite Compound, the other clown in the basement has somehow managed to escape and, M-4 in hand, proceeds to run screaming around the compound unable to escape because all the doors are locked.  I’d like to repeat that…

THE KID WITH THE MACHINE GUN CAN’T GET OUT OF A FARM HOUSE BECAUSE THE DOORS ARE LOCKED


When he finally goes flailing outside and gets shot by the ATF because they mistake him for a cult member, I couldn’t have been happier.  Look, I can suspend my belief for major amounts of shit but when you ask me to believe a kid in Georgia doesn’t know you can shoot through a fucking wooden door?  Get bent Mr. Human Bong Pipe Smith.


Things get a little better when Kevin Pollack gets shot in the face after 45 seconds of screen time and then a giant (and LOUD) firefight breaks out between the ATF and Cooper’s folks while Goodman bitches on the phone at his boss because the Government has suddenly forgotten Ruby Ridge and ordered everyone dead.  The daughter of the lumpy housewife finds out the ATF’s plans and grabs the last Joaquin standing and somehow thinks he will help her get the kids out and expose the government’s awful plan….totally forgetting her family’s awful plan to keep killing homosexuals until Jesus gives them all solid gold McMansions.  After she kills her mom, he decides she may be kinda ok so they run outside screaming at John Goodman to let them live while he screams at them to get back.  One of the ATF guys runs up and plugs the kids both and then, out of nowhere, Red State becomes the greatest horror film I have ever seen.


Because the Trumpets blare.  THE Trumpets


I am a total nonbeliever but I come from a very long line of Southern Christians and I knew what that meant as soon as I heard it.  That horrible sound, that incredible sound.  The sound of The End.

I sat here with tears in my eyes saying “No!  No!  It can’t be true!  He was RIGHT???  It can’t be true!”  Cooper comes prancing out with his group while the ATF is falling to the ground covering their ears.  He tells them what I already knew.


The Final Seal has been broken.  Its all been unleashed.  Jesus is coming NOW and the war has begun. 


Cooper struts triumphantly toward Goodman, telling him all this.  Its all done.  we were all wrong.  He was right.  THEY were right.  The camera pans up to show Cooper standing nose to nose with Goodman, his arms extended in a mock crucifixion.


And I don’t believe it.  Smith has done what no one would do.  He let the evil win,  he let the monster win, said this was THE TRUTH and that the monster was actually the righteous one.  He just gave us the most horrific ending of any film ever made.


And then the dirty son of a bitch snatches it all away with the most pussy epilogue put on film since Hitchcock had Simon Oakland spend 20 minutes explaining transvestitism to an audience filled with repressed suburbanites.  Goodman is in a meeting explaining to his handlers that the most idiotic convoluted scheme ever created was to blame for the trumpets (Eco-Hippies next door set up a big speaker to annoy Cooper and decided to play it at exactly the moment after the raid) and gives them an absolutely asinine story about his childhood pets to explain why he didn’t want to kill everyone that he and his men just killed.

The film ends with Cooper singing a hymn in a jail cell and someone telling him to “shut the fuck up”


Red State is like every girl I dated in the 90s; short, stupid, jittery and ultimately heartbreaking.  The performances range from good to absolutely phenomenal (Michael Parks deserves an Academy Award nom for his portrayal of Cooper), its surprisingly authentic as far as the cult is concerned and the sound, of all things, is just fantastic.  But I can’t forgive Smith for being so absolutely fucking lazy.  The film can’t make up its mind what it wants to be and it just wants to sit around and run its fucking mouth while laughing in all the wrong places.  That kind of pothead bullshit is fine for some stupid stoner comedy but when you decide you want to make a grown-up thriller, you can’t think you get an award just for showing up.  For as it is written in the Good Book-

“Verily I say onto ye that I doth intend to tell a tale of wonder!”

ayame-sama-deactivated20111203- asked: *bounce bounce* HIIIIII! =D

Hello beautiful….so glad I can still stay in touch with you