An indelible melt

Some films sell themselves by the cast, such as the action movies of the 1980s where the star's surname was in significantly larger type than the name of the film. Some sell themselves by the title alone. I'm a particular fan of a good title. You know what you are going to get with something like 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' or 'The Blood Beast Terror' whereas you're still in the dark with something more vague such as 'Legend'. Actually, 'The Blood Beast Terror' is about a girl that turns into a moth (rather brilliantly called a 'were-moth') so maybe you don't know exactly what you're going to get after all. The title gives you a clue though. There is blood. There is a beast. There is also a certain amount of terror, but this terror is mainly towards the end, when an evil scientist's dastardly plot to create a male were-moth to mate with the aforementioned girl is revealed. Primarily because you fear for the actor's ability to utter the phrase 'male were-moth' with a straight face.

Another film that drops one or two subtle clues as to the plot in its title is 'The Incredible Melting Man', which I was fortunate enough to see recently. Okay, so it doesn't so much give you clues as write the plot on the title equivalent of a baseball bat (it's an American film) and proceed to bash you about the head with it. Needless to say, I was very excited when I loaded the dvd into the player, eager to see this incredible melting man melt incredibly. Sadly, the incredible melting man doesn’t really melt incredibly at all, at least not until the final gooey reel. Until that point he just loiters in the shadows glooping over his suit, lurching out occasionally to smear himself on someone. Initially optimistic hopes of him concentrating his melt when he feels threatened and squirting it at someone remained simply hopes.

Happily this small failing is made up for with some delightful b-movie silliness. Near the end, the hero on the trail of the dribblesome one, Dr Ted Nelson, walks towards a policeman with his hands up and shouts "don't shoot, I'm Dr Ted Nelson" and promptly gets shot. Apparently GPs weren't popular in the 1970s. Nurses evidently weren't particularly bright either, as at one point a rotund nurse is shown running (in glorious slow-motion) away from the eponymous fiend down a very long corridor, and when she reaches the door at the end rather than pull or push it open, she barrels through the glass like it's the front door of her local Greggs. Actually, I might be doing her a disservice. Perhaps if the camera had lingered a little longer we could see that rather than say 'push' or 'pull' on the door, maybe it simply said 'smash through'.





Maybe she was just in a hurry. It can't have been fear, after all she's running away from a man with toilet tissue hanging out of his nose. Don't believe me? Watch the scene here.

There, that has to have sold it. If not, the box cover declares him to be an all new type of monster and I can confirm that this is absolutely true. Of course bearing in mind the toilet paper incident he's not a very scary one. It's hard to feel intimidated by someone with Andrex dangling from his right nostril. This doesn't stop ladies from screaming throughout but really it’s just because of the mess he’s making on the carpet. “Eeeek!" they squeal, "stand on a newspaper!”.

I'm not clearing them up

Whilst on this subject, I may have mentioned before that I do not enjoy following people into the bathroom. Specifically I don't like being reminded that anyone uses it apart from myself. The whole event is an unpleasant one in fact, if I wouldn't end up with my own wasted seeping from my pores and coating my skin like over-applied foundation, or sorse simply bursting like a blocked sewage pipe, I'd have glued myself up years ago. Yesterday I was pleased to be reminded that I'm not alone in this.

"I hate going into the toilet when someone's dropped their guts" declared a colleague at work.
"Hear, hear" I concurred, inwardly congratulating myself on our banter.

His words stuck in my mind. Not because of  wondering who/what he would like to follow into the toilet, but because his expression was simply so vivid and colourful (although that colour was mainly brown). It makes you think that you're following someone of immense clumsiness, because after all of all the areas of your anatomy, your guts are surely one of the most secure. It takes great skill to drop them. I would have thought that you are more likely to have one of your hands fall into the sink whilst you're washing them, it tumbling awkwardly around the plughole, than you are to drop your guts all over the place. I could understand your brain falling out of your mouth since that's an orrifice that spends most of its time hanging open like a cave with a single wingless bat hanging from the ceiling. I suppose if that happened your body would soon follow it to the floor and the inconvenience wouldn't be the grim mess, more the minor annoyance of an individual having to stand astride your blankly staring face in order to have a wee. But to drop your guts? Clumsiness in the extreme. Rude too. Just because you don't want them doesn't mean that you can leave your spare parts laying around on the offchance that Burke and Hare happen to be passing.

Another alternative is that it is an exhibition of selfishness, the person cheerfully unburdening themselves of a gutful of guts without considering the effects their presence will have upon the next bathroom inhabitant. Away they swan to live their now slightly less gutful life whilst an unfortunate someone slides across the floor, one foot on a colon that's echoing raspberries around the tiny room, the other making an ill-judged step onto some intestines, squeezing semi-digested pap from them like a rusty tube of toothpaste before skidding to the wall and coming to an undignified halt sprawled over the sanitary bin.

So I suppose this is a plea to the rest of the world: keep your guts. Love them. Cherish them. Maybe even use them. Just please, for all of our sakes, don't drop them. If you do tire of them at least have the decency to have them eaten by zombies and add some entertainment to the proceedings.

Faesh in a bowl

I've just seen a programme (the brilliant 'You Have Been Watching') that talked about 'Dancing on Ice's judge Jason Gardiner and his comment that Sharron Davies resembled "faecal matter that won't flush" (watch him apologise in an entirely heartfelt manner here). Now needless to say this passed me by at the time because I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out with a junkie's spoon than watch any of the celebrity dancing dross that infects Saturday prime-time schedules and seeps into conversation like sewage from a leaky pipe, however even I can tell that's not the most supportive comment he could have made. However, in his defence, she was wearing brown and drifting awkwardly around a large white bowl. Compare that to the ever popular 'Lion King' musical where every night a black fellow gets a standing ovation for wearing a yellow hat and saying he's a lion. Suddenly Sharron Davies as shit seems pretty convincing.