Saturday, January 23, 2021

Angry Animal Watch: Day of the Animals (1977)




Watched:  01/22/2020
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's
Director:  William Girdler

I think the *weirdest* thing about this movie is that it genuinely feels like famed filmmaker James Nguyen of Birdemic fame may have taken inspiration from Day of the Animals (1977) for his 2010 opus.   The second weirdest thing is seeing Leslie Nielsen in what was likely one of his last dramatic roles before drifting into his particular brand of comedy (of which I am a tremendous fan).  

This movie is not a sequel to, but is a spiritual partner to, 1976's Grizzly by the same director and both films feature Richard Jaeckel (a classic "oh, THAT guy" actor).   Both are about humans in the woods with animals out of control, I guess.  But the scale here is much larger/ more hilarious.

Our plot:  a bunch of people have signed up for a "survivor's" trek through the wilderness, but are all dressed like they're headed for the supermarket.  Over the course of a few days they'll rough it in the mountains of California, but reports are coming in that animals are acting funny.  We're introduced to our parade of stereotypes/ tropes, all of whom explain who they are as they come down the exposition line at the beginning.

Well, crazy thing, the ozone is bad something something, higher elevations, and the animals have become homicidal.  I mean, MORE homicidal.*  They particularly have it in for us slow-moving humans.   

Anyway - the movie is a bit of a mess, but has two major thrusts - 1) the escalating attacks on the walking person buffet, and 2) the interpersonal conflict that needs to arise in any of these films.  In our case, it's the increasingly irritable ad man played by Nielsen who winds up shirtless and baying at the moon before the film is over.

There's an indication that things have gone awry in the sleepy mountain town where our adventure begins, but the budget wasn't there to show too much of that, so all we get is the aftermath and the indication that SOMETHING happened.  But, yeah, there's a storyline for the Sheriff that just abruptly ends.  We sort of get a story about a little girl who is maybe the only survivor of... something?  And a deeply unsatisfying story about a pair of quarreling lovers that, against all common sense, leave the group after being attacked by a goddamn wolf.  And, man, why anyone would follow Leslie Nielsen's character in this movie is impossible to understand.  

And, yes, for reasons unexplained, the entire multi-day crew of people has no radio to call down in need of help.  Which seems like an oversight.

But the women's hair and make-up remains on point despite a half-a-week of running from cougars.

Anyway - what the movie does have are frequent animal attacks, and from a wide array of animals.  If you're like me and enjoy movies about people losing to the Wild Kingdom, and only a few escaping to look traumatized afterwards: I have a great movie for you.





*Animals tend to eat other animals and people if you give them a chance, really.  

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Friday Amazon Watch Party: Day of the Animals


Day:  01/22/2021
Time:  8:30 Central
Amazon Prime Streaming


I have never seen this.  It looks insane.  It is free to watch with Amazon Prime.  

And it is one of my favorite themes in movies:  animals turning on humans, to eat them, hopefully

JOIN US AS THE POODLES TURN ON MANKIND

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

PodCast now (also) on YouTube - Entrusting the Archive to Corporate Overlords


For a long time I've been somewhat nervous about the hosting of the Signal Watch PodCast solely at SoundCloud.  Look, SoundCloud is a good, easy-to-use service, but it's also a company, and those go under, get bought out, change strategies, etc... 

I've used RSS to push the content to other podcasting platforms, and that's been nice - but I genuinely don't know what happens if the SoundCloud goes away.  Will those go away?  What if Stitcher dries up?

Right now those kids at "Google" seems like they know what they're doing.  But, YouTube wants to be about video, and so moving the podcast there had challenges.  When I looked a while back, all the recommendations were about manually transforming each episode into a video - which, individually, not a huge deal.  But multiply that by 135 episodes and a handful of extras, and I'd be hand-converting episodes til next Christmas.  

I changed how I phrased my search parameters for how to get the podcast to YouTube, and up came a service called "Repurpose.io".  They seem legit.  The service is super, super simple to use, and while it costs money, it also works really well.  As of this posting I believe all episodes have made their way to the YouTubes.  

Check out our YouTube here.  It's also where we've posted some sketches, taste tests, etc... So, all your Signal Watch needs.

Look, I used to work in digital audio and video preservation, and it's a bear of a field.  And I don't have any memory institutions like a museum, archive or library clamoring for episodes of The Signal Watch.  But right now, I expect that YouTube, which lets me host there for free, will outlast either me or my ability to care about whether these episodes continue to exist.  I mean, maybe when I'm 90 I'll be like "what DID I have to say about Streets of Fire?"  But probably not.  I'll be too busy seeking out water in the wasteland deserts of Trumpland Sector 35 (brought to you by: Confederate Burger).  

It's the same reason I'm like, sure, Blogger.  They're still here.  And owned by spooky ol' Google that's using this blog to mine data and sell ads, but, look.  You people didn't want to join my Patreon, so here we are.

Anyway - I need to do some curation inside of YouTube, so bear with me as I get all that straightened out.  But I do plan to do some curation there and not just dump episodes.

Oh, and, hey, Repurpose.io lets me use the images I already had tagged to the episode, so it's surprisingly easy to navigate on the YouTube menu.

So - YouTube also does this amazing thing where - when you upload audio at least - it checks for copyright claims.  About 85-90% of the videos have some copyright claim due to my use of the music involved.  So, even if the videos went wildly viral, I won't make a red cent.  And, hey, the song owners might!  Good for them.  

The only claim that totally blocked the video from release was "Hungry Like the Wolf" from Duran Duran, which is hilarious.  Fortunately, YouTube just lets me cut out the song.  So - easy, squeezy.  No more Duran Duran.  I can deal with that minor hiccup.

We'll see what other pitfalls await me, but so far, so good.

Happy Birthday, Dolly Parton

 


Today is Dolly Parton's 75th birthday, and if 2020 gave us anything, it's yet another wave of well-deserved Dolly-mania as Dolly showed us all, once again, what it looks like to be a decent human being who can also make grown adults cry with a song.

We're experiencing our own wave of Dolly-mania here at League HQ, so join us.

And here's Dolly's gift to us - a reminder that things can and will be better.

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Phil Spector Passes





In this era it's hard to remember what it was like not knowing every crazy thing someone famous did or had done, and  in a pre-social media era, it was maybe easier to conflate madness and genius.  And Phil Spector managed to leverage his gigantic cultural shadow to protect himself from consequence, terrorize and generally make miserable some of the foundational acts of American pop music.  

Spector is perhaps one of the original producers to earn a name beyond the music industry, and is definitely the longest sustaining name of a producer people still recognize.  

Look, I love the Wall of Sound stuff.  Back to Mono was one of the first big outlays I ever made for a boxed set when I couldn't afford it and somehow made it work.*  The Crystals, Ronnettes, Darlene Love... totally my thing.  But I'm also well aware of the nightmare Spector made their lives.  

In the end, he murdered actress Lana Clarkson - then managed to dodge jail for a few years and was eventually convicted.  

Since learning of his various and frequent abuses, I've not been able to reconcile Spector's work in the studio with what he did in his private life.   By the time the news about Clarkson's murder hit, I knew enough about the guy that I wasn't that surprised.  I just thought he would have more self-preservation instinct than to actually draw that kind of attention to himself.

Anyway - you don't have much choice but to sometimes separate the artist from the art.  But, man, is it hard to do so sometimes.  


*back then skipping meals was always an option for saving money - I could just be dizzy for a bit til dinner