As I was thinking over the theme of this Roundtable, it occurred to me that “core competency” was not a straightforward issue for me. To begin with, there are the core areas I assumed I’d be pursuing when I began my site, some of which I never followed through on. Then, there are the things I still consider to be deeply important to me, but which are strangely, even shockingly under-represented in my twenty years’ worth of reviews. And then, there are the “competencies” (too strong a word, really) that other people tend to associate with me, simply because — regardless of what I originally intended, regardless of what I’ve cultivated privately — these were the things I actually did.
Bearing that in mind, I identified two themes that represent me a little bit more than I’d ever expected them to:
- Horror flicks from Southeast Asia; and
- Ridiculously ambitious projects that never get finished.
Will I ever make it all the way up the mountain to Part XV? Keep watching this space!
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.
#1 by Alaric on March 1, 2019 - 8:34 pm
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“Ridiculously ambitious projects that never get finished.”
Very clever. So, either you successfully complete reviewing the entire series, or the attempt to do so is even more appropriate as your entree for this Roundtable. You literally can’t lose.
#2 by ronald on March 9, 2019 - 9:56 am
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“Also, the very idea of a monster that can dissolve an entire human body and clothes with its vomit, while leaving behind no other trace, is just plain silly.”
Well, it’s all subjective, of course, but the “monsters” from episodes “Badlaa” and “The Gift” (among others) from Season 8 of The X-Files take things further than that. They Eugene Tooms look downright pedestrian…
At first I thought “Manananggal” was an alternate spelling for “Penanggalan” but Wikpedia assures me that they’re two separate legends. When I was a kid, I read a library book (hardcover) about vampire lore and learned about not only the Penanggalan but the Pelesit (a vampire cricket, cool), the Polong, the Nachzehrer, the Itzpapalotl, the Zotz, and others. Those names (some of which I subsequently came across in later sources) stuck me but not, alas, the author of the book, which IIRC was entitled simply “Vampires,” which, yeah, THAT helps a lot…
While I’m on the subject, does that book sound familiar to anyone? I mean, there’s always that CHANCE, right? Thanks for your time. 🙂
#3 by Alaric on March 9, 2019 - 6:05 pm
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Was it this book, by any chance? https://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Weird-horrible-library-Garden/dp/0553150227
#4 by Braineater on March 10, 2019 - 8:00 pm
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Some Philippine and Malay monsters share similar characteristics as well as linguistically-similar names. The Malay pontianak is a woman who has died in childbirth, who comes back as a vampire; but the Philippine tiyanak is the vampire version of the dead baby. They’re both related by the root word “anak”, which is “child” in both Malay and Tagalog.
As for the book, I don’t remember ever having come across it; but this one: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Vampires-Thomas-G-Aylesworth/dp/0070026475/ says it includes vampire myths from around the world. Any closer? (That guy Aylesworth seems to have written books on every subject imaginable…)
#5 by ronald on March 9, 2019 - 8:34 pm
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No, but thanks anyway. 🙂 It was primarily pictures with captions “floating in the air”, like in some Time-Life books. It was about the size of the book you linked to, though, not as big as a Time-Life book.
Anyway, again, thanks for the effort. 🙂
#6 by Alaric on March 10, 2019 - 8:41 pm
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Maybe it was one of these? https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6436.Vampire_Non_Fiction
#7 by ronald on March 11, 2019 - 5:34 am
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None of the above but, again, I appreciate the effort expended. Thanks. 🙂
(I should perhaps specify that “when I was a kid” equals late 1970s/early 1980s)
Anyway, about the SRR film franchise title, what does “a twelve bar blues-form song, written in 1954 by Jesse Stone under his songwriting pseudonym of Charles E. Calhoun” (thanks, Wikipedia) have to do with anything?
😉
#8 by Braineater on March 13, 2019 - 9:07 am
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Three episodes: one makes you Shake, one makes you Rattle, and then you’re ready to Roll. Part II makes this explicit by labeling each story the “Shake”, the “Rattle”, or the “Roll”.
#9 by ronald on March 12, 2019 - 10:30 pm
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Regarding the franchise, it seems like it would have been very easy to establish continuity from film to film by featuring a “monster hunter” as a recurring character who turned up in some capacity or another in the most monster-centric sequences. I suppose they just didn’t see a need for that. Unlike some other horror “franchises” who try to PRETEND their films are connected when they actually aren’t.
So, “Girlie”, “Virgie”, are “Finallie” and “Survivorie” (rhymes with “your ivory”) also acceptable names for Filipino horror heroines? 😉
#10 by Braineater on March 13, 2019 - 9:06 am
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Initially, they weren’t really looking for continuity: when Gallaga and Reyes took over, they eventually settled on unifying the episodes by theme. In Part V, after Gallaga and Reyes left, the film-makers tried using a framing device to link all three stories, and it really didn’t work… that was the last time they tried to make a definite connection between the stories, Amicus-style. In later installments, you might glimpse characters from other episodes showing up in the background of any given story… but there was no need for a recurring monster hunter when the real unifying element was Philippine folklore itself.