Today

I decided to cash in most of the change I had lying around the apartment--some $150.00 worth. I went to the despised Wal-Mart because I wanted to pick up the Snowflake Teddy bears the retailer has every year during Christmas (as well as Valentine's Day). I have been getting them most years, the exception being last year because I waited too late. Of course they are made in China, but just about all plush animals are made there regardless of retailer. It stinks, but I still like to collect plush animals.

Earlier I went to Best Buy and picked up a DVD box titled 50 Movie Pack: SciFi Classics DVD Collection for under $20. Some of the flicks aren't SciFi but sword-and-sandal epics made during the B-movie era of the 1950s and 1960s. Right now I am looking at one of the most celebrated bad movies of all time, Mesa of Lost Women (1953), which sports what must be the worst goddamned musical score in the history of motion pictures. It is mostly a horrid flamenco guitar strumming the same goddamned stupid chord over and over with some piano thrown in here and there for no good reason. The culprit for this score was one Hoyt S. Curtin (1922-2000), who much later was actually nominated for an Emmy. The score was so terrible legendary director Ed Wood used it for his classic Jail Bait. Mesa also sports some pretentiously awful narration by Lyle Talbot. The acting is forgettable and doesn't make any sense. Therefore I recommend it highly.

It'll take me a few months to get through all of the films in this collection. In the meantime, I ordered the legendary Manos: The Hands of Fate, which many bad film buffs believe is even worse than anything Ed Wood ever did. I want to see for myself just how bad it is.

Edit: I am now watching the classic baddie Eegah (1962), starring Arch Hall, Jr. and Richard Kiel in the title role. Kiel, of course, went on to bigger and better things in his acting career, while Hall, Jr. ditched acting altogether and became a pilot. Incidentally, today is Hall's 64th birthday.

Edit 2: Hearing Hall, Jr. "sing" "Vicky" in this film, I really think I prefer the godawful flamenco guitar in Mesa of Lost Women. Talk about nails on a chalkboard. Thank God he changed careers.