5. April 2008 by Ria.

Mushishi is an anime series that is has a more subtle, and spiritual theme, so for all you that like that non-stop kick-your-butt kind of anime, this isn’t it, so just cool out, and enjoy some Mushishi for once in your life. First, lets talk about the Mushi Master, Ginko. Now I like this guy, he really knows his mushi well, he must have taken a few courses at Mushi college somewhere. Ginko is a good natured fellow, but he’s suffering a little in the looks department. Yes, I know every guy can’t be a Chad, a Sesshomaru, a Hadji, or a Naraku, I’m just used to seeing good looking anime guys everywhere I turn, that’s all. But I’ll give him a 10 in the personality department, how’s that?

Now Ginko explains what mushi is in his own spiritual terms, which may leave you scratching your head, but don’t worry, I’ll describe it in Ria’s terms, so that it may make some sense to you. Mushi is this weird stuff with supernatural powers that have the ability to attach itself to people and cause chaos that person’s body. Now that you’re fully educated on what mushi is, we can move on to this episode which starts off with a boy living alone who has the ability to create life by drawing it with his left hand.

Ginko studies the kid, trying to find out more about him, and he ends up being a houseguest. He gets up in the middle of the night, and find a mushi ghost floating around. Now any normal person would have broke their neck to get out of that place, but not Ginko-I guess he knew it was a mushi ghost right away, but who cares, I would have been ten miles away instead of trying to analyze it to see if it was mushi or not. First of all, I’m not sleeping in any house, where my only source of light is a candle.

Anyway, Ginko finds out that the ghost is the boy’s grandmother Rinsu, but she takes the form of a child, and she also has a broken wine cup in her possession. Now after all this talking, Ginko finds out that Rinsu is stuck between mushi and human form because of some banquet that was interrupted. Now the next morning Ginko tells the boy that in order to free his grandmother, he must draw the broken wine up with his left hand. Interesting that the technique works, oh well, whatever, anyway Rinsu appears and the boy finds out the whole story, and this is how it goes…….

A long time ago, Rinsu was in the woods minding her own business, and this mushi figures put her into a trance, and led her off to this banquet in her honor. “Good, I hope you guys are serving lobster, and crab legs, because the Red Lobster around my house just closed.” At the banquet, they discuss the grandson. The mushi said that if she would travel forward in time, to look after him, she would be granted powers of her own. In order to seal the deal, she would have to drink from a winecup. “Rinsu, don’t trust those mushi, and don’t drink that stuff, it could be roach spray, or gasoline, they could be trying to kill you!”

But you know how naive kids are, and as she drank from the cup, a crow decided it wanted to mushi food, and attacked them, making Rinsu drop the cup and watch her mushi spirit run off into the sunset. “Wait a minute, that mushi better come back and finish the job so that poor girl won’t have a mushi spirit running around terrorizing other people, like me!”

Okay, now back to the present, now that the wine-cup is bound together again, Rinsu is able to see and talk to her grandson. Now, how sweet, especially for the grandson, who can pull her hair, and slap her around  every now and then. What? Well, the grandma is now a kid, and her grandson needs someone to play with, so he should be able to treat her just like any other kid, right?

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5. April 2008 by Ria.

So we’re in the first week of April, and I’m just getting around to the last Lugosi movie on this DVD, so you know what that means, right? I’ll extend Lugosi month throughout April, so also be on the lookout for White Zombie, Black Friday, and The Invisible Ray later on this month. First of all, I want to say that I have issues with Lugosi taking second billing to Karloff when obviously Lugosi had the bigger part. I will admit that Karloff is a slightly better actor, but that was only because he was offered better parts than Lugosi.

I mean, what did Karloff do in this movie, except walk around, looking like an hideous mope, playing a servant that can barely talk? And speaking of looks, I need to tell you folks, that if you’re eating while watching this movie, hurry up and finish it, because you might lose your appetite after you see what Karloff looks like after Lugosi does a number on his face. Now let’s get started……….The movie starts out with this dumb chick Jean (Irene Ware) speeding in the rain, and runs of the road. Now the car flipped over a few times, and she ends up in the hospital near death.

“Now, Universal, I see I’m gonna have to give you guys a lesson in realism here. Anyone that’s a victim of a horrifying car accident, is gonna look jacked up, so its alright to put a few cuts and bruises on her face, especially if you don’t want to go the whole 9 yards and bandage up her whole head. Now after she has surgery, she can go back to looking perfect, like before the accident. Are you guys taking notes?” Okay, so Jean is slipping away into permanent la-la land, when her father Judge Thatcher (Samuel Hinds) contacts Dr. Richard Vollin (Lugosi), the only one he thinks can save her life.

Now the first couple of times, Vollin pretty much tells him to kiss off, so the judge takes a ride out to his house and pleads with him to save his daughter’s life. After all that beggin’, Vollin agrees, and in no time at all Jean is back to normal. Vollin falls in love with her, but she’s engaged to Jerry (Lester Matthews), but still invites him to see her dance at some show. “Oh yeah, and that’s another thing Universal, couldn’t you find a real dancer to stick in there, because  let me tell you, Jean can’t dance. What was that? You mean, that was a real dancer? Uh, ok, if you say so………….”

Now Jean kind of likes Vollin too, and her father sees all this and doesn’t like it. So he takes a trip out to Vollin’s place to ask him not to encourage any kind of flirting from Jean, and in his own roundabout way suggests that he find someone else to hit on. He tells Vollin that he really doesn’t want a young girl like Jean. “Judge Thatcher, are you stupid or something? Don’t you know that men fossils would give anything to get a young girl to pay them any attention, so what are you talking about?”

Vollin gets pissed off, and I guess this is the time he goes crazy, and starts thinking of ways to kill to him. Now on-the-run criminal Bateman (Karloff) stops by Vollin’s house in order to get a face lift, 1st, so that he won’t be found out by the cops after he killed a couple of people, and 2nd, ’cause he knew that people had nightmares after seeing his big ugly face in the Black Cat movie, so he decided to do something about it. Now Vollin told him that he wasn’t a plastic surgeon, and Bateman got what was coming to him, a jacked up face.

Vollin also disfigured him (more than he already was), because he was trying to blackmail Bateman into killing off the Thatchers, after all, Bateman just killed a couple of people, what wrong with adding 3 more to the notch on the belt? The deal? Vollin will fix Bateman’s face, if he does the killings. So Vollin makes him a butler, and invites the Thatchers, Jerry, and some more of his dull friends over for a party. Now Vollin is a huge Edgar Allen Poe fan, and he talks about how the talking raven in the poem supposedly went mad, after he lost his love.

Now this torture chamber that Vollin created is a symbol of the Raven’s madness (and his own) that we get to see towards the end of the movie. Bateman kidnaps the Judge, and straps him down on this slab where there’s a razor like pendulum swinging back and forth. Then, Vollin throws Jean, and Jerry in this room where the walls move in to crush whatever is in there. Good, I hope they get it, I’m tired of those two anyway. Well, they would have gotten it, if Bateman didn’t decide to play hero at the last minute.

He realized that he had the hots for Jean, and decides to rescue her and her father from doom. “Bateman, you’re stupid for saving her, forget about running off with her, she’s engaged to someone else, nor does she want some fugitive who looks like he was just hit in the face with a garbage pizza.” Now why Bateman is trying to save the Judge, Vollin gets pissed off, and shoots him, but he still has enough strength to save Jean, and push Vollin into that room that closes in on you, so he’s history. But so is Bateman who dies shortly after.

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