Fat Fleshy Fingers (2023)

A shapeless mishmash of surrealism, absurdity and all bodily fluids, the way-way-out anthology Fat Fleshy Fingers comes loosely linked by the appearance of the film’s mascot: a toothy pink parasite that looks like a dildo Clive Barker might design. If you’re a fan of the bizarro fiction movement, this experience — and it is that — was made expressly for you. Segments range from inspired to inane; its closest analog may be Japan’s Funky Forest. Regardless, drugs were drugged.

With The Greasy Strangler himself, Michael St. Michaels, as a grandfather to a dying girl, the first bit is the funniest and most successful. He shares a story about an ancient mummy’s curse, which involves “touchable, delicious, fuckable worm juice.”

From there, the law of diminishing returns kicks in as the parasite passes person to person — you know, like It Follows, but with far more consumption of fecal matter and insertion of inhuman things into human holes. From a pirate orgy to a severed finger, shock value is the point for all 10 directors. If the application of “sex perfume” portion isn’t the nastiest thing you can recall seeing of late, I don’t even want to know.

The very definition of “your mileage may vary,” Fat Fleshy Fingers could be called an un-thology for breaking all rules of convention. Its weirdo cartoon interstitials don’t quite qualify as transitions, plus stories aren’t present to be told as much as exploited to an extreme. “Whether you’re a scalawag or a swashbuckler,” to borrow one character’s phrasing, a viewing isn’t likely to endear you to check out the music of the Elephant 6 collective’s Neutral Milk Hotel, whose lo-fi psychedelic tunes inspired each piece. —Rod Lott

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Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche

On Oct. 5, 1962, two titans of popular culture were unleashed to an unsuspecting public: Beatles records and James Bond movies, in the respective form of “Love Me Do” and Dr. No. Whether the result of kismet, fate, dumb luck or preordained from the heavens, this much is incontestable: Although born in Great Britain, these fraternal twins today belong to the world.

Brighton-based author John Higgs tracks how both were able to achieve the near-impossible — on often-perpendicular paths, no less — in the wonderful new book Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche.

From the acrimonious Phil Spector to the acronymous SPECTRE, the similarities along the way are mind-blowing. But this is hardly some Lincoln/Kennedy-style listicle. Rather than merely drawing parallels between his two subjects, the author seems more interested in examining their differences on such stances as class structure and racism.

Even topics that hardly shake the earth are considered — including sports, hairstyles, intoxicants and transcendental meditation — as Higgs chronologically mines history, showing how Bond and The Beatles influenced this ever-changing world in which we live in.

Although Love and Let Die is not a salacious book, sex plays a large part in the story. How could it not? It’s present from the start, revealing the BDSM proclivities of 007 creator/virulent racist Ian Fleming. Higgs even notes Fleming’s first novel, 1953’s Casino Royale, referring to a potential tryst of Bond’s as possessing “the sweet tang of rape.”

With that style of misogyny galore, George Lazenby’s final test for securing the Bond role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service shouldn’t come as a shock, and yet it does: Producers watched him have sex with several hired hookers “to make sure that he wasn’t gay.”

On The Beatles’ side, I certainly knew each member had his womanizing ways. But I didn’t know — or need to know — about their early-days group masturbation sessions. (Fap Four, anyone?) If Paul McCartney’s candor there is outrageous, miserable asshole John Lennon later outdoes him by sharing regret in not balling his own mother after grabbing her breast as a teenager. (Imagine!)

With more than a little help from that story and others, Higgs succeeds in explaining why Lennon’s reputation as the “genius” Beatle wasn’t exactly well-earned, while restoring the luster of the others. He does several things right throughout Love and Let Die‘s pages, including not ignoring Operation Kid Brother (although many would) or 1967’s ill-fated all-star “comedy” version of Casino Royale (although many should). —Rod Lott

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Children of the Corn (1984)

Like the small towns that dot the lonely roads here in Oklahoma, Nebraska is not far off from us. Dusty and decrepit, all the towns really need are many stalks of wilted corn (or wheat) and spiritually inbred children.

Very loosely based on the tight short story by Stephen King, Children of the Corn was made into a movie by now-Oklahoma-based director Fritz Kiersch (interviewed in Flick Attack Movie Arsenal: Book One) in 1984, with many critics then (and today) calling it one the worst King adaptations of all-time.

But I consider Kiersch’s bastardized adaptation to be King’s best movie for the horror screen.

A long time ago, in the rural town of Gatlin, Nebraska, the entire kid community massacred all the adults under the leadership of the diminutive messiah Isaac (John Franklin). Now, a few years later, a young couple — Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicky (Linda Hamilton) – run over a child on the lonely road, with foreboding cornstalks on both sides.

As Burt and Vicky go to town to find answers, they find the children are part of a corn-worshipping blood cult that pays homage to “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” a demonic force that turns innocent children into bloodthirsty anti-saviors of mankind. As Burt looks for a way out, Vicky is eventually strung on a cornstalk cross at the esoteric deity comes for her. With the children running from the ’84 special effects, the demonically possessed man-child Isaac gives a final stand!

While the personas of Burt and Vicky are fine in their cardboard stock-characters, the teen followers of this dirty deity are simply frightening, especially the ginger-haired fireplug Malachai (Courtney Gains) and, worse, the infernal hayseed Isaac.

I believe this movie is all about Kiersch’s willingness to showcase most of the sacrilegious slaughter on the big screen, even if most of the gore scenes are grossly implied; still, the idea of a community of murderous children will always keep me awake, haunting my dreams since my small-town VHS rental. From a native Texas filmmaker (with, I’m guessing, an Oklahoma background), it seems what rural Oklahoma is actually like: endless miles of ghostly towns with one or two people outside a filling station on a sweaty afternoon, a cult of devil-worshippers behind every curtain.

From the troubled-teen drama Tuff Turf (with James Spader) to the sadomasochist fantasy Gor (with Jack Palance), Kiersch’s low-budget films have been given the Oklahoma Outlander Seal of Approval from the psychotronic fan in all of us, even if we don’t want them. I don’t blame you. —Louis Fowler

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