So I was sick on the couch today. That is to say, I was on the couch with a cold, not, I puked on the couch. So I decided, it being October and all, I'd check out some horror programs I had recorded off the Free Showtime weekend a couple weeks ago. First I watched a "Masters of Horror" episode in which a woman is chased by a knife-wielding maniac (and taunted by a goofy old man who won't stop singing) whom she eventually defeats because of the survival stuff she learned from her psycho survivalist husband whom....she murdered after he raped her! I guess...I know that torture is the new horror vogue, but I mean, here we have a screaming woman whose eyes are removed via drill press. Ick, ick, ick. The part where our heroine (...or IS she? We ask ourselves when she drills the eyes out of her dead hubby's head at the end) is running through the woods and inexplicably finding time to build a tiger pit while the maniac has stumbled or whatever was very cool, but the whole "trapped in a basement with icky stuff happening" part--eh, who needs it. Gross, but not scary. And if you've seen three horror movies,(especially if one of them is texas chainsaw massacre), you pretty much know what's coming all the time. If this was made by a master of horror, what do the lowly journeymen do?
Well, as it turns out, they make crap like Vampirella. Now, I will admit to having read a few issues of the comic in my day, so I was expecting some enjoyable cheese. And it was cheesy, but, sadly, not that enjoyable. The first thing I noticed was that the actress playing Vampirella was not weilding the D-Cup assets that the comic book character did. "I betcha the fanboys got all mad about that!" I thought to myself, and sure enough, you can find their complaints about the size of Talisa Soto's boobs here. Mostly it's a movie too lazy to be as bad as it needs to be, but Roger Daltrey as the bad guy Vlad does his best to camp it up, chewing necks and scenery and delivering his bad guy lines with appropriate cheesy gusto.
Which got me wondering--what the hell is it with Roger Daltrey and his B-Movie acting career, anyway? I mean, leaving out the Who-based projects, you've got McVicar, which is a real-ish movie that's not that good, and Lisztomania, which I've never seen, (but, I mean, you see one Ken Russell movie, you've pretty much seen 'em all. ), and then you've got a pretty sizeable body of b-movie and tv crapola. Por que? I mean, could he really need the money? (Maybe--how else to explain the incessant Who farewell tours?) Or does he just have such a love of the greasepaint that he'll take any role that comes down the pike?
