It was Really Mom's Fault! Or How I Stand Corrected (Or How I Sit in Front of the Computer Corrected)

Author's note: If you haven't read the blog immediately preceding this one, 'I Pinpointed How I Became Warped or It Was All My Father's Fault,' it would be helpful to do so before reading this one.

Upon speaking to my sister, She Who Must Be Obeyed on the subject of How I Was Really Warped as a Child, I was corrected.  'The Green Slime' was not the first scary movie ever watched by moi.  Au contrare, mon maman had gotten that psychological bag of worms out of the way YEARS before.

It was 1966, allegedly.  It could have been 1967 or possibly 1968.  I don't remember anything about the Viet Nam War.  I don't remember the Summer of Love.  It might have been the Summer of the Dirty Diaper.  Or possibly it was The Summer of How I Escaped From the Backyard and Found the Ice Cream Shoppe and Cadged Free Ice Cream Until Mom and Dad Found Me.  (That happened.  I became a moocher at an early age.  Or else I had my sweet tooth priorities correct.)

Dad was stationed in the Philippines.  Here he is.  I have photographic proof.

Dad at Jungle Survival School in the Philippines
He's the pissed off one, 2nd from right on top row
Wow, talk about racist image from the 60s -look they made all the
natives kneel in front.  Except for the lone white guy kneeling on the far right, bottom;
he must have been in the dog house for something.  Yikes.

Consequently, the mater, the sister, and I went with.  First time I got to be in Hawaii and I don't remember a thing.  Must have been a fast luau or the stuff in my bottle was extremely intoxicating.  My sister states that while stationed there Mom used to plunk us down in front of the television every afternoon to watch the daily movie.  There was one channel then.  And it played the same movie, every day, for ever and more.  And apparently, we dug it.  We watched it, again and again and again.  (Do I need to mention the connotations about plunking your 2 and 6 year old daughters in front of a Grade D horror movie day after day?  The same Grade D horror movie day after day?  My opinion of my mother's parental skills just dropped a notch.)  (Then, I just thought of myself allowing my daughter, Cressy, to watch Spongebob everyday.  It's not always the same one, but hell, it might as well be.  Now she can accurately imitate Spongebob's laugh.  Eerily.  It's pretty much making me question my own parenting skills.)

The Sis sez, "It was about a tree that came to life and ate people."  Funny how I remember 'The Green Slime' but I don't remember the man eating tree movie.  The Sis also said, "It was a really, really bad movie."  Do you remember the quote from Bloom County?  Oh, joyfulness and merriness abounding in large goopy amounts, I found an actual copy of the strip without having to go up into the attic and dig out the book.

Apparently, the tree movie was that bad.  I love Opus.

But the Sis and I couldn't remember the name of the Grade D movie.  (The question I sense people are asking is, "Was it really worse than 'The Green Slime?'"  Yes.  Yes, I think it was.)

Ah, there was a mystery.  It was made before 1966 because I sense that that quality television network wasn't the type to play 'new' movies on it.  Also the fact that they were repeating the same movie over and over sends a type of message.  (Maybe they didn't have a lot of taste, or money, or something else, like access to other movies.)  There was a tree monster in it that definitely came to life and ate people it didn't like or perhaps people with weed wackers.  It was not 'Day of the Triffids.'  That movie had Howard Keel and as I was checking http://www.imdb.com/ for information I found out that Holy Revenge of the Nerds IV, Batman, it was redone in 2009 as a TV miniseries.  How did I miss that?  Anyway, space meteorites come around and make everyone blind except some poor bastard who was in the hospital.  (Sure hope this wasn't the same meteors that brought the green slime in 1968 or are meteors just getting a bad rep?) Then space alien plants start somethin' somethin' and not in a good way.

There ya go.  The poster says it all.  Spine chilling terror.  But it wasn't the right movie.  (Apparently, it had a little too much class.)

Back to the detective work.  So I put in the terms, 'maneating tree bad movie' in Google and eventually I found a contender. 

And that's more like it.  Look, man eating tree, eating a woman or possibly carrying her off for unspeakable lewdness.  (I'm thinking she's an extreme gardener and the tree monster did not take it well.  Maybe the tree monster should stop trying to hook up on eHarmony.)  Of course, the tree monster's butt appears to be on fire, so that could be the root of his discomfort.  (Get it, root?)

Now I'm feeling compelled to do some creative artwork.  Or specifically creative dialogue.

And of course, then my creative juices are flowing and I just had to do the following, which has nothing really to do with the point of the blog, but it's funny so WTF?

OMG, I should be ashamed of myself.  Anyhoo, it's a good title.  'From Hell It Came.'  Can't get any more self explanatory than that.  It CAME from Hell.  Any questions?  No, IT CAME FROM HELL, it's all right there.  (Of course, the title could be referring to the budget or the movie script or the director, but I'm thinking they actually meant the tree monster.)  IMDB, an Internet site that has entirely too much damn information about movies and movie related crap, sez, 'A wrongfully accused South Seas Prince is executed, and returns as a walking tree stump.'  (You can see how he might be interested in online dating sites.)

Okay, now I'm falling into extreme ludicrosity.  (Did I make up a word?)

But look, look, look.  Oh, glorioski and happy days!  Thank God for other warped people who love old, bad, bad, bad movies and feel compelled to share with the world.  I found it on YouTube.  I love YouTube.  Here's the original trailer for 'From Hell It Came,' from 1958.  It's so bad that after you watch I will make obligatory comments about its badness.

Oh, where to start.  I had to watch it again and I was forced by psychological forces in my head to write down parts of the dialogue because I couldn't help myself.

First of all, the trailer goes into its ghastly spiel of doom and gloom.

'The tree monster was sworn to kill, torture, and destroy!'

There's a problem with that.  If the tree monster kills first, then torturing and destroying became moot, but that's just the writer in me throwing monkey wrenches into the works.  And see when the prince is about to be executed he kind of gives away the whole deal by saying, "I'm coming back from hell to kick your little pussy asses, bee-yotches."  That's kind of a spoiler but then the title had already done that, so to speak.

Then the female doctor is looking at the tree monster which is mystically and magically and horrifically growing on the executed man's grave and which, interestingly enough, has an awful, malignant tree face, and she says, (foreshadowing much, here?)

"I have an eerie feeling this thing knows what we're saying."

(Wow.  The tree monster face winks at her and makes evil smooching noises too, thinking, 'You might just be on to something, sister.')

And finally, the words,

'Hate and horror gave it LIFE!'

pop onto the screen, in case you missed the subtlety of the message before that.  This is followed by,

'But nothing could bring it DEATH!'

Now why isn't this movie on my list of worst movies of all time?  It certainly deserves a write in nod.  But the real question would be would I let Cressy watch it?  Sure, but I think she would think it was too stupid to watch.  ("Mommy, why does that tree monster have a zipper?"  "Mommy, that woman doctor is a moron."  "Mommy, can we watch Spongebob?")

Fuck it, let's go play with Lego's.