The clothing-averse bohemian in question was played by Lynn Collins, who attended the Juilliard School for Drama, and is probably best known right now for playing ‘Kayla Silverfox’ in X-Men Origins: Wolverine… although she also had a recurring role in the first season of True Blood, as a Merlotte’s waitress named ‘Dawn Green’ (who sadly didn’t live to see the second season!) Collins has also been cast as the female lead in the upcoming John Carter movie, playing ‘Dejah Thoris’, aka “A Princess of Mars”… a part previously played by Traci Lords (of Cry Baby fame), in a slightly cheaper adaptation of the same source material. By a wacky co-inky-dink, in the original novel Thoris also introduced herself to the hero while bare-ass naked, as (according to Wikipedia) “Except for some jewelry, all of the planet’s races seem to eschew clothing and look down upon Earth’s inhabitants because they do wear clothing.” Beatniks in space!? Who’d a thunk it?

I only mention this because I’ve just watched another “period” horror flick featuring the bella Bellucci… namely Brotherhood of the Wolf (aka Le Pacte des Loups) (2001). For those who don’t know, this film is loosely based on a real-life series of killings that took place in 18th Century France, and follows the adventures of a royal trouble-shooter named ‘Grégoire de Fronsac’, and his faithful Iroquois “brother” ‘Mani’, as they attempt to untangle the mystery surrounding an ambiguously identified animal known as “The Beast of Gévaudan”. In between hunts, Fronsac romances the chaste daughter of a local count, and falls under the spell of a sultry courtesan, who’s the star attraction at their friendly neighbourhood brothel. Can you guess which one Bellucci plays…? Despite being a historical drama, which frequently references actual figures from the time, the writers also saw fit to spice things up with kick-ass martial arts sequences, CGI creature FX, and Native American magick! Bless ‘em. The title led me to expect a fairly straight werewolf story, but the reveal of the “Beast”, and her true provenance, is far more inventive and intriguing than that. I don’t want to say any more though… all I will say is that I thought it was a fantastically entertaining genre-mash-up, and I’m a little annoyed at myself for taking so long to see it. Apparently there’s a two-disc version of this DVD out there in other regions with deleted scenes and other fancy features on it, so I’m rather envious about that. All I got here was an interview with the author of the non-fiction book that “inspired” this particular tale… and he’s an interesting guy, but he didn’t actually work on the film itself, so his interview is a tad tangential!

Bellucci’s character takes a little while to warm up, but when she does, she’s pretty awesome… for reasons I can’t really go into here, without spoiling the story. Sequels are rarely the equals of their predecessors, but in this case I’d gladly advocate for the filmmakers to return to this particular well, and show us what ‘Sylvia’ got up to next. This film also features Bellucci’s real-life hubby, Vincent Cassel, rather heavily… although they don’t really share many scenes together, as he plays the possessive brother of the hero’s main love interest, and doesn’t seem to have much interest in other women! Normally I’d be quite jealous of Cassel for his relationship with Bellucci, but he’s such an engaging actor, and he gives such a great performance here, that it’s impossible to bear a grudge against the guy. And it can’t be much fun for him, seeing his wife writhing around on the screen with another man! Being in the biz himself, he’s probably done his fair share of sex scenes too, though… so it probably balances out.

Stray observation: While watching this film, I realised that one of the reasons why I like French cinema so much might be because a lot of the actors have big (i.e., proper) noses, just like mine… hurrah!

And speaking of faux-Goth failures, last night I watched The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005), the third psuedo-sequel to that unassailable classic. For those who don’t know, this straight-to-DVD-hell flick stars Edward Furlong (of Pecker fame) as ‘Jimmy Cuervo’, an ex-con living on the “Raven Aztec” reservation, who was imprisoned for killing a dude who was trying to rape his girlfriend… or maybe she just became his girlfriend afterwards, out of gratitude? I’m not sure. The movie’s littered with flashbacks and flashforwards, and frankly it’s a little hard to keep track when your mind’s wandering, and you’ve got one eye on the clock. Anyhoo, while he was working on the chain-gang, he became acquainted with a “Satanic Cult leader” named Luc Crash, played by David Boreanaz (of Buffy and Angel fame), who is now on the loose, and looking to involve his old chum in a ritual which could conjure up the Antichrist! Eep! Of course, if you know anything about The Crow legend, you’ll know how this goes… Baddies kill the Hero and his Lady, then the Hero gets resurrected as an avenging angel, and picks the Baddies off one-by-one. And I’m not actually opposed to them recycling that basic plot structure, so long as they add enough new elements to keep things interesting… but I do object to them making Furlong put on Goth make-up and clothing, for no apparent reason. It made sense in the original, because that’s the kind of scene the main character was into anyway… but here the justification for it is so tenuous, they really shouldn’t have bothered. I mean, it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than some white face-paint to trick true fans into mistaking this for a worthy successor!

In fairness, I did appreciate the change of setting (from the usual shadowy city, to a rundown desert town), and the variation of villains… but that’s about all this entry has going for it. The characters kept growling one-liners at each other as if they were the most badass bon mots ever uttered… but more often than not, what they were saying didn’t actually make any sense if you thought about it. It’s kind of like in The Sims, where you can tell how a character feels from the tone and inflections of their voice, but the actual “words” they’re speaking are gibberish. And it’s a crying shame to see so many actors I admire reducing themselves to regurgitating this drivel… especially in the case of Crash’s boss, a jive-talkin’ pimp played by the late, great Dennis Hopper. Ain’t nothing easy about this ride, man. Boreanaz hams it up horrifically, revisiting the worst excesses of his ‘Angelus’ schtick… Furlong plays it far more seriously, but still isn’t especially convincing as an avenging action-man… and Danny Trejo just seems wasted as the dead girlfriend’s priestly father.

As for the female cast members… well, Tara Reid plays Crash’s Satanic bride-to-be, ‘Lola Byrne’ (I didn’t get the “joke” with their surnames until Hopper’s character spelled it out for me… “Crash and Byrne”, geddit?), but the most complimentary thing I can say about her here is that she looks fantastic… especially in her jet-black bridal outfit. I just couldn’t figure out what her character was supposed to be about… I mean, we first see her aiming a sniper rifle at some chain-gang guards, presumably with the intention of picking them off if they attempt to thwart her lover’s escape… and she happily cuts a living woman’s eyes out to use them in a ritual… but every now and then they’ll have a shot of her looking queasy and troubled by the mayhem and carnage that Crash is causing. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with a purported villain experiencing pangs of guilt, and eventually attempting to mend their ways… it just seems as if her attitude is totally arbitrary, fluctuating from one scene to the next. Is that just bad acting, or bad directing and editing? I don’t know. All I know is that she was fantastic in Josie and the Pussycats, and I’ll always think of her kindly for that… but her performance here is pretty amateurish. Emmanuelle Chriqui fares much better as the hero’s girlfriend, although she doesn’t get quite as much screen-time since she’s killed off pretty quickly. Incidentally, her character is of Native American descent, and goes by the rather beautiful name of ‘Lily Ignites The Dawn’. Chriqui has actually appeared with Furlong before (briefly) in the far more enjoyable Detroit Rock City, playing the poodle-permed disco chick who isn’t Natasha Lyonne. Meanwhile, Hopper’s main squeeze is played by Macy Gray (of being Macy Gray fame), and it’s very weird seeing the two of them together on-screen, along with Boreanaz and Reid. You might think that a movie with that sort of stunt-casting could be fun, but you would be very, very wrong. Unless you have a very masochistic concept of what constitutes “fun”.

In ep 2.3, the boys accidentally release an evil demon named ‘Nanatoo’, while trying to convince a couple of cute Goth girls that they’re actually warlocks! The girls go by the dubious monickers of ‘Anthrax’ and ‘Ebola’, and are played by  the equally pseudonymous Dee Plume and Sue Denim, who previously appeared in the first series as a pair of Electro girls. In reality, they are the founding members of Robots in Disguise, an electropunk band with three albums to its credit. I’m not usually a fan of that kind of music, but I’ve heard a lot of their stuff, and quite enjoyed it. They have some very catchy tunes, and some very amusing lyrics… so hopefully there’s been a decent boost to their sales, since they started trucking with The Boosh.

They don’t really get much to say here though… their role in the story is simply to rock up, look cool, say the word “sorcery” in a sexy way, and then make a hasty exit, exasperated by the boys’ antics. But, this being the Boosh, they each get a fantastic outfit to wear… including fangs for Plume, and a milky contact lens for Denim! As noted on the commentary track, it would seem that no one working on the production side of things actually knew the difference between a scary, Satanic “pentagram” and a happy, healthy “pentacle”, and I can imagine that being quite irritating to viewers with a serious interest in the occult, but other than that, the whole episode seems admirably Goth-friendly, since it’s the fakers who are made to look foolish, rather than the kosher “spooky kids”.

‘Little Debbie’ (Ali Akay) probably gets the most screentime to herself when she goes wandering off alone, but she doesn’t survive very long separated from the others… ‘Big Debbie’ (Ariel Badenhop) lives a little bit longer, but also has to endure having her boobs groped by a dismembered hand before dying. Ew! I suppose, since their idea of a good time is going to a sacred burial site to “break stuff”, you could argue that they got their just desserts… but personally I would have preferred to see them make it out alive, just so I could get a better look at their costumes in the daylight! Ah well…

“The Ship of Theseus” is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object. I only mention it because the ninth (!) series of Two Pints started this week, with only two of the original cast members/characters remaining, after Sheridan Smith and Kathryn Drysdale jumped ship to swim to sunnier and shinier shores. In their place, we have ‘Cassie Claypole’, an aggressive young “emo skank”, played by Georgia Henshaw (of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging fame). I actually quite like her as an actress, and I know I should be glad to have another cute goth-y girl on telly… but I was so turned off by how empty and unfunny the first two episodes of this series were, I can’t really work up much enthusiasm for her character. It doesn’t help that when she’s playing happy and smiley, she just reminds me of a younger version of Smith, and makes me nostalgic for those halcyon days gone-by.

The proper critics have never had much time or respect for this show, so it seems silly to try waxing intellectual about it, but I really feel as if the show’s creator, Susan Nickson, had a unique comic voice… and since she sidled away from the show, there’s been a marked drop in the sort of cleverly-stupid, surreal dialogue that made the show so much fun back in the day. The new series is also rather handicapped (pun!) by the fact that ‘Gaz’ (Will Mellor) is now confined to a wheelchair, and the jokes about his condition simply aren’t funny enough to negate the bad taste. I’m still quite fond of Natalie Cassidy, but she seems to be half-heartedly going through the motions as ‘Donna’ now, as if her friends have all gone off to the dance-floor and left her at the table watching their handbags and humming along to the music. Poor thing.

Now that I’ve watched Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010) through a couple more times*, I’ve come to the conclusion that my favourite character after ‘Knives’ is probably Ramona’s fourth Evil Ex, ‘Roxanne “Roxy” Richter’, as portrayed by Mae Whitman. For one thing, I really love her look… especially her hair and the war-paint stripes on her face… and for another, it’s awesome to see such a cute actress being so totally badass. Aside from her incredibly impressive fight moves, she also gets some great zingers to spit out at Scott… I don’t want to spoil them here, but her deliver is hilarious. Oddly, Roxy is the only Evil Ex who seems genuinely pissed off about being dumped… and you can kind of sympathise with her when Ramona blithely dismisses their time together as a misguided “phase”. Tch! Apparently in the original comic books her name is spelt “Roxie”, and she’s depicted as an accomplished fine artist who has an inferiority complex over her (lack of) height, and the fact she’s only a “half-ninja”. Bless. Any chance of a spin-off movie for her? No? Alrighty. I wasn’t familiar with Whitman before this, although she apparently appeared as one of Michael Cera’s girlfriends in Arrested Development… which, as a newly minted Cera fan, I really should watch sometime. She’s also done a shedload of voice-overs, for animated projects as diverse as Tinker Bell, Family Guy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, American Dragon, Johnny Bravo and Duckman!

I also have to give a shout-out to Christine Watson who plays the four ‘Demon Hipster Chicks’ who back-up up Evil Ex No. 1, ‘Matthew Patel’. According to Edgar Wright’s commentary tracks (yes, that’s plural), she had an incredibly hard time of it (“the hardest day of the shoot” are his exact words), suspended up in a fork rig for thirteen hours, with full contact lenses and fangs in, having to dance to the same damn song forty times in a row! When you watch it carefully, you can see that each Demon Chick is making a slightly different expression at various moments… so it isn’t just the same take replicated four times over. Watson doesn’t really get a lot of screen time in the finished piece, but I hope she feels it was worth all the discomfort… I mean, she’s definitely an eye-catching character, and at least with the DVD people can rewatch that scene and appreciate her moves a little more. Needless to say, in real life she’s a very pretty lady… and an excellent dancer.

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* For the commentary tracks, ‘cuz I’m nerdy like that… so a big “bless you” to Anna Kendrick who admitted to being an avid listener herself, and lambasted the commenters on other movies who mock our kind. Swoon!

Although I thought Buehler was very funny in Life, when you look at Morgan’s resume, it’s easy to see why she got the lion’s share of the lines here. Apparently she’s been in “the biz” since 1985! I have to assume that she was a child/baby star, because she really doesn’t look old enough to have been around that long otherwise. Sadly the majority of her credits are one-episode-wonders, including such minor anonymous roles as ‘Anarchist’, ‘Girl in Black’, ‘Punk Girl’ and ‘Purple Hair Girl’… although she was a recurring “guest star” in the Alien Nation TV series, playing ‘Jill Molaskey’. Whoever that was. Morgan doesn’t get anything especially hilarious to say in this episode, since she’s more of a plot cog than a fully fleshed-out character… although that outfit does show plenty flesh, so I’m sure she’s won a few new admirers now (myself included, obviously).

Incidentally, if you’d like to see more screen-caps from the show, then I should say I “borrowed” these from a BBT collection that someone has kindly been keeping. Bless ‘em.

Next up in ep 2.19 was Gena Shaw playing ‘Fiera Schwartz’, a young offender Crews spots collecting litter outside the morgue where a Coroner was found murdered, as part of her community service. Technically she doesn’t answer one way or the other when he asks her point-blank if she’s a Goth… but she does admit that she was arrested for disorderly conduct outside a venue called “Bleak”, so I’d say she fits the profile. There’s a later scene where Crews makes his way through a Goth-y club, and the screen is filled with lingering shots of sexy extras… but none of them get any dialogue, so I’m not counting them here. Again, Shaw gets some good lines and plays the part very well… but the only other title on her resume I recognise is an uncredited role as a “Party Girl” in Not Another Teen Movie (2001)… so I guess I’ll have to cast her in my hypothetical/imaginary sitcom spin-off too!

Aside from singular appearances in The Sopranos and Law & Order and a couple of commercials, Blue doesn’t have many other credits to her name… but it’s obvious from her IMDb gallery that she’s grown up to be quite a hottie. I hate to bang on about this, but I do love a woman with a prominent nose and strong eyebrows… in fact, I dig her look so much, she’s actually inspired a new character for my comic book! So, yay to her! Whether the book will get published in time for her to play the part in a movie adaptation is another matter entirely…

A similar thing happened when I flicked on early morning music show Freshly Squeezed a few weeks back, and saw a very pretty lady with a super-sharp bob snarling out at me through the screen. I had the sound off, so as not to wake anyone, and the subtitles weren’t working… so, I had no idea who she was or what she was so angry about. Turns out her name is Jessie J, and she’s a hot new British singer/songwriter… in an urban R&B stylee. It pains me to be so “on trend”, but I love how aggressive she is in that video (NSFW)… and after several replays, the song that goes along with it (“Do It Like A Dude”) has become firmly lodged in my brain! Apparently her debut album, Who You Are, is coming out in a couple of weeks… and I’m guessing it’s going to be a big seller, considering how well the singles have done so far. It’s always a weird feeling when I find myself liking someone who’s actually popular with the general public… not an unpleasant or undesirable feeling… just an unusual one. I’ve heard a few tracks from the album already, and while they aren’t my usual cup of tea, I can still respect what she’s doing… there’s a lot of humour and feisty attitude in her lyrics, and her heart seems to be in the right place. For instance, ‘L.O.V.E.’ includes a line about how romantic attraction transcends gender… on ‘Who’s Laughing Now’, she’s clearly on the side of the underdog, rather than the bullies who ridicule them at an early age… and ‘Price Tag’ could be seen as an anti-capitalist anthem, encouraging the listener to have fun and not be such a “bread-head”! So, as far as I’m concerned, she’s a force for good in pop-culture, and I’m glad to see her succeed.

The way that his interests/obsessions overlap with my own would make him an ideal artist to work on the comic book script I’m polishing up at the moment… if only I could afford him! Unless I win the Lottery in the next couple of months, I may have to figure out a way to eat his brain and gain his talent… or would I have to eat his hands? Hmmm…

PS. My sincerest apologies to Mr Fell for cropping his artwork… but it’s a compulsion of mine. Click here to see the full version of the “Sophie Sees” illustration in all its glory!

PPS. Heeeeeere’s Rosie:

Because, why not?

Anyhoo, The Banned’s token Emo, ‘Beth’, is played by Jessica Bell, who used to front a proper all-girl indie/punk band called “The Tommys” back in the day. Only one official track of theirs seems to be available to buy online (“The Day The World Turned Chav”), but from what I’ve read I gather they were pretty rockin’. To quote one gig review: “Blonde-mopped singer Jess, a human wrecking ball, fixes the front row with an evil eye and proceeds to lay waste to the venue and its equipment… [their songs] slice with a flash-glam-trash-punk-rock’n’roll intensity, and Jess belies her years by belting them out in a voice for which Gram Parsons could have invented the description Grievous Angel.” Crikey! Unfortunately, according to an interview she gave to the Blackpool Gazette to promote this film’s release, Bell got a bit homesick on tour: “I never got tired of it but it was time for a change,” she said. “It was a hard decision to make but I’ve no regrets. I like spending more time with my friends and family – so six weeks’ filming was just about right.” A year on, it doesn’t look as if The Banned will become a permanent gig for her either, but I doubt that’s going to hold her back: “I don’t do the Lottery so I’m never going to be rich that way… My only real ambition is to be happy doing what I do and I hope that’s going to be making music and acting. Oh yes, I write songs as well. Music’s in my blood.”  Right on! Asked to rate her comparative sex appeal, Bell claimed “all the others have got great legs whereas I just didn’t feel sexy”… which is just silly, because any fool can see she’s hella cute… and it’s pretty obvious from the extra features on the DVD that she can really wail too, so I hope we get to see and hear a lot more from her in future!

Aside from starring in both Trinian’s flicks, Riley played a pivotal (though not particularly pleasant) role in the criminally underrated comedy The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio) (2009). This means that we might actually have “filmed a scene together”, in the broadest possible sense… I mean, we were on totally separate boats, milling around a large harbour, and I can’t say for certain that she was even there at all… but it would still make a good ice breaker if we ever met in real life, right? Apparently her most recent appearance was in the wildly successful Inception (2010), playing a character called simply “Blonde”. I haven’t seen the film myself, but I’m assuming from the name that it wasn’t a huge role… unless she’s playing a reincarnation of Mr. Blonde? Probably not. I think she’s a very talented actress, and can be very funny when she isn’t playing the sympathetic straight-woman… she’s also ridiculously beautiful, of course, but I’m sure you’d spotted that already… so, here’s hoping she has a long and rewarding career (and gets to play a real Goth someday)!

The first film may have had its flaws, but it did at least have some funny character moments and skits tied to the loose framework of its rambling story. This time around the plotting is a lot tighter, and the narrative flow seems a lot smoother, but this “progress” is made at the expense of the characters and the jokes. At first the writers appear to be setting up some potentially interesting arcs, as ‘Annabelle Fritton’ (Talulah Riley) finds herself thrown into the role of “Head Girl”, prompting accusations of nepotism and general resentment (her aunt does run the school, after all), while rebellious new girl ‘Roxy’ (Sarah Harding) threatens to turn the school’s rival cliques against each other in an effort to recruit her! All of that set-up is then promptly flushed down the crapper once the film’s actual plot kicks in, and everyone starts running around trying to track down a hidden hoard of pirate treasure! Which wouldn’t be so frustrating, if they weren’t wasting such an incredibly bright and talented young cast. I know that the original, old-timey series always sent the girls off on wacky adventures across the globe too… but they didn’t have such clearly defined characters, played by actresses of this calibre. Personally I’d much rather have seen the writers forget all the action-thriller arsing around, and just stick to a simple story about an anarchic “alternative” school, where the pupils are split into warring tribes, and all of the tension, drama and comedy comes from the internal politics, rather than external threats. Assuming they got me in to punch up the script, of course…

If forced to choose between the tribes, I’d have to say that the “Emos” were my favourite, with the “Ecos” coming a close second. Despite their strong objections to being called “Goths” in the previous film, the Emos’ new leader (‘Zoe’) arrives at school lying in a coffin in the back of a hearse… which is pretty much as Goth as it gets! Montserrat Lombard seems to be having fun with the role, but the writers’ characterisation is a little too wishy-washy to provide any real sense of malevolence or menace. Yes, she does build an electric chair for her science experiment, but she’s also afraid of graveyards and rats, and voluntarily takes on the “priest” role during an exorcism! Huh? I’d rather they’d run a little deeper into Addams Family territory (or even referred back to Searle’s original cartoons), and thrown some more macabre jokes out at the audience. And it still bugs me to see the Emos bopping away to generic pop music in the final celebratory scene… it’s just so out-of-character! In fact, everything about this film is rather generic and superficial, as if they’d aimed it squarely at the sort of teenage girls who can’t tell the difference between “P!nk” and “Punk”. And there is a difference, dammit! I only wish the writers and director had put as much thought and care into their work as the hair, make-up and wardrobe departments did.

Going back to the music thing… before I watched the film I was all set to hate on Harding, who is best known as a singer/lip-syncher with the prefabricated pop group Girls Aloud, but she actually acquits herself quite well as an actress, as far as I can tell. That said, her character is completely superfluous to the plot, so I’m still annoyed that she sucked so much screen time away from more experienced (and firmly established) cast members… such as the twins, Cloe Mackie & Holly Mackie, who didn’t seem to get any decent lines this time around, despite stealing so many scenes in the previous film. Juno Temple started strong, but then got rather lost in the rumpus as head Eco ‘Celia’. Meanwhile poor Tamsin Egerton did her best with a character who’d been reset to “dumb blonde” default mode, despite the progress she’d supposedly made at the end of the previous instalment. Again, it wouldn’t be quite so frustrating if these characters physically disappeared, but they don’t… you can see them there on-screen the whole way through… they just don’t say or do anything especially memorable. Everyone gets drowned out by the noise of the plot… but the plot doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t build to a satisfying, cathartic climax, so where does that leaves us? Up the Thames without a paddle, that’s where!

Closing thought: Consider the irony of a film with an overtly Feminist agenda being packaged in a case with only the male cast members credited on the front cover.

[Deep, cleansing breath...]

All of that aside, the movie’s one redeeming feature (aside from the kick-ass soundtrack album) is Director’s performance as ‘Kim’. Apparently she auditioned for a different role, but Berlinger was smart enough to recognise that her striking features and piercing blue peepers would serve her much better as the tour group’s token Goth. It’s not just her appearance that catches your attention, of course… she really embraces the archetype, and brings a lot of deadpan humour and attitude to the role. Just seeing her schlepping supplies around while gripping a defiant cigarette between her teeth made me chuckle far more than it should. If she had appeared in any other movie, ‘Kim’ might well have become one of my fave fictional Goths of all time… but I’ll always think fondly of those first few “getting to know you” scenes, before the story kicks in and everything goes to hell in a hanging basket… I mean, how can you not love a gal who’s first introduced taking a casual catnap on a gravestone? Bless her.

I had to watch through the first ten minutes again on the BBC’s iPlayer, to grab these screencaps… but my internet connection is so slow and crappy, I didn’t get any further through the episode this time around. For all I know, something fantastically hilarious and/or enlightening could happen in the final third of the programme… but somehow I doubt it. According to Wikipedia this episode (“Grandad and the Emo of Doom”) came from the third series, and the BBC has already commissioned a fourth and fifth instalment! Clearly the kiddies have a much higher tolerance for this sort of “humour” than I do… or maybe it’s just being kept on the air by “dirty old men” like me, hitting their mute buttons and perving over Harmer? Hmmm…

* If only there were an abridged version of Deal Or No Deal where they cut out all the between-box banter, and replaced Noel Edmonds with a simple touch-screen computer, I wouldn’t need to flip at all!

In real life, Tamblyn seems like a pretty cool cat too… she’s the goddaughter of Dean Stockwell, Dennis Hopper and Neil Young… and when she isn’t acting up a storm, she writes critically acclaimed poetry books. She’s also currently dating the comedian David Cross… which I only mention because it gives me hope that maybe, sometimes, occasionally the groovy gals do make passes at nerdy guys with glasses…

Anna Walton puts her ethereal beauty to excellent use as the eponymous vamp ‘Vicki’, shortly before scoring an equally “otherworldly” role as ‘Princess Nuala’ in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). I’m not sure her character here is so irresistible I’d actually be willing to kill and/or bleed for her… but she does look pretty damn good when she gets all gothed up to prowl for her prey.

Kate Sissons also deserves an honourable mention for her turn as ‘Haze’, managing to squeeze a lot of charm into quite a small part. But the real scene-stealer in the cast has to be Keith-Lee Castle, who is probably best known for playing ‘Count Dracula’ himself, father to a disappointingly wimpy heir, in the children’s TV series Young Dracula (2006-2008). Thank goodness they didn’t put him on the cover though, or who knows what sort of trauma might have occurred when confused parents accidentally exposed their children to all this gore, sappho-eroticism and shaky camerawork!

This morning I neatly avoided the regular Friends reruns, and hit a Frasier rerun instead. Bit of a frying pan/fire scenario there, but the experience was made a little less painful by the revelation that Frasier’s son was going through a “Goth” phase… and was even running around with a cute Goth girl named ‘Andi’. She didn’t get a lot of screen time, but she had a great look going on… and it turns out the actress who played her, Marisa Guterman, has a pretty cool resume.

Aside from this episode of Frasier (“High Holidays”, s11e11, 2003), Guterman also appeared as the ‘Girl with Braces’ in Andy’s traumatic flashback in The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), and as ‘Slumber Party Girl’ in an episode of Mr. Show with Bob and David (“Life Is Precious and God and the Bible”, s04e01, 1998). On a more teen-oriented tip, she appeared as another ‘Goth Girl’ in Drake & Josh (“Who’s Got Game?”, s04e05, 2006), and seems to crop up as suspiciously “alt” or nerdy characters in a lot of other shows too… so I imagine she’s got the whole deadpan thing pretty much down pat by this point! I haven’t actually seen all of these shows, of course, but she has a lot clips on her site, and they’re pretty damn funny.

Oh, and did I mention she’s also an aspiring singer/songwriter? No? Well, she is… so check out her MySpace page to listen to some rather lovely tunes. She’s clearly a very talented young woman, so here’s hoping we get to see (and hear) much more from her in the future! (fingerless gloves optional)

One thing I love about snuffling around the charity shops for DVDs/videos is that I’ll often find some random film I never would have heard about otherwise, and they’re cheap enough to take a chance on… and so it was with an indie flick called Gypsy 83. What first piqued my interest was the cover… partly because of the rather sexy photo of Sara Rue dressed in full gothic attire, and partly because the top half of the sleeve had been neatly, but mysteriously removed. As you can see from the photo here, the section that was cut out (indicated by the bright red box) featured two topless young men getting it on. The word “gay” is used four times in the first paragraph of the back-cover blurb, so I wasn’t really surprised to get home and discover the nature of this “offending image”, but I’d still be curious to know who did the chopping… the donor or the shop staff? And since a similar, smaller image appears on the back cover, what exactly was their reasoning?

I’ve never understood why some people consider the image of two men kissing to be so much more offensive than a man and a woman kissing… but in this case I think they were actually doing potential purchasers a favour. It’s a clear case of false advertising, since the only actual sex scene is about two minutes long and pretty tame. It’s also intercut with a straight scene featuring Rue and an Amish hitchhiker (don’t ask), so I doubt it’s of much use to any gay fellas looking for some soft-core porno. Weirdly the BBFC classification on the back cover claims that the film “contains very strong language, strong sex and sex references”, which is probably a fair warning from a legal standpoint, but also slightly misleading. Are “gay interest” films often misrepresented like this? Seems a rather mean, exploitative trick to me… or does man-on-man action always warrant a stronger warning, regardless of the actual explicitness of the content? Oh well, at least the gothic content is more explicit and ubiquitous. The leads look gorgeous throughout, with fantastic hair and make-up, and I loved the way they set up candles and velvet curtains wherever they went on their road trip, turning even the most humdrum picnic bench or truck-stop toilet into a little oasis of dark beauty. That’s one thing I’ve always admired about Goths… the drama and romance they bring to an everyday setting, simply by walking down the highstreet in a top hat and frock coat!

Elvira: “And if they ever ask about me, tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs. I was also an incredible pair of legs. And tell them… tell them that I never turned down a friend. I… never turned down a stranger for that matter. And tell them… tell them that when all is said and done, I only ask that people remember me by two simple words. (pause) Any two, as long as they’re simple.”

There’s probably nothing to be gained from peering back through the mists of time to analyse the hormonal stew that was brewing back then, but early exposure to Elvira and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, have clearly left a mark on my libido, lumbering me with an unhelpful attraction to theatrical, goth-y women… “unhelpful”, because I’m a square, scruffy geek, and unable to maintain a “style” of any kind, let alone a high-maintenance one like that. Sigh. Naturally, this is a fun time of the year for me, as the whole country sets its phasers to “spooky”, and the pubs are crammed with Elviras, Morticias and Magentas. Hurrah!

I would write more about Peterson herself, and the evolution of the Elvira character, but the AV Club interview that prompted this post sums it all up better than I ever could.

Happy Hallowe’en!