Rant #2,243: Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

I hope you had a good weekend.

My weekend was the usual mix of busy-ness, never sitting down, running around until my knees hurt, and well, it all started on Friday night.

On that night, my son and I went to see the Brooklyn Nets' first home game of the year, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

I was born in Brooklyn more than 60 years ago, and while I am as separated from that borough as one could be at that point, at least part of my roots are still in Kings County, and my son and I enjoy going to basketball games at that arena.

It just so happened that this game was against the New York Knicks, to make the event even more special for us and the fans that were there--a packed house, more than 17,000 people.

It was a great game, with the Nets somehow eking out a 105-103 win.

We made all of our train connections coming and going, so we were home before 11:30 p.m. that night.

Then we had the normal Saturday for us, which included a lot of running around, so much so that I am seemingly still out of breath from it.

Then came Sunday ... and I could finally relax, to a certain extent.

It was not a relaxing day for my wife or son, as they had to work, but that situation--I hate when my wife works on the weekend--allowed me to "chill out" yesterday.

I did pretty much absolutely nothing--I did do the laundry, made a few lunches, picked up my son at work, that sort of thing--but otherwise, I didn't do too much of anything.

What I did do is watch a few movies to kill some time, one of which was absolutely dreadful, the other one which I have seen countless times before and it remains one of the funniest, best movies ever made.

Let me get to the former first, so I can get it out of the way.

"Moonshine Love" is probably one of the worst films ever made. This 1970 film (which is in beguiling black and white and looks like it was actually made at least five years earlier), defies description but is probably in the very short-lived "Hixploitation" genre (I didn't even know that there was such a genre until I looked it up), and is best forgotten quickly,

The long and short of it is that it takes place in the boondocks somewhere, involves hillbillies that make the Clampetts on "The Beverly Hillbillies" into second cousins of Albert Einstein, and makes little sense at all.

Some crook commits a robbery, runs off with the money, and then is involved in a car wreck, where he completely loses his memory.

He is nursed back to health by a hillbilly clan that I cannot quite figure out; there is a male there who I believe is the father of a tall blonde and is married to a dark haired woman with a European accent.

Anyway, the crook ends up being the lover of the blond woman, the dark-haired woman romps around too with various paramours, and later, the robber's accomplices come to get their money, but the robber is fully engaged with the hillbilly family, and still doesn't have his memory, so he has no idea where the money is.

There is a climax, which I won't go into, but this film involves lots of nudity and sex scenes (one with a carrot that has to be seen to be believed), and, well, yes, it does fill up a little more than an hour of your time with some mindless "entertainment," I guess.

The other movie I watched is so much better than this trash that to list it in the same Rant actually is very unfair, because here we are talking about a real movie, something that was created for the mass audience, and hits it mark whether you are watching it for the first time or the 1,000th time.

One of the funniest movies ever made, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" came out of a move of pure genius: combine the comedy of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello with a gaggle of "monsters"--not just the Frankenstein monster, but also Dracula and the Wolfman--into a single movie.

And this 1948 film never fails to deliver laughter and thrills, sometimes at the same time.

The boys play inept shipping clerks who get mixed up with the elements of a spook house, including newly purchased attractions--the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) and the corpse of Dracula (Bela Lugosi)--that have been purchased by the owner of the spook house.

Through one circumstance or another, these attractions spring to life, with the Wolf Man--Lon Chaney Jr.--doing his best to keep a straight face as he tells the boys of the impending havoc of these two creatures.

Everything comes out into the open at a Halloween costume party, where Dracula goes after Costello's brain and somehow, he and Abbott prove that the monsters did come back to haunt the world, but are able to thwart them at their evil turn.

And the ending of the film is one of the greatest finales in movie history, and if you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you, but I will say that decades later. Michael Jackson had the same intention as Bud and Lou did at including this actor in their respective works.

Anyway, this film was pure comic genius, and several years ago, it was ranked as one of the greatest comedy movies of all time--and with Halloween coming up next week, it is the perfect time of the year to watch this movie, and watch it again and again and again.

It is that good, and this movie certainly solidified Bud Abbott and Lou Costello as the greatest comedy team of all time, bar none.

So that was my weekend, certainly made up of scary monsters and super creeps!

And I am sure that next weekend should be an interesting one too, because I work for the weekend, so it has to be interesting.

Stay tuned.