Rant #2,951: Busted

There is a dark cloud over my head that simply does not want to leave me.
 
I have chronicled my troubles this summer in Rant after Rant, and I wish I could tell you that things were better, but they aren’t; in fact, they may be worse.
 
I still have this lousy thing on my head, and while it isn’t nearly as bad as it was a week or so ago, it continues to gnaw at me, and I wish it was gone already.
 
It is trying to form a scab but being in such a sensitive place, it isn’t healing as quickly as I would like. I guess I am in the long haul with this thing … and soon I will need a haircut, and then what?
 
My right leg still suffers from the reoccurrence of the “Jumper’s Knee” that came back during my vacation, and while it is 100 percent better, it still is there, and I do feel it every day, but honestly, of everything that is pulsating around me and to me right now, this is the one thing I think I can live with.
 
And of course, we have our pool sitting there like a giant cauldron of pea soup; my computer simply isn’t right—it takes at least two times to start it up each morning; and now I have a new nut to crack, and that is that my car radio—including the camera and phone features—did not go on yesterday as I drove my son home from work.
 
The screen was blank and no matter what I did, it would not turn itself on.
 
The funnily thing is that I had been listening to it—with just the electrical part of my car on—while waiting for my son to finish work, but when I fully turned the car on, everything died—
 
Only to return 15 minutes later, after I had turned the car off and then started the car up again.
 
This was no reboot. Reboots take a minute or two or three. This was 15 or 20 minutes or so … do I have a situation with the car radio that is like the one I have with my computer?
 
Only time will tell, but I am going to have to fix it, one way or the other, because the car will never pass inspection without the camera working.
 
And then, today, I have to go back to get my allergy shots, 25 miles away from my home.
 
If you remember, I tried to do this last week, but the only road into the facility was closed, and I tried to work around it, but to no avail.
 
I am sure that this won’t happen again, but 25 miles there and 25 miles back without my shots is not only a complete waste of time, and gas, but it is truly reprehensible that I cannot get my shots where used to get them, maybe five miles there and five miles back.
 
Totally ridiculous, but then again, that phrase “totally ridiculous” is the phrase of my summer, as one thing or another has happened to dampen my spirits amidst one 90-degree heat one day after another.
 
At least I have my little job going for me, as it keeps me somewhat engaged and eats up some time, while I make a little bit of money from my skills that nobody wanted on a full-time basis.
 
So what do I do during down times, and with everything going on, there have been some times when I simply don’t have much on my plate, except a bushel of worry?
 
I fill in those times with my perpetual watching of bad movies, mainly from the late 1960s and early 1970s when anything and everything was ripe for exploration by the movie business, and that doesn’t necessarily mean Hollywood.
 
I stumbled upon an Italian-made pure trash movie the other day, and was so "engaged" by the cut version of it that I found on YouTube that I searched out and found the uncut version of this gem elsewhere on the Web.
 
This 1976 film, called “Passion Plantation,” was also called “Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle,” but has absolutely nothing to do with those Euro-trash movies starring Sylvia Kristal.
 
This particular film is more in line with the happily short-lived “Civil War-sploitation” genre, which began in the mid-1970s with the worldwide success of “Mandingo,” which was made by an American studio and made millions as it chronicled the life—including the sex life—of slaves and their masters during the years leading up to the end of slavery.
 
Sure, this isn’t quite the topic to be reliving in 2022, when we are supposed to be more forward thinking than the sexploitation of slaves on the screen, and no, this is as far away from "Roots" as you can possibly go, but “Passion Plantation” at least has something of a heartbeat in its delivery, with its conclusions pertinent for today’s world.
 
The basic story is that a slave plantation owner’s daughter—a cross between “Ilsa, the She-Wolf of the SS” and Brigitte Bardot—allows her own inner sexual demons to get to her as she attempts to run the family plantation with her father’s permission. 

She plans to marry the town’s other big plantation owner’s son, but he is more human, and while he also abuses the slaves, he falls for one of them who saves him from a snake bite … which sends his former lover into a rage, and well, you can probably future out what happens to her without seeing the film.
 
Sure, you get the slave beatings, the indecent relationships, and all of the same things that you got in the Hollywood-made “Mandingo,” but here, you get a movie with something of a heartbeat, something of a meldling of both black and white characters into something we used to call “the human race,” a theme that even through all the debauchery—or as much debauchery as an R-rated film would allow—transpires on the screen.
 
I won’t say that the end justifies the means, but at least this film has something of a conscience, and while what leads up to it is hard to watch at times, its morals are there, unlike other films in this short-lived genre.
 
And did I mention that the women in the film—black and white—are all gorgeous?
 
Yes, that helps you get through all the perversity, but good does triumph over bad in this film, so it has its heart in the right place, but it takes forever to get there.
 
If you have 90 minutes to waste, I would recommend it, but with the caution that in 2022, it can be very difficult to watch.
 
But people watched “Mandingo,” later watched its even more horrid sequel “Drum,” and viewed a few more European-made films in this genre, one that happily died a very quick death.
 
That the worldwide movie business even went to this theme nearly 50 years ago shows how open everything was back then, and really, how closed things are today.
 
I am not going to give you a direct link to this film, because it really isn’t the type of movie I would recommend, probably just to purveyors of bad movies, so if interested, I bet you can find the uncut version as easily as I did.
 
Now that I spent 90 minutes watching that movie, what do I do with my pool and that thing on my head?
 
I just don’t know at this point, I just don’t know.
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.