"Neanderthal" By Frank Frazetta.

I love this shot.

When you look at sci-fi stories like Star Wars, especially, there's so much more to it than just the technology. It comes back to this idea of "the Force" which I think is based on a lot of Eastern philosophy and religious ideas of "you can either be on the dark side or the light side". It's kind of that Yin and Yang sort of look at energy as a whole. Star Wars has a second meaning to it.

I mean, George Lucas himself even admitted that Star Wars was an allegory for the Vietnam War, especially around Nixon trying to get reelected. He even mentions that democracies aren’t taken, they're given away. Though I also know that he also borrowed significantly from the legends of King Arthur.

I think there's a lot of meaning in sci-fi in general. It's a way to comment on our reality and our current situation through another lens. I think that's the beauty of sci-fi in general. It's also why I think the most recent Star Wars movies got negative reviews, because they were trying to tell Star Wars stories and not real-life stories.

It's a great reflection tool. If Star Wars is about Vietnam, then Dune is about the Middle East. Because Arrakis the planet = Iraq. Spice is the resource, oil is the resource. At the core of it, I think that's the whole point.

"Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." - Tao Te Ching (Chapter 76, translation by Stephen Mitchell)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

Freaks (also re-released as The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature's Mistakes) by Tod Browning.

Based on elements from the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins.

Step right up and be horrified! Or be sympathetic, that works too. This is a unique film. Believe me, there has never been and will never be a film like this again.

Get this: After the success of Universal's original "Dracula" in 1931, MGM approached its director Tod Browning to make "the scariest film ever made". So what did Browning do? He gathered real circus sideshow performers from all over the country and made the movie "Freaks". The movie's so shocking that MGM was sued by one audience member who claimed that seeing the movie gave her a miscarriage. This movie is so controversial that there are still cities in the United States where it's illegal to even show it!

Just a word of warning before you decide to go see this, some of the people in this movie do look very disturbing. If you'd rather not subject yourself to that kind of imagery, then it would probably be best to not see it. Regardless, this film is full of iconic moments of pure cinema, pulpy horror, carny noir, and perverse melodrama. Freaks is still unclassifiable after many decades. It's still sick, twisted, perverse and profoundly human. It contains Tod Browning's view of the world at its purest.

Fun Fact:

One of the scariest creatures in Celtic folklore has gotta be the Caorthannach. Also known as the "Celtic fire-spitter" and believed by some to be the mother of Lucifer himself, Caorthannach was the name of an old witch that was part human, part serpent. Whenever she would emerge from her watery abode, she would wreak havoc, murdering travelers, burning down homes with families trapped inside and the rare few who evaded her initial torment would still be caught and devoured later.

The Caorthannach's reign of terror ended thanks to Celtic hero Finn McCool. He and his band of warriors lit her up with arrows and she died right on the spot. Except, a year later, a little turd named Conan broke her thigh bone, allowing a worm to crawl out and escape into a lake. That worm was Caorthannach and when she emerged out of the same lake fully grown and ready to terrorize a nearby town, Conan let her swallow him whole. Then he cut her open from the inside, beheaded her and threw her head into the lake. Her blood then permanently turned the lake red, and it was called "Loch Derg" or the "Red Lake" from then on.

Well she sounds... lovely, doesn't she?

Flesh and Blood (stylized as Flesh+Blood) by Paul Verhoeven.

Verhoeven's first English-language film.

15th century brutality, superstition and politics, Verhoeven style.

This film wasn't a smash hit, probably owing to it being outrageously dirty (and its immensely depressing depiction of 15th century life), but it was critically acclaimed.

Inspired Berserk creator Kentaro Miura.

Connection/Fate

Hasta los Huesos (Down to the Bone).

"Chained" ("Conan the Usurper") by Frank Frazetta.

True scary story:

In 1800s London, a surgeon named Robert Liston became somewhat of a local celebrity through his use of brute force and speed when performing operations, skills that were vital to the survival of a patient before anesthesia was discovered. Liston could remove your leg in less than 30 seconds and to keep both his hands free, he would hold the bloody knife between his teeth while working (tasty).

But just because Liston was good didn't mean he was perfect. One time, he accidentally sliced off his patient's bollock along with the leg he was amputating. Legends say his biggest mess up though happened when he worked so quickly, he cut off three of his assistant's fingers and while switching blades sliced through a spectator's coat. Both the assistant and the patient later died of gangrene and the unfortunate bystander died on the spot from fright. If the stories are true, that would mean this is the only surgery in history with reported 300% fatality rate.

So yeah, this surgeon killed three people in one operation.