Last Week’s Notes 20260710

All the Notes from the last week in one place. Trying to Subvert Shadow-ban. Five Pointless Reviews: Delirium, Exit 8, Cruel Jaws, Obex & Hidden in The Fog. Music to Read by. Music to protest by.

An Attempt to Subvert The Stubstack Shadow-ban on The Fiesta 13 Stubstack.

Celebrating The Fourth of Junely. July & June have been combined for a more streamline 10 month year in Blaine, Ne #1302. Fireworks, Weed Drinks, gobbling up meat tubes, Roman Candle fights. The Fourth of Junely is double AMERIKA!

The fourth means Jaws, we’ve got a The Fiesta 13 Pointless Review of Cruel Jaws later.

Click the button & listen while you skim, the soundtrack collage for all of the very recognizable, yet not quiet copyright infringement, of the Italian movie Cruel Jaws.

Notes Going Backward:

Delirium

(A Fiesta 7/13)

July is #giallojuly, but we haven’t seen many giallo columns. We love giallos. A weird psychosexual mystery with gory, horror set pieces. Yes, like. We’ve seen maybe 100 of them. Never once have we correctly guessed the killer. With modern American mysteries, we’ve got a 50-70 percent hit rate. American mysteries are easy. Look at the poster. The most famous person after the lead is the killer most of the time.

Another controversial giallo take. Early slashers, the ones without a boring supernatural killer borrowed the gory set-piece kill scenes from giallo. April Fool’s Day for example. Mystery + Gore + Survival. When Micheal Meyers showed up, mystery, gore & survival was slimmed down to just gore & survival.

Delirium: Photos of Gioia by director Lamberto Bava (Demons! Watch it now, horror nerds! Then watch Demons 2) is near the very tail end of the giallo craze, 1987. Gioia (Serena Grande) is a aging model who left the biz to start a ‘mens-only’ magazine, Pussycat, with her husband. Her husband died a year earlier in a car crash. She’s left to run the magazine with horror-giallo legend Daria Nicolodi. Behind every great Bava or Argento is Daria Nicolodi.

(Spoiler Alert: The husband DOES NOT have a secret past or was murdered. Sort of a shock for most twisty mysteries.)

The plot revolves around a shoot to re-create Gioia’s famous soft-core nude pics. More than most giallo’s treatment of women, Gioia is a more three-DD character. Serena Grandi is the main reason for her full character. She’s great. Gioia’s conflicted about selling the mag to a shark, one of the many suspects.

As in every giallo, every guy in the movie, besides Detective Lunkhead Gaslighter, is a suspect. Detective Lunkhead Gaslighter tells Gioia to just forget about motives and all the deaths directly related to you, the big-boy cops will deal with it. Take a nap, sweetie.

Models are pitchforked, stung with bees (Shout-out to Dr Phibes!) & other odd methods. The killer, from the red-flashing POV, is either Satan or has one terrible migraine. When the killer sees the victim, he sees a half-insect/ half-model like in the poster. The first time we saw this, Delirium earned a free rating point, the jarring scene with the one-eyed bug lady pitch-forked into the pool. Awesome. Bava must have some left-over costumes from a bug invasion movie.

The suspects follows the giallo trend of multiple similar-looking men as potential killers. They blur together, complicating the mystery. That’s the trick that keeps us from ever guessing the killer. Daria, also a suspect, isn’t given much to do.

Delirium’s most annoying character is the rich, big-teeethed wheel-chaired teen Rear-Windowing nude Gioia next door. He’s given a sympathetic back story well beyond the ability for redemption. He’s a creep. She’s okay with his binoculars trained on her boobs all day. She even sets-up a shoot with other models for him to oogle. ‘kay.

She grieves her husband’s death in odd ways.

The killer sends pics to Gioia of the magazine’s dead models in front of Gioia’s iconic photo.

Set solidly in the 80’s, the cool ’70’s fashion of the height of giallo is replaced with the big-shoulder curtain rod dresses like they were in Designing Women. Giallo belongs in the ’70’s.

Also, there’s a set-piece in the new ’80’s phenom, the mall.

Gioia represents, in part, the aging giallo murder-victim model. Delirium knows full-well this is the tail-end of giallo.

No, we didn’t guess the killer. But the motive was in-part psychosexual. Tres’ giallo. All the clues were there, we just missed ‘em.

We guessed the killer if this was a traditional American mystery. We guessed Chris Evans. Nope.

Currently on Arrow.

Delirium

(A Fiesta 7/13)

19870410 DELIR M

♥️♠️♣️♽

$$$

Delirium remind us of a local movie that became a minor hit in Blaine, NE #1302 in the late ‘80s.

The Dillard’s Killer: Slay the Customer

The film set in the Blaynetown mall, specifically the anchor Dillard’s Department Store at the end of the mall. Fans loved all the blood splashing on merch. The kills & pacing Shots from Chopping Mall & Dawn of The Dead are cut in to juice the gore, but fans thought odd & boring the plot of being ‘A Super-Seller.’

After a few weeks, audiences discovered that The Dillard’s Killer: Slay the Customer was just a Dillard’s Employee Training Video cut with gore. Made 3 million on an industrial short budget.

The Dillard’s Killer: Slay The Customer was still shown to new employees up until their bankruptcy & still available on VHS.

Lil Richie Baldy Rich Petey Cricketts just cashed the check. Before the fourth weekend, no Cricketts ads. There was only one for Osborne from a hybrid 401C Pac called Groundswell Nebraska. They’re on Stubstack.

The Groundswell ads are still running, but now Cricketts is running ads 5 to 1 to Osborne.

One is his ads is from his campaign, but most are from The Working Family Opportunity Alliance. The name intentionally meant to confuse with The Working Families Party. There’s even a fake Repug candidate running as ‘independent.’ Winning without clumsy misdirection is impossible for The Repug Pro-Fa Party.

The Cricketts ad focus on all the dumb distraction issues they’ve relied. Osborne wouldn’t vote for The Big Beautiful Bill. He wants men in women’s restrooms, blah, blah bullshit.

Cricketts, today is worth 215 million, up roughly 35 million since he took office in 2020.

Where’s those awesome ads from the Fischer campaign? All we’re seeing are super generic onslaught of DNC style e-mails.

Here’s an idea. Cricketts touts his tax savings with the BBB, dropping social security taxes (A back-door plan to starve & eliminate that socialism), no tax on tips (mostly benefits wall street hedge funds who, um, work on tips.) & other BS policies.

Do this ad: Figure out how much The Big Beautiful Bill has netted Cricketts. Compare that to Osborne’s ’savings’ from The BBB in the last year he was a full-time worker. Ad writes itself. Attack him on the things he said about the benefits. What those benefits means to suffering farmers, closing rural hospitals, the massive nursing deficit, SNAP & so on. Who actually pays for the BBB & who suffers.

He ties himself like a boat anchor to Our Beloved Leader. Make him account for his craziness. Two days ago, Our Beloved Adjudicated Rapist & Felon Leader Lie Socialed about putting Dems & Communists & People who support Healthcare for All in ICE concentration camps.

Seriously, that’s fucked up in a Tsunami of fucked up.

Cricketts is another example of soft corruption Our Beloved Pedophile Leaderenables.

Exit 8

A Fiesta ∞/13

♥️♦️♣️♼

The game Exit 8 takes 5 minutes to beat. Easy as guessing 8 consecutive coin flips correctly. No prob. Grab a coin.

We’ve clocked 20 hours & only reached level 4. Spot an anomaly & turn back, otherwise advance to the next level. The game resets if you’re wrong. Simple enough. Memorize one corridor. Check everything. Doubt everything. Slowly enter a paranoid hell of self-doubt. That’s genius of the game & movie. An escalating doubt about your own abilities. No anomaly much worse than anomaly.

The game, up to level 4, has no plot as far as we can tell. Just a looped hallway.

How will the movie even work? The plot, as slight as it is, revolves around sorting out and resolving guilt. The game is full first person POV, so nausea sets in fairly quick, a benefit not a bug. We can only play the game 10-15 minutes at a time before feeling swimmy.

The movie starts with the game’s POV. Fortunately, at the exact moment the POV exhausts, the movie switches to normal movie mode. Thank you, we said out loud.

Our hero, The Lost Man just found out his ex-girlfriend is pregnant & she wants him to visit her at the hospital to discuss the matter. The Lost Man is conflicted. Getting off a Tokyo subway, he takes Exit 8 to leave for the hospital. No one else has entry to exit 8. The Lost Man goes from bustling crowds to a surreal space with eerie florescence silence.

Exit 8 makes the viewer an anomaly-spotter as well. You often see the weird before the character does, if you’re looking. Anomaly-spotting takes up most of the run time. Honestly, kind of a fun way to spend a movie. First one to spot the anomaly wins.

If there is one. Exit 8 is a better game if someone’s sitting next to you helping. The Fiesta 13 lives in their own mind 24/7 & another pair of eyes helps.

It’s a true trope, popular horror reflects the fears of a current-day audience.

In the ’50, the nuclear bomb brought us big bug movies. The seventies & eighties, body horror reflected fear of disease, especially AIDS.

Exit 8 plays to the fears of workers in an oppressive system. Make one typo. Make one mistake & you have to start over. The fear of failure looms heavily over each 50/50 choice. Plus, the further you get, the greater the fear of one mistake erasing any progress.

Feel that way at work? People get fired for one wrong choice. Workers are easily replaced. The Lost Man is on his way home from work. The Subway, a symbol of the work grind for so many isolating head-phoners, is the only location in the movie.

Add to work clostrophobia, the sudden unexpected life event of a pregnancy, that’s pure fear for those living on the razor’s edge of a work. Work that’s both a prison, money & rat maze. Employers want the same mistake-less quality. All of the time. No mistakes. The razor’s edge is only maintained through rigorous stasis. Don’t move & you can’t fail. Your day, mood must be factored out, the colors of personhood muted to a white-tiled wall. We’re NPC’s in our own bosses’ video game. Trapped in a loop. Seeing the same non-responsive man each loop. Getting only cryptic clues instead of answers, a silence the only answer given.

Like the nightmare of naked public speaking, this nightmare reflects work fears.

Exit 8

A Fiesta 8/13

(We spotted the earlier anomaly!)

***

Guys, we did it! We wrote a whole review about a modern horror film & didn’t use the word ‘Liminal.’

So, let’s sing:

liminal, liminal,

bo-biminalBanana-fana fo-fiminal

Fee-fi-mo-miminal

liminal!

###

Exit 8 is on Shudder later this month.

Alert The Mainstream Media!

Wait, we have. They’re not saying anything.

Huh.

Oh, Scott Jennings ‘talked’ with him. ‘kay.

There’s stories about Kentucky voters demanding accountability.

Nuthin’ from news.

Then again, congress is only in session for 23 more days before the November election. Maybe, he can stay dead & ruin democracy from beyond the grave. That’s so Mitch.

This week, we’re working on a game. This template can be applied to all movies on The Big List to create new games. Our goal, every horror movie is part of the horror movie game and the same with noirs and riffed movies.

Christmas (Horror) in July.

Drawn from this old post with a new game board. It’s a trivia game where being wrong doesn’t mean you’ll lose. Plus, use it to pick a movie.

Click Graphic for The Full Post:

Cruel Jaws

A Fiesta 7/13

19950926 CRUJA V

♥️♣️♽

Nuthin’s sez the Fourth of July like Jaws.

Not a McDonald’s Fried Apple Pie or a Mr. Met Bobblehead. Not Step-mom porn.

Jaws, the celebration of unheeded warnings and shark carnage, patriotic-style, does what America does best, take a good idea & turn it into 10,000 crappy copies.

Future historians will cite July 4, 2026, America’s 250th, as the day American Empire died. Let’s celebrate by watching something truly American, another crappy copy of a good idea. Made by Italians. We dub Cruel Jaws probably the 250th Jaws rip-off! Celebrate the 250th with us.

We’ve included sound clips of the movies’s music. Listen while you read. Not since the Turkish Star Wars rip-off has a movie so shamelessly stolen copyright. Check out the ‘original’ music.

Straight-to-video in 1995 by Italian director, Bruno Mattei (Rats: Night of Terror) slumming under an American pseudonym, Cruel Jaws’ only cruel by straight-up theft.

By 1995, the first wave of Jaws rip-offs & animal attack movies died out a decade ago. We’re still a decade away from the worst trend in cinema, CGI shark movies. Movies intentionally trying to be terrible. Unwatchable crap. We prefer watchable crap. Rather watch a movie where they tried & ended up terrible than the arch stance, we meant to be bad. We tried to be bad.

How can this movie be bad? Well, they lifted shots from five other killer shark movies. They stole better quality. That’s something.

Good Hulk Hogan, Baby-faced Mark Ruffalo & Mullet Aaron Eckhardt run a failing aquarium & carnival. Untanned Scarlett Johansen’s hot sister Belinda Carlisle kept us watching her bikini changes. No nudity, though. 30 days to eviction & sleazy mob guys are somehow involved. And Nazi scientists? They release killer sharks to scare off the aquarium’s dolphins. Is that what they’re doing? The movie seemed edited in a cyclotron containing other movies.

In killer animal movies, we always root for the poor, yet hungry killing machines. Hu-mans are always the problem. Always. Cruel Shark is loaded with innocent-as-Jesus sharks. There’s Bruce from Jaws, Jaws 2 & Jaws 3. There’s the regatta chomp from The Great White. There’s giant vinyl pop-up sharks, stock footage sharks, POV sharks, a ceramic shark, puppet sharks, jumping sharks, the repeating shot shark, dolphin sharks and one tiger shark.

The plot’s basically the same as Jaws without the three leads. The mayor refuses to stop the big regatta festival after multiple shark attacks. A precious, cloying heart-tugger wheelchair girl falls in the water & unfortunately doesn’t get eaten. The movie would have gotten a 13 if that happened. Only a few of the bite-worthy characters even get eaten. The guys go shotgun-shooting at sharks with no results. More terrible decisions follow, yet only a few pay. One good note, at the end, the ascot mayor falls in a dolphin pool. In good Jaws rip-offs, the mayor gets eaten. How long did the mayor last in the original movies? He’s in the second one.

Wanna watch good regatta carnage? Check out Piranha 3-D, an unintentional benefit from the invention of cinema. John Sayle’s Piranha is our fav killer animal pic.

The generic sound drop-worthy dialogue & very familiar music from a handful of other films turn this unwatchable crap into watchable crap. A Where’s Waldo of copyright infringement.

Like watching a crime being committed.

Like America’s 250.

Cruel Jaws is America’s current vibe. We still root for Bruce.

It was the best of times, it was the completely fucked up of times.

Gallant

Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past.

Goofus

But in recent years, there’s been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional character, to beat the American spirit out of us, alienate us from our history, and to make it impossible to even answer the question, what does it mean to be an American? As we march into our 250th year incredible, beautiful year it will be. We must never forget there is no American freedom without American culture. And there is no American founding without the American people.

Gallant

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.

Goofus

As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage or tell our children that we live on stolen land, or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past.

They are slandering and attacking our future. Not going to let that happen. They’re trying to tear down the great American character to destroy the people who declared independence, who crossed the Delaware, who settled the West and conquered the skies. You know who those people are.

Gallant

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.

Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.

Finally, The Onion has slopped out the prequel to America’s Highest Texas-Prescribed History Book in 10,000 years. Over 300 copies!, Our Dumb Century:

America: Birth of A Nation

250 Centuries in The Making

We love you The Onion & God. The Fiesta 13 has loved the both of y’all as much as Sisyphus has loved The Rock and not in a sexual way as we had fully expected.

Honest as words, now the flattery’s over.

$$$

The Fiesta 13 would gladly promote, patronize, suck & subscribe to The Jim Haggerty Show, the latest show at InfoWars. We’ve had many pleasant dealings with Mr. Haggerty. Both professionally & as drug buddy.

But politely, sir, Captain, Mister Dan Haggerty, fuck you.

The Green HogWater was stolen from The Fiesta 13. And just minutes before we saw the closed circuit of Mister Jim brain-storming new HogWater flavors to boot!

But, hahahaha, we got to Man Santo first. He didn’t expect to have so much legal product to unload, but caved to threats of immolation from the public. So, we moved on that deal like an aphid to a leaf. The Fiesta 13 has marketed & manufactured the best green-colored energy drink for hogs & humans on the market:

Roundup POWER MAXX ENERGY DRINK

In Aphid Apple, Cherry Cricket, Bee Berry & now Green, formally Green Grasshopper.

Ten-minutes to make the graphic, signed unread papers & people we know. Ba-Bang. We’re to market before you and the legal owner of any future patent. And we’ll take that to court!

Just now, The Fiesta 13 has heard from a former Hag-tern, his term, not ours, he says your in-warehouse Green HogWater might not even be a green energy for hogs & humans.

[Edited for character length]

…plus, this stupid service, ooooh StubStack, we’re for truth, won’t let us promote At InfoWars with and link away from Stubstack.

Conspiracy. We bet a pedo Logogarch behind this.

It’s Giallo July. Giallo’s one our favorite genres. Here’s a collage we made of one we like. What is it?

#giallojuly

Here’s Your Patriot Playlist of Protest. 265 songs of Resistance throughout the years. Over 14 hours of music & videos.

There’s also audio only lists on Apple, Spotify & Amazon.

Tonight, we watch the last episode of 1967’s The Prisoner. Does the show resolve? We’ll let you know. Of course, yesterday’s the day The Prisoner shows up on Criterion. So check it out, still relevant.

Visit the Village today.

We’re happy to report, there’s a definitive, weird end.

This promotion brought to you by Peter Theil’s The Village

Escape Today Forever.

Click on Graphic for the first episode of The Prisoner on YouTube.

OBEX

A Fiesta 10

♦️♼

Every 17 years, the cicada’s burrow up from the earth like the tiny undead to overwhelm our reality. These insects are like meth head grasshoppers on a humid Texas day. Cicadas create a wall of unending industrial noise that our hero can’t escape, sparking memories of his dead mother & triggering an anxiety to start the story.

1987, Computer Conor is an ASCII-artist. He takes photos & for five bucks he creates an ASCII-duplicate by two-finger typing. Truly, a lost art subsumed by the modern machine. We had a non-licensed, un-artistic computer ASCII program turn the poster above to its basic characters & added the PNG to the original poster for an idea.

Conor is well-adapted to the new technologies. Bleeding-edge technologies. He sings along with Gary Numan’s Cars on MIDI with a microphone before sleep. He plays the latest games. His media library takes up an entire wall. He watches TV with his dog, Sandy, on three stacked 19-inch Sony monitors.

Confession: We also had the same TV set-up after the station threw out some old monitors because new technology demanded tossing the old. Tech in the 1980’s & ’90’s always came with built-in obsolescence with new upgrades every three months. One night, friends taped half-dollar sized magnets to our tube TV’s for a new distorted picture. Weird, but watchable.

Like this movie. Critics use the phrase Lynchian a lot to describe the film, specifically Eraserhead. The effective B&W low-fi special effects. The industrial drone of cicadas as soundtrack. The odd shots & pacing. The comparisons are warranted, but it’s not a copy. More of a homage, a children’s fable.

Urban hermit Conor talks to the only woman in his life through his front door. He, like most of us, are isolated in our own individualized technology bubble. Safe. Looking at new games, he runs across Obex, a computer game that promises to put him in the game. Obex reminded us of the 90’s trend of having children fill out a questionnaire with favorite stuff, then after a few weeks, the child would get a cassette story or book specifically, but also generically tailored to the child. Conor also fills out a questionnaire & takes a few photos for his specialized Obex game that puts him ’in the game’. After a few weeks, he gets the game, plays for about 30 seconds before making the trash can fat. Terrible game even for a 3.5 Meg Floppy Disc. Obex looks like very early flash animation with zero plot and no directions.

At night, Obex’s main boss, Ixaroth, roams reality until Conor is dragged into the game to start his Zelda-like quest. His quest, the best possible reason for a quest, is to save his awesome dog, Sandy, from Ixaroth.

Surrealism, sweetness & heart follow. Obex, at its heart, is a fairy tale. Obex is streaming exclusively on Night Flight.

***

In Blaine, NE #1302, we’re burned out on the constant technological churn. Here’s some of the different formats we’ve had to purchase just for the classic Stone’s record Let It Bleed:

Wax Cylinder 78 RPM Album 45 RPM Single 33 1/3 Record 13 RPM Album 8-Track 13-Track One-Sided Cassette Two-Sided Cassette Backward Cassette Open-Reel 2-Track Open-Reel 8-Track Open Reel 33 1/3-Track Smell-O-Sound Taste-O-Sound Feel-O-Sound Punch-O-Sound 2 HR VHS 24 HR VHS DAT DAT-Plus DAT Double-Plus DAT Double-Plus-Good Short-Wave Long-Wave Compact Disc Uncompacted Disc CD-Rom CD-Rum Player Piano Braille-Sound DVD DVD Slow The Panharmonicon Piano Cylinder Music Box Disc Ediphone Edison Gold Molded Record Diamond Disc Tin Foil Disc Electrical Dictaphone The Sound Scriber Scrivener’s Sound Ball DictaSound Teflon Minifon Dictech Sanyo Micro-Pac Sabamobile Playtime Pixel Vision Microcassette Maxicassette MinicassetteQuadrophnics Octophonics Triskadecaphonic Quadrovinyl HiPac Elcassete High Definition Compatible Digital Lo-Fi Etch-A-Sketch Sound Twin V Real Audio Faked Audio Wav-Pak FLAC OGG APE AIFF MP3 MP4 MP13 AAC ALE BFD WSD DSF Slot Music Slut Music Mutt Music Opus Zune Zone Trios Streaming, among others.

Some formats, like 8-Track, we’ve purchased many, many times due to forgetfulness. Because of harmful completist gene, we’ve bought all of these formats for the one new song or demo included with each new format release.

We’ve purchased Let it Bleed 79 different times. Now, we just stream for free.

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

A Fiesta 11/13

♦️♠️📺

Woke up this morning thinking about this under seen funny & brutal mockmentary from 2004. The premise is a classic What If.

What if The South won The Civil War. C.S.A. shows a day of TV, primarily a British Mockumentary about The South’s rise to power with slavery-owning commercials interspersed.

While the acting is uneven, the premise is amazing. Looking at the (now-AI generated) reviews on IMDB were primarily complaints about ‘Accuracy’ of a fictional past.

Not anywhere on streaming, it’s on YouTube.

Hidden in The Fog

A Fiesta 9/13

♠️♣️📺

The last day of the month is Criterion Last Chance Leaving Day. We’d watched one Nordic Noir earlier & it was OK. Not as good as the three great Argentinian noirs we watched on Criterion featured a few months ago.

Loaded with the amazingly still-legal faux weed we call ‘Bunk’ in this conservative midwest, settling down for a bedtime movie. Okay to be a bit impaired after another Lucky Day in Hell, as The Eels would say.

While we settled in, we always forget how much noirs burn through plot. Ten minutes in & Lorna’s already on the run. In a Marvel movie, ten minutes in, The Hulk is still putting pants on to go to work. A shot, a car crash, a frame-up ten minutes in while we were writing jokes about the backward-loop sound of Swedish. If we’re behind the plot, we’re happy. Like its Eurotrash cousin, giallos, noirs should be somewhat confusing, emphasizing the noir moods of paranoia & prosecution. Easily guessing the plot ruins movies anyway. We want to be wrong.

In the flashbacks, Lorna’s in love with a classic noir bad guy, older creep who cheats on her. He looks like a cross between a tall Lugosi Dracula & Count Chokula. In the opening scene he’s shot. Noir-time.

Noirs are sold by the open & ending with the middle fleeing section sometimes too long. Hidden in The Fog switches to drawing room mystery mid-way to break the cliche with some well-acted archetype suspects: The spurned lover, a crooked businessman, the touchy artist & drunk housekeeper.

Hidden is a quality noir, fierce eye-browed Eva Henning holds the screen well. The Hayes Code doesn’t apply here, so not a typical noir ending with some not Hayes Code elements you wouldn’t see in this country. Sweden’s always been more progressive in sexual matters than the US.

In a noir mood, this fills the bill well.

Spoiler time:

Lorna admits to shooting her creep husband. Movie over. Wait. The creep husband was poisoned & was dead before shot.

The police say, you’re innocent Lorna, free to go. Okay.

Then, Lorna sees earlier, there’s poison in his coffee & lets this slide. She admits this to the police as well. The cops tell her THAT poison capsule was just a sugar pill. Again, Lorna is not culpable, free to go.

By our count, she should be charged with attempted murder & negligent homicide, respectively. Add fleeing the police. If The Hayes Code was in effect, the ending would be much different.

We leave you with this question:

Is it a crime to shoot a dead body? She believed him to be sleeping.

(Answer: Yes.)

This time’s Last Week’s Notes is sponsored by McCrickets

McCrickets

It’s what we eat.