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THE WEST GEORGIAN, WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25, 19SI.
Entertainment
'Magic Bauble'Presented
DEBRA NEWELL
Anew play is being presented (or the
first time at West Georgia this week
“The Legend of the Magic Bauble," a
14th-century farce, opened Feb 23 at 8
p m and runs through Feb. 27 at the
college auditorium
Written and directed by Richard
Asam. assistant professor of speech,
the play takes the audience to a fantasy
land called Noiterednuth It is
populated with street cleaners,
monsters, and royalty Hecate, a witch
from the underworld, pits all the mor
tals against each other in her desire to
control the kingdom
There is a hero who strives to outdo
himself, a young maid who wants
nothing more than for lier hero to come
home, and several people of the court
who display Machiavellian behavior
"What these characters hope to ac
complish is not really what they do,"
said Asam
There is a large cast in the play in
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COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS
A MARTIN RANSOHOFF PRODUCTION
A RALPH BAKSHI FILM
"AMERICAN POP” _
ProaucedbT^TO R^S(OT &^ALPHBAKSt I CKI^b^RALPHBAKSHI DOl B '.T- 1 ’ WST
Opening at Selected Theatres Near You.
eluding Peter .seirsaaie as the Priest,
Burton Black as the Old Man, Jackie
Winslet as Hecate, Terry Collins as
Harold, Cindy Stone as Margaret,
Renee Allen as HifHif, Debra Newell as
the Princess Francene, Jim Houghton
as the King, Laney Kendrick as the
Queen, Don Webb as Thomas, Rosi
Porschatis as Bianca, Bill Dukes as
Ralph, Bob Haynie as Phil, Michael Os
ment as Johnny, Angie Schulte as
Babin. Kelly Frainey and Kate Street
as furies, Jack McGhee and Clark
Millsap as ambassadors, and Tisha
Novak and Lon Keeton afc ladies of the
court.
All seats for the play are reserved
Tickets may be reserved by calling the
Fine Arts Office at 834-1224 from 9am
toS p m. daily or going by the office
located on the first floor of the
Humanities Building on campus
Tickets are free with a current student
or faculty I D Without a college I D.,
tickets are $2 00
Even a mere street sweeper - Johnny, played by Michael Osment - can reach
the top during a moment of musical Inspiration in Richard Asam s 14th centiiry
farce!" The Legend of the Magic Bauble " (Dress rehearsal photo by David Ed-
Coal Miner's Slaughter: Cream of the Crap
.... ■ ii IJ ~ Ironic minimi u/hirh nrnirrfN
Bv JEFF PAYNE
The first time I saw the t v commer
cial for "MY BLOODY VALENTINE,"
I laughed so hard I nearly fell on the
floor It's too good to be true! I thought
semi-hysterically. The Not-Ready-for-
Prime-Time-Players have come of age!
Little did I realize that I would enjoy
the movie itself almost as much as the
satirical spontaneity of my first ex
posure to its outrageous ad campaign
What appealed to me most about this
little quickie shocker was that I was
never quite ... sure if its humor was
unintentional
You see, with perfect historical tim
ing, MY BLOODY VALENTINE cap
tuns the quintessential hype of the
cheap horror flick.
It is a predictable surprise
A good illustration of this intriguing
paradox can be found in the prologue It
begins, unassumingly enough, with a
shot of two people in full coal-miner's
protective garb walking in silence
along the length of a dans tunnel Even
tually they stop in a nook, facing each
other One removes the cumbersome
headgear, revealing a somewhat plain
faced, yet sensuous young woman The
other (who is evidently a man because
of the depth of his heavy, ragged
breath, which is amplified by his
mouthpiece > stands in mesmerized an
ticipation while the smiling blonde
seductress before him slowly disrobes
nB HI -jfli hmi
Harold, played by Terry Collins, prepares to slay a menacing monster —with
the help of the Magic Bauble' itself while the King and his court look on. < Dress
rehearsal photo by David Edwards.)
He strokes her smooth, bare shoulders,
feigning erotic embrace —and sudden
ly shoves his startled subject brutally
backward, impaling her midsection on
a protruding metal bar She gasps in
shock, and the camera zooms into the
resonant darkness beyond the oval of
her lips.
Now, the ‘Psychotic-killer-on-the
loose-for-no-apparent-reason' theme
set forth in this scene has transcended
all connotations of the term ‘cliche It
has long since been pummelled into
oblivion, along with the ‘Boy-meets
girl; Boy-loses-girl; Both-end up
insufferably-happy anyway' potboiler,
and others of that ilk Here, however, it
receives interesting narrative and
visual treatment, which though by no
means original is certainly unusual
in a project of such a limited nature
I assumed, when I first saw the two,
that they would find the mangled,
bleeding body of our perpetual an
tagonist's latest prey, to the distracting
strains of a stock soundtrack As it
turns out, not only are both not coal
miners (Surprise #1), but one of them is
a woman (Surprise #2). These minor
revelations are tempered by the quite
obvious fact that during the ensuing
dalliance the poor girl is going to bite
the bloody dust; still —as the old say
ing goes two outta three ain't bad
Add the other attractive qualities in
herent in this sequence (such as the
comic exaggeration of the heavy
breathing convention; the transitional
technique and. most importantly, the
effective elimination of standard high
pitched “music”) and the result is a
derivative but entertaining diversion
The entire film, in fact, is provocative
in its blandness The plot is essentially
an amalgamation of elements from a
wide array of cinematic shockers The
1978 shoe-string blockbuster "Hallo
ween" (the highest-grossing indepen
dent film ever made, only recently
having beaten the king of cult classics
and premiere midnight movie, "Night
of the Living Dead") is the eye of this
horror hurricane
The story takes place, over the course
of the three days leading up to and in
cluding Valentine's Day in a charming
rural pockmark known as Valentine
Bluffs (sic). After the obligatory
teenagers and authority figures have
been introduced, the story of the
aforementioned maniac is related,
flashback fashion, in the most hilarious
exposition this film fan has ever seen
Who is that masked man’’ Well, accor
ding to the wild-eyed bartender in the
kids' favorite hangout, our villain isone
Harry Warden, the sole survivor of a
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Jim Hammett, Bditor
tragic mining accident which occurred
20 years before, on you guessed it -
Valentine's Day Legend has it <we an
told) that Harry killed one of his
employers with a pick, then swore as hi
was being carted off to the nearest in
sane asylum that he would return il
there was ever another party such as
the one that they had had that night
<?????>.
Therein lies the conflict, such as it is
The kids want to tiave a party The
police don't want to run the risk Mean
while, the whole damn town is getting
picked off.
Sounds like a fireside tale, doesn't it?
That’s the way it comes off like it
was made up along the way. But aren't
those a lot of fun? When the only thing
that is spine-chilling is the cool night
air. l)ut it's all you can do to keep from
laughing?
To underscore several other things
that MY BLOODY VALENTINE lias
going tor it (besides that uproarious ti
tie), let's carry the moonlight-yarn
analogy a bit further For one thing,
the gore which is so common in film to
day is kept to a minimum in this movie.
I’ve had it up to mv neck with decapita
11 ons Most of it is. left off screen to the
more nightmarish imaginations of the
members of the audience. Also, there is
a strong sense of indentification with
the film’s rather likeable characters
who are played to the melodramatic
hilt by a cast of unknowns; they could
easily be our friends sitting around the
hypothetical fire In addition, several
common lears are exploited ingenious
ly in the climactic scene 1 guess where it
takes place - ’ >. such as fear ot the dark,
fear of strange places, fear of disorien
tation Do you see what the makers of
this film are getting at here? They’re
playing on the subconscious fear of
movie theatres! The cherry on the top
of the whole thing is the cheap yet sub
tle chilling denouement which with
three simple words lightly touches all of
the fears tha! I've mentioned and one
that 's even worse
MY BLOODY VALENTINE is a dog,
admittedly; but it is the kind of oddly
appealing mutt which (you sense in
nately) could have been under slightly
different circumstances —a
thoroughbred) Its appeal is esoteric, to
be sure It would probably bore you out
of your skull: but it could literally
steal your heart
The review was made possible
through the courtesy of the Village
Theatre in Carrollton, where MY
BLOODY VALENTINE is currently
showing through Thursday. Feb 26