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THE HANGED MAN (1974) – Steve Forrest starred in this excellent made for tv movie that was a failed pilot for a series. Forrest portrayed a gunslinger who seemingly meets his end on the gallows early in the film but who supernaturally rises from the dead to atone for his misspent life by combating evil in the 1800s west. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, FRONTIERADO, Halloween Season
Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror. People who want to see our vile main character suffer will definitely enjoy this part.
FOUR CENTURIES ON A SHAPELESS THRONE
Image by GodofPegana at Deviant Art.
This stanza opens up with Maldoror paralyzed and suffering a variety of excruciating torments. Like a wooden stake through the heart will take out a vampire and a silver bullet through the heart will kill a werewolf, Maldoror’s weakness is at last revealed to us.
While our supernatural protagonist was seated on a boulder contemplating his next move in the ongoing feud between him and God an unnamed human being crept up on him from behind and drove their sword downward through the nape of Maldoror’s neck and on, vertically, driving it through the fiend’s spine like a spike. This has rendered Maldoror paralyzed but happily (given his countless atrocities) NOT immune to pain. Continue reading
Filed under Maldoror
Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination of the macabre 1868 French language work The Songs of Maldoror. It’s back to more explicitly horrific material this time around.
THE TORMENTED MAN
After the previous topsy-turvy stanza saw Maldoror lost in The Valley of Unreality this adventure is much more straightforward.
The supernatural being Maldoror is wandering through a forest when he is attracted by the sound of agonized screams. Locating their source he is intrigued to see a man hanged from a gibbet by his very long hair and with his hands tied behind his back. His legs swing freely, increasing the agony of his pain-wracked form.
The man’s emaciated form showed he had not been fed in days and his face was so stretched from long suspension by his hair that it had lost nearly all human shape.
The tormented man screams that, due to all manner of tortuous pain, he has not been able to sleep during the three days he has been hanging there. He also begs Maldoror to slit his throat and put him out of his misery.
From hiding Maldoror observes two crazed, drunken women approach the spot where the man hangs. One of the women is very old with her uncombed hair fluttering in the breeze. The other woman is much younger but so thin her knees knock together as she walks. The ladies carry whips, paint-brushes and buckets of hot tar with them. Continue reading
Filed under Maldoror
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