Probably, it had something to do with Trilogy of Terror, and Karen Black being terrorized by a possessed Zuni doll.

Mental Floss has a great bit up about the 1975 production and its aftermath.

Definitely not in a Papa John’s.

I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

(In case you need help with the reference.)

Sure, the trailers LOOK good, but so far the DC films haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory, so I was kinda keeping the whole thing at arm’s reach.

Then I noticed something important, largely because (a) The Hollywood Reporter tweeted something ignorant/clickbaity that was (b) then shamed into my timeline:

Yep. Wonder Woman is directed by Patty Jenkins, whose first feature was the Oscar-winning Monster in 2003 (which she also wrote, btw).

Sold. Hey, Mrs Heathen, when are we going?

(Prior Art.)

Word comes that Roger Moore has died at 89.

Moore, obviously, is known as the post-Connery Bond, but true nerds recall that he was actually the third guy to play 007 (in the Eon Productions films, which are all that really matter). When Connery bowed out after his fifth outing (You Only LIve Twice in 1967, which is the one where he teams up with a Japanese agent and goes undercover in, basically, yellowface before the final fight in a volcano base), Australian model George Lazenby took over for a single picture (the underrated On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, co-starring Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas!) before Connery’s code (Diamonds are Forever, featuring a thinly-veiled Howard Hughes proxy and Crispin Glover’s dad as one half a very creepy assassin team). Moore first appears in the next film, 1973’s Live and Let Die.

At right, a GREAT cast photo. There’s a LOT going on there, which fits given the lovable mess of a film it’s from, but allow me to point out:

• That’s Yaphet Kotto to Bond’s left. He’s the big-bad in this one (“Mister Big”), but he went on to star in the first Alien film as well as in Homicide: Life on the Street.

• The skinny young thing at the lower left? Yep, Jane Seymour, then a largely unknown 22-year-old ingenue.

• Yes, that’s Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in the back row. You may also know him from 7-Up’s “Uncola” ads in the 70s and 80s, like this one.

• Not pictured is David Hedison, who makes his first of two appearances as Bond’s CIA pal Felix Leiter here. He comes back in 1989’s License to Kill, opposite Tim Dalton (that’s the one with Robert Davi as a ruthless drug lord who has, amazingly, Benecio del Toro as a henchman; Wayne Newton appears as a televanglist). The only other guy to play Leiter twice is the incumbent, Jeffrey Wright. Hedison is now 90 and retired, and Wikipedia contains the amusing bit of data that he’s now Jodie Foster’s father-in-law.

• We do not talk about the goddamn redneck sheriff, or the fact that he is, unaccountably, vacationing in Asia during the next installment.

After this auspicious debut, Moore went on to have the longest tenure in the role: a total of 7 films over 12 years. His swan song came in 1985 and is, sadly, is almost certainly the worst of the bunch. By then, Eon Productions was completely out of Fleming books to adapt (with one key exception they wouldn’t touch for 20 years), so I guess it makes a little sense that, in the middle of the 80s, they’d feel fine about a 58-year-old Bond chasing a crazed millionaire (Christopher Walken!) whose aide-de-camp is Grace Fucking Jones. Hey, while we’re at it? Why not a fight on the Eiffel Tower!

Sigh.

Of course, it’s not his fault that the films had veered hard into silliness and camp by that point; he had some great ones — the debut, obviously, but also The Man With The Golden Gun (a prosthetic nipple!), The Spy Who Loved Me (hot Russians! submarine sports cars! the greatest opening scene ever!), and Moonraker, about which more later.

He was a more suave, mature, and sophisticated Bond than Connery or those that came after (though maybe Brosnan’s version was close), and for most people of my generation he was our first exposure to the character — sort of the Tom Baker of the series, really. As noted, Moore’s got the most films and the longest tenure, a record that doesn’t seem likely to fall. Connery did only 6 films to Moore’s 7. Brosnan and Dalton together only account for 6 more. Craig may or may not do a 5th film, but he’ll certainly be done by then.

My first Bond film was Moonraker. I saw it in a drive-in with my dad, in a time when drive-ins were already well on their way out. It was obviously derivative — Star Wars made everyone want to do SF all of a sudden, so Bond-in-space was in some ways inevitable — but it’s held up okay, especially considering that it’s only the second time Eon Productions was “on their own” with no novel to draw from. We got the second coming of Richard Kiel’s 7-foot, steel-toothed Jaws, memorable weightless nookie, and a “Bond girl” whose naughty name (Holly Goodhead) flew entirely over my 9-year-old head. I was obviously smitten immediately, and quickly devoured the back catalog via the newfangled VCR my newly-divorced dad would soon acquire. Impossibly, my Baptist grandmother even bought me some of the books.

Anyway. Godspeed, Roger Moore. I noted not long ago that we’re likely to lose several more Doctor Who actors in the short term. The first three are already gone, and Tom Baker is 83. The same can be said of the Bond men: Lazenby is 77; Connery is 86. Tim Dalton is 71. Brosnan is 64. And we are, all of us, getting older right along with them.

This short asks, and answers, the question “Has Reservoir Dogs Aged Well?”

(Spoiler alert: Yes.)

Mrs Heathen and I are suckers for prestige TV, and I love gangsters, so we dove into Boardwalk Empire when it started. Unfortunately, it just didn’t hold us after the 2nd season — and frankly, we stayed longer than we might’ve otherwise, in part because of the incredible charisma that Jack Huston imparted to the tragic, disfigured Richard Harrow.

The show concerned organized crime in Atlantic City in the years between World War I and the end of prohibition, more or less. The central character, played by Steve Buscemi, was based on a real person, though obviously they took liberties. Michael Pitt appeared as Jimmy Darmody, young man who’d run off to war and come back physically whole, but mentally shattered.

Darmody befriends Harrow, and introduces him to the criminal underworld of Atlantic City — a role that, as it turns out, Harrow takes to like a duck to water.

Anyway: it’s through Harrow that I first learned that, after the war, many who had facially disfiguring injuries were fitted with tin masks molded and painted to resemble their prewar faces.

Here’s how Harrow enters the show:

This morning, I was reminded of the show generally by this excellent photoset over at the Atlantic. Pay close attention to number 33.

So I finally got to the tab I opened the other day about Bill Paxton, which reminded me of his short-lived New Wave band Martini Ranch, and their two videos, which support my long-held view that all the cool famous people know each other and hang out together.

Martini Ranch was a pair: Paxton was collaborating with the band’s founder, Andrew Todd Rosenthal, and sounded nothing if not period-correct in 1982. Given that it was the 80s, OBVIOUSLY there are music videos — though, sadly, the count is two. Both date from the late 1980s, and boast casts and crew

The first clip was for the improbably named “How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self Culture“, and looks and sounds like someone put Metropolis and Devo in a blender. And here’s where the connections start, too, because the cast for the video includes Paxton and some pals of his: Anthony Michael Hall (with whom he’d starred in Weird Science) in 1985, plus Lords of Discipline (1983) cronies Rick Rossovich, Judge Reinhold, and Michael Biehn — the latter, of course, also with Paxton in Aliens in 1986.

The second video, for a song called “Reach“, was more high concept: a bank robber (Paxton) rolls into a post-apoc western-esque town, pursued by a cadre of improbably attractive female bounty hunters. Where it gets connect-the-dots fun, though, is in the cast and crew.

First, it was directed by James Cameron. Sure, it was only about 1988, but by then he already had a couple directorial successes under his belt (Terminator and Aliens, with Abyss probably already in production); he’s shooting this because they’re pals. Cameron would go on to cast Paxton in 5 films (the first Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, Titanic, and Ghosts of the Abyss), which is more than any other actor. (Cameron’s 4-time club includes Lance Henriksen and Biehn, though the latter got the better deal, as I’m not sure “Piranha II: The Spawning” should be seen as the pinnacle of Cameron’s work.)

Second, the lead bounty hunter is Cameron’s future (and now ex-) wife Kathryn Bigelow, who was also using Paxton in her Near Dark around the same time (1987).

Paxton’s band of outlaws is especially delightful: it includes colleagues from Aliens and Near Dark (Henriksen and Jenette “Vasquez” Goldstein were in both films; the video also includes Paul Reiser from Aliens and Adrian Pasdar from Near Dark) — plus Reinhold makes a return appearance.

Rounding out this delightful crowd is a near-unrecognizable Bud Cort from Harold and Maude, who polishes Paxton’s bike.

The final note is that I’d totally forgotten Pasdar was in Near Dark, and now I can’t remember if he managed to be on Agents of SHIELD at the same time as Paxton as well.

TL;DR? It’s neat to see all this repeat work, even in obscure music videos.

Also? Remember there’s a Bill Paxton pinball machine in this world.

Also also? This brilliant tweet:

Via Kottke, we find The Beastie Americans: footage from The Americans cut into an alternative video for the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” I almost always HATE mashups of any kind, but this is kind of awesome. Enjoy.