aethwolf | Reading

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You may wonder why I give the subject line I do for this post, so I will tell you. If you have been following my posts about the abuse of actress Sandra Peabody while making The Last House on the Left over fifty years ago, you will know that the evidence is scattered. There are a lot of rumours out there online, as well as warped versions of the truth. Many people seem to find summarised versions of one or two of the best known stories, publish those, and leave it at that. I wanted to dig deeper, and I eventually found a true smoking gun in David Hess's horrific quote from 2008.

The blunt fact is that, barring extraordinary good fortune, I could not have found the crucial Vanity Fair article without AI help. I didn't really know what I was looking for until I saw it, so a traditional Google search was not enough. The article seems to be almost completely unknown even by people who write about the movie, so it's not referenced elsewhere. And Hess's appalling words are buried without surrounding context 2,000 words into a 5,000-word paywalled article. AI found this for me when nobody else had, and when for a lone amateur like me perhaps nobody else could. This matters.

I have used several AI assistants (all on their free tiers) during my research. Doing this has been more useful than using one alone. I have especially used Claude, which is the most perceptive and can read scanned pages and interpret images, but has a very limited free tier. ChatGPT, which has been very variable: sometimes superb at digging out evidence, sometimes useless at more straightforward tasks. Copilot, which lacks the vital "edit prompt" option for repetitive tasks but is good at giving (simulated, of course) ethical judgements. And Gemini, which is clearly less advanced but is useful when working with the Google ecosystem, eg searching in Google Books.

Of course using AI output uncritically is a disastrous approach, and that is often what people look at when they call AI worthless. What I did was to use the information AI gave me as a starting point and manually check its sources. I could also spend extended periods asking different AIs slightly different versions of the same question, something you simply couldn't realistically do with a human collaborator. AIs can look dispassionately at evidence without letting emotion blind them, and a human can make moral judgements that an AI can't. I needed both acting in concert.

There are indeed serious, legitimate questions to be asked about AI, ranging from its effect on water resources to the impact on the justice system of near-perfect deepfakes. But my own experience has convinced me that a completely one-sided "AI is bad" approach is, at least for the sort of work I have been doing, simply wrong. If you want someone who hates AI in all its forms, then you are not going to find that here. In truth AI is more than large language models, as the image analysis I've used shows. But LLMs themselves have been a crucial part of my uncovering this evidence.

I have more work to do on this. It will definitely include using AI as a part, though never a whole, of my toolkit.

Current Mood: determined

loganberrybunny

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276/365: Flood marker stones, Worcester
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I had to go to CHEC in Worcester today for yet another eye consultation, this time for glaucoma screening. At least I actually saw a doctor this time. Nothing especially wrong, but they'd like to see me again in three months and then (if still nothing wrong) every six after that. It's a bit of a pain, really, and it's likely to end up costing me a tenner or so each time for trains and buses, but fortunately it's NHS so the actual medical bit is free. The doctor herself was pleasant, at least.

I had a bit of time to wander around Worcester. This is not exactly a rare occurrence for me, but at least there are more things left I haven't photographed for my 365 than there are in Bewdley! The photo is of the flood level marker stones by the cathedral. They seem to have stopped updating them since Covid – maybe they relied on a particular stonemason who is no longer around – but you can at least get an idea. The highest bricks here are a good way above head height. The River Severn is rather a floody river!

Current Mood: awake

loganberrybunny

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Ford Focus satnav
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Of course I know about the horrific events on the train near Huntingdon last night. As I type this only one person remains in a life-threatening condition, and it seems this is an LNER (railway company) worker who put himself in harm's way to protect the train's passengers. This is heroism in the line of duty, and I hope it will be widely recognised as such. I hope this man does recover and can then begin to rebuild his life.

On a vastly less important note, typing is awkward at the moment because I've got a small cut on my right forefinger tip. I think it's probably a paper cut, but I don't know for sure as I don't remember getting the injury. These things hurt, because of the number of nerves in the fingertip, but they also usually heal up reasonably quickly, which is something!

My photo tonight is extremely boring, because I really couldn't think of anything else to say! This is the satnav in the Ford Focus I had a lift in this morning. The location is a retail park in Kidderminster. And yes, the driver and I both like our aircon on fairly chilly, since it's November and we're wearing coats! I've never been one of those people who keeps it on 25 °C and wears shorts and a T-shirt in the car in the middle of winter. :P

Current Mood: sleepy

lupestripe

I have spent most of the weekend with Arakin and Ben, whose friend Dark Wolf was staying over. We had never met, but we have been speaking online, while he also seems to share a number of old school friends. He arrived on Thursday evening and we decided to go out on Friday, with Pizza Rosso at Alexanderplatz being the destination of choice. This was largely done at Dark Wolf's request, but it's also far easier for me to get to than out where Arakin and Ben live, which is about two hours from me point to point. I was a little skeptical about whether the restaurant would be any good, with it being tourist central, but it turned out to be most excellent. The bruschetta tasted fresh and the salami pizza was satisfying. Only the bread as an entre could have been improved. The staff were also very friendly and it's definitely a place I'd take friends to, should we need something good when doing the tourist sights. What with it being Halloween, there were many people in costumes out, which was wonderful to see, but alas my friends didn't really want to stay out past the meal so I got back home at 10pm.

Saturday was the start of November and it was an incredibly down day. Wolfie's foot has struggled to recover since The Offspring concert on Monday, meaning he wasn't able to come to Qualgeist. I had suggested going with Dark Wolf, but he didn't fancy it in the end, and although I could have done at Al Song's request, I feel there's no point going to a BDSM dungeon if there's no-one to play with. This part of my life, like my sex life in general, is feeling incredibly unfulfilled right now and it's getting frustrating. My chronic tiredness is not helping though and yesterday was certainly a day of immense fatigue. After writing off the munch, in the end, I hopped on a bus and checked out the Johannistift Evangelical commune, which is about 20 minutes away. This has been on my list of places to visit for quite some time, and is basically Spandau's equivalent of the Moravian Settlement in Pudsey. It seems to be a dedicated religious community focused around a central square upon which sits a neat little church. There's some interesting steel modern art structures dotted around which looked like something out of the 1980s, while the brick buildings were all rather neat and well-aligned. I enjoyed just wandering around and was interested to note that this area wasn't too far beyond my previous walking limits. I did try and walk back to home from there, but halfway through the fatigue really hit me, and I ended up catching the bus then going to bed for two hours.

When you are this tired, rousing yourself early is difficult, but this is what I did on Sunday with the aim of going around to Arakin and Ben's place. As I mentioned, they live about two hours from me, having moved to the far south-east of the city just over a year ago. I had never been to their house and it is a rather nice three-floor semi-detached home, very in keeping in the German style. They have a bus stop right outside their house, which is convenient, while passing through Köpenick meant I could take the S3 most of the way. The roadworks are still there outside Köpenick station but it was interesting to note that they may have finished the roof work at Ostbahnhof. The new station without the wood and scaffolding looks a lot airier and pleasant than it looked before, not to mention lighter.

We met at Presso Cafe & Lounge, a place familiar to both Arakin and Ben, where I picked up a Fritz Cola and some delicious scrambled egg and ham. This was served with a bread roll and it made for the perfect brunch. The cafe was definitely family-owned and the lady knew my friends, so it did feel rather homely. After this, we headed back to Arakin and Ben's for a few beers and a chat, before the usual flicking through YouTube. It was great catching up with everyone, even if the beers did start to hit me quite hard due to the tiredness. By 5pm, we all fancied some dinner, so we headed into Köpenick for Indian food, again at a place recommended by my friends called Aao Ji. They had only been here once, it turned out, three days ago, but they felt it worth a visit. I did enjoy the mango lassi, but perhaps my curry choice wasn't the best. It was a little like Indian mushroom soup, with no spice whatsoever, so I think next time I'll choose something else. Dark Wolf is heading back to the Netherlands tomorrow and with a near two-hour journey to get back to Spandau, we decided to split after this. I walked back to the S-Bahn station at Köpenick and then hopped on the trains I needed to get back home. Once back, I crashed again, only just waking up two hours later.

loganberrybunny

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It's a grim thing to have to say, but based on the research I've been doing over the last few weeks – which I haven't yet finished with – I have come to a sad conclusion. That is that I am morally certain that Sandra Peabody was severely psychologically abused while making The Last House on the Left, most notably by David Hess whose psychological abuse of her was also strongly sexualised. His Vanity Fair quote was, for me, the final nail in the coffin. That's not a social media post of unsourced rumours or a one-person blog (yes, like mine), where a writer might be tempted to push a particular angle. It's a mainstream magazine with fact-checkers, legal review and the like. Barring a catastrophic failure of almost every 2008-era journalistic safeguard, Hess said what he did, and that alone constitutes severe abuse.

Current Mood: sad

loganberrybunny

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274/365: Roadworks, Bewdley
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Rather annoyingly, I've got a small paper cut on my right index fingertip, about the most irritating place I could have it. While it'll heal shortly, it's awkward to type at the moment so I'll keep tonight's post short. Here is a reasonably colourful but rather disorganised-looking roadworks site in Park Lane, Bewdley. That's about it!

Current Mood: sleepy

loganberrybunny

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Halloween (1978)

I mean, it had to be, didn't it? I'd never seen this film, so when it came to a choice of a movie to see on 31st October... yeah. Here we have a 1970s low-budget horror flick made without traumatising or recklessly endangering its actors.¹ Isn't that nice? It's dated surprisingly well, too, with the exception of a single line that wouldn't get anywhere near being approved today.² The lack of smartphones is a plus. The boring neighbourhood is a plus. The old telly is a plus. The minimalist piano score is a plus, especially the key shifting I didn't expect. The relative lack of gore is a plus. Donald Pleasence is an expected plus. And, of course, Jamie Lee Curtis is a plus – amazing to think she was then almost unknown and bought her own clothes for the movie at a high street store! The film is 18-rated to this day, though it's not an especially strong 18 by 2025 standards, I think. Overall? I'd call this a solid four. Glad I saw it. ★★★★
¹ I expect they'd need some extra stuff in 2025. But by 1978 standards? Pretty darn good.
² Not malicious, just a believable-for-the-character-in-context jokey line that lands badly now.

Current Mood: satisfied

loganberrybunny

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273/365: The Billiard Hall, West Bromwich
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I had a bit of a slog into West Bromwich today for boring reasons. It's not difficult to get there, it just needs three buses each way. Since it was the last weekday of half-term, it was also extremely busy absolutely everywhere in the shopping part of the town centre. It rained quite a bit, too. To cap it all off, Costa had stopped doing their afternoon coffee-and-muffin deal without making it obvious, so I had to pay £6.90 when I'd been expecting £5.49; grumble. :P Here's a pub I used to go to very occasionally, though I didn't much like it as the single big room was noisy. The Billiard Hall started out as exactly what its name implies, and though the interior is dull that name over the door is very nicely done. Note the cues and balls to either side!

Current Mood: tired

loganberrybunny

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271/365: Horsefair horse, Kidderminster
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272/365: Market Hall, Worcester
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The friends being me and

nightlightsuk who I've known for more than twenty years now, and who was kind enough to join me in Worcester for a few hours. Most of which was spent eating, yattering, or both. This was a very agreeable way to spend a day, to say the least, so a big thank you and *hugs* for that! The lower photo today is of the top floor of the rather odd Market Hall in Worcester. No market, just a mixture of empty units and offbeat shops. Up here: comics and annuals shop on the left, vegan sushi café at the end, record shop far right, film (as in camera film) shop near right. It's all very strange.

I failed to upload yesterday's 365 picture on time – as it happens that wasn't a deliberate omission after my much more serious earlier post; it was just forgetfulness! So you're getting it now. That's the upper photo today: the life-size horse sculpture here is in the Horsefair, a formerly (and still to an extent) run-down area of Kidderminster. It's made of over 500 actual horseshoes, and was made by Tom Hill in 2011.

Current Mood: happy

loganberrybunny

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Content warning on this one for threats of sexual violence. I've deliberately put some of my own wording before the (text-only) screenshot, so you can stop reading now if you want to.

This is it. As I say, the smoking gun. If you've been following my posts about Sandra Peabody (originally credited as Sandra Cassell) and the abuse she suffered on the set of Wes Craven's early horror film, The Last House on the Left, then you'll know that one thing that's repeatedly frustrated me is how difficult the evidence is to find. It's not hidden exactly, but a lot of it's in un-Googled places like DVD commentary tracks, obscure video clips, or a making-of book that's been out of print for two decades. But now, finally, I've found something different.

This is from an actual mainstream publication: Vanity Fair. Specifically, from this article from March 2008. It's paywalled, and normally free users can't read very far down – as you may well find if you click that link – but very recently I was able to get legitimate access on some kind of very short-term mobile free trial offer. The article is called Killer Instincts, it's bylined Jason Zinoman, and it starts on p304 of the print edition. It's a long article – over 5,000 words – and the relevant part here is almost 2,000 words in, far beyond the usual paywall line. That's why I'm only reproducing the small section that's directly relevant:

It's pretty sickening stuff. If you've spent the time I have in researching what happened on this set, it's sadly not surprising that David Hess would say that. Nevertheless, it's extremely rare, possibly even unique given how difficult it was for me to find this, for him to be quoted saying something so directly repulsive in a mainstream publication. Hess is no longer around; he died in 2011. I would say "good", except that it means he'll never be held accountable.

Vanity Fair failed on that, too. After the extract I've included, without any further editorial comment, we get many paragraphs of rambly recollections from Wes Craven, the director of Last House on the Left. We get to learn all kinds of things about him, from his Baptist upbringing to the time he encountered Quentin Tarantino. What we don't get, anywhere, is Mr Zinoman actually asking Craven why he allowed behaviour like Hess's on his film set, and whether he regretted failing to protect a young and vulnerable actress.

Craven too is dead now, so that question too can never be asked. He left a more worthwhile legacy than Hess, and in his later career he does seem to have shown proper concern for his actors. But he didn't here, and as far as I'm aware he never once apologised for that. He got as far as a "She wasn't always acting" or a "We put her through hell", usually accompanied by that rueful chuckle of his, but actually saying sorry to the woman his actor terrorised was apparently a step too far.

I have serious issues with the way parts of the horror fandom still seem to idolise David Hess as "the Mad Hessian". He threatened a young woman with rape on set in autumn 1971, then spoke with no remorse about it 37 years later, and if that doesn't disqualify him then your moral radar is broken. I also have issues, more widely, with the whitewashing of Wes Craven's career. He did a lot of good things in his time, but the way he ran the Last House set wasn't one of them, and that needs to be said much more.

Sandra deserved so much better than this.

Current Mood: sick

loganberrybunny

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270/365: Piccolos, Bewdley
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Another fairly unexciting day, which is naturally par for the course for me! The most interesting thing I can remember seeing is a hole in the road on Park Lane where National Grid were replacing something or other. Yes, this is the level of thrills we get in Bewdley life. Today's photo is even more amazing, as it's a coffee shop I almost never go into! Piccolos is fine as far as service goes, but it's really cramped inside and so it doesn't feel comfortable lingering. What's the point of a coffee shop where you can't linger, eh?

Current Mood: awake

lupestripe

Last night, we headed down to the Uber Arena to check out The Offspring. I wasn't feeling up for it to be honest, largely on account of a very poor night's sleep, but we had bought tickets a year ago and we knew the gig would be good. We timed it perfectly, entering the arena just as support act Simple Plan came on. These guys are quite big in their own right and we knew a few of their songs before going to the show. As befitting a band of their size, they also played a near hour-long set, unleashing inflatable balls towards the end too. These balls would return for The Offspring.

Wolfie and I grabbed a couple of beers as we watched the show, balking at the €7.80 asking price. We stuck around the back as from there you get a half-decent view, while Wolfie's ankles are still struggling with lengthy periods of standing. I resolved to get seated tickets going forward, but he generally lasted well, only having to leave to sit down for the final two songs. Alas, these were "You're Gonna Go Far Kid" and "Self Esteem", two ecstatic crowd pleasers that made the evening end on a high. There was a significant energy to the band, remarkable considering they're in their late-50s, while the cartoon backdrops provided another dimension to the show. There was even a roaming blimp, which filmed people shaking their booties for Booty Cam during the gap between bands as well as providing aerial shots of the crowd. There was also a Fuck Yeah cam too. I didn't really pay attention to this as we were outside in the main concourse sitting down. This sort of audience participation scares me anyway, like those Kiss Cams you get at American sporting events.

The whole show was incredible. It started frenetically, then calmed down a little midway through when the band did a tribute to Black Sabbath. Their new tracks were interspersed with their greatest hits and there was plenty of space to dance, even with the sell-out crowd. The only two negatives were people wearing hats, which obscured the view somewhat, and people filming the show repeatedly. The number of times I had to see the stage through someone's phone screen was irritating and I felt sorry that they felt they couldn't just live in the moment. It was a shame. The full range of special effects were on show too, including smoke machines and confetti cannons, which added to the positive vibes of the place. Both Dexter Holland and Noodles are incredible showmen and the songs are infectious, so it was very easy to get lost in the music. The highlight for me, however, was the moving "Gone Away", which Dexter played on piano, urging us all to light our torches to remember someone who is no longer with us. I thought of Entei-rah and found this really moving, tearing up as I sang along. I sang along to other songs too, but those were a far more ecstatic vibe. And of course there were the people dressed as Scooby Doo running on the stage during Simple Plan and then a guy in a gorilla suit messing about too. At one point, there was some crowd surfing too. All the kind of fun anarchy you'd expect at a pop punk gig.

After the gig, Wolfie was feeling pretty limpy, but we wanted to stay out. Instead of going up to Brewdog, which tends to shut early despite their midnight stated time, we headed south, hopping on the U3 to Schliesses Tor. There, we had a choice of Hopfenreich or Space Medusa and we went to the latter. We didn't realise it was a smoking bar - I'm not sure it was when we visited there with Procyon during Berlin Beer Week - but we grabbed a couple of beers and chilled. I didn't realise it was a Ukrainian-owned bar and they were a little offended when I asked whether they were Ukrainian or Russian. They thawed quickly when I detailed my trips to Ukraine. We ended up leaving for pretty much the last train, changing at Fehrberliner Platz on the way back to Spandau. It was a brilliant evening and way to end what had been a difficult day due to the tiredness.

loganberrybunny

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269/365: Bromsgrove Hospital
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And I do mean quick: I was in Bromsgrove Hospital for about 15-20 minutes! The annoying thing was that, even with a lift, it took forever to get to and from Bromsgrove thanks to two separate long traffic lights on the road from Kidderminster. Also, I was starving by the time we got back as I'd declined the offer of a bite, which I rather regretted! Small hospital that it is, its restaurant is only open at lunchtime, which is less than ideal if your appointment is at 16:15... anyway, I was there for routine eye screening, and I always like going to Bromsgrove for that as it has the most modern equipment and so the scans are very quick. No need for dilating eye drops these days! The photo above is exactly what you'd expect, but it does show you how small the place is. There's a small two-storey wing just to the right, but that's about all.

Current Mood: tired

loganberrybunny

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And for anyone who's seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as I now have, I want to be clear: my subject line is accurate. I don't mean her character, Sally Hardesty, though she was indeed a proto-Final Girl. I mean the actress herself, Marilyn Burns.

In my recent post, I detailed three particularly nasty examples of her mistreatment while making the film, but these were far from the only ones. Among other things she was semi-accidentally hit on the head with a sledgehammer whose steel shaft hadn't been made safe, was hurt doing a six/seven-foot jump involving sugar glass that had hardened in the humid conditions (her limp near the end is genuine), smashed up both knees to be bleeding pretty badly after 17 takes of the gas station sequence (Tobe Hooper: "It was terrible, but it played very well"), was chased through dark woods with a live chainsaw (chain off, but rubber belt on), and – for just a second – was in a room with a Gunnar Hansen who literally wanted to kill her because the set conditions had driven him deluded and for that moment he thought he was Leatherface.

So, Final Girl? Let's have a look at the scorecard:

1) Moral superiority. Her safety was treated as rather a low priority by Tobe Hooper and his obsession with bloody "raw authenticity", leading to injury after injury. She was upset by neither him nor anyone else on set praising her performances. Yet in later years, while she was honest about what she'd faced, she never sounded vindictive or twisted, and she was willing to remain on good terms with Hooper, Hansen (except for a while after his knife deception was revealed) and the others. She didn't treat anyone else the way Hooper treated her. Box ticked.

2) Resourcefulness. Despite not being an experienced actress, she was able to produce a performance that is still talked about while frequently acting under extreme duress – exhaustion and overheating at best, active abuse and assault at worst. She did most of her own stunts, some of which were significantly more dangerous than those of many other actresses of the era and genre – sometimes even more reminiscent of the silent era. Box ticked.

3) Resilience. Are you kidding me? Let me remind you that she somehow made it through a shoot where, in the space of five weeks, she had been beaten to the point of unconsciousness, dripped with her own blood, assaulted with a knife, run from working chainsaws and done about 900 takes of every angle regardless of fatigue because of Tobe sodding Hooper's cavalier attitude to her safety and obsessive artistic perfectionism. Box ticked.

4) Survival. On this set, that didn't just mean getting through a tedious, tiring shoot. It literally meant what it says: survival. She could have died in several ways out there: if Hansen's delusion had lasted a little longer, if the steel-cored "broom" had caught her an unlucky blow on the temple, if the sledgehammer had been wielded a bit too hard, if she'd succumbed to the extreme heat of the dinner scene, if a chainsaw accident in the dark had severed an artery... Box ticked.

5) Overcoming her monster. The "monster" here is probably a combination of things. Tobe Hooper (yes, again), the generally appallingly unsafe set, and the brutal Texas heat. In post-production, Hooper deliberately drove her to emotional collapse for the eye close-up scene, despite being under nothing like the pressure he had been on set. The set involved genius stunts like one actor putting gunpowder on his hand and lighting a match. All this should have broken her. It didn't. Box ticked.

6) Bearing witness. Burns didn't retreat into a quiet life once TCM had finished filming. She chose to lean into her experience and engage with fans and journalists, guest at conventions, do Q&A sessions and interviews, and more besides. She was straightforward about how hard her experience had been, but she almost never crossed into bitterness or anger. Once she knew the truth about Hansen's lie, she was able to talk about it fully. Box ticked.

So there we are. A perfect full house. The whole point of the Final Girl is that she's supposed to be fictional, something impossible to recreate in real life. Yet Burns did it – and she did it without the predestined protection of the script that her fictional counterparts have. She faced moments when it was genuinely uncertain whether she would leave that movie set alive. Her treatment was unconscionable, and she should never have had to earn this title. But since she did:

Marilyn Burns. The real Final Girl.

Current Mood: impressed but sad

loganberrybunny

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268/365: A gate and a field
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The clocks have gone back, which means sunset is suddenly well before five and it's dark the whole way through after teatime. It is (briefly) a little bit lighter in the mornings, but I'm not really an early morning person when I can help it. The weather was mostly grey again, albeit with one or two breaks. Today's photo is me really scraping the barrel. Well, no, it's not that. I'm not sure I have a barrel. It's just a gate leading to a field by the interestingly named Snuff Mill Walk. I have absolutely no idea whether said road ever boasted an actual snuff mill; these days it's simply a mildly posh residential cul-de-sac.

Current Mood: relaxed

loganberrybunny

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267/365: Bug Hotel, Worcester
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Another trip to Worcester today to have a nice afternoon with My Little Pony fandom friends, including one who hadn't managed to make it for several months and persevered despite being inconvenienced pretty badly by CrossCountry Trains. (This is not exactly rare.) We had a nice few hours, as we nearly always do, in spite of the lighting in the basement we use gradually failing through the weeks to the point where our side of the big table we sit at now has one working bulb! Today's photo is of the Bug Hotel near Worcester Library – appropriately known as the Hive – which is there to attract insects. Not much going on today that I could see, but then it is almost the end of October. Clocks going back tonight, which definitely heralds the end of the outdoor season for me if the rain hadn't already done it.

Current Mood: pleased

lupestripe

Very little has happened this week, but I have decided I want to move away from some of my current clients as soon as possible. Since starting editing for Fenris, I have realised that this is what I want to do - write and edit fiction and non-fiction - rather than tedious marketing work. It may take some time to transition and I'm aware that I'll probably have to take on a few corporate clients, but I am working towards re-orientating my client base so I can focus on the things I really want to do. I am sick of feeling hollow with my professional situation and want to start feeling pride in what I'm doing again, which is something I haven't had for a few years now. I'm hoping to make the transition quickly as I also think it will improve my mental health.

The only thing that's happened this week is I met up with Notefox and Snowi at Schneeeule. This brewery and bar dedicated to sour beers is sadly closing after nine years and I regret not visiting it more often, even if it is in Rehberge in the far north of the city. Notefox mentioned it on the Beer Meet Chat and so I decided to accompany him. Sadly, Wolfie didn't come down as he thought it may turn into a drinking session. This didn't really happen, although we did end up sharing a few special beers with the kindly owner, and this resulted in us staying an hour and a half after closing. She was giving away all beer in her cellar for free, while the beers packed into boxes in the main bar area were available at discounted rates. Most of them didn't have labels on, but she knew what was what due to the colour of the bottle caps. I just bought ones with labels on, including some rare ones that will no doubt form part of our Christmas drinking. My box ended up costing €30, but I gave her €50 on account of the place closing (we had to pay in cash and this resulted in a trip to the Sparkasse where Notefox's bank was playing silly buggers). It will be a sad loss as I've never known a bar dedicated exclusively to sour beers, but considering this was only the second time I had been there, I can't really complain about its closure. She has loads of beer left though and so she may do a few tastings sometime, which I'll keep an eye out for. It was also good to see Snowi again, who is excited about passing her probation at Wolfie's place of work, so all in all a good day. I didn't get back home until 9:30pm though and Wolfie was quite hungry, which I felt a little bad about.

This week is Brewdog's Collab Beer Fest and had we been in Leeds, we would have gone. Yet, now they have closed the final Leeds bar, of course we wouldn't. And due to Brexit, the Berlin bars aren't running it either. My view of Brewdog may have shrunk considerably in ten years, but this seems to be a perfect encapsulation of how things are not as good as they used to be. It's a minor point of course, but certainly one that seems quite pertinent this weekend. I suppose that would at least reduce my weight gain - I am very conscious of becoming larger as I don't do as much exercise as I used to. I used to do 10,000 steps religiously, but with other pressures on my time, I'm barely hitting 8,000 a day now. I don't think I'm drinking more than I used to, but I'm probably snacking more. I do need to work on my weight, but I have been saying this for years. I think it would really boost my meager self-belief if I could slim down though.

Aside from that, I am starting to get the passion to write again, although it's coming on slowly. The last few months have seen rejection after rejection, and it has all knocked my confidence somewhat. I'm also really tired, consumed by worry about a variety of different things. I didn't sleep well during the week. I am hoping to kick start things again soon after an encouraging writers' group meet on Friday. I was going to do some writing today, but the trip to Schneeeuele overtook things. Maybe tomorrow, when the weather is poor. At least we also get a lie-in what with the clocks going back, although it's depressing to think that winter is finally here. Today's weather was a portent for the next few months and it's hard to keep one's spirits up really. I suppose I've just got to get through it.

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dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

loganberrybunny

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266/365: High Street, Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
Thank Frith it's stopped raining for a bit. It was actually not too bad at all today, albeit rather on the chilly side again. I didn't do anything even remotely interesting, so all you're getting is yet another photo from Bewdley. This is High Street from the eastern end, which is where the town centre is. Those fifteenth-century houses I showed you yesterday are out of shot, around the bend in the distance. The Talbot pub keeps trying to reinvent itself, but it never really works out. I've never so much as been inside myself!

Current Mood: busy

loganberrybunny

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It turns out it was worse than I thought. Worse than I could ever have imagined. Regardless of the grace and humour Marilyn Burns herself showed in engaging with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, its personnel and its fans in later years, and regardless of the fact that she worked with director Tobe Hooper again on Eaten Alive, looked at objectively this particular movie's creation was an ethical catastrophe. Marilyn Burns suffered gross negligence, physical assault and psychological cruelty on that movie. And when you watch the film, the results of all three are right there on the screen. You are literally watching a young actress being abused on a film set. Let me give you the details – and these are nowhere near all the ethical failures that five-week shoot had, just three of the most severe. I'll first give a brief summary of each incident, following up with a longer paragraph including links and citations.

1. Gross negligence – Because a broomstick prop hadn't been checked for safety, Marilyn Burns was beaten so badly with it that she received multiple bruises and a black eye, and briefly fainted after cut was called.
2. Physical assault – When a tube containing prop blood failed, co-star Gunnar Hansen deliberately cut Burns' fingertip for real with a knife, then allowed another actor to suck the blooded finger without knowing the blood was real.
3. Psychological cruelty – In post-production, director Tobe Hooper called Burns to the editing suite under false pretences, then subjected her to hours of distress and discomfort to make her eyes look bad for a shot.

Now for the promised details of each incident:

1. Gross negligence
This one directly contributed to the worst injuries Burns received during production. As director Tobe Hooper notes in this 2015 interview with Flashback Files, for the scene where the Cook (Jim Siedow) attacks Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) with a broomstick, he'd asked for a safer prop "so as not to hurt Marilyn". So far, so good. But what he was given was a rubber stick with a steel rod inside – more dangerous than a real broom. As Siedow himself noted in 2000, the crew and even Burns herself, assuming the stick was a safe prop, encouraged him to hit her harder for realism, something he'd been reluctant to do. He "started having fun doing it and started really slugging her", they got through the takes... and then she "fainted dead away ... beaten up pretty badly". (She has a black eye at times in some of the following scenes. That black eye is not make-up.) So, an actress was beaten into – fortunately brief – unconsciousness because her director failed in his basic duties to a) know exactly what was going onto his set and b) keep his actors safe, and because a brave and committed actress was willing to endure pain beyond what she should ever have needed to.

2. Physical assault
When the kidnapped Sally is brought into the Sawyers' farmhouse, she's bound hand and foot on a chair and gagged with a rag secured by a rope. This being low-budget 1970s film-making, those restraints are real, not quick-release props: Burns noted in this Terror Trap interview that at one point she fell over and "I'm sitting there with my hands tied, my feet tied, the filthy gag in my mouth they just picked off the set (who knows where it had been)". Anyway, in this scene Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) cuts her finger with a knife so that Grandpa (John Dugan) can suck her blood. In his memoir Chain Saw Confidential, Hansen writes (pp122–23) that after the blood tube failed multiple times, he "decided to make sure it worked. I turned away from the others and quickly stripped the protective tape off the blade. [...] I would cut her for real. I wanted to be done with this shot, whatever the damage." He cut her fingertip, squeezed to get the blood to ooze, then pushed her finger into Dugan's mouth for him to suck. Dugan assumed it was stage blood, as did everyone but Hansen and Burns herself. Sally (and therefore Marilyn) was gagged and bound, so Burns could not effectively withdraw consent, and her screams – we all know that fingertip cuts hurt – were expected for the scene so were interpreted as acting. Hansen did not admit what he'd done to anyone for decades, so Burns repeatedly defended it as an accident – even some online sources continue to state this. So yes: if you watch that film and are impressed by how real the blood and screaming feel at that point... it's because they are real. You are, quite literally, watching a bound woman being injured with a knife, and having her blood drunk, without her consent or even prior knowledge.

3. Psychological cruelty
Again, the details of this incident come from Chain Saw Confidential (p128 this time), including contributions from Burns herself and from editor Larry Carroll. After principal photography had ended, Hooper asked Burns if she wanted to come to the editing office to "see what's going on", adding "I just want a few shots of your eyes". What actually happened was that she was kept there far longer – in her recollection, "it seemed like four or five hours", with the camera on them the whole time and her having to scream and cry repeatedly. She wasn't able to check her eyes as they got redder and debris built up, and nobody asked her if she was uncomfortable or suggested she "take a moment". Instead, she says, "They thought, 'This is getting better. Give her another couple hours and her eyes will really look crappy.'" When it was finally over, says Carroll, everybody left. Burns was left "devastated [...] there was nothing left." Carroll alone did stay with her, wanting to drive her home because of her condition. He ends by saying, "I think for Tobe, the performance that he wanted, about the only way that he knew how to get it out of her was basically torturing her, and he did. It was horrific." What came of all this were the extreme eye close-ups (not those of Burns' wider face) shown in the dinner party scene. Again, the result of what Hooper did is in the film you can watch today.

Current Mood: horrified

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Page Summary

loganberrybunny - Why I cannot accept the "AI is bad, end of" argument
loganberrybunny - The eyes have it
loganberrybunny - This and that
lupestripe - Canines Versus Felines
loganberrybunny - Sandra Peabody: I wish I could reach a different conclusion
loganberrybunny - Not a very interesting 365 photo, but what's new? :P
loganberrybunny - Film post: Halloween
loganberrybunny - West Bromwich
loganberrybunny - Two friends, two photos!
loganberrybunny - The smoking gun in Vanity Fair
loganberrybunny - Piccolos
lupestripe - The Offspring - Supercharged Tour
loganberrybunny - Quick hospital visit
loganberrybunny - Marilyn Burns: Final Girl
loganberrybunny - And now it's basically winter
loganberrybunny - Bug hotel
lupestripe - Retractable Bollards Have Revolutionised Parking
mark in dw_maintenance - Database maintenance
loganberrybunny - A much better day's weather
loganberrybunny - The Texas Chain Saw Masssacre: Thoughts after watching

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Page generated Nov. 4th, 2025 08:29 pm

Aeth Wolf

Rocker Wolf Extraordinaire

Reading

Why I cannot accept the "AI is bad, end of" argument

The eyes have it

This and that

Canines Versus Felines

Sandra Peabody: I wish I could reach a different conclusion

Not a very interesting 365 photo, but what's new? :P

Film post: Halloween

West Bromwich

Two friends, two photos!

The smoking gun in Vanity Fair

Piccolos

The Offspring - Supercharged Tour

Quick hospital visit

Marilyn Burns: Final Girl

And now it's basically winter

Bug hotel

Retractable Bollards Have Revolutionised Parking

Database maintenance

A much better day's weather

The Texas Chain Saw Masssacre: Thoughts after watching

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December 2022

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