Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet (1956)

“I’ve never been one

for intellectualizing.”

—Charles Bernstein,

Rough Trades

It must be the Summer Doldrums—suddenly I ran out of Things to talk about—all those Weimar films filled me up with all sorts of bedazzling & tormenting Theories—tantalizing and promising me this & that—when what I really wanted was access & Filmic Dispensation—a Movie should surely not simply “be” but rather “become”—whatever that is or was or could be—listening to the riotous gears grinding away inside my Stupid Head—in pursuit of what was Vulnerable & Virgin way back When—probably lost for all Time by now—the sense of Saturday Matinee Excitement & Violence—the Beating of the Throbbing Teenage Collectivist Breast—there in the cheap run-down Strand Theater—compared with the more upper-class hoity-toity Granada—that old revered Movie Palace—stucco Spanish Colonial Revival theater—graced by finial-topped towers rising on either end of its red-tiled roof—slender arched windows set within the Imperial Façade—divided by elegant vulture-capitol columns—flanked by corbeled parapet five terra cotta clown figurines—with its Moorish-flavored lobby and auditorium—but The Strand on the other hand was just a Dump—perfect for rowdy Sat matinees & serials—the place packed every weekend with the boisterous Baby Boomer Spawn of the WWII generation—plaguing the town with shocking visions of Sexploitation cinematics to come—especially when we got cars & loitered at the louche Snake Pit Drive In west of town—indeed that’s perhaps the Problem with my filmic libido lately—putting aside the rhetoric & wanting to speak from the dumb harelip Heart of Adolescent Angst & dirty Tennis Shoe stinky Romance there in the Stand’s awesome Darkness—the Thing that demanded crummy Double Features—to salve the worrisome wicked Beast of our emerging BB Erotic Imagination—already moving beyond the mere trickeries of Cartoon eidetics—into the much more serious precocious realms of Boyish Teenage Alien Intelligence—our burgeoning Bad Seed Bodies themselves becoming truant troubling Monsters of the Id—invisible inscrutable Unidentified Objects from Inner Space—Unknown, Undocumented, Beyond the control of Boy Scout fascist uniforms—and Nazi-esque marches & salutes around Hitlerjugend campfires—deep in the Baby Boomer Bildungsroman Night!!! How can I reformulate the discomfort and half-felt insatiable currents—of those now-outmoded impatient Humanoid Futuristics—eliding & oozing & bleeding into on those raucous Saturday Morning Riots at the Strand Theater—sweaty with terrifying Testosteronic Planet X damp armpits—exuding incredible Pheromonic Interplanetary Unrelenting Buzz-Throbs & Bad Boy Boldness—especially in the Creaking Groaning Balcony up above—where I weak-kneed & delirious with new-found Exo-Galactic compulsions—found myself glued to the sticky Pepsi-Cola floor—my knees stuck to the slimy downhill incline—manhandled by one youthful Monster of Id Boyfriend after another—getting penetrated & injected with one Krell Mind-Boost and then another & another—each exquisite burst of otherworldly Energy—scooting my meager gimpy-retarded IQ—upward into Realms of Never-Before-Experienced Heights of Arcane Young Animal Intelligence—that even now makes me Envious and Moody—so that I can even still feel my Nostrils quiver—with the tart Smell of Teenage Alien Burnt Rubber—the Speed & Heightened Cosmic Awareness—still so Troubling to me even Today—Looking back on those Exciting Excruciating Matinee-MetaLuna Twilight Zones—back when I limped home—shamefaced with The Curse of the Cat Woman—my Lips smeared with the prehistoric Tartness—of The Monster from the Black Lagoon—collapsing in my modest middle-class bedroom finally—feeling lucky to have Survived yet another Weekend—my newfound Krell Intelligence slithering deep inside my Chicken Brain...