Revisiting PRIDE FC 7 from 1999!

Featuring “Dirty” Bob Schrijver living up to his namesake, Igor Vovchanchyn showing us what illegal knees oughta’ look like and the promotion debut of some guy named Wanderlei Silva!

Read More

Revisiting Pride FC 6 from 1999!

Featuring an unsung classic with Matsui/Newton, Saku taking on THE Ebenezer Fontes Braga and Takada getting positively WRECKED by Mark Kerr!

Read More

Revisiting PRIDE FC 5 from 1999!

Are you ready for quite possibly the most forgettable PRIDE event in history? Hell, I just started this article and I’ve ALREADY forgotten about it!

Read More

Revisiting ECW November To Remember 2000

Roughly two months away from insolvency, ECW tried its darndest to make its marquee show of the year in 2000 stand out … and the results are, well, underwhelming, to say the least

Read More

VHS Review: 'Our Friend, Martin' (1998)

Revisiting one of the most ubiquitous Black History Month video cassette staples in the annals of American public education (and yes, it does indeed play fast and loose with the historical accuracy, in case you were wonderin'.)

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

I don't know how you folks spent your Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but if you ask me, there's only one proper way to get our collective Kangs on - and that, of course, is with a screening of the 1998 straight-to-video cartoon Our Friend, Martin.

What, you've never heard of Our Friend, Martin before? Well, if you grew up in elementary school America between the years 1999 and 2005, odds are your local public escuela/indoctrination factory made you watch it at least once a year (if not to commemorate MLK Day, than certainly as filler come Black History Month.) Now, I was in middle school and on the verge of entering high school when the straight-to-video offering was initially released, so I just missed out on this particular early aughties phenomena. But judging from the way the Millennials talk about this 'un on Reddit and 4chan and YouTube, I'd feel pretty comfortable labeling Our Friend, Martin as their generation's The ButterCream Gang - that weird piece of ubiquitous pop cultural ephemera that not only is inextricably tied to one's public education experience, but seems to only exist within the vacuum of elementary school nostalgia.

Even now I'm not sure exactly who bank rolled this thing, or what they're agenda was, or if they even suspected the damn tape would become a VCR staple in every primary school in America for at least half a decade. Whoever it was, though, they had to have had quite a bit of loose change to throw around, considering the staggering number of A-and-B-list celebrities lending their vocal talents to the production. Ed Asner, Angela Bassett, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, Ashley Judd, Susan Sarandon, Jon Travolta, OPRAH - hell, they even got Urkel to show up for a day or two in the recording studio to voice a teenaged MLK. It's undoubtedly a star-studded production, and the fact that this thing never made it to TV (or even basic cable, to the best of my knowledge) makes its existence all the more perplexing. I mean, you'd think PBS, if nobody else, would've tried to wrap their mitts around this one, but no - apparently, Our Friend, Martin went straight to video and - for all intents and purposes - just stayed there until YouTube and DailyMotion came along.

And if you've never seen it before, well - consider this in-depth review/analysis either a late MLK, Jr. Day gift or a really early Black History Month present.

The film begins with a title screen for DIC Entertainment, who is best known for producing half of every cartoon made in the 1980s (Nelvana, obviously, did the either half.) Some organization called I.P.M. gets secondary billing, but I have no idea who or what they are. And no, a quick Google search turns up nothing of use, even when you use "Our Friend Martin" as a Boolean assistant. We get this really, really cheesy R&B song as the opening credits rolls, and even better it's called "When We Were Kings" because fuck, sometimes the universe just makes things TOO easy for us.

No, this is the film at its absolute subtlest.

The movie begins proper with these two black kids standing in front of rubble that magically transforms into a fully built house. Oh, and one of them transforms into Martin Luther King, Jr. after entering the Stargate, so there's that.

And because this shit isn't late 1990s enough, we have ourselves a secondary title theme performed by Salt N Pepa, which sounds more like something to bump uglies to than something befitting of a children's animated program. From there, we are introduced to our antagonist, Miles, a precocious black kid who idolizes Hank Aaron, has a nasty ass bedroom and calls his mama "a slave" because she actually wants to work overtime at the office. (Oh, and as an aside, we never see Miles' father in the cartoon. Yeah, that revelation shocked the shit out of me, too.) Then she tells him if he doesn't get his grades up, he won't be able to play baseball and become rich like Barry Bonds and will probably end up slangin' crack down at the Waffle House down by the I-285 interchange. By the way, this kid's house is NICE - we're talking two stories, stairs, a basement, an attic, the fuckin' works. As a matter of fact, one might even call Miles - dare I say it - privileged?

In the next scene Miles is accosted by this fat blond white boy in a purple belly shirt. Eventually the bully, named Kyle, grabs hold of Miles at the bus stop but the old white bus driver almost runs him over and Miles is just barely able to escape. "See you, wouldn't want to be you," Miles says, which, for the record, was an antediluvian phrase even by 1998 standards. So Kyle's dad - voiced by John Travolta of all people - has to drive him to school. Which, fittingly enough, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. From there, we're introduced to the rest of the cast. There's this skateboarding kid with a country accent (voiced by the little kid from Sling Blade, if you can believe it) and this stuck up Hispanic bitch who considers herself "Madame Curie" and the rest of her cohorts "The Three Stooges." Miles' teacher (whose race is a complete mystery - she could be Dominican or she could be Irish) then tells him she's worried about his slipping grades and he blames it on baseball season. Then he says the only way for a black person to make money in this day and age is through sports or entertainment, and then the teacher says something about Colin Powell and tells Miles that if he doesn't do a good job on his book report about Martin Luther King, he's going to be held back a grade. 

So anyway, the kids go on a field trip to MLK's birth home, and Whoopi Goldberg is the tour guide and the country skateboarder kid LITERALLY asks her if MLK had magical powers. Then Miles sees a photo of MLK as a kid playing baseball and Miles says "why the fuck NOT steal a revered civil rights leader'  baseball glove?" But as soon as Miles puts it on, Wish Kid-style, he and that country motherfucker are magically transported back to the 1930s. Sure as sugar, they run into 12-year-old MLK, whom Miles describes as "major magic time," which I have to admit, does roll off the tongue rather smoothly. Oddly enough, even though it's Atlanta in the Great Depression, black kids and white kids are playing baseball together, which, I don't know, seems like a bit of a stretch to me. But then a white woman calls Miles "an uppity colored" and tells the white skateboarder kid that if he doesn't clean up his act he'll get fucking lynched.

Miles slips on the glove again and this time around the kids wind up on a train with a teenage Martin Luther King, Jr. King explains how he spent the summer humbly picking tobacco in Connecticut to pay for college, which - to put it mildly - isn't exactly a 100 percent truthful interpretation of what King's ACTUAL youth was like. Then MLK talks about how "whites and coloreds" couldn't associate with one another in the South, while ominous music plays over stock footage of segregated water fountain signs. Then the kids eat dinner with the rest of the King family, and Daddy King is voiced by James Earl Jones, because of course he would. "Don't you think it's cool he's always doing nice things for everybody else?" Miles comments.

Hey, it was either that, or Wayne Williams Junior High.

The kids time-skip once more. Now they're in Montgomery, Ala. for the bus boycott in 1956. And now MLK is voiced by Levar Burton, and we get the NARRATIVE APPROVED Rosa Parks story (which, of course, never brings up the fact that Samuel B. Fuller was already in the process of BUYING the Montgomery bus system), and then we get stock footage of MLK's house getting firebombed. Then a character voiced by Samuel L. Jackson starts rallying the black community to use violence against the honkeys, but MLK tells them to be more like Gandhi instead ... which, uh, means he wants them to hate Africans and sleep with their naked nieces on top of them?

Well, before we can fully digest that peculiar visual, the kids time hop again, and now it's time to relive the Birmingham riots, complete with a montage contrasting cartoons and real people having Dobermans bite their ball sacks and getting hit in the face with fire hoses. The kids end up getting transported back to the modern day, and the next day they watch ANOTHER video about the sit-ins and "Bull" Connor, who is pretty much depicted here as a cross between Hitler and The Penguin. And that's our cue for even MORE footage of black people getting power washed, complete with the very, very debatable suggestion that MLK and JFK formed a partnership for racial justice.

After school, the kids go back to MLK's birth home and convince Whoopi Goldberg to let 'em go back inside and fuck around with the time-space continuum some more. The fat white kid and that know-it-all Hispanic bitch decide to trail 'em and what do you know, all four of them wind up getting sucked back in time to the March on Washington. Oh, and hilariously, the "I Have A Dream" speech is dubbed over, because the King estate actually TRADEMARKED it and make people pay to use it now. That said, you can still have a lot of fun with the scene subbing in your OWN music. Might I suggest "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)" by W.A.S.P.? Anyhoo, the kids run into their future teacher at the rally, and she talks about MLK representing the "power of one" and "affecting change in everyone we touch" and a whole bunch of other hippie dippie bullshit. 

Then the kids hop forward in time and find newspaper clippings about King's death and act like it's the first time they ever heard he died before and decide to head back in time and STOP MLK FROM GETTING ASSASSINATED. "Sorry, that's way past my curfew," MLK tells the kids when they ask him to travel with them to 1999. But after name dropping Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall enough times, MLK finally decides to travel to Miles' time alongside the rest of the chirrens. Except when Miles and MLK get there, the King birth home is just rubble on the ground and the two white kids are best friends instead of being antagonistic towards each other and oh shit, black kids aren't allowed to ride the school bus anymore. Cue stock footage of KKK marches and "colored only" park benches and MLK starts asking Miles some serious questions about why he thinks *his* timeline is so great again. Now cue MORE stock footage of burning crosses and masses of black people weeping. And, then when the kids get to the middle school, all of a sudden it's been renamed "Robert E. Lee Middle" and the water fountains are segregated again and the principal keeps telling them to "git out" and chides the teachers for being "stupid women." And, oh, that Hispanic girl from earlier? Now she's a street urchin who doesn't know English and polishes floors for a living and Miles' mama is a MAID and he's all pissed that he don't have a Nintendo 64 no more.

So Miles and MLK have to sleep in bags on the floor and then MLK sees his daddy's ghost in the clouds and right then and there he decides he has to go back in time and DIE and keep the continuity loop a goin' as originally planned. And holy shit, they actually SHOW MLK getting shot in Memphis. Well, you have to give 'em some props for having the cojones to put THAT in a children's cartoon. From there we segue to footage from King's funeral, but again, since it originally used quips from the "I Have a Dream" speech, all we have here is just dead audio. Anyway, with everything corrected in the space-time continuum, Miles is able to come back to the modern day and yep, everything is back to normal. And after Miles gets an "A" on his assignment, the kids decide to go feed some homeless people and join Jimmy Carter's Habitats for Humanity and hug crippled black women in wheelchairs while a cover "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" plays in the background. And that, my multicultural brethren, is all there is to it.

Hooray for government-mandated inclusionary policymaking, which totally can't be subverted into civil liberties-eroding power grabs the same way government-mandated exclusionary policymaking was!

Well, I guess that is what it is, isn't it? I guess you don't need me to tell you the historical accuracy in this one was hit and miss, and you REALLY have to question the cartoon's rosy - if not downright messianic - depiction of the good Rev. Dr. King. I mean, it's not like they were ever going to show the alleged homosexual drunken orgies or bring up the fact that a lot of MLK's mentors were avowed communists or anything like that, but they could have at least tried to make the guy seem a little more relatable. After all, the REAL MLK smoked, packed heat, and boned at least one white woman, didn't he?

I suppose in hindsight one may consider Our Friend, Martin one of the great pioneering texts of the ongoing "white guilt" complex in American society - especially for Millennials. Remember, this was shit children were seeing every single year throughout elementary school and junior high, and let's face it - the big, central message the cartoon gets across (rather intentional or planned) is that a.) MLK was so great that everything he said most be taken as the literal social gospel and b.) left unchecked, white men will enslave you again and call your mama bad names. Even if that wasn't the filmmakers' desire, that's just the way hyper-literal children think, and when you have that pounded into your skull over and over for nine years, without a single adult explaining the movie's takeaways in a more nuanced form it can and will leave an indelible stamp on one's psyche - and no amount of factual evidence is likely to surmount the pure emotional pull one has felt since he or she was in kindergarten. The filmmakers may have thought the key idea children took away from the movie was that you shouldn't treat people unfairly because they're different, but instead the central theme they're walking away with is "holy shit, white people were EVIL as fuck back in the day, and if we don't do everything MLK tells us to they'll start treating minorities like doo doo again." Just read the comments on this YouTube upload - virtually none of the top comments are about racial reconciliation, but various shades of the old "boy howdy, the whites sure were MEAN towards blacks back then, and you know what, the probably still want to enslave us" chestnut. Planned, or unplanned, that's the major takeaway easily impressionable children got out of this movie - don't judge people by the color of their skin, except for the white ones, because goddamn, look at all the evil shit they did back in 1950s.

As a history lesson, it's pretty much just brazen hagiography for the ankle-biter set, leaving out all of M.L.K.'s more regrettable character traits and pretty much attributing the entirety of the Civil Rights Movement to his doing (that there isn't a companion video chronicling the animated exploits of Malcolm X is a rather telling example of omission by design.) As a morality play, it's pretty humdrum as well, but come on - it's pro-diversity propaganda intended for first graders. What did you expect? And taken only on its merits as animation, it's passable, but nothing extraordinary. The entire time I was watching the video I just felt like the character designs seemed hauntingly familiar, and sure enough, the IMDB validated my suspicions: it was co-directed by Vincenzo Trippetti, who as fate would have it, also served as a storyboard supervisor for The Real Ghostbusters, Jem and Mummies Alive! Needless to say, if there was ever a production in dire need of a sudden guest appearance by Apep the Snake God, surely it would be this woefully uninvolving cartoon.

As a piece of nostalgic ephemera, I suppose it has its merits. Shit, I didn't even watch the thing when I was a kid and I still smelled my old elementary school's cafeteria and gym mats while I was reviewing it. But more importantly, it stands as a testament to the power of the media - particularly animated programming - as a major social conditioning engineer. Our Friend, Martin is unquestionably a production with the chief goal of dictating morality to its young audience. It has little to do with entertaining them, or even giving them an educational history lesson. Rather, it's a coordinated effort to instill in young viewers the seeds of an adult ethos, one that neatly contours to a particular political ideology and its pre-established dogma.

Is the intent of Our Friend, Martin to encourage children to rebuke collectivist labels and see individuals as precisely that, individuals, or is it meant to goad children into believing a one-dimensional social policy creation myth that clearly paints one half of the U.S. social dyad as born losers and the other half as lapsed ethno-totalitarians?

And if you can't figure out which one, no worries - just show this flick to an eight-year-old and they'll be able to tell you which is which as soon as it's over.

Read More

Revisiting ECW November 2 Remember 1999!

It's ECW's marquee PPV, at what was arguably the company's apex. So was it truly a November to Remember, or one the 'rasslin history books are better off forgetting?

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

Extreme Championship Wrestling will probably always be my favorite wrestling promotion ever. A lot of people have tried to retroactively write it off as nothing but overrated garbage wrestling, but those people clearly haven't watched ECW in a long time (or if it all, for that matter.) The same way people who have never seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre think it's 90 minutes of blood and guts - despite the film itself being virtually devoid of any kind of red splatter - ECW critics tend to reflect on the promotion as just bloody, stupid brawls with no psychology, mat-work or action-enhancing story-lines. And this, my friends, is just one great big lie that should've been expelled from the IWC collective consciousness a long time ago. 

Sorry, haters, but ECW isn't "garbage wrestling." Nothing in ECW ever got anywhere close to being CZW or Big Japan body mutilation festivals, and honestly, the amount of outside the ring scufflin' and furniture abuse in the promotion wasn't really anything beyond the same sort of stuff that was going on in FMW or had already become commonplace in Mid-South Wrestling and the CWA in the fucking early 1980s. The ECW product had always been more old-school NWA than IWA, and the truth of the matter is that Paul Heyman and company may have actually put on some of the best pure wrestling matches of the 1990s. 

You scoff? Just take a look at matches like this. Or this. Or even this. Sure, the company also had its fair share of pointless bloodbaths and gloriously overrated spotfests, but for the most part, the lion's share of ECW bouts were fairly respectable (and often immensely entertaining) matches every bit as effective and professional looking as anything you were seeing in the WWF or WCW at the time - if not considerably more enjoyable.

And nowhere is that more evident than ECW, circa late 1999. At this point, the company was at its make or break point with the TNN cable deal, and of course, we all know how that turned out. Still, there was more hope in the product that despair, and you can't help but feel that naively optimistic energy when revisiting that year's November 2 Remember spectacle. The company was fresh off arguably its greatest PPV yet, Anarchy Rulz in Sept., and while the company did experience two huge losses in the departures of the Dudley Boys and Taz, they also managed to gain two huge stars in the form of the returning Raven and Sandman. With Mike Awesome the company's heavyweight title holder and Rob Van Dam its most popular and most bankable star - not to mention a surfeit of talented young up-and-comers on its roster like Super Crazy, Tajiri and Kid Kash - it seemed like ECW was setting itself up very, very well for its biggest year ever in 2000. And this last PPV hurrah for 1999 - the year ECW gambled it all on a one-shot opportunity to break into the mainstream - at once marked the end of the brand we once knew and the beginning of an all new product that - perhaps a little bit too audaciously - laid it all on the line in an effort to go toe-to-toe with WCW and the WWF.

But let's let the PPV speak for itself, why don't we? 

Alright, we are calling this shit LIVE from the Flickinger Center in Buffalo, New York. Joey Styles and Cyrus are in the ring. Held Nov. 7, 1999, it's ECW's seventh annual N2R event, which is pretty much analogous to its WrestleMania. Cyrus is wearing rubber gloves because he says Buffalo is the bacteria capital of the United States and if had to work here, he would live in Toronto. This draws a hearty "well, well, well" from Joel Gertner, who then cuts a bawdy limerick about himself being "the one you want to pork when they are in New York." Gertner says he should be calling the show, not Cyrus. Cue the "War Machine" ripoff riff as Taz comes out in blue jeans and a trench coat to a chorus of "you sold out" chants" (since he was headed to the WWF in about a month's time, you see.)

If you told me 17 years ago that one of these men would be the official voice of New Japan Wrestling - we'll, I'm sure we'd all pick incorrectly.

Taz (who is actually shorter than Styles by several inches) is angry because he says Joey won't return his phone calls. Taz then calls him a lying bastard who implied he choked out RVD from behind on TNN two weeks earlier (and for the life of me, I just don't recall seeing that episode.) Taz then calls him, and I quote, "Mr. Genius Goddamn Microphone," and says "if you don't like it, I won't give a shit." He challenges Joey to a fight and the crowd chants "fuck him up, Joey, fuck him up" - which, considering Styles allegedly knocked out JBL for real, isn't exactly beyond the realm of possibility. Taz asks Joey is he amuses him. Style apologizes, but Taz keeps egging him, calling him "a disrespectful sonofabitch." Joey leaves the ring then Taz calls Joel "a fat shit." He locks him in the Tazmission, and it looks really, really shitty. Taz grabs the mic and tells RVD he is going to kick his ass later tonight, and then he shakes Cyrus' hand.

The video intro shows RVD jumping into the crowd, Mike Awesome power bombing Mikey Whipwreck to death and even Lita herself (back when she was known as Miss Congeniality) whipping up on some bitch. 

Simon Diamond is in the ring with his bodyguard, Dick Hertz, who immediately receives chants of "you suck dick." Hertz slaps Diamond on the ass and tells him "good luck, tiger." Diamond than refers to Dick as "huge and vascular" and lets the audience know he's going to "let Dick slide this time." Out comes Jazz, the "female fighting phenom," to virtually no fanfare. She slaps Simon and hits him with the Jazz Stinger (an X-Factor variation named after a Neil Diamond vehicle, for some reason.) Dick grabs her and hits her with an awesome spinning shoulder breaker thing he calls "the penile implant." Cue "Highway to Hell" as Spike Dudley makes his way to the ring. He hits Dick with the Acid Drop, then Diamond Pearl Harbors him. Spike goes for another Acid Drop, but flips over Diamond's back and gets dropped faced fist on the turnbuckle. Spike does a running flip off the mat to hit Diamond on the floor. Spike grabs a wooden chair, climbs the top rope and clobbers Diamond with it. Diamond back flips Spike. Now Simon is bleeding. Spike takes a back-first bump into the guardrail. Back in the ring, Diamond hits him with a few snap suplexes. Spike headbutts him in the balls and hits him with the Acid Drop, and yep, that's good enough for the three count. the Full Blooded Italians come out immediately and Little Guido power bombs the fuck outta' Spike off the top rope and then Big Sal E. Graziano belly flops on him while the crowd chants "you fat fuck." Cue "Intergalactic by the Beasties as Nova comes out to make the save. He hits Sal with a double axe handle and stomps the fuck out of Guido. Then he lands a spinebuster and a crossbody, then an X-Factor variation Guido sells like a retard. Nova flies off the top rope to the outside and wipes out Guido. Back in the ring and Sal E. free shots Nova. Guido starts stomping him and Joey says Guido probably didn't see too many planchas when he was in UWFi (and yes, believe it or not Guido actually does have a professional MMA bout on his resume.) Guido catches Nova with a clothesline and he stomps the hell out of him. Then there is a chop exchange and Guido hits a facebuster off the top rope for only a two count. Guido with more stomps. The two keep reversing a neckbreaker and Guido finally lands it. And all I can say is, man, do I miss that idiosyncratic, hyperactive, pulsating ECW camerawork, complete with the inane up-close shots. Guido goes up top and Nova pursues him and hits him with a reverse Samoan drop. Guido reverses the pin and only gets a two-count. We get a punching exchange and then Nova hits him with an awesome powerbomb-into-a-stunner combo Styles dubs "the Smash Mouth." Sal E. pulls Nova off before the ref can make the three count. Nova hits Sal with a tornado DDT, then Guido hits a distracted Nova with the Tomikaze for the win. Sal E. splashes Guido after the bell. Here comes Chris Chetti - wearing these supremely fruity, white fluffy frills on his jacket - to make the save. NOW here comes Danny Doring and Roadkill to beat up on Chetti. Roadkill splashes him and kills his ass dead, then pulls out threads of his fluffy fabric as a souvenir as the soothing sounds of Soul Coughing echo throughout the arena. Well, if you linked those first two matches and the tomfoolery in between as one, uh, spectacle, I'd feel pretty confident giving it a [***] rating.

Tajiri and Steve Corino roll Jack Victory out in a wheelchair. Corino calls Tajiri the "god of the three way dance" and talks shit about Jerry Lynn and Super Crazy. Crazy comes out wearing a t-shirt reading "Insano Luchador" and Jerry Lynn comes out to what I think is Fear Factory instead his kinda' awesome Coal Chamber walkout song that was on that one ECW CD. His ribs are still taped up from a Justin Credible and Lance Storm beatdown from like, two months ago.

No, it's not a bad screengrab. The late 1990s actually were that blurry in real life.

Styles says Lynn has historically been underutilized, not just in the WCW but even when he first came to ECW. The three competitors square off. Tajiri buzzsaw kicks Lynn, then Crazy leaps off the turnbuckle and hits Lynn with a dropkick. Lynn hits Crazy with tilt-a-whirl headscissors and Crazy responds with a huge-assed arm drag that gets the crowd roaring with approval. Tajiri locks Lynn in the Tarantula (basically, this really hurty-looking submission using the ring ropes for leverage) before Crazy makes the save. Then Tajiri counters a sunset flip into a Tarantula on Crazy and then Lynn has to save him. 

Tajiri with a hard superkick on Lynn. Then Lynn gets major airtime crashing into Crazy off the top rope. Here comes Tajiri with an Asai moonsault. Crazy thrown into the steel guardrail. Tajiri and Crazy brawl in the audience (look at those snazzy wooden chairs!) Here comes Lynn diving over the guardrail to wipe 'em both out. Now all three men are brawling through the audience. Crazy does a moonsault off the building entrance gate and takes out both Lynn and Tajiri. The crowd chants "holy shit" the whole time they battle back to the ring. Crazy with an inverted surfboard on Tajiri. Lynn hits him with a bulldog. Lynn and Crazy tussle. Lynn with the Gory Guerrero special, then a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Cyrus says something about how much it would suck for Crazy to get beat by some white dude using a luchador finisher. Tajiri with an awesome hurancanrana on Crazy. Crazy counters another hurancanrana with a powerbomb then he hits a moonsault. Crazy powerbombs Tajiri again, but Lynn breaks up the cover. Wait - why would he want to break up a pinfall in an elimination triple threat match?

Lynn hits the cradle piledriver on Crazy, but - again - Tajiri breaks up the pin. Then he hits Crazy with a brainbuster and claims the three count for himself. Lynn stomps Tajiri. Tajiri with a springboard elbow a'la the Great Muta. Loud kicks to the midsection, with a tree of woe facilitating a sliding baseball kick to Lynn's face. Lynn hits a German suplex, but Tajiri lands on his feet. Lynn grabs him again and lands a German for real this time. Lynn goes for a tombstone piledriver, but Tajiri counters it into a backbreaker and a thwarted moonsault. Lynn with forearm shots in the corner, then a tornado DDT off the top rope. Lynn with an hurancanrana (Spellcheck, RIP), but Tajiri breaks out and kicks him. But Lynn no sells it and says "hit me again you homo" and THEN he hits the cradle piledriver for the win. After the bell, there's this great moment where Joey says he thinks Lynn is still the only guy who can beat RVD and Cyrus admonishes him for discounting/burying Taz. Of course, Corino tries to attack Lynn after the match and Lynn piledrives that motherfucker and the crowd chants "Jerry! Jerry!" over and over again like they were on that one daytime TV talk show - you know, The View. A good showing all around, in my eyes. [*** 1/4]

We get a replay of highlights from the last match and Styles starts talking about the Baldies stapling New Jack in the eyeball on the last episode of ECW on TNN. And hey, here's that footage from last Friday in case you missed it!

Loud music blares in the background, so you can't even hear Styles and Cyrus speaking in the announcer's box. Cyrus shows Styles a big old name tag and Styles asks "what's with all the office talk, I work from home?" and this makes me laugh.

All four Baldies are in the ring. If you can name all of 'em, congratulations on being the biggest loser that's ever lost at anything, ever. And here comes Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten, with chairs en two. Yep, both of these guys are dead now, in case you were wondering. 

Balls in first (that's what she said) and he gets ganged up on. Axl hits the ring and cleans house with a few chair shots. So it's a four on two shindig. "Skull is behind balls," Joey states. Angel is wearing that stapler he used on New Jack as a necklace. And on cue, here comes New Jack with his bucket o' plunder.

Jack hits two dudes with crutches and keyboards another dude. It's down to Jack - armed with a golf club - and Angel. Devito gets a trashcan smashed over his skull. Then New Jack LITERALLY cleans house by hitting Angel in the balls with a vacuum cleaner And there's a cookie sheet shot to the groin, for good measure.

One of the Baldies gets stapled in the thigh. Balls makes another guy eat a trashcan. The camera can't capture any of the madness now. Balls with a double suplex. New Jack and the other two dudes are brawling in the audience. Axl gets a ladder. That really fat guy in the Baldies - it may or may not be P.N. News, if memory serves correct - actually lands a top rope senton on Balls, which I suppose is kinda' impressive. 

Axl and Jack set up the ladder. Now Jack has a table. ECW is so ghetto they have to put a PPV sign over the basketball goal the arena wouldn't let them remove. Jack climbs up and he makes his patented pay-per-view suicide dive. Much deserved "ECW" chants follow, with Styles say it is "the damndest thing" he's ever seen in ECW. Uh, forgetting something, Mr. Styles?

Can you imagine how many drugs and STDs that vacuum cleaner could suck up in the locker room?

Axl and Jack make their way back to the ring. There's a hilarious moment where New Jack cracks one of the Baldies over the head with an NES and Styles just calls it "a video game." Cyrus says New Jack prolly trained for this match by committing crimes. Jack gets the stapler and sure enough, he staples one of the Baldies. Then Angel hits him over the head with a baby powder filled guitar and that's enough to give him the three count. An "extreme replay" shows New Jack jumping off the basketball goal/sign. "If I wasn't here live I would've thought it was a special effect," Styles comments. "You're in the wrong company if you're looking for special effects," Cyrus responds. Unfortunately, he doesn't mutter "or paychecks that don't bounce" under his breath, though. A solid little garbage match right here - like one of those old CKY videos, it's dumb as shit and unrefined as fuck, but heaven help you, you just can't convince yourself you're NOT being entertained.  [** 3/4]

Time for an interview with Sabu and Bill Alfonso. Sabu's armbad reads "TICHO" for some reason. Alfonso tells Candido he needs to be ready for the fight of his life. Oh, "TICHO" is the name of Sabu's friend who apparently just died. Alfonso says he's dedicating the match and the show to honoring his memory. 

"Back in Black" lets us know Candido is making his way to the ring. Sunny (Tammy Lynn Sytch) is with him. Styles lets us know you can look at skanky pictures of her online cause that ain't gross or nothing. Sunny takes off her jacket to reveal a very hoe-ish outfit.

Here comes a somber Sabu, accompanied by his awesome in-house music. Considering how good these "ECW original" tracks were, you kinda' wonder why the company never produced more proprietary tunes. And I know I'm pissing up a proverbial rope, but can someone please explain to me how Sabu is genocidal? Considering his in-ring technique, "homicidal" and "suicidal" make sense, but which ethnic group did Sabu canonically want cleansed from the face of the Earth? Next to the source of The Million Dollar Man's immense wealth, I can't think of a more bamboozling pro rasslin' mystery. 

We get some loud "Sabu" chants, which quickly transforms into a chorus of "show your beaver." Sabu shoots for a low takedown. Bodydonna Skip darts out of the way. Sabu lands a quick reaper but misses on the follow-up elbow drop. Time for a collar and elbow tie-up. Styles says Sabu is very underrated as a mat wrestler. Outside brawling ensues. Chris slams Sabu into a guardrail and makes him eat some chops. A backdrop sends Candido flying over the top rope. Sabu hits a diving plancha. Then Chris hits a stalling suplex and a top rope leg drop (the New Jersey Jam.) The crowd chants for "tables." Chris with a floating suplex, but he misses on the diving headbutt. Sabu with a DDT, then a chair-assisted triple jump leg drop for a two-count. Sabu sets a table up outside. Chris flies to the outside with a diving hammer blow. He rolls Sabu on top of the table. Sabu gets back up and hits a top rope hurrancanranna in the ring. Camel Clutch on Chris. Bill Alfonso throws in a table. Candido hits Sabu with the electric chair drop. Chris sets up the table. He lays Sabu on it. He goes up top for a leg drop, but Sabu rolls out of the way and Chris goes through it ass first. Sabu goes for a pin, but he can only muster a two count.

Who says the late 1990s weren't enlightened? Here we were, not only cheering some Arabian guy to pull a white dude's fucking face off, but actually PAYING to see it live.

Sabu with the Camel Clutch again. The crowd chants "show your tits" (I imagine that's directed towards Sunny.) Sabu smacks Chris with a chair. He hits Chris with a running ass to the face and Candido double sells it by falling on the chair again. Sabu with a huge jump out of the ring into Candido in the front row. Man, those wooden chairs the audience has to sit on are hilarious. We get some wild brawling in the crowd now. ECW was so ghetto, they had to use yellow caution tape to block off fans near the opening entrance. Chris gets back in the ring. Sabu throws another chair at him. Sabu with a springboard splash for a two count. ANOTHER Camel Clutch. Well, there's a lot more psychology in this one than I thought. We've got ANOTHER table in the ring. Candido is laid out across it even though it's only halfway up (two of the legs are still slanted downwards.) Regardless, Sabu hits a top rope leg drop anyway but it's only good for back-to-back two counts. Sabu whiffs on a triple jump moonsault. Chris responds with a phat fallaway powerbomb, then a piledriver. Just a two-count on each. Chris lands a superplex - just a two. Chris sets the chair up in the middle of the ring. Sabu runs up it uses it for another moonsault. Just another two-count. Sabu goes up top but Tammy crotches him. Chris with a hurrancanranna off the top rope and he lands on his feet on the follow-through. He goes up top for a diving headbutt. Just a two count, and Chris screams "bullshit" at the referee. "It's almost like giving yourself a concussion," Cyrus says - boy, how the times have changed when it comes to pro 'rasslin commentary. Chris with a piledriver. He puts yet another table in the ring. Sabu with a dropkick to the ankle. Sabu sets up the table and lays Chris on it. Sabu goes up top and Tammy tries to shake him off but Bill enters the fray. He tries to put Tammy on it, but Chris sacrifices himself to roll her off. Naturally, Sabu uses the opportunity to leg drop that motherfucker through the furniture ... and it's STILL only enough for a two count. Sabu gets a chair and goes up top for an Arabian facebuster. Then he locks in the Camel Clutch and Candido finally submits. Well, shit, that match was WAY better than I recollected. [*** 3/4]

Let's cut to Masato Tanaka running on a treadmill. He says tonight "I BECOME NEW WORLD CHAMPION." Then we cut to Mike Awesome and Judge Jeff Jones. "I'm going to break your damn neck," the mulleted world champ declares while doing those little arm band bicep curls. 

Styles says Tanaka has more wins over Awesome than anybody else and that Awesome has never beaten Tanaka in a one on one match in the states. November is known for its controversial title changes, Cyrus says - boy, I wonder what he's referencing there?

We throw it to the back where Louie E Dangerously is doing an impersonation of Paul Heyman, telling Jazz and Francine they are fired before getting escorted out of building himself. Tanaka comes out to awesome '80s sounding shit metal. God, that makes me want to play Sega CD so bad right night. Awesome comes out to Bruce Dickinson's cover of "The Zoo" by The Scorpions. Joey brings up Awesome's stint in FMW as the Gladiator, but says nothing about his role in that one amazing-beyond-words exploding barbed wire swimming pool death match. We begin with some MONSTROUS Awesome chops in the corner. Awesome with a springboard elbow. Tanaka retaliates with a springboard clothesline. He goes up top and splashes Mike on the outside, then throws him into the guardrail. Then he clobbers his ass with a flying chair shot. Awesome with a belly to belly suplex, than a clothesline that sends Tanaka flying over the top rope. Awesome with a suicide dive (uh oh, talk about foreshadowing!) over the top to the outside. "Most six and a half feet tall wrestler don't even leave their feet anymore, brother," Styles says. The crowd chants "Awesome mullet." Awesome takes another suicide dive over the guardrail to wipe out Masato with a springboard clothesline.Mike goes up top with a chair and fucking El Kabongs Masato twice but he still gets up like it's nothing. Masato gets the chair, hits Mike twice and uses it to spice up his Roaring Elbow, but it's only good for a two count.

Probably the highlight of his career, next to being a Fat Chick Thriller.

He puts the chair over Mike's face. He goes up top with yet another chair and leg drops that white nigga. Just a two count. Masato goes up again and hits a tornado DDT. Again, only a two-count. "One more time!" the crowd chants, so Masato goes up for another DDT but Awesome counters with a fucking brutal sitout powerbomb on the chairs below. Aweome clotheslines Tanaka out of his boots and hits him with an Alabama Slam that looks ten times stiffer than Sycho Sid's powerbombs. Awesome sets up Chekov's table on the outside. Tanaka counters the powerbomb attempt and hits a belly to back suplex. Then Awesome hits a sitout powerbomb off the apron through the table. "My mother's going to hate me for this, but holy shit!" announces Styles. 

Both men roll back into the ring and another table enters the fray. Awesome goes up top. Tanaka gets up and pushes the table back and tries to go for a  superplex, which Awesome tries to reverse into a powerbomb. Eventually, Tanaka hooks the superplex through the table, but it's only enough for a two. Tanka goes up top again for the Diamond Dust (not to be confused with the Dustin Diamond, of course.) He lands it, then points to his elbow. He gears up for the Roaring Elbow, but Awesome counters with a release German suplex and a running clothesline. Awesome goes up top and lands a huge frog splash. Just a two count. So he goes up top again and sets Tanaka up for a powerbomb. He lands it and that's what nets him the three count. 

God what a fucking awesome match.  I know these two have had a million great bouts (and there are prolly some better ones from the same year) but SHIT this was just so manly and satisfying. I'm giving it [**** 1\4] and if you don't like it feel free to gurgle a turd real quick. 

Time to hard sell the RVD vs Taz match. The TV title on the line. "RVD is the most popular wrestler in ECW history and if you don't believe it just listen to the pop he gets when he comes out," Styles says. To which Cyrus replies, "you know where the belt could end up if Taz wins." Get it, because Taz just signed with the WWF and is leaving ECW right after this match and stuff? 

LOL at the guy holding a "Taz fears Steve Corino" sign. Taz, serenaded by the ECW in-house version of Kiss' "War Machine," comes out first. RVD comes out to Pantera's "Walk," although I've always preferred the cover by Kilgore, personally. Taz does some last second calisthenics in the corner. "If you look up the word 'over' in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of RVD" Styles says. Funny, I don't see his face anywhere in the online entry, you Sacajawea dollar hocking lie-teller. 

RVD comes out with billowing "special effects smoke and not doobie smoke, for real, ya'll" while Styles creams his jeans talking about his two-year title reign. Taz, naturally, is booed heavily while the Buffalo faithful keep screaming "the whole fucking show" in unison. 

We learn that RVD's wife is recovering from a jet ski injury, which is pretty much the whitest way possible to be hospitalized. "Imagine the political repercussions of him beating Rob Van Dam," Cyrus comments. An aside, but holy shit, have you seen what this guy looks like nowadays? Motherfucker looks like he's a fat version of Balki from Perfect Strangers. 

Taz starts with a side headlock, then RVD does a spinning headscissors and both guys throw whiffed kicks and get a standing ovation on the stalemate. RVD showboats in the corner while Taz takes a breather. Taz with a judo takedown, then RVD gets the ropes and Taz mocks him with the RVD thumb-pointing gesture and we get a vociferous "fuck you Taz" chant. Taz stomps on RVD and we have dueling Irish whip reversals. Taz bullies RVD into the corner and RVD gets a two count on a flipping sunset pin attempt. And another stalemate. For some reason, the commentators start talking about pro football, leading to quite possibly Cyrus' line of the night: "You could be a fullback for the Bills, Joey." 

Paul Heyman turned THIS GUY into a PPV draw - don't ever try to tell me he ain't a marketing wizard.

RVD goes flying after a Taz back body drop. He takes out a cameraman too. Taz follows RVD outside and throws him into guardrail. They battle down the ramp access path and RVD crotches him on a steel guardrail. RVD makes it back to the ring first and takes a bow. Taz re-enters the fray and clips RVD's knee while he's showboating. Taz with stomps in the corner, and RVD is actually doing a really good job selling it. Taz with a NASTY Alabama Slam off the top rope, followed with some vicious punches while he has RVD in a crossface. He follows that up with a knee to the midsection and an evil-looking Tiger Suplex. Taz looks under the ring and pulls out a table. He sets it up in the corner. RVD hits him with a spinning drop kick. Van Dam follows suit with a sliding baseball kick and a cartwheel-into-a-moonsault, but it's only good for a two-count. The follow-up Rolling Thunder senton can't get the three, neither. 

RVD lands a corkscrew leg drop and grabs a chair. That's when Taz KILLS RVD with a clothesline on the rebound and it's fucking tremendous. This leads to a great spot where Taz tries to suplex RVD through the table, but then RVD gets a chair, attempts a Van Daminator and gets caught in a T-Bone Taz-Plex through the wooden furniture. Now that shit was just masterful. Naturally, it's only worth a two-count, though. Bill Alfonso gets inside the ring with a chair and slaps Taz. RVD goes up top and kicks the chair into Taz's face. It's only worth a two. RVD goes up again but Taz crotches him. RVD reverses another T-Bone Taz-Plex attempt into a jaw-jacker. RVD botches a split leg moonsault, which only gets him a two, anyway. "You fucked up" chants echo throughout the arena. RVD counters a German (uh, but not this German) and hits Taz with a spinning kick, then the Five Star Frog Splash for the three. 

Eh, the finish felt rushed (if not wholly improvised on the fly), but all in all that was still entertaining as fuck. Had they properly booked the thing and given both men more time, though, it could've been one of the greatest matches in ECW history. I give it a solid [*** 1/4] for effort. Both men high five after the match and RVD shows off the title while Taz, ironically enough, walks on home, boy. 

Now Rhino is coming to the ring (his theme, in case you are wondering, is "Debonaire" by Dope.) And here comes Justin Credible (with Jason, "The One Man Entourage") out to the Grinspoon version of "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck," which I've always thought was vastly superior to the original version by Prong. Styles, on Jason: "he once won the three-legged race by himself." Get it, because he apparently has a HUGE dong!

Cyrus pimps something called the No Holds Barred radio show, which what do you know, Justin is wearing a tee shirt for. Lance Storm is out third, accompanied by Dawn Marie Bytch and that fuckin' boss techno remix of "El Phantasmo and the Chicken Run Blast-a-Rama" by White Zombie. Styles says Marie's ensemble isn't a dress, it's a cocktail napkin. "Well, pass the drinks," Cyrus comments. "Where Dawn Marie is concerned, I wouldn't wear any latex whatsoever."

"Man in the Box" means Tommy Dreamer is on his way to the ring. And my goodness, does his valet Francine looks like a crack ho. Sorry, but she does. Raven comes out to "Gotta' Keep 'Em Separated" by The Offspring and Styles reminds us about his glorious return against the Dudley Boys on that one episode of ECW on TNN. And man, is it weird seeing Raven NOT being a tremendous fatass for a change. And lastly, "Enter Sandman" blares over the P.A., heralding the arrival of ... well, take a guess. The reaction isn't as ape shit as his big company return a few weeks earlier, but it nonetheless does the heart good to see everybody singing along to Metallica while Sandy (wearing, of all things, a Bruce Lee tee-shirt) smashes beer cans into his own skull. Sigh ... it almost makes me want to weep with nostalgia. Styles talks about the triangle rivalry between the three men and we all LOL at the dude in the crowd holding a sign reading "Hak who?"

The intros are longer than most matches, but maybe that's for the best here. Huge "welcome back" chant for Sandy to being. He and Storm get the ball rolling. Sandman gives the ref his stick. Rhino gets tagged in. "Fuck him up, Sandman" chants begin before they even lock up. The ref breaks it up, for some reason. Another tie-up. Rhino pushes him down and Tommy gets tagged in. Storm tagged back in. He uppercuts Tommy. Dreamer with a side Russian leg sweep. Raven walks away from tag. Credible in. Elbow from Justin, then he gets crotched by Dreamer. Dreamer with a hangman neckbreaker and Sandman gets tagged in. He chases Credible around outside. Rhino blindsides Sandman and Credible whacks him with his Singapore cane. Credible punches the shit out of Sandman while Storm holds him in the corner. Storm hits a handspring clothesline and Rhino powerbombs Sandman off the top rope, but it's only worth a two.

Credible tries to keep Sandman cut off in enemy territory. Credible gets his balls slammed into the ring corner. Then Storm misses on a frog splash. Raven coldcocks Dreamer so he can get the tag. Raven fucks up everybody but gets gored by Rhino before he can DDT Credible. Then Storm superkicks Raven. Sandman is placed in the tree of woe. Dreamer clotheslines Rhino then Storm planchas Dreamer. Raven hits the Evenflow (don't you DARE think of calling it the Raven Effect) but Storm breaks up the pin. Rhino beats up Dreamer outside. Raven and saves him and they set up a table. Raven does a drop toe hold on Dreamer on to a chair and then he misses the table plancha on Rhino, who accidentally gores Storm. Sandman capitalizes on the fuck up and whacks Rhino with the cane three times before he finally goes down. Francine and Dawn Marie have their obligatory catfight, then Sandman kisses Dawn Marie then Raven and Sandman accidentally cane each other, allowing Justin to hit That's Incredible on Sandy for the three count. Styles wonders aloud if Raven may have whacked Sandman on purpose as he walks back to the locker room before everybody else. We get a quick and dirty recap of the PPV and that's that, Mattress Man.

This image is so 1999, it might as well have the Sega Dreamcast logo on it.

While the [** 1/2] main event was a relatively low note to go out on, the show as a whole was very solid. The Masato/Tanaka title bout was absolutely fucking ace, while the Sabu/Candido match was WAY better than I remember. Throw in the above average RVD/Taz matchup and the three-way - plus the clusterfuck-tastic Diamond vs. Spike/Nova vs. Guido medley - and that's one pay-per-view with at least five [***]-plus matches, which for a wrestling PPV in 1999, is astonishingly solid.

In some ways, you could call N2R '99 the zenith of post-TNN deal ECW - if not its first obvious death rattle. In six months' time, Mike Awesome would be in WCW, Rob Van Dam would be sidelined with a leg injury (thus derailing a huge champion versus champion bout against Awesome that possibly could have kept ECW alive a little bit longer), and Sabu, Chris Candido, Raven and Lance Storm would all be out of the promotion. By the time N2R 2000 rolled around, the roster was so depleted they had to put the Heavyweight belt on Steve fuckin' Corino, with the co-main event slot reserved for Rhino steamrolling whatever homegrown "star" was left on the payroll. In hindsight, this was the proverbial "last good day" for ECW - from hereon out, it was just one long, drawn-out, year-long spiral into financial oblivion.

Still, even hurtling headlong towards its inevitable destruction, ECW's product remained as entertaining as ever. There's no doubt in my mind that Extreme Championship Wrestling was a far more entertaining promotion than WCW and the WWF from 1998 to 2000, and ECW's PPVs from that era were consistently more enjoyable from top to bottom than its competitors. It's really a shame that so many people have forgotten how solid ECW was, even this close to its demise - and needless to say, this PPV just whups the tar out of the '99 editions of Survivor Series and Starrcade, and it ain't even close.

I'm pretty sure this show is available on the WWE Network, and it hasn't too hard to find using, ahem, "alternative viewing platforms," if you catch my drift. If you've never seen it you definitely need to check it out and if it's been a decade or so plus since you last saw it, I strongly believe it's worth a re-watching. 

This is the kind of wrestling product that just don't exist any more. So thank goodness we've still got the tapes a' circulating, no?

Read More

Book Review: 'Hannibal' by Thomas Harris (1999)

Forget the lackluster 2001 movie - this is Hannibal the way you were supposed to experience it. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

When it comes to celebrating  the cinematic form, very, VERY rarely do hardcore horror fans and "mainstream" moviegoers intersect. By and large, the stuff “normal” film watchers and critics like fall under the umbrella of “suspense” or “thrillers” – i.e., the kinds of movies that are too classy to load up on the buckets of fake guts and gore, while the stuff the hardcore are into are super obscure, super-artsy (sometimes, to the point of being transgressive abstractionism) and filled with so much excess sex and violence that most countries won’t even let you import them on DVD. Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Best Picture winner Silence of the Lambs, however, is one of the very, very few movies embraced by both “normal” folks and the wackos who spend all night torrenting weird-o Japanese fetish movies about people painting pictures of daisies using mermaid pus. Sure, a lot of snobs and other varieties of hoity-toity people try to say the flick ain’t your run of the mill splatter movie, but let's face it, Silence of the Lambs, categorically, is hardly any different from stuff like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Last House on Dead End Street. Granted, the acting is way better, but the star attraction is still downright gross and discomfiting, genre-standard shock and schlock. You can say the thing you remember most is Anthony Hopkins' performance, but we all know the first thing that comes to mind whenever you hear the title brought up is Jodie Foster having spunk thrown on her and a naked transvestite dancing around his bedroom with his wing-wong tucked up his bunghole. Yeah, some real “high art,” all right. 

In hindsight, it really shouldn’t be shocking at all that 2001’s follow-up Hannibal failed to recapture the magic of its predecessor. I mean, sure, the movie did have its fair share of gross-out moments, but it didn’t have that same degenerate cinema mentality. The problem there is that Ridley Scott and pals were TRYING to make a movie that appealed to the Oscar voters, instead of just making a great pukeola creepfest like the first time around. It was just too subdued and regal a motion picture, especially considering how over-the-top its source inspiration was. Now, I’ve never read Tom Harris' earlier Hannibal Lecter novels, so I can’t give you any insight into how the dude’s writing style and take on the central character has developed over the years. But what I can tell you, however, is that Hannibal, the novel, is way, way more messed up than Hannibal, the movie. Had the filmmakers stuck more closely to the book,  the final cinematic product undoubtedly would’ve turned out a million times better.

Never got around to reading Tom Harris' original literary sojourn, or just too damned lazy to flip through the 400 page tome yourself? Well, old Jimbo here has done you a kindness and drawn up a special Cliff's Notes version of the 1999 novel, which really, is the absolute perfect kind of Grand Guignol nonsense to churn your way through in the lead-up to Halloween. Strap on your reading glasses, folks - it's time to revisit one of the classics of mainstream, modern horror nonfiction. 

The novel begins with Clarice Starling and her FBI pals sitting in a van with a 150 pound block of dry ice. They storm a fish market during a meth raid and Clarice winds up gunning down an African-American woman while she was holding her infant (all the while, "La Macarena" plays in the background.) Oh, and the woman (no innocent bystander, mind you, but the HBIC of the meth running operation) is known to have AIDS, so Clarice has to be extra careful spraying down her infant with a hose. Making matters worse, a couple of Crips got ran over during the raid, and at least one other FBI agent got killed. 

So Clairce heads back to her duplex in Maryland where she is splitting rent with Ardelia Mapp (a.k.a., that fine Rae Dawn Chong looking cadet from Silence of the Lambs) and she cries on top of her washing machine while reading tabloids about the botched raid. After that we get the Dummy's Guide to Silence of the Lambs for those of you who missed out on it and we learn that the FBI is really, really enthusiastic about shitcanning Starling for the shootout. She rues her agrarian roots thusly: 

"What do you have when you come from a poor-white background? And from a place where Reconstruction didn't end until the 1950s. If you came from people often referred to on campuses as crackers and rednecks or, condescendingly, as blue-collar or poor-white Appalachians. If even the uncertain gentility of the South, who accord physical work no dignity at all, refer to your people as peckerwoods - in what tradition do you find an example? That we whaled the piss out of them that first time at Bull Run? That Great-granddaddy did right at Vicksburg, that a corner of Shiloh is forever Yazoo City? There is much honor and more sense in having succeeded with what was left, making something with the damned forty acres and a muddy mule, but you have to be able to see that. No one will tell you."

Almost on cue, she then receives a letter from our good pal Hannibal, who mocks her for her recent fuck-uppery and says something about  cryptically meeting her "between silver and iron." 

Now we meet Mason Verger, this really rich dude whose daddy was a pork kingpin back in the day. He's also paralyzed, on a respirator and hideously disfigured from .... something. The author describes in excruciating detail how he can't make plosives sounds and a mechanical apparatus has to moisturize his eyeballs because he doesn't have any eyelid left. Also, he is really, really fixated on a pet eel, for some reason. 

Clarice has a meeting with the FBI and she talks with Jack Crawford, who is a smug piece of shit who has it in for her. They talk about Hannibal rumors on the Internet and the recent execution of Fou-Tchou-Li - you know, that whole "death by a thousand cuts" metaphor. Starling then meets with Verger, who explains his meat packing fortune background. His mansion, for some reason, has a bunch of welfare kids playing in a daycare center. Starling takes one look at his sister, Margot, and automatically assumes she is on steroids. As it turns out, Verger got off light on some child molestation charges back in his youth, and instead of a lengthy jail sentence, all he got was community service and court ordered treatment - with Hannibal. Let's let Mason himself explain just how well his therapy went, why don't we? 

"So I pulled down the noose in front of my big mirror and put it on and had the release in my hand, and I was beating off with the other hand watching for his reaction, but I couldn't tell anything. Usually I can read people. He was sitting in a chair over in the corner of the room. His legs were crossed and he had his fingers locked over his knee. Then he stood up and reached in his jacket pocket, all elegant, like James Mason reaching for his lighter, and he said, `Would you like an amyl popper?' I thought, Wow! He gives me one now and he's got to give them to me forever to keep his license. Prescription city.Well, if you read the report, you know it was a lot more than amyl nitrite ... I mean whoa! He went over to the mirror I looked at myself in, and kicked the bottom of it and took out a shard. I was flying. He came over and gave me the piece of glass and looked me in the eyes and suggested I might like to peel off my face with it. He let the dogs out. I fed them my face. It took a longtime to get it all off, they say. I don't remember. Dr. Lecter broke my neck with the noose. They got my nose back when they pumped the dogs' stomachs at the animal shelter, but the graft didn't take."

After that, Mason makes himself feel better by ordering a young black child into his darkened living quarters, where he demands the child feed rat poison to his pet cat. After that, Verger's orderly dabs away the kid's tears, and puts the salty remnants inside Verger's chilled martini glass. Yep, this sumbitch is so evil he literally drinks the tears of children.

Starling decides this is the most opportune time to pursue a lead she got on some x-rays, so she decides to visit the old abandoned mental institution in Baltimore. She decides to sneak into the dilapidated building, where she runs into a deranged (but fairly harmless) homeless man and learns that Barney, a former security guard, stole all of Hannibal's records before the facility shut down. Oh, and this was never really expressed in the movies, but apparently, Hannibal himself has six fingers on one of his hand. And hey, you know Miggs, the dude who threw his own spunk on Clarice in Silence of the Lambs? Well, we learn that Hannibal didn't take to kindly to that kind of tomfoolery, so he killed him afterwards. 

Next, we get some exposition on Mason's plan to kidnap Hannibal and kill him with a platoon of wild hogs he's been breeding over the last 20 years. If you thought the main character in American Psycho was autistic, just wait until you hear how detail-oriented this motherfucker is about pig teats. 

As it turns out, Hannibal has been living in Florence since the end of SOTL, using the alias Dr. Feel (not to be confused with Dr. Feelgood, naturally.) He's being pursued by some guy named Pazzi, a disgraced investigator whose claim to fame is catching some dude who spree killed a whole bunch of Italian couples. He's been offered a cool million by Mason to capture Hannibal, but he'll get a smaller amount if he can just obtain his fingerprints. So he hires a gypsy to go grab him so he'll get his thumbs all over a bracelet, but she freaks out when she sees Hannibal and calls him "the devil." Pazzi then hies a pickpocket, but LOLOOPS, he has his femoral artery sliced open by Hannibal during an attempted wallet-thieving. 

So Pazzi hires these goons to help him capture Hannibal. They do a practice run for Hannibal's execution by stuffing a business suit with chicken guts and boiled eggs and record the feral pigs tearing it to shreds. 

Following a scene in which Hannibal draws a picture of Starling's face on a griffin (apparently, he's part Napoleon Dynamite, it appears), he apprehends Pazzi, guts him, hangs him and defenestrates him with, of all things, a floor buffer. Oh, and one of the hired goons gets killed too, while Hannibal drones on and on about Dante's Inferno imagery and shit. The author lets us know a vacationing Swiss family recorded the entire thing and they sell the rights to the video to some National Enquirer like shit rag, and Starling wonders what kind of car Hannibal is driving these days (she correctly assumes it is a Jaguar.)

Up next, Hannibal trolls Mason with a letter, which is definitely worth printing in full:

"Dear Mason,   

Thank you for posting such a huge bounty on me. I wish you would increase it. As an early-warning system, the bounty is better than radar. It inclines authorities everywhere to forsake their duty and scramble after me privately, with the results you see. 

Actually, I'm writing to refresh your memory on the subject of your former nose. In your inspirational antidrug interview the other day in the Ladies' Home journal you claim that you fed your nose, along with the rest of your face, to the pooches, Skippy and Spot, all waggy at your feet. Not so: You ate it yourself, for refreshment. From the crunchy sound when you chewed it up, I would say it had a consistency similar to that of a chicken gizzard - "Tastes just like chicken!" was your comment at the time. I was reminded of the sound in a bistro when a French person tucks into a gesier salad. 

You don't remember that, Mason? Speaking of chicken, you told me in therapy that, while you were subverting the underprivileged children at your summer camp, you learned that chocolate irritates your urethra. You don't remember that either, do you? Don't you think it likely you told me all sorts of things you don't remember now? There is an inescapable parallel between you and Jezebel, Mason. Keen Bible student that you are, you will recall the dogs ate Jezebel's face, along with the rest of her, after the eunuchs threw her out the window. 

Your people might have assassinated me in the street. But you wanted me alive, didn't you? From the aroma of your henchmen, it's obvious how you planned to entertain me. Mason, Mason. Since you want to see me so badly, let me give you some words of comfort, and you know I never lie. 

Before you die you will see my face. 

Sincerely, Hannibal Lecter, MD  

P.S. I worry, though, that you won't live that long, Mason. You must avoid the new strains of pneumonia. You're very susceptible, prone as you are (and will remain). I would recommend vaccination immediately, along with immunization shots for hepatitis A and B. Don't want to lose you prematurely."

Up next, Mason talks with the U.S. Inspector General about the Humane Slaughter Act. The general says he prefers Hannibal be apprehended on the state level, while Margot symbolically crushes walnuts in the background.

Margot tells Mason she wants his sperm so she and her lesbian partner can have a baby. She can't have one of her own because her ovaries are shot from hormones and anabolic steroids. You see, their deceased daddy's lawyers won't give either of them any money unless they produce a biological heir, and Margot's gal pal getting knocked up is the only thing standing between them and their fortune going to Baylor University or the Southern Baptist Convention. Oh, and Mason apparently did a lot of sister raping in his youth. You ... probably don't want to know the details. 

...but here they are anyway, you sickos. 

Next scene, Hannibal is on an airplane, in Canada, en route to Detroit - wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt with a ton of cash taped to his body. He feeds figs - or, at least that's what he says are figs - to this annoying kid beside him and has a nightmare about his sister being kidnapped by Eastern front fighters in 1944 (yeah, more on this in just a bit.) Hannibal wakes up screaming and calms himself down by fantasizing about his dream study, complete with frescoes of Starling, J. Edgar Hoover and Jesus in a '27 Model T. No, I'm not making any of that up.

After Starling recreates the botched raid at Hogan's Alley (apparently, it's not just a NES game), she meets with Deputy Assistant General Paul Krendler, who says he thinks Hannibal is gay and calls her a "corn pone cunt." Afterwards, Krendler, Mason, Margot and the psych department chair at Baylor discuss Hannibal's past and his connections with Starling. The Baylor rep says they are both orphans and raises questions about Starling being a lesbian. He ultimately diagnoses Hannibal with "avuncular disorder," that being, a desire to manipulate younger prey by posing as a mentor. Mason changes the discussion by bringing up the time he visited Idi Amin and discussing the proper way to crucify people. 

By now, Hannibal has made his way stateside and is stalking Clarice. He breaks into her car and breathes in her scent and has flashbacks about his younger sister Mischa (I promise, we'll get back to this one in just a moment.) 

So Barney works for Mason now. He explains his credentials and recounts Hannibal killing Miggs. Meanwhile, Hannibal decides to go buy a crossbow and some arrows at a gun show. He then tests his new equipment by going out into the woods, killing a hunter and flaying him beside a deer. 

You know that disadvantaged black youth from earlier? Well, apparently, he went home and ate rat poison and is now hospitalized. 

Barney comes on to Margot in the shower, they fight, and apologize to each other. Margot then asks Barney if he will kill Mason for her. 

Hannibal goes to Texas and pays to have a coffin exhumed. But whose corpse is it? 

Starling is officially shitcanned by the FBI for engaging in correspondence with Hannibal. During her hearing, Krendler fantasizes about saying all sorts of nasty things to her. 

Hannibal rents a room and watches the Errol Morris documentary A Brief History of Time and thinks about entropy for a bit. The scene when a teacup shatters into a million billion pieces - never to re-assemble itself - makes him yearn for his deceased sister. You see, growing up in Lithuania, Hannibal's younger sister was kidnapped by a ragtag group of Nazis led by a particularly nasty S.S. commander, who axed her to death and then ate her remains right in front of Hannibal. So, yeah, that's pretty much the origin point of his psychosis, canonically. 

In diegetic time, Hannibal goes to a hospital, knocks out a doctor, leaves him on a toilet, steals a ton of drugs and hijacks a truck. He stalks Starling at a grocery store, and that's when Mason's Italian goons hit him with a tranquilizer to the neck. They pull him into a van and whisk him away to Mason's place out in the sticks. 

Mason tells Hannibal he's going to start by making the pigs eat his feet. One of the goons busts Hannibal's eyes with a stun gun. Hannibal talks with Margot (she was one of his patients as a kid and knows all about the evil shit Mason did to her) and he tries to goad her into killing her brother. Hannibal suggests using the stun gun to stimulate his prostate and scoop up his precious, precious sperm before he dies, though. 

One of the goons tries to drug Hannibal so he bites off his eyebrow. The goon responds by poking Hannibal's nipple with a red hot poker. Hannibal is hoisted over the pigs with a forklift, but here comes Clarice to make the save. A shootout ensues and Hannibal is freed. He carries Clarice out of the mansion - the pigs, apparently afraid of him out of pure instinct, refuse to pursue him. And now? We come to Mason's supremely over the top demise. There's no point in diluting Harris' own verbiage, so I'll just copy and paste it straight from the source: 

"She bent over the aquarium with her great arms down in the water. She held the carp by the tail down close to the grotto and when the eel came out she grabbed it behind the head with her powerful hand and lifted it clear out of the water, over her head. The mighty eel thrashing, as long as Margot and thick, its festive skin flashing. She gripped the eel with the other hand too and when it flexed it was all she could, do to hold on with the spiky gloves embedded in its hide.
Careful down off the chair and she came to Mason carrying the flexing eel, its head shaped like a bolt cutter, teeth clicking together with a sound like a telegraph key, the back-curved teeth no fish ever escaped. She flopped the eel on top of his chest, on the respirator and holding it with one hand, she lashed his pigtail around and around and around it. 

"Wiggle, wiggle, Mason," she said.

She held the eel behind the head with one hand and with the other she forced down Mason's jaw, forced it down, putting her weight on his chin, him straining with what strength he had, and with a creaking, cracking sound his mouth opened.

"You should have taken the chocolate," Margot said, and stuffed the eel's maw into Mason's mouth, it seizing his tongue with its razor-sharp teeth as it would a fish and not letting go, never letting go, its body thrashing tangled in Mason's pigtail. Blood blew out Mason's nose hole and he was drowning. Margot left them together, Mason and the eel, the carp circling alone in the aquarium. She composed herself at Cordell's desk and watched the monitors until Mason flat-lined. 

The eel was still moving when she went back into Mason's room. The respirator went up and down, inflating the eel's air bladder as it pumped bloody froth out of Mason's lungs. Margot rinsed the cattle prod in the aquarium and put it in her pocket."

Oh, by the way, Mason had a condom sacked over his paraplegic dong before the eel-assisted fratricide. And yes, in case you were wondering, the excitement of having the creature tear his esophagus to shreds did indeed make him come. 

Hannibal takes Clarice back to his rented place and pumps her full of the stolen drugs. Then, he decides to perform some hypnotherapy on her. He pretends to be her deceased father and then takes her into the bedroom, where the exhumed remains of her actual father are splayed out on the mattress. He then tells Clarice he knew Krendel bugged her car, and that gave away his location to Mason.

We jump ahead a couple of days. Mapp interrogates Barney at gunpoint for info on Clarice's whereabouts, and he's got nothing. Then, he gives Margot Hannibal's old mask, so they can plant DNA on the crime scene. For his efforts, he gets a quick, tongue-less smooch from Margot.

Meanwhile, Hannibal is still drugging Clarice. He wheels out Krendel, cuts opens his skull, carves out a chunk of his brain, fries it, and makes him eat it (basically,it's  the exact same scene from the movie, except Hannibal is considerate enough to kill him with an arrow after all the tomfoolery.)  

Denouement time, and it's way different from the cinematic treatment. Get ready shippers - Harris is about to give you the sick shit you've long been clamoring for: 

"When she replaced her glass on the table beside her, she pushed off her coffee cup and it shattered on the hearth. She did not look down at it. Dr. Lecter watched the shards, and they were still. 

"I don't think you have to make up your mind right this minute," Starling said. Her eyes and the cabochons shone in the firelight. A sigh from the fire, the warmth of the fire through her gown, and there came to Starling a passing memory - Dr. Lecter, so long ago, asking Senator Martin if she breast fed her daughter. A jeweled movement turning in Starling's unnatural calm: For an instant many windows in her mind aligned and she saw far across her own experience. She said, "Hannibal Lecter, did your mother feed you at her breast?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever feel that you had to relinquish the breast to Mischa? Did you ever feel you were required to give it up for her?"  

A beat. "I don't recall that, Clarice. If I gave it up, I did it gladly." 

Clarice Starling reached her cupped hand into the deep neckline of her gown and freed her breast, quickly peaky in the open air. "You don't have to give up this one," she said. Looking always into his eyes, with her trigger finger she took warm Chateau d'Yquem from her mouth and a thick sweet drop suspended from her nipple like a golden cabochon and trembled with her breathing. He came swiftly- from his chair to her, went on a knee before her chair, and bent to her coral and cream in the firelight his dark sleek head."

And three years later, Barney and his new gal pal (not Margot, he apparently failed in his quest to turn her straight) sees Starling and Hannibal at a Buenos Aires opera house. Apparently, Clarice and Hannibal have been an item for quite some time now. He's still acting as her "therapist," so to speak, but he no longer drugs her up before sessions. Instead, he's taught her how to enter her own "special place" in her head like he does. We learn that Jack Crawford died and Mapp sends Clarice a ring. The book ends proper with Hannibal making an allusion to that scene in A Brief History of Time, stating that he now has no qualms watching the teacup shatter anymore. 

Well, told you it was different from the movie, didn't I? Obviously, there are a lot of major omissions from the novel in the 2001 film adaptation, including the deletion of several characters (most notably Margot), the total elimination of the background on Hannibal being hunted down by Nazis in his youth, and of course a lot of stuff excised concerning just how fucking horrific of a human being Mason is. Oh, and the finales are way different - in the movie, Hannibal has to hack off his own hand to evade authorities and the flick concludes with him feeding mysterious stuff to some Asian kid on a flight. Needless to say, the book kicks the shit out of the movie, in every conceivable way.

Now, I've never read any of Harris' other Hannibal books, nor have I seen Hannibal Rising or watched a single episode of the TV show. From what I've collected from my Internet skimmings, however, that media apparently does a pretty solid job filling in the gaps the 2001 movie left out, so if you just have to know everything there is about the Dr. Lecter canon, you've got plenty of stuff out there to chew through. 

Personally, I don't really consider it a proper Halloween without gutting my way through at least one high-caliber horror novel (which is really out the normal for me, seeing as how I usually disregard all forms of fiction that aren't hilariously overbearing propaganda.) I really can't say I was totally enthralled by Hannibal from start to finish (indeed, there are periodic 20-page gulfs you'll feel like skimming through to get to the next kill), but overall, it is a fairly enjoyable little read that offers way more sex, violence and nightmare fodder than the ill-fated '01 film adaptation.

This stuff is just tailor-made for reading at 3 in the morning, bundled up in a blanket as the chilly autumnal wind creeps its way through your bedroom, or perusing next to a rainy windowsill on a Saturday morning while sipping on warm, store-brand pumpkin spice coffee. It's trashy literature, yes, but it's the good kind of literary trash - the kind that you can wrap yourself up in for an entire month, digest like an whole package of Little Debbie's Bat Brownies and immediately shuck away as soon as November rears its turkey and stuffing-scented head. 

Or in other words? Yeah, it's pretty much the ideal kind of instantly disposable, instantly gratifying, decadent pulp fiction for Halloween readin'.

Read More