Preview Of Coming Attractions

Film reviewers attribute the worst movies ever made to Hollywood personality Ed Wood.

Mr. Wood stands in danger of loosing his number one spot.

My son Donald and I plan to make several movies over the next few months. Our films are sure to become classics.

After all, I’m noted for my refined taste in movies.

For instance, I rank among my personal number one box office favorites The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra, a film in which Ranger Brad says, “ Seriously, folks, around these parts we’re serious about taking horrible mutilations seriously”.

And the space aliens conquer the world using house painters’ caulking guns as props. (That solved some budget problems).

According to my cinematic taste, another prime example of the film maker’s art should attract the attention of other refined, cultured viewers with discriminating tastes.

It’s called Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.

In the opening scenes of this fictional cinematic event, vampires attack lesbians in the city. Church leaders appeal to the Savior of the world for help. Jesus, who’s been studying karate before his second advent, comes out of retirement to battle the vampires. He whisks along city streets on his skateboard healing the sick, blind and crippled as he goes. A gang of 36 atheists attack, and Jesus karateizes the lot. But then, vampires beat him up and leave him bleeding in the gutter. A priest passes by on the other side, a cop passes by, but the Good Transvestite picks him up and nurses him to health. Then Jesus teams up with a professional wrestler and they whack vampires right and left in an auto junk yard and –

Oh yes, have I mentioned that this movie is a musical?

No account of my refined taste in cinema is complete without mention of Lair Of The White Worm. In this film an evil giant snake attacks the village demanding an offering. The townsmen decide to sacrifice Alice because, “She the closest thing to a virgin we’ve got in this village”. But the intrepid Scottish hero saves Alice and the village by thwarting the evil serpent by the simple ploy of going into the snake’s lair with a mongoose hidden under his kilt.

These are three of my top movie picks, these films make the early Godzilla movies look like cinema!

So naturally, the films Donald and I plan to make may rank right up there with these other film classics. Here’s a photo of Donald as cameraman/director:

Not really.

Seriously, our films lack such luster; they have different roots.

For several years back in the mid 1970s I taught Bible lessons at a sort of half-way house for drug addicts. A judge had given convicted residents the choice of going to jail or staying at the shelter and one requirement of living there was they had to attend my bible classes.

Talk about a hostile audience!

To win their attention, I developed various odd gimmicks to both amuse and instruct. They worked pretty well. Although in one class, while I illustrated a Bible lesson with poster paints, one guy went to sleep. I continued my talk as I crept out into the audience and painted his nose red. The class thought that was a hoot.

Years later, I taught these same lessons at a skid-row mission where the administration made the men sit through one of my Bible classes before they could have supper.

Many resented this requirement so I felt it necessary to do my best to win their attention and sympathy.

I felt I was battling for men’s very souls there because almost every week one or two of the down and out guys would have died between meetings.

So, although I fooled around and joked a lot to gain attention and interest, I trembled at the seriousness of what I was doing.

Then, once after a couple of years, the pastor of one of Jacksonville’s society churches happened to visit our house while I was rigging one of my demonstrations for the mission. The project intrigued him and he asked me to make a presentation to his Pastor’s Bible Class, a group made up of physicians, attorneys, architects, bankers, etc.

After praying about it, I felt that if a lesson was good enough for the guys at the mission—if I were giving them my best—then that same lesson was good enough for the society class. So I taught the exact same lesson both places that week.

The class proved popular enough that the pastor asked me to take over, and I taught that way for several years.

Incidentally, I was not exactly a high society person myself; as I was teaching that class on Sundays, during the week I worked as a janitor.

A strange situation.

Anyhow, because my son Donald got this bug about making video films for the internet, his idea is to use me teaching some of these same lessons with the same gimmicks and my tasteful jokes.

He wants me to star in his films.

Seriously folks, he’s serious about making serious religious-type films for a serious viewership…

What am I to do?

I can’t find my caulk gun!

Know where I can buy a mongoose cheap?