Movies that are "so bad they're good" make their appearance on excuse me, ghidorah via part 2 of our kitsch survey. Fans of Grade Z horror, various exploitation films, plain old psychotronic, and whatever category Hillbillies in a Haunted House falls into will be pleased, I think, especially if they are Christians who have wondered why they love such unlovable films and why they harbor such a warm regard for film giants like Tor Johnson (a gen-yoo-wine film giant, if there ever was one).
There is, after all, a certain feeling which may be expressed as "What happens to me if the Lord returns and finds me sitting here watching Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory ?" There would appear to be no good reason to grant two hours of precious life to such a film. But then, why the delight? Why the sheer joy of discovery? Why the tender hearted fannish devotion to cult film stars? Hmmmm... Maybe I should run my mouth about this for about an hour and then upload it to iTunes so that others may listen to my ravings! And, in fact, I did just that.
I am hard at work on a new website which will act as an umbrella for various of my little projects including excuse me, ghidorah. It has been difficult to find whatever niche market exists for my book, The Magic Eightball Test: A Christian Defense of Halloween and All Things Spooky, and this new website will, I hope, do the trick. I can't help believing there are thousands of people out there in the fundamentalist and/or evangelical subculture who are inundated with anti-Halloween theologizing, who feel that somehow dumping Halloween and Autumn is tantamount to dumping part of their soul, and who, therefore, go either one way or the other. Either they stick with their particular fortress mentality form of Christianity -- because they love the Lord -- and trash all their pop-cultural pursuits as "the devil's bidness" or they stick with the symbols that speak to them -- because they want to cling to what rings true whether they understand it or not -- and turn their back on churchianity.
Now, how many books do you know which would help somebody out in such a situation? Brother, there ain't any! Except for my own little ink and paper attempt to point out the fallacies of the fundamentalist/evangelical cultural mindset while, at the same time, totally affirming orthodox, historic, supernatural Christianity. It doesn't have to be "God or Godzilla". Brother, it can be "God and Godzilla"! In fact, our pop-cultural symbols speak to us because they bring the moral imagination to life -- and the moral imagination enriches our sense of what is at stake as powers and principalities duke it out in our lives. "God and Godzilla" is simply better, because faith enriched by imagination is better.
If you see what I mean.
So, anyhow, the new website is ChristianHalloweenFan.com. It will be up sometime around the first of October.
Of course, my book is always available at Amazon and other fine internet booksellers. Though I recommend purchasing it directly from lulu.com -- it gets printed by a different printing company in that case and I think the quality is better.
Lastly, I do apologize for a faint hissing which pops in and out during the podcast. I am experimenting with my microphone. I will endeavor to correct that problem and upload a revamped version of the same podcast. But don't let that keep you from listening to it ASAP. It's not that noticeable. Right click or control click the title to this post (above) to download the podcast or head over to iTunes which should be updated to include this addition pretty soon.
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