The Screaming Skull

(someone’s knocking at the door)
Tom: Do him a favor, open the door! [then he sings a little tune]

“Let ‘Em In” by Paul McCartney and his Wings. Just thought I’d mention it.


(a shot of a portrait of a pleasant-looking woman in a big sun-hat)
Tom: I’m Hedda Hopper.

Hedda Hopper was a notorious Hollywood publicist back in 1940’s through 50’s. She was hated and feared by nearly every person in Hollywood, and called a bitch on numerous occasions. It must be really hard to have been Hedda Hopper, to be so loathed and feared. But I suppose the money makes up for it. In any case, she looks like the woman in the portrait (she always wore big hats). So there you go. She also acted, mostly in bit parts--she was in Topper, Alice Adams, and even played a thinly veiled caricature of herself in The Women. Her son, by the way, is William Hopper, who starred in "Perry Mason" and The Bad Seed...and The Deadly Mantis, a "MST3K" experiment.


(the Husband is walking back to the house)
Mike: If Ed Wood had directed Rules of the Game.

Rules of the Game is actually a French film directed by Jean Renoir in 1938. It’s a social commentary, about taboos and class struggles, etc. etc. It's generally considered Renoir's greatest film, and always ends up on critics' Best Films EVAR lists. Ed Wood, on the other hand, is considered the worst director of all time, and made what many consider to be the worst film of all time, Plan 9 from Outer Space. He dealt primarily with science fiction B-films, although he did occasionally touch on taboo subjects like cross-dressing, in the film Glen or Glenda? (which pretty much tells you the depth of the film right in the title). I don’t suggest seeing any of his movies—unless you want to laugh at them, which is actually quite fun—but I do suggest you see a biopic about him titled Ed Wood, in which Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood, and Martin Landau plays Wood’s constant star (like Scorsese and De Niro) Bela Lugosi. It has to be one of the few films that have made me laugh out loud. It is very good.


(the Wife, in her penoir, falls on the floor and sobs)
Mike: I was going to do the dance of the seven veils but I only have four!

Alas, she cannot count. Perhaps she was poorly educated…