Author Topic: PseudoPod 708: Tenderizer  (Read 1761 times)

Bdoomed

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on: June 21, 2020, 07:24:31 AM
PseudoPod 708: Tenderizer

Author: Stephen Graham Jones
Narrator: Eric Luke
Host: Alasdair Stuart
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett

“Tenderizer” was first published in the movie themed anthology The Cutting Room where it shared a Table of Contents with “Final Girl Theory” by A.C. Wise.



Content Warning:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



Brutal Is the Night: A Review

Remember The Blair Witch Project’s marketing campaign? It was an update of sorts on 1971s The Last House on the Left, except where Wes Craven would have us keep reminding ourselves that it’s just a movie, it’s just a movie, Blair Witch kept whispering that this was actual found footage. Its the same dynamic, though; it was tapping the same sensationalistic vein.

Writer/director Sean Mickles  knows this vein very well. And, for Tenderizer, he let it bleed.

As you probably recall, the first trailer was released as a “rough cut,” with the media outlets quoting Mickles’s grumbled objection that Tenderizer wasn’t ready, that production difficulties were built into a project like this, weren’t they?

Speculation was that he just wasn’t ready to let it go, of course.

It wouldn’t be the first time.




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Scuba Man

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Reply #1 on: June 21, 2020, 12:31:49 PM
I enjoyed the narration.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
. Ah well...  :-X

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Languorous Lass

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Reply #2 on: June 21, 2020, 03:22:37 PM
Scuba, I had a similar reaction.  Plus having read (and written and edited) film reviews and criticism, I kept thinking that this piece, 
with its speculation about the source of the footage (when it finally got around to discussing the film itself), would never have been published in a credible publication.   Plus I can’t buy, without more context, that survivors and “dignitaries” would have put their imprimatur on a film like the one described by coming to a showing, especially given the description of the filmmaker’s previous films. 

The story might have worked better, IMHO, if it had been framed as a piece looking back at an infamous film from a few decades previously.  That way the detailed descriptions of the trailers, and the personal details about the filmmaker, would have made more sense:  readers wouldn’t be expected to already know about those details.



Marlboro

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Reply #3 on: June 23, 2020, 03:11:55 AM
I liked it.



JDuckworth

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Reply #4 on: July 01, 2020, 12:49:05 AM
Scuba, I had a similar reaction.  Plus having read (and written and edited) film reviews and criticism, I kept thinking that this piece, 
with its speculation about the source of the footage (when it finally got around to discussing the film itself), would never have been published in a credible publication.   Plus I can’t buy, without more context, that survivors and “dignitaries” would have put their imprimatur on a film like the one described by coming to a showing, especially given the description of the filmmaker’s previous films. 

The story might have worked better, IMHO, if it had been framed as a piece looking back at an infamous film from a few decades previously.  That way the detailed descriptions of the trailers, and the personal details about the filmmaker, would have made more sense:  readers wouldn’t be expected to already know about those details.
Honestly I forgot it was supposed to be a review about ten minutes in. Sort of like how Parks and Recreation begins ostensibly as a documentary ala The Office, but by season 2 there's no attempt to really sell that premise/conceit.

I do wonder if this "review" is more like a draft that the writer never actually gets around to submitting/deletes as soon as they're done with it. I also wonder if the writer of the review is actually the director himself, and that this "review" is another progression in his telescoping assessment of the tragedy he wrought much as the film was.



Scuba Man

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Reply #5 on: July 07, 2020, 07:48:43 PM
I liked it.
I’ve been shlepping branches & cutting up paper birch and dying and diseased ash trees on our woodlot. A second listen softened my opinion of the tale. The narration was excellent and pulled me in. The plot? Ah well. I think I know what’s going on. :o

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Scattercat

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Reply #6 on: June 02, 2021, 09:11:22 AM
This was a gripping one.  I do not actually much care for actual detailed breakdowns of cinematography in real life, but for some reason it works really well in horror fiction.  (Well, sample size of two so far, I guess, between this and "Final Girl Theory".)

Honestly, the only criticism I have is that I feel like this story is too kind, positive, and optimistic.  It assumes that the American public would be horrified by a school shooting and would be at all fazed or impressed by an indictment of themselves as audience.  The real-life responses to actual similar events are a lot more bleak and even more horrifying, to me.  (For example, parents of Sandy Hook Elementary victims being stalked and receiving death threats for talking about how their child was murdered, because the senders of said threats fear that they might not be able to buy some of the products they like as a result of that conversation.)  For those of us, in contrast, who have a functional sense of empathy, this story is a rough ride.

What a world, where horror authors struggle to convey something more shocking, more appalling, and more disgusting than actual reality.  I sincerely wish I lived in the reality where one school massacre was a national tragedy that still reverberated in the public consciousness years afterward, instead of just another Tuesday.