MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Like an alchemical treatise, James Cameron's film is laden with symbolism. The shipwreck of the Titanic symbolizes the financial situation of the Illuminati sect which was very precarious at the time as a result of the treasurer's flight with all the credit cards and the silver cutlery. The epic romance between Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio represents the idyll between Capitalism and Communism to which the most recalcitrant members of the sect aspire. The iceberg against which (to the viewer's astonishment) the Ocean liner collides, symbolizes the asteroid that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago killing the dinosaurs, who in turn represent the members of the sect all of whom were by then pessimistic about their survival as a consequence of the drastic reduction of their salaries. In any case, the tragic ending of the film was highly controversial during the writing of the script, and many Illuminati advocated a happy ending in which the ship not only did not sink ...

With this movie, the Illuminati gave it their all. All their ideology is incorporated here. The idea that penguins are gentlemen and that they deserve to be admitted to high society clubs. The idea that “cleanliness is next to godliness” and “if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The idea that Georgia and its capital Atlanta (home to one of the Illuminati's top franchises: the Protective Order of the Damned Calligrapher) are located at the wrong latitude. The idea that love between a man and a woman is too complicated and that it would be preferable for romanticism to be limited to a man's relationship with his horse. All of these key ideas are surreptitiously in one way or another in the film. Likewise, Scarlett O'Hara is the symbol of the goddess Athena (Illuminati’s great goddess) and Louis B. Mayer suggested that, throughout the entire film, Scarlett be all of her covered in gold leaf like an ancient statue -a suggestion that was strongly rejected by David O. S...

Illuminati are really fond of horses. If it had been up to the producers of the major studios of Hollywood’s golden age, all movies would have been starring horses. Since this would have had little commercial viability, the savvy Hollywood producers decided to put a rider on the horse, and thus set out to produce films starring men on horseback. This genre was called "western" to distinguish it from the "eastern" genre in which riders rode ostriches instead of horses. There is no genre in Hollywood history with such a profusion of films as the Western. This is due on the one hand to the Illuminati's fondness for horses and, on the other hand, to the difficulty of placing horses in other genres such as romantic comedy, gangster, science fiction, musicals, drama, etc. It’s well known that Jack Warner attempted to set a racehorse named 'Black Pearl' up for the leading masculine role in Michael Curtiz’s film “Casablanca". Curtiz objected but, given Jack...

The Hollywood producers belonging to the Illuminati sect wanted to shoot a great production that would discredit the Darwinian theory that humans come from apes. (Although from my own experience, I dare say that it would not be strange if there were some exceptions that came from the kangaroo.) To this end they hired the services of Daniel Morris, an ardent foe of Darwinian theory and of all scientific theories in general. Unfortunately, Morris passed away during filming when he wanted to demonstrate to a wannabe actress the falsity of the theory of gravity. Then the direction of the movie was entrusted to Franklyn Schaffner, who (as revealed in his memoirs) was secretly convinced that it was the apes that came from human being and not the other way around. Anyway, the plot is based on the idea that man and ape not only are different species but also differ as to the coolest fashion style. In the film, civilized apes have evolved from arboreal monkeys. However, human beings haven’t cha...

To say "conflictive" would be an understatement. At the time Mayer was running the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Greta Garbo was the most famous actress in Hollywood, and yet one of the most unknown. The public wasn't even sure she was a real live woman. Many believed it was a cartoon, and the magazine "Scrapbook" got to claim she was having an affair with Mickey Mouse. (Walt Disney had to make an official denial.) She had a lot of character and didn’t bow to the requirements of the entertainment industry. Louis B. Mayer himself confessed in an interview that he was afraid of Garbo -he had put bars on all his windows and wasn’t going anywhere without a bodyguard. She had gotten in the habit of slapping him every time she saw him on the set, because she did not like that anyone but the essential technical team witnessed her filming. In the MGM Garbo did always exactly what she wanted to do, and if Mayer dared to oppose, he received a few slaps from her. Audiences were ent...

Metaphorically speaking, a thriller is nothing more than a maze (or a mess) through which a series of disreputable characters circulate trying to find something. In the most emblematic case (that of John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon"), everyone tries to find a falcon, nobody knows why. Not because they like the elegant flight of such birds (since this particular falcon is unable to fly due to a problem in its constitution: it’s made of gold) but for some other reason that escapes me. The detective (Humphrey Bogart) is brought into this damn mess by a ‘femme fatale’ (Mary Astor). Unfortunately, in addition to this fatal woman, there is also a wide assortment of fatal men, all of whom cause trouble for Humphrey Bogart. To begin with, they kill his partner, who was the mastermind of the detective agency, thus leaving the business brainless. At this very moment, the viewers are beginning to adjust to the idea that they will be home late for tea time. If the dead man had been ...

In Hollywood in the mid-1950s, a new type of movie star emerged characterized by rebellion, sadness, self-destruction and blue suede shoes. James Dean and Annie Branchowsky are the two most paradigmatic examples. Let's focus on the last one. Annie Branchowsky was born in a small Ohio town of just five neighbours. (When she moved to Hollywood with her two brothers and parents, the town went into bankruptcy and was wiped off the map.) In Hollywood, Annie got an audition to play the young woman bitten by a snake in the B movie "The Bite," but all the other applicants yelled louder. She just said "Ouch!" and bite off the snake's head, which ruined the production. Desperate, the director predicted an uncertain future for her as an actress, but she was not discouraged and landed a walk-on part in a Warner production. She was supposed to help the old protagonist cross the street, but instead she got into a taxi with the old woman and they both disappeared for five ...

In the early days of the film industry, an atmosphere of intolerable moral corruption reigned in Hollywood. The films displayed a degree of depravity that would have flushed the Marquis de Sade. The natural separation between actresses and actors began to relax and towards the end of the 1910s, mixed films began to be shot: actors and actresses shared the same set, appeared in the same sequences and even spoke to each other without even blushing. Actresses like Theda Bara, Clara Bow, and Gloria Swanson appeared in makeup and holding huge Gruyère cheeses on their heads. Actors like Rodolfo Valentino, John Gilbert and Ronald Colman allowed themselves to put a flower in their buttonholes, look in the mirrors and smooth their hair while smiling at the portrait of his fiancée. Most of the spectators went to the movie theaters blindfolded so as not to see so much ignominy. In spontaneous attacks of hysteria, some of them rolled around on the floor like possessed persons. Others teared their ...

Citizen Kane is a movie of extreme complexity. The cinematographic technique is complex: those risky camera movements that in no time go from a general shot to a close-up one hitting the face of the actors, who thus suffer continuous concussions, and forcing makeup artists to use large doses of makeup to hide the bruises. But also the plot is complex: the humble sledder who somehow manages to become a newspaper mogul and then fall in love with a cauliflower but keeps it a secret for fear of being branded as eccentric. Complexity extends even to the praiseworthy work of the hairstylists who, in a burst of creativity, adopted the hairstyle of the French aristocracy of the 1780s to create sophisticated ‘pompadours' for each and every one of the characters. The higher the character's social status, the more tall and voluminous his hairstyle is. And since Charles Foster Kane's social status progresses throughout the film, the stylists added accordingly more and more vertical vol...

"Strangers on a Train" is a double-bottomed film, like the suitcases of smugglers. This was common practice in Hollywood, where many directors tried to sneak Bolshevik ideas into their films. (The House Un-American Activities Committee saw this diaphanously.) When it comes to talking about Alfred Hitchcock, his real name was Boris Karshenko and he was a secret KGB agent specialized in following bald guys with a goatee. The best MI6 agent fitted that profile, so Karshenko (aka Hitchcock) was parachuted into London. However, the KGB was unaware that the MI6 agent in question had long been using a hair restorer and now had a mop of hair. Overnight Hitchcock found himself in London with nothing to do, so he tried to eke out a living in the cinema. Unexpectedly he succeeded and made the jump to Hollywood. However, he continued to think that communism was not only superior to capitalism but that communists were taller and more handsome than capitalists. His 1951 movie ‘Strangers on...

“Red Planet Mars” (1952) is undoubtedly one of the best (or one of the worst: in any case it’s not a halfway point) movies about the intrigues that preceded the Bolshevik revolution. The film narrates with realism the invasion of our planet by some Martians who are forced to make an emergency landing as a result of the drunkenness of the pilot, Grtyyuk Drakorewoo (whose name is significant because in Martian language it means 'the drunkest teetotaler'). Once on Earth the Martians have no choice but to rummage through the dumps, until they get tired and take out their ray guns. Humanity believes itself to be in danger of death or, if not of death, at least of total annihilation, and asks a circus clown (Peter Graves) for help. For a while, the clown manages to distract the Martians by juggling, but when one of the balls falls to the ground, the Martians understand that this is nothing more than a gross diversionary tactic, and they run out of the circus tent ready to conquer the...

During Second World War, people had plenty of tragedies. Thus what the public asked from cinema was an escape. It was time for comedies and, above all, for musicals. Hollywood producers traveled to New York and bought tickets to Broadway shows. One of these shows was titled ‘The Tattooed Odontologist’ and Samuel Goldwyn was enthusiastic about it because "it was so pointless that you had no choice but to escape." The story revolved around an obsessive compulsive dentist accumulating complaints of arbitrary tooth extraction. The musical numbers focus on the scenes where the dentist unleashes his obsession, so the patient's shrieks of pain are naturally integrated into the merry melodies in the manner of a chorus. Goldwyn purchased the film adaptation rights and entrusted the making of the film to Walter Girsh, a puppet theater director who was determined to direct the actors using strings moved from above with his own hands and those of his puppeteer collaborators. This gre...

One of the most heartwarming scenes in the saga is the interaction between Chewbacca and the watermelon vendor. The Wookiee warrior stumbles upon a basket full of watermelons and, thinking they are human heads, grabs the vendor and accuses him of being a serial killer. The vendor calls him "hairy screwball" and, to demonstrate that the watermelons are not heads, throws one to the ground, smashing it to pieces before the horrified gaze of Chewbacca, who now accuses him of being disrespectful to the heads of the deceased. Continuing his exculpatory demonstration, the vendor takes a piece of watermelon from the ground and eats it. Chewbacca recoils at the utterly lack of scruples of the man, whom he accuses now of anthropophagy. In fear of witnessing some other perversion on the part of the horrid man, Chewbacca hurries to deliver him to the Imperial Police.  I think this scene offers clear proof of Chewie’s big heart and of his unwavering commitment to the values that character...

I guess you have in mind his character in the movie "The Shining". Well, you have to take into account the circumstances in which the film shooting took place. Above all, the hotel that served as set was possessed by an evil dwarf. Cinema spectators are only witnessing the effects of such a circumstance on Nicholson, but all the film crew was subjected to the same psychological pressures. At the sudden vision of the diabolical dwarf, a makeup artist raised both eyebrows in the air at a great height provoking in turn the pop out of a sound technician’s eyes. One cameraman didn't stop smiling from ear to ear for no apparent reason till his jaw became dislocated and he had to be urgently admitted to the hospital. Also, most of the film crew used to make sibilant noises non-stop while running around crouched. We have the valuable testimony of the script girl: “The shooting was a nightmare. We were all affected in one way or another. This was reflected above all in our faces w...

A wicked purpose. In the 1930s and 1940s, when a man was walking down the street and suddenly came across a seductive woman with an unlit cigarette on her lips, he knew he was already a goner: he had just fallen into the evil networks of a "vamp". “Will you give me fire?” she would say seductively. Movies had warned the man about it, but vamps’ fatal attraction was utterly beyond him. Women like Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Ida Lupino, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth were too seductive not to give them a light. The man was defenseless before them, he could do nothing but take out the Zippo lighter. Although the vamp pretended that the fire was to light a cigarette, he knew it was only a pretext. Actually, she wanted fire for a shadier and unspeakable purpose, like setting fire to his house, or making poached eggs that she will later rub in his face till leaving him blind, or swallowing the fire like a fakir and then spitting it in his face. He knew that one way or another...

Are you trying to be funny? Thank goodness. Because I've seen too many Ingmar Bergman movies for me to like jokes. Then, you must be a dummy. Okay, here are some little cinema lessons for dummies… Pluto doesn’t meet the conditions to become a film set. In fact, it doesn’t meet the conditions to become nothing at all. I don't think anyone with half a brain has ever considered shooting a movie on Pluto. Maybe some Hollywood producer under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen, but no-one else. Don’t be fooled by appearances: Just like movies set in past times don’t require a trip back in time, science fiction movies that apparently take place on other planets are actually shot in Hollywood. Because there is a thing called ‘set decoration’, you know? Set decoration is an important part of a movie. Except if you are Ingmar Bergman and practically restrict yourself to filming close-ups, a director needs a set that fits the theme of the film. For example, it’s convenient that in a...

Today any actor would be glad to take the bad guy role in a movie starring Eastwood. However, in the early stages of his career, only totally desperate actors consented to play villains in his movies. The reason for this is that Eastwood wanted his pistol with real ammunition. There was no point surreptitiously substituting the bullets for blank cartridges: Eastwood could tell by the weight of the gun. When we see the villain flee with a terrified look, sweating and trembling like jelly, in those first films such as "A Fistful of Dollars", "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Dirty Harry", we are not in presence of a masterful interpretation but of the authentic terror of a poor man who knows that the bullets whistling over his head are live ammunition whose aim is to hit the mark. How many takes had to be redone because the villain pretended to drop dead prematurely! -just after hearing the first gunshot or even before. That was Russian roulette with fiv...

Norma Desmond is fond of that monkey. In fact, it is the great love of his life. The men she has been related to only wanted her for her fame and money. The monkey, on the other hand, wants her for her bananas. (On the advice of his tax advisor, Desmond had purchased an entire plantation to evade taxes.) But the monkey dies in a tragic car accident. Desmond buries the monkey on the sly, at midnight, to avoid prob lems with the Humane Society. Deranged, the next day she meets Joe, the frustrated screenwriter, and her sick mind recognizes him as the deceased monkey. Joe plays along because he likes bananas, and agrees to write the script for "Salomé." However, the script does not advance, it is aground on the first syllable. Two years pass and the script remains aground on the first syllable. So Desmond hires a private detective who finds out that Joe doesn't even know how to write his own name: he's illiterate. Disgusted, Desmond kills him and buries him at midnight wi...

Brando was more rebellious. Because his rebellion was against himself while Dean's rebellion was against a used-car salesman, a certain Morris Lafargue who had sold him a car without a steering wheel. Marlon had also been a victim of the same car salesman (sold him an old Mustang pulled by a horse), but never held a grudge against him. Furthermore, in his will Brando gave him half his inheritance money. Brando couldn't bear his own tough guy image. Actually, he enjoyed classical music and would have liked to be prima ballerina at the National Ballet - but had to resign because he was unable to stand on tiptoe. Anyway, in all his films he begged the director to allow him to perform a few steps of ballet in some sequence. In ‘The Godfather’, Coppola was about to acquiesce and grant him this wish. Specifically, he had in mind the sequence where Bonasera shows up at Don Vito’s on his daughter’s wedding day and asks him to murder for money. “Don Corleone, give me justice" he be...

There is a villain that few people notice, but in my opinion it’s the meanest of all. His name is Abe Zunig Konigsberg, although name may not ring a bell because it is not mentioned in the movie. The movie in question is Superman II. When Clark Kent enters or leaves the newspaper building where he works, there is a janitor there who doesn't even appear on the scene. He is Abe Zunig Konigsberg, the most evil villain in superhero cinema. This man not only spies on Clark Kent and is aware of his secret, but he is building a kryptonite bomb to kill him. Fortunately, he doesn't have enough time to finish building it before the movie ends. A few more minutes of footage and… goodbye Superman. (Neither the director nor the technical team knew anything about this plot, only the wardrobe girl was aware of it.)