Cud & Tith’s Death and Dismemberment Thursday Movies night, Tragedy Edition: David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) (1h36m) and Le Vourdalak (2023) (1h31m) at 4:30 PM US EDT

The theme of tonight is deep, all-consuming sadness.

Total run time: 3h07m of movies plus wiggle room.

A note: timezones hard, feel free to use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ or something similar to do timezone conversions to your local time

We will be using Blorptube tonight: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine. IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a good VPN whenever visiting Blorptube due to how peering works.  You can read more about Peertube and potential security concerns here: https://hexbear.net/post/3471120

The Fly (1986)

Loosely based on George Langelaan's 1957 short story of the same name and the 1958 film of the same name, The Fly tells of an eccentric scientist who, after one of his experiments goes wrong, slowly turns into a fly-hybrid creature.  I’ve been assured this movie is very good and very upsetting.

From the wikipedia: “Seth starts to exhibit increased strength, stamina, and sexual potency, which he attributes to the teleportation "purifying" his body,” but actually it’s fly vigor.  This sounds cool.  

Cud lore: I thought I’d seen this one already and it wasn’t that good, but it turns out actually when I was watching Honey I Shrunk the Kids on TV with my mom in days of yore, she pointed out that a scene in it referenced this movie.  Oops.  

Also I would like to shout out Neal Asher’s sci fi book Cowl which features a fly-headed dude trying to use time travel to seed earth with his descendants because he hates other people so much he wants to erase them from having ever existed.

Content Warnings for The Fly

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/11771

UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/3743

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/6fU7ei2JG6bPYJX71q6hXA

Interstitial Break Queue: 16m09s planned

Pee Break Songs:

Return of the Fly - The Misfits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjjm4wQhz4

Blood - Velvet Acid Christ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W28kMppBl1Q

Le Vourdalak (2023)

Set somewhere in Eastern Europe, Le Vourdalak follows a French nobleman on his way to a diplomatic summit.  He gets lost and seeks hospitality with a local boyar’s family, who are waiting for their patriarch to return from battle against the Turks.  Their father returns — dead.  Very obviously dead.  Yet the lead son will not admit the obvious, and simultaneously takes his place as head of the household and refuses to step into the role.  The frenchman is drawn into the web of abuse and must try to survive while this family eats itself.

The movie is a bit of a slow burn, a bit surreal, but I found it to be very haunting and upsetting.  I kind of feel like apologizing in advance of this movie because when I saw it a couple years ago it was so unsettling and frightening that I was on edge for days after, and it was so heartbreaking and sad that I still don’t know how to even talk about it (although my evil abusive ex throwing a line from the movie in my face may contribute to that).  And of course, apologies for it being in the French language.  Nevertheless, it was also really powerful art.

Content Warnings for Le Vourdalak

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/1210445 — be warned, apparently almost nobody in the comments knows gender when they see it

UnconsentingMedia: no entry

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28313478/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/rt3n74cYBHFuvkgwW5aF3V