Monday Morning Movie Review: The Blob (1988)

3 November 20252 November 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly has had very little time for watching flicks lately, but I managed to squeeze in the 1988 remake of The Blob. It and the 1958 original are both films I’ve known about my entire life, but I have never seen either of the flicks. I think an episode of Muppet Babies featured clips of the titular creature from the 1988 film, so I had a good image of the pink, oozing goo from my early childhood, but otherwise all I knew about either films was that they involved a gelatinous, amorphous entity absorbing people lethally.

TBT: Rooting Out Heresy: The Cathars

30 October 202527 October 2025 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

We’re living in heretical times. All sorts of New Age nonsense is afoot.

The thing is, all the “New Age nonsense” is just Old World paganism and Gnosticism wrapped in therapeutic language. People are looking for answers—the easier the better. I’ve been reading the classic, authoritative book on the subject, The Kingdom of the Cults (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, as are several others links in this post; I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you), by theologian Walter Martin, and it is wild how many of these cults share the same basic qualities—claiming to be “Christian” while perverting and distorting the very heart of the Gospels.

With that, here is 14 October 2024’s “Rooting Out Heresy: The Cathars“:

TBT^65,536: On Ghost Stories

16 October 202514 October 2025 The Portly Politico1 Comment

That sweet, crispy, autumnal feel is in the air, which means it’s the perfect time for ghost stories. I love reading a good ghost story as the days grow shorter and darker, and the wind whips leaves through the streets.

Thanks to Ponty’s recommendation that I review The Haunting (1963) for 31 Days of Halloween, I’m going to crack open Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), which I first read a few years ago. It’s more about the ghosts of the main character’s tortured psyche, but it blends the thin veil between psychological torment and the possibility of non-corporeal supernatural apparitions influencing events in this world.

With that, here is 17 October 2024’s “TBT^256: On Ghost Stories“:

Ponty Praises: The Descent (2005)

15 October 202514 October 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Ponty is back with another great movie review, this week featuring the claustrophobic thriller of 2005’s The Descent. The film explores the tension of being trapped in the dark with something sinister and lethal—a core human fear.

When I was a kid, we took a big trip to the mountains to visit my great-grandmother in the mountains of western Virginia. On that trip we visited Mammoth Cave, a large cave system in Kentucky, and I believe Bat Cave in North Carolina as well (I could very well be conflating multiple trips into one in my mind). At one point on a guided tour of the caves, deep underground (we took an elevator to descend into the chamber), the tour guide turned off the lights in the cavern. The darkness was so total, so complete, it was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I think I instinctively moved closer to my family so I at least had some sense of security.

That experience very much captures, albeit in a very safe, tame, and controlled manner, what this flick feels like to watch. We take it for granted that, even in the dead of night, there’s usually some source of light: the moon, a cellphone, an alarm clock, the soft green of a charger indicating it’s doing its job. Total blackness—complete darkness—is something truly unsettling.

Ponder that as you enjoy Ponty’s review of The Descent (2005):

AWFL Calls It Quits

8 October 20257 October 2025 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Today’s post is going to be unapologetically catty. I’ve been quasi-hate-reading a blog called Robby Robin’s Journey for awhile now. The proprietor, Jane Fritz, is the smug-looking lady who inspired some of my Boomer rant last year. She came to my attention when she wrote a quintessentially Boomer comment on the excellent piece “The Boomer Mentality,” a great post by Erin over at Existential Ergonomics. Erin is way more intellectually generous than I am; after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I’ve washed my hands of being generous towards progressives.

Except, of course, I’m writing this post, which probably suggests I care more than I wish.

Regardless, Old Lady Fritz announced on Monday, 6 October 2025, that she is calling it quits in the self-indulgent post “The time has come. I can’t wait any longer.” It’s her parting salvo with some Leftist political cartoons that compete with another to be as cringy and sanctimonious as possible (also—why do these old lady bloggers write titles that consist of two or more sentences? It’s like writing the text of an e-mail in the subject line).

Monday Morning Movie Review: Spree (2020)

6 October 20256 October 2025 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Yours portly is playing catch-up on the blog after a grueling Homecoming Week at work. Apologies for delayed and/or missing posts lately. —TPP

I’m not a huge fan of “found footage” films, most of which are just knock-offs of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Of course, I see the appeal for studios: these flicks are cheap to make, and offer (at least in theory) a more visceral experience. There are exceptions (such as today’s film), but found footage flicks typically devolve into lots of shaky camera work and improbably perfectly placed cameras that always seem to capture the exact video and audio that they need to tell the story.

Naturally, that’s because it’s all directed and staged, but it reveals the lie inherent in these films. Far from being “found,” the footage is actually quite curated—but in a sloppy manner to create the illusion of us just picking up someone’s perfectly edited (in-camera!) VHS tape.

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of reviewing security camera footage will know that they rarely capture anything worthwhile. The footage is too grainy to identify anyone positively; audio is lacking or non-existent; footage gets overwritten with new footage quickly. The frustration for law-abiding citizens, of course, is that security cameras never seem to get the right angle to catch criminals, but always keeps an eye on the rest of us. CCTV might help keep down crime, but it really just ends up monitoring the rest of us. It’s the definition of anarcho-tyranny.

But I digress. I recently watched a good found footage film, 2020’s Spree. It’s a horrific dark comedy, mostly because it shows the extreme toll of living in a terminally-online world, in which shallow and hallow people gauge their self-worth in terms of likes, impressions, and reactions.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

29 September 202528 September 2025 The Portly Politico2 Comments

When I was very, very young, I saw Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), probably recorded to a VHS during one of the rare free Disney Channel weekends, and it terrified me. The images from the film, particularly the scene where the demonic circus’s parade searches for two young boys through the streets of Green Town, have always stuck with me.

Based on the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes blends fantasy and horror elements with an ostensibly child-friendly story into a spooky tale of friendship, fear, courage, and resisting sin.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

22 September 202521 September 2025 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Yours portly is kicking off the Halloween season a bit early this year—after all, it’s the first day of autumn! I’m doing so with a classic Universal Pictures monster flick, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.

Prior to seeing the flick for the first time a year or two ago, I only really knew about the plot from Young Frankenstein (1974), which spoofs key scenes from Bride and Frankenstein (1931). Shudder had Bride back on its service as of last week, so one night I watched it again, and really enjoyed it.

Bride of Frankenstein moves in a more comedic direction than its bachelor predecessor, with Frankenstein’s Monster smoking (and becoming addicted to) cigarettes and humorous homunculi—like an overly amorous king—offering up some laughs (and padding out the film’s refreshingly swift seventy-five-minute runtime). But it still offers up some classic scares.

Ponty Ponders Attack of the Meth Gator (2024)

17 September 202515 September 2025 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Good ol’ Ponty is back with another B-movie review. 2023 was apparently the year of exploitation films about drug-addicted animals, with Cocaine Bear (2023) as the prime example of this bizarre subgenre. I wonder if any desperate indie filmmakers made Fentanyl Fox or Oxy Otter or the like.

Well, somebody made Attack of the Meth Gator (2024), which demonstrates well the B-movie tendency to jump on the latest fad and churn as many bucks out of it as possible. The Asylum made the film, which should come as no surprise—they’re the same folks behind the terrible-but-popular Sharknado franchise.

Apparently, the film is based on a joke Tweet (long since deleted) from a police department in Tennessee, warning residents not to flush their drugs, lest gators become hyper-aggressive “meth gators.” Such a thing might not be possible, but even the remotest possibility is too terrifying and silly to contemplate for long.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of this timeless classic:

TBT^2: Remarkable Animals

11 September 20259 September 2025 The Portly Politico2 Comments

After years of misspent youth, during which time I considered animals little more than fleshy, occasionally cute, robots, yours portly has learned the error of his ways and become an animal lover.

Don’t get wrong—I love to eat animals as much as I enjoy keeping them as pets, and I possess a realistic view of animals: they exist to serve us, not the other way around. I love Murphy, and I’ll make sure she is fed, watered, and (when appropriate) medicated. But the day that the vet says, “we can keep her alive another two weeks with this $4000 experimental canine chemotherapy,” it’ll be time to give the old girl a heartfelt goodbye. By comparison, I’d sell my left kidney to the gay mafia if it’d add one day to the life of one of my family members or Dr. Fiancée.

All that said, I now very much see animals as a gift from God. Every child in Sunday School knows that the first job of the first man was to name the animals; God Spared the animals along with humanity when He Commanded Noah to build an ark. Clearly, our relationship with animals is meant to be a fruitful and productive one.

Further, anyone who has ever owned a dog (or even a cat) knows that these creatures have personalities. Sure, I imagine jellyfish don’t lead rich inner lives, but it’s wild and amusing to me how dogs can possess such a range of personalities. Murphy is aloof and anxious, but very much the queen of her domain. Dr. Fiancée’s three-legged mutt is sweet and loving, but has her sassy moments like Murph. My parents’ two rat terriers are cousins and/or half-brothers of some kind (I think they share a grandparent), but despite their genetic similarity, their personalities are nearly opposite (much like human siblings at times).

Do I think dogs have souls? Perhaps not in the way that humans do. But there is a life and intelligence behind the eyes of a dog. Even the most forlorn, neglected mutt possesses something of a shimmer behind his sad eyes. The fact that the eyes can even express emotions suggests there is something deeper there.

Of course, the evolutionist wags will snarkily remark, “we just bred them to reflect qualities we like.” Perhaps. Nevertheless, I’m struck by how human dogs can be, while also being something quite different—in some ways, something even better.

All points worthy of speculation, idle or otherwise. What do you think, dear readers?

With that, here is 12 September 2024’s “TBT: Remarkable Animals“:

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: analysis