Stink Lines

I seldom do movie reviews, mostly because I don’t know what I am talking about, but I will make an exception today. The circumstances demand it.

This weekend Rachel and I watched The Mystery of the 13th Guest, a murder thriller from 1943. It’s on Netflix. I am hereby declaring it the worst movie ever made. I know the field is broad and rich, littered with many worthy contenders, but this one fails on multiple levels with elaborate cinematic pratfalls. I believe this is a rare find because it is a movie very few people know about. You are getting this valuable review free of charge, unless you are a paid subscriber, in which case it is costing you roughly 31 cents.

The Mystery of the 13th Guest was directed by the weirdly prolific William Beaudine, famous in Hollywood for doing low-budget schlock films badly but quickly — “worst but first” is the self-deprecatory journalism cliche that applies to crappy news stories written quickly.

Beaudine was nothing if not efficient. Sometimes he shepherded his movies into the can in a week or less. In their book “The Golden Turkey Awards,” the film-critic Medved Brothers called Baudine one of the worst directors who ever lived, anywhere, in any time period. They nicknamed him “One-Shot,” because he always seemed to shoot just one take, even if actors flubbed their lines or special effects kerplopped.

Beaudine favored a certain genre of amalgamized, twinned garbage. His last two feature films, both released in 1966, were the horror-westerns Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. You get the picture, as it were.

This movie, however, was not deliberately campy. It was inadvertently campy, which is far more disreputable.

The 13th Guest is stinko for a number of reasons — the dialogue is as wooden as a tongue depressor, and the efforts at comic relief are laughably lame and extravagantly overacted. When a character is showing anger or exasperation, you can practically see little comical steam lines rising from his head. At one point, a tough-guy police character has been dissed and throws a melodramatic dirty look at his tormentor — at which point Rachel immediately belted out the ancient, cardboard Depression-era cliche that the guy clearly was thinking and should have been muttering and sputtering aloud: “Why, I oughta….”

However, the amazing thing is that the movie never bothers to explain anything, plot-wise, in even a rudimentary way. It finds it has no duty to the viewer. Even Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outerspace, often considered the worst movie ever, hewed to a sort of tortured internal logic. It is true that Plan Nine never quite explained how the act of reanimating the dead fit into the plans of the gay aliens, but that is a minor detail compared to the enormous vacuum of facts in The 13th Guest.

In this movie, gigantic questions about the storyline go unaddressed. Gaping holes in the plot are allowed to remain. As you watch it with another, you keep blurting things like, “But wait, why did he …?”

The questions enumerated below, which are very specific, are not spoilers. The plot is so inane that no reveal can truly sabotage it. They will only enhance your enjoyment of the movie, acting as a sort of study guide. The Mystery of the 13th Guest is a magnificent, transparent work of storytelling ineptitude. There is no real suspense, no disclosures that come as a shock.

I would not be sharing this if it were not important. We could be talking today about the hilarious Republican meltdown in Congress, for example. So:

Why did the murderer hire the world’s greatest wisecracking detective to investigate the murders that HE, the murderer, was committing? This is never explained. It seems like a bad idea.

Who was the mysterious 13th guest? This was never explored even though it is, you know, the title of the movie.

Why, when police discovered that the victims had been electrocuted by being lured into answering a telephone that had been wired to a gigantic dynamo, turning into an electric chair — why did they look at the telephone, see that its cord disappeared mysteriously into a bookcase, and then …. not follow it? They didn’t. They shrugged, concluded that there was probably nothing behind the bookcase, and then didn’t check it out to see if maybe there was something nefarious back there, such as, you know, a secret room with a gigantic electric dynamo and a murderous maniac hiding within?

Why is the dialogue so terrible? Why does someone say “Marjory, your soul must look like the inside of a vinegar bottle,” a line that, when you deconstruct it, makes no sense at all.

Why was the death mansion, which had been unoccupied for 13 years and where all the furniture had drop-cloths over them, and were covered in dust — why were the lights in the house, and the phone system, still working? Detectives wondered briefly who the heck was paying for that, but then shrugged and dropped the issue, even though a simple inquiry to the electric company would likely have revealed the dastardly electrocution-murderer before he killed again, many times? As I said, with more foreboding than the movie ever delivers, despite its electrocuting-telephone theme, is that there are no disclosures that come as a shock.

Why was there an unexplained dank dungeon in the basement, beneath a creaking trap door? Is this a feature of many houses? Do Realtors brag about dungeons?

When people kept turning up electrocuted in the house, why did police not station someone there watch and see who was electrocuting people?

Why did the murderer, who for weeks on end was hiding in that secret room out of sight of everyone, always wear a full-face leather mask, apparently made out of a real face? Was there any reason other than the fact that the movie didn’t want the audience to know who the guy was? (Hint: There wasn’t.)

Speaking of faces, why did a highly reputable plastic surgeon agree to surgically alter the face of a woman so she looked entirely like a specific other woman — a medical impossibility, but let’s chalk that up to willing suspension of disbelief — without ever suspecting that there might be a heinous explanation for such a bizarre request?

Why was the woman who apparently agreed to have her face become the face of another woman — why was she never identified? We have no idea who she was or exactly why she did it.

Why was a police officer assigned to the case as stupid as a hamster? And why did he keep falling asleep on the job, literally, and then waking up in Atlantic City in the back of a cab? What was up with that?

Why did the murderer commit his crimes? He appeared to have no motive whatsoever. There was nothing in it for him and he was not crazy.

This was a remake of a previous movie based on the same premise from the same work of fiction. The Thirteenth Guest, which starred Ginger Rogers. Gingerly, as it were, the many reviews in the 1940s were aching to be kind to the beloved Ms. Rogers, so they tactfully and backhandedly point out that the 1943 remake was even worse than the original. The final question is — the final mystery of The Mystery of the 13th Guest, is why was this movie ever made?

So here is the Gene Pool Gene poll question of the day…

Here is today’s episode — a recent Gene Pool feature — from my irresponsible 1998 pseudo-medical book “The Hypochondriac’s Guide to Life. And Death.” Each episode features a seemingly insignificant symptom that might mean an incoming fatality barreling down on you:

“Itching: Doctors call this ‘pruritis,’ which makes it sound vaguely dirty and exciting. Alas, it is just itching. When itching is localized, the diagnosis is relatively simple: Seborrhea, dermatitis, athlete’s foot, scabies, lice. It is when the itching is generalized that all sorts of terrible possibilities arise. If it is centered in the feet or the lower half of the body it can be one of the first signs of Hodgkin’s disease, a potentially fatal cancer of the lymphatic system. Generalized itching can signal a form of leukemia. It can be the very first symptom of lung cancer, ovarian cancer, or prostate cancer. It is almost always the first symptom of Hanot’s cirrhosis, a life-threatening liver disease of middle-aged women. And then there is mycosis fungoides, the final ring of itching hell.

“Mycosis fungoides is a rare, galloping skin tumor. It starts with itching. You ignore it. Then, sometimes, years go by symptom-free. Then the itching returns with a vengeance. Then your body erupts into patchy discolorations. You resemble a dalmatian. Then the discolorations spread. You resemble a guernsey cow. Then the tumors become what the medical books describe as “tomato-like.” Then things start getting really ugly…”

Okay, now we enter into the famed real-time Q and A and O (observations) portion of the Gene Pool, in which I respond to your questions and observations. Many of today’s q’s and o’s were in response to my Weekend call for strange knacks and talents and odd superpowers you might have. Reminder: If you are reading this in real time, please keep refreshing the page to get new observations and responses.

Q: I am curious about your quote "humor and tragedy are made of the same substance, like matter and energy" and would request a more detailed explanation. My parents were at a charity event tonight for their synagogue, a Jewish comedy show, at the end of the least funny week for Jews in recent memory. The event was of course planned months in advance, but the timing is certainly interesting. And certainly we could all use some laughs right now. 

A: I will revert back once again to my favorite quote about humor, by Dave Barry.   I once asked Dave to define “a sense of humor” for a special bizarre encyclopedia issue of Tropic magazine, where we explained the truth about odd things.  Dave spent two days thinking about it, and finally wrote: “A sense of humor is a measurement of the degree to which you realize we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason.  Laughter is how you release the anxiety you feel about this.”

This doesn’t mean everything warrants immediate deconstruction in a funny way. Time matters, too. I would not try to be funny, now, about Gaza and Hamas and Israel.

Q: My superpower — Years ago, in my single days, I was at a party of twenty somethings. Joviality reigned. I was conversing with a young lady and, for some reason, I bragged that a former girlfriend could remove her bra without the necessity of having to remove any outer garment . The sporting gal that I was chatting up said every girl could do that and then she proceeded to fiddle and fangle and soon she yanked her bra from her blouse sleeve. Well, hot damn. But wait, but wait. In quick order, every lady in the room Houdinied their bras from beneath their clothing. That’s when I realized my super power was being able to get a room full of young women to shuck their brassieres. Like Peter Parker, I realized that with great power came great responsibility so I have never again deployed my gift. I’m awaiting some world-saving need to do so.

A: This is an excellent anecdote!  Well explained, with a nice twist at the end.  Speaking of a nice twist at the end, when I was about 20 my trick was that I bragged, in public settings – in bars, at parties and such – that I could unhook a woman’s bra, through her shirt, in five seconds or less.  Obviously, I only actually performed this feat when challenged and specifically authorized to attempt it.    And I could.  It’s a trick I taught myself, with a girlfriend.  You have to pinch and roll the back-strap in your fingers, at its clasp.   

I loved the stunned looks on faces.   And it always got laughter, particularly from the “victim.” .  Some girls/women just kept partying hearty but others crossed their arms and headed for the ladies’ room.

No, I haven’t practiced this rare talent in 50 years.

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now, on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Stink Lines… “ ) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to roughly 1 p.m. ET today.

Send in questions and observations here, to this special orange button.

Q: Which do you think would be worse as a pitcher...giving up a hit on the first pitch of the game and then retiring the next 27 batters, or retiring the fist 26 batters and giving up a hit on the 27th (not including the case a couple of years ago in which the umpire admitted he missed the call)?

A: This is an odd question.   Of course the first is better.   It even happened, and more dramatically than that.  Here is the story. 

The second is awful.   I watched this happen in real time, to Mike Mussina.  He was ONE STRIKE away from a perfect game.  Here is the final moment. 

Q: Have any comments on people walking out on Dave Chappelle’s monologue when he criticized Israel?  

A: Boy, this is turning into a comedy analysis clinic.    The story is too vague for me to make a judgment, because – like so much inept reporting about standup – it doesn’t explain if Chappelle was going for humor, and, if so, how successful it was.    Yeah, I think he should be able to be political, even politically objectionable to a portion of his audience.   I also think they should be free to leave.  I also don’t understand why they claimed they felt “unsafe.” 

Q:  I can recite the entirety of A Midsummer Night's Dream from memory, and used to do so to pass 2 hours on long drives.

A: I can do Prufrock.  Yours is a far greater accomplishment but also far more trivial.   AMND is frippery.  

Q:  My knack is parallel parking. I can get into any space anywhere on either side of the street. Unfortunately, back-up cameras have totally destroyed any bragging rights conferred by this skill. With a camera on your back bumper and little lines on a screen, about any trained monkey can now safely slip into a spot on the side of the road. -yellojkt

A:  Hello, yellow, my bete noir.   It’s been a while.   As you probably know, I share both this talent and the distaste for autopark and backup cameras.  They have taken away our dignity, yours and mine.  

This is one of my favorite columns.  It speaks to the subject at hand. 

Q: Can cross one eye and (slightly) wiggle my ears. Can also do a variety of mimey (and therefore, to most people, loathsome) things such as pulling invisible ropes and walking with an invisible walker. I wish you'd do your egg trick on Nov. 17 (for 14 seconds, so we don't have to buy the law firm a new carpet). – Melissa Balmain

A: Hi, Melissa.  Melissa is an Invitational star and the editor of Light, an excellent online magazine devoted to light verse, or doggerel.   November 17 is the date of a Light Verse poetry reading in DC, in which I will participate.  Whether I will juggle eggs will depend entirely on whether I have regained the skill by then. 

Q: My greatest talent is to make a particular noise in the loudest way anyone has ever heard, the “shhhh” noise. In middle school, the people around me, if there was some babble going on and the teacher was trying to get order, would implore me, “<last name>, make the noise!” I would and the room would fall into a stunned silence. I have to admit it’s deafening. I also have a loud stage whisper, it’s clearly conversationally audible. I can also whistle in tune: this has been called-on on stage, but it’s not really that unusual. I can also keep whistling and keep pitch both exhaling and inhaling, so I never have to stop to inhale. You have to adjust pitch a bit each time you change over and I’m not as loud when inhaling.

A: That last thing explains how we harmonica players can keep going without appearing to take a breath. 

Q:  A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her nameplate that her name is Patty Whack. "Miss Whack, I'd like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday." Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it's okay, he knows the bank manager. Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some collateral. The frog says, "Sure. I have this," and produces a tiny porcelain elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink, and perfectly formed. Very confused, Patty explains that she'll have to consult with the bank manager and disappears into a back office. She finds the manager and says, "There's a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral." She holds up the tiny pink elephant. "I mean, what in the world is this?" 

The bank manager looks back at her and says, "It's a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone." 

A: Okay, that is unbelievably terrible.  Thank you. 

Q:  I have a ... thing I do. I don't know if it counts as a knack per se, or would properly be considered more akin to a personality or neurological disorder. Any time I see a number -- address, telephone number, someone's SSN or birthday, what have you -- I factor it. Or I add up all the digits. Or both, if the number is divisible by 3. I even get a little excited if the number has numerous and/or unusual factors. There's a house in our neighborhood with the number 67320, and I get a little frisson every time we walk by it because it is divisible by 5, 8, 9, 11, and 17.

A:  I count by tens every time I am doing something, like filling a coffee carafe with water, measuring out the time it takes to fill by counting backwards from ten, as in a rocket countdown….  “10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 zero.  And again 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 zero.    I have no idea why I do this.  It is not necessary to know how many unmeasured ten secondes are required to fill a carafe. 

Q: What did you think of the long Jim Jordan profile that ran in the WP a few days ago? I read it with interest, thought the wrestling angle was illuminating, if not exactly unexpected, and was gobsmacked to find millions of indignant comments from readers who were outraged by what they saw as a puff piece glorifying Jordan. Many of them also complained that it was too long and so they didn't read it, or didn't read all of it, or were so horrified by the headline that they refused to read any of it and went straight to the comments to express their ire. It seemed to me that these responses demonstrated both the nonexistent attention-span of many readers and also the poor reading comprehension skills of those few who bother to read. Am I mssing something?

A: You missed nothing.  The man came off as a brute, a maniac.    And it was by two of the best sportswriters alive. 

Q: Tell us just the set-up lines, not the punchlines, of several jokes you would never tell publicly.  

A:  Nope.  I have about ten but no way.  The only one of the ten I can tell is this:    Why do jews wear those little beanie hats?  Because the little propeller costs extra. 

Now, a fair question is, why can I say that for humor?  And I think there’s a good answer, and it’s not just that I am Jewish.   It is that it is about a ridiculous, outdated stereotype that has no power to injure anymore.  Jews are no longer derided for allegedly being “cheap.”  

  Actually, I just heard a Woody Allen routine from 1963 on the Steve Allen Show.   He ended with a subtle Jew joke.  Not framed as a Jew joke, but it was.   At the end of his act, he took an old pocket watch,  a really beautiful old antique, allegedly to see how much more time he had before the camera. .   And he said it was one of his prized possessions.  He said “on his deathbed, my grandpa sold it to me.”

Q: You wrote: “I hate to believe [Trump's popularity] is about the essential worthlessness of 40 percent of our population," I struggle with this every day. To contemn Trump himself is as easy for me as it is for your typical subscriber. The same goes for the dingbats in his orbit or "MAGA types" in the abstract. The circles I can't square are those actual human beings I know and respect - my softball coach, a childhood friend's mom, and almost the entire Appalachian branch of my family tree - whose approval of Trump's actions is directly proportional to my disgust. What should I do with these people? Never talk about politics in their presence? Try to persuade them to change their opinions? Cut them out of my life entirely? I'm ashamed to admit that I've mostly opted for the last one. Is this something you wrestle with, Gene? - E from NoVA

A:  I don’t personally wrestle with it because I don’t believe i know a single person – anyone I care about – who is a Trump enthusiast.  Not a single person.  I do have one guy I used to work with – I used to know him well when we were both in our 20s – but we haven’t met in 40 years.   Recently he wrote to ask me if I was still a fan of Biden, and I said sure, pretty much, and he was disgusted by this.  

“What’s to like about Joe Biden?Do you like the US being destroyed?”

I asked him how Biden was destroying the U.S., and this is what he wrote: 

“Pointless Ukraine War

Open Border

Drag Queen story hour

Political DOJ”

This is a brilliant guy.  Author of several books. 

I wrote back:

“I am bothered by none of this.   We are as politically different as possible, dude. 

Drag queen story hour?  Really.  This frosts your shorts?

The Ukraine war is not pointless.   Our participation, at the level we're at, might even be a masterstroke of geopolitical strategy. 

The economy is surprisingly strong. 

I don't see a political DOJ.

The border has been effed up for 30 years.   Biden is committing more money and people than his predecessors.  It is not at "open border."  

Just one question really needs to be asked:  Would you vote for Trump over Biden?  Because if you would, our conversation in both directions is pointless.”

He said he would.   And that was that.  

Just as added fillip, not that it needs to be said, but the most excellent Jeff Tiedrich, who writes a substack jefftiedrich@substack.com, has a litany of things he often lists and elaborates on:  

“Lately we’ve been so focused on Little Donny F—face’s legal travails that it’s easy to forget that the quadrice-indicted twice-impeached popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring witness-tampering disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering language-mangling serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating weather-map-defacing horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 91-count fluorescent tangerine shitbag is also a total f-ing lunatic — and a gross pig.”

That last diatribe, by Tiedrich, was in part occasioned by a recent report that Trump once asked Melania to walk around Mar-a-Lago in a bikini, so other guys would see what they were missing out on. I kid you not.

Q: To your list of questions about The 13th Guest, may I add....why did you waste an evening watching it? I'm younger than you and I don't even watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000 anymore, although I enjoyed it immensely back when I wasn't conscious of not having enough time left to watch all of the GOOD movies/read all the good books I haven't gotten to yet.

A: Because it was hilariously bad, and we didn’t know that when we watched it. We like old movies. Now I’m really glad I saw it.

Q: Two-part question: 1) Did anyone write in to brag about their knack for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, or so forth; and 2) Was said brag misspelled, mispunctuated, or otherwise comedically notable?

A: I got one like that. Not gonna hold the person up to ridicule.

Q: Assuming there are still kids who haven't been warned away from Casa Manteuffel-Weingarten, what do you plan to hand out on All Hallows Eve, besides advice ?

A: Our dog hates people who come to the door. We haven’t decided how to handle it yet. I was going to say I was leaning toward the old reliable apples with razor blades, but decided I’d get ganged up on by the Internet posse.

Q: In our house, we are unable to commit to anything that might take longer than 30 seconds to fix it if we change our minds. And I say "30 seconds" to be generous to ourselves, because it might be more like 3 or 4 seconds. Basically, if we can't be certain it will be forever, we can't do it. Leading to a large collection of framed posters, paintings, etc. sitting on their bottom edge in various spaces of the house, because hanging anything up would likely lead to disagreement about exactly where it should be hung, and then it would have to be moved. By disagreement, I mean, of course, that I would hang it up and I would be perfectly happy with it, but my wife (who claims superior aesthetic sensibility) would declare this to be appallingly wrong because it needs to be moved an inch, or it needs to be swapped with something hung up elsewhere. And I might do it, but I would silently seethe, because I hung it where I thought it was best in the first place. And if I do move it, she will insist that I agree that it is better in the place where I privately think it is less good, and there can be no peace unless we verbally agree with some realistic level of enthusiasm, carefully calibrated to indicate actual preference (which is a lie) but no sarcasm (which is the truth). So I don't hang things up.

A: I hang clocks up.   But only because you have to.  

Q:  From pumpkin spice to wartime reporting, here we go. I found the NYT headline yesterday to be horrible for the simple reason that the qualifier on sourcing should have come first. "Palestinians say IDF bombed a hospital" and not "Israel bombs hospital in Gaza, Palestinians say." The NYT has not really backed down, although they did take down the original banner headline. As both of our fearless leaders are news veterans, please let me know why I am so obviously wrong. Lynne L.

A: You are not wrong.  They finally apologized yesterday, in a note to readers.

This is Gene. I am calling us down, and asking, as always, that you keep sending in comments, questions, and observations. I will deal with them on Thursday with the Invitational Gene Pool, which is being recognized more and more, like Frederick Douglass.

Here is the question and observation button: