Blood On The Saddle Bag

Howdy, Saddle Pals, it’s that time again. I see that Pony Express rider slowly trudging into town carrying a heavy loaded sack of fan mail from all you boys and girls. Mr. Pony Express Man says, “Next time get a stage coach or a train to carry all that mail, Walker. You’re killing me and my horse with all them messages!”

Ha,ha,ha…Thank you, boys and girls, for all your cards and letters sent to yours truly, Crash Walker c/o Wranglers’ Canyon, brought to you by the good folks at Bosco, the United California Bank, and the kind folks at Honeywell. Let’s dive in to some of these letters now and see what’s shaking!

Tito Polanco from far-off Honduras says, “Dear Crash, I like the way you shoot your gun. How many bullets does your gun carry? Can you kill at the least ten bad men with your gun? Mumblin’ Pete always makes me laugh. It is good he can kill. Please excuse my bad English”. No problemo, Tito.

Darrell Duares from Detroit, Michigan writes in and says, “You should have Sailor Jerry get into some bad shoot-em-ups, his hook holding a Colt .45, yeah that would be bad”. It sure would, Darrell!

By the way, kids, don’t forget to ask your Mom and Dad to buy you the Crash Walker repeat action rifle from Remco, it is the authentic replica of the one I use on my show. All you need to do is add your Greene Stick-Em Caps to get your barrel smoking and you’re all set! You can shoot bad men along with me while you’re watching the show, Tito.

Three cheers to the Osaka, Japan chapter of the Crash Walker Official Fan Club. Moshi moshi, boys. Lookin’ real sharp in those ten gallon hats and six guns. You’ll be ropin’ steers in no time, just like your hero Crash. Sayonara!

EXTRA! EXTRA! Got a few requests for pen pals in Yugoslavia, Cypress and Finland who want to chew the fat on all things Wranglers’ Canyon. Anybody game?

Suzy Whitechapel, 16, from Cardiff, Wales wants to know when is Crash Walker going to fall in love and will she be a hard-ridin’ cowgirl? Well, honey, I don’t rightly know, there sure are a lot of fetchin’ fillies who tried to put the reins on me, with very little success, heh heh. All I’ve got to say, Suzy, is keep watching Wranglers’ Canyon and drinking your Bosco or whatever you kids in Wales drink.

Rolf Heine from Hamburg, Germany writes, "Saying what is Mumblin' Pete? Understand what he says, do you? My bad English you will excuse". Welllll, to tell you the truth I don't rightly know what Mumblin' Pete's saying, Rolf, but it sure do makes sense at the time. By the way, Rolf, is Hamburg next to Frankfurt? Your parts sounds like you German folks got some mighty good eats!

Well, that’s about all the time I have to get to your questions and requests. It sure was nice of you all to write to your old frontier pal Crash. Now don’t forget to do your homework, do your chores, be nice to your brothers and sisters, go to church on Sundays, drink your Bosco and watch Wranglers’ Canyon every Friday evening, 9 PM Pacific Standard Time and 10 PM Central Time, and may The Good Lord take a liking to you!

Tokyo Gore Police (Japan, 2008)

If the Chinese dazzled us with creepy psychic horror films like The Ring and The Eye, then Japan responded with insane, erotic fetish, over-the-top gore with humor to spare movies. The most sensational output comes from a genius make-up and special effects artist, Yoshihiro Nishimura. Nishimura references Salvador Dali as one of his biggest influences in the way he depicts distorted body parts in surreal settings. His sci-fi/horror classic, “Tokyo Gore Police” has enough erotica and surrealism to make Dali beam with pride. It serves up outrage the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the college revival house theater days of Jodorowsky, Makavejev, and crazy Fernando Arrabal.

Tokyo Gore Police is the story of Ruka (Eihi Shiina), a police officer for the Tokyo Police Corporation, a now-privatized police force who excels as an Engineer Hunter. Engineers are serial killers who have the ability to make their severed body parts morph into deadly weapons, whether it’s a chainsaw or a sawed-off shotgun, all courtesy of a mysterious stranger dressed in black named The Keyman (Itsuji Itao). It’s up to Ruka to find The Keyman and stop him from his evil task. Unfortunately, Ruka is a flawed person herself, a cutter who inherited her bad habit from her mother to punish herself from not preventing the murder of her father.

Just like Jodorowsky, though, the plot is almost secondary to the Garden of Surreal & Erotic Outrage breaking up the plot from time to time. In between action scenes you’ll be treated to:
1. Blood showering out of a severed limb like a wedding reception fountain.
2. Chainsaws flying straight into a man’s mouth and ripping open his head.
3. Commercials hawking cool cutters for teenage schoolgirls with cute colors and promising it makes “blood taste better”!
4. Punk kids on the subway chuffing down live earthworms and night crawlers. Yum!
5. Amputee leather slaves walking on prosthetic legs made of samurai swords.
6. The Keyman’s severed upper head grows two gun barrels that shoot out bloody ginsu knives.

Ruka’s colleague, Officer Barabara-Man (Jiji Bu), decides to let off steam by going to a kinky S&M club that specializes in back room sex with mutant girls, like a Snail Girl and a Girl with Crocodile Jaws Snapping Between Her Legs. Whoa! He picks Door Number 2 and gets the girl with the croc jaws who bites off his dick, which naturally provokes another Wedding Fountain of Blood. He gets the Engineer Key and needless to say, his empty crotch morphs into humongous red cock cannon! He takes his Gigantor cock cannon and goes berserk at police headquarters, firing deadly cannonballs at his fellow officers.

Ruka finally corners the Keyman in his crummy apartment, and instead of killing her confesses that he’s the son of the Police-sanctioned hit of her father, executed at an anti-police privatization rally. His father also killed by the now-privatized Police Corporation, he devoted his life as a genetic scientist by injecting himself with the DNA of psychotic killers like Ed Gein and Charles Manson, all bottled up and labeled in his laboratory. That’s right, another Mad Scientist movie! To Ruka’s horror she’s trapped by him with an Engineer key installed in her against her will.

In the meantime the Tokyo Police Corporation has gone completely batshit crazy and begin arbitrarily torturing and murdering citizens en masse, so Ruka hits the streets with her newly acquired Engineer mutation, one crocodile arm which rips the face off a policeman’s head. Now that Ruka knows who the fascist madman behind her father’s murder is she has a final showdown with him using her best samurai sword skills and that badass crocodile arm.

Tokyo Gore Police ends with the Tokyo Police Corporation no longer privatized, with the slogan in big screaming letters: MORE GORE COMING SOON! Love it or hate it, Tokyo Gore Police is punk as fuck and makes no apologies about itself. It’s easily the only movie that can kick any video game’s ass with a cock cannon around the block!

Also recommended: THE MACHINE GIRL, almost as demented as Tokyo Gore Police and well worth your time.

Manga Or Fashion Sketch

The world of manga has changed dramatically in the past few years , no longer the stronghold of Sailor Moon and other childlike comic strips, it has taken on a sophistication that is both exciting and startling to watch. More and more artists in the manga field are illustrating in less cartoony styles and utilizing styles that hover closer to full-on fashion sketches.

One of the most loyally followed artists is Akira Amano, artist and writer of “Hitman Reborn!”. According to Wikipedia, “HItman Reborn!” is the story of “a young boy named Tsunayoshi Sawada, who finds out that he is next in line to become the boss of the most powerful Mafia organization called Vongola, the Vongola Family. As such, the Vongola's most powerful hitman, a gun-toting infant named Reborn, is sent to tutor "Tsuna" on how to become a respectable boss”. It was one of the most popular manga series in Japan.

What makes “Hitman Reborn!” and other series unique from the others is that the males are depicted as hyper-stylized, brilliantly put-together and more than a little sleek (read: feminine) in the way they’re depicted. As a result, many of them are drawn in a style that more closely approximates fashion sketches than as cartoons or superheroes.

This raised a few questions; are these new artists failed fashion designers or are they simply highly evolved cartoonists? This sleek, verging-on-androgynous artwork has consequently opened doors comics forefathers like Chester Gould and Will Eisner never dreamed of, initiating a decadent new comics genre unique to Japan: Yaoi.

Yaoi, to put it mildly, is homoerotic manga porn written and drawn by women showing delicate boys having sex. This is mostly aimed at women who seem to go for this sort of thing; these comics don’t really have much of a large gay following - many Japanese gays find the comics ridiculous. And yes, there’s a Yaoi-Con (of course) that takes place annually in San Francisco. Last year it moved down to Long Beach, California.

The bottom line, as I see it, though is that there’s something happening here, what it am is prezackly clear. Comics are looking more like swanky fashion sketches, and Japan leads the way in providing a highly sophisticated alternative to all that bad ultra-vi cluttering up the racks at the comic books stores.