Cryptokubrology: Oh! Octopus

In "Cryptokubrology: 237 in Films of 1980 and Before," I asked for suggestions of other movies in which people noticed mention of "237s," before The Shining (1980) was released.

One such "237" was spied in the 1937 monster comedy Sh! The Octopus. It shows up as a room number, specifically here, with Marcia Ralston.

Sh! The Octopus is a 1937 comedy-mystery film produced by Warner Bros., directed by William McGann and starring Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins and Marcia Ralston. While contract players Herbert and Jenkins frequently appeared in the same picture, this is the only movie to present them as an actual team. The film's oddball qualities have made it something of a cult favorite.

Herbert and Jenkins play two bumbling detectives, who, in pursuit of a master criminal, The Octopus, find themselves inside a haunted lighthouse full of suspicious characters, including the titular character, who appears to be an actual octopus.

Reviews of this film rank talk of it as "dreadful" and truly difficult to watch. However, at "Trailers from Hell," Michael Schlesinger speaks of Sh! The Octopus as achieving near perfection in its genre. (See the original trailer here.) He also says there was a rock group that named themselves after the film

In the long discussion at "1000 Misspent Hours," Sh! The Octopus is viewed as "one of the few known specimens of a seemingly impossible genre, a parody of a parody. By all accounts, this movie was intended as a spoof of The Gorilla, which had itself been a spoof of contemporary spooky house mysteries like The Bat and The Cat and the Canary. Finally, and most importantly, Sh! The Octopus is quite simply one of the strangest and most utterly illogical mainstream movies of its— or any other— era."

That site notes that "Captain Hook (George Rosener, from Doctor X and House of Secrets), the one-handed caretaker, is a dangerously unbalanced man, and has a habit of flying into a homicidal rage whenever he hears the ticking of a clock."

Scott Ashlin, the site's reviewer, says, "The one thing stopping me from nominating Sh! The Octopus as the single stupidest horror or mystery film of the 1930’s is the disconcerting possibility that its creators understood exactly what they were doing."

As to Room 237, it may serve a special function in this film. After the lighthouse explodes, and the viewer assumes the movie is over, it is not.

There is a fade to a scene in a hospital where a major character "is on a bed, flailing about and being attended to. Turns out he fainted because of all those pills he was taking in the car at the beginning of the movie." Marcia Ralston and another actress "are nurses at the hospital, and [one] points this out in a manner that’s extremely similar to the final scene in Wizard of Oz 2 years later. So all that stuff that just happened? Never happened," writes the reviewer Stacia on April 15, 2008 (here).

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Marcia Ralston was married to Phil Harris, once upon a time.

Sh! The Octopus, according to some sites is written by Ralph Spence, based on The Gorilla (a 1925 play), also written by Ralph Spence. IMDb credits the writing to George Bricker (screen play), Ralph Spence (from plays by),  Ralph Murphy (from plays by), and Donald Gallaher (from plays by).

The movie was released on December 11, 1937. Schlesinger talks of it being targeted for Christmas of 1937.

The "Octopus" has taken on a sinister cryptopolitical meaning in recent years, with the book, The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith. As Google notes, "Originally released [in 1996] to critical praise, this book became a much sought-after classic in the underground of conspiracy literature - today commanding high prices on the book collector's market. The new paperback edition [from Feral House in 2004] carries Casolaro's conspiratorial insights and research into the post-911 world, for which it was a harbinger."

Also, the deeper twilight language of having the character "Captain Hook" in Sh! The Octopus is an enigma.  In 2010, I wrote of the mysterious series of deaths of young children, all killed in similar ways via hangings from hooks. The deaths often occurred due to coat hooks, sometimes in closets, sometimes in bathrooms. That essay appeared on January 24, 2010, under "The Peter Pan/Hook Deaths." I followed this on February 27, 2014, with "New Hook Death." In 2017, I updated this phenomena with a new posting.

BTW, Sh! The Octopus has a scene with a hanged man dripping blood, and lends itself to various twilight language interpretations.

Credit for this 237 discovery: Matt Hopewell.

Next Movie Shooting: August 5, 2016?

Could the next major theatrical mass shooting occur on August 5, 2016?

Remember Friday, July 20, 2012? James Holmes opened fire on the patrons at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, just as The Dark Knight Rises began, killing 12 and injuring 70 others. The night was the premiere evening for the film. (See also here, here, and here.)

Do you recall what occurred a year before that event? Early on Friday, July 22, 2011, a person dressed as a policeman (Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist) fired shots at Norway's Labour Party Youth Camp on the island of Utøya, injuring and killing over 90 people, mostly young people. There were about 700 people at the camp. The death toll for the shootings at the camp plus the bombings was set at 77. The same day, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Captain America: The First Avenger was widely released in the United States, which began with a battle between Nazis and the film's hero - in Norway. (See also here.)
The movie Suicide Squad opens on Friday, August 5, 2016. Is it subconsciously broadcasting the kinds of messages to those who might shoot up a movie theater?

I hope not, but stay tuned. And be forewarned.

What has happened on August 5ths in the past?

642 - Battle of Maserfield - Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald of Bernicia.
910 - The last major Viking army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward and Earl Aethelred.
1071 - Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes captured/Islam advances through Europe.
1305 - William Wallace, who led Scottish resistance to England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London for trial and execution.
1812 - War of 1812: Tecumseh's Native American force ambushes Thomas Van Horne's 200 Americans at Brownstone Creek, causing them to flee and retreat.
1973 - Arab terrorists open fire at Athens airport, kills 3 injures 55.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of World Trade Center bombing goes on trial.
2003 - A car bomb explodes in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel killing 12 and injuring 150.
2012 - Gunman opens fire on Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin killing six people and committing suicide.

The Joker returns.

The Hanging Woman: Harley Quinn hangs upside down in her prison cell.

Déjà Vu, Sync Quick News, and Hanging Man

For fans of Alan Abbadessa-Green's rather addictive frequent (usually on Thursdays) short video Sync Quick News, from Sync Book Press, the one on December 4, 2014, was, well, provocative. The Sync Quick News' "Cops Cameras and Cards" clicked on all pistols.

Mixing nicely with the content, I was struck by Green's use of a word - déjà vu - early in his news that I also found had popped up in the news I was following on the 3rd of December. It was that kind of week. 

Déjà vu, from the French, literally "already seen," is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event, feeling, or perception currently taking place has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not.

As it turns out, I was looking into a report of five people being shot outside a restaurant in Newport News Tuesday night, at about 8:20 pm, December 2nd. The telling name of the location: Déjà Vu Restaurant and Lounge, Newport News, near Norfolk, Virginia. The Déjà Vu site is attached to Wynnwood Plaza Hotel. The victims were ages 28, 32, 42, 45, and 59, and were together. One was a Navy sailor, and now the Déjà Vu is off-limits to Navy personnel.

Had I just heard some news from Newport? Or Newport News (oh ya, on November 28th)? Or Newtown? Or Newton? Was this the same story or another? And that restaurant name? Whoa. Oh, and yes, I was recently in Newport, Connecticut. 

"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just 'something that happened.' This cannot be 'one of those things'....This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance.…These strange things happen all the time." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

Alan Green's video news also, in and of itself, gave me a déjà vu feeling because it spent time talking about this Twilight Language's and the Mask of God's recent discussions of the Hanging Man Tarot Card.

My images were of the Hanging Man card and Heath Ledger's last character as a hanging man.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: Heath Ledger's final role.

This all linked to more syncs coming my way.

Heath Ledger and Andrew Keegan starred in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).

This is the week when celebrities and syncs became news.

According to Vice, actor Andrew Keegan started a new age temple and spiritual movement in Venice, California, called "Full Circle." (Venice Beach? Venice Beach? See here and here.)

"Synchronicity. Time. That's what it's all about," Keegan told Vice. "Whatever, the past, some other time. It's a circle; in the center is now. That's what it's about."

Andrew Keegan's last film role is an uncredited policeman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which, of course, starred Heath Ledger as the Joker.

What occurred also earlier in the week is that I randomly stumbled across a repeat broadcast of a Tosh.0 episode about "furries" (people who dress up as furred animals for fun, frolic, and sometimes sexual encounters). It gave me a deep déjà vu feeling watching Tosh's creepy scenario. But not because I had seen this Tosh.0 episode before, for I had not.

Originally broadcast on September 3, 2013, this specific one was noted as being from Season 5, Episode 5. You can see the video entitled "Furries-Kid," here.

In one of his "web redemptions," Tosh decides to stage a "celebrity" furries party. The associated identities assigned to various characters in the sketch are, well, coincidentally bizarre and déjà vu.

Tosh, on the left above, with skin-colored tights on, and elaborate fake body fur, says he is "Robin Williams."

At the "party," which is sort of a furrie déjà vu version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the "Williams" character goes around identifying the costumed "celebrities."

Coming to the pictured pink furrie above, who is engaging in motions suggestive of masturbation and hanging himself, "Williams" identifies this is furrie as "Philip Seymour Hoffman." What?

This was prophetic, in a way, as far as these two characters exchanging behaviors.

[Little did I know how "prophetic." See "Eyes Wide Furry."]

Back to what took place after Tosh's fiction was produced, in an act of parasuicide, the real Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, died February 2, 2014 (Groundhog Day), with a syringe in his arm. Hoffman's death was caused by "acute mixed drug intoxication, including heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine," according to the New York City's Medical Examiner's office. 

This all seemed a bit of déjà vu, for Hoffman's friend, Heath Ledger's autopsy result of February 6, 2008, from the same medical examiner's office said Ledger had died "as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine." Heath Ledger was 28, when he died January 22, 2008. 

By the way, the film Groundhog Day (1993) is the ultimate cinematic treatment of déjà vu, when the same day repeats over and over again.

A few months after Hoffman's death, on August 11, 2014, the real Robin McLaurin Williams, 63, died in his Paradise Cay, California, home. The Marin County Sheriff's Office deputy coroner stated Williams had hanged himself with a belt and died from asphyxiation.

Williams hanged himself (in the real world). Not Heath Ledger nor Philip Seymour Hoffman (who both, through film and in Tosh's fiction, did hang). The fiction foreshadowed the reality, however, among friends, in a strange twist of programming. 

(L-R) Clifton Collins Jr, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bennett Miller, Heath Ledger, and Abbie Cornish.

Heath Ledger (far right) next to Philip Seymour Hoffman, at the 2006 Oscars with George Clooney, Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Above and below: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams in Patch Adams (1998).

On December 1st, just by "coincidence," I found myself watching Magnolia again. And there was Philip Seymour Hoffman again.

Phil Parma [Philip Seymour Hoffman]: "Why are frogs falling from the sky?" ~ Magnolia, 1999. 

Why, indeed?

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See also, update, here.

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