Belated Shortenings

It's going to be a busy bee month here around these parts, so allow me to busy bee yourselves with a few external suggestions:

Good friend of the Doll's House Elwood Jones invited me on his podcast, the MBDS Showcase, to discuss two very different, very memorable classics of vertically challenged cinema. Take a listen to his episode 36, where we discuss one of my personal favorites, Stuart Gordon's Dolls, along with the very special, very odd For Your Height Only. Just in case you didn't recognize the title, FYHO is indeed a James Bond, um, adaptation of sorts, starring 2'9 action star Weng Weng as the world's deadliest and least secretive secret agent. Check it out here!

Meanwhile, down south of the equator, good pal Chris Hewson has tackled a few family-friendly Shortening cookies over at Not This Time, Nayland Smith. Travel back to the grand ol' '90s for his review of the 18-episode Betty Davis-starring sitcom Maybe This Time.  

While you're there, take a look at his review of 1995's long-awaited cinematic Annie sequel (I know, who knew it was a thing?) Annie: A Royal Adventure.  

Joan Collins is in it, and she wears a fabulous hat. What more do you need?

That's fair. The world can never have enough Zelda Rubinstein wearing a great hat. Hence, I leave you with one more little bonus, courtesy of my podcast, The Feminine Critique. On our most recent episode, Christine and I tackle 1989's pop masterpiece Teen Witch, along with the recently released and confusing to pronounce The VVitch. Download* via iTunes or hear it here!

*Just in case it's unclear, download the podcast, not the movie. Pony up a few singles and pay to see the movie so that studios keep buying and releasing movies like The VVitch. We'll all be better off, and otherwise, I'm selling your soul to that nice lady in the woods and I won't feel a goat's eye bad about it. 

My Fellow Shorteners

The little people need to stick together. It's much easier to climb out of trouble when you can hop on someone else's shoulders. Particularly when said someone's shoulders are low enough to the ground for you to actually be able to hop on.

My point, of course, is that The Shortening is a team effort, and a glorious one when two of my favorite fellow bloggers tackle two of my favorite films. Deep down From the Depths of DVD Hell, Elwood Jones digs in to Stuart Gordon's 1987 classic Dolls. Head here for his thoughts, and stay tuned for next month's Mad, Bad, & Downright Strange Showcase podcast when I join in to say even more about Judy's adventures in doll-ville.

Further down south, the fabulous Chris Hewson of Not This Time, Nayland Smith attempts to TOP THAT with coverage of 1989's musical extravaganza Teen Witch. Set your broomstick GPS here to read his take on this piece of glory, co-starring Golden Lifts champion Zelda Rubinstein herself. 

Don't forget that if you have a Shortening post of your own, feel free to share it here in the comments section or email me at deadlydollshouse at gmail dot com (but you know, the right way). 

And the Golden Lifts Go To:

 Zelda Rubinstein

1933-2010

It's hard not to love this woman. Standing at just 4'3, the late actress is best known--to horror fans and the general public--as Tangina, the ethereal medium who helped save Carol Anne from not one, not two, but three Poltergeists between 1982 and 1988. Before her passing in 2010, Ms. Rubinstein had amassed a bevy of key roles on the big and small screen, with credits that were mainstream (Picket Fences,  Sixteen Candles), indie (Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Anguish) and belovedly cult (Teen Witch).

With a voice that somehow called to mind strawberry marshmallow fluff, Zelda Rubinstein was one of a kind when it came to performing. Like many genre fans who saw a sleepover party turn to screams once the PG-Rated Poltergeist showed up, I personally always had a soft spot for her unique presence whether it was on an episode of Tales From the Crypt or as the well-known voice that cooed "Taste the Rainbow" for Skittles ads. As I sat back to wonder which supporter of the vertically challenged qualified for a pair of Golden Lifts (the now yearly award bestowed upon someone awesome with a connection to shortness), Ms. Rubinstein seemed a natural Cinderella fit.

Upon poking a little more into the other side known as the Internet, I was thrilled to discover that not only was Ms. Rubinstein a wonderful actress, but more importantly, a truly wonderful person.



Having left a successful position as a lab technician to pursue the Hollywood dream (which found her late into her 40s) Ms. Rubinstein wasted little time in pairing her successful acting career with admirable work for better causes. Her first film role in the Razzie Award winner Under the Rainbow made her question how little people were seen by the film industry, leading her to establish the Michael Dunn Memorial Repertory Theater Company. Named after an Oscar nominated little person, the (now defunct) theater was composed of 16 fellow little people with the glorious mission statement "Become an actor and your world will get much bigger."

After stealing her scenes in Poltergeist, things certainly did for Zelda. She worked steadily from that point on and bravely used her growing fame to help bring awareness about the life-or-death importance of safe sex during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Playing a kindly mother encouraging her gay son to use protection, Rubinstein appeared in print and television ads for L.A. Cares at the risk of putting her career in jeopardy. Looking at this from a 2012 perspective, it's hard to believe that just 30 years ago, actors could be unofficially blacklisted for speaking about the kind of issue that can now be recognized through simple red ribbons, but in 1984, becoming a spokesperson for such a then-controversial (and sadly still so, in different ignorant ways) issue could have been a career killer.

 

Zelda Rubinstein knew that. And it didn't matter. This woman who had faced the odds since birth with what some would've called a handicap was willing to risk her newly prominent reputation to illuminate an issue that she cared deeply about, and one that the whole world should've addressed sooner.

Despite what our cultural atmosphere wants us to believe, movie stars are not superheroes. They (sometimes) have a specific skill set paired with great luck and with those tools, they can give great performances or mumble through a script and sometimes, take everything that comes with it to make a difference. Zelda Rubinstein didn’t necessarily change the world, but she piped up in a time when others didn’t while also establishing herself as a formidable screen presence. These posthumous Golden Lifts won’t do much, but personally, I for one am glad to have learned a little more about a woman who was far more special than I ever realized.

 Also, that dame could ROCK a sassy hat!

Salute Your Shorties: Near Dark's Homer

A decade before Kirsten Dunst was reanimated by a ponytailed Brad Pitt, the world met Joshua John Miller's sad and slightly foul-mouthed Homer.

We never learn the full story of Homer's vamping although obviously, it happened a few bites before puberty. Played by Joshua John Miller (son of Jason and little brother of Lost Boy Jason Patric), Homer is a monster, an evil, humanity-hunting killer with little sympathy for the necks he bites (one of them being surrogate sister Mae, whom he turned just after she graduated high school). You wouldn't want to buy the kid a coke in a roadhouse.

And don't you DARE mispronounce his name. No, I don't know how one mispronounces such a straightforward word myself but you can bet my solar deflecting overcoat I'm not about to find out.

On the other hand, what makes H-O-M-E-R such a lasting character is that he IS sympathetic. Like a teenage Frankenstein or vegetarian zombie, Homer shouldn't exist. As Antonio Banderas musically purrs in Interview With a Vampire, it's unnatural to turn someone so young, a supernatural crime that creates a physically forever preteen with an ever evolving mind. Remember when you were twelve? Life wasn't the worst it could get--I hold that eighth grade was made for such hyperbole--but you knew you were simply passing through a treacherous but thankfully temporary phase . You were SO CLOSE to being a grownup, to losing baby weight in a growth spurt that would make sense of your proportions. Your body was on its way to being whole.

Now imagine someone pressing pause.

Poor Homer. Even amongst his own kind, he can't ever REALLY find his place. Severen (the delectable Bill Paxton) treats him to all the pitfalls of being the youngest sibling, while Mae shifts her attention to the same-aged newbie Caleb.  It's no wonder that he'd want to create an equal in Sarah, a young human who could, if turned vampire, be the one and only creature to eventually understand what immortality at the wrong age means.

Of course (SPOILER ALERT) Homer never gets that chance although darnit if he doesn't die trying. Erupting in a pre-Buffy burst of flames, Homer chases his lost friend into the sunlight, screaming her name as he burns himself alive en route.

Now that's a way to go.

Credit certainly extends to Miller, just thirteen when filming this dense role. Perhaps the '80s best "little brother actor," Miller finds the perfect balance in bringing out the old frustrated soul dangerously lurking inside his misleading kid frame. He would go on to more iconic (at least by Doll's House standards) roles in the underlooked Class of 1999 and the glorious cheese that is Teen Witch, but it's Homer that made such a haunting stamp on genre cinema, and for his work, The Shortening raises an honorary glass of fresh squeezed neck juice from a little person stunt double on the set of a kids' film.