Writings By Date| Panama: A Test of Endurance | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
But I was wrong. There was something worse than both things: the second movie. You can always tell when you're in for a treat when the first name to come up on the screen is Mario Van Peeples. This classic called Love Kills was no exception to that rule. Knowing that we couldn't change the channel, you'd think this was as bad as it could get...but you'd be wrong again. Our video "technician" apparently hadn't received the proper training, because the first 15 minutes of the movie played with the vertical hold off, flipping the picture 80% of the time, causing the viewers to lapse into some sort of hypnotic state. I can't remember a more painful television moment in my life. I could endure an eternity of watching Eyes Wide Shut over this, as I fruitlessly tried to bury my head in the seat to keep from getting a headache. But it was no use — you had to look. And what amazed me was that nobody even said anything. Maybe it's because they were all Spanish-speaking, and so not being able to read the subtitles spared them from falling victim to the film's evil trance. As I looked behind me, everybody on the bus sat there helpless, watching these tumbling images, and equally unable to look away. It was like some kind of mobile Clockwork Orange experiment.
Finally, he returned and jostled a few knobs to restore the picture to normal. After actually being able to see the pictures, I can't honestly say things got all that much better — this was, after all, a Mario Van Peeples film. Before long, you couldn't really help but follow along, if only to wish this painful saga to end.
As the movie neared its cliffhanger, and we were finally going to learn who the stolen jewelry trader "Tuna" was, the lights on the bus came on. People started to get up and assemble their things, while the movie continued to work up to its conclusion, yet something managed to jar them from their hypnotic state. That could only mean one thing: we were coming to the border.
