Christmas Tombs & Hanukkah Tigers

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If you're looking for a last minute gift idea for the holidays for a real movie buff (i.e. yourself probably) I highly and profoundly recommend snagging a copy of the new blu-ray double-feature set of Fritz Lang's so-called "Indian Epic" which consists of two 1957 flicks that were released back to back, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. They're really just one long movie divided by a cliffhanger, and they're really and truly insane. I did a Twitter thread whilst watching them in high amusement this past weekend...

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Thinking about redecorating in 2020, open to suggestions pic.twitter.com/JnpFuIXFn9

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 15, 2019

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... which only begins to hint at the camp -- and serious filmmaking as well! -- pleasures therein. This is Fritz Lang, after all -- dude knows how to make a movie. The influences these had on the Indiana Jones series are obvious -- it sometimes feels like the artifice and technicolor of a Douglas Sirk melodrama wedded with a Saturday Afternoon Serial, with everybody slathered in brown make-up and screaming in German. There's Bava lighting in caves and sexy dances under outrageously bosomed goddess statues, snake puppets and a zombie leper colony and quicksand. I mean it is obviously a product of its time, but WHAT a product. One of a kind. Well two of a kind. And don't sleep on lead actor Paul Hubschmid either...