Fire in the Hole

This was the shout of the pyro team when I worked on Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four. Here’s the trailer for the movie: https://youtu.be/gcpmM-eTESI

It’s even got its own Wiki page, as it was never released and never intended to be released. It wasn’t any more terrible than any other of Corman’s films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ but apparently because of some deal with the contract, if the producers didn’t make a film they’d lose the rights. So they made a truly terrible film and never released it, and now it has some sort of cult standing. Apparently you can watch the whole thing on YouTube somehow. So that’s my recommendation this week. Go watch an outrageously terrible movie and laugh your way through the whole thing.

Here’s the IMDB page: The_Fantastic_Four_(unreleased_film) I even got credited as a camera assistant. Crazy that I’ve never looked.

So anyway, the pyro team were all ravers, as raves were the thing back then. Imagine a bunch of kids (no one was over about 25 on the FX team) who hadn’t slept in weeks from all the ecstasy or coke or whatever else they were doing all night and every weekend and they were working with explosives. To be fair, they were utterly professional and there weren’t any accidents, but the facial tattoos and red rimmed eyes didn’t inspire confidence.

I wish “fire in the hole” was a cry that made sense in the general public. It’s apparently a mining term, when miners were blasting a new part of a mine into existence. Beware, something major in the architecture of your life is about to happen, and it could be dangerous. To be followed by “run away, run away” https://youtu.be/M6lOpuI7rQI

Brave Sir Robin ran away, 
Bravely ran away, away. 
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled. 
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about 
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet, 
He beat a very brave retreat, 
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.

He is packing it in and packing it up 
And sneaking away and buggering up 
And chickening out and pissing off home, 
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge.

(from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) If you can’t manage something as silly as The Fantastic Four, then try this one. Always good for laughs.

At the moment, I want to cry “fire in the hole” every time I watch the news, after which I want to hide, curled under the sheets with a stuffed cow who somehow makes everything a little better. The power of Foro.