h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I loved your resistant take on this movie. Islanders are differently mentated and that is one of the things that makes Earth so fascinating.

Glad you enjoyed it – have you watched 'The Wicker Man'?

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I am not sure that I saw the original---just the silly remake with Nick Cage. I've never been too big a fan of Hammer films.

Technically it isn't a Hammer film but British Lion (just like all American animated films are often called 'Disney', all British horror films from the 1950s+ seem to be labelled 'Hammer') though it does star Hammer stars Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland. Definitely well worth watching – although by reading this the ending's been spoilt!

I'm still waiting for Awix's reaction…

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I did warn him about this...I'm sure he will be along...

Two things I found interesting about the film:

That idea you've recognised, that the community is bad and the detached outsider is good, is an essential element of the latter stages (i.e. Existentialist) of the Enlightenment project, films like Straw Dogs and government schemes to obliterate communities in inner city slums were all part of this social science-driven idea that individuals needed to be freed from the chains of community.

The other thing that struck me about the film was that the villagers were happy during the human sacrifice; this always seemed historically inaccurate to me. In order to get the gods to change their behaviour, the community would be forced to do the most powerful, desperate thing they could imagine: to kill another human being. The atmosphere at a human sacrifice would not have been happy and relaxed.

As Flanders and Swan noted, Summer is a cumin in got itself on the banned list - people were singing cuckoo a bit too lewdly.

It is conversations like this that convince me that h2g2 is a unique internet venue...

As Archie Rice so famously said: "You've been a good audience. You've been a very good audience. Tell me where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you."