Word: shocker
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...freshman seminar booklet you received over the summer can be a shocker. You may have imagined narrow fields of expertise at Harvard, but the obscure snippets of academia which make up freshman seminar courses are probably your first encounter with just how erudite and moldy some professors...
...most memorable portrayals in recent films were of twelve-year-old prostitutes, and they were played by girls who really were twelve?Brooke Shields in Louis Malle's misty legend of 1917 New Orleans, Pretty Baby, and Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese's contemporary shocker, Taxi Driver. Each movie caused a mild outcry, but the general reaction was nervous acceptance. The phenomenon they dealt with was real enough; as Malle took to pointing out, you can hire a twelve-year-old whore any night on Manhattan's Eighth Avenue...
...there is Dracula, the latest in a long line of remakes, a frisky summer shocker that will give you a decent evening out but not a whole lot more. But what am I to tell Director Badham when he says to me, "I played by your rules for good horror movies. I got a smooth script and a great cast: Laurence Oliver is Van Helsing. I kept it playful and tongue-in-cheek: huge, somewhat stylized sets, plenty of action, a leading lady with nice tits...
Alien is ugly in conception, but it achieves what it's after; Prophecy is an innocous shocker, dully made. Which is a surprise, because director John Frankheimer has made some wonderful thrillers; the least I expected was a little directorial style. Frankheimer keeps the killings relatively bloodless, but they're also flat and slightly rushed, lacking the witty camera set-ups or pungent, economical editing of a classic like Jaws. The baby mutants--popped little dragons--are rather cute, but they're straight out of Eraserhead. The big pig has no personality; at best, it suggests the nightmare...
Meanwhile, another shocker on prices provided further evidence that after just five months, the President's Stage II anti-inflation effort is flagging. In March wholesale prices zoomed 1%, or at a compounded, annual rate of 12.7%, the same as in February. Leading the price index was food, which jumped 1.2%, with particularly severe rises in beef and veal. So far this year, beef prices have increased at an annual rate of more than 100% and are expected to remain oppressively high for the rest of the year. The standard Administration forecast calls for inflation to moderate...