I Will Dance On Your Grave While Spitting, Or Something!?

Monday is about movies, sometimes TV. Today, I’m still on the search for a film, or a TV episode, on the thin thread of a memory…

I often think about how my grandfather and I didn’t really bond, but we were close, we weren’t really the same in any way at all — but I can see myself in some of what he was like, or I can now appreciate the way he was a whole lot more than at the time. I wouldn’t ever hope to be like it — he wasn’t tolerant, he was far too impatient, and was selfish about his hobbies; wasn’t giving at all.

He’d take me and my brother to Rush Munro’s — where we’d stare at the goldfish pond, and then sit in the old, wooden booths with an ice-cream. This was a big, big deal. And it was devastating the day I changed my order and chose chocolate. You see, Rush Munro’s would only do the ‘baby’ size in vanilla. So me and Grandma got given those, and my brother and Pop would kick back on a giant swig of chocolate from the bigger cone.

I think my brother tipped me off eventually, eh. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to catch on. And this was a disaster as far as the old boy was concerned.

We also would watch a lot of movies together. He took me to see all sorts of garbage. Leonard Part 6, a couple of the Star Treks and Supermans of that day. And Condorman. I loved that!

Some of them are only part-memories, because my grandfather would have to negotiate a five-year age-gap between me and my brother, and so often it was best that he just ignore that altogether and take us both to the movie he wanted to see. I’d be told to just go to sleep in the parts I didn’t like, or look at the ceiling. Or something like that.

So Tarzan. Or Battletruck. These are films that are imprinted. I have rewatched a few of the titles mentioned above, but it’s also quite nice to just let the half-memories hang too. I can’t recall all of them — and it’s only writing this right now that reminds me that he took me to Lethal Weapon, and Dragnet and, oh yes, For Your Eyes Only. Not all bangers, but not all trash.

School holidays were a great time to go to the movies, but back then there wasn’t the run of timed animated films. If you were lucky there was a Footrot Flats at Christmas. But just as likely the “summer holiday film” was something like Crocodile Dundee. There wasn’t a whole heap of animation is what I’m saying.

My grandfather never owned a VHS. A shame really, he’d have loved such a thing. He would have watched all manner of garbage.

When the telly wasn’t on — which was not often — he might listen to religious music, or Charley Pride. He’d listen to the radio a bit too, but mostly his own cassettes of country and classical, or talking books of the bible and other such fictions.

But Saturday nights were fun. We stayed there quite often. Tiny house. Not much to do. We would take our books, but the TV was always blasting. So after Country Calendar and maybe It’s In The Bag, it would be whatever the TV movie was — and if we were extra lucky we could stay up a bit late, sometimes there’d be an episode of Hitchcock or Roald Dahl or Hammer Horror or something along those lines. In the holidays we could sometimes watch The Sunday Horrors if we were staying there. My grandfather hooked me on the Planet Of The Apes franchise. And terrified me with Birds and The Swarm and Orca.

There’s one that’s forever in my head, a half-memory. I Googled it again just before. I tried really hard. I wrote:

millionaire has trophy wife he kills her with extreme noise then dances on her grave

A couple of times a year I try a few variants. The Google-box tells me that what I once watched on the Goggle-box was 1985 TV movie, Deadly Intentions. Except it wasn’t. (That does sound fantastic though, and I will be watching that A.S.A.F.P!) I’m told, also, by the machine, that it was an episode of Trophy Wife (nope!) That it was maybe I Will Dance On Your Grave: Cannibal Hookers (also no). And that it was all-time shocker video-nasty, I Spit On Your Grave (again no, and yes I’ve seen that, and its more recent remake — both vile).

It’s never any of the things that Google tells me (so many Dance on Grave variants) — but it’s only tonight, thinking about it again, that I might be misremembering the trophy wife’s name as ‘Selina’. Perhaps it’s Serena? Or something a million miles from either of those options. And it’s also possible that it wasn’t even an actual movie, but in fact an episode of the aforementioned (Hitchcock Presents…etc). So I modified my prompt all smooth-like:

millionaire has trophy wife he kills her with extreme noise then dances on her grave TV episode

Anyway, what I remember is: It had a millionaire guy, old guy, he had a trophy wife and she had cheated on him, she had boasted about being the trophy-wife too. And so he designed this special sound-room and he killed her by trapping her in it and playing ear-piercing frequencies. Literally-so. Her ears bled. And then burst. And he chuckled as she struggled and crumpled to the floor, and he said something, from his position at a control desk, through a microphone. And it was something like, ‘I shall dance on your grave, Selina’ (I am pretty-sure her name was Selina, or was until just earlier).

And then the next and final scene of the movie, or TV-drama, or whatever, was a limo pulling up to the gravesite. A sort of coda, really. You know the type of flash-forward that happens at the end of such films. And here, a pair of black shoes and some business trousers came into view. The chauffeur pressed play on a boombox. The millionaire-murderer-man does a wee soft-shoe-shuffle as the boombox plays some polite jazz. The camera confirms that it was absolutely “Selina’s” grave that was getting danced all on. And that is that. So, then the credits rolled.

I kinda like having that memory. And just leaving it there. But at the same time, if I ever solve the mystery, or somehow stumble upon this, or anything that looks almost close to it, I’ll be watching it all over again for sure. I’m a big fan of the TV movie and have folders filled with them on my YouTube account. They’re gloriously nostalgic, all at once woeful and taut and compelling. Both weird and wonderful.

But this one is the strongest memory of all those early experiences. Only thing is I can’t for the life of me remember an actual title, or the right way to go about finding anything that comes close.

One final memory though, related to this. And it probably informs who I am today, how I’ve turned out, and what I’ve become. As soon as that little soft-shoe dance ended, and the credits started to roll, I heard my grandfather’s voice breaking through over the loud volume of the TV. He was ready. He’d had enough.

“Time for bed”, he said. He stood up, turned the telly off, and told us all a goodnight. And that was that. We shut the lights off and talked in bed for as long as we could, until finally we could gather some sleep.