Dancing: jubilant, energetic expression of the human experience, or chilling bizarro psychodrama? You be the judge.
Case #1
The South Seas Club is where the Hollywood elite of 1938 go to hobnob and to preen. Struggling actress wannabe Jenny and her ragamuffin boyfriend Cliff have often joked about coming here, and now here she is in the company of top leading man Neville Sinclair. When he leads her to the dance floor, even though the band isn’t playing (“I hear music,” he insists seductively, gazing into her eyes), it’s like a dream come true — or is it? Little does Jenny know that Neville Sinclair is a Nazi spy who’s using her to get to Cliff, who has the rocket pack prototype that the Germans want in order to create an army of flying commandos! But Cliff knows it and is speeding to Jenny’s rescue. We know it too, but that’s not all that makes the scene unnerving — it’s also Jenny’s palpable sense that this unfolding scene is too strangely perfect and too damn easy.
(From The Rocketeer.)
Case #2
What does a psychotic supercriminal do when besieged by an also-somewhat-unbalanced superhero after climbing to the belfry of an improbably tall gothic cathedral? Why, waltz with his pretty (but weirdly limp) hostage while his ineffectual goons eliminate themselves trying to take on the costumed hero one at a time.
(From Batman [1989].)
Case #3
Nothing says “joy of motion” like starving a chubby coed in a dank pit in your cellar while videotaping yourself in drag, dancing naked with your penis hidden between your legs.
(From The Silence of the Lambs.)
[Extra special thanks to sister Suzanne for some excellent suggestions for this post.]
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