The Checkout Counter #36
October 2025

Possession

Titane

Phantom of the Paradise

farewell to the month of strangeness, disguise, weird websites, and horror flicks. i started off my october in shorts, swatting at mosquitoes, and now i'm wrapped in blankets and can't leave the house without a big coat. thanks, as always, for reading 🎃

Film

  • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, 2014damn this soundtrack bangs. funnier than i was expecting. another entry into the surprise heterosexual vampire movie collection—the romance didn't work for me at all, but that's fine. the image of a chador-clad vampire skateboarding in the middle of the night is hard to beat.
    Horror, romance. Arash cares for his heroin-addicted father and struggles to make ends meet. A vampire stalks his neighborhood.
  • Possession, 1981obviously trite to say, but isabelle adjani and sam neill are so incredible in this. they have such good, unnerving gazes. i don't really have the words to describe this movie in any new or meaningful way so i'll just conclude with the thought that it's a remarkable watch and berlin looks great.
    Horror. After asking her husband for a divorce, a woman begins exhibiting increasingly strange behavior.
  • Titane, 2021has maybe the most mesmerizing needledrop of the decade within its first ten minutes. this gave me such an adrenaline rush, i felt like i had to do laps around the block as the credits rolled lmfao. definitely watched a lot of the first thirty minutes through my fingers (the nose scene!). i did end up liking that initial atmosphere more; i was less entranced when the story took a turn into a slower family drama. so wild that this is agathe rousselle's feature debut—what a performance!
    Thriller, horror, drama, scifi. To save her life after a car accident, a girl has a titanium plate implanted into her head. Years later, she finds herself on the run.
  • Phantom of the Paradise, 1974wow! this is obviously a lot of fun with dazzling visuals and getups, but i was most surprised and touched by its earnestness. the titular phantom in that big silly helmet is endearing in the same way a sickly baby bird that fell out of its nest is. no compromises for art or he'll h(a)unt you to the ends of the earth. realest character ever. i love how he and everyone else looks and acts like cartoons.

    one of those "how is this not more popular" movies, though i guess its niche/cult status gives it a certain allure. it sure got me.
    Musical, comedy, horror. A songwriter seeks revenge on the music producer who stole his favorite singer and life's work.

Music

Comics

Articles & essays

Blogs

Around the web

  • What Else Is On?
    Monthly link roundups
  • Transit Maps
  • On The Internet Everybody Knows You Had A Dog
  • My Cool Blog
    Website template for Eleventy
  • New Work by Gary Larson
  • The Wikipedia article for Anatoli BugorskiAnatoli Petrovich Bugorski is a Russian retired particle physicist. He is known for having survived a radiation accident in 1978, when a high-energy proton beam from a particle accelerator passed through his head. [...] The beam passed through the back of his head, the occipital and temporal lobes of his brain, the left middle ear, and out through the left-hand side of his nose. [...] Bugorski understood the severity of what had happened, but continued working on the malfunctioning equipment, and initially opted not to tell anyone what had happened.

    ????????
  • Weird Web October 2025very happy that WWO returned for a second year! i made eight webpages this time around, and had fun messing with code i often couldn't really understand. everyone else's contributions can be viewed through the main link!

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