The Alex Winter/Brooke Shields/Randy Quaid 1993 B-movie extravaganza Freaked had very little to offer in the way of quality, but it did feature Mr. T wearing a dress. The plot was simply an excuse for make up artists to ply their fading trade in the few remaining years before computers took over the Hollywood effects biz. Still, Mr. T saying, "But now I know who I am. I can say to the world, 'Hey, this is me. I am woman, and I like me'" is about as good as movies can hope to get. Why am I bringing this up? I'm glad you asked.
See, the gruel-thin plot swirls around Winter's salesman character discovering that the chemical he's selling is actually dangerous and turning people into freaks (shock!). Of course, he too becomes a freak. At first, he's against it. He struggles, but then the other freaks start converging on him, chanting "One of us! One of us!" That's the refrain that flooded my mind as I read through the comments under today's QOTD, the one about talking yourself out of buying really unwise cars. And one of you freaks really stood out. Armand4 writes:
About a year ago, before I blew a large chunk of my life savings on a '62 Sunbeam Alpine, I went to look at a Peugeot 404. I've always wanted a 404—what true Jalop can resist French tailfins and a four-speed manual on the column? I brought my dad along, since he had a 404 back in the day and rebuilt pretty much every piece of that car (when he sold it, it had 350,000 miles and was running fine). The one we looked at was missing its bumpers and hubcaps, and the shifter for the ZF automatic clearly wasn't connected to anything as the shift linkage was dragging on the ground. It hadn't run in at least 20 years, and the front crossmember was rusted out. I turned to my dad, expecting him to say something like "yeah, this shouldn't be too hard to fix." But when I looked at him, he was literally shaking with terror at the thought that I might purchase that POS and disassemble it in his garage. I decided to wait for something else to come along.
Oh, and I've been thinking that a Peugeot 203 or Renault 4CV with the proper period-correct tuning bits would be a cool vintage racer. Clearly, I'm insane. I think I'm probably lucky that my financial situation barely allows me to have one project car, because otherwise I'd be knee-deep in rusty, esoteric old heaps.
One of us! One of us! One of us!