Moses, Sinners and the Ten commandments.

When Moses thundered down Mount Sinai hurling his Ten Commandments (cast in stone) at all sinners, I was glued to my seat. I already, at age sixteen, was a severe repeat sinner, despite or because my mother’s warning years earlier to keep my hands above the blankets. Curiosity got the better of me.

What better to keep hands warm during icy winters than between your own legs and underneath the blankets? Of course, with a newly discovered and voluptuous Mrs Hormonal Rage knocking on boys teen years, one would have to be of the ascetics’, sitting inside a mountain cave contemplating the beauty of other ‘nothingness.’ genre, to resist what came naturally. I was not. A tug every-now-and then, et voila, the rest is history. I became a terrific and very enthusiastic sinner.

I think it might have been in Burwood’s Emperor cinema here in Australia in the form of the magic of Paramount Pictures’ 1956 widescreen VistaVision Biblical epic The Ten Commandments of Charles Heston. I crushed all my crisp chips in it’s bag from sheer nervous excitement. So did many others. Boy, did the sinners take a beating? Was I already then getting a free ride in atonement by vicariously enjoying others being punished but not me? I remained Scot free, despite all my sinning. I, feverously became all woozy having paid for my ticket to the ‘Emperor Cinema’ and watching in a quasi religious indignant torpor the ‘real sinners’ getting their heads sliced off. Yet, I stayed alive! Were my sins not real? So much for church religion.

There is nothing more invigorating and cleansing than watching others getting punished, especially on the big screen. I remember earlier on, watching many episodes of Rin Tin Tin whereby in nail biting fashion someone always would cop the arrow or bullet. Later on came cowboy movies. Again the baddies got a knocking even if it meant that the goodies kept appearing being chased around the same set of rocks. Who cares? The cinema was roaring with the caddie and his tray doing a roaring trade as well.

I know now that for sheer excitement, those early big screen movies were tops. Often, there were two movies for the price of one. I’ll never forget at some cinemas a Hammond organ rising majestically up from below the bowels of the cinema. A smiling man dressed not unlike Liberace (squishing atop a wedding cake) would then set the mood with a slow Strauss waltz or something from Rodger’s and Hammerstein. It became an apparition as real, as religious, as worthwhile and as good as a Moses running down the mountain even without the ten commandments…

I decided then and there to watch proceedings in the world of love and sex for a while, slowly my conscience and awareness became sceptical of mortal sin and eternal hell-fire, especially later on with my hands tucked between thighs and legs not my own. What a revelation. It has never ceased to amaze.

It was all so terrific.

Tags: Burwood, Charles Heston, Emperor, Liberace, Moses, Paramount, The Ten Commandments, VistaVision