Did they hand out the Oscars yet? The Dauphin hasn’t kept up much with movie news since being confined to a private clinic in Switzerland for an intricate blood draining operation, the kind where your life’s fluid is siphoned out of your body, then replaced with fresh, healthy plasma. You may have heard of the process—it’s been performed on several celebrated rock stars. In fact, when I checked into the sanitarium, they put me in Keith Richards’s old room.

But even as The Dauph’s absinthe-ravaged veins are being subjected to the ultimate refinement process, the telephone in the seepage chamber rings with a long distance call from CREEM World Headquarters in Birmingham with a request that, for yet another year, Edouard compile a list of the Ten Worst Films Of The Year.