Saddened by the death of actor David Carradine, I’ve been wanting to post something about him but I’ve been unable to get a handle on what I wanted to say. The “perversity” surrounding the manner of his death doesn’t really interest me… and it’s too bad that so many people are focusing on that aspect, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Actors like Carradine–geniunely weird, eccentric, volatile, and frequently great–are a dying breed. Back when I was eleven or twelve, I came into possession of a treasure trove of Playboy magazines and read an article on Carradine back when he was still riding that post-Kung Fu wave. I don’t recall specifically what it was in the piece that freaked me out, but I remember being shocked by how untamed and unpolished he came across, shattering my tiny mind regarding how I thought actors were supposed to behave away from the cameras. Of course, if you can’t deliver on talent to balance out the wildness, then you’re just out-of-control. Carradine delivered.
Over at the always interesting Moon in the Gutter blog, Monsieur Richey is holding a Charlie Kaufman film poll in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Kaufman/Spike Jonze feature Being John Malkovich… our first real encounter with these (still) extraordinary filmmakers.
So head on over and vote. I’m curious to see what the results are myself. I’m choosing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York for my two faves. Who’s with me?!
Monsieur Appleby over at the nifty Rushmore Academy blog, which focuses on all things Wes Andersonian, informed me last night that my first book, Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood’s Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers (Kamera Books), was highlighted over at David Hudson’s The Daily blog at IFC.com. Pretty cool, I think. The mention there is due to a new lengthy review of the book (which I did know about) in the latest online issue of the always interesting Bright Lights Film Journal. And if you head over there to read the review, make sure to check out the reviews for Richard Brody’s stellar book on Godard, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, director Michel Gondry’s book You’ll Like This Book Because You’re In It: A Be Kind Rewind Protocol, a new book on cult exploitation director Jack Hill (Spider Baby!), and what looks like a great book on the much maligned but sturdy Epic film genre (a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine) by Jeffrey Richards.
One of my literary heroes has died after a long illness. You can read a brief BBC piece here. No doubt more substantial thoughts will drift out over the next couple of days.
I just posted a short piece over at the Rushmore Academy about an article by The New York Times’ film critic A.O. Scott concerning what he perceives as a neo-neo realist movement. There’s also a link to The New Yorker’s Richard Brody’s rather testy response. Both bring up valid points, I think.
I woke up this morning to hear of the death of iconic pin-up girl Bettie Page. She’d suffered a heart attack a little over a week ago and so the news wasn’t a surprise but it’s still sad. My first exposure to the lovely Bettie was through the late Dave Stevens‘ marvelous The Rocketeer comic book in the mid-1980s, where “Betty” (later named Jenny and played by Jennifer Connelly in the 1991 film of the same name) was idealized in pen and ink for a new generation of (mostly) young men who had never yet seen any of her original nudie, bondage, and cheesecake photos from the late 1940s and 1950s. By the early 1990s, the Bettie Page revolution was in full swing and if you knew where to look, it wasn’t difficult to see her influence everywhere–books, movies, comic books, postcards, posters, porn. And if it wasn’t the dirty, fun, girl next door Bettie herself, it was some swishy hottie who wanted to look and be just like her. Remember that hot retro chick who used to work the bar down at your favorite watering hole, the one with the bangs, the sneer, and the purr every time Johnny Cash came roaring over the juke? That was Bettie. Revved-up for a new generation.
The real Bettie, the one beyond the image, didn’t have the easiest life after she quit posing for fetish pictures in the late 1950s. She became a Christian, spent some time in Portland, Oregon (I was told when I lived there), Florida, and then eventually moved back to Los Angeles. There were plenty of mostly downs and you can read more about that here, but it seems that in her final years Bettie recouped some of the money that had been made off of her image throughout the decades.
She’ll live on–in books, movies, comic books, postcards, posters, and porn. Legends only grow hotter with the passage of time.
The great Forrest J. Ackerman, the man who unleashed countless monster kids into the world with the publication of his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, died last night in Hollywood at the age of 92. He will be missed.
I got a chance to meet Forry back in the late 1990s at the World Horror Convention in Phoenix, Arizona and he was kind enough to pose for a picture with me and some friends as well as show us the rings he received from the legendary Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. He also talked about those iconic masters of horror and I could have listened to Uncle Forry, as he was widely known as to his many fans, all night. I always meant to journey down to Hollywood to visit his fabled Ackermansion, his treasure trove of a house filled with cinematic arcana devoted to science fiction, horror, and fantasy… but alas, I never did.
You can read more about the king of genre fandom here.
I’ve long been a fan of John Wyndham’s apocalyptic science fiction novel Day of the Triffids. For such a ludicrous concept–giant carnivorous plants, possibly man-made, stalk the earth and leave humanity dead, wounded, or scrambling to fight them off–the book is a gripping read, mostly due to how Wyndham superbly delineates the power struggles between the different gangs of survivors in the waning twilight of civilization. The relatively mindless terror of the triffids is bad enough. But with the added pressure of argued, reasoned, collectivized tyranny enforced by a group of soldiers upon our protagonists, it’s difficult to decide what grim fate is worse.
Published in 1951, Wyndham’s novel has influenced everyone from George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (28 Days Later), as well as spawning two direct screen adaptations. The first one was a 1962 version starring Howard Keel–sort of fun in a Saturday morning movie and cold cereal kind of way–and from what I can remember it’s not very faithful. The other version, made for British television back in the early 1980s, lacks the cinematic oomph! that the story demands, but its earnest acting and faithfulness to the source material make it essential viewing.
Here’s a clip from it:
Now, 57 years since its original publication, Wyndham’s monstrous veggies are getting a new chance at life with news that the BBC has commissioned a new mini-series from writer Patrick Harbinson (ER, Law & Order). The show won’t hit television screens until 2009, so if you’ve never read the book… you have plenty of time to rectify that.
I’m not sure if the majority of Americans truly understand how vibrant triffids are to the collective imagination of people hailing from England, Scotland, and Ireland. It’s sort of like the difference between Dr. Who in England (it’s part of the culture at large, not relegated to cult status) and Star Trek in the States (cult phenom). Triffids are part of the culture. Here in Ireland, hidden away in the wilds, I was more than amused hearing people toss out the word “triffid” to describe an overgrown plant or savage looking nettle. Thank the gods above and below that I haven’t seen any plant(s) actually move around in the jungle of weeds behind our cottage, but there is a rather large and intimidating looking beast of a plant nestled between the back door and the window that distresses me. The cat seems to like it, though, so I’m not completely ready to burn it down yet. But at the slightest sign of aggression… it’s broccoli.
You can read more about the allure of triffids and the perverse love of watching the end of the world in films here.
[This was actually supposed to be posted on Wednesday October 29. Then on Thursday... and then Halloween came around and it still wasn't up. Now it's November 2 and well... Halloween really is every day for those who love horror and the macabre.]
You love horror movies and want to host a marathon of them for Halloween… only problem is: you’ve seen everything! What to do? You’ve seen all of the Halloween and Friday the 13th movies, you’ve had your fill of zombies, you’ve worn out your discs of Argento, Bava, and you want something a little edgier than your beloved Universal monsters, Hammer horrors, and wispy Val Lewtons. What to do? Here are my picks for some underrated horror films sure to scare, disturb, or freak you out.
Possession (1981)
Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil are a married couple in peril. She wants a divorce and her emotionally detached husband doesn’t. So she does what any person would do in her situation… she has an affair with a monster. Or something like that. Crazy, brutal, surreal, bloody, and did I mention… crazy? This is the trailer for the shorter American cut of the film, thankfully no longer available.
The Keep (1983)
Not a great movie by any means. In fact, the second half is downright unintentionally hilarious, hideous, and memorable in all the wrong ways. Up to that point, though, Michael Mann’s one foray into the eldritch regions of cosmic horror is pretty damn good and is a faithful interpretation of F. Paul Wilson’s Lovecraftian-styled vampire novel. I think this film’s unavailibility on DVD has helped it generate a cult appeal that… well, would wear off pretty quickly if people actually watched it.
Having said that… there are some amazingly hypnotic scenes early on–e.g. the opening few minutes, the discovery by the two Wehrmacht soldiers of the hidden tomb, Scott Glenn’s “awakening” and his subsequent journey to the Keep–that easily separated this from the glut of slasher and gore films flooding the screens around the same time. Hopefully, Paramount will unleash Mann’s “director’s cut” (rumored to be 180 mins) onto BluRay and DVD soon and I’ll be pleasantly surprised by how wrong I am about that second half.
Prince of Darkness (1987)
This is one of director John Carpenter’s lesser known movies, but one that has always had its share of supporters… me being one of them, though I didn’t come on board until the mid-1990s. It has two terrible lead performances by Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount, some hilarious unintentionally funny scenes, and yet… yet… it scares me. In fact, it contains one of the scariest moments that I’ve ever seen in film. And no, it has nothing to do with Jameson Parker. My gods, what was Carpenter thinking when he hired him? Guess he came cheap.
Santa Sangre (1989)
Director Alejandro Jodorowsky, no stranger to surrealism and provocative subject matter (see the cult classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain), here conjures up what is arguably his most cohesive and overall best film. It’s also a strangely moving film, while never abandoning the grotesqueness and violence that frequently shape Jodorowsky’s films.
The Reflecting Skin (1990)
The nightmare of childhood indeed. Plenty of great films have been made about the loneliness, pain, and horrors of adolescence–Bunuel’s Los Olvidados, Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive, Robert Mulligan’s The Other, Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Leolo, and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, to name just a few–and though I don’t think Philip Ridley’s feature debut deserves to be placed in the pantheon, it sure does pull you down into its dark undercurrents, leaving you unsettled and lost afterward. I haven’t seen it since 1990, so my recollection of it may be a bit foggy. But I often think back upon the film’s American gothic sensibility and surrealistic touches… and that awful moment with the frog. And then there’s that thing in the barn… and those greasers in the car… and that vampire….
Here’s the trailer. Also look out for the great Viggo Mortensen in an early role. Mortensen would team up again with Ridley for the director’s second film, The Passion of Darkly Noon.
Dust Devil (1992)
When South African director Richard Stanley’s post-modernist science fiction/horror Hardware was released in 1990, it seemed like the work of a true stylist and pessimistic visionary… a long fetid industrial howl in complete opposition to the overblown escapist fantasies that the Hollywood studies churn out and have perfected. Hardware felt like a true cinematic comrade to the so-called cyberpunk literary sub-genre that was already burning out around that time.
Hardware wasn’t a hit when it came out and it quickly disappeared from theater screens in the US. I managed to see it three times at the cinema and eagerly wanted to know where this Richard Stanley was going to lure us next.
But when Dust Devil was finally released a few years later, it arrived straight to video from Paramount as an 87 minute mess (courtesy of Harvey Weinstein at Miramax) and I was left frustrated by its incoherence. Then I read a review in Sight & Sound where a longer cut of it had been released, fleshing out the film’s more mythic ideas as well as the storyline involving Zakes Mokae as cop on the hunt of the supernatural serial killer played by Robert Burke. Thankfully, the “Final Cut” and an even longer workprint are readily available on DVD, giving us an opportunity to reevaluate it. Now, if only Stanley would direct a new feature.
Here’s the video trailer for the “Final Cut.” Warning: graphic violence.
Dark Waters (1993)
The 1990s were not a great time for the supernatural horror film, especially of the European variety. But for lovers of Argento and Fulci, Mariano Baino’s feature-length debut is a hot shot of sinister atmosphere and monstrous evil. While pretty much ignored in the years after its release, the film has garnered a much deserved cult audience since its stellar US DVD release a few years back from NoShame. A minor classic to be sure.
Cemetery Man (1994)
Here’s another brilliant, inspired Euro cult classic from around the same time as Baino’s film. Although most serious horror aficionados were familiar with director Michele Soavi from his numerous supporting roles in films like Fulci’s City of the Living Dead, Lamberto Bava’s Demons, and many others, as well as his own directoral work with StageFright and The Church, it was Dellamorte Dellamore aka Cemetery Man that made many of us realize how brilliant Soavi truly was. Based on the long-running Italian fumetti (comic book) Dylan Dog, the film was unavailable legally for years in the US before finally being given a disastrous theatrical run a couple of years later. The best Italian horror film of the 1990s, without a doubt. And a zombie film to boot… when zombies were far from being hip.
Dead Birds (2004)
Now for one of the best American horror films from this decade, the supernatural Western Dead Birds. Starting off like The Wild Bunch when a group of AWOL Confederate soldiers rob and shoot up a bank, the film careens into Lovecraftian cosmic horror when the bandits retreat to an abandoned plantation mansion. Strong performances, especially from Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, Michael Shannon, and Isaiah Washington, and a deliberate pace help draw us into the creeping inevitable doom these characters face. Highly recommended. Why this wasn’t given a proper theatrical release from Columbia Pictures is beyond me.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
Premiering at the 2005 HP Lovecraft Film Festival in my hometown Portland, Oregon (where I first saw it and reviewed it for VideoScope magazine), this short is a true labor of love. Based on Lovecraft’s tale of eldritch terror and madness from beyond the stars, the film is a black and white homage to silent film (think Guy Maddin mixed with Weird Tales) and is surprisingly faithful as well. Until Guillermo Del Toro finally makes the long rumored At the Mountains of Madness… this is the supreme Lovecraft adaptation around. And there’s even a stop-motion sequence too!
Posted by derek 
Posted by derek 
Posted by derek 
