It’s another well-rounded podcast episode milestone, and Dread Media is getting down right religious in its celebration. Join Des and me as we go through the entire 90‘s Angels-In-Rebellion series, The Prophecy. Throughout our coverage of the five films (thought there were only three entries? We wish we did, too...), we play kickin’ tunes and sing the praise of one of the best Satans ever to be committed to celluloid.
The trailers are below, as are a feature on the top ten angels in cinema (three of them being version of Gabriel), and a little orchestral Glenn Danzig--he shows up in the second film.
Well, here we are at my last full year in Brooklyn! Things are about to get very chaotic soon, but for my eighth year of life, it’s still business as usual. To be honest, I really don’t recall a lot about this year save that I’m pretty sure this was the year I ventured across Atlantic Avenue one time to visit my school friend Darryl, which was considered a Really Big Deal for me.
Anyway, your nominees are:
PRIME CUT
This past week commemorated Lee Marvin’s birthday. Marvin was one of the great movie tough guys (and the first cinematic version of Donald Westlake’s legendary character of Parker in Point Blank), and this film sees him facing off against one of the greatest movie actors we’ve ever had, Gene Hackman, over a slaughterhouse. From what I gather, it’s a really sleazy film, with people being ground into sausages and a good dose of sex trafficing. It’s only the second film directed by Michael Ritchie, who goes on to make The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Fletch and The Golden Child. This film had a rep, and I want to see if it’s earned. SISTERS
Yeah...Brian DePalma.
I loathe Brian DePalma. I find his work insufferably self-reverential--by which I mean he thoroughly, self-consciously lifts whole from other directors in a way that is the equivalent of screaming ‘Watch What I Can Do’ to the audience. The only films of his I can tolerate that I’ve seen are The Phantom of Paradise (which I actively enjoy) and The Untouchables (which is inoffensive, save for the big ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in the train station). Some of his films, like Scarface, are so badly constructed that the message he’s trying to send us is totally misconstrued by the audience.
But...
I recently saw the documentary about him, and it has made me curious to visit some of those films of his I have not watched (because...well, it’s his), or films I did watch that I hated, and see if the information imparted by him has altered my opinion. Sisters, DePalma’s first foray into the Norman Bates Mine, is one of his films I haven’t seen because, well, I was way too young to see it when it was in theaters and by the time I could, I was disinclined to give it the time. I’m willing to give it at the least the time it would take to view it to see if my new knowledge of the director has changed my view of him.
BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX
This is kind of a cheat on my usual policy of only choosing films I’ve never seen, as I’ve seen parts of this Japanese adaptation of the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub. You see, about a decade later some Americans mashed together segments from this and its two sequels to create the notoriously, gloriously gory Shogun Assassin. I loveShogun Assassin, but I also recognize that it is a Frankenstein-ed, bastardized, campy version of what was a very serious movie series in Japan. I want to see what the original intent of the filmmakers were, and where better to start than with the first entry?
THE GORE GORE GIRLS
Yeah...Herschell Gordon Lewis.
I recognize that this man was an innovator in the horror industry, but I don’t have a lot of respect for him. Every time I have read or seen the man talking about his films in his own words, I am struck by how much contempt he seemed to have for his audience. He is not a good filmmaker in any real sense of the word.
And yet....
This, the last of the films from his ‘classic’ cycle of gore-nographic epics, stars comedian Henny Youngman. That’s the closest thing Lewis ever got to having a genuine star in one of his movies--Youngman was making regular appearances on Laugh-In at the same time this shabby little picture was making the Grindhouse rounds. Even though I am positive watching this film will cause my soul to shrivel up a little inside, I have to know the extent of Youngman’s involvement in this.
There you have it. Starting tomorrow, head over to my Twitter Page and vote for which of these four flicks you’d like to see me watch and report on next weekend. Good luck, and please be kind and Retweet the Poll after you vote!
It's only until you watch the movie that you realize how fucked up and dishonest this poster really is.
I did not get the experience that I expected out of this film. And even though what it is is flawed, I actually think it’s a better experience than what I was looking for.
This may be the only ‘Fish And Chips Western’; it was produced by Tigon Pictures, which I’ve called in the past the mentally challenged brother of Hammer. Tigon made some seriously silly horror movies, but their best--Blood on Satan’s Claw (which I discussed here) and Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General--were period pieces, which gives their choice to do a western a crazy sort of sense. And while most of this was shot in Spain, there are some scenes shot in Twickenham Studios. So...Fish And Chips Western. I didn’t know such things existed.
Anyway, I expected one of these awkward American attempts to catch up with the deconstructionist double attack of Spaghetti Westerns on one side and Peckinpah’s violent flicks on the other. But this film is much more Spaghetti than Traditional, even though it has traditional elements (including a score that just sounds out of place here). It actually turns out to be a fairly sober revenge flick with a real engaging double act from Raquel Welch and Robert Culp.
Obviously, this film was greenlit on the fact that Raquel Welch Is Real Hot. I think she’s the last of the Great Cinematic Sex Symbols, but she has this air about her that gives her a regality and dignity that adds to her appeal. And she’s a better actor than people may give her credit for if she’s given the right actor to bounce off of--which is why she’s particularly good here. You can see the thought process going on in the head of Hanna Caulder at all times, and the give and take she has with Culp is so lively it drives the film forward. And God Bless director Burt Kennedy and David Haft (writing under the pseudonym Z.X. Jones) for never giving into the temptation to make the relationship between Welch and Culp sexual. There are moments where the script teases the idea--Hell, Caulder pretty much offers her body as payment when she first meets Culp’s Thomas Price--but the relationship that does develop is more that of master and apprentice. or knight and squire. It’s funny that throughout the film I wondered if Quentin Tarantino patterned the relationship between Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained after these two--it turns out Tarantino consciously aped this relationship in the scenes between Uma Thurman’s Bride and Sonny Chiba’s Hanzo in Kill Bill!
However...as good and as nuanced as Welch and Culp are, there are flaws. The villians--played by three of the most Western of Western Actors Alive at the time (Ernest Borgnine! Jack Elam! Strother Martin!)--do some truly horrific things in the first ten minutes of the film to establish their credentials and then spend the rest of the film acting like goofs. Every once in a while, director Kennedy cuts to the trio behaving like total idiots, and I got the queasy feeling those scenes were meant to be...funny? But I found myself unable to see humor in their antics, considering I watched them kill a bunch of people in cold blood, gang rape Welch and then set her house on fire with her in it less than an hour ago. There’s also a character called ‘The Preacher’ played by Stephen Boyd, who might as well have ‘Deus Ex Machina’ written across his chest. He shows up as Culp and Welch are staying at Christopher Lee’s house to glare at them, then pops up to shoot Ernest Borgnine at a key moment in the climax. Why? Damned if I know. Then there is the previously mentioned score, which sometimes is aping traditional western soundtracks (more than once I got a feeling of Magnificent Seven to the trumpet and percussion) and sometimes plays odd, light comedy music at weird times (like when we’re watching Welch rise up from a bathtub....)
Chistopher Lee is in a Western...because he's Christopher Lee and can do whatever he Damn Well Pleases.
What? Yeah, Christopher Lee is in this film. It was his only Western, and he seems to be having a Ball playing a gunsmith who custom designs Hannie’s pistol. And adding him into the mix for a big chunk of the second act only elevates Welch’s and Culp’s game. There is one scene where Culp and Lee are having a discussion about something, but Lee’s gaze is on Welch, sizing her up...and Welch sizes him up right back.
This was actually a pleasant surprise, something that certainly hewed close to the Spaghetti Western template while doing it from a different angle. It apparently did very poorly here in the States, but I certainly recommend it for students of Westerns, and maybe others as well. You can do a Lot Worse than spend time with Hannie Caulder.
It’s the calm before the storm that is Episode 600 with two reviews. First up, Des and Darryll take a look at the Takashi Miiki Yakuza-themed horror road trip Gozu. Then, to mark the passing of the great Albert Finney, I reach back to his Weirdest Year Ever of 1981 and the Michael-Crichton-Yells-At-The-TV sci-fi action(?) oddity Looker.
The trailers are here, as is a music video from the band One OK Rock in both English and Japanese (this is what I got when I put ‘yakuza music video’ in the YouTube search engine) and some examples of subliminal advertising!
This week Des sits down with the man who got horror in our musicals and helped turned Saw into a major franchise, Darren Lynn Bousman! Listen in as Bousman talks about his new film St. Agatha and his ‘augmented reality’ projects The Tension Experience, The Lust Experience and Theater Macabre. Then Duane joins Des for a dose of urban fantasy, German style with 2017‘s meta(?) romp Snowflake.
The trailers are below, as is Bousman introducing you to some of the interesting characters you’ll meet in The Tension Experience and, because I like hearing Anthony Stewart Head sing, a song from Repo: The Genetic Opera.
The interesting thing for me is in compiling this list of four candidates brought to my attention that a number of films I absolutely love were made this year--among the ones I saw on the service I’m using to access these films were The Abominable Dr. Phibes (one of my favorite films, period), Get Carter (ditto) Straw Dogs (also ditto), The Beguilded (so, so ditto), The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange and Shaft. There are a couple of films I’m holding back for my Dread Media Patreon Exclusive Podcast The Horrors of My Life, and one--Wake In Fright--I hope to do a discussion with noted Ozploitation Royalty Brian Trenchard-Smith sometime in the future. I suspect from here on in that my choices for films I’ve never seen before will be narrower and maybe more esoteric.
1971 is also the source of one of my earlier movie experiences. My natural father once arrange for the daughters of his boss to take me to a matinee screening of Hercules In New York at the City Line Cinema. However, said daughters did not show up on time, so the film I ended up seeing at the tender age of seven was The Omega Man. It kind of scarred me for a while.
I also have memories of pretending to be scared by the phony-ass gorilla in Diamonds Are Forever when my natural father took me to the Oasis Theater in Ridgewood to see it because I was bored and wanted to go home.
Anyway, here are your choices for the year of 1971!
PUNISHMENT PARK
I suspect only the real Film Nerds know the name of Peter Watkins, who was pretty much making found footage films decades before Myrick and Sanchez first came up with the idea of The Blair Witch Project. And even then, I was unaware of this film until I saw it referenced in, of all things, a role playing supplement. Like all of Watkins’ work, it’s all about a government gone fascist playing games with its citizens and is apparently mainly improvised. I’ve only seen Privilege, the most ‘conventional’ of his films (and even that one plays mind games by purporting to be a documentary), and I’m curious to see this one.
SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR
I can’t find a trailer for this one (except for one that seems to be just a portion of an implied rape scene and, as such, ick), so I’m including what seems to be an excerpt from a German special on the making of the movie. This is one of those films that fell through the cracks of time, which seems odd given that it’s a psychological thriller about Anthony Perkins trying to manipulate an amnesiac Charles Bronson into murdering Jill Ireland. Yet this is literally minutes before that handful of films that made Bronson into an action movie icon, so I’m not surprised it’s lost in the shadow of The Valachi Papers and The Mechanic and Mr Majestyk and Death Wish. It seems like an intriguing little film that takes advantage of Bronson’s acting chops--something he ceases to be valued for as the 70‘s reach their end--so color me intrigued. HANNIE CAULDER
Yes, I will admit that a part of wanting to watch this is because it features Rachel Welch, the kind of sex symbol that I don’t think exists anymore. Welch defined the 60‘s as much as Marilyn Monroe defined the 50‘s--she was ubiquitous. But this interests me because it’s one of a couple of westerns Welch made in this period (her family was originally from Boliva--her cousin turned out to be the first female President of that country--and her latina features made her a natural for this genre) where the American western was transforming due to pressures from the Spaghetti Western on one side and the deconsructionist sagas of Peckinpah. The film seems to be merging old western tropes with feminist ideas, and it could be interesting to view.
THE SHADOW WHIP
In 1971, a little film called The Big Boss--or, as us Amurricans know it, Fists of Fury--hit our shores, made a star out of a fight choreographer and actor named Bruce Lee, and ushered in a tidal wave of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. This is one of those martial arts films that came out just before those floodgates opened; all I’ve read on this seems to imply that it wasn’t released here until the ‘00s, and that on DVD. The film features Pei-Pei Cheng ‘The Queen of Swords,’ who God Bless Her is still working to this day (she is featured in the upcoming live action redo of Mulan because....well, because Disney feels we need ‘live action’ versions of every one of their animated features and we’re gon’ get them, dammit), and it looks real fun. Supposedly her character does battle with a whole cadre of bandits with her swordplay and, oh yeah, her titular whip.
Yes, you’ll notice I have two candidates where hot women kick some butt. I like hot women, and I like kicking butt...especially in the martial arts genre, because wu shu kung-fu has the same athletic gracefulness as ballet does.
There’s you candidates. Head over to my Twitter Page starting tomorrow and let me know which of these four bad boys you want me to experience for the first time and report on!
Now that we’re entering the 70‘s on this little experiment, I am once again confronted with the question of why I am so in love with African American cinema of the decade or, as it’s popularly known, ‘blaxploitation.’ Granted, I have always had an affinity for what could be termed ‘black culture’; I’d chalk this up to growing up in Highland Park, Brooklyn, a very integrated neighborhood but I suspect this goes above and beyond just growing up in such a place. I was once told by a hip-hop artist I was interviewing back in the 90‘s that he appreciated talking to me because I was knowledgeable and affectionate toward the culture without trying to pretend I’m part of it, but I wonder if my affection comes from its ‘otherness.’ Am I fetishizing what I am not in my celebration of this genre, and have I been doing this my whole life?
I bring this all up because it was fairly clear right from the start that I would be watching this, the second of three films featuring Sidney Poitier as Lt. Virgil Tibbs. This may be the first mainstream film series from a major studio to have a black man as a lead, and I’m pretty certain this film got green lit four years after the success of In The Heat of The Night because United Artists knew there was some money to be made in urban areas--the fact that it’s named for a line of dialogue from the original that is never uttered during the film’s almost two hour run time, a line that harkens back to the assertiveness Tibbs has in the fact of institutional racism, makes it clear that this is trying to bring in an African American audience. And if we’re to take into account the success of 1971‘s one-two punch of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Badassss Song, there was an African American audience positively starving for movies that were about their experiences...so a new Virgil Tibbs thriller seems like a no-brainer.
Except....
This is a very good movie that benefits from an exceptional cast of character actors. Even the background actors are amazing; a couple of times, director Gordon Douglas (perhaps best known for one of the best 50‘s sci-fi flicks, Them) pans across crowd scenes and there’s all these wonderfully expressive faces in those crowds that hint at different stories that could be told. Among the actors in support of Poitier are Martin Landau--and boy, does the camera love his piercing eyes--as an activist preacher; Anthony Zerbe playing the Anthony Zerbe Is A Slimeball role; Ed Asner in full toupee--which looks freakin’ weird--as a Designated Red Herring; Jeff Corey as Tibbs’ superior; Hell, you can spot John ‘Higgins on Magnum PI’ Hillerman as a reporter in a few scenes. I was taken by the performance of Beverly Todd as the unfortunately named ‘Puff,’ who creates this persona as a professional to slips to show us a much more vulnerable woman underneath. While it doesn’t take a lot of advantage of its San Francisco setting, there are some action sequences featuring the Golden Gate Bridge and Chinatown. There’s also an opening sequence that shows Douglas was watching giallo films in its striking use of color and angles.
And yet, it doesn’t quite work because when you take Virgil Tibbs out of the sociopolitical context of In The Heat of The Night, you have...a standard police detective who happens to be black. Poitier portrays Tibbs as cool, but it’s not the cool the moviegoing audience wanted at the time. This is the cool of ‘calm, cool and collected,’ not the cool of a maverick rebelling against The System. It doesn’t help that almost all the aforementioned action sequences are backloaded into the last half hour, so that Poitier giving a beatdown come off as...sudden and strange. And instead of scenes of our hero investigating this murder, we get painfully stilted scenes of Tibbs acting as a parent and playing footsie with a criminally underused Barbara McNair as his wife.
By forcing Tibbs out of a political context (there’s some subplot about Landau pushing a political proposition about housing, but it’s all kinda in the background) and trying to give him an ordinary life, it makes him ordinary, which leeches away what makes the character so notable. And what remains is just an okay police drama--an admittedly well-acted, well-crafted, perhaps overlong police drama. And that wasn’t what the urban audience United Artist was pitching it to wanted, as they learn when Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles does give them what they wanted next year.
I would recommend you see it if you like police thrillers or are interested in blaxploitation cinema, as it’s a well-made film with some great performances. But be prepared, because it’s a bit of a slog.
After all the excitement of Action January, it’s time to return to some basic slice-n-dicing kinda horror Blumhouse Style! First Des and Darryll take in the 2014 remake of the grindhouse classic The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Then I chime in with a review of 2017‘s Happy Death Day and try not to focus solely on the awesomeness that is Jessica Rothe.
The trailers are below, as is a discussion of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, the real case that inspired The Town That Dreaded Sundown!
For a change of pace this month, I decided to ask my good friend Patrick of Scream Queenz: Where Horror Gets Gay to choose the film Virginia and I could give my hapless specimen to torture--EDUCATE! I mean educate him with. Knowing my love of musical theater, Patrick decides to inflict--SHARE! I mean share with Chris a bizarre Paramount Pictures production known as The First Nudie Musical. It’s an old-style putting-on-a-show kinda musical, only...there are copious naked people.
Only in the 70‘s folks.
That’s also the only way I can explain Diana Canova’s winge-worthy .accent and the extended Brando joke.
Now with added Richie Cunningham!
You can find this phase of my grand experiment here
Thanks, Patrick, for participating in...The Honeywell Experiment!!! Please check out his biweekly, bi-friendly, primarily gay, totally Fabulous podcast at the link provided...he. Is. Great.
As some of you may know, my favorite TV Show of all time is The Avengers. Originated in 1961 by Sidney Newman (who would also help create a little show you may have heard of called Doctor Who--this guy had some instincts) as a way to retain Ian Hendry, the lead of Police Surgeon, it started out as a fairly conventional suspenser with Hendry’s doctor helping out a mysterious spy played by Patrick MacNee. But during the years it ran, The Avengers morphed into something of its time, and yet timeless...one of the most distinctive products of the Spymania that overtook the mid-60‘s.
I imprinted on the show when I watched the reruns on WWOR-TV here in New York. Back then, we Americans only had access to the last four (?)* seasons of the show, most of which featured my First Super Crush, Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. As I grew up, I found ways to watch the show whenever it was presented--late at night as part of CBS’ Friday night programming; waking up at 3a.m. during college when WABC presented the show as a lead-in to their Western repeats, then going back to bed for two more hours of sweet sleep--and it got to the point where I could tell the episode by the opening shot. When A&E finally imported the two seasons featuring Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, I started watching those. The only episodes I haven’t seen are the two-and-one-quarter episodes that still survive from the first season...until now.
You see, some years ago I made a promise that if I ever had access to all the surviving episodes and could find someone to take the journey with me, I would do an index podcast covering the entire series. Late last year, I found access to the whole run of the series, and you know me--make a promise, keep a promise. Thus I have teamed with Scott McGregor, who had fond memories of watching the show as a young’un, the talented amateur looking at the show I’ve practically memorized with new eyes. Starting this month, we’ll be covering an episode a month, beginning with the fifteen-minute bit that remains of the pilot, ‘Hot Snow.’
The promo is here, in case you’re curious. Episodes will drop monthly on the Two True Freaks Podcast Network, the same place you get The Honeywell Experiment. Come join us for a trip back in time to an England that never existed--but probably should have been...a land of charm, civility, derring-do, and as much champagne as allowed by law.
Be seeing you.
*--there is some dispute as to whether the color Emma Peel episodes encompass one or two seasons. I'm going to split the difference and call them '5A' and '5B' for the show's purposes.
