THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Fantastic Planet (1973)

It has been over 24 hours since I finally got around to watching this.

I still don’t know what the Hell I watched.

What I can say is it is very striking visually.  Throughout its short running time--it’s a little bit over an hour--it looks like it was done in watercolors or soft pencils.  There are some strange moments where director Renee LaLoux stops the narrative (for what it is) to dwell on some bizarre bit of wildlife on the planet ‘Ygam’ going about their business.  It’s obvious he’s interested as much about the environment he’s creating than the story he wants to tell....and I’d be good with that if I understood what was going on.

I shudder to think of how the American public reacted to this back in 1973...probably better than I imagine, given that Ralph Bashki had already released Fritz The Cat .  But the trailer makes no hint of how adult this tale is, and I envision parents reacting in horror to the brutality and nudity on display and the frankness of the story amidst all the ‘battle animals’ and blue aliens playing with guys dressed as...well, chickens is my guess. 

The plot evokes a number of things--Jonathan Swift, the French Occupation during WWII, the Holocaust, the history of slavery, even the Exodus.  The narrator is Terr, an ‘Om’ who was apparently hijacked, along with loads of others to become pets, from Earth by the Draags, blue humanoids with red eyes and fins for ears who spend most of their time in ‘meditation’ for unknown reasons.  We watch as Terr grows up as a pampered--and tortured--pet, learns about Draagian culture and science through the lessons of his owner, escapes to join up with a tribe of ‘wild’ (i.e. unowned) Oms, evades the Draags attempt to ‘De-Om’ their living spaces, and escapes to the so-called ‘Savage Planet’ that serves as Ygam’s moon to discover their oppressors’ secret.  It takes a while to go through all this, so much so that the wrap-up seems abrupt and, well (especially in light of current events) kind of naive.

While I wasn’t engaged by the story very much, it’s made up for by the strange and wild visuals of this movie.  Say what you will about the simile LaLoux is making about human interactions, Ygam always feels like an alien place...and there are some set pieces, like our observation of the wild Om colony’s religious ceremony or the bizarre moment where the Draags are using their imagination to physically change their forms, that are unique to this film.  While I do think that this is a case where LaLoux’s story is muddled to the point of opaqueness by this weirdness, I think it’s also a case that that weirdness is strong enough in and of itself that I...

Well, I’m going to recommend this.  It’s a singular experience, and it’s something you might enjoy.

Hey!  Wanna Help Support This Blog And Get Cool Goodies In Return?  Then head on over to The Domicile of Dread Patreon Page and join me on my crusade to Make The World Stranger.  For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get new fiction and exclusive essays.  Invest a bit more, and get other stuff including advance access to my new television podcast Thomas Deja’s Watching (the first episode will be available next week!),
the Patreon Exclusive Podcast Cinematic Mirage, movie commentaries...and even the chance to assign me articles that’ll be published on this very blog!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#604

In honor of Sing Out Day (yes, there is such a thing as Sing Out Day), this episode features a sci-fi horror musical from Canada!  Des and I travel back to the Rockin’ 60‘s with the curio Bang Bang Baby, featuring a singing Peter Stormare, a male lead that reminds me of a member of Kids In The Hall playing Elvis, and some guy with a mouth in his neck.  Then Devil Dinosaur Jr. checks in on 1981‘s Madhouse, a heart-warming story of sisterly love(?) featuring dogs that bite.

The trailers are below, as is an Anthrax music video and a number from 1981‘s Dennis Potter-penned Pennies From Heaven (a film Bang Bang Baby’s director Jeffrey St. Jules may have taken some inspiration from), featuring Christopher Walken dancin’ like Bernadette Peters is watching!

Listen to Dread Media #604 here

THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1974

Welcome to 1974, my first year as a resident of Queens County--although, since the apartment we’ve moved into is literally three blocks from the Brooklyn/Queens border, I am still in touch with my old neighborhood.  I’m going to PS 60--but because I am a couple blocks shy of being eligible for the bus, I have to walk some eight blocks to get there.  This may be the year they tried to put me on sedatives for my Explosive Mood Disorder (still just being referred to as ‘schizophrenia’) that caused me to sleep through many of my classes.

Anyway, here are you candidates for my tenth year of life:

THE GROOVE TUBE

There was a brief fad that lasted maybe four years for Sketch Comedy Movies--why, I have no idea.  Most everyone knows John Landis/ZAZ’ Kentucky Fried Movie, but three years before that there was this film written and directed by Ken Shapiro and featuring Richard Belzer (one of my favorite comedians) and Chevy Chase.  I know very little about this film other than seeing its gorilla mascot in the ads, knowing its reputation for being a bit smutty, and imagining it looks real cheap.  But this is a subgenre that fascinates me (you know, like the ‘Psycho-Biddy’ films) and I want to see more examples of this.

THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS

I have talked elsewhere about my love for Ozploitation Cinema, and how car-centric it could be.  This is a film about an Australian town named Paris that causes car accidents as a way of stimulating its economy.  All I remember of it was seeing the crazy posters featuring Volkswagen Bugs with spikes all over them.  But this was the second film directed by one Peter Weir, who will go on to direct such notable films as The Last Wave, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, The Truman Show and others.  It always amuses me when directors that have impressive CVs starts out by making such tawdry exploitation material, so I’m curious....

And speaking of directors who start out by making crap....

SEIZURE

This was the directorial debut of one Oliver Stone, a low-budget Canuckploitation horror flick featuring Jonathan Frid being terrorized by three of his literary characters brought to life--one played by the divine two-time Bond Girl Martine Bestwick and another played by Hervé Villechaize.  While Stone will own up to making it (unlike, let’s say Alan Rudolph, one of my favorite directors who refuses to acknowledge he made Barn of The Naked Dead), he is obviously embarrassed by it, and that makes me happy.  I do not like Stone, and I like to think that bringing this film up and discussing it will give him a twinge of agita late at night...

CHINATOWN

This is one of the more notable films on my List of Shame, which should be surprising to those of you familiar with my podcasting efforts given I have used variations of the line ‘It’s Chinatown, Jake.  It’s Chinatown’ as a punch line to some of my jokes.  It should be even more surprising when you take into account that I friggin’ bought the damn thing on DVD, have watched the Robert Towne interview that’s a special feature but never watched the film.

It is not the most notable film on my List of Shame.  No, I will not tell you what it is.

I think everyone knows what this film is about, who stars in it, the problematic director, and all that jazz.  The fact is, I’m hoping to use this project to finally Get Off My Ass and Watch This Thing.

There you go.  You’ll have one week starting tomorrow, March 22nd, to head over to my Twitter Page and vote for you choice of which film I will view and comment on.  Expect my thoughts on the winner of the 1973 poll, Fantastic Planet, in the next few days.  Have fun!

Hey!  Wanna Help Support This Blog And Get Cool Goodies In Return?  Then head on over to The Domicile of Dread Patreon Page and join me on my crusade to Make The World Stranger.  For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get new fiction and exclusive essays--like the review of Captain Marvel I posted this week.  Invest a bit more, and get other stuff including advance access to my new television podcast Thomas Deja’s Watching, the Patreon Exclusive Podcast Cinematic Mirage, movie commentaries...and even the chance to assign me articles that’ll be published on this very blog!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#603

This week we revisit a film series that was a gamechanger (if you don’t believe me, we’ve got a review coming up in a few weeks that would argue otherwise), John Wick!  Join Des and Sezin Koehler as they evaluate both chapters of the story about The Man You Do Not Want To Mess With as played by Keanu Reeves.  Dare we hope for an appearance from The Big K himself during the discussions?

The trailers are here, including the trailer for the upcoming John Wick III: Parabellum, out this May 17th, and some videos that show The Big K training for the role that revitalized his career!

Listen to Dread Media #603 here

THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972)

As I may have mentioned earlier, this flick is a little bit of a cheat for me.  Back in the day I rented out a VHS of Shogun Assassin, which I recall being an incoherent but hilarious riot of gore.  And there’s a good reason for it being incoherent; it literally is the equivalent of those TV Movies made up of two episodes of a TV series stitched together, having condensed three films into one with emphasis on the admittedly ultraviolent sword fights.  Maybe somewhere out here in the wild frontiers of the internet is a review of that film in an issue of my old ‘zine, Sticky Carpet Digest--I’ve looked and I cannot find it (although apparently I’m quoted in a review of Infra-Man, which is cool, I guess).

Anyway, Shogun Assassin was made out of bits and bobs of the ‘Lone Wolf And Cub’ series produced by Katsu and distributed by Toho.  There are six of these, and the bulk of that film is apparently made out of this film.  I will admit to getting weird moments of deja-vu (see what I did there?) when certain shots popped up in this short, punchy little picture that mirrored my memories of that Americanized, Frankensteined product.  But what I also got are weird moments of grace and poetry that makes this feel like a much different picture.

The plot of this film is very slight--hell, I can see where that TV movie compilation vibe came from way back when, as it really does feel like a portion of a much longer narrative--and can be broken down into two set pieces: our hero Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) fends off a clan of female assassins led by Sayaka (Kayo Matsuo) while also trying to kill a traitor to a dye-making clan who is protected by three brothers who are collectively known as The Gods of Death.  It barely makes its 80 minute run time, and yet it has a kind of contemplative, laid back feel to it.  This movie is not interested in running like a modern action film is; it’s perfectly happy to stroll amiably.

The true strength of this film lies in Wakayama and Akihiro Tomikawa, who plays his son Diagoro.  Wakayama is an unlikely action star, even for the 70‘s--the man is positively doughy, with a face that belongs more on a baker than a samurai (I kept getting visions of John Belushi seeing this film and keeping it alive in the back of his head when it came time to create 'Samurai Deli')--but he provides a compelling central performance that grounds the film.  And since Tomikawa is frequently a blank slate, we’re left to infer what effect this brutal life is having on him.  There are several set pieces that rely on an enigmatic bond between the two that Just. Work.

The film was notorious for its violent fight scenes back in the day.  It seemed more violent to me when I saw Shogun Assassin decades ago, maybe because it had been cut to emphasize those fight scenes...but now they look at turns silly (the fountains of tempura paint that literally launch themselves across the screen every time a limb is severed) and...well, elegant (the way the blood slowly wells up from the ground when one of the ‘Gods of Death’ reveal an attacker’s hiding place).  The thing that strikes me though is how quick these fights are--literally in some cases, you blink and you miss a key moment in the choreography.  But the way director  Kenji Misumi is always contrasting these lightning-fast bits of gore with these elegiac grace notes gives the film an entirely unexpected flavor.

Even though the pacing and visual language of this film might seem alien to you, I would certainly recommend seeing it.  It’s very unique in and of itself, and it might open your eyes to a different approach towards admittedly over-the-top violence.

Hey!  Wanna Help Support This Blog And Get Cool Goodies In Return?  Then head on over to The Domicile of Dread Patreon Page and join me on my crusade to Make The World Stranger.  For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get new fiction and exclusive essays.  Invest a bit more, and get other stuff including advance access to my new television podcast Thomas Deja’s Watching (coming soon from the Two True Freaks Podcast Network), the Patreon Exclusive Podcast Cinematic Mirage, movie commentaries...and even the chance to assign me articles that’ll be published on this very blog!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#602

Do you like wolves?  What about spiders?  How about, ummm, redheads in glasses hanging out after Armageddon? Well then you’re going to love this week’s episode!  First up Des visits with the author of Carnivorous Lunar
Activities, Max Booth III.  Then there are film reviews: Rich The Monster Movie Kid tries to avoid getting trapped in the Web of The Spider (a film that may sound familiar to Dread Media Patreons...heh), and Des returns to join Duane in a discussion of the post-apocalyptic thriller Molly.

The trailers for both films are here, as are a video of Booth as ‘Chad The Werewolf’ (trust me on this), a werewolf compilation music video, Edgar Allen Poe in a rap battle with Stephen King, and a countdown of top ten post-apocalyptic landscapes!

Listen to Dread Media #602 here

If Everybody’s Doing It, Why Can’t We: The Debut of The Deja’s Domicile of Dread Patreon

This is what you get when you Google 'Domicile of Dread'

You’ve been sitting with me for a while now; some of you for much longer.  You know a few things about me.

You know I need to create.  I am compelled to create.  What I’ve learned about myself in the last year and a half is that being unable to create makes my mental illness worse.

I’ve been encouraged in the past to set up a Patreon to help support myself.  I’ve been resistant like I’ve been resistant to all newfangled stuff (ask me about how long it took me to adopt Twitter...), but when I do finally accept that modern stuff, I go all in.

If you enjoy my writing--my fiction and my popular culture criticism--or my podcasting, I’d like to invite you to be my partner in my ongoing journey.  If you contribute a little bit a month, it will help propel me further in my journey to Make The World Stranger...and in exchange, I will give some you some exclusive goodies.  Just go here and sign up.

What sort of goodies?  There are five tiers starting at $1 and going up to $10.  The lowest tier (The Domicile of Missives) will net you a piece of writerly stuff every month to feast your eyes on.  As you go higher up the tiers, you can get podcasts (Thomas Deja’s Watching, where I’ll be covering television shows on an episode-by-episode basis either by myself or with a guest, will be available at the $3 tier, and Cinematic Mirage, where I examine films lost to time or film projects that never came to fruition, will be available at the $5 tier*), movie commentaries, and--at the highest tier--the chance to actually assign me articles to write for this very blog.  Some of these things will be released to the general public after a period of exclusivity.  Some, like the movie commentaries, will be available for sale to non-Patreons after a period of exclusivity.  And some will just be between you and me and the other Patreons.

I hope that this will benefit both of us, that we can open up a personal dialogue that will shape my continuing creative journey and hopefully provide you with some diversion, insight and entertainment.

...but wait, there’s more!

To commemorate the opening of this new wing of The Domicile--what I’ve been referring to in my mind as ‘The Domicile of Treats’--anyone who signs up between now and March 17th will get as a thank you the two extant episodes of Horrors of My Life, the Dread Media Patreon Exclusive that covers 1964‘s Castle of Blood and 1965‘s Planet of the Vampires!  These have only been heard by a handful of people--and now you!

So come on...sign up.

Let’s Make The World Strange!


*--Thomas Deja’s Watching will be presented monthly.  Cinematic Mirage will come out on an irregular basis to account for the research I’ll be doing for each episode.

THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1973

Here we are in 1973.  During this year, my family moved from Highland Park in Brooklyn to Woodhaven just over the border in Queens.  I’m pretty sure my mother became pregnant with my youngest brother Geoffrey, and that I saw my first silent film when the Woodhaven BID ran City Lights one morning at my new local theater, The Haven, as a free children’s viewing.  I’m also pretty sure that my natural father bought a Super 8 movie camera, and I began writing and shooting ‘movies’ featuring my brothers and the brother and sister who were my next door neighbor.

So your nominees are:

MY NAME IS NOBODY

Yes, it’s another Spaghetti Western, only this one is a lot lighter than the ones I’ve put up on previous polls.  It’s apparently inspired by an idea by the Grandpapa of All Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone (the only film that he was involved in that was shot mainly in America), partially directed--uncredited--by him and stars Italian Cinema Icon Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda.

Yes, that Henry Fonda.  It’s a real unlikely bit of Star Power for what is, by all accounts, more of a comedy than a western.  I love Leone, and this is one of the very few films he’s been involved with I’ve never seen.  Plus I’ve never seen a film featuring Hill to the best of my knowledge, and I’d like to correct that.

PETS

This is a weird one--apparently Raphael Nussbaum was looking for some new angle on softcore sexploitation and came up with this ‘girl on an odyssey’ adventure that ends with her leading a congregation of ‘pets’--women kept as prisoners by a sadistic rich asshole--against their captors.  The closest thing we have to a star is female lead Candice Rialson, who appeared in a handful of films (yes, they were mostly softcore porn, including the notorious talking vagina parody Chatterbox) throughout the 70‘s.  It just looks So Odd that I want to see what The Hell Nussbaum Was Thinking.

HIT!

I couldn’t find a trailer, so here’s a clip.

Given my love of blaxploitation cinema, it was inevitable I would look for an obscure example of the genre.  But the reason I want to see this actioner is not that it stars both Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor, but that it was directed by Sidey J. Furie, whose work on The Ipcress File blew me away.  I want to see what Furie, who worked with Williams two years prior on the Billie Holliday biopic Lady Sings The Blues, does with this particular, particularly of its time, genre.

FANTASTIC PLANET

Our first animated candidate.  I saw television commercials for this film as a young’un, and caught clips of it, and all I can intuit is that it’s Pure D Weird.  I have only a vague concept of what it’s about and viewing the trailer I’m including only confused me more.  That being said, I’ve been told this is a great viewing experience, and I’m curious.

There you have it.  Head over to my Twitter Page  between now and the 15th and vote for which of these four flicks you’d like to see me watch and report on the following week.  Good luck, and please be kind and Retweet the Poll after you vote!

THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Prime Cut (1972)

There was this strange period in the 60‘s and 70‘s where some of our cinematic icons seemed...decidedly against type.  These icons may not have been conventionally attractive, may not have had an artistic range on the surface, and may not have had nuance.  But they had presence and gravitas, and when you watched them you couldn’t take your eyes off of them.  One of these icons was Lee Marvin.

I do think Marvin’s cult has waned a bit, but his resume remains impressive.  He is one of three men and one woman who has played Donald Westlake’s honorable thief Parker*, and I find that he shares a lot of the same qualities as the last cinematic Parker, Jason Statham.  Both Marvin and Statham tend to...not show much on their face, and they tend to be low key...and yet there’s a sense of control in Marvin that’s undeniable--even when he’s being chased through a wheat field by a thresher, you have no doubt he knows what he’s doing.

This is the second film from director Michael Ritchie and he seems to know that Marvin is his biggest asset.  He’s in the majority of the film’s 88 minute runtime, and he simply dominates the film--not a mean feat given he’s acting opposite Gene Hackman, who is arguably one of the finest film actors of all time.  What impressed me is how he does not seem to change his expression or his vocal inflection, and yet he conveys a lot with every line.

This film seems to take place in a weird comic-book-like universe where almost everyone wears a specific uniform to easily identify them--Marvin’s Nick Devlin (real subtle symbolism there, writer Robert Dillon) rocks an ice cream suit and white loafers throughout, Gregory Walcott’s hulking henchman Weenie is always seen in overalls and a white wife beater, etc.--and there are set pieces I could easily see Frank Miller come up with for an early issue of Sin City, especially the ‘private sale’ that Hackman’s MaryAnn conducts in the film’s first act.  There’s a simplicity to the plot--a plot that is sort of forgotten once Devlin takes possession of Sissy Spacek’s Poppy--that allows the film to flow effortlessly.  The action sequences are simple, designed to take advantage of the endless fields of corn, wheat and sunflowers that dot the outskirts of Kansas City.

And yet...

There’s a surprising humanity to this hard-ass action film.  Even though Devlin does some horrible things, he obviously is a honorable and, dare I say, decent man.  Devlin’s relationship with Poppy is never anything other than fatherly, even when Poppy out and out tells one of his lieutenants that she loves him.  He insists that the man who is ground into sausage in the film's
opening sequence get a proper burial and agrees to meet one of his lieutenant’s mother before they leave on a trip.  There are times you have to remind yourself that this is a mob enforcer that we’re following even as he’s acting as an Avenging Angel.

I should also mention before concluding that Ritchie includes some LGBT content--some that’s good, some that’s bad, but all of which is handled very deftly.  There is a speech Spacek has that pretty much makes it clear that she is at the very least bisexual, if not lesbian, that’s...real respectful for a film like this--but on the other hand, an extended scene between Hackman and Walcott as they play wrestle came off so homoerotic I thought they were meant to be lovers before Walcott refers to Hackman as his brother.

I recommend this film.  It moves quickly, has a real impressive central performance from Marvin, and manages to give us a little depth with our violence.

*--I know the common wisdom is that Marvin played the best Parker in Point Blank, but my impression was always that Parker was supposed to be more or less unassuming in appearance; his anonymousness was a major tool in his trade.  Marvin--like Statham--stands out too much.  In a funny way, Mel Gibson in Payback (Brian Hegleland’s director’s cut, not the comedic cut I saw in theaters) is much more accurate to the image of Parker I have in my head.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#601

It’s a festival of ecological terror with memorials and, uh, giant bunnies in this episode!  First up, Des and Duane honor Lisa Sheridan, who passed last week, by reviewing her last film, the lakeside eco-horror Strange Nature.  Then, in a real change of pace, Rich The Monster Movie Kid delves into one of the weirdest, silliest Nature-Run-Amok movies ever, Night of The Lepus.

The trailers are below (notice how they never mention that ‘Lepus’ is Latin for ‘Rabbit’), as are a brief background on Ms. Sheridan and a music video by Royal Blood that sure is...thematic.

Listen to Dread Media #601 here

Phase BTS of...THE HONEYWELL EXPERIMENT!

It’s time for a very special phase of the experiment.

No, nobody’s going to get touched inappropriately or learn an Important Lesson About Racism...but Honeywell will learn an Important Lession about Australian Cinema. 

I left Virginia in charge of the OcaDecaGonAGon and dragged him to visit a man who is Ozploitation Royalty, the one and only Brian Trenchard-Smith! The director behind such legendary films as Turkey Shot, BMX Bandits, The Siege of Firebase Gloria and The Quest joins us for a discussion of his seminal action film The Man From Hong Kong!  We go in-depth with him about the making of the film and the principles of directing action sequences.  We also talk about his new career as an author.

You can find this brilliant conversation with this great man here.

And be sure to pick up Brian Trenchard-Smith’s time-twisting thriller Alice Through The Multiverse here.

Thank you, Mr. Trenchard-Smith, for gracing us with your knowledge and charm on...The Honeywell Experiment!