No indie DVD label is as dedicated to the preservation and promotion of “outsider cinema” quite like our friends at Severin Films. Nope, no one does “so bad that it’s good” titles like they do—witness their mind-numbing Birdemic:Shock and Terror release. Need I say more?

“Either by way of budget constraints or warped vision,” says Severin’s marketing director Evan Husney, their releases “represent a piece of a cinematic underbelly from a universe all its own.”

Now Severin, in association with The Intervision Pictures Corp. are going to be releasing some of the cultier cult films from the nearly 850 movie catalog owned by pioneering VHS distributor, Larry Gold, Sr., who died earlier this year of a heart attack. First in that slate is the DVD release of SLEDGEHAMMER, a shot-on-videotape, no-budget slasher flick from the 80s:

The plot is familiar: A group of friends comes to party at a backwoods house where a legacy of brutality awaits. But within this minimalist ’80s mélange of food fights, feathered hair and abusive slow-motion lurks a relentless synth score, bizarre sexual subtexts and a disturbing shape-shifting behemoth killer. The result is 85 minutes of fever-dream depravity.

The “fever dream depravity” that is SLEDGEHAMMER was directed by David A. Prior and starring Ted Prior (his brother) and Linda McGill

At some point I had a VHS copy of this that someone gave me, but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. I probably never did more than scan through it on fast forward before passing it on to another otaku pal of mine. That was probably a mistake. One night at Cinefamily, here in Hollywood, I saw a scene from the film and I immediately thought “Oh, that was probably that SLEDGEHAMMER thing I used to have” and regretted that I never watched it.

Severin sent me the video clip last week, along with the DVD of SLEDGEHAMMER. My mistake for not paying closer attention to this absolutely BERSERK little number when I had the chance! Just look at that clip. How could you not want MORE?

Don’t answer that, but If you are interested to win a copy of the SLEDGEHAMMER DVD be the first one to answer this question in the comments (only the FIRST person with the correct answer wins):

What popular magazine featured “extensive” coverage of SLEDGEHAMMER star Ted Prior in 1984?

 
Poet, musician, film maker, photographer, publisher, world traveler, spiritual seeker and cosmic New Yorker, Ira Cohen has died at the age of 76

Author of dozens of books of poetry and “The Hashish Cookbook” (under the pseudonym of Panama Rose), Cohen also published the works of his friends William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, Jack Smith Harold Norse and many others.

Cohen made many pilgrimages to India and Kathmandu (where he ended up living for several years) and chronicled his journeys in extraordinary photographs. His travels took him to Morocco, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Spain, Japan…but all roads eventually lead back to New York City’s Lower East Side.

As a film maker, Cohen developed a style distinctly his own by photographing images reflected in Mylar plastic. The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Brain Damage were directed by Cohen in the late 1960s using this mirror effect. The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda was released in 2006 on DVD by the folks at the late lamented Arthur Magazine. Cohen conjured some of the same cinematic spirits as his peers Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger.
 

Jimi Hendrix photographed by Ira Cohen
 

In certain artistic and literary circles, Mr. Cohen was a touchstone. “Ira was a major figure in the international underground and avant-garde,” Michael Rothenberg, the editor of Big Bridge magazine, an Internet publication, said in an interview. “In order to understand American art and poetry post-World War II, you have to understand Ira Cohen.”

If you spent any time in downtown New York’s art scene during the past five decades you would have undoubtedly crossed paths with the open-hearted and wise gentleman who described himself as a “multi-media shaman.” Ira Cohen stayed relevant throughout his life, never square and never predictable. He was magic. His sphere of influence only grew larger as he grew older. His International reputation as a world class artist and wizard continued to flourish right up to his death on April 26.

Here’s an excerpt of The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda which features a score by the original drummer of the Velvet Underground, Angus MacLise.
 

 
A trailer from a film on Ira Cohen and scenes from his film “Brain Damage” after the jump…

 
The Dangerous Minds Radio Hour kicks off it’s 21st episode with special guest DJ Comet of Mod Cinema who excitingly rummaged through his musical collection to
bring rare tracks from France, Australia, Germany, Brazil, UK, Japan, and the good ol’ USA.
 
Francoise Hardy “L’amour en prive”
The Gibsons “City Life”
Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra “Oh, Oh, Oooh, Ei Ei Ei - Wo Immer Es Auch Sei”
The Doves “I’ll Cry If You Make Me”
Gal Costa “Lost in the Paradise”
Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf “Talk About a Girl”
Bertrand Burgalat “Pleased Me”
Alan Brackett & Scott Shelly “Best Times”
Steve Martin “Love Songs in the Night”
Connie Stevens “Tick Tock”
The Rotary Connection “Memory Band”
Dee Edwards “Why Can’t There Be Love”
M.E.D. “Can’t Hold On” (instrumental)
The Tremeloes “I Swear”
Oh! Penelope “Lait Au Miel”
Judy Mackenzie “New Song”
Pascale Audret “Affole-Toi Marie”
Cliff Wagner “Red Spots”
Lee Hazlewood & Ann Margret “Sweet Thing”
Chris Stamey “the Summer Sun”
Astrud Gilberto “Number One to the Sun”
Lyn Murray “Love Hate Love”
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at iTunes
 
Video bonus: Four years after Detroit soul group The Dramatics broke into
the Top 10 with their hit song Whatcha See is Whatcha Get they appeared
as themselves in the very strange 1975 Blaxploitation film Darktown
Strutters.
 

 
Produced by the The Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham and directed by Peter Whitehead Charlie Is My Darling documents the band’s 1965 two city tour of Ireland. A somewhat haphazard affair, the film is none-the-less a fascinating glimpse into the life of The Stones on the road, backstage, performing and getting drunk. It also includes some footage of fans rioting at London’s Royal Albert Hall which was later inserted at Oldham’s behest to make the movie more commercial.

Whitehead directed one of the seminal films about the swinging sixties, Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London, and the exhilarating documentary of the infamous beat poet gathering at Royal Albert Hall, Wholly Communion. After seeing Wholly Communion, Oldham picked Whitehead to direct a freewheeling film that would compete with the success of the Beatle movies. The result was something a bit darker and rougher than anything produced by the Beatles at the time.

Charlie Is My Darling was given its premiere at the Mannheim Film Festival in 1966 when Joseph von Sternberg was Director of the Festival. He said - “When all the other films at this festival are long forgotten, this film will still be watched - as a unique document of its times.”

Filmed over three days in Dublin and Belfast, the film captures the boys in all their pristine and unspoilt pagan energy and satanic glory - soon after the release of their first big single in America - the record which established them there - “I can’t get no satisfaction”.

The passionate stage performances are finally wrecked by fans getting on the stage - the boys have to flee for their lives over railway lines when they arrive in Belfast. Scenes in the dressing room are highlighted by Keith playing acoustic Blues guitar - showing what a master he was on the guitar, and how serious he had always been about Blues music. Interviews with Charlie and Bill are very revealing - but most poignant of all is the interview with Brian Jones in which he discusses his threatened future as a Rolling Stone. Speaking only of ‘time’ and ‘insecurity of his future as a Rolling Stone’, he seemed already unconsciously aware of his fate. Did he not deliberately bring it upon himself?

The film ends with the legendary scenes of Keith and Mick drunk in the hotel ballroom - Keith playing the piano (extremely well!) and Mick doing an accurate and subversive impersonation of Elvis.”

The rights to Charlie Is My Darling and its soundtrack became entangled in legal problems when Allen Klein took over management of The Stones. Klein had a rep for being difficult (which is putting it kindly) when it came to controlling the band’s assets. So the original cut of the film was never released on video. A DVD version was released in England with a soundtrack of generic instrumental pop as background music and is basically unwatchable.

Here’s the real deal:
 

 

 
Superb animated timeline of Stanley Kubrick’s filmography by animator Martin Woutisseth. Music by Romain Trouillet.

 
(via KFMW)

 
I’ve been a huge Terry Southern fan for as far back as I can remember—I’d even go so far as to say that I’m a Terry Southern nut. Posting some of his unpublished work here on Dangerous Minds has been a thrill for me. In my day, I have gone about collecting a fair amount of first editions, magazines, memorabilia and just stuff that relates to Southern’s career. In fact, as I sit here typing this, there is a framed poster of The Magic Christian hanging on the wall in my office (it’s the exact one you see above). Terry Southern is a charter member of my personal pantheon of 20th century heroes.

In case you don’t know who the grand and groovy Terry Southern was, here’s a brief bio, taken from the Open Road Media website, where his books are being made available as e-books beginning May 3rd:

Terry Southern (1924–1995) was an American satirist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator and is considered one of the great literary minds of the second half of the twentieth century. His bestselling novels—Candy (1958), a spoof on pornography based on Voltaire’s Candide, and The Magic Christian (1959), a satire of the grossly rich also made into a movie starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr—established Southern as a literary and pop culture icon. Literary achievement evolved into a successful film career, with the Academy Award–nominated screenplays for Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which he wrote with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George, and Easy Rider  (1969), which he wrote with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

Truly a “writer’s writer,” Southern was lauded by the likes of William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Stanley Kubrick, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe. Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. He also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Barbarella, The Loved One and The Cincinnati Kid and for a while, worked for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. He was declared “the most profoundly witty writer of our generation,” by novelist Gore Vidal, no slouch in the wit department himself and is one of the “people we like” chosen by the Beatles for the Sgt. Pepper’s collage. Now the city of Dallas, TX has proclaimed May 1st, 2011, “Terry Southern Day” in recognition of one of the Lone Star State’s few genuine literary legends.

On that day Dr. Strangelove will screen at the historic Texas Theatre (where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended, btw) and Dallas City Councilwoman Delia Jasso will present Southern’s son, Nile Southern, with the official proclamation for “Terry Southern Day.”  Nile Southern will also be showing a portion of his upcoming documentary Dad Strangelove, about his famous father. A Q&A session will afterwards will be moderated by The Dallas Observer’s Robert Wilonsky, who recently wrote a fascinating article about Nile and the important job he performs of archiving his father’s legacy for cinema historians and literary scholars of the future.
 

 

 
Well this certainly looks like a fascinating documentary. I’m intrigued. Unfortunately there’s no information on the release date. From the film’s website:

Somewhere To Disappear is a film about the desire to run away. For his project, “Broken Manual”, the photographer Alec Soth traveled across America looking for people who’ve retreated from society. Some live in mountain cabins, some in caves, others in the desert. Who are these modern hermits? Why do they want to escape? And what is Alec Soth really looking for?

Alec Soth is a world renowned photographer best known for his portraits using a large format camera. He is represented by Gagosian Gallery, Westein Gallery, and Magnum Photos. Laure Flamarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove are young European filmmakers who followed Soth over the course of two years.

This film is about men, America, Alec Soth and the dream to disappear.

UPDATE: I contacted the film’s website and here’s what they said: “The movie will be screened at Minneapolis International Film Festival on the 2nd of May and at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto on the 5th and 7th of May.

There is no theater release yet but we are working on it and we’ll make sure to let you know as soon as a date is set.”
 

 
(via Booooooom!)

 
There must be something in the water, as a friend and I were discussing this very thing the other night over a chilled beer in The Giddy Arms. It made us feel positively geriatric when we realized Goodfellas was released twenty-one years ago, Trainspotting fifteen, and The Sixth Sense came out before the millennium. Now those clever bods at xkcd have devised a chart, which by using movie release dates will make us all feel terribly old.

I’m officially ancient, how young are you?
 
Via xkcd
 

 
It’s been an open secret among film fans, horror geeks and Hollywood executives for a long time. Rumors and innuendo have spread like wild fire but have always been rigorously denied. Until now. Finally, enough time has passed that the truth can be revealed. Without fear of reprisals, a back lash or any kind of black listing. The world has moved on and we’re now ready to accept the truth. So say it loud and say it proud people: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge is GAY! Waaaay gay.

Yes, Nightmare… 2 has always been singled out among the franchise for its homosexual undertones (or overtones to be more precise) but now, over 25 years later, the cast and crew involved in the making of the film are coming clean with their intentions. Indeed, a fair number of the staff were gay (which is not so unusual for a film production) but writer David Caskin now openly admits that his script did indeed deal with homosexuality, and the lead character Jesse’s confusion over his own orientation. However, what he thought were subtexts in his writing and in the eventual movie were unintentionally ramped up over the course of the filming to become almost screamingly obvious. I guess it didn’t help that lead actor Mark Patton was openly gay (though not at the time of filming). The below clip is from the 2010 documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and features enlightening and funny interviews with all the major players (including Robert Englund) on this most touchy of topics:
 

 
Still, for all the interesting subtextual analysis it offers, Nightmare… 2 is by far the weakest film in the series. It lacks tension and fear and contains no truly memorable death scenes (apart from maybe coach getting spanked to death in the locker room). And I should know about these things—you see, as a child I was obsessed with the Elm Street films. Yes, as a child. By the time I was eleven years old I had watched all the Nightmare films I could (which at that point was four, the latest being Nightmare… 4: The Dream Master which featured the recurring character Alice and an amazing “roach motel” death sequence). On my time off at school I would often find myself drawing Freddy Kreuger comics that involved nubile teens meeting an array of grisly deaths. I mean, all that stuff is completely natural for a ten year old. Right? And look at me now. I’m perfectly fine.

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy is available to buy here.

Many thanks to Peaches Christ!

After the jump, the trailers for Never Sleep Again and Nightmare on Elm Street part 2: Freddy’s Revenge...

 
Phone Sex Grandma is a short film by Jack Truman about an older female telephone sex worker that follows her routine for a day as she goes about her business. While it could be argued that this film has a lot to say about the socio-economic place of gender and the role of the elderly in declining late-capitalist society, you should probably just forget all that and admit that it’s really funny.

Old people having sex (or in this case talking sexy) is one of the oldest tropes in the comedy handbook - but you’ve gotta hand it to this woman, when it comes to sexy talk she is a pro. And I mean a professional. Check out 3:10 where she is taking a piss AND talking sexy AND pretending to be East Asian! Or 5:20 when she is taking a bath, reading Darwin, talking sexy AND pretending to be black! That is some epic multitasking right there. Phone Sex Grandma is my new (NSFW) hero:

EDIT: from the Phone Sex Grandma IMDB page (which states that the film is a “mockumentary”):

Director Jack Truman and star Opal Dockery are a real-life Mother/Son filmmaking team

WTF?!?

 
Thanks to Tickle for the link.