VHS 2005 Foam
 
Humorous artistic tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s inscrutable cinematic masterpiece created in 2005 by David Herbert. What I’m more interested in is seeing the VCR that can handle this gargantuan tape.
 

 

 
(via Booooooom!)

 
If there’s one aspect of the 80’s that I am glad hasn’t been revived it’s that horribly real nuclear war paranoia. However, if you do fancy taking a trip back to the time when the world’s superpowers could have wiped out most of humanity at the flick of a switch, then Threads is the film for you. This one-off BBC made-for-television film from 1984 was mentioned in last week’s How TV Ruined Your Life episode about the power of fear in the media, and it’s a brilliant example (in ways both good and bad).

Threads is set in the Northern English industrial city of Sheffield, and concerns itself with the impact of a nuclear bomb blast on the community, and the effect it has on the whole country in the years that follow. Having a micro-level setting makes Threads more effective, particularly in the scenes that show how a blast would be dealt with by local government, and how some of the seemingly smallest losses are the most painful. The gray-skied Yorkshire moors backdrop adds hugely to the medieval-regression scenario that plays out after the horrific first attack. From BBC4:

Director Mick Jackson shoots the piece as if filming an actual disaster, using a documentary-maker’s dispassion that renders the grey, gruesome scenes unbearably compelling. The blend of personal tragedy and global catastrophe is deftly handled but it’s the attention to detail and stunning breadth of the work which most impresses.

Writer Barry Hines, best known for Kes, fashioned his script on evidence supplied by bodies as varied as the British Medical Association and the Home Office, with literally dozens of experts from varying fields - including Carl Sagan - consulted to guarantee authenticity. The cold exploration of such horrific events is frightening, from the awful build-up to war and the immediate impact of the bomb, to the viler, long-term consequences of a poisoned world.

I hadn’t seen it before yesterday, and I should mention that it’s not a viewing experience to be undertaken lightly. But it IS worth watching. I am just glad I never saw this film at the time, being only a child in the Eighties, as it is truly one of the most bleak (if brilliant) viewing experiences. Plenty of YouTube comments attest to the film’s powers to inspire nightmares in children, even in adults. I am guessing that it also led to a surge in the number of people joining CND.

Besides, you know you’ve hit a certain apex of harrowing brilliance when Portishead name a song after you.
 

 
‘Threads’ parts 2 -12 after the jump…

Thanks to Chris P. Daniels for the link.

 
Directed by and starring Robert Hossein and written by Dario Argento, Une Corde, Un Colt (The Rope And The Colt) is a rarely seen 1969 French spaghetti western ( pâtes de l’ouest) with a dynamite score by the director’s father, André Hossein. The film’s title song is sung by none other than Scott Walker.

I swore a vow on my dyin’ breath
to ride a trail that ends in death
and death could strike with a frightening jolt of a lightning bolt in
the land where the rope and the colt are king

The Rope And The Colt was also released with the much more sinister and compelling title Cemetery Without Crosses. The DVD is available from CultCine Media.
 

Best-selling author Jacqueline Susann and Judy Garland at a 1967 press conference.
 
Judy Garland’s screen test for Valley of the Dolls. Re-blogging this from Billy Beyond, who writes:

After they fired her she took the costumes and performed in them at the Palladium in London. Go Judy.

The idea of casting Judy Garland as aging actress “Helen Lawson” in Valley of the Dools was pure genius, when you consider that Patty Duke’s “Neely O’ Hara” character was so obviously based on Garland herself. Not that Susan Hayward wasn’t great in the role, she was, but it would have been even better with Judy Garland.
 

 
After the jump, Patty Duke tells the story of Judy Garland getting fired from Valley of the Dolls... and her revenge!

 
Little Richard sings “Scuba Party” while frenzied go go dancers attempt to throw planet Earth off its axis with the sheer force of their hips. This is the highlight from the highly forgettable beach blanket dud Catalina Caper. For a few brief minutes Mr Penniman transforms this turd into gold.
 

 
In 1979, Gary Weis, known for his short films on Saturday Night Live, directed a documentary about South Bronx street gangs called 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s . Weis came up with idea of doing the film after reading an article in Esquire magazine by Jon Bradshaw. The article, like the film, focused on two gangs: the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls.

Despite its role as an important and unflinching portrait of a profoundly interesting time in New York and, as pointed out by The New York Times, hip hop’s cultural history, 80 Blocks was, for many years, impossible to find, only briefly available as an educational VHS release in 1985.

In the time since its initial release, the documentary has gained an overwhelming cult status. With little to no news coverage over the decades since its release dedicated fans continue to buzz about the film, especially now that the internet has provided fans common ground to fondly look back not only the documentary itself, but the era that it captured so vividly.

Here’s 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s in its entirety. If you dig the film and want to own a copy, you can purchase the DVD here. It comes with alot of extras, including interviews with the director, cinematographer, and a forty page book.
 

 
Marc Campbell previously drew our attention to Mondo Balordo, with his post on Franz Drago: 27 inches of swingin’ dynamite. Though not a classic of the shockumentary genre, Mondo Balordo (1964) continued the trend of exploitation documentary devised by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, with Mondo Cane (1962) and La Donna nel Mondo (aka Women of the World).

Directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero and Albert T Viola, Mondo Balordo has some classic bizarre moments, and a commentary by none other than horror legend, Boris Karloff. 

Our World…What a wild and fascinating place it is! Filled with love, hate, lust and all the hungers and driving passions by which the strange creature called man is possessed.

Karloff’s association with the film, and billing, gave it a certain amount of respectability. However, the sixties was an odd decade for Karloff as the great septuagenarian actor continued to churn out a volume of films enviable in a man half his age. Though he made some excellent films during that decade, Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, Roger Corman’s The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors, and Michael Reeves The Sorcerers, he did make some of his worst Cauldron of Blood, The Incredible Invasion, La muerte viviente.

Mondo Balordo is a novelty for Karloff fans, a distracting piece of bizarro movie-making, tasteless in places, though not necessarily for the reasons the film-makers originally intended. The whole film is available below, and here’s how the producers sold it:

Horror icon Boris Karloff wittily narrates Mondo Balordo, a shocking and depraved mondo movie that chronicles perversions and abnormalities from around the globe. You will be unable to look away as your eyes fill with shocking images that will burn scars into your retina and render you paralyzed in your seat. Grotesque and exploitive, but also riveting and defiant of taboo, Mondo Balordo seeks out the most twisted and surprising images. Subjects explored in graphic detail are dwarf love, white female sex slavery, Eastern brothels, black-market smuggling, marijuana, lesbianism, needless dog surgery and the phenomenon of raincoat-clad peeping toms. Experience Mondo Balordo if you dare!

 
Previously on DM

Franz Drago: 27 inches of swingin’ dynamite

Witchfinder General: The Life and Death of Michael Reeves

 
Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 shows never before seen footage of a female Sasquatch giving birth in the wild. Cameras have rarely gotten this close to the creatures.

From the “factoids” section of the film’s website:

Estimated Weight of Pregnant Female: 275lb/125kg/62flbn*
*Flibbon(flbn) has been theorized as a rudimentary unit of weight developed within Sasquatch culture.

Estimated Foot Size: 1.5ft/1.48168Pc

Estimated Weight of Infant: 15.4lb/7kg/3.27flbn

Estimated Area of Sasquatch Vagina in Hectares: .000025hec

Gestation Period: approximately fourteen months

The North American Sasquatch is a megafaunal bipedal hominoid, also known as “Bigfoot”, “Nuk-luk” or “Woolybooger”. The male Sasquatch unceremoniously abandons the female immediately upon impregnation. This leaves the female to fend for herself during the intense seventy-two hour labor period. The standard birthing posture is upright, scientifically referred to as “Inverted Supine” or “Gravity-Fed Style”. Traditionally a tree serves as the midwife; seizing it by its trunk, the female is provided with ample protection, leverage, and stability. Once the female’s water breaks(approx. six gallons in volume) she seeks out a secluded deciduous tree, its trunk an average of three feet in diameter, thick enough to support the expecting mother and her firm embrace. Typically the female Sasquatch tends to avoid trees of the coniferous variety when making her choice. There are two theories behind this: One, is that the sap/tar secretions are a nuisance during the already complicated birthing process, and two, is in order to avoid exposure to pine nuts, which are considered toxic to the Sasquatch newborn.

 
Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 was recently screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Via David Zellner

 
Attention Los Angeles film fans, actor Udo Kier will be IN PERSON Friday night at Cinefamily as part of their month long “That Guy!” celebration of character actors:

There is no other human on earth who looks like, moves, speaks and acts like Udo Kier—and many of the world’s top film directors are intimately aware of this. Frequently cast to give a film that extra indefinable oooompfh, Udo nails it every time, with a mixture of camp, chills, commitment, charm and sex! His penetrating blue eyes are like laser beams aimed through the soul; his gravitas can skew either warmly funny or deadly serious; his physical appeal is that of a sensual dark overlord; his that-guy-ness—electrifying, as his appearance in over 200 film/TV roles, from arthouse to grindhouse, have inspired a deeply devoted cult. This Teutonic two-headed titan of both top-shelf cinema classics and trashy exploitation fare has simply been one of our favorite on-screen performers for forever—and besides, how could Von Trier, Fassbinder, Herzog, Paul Morrissey, Rob Zombie, Argento, Carpenter, Van Sant, Wenders, Michael Bay, Guy Maddin and Uwe Boll all be wrong?

Tonight, we’re thrilled to welcome Udo for a lively discussion about his wild and prolific filmography, an oodles-of-Udo presentation of some of his greatest movie moments, and two incredibly rare films: the legendary 2002 short film Mrs. Meitlemeihr (which features Udo as Adolf Hitler hiding out in post-war London…in drag!), and 1996’s United Trash. Directed by Udo’s good friend, the late Christoph Schlingensief (a director whose outrageously outré is-it-art-or-is-it-exploitation satirical style made Kier his perfect frequent collaborator), the film is an incredible holyfuckingshit masterpiece not to be missed. And it stars Kitten Nativdad! Seriously, don’t miss this. JUST ADDED: the evening’s show will also feature the world premiere of new short films directed by Guy Maddin that star Udo, ones filmed simultaneously with Guy’s new feature Keyhole!

Starts at 8pm. Co-presented by Badass DIgest.

Below, Udo Kier’s memorable cameo in My Own Private Idaho.
 

 
Vittorio De Sisti’s Naked England (Inghilterra Nuda) from 1969 looks like mondo trash at its finest. But good luck finding it on DVD or video. For now, this wild little trailer will have to do.

Drugs, drag queens, nude psychotherapy, tutorials on stripping, trepanation, women wreastling (sic), disco churches and a soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, a suspected murderer who himself would be a suitable subject for Naked England, is an irresistible mix that makes this flick a perfect candidate for restoration and a digital release.

Narrated by English sword and sandal star Edmund Purdom.

Anybody know where I can get my hands on a copy?