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This will flip your lid: Jayne Mansfield’s wild exotic dance in ‘Primitive Love’
10.14.2010
04:34 am
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Jayne Mansfield’s exotic dance from the 1964 mondo documentary Primitive Love. The blissed-out dude playing the plastic bucket embodies everything I aspire to be: Buddha nature in overdrive.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.14.2010
04:34 am
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‘Microscopic Liquid Subway To Oblivion’ will melt your mind
10.14.2010
03:48 am
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Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion  not only has a great title, it has one of the weirdest title sequences in the history of drugsploitation cinema. The psychedelic theme song by Ronnie Jones and The Man is faux hippie shit at it’s finest. This Italian rarity is from 1970. It stars Ewa Aulin who played the title role in the 1968 film version of Candy.
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.14.2010
03:48 am
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Filipino Batman and Robin: The crappiest and funniest caped crusader film ever!
10.13.2010
10:01 pm
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Filipino campfest Alyas Batman En Robin was made in 1993 on a zero budget, though it was considered a major release in the Philippines and starred three of that countries most popular comedians. Goofy, cheesy and fun, this flick is filled with crappy costumes, bad action sequences, inept choreography and a soundtrack that is cringe-worthy. But, it’s epic crappiness is what makes it such a blast. Here’s the grand finale featuring a blatant ripoff of Danny and The Juniors’ ‘At The Hop’.

Directed by Tony Y. Reyes and starring Rene Resquiestas, Dawn Zulueta, Vina Morales, Kempee De Leon, Joey De Leon
 

 
Watch the jawdroppingly silly trailer for Alias Batman And Robin after the jump…
 

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Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.13.2010
10:01 pm
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Michael Gough: ‘Horrors of the Black Museum’
10.13.2010
07:30 pm
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It starts innocently enough. A young woman receives a surprise package in the mail.  No doubt a gift from an admirer, or a belated birthday present. She opens it, inside is a pair black binoculars. An odd gift, for sure, but well-intentioned, no doubt. She examines them, then goes to a window, where she puts the binoculars to her eyes. Two spring-loaded spikes are instantly fired into her eyes, blinding and killing her.

So begins Horrors of the Black Museum, the most gory, gruesome and shocking film made in the 1950s. Co-written and produced by Herman Cohen, the American producer best known for I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Horrors of the Black Museum announced a new and distinct genre in movie-making - Exploitation, with its focus on sadistic cruelty and violence. Released in 1959, it is incredible now how this film was ever made, let alone given a certificate. 

Filmed in “the most fantastic advance in motion pictures,” Hypno-Vista, “a psychological technique” where the audience in the cinema auditorium “actually become part of the action…on the screen,” Horrors of the Black Museum didn’t need gimmicks to snare its audience. It may be Cohen’s masterpiece, but it is the central performance from Michael Gough that makes the film so bloody marvelous. 

Born in Kuala-Lumpur in 1916, Gough started his film career in 1947, and has appeared in over one hundred films since. Now best known for his appearance as Alfred Pennyworth in the first four Batman movies, Gough is the uncrowned King of Horror, starring in some of the most interesting (The Skull, The Curse of the Crimson Altar), shocking (Black Zoo, The Corpse, Horror Hospital) and influential (Dracula, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors), horror films of the of the 1950s-80s.

Gough may devour the scenery in Horrors of the Black Museum, but it is just what is needed to carry off such a bizarre and absurd story-line, as he stars as deranged writer, Edmond Bancroft, playing a murderous game of cat-and-mouse with the Scotland Yard Police. Cohen and Gough made five films together, but nothing matched the shock and awe of this beauty. In an interview with Cinefantastique Gough gave a tantalizing snippet of what making the film was like:

“I made five films for Herman Cohen as he seemed to like the way I played his characters or perhaps I should say character because the first three were cut from the same cloth. Cohen was a showman first, last, and always; his manner was always overbearing and his opinions sacrosanct. During the filming of Horrors of the Black Museum, he would show up unannounced onset and tell our director Arthur Crabtree how to direct a scene and the actors as well. I mean this just was not on, and as a result Arthur began to loath Cohen on sight. He demanded all the walls of the set be painted a violent shade of blue or green; Herman Cohen was the boss on all that he produced – and not in a positive way either.”

Grim and gory, Horrors of the Black Museum is definitely one to rent for this Halloween.
 

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.13.2010
07:30 pm
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Hard-boiled Frank Sinatra: Tony Rome will get ‘em if they don’t watch out
10.13.2010
01:31 pm
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“Tony Rome” was Frank Sinatra’s hard-boiled detective alter-ego in two films, 1967’s Tony Rome and its 1968 sequel, The Lady in Cement. Bucking the trend of Bond and the sub-Bonds like Our Man Flint (with James Coburn) and the “Matt Helm” series starring his Rat Pack buddy, Dean Martin, the “Tony Rome” movies were much more noirish in their approach, although, natch, this being Ol’ Blue Eyes, there were silly, sexist and “in joke” elements aplenty in the films.

Sinatra was directed in both films by Gordon Douglas (who directed him in Robin and the 7 Hoods) and surrounded by A-list cast members Raquel Welch, Bonanza’s Dan Blocker, Jill St. John, Gena Rowlands and sexy Sue Lyon (who played the title role in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita).

I have always particularly liked the jaunty theme song to Tony Rome, written and produced by Lee Hazelwood and sung by Nancy Sinatra, you can hear it here.

Hugo Montenegro provided the groovy soundtrack to Lady in Cement, here’s the trailer:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.13.2010
01:31 pm
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Alejandro Jodorowsky interview on BBC TV 1991
10.12.2010
06:13 pm
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British TV personality Jonathan Ross interviews Alejandro Jodorowsky on the BBC in 1991. Jodowsky had released Sante Sangre a year earlier and had just completed The Rainbow Thief when this show was filmed.

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

“I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.”
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.12.2010
06:13 pm
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Sun Ra: Rocket Number Nine 7” single (1968)
10.12.2010
01:19 pm
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Sun Ra’s Rocket Number Nine is an exuberant, joyfully child-like expression of excitement at the notion of space travel. It is one amongst many catchy anthems the man created during his time on Earth. This version from a 1968 self-released 7” single and compiled on the wonderful 1996 double CD Sun Ra: The Singles is probably my favorite. Slowed down to a New Orleans swagger, I could listen to that glorious Monk-esque riff all day long.
 

 
Hear a few more versions of Rocket Number Nine by Sun Ra after the jump…

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Posted by Brad Laner
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10.12.2010
01:19 pm
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Last Minutes with Oden: Are you ready to be heartbroken?
10.11.2010
02:21 pm
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Last Minutes with Oden was voted best video at the Vimeo Festival + Awards over the weekend and boy did it deserve to win. The film is a six-minute long documentary about a former addict, Jason Wood, putting down his much loved pooch, Oden. Directed by Eliot Rausch, the short sensitively portrays what it’s like to go through something like this—is there anything more wrenching than having to put a dying pet down?—as well as expertly tying in Jason’s brutal backstory. The film is tightly and economically directed and to say it’s moving is a criminall understatement (I cried my eyes out—just sobbed like a baby—watching this earlier in the year and just now).

The Vimeo awards were held at the School of Visual Arts in New York and judged by folks like David Lynch, Roman Coppola, Morgan Spurlock, and M.I.A. Another winner that I really liked is Andy Brutel’s insane music video for “Scissors” by Liars.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.11.2010
02:21 pm
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Hershell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore
10.10.2010
01:19 pm
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The Los Angeles premiere of director Frank Henenlotter’s new documentary, Hershell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore takes place at Cinefamily in Hollywood, CA on October 12th on a double feature bill with the gore classic, Two Thousand Maniacs. Henenlotter and producer Mike Vraney will be here in person for a Q&A in-between the films.

Frank Henenlotter, one of our favorite HFS directors and the man behind classics like Basket Case and Brain Damage, is back with the definitive portrait of Herschell Gordon Lewis, one of the godfathers of exploitation movies! Featuring John Waters, drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, Lewis’s legendary early producer David F. Friedman, Herschell himself, and testimony from the people who were actually there! You’ll witness Lewis’s beginnings in the bare-naked innocent era of “nudie cuties,” just before he shocked the world with Blood Feast, the first ever gore film—and then you’ll be treated to a madcap whirl of his notorious, controversial career, featuring Two Thousand Maniacs!, She-Devils On Wheels, Blast-Off Girls, Just For The Hell Of It and the incredible The Wizard Of Gore! Experience a decade of motion picture madness, with tons of film clips, rare outtakes, and unintentional hilarity, as The Godfather of Gore leaves you laughing and screaming at some of the most amazing movies to ever play American theaters!

[True story: When I met future “Club Kid Murderer” Michael Alig (when both of us were still teenagers) he was the first person I knew who had a VCR, but he only had three videotapes: Hershell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs and Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer. Coincidence? You decide!]
 

 
Below, the trailer for Lewis’s hicksploitation “masterpiece” Two Thousand Maniacs. I’ve only seen this film twice, and yet I can still remember most of the lyrics to the insanely catchy theme song.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.10.2010
01:19 pm
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The Paranormal Peter Sellers
10.09.2010
07:23 pm
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Many actors are superstitious. Some like Peter Bull kept a collection of Teddy bears to bring him good luck; others like Jack Lemmon said the words, “It’s magic time,” before filming each scene. But few have ever been quite as obsessed with superstitions and the occult as comedy genius, Peter Sellers.

Sellers’ introduction to the Occult came via fellow Goon, Michael Bentine, the “Watford-born Peruvian,” who had grown-up in a household where seances and table-turning were regularly practiced. Not long after they first met, Bentine told Sellers of his psychic abilities - how during the Second World War, when Bentine served in the Royal Air Force, he had been able to tell which of his comrades would die before a bombing mission. Bentine claimed if he saw a skull instead of his colleague’s features, then he knew this person would be killed. How often Bentine was correct in these predictions is not known. No matter, Sellers was greatly impressed by the shock-haired comic and was soon obsessed with all things paranormal.

From then on, Sellers collected superstitions, as easily as others collect stamps. He refused to wear green or act with anyone dressed in the color. If anyone gave him something sharp, he gave them a penny. He read his horoscopes every day so he would always know what he should do.

Sellers often said he had no idea who he was: “If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”  This was his way of renouncing any responsibility for his actions.  He claimed he found comfort and stability in consulting clairvoyants and fortune tellers, which again only underlines the fact he did know who he was - a control freak, who wanted power over his future. It was inevitable, therefore, that once under the spell of sooth-sayers and psychics, Sellers was open to fraudsters, tricksters and con-men.

The clairvoyant who had most influence over his life was Maurice Woodruff, the famed TV and newspaper astrologer, whose syndicated column reached over fifty million people at the height of his career. Woodruff received over 5,000 letters a week, asking for advice and had a Who’s Who of of celebrity clients, including composer Lionel Bart and actor Diana Dors. Woodruff had famously predicted the death of President John F. Kennedy and the end of the Vietnam War. Sellers was devoted to Woodruff, consulting him before he accepted any film roles, and regularly had tarot readings performed over the telephone. But Woodruff was heavily in debt and open to the persuasion of earning a little cash when film studios asked him to suggest film scripts to Sellers.

One famous tale, recounts how Woodruff was asked to suggest the initials of director Blake Edwards as being very important to Sellers. Unfortunately, Sellers failed to connect ‘B.E.’ with the famous Hollywood director. On return to the Dorchetser Hotel, his usual residence when in London, Sellers was smitten by the sight of a beautiful, young blonde-haired woman at reception. When he enquired who was this vision of loveliness, he was told Britt Ekland. Sellers recalled Woodruff’s prediction and married Ekland within weeks.

 
More on the paranormal Peter Sellers plus bonus clip after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.09.2010
07:23 pm
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