Michael Leavitt, inspired by Harold and Maude
Super delightful Harold and Maude scuplture by artist Michael Leavitt. They’ll be showcased at Gallery 1988 in San Francisco starting Saturday, September 4th.
Crazy 4 Cult: Customs - Saturday, Sept. 4th from 7-10PM at G1988 SF!
Previously on Dangerous Minds: Harold and Maude paper dolls
I’ve written here before about how I used to go fanatically out of my way to collect memorabilia related to the movie Candy, in particular items emblazoned with photos of the film’s titular heroine, who was played by the comely Ewa Aulin, a one-time Miss Teen Sweden. Candy, which I didn’t actually see until much later was a “holy grail” movie for me, but when I saw it, my opinion was not favorable. (Nothing could have lived up to my high expectations to begin with, but Candy really sucked. But this isn’t about Candy, you can read what I wrote about that film here).
Another 60s goddess who I have a ridiculous amount of photos, movie posters, picture sleeve records, sheet music and even fine art photographic prints of, is Marianne Faithfull. Of all of my pantheon of 60s goddesses (Ursula Andress, Paula Prentiss, Francoise Hardy, Racquel Welch, Jane Birkin, Sandie Shaw, Joni Mitchell, P.P. Arnold, Claudine Longet) I’d have to say that Faithfull is, by quite a wide margin, my #1 favorite. Quite simply, there was no female anywhere on the planet as cool and as sexy as she was during the 60s. She was born with one of the most classically beautiful faces of all time and she just had that look which embodied the era as no other woman’s look or style could. A goddess, she was and still is.
A film titled Girl on a Motorcycle, alternatively known as Naked Under Leather, was made in 1968 to capitalize on Faithfull’s libertine reputation, acquired as the result of her having only a fur rug wrapped around her otherwise naked body during a drug bust at Keith Richard’s home the year before. In the film, Faithfull famously wears a black-leather catsuit with fur lining. Meow.
There’s not a whole lot of dialogue and even less plot in Girl on a Motorcycle. In a nutshell, Faithfull plays a young woman bored in her marriage who decides to escape, riding through the European on a motorcycle to meet her lover (Alain Delon). The audience hears her thoughts and existential musings. There are some spicy sex scenes with Delon that earned the tame-by-today’s-standards film, an X rating. It’s a little hard to follow and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but who cares? That’s not why you’re watching it anyway.
What we basically have in Girl on a Motorcycle is one of the quintessential Swinging 60s time capsule relics of psychedelic sexploitation. Is it a “good movie”? No. Is it a feast for the eyes. YES, indeed it is, and not just because of the gorgeous Ms. Faithfull, either. The European scenery is also brilliantly captured by director Jack Cardiff, a well-respected cinematographer who also shot classic films like The African Queen, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus (Not to mention Rambo: First Blood II). There’s also the psychedelic jazz score from Les Reed to recommend the film.
In summation: Girl on a Motorcycle, it’s 90 minutes of great shot after shot of one of the hottest women ever born riding a motorcycle in a leather catsuit or else having that same catsuit removed by a Frenchman’s teeth. With great music and some solarized psychedelic stuff thrown in for good measure (and to foil censors). The end.
This is the trailer for Girl on a Motorcycle. Picture this going on for about 90 minutes and… you’ll get the idea:
Here’s a page with lots of photos and scans of the many, many different movie posters that were made for this film. I have owned many of these myself. Note, in particular, the Czech and Japanese ones mid-way down the page. This is the kind of thing that I set up Ebay alerts for. (Cinebeats)
My, my the unlikely things you can find on Hulu if you dig deep enough… F’rinstance, there’s 1972’s horror/blaxpoilation classic, Blacula, starring deep-voiced actor William Marshall, wlo also played “The King of Cartoons” on Pee-wee’s Playhouse .
From the WIkipedia entry:
In 1780, Prince Mamuwalde (Marshall), the ruler of an African nation, seeks the help of Count Dracula (Charles Macaulay) in suppressing the slave trade.[4] Dracula, who along with his other evils is revealed as a racist, not only refuses to help but also transforms Mamuwalde into a vampire (denigrating him with the name “Blacula” into the bargain) and imprisons him in a sealed coffin to suffer the un-ending thirst of the damned. Mamuwalde’s wife Luva (McGee) is also imprisoned but, not being a vampire, dies in captivity.
Almost two centuries later, in 1972, the coffin has been purchased as part of an estate by two gay interior decorators, and shipped to Los Angeles. The men open the coffin and become the vampire’s first victims. Blacula then travels around the city and soon encounters Tina (McGee), who appears to be a reincarnation of his deceased wife, and begins stalking her. This brings the vampire to the attention of Dr. Gordon Thomas (Rasulala), who is helping Lt. Peters (Pinsent) with the investigation of the series of strange murders that is occurring, and whose girlfriend Michelle (Nicholas) is Tina’s sister (by an unlikely coincidence Tina and Michelle are also friends of Bobby, one of the murdered gay men).
The film continues as the vampire kills several more victims and hypnotizes Tina into falling in love with him. Meanwhile Thomas, Peters, and Michelle are following the trail of victims and come to realize that a vampire is responsible and Mamuwalde is their culprit. In the final scenes, the police shoot at Blacula and Tina; he is unharmed but she is mortally wounded. He saves her by turning her into a vampire, but Thomas, Peters, and Michelle find Tina and kill her with a stake through her heart. Distraught, Mamuwalde climbs up a staircase and onto a rooftop, into the sun to kill himself. Blacula melts in the light, and maggots suck his bones, and eat his flesh.
They even have the sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream!, costarring Pam Grier.
As part of their promotional push for Robert Rodriguez’s controversial exploitation flick Machete, 20th Century Fox commissioned filmmakers to do ‘lifestyle’ videos of the folks involved with making the movie. This first one, directed by Estevan Oriol from SA Studios, features perennial badass Danny Trefo lowriding in East L.A.. with his buddy Mr. Cartoon.
Rodriguez knocked me out with his zombie gorefest Planet Terror, so I have high hopes for Machete. Trejo as a ridiculously over-armed desperado looks like my kind of hero, Billy Jack on steroids.
Thunderbird is the crack cocaine of wines. It’s fortified with additional alcohol to get you drunk quicker. If you drink enough of the swill it will turn your tongue black, incinerate your gut and napalm your liver. The Gallo Wine Co. designed their firewater with the ghetto in mind. Their radio ads featured a song with a proto-rap vibe, “What’s the word? / Thunderbird / How’s it sold? / Good and cold / What’s the jive? / Bird’s alive / What’s the price? / Thirty twice.” It is said that…
Ernest Gallo once drove through a tough, inner city neighborhood and pulled over when he saw a bum. When Gallo rolled down his window and called out, “What’s the word?” the immediate answer from the bum was, “Thunderbird.
In a move that seems almost surreal, actor James Mason was recruited by Gallo to pitch its poverty punch. He was given a Rolls Royce as payment. Years later, Mason went on to star as a vicious slave owner in the soft-core blaxploitation potboiler Mandingo. Thunderbird shill to sleazoid slave owner ain’t much of a stretch character wise and probably didn’t earn him any dividends in the karma department.
The first ad in the following video tries to glamorize Thunderbird as a sexy, hip and happening cocktail for young stylish Blacks. The second is Mason trying to keep a straight face as he describes Thunderbird as “not quite like anything I’ve ever tasted.’
Apparently James had never drunk gasoline.
In 1983 Dennis Hopper went to Rice University in Houston, Texas ostensibly to screen his latest film Out Of The Blue. But little known to anyone, other than Hopper and a handful of his buddies, he had another agenda entirely. While he did indeed screen his movie, Hopper had actually come to Houston to blow himself up.
After screening Out Of The Blue, Hopper arranged to have the audience driven by a fleet of school buses to a racetrack on the outskirts of Houston, the Big H Speedway. Hopper and the buses arrived at the speedway just as the races were ending and a voice was announcing over the public address system “stick around folks and watch a famous Hollywood film personality perform the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act. That’s right, folks, he’ll sit in a chair with six sticks of dynamite and light the fuse.”
Was famous Hollywood personality Dennis Hopper about to go out with a bang?
Hopper apparently learned this stunt when he was a kid after seeing it performed in a traveling roadshow. If you place the dynamite pointing outwards the explosion creates a vacuum in the middle and the person performing the stunt is, if all goes according to plan, unharmed.
After bullshitting for awhile with the crowd and his friends, a drunk and stoned Hopper climbed into the “death chair’ and lit the dynamite.
Rice News correspondent describes the scene:
Dennis Hopper, at one with the shock wave, was thrown headlong in a halo of fire. For a single, timeless instant he looked like Wile E. Coyote, frazzled and splayed by his own petard. Then billowing smoke hid the scene. We all rushed forward, past the police, into the expanding cloud of smoke, excited, apprehensive, and no less expectant than we had been before the explosion. Were we looking for Hopper or pieces we could take home as souvenirs? Later Hopper would say blowing himself up was one of the craziest things he has ever done, and that it was weeks before he could hear again. At the moment, though, none of that mattered. He had been through the thunder, the light, and the heat, and he was still in one piece. And when Dennis Hopper staggered out of that cloud of smoke his eyes were glazed with the thrill of victory and spinout.
In this video footage shot by filmmaker Brian Huberman, we see Hopper in all his intoxicated glory before and after his death defying stunt.
Huberman on the film clip:
The large guy making the sign of the cross is the writer Terry Southern and the jerk threatening to blow up my camera is the German filmmaker, Wim Wenders.
Here’s a piece of history folks.
Watching these Kodachrome color tests from 1922 actually took my breath away for a moment. I felt as though time had stopped and I’d entered a dream. The colors are so sensual I felt like devouring them, inhaling them like opium. This stunning footage is archived at the George Eastman House and is an early test of the Two-Color Kodachrome Process.
In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.
Read more about these gorgeous moving pictures here.
Plenty more hi-res images to scan over at Stanley Kubrick - Deserving of Worship.
Beatnik chicks rule. Phillipa Fallon and Vampira move imaginary furniture in the coffeehouses of our minds.
Two groovy clips from High School Confidential and The Beat Generation.
The words to ‘High School Drag’ (the poem in the HSC clip) were written by B-movie screenwriter Mel Welles who seemed to have the right credentials for writing bop prose, “I was an expert on grass in my day…” Welles also wrote hep talk for hipster royalty Lord Buckley.
Swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Vampira went on to have a full-blown TV and film career, but what happened to the exquisite of Phillipa Fallon? She only made two films after High School Confidential, which is hard to believe considering the indelible impression she makes in that brief moment when the planets aligned and beatific angels kissed the foreheads of teenyboppers everywhere as Phillipa laid the beatnik gospel upon us. Ms. Fallon should have been a mega-star.
Check out the rat Vampira is cuddling while she versifies.
After the jump, Dennis Hopper as a beatnik in a 1964 episode of Petticoat Junction and the full text of the poem ‘High School Drag’ in all its glory.
