In this latest brilliant comedy short from Jackal Films (director Jacqueline Wright and writer/performer Alice Lowe), Dangerous Minds pal, Rich Fulcher stars in the title role, of “My Old Baby” a “tragic true story of a baby afflicted with a rare degenerative condition, with horrific irreversible symptoms.” Clearly, this is a role Rich was born to play! (I just hope, you know, he doesn’t get typecast). Narrated by Sharon Horgan.
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.
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.
Dead Or Alive’s Pete Burns has gone through quite a transformation since his early days of pop stardom. This video is of a recent London performance by the plastic fantastic Burns.
Pete Burns, rock and roll Lion Lady…
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…
A strange little ditty from an even stranger record company. Homer The Happy Little Homo was released on Camp Records sometime in the early 1960’s. Here’s a brief history of this obscure novelty label:
Almost nothing is known about the mysterious 60’s record label Camp Records. They released an album and 10 45 rpm records of gay parody songs, most done with effeminate voices. I believe they were issued in the early 60’s, as they all appeared in an ad in the gay magazine Vagabond, dated 1965. The address on the album record jacket was PO Box 3213, Hollywood, California, and it credited all selections to Different Music Co, Hollywood.
The artists singing most of the songs were uncredited, or with names obviously made up, like Byrd E. Bath and B. Bubba, but one name stands out, Rodney Dangerfield. That name credited on one of the songs, and possibly another. This would have been very early in Dangerfield’s career, as his website bio says he decided to devote his career to comedy at age 40, which would have been in 1961. But I don’t think it was the comedian we know; just a prop name used for the release. Dangerfield disclaims any knowledge of it.
A second album released on the label was called “Mad About the Boy.” It was filled with mostly well-known Broadway and cabaret songs that were originally sung by women. This album kept the pronouns intact, making them very gay. They were done in lounge style, without a campy approach…in other words, done “straight.” The liner notes state: ‘The primary reason for doing this album was to prove that good songs could and should be sung by everyone. Gender should not be the determining factor as to who should sing what.’ The notes later say that the male soloist and other artists on the album are well-known ‘Hollywood, TV, and screen personalities’ but ‘we are not at liberty to reveal true names.’ I have no idea if all this is true, or simply hype. The album probably came out in 1964 or 1965, as it pictures on the back all the previous releases of the label. And it is also advertised in the 1965 issue of Vagabond (see more, below), so I believe it was the last record they released.
JD Doyle
The video features some record sleeves from Camp.
Thanks to Queer Music Heritage.
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.
Speculating on how an 85-year-old Lenny Bruce would be celebrating his birthday today is as fun as it is pointless.
But it’s pretty easy to guess that edgy comedy’s patron saint would not have been able to stretch out casually on TV for 25 minutes in conversation with a legendary publisher and lifestyle creator like the Hef.
That’s what happened in 1959 on the first episode of Playboy’s Penthouse, Hugh Hefner’s first foray into TV, which broadcast from WBKB in his Chicago hometown. This was the first mass-market exposure of the erstwhile club-bound Bruce, and its high-end hepness set the tone for the show’s two-season run, which featured a ton of figures in the jazz culture scene.
Of course, the dynamic between the eloquent snapping-and-riffing Long Islander Bruce and the perennially modest Midwestern Hefner is classic as the comedian covers topics like “sick” comedy, nose-blowing, Steve Allen, network censorship, tattoos & Jews, decency wackos, Lou Costello, integration, stereotypes, medicine and more.
As requested by our own Tara M., here’s a quick Pere Ubu post. You really can’t go wrong with anything they released in their first incarnation (‘75-‘79 or so) but these first 2 7” A sides are total rock classics by any sane person’s standards (of rock). I personally spent many teen hours thrashing about in suburban bedrooms with my pals to these deathlessly perfect monster jams. True American masterpieces.
More Ubu after the jump…
Henry Miller, Asleep And Awake is a charming visit with the Buddha of Brooklyn.
Tom Schiller’s 1975 documentary follows Miller from the microcosmos of his very own shit-hole to a mock-up 1890s New York of his childhood—or “that old shit-hole, New York’” (in fact the set for Hello Dolly, with Barbra Streisand & Walter Matthau, 1969). Schiller describes his documentary this way: ‘A guided tour of the pictures and artifacts of his bathroom’ ... though it feels to be very much more than that.