I was actually looking for the rather good Dirk Bogarde film The Mind Benders, based on the novel by James Kennaway, when I came across this famed anti-LSD film of the same name.

Based on genuine experiments that took place in the 1950s, Kennaway’s The Mind Benders dealt with the use of sensory deprivation tanks as a means to brainwash individuals—ultimately to be used by friendly western governments for covert political means. Though the story was couched within a tale of love and infidelity, it was highly controversial when first released in 1963, and both book and film received undeservedly harsh, misguided and reactionary condemnation.

A few years later, and the FDA produced The Mind-Benders: LSD and the Hallucinogens, which is variously dated as 1967, 1968 or 1970. The title alone sounds like a musical line-up. While it was okay for governments to mess with people’s minds, the youth taking acid or peyote and alike on their own, well that was a definite no-no.

It doesn’t really work as an anti-drug film, as the interviewees seem like nice people, from nice homes, who probably had nice lives, nice jobs, and who generally had a nice time with the drugs. They tell us about their experiences both good, bad and “really frightening,” after taking LSD for kicks, or to learn something about themselves or life.

One interviewee claims some people will flip out, and people may die, but they really should read up on what they’re getting into. Sounds like sensible advice. While others talk about bright lights, lights brighter than the sun; or everything vibrating, falling apart, and eyes like an electronic microscope; or the patterns and connections the hallucinogenic experience illuminates. And of course, the scary part, where people think they are dead, or fear that everything can break or can become one, and really far out things can just disappear. A bit like the Internet then.

M’colleague, Marc Campbell posted this a while back. At the time, Marc commented:

“Good production values give this drug scare film from 1967 the sheen of respectability, but it’s still full of the same old bullshit. At a time when kids needed a Psychedelics For Dummies instructional manual, we got the kind of spooky propaganda that caused more bummers than strychnine-laced STP.”

Nicely put.
 

Cohen in Buddhist regalia
 
Celebrities and artists discussing religion is always a tricky business. Fame tends to be a of a very worldly nature and often threatens to cheapen the subject, or distract from the gravity of spiritual matters. This can go doubly awry when westerners project their exotic fantasies on Asian religions—the fantastic book, Karma Cola, by Gita Mehta is an insightful look at the phenomenon of American and European “pilgrims” traveling to India, hoping to find enlightenment. (Since people are people, anywhere you go, many of those pilgrims were defrauded by fake yogis—India’s snake oil salesman and televangelist swindler equivalent.)

However, Leonard Cohen’s narration of the 1994 documentary pair, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Way of Life and The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation, is both understated and dignified (with the first film featuring The Dalai Lama himself). Cohen, who was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk in 1996, is staid in his narration of Tibetan Buddhist theory and practice, but the films are neither dry nor academic—a scene with a man in a hospice dealing with his own mortality is particularly affecting. I have to say, I initially just checked this out looking for something on Cohen’s Buddhism; what I found was an extremely respectful and compelling documentary, devoid of voyeurism, and mindful of the humanity of its subjects.

The series in its entirety is divided into five segments below, four being about 20 minutes long, with a two-minute clip in the middle.
 

 
According to The Detroit News, rock poster artist Gary Grimshaw, long associated with the MC5 and Detroit’s legendary Grande Ballroom, died Monday morning after a long illness, and several recent strokes, at the age of 67. 

Grimshaw was best friends in childhood with the late MC5 singer Rob Tyner. He was also a part of revolutionary poet John Sinclair’s Rainbow People’s Party and the “Trans-Love Energies” artistic movement. Grimshaw was active from the late 60s until recently, doing new work for local appearances by The White Stripes and Patti Smith and publishing a book last summer with Leni Sinclair titled Detroit Rocks! A Pictorial History of Motor City Rock and Roll 1965 to 1975.

Grimshaw’s style is instantly recognizable and his work is highly collectible.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Via Michael Simmons

 
Art rock gods Wire were inactive between 1981 and 1985 due to solo outings and other projects. When they reformed, the sound of Wire 2.0 moved away from their earlier harder-edged material towards more electronic instrumentation and experimentation.

The band had moved on and announced that they would play none of the older songs live, hilariously opting instead to hire a Wire tribute band called The Ex-Lion Tamers—their name taken from one of Pink Flag‘s song titles—to open their American tour playing tunes from their first few albums.

You have to love that. What other band save for Wire would do such a thing?

Wire live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London on Sunday July 21, 1985. This is, I’m pretty sure, the first gig of their return.

Set list: “Drill,” “Serious Of Snakes,” “Ambulance Chasers,” “Harry,” “Madman’s Honey,” “Come Back In Two Halves,” “Kidney Bingos,” “Up To The Sun,” “Drill.”
 

Asaoka Ruriko, Kokoro No Uramado, 1969
 
In late December I did a post about the fantastic rock posters of the Japanese pop art master Tadanori Yokoo. Even though I referred to a couple of his album covers, I didn’t know that his work in that medium was every bit as extensive. As with the posters, the bulk of his album cover art was in the 1970s, but he dabbled in album covers in the 1980s and 1990s as well.

Artists include Santana, Miles Davis, John Cale, and Earth, Wind, and Fire as well as a panoply of musicians with whom I’m not as familiar, some of them Japanese.

All of these images are a feast for the eyes, something about the genre of rock art unleashed Yokoo’s inner insane collagist. His 1960s pop art work is admirably restrained from a formal perspective. I find these covers fascinating, I can look at them endlessly. The album art for Santana’s Amigos is a particular treat. Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Santana, Lotus, 1974
 

 

 

 

Miles Davis, Agharta, 1975
 

 

 

 

Santana, Amigos, 1976
 
Lots more after the jump…..

 
Thomas More school in Mechelen posted this silly video of students taking an exam while their drone overlord watches over them. The drone is supposed to deter cheaters and perhaps catch one or a few tricksters in action.

Honestly, this Orwellian approach seems more distracting than anything. I mean, wouldn’t the buzzing from the drone and the “OMG there’s this annoying flying thing above mah head!” hinder concentration? Kinda dumb if you ask me.
 
Update: Perhaps a hoax?
 

 
Via Metro UK and Nerdcore

 
The name Russ Meyer has some striking connotations. The first being a comic-book style obsession with large, heaving, fleshy female breasts. But if all you see with the man is pendulous, heaving, busting-out-of-the screen tatas, then you are seeing only part of the picture. Meyer’s signature films boasted top notch editing that never let you finish a breath, plot lines that played out like the weirdest morality tale and characters that were so over the top and wild, that you really wished real life could be just like that.

Out of the 24 feature films he is credited with directing, there is one that has been fairly obscure and in the shadows till now. With 1964’s Fanny Hill, there are some potential reasons for this. That’s not to say it is a bad movie. It’s cute, features some lovely ladies and some fun performances. Fanny Hill stars Italian actress Leticia Roman as the very pretty, sweet natured and brain-damaged/naive titular character. Unlike the sexually precocious character from the classic 1700’s purple prose book, this Fanny Hill is about as glowy-cheeked and innocent as a Disney character.
 

 
After being orphaned by her rural parents, Fanny is taken to the city by her “friend,” whom we never meet. Abandoned, homeless and hungry, a desperate Fanny ends up at an employment office run by a hirsute woman with salacious looks. Before the living definition of mustache rides can act on any of her barely hidden impulses, Mrs. Maude Brown (legendary classic Hollywood actress Miriam Hopkins) saunters in and is flabbergasted at the eerie resemblance that young Fanny has with her late daughter.

Mrs. Brown immediately takes on the young lamb, not as a maid, but as a surrogate daughter. Madame seems a bit off, but compared to whatever fate beautiful-dim bulb Fanny has with Mustache Rides, she is in better hands with Mrs. Brown. She soon gets to stay at her new benefactress’s lovely home and her coterie of comely “cousins.” At last, the Meyer-ian buxotic factor comes into play, as each woman is gorgeous and colorful, including one acting like a crazed Lolita and another one practicing her whipping techniques on a mannequin. Russ Mayer fans will spot the uber-busty Rena Horten, whom he would go on to use in the incredible sex filled, fire and brimstone fueled Mudhoney, amongst the “cousins.”
 

 
After setting her up with one particularly lecherous, bewigged older man that ends up in catastrophe, Mrs. Brown realizes how genuinely virginal her new charge is. Of course, does that dissuade her from wanting to assimilate the young lovely into her roster of sexed-up, tigress-courtesans? Of course not!

However, as if Fanny’s blind allegiance to her own dim-witted naivete was not enough, soon another threat looms to wrench Brown’s plans for making the girl her next soiled dove. A chance meeting with a young sailor, Charles (future director Ulli Lommel), plunges Cupid’s arrow straight down Fanny’s heart. The young lovers announce their plans to wed to Mme. Brown. Not wanting her still untarnished future meal ticket to slip away, Brown engineers a plan to put Charles far away on an island. But you cannot keep a seafaring soul away and hijinks ensue, including one randy aristocrat named Hemingway (Walter Giller) who tries to wed Fanny, solely to get into her pantaloons. Will true love intervene or will our young heroine end up violated by a man whose sexual games involve gropey sleepwalking?
 

 
Fanny Hill is a cheeky film that is about as racy, if not slightly less so, than an episode of Benny Hill. Given that Mayer was THE godfather behind the nudie-cutie film movement, starting with the groundbreaking Immoral Mr. Teas, it is incredibly surprising that there is nary any real nudity in the entire film. There’s a decent amount of cleavage and some of the aforementioned ribaldry, but given that this came out the same year as Meyer’s far heavier and lurid Southern-fueled exploiter, Lorna, it feels unreasonably tame.

That said, Fanny Hillis a charming film with a cast that obviously had a lot of fun and relish with their roles. Hopkins, famous for her work in such Hollywood classics as 1933’s Design for Living, glams it up as the advantageous Mrs. Brown. Giller as the ridiculously lecherous Hemingway is even better, to the extent that you want more of his character. Roman is highly pretty and well suited to the supernaturally naive Fanny. Out of the canon of Meyer heroines, she is the wallflower at a swinging, claws-out-fighting party filled with women like Tura Satana, Erica Gavin, Kitten Natividad and Uschi Digard. But that’s okay because “Fanny Hill” itself is the wallflower of Meyer’s filmography.
 

 
That said, even wallflowers have their moments and deserve love too. Thanks to the continually fine work from the folks at Vinegar Syndrome, this long obscure title is now available, spiffed up from its original negative and released on both DVD and Blu Ray. It’s great to have it, especially since the only time I ever remember seeing it beforehand was on a battered Paragon VHS at the second oldest video store in my hometown. On top of this nice release, they have also included an interview with former protege of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and director of the 1980 Richard Hell film Blank Generation, Ulli Lommel. They have also included Albert Zugsmith’s The Phantom Gunslinger as a bonus second feature! (Zugsmith who produced Fanny Hill.) Starring former teen heartthrob Troy Donahue and famed Mexican horror actor German Robles, The Phantom Gunslinger ironically looks visually more like a Meyer film, minus the breasty factor, than Fanny Hill. Splashy colors, Ala Wild Gals of the Wild West, and an over-the-top approach to characters that it feels like Tex Avery did five hits of acid and decided to make a live-action Western film with Troy Donahue. This is praise, by the way.
 

 
Fanny Hill is a cute and interesting cinematic footnote of one of the truly most innovative, talented and wholly unique filmmakers America has produced in the last 100 years. Treat it like your charming Aunt, tipsy at a brunch after her 3rd Mimosa, telling you a PG-13 joke and giggling like she just said the nastiest thing in the world.
VHS release on

 
Dirk Bogarde “coveted the dream” of making a change in his cinematic career. He longed for some “self-respect,” but that day in May, 1968, Bogarde was in Rome, earning his living, filming an advert for sunglasses on the city’s Spanish Steps.

This was not how he hoped his future career would progress. Though thankfully, as Bogarde later recalled in the second volume of autobiography, Snakes and Ladders, it didn’t last long and was less “shameful” than he had imagined.

I ran up and down the steps twenty or thirty times, inanely smiling, blacked-out by the sun-glasses which successfully concealed my face, mute, since I spoke no word, sweltering in a flannel suit and new shoes which slipped on the polished stone.

Of course, Bogarde did not know it then, but this advert would bring him into orbit of the director who would bring him his greatest artistic success.

Luchino Visconti was in Rome casting for a movie, which was partially inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Bogarde had read a first draft of the screenplay, but thought the central character of Freidrich Bruckmann “wet.” However, his partner and manager, Anthony Forwood arranged for Bogarde to meet with Visconti to discuss the project further. Though against the film, the actor followed Forwood’s advice.

On meeting in an hotel, over whisky and sodas, Bogarde was impressed with Visconti, and despite his original misgivings, agreed to take the role of Friedrich in the film, which became The Damned. It was from this first fortuitous meeting that Bogarde and Visconti went on to work with each other on Death in Venice.
 

 
According to Philadelphia magazine, police are on the hunt for a man they’ve coined the “Swiss Cheese Pervert.” Apparently this dude likes to drive around and show his junk to women with a slice of swiss cheese. Yep.

Via Philly.com:

According to the group, the suspect, a heavyset white man estimated to be in his late 40s or early 50s, approaches women while driving a silver or black sedan with his genitals exposed. He then displays a piece of sliced Swiss cheese and offers to pay the women to put the cheese on his penis and perform sexual acts on him using it.

snip

A police source yesterday confirmed that the Special Victims Unit is investigating the man after several women from the Mayfair area filed reports describing similar encounters with a man displaying what the source called a “major sexual cheese fetish.”

If any of our female readers in Philadelphia come in contact with this man and his “major sexual cheese fetish,” you should contact the authorities immediately.

UPDATE: Is this man the “Swiss Cheese Pervert”?

 
J. G. Ballard’s prose poem “What I Believe” was originally published in the French magazine Science Fiction, in January 1984. It was written in response to a request from editor Daniel Riche for the series entitled “Ce que je crois.” Described as “part poem part prayer” it offers a personal and amusing catalog of tropes and memes, the recurrent imagery, themes, and influences which are to be found in Ballard’s work.

Ballard’s poem subverts the pomposity of the traditional “What I believe” list, where you expect long meanders into politics and self-justification. Ballard’s is more fun, though as equally revealing as those written by Bertrand Russell or E. M. Forster.

The animation I believe or Credo was created for the first exhibition dedicated to J. G. Ballard and his work, which was held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Spain, in 2008.

It should be noted this is an edited version of Ballard’s “What I Believe,” as read by the author on the documentary series The South Bank Show, in 2006.

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

“I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.”

Here the poem jumps, excising Ballard’s belief “in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen of her lower lip…” too problematic for those on the Left in TV, where abhorrence is the expected response to Mrs. T. However, Ballard pointedly goes on to imagine Thatcher “caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.”

Ballard admired Thatcher, and said in an interview contained in RE/Search that he had almost jumped for joy when the Iron Lady was first elected in 1979. But to be fair, so did most of the British voting public, hence Thatcher’s dominance in power over three elections. Margaret Thatcher was the kind of strong woman Ballard admired, though he did later satirize her as the environmentalist zealot, Dr. Barbara in Rushing to Paradise.

Like the artist Francis Bacon,  Ballard reworked his own personal obsessions in his work, he mined a distinctive style of fiction that was instantly recognizable—airport car parks, empty swimming pools, deserted beaches, forgotten motels, etc etc. These are the memories of his childhood in Shanghai, as filtered through the prism of his imagination.
 

 
H/T Suzanne Moore. More on what Ballard believes plus bonus videos, after the jump…