We’ve noted before that the merchandising arm connected with Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie of 1979 didn’t seem to know anything about the movie. (For example here are a bunch of trading cards Topps put out, with bland text that seems pretty clueless about what’s actually in the movie.) 

Apparently nobody had gotten the memo that Alien was an R-rated thrillfest in which an alien creature gorily bursts through the chest of one of the characters—this movie was clearly not intended for nine-year-olds, which made the attempts to market the movie to nine-year-olds all the weirder. (Actually, I myself was nine years old when Alien came out—I didn’t see it, but I vividly remember a classmate of mine telling me all about it. Obviously the chestburster scene was the main thing he talked about.) 

So here’s another kid-targeted mindfuck…. an actual Alien board game, put out by Kenner!
 

 
On BoardGameGeek, the world’s greatest resource for board game enthusiasts, the user reviews for this game are all over the map, and it’s easy to see why. A glance at the board reveals that the game is probably a pretty lazy rehash of Parcheesi, which is basically true. (If you were given a single day to design a board game as a tie-in for, say, Kong: Skull Island, you’d probably end up with something along the lines of Parcheesi, too.) But at the same time, there are some clever touches.

The object of the game is to make your way through the Nostromo to reach the Narcissus space station. Each player has three Astronaut tokens and one Alien token. You roll dice and move players around, and a player can use his or her Alien to take out the opposing Astronauts. Now right there you have an instant contradiction: The whole point of the Xenomorph is that nobody “controls” the fucking thing. It is inherently uncontrollable. The dictates of symmetrical gameplay that would have reigned in the 1970s meant that you couldn’t have one player as the alien and other players representing the Nostromo crew members, which is how the game probably should have been designed. 

Anyway, I mentioned clever game design. The main feature I wanted to point out was the introduction of “air shaft” pathways that are only available for the Alien to use. I like that idea quite a bit. Parcheesi doesn’t have that feature, right?

Also, in the game instructions there appears what is maybe the greatest sentence ever to appear in an instructions manual for a game designed for kids. The sentence is: “Aliens are never eliminated.” Eek!
 

 
It’s interesting that the understanding of Ripley as a movie character for the ages had not solidified yet. Sigourney Weaver’s image doesn’t appear anywhere on the box. Here’s an interesting custom logo that Kenner must have cooked up for the game:
 

 
If you paid the original price for this game in 1979, you lucked out by obtaining what would eventually become a collector’s dream acquisition.

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US movie poster for ‘The Lonely Lady’ for sale at Westgate Gallery

We’ve waited almost 34 years to see The Lonely Lady as it played on cinema screens during its cruelly brief Universal theatrical release.  Only 1983’s most depraved trash-film degenerate whose sense of camp was so finely tuned that the combo of Pia Zadora plus Harold Robbins set off an alarm-bell that sent them flitting, without hesitation, to the nearest multiplex, earned the privilege of experiencing on the big screen a motion picture that’s been called “a baby Valley of the Dolls”, “the funniest trainwreck ever lensed,” “Pia Zadora’s most shocking role,” and “the Showgirls of the Eighties.” 

An even smaller segment of the initial LL audience stumbled upon their life-changing movie ticket through magical good fortune.  In my case, it was a doubly mystical milestone.  My grandmother’s selection of The Lonely Lady for her precocious, film-crazed tween grandson not only left an indelible impression as the filthiest, most lurid motion picture I’d ever seen, it opened up a literary world of riveting, highly educational, frequently pornographic sagas euphemistically known as “beach books” which ensured I was completely corrupted before puberty.  She had, you see, chosen this film because she’d read the Robbins novel, as she told me on the taxi-ride home, sending me straight to a collection of paperbacks which my saintly, beloved, closet-freak meemaw had been quietly enjoying in plain sight for as long as I could remember:  In addition to the brilliant Mr. Robbins (The Adventurers, The Betsy, 79 Park Avenue), during my early teen years I discovered the best of Jackie Collins (Hollywood Wives, The Stud, The Bitch, Lovers & Gamblers), Judith Gould (Sins), Sidney Sheldon (The Other Side of Midnight, Bloodline), Sally Beauman (Destiny, possibly THE filthiest) and of course Jackie Susann (Valley of the Dolls).
 

British quad movie poster for ‘The Lonely Lady’ for sale at Westgate Gallery
 
As much as I cherish all of the above masterworks, only one of them spawned a movie in which Pia Zadora loses her virginity to a garden-hose wielded by Ray Liotta.  And now, thanks to Shout Factory’s gorgeous Blu-ray release, the first time this cult essential has been available on home video since the days of VHS, a whole new generation of thrill-seeking tweens can start learning everything their parents won’t tell them and be better prepared for the Hollywood careers that so many of them have already chosen.

Top 10 things about The Lonely Lady:

10.  The soundtrack includes Pia’s cover of “The Clapping Song.” 

9.  The bizarre and inappropriate Eurotrash accents of so many bit players in a story set entirely in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood & Beverly Hills. 

8. Pia’s brilliant writer character is named “Jerilee Randall.”  Jerilee Randall!

7. Jerilee’s attempt to get her indecently too-old, impotent and obscenely hairy-backed husband hard by cooing “Gently, gently”. 

6.  Instead of the luscious bi-sexy babes of Cinemax, the lesbos here are all repulsive predatory gargoyles, like the long-breasted bikini-clad matron in the hot tub who purrs the horrendously looped pick-up line “It’s wonderfully relaxing!” 

5.  The lesbian Italian movie star (who tricks Jerilee into a threesome with her toad of a husband) is cross-eyed, but her nipples point in different directions, too.

4.  Post-threesome, Jerilee is so disgusted with herself she showers with her clothes on and promptly suffers a nervous breakdown. 

3.  The best nervous breakdown scene EVER, in which the keys of Jerilee’s typewriter become the faces of her tormentors, before rising from the keyboard into a swirl of mocking sound-bytes and cheesy shattering optical effects. 

2.  The Blu-ray’s bonus “Network TV version” of the film features an extended typewriter-mad-scene and other unique bits to make up for the absence of the eight nude sex scenes Pia dutifully performed. 

1.  Finally, a cautionary tale that dares to expose Hollywood’s most sordid secret:  Everybody wants to fuck the writer! 
 
The bonkers nervous breakdown scene from ‘The Lonely Lady,’ after the jump…

A laser-cut image of actor Malcolm McDowell from ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ A triangular cameo and necklace by Fable & Fury.
 
Based in Seattle, Fable & Fury’s often gonzo wearable offerings run the gamut from necklaces with cameos of David Lynch and Vampirella to devilishly stylish takes on famous verbiage from Stanley Kubrick’s violent mindfuck, A Clockwork Orange. One such homage—derived from Anthony Burgess’ 1971 novel on which the film was based—includes the word “Devotchka” attached to a chain. The word, which means “young woman” is a part of the colorful fictional slang “Nadsat” created by Burgess himself which Kubrick incorporated into the film. Another great homage to the film by Fable & Fury designer Jennifer is her grim nod to “Alex DeLarge” (memorably played by actor Malcolm McDowell) and his prison number “655321” done in gleaming stainless steel. Nice.

Fable & Fury has been cranking out their bad-ass statement pieces for almost a decade and many of Jennifer’s pieces sell out quickly. The vast majority of the necklaces I’ve posted below run from $21 bucks to $32 or so depending on the style and material, and most are currently in stock at Fable & Fury’s online store.
 

 

 

Another clever reference to ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
 
More after the jump…

 
The first thing you see when you watch W.T. Morgan’s 1986 documentary The Unheard Music about the difficult-to-Google Los Angeles punk band X is a caption reading “PLAY THIS MUSIC LOUD.” Always good advice, of course. Morgan worked on the documentary for five solid years while the band was at its peak, and The Unheard Music emerges as a darn good document.

X was one of those bands, like the Who, where all four members contributed something essential to the music as well as the band’s persona. Exene, Doe, Zoom, and Bonebrake had distinct, interesting personalities that turned out to exhibit the quintessence of chemistry. The band was so much more than the sum of its parts. Exene’s striking vocals and John Doe’s Americana tendencies meant that X’s identity would transcend the confines of the punk movement. As you watch, there are plenty of killer live performances, so you can conduct the debate in your own mind if they were truly merely a punk band.

Because the movie was shot over such a long time, we get to see the band at different stages. Morgan’s editing strategy is a very 1980s one, which is to say there’s a fair amount of TV collage, and he doesn’t take things too seriously, which is always a help. Morgan clearly had a lot of footage to choose from, which means that there are a lot of fun bits. Doe amusingly tells of scavenging a sizable letter X from the Ex-Lax Building in Brooklyn, funny to me because I’m good friends with a family who currently lives there. Bonebrake displays his polyrhythmic skills on the vibraphone while Exene and Doe fool around with some Hank Williams ditties in a scuzzy apartment.
 

 
Ray Manzarek of the Doors, who produced X’s killer first four albums (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under the Big Black Sun, & More Fun in the New World) before being unceremoniously replaced by Michael Wagener for Ain’t Love Grand (big mistake), is on hand to testify to X’s unmistakable power as a live band the first time he saw them. (He also joins them onstage for a version of “Soul Kitchen.”)
 

 
There’s a terrific bit in which two interviews are intercut, from Bob Biggs of Slash Records and some stooge from MCA Records named Al Bergamo, in which the unimpeachable values and good taste of the former are contrasted with the horseshit coming out of the pie hole of the latter. Bergamo claims to find the potential for “limited sales” in X while unconvincingly feigning excitement about some forgettable band MCA had on their roster called Point Blank. Ugh.

Among other things, the movie is an interesting document of the scruffy Los Angeles of the early 1980s.

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The Painted Player Guitar Co. is a British team of luthiers and artists located in Basingstoke. They do some truly elite work, making dazzling guitars and modifications, offering instruments with vivid pop-art paint jobs, gorgeous custom refinishes, and relic work that closely matches the worn finishes of famous individual guitars played by the likes of David Gilmour, Rory Gallagher, and Andy Summers. The galleries on their web site are a droolworthy trove of guitar porn, but there’s one item in particular that amazes above all others: this bass themed after the titular vessel in the triptastic 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine.
 

 

Truly amazing in every way, this original concept from The Painted Player puts the legendary ‘Yellow Submarine’ quite literally in your hands!  Beautifully hand crafted, this stunning bass guitar utilises a combination of a fully hand-crafted Alder body with Precision Bass influences while featuring hand-painted artwork that brings the whole piece to life.  A musical icon as well as an animated legend, the ‘Yellow Submarine’ Bass is a must for the dedicated Beatles fan and the avid bass player alike, those who dare to stand out on stage.

 

 

 

 
The bass’ body is a custom build, and its neck, bridge and electronics are harvested from Fender Precision Basses—and BOY, I’d sure love to find the dumpster where they chuck the discarded bodies. Thoughtfully, Painted Player offers budget-minded players and enthusiasts who just want these as objets d’art and so don’t care if the electronics are top-notch the option to have their submarine made from a less expensive bass, though due to the custom built body and hand painting, even the entry level version is hardly cheap—low end models start at £1,299 (about $1650 USD).

Painted Player also offer much less elaborate but still quite stunning Yellow Submarine themed Les Pauls.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
The invention of the polyurethane wheel in 1972 literally reinvented the wheel for the modern skateboard. While Team Zephyr etcetera were tearing up the empty pools of the west coast, it wasn’t for another decade that underground skateboarding began to seep into the cul-de-sacs of suburban America. More than just a surfer fad, skateboarding echoed the defiant self-expression of the nation’s youth subcultures. So it was no surprise then, that the sport often gravitated toward the thriving punk movements of the era. Ever the locale for political discomfort, Washington DC under Reagan was a mecca of punk and hardcore, with bands like Minor Threat and Bad Brains setting the nation’s pulse. Obviously, the skate culture came along with it.

The only problem was, in DC there was nowhere to skate. The short-lived scene saw a demise in the mid 80s, with the closing of the city’s only parks and backyard ramps. That was, until the Cedar Crest Country Club. Located in the middle of a forest in Centreville, Virginia, the half-pipe was built in March 1986 on the property of a golf club. The property owner’s son was given free-reign on expenses, resulting in the construction of a ramp like none other. Besides its behemoth-like qualities, the most notable feature of the ramp was its steel bottom, which ensured maximum speed and higher air time. There was nothing else in the country like it at the time, and it was free to ride if you could make the hour trek outside of the District.
 

Tony Hawk skates Cedar Crest
 
Before long, people from all over the world were dropping in at CCCC. Some of the world’s greatest skaters, like Tony Hawk and Bucky Lasek, all came out to skate. Camping was allowed, and people started showing up for the punk shows they had on the ramp. Bad Brains played, along with Government Issue, GWAR, and Scream (with a young Dave Grohl on drums). Fugazi was scheduled to play CCCC for one of their earliest shows, but the cops broke it up during the opener’s set (evening skating resumed, however).
 

 

 
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Dario Argento’s impressive directorial debut, the 1970 Italian giallo, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, has just been given the 4K restoration treatment by Arrow Video, and on June 20th, Arrow’s limited edition Blu-ray/DVD set will be released. The package is well on its way to being sold out, but more on that in a moment.

In addition to this being his first time behind the camera, Argento also wrote The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Inspired by the 1949 pulp novel, The Screaming Mimi, the film concerns an American writer working in Italy who randomly witnesses a woman being stabbed by a mysterious figure clad in black—but is that really what he saw?
 

 
At this early stage, Argento was very much influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Psycho (1960), though Hitch’s The Birds (1963) gets a few nods here, too. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a mystery thriller/crime drama, with elements common in later slasher films—all characteristics of the giallo genre. The idea of being trapped, like a bird in a cage, is a frequent theme, resulting in a claustrophobic, tense atmosphere.
 

 
Some Argento trademarks are already on display here, like the framing of brutal murders at the hand of a mysterious killer, and the use of vivid colors—especially red. He’d really come into his own with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977), but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a praiseworthy first outing for the director and very much worthy of your film library.

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Rudy Ray Moore is best known for his Dolemite character which appeared in a string of low-budget 1970s blaxploitation films. His jive-talking, rhyme-spitting comedian/pimp/martial artist character has become a cultural icon and has been homaged by Mad TV and in the loving blaxploitation tribute, Black Dynamite.

Moore’s best films, Dolomite, The Human Tornado, Disco Godfather, and (my personal favorite) Petey Wheatstraw have all been recently reissued in gloriously fully-loaded, ultra-deluxe Blu-ray editions by boutique label Vinegar Syndrome, and I can’t recommend them enough for fans of ‘70s so-bad-it’s-good grindhouse fare.
 

Rudy Ray Moore, straight pimpin’, in “Petey Wheatraw, The Devil’s Son in Law.”
 
Though Moore, who left this mortal coil in 2008, sold thousands of spoken-word “party records” as a comedian, he is not widely remembered for the dozens of records he released as a musician. Moore is considered by many to be “the Godfather of rap,” as his rhymed “toasting” storytelling style is often cited as one of the great inspirations on that musical genre; but Moore’s own musical recordings are, by and large, straight r&b and early rock and roll affairs, with many of the early singles demonstrating obvious Little Richard and Chuck Berry influences. 

His talent as a singer rivals his talents as a comedian and martial artist—and depending on your level of Rudy Ray Moore fandom, that is either a slight or high praise.

I’ll let you be the judge.

Have a listen after the jump you no-good, rat-soup-eatin’ motherfuckers…

 
Cinefamily has been programming films and events at L.A.’s legendary Silent Movie Theater for almost ten years. They’ve also created deep dive video mixtapes assembled entirely from found footage, on subjects including but not limited to cults, Bigfoot, Christploitation, video games, David Bowie, and cats—but those have always been screened for Cinefamily’s theatre audiences, and have never been shared online until now, with the YouTube release of Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars.

Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars is exactly what the title says—a feature length collection of found footage from the 1970s and ‘80s, all related to the utterly seismic phenomenon that the first Star Wars movie became, but with no footage from Star Wars itself. There are goofy news segments, character costume dance numbers, commercials, clips from talk shows, clips from Star Wars actors’ pre-Star Wars films, including then-teenaged Carrie Fisher’s immortal query of Warren Beatty in Shampoo. There’s a completely bonkers bit from Sesame Street showing Big Bird attempting to communicate with R2D2. There are Star Wars disco crossovers. There’s Gary Coleman as a Jedi. There’s an ad for Chewbacca gum, because GET IT? CHEW? OH, THAT IS RICH!

There’s a disquieting and baffling clip that seems to show a Tusken Raider watching a woman in a chicken mask getting fucked from behind.
 

Seriously, WHAT?

The effect, in the end, is kind of a documentary film about the ubiquitous sensation that movie became, the ridiculous responses people had to it, and all the ways in which it was embraced. The story is told entirely with a barrage of clips—every single one of them fascinating in its own right—that resembles underground video compilations from the ‘80s.

Cinefamily’s creative director Marcus Herring talked to DM about it in an email exchange:

My creative partner Tom Fitzgerald and I made the mix for the theatre. We kinda wanted to get back to a time when Star Wars was new and fresh and rare, especially in light of the fact that a new Star Wars movie will be coming out every year from now until the end of time. It’s easy to forget that there was a time when Star Wars was new, before the Comicon empire, before Wookiepedia, and before the very idea of being a Star Wars Fan became a sort of codified identity. We’re not getting into the mythology about the universe, character backstories, the extended universe, the gravitational orientation of the gun turrets on the Millennium Falcon or any of the boring stuff that turns normal people off of Star Wars. This mix is more about lots of different kinds of people from all around the world having pure fun with Star Wars, whether it’s the bizarre interpretations of the iconography on Euro TV or the early homemade versions of Star Wars made by American kids back in the 70s/80s. There is a sort of edutainment aspect to the mix as well, because it’s also the story of the films and the filmmaking, all told without taking it too seriously.

Most of the mixtape footage is very rare, or at least buried by time and the sheer volume of video material devoted to Star Wars. We’ve been collecting this stuff for a long time, collecting weird and rare video about all kindsa subjects is what we do. We think fans will love it of course, but really it’s Star Wars for people who might not necessarily even care that much about Star Wars. We wanted to make sure that it’s coming from a place of love and fascination, even if a lot of the clips are gonzo. A lot of people dish on Lucas these days, but I think the audience will be refreshed to see him in our mixtape presented as the young, techy, artsy, and interesting guy who gave the world this awesome gift.

 
Watch ‘Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars’ after the jump…

 
Without Mudhoney, there’s no grunge scene writ large and so therefore there’s no Nirvana either. A bold claim to be sure, but not too controversial when you consider that Mudhoney was the first band from Seattle during that era to make a major splash outside of the Pacific Northwest, which had the effect of attracting area musicians to the city while also putting the world and major record labels on notice.

If you were a fan of the grunge movement as it was happening, you’ll be sure to enjoy the 2012 documentary I’m Now: The Story of Mudhoney, directed Adam Pease and Ryan Short. It’s chock full of amusing tidbits.

For instance: Mark Arm’s day job is managing the Sub Pop warehouse. When you order something from Sub Pop, there’s a decent chance that Mark Arm himself is the person who seals it in cardboard for shipping.

The movie covers Mudhoney’s origins as a high school band called Mr. Epp, in which both Arm and Steve Turner played. Later on, Arm’s band Green River, whose LP was Sub Pop’s first release, broke up, and Arm instantly got on the phone to cajole Turner into forgoing his studies and joining forces.

Arm is touted in the movie as the originator of the term grunge but with typical humility he hastens to point out that the word was originally applied to Australian bands such as the Scientists and Beasts of Bourbon. In voiceover, a band member acutely observes that the term was really “a different way of saying punk rock.”

Legendary Seattle producer Jack Endino mentions that his only comment upon hearing the band play was, “Are you sure you want the guitarist to be this dirty?”

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