Actor Peter Cushing in a contemplative moment playing his war games with his minature models.
 

“Television is a rather frightening business. But I get all the relaxation I want from my collection of model soldiers.”

—veteran actor Peter Cushing explaining his love of model soldiers in 1958.

The 2004 biography about his life, In All Sincerity, Peter Cushing, is a revealing read about the actor who, by all accounts, was one of the most gracious and kind people to ever work in film. Regarded as one of the UK’s finest actors, Cushing cut his remarkable acting chops early in life and, at the same time, pursued his love of drawing and art. While Cushing was still trying to make his name in cinema, he sold scarfs he hand-painted himself. In addition to painting watercolors, Cushing held on to a part of his childhood, collecting and painting model soldiers and trains. His love of miniature models would last his entire life, during which the actor would amass over 5,000 individual models (not toys mind you) of soldiers, trains, trees and landscape, horses, castles, historically accurate battle gear and more. All of which he painted by hand.

A proud member of the British Model Soldier Society, Cushing used his models for formal gameplay in accordance with H.G. Wells as outlined in his book Little Wars (1913), and its companion, Floor Games, published in 1911. Known as “hobby war games,” the games would take hours to complete, and (according to Cushing) if played to the letter, approximately nine hours would be consumed by one war game. The British Model Soldier society was formed in 1935 by a group of fifteen, all-male members (Wells denoted in his book that the games were to be played by boys between the ages of twelve to one hundred), who would meet up at a pub. Cushing was so serious about his therapeutic pastime he engaged the services of Frederick Ping—a pioneer of model soldier art. Considered a master of the medium, nearly all of Ping’s figures were forged from scratch, and in addition to Cushing, his figures were revered by aristocrats and the well-to-do. Cushing would commission Ping to create soldiers for him, which he would, in turn, paint meticulously by hand. The only thing more intriguing than the man who played Dr. Van Helsing, Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and Grand Moff Tarkin are the photos and television footage of Cushing with his massive model collection.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Footage of Peter Cushing showing off his miniature models and soldiers.

 
Hollywood is a weird town. I mean, where to begin with that statement? Perhaps we should just jump to the topic of this post, the 1973 film The Baby, a movie about a mentally incompetent man who lives his life as an adult baby along with his mother and two Stepford Wife-esque sisters. If you’ve never seen this film, just trying to wrap your mind around the idea of watching a movie about a grown man operating at the capacity of a breastfeeding infant (because, yeah, that happens in the film) is probably enough to make you consider your current life choices. However, I bring good news to all you subversive content-loving freaks, The Baby is a strangely well-acted mind-fuck of a film which somehow, despite its putrid pediatric subject matter, received a PG rating upon its release in 1973.

Ted Post’s many directorial credits include classic television series such as The Twilight Zone, Rawhide, and Gunsmoke, and films, including two Clint Eastwood gems, Magnum Force, and Hang ‘Em High. Post’s work earned the director two Emmys and the admiration of his peers. He took the job of directing The Baby after writer Abe Polsky spent a year trying to convince him to do it. The film—a peculiar psychological/horror/thriller, is quite a departure from Post’s tough-guy wheelhouse. What made Post so perfectly suited to direct The Baby was his reputation for not interfering with his actors so they could do what they did best, bringing the characters to life and making the audience believe they are the person they are seeing on screen. Even if that character is an infant trapped inside the body of an adult. So when actor David Mooney (billed as “David Manzy” in the film) got the role of “Baby” in The Baby, he shaved his entire body in order to look like a 21-year-old baby (He was then 32). You’d think someone might have told the poor guy about the smelly miracle that is Nair, but I digress. Here’s Mooney from a 2011 interview where he spoke briefly about his experience filming The Baby:

“One of my most challenging experiences was playing [an impaired] boy… in a movie called The Baby. And that’s now become a cult film. The acting part of that was so difficult because I had to totally de-man-ize myself and become a baby, act like a baby. And I just, I’d always loved babies, so I was around baby cousins and all this, and had held babies and babies sat on my lap and all that, so I was aware of how babies, the innocence they had and the dependability they have on you and how they’re so real because they react to the stimulus that’s given them at the time. So I had to learn all those things and make sure to incorporate that into that role.”

 

Actor David Mooney as “Baby.”
 
Shortly after the opening credits, which are shown over a scene with social worker Ann Gentry (played by the Lynda Carter-looking Anjanette Comer) looking over photos of Baby at various stages of his development, it’s clear something is amiss with Baby, and Gentry’s character is going to be the one to find out. This brings us to our dramatic introduction to Mrs. Wadsworth, Baby’s mother, who commands the screen, much like the unsettling forcefulness of a chain-smoking Joan Crawford (think 1964’s Strait-Jacket), or a fired-up Elizabeth Taylor. When Mrs. Wadsworth (played to the hilt by actor Ruth Roman), greets Gentry on the porch of their regal home, it seems abundantly clear the young social worker is in over her head. During her visit, she meets one of Baby’s sisters, the odd, big-haired Germaine, and finally, Baby, who is taking his afternoon nap. So begins Gentry’s role as the family’s new social worker, and things get very, very weird, and very, very sinister quickly. Specifically, there is a scene in The Baby depicting the most unsexy, unsettling catfight in cinematic history. This is a fact.

Another bizarre aspect of the film is the use of real baby sounds instead of baby soundsas mimicked by actor David Mooney. Allegedly, the original audio for the film was of Mooney making adorable baby noises. The Baby‘s soundtrack, scored by Gerald Fried, does its best to invoke, at times, the masterful vibe of Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane) along with some foreboding beatnik-bongo jazz flute jams. Of all the stand-out performances Post got from his actors, it is Mooney’s deep dive into becoming Baby that you will never forget. Since we’ve all got so much time on our collective wash-your-fucking-hands right now, I’m happy to report that it is streaming for free in all its beautifully paced, deranged entirety on Tubi. It was also released on Blu-ray in 2014 by Severin and is well worth owning if you are a collector of physical media, especially oddball films that defy explanation. The trailer, some stills, and movie posters for The Baby follow.
 

The scene where social worker Ann Gentry first sees Baby asleep in his adult-sized crib.
 

 

Baby isn’t happy!
 
More after the jump…

 
I guess there’s not much more to be said about The Texas Chain Massacre that hasn’t already been given. One of the most influential seventies American films after Star Wars and perhaps The Godfather and Jaws.  What I remember of it at the time of its release has little to do with the film but everything to do with expectation and rumor.

I first heard of the movie in the schoolyard. I was too young to go see it and living in Scotland meant if you didn’t see a movie on release then you had to make do with the semaphore of rumor, exaggeration and bullshit. Which is the part that kinda interests me because why would a junior high school kid in Scotland hear about The Texas Chain Massacre unless it was something important? There was no Internet, no Google, no streaming services, no mobile, none of that stuff. Information was read in comics, newspapers and magazines or recieved second, third or fourth hand from friends who had a relative in Canada or went for a holiday to Florida where there was a bad frost and all the oranges on the trees turned into fruit sorbet. That kind of thing.

The first story I heard about this particular movie came (I think) from a guy called John Scott, who claimed some of the actors genuinely died during the making of the movie and there was this guy called Leatherface who was a butcher and he was still out there dancing with his chainsaw in the sunlight.

I had no idea what this meant, but the name “Leatherface” implied something utterly perverse and deranged. Was it a gimp mask? Or, maybe an Ed Gein flesh mask? We all knew about Ed Gein as he was our parents’ bogeyman because of Psycho, a film one relative described to me as “the wickedest movie ever made.” Gein was a real life monster like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were real monsters. We all knew something about the horrific things they had done. But then again, what we knew of Gein was mainly through exaggeration and myth. In fact, half the stories I heard about the old cross-dressing cannibal had nothing to do with him and more to do with the speaker’s imagination, which in comparison to the actual crimes—or even those of Hindley and Brady—were utterly anemic.

The second tale I heard about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a reiteration of the first, that the film was based on a true story. As it turned out this was what the film actually claimed, true events which took place on August 18th, 1973. But as filming on this movie finished four days before the date given in the opening titles this was unlikely, if not impossible. That was director Tobe Hooper’s intention. He considered America during the Nixon years to be riddled with fake news and propaganda pumped out by the government.

The third tale was something to do with a guy who used two teen girls to source young boys to rape, kill and torture. This made the film seem far more debauched and unsavory. We were skeptical about this, which shows you how our pre-pubescent minds had some kind of warped standard where torturing, killing and eating people was okay, but raping, torturing and killing people—especially boys—was a step too far. Go figure. But as it later turned out, this was a tad closer to the truth as co-writer Kim Henkel had:

...noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne ... said, “I did these crimes, and I’m gonna stand up and take it like a man.” Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.

The final story of note was the one where someone said The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was so horrific that it had been banned. This happened to be true, well at least in certain countries, but we didn’t know where and why or how the film had been banned. It was just left to our imaginations to ferment the worst possible scenarios as to what the film was actually about.

It was more than a decade before I got to see the film and thought it well-made, clever, and entertaining. Though I guess I would have paid top dollar to have seen the movie my fevered imagination had concocted all those years ago.
 

 

 

 
More snaps of the infamous cinematic cannibal family, after the jump… 

 
Sunday morning, flicking through news channels I chanced on a Nigerian breakfast show that held my attention between mouthfuls of cereal. Four women around a table were discussing a new movie called The Milkmaid. Clips were played as one woman said she hoped the movie would get the chance to be screened at Cannes, and have the chance of being seen at the Toronto Film Festival. This was not just an ordinary movie—The Milkmaid was one of the best movies to ever come out of Nigeria.

Every so often there comes along a movie that will change everything. Parasite did it at this year Academy Awards and I’m laying money that The Milkmaid will win awards and do the same at next year’s Oscars. This movie is a game changer—a work of brilliance, a compelling harrowing tale that does what all great works of art should do: make the viewer question what is going on in the world.

It’s inspiration comes from real events. In April 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The girls had been kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist terrorist organization operating out of the north-east of the country. The kidnapping brought condemnation from across the world. After some of the girls were released, the story and interest in the lives of these girls and the people tragically caught in the crossfire between terror and extremism were soon forgotten. Filmmaker Desmond Ovbiagele thought something ought to be done to highlight the psychological trauma, displacement and economic impoverishment extremism inflicts on society. He started writing a screenplay about Aisha, a Fulani milkmaid, searching for her younger sister, who approaches the religious militants responsible for their separation. Ovbiagele has crafted a powerful piece of cinema which he hopes will bring “attention to the present plight of real-life victims of militant insurgency in Nigeria (internally displaced persons, IDPs), to generate support for their economic and psychological rehabilitation and social re-integration.” His film offers a discourse on the very real threats posed by extremism.

Shot over three months in Nigeria, The Milkmaid stars Anthonieta Kalunta in her film debut as Aisha, with Maryam Booth as her sister Zainab, and Gambo Usman Kona as Dangana. Unlike most movies pumped out by Hollywood or Marvel or Disney or whoever, The Milkmaid is an important, complex film, a substantial work of art that addresses issues pertinent to all of our lives. What it needs now is to be seen by as many people as possible.

I contacted writer and director Desmond Ovbiagele to find out more about him and the making of his movie.

How did you start making The Milkmaid?

Desmond Ovbiagele: I completed and released my first feature film in 2014, a locally set (in Nigeria) crime drama. Spent the next three years recovering from that interesting experience. Then early 2017, felt I was ready to get back into the fray, and commenced writing the script for what turned out to be my next feature, The Milkmaid.
 

 
What was your inspiration for the film?

DO: Creatively, I find myself drawn to themes that are of contemporary social relevance. Perhaps it’s because I believe that the medium of film is imbued with such amazing power, and the process of realizing a story can be so incredibly daunting and challenging; therefore one needs to tackle issues that justify all the palaver. And clearly the prevailing insurgency and general insecurity in my immediate environment was a natural candidate for attention. Following the much-publicized outcry and placard-carrying by presumably well-meaning international celebrities over the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, it was rather disheartening to watch the widespread moral indignation steadily (and surprisingly quickly) vaporize to near-total silence (both locally and internationally), even when the atrocities were clearly still being committed, albeit largely to victims from a different demographic, perhaps. And given that literally millions of survivors are currently wasting away in the makeshift camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) that dot the country, their lives at a total dead-end, I guess I felt a burden to use the craft and my privileged position to speak on behalf of those who lack the facility to make themselves heard.
 

 
How did you come into filmmaking? What is your background?

DO: Came from a career in financial services that was materially rewarding but clearly left a gap in the personal fulfilment department. Took me several years to identify how to fill that gap; turned out to be writing and directing. A bit surprising, as I had done practically nothing in either area all my life, although a rapacious reader of novels in my childhood, to be fair.

How did you become involved in filmmaking?

DO: Basically started out as a screenwriter; wrote and submitted several scripts (frequently with international settings) that went absolutely nowhere. Felt I needed to pursue more control of my destiny in order to break through, so accordingly refocused my attention on issues closer to home (literally), whilst simultaneously foraying into producing and directing.

Can you tell me about the casting for The Milkmaid?

DO: The plan from the outset was always to render the dialogue in the prevailing language of the theater of conflict (for authenticity) which is Hausa, and to a lesser extent, Fulfulde (the principal characters are of Fulani extraction). This naturally ruled out a large swathe of the most popular actors in the local film industry (a.k.a. Nollywood) who are predominantly English-speaking, and following a couple of auditions, the cast was largely drawn from the tiny film community in Taraba State in northeast Nigeria where we shot the film. In fact, for one of the lead actresses, this was her first performance in film, short or feature.
 

 
What was it like filming? Were there any difficulties?

DO: Difficulties aplenty on multiple fronts. I actually don’t speak Hausa myself, so directing the actors (several of whose English was severely limited) under the typical time pressures was an exercise in patience and endurance notwithstanding the presence of translators. And for aesthetic reasons, we shot a number of scenes on the Mambilla Plateau which features some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, but as the highest point geographically in Nigeria, is also considerably difficult to access, particularly with heavy equipment trucks. To put it in context, a trip just from the Taraba State capital in Jalingo to Mambilla (also in Taraba) takes seven hours, much of that time negotiating up the mountain. And the trucks were coming all the way from Lagos in the southwest, on the opposite side of the country. So additional challenges were encountered when transporting our production materials through southeast Nigeria enroute to location; essentially our crew were literally almost lynched by locals there who were erroneously informed that the our costumes and props were evidence that they were the terrorists who had coincidentally attacked that same community just a few days prior. We lost an entire week of shooting whilst battling to resolve that particular imbroglio. So, yes, a few difficulties.
 

Director and writer Desmond Ovbiagele.
 
What has been the response to your film?

DO: We’ve held just a couple of private screenings thus far but are very gratified at the feedback; people definitely seem to connect with the story, cinematography and performances, and it certainly helps that it is obviously a very topical issue (insecurity)

How can we get your film to Cannes and Toronto and onto the American market?

DO: Clearly very lofty platforms with a formidable number of films all aspiring to get in, so we would really appreciate as much buzz as can be generated anywhere possible to improve our prospects for
consideration.

Check here to find out how you can help get The Milkmaid to a cinema near you.
 

It’s too bad words like ‘masterpiece’ and ‘epic’ have been so overused by excitable film critics, because Sion Sono’s Love Exposure is an actual epic masterpiece that is going to dominate the filmscape for decades.” - New York Asian Film Festival

“Japan’s eroto-theosophical answer to the allegorical journeys of Alejandro Jodorowsky”—Film Four

Japanese auteur Sion Sono’s extraordinary 2008 film Love Exposure (“Ai no mukidashi”) is the epic—yet still whimsical—story of Yu Honda (Takahiro Nishijima), the “king of the perverts.” Yu is the ninja master of the “up skirt” photograph. After his mother dies, Yu’s father becomes a Catholic priest. He insists that his son confess his sins to him. Yu, a good boy, has nothing really to confess so he just makes stuff up that his father doesn’t even believe. Eventually he falls in with a new crowd and soon his transgressions are a bit more… sinful. Still, Yu himself is not aroused by his own panty shots and lives an otherwise chaste life as he patiently awaits the arrival of his one true love. He’s only “sinning” for the sake of his relationship with his father.

Yu loses a bet and he is obliged to dress as a woman and kiss a girl he likes. As the boys are goofing off, they come across a young girl, Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), who is about to be attacked by a gang. Yu is instantly smitten with the beautiful Yoko and—still dressed as a woman—he jumps into the fight and together they kick the gang’s collective ass. To fulfill the conditions of the bet, Yu kisses Yoko who begins to think she is a lesbian and crushes hard on Yu’s disguise of “Miss Scorpion” (an obvious nod to the 70s Japanese women in prison Female Convict Scorpion film series) Yu believes he has finally met his one true love… and she thinks he’s a woman!
 

 
Yu then finds out that his father the priest has a new girlfriend and will be leaving the priesthood to marry her. Guess who his new step sister is going to be?

The entire first hour of the film—the title card appears 58 minutes in—is but a prologue, setting up what’s to come. The Aum Shinrikyo-like cult religion, the gory violence and the explosions all happen later…It’s a pretty epic love story as far as they go. Trust me, you have never seen THIS film before (or anything else even remotely like it). But you really need to.

I’d recommend Sono’s loopy masterpiece (and it is a masterpiece) to anyone with a taste for unusual world cinema, which is not to say it’s esoteric in any way, because it’s not. Love Exposure is a real crowd pleaser. It’s an event! It may run for four hours, true, but it felt like two, trust me, don’t be intimidated by the length. Even if someone doesn’t love it as much as I do, surely they would appreciate it. It’s such an unusual cinematic experience. And it’s great fun. When it was over, I was sad there wasn’t more. When’s the last time you felt that way about a four hour film? Feel that way about Ben Hur or The Irishman?
 

A trailer for Sino Sono’s ‘Love Exposure’ with English subtitles. I can’t say that it’s successful at getting the film’s point across, but that would just be impossible.

It didn’t take but a minute after the film had ended for me to jump online and try to buy the film’s soundtrack. It doesn’t exist as such, but aside from a bit of Beethoven’s “Symphony No.7 in A Major” and Ravel’s “Bolero” the entire four hour film’s soundtrack consists of three amazing songs by the long running Japanese psych rock band Yura Yura Teikoku (“The Wobbling Empire”). These same three songs are played over and over and over again. After four hours, they are drilled into your DNA for life.

Although I personally had never heard of them before, Yura Yura Teikoku were around from 1989 to 2010. They are one of the very few “underground” groups in Japan ever to become a major commercial act. They almost never played outside of Japan, and were, and still are, criminally obscure outside of their homeland. I’ll try to describe their sound, but it’s sort of pointless as Yura Yura Teikoku cover so much territory from song to song. They’re intense, but they’re melodic. At times the trio—who describe their own music simply as “psychedelic rock”—sound like Can crossed with Phish. Or early Flaming Lips doing a spaghetti western theme. Other times they remind me of a 60s garage rock band like The Sonics, but the next song will sound like Lloyd Cole. The one after that sounds like the lovechild of Neu! and the Grateful Dead. Or even the Ventures channeled through Ennio Morricone or a combination of Pink Floyd with The Blow Monkeys! Suffice to say, they are all over the map musically, from heavier riff-based guitar rock to prettier tunes that would make a great soundtrack for a picnic on a sunny day. From hard-rock workouts that will crush your head to things that you would whistle along with. Black Sabbath to Burt Bacharach on the same album, if not the same song.

The one area of commonality that nearly ALL of Yura Yura Teikoku’s music has—trust me, because I’ve been positively gorging myself on it lately—is that their songs posses a quality that make them sound uncannily familiar. The three songs featured so prominently in Love Exposure are especially adept earworms.  Have a listen to my new favorite band, Yura Yura Teikoku. Chances are that they might become your new favorite new band, too.
 

“Kudo desu (Hollow Me)”
 
More after the jump…

 
To All a Goodnight (1980) is the only movie directed by David Hess, the singer/actor best remembered as Krug Stillo, the lead psycho in Wes Craven’s notorious 1972 film, The Last House on the Left. To All a Goodnight hasn’t been widely seen, and though the flick has duly received its share of criticism from those who have, it’s worth noting for its place in slasher film history.

In To All a Goodnight, a group of young female students have stayed behind at their school, rather than returned home for the Christmas break. A killer party is planned, but after the festivities begin, a murderous, masked Santa threatens to ruin all the fun. Could the slayings have anything to do with the death of a girl who died during a hazing incident two years earlier?
 

 
Okay, that’s the gist of the film. Before I get into the merits (and lack thereof) of the picture, I found its position in the slasher cinema timeline to be intriguing, so let’s start there.

According to IMDb, To All a Goodnight premiered on January 30th, 1980. Assuming this is correct, that means it predates, by a few months, Friday the 13th (1980), the first major slasher film to come out after Halloween (1978). Incidentally, the killers in both To All a Goodnight and Friday the 13th have similar motives. As far as the homicidal Santa character, the 1/30/80 date also means that it precedes Christmas Evil (which debuted in November 1980), and by several years, Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). Furthermore, To All a Goodnight is one of the earliest—if not the earliest—holiday-themed slasher with a masked murderer to follow Halloween.
 

 
Other slasher elements include the Xmas theme, borrowed from Bob Clark’s groundbreaking 1974 slasher, Black Christmas (also nicked was the basic premise of young adult women staying at school over holiday break). Though To All a Goodnight doesn’t have a “Final Girl”, per se, the innocent heroine Nancy is certainly Final Girl-esque.
 

 
The estimated budget was a paltry $70,000, and the film was reportedly shot over the course of just ten days, so admittedly, there’s wasn’t a lot for first time director David Hess to work with. Not helping matters is the flimsy script, the laughably bad dialogue, and the acting chops, which range from average to subpar. As for Hess, he didn’t set the world on fire with his directing here—the biggest goof I noticed was a nighttime scene obviously filmed in broad daylight—though I’ll give him points for creating some atmosphere.
 

 
Perhaps the biggest issue with To All a Goodnight is its general lack of suspense—a pretty big problem, considering this is a horror film, after all. Then there’s the bombshell ending, which is basically nonsensical and designed to shock, more than anything else.
 

 
Despite (because of?) its faults, I think fans of cheesy ‘80s slashers will get a kick out of To All a Goodnight. If you dig such films, it’s definitely worth seeing once—but maybe not more than that!
 

 
Some have criticized the movie for being ridiculously dark, but this appears to have been the result of a poor transfer during the VHS days (see this YouTube upload of the U.S. home video edition). The Blu-ray, while a little grainy, doesn’t have any lighting issues. A similar looking rip of the film is embedded below, though, alas, it has Greek subtitles. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray/DVD set is available on Amazon.
 

Tom Savini and Andy Warhol. All photos by Christopher Makos via Pittsburgh City Paper.
 
Before Tom Savini made Andy Warhol look like a character from one of George Romero’s films, he had never met the soft-spoken artist. However, his actor/makeup artist/stuntman younger brother Joe Savini had attended school with Warhol at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. George Romero is also an alumnus of the school. Following the release of Day of the Dead in 1985, Savini would receive a call on behalf of Andy Warhol requesting that he transform Andy into one of his iconic zombies. Given the fact that Pittsburgh is truly the center of the zombie universe, as well as the birthplace of Andy Warhol and Tom Savini, the pop artist’s request to become a zombie was perhaps inevitable. Whatever the case may be, Savini and long-time colleague FX legend Greg Nicotero traveled to meet Warhol in New York to make Andy’s dream of becoming one of the undead a reality.

During their time with Warhol, the platinum-wigged artist sat quietly while Savini and Nicotero worked their magic. Also on hand was Massachusetts native, photographer (and former apprentice to Man Ray) Christopher Makos, who captured a few moments from the threesome’s strange get-together. According to Savini, he himself was unaware Warhol was wearing a wig and gently tried to adjust Andy’s “hair.”
 

Zombie Warhol.
 
It turns out Andy Warhol was very much a fan of Romero’s Living Dead series and zombie culture. In an interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper, Makos, a close friend of the artist, believed Romero’s films—and others like them—were a part of the artist’s “fieldhouse” (though he likely meant “wheelhouse”). Warhol’s 1977 film Bad features a gory scene of a woman tossing her crying infant out of a window. It splatters on the sidewalk next to a woman walking by, spraying blood from its head.

Another aspect of Romero’s films that appealed to Warhol was how the filmmaker was able to make such a strong statement with a relatively small budget. In the case of 1985’s Day of the Dead, Romero saw his initial budget of seven million slashed in half. This forced Romero to make huge concessions not only to the original script and larger scale of the film, but his desire for Day of the Dead to be unrated. If you’re a fan of this film, the reality of the drastic cuts ended up producing some of the greatest practical effects ever, as well as the gift of another Massachusetts native, Joseph Pilato (RIP) in the unforgettable role of Captain Henry—“Choke on ‘em!”—Rhodes, who only got the part as a direct result of the reduction in the film’s budget.

Makos’ photographic legacy is astounding in its own right, and his many images of Andy Warhol can be found in his beautiful books on Andy. Tom Savini has recently released his highly anticipated autobiography, Savini: The Biography.
 

An alternate image of Warhol as a Savini zombie.
 

The trailer for Andy Warhol’s ‘Bad.’

God in Three Persons 2020, courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation

Next month, the Residents will perform their 1988 narrative album God in Three Persons at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show will combine new video projections by the artist John Sanborn with a live performance by the Residents and vocalist Laurie Amat, whose contributions to the original LP are memorable. 

Homer Flynn, the president of the Cryptic Corporation, has handled the Residents’ affairs since the 1970s. I called him just before Thanksgiving, interrupting his graphic design work on an upcoming release involving the Mysterious N. Senada to pepper him with questions about the Residents’ next moves.

Dangerous Minds: Has God in Three Persons ever been performed in front of an audience before?

Homer Flynn: Well, not in the way that it’s being done now, I’ll put it that way. You know, the Residents always felt that God in Three Persons was probably the thing that they had done that most lent itself into being expanded into more of a theatrical-slash-visual form. And one way or another, they’ve kind of worked around with that for some time now. But what happened was that they made contact with a producer, a guy named Steve Saporito in New York, and, you know, one of the Residents did a solo performance, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago, in San Francisco and New York. It was called “Sam’s Enchanted Evening.” And Steve, that producer, was the one responsible for getting that to New York, and afterwards he asks, “Well, what else are you interested in doing?” And the first thing in the meeting that came up was God in Three Persons. And so, in a lot of ways, that kind of picked up the energy, in that way. 

But they did a reading of God in Three Persons for ACT, the American Conservatory Theater, which is a very well-established theater in San Francisco, and that happened, I think, a little over two years ago or a little over three years ago. They got some interest at that, but then the woman who was the artistic director left, and there was a big changeover. And they are still interested, but meanwhile, in between, they’d also been talking to the Museum of Modern Art, and the interest really started picking up there, so the energy started going in that direction.

So in answer to your question, they did do a reading of it at ACT about three years ago; they also worked with an American classical composer and conductor who was doing a museum show at a contemporary art museum in Rotterdam, and they performed some pieces of it with him as part of a museum installation. And then they did some more pieces of it at a performance in Bourges, France, just this past April. So they’ve done pieces of it here and there, but they’ve never done anything nearly as extensive or ambitious as what they’re doing now.
 

Homer Flynn, courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation
 
Can you tell me how it compares to the original touring show that was planned? I don’t know how far along that got.

You know, that really didn’t get very far. They had some conversations with BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, oh, back in the late Eighties, about potentially doing God in Three Persons with them. But ultimately, what happened was that, one, they felt like they were not gonna be able to do justice to it in a touring scenario, and then also, two, before anything could happen, they completed their King & Eye album, you know, which was all Elvis covers, and they just felt like that was gonna lend itself much more to touring than God in Three Persons. So at that point they kinda dropped God in Three Persons as a performing piece and moved towards The King & Eye, which ultimately became their Cube-E tour. That was probably about ‘89.

It would probably have been harder in a number of ways to stage God in Three Persons in ‘89. For one thing, you have the video doing some of the work in this version—

Absolutely.

—but also the content. The end, I find it hard to imagine taking that on the road with the ending it has, which I think is still pretty shocking, actually.

Yeah. Well, in some ways, it almost seems like it’s more shocking now than it was then. But it also feels, in a lot of ways, you know, the whole idea of the twins being very gender-fluid—you know, that idea was kind of completely off the charts, at that point, and now it actually feels very much in line with the times, in a lot of ways.

Is [genderqueer porn star] Jiz Lee playing both of the twins?

Yes. Right. Correct. There are a few shots that John did where he brought in another one, another person that looked very similar to Jiz, so there would be some times when both of ‘em were in the frame, and he wasn’t having to do video doubling or whatever. But for the most part, Jiz plays both twins. 
 

‘Holy Kiss of Flesh,’ the ‘almost danceable’ single version of ‘Kiss of Flesh’ (via Discogs)
 
I have a sense that the story of God in Three Persons is about show business, more than anything else, and I wonder if the Residents see it that way.

Well, it’s interesting that you would say that. How do you make that connection?

Maybe the horrible celebrity environment we live in has just permeated every last fold of my brain. There’s something about the Colonel Parker aspect of Mr. X, and the road show, freak show aspect of the story.

Well, it’s interesting you would say that, especially given the fact that Cube-E, you know, The King & Eye, with Elvis and the obvious Colonel Parker connection, and then Freak Show were the next few things that came after that.

Right. Elvis is a thread, in a way.

In a way, yeah. The Residents—well, they’ve always found connections in, shall we say, unpredictable ways. 

One of the things that’s interesting about seeing what the Residents are gonna do at MoMA is, with this piece, the lyrics carry so much of the story, it seems like there would be a lot of really interesting staging decisions. At some places what’s happening in the lyrics is really explicit, and in other places, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on in the story. Can you tell me about the staging?

In the same way that the original piece is really a monologue set to music, the staging will be similar, but there will be other performers. The primary additional performer will be a shadow Mr. X, who will be a dancer that, at times, will be like a kind of a doppelgänger, in a way, echoing Mr. X. And then, other times, there will be three projections in the performance. One will be the primary projection which will go all the way across the back of the stage. But then there will be another narrow vertical screen that will kind of come up and down, and it will bisect that larger screen. And then there will be a third screen that the shadow Mr. X will carry, at times, and then there will be another performer holding a hand-held projector, in order to project upon the hand-held screen. So that’s the basic setup, from a performance point of view. And then, of course, all the music will be live.

Staging Mr. X with a double: I can’t help but make the connection with the songs that inspired the album: “Double Shot,” which is two, and “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which is about the Trinity. And that’s kind of what the story is about, right?

Right, exactly. Yeah. But, you know, the Residents kind of love dualities, and you see dualities reoccuring throughout their pieces all the time. The twins are a certain duality, and Mr. X and the shadow Mr. X become another duality, and there’s probably other ones in the same piece, too. It all kinda fits in with the Residents’ world.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
In 1968, Federico Fellini decided he was going make the greatest homosexual movie ever made. What he meant by a homosexual movie, no one was quite sure, but it was going to be great. In fact, it going to be the greatest homosexual movie ever, or so Fellini kept telling anyone who would listen.

Fellini was living it large with the international success of La Dolce Vita, 8½, and Juliet of the Spirits. He was now described by some critics as “the greatest living director.” What Alfred Hitchcock thought of this news, no one knows, but Fellini was not going to disagree. He travelled to America where he was fascinated by the rise of hippie culture, free love, and young boys with long hair who looked like girls. It was the Age of Aquarius, the hippies told him. Fellini was an Aquarian, born on the 20th of January 1920. He was superstitious and believed what he was told. This was then was the Age of Aquarius—his time. Who was he to disagree?

The subject matter for his new film was the first century story Satyricon by Gaius Petronius written during the reign of Emperor Nero. Petronius fell foul of Nero and was accused of treason. To avoid one of Nero’s gruesome executions, Petronius cut his own wrists, bound them up, then picked at them during a dinner with friends until he inevitably bled to death. Much of Petronius’ original text for Satyricon had been lost but this did not concern Fellini, as he was more interested in imagining what had happened in those missing gaps. This was not going to be Petronius’ Satyricon but Fellini’s Satyricon. It was the first time the director’s name appeared before the title of his film.

Satyricon told the story two young streetwise punks Encolpius and Ascyltus and their mutual lust for a boy Gitón. The pair fall into various misadventures before Ascytlus is killed and Encolpius abandons his lustful ways for a more-considered life.

Author Paul Gillette set the scene for Fellini’s movie in his introduction to the film-tie-in book of Satyricon:

Imperial Age Rome was a cesspool of vice and carnality. The leisure classes, having been turned from power, devoted themselves exclusively to the pursuit of pleasure. Marriage was regarded as a mere formality, more often than not ignored; bisexuality was considered the most desirable state of sexual appetite, the term being equated with ‘sexual completeness.’

When a boy attained the age of reason, or as soon as possible thereafter, his parents would seek to place him under the tutelage of a young man who had proved himself learned and wise in the ways of the world. It was the function of this wise young man, called a “mentor,” to teach the boy all worth knowing—not the least worthy of which was sex. At the same time that the lad was being taught logic, literature and numbers, he was being introduced to sexual experience in the form of manual, anal and oral contact with his mentor. When it was thought that he was sufficiently prepared, the boy was introduced to the heterosexual world; thenceforth, he was free to do as he chose. The same master-apprentice relationship existed among females.

Petronius’ tale was a scandalous satire on this world, poking fun at the people and their loose morals and practices.

Fellini saw a parallel between mid-first century Rome and the 1960s. But although this was a time of free love, rock concerts, and students rioting on the cobblestone streets of Paris, Fellini wanted an older, respected bunch of actors to appear in his movie. He called Danny Kaye and summoned him to the Cinecitta Studios. The versatile song-and-dance comedian arrived at Rome airport without the slightest idea what Fellini wanted, other than he wanted him to star in his next movie. Over lunch, Fellini told Kaye, he didn’t want him as the star but rather the villain of the piece, Lichas—a murderous gay transvestite pirate and mortal enemy of the story’s narrator Encolpius. He kidnaps Encolpius to keep as his catamite then marries him while dressed as a bride. Kaye baulked at the idea. This wasn’t the kind of family entertainment that had made him famous.

Taking on such a role might bring unwanted attention to Kaye’s private life. Kaye was bisexual and had a long-term relationship with Laurence Olivier. According to biographer Donald Spoto, Kaye once organized for Olivier to be stopped on entry to the US at New York airport. Kaye had disguised himself as a customs officer. He then allegedly carried out an intense cavity search on the noble Shakespearean actor, before revealing his true identity.

After his meeting with Fellini, Kaye quickly returned to America. Less said, soonest mended. Yet, seven years later, Kaye did play a dubious pirate with an obsessive interest in children, when he starred as Captain Hook against Mia Farrow’s Peter Pan. Perhaps Fellini had been right in his choice of Kaye. The role eventually went to French actor Alain Cuny.
 

 
Undeterred, Fellini told the press he would cast Mae West, Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante, Van Heflin, Boris Karloff, and Michael J. Pollard. No one was going to stop the great Fellini from making his movie. But Groucho Marx said “No.” Durante said “What?” Mae West turned the offer of playing a sex mad high priestess and mother figure down as she didn’t like the idea of being a “mother figure.” Boris Karloff was interested but too busy, perhaps a day or two in May?. Pollard said “Yes,” but nothing came of it.

Fellini even appeared on TV stating he was going to cast the Beatles. While this would have certainly been a more interesting film to make than the folly of The Magical Mystery Tour, the question was: which Beatle would play which role? Would McCartney be the young love interest Gitón? Would Lennon be Encolpius?  Harrison Ascyltus? And what about Ringo? The suggestion captured the media’s imagination. Fellini added that he hoped the Beatles would write the score for the movie. Meanwhile, back in London, the Beatles’ press office said they knew nothing of any proposal for John, Paul, George, and Ringo to star in any great homosexual movie, Fellini’s or otherwise.

The novelist Henry Miller watched Fellini’s performance on television and noted the director was merely improvising—riffing like a jazz player on the celebrity names he pulled out the air to see the response each one received. Now, he said he would cast Terence Stamp and Pierre Clementi who would star as Encolpius and Ascyltus. Fellini added:

I’d like [Elizabeth] Taylor, [Richard] Burton, [Brigitte] Bardot, [Peter] O’Toole, [Louis] de Funes, Jerry Lewis, [Marlon] Brando, Lee Marvin, the Beatles, the Maharishi, Lyndon Johnson and [General] de Gaulle, or else no one, not a known face, to increase the sense of foreign-ness.

It was becoming clear that it was going to be “no one”—though Michael J. Pollard was still keen.
 

Fellini and ‘the unknowns’ he eventually cast.
 
More of Fellini’s ‘Satyricon,’ after the jump…

Black Christmas, Italian, 28x39”

Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale.

Anyway, my pal Christian, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is the maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like his if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of deep expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Italian giallo posters. Christian is what I call a “sophisticate.”

He’s got a carefully curated cult poster collection on offer that is second to none. His home is a shrine to lurid giallo, 70s XXX and any and every midnight movie classic you can shake a stick at. But why would you want to shake a stick at a bunch of movie posters to begin with? That would be pointless. And stupid.

The Westgate Gallery’s Black Christmas 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. All you have to do is enter the discount code “BX19” at checkout and your tab will be magically cut in half.

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com.
 

Abominable Dr Phibes, Italian, 26x37”
 

All the Colors of the Dark, Italian, 39x55”
 

Attack of the Mushroom People, Italian, 55x78”
 
Plenty more posters, after the jump…