They’ve been gassing the PR machine pretty hard lately around the impending opening this fall of the $25 million-dollar budgeted Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Directed by the brilliant Julie Taymor and featuring a score from U2, it’ll either be a great night of theater or else the most-embarrassing piece of shit ever. When it comes to a musical sung by a superhero and supervillains, I doubt there is much of a chance for middle ground!

But did you know that there already was a Spider-Man musical? Yup. In 1975, a Spidey rock opera, Rock Reflections of a Super-Hero was released. One day when I was 9-years old my dad brought it home for me. It had a cool album cover which was a painting of Spidey/Peter Parker by John Romita and narration by—who else—Stan Lee. It’s gloriously awful, basically the Peter Parker story set to song (“Square Boy” is about his nerdy high school years. “Gwendolyn” is of course about the death of his girlfriend Gwen Stacy).

The best/worst song is the Doctor Octopus song. In it he threatens to turn the Black Panther and Thor into go-go dancers. If the whole things were a Doctor Octopus album, it would have been way better. It begins in the second half of the clip below:
 

 
And dig the back cover: The Hulk on drums, Silver Surfer on synth, Luke Cage on bass, Thor on trumpet, the Fantastic Four on backing vocals (Ben Grimm has a certain Mama Cass-like quality to his voice, don’t you think?) and Captain America on… tambourine?
 

 

 
One of my favorite genres of exploitation films is Filipino action flicks. I’m thrilled that Mark Hartley who directed the fabulous documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story Of Ozploitation has a brand new film screening at this years Fantastic Fest (which DM will be covering) called Machete Maidens Unleashed, an overview of legendary Z-movies from the Philippines.

During the classic grindhouse era of the ‘60s and ‘70s independent producers began turning out more and more exploitation features for less and less money. As the cycle wore on, there was a demand from audiences for more variety in settings and situations, and a demand from producers for lower budgets. Since it already had an infrastructure conducive to the making of inexpensive films, the Philippines fit the bill to a T. Labor was cheap, there were skilled technicians and equipment and, possibly best of all, the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos looked upon the enterprise favorably, contributing everything from tactical assistance to military firepower. One interviewee refers to the Philippines at this time as the “wild east”, and that assessment certainly seems apt as we hear story after story of gunfights in hotel lobbies, rats the size of poodles and the most insane, irresponsible stunts imaginable. As shocking and lurid as many of the women-in-prison, jungle action, mad scientist and martial arts movies made in the Philippines were, the back stories may actually surpass the films in their shocking details. But when the films being discussed and shown in Hartley’s trademark montage style are as wildly entertaining as For Your Height Only, Mad Doctors Of Blood Island, The Twilight People, The Big Doll House and TNT Jackson, it may be a tie.

I will be interviewing Mark Hartley during Fantastic Fest (Sept. 23-30), so stay tuned.

Here’s a clip from the classic For Your Height Only (aka For Y’ur Height Only) featuring the 3 foot tall martial arts master Weng Weng, the Filipino James Bond.
 

 
One hit wonders in Germany, Adam and Eve do their best Sonny and Cher in this video from 1967, “They Can Look At Us And Laugh”. The duo were Eva Bartova from Prague and American expatriate John Christian Dee.

There’s not much information on John Christian Dee that I can find. He was born in Buffalo, NY. He moved to London in his twenties. He wrote some songs for The Pretty Things and The Pink Fairies. He later married the infamous Janie Jones and together they ran a prostitution ring in London. He and Jones were busted and sentenced to prison but he fled the country. In 1975 he was jailed in Germany for stabbing his girlfriend. He escaped and disappeared somewhere in France.  John Christian Dee died in London in 2004.

After Dee split for England, Eva continued to record with a new Adam, Hartmut Schairer, but the results weren’t nearly as interesting as her brief career with Dee. She died in 1989.

The video is a real oddity. The Sonny and Cher replication is pretty amazing. The song sounds like something Sonny would write, with its depiction of hippies as proud loners being ostracized and ridiculed by straight society. The first Sonny and Cher album was titled Look At Us - not much different from the title of this song. Dee has Sonny’s vocal mannerisms down pat: stretching vowels with a wiseass snarl.

Anyway, here’s Adam and Eve. If you don’t dig the song, you’ll love the wigs and bell bottoms. If you want more, buy the CD here.
 

 
More Adam and Eve after the jump…

 
This is a segment from a Danish Dutch documentary from 1977 called Wonderland. The entire film is available for viewing on Youtube. This is my favorite clip from the film. Warren extolling the virtues of the Tex Mex food at The Burrito King. L.A. at its finest.

 
Legendary Malaysian actor and musician P. Ramlee plays the totally groovy “Bunyi Gitar”. The fez , the shades, teenagers twisting like rock and roll angels, this video has it all. Thankyou DJGiantRobot.

P.Ramlee’s big break came on 1 June 1948 when he was spotted by Tamil film director B. S. Rajhans. The director was impressed by Ramlee, and in 1949 he was cast in the film Nasib (Fate). Seven years later, Ramlee directed his first film Penarik Becha (The Trishaw Man). In 1957, Ramlee would act in the first of his Bujang Lapok (Dowdy Bachelors) comedic films that he acted along S. Shamsuddin along with Aziz Sattar, which are still popular among the modern Malay film watchers.On 29 May 1973 P.Ramlee died at the age of 44 due to heart problems and was buried in Jalan Ampang Muslim Cemetery, Kuala Lumpur. In 1986, in honour of his contributions to the Malaysian entertainment industry, the P. Ramlee Memorial was set up in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. In 1982, Jalan Parry in the KL city centre has been renamed Jalan P. Ramlee in his honor. He was posthumously awarded with the Malaysian honorific title Tan Sri in the early 1990s.

P. Ramlee superstar!
 

 
Austrian filmmaker Virgil Widrich and his crew truly turned it out in 2003 with Fast Film, an amazingly obsessed confluence of film history, paper-craft and pre-digital animation.

Born from the scraps of Widrich’s equally well-crafted short, Copy Shop, Fast Film imbues its surrealistic qualities with familiarity, humor, anxiety, dread and hints of sexuality.
 

 
After the jump: How this incredible film was made…
 

 
Unreality/via Matt Staggs

 
One of the things that can certainly be said for Alan Moore’s various projects over the years, is that they tend to be beautifully packaged and published products. Although often pricey, his dedicated fan base clearly appreciate the effort, as these beautiful objects tend to sell out rather quickly.

Dig Unearthing, his latest, a collaboration with noted photographer, Mitch Jenkins: Lex Records produced the package, which includes two deluxe 180g vinyl records of Unearthing, a deluxe 180g white vinyl record Instrumental EP, three CDs, a poster, a portrait of Moore by Jenkins and a printed transcript.

Unearthing is an audio and visual project uniting legendary comic book writer Alan Moore award-winning photographer Mitch Jenkins and a cast of high- caliber musicians. A story written and narrated by Moore with a mesmerising score from Crook&Flail, Stuart Braithwaite, Zach Hill, Justin Broadrick, Mike Patton and more.

Bleep are proud to be the first retailer to present this deluxe, limited edition box set via Lex Records including the full 2-hour audio reading of Unearthing on CD and heavyweight vinyl, a separate EP of instrumental highlights from the score, a dot-matrix printed transcript, photo portrait of Alan by Mitch Jenkins.

Personally, I think he ought to throw in one of those huge “Camberwell Carrot” joints he’s so famous for, as seen in the photo below:
 

 

 
Via Planet Paul

 
Another weird and wonderful video concoction from Mr. Smoochy.

 
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” and Don’t Look Back . Google Bob Dylan. He used to be a protest singer.