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…

A coat with an image of Malcom McDowell as Alex DeLarge in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (a bargain at $1,380).
 
Recently we shared with you the wildly overpriced, hideous Captain Beefheart designer silk shirt that nobody asked for. Now, direct from the “nobody asked for this shit” department comes a line of high-priced coats containing disturbing visuals from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.

Because nothing says high fashion like a giant tormented image of Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell) with his eyes being held open by sharp metal clamps on a coat, here’s a little background. In the scene, DeLarge is going through the horrific, but fictional Ludovico’s Technique, a kind of aversion therapy during which he was forced to watch extremely graphic Nazi imagery. But wait! It gets worse. Kubrick was well known for getting his actors to push themselves to the point of no return. For instance, actress Shelly Duvall shared in an interview in 1980 with Roger Ebert that her character in The Shining, Wendy Torrance, “cried twelve hours a day, all day long,” concluding she spent thirteen months on location essentially in tears. And that’s just one account of Duvall’s difficult experience with Stanley Kubrick. Getting back to the image on the jacket above, the shocking scene was shot in ten excruciating minutes during which McDowell’s corneas were repeatedly scratched. McDowell broke it down in an interview in 2014 like this:

“I didn’t feel at the time, my eyes were anesthetized. In the car going home, I don’t know if you’ve ever scratched your corneas, but you don’t want to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain like that before. It was horrible. Like being cut with razor blades.”

Before I go any further, I should say the coat in question is 100% polyester, and it’s the least expensive of the four coats being sold by Moscow-based conceptual clothier (?) SVMOSCOW. If tortured Alex DeLarge isn’t your bag, SVMOSCOW also has a coat featuring an aggressive-looking DeLarge in his Droogs getup, including his massive white codpiece. But honestly, aside from the price tag aligning with a specific demographic, I’m pretty sure if I spotted someone sporting one, they would likely know fuck nor all about what it was based on. To be fair, lots of heavy metal fans can’t name more than one song by the band whose t-shirt they are currently wearing. So the next time you see someone wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, ask them to name their favorite Maiden jam. If they tell you it’s “Run to the Hills,” its a lie. Of course, if these spendy duds are your thing, you can break payments into monthly installments that look like a car payment. See the rest of the worst of the collection below.
 

A variant of the jacket at the top of the post which retails for $2,775.
 

A long coat featuring McDowell as Alex in his Droogs gear, $1,955.
 

Another long coat with an image of Alex DeLarge, $2,135.
 

The official NSFW trailer for ‘A Clockwork Orange.’

 
Scene: Opening titles.

A group of sunny So-Cal cheerleaders kick and shake: “Give it an L. Give it an I. Give an S. Give it a Zee. Give it…”

They’re going to do the whole fucking alphabet…

“...an O. Give it an M. Give it an A…”

We’ll be here all day….Jesus fucking Sanchez...

“..Give it an N. Give it an I. Give it an A.”

Wait…

“...What does it it spell…LISZTOMANIA!”

Cue Alan Whicker, for it is he…He speaks into his microphone…

Whicker: The thing about Ken Russell’s most misunderstood and most reviled film Lisztomania is that it has some of his best stylistic devices and some of his worst artistic traits. It is a film that shows the best of Ken Russell while revealing the problems involved in ever fully realizing such a febrile imagination on a shoestring budget.

Cut to: Archive footage of producer David Puttnam in a bank vault counting money while reading movie reviews. In the background hundreds of Oompa-Loompahs are making telephone calls to very important Hollywood producers.

Whicker (in voice-over): This man is God. He is a movie producer. He wants to leave his fingerprint on everything he touches…Today he wants people to know he is making the Ken Russell film that will “Out-Tommy Tommy.”

Note that David Puttnam has a beard. The writer Roald Dahl hated people who wore beards because he thought they were hiding something. Ken Russell sported a beard during Tommy. Two beards could be seen as two negatives. But as Woody Allen once noted, two negatives make a positive.

Puttnam hopes Lisztomania will be a positive.

Unfortunately, Russell shaved his beard before filming and tried out a rather dapper mustache…

Suitable music, cue the blog:

Russell had originally intended to make a film about George Gershwin starring Al Pacino. He was under contract with Puttnam to make six movies on six composers. Together they’d already made Mahler starring Rober Powell and Georgina Hale to mixed reviews though some minor success at the box-office. Then came Tommy, the movie version of the Who’s classic concept album. Tommy had been a major hit with both audiences and critics across the world. Russell’s movie kick-started pop promos and whole new way of cinematic storytelling. At Puttnam’s bidding, Russell wrote two scripts. One on sex-mad classical composer Franz Liszt. One on George Gershwin. The latter was dull, The former interesting...

Scene: Exterior Day: Enter Roger Daltrey juggling fish while walking on water and turning it to wine.

Daltrey was at his peak. He was Tommy. He was the frontman for the Who. He was the one name everyone wanted to work with. Russell wanted to make another film with Daltrey. Daltrey wanted to make another film with Russell—despite 32-takes running barefoot through a mustard field for Tommy.

Puttnam liked the idea of Daltrey and Russell making another film together. He opted for Lisztomania and dropped the idea of Pacino as Gershwin.

Cut to: Ext. Day: Archive footage of Ken Russell on location.

Russell: Roger is a natural, brilliant performer. He acts as he sings and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence which is why he was a perfect Tommy and why he is the only person to play Liszt.

Flashback: Roger Daltrey discusses Liszt in a TV interview from 1974.

Daltrey: Liszt’s music is just like modern day rock. He was a lot like me. He had this religious thing like me but he still went lusting after women.

Cut to Alan Whicker walking on a surf-washed beach.

Whicker: Lisztomania was the term coined by German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine to describe the mass adulation composer Franz Liszt aroused in his fans. Liszt was mobbed by breathy young women, who swooned at his recitals, chanted his name, plundered discarded detritus for keepsakes (cigar butts, coffee cups, gloves) and dared to touch the hem of his garment.

Many Germans considered Lisztomania to be a genuine fever, but no one could find its cause or its cure. Heine later wrote:

What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt.

The seed was sown in Russell’s brain. Classical musicians like Liszt are the same as pop stars like Daltrey, Mick Jagger or the Beatles.

Cut to the blog:

Actually, Russell originally wanted Mick Jagger to play Liszt. However, the starting point for his script and the film was the novel Nélida by Marie d’Agoult–the “thinly disguised fictional account” of her four year affair with the long-fingered composer Liszt.

Russell saw Liszt, as Joseph Lanza notes in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films,  as “Romanticism’s baby and the precursor to the modern pop star.”

Like other great names that caught Russell’s eye, Liszt fought internal wars. He was torn between love for his music and his prurient desires, his guilt about leading a cushy lifestyle and sitting idly during the 1849 Hungarian rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, his desperation for the kind of commercial success that would belie his artistic integrity, and most important, the queasy fact that Wagner was eclipsing him as Europe’s symphonic superstar.

Russell saw much to play with here and described Lisztomania as not a straightforward biography but coming:

...from things I feel when I listen to the music of Wagner and Liszt, and when I think about their lives.

Russell wanted to make a film about the rivalry between Liszt and Wagner, and how Wagner plagiarized some of Liszt’s work and ended up marrying Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. However, Puttnam wanted another Tommy full of rock stars and great tunes. Tommy was money. Tommy was Oscar-nominations. Puttnam liked both. But Lisztomania was an unknown quantity. Puttnam forced Ringo Starr on Russell. He added scenes and even included some musical cues that had nothing to do with anything. Russell was beginning to feel frustrated.

Sidebar: When I produced stuff for TV, I saw my job as enabling the director to bring their vision to the screen. Puttnam was of the olde school where he thought a producer had his/her vision on the screen, not so much the director. The problem with creative industries is that everyone thinks they are creative. But in truth: Producers are money and editorial. Directors and writers are talent.

Here’s another interesting piece of casting: Russell allegedly wanted Marty Feldman to play Wagner but he settled for Paul Nicholas. Not that there’s much wrong with “Cousin Kevin” Mr. Nicholas, but he ain’t Marty Feldman…

Russell’s screenplay was only 57-pages long. The script was all in his head. Puttnam insisted on having everything down on paper so he could cost it. The budget spiralled upwards but not as much as Russell wanted. What should have been Fellini became end-of-the-pier cabaret. It probably suited Russell as his imagination soared in adverse circumstances. But the different aims of a producer who wanted a pop promo; and director who wanted to make a film about art, music, and rivalry between two composers, were never fully resolved.

Russell fell back on the comic strip format he had used with his (banned) TV biopic on Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. The film became a series of dreams which highlighted key moments in Liszt’s life. Russell eschewed any realism using references to Universal horror movies, pop concerts, the rise of National Socialism, mensch und übermensch, Pop Art, comedy, and even some of the movies that most influenced the young Ken Russell.

The resulting film may be considered by some as a mess, but it’s a genius mess. A film that offers up more ideas in one sequence than a dozen studio movies with one-hundred times the budget. As Ross Care correctly noted in Film Quarterly:

Ken Russell is an intuitive symbolist and fantasist, a total film-maker who orchestrates his subjects in much the same manner that a composer might transcribe a musical composition from one interpretative medium to another…

Or as Joseph Lanza wrote:

Lisztomania—[was] the film that established once and for all Ken Russell’s refusal to pay any more token favors to biographical “realism.” Lisztomania contains many relevant facts about Liszt—his music, the people who affected his life, his marital problems, his womanizing, his recourse to religion, and of course, his strained relationship with Wagner—but it goes further into the deep end than even the swastika-adorned portrait of Strauss from five years before.

Released in 1975, shortly after Tommy, Lisztomania continues Russell’s harder, more satirical edge, with more lavish sets, more crazed acting, more frenetic plot pacing, and a premise that is simultaneously silly and fantastic.

Cut to: Alan Whicker up to his next in water on a beach.

Whicker: Cinema and TV was never the same after Tommy. And Ken Russell’s career was never quite the same after Lisztomania.

End titles.
 

 

 
More on Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, after the jump…
 

 
Fuck Winter—Halloween’s coming!

Moving apartment, packing and unpacking boxes of belongings, I rediscovered a few old LPs and cassette recordings of the likes of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and David McCallum telling tales of terrible things I’d long forgotten. Suppressed memory, you might say. It was quite a discovery, happy and sad, like finding photographs of long lost lovers and knowing the reason you split and why you were such a dick. Recordings of horror stories which were once so very, very important but now much less so. Perhaps

These were recordings of the very best reading great tales that could entice, enthral, and entertain.

I still listen to such today. Downloading podcasts of The Horror from Relic Radio, or listening to Old Time Radio classic tales by Wyllis Cooper and Arch Obler for Lights Out, or those other shows like Suspense, Himan Brown’s Inner Sanctum, The Witch’s Tale, The Hermit’s Cave, or E. G. Marshall and his three-act The CBS Mystery Hour.. Today’s equivalent is the wonderful podcast series Tales from Beyond the Pale devised and produced by Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuaid.

It’s not that entertainment was somehow better in the past, it is rather there was a bigger and more diverse range of imaginative material produced than all the tawdry remakes, or the repetitive Marvel superhero movies or the tick-box detective shows/sci-fi series available 24/7 today. Imagination has had its wings clipped by money, politics and Twitter mobs, and will never fly to giddy heights in a cage.

But back to the point of this post: Halloween’s coming. And here to get in the mood is a gallery of vintage album covers featuring some of biggest names in movies and entertainment (Karloff, Lugosi, Price, McCallum) reading classic tales of terror and imagination. Plus a few novelty records to show not everything was golden in the past…
 

 

 

 
More eerie album covers, after the jump…
 

 
While the approximate year of when punk rock actually “broke” into the mainstream differs from who you talk to or the weight of cultural references, it could be said that the year 1991 was an indication of a shift in the underground. Or at least it is according to Dave Markey, filmmaker and denizen of the West Coast punk rock scene, known for certain achievements as the We Got Power! fanzine, The Slog Movie, Sin 34, and the Black Flag music video for “Slip it In” (filmed at my high school). After seeing Mötley Crüe perform “Anarchy in the UK” on TV while on a European tour with Sonic Youth and Nirvana, Markey proclaimed that 1991 was the year punk rock finally broke, which became an ongoing joke throughout the tour. The catchphrase even became the title of the Super-8 documentary that Markey was filming.
 
In ways, the tour was a “calm before the storm” for Nirvana, who were supporting Sonic Youth on the run and on the verge of colossal mega-fame. Just a month later, they would release Nevermind and we all know what came after that. If you haven’t seen Markey’s incredible documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke, do yourself a favor and check it out. An incredibly genuine behind-the-scenes look at indie-grunge royalty as they traverse Europe during a pre-Lollapalooza era. Oh, and some pretty memorable live performances by Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Babes in Toyland, and the Ramones (sans Dee Dee).
 

Flier from Sonic Youth / Nirvana show in Cork, Ireland
 
While the doc originally saw limited release in 1992, legal disputes with Nirvana’s estate kept the film from making its way onto DVD - that is until 2011, when Universal coincided the release with Nevermind’s 20th anniversary. Eyeing its eventual reissue, Markey began to assemble a postscript companion piece made up of unused outtakes and other footage from the documentary, titled (This is Known as) The Blues Scale. The name originated from a statement that Cobain yelled to Markey while ripping through a guitar solo on stage.
 

Thurston watching Nirvana at the Pukkelpop Festival
 
Since it is all b-side material, the film presents a unique look at another side of the tour - more-so how these performers were ‘performing’ offstage. There are a few live cuts, but since they were originally excluded from the opus concert doc, it’s more focused on the hijinks and personalities of the tour. And in that sense, Blues Scale is an even more raw and honest look into 90’s rock history. Like, for instance, there’s a story about how Nirvana got kicked off MCA after Kim Gordon wrote “Fuck You” on a card the label left in their dressing room. Or that Kurt Cobain thought up a gimmick that involved him hanging himself onstage. There are also scenes with Sonic Youth at an amusement park, a giddy Cobain playing spin the bottle, Thurston Moore’s take on emocore (“Mick Jagger is the king of emocore”), and cameos by Courtney Love, J. Mascis, Epic Soundtracks, and longtime Black Flag roadie, Joe Cole.
 
More after the jump…

 
Sometimes things get lost because it’s easier that way. Like Jeremy Deller’s and Nicholas Abrahams’ 2007 documentary on Depeche Mode fans called Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (aka The Posters Came from the Walls). No one’s quite sure what happened there. Maybe it was accidentally filed under “F” for forgotten? Or perhaps carelessly pushed to the back of the archive where no-one would ever think to look except for maybe a very keen researcher hoping to find that one rare masterpiece for a festival schedule?

Who knows?

Whatever happened, happened. But very few people have seen Deller’s and Abrahams’ documentary, which to be frank is a goddamn shame.

Our Hobby is Depeche Mode is one of the best films ever made about music. It’s a staggering good documentary that has the audacity to speak to the fans and only the fans. Are you aware that Depeche Mode fans comprise one of the most ardent and hardcore fanbases of any group in the entire world history of popular music? Oh yes they do. Maybe not so much in their homeland England, but in many countries, Depeche Mode are viewed as actual heroes. 

Jeremy Deller is a Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker. Nicholas Abrahams is a documentary filmmaker, artist and promo director. Their film Our Hobby is Depeche Mode documents the stories of Depeche Mode fans like Mark who was homeless when he found his love for the band. He slept rough under Hammersmith Bridge. His greatest fear was not finding food or comfort or money but would the batteries in his Walkman last so he had their music as company. Or, Masha, a girl in Russia who spends her time drawing intricate comic strips of her imaginary life with Depeche Mode. Or, Orlando who lights a candle every day at his shrine to the band. Or, the thousands of youngsters who gather every year in Moscow on Dave Gahan’s birthday to celebrate “Dave Day.”

I contacted Deller and Abrahams—the former over the phone, the latter over genteel refreshments in a busy Glasgow cafe—to find out about their documentary and what happened to it?

How did ‘Our Hobby is Depeche Mode’ come about?

Nicholas Abrahams: We were commissioned by Mute Records. They wanted to commission a film about Depeche Mode.

Jeremy Deller: They wanted a film to be made to celebrate some anniversary. They wanted a documentary about the band. We suggested this film about the fans and this way you don’t have to have the band involved.

NA: We pitched it as not about the band but what if it’s about the fans and how important the music can be to people in ways the band could never imagine. That was our pitch basically.

We knew if you made a film about the band, it maybe what a lot of Depeche Mode fans wanted but it’s boring people talking their music. We knew fans wouldn’t realise how interesting they are. And they were interesting.

JD: I was aware the band had this huge following in Eastern Europe and Russia. It was something I’d heard about but didn’t really know much about. I thought that would be quite fertile territory for the film.

NA: Daniel Miller [Head of Mute Records] knew Depeche Mode were huge in Russia but he didn’t know the story. He said, “It would be great to know about that.” We were discovering all that as we went along.

How did you find the fans for your film?

NA: We advertised through the official Depeche Mode website. Had any fans got stories about the effect the band had on their lives?

JD: I can’t remember how many we got but it must have been over 5,000 responses. We had to go through every one and work out if we could film these people, if it was worth filming them or not. It was kind of trial and error really. Some of them really stuck out, like Mark, because no one else really had a story like that.

It was trial and error and traveling around the world meeting people we’d never met before and filming an interview straight off, straight from the airport you go and make an interview and another one and another one. Then you’d have a night out with them. The next morning make an interview then go off on a plane. It was like being on tour.

NA: We were just looking for interesting people really. We also wanted to see the archive the fans had like the stuff from Russia the VHS tapes that were passed around like sacred objects and copied and re-copied.

JD: Depeche Mode for some people is a religion. In the same way, for us in Britain, the Beatles are like a religion. The effect is very similar to what the Beatles did to Britain and America in the 1960s.

I think it has enriched their lives, definitely. Maybe not financially but in terms of networks and friends and culturally. I think it has been good for people.
 

Deller and Abrahams.
 
Did you have any preconceived ideas about the kind of documentary you wanted to make before you started filming?

JD: You know what you want but you don’t know how you’re going to get to it. It’s so random really because you’re relying on the public. You can’t really control those people who you’re working with and filming. You know the kind of thing you want.

NA: We thought the stories in the film were culturally interesting, especially the stuff behind the Iron Curtain. At one stage it was going to be called How Basildon Ended the Cold War. Because it was like soft propaganda. And because in England they’re not taken that seriously where in other places they are. It’s as simple as that. Also how culture travels around the world, how it varies. 

JD; A film with a global story which show’s [Depeche Mode’s] reach as a band really and how different countries look at them in different ways.

NA: It’s all tangential. None of this is what the band is aiming to do. People take something and use it in their own way. I suppose that’s part of what the film’s about.

We couldn’t have made the same film about another band, like say U2, because there’s an outsider-ish element to Depeche Mode.

Did you enjoy making it?

JD: I did actually. It was kind of amazing. It was quite tiring. I don’t know if I could make it now, you know, being a bit older. I think it would probably do my head in all the flying and stuff. Obviously there’s all that strain and stress when you don’t think you’re getting what you want and you’ve traveled all the way to a country and you can’t grab what you need and you know it’s there and you cannot find it. Those moments are potentially stressful.

What was the response from Mute Records and the band? And what happened to your film?

JD: Daniel Miller really loved it. But as soon as it got into the band camp or arena it sort of got lost a bit. We never really had any direct contact with them. We never really knew what they thought of it. It was made for them. It was paid for, ostensibly, by them. It sort of disappeared really.

NA: We were never asked to make changes. We just got shut down. It never got released.

JD: I think it got wrapped up in some band politics. Some politics within the organization which we weren’t really aware of and we had no control over. It just happens really. Bands are very strange things, they’re like little countries aren’t they? Especially bands that are very successful and make a lot of money. We were absorbed into that.

It’s never been put online and never been released as such—online or in cinemas or TV. We’ve never really exploited that. I think it’s time now that we can do it.

At this point, what are your hopes for ‘Our Hobby is Depeche Mode?

JD: I just want it to be seen really. It’s not as if I have some grand hope for it as it’s so old, if I’d made it last week i’d want everyone to see it. A lot of people have seen it. I just want it to be seen more widely really.

NA: It’s a total Valentine to the band.