Manson (1972) is the razorblade in your Halloween candy bar. Chock full of footage of Manson and his freaky followers, this competently-made and unsettling documentary is a horror show made that much more horrifying by the fact that these folks aren’t acting, they’re real. With subject matter this dark and disturbing, the film makers didn’t have to embellish the story in order to gut punch the audience. All they had to do was point the camera in the right direction and let the film roll. Some of the interviewees have the long-distance stare of the truly mad.
Had the US government wanted to put a stake in the heart of the hippie movement, Manson’s gang of demonic flower children and the mayhem at Altamont provided the perfect opportunities to discredit an entire movement. Along with the death of Sharon Tate and Meredith Hunter, 1969 saw the death of the Aquarian Age.
Here’s a Halloween treat for Dangerous Minds readers: one of my all-time favorite Roman Polanski movies, The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Polanski directed and stars in this delightfully warped horror/comedy which features his stunningly beautiful wife Sharon Tate and the very funny Jack MacGowran. When it was released in the USA in 1967 (in a version butchered by MGM Studios),The Fearless Vampire Killers was ignored by audiences and trashed by film critics. But over the years, the film has developed a cult following and has been subject to critical revision that has shifted in Polanski’s favor. FVK may not be in the same league as Polanski’s masterpieces, but it is highly entertaining and beautifully crafted.
Anyone who is a fan of the lushly produced and oftentimes sexy vampire movies that came out of Hammer Studios in the Sixties will appreciate Polanski’s highly-stylized Technicolor take on Transylvania with its elegantly decadent vampires flitting through gorgeously gothic boudoirs and ballrooms.
The Fearless Vampire Killers presented in its uncut European version:
It’s getting near Halloween, and what better to celebrate than watching writer and film-maker, Shade Rupe‘s excellent short film T is for Trick.
So impressive is Shade’s film that the legendary horror writer and director, Clive Barker sent Shade a note of his approval:
Hey there Shade,
That was an elegantly shot, sharply edited and strongly conceived and directed four minutes of film-making. Colour me impressed. You managed to imply a whole range of character options for us, from which entirely plausible narrative solutions spilled. Very fine, courageous work from you and your actors. I hit the heart to say I’d been there. I hope it helps and i will certainly make sure my guys do the same.
Bloody good work, my friend.
Clive
Who could disagree with Mr Barker? But judge for yourself, and if you like, then you might like to vote for Mr Rupe’s success, by ‘hitting the Heart Vote button’. You will not be disappointed.
Check here to vote for Shade’s film T is for Trick to be included in the ABCs of Death.
So buzzed was I by the reaction to my first Disco Argento mix (downloads maxed out on Soundcloud* - thanks guys!) that I decided to go digging through the vault of horror/disco cash-in records yet again to put together a follow-up. And so I give you… Disco Argento 2: The Sequel! As with most sequels, it feeds heavily off the original’s success while boldly pushing the concept into uncharted waters (the 1980s). I feel as if this time I got to truly express my vision, though it could be argued that I am over-indulging myself (twelve minutes of Pat Hodges?!).
I’m pretty chuffed to be able to put a few real gems on this mix - tracks like Stelvio Cipriani’s theme for Tentacles (actually called “Too Risky A Day For A Regatta”), Riz Ortolani’s energetic jazz-funk workout “Drinking Coco” from Cannibal Holocaust and the simply divine “New York One More Day” by Franisco DiMasi from the score for Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper (possibly the only passable excuse for that super sleazy film to exist). What is with these Italians and their fabulous soundtracks? It’s also the second appearance of the day for DM pal Matt Berry, heard here in his Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace guise as Todd Rivers, with an electrifying remix of his ode to thwarted passion “One Track Lover”. Here’s the tracklist in full:
NOSTROMO Alien
GOBLIN Tenebre
FABIO FRIZZI Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters)
FRANCISCO DI MASI New York One More Day (Disco Beard edit)
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ Police Station Assault
RIZ ORTOLANI Il Corpo Di Linda
TODD RIVERS One Track Lover (Synthia Remix)
FAT BOYS Are You Ready For Freddy?
FRANCIS HAINES The Trioxin Theme (aka Return Of The Living Dead Theme)
JOHN CARPENTER & ALAN HOWARTH The Duke Arrives/Barricade/Snake dialog
PAT HODGES Fly By Night (Midnight Mix)
RIZ ORTOLANI Drinking Coco
STELVIO CIPRIANI Tentacoli (aka Tentacles)
THE CHAMP’S BOYS ORCHESTRA Tubular Bells (Cosmic Mix)
ABKCO Films presents legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky in a rare New York appearance with a Halloween screening of The Holy Mountain at MoMA:
Jodorowsky will introduce his visionary 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain, which famously played for sixteen straight months at New York’s Waverly Theater, at “An Evening with Alejandro Jodorowsky” on Monday, October 31, at 7 PM. The program serves as a coda to the exhibition of Jodorowsky’s work that was organized at MoMA PS1 earlier this year by Klaus Biesenbach.
Jodorowsky will take part in an onstage conversation with Klaus Biesenbach and Joshua Siegel.
The Holy Mountain is a surreal and picaresque satire depicting the journey of a Christ-like figure, the Thief, to a symbolic mountain that is said to unite Heaven and Earth. Playing the character of the Alchemist both on and off screen, Jodorowsky immersed his actors in months of preparatory spiritual and occult exercises, and was also responsible for the costume, set designs and for co-writing the musical score.
Tickets are $12 adults; $10 seniors, $8 full–time students. Admission is free for Museum members. Tickets and info. The Holy Mountain is out on Blu-ray DVD.
‘Tis the season, and all that jazz. Halloween is my favourite time of year, so to help people get into an undead festive mood here’s the first of a couple of spookalicious mixes I will be sharing over the next few days. First up it’s my Disco Argento mix, a compilation of late 70s and early 80s horror movie-inspired discomania put together for Glasgow’s Menergy club. It features dancefloor versions of the themes from Phantasm, Friday the 13th, Dawn Of The Dead, Amittyville and Demons, some score tracks and a few soul horror cash-ins. It also comes with a rather snazzy (and exclusive) Thriller-inspired sleeve by top comic artist Frank Quitely too. Here’s the full tracklist:
Halloween II - John Carpenter
Cannibal Ferox - Fabio Frizzi
Zombi - Goblin
Amityville Frenzy - Lalo Schiffrin
Prom Night Theme - Zaza & Zitter
Phantasm - Captain Zorro
Phantasmagoria / Silver Sphere Disco - Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave
NYC Theme - Budy-Maglione
Demons (Disco Beard Edit) - Claudio Simonetti
Friday The 13th Part III - Manfredini & Zager
Lust - Rinder & Lewis
Doin’ It In A Haunted House - Yvonne Cage
Disco Blood - The Vamps
Soul Dracula - Hot Blood
UPADTE
The download limit for Disco Argento has been reached on Soundcloud - but you can also download the mix from this link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/eg1dcw
Directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, Underground (1976) tells the story of radical activists the Weathermen via interviews and news footage of the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s.
De Antonio reports that he had little difficulty contacting the radicals-in-hiding. Along with cameraman Haskell Wexler and editor Mary Lampson, he filmed the interview in a California safe house, avoiding his subjects’ faces by filming them through sheets and from behind. One camera angle used by De Antonio became a hot topic of discussion among film students. The Weathermen and women are filmed through a mirror. We see De Antonio, Lampson and Wexler with his camera staring right at us, but only the backs of the subjects’ heads. The angle states exactly how the film was made and acknowledges the presence of a camera at all times. What’s more, it suggests that the filmmakers are an active part of the testimony, and not separate from it. To some the shot suggests solidarity with the Weathermen. Others see it as a challenge to the F.B.I.: we’re exercising our First Amendment rights and we’re not hiding from anybody.”
De Antonio, Wexler and Lampson were subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to locate the Weathermen. The film was pulled from circulation.
The three, all prominent within the Hollywood community, hired the best lawyers that they could find, and with the support of other filmmakers and actors, including Elia Kazan, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, were able to get the subpoenas repealed . The three were able to use their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, as well as the rights of journalistic integrity which allow for confidentiality of sources.
The Weather Underground were a divisive force within the anti-war movement. Their violent approach to protest, which included bombing symbols of the corporate war machine, was reviled by pacifists who felt their tactics were just a mirror image of the forces the peace movement was railing against. But despite their lack of support, The Weather Underground managed to shake up the system without anyone getting killed but themselves. Three Weathermen died when a nailbomb blew up in a townhouse on 11th street in Manhattan in 1970.
In 1979, Michael Palin and John Cleese were invited onto a chat show, Friday Night, Saturday Morning, to discuss the controversy surrounding the latest Monty Python film, Life of Brian.
The film had outraged Christians across the world, who erroneously believed Brian was a blasphemous representation of Jesus Christ. In America, thousands turned out to demonstrate against Brian, waving banners that read, “Jesus was nailed to the cross not Screwed,” and singing “Kum Ba Yah”.
When the film arrived in the UK, there were similar candle light vigils and councils opting to ban the film from local cinemas, rather than face the ire of Nationwide Festival of Light, a prudish, busy-body Christian group, who foolishly believed they knew what was best for all the British public.
As Life of Brian was released, Cleese and Palin agreed to debate the film with professional Christian and hypocrite, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Mervyn Stockwood, Anglican Bishop of Southwark, who had the look of man who might enjoy yodeling up an altar boy’s arsehole. It was agreed the four would meet in the no-man’s land of the BBC’s chat show Friday Night, Saturday Morning, which was hosted by a variety of presenters (most successfully by the great god Ned Sherrin), but on this occasion by Tim Rice, yes that Tim Rice.
It was a brutal schoolyard battle, with most of the bullying coming from God’s defendants. At one point, the prissy Muggeridge turned to Palin and said:
Muggeridge: “I started off by saying that this is such a tenth-rate film that I don’t believe that it would disturb anybody’s faith.”
Palin: “Yes, I know you started with an open mind; I realise that.”
Neither of the Pythons seemed prepared for the Bishop’s and Muggeridge’s well-rehearsed outrage, which was a shame, and they gave their counterparts too much respect. Palin later noted in his diary:
“He began, with notes carefully hidden in his crotch, tucked down well out of camera range, to give a short sermon, addressed not to John or myself but to the audience. In the first three or four minutes he had brought in Nicolae Ceauşescu and Mao Tse-tung and not begun to make one point about the film. Then he began to turn to the movie. He accused us of making a mockery of the work of Mother Teresa, of being undergraduate and mentally unstable. He made these remarks with all the smug and patronising paraphernalia of the gallery-player, who believes that the audience will see he is right, because he is a bishop and we’re not”
I saw this show when it first went out, and I knew then it was a moment in TV history - a major cultural shift, when the accepted (and interfering) role of religion in public life was shown to be no longer relevant, or acceptable.
More from Python vs. God, plus trail for ‘Holy Flying Circus’, after the jump…
The Rum Diary is the product of hugely talented people. It’s based on a book by Hunter Thompson and stars one of Thompson’s biggest fans and acolytes Johnny Depp who also produced the film. In Bruce Robinson it has a director and screenwriter that is responsible for one of the best comedies of the past three decades, the hilariously bleak Withnail And I. This is the coolest trio since Cream broke up.
Pulling The Rum Diary out of development hell (for years studios tried to get the film off the ground) was obviously a labor of love for Depp and that may be why it doesn’t work as well as it might have. Depp’s love for Thompson could be the problem here. Love is blind… or at the very least nearsighted. Depp’s approach to Thompson is too cautious, too safe, too reverent. I think if Thompson were alive he would have instructed Depp to loosen up, too untighten his ass and go for it…gonzo-style.
The Rum Diary wants us to enter Thompson’s deliriously intoxicated world, but it’s just too damn tidy and slick for its own good. The squalor, mayhem and debauchery lacks any genuine sense of danger and the delirium is never delirious enough. And I’m definitely not buying into the film’s depiction of Thompson as some kind of romantic saint. Spinning Thompson into hero material might make for a crowd pleasing narrative but it stretches The Rum Diary into mythic places it doesn’t belong. By trying to do right by Thompson, Depp may have done him a disservice by turning one of pop culture’s biggest bad-asses into a Mr. Goody Two Shoes.
As frustrating as The Rum Diary is, there’s much to like in the film. Which is why it’s frustrating. Robinson’s direction is filled with brilliant moments - a menacing, sexually-charged scene inside a night club choreographed to scorching blues music, a visit to a hermaphrodite Voodoo priestess/priest who dispenses some powerful reptilian mojo, and a chase scene involving a decrepit Fiat, some high octane hootch and a bunch of pissed-off Puerto Ricans. Giovanni Ribisi is wonderfully deranged in a performance that channels Richard Grant from Withnail And I and there’s some brown acid weirdness that seems to have wandered in from Terry Gilliam’s Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas which, despite being recycled, is still good for a contact high.
The weakest part of the movie is supposed to be its dramatic core: a plot involving a bunch of greedy industrialists attempting an illegal land grab. But it is so undercooked and dull that the film walks away from it way before Thompson does. As a result, his character building moment, his crisis of conscience, lacks punch because most viewers won’t give a flying fuck about the whole damned thing. I suggest you forget about the particulars of the plot and just dig the atmosphere and the film’s all too rare leaps into the unknown.
When Bruce Robinson’s vision becomes disengaged from the story, dances outside the script and elbows the actors out of the way to let something organic and real in, The Rum Diary becomes as drunken as Rimbaud’s boat. My sense is that after Robinson started shooting the film with his cinematographer, the incredible Dariusz Wolski, he became increasingly engrossed with Puerto Rico’s shadow side and the mystery of the moment took over as the screenplay receded into the background.The movie finds itself in the interstices where life slips through and the audience is allowed to simply take it all in - the lysergical light, the sway of sun-sharpened silhouette, the fetid murk and tangle of tree vine, rotted root and gnarled limbs, the bristling feathers of a cockfight, the murderous intent tattooed on faces of people done wrong, the unraveling of symmetry and beautiful decay of streets and ancient buildings that stagger under the weight of forgotten crimes and deadly secrets. Within this sweetly malodorous topography lurk the kind of dark dreams that press in on a man. This is the kind of shit that writers pull inspiration from with the fervor of mad dogs digging for a hank of flesh and bone. This is where Hunter Thompson found his fucking muse. And Robinson may have as well. In these all too brief moments, The Rum Diary reminds me of Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus. It is at its most sublime when its characters become figures in a landscape that throbs and surges with a sexual heat and as they move into the foreground we see in their eyes bottomless desire. Had Depp lost himself as Robinson did he may have found the redemption that the film cries out for.
Should you see The Rum Diary? Absolutely. Just prepare yourself for an experience that could have used more of what Depp describes as Thompson’s “savagery.” Or some of whatever that Voodoo priestess was doling out. Ask Bruce Robinson exactly what that shit was. I bet he knows.
The Rum Diary opens in theaters on October 28.
Johnny Depp and Bruce Robinson at the Austin Film Festival screening of The Rum Diary. Film critic Elvis Mitchell is conducting the interview. October 21, 2011. This is absolutely lovely, as you will see. I think everyone in the Paramount Theater was drunk. Hunter would have loved it.
