A mashup of a 50s instructional film on dating and Star Wars. Quite funny.
 

 
Via Have you seen this?!

See more animated GIFs after the jump…

 
I got an advance copy of Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones on Blu-ray yesterday from the publicist for Eagle Rock Ent. and I must say, it’s probably the best longform Rolling Stones performance on the market or that we’re ever likely to see.

Originally shot on the 1972 USA tour in support of the Exile on Main Street album, during four separate shows in Ft. Worth and Houston, Texas, the film was shown theatrically in midnight screenings throughout 1974. The “QuadraSound” four-channel magnetic soundtrack required a a 3300-watt sound system to be delivered on a truck to the cinema which was run by professional sound engineers who tailored the mix according to how big the venue was (and also how full the seats were). The releasing company, Dragon Aire Ltd. had four of these systems touring at once.

The 1972 North America tour was the Stones at the absolute pinnacle of their powers as live performers—as even Mick Jagger admits, they could be a pretty sloppy live band at times. Here, with a setlist culled from their best albums, (Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street) they really putt their shoulders into it, clearly full of piss and vinegar to spare . It’s just a great Rolling Stones performance, full stop. If you are a fan, this is exactly what you want.

This film hasn’t really been seen (except for an Australian VHS release that’s been widely bootlegged) in about three decades, so the experience of these performances hasn’t been devalued by constant repetition on Vh1 Classics. Aside from that, let’s not forget the presence of virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor (arguably the best musician ever to play in the band). And it sounds very, very good in the newly remastered 5:1 surround. (I’m a little less sold on the picture, which looks fine, but has that slightly jagged looking quality that always results from a 16mm film getting blown up to 35mm).

All in all, I’d say that if you are “so inclined” that this should be a definitive “buy,” fanboy. I didn’t feel that way about the recent Exile on Main Street reissue in the least, but this DVD, especially on Blu-ray, really can’t be beat.
 
Here’s a somewhat murky—but asskicking—clip of “Happy” from the film.
 

 
Big Tits Zombie 3-D (AKA Kyonyu Dragon), where strippers meet Night of the Living Dead, all refracted through a distinctly J-sploitation vibe. This whole 3-D might be a fad, so enjoy it while you can…
 

“You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself.”

It’s Michael Caine as Jack Carter, intimidating a small-town gangster, Cliff Brumby, in the 1971 film, Get Carter. Within seconds Carter has shown Brumby, played by future TV soap star Bryan Mosley, who’s boss - a quick karate chop and Brumby’s on his knees. That’s what Carter does. He’s a hardened criminal, a killer, and now he’s back home to find out who murdered his brother.

Taken from the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, Get Carter changed modern crime fiction. Firstly, it created a new genre British Noir; secondly, it kicked in the French windows at St. Mary Mead, and replaced the anaemic Miss Marple with the harsh reality of professional criminals, and the brutality of their lives, from which every succeeding British crime writer has taken their cue.

Lewis was born in Manchester in 1940, and raised on Humberside. He showed skill as an artist and as a writer, and attended Hull Art School. In 1965, his first novel All The Way Home, and All Through The Night was published. Lewis then worked as animator on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, before writing Jack’s Return Home. He wrote a further seven books, including two more Jack Carter novels, and the classics Plender, Billy Rags and GBH. He died too soon, too young, almost forgotten in 1982. What a fickle fucking world we live in.

Jack’s Return Home was in part inspired by a real-life killing that took place during the height of the swinging sixties.

In August 1967, criminal Angus Sibbett bullet-riddled body was found in his Mark Ten Jaguar under Pesspool Bridge, County Durham. Sibbett was a bag man involved in extortion and collecting slot machine money.

Sibbett was employed by notorious, North-East gangster Vincent Landa, a man considered “more important than the Prime Minister”. Sibbett worked with London criminal Dennis Stafford and Landa’s brother, Michael Luvaglio.  Luvaglio had no previous convictions but Stafford, who went under an alias, had served a seven year sentence for possession of a firearm and had notoriously escaped from Dartmoor and Wandsworth prisons eventually fleeing to Newcastle, where he set up a company which was a front for fraudulent activities.

When Sibbett was discovered creaming off Landa’s takings - pocketing £1,000 a week - he was killed.

It seemed an open-and-shut case.  The police came after the gang. Landa fled the country, while Stafford and Luvaglio were arrested for Sibbett’s murder. But both men claimed their innocence, however, they were tried, found guilty and sentenced to gaol.

Stafford believed he was charged because of his previous activities whilst on the run in Newcastle, and has since stated, “If it had not been for me, Michael would never have been charged.”

While Luvaglio has said: “When I was arrested, the police told me that I only had to say that Stafford had left me for a while that night and I would go free.”

In hindsight, the whole case seemed like a fit-up as the evidence against both men was flimsy to non-existent. Importantly eye-witness statements and forensic evidence, which could have cleared both men, was ignored.

On that fateful night, Sibbett was to meet Stafford and Luvaglio in The Birdcage nightclub in Newcastle. Eyewitnesses vouched for both men, apart from a period of 45-minutes around midnight - the time Sibbett was murdered.  This 45-minute window proved crucial, as the police claimed Stafford and Luvaglio had left the nightclub, driven 16 miles, pushed Sibbett’s vehicle off the road, then pumped 3 bullets into him, before returning to the club.

In 1967, even in a souped-up cop car, traveling at full-speed, lights flashing, it wasn’t possible to do what was claimed. But it didn’t matter. Luvaglio and Stafford were set for punishment. It was a warning to any other London criminals (most notably London’s notorious Kray twins) against moving their operations north.

Stafford served 12 years but always insisted his innocence, claiming a Scottish shooter committed the crime. This was confirmed in a TV documentary by John Tumblety, who said on camera that he in fact had driven the real murderer back from Pesspool Bridge to the Birdcage club and that man was neither Luvaglio nor Stafford.

In May 2002 Sibbett’s slaying (now renamed The Get Carter Murder) made news when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British Home Secretary had kept Dennis Stafford in jail longer than was necessary and ordered £28,000 compensation to be paid.

To this day, both men continue to campaign to clear their names of the crime they didn’t commit

In Get Carter the film’s slot machine king was played by playwright, John Osborne, whose character Cyril Kinnear, lives in Dryerdale Hall, Durham, the very building Landa used as his gangland HQ.

In 2002 Landa said :

“The two (Stafford & Luvaglio) men were wrongly convicted and the evidence was incorrect. If they were tried today they would never have been found guilty. It was a political trial. The Home Office had suffered at the hands of gangs like the Krays and the Richardsons and they stepped in to smash what they thought was an organised crime ring.”

These aren’t the only characters Lewis adapted for his novel, and later the film. Property developer Cliff Brumby was a hybrid of Newcastle City councillor, T. Dan Smith and architect John Poulson. Both men were notorious in the sixties, and were later found guilty of bribery, corruption and giving backhanders to MPs and councillors in order to have shoddy building plans passed.

The pair destroyed most of Newcastle and built cheap concrete housing and offices. At the trial, the judge said that the scandal “now couples corruption with the north east.” So far reaching were their underhand activities that Conservative Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling resigned over the scandal.

Smith was accused of infiltrating councils across the North of England and corruptly forcing them to give business to architect John Poulson. Smith used £500,000 of Poulson’s money as bribes. Smith ruled with an iron hand and was described as a “demagogue”. He ended his life championing pensioners’ rights from the 14th floor council flat in a block he had built.

Incredibly Get Carter was not a box office hit on its first release. This was in large part down to the stupidity of the critics who described the movie as “soulless and nastily erotic…virtuoso viciousness”, a “sado-masochistic fantasy”, that “one would rather wash one’s mouth out with soap than recommend it.” Of course, since then Get Carter has been rightly reappraised by a younger generation who have hailed Michael Caine’s chilling and utterly compelling performance as Carter, which has led to the movie being described as a classic of modern cinema and arguably the greatest British crime film ever made.   
   

 
Killdozer was an awful mid-70s ABC Movie of the Week about some tough guy constriction workers doing battle with an alien-possessed bulldozer on a desert island or in Africa or something. How dangerous can a demonic bulldozer really be? When you get right down to it, they can still only go about 5 miles an hour,

It was co-written by sci-fi Theodore Sturgeon, based on his novella of the same name (there was also a Killdozer Marvel comic). Clint Walker and a young, pre-S.W.A.T. and Spenser for Hire, Robert Urich starred.

As crap as Killdozer is, it’s still probably the best alien-possessed bulldozer film ever made…
 

 
Coming attraction for Otto Preminger’s sixties psychedelic misfire Skidoo. Credits sung by Harry Nilsson.
 

 
Skidoo is a mess, but it’s still fun in the way a car crash without serious injury is fun. And the soundtrack by Nilsson is totally groovy.

Watch the movie in its entirety after the jump…

 
In Luigi Petrini’s 1980 bizarre b-movie White Pop Jesus the son of God takes on the mafia and assorted sinners in a Bavaesque dreamscape to a Shaft-like funk groove.

Watch polyester Jesus wage holy war against spandex, spiky hairdos and a giant syringe.
 

 
More disco Jesus after the jump…

 
A few days ago, I posted here about disco singer Monti Rock III, the first queen I ever saw on TV when I was a kid, and I mentioned that he had not really crossed my mind in a very long time… then coincidentally, yesterday, Robert Coddington, Nelson Sullivan’s archivist (who I wrote about here), gave me a copy of a short film by D.A. Pennebaker titled You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You. Who should turn up in this obscurity? Well, Monti Rock III, that’s who, then working as a celebrity hair stylist (he did the bridal party’s hair). A young Richard Alpert (AKA Ram Dass) and jazz great Charles Mingus also turn up in the film.

And Mrs. TImothy Leary? Well, after divorcing the High Priest of LSD—their marriage lasted about a year—the high fashion model then known as Nena von Schlebrügge married Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman. Their daughter, actress Uma Thurman, was born in 1970.

Here’s how Pennebaker describes the Leary nuptials:

This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it.  Blackwood took me downtown to meet Monte Rock III who was singing at Trudy Heller’s but who was also a very pricey and off-the-wall hairdresser and was in fact going to be doing the bride’s hair.  Nena’s brother, Bjorn, known as the “Baron” was a friend of the Hitchcock’s, as was I, and the idea of going along and filming the wedding seemed not unwarranted. I’ve always wanted to film someone getting married.

So we drove up in Monte Rock’s ancient Buick, Diane Arbus, an editor from Vogue whose name I can no longer remember, and of course Monte Rock, his fingers covered in rings. Close behind, Proferes and Desmond filmed us as we drove, up the Taconic and through the gates of the Hitchcock mansion.

There were Hitchcocks and friends and relations of Hitchcocks, the Baron and his court, a score of models, and Charles Mingus playing a lonely piano. Even Susan Leary fresh out of jail.  It was indeed an amazing wedding, and for all I know, an amazing marriage, although someone later told me it was over before I’d even finished editing the film.

After Nena divorced Leary she married a Tibetan scholar, Dr. Robert Thurman and her daughter Uma is Uma the actress.  Dick Alpert became his own guru, Baba Ram Dass and achieved a sainthood of his own.  Monte Rock III left Trudy Heller’s and went out to Hollywood and became famous for his line in the John Travolta movie, Saturday Night Fever, when as the disco DJ he exclaims, “I love that polyester look.” Charles Mingus got thrown out of his loft and sadly perished, and in time the Hitchcock house itself burned down, or so I’ve been told.  The mystery is that we never filmed anyone actually getting married.

D A Pennebaker, 1964, 12 min., b&w

 
Part II after the jump…

 
Bad Boy of British cinema, Nigel Wingrove, is the only director to have one of his films banned on the grounds of blasphemy. His 1989 short Visions of Ecstasy, was refused certification by the British Board British Film Censors on the grounds of its sexualized representation of Saint Teresa of Avila making love to a crucified Christ on the cross.

The film was based on St Teresa’s own religious and highly erotic writings:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it…

When I interviewed Wingrove in 2005, for Channel 4’s Banned in the U.K., he explained the main issue was over Christ responding to Teresa’s kisses. If Christ had been represented by a wooden mannequin or a blow-up doll, rather than an actor, then Teresa could have fucked her brains out, and the film would have been passed uncut. As it was, the BBFC wanted the offending scenes removed, which meant losing almost half the film. Wingrove rightly refused and the film was banned.

In 1996, supported by the likes of authors, Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon, film-maker, Derek Jarman, and musician Steven Severin, who composed the soundtrack for Visions, Wingrove appealed to the European Court of Human Rights under Article 10, which defends freedom of expression, to have the ban lifted. The Court dismissed his case, stating that the criminal law of Blasphemy, as it was applied in England, did not infringe the right to freedom of expression under Article 10. In other words, typical bureaucratic ass-covering.

Wingrove is currently working on his next cinema release Sisters of Armageddon, which as he tells Dangerous Minds is:

A sci-fi nunsploitation film called Sisters of Armageddon - think Planet of the Apes meets The Nun’s Story with a sprinkling of The Gestapo’s Last Orgy and a soupçon of Mad Max.

And here’s a sneak preview.
 

 
Bonus clip of the banned ‘Visions of Ecstasy’ after the jump…