Billy Idol.
 
Today on Dangerous Minds I present to you two of my favorite things; a vintage, upper-tier European horror film paired with the punk rock icon Billy Idol. The film in question, Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face) is quite horrifying, though its director George Franju (the co-founder of Cinémathèque Française, an organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world), didn’t see it that way. Instead, he classified his film as a story revolving around grief and despair, and what can happen once one has reached the very depths of both valleys. Franju’s film was based on the 1959 book Les Yeux Sans Visage by Jean Redon for which Redon had already written a screenplay. Redon’s adaptation would be augmented by French fiction crime author Pierre Boileau, and the film would make its debut in Paris on March 2, 1960. When it was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival later in the year, it was reported that seven people in the theater fainted during the surgery scene—and if you have seen Les Yeux Sans Visage yourself, this is entirely understandable.

One of my favorite pieces of horror history inspired by this film concerns that maverick of the horror genre, John Carpenter. Actress Edith Scob wore several different masks in Eyes Without a Face which were cast from her own face. Some were created for the many close-up scenes of Scob in the movie which, according to Scob felt like “thin skin glued around the eyes and lips” as well as a thicker mask which could be more easily removed. Carpenter has said the mask worn by Scob played a very important part of his concept for maniac slasher Michael Myers and the mask he wore in 1978’s Halloween.

Others have also been inspired by the film, including Billy Idol who penned what would become his first top-ten hit in the U.S., “Eyes Without a Face” in 1983. Now that the song is perhaps rolling around in your head, the dreamy words cooed in the chorus by Perri Lister (Idol’s girlfriend at the time) are sung in French “les yeux sans visage” and this is a super obvious hat-tip to Franju’s frightening film. The accompanying video for “Eyes Without a Face” was shot in a mere 48 hours during which Idol neglected to take out his contacts. Here’s more from Billy and his actual eye emergency (as told in his fantastic 2014 book Dancing with Myself):

“Back in the 80s I wore hard contact lenses, and after shooting “Eyes Without a Face” for 48 hours, I flew to the next gig in Tucson, Arizona. At that point, I had been wearing them for 36 hours. I hadn’t slept that much—if at all. While waiting for the sound check, I went outside to lay down and passed out on the cool grass outside the college venue. I still hadn’t removed my contacts, until, without warning, I was awakened rather rudely by a sheriff pointing a gun directly at me. I could only hear his voice distant and hollow in my head. When I opened my eyes, I could only make out the outline of his weapon, while tears came pouring from my eyes. Something was wrong! The pain was so intense, and my eyes were gushing. They rushed me to a hospital, and my eyes remained bandaged for two days until my corneas had healed.”

Hearing Idol talk about the pain he was in when his contacts fused with his corneas churns my gut much like the film which inspired his kind-of-creepy hit song. Criterion released a digitally-restored Blu-ray of Les Yeux Sans Visage in 2013, and it is full of some great extras including insightful vintage interviews with Franju, and a recent interview with Edith Scob. As I’d hate to spoil the film for anyone, I’ll refrain from posting images from Les Yeux Sans Visage. Instead, you can watch the trailer which should be plenty enough to entice you into seeing this film as well as footage of Idol, Steve Stevens, and Perri Lister looking good while lip-synching “Eyes Without a Face” during the Saint Vincent Estate music event in Italy in 1984.
 
Watch after the jump…

A colorized image of Bela Lugosi as “Dracula” by artist Micah Carey.
 
Well, it’s that time of year again when most of us turn our attention to all things Halloween, including yours truly. So, to get you in the spirit of the season, let’s learn a little bit about an Italian cat by the name of Bruno Martino. The jazz composer, piano player, and crooner who gave us the musical gift that is the “Dracula Cha-Cha” (also known as the “Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha”).

For most of his career, Martino played the nightclub circuit in Europe and wrote music for other performers. His 1960 song “Estate” would bring him his greatest success and was covered by the likes of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and Shirley Horn. Though for my money Martino’s jam about the Prince of Darkness and everybody’s favorite blood-sucker Dracula, the “Dracula Cha-Cha” is Mr. Martino’s crowning achievement. Martino wrote the bouncy number along with Bruno Brighetti, and it is quite the earworm. The song is said to have inspired the bonkers 1998 novel by author Kim Newman, Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha (the third book of Newman’s “Anno Dracula” series) which reveals a wild reality where Dracula was never killed by Dr. Van Helsing. The groovy tune has also been covered by a long list of other musicians including experimental Australian band The Tango Saloon with the fucking glorious vocals of Mike Patton on their 2008 album appropriately titled Transylvania.

I’ve included images of various album covers for Martino’s “Dracula Cha-Cha” as well as his original 1960 version of the song. I’ve also posted The Tango Saloon/Mike Patton version below because it rules and let’s face it, Patton is God. Dig it, ghouls.
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

A promotional image for the Japanese horror film ‘Jigoku’ from 1960.
 
Also known under its alternate title of “The Sinners of Hell,” Jigoku was directed by Nakagawa Nobuo. An idiosyncratic man who was often referred to as “the Alfred Hitchcock of Japan,” Nobuo was known for wearing traditional wooden Japanese footwear (or getas) which are supported by horizontal platform wooden slabs on the soles, around the set of the film, which while a bit strange paled in comparison to the terrifying, gory and very weird things that happened on screen.

Jigoku takes a cue from the real life murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. The pair were two rich white college students who murdered a fourteen-year-old boy after planning what they referred to as “the perfect crime” for months. The case was also used as a plotline for both Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope and Richard Fleischer’s 1959 film Compulsion starring Orson Wells and Dean Stockwell. Though the title of the film seems somewhat straightforward, it is anything but. At its heart, it is a sordid tale of guilt and remorse and how our actions in life may well be predictors for what will be waiting for us once we’ve passed into the great beyond. Nobuo’s narrative also follows along with the various regions and consequences associated with the multiple levels of the Japanese conception of Hell, which is an incredibly complex topic to try to explain on its own. One of the reasons I love this movie so much is the fact that it plays out much like a classic horror film. You know, bad things happening to bad people after they do bad things. There’s even a scene that had me recalling one of my favorite horror films, 1980’s grossly unappreciated Motel Hell. Other Japanese horror films that would also take notes from Nobuo’s Jigoku include the 2002 film Ju-On: The Grudge.

Jigoku was the ninth film in a series by Nobuo with Shintoho, one of the largest film studios in Japan. Shintoho’s primary source of revenue was producing genre specific exploitation films. In a strange twist, the studio found itself almost completely broke during the filming. Although shooting was expedited to help cut costs, some of the actors were actually enlisted—or forced—to dig holes on the set for themselves (!) for an unsettling scene that will stick with you like the fake, red gore that gets slung around throughout the film. By the time Jigoku was released, Shintoho had gone bankrupt. This fantastically gross and frightening film was the subject of a great documentary from 2006 titled Building the Inferno: Nobuo Nakagawa and the Making of ‘Jigoku’ which I highly recommend you seek out after first successfully seeking out Jigoku. I’ve included a number of remarkable stills from the film below. Pretty much all of them are NSFW. YAY!
 

 

 

Remember those holes that the actors had to dig for themselves on the set of ‘Jijoku?’ Here’s one of them with the actor inside having his makeup done.
 
More after the jump…