Surging Through the Corridors of the Crazed Mind: Dementia (1953) Daughter of Horror (1957)

For years this obscure nightmarish gem was known to psychotronic fans as Daughter of Horror. Never “officially” released onto video, the film was nevertheless easy to track down from numerous gray market outlets, and for those lucky enough to have wallowed in its beat-inspired existentialist noir/horror rhythms, the experience was unforgettable. Directed by John J. Parker, the film is a black and white psychosexual horrorshow dealing with a young woman, known only as “the Gamin” (Adrianne Barrett), as she ventures through the dark city streets encountering various unsavory characters while she experiences a torrent of hallucinatory visions involving murder and Ed McMahon! Since Daughter of Horror was filmed with no dialogue and virtually no sound except for George Antheil’s musical score, the future-Tonight Show sidekick, who was then a radio announcer, supplied the film with an over-the-top “evil” narration. With ingredients like that you’d think the film was destined for greatness! Well, in a perfect world it would have been.

Luckily, Kino on Video (those crusaders for all that is black and white and silent) has lovingly resurrected this little masterpiece for the digital age. And not only that, they’ve also released the original cut of the film, Dementia, which contains scenes cut from the later release and doesn’t contain the campy Ed McMahon narration. The original cut takes a while to get used to, only because McMahon’s loopy psychobabble was so damn memorable, but it’s without a doubt the preferred version. The print is also amazing to behold and really shows-off William Thompson’s glorious cinematography.

Dementia/Daughter of Horror is available on DVD from Kino on Video.

Moonage Daydream: The Virgin Suicides (2000)

Five sisters -- the entrancing Lisbon daughters -- commit suicide and forever haunt the imaginations of the young men fortunate enough to have encountered them during their all too brief lives. Much like her brother Roman’s first feature, CQ (2001), Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut was self-assured and gave one much hope as to what she would accomplish in the future. Of course, her second film, Lost in Translation (2003), not only lived up to the promise, it secured her place as one of the most intelligent and gifted American directors working today. Based on Jeffrey Eugenide’s novel of the same name, The Virgin Suicides -- the film -- could have easily deteriorated into maudlin morbidity or juvenile preciousness if a lesser talent had directed it. But as it turned out, Coppola’s skillful adaptation is a dreamy, melancholic fable that brilliantly balances the story’s enigmatic power with dollops of black humor and a gentle poignancy that is hard to shake off. Set in Michigan during the mid-1970s, the film’s sense of period detail and use of rock songs from the era are first rate. The original soundtrack by French electronic-pop duo Air is equally superb, and adds a fabulous drifting flow to this cinematic loss of innocence. The ensemble cast is excellent as well.

The Virgin Suicides is available on DVD from Paramount Home Video.

UPDATE COMING SOON!

Honest. And that's a threat.

Into the Zone

This link is to a website by a Ukranian woman who regularly rides her motorcycle through the dead zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power site and has beautifully documented what she has witnessed there. Chilling and unforgettable stuff to say the least. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Check it out:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

What’s Been Playin’ on the CD Player

I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. Much too much to write about in depth, so I’ll just list a few of the sounds that have kept me up late at night.

Soundtracks:

Barry 7’s Connectors 2 -- A collection of rare Italian lounge music from various Euro films.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 -- One of the best soundtracks from 2003. Too bad there are still tracks from the film that aren’t even on it. It’s still worth picking up, though.

Spaghetti Westerns Volume Two -- A fantastic two disc collection of music from some of the most enjoyable Westerns this side of … eh … well, from Italy.

Classical:

J. S. Bach ~ The Art of the Fugue -- A new release from the highly regarded Emerson String Quartet.

Bartok ~ The 6 String Quartets -- Absolutely splendid two disc set from the Takacs Quartet.

Ute Lemper ~ Berlin Cabaret Songs -- Beautiful, sexy chanteuse Ute Lemper interprets a fabulous selection of music suppressed by The Third Reich. Life's a swindle, so take what you can.

Ute Lemper ~ Illusions -- More sad and beautiful songs from this incredible performer. Dreams turning into dust have never sounded more exquisite.

Jazz:

John Coltrane ~ Blue Train

John Coltrane ~ Giant Steps

Miles Davis ~ In a Silent Way

Miles Davis ~ Miles Ahead

Everything Else:

Drive-By Truckers ~ Southern Rock Opera -- Absolutely the best damn thing I’ve listened to in a while. Trust me on this, if your taste in RAWK tends to head 180 degrees South, then check this incredible band out.

Eminem ~ White Man’s World

High On Fire ~ Surrounded By Thieves -- Monstrous thunder doom/stoner metal from three gents who currently reside within the bowels of the earth. Makes Motorhead sound like little girls.

Lynyrd Skynyrd ~ (pronounced’leh-nerd’skin-nerd) -- You think you know what this band’s about? You have no idea. Listen and learn. Great songwriting, deceptively simple, and oh so swampy. I had to pick this up, along with their second album, after listening to The Drive-By Truckers, who pay homage to Skynyrd on their above mentioned CD.

Lynyrd Skynyrd ~ Second Helping -- Do not pass this band off as just a bunch of longhaired redneck howlers. Proudly Southern, yes. But also soulful, skillful, and passionate. There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface than you think. Even better than their first release.

My Bloody Valentine ~ Loveless -- One of my all-time favorite albums.

Oblivians ~ Sympathy Sessions -- Drunken, bluesy, fucked-up garage rawk all about sex, sex, and more sex. Grab your kitten and burn baby burn.

The Polyphonic Spree ~ The Beginning Stages of … -- Been a while since you’ve attended church? Drop this into the CD player and rejoice! Psychedelic pop/gospel/dream emanations from the Soul above!

Tom Waits ~ Blood Money -- What more do you need to know? It’s Tom Waits! And damn if he doesn’t seem to be conjuring up some dire warnings from below on this one. Wake up! The End is nigh!

Lucinda Williams ~ World Without Tears -- Oh, Lucinda. Give me a call.

Shock and Awe, or how Christianity Can Sometimes Really Hurt You

I’m sort of amused and confused by some of the outrage hurled at Mel Gibson’s new Mad Max film -- Oops! I mean his new Mondo-Biblical horror film about the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the end for you. But seriously, why are so many people shocked about the film’s violence? Have you no knowledge of the darker undercurrents of the religion? For those of you who are unaware of many a Christian’s sado-masochistic death-trip tendencies or who believe that the religion is bloodless and lacks bite, I urge you to seek out the book Tortures & Torments of the Christian Martyrs from Feral House. Originally published in 1989, the book is long out of print, but a newly revised edition should be out soon. The book is partly a facsimile of an edition published in 1904 with engravings from the 1591 edition. Vividly depicting the excruciating tortures that the passive-aggressive Holy Martyrs so deliciously craved, this is a brutal reminder that not all believers want their salvation tasting like vanilla. The book also contains a fascinating appendix entitled On the Physical Death of Jesus, written by a pathologist from the Mayo Clinic. Whether your interest is morbid fascination, scholarly, or because you need some deviant material for your next holy masturbation session, check it out. Your soul may depend on it.

Lazy and Tired of Working for The Man

Well, the 27th Portland International Film Festival is in full swing and I've managed to see . . . one film. Yep. One film. I mean, don't get me wrong. If I only had to see one film from the entire festival I'm glad that it was Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's entry, The Saddest Music in the World (2003). It was brilliant and probably his most accessible film to date, although my favorite is still Careful (1992). But one film? Yep. I gotta manage my time better or something.

It Needs a Longer End Credit Sequence: The Wild Bunch (1969)

I wasn’t trying to make an epic. I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is that you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line.
-- Sam Peckinpah

Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is playing in town at Cinema 21, so Lynda and I shuffled down the street to experience it in the theater. Although we’ve both seen it on the big screen before, it’s a hard film to pass up. Cinema 21 is showing the 144-minute version, which reinstates some flashback sequences and the scene when Villa’s rebels attack Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), and his troops. If you’ve never seen this film, I urge you to check it out, even if you don’t like Westerns. Hell, especially if you don’t like Westerns. From its simple yet dynamic narrative to its revolutionary cinematic syntax (especially for the genre) to the twilight moral universe of killers and victims that Pike (William Holden) and The Bunch exist in and that we, the audience, are forced to submit to –- this is cinema of the highest order. Many have copied and ripped it off (e.g. Brian De Palma, Walter Hill, Paul Schrader, Oliver Stone, Robert Rodriguez, and John Woo, to name only a few culprits), but none of them have ever equaled the monstrous force or moral complexity that comprises Peckinpah’s film. Basically, The Wild Bunch are the only men in a town of boys. Christopher McQaurrie’s 2000 neo-noir, The Way of the Gun, paid splendid homage to The Wild Bunch and is probably the best of the newer crop of films inspired by Peckinpah’s legacy, although it nevertheless lacks the seriousness of Peckinpah’s film. In the end, it’s still a cartoon. A fiendishly good one, but a cartoon nonetheless. But off the top of my head, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) is arguably the only other Western that comes close to matching the emotional and moral weight of The Wild Bunch.

It’s 1912 and World War One is looming on the horizon. The American Old West is dying out and with it, the violent men who helped shape, tame, and define it. Pike Bishop, Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Lyle Gorch (Warren Oates), his brother Tector (Ben Johnson), and Angel (Jaime Sanchez) are looking for one more big score after their attempt to rob a bank in the town of Starbuck went horribly wrong when Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) and his crew of bloodthirsty bounty hunters ambushed them. Barely making it out alive of the melee, Pike and his gang of killers regroup and end up working for a corrupt Mexican general, Mapache, to steal a shipment of U.S. military guns and ammo, while Thornton and his posse of cut-throats are riding hard on their trail.

Even thirty-five years after it was first released, the violence in The Wild Bunch is still ferocious and shocking. Between this and Arthur Penn’s ode to lawlessness and pop-art criminality, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), never had a film so ruthlessly propelled the audience into the topsy-turvy moral universe of its characters; never had a film so thoroughly abandoned its audience and not given them a character to root for and bad guys to hiss at. There are no Good Guys and Bad Guys in this film -- only killers and prey. Remarkably, Peckinpah manages to make us feel and mourn for The Bunch when they go down at the end in a hail of apocalyptic rage and bullets, but it comes attached with plenty of moral dilemmas and a bitter taste in our mouths. Like the character The Judge said in Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, Blood Meridian, there are “Bears that dance, bears that don’t.”

When the film ended and the house lights went up, Lynda leaned over to me and whispered, “The film really needs a longer end credit sequence.” I looked into her weary eyes, scanned the theater around me to see others who were still seated looking equally worn out and wounded by what they’d just witnessed, and nodded my head. Bears that dance and bears that don’t. Indeed.

The Candidate's Bookshelf!

This comes from the Book Sense web site. Amusing and very, very interesting:

http://www.booksense.com/candidatebooks/index.jsp

RED RAIN by Michael Crow

Half-Vietnamese, half-black, all cranked up -- Baltimore cop Luther Ewing is a guy who enjoys existing in the underbelly of society. He breathes in corruption and feeds off of violence and mayhem. He likes the wet work. He craves it like a shark needs the sea. For Luther, the troubled waters that most of us will do anything to avoid, have become the source of his being. He drinks greedily from the killing tide and swims freely within the dark waters. And he grows stronger while submerged there. But does he become less human the longer he swims? Luther is a Gulf War vet. He also utilized his killing trade as a mercenary in Bosnia, which is where he met the Russian merc Vassily. Now Luther's old friend is in Baltimore stirring up trouble with the Russian mob. Bosnia was one thing, but Baltimore is Luther's turf. Guess Luther and Vassily are just going to have to start a war. Pray they don't take the whole city down with 'em.

Red Rain is a punch to the face. It makes Mickey Spillane and James Ellroy subtle as haiku. Its feverish prose, vivid characters, over-the-top action sequences that border on the side of parody but always manage to stay engaging, and expertly measured hallucinatory pulp sensation, easily make the novel a tight read. Red Rain, and its sequel The Bite, are written under the pseudonym Michael Crow. The only thing known about the real author's identity is that he is a "prizewinning, critically acclaimed literary novelist whose works have been translated and published in nine languages." A reporter from the Baltimore City Paper believes that it's William Vollman. Mr. Crow has neither confirmed nor denied the accusation. I'll get to The Bite soon and give you the lowdown. Bottoms up!