Ann Coulter's Favorite Comedian

There's not a lot of laughter around these parts. Nightmare Town is hardcore, man. It's tough, mean, and the only laughter you'll hear will be at your expense. But we sure do love Andy Kaufman. We miss him dearly. And the word on the street is . . . he's alive. Really. Don't believe me? Check out this link and read all about it:

http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/

Sure, it's probably a hoax. But what if . . . .

The Spaghetti Files: A Man Called Sledge (1970)

James Garner, playing against type, is Sledge. And he’s a very bad man. A ruthless bandit and killer, Sledge is one guy you do not want to get involved with. But Sledge is getting old and he’s looking to cash out, so to speak. Just one more score should do the trick. He’s got an experienced bunch of gunslingers with him -- including Claude Akins and Dennis Weaver -- and the big payoff awaiting them is definitely worth the risk. Only problem is . . . the payoff (a cache of gold that could keep a small country afloat) is inside a federal prison.

Directed by American actor Vic Morrow (The Blackboard Jungle, Twilight Zone: The Movie), the film was shot in Spain with an Italian crew and subsequently feels a lot more like a Spaghetti Western than its American Western peers. Morally complex, violent, and with an attention for the gritty anti-poetic details of life in the wild, wild west that its American counterparts of the time eschewed (Sam Peckinpah excluded), A Man Called Sledge is a sadly underrated good time.

A Man Called Sledge is available on DVD from Columbia-TriStar Home Entertainment.

Images Update

I've got a couple new reviews up over at the Images web site. They were both written awhile back but just went live today. The first one is for the Spanish arthouse/horror film, In a Glass Cage (1986), and the second one is on Peter Weir's 1975 apocalyptic SF film, The Cars That Ate Paris. Check 'em out:

http://www.imagesjournal.com/2004/reviews/inglasscage/

http://www.imagesjournal.com/2004/reviews/carsateparis/

Saints and Ghouls: Dance with the Devil a.k.a. Perdita Durango (1997)

Barry Gifford writes like a possessed priest. He writes about the hard way and the nightside roads most of us are afraid to travel down. He writes with an insight into human nature that is disturbing yet always entrancing. And like Elmore Leonard, the modern crime fiction master of the American Burn Out, Gifford does it all in a stripped down humorous style. Dance with the Devil, directed by Alex de la Iglesia (the man responsible for the satanically enjoyable Day of the Beast from 1995) and adapted from Gifford’s novel Perdita Durango, is sort of a follow-up to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) but with more teeth. Starring Rosie Perez as Perdita (she’s really good, honest!) and the great Javier Bardem as Romeo Dolorosa, the drug dealing Santeria priest who wins Perdita’s black little heart all for himself, Iglesia’s amoral killers-on-the-run film is flawed, but it’s also staggeringly good more so than not. Human sacrifices, kidnapped teens, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, James Gandolfini as a boneheaded yet dedicated federal agent bent on capturing Perdita, dead fetuses, and director Alex Cox (one of my faves) as a MIB who is very, very interested in them dead babies, are just some of the treats in store for those who like their comedy pitch black. This film’s tongue is so sharp it slices clear through its own cancerous cheek with a dexterity that would have made Ed Gein crack a smile. Think Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers lacked attitude and was a little corny? Well, give this one a shot.

Although it states on the DVD keep-case that the film is “unrated,” unfortunately that’s not the case. The original Spanish version of the film runs 126 minutes and contains a few more scenes of violence and mayhem. But most importantly, the American “unrated” cut of the film is missing scenes from the 1954 Robert Aldrich western, Vera Cruz, which starred Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper. Cruz is a favorite film of Dolorosa’s and the ending of Dance with the Devil (at least in the Spanish version) contains a scene wherein the faces of Lancaster and Cooper morph over Dolorosa’s and another character’s during the climatic shoot-out. Presumably the scene was altered because of copyright issues. Regardless, the “unrated” American version is still worth checking out.

Dance with the Devil is available on DVD from A-Pix Entertainment.

Shameless

Lynda E. Rucker and I have collaborated on a review for Video Watchdog magazine, issue #107. It should be in stores now. The piece is a review of the dearly lamented science-fiction television show, Firefly, which came out on DVD late last year after being unceremoniously cancelled by those bastards at FOX. I'm pretty damn proud of it, not only because I think the review turned out well, but because it was the first time Lynda and I have written something together. Be warned . . . it will not be the last!

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.