We Want Miles

Some early Miles for the weekend... The Dark Magus is never far from the stereo these days but I feel another round of obsessive listening is imminent, ahead of the forthcoming Miles documentary. For now, I’m concentrating on the pre-Columbia years when Miles was recording for Prestige.

There’s a kind of received wisdom that these sessions are inessential in comparison with his later records, something I’ve bought into myself. Not helping matters either that the Prestige albums were not terribly packaged (none of the stylish art direction you would find on Blue Note, or even Columbia), and the CDs themselves come with perfunctory liner notes. There’s also the matter of Miles’ heroin habit during this era which has been blamed for some uninspired performances on these albums. Perhaps my critical ears are not so finely tuned, but I’ve been discovering some tremendous music throughout these albums and I look forward to picking up the last remaining albums to complete the collection...

Legend of the Witches (1970, dir. Malcolm Leigh)

I’m pleased to see the BFI are putting Malcolm Leigh's 1970 occult documentary on the Flipside imprint, c/w the 1971 Derek Ford directed short Secret Rites which I’m unfamiliar with. I caught Legend of the Witches earlier this year when it turned up as a late night screening on Talking Pictures, and found it surprisingly watchable despite its reputation as a bit of a bore. I imagine John Trevelyan passed the film as a “white coater” but the ample full frontal female (and male) nudity surely pleased the raincoat crowd, and I believe the film did good business, much to the delight I’m sure of the tireless self-promoter and “King of the Witches” Alex Sanders who appears in the film.

The film is less a sexploiter than I was led to believe, and there are parts of the film that are artfully composed, even lyrical (the film was shot in b/w) which probably helped its passage thru the offices of the BBFC, and by and large, I thought it a sober and serious examination of witchcraft and its rituals (something I know little about, it must be said). Worth mentioning that by odd coincidence I watched the film right after All the Colors of the Dark, and it made for quite a contrasting double-bill. Legend of the Witches is due for release just in time for Halloween…

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

The definitive double album progressive rock saga from which I cannot escape… Peter Gabriel once introduced a live set of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway as “a lump of songs and music”, and earlier I took advantage of a slow Tuesday morning at work to listen to the album in its entirety, something I rarely have the time to do these days. And what a brilliant, beguiling and occasionally maddening lump is it. Listening to the album from beginning to end certainly makes the second, more fractured record much more coherent and satisfactory. One of the many remarkable things about the album is the sense of Genesis re-inventing itself, abandoning the English pastoralism of the previous albums, for something more dark and visceral, and urban - the story set in a phantasmagorical NYC with a razor wielding drug-taking Puerto Rican gang member as its protagonist. It’s a shame that no definitive audio recording of the Lamb live shows has yet emerged but I wonder if these concerts are best left to mythology ? Listening to the audience recordings in circulation, it’s clear the album which is drenched in effects and multi-tracked instruments was complex to reproduce, and for all extraordinary photographs of Gabriel dressed in Rael’s proto-punk uniform, and the outrageous bulbous Slipperman costume, the band admitted that the concerts, which also employed an arsenal of projectors, backdrop slides and lasers, had more than their fair share of Spinal Tap malfunctions.

It's a shame too that a complete visual recording has not surfaced at the time of writing. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the great lost 35mm 70’s rock film epic, and there is something inherently cinematic about it, the album so rich in film imagery and allusions, real and imagined to film – several times throughout the album I was reminded of the film music of Goblin and at least one of the instrumental passages, "Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats" could have easily strayed from a Popol Vuh album. And I like that the album’s closing track, "it" sounds like it was composed as a play-out song for the album’s end credits. The question I’m left to ponder over now is whether The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway eclipses Dark Side of the Moon…

Blastfighter (1984, dir. Lamberto Bava)

Renato Casaro’s painting for Lamberto Bava’s 1984 film Blastfighter… Another recent watch, courtesy of the very nice 88 Films Blu-Ray.

The blurb on the back of the sleeve, by Quentin Tarantino no less, calls this Lamberto Bava’s best film, and while I didn’t think it matched the joyful delirium of Demons, I thought this riff on First Blood and Southern Comfort was pretty terrific stuff all the same. This was a first time screening too. I almost saw this one back in the late 80’s, I remember well the eye catching Medusa VHS sleeve, but most likely that afternoon’s rental money was spent on Fists of Steel. I was pleased to see Lamberto Bava’s warm homage to his father Mario on the opening credits, and while the film has few opportunities to indulge in the kind of dreamlike, baroque style of Bava Sr. – this is after all a tough, muscular outdoors action adventure film, Blastfighter does look terrific thanks to cameraman Gianlorenzo Battaglia who captures, quite beautifully, the damp, decidedly off season atmosphere of the rugged Georgia wilderness. And there’s a touch of the funereal smuggled into the final act when tear gas deployed from the Blastfighter’s considerable arsenal sends great big tendrils of smoke eerily wafting across the screen. I thought the two leads Michael Sopkiw and Valentina Forte were quite fine, and very game, scrambling over some very difficult and dangerous terrain. George Eastman is a tremendous presence as ever even if this is one of his most restrained performances. And did I really see the banjo player from Deliverance in an early scene ?

Bernard Gordon: Screenwriter

I revisited Horror Express at the weekend courtesy of Arrow’s terrific Blu-Ray, and had the rare luxury last night of actually watching the extras before the disc is returned to the shelf. By far the best video supplement on the disc is the 30min conversation with veteran screenwriter and Horror Express producer Bernard Gordon, filmed in 2005.

Much of the talk centers around the difficulties Gordon experienced with HUAC and the blacklist - his leftist politics and pro-union sympathies ended his career as a promising writer at Universal, but after a brief hiatus, Gordon resumed screenwriting under a pseudonym, taking whatever jobs came his way (which included the occasional B-movie like Zombies of Mora Tau). The talk then turns to the era of the international co-production when Gordon found himself working in Spain for film producer Philip Yordan (who often took credit for Gordon’s writing), eventually leading to Horror Express. I won’t say anymore save to say this is a fascinating interview and highly recommended to anyone who might have skipped over it previously (it also appears on Severin's 2011 edition). Gordon was well in his 80’s when David Gregory filmed him and he reminded me of one of those aging New York wiseguys that turn up on the fringes of Goodfellas or Casino – still sharp and still tough.

After watching the Gordon interview, I reached for my copy of Patrick McGilligan’s 1997 book Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, which devotes a chapter to Gordon (who’s in much more prickly form for the interview in the book), and it’s another illuminating insight into the difficulties of maintaining a writing career after coming to the attention of HUAC, with sad stories of talented screenwriters forced to work for change on underwhelming assignments and frequently relinquishing credit for their work, such was the stigma of the blacklist, a situation cost-cutting producers were all too keen to take advantage of…