The State of Things

Wim Wenders' 1982 film The State of Things is a wonderful look at the nuts n' bolts of making movies. The story concerns a small European film crew shooting an apocalyptic sci-fi movie on the coast of Portugal. The film, known as The Survivors**runs aground, when the money dries up and the producer goes missing, leaving the cast and crew to sit it out and wait for the production to restart...

The State of Things is essentially Wenders' 8½, made during some downtime on the troubled production of Hammett which Wenders was directing for Coppola's Zoetrope. Shot fast and cheap, and co-written with maverick American director Robert Kramer, Wenders' film is the very antithesis of Hollywood film making, lensed in black and white and for most of its running time, a film with hardly any plot - this is a film about people marooned on a gloomy wave battered coast, hanging around, waiting for something to happen. Only in the final act of the film does Wenders make something of a compromise, when the director of The Survivors goes to LA in search of his producer, and the film shifts gears into the kind of strange enigmatic thriller territory of The American Friend.

The State of Things may be one of Wenders' bleakest films - it is after all, a film about the impossibility of making films, but it's often a very funny film - the film director's deeply pretentious, neurotic wife, or one of The Survivors' actors discussing his catalogue of embarrassing childhood illnesses are particularly witty. Among the fine cast, is a marvelous larger-than-like appearance by Sam Fuller as The Survivor's veteran cameraman, an excellent turn by Allen Garfield as the producer-gone-underground, and a short cameo by Roger Corman as a sinister lawyer.

The State of Things is available as a R2 DVD on the Axiom label, who have released some of Wenders earlier movies and documentaries. Generally, this is a strong effort. The image is nice, a little heavy on grain perhaps but pleasing nonetheless. Audio is fine, doing justice to Jürgen Knieper fine score. Extras include some deleted scenes. It's a real shame Wenders didn't provide a commentary for this fascinating film.

* Notes Wenders devotes the entire first reel of The State of Things to The Survivors, shot entirely in sepia tones, similar in look to Lars Von Trier's 1984 debut feature The Element of Crime. Wenders would return to the sci-fi genre in 1991 with the epic Until The End of The World

Empire's 500 - The View from the Mainstream

Published in this month's Empire is their list of 500 Great Movies Of All Time, which makes for interesting reading. The list was compiled from votes from film makers - writers, directors, cinematographers, critics and fans. Of course lists of this kind are highly contentious but I just wanted to add a few random comments about the list. Before that, worth mentioning this issue's cover - Empire put out 100 different covers featuring films from the list. I went with the Eraserhead cover for this post, but my own copy is the Citizen Kane cover - the best choice that day at the newsagents with a rack filled with Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Big Lebowski.

Favourite film lists are argued about as much for what's missing as opposed to what's included, but I expected to see Nashville, Easy Rider, The Devils, Deliverance and The Blair Witch Project, all of which were absent from a list that included the junk like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Transformers

I always assumed Suspiria was Argento's most well known, popular film but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (#272) sits some 40 places above Suspiria (#312). Cronenberg has just one entry - the overrated A History of Violence (#448), no sign of Videodrome or The Fly. Alejandro Jodorowsky's only film on the list is Santa Sangre (#476) - good to see it included but I would have assumed it would have been El Topo. Possibly the most disappointing ranking on the list is The Wicker Man which just crawls into the list at #485.

Only 3 Italian westerns figure on the list - Once Upon A Time In the West (#14), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (#25), and The Great Silence (#386).

It was perhaps inevitable that The Terminator (#308) and Alien (#33) would be outranked by their more inferior sequels, but the original Evil Dead figures nowhere on the list despite the presence of Evil Dead II (#49) and Army of Darkness (#372)

Here's the entire list

Until the Light Takes Us

"The truth is out there...it is to be found, in a sea of lies". So says Burzum main man Varg Vikernes, interviewed from his prison cell where he was, during the making of this film, serving a 21-year sentence for killing fellow black metaler Øystein Aarseth, aka Euronymous, frontman of Mayhem. Until the Light Takes Us is a 2008 documentary exploring the phenomenon of Norwegian black metal, and how a few bands centered around a small record store in Oslo would make international headlines after a spate of church burnings, a suicide and two gruesome murders...

Unraveling this extraordinary story, the film features interviews with Varg Vikernes and Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell of Dark Throne, two pivotal figures in the origins of the black metal scene, as well as members of Mayhem, and Immortal. To their credit film makers Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell take a suitably cold detached view of the black metal scene, and treat their subject with intelligence and a refreshing lack of pretension. Don't expect long poetic tracking shots through the bleak Norwegian woodlands, this film identifies the banal conformism of Norwegian society and its slide into consumer globalization as the springboard for the extreme worldview and lifestyle (and propensity for self-destruction) shared by many of the bands at the center of the first wave of black metal.

Whether we emerge from the film with the truth about what really happened on the night of August 10th 1993 when Varg Vikernes plunged a knife into the skull of Øystein Aarseth, remains unclear. Certainly, the film makers absent voice throughout the film is felt most strongly here, and for all his intelligence, wit and sensitivity Vikernes' assertion that the killing was done in self-defense is somewhat hard to swallow considering he was busy stockpiling explosives and ammunition at his home, with the intention of destroying the head-quarters of an anti-fascist league in Oslo. Yet the film makers never question him on this point.

Criticisms aside, the film does a fine job of recounting the rise of this very insular underground scene before its colonization by the metal mainstream. There's some startling newsreel footage of medieval Norwegian churches burning to to the ground, and one particularly memorable sequence where Satyricon drummer "Frost" mutilates himself at a performance art installation. The film also features some rare clips of many of the black metal bands in their infancy (albeit mostly on unwatchable VHS footage) and the fine soundtrack, not only features black metal music but well chosen cuts from Boards of Canada, sunnO))) and Black Dice.

For metal fans (and anyone interested in transgressive culture), Until the Light Takes Us is highly recommended. The film makes its long awaited debut on DVD and Blu-Ray in the US on October 19.

Hardware

Hardware, Richard Stanley's 1990 debut film could have came fresh from the pages of the long-running British sci-fi comic 2000AD, (and it almost did, but more about that in a minute). Set in a poisonous post-apocalyptic radioactive future, the remains of a prototype android finds its way into the hands of metal supltress Jill, who fashions the head as a centrepiece of her latest metallic creation. However, the android, a killing machine designed to curb population growth is not so obsolete, and after recharging itself from the power supply and rebuilding its body from various bits of metal, recommences its mission...

Anyone seeing Hardware for the first time after experiencing Richard Stanley' strange and enigmatic Dust Devil may be be surprised by the flat-out commercialism of Hardware, a film that makes no bones about being a rollicking sci-fi actioner. Stanley was probably saving his Tarkovsky influences for his next film, as Hardware sees the director riffing, (quite expertly it must be said) on the kinetic thrills of The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Thing, (which like Carpenter's alien monster, Hardware's android is a shapeless bastardization of various forms). And if that wasn't enough, added to the mix is the hallucinatory weirdness of Dario Argento and outrageous splatter of Italian Post-Apocalypse Cinema.

Hardware is a heady brew, but the film is not without its shortcomings - the script is often clumsy and too busy with awkward exposition, the performances are variable, some of Stanley's ideas are a bit too broad (does the film really need Iggy Pop's irritating radio shock-jock?) and Goblin member Simon Boswel's score sounds terribly dated nowadays. Still, a far better film than much of the independent sci-fi fare that came in the early 90's (Split Second, Liquid Dreams anyone ?), and that a talent like Stanley has still only made two full features films to date is lamentable.Hardware was a considerable hit for Palace Pictures and Miramax on its release, but attracted some unwanted heat from the folks at 2000AD, who claimed that the film bore some striking similarities to SHOK! Walter's Robo-Tale, a comic strip which appeared in the 1981 Judge Dredd annual. Perhaps, but ironically, Hardware is a much superior film than the official 2000AD spin-off Judge Dredd.


Severin's US Blu-Ray edition of Hardware is quite simply a stunner. I had the Palace VHS edition in the 90's and home video just wasn't robust enough to do justice to Stanley's blazing color schemes. The high definition transfer is nothing short of miraculous, truly the film has never looked this good. Audio is equally strong so crank this one up, after the neighbors have gone out, and there's quite a treasure trove of extras - deleted scenes (from a scuzzy looking workprint), trailers, featuretes, some short films, a lengthy documentary about the film, and an informative, interesting commentary from the director (which differs from the commentary on the UK Optimum Blu-Ray, another fine disc (which completists may want to pick up). This is what you want, this is what you get...

Deadly Blessing

Famous nowadays for a scene in which a young Sharon Stone has a spider dropped into her mouth, Deadly Blessing, Wes Craven's 1981 film, is one of the director's more marginalized films, unfairly so as it remains a fascinating work for a number of reasons.The film set in the pastoral farmlands of Ohio begins with a murder. A farmer is killed in mysterious circumstances when he's crushed under the wheels of one of his machines. It appears to be the work of an Hamish-like fundamentalist religious sect, who shun the sinful conveniences of modern life, and preach a sermon of fire and brimstone. And now it seems the killer has turned his attention on the farmer's widow...

On paper it sounds pretty uninspiring but nothing in Deadly Blessing is quite what it seems. Early on in the film Craven quite skillfully disorientates the audience about where exactly the film is going and the pace of the film from there on in rarely flags, with a number of suspenseful set pieces. Without giving it away, the final sequence of the film is quite astonishing so be sure to stick it out to the end. It may leave you with your jaw on the ground but it does add quite an extraordinary dimension to the events of the film.

Craven's direction is typically solid throughout, and performance-wise, this is one of the better casts from Craven's early film-making career. Maren Jensen (best known for the original TV series of Battlestar Galatica) playing the terrorized widow, Martha, is especially good and makes for a strong resourceful heroine. Its quite a shame, Deadly Blessing would be her last screen appearance. Impressive too is a fresh-faced Sharon Stone who very bravely shares screen time with some rather nasty looking spiders. And of course there's Ernest Borgnine playing the sect leader with all the thunder and fury of a deranged preacher. His biblical beard looks a little phony but he's great nevertheless. Michael Berryman the poster-child of The Hills Have Eyes is in there as well, and appeared on the striking UK video sleeve.

Deadly Blessing is an important Wes Craven film as it sees him working towards the kind of dream ambiance of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The film seems preoccupied with dreams - Sharon Stone's character has nightmares about being visited by a ghostly presence, and watching the film a second time I was struck by the how much of the film makes little sense with odd moments of strange, surreal imagery - a milk carton pouring blood, a flock of chickens in a coffin. In fact two from ideas for the film would be loaned out to A Nightmare on Elm Street - the aforementioned spider-in-the-mouth sequence and a scene where the heroine shares a bath with an unwanted guest.

Deadly Blessing remains unavailable in the US on DVD which is strange considering Wes Craven recorded a director's commentary for the film. My copy is the R2 budget release courtesy of Arrow. Completely barebones, not even a trailer, the film at least looks good, preserving the modest 1.78 widescreen image. The informative commentary track can be found on Umbrella's Australian release (coded for Region 4) and of all the editions of Deadly Blessing available it's the one to get...

Sketches for Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune

I'm planning on picking up the Blu-Ray edition of David Lynch's Dune in the next few weeks, its always been a favourite film of mine despite the critical mauling the film regularly receives. Possibly the greatest sci-fi film never made has to be Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of Frank Herbert's epic novel. Jodorowsky was hired on to direct the film in 1974, and after two years and two million dollars worth of pre-production the film was abandoned after the French financier's balked at the scope of Jodorowsky's vision.


Jodorowsky had amassed quite a team for his production of Dune - conceptual artists HR Giger, Jean 'Moebius' Giraud and Chris Foss, Dan O'Bannon was hired to supervise special effects, Pink Floyd were proposed for soundtrack duties, and Salvador Dali was to appear as the Emperor of the universe. No footage was ever shot for the film so all we are left with are various artworks for the film, including five wonderfully dark and strange paintings by Alien designer HR Giger. The final two paintings below post-date the Jodorowsky production.

I Spit On Your Film !

From the Irish Times website... THE IRISH Film Classification Office has banned the DVD re-release of Meir Zarchi’s notorious 1978 horror film I Spit on Your Grave. The body, formerly the Irish Film Censor’s Office, has, in recent years, been reluctant to ban films outright, so this must be viewed as an unusual move. The reason given for declining to issue a certificate for the DVD, was the depiction of “acts of gross violence and cruelty towards humans”. Mr Zarchi commented: “It doesn’t surprise me that Ireland have decided to ban the film.

The decision comes a little less than a year after John Kelleher, seen as a liberalising force, retired as the director of classification. Ger Connolly, the current acting director, was formerly an accountant in the advertising and manufacturing industries. The reissue is timed to coincide with an upcoming remake of Mr Zarchi’s creaky original.

I'm surprised by this... Head censor Ger Connolly's move to make the film unavailable is perplexing considering the DVD can be obtained from the UK in a matter of days, never mind the fact that the film is beamed into Irish homes almost weekly on Sky's Horror channel. This is not the first time Ireland has refused classification to titles freely available in the UK - in the early 90's Ken Russell's film Whore was refused a release, as was From Dusk Til Dawn and the 2002 film Spun. Is this latest banning the beginning of a new era of stringent censorship ? Watch this space....

The Lost Criterion Commentaries

It’s a real shame that the Criterion-recorded commentaries for Taxi Driver and David Cronenberg's Crash are still marooned in laserdisc limbo, such is the habit of Criterion for hanging onto their extras, when they lose the rights to a particular film. Luckily, mp3 rips have been made of the director commentaries for their Taxi Driver and Crash laserdiscs, and both are presented here...

David Cronenberg always delivers fascinating commentary tracks for his films but the Crash commentary is especially illuminating as Cronenberg discusses and elaborates on some of the more esoteric ideas in the film, as well as the controversy that followed the release of the film.

The Taxi Driver track is one of Scorsese's better commentaries, recorded as Scorsese watched the film (and not stitched together from interviews). Joining Scorsese on the track (but recorded separately) is writer Paul Schrader, and both men deliver an excellent and comprehensive overview of their iconic film. Listen out for Scorsese in a rare slip, bungling a Jean-Luc Godard title !

Late addition: John Sturges commentary for Bad Bay at Black Rock, from the Criterion laser (Many thanks to Rob for this!)

Crash - David Cronenberg (Mediafire)
Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader (Mediafire)
Bad Day At Black Rock - John Sturges (Mediafire)

Within the Woods - the original Evil Dead

I had high hopes that the Blu-Ray edition of The Evil Dead would include Sam Raimi's 1978 short Within the Woods a dry run for Raimi's most celebrated film. Sadly, it wasn't to be, and this wonderful 30min artifact of Evil Dead mythology still remains unseen and unavailable today, in any official channel that is...

Shot in 1978 in and around producer Robert Tapert's family home (a far more agreeable place than the rustic cabin in The Evil Dead), Within the Woods concerns two couples vacationing in the woods. One of the couples, Bruce and Ellen (played by Bruce Campbell and Ellen Sandweiss, yes, they keep their names) unwittingly choose an Indian burial ground for a picnic and unleash a force seeking revenge for their desecration of hallowed earth. After Ellen discovers the mutilated dead body of Bruce in the undergrowth, she runs back to the cabin to warn Shelly and Scotty (played by Intruder director Scott Spiegel). In the meantime, Bruce it seems is not so lifeless after all and his body is now possessed with the spirit of the evil dead...

Within the Woods is a fast paced, energetic little horror film and is surprisingly intense and gory for its meager means (shot on Super 8 to drum up much needed funds to shoot a feature length project). Tom Sullivan who engineered the amazing fx work for The Evil Dead was on board for this film and provides plenty of blood and gore here. The scene where Shelly is stabbed by Bruce in the neck is especially savage and Bruce Campbell himself spends most of the film drenched in splatter. Ellen Sandweiss is particularly excellent here, a little more robust than the character she would play in The Evil Dead, acting her socks off, tumbling through dense woods and streams, and all the while screaming the house down. Bruce Campbell is of course effortlessly cool even at this early stage in his career. The score for the film is composed of some recognizable cuts lifted from other films, and the end credits features a Tangerine Dream piece. No doubt, an official release of the film would be problematic...

Absolutely required viewing for Deadheads, Within the Woods features a number of ideas and motifs that would live on into the film's next incarnation. The striking roaming camerawork was already established here, so too the shot of the ghostly swing chair, the gag where Ellen struggles with the key to the cabin only to be grabbed by a hand, the shot of the ritual dagger in the back, the scene where the possessed Bruce bites off his hand, were all reused for The Evil Dead.

Within the Woods is hugely enjoyable stuff and its a shame it could not be included on one of the countless Evil Dead editions issued on home video over the years. Sadly, the current version circulating, sourced from a mangled VHS copy borders on unwatchable - the version I have is so degraded, I could not get any usable screenshots for this post. Apparently Raimi is strongly opposed to an official release citing his film as amateurish. Whatever shortcomings Within the Woods may have, I certainly enjoyed it a lot more than his Spiderman films.

Waves of Lust

Waves of Lust made in 1975 marked a return to feature film making for Ruggero Deodato after a few years in the wilderness of television. Deodata was initially lukewarm about taking on the film - at that point it was a relatively innocuous softcore skin flick, but his interest was stirred when he realized that Lamberto Bava's treatment had the makings of a good thriller.

A balmy, sun-kissed Italian version of Polanski's Knife in the Water, Waves of Lust concerns a free-wheeling young couple, Irem and Barbara, played by Al Cliver and Silvia Dionisio (Deodato's wife at the time) who spend a few days on a luxury yacht with another couple, Giorgio a wealthy industrialist and his wife Silvia, played by John Steiner and Elizabeth Turner. With Giorgio completely dominating his wife and guests and dishing out abuse, humiliation and degradation, its only a matter of time before good manners and hospitality goes overboard...

Deodato's instincts proved right, Waves of Lust is an entertaining sex flick and an engaging thriller. Deodato, one of the more competent and reliable directors of Italian exploitation cinema delivers a very enjoyable romp making fine use of the confined spaces of the yacht, while generating some real heat with the plentiful nudity and teasing sex. There are a few subtle hints early in the film that Irem and Barbara may not be a innocent as they seem, and in the second half of the film, Giorgio, fueled by booze grows increasingly paranoid that his life is in danger. Very much a film about about psychological violence as opposed to real violence, Deodato does included one bit of nasty business involving a spear gun, and the haunting ending of the film chills the blood...

That the film is so highly erotic is largely thanks to the two beautiful lead actresses. Elizabeth Turner makes much of her role as the long suffering Silvia. She can also be seen in Fulci's The Psychic and Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse. Silvia Dionisio, an especially gorgeous actress was quite a big star in Italian cinema at that time, so no surprise the film was a huge success on its release. Of the male leads, Al Cliver, an actor who has clocked up his fair share of vacant performances over the years actually turns in something credible here, but he's outclassed by the wonderful John Steiner who specialized in playing sneering, conceited assholes, and here he's on top form playing one unmerciful prick.

Raro presents Waves of Lust on DVD in a fine special edition. The image quality is generally very good utilizing a crisp, clean print. Some flesh tones are a little too hot in some scenes but its a minor complaint. The audio track is Italian only with removable, easy to read English subtitles.

Extras include an English subtitled feature on the film with contributions from Deodato, Al Cliver, Lamberto Bava and Deodato's son, who appears in the opening sequence of the film as the little boy on the beach. Also included are some deleted sex scenes that were prepared for the export market, which amounted to slightly longer and explicit shots of the existing scenes in the film. Rounding off the extras, are some 20mins of commercials Deodato shot for Italian TV, mostly for cosmetics. One of the adverts features a shaggy dog and a cute rabbit, which Cannibal Holocaust fans will no doubt be disappointed to learn that neither are mutilated on camera.