First look at The Devils DVD

Favourite films are always the hardest to write about so I'll spare you my indelicate ramblings about Ken Russell's great masterpiece. When it comes to The Devils, I can only speak in superlatives. It's a shame that the BFI could not secure a Blu-Ray release of The Devils, but I've stopped speculating on Warners' very peculiar relationship with the film. Blu-Ray aside, the 2-disc BFI edition is about as definitive as it gets. The film itself looks stunning - it's been years since I've seen it in its original 2.35 aspect ratio, not since the Warners VHS edition released in the UK in the late '90's (as part of their Mavericks series). The DVD was sourced from an excellent print and restores some quick shots of gore during the torture sequences. Simply put The Devils has never looked and sounded so sumptuous. In addition to the fantastic presentation, the BFI have supplied some fascinating extras which I've cobbled together a few quick notes on.

Disc 1 kicks off with an audio commentary (recorded in 2002) with Ken Russell, Devils editor Michael Bradsell, Mark Kermode and Hell On Earth director Paul Joyce. I must confess I haven't had the time to listen to this yet but by all accounts it's a good one, Russell always good company for commentary tracks. Next up, are the UK and US trailers for The Devils, and both make for an interesting comparison. The UK trailer is surprisingly highbrow, and perhaps due to the film's bumpy ride through the office of the BBFC, plays down the more salacious aspects of the film. The voice-over offers a useful primer on the historical background of the film, and name drops some French scholars and writers who have studied the possession at Loudun (although strangely omits Aldous Huxley who's book provided the main source of information for Russell's screenplay). The US trailer is by contrast a little lighter, the film presented like a proto-nunspoitation drama but this time the voice-over offers a word of caution ("The Devils is not a film for everyone")

The second extra on disc 1 and perhaps the most enjoyable on the entire set is Russell's film Amelia & the Angel, a very charming 25min short about a little girl on a mission to recover a pair of angel wings in time for her nativity play. Her adventure takes her miles from home and Amelia encounters various oddball characters but finally persistence and a prayer pays off when she receives a gift from the Heavens... Made in 1958, Amelia & the Angel is remarkable in that much of Russell's signature style was already established - his imaginative use of music (a mixture of music box ditties, vaudeville tunes and classical cuts), surreal humor (a somersaulting dog) and Russell's talent with visuals. The film includes a number of striking travelling shots, some excellent location work - at one point Amelia's quest brings her to a dilapidated railway station where she meets a down on his luck circus performer, and a few magical Cocteau like touches, like a scene where Amelia encounters a strange apparition on a staircase, which turns out to be a man carrying a gown.

Disc 2 kicks off with Paul Joyce's excellent 48min documentary, Hell on Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of the Devils. Made in 2002 to coincide with Channel 4's one-off screening of the reconstructed director's cut of The Devils (which included the legendary Rape of Christ and bone sequences), this is a superb love-letter to Russell's film, with just about everybody involved in the production (as well as critics, commentators and then BBFC examiner Ken Penry) gathered together to share their memories. One of the more interesting participants in the documentary is a Catholic priest who worked for the Legion of Decency, and his comments on the Rape of Christ sequence (which he feels is an integral and justified part of the film) are particularly illuminating. Some of the anecdotes are priceless, like Russell beating critic Alexander Walker over the head with a copy of the Evening Standard on a TV talkshow, after Walker's put-down of the film.

Elsewhere Vanessa Redgrave admits the gooey concoction she is forced to ingest during her exorcism was in fact soup, extras recall the joie de vivre of being a naked nun, and Russell remembers botching the cue for a explosion effect, which allows actor Murray Melvin the funniest line in the documentary. Incidentally, Paul Joyce had to recut his film when Warners this time refused permission to show the Rape of Christ sequence in the documentary - originally the sequence was seen in its entirety in the documentary, but now only a fragment of it remains (as well as quick edit of the bone sequence). It's not a major loss by any means, and Joyce compensates by extending some of the interviews but if you have a copy of the documentary in its original form, it's worth hanging onto.

Next up is a fascinating 22min promotional film entitled Director of Devils filmed during the production of the film, and featuring Russell en route to the set discussing his reasons for making the film. There's also some terrific footage of Russell choreographing extras and shooting scenes with Oliver Reed. Best of all is some footage of composer Peter Maxwell Davies recording the film's extraordinary score, the players armed appropriately enough with a battery of strange and exotic musical instruments and devices.

More footage of the production is seen in Michael Bradsell's silent 8mm footage shot around the Pinewood set, included here with a commentary from Bradsell. Some of this invaluable footage was incorporated into the Hell On Earth documentary but much of it has not been seen before. Bradsell camera catches gangs of set decorators working on Derek Jarman's huge sets, and actors and crew preparing to film the Blackbird sequence, while Bradsell points out some key personnel such as Russell's then wife and collaborator Shirely. This footage runs just 8min but is fascinating nonetheless.

The final extra on the DVD is a 13min Q&A with Ken Russell and Mark Kermode filmed at the NFT in 2004. Russell appears in good form and discusses his love of classical music (citing Prokofiev's 1927 opera The Fiery Angel as a key influence), the suppression of his 1970 Strauss biopic Dance of the Seven Veils, and his Catholic faith. It's not a terribly important piece but it's a worthwhile addition.

Finally, the DVD set comes with an excellent 44-page booklet featuring essays on The Devils, a fine piece on Derek Jarman's contribution to the film, tributes to Ken Russell and Oliver Reed, and the BBFC's Craig Lapper provides a detailed account of The Devils long and troubled history with the Board. All said, this BFI DVD is a magnificent and revelatory package for fans of The Devils who have waited years to see Russell's masterwork get the digital treatment. My highest recommendation.

Emanuelle In America

A powerful rebuttal to naysayers who dismiss Italian Exploitation films as mere rip-offs, Emanuelle In America is a fine example of how the Italians imposed their own unique slant on the latest cinematic trends, and beat everyone else at their own game. Made just three years after the original 1974 Emmanuelle, Joe D'Amato's film with it's staggering mix of hardcore sex and gruesome violence seems an awful long way from Sylvia Kristel's soft-focus fumblings. Before Blue Underground's landmark release of the film in 2003, the full uncut version was seen only by a small cadre of savvy film collectors and thanks to coverage in the underground press, the film amassed a near mythological reputation. Even after 10 years of the film being widely available on DVD, Emanuelle In America is one of the few films from the Golden Age of Exploitation which still retains it's power to shock and awe¹.

After her romp across Bangkok and Casablanca in the previous episode, Emanuelle finally gets down to some serious investigative journalism, first infiltrating a millionaire's mansion (as the new girl in his harem, naturally) to gather evidence of illegal arms smuggling, followed by a quick visit to Venice to do a story on the decadent rich, and finally returning to the US where she goes undercover at a stud farm for rich women who like to be serviced by well hung beefcake, which leads to the discovery of so-called snuff films... Wayward plotting is one of the hallmarks of the Black Emanuelle series, but nowhere is it more evident than Emanuelle In America, the most episodic of the films, and best understood as D'Amato's take on the Mondo film (in fact D'Amato would make a genuine mondo in 1978 called among other things, Emanuelle and the Porno Nights with Laura Gemser as the hostess). D'Amato admitted that the film was as much a response to French distributors who were looking for something stronger from the next Black Emanuelle film, but America feels like D'Amato was testing the limits with this genuinely provocative work - as well as introducing harder sex into the series, the film features some bestiality, in a scene where a woman is masturbating a horse, a taboo usually confined to underground stag loops. One wonders what French cinema-goers made of it all back in 1977.

Of course the film's other major talking point is the final section where Emanuelle chances upon a snuff film and follows the trail of breadcrumbs back to a US senator who invites her along to witness (albeit drugged) one in production. Unlike the ludicrous hit and run attempt that was Snuff, the sadistic torture footage seen in Emanuelle In America feels uncomfortably authentic. The footage D'Amato shot for this sequence was deteriorated to the point where it resembled a worn, grungy 8mm loop. What is interesting about these scenes is that when Emanuelle actually visits the torture chamber where a murder is being filmed, there is no distinction from what she actually sees and the earlier ragged looking loop - which implies a continuity error, or perhaps D'Amato had something more subversive in mind, intending to hoodwink the audience into believing the footage was genuine, that he had appropriated it, much like old World War II newsreel footage was used in war films in the place of expensive special effects. Even more disturbing the sequence ends as the senator lifts up Emanuelle's dress as they watch the carnage unfold - the spectacle of torture and murder as titillation. Ultimately D'Amato shows his hand in the otherwise superfluous coda of the film when Emanuelle and her boyfreind are seen relaxing at a native village, only to discover that it is in fact a film set, D'Amato suggesting that everything can be faked.

Blue Underground's fully uncut DVD of Emanuelle In America was a heaven-sent release for fans of European Cult Cinema, and a huge leap forward from fuzzy nth generation copies of the rare Venezuelan Telehobby tape. The 1.85 anamorphic transfer looks fantastic, while the snuff sequences retain their distressed beaten up texture. The English audio is fine too. Extras include an 11min audio interview with Laura Gemser (with a great selection of stills and promo art as a visual accompaniment). Next up is a 13min interview with Joe D'Amato, taken from the feature length Joe D'Amato: Totally Uncut! documentary (which was later made available awkwardly enough split over Shriek Show's Images In A Convent and Anthropophagous DVDs). The final extra is a very worthwhile text essay on the Black Emanuelle series by the ever reliable David Flint.

------------
Notes
------------

1. Emanuelle In America has long been associated with Videodrome - David Cronenberg cited the film as an inspiration when he spoke to Tim Lucas on the set of Videodrome, when Lucas was writing for Cinefantastique. (See Emanuelle In America DVD review, Video Watchdog #99)

Emanuelle In Bangkok

This, the first official Black Emanuelle sequel arrived in 1976 and in many ways is a defining moment, fully establishing the template that made the series so superior to the official run of Emmanuelle films. The dropping of Black from the character's name signaled a more expansive, confident type of Emanuelle film (although it would return briefly for Black Emanuelle White Emanuelle), and the film would mark the first significant collaboration between Joe D'Amato and Laura Gemser. D'Amato had previously directed Gemser in a bit part in his 1976 sex comedy Vow of Chasity, and their working relationship continued with the Emanuelle series and films such as Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, Caligula II: The Untold Story, The Alcove, and the 11 Days 11 Nights series, before D'Amato settled into fulltime porno production in the mid-90's, and Gemser retired from the film business.

In the film, Emanuelle journeys to Bangkok to do a photo-essay on Thailand's royal family. After receiving the hopitality of Prince Sanit, Emanuelle is forced to flee the country when the Prince is involved in a failed coup. Emanuelle goes to Casablanca to meet with her on and off boyfriend Roberto and begins a new relationship with the sensitive teenage daughter of an American diplomat... Anyone who had forsaken Joe D'Amato after the long slog through Antropophagus or Porno Holocaust, would do well to catch Emanuelle In Bangkok, one of the director's breeziest and most entertaining films. Unlike Emanuelle In America and Emanuelle Around the World, this episode has little shock value, Emanuelle's globe-trotting, bed-hopping antics would make a fine introduction to the series. The nudity and sex is near relentless over the 90mins or so, but D'Amato's previous career as a cameraman serves him well and the film always looks stylish without looking like a Chanel advert.

For the armchair tourist, D'Amato steals some fantastic shots of historical sites around Bangkok, and fans of mondo weirdness will enjoy some furious Thai sword-fighting, a sequence with a stripper and her ping-pong ball swallowing pussy, as well as a real-life fight to the death between a cobra and a mongoose. Emanuelle as a character emerges here as a powerful sexual being, her sensuality liberating a vacuous American couple and a frigid female archaeologist. The film has some tender moments as well, like Emanuelle's love affair with the teenage girl, confused about her sexuality, but still has one instance of unbridled sleaze when Emanuelle is gangraped (again!) by some rough and ready royal security guards - and befriends them following the attack (?)

Laura Gemser has rarely looked more stunning than she does here, both in and out of her seemingly endless wardrobe, and her commitment to the role is impressive to say the least, especially in the aforementioned rape sequence where she's pawed and clawed by some ugly extras. Gabrielle Tinti returns from the first film, cast here as Roberto, and was perhaps hired as moral support for his leading lady - Gemser and Tinti were lovers since Black Emanuelle, and would later marry during the production of Emanuelle In America. Tinti continued to appear alongside his wife for the rest of the series, apart from Emanuelle Around the World. Excellent support too from Ivan Rassimov as the memorably sinister Prince Sanit. Rassimov was on something of a roll at this point in his career, coming off a pair of brutal crime thrillers, Umberto Lenzi's Rome Armed to the Teeth and Massimo Dallamano's Colt 38 Special Squad, before departing Bangkok for the rain forest in Deodato's Last Cannibal World.

Emanuelle In Bangkok is available as part of Severin's Black Emanuelle's Box Vol. 1 and is a very good presentation over all. The 1.85 anamorphic transfer is very solid, if a little grainy in parts, but the colors are strong and the level of detail is impressive (especially in the sequence when Emanuelle visits the pagodas of Bangkok). The print used is in generally good shape with only a few fleeting instances of damage and instability. Worth mentioning the opening and closing credit sequences are sourced from a French VHS, and are noticeably soft looking. The English dub sounds absolutely fine, while the disc features two extras - a theatrical trailer and an interesting if inessential 13min interview with D'Amato recorded at a UK Horror festival. A UK DVD is also available from Optimum but it has been shorn of over 4mins of footage courtesy of the BBFC, making the disc irrelevant.

Black Emanuelle 2

Despite the success of Black Emanuelle, director Bitto Albertini was not chosen to helm the follow-up. Laura Gemser had been spirited away to take the titular role in Emanuelle In Bangkok, the first of a series of Emanuelle films directed by Joe D'Amato, which more of less forms the backbone of the official Black Emanuelle series. Not to be outdone, Albertini forged ahead with a rival production, Black Emanuelle No. 2 (as it's known on the English-language print), and cast model Shulamith Lasri as his new heroine. The result was a Black Emanuelle film in name only as Albertini ditched the bohemian, sexually voracious Emanuelle of the previous film for something much more different...

In the film, Emanuelle is under the care Dr. Paul, a psychiatrist determined to find the cause of Emanuelle's violent distaste for sexual contact, and her increasingly fragmented psyche. Paul investigates Emanuelle's past and uncovers a cataclysmic event responsible for her disturbed state of mind... The odd man out of the series, Black Emanuelle No. 2 is best compared with the third Halloween film, Season of the Witch and it's attempt to break away from the previous films, and perhaps Albertini felt similarly, in the wake of Gemser's departure. Watching the film in close succession with the previous installment, the tonal shift is even more conspicuous. While the original film quite readily dispensed with the pretensions, Black Emanuelle No. 2 is a busy, sometimes incoherent mix of flashbacks and imaginary episodes, some of which work, like the film's genuinely disorientating opening sequence; while other fail, like a cringe worthy scene where Emanuelle remembers her father as a drunken bum on the corner of skid row.

The problem with Black Emanuelle No. 2 is that Albertini dispensed with all the elements that made the first film a success. Here the director forgoes exotic visuals in favour of some well trodden New York locations (which inadvertently makes the film look like a Blaxploitation number), with Albertini constantly shooting his actors against the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty or Rockefeller Center. It's quite a stage bound film as well, much of the story takes place at Dr. Paul's clinic whose residents seemingly add up to two Shock Corridor-style patients, a crazy general and a woman who walks a toy dog. Aggravating that is Gemser's absence from the film. Her stand-in, the dour-faced Shulamith Lasri as Emanuelle, simply doesn't cut it, despite being propped up with good turns from Angelo Infanti and Don Powell (both returning from the first film as different characters), and not surprisingly the model turned actress slipped into obscurity after this one-shot gig.

As a skinflick Black Emanuelle No. 2 is no great shakes either. Unlike the original, the film was shot only in a soft version, and some ample female nudity aside and the highly charged opening scene, the film is low of eroticism and sleaze. Bizarrely, Albertini who co-authored the screenplay set Emanuelle up to be a mass of sexual neuroses, (which requires little onscreen action) although a threesome sequence late in the film with Dr. Paul's nymphomaniac niece (?) and a Coney Island stud (whose claim to fame is hanging an anchor off his cock) would seem to cheerfully contradict Emanuelle's problems. All told, Black Emanuelle No. 2 is a curiosity and if it was Albertini's intention to turn the Emmanuelle formula on it's head, it's an admirable one, but the film ultimately doesn't add up to much, and can only be recommended as part of a study of the entire series.

Black Emanuelle No. 2 is available as part of Severin's 3-disc boxset Black Emanaulle Box Vol. 2 from 2007. The 1.85 image looks very nice, with good detail, and only a minimal amount of grain. The audio is strong, and dialogue is perfectly clear. Two extras are offered - the theatrical trailer, and a 15-min interview with cast member Dagmar Lassander (better known as the real estate agent in House By the Cemetery) who reminisces about her acting career in Italy (but makes no mention of Black Emanuelle No. 2 !)

Black Emanuelle

In 1974, porn went mainstream with the release of Just Jaeckin's film Emmanuelle, a riff on The Story of O shot with the soft-focus style of a Vogue magazine spread that scored a huge box office hit worldwide. A flood of inevitable sequels, imitations and rip-offs soon followed, among them a series of Italian films which became known as the Black Emanualle series, devised by producer Mario Mariani and director Bitto Albertini who brazenly sidesteped copyright concerns by dropping the second m from the Emmanuelle title. Compiling a definitive filmography of the series is tricky with so many official and unofficial films and spinoffs but it's generally agreed that the series includes Black Emanuelle (1975), Black Emanuelle 2 (1976), Emanuelle in Bangkok (1976), Emanuelle in America (1976), Emanuelle Around the World (1977), Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977), and Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978). The series' lynchpin was Dutch-Indonesian model Laura Gemser, a mesmirizing beauty first spotted in a minor role in Emmanuelle 2, and elevated to her first starring role in Black Emanuelle...

A simple amalgam of sex film and travelogue, the sliver of a plot concerns international photographer Mae Jordan (otherwise known by her nom de plume Emanuelle) sent to African on assignment where she indulges her sexual appetites among the wealthy decadent European expatriates she stays with... Black Emanuelle is a lazy film. The story offers a number of dramatic situations as Emanuelle hops from body to body, bed to bed seducing both of her married hosts, but there's barely a ripple of jealousy or betrayal in her wake. Perhaps, a commentary on the jaded lifestyles of the bourgeoisie but I doubt it. Even Emanuelle’s photographic work is largely forgotten - at one stage she declines a trip to the foothills of Kilimanjaro, and instead seems content to snap nude pics of her female host posing against the scenery, and there's a token sequence where Emanuelle takes her Nikon with her on safari to photograph some very nervous looking animals - and who could blame them with an Italian film crew nearby.

Of course in these kind of films melodrama is just padding between bonking sessions and thankfully Black Emanuelle is loaded with sex and nudity. Gemser looks particularly fresh-faced and beautiful here and commands complete attention in and out of her clothes. Gemser makes it with most of the cast, men and women, as well as some lucky incidental characters, but wisely refrained from taking part in the hardcore scenes. The hardcore footage was actually shot on set, and aside from the use of obvious body-doubles, these scenes are not too jarring unlike say the hard cut of Franco's Female Vampire which had its hardcore inserts filmed much later. Still, the film has a strange innocent charm, hardcore and all, in some part due to the gossamer soundtrack of Nico Fidenco, and director Bitto Albertini photographing Gemser amongst some lush scenery, including one marvelous sequence where Emanuelle seduces one of her suitors against the backdrop of a magnificent gushing waterfall. Only once does the film get genuinely down and dirty, when Emanuelle is gang raped by a loutish football team, and in that odd convention of 70's Cinema comes to enjoy her ordeal.

For English-speaking fans Black Emanuelle has been difficult to get a hold of in it's full strenght version. At the time of writing, there is no official DVD edition in the US. In the UK the film is available courtesy of Optimum, and while it features a decent transfer (and is very cheap), the BBFC saw fit to remove well over a minute of hardcore footage, leaving some very jarring edits. Thankfully, there's an alternative - Italian label Stormovie put the film out in 2008 in it's full uncut version and includes the English dub track. The non-anamorphic 1.85 transfer taken from a clean, damage free print is generally very good, if slightly soft looking (which is most likely how the film was shot), and sporting a faint greenish hue. The English audio track is for the most part adequate although some dialogue can lack focus - no English subs are provided but you can't have everything I suppose. The only extra provided on the disc is a French trailer, but the DVD comes with what looks like an excellent booklet about the film, with some nice poster art but sadly only Italian text is provided. The disc is currently available at Amazon.it and is highly recommended.

Horror Hospital

As the sixties drew to a close, Antony Balch's film career began to gather momentum. In 1969 Balch wrote and directed the sex comedy Secrets of Sex for producer Richard Gordon. Secrets of Sex was an oddity, it's episodic structure owed something to William Burroughs' Naked Lunch and the novel's dense tapestry of seemingly unconnected routines. Balch in fact had been nursing his dream project to make a film of Naked Lunch for some time. While Brion Gysin was working on the screenplay, Balch began another collaboration with Richard Gordon, a horror comedy shot in 1972 about a Benway-esque surgeon who performs unspeakable surgical procedures on the brains of hippie dropouts at the secluded Horror Hospital...

A minor classic of British Horror, and a divisive one among fans, Horror Hospital is one of the more eccentric Horror films from the early seventies, a memorable mix of splatter, comedy and a notable streak of perversity. Horror comedies are best approached with caution but Horror Hospital is thankfully more Abominable Dr. Phibes than Bloodbath at the House of Death, and Balch deftly balances horror movie clichés with some memorable idiosyncrasies, like Doctor Storm’s car with its retractable blades that lop off heads of runaway patients (seen in the striking pre-credit sequence). Directed with imagination and flair, Horror Hospital was proof enough that Antony Balch had successfully made the transition from Underground Film to commercial Cinema. There’s some good fun to be had from the cast too. Robin Askwith looking like a Jagger wannabe equips himself well as the hero thoroughly disgusted with the lobotomized guests and bathroom taps that gush blood. Dennis Price turns up in two scenes and almost steals the show as an old queen who shepards victims to the hospital, while Michael Gough is excellent as the sinister surgeon, and so too is Ellen Pollock with that extraordinary face of hers, playing Storm’s partner-in-crime and ex-whorehouse madam, Olga.

Balch ever the cinephile includes some nods towards favourite films - the plot borrows from House of Wax, and Michael Gough plays Storm in full Bela Lugosi mode (Balch met Lugosi when the actor performed Dracula on stage in England in 1951, and allegedly had a copy of the lost Lugosi film Lock Up Your Daughters from 1959). The black leather clad motorcycle guards who patrol the hospital grounds remind one of Jean Coctaeu's Orphée, while Balch in perhaps a nod to Freaks cast midget Skip Martin as one of Storm's henchmen, the most sympathetic character in the film. Interestingly, Horror Hospital has certain similarities with Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Picture Show musical. Both feature a transvestite death-rock star, as well as similar plots - in Balch's film a couple arrive at the home of a mad scientist who keeps lobotomized zombies working out in the gymnasium, while in the musical, a newly engaged couple arrive at the home of a mad scientist who is engineering a muscle man creature. Horror Hospital's release predates the opening of Richard O'Brien's musical by just a few months, so it's perhaps best put down as one of those weird coincidences.

Horror Hospital was released in 1973 on a double-bill with The Corpse Grinders (although a more appropriate pairing would have been with Flesh for Frankenstein), and despite it's success, the film was Balch’s last directing gig. Balch had funnelled much of his own money into the Naked Lunch adaptation but the film was ultimately doomed - Brion Gysin’s screenplay became increasingly removed from Burroughs’ book with each successive draft. Burroughs himself described the screenplay as "long on burlesque and included a series of music-hall comedy songs". Other film projects fell by the wayside and Balch continued to work in film distribution, primarily sexploitation. As the decade wore on he became increasingly dogged by ill-health, eventually diagnosed as stomach cancer. Balch died in April 1980. Horror Hospital remains an important film in the cannon of British Horror Cinema, illustrating the sea change that was taking place with similar-minded independent films like Frightmare and Vampyres, which offered something decidedly more transgressive than the films of Hammer and Amicus.

Horror Hospital first surfaced on DVD way back in 2001 on the Elite label (which is the copy under review here), and featured an excellent 1.85 transfer. The print used for the DVD was sourced from producer Richard Gordon and was virtually flawless. The Elite edition contained one single extra, the amusing British trailer which was light on actual footage from the film but big on hyperbole. The Elite DVD is now OOP but in 2010 Dark Sky released their edition, featuring a more vibrant transfer and adding an excellent, comprehensive commentary track by Richard Gordon. Recommended.

William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville - Thee Films 1950s - 1960s

This Cherry Red DVD from 2007 is a collection of five Antony Balch and William Burroughs short films made in the period of 1963-1971. The set contains, Towers Open Fire, The Cut-Ups, Bill and Tony, William Buys A Parrot and Ghosts at No. 9 (Paris). Only two of the films, Towers Open Fire and The Cut-Ups were exhibited theatrically, the remaining films were discovered when Psychic TV's Genesis P-Orridge rescued a number of film cans stored at Antony Balch's office. After Balch had passed away in 1980 from stomach cancer, his office in Soho was about being cleaned out for a new tenant, and a number of Balch's personal effects including several rusting cans of film were destined for a skip. Brion Gysin was informed of this and made a phone call to P-Orridge in London who became the unwitting caretaker of Balch's archive of undeveloped film footage.

The collection begins with the 1 minute 30 second, 16mm color short William Buys A Parrot, perhaps the most mysterious film in the set. In the film, Burroughs is seen calling to a house and speaking to a man at the door. The action then switches to a veranda and Burroughs is seen looking at the titular bird bobbing up and down in it's cage before sitting down and having a drink with his host... Very little is known about this fragment, when and where it was shot and the idea behind the film. Possibly the film was made in Tangier, from the same period as filming for Towers Open Fire, and might well have been an early experiment in shooting on color stock. Incidentally, the footage was shot without sound so P-Orridge added some Psychic TV music over it (a minimal loop of Burroughs' voice). Also the footage was originally untitled and was named William Buys A Parrot by P-Orridge, although the bird is quite clearly a cockatoo.

The most well known and widely seen of the Balch/Burroughs films, Towers Open Fire was made around 1962-1963, shot in b/w and runs around 9 and a half minutes. The soundtrack is a dense mix of narration, dialogue, sound effects and Moroccan music. Burroughs' writing at that time was exploring the non-linear Cut-Up method, used in novels like The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, but Towers Open Fire does have a narrative of sorts. In the film, society is plunged into chaos when the stock market collapses. Conventional sex has been replaced by masturbation (Balch, filmed from the waist up, which escaped the notice of the BBFC although they had some bad language removed), while hands are seen waving over canisters of film, and Burroughs' voice is heard conjuring a magic spell - "Lock them out and bar the door, lock them out for ever more, windows, nook, cranny, door... lock them out for ever more" (interestingly this dialogue turns up in the Burroughs-narrated Witchcraft Through the Ages, Balch's 1967 recut of the classic silent Haxen). The film then momentarily breaks down then recommences with Burroughs showing a demonstration of making a cut-up by folding strips of newspaper - this section of the film experiments with a hyper-speed cut-up montage of sequences showing Burroughs walking along the Seine, followed by footage of a Dreamachine exhibition in Paris, and a scene where Burroughs shoots up.

Burroughs is next seen dressed in full combat regalia, playing a guerrilla terrorist bursting into a boardroom and shooting a ping-pong gun at a display of family photographs. People are vaporized in the streets leaving piles of clothes behind. Burroughs in then seen armed with a tape recorder and a microphone giving orders over a public-address system which results in the Board members (including Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi sitting to Burroughs' right) literally dissolving into static silhouettes. The strange cabalistic drawings from the boardroom are scattered along a country road. Finally, a man outside a cinema cheerfully dances to himself and then looks to the skies which are full of sinister colored blotches, perhaps the arrival of the apocalypse... For an experimental film Towers Open Fire received decent exposure when in the summer of 1963, the film was included as the supporting short on a double bill of Godard's Vivre Sa Vie and the classic Horror Freaks. Balch was a huge admirer of Todd Browning's masterpiece, and made a print of the film to exhibit theatrically after the BBFC had lifted their long running ban on the film.

Balch and Burroughs' next collaboration was The Cut-Ups, completed in 1967, which incorporated footage from an earlier abandoned film called Guerrilla Conditions. Running approximately 18mins, The Cut-ups is a radical experiment in montage, applying the rules of the Cut-Up to film. Balch cut foot-long strips on various footage he had shot around Paris, London and New York and edited it together in completely random order. The results are quite mind-bending. The individual shots itself pass by the eye so rapidly that the film is very much like the equivalent of viewing a Dreamachine with the dancing patterns of light shapes experienced by the viewer. Among the footage is Brion Gysin walking through the streets of Paris' Latin Quarter to the Beat Hotel, Burroughs playing a leering doctor examining a sickly youth, shots of a cityscape through the cut-outs of a Dreamachine cylinder, Burroughs boarding a subway train, Gysin at work on a huge floor-sized roller painting, Burroughs entering the Burroughs Corporation building, and Burroughs as an agent meeting a contact and receiving instructions.

Later sections of the film include images layered on top of one another to the point of abstraction - building fronts mesh together to form abstract grid patterns, while figures fade in and out of images like spectral visitors. The soundtrack for the film consists of words and sentences spoken by Burroughs and Gysin - Yes/Hello/Look at that picture/Does it seem to be persisting?/Good/Where are we now?/Thank-you/How does it seem to you now?, so randomly cut-up and repeated ad infinitum, that they gradually become meaningless, and the music of the speech emerges very much like Steve Reich's 1964 tape experiment masterwork It's Gonna Rain. The Cut-Ups, like Towers Open Fire played commercially in London, and according to Gysin had strange effects on the audience. Seen today, it remains an extraordinary, mesmerizing piece of Cinema.

Made towards the end of the '60's, Bill and Tony is a 5min film featuring Burroughs and Balch, who swap identities (and voices). After formal introductions ("Who are You ? I'm Tony, who are you ? I'm Bill, where are you Tony ?"), Burroughs is seen as a disembodied head speaking a bizarre Scientology text. Balch then speaks his monologue, consisting of some dialogue from Freaks ("And now folks if you'll just care to step this way, You are about to witness the most amazing, the most astounding living monstrosity of all time"). The exercise is then repeated but Burroughs now speaks with Balch's voice, and vica-versa... Shot on 35mm color stock, Bill and Tony was purely an experiment, based on an idea of Brion Gysin's and seen previously in Towers Open Fire - where a face was to be projected onto the face of a performer. Bill and Tony doesn't seem terribly important but in some respects it pre-figured Samuel Beckett's 1973 play That Time, in which the sole actor appears on stage completely blackened out except for his face and three disembodied voices are heard throughout the short play.

The final film in the set emerged from the cans of film P-Orridge had salvaged from Balch's office. P-Orridge set about the Herculean task of cataloging the footage which was eventually reshaped into a 48min film entitled Ghosts at No.9 (Paris), a reference to The Beat Hotel located at 9, Rue Git le Coeur. Much of the material used in the film was based on footage shot for The Cut-Ups plus some experimental color tinted footage of Burroughs' face undergoing strange and disturbing mutations by way of double exposure effects. In a sense Ghosts at No.9 (Paris) is a remix of The Cut-Ups but the film remains a valuable work in itself, giving the viewer a chance to savour the footage used for The Cut-Ups without the rapid-fire montage style of that earlier film. Ghosts at No.9 (Paris) also contains footage of what Jack Sargeant refers to in his excellent book Naked Lens - Beat Cinema as rehearsal footage for a proposed film version of Naked Lunch to be directed by Balch. In the film, Burroughs very much in agent-mode is seen hurriedly packing in his room - a scene which could have come out of the late section of the novel when agent William Lee shoots the two cops Hauser and O'Brien and has to make a hasty exit. The soundtrack for Ghosts at No.9 (Paris) is a cut-up of various Burroughs tape recorded experiments and readings, (plus an unexpected snippet of Dylan's Desolation Row) and is a sort of alternative companion to Burroughs' album Nothing Here Now But the Recordings which P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson and James Grauerholz put together in 1980.

Over the years the Balch and Burroughs films have been released on home video in various incarnations. In 1984, Towers Open Fire and Ghosts at No. 9 were released on the 2nd tape of double-VHS release of the Burroughs-themed The Final Academy Documents, while all 5 films were made available in 1988 on the UK Jettisoundz/Visionary label as Thee Films 1950s - 1960s (which the Cherry Red DVD is a re-issue of), while in the US, Mystic Fire Video released the films (minus Ghosts at No. 9 (Paris)) on a tape simply entitled Towers Open Fire. In 2005, both Towers Open Fire and The Cut-Ups were included as extras on Synapses' DVD edition of Balch's Secrets of Sex (or Bizarre as it's known Stateside), also included on UK label Odean's 2010 DVD. Italian label issued a 2-disc collection of Burroughs films under the title W.S. Burroughs: The Cut-Up Films, which included the 5 films plus two additional films, Stan Brakhage's 1978 film Thot Fal’N (which Burroughs appears in) and Commissioner of Sewers, a shot on video souvenier of Burroughs' trip to Germany in 1986. The Raro DVD would seem an obvious choice but apparently the picture quality is quite poor. The region-free Cherry Red DVD is by far the best way to see these films, the image quality looks very good (in as much as it could be), although the Cherry Red DVD provides no information on the films, and lazily replicates the Jettisoundz/Visionary edition's misleading title (none of the films were made in the 1950's) and it's lack of credit for Antony Balch, the co-creative force behind these important films. Aside from some promos for other Cherry Red releases (including their poor release of The Final Academy), the disc has no extras.

FLicKer

This fascinating and engrossing documentary from 2008 sheds much needed light on an artist who has too long lived in the shadow of friend and collaborator William Burroughs. Brion Gysin, avant-garde writer, painter, inventor, magician, performance artist and sound poet is best remembered for introducing Burroughs to the Cut-Up method, whereby random words and sentences are spliced together to form new and unexpected meanings. It marked a new direction in Burroughs' writing, the technique was incorporated in the writing of Naked Lunch, and later both men would develop the Cut-Up method for sound art and Cinema. Gysin's other major work which forms the centerpiece of Nik Sheehan's film is the Dream Machine (or to give it its exact title, Dreamachine), a light flicker device which rapidly alternates between shadow and light creating striking hallucinatory patterns behind the closed eyelids of the viewer.

Gysin first began thinking about the Dreamachine during a bus trip to Marseilles in 1958. Gysin was resting against the window and the light from the sun flicking through a line of tress created a strange pulsating effect behind Gysin's closed eyes. Gysin wrote of the experience in his diary:

"An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time"

Constructed in 1960 by Brion Gysin and mathematician friend Ian Sommerville, the Dreamachine is a simple yet brilliantly effective object. The original prototype for the Dreamachine was a cardboard cylinder with slits which sat on a spinning 78rpm turntable. Inside the cylinder hung the light source, a 100W bulb. For Gysin, the Dreamachine was the ultimate "drugless high", and he had hoped it would bring nothing less than a revolution in human consciousness.

Sadly the Dreamachine never caught on. Gysin came close to doing a deal with Philips to produce a line of Dreamachines but the plan fell through. The strange story of the Dreamachine is thoroughly explored in the documentary, alongside an excellent overview of Gysin's life - his years in Tangier, where he introduced Western listeners to the drone music of the Master Musicians of Joujouka, his years at the Beat Hotel in Paris, his residency in London (in view of MI5's headquarters much to Gysin's amusement) and his lifelong friendship with William Burroughs, both of whom collaborated on the 1977 book The Third Mind, which further explored the Cut-Up technique. Gysin's other art is featured as well - his beautiful grid paintings, and his series of artworks based on Japanese calligraphy. Gysin's sound poetry is also heard in the film, like his 1960 spoken word cut-up "I Am That I Am".

Sheehan's film includes a diverse and interesting cast of musicians, writers and film makers, including Genesis P-Orridge, Kenneth Anger, Iggy Pop, Lee Ranaldo, Ira Cohen and DJ Spooky. P-Orridge, who has done much to champion Gysin's work since his death in 1986, takes us on a tour of what's remaining of his personal archive (P-Orridge's London home was famously raided in 1992 while he was abroad, his belongings were seized by Scotland Yard investigating the activities of his organisation Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth), while Iggy Pop is joined on stage by the Dreamachine during a Stooges show in Paris. Sheehan also opens up the film to a wider discussion on the meaning of art and the role of the artist, and despite the film's esoteric subject, FLicKer makes for intelligent and illuminating viewing.

FLicKer is available on DVD in the US on the Alive Mind label. The DVD features a very pleasing 1.66 transfer - the interview footage Sheehan filmed for the documentary is very clean with strong vibrant colors, while the archive footage is a little rougher but otherwise in good shape. Sound is fine too, and the score sounds very robust. The DVD features no extras except for trailers for two other films on the Alive Mind label. Alternatively, you can view the entire film here.

------------
Notes
------------
UbuWeb hosts an excellent archive of Brion Gysin's sound art albums, all available to stream or download as good quality mp3s. Also the official Brion Gysin website is an excellent and comprehensive resource of Gysin art, images, articles and interviews

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

This documentary from 2010 is an excellent introduction to the life and work of William Burroughs, one the great writers and thinkers of the 20th century. A Man Within gathers together an impressive array of Burroughs' closest friends, lovers and admirers, plus contributions from John Waters, David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant, Patti Smith, Genesis P-Orridge, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Iggy Pop and Laurie Anderson, each of whom offer their own personal take on the man Norman Mailer once declared to be "the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius".

Less interested in making a conventional biography of Burroughs the novelist, director Yony Leyser concentrates on Burroughs the person, or the man within, and largely succeeds. The film is structured in chapters which examine the forces that shaped Burroughs' life and propelled his writings - drugs, homosexuality, guns, the impact of Naked Lunch and Burroughs' own difficulty in connecting with people. Burroughs himself was a mass of contradictions. He wrote extensively about drugs and despite having been a habitual user all his life, Burroughs' writings are full of warnings about their damaging effects, the degradation and the loss of control to the user. Burroughs struggled on and off with addiction ("the strait-jacket of junk" as he called it) and actor Peter Weller remembers a conversation with Burroughs on the set of Naked Lunch where Burroughs stringently warned him off using Percodan.

Despite marrying and fathering a son, Burroughs was homosexual but was the antithesis of the limp-wristed gay. Burroughs distanced himself from the queer movement and remained quietly reserved about his sexuality, only emerging through works like Naked Lunch and Queer, which often took a dark, subjective view of homosexuality. John Waters speaks about Burroughs' sexuality as another example the writer's iconoclasm - "He opened up to me, not gay culture, but gay rebels and couldn't-fit-in gay culture". The film is quite candid about Burroughs' relationships with men and includes a marvelous snippet of archive footage of Burroughs and Warhol in a rare moment discussing homosexuality over dinner.

The most notorious chapter from Burroughs' life remains the accidental shooting dead of his wife in Mexico City in 1951, which Burroughs darkly referred to as the catalyst for his writing career. Rather strangely this tragic event in Burroughs' life did not deter him from guns and along with his beloved cats, became an permanent fixture of his life. The documentary features a lot of footage of Burroughs at the target range and shows the writer working on his so called shotgun paintings, created by Burroughs shooting a can of paint, with the ejecta splashing across a nearby canvas. Interviewed for the film is one of Burroughs' gun dealers who shows an elaborate silencer Burroughs had made in his basement so he could shoot off his guns and not disturb his guests upstairs, while Marcus Ewert, Burroughs' lover relates an anecdote about the writer keeping guns in bed with him - they were of course fully loaded.

Named by Jack Kerouac and published in Paris in 1959, (The) Naked Lunch Burroughs' seminal work brought with it international notoriety and a devoted following. Friend and collaborator John Giorno recalls the legion of fans that would arrive at the Bunker, Burroughs' home on the Bowery, New York's Lower East Side, bringing with them copious amounts of drugs. (Giorno amusingly reckons that Burroughs' insistence on taking the first shot saved him from contracting AIDS). In the 70's Burroughs was regularly having dinner with luminaries like Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, Terry Southern, Nicholas Roeg, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry and Richard Hell. Burroughs was a supremely intelligent and eloquent raconteur but emotionally withdrawn. Perhaps it was his unrequited love for Allen Ginsburg, but Burroughs preferred sex with professional young hustlers, where there was little chance of heartache. Even Burroughs' relationship with his son (seen here in rare footage) was problematic and ultimately unresolved - William Jr. died from liver cancer in 1981 aged 33.

If the film has a flaw it's the brief running time - at 80 odd minutes the film feels a little too lean. It would have been nice to hear more about Burroughs' novels post-Naked Lunch, like the Nova Trilogy, comprising of the novels, The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express, which all feature the most radical use of the cut-up. Also there's little about Burroughs' impact on Cinema, the experimental films he made in collaboration with Antony Balch in the '60's, the 1984 German film Decoder which took inspiration from Burroughs' Electronic Revolution essay (and features a cameo by the great man himself). Also, more time should have been allocated to David Cronenberg, whose 1983 film Videodrome is one of the best cinematic interpretations of Burroughs' ideas, not to mention Cronenberg's own film of Naked Lunch which brilliantly fused the novel with episodes from the writer's life. These minors gripes aside, A Man Within, with its soundtrack by Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore and fabulous footage of Burroughs remains an essential document.

John Waters: "He was the first person that was famous for the things you were supposed to hide. He wrote poetry about assholes and heroin"

David Cronenberg: "I think Burroughs' writings particularly Naked Lunch were quite revolutionary... It wasn't just homosexuality, it was alien sexuality"

My copy of A Man Within is the UK edition courtesy of Artefact Films. The DVD features a decent enough 1.78 anamorphic transfer. Much of the archive footage looks expectedly beat up and worn depending on the source, while the newly filmed interviews look fine (if not exceptional). Audio is good, and helpfully some of the audio on the rougher archive footage is subtitled. Extras includes 16min of Home Footage with Burroughs relaxing in Kansas with friends (among them Steve Buscemi), 3mins of murky handheld looking footage of Sonic Youth paying a visit to Burroughs' farm, plus 2min of Burroughs creating his shotgun paintings. Overall a fine DVD but the US edition on the Oscilloscope label is better, packaged in a very nice foldout sleeve, and containing some additional extras, including a 15min featurette on Naked Lunch's 50th anniversary held in Chicago in 2009.

The Third Annual Report of Plutonium Shores

I'm normally not one to mark birthdays and anniversaries, or swoon over post-counts and hit-numbers, but this blog has reached the third year of activity today and I'm in a contemplative mood. No one is more surprised about this than me - there was never any plan, long term or otherwise when I set it up on that Saturday afternoon, Valentine's Day 2009, most likely it was something to kill a few minutes while some music was downloading in the background. But after I put out my first experimental post (a rough n' ready piece on Stephen King's Dark Tower saga), I liked the look of it and more followed...

The first header, a shot of Catherine Deneuve wearing a nightdress and a switchblade, from Repulsion. Featuring the mission statement - "Some words about films, music, books and other good stuff..." Honestly, that was the plan

Originally, the blog was intended as a sort of blogger's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an ever shifting patchwork of personal interests and obsessions - Cinema, music, art, literature, astronomy, the music of Throbbing Gristle, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the lives of counter culture figures like Aleister Crowley and Charles Manson. Pretty soon though, it was apparent that the focus had narrowed and I was concentrating all my writing on films. Occasionally, anomalies slipped through like a post about a John Cage album, which I later removed because it looked so weird sitting there sandwiched between a bunch of exploitation films - somehow I had moved into the ghetto of Cult Cinema writing, and now that my blog was made I had to sleep in it...

The second and third header - both landscape shots, the second a Caspar David Friedrich. Both short lived. "Some words about films, music, books and other good stuff..." but where was the music, and other good stuff ?

I often say that blogging is hard work, and for me it really is. When I put a post together, it's never an easy process, the thing gets bashed out and kicked around, chopped and changed endlessly before it goes out. I'm not a professional writer by any means, and it shows, but I think anyone who can stitch a few words together can communicate an idea or an opinion. No one should have to have a qualification to write. Having said that, I always cringe when I chance upon a vintage post of mine and I'm a little bit like Woody Allen in the sense that I never go back and watch my old movies. But I do remain proud of some things - the trainspotter's guide to the Apocalyspse Now Workprint, and a Watchdog style bit of detective work on some missing subtitles on DVD editions of Tarkovsky's Mirror. I think the 39 strong Video Nasties review series I ran was pretty good too. If I had to name two major influences on my writing, it would the brilliant UK film fanzine Shock Xpress, and Nathaniel Thompson, whose film reviews over at Mondo Digital are the best on the Internet.

The fourth header, featuring a shot of the demon mask from Onibaba. Finally a revised mission statement, "Going steady, deeper into Movies", shamelessly stolen from Pauline Kael

Aside from the creative kick I get from blogging, the long terms friends I made through these pages is the most satisfying thing about doing this blog - Aylmer, Jeremy, Jesper, Jon, Martin, Phil, the hardcore faithful who have kept up with me over the years. Thanks guys to each of you. (Your commentary always means a lot to me, but where are the girls?). Special mention also for the ever faithful Japanese porn site that's been spamming me with their links since I began. I promise one of the days I will post a link to their website where you can check out their bukkake and enema vids if you're that way inclined. When I started the blog I was so clueless - the blog was running well into a year before I discovered the Followers gadget. Also the name I chose for the blog has been a bit of a curse for me. The name was decided in the space of a minute during the blog set up (really it's one of those things you should sleep on), and came from a misquoted line in Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Raven, "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore" - I was sure no one would have made the same mistake (the damn thing is tricky to spell as well!) but now it seems there's a bunch of Plutonium Shores out there - so if you landed on this page expecting to see something about an investment advisory company from Milwaukee, you best go back to Google. We only deal in films here, mister...