One eye on Brando

I’m currently reading The Contender, William Mann’s 2019 biography of Marlon Brando, and as ever with film biographies, it gives me a good excuse to go back and revisit the films. This weekend it was the turn of On the Waterfront and One-Eyed Jacks. Waterfront I’ve seen a number times over the years (I was lucky to see it in a theater in 2017), but One-Eyed Jacks I hadn’t seen since the VHS days. Actually, I had seen portions of the film in recent years, on one of those backwater TV channels that shows public domain titles in unwatchable sub-youtube broadcasts, and somehow One-Eyed Jacks was one of the titles that screened 3 or 4 times a week. I’m astonished at how a Paramount film of this prestige could fall into public domain, but all that was swept aside courtesy of the Arrow Blu-Ray which features the 2016 restoration. One could hardly measure the work done on the film against the scrappy thing that I had last seen on Showcase TV, but in any case the film looks absolutely magnificent. What always excites me about the One-Eyes Jacks is the mighty Pacific ocean which features heavily in the film - certainly not a typical piece of Western iconography, but this idiosyncrasy (if you could call it that) gives the film a grandeur that must have looked quite majestic in theatres fitted out for big Vista Vision productions.

Watching the scenes with Timothy Carey I’m reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s brief involvement with the film, as was Sam Peckinpah, and I found some nice connections to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which reunites actors Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado. There were moments too when I thought of Monte Hellman’s great sixties Westerns and I’d like to imagine he was an early advocate of the film. I’m looking thru Brando’s filmography right now and I might have already hit the highlights in terms of the book. I probably won’t get time to catch The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris or Apocalypse Now in the next week or so, but I shall try to steal time for two noteworthy late-60’s pictures: the never-seen-before 1966 film The Chase (for that once-in-a-lifetime cast at least) and the 1969 oddity The Night of the Following Day, which I have great affection for. Sadly, I don’t have a copies of Burn! or The Missouri Breaks, two films I would have liked to sit down with, not to mention the 1967 Charles Chaplin-directed A Countess from Hong Kong, conspicuous by its absence in my 2003 Chaplin boxset…

The Greatest War and Peace film ever made !

Part of the plan for reading War and Peace over January was to toast the completion of the book with a screening of Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1967 film adaptation. Catching a near-7 hour film is a rare treat in my house, so there was considerable excitement on Friday night when I dug out my 5-disc Artificial Eye DVD edition. This was just my second time sitting down with the film since picking up the AE set back in 2007, and my recollection of the film had faded over time. Certainly the poor presentation of the film had been forgotten, and while many of the flaws and inadequacies of the Russico transfer could be overlooked a decade ago, upon completion of the first disc, I returned the set to the shelf and promptly ordered the Criterion edition – hugely expensive, but those first two hours of Bondarchuk’s film swept me away with its sheer exuberance – the wild subjective handheld camerawork, and the film’s astonishing scale with its God’s eye view of battlefields strewn with thousands of extras and giant columns of drifting smoke. It’s been a surprisingly faithful adaptation so far, and I enjoyed Bondarchuk’s treatment of favourite scenes from the early part of the novel - Pierre’s dual with Dolokhov in a knee-deep snowfield, Prince Andrei’s return home from the Battle of Austerlitz to find his wife in labor, and so on. As if Sergei Bondarchuk didn’t have enough to do with helming the production, he also appears in the role of Pierre, and initially I felt he was miscast, looking a little older than the character in the novel, but I soon found Bondarchuk’s sad, watery eyes most agreeable. I’m eagerly awaiting the Criterion edition now…

War and Peace

Farewell to War and Peace ! I made a new year’s resolution in the dying candlelight of 2019 to finally read Tolstoy’s behemoth, the quintessential large trophy book of my collection which I’ve been saving for a long prison sentence. I managed to read it in just less than a month (not quite life-without-parole), and for the most part I enjoyed it immensely, despite it soaking up almost all my spare time (hence my absence from this place). The sheer scale of the book was daunting - and there was a moment when I reached 900 pages or so, that I felt like a marathon runner about to hit the plateau, the finish line, an unreachable 700-odd pages away. But having come so far there was nothing left to do but relax my pace, regulate my breathing and drive on. I’m making it sound like some foolish death march, but the joy of War and Peace is in its length - after a couple of hundred pages I had moved quite comfortably, bag and baggage into Tolstoy’s world. A Guardian columnist wrote a piece on the book in 2016 and claimed he read the book in just 10 days, and while I’m not doubting his fitness, it seemed to me that such a sprint could not do justice to the book’s grand sweep and the changes the war brings to the lives of the principle characters.

That’s not to say the book wasn’t maddening at times. My edition of the book, an e-copy of the 2010 Oxford edition (featuring a well-regarded translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude) includes the French dialogue which the characters would slip in and out of mid conversation (as was the custom among the Russian elites of the day it seems), necessitating the tapping of the footnotes to read the translation, and disrupting the pace of the scene. Another point of irritation was the morphing of character names from first names to family names to nicknames, sometimes within the one paragraph - another Russian convention that had to be grappled with. One particular aspect of the book I enjoyed was reading the battle scenes, which surprised me - my eyes generally glaze over the complex details of military maneuvers but Tolstoy writes his war scenes with clear, vivid language, and I felt a tremendous sense of the sound and fury of war.

Much of my reading was accompanied by various ambient music, the more minimalist and unobtrusive the better, which sometimes lent an agreeable Malickesque quality to the book as characters expressed their innermost thoughts, and for the early sections of the book, I was pleased to use Keith Jarrett’s 1987 album, Book of Ways, a double-CD of improvised clavichord recordings, an instrument featured in the book, providing a nice bit of cross-pollination between the book and my record collection. I finished the book at the weekend and went straight into William Mann’s Brando biography, but I can still feel the pull of War and Peace days later, the sense of time and place, but mostly the characters and a profound sense of loss for their passing.

Shaun Hutson's Terminator

The fly crawled into the wound, feasting on the dark fluid within. Terminator ignored it as it nudged deep into the gash on his face. The skin was torn in many places, some of the cuts mottled green and blue where gangrene had begun to set in. The flies swarmed over the putrescent repast like gourmets. The cyborg could smell its own odour. The tiny hotel room was rank with it, a thick fetid stench which clogged the air and was made worse by the stifling heat...

Shaun Hutson, The Terminator

It seems an unlikely pairing, James Cameron’s stylish hi-tech sci-fi thriller and splatterpunk novelist Shaun Hutson, but back in 1984 UK publishers Star commissioned Hutson to write a novelization of Cameron’s film to tie in with its January 1985 release in the UK and Ireland. By all accounts neither party was terribly enthusiastic about the project. Hutson reportedly completed his assignment in just 15 days, and the novelization was not published in the US. Instead a more substantial, expansive and what might be best described as official novelization was penned by Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher and published in the US in November 1985. Of the two Terminator novelizations, the Frakes and Wisher book is probably the one best recommended for Terminator scholars. I've read in tandem with Hutson's novelization, a advanced draft of The Terminator screenplay, dated April 20th 1983 and the novelization closely follows, almost scene-for-scene, the screenplay, even dialogue in most cases remains unchanged. That’s not to say Hutson’s pass at the film should be disregarded. Before the advent of the 2001 Special Edition Terminator DVD, Hutson's novelization was one of the few sources of information on scenes that never made the final cut, and even today, with The Terminator mythos thoroughly explored in numerous books and websites, the novelization can still surprise with a few interesting diversions.

Two scenes that most likely were not filmed involve two supporting characters. Early in the novelization, readers are introduced to redhead Ginger Ventura and boyfriend Matt, when Sarah meets both at a gym. It's a minor, lightweight scene that no one would miss. The second lost scene is more substantial though and serves to introduce the character of the weary lieutenant Ed Traxler, first seen attending the home of the second murdered Sarah Connor:

Lying face down was a young woman, although it was hard to ascertain her age at first glance. Her upper body was a torn mess, a congealed puddle of blood having spread out around her. Part of the back of her skull had been blasted away revealing the sticky grey brain matter beneath.

‘Sarah Connor?’ he said. ‘That can’t be right. That’s the name of the one from Valley Division this afternoon.’

Vukovich shrugged and handed something to his superior

‘No doubt about the name. Here, we got her driver’s licence.’

‘You gotta be kidding me,’ Traxler said. ‘Jesus Christ. A one-day pattern killer. The newsboys will be short-stroking over this one.’ He looked down at the driver’s licence, hoping that there was some kind of mistake. There wasn’t.

Cameron judiciously transposed this bit of exposition to the police station for the film, but the scene as originally written lends Traxler a more profound connection to the unfolding events - when Sarah is later stalked by the Terminator in the police station, the critically injured Traxler hands Reece his gun and implores him to keep Sarah alive, suggesting that he believes what Reece had spoken about during his interrogation.

If the Frakes and Wisher book is now considered the definitive novelization of the film, Shaun Hutson's book has at least one important plot point not found in its US counterpart. After Sarah and Reece regroup at the Tikki motel, Sarah tries to convince Reece to destroy the Cyberdyne Systems plant which she locates in the phonebook. The plan is ultimately scotched when the Terminator resumes his pursuit but by a strange twist of fate, the climactic battle between Sarah and the Terminator takes places at the Cyberdyne manufacturing plant, where two of its personnel recover one of the cyborg chips. Interestingly there seems to have been some confusion on Hutson's part about what the computer system that waged war on humanity is actually called, referring to it as Skynet, but also as Titan. The word Titan eerily anticipates James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic but I could find no evidence that it sprang from an early Terminator screenplay draft. Perhaps Shaun Hutson was sneaking in a reference to Trident, the United Kingdom's nuclear missile programme established just a few years earlier in 1980.

A noteworthy aspect of the book is the naming convention used for the cyborg assassin. For the bulk of the novelization, Hutson refers to the T-800 as simply Terminator, without the definite article, which is not restored until the story's climax. This initially threw me off, thinking it was an ill-advised idiosyncrasy of the author, but the inconsistency is explained in the April 1983 screenplay which contains this bit of action:

The last flakes of flesh are falling from him like burning leaves. His gleaming structure is revealed in all its intricacy. No longer a 'He', but an 'It'. It looks like Death rendered in steel.

And for the remainder of the screenplay, the cyborg is referred to as The Terminator, which Hutson duly follows for the rest of the novelization.

Morbid Angel

Mickey Rourke as the private detective with an identity crisis in Alan Parker's 1987 film Angel Heart...

A freshly unearthed memory of first seeing this film on a trip to London, nearly 30 years ago was the inspiration for last night's screening, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this unlikely voodoo Horror film noir hybrid. Fangoria readers were treated to some outrageously gory shots from the production in issue 63 ("Sam Spade goes to Hell") which may have set expectations a tad too high when the film finally arrived, to chilly notices. Despite the dark and nightmarish imagery of Midnight Express and Pink Floyd: The Wall, I don't think Parker had much of an affinity with the Horror genre, which was just fine - I thought the film was most enjoyable when it worked thru the noir conventions - the labyrinthine plotting, the detective with a mysterious past, the dimly lit interiors and so on. It was only when the film strayed too far into Horror film territory in the final reel did it falter, including a ridiculous shot of Robert De Niro's character which left no doubt about his diabolical origins. Still, there was much to enjoy - Mickey Rourke is tremendous as the tormented private eye who makes Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe look sharply dressed and the production design is impeccable. Michael Seresin's camerawork, all expressionist shadows and autumnal hues, quite brilliantly underscores the film's sense of moral corruption, but watching the film last night I had to wonder how it might have played had it been lensed in noirish black and white...

Streetcleaner at 30

I must not let the day go by without mentioning another anniversary. 30 years ago today, Earache unleashed Godflesh's debut long-player Streetcleaner and the world was never the same again. Actually I didn't catch up with the album until 1991 after hearing the title track on Earache's Grindcrusher compilation and I immediately sought out the album (on cassette if my memory serves me right). Streetcleaner is often spoken about as a landmark metal album, but at the time, it didn't sound like any kind of metal I had heard, with its abrasive, screeching guitars, thudding bass and the clean, mechanical precision of the computer-programmed drum beats. Godflesh was evolving fast: by the time Streetcleaner was cut, the band had shaken off the Swans influences heard on the eponymous 6-track EP recorded the year earlier, and the group would move even further out with the subsequent Slavestate recordings. In many ways Godflesh heralded the beginning of the end of my teenage metal years - the music of John Zorn's Painkiller, and Mick Harris' post Napalm Death excursions into isolationism and dub seemed far more interesting than the next Morbid Angel and Deicide albums. When Godflesh's 1992 album Pure came out Justin Broadrick was talking about the influence of hip-hop and Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full on the music and it sent me down new avenues of investigation that no longer seemed compatible with death metal. And astonishingly Broadrick was just 20 years old when Streetcleaner was recorded.

Andrei Rublev - the Japanese laserdisc

One last Andrei Rublev post... I recently picked up the 1990 Japanese laserdisc, purely as an objet 'art, and it is rather lovely. Surprisingly simple in its art direction, (for a Japanese laser) and keeping with Pioneer's Soviet Film Collection line (which also includes Tarkovsky's 1961 film The Steamroller and the Violin, and Donatella Baglivo's 1984 documentary Andrei Tarkovsky: A Poet in the Cinema), the spare design - a simple gatefold with stills and Japanese text, matches well the austerity of the film. And for the record the 4 sides house the 182min version.

The Mysteries of Rublev

Last week my mother presented me with the 1974-1975 annual Film Review book, once part of my film book collection until it mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again. It was found quite by accident, stashed away on top of a wardrobe at her home, where it had accumulated the dust of the ages. Reading the capsule film reviews of the year covered, I chanced upon an entry for Andrei Rublev, which had some interesting devil in the detail. I knew the film had taken several years to emerge out of the Soviet Union, but I was surprised to learn that the film’s first non-festival playdate in the UK was as late as 1973.

My initial thought was that the Film Reviewer had seen the film in rep, but not so - according to BBFC records, the film was first examined and certified in August 1973, and was issued an AA cert with cuts. The Film Review entry notes the film was screening the following month at Camden’s Bloomsbury Cinema (now the Curzon Bloomsbury), but I was less than sure - turning to Sight and Sound magazine from the same era, I could find no mention of the film’s release, although the film’s unavailability was mentioned in the Spring 1973 issue, where Ivor Montagu, in his Tarkovsky retrospective lamented: "Who has it here and what, if anything they intend eventually to do with it has not yet transpired. Our loss". Fortunately, the October 1973 issue of Films and Filming put the matter to rest, when that issue carried an ad for the film’s London run (photographed from my copy below).

Interesting too, that this version of the film distributed by Columbia-Warner ran 145mins, well short of the 182min international version. BBFC cuts aside, I was curious to know how this truncated version of the film was prepared, whether some editor shorted or eliminated sequences considered longueurs, or perhaps were episodes within the film simply removed a la the original theatrical release of Kwaidan. Perhaps a clue can be found in Margaret Tarratt’s’s lengthy and thoughtful review of the film in the November 1973 issue of Films and Filming: “It is in many ways complex and difficult to follow although something of this may be due to the cuts that have apparently been made”. The next appearance of the film in BBFC records comes in 1991 where the 182min was passed uncut for theatrical and home video distribution by Artificial Eye, which would suggest that Tarkovsky’s preferred version of the film, was only finally unveiled to UK audiences, some 25 years after the film was completed. But chatting with film writer and DVD producer Michael Brooke on Facebook earlier, it seems the 182min version did do the rounds of rep houses in the 80's, while the film had two known TV screenings on BBC - one in 1976 (length unknown), and a second airing in 1987. Abel Ferrara biographer Brad Stevens confirmed to me that the 1987 screening contained the complete shot of the horse falling down the staircase which was eliminated from all BBFC-sanctioned editions of the film, so I'm wondering if the BBC had access to the 205min version ?

Essentials

Well sadly I didn't get to watch any Horror films last night, but no matter, there will be time enough - as far as I'm concerned Halloween ripples across the whole month of Samhain (November). But had I time and the mental fortitude, I might have spent the entire day watching this desert island selection - no wildcards, no pretensions, just ten beloved films that have been with me since adolescence...

Drones, atmospheres and a touch of depravity - A Halloween playlist

I may not get to watch any Horror films today so instead I'm lining up as many scary records as I can. A Halloween playlist of sorts, and we're starting with a huge slab of kosmiche weirdness courtesy of Tangerine Dream's 1972 album Zeit. It's not my favourite TD album, but it's certainly the scariest - 4 sides of unnerving atmospheres and drones, the album subtitled "A Largo in Four Movements", perhaps a nod to the album's classical undertones. All the usual spacey cliches come to the fore with Zeit, but the sci-fi trappings soon peel away with those long abrasive Ligetti-like cello lines that open the album. This is music heard in the cold empty wastes of endless space, or the abandoned alien city of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. It's a long grueling 75min trek and if you can make it to the end, you have my complements.

****

This next selection is very much the Horror-film-by-proxy. I won’t get to see The Shining, or The Exorcist this evening but I can certainly listen to them, and this collection of Krzysztof Penderecki works contains selections from those films (and INLAND EMPIRE). Across this double CD, the Polish composer turns the traditional orchestra into an avant-garde labyrinth of woozy strings, brooding rumbles, ominous silences and disruptive percussive effects. It’s good to listen to this collection again, and hear those pieces so familiar from The Shining in their entirety, rather than the fragments Kubrick selected, judiciously so it must be said. As well as the titles listed above, James Horner's score for Aliens is strongly reminiscent of Penderecki's work especially the 1976 piece The Dream Of Jacob, included in this collection (and one of the pieces heard in The Shining)

****

Carrion for Worm, the 1991 long-player from Arizona’s Nuclear Death is quite possibly the most unnerving album that emerged from the first wave of Death Metal. Deicide waged war on Christianity, and Cannibal Corpse and Autopsy drenched their albums in outrageous splatter but Nuclear Death were genuinely out on a limb, and lyrically their songs read like extracts from the diaries of Se7en’s John Doe.

Little boy with little penis
plays his organ in the dark;
his lust will forever be
with the feces of his homosexual lovers;
the boy will forever dine
on the feces of his homosexual lovers;
Little boy, perverted boy
don't grow up, just die...

Indeed. Carrion for Worm is a fantastic sounding album, with churning distorted guitars, grindcore velocity blast beats, and the demonic howl of vocalist Lori Bravo, a rare case of a woman fronting an extreme metal group. It's a shame the band never clawed its way out of the underground. Last year I read Choosing Death, a very good account of the early Death Metal scene and the author mentioned the mighty Bolt Thrower and their female bass player - a singular case of a woman in a death metal band. Evidently the author never heard of Nuclear Death.