The Cremator

I picked up a few Eastern European films on DVD this week which inadvertently led me to grab this 1968 Czech film off my shelf. The Cremator directed by Juraj Herz tells the story of Karl, a professional, petit-bourgeois cremator who's murder fantasies are given full expression as the Nazi's begin their occupation of Czechoslovakia. Karl's profession allows him to dispose of the bodies without suspicion - for his new Nazi masters it’s a matter of ethnic cleansing, for Karl it's releasing the living from the suffering of life. For such a dark story, the film is surprisingly humorous - look out for the running joke about the bickering couple who turn up at various points of the film, and Rudolf Hrušínský playing the cremator himself is wonderfully charming and amusing. The story which was adapted from a book may have its origins in the murderous exploits of Marcel Peroit, a doctor who murdered and robbed Jews and resistance fighters during the Nazi occupation of France, and the film has a certain resonance with Fritz Lang’s M and Ulli Lommel’s M inspired film The Tenderness of the Wolves. And certainly Repulsion, Polanski’s study of a deranged young woman would appear to be a key influence on the film.

As befitting such a grim story, The Cremator is suitably nightmarish, shot in stark black and white and full of strange dreamy surrealism, conveying Kurt’s increasing mania. Herz's direction is often magnificent, using a number of arresting visual techniques like rapid-fire montage, extreme close-ups, a dazzling use of wide angle lens, and a wonderfully disorientating editing style that shifts time and space from scene to scene, causing the viewer to readjust his focus of where and when the film is taking place. The Cremator is available as a very pleasing R0 DVD from Second Run. The sole extra on the DVD is an insightful introduction from the Quay Brothers, and the DVD comes packaged with a fine booklet of notes and essays by Daniel Bird. Highly recommended.

Warren Oates - Across the Border

I had some time yesterday to grab a screening of Tom Thurman's hour-long 1993 documentary Warren Oates - Across the Border, which comes as an extra on Anchor Bay's DVD of Cockfighter. I first saw Warren Oates in probably The Wild Bunch, but it was seeing him in Two-Lane Blacktop as The GTO, that made me fall in love with this great unsung American actor who died prematurely of a heart attack in April 1982

Across the Border is a light but affectionate look at an actor who specialized in not only playing losers, but playing characters who Ned Beatty describes as authentic...real. The film narrated by Beatty, includes interviews with friends, family and colleagues - including, Monte Hellman, Peter Fonda, Harry Dead Stanton, Stacy Keach, Millie Perkins, Ben Johnson and American film critic and author David Thomson. There's also some clips from Oates' films, mostly Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, his 4th and final film with Sam Peckinpah.

Two-Lane Blacktop is still my favourite Warren Oates performance, along with his mesmerizing wordless turn in Cockfighter. Looking through Oates' filmography, is like a journey through an era of American Cinema that remains unrivaled in its richness and daring - Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Shooting, In the Head of the Night, The Wild Bunch, Two-Lane Blacktop, The Hired Hand, Dillinger, Badlands, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Cockfighter, 92 In the Shade, China 9 Liberty 37, all of which are essential viewing...

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue

Jorge Grau's magnificent film, Non si deve Profanare il Sonno dei Morti, or more widely known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, a Spanish Italian production, was made in 1974 and is part of the first wave of zombie films inspired by George Romero's 1968 horror Night of the Living Dead. The story set in the English countryside, concerns a mismatched couple George, and Edna who become mixed up in a spree of murders, caused by zombies returning to life...

Comparisons with Romero's landmark film are inevitable, but refreshingly Manchester Morgue is not strictly locked into the zombie conventions set by Romero and John Russo. An intriguing notion which seems like it strayed from a Hammer film, has the creatures extend the zombie plague by rubbing blood on the eyelids of the dead who in turn rise up to kill. Also, unlike Romero's film which vaguely explained the zombie phenomena as a consequence of a satellite returning to Earth and raining down a deadly Venusian radiation, the writers of Manchester Morgue had a more ecological concept in mind. The film's opening sequence before the story begins proper is a montage of city streets filled with rubbish, and commuters hurrying to work wearing smog-masks. The film suggests that a new experimental ultrasonic device for killing agricultural pests may be responsible for the zombie plague, reanimating the nervous systems of the dead, but one might infer that the it may be Nature itself that is rebelling against mankind for its constant interference, and in a sense the film draws a parallel with Deliverance, which had mountain men emerging out of the woods like ancient forest spirits seeking revenge on the four businessmen for the damming of the river by the power company.

And while the film takes a dim view of city living, the countryside may be no better, as the film captures the Peak district of England, as a dark, damp claustrophobic place. Certainly the film belongs to a lineage of films which took a sinister view of the British countryside, films like Witchfinder General, Straw Dogs, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw and Symptoms. Also adding some chills to the film is the terrific sound design, the creepy experimental score, and some rather unnerving electronically treated bird calls. The film is well cast, with cult actor Ray Lovelock appearing as the leading man, and co-star, Cristina Galbó who appeared in What Have They Done to Solange? Also appearing in the film is Arthur Kennedy who plays a bigoted fascist detective. The English dub struggles with the various regional accents but Arthur Kennedy's voice is especially grating, being a rather horrible Oirish accent!

When the film was released in 1975 it was quite noteworthy for its gore (courtesy of Giannetto De Rossi) and by 1984 it was still strong enough to attract the attention of the DPP who removed the film from video shops across the UK, and was given the status of video nasty. The film was re-released some 18 months later with cuts to some of the stronger zombie carnage. It’s a testimony to the film's quality that it still remained hugely watchable in spite of the cuts. My copy of Manchester Morgueis the old Anchor Bay DVD edition, which is thankfully uncut (and known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie on the print). However this edition has since been made obsolete by Blue Underground's stellar 2-disc edition which needless to say is highly recommended to fans of European fantasy cinema.

Tobe Hooper's Cannon Trilogy

The Cannon trilogy is not so much a trilogy of related films but is rather a 3-picture deal Tobe Hooper signed on to make with Cannon pictures.... The films were Lifeforce (1985) Invaders from Mars (1986), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre II (1986). The films of the Cannon trilogy would themselves be the last of a great run of movies Hooper would direct, beginning with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive, Salem's Lot, right through to Poltergeist, The Funhouse and the Cannon films. Since then Hooper has suffered much interference from producers and distributors re-cutting his subsequent films, with only 2004's The Toolbox Murders showing only occasional flashes of greatness.

The first film of the Cannon Trilogy, Lifeforce, an adaptation of Colin Wilson's 1976 novel Space Vampires about alien creatures unleashing a vampire plague upon London remains one of the great sci-fi horror films of the 80's. The novel explores the intriguing premise of the phenomena of vampirism brought to Earth by aliens, and swaps the traditional blood-sucking for soul-sucking, the life force of the film's title. Colin Wilson apparently hated the film, and sure, it’s ludicrous and overblown but there is much to enjoy - a great cast, a surprisingly epic Harry Manfredini score and excellent old-school visual effects from John Dykstra. The film is so well paced, there's hardly a minute to dwell on the story's shortcomings, and the final act of the film as London becomes besieged with marauding blood sucking zombies is a real treat. Had Lifeforce been made 20 years earlier it could easily have been a Roy Ward Baker project starring Peter Cushing, or Christopher Lee, and the film could be seen as a sort of spiritual heir to Quatermass and the Pit. Interestingly, the script was co-written by Dan O'Bannon who would also write the screenplay for The Return of the Living Dead (which was to be directed as a 3D film by Tobe Hooper) made the same year as Lifeforce. Both films have some interesting parallels, and at least one idea, a shriveled corpse coming to life on a mortician's slab, would be recycled between films.

Lifeforce released in June of 1985 would prove to be a commercial misfire. Cannon effectively sabotaged the film by cutting 15 minutes out of Tobe Hooper's original 116-min cut, causing some storyline problems, but more disastrously the studio opened the film around the same times as Cocoon, a Speilbergian mega-hit confection about some old folks who have their lifeforce rejuvenated by aliens...

After the box office belly flop of Lifeforce, Hooper's second picture with Cannon, Invaders from Mars would be made for half the budget of the first film. Invaders from Mars, is a contemporary remake of the 50's chiller about a boy who discovers his parents and his town are being taken over by aliens. Sadly, Hooper's film was dogged with problems, going over schedule and released to a lukewarm critical response, and more disastrous box office returns. Invaders from Mars is actually a very good movie, well cast, with Karen Black, James Karen, Sam Bottoms and Louise Fletcher, and featuring more fantastic visual effects by John Dykstra, and some of Stan Winston's most impressive creature designs. Winston would also work on Aliens the same year and both the subterranean lair in Invaders from Mars and the alien hive in Aliens are not too dissimilar. Hooper's direction has its fair share of great showy moments, and his kinetic camerawork, one of Hooper's greatest strengths as a director is often magnificent. However, the film would prove to be another financial failure for Cannon, and truthfully the film was probably too dark and sinister for the adolescent audience it was aimed at. Special mention also for Christopher Young’s wonderfully strange experimental score.

With the poor box office receipts from Lifeforce and Invaders from Mars (both of which failed to recoup even half their production costs), relations between Tobe Hooper and Cannon were understandably strained. The third and final picture made for the studio would be sequel to Hooper's extraordinary breakthrough film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It seemed rather inevitable that a Chain Saw sequel would be rolled into production, and thankfully it was Hooper at the helm. Apparently a sequel was planned in the 70's by some other film makers, and by all accounts the screenplay for this particular version was definitely not up to scratch. Cannon by now had the knives out for Hooper, and unnerved by the thought of more financial losses, gave Hooper a budget of $5million and a brutal production schedule - the film went before the cameras on the 5th of May and was in theatres on the 22nd August. The film penned by L.M. Kit Carson has the Sawyer family (with a few personnel changes from the original Chain Saw) relocated to Dallas and pursued by a crazed Texas ranger hell bent on revenge for the murder of his nephew in the first film. Hooper's idea for the tone of the film was to go in a different direction to the first film amping up the black comedy of the all-American dysfunctional family that simply loves to kill. It was a bold move, and the film has its fair share of detractors but Texas Chain Saw Massacre II is driven by a relentless carnival ride atmosphere, and by the time the film reaches its final act, it feels genuinely out of control.

That the film would turn out so well is something of a miracle and is testimony to the fearlessness of cast and crew, who worked a punishing 15-hour day, six-day week to get the film completed. Much of L.M. Kit Carson’s screenplay had to be re-written on-set as Cannon routinely shaved days off the schedule and to get the film finished, Hooper cut the film together as it was being shot. Hopper has outfitted his film with another great cast - a dazed looking Dennis Hopper as the Texas Ranger, Bill Mosley as the demented Chop-Top, and Caroline Williams, excellent as a feisty Texas DJ. Sadly Gunnar Hansen would not return as Leatherface, but Bill Johnson does a good enough job behind the mask. Of the 3 films made for Cannon, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre II would actually turn a profit, despite Tom Savini's gory effects causing the film to be passed up for an R rating.

Of the 3 Cannon films, Lifeforce and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre II are both available on DVD. Lifeforce was issued as a barebones MGM DVD but thankfully, is the full Director’s cut. Following a barebones disc, Chainsaw II was re-released on DVD in 2008 as a very fine 2-disc edition with comprehensive extras. Invaders from Mars was once available as a stand-alone disc or coupled with Strange Invaders, and both editions can still be located fairly easily.

Rob Zombie's Halloween

If anyone was in doubt that John Carpenters 1978 film Halloween was a holy grail of modern Horror Cinema, consider the critical mauling that Rob Zombie's remake suffered when it arrived in theatres in August 2007. Of the current crop of horror remakes, Halloween-2007 has seen the most controversy. Remakes of The Omen, Black Christmas and The Fog, all came and went, disappearing from memory, while the modern retellings of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes were greeted with a cautious enthusiasm. However, for Halloween, the film would for months after its release be subjected to intense heat across online message boards of the Horror community. It’s probably fair to say the film was doomed from the outset - when it was announced that Zombie would helm the film horror fans were immediately skeptical, and would scoff at Zombie's arrogance when the term remake was pushed aside in favor of reboot. The film was released in 2007 and did good business, but almost immediately the backlash began. For its DVD release, the film was initially put out in its theatrical cut, and was quickly followed by Rob Zombie’s final director's cut which is the version I saw. I haven't seen the Theatrical Cut myself but I understand the film is best served as the director intended it.

Worth saying at this point that I actually consider Halloween a rather good film, certainly better than the junk that followed Halloween 4. Rob Zombie's screenplay goes back the beginning of the series and is retro-fitted with the missing details from John Carpenter and Debra Hill's original film - the first half of the film concentrates on Michael Myers' early life, while the second half settles into more generic slasher territory. Interestingly the character of Sam Loomis, the psychiatrist assigned to the Myers case has been given a new slant - in the original film Loomis is something a modern day witch-hunter, where as in Halloween, the character has built a lucrative writing career on the psychopathology of Myers and Loomis' final showdown with Myers has a certain karmic resonance. Where the film succeeds is as a mood piece - its dark and edgy, and visually Zombie has kept the prowling Steadicam sweep that gave the original film much of its power at bay in favor of a nervy hand held look (which admittedly includes some rather disastrous framing). Some terrific moments throughout, including the brutal assault on Annie, and if you can ignore a corny false ending, its worth hanging on for the last sequence in the film where Michael Myers literally rips his old crumbling house to pieces in search of Laurie. The cast do a fine job - Scout Taylor-Compton playing Laurie Strode is a great scream queen while a suitably creepy Daeg Faerch plays the 10 year old Michael Myers. With Malcom McDowell as Sam Loomis, Sheri Moon Zombie as Michael's stripper Mom, and look out for Danielle Harris (returning from Halloween 4 and 5), Danny Trejo, Brad Dourif, Clint Howard, Udo Kier, Dee Walace, Ken Foree, Sybil Danning, Sid Haig and a strange cameo by Mickey Dolenz !

In 2008, Halloween was released for the third time on DVD this time as a 3-disc edition, porting over all the extras from the earlier Director's Cut release, but adding a third disc containing the staggering 4 and a half hour documentary Michael Lives, The Making of Halloween, a massive chronicle of the thirty-odd days of the film's shoot plus some additional days of reshoots. Its a hugely impressive work, that one hopes might offer some redemption to the much maligned film, and besides some backslapping by the cast, its absolutely required viewing for film students. Just don't expect this to be a Hearts of Darkness or a Burden of Dreams, despite all the onscreen carnage, it looks like Zombie's film was a relatively stress free shoot...

Grindhouse - The Japanese DVD

Grindhouse (term)

A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly showed exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theatres located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease used to be on the bill

Grindhouse (film)

An American anthology film featuring two feature-length segments, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, bookended with trailers for fake upcoming movies, advertisements and theatre announcements

After Grindhouse spectacularly flopped following its April 2007 release to an indifferent movie-going public who didn't know/care about exploitation movies, the Weinstein Company dumped the original 190-min anthology film, and put out Rodriquez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino's Death Proof as extended stand-alone features. Both films were never re-instated back into Grindhouse, and still today, the original film remains unreleased on home video in the US and Europe. Fortunately, the Japanese were treated to a spectacular 6-disc boxset that contained the original Grindhouse film.



Grindhouse in its original 190-min uncut form is a hugely enjoyable experience. As well as the two films which contrast nicely with one another, the fake trailers are a lot of fun. Rodriguez's Machete trailer, a Mexploitation revenge film genuinely looks like it was cut from a complete movie. Rob Zombie's trailer, Werewolf Women of the SS is a delirious cross between the SS Exploitation films of the 70's, like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, and hybrid trash classics like Rock 'N Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. Look out for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu - possibly his best work in years. Edgar Wright’s trailer Don't is a wicked tip of the hat to British exploitation movies of the 70's and the films of Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren. The "Don't" of the title which is repeated in a frenzy as the trailer intensifies is a nice riff on the cycle of mostly 70's horror films with Don't in their title - Don't Answer the Phone, Don't Go In the House, Don't Look in the Basement etc... The final trailer, Thanksgiving by Eli Roth, is an homage to holiday-set slasher films like Halloween, Friday 13th, My Bloody Valentine, Black Christmas etc. and has just the right amount of teens, tits and decapitations.

Whether you consider Grindhouse a throwaway novelty film or a piece of conceptual art is a matter of taste. Personally, I think its the latter - homages are one thing but what Rodriguez and Tarantino have done with the film - artificially adding dirt and debris to the print, adding scuffs and bad splices, was a extraordinary bold move. At one stage of the Rodriguez segment, a love scene appears to grind the movie to a halt only for the film to melt in the projector gate and jump cut into the next scene following a "Missing Reel" announcement card. Perhaps the segments should have been shot full-frame, but its a minor point. Both films photographed by their directors in Cinemascope, look great with appropriately grungy lighting and colors. Tarantino's segment is visually the cleaner of the two but look very fast at the beginning of the front credits, and there is an almost subliminal title card announcing the films as Quentin Tarantino's Thunderbolt, the implication being that the Death Proof title was grafted onto the print at a later date (which was often the case with exploitation films dumped on the re-run circuit) Rodriguez's segment is most faithful to the grindhouse experience - the film could easily have been a New World release from the early 80's, and is loaded with affectionate nods to American films such as The Crazies, I Drink Your Blood and Return of the Living Dead, as well as European zombie films like Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City and Lucio Fulci's Zombie Fleah Eaters. Tarantino pays respect to the car-snuff genre of the early 70's - Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Gone In Sixty Seconds, and explicitly references the great car chase classic Vanishing Point.

The Region 2 6-DVD set made for the Japanese market is nothing short of dazzling. As well as the original Grindhouse film, the set contains Planet Terror and Death Proof in their extended forms plus copius extras. The set is housed in an appropriately beat-up looking case, and folds out into a large 2 tier digipak holding the 6 discs which look like jukebox 45's. The packaging is illustrated throughout with stills, posters and ad mats of the various trailers and segments. On the discs themselves, the Japanese subtitles are removable. The set is almost the complete Grindhouse experience, almost, because missing from the set is a rare 5th trailer, Hobo with a Shotgun which played with the film on a very select run in Canada. The fake trailer was directed by some first-time film makers who won a Grindhouse trailer competition organised by Rodriguez…

Scorsese X 4

Scorsese X 4, is a compilation tape of early Martin Scorsese films and consists of What's A Nice Girl Doing In A Place Like This (1963), It's Not Just You Murray! (1964), The Big Shave (1967) and Italianamerican (1974). The PAL tape was released by Connoisseur Video in the UK and Ireland in 2000.

What's A Nice Girl Doing In A Place Like This, Martin Scorsese's first movie made in 1963, is a 9 minute comic surreal short about a neurotic man who becomes obsessed with a picture of a man in a boat on a lake. After talking with his therapist, the man decides to become part of the picture... Scorsese's first film is very much an avant-garde piece, experimenting with different camera angles, lighting and movements; and rapid fire intercutting between live action and still photographs. Looking at the film today, its very likely Scorsese was absorbing a lot of European cinema like the films of Fellini, Truffaut and Godard.

It's Not Just You Murray! made the following year is fascinating in the light of Scorsese's later films. The film is about two small time New York crooks, Murray and Joe, and Murray's admiration for Joe who may be taking advantage of his friend's good nature... It's Not Just You Murray! has some interesting similarities with Who's That Knocking At My Door, and especially Mean Streets. Look out for a scene in Murray which looks very like a dress rehearsal for the pool room dust up in Scorsese's breakthrough film.

The third film on the tape, The Big Shave from 1967 is a mysterious 6 minute piece about a man who repeatedly cuts himself while shaving. Shot in color and in a bright white bathroom, it's a rather grim and surprisingly gory bloodbath.

The final film on the tape, Italianamerican a documentary portrait of his parents is from 1974. Easily the best film in the set, Italianamerican stars Catherine and Charlie Scorsese as they sit around their apartment and over dinner discussing their lives, the neighborhood they grew up in, and their parents who came to America from Sicily. Its a warm and deeply affectionate film, very much a cinéma vérité piece - at one stage Scorsese, who interviews his parents can be seen pausing to read his notes; and is intercut with photo montages and historical newsreel footage. Both parents are immensely charming, but Catherine Scorsese is the real star here, and she would virtually re-create her role some 25 years later in Goodfellas. Incidentally Mrs. Scorsese's recipe for meatballs appears on the credits !

A Lizard In A Woman's Skin

Lovers of freaky erotic cinema (especially Jess Franco's otherworldly Venus In Furs and Vampyros Lesbos) would do well to check out Lucio Fulci's 1971 film A Lizard In A Woman's Skin, a murder thriller set in Swinging London. The plot concerns the murder of a hippie and the would-be involvement of a woman who has weird nightmares about LSD soaked sex orgies. Fans of Italian giallis will be glad to hear that the film is reassuringly convoluted with enough plot twists and turns to recommend a second viewing of the film to unravel all the various elements.

A Lizard In A Woman's Skin is one of Fulci's most accomplished films. It’s impressively directed and fizzes over with enough visual style to keep you interested long after you’ve abandoned keeping up with the story. There's much to enjoy here - Ennio Morricone's psychedelic tinged score, extraordinary dream imagery and some taunt muscular hand held camera action. Two sequences worth noting - a stunning chase sequence through a dilapidated church, and a notorious sequence where the heroine, played by the very fine Florinda Bolkan stumbles into a room of vivisected dogs. It was this scene which brought some considerable heat down on Fulci when Italian authorities believed the director had used real dogs. Luckily Fulci avoided a two year jail sentence when his effects man Carlo Rambaldi was able to provide one of the puppet dogs used in the sequence. The film is noteworthy for its gore - it’s not terribly blood drenched but it is much stronger than anything the director had previously filmed. One rather shocking breast stabbing scene would return in more explicit fashion for the director's 1982 slasher epic The New York Ripper. Incidentally, Florinda Bolkan would re-team with Fulci the following year for the director’s classic Don’t Torture A Duckling.

The R1 DVD from Shriekshow is a good but far from stellar presentation of the film - the English dub print used suffers from somewhat stale colors, and some scenes are lifted from a different, more worn print. It's nothing that would spoil your enjoyment of the film, and pleasingly the film can now been seen uncut. Shriekshow issued the film in two editions, a 2-disc fullscreen print of the film and later, a single disc widescreen uncut edition. The latter is the version to own.

The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday is the best British gangster film ever made. The film, directed in 1979 by John MacKenzie almost wasn't seen in its original form when financiers ITC opted to re-edit the film to tone down its violence and remove a key element of the story involving the IRA. Luckily, the film was rescued by Handmade films who put the film out intact to great success. At the centre of this film is Bob Hoskins playing the London crime lord Harold Shand who's got a serious vendetta on his hands, as he stands on the cusp of legitimizing his business empire with the acquisition of large sections of London dockland. Fans of Guy Richie will eat this up with its wide-boy Cockney slang and violence. The film includes a rather shocking throat slashing by broken bottle, and in perhaps a nod to the title of the film, one character is found nailed to the floor, crucifixion style. The film must be something of a Richie favorite - he would actually cast two members of the film - Alan Ford and P.H. Moriarty (in Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).

For Hoskins who by 1979 was something of a veteran TV actor, The Long Good Friday was his major breakout role, and from his first scene in the film (memorably to the great theme music) owns the movie. Hoskins invests Harold Shand with great pathos as he walks the line between a proud Thatcherite entrepreneur to vicious mob boss; the latter best illustrated by a dazzling sequence in an abattoir as Shand gathers together all the prominent London hoods and reminds them in no uncertain terms of who's the boss. Also, look out for the justifiably famous climax of the film, a long wordless shot of Shand as he realizes that he now is on the wrong side of the meet hook.

My copy of the Anchor Bay R2 DVD features a rather soft transfer of the film, but carries an audio commentary by John MacKenzie. The DVD was later re-issued with largely the same transfer and commentary but with a 50-min feature on the making of the film. It was part of the Criterion collection in the US but has since been re-issued by Anchor Bay.

Clive Barker, Coil and Hellraiser

Book lovers in my hometown of Cork will know that Vibes & Scribes is a good place to find an interesting book, and yesterday I picked up a copy of Douglas Winter's biography of Clive Barker, which I had completely missed. It's a weighty tome, the hardback edition has some 500 pages of reading so I'm looking forward to getting into this sometime.

Disappointingly, Coil get only one short mention in the book. Coil, an extraordinary experimental electronic collective (one of my favourite bands) were commissioned by Clive Barker to write the soundtrack for Hellraiser, which they did but New World, who financed the film rejected the score for being "too intense". Hellraiser went on to be released with a very fine Christopher Young score, and Coil released their unused soundtrack as The Unreleased Themes For Hellraiser

Coil interviewed in Compulsion magazine (Issue 1, Winter 1992) spoke about the Hellraiser project...

Regarding Hellraiser, what actually happened? Did Coil pull out or did the financial backers think the music was too weird?
Well we pulled out about 10 minutes before they said we were going to pull out anyway. The thing is we were in right at the very beginning of the project, like Clive Barker was writing a screenplay and he came to our house and took away a load of piercing magazines and things. Which is where they got all the Pinhead stuff from.

Apparently, it was quite S/M orientated
Yeah, we saw some original footage which we unfortunately didn't keep but it was really heavy and good, like a sort of twisted English horror film. And then when the Americans saw this footage they thought it was too extreme and they also gave Clive ten times the original money.

It completely changed then
Yeah, so then Clive sort of felt, because it was his first film and with Hollywood being involved it was his gateway to the stars. So they changed the location to America, dubbed all the actors over and took out a lot of the explicit sex.

Did you feel let down about this? It could have been your gateway as well
Yeah, it would have been brilliant but we wouldn't have carried on because they were changing everything and they weren't being very nice to us the actual film people. They were keeping us in the dark a lot. We said we'd had enough just at the same time they decided they wanted to use Howard Shore (sic). They just wanted normal film music. They didn't want anything too scary which is sad and ridiculous for a horror film.

Mirror - the missing captions

The UK Artificial Eye VHS edition of Tarkovsky's Mirror carried captions to identify segments of newsreel footage scattered throughout the first hour of the film. Curiously, only this VHS edition contains these captions, they do not appear in any other subsequent English-language video releases of the film. Where the captions originated from is something of a mystery, perhaps they were listed in program notes which accompanied screenings of the film. Whether Tarkovsky would have sanctioned these captions is another issue, but I personally find them illuminating and a welcome addition to the film.

The captions are taken exactly as they appear in the Artificial Eye VHS edition released in 1992. However, the timings are an approximation of where the captions would appear had they been in the 2002 Artificial Eye DVD. (The screenshots used are for illustrative purposes only and are not based on where the captions would appear onscreen, although in most cases they're close.)

"Spanish Civil War" (38 minutes 47 seconds)
"Record Breaking ascent to stratosphere by Soviet balloon" (39:46)
"Soviet troops crossing Sivage lagoon, Crimea 1944" (57:04)
"Soviet troops liberate Prague, 1945" (60:44)
"Moscow victory parade" (61:03)
"First atomic bomb, Hiroshima, 1945" (61:07)
"China, 1969" (62:07)
"Soviet border guards confront Chinese demonstrators, Damansky Island, 1969" (62:25)

"Spanish Civil War"

"Record Breaking ascent to stratosphere by Soviet balloon"

"Soviet troops crossing Sivage lagoon, Crimea 1944"

"Soviet troops liberate Prague, 1945"

"Moscow victory parade"

"First atomic bomb, Hiroshima, 1945"

"China, 1969"

"Soviet border guards confront Chinese demonstrators, Damansky Island, 1969"

Update August 2016 - It was my hope that the AE might have re-instated the captions for their Blu-Ray release of Mirror but sadly it wasn't to be, and the captions remain marooned on the AE VHS edition. Worse that that the AE Blu-Ray has some considerable problems with the transfer, which doesn't bode well for the remaining titles in AE's Tarkovsly Blu campaign

Cocksucker Blues

Cocksucker Blues is the legendary suppressed Rolling Stones documentary from 1972. Directed by Robert Frank, this is a fly on the wall cinéma vérité look at the Rolling Stones on the US leg of their Exile on Main Street tour....

The rock n' roll movie as an open sore, capturing the Stones and their entourage in all their excess. The movie shot in raw 16mm black and white (with terrific concert footage in color it must said) features scenes of roadies molesting groupies (egged on by the Stones), groupie fucking, and endless drug taking - smoking, snorting, and injecting - its all here, paraded with wild abandon before Frank's unflinching camera. The flipside of all excess is the way the film chronicles life on the road, the sheer boredom of hanging around back stage or wasting time in hotel rooms which, in at one point results in a TV given a hasty exit through a window. Cocksucker Blues is not an easy film to digest - its rough, made with available sound (dialogue often overlaps into incoherency) and is cut together with a reckless regard for continuity - it sometimes feels like 60's experimental film, so its a fine companion to the Jean-Luc Godard's 1968 film with the Stones, One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil...

Cocksucker Blues, along with Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies is one of the last great underground films. Watching it today, it’s no surprise why the Rolling Stones buried the film so it could never be shown in public. Had the film been released in ’72, it would have destroyed the Stones reputation in America. My copy is sourced from a VHS-rip, so track this one down if you're interested...I would put this up there with Bowie's Cracked Actor, the Monkees’ Head, Zappa's 200 Motels and Metallica's Some Kind of Monster as one of the great rock films. And for Stones fans who need a grungier alternative to Scorsese's Shine A Light concert film, this is required viewing.

Inseminoid

Inseminoid, Norman J. Warren's 1981 film is probably the low budget British director's bona fida masterpiece. The film which is a sort of bastardization of Alien and Rosemary's Baby, follows a bunch of Anglo American archaeologists marooned in a subterranean research station. The trouble begins when one of the women on their team is impregnated by an alien, and typical of your average unplanned pregnancy turns into a murderous cannibal. The set up is probably fine tuned to the budgetary constraints of the film - a rampaging woman is a hell of a lot cheaper than a HR Giger/Carlo Rambaldi alien, and perhaps it was just as well as the alien creature itself is rather pathetic looking. In spite of all that, Inseminoid is a rather enjoyable piece of space movie trash and a perfect example of a film that works as a whole - aside from the insemination sequence, you couldn't isolate any one scene as being particularly effective but add the entire thing up, and it does emerge as a surprisingly disquieting picture. It's a gloomy, even depressing film as well I think, and in this regard the low budget works it its favor - the flat lighting, cheap effects, the austere looking sets and what looks like uncomfortable shooting conditions for the cast and crew.

Easily Norman J Warren's best looking film, Inseminoid's major coup was that it was actually shot in a extensive cave network in Kent. The set design is excellent (this is no poverty row Blake's 7 episode) and despite the poverty row budget, Warren shot the whole thing in glorious 2:35 widescreen. Obviously the film is an Alien vehicle, but Polanski influence is there too - the insemination sequence is heavily inspired by the nightmare sequence in Rosemary's Baby. And there's an Argento-esque feel to it as well - Warren acknowledged Suspiria as a major stylistic inspiration, and a times the film has scenes shot with candy-colored lighting. The grim electronic score probably wouldn't sound too out of place nowadays on the Ghostbox label. Inseminoid is worth seeing at least once, so if a cheap copy comes your way, pick it up. My copy is the old (and very good looking) Elite disc. There's a UK Anchor Bay edition with a Norman J. Warren comm. track (meant to be good). For fans of low-budget British schlock, Inseminoid would make a good double bill with Xtro.

Michael Mann's LA Takedown

I had an hour and a half to spare this afternoon, so I had a screening of Michael Mann's 1989 TV film LA Takedown. This would appear to be a minor entry in the director's cannon of films, but in retrospect it’s now seen as the dress rehearsal for the epic undertakings of his crime saga masterpiece Heat. I'm not up to speed on the making of LA Takedown, but it looks like Mann shot this one fast, loose and cheap - it has none of the slickness of the Miami Vice series, and is almost workmanlike compared to Thief and Manhunter. However, this has all the regular Mann elements - tough street dialogue, Jan Hammer-style ambiance, and the poetry of the urban landscape.

What makes the film so enjoyable to watch now is comparing it to Heat. Running for just over 90min, the bulk of LA Takedown was lifted for Heat. Most of the dialogue survived, Mann only made minor revisions to his screenplay. In some cases dialogue is used in different scenes for different characters - but most of the major set pieces in Heat are found in LA Takedown - the opening robbery, Waingro's murder of the prostitute, the botched surveillance job by the cops, the coffee-shop sequence, and the street shootout. The Pacino/De Niro face-off at the coffee shop in Heat is taken word for word from the scene in LA Takedown, so Mann must have really locked down the screenplay - no improvising here.

With Heat, Mann expanded his tight TV movie into a 3-hour epic and introduces new characters and back stories, like the getaway driver (who only appears at bank robbery in the TV film), or the Roger Van Sant character. The most radical revisions to the script are the expansion of the Val Kilmer character and the introduction of the Ashley Judd character. Also, the ending of Heat at LAX is brand new. In LA Takedown the film ends with a shoot out at Waingro's hotel.

The acting is variable in the TV film - Scott Plank who plays the Vicent Hanna character is fine. Less so is Alex McArthur who plays the De Niro character (here named Patrick McLaren) - he's a little too intense for my liking - De Niro brought much more subtlety to the part. Alex McArthur is recognizable as the serial killer from Friedkin's Rampage. Also, appearing in the film is Michael Rooker some three years after his iconic turn in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Sadly he has nothing to do in this film. If You can find this on DVD, its worth picking up. My copy is the UK MIA edition, released in 2000 and like other MIA DVDs it’s only a minor step up from VHS.

The Trip

A friend of mine, left a little... herbal present with me over Christmas, so armed with that I sat down and watched the Roger Corman directed, Jack Nicholson-penned acid-epic The Trip... In the film a commercials director takes LSD to open his mind to new ideas... And that's about it for the plot, but The Trip is a primiarly a visual film. Corman floods the screen with trippy LSD soaked visions, stroboscopic lighting, and enough rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness editing to rival Natural Born Killers. There's some incredible set pieces here - a love scene shot in strobe lighting with extraordinary color effects, and a stunning sequence where Peter Fonda finds adventure on the Strip - Corman will never be a hero of the Underground like Kenneth Anger or Warhol, but this sequence is one of the few instances where American mainstream cinema has matched the amphetamine rush of Scorpio Rising.

Admittedly Fonda is a little wooden, but he's backed with a good cast - Dennis Hopper, and a bearded Bruce Dern who looks like he just walked out of The Band. The music for the film is provided by the Electric Flag, and is a rather good mix of lounge-y jazz, fuzz guitar and freak out electronics - one piece of music even turns up in Easy Rider. Look out for the copy of Howl lying around Bruce Dern's groovy apartment, and fans of Ministry's Psalm 69 album, listen out for some dialogue lifted for "Just One Fix"...

The US MGM DVD of The Trip looks great, featuring a Making Of... and a fine engaging Roger Corman commentary. Best of all, its on a double bill with another LSD film The Psych-Out, which is essential viewing if only to see Jack Nicholson playing rhythm guitar.

POST-SCRIPT:  Not a hallucination, I'm glad to say, from the August 1994 issue, Empire's listing for The Trip on the satellite channel Bravo, a rare opportunity for UK audiences to catch what James Ferman once referred to as a "tremendous advertisement for LSD". It was thought that the BBFC had no jurisdiction over television but the screening of The Trip was cancelled at the 11th hour...