Bitter Cinema

Overrated

2007-01-04T22:01:00.000-06:00

Ha ha... Hal Hartley:

"I used to co-own a video store and we had a �respected American directors� section. Hal Hartley was not in it. People wearing untucked dress shirts would always ask me why he was not in that section, and I would reply �Because we don�t respect him, his movies are over here with the Mike Leigh and Atom Egoyan stuff�."

From Chunklet's The Most Overrated Indie/Underground/Art Filmmakers of All Time! Yeah, the Chunklet dudes can be know it all pricks, but at least when the guy disses Godard, he urges the clueless hipster to watch Robert Bresson instead!

The Glory that was VHS

2006-12-05T21:11:00.000-06:00

The halcyon days of VHS! -- who knew that we would be nostalgic for those glorious hours spent in the mom-and-pop video store, with the oversized boxes, faded from constant plate-glass sunlight... and the boxes, empty and cellophane wrapped (the tapes shelved safely behind the counter), lighter than air almost, would tumble like hollow dominoes with the merest brush of an elbow. And the forbidden pleasures and horrors the box's artwork would promise-- as if you would never see a movie bloodier and and more debasing than Dr. Butcher, M.D. (Medical Deviant), until you run across a tattered box for Bloodsucking Freaks, and then, one step beyond, the non plus ultra of home video depravity, Faces of Death, where real people actually died on screen! What a world!

See glorious examples of VHS box-art with Critical Condition's A Visual History of Video Companies in the 80s, a series that begins with examples of Paragon's releases, and will update with examples of other video producers like Midnight Video, Gorgon Video, Media Home Entertainment and Wizard Video. 2 day rentals only $2.50! Free popcorn!

Royale (w/ cheese)

2006-11-30T23:15:00.000-06:00

Found on YouTube-- See it before the powers that be take it away. A video mashup with the title sequence of the new Casino Royale (very nice in its own right) set to the original Burt Bacharach penned Casino Royale theme from the 1967 spoof. Not earth shattering, but prety cool to watch. Anyway, more on Casino Royale this weekend.

Robert Altman

2006-11-21T19:09:00.000-06:00

R.I.P. Robert Altman... American Patriot, Filmmaker, Crazy Coot, Great Unique Talent, Dog Tattooist...

GA: ...Is it true that in the forties you used to tattoo dogs?
RA: Absolutely.
GA: Can you explain?
RA: Well, in the forties, I tattooed dogs.
Right after the war I got a dog for myself, a personal dog. I don't know why, it was a terrible Bull Terrier. The guy I bought it from had this thing called an identicode, which he would tattoo on to dogs for identification. I thought this was a terrific idea. Before I got out of the shop with my Bull Terrier, I was the vice-president of this company.
So, I became the tattooist. We would take the dog, and inside the groin, by the right-hind leg, we would shave and put on the antiseptic fluid and then with the tattooing machine I would do letters, and I got pretty good at it, and we'd put the number of that dog that was registered. We thought we were off to be millionaires. It turned out that I just got a few dog bites.
GA: I also heard that you tattooed President Truman's dog.
RA: Yes, I did. We tattooed Harry Truman's dog in Washington. That was a publicity stunt. Although the dog was actually tattooed. I also tattooed a waiter.
He was bringing drinks up to a hotel and he said, 'What are you guys doing.' We told him we tattooed and he said, 'I always wanted to have that!' So, we were a little drunken, I remember this guy took his shoe off and I tattooed on the bottom of his foot his army serial number and his name. His name was D W Stiles. I don't remember his number.
GA: Do you regret having given that up for film-making?
RA: Well...they're both about the same.

Hitchcock as Commodity

2006-11-15T20:43:00.000-06:00

While we may marvel at Hitchcock's artistry and crafty cinema, I've always been fascinated by Hitchcock the huckster, the self-promoter. I've often wondered when Hitchcock was first pushed as a selling point for his productions. In his his early days in Britain, he was touted as a "boy genius", and, with his series of thrillers in the 30s, he was starting to wear the sobriquet of a "master of suspense". But when exactly was the image of Hitchcock, the droll fat man in funereal black suit as we know him today and as we knew him forever, used to sell a picture? Was it this sort of ugly looking caricature on this poster for his 1942 movie Suspicion. And not to think that this is too much of an anomaly, here's another poster for the very same film, now featuring a much more stylized impression of Mr. Hitchcock (and much more flattering to boot!). His distinctive physical appearance was one that Hitchcock used to separate himself from his peers. One can't imagine seeing a picture of an eyepatch wearing Ford chewing on a handkerchief pushing Gideon of Scotland Yard or slim, gray Hawks pushing Man's Favorite Sport? Of course, his sense of cinema was distinctive enough to set him apart as well.

Yes, this is a very modest and pissant addition to the Hitchcock blog-o-thon!

Gods... I Like Gods...

2006-11-12T22:13:00.000-06:00

Raise a tall glass, wherever you are, to the memory of Jack Palance, issue of Ukrainian-Pennsylvanian coal mining folk, former prize fighter, American film star. As distinctive as his face (sharp, flat, angular, cubist almost) was his voice (also sharp, flat, angular, probably not cubist though). While his looks made him a movie heavy, his voice, velvety smooth and sharp and cruel made him an actor that transcended the lot of your usual 1950s badguys like Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand (although I'm very fond of those guys as well). While his face scored some very memorable moments in film (like his his scarifying death grimace at the end of Aldrich's Attack, a spectacular film!), it was his voice that created exquisite moments of cinema for me.He didn't write the lines he spoke, but by all rights, we should claim ownership. Here are a couple.

"Pick up the gun..." from Shane, incorporated into a great bit by Bill Hicks...

"Gods. I like gods. I like them very much. I know exactly how they feel. Exactly." Godard cast Palance as the vulgar American movie producer Jeremy Prokosch for his Contempt. Palance was reportedly very miserable while making the film as Godard refused to listen to any of his ideas for the role, giving him the most menial physical instructions: walk three steps, hit the mark, look to the left and smile... They squabbled throughout the shoot and Palance phoned his agent everyday to get him off the production. Afterwards, Palance referred to Contempt, a film one critic called the "greatest work of art produced in post-war Europe", as a picture he made with "some French director". The tensions made for great cinema, though, and Palance's bestial performance is crucial to the film.

But Palance had little regard for most of his film work. "Most of the stuff I do is garbage," he said. He also had nothing but disdain for his directors, "Most of them shouldn't even be directing traffic."

One of those directors he disdained was probably that Spanish iconoclast, the visionary/hack (or hack/visionary) Jesus Franco, who directed him in Justine, an adaptation of a Marquis de Sade piece, where Palance chews the scenery like Matter Eater Lad (on acid!). Don't believe me? See highlights of his performance here.

You wouldn't want to hear Palance upset either! But if you do, listen here (mp3).

Also, he recorded an album in the late 60s, a Lee Hazelwood influenced country-ish effort. Here's a song he wrote and sang, "The Meanest Man Who Ever Lived".

El Topo Crazy

2006-11-09T22:23:00.000-06:00

One of these days a legit version of El Topo's going to be released in North America, maybe soon (here's a site for Abcko Films, who are going to release three of Jodorowsky's films, in theaters and on DVD, one of these days --check out the nifty video!-- Jodorowsky is such a delightful blowhard). In the meantime, let's go crazy with some El Topo links, shall we? First, crazy stills from the movie... from Subterranean Cinema, the complete text (with images) from El Topo: A Book of the Film (the script, actually)... also, from subcin, the complete soundtrack (in mp3) from the El Topo soundtrack (released by Apple Records!)... if that's not enough, there's a motherlode of links on Jodorowsky here (the guy does not lack for fans), including this really interesting essay on Mexican experimental cinema (Jodo wasn't the only one)... Also, if you're lucky, you may see the entire film here on Google Video (I saw a little bit of it a week ago; now the site states that the "video is currently not available -- Please try again later".

Jodo Update!: The wonderful WorldWeird Cinema blog offers the latest news on recent Jodoworsky screenings. Check it out!

Girl on a Motorcycle (1968)

2006-11-06T21:24:00.000-06:00

Poster of the Week! -- is that Marianne's torso? Here's a sexy leather and zipper version of the the ad artwork for Jack Cardiff's Girl on a Motorcycle, suitable for your computer desktop. More about the movie here, here and here (it was known as Naked Under Leather in the US). More info on the film's star Marianne Faithfull here (her official site), and here (nice pics but website plays a midi version of "As Tears Go By")and here. Extra bonus: here's a video for her great late 70s record "Broken English", directed by Derek Jarman.

Found on YouTube - Some Castle Films

2006-11-05T22:02:00.000-06:00

Found on YouTube: One way for movie fans to collect their favorite films back in the days before home video was to get digest versions in a home movie format, either 8mm or 16mm. Now, you can see some of these truncated versions, complete with sound. See 8 minute versions of Universal monster classics like The Mummy, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, and Dracula (dare I say, the edited version is an improvement, all of the hits, none of Browning's languorous misses and near-misses). See them for yourself. For more info on Castle Films' monster movie abridgements, go here.

Dr. No (1962)

2006-11-02T21:03:00.000-06:00

Note: This is an oldish piece I wrote and posted on this site a good long while ago (4 years ago, sort of). The original page it was on is no longer linked to on this site (although it may still be googled), so I've decided to post it as a blog post just so it could be more accesible. Besides, with Casino Royale in theaters in a few weeks, it's not a bad idea to see how the whole Bond phenomenon started more than 40 years ago.

�Attention, This Man� Agent 007 Carries a License to Kill�, reads the Italian blurb to this poster promoting the original release of Dr. No, a rather odd proclamation to draw attention to a supposedly secret agent. In 1962, years before James Bond became �Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang� and an international phenomenon, some publicists were probably at a loss on how to promote the film. Instead of images of swizzle sticks, long legs, silvery cars, the lean and long barreled pistol and Connery�s cold smirk that became pop fodder in the mid-sixties, the marketers of the first James Bond adventure, a modestly budgeted film adaptation of one of a moderately successful series of espionage thrillers, had to rely on maybe viewing the final film (most probably not, as this was not a normal procedure of the time), a few production stills, and, quite possibly, their wits and imagination.

Worldwide, most of the posters advertising Dr. No featured Sean Connery with a gun and Ursula Andress in a bikini, but this Italian ad seems to be the only one that featured Bond in a homburg. We usually think of Bond as a hatless creature, but he always wore one during the opening gun barrel sequences during the '60s (even George Lazenby sported one in On Her Majesty�s Secret Service, the last one that did, actually), and Bond's tossing of his hat on the hat rack in Moneypenny�s office is one of the miniature hallmarks of the early films. Kids weaned on the jokey and bombastic interpretations of Moore and Brosnan would be astounded, perhaps disappointed (if not bored restless) by the relatively staid and lusterless action of Dr. No, which probably seems as positively Paleolithic as Birth of a Nation or a black and white cartoon. Coming as it did on the tail end of that post-war golden age John Cheever celebrated as a �long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light... when almost everybody wore a hat,� Dr. No is a transitional piece of sorts, a last gasp of gray flannel cool and booze soaked insouciance before the world turned day-glo and hatless heads grew their hair long and jerked and swayed to the sounds of swinging London. The Bond of Dr. No was the Organization Man turned Danger Man, a bit impetuous perhaps with a weakness for vices of which his superiors may disapprove, but ultimately one whose primary function is to serve the company. �When do you sleep, 007?� asks M after Bond is summoned to his office from a wee hour casino jaunt. �Never on the firm�s time, sir,� answers Bond, matter-of-factly.

Some of the more unpleasant vestiges of British imperialism crack through the movie�s cool veneer. The Jamaica of Dr. No is not the Jamaica we recognize from The Harder They Come, but a colonial version of white men in starched white Bermudas and a game of bridge in the afternoon while brown-skinned men serve gin and tonics. One of the more egregious examples of this sense of colonial privilege is when Bond instructs Quarrel, his Cayman Island lackey, to �fetch my shoes�. The filmmakers themselves were not above such soft-boiled racism, as in their portrayal of Quarrel as a superstitious native, blubbering about �dragons� with a pop-eyed abandon not seen since Mantan Moreland. These colonial attitudes stem from the Ian Fleming original, which probably was as embarrassingly politically incorrect in 1958 when it was first published as it does now (check Fleming�s description of �Chigroes�, the half-Chinese half-black islanders who were in league with Dr. No: "The Chigroes have all the venality of the Chinaman and all the brutishness of the Negro.�). Dr. No�s ethnicity was not touched upon in the movie, but in the book he�s another example of the Yellow Peril as exemplified in Sax Rohmer�s Fu Manchu stories, although, in this case, he�s half-Chinese half-German (Fleming had a big bugaboo about miscegenation).

At least seen in this light, the movie does seem dreadfully old-fashioned, a time yellowed relic of a time we won�t (and probably don�t want to) see again. But when Dr. No was released to theaters in late �62 �early �63, it was something entirely exciting, brash and new. It introduced Sean Connery as a model for a new kind of hero, amoral, brave, yet capable of cold-blooded brutality (�That�s a Smith & Wesson, and you�ve already had your six�: Dent�s killing was the single most cold-blooded act in any Bond film, never to be equaled, even in more permissible times). We had to wait until Clint Eastwood starred in Sergio Leone�s westerns before we would encounter a movie hero as nonplussed about life and death. Many critics have commented on the science fiction aspects of Dr. No, but the subplot dealing with radio beams throwing off the gyroscopes of �Cape Canaveral rockets� (a MacGuffin actually) is not so much science fiction but a mirror of the science fact that figured prominently in the headlines of the day. This was, after all, the dawn of the space age. These scientific elements were woven into the fabric of the story in such a nonchalant and cavalier manner, that the audience took it as a matter of fact, without needing to suspend disbelief, a requisite in later Bond features. Indeed, one of the winning points of Dr. No is its very nonchalance and casualness, its easy sexiness, the effortless way Connery glides through Ken Adam�s sets, the breezy pace of the narrative, the fast cutting and quick action which blurred plot holes and contrivances enough so they became inconsequential.

The film, of course, was a worldwide success. Whatever innovations Dr. No may have introduced, these were not preludes to more daring filmmaking in the series to come (some may say �franchise�), but, instead, were immovable elements in the Bond formula, from which there can be no deviation. Although there are more than a few good Bond movies, the first three Connery Bonds (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger) are the canonical standard, where the formula was perfected and honed to a fine shiny edge. Bond became a cash cow, still to this day, forty years later. Who could have predicted this back in 1962? Who could have foreseen that this tight little thriller would have spawned close to thirty new editions (one cannot properly call them �sequels�)? Like the colored pushpins denoting a franchise location in some grand corporate map, each Bond film pricks a point in our pop culture atlas, some deeper than others perhaps, but each providing a consistent value of entertainment, sex, and adventure, much as an order of McDonald� fries purchased anywhere in the world provides the same consistent value of crispiness, saltiness, and starchy caloric content. Admittedly, this is a very simplistic analogy, as there is some artfulness involved in the Bond movies, some of it quite brilliant (Maurice Binder�s title sequences, John Barry�s music, Ken Adam�s sets, Connery�s iconic performances), but the salient point remains that even the most artful elements of the Bond series became a crucial part of the formula, so much so then even when these creators stopped working in the Bond films, it seemed necessary for Danjaq, S.A. to recreate them with artful replicators (such as David Arnold for John Barry, and Daniel Kleinman for Maurice Binder). Thus, the formula became as familiar as comfort food, and just as reassuring for consumers. One cannot create forty years of uninterrupted box office success with stark originality each and every time, or at least, that�s the conventional wisdom. At least, we can see a glimpse of the time before James Bond became a formula, back in 1962, when the company man wore a hat.

More Info...

Red Grant's The Art of James Bond is an extraordinary compendium of visuals dealing with the Bond phenomenon, from book covers (including those cool Signet paperbacks my dad used to read and which I devoured during my adolescence), movie posters, album covers, ad mats, concept art, and a whole lot more. Dig on the 'sixties style! Groove on the Thunderball concept art! Or you can check out the concept art for A View To A Kill featuring a half naked Grace Jones. There are tons of Bond sites out there, but this one is one of the best.

Another good Bond site is Her Majesty's Secret Servant run by Paul Baack and Tom Zielinski, a couple of Bond obsessives. Of special interest is Richard Taulke-Johnson's essay exploring the semiotics of Bond (by way of Umberto Eco). Good stuff.

By the way, click on the poster for a larger image. 205K

Bollywood Babylon

2006-11-01T20:49:00.000-06:00

More weird crap for your bleeding eyeballs. Dig this crazy collection of Bollywood hand-painted movie posters.

Dracula, Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Pt. 2

2006-10-31T21:45:00.000-06:00

Extra Poster of the Week! --A double shot of Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, a more pop art campier late '60s version from the USA. While the Brits were focused on Dracula's rage, US distributors pushed the flick with jokes and semi-clever bon mots: "You can't keep a good man down..." or "Dracula has risen from the grave... obviously". Well, not great jokesters... obviously, but the poster has a pretty nifty modular scheme. Of course, click on the image for a larger version. 204K

Dracula, Has Risen from the Grave (1968)

2006-10-31T21:43:00.000-06:00

Poster of the Week -Halloween Edition!-- After a long, long, unexplainable and wicked hiatus, the poster returns with a vampire cape spinning flourish. Dracula Has Risen From the Grave was the third Hammer Dracula released (not counting Brides of Dracula, in which Dracula and Christopher Lee did not appear), made a full ten years after Horror of Dracula. This really surprised me. I had always thought there were a lot more, oddly enough. Anyway, it's a fun movie of its type, where Dracula is resurrected, kills some people, and is then killed himself, impaled on a giant golden cross, only to be resurrected again in the next movie. Nothing spectacular, to say the least, but these Hammer films were a mainstay on Halloween TV when I was younger, and an intrinsic part of the season as the Charlie Brown Christmas was/is during that holiday's televisual festival. Check out the heavy-duty staking scene from DHRFTG (as the fans like to dub it) here. Read and see more of lead actress Veronica Carlson here. And you've never seen Dracula in such a rage as in this film's UK poster art, which you can see in a larger image by clicking on the image on the left. 184K

Vampire A-Go-Go!

2006-10-30T21:48:00.000-06:00

There's a Vampire Blog-a-thon going on (instigated by the Film Experience Blog), and I wanna play too. And to expand on a vampiric metaphor (metaphor?-- maybe a cliche), let us prey and suck on the fat and prodigious bandwidth of a Google enabled YouTube, as yet still unbloodied by copyright fights to come or starved skinny by a toll on a muti-tiered info-turnpike. We're talking vampire movie trailers, nothing from anything made after 1979, so no Lost Boys, Hunger, Fright Night, or Coppola's own Stoker Ace, kids. Nothing but gold here...

Requiem Pour Une Vampire --"...dans le chateau des orgies". Jean Rollin may not be everyone's cup of blood (and I'm not really sure he's mine), but his pictures have a poetic sensibility all their own, although paced with the languor of a laudanum high.

Planet of the Vampires --"...harboring a form of life worse than death". Bava goes Gothic in outer space and goes nuts with the color filters.

The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman --"...your blood will boil and your flesh will crawl..." A favorite from wayback. See it with someone you hate.

Mark of the Vampire --"Watch out! They may be hovering over you! Or you! Or YOU!" This one goes wayback to 1935. Nice central role for Lugosi in this trailer, and he camps it up nicely.

The Vampire Lovers"...sample, if you dare, the deadly passion of the Vampire Lovers!" Some early 70s Hammer, trying to sex up their gothic horrors with varying levels of success. It's better than most, if that doesn't seem to be damning with faint praise.

Lady Vampire (Onna Kyuketsuki) --Never heard of this one until I ran across the trailer on YouTube. I had no idea the Japanese were making gothic horrors in the 1950s. The trailer's completely in Japanese, so I'm taking guesses as far as the movie's plot goes. The lead vampire (not a lady, by the way, nor a gentleman for that matter) wears a classic Dracula style cape and walks around in cool shades. And he's pretty vicious when he attacks, with really large canines. If you're only going to see one of these trailers, check this one out!

Blacula --"...the black avenger, rising from his tomb to fill the night with horror!" Sure, it's ludicrous, but Blacula's still one of my favorite vampire films from the 70s. William Marshall is fantastic in it (what a voice!). Great soundtrack by Gene Page.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro) --Another Japanese vampire spectacular, and this one's really good. Not really a gothic take, although the filmmakers take some of the gothic conventions and play hardball with them. Vampirism (of a sort) explained through a colorful and crazed science fiction prism. This one needs to be available on DVD Region 1.

Orgy of the Living Dead Triple Feature --"This man's name is John Austin Fraser. He lived in Chicago, Illinois. He now resides in the state mental hospital." Not a great example of a vampire movie trailer, but an excellent example of classic American movie ballyhoo. The trailer's a better piece of cinema than any of those three features. I think one of the features is a vampire film, Fangs of the Living Dead, sometimes known as Malenka.

Nosferatu The Vampyre --"A film unlike any Dracula film you've ever seen...." Werner Herzog's version, of course. It's the best version of Dracula on film and it's the best vampire movie ever. Yeah, I said it.

All right, one more... Blood-o-Rama Shock Festival --"Are you ready for more than four hours of blood drenched, chill crammed terror?" Another trailer for a entire program of films. I like the act they use the term "festival" to give it an air of sophistication. I believe all the films come from the Philippines.

The Peter Cushing Film Poster Site

2006-10-27T23:02:00.000-05:00

As a companion piece to the previous newspaper ad post and the scuzzy woman-hating ad for Corruption, here's a site devoted to the film posters of the star of that film,The Peter Cushing Film Poster Site. It's more interesting to see some of the artwork for Cushing's lesser known (and mostly unseen) films, like Cone of Silence or Cash on Demand, although there are some cool, rarely seen international examples of hits like The Curse of Frankenstein and Brides of Dracula.

Newspaper Movie Ad Archive

2006-10-27T21:20:00.000-05:00

Ah, those halcyon days when drive-ins ruled the earth! Wanna see some sleazy halftone movie admats from the '60s and '70s? Check out the Newspaper Movie Ad Archive, compiled from newspaper ads from the Albany, NY, and Raleigh, NC, areas. Lots of retro fun stuff, like this (Ingmar Bergman at the drive-in!), this ("Absolutely No Children Admitted..."), and this ("In Person: Dracula!")!

Snippets...

2006-10-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

SNIPPETS! The image on the left has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Just an image cut out of an old comic book, just eye candy to fill up space in a woefully updated weblog (although, as an aside, vis a vis the term "eye candy", one can imagine an early 70s DC Comics character, quite possibly the Green Arrow, using the term "vein candy" to describe heroin-- or "skezag" as it's known in the DC Universe). In any case, here are some some (sort of) randomlinks to waste some time with:

An early draft of the script for Son of Frankenstein
Bond smells a rat -- The James Bond Music Library
Juha's Buster Keaton Page
Derek and Clive
The Pagans
Break My Face
Lightning Bolt
RIP, Renato Polselli
More Polselli

Splatterporn!

2006-10-24T22:48:00.000-05:00

Back when, more than a few years ago when I wore a younger man's socks, I graduated from the creaky puns (Hollyweird, Karloffornia... You Axed for It!), the monster-kid hagiographies (King Karloff! Lord Lugosi! Prince Price! Saint Peter Cushing!)and the crummy cheap B&W newsprint of Forrest Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland to the slicker, harder, more colorful Fangoria. What I remember most of this transition of horror fandom was Fangoria's decidedly more grown-up look at horror. Gone were the puns... now there were cuss words! And the pictures... Good God! Gone were the rare behind the scenes shots of Lugosi on the set of The Return of Chandu or of Peter Lorre conferring with Basil Rathbone on the set of A Comedy of Terrors.In their stead were bloody, torn latex corpses, gutters strewn with entrails, brains splattered on cinder block walls while technicians laugh and pose with a skinned skull. Fangoria even had a centerfold of sorts; a kind of pull-out picture to hang in one's wall. One of the first I remember was a garishly oversaturated shot of a young fellow with an arrow jabbed his eye (as a matter of a fact, here's the issue in question; dig the rest of that issue's grue). The rest of the photos were as equally grisly, with an almost pornographic attention to detail.

That pornographic attention to detail is fully evident in this collection of Maxim's Best Horror Movie Deaths. Maxim's easily one of the most idiotic magazines on newstands today, a Playboy without the sophistication (even the faux sophistication Playboy used to bandy about, especially back in the 60s and 70s when they used to interview people like Nabokov and Bertram Russell), or even properly nude women. Their list of deaths is not a bad one by any means, even with all of them coming after 1979; and even with the insipid laddish commentary ("Mr. Drill, meet Mr. Head. Mr. Head, meet Mr. Drill. Now you guys make yourself comfortable and we'll bring in some punch and snacks"). Besides, you'll see Jason X's only scene of note (and that's noy saying much). Certainly not for the squeamish, and, be warned, the video starts as soon as the link opens. Horror's best money shots. Dig it.

Found on YouTube - Nana's Dance

2006-10-23T21:52:00.000-05:00

Found on YouTube: Cyd Charisse, she's not. She's sort of gangly and awkward as she traipses between the billiard tables and the dumbly indifferent men. Nana's exhuberance is infectious though, even if we do see it as her desperate buffer against the emotional pricks and jabs her mess of a life now sadly accords. Her sauntering legkicks and broad smiles belie her darkly cornered state, even as she attempts to elicit the simplest of grins or at least one bare nod of scknowledgement from the impassive men around her; men who ultimately, as any viewer of Vivre Se Vie can attest, would be her undoing. At the end of the dance, Nana spirals into exhaustion. Is it a surrender? As one of Godard's subtitles for this one of twelve tableaux reads: "- there's no gaiety in happiness-". The actress in the scene is, of course, the sublime Anna Karina. The scene is from Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live), only Jean-Luc Godard's fourth film; also his saddest and most human. Watch the clip here, or click on the image.

Visit Charming Toho Kingdom

2006-10-22T23:51:00.000-05:00

Oftentimes, when grazing through a thorough and extensive database such as the fantastic Toho Kingdom, the ultimate end-all for all things relating to releases from Japan's Toho Studios, riffling through the familiar (Ikuru, Rodan,Yojimbo, or even Submersion of Japan (Tidal Wave)) does not satisfy as much as plucking out the colorful unknowns like Young Guy vs. Blue Guy, Operation Crazy Mexico, Age of Homicide Mania, or Japan's Number One Sycophant Man, and ultimately becoming fodder for clueless conjecture or another round of a game of your guess is as good as mine. If only Hollywood's product looked a quarter as interesting... Check out Toho's lost projects and original concept art (particularly for The Mysterions).

Yakuza Movie Posters

2006-10-22T01:24:00.000-05:00

Quintessentially Japanese, the yakuza movie has only recently been recognized in the West, primarily through Seijun Suzuki and Kinji Fukasaku's work. If you're like me and you don't know much about the genre aside from the work of the aforementioned directors, you can find a good intro here. You can find a very nice collection of yakuza movie posters here (by the way, the site has an embedded loop of the sound of ocean waves). If you're an American kid of the '70s like me, you were probably introduced to the mythos of the yakuza through Leonard and Paul Schrader's, Robert Towne's and Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza starring Robert Mitchum.

Popeye and Pals

2006-03-08T21:43:00.000-06:00

Back when Hector was a pup, during the fuzzy glory days of local television, in the afterschool hours, there used to be half hour programs that strung together ancient theatrical shorts for the entertainment of kids of all ages. These cheapy productions, some introduced by a wily host or some merely bridged by a panoply Duncan Yo-Yo and Wham-O commercials, were a staple of many an American kid growing up in the 60s and 70s. Usually one character would be deemed the tentpole for the program, the program of which would cast a long and wide penumbra that would cover a smorgasbord of disparate (and often edited and truncated) shorts, from the always cool Warner Bros. set, to Little Rascals/Our Gang comedies, to the Three Stooges of course, to, if the programming manager was hip enough, a UPA collection, or, if the station was cheap, wretched recent vintage Terry Toons crap like Deputy Dawg. Of course, Popeye was a perennial tentpole character, but the cartoons were hit or miss too. The Famous Studios color cartoons were pretty good, but the ones produced by the King Features Syndicate were horrible (they also produced the craptastic Beetle Bailey cartoon).

But the black & white Fleischer cartoons were sublime. Such depth and richness in their look, and the detail and throwaway lines in their sound design! They were the only b&w cartoons we saw on televison back in the 70s, but soon fashion took over and the color cartoons took precedence over ancient dusty monochrome. That these cartoons are not available in a pristine and remastered collection today (although you can find them in public domain collections). In the meantime, check out this wonderful tribute to the Fleischer Studio Popeye run by the Calma brothers of Canada. There's a nice collection of posters and stills, even streaming video cartoon samples (Real format). There's also a tidy explanation of the very messy rights issue that has held up any official video release of these cinema classics.

Movie Poster Decollage

2006-02-25T14:25:00.000-06:00

A decollage is the opposite of a collage. Instead of adding bits and pieces of images onto another image as artists do in a collage, in a decollage, the artist cuts, rips, tears and removes bits and pieces of an image (preferably handbills pasted atop other handbills pasted on even more handbills on a wall) to expose other images and textures that lay beneath it, creating accidental and unexpected juxtapositions, connections and compositions. Some call it action painting without the painting. Wikipedia entry here. The most renown decollagist was Italian Mimmo Rotella, who died earlier this year. Here's an excellent gallery of movie poster decollage, most of the posters of a late '50s and '60s vintage.

French Mag Covers

2006-02-25T09:44:00.000-06:00

A very grand collection of French film periodical covers. There's quite a bit of them here. Go here to an index and links to their galleries. Genre fans will like the Midi-Minuit Fantastique gallery (of course, you know that Midi-Minuit Fantastique was the first serious magazine devoted to fantastic cinema, right?). Euro-trash devotees can get their rocks off at the Sex Star System ("Le Magazine du Cinema Erotique") gallery. Bookmark it now! Found through Agence Eureka via Flickhead.

Speaking of French periodicals, I've just found that the grandaddy of French movie magazines, Cahiers du Cinema has been translating some of its online articles into English (as well as Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and, soon, Arabic). Great for non-Francophones, especially for those of us whose high school French is as weak as American tea.

In My Arms

2006-02-15T22:42:00.000-06:00

It's such a common image and cliche in movie poster art, particularly in those older posters that pushed a pulpier brand of cinema, that it has become practically invisible (or, more properly,unnoticiable, at least to my dim eye). But not just in the movie posters, but in the films themselves; also, comics and pulp magazines. What horror film before 1960 didn't have its monster carry, in outstretched arms, a screaming or unconscious ingenue? It's so common, it's laughable. The image also carries a certain erotic frisson, of course: the bare outstretched leg, the arched back, the jutting bosom, the exposed throat. And from there it turns into fetish; and what is fetishism but a peculiar kind of obsessiveness. And the true obsessive always builds a webpage about his or her obsession (in this day and age). And here we have In My Arms, which catalogues every sort of image of a woman carried by either man, monster or beast. Enjoy, if you want.