A while back I uploaded and posted the entire album for the obscure but great rock opera album Flash Fearless vs the Zorg Women Parts 5 & 6 which featured people like Alice Cooper, John Entwistle, Elkie Brooks and Jim Dandy. The album was a spoof of sorts of the old Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon comic strips with an overt sexual theme running through it. A Uranium Café reader, Keith Firman, was generous enough to take the time and energy to share the comic book that came with some releases of the album. The Chrysalis releases I had owned in a couple different version never had a comic book on in the inside. The scans were pretty good but some of the text is a little blurry as I had to resize the files a bit. Sorry. It was the best I could do. The panels where the text is super tiny actually are showing the song lyrics. Should not effect any story continuity.This thing is really hard to come across and I have not yet seen scans of it online. If you are not familiar with the album check it out free here at the Café and maybe the Rapidshare on the post link is still good if you want to download all of it. Again, thanks to Uraniumphile Keith for these. I do not get many comments here at the Café but what I lack in quantity I make up for in quality from my dedicated readers.

SEE THE ENTIRE FLASH FEARLESS COMIC BOOK HERE >>

TODAY’S MIND NUMBING FEATURE:

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES

ENTER HERE TO SEE ASTRO ZOMBIES IN ITS ENTIRETY ALONG WITH TRAILER >>

THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER

1968/Director: Ron Ormond/Writer: Ron Ormond

Cast: Ron Ormond, Tim Ormond, Peggy Anne Price, Sleepy LaBeef, Georgette Dante, Ronald Drake,  Jack Horton,  Pauletta Leeman, Harris Martin

AKA: THE EXOTIC ONES

As hard as it may be for the uninitiated neophyte to conceive there is a class of “cult”* film makers whose technical skill and dubious vision are on a lower rung of the film making ladder than even Ed Wood, Jr.. In fact the title “worst filmmaker of all time” has never really been suitable for Ed Wood, Jr. since there are moments in his films that show some degree of craftsmanship. Of course I am talking apples and oranges here, okay. Tim Burton made an embellished biopic of Wood’s life and career of the technical nature Wood himself could never imagine and I could not imagine myself trying to argue that Woods is a better film maker than Burton. But better does not mean more fun in a kooky sense of course.  Burton could make a film that is an homage to bad film making but could never make a film as genuinely bad as Jailbait . Why you ask? Okay, maybe you didn’t ask but pretend you did. Because when Ed Wood, Jr. made Jail Bait or Plan 9 from Outer Space he was trying to make a good film and fell short of the mark. It is the failing to reach the lofty goals of a mediocre film maker that makes Plan 9 so wonderful. I still find most of Wood’s catalog pretty deserving of being watched over when there is nothing else to do with life. I can dust the house or watch Bride of the Monster again. Not a tough decision for me folks.

But in an even more remote and frozen orbit from the world of conventional film making are a band of true outsiders that churned out what are often called Z-Films. If B-Movies refer to films made outside the normal system of film production, distribution and politics of Hollywood on super low budgets with less known actors then Z-Films represent a world even outside the rules and codes of B-Movies and their arcane creators and unknown casts constitute a veritable sub-culture of film making. I doubt anyone sets out to make a “Grade Z Classic” the way Ted V. Mikels did with The Astro -Zombies or Al Adamson did with Dracula vs. Frankenstein but somewhere events beyond reasonable human control (such as the collective lack of any film making talent on the part of the entire cast and crew) come into play. And yet there is something genuinely entertaining about the films of folks like Ray Dennis Steckler, aka Cash Flagg, and even Herschell Gordon Lewis that can provide a certain portion of the population a sound evening of pseudo-surreal film watching. One could argue that this same said portion of the population is in desperate need of shock therapy or even lobotomies but that brings the subject matter a little too close to home to make me feel comfortable. So lets move on and discuss a truly odd film I had the masochistic pleasure of watching recently called The Monster and the Stripper, aka The Exotic Ones by the eccentric Ron Ormond.

* I do not like the term cult movie much lately as it is overused these days but is still most applicable at times. It has become a way to sell unsalable DVDs is all and the term has lost some of the categorical usefulness it once possessed. I long ago removed it as a category description here at the Cafe.

MORE OF RON ORMOND’S THE MONSTER AND THE STRIPPER HERE >>

I first picked up a CD by Houston thrash metal band Dead Horse back in the early nineties, right before I left  scorching hot San Antonio Texas for the drizzly overcast of Seattle, where I would spend my last ten years in America before coming here to China. At the time I bought 1991′s Peaceful Death and Pretty Flowers I really knew little of the band except for what a heavy metal Mexican gal I worked with said about them and I felt her praise was biased. At the time I really did not know much about metal music except for the early albums by Metallica and I certainly was not one at that time in life to buy Indie records. That is something that would change in me while in Seattle. The truth of the matter is I simply did not like the CD much and it went into a box and would come out a few years later after I had developed a taste for metal and I really appreciated it more than I could have during my time in San Antonio. Coming out of the same grueling and brutal Texas metal bar scene that spawned more successful acts like Pantera  Dead Horse did the type of touring in places that literally separate the men from the boys. After some seven years of touring and building up a devoted following they released around 1990 what would really be their only two albums except for some EPs that never drew the attention of big record labels.

MORE TEXAS STYLE THRASH METAL WITH DEAD HORSE INCLUDING MP3 SAMPLES >>

Lots of personnel changes over the years for this prog rock band initially influenced by bands like King Crimson and early Genesis. I am not sure who is who in the picture above (expect for Dario Argento in the front of the color picture of course) and if anyone can help clear it up I would appreciate it. There are lots of pictures online but most did not help to sort out the mystery for me. I will try to figure it it out by the time I do another post on them as I have drafts on Profundo Rosso, Suspiria and Tenebre, with complete scores, queued up. More information can be found at this official band site. This is the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack recorded by Goblin for the European version of the film, Zombi, and does not included any incidental music or stock film scores that other versions contain. A very listenable album of chilling music and one I have been using lately while surfing or reading blogs. The scores certainly helped some of the films they were made for, most definitely Dario Argento’s often meandering, chaotic works. In exchange for Argento’s assistance in the production of Dawn of the Dead George Romero allowed the more explicit European version to feature the Goblin score more predominantly. Goblin often collaborated with Aregento and did some of their best scores for his horror and giallo films. To make things a little easier on myself the songs are grouped together in small batches of about four rather than one link per song. Enjoy and more Goblin coming soon.

MORE DARK PROG ROCK WITH GOBLIN AND THE COMPLETE ZOMBI SOUNDTRACK >>

JOHN PAUL JONES’ SOUNDTRACK TO

SCREAM FOR HELP

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I got this album actually when it was first released. I heard it played on the midnight album  show of one of the local radio stations in San Antonio. It was released on the Chrysalis label-a sort of light green label with a red butterfly off to one side-which was also the label that backed Jethro Tull and Robin Trower. I understand that there was a comic book that was released with some versions of the album but not with mine and I could not find scans of such a thing online but I believe that this is a fact and not a myth. There was a small tour that did not last long as it did not feature any of the big stars that collaborated on the album, including Elkie Brooks, John Entwistle and Keith Moon, James Dewar (of Robin Trower), Jim Dandy and of course the inimitable Alice Cooper. It is a mini rock opera and the songs are all pretty good 70′s style rock and roll. The album all but vanished into obscurity but was recently re-released to accompany the Alice Cooper boxed set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper, which contains his two songs from the album. If anyone has scans of the comic book I would love to see them. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Some kind reader hooked me-and therefore you, the dedicated reader- up with some scans of the comic book that came with some versions of the original album. Here is the link to the best scans of the Flash Fearless comic you’re ever going to find.

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