• Jeff Trent: Modern women. They’ve been like that all down through the ages. Especially in a spot like this.
• Eros: You do not need guns.
  Jeff Trent: Maybe we think we do.
• Paula Trent: …A flying saucer? You mean the kind from up there?
  Jeff Trent: Yeah, either that or its counterpart.
• Paula Trent: Now, don’t you worry. The saucers are up there. The graveyard is out there. But I’ll be locked up safely in there.
• Air Force Captain: Visits? That would indicate visitors.

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This is a band that started off as a B-Movie concept that never got off the ground during the late 80’s. The original songs were to a be some sort of soundtrack I guess but instead they became the music Groovie Mann and Buzz McCoy would use to launch the concept band with the same name as the failed film: My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. The music is inspired by all sorts of old B-Movies and Z-Movies of the 60’s and 70’s and uses well placed samples from those films to create a really interesting effect. They are not the only band to do this of course. Ministry does it very well and in a similar style and Rob Zombie uses cult film samples more sparingly in his much heavier B-Movie style metal music. But TKK does it up in the coolest fashion of all because “cool” and “hip” are a couple of the themes they draw on to create their world of jaded hedonism run amok. Their songs explore the sleazy, decadent side of life without really getting nihilistic about it. There is always something slightly comical or satirical even when they are singing or sampling about drug overdoses, muder conspiracies or bargaining with Satan. Read the rest of this entry »

MARTIN

1978/Director: George A. Romero/Writer: George A. Romero

Cast: John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, Christine Forrest, Elyane Nadeau, Tom Savini(also special effects and make up), Sara Venable, Francine Middleton, Roger Caine, George A. Romero

I have to honestly admit that I have never been a big fan of the films made by Romero outside his zombie masterpieces, numbering five totally now. Some of the stuff I’ve watched such as Monkey Shine, Dark Half and his contribution to Two Evil Eyes just did not seem all that great. They were watchable movies but nothing I really felt like seeing again. I did like some of the Creepshow segments, but overall was not thrilled. Still Romero remains a great filmmaker, in my opinion based, on a handful of films including his aforementioned zombie epics. In the mid 70’s Romero and producer-partner Richard Rubenstein and Rubenstein’s Laurel Films owed a lot of money that needed to paid back to keep the business going. Romero did not make any films for three years and did projects such as making sports documentaries until the debt owed by Laurel was settled. His last two films, in 1973, were both sort of odd little pieces I never had much liking for. One was Season of the Witch and the other, slightly better, The Crazies, about people basically becoming “zombies” after becoming exposed to toxic waste. It was not a bad film. Season of the Witch was rather chaotic in my opinion. The cinematography and sound were very poor and distracting. So by the time 1976 rolled around Romero was ready to do something new and exciting. He wanted to begin Dawn of the Dead but needed more money to make sure the film was the rotting epic he envisioned.

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FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

1958/Director: Arthur Crabtree /Screenplay: Herbert J. Leder /

Cast: Marshall Thompson, Kim Parker, Kyanaston Reeves, Stanley Maxted, Terence Kilburn, Gil Winfield

This is a great little disembodied brain movie full of cold war paranoia and strange science gone awry angst. I could not figure out why these supposedly Canadian and American actors all had weird British or Irish sounding accents until I read that it was part of a series of British movies filmed during the late 50’s that were supposed to be set in the States. It is on the Criterion Collection which as I understand tries to find and transfer the best quality prints possible. Well, the film looks great and is a barrel of fun. Plenty of unintentional laughs and some really disgusting looking brains that crawl like inch worms using their spinal cords. The story takes place on and around an American military base somewhere in western Canada. The characters are typical 50’s sci-fi stereotypes… Read the rest of this entry »

Jimmy Page was asked by neighbor Michael Winner to score his 1982’s Death Wish II and Page accepted the project, being as Led Zeppelin was now history following the death of drummer John Bonham. 1974’s original Death Wish was scored by jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock and is a good movie score. Page does not try to top Hancock and instead does a rock/blues solo album with a few tracks of incidental music. The album was recorded in his SOL studios and features a collection of musician friends. The album is a strange piece of music overall but not in a negative way. Page uses ample Roland guitar synthesizers as well as actual synths. Reputedly some of the score was revisions of Page’s Lucifer Rising soundtrack which was never used for the Kenneth Anger film due to personal conflicts. I have that soundtrack and there are similarities in pieces like Hotel Rats and Photostats and A Shadow in the City, but I would say not really all that much. The incidental music is droning and eerie while the rock parts are straight ahead jams and classic Page riffing. The album went nowhere as far as the charts are concerned and only Page aficionados seem to even know the album was ever made.

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IMPRINT

2006/Director: Takashi Miike /Writers: Mike Garris, Daisuke Tengan

Cast: Billy Drago, Youki Kudoh, Michie Itô, Toshie Negishi

I really liked the movie Audition by Miike and have seen a handful of his other works such as Visitor Q, Gozu, Ichi the Killer and something called Izu I think. I guess I am getting a feel of what his work is about and it seems to be primarily shock style cinema. That is, jolt the audience with freaky and offensive imagery with an emphasis on anything taboo and deviant and blasphemous. No subtlty. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that in my book. I guess nothing in his movies is any worse than some of the scenes from Saving Private Ryan in a way. I am an above average fan of splatter and gore cinema from way back. The problem I have with Miike’s films is the same problem I have with some one like lets say Dario Argento. I just have no friggin’ clue as to what the movie is supposed to be about. Audition and Visitor Q seem to have some effective linear narrative going on but the other movies I’ve seen just seem to abandon plot for well photographed but ultimately pointless scenes designed to simply disgust or offend the viewer. The movie itself becomes nothing but a vehicle for these disturbing images rather than the other way around. The plot and story simply become secondary to the shock scenes.

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AUDITION

1999/ Director: Takashi Miike/ Writer: Takashi Miike

Cast: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Miyuki Matsuda, Renji Ishibashi, Jun Junimura

I saw this a couple times in Seattle, once at the small Grande Illusions alone and once with my movie mate Matt and he just loved it. I can’t believe I had a copy of this movie here and turned it back to the shop because the subtitles did not work in English. Later I would realize that I simply did not know how to use the Chinese remote and that the subtitles most likely did work fine. I have some of Miike’s other films on DVD here like Visitor Q and Gozu and Ichi the Killer and some other Yakuza style adventure films that appear to be a long series, but I have not found a new copy of Audition. Damn me! Damn me to hell! Needless to say it is one great movie, a real stunner. It’s the kind of movie that if you were a girl and your boyfriend sat around watching it over and over you may want to question the direction the relationship is headed. It is hard for me to give a thorough review being as I have not seen the film in years. I prefer to critique a film within a day or so of the viewing, or a week at the most, while the images are still fresh and vivid. Suffice to say a fan of shock cinema will not be disappointed at all. But shock cinema (and Miike is a shock film maker, there is no doubt) is a little misleading here in this case as the movie is a finely crafted and well acted and, in my humble opinion, the best of Miike’s work that I have seen so far.

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I am a huge enthusiast of film noir style films and especially those of the 40’s and 50’s. I decided to finally begin this category dedicated to noir films. I have seen plenty and have a decent DVD collection to review. I might add that for me film noir is not limited to tough talking detective films, though those movies represent the core of what film noir is noted for, but can include boxing films such as The Set Up and Requiem for a Heavy Weight, and in a stretch even westerns such as High Noon or Gregory Peck’s The Gunfighter. Some newer films such as the excellent Body Heat and L.A. Confidential draw from the film noir tradition but are not really film noir to me for one big reason: they are not in sensational black and white. Color just eleviates the despair and suffering to a tolerable point. The soul is to so dark and stained any longer and you cannot get those great smoke rings against the black background any longer. Lets begin this category with triple doses of the underbelly of life, beginning with pretty boy Tyrone Power’s experiment in carny angst:

Nightmare Alley

1947/Director: Edmund Goulding/Screenplay: Jules Furthman , William Lindsay Gresham (novel)

Cast: Tyrone Power , Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith

From what I understand Tyrone Power bought the rights to Lindsay Gresham’s novel for something like $60,000 and wanted it to be a vehicle to shed his romantic lead image and establish him as a legitimate actor. The studios at first felt the material was unfilmable but Powers and prospective director Edmund Goulding were persistent and the movie was filmed. Powers plays a traveling sideshow carnie on the look out for his big break who he finds in the sideshow fortune teller. They team up after her alcoholic husband or boyfriend drinks a bottle of wood grain alcohol and do a mind reading act that soon grows too small for Powers. He is shotgun married to the strongman’s (Mike Mazurki) naïve but sexy daughter played convincingly by pretty Collen Gray.

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Born Thomas Jones Woodward, who later under advise from manager Gordon Mills changed his name to Tom Jones, was born in Wales and had a rough time getting his raunchy, sexy voice heard over the British airwaves in his early career. Before Gordon Mills, while being managed by Joe Meeks, Jones sang and fronted the group Tony Scott and the Senators and they had a sound that was influenced more by early American rock bands than anything else. The senators would became the Playboys and then the Squires before Mills would captain him into a solo career that made his name a household word by the late sixties. I remember watching the This Is Tom Jones TV show when I was a wee lad with my mom and he had all these strange stars from the time like Joel Gray and Petula Clark on there doing the variety stuff they all did back then. He always opened the show with his break through hot song It’s Not Unusual and the gals in the audience just went nuts. In the late 60’s he recorded less and performed more and his shows in Las Vegas were famous for having hotel keys and panties thrown up on the stage. He made friends with Elvis while there and the friendship lasted until the King’s death. Read the rest of this entry »