I have only received a couple comments from the actual people who make some of the uranium packed motion pictures I review here at the Cafe. One memorable one was a nice comment by Marco Werba who did the score for Dario Argento’s Giallo (a film I liked actually) and just the other day I got two comments from some of the people involved with the Ron Ormond film The Monster and the Stripper (aka The Exotic Ones)which I reviewed here last summer. Not only are the comments from people directly involved in the project but Ron Ormond’s son Tim, who played Timmy in the film, supplied us with loads of great trivia around the film and its makers. He seems like a real nice guy with a sense of old fashioned southern hospitality that the world needs more of. Thanks Tim for these great anecdotes. Also is a short comment from Diane Jordon who played one of the dancer’s in the film. I actually caught her in a screen capture for my post. It is posted here and she is the dancer to the left. Ormond’s films are not for everybody but I liked Monster and the Stripper. Good campy fun and you can tell the people are having fun making it. Posts coming eventually on Please Don’t Touch me and If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do. Both Diane and Tim are looking for their friend and co-star in the film Georgette Dante. I posted a picture of Georgette, who did great inb the film, next to the one of Diane. If you have any clue I will try to forward a message to Tim or Diane though I do not have their email. I will figure it out.  For now lets check out their comments and some new screen captures. Thanks Tim and Diane.

See the rest of The Monster and the Stripper with comments from Tim Ormond himself right here >>

Finally got around to updating my links to an old audio post that I got a comment on earlier today and therefore some motivation. That  post is gets lots of hits still and a regular comment here and there. That is my posts with MP3 samples for the Texas metal band Dead Horse. There are Rapidshare links on the site for the complete albums Peaceful Death and Pretty Flowers and Horsecore. Click the image below to get to that post:

PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!

1962/Director: Ray Milland/Writers: John Morton, Jay Simms

Cast: Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchel, Joan Freeman, Richard Bakalyan, Rex Holman

I know I’ve really liked a movie when later I am replaying the film in my head. Sometimes I imagine myself in the film and what I would have done in certain situations. Usually I handle these situations much better than the film’s original characters did of course. Or I may imagine myself overseeing a remake of the film that, while employing modern technologies, remains true to the original concept. Such is the case with the Ray Milland well directed low-budget doomsday film Panic in Year Zero! Certainly there are flaws to the film if you want to sit back and pick it apart but over all the film works well as a cold war period vision of how an everyday suburban family out for a weekend of tranquil fishing and camping has to deal with the sudden reality of a nuclear war in their backyard.

The capable actor Milland, even in schlocky fare like Frogs or The Thing with Two Heads, handles the directing chores well here. The film is a 1962 AIP low budget feature and it could have fared worse. But Milland’s pacing moves the story along with out it ever getting too bogged down. It does get bogged down of course here and there but I feel that is more an issue with the film’s budget than with its direction or acting. All of the devastation is alluded to and we never see any of the brutal horrors of the devastation an atomic bomb being dropped on LA would cause. Milland plays honest, hardworking everyday citizen Harry Baldwin who is heading out for some fishing in the Sierras with his family. His wife Ann (Jean Hagen) rouses their two grumpy teenagers, Karen and Rick (played by a pre-beach party Frankie Avalon) up at the crack of dawn to get the trip under way. In no time the action begins as LA lights up behind them and they stand in disbelief as the hugest mushroom cloud ever forms over what was once Los Angeles.

MORE PANIC IN YEAR ZERO! HERE >>

I went set and me up one of these new fangled Tumblr photo blog sites to help me share some of the images I have saved on my computer and disks over the last few years. Not really sure how the site works other than I get to post all sorts of sleazy pictures and have it all pass off as high art or something there. I  have tons of images stored away in the form of movie posters and VHS covers, comic book art, movie and rock-n-roll images and who knows what the hell else. Of course I am pandering the obligatory girlie stuff since that is what gets the attention of folks and I am not adverse to gawking at pictures of lovely women in provocative situations. I am still a bit burned out with doing movie reviews and that phase will pass but lately I am just not up to it really. Life issues have my concentration compromised. But there is tons of stuff on the back burner and it will be coming out eventually. For now expect a few posts of eye candy with the barest of text to explain what is going on. If you want to check out my Tumblr.com stuff click on the image above or find the link  button in the menagerie that is my sidebar.

Sadly Jerry Lewis’s film work is typically derided in this day and age. He is lampooned and mocked for the most part and his over all fine output of films from the late 50’s and into the late 60’s is dismissed as the works of a egomaniac with lots of studio clout. This is unfortunate since many of his films made for Paramount Pictures, which he also directed and wrote (usually with script partner Bill Richmond) and sometimes produced, were pretty decent movies. I prefer this period of his films to the buddy films he made with Dean Martin and am willing to concede that by the 70’s his films were becoming unwatachable. The Errand Boy was made in 1961 and is a curious little film really. The film looks and feels more like a French or Italian film of the same time period. This is true not only of the surreal nature of the story but of the crisp b/w photography by W. Wallace Kelley who worked as cinematographer on many of Lewis’s films of the period as well as doing visual effects for films like Vertigo and The War of the Worlds.

Lewis plays the nobody Morty S. Tashman who is promoted, so to speak, from dong odd jobs on the studio lot to being an errand for for the studio moguls of Paramutual Films. The bigwigs actually want to use Morty as a spy to see were revenues are going but the film actually drops this plot rather quickly and the story becomes and series of short vignettes that have no real connection to one another. Morty remains alone through out the film and there are no romantic interests or character conflicts other than the scenes between Morty and his boss. The film ends with Morty, a lost soul basically, becoming a Hollywood star through a series of goof ups and film makers seeing his idiocy as gifted genius. Lots of irreverent jabs at the film industry and at Lewis himself in the movie. My wife and I really loved one short sequence where Morty interacts with a hand puppet. The scene reminds me of something you would be more likely to see in a Fellini film. I liked it so much I a made a clip of it using Sony Vegas and up loaded it to my Viddler account. If you hate Jerry Lewis this film will not change your mind in any way. But if you like his more well known films like The Nutty Professor or The Ladies Man you should be able to enjoy this strange little movie from an over looked filmmaker and comedian.

SEE THE LITTLE CLOWN SEQUENCE FROM THE ERRAND BOY HERE >>

As a follow up to my last post I did find a file at Megalupload for the new Robert Crumb comic book called The Book of Genesis Illustrated. I broke the file up into three parts and put it up at my Rapidshare site. Those links are posted below and you can see some sample pages if you open the ‘More’ tag. I did not do the scans and left the credit page for Jojo the scanner. The book is a wonder to behold and anyone a little familiar with the Book of Genesis will see that Crumb kept pretty true to the story though he did take some graphic liberties with the illustrations. Not that that offends me. I am not a Christian but I do not loathe or detest the religion and find there to be many beautiful metaphors and ideas in the Bible. Of course there are some carnal and violent moments in the book as well and Crumb does not winch in his depictions of these events. A great comic book and the links are here. Of course if I were in the states I would go out and buy the book and recommend that you buy it as well. But it is impossible to get the book in China and I cannot afford the murderously high import shipping and handling charges China latches on places like Amazon. The S&H would probably be double the price of the book and the chances of it being stolen along the way are fairly high. So I snagged it for free and unless you are afraid of the wrath of Jehovah then you can do the same.  However you do it just check out this artistic marvel that took four years to complete  from the truly gifted Robert Crumb.

GET RAPIDSHARE LINKS AND VIEW 12 SAMPLE PAGES FROM ROBERT CRUMB’S BOOK OF GENESIS HERE >>

Most people are probably more aware of the excellent 1995 Robert Crumb documentary by Crumb’s friend and bandmate Terry Zwigoff. That is a film and I was lucky enough to get to see it in one of Seattle’s little art house cinema’s back when I lived there. Less well known but easier to watch than Zwigoff’s often depressing exploration of Crumb’s dissatisfaction with American culture (he is moving to France with wife Aline Kominsky in the film which he considers a nation “slightly less evil than America”) is the one hour documentary produced by the BBC’s Arena Films. Crumb wrote the script for Confessions and the film is full of historical footage and cynical insights but is also a lighter look at the cartoon legend. Like Zwigoff’s film Confessions explores Crumb’s dubious acceptance of his role as a comic book icon and looks at some of the minutiae of his daily life with Aline on a farm. If you’re a fan of the guy’s work then this is a documentary you will want to see. After I moved away from buying and reading the super hero stuff by Marvel decades ago it was the natural progression of events to get into the stuff by Crumb and his peers. I cannot go on enough about how the guy’s work thrills me in terms of his technique and his writing style. His most recent contribution to illustrated stories is a verse for verse comic book rendering of the book of Genesis which is causing a stir amongst religious fundamentalists for its adult themed interpretation of the Biblical book. He spent four years on the project and I have yet to see it but am trying to find a version of it online.  A fascinating personality and talented artist.

SEE THE COMPLETE BBC CONFESSIONS OF ROBERT CRUMB HERE >>