Got these files in as PDFs and edited them using my trusty Fastsone Image Editor. Not really sure what the title would translate as. I think it is ‘Young Animal’ but it is Japanese and I speak and read zip thereof. There is a website connected to these two magazines at http://www.younganimal.com and I checked it out and it is not, I promise, any sort of bestiality site. If it had any such connection, even remotely, the site or the books would not be here. The images below are not nude images and fall not a type of photography form from Japan called gravure. The word can refer to a printing process or, more in line with the ‘research’ done for this post,  to a type of modeling in Japan where the models pose in usually non-nude shoots. The style ranges in its scope from modeling cosmetic products and fashion wear to borderline porn. The models have the appearance of being nymphets at best. This sort of modeling has spread across across Asia as the standard practically for product promotion. The recurring themes seems to be a coquettish nature mixed with the Japanese penchant for cosplay scenarios. The magazines have the initial appearance of being aimed at teenage girl readers and in fact a certain percentage of the readership are young girls reading the fashion tips and looking for models to imitate. But there seems to be no secret that the bulk of the readership is made of slimy old guys, er, who like looking at girls, um, in bikinis on a ski slope. The lack of nudity keeps the magazine out of the pornography category technically but there is something even more titillating about the non-nude images. One more reason why Japan is the greatest culture in all of Asia. All the girls in the magazine are over 18 as far as I can tell from the web site.

MORE ‘YOUNG ANIMALS’ HERE >>

Here are some selections from the album Teenage Mojo Workout by the surf/rock-a-billy style girl band from Tokyo called The 5,6,7,8’s. So named because they focus their sound on music from the 50’s to 80’s. The core of the band are sisters Sachiko on drums on and Yoshiko (aka Ronnie) Fujiyama on guitar and lead vocals though the girls often take turns wailing into the mic. There have been some lineup changes as far as bass goes but Akiko Yomo has filled the slot since the 1990’s. The band has a garage sound and Quentin Tarantino used them in his Kill Bill film during the House of Blue Leaves sequence. The sound is definitely raw but it is a side of Japanese music I welcome over the sappy J-Pop stuff you hear all over Asia these days. American culture, with good reason, has been more noticable in Japan than any other Asian culture. This is for better or worse and there is a strong fascination with good ol’ Yankee kitsch in Japan that is noticeably absent from countries like China. Their album covers are clever take offs of old 60’s covers by girl bands like the Ronnettes. The songs are usually sung in Japanese but sometimes in a pretty rough English that you will either love or hate. Part of the band’s underground success is their appearance and attitudes. They stay in character most of the time off stage and they sport teenage-deb type tattoos. The gals all typically wear  groovy retro hairdos and rolled up blue jeans or  sleek leather outfits. And hell they’re just cool Japanese chicks so that is a super plus no matter how crumby their songs are. Not for everyone’s taste and that is why there are here at The Uranium Café. More 60′s style Japanese pop music coming in the future.

TEENAGE MOJO WORKOUT

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HARLEM SHUFFLE

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GREEN ONIONS

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HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND SAVE AUDIO/VISUAL FILES FROM THE URANIUM CAFE:
If you want to download and save an audio (or even video) file this is the easiest way to do it:
1) Use Mozilla Firefox
2) Install any number of add-ons that capture Flash Media. I use Fast Video Download. It is straight forward and easy.
3) Play the file let it buffer a bit then click on FVD in your status bar and select the file then rename it after the download completes.

SANTO AND BLUE DEMON vs. DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN (Santo y Blue Demon vs Drácula y el Hombre Lobo)

1973/ Director: Miguel M. Delgado/Writer: Alfredo Salazar

Cast: Santo, Blue Demon, Aldo Monti, Augustín Martínez Solares, Nubia Martí, María Eugenia San Martín, Wally Barron

A while back I got in a bunch of Santo and general Mexican horror films from Cinemageddon. I used up much of my precious ratio there to appropriate about a couple dozen films only to find out later more than half were not even dubbed or subtitled. I learned to read the little review section better after this. My ratio still has not recovered and I am sort of burned out with that place and how hard it is to maintain a good ratio. But they do have a great selection of Santos films and I even went back and got a few titles from the first batch over again and was careful to get them dubbed or subbed this time. One of the films I got in was the really great Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman. Blue Demon is Santo’s wrestling buddy and sometimes opponent in the ring, but always friend and equal in crime fighting and saving the world outside the ring. Both actors (who go by their wrestling names) are in their fifties in this 1973 film directed by Miguel M. Delgado and written by luchadora and Mexican horror veteren Alfredo Salazar. The version I have looks nice. It is shot in color but for some reason the later color Santo adventures look cheesier than the atmospheric ones from the 60’s. The old sets were reminiscent of early Universal horror films. Well with this film the fascination with Universal monsters has returned as Santo and Blue Demon face off against none other than Count Dracula (Aldo Monti who battled Santo in Santo and the Treasure of Dracula ) himself and his nefarious sidekick the Wolfman (Augustín Martínez Solares who also played the beast in Night of the Bloody Apes). Delgado would go on to direct the Santo and Blue Demon vs Frankenstein but I have not seen that one yet and not even sure if I have it. If I don’t I will have to get it (damn my CG ratio) and hope that it is as fun as this one was.

MORE SANTO AND BLUE DEMON WRESTLING WITH DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN HERE >>

HORRORS OF MALFORMED MENK (Kyôfu Kikei Ningen)

1969/Director: Teruo Ishii/Writers: Teruo Ishii, Masahiro Kakefuda

Cast: Teruo Yoshida, Yukie Kagawa, Teruko Yumi, Mitsuko Aoi

I have been delving back into Japanese cinema of the 60’s and 70’s and focusing on the Pinky Violence variety as well as the b/w noir style films by people like Seijun Suzuki. I have a few films here by director Teru Iishi but had yet to get around to watching one all the way through. I mean I tend to skim over these things for quality assurance purposes before burning them a disk then deleting the files from my hard-drive. I think I have Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf, Female Yakuza Tale, Blind Woman’s curse and the focus of this review The Horrors of Malformed Men. I will have to confess something here. I often have no clue as to the history of many of these before I download or that the above films were even all by the same director until I began doing some research for this review. I may download a film simply because I like the title or the poster art and screen captures. I will skim over the review to get some idea of when it was made and what other work the director was involved with then decide whether to use up my bandwidth and hard-drive space with the download. Usually any Japanese film made from the late 50’t to mid 70’s has a better than 50/50 chance of getting downloaded in the first place. So when I saw the review snippets about the Horrors of Malformed Men and how it was banned in its own country for some forty years and never released on VHS I was thoroughly enticed.  My first thought was how freaky could the film be in order to be banned in Japan of all places. Well the lure of a film made in 1969 Japan being banned for so long is something I personally cannot resist but there is actually a slight catch to the banned aspect of this film.

MORE OF THE HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN HERE >>

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo)

1966/Director: Sergio Leone/Writers: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone

Cast/ Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito

I was living in San Antonio Texas where my dad was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base when The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was released. We all packed ourselves in his Valiant station wagon and went to the Valley-Hi Drive to see the film and it left an impression on me that was to linger for the rest of my life. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a film that falls into a very narrow category for me. Films that I feel are not only great films but films worthy of deeper introspection and multiple viewings and each viewing seems as fresh as the first one. It is a film I am not even comfortable commenting on here. There are a few others as well that would make me shudder to do a post here at my humble site about: Apocalypse Now, The Last Picture Show, Dr. Zhivago, Lord Jim and even Blade Runner and other films of the same caliber that have left such a lasting impact on me that I simply feel unworthy to expound on them in any fashion. And is another reason and that is that films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Apocalypse Now have been critiqued and reviewed to death on the net. I usually try to select more obscure and little viewed films of an often trashier variety here at the Café to pander. Also I try not to be too pretentious with my comments and speculations. I will leave all that to the experts. Certainly many films deserve deeper philosophical reflection but I am not the sort of person to publicly delve into all that sort of thing. In simple terms I like to proceed with my foot as much out of my mouth as possible. But when I watch a film like this one I am usually transported to another world all together. So with that as an introduction let’s take a look at this western masterpiece by maestro Sergio Leone.

MORE OF THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY HERE >>

GLI AMORI DI ERCOLE (THE LOVES OF HERCULES or HERCULES vs THE HYDRA)

1960/Director: Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia/Writers: Sandro Continenza, Luciano Doria

Cast: Mickey Hargitay, Jayne Mansfield, Massimo Serato, René Dary, Moira Orfei, Gil Vidal

AKA:
Hercules and the Hydra
Les amours d’Hercule (France)

This film has the dubious honor of having remained in my draft folder the longest of any post draft ever. I would have to double check the date but I am sure it goes back to June or July. In fact the post was the last post I had made before my site was hacked back then and a three week nightmare began. I still have the PDFs and pics in a folder on my hard drive and tried to put the post back together and after I had finished this and a couple other posts lost during the hacker period I sort of forgot about them. The others have been completed and this is the last of the old posts that have been locked up in my draft folder since summer time. Another problem here is that I cannot find the movie file. It is burned on a DVD disc somewhere but I have so many I gave up looking for it for now. Typically I would prefer to fast forward through a film I have not seen in a while to refresh my memory before reviewing but in this case that will not happen. I will refer to the PDF files I made of reviews and my memory of the film, since it did leave and impression. In fact, I want to see it again as it is a fine camp classic and Mickey Hargitay’s beardless Hercules is one of the more unique Peplum/Sword and Sandal performances in the history of the genre. Couple that wit the fact that his co-star in the film is none other than Mrs. Mickey Hargitay herself, Janyne Mansfield, and how can a person go wrong if his inclination is to spend a lazy night on the sofa watching some fine Italian made cheese.

MORE OF MICKEY HARGITAY AND JAYNE MANSFIELD IN THE LOVES OF HERCULES HERE >>

Hot on the heels of my first rare Robert Fripp interview is this second tasty little morsel. Fripp is young and intense here, looking like he did from the time of his Exposure album. He is in good spirits as he chats with the two fanboy hosts with enviable connections at the Boffomondo Show. Not sure what that is but it looks like some type of public access thing back when some of those shows were cool.  There is some info on the show at the link I posted. Seems these guys (sort of a couple Wayne’s World type  lads) really dug prog rock (as I do) and somehow got some big names to appear on their LA based cable show. Other than Fripp some people they had include Adrian Bellew, John Wetton, Phil Collins, and fusion guitarist Al Di Meola. and  I can’t remember where I got this but it looks like it may have come from Youtube as it was in four short sections which I joined together and uploaded to my Viddler account. Lots of talk about King Crimson and its break up after the Red album.  Not much more to say about this one except that it is not to be missed by Fripp and King Crimson devotees. Will have my Fripp article back up soon I hope after I get the audio file hosting sorted out. Enjoy.

ROBERT FRIPP INTERVIEW 02 HERE >>