An Evening of Arthouse “Horror”: The Company of Wolves and Cemetary Man

The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984): Last year, in my post about Hooper’s The Funhouse, I talked about how the horror shelf at the video store was a site of fantasy for me — I couldn’t see the movies in question, but I liked to imagine what they might be like. I recall seeing the jacket to Company of Wolves just once, at a store we didn’t go to much, but that had an amazing selection. It was in a bin near the checkout lane that I can only assume was for holding recently returned movies not yet re-shelved. The jacket prominently featured a man whose mouth was open unnaturally wide from which was protruding the open snout of a wolf (this same image appears much smaller on the poster to the left) while Little Red Riding Hood looked on, not cowering in fright, but mildly non-plussed. I was terrified. The back of the jacket offered some unrelated but equally disturbing wolf-people imagery, and I gazed on in horror until my mother noticed what I was looking at and admonished me.

The experience of the box — easily the most frightening piece of horror art I’d seen up to that point — stuck with me for years, though I couldn’t recall the name of the film. A few years ago, I was reading a book on British horror, and stumbled across a picture. Since knowing is half the battle, I promptly found a copy, and it quickly became one of my favorite movies.

One of the things that attracted me to Wolves so much on viewing it as an adult was how much it succeeds in the vein that I feel Labyrinth (and many movies of its ilk) fails. Namely, it problematizes the fantasies that underpin the coming of age story to the point where the wonders of childhood seem alien and frightening without rendering the change itself cuddly and charming. Here, George Lucas isn’t involved to insult the intelligence of his audience, and the seductions of the powerful figure don’t end with a happy return to family and the status quo. In this case, adolescence isn’t dismissed, nor is it celebrated as such, but rather painted as necessary though somewhat fraught with danger.

The Company of Wolves is based on an Angela Carter story from famous her collection of feminist re-tellings of fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber (she also co-wrote the screenplay to this film, along with Jordan) . This is, as you might imagine, a version of Little Red Riding Hood… but with the predatory possibilities of the Big Bad Wolf sexualized, and with lots of doubt cast on the veracity of the implicit warnings of the story, and on the motives of those who would choose to tell such stories. Carter was rather vocal about the influence of Jaromil Jires’s 1970 surrealist film Valerie and her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu), which involves a young girl’s allegorized sexual awakening in the context of folk legend and the supernatural — the parish priest (who might also be her father) is a Nosferatu-esque vampire, etc. Valerie and the film version of Wolves speak to each other in frankly exciting ways: Wolves is not a re-make of Valerie, so much as a radical re-envisioning. They would make for a fine double feature, but for how squeamish the sexuality of Valerie makes some viewers. Not wanting to risk alienating my guests, I’ll let that one lie for now.

This one is also one of the few places I can think of where David Warner (who plays our protagonist’s father) isn’t the center of a Machiavellian scheme, and where Angela Lansbury, arguably, is.

Here’s a trailer for your further consideration:

as well as:

Cemetary Man (Dellamorte Dellamore) (Michele Soavi, 1994):

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) has a problem. It’s not that the dead come back to life in the cemetary that he is the caretaker of (though they do). Rather, he is bored and lonely. Nothing ever happens in the cemetary; his only companion is Nagi, a loyal and devoted imbecile who is his resident gravedigger. Francesco wants nothing more than get some respect from the town that employs him and maybe to find something like love.

And so begins this existential comedy/romance, with zombies. Or, rather, this sexy splatter-horror film with a viable intellect. Or… Cemetary Man is hard to easily classify. In the right circles, it’s regarded as one of the finest horror movies made to date; in others as a pretentious, nonsensical mess.  It doesn’t help that its American release was bungled first in the theater (a release two years after its moment of European critical success, a campy poster and ad campaign, an opening on six screens nationally) and then on DVD (it didn’t come out on disc until 2006, and now has fallen out of print). It took me ages after having it recommended to see it (an unfortunate comparison in tone to Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive turned me off), but even ten minutes into when I finally did get around to it, I kicked myself awfully (figuratively!) hard for having avoided it.

Nonetheless, it (and the comic book, Dylan Dog, that its source novel’s author also writes) is seen as a viable cultural production in a broader sense, with no less than Martin Scorsese hailing the film as one of the best of the 1990s, and Umberto Eco saying of the comic “I can read the Bible, Homer or Dylan Dog for days on end without ever feeling bored.” This one’s worth your time.

For symmetry’s sake, here’s a trailer for this one too:

An Evening of Films by Jeunet & Caro – The City of Lost Children & The Bunker of the Last Gunshots

The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1995): Long before Jean-Pierre Jeunet had his American mainstream success with Amélie, and even before his venture into Hollywood filmmaking with Alien Resurrection, Jeunet was known for making dark, ideosyncratic French science fiction movies with his collaborator, cartoonist Marc Caro.

Following the reasonable international success of 1991’s Delicatessen, a blackly comic post-apocalyptic film about cannibalism, circus clowns, and family life under pressure (and which garnered for the duo, among other things, a ringing endorsement from Terry Gilliam), they set their sights on an even more ambitious, and somewhat less comic final product. The result was this film, which generated glowing international  reviews and developed something of a cult following (as well as a Playstation tie-in game) here in the US.

The film presents a strange night-time world — seedy, wet, filled with rusting Modern machinery, the unnamed City is a hyper-stylized mix of the Dickensian metropolis, and the bad part of town from film noir. A sinister cult preaches that through blindness, sin can be purged. A gang of elementary-aged children run a successful pickpocketing ring. Desolate opium-ridden ringmasters live out their lives in run-down trailers. And, somewhere out in the water, an oil rig has been transformed into the lair of a mad scientist who tries to steal the dreams of kidnapped children… Much of this is background texture or prelude; the main action of the plot comes from this, but is more than the sum of the setting and visuals.

There’s plenty to go on and on about — Jean-Paul Gauthier’s costumes, Ron Perlman’s monosyllabic performance in French, Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score — but I’ll let you watch for yourself.

City of Lost Children works so well because of how fluidly its many parts are able to work together, both at the level of its contributors and at the level of its influences.

as well as:

The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (Le Bunker de la Dernière Rafale) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1981):

Not nearly so well known as the other productions of Jeunet & Caro, this short relies almost exclusively on its visuals. Its dedication to recreating the stylized visuals of a ’20s UFA production almost anticipates the work of Guy Maddin some ten years later, but to a much different effect: here, Jeunet & Caro are interested in a claustrophobic element that the open (though soundstaged) vistas in Maddin’s work do not seem to take on at all.

In the world that this short investigates, a war rages on (or perhaps no longer does at all) in the world outside a monolithic bunker. The soldiers left inside — all shaved bald, many sporting nasty facial scars — are getting stir-crazy, and are plotting Machiavellian schemes, or else letting their latent sadism leak out unchecked. In the midst of this, a short circuit starts a countdown clock that no-one has seen before. Is this the work of saboteurs? Is there a spy in their midst? The paranoia runs high, and all parties involved scramble to put their own plots in motion before the countdown reaches zero…

An Evening Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Burton’s BATMAN

The summer of 1989 saw the release of Batman, Tim Burton’s radical big-screen re-imagining of the character. It was the film that began the summer blockbuster branding/super-liscensing phenomenon that we now take for granted; the film that put “franchise” in an entertainment context.  Batman is the father of the superhero film-as-genre that is most often discussed as a product of the post-9/11 moment; nearly all of the genre’s stylistic and thematic hallmarks can be traced right back to its feet. For my dollar, it remains the finest articulation of that set of tropes, at least in part because it doesn’t take itself altogether seriously, and because it handles its beats with a naive charm that later by-the-numbers articulations can’t hope to capture (Ben Affleck in Daredevil, anyone?)

This said, I’m extraordinarily biased, by my own admission. I was seven in the summer of 1989. After finishing first grade, I had my tonsils and adenoids taken out, a surgery that while quick in terms of hospital time, debilitated me for a week or so. A comic book store had opened earlier that summer in my town, and my purchases, mainly of Detective and Justice League were driven by my ardent, newfound interest in Batman (My purchase of JLA 124, the first comic I picked out for myself, was my first from that store, but far from my last). I read the few comics I had over and over. Following my recovery, my family went on vacation to a state park in Ohio. And there…  Batman was in full force. The local grocery store had a mural in progress of the black-costumed Batman swinging in on a rope. The novelty shop that catered to the nearby university announced on its marquee that it was THE spot to but Bat-goods. The kid in the cabin next-door to ours had seen the movie, and we looked through my then still nascent collection of Batman comics with a fervor that made us quick friends.

And somewhere in there was the catch:  Batman was rated PG-13, and I was in no uncertain terms forbidden from seeing it. It consumed my waking thoughts that summer, and that fall. I transferred schools between first and second grade, and while a few of my classmates came with me, I was largely in new territory. I was emotionally young for my age, and was strange enough that I was an easy target for the derision of my classmates. Consequently, for the next several years as this increased, I drifted even further into the primary colored world that comic books (and the Beatles) offered to me. This, understandably, didn’t at all lessen my desire to watch  Batman. All the other kids had seen it. In my mind, if I saw it too, maybe I’d fit in better. I obsessed over film ratings, and looked at the movie advertisements each day in the paper, anticipating the discussed forthcoming sequel.

By the time I was finally allowed to see the object of my fascination (if memory serves, the same weekend as the LA riots over the Rodney King verdict), I had consumed every piece of Batmaniana I could get my hands on. I read the novelization, had collected the whole of the 123-card set of Topps cards featuring stills from the movie (except “Haunting Memory”, which I’ve still yet to find), and paractically memorized the Batman Souvenir Magazine, which was chock full of behind the scenes anecdotes and photos, and a brief but mesmerizing section on the collection of the world’s foremost collector of Batman merchandise. The Batman action figures that I had all looked like Keaton (I preferred the one where he was blue and grey, like the comic book, while still looking like he did in the movie). The brief vogue for superhero movies of similar aesthetics couldn’t have been aimed better than at me, and I devoured Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, the Flash TV show, and The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. I was about as primed as I could be.

The movie, nonetheless, managed to live entirely up to my hopes. Batman swooped (the stills of the early rooftop scene where he descends, cape fully splayed, his chest symbol illuminated, didn’t do the scene justice), the Batmobile roared, The Joker leered, everything was there as described but even moreso. i was troubled that there were scenes missing (the ragamuffin asking “Is it Halloween?” in the alley, the kids playing Batman dress-up at the story’s close, Bruce Wayne rescuing Vikki on horseback) that I knew so well from the cards or novelization, but that was easy to overlook. Michael Keaton was as much, as authenticly Batman as Adam West was, who I’d watched daily, and I couldn’t have been happier.

I got to see Batman Returns in the theater, which was fun, but I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as Batman itself. I dutifuly saw each of the subsequent sequels as soon as they appeared, but they too were scarcely able to hold my excitement like their proginator. I had a poster from Nintendo Power (Though I didn’t have a Nintendo) advertising the  Batman tie-in game hanging on the wall of my room through all of junior high and high school.

In the summer after high school, a nearby video stoare went out of business. I spent $200 (more money than I had) and bought hundreds of videos, the beginnings of the Mike Q Memorial Movie Library that exists today. For whatever reason, I’d not seen Batman since that first ecstatic time, and the novelty of owning it was too great not to give it a whirl. To my delight, it was just as much fun as I’d recalled. It hadn’t spoiled for me in the slightest. If anything, it had gotten better. I got more of the jokes, I was dazzled again by the visuals, and I was able to put to bed once and for all that the ending of Metropolis (a great high school favorite of mine that I’d first heard of all those years ago in the Batman Souvenir Magazine) was quoted for Burton’s conclusion almost verbatim (Alex Proyas’s The Crow pulls the same trick, incidentally).

I’ve still seen the movie only a handful of times, which surprises me to think about. I’ll watch it whenever I catch it on TV, but I don’t watch much television anymore, lowering those chances substantially. A few years ago, when I was the best man in a friend’s wedding,  Batman ended up on TV as we were getting ready. I got so sucked in, I forgot to shave, and thus took part in the ceremony with a five o’clock shadow. I went to see Christopher Nolan’s  Batman Begins on June 23rd, which gave me a thrill (it was the earlier film’s 15th anniversary, then). Though I didn’t enjoy Begins as much as I’d hoped I might, the rush of the substitute experience was enough to make that day one of the most enjoyable in recent memory. I got the extended release of Batman from my parents (irony!) for my birthday a few years ago when it came out (the initial release of the movie was in the early days of DVD, and was light on additional features), and at least part of my birthday party that year was spent watching Batman with my friends.

I can think of few ways better to spend the night of June 23rd of this year, the 20th anniversary fo the film’s release, than to watch it again. I’ve recently aquired a projector, which changes the expereince of watching movies dramaticly from that of watching on the much smaller screen of my hand-me-down TV set. I can’t wait to see Batman, larger than life, playing out the drama I know so well on my wall.

We’ll almost certainly watch a short feature before the main event, but which one (or both) I’ll leave to the vote of my guests. Here are the contenders:

SUPER POWERS TEAM: GALACTIC GUARDIANS: “THE FEAR” (1985): By the mid ’80s, the Superfriends cartoon, mainstay of ’70s saturday morning lineups (and some of my first exposure to Batman and Robin, in reruns), was getting long in the tooth. To freshen things up, Hanna-Barbera revamped the show’s look and feel entirely for when ended up being its last season. Taking thier cue from the DC Superheroes toy line that was popular at the time, the name of the show switched to SUPER POWERS, and lesser-known DC characters such as Cyborg and Firestorm, who had action figures, appeared as regular members of the team. Alan Burnett, who would go on to be the story editor for Batman: The Animated Series, took over as story editor for the new series, and unprecedentally focused on characters and more “serious” situations from contemporary DC comics. The character designs developed by Alex Toth in the early ’70s, which had remained in play for the past 13 years or so, were discarded in favor of new ones based on the early ’80s merchandising style guide drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (which you know well if you had or have seen anything with a DC character on it from the early-to mid ’80s, or any of the recent spate of retro DC T-shirts or buttons).

Perhaps the most novel change, though, was the replacement of longtime Batman voice Olan Soule (who had been Captain Midnight in the early days of television) with Adam West.

This particular episode, written by Burnett, focuses almost exclusively on Batman and Robin (Wonder Woman also appears, though in a substantially reduced role). The Scarecrow’s fear skulls ime tgive Batman vivid hallucinations of Crime Alley, which render him almost useless. What is the dark secret of Crime Alley? And why is Professor Jonathan Crane so eager to help with the case? This episode features the first time Batman’s origin appeared on television (it’s mentioned obliquely in the first episode of West’s ‘66 tv show, but no more), and remains an even more explicit account than anything shown on the later Animated Series. Though still somewhat silly and bound by the children’s television standards of its time — you can’t make a silk purse from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon — this series, and this episode in particular, manages to be head and shoulders better than much of its ’80s kidvid competition and the prior Superfriends incarnations.

“PARTY MAN” & “BATDANCE” (1989): After being shown a rough cut of the film, sure-fire Time-Warner recording artist Prince came back a week later with almost a full record’s worth of material ready for use as its soundtrack. Though only two songs actually appear in the film, Prince’s Batman soundtrack shot up the charts in the summer of ‘89. This was somewhat deceptive; what drove sales at least in part was Danny Elfman’s stirring score, which was not present at all on the Prince record(a great disappointment to me as a youth). What the record did accomplish was a sort of market domination by Time-Warner: it had a successful movie released by its film wing, a best-selling novelization from its publishing wing, a best-selling album from its music wing, and chart-topping comic book sales from its comic book wing. Horizontal marketing, friends!

These videos by Prince, promoting songs from the record. These videos feature Prince as Gemini, a Batman/Joker hybrid (something like a late ’80s Composite Superman) that dominates the album. Prince makes a fine looking Joker, arguably more like his comic book counterpart than Nicholson. The aesthetics of these videos both match and trouble those of the film itself, sometimes verging on parody, sometimes diving right in, other times remaining rather faithful to the film’s look and feel. They are both supplementary and essential, and provide some of the missing bridge between the light, fun ’60s incarnation of the character that the movie attempted to revamp, and the more decidedly late ’80s Burtonian vision.

An Evening of Atmospheric “Horror”: The Funhouse and The Black Cat

Welcome to the Funhouse...

THE FUNHOUSE (Tobe Hooper, 1981): When I was young, I wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies. My parents were rather strict about this. I did, however, really come to like monsters, and the concept of the horror movie. To make up for this (and I undertand this wasn’t uncommon with folks of my age and circumstances), I used to roam the horror aisle of the video store, imagining what the films advertised by the graphic (in sensibility, if not gore) packaging might be like. I had some clear ideas, but these mostly, when I began actually watching horror movies, weren’t anywhere close to the reality of the genre. That’s where The Funhouse comes in. Though I don’t recall it from my youthful perusal of video jackets (in part becuase of its consistently poor advertising graphics: from its release poster to its video and DVD boxes, the movie has been burdended by some terrible and/or misleading art), it more than any other film I’ve seen captures just what I’d expected/hoped that horror movies would be like.

As a result, The Funhouse is not the best horror movie I’ve ever seen, but might be my favorite. It, for instance, is not especially frightening. It has its moments of suspense, sure, but it isn’t terrifying. But, then, I’m not usually frightened by movies. It is marred by some evident production problems. By what accounts of this movie’s production I’ve found, there were some substantial disagreements between the movie’s producers and director Tobe (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) Hooper. According to Cinefantastique (10.3), this forced the production into daily script re-writes, caused budget and shooting over-runs, and made subplots in scenes shot earlier dangle as the scenes that they anticipate were never filmed. Sounds rough, right? Dean Koontz, before his career took off, thought so too. He was given the responsibility of writing the novelization of the screenplay (under the pseudonym of Owen West), and so took the liberty of completely changing the story. Unfortunately for the film, the (unrecognizable, and much more sleazy-feeling) novelization was released months before the movie, disappointing audiences futher with the disconnect between the (popular and well received) book and the movie it was “based” on.

But the movie is better than that. For one thing, this picture captures the best essences of both the slasher/stalker pictures that were gaining popularity in the moment this film was made (Halloween and Friday the 13th being the most immediate points of comparison) and the monster movies of a previous generation. That is, there’s much more at play here than teenagers being hunted down, and also means we end up with sympathy for both the protagonists and the “monster” stalking them. The production design and cinematography are lush and mix a certain overt silliness with a shadowy atmospheric that manages to make the titular funhouse itself a character as alive as the protagonists, and as menacing as the villains.

Much of what works in this movie gets scooped up by Hooper when he revisits hisTCM five years later for Cannon, the ’80s schlock house that also made The Apple and Death Wish 3. The sexualized terror of The Funhouse’s Liz (Largo Woodruff) when she’s cornered in the labyrinthine ductwork is awfully similar to the more famous scene in TCM 2 when Stretch (Caroline Williams) is menaced at the radio station by Leatherface. Both films are likewise infused visually by what my old officemate Stefan Cieply dubbed “gothic kitsch”: an accumulation of objects of bad taste seemingly collected without irony that give the audience a palpabale sense of just how wrong the environment created by the collectors is to have stumbled upon — an element borrowed from both films by Rob Zombie in his House of 1,000 Corpses.

So that’s a lot about the movie, but not much in the way of setting up what you actually are being set up for. So: a group of four teenagers out on a double date and looking for kicks decide to spend the night in the funhouse of the travelling carnival set up on the outskirts of their sleepy town. But as they witness more than they expected, their night turns from prankish lark to terrifying fight for survival…

Here’s a trailer:

as well as:

THE BLACK CAT (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): Though a feature in its own right, this one clocks in at a few minutes over an hour. Not quite short enough to be a short, so it’s a double bill. This is the strongest second tier horror film to come out of Universal in its golden age, and may be my favorite of the bunch (though I’ll admit to not having seen Whale’s Old Dark House yet). Though the poster claims allegiance with Poe’s (public domain) story of the same title, that simply isn’t the case. Like the last few of AIP’s later Vincent Price/Roger Corman Poe pictures, the title was meant for audience draw rather than legitimate adaptation.

That said, this movie has just about every element one would want from one of its pedigree, and is more or less swiped whole by Rocky Horror to boot. A young honeymooning couple (shall we call them Brad and Janet, though they’re really named Peter and Joan?) find themselves in the strange mansion of an even stranger host (Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Karloff) who is locked in a polite but nonetheless bitter rivalry with an equally curious figure (Dr. Vitus Werdegast, played by Bela Lugosi). Poelzig’s plans seem to include our innocent young couple, and seem to be far from kosher…

As this is an evening of atmospheric “horror”, there’s little that’s too terrifying here, though there’s plenty to conceptually unsettle, and visually haunt. This is usually a film that sticks with its viewers fro quite some time. The set designs in this movie are startling creations in an expressionist/Deco mode, and go a long way towards equating that style of aesthetic severity/economy with the Satanic. Karloff’s Poelzig is dapper, gentlemanly and sinister in a way that few screen villains are, were, or have been since (and is, by some accounts, the visual genesis of Dr. Strange!). The score includes themes from Beethoven’s 7th symphony and Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos. And, as a topper, there are some rather prominant (evan central) elements of this film that are as queer as can be. How can it go wrong? For my dime, it doesn’t!

An Evening of Cult Animations of Arabian Nights: ‘The Thief and The Cobbler’ and ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER [RECOBBLED CUT] (aka Arabian Knight, Princess and the Cobbler) (1993/2007): This is one of the most striking animated films you’ve probably never heard of. It’s convoluted production circumstances (detailed briefly here, from, of all places, the film’s IMDB trivia page) partially account for why:

Originally conceived by Richard Williams as an attempt to make the greatest animated film of all time, it later became his own “reason for living.” After failing to secure funds from private investors or a studio to make the film, Williams decided to finance the film on his own, taking small jobs on television commercials or Saturday morning cartoons and using the proceeds to hire his own group of animators. The production moved in fits and starts until the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988 ) allowed Williams to make a deal with Warner Bros. to finance and distribute the film. As the production continued, however, it became obvious that Williams would not meet the 1991 release date originally set by the studio due to numerous delays, not the least of which were the director’s insistence on absolute perfection and hesitation in using storyboards–two circumstances which often resulted in whole sequences being scrapped and re-shot. With Warner Bros. nervous over the release of Disney’s Aladdin (1992), which [more than closely] resembled The Thief and the Cobbler (1993) in story, tone and style (many of the animators on the Disney feature had also worked for Richard Williams), the studio turned over completion of the film to the Completion Bond Company, which promptly fired Richard Williams and brought on animator Fred Calvert to finish the film as cheaply and quickly as possible. Calvert heavily re-edited the film and altered the story, bringing in Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals and Jonathan Winters to re-dub the lead characters. Eventually distributed by Miramax, the film was cut even further before debuting in theaters. Though bootleg copies of Richard Williams’ original work-print continue to circulate and several restoration attempts have been proposed, an official “Directors Cut” has yet to be released.

That’s necessarily compressed… There are plenty of longer accounts out there, with even more heartbreaking trivia (the first DVD release of the film was a pan & scan print of the Miramax cut, issued as a givaway in specially marked boxes of Froot Loops, for instance). We will not be watching any of the butchered officially released cuts, but instead the “recobbled cut” put together with the magic resources of the internet by fan/animator Garrett Gilchrist. This new version uses the Williams workprint as its source, both for soundtrack and sequencing, using laserdisc elements, storyboards and animation tests to fill in the gaps. I (and more than a few other folks, natch) feel the result is truly sensational… but I’ll let you judge for yourself.

as well as:

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) (1926): I saw this showing at the recent Phillips Collection “Société Anonyme” dada/surrealist exhibit. It blew my mind, and is just as breathtaking in sustained viewing as it was at my first glimpse. It was made by avante-garde German animator Lotte Reiniger, sometimes pal of German silent director Paul Wegener (Der Golem), and a member of the Weimar-era art scene in her own right.  This is one of the earliest surviving animated feature films, predating Snow White by some fifteen years. It’s silent, and it’s done in an Asian shadow-puppet style, rather than the more traditional animation on display in Thief and the Cobbler, but that’s a large part of its beauty. It also runs just over an hour, so as part of a double bill, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

with special intermission cartoon shorts:

Ub Iwerks’ Willy Whopper in “INSULTIN’ THE SULTAN” and “ALI BABA” (1934 and 1936, respectively): Ub Iwerks was Walt Disney’s right-hand man. He’s the one who animated the early Mickey Mouse shorts, he’s the one who came up with the Silly Symphonies concept, and as animation in its golden age became an easy way to make lots of money, he left Disney and started his own competing studio. After a few years and some bad breaks, he ended up back at Disney, where he continued to quietly do much of the important work behind the scenes (he was the head of the “imagineering” department, which designed and made the robots for the theme parks) as well as doing special effects work for others (he got an Academy Award nomination for his effects work on Hitchcock’s The Birds). These are a pair of short cartoons from the brief heyday of his studio. They’re more Fleischer-zany than Disney or Warners ‘toons are, but are more fun for it. It’s also worth keeping in mind that these were made during the ’30s, and as a result, aren’t especially…ah, tolerant.

An Evening Inside the Head of Vivian Stanshall

Viv Stanshall, with a ship adrift on a sea of shaving cream atop his head

Vivian Stanshall: comedian, musician, cult figure, former frontman for the infamous 1960s surrealist pop group The Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band — inspiration to the future Monty Python troupe while both groups were together on a British kids show, famous for their appearance in The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour film, frequent openers for the likes of Cream in their heyday — is generally underappreciated (even criminally so) in the US, aside from a small but ardent following. Unlike his fellow Bonzos alum Neil Innes, who has achieved some measure of fame for his (large) part in The Rutles films and records, Stanshall gets overlooked in favor of more homegrown cult weirdos, like Msrs. Zappa and Beefheart. I feel as though Stanshall’s rather tangible eccentricity deserves to let its fierce light shine out through those in my film circle! And so, True Believers, I give you…

Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980): This is the film of the record of the radio show that made Stanshall famous among the right sort of people in the UK. It seems that in the early 1970s, when hipster DJ John Peel of the BBC wanted to take vacations, he’d ring up Viv, who would play records, but also present installments of a fictitiously long-running soap opera called Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. The (central) joke of these stories was the deployment of the story so far: hopelessly byzantine, with expressionistically interconnected characters and patently ridiculous circumstances. These periodic broadcasts proved so popular that they were followed by a Stanshall record of the same title, with two solid sides of narration that both did and didn’t quite synch up with the beloved radio plays. As such things sometimes do, this turned into an offer for a film, and with Stanshall behind the typewriter, the film shambled onto the unsuspecting screen. Shot in a sort of muddy sepia black and white, the story concerns the titular Sir Henry Rawlinson (Trevor Howard), the last of the old guard, bigot prince of rotting Rawlinson End, and the family, servants and townsfolk that make up his world. It’s rapidfire, stream of conscious humor often threatens to upend itself and like its audio forerunners, piles on layer after layer of detail and eccentricity into its elaborate presentation. Long available only on poor videocassette prints, the British have recently been treated to a pristine new print on DVD, which I now share with you.

Here’s a review of the film from TVCream’s Top 100 films list:

Practically everything the genteelly unhinged Vivian Stanshall did lends itself to untold repeated scrutiny – we only just noticed the other day how his early ’90s Ruddles Real Ale adverts contain a bizarre homage to Purple Haze – and nothing of his is more dense and packed with detail than the decrepit pile and inhabitants of Rawlinson End. Translated from the LP monologues and Peel Sessions, but crucially not losing the bite of the original riotous routines, the sepia-tinted world of musty armour, itinerant staff and gin-senile gentry is there in all its incontinent majesty, with Trevor Howard topping off a fine cast as lord of the manor. The plot, such as it is, involves Patrick Magee’s attempted exorcism of the trouserless ghost of Henry’s invisible toy dog-walking brother (played by Stanshall), but that’s almost a formality amongst the dovetailing vignettes of Harry Fowler’s spying spiv, Denise Coffey’s tapeworm advice, Sir H’s personal PoW camp, etc. etc. If it has a failing, it’s that there’s too much going on – as soon as one gag has unfolded, it’s superceded by another one as the script gets seemingly bored with itself. Not that the audience is in danger of following suit – it takes an effort to keep up with the pace of invention. But it’s well worth it. Stanshall’s wistful theme song, “The Cracks Are Showing,” is a corker, too.

For the still unsold, I’ve included also a Youtube copy of the trailer (which I showed after Fabulous Stains last time):

 

to be preceded by

“One Man’s Week: Vivian Stanshall” (9 April 1975): This short film, originally shot for BBC2, spends time with the erratic Mr. Stanshall, who takes us through the high points of a week of his life some five years before the Sir Henry movie. Viv shows us his pets, gets interviewed by the BBC, goes shopping for old records, and finally ends up in a recording studio in France with his band, biG Grunt. This is a fine introduction to the man for the beginner, and a rare intimate treat for the experienced. It’s also likely I’ll show Viv’s interview on the teen-oriented talkshow Friday Night, Saturday Morning, where he’s promoting Sir Henry, and it seems the host’s only research has been the “One Week” broadcast.

I do hope you’ll join me.

An Evening with Girls That Rock Pt. 1: The Stains & The Runaways

Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981): This is another one from the “one that got away” file. Directed by record & movie producer Lou Adler (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Up in Smoke, Brewster McCloud, founder of Dunhill Records, etc.), written by Nancy Dowd (Slap Shots, Hal Ashby’s Coming Home) and Jonathan Demme (director of Silence of the Lambs, Something Wild, Stop Making Sense and Sterling Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia), and starring both a young Diane Lane (The Outsiders, Lonesome Dove) and Laura Dern (half of David Lynch’s films, Jurassic Park), as well as a host of rock musicians — Fee Waybill from The Tubes, Steve Cook & Paul Jones from The Sex Pistols, and Paul Simonon from The Clash — this punk gem was never officially released in US theaters (apparently due to cold feet from the studio).

Corinne “Third Degree” Burns (Lane) made national news when she was fired from her dead-end fast food job in her depressed Nowhere, USA hometown. In a followup interview, she mentions that she’s focusing on her rock band, The Stains — her, her sister, and their cousin (Dern). Through a series of advantageous circumstances and clever media manipulation, Corinne manages not only to score her band a slot on a small-time national tour, but to build an almost overnight fan following with their distinctive look, and their sneer that they “don’t put out.” The film is as interested in the reactions of everyone around The Stains as it is on the insecurities of the band themselves: the sleazy managers, the all-too eager fans, the egotistical rockers (both old and young) on the tour all want a piece (in one way or another) of the girls. The question, of course, becomes how carefully these seemingly-confident young girls will walk the line between not putting out, and selling out all the way.

Despite still not being commercially available in any format, The Stains has become something of a cult classic — it was a mainstay on late-night cable in the late 80s and 90s, and draws big crowds at the occasional revival showing. This one’s made a definite impression on those that have seen it — This movie’s not camp, it’s the real thing.

 

 

to be preceded by clips of:

 

The Runaways Live in Japan (c. 1977): Pre-punk grrl rockers or elaborate “sex sells” marketing trick? You decide! Well, as much as the circumstances allow, anyway. An all-girl band from L.A. that hung out (underaged) at the legendary English Disco glitter rock club in the mid-1970s, they were produced and managed by Kim Fowley — a canny publicist and talented songwriter, but by all accounts an unpleasant human being. When their first record was released in 1975, none of them were over 17 — a fact the jacket of the record proudly displayed. And what pedigree! This is the band that gave us Joan Jett (that’s her on the right) and metal queen Lita Ford (next to Jett in red). It probably won’t surprise anyone that’s read this far that the real-life Runaways were at least conceptually (though not biographically) the inspiration for The Stains.

Like so many ’70s American pop acts, though, they made a much bigger splash in Japan than they did stateside, where they were largely dismissed as a gimmick act. Promoting their second album, they recorded a live record and a concert film in Japan — just as their bassist had a nervous breakdown. We’ll be watching footage from this period (parts of the movie, as well as some Japanese live TV appearances) that show off just how rockin’ The Runaways are (I’m a fan, I guess you can tell).

An Evening of Vintage Experimental Animated Science Fiction: Fantastic Planet b/w “Mars and Beyond”

FANTASTIC PLANET (La Planète Sauvage) (1973): Those who stuck around some after KISS last time saw the first minute or so of this one, and a trailer, and thus know some of what to expect; others may remember the trailer when I showed it before TRON in the spring. Regardless, the rather deadpan preview doesn’t quite prepare the first-time viewer for this one. This is the first full-length film from French science fiction animator René Laloux (who would go on to make the films Time Masters and Light Years before dying a few years ago), in collaboration with French cartoonist Roland Topor (the French Ralph Steadman, collaborator with Laloux on “The Snails,” also shown last time, as well as the force behind the infamous Marquis). Fantastic Planet is often called a political allegory (about the Russians invading Czechoslavakia in 1968), though it’s best remembered for its surreal, almost hallucinatory visuals and attention to zoological detail, as well as its both ethereal and break-ready soundtrack. This is one of the few science fiction films out there that lives up to the high bar set by its print counterparts.

Here’s how Anchor Bay’s release from a few years ago describes the film:

“Winner of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix Award, Fantastic Planet is an allegorical tale about the struggle for freedom of a race of humanoid creatures called Oms. The Oms live on the far away planet of Ygam, ruled by a society of blue-skinned giants called Draags, who keep the Oms as domesticated pets for their children. But when [an Om named Terr] manages to escape with a Draag knowledge device, he unites a society of wild Oms to use the knowledge and revolt against their exploitative treatment.”

to be preceded by:

“Mars and Beyond” (1957): Originally aired in 1957 as part of the quasi-educational “Man in Space” series on the Disneyland TV show (later the Wonderful World of Disney), this segment contains both serious “educational” content, and more wheimiscal slapstick material. Of particular interest is that the program is almost entirely (and quite lushly!) animated — in styles ranging from the comical, to deco-abstract, to pulp-magazine glossy, and most stops in between. This one’s a real treat. Directed by Ward Kimball, the Chuck Jones of the Disney studio. Watch for the cameo from everyone’s favorite Nazi rocket scientist himself, Werner von Braun!

Jaz Williams’ Birthday in absentia: An Evening of Movies KISS Fans Hate

KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK (1978): I don’t think much of KISS (the cartoony ’70s glitter-metal band) myself, but I’m pretty keen on this one. What do you do when you are a successful pop band? You make a movie. KISS did it (unlike many) not at the early peak of their fame, but after the pinball game and the Marvel comics that cashed in on them. And, rather than doing it artfully, or on the big screen, they chose to do a live-action made for TV movie produced by Hanna-Barbera — they of Scooby Doo and Space Ghost fame. What you end up with, then, is something like the Scooby-Doo-Meets-Celebrity specials of the ’70s, without Scooby and the gang — a product that the target KISS demographic hated, and that the band has struggled to suppress ever since (A DVD release of this a few years ago was quickly sued out of print). This one’s got it all — evil robot duplicates, KISS as superheroes, mad scientists, ChromaKey special effects, an amusement park haunted house… It pushes almost all my buttons. If only it could have been T.Rex Meets the Phantom of the Park!

to be preceded by highlights from

The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976): (Description taken from http://members.aol.com/ShockCin/paul.html): “First broadcast on October 29, 1976, this hour-long TV-special is so excruciatingly ill-conceived that it’s difficult to avert your eyes from the multi-career carnage. Thanks to ’60s and ’70s TV-gigs like BEWITCHED and THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES, the ‘flamboyant’ (nudge nudge) Paul Lynde became one of the biggest, cruelest, barely-closeted faces in Hollywood. And at the height of his comedic fame, some coked-up ABC exec greenlighted this holiday fiasco, which is loaded with guest stars and (in the rudest in-joke of all) begins with perpetual-asshole Lynde in a Santa suit! [...] The slim excuse for a plot has Margaret Hamilton as Paul’s homonculus housekeeper, who takes him to her sister (Billie Hayes)’s creepy manor on Halloween night. Suddenly Hamilton transforms into her old WIZARD OF OZ Wicked Witch of the West costume, while sis is H.R. Pufnstuf’s Witchiepoo! They hope to hire Lynde as a “spokeshuman” who’ll convince the world that witches are cool, in exchange for three wishes.” The guests in this debacle include Tim Conway (of the Carol Burnett Show), Florence Henderson (from The Brady Bunch), Donny and Marie Osmond, Billy Barty, and, of course, KISS.

An Evening in Honor of My Kid Sister: Danger: Diabolik

DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968): After the international success of Bond and Batman in the mid-1960s, the rest of the world decided to join in the fun. Mario Bava (Planet of Terror, Black Sabbath) entered the fray by adapting the Italian comic book mainstay Diabolik to the screen. Diabolik is a masked supercriminal who uses his brains, gadgetry and vast financial resources to undermine an unnamed European country. This one’s shot and edited in a way that evokes comics themselves, rather unlike more “static” period adaptations like Barbarella.

to be preceded by

“Body Movin’” (1998), The Beastie Boys video which is (rather self-conciously) based on Diabolik