BLAZING SAND reviewed

BLAZING SAND

Brennender Sand

1960, Something Weird Video

85m 40s, $10 DVD-R, $9.99 download

At first glance, this dubbed desert adventure might not look too different than any other arid jeeps-and-camels eyesore you might have found playing in a 3:00am slot on one of your local television stations back in the early 1970s. However, there is real historical significance here: directed by Raphael Nussbaum, BLAZING SAND was the first post-war co-production between West Germany and Israel. Think of that: less than fifteen years after the Holocaust, these countries had found a way to move beyond their horrible shared past and embark on hopes toward a more fortunate shared future. Yet, with the passing of time, it has come to be remembered primarily as the acting debut of Daliah Lavi - credited onscreen as "Daliah Lawie."

She plays Dina, a snobbish arrogant Israeli beauty who dances in a nightclub frequented by her "theatrical" friends, four of whom - including her boyfriend, Marco - recently crossed the desert into forbidden, heavily guarded Jordan, where they went to the ancient city of Citra intending to loot an ancient crypt of its fabled scrolls, the originals of actual Biblical texts in the hand of King Solomon. When only one of the men returns, empty-handed, he is shot on sight by Israeli border guards and dies in hospital - but not before telling Dima that Marco is alive and that the scrolls she was hoping would fund their getaway to a better life are in his possession. Dina resolves to mount a rescue mission and approaches Saddik, a slick would-be playboy type of means, and manages to seduce him into financing the expedition without really giving him anything other than empty promises in return. She also turns the charm on local war hero David Rodin (Abraham Eisenberg, a kind of junior league Brad Harris), whose heart belongs to the earnest farm girl Hannah (Gila Almagor); he rejects Dina but accepts her invitation to lead the group, which is filled out by Saddik, a klutzy college boy named Mike (at one point, he tries to start a campfire by rubbing two sticks together when there is a blazing torch right beside him), and Julius (Gert Gunther Hoffmann), the local school's professor of archaeology. They form quite a motley group and comparisons to Doc Savage's "Fabulous Five" would not be far amiss. Posing as a Bedoin caravan, with Dina riding a donkey and cradling a blanketed doll, they manage to reach their destination - "All Shots Have Been Taken On the Original Scene of Action" the credits tell us - but the trouble is in getting out.

For a film with such a weighty historical distinction, and a storyline encompassing so much struggle and tragedy, the overall feeling it projects is surprisingly whimsical, and the dubbing lends a comic dimension that one can't be sure was always present in the original. (While investigating the interior of Cintra's Temple of the High Priests, with everyone examining solid walls for possible secret passages, the torch-bearing Julius suddenly finds a huge hole in one wall and cries "I think I've found the entrance!" Also, Dina is variously addressed during the film as Tina, Nina and even Lina!) In some ways the real storyline is Dina's character arc from a cynical, superior, manipulative person to someone willing to take the ultimate responsibility for others and a common cause. 

Making her debut at age 20, Lavi is somewhat more full-figured here than the lean, lithe-figured star she soon became, and she's made to wear a procession of unflattering outfits, even a singularly ugly bikini. Statuesque and sultry she may be, but she doesn't quite have a firm grip on acting yet - she has a hard time making eye contact with her co-stars - but, especially once the action moves from the general kibbutz setting to the desert, we can see her gaining ease and even some command in relation to the camera.

Considering how lightweight the film really is, it builds to a surprisingly solemn pay-off that philosophizes that maybe  people, like things, belong where God has put them. Though made at a time well before the downbeat endings that would gain favor in Britain and America by the end of the decade, it leaves us with many more characters dead than alive. In its tragic closing shots, BLAZING SAND seems to propose that life is a dangerous game and that mere survival is nothing to sneeze at.
 
This film is an important reminder that Something Weird Video's eye for the oddities of cinema is all-embracing and not strictly limited to grindhouse fare. BLAZING SANDS is not a great film and doesn't clearly adhere to any proper genre that we recognize here; however, it is an international co-production of some historical note, and marks the arrival of an important new star. While the presentation here is hardly definitive, it serves as a valuable bookmark that could well encourage a more definitive restoration someday.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

 

Joe Sarno's THE WALL OF FLESH reviewed

THE WALL OF FLESH

1968, Something Weird Video

88 minutes
$10 DVD-R, $9.99 download

The last of three features filmed back-to-back in the New York City loft apartment of Morris Kaplan (the others were ALL THE SINS OF SODOM and VIBRATIONS - now available in a 2K Blu-ray DVD set from Film Movement),  THE WALL OF FLESH is still more of a minimalist production, one that harkens back to earlier Sarno films such as SIN IN THE SUBURBS (1964, VW 24:23) and RED ROSES OF PASSION (1966, VW 85:15) in that it concerns repressed individuals who join cults, giving themselves over to a collective mentality, as a means of unblocking themselves sexually. 

The film begins almost mid-sentence as married couple Art (Dan Machuen) and Vera Coleman (Maria Lease) are enjoying a post-meal conversation with Vera's office co-worker Nancy Horner (Nina Forster, uncredited) and her sister Lauri (Lita Coleman), an "aspiring" anthropologist recently returned from South America, where she studied the living and mating habits of a primitive native tribe. When she mentions that some of the natives' sexual problems could only be cured by group rituals, Art responds with interest while Vera seems repelled - a response that makes more sense after the guests' departure, when Vera is shown responding coldly and without pleasure to her husband's attempts at lovemaking. Her problem is somehow rooted in her resentment of Art's decision to stay at home to pursue a writing career (for which she secretly doesn't believe he has any talent), while she has been forced into the workaday world to support him.

Maria Lease and Dan Machuen.

In a flurry of appropriately claustrophobic scenes that alternate between only three small, cramped rooms - and which could well be fewer with minor redressing (Art and Vera's living room and bedroom, and the bedroom of the single-room apartment shared by the two sisters) - Vera quickly reaches the point where she can no longer bear Art's touch, even when she guiltily invites it; Nancy - a recovering nymphomaniac who's had to change her ways after a rough illegal abortion - becomes obsessed with Art; and the bisexual Lauri betrays her sister's interest by making a play for Art herself, which he more readily accepts. Lauri also becomes a confidante of Vera, whom she directs to the private therapy sessions of her former lover Jennifer Taggart (Cherie Winters), which turn out to be group sex sessions that addict those participating, not only to group intimacy but also to Jennifer's own dominant persona. Lauri's introductory presence at Vera's early sessions prevents her from making her own intended departure from the city, a knowing gesture of self-sacrifice that sucks her back into a lifestyle and romance she had deliberately fled as far as the jungles of South America.

This film was assembled with conspicuously lesser means than its predecessors. As mentioned, the sets are severely limited, so much so that Lauri has to be shown working on her anthropology thesis in windy public places; when she goes to enter Vera in Jennifer's classes, there is no waiting room set, so she is shown leaning against a wall and reading a magazine in tight close-up, a composition into which Jennifer somehow enters. It frankly doesn't sound like it would work, but the characters and the drama of their situations holds the viewer and the story flows without disruption. Sarno's script, though hampered by the scenic limitations imposed, is innovative for the ways it surprises the familiar viewer's expectations. The outsider here (Lauri) is atypical of such figures in his other work; though she does interfere in a marriage, the sensitive Art's strength of character (a particularly well-played facet of Machuen's performance) doesn't permit her to seduce him until Vera is, to some degree, already lost to him. Lauri doesn't cause the usual divisiveness and destruction common to Sarno's intruder characters but rather sacrifices herself, in order to guide other people, about whom she cares, to a place where they find themselves more fulfilled.

Dan Machuen and Marianne Prevost.

Also remarkable about THE WALL OF FLESH is that Sarno opts not to take any editorial position on the interpersonal dynamics taking place, a problem he subverts by introducing the Colemans' marriage as troubled from the beginning, and by having Art - an unusual Sarno male, in that he's more sensitive than most of the women - repeatedly voice his feeling that he would rather lose Vera than have her live out her life with him unhappily. Sarno typically avoids passing any kind of judgement on his characters as their story is in progress, leaving the viewer as involved in their process as the characters themselves, and reserves any glimpse of judgment for those points where his stories end. This often leads to more conservative conclusions than the bold subject matter or the intensity with which it's pursued might lead us to expect; in this case, however, the film concludes as suddenly and abruptly as it begins, leaving the characters' respective quests for happiness not only ongoing, but, for the viewer, an open question. This seems to me a breakthrough in American erotic cinema, asserting the film's stake in matters of philosophy as well as the sexual, its execution favoring both over the merely erotic.

It should be mentioned in this context that THE WALL OF FLESH was possibly the first of Sarno's American films to break through certain earlier boundaries; there is more oral-erotic contact (not oral-genital) between the actors, pubic hair is shown, and two of the female characters are shown pleasuring themselves (as in the Swedish-made INGA), though not explicitly. The introduction of masturbation as a topic, and the dramatization of women taking responsibility for their own pleasure and fulfillment, would continue in Sarno's imminent series of "vibrator" films, which began with VIBRATIONS but would become more focused in his Florida-made films ODD TRIANGLE and THE LAYOUT [reviewed VW 91:10].

Something Weird's DVD-R presents the film in full frame 1.33:1 with a bold mono track. (The slight widening of the image seen in my video grabs are an aberration of VLC and do not reflect the actual look of the disc.) The feature is accompanied by a theatrical trailer that includes a glimpse of an uncharacteristically joyous sexual encounter between the Colemans that, curiously, does not appear in SWV's print but is mentioned by Art to Lauri as a positive initial result of Vera's therapy. Whether it was cut prior to release or simply missing from this rare surviving print is not presently known.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Something Weird Video's BACKWOODS DOUBLE FEATURE Reviewed

Welcome to Something Weird Video Week here on Video WatchBlog! Since the passing of SWV founder Mike Vraney in January 2014, the company responsible for finding, restoring and releasing literally hundreds of once-lost exploitation films has continued under the direction of Mike's widow, artist Lisa Petrucci.  For the last few years, while maintaining the status quo at SWV, Lisa has guided the company into some fruitful new alliances, resulting in such exciting releases as Arrow Video's SHOCK AND GORE/HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS FEAST sets,  Film Movement's Joseph W. Sarno Retrospect Series releases (most recently ALL THE SINS OF SODOM/VIBRATIONS), and the recent AGFA Blu-ray release of THE ZODIAC KILLER (1971), while the company has continued on with business-as-usual.

Something Weird's back catalogue is so richly diverse that they often obscured some of their own releases back in the days when they were releasing new titles by the dozens. And now, focusing as people tend to do on what's new, it seems to me that there's a real danger of taking this abundance of rare product (more than 2,000 titles!) for granted. So I've decided to devote this week to a celebration of Mike and Lisa's great achievement. I'm going to go back and pick out a handful of interesting, worthwhile titles that were overlooked by VIDEO WATCHDOG's print coverage over the years - their Image Entertainment DVD titles as well as their own DVD-Rs/instant downloads. Everything I'm going to write about here over the next several days very much warrants rediscovery - and it's just a fraction of the bounty awaiting you over at www.somethingweird.com.

BACKWOODS DOUBLE FEATURE:
COMMON LAW WIFE, 1963, 76m
JENNIE: WIFE/CHILD, 1968, 82m
MOONSHINE LOVE, 1970, 61m
Something Weird/Image Entertainment, DVD $14.98

"Over 3 1/2 hours of Hillbilly Hokum!"

This 2003 DVD release from Something Weird Video / Image Entertainment is billed as a double feature but actually contains three films: Eric Sayers' COMMON LAW WIFE (1963, which contains the only footage from an unreleased early Larry Buchanan film); JENNIE, WIFE/CHILD (1968), directed by James Landis of THE SADIST and THE FLESH EATERS fame; and - hidden away in the extras - MOONSHINE LOVE (1969), a film by the unknown Lester Williams which is conspicuously more explicit than either of the two main features, and also went by such demure alternate titles as SOD SISTERS and HEAD FOR THE HILLS.

COMMON LAW WIFE is a little-known but classic example of a compromised feature film, reworked for commercial and exploitative purposes. It began as an early film by Texas-based maverick filmmaker Larry Buchanan (THE NAKED WITCH, MARS NEEDS WOMEN, GOODBYE NORMA JEAN) entitled SWAMP ROSE, which had starred the elderly George Edgely and middle-aged Anne MacAdams as Texas oil magnate Shugfoot Rainey and his live-in mistress Linda, whom the millionaire abruptly dumps in favor of New Orleans stripper Baby Doll, played by an attractive young lead named Lacey Kelly. This then compels Linda to assert her hold over Uncle Shug by legally confirming herself as his common law wife. The film had been shot in color back in 1960 but was never released.

The footage was acquired by producer-distributor Michael A. Ripps, best-remembered for acquiring a slimly-released independent item called BAYOU and transforming it into POOR WHITE TRASH, and later sexing-up Roger Corman's THE INTRUDER and pulling it into overdue profit by retitling it I HATE YOUR GUTS. Ripps hired local amateur filmmaker Eric Sayers to make Buchanan's film (apparently focused on the middle-aged angst angle) racier and more exploitable. He proceeded to reshoot large chunks of it - adding an incestuous angle (Baby Doll was now the oil baron's niece, one he sexually corrupted in her childhood), an affair with the town's local sheriff (he's married to Baby Doll's sister), a rape at the hands of a moonshiner, and more. Sayers had nothing of Buchanan's ability, so COMMON LAW WIFE "crosses the line" like crazy, and the old and new footage cuts back-and-forth with absolutely no sense of rhythm - but as an example of what can sometimes happen to a film to make it "more commercial," it's a fascinating diversion for cinephiles. You see, Sayers was able to retain the services of some erstwhile cast members like Anne MacAdams and George Edgely, but Lacey Kelly was no longer available for reshoots. Therefore, the all-important role of "Baby Doll" is played in the final cut, with Buchanan's color footage dumbed-down to grainy black-and-white, by two completely different women. Ms. Kelly's unnamed replacement is disguised in some early shots with sunglasses and a series of preposterous hats, but it's ultimately a fact impossible to cover up.

For all that, I must confess that this impossible-to-conceal fact did nevertheless get by me; while the shots of Baby Doll flouncing around in obvious disguise did seem suspicious, I never cottoned to the fact that the film actually had the gall to present me with two different Baby Dolls in tight facial closeup till I listened to Buchanan's audio commentary, moderated by Nathaniel Thompson. Once I did notice, it was obvious - and I have little doubt that drive-in audiences never caught on. At any rate, someone ought to double-bill this one with Buñuel's THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE someday.

Though I'm unaware of any tales of post-production woe having been passed down to us about James Landis' JENNIE, WIFE/CHILD, it carries some tell-tale markings of a director losing control of his project. Furthermore, the IMDb tells us that two different directors were involved and that neither of them is credited; the other being Robert Carl Cohen - listed only as being "in charge of production." Made in 1968, and therefore more generous in terms of nudity than its companion feature, it's a sometimes startlingly well-made picture, a kind of hillbilly retelling of Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. Middle-aged Albert Peckingpaw (Jack Lester) owns a farm and is married to the much-younger Jennie (Beverly Lundsford), who finds herself stifling from loneliness in the domestic cage her husband has made for her. She becomes attracted to the farmhand, the unlikely-named Mario Dingle (Jack Leader), who's stupid but smitten and tender toward her, and lust leads them to commit acts that draw her husband's ire and compel them to still worse acts.  As with Landis' earlier film, the cult favorite THE SADIST (1965), JENNIE: WIFE/CHILD was photographed in black-and-white by Hungarian immigrant Vilmos Zsigmond, who went on to become one of the most justly celebrated cameramen in the world (DELIVERANCE, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, BLOW OUT, THE DEER HUNTER) so it looks gorgeous throughout, and it also features a score by Davie Allen and the Arrows (THE WILD ANGELS) as well as their surprise on-screen participation. What is odd about the film as it finally stands is that much of the score feels ill-suited to the American Gothic film Landis made, and the dramatic moods he painstakingly creates are abruptly cut-off with ironic intertitle cards that cast the overall picture into a bizarre Brechtian tense, underscoring the distance between the viewer and the unfolding tragedy. I liked what I saw, but I strongly suspect there is a behind-the-scenes story here, waiting to be told, and a much better film that never saw the light of day. Visually, the film belongs very much in the same category as BABY DOLL and SPIDER BABY:

The bonus third feature in the set, Lester Williams' MOONSHINE LOVE, is a fairly amateurish film that opens with a credit sequence emphasizing its professionalism with an array of behind-the-scenes production shots. It's about a bank heist (staged in a Woolworth's parking lot, no less) that goes awry, leaving the mastermind high and dry while one of the two hired perpetrators (Tim E. Lane) - the one in possession of the stolen money - not only loses it but also his memory when he takes a tumble from the escaping vehicle. He is saved by a couple of mountain women (one of them speaks with a pronounced German accent, without explanation) who live with their moonshining father in the woods, in incestuous abandon. One of the moonshiner's daughters (Lil, played by "Breedge McCoy") speaks with a pronounced German accent, for no more apparent reason than she was agreeable to doing nudity and being manhandled. Neither of the daughters are what you'd call pretty, but Genie Palmer, the probably pseudonymous actress who plays Jeannie, gifts the production with some surprisingly candid eroticism in a scene where, without a hint of self-consciousness or performing to camera, she treats a carrot as a sex toy - and really seems in intimate communication with it. She also has an extended love-making scene with Lane that, while technically softcore, conjures real heat and seems no less than genuine.

This "Backwoods" release is almost 14 years old now, but the disc was very well-mastered and, aside from some unavoidable scratches and splices, the picture quality upscales extremely well on Blu-ray players. (Larry Buchanan is clearly impressed by what he sees in the course of his commentary.) The other extras are limited to an amusing extended trailer for COMMON LAW WIFE that follows the example of Hitchcock's trailer for PSYCHO, with an unnamed announcer telling us about this film - too shocking for him to show any scenes from the actual picture - while standing in a sleazy motel room of the sort wherein, he tells us, the film opens. (The film does no such thing, opening in a New Orleans strip club.) There's also a "gallery of roadshow exploitation art with audio oddities," about eight minutes in length, and this is also a rare release that rewards reading the chapter titles with a few laughs - even before you watch the movies.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

What Am I Going To Watch Tonight?

Those of us who share the over-acquisitive home video gene are almost certain to share another problem: the never-ending challenge of deciding what to watch. One of the great pleasures of owning a sizeable film collection is being able to act on the whim of wanting to see something, but such whims are actually rare - or at least seem so, in the shadow of an enormous archive of possible options.

Of course there are days when a new title comes into our hands on its day of release, something we've been anticipating for weeks and must watch right away... but if for some reason we don't, it's curious how quickly a new disc can begin to merge with the sheer absorbing mass of all the titles we've owned for years.

Other strange things happen once a disc is thus absorbed. When a collection soars into the thousands, David Lean suddenly stands on common ground with Edward D. Wood, Jr. - budget means nothing, epic vision means nothing, stars mean nothing, everything is reduced to the title on the spine and what resides of a film on the thumbnail of our memory. I've found that movies titles begin to lose all associative meaning when you look at more than two side-by-side; even a Blu-ray box set (and all we've spent to acquire it) begins to look strangely equal to the DVD-R we made of an old WOR broadcast and packaged inside one of our better Photoshop cover creations. Nowadays, we don't even have to be a collector to feel stonewalled by sheer variety; we experience the same thing when we're confronted with all those thumbnails on Netflix. I'm convinced that one of the major reasons for the popularity of series bingeing is that moving on to the next episode saves us from that fruitless torment of having to decide what to watch next.

Like many of you, I'm sure, I tend to give no thought whatsoever to the question of what I'm going to watch until it occurs to me that I feel like watching something. Then I turn to my memory of what I have, which is unfortunately always my first choice rather than to go to my computer and bring up the list I've actually catalogued, where I'm faced with dozens of pages of titles - black on white in Word - with no graphics to differentiate one from the other. The more you have, the worse it is. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has become so frustrated from hours of fruitless browsing that I've ended up wasting the time available for watching something and going to straight to bed - grumpy, beaten down, unentertained. 

So what can be done about this? Is there some way we might begin to recapture our rapture about the treasures we have squirrelled away? 

I think I've found the answer and it's surprisingly simple.

The secret is to pick our evening's entertainment earlier in the day and to spend that day looking forward to what we're going to see. Think about it: what this problem needs is the time to think about it. This has always been factored into the way we see movies in theaters. We have to pick a day and a time, we have to dress, to go out, and during those preliminary hours, that film is ours to dream about - to look forward, to imagine, to savor.

Your choice doesn't have to be extraordinarily careful or discerning; the plan will work whether it's a movie you already love or one you are simply curious to see. Find the disc, put it where you won't lose track of it, and think about it all day long. If it's something you've seen it before, reflect on the other times you've seen it and the pleasure it has given you. If it's something you haven't yet seen, Google it, look at production stills, read some reviews. Celebrate it. Value it. 

Turn your indecision into a hot date.



(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

   

RIP Basil Gogos (1929-2017)

I swear to you, one of my first thoughts upon awakening yesterday morning was of the first time I met Basil Gogos. It was October 1994 and I was at the Chiller Theater convention in Secaucus, NJ, helping Barbara Steele with her table when I heard that Basil Gogos was down the hall, setting up his own table. I hightailed it right over there, found him setting things out on his table and speaking with an attractive younger woman seated behind it (I later learned this was his partner, artist Linda Touby); I grabbed him by the hand and told him that I had to rush over and tell him how very much his work had enriched my life. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linda smile and look down; I still don't know if she was smiling because she was pleased to see him so appreciated or amused because she heard this from everyone meeting him for the first time.

And now I've just heard that Basil has passed away the day before yesterday, September 13, at age 88 (though some Internet sources list him some 20 years younger), in time for him to have sent me that waking thought. No cause has been reported.

Though he was not the first artist to paint a cover for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, Basil (then a veteran illustrator for men's adventure magazines) literally blazed the trail for horror and monster portraiture, single-handedly defining the glory of the painted monster magazine cover, turning images coined for exploitation into the finest of fine art - feral poses and bestial, skeletal faces splashed with all the colors of fright and passion. He began with the image of Vincent Price's Roderick Usher on the cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #9, and - incredibly - though his artwork (sometimes recycled) appeared on fewer than 45 covers in the magazine's 25-year, 191-issue run, his work arguably defined the flavor and the potential of the magazine in ways its photo-heavy, juvenile interior could only hint at. He also provided covers for other Warren Publications, including SCREEN THRILLS ILLUSTRATED and SPACEMEN, but Warren seemed to tap him to launch new ventures rather than to sustain them.  Remarkably, he had provided only 15 covers for FAMOUS MONSTERS before there was an unexplained parting of the ways that led to his being replaced by the likes of Ron Cobb, Vic Prezio, Ken Kelly and various photo covers, and even some reprises of his covers (Claude Rains' PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, GORGO) on later issues. (Discovering how rarely his work actually appeared on FM's covers, in contrast to the seismic cultural impact they had, is like realizing that Christopher Lee appears for only eight minutes in HORROR OF DRACULA.)

Upon the death of Boris Karloff in February 1969, Warren Publications wisely arranged for Gogos' return, and his elegiac portrait of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster for the cover of FM's Karloff Memorial issue (# 56) proved an instant classic. Looking back, in some ways, this cover and issue were my introduction to the mourning process and something in me, now, wants to relight its beautifully rendered candle for Basil.

The return of Gogos to the covers of FAMOUS MONSTERS was the beginning of a second and even longer streak of classic cover paintings: Jonathan Frid as DARK SHADOWS' Barnabas Collins; Fredric March as Mr. Hyde; Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray; Vincent Price in HOUSE OF WAX. But within the year, the magazine resorted to another recycling, this time of Lon Chaney's razor-toothed vampire from LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, FM's cover for #20 reformatted for #69. As fans, we patiently awaited the next Gogos cover. His last for the magazine came with an extraordinary portrait of Prudence Hyman as Hammer's THE GORGON for the cover of FM 179, in 1981. In a terrible lapse of judgement, a photograph of Arnold Schwarzeneggar from CONAN THE BARBARIAN was allowed to intrude upon and share the composition.

At the time I met Basil, he was doing covers for Steven Smith's fine new magazine MONSTERSCENE. I presented him with some copies of VIDEO WATCHDOG, and though he was later very complimentary about the content, we both had a chuckle when the first words out of his mouth were a disappointed "Oh, you do photo covers..." I have no idea what he was paid for his cover art, but - till the very last issue of VW - I always found the hardest job to be working out adequate compensation for our cover artists, because Gogos had instilled in me so much respect for that work. He was a soft-spoken, cheerful, and humble man and I wasn't prepared to insult him by making him an offer I considered to be far beneath him. His brushes had conjured so many of the contours of my young imagination; he articulated with greater skill than my young self could muster a real passion for the monsters I loved, and therefore taught me something of love and passion. His mastery of color prepared me to love Mario Bava. My favorite of all his works is his portrait of Ingrid Pitt, done for the cover of MONSTERSCENE; Ingrid was at that Chiller show too, and I know that she was deeply pleased and flattered by it. (How could she have felt otherwise, beholding the difference between a performance and a piece of iconography?) I was fortunate enough to have been standing there as she voiced her appreciation and he returned it by saying it was his great honor to work with such a beautiful subject.

Since his passing was announced on Facebook last night, I have seen countless postings on my news feed by artists who have said, in their own ways, much the same thing - and I realized from this outpouring of gratitude that Basil Gogos was not just a seminal cultural figure but a germinal one; he presented to us largely untapped territory that was there for everyone's future mining. And the most wonderful thing about this influence of Gogos is that everyone he inspired paints differently; no one really paints like him. Basil remains unique. What his students derive from his example is permission to paint monsters with love and empathy and joy and absolute freedom. 

Valé to the great Gogos, who taught so many of us how to see in the dark.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

One For the Grandkids: TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

"I should follow YOU?"
- Miles Davis, to a fan expressing his wish that he go back to playing ballads

At the end of Episode 16 of Showtime's TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, we saw Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) briefly rescued from mid-life marriage to a man who was something less than the man to whom she once aspired by an invitation to dance. She then returned to her husband's side and a reality-shattering crash through that illusion into what appeared to be a confrontational collision with her own makeup mirror. I spent the past week wondering where this scene would take us. In a way, it took us nowhere, because we don't see Audrey again in the miniseries' last two episodes; then again, this scene tells us exactly where we are headed.

The last two episodes, or hours (if we accept - as I think we should - David Lynch's description of this latest collaboration with Mark Frost as "an eighteen-hour film" rather than a miniseries) of this story suggest to me a one-hour or 90-minute story with a 15-16 hour prologue and a one-hour epilogue. It does not accommodate traditional narrative structure, and therefore is doomed to disappoint most audience expectations geared to that experience. Many times as the weekly chapters rolled out, I found myself responding to them not as narrative, not even as cinema, but as digital painting - making use of live actors selected much like emotional colors. As some others have observed, the quality of the digital effects suggested an unusual transparency that might look bad or cheap to those whose standard of measure was reality; but I always felt the point was never to suggest reality but different graphic ideas put into motion. A noble attempt to reclaim the viewer's right to suspend disbelief with their own senses, rather than have the technology rob them of that privilege. As the entire arc of the program is revealed, this level of artifice has a point to make.

As with the original series finale, the general response I've been seeing has been disappointment, even anger, sometimes followed by a slowly blooming acceptance and enthusiasm. The disappointment, I believe, comes from a thwarted authorial impulse: it didn't go where we wanted it to go. But as characters in the story have been saying, "The past dictates the future." Therefore, any attempt to return to the past is a sentimental urge, a romanticism doomed to failure or, if indeed such contact is made, we run the risk of monkeying with our present vantage point in the future. Which is exactly the trajectory of the final chapter. In the last moments, when Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) asks "What year is this?" I don't think he's asking which year he's inhabiting. Rather, he's questioning our expectations of the narrative, our demands for clarity and a happy ending - even a satisfying reunion. Why did we want to go back to a murder scene? What did we want to undo? Or do? Were these characters not supposed to change - though we, their creator and television itself has?

And finally, Cooper is also asking the wrong question, which points to a suggestion of his condemnation to another long detour through mystic circles - his penance for his ego in assuming superhuman responsibilities and a god-like role in setting everything right. When Cooper and Diane (Laura Dern) risk "changing everything" by riding the electrical coordinates to new identities, they soon lose each other and Dale finds himself alone in the American west, in the city of Odessa. It's not only the name of a Ukrainian city, but the feminine form of Odysseus or Ulysses, the hero of Homer's THE ODYSSEY, and finally a Greek word meaning "full of wrath." (The ODYSSEY connection to Cooper is quite interesting, particularly if we consider the interpretation that it took Odysseus so many years of wandering to return home because he didn't want to go home.) The Cooper whom we see cruising the streets of this melting pot American city is neither the all-good Cooper of the original series, nor the Bad Cooper, whose negative energies have been conquered by this point, or at least redistributed. As earlier events have shown us, Cooper's efforts came very close to saving Laura retroactively - indeed, he does seem to prevent her murder, at least on one plane of existence - but in doing so, he interfered with her own karmic destiny and sent that compulsory drama elsewhere to find its fulfillment.

But he has not yet learned this lesson, and when he sees the fateful name Judy on a restaurant sign in Odessa, he follows the sign to a breakfast interrupted by the modern-day equivalent of an Old West shootout, as he butts in to save a stranger's honor. The melting pot signs (Odessa, Maersk, etc), the open carry laws, people living in accordance with romantic ideas of freedom in a conspicuously unfree word...  Lynch's purpose here is plain - this is the America we now I habit, viewed through a pair of THEY LIVE eyeglasses, as it were. Cooper continues to take lawful responsibility for Laura Palmer's metaphysical fate by tracing Judy to her lookalike counterpart - an apparent kook and murderess whose name is not Judy but rather Carrie Page (Sheryl Lee) - and hoping to discharge the evil energies riding her existence by introducing her to her mother (Grace Zabriskie), who is dealing with devils of her own. But it's no longer her house... for the rather obvious reason that "You can't go home anymore." What Cooper may suddenly be inhabiting outside the Palmer house is not a different year, but a different tense - namely, reality. (This reading of the ending would appear to be supported by the casting of Mary Reber, the real-life owner of the Palmer House property, as its present owner Alice Tremond.)

In short, David Lynch and Mark Frost have addressed themselves to the fact that art is a thing of process and progress that does not move in reverse; only the longing of the human heart does that. In so doing, it may well motivate the creation of art, but such art is usually wrenching in its torment, bringing us to terms with more innocent times that were never really so innocent, the nostalgic songs that closer scrutiny reveal to come from places of real pain, the high school sweetheart who got away and fired a bullet through the brain of the fellow lucky enough to catch her. Because what such investigations usually signify is that the present, our present, is in some way unsatisfactory - but if we dare to move back, we risk changing or losing connection with where we were. 

The original TWIN PEAKS series still exists, and that experience can be repeated to the heart's content, leaving THE RETURN to warn us of the myriad dangers awaiting anyone careless enough to rifle backwards through the spent pages of life. 

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved. 

The Bava Book at 10

Free Pass through August 31!
Now with more extras! Click book to access.

It's hard to believe, but today marks the 10th Anniversary of the arrival of printed copies of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK at our doorstep.

It was a traumatic arrival, midwived by two large delivery trucks, whose drivers proceeded to fill our dining room and foyer with towers of heavy boxes, each containing three shrink-wrapped copies and weighing 39 pounds. Somehow the wooden floors of our old house, built in 1907, stood up to the crushing punishment and we lived that way for weeks, moving from here to there through tight passages between the boxes. Postmen who showed up to take the outgoing cursed under their breaths, but the patrons who pre-ordered blessed us and sent us photos of their children being crushed by the almighty monster. It all balanced out, and now (as those lucky enough to secure a copy know) it is What It Is. There's not a deluxe imprint out there that hasn't tried to make something even bigger and unwieldy in response.

Donna and I were wondering what we could possibly do to commemorate this important date. Unfortunately, the stars are not yet in alignment for us to undertake a revised edition. I am presently swamped with audio commentary work and there was no time or opportunity for me to produce something new for it. So what we've decided to do is to update the Digital Edition with more archival bells and whistles pertaining to its research and release.

Here is a list of the new audio-visual contents added to the Digital Edition today: 

• My original interviews with Vincent Price (1975 - the first interview conducted for the book) and Cameron Mitchell (1989) - Audio, both released complete for the first time!
• A webcam promotional interview with Tim & Donna Lucas, conducted by research associate Lorenzo Codelli, with a guest panel consisting of Lamberto Bava, Joe Dante, Kim Newman and Alan Jones, recorded in Trieste on November 16, 2007. (I was later told that Daria Nicolodi was in the audience for this event!)
• The Bava Book Behind-the-Scenes, including our First Peek at a preview copy, the arduous and precarious Delivery (uncut - because, as Donna says, "Why shouldn't they share our anguish?"), and the packing and shipping process out of our home!
• Tim & Donna at the Saturn Awards in Los Angeles, 2008 - introduced by actor John Saxon and including our acceptance of the Award for Special Achievement!
• Select examples of stills and posters BEFORE and AFTER the meticulous restoration work!
• All this, PLUS an IMPROVED Table of Contents spread, with films and multimedia now listed ALPHABETICALLY for your greater convenience!

It's also now available in HTML-5, so it can be viewed on all web browsers without the addition of Flash.

So, what are all these new bells and whistles going to cost you? Well, you know us: NOT A CENT!

If you've already bought and downloaded the book, download it again and your copy will be automatically upgraded.

If you still haven't bought the Bava book, we are offering everyone a Free Pass to sample the new HTML format online, browse it, read it, live with it ABSOLUTELY FREE through August 31. No log-in required.

If you already know this is something you need and can't live without, you can buy it here and have it forever for the regular sale price. We appreciate your continued support.

Donna has been doing all the work on this upgrade, so I asked to summarize it in her own words. This is what she said:

"Now the digital Bava Book is the way I always imagined it could be! Not only does it look like the original, it's more functional and entertaining! The addition of trailers and interviews, home movies, and the "before" shots of the stills and posters we worked with will give readers a more complete picture of Bava's life and times, and the work and skill involved in creating a book of this size! I want to add more... and the great thing is, I can! I will! And updates are free!"

So, what are you waiting for? Go get yours NOW.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Sarno's RED ROSES OF PASSION An Overlooked Gem

Patricia McNair is up to some suburban witchcraft in Joe Sarno's RED ROSES OF PASSION.

You may have had the same feeling, but sometimes I see a film that so impresses me I'm reluctant to go back and watch it again. I once put Eric Rohmer's PERCIVAL in my Top Ten on the basis of a single viewing, and - even as a long-standing Rohmer champion - was nowhere near so impressed on the second pass. Such has also been the case since my first viewing of Joe Sarno's RED ROSES OF PASSION (1966) about 15 years ago, which I reviewed with great favor back in VIDEO WATCHDOG #85. I love Sarno's work - I'm even writing a book about it now - but could this really be the knock-out I remembered?

I hate to say it (because I would have much preferred it to come out as part of Film Movement's Joseph W. Sarno Retrospect Series, and had the chance to do a proper commentary for it), but I was - if anything - even more impressed by my second viewing of RED ROSES OF PASSION last night. Vinegar Syndrome has now released it in a DVD/BD dual pack and the camera neg-sourced transfer is gorgeous. Not really about sex so much as sensuality, it's one of Sarno's best realized pictures, and possibly his most strikingly original story; it's a kind of horror fable (in that regard, rather like Jess Franco's LORNA THE EXORCIST) that looks at erotic inhibition and licentiousness through an occult lens. If you can imagine what Herk Harvey, for example, might have done with a remake of Romero's HUNGRY WIVES - that'll point you somewhere near the right direction. It's astonishing to me that a film this potent and original could still be so little-known.

The VS set is a limited edition of 2000 copies and apparently prone to the odd bad pressing; I had to return mine to Amazon today because the soundtrack on the Blu-ray disc was badly distorted. (Knowing how cheaply Sarno was sometimes obliged to work, it took me about 15 minutes to question the sound quality by putting on the other disc.) The DVD looked almost as sharp as the BD and sounded fine.

The only extra is a 20m monologue by Sarno authority Michael Bowen. He's a genial talker and knows his stuff. I smiled a lot because I've been covering much of the same tricky ground and coming up against the same questions in my own research.

(c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

 

First Look: Kino Lorber's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Kino Lorber Studio Classics is set to release their 50th Anniversary Blu-ray edition of Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1967) one week from tomorrow, on August 15. I had the good fortune of being invited to provide the audio commentary for the US theatrical cut of the film, which most fans seem to feel is the definitive version and is making its Blu-ray debut in this release. It's a two-disc set and both the theatrical cut (162 minutes) and the extended cut (179 minutes) are included, both versions treated to 4K restorations. The extended cut is offered in this same set with optional audio commentaries by Sir Christopher Frayling and Richard Schickel.

As a contributor to the set, I received an advance copy of the set today, so I thought I might whet my readers' appetites with an advance peek. (Click on images to enlarge.) There has been some concern among the film's most ardent devotées about how this release is going to look, since MGM's previous Blu-ray release had a pervasive golden tint that was never part of the film's cinematography. As you see, that aspect has been eradicated. The blues in this new transfer are handsomely reasserted, and the depth of some compositions is actually dizzying. This film was shot in Technicolor and Techniscope, the latter being a two-perforation scope process that led to it being termed "the poor man's CinemaScope" back in the day. When I was a kid, and seeing a lot of sword-and-sandal pictures at my local theater, I could pick a Techniscope film out of a line-up because they were prey to excessive grain and a coarseness of detail, especially in depth. So I am sometimes astounded today by how much detail and depth it is now possible to digitally exhume from old Techniscope film - and Leone and Tonino Delli Colli choose their shots in this film as though they could see the technology coming that would someday unlock all of its power. Love seeing the original UA logo card back, too.

 

 

Pre-order now and get yours... for a few dollars less.

Text (c) 2017 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.