by ·Comments Off on Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Albert Zugsmith)

Odd human trafficking spy/rescue story, less furious than The Furious but overall better, set in 1900ish San Francisco. Yet another movie where newspaper men have to solve local crimes themselves, sneaking around to find kidnapped brides held in bamboo cages. All the dialogue is philosophical quotes. Costarring every Asian guy they could round up to play Chinese (including the Chinese-Hawaiian Richard Loo, who played Japanese in The Steel Helmet, and the Korean-American Philip Ahn, who’d play a doctor in Shock Corridor), I found nothing wrong with the movie’s politics except when it scared a cockatoo into trying to fly while tied to a perch.

Vincent Price is a rogue element stepping into the middle of a gang war filmed on Western sets, hmm. Nice freakout scene with masks, skulls, funhouse lenses, and zoo animals. In the middle of the rescue operation Price has a couple hours to kill until the girl auction starts, so he stops to smoke some opium. Soon afterwards when he’s accosted by baddies, the drug has given him super-slo-mo powers.

Feels like a Messiah of Evil / Carnival of Souls indie. Zugsmith produced a couple Sirk films and Touch of Evil before cementing his legacy with MST3K-bound pictures about wayward high schoolers. As far as I can tell, the source book by Thomas De Quincey (best known as originator of Suspiria) is an 1810s drug memoir and contains no human trafficking thriller story. The Monthly Film Bulletin review excerpted on wiki is spot on, just add “(complimentary)” to the end of each sentence.

Philip Ahn and Vincent have the same tattoo:

The late Richard Loo faked his death, joins Price for the final fight:

Angelo/Master has a cameo:

by ·Comments Off on Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1969, Ken Jacobs)

Ken shows us a ridiculous silent comedy, then re-shows it, this time splitting the image, or zoomed in on a different section, or showing an entirely different scene with a color flower and a person in silhouette for some reason. We have Peter Tscherkassky at home. Highlights from my soundtrack include Neu 2, the usual Zorn and Warp stuff, and Metallic Life Review.

Alex Fields:

The length feels like a product of how long it inevitably would be once the decision was made to rework all the footage chronologically, and not of how long the ideas and tricks could sustain interest. More importantly than the length, the rhythm of the film suffers as a result, and the longer it goes on the more it feels like some sequences are just going through motions we’ve already seen in order to get us to the next interesting part (and the interesting parts become fewer and further between after the first 30-40 minutes).

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A Tom Tom Chaser (2002)

That’s more like it – stretching the time and image of the film like taffy for ten minutes, more fun than the feature. I played a near-equal-length song from Dirty Three’s Ocean Songs.

by ·Comments Off on Yellow Submarine (1968, George Dunning)

What a movie to watch as a sober adult. Obviously I needed to see this as a Beatles completist, but also it came up indirectly (about a thousand times) in the last novel I read. Unfunny Monty Python outtakes mixed with a childrens adventure story voiced by Beatle impersonators, it’s not bad.

Meanies:

But oh, the designs! There’s some really wild animation and character design in this. And the story pauses six or ten times to play an illustrated Beatles song, nothing wrong with that. I thought maybe “Only a Northern Song” would make some kind of sense in the movie’s context, but no, it’s just a weird song.

The Beatles are known to be witty, so the movie’s writers (known for childrens shows and also Love Story) are in “witty” mode. Jeremy Hillary Boob turns out to be a blue-faced brown and pink puffball, who I’ve never noticed on the front of a sweatshirt or anywhere else.

Fake John was really called John, Ringo and George were Paul, and Paul was Geoff – besides this movie, the gang’s most prominent role was when Geoff played “drinking villager” in Blood on Satan’s Claw. I’ve seen shorts by Dunning and by animators Paul Driessen and Alison De Vere.

Everyone’s got World Cup fever:

by ·Comments Off on The Hustler (1961, Robert Rossen)

I was this old when I found out pool and billiards are different games. The heck are you supposed to do on a billiard table with no pockets? Paul Newman doesn’t know either – he’s a pool guy, traveling with older partner Charlie (of an Andy Griffith war comedy), drinking heavily and winning games against suckers, until he goes broke trying to defeat poolmaster Jackie Gleason, gets his thumbs busted by some guys he ripped off, and lays low with his new drunk gal Piper Laurie for a while.

Paul and Piper in bad times:

and worse times:

Of course Newman’s goal is to get back on his feet and take down Gleason, now with moneyman George C. Scott on his side (same week I watched Anatomy, Scott keeps stealing movies). Piper (Carrie’s mom and sawmill boss of Twin Peaks) is washed up and worn out, enjoys(?) her Newman fling before drinking herself to death after their latest success. On the outs with the moneyman, Newman wins his big match, and maybe can’t set foot in a pool hall again, we’ll find out in the sequel.

Movie is too into its actor-drama schtick to fully succeed, but is pretty good as a sports story for depressives. Rossen made one more film before dying young. His cowriter had done The Stranger Left No Card, and the storywriter did The Man Who Fell To Earth, a weird combo.

by ·Comments Off on Danger: Diabolik (1968, Mario Bava)

Possibly the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie I’ve ever watched on its own – though I followed up by immediately rewatching the episode. Somewhere along the way I heard that the movie is actually excellent, and that’s not true; it’s Italian Batman Mabuse 007, but the color really pops on the new blu-ray and I got to listen to Ennio’s “Deep Down” for four hours.

Eva:

Eva (artist’s rendition):

Diabolik was in Barbarella the same year, and those would make a great double-feature: jokey genre movies with high fashion and design. He’s the villain hero, out to steal whatever he pleases, for no reason but that he can, and only Inspector Michael Piccoli and Gov’t Minister Terry-Thomas can stop him. Oh I’m kidding, they can’t stop him at all, in fact Diabolik shows up at their press conference and drops “exhilarating gas” to cause a laugh riot, just to humiliate them.

One of ten-ish movies produced by Dino De Laurentiis that year, Bava between horror movies, enlisting his idiot son Lamberto to assist. Diabolik’s chick is Eva of Ken Russell’s French Dressing. She wants an emerald necklace she saw on TV, so her man goes out to steal it, starting a war with his archrival Valmont (white-haired Adolfo Celi of Thunderball) who runs a ridiculous nightclub. Hundreds more things happen: a cop has a wacom tablet, Diabolik uses emeralds for bullets, falls out a plane and fakes his own death, a woman makes a Robin Hood reference (but to Piccoli, not Terry-Thomas). Diabolik finally Fight-Clubs the country’s tax office buildings, then after the country melts all of their gold into one giant chunk to make it easier harder(?) to steal… he steals it. Technically he’s still alive at the end, encased in gold, but there would be no sequels since there was nothing left to steal.

by ·Comments Off on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1969, Michael Lindsay-Hogg)

Meant to be televised in 1969 but withheld for decades because the Stones were afraid of The Who – and for good reason, the latter’s version of “A Quick One” is the greatest performance in any rock doc I’ve seen lately.

Staged inside a circus tent with acrobats and stuff in between music acts, passing through a wild Lennon/Ono act and culminating in a decently good Stones set.

Of the bands I didn’t already know, Taj Mahal’s amped-up bar band > Jethro Tull’s flutey rock > Marianne Faithfull’s pretty folk.

by ·Comments Off on Head (1968, Bob Rafelson)

A Magical Mystery Tour parody, I think.

A Monkee wonderful-lifes himself off a bridge, then a girl makes out with each Monkee in turn in a single take. A highlight is Mickey puncturing a Western scene by swiping away the fake arrows and walking through the backdrop. Maybe not a highlight but certainly memorable is when the boys get shrunk to dandruff-size then are vacuumed off Vic Morrow’s head.

Pretty meaty role for Timothy Carey. Jack Nicholson pops in for three seconds, and Frank Zappa delivers a motivational speech with a talking cow.

by ·Comments Off on Vogel 21: Coming Apart and Broughton

Coming Apart (1969, Milton Moses Ginsberg)

“Where would we get a duck? I don’t even have a dresser.” Pervert Month continues, as psychologist Rip Torn sets up a hidden camera to watch him have sex with all his neurotic patients, and anyone else who knocks on his door.

Women who join Rip include Julie “daughter of John” Garfield (Ishtar)… Viveca Lindfors, the Swede in Run For Cover… and Sally Kirkland of Demme’s Crazy Mama. The online plot description say Rip induces his own mental breakdown, but it’s Sally who aims a gun at herself then trashes his office in slow-mo at the end. Rather than emphasizing breakdown, Amos Vogel tells the story as Rip’s “increasingly problematic sex life.”

From Film as a Subversive Art: The End of Sexual Taboos: Erotic and Pornographic Cinema, Vogel goes on and on (usefully) about censorship laws. “One can only hope that eventually arousal of erotic feelings in the cinema will take the place of the aggression and violence predominant in films today,” sorry sir. The director is better known for Werewolf of Washington, a movie so notorious that pd187’s review of it was removed by a moderator.

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The Bed (1967, James Broughton)

A bed romps stop-motion through a field, then a nude couple materializes and romps around the bed. More and more people appear through the magic of editing, some of them nude. The music is ghastly electro-harpsichord.

Favorite scenes: a woman reads to her dog… lizard crawls out of a guy’s mouth and transforms into a girl… wild girl with horse tail rides old Colonel Sanders guy until he runs away.

Vogel:

The actors, who exuberantly perform scenes of the human comedy, include Imogen Cunningham, Alan Watts, and other San Francisco artists and writers. While even avant-garde nudity seems often to betray an absence of joyful or uncomplicated sex, The Bed displays a smiling, polymorphously-perverse eroticism.

Nuptiae (1969, James Broughton)

Sound is awful again (panpipes and poetic narration) but concept is good (legal government marriage ceremony juxtaposed with ancient/traditional portraits of marriage). Incredible that you could hire Stan Brakhage to photograph your little movie. “The union of opposites, the wedding of pleasure and pain,” oh, is this a Hellraiser thing?

by ·Comments Off on Hawks and Sparrows (1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini)

The rare movie with a bird title that is not a metaphor, two guys (long-faced comedian Toto and the curly-haired young guy from every Pasolini movie, both of them very good) are sent by St. Francis to spread the good word to the hawks and the sparrows. They spend a year in a field until Toto learns to talk to hawks and tell them about god. Stalking sparrows in a churchyard, Toto attracts a following, getting overrun with townspeople building a festival around him, finally begs forgiveness then rampages through the place, pelting nuns with ricotta. When they see a hawk eat a sparrow, they inform St. Francis and he tells them to start over. Back in the present-day framing story, I don’t like how the film crew keeps pulling the talking communist crow by a string. Not sure if the plot disintegrated in the last third or if I’d had too many beers, but Toto gets as tired of the dubbed crow as I did, and eats it.

It’s not a serious movie:

St. Francis, also of Rossellini’s Cartesius:

Philosophy: