by ·Comments Off on This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967, José Mojica Marins)

Coffin Joe is still a real asshole to everyone he meets – an atheist and completely insufferable about it. In the last movie, after killing a bunch of people, he ended up blind, insane, and dead. This one simply opens among a mad montage of grave-clawing hands and squigglevision credits with [townspeople] “he’s still alive!” [doctor] “he’ll see again!” [judge] “exonerated for murder!”, and then we get on with it.

The townspeople gather to shout about their women who’ve gone missing, figuring the culprit must be Coffin Joe, then Joe comes out to yell at them, saying what, because I’m different?! I’m just as guilty as each of you, and I vow to go out and find this kidnapper! Then he goes straight home to his room full of kidnapped women and gives them another speech about how superior he is – belligerent speeches are his love language. Then he covers the women in giant spiders while they sleep.

Note the parrot behind Henchman Bruno:

Based on his actions, this does not appear to be a true statement:

It’s a little funny to cast yourself ranting about your superior mind, taking on an entire town full of the dumbest people alive. He shows interest in the colonel’s daughter, and when her brother tries to pay him off, Joe takes the money and crushes the brother’s head, framing some bald guy for the crime. His entire scheme involves setting traps for the women until he finds the most superior among them, then impregnating her to begin a new master race, so women are dying every few scenes, including, finally, his would-be bride, precipitating Joe’s downfall.

The backrooms:

Joe has a prolonged hell-nightmare in color, then goes into town and gets captured by his enemies, but they are extremely dumb and slow. He wanders into a storm daring God to strike him down, and when God does, Joe says ahh that proves nothing. A surviving girl from the snake incident (I believe that was after the spiders) rats on him, so a torch mob chases Joe into a skeleton swamp. Supposedly he accepts religion in the moments before drowning in the swamp, but he’s filmed from behind, we don’t see his mouth moving, so I don’t buy it. Coffin Joe would return in Embodiment of Evil… forty years later.

by ·Comments Off on The Cremator (1969, Juraj Herz)

Practically a monologue by our lead guy, who becomes more demented and self-obsessed, devolving from a family man to a family-murdering nazi. He’s a recognizable type too, always talking in circles but without anything of his own to say, picking up outside ideas, internalizing and amplifying them. Sure we got grotesque lenses and fast cuts, but the thing that turns this from a series of scenes into one years-spanning monologue is the terrific transitions, where some Rope-like camera move will have him finishing a thought or a sentence in a new location or month than he started it. Herz would go on to even weirder things, like the vampire car movie.

Cremator vs. cat:

Cremator’s innocent son with his goofy smile:

Wax museum:

Unfortunately not a wax museum:

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).

–
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.