4. The X-Rated Italio-Giallo Series #14 (Spine 126)

“Die Nacht der Rollenden Kopfe” (or: Death Carries a Cane)

Yes, Death does indeed carry a cane, and he uses it, too! Uses it to grab his victims by the neck before he slashes them to death in this fun and silly Giallo from 1972! Produced within the same era as Argento’s “Bird with the Crystal Plumage”, this murder-mystery has more in common with earlier Italian Gialli than with Argento’s far more famous (and far more stylish) films later in the 70’s. The common Giallo trappings are definitely here in Death Carries a Cane, from the usual opening scene that provides a material witness to the catalyst murder, to the constant shots of black gloves and close-ups of the straight razor used to dispatch the unfortunate victims of the kill-crazy rampage. In almost a pre-telling of some of Argento’s intermittent themes, the murder victims are all female students of a famed dance academy. Unfortunately, despite the high entertainment value, this thriller isn’t particularly well-written – by the time we get to the ending (which is actually a little suspenseful), when the murderer is finally caught and we’re privy to the identity, one of the detectives humorously sums up how the audience might feel at the revelation: “I don’t get it”. The lead Inspector proceeds to explain and it’s all wrapped up in a neat little package – except for the fact that it really doesn’t seem all that plausible. In fact, a lot of the precursory clue-finding is flat-out ridiculous – it’s a wonder they even solved the crime at all! But to reiterate, the trade-off is in the entertainment value, and for all its ridiculousness we do have a decent amount of bare flesh and spurting blood. I’d say if you can track a copy down, it’s recommended. Definitely a lot better than some of the lesser-know Gialli I’ve sat through. (Though now that I look at this review I guess this doesn’t really sound like a glowing recommendation, does it? Seriously, it’s fun.)

-V.

Consumer Rehab: Day whatever…

I just started reading George Orwell’s brilliant “1984”. I’d watched the film last year and now can clearly see that it is imperative reading, even if your only intention is to see the film. There’s too much information, too many ideas, too much beauty and anger and other emotions to cover that as good as the film is, the novel will always have far more depth, meaning and even resonance than the film alone. I was reading one of the chapters about halfway through the book in a coffee shop this morning before going to the old Dayjob. I read or write in the same coffee shop every morning before starting the Dayjob. It’s a thing I like to do, and I really like to imagine that I’m doing it in a Parisian streetside café. Of course the fair-trade coffee shop on an ugly street corner in the depths of the industrial east side of my west coast Canadian city doesn’t even come close to the cafés of Paris, I go nonetheless, to spend time spending time that’s not at the Dayjob. It’s a good start to the day. Anyway, today, this morning, there I was, as usual, seated at one of the tables with Orwell’s 1984 open before my face and my empty espresso up stacked askew on the stained saucer beyond the book, when I looked over to the growing lineup at the cashier counter. The lineup always grows around eight-thirty in the mornings, people grabbing their-last chance coffee before running into their own nine-in-the-morning Dayjobs. I imagined Winston, the hero from 1984, in line at his office cafeteria with his dented tray waiting for his serving of milky soup and gin rations. I could see Winston standing in line at the coffee shop waiting for his warm blueberry muffin and Americano instead. I could see him clearly in my mind, paying for the foodstuff that was surely better than the slop they were serving in 1984. (That’s the Orwellian 1984, to clarify). But was there really a difference? While we’re all here, now, paying for our muffins and gourmet free-trade coffee, Winston got his foodstuff for free. Still had to stand in line, but it was free, because he was part of society. Part of the Work Force. And us? We’re part of the work force, too. We go to work, get paid, and then we’re “free” to use our paid monies on anything we want. Doesn’t even have to be muffins or Americanos. Can be anything – cable TV, CDs, iTunes, iPods, cameras, board games, a new couch, whatever the fuck we want. Now that’s freedom. Only we have to spend our money on that freedom. The more we spend on our Stuff, the more we have to work to get ourselves out of consumer debt. We work, get paid, and spend money, so we’re free. Or so we’re told we’re free. I don’t know, but that doesn’t sound like Freedom to me. Orwell, “1984”: Freedom is Slavery. I suppose it is, if you have to go to work more and more just to keep up with the debt that your freedom’s gotten you into. There’s so much advertising now, freedom can be considered synonymous with consumerism in the eyes of the capitalist society. That’s what capitalism is, essentially, the freedom of consumerism. The freedom to buy or sell anything. It’s all business, and business requires workers, and workers need to get paid and workers need to spend money or society will collapse as we know it. That might be squeezing everything into a too-tight nutshell, but my own idea intrigues me. Or at least in the dawning winter light of Orwell’s literature and bitter espressos, it seemed intriguing. Maybe not, but I thought I’d share it with the rest of the Party members… for free.

-V.

Fuck the Bozos!

Just finished watching last year's hi-def video release of Terry Gilliam's sci-fi semi-classic “12 Monkeys”, and I've gotta say, I liked it just as much as “La Jette” (and here's to hoping an angry mob of cinephiles doesn't follow me home in the dark and beat me to death with vintage film projectors), and I liked it a lot better than the first time I'd seen it, way back in '96, I think it was, at one of the downtown cinemas that no longer exists. That's not to say I didn't like it the first time I saw it – not at all – I just think I missed some of the finer nuances of the film. Like when Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe have that film-philosophical scene inside the movie theatre during a Hitchcock retrospective, where Bruce Willis muses verbally on how films are different to you when you watch them at different times in your life. The films you watched before haven't changed, but they do take on other meanings when you're a different person. I suppose this would be one example of an incestuous allusion, as 12 Monkeys was actually now doing the same thing for (or to) me as I sat watching it fourteen years later. I remember also why Brad Pitt stood out for me – because he stole every scene he was in. Well, maybe Mr. Pitt's performance in this particular film wouldn't classify at all as nuance in even the loosest interpretation of the word (or in regards that scene in the theatre either, for that matter, but the sound of the word “nuance” just seemed so right – alright, I'll quit saying it now), but there were some words to live by spoken by that social paranoiac, the epitome being when he stormed out of the 12 Monkeys headquarters calling out, “Fuck the Bozos!” Right freakin' on! That's what I'm talking about! I promptly decided to philosophically snare that little gem of a saying for myself so that I might immediately start applying such virtue to everyday life. Seriously, who the fuck has time for bozos anyway? I'm sure virtue was the right word to use there, I double-checked that in a thesaurus and the first synonym was “moral excellence”. Yes, I'm quite positive that was the word I wanted. To the bus driver who's wearing headphones while driving and missing every second stop. To the co-worker who wants everyone else to make his job easier but is too self-absorbed and ignorant to help anyone else out. The business owners who will blow thousands of dollars on frivolous things but claim there's no money for raises, or additional staff to help with the workload. The people who fuck the day away on the internet and then complain that there's too much work to be done on such a small staff. The people who won't move over when they're taking up the whole sidewalk, the people with umbrellas who still walk under awnings in the rain, the taxi cabs who think the traffic signs must apply to everyone but themselves, the drivers who speed out of unmarked alleys in the dark and look shocked when they almost run over a pedestrian, oh yes indeed, Fuck the Bozos! With the world full of them, can we seriously afford to be giving undue attention to all of them? Christ, that would take an entire lifetime. There are other bozos around who seem to enjoy bitching about everything, so let's let those bozos take on (or continue on with) that duty. I'm comfortable with that. Bozos “A” will call out bozos “B”, and then we can sit back stress-free with socially paranoid grins on our faces watching the monkey show and checking out some old films again, now that we're completely different people with new sets of views on the important things in life. Yes, this is me wallowing in the brilliance of 12 Monkeys; dig it. (Insert sigh of satisfaction here).

-V.

3. The 666 Special Edition X-Rated Kult DVD (Spine 4)

Massacre at Central High

A few months ago, friend of mine was talking about how most revenge films are right-wing, purely by nature. I do personally believe this to be true. Another friend of mine, much more recently, was crashing on my couch one night when he threw in the Neil Jordan film “The Brave One”. I do like The Brave One, but I'd forgotten how it was actually attempting to portray Jodie Foster's revenge scenario in a more left-wing manner – or at least, some of the morality behind the revenge. There are, I'm sure, other revenge flicks out there that wind up portraying the old “eye for an eye” without leaning completely to the right, by addressing other, possibly more emotional, issues with the action of vengeance. When I first put in the X-Rated Kult DVD triple-six special edition of "Massacre at Central High", I found this (almost immediately) to be a pretty good film, and I thought it was going to be an excessive in left-wing revenge filmmaking circa the early seventies in America. And I stress, thought it was going to be...

Massacre at Central High opens up with an establishing shot of the school and main setting, while a few of the students straggle along before getting to their first class. Once inside the school, we see actor Robert Carradine (pre-"Revenge of the Nerds") scrawling a red swastika on one of the lockers just before we meet leading character David in that same hallway. David is a new transfer student, who has a friend Mark, and it's Mark who's already “set him up” with the cool kids. Turns out, the cool kids are nothing but a mean group of bullies, and are described by one of the students as “the Gestapo squad” (though I might be paraphrasing the “squad” part of that quote). Anyway, the point is clear enough; and David isn't really grooving the the Gestapo Squad's social tact, so he breaks free from the group, which puts stress on Mark, his friend who's still socially tied to the group. After a confrontation between David and the rest of the Gestapos during an attempted gang-rape of two of the female students, in which the Gestapos get the proverbial shit beaten out of them (David is something of a high school warrior), they ill-advisedly try to get David back on their side, to join forces with the power, instead of creating opposition with it (him). Things don't turn out the way they want, and the Gestapos end up crushing David beneath a car he's fixing, permanently crippling him. Here, then, we are introduced to the fatal revenge plot of the film. However, much to my surprise, the bullies are dispatched quickly and the plot takes a dramatic turn towards the likes of George Orwell's Animal Farm, using the student body in place of animals as they try to re-establish some kind of political hierarchy now that the previous totalitarian leadership has been abolished, permanently.

Massacre at Central High, I have to say, threw me for a loop – and in such a good way. I'd read a few reviews on the internet holding this little-seen American cult film in high regard, and I can see why. I'm sure this movie was marketed as drive-in fodder, when there's so much more it has to offer. Even the exploitable elements – the action, the murders, the nudity from nearly all of the leading players, both female and male -- all fit so well inside the political story and high school lives of the characters that they actually cease to be true elements of exploitation, rather lending to the quality of the whole film and all the characters and their relationships therein. I can say I haven't seen a movie about high school kids I've enjoyed so thoroughly since the film noir “Brick” a couple of years back. To really amplify the kind of people this story is about, there are no adult characters in the movie (save for a few non-speaking extras at the end of the film), no teachers, cops, parents. A principal is spoken of, once, but never scene or heard from on-screen. Like the Animals of Orwell's Farm...

Massacre at Central High comes highly recommended, if you can track down a DVD copy (even a crappy one) online. This X-Rated Kult DVD was presented in an Academy aspect ratio, but it looked open-matte to me, so I zoomed it into 16x9 and the framing looked pretty good. Thankfully, the English version on this title came watermark-free.

-V.

1. The "Evilspeak" 2-DVD-set-box, X-Rated Kult DVD (Spine 118)

About the X-Rated Kult DVD (mini-series)...

X-Rated Kult DVD is a now-defunct European cult movie distributor, their claim to fame is really having released well over a hundred titles on special-edition PAL DVDs and casing them in large plastic clamshell cases (reminiscent of the old Warner VHS clamshells), often with multiple versions of the artwork printed for each title. Releasing titles from Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Luigi Cozzi and a slew of other horor/exploitation filmmakers, both European and American, over the few years they were in business X-Rated Kult DVD built up quite the impressive library, utilizing just as impressive splashy cover artwork. Other than Criterion, I can't think of another DVD company that used such an original and consistent concept for branding their releases. In fact, I'd say the the Kult DVD were far more original and consistent in their packaging than Criterion. As the company has ceased releasing their PAL special editions a couple of years ago, I felt lucky to have found a handful of them at a horror movie retailer in Milan called Bloodbuster (they were featured in one of Rue Morgue magazine's 'Travelogues of Terror' a while back), and you can still order some of the titles: bloodbuster.com

Only recently, I've started cracking open those awesome clamshells. (When possible, I've included the X-Rated Kult DVD artwork, but some of the jpeg quality is not great, sorry about that).

“Ein Computer programmiert vom Teufel personlich!”

I already knew when I had this two-disc, three-film-version of the Clint Howard splatter film in my hands that Anchor Bay had already released an uncensored version in North America. As per my opening paragraphs, it was definitely the packaging that got me with this one. Plus three versions of the film..! The uncensored 100-minute version of this eighties American horror film was also presented in anamorphic widescreen, so I figured the print would be pretty good. When I finally opening this baby up, I found that the two discs were mislabeled – Disc 1 said it was disc 2, and vise-versa. So having accidentally put the original 87-minute R-rated version in the DVD player, I was suddenly horrified to find that it was only presented in a German language dub with optional Dutch subtitles! Oh, crap. I had to switch the discs anyway, so I threw in the uncensored version, and thankfully, there was an English option without any subtitles – however, if you choose to watch the film without the Dutch subtitles, the subtitles are replaced with a handy (thankfully little) note at the bottom of the screen informing us North American viewers that this film is only intended for sale in Europe. I though this was a little unfair of them, I'd bought the goddamned thing in Europe! Then again, how did they know I was going to do that, right? Well, back to the print, and all in all it was in pretty decent shape, but I couldn't help think that the Anchor Bay version might've blown this out of the water. I can't say though, not only had I never watched the Anchor Bay version, I'd never even seen this film before! As the film goes, it was actually pretty cool, if extremely heavy-handed in its seemingly endless set-up... but what a payoff.

Clint Howard, younger brother of famous film director and American Graffiti/Happy Days star Ron, plays an orphaned teen attending a military school. He's bullied by the sports coach, he's bullied (endlessly) by his teammates and roommates, he's bullied by the priest, he's bullied by the Sargent and the Colonel and the Colonel's secretary (who steals his Satanist book). I guess you can see where this is headed. Clint, here named Coppersmith (or “Copperdick”, as his roommates taunt him), had been using the Satanic book (before it was stolen from him) and the academy's library computer to secretly translate the text of Satanic vengeance as scribed by some long-ago murdered Satanic Cult leader named Estaban (don't worry, there's a hilarious prologue explaining this whole backstory character). The computer graphics are as advanced as those in Superman III, but that's not much of a shocker as both films were from the same era (I just wanted to offer a more mainstream example of the computer technology). As the story should go, the computer becomes possessed, Coppersmith becomes obsessed, and everything comes to a bloody head in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, with a real show-stopping finale. That at least made it worth sitting through the first eighty minutes of pure set-up. This one really took its time, and I have to say I was a little surprised at that, even other films of this ilk never took that long to start paying off... but as I said, Evilspeak did pay off in spades. Of course, I'm talking about the uncensored version here, I don't know if the original and twelve-minute-shorter US cut was anything so gorily spectacular.

Well, as I'm a sucker for packaging, I have a few more X-Rated Kult DVD to go through yet, I'll be reviewing four more for this blog and one for the Jess Franco Fan blog (unabashed self-promotion: see sidebar blogger links) as part of the X-Rated Kult DVD mini-series of posts. If you're interested in checking out these films, I do believe a lot of them have been re-issued by either American distributors or by UK distributors in region-free versions in one form or another.

-V.

And yes, this is an actual still from the film. Enjoy.

...And a Happy, totally belated, New Year!

Well, for those of you who would like to know, 2010 is going to be pretty busy around the Creepy Six Films camp. First up, the trailers for “The Hard Cut” and its sister production should be back up on the site this month (sooner rather than later), we're replacing the old teasers with new Hi-Definition compressions. We're going to be finishing off the two feature films and finally getting them out of post-production later this year. And last but not least, if you've noticed a teaser poster in the 'coming soon' section of the website proper, well, there's going to be more fun there by the end of the year. Of course, that's all projected and time has certainly got a way of getting away from me at the most annoyingly inopportune times – like when you're trying to get three films ready for release in the same year. Where do the days go? Flying past my head in a freakishly rapid blur, that's where. But, it's a new year, fresh start and all that, right? So nose to the grindstone and I'm sure we'll have everything ready when it's supposed to be.

In the meantime, keep checking back!

-V.

A Christmas List #3

Below is a list of cool things I discovered just this year (though not necessarily from 2009)... Would I steer you wrong? No way in hell! Enjoy!

Favorite theatrical release this year:
Moon.

Movies:
The Animatrix (sci-fi)
Cypher (sci-fi)
The Jacket (sci-fi)
Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion/Blu-ray)
Martyrs (horror)
Massacre at Central High (this one was hard to track down!)
Timecrimes (sci-fi)

Books:
Stephen King's Dark Tower series
“Comix” by Dez Skinn
Dean Koontz' “The Bad Place”
Joe Lansdale's “Leather Maiden”
Micheal Slade's “Ghoul”

Music:
Megadeth's “The System Has Failed”
Alice Cooper's late seventies/early eighties catalogue – including, but not limited to
“Lace and Whiskey”
“Special Forces”
“Zipper Catches Skin”
“From the Inside”

Food:
Smoked meat poutine

Graphic Novels:
Ed Brubaker's “Criminal” editions

TV:
Lost (Season 5)
Mad Men
Weeds

For getting more creative:
Moleskine lined-paper notebooks


-V.