As a media-loving teen in the 80s it was full-time work following up on my various media obsessions. I was huge into Monty Python, and had a jones for all related British humor, staying up late to catch Fawlty Towers reruns on PBS, for example. So when MTV, in a then-novel foray into non-music programming, announced the airing of their first episode of The Young Ones, I eagerly tuned in.
There had been a timelessness to Python, but The Young Ones was more recognizably NOW, injecting elements of punk and other contemporary music that was beginning to fascinate me. The Young Ones seemed to jump out of the set; Python seemed to fester sillily, but The Young Ones was a moshpit. But its celebration of rule-breaking anarchy was tempered with self-reflection. Rik, the in-house anarchist, was often revealed to have crippling self-doubt, often stopping short when considering the reality of the party line he spewed so explosively. I wasn't surprised that Rik Mayall, the actor who played Rik, was one of the lead writers of the show, since Rik seemed to have more shade and substance than his three fellow students. He was a nice warning to a budding malcontent, and, in retrospect, looms large in my personal lexicon.
I'd kept only sporadically in touch with Mayall's oeuvre over the last few years - some swear that Drop Dead Fred is a classic, but it seemed much less than what it could have been. But I was pleased that he kept working, and was sorry to hear of his injuries later in his career. I was sad, though perhaps not surprised, to hear of his untimely death.
There's much to enjoy and appreciate in looking back on his work - memories of Rik's more insane moments, of Mayall's more bittersweet and shaded television experiments. And indeed of his role in a strong, countercultural movement in British comedy that has made as indelible a stamp on comedy as we know it as the surreal antic of Python before it.
I mentioned over on Twitter that I was more excited to celebrate Ken Russell's birthday than I was the 4th of July. And as delighted as I am to have a job where writing a celebratory post on the occasion is a duty specifically called for in my job description, I have, of course, not exhausted everything I want to say about this estimable figure.
I came in at the tail end of the main of his career - of all of his films I only ever saw WHORE during its theatrical run. I've been lucky enough to catch up with some of his work in rep screenings, and other films (LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM and particularly SALOME'S LAST DANCE, possibly my favorite cinematic adaptation of a play) were mainstays of my video watching then and now.
Though he'd had a long and provocative life and career (which only got more and more outrageous the older he got), I was still stunned and saddened by his death in November 2011. One naturally assumes that such larger-than-life folk will remain, but of course this isn't so.
Reading up on Russell prior to writing about him I clicked through to the article on "A Kitten for Hitler", a rare Internet-only film from Russell. Challenged in 2007 to make a film that he would himself want to have banned, Russell created a short, bizarre, and horribly, horribly wrong little eight-minute short. The hilariously shit CGI is only the start of it. The thing is on YouTube. Consider yourself warned.
Today with Russell firmly on my mind, I kept laughing about this movie. Marvelling at its sheer wrongness, but delighted that there's still a huge body of work to be experienced for the first time. It should hold me over until 2019, when his Richard Strauss documentary can be legally shown again.
So now I'm at home, watching AMC's OVERKILL DOUBLE BILL, Charles Bronson shooting the hammiest packs of 80s street punks you ever saw in DEATH WISHes II and III. Both were directed by Michael Winner - he directed the controversial and interesting DEATH WISH a decade prior (and worked with Bronson prior to that on the lean and gripping THE MECHANIC before that), but by this time he really was slumming. Indeed, it was during the 80s that he unleashed the sleazy, wrong-headed and hilarious teen-in-peril schlock-a-thon SCREAM FOR HELP, the only movie I still love for totally wrong reasons (Time Out raved: "Will cause Winner fans to re-view earlier work to reassess a hitherto unappreciated comic talent."). The films viewed tonight are pretty unrelenting - the world seems to consist solely of victims, badly dressed street punks, and Bronson. II is a bit more raw and painful (though a great deal of the nauseating violence has been cut out), as the remainder of Bronson's family are killed, and he sets off on a vendetta against the bastards who killed them. They belong to a larger gang, so Bronson kills the rest of them, too, as long as he's there.
The movie takes itself very seriously, though a young Laurence Fishburne wears goofy new wave shades and dances while licking a switchblade. The urban grime is piled on so thick you gotta wade through it - and holy God, I don't believe that a) Laurence Fishburne was the dude who tried to hide behind the ghettoblaster during the big gunfight about 90 minutes in and b) AMC actually kept in the bit where his eye falls out. It's like I got my own little grindhouse right here in my apartment. Right on.
(NOTE: Jimmy Page composed and performed the score to DEATH WISH II. John Paul Jones composed and conducted the score to SCREAM FOR HELP. What hold did Michael Winner have over the members of Led Zeppelin that enabled him to use their talents in such twisted service? And what excuse can be made for Jones' berzerk and overwrought symphonic score for SCREAM FOR HELP [Time Out again: "...soundtrack so far removed from the action as to be positively existential."]?)
DEATH WISH III's a great deal sillier and schlockier, with only friends of Bronson getting hurt or killed this time out. Anarchy reigns to a ludicrous degree - we don't see a woman walking down a street carrying a purse without watching some punks run up and snatch it. A whole neighborhood is terrorized by these troublesome jerks, but with the blessing of a corrupt police lieutenant (Ed Lauter, natch) Bronson shows up to set things right and avenge the violence inflicted on his friends. He gets into it, too, and is seen doing things like wasting a couple of punks with an elephant gun for fucking with his car radio. But they keep coming after his friends, and even throw buddy Martin Balsam down a fire escape in probably the most half-assed Hitchcock homage ever committed to film. Soon the violence escalates and you have a full-tilt battle royale, as Bronson takes a big Browning machine gun and mows down legions of punks, and the good citizens of the neighborhood take their guns out of their bureaus to help take back the streets. The leader of the street punks (who, it must be pointed out, sports a spectacularly asinine reverse mohawk) is dispatched in an effective and hilarious manner, and Bronson, empowered and absolved by Lauter's manly nod of endorsement, packs his bags and walks down the street into the sunset. Fantastic.
--Couldn't help but feel a "good news/bad news" sensation when I read that the San Francisco Film Society had finally found a year-round theatrical home. As delighted as I am that they've partnered with New People to run their programming in the basement cinema, I guess the space is now formerly Viz Cinema. The space has had a rough go of its own programming of classic and contemporary Japanese cinema, but were starting to revamp their program with a series of weekend matinee screenings. Perhaps I'm being blindly optimistic when I hope that Viz's programming team will continue to have at least a say in what goes up in the space; I've grown more than accustomed to the fresh anime screened there.
--Perhaps I'm being similarly naive with regard to the Red Vic Movie House, but the programs I've experienced there recently (and the sizes of the midweek audiences they've attracted) are not in keeping with the space's numbered days. The thirty-year-old venue is set to shut down next month, and I'm wondering if maybe people are experiencing the place while they can. Monday's screening of Wings of Desire was very well-attended, as was Jesse Hawthorne Ficks' eye-opening Woody Allen program (including twofeatures and a stunning collection of trailers). The dreamer in me believes that this kind of late-inning attendance could save the theatre; the realist in me knows that even if the Red Vic survived, they wouldn't be back.
--Revisiting Wings of Desire was a curious experience. I found in retrospect that I'd both enshrined the film and taken it for granted, happily declaring it a masterpiece while completely forgetting why I'd done so in the first place. And so I became completely swept away in it, moreso than ever perhaps. The story of the angels that walk among us, and one angel's forsaking of his divinity for earthly love, remains absolutely timeless, and every single character in the film remains a cherished friend.
--Sad, indeed, then was it to say goodbye to one of those friends yesterday. May Peter Falk rest in peace. Adios, compañero.
--Sad, too, am I to mourn the passing of comics artist Gene Colan. Among a number of other accomplishments, his Dracula I consider definitive.
--And yet during the writing of this the New York state senate passed the Marriage Equality Act and its corresponding amendment. Some transitions your proprietor can totally get behind.
Hicklenton's work on the British strip Nemesis the Warlock was a revelation, bringing a gloriously gothpunk spirit to a character already entrenched in khaos. Hicklenton had been diagnosed with MS in 2000, and fought the disease as boldly as he flaunted artistic conventions.
A fond goodnight to the late Robert Culp, who died at his Hollywood home earlier today.
Everyone is justly lauding his work on the groundbreaking TV series I Spy - Culp and co-lead Bill Cosby struck numerous blows on and off-camera for America's civil rights movement during the making of the show.
But your proprietor's fondness for Culp extends to many roles, chiefly that of amnesiac/would-be savior Trent in the Harlan Ellison-penned "Demon With A Glass Hand" episode of The Outer Limits. Last time I was in Los Angeles I was honored to stand upon the stairway from which Culp/Trent leaped in the story's climactic chase scene.
I built this house as a place where I could examine/talk about my favorite horror/fantasy films. Other topics will be discussed if the spirit moves me. Enter freely and unafraid.
