it was only a matter of time....

@HouseOfSparrows

GIRLS ON FILM (long uncensored version + short censored version)

The band made two versions of this video: one (for the 12" dance remix) "tastefully smutty" to cause a stir and get noticed in nightclubs, the other (for the 7" version) sensuous but relatively tame for safer venues (MTV hadn't launched when the video was made). We teenagers weaned on MTV saw the latter version, but though we were too young for the clubs, we were well aware of the former. Though Duran Duran came up through the late 70s postpunk scene in the UK, their first three albums and the attendant videos all seemed to hit the States at about the same time, and though the "tastefully smutty" GIRLS ON FILM clip was intended for adults-only venues, the sheer ubiquity of early Duran product being foisted on US fans meant that it was easy to find. I suspect most of my teenaged peers either borrowed an older sibling's copy or rented it from an unwary clerk at a video rental shop (which is how I eventually caught up with it). Everyone who grew up on Duran Duran knows both versions, which leads me to believe that there were other pre-teen or teen fans for whom seeing the video was something of a rite of passage. It was intended for nightclubs and pay TV networks like the nascent Playboy Channel, but since the band were for "young people with lots of energy" (per Simon LeBon's words), did they really expect we wouldn't seek it out?


Fig. 1 - "tastefully smutty"

After recently re-watching both versions of the video, I was struck less by the vintage erotica (lovingly itemized here) as by the intersecting levels of fantasy and reality. The long version of the clip begins with a minute of behind the scenes footage (with stagehands building the set, artists making up the band) mixed with footage of the band performing. We're taken back and forth between the preparation, the "performance", and the various erotic scenarios that unfold in front of the band. Flashbulbs pop off from cameras wielded both by photographers and actors playing photographers. The video often serves as a document of the making of itself, and the artful and efficient dismantling of the line between the levels of fantasy and reality suggest that directors Godley and Creme have perhaps absorbed some Jacques Rivette as well as Tinto Brass.


Fig. 2 - is the POV here real or fake?

To your proprietor's considerable surprise, this aspect of the video is even more sharply prevalent in the "safe", short version, which ends with a small debutante party unfolding in the ring before the band. As a masked gentleman stands unnervingly still, two glitzily dressed couples take the stage, dance to the final verse, then retire to the offstage area for cocktails, where one of the women forcefully kisses a t-shirt-and-jeans clad stagehand who's seen throughout both versions. A quick shot of the band breaks up the progression, but it's not enough to indicate a passage from video-time to real-time, and the effect is a startling crossover of onstage desire to the backstage realm. Though the artsmut of both versions is what they're remembered for, it's this surprisingly sophisticated ballet of lust and fantasy that gives the video its real oomph, and keeps the clip feeling fresh even thirty years after its making.

Coda - GIRLS ON FILM is neither the band's best video nor their sexiest, but it was the first video with which they reached out to catch the music video wave that they would ride to world wide fame. This early body of work played before my eyes at a time when I was just understanding what film could do, and just as Duran Duran's music suggested the weirder places that music could go, these videos (particularly the clips by Russell Mulcahy) helped form my understanding of how films were made. All told for now.

GEORGE A. ROMERO'S SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

The man's name seems to be in the title for this, and why not? As director of the films that defined the modern zombie as a shambling, flesh-eating reflection of our ongoing societal anxieties, he's certainly earned the right to have his work trademarked to differentiate it from his legions of followers and imitators. Indeed, since his more recent work in the zombie subgenre is quite minor in comparison to his first two masterworks, perhaps such branding will help set his current, lo-fi and low-budget fare apart from the similarly low-budget zombie films that litter the modern horror landscape.

There's no question that SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD lacks the scope and impact of NIGHT or DAWN, but your proprietor is hard pressed to see why that matters much. If SURVIVAL has the impact of a sketch in comparison to the wider canvases of the earlier films, there's enough variation on the formula (and some intriguing callbacks to previous work) to make it engaging. A small contingent of rogue military, led by the gore weary Sarge Crockett (Alan van Sprang, reprising a short role from Romero's previous), find themselves caught up in a feud between two Irish American clans on an island off the coast of Delaware. Romero offers an intriguing (if diffuse) parable for the mindless violence we perpetuate, and deploys the undead in more subtle ways to put his points across. The zombies occasionally even seem beside the point, until a lovely final image (a nice visual rhyme to the bald zombie that served as DAWN's main icon) ties it all together. A fairly large cast of unknowns do justice to the weird little human moments that Romero's peppered his script with. And of course there's a solid helping of good ol' zombie gore.

Some guys reach retirement age and turn to painting. Romero sticks to zombie films, crafting modest little works that still reveal a working and engaged aesthetic. I'll see the next one, too.

THE GATES OF HELL

When a priest commits suicide in a cemetery in Dunwich, the resulting bad vibes are picked up during a seance in New York City. It becomes clear that the good father's death has opened a portal to hell, and a disparate group of folks have only three days to get to Dunwich and close the portal before a flood of demons come through it and destroy the world.

Your proprietor saw this at the house of good friend and frequent commentator Mark Nigara. Coincidentally, this film (and a few of the other notables in the oeuvre of director Lucio Fulci, including HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY and THE BEYOND) were released contemporaneously with the studio albums cut by Ronnie James Dio with Black Sabbath. Mark had been paying hommage to the late RJD all week, and some of the Dio-era Sabbath proved a perfect prelude to the Fulci double feature ahead of us (the second film seen, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, was reviewed here previously).

THE GATES OF HELL, as the title suggests, boasts enough gruesome imagery and atmosphere to fuel several heavy metal albums. Fulci sacrifices realism, production value, all but the most bare vestiges of a plot, and any sense of logic to craft a dreamlike, genuinely suspenseful descent into hellacious fantasy. Some scenes - the suicide that kicks it all off; a harrowing rescue from a premature burial; the attack on a tavern by some angry spirits - are textbook examples of suspense filmmaking.

But other scenes, man, I don't know: a makeout session ends with bloody tears and vomited entrails; Bob, the town pervert, is dispatched for scant reason with a table drill through the head; the truly baffling coda that may signal the resurgence of the damned. By all accounts Fulci embraced all manner of experimentation on his films - indeed, the aforementioned coda has been said to be the result of a free-wheeling mashup by Fulci of random footage culled in the editing room. There is an artfulness to Fulci's insanity, and every so often a gruesome scene comes from so far out of nowhere that it does feel like some 3 AM dispatch from the cinematic subconscious. Bob's toolshed lobotomy is completely unconnected to the supernatural forces gathering in Dunwich, but the sheer excess of it (I'm astonished the drill didn't bore into his eye, frankly) suggests a deeper connection to the film around it.

As unforgettable as many of the setpieces in THE GATES OF HELL are, the full-tilt approach Fulci takes to the material keeps the film from remaining unsettlingly in the mind. If figures prominently in the run-up to THE BEYOND, Fulci's masterpiece, which perfects the fantastic scope of the previous film while amping up the apocalyptic fantasy. But that's a review for another time.

THE GATES OF HELL is reviewed here under the aegis of the Final Girl Film Club, run as always by the sharp and sparkly Stacie Ponder.

HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY

After a furtive sex date in the basement of a New England house, a beautiful young woman is stabbed in the head by an unseen assailant. This house (which, spoiler alert, is located next to a cemetery) is soon to welcome some new residents: Norman Boyle, a New York academic conducting a study on old houses, his wife Lucy and his son Bob. The assignment is already shrouded in mystery (a former colleague of Norman's committed suicide after living in the house), yet Bob's parents ignore his assertions that a young girl has offered him dire warnings to avoid the house at all costs.



A mid-career opus from Italian horrormeister Lucio Fulci, House by the Cemetery is less epic and apocalyptic in scope than Fulci's best-known masterpieces (ZOMBIE, THE GATES OF HELL, THE BEYOND). It's as dreamlike as those films (in other words, it makes little sense), but the more intimate setting of the film gives it a healthy dose of comparative realism. Clearly influenced by films like THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE SHINING, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY taps more human fears. The zombie-populated hellscapes of his other works are gorey fantasias that return us safely to our lives, but here Fulci plays with still -palpable childhood fears. Though this film was certified a video nasty during a censorious period in British cultural history, it's no more vicious than a fairy tale. The fear of the bogeyman in the basement (and of parents who ignore our warnings) is something we all share, and Fulci knows it.

in conversation: Dark Shadows

house: D!!!!!!!!
4f: Hiya
4f: Still in bed
4f: Yay
4f: Still watchin DS
house: like fritos, isn't it? can't stop with one episode
4f: Yup
4f: Amd dsoesnt matter if I doze
house: indeed
house: it's ambient gothic TV
4f: Yes!
4f: I love the lines
4f: Sometimes I feel like replying
house: it's drinking game fodder to be sure
4f: everyone draws a name from a hat - when your character goes up on a line, you drink
4f: "Ok. It's because I'm a fucking vampire ok? Now get off my back!"
house: and when roger draws from the decanter in the living room, everyone drinks
4f: Ha
house: i don't completely understand my fondness for roger
house: maybe because on a fundamental level we both just want it quiet
4f: Heh
4f: Ha ha
4f: He's the resident malcontent
4f: Mrs stoddard doesn't help improve morale
house: she classes up the place, though
4f: Yeah. Classy dame.
house: one of the finest moments in the series' first year is when carolyn (the free-wheeling blonde) sluts it up one too many times, and mrs. stoddard just lets her have it
4f: Hahahhahha
4f: LOVE the lines!
4f: Haha
house: you can see why depp and burton are queer on making the film
4f: Yyyesssssssssss
4f: I was tickled pink to hear about it
house: there's no way it'll be allowed, but i'd love it if burton executed each shot/scene in one take like the original show
4f: Yes!
4f: Whatever it is...it'll be good
house: here's hoping
house: still watching DS or are you doing stuff?
4f: both
house: good good
4f: i'm enjoying the most delicious miso an dnoodles for lunch
house: excellent
4f: why did they want willie gone to begin with?
4f: he put the moves on the slutty chick?
4f: they are so mean to him
house: yeah - plus he was jason's more unhinged lil' buddy - jason would threaten shit, but willie looked just THIS far from actually doing it
house: there are quite a few episodes of bad willie before barnabas basically (i'm convinced) raped him
4f: vampires do that
4f: this series is rich and superficial all at the same time
house: it really is!
4f: "rich" and campy too
house: it plays a long game - you have like 20 episodes of almost non-existent plot development, and then something really insane, otherworldly, or just plain fucking GAH happens
4f: the residents are SO stupid
4f: kinda love it
house: a frustrating drawback about the show is that you're almost never behind the characters - you know a secret, and wait for weeks for the characters to figure it out
4f: ha
house: the series nearly lost me the first year when victoria was locked in a basement for ten straight episodes
4f: was this created in part for tweens back then?
4f: or stupid housewives?
house: not deliberately, i don't think - it was made for the daytime TV audience, but the kids quickly caught on and became the show's main demographic
4f: i LOVE the "next episode" option
house: on DVD i just let the thing run
4f: one press of a button and then a fix...
4f: ah
house: and i like how the camera fixates on an empty space as the closing credits roll
4f: yes
house: how many episodes have you watched?
4f: 14
house: cool - you've seen both episodes 214 and 222 - don't recall what happened in them, but they were both shown at MOMA during the jeremy blake WINCHESTER show
4f: we're at the spot where willie has moved into the place and barnabas has comissioned a painting of himself
house: right
4f: young child's name is david
4f: heh
house: i've come close to putting some david-related dialogue on my voicemail greeting, since he's always missing/fucking around at the old house

on Film on Film

Dismayed as your proprietor is to see IRON MAN 2 dominating the Castro Theatre for the foreseeable future, I'm delighted to have a nice alternative going up tomorrow night at Oddball Films. Our friends at the Film on Film Foundation has a spiffy event happening tomorrow night. Bricks in the Wall: Humans and Their Built Environment looks to be a well-chosen batch of films detailing our relationships to the worlds we create, and I hope to see you there.



The presence of 70s Godzilla movies at Viz Cinema did much to help the SFIFF post partum depression, and the week of anime beginning today promises more of the same. I'm particularly keen on seeing, for the first time, Royal Space Force early next week.

More substantive posts to come. Promise.