How I fell in love with horror cinema (and movies in general)

The scariest movie I have ever seen was The Wizard of Oz.   

It helps that I was five years old at the time. My parents had taken me to see the film at Maple Ridge's long-since-defunct Stardust Theatre. It was, I believe, my first time in a movie theatre; it was certainly my most traumatic experience in one. I was reduced to wailing and hysterical sobbing in fear for Dorothy, whose jeopardy at the hands of the dread flying monkeys was simply too much for me to witness. Mom and Dad had to take me from the theatre; I didn't get to finish the film until years after that, on TV, where things were less intense. 

You might think I'm revealing a flank on this one, exposing a bit of my soft white underbelly, but the truth is, I'm kind of proud of that reaction, impressed that a film could affect me that deeply. It says something about The Wizard of Oz, of course - but also something about me, that my engagement with the experience, as a child, was so utterly sincere and wholehearted. It's the right way to watch a film (though ideally you stick it out til the end). A lot of kids fidget, chatter, run around the aisles if you let them; I was totally focused on and emotionally invested in the movie theatre screen, even if what I saw there totally freaked me out.

I like to think that that bad experience was what sunk the hook in me, that being so overwhelmed by the emotions The Wizard of Oz stirred in me that I had to be taken home - in effect, being "beaten" by the movie -  made me regard films as a challenge, and perhaps helped cultivate the desire to take on more and more challenging film fare. Whether that meant braving gore or  the years I spent renting, some fifteen years later, anything I could find with subtitles in the video stores of Maple Ridge, I certainly grew into someone who wanted to confront unfamiliar and difficult cinema - someone who regarded movies, as Wes Craven has said, as a sort of "boot camp for the psyche." That aspect of myself began somewhere, and it seems logical that those flying monkeys had something to do with it.

Plus how could I not be fascinated by something that had such power to effect me?

I can recall vividly my next most important film experience, as well - also involving a projected film, which took place in elementary school a few years after that. (I saw lots of movies on TV, but somehow the most formative cinematic experiences of my childhood took place during actual projected screenings, so I got it right there, too). We were led into the school auditorium to watch a projected print of the original 1933 version of King Kong.

By that time, around age eight, I was already a bit of an unusual kid. I was interested in art and writing; and while other kids were wild for their bicycles, or running around playing soccer, or building car models, my enthusiasms were playing with plastic dinosaurs, building Aurora snap-together models (of dinosaurs, again, and later, monsters) and exploring the fields, forests and ponds of Maple Ridge, looking for snakes, salamanders, and frogs.

Other kids have stories about winning goals or home runs; I have stories about the time I put leeches on my arm, to see if their bite hurt, and see how hard they were to get off. (Easy, if you've got a lighter; one of the bigger kids showed me that you just needed to get the metal on the lighter hot and put it next to the leech and it would curl up and let go).

Anyhow, for a kid like that, King Kong was cinema heaven. I had probably seen other movies or TV shows involving dinosaurs before, since I was so fascinated by them, but I had seen nothing on the level of Willis O'Brien's stop motion animation. Whether it was by accident or design, our class was led into the elementary school gymnasium after the film had already started, such that the first thing I remember was the raft scene, where the intrepid adventurers have their raft toppled by a long-necked dinosaur. From the moment that creature - guess I'll call it the defunct name of "brontosaurus," because that's what he was to me then - stuck its neck out of the water, I was hooked.

I had spent a good portion of Grade One molding dinosaurs out of modelling clay that the teacher had brought to class - we had several on display, and the janitor at the school added to the collection with a couple of almost professional-quality models of his own, which sadly did not survive (I believe he later killed himself - there was a janitor at my school who did, and I believe him to have been the same guy; I sometimes think of him now, this man who made dinosaurs for children, staying late after the school was closed, neglecting his cleaning so he could make this gesture of connection... I don't know much about him but it's sad that a guy who would do something like that would end up taking his own life). In Grade Two, I had a whole diorama of the creatures, complete with fake plastic palm trees and other landscape effects, on the windowsill of the classroom, mostly made to impress a girl I liked. All of that was pre-King Kong, but that there was a logical connection between the models I made with my hands and the models up there on the screen made the film seem, not just magical, but attainable; magic that had a connection to my day to day life. 

That's not to say I was ready for whatever cinema had to offer, though. There is one more formative film experience that needs to be mentioned: the second time I had to be taken from a movie - though it was at a drive-in, not a theatre, with Mom and Dad in the white American Rambler that my Dad used to drive. I had seen images in Famous Monsters of Filmland - a magazine which I had just begun to read, at that point, but would soon become devoted to - of a film called The Land That Time Forgot (1975); and I had seen their cover story on a film called The Food of the Gods (1976). The two films made it to a double bill, out in Surrey, I think, and I spotted the ad in The Province and did a can-we-go-can-we-go on my parents. I remember my father enjoyed The Land That Time Forgot quite a bit - a perfect father/son movie, in a way, since it had dinosaurs and Germans in a U-boat. My mother mostly enjoyed our enjoyment, I expect.

The story involves a group of American and British soldiers and civilians, whose ship gets blown up, and who end up commandeering a U-boat; a power struggle ensues between the American (b-movie star Doug McClure) and the German leader (British actor John McEnery), and they end up off course in uncharted waters, approaching an unknown island, with an underground passage that leads to a world where dinosaurs and cavemen co-exist. It's by no means a great film; the dinosaur effects have nothing on the O'Brien/ Harryhausen school of effects, and the film is cluttered with half-baked evolutionary theorizing that could have likely been left in the Edgar Rice Burroughs source text (which, written in 1924, was not exactly cutting edge science; I could spot its fallacies even then). Still, I loved it. All three of us in that car together watching that movie might just count as one of the happiest moments of my childhood - along with my parents taking me to see a fossilized dinosaur skeleton at a museum, and playing with my dog, and catching a really big snake in a local pond...

The Food of the Gods, however - the second feature on the double bill, after it had gotten good and dark - was by no means as wonderful an experience. It had looked great on paper - I thought I was ready to see people menaced by giant rats - but it quickly proved too much for me to take. Shot on Bowen Island, which I didn't realize until I recently revisited the film on DVD, it deals with a substance that bubbles out of the ground that, when fed to animals, makes them grow to gigantic proportions. A farmer and his wife feed it to their chickens (and yes, folks, there is a giant chicken attack in the movie). But local hornets and rats and other creatures get into the stuff, too.

The hornet effects were too godawful to actually be scary: as with the ant effects in Bert I. Gordon's other notoriously bad big-creature feature, 1977's Empire of the Ants, several of the "attack" scenes involve insects held by tweezers being waved in front of the camera, badly superimposed on the action. It's almost at a Birdemic level of badness - especially since hornets held with tweezers (curled sideways, wings folded, legs and antennae twitching) look utterly nothing like hornets that are flying.

Anyhow, so far so bad: the film wasn't impressing me, but it sure wasn't scaring me. The giant chicken confrontation did neither, either. Where the film became too much to bear, however - about twenty minutes into its runtime - is where the farmer's wife - gamely played by Ida Lupino, near the end of her film career - hears a crashing in her basement and goes to investigate. A jar of her preserved fruit has fallen from a shelf; she reaches back behind the other jars to see what's back there - and is attacked by giant maggots!

As I say, I re-watched the film recently, and I must admit, this scene is still unsettling. The effects are great, at least compared to the hornets and chickens; and there's a real nastiness to the way the attack is shot - traumatic music plays, and the film defies realism to have Lupino - instead of pulling her hand back at the first bite - submit to the attack for several seconds, so the camera can linger on the gore. There's a nastiness at work that suggests the film has an ill-will towards its audience, a none-too-playful element of genuine sadism. I don't blame myself for being unsettled - it's a pretty ugly moment. I went pale and felt my stomach turn for a reason, that night at the drive-in. 

And so it went: "Mom, Dad... can we go home?"

My recent viewing of the film is in fact the first time I have gone back to finish watching it (a past attempt was aborted when I saw how baaaad the film was). Glad in hindsight that I got us out of there, because (as someone who had pet gerbils, around the same time) I probably wouldn't have liked all the scenes in which real rats are shot or exploded or otherwise subjected to real deaths for the sake a cheap special effect. I've never really understood that sort of thing. It's like the real snake deaths in Sssssss and Stanley; who would go see either film but a snake lover, and what snake lover would want to see snakes get killed?

The Food of the Gods is a nasty little movie, really, without much in the way of redeeming qualities, though connoisseurs of bad cinema might find something to enjoy in it, or perhaps the residents of Bowen Island: it is very recognizably a BC-made film...

Whether Food of the Gods provoked me to try again with horror films, by upsetting me so much, I cannot say, but it certainly didn't stop me. A couple of years after that, I caught a double bill of Dawn of the Dead and Phantasm, with my father, in Mission - another very important film screening, for me. Then came Alien, and Altered States, and Friday the 13th, and An American Werewolf In London - all R-rated, so I had to get my father to take me to those, too; he was terrific about that, really. Those were good nights out, important movies to my childhood self, and I still have great fondness for all of them.

There were other films I watched and loved as a kid - I had somewhat weird fascinations for character dramas like The Big Chill and Ordinary People, and for years was obsessed with a late night screening of Husbands that I caught on TV (one of my first trips to the Pacific Cinematheque was to see the film projected as part of a tribute to Cassavetes, shortly after he died in 1989). But for me, the love of cinema began with a fascination for horror and weirdness, and I doubt I would have ever been so passionate about movies if it hadn't been for those damn flying monkeys...

Black Flag Lawsuit again

...from Vice. Haven't even read it yet myself but I know I'll want to link it here, so...

(Edit: Oo, it's a Keith Morris interview, spillin' the dirt on his time with Black Flag and talking about the formation of Flag... though it appears to have been done pre-lawsuit, and just published now). 

People we like: Mark Prindle

The Prindle Rock and Roll Record Review site - a veritable wealth of entertainment! - may be mothballed, but Prindle is alive on Facebook, and has some pretty delightful video reviews on Youtube. For instance, check out his album review of the hilarious Van Morrison "Contract Breaking Sessions." I did not know about that album before seeing this clip; I had, like Prindle, not much interest in Van Morrison before; but I kind of like him now...!

Jerking Off to Comic Books (for Robin Bougie)

Sure, I admit it: I have jerked off to comic books. But you have to understand the context: when I began masturbating (at age 12, in 1980), porn wasn't so easy to come by. The internet didn't exist, home video had barely begun, and actually buying an adult magazine required a shamelessness and a ballsiness I did not possess, at least until a few years later, when I bought my first issue of Playboy at a drugstore. That, as it happens, was the April 1982 issue of Playboy, pictured below, and even then, at the hormonally raging age of 14, I was absolutely terrified that the clerk - a matronly middle-aged woman - would refuse to sell it to me, demand to call my parents, or say something humiliating about how I probably wasn't buying it for the articles... Within a couple of years I had a goodly-sized stack o' porn under my bed, but that single Playboy - simply by virtue of being the only one I owned at that time - surely has to hold the record for the magazine I have stroked off to more than any other; I was in a monogamous relationship with that one magazine for months before acquiring my second and third...

Before I got up the guts to buy that first ever stroke mag, tho', I had to make do with what was, so to speak, at hand. Often that meant late night TV, when my parents were out or asleep, when you could sometimes catch late night screenings of Emmanuelle or The Vampire Lovers or other racy fare on Canadian channels. When I finally got a TV in my room, I could stay up late on weekends getting all sweaty-palmed as I channel surfed with an erection. A glimpse of tit on the French channel? The 20 Minute Workout? The Solid Gold Dancers?

I jacked off to all of these things and more, sometimes sitting for hours, changing channels, hoping to stumble across something that stimulated me. In fact, I was exposed to some pretty great culture through that very quest for wank material - that was how I first got curious about Zabriskie Point, when I saw the hippie lovemaking scene on the late late show, though I don't think I actually got off on it at the time. I believe I stopped and thought - "hey, that looks pretty interesting, but it's not actually sexy." Followed maybe by, "Jeezus, I think I just saw some guy's balls on TV! What the hell IS this movie, anyway...?"

Jerking off to TV wasn't always practical, however - particularly since masturbation felt so much safer behind a locked bathroom door, especially when the parents were home or awake. You couldn't bring the TV in there with you, but you could easily sneak in the Sears catalogue, for the bra section, say. I'm pretty sure I read my first issue of Creem in the bathroom a few times, too, for that photo of Joan Jett walking on the beach in a red top that hugged and complimented her breasts. There was a book on science fiction movies that I remember liking for a nudie shot of Valerie Perrine, in the film Slaughterhouse Five, and a movie mag that had an honest-to-god centrefold of a skimpily clad Caroline Munro. Of course, this has made its way online:

And yes, in those pre-porn years, I would occasionally get off to comic books: because no matter how racy the subject matter in some of the comics I bought, it took a fair bit for anyone to object to a kid buying a comic - at least until my father took the time to read an issue of Commies From Mars that I bought at The Comic Shop, during my underground comic years, which came a bit later. He wasn't a big Greg Irons fan, I guess: he made me get rid of it and forbade any more Commies From Mars in his household. But I wasn't jerking off to Commies From Mars, anyhow - and it was the rude political content he found objectionable, not the sexual stuff, as I recall...

No, no, folks: for stroke material, I would go crazy on Vampirella, and Heavy Metal, and 1984, and... well, whatever else I could find that was sexy. Warren magazines often had the odd sexually themed story, or suggestive panel, or glimpse of comic book nudity. Those were the years, understand, when I could brush up against a table at the right level and my dick would suddenly get hard; when frickin' tables can give you an erection, a magazine cover like this can all but make you stain your underwear:

 

When I bought Eerie or Creepy (also Warren publications), I would actually read the stories, but Vampirella - well, there was another reason I liked her.  Warren publications knew their target market very, very well.

If there was ever any single comic artist who knew where I was, erm, coming from, sexually, as a teenaged boy, it was Richard Corben. I would hate to guess the number of times I jerked off to images in his Den series, in Heavy Metal - sadly turned into the stuff of comedy in the film adaptation, with John Candy giving Den the voice and thought processes of an adolescent male, but played pretty much straight up as a heroic sex fantasy in the magazine. It would have to be in the hundreds, at least. I really, really liked the way Corben depicted the heft and curve of the female breast, and I enjoyed his hyper-real arbrushed art style... and I did read the stories, too! I don't have as much nostalgia for my masturbatory teenaged self as I do other aspects of my life - I would bet Cinema Sewer's Robin Bougie, by comparison, has a whole closetful of stroke material from his younger years - but I actually bought an old back issue of Eerie magazine based on my fond recollection of the Richard Corben cover art (and the story therein which it illustrates). I know that magazine is one I masturbated to, back in the day - and not just for the cover, though it's pretty remarkable, innit?

Thinking on it, you can't get a more perfect illustration of the transition from boyhood to manhood - from dinosaurs to naked women - than that cover, really; and what better metaphor for the teenaged penis than a reptilian, lustful horn, pointed savagely at the female of the species?

I would hate to think what 13 year olds jerk off to nowadays. I'm sure any adults who make art like the above, in magazines aimed at young people, would be viewed most suspiciously in the current climate - and rightly so, perhaps - but I haven't cracked the cover on an actual contemporary kid-oriented comic book in a long time; God knows what's in them now. I suspect that comics and other print publications that kids can get their hands on are far more regulated than they were during my pre-porn heyday (1980-1982). Also, they likely have less incentive to try to pitch themselves at horny youths, since kids today can doubtlessly find anything they want by way of stimulation online and don't need comics for their sexual content. (I bet the Sears catalogue doesn't get snuck into the bathroom very much these days, either). Besides, for those without access to the internet, there's a whole new class of magazine - from swimsuit issues to Maxim - that didn't exist when I was young. My masturbating to comic books at age 12 and 13 was a matter of deprivation, of making due, of being hungry for sexual stimuli and not having any other easy access to it; it was the equivalent of guys having sex with other guys in prison, because there weren't any women around (except, in my case, real ones, who were terrifying and mysterious and not at all interested in weird chubby kids like me).

Now that I'm an adult, now that I have the freedom to jerk off to pretty much whatever I want (within obvious legal limits), I don't NEED sexy comics to stimulate myself, and more importantly, I don't want them. I'm still curious about sexually themed comics and animation - I've peeked at the odd hentai manga, and I watched the Urotsukidouji movies and found them fascinating - but that shit doesn't turn me on; it amuses me, it startles me, it can be very oddly entertaining and revealing of the psychology of its authors - but good God, jerk off to it? Why? Why, when I have a girlfriend on the one hand and the internet on the other and a few pornos on DVD on the side? It's not like I have a tentacle fetish or anything. For an adult male to jerk off to cartoons or comic books... that's just wrong, isn't it?

This brings us to the point of the article.

I picked up Robin Bougie's fourth and newest Cinema Sewer anthology the other day. To be honest, I feel a bit like Colin Upton in regards some of the stuff Bougie writes about/ draws. Bougie has a free-range enthusiasm for some pretty twisted stuff - from hardcore bondage to Brazilian fart porn to films and kinks I have not heard of, he pretty much seems fearless, unwilling or unable to censor himself, and disinclined to view pretty much anything that consenting adults get off on through a moralizing, condemnatory eye. While I could take sides with anti-porn feminists about a few of the films he writes about, for the most part, his content doesn't offend me - I'm just far more vanilla in my porn consumption, and in my sexuality in general. I read him talking about jerking off to Brazilian fart porn somewhere; I haven't even exposed myself to it, and have absolutely no desire to do so, and really do not feel like I'm missing anything.

True to that, the stuff I read first when I pick up a Cinema Sewer anthology is usually the stuff that deals with straightforward, non-pornographic cinema. Robin has articles in the current anthology on film noir, for instance - including his description of Panic in the Streets, an excellent Jack Palance/ Richard Widmark movie that he himself turned me onto at the Videomatica rental store some years ago (thanks, man!). He has another piece in defense of Brian DePalma, whom I also admire (though why Bougie rejects Redacted and ignores Casualties of War, Snake Eyes, and Hi, Mom - three of DePalma's finest!- is beyond me). He has a page on "Crazy Hong Kong Subtitles" that he's compiled that is filled with fun (including lines like "How can you use my intestines as a gift?" and "We cops. Have no time for farts" - taken from films I have never heard of, let alone seen). This is all very enjoyable reading, and well within my frame of reference and comfort.

On the other hand, his 2007 article on "The Public Sex of Sonan," about a Japanese teen who gets off on having sex in grocery stores and such, simply doesn't speak to me the way the other content does (though now that I've flipped through the book looking for an example of something I normally wouldn't read til last, suddenly I want to read that article... And I'm keen to read "Ted Bundy: Porn Made Me Do It," having just watched the compelling serial killer movie Riverman, with Cary Elwes as Bundy and Bruce Greenwood as a detective who interviewed him...)

Two things really struck me in flipping through the book, however. First, in regards all the drawings of masturbating nuns, Jesus with a giant erection, countless girls performing fellatio, a girl (on page 149) on her hands and knees, spreading open her asshole with both hands... this stuff is actually pretty healthy, I think. It doesn't make sense, given how normal and ubiquitous sex is, that we repress so much of it - that there is so much hypocrisy, so much dishonesty, so much confusion and obfuscation when it comes to communicating about sex in our culture. That girl spreads her asshole, and I think, "right on!" Even the illustration on page 93, capturing a scene from a Latin American film in which a woman is being forced to perform oral sex at gunpoint... while I find the idea objectionable, don't want to see the film, don't find the image arousing, and feel no impulse to produce such images myself - as a cartoon, it doesn't really bother me; and it seems valuable that Bougie doesn't restrain himself from representing such images. I think I'd rather live in a culture where representations of sex and sexuality, even in extreme forms, flourished aboveground and in the arena of public discourse, than in one where it was repressed and shamed and forced underground; that's where the real sickness starts, when shame and guilt and fear and confusion and the inability to communicate openly about ones thoughts, desires, feelings - however weird! - make people turn to perverse and private and often antisocial means of gratifying themselves - or where shame and repression lead to hatred and the desire to strike back... I see absolutely nothing of that in Bougie's work, even at its weirdest, and see far more grim a threat in the idea of government censorship than I do in the obsessive drawings of some horny nutcase with a pencil (I mean that in a good way, Bougie, really I do).

The second thing that struck me, though, was a comment Bougie made in an interaction with a fan, on page 47, where he proudly declares that what he makes is porn, not erotica, and says (in a little speech-bubble, beside a cartoon image of himself) that "jerking off to what I draw is the ultimate compliment." Suddenly my head did a little flip-around and I scanned the book again and thought, "Jesus Christ, are people actually jerking off to this stuff?" To hand-drawn pictures - DRAWN BY A GUY! - based on scenes from porn films, when they could simply go onto the internet and look at actual XXX?

I mean - Bougie's a very entertaining and talented artist, and some of his images (like the "All Night Dildo Session" on page 80) definitely have some heat to them... but jerking off to Cinema Sewer - really? The thought is utterly bizarre, and I reassured my gal tonight, on inviting her to the Cinema Sewer book launch this Saturday at They Live video (4240 Main, starting at 8pm), that I do not actually jerk off to comic books.

At least, not any more.

Allen Lanier, RIP

When I was 14 or so, the only famous Allen I knew (though his name was spelled slightly differently from mine) was Allen Lanier, and based on that, I became attuned to his contributions to the Blue Öyster Cult and perked up to see his name mentioned on John Cale, Patti Smith Group and Jim Carroll Band records. He was an Allen who rocked, so maybe I could too! I haven't heard much about him in years - he retired from the BOC awhile back - but 66 is far too young to die.

This reminds me that 66 is also the age that a Ouija board once told me that I would die. Say it ain't so, Ouija! And rest in peace, Allen Lanier.

Bus gripes: bus transfers not to work on Skytrain

My girl and I have an ongoing conversation about why I don't write a letter to Translink about problems I've perceived with their system.

My most enduring gripe, as someone who commutes out from Maple Ridge, is that the 160 Vancouver - absolutely the best bus to catch if you're travelling downtown - is routinely scheduled so that it leaves Coquitlam Station about two minutes BEFORE the 701, the connecting bus from Maple Ridge, arrives. This means that you spend 40 minutes riding from Maple Ridge, enduring the digression the bus takes through Pitt Meadows - the 701 is by no means a direct, efficient bus - and then get to the bus loop to discover that the 160 just left, or is, in some cases, pulling away as you pull in. You can catch various buses instead, but none that go directly downtown. The 97 - supposedly a B-Line bus, supposedly synonymous with efficiency - takes you on a long digression through the back ass of north Coquitlam before delivering you to the Skytrain. The 177 hauls you through the hilly grounds of Riverview Hospital and plies its own circuitous route before getting you to Braid Station. The 169 is pretty good for getting to Braid Station quickly, but it's still only Braid Station, one of the most remote commuter hubs this side of Surrey. Any one of these routes, compared to the 160, adds a half hour to any trip downtown you may have planned - pretty much the same half-hour you're forced to wait at the bus stop for the next 160, when you miss it by two minutes.

This sort of poor planning doesn't happen by accident. My theory is, they build a half-hour wait (or a half-hour's worth of back ass digressions) into the trip for the simple purpose of making sure any transfer they give you is useless by the time you arrive in the city: to make you pay more money, in effect. The 160 would be perfect for getting downtown, and your transfer would still have some life to it, IF they designed the connections so that you could get on it as soon as the 701 arrived... it would be easy enough for them to offer a nice direct line from Maple Ridge, with a nice direct transfer onto a nice direct line at Coquitlam, if that's what they WANTED. That it is NOT set up that way must surely be glaringly obvious to all parties; if it were a mere mistake, it would have been fixed by now.

In defense of my cynicism here, take this article: with the upcoming compass card "upgrade," your bus transfer will no longer be valid for the Skytrain system; you'll have to pay an entirely new fare. This is obviously not good for consumers and commuters (or visitors to the city!) - but who the hell cares about them? It's not like this is a public service we're talking about... With this much bad faith on display, it's pretty hard to believe that complaints would make any difference. Bend over, bus riders: Translink has an upgrade for you...

Happy 30th anniversary, Melvins!

Unless someone gives me tickets, I probably am going to miss this show - I have no money whatsoever - but the Melvins are an incredible band.

The Melvins were among my most-seen bands when I was a grunge fan attending shows at the Cruel Elephant in the early 1990's - I saw them two or three times, once in the Gluey Porch days, and then again with Lorax, and maybe one time after that. Aside from the Jelvins at the Croatian Cultural Centre a few years ago, I haven't made it to any of their recent shows - though I tried a couple of times: I sold my tickets to their Commodore show because I had a chance to go jam with a then-buddy (I don't play music very often, am godawful and untalented, but they needed a bassist and I could occasionally pretend I knew what I was doing). Then sold my tickets to their last show at the Rickshaw when I couldn't find anywhere to sleep in the city that night (I hadn't brought the requisite ID for a hotel stay). All the same, the Melvins are one of the greatest American rock bands now active, and I wish them a very happy anniversary...! Should be an amazing show...

More on Zev Asher

Two separate downloads have been put online of Zev Asher's music since his passing: one by Keith Parry, here, and one by his friend Jen Morris, here.

There's also an obit of Zev on the Straight site, with a photo that Bev Davies took of Zev when he was in Vancouver for 2011's Noise Night.

Anyone who knows what's happening re: Zev's movies, please let me know. When last he and I corresponded, he had plans to release his films on DVD, was talking about recording commentaries and so forth; I've been sitting on an interview since 2011, with plans to put it into the world to correspond with that release. It would be a shame if all that got scrapped now - his films are too interesting, too unique to lapse into obscurity.

Bobcat Goes Bigfoot: Willow Creek

It's high time for a serious, well-made cryptozoology movie. The whole concept of bigfoot, in particular, is sorely in need of a reboot and re-branding, lest the Sasquatch become nothing more than the stuff of stoner comedies, unseen Z-quality horror movies, and beer commercials - dismissive and superior, tacky and tasteless, or just plain silly. Whether bigfoot exists or not, children growing up without a local woodland monster to enhance their senses of wonder, awe, dread and curiosity - growing up in a world with Santa and the Easter Bunny, but no believable bigfoot - are growing up impoverished, deprived, cheated. Bigfoot belongs on the big screen, in a scary, sincere movie made by someone with the talent to do the story justice and a healthy respect for the mythos, regardless of whether they buy into it themselves...

Happy as I am, given these feelings, to hear about Willow Creek, I was not expecting that Bobcat Goldthwait would be the man to take up the cause, frankly. The trailer for this new, non-comedic found-footage bigfoot movie, and the poster, have appeared online recently. The poster is better than the trailer, which makes the film seem a bit too Blair-Witchy (and doesn't seem to do justice to the film's documentary elements), but still, I'm definitely curious (this review seems pretty positive, though I'm reluctant to read more about the film than I already have, since I already know I need to see it. Noted Ufologist Nick Redfern also gives it a thumbs up on Cryptomundo). It helps that I've liked every single Bobcat Goldthwait film I've seen (now at three: World's Greatest Dad - which I liked better on second viewing than first; Sleeping Dogs Lie, which no one nowhere should watch with their mother; and the rather terrific God Bless America). No word of a Vancouver screening as yet. Maybe it'll make it to the VIFF?

Note: there is a helpful, but not exhaustive, IMDB list of bigfoot movies here, in case you're wondering about Willow Creek's competition. You will note that, Harry and the Hendersons aside, not many of the films on it are widely known, nor do many seem that promising. As far as I can recall, in fact, the best bigfoot film I've seen to date is The Creature From Black Lake, if only because it boasts great performances from Dennis Fimple, Dub Taylor and Jack Elam. The competition is slight enough that Bobcat might just have made the best bigfoot movie ever...

EDITED TO ADD: oh BOY do I want a Squatchit. Somebody give these guys some money for me, okay?

Sorry, Werner; plus internet ennui

I am sure that Werner Herzog's spot on the dangers of texting while driving is far better than the average public service video, but frankly, I find the whole idea somewhat underwhelming. Plus I have a pretty good Michael Connelly novel on the go; was thinking of re-watching District 9, since I liked Elysium; and could always make good use of the night by taking a bath, or cleaning my kitchen, or going to bed early.

Sorry, Werner...

I've been having this feeling lately that more and more, the internet is not so satisfying lately, you know? I mean, it's great for work - for contacting interview subjects, for researching projects, doing job searches, and so forth. It sure saves on the cost of buying porn magazines (do they still even exist?). And there's always an abundance of idle entertainment to be found on Facebook, Herzog-related or no. But on the other hand, there's also the sense that I waste a lot more time sitting in front of the computer than is justifiable, and the number of personal emails that I get is probably down to a dozen a week (and could be eliminated altogether, since I can always connect with my friends via cellphone or text message). Unless my writing work picks up, I'm actually considering giving up the internet at home... It's not cheap, and there are definitely more rewarding ways to spend my time...

Elysium: a worthy, smart blockbuster for SF fans

To be absolutely honest, at the expense of seeming to criticize a film I mean to praise, I didn't get that emotionally involved in Elysium: its characters are too one-dimensional, too straightforward, too like thematic elements in a parable about inequality and class warfare to really invite investment or identification, and the experience of seeing the film is more like watching the working through of ideas than the telling of a story... All the same, God bless it for HAVING ideas, for having something to say; and God bless Neill Blomkamp for proving that his singular vision, so successfully captured by District 9, is not the stuff of an anomalous indy one-off, but can endure the travails of big budget filmmaking, can more-or-less survive the journey to the megaplex undiluted. It's not that easy to do! I've seen a few summer blockbusters this year - Pacific Rim, World War Z - and while I enjoyed them enough as they passed before my eyes, I felt strikingly hollow afterwards, and somewhat ashamed to have actually spent money on fundamentally empty experiences - like I'd been suckered; Pacific Rim was singularly disappointing insofar as so little of Del Toro's personality, so rich in his other films, seemed to have made it onto the screen. It coulda almost been a Michael Bay movie; Elysium could only have been made by Neill Blomkamp. The design of the spaceships and technology, the way the slums of Earth are filmed, the ways in which the hero has to undergo a painful personal transformation (this time more into cyborg than prawn-thing) in order to achieve redemption all resonated against his earlier film and spoke of a personal vision at work, rather than a corporate boardroom, a gigantic budget, and an astonishingly huge special effects team... though no doubt all of those were in play behind this film, as well...

Truth is, the bigger and louder movies get, somehow the more disposable and of-the-moment they seem, such that it becomes hard to imagine anyone caring about them in years to come; since there is less and less room for individual idiosyncrasy, thematic richness, or authentic personal passion behind them, how can they hope to linger in the memory (or the marketplace)? Now that people have all but given up on DVDs and Blu-Rays, with less and less money to be made from repeat viewings of a film after its theatrical run has finished, maybe staying power is no longer a priority? One suspects that in twenty years time the blockbusters of the moment will be as forgotten as films like Sly Stallone's Cliffhanger are today...

For its idiosyncracy, Elysium is a rare enough experience - at least in the megaplex - that I'm willing to overlook the film's flaws. And it's nice to know that there's a film in the theatres that actually invites discussion, analysis, that has things on its mind other than getting as much money as it can out of as many viewers as possible, before the corporate entities behind it move on to the next spectacle. Elysium isn't perfect, but it gives you hope that mainstream cinema isn't entirely worth abandoning just yet. I bet it'll have a nice following in third world countries, too... 

Zev Asher, RIP

Photo by Jen Morris,  not to be reused without permission! 

This is very sad news. I have been informed by email from friends of Zev Asher's that he died recently (earlier today, I believe), at the age of 50. Obituary and funeral details are here.

Zev was the first real interview I gave, for the final issue of Terminal City, to promote a screening of his at the Cinemuerte festival in 2005 (that interview is on my blog here). We finally met in 2011, when he came to Vancouver for a noise event and screening of his film, Subcultural Revolution: Shanghai, at my invite, and we did a big interview at that time, which has been pending publication; the idea was to publish it to correspond with a planned DVD release of some of his films. He had been battling cancer for some time at that point, and was recuperating, but when last I heard from him, in November of last year, he had anemia and was not doing so well. It seemed to be a back-and-forth battle, dragged out over a long period; but when emails I sent began bouncing back a few months ago, I began to suspect something was wrong. 

I was not close to him, but I greatly enjoyed the afternoon we spent in Vancouver, talking about his days in Nimrod and sharing our experiences of Japan. We walked around the downtown eastside and visited Scratch Records, his former label, which still existed back then (Keith Parry's touching and funny obituary of him is online here). After he left, I enjoyed his correspondence; the last email he sent, he pointed out that Jim Carrey had appeared in the Dirty Harry movie The Dead Pool. This I did not know. 

If anyone has pictures of Zev onstage or with Nimrod that they would like to see used to illustrate an article on him, sometime this summer, I'll be putting a big one into the world, based on our interview, in Zev's memory. As I say, I did not know the man well, but I liked him, and value both his music and his films. See his website or his Youtube channel for more information about (and examples of) his work. Rest in peace, Zev; my condolences to those who knew you.

FLAG vs Black Flag

Doing some comparisons on Youtube. Here's a full FLAG set (note: an awesome version of "My War" begins at 9:45). Bill Stevenson's drumming really stands out here - he's still pretty amazing, and the band in general sound lean and mean and hungry. FLAG profits from having two guitarists, too; they really make the most out of some very brief, fast, simple songs. Then there's a full set from Black Flag, here - a much longer show, but with video and audio a bit rougher, alas. It's a little hard to tell with the audio the way it is, but it sounds like the new drummer's got nothing on Stevenson, and the songs sprawl a bit - see in particular Greg Ginn's solo in the middle of  their new song, "The Chase," starting around 8:30; the song borders on falling apart, can barely contain his tendency to spazz out. Still, the overall energy is dark and menacing and credible, and leans towards the new (it would be hard to imagine FLAG writing new songs and still being FLAG; good as they are, they're a cover band, right?). The bassist kind of disappears, as bassists are wont to do. The big difference lies in Ron Reyes; I think I like his vocals better than either Keith's or Dez's, and I definitely like his stage presence, stalking like a panther, menacing. A cool version of "Can't Decide" starts around 46:50, which accomodates Ginn's style much better. (Attentive readers will be able to guess what my favourite Black Flag album is).

Both bands sound pretty good to me, actually...

A bar of chocolate for Lizabeth Scott: on The Cinematheque's film noir series

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Bad week for rock'n'roll: Black Flag lawsuit, Motörhead stops show short, Sharon Jones' tumor, Tim Wright dies

Apparently Greg Ginn is suing both Flag and Henry Rollins for trespass against his ownership of the Black Flag brand. Not sure how I feel about it. On some level it makes sense that he'd be upset by some of the shenanigans described, since - at least according to Ginn - Keith Morris and Rollins attempted to trademark the Black Flag name and logo last year; but on another level, isn't it like pouring a cold pitcher of water across the crotches of people you're planning to have sex with? Having TWO versions of Black Flag out there was kind of hot, after all; surely a "the more the merrier" attitude would have been the more magnanimous, rock-positive move, contributing to an atmosphere of infectious enthusiasm for the Black Flag back catalog: enthusiasm which the suit puts rather a damper on. But then, Ginn doesn't come across particularly well in the book on the Negativland lawsuit, either. Rock 'n' roll is best served without litigation... more from Black Flag on the matter here (and hey, the new Black Flag song is pretty good).

Also not great news: Motörhead went ahead with a performance at Wacken open air recently - their first time back onstage since they cancelled a bunch of shows due to Lemmy's health issues. It was intended to be a one-off show, but Lemmy still wasn't feeling up to snuff; he had to bow out after six songs. Half of their set is circulating on video - it actually sounds pretty good, considering. Lemmy seems the sort of guy who would perform himself within an inch of the grave, so if he had to stop, he must have been feeling pretty goddamn lousy. One wonders how the Wacken crowd received it: I remember nasty chants of "bull-SHIT" when Cradle of Filth ended a Vancouver show without an encore because their singer was feeling ill, but I somehow imagine the Wacken crowd, who, unlike the Cradle of Filth fans, were doubtlessly in the know about Lemmy's health concerns, would have been kinder and much more worried. I imagine 85,000 metalheads trying to rush backstage to ask "is Lemmy okay?" Rather than wishing him a speedy recuperation, it seems best to wish him a nice long slow one - because no one wants to see him drop mid-concert; the band still has shows scheduled for November, but jeez, guys, at this point you've got nothing to prove to us, and we will wait for you... (official statement on Lemmy here).

Finally - this is news from awhile back, and more of a soul/ funk thing than rock, but anyone wondering why Sharon Jones hasn't had an album out lately can find the answer here: she's being treated for bile-duct cancer (and expected to make a full recovery). In fact, the Dap-Kings new album is complete, but will be shelved until the band are able to tour behind it. Meantime, Daptone fans can go see the documentary about Charles Bradley at the Rio tonight, and/or see him at Deer Lake Park this weekend... if I were in Vancouver, that's where I'd be tonight.

Edited to add: Tim Wright of DNA (and the original lineup of Pere Ubu) died at age 61 this week...! That sucks!

Of extended technique, plus Darren Williams and Francois Houle at the Kozmik Zoo, Monday

Darren Williams by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

A confession: when it comes to reed instruments, I'm not at all clear how extended technique works. Listen to THIS, for instance - start with the first track, off Darren Williams' new solo album, Reed. I know that there's a trick as to how he can continuously play for long stretches - that he's actually inhaling and exhaling at the same time, which allows for the seemingly limitless playing you hear. (I want to call it "breathless" playing but obviously breath is involved, it just appears to be one long endless breath, unlike the normal human inhalation/ exhalation thing). But my understanding is a matter of merely understanding the words; I have no actual grasp of how to do what he's doing, no physical sense of it, and I have lots of questions, like:

a) How long exactly can he keep this manner of playing up? It seems to so transcend normal human limitations as to appear infinite, but surely he needs to stop and inhale sometime, no?

b) Are there health consequences of playing this way? My recollection of seeing Francois Houle and Evan Parker do this sort of thing is that they get a bit red-faced and puffy-cheeked, so is it actually, um, dangerous to do? Can something, um, burst?

c) Alternately, are there benefits? Is being able to breathe this way useful for singing, swimming, cunnilingus, or other applications? Surely Williams' vital capacity must be enormous. Can he blow out a birthday cake from across the room?

d) Is he actually taking new breaths when he is playing in this manner, or recycling the same breath? If he's recycling, is he getting less and less oxygen each time? Does he get light-headed? If he's recycling, it requires him to breathe in eventually, RIGHT? If he's actually taking new breaths, which orifice exactly are they coming through?

e) Does playing this way have other limitations? Can he only play "so hard" when he's working on inhaling while he exhales? Does it require massive amounts of exertion or concentration, or does it get easy after time?

f) Is this something *anyone* with the right amount of training can do, or is does it require some particular genetic profile or body type or...?

Darren Williams (saxophone) and Francois Houle (clarinet) are playing the Kozmik Zoo this Monday. Both are masters of extended technique; Houle, in fact, is one of Williams' teachers. Perhaps some answers can be found by attending...

Ray Harryhausen tribute begins tonight!

Starting tonight at the Pacific Cinematheque: a double-bill of two of the best-loved Ray Harryhausen films, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts! Great stuff (though the above image is from neither, but The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Gary Floyd has me thinking of Kali lately, what can I say...). When I was a kid, no one instilled in me a sense of the wonder of cinema like Harryhausen (though Forrest J. Ackerman, also departed, helped immeasurably). I recently revisited both of these films and was pleased to see how well they held up, not just as effects vehicles, but as storytelling...

Only God Forgives is a must-see

Only God Forgives is remarkable cinema; anyone concerned with film should rush to the Rio Theatre tomorrow (Monday, at 7:30 and 9:30) to catch it on the big screen before it goes away for good.

I've been a slow study when it comes to Nicolas Winding Refn. I had no great fondness for Refn's previous film, his North American breakthrough Drive; I watched it once, shrugged, and no longer have a strong enough remembrance of the film to fairly comment on it, save that Refn seemed to wear his influences on his sleeve (Michael Mann, Walter Hill, maybe a bit of Kubrick), and that I am no great Ryan Gosling fan (though I did like him in Fracture, which takes his apparent smugness and runs it through the mire a bit: by pitting him against a better, if hammier, actor, Anthony Hopkins, who plays his nemesis, the film almost stands as a metaphor for itself - the on-screen cat-and-mouse game figuring the clash of talents behind it). Though I've been told Refn's Pusher trilogy is great, and was impressed by what I saw of Valhalla Rising, the only other Refn film I have seen to completion is Fear X, his ambiguous Hubert Selby Jr. collaboration, starring John Turturro as a man whose pregnant wife has been murdered, who may or may not get justice for himself, having followed an obscure lead to a different town, where he confronts the vigilante responsible for her death (James Remar - best known these days as Dexter's ghost-dad). It's a remarkably visual film that at times is very gripping, but it leaves just enough unexplained that for me, it seemed (on first viewing, anyhow) to be kinda unfinished and unsatisfying.

Nothing of the sort can be said for Only God Forgives: while it does refrain from spelling things out, and gives what appears to be competing "objective"/ real and subjective/ hallucinatory versions of its action at certain points, sometimes not tipping its hand as to which is which - the film offers a morally complex, psychologically rich drama that DOES arrive at completion, while still leaving the viewer lots to discuss and/or ponder. It's also beautifully shot, by Fear X's Larry Smith, who also worked on Refn's Bronson and three Kubrick films; Refn tips his hat to Gaspar Noe in the credits, and you can see why (the more commented-upon hat-tip to Jodorowsky is more oblique, though it presumably has more to do with the themes of the film, which take in troubled mother-son relations and a young man's rise into maturity, than it does with its look. There's also quite a bit of business involving hands and their severing, which resonates a bit against Santa Sangre...). The Thai locations and various beautifully-filmed set pieces, such as the slow, lovely tracking shot in which Chang (Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm, below) practices his swordsmanship, keep the film visually compelling for those with a hungry eye; Kristin Scott Thomas steps miles outside of her usual neurotic, stuffy Brit role to play a fierce American blonde Mom-from-Hell with various crime connections; and Cliff Martinez provides a terrific score, mostly consisting of overtly-Tangerine-Dreamy analog synth stuff, which is not shy in taking center stage at a couple points. Gosling is pretty good, too; maybe I just like seeing him get the shit beat out of him! Far as I'm concerned, Only God Forgives is a must-see, though be warned: the violence in it is brutal and unpredictable and may cause the odd flinch and/or gasp from any less-desensitized girlfriends you happen to talk into coming along. I speak from experience on that one.

Only God Forgives appears to end its Vancouver run on Monday, so make sure you get out to catch it while you can...

First come the pigeons, then the Chinese handymen....

Apparently there was a reason I dithered and fucked about for hours in the apartment today: just now, while I was on my hands and knees naked in the hallway hand-picking lint from my carpet, an older Chinese man unlocked my door and proceeded to come inside... until he saw me, sticking my head and shoulders around the corner at ankle level, asking him what the hell he was doing (he was in no position to return the question, fortunately). He is one of several handymen doing renovations in the building, and merely had the wrong suite; I suspect this is a mistake he will not make again.

L'affaire Spiderbaby

In case you've missed it, this is a pretty fun rabbithole to dive into: Quentin Tarantino's girlfriend, a Canadian who publishes under Lianne Spiderbaby, and who contributes to a variety of horror mags, including Video Watchdog (for whom I have also written), has been busted for what appears to be some pretty overt plagiarism. See here and here for more; the latter is the site of former Super Happy Fun guy Mike White (interviewed here). White was the one who famously outed similarities between Ringo Lam's City On Fire and Reservoir Dogs back in the 1990's.  (that's a very entertaining video, if you've missed it). Oh, and apparently Quentin Tarantino is a foot fetishist: that's a pretty trashy article, but it's also pretty damn entertaining, I must admit. Besides, I've sucked me some toes over the years - it's not like I'm holding him in judgment...

Never, however, have I plagiarised...

The X Files and Gabrielle Rose

Stumbled across the first season of The X Files in a thrift store today and picked it up almost out of curiosity, because, given the hours I invested in the show in the 1990's, there's a curious void left in my mind, a lack of impression, like I've forgotten why I ever followed it devotedly. Watching the first two episodes tonight didn't do much to enlighten me, though for light entertainment, it was certainly not much worse than, say, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Part of my amusement  - besides trying to pin down Vancouver locations - was seeing how goofy and naive the series seems, how it's not much more sophisticated than the monster-of-the-week exploits of Carl Kolchak - a silly, slight thing, nowhere near as gripping as I found it twenty years ago; post 9/11, the conspiracy theories they roll out all just seem so innocent, so childish, so lacking in gravitas or believability that one can only chuckle...

The highlight of the evening was watching the second episode, "Deep Throat," and discovering it co-stars Vancouver actor Gabrielle Rose, as a woman whose husband - an experimental jet pilot - suffers a strange breakdown and is mysteriously "taken" by government agents. She gives an intense, memorable performance, which I nonetheless had completely forgotten, though I knew who she was when I first saw it. After she turns to Mulder and Scully for help, her husband is returned in a changed state, and - the meat of the role, acting-wise - she presents the familiar Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers "that's-not-my-husband" trauma in such a way that you believe her character, Anita Budahas, is on the edge of a breakdown. Acts the hell out of the part, she does - a neurotic powerhouse performance that goes so far in eclipsing what's around it that it borders on being too much. (She also manages, with all her twitching and quivering, to be quite sexy; or maybe that's just me). I was surprised that I'd completely forgotten her appearance; fans of hers should check the episode out (no doubt there's a way it can be watched for free online somewhere). Note that Rose also appears in Season 2, Episode 2, "The Host", in an entirely different role, so apparently the production team was impressed by her, too; that's the episode with the human flukeworm, and I actually do remember her appearance (if only slightly)...