Countdown

I know that the WFMU blog (which is so rad) is doing a countdown to Hallowe'en but I don't really care because I thought of it too and this one will feature some favourites of mine (not theirs) and hopefully ours and a trailer and a poster and they should gradually put you in the mood for whatever it is you do on the 31st of October.

Let's go!

We'll start off with some lighter (not better or worse, mind you) fare.

cause I feel filthy in a Metzger manner...

"But how do I defeat a guy who's immortal?"

You'll find this in the reading rack of our restrooms in the cinema...

boos at the Bloor

Don't often do plugs for stuff going on in good old Toronto, but if you are in town, be sure to head over to the Bloor Cinema and check out one of the screenings in this years line-up of the TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL which runs from October 19-25.They have a decent selection of international fantastic films including WOLFHOUND full of CONAN-style sword and sorcery kicks, but with a Russian twist, THE REBEL for kung fu kicks to the head from Vietnam, and from the demented mind of Shinya Tsukamoto, director of TETSUO and TOKYO FIST comes NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE. If you dig Lloyd Kaufman and his Troma-tastic style of lo-brow shlock, take a bite out of his much anticipated new zombie comedy musical POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD. And to close off the Fest on the 25th is MURDER PARTY a good excuse for bloody chainsaw humour. For a complete festival schedule, feature film reviews, trailer links, and the festival box office are now live at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival website here: http://www.torontoafterdark.com/

The above photo is by Sam Javanrouh from his fab blog daily dose of imagery. You might recognize the zombie from one of the undead who was lurking about the DIARY OF THE DEAD premiere...

Summer of Sam (the Record Man)

I don't want to be seen as somebody who cannot let go of the past and is endlessly obsessed with the tiniest, cement speck of downtown Toronto's history or whatever. I mean, I never grew up there...I was always an hour or more away. And anyway, Jesse is already totally absorbed by it to an almost frightening point. He needs your help.

This is just a recollection that came back and pushed me in a few directions and had an effect on me in the most recent week or two. I woke up to some radio show playing old punk rock and I heard this song by all-girl Toronto combo, The Curse, called "Shoeshine Boy". I'm not sure I'd ever heard it before but it immediately flooded my brain with foggy memories of the killing of Emanuel Jacques and Ontario's own seedy Times Square, downtown Yonge Street. The only thing that keeps this post remotely on topic is the fact that we seem to all be into the grand and dirty cinema/culture centres of yore around here and we had a doozy in the 70s with Yonge and the area's grime was noticed and 'something had to be done' once it was brought to attention by the media via this tragic and grotesque crime.

My family would come to Toronto for a weekend each year. Usually we'd take in some event like a concert or game or whatever but to me it was the beginning of a love of Toronto street walking and record stores and shit. Like, Jamie Ufton at school let me know where the Record Peddler was on Queen East and Flash Jacks on Yonge and I'd go out to the Danforth Music Hall (or was it the Roxy?) to see the Led Zeppelin movie which played there on Saturdays along with a dull Jimi Hendrix documentary. Stuff that was very exciting to me at the time and still resonates that way. Anyhow, I remember one year (maybe the first) my parents were warning me to be careful and stuff and I had a vague but mostly uninterested memory of a grisly downtown crime in the previous year or so that I equated with the much larger and more known Son of Sam thing in NYC. In fact, I believe I ended up thinking that the killing of this young boy in Toronto was committed by the Son of Sam, albeit briefly. So, after hearing the song that is loosely based on the crime and stuff, I wanted to find out more so I went searching and got into the headspace of Toronto in 1977 or so. A fun time!

This was probably my favourite little page. They don't write stuff like this so much anymore, do they? I don't read a lot of newspapers so maybe they do but this feels antiquated even, you know? It's cool though for sure.

And I finally found the song I'd been searching for back when I posted about the CN Tower's slight stumble (and still recovering fine, thanks!) from stature a few weeks back. This song is a stunner so I suggest you download it right now...the B side can wait. Also, now I need to find Jamie Ufton and convince him to sell me his collection of early Canadian punk 45s. I'm sure he had them. Help me.


And as a filmic illustration, the ad campaign from the era that totally freaked me out and continues to do so and always will. What a truly creepy image this is. It's burned into me and would genuinely frighten the shit out of me when I saw it in the paper.





CN Power!

sticky initials

Topps Monster Initial Stickers! Oh, the glorious memories of these stickers that would find themselves adhered on to every surface of a young boys bedroom! I remember staying overnight at a friend's house and he had them plastered all over the headboard of his bed along with those gross-out consumer product parody stickers. What were those called. The folks over at i-mockery.com have created a letter generator using these cards. What are you waiting for, head on over and get MONSTERIZED! Too bad its just missing that stale stick gum that cracks when you touch it.

The Antichrist

A chilling vision of the future (1998)...

my dream house (or nightmare...)

Been AWOL from the cinema, but the season of trick or treats has lured me back. As the frost begins to mount its attack on pumpkin fields, I am sure to pull out a spooky fave of mine, THE LEGEND OF THE HELL HOUSE. My first time seeing this was when my parents allowed me to stay up to view it on late night television. As my sleepy head nodded off during the broadcast, the film's dense atmosphere invaded my dreams, making the experience one that I fondly remember. Then as a goth influenced teen, I delighted in the use of dialogue and sounds from the film in several songs by the Vancouver band Skinny Puppy, which next to Polanski's THE TENANT, is the most oft-sampled film in their canon.



And here is a flashback for British viewers, including news recap of poll tax riots in Whitehall and Maggie Thatcher just before a late night broadcast. I love how the horrors of real life fade into the creepy organ of the film's intro...

Abby

from the director of The Manitou...

She gets around

First she has Russ Meyer doing her in 1964.



Next, Barry Mahon tirelessly woos her charms all through 1967...





And into 1968.



Then the Swedes (of course!) take a taste of Fanny before the same year is over.




It's enough to give a girl a reputation, and fast!

Horrorthon!

The Floor Stickens

Heavenly Bodies must be awesome by now! Eighties Toronto and leotards...

I know we can't bring ourselves to talk about video too much around here, but can I just give a shout-out to Key Video, a specialty label of CBS/FOX in the eighties that put out a lot of their obscure art/b-movie holdings; Stranger Than Paradise, the 1966 Batman, the mighty Prime Cut, Altman's Quintet, the 100% berserk Ryan O'Neal gambling picture Fever Pitch and yes, Heavenly Bodies, and all with the same garish rainbow packaging design.

Johnny said what?

what pulled me away

Every year I get whisked away from our fleabag cinema to chat up and shmooze with folks in the international film scene and this year I had to look after a blog dedicated to this little sidejob. You can check it here, but if you want highlights, check these snippets out below. There will be more to come on the blog like a Q&A with George A. Romero and Stuart Gordon, but in the meantime, you can watch a never before seen, 4 part interview with Dario Argento from 1990 (check the user page for the other 3 parts), and Dario and Brian Yuzna introducing films that they had in the Toronto Festival of Festivals' Midnight Madness selection from 1990. The Bloor Cinema is no longer used by the Fest, but still runs rep and specialty fest programming. Just saw NIGHT OF THE CREEPS there on Thursday with director Fred Decker in person! And in these flashback clips, keep your eyes peeled for this dude:

Sorry ladies, as much as you beg me, that look is not coming back....

TIFF - Classic Midnight Madness # 1

TIFF - Classic Midnight Madness # 2

TIFF - Classic Dario Argento Interview - Part 1

get outta my seat! I'm BACK!

L.A.scivious

I just finished a viewing of 1971's, 'Refinements In Love' with Rene Bond and narrated/hostessed by the lovely Liz Renay. Ostensibly, I guess it's a quasi-documentary type Mondo film studying the changing morals of the late 60s and early 70s sexual revolution but really it's just an excuse to show some hardcore inserts to prop-up timeless sexual psychology stories and whatnot. There was quite a bit more explicit (it was porno, people) lewdness than I was expecting but the faux doctors and expert opinioners were as great as the examples of problems they brought forward for examination. The french kissing seemed awkward.

One 'soon to be married' couple consisted of a prudish girl of Victorian strongmindedness and a self-described normal, red-blooded American who just couldn't handle it anymore. She calms his raging animal and then tries to get the subject changed.

Near Wife: Tell me what you did today.
Near Husband: I suffered.
Me: big laughs

*Spoiler* Apparently they later separated and he moved to the East Coast while she retained custody of their child. *End spoiler*


All the while, there is this intermittent yet interesting folky score that outlines some of the activity on the screen and clearly inspired later acts such as Arthur & Yu. The waterbed song is pure enchantment.

Anyway, enough of my cold and congested rambling, the real reason I am here is to show that the marquees of sleazy California are as good (not quite so, though) as Times Square. As usual, these Mondo films have a great batch of footage with vast historical significance to some people. And there's a nice montage of what appears to be Las Vegas' land of topless establishments in there as well.














And, curiously, we have Times Square for a second in there too. Meduim Cool across the street!

God Told Me To

Tony Lo Bianco takes on Evil in this 1976 Larry Cohen joint. Might be time to finally run that God Told Me To/Q: The Winged Serpent double bill!

The Blue Wire or The White Wire?

This is the kind of film secret sinema societies were made for... Juggernaut!

Parental Guidance Suggested

I have never seen It's Alive - how can it be scarier than this traumatizing commercial for it?

Warren Fucking Oates

Dixie Dynamite!


Cockfighter!



Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia!

The grand shadows of fallen giants

Dear CN Tower

Hi. How are you? Are you sad today? I'm sorry if this is the case but try to remember that no matter what happens, you'll always be the coolest freestanding structure in the world. You got that covered easy and nobody can ever take it away from you or you from us.

I'll never forget the high thrills you provided me with and the dizzying fun it is to look up when I'm down there beside you. Remember when Mlle. Moore gave me such trouble for climbing past the bars and into one of those little round window well things? Ha! Screw her! We knew what we were doing. To spit off of your breezy heights is to be alive.

I love you.

Michael

Free reign

It's so nice when the brains behind the blog are all off busying themselves for the Toronto International Film Festival and us rural bumpkins can just kinda say, "Whu?," as we drag a broom around the empty place and sort of dwell on whatever we fancy and push the accepatable boundaries of run-on sentences while doing it, man. That's nice.

Last weekend while seated even slightly more into 'the sticks' for a spell, we returned to the warm chest of one of our all time favourite screen bounders, George Sanders, and re-watched his near final farewell to celluloid, 1971's Psychomania. I've got a dismal old dupe-y VHS around that was recorded at 24 hour speed but I've been itching to get a nicer copy to revisit so I got this cheap DVD under poor advice only to later find that it has a scene trimmed where our man George is introduced and something else that sounds wonderful also happens but I've forgotten what that one is. So, either we go for a UK cut of the film on DVD or find a special someone who has the nice, widescreen version that is OOP and too much at $100 or so but apparently is fully intact. Such decisions.

If you've never seen the film, I suggest you seek it out and bathe in the remarkably fun nonsense that it is. Basically, due to some family witchcraft history and a particular fondness of frogs, this young chap who is the head boy of a motorcycle gang (they're called 'The Living Dead'!) decides it would be terrific fun to willingly kill themselves in order to come back as indestructible immortals and continue their unique brand of childish mayhem and kill a few people who disapprove and tut tut too! So, they do, damned kids! And it's a joy to behold and there is a rather plaintive (and head-shakingly awesome) song sang at this young man's funeral party where he is in a hole and on his bike in full gear and a ton more of golden moments that make it all so worthwhile and enjoyable if you're in for a goof of a good time. I guarantee your smiles and good times, people.

And Sanders plays a butler and even though he is near his low moment of eventual suicide and acting in dregs clearly beneath him, the man is a true actor and professional to the finish and delivers a fine performance all around. A class act always.




Here is the type of awful, no-good goings on that these young and leathered limeys get up to. For shame!




And here we see the country of origin, UK quad for this treasure of cinema.

Pinks

Still one of my favourite films and the trailer is very exciting too. I just had a Hellman craving but I don't have the time to sit and watch the film right now so this clip will do just perfectly as a taste. Usually, a simple viewing of the opening moments of the film has me hooked in and I'm there for the duration and all the Oatesy goodness but I have avoided that here and now for us all. It's such a meditative film for me that I can't expain why it's so attractive. Like Barbi Benton, it's something entirely personal.

Memories of Forty Deuce

Revolve

"Leave the children home."

Fairy stories!

An excellent discourse from an even more excellent movie that I need to revisit very soon. You get it all in Jack and the Beanstalk and you get a good dose of Poitier's cool calm and Vic Morrow's classically dour delinquent. Does it come any finer? And then at the end, you see the squareness of the teachers still jiving Glenn Ford for trying and you can taste his frustration when he so presciently talks about thinking for yourself in the face of everything. It's boss.

have chair will travel

Suspect Video used to have a copy of this on VHS. Wonder if it is still available for rent...

If you can't have the real thing-- you do all kinds of unreal things

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Somehow after watching an Elliot Gould clip that Jesse sent me, I found this clip from DEEP END which I remember seeing at the B-Fest at the Bloor years ago. How it fit into a "B" category I will never know, but I am grateful for seeing it on the big screen. What a great poster! For more pics, visit this Russian film fan blog.

Orgone accumulation

Well, it's been a little spell since I've come across a nice marquee scene but there it was, smack dab in the middle of the excellent WR:Mysteries of the Organism as Jackie Curtis licks an ice cream on a NYC stroll through heaven.









And I totally love Milena Dravic's character (and her friend too!) for the sharp decorating choices she makes.