In Heaven and Hell With You

I've been listening almost exclusively to Siouxsie and the Banshees for the last couple of weeks. Halloween seems an appropriate time to write something about them, and about Siouxsie Sioux in particular, given that a song entitled "Halloween" figures so prominently in their discography.

In my opinion, no other British group of the post-punk era underwent such dramatic metamorphoses or so thoroughly explored their potential as a recording unit as Siouxsie and the Banshees. Their albums were strong and intelligently sequenced, their singles (collected as ONCE UPON A TIME and TWICE UPON A TIME) were glorious, and their B-sides (collected in the box set DOWNSIDE UP) were a laboratory for fascinating experimentation. Siouxsie herself was such a compelling figure, so obviously a creature of theater and so sleekly photogenic in their videos, I find it incredible, even outrageous to this day that no one ever approached her to act in features. And when harrowing flipsides like "Umbrella" started turning up, I couldn't understand why at least one enterprising horror director out there didn't have the brain to put them in harness right away as the Anglo answer to Goblin. They were not ones for standing still; they went through guitarists like Kleenex (The Cure's Robert Smith moonlighted with them briefly), but their core guitar sound was essentially defined from the get-go by original six-stringer John McKay and later refined when the extraordinary John McGeoch joined the Banshees for three of their most beloved albums (KALEIDOSCOPE, JUJU and A KISS IN THE DREAMHOUSE). Even with later guitarists on board, they were a powerhouse live band, driven by Budgie's thundrous drum sound and one of the most original and authoritative female figureheads a rock band has ever had.

I had the good fortune to see them live once; it was good fortune because Siouxsie and the Banshees never came to Cincinnati, but they happened to be playing in Washington DC in May 1986, on the day after a wedding we attended there. It was a funny situation: we were staying with the friends who got married, who had already been living together for awhile. Donna didn't want to go, but the bride did, but the bride was supposed to be honeymooning, so Donna ended up using my spare ticket under duress. We were strangers to Washington, didn't know where the Warner Theater was, but as we wandered around, people with pink mohawks and chained leatherware began to appear, so I suggested we just follow them. I had seen a number of punk and post-punk acts in Cincinnati, but here people never dressed the act -- you couldn't particularly tell a Ramones audience from a Jackson Browne audience by sight in Cincinnati. This concert was my only direct exposure to anything like an authentic punk audience, and I found their style and energy stimulating, but once the show was over, Donna wanted to get out of there pretty fast, so we did.

Apart from a little accident at the outset when the theater's heavy velvet curtains opened too swiftly, causing a backdraft that sent one right into Budgie's thundering drum kit, the performance was impeccably played with all three musicians giving their all. (I saw them with John Valentine Carruthers on guitar, whose gleaming work on "Cities in Dust" and "92 Degrees" is as definitive as anything they did with McGeoch.) I had seen only very early performance footage of the group at that time and was particularly impressed by how Siouxsie had matured as a live performer. She, who had started out shaking her fists and thumbing her nose and goosestepping across the stage, danced sinuously like an art nouveau Salomé, till the show climaxed with her somersaulting through stage fog while singing "Eve Black/Eve White," one of her many songs of fractured personality, this one inspired by THE THREE FACES OF EVE.

The classic group's only official live video release, NOCTURNE, captures them at an earlier point in time (with Robert Smith still aboard) but playing a similar set list; I recommend it, especially for the show-stopping "Night Shift," a grippingly dolorous dirge that opened Side 2 of JUJU and somehow became the cathartic centerpiece of every concert they played thereafter. (There's a circulating 1981 Cologne show that finds Siouxsie urging her catatonic audience to stand up, dance, do something, explaining "We're just a pop group" -- and then launching into this song.) Siouxsie and the Banshees were also, among other things, a highly film-literate band, even opening TINDERBOX's "92 Degrees" with a sound byte from IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE ("Did you know that more murders are committed at 92 degrees fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once... At lower temperatures, people are easygoing; over 92, it's too hot to move, but just 92, people get irritable!!!")

I'm glad I had the chance to see them play when I did, because they began losing their appeal for me with their next album, the covers collection THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Their best remaining song, "Peek-A-Boo," was reportedly based on the master tape of one of their earlier songs... played backwards. That they could turn something so rooted in the outré into their only US chart hit testifies to their gifts of invention, even at this late stage. They disbanded after their 1995 album THE RAPTURE, with Siouxsie and Budgie (who married in 1991) focusing their attentions thereafter on the side project, The Creatures. The way groups end often colors the way we feel about them in retrospect, and the way Siouxsie and the Banshees slowly succumbed to overproduction, revolving door personnel and divided attentions meant that I spent a good deal of the past decade not listening very much to the many wonderful songs and albums they gave us.

This latest Banshees binge of mine got underway strangely. I hit a wall in a writing project and felt a depression coming on, so I decided to meet it head-on by listening to "Swimming Horses" from the HYAENA album. Of all the group's recorded work, this is the one song that never fails to get under my skin, and it's been known to induce blue moods in me that last for days -- blue but somehow delicious. In this case, however, I administered it to myself as a kind of antigen -- before the depression could take hold, I hoped the song would. Surprisingly, it worked. I then loaded all of my Siouxsie CDs onto my iPod and found that, despite the music's sometimes dark imagery, its propulsive drumming and spider-woven guitar lines and the sheer gusto of Siouxsie's bellowing combined into something quite energizing and uplifting. It's been a good companion.

In the course of this latest immersion in the Banshees, I read some things and discovered that Siouxsie and Budgie divorced awhile ago and disbanded The Creatures, and that Siouxsie released her first solo album, MANTARAY, last year. She's still a handsome woman, and the album finds her still in strong voice, and noticeably less guarded about showing her tender side. (What's next, a sense of humor?) It's a good album, opening with "Into A Swan," a pounding ode to impending personal transformation -- a theme also reflected in song titles like "About to Happen", "Here Comes That Day" and "If It Doesn't Kill Me." The instrumental sound of the album is percussive techno-cabaret, appropriately fantasmagorical but with a array of instrumentation whose broad musical palette recalls A KISS IN THE DREAMHOUSE. But hearing Siouxsie's voice severed from the tantric, flangey, tidal swell of The Banshees sometimes brings about in actuality the sense of dislocation that she often sang about on the albums she made with The Banshees in the late '70s and '80s. The ever-fluctuating flavors of the record's instrumental backing gradually ring hollow (or at least fickle) over the course of ten songs, failing to provide in visceral anchoring what it delivers in varietal color. Of all the tracks, "Into A Swan" and "They Follow You" come closest to capturing a classic yet distinctively fresh Siouxsie sound. Vocally and instrumentally, MANTARAY is an inventive album, though it falls short of being a wholly convincing or coalescent one. Siouxsie's voice needs to backed by stronger personalities, and I hope her next solo album finds her sounding just as bold but less alone.

To help set the mood for your holiday festivities, I leave you with Siouxsie performing the aforementioned "Halloween" with the classic Banshees lineup of Steve Severin (bass), the late John McGeoch (guitar) and Budgie (drums).

Grace Slick @ 69

Grace Slick, self portrait.

Somewhere in California, I suppose, Grace Slick is celebrating her 69th birthday today -- and if she's not, because she has it in that fool head of hers that old people don't look good when they're making music or having fun, well... I'll celebrate for her.

I first saw and heard Grace singing "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit" on radio and television a bit earlier in life, when Jefferson Airplane's SURREALISTIC PILLOW album was climbing the charts, but they didn't become my favorite band until I saw them play live on National Public Television in two hour specials that aired in 1970. Those two shows, "San Francisco Rock: A Night at the Family Dog" and "Go Ride the Music", were released on DVD this year to little notice but, after decades of having to contend with bleary, jittery dupes, these clean and steady presentations (with remixed 5.1 mono sound) are godsends. These shows don't just represent the ground zero of my nearly lifelong love affair with Jefferson Airplane; they embody the moment I became obsessed with live music recordings -- savoring the ways in which live performance differs from studio recordings. As good as their studio albums were and are, live performance was everything to Jefferson Airplane. Witness this sample from "A Night at the Family Dog" -- where I also fell in love with Jack Casady's electric bass.

The way Grace Slick presided over Jefferson Airplane's initial media blitzkrieg, with her soaring contralto painting powerful Cassandra-like visions of the drug-amplified mind, I had assumed that she was the band's lead singer. In fact, she had replaced the group's initial female vocalist, Signe Anderson, who had been granted only one solo number and generally sang backup. Grace left her initial band, The Great Society, to join the Airplane and brought with her the two numbers she proceeded to make world-famous with them. Marty Balin, the group's mellow-voiced founder and actual lead singer, can be seen in footage of these early TV appearances huddled over an electric piano he's not playing, looking like the odd man out. Marty's persona as a singer was romantic and persuasive, almost feminine, and Grace complemented him with rock's first non-melodic female voice, whose value lay in its conveyance of a power that went beyond masculine into something nearer the prophetic or the godly. Finding herself the unwitting focal point in a band she'd just joined, Grace was sensitive to Marty's feelings and refused to allow either of her original contributions to the follow-up album, AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER'S, to go out as the A-sides of their next singles. As a result, Jefferson Airplane stopped being a singles band overnight and became one of the first true avatars of AOR (album oriented rock).

In addition to being beautiful, smart, sassy, sexy and a distinctive vocalist, Grace was one of the most original songwriters of her time: "Rejoyce" reduced Joyce's ULYSSES to a four minute song, "Eskimo Blue Day" and her remarkable live vocal improv on "Bear Melt" were impressionistic ecology, and "Hey Fredrick" and "Across the Board" are two of the most unflinching songs about sex ever recorded. She's underrated as a keyboardist and still generally an unknown quantity as a guitarist, though I've heard a tape of her playing acoustic guitar that proved her at least as adept at the instrument as the Airplane's rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner -- the father of her only child, former MTV veejay China Kantner. But, in a band also featuring Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, the last thing the Airplane needed was another guitarist.

My favorite photo of Grace, circa 1969, from the inner sleeve of Paul Kantner's BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE album.

Over the years, I've done my best to celebrate my love for Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane in some tangible form -- I've finished the work but haven't been able to share it with the public as yet. Last year, I wrote an entire book about Jefferson Airplane's 1968 album CROWN OF CREATION that I hoped Continuum Press would publish in their "33 & 1/3" series; to date, they haven't. (They will start considering new submissions within the coming weeks and I will try, try again.) Before that, I wrote a four-hour script entitled JEFFERSON AIRPLANE: LOVE & HAIGHT, which told the band's entire story with founder Marty Balin as its protagonist and Grace Slick as its accidental antagonist. When more than a year passed without interest from anyone, I took my agent's advice and rewrote the script as a regular feature focusing on Grace. I had lots of ideas for people who could play Grace, ranging from Leelee Sobieski to Pink to Sarah Silverman, but the word that came back after all my troubles is that Grace and the Airplane weren't sufficiently well-known to have a movie made about them.

Excuse me? We're talking about the band that headlined at Woodstock and supported the Rolling Stones at Altamont, the band that Ed Sullivan and LIFE Magazine called "the top rock group in America." Grace herself was ranked #20 on VH1's 100 GREATEST WOMEN OF ROCK 'N' ROLL special. We're also talking about an industry that has made TV-movies about bands like Sweetwater and The Monkees. But be that as it may.

In honor of Grace's birthday, I've decided to post -- for the first time anywhere -- the first five pages of my unproduced Grace Slick biopic screenplay. Maybe someday we'll all be able to see the rest. In the meantime, enjoy.

INT. SUBURBAN LIVING ROOM - DAY

Caption: San Francisco, 1946.

Two little, dimpled hands carefully place a 78 rpm record on an RCA Victrola turntable and lower the heavy needle onto its spinning grooves.

Cue: “Three Little Maids from School Are We” from THE MIKADO, by Gilbert & Sullivan (any version dating from the period).

CLOSE SHOT of an ornate, black, Spanish-style fan fluttering. As the words of the song emerge from the crackles of the worn recording, the fan lowers to reveal the face of a plump little GIRL, six or seven years old, covered in heavy Geisha-style makeup which she has obviously applied herself. This is the YOUNG GRACE SLICK.

YOUNG GRACE (pantomiming)

Three little maids from school are we,

Pert as a school-girl well can be,

Filled to the brim with girlish glee,

Three little maids from school!

Her middle-class MOTHER and FATHER sit on the living room couch, looking more dumb-struck than entertained.

The little girl is wearing a fox stole and one of her mother’s dresses, which drags along the ground as she moves in a child’s version of grown-up choreography.

YOUNG GRACE (cont’d, pantomiming)

Everything is a source of fun!

Nobody’s safe, we care for none!

Life is a joke that’s just begun!

Three little maids from school!

INT. HIGH SCHOOL CORRIDOR - DAY
Caption: Palo Alto High School, 1954.

Three 13 YEAR OLD GIRLS are carrying their books to class. Two of the girls are cute, blonde and shapely, but the third is dark-haired, moody, flat-chested and pudgy.

SCHOOL MAID #1

He’s in my chemistry class! Talk about chemistry! Isn’t he the dreamiest?

SCHOOL MAID #2

I wish he’d asked me to the dance before Darryl did.

SCHOOL MAID #1

Greedy!

SCHOOL MAID #2

How about you, Gracie?

TEENAGE GRACE

Don't call me that. I hate that.

SCHOOLMAID #2

Okay, but who’s taking you to the prom?

TEENAGE GRACE

Jack Shit.
SCHOOL MAID #2

You mean nobody asked you?

TEENAGE GRACE

Nobody sees blonde hair and big boobs when they look at me. What’s left? Funny knees and a smart mouth?

SCHOOL MAID #1

You don’t have to be blonde or have... a womanly figure to get a boy, Gracie.

TEENAGE GRACE(irritated)

Oh, yeah?

SCHOOL MAID #1

No. You just need to make... an impression.

SCHOOL MAID #1 bats her eyes at a passing BOY, who crashes into an open locker door.

Cue: “Greasy Heart” by Jefferson Airplane.

A distorted sting of electric guitar grows in volume, sounding larger and larger until...

TITLE SEQUENCE - VARIOUS CONCERT STAGES

The adult GRACE SLICK is seen performing “Greasy Heart” onstage with JEFFERSON AIRPLANE.

She is dressed in an elegant, pearly white, silk pantsuit with loose sleeves and neckline, low white pumps. Her classically simple apparel offers minimal distraction from her long dark hair, icy blue eyes and porcelain Nordic features. She’s like a haute couture model, but scary as well; she’s like the 1960s prototype of a Goth punk.

Periodically throughout the song, Grace’s wardrobe changes.

GRACE(singing)

Lady, you keep asking why he likes you

How come?

Now she’s wearing a Girl Scout’s uniform...

Wonder why he wants more

If he’s just had some

Now a nun’s habit, wielding a crucifix...

Boys, she’s got more to play with

In the way of... toys

Now a loose-woven, see-through black net blouse with pockets over her nipples, complemented by a black leather miniskirt and thigh-high leather boots...

Lady’s eyes go off and on

With a finger full of glue

Her lips are torn apart

Her face in come-to-me-tattoo

Now she’s performing with black makeup covering every exposed inch of her skin. She thrusts a fist into the air in a Black Power salute...

Creamy suntan color that

Fades

When she

Bathes

Now she’s in Adolph Hitler drag, a little square mustache cut out of black paper stuck on under her nose...

Paper dresses catch on fire!

And you lose her in the haze

With wicked alacrity, she makes a warning “Sieg heil!” gesture to her audience, cautioning them...

Don't ever change people

Even if you can!

The stage is now covered in orange smoke. Grace emerges from the fog dressed in “Bride of Frankenstein” mode. Her hair is jagged, spiky, like an aurora of electricity. Her hands, moving mechanically, scratch at the air like robo-claws.

You’re your own best toy

To play with

Remote control hands

Made for each other

As before, a CLOSE SHOT of an elaborate Japanese fan, which drops to reveal the adult Grace in full Geisha makeup and apparel.

Made in Japan!

Woman with a greasy heart

Auto-matic man

Don't ever change people!

Your face will hit the fan

She whacks the side of her powdered face with the fan, and we return to the white pantsuit:

Don't... ever change people

Even if you can!

Don't change before the empire falls

EXT. LOMBARD STREET - DAWN

As the song continues, Grace (circa 1972) is laughing and drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels while speeding down Lombard Street in San Francisco, where it turns into Doyle Drive in the vicinity of the Golden Gate Bridge. She must be going over 100 miles per hour.

You'll laugh so hard

You'll crack the walls

Grace loses control of the vehicle, which spins and crashes into a wall as the last word hangs in the air, resonating.

FADE TO BLACK.

Grace today. Anybody want to buy a painting?

Jefferson Airplane's manager Bill Thompson read my script (which was informed by my own research, as well as Jeff Tamarkin's fine book GOT A REVOLUTION! THE TURBULENT FLIGHT OF JEFFERSON AIRPLANE) and told me it was pretty accurate. For now, though, it's in a drawer.

Grace, whose tongue-in-cheek song "Silver Spoon" once extolled the joys of carnivorous living (including cannibalism), is today a practicing vegan. A previously unreleased recording called "Surprise Surprise," featuring her, appears on the new Jefferson Starship release JEFFERSON'S TREE OF LIBERTY, but she has been retired from music for many years and now devotes her time to painting. I like the pretty storybook quality of her art, but it doesn't begin to compare to the cutting edge brilliance of her voice or the songs she wrote. Grace says that she continues to write and record songs at home on the piano for her own amusement, and I hope to hear some of them someday. There have been reports of health problems in recent years, but she continues to appear at gallery shows to promote her art. For now, I'm simply glad that she's still with us and that the possibility of new work from her still exists.

Happy Birthday, Grace. You made an impression.

Tomorrow: Some Halloween thoughts on one of Grace's greatest stylistic descendants... Siouxsie Sioux.

COTTONMOUTH Debuts Tonight

At the tolling of Midnight...

Tonight...

Go here, Trick or Treaters, for the World Premiere of COTTONMOUTH, a new and terrifying film short by Christopher P. Garetano, based on Stephen R. Bissette's classic horror comic, which originally appeared in the pages of GORESHRIEK and TABOO.

And here's a link to Steve's own intensive account of the project's history.

Redder Than Ever and Less Deserted

Monica Vitti, l'adoro.

Last night I had the pleasure of screening BFI's new high-definition import disc of Michelangelo Antonioni's RED DESERT [Il deserto rosso, 1964] and came away with the unusual feeling that I had finally seen a beautiful woman captured in the Blu-ray format.

Of course, Monica Vitti isn't the first beautiful woman to be showcased in Blu-ray, but my own appreciation of beauty involves a woman's faults and flaws, her intensity, her fun, her mystery. Till now, I never came away from a Blu-ray experience with so many details of femininity left to savor. The freckles on her back. The fainter freckles on her cheekbones, sublimated by powder. The intoxicating auburn swell of her hair. The zipper down the back of her green dress. The wrinkling of her beige nylons. The way she gives herself to the camera, and what she withholds from the camera. The impish delight with which she bites into a quail egg when she's told it's an aphrodesiac. It's no wonder that Roger Corman once cited Monica Vitti as his favorite actress. Blu-ray brings us so close to her that we can feel all the warmth of this alleged Ice Princess of the northern Italian intelligentsia, and this startling access into her humanity brings us into deeper intimate contact with the anxieties she portrays. The film itself consequently becomes more powerful because the presentation excuses the iconography and lets us become involved with her as a flesh-and-blood being, alienated by a once-rural landscape that, with its foregrounded miniatures and electronic music, has creepily transformed into something like the alien spookscapes of Mario Bava's Terrore nello spazio.

I first saw RED DESERT (very much a science fiction film, I think) many years ago when it was released in a much inferior DVD presentation by Image Entertainment. I'd heard that the film marked an important advance in the use of color onscreen, but the Image disc did little to show why this was so. Consequently, I have long chalked the film up as my least favorite of the Big Antonionis. Today I feel quite differently. The BFI disc makes the film's innovative uses of color quite conspicuous, as it also does with what was gained from its use of heavy grain and shots lensed out of focus. Unfortunately, the richer presentation can do nothing to get the starch out of Richard Harris, whose dubbed performance isn't half the obstacle of the sheer two-dimensional look of him. Every time Harris appeared onscreen, I couldn't help thinking how much RED DESERT could have used the readier warmth and self-abandon of Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT compatriot Rod Taylor.

The movie's unusually understated climax did nothing to resolve my concerns for Vitti's Giulietta, whose expressed wish that everyone who ever loved her might form a wall around her is, I must confess, a yearning I have sometimes felt myself. For this reason, RED DESERT will probably now become one of those movies I revisit, less for cinematic reasons than because I found them inhabited by a kindred spirit -- like the calls I sometimes make on the spur of the moment to friends I've fallen out of touch with, to compare notes on how life has been treating us. Of course, Giuliana's fate will not change, but that's beside the point, because neither will mine.

RED DESERT is also available as a standard definition disc, also from BFI.

JVC Presses Eject

Yesterday was an historic day -- according to this sobering report from VW's own Sam Umland.

DEEP THROAT Director Damiano Dies

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A Halloween Gift from VW's Shane Dallmann

Greetings, friends--

To pave the way for Halloween, and to pay tribute to a fallen--but NEVER to be forgotten--friend, we of the MANOR would like to share a special project with you.

Officially unreleased (for now), THE WOODEN GATE was the second feature length effort from Labcoat Productions. This "evil in the woods" tale from the makers of FLESH EATERS (previously exhibited as an "independent cinema" special at the MANOR) was filled with local (Monterey County) talent, with writing/directing chores shared by Christo Roppolo and yours truly.

THE WOODEN GATE features guest appearances by directors Jeff Burr (THE OFFSPRING, LEATHERFACE, STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS) and Jim VanBebber (DEADBEAT AT DAWN, THE MANSON FAMILY)--and also boasts the final role of our dear friend Jonelle Snead (as "Lucy"). Refusing to let a terminal diagnosis keep her down, Jonelle gave the part everything she had.We couldn't do anything about said diagnosis--but there WAS something we could do for her. It was 2004, we were still working on the movie, but Jonelle had greater concerns--she needed a place to live. At the time, MANOR was transitioning from the Barbary Coast Theatre to the R.O.P. Studio, but the Barbary was still available for our concept--an independent genre film festival in the name of charity--with all proceeds going directly into a fund for Jonelle's temporary residence (we were all willing to help, but couch-crashing and car-bedding weren't the way to go).

The MANOR crew hosted the event. Christo and I supplied FLESH EATERS. Gary Ambrosia (Super Genius Productions) served up his WWII thriller THE ANGELS OF DEATH ISLAND. Jeff Burr screened THE OFFSPRING and Jim VanBebber premiered THE MANSON FAMILY... without a doubt, the nastiest piece of work ever run in the name of charity!

Also on the card was horror-host/storyteller/FRIEND Carpathian (of the Patient Creatures), who regaled the audience with amusing anecdotes and a heartfelt tribute to Jonelle (who, despite initial misgivings, proudly attended the event front and center). The WOODEN GATE cast and crew joined the MANOR team for setup, concessions, cleanup and everything else under the sun, while fellow hosts and friends coast-to-coast donated special auction items and video encouragements.

I will always remember this event--but more important was the aftermath: we did, indeed, secure lodgings for Jonelle (in the company of a registered nurse, no less) for the space of several months before she was relocated to pass away in peace and comfort at the local Hospice House (now known as Westland House) in October of 2004.

So whither THE WOODEN GATE? As frustrating as it has been for the cast and crew, we have been holding out for a PROPER release of our sophomore effort rather than go the "self-publishing" route. At one point, we held out hopes that a certain genre-affiliated DVD company would take advantage of the fact that it was releasing several other properties associated with Jim Van Bebber... but after several months of what amounted to stalling and teasing, their appointed lackey finally admitted that they'd never actually planned to do anything with it.

Whoa--whoa... stop... getting bitter here and that's not where I meant to go. We are shopping THE WOODEN GATE (which sold out the Osio Cinema in Monterey for its Halloween premiere) to a worthy distributor and it's going to happen. But this weekend, on the anniversary of Jonelle's passing, we're going to give it to you FREE.

The MANOR timeslot will kick in with a special introduction and some cartoon fun at 10 Pacific... delaying the start of the feature mayhem to approximately 30m into the show. We did that for a reason--THE WOODEN GATE is one EXTREME piece of work. No hardcore sex or anything like that... but everything ELSE is a go. So as we're fond of saying, "Give the youngsters a book to read."

This is an unofficial MANOR episode--an "independent cinema" special which will run UNCUT and UNINTERRUPTED. Save for our intro material, we will NOT be breaking in and "hosting" it. You'll be getting THE WOODEN GATE full-strength for this pre-Halloween weekend ONLY.

You can meet several of my "Gate-Mates" through my Myspace profile. You'll find lead actor Douglas Matthews as "Douglas," co-players Alfonso Milla and Kat Reina (as "El Chingon" and "kittykat") and special makeup effects mistress Robin Shaw (as "KAT").

And if so moved? Please make a donation to the American Cancer Society--or to the MANOR's current charity of choice, www.twotrees.org (tell them DR. CREEP sent you).

Friday (Oct 24) and Saturday (Oct 25) 10PM Pacific

Saturday (Oct 25) and Sunday (Oct 26) 5AM Pacific

Monterey cable channel 24 (AMP) or on-line at http://www.ampmedia.org/

Choose "Programs" and then "Web Stream" for Channel 24

All my Halloween best,

Shane "Remo D." Dallmann

"Se telefonando"

No less a musical authority than FILM SCORE MONTHLY's John Bender considers this song, written by Ennio Morricone and performed by Mina Mazzini, to be the most sublime few minutes in the history of pop music. He directed me to this 1966 performance on YouTube, which reminded me that I knew the song well (if not by name) from various Morricone anthologies and have never failed to be moved by it. What's especially wonderful about this live performance is that you can tell that Maestra Mazzini knows perfectly well that she has found her defining moment of stardom and, for three minutes and change, she rides that wave in a state of perfect joy and confidence. May we all be so well prepared when our moment comes.

First VIDEODROME Review

While doing my morning net browsing, I was pleased and surprised to discover the first review of my new book VIDEODROME that I've seen on Steve Bissette's S.R. Bissette.com site. (Pictured on the left is a photo not included in the book, showing me interviewing actor James Woods on the set.) Go ahead and click on the review, then come back after reading it and I'll comment.

As with his earlier review of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, Steve is wonderfully enthusiastic and commendatory about the book itself ("a brilliant dissection of the collaborative creative process at work, hence of interest to anyone who is either a creator themselves or eager to understand the creative process") and his review is one that any writer would be pleased to receive. He also has some strong opinions on the subject of what he sees as my ratification of "pejorative terminology" -- in this case, my identification of VIDEODROME as a conceptual granddaddy of the subgenre we know today as "torture porn" -- and I'd like to take a moment to respond to this.

In the book's final chapter discussion of VIDEODROME's influence on contemporary horror trends, the phrase I actually use is "so-called 'torture porn'" and I hardly "dismiss these successors" with the "simplistic contempt" Steve mentions. In fact, my space limitations being what they were (I was contracted to deliver a 144-page book and was generously granted an extension to 160 pages), the whole discussion is limited to a single paragraph that is shared with its influence on films such as THE RING.

Steve may be needled by the fact that I've used the phrase without the "so-called" in some of my past VIDEO WATCHDOG writing, but I've always used it as a convenience, without any political bias nor, as best I can recollect, any critical bias. I see the term as analogous to one that I coined back in my 1980s writing for GOREZONE and FANGORIA -- "gornography" -- a humorous pun that, as a matter of fact, I remember Steve enjoying at the time. I suppose this is a particularly appropriate explanation of anything apropos of VIDEODROME, but Steve seems to have an entirely different subjective take on "torture porn" than I do, one that may well be more connected to reality (as most people perceive it) than my own. I've never seen it as anything but a descriptive term, poppy rather than pejorative, referring to films meant to arouse audiences with dramatizations of reductive cruelty. This probably has something to do with me finding the term "porn" more amiable and user-friendly than its more severe-sounding root word "pornography."

For all that, I've had letters on the subject in the past, which is why I took care to predicate the term with "so-called" in VIDEODROME. Even though I don't take the term as nergatively as some, I would hope this gesture shows a dawning sensitivity on my part to how other people perceive it and a resolve to use it with greater care and awareness.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Steve Bissette writes beautifully, and meaningfully, about Fellini's SPIRITS OF THE DEAD segment "Toby Dammit" today at his S.R. Bissette blog. Check it out here.

Delirium Tremendous

At the time of its release in 1949, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's THE SMALL BACK ROOM was praised as a welcome return to the postwar realism that audiences had come to expect of "The Archers" after their Technicolorful, fantasmagorical THE RED SHOES. The respectful but compact reputation enjoyed by this intimate wartime drama overlooks one of its most startling achievements, a sequence in which aging munitions expert Sammy Rice (David Farrar) -- tin-legged, alcoholic, self-loathing and lovesick -- finds himself alone in a room with an unopened bottle of whiskey as every tick of the clock suggests that his lover Susan (Kathleen Byron) has stood him up on their usual Wednesday night together.

The sequence, designed by Hein Heckroth, uses a stunning photograph of Byron to nudge Sammy's feelings of being teased. (There are hints of the mad siren that Byron becomes in the finale of BLACK NARCISSSUS in the way her eyes are lighted here.) Cinematographer Christopher Challis, working with Powell, ensures that, as Sammy paces impatiently about his apartment on his hurting leg, that the bottle of whisky set aside by the couple to celebrate the eventual end of the war is positioned threateningly in the foreground -- as it is in Sammy's consciousness -- whenever Susan's taunting portrait isn't. It's helpful to know that Sammy can't handle whiskey and the local publican (Sidney James) refuses to serve it to him, no matter how much his leg pains him.

Suddenly, this "realistic" minor masterpiece jolts into expressionism with a remarkable series of composed images that find Sammy more ogreishly dominated by the ticking clock -- a device conveying a double meaning in a scenario about British officers striving to learn how to dismantle unexploded "Jerry" bombs without incurring new casualties. The mise en scène suggests that Sammy is now himself a ticking time bomb.

Criterion's DVD of the film (the subject of Ramsey Campbell's column in VIDEO WATCHDOG #146, now in preparation) includes a new video interview with cinematographer Challis, who recalls how shots such as these were filmed with split diopters and other means of keeping the two disproportionate sides of the screen in equal focus.

Note the wallpaper in Sammy's flat in this Dutch angled set-up, because it's going to change.

There is something about this profile shot of Farrar that strongly evokes compositions in religious art, emphasizing his test of spirit.

Now the bottle begins to multiply within the patterns of the wallpaper.

Then the wallpaper explodes into panels of ticking clocks.

Sammy finds himself crucified within their multiplicity.

Sammy is literally pinned to the wall by the looming bottle of temptation, now grown to enormous proportions as it bullies him.

As he squeezes himself free, he edges along the wallpaper -- note that the bottles integrated into the design have here assumed a more three-dimensional presence and tactility.

As he emerges from the pinch, Sammy is rendered into a complete coward by temptation, confirming his worst fears about himself -- which also show the way to his only salvation. Namely, he's nothing without Susan.

The hallucination sequence continues for quite a bit longer, but I don't want to spoil it for newcomers. What I will say is that the resolution of the sequence and the situation confirms, in its unexpected elements of irony, humanity and humor, why Michael Powell was one of cinema's most singular talents.

After an excruciatingly suspenseful bomb defusion sequence, THE SMALL BACK ROOM grants Sammy and Susan a happy ending. Exhausted but triumphant, Sammy finds the strength and self-respect to demand and receive the authority that's rightfully his, which Susan has been unsuccessfully goading him toward for the balance of the picture. He returns to his smashed-up apartment, where his homecoming is made magical by his discovery that everything broken -- including the picture frame that held Susan's taunting portrait -- has been fixed, replaced or put back in its proper place by his lover's caring hands. I've seen scenes in religious films of people ascending into Heaven itself that weren't filmed with half of this scene's payload of emotion and fulfillment.

Twice in the many years we've been together -- or, rather, as we've been reunited after the rare times we've been apart -- Donna has surprised me by imposing order on rooms that I've left in complete disarray (as I tend to do). Both times, I was extraordinarily moved by what she accomplished with this thoughtful gesture: not just a reordering of my environment, it was like being given a sense of restored well-being, the gift of a fresh outlook. For this reason, the finale of THE SMALL BACK ROOM held a special resonance for me, but the movie as a whole took me completely by surprise as one of Powell and Pressburger's most note-perfect studies of the human heart.

Swallowing TRUEBLOOD

Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) hit the slay bars in HBO's TRUEBLOOD.

As an admirer of Alan Ball's previous HBO series SIX FEET UNDER, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the September 7 debut episode of his new vampire-themed series TRUEBLOOD on that same network. The initial promotional use of imaginary commercials for vampire-related products didn't help, weakly echoing SIX FEET UNDER's own initial (and thankfully abandoned) use of tongue-in-cheek TV commercials for undertaker accessories. However, partly because it has such a great timeslot, I've stuck with the show -- based on Charlaine Harris's "Sookie Stackhouse" novels -- and have enthusiastically warmed to its well-thought-out imagining of a near-future world in which vampires and the living attempt to coexist.

With last night's episode "Cold Ground," TRUEBLOOD reached a climax of sorts with its most effective episode to date, full of genuine panic, pathos (at its most multi-leveled as Sookie cries while eating the remains of the last pecan pie made by her murdered grandmother) and passion (as she consecrates her advent into unsupervised adulthood by donning a nightgown any Hammer heroine would envy and racing to an intuited rendezvous with Vampire Bill, whom she finally allows to penetrate her orally with the vulnerable words "I want you to"). This episode, directed by Nick Gomez, achieved a level of greatness within its genre that made the sometimes awkward path it took to reach this high point seem more special and interesting in retrospect.

I've never been a particular fan of the Anne Rice approach to vampire fiction, or the rock star/leather duster-wearer variety of vampire that has cluttered the movies in their wake. I haven't read anything by Charlaine Harris either, but I'm beginning to think that TRUEBLOOD may be the most important addition to vampire cinema -- if television can be termed cinema -- since Count Yorga laughed at the crucifix wielded by his adversary. As the author of two vampire novels myself, I have my own ideas of what the subgenre should and should not be, and it pleases me to no end that another body of work has finally come forward that seems to share my ideals and wants to move the genre in a more correct direction.

TRUEBLOOD functions as social satire and metaphor, with the introduction of a Japanese brand of bottled synthetic blood called Trueblood allowing vampires to "mainstream" by nurturing themselves from product rather than victims, and the outsider nature of the bloodsuckers serving dual purpose as an illustration of antiquated biases against gays. In an especially clever subplot, vampire blood is being sold as an underground street drug called V, which is doled out on blotters and expands the consciousness and physical powers of the user like a combined hit of acid and Viagra. (Note: Kim Newman informs me that this same idea was explored in his novella ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA, published two years before the first Sookie Stackhouse novel.) But what I find most consistently intriguing about the show is Stephen Moyer's nuanced portrayal of the 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton, a non-survivor of the Civil War, who speaks with a dead-accurate sense of Southern manners that convincingly embodies the sense of a character who has lived entire lifetimes and who, despite the obscenity of his condition, is struggling to preserve within his own demeanor a sense of values that make his pained existence somehow liveable. He may be the best vampire character to come along since Barnabas Collins, and the way he seems to speak from another era recalls the chills raised by Chris Sarandon in the 1992 Lovecraft adaptation, THE RESURRECTED. Bill's sometimes unbearably tense romantic link with the plucky and so-far-inexplicably-telepathic heroine Sookie (consistently good work by Anna Paquin) makes sense because, as damned as their relationship would seem to be, it's underscored by a mutual and specifically regional moral rigor that gives Sookie the peace of mind she craves (the thoughts of vampires cannot be overheard), and Bill the mirror he is otherwise denied in undeath.

The executive story editor on TRUEBLOOD is Chris Offutt, whom I credit -- rightly or wrongly -- with some of the brushstrokes I'm appreciating so much in Moyer's rich characterization. In his bourbon-voiced courtliness and subdued volatility, Vampire Bill Compton reminds me a lot of Chris's dad, the sci-fi/sword & sorcery/pulp porn scribe Andrew J. Offutt. Andy was the first professional writer I ever met, and very kind to me when I was a youngster; in fact, he contributed an amusing article surveying the then-current horror movie scene to the second issue of a film-related fanzine that I published in the early 1970s. I remember meeting Chris when he was just a kid at various Midwestcons as the eldest in a procession of youngsters that fandom knew as the "Offuttspring," trailing their pretty mom Jody like so many quail. He has since gone on to enviable success and respect as a literary (as opposed to genre) novelist and short story writer, and I was pleased and surprised to find someone with his credentials and knowledge of the South affiliated with this program. I don't know if this perceived nod to his dad is deliberate or subconscious or just a natural emanation of Chris's life experience, but there's a lot of the Andy Offutt I remember in Vampire Bill.

This is a show rich in characterization, inventiveness and incident, and I hope it can stay on track after so powerfully forking the road of Sookie's humanity. Even if it stumbles after this, these early episodes of TRUEBLOOD will continue to represent vampire cinema at its most clever and progressive.

Coralina Rocks with Video Watchdog

This link will take you to a YouTube audience video of Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni performing "Suspiria" onstage in Toronto with ex-Goblin keyboardist Maurizio Guarini's band Orco Muto, in 2007. To my astonishment, Coralina's intense performance -- which is accompanied throughout by a rear screen slideshow of images from Dario Argento films -- climaxes with two strangely included Herschell Gordon Lewis projections, the second of which happens to be the controversially gruesome cover of VIDEO WATCHDOG #60!

This first collaboration came as a huge surprise to Donna and me, and I suspect it will surprise Coralina too! In a still more impressive coincidence, this performance took place on August 24 -- the very day that we first received MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK from our printer in Hong Kong!

SWEDEN, HEAVEN AND HELL reviewed

If you feel like taking a dip into my review of Luigi Scattini's SWEDEN, HEAVEN AND HELL (Klubb Super8 Video DVD), appearing in the November 2008 issue of SIGHT & SOUND, here is a link to the online version.

Some Pictures From Coralina

My new sister Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni sent me a selection of photos taken by her camera at Cinema Wasteland and I thought I would share them with you. This first picture is her personal favorite from the weekend and, with all due respect to Lamberto (whom I waited 28 years to meet!), it's mine too. Inside the box, of course, is Coralina's own personal copy of the Bava book. I am so proud to be in this picture, I can't tell you.

Here's another angle of the group shot featuring (left to right) Brett Halsey, Donna Lucas, John Saxon, me, Lamberto Bava, Mike Baronas, dear Coralina and Mariano Baino. What a great moment.

Here is a shot from Saturday's Q&A with Lamberto and Coralina, where she answered questions about her own career and also kindly translated for Lamberto. He was the first director to cast her in a motion picture (DEMONS 2: THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES), giving her the role of Sally, the bratty birthday girl who becomes a blood-and-pus-drooling icon of Eighties Italian horror. She was so happy to get the part, she wept and apologized profusely. This prompted Lamberto to advise her, "Don't ever change."

During the show, I saw a few different modellers approach Lamberto with tributes they had made with their own two hands. This superb facsimile of the mask from DEMONS -- I initially thought it was the original! -- is one of these tributes. He signed its interior lining and handed it back to its creator.

One of the products displayed on Brett Halsey's neighboring table was this action figure of his mosca-headed self from 1958's RETURN OF THE FLY. Whenever Lamberto saw this box, he would chuckle and cry, "Help! Help!" I'm sure that's what he's saying here now.

Lamberto Bava and the Family Cross

When I met Lamberto Bava at Cinema Wasteland this past weekend, I told him that I had two great fears about our meeting. One: that he would tell me wonderful stories about his father that I didn't know to include in my book MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK; and Two: that he would open the book, point to something, and say, as nicely as possible, "Uh... maybe not."

Both things came to pass.

On the first count, he told me a wonderful story about Mario Bava's first encounter with horror cinema, which may have been the childhood moment that predisposed him to a fascination with the macabre. When Mario was a young boy, he lived with his family on the top floor of an apartment building. From the bed in his room, Mario could look out the window at a neighboring movie theater. On warm nights, the roof of this theater rolled back to let in the cool night air... but, from Mario's perspective, the opening of the roof revealed the theater screen. One night, the young Mario happened to be looking out his window when the theater's roof opened to reveal... F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU (1922), which he proceeded to watch with a sense of mounting terror. The film clearly left its impression on the boy, who included an inversion of NOSFERATU's undercranked coach ride sequence in his official directorial debut, BLACK SUNDAY. Good story.

On the second count, Lamberto is unsure of the validity of the Mario Bava signature on the Brett Halsey photo included in the book's chapter on FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT. I told Lamberto that it was the only signed photo of Mario I had ever seen, and he answered, "Maybe not his." Lamberto's reason is that everyone in the Bava family signs their name in a manner that includes what has become known as "the family cross" -- a cross worked into one of the letters. He showed me what he meant with his own signature, in which the L of his first name grows out of an initial cross. Later in the day, Lamberto watched me sign a copy of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK for someone and saw that I drew a line through the middle of the S at the end of my name. "Since [I told you]?" he asked, smiling. But no, I explained that crossing my S started years ago, when I carelessly added the bridge too my A too far to the right. I liked the effect and kept it, sometimes as a dash after my S, sometimes as an elongated tail of the letter that extends across it, but more commonly as a line through my S -- the way I draw lines through my 7's in the European manner. I'm sure there are copies of the Bava book which I signed that don't have a crossed S, because the task of signing one thousand books required some variation to break up the monotony; likewise, I remember signing some of the books straight across and others more diagonally. That's why I believe the signed Halsey photo to be genuine. I know that I'm inconsistent and occasionally careless about the way I sign my name. But you can see what Lamberto means by comparing the signature on the book's title page, which has the family cross, to the one on Brett's still.

As we were preparing to leave on Sunday, Lamberto presented both Donna and me with signed photos of himself. The one he gave to me was signed, in Italian, "To Tim - an honorary member of the family." As the recipient of this tremendous compliment, I will do my best to live up to it by taking care to cross the closing S's in all my signatures from now on.

Our Weekend at Cinema Wasteland

This past weekend, Donna and I drove four hours north of Cincinnati to Strongsville, Ohio -- near Cleveland -- where we attended the Cinema Wasteland convention. Among the guests of honor was Maestro Lamberto Bava, with whom I have been corresponding and speaking by phone since 1980, twenty-eight years ago. Travel makes me nervous, but (as I told him in an e-mail a couple of weeks ago), Lamberto could not come halfway around the world to my state without me making the effort to join him. I am so glad that I did. This picture was taken within minutes of our first meeting at Lamberto's table.

There was an instantaneous sense of warmth and familiarity, and our rapport was immediate, happy and intense. I was with Lamberto for most of Saturday and until about 1:00pm on Sunday, and despite my general lack of Italian and Lamberto's fractured English, our communication was nearly non-stop. I love this picture because it captures some of that intensity.

I snapped this picture of Donna and Lamberto. They were charmed by each other and it was such a treat to see them interact.

While snapping some "official portraits" of Lamberto and I, Donna suddenly told us, "And now just look at each other." (She got a kick out of "directing the director.") Thus resulted my favorite picture of the two of us. There is a similar photo of Donna and me from the early years of our marriage, in which the look we're exchanging seems to miraculously summarize who we are to each other. This picture has a similar quality.

I guess this is our "John Bender meets Francesco de Masi" moment, but it wasn't a conscious recreation. The emotion here is very sincere. To communicate with Lamberto from long distance is one thing, but it was so much more meaningful for me to communicate with him in person. His eyes twinkle; he's a truly genial person, and it was a treat to sit beside him at his table and see him greeted by a constant procession of his admiring public. Most of what has been written about Lamberto's work in English has been of the "He lives and works in the shadow of his father, Mario Bava" school, and while that may be the general critical view, it's not a realistic view. I saw numerous awestruck people approach Lamberto's table and tell him that his movies -- his, not his father's -- inspired them to become artists, writers, painters, actors, or just horror fans. I felt so pleased for him.

My favorite overheard story came from a couple who run a day-care center, who told Lamberto that DEVILFISH was loved so much by their kids that one group actually watched it five times in two days! I'm sure that's the best review DEVILFISH ever had!

When Lamberto was talking with me, sometimes his English failed him and he asked fellow guest of honor Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (the Dario Argento diva also featured in Lamberto's own DEMONS 2: THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES and GHOST SON) to translate his thoughts. Meeting Coralina was one of the sweetest treats of the weekend for us, and I refer you to today's posting at the Bava Book Blog for more about this special lady.

Also present was Italian horror director (and Coralina's lucky companion) Mariano Baino, whose DARK WATERS was released here on DVD by No Shame in a deluxe box set with amulet. I haven't yet seen DARK WATERS, which Lamberto gave a strong and persuasive endorsement, but I much enjoyed meeting and talking with Mariano, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and likewise had that combination of warmth, friendliness and intensity.

I was so pleased to finally be in Lamberto's company that I never left his table except to attend to the call of nature. On Sunday, we got into the dealer's room early and I had a little time to visit some of Lamberto's immediate neighbors on Celebrity Row and that's when I discovered that, just a few seats to my right, all along, was none other than writer-director Jeff Lieberman! As a horror fan hitting all the drive-ins back in the 1970s, Jeff became an instant genre luminary with the release of SQUIRM, and he completed his Big Three with the cult classics BLUE SUNSHINE and JUST BEFORE DAWN. In reviews I wrote at the time, I compared Lieberman to David Cronenberg and the later release of REMOTE CONTROL (his VIDEODROME, if you will) supported the comparison. Jeff told me about some exciting new irons he has in the fire, and I look forward to seeing more of his work, which has always been original and healthy for the genre.

Sitting to my immediate right throughout the weekend was the great Brett Halsey, who starred in two Mario Bava films (FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT and ROY COLT & WINCHESTER JACK) and also worked with him during the filming in some sequences for the Riccardo Freda costume adventure THE SEVENTH SWORD. I've known Brett via phone and e-mail for five or six years, and this was our first meeting. Now that the Bava book is done, I was able to broaden the scope of our subject matter and he told me some fascinating stories about working with Freda and he also gave me a surprising insight into the personality of the late Steve Reeves, someone I approached to be interviewed for the Bava book a few times without success. He told me that it was his understanding that Reeves' parents were deaf-mutes and that Steve himself did not learn to speak until he was seven years old. This is something I don't recall ever reading about, and it explains a good deal of Reeves' personal reserve. Brett kindly gave me a copy of John Murray's new book about his career (from Midnight Marquee Press) and I bought the new edition of his novel THE MAGNIFICENT STRANGERS, out of print since the 1970s, and newly revised and expanded in its current edition from I-Universe.

During our Sunday morning stroll along Celebrity Row, we met Betsy Palmer, who was wearing either her original Mrs. Voorhees sweater from FRIDAY THE 13TH or something very like it! Now 83, Betsy turned out to be a real sweetheart and hugged us both for commemorative photos. As die-hard fans of I'VE GOT A SECRET, we asked for some behind-the-scenes stories about her curmudgeonly co-star Henry Morgan (a personal favorite), and boy, did we get 'em! A short but very sweet encounter.

The surprise of the weekend came when Donna and I were heading to the elevators to get ready for dinner on Saturday, when I heard an unmistakable voice call my name from around the corner. It was Don May, Jr. of Synapse Films! Don (seen here at the right, with his partner Jerry Chandler in the middle) has been a friend and reader/supporter of VIDEO WATCHDOG since the beginning, then became a contributor of articles about HIGHLANDER and THE EVIL DEAD, and now he heads one of the most important independent horror/exploitation DVD labels around. As this photo shows, every moment I spent with these two guys was an absolute joy. Support Synapse Films and Impulse Pictures products! They tell me they'll be bringing Christina Lindberg to the next Cinema Wasteland convention!

I don't have a photo to commemorate the event, but during Saturday night's dinner with Lamberto, Coralina, Mariano and Mike Baronas (who brought everyone together at this event -- bravissimo, Michele!), our table was approached by an effusive admirer of Lamberto's whom I immediately recognized as Adrienne King, the female lead of the first FRIDAY THE 13th. It seems Adrienne is quite an admirer of classic Italian horror, knew all about the movie's debt to TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, and we invited her to join us. She added still more excitement to an already happy and animated table, and Brett Halsey also dropped by, completing a perfect evening.

This weekend also allowed for a personal reunion for Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni and her aunt and uncle, Bruno and Rose Botti, whom she hadn't seen in about five years. She told me that they weren't very familiar with her work in movies, and the convention gave them an opportunity to see their famous niece in her professional element. They were very nice, friendly people, clearly very proud of their niece, and you can see how moved Coralina was to be in their company again.

As the clock ticked down the moments to the time of our departure on Sunday afternoon, we finally succeeded in assembling the Italian horror contingent for a commemorative photo. From left to right: Brett Halsey, Donna Lucas, John Saxon (so consistently in-demand at his signing table that we had very little time to get reacquainted), Tim Lucas, Mike Baronas, Lamberto Bava, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni and Mariano Baiano. The photo was taken by John Saxon's fiancée Gloria Martel, a terrific lady, and I consider it one of the great keepsakes of my life.

In fact, once Gloria started setting up the shot, she was suddenly joined by a half-dozen other photographers... and as the flashes started going off, they were joined by other camera bugs who followed the bombardments of light over to our corner. Soon, our eyes were all dazzled by the blue afterburns of flashing cameras.

This picture was snapped dozens upon dozens of shots later, just as we thought we had finally finished. Then one of the many photographers, a member of the Cinema Wasteland staff, suddenly exclaimed, "This is too good to pass up; I'm getting in on this!" -- then handed his camera to his girlfriend and sidled through the tables to stand in front of the group. More pictures ensued. And then more people joining the group to be photographed ensued! The expressions in this candid shot -- the way Donna and Mike and I are laughing, the way Coralina is looking at me, the way John is looking at the Cinema Wasteland staffer who wants a piece of this historic moment ("Oh yeah? You want a piece of this?") -- capture the spirit of the weekend in ways that the posed shot doesn't, and that's why I cherish it just as much.