Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog: April 2022

Friday, April 22, 2022

Found on YouTube: THE ALVIN SHOW (1961-62)

Sometimes I go to YouTube in search of some lost treasure and leave disappointed, forced to accept that the time is not yet right for me to be reunited with my old attachment. It's very rare, but it sometimes happens that I go to YouTube and discover that which I have sought has at last been found and uploaded. Today was such a day! Some kind soul has found and posted all 26 episodes of the 1961-62 TV cartoon classic, THE ALVIN SHOW. A few look great, many more are from acceptable broadcast or 16mm sources, and one or two are partly in black-and-white, but they are all there.

A lot of Johnny Come Latelys will tell you that MTV or The Monkees invented the music video. In terms of TV music videos, they were actually invented by Ozzie Nelson for THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET, who devised one from reused footage from earlier episodes to promote his son Rick's  song "Travelin' Man" (making it a huge hit)... but THE ALVIN SHOW, being an animated program, took the illustration and dramatization of song in still more imaginative directions while still using them to sell the records of Ross Bagdasarian's conceptual vocal group, Alvin and the Chipmunks. I believe it was Lester Bangs who once identified Alvin as rock's original punk, and I would argue (semi-seriously) that Bob Dylan might never have picked up a harmonica if Alvin hadn't already played one in a way that said "This Machine Kills Conformity." THE ALVIN SHOW anticipates the later animated adventures of THE BEATLES in that each episode tells two stories, each encompassing a song from the group's catalogue.  

I've read there are some lingering family issues that have led Bagdasarian's son (the rebooted "David Seville" who rebooted Alvin, Simon, and Theodore with the novelty album CHIPMUNK PUNK) from opening the vaults to release the series as a whole. Cartoon fans of my generation have been aching for these for a long time. So if you want to see them, or even download and have them till an official release is sanctioned, I advise you to head on over to YouTube and search for THE ALVIN SHOW. Sooner or later, because you never know. You'll be glad you did.

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

50 Years Ago... How I Began

50 years ago tonight, April 12, I saw this film for the first time at a special preview screening at Cincinnati's Westwood I Theater. I was still just 15 and watched it in a state of shock because, just before my ride arrived, a call came from a neighbor asking if we had heard that my best friend Mike had died. That's when my ride pulled up. I didn't know what to do; my mother encouraged me to go anyway—I'd read the novel and had been looking forward to the film for more than a year, and as she reasoned, it might turn out to be a misunderstanding. She promised to run up the street and check things out, but I had to "go now." So I reluctantly went and experienced this very disturbing film (which I was not really old enough to see), all the time my mind weaving in and out of realities, not knowing whether my friend was alive or dead.

When I got home, my mother confirmed the bad news for me and we hugged each other for what felt like the first time in years. I realize I'm being elliptical; I don't want to do into specifics because they would involve other people and the fact is, we none of us really know what happened or why.

I spent the next couple of weeks at home, trying to make sense of what had happened. During that time I wrote a review of the film, which—as Mike had been encouraging me to do—I folded up and submitted to CINEFANTASTIQUE. While that review wasn't accepted (it would have been, I was told, but this coveted title had long been promised to another reviewer), they did accept a shorter one I also sent along. It became my first-ever magazine publication.

Half a century later, my review of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (as returned to me by CFQ's Fred Clarke) has remained unpublished, folded and pressed into a folder of my original typescripts for the magazine. One of my current projects is a collection of my film writings and it is my intention to include it there; but I've also decided to "seize the day," as it were, and present those two pages as they were originally typed on my very own Royal manual typewriter, as my tribute to Mike.

And here is the review Fred accepted (with an open invitation to submit more, which I followed up on in early 1974), in an easy-to-read size and as it appeared on the printed page in context.

Reading the other reviews on this page reminds me that, whether or not one agreed with the reviewers, CINEFANTASTIQUE was the finest magazine in my world at that time. It was an honor to be a part of their roster, and I would stay with them until sometime in 1983.

The least that can be said of these submissions was that they needed an editor, and I had no business invoking 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY since (to be absolutely candid) I still hadn't seen it at this time and wouldn't till its 70mm reissue in the mid-1970s; but it's best to present them here exactly as they came out of me at a time when something scared me into becoming myself. Naturally, I don't look back on this material with much charity from where I sit now—it's a mess, really—but (I tell myself) it's not as bad as it might have been, coming from an emotionally shattered fifteen-year-old with not very broad experience of film, life, or even grammar, all of whose adjectives carry the exact same absolute weight. Taken altogether, it does provide the best answer to a question I'm sometimes asked: "How do you start out as a film critic?"—which is, "You just start, however, wherever, and as best you can."

In the spirit of acknowledging those mysterious coincidences and synchronicities that sometimes pop up in life, the next audio commentary on my schedule is for a film directed by... Stanley Kubrick. I'll be writing it 50 years to the day when I sat down and wrote that first professional review.

Sunday, April 10, 2022

The Manetti Brothers' DIABOLIK (2021) reviewed

Thank goodness for Italian Blu-rays, especially those with English subtitles (even bad ones), which have made it possible for me to finally see the long-awaited new version of DIABOLIK (2021).

To get the most enjoyment out of it, it’s important to forget the colorful, imaginative Pop Art fun that Mario Bava brought to his 1967 version. This film is truer to the original graphic novels; the room tone throughout is sub-Bondian romantic gravity, not outrageous action and even more outrageous romance. After the opening car chase, action is almost entirely removed from the story, which is more about how Diabolik and and his muse Eva Kant became partners. Miriam Leone is no Marisa Mell, still she pretty much knocks Eva out of the park with her personal style and the animalism of her presence. I wish I liked Luca Marinelli even half as much in the title role; he has a muscular build but is lacking the necessary presence and piercing gaze. Diabolik's look was originally based on the actor Robert Taylor, and much could have been improved simply by outfitting Marinelli with bold blue contact lenses. In the comics, Diabolik's hair is almost a black skullcap with a widow's peak, which the movie completely fails at suggesting; instead, Marinelli's hair appliance conveys the impression of a lame Dracula makeup.

The film is set in the 1960s, without saying so, and there is absolutely no evidence of the Baby Boomers' impact on mass culture; there are young people in the film but they seem prematurely mature, reveling in wealth and listening to anonymous lounge records. The story is derived from two early comics stories by the Giussani sisters, which are very much indebted to situations in the early Fantômas novels, but done less well. There are a few nods to the Bava film in terms of shots and locations, but—surprisingly—no analogy to the famous money-bed shot. And here is the greatest disappointment: there is no joy in this Diabolik’s life of crime. We never understand his guiding philosophy, the reasoning behind his lifestyle, or even how he is able to commit himself to these pursuits to such a financial extent. Likewise, even though Eva is introduced as a wealthy social climber who is on the threshold of succumbing to the offer of marriage to a rich executive she loathes, it's not enough to explain why she is drawn to the danger of Diabolik and his subterranean lifestyle. Which brings us to Diabolik’s hideout: it has a terrific entrance and a dizzying foyer of tunnels (how did all this get built?) but, when we finally reach the actual headquarters, the effect is anticlimactic; it is all too believable, by contrast, as a one-man job.

What this film really needed was a megadose of personality and panache, not least of all on a musical level. (The score is disappointingly low-key, and even stoops during one caper to aping Lalo Schifrin's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme.) Bava was able to pull it off with some panes of glass, some paint, and a handful of magazine clippings. The film's faults aren't really about not having enough money, but about having enough money but not the imagination to know when not to spend it.

Even so, and despite a running time of more than two hours, there are signs of promise here and I would be very interested in a sequel to see what its directors (The Manetti Brothers, Antonio and Marco) might have learned from their mistakes. According to the IMDb, DIABOLIK 2 and DIABOLIK 3 are now in post-production.