Friday, September 30, 2022

The Passion of Ray Dennis Steckler - Part 3

The following text is my own subjective reading of Ray Dennis Steckler's THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? (1964, 81:33). Please do not read until after you have seen the film and given it some thought on your own. - TL


The film opens with a black screen and the sounding of thirteen strikes on a tinny gong. If this baleful sound represents a deliberate step into the realm of bad luck, the gong tolls for Jerry—the protagonist of the film—rather than Ray Dennis Steckler, who plays him (under his alias “Cash Flagg”) and understood how fortunate he was to be able to direct and star in his own crazy movie, a dream that countless souls never get to realize. Jerry has not yet been introduced (and won’t be, until nearly eight minutes into the picture) but we’re already deep inside his head. 


The images kick in with what could pass for an ambitious crane shot, looking down upon the Cyclone Racer, the wooden dual-track roller coaster at the Nu-Pike (originally The Pike) amusement park in Long Beach, California, which was in operation from 1902 to 1979. In 1954, The Nu-Pike was considered the fifth largest amusement park in America, but it wasn’t exactly a wholesome place. As this film’s weird dreamscape suggests, its family-friendly side went apace with a shadowy one that encompassed gambling, peep shows and prostitution. Then, in 1955, along came Disneyland and The Nu-Pike soon lost what little luster had. Notice that the screen is literally bisected diagonally between the park and the Pacific coast, the place where Jerry feels most alive and where he will die within slightly more than 81 minutes. Billed as “The World’s Greatest Ride,” the Cyclone Racer itself was itself on course to obsolescence; it was discontinued in 1968. 



A pair of dissolves take us closer to the park and to the midway attraction identified as Madam Estrella, a gypsy fortune teller played by Brett O’Hara. She’s more interested in sitting in the lap of her boozy customer (producer George J. Morgan, in real life a teetotaler) and kissing him than in reading his fortune, but even pissed to the gills he has no interest in her or (as the trailer dubs it) her "wart of horror." He only comes around because he's got his eye out for her prettier sister Carmelita. Estrella is so incensed by this admission that she sics her hideous henchman Ortega (Jack Brady) on him. A misshapen funhouse mirror of a man, Ortega drags the boozehound into the next room and holds him down while Estrella dumps hydrochloric acid (helpfully labelled "Poison") on his face. As we’ll eventually find out, this is how Estrella has managed to hold onto a whole roomful of unwilling suitors.


If I read the palm of this scene, I see that Estrella is Spanish for “star,” and indeed her little hovel is decorated with a homely chart of the constellations. It’s interesting that Steckler would cast his producer (who gave him $38,000 to make the film and give him a small role) in opposition to the star, which can be read as a metaphor for himself, since his Cash Flagg persona is top-billed in this opus; though Morgan facilitated the making of this dream opportunity, the star nevertheless disfigures and consigns him to a closet along with several others of his own kind. Steckler is showing us that his path to this moment was paved with disappointments.

After the main titles we return to the Nu-Pike for another of this real place's imaginary attractions, namely the dancing duet of Marge Nielson and Bill Ward, headliners at its imaginary nightclub, the Hungry Mouth. Marge is played by Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s wife at the time), a professional dancer under the name Carol Lynn who previously played the unbilled dancer accompanying Arch Hall Jr.’s performance of “Vickie” in WILD GUITAR (1962).


As soon as she gets offstage, we cut to her dressing room where we see a filthy teddy bear—there must be some personal story attached to this—and a pressbook for WILD GUITAR prominently affixed to a wall; they share virtually every shot of her. She seeks immediate refuge from some unaddressed heebie-jeebies in a bottle of booze. When she sees a harmless black cat in her dressing room, she literally screams and pleads with her boss (Gene Pollock) to take it away. He advises her to stop drinking; he reminds her that the mistakes in her last night’s performance nearly cost her her job. She promises to try “... just for you,” and he answers “I’d rather you do this just for yourself”—one of those rare lines that seem to hover, pregnant with a meaning whose clarification we will have to wait out. “Maybe so, maybe not,” she muses, taking another sip from her glass.


It’s at this intersection of indecision that the film belatedly introduces its best-bud protagonists, roommates Jerry (Flagg/Steckler) and Harold (Atlas King). It’s time to for them to pick up Jerry’s girlfriend Angie, but he’s hesitant as he sits in his favorite chair toying with a little puppet-like figure. Her mother hates him and he knows this. Harold, a Greek immigrant with a tall Pompadour and an amusingly thick accent, suggests that maybe they’d like him more if he got a job.

“You gotta do something, y’know?” Harold presses him.


“Why?” Jerry questions. “The world’s here to be enjoyed, not to make you depressed. That’s what work does, Harold. It makes you feel depressed.”


He turns the nose of the doll in his hand down so that its sulking attitude matches that of a dour sculpture on the end table beside him. These are bad mojo objects that resonate with the gong, Estrella’s crystal ball, the alcohol and the black cat. The scenes seem to be lining up and locking together, like the constellations charted on Estrella’s wall. 



Jerry and Harold agree to seize the day. They burst out of their sad little apartment (which, according to Steckler's commentary was his and Carolyn's own residence at the time) and drive out to Angie’s more cheerful-looking suburban home.


As we meet Angie (Sharon Walsh), she’s on the phone, turning down a date to go to the beach with another boy, Phil. When she hangs up, her conservative and overly worried mother (Joan Howard) speaks up for Phil—“such a nice boy”—and denigrates Jerry for having “no education, he’ll never be able to make a living.” Angela counters that Jerry is “fun and exciting” and that her mother is “way ahead” of her or any plans she might have. They're “just having fun, that’s all.”


Jerry arrives and honks. “He doesn’t even come to the door for you!” her mother exclaims. We cut to an underlining close-up of Angela as she counters, “He wouldn’t be Jerry if he did.” 



Legend has it that Sharon Walsh stepped into the role of Angela at the last minute, literally recruited by Steckler from the film's dancing girls when his first choice preferred to keep a date with her drummer boyfriend than star in his film. Walsh nails this scene and every other and the film is inconceivable without her inner strength and moral compass.

Outside, Jerry is sitting on the hood of his crummy blue station wagon (the same one driven by Steckler's "Mad Dog" Click in THE THRILL KILLERS) as Angie steps out. Amiably, Jerry asks her stoic brother Madison (who’s washing his car) “How’s college?”

“Fine, you should try it sometime,” he answers.


“No, thanks,” Jerry grins, sliding onto the ground. “The world’s my college.”


And then our three protagonists—Jerry, Angie and Walter—head out into the world… but settle on the Nu-Pike, which of course isn’t the world at all. However, it will represent an education for Jerry. As the friends approach the park’s entrance, Steckler allows the entire word ENTRANCE to fill the wide screen so that the dual, more baleful meaning of the word has a chance to sink in. Directly below the word we see two slightly overlapping parked cars, one black and the other white, which seem to propose a kind of crossroads. 



These may be nothing more than accidental details, but I would admit that a good deal of the meaning I’m reading into the film is probably accidental. Nevertheless, this material didn’t just happen. It didn't feel right to Steckler until it was framed and cut this way. According to him, he took a completely intuitive approach to directing the picture—arriving on the set each morning and only deciding what he was going to do that day after he'd spent some time on his own, absorbing the feel of the set or location. 

They bypass the rides to go directly to the beach, where Walter stands apart as Jerry and Angie frolic, actually running and skipping along the water’s edge like a couple of kids. These same three characters will converge here again as the sand in Jerry’s hourglass finally runs out, and once the sea’s eventual meaning is known to us, we can read these images of Jerry and Angie as two people skirting the very edge of death. Steckler said that, as a teenager, he was greatly influenced by James Dean and his last film REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, which was released only after his premature death at the age of 24. He made this film at the age of 25 and I suspect that his feelings about Dean’s premature death are somehow tied up in the fabric of this film and its implicit recommendation of using, rather than wasting, one’s time. In so doing, Steckler seems to have accidentally (or intuitively) become one of the earliest American directors—if not the first—to incorporate a “romp” sequence, which would be so important as a filmic expression of the 1960s zeitgeist, and so central to the mythos of The Beatles, The Monkees, and other pop groups yet to emerge. (Appropriately, one of Steckler's sidelines to his feature career would be as a director of music videos.)


The following montage of Nu-Pike amusement rides make clear that the park’s particular brand of amusement is more closely allied to terror than laughter; the rides all seem pledged to skirt the very edge of death—and that edge was occasionally crossed in the Pike's (and later Nu-Pike's) history, in face and fiction. The first ride we see is the Kiddie Land Hi-Ride, also known as the Moon Rocket or Space Capsule at different points in the park's history. In a 1975 episode of EMERGENCY!, paramedics were summoned to the Nu-Pike to rescue a heart attack victim stuck aboard this towering ride by a jammed cable.

Vilmos Zsigmond actually took his 16mm camera aboard the Cyclone Racer to joltingly chronicle its death-defying descents. In 1958, 19 year-old George Doig of Torrence, California’s defiance of death was itself defied when he fainted aboard the harrowing ride, his head tipping outside the car at a steep turn and getting crushed when it slammed into a rail. This incident would surely have been part of the ride’s legend at the time of filming, and perhaps a close correlative in Steckler's mind to the autocrash fate of James Dean on September 30, 1955—67 years ago to the day of this very posting. On the Severin disc at 14:18, you’ll notice the star poised at the very peak of the ride’s ascent, which can be read as an indication of the ups and downs of playing the Hollywood game or may also suggest that Jerry and his friends are already in the thrall of Madam Estrella several minutes before meeting her.

 


Another ride on the lot, a double-decker ferris wheel known as the Sky Wheel, claimed its own share of lives in 1949-50. As described in an account posted online at polaris93.livejournal.com, the author’s cousin and her date were aboard the ride, their seat almost at the top of its wheel when “the seat just ahead of theirs broke away from its mount and, invested with a large freight of angular momentum, shot out into the night and plunged down in a long ballistic arc to the concrete, over a hundred feet below. The four young people in that seat died horribly, crushed under their seat and/or splashed across the concrete, blood leaking everywhere… Anne and her date, wondering if they’d be next to fly off into the night and down to their deaths, hung there close to the top of the ferris wheel for some time as the employees and managers of the Pike figured out what to do.”    

Meanwhile, in her dressing room, Marge continues to drink as the lame house comedian (James Bowie) gives others reason to. Marge’s alcoholism inevitably ruins her performance—which Steckler depicts with dizzy POV shots that break the fourth wall to reveal production lighting—and she dashes offstage in embarrassment. Her boss catches her taking another drink and orders her to take the next show off and come back for the third; if she screws that one up, she’s fired. She puts down her drink and turns to the nearest source of solace available to her: an astrology magazine that inspires her to consult Madam Estrella. 

 


After some additional views aboard the Cyclone Racer as night falls, we see Jerry attracted to the hootchie girl stage as Marge, dressed in a dark hat and coat, urgently cuts across the midway toward Estrella’s tent. Though the following scene's master shot encompasses the entire scene, Marge’s card reading (supposedly a Tarot reading, though Estrella deals out round playing cards) is covered with an impressive variety of high and low angles. When her inquiries are answered with an Ace of Spades (the “death” card), the master shot crosses the line by reversing the seated positions of the two characters, disorienting to the scene’s defined geography but necessary to show Marge running out through the wrong door, which occupies the space previously defined by the camera's placement. Finding herself in Estrella’s private apartment, she finds another door indicating an exit but, as she opens it, a crazed hand thrusts out through cell bars! Terrified, she turns and runs past Estrella, making her escape but dropping her purse in the process. As she bolts out of Estrella’s showfront, she accidentally knocks Harold to the ground, and at last our binary storylines—one embracing life, the other eluding death—finally intersect like crossed stars. 

 



For the price of “feefty cents,” Madam Estrella reads Angela’s palm. Once again, the film's three man camera crew of Joseph V. Mascelli, Vilmos Zsigmond and Laslow Kovacs offer up a spellbinding array of camera angles within the tight space. Estella foresees that Angie will be “lucky in love… I see only one husband for you… I see your mother will not approve of man you choose for a husband.”

Jerry pats Angie Baby’s hand smugly.


Estrella then looks into her crystal ball for insights into her more immediate future. Watching the film for the first time, we may be forgiven for distrusting Estrella’s crystal ball predictions as midway phony baloney—after all, she’s been introduced as a carny hooker not above disfiguring the would-be clients who reject her advances; however, on secondary viewings, we realize her forecast (“someone… yes, it is you… by water… now I see a man… I can no longer see you… now a man moves… yes, you are lying on the ground… by water…”) is genuine prophecy and this deepens our perception of her as someone forced into the peripheral shadows and horrors of life by her gift (or curse), her powers of perception. 

 


It’s generally accepted that most 80-to-90-minute films should state (or at least allude) to their story's theme before the end of Act 1 (ie., about 20-30 minutes into the picture). As we arrive at the end of this film’s first third, what this seemingly meandering but actually quite focused narrative is telling us is that amusement is evasion. Evade the real world long enough and it will come looking for you, and the bait on its hook will be your own idle curiosity. 


To be continued... 


 

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Thursday, September 29, 2022

THE PASSION OF RAY DENNIS STECKLER - Part 2


In all candor, till now I’ve never felt particularly drawn to the cult of Ray Dennis Steckler. I have a vague memory of seeing it in the early days of home video, when it would have been a pasty presentation, either pan&scanned or cropped right down the middle. Nothing about it spoke to me or stuck with me at that time. Part of the fault would have been the crude presentation, but consider too that the outstanding references of that time were books like the Cult Movies books, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, and the Medved brothers’ Fifty Worst Movies of All Time(which called it the worst film of all time) and Golden Turkey Award books. Even Lester Bangs’ enthusiastic 1973 essay (included in his book Carburetor Dung and Psychotic Reactions) praises it with a put-down: “Like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and a very few others, it will remain as an artifact in years to come [to] which scholar and searchers for truth can turn and say ‘This was trash!”” 

It was the fashion of that time, 40+ years ago, to write about such outlying films as objects of folly, as freaks of a nature dictated by the Hollywood norm. Until recently, my outstanding memory of Steckler’s THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? (1964) was not the film itself but of making a compilation of unbelievably bad musical production numbers for a friend, in which I included three from the Steckler film, which I’m not even sure I ever made it through. The title doesn’t exactly encourage us to take it seriously.  

 

But times have changed. Not only has the literature about such films dramatically evolved and broadened over time, but the work of filmmakers such as David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Darren Aronofsky, Lars von Trier and Yorgos Lanthimos (to name only a few) have bent the norm of contemporary cinema itself. Our access to an inconceivably wider range of films via discs and streaming has also ripped off our blinders and extended our reach within and without; not only have we become more sophisticated in our selections, we are now reinventing the familiar through senses far more cultured than they were once upon a time. 

 

Watching THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? from Severin Films’ THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILMS OF RAY DENNIS STECKLER box set, I felt myself in the grip of a very special experience that, for whatever reason, simply wasn’t available to me before. The booklet notes explain that the movie “was scanned and restored in 4K from its 16mm camera reversal AB rolls. One such reel could not be located and therefore was scanned from the corresponding reel of its 16mm dupe negative.” The restoration by Sebastian Del Castillo, with color correction by Steve Peer, turns up the heat on Steckler’s fever dream, giving even its most down-to-earth scenes the richness of vintage Kodachrome photography. It’s unbelievably beautiful. The framing is correct and we’re no longer looking at a blown-up, blown-out 35mm print source; imperfections are no longer being fired into our retinas twenty-four times per second. For the first time we have unobstructed access to the purity of effort and vision that went into this film, well ahead of its time, and we can now also readily compare it to other, later films whose obvious spiritual alliances change its category and raise its value. 



The films of David Lynch in particular—with their Hollywood settings, their nostalgic tone, their interest in the disturbing people who inhabit the margins and shadows of mainstream life, and their fascination with fugue states and otherworldly production numbers—offer an invaluable regulator through which to process this delirious work.     

I was so captivated by THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES… that I couldn’t just review it; it was important for me to chronicle what I saw as I watched it, and watched it again with its delightful director’s commentary. Steckler addresses his most costly ($38,000) and famous film like he’s on a comfortable raft floating down a mnemonic river to eternity, looking back at sets and locations and people that he brought together a lifetime ago in an inexplicable ceremony of art. He wasn’t overthinking it (that’s my job) at the time, and he’s not interested in starting now; he was just seizing the day and making a movie—not to get rich, as so many others do, but just because he loved making movies. He speaks tenderly of almost every face that passes by, the few that stuck with him and the many others who drifted away, and sometimes offers us a background story that makes the whole feel even more miraculous. The film has a screenplay credit, but it was apparently no more than a general outline; he says he came to the set early each day, coming in as early as 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, just to be there alone and get a feeling about what he was going to do on a given day. He learned later that directors like Antonioni did the same thing. He approached it as a work of intuition, a dredging of his subconscious, of his life and his era, and it was the best he could do under the circumstances. 

 

The disc also includes an introduction and a second audio commentary by drive-in movie reviewer Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom). I haven’t listened to his entire commentary, which was done in character, but I heard enough to know that he takes a fairly knowledgeable approach even though he’s principally there to amuse. A fair amount of the information he shares can also be found in the Steckler commentary, but it's on a different wavelength; some viewers may prefer to approach the film as a hoot. Also included are trailers and radio spots for the film and its 1971 reissue version TEENAGE PSYCHO MEETS BLOODY MARY. 


Severin Films' Steckler box set is available here on their website at significant savings.



Next up: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES... How I See It.


 

 

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Monday, September 26, 2022

The Passion of Ray Dennis Steckler - Part 1

In the last few years, Severin Films has redefined the perimeters of cult-themed Blu-ray box sets with such monolithic releases as Kier-La Janisse's weighty ALL HAUNTS BE OURS Folk Horror compendium, two separate volumes of THE EUROCRYPT OF CHRISTOPHER LEE, the impressively thorough and indispensable THE DUNGEON OF ANDY MILLIGAN, THE COMPLETE LENZI/BAKER GIALLO COLLECTION and - to bring things back full circle - a recent HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN set containing four rare titles covered in Janisse's recently revised mastertome of the same name. These megablocks of infotainment may be pricey, but - packed as they are with commentaries, location tours, interviews and other archival catnip - they can't be accused of under-delivering; each one sucks you in like a carnival barker inviting you behind a curtain that cloaks a black hole. You come out the other end, eventually, an enriched individual.

Everyone's viewpoint differs, so I won't name names, but you don't necessarily get this level of experience with every box set that comes along - at least I don't. Not every performer or filmmaker lends themselves to such detailed examination, but I find the work Severin is doing to be not only well-packaged and pitched equally to all sides of fandom but tastefully curated, as well. They know what's good (or at least interesting) and they know their audience.

Severin's latest mega-set is THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILMS OF RAY DENNIS STECKLER, a 10-disc, 20-film set laden with alternate cuts, deleted scenes, interviews, trailers and audio commentaries in its detailed coverage of a 46 year career. The set starts out quite innocently with movies like WILD GUITAR, his trash-classic THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES, THE LEMON GROVE KIDS, and RAT FINK A BOO BOO (not a typo, at least not mine), then steers through his sex-and-violence phase of the 1970s and '80s (including some graphic examples with titles like NAZI BROTHEL and COUNT AL-CUM), and ends up in a final port including more personal late works such as SUMMER FUN, ONE MORE TIME, and the 257-minute autobiographic epic READING, PA.



Born in January 1938 in Reading, PA, Steckler got his first breaks in 1961-62, working as an assistant cinematographer or full-fledged cinematographer on such films as THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER, WILD ONES ON WHEELS and EEGAH!. Steckler also played a supporting role in EEGAH! and impressed Arch Hall Sr. and Jr. with his resourceful know-how on both sides of the camera. Perhaps most importantly, he proved himself especially savvy in his ability to stage and sell a song visually, which allowed Arch Jr. to perform his song "Vickie" without looking too foolish. In fact, it went over so well, it got reprised in the Halls' next Fairway-International production.

This was WILD GUITAR (1962, 89:24), the earliest film included in this set and Steckler's directorial debut. Telling much the same "Star is Born" story as THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (1955) or JAILHOUSE ROCK (1957), this is a redundant but nevertheless inventive poke at the evils of the music industry in which Bud Eagle (Hall Jr.), a starry-eyed kid from the sticks, arrives in Los Angeles carrying just a suitcase and guitar. The opening deluge of local scenery feels genuinely, sweetly star-struck and also somewhat in love with the city's working class (epitomized here by Marie Denn as waitress Marge). Standing on the sidewalk outside Dino's Lodge (then a famous spot thanks to weekly exposure on TV's 77 SUNSET STRIP), Bud can't resist combing his outrageous pompadour à la Edd "Kookie" Byrnes. 




With no more than 15 cents in his pocket, Bud has a meet-cute with professional dancer Vickie Wills (Nancy Czar) and tags along to her afternoon gig at a TV studio. When another musical guest bails out at the last minute,  Bud seizes the opportunity to perform and proves such a hit that he's immediately signed to a Faustian contract with Fairway Records mogul Mike McCauley (Arch Hall Sr, acting as "William Watters" and delivering dialogue he'd written as "Nicholas Merriwether"). Arch Sr.'s willingness to use his own company's name for that of a fictionally criminal racket is akin to American International Pictures' depiction of themselves as a bunch of corporate assholes in 1958's HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. Steckler (as  "Cash Flagg") plays the role of Stake - McCauley's slick, hyper-tanned, gun-toting toady - with Henry Silva-like nonchalance. The budget is so low that the offices of Fairway Records is basically a storage closet at the TV station, decorated with 8x10s of Mitch Miller and a display of 45s on the King, Sun and Challenge record labels.



McCauley ("Call me Mike") presents Bud with a new guitar, a pile of nice suits and a wood-paneled playpen of his own, but he's cut off from all contact with the outside world, made to keep writing new songs and just do as he's told. Before you can blink an eye, Mike's PR machine drives the world Bud Eagle crazy, to the point where all the teenagers are wearing eagle (or hawk or turkey or chicken) feathers in their hair as they twist and watusi. He even hires a pack of cynical teenagers from all over the country to head his fan clubs. One night a drunk shows up at Bud's sanctum - Don Proctor (Robert Crumb - no, not that one), the has-been hit singer who preceded him in this circle of Fairway hell - who tells him what's really going on, leaving Bud to decide which path he wants to take. Surprisingly, in a manner that feels especially true to Steckler's personal laws of dramatics, Bud decides to give the villain a chance to redeem himself and - though the film's dramatis personae includes many a criminal type - we don't doubt for a minute that he eventually will. Along the way, Steckler finds time to introduce a pack of Bowery Boys-like hoods who make a miserable attempt at kidnapping Bud (once again, all is forgiven) and he skillfully delineates a sweet up-and-down romance between Bud and Vickie whose high point is a magical date in an after-hours ice-skating rink. (He may be zany but he's also got an eye for poetic moments.) Nancy Czar is far from my idea of a female lead, but this is a movie that honors and celebrates the modestly talented people who will never know the Big Time. What matters here is that she dances her little heart out and the cinematography heralds her as a goddess. 





     
Though WILD GUITAR was technically a work-for-hire, it's a tribute to the sheer force of Steckler's personality that the film comes across as a trailer for the faces, characters, musical numbers, meta self-references, and inside jokes that would turn up in his later pictures. It also helps that Steckler was working with cameraman Joseph V. Mascelli (author of THE FIVE C'S OF CINEMATOGRAPHY) and two talented Hungarian emigrés, Vilmos Zsigmond and Laslo Kovacs, who would soon revolutionize the art of cinematography; they functioned as a literal three-man camera crew during the difficult-to-stage musical sequences, three cameras  simultaneously filming, which allowed for all sorts of cutaways and sophisticated detailing rarely if ever seen in films of this station. It's no WITCHFINDER GENERAL, but it's not bad for a kid still looking forward to his 25th birthday.

Severin's presentation of the film was sourced from Nicholas Winding Refn and is a 4K restoration of its 35mm camera negative. As you can see from these frame grabs, it looks swell.

The extras on this one include a 35m interview with Arch Hall Jr., who comes across as surprisingly eloquent and knowledgeable; the Ray Dennis Steckler episode of British TV's THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILM SHOW; and a lengthy "interview" with the man himself circa 2004, in which he rambles in a chain of vignettes separated by black-outs. This  bonus might have benefited from some tightening up, but this package is not about giving us less.  

Severin Films' Steckler box set is available here on their website at significant savings.


Next up: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? (1964).
    


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Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Jean-Luc Godard (1930 - 2022)


I am seeing reports all over my news feed that Jean-Luc Godard has quit smoking.

No, not really, but I find this subterfuge of mine more acceptable than the abounding rumor that he has died.

About this, I can only say perhaps for you, but not for me. I still have films from all his many periods still to discover and rediscover, so we have much unfinished business to conduct.

Godard is a true critic of the cinema in that his films really cannot be viewed, only re-viewed so, in terms of our discreet rapport, he will almost certainly outlast me.


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