My Return to the NaschyCast!

Now available for your listening pleasure is my return visit to Troy Guinn & Rod Barnett's Paul NaschyCast, which you can download from the link at the bottom of Rod's intro here. We recorded our two-hour conversation at the hush-hush Wonderfest reunion last month and discussed (among other films) Carlos Aured's HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, Javier Aguirre's HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE and Jacinto Molina's THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD, while also managing to touch on other filmmakers as diverse as Jess Franco and Eric Rohmer. My views on these films were sometimes at odds with my hosts' opinions, so this led to some debate and discussion I believe you'll find interesting.

Happy 100th Birthday, Vincent Price!

This photograph was taken during our only meeting, on July 13, 1976, in Mr. Price's dressing room at Dayton, Ohio's Memorial Hall. He was rehearsing for an upcoming Kenley Players production of DAMN YANKEES, in which he played Satan. He was the first person I interviewed for MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK.

This past weekend, I had the honor of interviewing Roger Corman over two nights at the Hi-Pointe Theater in St. Louis, MO -- prior to screenings of THE TOMB OF LIGEIA and MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH -- as part of their ongoing Vincentennial celebration. My thanks to Tom Stockman and Cliff Froehlich of Cinema St. Louis for inviting me and allowing me to meet and spend quality time with my hero, under Vincent's wing, as it were.

Happy Birthday also to Sir Christopher Lee, today celebrating his 89th!

In Italian Bookstores Today

Elena Cecchini's brilliant translation of my 2005 novel THE BOOK OF RENFIELD: A GOSPEL OF DRACULA, containing unique explanatory footnotes and a post-scriptive essay about the novel by critic Alessandro Defilippi. Published by Gargoyle Books.

The new subtitle translates as "The True Story of Dracula's Disciple."

VW's Memorable Scenes of 2010

Shortly after asking our contributors to compile their lists of Favorite DVDs of 2010, I decided to ask them an additional question:

"What was the most memorable movie scene you saw in 2010?"

I didn't specify whether the scene should be from a new or an old film; I was simply interested in exploring what kind of scenes and imagery were most enticing to us this year. Here are the results...

Michael Barrett:

It's hard to remember a most memorable scene of the year. There are scenes I admire, but often for intellectual reasons more than emotional ones, such as a certain exhaustively-discussed sequence in Tarantino's war movie. I'd prefer to measure a memorable scene by my physical response. I felt powerful emotions at certain moments in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, but it wasn't my first time watching that movie; it only felt like it. Is there something the matter with me, or with movies? Aren't any new movies sufficiently moving to me? Am I even jaded to seeing classics for the first time? Why am I always thinking "Oh yes, that's very good--Next!"? I worry about this.

And then something happens out of the blue, like THE INVENTION OF LYING with Ricky Gervais. It should be called THE INVENTION OF GOD, but that wouldn't have played in Peoria, so it's disguised as a romantic comedy. In fact, the conventional romantic triangle rather lets down the picture--oh, but what a premise. Gervais invents Heaven in an effective scene with his mom. This event snowballs until he becomes the world's first and only messiah and we arrive at his "Moses" scene where he explains the Man in the Sky to a credulous crowd. It's so funny, I had to press Stop until I could calm down. That doesn't happen every year. (I'd have been helpless in a theatre, which hasn't happened since THE BIG LEBOWSKI.) When movies can still make you laugh, that's real power.

Ramsey Campbell:

The scene that's haunted me for months is the ending of Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY - one of those final scenes (as in LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD or L'ECLISSE) where some of the power of the image comes from the dawning realisation that this will be how the film ends. It's a film I loved, and I thought the resolution or rather lack of one was perfect for it.

John Charles:

My choice would be the final moments of INCEPTION. The last shot might not have had quite the same resonance a few decades back, but so few movies nowadays give you anything of substance to think about, let alone have you leaving the theatre intrigued and with something else to consider.

Shane M. Dallmann:

Short and sweet... INCEPTION featured one of the most diabolically delightful final shots I've had the pleasure of enjoying in recent years.

David Kalat:

There have been a number of superb scenes this year—I could almost grab any random scene from the hilarious BLACK DYNAMITE and be done with it—but the one that has stuck with me the longest, and compelled me to think/talk/write about it the most is a fairly innocuous-seeming moment from the early part of CATFISH.

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, CATFISH is a low-budget first-person-shooter documentary by Areil (Rel) Schulman about his Facebook-based friendship and romantic flirtation with Megan Faccio, an improbably accomplished multimedia artist from a family of young prodigies in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As the story unfolds, Rel becomes increasingly alarmed by growing doubts that Megan is who or what she claims to be, and he and his filmmaking buddies take their camera on the road to confront Megan in person. This latter half of the movie is as taut a psychological thriller as anything cooked up by Jimmy Sangster, but to get to it we need those early scenes of Rel and Megan instant-messaging and calling each other. One of those scenes, in which Rel speaks to Megan on the phone, became the focal point of controversy when the movie opened.

By the finale, it is fairly clear that Rel’s suspicions had to be inflamed before they started shooting the movie. Indeed, the only way any of this makes sense is if Rel and his cohorts had an inkling of where this was all headed before they filmed that phone call. But, in that phone call, Rel presents himself as fully invested in his virtual relationship with Megan and completely doubt-free. Let’s phrase this another way: those opening scenes were staged for the camera, with the filmmakers misrepresenting themselves solely to establish footage they needed to tell the story.

Critics jumped on this—even those who were otherwise impressed by the film. Rel’s behavior in those early scenes, and his duplicitous stance in that phone call, was like James Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES or other phony memoirs, they said. An impermissible intrusion of fiction into a non-fiction realm.

Ahem.

If you’ve read my Fictuality article in VIDEO WATCHDOG, you know I admire the crossover of fiction and non-fiction, and moreover I am deeply skeptical of the ability of “pure” documentary to exist in the first place. Every documentary has an element of the staged about it.

The documentary MY KID COULD PAINT THAT has a lot of topical similarity to CATFISH, but instead of being a first-person presentation it is a traditional-style documentary. MY KID COULD PAINT THAT could be cut down and aired on a TV newsprogram and fit right in to that objective journalistic style. And it starts off presenting an unskeptical treatment of its subject, then gradually allows doubt and contrary evidence to creep in—just like CATFISH. Critics didn’t cry foul (in part because MY KID COULD PAINT THAT was lost on a DVD-only release, whereas CATFISH played in multiplexes in Middle America where it made itself an easier target).

Or consider Errol Morris’ landmark THE THIN BLUE LINE. The film begins with one account of Randall Adams’ alleged crime, and then gradually chips away at it to bring in alternate explanations and contrary facts.

In all three of these documentaries, it is essential to their storytelling success that one hypothesis be advanced first, and then challenged and revised as the film progresses. The films that adhere to old-school documentary technique do this without raising any hackles, but CATFISH’s presentation as a sort of videotaped memoir makes that long-standing and venerable technique seem dangerous, new, and illegitimate.

The world of fiction films posing as documentaries is well established. CATFISH is the herald of a new genre of documentaries that pose as fiction films, and the lines are going to get muddier still in the years to come.

Tim Lucas:

Of the new films I saw this year, two films stand out as offering scenes that made me either laugh out loud or shudder at their visionary truth or audacity. One was in Werner Herzog's THE BAD LIEUTENANT - PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS -- the scene where a coked-up Nicolas Cage urges a compatriot to "Shoot him again! His soul hasn't stopped dancing yet!", followed by a subjective view of the felled man's spirit break-dancing around the wreckage of his body until one last bullet nails it down.

The other was in Joe Dante's THE HOLE, as Bruce Dern struggles to finish drawing the jigsaw pieces that will collectively compose a revelatory image, while sitting in a brightly lit room whose lightbulbs are exploding one by one around him, the pops coming closer as they inch him incrementally toward a final darkness. This is a film meant to address childhood fears, which it does on an admirably sustained all-ages level that is effective without being traumatizing. However, in this scene, Dante stages a simultaneously comic and terrifying metaphor for the most fundamental fear of any artist who has reached middle age: that the time to express ourselves is running out. The scene carries extra weight because THE HOLE is Dante's first feature film in six years and still seeking US distribution.

Eric Somer:

Most memorable sequence from a film released on home video this year? That would be from HOUSE/Hausu, when a piano devours a teenage girl. Words cannot really describe it, so I will leave it at that.

VW's Favorite DVDs of 2010: Editor's Choice

And now it's my turn.

I was fortunate enough this year to contribute to a number of worthy DVD and Blu-ray releases, including Image Entertainment's THRILLER - THE COMPLETE SERIES, Arrow Films' INFERNO and SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (UK), Mondo Vision's SZAMANKA and Synapse Films' VAMPIRE CIRCUS. Since David Kalat omitted from his list those titles he contributed to, as a conflict of interest, I will follow suit. Each of these releases would have earned a place on this list even without my contributions because they are truly remarkable presentations.

THRILLER is without question the most thoroughly and capably annotated archival television release of the year; INFERNO restores Dario Argento's 1980 classic to a level of beauty and clarity I had not even witnessed on the big screen; SZAMANKA introduces to America one of Andrzej Zulawski's most important films (indeed, an important horror film of a most unusual kind); and SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is the long-awaited, definitive version of a hard film to nail down, encompassing Fellini's masterpiece "Toby Dammit." (If truth be told, SPIRITS is probably the year's most important new release for me, being the first home video release of this title struck from the original camera negative and reinstating the English audio option.) VAMPIRE CIRCUS recently arrived by missed being processed for inclusion by the skin of its fangs. The advance word elsewhere on the net has been very positive indeed.

This is the 12th and final list of our annual overview, and I was delighted that so many of the lists provided by our contributors praised discs that fell outside my own viewing this past year. That said, I must admit to a twinge of regret that none of our contributors -- not even I -- was able to find a place in our surveys for a disc as beautiful, generous and detailed as 20th Century Fox's AVATAR - THREE DISC EXTENDED COLLECTOR'S EDITION. With new releases, I suspect we take the bells and whistles more easily for granted. With time, the value of these discs may become more deeply felt and appreciated... but by then we'll likely be on to a whole nother medium.

My list is presented, painstakingly, in order of preference, but I must stress that the entire list is preferred.

1. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1954, Criterion)
Probably one of the five or ten greatest horror films, and transcendent of genre in many ways, this disc contains the most staggering supplement ever to appear on DVD: a 2½ hour documentary composed of surviving raw footage from the original filming. This provides us with a unique glimpse into the work methods of everyone involved in the production of this American masterpiece. What this means is that we can now see actors like Lillian Gish, Robert Mitchum and Shelly Winters not only in performance but in process, and witness how Charles Laughton, in his only directorial assignment, shaped their performances.

2. THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS (1925, Kino on Video)
It's hard to believe now that I first saw METROPOLIS at a public library screening in the late 1960s that was dead silent and ran approximately one hour. I've since seen it numerous times, at numerous lengths, but this two-hour, twenty-plus minute version of Fritz Lang's masterpiece is the most revelatory─not only due to the newly recovered footage (which very nearly completes it), but also to the HD clarity which exposes previously assumed live action, miniatures or scale model shots to be animated drawings or glass matte paintings. The new footage is in rough shape, allowing it to provide its own footnotes; it adds a great deal to Fritz Rasp's sinister role as Joh Frederson's right hand man, smooths the previously jagged edges of Brigitte Helm's extraordinary triple role, and gives the whole film the breathing space to assume its rightful role as a spectacle. What was never quite so apparent to me before is that METROPOLIS is truly an opera, a film thoroughly informed by the filmmaker's love of opera as surely as Dario Argento's best work found its new direction by wedding its cutting and amplifying its visuals to the key of progressive rock. Knowing this makes its dramatic excesses and its oversimplified, perhaps overly symbolic theme into perspective, makes them more forgivable. Because of this, I find that its traditional narrative scoring─however wonderful it may be, and it carries a distinct and glorious prophecy of Franz Waxman's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN score during the creation scene in Rotwang's lab─rubs ever so slightly against the grain of what Lang's vision truly wants to be. For all that, it is a very fast-moving two-and-a-half hours and the recovered footage only serves to make it more vital, modernistic and approachable.

3. AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY (1968-72, Criterion)
Over a three year period, BBS produced seven films: HEAD, EASY RIDER, FIVE EASY PIECES, DRIVE HE SAID, A SAFE PLACE, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS─six of which encompass the arc of work that made Jack Nicholson a star and an actor worthy of stardom. This set contains all seven films and couches them in a wealth of exhilarating extras─audio commentaries, documentaries, interviews, archival materials─pertaining to each film and the company as a whole. Though not fantastic in nature, at least not wholly so, this set represents the college attended by the class that graduated from Roger Corman High School and incidentally underscores the value of the work that actors like Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper and filmmakers like Peter Bogdanovich did with Corman. And the HEAD disc contains, for the first time ever on home video, the 1966 screen tests of Micky Braddock (Dolenz) and Peter Tork, as well as ensemble tests that show The Monkees acting with other wannabees. For Monkees fans, this footage alone is worth the cost of the set. It's almost enough to make one overlook the not inconsiderable fact that the film itself has been remixed in 5.1, with the songs sounding far better than they do on Rhino's newly remastered HEAD soundtrack box set.

4. HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT'S INFERNO (2009, Park Circus, Region 2)
This documentary by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea tells the story of the great French suspense director's ill-fated 1963 project with Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani, about a middle-aged husband's festering jealousy about his younger wife, which ended when Clouzot suffered a heart attack two weeks into the filming. Collected here, for the first time, is an assemblage of loose and edited footage from those two weeks, footage that promises─even at a distance of almost 40 years─to catapult cinema into new visual vocabularies of human psychology and derangement. Clouzot ventures beyond narrative images to dwell obsessively on the beauty of Romy Schneider, using her as the centerpiece of numerous enthralling special effects, color and makeup tests, and superimpositions. Though presented in the scientific context of a documentary, this is one of the sexiest films ever made. Reportedly coming stateside from Flicker Alley.

5. ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO - 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Universal)
I'm working hard to hold myself in rational check here, because Universal's Blu-ray remastering of PSYCHO, coupled with ADX's 5.1 audio remix, begs to be hailed as the restoration of the year. It unearths visual and sonic elements of the film that feel every bit as long-buried as the lost footage from METROPOLIS or Clouzot's INFERNO. I'm talking about the deeper register now available to the double basses in Bernard Herrmann's orchestra, which make the murder of Marion Crane somehow more traumatic and revolting, and the way the rainfall now heard outside the Bates Motel as Marion checks in places us, with her, in a shower from the get-go. The little rear-channel kick in the pipes just before the shower water is heard in the front channels, and the deep idling sound of Arbogast's car motor. Likewise, the refining of the B&W cinematography has become revelatory in its own way, bringing us into more intimate contact with nearly all the performances. In Janet Leigh's case, this scrutiny presents us with one of the great tragic performances of the past half-century, and the densely layered eloquence of Joseph Stefano's dialogue retains its place at the very pinnacle of the genre. The extras on the second disc are mostly ported over from previous editions but remain valuable, with an excellent making-of documentary by Laurent Bouzereau and a sampling of the legendary Hitchcock/Truffaut interview that reveals the two men more at odds than print suggested, building to a satisfying assertion from Hitchcock about PSYCHO being a film that asserts its value almost entirely in cinematic terms.

6. THE WIZARD OF OZ - 70th ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION
(Warner)
The regularity with which Warner/Turner/MGM keeps trumping past editions of this title has become tedious, but the first Blu-ray issue of the Victor Fleming classic obliterates even the memory of the $1,000,000 digital three-strip restoration of a few years ago. Every check in Dorothy's gingham dress is herein preserved in crystal clarity, and the ruby slippers sparkle and hold the eye in long shots as they never have before. Remarkably, the enhanced clarity of the presentation doesn't unearth faults so much as the film crew's peerless eye for detail in terms of makeup and set design, a standard of quality that carries through to every department on the production in a truly timeless manner. There is simply infinitely more here to appreciate, and even to notice for the first time. True, the box set is padded with a third disc devoted to a lengthy MGM studio history documentary available elsewhere, but the second disc includes some worthwhile arcana, including the earlier silent film adaptations of THE WIZARD OF OZ and a selection of L. Frank Baum's own Méliès-influenced shorts adaptating his Oz stories, and a made-for-TV movie about Baum starring John Ritter.

7. FANTOMAS: THE COMPLETE SAGA (1914-15, Kino on Video)
In 1998, when I reviewed JUVE VS. FANTOMAS in VW 43, 45m of one serial was all that could easily be seen of Louis Feuillade's epic five-hour serial adaptation of the popular crime pulps of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. JUVE VS. FANTOMAS alone runs 62m in this complete edition. This release belatedly follows earlier issues of this material in France and the UK, and is included here for its importance rather than its novelty. The supplements on Universal's PSYCHO disc would have us believe that Hitchcock was sui generis, but Hitchcock learned everything about the fundamentals of suspense from Fritz Lang and Feuillade. Kino's set has some fine supplements, including other Feuillade shorts and two lively David Kalat commentaries, but it is very disappointing that numerous extras from the other sets were not ported over, including Georges Franju's interview with Marcel Allain.

8. THE GENERAL (1920, Kino on Video)
Despite being an admirer of Keaton's work, for some reason it was not until this year that I finally caught up with the film most commonly cited as his masterpiece. I'm glad I did, because this Blu-ray issue is like looking through a glass window into another time -- culled from an archival print taken from the original camera negative, it is a magnificent feat of restoration, and presented with a choice of three different musical accompaniments. Worth seeing not only for the work of genius that is is, but for the ripples it sent out, influencing (for example) Sergio Leone's later work on THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and even ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

9. GEORGES MELIES ENCORE: NEW DISCOVERIES (1896-1911, Flicker Alley)
Flicker Alley's five-disc set GEORGE MELIES FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA 1896-1913) from 2008 seemed exhaustive but an additional 28 shorts by this seminal fantasist came to light only after its release. Also included are a couple of shorts by Méliès' Spanish counterpart Segundo de Chomón, sometimes mistaken for the work of the French master and no less brilliant.

10. THE T.A.M.I. SHOW (1965, Shout! Factory)
In which James Brown throws down a still-resonating gauntlet to the bill-topping Rolling Stones, who haven't even written "Satisfaction" yet. This all-star live performance, filmed with television cameras at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, has a little something for everyone (Mersey Beat, Motown, soul, girl group, soul, beach music, garage band) and it's all pretty much cream of the crop. Even some of the lesser bands have the power to make one misty. Speaking of crop, it's been impossible to see this film in its original widescreen format since its original release, especially with The Beach Boys' set intact, and this disc restores all that. The surprise of the film, once you notice that Teri Garr is one of the background dancers, is how much musical history she's able to eclipse with her frenzied flailings.

RESTORATIONS OF THE YEAR:
ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO - 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Universal)
THE WIZARD OF OZ - 70th ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION
(Warner)
SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (Arrow Films UK)
THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1939, Universal)
THE T.A.M.I. SHOW (Shout! Factory)
HEAD (in AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY, Criterion)

HONORARY MENTIONS:
TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE and TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT (1959/1960, Warner Archive)
Directed respectively by John Guillermin and Robert Day, these British-produced Gordon Scott adventures raise Edgar Rice Burroughs' character to a level of maturity and rousing excitement that his long-running film franchise would never enjoy so fully again. GREATEST ADVENTURE features one of the earliest screen appearances of Sean Connery, as a stooge to main menace Niall McGuinness, and the heavies in MAGNIFICENT are as good as they come: John Carradine, Jock Mahoney and Al Mulock. Two of the finest matinee movies of their time, these deserved an official release from Warner Home Video, and much more ballyhoo than they got. If you care about action and adventure cinema, don't let anything stand in the way of ordering these burn-to-order discs from Warner Archive.

THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN, DARK AND STORMY NIGHT and TALES
FROM THE PUB (2009, Shout! Factory)
While his TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD (2007) still awaits release, Larry Blamire's subsequent three Bantam Street productions arrived on disc this year in splendid presentations. These movie-smart, absurdist parodies─tackling fantasy-adventure, old dark house movies and ONE STEP BEYOND, respectively─not only share one of the most delightful repertory acting ensembles ever assembled, but they stand on their own comic merits (you don't need the reference points to laugh, yet they run hilariously deep) and they represent pretty much the only real, consistent wit found in American comedies today. Blamire's work is a testament to what can still be achieved when shooting digitally and strictly to low budget, and it's time some forward-looking studio (assuming there is such a thing) repaid his ingenuity with an opportunity to advance to the next level.

Don Van Vliet 1941-2010

"I'm goin' up on the mountain and find me a cave and talk those bears into takin' me in..."
-- Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), "Wild Life" (1969)

A word on the importance of Captain Beefheart.

When I was 16, I was in a bad way: my best friend had committed suicide and my own homelife was becoming unliveable. It crossed my mind more than once that it might be more convenient for all concerned if I wasn't around anymore. Then one morning, I awoke with one clear thought in mind: "I am going to have to start listening to some f****ed-up music."

And so I began to embrace sounds I could not bring myself to embrace before. I started listening to Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, The Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges... bands that tapped into emotions that were not traditionally musical -- and I believe hearing those edgier feelings expressed musically, literally saved my life. They also opened my ears to new textures, contours and concepts of beauty.

Beefheart's music may sound crazy to some of you, but it became my refuge from something much crazier. More than any teacher I had, his work taught me to think like an artist and how to use language like paint.

I shared this life-saving confession earlier tonight with a friend, and she wrote back to me, "We should all be so lucky to say that we served such a purpose in this life."

So, thank you, Don, for being the bear on the mountain who took me in -- and godspeed.

Where I've Been, Where I'm Going

If you're looking to get my attention, putting my name on the cover of your magazine is certainly one way to do it. Yesterday I received the first two issues of THE JOURNAL OF INTERSTITIAL CINEMA, which its editors kindly sent to me, and I was pleasantly surprised to find my Millipede Press book about David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME the subject of an essay/review in the second issue. It's weird to see my own name and work sandwiched between "Great cheapskates of cinema!", "The obituary of a playing card!" and "Necksnappers!," I suppose because nothing seems more mainstream to me than me, but that's the beauty of it.

Published and written by (one assumes, the pseudonymous) Grog Ziklore and RJ Wheatpenny, JOIC celebrates the cinema that falls between the cracks not only of genre but of general notice. The first two issues strike me as an intriguing conglomeration of Steven R. Johnson's DELIRIOUS, Charles Kilgore's ECCO and Bill Landis' SLEAZOID EXPRESS. There's a tabloid element here ("Reel Tragedy," a look at an NYU film student's suicide, appears to be real reportage but reads like a comic item) but the writing is consistently intelligent. It's a pleasure to see people sidestepping the internet to inject some ink back into life and life back into ink.

The three-page VIDEODROME review doesn't mention who published the book, which won't make my publisher too happy, but people will be able to find it anyway. My guess is that RJ Wheatpenny reviewed it because he (I'll assume he's male) is legitimately interested in the subject and author, and not because he was sent a review copy. His cogent assessment of the film and the book concludes with a lengthy paragraph (anyone else would call it a page) about me, personally. I'm called "the father of modern genre film writing" and the Bava book is called "the best book ever devoted to a single filmmaker," which is very flattering, before Wheatpenny goes on to some closing notes on the current oddities of my career arc:

"After its publication [the Bava book] and the 2008 release of his VIDEODROME book, Lucas seems to have transformed in his own way. He still publishes and contributes to VIDEO WATCHDOG but is less of an influence on its tone, and he's ceded the magazine's prime real estate to a varied stable of contributors. His Video WatchBlog... is rarely updated anymore, and he now seems to prefer the instantaneous (and largely uncritical) feedback of constant Facebook updates... Judging from his online posts, he's more enthusiastic about music and script-writing today than the movies on which he's built his reputation, and although he's not abandoned them, he seems as set on a different creative course after his VIDEODROME book as Cronenberg was after releasing his film." (page 20)

Very interesting viewpoint, and not at all untrue. Its inaccuracies, if any, stem from Wheatpenny knowing the public me rather than the personal me. My Facebook page, where I've spent most of my public time this past year or so, is a personal page though it welcomes most everyone who asks to be admitted. Music has always been a passion of mine, equal to if not greater than my love for films, which have been my vocation. My FB wall is a vehicle that lets me express my thoughts about music, for which I have no other outlet, and also to interact with a large number of people. And just as I once used all my free time between issues of VW to work on the Bava book, I'm now working toward establishing a career as a screenwriter, though I don't actually discuss those pursuits much on FB.

Certainly, as RJ speculates, finishing the Bava book and publishing the Cronenberg book did something to formally close a big chapter of my life. From my own viewpoint, finishing the Bava book was like awaking from a nearly lifelong dream, wherein I had actually nourished the point of view that such a marginal obsession would be enough to hold and keep me for a lifetime. Many in my audience seem to think that completing these projects would simply free me up to tackle others -- a book about Jess Franco, for example. But not having these projects, especially the Bava book, to occupy me didn't have that effect; instead, I locked myself into this blog for awhile and continued to give and give and give, without taking anything in to nourish me. And I became aware that there were sides of life, of my own life, that I was not exploring and which were the only ways I could recapture the rush I felt when I was humming my way through a work in progress. So I made myself the work in progress. Swimming, vegetarianism -- I've told this story here before.

Being a published novelist as well, I also determined to redirect my life toward achieving something more as an artist in my own right, rather than writing about other artists. Because spending my life alone at home in front of the computer 24/7 was no longer all I wanted from life, my writing turned to screenwriting. (It's my informed view that neither VW nor my fiction is likely to support me through my old age, so as I near my autumn years, income becomes more of a concern.) I've been seriously screenwriting now for four years; I've written seven different scripts, including multiple drafts of each, and I've optioned two. The people who have read my most recent feature script, an adaptation of Orson Bean's ME AND THE ORGONE, tell me it's the best thing I've ever done. I've yearned for more creative interaction, but I don't like spending long hours writing the best possible version of a story only to see it thoughtlessly fudged by other hands, so my thoughts have had to turn to directing. It's the only way for me to ensure that I'll finally be judged for what I've written, rather than for what was rewritten. I didn't think it was in my personal nature to be a director, but now that I have experienced what one gains by being surrounded by a supportive crew, I've learned otherwise.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be returning to the Factory at the Douglas Education Center in Monessen, PA to direct my own first film work. The subject is an adaptation of my novel THROAT SPROCKETS, which could now be loglined as "MAD MEN meets TRUE BLOOD" though it was begun in 1987 and first published in 1994. When I met Guillermo del Toro at the Saturn Awards in 2008, he told me he considered THROAT SPROCKETS "the perfect MASTERS OF HORROR story." I'll be directing a promotional trailer and a representative dialogue scene from the book, which executive producer Robert Tinnell will then use to attract funding for the full feature, which we hope to shoot sometime next year.

I'm not even going into everything I've gone through in the last couple of years, but even this much disclosure should show that I haven't lost my interest in movies -- on the contrary, that interest has expanded to encompass much more activity, and activity in the truest sense. Meanwhile, VIDEO WATCHDOG continues to come out on schedule, I wrote more than half the contents of our 20th Anniversary issue (#158), and I'm constantly brainstorming new directions the magazine might take to keep it vital and growing as the marketplace continues to undergo radical change. But I thank RJ Wheatpenny for the interest shown by his essay and I recommend those of you on the lookout for a new and unique fanzine to give THE JOURNAL OF INTERSTITIAL CINEMA a try.

"We grudgingly have a website," its editors admit on the back cover. You can find it here while they remain on the technological fence, or beat the odds by sending US cash money ($3.00 for the 24-page #1, $4.00 for the 28-page #2) to Journal of IC, 387 Grand St. #902, New York NY 10002.

The Only Reliable Film Magazine in the World, says Quentin Tarantino

My friend Daniela Catelli (the author of Italian books on THE EXORCIST and William Friedkin, and an Italian translator for parts of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK) sends the following message from Rome:

"Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, now you’re famous in Italy! This is from the only independent newspaper in Italy, IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO, and it’s a small daily column written by Luca Guadagnino, a film director who’s in the Jury at the Venice Film Festival with Quentin Tarantino. You will find the scan attached, this is the translation:

“Here’s some advice from jury president Quentin Tarantino: The only reliable film magazine in the world is VIDEO WATCHDOG, a [bi]monthly publication that reviews only the films on DVD without submitting to the market rules. Instead, VW follows the taste and the analytical depth of his founder, the greatest film historian Tim Lucas, author of – Tarantino claims – the best book on films ever written: MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. Tarantino-Lucas-Bava: cinema is truly without borders.”

I'm most grateful to Quentin, whom I've never met and with whom I've never spoken, for these astounding, purely unsolicited and heartfelt words of praise. There are three huge compliments in that little paragraph. Color me blushing.

So come on, you Tarantino fans... embrace paper! SUBSCRIBE!

FILM COMMENTs on Video WatchBlog

My sincere thanks to Ben Simington, Paul Brunick and the editors of FILM COMMENT magazine for including Video WatchBlog on their new list of "The Top Film Criticism Sites." Forty or so other sites were so honored, and with this article including such prestigious bloggers as Glenn Kenney, Dave Kehr, Paul Schrader, Matt Zoller Seitz and Gary Tooze (whose impressive DVD Beaver is referred to as "the next generation heir to Tim Lucas of VIDEO WATCHDOG," making me wish, in my advanced years, that I could bequeath him some of my bills as well as my legacy), to be part of this roll call is a major professional compliment.

Update: Paul Brunick informs me that the list has also been cross-published at SLANT Magazine's The House Next Door blog, click here, which offers a more attractive presentation, share widgets and user comments.

Press Release: It's Official

DIRECTOR IRENE MIRACLE AND AUTHOR/PUBLISHER TIM LUCAS OF VIDEO WATCHDOG TO COLLABORATE WITH THE FACTORY DIGITAL FILMMAKING PROGRAM AT DOUGLAS EDUCATION CENTER

'The Baggage Claim' Will Begin Filming in Late July 2010 at Douglas Education Center

MONESSEN, PA., May 17, 2010 – On any ordinary day, walking into the The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program complex at Douglas Education Center (DEC) would be both exciting and imaginative - as students learn the building blocks to develop a positive career in filmmaking. These days the ambiance is absolutely electrifying as students and teachers gear up for this summer’s “The Final Product” production.

Golden Globe-winner Irene Miracle (director of DAWNLAND: CHANGELING as well as an actress noted for such films as MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, Dario Argento’s INFERNO and PUPPET MASTER) and students from The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program at DEC will team up to produce THE BAGGAGE CLAIM in late July 2010. The film is based on a screenplay by Tim Lucas, Saturn Award-winning writer/publisher of VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine, and the cult fiction favorites THROAT SPROCKETS, THE BOOK OF RENFIELD, and the epic biography MARIO BAVA – ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. THE BAGGAGE CLAIM will be produced under the auspices of The Final Product - the last course students enrolled in The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program at DEC will take prior to graduation. “The Final Product exemplifies the Factory’s philosophy of immersing students in a real world production situation by teaming them with working filmmakers on viable projects,” said FACTORY director Robert Tinnell. Previous productions have been directed by Tom Savini, whose make-up effects school is part of Douglas Education Center, as well as by Tinnell, an industry veteran whose directing credits include FRANKENSTEIN AND ME and whose screenplay for THE LIVING AND THE DEAD will be directed by Brad Anderson in the coming year.

Irene Miracle is eager to begin collaboration with DEC. “What delights me about Robert Tinnell and The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program at Douglas Education Center is the feeling of being surrounded by an incredible number of like-minded poetic creators, and that together we’re all aiming for the stars. That may explain why this little film we are planning will be so crowded with people, quick scene changes, and a heart beat that takes the world into a quick dance.”

Screenwriter Tim Lucas notes, “I sat down and wrote THE BAGGAGE CLAIM in a single sitting, in longhand, hardly changing a word as I typed it up. Irene loved it, and when Robert Tinnell came aboard and we saw what was possible with his resources at DEC, we revised it together with an eye to those possibilities. It was one of the happiest writing experiences I’ve ever had.”

Lucas goes on to say, “In some ways, THE BAGGAGE CLAIM is an opportunity for a group of artists experienced in horror to speak more warmly to our audience by sharing what we’ve learned about life and relationships by this point in our lives, while telling a story in an unmistakably fantastic vein.”

DEC students enrolled in The FACTORY Digital Filmmaking Program will have a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a variety of positions during the creation of the digital production of THE BAGGAGE CLAIM. All aspects of filmmaking will be put to use while students work hand-in-hand with film industry professionals. Education and experience will be used in the field in a green screen environment.

“My students and I are thrilled to be working alongside this wonderful group of film professionals,” said Robert Tinnell. “There is a tremendous need for students to have practical, hands-on film-making experience prior to graduating into the real world of professional filmmaking, and I am very pleased that DEC is creating an atmosphere where creativity and learning are one in the same in achieving that aim.”

For more information, call 412-684-3684 or visit www.dec.edu.

Here's a link to the actual press release.

Get Rondo-ized!

"Don't hurt that Rondo, Rondo!" VW publisher Donna Lucas takes a protective stance outside the auditorium where the 6th Annual Rondo Awards were held at WonderFest in 2008.

In an effort to spread awareness of VIDEO WATCHDOG's various nominations for the the 8th Annual Rondo Awards, Donna and I (with the approval of our writers) have decided to make available -- for a limited time -- the complete texts of the four nominees for this year's Best Magazine Article award.

Stephen R. Bissette's "Let the Twilight In", an in-depth study of TWILIGHT and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, can be read here.

Eric Somer's "Down the Block from Bergman: THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and Beyond," an examination of the influence of Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING on Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, the recent remake, and other horror films, can be read here.

Kim Newman's "DVD Spotlight: MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION, a detailed history of the 1966-70 British TV terror anthology, can be read here.

And Shaun Brady's "Weird Scenes Inside the Fun House: The Making of MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD," a production history of the 1972 Pittsburgh-made surrealist horror film, can be read here.

And here is a link to a special Rondo link page now added to our website, which also features direct links to a five-part HD video of my Q&A with INFERNO star Irene Miracle and composer Keith Emerson, which has been nominated for Best Fan Event.

Also, please don't forget to consider any of our many hard-working contributors for your vote in the Best Writer and Best DVD Reviewer categories, and remember that both our cover artist Charlie Largent and our art director Donna Lucas (whose layouts make VW's feature articles soar) are eligible in the Best Artist category.

Stacie Ponder Interviews Me

... about blogging, horror and French head cheese on her outstanding blog Final Girl. Click here for the goods.

Postscript to an Editorial

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the warm communications I've been receiving from friends, acquaintences and other readers about my very personal editorial in the current issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG. It's surprising to me because I haven't changed -- I feel I mourned my mother when she walked out of my life six years ago -- yet I am aware that people's perceptions of me have been changed by it. I want to assure everyone that all the things I wrote about exist in the distant past for me, truly, which is why I was able to write about them in such a calm and controlled manner.

For those who might be wondering, it has only been in the last few days that we learned exactly what happened to my mother Juanita and my aunt Rose. They were not in an accident together, as my editorial speculated from the fact that they died one day apart.

Last New Year's Eve, my aunt's husband Jack suffered a debilitating stroke. He was placed in a nursing home, but their insurance soon ran out. While caring for him, Rose was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 3 to 6 months to live. After a week, her daughter (my cousin) Kim shared the news with my mother, who was Rose's closest friend and also reliant on her for things like grocery trips. Naturally, she took it badly and said that she didn't want to outlive her baby sister. My aunt's youngest daughter Susan asked her mother to bring her father with her for a visit to her home in Sacramento, in the hope of keeping them out there to care for them both. A couple of days before the trip west, aunt Rose went to dinner with my mother, along with Kim and her family; they all had a great evening together, my mother flaunting a new hairdo and the two of them acting like a couple of teenagers together, as they always did.

Kim received a call from her mother the next morning, complaining that my mother was ignoring her. When she fell out of her chair to the floor, they realized she had been silently stricken with some kind of stroke. She was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support while testing was performed. My mother had a living will and did not wish to have her life artificially sustained. A series of seizures ensued over the next 2 days. She was pronounced brain dead and life support was removed. She continued to breathe on her own for two days. Rose and Jack flew west to Sacramento on March 4. My mother died early on March 5, between 2 and 2:30am.

Upon arriving at her daughter's house, my weary aunt Rose had immediately stretched out on a sofa, exhausted. The news of my mother's death was communicated to her by phone the following morning around 9:00am Pacific time, and she never got off the couch -- passing away on March 6, the day after, around 1:30pm.

My cousins, sister and I all feel that their real causes of death was that each of the sisters was unwilling to live without the other.

I thank all of my correspondents for the kindness and enthusiasm they have expressed to me about the editorial. Frankly, I didn't intend to write it, but one was due, my back was to the wall, and because the news was fresh in my mind, it was the only thing I was able to think or write about. Because my mother had been a vital player in my early development as a moviegoer, and was such a lover of movies herself, it seemed permissible -- also because VIDEO WATCHDOG has always communicated with its readers about our relationships with movies as the most intimate shared experience. Suffice to say, I'm grateful for your kind indulgence and support.

The Latest

It's been awhile since I've blogged anything substantial, at least in a verbal sense, so I thought I would grab some time on this lazy Monday in which to flex this somewhat atrophied muscle.

Donna and I are presently in the latter stages of preparing VIDEO WATCHDOG 153, which will contain an unusually high number of reviews (everything from THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD Blu-ray to Richard Lester's THE BED SITTING ROOM to DEADGIRL), as well as an interesting feature article on the making of the 1973 regional horror film MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD, including many never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes photos. For this issue, we'll be swapping out my Video WatchBlog column to include an all-DVD installment of Things From the Attic, for which there has been a lot of demand. I have also written the next issue's AVI Watchdog column myself, focusing on some of the fan-subbed delights available to the lucky members of the file-sharing website Cinemageddon.

While I was in Los Angeles recently, to promote the ISHI script I wrote with Diane Pfister and to introduce and interview Irene Miracle and Keith Emerson at the New Beverly's record-breaking INFERNO screening, I was invited by David J. Schow to participate in recording a couple of audio commentaries for Image Entertainment's release of the complete THRILLER series with Boris Karloff, scheduled for September or October of 2010. David, Ernest Dickerson and I shared the commentary duties on "The Grim Reaper" featuring William Shatner and Natalie Schafer (my favorite THRILLER episode) and "The Premature Burial" featuring Karloff himself. The sessions went really well. I'm told that other episodes will feature commentators like episode director Arthur Hiller, LOST SKELETON director Larry Blamire, filmmaker and soundtrack buff Jim Wynorski, Eighties TWILIGHT ZONE producer Alan Brennert, TWILIGHT ZONE historian Marc Scott Zicree, FANTASTIC TELEVISION author Gary Gerani, and others -- including a dozen or more by Mr. Schow, author of the justly celebrated book THE OUTER LIMITS COMPANION. The producers at Image are also trying to involve some of the surviving actors from the series for comment. Some isolated music scores are also promised. Image's THRILLER, sublicensed from Universal, promises to be the most important archival horror DVD release of next year.

As at least 750 people know, I've been spending most of the time I used to spend here over at Facebook, mostly because I crave the interaction and the exposure to my friends' thoughts and activities. Some relationships I've founded there have truly changed my life, and I seem to be much more focused on my life this year than on my work. This was probably necessary after the time and effort I've applied to this blog, the Bava book, VW and my screenwriting pursuits over the past several years, but it has also been exhausting in its own way. Now that work on the ISHI screenplay is finished, I will be returning to my script of ME AND THE ORGONE, which I abandoned back in February when the ISHI project was brought to me. There is also another script I have agreed to write, about which I'll say more when the time comes.

There are also a couple of novels I have in mind. One is a sequel to THROAT SPROCKETS, already begun, which would take the story in truly unexpected directions; the other would be a contemporary rewrite of a favorite classic novel, a mainstream effort about the changing face of human relationships. I feel so out of the habit of this kind of writing, but know that getting back to it is essential to my sense of well-being.

Also, though the contract is not yet signed, I have accepted an offer for the Italian translation rights of my 2005 novel THE BOOK OF RENFIELD: A GOSPEL OF DRACULA.

But the most exciting news at the moment is that my original horror script SCARS & STRIPES is steadily approaching production, and the producers at Livestock Entertainment have been showing me actors under consideration to play my characters, conceptual art and so forth. As I mentioned above, while in Los Angeles last month, I got to meet Ernest Dickerson, who will be directing the film, and we got along like a house on fire, sharing much the same tastes about horror films and the aesthetics of the genre. He's working on a redraft of the script now and I was excited by everything he said he would be introducing to this draft. Ernest is also preparing an in-title-only remake of RKO's LADY SCARFACE, to star Paz Vega (SEX AND LUCIA), which means he actually has two films in development at present, both with the word SCAR in the title! What are the odds?

I should also mention here that, recently, my ISHI associate Diane visited Ancestry.com where she discovered that she was a direct descendant of Matoaka P. Powhatan (1595-1617), better known as Pochahontas. This was an amazing discovery, but a still more personal discovery awaited me when her eureka inspired me to visit this website. I found no discernible celebrities in my family tree but did learn some new things like my father's birthdate (May 22, 1926) and the circumstances of my maternal grandfather's death at age 29 (bronchial pneumonia). I was also able to trace my mother's side of the family to a John Cartwright, born 1600 in Northamptonshire who became my first ancestor to sail to America, where he died in 1666, in Virginia.

But the most startling discovery awaited me at the opposite end of the familial timber, where my mother Juanita was listed as having died on March 5 of this year, at the age of 80.

My mother and I had a difficult relationship, impossible in many ways; we were separated for most of my life, and we had been estranged for her last six years. I still don't know her cause of death, but her sister and only friend, my aunt Rosalie, is likewise listed as having died the day after, on March 6, somewhere in California, so it's possible that they were involved in an accident together. It would have been my mother's first trip to California. We are still searching for answers, even for a burial site, but Rose's daughters Kim and Susan are long since married and hidden behind married names, so I don't know where or how to reach them for further news. Donna and I have written to the house where Rose last lived, in the hope that someone in a position to answer questions will reply. I've written in more detail about my mother in the editorial of the issue now under construction, but it was such a strange, remote way to learn of her death -- oddly typical of the way things always were between us.

A Night in the Infernal Spotlight

Your faithful blogger poses outside the New Beverly Cinema with Irene Miracle and Keith Emerson, the respective star and composer of Dario Argento's INFERNO.

Photo (c) by Lee Christian. All other photos (c) by Tim Lucas.

Before the screening, a group of 22 attended a private dinner at India's Oven, a restaurant just a few doors down from the theater. Excellent food! Here Irene poses at table with her good friend of 30 years, VARIETY reporter and screenwriter F.X. Feeney.

DVD producer Perry Martin (who supervised my audio commentaries for Anchor Bay's MARIO BAVA COLLECTION sets) joined us for dinner with his charming wife Kelly Ann.

THE BOOK OF LISTS: HORROR author Scott Bradley generously hosted the dinner, much appreciated by all!

Irene poses with both sides of a special souvenir postcard that she produced as a giveaway item to all INFERNO attendees. Each card was personally autographed and promoted her recent directorial debut, DAWNLAND.

Author John Skipp (center) listens in as documentarian Howard S. Berger (right) invited Keith Emerson (left) to participate in his in-progress film about legendary music producer Joe Meek. In the background, Peter Avellino.

Your faithful blogger with his favorite Argento heroine.

The New Beverly marquee.

Irene basks in the opening night glory she missed in 1980, when INFERNO bypassed US theatrical release altogether.

Tim, Irene and Keith pose for more than a half-dozen photographers outside the theater following the screening.

And who should I discover standing outside in the fog but two of the event's front row attendees: FEAST director John Gulager and his legendary actor dad, Clu Gulager (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD)!

Allison "Nekromistress" Grace poses in the evening fog with her copy of an original vinyl pressing of Keith Emerson's INFERNO soundtrack, freshly signed by Keith and Irene!

Irene Miracle poses with a special "Three Mothers" bouquet gifted her by three friends Amy Wallace, Scott Bradley and Tim Lucas. The bouquet featured three of each flower.

Coming Into Los Angeles

I'm very happy to announce that I will be making a personal appearance, one week from tonight, on October 17th, at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles.

I will have the privilege of introducing and conducting a Q&A with star Irene Miracle prior to a midnight screening of Dario Argento's INFERNO, the hypnotic second chapter in his "Three Mothers" trilogy. This film was also the last project Mario Bava worked on prior to his death in 1980, and I'll speak a bit about the anonymous special effects contributions that Bava supervised for the picture.

This will be Irene's first US public appearance in many years, and my own first public appearance in Los Angeles since the American Cinematheque's Mario Bava retrospective of 1993, so please come out and join us!

I hear the 35mm print of INFERNO looks spectacular, so it promises to be a fireball of an evening!

Waffling About Watchdog, Weight and Woodstock

Sam Umland has written a wonderful response to my previous posting's 20th year announcement at his 60x50 blog. Always thoughtful reading here and I commend it to your attention above and beyond his VW musings, which include an overview of his and wife Becky's long and valued affiliation with the magazine.

We have been receiving numerous calls, even from our printer, inquiring about the status of VW 150. Donna promises to have it to the printer by Monday, so it should be a busy weekend here at Chez Watchdog. Today, with temps pushing to 100° here in Cincinnati, the air conditioner went back into my office window to facilitate speedier and more pleasurable editing of the contents of VW 151.

Also, though I did not mention it on Tuesday (when it would have shared the spotlight with VW's 19th anniversary), Diane Pfister and I finished our screenplay THE WEIGHT OF SALT AND SOUL that same day after four months of steady, intensive and almost exclusive labor. The following day we made some additional changes to the 181-page manuscript and sent it around to our agent and some friendly readers for feedback. Our plan is now to take a week off and decide what we want to do next.

Yesterday I watched four movies in a day (Robbe-Grillet's EDEN AND AFTER, the four-hour director's cut of WOODSTOCK in Blu-ray, JUNO and THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR), which is something I haven't done since... well, since I was who I used to be. I have owned a Grove Press hardcover of Marguerite Duras' novel THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR for close to thirty years and have wanted to see the movie for as long. It was a great disappointment, as I find Tony Richardson's films almost invariably are. I thought the controversial JUNO was refreshing, savvy fun with a commendably subtle edgy subplot (had I been directing, Jason Bateman would have pulled out a copy of THE HEADLESS EYES rather than THE WIZARD OF GORE, though), and EDEN AND AFTER gave such a brilliant slant to the rest of the day that I think watching an art film at 10 or 11 every morning might be just the way to start my day.

WOODSTOCK remains one of my favorite movies, and its non-musical elements are becoming more poignant and fascinating with age. The bottom end of the disc's 5.1 TrueHD mix attests to how dully or just plain badly most of the bassists at Woodstock actually played, but let's hear it for the select few who make the movie's subwoofering bearable and melodic: Bruce Barthol of Country Joe and the Fish, John Entwistle of The Who, Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, and god of all bass gods, Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. Speaking of the Airplane, the disc's second disc of supplements includes something else I have waited more than thirty years to see: one of the earliest live performances of the then-not-yet-released "Volunteers," which appeared on the original soundtrack album set but has never been included in any cut of the movie. Legend has it that most of the band got dosed from a water jug before taking the stage at dawn, and by this point in the set, Jorma Kaukonen's guitar playing had become pre-grunge sludge and Marty Balin, clearly tripping his balls off, sings the words with a passion he could still summon when the song was fresh.

YES

Sometimes I miss blogging.

When I miss it most is when I need to write something else on deadline, like my column for SIGHT & SOUND, and I realize halfway through the first paragraph (or sentence!) that my journalistic/criticism muscle has gone flabby from underuse. If this blog was ever good for anything other than entertaining you, it was for keeping this muscle in shape, and I'd like to get it back.

In case you're wondering what I've been doing... At the end of January, my path fortuitously recrossed with that of Diane Pfister, an old friend from my high school art class, after a gap of 35 years. Diane is a successful fine artist who lived and taught in London for twenty-five years before relocating with her husband and daughter to Connecticut two years ago. (You can visit her website and see some of her paintings here.) She and I began an enthusiastic correspondence, sharing ideas and comparing notes on life and art. One month into our letter-writing, Diane surprised me by admitting that she'd had experience in London in the late 1980s as an assistant director on various features and television series (including Jim Henson's THE STORYTELLER), during which time she had also written a screenplay. Naturally, I asked to read it. THE WEIGHT OF SALT AND SOUL, as it's called, turned out to be a rough diamond; its presentation was raw and it was actually unfinished, but its rich cast of characters and profound story -- an historical fish-out-of-water saga about a lone Native American and the well-meaning people who come to his aid -- were so impressive that I proposed helping her develop it into something saleable.

It was two days after receiving her script, on February 26, that I wrote the eight-line poem "845" that signalled my adieu to this blog. I knew I was getting involved in a big project, and that it has been.

Since March, Diane and I have developed her original 95-page acorn into a 190+ page oak that has since been pruned down to 175 pages, though it still lingers perhaps 10-15 pages shy of completion. We will be keeping the longest draft on file as insurance in case a cable miniseries should become its ultimate port, but we would prefer it to become a feature, which may mean losing as many as 50 of its pages. I'm not altogether sure it can be done. SALT AND SOUL is full of life and magic and incident and is easily the most commercial project I've ever been part of. While its drama and comic elements have broad mainstream appeal, it also has magic realist aspects and also some macabre touches. So, for most of this year, my mind has been more or less completely absorbed by this story and our process. I expect to finish the first draft within the coming week; then begins the work of getting feedback on what we've done, determining what if anything else remains to be do, and trying to place it.

Work on this project overtook my ongoing work on the ME AND THE ORGONE script, which is halfway finished though a complete treatment exists and won the approval of the book's original author, Orson Bean, and some other readers. Once I finish with SALT AND SOUL, I will most likely go back and try to finish ORGONE quickly. In the meantime, Diane and I also have another project we are discussing, a story that would initially take shape as a book (fiction or non-fiction, we're not sure; perhaps a combination of both) but eventually become another screenplay. We will see.

So my screenwriting muscle is in pretty good shape these days, but other material needs to be written each month if our bills are going to get paid, so I need to focus on getting my other muscle back as best I can. That muscle is in a different area of my head, and there are days when I miss that old plug-me-in-and-let-'er-rip efficiency.

So it's possible you may be seeing more activity here in times ahead. I still don't want to go back to the article-length entries I used to post here, but surely there's another, more reasonable way to go about this.

In case you are wondering, yes, VIDEO WATCHDOG #150 is running late -- more than a month behind schedule, unfortunately. All of the material is finished, in place, and illustrated, but Donna wants this special issue to include some special sale offers and is working on some new ads. It will be our June-August issue, and I will drop a note here when it is finally sent to our printer. Thank you for your patience, and please spread the word.

My Rondo Acceptance Speeches

Your erratic blogger receives not only the Best Blog Rondo but a red-hot smoocheroonie from Nurse Moan-eek. Photo (c) and courtesy of Eileen Colton, CHFB News.

This year's WonderFest played host to David Colton's presentation of the 2008 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, where I was honored to receive the awards for Best Writer and Best Blog (Video WatchBlog, natch). Jennifer Sorrels has kindly posted camcorded footage of much of the ceremony at YouTube, including footage of my two pre-scripted acceptance speeches, which you can see and hear by following these links...

Rondo recipients Cameron McCasland, Gary L. Prange, Linda "Nurse Moan-eek" Wylie, Michael Schlesinger (2007 Monster Kid of the Year), Tim Lucas and 2008 Hall of Famers Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh.

Best Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTB8oclWsA0

Best Writer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sERAjJlu-w

Raymond "Coffin Ray" Castile, Cameron McCasland, Gary L. Prange, Linda Wylie, Michael Schlesinger, Tim Lucas, Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh, Larry Blamire, Donnie Waddell, RUE MORGUE editor Jovanka Vuckovic, and 2008 Monster Kid of the Year Joe Moe. Blocked from view at extreme left are Best Artist Ken Kelly and Coffin Ray's fetching translator, Sara "Saramonster" Lattis.

More camcorded Rondo clips and terrific WonderFest photos by Eileen Colton can be enjoyed at this thread on the Classic Horror Film Boards. I would especially recommend Coffin Ray's "Best Article" speech -- as always, a show stealer, and this year augmented by Sara Lattis' hilarious deadpan translations.

Der Nebula von Notre Dame

VIDEO WATCHDOG contributor Kim Newman and I are both honored to have work included in the newly published NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2009 (ROC, $16 US/$20 Canada), edited by Ellen Datlow.

Kim's contribution is an appreciation of author Michael Moorcock, the recipient of the 2009 Damon Knight Grand Master Award. (The book also includes Moorcock's story "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius," from his recent collection THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE.) My contribution is an essay about Guillermo del Toro's PAN'S LABYRINTH, the screenplay for which won a Nebula Award.

Kim, widely anthologized, must be used to this sort of thing, but it was a great kick for me to see my name highlighted on the back cover among the likes of Moorcock (a longtime hero), Barry N. Malzberg, Joe R. Lansdale, Jane Yolen, Michael Chabon and the illustrious Kim, among others. I thank Ellen Datlow for inviting me to work in such august company.

Go to your favorite bookstore now and buy it.

I also want to take a moment to recommend another new arrival. The German DVD company Anolis has followed their deluxe edition of Mario Bava's BLUTIGE SEIDE (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE) with an even more lavish presentation of DER VAMPIRE VON NOTRE DAME (I VAMPIRI). Unlike the domestic Image Entertainment release, which included the Italian version only, Anolis adds on the German version (which runs 4m longer than the Italian version, which was cut to appease the censor board) and also THE DEVIL'S COMMANDMENT, the US version containing additional exploitation footage.

Further sweetening the deal is a delightful, hour-long documentary, C'EST LA VIE, interviewing the great Swiss character actor Paul Muller, now 85 and living on a healthy pension somewhere near Rome. The program covers Muller's early life, early work in theater, and the films that preceded I VAMPIRI, then actually shows Muller reacting to scenes from the film, and wraps up with some generous comments about working with Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda on EUGENIE DE SADE. I am not sure I've ever seen Muller crack a smile onscreen, at least not a genuinely happy one, so it was a great pleasure to discover him to be such a charming, chuckling pixie offscreen. He's a very sharp 85, too, with valuable and unfaded memories of his long career.

Also included are trailers, still and poster galleries, and an interesting attempt to reconstruct the pre-credits sequence originally envisioned by Riccardo Freda, which was changed when he was replaced by Mario Bava in a rescue effort that required a rewriting of the narrative. English subtitles are provided, even for the Muller documentary, but these do not extend to Christian Kessler's German-language audio commentary. I'll be covering this important release in more detail in a future issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG.