Monsters Attack WonderFest 2009

As we all know, monsters are generally very benign critters, such as this Saucer-Man who kindly posed with VIDEO WATCHDOG publisher Donna Lucas at WonderFest 2009 in Louisville, Kentucky this past weekend. Saucer-Man pitches in to help at the Ultratumba Productions table on weekends. During the weeks, he works at a nearby restaurant as -- what else? -- a saucier.

Friendliness and good will initially seemed to be the case with this imposing, larger-than-life-sized, 3-D embodiment of Jack Davis' 6 ft. tall Frankenstein Monster, one of the many wondrous trappings of this year's Old Dark Clubhouse constructed by ODCH innkeeper Gary L. Prange. He was perfectly well-mannered during the day, as seen here with THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN writer-director-star Larry Blamire... but then, as night fell...

THE MONSTER RAN AMOK! He started by strangling me!

Then he grabbed LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN producer Michael Schlesinger! He attacked so quickly, so lethally, that Schlesinger had literally no time for one last pun! And (imagine this in a Huckleberry Hound voice) that's fast, man!

Then he moved on to MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT publishers Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh! He squeezed them together so tightly, their ampersand was no longer necessary!

And finally he grabbed Rondo Award-winner Linda "Nurse Moan-eek" Wylie, who tried to get away Scot free, but to no avail!

Unfortunately the attacks were not limited to the Frankenstein Monster. Donna later had the misfortune of an encounter with TV horror host Count Gore DeVol, who lured her into a false sense of security with pleasantries and saturdays and sundries until...

... he sank his fangs into her neck!

Fangs for the memories to the Rondo Award-winning WonderFest!

The Long and the Short of I VAMPIRI

Original Italian quattro-foglia (four-sheet), artwork by Arnaldo Putzu.

Pursuant to yesterday's post about the new DER VAMPIR VON NOTRE DAME (I VAMPIRI) release from Anolis Entertainment, the company's publicist Ivo Scheloske has sent me links to a pair of richly illustrated German-language web pages that compare the German and Italian versions of the film, and the Italian and US (THE DEVIL'S COMMANDMENT) versions. Danke to Ivo for the links; well worth checking out. The pages also contain Amazon.de links that will take you to where you can order the disc.

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.

Another CRASH

Bill Moseley in the unreleased film NIGHTMARE ANGEL, Zoe Bertoff's 1980s adaptation of J.G. Ballard's CRASH.

Brett Taylor, who contributes regularly to VW's "Biblio Watchdog" department, sent the above photo with the following letter after the posting of my J.G. Ballard post-mortem:

This fairly mundane still is all I was able to dig up on NIGHTMARE ANGEL, an adaptation of [J.G. Ballard's] CRASH from about 1984. I got it from the director, Zoe Beloff, who was just out of film school at the time. Bill Moseley says it's better than the Cronenberg version, but he would, wouldn't he? It was shot in industrial areas of New Jersey. I think there's some loophole about adaptations where you can do them so long as they're not shown for commercial purposes. I remember Stephen King saying he allowed anybody to film his stories as long as they pay a token fee of $1. So there've been many short films of his stories that have never been widely shown.

I've sat on this still for years. It was supposed to go with my Bill Moseley interview, but then PSYCHOTRONIC went under. I kept hoping they'd come back on the Internet, but after a few years I gave up on that notion. Then I had the vague notion of writing an article on unreleased films, but didn't think the world needed another "Day the Clown Cried" article. Now my interview is several years out of date, and I don't have any particular use for this shot. So I thought you might be interested in it.

I certainly am, and I thought other visitors to this blog would also be fascinated. Now how does one see NIGHTMARE ANGEL, a film I'd never heard of before, and which I don't recall being mentioned in Iain Sinclair's book on the book and film? Purely for non-commercial purposes, of course.

Thanks to Brett for sharing this interesting discovery.

Ballard Gone: World at Half Mast

Yesterday I would have described James Graham Ballard as our greatest living novelist; today, following his death from prostate cancer at the age of 78, I would still categorize him as arguably the most progressive thinker and commentator of our time. He found the beauty in places where beauty did not exist prior to his discovery: in desolation, in anomie, in medical language, in injury, in emotionless sex, in catastrophe, in sterility, in those places where hard corners open into infinite cold, where the imagination turns against itself. In some ways, I feel we continue to live in the 20th century precisely because most of us cannot follow Ballard's writing into the 21st century as it truly is. I consider CRASH the finest piece of writing I've ever read, and it (along with THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION) surely influenced the writing of my own novel THROAT SPROCKETS; CRASH taught me, more than all of Flaubert, more than all of Nabokov, the value of the mot juste, the perfectly crafted sentence and the value of transgression. Ballard himself observed that the book's cult success was not immediate, that it was initially accepted only by "a few psychopaths and amputees."

Somewhere in my archives I have a cassette of an early 1980s interview I conducted with David Cronenberg, during which I asked if he had ever read CRASH, which I expected he would like as it consolidated his obsessions with mutation and cars. He hadn't, but he promised he would. The film he eventually based on Ballard's book had its good points, but is not half so important or daring as the novel; likewise, Steven Spielberg's ambitious but overblown film of EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Jonathan Weiss's film of THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION comes much closer to the mark, making what was oblique and implicit in the original work more explicit while remaining true to its essential spirit and vocabulary.

One of Ballard's typically inspired book titles was A USER'S GUIDE TO THE MILLENNIUM. I feel this title would have been more accurately stamped on the cover of J.G. BALLARD QUOTES, a compendium of quotations from his interviews and fiction assembled by V. Vale and Mike Ryan for ReSearch Publications. I'd call it the perfect bedside book, if it didn't have the most extraordinary capacity to ignite the imagination and keep one up all hours, looking at all and sundry through Ballard's uniquely pitched spectacles. For example, he called Madonna's chromium-plated coffee table book SEX "a Commonplace book for our day, by the Daisy Ashford of the 1990s, as filled with homilies and naive dreams as the diary of any Victorian young lady." He included The Los Angeles Yellow Pages, as well as Burroughs' NAKED LUNCH, on his list of 10 Best Books. Yet he was more than a mere provocateur; these seeming provocations are actually laced with almost perilous insight and keen perspective. He had vision and the courage to use it, the capacity to look at the world around us with the poised disengagement of an art critic. Some called this perspective psychotic; I would call it Godly and the spectacle itself psychotic.

In RUSHING TO PARADISE, Ballard wrote "Contrary to general belief, no one's death diminishes us." Ballard's death enriches us by completing one of the most valuable shelves of literature in English.

EXPOSED Reviewed

Christina Lindberg in a frisky clinch with Janne Carlsson in EXPOSED.

My review of the Christina Lindberg epic EXPOSED (Exponerad, a.k.a. THE DEPRAVED), now available from the great folks at Synapse Films, appears in the May 2009 issue of SIGHT & SOUND... and also on the S&S website here. This issue should be of especial interest to VIDEO WATCHDOG readers, as it includes Kim Newman's review of the must-see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Mark Kermode's survey of recent vampire cinema, and another piece by Kim about "The New Horror" and what it may be lacking.

Deep Deep Down

All fans of Eurocult cinema owe it to themselves to check out this YouTube clip of Mike Patton's Mondo Cane performing Ennio Morricone's "Deep Deep Down," the love theme from Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK. I've always liked the song, with its Christy vocal, without giving it too much thought -- it's not even my favorite musical cue in the picture -- but seeing it performed live by such an expressive vocalist, a full choir and orchestra brought tears to my eyes.

God bless them, every one.

It's like seeing an entire city rise up in tribute to Mario Bava, Ennio Morricone, Marisa Mell and John Phillip Law. It's like seeing a modest film made forty years ago by humble artisans, shrugged off by most people at the time of its original release, triumphing over time by spreading the wings of a glorious phoenix.

I sent a link to Lamberto Bava, who turned 65 years old this week -- the age at which his father died in 1980. I wish Lamberto a much longer run.

Mille grazie to my friend Rod Barnett for alerting me to this.

Luís Buñuel Gets You There On Time

My review of Luís Buñuel's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL and SIMON OF THE DESERT, now available on DVD from Criterion, is part of their April 2009 issue and also appears as a free enticement on their website here.

In other personal news, I was notified yesterday by editor David Barker of Continuum Press' 33 & 1/3 series that my book on Jefferson Airplane's 1968 album CROWN OF CREATION did not make the latest round of cuts, which is now down to 27 finalists. One of these, on Neil Young's TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT, has been proposed by VW's own Sam Umland, I'm pleased to report.

Any rejection is disappointing, but this one especially so. I have now written a cable miniseries, a feature screenplay and a book about Jefferson Airplane and not one of them has been able to "take off." It is also Dr. Barker's second rejection of this completed project, though he offered at the time of its first rejection to consider it as an emergency fill-in title, should another author on their roster encounter problems or fail to meet their deadline. Obviously the state of the economy entered into this decision, but jeez, you would think a finished book about one of the best-selling albums by the group who headlined at Woodstock and Altamont, written by a multi-award-winning critic and biographer, would have counted for something.

So now do I advance into the brave new world of music book publishing, or not? That is the question.

Video WatchBlog Wins Best Blog Rondo Award

I'm very surprised and flattered to report that, when David Colton announced the winners of the 7th Annual Rondo Awards last evening in a live Classic Horror Film Boards chat, Video WatchBlog was named Best Blog and I was named Best Writer for the second year in a row.

The common wisdom I've been hearing is that I destroyed Video WatchBlog's chances of winning by retiring it while voting was still in progress, so I am moved by this victory in particular. I've received some truly extraordinary letters from readers about this blog, and what it has meant to them; in a long letter I must count as the most touching of them all, David Colton himself gave his reasons why he considered Video WatchBlog to be my "finest hour." It's very testing to read something so heart-felt and uplifting, and to receive an popular vote acknowledgement like this award, and still stick to my guns... but I must. For now, I feel that returning to this discipline, in addition to everything else I'm trying to accomplish, would be more personally damaging than it could possibly be generally helpful. I may have disappeared from daily view and free access, but I'm still producing the best monthly print magazine of its kind (some would say the only monthly print magazine of its kind), enjoying a stimulating new phase of life, and working on (and preparing to work on) some exciting new projects.

We are now preparing to buckle down to an important number of VIDEO WATCHDOG, our 150th issue, and we want to make it something very special. I feel more able to accomplish this goal without the added responsibility of this blog, and I suspect you'll be more avid to read that issue because of what has been withheld from public view in advance.

Thank you all, very much, for your votes and good thoughts.

What follows is the complete press release of the 7th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Film Awards, with a complete list of recipients in each category. I send my congratulations to all those listed.

MARCH 24, 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARLINGTON, VA -- Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, TV's The Munsters and Ray Harryhausen's 7th Voyage of Sinbad were all winners Monday in the Seventh Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, which also honored the man who cared for sci-fi legend Forrest J Ackerman in the final years of his life. But the biggest surprise came when a special "Hitchcock" edition of Barbie, dressed like Tippi Hedren and swarmed by miniature crows from The Birds, topped the Creature from the Black Lagoon in a showdown for Best Model, Toy or Collectible.

Not only did the 50-year-old doll from Mattel beat out the green-scaled Creature, but she outclassed models from The Exorcist, Invasion of the Saucermen and even an action figure of Rondo Hatton himself, the obscure 1940s horror actor who inspired the fan awards. The Rondos are an annual celebration of the vintage monsters who sparked almost a century of horror films and sequels. The worldwide online survey by the Classic Horror Film Board, a 14-year old online community, is the largest in the genre and drew a record 2,932 emailed votes.

Beyond Barbie's latest triumph, winners Monday ranged from the modern -- The Dark Knight was voted best film of 2008, the BBC's Doctor Who was favorite television show -- to classic horrors from the past: -- A new edition of the 1960 film, Psycho, was voted Best Classic Horror DVD. -- A collection of Harryhausen's 1950s science films, including a colorized Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, was named Best DVD Collection, and the collected episodes of The Munsters was the favorite TV collection. -- And a painstaking reconstruction and restortaion of Carl Dreyer's atmospheric 1932 chiller, Vampyr, was voted Best Restoration.

The most emotional moments came when it was announced in an online ceremony that a Los Angeles producer, Joe Moe, had been named "Monster Kid of the Year,'' for his long years serving as a friend and caregiver for horror and science fiction collector Ackerman. The founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, Ackerman died this year at the age of 92.

"For his quiet, constant and unwavering stewardship of Forrest J Ackerman's final decade of life,'' the Rondo citation reads, "Joe Moe revealed not only the man behind Mr. Monster, but the grace and strength of the ultimate fan. For being there when we all couldn't, Joe Moe is Monster Kid of the Year.'' Moe, contacted by phone during the event, said, "If ever there was a time when I needed my monster family, it's now. Thank you so much for validating the work I tried to do in a fashion that would make all of you proud. I tried not to cry for Forry but now that he's gone, this honor from you, my pals, has me in tears. Thank you so much."

Other winners included:

Best DVD Extra: "One for the Fire,'' a documentary about the making of Night of the Living Dead.

Best DVD Commentary: Makeup master Rick Baker, Bob Burns, Scott Essman, Steve Haberman and Brent Armstrong for The Mummy (1932).

Best Documentary: Spine-Tingler: The William Castle Story.

Book of the Year: The Twilight Zone by Martin Grams.

Best Magazine: Rue Morgue.

Best Article: "Coffin Joe Resurrected,'' a look at the legendary Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, by Scott Gabbey and Jovanka Vuckovic in Rue Morgue.

Best Magazine Cover: Rue Morgue #83, a portrait of Forrest J Ackerman by longtime Famous Monsters artist Basil Gogos.

Best Website: Trailers from Hell.

Best Blog: Video WatchBlog.

Convention of the Year: WonderFest in Louisville.

Fan Event of the Year: World Zombie Day.

Favorite Horror Host: Svengoolie, played by Rich Koz, in Chicago.

Best Horror Audio Site: Rue Morgue Radio.

CD of the Year: Soundtrack of The Blob by Monstrous Movie Music.

Best Horror Comic Book: Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch, by Mike Mignola.

Biggest controversy: An L.A. fan's disputed claim he had once examined the long-lost Lon Chaney film, London After Midnight.

Writer of the Year: Tim Lucas, author and editor of Video Watchdog

Artist of the Year: Basil Gogos.

Favorite DVD Reviewer: Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant.

Vasaria Public Citizen Award: Cameron McCasland and Creature Cinema for public service announcements by Nashville's Dr. Gangrene [Larry Underwood] and Nurse Moan-Eek [Linda Wylie].

Monster Kid Hall of Fame inductees: European horror actor Paul Naschy; Jim and Marian Clatterbaugh of Monsters from the Vault magazine; painter Ken Kelly; the late Calvin Beck, founder of Castle of Frankenstein magazine; the late Lux Interior, lead singer for punk band The Cramps and an influence on the psychobilly horror rock movement; and the late Bob Wilkins, original host of San Francisco's Creature Features.

Many of the Rondo winners will receive Rondo busts, sculpted by Kerry Gammill and cast by Tim Lindsey, at the WonderFest convention in Louisville on May 16. Further information, including runners-up and all the nominees, can be found at rondoaward.com.

Rondo Voting Ends Tomorrow!

Still haven't voted for your favorites in the 7th Annual Rondo Awards? Better make up your mind, because tomorrow (Saturday) night, March 21, at 12:00 midnight is the deadline! Visit the Rondo Award website for the list of nominees and send your choices to taraco@aol.com-- and remember Donna Lucas, the designer of each and every issue of VW since the Dawn of Time, for Best Artist!

VIDEODROME Hardcover Available Now

You may remember that my Studies in the Horror Film book on VIDEODROME was originally announced as forthcoming in both trade paperback and signed/numbered limited hardcover editions. Some of you have expressed a special interest in acquiring the hardcover, which did not materialize at the same time as the softcover, and a few of you may have even been holding out in favor of it. So I'm happy to be able to pass along the news that the hardcover edition is now in house at Millipede Press and available for purchase. Collectors should note this is the author's first-ever signed/numbered limited edition -- if you don't count a 20-copy signed/numbered edition of an illustrated prose poem called "Amelia Earhart" that I Kinko'd for a select group of friends back in the mid-1970s, and I don't think we should. Long live the VIDEODROME ordering page, which you can find here.

846, or On Second Thought...

At Donna's suggestion, I am going to reactivate Video WatchBlog -- but not to become what it was before. Because VIDEO WATCHDOG remains our bread and butter, we need a place to make timely announcements to our readers, and this is the most convenient and sensible place to do that. So, while I will not be posting additional articles or essays here, I will pop back from time to time to advise you of special offers, personal appearances and such.

I am, I repeat, AM done with blogging.

845

I have no more time in my life for this blog,
Too much else that I'd rather be doing;
It's hard to have a life and do the Watchdog
And this; it seems I'm always reviewing.

This is post Eight hundred and forty five
But I need to pull the plug, I just do.
The show will go on, the mag will still thrive,
But from here, I must bid you adieu.

Birthday Love to Coralina

Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni is Italian horror's reigning Diva of Delicious Death Scenes, but she is also a dear friend, an inspiring fellow artist, and our beloved sister, so Donna joins me today in sending her our warmest regards on the anniversary of her birth. She's seen here with us at last October's Cinema Wasteland convention, embracing her own personal copy of the Bava book, while we embrace her -- as I wish we could be doing right now.

Coralina first won the hearts of horror fans as another birthday girl: the ill-fated, talon-sprouting, pus-erupting Sally of Lamberto Bava's DEMONS 2: THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS -- a legitimately great monster performance. She can currently be seen in what is surely the most outrageous of her many death scenes in Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS (featured in the new issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG), and is presently engaged in many different projects we eagerly await, including an ambitious authorized biography written with Filippo Brunamonti, new paintings and music, and some original screenplay projects written in collaboration with the talented writer-director Mariano Baino (DARK WATERS).

You can see the delightfully experimental and allusive 6m trailer for Coralina's and Filippo Brunamonti's forthcoming book on her MySpace page here (which includes a Hitchcock-like cameo by... er, another book), and also sample tracks from her CD, LIMBO BALLOON -- which capture the real Coralina I know and love.

"Happy Birthday!" the dark incubus spake.
"Now tie the birthday girl down
And... cut the cake!"

Criterion's MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION reviewed

Robert Taylor chases Irene Dunne's skirt right into the path of a speeding car in the 1935 version of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION.

My review of Douglas Sirk's -- and John M. Stahl's -- MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (Criterion DVD) appears in the March 2009 issue of SIGHT & SOUND, now on newsstands. It can be also read for free on their website, here.

The Latest on VIDEO WATCHDOG

If this blog should be doing anything, it is helping to promote the venerable hub of this freewheeling enterprise: VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine. I've been solipsistically remiss in mentioning here that VW 147 is now en route to subscribers and newsstands, and available now from our toll free 1-800-275-8395 number.

For those of you who favor Eurohorror, this current issue features an engrossing and illuminating (if I do say so myself) round table discussion of Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS, with input from Maitland McDonagh, Kim Newman, Richard Harland Smith, Brad Stevens and yours truly. And, obsessives that we are, we let the thing roll on for 21 pages illustrated in full color! Where else are you going to get that? This is also one of those proud issues that has something to offer readers of every taste, from Jean-Pierre Melville noirs to horror classics from the '30s through present day, and both Kim Newman and Audio Watchdog Douglas E. Winter have their respective says about Peter Watkins' seminal rock-oriented cautionary tale PRIVILEGE. You can get the whole rundown on the issue here, complete with four free sample pages to whet your appetite.

Those of you who have been secretly wishing to write for VW over the years, but have been deterred by our "on an invitational basis only" restriction, may find an announcement in my current editorial of especial interest.

A great issue, this one, but being a monthly gives us no time to rest on our laurels. Last week, we put the finishing touches on our next issue, VW 148, which is now at the printer. Our readers have been urging us to follow our head by covering more obscure product, which we're happy to do, but if we want to keep the folks at Diamond Comics Distribution (and, by extension, ourselves) happy, we're going to have to do everything we can to keep our covers more recognizably commercial. I think Charlie and Donna's cover for 148 is a stellar example of doing this in the prettiest and most tempting way possible.

VW 148 is not billed as such, but it's actually one of our popular "all-review" issues. We weren't planning to emphasize STARDUST to this extent, but the quality of Sheldon Inkol's writing about the film, and the wealth of beautiful images available to us from it, conspired to give this issue both a special identity and sense of direction. Charlie did a lovely job of framing the ever-photogenic Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover, and adding sprinkles of his own stardust to the framing background. I also like the diversity of Donna's choices for the supporting images on the cover stripe, ranging from the British TV miniseries DEAD SET to Al Pacino (so memorable opposite Pfeiffer in FRANKIE AND JOHNNY) in the thriller 88 MINUTES, to classic stars like Fred Williamson and Sidney "Charlie Chan" Toler. This should be shorthand to our readers that, while our cover aims to appeal to wider or at least consistent numbers, the innards of this issue delve well into our usual depths.

Aside from reviews of everything from Herschell Gordon Lewis' MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN to Hideo Nakata's thought-lost ghost story KAIDAN (a remake of a Nobuo Nakagawa classic, to which we have frame grabs comparing and contrasting both versions), the real centerpiece of this issue is Kim Newman's review of the seven features collected in Fox's CHARLIE CHAN VOLUME 5 (including the spooky and rarely seen DEAD MEN TELL), which we've chosen to present in the form of a feature called "Charlie Chan: Curtain Down at Fox." You can read more about this terrific issue here, in our current "Coming Soon" section.

Before or After VW?

While perusing the Mario Bava items currently being hawked on eBay, I was startled to find this strangely familiar box art for a Greek VHS release of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE [Sei donne per l'assassino, 1964]. This Video Cronos release isn't dated anywhere on the auction page, but it's possible this box art design actually predates the debut of VIDEO WATCHDOG, since VHS has been around since 1979 or thereabouts. If this release came after 1990, it would offer compelling proof of VW's influence. If it dates from before 1990, it's an impressive bit of foreshadowing, linking Bava with the magazine that would later publish his biography.

Recent Activities

Donna and I spent the Valentine's Day weekend in Nashville, Tennessee -- our first-ever visit there -- where we visited with friends, had some delicious sushi at a Sapporo in Rivergate, and spent some time at a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, constructed there over 100 years ago for the city's centenary celebration.

While there, I also went inside to pledge eternal fealty to the goddess Athena.

The timing of this trip was cosmically fortuitous. During the four-hour drive from Cincinnati to Nashville, we drove past the Kentucky birthplace of Abraham Lincoln -- on his 200th birthday. Two days later -- in the early hours of St. Valentine's Day (when the above pictures were taken), for a total of 18 minutes -- the Moon was reportedly in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars, signalling the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as described in the popular song from the 1960s musical HAIR.

I've also been...

... celebrating my and VW's various Rondo nominations, and the recent optioning of my original horror script SCARS & STRIPES by the British production company Livestock Entertainment.

... polishing an unpublished science fiction novel, THE ART WORLD, for another crack at publication.

... planning a four-issue graphic novel story arc for a leading comics company.

... enjoying some particularly wonderful, rewarding correspondences. One of these inspired me to revisit Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER, which was time very well spent.

... looking forward to returning to the pool with my new Finis SwiMP3 player. I imagine Scott Walker and Echo and the Bunnymen will sound especially good underwater.

... reading Frank Harris' legendary MY LIFE AND LOVES (Grove Press). I can remember a time when this book looked too long to read. Very educational; should have read this in my 20s.

... listening a lot to Marianne Faithfull's BEFORE THE POISON, which I find superior to her celebrated '70s album BROKEN ENGLISH.

... thinking seriously about selling off large chunks of my poster, lobby card, book and magazine collections. Now that my body has lost 40+ pounds, I'm finding that my acquisitions weigh too much.

VW Sweeps Rondo 7 with 10 Nominations!

The nominations for the 7th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards were posted over the weekend at the Rondo Award website, and I'm pleased to report that VIDEO WATCHDOG earned no fewer than ten (10) nominations, while my own outside projects, including this blog, earned another three (3)! They are as follows...

BEST BOOK

THE BOOK OF LISTS: HORROR edited by Amy Wallace, Del Howison and Scott Bradley (to which I contributed)

VIDEODROME: STUDIES IN THE HORROR FILM by Tim Lucas

Also nominated: VW's own Tom Weaver and Anthony Ambrogio for, respectively, I TALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and YOU'RE NEXT! LOSS OF IDENTITY IN THE HORROR FILM.

BEST MAGAZINE OF 2008

VIDEO WATCHDOG

BEST ARTICLE (8 nominations! More than any other magazine!)

'Amy and Her Friends: The Ann Carter Interview,' by Tom Weaver, VIDEO WATCHDOG #137. A career retrospective with the young star of a Val Lewton classic.

'Bewitching Hazel,' by David Del Valle, VIDEO WATCHDOG #140. Remembrance of late Hammer star Hazel Court.

'California Gothic: The Corman/Haller Collaboration,' roundtable with Roger Corman, Daniel Haller and Joe Dante, moderated by Lawrence French, VIDEO WATCHDOG #138. Tales from the sets of the Poe films and more.

'A Eulogy for Charles B. Griffith,' by Justin Humphreys, VIDEO WATCHDOG #141. A friend remembers the touching final days of the eccentric writer behind AIP classics.

'Harry Redmond Jr.: Last Survivor of Skull Island,' by Mark F. Berry, VIDEO WATCHDOG #146. Interview and revelations from last production veteran of King Kong and other RKO Cooper-Schoedsack-O'Brien classics.

'The Prisoner: A New Order,' by Tim Lucas, VIDEO WATCHDOG #142. Making new sense of the village by reshuffling the episodes.

'Suspense: The Lost Episodes,' reviewed by Kim Newman, VIDEO WATCHDOG #140. Episodes from dawn of TV described in kinoscopic detail.

'The Ubiquitous Dabbs Greer,' by M.J. Simpson, VIDEO WATCHDOG #144. The character actor interviewed about HOUSE OF WAX, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and more.

An incredibly tough competition!

BEST MAGAZINE COVER

VIDEO WATCHDOG #137 - Ann Carter and Simone Simon cover by Charlie Largent

BEST HORROR BLOG

Video WatchBlog by Tim Lucas

I was also surprised and interested to see that a new "write-in" category has been introduced this year: Best DVD Reviewer.

I sincerely hope you'll all take the time to vote for your favorites in the various categories. As I've said here before, I'm not asking you to vote for VW or for me, necessarily (of course, I'd be the last to discourage you from doing so!); the important thing is to do your part to see excellence in the field of fantastic film journalism and pop culture acknowledged and rewarded. The ballot page tells you everything you need to know about voting; it's easy, and you needn't vote in every category. Voting ends on March 21.

My congratulations and best wishes to all of this year's nominees!

Mario of the Desert

While watching the new Criterion Collection disc of Luís Buñuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT (1965), in preparation for reviewing it for next month's SIGHT AND SOUND, I saw a couple of things that struck me as worth noting here -- namely, a previously unnoted set of connections or coincidences linking the work of Buñuel and his contemporary Mario Bava.

There has been some debate on the subject of which came first: the little girl devil in Bava's KILL, BABY... KILL! or the one in Federico Fellini's TOBY DAMMIT. The answer to that brain-teaser, it turns out, is the one in Buñuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT, played with minxish aplomb by VIRIDIANA's Silvia Pinal. The Devil materializes to tempt the early Christian ascetic Simon (DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON's Claudio Brook) in various guises, the second of which is as a little girl rolling a hoop. When her innocence has no effect, she turns more womanly and coquettish, displaying a shapely pair of dark-nyloned legs and finally baring her breasts (a startling image which Criterion has boldly posited as the disc's inset), yet Simon remains inviolate.

The hoop accessory is interesting, being analogous to the white ball of Bava and Fellini's evil spectres, but also because it has a Freudian dimension of entrapment when contrasted with the phallic pillar of Simon's proud asceticism.

After the failure of her thwarted seduction, Pinal's Devil returns as a bearded, lamb-cradling Jesus Christ and, still later, as a bare-breasted goddess. The Buñuelian irony of all this, of course, is that Simon's prayers for godly intervention into his selfless life attract only the brickbats of a friendly Hell. Finally, abruptly, the Devil sweeps Simon off the top of his pillar by introducing a jet plane into this early Anno Domini fable.

The sudden assault of futurism anticipates the finale of Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL (1973), in which Elke Sommer survives a harrowing night among ghosts in what appears to be another century, only to find herself aboard a 747 bound for Hell, piloted by Telly Savalas' Satan. Producer Alfredo Leone has taken credit for suggesting this finale, but it seems remarkably consistent with these and other Buñuelian tropes found in Bava's filmography. LISA AND THE DEVIL, of course, was also filmed in Toledo, Spain -- which Buñuel considered "a holy city." He filmed TRISTANA there in 1969.

Criterion has also issued Buñuel and Pinal's earlier masterpiece THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1964), in which a severed hand briefly runs amok. The look of this deathly appendage is nearly identical to a sculpture of a disembodied hand that plays a prominent role in Bava's final feature, SHOCK aka BEYOND THE DOOR II (1978).

SIMON OF THE DESERT runs only 45 minutes and is perfect enough at this length. Buñuel always claimed that the money (supplied by Pinal's furniture magnate husband, who produced) ran out, preventing him from completing the picture. In a supplement on the SIMON disc, a 2008 interview with Pinal includes her surprise confession that she was responsible for pulling the plug, when Buñuel excused himself from another project she was planning, a vanity three-episode anthology inspired by the Mastroianni/Loren hit, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. The actress now regrets her fit of hubris and recognizes that only her work with Buñuel has entitled her to a place in the history of cinema.

As Promised

Here's the reply card, provided with copies of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, that the late, great Lux Interior sent to us back in October 2007. Such a sweet thing to revisit after the sad events of last week. Wish we could have met...

Always Crashing Into Myriem Roussel

The talcum powder scene from Tristesse et Beauté.

My Myriem Roussel fever continues to run high. Thanks to eBay, I've been able to obtain ancient VHS PAL and SECAM pre-records of Joy Fleury's Tristesse et Beauté ("Sadness and Beauty," 1985) and Robert Van Ackeren's Die Venusfalle ("The Venus Trap," 1988), both featuring Roussel, neither of which was ever exported to America.

The former, which co-stars Charlotte Rampling and Andrzej Zulawski, casts Roussel as a sculptress. the younger woman in a lesbian relationship, who is sent by her partner to seduce and destroy a successful writer who broke her heart years before. The film was given a DVD release in Italy, which would certainly have yielded a much superior picture to the French SECAM crap I watched, but it would also have stuck me with Italian dubbed audio; at least on the tape, the original dialogue recording was intact. I found the movie compelling even without understanding all the dialogue; its images are gripping, its depictions of artistic process valid, and Roussel is absolutely lovely, acting with equal conviction in her love scenes with Rampling and Zulawski. It's an erotic film whose standout scenes spotlight personal hygiene, firstly as Roussel powders her body prior to an assignation with Zulawski, and secondly as Rampling uses a straight razor to shave her lover's underarms.


Die Venusfalle, from the director of A Woman in Flames, curiously downplays Roussel in its packaging, which toplines and pictures "Der Neue Erotik-Star" Sonja Kirchberger, though Roussel is given top-billing on the film itself. The movie is typical, pretentious, coked-up, '80s Eurotrash in many ways, with a soundtrack featuring various uncredited Bowie, Roxy Music and Iggy Pop tracks. Nevertheless, Roussel comes across as a real rock star here.

Her introduction, withheld until we're more than 20 minutes into the picture, must be one of the most outrageous ever dared. The unlikeable, arrogant, fashion-plate male protagonist, Max (Horst-Gunther Marx), struts into a pool hall, where he finds Marie (Roussel) playing billiards with a man. It's obvious they notice one another, but they're too cool to acknowledge the attraction, not even exchanging glances as she and her partner finish and leave. Cut to later that night, as both toss and turn in their respective beds with their respective lovers asleep beside them. They both awaken, silently dress, climb into their cars and roar off into the night. Moments later, their two cars independently arrive on opposite ends of the same street and accelerate toward one another in a game of Chicken, finally deflecting off one another in a scrape that sends both vehicles spinning out of control.










The two staggered drivers sit in their cars for a moment or two, eyeing each other like diagrammatically fated pawns. They recover their senses, exit their cars, start walking then running toward one another, collide in an embrace and proceed to make love right then and there, in the middle of the empty strasse.





Yes, the scene is ludicrous, even kitschy, yet it's more vividly staged and carries a stronger erotic charge than anything in Cronenberg's CRASH. And I ask you, does the cinema have a better reason to exist than to bring visions such as this within everyone's reach? (Well, everyone able to play PAL or SECAM tapes, anyway.)

There's another enjoyably preposterous scene where Max disrupts Marie's ballet recital; it's preposterous because Roussel, despite having a perfect swan-like neck and balletic grace, is much too tall to be part of a ballet chorus and looks awkward when raised. This doesn't alter the fact that she's an extraordinary creature and makes the film endurable, even irresistable, with her uncanny presence alone.

Throughout this alternately fascinating and annoying movie, I kept thinking that Georges Franju would have given his left arm to work with Roussel: she's Édith Scob and Francine Bergé rolled into one. Indeed, the final shot, in which she slips out a window wearing a fetching black danceskin, could easily pass for something Franju directed. Alas, though the very young Roussel was the protégé of Jean-Luc Godard, the Roussel of her late 20s and 30s appears never to have found the ideal interpreter of her particular brand of magic.

I understand that Die Venusfalle played in years past with English subtitles on the Australian superstation SBS. If anyone in my audience has a recording of that broadcast, or a copy of the Fleury film in English, please let me know how I might obtain a copy from you.

Lux Interior (1946-2009)

Donna and I were saddened to learn of the death yesterday of legendary Cramps frontman Lux Interior, who, under his real name of Erick Purkheiser, was a longtime subscriber to VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine and one of the original patrons of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. He was kind enough to send in the index comment card provided with his copy, which he filled out enthusiastically; I've asked Donna to pull it from our files so that I can share it with you in the days ahead.

I was first exposed to the deadly, 'tang-drenched, rockabilly vibes of The Cramps through the movies: as one of the more memorable acts in the IRS concert compendium URGH! A MUSIC WAR and as part of the soundtrack for Tobe Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2, where DJ heroine Stretch (Caroline Williams) gives a spin to their classic tune "Goo Goo Muck." Erick, who was 62, reportedly died due to a pre-existing heart condition -- twenty-plus years after an intensely circulated death rumor in the late 1980s. Donna and I send our condolences to Erick's wife "Poison" Ivy Roschach and to his friends, family and fans.

As long as speedometers go higher than the legal speed limit, as long as monster movies occupy the tiniest niche in the popular consciousness, as long as hard-ons hide in tight bluejeans, Lux's raging music will live on.

Bava's Lost Super Giallo Opportunity

Tomorrow marks the commencement of the 59th annual Internationale Filmfestspiele in Berlin. I have a number of friends who are boarding planes today to attend, hopeful of meeting and attracting investors for their current projects, and I wish them all success. Their scripts are all something seldom seen in theaters today -- originals, not remakes-- so they can use all the positive thinking you can send their way. I, for one, don't believe a country that voted Barack Obama into office is interested in continuing to subsist on a steady diet of remakes, but evidently stubborn Hollywood thinks differently. Even flops like THE ILLUSTRATED MAN are being green-lit.

The above scan from a 1965 Italian trade paper reminds us that even the greats of cinema who have now passed on into history, such as Mario Bava, had to spend much of their careers in pursuit of funding. This ad attempted to stir up interest for a 1965 project called 12 bambole bionde ("12 Blonde Dolls"), described as a venture between Bava, actor-turned-producer Ulderico Sciarretta, and Sciarretta’s production company, Eco Film.

The advertisement asks: “Who killed Gino? Who killed Linda? Who killed Paolo? Who killed Romolo? Who killed Raymondo? Who killed Emerson? When these questions are asked, Inspector Klem will answer them!” (Apparently most of the “12 Blonde Dolls” were to be men!)

What is interesting about the ad—which goes on to promise “not just a Super Giallo, but a Colossal Giallo”—is that it says absolutely nothing about the movie's obvious and quite ambitious intention of doubling the body count of Bava’s vicious Sei donne per l’assassino (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, 1964), a film that had the good fortune to be released all around the world. Instead, the ad hubristically proclaims that 12 bambole bionde “follows the grand success of Crimine a due.” This ultra-obscure title, directed by Romano Ferrara and starring John Drew Barrymore and Lisa Gastoni, was apparently Sciarretta’s first and only film as a producer, issued earlier in 1965 and never released outside of Italy.

Understandably, few (if any) investors were attracted by the ad's questions or its hollow boast of Crimine a due's "grand success." The upswing of this faulty strategy: 12 bambole bionde was never made and Bava and Sciarretta never worked together.

Origins of a Film Critic

Me (third from left) with the Mirror staff, photographed on the ground floor of the then-under-construction new building of Norwood High School in 1971. Click to embiggen.

These have been very interesting times for me: I've been unexpectedly reunited with a long-lost friend from high school, now a successful and well-travelled artist. This has led to a vigorous, fulfilling correspondence and a lot of restimulated memories from thirty-odd years ago, some good and some not-so-good. My friend evidently lost a lot of her old personal photos along the way, and she asked if I might send her some high school pics, which led me and my digital camera back to my long-packed-away yearbooks from Norwood High School. While rifling through the pages of the 1971 and '72 Silhouettes in search of her, I also took a digital snap of this personal shot, which shows me as part of the staff of the school paper, The Mirror. This is where I was first published as a film critic.

Introducing the Mirror staff from left to right: Sharon Nolte, Gary Larrison, yours truly, Jeff Wilkerson, assistant editor Joan Peters, editor Randall Parsons, Rod Best and faculty advisor Miss Danea White. (Not pictured: Bill Howard and Nadine Hoover. Nadine was a sweetie, and I hope she's happy and thriving, whatever her current circumstances may be.)

Randy Parsons was the president of the 1971 senior class, the fellow who spoke to us clueless frosh on Orientation Day, telling us about the school and the innate superiority of upperclassmen while also encouraging us to pursue extracurricular activities. I responded by following him out of the auditorium, calling "Mr. Parsons!" down the hall, and offering my services to The Mirror as film critic then and there. I'd already had some reviews accepted by CINEFANTASTIQUE, not yet published, which gave me this then-unusual measure of courage.

My chores on The Mirror, where I worked through my freshman and sophomore years, consisted of reviewing films and records and also writing/drawing a serial comic strip, Captain Norwood. Unfortunately, only two samples of the strip survive in my archive: the first and the very last, published toward the end of my freshman year. The final strip became a huge cause celebre at NHS when Captain Norwood was finally unmasked and revealed to be the school janitor, Fred Burnett, who became an overnight star. There's a picture in the 1971 Yearbook of Fred surrounded by a gaggle of prom girls, the poor man looking like a deer caught in the headlights of teenage sex. That picture is the success of Captain Norwood in a nutshell. I don't know why I didn't continue the strip in my sophomore year, when Mrs. Janet Fealy took over as faculty advisor. Possibly she wanted the paper to become a little less irreverent, or maybe I decided not to continue with it. I liked Mrs. Fealy; she was remarkably forgiving of my various crimes, like blasting The Mothers of Invention's "Billy the Mountain" on the paper office's turntable when I had no idea that she was sitting in the outer room, grading papers. The look she shot me as I emerged from the room with the record under my arm -- followed by a slow, head-shaking, half-complicit smile -- is one of my sweetest memories of high school.

Some other interesting folks here. I'm the only freshman in the picture. Gary Larrison, the senior standing to the left of me, was the first novelist I ever met. I remember him working on an original novel called THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, undertaken for Independent Study, in the paper office. I was astonished by the ambition of his project and I asked him about it with great interest; it turned out to be my first glimpse of my own future life. Sharon Nolte, who looks remarkably like Donna looked when we first met two years later, was a nice girl, one of two (the other being Nadine) who cared enough to check on me at home during an extended absence after the 1972 suicide of my best friend, Mike Hennel.

Danea White was the most important teacher I ever had, though I never had the pleasure of taking one of her classes. In addition to being the paper's advisor, she became a personal friend and mentor, and there were a few times when she, her boyfriend (and later husband) John and I used my theater passes to go to the movies together. It was a great time for movies and we saw things like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and EL TOPO, which I then reviewed for the school paper, though I doubt even my senior editor Randy was old enough at the time to be admitted to them. One day, Miss White and John surprised me by inviting me to lunch in that off-limits haven, the teacher's cafeteria, where my presence drew the codfish-eye from a few other teachers who regarded me as something of a ne'er-do-well. I credit Danea's interest in my talent and well-being with keeping me alive during a difficult period and with encouraging me to finally forsake my art interests to become a writer. My only regret is that we're standing so far apart in this picture, the only one ever taken of us together.