Nazi Comics

Nazi comic strips poke fun at Americans and their movies. They also bitch about Superman. Just a couple of the exhibits from the Nazi and East German Propaganda Archive.

One more: check out the Nazi board game --Stukas Attack!

Johnny Cash's Thunderball

Mp3 Friday!-- forgot to put one up last week, so this time we'll have one that especially nice-- Thunderball (Johnny Cash) 3.3M

No, it's not Cash's take on Tom Jones' brassy tune, but an alternate theme for the 1965 James Bond epic. I don't know the particulars on whether it was a commissioned piece, or if it was entirely Cash's idea, but it was submitted to Eon Productions Ltd. for consideration as the theme for their biggest, boldest Bond yet.

The mind reels at the possibility, but the Cash version (which Johnny Cash wrote himself) is not a bad little number, but it's Ghost Riders of the Sky shuffle and Cash's very earnest baritone, of course, do not fit the Bond model, which in 1965 was the apotheosis of pop style. Cash's theme seems of an earlier time, where recounting a hero's deeds against evildoers in a ballad, up against the self-referential, mocking tone of the Bond films, feels as old-fashioned as a horse and buggy. This is not to say that the songs Cash wrote and sang were unsophisticated. Indeed, many of Cash's best work was darker and much more complicated, at least from a moral perspective, than anything from the Bond series. Bond, I feel, set a new paradigm for film heroes in the 1960s, one which set the decent fellow model on its ear. This new hero's amoral pursuit of pleasure, be it for sexual conquest or for the thrill of adventure, may, on the surface, make these heroes seem more complicated, but that may not always be the case. One can imagine Bond shooting a man just to watch him die, but never lamenting the circumstances, nor be tortured by the consequences like the characters in Cash's songs.

Kubrick's Polaroids.

Remarkable Polaroid lighting tests shot during the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey are the gems found at this German website (with German and English language versions) for a Stanley Kubrick exhibit for the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt.

Gallo's Bunny's Brown

Glad to know there are others interested in Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny, and not just because of Ms. Sevigny's oral commitment. Like Anna Karina's Sweater has tons of info.

 

There's Always Toomorrow

Before Xanadu, even before Grease, there was Toomorrow which features 21 year-old Olivia Newton-John and three guys as the "rock group" Toomorrow and their sci-fi adventures. Produced in 1970 by Don Kirshner, creator of the Monkees, and Harry Saltzman, who made his bones with the Bond movies, it opened with a fair amount of fanfare, but then closed after a week when the principals realized they had a dog on their hands. It was immediately shelved, and it's been screened very seldom since. Rumors state that Kirschner won't have the film re-released during his lifetime. Meanwhile, a bootleg floats around in Japan. You can hear sound clips from the Toomorrow album here.

Even before Toomorrow, there was Funny Things Happen Down Under, which was Olivia's first feature back in 1965, when she was all of 17.

 

KMPX and KSAN Airchecks

The counter-culture took to the airwaves in San Francisco with such "underground" radio stations like KMPX and KSAN, which provided the template for the cool laid-back stylings of FM rock radio throughout the 70s and the 80s before Clear Channel engulfed them all and any hint of personality was erased. Excepting in the case of left of the dial and college stations, to suggest that the playlists of these late 60s stations are more eclectic than those of present day radio would be so obvious as to be absurd. Find dozens of audio samples and airchecks herein, scoped and unscoped. And don't forget the flowers in your hair.

 

The Snotgreen Sea

It's St. Patrick's Day, and along with the wearing of the green and the prodigious consumption of alcohol, and, as sure as the nose on your face, John Ford's The Quiet Man will be playing at a TV set near you. Sodden with boozy Irish sentimentality, the sign of the cross and the fisticuffs, the fiery-haired Colleens, the rolling green fields, and Barry Fitzgerald mouthing Celtic dicta, you're sure not to find more bog fodder than this piece of fine Irish-American treacle. Where one can find the inherent contradictions of the Hibernarian soul -- its brutality and its sentimentality, its conservatism and its joy in poetry-- as inpenetrable as your fifth pint of Guinness, The Quiet Man feels as authentically Irish as green Budweiser.

 

Martin Amis and Saturn 3

Little did I realize that the schlocky 1980 science fiction epic Saturn 3 was scripted by none other than that mad dog Englishman Martin Amis. I wish I could somehow tie it all up, and find in Saturn 3 the germ of an exegesis to Amis' body of work, but it's been about 8 years since I've read any of Amis' books (the fantastic Time's Arrow, which probably could make a pretty good movie), and more than 20 since I've last seen Saturn 3 (which I remember as being laughably bad, but nothing more than that). What Amis got out of the endeavor was, of course, a Hollywood paycheck, but also the background for his novel Money, where the movie's actors Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel were reimagined in the novel as Lorne Guyland, Butch Beausoleil, and Spunk Davis. As Amis later said: "It just seemed to me that when I was working on that film I was head-doctoring and kissing ass, and writing these characters as they saw themselves, as they idealised themselves."

Art imitates life, or in this case imitates trash. I haven't read Money, but it may mark my return to the Amis ouevre, perhaps in tandem with a re-viewing of Saturn 3. In any case, we can admire this Polish poster of Saturn 3, which gives it more of a pop-art Barbarella feel than I remember the movie having. The film's director, Stanley Donen has an impressive pedigree as a director of musicals for MGM in the 50s and sophisticated entertainments like Charade and Two for the Road. Donen received an honorary Oscar in 1998, more than likely not for his efforts on Saturn 3.

 

Hip 1960s & 1970s German TV advertising on display here. Commercials spanning from 1956 to 2002 for the German soft-drink Afri-Cola. As is usually the case, the ads from the 60s and 70s are the most creative. The cola was advertised as the "safe drug" during the tumultous year of 1968. It's still being bottled to this very day, and it has its adherents.

 

Hey Navajo Joe

Mp3 Friday! ....this week: Main Title-Navajo Joe (Ennio Morricone) 3.9M

This is a great track! Also a classic mid-1960s western theme from Morricone: the screeching wordless vocals, the thick twang of the Danelectro guitar, a battery of tympanis, and a frenetic Italian choir chanting "Navajo Joe! Navajo Joe!" This was composed about the same time as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and there are many similarities. And while that classic tune is a pop masterpiece (and then some), the Navajo Joe Theme has almost an abrasive avant edge (but then again, so does a lot of late 1960s Italian film music).

As a film, Navajo Joe is hardly The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (not even close), but it has its defenders. The movie's star, Burt Reynolds, thought it the worst film of his career. Then again, before the stellar reviews came pouring in, he thought Boogie Nights was a piece of shit, too.

 

LLLS 2 Danger in the Middle East

The Late-Late-Late Show Project, which is a vain attempt to track down as much information on the very obscure European programmers whose shoddily produced trailers are featured in Something Weird's The Late-Late-Late Show tape, and extrapolate like mad when the information withers, dries up, and blows away carelessly.

No. 2: Danger in the Middle East, original French title Le Bal des Espions, which translates as The Ball of Spies, or maybe, The Dance of Spies. It's Italian title is Le Schiave Bianche, which translates as White Slave Girls, a decidedly more prurient title. It has more of a pedigree than our last Late Show entry, The Fury of the Apaches. Indeed, as the narrator of the trailer proclaims at the beginning: "A newcomer among great motion picture directors, Michel Clément, has created for you the most unusual and most exciting of the new French films!", which could signal it as part of the French New Wave. Whether or not Clément was associated with the New Wave, Clément did pay his dues, working as an assistant for New Wavers' favorite Robert Bresson on Pickpocket and A Man Escaped, but there seems to be very little of Bresson's cinematic austerity in Clément's film as exhibited in the trailer. There's plenty of action, sex, and some very brutal violence (a man is pinned against a wall by a very fast moving car, a man's neck is broken barehandedly, pistol whippings aplenty, and a lot of people shot in the back). Seemingly, none of Bresson's transcendental style is evident. Also the movie has Michel Piccoli, who starred in films by Godard and Buñuel, and the stunning Françoise Arnoul, who's worked with Renoir and Rosellini.

Once again I must submit a disclaimer that I haven't seen the full movie in question, just it's trailer, but it's safe to say that Danger in the Middle East may be little more than an average actioner. This was Clément's only directorial effort. He want back to assistant work soon after

I don't believe this movie is available anywhere in any format.

 

Obligatory Dio Post

If for no other reason than to show how time has not dulled the creepiness of its nerdy stalker premise, here's Dio's Rainbow in the Dark , a video from the glory days of mid-80s MTV. Count the cliches, if you can. Darkness fans, take note.

 

Ah Sweet Vespa!

Here's an interesting gallery of Vespa calendar images from the 50s and 60s, as fine a collection as any of European cheesecake. Included are beauties like Angie Dickinson, Jayne Mansfield, horror queen Barbara Steele, Bond girls Ursula Andress and Claudine Auger, and... John Wayne?

Going Ape Over Godzilla

The Japanese call them kaijû eiga, we call them, for lack of a better definition, Japanese monster movies, the ones where outsized creatures do battle, and stomp underfoot the toylike trappings of humanity. At one time scorned and belittled, and considered merely the province of children and developmentally arrested males, now they are considered worthy of academic study. Here is one example: an exhibit of Japanese monster movie posters from around the world at the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

For more Japanese poster art, check out this collection of images from Toho studios, the people responsible for most of the giant creatures we saw hopping across matinee screens.

 

Garota de Ipanema

Mp3 Friday! A new Bitter Cinema feature.... This week: Tema de Desilusao from Garota de Ipanema (com. Antonio Carlos Jobim arr. Eumir Deodato

I hate to be using another IMDB link for a movie, but if that's all you can find.... Garota de Ipanema, or The Girl from Ipanema, was made in 1967, a sort of tie-in to the famous Bossa Nova tune by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. I can find very little information about the film except for what you can find through the IMDB. Maybe it wasn't very good, but the soundtrack's not bad at all. The soundtrack's line-up seems like an all-star cast of Brazilian musical talent in the mid-60s: Tom Jobim, Vinicius, Chico Buarque, Elis Regina, Baden Powell, Tamba Trio, Quarteto em Cy, Nara Leao. The soundtrack's been hard to find until it was recently reissued, I think in Brazil. Now I think it's out of print again.

But here's a little taste. This tune is entitled Tema de Desilusao, which means, I think, Theme of Disillusion, which is the last track of the record. The melody should be very familiar, as it's The Girl from Ipanema, but darkly colored with minor chord progressions and a somber orchestration. The melody is, of course, Jobim's, but the arrangement was by Eumir Deodato, who later scored a hit in the U.S. with his jazz-fusion take on Also Sprach Zarathustra, which we all know as the 2001 Theme. I'm assuming that the disillusion occurs when the girl from Ipanema walks away, impervious to the main character's attention. Or maybe someone gets killed in a boating accident, and life is seen as a strange folly. Disillusionment comes in many shades of gray.

As an aside, Helo Pinheiro, the actual inspiration for the original song, and has used her modicum of notoriety to some advantage, appeared recently with her daughter in a pictorial in the Brazilian edition of Playboy. Olha que coisa mais linda!

 

LLLS 1 The Fury of the Apaches

The Late-Late-Late Show Project (as referenced here)

No. 1: Fury of the Apaches, original Spanish title El Hombre de la Diligencia, which could translate as The Man of Diligence, or The Diligent Man (as in a thorough and careful fellow), but more than likely means The Man from the Stagecoach, or Stagecoach Man, as there's a stagecoach in this movie trailer, the first in Something Weird's The Late-Late-Late Show video comp, but there's very few diligent men, unless they're diligent about killing Apaches.

Fury of the Apaches was a Spanish-Italian co-production from 1964, which incidentally was the same year Leone and Eastwood broke new ground with A Fistful of Dollars. No two European westerns could seem further apart, either stylistically or philosophically. This is not an indictment on The Fury of the Apaches, but it shows the aesthetic broad-jump A Fistful of Dollars made within the genre.

Of course, this reading is made solely on viewing the trailer, not the actual feature film, so whatever critical judgments I make are clearly suspect. The Fury of the Apaches could be a magnificent film. It could be playing with the tropes and conventions of the genre. It could be the work of an inspired hand. It's director, Jose Maria Elorrieta, began his film career making short documentaries on Spanish painters and architectural treasures, so he may understand pictorial style. He also wrote many of the films he directed. However, glancing through his filmography one sees the straight and narrow road of a journeyman, a man who kept his fingers in many pies, generically speaking, from an early 60s sentimental convent drama starring Soledad Miranda, a wacky and sexy 1967 fantasy-comedy with Jeffrey Hunter, and an early 70s vampire film, and westerns like Fury of the Apaches. It could be that the inhuman butchers who edited the trailer and wrote the accompanying copy, drained the subtle beauty from the original, purged its moral ambiguity, removed the ahead-of its-time sensitive portrayal of Native Americans, and in its stead had a manly stentorian voice read over gunshots, whistling bullets, galloping horses, shrieking Apache war cries:

An epic episode in this epic story of the West. As our pioneers face the fury and terror of a savage land and a still more savage people. The paleface frantically search for gold but often found... The Fury of the Apaches!

Instead, we have a carnival of cliche. Here's one exchange. Our hero, Major Loman, portrayed by American Frank Latimore, fights another fellow and then holds him at bay with a loaded Winchester. In between them stands Ruth, played by our female lead, the lovely Filipina Liza Moreno (whose own filmography includes a turn as Darna, the Philippines' biggest comic book heroine). She speaks:

"Don't shoot Loman. Don't. For my sake." (Rather unspiritedly)

In walks another fellow, who surveys the situation bemusedly. He speaks:

"You two have found a good time to kill each other! You two! Why don't you wait 'til we got rid of the Apaches!" (In a campy Paul Lynde kind of voice)

You get the gist. Remember those scenes in old movies when someone would turn on a TV set, a cowboy and Indian movie would come on? The generic late movie (at least from the fifties and sixties), the western everybody's seen for a million times? Imagine your grandad, flipping through the TV Guide after dinner on the easy chair in 1967, finding Fury of the Apaches is coming on at 8 on channel 9, lighting his first Pall Mall of the evening, gets off the chair with a grunt, clicks the dial to 9, adjusts the "goddamn" rabbit ears, settles down with a cold can of Ballantine Ale, farts. Within 30 minutes, in between ads for Tareyton cigarettes and Lou's Used Car Emporium, grandpa's out like a light. Later, grandma nudges him awake and she leads him to bed. Does he tell his buddies at the plant about the wonderful find he saw the night before?

Hell no. He leaves it for his smartass grandkids, college educated but barely making a living, to spend way too much effort on some paella-spaghetti western he may have given the time of day (and only that). Then again, he may have known it as Apache Fury, which was its original American title. Or perhaps he knew it as Ranch of the Doomed? Who would give a shit about some cowboy picture?

Indeed. I was ready to quickly dismiss Fury of the Apaches as a reactionary western, perhaps even Francoist one, at least in the trailer's depiction of the Apaches. Even John Ford was enlightened about the Indians in 1964. Then I found a blurb on the film (yes, you can have it on VHS):

Geronimo's Apaches attack a stage coach full of people who take refuge in the wrong place at the wrong time. On board is the infamous Judge Driscoll (George Gordon) and his lovely fiancee Ruth (Liza Moreno) who are on their way to the altar with a fortune packed away in their belongings. Waiting at an abandoned rest stop is Loweman (Frank Latimore), the man Driscoll sent to prison years before so he could steal the man's gold mines. Meanwhile, the Apaches continue their attacks joined by another tribe. To make a bad situation worse, tensions are mounting, tempers flaring and Driscoll's connection to Ruth's first husband's death is revealed within the claustrophobic confines of the rest station. More of a Soap Opera than a Horse Opera, the personal bits of bitter history the characters share are as scary as the Indian raids.

It's a Douglas Sirk western! Imagine Almodovar in 1964, lensing a western!

The Western genre as our grandfathers knew it is, for the most part, dead. Westerns are still produced, but very seldom. Clint Eastwood, the last great master of the Western genre, hasn't made one in 12 years. The dusty excitement the Western provided to audiences two generations ago, like the grimy thrills of 70s crime thrillers, and the techo-shocks of today's quasi-sci-fi product, are all one and the same. It's the same story but in a different context. But what makes older films interesting is when it's seen in a different context, i.e. the Western as soap opera. It's what makes contemporary films interesting as well. Just watch!

 

Nightmare Theatre

Another cool one! Vintage audio from Nightmare Theatre with "Dr. Cadaverino" on WITI-TV in Milwaukee. The site's got a lot of great information, including the "Shock" horror movie package sold to local TV stations in the late 50s.

 

THE LATE-LATE-LATE SHOW

Picked up a tape from a local video shop yesterday, and now I'm completely obsessed about it. It's name is THE LATE-LATE-LATE SHOW, and it's a collection of trailers from Something Weird Video. As the copy on the box states:

For all you Insomniacs who saw these obscure European espionage movies, westerns, thrillers and historical dramas of the early Sixties on TV: The Fury of the Apaches, Danger of the Middle East, To Catch a Spy, Agent of Doom, MMM 83, X-Ray of a Killer, Lost Treasure of the Aztecs, Eyes of the Sahara, Dangerous Agent, King of the Vikings, Duel of Fire, Walls of Fear, Stranger from Hong Kong, Killer Spy, Secret File 1413, Operation Gold Ingot, Escape from Saigon, Headlines of Destruction, The Black Monocle, Death Pays in Dollars, Sergeant X of the Foreign Legion, Nest of Spies, Prisoner of the Jungle, Messalina, Hercules of the Desert, Sea Fighter, Destination Fury, Prisoner of the Iron Mask, Musketeers of the Sea, and the 1952 suspense short THE GENTLEMAN IN ROOM 6.

Even in this time of all-inclusive film scholarship and, thanks to the internet, a very informed fanbase with reams of documentation at their fingertips, these are films that are, for the most part, forgotten. Most the films whose trailers I saw were European spy thrillers (mainly French from what I can ascertain) produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was before Bond-mania took over half of the world, and Euro-spy programmers became parodies and goofy pop-art extravaganzas. But what of their predecessors, these very humble and earnest black and white thrillers? As Something Weird's box copy so implies: these were cheap gut-bucket flicks that local TV needed to fill holes in their schedule. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, time needed to be filled for programming, and movies were the cheapest way to fill that time. Mainly these were packages from studios like A.I.P. that were mainly european programmers picked up for a song and then re-edited, cheaply dubbed and retitled. If you're old enough, maybe you remember a morning movie, or an afternoon movie, maybe tied in to a sweepstakes or contest. Remember when there used to be Late Late Movies, and not infomercials?

I certainly do. Watch this space for more information. I intend to track some of this stuff down.

 

Euro-Spy Royale

Here's something cool, a gallery of European spy movie posters from the 1960s!

 

Genuine Dislike of Mel Gibson

"His actions were also partially due to a genuine dislike of Mel Gibson...." For some reason I find this very funny. He's got some balls, that kid!