Marc posted here recently about Kieran Turner’s new documentary, Jobriath A.D. and I was thrilled to hear that the film was about to come out.

Kieran was kind enough to share Jobriath A.D. with us and, on many levels, I just loved it and think that a lot of Dangerous Minds readers will really love it, too. Narrated by Henry Rollins and featuring interviews with Marc Almond, Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt, Ann Magnuson, Kristian Hoffman, Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters and Jobriath’s manager Jerry Brandt, Turner’s film seems set to perform the same task for Jobriath Boone, rock’s first out and proud “fairy” that Andrew Horn’s The Nomi Song doc did for the once similarly obscure Klaus Nomi.

I caught up with Kieran over email:

I was completely wowed by Jobriath A.D. My wife loved it too, and she absolutely hates Jobriath’s music, so that’s really saying something, as well. You won her over.

Kieran Turner Now THAT fascinates me. I had a conversation with a journalist in the UK and wondered what people who didn’t like Jobriath’s music would think of the film. For instance, if you go see this film not having heard anything before and you are exposed to the music and you’re sitting there scratching your head, is the rest of film just a complete wash? Would you just sit there with your arms folded and a sneer on your face every time someone popped up onscreen and offered up some praise? Or could a viewer appreciate the story and say- okay, I don’t like the music, but the guy broke ground, and this is an interesting cautionary tale and great period piece. I honestly didn’t know the answer to that question, and looking at it from my own perspective, I wasn’t sure I could, so how could I expect anyone else to? Because I know everyone isn’t going to like this music and I never expected that in a million years, nor can I fault anyone for it. So to hear that your wife, who doesn’t like Jobriath’s music, was able to take something away from the film and enjoy it- that thrills me to no end.

Jobriath, until the last few years, at least, was not an artist who it was “easy” to find out about. I discovered him myself, completely accidentally at the Sixth Ave Flea Market flipping through albums and going “What’s THIS?” How did you first hear about Jobriath?

You know, I had always heard about Jobriath, as I am a huge music freak and particularly obsessed with the 70s and gay history. I’m too young to have been around during Jobriath’s brief heyday, so I never got exposed to the music. And every time I read about him, he was always described as a joke, so I believed it, since I was unable to hear the music. I guess I stumbled upon the compilation Morrissey put out while I was online, took a chance and ordered it and was just blown away by the music and the talent.  And after that, I was obsessed. I wanted to know everything.  I was expecting to hear a 70s version of Pansy Division and what I got was a real artist.

I never had any desire to make a documentary.  In fact, I had been gearing up to make my 2nd feature film in 2007, and our funding fell through 4 weeks before casting was to begin in NYC and I had nothing going on, no job, I’d sublet my apartment, so I had this chunk of time and I just started researching.  I took 14 months to really track down enough people, get enough information, lock the music up (which was crucial) and feel comfortable enough to know it was safe to start the cameras rolling, which we did in January, 2009. I shot on and off for 2 1/2 years, still researching, finding new people, new information, new materials the entire time, and then began editing last summer.

Where did you find the vast treasure trove of images and film footage that you uncovered for Jobriath A.D.?

All different places. Honestly, it was a bitch. And we were finding material up until January of this year.  In fact, we had what we thought was a finished cut and then a photographer came out of the woodwork with some fantastic photos of which we nabbed a half dozen and put them in at the last minute.  And the interview footage with Jobriath and Jerry Brandt was a complete accident. I had been told that the LA NBC affiliate had filmed Jobriath’s first night at The Troubadour in 1974 and did a simulcast, which I always found very suspicious.  Why would a Big 3 network do that?  It made no sense. That, coupled with the fact that the filmmakers who were doing a doc about Zolar X, who had opened for Jobriath at those shows, had done a thorough search for the footage and had come up with nothing led me to believe it was a myth. Anyway, my co-researcher found some footage at NBC that matched the time period of the Troubadour, but no one knew what it was, only that it was 30 min. So I paid to have it transfered and they sent over a quicktime.  I was so nervous to watch it, I sent it to my editor and the two of us watched it over the phone together. Well, there was NO performance footage, just 10 minutes of rehearsal and then this AMAZING 20 minute sit down interview.  I was near tears, I was so happy, because the dynamic between Jerry and Jobriath, which was just missing from the film up until that point, was so clear in this interview footage. You watch one tiny section of it and it sums up their relationship immediately.

Speaking as a longtime Jobriath fanatic—one of your interviewees, Ann Magnuson, told me about 20 years ago that I was probably the only straight guy in America who even knew who Jobriath was—the part about how all of his costumes and belongings were thrown away after he died was so heartbreaking, but now that your film exists, and is such a testament to this vibrant, talented supernova individual who once existed, more people will hear of Jobriath than ever did during his lifetime and that was very gratifying to contemplate. The film seems such a labor of love, what was the impetus behind the doc and how long did you work on it?

It was sort of three pronged, my reasons for wanting to make this. First, I thought it was hugely unfair that Jobriath was a pioneer of the gay community, the first openly gay rock star (and I mean OPEN and not the bullshit bisexual pose of Bowie, et al, who were just using it for shock and had wives and girlfriends to fall back on). And I get very tired of people throwing out other examples of artists they think were openly gay back then. Trust me, I did the research. In America, it was Jobriath, then Steven Grossman, who even fewer people had heard of. You had Long John Baldry, who was very fringe and really in the UK. But I don’t want to hear about Liberace, Little Richard, Elton John and all those others.  It was Jobriath.

But I would not have made this film if the music wasn’t good. Really good. Because what’s the point? Then you ARE making a doc about Pansy Division who, all they have going for them is the gay gimmick. And I don’t mean to bash PD. I don’t know them, I don’t have anything really against them.  I do find the music to be incredibly reductive and rather infantile, but I also know that people do enjoy it, I guess. I just feel like as a gay man, it doesn’t thrill me to have an openly gay band singing about sucking cock and cruising the local skater boys down at the park. But they do have a following, so they’re doing something right. 

With Jobriath, I was just so thrilled that it wasn’t only a gimmick and that there was some major talent there. Of course, not everyone will like the music, but it’s silly to expect everyone to like something. I just thought there was a larger audience out there who wasn’t aware of him and who would get it.

And lastly, I felt like I could identify with Jobriath as someone who is creative and and often has to depend on the permission of others in order to share my creativity with the world, whether it be through funding or reviews or getting my foot in the door. How many of us really just want to share what we’re passionate about with the world, but because someone in power deems it unworthy, we’re pushed aside or have the door slammed in our face?  That’s all Jobriath wanted to do, just put his gift out there to the world and the world said “Fuck you.”  Before they ever heard the music. Because they didn’t like the image, because they didn’t like being told they should embrace something, because they weren’t the ones to discover it, because they were afraid of it—whatever the reason. And it destroyed him. And who can’t identify with that, with putting yourself on the line for something that you’re passionate about, only to be rejected? And that is why I think this is such a universal story. You don’t have to be gay, you don’t have to like the music, you just have to be human. 

Often filmmakers are obliged to cut something out for running time’s sake. Anything juicy that we’ll have to wait for the DVD to see?

Oh yes, we cut out a LOT of material. Jobriath was in the running to play Al Pacino’s lover in Dog Day Afternoon.  I found that quite interesting, but we just didn’t have time for it in the film, so there’s a section about that.  There’s also a section about a musical he wrote which Joe Papp was developing called Popstar, which I have some material from. There’s also some interesting sort of heresay about him and Bowie in terms of a perceived rivalry. I investigated it fairly thoroughly and the reason I didn’t put it in the film was because I couldn’t come to a conclusion. For as many people who said there was an issue, I had just as many who said there wasn’t.  It’s something worth examining and letting a viewer make up their own mind, but it didn’t fit in the film and it didn’t further the story. And there is certainly more about Jerry Brandt, more about the family. I also have a lot more interview material with the musicians in the film (Jake Shears, Joe Elliott, Marc Almond, et al) who I had to cut most of for time. This DVD will be packed with extras, I hope.  We have the material, it’s just a matter of what sort of distribution deal we wind up getting. But if you like the movie, you’ll want the DVD.

Jobriath A.D. aside from reviving an interest in Jobriath, as both a musician/composer and also as someone who will ultimately be seen as an important and pioneering gay figure in the arts, also seems like it could provide one last big wave for Jerry Brandt to ride. Something like a Broadway musical, as he says in the film, is entirely plausible, don’t you think?

You know, who knows what will happen? Jobriath is a niche figure. I certainly don’t expect FunKo to go into production on a series of Jobriath bobble-head dolls, if you know what I mean. I think everyone involved with Jobriath needs to take it one step at a time. I mean, the music is back out of print, so let’s start there before we make lunchboxes. I’m being facetious, of course, but I think Velvet Goldmine has proven exactly what sort of a market there is out there for fictionalized glam rock.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Jobriath: Rock’s Fairy Godmother

Below, Jobriath and the Creatures on The Midnight Special in 1974:
 

 
Glamorous crate-digger Veronica Vasicka is the “musical detective” behind the Minimal Wave record label. She discovers and then promotes/advocates for the work of criminally overlooked, mostly European, underground musicians of the DIY late 70s/80s bedroom experimental synthpop scene, and exposes it to a new generation.

The genre, dubbed by New York-based Vasicka herself, is an electronic twin of the indie-rock “low-fi” movement and dates back to a time when synthesizers and 4-track home recorders were coming down in price and in the hands of more and more people (“Warm Leatherette” by The Normal—recorded by future Mute Records head, Daniel Miller on a $150 Korg 700S synthesizer in his apartment using two tape decks—would be emblematic of this sound). The music was often never even pressed on records, instead circulating on cassette tapes.

Veronica Vasicka’s East Village Radio show (she’s one of the co-founders) provided the initial focus for her archival endeavors, but soon her proclivities for turning up the rarest, most obscure tracks, led to her passion becoming a business and a career. Vasicka’s latest compilation, Minimal Wave Tapes 2 was recently released in conjunction with LA-based Stones Throw Records, best known for being the home to Madlib and MF Doom’s Madvillainy team-up.

Dazed & Confused’s Tim Noakes asked her some questions:

D&C: Do you regard yourself as an archivist or a musical detective?
Veronica Vasicka: A musical detective, for sure. A lot of the music was lost to particular places and locations. There’s a band called Aural Indifference from Melbourne in Australia on The Minimal Wave Tapes: Volume 2. He only made 30 copies of that tape, just 30 copies! I met his girlfriend by accident and it was such a surreal coincidence the way it happened. He went home and found a copy of the original master-tape in his parents’ basement and brought it to my show on East Village Radio. He was shocked anyone knew about it. In some ways it is such a small world as the people that have been collecting this stuff are connected, so in this underground way the connection already exists. Once people know what you are into, then they will make recommendations.

D&C: Are you surprised at how this sound has caught on?
Veronica Vasicka: Yeah, especially because it is kind of like outsider music, and with outsider music you never know how the public will respond. It’s important not to think too hard about it, to just go with my intuition for this kind of band or project, and that is what I have been doing since the beginning: going with what I think needs to be heard.

Not everyone, apparently, is all that happy about seeing their work from three decades ago come back to haunt them:

D&C: What do people think when you get in touch and say, ‘I want to put out a record you made 30 years ago’?
Veronica Vasicka: The general reaction is, ‘How the hell do you know about my music?’ or, ‘You really want to release that?! The music that I didn’t take seriously?’ Or, ‘Do what you want with it.’ Sometimes these artists don’t want to take it further and don’t want their music to be out there beyond the format that it’s in because it’s a reminder of a time that was maybe not the best in their lives. It just happens sometimes – they didn’t push it at the time so why would they want to push it now? It happens.

D&C: When this music first appeared there was massive unemployment and financial ruin around the world, and we are seeing the same again these days. Do you think bleak times foster the most radical musical creativity?
Veronica Vasicka: Yes, there is certainly a parallel between what was happening economically during that time, the late 70s and early 80s, and what came out of it in terms of music, what people created during that time of struggle. I also think that’s another reason why people are attracted to this music once again, because we are living in a similar economic climate. I think there is a connection there. Great music and creativity always emerge out of times of struggle.

D&C: Do you ever feel like you are living in the past?
Veronica Vasicka: No, I feel like I get obsessed with the past sometimes but in this case the music wasn’t given a platform in the past – yes, it was made in 1982, but how many people actually heard it? Not many. It just existed in a vacuum. I don’t feel like I’m living in the past, the music was just made there. The music was fully realised but its existence and purpose in this world was incomplete and so I am completing it.

Read more at Dazed Digital, plus they’ve got an exclusive Minimal Wave mix from Veronica Vasicka.
 
Hard Corps performing “Dirty” at The Fridge in Brixton in 1986, one of the tracks from Minimal Wave Tapes 2
 

 
More Minimal Wave after the jump…

 
Everyone loves a hero and even more, everyone loves a villain. The more broad chested the hero and luridly evil the villain, the better. This basic black/white viewpoint that people cling to like a spit stained security blanket is often the main impetus behind the superhero genre. A figure, often with extraordinary powers, becomes the pinpoint of hope for all that is fair and just. Real life is mired with red tape, corruption and the folly of our own nature. These are all reasons why the idea of a flawed superhero wasn’t terribly popular until recent years. (Though The Kinks get some major points with their song, “Catch Me Now I’m Falling” off of their album Low Budget.) But there was a film that predated all of them, way back in 1983 in the form of Philippe Mora’s The Return of Captain Invincible. Did I mention that it’s also a musical?

The Return of Captain Invincible stars Alan Arkin as our titular hero who is first introduced in a 1940’s style B&W newsreel, with our young, clean-cut Captain defeating gangsters, fighting the Nazis and representing everything that is good and wholesome about America. That is, until he ends up getting hit with charges of communism by The House of Un-American Activities, led by Joseph McCarthy. The witch hunt demoralizes our hero, who goes into hiding and ends up in Australia, liquor soaked and trading his spandex for stained, baggy clothes.

 
To passersby, he’s just a liver-crying-for-help derelict, belting out “New York, New York” to the rural hills Down Under, when he’s not inadvertently saving lives, particularly of tough police woman, Patty Patria (Kate Fitzpatrick). It’s only a matter of time before the superhero within the man has to come back out, especially with his old foe, the devilish and devilishly handsome Mr Midnight (Christopher Lee), back on the horizon. But it takes an old promise to a young boy who has now grown up to be the President of the United States (the incredible Michael Pate), to bring the hesitant, rusty but goodhearted Captain out of retirement. The question then emerges, will the once strong superhero be able to defend the world from the evil megalomaniacal clutches of Mr. Midnight and surpass his own inner demons?

 
The Return of Captain Invincible is a heartfelt, goony and surprisingly smart film. It is truly a strange creature, one that could have only be helmed by the same man that gave us the historical art film, Mad Dog Morgan (with Dennis Hopper) AND Howling II (with Sybil Danning’s shirt exploding breasts), Phillipe Mora. A wholly unique filmmaker who is never praised enough for his brass balls, not to mention creative flexibility, Mora pulled out all stops with this one. From the bright, comic-book style color schemes to the number of bizarre little touches,Captain Invincible is a superhero film like no other.

 
For starters, there’s our main character, played with typical perfection by Alan Arkin. Handsome and with a enough emotional gravitas to pull off a man who is solid in heart but whose spirit has been cracked by the very country he protected, Arkin’s Captain Invincible is a true hero with a human bent. We get to see him run the gamut from being your typical 1940’s strong-jawed hero to being a scruffy alcoholic suffering from the DT’s the night before he goes back into training, only to circle right back to being the chap that saves the day. On top of that, Arkin’s musical background comes into play quite nicely here, taking vocal duties on most of the songs featured, with the highlights being “The Good Guys & The Bad Guys” and “Mr. Midnight.” Arkin balances out the humanity and absurdity of it all so perfectly.

 
Speaking of absurd wonder, Michael Pate as the President is stupendously awesome. If he ran for office, my cynical booty would be hightailing it to the nearest booth in a hot flash of a second! A legendary character actor who had made his mark both in America and his native Australia, Pate is all Kennedy hair, Texan charm and big shouldered awesomeness, with the standout being the “Bullshit” number. This literally amounts to Pate saying the word “Bullshit” over and over again, set to an electronic beat. It is cathartic in its greatness.

 
Of course, there is the tall, cool, grim-in-his-beauty Christopher Lee as our villain Mr. Midnight. Lee is having a lot of great fun here, bringing a sense of intentional camp to his role. Lee is center point to the absolute musical highlight of the film with “Choose Your Poison.” Yes, Christopher Lee, in that wonderful Wagner-opera from depths of unknown bass voice of his, singing about the joys of drinking. It’s even better than “Bullshit!”

 
Kate Fitzpatrick doesn’t really get to shine quite as much as the others but is still good and realistically tough, as in you can halfway buy her as a real police officer. The aforementioned soundtrack, while a bit MOR in spots, has some absolute gems here. It should shock absolutely no one that the highlights, minus my much beloved “Bullshit,” were all helmed by Rocky Horror pioneer and flat out genius Richard O’Brien, along with another Rocky alumni, Richard Hartley, providing the music. His numbers, which include the title theme, “Mr Midnight” and “Choose Your Poison” are A+ O’Brien greatness.

Return of Captain Invincible is not a perfect film and it will undoubtedly off-put some with its strange brew of social commentary and goofiness bordering on surrealism. The idea that a bourbon soaked derelict muttering to himself down the road could be a superhero gone to seed is a smart and thoughtful one. Our hero and concept here could fit in any time period. A little flea-bitten and hardened by a flawed world but at the end of the day, still hopeful and willing to fight for a better future.

Plus, “Bullshit!”

 
Fernwood 2Night was a talk show satire starring Martin Mull and Fred Willard. Preceding Alan Partridge and Larry Sanders by quite some years, Fernwood 2Night came on the air in 1977 when I was eleven years old and I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Where I lived, it was on a station called Channel 53, a low rent UHF channel in Pittsburgh that was like a junkyard of cheaply licensed television. Like a real life version of the fictional cheapo cable channel in SCTV, Channel 53 showed an insane low-budget mix of Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Aussie women in prison soaps, Monty Python, Flash Gordon serials, The Avengers, Hammer horror, Sgt. Bilko, My Favorite Martian, Jack Benny, Tom Baker-era Doctor Who shows, freakazoid televangelist, Dr. Gene Scott, Dave Allen at Large, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman five days a week. It was TV heaven for some, telly hell for others. Me, I loved it.

That’s where Fernwood 2Night comes in. Fernwood 2Night was the summer replacement series so that Mary Hartman’s cast and crew could take a much-needed break from pumping out five weekly episodes. It was my favorite TV show and I would throw a FIT if my parents wanted me to go someplace when it was on. Like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, it was on five nights a week, too, and I probably saw ALL of them.

Martin Mull was brilliant as Barth Gimble, the twin brother of Garth Gimble, a caddish wife-beater character Mull portrayed on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman who had come to a gruesome end (he was impaled on a Christmas tree!). It is implied that Barth has legal issues (which may or may not involve an underage girl in Miami) so after his brother’s death, he’s stuck working in the podunk town of Fernwood, where he feels smugly superior to everyone, especially his announcer/side-kick Jerry Hubbard. played by Fred Willard.

In a scene-stealing role that defined his entire career playing the clueless white guy—is there ANYONE more Caucasian that Fred Willard?—Willard portrays what is quite possibly the dumbest, most dense character in all of television history. I’ve always thought that Willard was a comedic genius—the obtuse angles of his observations, so off the cuff and spontaneous, so REAL—and he was never funnier than he is in this role. The core cast was rounded out by their dour band leader, “Happy” Kyne” (Frank De Vol) and his “Mirthmakers.”
 

 
The Fernwood 2Night writers overlapped somewhat with the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman crew, but by and large (I think) Harry Shearer seemed to be the head writer, with other material provided by Mull and Willard and future rightwing shill Ben Stein. Alan Thicke—who must’ve been a hip, hip guy before Growing Pains, he even wrote for Richard Pryor—was the producer and the whole enchilada was, of course, executive produced by the great Norman Lear. Guest appearances included Dabney Coleman, Kenneth Mars, Jim Varney and even Tom Waits

In the second season—which was renamed America 2Night—the show “moved” out of small town Fernwood to the fictional town of Alta Coma, California, “the unfinished furniture capital of the world” (mainly so the writers could stop having to come up with contrivances for why a particular celebrity would happen to be in Fernwood, Ohio in the first place). The America 2Night series saw the likes of Gary Coleman, Vincent Price, Robin Williams, Peter Frampton, Steven Allen, Paul Lynde, Milton Berle, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston and many others making guest appearances. America 2Night was shown on the United Broadcasting System, or UBS, “the network that puts U before the BS.”

Other than sporadic showings on TV Land in the early 90s, the 130 episodes of Fernwood 2Night and America 2Night have seldom been seen since they originally aired. It’s a comedy goldmine that’s remained untapped for a long time—as brilliant as the original SNL if you ask me. Back in my Disinformation days I tried to license the show for DVD release but even Norman Lear’s company had no idea who owned it (turns out it was Sony who still haven’t done anything with them). A couple of years ago, I was able to download the entire series of Fernwood 2Night from a rare TV torrent tracker and I was in absolute TV heaven again. 

Dr. Emanuel Kazinsky explains the differences between the races:
 

 
A spanking demonstration by Marshall Petty:
 

 
After the jump, more Fernwood 2Night and America 2Night clips…

 
Frederick Wiseman’s powerful, depressing—Roger Ebert called it “despairing” and that’s probably a better word—1967 documentary Titicut Follies revealed the sordid and horrific conditions of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Wiseman’s camera watches impassively as the patients are bullied, taunted, herded like cattle, mocked, stripped, drugged and kept in sub-human conditions by the institution’s callously indifferent guards, social workers and psychiatrists. The film is a narrator-less, structure-less collection of some of the bleakest cinéma vérité images in film history. The footage of the yearly New Year’s Eve talent show, the “Titicut Follies” (“Titcut” is the Indian name for the Taunton river) featuring the inmates (and some of the staff) is like something straight out of a Harmony Korine film. In another scene, a doctor smokes a cigarette and dangles a long ash over a funnel as he inserts a long rubber tube into a patient’s nostril for a force-feeding.
 

 
Amos Vogel called Titicut Follies “a major work of subversive cinema and a searing indictment…of ‘the system” in his seminal book Film as a Subversive Art.

Wiseman, a Boston-born lawyer, had taken his law classes from Boston University to Bridgewater for educational purposes and decided he wanted to make a film there. He was granted permission to film at Bridgewater for 29 days. Although Wiseman got got appropriate assurances, releases and agreements from legal guardians, prior to the debut of Titicut Follies at the 1967 New York Film Festival, the state of Massachusetts tried to get an injunction stopping the screening, the state arguing that the film violated the patients’ right to privacy and dignity. A state court eventually ordered that all copies of the film should be destroyed, but Wiseman’s appeal—luckily he was a lawyer—to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, resulted in the film being allowed to be shown to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in related fields.
 

 
Wiseman appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court, but got nowhere. Titicut Follies was the first film to be banned in America for a reasons other than obscenity or national security. In 1991, a Superior Court Judge allowed Titicut Follies to be released, citing the passage of time and the end of privacy issues (many of the patients were dead by then) and First Amendment concerns. On September 4, 1992, Titicut Follies was aired on PBS with a taped explanation of what audiences were about to see by Charlie Rose. A Titicut Follies DVD was released in 2007 by Wiseman’s Zipporah Films.
 

The wild movie poster by famed illustrator Alan Aldridge

Chelsea Girls was Andy Warhol’s first “commercial” success as a filmmaker. Co-directed by Warhol and Paul Morrissey, the film consists of twelve improvised vignettes (two were semi-scripted by playwright Ronald Tavel) featuring the druggy, draggy, seemingly morally-bankrupt freaks who constituted Warhol’s entourage and inner circle.

Chelsea Girls was shot in summer and fall of 1966 in the Hotel Chelsea, at Warhol’s “Factory” studio and in the apartment where the Velvet Underground lived on 3rd Street. Brigid Berlin (“The Duchess”), Nico, Mario Montez, Ondine (“The Pope”), Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Rene Richard, Eric Emerson, Gerard Malanga, filmmaker Marie Menken, Ari Boulogne (Nico’s son) a gorgeous young Mary Woronov—who danced with the Velvet Underground as part of “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable”—and others are seen in the film’s three and a quarter-hour running time (the film un-spooled on 12 separate reels). Most cast members are listed by their own names as they were essentially playing themselves.

Chelsea Girls was booked into a prestigious 600 seat uptown theater in New York and actually distributed to theaters across the country. In 1966, it’s unlikely that middle America had any idea that people like this even existed. Cinema-goers in Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington, San Diego and yes, even, Kansas City probably got their first exposure to actual drug addicts, yammering speed-freak narcissists, homosexuals, drag queens and a dominatrix when they watched Chelsea Girls. The film was even raided by the vice squad in Boston. The theater manager was arrested and later fined $2000 when a judge found him guilty of four charges of obscenity.

Rex Reed said “Chelsea Girls is a three and a half hour cesspool of vulgarity and talentless confusion which is about as interesting as the inside of a toilet bowl.” Tell us how you really feel,...

The film was presented as a split screen, running simultaneously on two projectors with alternating soundtracks. It was a mixture of B&W and color footage. Edie Sedgwick’s vignette was removed from Chelsea Girls at her insistence, but was later known as “The Apartment.” A section originally screened with Chelsea Girls called “The Closet” (about two “children” who lived in one, with Nico and Randy Bourscheidt) was cut and later shown as a separate film.
 

 
A young Roger Ebert reviewed it for The Chicago Sun-Times:

For what we have here is 3 1/2 hours of split-screen improvisation poorly photographed, hardly edited at all, employing perversion and sensation like chili sauce to disguise the aroma of the meal. Warhol has nothing to say and no technique to say it with. He simply wants to make movies, and he does: hours and hours of them. If “Chelsea Girls” had been the work of Joe Schultz of Chicago, even Warhol might have found it merely pathetic.

The key to understanding “Chelsea Girls,” and so many other products of the New York underground, is to realize that it depends upon a cult for its initial acceptance, and upon a great many provincial cult-aspirers for its commercial appeal. Because Warhol has become a social lion and the darling of the fashionable magazines, there are a great many otherwise sensible people in New York who are hesitant to bring their critical taste to bear upon his work. They make allowances for Andy that they wouldn’t make for just anybody, because Andy has his own bag and they don’t understand it but they think they should

.

Ebert hits the nail squarely on the head. Chelsea Girls is actually a fucking terrible “film.” If you view it as “art” or even as an important cultural artifact of the Sixties (it’s both) then you can give it a pass, and should, but if you’re expecting to be entertained, you need to re-calibrate your expectations. Only a few parts of the film are actually engaging (Ondine’s speed-freak monologues; Brigid Berlin poking herself with speed; the “Hanoi Hannah” section with Mary Woronov) but the rest of it is… boring.

It looks good and parts of it are “interesting” because you can only hear what’s happening on one side of the split screen and so the silent side becomes somehow more intriguing, but, oh yeah, this is a boring thing to watch. It’s still cool, but it’s boring, if that makes any sense.

Chelsea Girls has been next to impossible to see since its original release, usually screening just a few times a year around the globe. I caught it myself in the (appropriately) sleazy surroundings of London’s legendary Scala Cinema in 1984. There were probably six people there, including me. I admit to falling asleep for a bit of it, but I think everyone probably does.
 

 
This video comes from the Italian DVD that was given a very limited released in 2003. If you have any plans to watch this, I’d do it NOW because this puppy will almost certainly get pulled from YouTube.
 

 
Tom Lehrer seemed ubiquitous to me when I was a kid, but I later found out this was not exactly true. Seemed is the key word here. If you had a bunch of Tom Lehrer records (check), listened to the Dr. Demento radio show (check) and watched The Electric Company (check) then Tom Lehrer—and his voice and music—was a presence in your world. He sure was in mine and I loved, loved, loved him.

What I later discovered is that Lehrer basically hated touring, hated singing the same songs over and over and was not always a welcome guest on television shows due to his controversial—albeit hilarious—topical lyrics. Lehrer ripped racism, gored Werner von Braun and sang the Periodic Chart of the Elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song” (!) and he did it all in a quavering voice that drolly accented his wonderful comic timing.
 

 
But he didn’t do it for that long. There are actually not all that many Tom Lehrer songs, only 37 which is a pity because of how hilarious each and every one of them is. He did only 109 live performances. But still, if, as I say, your cultural diet consisted of the things I listed above, it seemed as if Lehrer was still active in show business long after he actually was.
 

 
By the late Sixties, Lehrer was tiring of show business and returned to his former life, that of a mathematician at MIT and later at UC Santa Cruz, where he still lives, retired. There was long a rumor that Lehrer dropped out from satire after Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, but he has denied this, saying he’d retired long before then anyway.
 
Lehrer’s best known song—thanks to endless spins on the Dr. Demento radio show over the decades—the darkly humorous “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” after the jump, plus an hour-long Lehrer concert from Danish TV, 1968

 
Art and death are so perfect together that the union at times is wholly symbiotic. Art is all about creation. Some artists even use birth-related terminology when creating new works, such as referring to their various creations as “my children.” Where you have birth, you must have death. Ah yes here they are folks, the bookends of our lives. Death fascinates and frightens us, which is why it can be such a huge thread in so many works of art.

Now there are common ways for death to co-mingle with art. People in their lives die and that naturally will have an effect on their art. The fear of death or even the embracing of it can also be a big ingredient too. But the artist as a man and woman being the literal bringer of death has been a pretty rare thing. You have the obvious examples, like Varg Vikernes from Mayhem and Burzum, Phil Spector and of course Charles Manson.

But to have an actual serial killer get legally released from prison because of the strength of his creative talent is practically unheard of. However that very thing happened in the early 1990’s in Austria with Johann “Jack” Unterweger aka the Poet of Death.

If ever there was one with a classic prone to serial killing childhood, Unterweger was it. His mother had been a prostitute and his father an American soldier that was long out of the picture before his son was officially in it. At some point early on, young Johann was abandoned and sent to live with his grandparents. His grandfather was an alleged severe alcoholic with violent tendencies, though Jack’s Aunt came out later on to say that he had a poor but loving upbringing. Whatever the case, he certainly had a troubled childhood that begat a very troubled young man, whose first crime was roughing up a sex worker at age 16.  It was only a matter of time that a serious transgression was bound to happen.

And happen it did, as a young woman was found dead in the woods. According to Unterweger himself, that before his first killing he had already committed numerous rapes and burglaries. It was the murder of 18 year old Margaret Schafer, whom he strangled to death with her own bra, that got him ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Where this story starts to get really weird is that going into prison, Unterweger was reportedly illiterate. While there, he began to devour book after book, educating himself, as both a reader and a writer. The even more amazing thing is that he unearthed a talent strong enough that he started to get notice from the outside world. Poems, plays and short prose began to emerge, but much like Jack Abbot before him, it was his autobiography Purgatory (Fegefeur) that got him the biggest notice and ended up being a bestseller. How many serial killers can claim to be award winning and best selling?

 
By the time he was up for parole, he had a bevy of prison reformists, writers and critics championing for his release with the reasoning that this sexual sadist and murderer had been reformed by art. This man’s intellect and creativity along with some well meaning but extremely naïve people got him out of prison and back into society.

Jack Unterweger went into prison an illiterate, poor, ex-pimp psychopathic murderer and came out a media darling and was immediately welcomed into high moving social circles. Book launches and society parties all welcomed the now stylish and handsome ex-criminal. Fegefeur even became a movie, making Unterweger one of the few serial murderers to have a writing credit on the IMDB. To anyone with any real logic about crime, it will come as absolutely no shock that prostitutes started showing up dead yet again in Vienna, a city with a usually very low crime rate towards sex workers in general.

The police suspected him immediately, but despite the surveillance, they couldn’t nail him on any suspicious behavior. Of course, Unterweger, like a lot of serial murderers was far from stupid and knew better than to do anything blatantly shady. (Well, aside from the whole murdering bit.) Also, like a lot of his fellow bloodthirsty spiritual kin, he quickly got cocky. He even challenged the police about what they were going to do about the string of fresh murders, with his bravura being displayed under the guise of a probing journalist. An act such as that either signifies brass balls or brass ignorance. In Unterweger’s case, it was a little bit of both.

Nevertheless, the police had nothing solid on him until Unterweger flew to Los Angeles for research on an article about crime for a local Austrian magazine. During this five week period, the killings in Vienna stopped and suddenly three prostitutes were found strangled with their own garments in the City of Lost Angels. What followed after this was a fascinating case of hubris and fear, with the collaborative efforts of the Austrian police and the LAPD ultimately sealing Unterweger’s fate. He was convicted of murdering 9 women and was sent to prison, where he hung himself with some string he pulled out of his jumpsuit. The ultimate irony was that he utilized the very knot that he had used to murder so many women on himself.

 
There is something else tied to this figure that makes the story even stranger, all thanks to the very unlikely form of Austrian pop star Falco. In 1985, he released his massively successful Falco 3 album, which included his biggest known song Rock Me Amadeus. Also on that album was a creepy and completely overlooked in the US pop song called Jeanny. This song, inspired by the Unterweger murders, went all the way to number one in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands. All that despite being banned by some radio stations and being protested by various groups, including some misinformed “feminists.”

 
Falco is an underrated artist, especially in this country where he pretty much is regarded as a “one-hit wonder,” despite having some moderate success with both Der Kommisaar and Vienna Calling. He did some really strange things under the pop music umbrella that still makes him stand out and Jeanny is further proof of this. The chorus is in English while the spoken word parts are in German, giving the listener a weird dysphoria especially given how near desperate sounding the speaker sounds. Just one look at the lyrics should tell you that this is not your momma’s pop tune:

NOTE: Lines in italics were in English in the original German version.
Jeanny, Jeanny…

[spoken] Newsflash, newsflash…

“Official government reports…”

Jeanny, Jeanny…

Jeanny, come, come on
Stand up please
You’re getting all wet
It’s getting late, come
We must leave here
Out of the woods
Don’t you understand?

Where is your shoe?
You lost it
When I had to show you the way
Which of us lost?
You, yourself?
I, myself?
Or… we ourselves?

Jeanny, quit livin’ on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
Such a lonely little girl in a cold, cold world
There’s someone who needs you
Jeanny quit livin’ on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
You’re lost in the night
Don’t wanna struggle and fight
There’s someone who needs you

It’s cold
We must leave here
Come
Your lipstick is smeared
You bought it and
And I saw it
Too much red on your lips
And you said, “Leave me alone”
But I saw right through you
Eyes say more than words
You need me, don’t you, hmmmh?
Everyone knows, that we’re together
From today,
Now I can hear them, they are coming!

They’re coming!
They are coming to get you.
They won’t find you.
Nobody will find you!
You’re with me.

Jeanny quit livin’ on dreams…

[spoken] Newsflash:
In the last months the number of missing persons has dramatically increased. The latest account from the local police reports another tragic case. It is a matter of a nineteen year old girl who was last seen two weeks ago. The police have not excluded the possibility that a crime has been committed.

Jeanny…

Jeanny, quit livin’ on dreams…

Pleasant dreams, right? The best part is that the video is equally unsettling with Falco playing the part of the predator. For anyone used to seeing the man all suave and dapper will be very surprised as he lets go of the pop ego and immerses himself into character. It’s quite reminiscent of Golden Earring’s brilliant and disturbing clip for When the Lady Smiles sans the black humor. There’s no humor here to cushion just subtle queasiness, especially when thinking about the true crime connection to boot.

Sadly, Falco left this plane on February 6th, 1998 after having a fatal auto collision in the Dominican Republic. But he got to leave behind a truly special thumbprint in the pop landscape of the 80’s. It’s sad to think of some of the crap that hit it big in the US while Jeanny was darkening up the European airwaves and dancefloors.

As for Jack Unterweger, perhaps one of the best lessons that one can learn from this is the importance of separating the art from the artists. Phil Spector is a genius that forever changed the soundscape of music but he is also an egomaniacal, abusive individual who murdered Lana Clarkson. Roman Polanski has made some of the best films in the past fifty years but he also drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. And despite what the Modern Lovers claim, a lot of people called Pablo Picasso an asshole. Every human being on this planet is capable of great acts of kindness and beauty as well as total horror. There are no born monsters, just man-made ones.

 
Even the most hardcore rock snob has probably never heard of the female punk band, Snatch. If they have it’s usually in connection with Brian Eno, who they recorded an amazing song about the Red Army Faction with in 1978 (“R.A.F.” was the b-side of the “King’s Lead Hat” single). I discovered them when the elaborate picture sleeve of “All I Want” jumped out at me as I flipped through a well-curated box of 45s at my friend Nate Cimmino’s apartment in the East Village in the mid-1980s. The cover, scuffed and reproduced poorly here, was really something, gold-gilded text and faux silk portraits of hottie punkettes Patti Palladin on one side and Judy Nylon on the other. “They sound like The Shangri-las if they’d have been crack smokers, I think you’ll really like them!” he said.

Nate certainly knew my taste in music! I promptly spent the next few years searching in vain for their ultra rare records. Eventually I found them all. And they’re on the Internet now, of course, so you can check them out for yourself. There is not a whole lot written about them that I can find. They were two ex-pat American girls living in London and Greg Shaw of Bomp Records released their first single in 1976. They recorded sporadically until 1980 and released one compilation album in 1983.

Judy Nylon was probably Brian Eno’s girlfriend (I think we can assume that “Back in Judy’s Jungle” is about her) at some point, and went on to make an album in 1982 with Adrian Sherwood called Pal Judy. Patti Palladin worked with the Flying Lizards and later recorded an incredible album of duets with ex-New York Doll Johnny Thunders titled Copy Cats. It’s one of my top favorite albums of all time and some of the very best music Thunders ever made.

Judy Nylon is also credited by Eno as helping him “discover” ambient music:

“My friend Judy Nylon visited me and brought me a record of eighteenth-century harp music. After she had gone, and with some considerable difficulty, I put on the record (Eno had just been released from the hospital and was bedridden). Having laid down, I realized that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn’t the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music-as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience. It is for this reason that I suggest listening to my pieces at comparatively low levels, even to the extent that it frequently falls below the threshold of audibility.”

 

 
A super rare video recording of Snatch onstage at Hurrah in 1979. This came from Paul Tschinkel’s incredible NYC public access TV show Innertube:
 

 
“All I Want”:
 

 
“R.A.F.” with Brian Eno:
 

 
“Black Market” (1980)
 

 
Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin cover Elvis’s “Crawfish” (from King Creole) for their Copy Cats album: Poor quality music video here.
 

 
“Amputee” (1976)
 

 
In this fascinating but (far too) short clip, Alan Moore gives an introduction to the work of artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), who he describes as “one of the most over-looked figures in British art history”. The obituaries for Spare’s death remarked “England had lost one of its best ever nude study artist.” Nearly sixty years after his death,  little is known about the artist outside of knowledgeable and specialist circles.

But Spare wasn’t only an incredible artist, as Moore points out, he was also “possibly the greatest English magician of the twentieth century.”

“I think that Magic offers the artist a new way of looking at their consciousness, and of looking at where they get their ideas from.”

Spare was an artistic prodigy, who was the youngest exhibitor at the Royal Academy, London. At the same time, he was developing his own esoteric beliefs, which brought him into contact with Aleister Crowley, and a relationship of sorts began, with Spare contributing illustrations to Crowley’s magazine Equinox. However, the friendship foundered and Spare alluded to Crowley in his book The Book of Pleasure:

“Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run! Is it by symbolising we become the symbolised? Were I to crown myself King, should I be King? Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity. These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels.”

Yet Spare did not give up on magic completely, rather he began his own particular mix of “repressed magic”, which fed directly into his art work. Spare became known for his “automatic drawing” - allowing himself to act as a medium to spirits to guide his pencil, creating inter-twined images of figures and faces on a page.

There are many different stories (some more incredible than others) about Spare and his involvement with magic and the spirit world. He was said to have the power of divination and premonition, and could accurately predict events long before they took place. He was also know for his dialog with “spirits” and “demons”, and after a fire at his studio, he fell under a mysterious ailment which left him unable to paint for 5 years.

Spare’s work had some odd admirers, in particular Adolf Hitler, who asked him to paint his portrait. Spare refused believing Hitler to be evil, and if he were a Superman, Spare was claimed to have said in reply, then he would prefer to live as an animal.

A biography on Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker was published last year, and is now something of a collector’s item, while a small exhibition of his work was recently held in Glasgow.
 

 
Previously on DM

And now for our scheduled interruption courtesy of Mr. Austin Osman Spare

 
To perfect a French-Canadian accent for his role in the 1966 film The Trap, Oliver Reed spent several days around the docks and bars of Montreal. One would suspect the great Hell-raiser spent most of that time in the bars, rather than around. However, the film company were smart enough to ensure Ollie didn’t spend too much time in the bars, and assigned a local to read him newspapers and teach him the lingo.

That was the thing about Reed - he was a great actor, but his life and work was over-shadowed by his off-screen excesses - even this interview from the set of The Trap ends up on his brawling. Of course, it made him a lovable rogue and, yes, at times a terrible bore, but the main affect was to lower the appreciation his performances deserved. Let’s be clear, he never had the critical acclaim his fellow mavericks Burton, O’Toole, Harris or Hurt achieved, even when Reed regularly proved himself to be a far better film actor, or at the very least their equal.  From early fodder like Curse of the Werewolf through Paranoiac to his collaborations with Ken Russell (The Debussy Film, Women in Love, The Devils) and Michael Winner (Hannibal Brooks, The Jokers, I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name) Reed was an exceptional actor.

Even take for example, his performance in The Trap - a movie with primarily two actors - Reed as a trapper who unwillingly takes a mute girl, Rita Tushingham, as his wife in, to live together in the remotest wilds of Canada, and what happens when he falls into a bear trap - and watch how he delivered a complete range of emotions that carried the film beyond its very slim storyline. Tushingham is equally as good, and their pairing works well.

Reed died too soon, and too young. But fuck it, he left behind a major body of work, which still needs to be properly assessed. And let’s not forget, he died pissed and arm-wrestling in his favored place - the bar.
 

 
Previously on DM

When Oliver Reed Met Keith Moon

 
It’s a lovely song but…

This is sort of like the sonic equivalent of watching an aquarium full of tropical fish for hours. I wonder what kind of effect playing this for days might have in a greenhouse. Would flowers bloom more fully and plants grow taller and greener or would they just die a slow and melancholic death?

 
On the occasion of the publication of William Hjortsberg’s extraordinary 900 page biography of Richard Brautigan, Jubilee Hitchhiker,  I am sharing something I posted awhile ago on Dangerous Minds:

“I was 15 when I first read a book by Richard Brautigan. It was called A Confederate General From Big Sur . I borrowed the book from my friend Joseph, a free spirited guy two years older than me who had a beard and rolled his own cigarettes. Though he looked like one, Joseph wasn’t a hippie. Hippies were part of a movement and Joseph wasn’t a joiner. In the small town in Virgina where we grew up, Joseph was completely his own man, a suburban teenage Zen monk who seemed ancient at the age of 17. It made perfect sense that he would be the guy to turn me on to Brautigan. They shared common traits: a clarity of mind, a sharp sense of humor and a deep love for language. Joseph kept a notebook with him at all times in which he wrote short stories, poems and haiku.

In this moment of recalling Joseph, I am convinced he was as close to being enlightened as any teenager could be in America in 1966. I wonder where he is today and what he’s reading.

Joseph, Brautigan, Jack Kerouac and The Doors were my saviors in the year of the Summer Of Love. I was stuck in the suburbs, surrounded by jocks and greasers, completely alone in my world of beatnik books and a meerschaum pipe full of banana peel. It was the year I read Brautigan’s second book Trout Fishing In America and the year that I left home for San Francisco. Joseph was there and I needed to make the connection with the Bodhisattva of the ‘burbs.

Those were the days when a book or a record album could change your life. If literature had a Beatles, its name was Richard Brautigan. It comes as no surprise that John Lennon was a Brautigan fan. They both had a whimsical point of view that started in the square inch field and expanded into the cosmos.

In 1968, I lived inside of a parachute inside of a dance hall in a ghost town near Los Gatos, California. It was my summer of In Watermelon Sugar. I read that magical book repeatedly (my psychedelic New Testament) and lived a simple life of bathing in waterfalls, eating brown rice and scarfing down countless tabs of Benzedrine (in honor of my hero Jack Kerouac) while trying to write with the ease and purity of Brautigan. I discovered that ease ain’t easy (particularly when you’re wired to the gills) and purity is near impossible. Really good writers make writing seem so natural that we all think we can do it. And then we try and soon discover just how hard it is to take energy from where you get it through the word to the reader without losing any immediacy in the process of transference. Brautigan’s poems and prose had this uncanny ability to gently slap you upside the head while maintaining a Basho-like quality of disappearing into what is being described - you saw the words become transparent as they melted into watermelon sugar. Watermelon sugar was Brautigan’s river Tao, a sweet subtle liquid that flowed through the pink flesh of our being.

William Carlos Williams famously wrote “no ideas but in things” and embodied that thought in poems like “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Brautigan wrote from a similar point of view - a kind of American Zen that was ordinary and transcendental, modern and prophetic…

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

One of the things that was most compelling and inspiring for a young would-be writer like myself about Brautigan’s books were their covers. With every new book that Richard published there was always an attractive bohemian woman on the cover. It was as though Richard was sending a message to all the reclusive teenybopper poets in the world that said “write poetry and you will get laid.” And it was true. I would sit in the Mediterranean Cafe on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley with my journal unfolded before me and invariably a young flower child would approach and ask if I were a poet. A response of “yes” would often lead to a fuck fest in my attic apartment on Channing Way. In the sixties being an artist/intellectual had the same aphrodisiac qualities associated with cocaine and Rolex watches in the 80s. Being smart was sexy.

For many of us, Brautigan was a door into a consciousness that was liberating in its playfulness and here and nowness. Reading Brautigan is like taking a pure hit of oxygen. Things sparkle. There is a sense of boundless delight and eroticism in his prose and poetry - a promise of the unspeakable, where language transcends itself.

Brautigan, now more than ever.”  February 2, 2011.

You can purchase Jubilee Hitchhiker here. If you’re a Brautigan fan, you’ll find it an immersive and deeply satisfying trip. It took Hjortsberg, who knew Brautigan well,  20 years to write the book and during his research he discovered unpublished Brautigan writings that had been locked in a safe-deposit box in Eugene, Oregon for 30 years. This is a gift from the poetry gods.

The following recordings of Brautigan reading were intended to be released on Zapple records, a spinoff of The Beatles Apple label. But the project was never fully realized. Harvest Records released them as Listening To Brautigan in 1973.
 

 
Would you believe me if I told you that a film involving ESP, serial murder, LSD experiments, a disfigured ladies man who is strongly clairvoyant, a fairytale witch and a strong undercurrent of nihilism, actually exists? Well, believe, nonbelievers, because it does, all in the form of the 1967 Herschell Gordon Lewis film, Something Weird. Nothing, maybe not even my description above, can adequately prepare you for this film.

The film opens up with a woman walking in a deserted looking cement alleyway, the kind you would need a razor to scrape clean. The camera is angled where we initially only see her legs, but think less sexy and more ominous. The sparse Jazz soundtrack, pregnant like a storm cloud,  underscores the impending sense of doom. Sure enough, another pair of legs come into the picture, black-slack clad and belonging to a man, who immediately starts to give chase. There’s a struggle and then a collapse, with the woman’s whole form slumping into frame, blank eyed, bloodied and frozen with the trauma that is death. It might be simple in set up, but this is one of the ugliest cinematic death scenes period. It actually shocked me the first time around, especially since I was mentally prepared and outright anticipating the Grand Guignol on strychnine violence that has earned Lewis the nickname, “The Godfather of Gore.” I was not, however, prepared for the stark ugliness and restrained violence, giving the former an even stronger impact. The audio only adds to this, depriving the audience of expected sounds, like screaming, footsteps and threatening words. Instead, it’s just the disjointed harsh imagery and one woeful jazz bass line.

 
Like a cupful of cold water to your face, there’s an immediate cut to two men practicing karate, complete with an overly loud yell. After an impressive demonstration, the film pinballs to an electrician, getting hit by a broken power line cable and then falling down to the ground, right to his death. Another man, Cronin “Mitch” Mitchell (Tony McCabe), gets hit in the face with the same cable. Unlike the fellow before him, Mitch lives but part of his face ends up horribly disfigured. The once boyish man is now reduced to borderline accosting his nurse and weeping in the bathroom, looking horrified at what his face has become. However, some curses beget gifts, and Mitch has now mysteriously attained extraordinarily strong powers of clairvoyance.

Despite his new gift, Mitch spends his time with his face mostly swathed in thin black fabric and dark sunglasses, working as a dime-store psychic. (Well, more accurately, a $2 one.) But life has more twists in store for our unlikely hero, which soon come in the form of a cackling, decrepit old woman. Turns out that the old biddy is actually a witch (Mudite Arums, yes that is how she is billed), as in any generic fairy tale or one of the more subdued Sid & Marty Krofft efforts. (Proof, there is a pouty red mouth painted on one of her knees, for no discernible reason.)

 
She notes what a pretty face he had before the accident and offers him a deal; get his old, flaw-free visage back and become her lover. Naturally, Mitch is aghast at the suggestion but is forced to rethink his reaction when, almost like a free sample, she magically removes all of the scar and tissue damage. It’s not long before he gets to test it out, coming to the rescue of a pretty, blue-eyed and potentially Quaaluded out damsel at a swanky restaurant. After he manages to shake one (fantastically) drunk harasser from her table, and then sweet talks her into coming home with him. As he swoops in for the seductive kill, the lovely Ellen (Elizabeth Lee) transforms into the Witch, who finds the whole thing hilarious, laughing even as she beckons him to fulfill his end of the bargain, which he does.

Meanwhile, there is a killer still on the loose, getting his next victim by murdering her with a primitive but effective flame thrower. (All in that same ugly, bombed out looking cement alley.) The police, with nary a lead in sight, get both Mitchell and Dr. Jordan (William Brooker), a Federal agent, on the case. Everyone is skeptical of Mitch, whose psychic prowess has now gained him national TV exposure. A small demonstration at the station, however, quells all but Jordan, prompting the Chief to invite Mitch and his companion/secretary, Ellen, to a shindig he is throwing at his house. The party’s a hit, with a skeptical Jordan zeroing in on Ellen, while Mitch starts to make some friendly talk with the Chief’s raven haired wife.

 
It’s only a matter of time that the party goers want to see a display of Mitch’s powers. In lieu of the usual psychic parlor tricks, the crowd, and the Chief’s wife in particular, request that he communes with the dead. (Yeah, that always seems like a good idea for a party!) Needless to say, it doesn’t go well, with Mitch levitating and then momentarily passing out. Turns out, his powers are a little too good, with the session unleashing a ghost, a serene looking bride, who is nevertheless scaring the parishioners at a local church. After being begged by the Reverend to at least check it out, Mitch agrees, purely on the grounds that no one mentions it to Ellen.

The ghost indeed shows up, grabbing his hand as they smile at each other before she completely disappears. Potential foreshadowing? You will soon be the judge and jury.

 
While Mitch is helping the living and the dead, Dr. Jordan continues his wooing of Ellen, with semi-results in that he is able to meet her for drinks and even defend the both of them from some local (and suspiciously clean-cut) thugs, best utilizing his chop-suey skills. Jordan, however, loses major points for coming about * this * close to sexually assaulting Ellen. At this point Mitch is canoodling with the Chief’s wife but psychically senses that his secret Hag is needing him. All of this results in one of the silliest bordering on surreal scenes in the whole film, with Jordan being attacked by his very own blanket! Whatever image is running in your head right at this very second is undoubtedly and eerily close to the reality. For better or worse, though, Jordan wins the fight of man versus textile fabric.

 
It’s only going to get even more strange, as Mitch decides to test out some government grade LSD that Jordan had given him earlier in the film. His red-soaked vision at first takes him through a desolate landscape, chasing Ellen who transforms into the cackling witch. He is able to track down the killer, in the same cement hell-alley that the women had been slaughtered in. The murderer bellows “I cannot be stopped!” before shooting Mitch in the head and our hero collapses to the ground, with the look of sad loss and defeat in his waning eyes. Believing the killer to be Detective Maddox after his vision, Mitch calls the department, putting the officers and Jordan on alert.

 
It’s a sunny afternoon and Mitchell is walking down the street. Before he can even finish ogling a curvy redhead, he gets hit with a sniper bullet, to the head, and our protagonist, our hero, is murdered before us. Jordan, taking his sweet time, finally catches up to Maddox, whom we’re never a 100% sure is the real killer, and murders him before the police can catch him. He is questioned on why he didn’t get to Mitchell sooner and potentially save his life. Jordan hollowly defends himself, only to break down later in the evening to Ellen, claiming that he loves her and wanted her all to himself. This prompts a delighted Ellen to reveal her true self, forcing the la ronde effect to come into play, with Jordan becoming disfigured with the Hag behind him, laughing knowingly.

 
Something Weird is truly something else, marking a truly layered note in the career of Herschell Gordon Lewis. For your cult film lovers, undoubtedly you’re nodding your head with recognition, perhaps even admiration, at the name of one HG Lewis. Rightfully dubbed “The Godfather of Gore,” Lewis helped usher in a new age of gooey horror, starting way back in the early 1960’s. A lot of his films, ranging from the game changer Blood Feast to The Gore Gore Girls, often played out like Grand Guignol on amphetamines. Despite the fact that the man also made biker films (the incredible She Devils on Wheels), kids films (Jimmy, The Boy Wonder) and sexploitation films (Suburban Roulette), the gore factor to this day is often the first thing that people in the know think of when they hear the name of HG Lewis.

But everything you think you know goes out the door with Something Weird. There is little to no gore, it is more sadly bleak, with our hero killed, a serial killer potentially still loose and the same old strange cycle of life just going on and on. But on top of all that, is an absolutely solid performance from Tony McCabe as Mitch. McCabe, who passed away under unknown circumstances only a year after “Something Weird” came out, is genuinely nuanced and likable. Mitch is no saint but that is part of his charm. He’s a bit of a ladies man whose basic core is good. It’s a damn shame that McCabe’s career was cut so short, since he shows incredible potential and charisma here.

Part of the beauty of Something Weird is that this is a film that clamps its fists down and refuses to be categorized. The closest one could come would be to call it a “nihilistic fairy tale,” which would be halfway honest to the spirit of the fairy tale genre pre-Disney. But even that only paints the broadest of pictures. Some will automatically detest it for not being what they expect but the best art is often the type that defies expectations. Boxes are meant to not only be opened but then ripped apart and burned.

Something Weird is available at Amazon and also from the legendary video company that took its name from the film, Something Weird Video.

 
Sometimes there comes along a director, whose talent is so apparent that you wonder why they’re not more famous. Glenn McQuaid is such a director, and his first feature, I Sell the Dead, in 2008, offered everything I want from a horror film.

It was my brother who tapped me in to Mr. McQuaid’s work. My brother and I had grown-up under the spell of the horror films produced by Universal in the 1930s and 1940s (with Karloff and Lugosi, and Lon Chaney jnr.), and Hammer films (with Cushing and Lee) from the fifties and sixties. Of course there were also the Vincent Price and Roger Corman collaborations, as well as the Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg anthology films of the 1960s and ‘70s.

We also had a love of stories by Dennis Wheatley (in particular his series of classic horror novels published under his Library of the Occult - Stoker, Shelley, ”Carnaki, the Ghost Finder”, and Guy Endore), and the tales of terror penned by Poe, Blackwood and Bloch.

My brother raved about I Sell the Dead, and when I saw it I had to agree. Written and directed by McQuaid, it stars Larry Fessenden, Dominic Monaghan, Ron Perlman and Angus (Phantasm) Scrimm, and is near perfect - a witty, clever and engaging story, presented in the style of the best, classic horror film. I was smitten, the same way I was when Boris Karloff as the Monster first walked backwards into the laboratory; or by Oliver Reed when he turned into a werewolf. McQuaid knows his genre and its cinematic traditions.

For his next film, McQuaid is one of the directors (alongside David Bruckner, Radio Silence, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, and Adam Wingard ) of the soon to be released anthology film, V/H/S, for which he wrote an directed the “unconventional killer-in-the-woods chiller Tuesday The 17th”. When V/H/S previewed at the Sundance Film Festival, it received the kind of exposure of which publicists dream.

At its screening two audience members fled in terror – one fainted, one puked. The last time I recall such a response was for The Exorcist in 1973, where there were reports of fainting, vomiting, and even an alleged possession.

When was shown at SXSW, V/H/S was described as ”an incredibly entertaining film that succeeds in being humorous, sexy, gross and scary as fuck.” While Dead Central gave it 5/5.

Though all the directors have been praised for the quality of their films, the reviews have singled out McQuaid for the excellence and originality of his contribution.

Before all this kicked off, I contacted Glenn McQuaid to organize an interview. Over the following weeks emails went back-and-forth, until the following arrived. The interview covers Mr McQuaid’s background, his influences, early work, The Resurrection Apprentice, working with Larry Fessenden, Ron Perlman and Dominic Monaghan on I Sell the Dead, to V/H/S.
 

 
The full interview with Glenn McQuaid, after the jump….