Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002)

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Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: W. Boyd Ford

Cast: J.P. Delahoussaye as Fuad Ramses III; John McConnell as Detective Dave Loomis; Mark McLachlan as Detective Mike Myers; Melissa Morgan as Mrs. Lampley; Toni Wynne as Tiffani Lampley; Chris Mauer as Mr. Lampley; Christy Brown as Bambi Deere; Christina Cuenca as Misti Morning; Michelle Miller as Laci Hundees; Kristi Polit as Trixi Treater

Synopsis: Decades after the events of Blood Feast (1963), in which his grandfather slaughtered women to create the titular feast for goddess Ishtar, grandson Fuad Ramses III (J.P. Delahoussaye) inherits the old catering store, only for the statue of the Babylonian goddess to immediate possess him, commanding him towards the desire to recreate the blood feast again for the wedding celebration of Tiffani Lampley (Toni Wynne) and Detective Mike Myers (Mark McLachlan).

There is an irony to be had that Herschell Gordon Lewis, never one to stay modest, confessed his contempt (in light heartedness mind) to the idea of art minded cinema. The irony was that, however, you could tell a directorial trademark to his films even if they were made just for money, idiosyncrasies to how he made his films and his sense of humour to making them. This is more so the case as, when the long awaited sequel to Blood Feast came about, his most well known film, he would afterwards claim that it was never really his own project despite directing it and collaborating with his old producer colleague David F. Friedman. It feels the case, this sequel instead feeling like it was put together with an entirely different mentality drawn from the subterranean fringe culture that embraced his films in the first place.

It is definitely an interesting film for him, less a sequel than a remake set in the same world, but between the psychobilly music by Southern Culture on the Skids, and its jokey (and frankly weird) tone, it's more a cultural signpost of alt-culture of the time of psychotronic cinema, rockabilly revival and early 2000s softcore titillation. It also means Blood Feast 2 is a tangent fest, the original film's premise replayed longer and with irony, liable to be off-putting in how much it dawdles on subjects unless you relent and accept those tangents are more interesting than the plot. Normally this type of ironic dithering about is why this kind of low budget genre cinema from the 2000s onwards is off-putting for me, but it's a peculiar experience instead here. It never becomes so-bad-its-good, thankfully, but is the kind of film, to keep you on your toes, where one of the police detectives (the older veteran obsessed with food) suddenly breaks out into a weather report in front of a map just for one moment. It's never brought up again and such odd turns are numerous.

It's an odd world as a result, barely stringing together a simple plot but with these weirdly attempted tries at humour actually weirdly inspired, closer to the camp mentality an overt parody from this period like Psycho Beach Party (2000) had all whilst still between playing the plot straight as possible in spite of this tone. It helps the broad characters, one note, are at least fleshed out in terms of joke characters. Our food obsessed cop, sceptic about Ramses III being the culprit, and his younger partner, obsessed to bag Ramses III for the sudden string of murders taking place, kept alive as a joke as they when they switch sides, and because of the female secretary in the office turns out to be the smartest and most confident person in the room between. The bride's mother, who is an overt stereotype for mother-in-law jokes. Legendary film maker John Waters in a cameo as a Catholic priest, a life's goal as a fan of Lewis' work playing as tasteless a joke in the role he'd have been game for and visibly relishes.

And then there's J.P. Delahoussaye as Ramses III, who at first is actually given a great performance in comparison to other cast members; at least a better performance than Mal Arnold as the original Ramses from the first Blood Feast, a "special" performance in itself. Then things change, and whilst I apologise for the obscurer pop culture reference, it's the exact comparison to what Delahoussaye's performance style becomes soon into the film; in the mid 2010s a veteran of American professional wrestling named Matt Hardy created an idiosyncratic persona, an ageless mad entity obsessed with riding lawnmowers and shooting fireworks at his own brother, to do something fresh, a "broken" character for a company called Impact Wrestling with a Cruella De Vil white streak in his grown out hair, and among the many other deliberately weird things using a manner of speech that can be described as Shakespearian wall chewing, gravitas of the hammiest sort Delahoussaye a decade earlier uses in Blood Feast 2 for humorous bombast.

It fits the film, one which saddles itself between this intentional humour and splatter, the raison d'être of Lewis' film. The original Blood Feast, despite its quirky kitsch, is important because it created the splatter genre of horror, back when on a limited budget Lewis had to use a cow's tongue and fake blood for the initial gore sequence. Decades later, and on the cusp of the new century, splatter and gooey special effects became more over the top and available in lowest budgeted productions. This is seen metaphorically here in how the main practical effects designer is Joe Castro, the director of the low budget series of Terror Toons films started the same year as Blood Feast II, the third one of the last works Lewis did before his death playing himself as the narrator of gristly reinterpretations of fairy tales. The gore in Lewis' older films, even as sleazy a later work like The Gore Gore Girls (1972), was crude and deliberately silly even if utterly revolting; the same is the case here where, despite how gruesome it is, there are overtly farcical details like Ramses III using kitchen implements or the infamous scene of someone's face being peeled off, the skull underneath still looking around like a perverse animatronic. The gore's most accomplished here, which is a humourous thought to consider, which arguably still keeps the sense of ickiness to it even when Delahoussaye is chewing the walls too.

At this point, I do have to deal with the softcore nature of the film which is the aspect which jars immensely; even whilst Lewis made nudie cuties before he made gore films, and at least one porn film he denied making, Blood Feast II at times feels like it was a 2000s softcore film meshed in DNA with a splatter film in a horrible teleportation machine accident. Now admittedly this is a film when most of the victims of these gore scenes are women, but the softcore nudity is a caveat in itself. This is to be minded in that, thankfully, we live in a world where we realise women are just as obsessed with gore films, cult and outlandish music, and very different views of good taste so there's a greater sense of complexity to the gaze a viewer has with a film which is neglected badly. It does however mean I would like a woman's perspective on a film like this, especially if she is someone who would actually defend these types of exploitation films, many in existence who are professional or amateur writers about such filmmakers like Lewis.

The specific type of softcore here is I can pin point to the early 2000s straight-to-DVD film, like Jim Wynorski's Busty Cops (2004), which became common on the lower shelves of even British DVD rental stores and those I admit freely I have seen a few of, like the aforementioned one*. Films which are on the verge of porn and are very statically shot even before they get to the nudity; films, from the few I've seen, the kind that Misty Mundae (real name Erin Brown) starred in, which were low budget and in many cases strange. Its the same here to the point of being pointless filler, where nude scenes are paraded in their own separate space, where a woman wanders a house very naked to Devil's Stompin' Ground by Southern Culture..., or when the bride and her bridesmaids decide to have a lingerie party for some unknown reason. It's this sledgehammer subtly with the material which is the one thing which may put off many rather than the gore or the strange humour.

Eventually the film's strangeness becomes compelling. One of the strangest running gags compels this opinion from me - in which a minor character dies and their body inexplicably starts popping up in future scenes, even at the wedding reception at the end of the film. There is a sense of the film being self aware of itself and trying to top what it did previously how genuinely eccentric it can be. Even one of those nude scenes, for the police secretary, is played as a bizarre dream for one of the police where her breasts become two iced deserts and for her, when he wakes, to chastise him. What in any other case would be a sloppy early 2000s production, a predecessor to Neo-Grindhouse in being too ironic and not taking itself seriously, instead in this case is camper than a boy scout conventional and genuine in its weirdness. In spite of the visible, overlong mess, that actually becomes the film's greatest virtue. Obviously, its alien to Lewis' films entirely, but it's a curious piece in his career because of this.

Abstract Spectrum: Camp/Eccentric/Grotesque/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

An outlier in the career of Herschell Gordon Lewis's filmography; also not as easily available as once it was when, thankfully learning where the song comes from and what it is, one of its songs used to play on the trailer for Arrow Video's promo reel in their early days. Blood Feast II does feel like a feast, a vast contrast to the quick and sudden shocks of luridness of the director's heyday but a long, peculiar thing. It requires being a hardcore fan of the legendary gore meister to appreciate, but God it's a curious thing to witness.

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* And that particularly example, still irredeemable, did show how bizarre these films could get, with random nude egg breaking in a group shower and a talking lama as a police chief. No, I'm not making any of that up either.

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Non-Abstract Review: HI-8 (Horror Independents) (2014)

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Directors: Various

Screenplay: Ron Bonk, Donald Farmer, Matt Hill, Alaine Huntington, Marcus Koch, Tim Ritter Todd Sheets, Brad Sykes

Cast: Various

Synopsis: Gathering together low/no budget filmmakers, HI-8 presents a series of shorts tied around a series of rules, and in tribute to shot-on-video genre film making, letting legends in the genre and newcomers create a variety of stories.

HI-8 is another anthology film from when, the early 2010s, they proved to be very marketable from The ABCs of Death to VHS franchise, and yet in this particular case there's the spectre of low budget filmmaking specifically from the eighties and nineties boom in shot-on-video, or very lo-fi productions, which is the influence over the segments. Among the many rules this anthology demanded from its directors, included in the end credits, includes no CGI or green screen, no modern filmmaking techniques, restrictions in areas like lighting, and that the films could only be shot on VHS, Hi-8, Digital 8, or Mini-DV. As a premise, its sound and the restrictions at play are fascinating to consider the potential of in terms of what they force upon the participants. This is especially as the individuals involved also include pioneers from that era, whose low budget productions gained a tribute like this decades later, alongside those who started in the nineties and the Millennium, a throwback which goes as far as include early pictures of everyone in their youths for a nostalgic emphasis.

The question to still ask, in a world where these films are cherished, is the whole issue that anthologies can be divisive for many in their quality per segment. I openly admit, positively, I like anthologies to the point even the lesser quality segments eventually grow in virtue just from the experience of the entire production. In particular as someone fond of these no-budget films I argue that in any length they have the advantage of 1) being sympathetic just for people trying to make their own films on very limited resources, 2) the unexpected cultural richness as many of these films (like here) have to use local actors and settings, and 3) they can be utterly weird and surreal on purpose and/or by accident. Anthologies however by their nature are an unpredictable thing due to multiple separate voices being put together.

HI-8 does have too many segments; the shorts (despite being very short) are affected by the lack of a clearly trajectory, as like The ABCs of Death following all the letters of the alphabet, to keep a pace to. Some of these segments could've done with a more fleshed out length - case in point Switchblade Insane by Tim Ritter, one of the eighties pioneers of films like Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness (1986), which is a troubling but fascinating idea of a wife who realises her husband is a serial rapist murderer but joins him on his ventures as an engaged participant with voyeuristic tendencies. It's disturbing, lurid and explicit, HI-8 not holding back in tastelessness, but it's an idea initially of interest as its entirely from said wife, watching in another care as he has a victim, following her perspective for a dark narrative especially as he is a misogynist with a distorted view of clearing the world of "dirty" women. If it has been longer, it might've avoided to crass and pointless twist ending, which doesn't work, and be forced to try a different ending which turns this unsettling premise into something fleshed out.

Thankfully we get A Very Bad Situation by Marcus Koch and The Tape by Tony Masiello afterwards back to back which fit the idea of these films and their lengths; interestingly Koch is more known for his special effects work on low budget films, while Masiello is a visual effects creator whose worked also on low budget films but also the 3D versions of major blockbusters. A Very Bad Situation, starts with a news montage of an alien invasion only to turn into a paranoid chamber piece in which three people locked in a garage become four, everything I hoped for in SOV cinema in how the story is easily done in a lower budgeted anthology and accomplished well, obvious in plot but carefully together, having the advantage too for a SOV film that you' have a clever practical effects artist wanting to be involved and present a ridiculous gore effect to end it on a high note. I wouldn't be surprised if Koch himself was involved with the exclamation inducing effects too.

The Tape, meanwhile, is the nod of realisation that SOV horror fans or people like myself are the ones who watch a film like HI-8 in the first place and get a winking sense of humour from this fact, an employee of a closing independent video store (cueing a celebratory pissing over Blockbuster, who closed in real life first) who finds a mysterious tape and becomes fixed on its gore like The King in Yellow did for book enthusiasts. It's a purring congratulatory ode to gore SOV films, which yet makes jokes about it when the protagonist's girlfriend is completely baffled by the lead's proclamation that it's the best film since Citizen Kane (1941). It also leads to a path of madness, at least an ill-advised decision to try to find its creator whose flesh mask and walls covered in plastic bin bags gives away an unconventional lifestyle. Here there's a point to be made of the equalitarian nature of no budget genre cinema, our lead a larger figured man, his girlfriend raising her eyebrows at all this a larger figured (but tattooed) woman who, in one of the funniest moments, attempts to seduce him only for him to still be watching the mysterious tape during sex. Even by the end of the 2010s, who is onscreen in most mainstream cinema is a very specific, biased idealism whilst there has always been, due to SOV cinema casting being more reliant on friends and willing participants, a greater sense of community. Even Genre Bending, a controversial segment I will get to later, casts a larger figured actress as the lead alongside two male actors of very different body proportions, which, despite that film playing into intentionally offensive humour, is still more progressive than many mainstream million dollar productions.

From http://www.filmmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/hi8.jpg

Unfortunately after The Tape is where HI-8 starts to collapse with a sense of exasperation and feeling its length to a detriment. Ron Bonk's Gang Them Style, premise wise, is inspired in which a tough guy from an eighties John Carpenter film tries to rescue his grandmother and the citizens of a retirement home from a zombie outbreak, all with the issue that (with people with mobility problems) even where he parked the car is an immediate problem. The issue is that, out of my own preference, the short immediate signals its intentions to have its humour almost entirely about pop culture references just from the title being a riff on Psy's Gangnam Style, a South Korean pop song which unexpectedly became a global phenomenon even in the West in 2012. It's a film made for people who grew up with films like Escape from New York (1981) or Aliens (1986); films which aren't necessarily a bad thing to quote from, as I both love They Live (1988) and that they at least tried to implement the famous bubblegum line in a new context, but it's exactly the same issue as with Family Guy of references which are merely for their own sake, rather than naturally included in a short which has its own humour.

From here, the sense there's too many segments is felt too, not even a sense of marathoning like a favourite of mine The ABCs of Death series, but overlong. I haven't mentioned the bookend story, which is by Brad Sykes, the director of the uber low budget and cheerful slasher Camp Blood (2000), in which two guys and a young woman film a SOV film in the woods, the horror waiting for them incredibly fragmented by the story being placed in pieces between the other segments and never actually connected to the anthology segments themselves as you'd expect for the format. It is, in itself, merely a segment by itself which is bizarre to have as a wraparound in a self-cannibalising quality.

From there the anthology goes feel drift a little, pleasures to be had if you appreciate this type of cinema but an acquired taste. The Request, from no budget veteran Todd Sheets, is a tale of a radio host being haunted by a mysterious called which merely feels like a fragment of a more interesting figure in this area of cult cinema, feeling not enough to really establish his obsessions barring the reference to his band Enochian Key and the use of guts for gore effects. Another veteran Donald Farmer has something more interesting in Thicker Than Water, the girlfriend in a male-female couple taking an extreme to making sure an ex is not going to reappear in her boyfriend's life, mainly because he's played by Mike Malloy, the director of the documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s (2012), who brings a bit more sense of horror and weight than expected in this segment; and Brad Sykes himself also contributes The Scout, in which a man and a woman are caught at an abandoned building in the desert, playing with an utterly surreal notion of seeing another reality with the viewer watching over the shoulder at a camera, an interesting conclusion to a short which could've been pretty predictable if its beginning was anything to go by.

The one segment that does need its own paragraph to unpick the potential issues and thoughts about is Genre Bending by Chris Seaver, because it's of the school of trying to deliberately offend the viewers for comedy, naturally likely to offend some from what I describe. Best way to describe it is a stalker watching a woman, who has an unexpected (and actually funny) conclusion, then another man gets involved which brings in the even more deliberate attempts at offensiveness as the segment attempts to make jokes about rape. Our female lead has already spoken some already crass things earlier for this humour, and segment plays with the second male lead slowly realising, despite being an attempted rapist, that he's (literally) screwed as she is not the victim he presumed and has the situation entirely in her hands. It's from a director who makes films with titles like Return to Blood Fart Lake (2011), so we're dealing with a filmmaker who is deliberately going for broad and un-PC moments like the second man's song penned for the scenario or how she goes about the turning of the table to the abrupt ending. The issue is whether you find Genre Bending's tone funny or not, whether you find it offensive and not acceptable, whether questions about why it might not be funny even for reasons not related to political correctness may have to be asked, or whether the viewer will just shrug his or her shoulders and think the entire thing was just dumb. For me personally, dumb and trying too hard is the answer.

And in the end, as anthology films of horror cinema have grown in size, the frequent issue that they're extremely variable in quality is a concern here. Here, too, there's also the question of why there wasn't as much invention when a lot of it at the midway point falls into a vague place of apathy. I still, with hindsight, enjoyed HI-8 (even in mind Gender Bending is going put a lot of people off for very understandable reasons), but as someone who defends and loves this area of cinema, I admit I've seen more interest feature length films than these shorts so it's a very flawed project.  

The Beast Pageant (2010)

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Directors: Albert Birney and Jon Moses

Screenplay: Albert Birney and Jon Moses

Cast: Jon Moses as Abraham; S. Michael Smith as The Watermelon Man; Ted Greenway as The Machine Man; Ron Bauerle as The Milkmother; Samantha Bennettlepel as Rock; Chelsea Bonagura as The Machine Woman; Janice Dowd as The Receptionist; Jon Eaton as The Artichoke Man

Synopsis: In a future urban environment, where fishing and tuna are the main activities and produce, a man named Abraham (Jon Moses) spends his days in an awful nine-to-five job at a fish factory, or in front of a TV/home computer which dictates his life and constantly tries to sell him goods, all the while as bitter memories of his girlfriend's demise at the hand of fish haunts him. When a miniature cowboy grows out of his side, things are about to change drastically.

Funded with the assistance of Kickstarter and taking over three years to actually finish, The Beast Pageant crosses a fine line between the intentionally eccentric and the intentional (and weird) darkness in the midst of this, succeeding for me if a tonal juxtaposition between the whimsical and twisted that also caught me off guard. At times it becomes nightmarish with its watermelon man illicitly trying to sell hammers under his duffel coat, other times evoking the failed Beatles TV special Magical Mystery Tour (1967) both, when the film turns into a musical, for some of the songs but also when the protagonist Abraham (co-director Jon Moses) ends up in the woodlands from his apartment, and the literal tree people appear, images you could synch I Am The Walrus up to.

The idea behind the film, once the film already sets up its intentions for surrealism in the opening with a completely naked man on a beach, part of the film's admirable equality in male and female cast members in terms of nude scenes, is a pretty travelled road of one figure's complete dissatisfaction with life. It's done with eccentricity but it's still a dull, aimless life and the search of esoteric transformation that is an obsession for many films of this type of psychotronic cinema. In this case, when your girlfriend, in flashbacks here, is covered in dead fish and all that remains of her is a head part of one's automated television/home set-up, there's a greater sense to ask what the point of life is as it is for Abraham. It's very commonplace themes at hand here, which even for the whimsical directions this has, does leave it with a very adult underbelly alongside material deeply inappropriate for children.

It also has the television constantly trying to sell Abraham commercial goods by way of 8-bit and web animation-like advertising, part of the film's own idiosyncrasies at play. The darker tone, in one of the more distinct details, is constantly seesawing with a homemade eccentricity where stop motion contrasts intentionally crude animated sequences with folk jingles, between a giant catfish riding race shilling sunglasses to the fact Jon Moses also has to play all these characters in the advertisements including the women. The hard work behind the production cannot be dismissed, its low budget forcing in the best of circumstances to use inventing production ideas and to just openly embrace its production values' flaws as an aesthetic depth. Even with mind of the directors' past history with music videos, there is also the decision to have filmed The Beast Pageant on an old Bolex camera they have said to have found, the moulding of an old style monochrome with the kind of sequences embraced by vaporwave a unique melding.

The shifts between whimsy and flat out perverseness, ramped up when an actual singing cowboy grows from the side of Abraham (also played by Jon Moses attached to himself for added oddness), are the most surprising detail The Beast Pageant can claim as its own. Michel Gondry meets lo-fi Guy Maddin is the initial blub, one which is also a musical. The music in particular emphasises the hard work at hand, as usually I would find this type of indie folk music awful weren't it for the fact here, especially when more musicians of a form of orchestra are introduced later on, it's a rich and beautiful one to listen to. You can argue the creators let the musical sequences indulge themselves, but they themselves add to the strange mood, such as a giant Abraham at a tiny house where a miniature nudist couple dance along to the cowboy's song.

Whilst the initial half of the film with its bombardment of obscure advertisements is fun, I'd argue the final half in those woodlands is where I was won over by The Beast Pageant, among those genderless bush people I've already mentioned, the film despite its folk whimsy aesthetic and creepy Lynchian aspirations suddenly getting into pop folklore by way of the I Am The Walrus vibe. The music, now the musical aspect is fully embraced, even has the style of sweet folk songs, all the while with the possibility of having been a charming family film if it didn't purposely undercut it with freaking and exceptionally dark moments. From the baby being born out of a giant breast to the deer man with an axe who cuts a off a musical number literally, it purposely undercuts its moments of charm and it feels absolutely deliberate, the emotional rollercoaster for us as the viewer as well as Abraham startling. In the end of the day it leads to Abraham, having escaped his industrial prison, a dull job being berated by his elderly management (literal old men), and having found himself. The project from Albert Birney and Jon Moses was likely one of experimenting in their wildest ideas but it all returns to an idea even the silliest of weird films, and a production like this does, of trying to find oneself in a topsy-turvy world, all the existential angst and transformation found in The Beast Pageant too.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Grotesque/Homemade/Lo-Fi/Weird/Whimsical

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Whilst it does find itself among a lot of influences and similar films which might marginalise it - I sadly never knew of the existence of this film until recently - I was delighted to discover The Beast Pageant, a fascinating creation whose hard work should be better known. Albert Birney and Jon Moses definitely could go from this aesthetic style - the monochrome or even the juxtaposition of whimsical material you'd find on YouTube violently juxtaposed with a naturalist homemade style shot in the woodlands of at least three different American states - and turn it into their own unique filmography whether from more low budget productions like this or if they were ever to get funding for a larger scale project.

The TV Wheel (1995)

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Screenplay: Judd Apatow, Nick Bakay, Morwenna Banks, Paul Feig, Joel Hodgson, Nell Scovell

Cast: Joel Hodgson, Nick Bakay, Morwenna Banks, Steve Bannos, Doug Benson, John Carney, Lilly the Chicken, David Cross, Clark the Dog, Paul Feig, Andy Kindler, Melissa Samuels, Fred Stoller, Lawrence T. Wrentz

Synopsis: Devised as a return to live comedy where mistakes were part of the thrill of viewing them, the creator of Mystery Science Theatre, Joel Hodgson, divised the "X-Box", a giant segmented wheel where various sets are built upon whilst the camera is fixed in one place, the audience witnessing a flurry of sketches as the cast have to move quickly as the wheel does.

So let's begin with the obvious, that barring their infamous episode covering Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), I've never seen Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the legendary cult series where trashy films were commented on by its creator Joel Hodgson, playing a janitor on a space station forced to watch "bad films", at least for four seasons, and a gaggle of robots. For better and for worst, MST3K is legendary, beloved, but also with the stigma of having birthed the idea of ironic viewing of films where improvising jokes rather than watching the film is encouraged. I don't think its Hodgson's fault for that one, just a minor slight out of his hands as - after ten original seasons, a 1996 theatrical film, and two Netflix series so far from 2017 - his creation gained a fan base with a lasting effect. Hell, I have to thank him just for bringing Manos to existence, no one knowing of the film until it was dusted off for an episode, where even the jokes themselves were losing to that feature's madness, and helping that creation of a literal fertiliser salesman with a camera have a cultural legacy. After Hodgson left the series mid-way through, he would devise The TV Wheel, an attempt to recreate the unpredictability of live comedy he grew up with, involving a very curious piece of set sized equipment known as the X-Box, and an ideal to literalise the television screen as a window.

The premise isn't as convoluted as the twenty or so minute introduction by Hodgson himself makes it. Originally, this was a HBO project before Comedy Central picked it up and screened the one-off pilot with a newly filmed segment where the creator explains his premise with literal diagrams; the introduction nearly killed my engagement with the episode, a long and utterly convoluted elaboration by Hodgson which, as much as I admire his love for his idea, echoes the sentiment "kill your darlings" in how long he goes with the premise. It tries, the playful almost Michel Gondry nature of the diagrams and boards moving in front and behind him, alongside the funny attempt at livening the segment up by having puppets staging a strike in the midst of his introduction, complaining CGI is going to replace them, but the intro takes too long and would've immediately killed the chances of the idea getting a whole series as it'd put viewers off.

As simply as I can try to explain the actual TV Wheel, he built a revolving "carrousel-like" stage originally called the X-Box which, whilst the camera stayed perfectly still in one fixed place, which rotated with segmented and various different sized sets, some merely a window, some larger, and one great running gag about ridiculous mini-golf courses in the gag off the stage itself, which interchange when the wheel itself spins. The point was that the performers and their stage itself, rather than camera edits and movements, were dynamic and changed quickly. In the midst of this, many recognisable figures from in front and behind the camera for comedy in the next few decades - including future director Paul Feig and with material written by Judd Apatow - have to hastily switch between costumes or improvise as they have a set time limit for the episode. Any cockups would be included, any sense of ad-lib welcomed, and Hodgson's obsession with puppets is found here alongside all manner of optical gags and (Gondry-like) inspired set production with paper signs and windows.

It's far from perfect, and the humour isn't as punchy as it should've been, especially as the live audience heard is more bemused at points then on-board with the concept, but the result is gleefully weird. As much as there are compromised to Hodgson's own introduction, not one single take but cutting to the top of the wheel and figures like the live orchestra to show its mechanics, it's a fascinating experience which I think could've worked. Its definitely one of the strangest sketch comedies I've seen in a while in structure and aesthetic design, knee deep into the nineties and (even in fuzzy VHS sheen) with bright plastic colours and moments weirdly reminiscent of Cafe Flesh (1982) but with significantly less porn. That doesn't stop it from having moments which could've come from such a cult film, such a robot which recommends drinks only to seduce a guy's girlfriend, the miniature golf gag starting from the Mouse Trap board game to heaven itself, and those aforementioned puppets.

Whether it's a snide comment on racism, as red robots claim their servant race will be inferior because they're green robots, or the Thunderbirds piss-take, everything has a jaunty and off edge tones to it which for its moments of light humour and pure silliness also gets dark, helping with even the failed gags. One of the female comedians, when her gag immediate fails before it starts, takes her top off with the creepy darkness found in her desperate question to the camera "Is this what you want?", follow by one of the male comedians in his way to also say the exact same words and take his shirt off, as if the TV Wheel is some perverse trap for comedians. That a man is later naked and being tortured on a giant pinball machine for one gag is also pretty bizarre just as an image, more so as it turns into the machine being used to get him to confess to an alcohol problem.

Not all the humour is this weird - the KISS sketch, where everyone is just heads on mannequin bodies and Gene Simmons is annoyed everyone has a gimmick in the band unlike him, is one of the best including the Foghat reference - but even apparently innocuous jokes get odder. Paul Feig, whilst not a great director if Bridesmaids (2011) is an indication of his work for me, is great onscreen as a charismatic magician welcoming the audience to his living book of gags and tricks, all the while his monkey sidekick warns us that he's been locked in the book like it's a horrifying Lovecraftian never space. The joke is among the best as it uses the TV Wheel and the production design to its advantage, like the Thunderbirds sketch, in both having the wheel move backwards and forwards but, in using the various windows and paper craft, creating clever live tricks of manipulation with special effects, the Thunderbirds one switching between live actors and puppets for a perfect live close-up of someone accidentally sabotaging a test craft with coffee on the control panel. Sometimes in other sketches, they just resort to actual magic tricks like the unfortunate, connected to Feig's sketch, which turns his dog into a chicken with one of his items but doesn't know how to change the dog back.

Clearly, the premise, the literal TV Wheel, is a prop which had to be carefully put together and probably the other factor which might've doomed it is that sketch comedy shows can be made with merely a host and guests trading off jokes to an audience, doing away with prop comedy for the most part. This is a shame to consider as, with fine tuning or even a simplified version of the premise, The TV Wheel itself was a unique viewing experience which, by itself including the end credits being literally taped onto the screen and rushed through, was charming enough but could've gone further than this.

Abstract Spectrum: Handmade/Quirky/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Personal Opinion:

Just by premise along, it's a peculiar creation from mid-nineties American television, and in spite of the over long introduction it has a lot to admire as a concept. Even if it was an idea to weird and complicated to get off the ground, a few more polished examples of the show would've sufficed at least.

Non-Abstract Review: The Elvira Show (1993)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNzlkYzM0ZmUtMTA1MS0
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Screenplay: Anne Beatts

Cast: Cassandra Peterson as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; Katherine Helmond as Aunt Minerva; Phoebe Augustine as Paige; Cristine Rose as Lindsay; Ted Henning as Chip; John Paragon as the voice of Reinfield

Synopsis: Elvira (Cassandra Peterson), posing as a fake medium despite being an actual witch and living with a relation Aunt Minerva (Katherine Helmond), lives in peaceful existence in Manhatten, Kansas until their niece Paige (Phoebe Augustine) arrives and the police are trying to catch her out for fake love potions.

So Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson was involved with an unaired pilot for a sitcom in which her character, created as the host for a show showing old b-movies only to become a cult institution all by herself, gets to be in the central of the kind of popular television from this era. The pilot, made by CBS, was never released - stories abound that the level of sexuality to the Elvira character, Cassandra Peterson more than happily using her busty figure for comedy and sharp with sexual one liners, was something unprepared for by certain CBS executives which killed the pilot's chances immediately. A further irony is to be found, as I researched this pilot, was that in 1996 a show with a similar premise (two aunts and a niece, all witches, and a talking black cat) would go forth as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and be incredibly successful, a series I watched a lot in my own youth and is probably as big an influence on me as an Englishmen as for many Americans growing up in the nineties.

I'll be brutally honest in saying The Elvira Show wasn't for me. Immediately the laugh track, recorded live in front of an audience, welcomed me into the strange and unreal world of sitcoms again, where each line (no matter how cheesy or bad) has to illicit a laugh unless a "sweetened" fake laugh track was included. Having not encountered one for a long time, pawing over each line, I felt its strange contrivance placed up a barrier, not like how with the BBC Red Dwarf series at its best where the laughs were won, but uncomfortably mannered. Here it reminds me where the rabbits sequence from David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) was drawing its influence for laughter appearing for the most abrupt lines.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/c-P6bHZc7ZY/hqdefault.jpg

A funny premise is had in the idea Elvira, the character built in films as well having actual magical powers, is pretending to be a charlatan to keep her head down whilst Aunt Minerva (Katherine Helmond) is more inclined to enchant a shopping trolley blithely to follow her in public. (Their talking cat Reinfield, voiced by regular Peterson collaborator John Paragon, sadly doesn't work and feels like a bad Garfield stand-in). With this in mind, the pilot pushes the sexual innuendo as far as it could, "stiff cop" and all pushing the material to the point the talking black cat Reinfield has to double check one line as if almost an apology for the smuttiness; in the modern day however it is fairly innocuous stuff. It's still a sitcom episode which contrives a tiny, bit sized plot which easily resolves - in this case a hunky male cop under cover to help bust Elvira's love potion ring, Petersen's character gladly trying to seduce him. With a niece raised in a convent, the aunts attempt to hide their abilities throughout the episode only to establish said nieces are like themselves more than she knew. It's pretty predictable stuff and when the comedy is mainly from obvious sexual humour and lame puns, it did become tiring.

The production for early nineties television doesn't help. The staged nature shouldn't be detraction in the slightest, especially when there's one gag about the carpet flipping up to swallow dust Elvira sweeps underneath it, suggesting it could get away with some magical weirdness for laughs, but it adds to the flatness to the material, the aforementioned predictable sitcom. There's a sense, having no previous experience of Petersen's work, it was the sitcom format for me that caused the problems rather than the character herself. It's still an amusing curiosity but a little innocuous for my tastes.

From http://nightflight.com/wp-content/uploads/ELVIRA-SHOW-9.jpg

Non-Abstract Review: Happy Hour (2015)

From https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/cjs-blog/wp-content/
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Dir: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

Screenplay: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara and Tomoyuki Takahashi

Cast: Rira Kawamura as Jun, Hazuki Kikuchi as Sakurako, Maiko Mihara as Fumi, Sachie Tanaka as Akari, Hiroyuki Miura as Takuya, Yoshitaka Zahana as Kohei, Shuhei Shibata as Ukai

[Japan]

Synopsis: The lives of four thirty plus year old women in Kobe, Japan are changed when one of them, Jun (Rira Kawamura), admits to have taken part in an adulterous affair and is about to good through divorce court.

Into the 21st century, cinema's constant evolutions challenge the perceptions of what cinema is meant to be. Unfortunate this leads to biases and ill advised tangents which go both ways. One way is to presume the new way is the best when they should co-exist as much as possible - found when cellioud film is still used for certain productions and archival purposes when there was talk of digital taking over, as has been the fact the promotion of 3D cinema has declined immensely after the push into the 2010s, a medium worthy preserving if just to see the films made within its various past lives as they were intended. The other way is preconceptions which undercut only the most boring of views of cinema: that animation is only for children; that no one watches black-and-white or foreign films; that cinema (to take another side) must be respectable and not be grungy genre work; that, in this particular example, films should only be two hours maximum unless award season productions and (inexplicably) superhero blockbuster, this rule dictated as much by cinemas wanting to show a film as many times in a day as possible for profit as it is the belief the human bladder couldn't take it.

There have been films in the past that pushed this rule. Technically Jacques Rivette's legendary Out 1 (1971) was originally meant for television, at 12 hours 53 minutes, but Béla Tarr's Satantango (1994) (7 hours 30 minutes) to far less known works like Joris Ivens' documentary How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976) (12 hours 43 minutes) definitely were meant for cinema. Even Hollywood itself has made long three plus hour epics in their golden eras, and even outside the USA you have Bernardo Bertolucci's five hour plus epic 1900 (1976) among other examples in world cinema. Digital filmmaking however, returning back to it beyond of off-the-cuff reference, or at least the advancements in economical use of film making equipment has allowed individuals to push the lengths of films further, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz the best example of this as he clearly belieies he cannot tell his country's pass without at least usually breaking the 200-300 minutes length with a few brisker exceptions.

They are films which undermine the traditional notions of viewing, forcing one to have to view a film as a day's single experience depending on length and forcing a commitment. Wisely even in cinemas, with the exception of Andy Warhol who had no issue at all with people walking in and out (or interacting) in the midst of his epic film experiments, intervals are a necessary and part of their dialogue. Unfortunately these films are marginalised as being entirely indigestible to mainstream or even mainstream art house cinema, ironic considering Bollywood cinema (usually pushing the three hour mark even with light entertainment) from India lionises a film as being an experience and superhero films (as mentioned) are pushing the three hour mark usually reserved for historical dramas.

The epic film is a gamble, but the risk can prove worthwhile if, now with the slither of hope that (even if temporarily) you can watch them at home split into pieces, such a film when actually available able to use the extreme lengths for incredible depth when you willingly plunge into their time frames. One such film, at five hours plus, is Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Happy Hour which, with the exception of a book reading/Q&A sequence after four hours in, never feels like an experiment film of endurance but actually passes in time with a surprising briskness. It's instead of an accessible, thoughtful drama about women which just happens to use this momentous length to draw this narrative of four women, including their subplots, out in fully fleshed form, closer to a novel in structure than a filmic visualscape.

It contrasts the origins, suggesting an experiment, where Ryusuke Hamaguchi created the film through a workshop and amateur thespians, the remarkable thing being how it feels a superior dramatic work as a result of this practical work shopping, breathed through a felt, carefully considered structure. One catalyst starts an actual plot - Jun entering divorce proceedings with her cold scientist husband Kohei (Yoshitaka Zahana) - but it happens to exist in a film with much space before and after alongside following the worlds of her three female friends too, all with characters in their own lives who have stories.

Fumi (Maiko Mihara), a manager of non-profit art spaces responsible for the bookends of the film of the workshop and the Q&A that play out as the longest chapters, realises her marriage is not truly peaceful, a subplot within a subplot that of her husband's interactions with a female novelist he is working having more to it than a professional relationship. Akari (Sachie Tanaka), a headstrong nurse whose friendship with Jun is betrayed by learning of her adulterous fling, whose criticisms of a young female nurse for mistakes turn on herself when a freak mishap in the final hours of the story lead to her breaking her leg. And Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), who as the conventional housewife the four women, despite an understanding mother-in-law, has to deal both with the frosty relationship with her own husband and also her son's romantic yearnings leading to a girl becoming pregnant. The length of Happy Hour is thus, like the aforementioned novel, from fleshing out these plot threads into a rich and vibrant web, played matter-of-factly over its length without deliberate obfuscation or pausing in length in meditation.

 Its length also plays a game in undercutting the viewer's perceptions by swimming the psychological depths of the characters. Ukai (Shuhei Shibata), a New Age-like guide, starts off as a nice if eccentric figure found balancing objects on a beach and now, despite the strangeness of his workshop ideas, manages to at least open up the participants to speak more freely through his mix of bonding exercises; by the end of the film he's opened up from his layers to show a sinister lounge lizard especially when he follows Akari, a figure trying to seduce women even if it means kicking a person's crutches away. In contrast Jun's husband Kohei comes off as a cold robot of a man originally, detestable especially as the divorce court sequence is an agonising series of a woman being embarrassed by the judicial system's lack of empathy and focus on cold facts; tragedy is found as, becoming an improvised host of the Q&A, Kohei is shown capable in his own way of being anopen man but found it too late, as Jun's friends chastise him for this late discovery and especially as Jun herself vanishes through the film in the narrative's elaborate plotting. This level of character depth is usually to be found in visual shorthand or economic skill by the best in cinema; Ryusuke Hamaguchi instead lets it be told as much and fully as possible, itself a success too and a rarity in a medium usually now seen as a protracted, disappointing fireworks display by mainstream cinema.

 Only at two times in Happy Hour does it feel like a deliberate challenge due to its length, for the workshop and Q&A sequences. The workshop, which lasts over thirty minutes, is early in the film preparing you for what to expect, including the post workshop bar scene that starts the drama properly, experienced as an energetic build up of key characters alongside slowly reaching a crescendo when Jun confesses her adultery through a carefully considered pace in terms of the time and amount dialogue beforehand to reach it. The Q&A, including the female author reading her work before, does become something that'll test the patience of some audience members, a sense to whether it is deliberate on Hamaguchi's part to stretch of time here emphasised with moments of the audience shuffling in their seats and characters in their own stories at the same time. It's the only moment where the middle class, artistically minded nature of some of the characters really stand out, potentially testing just for how the story being read of potential romance at a bathing resort is entirely subjective itself, a work in its own way is elusive and tense in its slowness as the words are spoken about microscopic detail. Considering that it's so late into a film that's already passed four hours by this point, before the sense of length is felt here, I cannot judge a film which has managed to succeed over that length, even if I had to split it into usually two hour pieces, the kind of casually told drama found here not just in Japanese cinema but East Asian cinema in general (like Edward Yang's Yi Yi (2000)), only longer in length.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi as a visual filmmaker is definitely a sedate one, preferring his long takes with a still camera immensely. He's at an advantage that set within Kobe with stretches among the countryside, Japan aesthetically in its modern and period settings has always been one of the most distinct in any type of cinema. This applies to many countries when one opens your eyes to so much cinema you can tract a country's idiosyncrasies, but even a back alley and conventional public buildings (baring my own pet obsessions) have a distinction in Japanese cinema over others, something with the way they are shot even no budget splatter films having an aesthetic charm over their Western counterparts.

Altogether, Happy Hour succeeded - at the 2015 Locarno film festival it gained a special mention but more so won the award for Best Actress rightly shared between all four leads. Not for a film even remotely as mannered in its naturalism as a Yasujirō Ozu, the archetype of Japanese dramatic cinema, but still with the matter-of-factness of ordinary life visible and embraced. Even if it has a more overt plot eventually, all the intrigue and darkness is casually brought in within one which defiantly has humour against the darkness, and comes to it all casually, many scenes over food and drink in languid conversation and one moment undercutting any sinister intentions of Ukai's when a woman with a broken leg gets held aloof by the patrons of a dance floor in an euphoric crowd surfing moment. Of course a huge point with the film is, whilst it has prominent male characters, it is an entire female driven narrative and, rather than just merely ticking a check list of having two female characters having a conversation, it's an actual feminist (or frankly humane) story of women who bond, become divided, aren't perfect but fully fleshed out in what makes each of them up. Enough time over five hours and with the right cast, including non-actors from the workshop the film came from, is spent to make everyone (even minor characters like the authoress) have a soul onscreen. That itself makes Happy Hour a relief and it does so as if as easy as taking an actual gulp of air.

From https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/
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