The Trial (1962)

 

Director: Orson Welles

Screenplay: Pierre Cholot and Orson Welles

Based on a novel by Franz Kafka

Cast: Anthony Perkins as Josef K.; Jeanne Moreau as Marika Burstner; Romy Schneider as Leni; Elsa Martinelli as Hilda; Suzanne Flon as Miss Pittl; Orson Welles as Albert Hastler; Akim Tamiroff as Bloch; Madeleine Robinson as Mrs. Grubach

An Abstract Film Candidate

 

Adapting Franz Kafka's tale, in which a man named Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is charged for a crime he had no prior knowledge of and is never told the charge at all, The Trial opens with a prologue based on a passage from the text. Of a man who waits outside "the Doors of the Law", aging and dying whilst both never being allowed in and the guard to inform him the doors were for him only. Dreamlike and of an unknown subtext, director Orson Welles himself narratives over the evocative hand drawn illustrations of this miniature narrative by Alexandre Alexeieff, a melancholic and strange one apt for a Kafka adaptation.

As a director who continually evolved, Orson Welles here was in total exile from Hollywood, immediately changing to a new world in terms of cinema. Whilst this is a French-Italian-German production, I ended up thinking of Mickey One (1965), as much because both used jazz in their scores but because, the later an Arthur Penn production in Hollywood influenced by European cinema, both exist in abstract worlds where the leads are in continuous paranoia of unknown forces. In Mickey One, it was a young Warren Betty as a stand-up comedian; here, it was Anthony Perkins, a clerk who suddenly wakes up in his introduction with a police officer in his bedroom.

There is a huge distinction in casting Perkins. Tragically his career was shadowed by Psycho (1960) and Norman Bates, which is worse because that was an incredible performance in itself, but here you can see his talent. He is perfect as a Kafka character, the nervous twitch of a man confused by a world which is based greatly on misperception. It is certainly, undoubtedly, an idiosyncratic film, for were it not for the fact he would move to even more experimental work like F For Fake (1973) in the seventies, this would be Welles' proudly entering into abstract cinema. An eerie one, where Perkins' Josef K. finds himself pin ponged between unknown forces, from large courts which amass a crowd, to Welles himself playing Albert Hastler, an advocate who could help Josef were it not for the fact that these cases are endless, Josef eventually meeting old people, half dressed with numbers hung round their necks in a hall, he is effectively among. That Bloch (Akim Tamiroff), one of Hastler's clients, has been in his shadow for years, effectively part of his furniture sleeping in a spare room, emphasises eventually the Advocate is just a figure who toys with his clients.

The film has an inherently surreal nature to itself, but interlaces it with an oppressive tone from the opening scene, not only with Josef being woken up in bed but with other policemen in his room, trying to steal shirts from him as impounded goods and even his co-workers in the lounge. The world, through a very distinct script, is full of traps, where authority can (in this scene) try dominate Josef by claiming a word does not exist is one, to describe an oval marking on his bedroom floor from where a dentist's chair used to be, only to question when he talks of this word as if he said it first. That those police, who tried to steal his clothes, when he makes a charge of misconduct, find themselves in the broom closest of his work place being punished by whipping shows how perverse and dog-eat-dog this existence is.

In a world where there is seemingly no tangible authority, not even a precise explanation to how it works let alone why Josef is even on trial, the film is also befittingly strange in appearance. Shot in Italy, France and even Croatia, the architecture looms over Josef as one man in the centre, and the locations created for the film contribute as much for this. His work place is a vast hall of desks, his superiority only shown in having a raised platform for his desk, not even having walls. Environments at one point do bleed into each other. Some are created locations of dreams and nightmares, from winding and endless corridors of files on shelves, to a room where the floor is entirely covered in manuscripts and documents. Even some of the aspects dated of the early sixties now have an appropriately weird aesthetic, like a giant wall expanding computer the male engineers have naturally christened female like a boat.

That is before you considering the characters and the cast, populated in legendary French stars even in minor roles, from Jeanne Moreau as Marika, as Josef's next door neighbour or a tiny cameo by Michael Lonsdale as a priest. Romy Schneider, making her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) with Andrzej Żuławski merely an escalation, plays the maid and mistress to Hastler, who is attracted to guilty men and, for no reason, has webbed fingers on one hand which never becomes a plot point. Then there are specific characters, from Welles' corrupt figure of power, given his commanding voice and prescience, to a painter who specialises in commissions for the judges, already a figure with an eeriness to him as, predating Beatlemania, he is inexplicably hounded by young (teen) girls who would mob his home/work place, a merely cage of wooden pallets, if he had left the door open. There is a lot of explicit sexual and political layers, and flat out innuendo, including questions of Josef's behaviour such as the presumption, when his young female cousin visits as a sympathetic voice, that he is going to "corrupt" her. And Schneider, whose character of Leni is the other most prominent character, is at once fascinating if her own curious figure due to her fetish.

That is before the ending, rewritten by Welles as a co-writer, with unexpected death by dynamite. This is all in mind that, throughout, The Trial is still sombre, that its weirdness is contrasted by a sumptuous production with dread inducing atmosphere and exquisite dialogue, a melancholic conclusion as, by the time Welles himself in the end credits lists off the production crew in narration, he befittingly gave the author of The Metamorphosis both an alien yet profoundly atmospheric adaptation.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Paranoid/Weird

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

Color Me Blood Red (1965)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Cast: Gordon Oas-Heim as Adam Sorg; Candi Conder as April Carter; Elyn Warner as Gigi; Pat Finn-Lee as Sydney (as Patricia Lee); Jerome Eden as Rolf; Scott H. Hall as Farnsworth; Jim Jaekel as Jack; Iris Marshall as Mrs. Carter; William Harris as Gregorovich; Cathy Collins as Mitzi

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #209

 

Pigments pal. Not haemoglobin!

When I first saw Color Me Blood Red a long time ago, I hated the film, not at a place to appreciate Herschell Gordon Lewis at all an era ago, getting into cult films in the late 2000s but a completely different person in my tastes. This was back when Tartan Films, with Something Weird Video, distributed Lewis' films on DVD in the United Kingdom under their Tartan Grindhouse sub label; that company no longer exists, which tells you how long ago that first viewing was. The different in time and where the final of his unofficial "Blood Trilogy" ends (with Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) is that he fully embraced his clear love for humour and winking to the audience. Whilst not a parody, which is for the better.

This is also not the first nor the last time a film has dealt with a mad artist who kills for their art - say hello A Bucket of Blood (1959) - but this particular one of Adam Sorg (Gordon Oas-Heim), a frustrated artist who finds his creative spark again in using human blood, still shows a huge jump into more deliberate comedy and whit among the luridness. There is even a joke about Adam hanging an abstract painting sideways in a gallery to see if any one notices, so that even if this does not feel like a film remotely interested in parodying the art world, they have the wherewithal to at least mock it time to time.

Before anyone asks, there have been artists who have used human blood in real life, one Vincent Castiglia eerily, to the point of clenching my arm in pain researching his work, turning this from a shock value concept to legitimate art with incredible preciseness, not merely drenching scenes from a surreal magazine or a cool horror novel cover as Adam does here in raspberry jam. Here, with Adam turning his pop art into blood baths, you see how arduous (and gruesome) it would be to try to use one's blood like a mad man, as he tries his own for a large canvas. Already on the edge, Gordon Oas-Heim the MVP with his unhinged manner, his relationship with his girlfriend turns sour, and his need to impress an art critic, one who criticised his work, pushes him over the edge.

Two Thousand Maniacs was good; it was a transition to more structured storytelling with a still-striking theme of the ghosts of the American South against the North. Here however is where my appreciation of Lewis will kick in onwards. His work is kitsch but the greater factor is his ability to wrung out entertainment to of a good sort, his eccentric filmography with films like this full of little touches of wryness and weirdness that improve vastly over Blood Feast. As much as I love that film's minimalist score, the jazz score here is exceptional, and whilst the delirium in his cinema would grow further from her, the humour thankfully makes itself welcome.

Such as with those water bikes that are abruptly in Adam's possession. Literally, bicycles custom made to float on the water and travel along when peddled. They were the only thing I remember from that first viewing, but it is apt as, whether something the production had access to or flung onto the creators, they are an example of the idiosyncrasies you find in Lewis' films which add life to them, which will grow in his productions from here on. They are even used for a murder scene, of someone on one against Adam in a speedboat, so Lewis thankfully took advantage of these ridiculous props, which is a good sign for the future. Then there are the heterosexual couple, friends of the female lead April (Candi Conder), who dress as each other, a lovably whimsical duo who are never traumatised (baring by accidentally finding a corpse in the beach sand) and are among the many strange figures that have appeared in Lewis' filmgraphy who stand out.

Color Me Blood Red does drag in the final half, mainly when it tries to be a conventional horror film, which clashes against Lewis' common trope of a very low budget and only a few locations to work with, emphasising dialogue scenes as a result which do not work when he is trying to be traditionally story driven. He is more interesting when, if there is a reliance on script, on skewered pulp tropes, zingers in the dialogue and eccentric characters, and thankfully, when this is in the right headspace Color Me Blood Red feels proudly camp, a kitsch production but with a sense of not being mockable, instead with its tongue firmly pressed in its cheek. And this is a time, soon after, when Herschell Gordon Lewis would become stranger. Making Jimmy, The Boy Wonder (1966), one of his two children's films, and Something Weird (1967), which lives up to that title tenfold. Lewis would return to gore films, and make them gorier, but naturally, they got stranger as he went along too. So, for me, Color Me Blood Red was a delight to return to, not bored as I was expecting a conventionally slick horror film as that first time, but a deliberately goofy film which improved tenfold. That, and with the added virtue that, as a stepping stone, this film's best virtues would appear magnified soon after as Something Weird was only two years after and so forth.

X: The Unknown (1956)

 

Director: Leslie Norman (and Joseph Losey)

Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster

Cast: Dean Jagger as Dr. Adam Royston; Edward Chapman as John Elliott; Leo McKern as Insp. 'Mac' McGill; Anthony Newley as LCpl. 'Spider' Webb; Jameson Clark as Jack Harding; William Lucas as Peter Elliott; Peter Hammond as Lt. Bannerman

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #208

 

An early Hammer film, a tale of a strange radioactive entity that has spring up from a fissure in the Scottish countryside, the first thing that came to mind pronounced is how safety measures when handling radioactive material has become more severe over the decades after. Back here, almost an entirely different reality of Britain in appearance and atmosphere, it was perfectly fine to just have a lead box for radioactive metals and a see through pane to stand the other side of to experiment on it, not even full body suits.

In seriousness though, whilst that was a perturbing aspect of the film, it is significant that when the original Godzilla was made by Toho in Japan in 1954, and the Americanized version only was made in 1956, there was a film here which is blatant as a metaphor for the dangers of using radioactive energy and substances without realising their danger. Of note, adding to this, is knowing this was meant to be a sequel returning to writer Nigel Kneale's popular character  Professor Bernard Quatermass, following from The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), only for Kneale to prevent this¹. In hindsight, you could have easily seen this film as a Quatermass production, but instead we have scientist Dr. Adam Royston (Dean Jagger), an expert in radioactive materials who finds himself drawn into this scenario when, during military training of locating radioactive materials with a detector, a group of army soldiers are caught off-guard by a fissure in the earth to appear.

The location, rural Scotland in the Lochmouth region, does add a lot of weight to this film even if it is a traditional b-movie that involves a monstrous form, [Spoiler Warning] a radioactive and living mass of mud-likegoo which absorbs radioactive energy [Spoiler Ends]. This is all in mind that you have a violent contrast to a wholesome idyllic place of the past against then-modern science. Here people still go to Church, as in one scene, and when they need to flee their homes, they hide in said Church with the vicar making sure everyone is safe. There are cars and electric lights, but this is still as much a place, even if shot in England, of the World War II and even pre-WWII era, contrasted by Royston's workplace of vast laboratories and computers, even if he himself prefers working in his little shed with his own experiments.

And, in spite of its monster, rendered with models being engulfed in its form, especially in the early stages X does have a darker side because of its tackling of radioactivity. Anyone who is in presence of this being, shown from its perspective for its victims, suffers radioactive burns which can more than likely kill them eventually, even just being near the entity. Even a child, a young boy dared by another to enter spooky woods, which is very adult to have done at the time and still is today. And, still by today's standards, there are a few gruesome moments, especially with someone when attacked in an x-ray room of the hospital being melted to death beyond the skeleton in its presence, which is still icky to see decades later. More so, it is a surprise to see in British horror film from the late fifties such scenes, a reminder than Hammer, whilst a cultural institution in the modern day, were pushing boundaries in terms of what they could get away with, the irony of them become antiquated in the mid-seventies ironic when even this, one of their obscurer films, has such scenes. It also presents one scene, as a result, which does become haunting in context of its themes and time of creation. That the father of the child injured, who has just died before in the scene, berates Royston for his involvement in working on radioactive materials, which he takes the blame for in a universal sense. This ultimately cheesy film still taps into a real fear post-atomic bomb which can be found and adds a greater weight to it.

Ultimately it leads to a monster film finale, which could be seen as a lacksidasical one in hindsight to all this, though let us not ignore this was a horror film first, and that it manages to still have a weight with the themes it decided to tackle. With the Quatermass connection, it would have actually improved the film if Nigel Kneale was willing to play ball. Not least, because The Quatermass Xperiment itself, the Hammer adaptation, ends with a cheesy looking monster, but managed to make its themes still stand out regardless. The themes in the version of the film we did get are still strong in this form, and Dean Jagger is actually an interesting lead who could have been a Quatermass-like figure himself in more productions.

The film as well looks gorgeous in context - mostly set in the countryside, the film in monochrome as well has an evocative edge which helps greatly with the production, even making the monster more alarming than goofy as it is a literal mass which cannot be halted. (Thankfully cinematographer Gerald Gibbs, a veteran who had worked on films like No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) beforehand, would be hired for Quatermass II (1957)). The other intriguing thing to consider is that, with some of his footage surviving in the final production, this was originally a film to be helmed by Joseph Losey, which adds an additional strange touch. Losey, who would eventually be the auteur behind many idiosyncratic dramatic films in the sixties to the eighties, would get a Hammer film entirely to himself, The Damned (1963), which was also about the perils of radioactivity, and thus adds a nice little bow to cinematic history when few directors get enough shot with the same studio on similar material.

 

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1) Referenced HERE.

Moonshine Mountain (1964)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Charles Glore

Cast: Charles Glore as Doug Martin; Gordon Oas-Heim as Sheriff Asa Potter; Jeffrey Allen as Jeb Carpenter; Bonnie Hinson as Laura Carpenter; Carmen Sotir as Angeline; Ben Moore as Raf; J.G. Patterson Jr. as Hutto; Stanley Dyrector as Ed Basham; Gretchen Blank as Mary Lou Carpenter; Harry Hoffman as Luther Basham; Karin March as Ma Basham

Canon Fodder

 

With Moonshine Mountain, you have a type of film that no longer is made, literally extinct in this current form without evolution having transpired or at all to keep semblances of it in existence. That, in the middle of the exploitation boom, you could have genre films specifically made for Southern states in the United States as Moonshine Mountain was. This is a concept that has existed before this film, but in this context, with Herschell Gordon Lewis being asking to make a film for the South¹, there is also the factor of an exploitation film here with the emphasis on southern culture and country music by way of this genre film that is ill defined, adding to this film's distinction.

It is amusing to contrast this to Two Thousand Maniacs (1964), from the same year, particularly as it shares cast members like Jeffrey Allen. No longer Southerners wishing to get gruesome revenge on Northern Yankees, they are lovable folk here willing to welcome Doug Martin (Charles Glore), a country music star from New York in their midst. Sure, one of the locals hits him over the head and steals his clothes when they met, but all is forgiven when Doug meets his family. More jovial than the initial introduction over a fancy jacket, the one thing the family is obsessed with is producing white lightning, moonshine from a giant red tank in the middle of the woods. The real threat is fittingly the authorities, Sheriff Asa Potter (Gordon Oas-Heim), who from the moment he steps in shot can have "corrupt law enforcer" as a name tag on his jacket.

The film is of its time; very low budget, it beholds to a period where one markets a film just on the back of having real country music, as the lead Charles Glore, who was a musician in Two Thousand Manaics, can play and sing among others, and some dynamic content, like a gun being shot off without any elaborate shoot out, and that being enough. Regional cinema still exists in the modern day, just in terms of if you were to go through micro-budget genre filmmaking, but films specifically to a regional audience are probably more obscurer nowadays; bear in mind, whilst this was a niche even in this era, it had an audience and a film like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) was a success as a blockbuster, even if in the modern day such a title would not be made again unless it could be made suitable for an intentional audience and for everyone.

This is nastier and adult than Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967), another of these films from this time which had more country musicians and was openly slapstick, but not much difference exists between them. Available in the modern day in a battered version, created from Frankensteining two sets of surviving materials, Moonshine Mountain has a homemade quality which is curiously wholesome. All in mind of the content occasionally reminding you of Lewis' trademarks, with someone getting an axe to them, and at least one moment which has not aged well, that one female character is implied as being raped, and the dialogue between her family and another laughing it off when it is, most of the film is very quaint in mind to the director's CV. Only if you were to get to his couple of children's films from after this production, because Lewis did try his hand at anything, would you get milder than this.

With their mind obsession being bootlegging liquor, the leads are lovable Southern stereotypes, incredibly broad as "hayseeds" to the point I legitimately wonder what an audience in, say, North Carolina would have thought of this film at the time, let alone even feel uncomfortable even typing the term "hayseeds" for that sentence. The sense of playfulness is found, even in the opening credits having jokes in regards to each member of the crew (“he’s a big ‘un, ain’t he?”), and written is what stereotypical accent is apt for these characters. One wonders, however, what regular punters from the South would think of these caricatures of very poor white hillbillies, with a mentally simple adult daughter among the many children as part of the stereotypes, particularly in mind that this habit of regional filmmaking for Southern viewers, going as far back of D.W. Griffith, could extend both to filmmakers from the region or anything from outside trying their hand at cashing in on the fad over decades.

The film also presents the question of Lewis the storyteller, particularly in terms that Herschell Gordon Lewis, known for his gore films, was however an exploitation filmmaker, with and without David F. Friedman as his collaborator and producer, and dabbled in many films. By this point, having had a history in sexploitation, than having success with Blood Feast (1963), he was already by a couple of years going to dabble in other genres, and here just a year after. In exploitation, structure could be argued as being more around the content to sell, then basing the plot afterwards around it, which adds an additional factor.

It is a tale with a lot of tropes commonplace in storytelling long before it, notable a lead in Doug who is a successful celebrity humbled on his journey to research authentic Southern music, gaining it he also falls for one of the main family's daughters, who in her open hearted nature is in vast contrast to his urbanite and domineering girlfriend, who comes to his location part of the way through briefly to be a character. The pulp tropes, a corrupt sheriff who has been killing and hiding the bodies of FBI agents with his lackeys, shows as well Lewis was more than likely putting in what worked well in even older genre films from the b-movies/film noir days of cinema, which have honestly continued in American cinema decades after even in the modern day. Lewis, in another era, would have likely made films for poverty row studios in Hollywood if he had been born earlier and closer to that region, and considering noir films were being made still, very cheaply, into the sixties (as Something Weird Video can attest to) I would have been surprised if in another reality he would had helmed a few too if he felt they were viable.

Again Moonshine Mountain is, in spite of its more adult content, from a quainter era of exploitation. I do not see later exploitation films having a barn dance as a huge set piece, especially as it never leads to an action scene or a fight, just one of the many musical scenes with the advantage that, whilst an acquired taste as a film, the music is at least good as it is wholesome. It clearly had to use what they could find, a lot of real countryside locations in the long grass, arguably the most production cost having to build that giant red vat of moonshine which naturally explodes in the finale to have one moment of spectacle. Out of Lewis' career, this is one which would have to be built up to as, naturally, whilst the splatter films made his reputation, Lewis from here in his career will continue to deviate and get odder even for the later gore films. Honestly, Moonshine Mountain out of these films is more of a curiosity for the hardcore fans, but is fascinating nonetheless in context to all this.

 

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1) As per his introduction on the Arrow Video release.

Carving Magic (1959)

 

Cast: William Kerwin as Charlie; Harvey Korman as Al

Ephemeral Waves

 

An educational film about how to cut meat, I had always presumed Carving Magic was a Herschell Gordon Lewis directed short, alongside the connect of Blood Feast star William Kerwin as Charlie, a man proving he has learnt how to carve a turkey. It would be befitting to imagine Lewis filming the cutting of various meats with a variety of utensils like his gore scenes.

Not a film for vegans/vegetarians, it is weirdly ritualistic even for meat eaters. Ephemeral filmmaking is a phantom zone of curiosities made for all types of subjects, no matter how weird they are as topics, and this is the same, set around Charlie telling a friendly couple at a dinner how he became a good carver, introducing his meeting (as part of a film production) with Martha Logan, a Home Economist and expert on carving. That you could even still take advice from this film in the modern day adds an odd edge too, as most of these methods of carving meat would benefit many people even if the portions were smaller. The figure of "Martha Logan" is a real one too, though with a curious touch that, part of the company Swift &Company, they employed many female Home Economists who took on the name as a persona¹.

Do we archive cooking writing and materials? The cooking books of Martha Logan can be found second hand online, but so much, from these recipes from the fifties to those from the 19th century, was made and with no sense that history preserves them unless integral to museum exhibits. I have looked at vast racks in bookstores in the cooking section, and been in so many second hand stores, to know that truly ephemeral material, disposed of, has to include cook books among the list. Carving Magic because of the Lewis connection has, ironically, been preserved more often, even though it a strange piece to be watching in hindsight. A film where you see meat lovingly being cut on teal shaped boards at one point, on a kitchen set for a film-within-the-film, set to the charming instructional movie music playing of light orchestra jauntiness, films like this with an attempt at playful aesthetic (and even a micro narrative of Charlie schooling his male friend Al) are curious to witness.  

Witnessing the anatomy of a lamb joint in precise detail, like the shank, does cause one to reflect on our connection to meat even beyond the ethics of eating other animals, just in terms of the rituals of preparing these objects of corporal flesh separate from the beasts of the land. In this aesthetic chic, still of the fifties with its traditional values of the at-home housewife, this is made even more pronounced, particularly as it raises questions of what is historical of the era or fabricated absurdities. Who had all these giant slabs of meat we see, including in Charlie's fictional home, and is this why American refrigerators and freezers as big as they are? How much did this once cost, and how time consuming was it, in hindsight, to prepare and cook this food, let alone cut it, when it takes a couple of hours just to cook (from experience) a simple pork joint for two people for Christmas? You can see fifties into early sixties Americana as a different place, where steak was a more common meal, and different from now where everyone has to work rather than be at home, not only feminism a factor nowadays but also economic reasons. One can be asking oneself whether it is possible for people to nowadays find the time, and if they are tired or lack the resources, to finely slice a rack of beef off the ribs. Noam Chomsky could have written a treatise on this if he had bothered.

Carving Magic, which already has the odd structure of being a film-within-a-film, as Charlie breaks out a projector and screens the film he helped made about how to carve meat, is also fascinating like so much of this ephemeral material in what you can read between the lines. That, despite being the world of housewives, masculinity is proven by being able to cut a turkey, which this all in its micro-plot actually boils down into. It is the kind of short, in its apparent squareness, which is inherently compelling even as a historical item. That I have not even mentioned that Al is Harvey Korman, in his first role, a comedian who would have a career long past this between voice work in The Flintstones to Blazing Saddles (1974) as Hedley Lamarr, among many Mel Brooks films, just adds among the odd little aspects in this short.

 

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1) One example, Thora Campbell, is talked of HERE.

Blood Feast (1963)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Louise Downe

Cast: William Kerwin as Det. Pete Thornton; Mal Arnold as Fuad Ramses; Connie Mason as Suzette Fremont; Lyn Bolton as Mrs. Dorothy Fremont; Scott H. Hall as Frank; Christy Foushee as Trudy Sanders

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #207

 

Have you ever had an Egyptian feast?

We talk of Psycho (1960) being a huge cultural influence in cinema, but with actual seriousness, what was the lasting effect when Herschell Gordon Lewis, bored of making nudie cuties, found a new niche and created the "splatter" genre? Whether it was more the decades later when we finally learnt of its significance or not, Blood Feast is still historically important even if from a director who never considered his work art but merely entertainment. It is not hyperbole to say that, whilst this genre could have been created later on by another movie, Blood Feast was the first and from it so much horror and genre cinema fixated on splatter effects and fake gore grew from this film's initial seed.

I will be honest though, even as a fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis, that I cannot fully appreciate the film, a case of a person's most well known creation which is yet not as interesting as others. It is the one many think of with Lewis, in terms of pop culture, but it is not as interesting or weird as later productions, even Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002). The one factor I have to take into consideration, in this tale of Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), caterer and worshipper of the blood goddess Ishtar in the midst of killing women for titular blood feast, is that this was the blue print for later work with kinks to iron out. It does show the virtues I came to like in his work, still the inherently kitsch and delightfully eccentric tone of his other work, but merely a fragment.

The splatter film, with the poster paint red and use of real butcher shop offal, could not truly exist without colour film, but one of the most distinct aspects of Lewis in general is that, most of his golden era of films in the sixties, this work is imbued with a distinct aesthetic also alien to the stereotype of the sixties, being for many flower power and hippies. Even in the context of exploitation films, Blood Feast sadly does suffer from its structure of a prolonged crime procedural which drags on even over sixty eight minutes, but alongside the gore still being strong in the modern day in context, the Americana and tone is arguably as much its personality. It is a film which is quite goofy, openly so, very much of square middle suburbia with its interior decorating and Wilma Flintstone hair on actresses violently juxtaposed with its gore. This is the kind of world you would presume to see in a beach film or an exotica album cover, inexplicably here instead and striking as a result.

In another context, the exoticism of Egyptian culture would be offensive nowadays, of evil cults of orgies and sacrifice to ogle over. Ishtar is not even an Egyptian God, but a Sumerian one, which adds an absurdity to this. Thankfully, these problems are neutralised by Lewis' personality. The later films were funnier, but from the start, Blood Feast has to its advantage a deeply ghoulish sense of humour, or least the sense of self deprecation to overcome its limitations. Helping considerably is the aesthetic - having to shot where he could, Lewis more than likely brought a lot more verisimilitude to the film where the clothes worn are likely those the actors had off-camera, whilst the grocery store Ramses works out of, as he offers the mother of a young woman soon to have her birthday to cater for, is clearly a real one. Even in mind, sadly, many of his films were not preserved as well as they could have been, only much later when the likes of Something Weird Video became his flag waver, Lewis' work as films shot in colour have their own gaudy, idiosyncratic atmosphere which still applies here.  The take on Egyptian culture, which merely boils down to a golden Ishtar statue that could proudly sit in a casino lobby, and even a flashback in the past with anachronistic sixties hair on the female sacrifice, instead comes off silly.

It cannot be denied how crudely made Blood Feast is. Some of the memorable aspects are likely unexpected - Arnold's performance is "memorable", more because whilst as an actor he felt less restricted in Scum of the Earth (1963), also be Lewis, but here is stiffer both trying to work with an accent and playing an older man with fake grey in his hair. Even here though, you have flickers of intentional silliness. Lewis makes some sadistic scenes here, but he never wanted to not be entertaining. It takes some of the bite of the issues I have had with the film when it was clearly made with his tongue in his cheek. Not ironic, but as its infamous tongue ripping scene, being like a spectacle of yucks holding it aloft in the air, wanting to make the viewer squirm like a haunted house spectacle, and then following it up with humour. There is humour when, even though her caterer has just been revealed to be a killer, the mother of the birthday girl says immediately afterwards will just have to have hamburgers instead, never mind that her daughter was nearly sacrificed. Moments like this would be amplified in his later work, and this one of Herschell Gordon Lewis' best aspects as a creator.

Also, one has to bear in mind that Lewis was also one person in the midst of this production, and whilst in the midst of this, I hold up Lewis as an idiosyncratic figure who made films distinctly of his wn, the people he worked with are of interest and built the foundations around him as in all film making. Intriguing, writing the script according to some sources, is Louise Downe, who was one of the lead actresses in Scum of Earth, and is a figure who, in truth, has been unfortunately sidelined in Herschell Gordon Lewis' history considering she was a writer on multiple films of his (The Gruesome Twosome (1967)), second unit/assistant director on many, even special effects for films like The Gore Gore Girls (1972), making her a figure who really needs a lot more information on. Mal Arnold, who sadly has a tiny filmography, is still compelling in his odd performance here,  though I have become fond of William Kerwin, who by this point, beyond this role as the lead detective, was a veteran in films and especially television. His tale is sweeter knowing he met his future wife Connie Mason, a model who played the lead and would be together until his death in 1989.  Even Lewis himself is underappreciated, as one of the most iconic aspects, and one of the best for me, is his own contribution to the score. Basic yes, but from its drum beats and extreme minimalism, it is as much part of the film's legacy.

Returning to a phrase used earlier, that this is the blue print for his later work, that reason is why I still will look to Blood Feast with admiration. Stiff and not as interesting as the later films, definitely, but still with a lot to like, and historical importance means it is necessary to see. Too much of it has become iconic in context for exploitation cinema - the trailer alone even, with Kerwin (as himself warning the viewer of the trailer itself before continuing with it, or the title screen being a Sphinx against a bright blue sky with the title composed from dripping (fake) blood. That this also was the progenitor of a genre too is impossible to deny either, and thankfully, the figures behind this film, not just Lewis, found a niche as a result of this and built from the plan in deliberately more lurid and entertaining ways.

Wild Palms (1993)

 

Directors: Peter Hewitt, Keith Gordon, Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou

Screenplay: Bruce Wagner

Based on the comic strip by Bruce Wagner

Cast: James Belushi as Harry Wyckoff, Dana Delany as Grace Wyckoff, Ben Savage as Coty Wyckoff, Robert Loggia as Senator Tony Kreutzer, Angie Dickinson as Josie Ito, David Warner as Eli Levitt, Kim Cattrall as Paige Katz, Ernie Hudson as Tommy Laszlo, Nick Mancuso as Tully Woiwode, Bebe Neuwirth as Tabba Schwartzkopf, Aaron Michael Metchik as Peter Katz, Brad Dourif as Chickie Levitt

Re-Review

From the first scene - in which the older brother of Jim Belushi, James Belushi, enters his suburban kitchen at night only to find a rhino there  by the refrigerator- you are immediately primed for a very weird and idiosyncratic television mini-series to ever be produced. Since I have learnt of said series, I was immensely fascinated by its existence and found it fit my sensibilities completely. Riding the zeitgeist wave Twin Peaks (1990-1991) created, broadcast on the same station ABC and co-produced by Oliver Stone, the result is a peculiar beast. One where Stone's cameo as himself, being interviewed about secret JFK conspiracy documents proving his theories, is the thing that barely bats an eyelid about what is going on throughout the narrative. That a phone line was set up to explain plot points per episode is a sign of where Wild Palms goes, a melodrama with a pulpy sci-fi bent and a lot on its mind.

Belushi is Harry Wyckoff, who finds a new career path under senator Tony Kreutzer (Robert Loggia), founder of the religion Synthiotics and founder of the Wild Palms group, who are developing both virtual reality television and mimizine, a synthetic drug with allows one to interact with the holograms. It is not long into the first episode, a feature length beginning, that Wyckoff's life becomes a complex spiral - caught between the war between The Fathers and The Friends, two opposing political sides; discovering that his son Coty (Ben Savage) may not be his own; that Kreutzer is a corrupt wannabe demigod, that and his wife Grace (Dana Delany) is suffering from her connections to the Wild Palms group, not least because her mother Josie Ito (Angie Dickinson) is a vindictive, violent person and Kreutzer's sister; that the story starts rolling, like a noir plot, with an old flame Paige Katz (Kim Cattrall), connected to Kreutzer, who has re-entered his life and stoked a flame that is eating away at both of them.

It is an alternative reality - set in 2007 when Japan did not have the economic bubble burst and influenced US culture - but so much of the five episode mini-series is incredibly fresh and meaningful still. The danger of religious cults; a populist politician played by Robert Loggia whose ability to charm by his charisma; that a murder shown live on TV will be forgotten a week later; and the fact that Wild Palms is about virtual reality technology in peoples' homes that, with a drug that can allow you to touch and interact with holograms, can be used to control people. So much stands out, even if the look and lore is of their times, the best of these sci-fi/dystopian/cyberpunk stories still interesting in their themes. The plot of Wild Palms is in fact not that difficult to set out, merely that there is so much on its mind, that it can be a lot to take in, especially as the show embraces more eccentric details. Its ideas are stil salient even in terms of virtual reality; back then, it was still disconnected from the reality of basic effects and having to wear one of Daft Punk's helmets, but the themes of reality and our growing addictions to artificial simulacra exist even into the modern day.

Whilst there are four directors involved - Peter Hewitt, former actor-director Keith Gordon, Three O'Clock High (1987) director Phil Joanou, and Kathryn Bigelow - this is the brainchild of Bruce Wagner. A novelist and screenwriter, his career in cinema is small but with David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars (2014) among his filmography, an underrated and weird Cronenberg work, his idiosyncrasies are felt between the surrealism to constant references to spirituality including Buddhism. The other factor is Oliver Stone, who produced the mini-series and in the midst of his nineties period clearly saw many of his sensibilities here. He is probably the reason why this is a lot more cinematic than a lot of mini-series, a sense of scale found in its style, where the camera will actually glide across scenes, and musical choices even include the Rolling Stones.

The cast certainly helps, certain performances an acquired taste and yet appropriate for what turned into a melodrama in sci-fi dystopia costume. For James Belushi, it is the least expected role he could have as he is known for comedies and family films until, in a nice piece of synchronicity, being cast in the 2017 series of Twin Peaks. That Belushi apparently had no idea what the plot was about almost feels fitting for the film. As our cipher into this world, an everyman who realise his life is more entrenched in conspiracy than believes, he is the actor playing the most muted role which means he is easy to dismiss, but someone appreciated by me nonetheless. Especially as he is the sane cog in the midst of everyone else, with only the sadness of Dana Delany as his wife, in her tragic plot trajectory, a grounded emotional current.

Robert Loggia, who described his role as Tony Kreutzer in the context of ancient Greek plays when interviewed about the miniseries, chews scenery appropriate for a character that has had people killed and also starts randomly bursting into song in the final episodes. Not a man unknown for weird films, an acid flashback to his Al Johnson impersonation in The Ninth Configuration (1980) and that he would work with David Lynch in Lost Highway (1997), he fits a role of the ultimate tyrant, obsessed with a McGuffin known as the Go Chip which will give him digital immortality. Angie Dickinson, from the likes of Dressed to Kill (1980), manages to outdo even Loggia as his sister Josie, channelling both Bettie Davis and Joan Crawford from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) with her pronounced makeup and heightened performance; appropriate for a character with an obsession with kidnapping her former husband and Friends leader Eli Levitt (David Warner), and gouging peoples' eyes out. Among these figures also includes Coty Wyckoff (Ben Savage), Harry's son who is both a new TV star for a cheesy show "Church Windows", naturally the first stage for controlling the masses, and a child sociopath; Ernie Hudson from the Ghostbusters films as a Friends member who becomes addicted to mimizine and can hear church bells as a result, and even Brad Dourif in a small role. Another smaller role is by one of the mini-series' directors themselves in Kathryn Bigelow, which has additional pertinence as this feels like a dry run for Strange Days (1995), her dystopian sci-fi epic which also deals with the dangers of technology through artificial memories.

The tapestry, which can be boiled down to the evil  "Fathers" and good "Friends" who are at war, is pleased to cram in as many references as it can, from the mythology of the hungry ghost to cinema references. Villains have their own fears and compulsions, and side characters on the Friends are even clearly meant to be gay lovers, with far more progressiveness to that point by it never being explicitly evoked yet part of a tragedy in the midst of this underground war. The plot twists and events fly thick and fast - secret tunnels in swimming pools, child kidnapping and psychotic child stars, drugs which induce hallucinations of church bells and microchips that create digital immortality - but there is always a sense of scale and gravitas which makes everything feel appropriate. It gets to the point where you have a glib reference here in calling a cafe in the background "Eros plus Massacre", a tip to the hat to a three and a half hour Japanese experimental film by Yoshishige Yoshida, which shows we are completely different territory to most television at the time. This is even before you get to Wagner's own quirks like his obsession, spoken by the characters, of rhinos being fallen unicorns. For television, it is like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) at points.

If Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2006) is like MTV scatterbrained version of this type of high-minded sci-fi, Wild Palms in tone is far more stylish and an moody, like the classy event it was originally clearly meant to be and from the director of Natural Born Killers (1994). Palms' class is felt just in Ryuichi Sakamoto scoring the mini-series, the former Yellow Magic Orchestra member and legendary film composer creating an underrated score in his career, or how for all its dated CGI animation, the premise is thought-out and still poignant, the dangers of one's dreams and alternative realities being controlled and manipulated. Like a high budget soap opera, the over-the-top drama and twists feel on point, and appropriate for a world that has yuppies beating people up in the street that everyone walks past.

It never comes off as tacky, and even the aesthetic, where Japanese clothing has influenced these characters' costumes and everything is high on early nineties style, everything is matter-of-fact, a grounded world that does evoke Wagner's constant obsession with Los Angeles and Hollywood if his bibliography is to attest to. That it is set in Los Angeles of another world makes the world's mishmash of content befitting, and the absurdity is also clearly on purpose - rhinos in the kitchen, dreams of taking a katana as one's briefcase, even the casting of Bob Gunton as the obviously suspicious psychologist - with a sense of humour occasionally and proudly appearing. I mean, one episode includes in its first scenes a hologram sixties girl group and the final episode is named after a song from a Marx Brothers' film. Author William Gibson has a cameo as himself, admitting he has been called the inventor of "cyberpunk", only to walk off and never be seen again.

The general madness on display was the original reason I feel in love with this title and is weaves gladly with the ambition and quality, characters spitting out elaborate and memorable dialogue in each scene with the content being as memorable and idiosyncratic. In spite of its limitations, still for a higher budgeted television production having to tell some of its content off-screen, Wild Palms is deliciously weird. Where swimming pools have secret doors at the bottoms, lairs to the Friends' hideouts, and that, as in all dystopian sci-fi of the time, there is a slum district which law enforcement stays out of, a Casablanca of rebels and bootleg holograms. The dichotomy between advanced tech, like virtual reality, against issues like the complete lack of internet, living in a subconscious realm outside of our past or future off the television screen, is matched by both moments of real emotional weight but also the weirdness of a religious cult whose motto "Everything must go" is literally taking an advertising motto as biblical text, the accidental comparisons to a real and controversial religious group not likely to be missed either whatever your opinion on them. Wild Palms is something deliriously weird that, even if it came after Twin Peaks' popularity, somehow was bankrolled and exists despite the sense it was never going to succeed even as a miniseries. An instant cult work, not contrived but too weird to live. Merely a slither of Wild Palms creates many questions which, even when answered, open up so many new questions of where they came from. Now that I have come to admire it even in context of its TV presentation, which once before was a flaw, Wild Palms gets by as a bizarre TV melodrama, a product of its time which thankfully exists, only to have turned into something I absolutely adore.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Psychotronic/Weird

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