Bladerunner, A Movie by William S. Burroughs(Blue Wind Press, 1986)

Guaranteed to provoke “whaaat, he didn’t write ‘Bladerunner’…?!?” reactions from moody, trenchcoat-clad adolescents the world over, this slim volume from Berkeley’s Blue Wind Press doesn’t really go to great lengths to try to explain it’s existence.

My initial assumption was that sometime during pre-production for the film that became Ridley Scott’s ‘Bladerunner’, some bright spark asked Burroughs to write a treatment for a possible screenplay, with predictably unfilmable results that eventually ended up here.

As you might expect from Old Bill, the text herein has nothing whatsoever in common with Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’. But in fact it was never supposed to; a brief note on the copyrights/ISBN page reads; “the author wishes to thank Alan E. Nourse, upon whose book ‘The Blade Runner' characters and situation in this book are based”.

I’d never heard of Alan E. Nourse, but turns out he was a fairly prolific science fiction writer, and did indeed publish a novel entitled ‘The Blade Runner’ in 1974. For some obscure reason, the Ridley Scott film ended up stealing the title of Nourse’s book, despite having no other connection to it, whilst this Burroughs treatment dates from an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to adapt that book for the screen.

Reading ‘Bladerunner, a Movie’ prior to researching this, I would have sworn blind that the storylines and ideas within it, with their unmistakable mixture of vicious social satire, weird science, post-apocalyptic utopianism and gay sex, were pure uncut Burroughs, but reading the plot synopsis of Nourse’s novel, it sounds like it was a pretty Burroughs-esque venture to begin with:

“The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs "blades" for Doc (Doctor John Long) as part of an illegal black market for medical services. The setting is a society where free, comprehensive medical treatment is available for anyone so long as they qualify for treatment under the Eugenics Laws. Preconditions for medical care include sterilization, and no legitimate medical care is available for anyone who does not qualify or does not wish to undergo the sterilization procedure (including children over the age of five). These conditions have created illegal medical services in which bladerunners supply black market medical supplies for underground practitioners, who generally go out at night to see patients and perform surgery. As an epidemic breaks out among the underclass, Billy must save the city from the plague hitting the rest of the city as well.”

Working within this structure, Burroughs uses the screen treatment as an excuse to rattle off a non-linear series of scene ideas and situations that take in some of the more familiar tropes of his own work, as Billy Gimp and his fellow bladerunners are reimagined as feral, homosexual ‘wild boys’, the black market medical facilities are used to revive the stoned surgery nightmares of Dr. Benway et al, and the idea of an economy based around the illicit supply of drugs and medical equipment naturally gives Burroughs much space to hold forth on his ideas regarding the supply and demand of narcotics and the forces of social control that lurk beneath them.

Whilst the random sprawl of Burroughs’ novels can get a bit much even for his fans, I’ve often thought that his writing works best when applied to shorter projects; the posthumous novelette ‘Ghost of Chance’ is a strong enough work to win over folk who’d rather eat glass than try to wade through ‘Naked Lunch’ again, whilst the unfinished ‘Queer’ is probably the most direct, emotionally affecting work of his career, complete with an essential introduction that basically functions as a key to understanding all of his cut up era work. ‘Bladerunner’ can easily be filed alongside these slim volumes – picking it up after keeping Burroughs at arms length for a few years, it was a refreshing and slyly funny read – a welcome reminder of what a unique and (no other word for it I’m afraid) visionary voice in the wilderness he was.

I still have no idea who the hippie guy pictured on the front of this book is, by the way.

Old Movie Reviews, Part # 2:Originally Posted October 31st 2005

The Black Cat (Lucio Fulci, Italy/UK, 1981)

Not under any circumstances to be confused with the Edgar Ulmer’s classic 1934 Lugosi / Karloff loon-fest, this is an Italian / English co-production that would have looked pretty crappy even at the height of Euro-horror mass production, and which must have been an embarrassment to all concerned in 1981. Fulci has made some films which are almost good, but this certainly isn’t one of them. Expanding on the Edgar Allen Poe story with all the subtlety you’d expect from the director of Zombie Flesh Eaters, this is – and I wish I was making this crap up – a film about an evil, serial killing cat. Yes, that’s right; picture dimly lit shots of the hapless moggie wandering around, overlaid with menacing Psycho-esque music, interspersed with extreme close-ups of his victims going “nooooo!”, and you’ve got some idea of the level of hilarity we’re dealing with here. Patrick “Would you like some WINE?!?!?” Magee reprises the same OTT acting style he used in A Clockwork Orange to play the cat’s mad scientist owner, who hangs around the graveyard at night recording the voices of the dead on tape recorders. Mimsy Farmer delivers her lines and waits for the pay cheque as the sassy reporter who has a dreadful suspicion she knows who might have crawled through the ventilation grille to kill that honeymooning couple in the locked boathouse. In short, Magee and the cat are brilliant. Everything else is rubbish. Best line: “If he were human, he’d be HANGED!”

[2010 UPDATE: Once again, I would just like to make clear that I love this film dearly, and don’t know what I was thinking re: declaring it to be ‘crappy’ and ‘rubbish’. What a clueless arse I was back then.]


Horror Hospital (Antony Balch, UK, 1973)

By god, this film is horrible. Not horrible in the way horror movies are supposed to be horrible, but just stupid, distasteful, baffling and wrong. It’s a British effort staring Robin Asquith from the ‘Confessions of..’ movies, and given the goofiness of the acting and the astonishing crapness of the story, I think it was intended to be a comedy, except that they seem to have forgotten to include anything even remotely amusing. The plot, such as it is, involves a wheelchair-bound evil doctor (Michael Gough) who uses his detox centre / country retreat as a front for his hobby of turning young people into zombies and making them morbidly dance around in their pants while he goes “look at them, they are under my power, ha ha ha” and so on and so forth. So naturally Robin and has lady-friend check in and are subjected to an hour or so of sub-Scooby Doo running around type bollocks. More worrying than the inherent rubbishness of the whole venture though is the extent to which an atmosphere of inexplicable and nasty sadism seems to work its way into every scene. Long sections of this film seem to dwell with leering and repetitive glee on scantily clad teenagers being restrained, beaten, drugged and generally mistreated by faceless men in leather and motorcycle helmets. There’s a LOT of syringes, leather gloves, punching, screaming and cold, dead-looking flesh – all of this creeping latently through the cracks of a lame, cringe-worthy ‘70s British comedy. The aura of general NOT RIGHTness surrounding this film is massive, and, combined with its utter z-rate banality, I feel somewhat ashamed to have been born and raised in a country whose national consciousness decreed this film should be made and people should pay money to see it. On the plus side though, there’s quite a fun gory beheading, the evil doctor turns into some kind of slime monster at the end and – I can’t help but be touched by the tragedy of this – the midget butler totally steals the show, putting his heart and soul into a fantastic, dignified and charming performance that outclasses everybody else present by a factor of ten. Were he of regular height he’d no doubt have been concerned with far better things, but, being a ‘comedy dwarf’, he finds himself relegated to supporting roles in god-awful films like this. A damn shame.

[2010 UPDATE: I’ve not subsequently had the chance to watch ‘Horror Hospital’ again, but needless to say, I remember it a lot more fondly than the above review suggests, and these days I think I’d really enjoy it. Michael Gough doing his creepiest Lugosi impersonation, motorcycle-based beheading, suit of armour enhanced sex scene, inexplicable slime-beasts and an ocsar-worthy turn from the diminutive butler (Skip Martin, whose credits also include The Masque of the Red Death, Vampire Circus and Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan)? What more could one want from an oddball horror/sleaze quickie for christsake! Dreary snob that I was/am, I’d probably have seen the film in whole new light had I known at the time that Antony Balch was a venerable Beat Hotel-affiliated boho who co-directed the “Towers Open Fire” and “Cut Ups” films with William Burroughs & Brion Gysin, and who became a big player in film distribution and exhibition in ‘70s soho, taking pleasure in blurring the boundaries between porn, exploitation and the avant garde at every opportunity; his applaudably detailed wikipedia page has more info.]


Mesa of Lost Women (Herbert Tevos / Ron Ormond, USA, 1953)

My god, where to start... A mad scientist who lives on a haunted mesa in the ‘Muerto Desert’ is creating an army of invincible super-women with the minds of insects! And giant spiders too! And he’s played by Jackie Coogan - Uncle Fester from the Addams Family! There’s a thunderous voiceover delivering dire warnings! A vampiric Mexican femme fatale performs a fantastic erotic dance in a cantina, gets shot at the climax, and then comes back to life as astonished patrons look on! The same piece of crazy mariachi music plays THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE FILM! A plane journey is represented using a model on a string, some cotton wool and a mocked up cockpit! There’s an escaped lunatic who talks like Kenneth Williams! There’s the laziest attempt to apprehend an escaped lunatic in cinematic history! For some reason the invincible monster-women hang around with a bunch of dwarves who look like Lon Chaney Jr! There’s a stereotypical Chinese man-servant who dispenses cryptic ancient wisdom and is secretly in league with Uncle Fester! There’s an even more embarrassing stereotypical Mexican who dresses like Speedy Gonzales and introduces himself as “Pepe”! There’s an alpha-male lead whose response to insane terror and imminent death is “let’s hit the hay and we’ll deal with it in the morning”! There’s a thoroughly lame-brained romantic sub-plot! There’s even a weirdly plausible pseudo-scientific explanation! And it’s all neatly wrapped up in under 70 minutes! Basically, this is B-movie heaven.

[2010 UPDATE: Well at least I got this one right. ‘Mesa of Lost Women’ ROCKS!]