October Horrors # 12: A Flipside Halloween with ‘Legend ofthe Witches’ (1970), ‘Secret Rites’ (1971) & More.

Back in the halcyon days of 2009-11ish, I was a regular attendee at the monthly ‘Flipside’ screenings which took place at the National Film Theatre / BFI Southbank here in London, organised in support of the BFI’s then flourishing DVD/Blu-Ray imprint of the same name. Bearing witness to the assorted oddities unearthed from the archives by curators Vic Pratt and William Fowler was always a joy and a privilege, to the extent that I pretty much bought my tickets blind, confident that whatever they came up with would prove both surprising and rewarding, even if it was something I would never have voluntarily signed up for in any other circumstances (a Q&A with the late Michael Winner springs to mind).

Naturally, I was sad to see the ‘Flipside’ slot gradually muscled out of the BFI’s schedule, presumably to make way for no-doubt-more-lucrative extra screenings of whichever restored Kubrick epic was currently doing the rounds (or, perhaps it was the decision, apropos of nothing, to screen the largely unheralded 1982 post-apocalyptic movie ‘Battle Truck’ with the director in attendance which proved the final straw for the accounts department, who knows).

The absolute highlight on the Flipside calendar of course was the programmes of shorts, TV episodes and documentaries which Pratt & Fowler used to pull together for Halloween (you can read my thoughts on the 2010 Halloween special here) and it has been a joy and a privilege this month to be able to relive the spirit of those strange evenings in my own home, as the Flipside label has risen from its slumber and produced a shiny new release which pretty much exemplifies the kind of thing which used to pop up at those October screenings.

Beginning with our feature presentation for the evening, Malcolm Leigh’s 1970 documentary Legend of the Witches opens in surprisingly meditative fashion, with a near ten minute sequence of uninterrupted nature footage. In what certainly seems like a boldly experimental gambit for a film which saw its only theatrical exhibition as a supporting feature for ‘Not Tonight, Darling’ aka ‘Sex in the Suburbs’ (Anthony Sloman, 1971), we see seaweed ebbing and flowing on the tide in a manner that I’d be tempted to tag as a tribute to Tarkovsky but for the fact that he had not actually made ‘Solaris’ yet at this point, reeds and branches swaying in the breeze, and a sunrise presented in real time.

(For some reason, Leigh and “lighting cameraman” Robert Webb seem to have had a particular yen for this kind of ambient / landscape footage, inserting seascapes, cliff faces and foliage throughout the film. Even when visiting a haunted house, the camera seems more concerned with the peacocks in the garden and the grain of wood on the staircase than the supposedly spooky goings-on.) (1)

Over this opening footage, our stentorian-yet-faintly-ironic narrator Guy Standeven intones what purports to be the “creation myth of the witches”, involving a tryst between the moon goddess Diana and Lucifer the light-bringer, representing a union between the feminine/lunar and masculine/solar ideals. (2)

Under the circumstances, this yarn does a pretty good job of sounding authentically old-as-the-hills, supporting the film’s contention that modern witchcraft has risen organically from the natural world and the impossibly ancient worship thereof. In reality however, this “creation myth” was likely knocked up from scratch by the film’s ostensible star, self-styled ‘King of the Witches’ Alex Sanders, and the references to the Greco-Roman Diana and the Christian figure of Lucifer will no doubt have already made the blood of any Wiccan purists in the audience start to boil.

We’re on safer ground though as we join Sanders’ skyclad coven (or at least, the younger and more photogenic members thereof, I suspect) as they circle their ceremonial fire in some suitably remote and inaccessible deep forest clearing, undertaking a series of elemental initiation rites for a new member.

Chances are, if you’re familiar with Sanders’ name, you probably know him in his capacity as a media / showbiz fixture, a relentless self-promoter and, arguably, an out-right charlatan. Here at least though, Leigh & Webb’s striking, high contrast black & white photography and solemn, naturalistic pacing succeeds in imbuing Sanders’ rites with a degree of dignity and gravitas, framing the coven’s matter-of-fact nudity in a way that often seems closer to Francis Bacon-style anatomical expressionism than yr common-or-garden exploitation.

After quite a lot of this, we veer into slightly more routine paranormal documentary territory, as Standeven essentially delivers a lecture on the early Christian church’s tendency to incorporate pagan tradition into their architecture and practice, and a sympathetic, Margaret Murray-ish take on the subsequent persecution of ‘the old religion’, all illustrated with visits to some churches and standing stones, medieval woodcuts, an examination of the weirder goings-on in the Bayeux Tapestry, and so forth.

This all leads up to a second staged ritual, which will no doubt have those hypothetical Wiccans spitting horse feathers, as Sanders and his wife Maxine are seen conducting a quote-unquote ‘black mass’, complete with full Xtian paraphernalia – looming crucifix, altar boys, sacred host and ecclesiastical music on the soundtrack. Presumably dreamed up in order to add a frisson of blasphemy to proceedings, this sequence ends like some Ken Russell wet dream, with Alex apparently instigating a menage-a-trois with two naked ladies inside the magic(k) circle. Good heavens.

Next up, we get an intriguing tour of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall. It’s still there today, and I have long wished to pay it a visit, although my failure to persuade anyone to drive me there has thus far stymied that ambition. I mean, I’m sure they must have changed things around a bit in the past half century, but on the basis of what we see here, it looks pretty amazing.

This transitions into another staged ritual, in which – extraordinarily, given that they were supposedly aiming to popularise and win respect for their beliefs – we see Sanders and his followers demonstrating the rites through which a coven might place a death curse on an enemy. This also incorporates a strong sexual element, as Alex and Maxine again put on a bit of a show for the camera, enacting the simulated conception and “birth” of the curse object.

Thus far, ‘Legend of the Witches’ has served up an odd mixture of sombre, moody atmospherics and increasingly questionable content, but happily, the film’s final stretch is by far the most entertaining, committing fully to the cause of wonderful, silly-ass nonsense.

For no particular reason, we ditch witchcraft for a while, and instead visit a haunted house (I’m currently unable to identify which one). Here, a mod-ishly dressed young lady is left alone to shiver in “the most haunted room” whilst – in a development guaranteed to produce rapturous excitement for those of us with a fetish for vintage audio equipment and/or The Stone Tape – a team of paranormal investigators begin hauling their elaborate electronic gear up the stairs!

I’m pretty sure this stuff was all staged for the film (the ‘psychic’ girl in the haunted room re-appears in later scenes, still wearing the same outfit), but it’s still great fun.

Rather than waiting for a conclusion to this paranormal stake-out, the film soon changes course again to take in psychic phenomena and, uh, electronically-induced hypnotism? Yes, there are whirring oscillators, “stroboscopes” and a big ol’ hypno-wheel on the wall, as we are invited to note the similarities between “traditional “and “modern” means of generating a trance state, leading us directly into the film’s big finale, in which all pretence of documentary realism is merrily discarded in favour of a wild, studio-bound happening (ostensibly the preparation for a scrying ritual) which feels like a cross between an early Velvet Underground photo-shoot, an outtake from ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and a Jess Franco night club scene.

Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in here, as we get a giant hypno-wheel projection, a guy wearing a goat mask, several naked girls, Alex Sanders (I think) turning up in an owl mask, ceremonial whipping and light bondage, clouds of incense, strobe lighting, and even a soundtrack of ragin’ sitar music (because there’s no better way to get your psychedelic witchcraft party started than with some totally random cultural misappropriation). Speaking with what I hope is the authority befitting a connoisseur of this sort of thing, I declare it to be absolutely amazing. Wow.

Moving on the Flipside disc’s second billed attraction, we find Secret Rites, a 50-minute item directed by sometime horror scriptwriter and notorious sexploitation maverick Derek Ford. Originally released as a supporting feature for Ford’s ‘Suburban Wives’ in 1972, we find ourselves presented here with a case study in how two films dealing with exactly the same topic, made at roughly the same time, with the same central participants, can be entirely different from each other.

Once again, Alex Sanders takes centre stage, but he and his coven seem to have left the neo-primitive rural environs depicted in ‘Legend of the Witches’ far behind, instead heading straight for the heart of London’s swingin’ scene and the urban sprawl of Notting Hill Gate. Their rituals are now a riot of tinfoil, black candles, theatrical make up, big moth-eaten goat heads and costumes from the psychedelic dressing up box, and are now staged in what looks like a cramped subterranean night club done up to resemble a faux-medieval dungeon, all captured by Ford’s camera in blazing, over-saturated faux-technicolor.

A queasy mixture of ‘fact’ and fiction, the flimsy narrative around which ‘Secret Rites’ is constructed concerns Penny Beecham, a real life model and actress who went on to become a regular on ‘70s TV, appearing in ‘dollybird’ roles in ‘Up Pompeii’ and ‘The Morecombe & Wise Show’. Confusingly, Beecham uses her real name in the film, despite the fact that she seems to be playing the role of a fictional trainee hairdresser who, having “always been fascinated by the occult,” has decided to get herself hitched up to the nearest witch cult.

(Note the poster for Harry Kumel’s ‘Daughters of Darkness’ visible on the tube station wall in the screen-grab above.)

Venturing into the patchouli-drenched bohemian hinterland of Notting Hill, Penny meets Alex and Maxine Sanders down the pub to discuss the possibility of her initiation into their order.

It’s the little details that can make a big impression in things like this, and, whilst Alex was droning on in his drowsy Mancunian tones about how much hard work it is learning to be a witch (lots of reading, lots of study, he keeps stressing, they don’t just spend all their time horsing around in the nude, he’ll have you know), I couldn’t help noticing that the couple both seem to have been enjoying half pints of a rather tasty-looking ale served in stemmed glasses, whilst Alex has his fags and his wallet set out on the table in front of him, like a seasoned man-about-town. Somehow, I found myself entranced by this curious mixture of pious new age esotericism and down to earth ‘70s masculinity (and Maxine’s paisley-patterned dress is a knock-out too).

After this, most of the rest of the film consists of kinky rites in the groovy day-glo cellar, in which the remnants of respectably sincere pagan practice (the ‘hand-fasting’ marriage ceremony for instance) find themselves napalmed by a retina-scorching aesthetic of fancy dress pop-porno psychedelic excess, culminating in the “rarely witnessed and never before photographed” Invocation of Ra, whose gold-foil bedecked explosion of high camp Egyptology must be seen to be believed.

Sanders, during his interminable invocations, even makes reference at one point to “the Terrible Domain of the Dread Lords of the Outer Spaces”, which seems pretty way out there, even by his standards. Perhaps some of those Ladbroke Grove Hawkwind/Moorcock type vibes had been rubbing off on him whilst he was down the pub?

Those in a position to know about such things have noted that Sanders’ “coven” seems to have had its numbers boosted on this occasion by at least some performers who also appeared in the harder sex films and illicit porno loops which Ford was producing during this period, and indeed, rumours persist that a ‘harder’ cut of ‘Secret Rites’ may have been prepared for the export market (perhaps explaining the awkward 50 minute running time of the version which made it into UK cinemas). No one involved in the BFI release seems to have been able to verify the truth of this however, so who knows.

Also of note in ‘Secret Rites’ is the soundtrack, which, perfectly in keeping with the film’s visuals, comprises a way-out smorgasbord of ominous, effects-drenched psychedelic jamming, credited to an otherwise unknown outfit identified as ‘The Spindle’. No one seems to have been able to ascertain the provenance of this music, or to identify any of the players involved, but writer Rob Young puts forward a pretty intriguing theory in the booklet accompanying the BFI disc.

And…. that’s about all I can think to say about ‘Secret Rites’, really. Suffice to say, it is essential viewing for… well, I mean, I hesitate to say everyone, but if you’re still reading this post by this point, then suffice to say, you’ve found a perfect little number to project onto the wall during your next occult-themed drug orgy, at the very least.

This being a Flipside release of course, the fun doesn’t end there, and my top pick from additional shorts included on this disc is – joy of joys – another episode of Out of Step, a series of short programmes which essentially seem to function as a more stridently judgemental 1950s version of a Louis Theroux type thing, in which presenter Dan Farson – yes, the same nephew of Bram Stoker and “charismatic Soho bon vivant” who later turned up in the wonderful BBC documentary The Dracula Business in 1974, no less! – tracks down some quote-unquote “oddballs” and basically bothers them about their unusual beliefs.

Farson’s witchcraft episode – broadcast in 1957 -may not achieve quite the same level of hilarity as his UFO one (which I briefly wrote about here), but he certainly managed to assemble an impressive line-up of interviewees, speaking first to the 92-year-old Dr Margaret Murray, whose 1921 book ‘The Witch-Cult in Western Europe’ played a pivotal role in establishing the more sympathetic narrative surrounding historical witchcraft which developed through the 20th century.

(Brilliantly, a note in the booklet accompanying this set reports that Farson had to re-shoot his ‘question shots’ for this segment of the programme in the studio, because he’d been involved in a drunken brawl the night before the Murray interview took place, and was nursing a black eye.)

Still an alert and engaging speaker at her advanced age, Dr Murray’s responses to Farson’s demand to know whether witches “actually have special powers” are non-committal, but he gets a far firmer statement of belief from Gerald Gardner, the man who essentially established modern Wiccan practice in the UK during the 1950s.

Definitely a card-carrying oddball, Gardner was living at the time in an abandoned mill in Castletown on the Isle of Man, surrounded by crudely carved magical effigies. Worryingly, he regales Farson with a tale about how he and his fellow witches successfully placed a curse on an unscrupulous property developer, and he also begins cackling devilishly when Farson broaches the subject of nudity. Let’s just say that I’d advise any residents of the Isle of Man who happen to be reading in the 1950s to keep their daughters well away from that there old mill.

Farson’s final guest meanwhile is Louis Wilkinson, an intimate friend and literary executor of Aleister Crowley. Unhelpfully from the point of view of a witchcraft documentary, Wilkinson claims that he was chiefly interested in Crowley’s talents as a wit and raconteur, and largely ignored all that magickal hoo-doo he got up to (which strikes me as being rather like claiming that you were friends with Joseph Goebbels because you liked his cooking and his singing voice, but never really paid attention to all that political stuff - but whatever).

Nonetheless, Wilkinson comes through with some great anecdotes about the control Crowley exercised over his disciples, and about the conduct of his followers during his memorial service – and, as with just about all stories concerning Crowley’s extraordinary life and conduct, it’s interesting stuff to say the least.

Next up, I turned my attention to another of the disc’s extras - Getting it Straight in Notting Hill Gate, a rather hap-hazard but still fascinating short film which takes a look at the same West London counter-cultural milieu from which ‘Secret Rites’ arose, presumably shot and directed by some proud denizens thereof.

I’ll skip over this one quickly, as it’s a bit off-message re: our Halloween/horror theme, but it should certainly prove enthralling viewing for anyone familiar with the Notting Hill area, as rambling, handheld street footage takes us through the Portobello / Ladbroke Grove area in all its post-psychedelic squalor and post-windrush finery, wringing a few moments of “Oh, it’s THAT place” type excitement even from me, and I barely ever visit that part of town.

Highlights include Caroline Coon of the influential legal rights organisation ‘Release’ interviewed (next door to the offices of Oz magazine, no less) by a young hipster going by the unlikely handle of Felix Scorpio, a visit to the flat of psychedelic artist Larry Smart (whose work looks genuinely mind-blowing – definitely worthy of further investigation), and a lengthy jam session from the band Quintessence, who we see laying down some seriously funky flute and guitar-led gear in their practice space in All Saints Church, improvising around the local anthem which gave this film it’s name. Oh, and there’s a bloke playing a sitar on a rooftop too. Top stuff.

All that, and this Flipside release still has more to offer; there’s a cine-poetic tribute to William Blake based around footage of contemporary London, directed by Robert Wynne Simmons, who wrote the script for ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw’, and a 1924 silent short entitled ‘The Witch’s Fiddle’, produced by the Cambridge University Kinema Club and utilising the talents of a bunch of keen young chaps who seemingly all went on to live lives which sound like the plots of Eric Ambler novels.

I haven’t even had a chance to watch those at the time of writing…. too much, man. Needless to say, we’re looking here at a wonderfully researched, beautifully restored and incredibly generous package of tantalising glimpses into the stranger and more marginal corners of British cinema, fascinating cross-cultural connections sparking off each of them like some out-of-control generator. Fantastic work from all concerned, and here’s hoping it opens the metaphorical floodgates for more collections of shorts, documentaries and suchlike under the Flipside banner.

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(1) Unfortunately, IMDB credits for the Robert Webb who worked on ‘Legend of the Witches’ seem to have been garbled with those of the American director of the same name, but I’m assuming THIS Robert Webb was probably the one who worked on music hall documentary ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ (1968) – co-directing with Michael Winner, funnily enough – and directed a short film entitled ‘Dancing Shoes’ (1969), before dropping out of sight..?

(2)Though it seems he rarely had the chance to give his voice much of a work out on-screen, Guy Standeven is notable for appearing uncredited in the background in just about every film ever made. Nice work if you can get it!

October Horrors #5:‘The Dracula Business’(Anthony de Lotbiniere, 1974)

Originally broadcast as a Tuesday night documentary by the BBC in August 1974, ‘The Dracula Business’ is a thoroughly entertaining forty-five minutes, structured in the ever-popular “this thing happened, also this largely unconnected thing happened” manner beloved of mondo movies and parapsychology paperbacks.

After an (unattributed) playback of the ship scene from Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’, proceedings begin, naturally enough, in Whitby. “I wonder if Count Dracula found this church yard as odd as I do?” muses presenter and Boris Johnson lookalike Dan Farson. Farson is the great nephew of Bram Stoker no less, and a “renowned Soho character” according to my (extremely limited) online research.

After treating some local children to a round of ‘Count Dracula’s Secret’ ice lollies, Farson quizzes them on their knowledge of vampire lore (chalk that up as “scene you definitely wouldn’t see in a documentary these days” # 1), before he attends a meeting of The Dracula Society at Purfleet (and these guys deemed 1972’s ‘Blacula’ “…the mosty horrifying film of the decade” according to my copy of the soundtrack LP, so they know what the hell they’re talking about). “Haven’t you got even ONE crank?” Farson asks the assemblage of mild-mannered eccentrics somewhat disappointedly.

In an attempt to demonstrate how much these programmes cost to make (gag © Eric Idle/Neil Innes), Farson next travels to Transylvania (“..there IS such a place..”) in present-day Romania, where the production captures some remarkably atmospheric footage, visiting a medieval convent decorated with appropriately infernal frescos, wherein nuns ward off evil by circling the grounds hammering planks of wood, whilst peasant-folk who look as if they could have stepped straight out of a Universal torch-wielding mob meanwhile queue up to kiss a carved icon above a well.

We are even presented with a picturesque rural funeral procession, featured in-between shots of mist raising from the forest, as Farson rambles on in pompous Wheatley/Lee type fashion about the depths of ancient superstition and an apparent “outbreak of Vampirism” that ravaged the area in the 18th century.

Remarkably, the filmmakers even manage to track down a woman – one of the singers at the funeral – who, interviewed against a backdrop of the local cemetery, tells Farson (via an interpreter) that her own father was suspected of being a vampire, and was disinterred and staked by village elders. Beat that for local colour.

Back in London meanwhile, things get a tad sillier, as Farson stalks about Highgate cemetery, musing on some recent cases of premature burial. Jarringly, we then jump straight from Farson recalling some spectacularly grim family tales about the ordeals faced by the Stoker family during a cholera outbreak in County Sligo during Bram’s youth, to the London offices of Lorimer Press, where some eager fanboys are sorting through a huge pile of Euro-Horror posters, preparing “..the latest work on vampire films”.

“Paul Naschy, the hunchback of the morgue!”, one of the guys exclaims happily, drawing our attention to a one-sheet for that very motion picture, which sits atop a fairly awesome French poster for (of all things) ‘Blacula’. I’m not sure who these fellows are (we’re not given their names at any point), but they seem like some cool dudes, with a lot of interesting things to say on their subject – perhaps the 1970s precursors to the Kim Newmans and Stephen Throwers of today?

Arguably somewhat less of a cool dude is good ol’ Michael Carreras, whom Farson corners at Hammer House, where he is checking out a test-pressing of Hammer’s cash-in Dracula LP. Carreras says something about the fantasy horror provided by Hammer being contrasted with “modern horror, more of a social realist document kind of thing..”. “Like Belfast?,” Farson jumps in. “Yes, very much so.”

Next up is Denholm Elliot, who gives us a great recitation of a passage from Stoker by way of demonstrating the “sexuality of vampirism”, following on from his 1968 TV version of ‘Dracula’ (which, on the basis of his hamming it up here, I should probably get around to watching). Elliot concludes his reading with perhaps the single greatest suggestive “HMMMMmmmmm…” ever captured on film. “Did you enjoy the devouring?” asks Farson. “Well, quite frankly, that isn’t really my scene…” responds Elliot.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, we then move to an on-set report from the making of Jose Larraz’s ‘Vampyres’ at Oakley Court. “How stunned my poor old Great Uncle might have been by these scenes,” Farson opines as Anulka and Marrianne Morris lounge naked on the bed waiting for the camera to roll, “and of the hard professionalism that goes into the making of this latest style of vampire film”.

We actually get a great glimpse here of Larraz in action, directing his leading ladies in rather hands-on fashion (“now, you go like that, and then like that, now… that is the thing… you come again, alright, with your hands like this…”, etc), all of which proves absolutely fascinating given the complete lack of ‘making of..’ footage that exists for most Euro-horror films of this era.

Sadly though, the scene cuts quite soon, as we return to Romania for a segment exploring Dracula sight-seeing tours, and plans for the “Count Dracula Castle”, which is to be opened to tourists in the Borgo Pass “hopefully in around 1977”. This in turn leads into a bit exploring the history of Vlad Tepes (“he was cruel, but… he had a certain style”) and the theories that have sought to connect him to Stoker’s Dracula.

Apparently running low on purely Dracula-related material, Farson next moves on to “..the general resurgence in the idea of the occult, which is greater in Britain today than it has been in the past few hundred years”. To pursue this further, he heads to a London sci-fi/fantasy bookshop (“specialising entirely in the occult, science fiction, and the ramifications of the Dracula cult..”), which needless to say looks amazing.

Here, he meets a woman, who, put on the spot by the presenter’s blunt questioning, states that she is attracted the idea of reading vampire novels due the fact she is “feeling rather aggressive” because her has husband left her, prompting her to seek vengeance against him through the form of “fantasy violence”. It’s all pretty awkward, to be honest.

From there, we return to Highgate, where poor old Mr Laws, the cemetery caretaker, is dragged out once again to hold forth on the “Highgate vampire”, Alan Farrant and the unfortunate flap of related grave desecrations that generated so much press in the early ‘70s. (For more on this, see my post here from 2010, featuring a report on a BFI screening of a contemporary news report that covered much of the same ground.)

As ever though, Mr Laws is good value for money. Choice quote: “one person said that he’d seen a horrible grey thing wrigglin’ down the road… all this bloody nonsense, y’know… I had to have the police clear them all off out of it..”.

And so it goes on: “Last year, in Stoke On Trent, a man was found dead in this house, in most extraordinary circumstances”. This leads us into the unfortunate tale of a paranoid individual who apparently died after swallowing an entire clove of garlic in an attempt to ward off vampires – a sad tale, somewhat leavened by the fact that the coroner Farson interviews on the subject has such a wonderful, Donald Pleasance-esque manner he could have fared pretty well in a horror movie himself.

The (rather questionable) Rev. Neil Smith subsequently rambles on a bit about his belief in vampirism and his attempts to exorcise people apparently suffering the attentions of vampires, before Farson states his belief that dabbling with the occult has “assumed the scale of an epidemic in modern day Britain”, travelling to “..the reassuring surroundings of a vicarage in Hull” to discuss the issue with a slightly more grounded clergyman, who again, manages somehow to turn his reflections on prevalence of mental illness encouraged by poking about with the powers of darkness into a highly entertaining turn.

Indeed, if there is anything to be said for the entirety of this confused, digressive and fatuous documentary, it is that it is hugely entertaining throughout - probably more so now than when it was first broadcast. The random insights it provides into pop culture and horror fandom circa 1974 are a delight, and it’s massively over-romantised, alien-coded visions of Northern Romania are likewise quite remarkable in their own right.

A perfect palette cleanser to throw on mid-way through your next Halloween movie marathon, ‘The Dracula Business’ can currently be viewed on the BBC iPlayer here, or via Youtube here.

London Frightfest 2011, Part # 3.

Midnight Son
(Scott Leberecht, 2011)

The only flick I managed to catch this year on Frightfest’s smaller ‘discovery’ screen, the unsatisfactorily titled ‘Midnight Son’ wasn’t one I picked out specially or anything – it just happened to be on when I had a film-length hole in my schedule, and I’d already paid for a day pass, so hell, why not. I’m glad I made the effort, because it was pretty good.

Shot on HD Video on what was presumably a non-existent budget, the festival blurb for ‘Midnight Son’ describes it as following in the footsteps of Romero’s ‘Martin’, but really I think it’s closer to a West Coast equivalent of Abel Ferrara’s ‘The Addiction’. Guess that wouldn’t pull the punters in quite so well though.

Anyway, ‘Midnight Son’ invites us into the life of a poor young chap who works the night shift as a security guard in a corporate office building. Seems he has a bit of a skin condition that prevents him from going out in the sun much, and in his spare time he likes to sit in his dingy basement flat painting pictures of sunsets. Understandably feeling a bit washed out, he pursues the kind of remedy that macho doctors in the ‘50s probably used to prescribe to young men with mysterious ailments: vigorously eating a blood red steak and spending the evening chatting to a girl he met selling cigarettes and candy outside a nightclub. This dose of protein and human companionship seems to perk him up no end, but as the working week goes on, the familiar fug descends again, and his discovery that blood works better than coffee as a pick-me-up leads him inevitably toward some rather more unsavoury habits.

So far, so familiar, but the film’s tone of smart, low-key realism goes a long way toward side-stepping the clichés that usually accompany this kind of story, stringing us along effectively enough to make the character’s gradual realisation of his vampiric nature seems both interesting and surprising, as much as we knew it was coming. The awkward quasi-relationship he develops with the similarly troubled young woman is very well played – a combination of her matter-of-fact drug problems and his matter-of-fact vampire problems amusingly conspiring to prevent them ever managing to have a nice evening together.

Although not exactly big on jollity to begin with (thinking about it, this is actually the only film I saw at Frightfest that didn’t have a significant amount of humour running through it), the film takea a darker turn when our man finds himself hanging around by the contaminated waste bins behind a hospital, forging a dubious alliance with a wannabe-gangster porter that eventually leads the story into the realms of a full-blooded (sorry) vampire/crime epic. Here, the video shooting actually works in the film’s favour, allowing for the creation of a believably cold and threatening nocturnal Hollywood underworld, very much reminiscent of the street scenes in Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’, and thankfully entirely devoid of the kind of dated goth/industrial hoo-hah that usually blights movies like this.

The mumbling indie relationship stuff manages to merge convincingly with the final-third shift into brutal noir crime story stuff, and if ‘Midnight Son’ does have a few of the drawbacks and unintentionally goofy moments that go hand in hand with such DIY, zero budget productions, they’re not worth bothering to go into here. By and large, I thought it was a very impressive piece of work, standing way, way, waaaay above the baseline for SOV horror. If you can stomach a heavy quotient of ‘grainy close-ups of pale, miserable people breathing heavily’ type stuff and aren’t sick to the back teeth of the kind of story that the DVD back cover blurb would probably describe as a ‘gritty urban vampire fable’, this one is well worth making time for.

Oh yeah, and another cool thing about this film – Tracey Walter, Miller from ‘Repo Man’, is in it! Yeah, y’know – “plate of shrimp”, “John Wayne was a fag”, “..you’ll see” – that guy. Always good to see him getting work, even if it is presumably unpaid in a micro-budget horror film. [Clarification: after checking IMDB, Mr. Walter is clearly not short of work – dude’s been in everything; wow, I had no idea.]

The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry
(Ángel Agudo, 2010)

Speaking of dudes who get a lot of work done for precious little recognition, it was depressing to see such a small turn-out for the screening of this documentary about the man Michael Weldon wryly described as ‘Spain’s most popular werewolf actor’, the one and only Paul Naschy.

Despite being presented as a tie-in with the Scala Forever season, only about half a dozen lonesome guys and a couple of couples made it into the auditorium to catch this one, perhaps reflecting the sketchy distribution and mangled presentation of Naschy’s films in the English speaking world. Although most of them are barely available at all in legitimate form, in the past year or so I’ve managed to scrape together a fair selection of the many, many horror films Naschy wrote and starred in during the ‘70s, and from what I’ve seen so far, you can count me a fan.

Whether at a career high watermark with 1971’s Leon Kilmovsky directed ‘La Noche de Walpurgis’ (aka ‘Werewolf Shadow’ aka ‘The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman’) or wallowing in a mass of straight to video shlock through the ‘80s and ‘90s, it seems like Naschy was one cat who was ALWAYS on form, his name guaranteeing a certain mixture of good-natured monster bashing, gleefully amateurish gore, brain-melting un-scripting and unhinged atmospheric weirdness that never gets old… assuming you’re the sort of misfit who enjoys it in the first place. Personally, I think it’s wonderful stuff – I’ll have to get around to doing some reviews at some point.

As a documentary, ‘The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry’ isn’t exactly up to much – basically an extended DVD extra, it doesn’t have a lot to offer beyond an uncritical synopsis of the man’s life and career, interspersed with clips from his movies and talking head interviewees talking about what a great guy he was. But Naschy (real name Jacinto Molina) makes for a fascinating subject, and I don’t see anyone else queuing up to make documentaries about him, so I guess this one wins by default.

Beginning on an interesting note, it tells us all about Molina’s traumatic upbringing during the Spanish Civil War, and his subsequent education in a Nazi-centric ‘German school’ (a clip from one of his ‘80s movies that shows his character violently tearing up pictures of Hitler, Franco etc, cursing their evil legacies, seeks to leave us with little doubt as to what young lad’s feelings on all this were), before we follow him through his initial career as a boxer and bodybuilder. Subsequently working as a gopher in the nascent Spanish film industry as domestic productions began to get off the ground in the ‘50s, Molina initially saw himself breaking into pictures as an art director, and wrote his first werewolf script just in order to have something fun and fantastical that he could hopefully persuade some international backers to let him work on. Legend has it that it was only at a last minute production meeting after their proposed star dropped out that Molina was reluctantly (it says here) persuaded to take on the role of the wolfman himself. Needless to say, the barrel-chested human dynamo took to this assignment with such gusto that his performance helped make 1968’s ‘Las Noches del Hombre Lobo’ (released in the US as ‘Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror’, despite a palpable lack of Frankenstein) into a big hit, and, well – the rest is history, of a sort.

In between the endless personal tributes, generalised hagiography and overbearing music cues, the thing that comes across most strongly in this documentary is a sense of Naschy/Molina’s extraordinary work ethic and unwavering dedication to his own strange corner of cinema. From his initial breakthrough in the late ‘60s through to his death in 2009, it seems that barely a day went by when this man wasn’t busting his ass trying to make some weird movie or other a reality, ploughing on through financial collapse, personal tragedy, government censorship, health problems, disappearing distribution networks and public disinterest to keep his various projects rolling, taking in a long series of Japanese co-productions, an unexpected left turn into oddball thrillers and controversial ‘issue’ movies, and a late career revival aided by American trash-mongers like Brian Yuzna and Fred Olen Ray.

In the final analysis, Naschy has a neat 100 films to his name as an actor on IMDB, 43 of which he wrote, directed or otherwise co-produced. Such a body of work is quite an achievement in itself, and the consistency of vision he seems to have maintained across the decades is remarkable. Of course, a lot of people would argue that such consistency simply means his films were consistently crappy, but who cares what they think? Have they ever made a movie in which a werewolf fights a yeti, or one where the disembodied head of Torquemada freaks people out in nocturnal visions, or where a secretly devil worshipping Indian guru fights zombies with a broadsword in a London cemetery? I think not. The level of basic craftsmanship and goofy invention in Naschy films is always a delight, and say what you like about them, they’re great pieces of demented, gut-level entertainment that are rarely dull, even when they’re almost completely incoherent.

If such eccentric figures as Jose Marins and Jess Franco can become international cult movie heroes then I think Paul Naschy is long overdue his day in the sun, and it would be the greatest gift a horror fan could ask for if some DVD company or other could finally set about reconstructing some nicely transferred, uncut versions of his films before the financial viability of DVD releasing goes down the plughole, leaving us to make do forever with the fuzzed up public domain atrocities currently on the market. If you’re listening out there Anchor Bay or Arrow or whoever, I’ve got money in my pocket and a Paul Naschy Box Set sized gap on my shelves. Make it happen.

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Following the Naschy documentary, my plan had been to hang on to catch the 11:30 screening of the fun sounding flick ‘Detention’, but to be honest, I was pretty worn out by this point – I had a splitting headache, and there was still an hour to go before that then, and I just couldn’t face the idea of killing yet more time hanging around the multiplex lobby drinking overpriced, metallic beer or aimlessly wondering the streets before fighting my way home on the nightbuses after the movie finished at 1am-ish, so… I’m sorry readers: I went home instead.

I know, what a wuss. As I sit here sneakily writing this on a rainy afternoon in work, I would absolutely love to be hanging out with a crowd of boozed up horror fans, watching some rip-roaring alien/zombie/high school movie, but on the night it just wasn’t gonna happen.

That aside though, another year of fine and varied programming from this festival, with even a lot of the films on the big screen serving to challenge the mainstream clichés of modern horror, and filling me with a lot more optimism for current genre cinema than I’ve felt for some time, I guess. Good stuff – looking forward to next year, etc.

Youtube film club: Cuadecuc: Vampir

A bit of a strange one, this.

In 1970, Jess Franco, bankrolled by the ubiquitous Harry Alan Towers, made his own version of Dracula, featuring a Euro-cult dream cast of Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor, Klaus Kinski and Maria Rohm. If the film that emerged is somewhat less than a classic, I don’t think it’s half as bad as people sometimes make out – it’s an honest attempt to film Bram Stoker’s novel at least, and it certainly has it’s moments.

But anyway - working on Franco’s Dracula in some capacity was a young Catalan documentary maker named Pere Portabella. For reasons best known to himself, Portabella seemingly hi-jacked a bunch of outtake and rehearsal footage from the movie (whether or not he had Franco’s blessing, I’m unsure) and mixed it up with the prodigious amount backstage footage he’d shot himself, processing the whole lot in high contrast black & white to create his own film – ‘Cuadecuc: Vampir’.

The result is difficult to describe. Not quite a documentary and not quite a horror film, it’s more like an avant garde exploration of gothic horror imagery, and perhaps an attempt to capture the underlying spirit of the strange moment in which Franco’s film was created.

When OkOk posted the link to the ‘Cuadecuc’ on Found Objects a while back, they advised that “..this film marvellously evokes the dark, eternal caverns of the unknown. Pure Gothic Ecstasy.” Whilst I can’t claim to have shared this level of reverie during my own viewing of the film, it certainly has much to recommend it to fans of haunted/unheimlich cinema.

The extreme contrast, degraded filmstock and disjointed, unsettling soundtrack all serve to invoke the spirit of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” and Dreyer’s “Vampyr”, inviting us to draw comparison between the gothic horrors of the 1920s and their survival into the 1970s, whilst fourth wall breaking interjection revealing the details of lighting, make-up and cheesy cobweb/bat effects provide a silent commentary on how flimsy the barrier separating transcendental gothic splendour from tawdry reality can be. The ‘vampire film within a vampire film’ conceit is fascinating in itself, and the backstage glimpses of the principal actors (minus Kinski, whose scenes were maybe shot by second unit or something?) slipping in and out of character will be worth the entry price alone for some of us weirdos. In particular, candid footage of Soledad Miranda hanging out and preparing for shots will be much treasured by her fans.

Some commentators (by which I mean guys on IMDB) have suggested a political interpretation of the film, implying the Portabella intended to present Franco’s film set as a microcosm of the crumbling regime of the director’s dictatorial namesake. A brief cameo by Jess himself, goofing around in an unfortunate side parting & moustache get-up that makes him look a bit like Hitler, would seem to rather crudely suggest as much. Geographically and temporally removed as I am though from the subtleties of Spanish politics circa 1970, this isn’t really an interpretation I can get much out of.

But whatever; however you choose to read this film, chances are you knew by the end of the second paragraph whether or not it’s the kind of thing you need in your life.

Those noble souls who are nodding affirmatively can stream or download from here.




A reminder of some previous Youtube Film Clubs you might have missed:

Mindbending Russian Animation
Witchcraft ‘70
Penda’s Fen
Saxana
Fantomas & Les Vampires
Harry Smith
Meshes of the Afternoon

Some thoughts on ‘Troll 2’ (1990) and ‘Best Worst Movie’ (2010).

A couple of weekends ago, I attended a sold-out screening at the Prince Charles Cinema just off Leicester Square (the closest thing central London has to a real repository theatre/grindhouse I suppose, although sadly these days they tend to stick to about 99% recent Hollywood output and the kind of senior common room ‘cult classics’ anyone with a TV has already seen a hundred times… but that’s a rant for another day). The event in question was a double bill of ‘Troll 2’, and ‘Best Worst Movie’, a documentary about ‘Troll 2’.

I had not previously seen ‘Troll 2’ and, beyond reading a few reviews on horror blogs etc, I was largely unfamiliar with the kind of word of mouth cult following that has grown up around the film. I just went along because I was curious and bored and, y’know, because I just like this kinda crap, and wanted to support the ambitions of whoever decided it was a good idea to instigate a theatrical screening of something like ‘Troll 2’, as opposed to just showing ‘Bladerunner’ or ‘Goodfellas’ or whatever for the thousandth fucking time.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, I was unable to convince anyone to come with me (“hey, d’you wanna go and see this movie called ‘Troll 2’ with me tomorrow night? I hear it’s really terrible.. tickets are £10”), so decided to go it alone. I was expecting it to be a pretty, uh, ‘niche’ event I suppose. I was completely unprepared for either the size (large theatre = totally sold out, queue down the street, people being turned away etc.) or rabid, Rocky Horror style enthusiasm of the film’s fanbase, whose good-natured whoopin’ and hollerin’ often threatened to drown out the movie’s audio altogether. And, uh, that was cool I guess – I certainly didn’t mind it, but I was somewhat taken aback. I mean we don’t get that shit going to see Truffaut movies at the BFI, y’know. Just what kind of weird cult have I been missing out on here?

Well, the film itself answered that question succinctly within its opening few minutes. For anyone who has yet to experience ‘Troll 2’ - and particularly those who may have been put off by it’s faintly obnoxious fanboy following - I would like to state my opinion that it is a genuinely extraordinary piece of work – an indescribably strange and misguided film whose appeal (for those of us who appreciate this-sort-of-thing) extends far beyond the realm of internet memes and horror-nerd injokes.

As is inevitably the case with films that attract that perennially misapplied “worst movie ever” label, ‘Troll 2’ is clearly not the ‘worst’ anything. Any dedicated fan of strange/low budget films will likely have more than a few joints on their shelves that sink far lower, whether judged in terms of technical prowess, enjoyment or coherence. As critic MJ Simpson sagely points out in ‘Best Worst Movie’, there are plenty of awful, tedious movies out there made by people who have no idea how to make a film. What is so remarkable about ‘Troll 2’ is rather the fact that it was made by people who clearly do know how to make a film – the framing, editing, cinematography etc, if not exactly world class, is at least fairly proficient. ‘Troll 2’s creators clearly had some degree of ability and common sense - and yet they still chose to put all of this shit in front of their cameras?! As Simpson puts it, it’s like a movie put together by professional filmmakers… after they suffered a severe blow to the head.

As with an Ed Wood or Ted V. Mikels movie, to laugh *at* a film like this, or to single out its moments of incompetence, is to completely miss the point - a reaction as mean-spirited and stupid as laughing at a musician because s/he ‘can’t play properly’. The delirious joy of watching something like ‘Troll 2’ arises rather from trying to put oneself in the headspace of the filmmakers, from trying to fathom the thought-processes that brought this breathtaking spectacle of otherness into being. And in the case of ‘Troll 2’, the fact that it is technically speaking quite good only serves to make this delicious feeling of bafflement all the more poignant.

(VHS Artwork via Lost Video Archive)

I won’t bother trying to summarise the many, many highlights of ‘Troll 2’ – there are other blogs you can go to for that, and besides, once I got started we’d be here all day. The whole thing is a highlight. Let’s just say that for the opening hour or so, I was utterly transfixed, convinced that, yes, this was the real deal. A genuine modern day Ed Wood movie; an earnest attempt to make a good, entertaining film in which every single element – every shot, every character, every line of dialogue – somehow ended up so cracked that it could have been beamed in from another planet.

The combinations of words, images and ideas thrown up by ‘Troll 2’ are of an order that a regularly functioning human brain will never have even considered before - a vision of purest anti-inspiration, rising from the lumbering carcass of a generic PG-13 horror quickie with such force that the result is near psychedelic. Quite what the horror schlubs and VHS hounds must have thought when they rented this thing for the first time back in 1990 expecting a bog-standard Full Moon Productions straight-to-video number (ala the entirely unconnected ‘Troll 1’), I can’t even begin to imagine. A psychotronic holy grail moment, for sure.

And furthermore, this industrial-strength cack-handed weirdness just seems to escalate as the film goes on, getting more and more over the top until it reaches a certain critical mass at about the sixty minute mark, after which my delight began to sour. Ok, I thought, it’s too late now - the filmmakers have shown their hand. I mean, this is just too fucking stupid for words. Those who have seen the film will know what I mean: the dragging-the-guy-in-the-plantpot escape scene; Grandpa Seth’s grinning reaction shots after poleaxing a goblin; the beef baloney sandwich; the whole ‘popcorn’ sequence. There is NO WAY this stuff could have been intended as anything other than total comedy. I figured that, much like Brian Trenchard Smith’s infamous ‘Turkey Shoot’, they must have watched the rushes at some point and realised what a bloody ridiculous movie they were making, then decided to just go with it, amping things up as far as they possibly could in the name of gross-out, LOL-worthy absurdity. It was still hugely enjoyable, no question, but what had begun as a beautifully mystifying piece of outsider art basically ended up turning into a Troma movie, and that made me sad.

But the brilliant thing is – I was wrong. From beginning to end, there was no self-conscious, good/bad movie irony involved in this film’s production. This shit is for real, and that is so wonderful I could cry. You see… well, this is gonna take a few paragraphs to explain…


‘Best Worst Movie’ is a slightly unconventional documentary. Not so much a ‘making of’, it’s more like an ‘aftermath’, catching up with ‘Troll 2’s cast and crew nearly twenty years later, and documenting the rise of the film’s internet-era cult following. ‘Troll 2’s cast was comprised of non-professionals and seemingly random passersby culled from the Salt Lake City shooting location, and as it turns out, at least half of them prove to be real “documentary gold” so to speak, running the gamut from lovable eccentrics to people clearly wrestling with severe psychological problems (the guy who plays the storekeeper somehow ended up appearing in the film on his days out from a mental hospital, and claims he had no idea what was going on and “was not acting” when laying down his brief but unforgettable performance).

Understandably perhaps, much of the screen-time is dedicated to these guys, but whilst it’s a remarkable bit of ‘real-people / real-lives’ filmmaking, personally I was hankering to find out about the Italian crew who actually MADE the movie. ‘Troll 2’s credited director, ‘Drake Floyd’, is clearly an anglicised pseudonym, so who in the hell was responsible, and will they want to take credit for their dubious masterwork..?

When I got my answer about forty minutes in, it was like the unmasking of a supervillian. Claudio Fragrasso?!? I fucking knew it! Now things start to make sense! Or rather, the overall lack of sense starts to make sense.

Admittedly, I’m only really familiar with Fragrasso thanks to his role as the writer and de-facto director of Zombie Flesh Eaters II and III (Zombie II & III if you live in the states), which genuinely ARE some of the worst films I’ve ever seen, but his reputation as one of the most staggeringly incompetent screen-writers in Italian exploitation cinema precedes him.

Yes, that’s right – even by the standards of Italian horror, where critically lauded, landmark films often exhibit about as much logic as a drunken shooting spree in a fairground, this guy is notorious for his sloppy, nonsensical scripting. Imagine that.

Between his work on the Zombi/Zombie/whatever films and his numerous collaborations with similarly ridiculed director Bruno Mattei, Fragrasso managed to carve out a prolific directorial career for himself through the ‘80s and ‘90s, making what I’d imagine must have been very low budget films, some of them filmed in America or featuring American ‘stars’, seemingly angling for the kind of US video release that ‘Troll 2’ eventually achieved in 1990. Apparently in 1986 he made something called ‘Monster Dog’, staring a career-low-point Alice Cooper. Be still my beating heart.

Anyway: when Fragrasso is introduced in ‘Best Worst Movie’, he wastes no time in letting us know that he takes his films very seriously. Like many of Italy’s daftest trash-auteurs, he claims straight-facedly that he wants his films to move people emotionally, and to inspire reflection on important issues. The audience here in London nearly fall off their seats when he stated in broken English that he wanted ‘Troll 2’ to address “life… and death… and the challenges that a family must overcome to stay together”, or something along those lines.

Fragrasso can’t take sole credit for the majesty of ‘Troll 2’ though. The original idea, and the surreal English-as-second-language script, are the work of his wife and frequent creative partner Rossella Drudi. Drudi seems a little more down to earth in her inspiration. “Some of my friends had recently become vegetarians,” she says, explaining the genesis of the film’s somewhat unique anti-vegan food-based horror conceit, “and this pissed me off.” Suddenly the path that led us to the deux-ex-beef baloney sandwich becomes a little clearer.


‘Best Worst Movie’ follows Fragrassi and Drudi as they travel to America to attend some cult circuit screenings of ‘Troll 2’. Initially Fragrassi seems somewhat awed to see people queuing up outside a theatre to see his movie, but after witnessing their reaction to the screening, he quickly becomes cagey. “They laugh at the parts that are funny,” he says suspiciously, “but also at the parts which are not meant to be funny?”

He seems to be pondering whether or not this is standard practice for American audiences, but slowly the penny begins to drop. “You understand nothing!” is his winningly concise response to a smirking fanboy who asks him in a Q&A session why there are no trolls in ‘Troll 2’, and by the time we get to a full-scale cast reunion/Troll 2 mini-convention at the original Utah shooting location, things have become outright uncomfortable.

The American cast members sit on a makeshift stage, sharing anecdotes about how none of the Italian crew spoke English, and how they were handed crudely rewritten script pages from day to day and forced to stick to the dialogue as written, rather than trying to adapt it into something slightly less ridiculous. Fragrasso meanwhile stalks the back of the hall, largely ignored and denied a microphone, heckling the actors. “Lies!”, he yells. “That is not true! Everyone had whole script”, “these actors, they are dogs”, “I know the way Americans speak better than they do”, and so on.

You get the impression that the director’s failure to ‘get’ his own film, or to adopt the kind of self-deprecating attitude that would be expected of an Anglo-American filmmaker in similar circumstances, cast rather a pall over the whole occasion.

(In fairness to Fragrasso, it is not only bad Italian directors who have experienced this sort of linguistic/cultural disconnection when filming in English – I was strongly reminded of the stories of Sergio Leone presenting Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef with pages of ham-fisted dialogue that they point-blank refused to say, or of his later insistence that ‘Duck, You Sucker’ was “a big phrase in America”, in spite of the legions of actual Americans desperately trying to convince him otherwise.)

Although Fragrasso comes across as a rather charmless individual, it’s hard not to feel a vast sympathy for him as he looks at the reels of the 35mm print of ‘Troll 2’ that has been made for the screenings, admitting that this is the first time he has ever seen an actual theatrical print of one of his films – “normally we just get the video”. What can he be feeling, as he reflects that after three decades of toil in the film industry, his only opportunity to see his work actually touch a projector comes because he made a movie that a bunch of Americans really like laughing at?

And the crux of the matter is of course that no matter how deluded his inflated view of his own work may seem, on some level HE IS RIGHT. Without Fragrasso’s earnest, unshakeable self-belief, ‘Troll 2’ would never have been anti-masterpiece that it is. For all its hilarious, ugly absurdity, there is something incredibly compelling about the film, something beyond mere mockery that has allowed it to strike a chord with a huge number of people.

I mean, I’ve seen a lot of objectively pretty good films in the past six months that I can barely remember at all, beyond a basic acknowledgement that they were pretty good. But I think about ‘Troll 2’ EVERY DAY. Seriously. There is something genuinely unsettling about its blunt, poorly realised imagery that makes you kinda shudder, even as you’re laughing; something unhealthily fascinating about the inhuman illogic of the script that can keep you up in the dark hours of the night, just sorta… trying to get an angle on it. After only one viewing, I feel like the whole film has lodged itself in my mind almost shot for shot, and how many movies can you say that about? Only a special few, whether for better or worse. And it is Claudio Fragrasso’s self-belief, his refusal to take the bait of cheap irony or self-parody, that has made that happen. God bless him for it.

According to a 2004 “Where Are They Now” entry on IMDB, “..after writing and directing a series of cult classics, [Fragrasso] married his high school sweetheart and settled down to a quieter life. He currently operates a conch-fishing vessel off the coast of northern Italy.”

According to a none-more-LOLworthy announcement at the end of ‘Best Worst Movie’ on the other hand, he has come out of retirement to work on - wait for it - “Troll 2: Part 2”.

So far, that has no entry on IMDB, and I pray it never gets one, because frankly the 2004 option sounds about as close to a happy ending as poor ol’ Claudio is liable to get.

“Troll 2: Part 2” would make a great name for a band though, wouldn’t it?

BBC4: A History Of Horror

A brief heads-up for any UK-based readers: the first two parts of a series entitled “A History of Horror”, presented by writer/comedian Mark Gatiss, are currently available to watch on the BBC iPlayer, and will remain there until, I believe, November 1st.

The first instalment, covering golden age of Hollywood horror, is pretty decent, but the second part, dealing with Hammer and ‘60s gothic horror in general, is bloody wonderful.

Initially I was irked by the fact that, like all current TV documentaries it seems, the whole thing has to be framed as some kind of ‘personal journey’ on the part of the presenter rather than just being a straight history. Thankfully though, Gatiss comes across as a genuine and knowledgeable fan, and manages to communicate the ineffable appeal of these films extremely well, I thought. And more to the point, I was happy to find myself agreeing with just about everything he said, and was overjoyed that he picked out so many of my personal favourites (“Plague of the Zombies”! “Black Sunday”! “Blood on Satan’s Claw”!) for special attention.

There’re also some great new interviews with Roger Corman, Jimmy Sangster, Barbara Steele(!) and Piers Haggard, a beautiful tribute to Peter Cushing, and… well, in short, I’d like to shake Mr. Gatiss by the hand and buy him a pint for making about as good a one hour TV documentary on this subject as could possibly be hoped for.

The concluding episode, covering ‘70s American horror, screens some time next week, and I’m looking forward to it.

For those of you in the rest of the world -- um, sorry, I don't think the BBC streaming stuff works abroad. Maybe somebody might Youtube it at some point...?

Youtube Film Club: Witchcraft ’70

Perfect for setting some pre-Halloween atmosphere, here’s “Witchcraft ‘70” aka “The Satanists”, a predominantly UK-set mondo outing cobbled together by one Luigi Scattini.

I’m not usually much of a fan of mondo movies, but at least some sections of this one are an absolute gas, full of freaky visuals, echo-chambered Italian pop-psych music, endless footage of fuzzy, red-tinted naked cavorting, and an English narrator’s script that’s completely out to lunch.

Guest appearances by ubiquitous British witchsploitation kingpin Alex Sanders, some supposed Brazilian Macumba practitioners, and a guy who projects the memories of the dead onto polaroid film. Things go off the boil a bit in the second half with a lot of boring mediums, Hare Krishnas, some miscellaneous hippies (well, uh, they kinda *like* the occult, I guess..) and a section on cryogenics (me neither). But as long as the narrator keeps givin’ it some, it’s still fun for all the family.

Part one is here: