ACTION WORLD - 29/04/25.

So, I’m unsure whether or not I have any remaining readers who are London-based, but just on the off-chance…

I am contributing the above event, taking place on Tues 29th April, at my local community café, as part of the New Cross & Deptford Free Film Festival.

The concept is, we will be travelling the globe, exploring world cultures through the warped prism of action movies.

As such, the current expectation is that I will be screening and introducing brief clips and trailers from Indonesia, Taiwan, Turkey, Australia, The Philippines and… possibly even some more places, whilst my accomplices cover assorted other locales.

Also, there will be beer - which is frankly a relief.

I can't make any great claims about the event being worth travelling / going out of your way for or anything, but like I say - just on the off-chance.

Ritual # 1.

Segueing neatly from last week’s post into a bit of shameless self-promotion, this seems a fitting moment to alert you to the fact that I actually utilised the previously quoted passage from ‘Satan’s Slaves’ as part of the text accompanying a new musical [or, perhaps I should just say, “sound”] venture that I threw online a couple of months ago.

In essence, Count Dracula’s Great Love aims to combine sounds from the past with some recorded in the present, mixing and manipulating the two in an attempt to conjure and explore the mysteries, aesthetics and atmospheric resonances of particular times and places long gone. Realised at least partially via the means of a trusty VHS player, assorted boxes with knobs on and a digital four-track, the project’s initial instalment mines the darker side of the American South-West in the early 1970s, and can be sampled either via the link above or through the embedded box below. If you dig it, or get something out of it, please spread the word.

Belated Plug: Nucleus Films Euro-CultRestoration Project.

Well, for the moment at least, life goes on, and another blogging responsibility that slipped through the cracks during this Halloween season and its ugly aftermath is the necessity of my telling you about Nucleus Films’ Euro-Cult Restoration Project, a recently launched crowd-funding initiative whose initial goals (it would be nice to think there will be more to follow, should things go well?) involve bringing lovingly restored and reconstructed versions of Lady Frankenstein (Mel Welles, 1971) and Death Laid An Egg (Giulio Questi, 1968) to the people.

To be honest, I recall finding ‘Lady Frankenstein’ a bit so-so when I watched it via a bootleg a while back, but I’m still looking forward to the opportunity of reassessing its virtues via the medium of a shiny new blu-ray. The real prize here from my POV however is ‘Death Laid An Egg’, a surrealist (in the legit sense of the word) art-house giallo whose blackly comic tone (yes, it’s set on a chicken farm) and Godardian formal transgressions ensure that it does just as much of an unforgettable hit & run job on its nascent genre as Questi’s legendary ‘Django Kill’ did on the Spaghetti Western.

At the time of writing, Nucleus’s campaign has not quite reached the amount needed to guarantee ‘..Egg’s restoration, so… I know the world at large has one or two other bigger fish to fry right now, but could you at the very least consider doing your duty for the preservation of bold & weird cinema and pledge some cash before the closing date crashes down at the end of the month? Nucleus are good guys with an admirable track record of movie-related shenanigans, and I am confident that they will do right by both these films and their customers, so come on – what have we to lose but our dignity?

All the further info you could wish for can be found in the link above.

Recommended Reading.

Whilst we rarely go in for direct product endorsements on this weblog, it has nonetheless come to my attention that there are a number of film books forthcoming in the next few months that I am incredibly excited about, and it occurs to me that readers here might appreciate a heads-up about them too.

In particular, I am consumed with what can only be described as ‘rabid anticipation’ at the thought that the first volume(!) of Stephen Thrower’s long-awaited study of the cinema of Jess Franco – now entitled Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco and published by Strange Attractor Press - will, gods willing, be in my hands within the next few weeks. As I have remarked here before, Thrower is, to my mind, the most insightful, readable and informative writer currently working in the sphere of quote-unquote ‘cult cinema’, and hearing him hold forth on Franco in various DVD extras (and in person at a one-off event at Bloomsbury’s Horse Hospital a few years back) has always been an absolute joy.

To suddenly have four hundred-plus pages of such material to dig into is a discerning Francophile’s dream come true, and upon receipt of said book I fully intend to put all other leisure-time activity of indefinite hold as I retreat to the sofa, put on a suitably ominous record and get cracking. Disturb me at your peril.

Murderous Passions is available in a range of enticing special editions directly from Strange Attractor, whilst the regular hardback can be nabbed at a slightly more economical rate via Amazon in the UK.

Another dutifully pre-ordered volume I’m really looking forward to is the first printed venture from one of the best writers out there on the criminally under-investigated subject of global pop cinema, Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!’s Todd Stadtman. Speaking as a novice viewer fascinated by the excessive sights and sounds of Bollywood movies but feeling very much adrift without a knowledgeable guide to point me in the direction of the grittier, weirder stuff lurking beyond the big budget masala melodrama, I can only imagine that I am the exact target audience for Todd’s sure-to-be-earthshattering Funky Bollywood: The Wild World of 1970s Indian Action Cinema, coming imminently from FAB Press. At this point I should probably say things like “woo, yeah, bring it on!” and so forth, so, uh, yeah – there ya go. Pick up your copy from the link in the preceding sentence today.

Speaking of Mr. Stadtman, we next move on to the happy news that his old alma mater, Teleport City, have finally thrown caution to the wind and embarked on their own book, entitled At The Matinee of Madness.

Whilst it may sound like a pretty pompous and unlikely statement, it would be no exaggeration to say that the writing of both Todd and Keith Allison on Teleport City had a pretty big impact on my life after I began regularly reading the site around a decade ago, and their work definitely played a pivotal role in inspiring me to cultivate an interest in quote-unquote ‘cult cinema’ (gotta stop saying that) that extends beyond mere time-killing and ironic chuckles.

Promising a bumper compendium of new material and re-worked old stuff, the forthcoming book should at the very least provide me with a perfect opportunity to relive those glory days of sneakily spending quiet afternoons at work marveling at tales of Turkish super-villains, Japanese girl gangs and Doug McClure punching cavemen in the face, before hastily pulling up a spreadsheet window as soon as someone approached my desk. As is only right and proper, the book should also, on the basis of the head-spinning contents list published here, make for a veritable smorgasbord of everything that is wonderful about psychotronic cinema, primed and ready to infect other impressionable minds with the same obsessive enthusiasms that have gradually consumed your humble narrator, further swelling the ranks of those of us who consider Mario Bava’s ‘Danger! Diabolik’ to be peak achievement of Western civilization. Phew.

Going the self-published route, ‘At the Matinee of Madness’ will initially appear as an e-book, with a print edition hitting our doormats at some point thereafter. Those who have clocked the smug ‘printed word’ pledge on the sidebar of this blog won’t be surprised to hear I’m waiting out for the latter option, but either way – keep ‘em glued to Teleport City for updates.

And, finally, at completely the other end of this blog’s aesthetic spectrum, we move to a belated notification of a book that was actually published a few months back and, given its limited edition status, may already have sold out. Assuming copies are still available, fans of David Rudkin’s extraordinary TV film ‘Penda’s Fen’ (which I linked to and briefly wrote about here, many moons ago) should make haste to purchase The Edge is Where The Centre Is – David Rudkin & Penda’s Fen: A Conversation, a hand-printed small press volume published by New York-based Seen Studios, and surrounded by some characteristically artwork by Julian House, who hopefully needs no introduction here.

I’ll be honest with you and admit that I haven’t actually had a chance to begin reading my copy, but chances are any Rudkin/Penda cultists amongst my readership are already preparing to complete the necessary Paypal transaction, regardless of my thoughts on the book’s contents.

Initial copies (if there are any left) come complete with several photographs of Rudkin taken during the interviews that form much of the book (hey, why not?), and a print of House’s poster for a 16mm screening of Penda’s Fen that took place in London last year – a screening that I missed simply because I failed to notice it was happening, although the very existence of a 16mm print at least gives me hope that one day we might get to see this masterpiece released in a slightly more salubrious form than the blurry VHS dubs currently doing the rounds. Fingers tightly crossed on that one.

UPDATE: The first edition of ‘The Edge Is Where The Centre Is’ is actually now sold-out, but the page linked above promises an expanded second edition at some point in the future, so by all means drop them a line to express your interest (see Seen Studios link above).

New Frontiers in Scrapbooking.

So, it occurred to me that now might be a good time to post a quick recommendation (or ‘plug’, in the contemporary vernacular) for The British Esperantist, the new paper-based venture from weblogging polymath Paul Bareham and writer & archivist Matthew Cheeseman.

Issue # 1 was declared ‘sold out’ before I had an opportunity to praise it’s virtues, but now that # 2 is with us, let me simply say that it is a splendid publication which should appeal to anyone who has ever spent time seeking beauty, oddity, hilarity and other, less easily definable feelings in the pages of obscure and forgotten printed matter.

Issue # 2 is still on sale at the time of writing for a modest £2.85 including postage.

Further info and purchasing instructions can be found here.

Kickstarterage.

When the ‘Kickstarter’ website / concept began to take off a few years back, I’ll admit I treated the whole thing with a certain amount of derision. (You want £10,000 to make a rock album? Fuck off - £150 of Maplins vouchers probably buys you more recording capacity than Sam Philips saw in his lifetime, and if that’s not good enough for you, get a bloody job like the rest of us etc etc.).

Filmmaking though is something that actually does take a certain amount of investment, and that generally involves a massive financial risk for all who venture into it. With the good / bad ratio horribly skewed toward the latter in what passes for the low budget film ‘industry’, and very few people willing to take a chance on the former, I find myself feeling a lot more charitable towards folks struggling to get worthwhile projects on screen, and as such, I’m interrupting our regular programming to inform you of a few such endeavours that have come to my attention recently.

First off, official Breakfast In The Ruins Hero Alex Cox is currently hunkered down in Boulder, Colorado, working on an adaptation of the late Harry Harrison’s ‘Bill The Galactic Hero’. Never less than ambitious, Cox is asking the world for $100,000 with which to realise this retro-fitted sci-fi epic, and, speaking as someone who actually really liked 2011’s Repo Chick, I have confidence in his ability to deliver entertaining, informative and generally ass-kicking satirical product for extremely low overheads. $88,000 in the bank with five days to go.

And secondly, those of you who keep an eye on the more interesting corners of weird-world-cinema type blogging might already be aware of Filipino b-movie super-fan Andrew Leavold’s long struggle to realise his self-explanatory documentary feature ‘The Search For Weng-Weng’. Without rehashing the details here, let’s just say that he’s obviously put a vast amount of time, research and obsessive dedication into the project over the years and has pretty much been taken to the cleaners for his trouble. For anyone half as interested as I am in the odd world of regional b-movie industries and suchlike, it looks to be an absolutely fascinating film and I’d really like to see it, so for heaven’s sake, drop him a few bucks.

Right, that’s the commercial break over with. You can turn the sound up again. Hope you enjoyed your trip to the kitchen.

Sub-Machine Gun.

A great honour was bestowed upon me this weekend, as renowned blogging polymath Unmann-Wittering (Island of Terror, Mounds & Circles, This Is Not The Universe) invited me to contribute to a new weblog.

The idea is simple: sub-titled screengrabs in all their surreal, puerile, beautiful glory. Posted one per day, and continuing up until such a point as people in foreign language films stop saying ridiculous things, and long-suffering translators cease typing them over the top in English.

Pointless? Simple-minded? Yeah, probably, but I know I never cease to get a kick out of the strange word/image disjunction that out-of-context subtitles can provide us with, and I hope you can enjoy it on some level too.

As far as my own contributions go, there’ll likely be a few that I’ve posted here in the past, a few ‘greatest hits’ from my tumblr, and a lot more that I’ll be posting for the first time.

Dig in.

Scala Beyond.

Just thought I’d write a quick heads up for any London/UK based readers, to alert you to the existence of the Scala Beyond season – sequel to last year’s Scala Forever - which is taking place through August and September. I accidentally found myself wondering into the press launch for the season a couple of weeks back, and my heart swelled with joy to see a line-up of events even more idiosyncratic and crazed that last year – a veritable cornucopia of THE-KINDA-STUFF-WE-LIKE-AROUND-HERE, and a great chance to create/experience a kind of movie-going that’s neither Hollywood blandness nor sniffy arthouse, but just… weird and cool and good, y’know?

Because really, who could say no to the rare opportunity to sit in a public space with other people and watch stuff ranging from ‘The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein’ to ‘Kilink in Istanbul’ to ‘Q: The Winged Serpent’ to ‘Penda’s Fen’? Well… truth be told, I didn’t actually make it to many of last years screenings for various reasons, but I’m damn well going to do my damnedest to get along to as many as possible this year, so if anyone else out there is thinking of attending, by all means give me a shout.

In particular, those who share my belief that Saturday nights are best spent in a haze of whisky and pro-plus powering through stuff like ‘Lady Terminator’, ‘Messiah of Evil’ and ‘Fascination’ are encouraged to check out the listings for Filmbar70’s various all-nighters… could be quite an experience.

Oh, and there are other things happening in other UK cities too – Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham - and even out-of-town events in Cumbria, Northamptonshire etc., if you happen to live near those places.

Anyway, a full line-up of events can be perused via a handy interactive menu on the website. Good luck and god bless, etc.

'80s Apocalypse.

Just a quick plug, in case anyone's interested: the webzine Platform did an interview with me last month about my weirdo punk band thing, and they were nice enough to ask me to write a follow up piece about some of my favourite beserk/trashy '80s movies.

As has frequently been pointed out (most recently/persuasively by the endlessly wonderful House of Self-Indulgence blog), not every movie made during the 1980s can truly be claimed as an '80s MOVIE. A slippery distinction, but y'know what I mean. Naturally it is the latter category that I chose to concentrate on. I also tried to pick some titles that aren't already gigantic cult movie touchstones (hence no "Repo Man", no "Liquid Sky", no "Return of the Living Dead" etc), and, with the exception of "Times Square", I've veered more towards the crazy-ass exploitation side of things gather than going for, uh... actual great, life-changing films and so forth. Also a slippery distinction, and one I would usually seek to avoid on this site, but... practicality, y'know?

My final short-list boiled down to: Fulci's "The Black Cat", "Times Square", "Night of the Comet", "Savage Streets", "Vicious Lips", "Demons" and "1990: The Bronx Warriors", and my enthusiastic 200 word summation of each can be found here: http://readplatform.com/space-age-thrills-2/.

Notices.

New posts forthcoming, but in the meantime, just thought I’d do a quick round-up of some other stuff I’ve been up to that might be of interest…

1. As if I wasn’t spreading myself thinly enough already / spending enough time staring at a computer screen, I’ve bitten the bullet and started a tumblr blog. It had to happen. Primarily, I intend to use it to dump some of the thousands of screengrabs I’ve accumulated whilst reviewing movies here. So, uh, yeah, follow it or whatever, or don’t.

2. A couple of weeks ago, my weirdo space-punk music project thing Space Age Thrills finished off an album. Homemade Ramones/Misfits/Spits type songs with lyrics about science fiction and horror movies is the basic concept, but in practice it's all gotten a bit, uh, sloppier and weirder and more varied than that. There's a Modern Lovers cover, and a John Carpenter cover, and a song about law enforcement in Texas in the 1960s, and a long, pointless self-indulgent song, and so on. Just thought I’d mention it on the off-chance that some of you guys might like that sorta thing. You can listen to it on bandcamp.

3. I’ve also recently started doing the occasional post on the Found Objects blog. Regardless of my sparse contributions though, you should probably be keeping an eye on it anyway, as it’s a daily info-dump of strange and eerie stuff, assembled to an indefinable yet somehow highly specific rationale. Hopefully I’ll be posting some new stuff, as well as revisiting some of the more aesthetically appropriate bits and pieces I’ve done here in the past.

4. Flatmate wanted! I’ve got a room in sunny South-East London that’ll be free from around July-ish for the space of about one academic year, possibly longer. Email for further details. Bear in mind you'd be sharing living space with someone whose idea of fun includes the preceding three items.

Phew! Normal movie-reviewin’ business resuming imminently.

My Back Pages.

This weekend, I will be leaving my current residence in Tooting for good and moving east across South London, to New Cross.

Although I’ve always liked the South East, and look forward to finding it a lot more lively and generally conducive to my way of thinking than my current suburbanised locale, one of the things I will miss most about life on the bottom end of the Northern Line is being able to walk across the common of an uneventful weekend afternoon to visit ‘My Back Pages’, opposite Balham station, one of my favourite bookshops in the city.

Now, I’m not the biggest Dylan fan in the world (I’m not the smallest either, but… that’s a subject for another blog), but I've got to admit, a bookshop named after one of his songs bodes well. It certainly suggests that, a) it’s unlikely to be some crusty, collector-centric antiquarian hang-out, and b) it’s liable to be an establishment with a certain amount of character, run by someone with at least a passing interest in the pointy end of 20th century culture. And indeed, this proves to be the case.

‘My Back Pages’ is about 75% second hand, with a fiction section stretching across several vast walls, divided (hell, why not?) by nation/continent with sections devoted to British, American, Irish, Russian, French, African, Hispanic, Asian etc. literature, each of them managing to largely avoid the tide of pastel-coloured middlebrow crap that has consumed most of London’s charity bookshops, instead offering a wide variety of books which, even if they’re not universally wonderful, are liable to be more than fifteen years old, of varied and interesting character, and, y’know, generally worth a look.

There are correspondingly big sections for history, politics, art, poetry, philosophy, media and, you know, all the other rubbish you may care to read about so as to gain knowledge and insight during your tenure on earth. They don’t have biggest crime or SF/fantasy sections you could hope for, but you can’t have everything, and there’s plenty of good stuff in that general vein scattered through ‘fiction’ anyway.

The ‘new books’ section of the shop is pretty good too, presumably reflecting the proprietor’s own tastes to some degree by mixing a selection of current bestsellers etc. with a heavy back catalogue of ‘cult’/beat authors, including some intriguing small press items, and some choice New Directions / City Lights paperbacks that I can only assume get taken down and dusted off every year or so before returning to the shelf and waiting for some random hipster dope like me to turn up and shell out for ‘em.

On my last visit, I believe I picked up a VHS copy of ‘Walkabout’ and a water-damaged book by Richard Hell off the bargains stall out front for 50p each, then headed inside to find ‘Over the Frontier’ by Stevie Smith, ‘Whitechapel, Scarlett Tracings’ by Iain Sinclair, Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, ‘Nightmare Movies’ by Kim Newman (long OOP, and essential reading for horror fans), Richard Williams’ book about Phil Spector, the abridged version of Gibbon’s ‘Decline & Fall..’ and one or two weird-looking pulp sci-fis – total bill: £25, and the Newman book alone was £11.

The shop briefly closed down about eighteen months back, and when it reopened I remember speaking to the owner, who said they’d just about scraped together enough dough to stay in business, and were hoping to keep on making their rent on a month by month basis, or somesuch. That was before the recession hit.

I realise Londoners who don’t live nearby may be hard-pressed to find any other reason to make the trip to Balham (you could, um, I dunno, walk across the common to Streatham Hill, and get the train to Battersea or Victoria? – it’s quite nice), but ‘My Back Pages’ is exactly the kind of shop I wish this city (or hell, this world) still had more of, and paying it a visit and throwing them some business could be well worth your while.