Back when I was 12 years old or so and would be allowed to go off on my own at the local shopping mall, I used to spend a lot of my time at Walden Books. Every time I went, I used to peruse a huge book by Danny Peary called “Cult Movies.” For any of those who don’t know what this book is/was, it was the first major book to look at the phenomenon known as cult movies and examine these films from a critical, but non-judgmental viewpoint. Peary looked at a wide range of cult films, from the obvious (“Harold and Maude,” “Rocky Horror Picture Show”) to the classics (“Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane”) to … “Pink Flamingos.”

Peary included a lengthy synopsis of every film and the description of what happens in “Pink Flamingos” had me convulsing in laughter.  The film is about two families competing to be “the filthiest people alive.”  It’s about people who do all the wrong things and are defiantly proud of them. For someone who painstakingly always did the right thing, reading about this film and its characters made me levitate.

This film was like a holy grail for me for several years. The film was released on video in the early 1980s, but no video store located near me carried it. The local art house maybe showed it as a late night film only occasionally … but also had strict age requirements. It wasn’t until the summer before my last year of college that I finally found a video store that carried this and I rented it along with a lot of other Waters films that I had read about, but had never seen.

My initial reaction? Very disappointed, especially after all the build-up in my mind and not being able to see it for years. This isn’t a slam on the film. It’s just that nothing could have lived up to what I had expected this film to be in my mind. I actually preferred (and still prefer) Waters’ follow-up “Female Trouble.”

However, I saw it in a theater during its 25th anniversary in 1997 (when it was officially rated NC-17 for “for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail”) and finally appreciated it. “Pink Flamingos” is a film that works best watching it with lots of others, where you’re all sharing the collective embarrassment of seeing the most outrageous and disgusting human behavior together.

I still don’t think this is Waters’ best film, but it’s still pretty funny. This clip is one of my favorites. And while the characters are fully clothed, the language is pretty rough, so it’s definitely not safe for work. You gotta love those Delmarva accents.

Back in the old days, everything you wanted to know about movies and TV shows and comic books – their makers, their history, their detractors, their weird variations – wasn’t available for perusal at the click of a mouse.

No, children, we had books back then, and they were wonderful resources.

For a few decades, I amassed a collection of books about movies and TV and comics. They were my encyclopedias, my Bibles. I read and re-read them, memorizing facts and committing the photographs to memory.

So I thought I would occasionally mention some of these books here for you. Maybe you’ve got your own copies. Maybe you can find them in used bookstores or on Amazon. Maybe some will still be in print.

Danny Peary’s “Cult Movies” is a good place to start. Published in 1981 and subtitled “The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful,” Peary’s book lives up to its name. The dozens of movies he writes about in the first book (three volumes total were published) range from beloved classics like “The Wizard of Oz” to still-at-the-time controversial films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to “2001″ to “Vertigo.”

Peary devotes three or four pages to each movie. He lists the cast and key creative positions and gives a synopsis. He then goes into detail about what made the movies cult films.

Peary tells how director George Romero made “Night of the Living Dead,” from its hardscrabble production to its difficult distribution to its reception by audiences and critics.

He has real insight into the movies he covers.

“Pessimistic and unsentimental, ‘Living Dead’ is so effective because it is totally without pretension,” he notes. “It works on basic fears: unrelenting terror, monsters, darkness, claustrophobia. ‘Aliens’ attack us on American soil; protectors, even blood relations, turn on one another.” He notes how the black and white photography, a side effect of its low budget, made it more effective in some ways (anyone see the recent black-and-white presentation of the pilot for “The Walking Dead?”) but worked against it (Columbia Pictures wouldn’t distribute the film because it wasn’t in color) in others.

Peary, who is still actively writing, although not books about movies, brings the right amounts of reverence and criticism to these great but oddball movies. He and his books are what every modern-day movie and pop culture blogger aspires to be.

In the 1970’s Midnight Movies had taken off across the USA and this book celebrates 100 classic (and some not so classic) movies.

I found a copy of it at the Bolton Collector’s Flea Market in Silverwell Street, Bolton, which has now long gone. But in 1991 when I bought this book, it was a regular monthly fixture inside the old sports hall selling bric-a-brac, tat and books. At the time I was just discovering film and a hadn’t seen many of the films in this book (in fact on the same day that I bought the book, I bought “Casablanca” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” on video, both included in the book), but I had the mistaken belief that every film would show up on TV again at one point, this is not the case and films like “Dance Girl Dance”, “El Topo” and “Reefer Madness” have only been on TV once in the past 20 years and some I still haven’t seen, but that is the joy of it, I might see all the 100 films one day (I watched “Lola Montes” for the first time last weekend).

There are many films such as “Out Of The Past”, “The Witchfinder General”, “Performance” and “Pink Flamingos” I discovered because of this book and it would be safe to say that besides “Halliwell’s Film Guide” this book had the biggest impact on me, it came at just the right time and helped guide me through the thousands and thousands of films out there

When I bought Cult Movies, I hadn’t seen “Duck Soup”, I saw it less than six months later. I had seen the Marx Brothers last film “Love Happy” before, because it starred Marilyn Monroe, but it was this film that turned me into a Marx Brothers fan and it was this book that turned me into watching it.

“Cult Movies 2” and “Cult Movies 3” are all well worth checking out, but I do wonder what happened to Danny Peary.

Dom-Dirk

In the book, “Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero” by Tom Clavin and Danny Peary, chapter one opens up with a story about how Bob Dylan became a fan of Maris during his 1961 home run chase.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“Among those rooting for Roger Maris as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s record in September of 1961 was a folksinger whose nascent career took off that month in New York City thanks to a rave in the Times and his first studio work. Although he wasn’t much of a sports fan, Bob Dylan felt pride when he learned that the ballplayer making national headlines also hailed from Hibbing, Minnesota.”

“Dylan was born in Duluth and didn’t arrive in Hibbing until he was seven and had nothing good to say or sing about it after he left and didn’t look back. So it’s ironic that he became the town’s favorite son, while Maris, who was born in Hibbing, was consigned to outsider status. The reason is that Dylan at least acknowledged he was from there. “It still burns me up that Roger claimed he was born in Fargo, North Dakota,” says Bill Starcevic, his childhood playmate in Minnesota. Roger didn’t care if the record books or trading cards got his birthplace wrong or if no one knew he’d changed his name to Maris from Aras in 1954, infuriating the many Marases of Hibbing. IF he thought something was trivial–or personal–he was surprised when others made a big deal of it.”

For all of you guys that don’t know, there’s a new book out called: Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero (by Tom Clavin and Danny Perry). I just got the book a few days ago, and I find the history and behind the scenes stories fascinating. This is a MUST for any Yankee fan.

About the Book (Press Release):

The definitive biography of the baseball legend who broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record—the natural way—and withstood a firestorm of media criticism to become one of his era’s preeminent players.

Tom Clavin and Danny Peary trace the dramatic arc of Maris’s life, from his boyhood in Fargo through his early pro career in the Cleveland Indians farm program, to his World Series championship years in New York and beyond. At the center is the exciting story of the 1961 season and the ordeal Maris endured as an outsider in Yankee pinstripes, unloved by fans who compared him unfavorably to their heroes Ruth and Mantle, relentlessly attacked by an aggressive press corps who found him cold and inaccessible, and treated miserably by the organization. After the tremendous challenge of breaking Ruth’s record was behind him, Maris ultimately regained his love of baseball as a member of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals. And over time, he gained redemption in the eyes of the Yankee faithful.

With research drawn from more than 130 interviews with Maris’s teammates, opponents, family, and friends, as well as 16 pages of photos, some of which have never before been seen, this timely and poignant biography sheds light on an iconic figure from baseball’s golden era—and establishes the importance of his role in the game’s history.

ROGER MARIS may be the greatest ballplayer no one really knows. In 1961, the soft-spoken man from the frozen plains of North Dakota enjoyed one of the most amazing seasons in baseball history, when he outslugged his teammate Mickey Mantle to become the game’s natural home-run king. It was Mantle himself who said, “Roger was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was.” Yet Maris was vilified by fans and the press and has never received his due from biographers—until now.

“Forty-nine years later, Roger Maris remains the authentic single-season home-run king. Perhaps too little, certainly too late in recent years, he has been venerated and vindicated. Better yet, in these pages, he is appreciated.”—BOB COSTAS

‘Cult’ is a broad term. It can cover something successful with a rabid fanbase or something more niche, but with disciples willing to die, or at least, exchange crossed words with critics over it. It’s so overused that it’s barely worth using any more. In cinematic terms, post ‘Pulp Fiction’ in 1994, became an epidemic. Contrived quirky dialogue and sudden bursts of violence? Cult. Botched heist? Cult. ending? Cult. Riddled with referential touches? Cult. Cult status can be bestowed in hack poster quotes before the damn thing’s even screened to the public. For the recent Cass Pennant biopic the tie-in book declared it to be “a remarkable British Cult Film” from the get-go. In 2010, unless it’s a bearded guru sanctioning nerve gas subway attacks, there’s no point buying any talk of cultdom. Fuck it. This wasn’t always the case.

Sometimes you’ve got to pay tribute to the teachers. Shoes..apparel…it’s all totally irrelevant compared to films and music. Films in particular are important, but having grown up poring through Halliwell’s Film Guide and Leonard Maltin’s annual tome, those guys dropped the facts, but badmouthed De Palma’s ‘Scarface’. There was a conflict of personal opinions that necessitated a new guru.

Without an equivalent of the mighty ‘Z’ channel as documented in ‘Z: A Magnificent Obsession’, Alex Cox on ‘Moviedrome’ (that’s a whole ‘nother blog post) screening the likes of ‘Walker’ and Danny Peary’s trilogy of ‘Cult Movies’ books published between 1981 and 1988 were my mentors. Peary introduced this Brit to ‘Over the Edge’, ‘Seconds’,  ’Massacre At Central High’ and ‘Behind The Green Door’ (RIP Marilyn Chambers) - classics. As relevant to my formative pop cultural education as ‘The Face’, ‘Spraycan Art’ or ‘Rap Attack’, this trio of books still holds an important place in film literature – much of what was covered in the first volume has been elevated in Blu-Ray special editions, but the ensuing chapters still hold some rarities.

Peary created a checklist – a curriculum for students looking for the odd, erotic, violent and offbeat, and he has excellent taste, with writeups (ignore the spoiler synopsis for each film) that can still enlighten an eager viewer. This was my film school. Always bear in mind that here you’re reading the ramblings of someone who spent afternoons as a child cross-referencing his cousin’s ‘Cracked’ and ‘Mad’ parody issues with the corresponding Halliwell reviews. Strange. Very strange.

Why there was never a ‘Cult Movies 4′ is a shame, but post 1988, perhaps the overkill of cult talk proved repellent. Danny’s ‘Guide for the Film Fanatic’ and ‘Alternate Oscars’ were essential too. This was a writer who just seemed to understand that populist wasn’t tantamount to entertainment. Easter is the perfect time to catch up on some films, and seeing as a ‘Clash of the Titans’ remake has fallen flat (without sounding like the anti-synth idiots of the early ’80s, CGI lacks soul – stop motion still wins), revisiting some of Peary’s tips made sense. 1969′s ‘Medium Cool’ and 1979′s ‘Saint Jack’ still capture their respective times, split by a decade, the former with sledgehammer subtlety compared to the latter, but linked by obsessive documentation and controversy.

Haskell Wexler’s ‘Medium Cool’ with a mix of real riot footage, revolutionary talk and fictional anti-apathy subplots, takes on some incendiary topics with regards to media ethics and earned itself an ‘X’. Despite notions of hippie idealism, it stays relevant. Quentin Tarantino was right to re-up Robert Forster’s career on the back of this and grindhouse favourite ‘Vigilante’.

Quentin apparently owns an original print of Peter Bogdanovich’s ’Saint Jack’ – an adaptation of Paul Theroux’s novel, and Peter’s last great film. Set in Singapore in 1973, it contains one of the decades most overlooked performances alongside Harvey Keitel in ‘Fingers’ from Ben Gazzara as the titular pimp operating in Singapore – the film is one of the only Hollywood films shot there, and despite the Brits and Americans looking like the real villains of the piece, Singapore authorities banned the film until 2006. With a yearly narrative showing Jack in deeper looking more world-weary, it’s a low-key affair, but a forced tattooing at the hands of Triads and the ensuing flowery cover up should prove interesting for the ink fans out there too. Both deserve wider audiences. After DVD releases early last decade, they’re out-of-print now, commanding some heavy prices. Where’s Criterion when you need them?

The background of both films is so interesting that 2001′s ‘Look Out Haskell It’s Real: The Making of Medium Cool’ screened on the BBC just prior to the digital release, and the 2006 book, ‘Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore’ are the perfect follow-ups. The book in particular is a product of obsession, but the guile and wranglings required to shoot the film justify 240 pages, but the author, Ben Slater is evidently a man as driven as Peary in putting his passion to paper, and it’s a story rarely told. Slater’s tie-in site is still getting updates, and this site, dedicated entirely to Danny Peary’s listings is worth spending some time with too.

After talk of Cosmo’s greatness in ‘The Killing of a Chinese Bookie’ last month, other Ben Gazzara moments of note (and of many) today are this ‘LIFE’ cover from 1969 too preceding the release of ‘Husbands’ alongside John Cassavetes and Peter Falk, looking sharp, and from a film that even I can’t bring myself to extol the virtues of, despite another great performance as Charles Bukowski from Gazzara, his fine speech on the nature of style from ‘Tales of Ordinary Madness’ – best to stick with ‘Barfly’ or ‘Factotum’ if you want a good motion picture on the pock-marked literary don-dada though.

October 1, 1961

The savviest photographers got the two money shots.   The first, taken from behind and near the Yankee dugout, was of Roger Maris making solid contact over the plate on a 2-0 fastball by Tracy Stallard.   The left-handed pull hitter is exhibiting his much praised swing with extended bat and arms parallel to the ground, his left hand turning over, his right leg straight and left leg flexed, his right foot pointing toward third base and his left one perpendicular to the ground, his muscles in his face, neck, and upper arms tense, and his hips rotating.

The second picture, taken from the front, was of Maris, one breath later.   With, surprisingly, still-seated fans behind him, he is completing his pivot, releasing the bat with his left hand, and watching with hopeful eyes the flight of his historic home run into Yankee Stadium’s parked right-field stands.   But even the award winners among them missed something quite extraordinary that took place seconds later.   Fortunately, one of the greatest, if most neglected, visual metaphors in sports history would be preserved on celluloid.

Having completed what his bedridden Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle always called the “greatest sports feat I ever saw,” the new single-season home run champion dropped his bat and ran down the baseline.   He rounded first at the same time nineteen-year-old Sal Durante held up the 61st home run ball in his right hand; another ecstatic young male fan leaped into the field; and the clearly dejected Red Sox pitcher concocted an upbeat postgame response to the media (“I’ll now make some money on the banquet circuit!”).

As he neared second base, Maris suddenly escaped dark shadows and moved into the bright, warm sunlight.   Just like that, he had finally found a slice of heaven after a long season he’d sum up as “sheer hell.”   In Roger Maris’s version of hell, he was the prey in a daily media feeding frenzy, lost his privacy, shed some hair, received hate mail by the bundle, experienced vicious heckling from even home fans, and having arrived in New York from Kansas City only twenty-two months before, was treated by the Yankees organization like an outsider, an ugly duckling in a pond of swans.   His blow on the last day of the season was a telling response to all that nonsense.

Maris ran as he always did after a home run – head down and at a measured pace, exhibiting nothing offensively ostentatious or celebratory, nothing to indicate he was circling the bases one time more in a season than anyone else in history.   He was pounded on the back by joyous third-base coach Frank Crosetti as he came down the homestretch.   Crossing home plate, he was greeted by on-deck batter Yogi Berra, then bat boy Frank Prudenti, and, finally, the anonymous Zelig-like fan.   Then he made his way into the dugout – at least he tried to.   Several Yankees formed a barricade and turned Maris around and pushed him upward so he could acknowledge the standing ovation.

He reluctantly inched back up the steps, stretching his neck as if he were a turtle warily emerging from its shell.   He dutifully waved his cap and gave his teammates a pleading look, hoping they would agree that he had been out there too long already.   They urged him to stay put and allow the fans to shower him with the adulation that had been missing all year.   So he waved his hat some more and smiled sheepishly.

The television camera zoomed in, and everyone could see that during his sunlit jaunt around the bases, he had, amazingly, been transformed.   With the burden of unreasonable expectations suddenly lifted and the knowledge that not one more dopey reporter would ask, “Are you going to break Babe Ruth’s record, Rog?”  the strain in his face and haunted look in his eyes had vanished.   He no longer looked double his twenty-seven years and on the verge of a meltdown.

Baseball fans would, in their mind’s eye, freeze-frame forever this image of the young, cheery innocent with the trademark blond crew cut who had just claimed sports’ most revered record.   For that one moment Maris believed all the bad stuff was behind him.   For that one brief moment, he felt free.   In reality, it was the calm before an even more vicious storm…

Growing up in the 1980s, I enjoyed many of the Steven Spielberg-related action-fantasy blockbusters and John Hughes coming-of-age comedies that my peers did. By junior high, horror movies were what I gravitated towards most. I still try to revisit John Carpenter’s Halloween once a year. I started reading Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert in 1989, having been aware of him (like many people my age) because of the Siskel & Ebert TV show. And around this time, I  also purchased Danny Peary’s Cult Movies books.

Peary’s books were the gateway into serious cinephilia for me. They lead me to Blue Velvet, Annie Hall, Pink Flamingos, Chilly Scenes Of Winter, Martin, Seconds, Out Of The Past, Aguirre The Wrath Of God, The Brood, The Naked Kiss, Ms. 45, His Girl Friday, The Seventh Seal, Over The Edge, Cutter’s Way, Targets, Taxi Driver, The Rain People, Harold And Maude, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, Performance, The Warriors, Black Sunday and dozens of other amazing films. Blue Velvet in particular was the title that made me begin thinking of film as a director’s medium, and David Lynch was the first director I really began following in the same manner as the music artists I liked. 

 During my college years, 1993-1998, I was the type to open a membership at every Mom and Pop video store in the area, even if they had only one film I had been searching for. I worked for half a dozen movie theatres, co-ran a film club, terrorized innocent people with longwinded musings on directors like Hal Hartley, and burned through what little cash I had into building my video library. And this was before DVD.

After college, I interned for 5 months at The Criterion Collection, during which time I got to hand laserdiscs to a bathrobe-clad Adrian Lynne, changed many a lightbulb, and did enough work to be thanked on their DVD of the much-loathed Armageddon. I lived in Wilmington, NC for two years and  managed one video store (Video H20, R.I.P.) there. Since then, I have worked part-time at others (currently the great Video Americain in Newark, DE) as the entire video store industry gradually dies away.

So I’ve decided to take the plunge into the blogosphere today. I harbor no great ambitions for this blog beyond having a place to share my thoughts on films and filmographies that I’ve been exploring, though other subjects are not out of bounds…

***

“With the exception of The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Citizen Kane (1941), no picture has been the subject of more critical writing than the original King Kong, an irreplaceable part of twentieth century American culture, the greatest, most popular, most intriguing horror fantasy film ever made. As King Kong is a testament for those who believe film is a collaborative an, the majority of articles have dealt with the various achievements of the numerous individuals who worked on the project, with the tremendous contributions of special effects genius Willis O’Brien and composer Max Steiner (who understood that Kong should be scored like a silent picture) being singled out most often. Because there is so much available material that documents the technical wizardry of Kong, I will confine myself to two other areas.

An Interpretation. Like most producers, Merian C. Cooper insisted that all his films, including King Kong, were strictly “entertaining pictures,” but Kong is so rich in implication that few critics haven’t read added significance into it. It has been interpreted as: a parable about an innocent, proud country boy (probably a muscular, uneducated black) who is humbled and finally destroyed when he comes to the cold, cruel city; an indictment of “bring ‘em back alive” big game hunters; a racist visualization of the fears a white woman has about being abducted by a black — or, as Harry Geduld and Ronald Gottesman suggest, “a white man’s sick fantasy of the Negro’s lust to ravish white women”; and a parable about the Great Depression, an interpretation I have never understood.

Numerous critics contend that Kong was intentionally filmed as if it were a nightmare. (If the picture is indeed a dream, this would explain the frequent changes in Kong’s size, according to scale.) B. C Dale writes:

“The film manages to bypass the critical, censorious level of the viewers consciousness and to secure his suspension of disbelief with what appears to be great ease. A number of French critics have attributed this phenomenon to the film’s oneiric qualities, its pervasive dreamlike control of some subconscious, uncritical pan of the mind. Indeed it does succeed in dreaming for us.”

I agree that King Kong is dreamlike — in fact, our first view of Skull Island is an exact reproduction of Arnold Bocklin’s dreamlike painting “Isle of the Dead” — but I don’t think that it is our dream we watch on the screen. The film begins in the real world, in dark, cold Depression New York where unemployed, hungry people stand in soup lines; but from the moment The Venture leaves port for uncharted regions, I believe we are on a journey through Carl Denham’s subconscious. Just as Pauline Kael described the landscape of Altair 4 in the Kong influenced Forbidden Planet (1956) as being .the caves, plains, and the towers of Dr. Morbius’s mind,” Skull (as in cerebral) Island’s expressionistic landscape — fertile, overgrown, reptile infested, watery, cave filled — is Denham’s fantasized sexual terrain.

And Kong, I believe, is a manifestation of Denham’s subconscious. Much like Morbius’s Id monster. Whereas Morbius conjures up his monster to kill off the men he fears will take away his daughter (likely his lover in his subconscious), Denham conjures up Kong as a surrogate to battle Driscoll for Ann’s love and to perform sexually with her when he has never been willing (or able) to have a sexual encounter himself. Although young and virile, misogynist Denham has traveled to the far corners of the earth with an all male crew to avoid intimate liaisons because he believes women will strip him of his masculinity (“Some hardboiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and he cracks up and goes sappy”). Kong is Denham’s female lusting side — his alter ego, which he keeps in the dark recesses of his mind, as remotely located as Skull Island, behind a figurative great wall. Kong is evidence of Denham’s desperate need to possess Ann; his birth is a result of Denham’s continuing to suppress his sexual/romantic drive even after he meets, and immediately falls in love with, Ann.

In New York, Denham tells Ann, “Trust me and keep your chin up.” A few seconds of screen time pass, and Ann, now on board The Venture, is struck accidentally by Driscoll — on the chin. This is a sign that Denham can’t be trusted to protect Ann’s physical well being even if he wants to. As his secret (even from himself) love for Ann increases, his Kong side overcomes his desire to protect her. He betrays his lack of concern for her safety (from Kong): for her screen test aboard The Venture, he dresses Ann in white — with her bee stung lips and hair style she looks like one of D. W. Griffith’s virginal Victorian heroines — as if preparing her for sacrifice, or perhaps a sexual initiation rite; then he takes Ann onto Skull island before he knows if it is safe. Just as Denham saved Ann in New York from jail (for stealing an apple), unemployment, and starvation, Kong continues Denham’s gallantry toward Ann on Skull Island, saving her from a tyrannosaur and a pterodactyl. But the difference is clear: the civilized Denham (the man) believes his interest in Ann is “strictly business,” while the primitive Denham (Kong) has placed no such restrictions on himself.

Since Kong is a side of Denham, Kong needn’t follow the movie formula of having Denham and Driscoll vie for Ann’s affections. Denham can allow Driscoll free reign with her because, in truth, the schizophrenic Denham is moving in on Ann from his Kong side. Also, through Kong, Denham tries to eliminate Driscoll and all other men who “pursue” her. When Driscoll’s kisses bring Ann to her height of sexual passion, and her breathing is heavy and her body is like jelly, he is conveniently (as far as Denham is concerned) called to a meeting with Denham and the captain. Suddenly natives, who to Denham probably represent the link between civilized man (himself) and his simian ancestors (apes), climb aboard The Venture at the very spot where Ann stands, at the first moment she is alone, and kidnap her to be Kong’s bride. Is it the natives’ lucky night? Or were things so easy for them — being part of Denham’s dream — because Denham’s subconscious orchestrated the whole thing in their favor?

That Denham and Kong are rarely in the same shot further gives one the impression that Kong is being directed by some external force, namely Denham’s subconscious, At one time Kong is on one side of the tree trunk bridge that holds Driscoll (who climbs off to safety) and several other men pursuing Ann (who fall to their deaths) — while Denham is out of sight on the other side of the bridge and only emerges after Kong has left. Not coincidentally, a later scene in New York shows Kong reaching into a hotel room (to which Denham’s subconscious must have directed him), snatching Ann, and knocking down Driscoll — while Denham is out of sight in the hall and only appears after Kong has left.

Denham and Kong do confront each other (the visualization of Denham’s internal struggle) when Kong breaks through the supposedly impenetrable door of the great wall (Denham’s mental barricade) — just as the Id monster breaks through the supposedly impenetrable laboratory door in Forbidden Planet. Confronted with his bestial side, the civilized Denham — a model for Morbius, who at this point denies his Id monster, thereby making it cease to exist — puts it (Kong) to sleep with gas bombs. Back in New York, Denham still tries to control his sexual side by literally chaining up Kong. However, once Kong breaks out of his supposedly unbreakable chains, Denham’s last barrier, we never see Kong and Denham together again until Kong lies dead.

Denham’s words “it was beauty killed the beast” makes sense only if the beast he’s referring to was part of himself. It is an understatement to say that Kong is too big for Ann, but we could overlook this except for the fact that Kong’s size prevents him from considering her a beauty. That he can’t even recognize Ann by her looks is evident when he pulls the wrong woman from the hotel and can only tell she’s not Ann by hair color and smell — not by beauty. That Kong reacts so violently when the photographers take pictures of Ann is not because he thinks they’re trying to harm her — Kong probably doesn’t recognize her — but because filmmaker Denham, a voyeur (as many critics have acknowledged), becomes filled with jealous rage because others are taking pictures of his actress / woman / property / beauty; and it is his subconscious that wills Kong to intervene by breaking his bonds and chasing the photographers away. Once loose, Kong is out of the civilized Denham’s control and goes all out to succeed in his mission of having sex with Ann. On Skull Island, a snake (a Freudian sex symbol) attacks Kong — a symbolic act that shows Denham is trying to suppress his sexual instincts; however, in New York, Kong attacks the snake — the Third Avenue El — making it clear that nothing will get in his way this time. Having no penis — is impotence the reason Denham avoids women? — Kong has symbolic intercourse with Ann when he takes her up the world’s greatest phallic symbol: the Empire State Building. Once this sexual act has been carried out (consummated), Denham is no longer sexually repressed (or a virgin). As his sexual self can surface at last, he no longer has to enjoy sex vicariously through a surrogate — and Kong, now obsolete, can die. Therefore, it makes sense that in the Cooper Ernest B. Schoedsack sequel, Son of Kong (1934), where Denham is the romantic lead and has a love affair with Helen Mack, the gorilla need not be and is not a sexual being.

Kong as Hero. That Kong is regarded as a hero rather than the prototype for all monster villains is quite extraordinary, considering how many innocent people he kills and how much property he destroys, all done with the emotion of someone eating a melting ice cream cone. His hero status is even more unusual since the recent reinsertion of scenes censored in 1938 from all prints of the film. These scenes of Kong partially stripping Ann (touching her and smelling his finger), viciously trampling and chewing on helpless natives, and dropping the woman he mistakes for Ann to her death from high above the city streets, make Kong’s “beastliness” much more pronounced.

Kong is a hero, I suspect, because he is a great fighter, capable of beating Tunney or Dempsey with his pinky, or the entire United States Air Force if it fought fairly; he gallantly risks his life for his woman; black people see him as a black character who fights White America; the poor see him as their champion who wreaks havoc on New York City, home of Wall Street and the least popular city during the Great Depression and not much more popular since; women see that he doesn’t hide his feelings as most men do. And Kong is certainly sympathetic. We feel sorry for grotesque characters whose love for someone beautiful is not returned — Fay Wray earned her reputation as the screen’s top screamer by shrieking every time Kong came near her. He is taken forcibly from his homeland, where he was god, to be, as Denham tells the theater audience, “merely a captive to gratify your curiosity.” He is destroyed by airplanes, something he can’t understand, for reasons he can’t comprehend. As his last act, he puts Ann in a safe place so she won’t suffer his horrible fate — what is truly upsetting is that Ann doesn’t verbally acknowledge the nobleness of this gesture. Kong dies so tragically and so theatrically (as a hammy silent movie star might) that we forgive and forget all that he has done. But for all this, as Robert Fiedel writes in The Girl in the Hairy Paw (Avon, 1976), “Most critics have always been at a loss to give adequate explanation for the great feeling of tragedy evoked by Kong’s death.” When the airplanes start firing on Kong we suddenly feel we are losing our best friend, when up till now we have thought Kong our enemy. I believe Fiedel pinpoints the reason for our dramatic reversal:

“The answer lies, in fact, in the musical score… Nowhere is the score more manipulative than in the death scene. As Kong realizes that his death is immediately impending, we hear a lamenting variation of the “Ann Darrow” motif played passionately by the strings… Then as Kong finally dies and loses his hold atop the Empire State Building, his motif is resolved by rest chords… signifying his acceptance of defeat… Kong’s actual fall is accompanied by a sustained blaring dissonant chord, and finally resolved by an orchestral outburst. It is interesting that his fall is resolved only by the score, and not by the visuals… The score serves the vital function of resolving the tension of the actual fall and denoting the precise moment to trigger our emotional responses… As Denham muses philosophically over the body of Kong… a celestial statement of the “Ann Darrow” motif is played in the upper string register which makes a final tragic comment on the death of Kong. A final recapitulation of the resolved “Kong” motif ensues, concluding the film on a negative, disturbing theme.”

King Kong is an institution, a folk hero, certainly more real to us today than the defunct studio that created him. Kong has been resurrected so many times — initially by major studio releases in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1952, and 1956, and then by impossible to miss television and repertory theater screenings — that he has become immortal. The King is dead!”

- by Danny Peary, published in Cult Movies 1, 1981.

***

“This is the second entry in George Miller’s influential, thrill-a-second, futuristic trilogy — coming between Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), which George Ogilvic co-directed. Mad Max unexpectedly became Australia’s most profitable picture upon release, raking in over $100 million on a mere $300,000 investment. The only country in which it didn’t fare well was the United States. That’s because three months after the enthusiastic AIP bought it for American distribution, the studio was taken over by the unenthusiastic Filmways. It needlessly had Americans re-voice then-unknown Mel Gibson and the other Australian actors, which made it seem like a dubbed spaghetti Western, and then dumped the picture into grindhouses. Mad Max 2, which was distributed worldwide by Warner Bros., surpassed the original’s box office internationally; and as The Road Warrior in the United States, where Mel Gibson had since 1979 become quite popular, its fate was much better — unlike Mad Max, it detoured through resounding commercial success before achieving cult status.

I think the near-future post-apocalyptic alternate-world setting in the original is much more fascinating and frightening than the timeless wasteland in the second film (and in the third), simply because it’s a vision one can relate to and appreciate other than on a subconscious level. Miller intentionally moved out of the realistic realm for the second film, using a narrator (the Feral Kid grown up) to emphasize “that this is storytelling, fable, mythology” — having a narrator from the distant future relate a story set in the near future throws time completely out of whack and makes the story fit even more snugly into a mythological framework. And though I don’t like Max becoming a vigilante in Mad Max and think — as I wrote in Cult Movies (1981) — “it is less interesting as a story about people than as a marriage between a filmmaker’s machines (his camera, his editing tools) and the motor-powered machines (cars, motorcycles) that he films,” I still find that, overall, its characters and the relationships between them are more developed than in the sequel. However, I like both films equally, and understand why most moviegoers and critics consider The Road Warrior the better film. It isn’t dubbed. Mel Gibson has even more screen presence than in Mad Max; his character has more shadings. Whereas Mad Max is a part-biker, part-horror, part-vengeance film, The Road Warrior attracted a broader audience because it seems to exist on a higher, classier, more cerebral plane — despite incorporating much material from those not-always-appreciated genres. And as mind blowing as the car stunts are in Mad Max, the $4 million sequel, which used 80 vehicles and employed 200 stunts, is even more spectacular.

What you watch with wide eyes makes your body shake. There is nonstop action and violence. There are furiously paced chases and terrifying crashes, which are shot close up by cameras that are inside speeding vehicles rather than on the side of the road. There are menacing, ritualistic, pageantry-obsessed characters. They wear leather, masks, and other weird medieval garb, and spiked, wildly colored punk haircuts; fire crossbows and flamethrowers; and race souped-up cycles and cars (chariots for these knights) across the mythical landscape. “The Road Warrior,” stated Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice, “is an honest-to-goodness movie-movie of such breathtaking velocity that it would spin hopelessly out of control if it did not have a charismatic hero at its core.” “Never,” declared Vincent Canby of the New York Times, “has a film’s vision of the postnuclear-holocaust world seemed quite so desolate or so brutal, or so action-packed and sometimes funny as in… [this] extravagant film fantasy, which looks like a sadomasochistic comic book come to life.” As Time’s Richard Coring wrote, “Miller keeps the eye alert, the mind agitated, the Saturday matinee spirit alive evoking emotion through technique.” Corliss:

“…cars crash, somersault, explode, get squashed under the wheels of semis. Skinless bug-eyed corpses hurtle toward the screen. A mangy dog sops at a coyote carcass. A deadly boomerang shears off fingertips, creases a man’s skull. That’s entertainment? As a series of isolated incidents, no… But as garishly precise daubs in George Miller’s apocalyptic fresco, they add up to exhilarating entertainment — and a textbook for sophisticated popular moviemaking.”

Corliss was one of the few American critics to have gone out on a limb and recommended Mad Max. Like other critics, he found it easier to praise the sequel because it is thematically more palatable. In its final third, Mad Max becomes another bleak, if more imaginative and compelling, revenge film with a sociopath hero; ex-cop Max, quite mad, tracks down and brutally murders the gang members who killed his wife and baby; he loses his humanity in the process. As Sarris reasoned, “[The Road Warrior] is somewhat more satisfying as genre entertainment than Mad Max because its heroics are driven less by vengeance than a vision.”

Miller told me in an interview for Omni’s ScreenFlights! ScreenFantasies (1984) that he and partner Byron Kennedy, the late producer of the first two Mad Max films, decided to make Mad Max for two reasons. First, they had a mutual “obsession for the pure kinetics of chase movies,” from Ben-Hur (1960) to Bullitt (1968), from Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd silent comedies to biker films such as The Wild One (1954) and those made by Roger Corman at AIP. Second, they were fascinated by Australia’s car culture: In the sixties, deserted rural roads were used as much for sporting arenas as they were for transportation and there was a disproportionate number of highway casualties. (While an intern, medical school graduate Miller spent six months in a casualty ward — his exposure to road trauma was “a germinating influence on the Mad Max films.”) Max’s character was of minor concern in Mad Max. They were content to have him become another in the movies’ long line of monstrous revenge killers because his vengeance story line would allow them to pursue their major interests. However, Miller and Kennedy decided to make The Road Warrior primarily to explore Max’s character. This time they wouldn’t be satisfied having a remorseless vigilante-killer as their lead. Such an objectionable character had appeal for the Death Wish (1972) audience but had no thematic interest to them. But they were intrigued by how such a character could evolve: becoming a myth-hero with universal appeal (Miller read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces); reluctantly interacting with and ultimately helping other lost, troubled people; regaining his humanity; and, because of heroics/good deeds, receiving redemption for those sins he committed in Mad Max. Miller told me:

“[When we made Mad Max], I don’t think we thought very much in terms of heroes …. It was only a lot later, after we began to analyze Max’s popularity in places as diverse as Japan, Switzerland, Australia, France, the United States, and South America, that I could see that Mad Max was a rather corrupted version of hero mythology. The film enjoyed success beyond the normal, exploitation car films because we had unwittingly, unconsciously, been ‘servants” of the collective consciousness: Mad Max was in fact another story about a lone outlaw who wandered through a dark wasteland — similar stories had been told over and over again, across all space and time, with the hero being a Japanese samurai, or an American gunslinger, or a wandering Viking, etc.
“The truth is that I had a tough time making Mad Max. I was dissatisfied with the film and felt that we had been constrained by my inexperience and our small budget, and for a long time when I was cutting it, I honestly felt it was unreleasable. When the film succeeded financially, I thought it would give me the chance to go off and do something quieter. We didn’t imagine that there would be a sequel. But the whole mythological question in regard to our hero made us want to do the first film again, to push that character a little further,
“Mad Max is a very dark film. We begin with an admittedly harsh world, but Max is a fairly normal man, working a day job as a highway cop, and having a wife and baby at home…. But the world catches up to him and his family is decimated; and he descends into his dark side. By the end of the film, mad, angry, crazy Max has become a full monster, the avenging demon. We leave him in the most pessimistic situation I’d like to leave any character. We must question whether he’s redeemable. On the other hand, The Road Warrior starts with a pessimistic world and ends with there being the possibility of rebirth, no matter how dark the order of the day is. Max spends most of the film attempting to deny his humanity. Mel Gibson called his character a “closet human being” who doesn’t want to be involved with other human beings because he believes an emotional investment will be too painful and also compromise his chances for survival. He can barely bring himself to have contact with his dog. But Mel Gibson has a quality of “goodness” to him, a “good core,” and this comes out a fair bit in his character in The Road Warrior — so you know that Max is essentially ripe for change … you recognize he’s ready to rekindle the spark of compassion within him. And that’s best characterized by his friendship with the Gyro Captain and his regard for the boy, the Feral Kid. By the end of the film, he realizes — perhaps entirely unconsciously — that he can’t live completely alone any longer, and that his life must have some greater purpose. He realizes that he has no choice but to drive the oil tanker for the people of the compound and be the one who is attacked by the marauders. It turns out that he was just a pawn of the collective, but even as a decoy he was responsible for these people gaining freedom and a new order emerging from the chaos. He begins to believe that, like all of us, he’s part of the collective, like it or not. It’s a much more optimistic outlook than we have in Mad Max.”

It may seem contradictory that Miller attempts to establish Max as a universal myth-hero yet, at the same time, sets him on a journey to find his humanity and again become a mere human being. Alter all, most of the movie myth-heroes/superwarriors to whom Max can be compared — Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, Charles Bronson’s “The Man” in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985), Toshiro Mifune’s Yojimbo (1961), Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo — realize, as we viewers do, that they will never be part of the human race again. That they are already “dead” is what makes them and Max (and even the lethally poisoned Edmund O’Brien in the 1949 melodrama D.O.A.) fearless and so formidable. They have nothing to lose. But it should be pointed out that Miller doesn’t compare Max to any of the above figures, but to “a Ulysses or Sir Galahad, a hero with larger-than-life qualities and human limitations as well.” Certainly Max is as laconic a superhero as Eastwood’s Man with No Name, and just as efficient at killing off bad guys; Max, too, is left for dead by bad guys but has a Christ-like resurrection, and his humorous relationship with Bruce Spence’s Gyro Captain definitely recalls Eastwood’s with Eli Wallach in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967). But the road warrior differs from the Eastwood character in that he is emotional about his past (he slugs Pappagallo for downplaying the deaths of his wife and baby), is haunted by inner demons (Eastwood has no past, no guilt), and, in this second film, doesn’t initiate fights — which Eastwood always does. So it’s probably less appropriate to link Max with Eastwood’s character than with Steve Reeves’s Hercules (1960), the rare movie myth-hero who strives to he a human being (and mortal), and with Allan Ladd’s Shane (1953), the rare movie myth-hero who displays admirable human traits.

Max has been compared to Shane, because he, too, is an outlaw who comes out of the blue to help a group of settlers/dreamers defeat villains that covet their property, and, while history moves forward, wanders off again into mythology. I also suggest Miller was influenced by two other Westerns. The premise of the film — a superwarrior and his amusing sidekick join an out-manned, ragtag outfit inside a compound/fort while enemy soldiers lay siege outside — is straight out of the Alamo segment of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955); the scene in which Max drives the truck full throttle into the compound while the Gyro Captain files above and the marauders are on his heels is similar to the scene in Davy Crockett in which Fess Parker (as myth-hero Crockett), Buddy Ebsen, Hans Conreid, and Nick Cravat race through the Alamo gate just before Mexican horse soldiers catch up to them. I asked Miller about Davy Crockett — sure enough, he still remembers the excitement he felt as a kid when the picture came to Australia, and how essential it was to own a coonskin hat. Hondo (1953), with John Wayne playing Louis L’Amour’s greatest hero, is also a probable influence on The Road Warrior. Wayne and his unpettable dog, Sam, race across the desert trying to flee hostile Indians, just as Max and his unfriendly dog try to flee a “tribe” of marauders in the desert. Sam is killed by an Indian spear — Max’s companion is killed by a marauder’s arrow. Whereas Max finds temporary safety in the compound, Wayne takes refuge at Geraldine Page’s ranch, which, for the time being, the Indians will not attack, There is no counterpart for Page’s character in The Road Warrior – soon after Virginia Hey’s beautiful Warrior Woman says her first friendly words to handsome Max and he seems touched, Miller unpredictably kills her off in battle (this part was originally intended for an actor but was given unchanged to Hey). But Page’s brave fatherless son (he’ll fight adult Indians), played by Lee Aaker, who becomes attached to Wayne, anticipates Emil Minty’s scene-stealing Feral Kid. The classic finale, in which Max drives the tanker (with the Feral Kid and the Warrior Woman on board) while the marauders give chase — the Indianapolis 500 if all drivers had weapons — can be compared to a similar scene in Stagecoach (1939), but it also recalls the final sequence in Hondo, in which bloodthirsty Indians chase Wayne, Page, and Aaker and their soldier-escorted wagon caravan across the desert. Incidentally, while many people have assumed Miller borrowed ideas from the 1975 cult favorite A Boy and His Dog (a post-apocalyptic world full of scavengers, a hero with a dog in the desert, a gang leader keeping his soldier on a leash), Miller didn’t see it until after he had made The Road Warrior – he “was surprised by the similarities.” However, Miller does give credit to A Clockwork Orange (1970), presumably for influencing Norma Moriceau’s startling punk costuming, the slangy dialogue (more noticeable in Mad Max), and the ultra-violence.

In many Westerns and other action films, similar characters consciously choose opposite ways of life and become mortal enemies. The hero can understand the villain because he is much like him, except the bad guy has relinquished his morality; he can defeat the villain because he has the same capacity for violence, is as unscrupulous in battle, and has slightly more cunning. In The Road Warrior Vernon Wells’s wildman Wez and mad Max have a bond they both recognize. Wez is the vile figure Max would be like if he completely relinquished his morality. They are each temporarily chained by the leaders of their respective camps, Mike Preston’s Pappagallo and the fearsome Humungus, played by Swedish bodybuilder Kiell Nilsson. Pappagallo (“We haven’t given up — we’re still human beings!”) admonishes Max for using the deaths of his wife and baby as an excuse to be “a scavenger, a maggot living off the corpse of the old world”; he asks: “Do you think you’re the only one who suffered?” Similarly, the Humungus cools off scavenger-maggot Wez after his male lover is killed; he reminds him, “We’ve all lost someone we love.” For a brief startling moment, the masked Humungus (what a great dirty wrestler he’d be!) has dignity and the grotesque Wez is as sympathetic as Max. Miller has reminded us that before normal society disintegrated because of a worldwide energy shortage — the Mad Max stories were triggered by the surprisingly violent Australian response to petrol rationing in the seventies — and many survivors let the reptilian side of their brains take over, the people who now inhabit the compound might have been friends with those marauders who now threaten them; Wez might have been a cop, like Max; the Humungus, who Miller thinks was a former military officer who suffered severe facial burns, might have served in the same outfit as his counterpart, Pappagallo. I asked Miller if viewers identified more with the good guys than the fancier dressed marauders. Miller:

“I would hope, as a storyteller, that there is identification with both sides. I think a well-told story gives insights into all forces that interact in any conflict. I really think it’s important. I find that in both Mad Max and The Road Warrior, the bad guys are more interesting than the good guys. On a pragmatic level, it’s more fun for the actors and designers to be working with the marauder, bad-guy types than the good guys who, I’m afraid, can be rather boring. If I had a chance to do the films again, I think I’d give a bit more insight into both sides. Then hopefully, the audience would be able to see that those people with the broader knowledge, who are prepared for broader connections and want to stay alive and eventually move toward the organization of a new society, should be classified as ‘good guys.’ I think the ‘bad guys’ are designated ‘bad’ because basically they have chosen to limit their perspective. They are people who say, ‘There’s no hope, there’s no chance for rebirth, so our goal is merely to survive, which we’ll do by taking what’s left,’ And really that’s all that differentiates them from the ‘good guys.’ Max is only marginally better than the Humungus [and Wez]; he is as committed as the marauders to survival at all costs, only he’s hasn’t the total amorality of the marauders.”

Like Mad Max, The Road Warrior was attacked in many circles for having excessive violence — I could do without seeing the Feral Kid’s boomerang slice off that old marauder’s fingers, but I think the violence is functional rather than gratuitous. I disagree with Richard Corliss’s claim (not meant to be criticism) that “our nerve endings [are soon] numbed by the movie’s aimless carnage.” Many people are killed, yet Miller doesn’t allow us to become desensitized to death, especially single deaths; we’re just as upset by the gallant death of the Warrior Woman in the last scene as we were by the murders of the raped compound woman and Max’s dog earlier in the film. Interestingly, we sense the worth of the Gyro Captain (who Miller believes serves the most important function in the picture since he both provides humor and taps Max back toward his humanity) because we identify with his revulsion upon seeing the brutal rape-murder of the captured compound woman — he has seen countless murders but hasn’t been desensitized either. Significantly, her murder and the dog’s are two of many powerful incidents of violence that Miller implies, rather than shows. Miller:

“I had censorship problems with the two films in certain countries because of the violence. And it was extremely difficult to make any cuts because, as you’d see if you looked at them frame by frame or sequence by sequence, there’s not much violence on the screen. They appear to be more violent than they are. That was deliberate.
“The question of how to use violence in films, or whether to use it at all, is very difficult to answer. I do know that there’s an impulse in filmmakers and other storytellers to try and confront both violence and death and shed some light on each. Of course, there’s a fine line between exploiting these subjects and examining them, And I’m not quite sure where the Mad Max films fall.
“One thing that has helped me try to put everything into context is the notion that movies are really public dreams… that we share collectively in darkened theaters. And just like dreams have functions, nightmares help us confront our dark sides. The reasons we told these post-apocalyptic allegories, these warning fables, was to help us explore the darker, more unthinkable side of ourselves. These dress rehearsals for our own deaths help us experience that part of ourselves which we are unable to deal with in normal, conscious, everyday living. And I think that’s the kind of impulse that gives rise to the violence in our storytelling. There’s obviously a need for violence in stories, as it has always been present in them, whether we’re talking about biblical stories or children’s fairy tales.”

The violence in The Road Warrior has thematic validity. The horrifying violence is what establishes it as one of the few post-apocalyptic pictures that doesn’t suggest such a future is romantic. Even the majority of compound dwellers we care about are killed off. “This world is not meant to be inviting,” says Miller. “It is brutal, scary, and forbidding.” It’s a world that has vast excitement and entertainment for us tourists who sit in our movie seats, but not even a madman like Max wants to live there — lucky for us he has no choice.”

- by Danny Peary, published in Cult Movies 3, 1988.

Credit must go to “Cueball” for his reproduction of the above promotional photograph.

Bloody Italiana

This is Herman’s and James’ blog devoted to all things bloody and – wait for it – Italian. Herman was a great help in pointing me in the right direction when I was after finding out more about mondo and cannibal films, but it’s not just gross-out stuff like that on BI – there’s zombies, giallo, detective stories, all sorts of stuff… And most of it I’ve never heard of, which is why it’s good to have a blog like this, one which gets down to the nitty gritty. [ Atom ]

Cinema de Merde

CdM is a site I came across when looking for material on Starcrash, an Italian Star Wars rip-off I wanted to watch with my movie buddy Vinny. I liked the way the author, Scott, came across as a shameless lover of tat, but also someone who had a brain in his noggin. His insightful reviews have even made me reappraise Brian de Palma (Scott is something of a BdP fan), a director I’d never really got on with bar Phantom Of The Paradise. Whilst I don’t always agree with Scott’s assessments, I certainly trust his integrity and his judgement, and he often gets me thinking about a film in ways I’d never previously considered – which is the mark of a good critic, I guess. Definitely a good place to browse through for ideas of films to watch (plus his essays are very interesting). [ RSS ]

FilmFanatic

FilmFanatic is a cineaste who is methodically working his way through the 1,650 ‘must-see’ movies recommended by Danny Peary in his book, Guide For The Film Fanatic. He shows an exceptional sense of commitment to the project, and provides some thought-provoking reviews in the process, balancing visceral appreciation with a scholarly analysis, but always in an accessible, minimally pretentious way. Definite props for not sticking to English language Hollywood fare, too. [ RSS ]

I’m Ready For My Close Up

IRFMCU is one of my favourite Resonance FM podcasts, and is definitely at the more highbrow end of the scale, but even then Alex Fitch and his co-presenters manage to draw the listener in with the genuine interest they show in the films they’re covering, rather than scaring you off with high-falutin’ mumbo jumbo. A lot of it relates to London film festivals and the like, but it’s all interesting. [ Atom ]

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