Simple erotic imagery doesn't get old (not for me, anyway). This iconic illustration from Ray Todd's The Horny Hitchhiker is a superb example of pornographic pulp.
As I am currently in production on a new movie in which a (possibly perverted) preacher plays an important part, this Greenleaf oldie is more relevant to my "pulp as a way of life" by-line than ever before.
Since a Pervert Preacher was not enough, the publishers spiced up the pot with some bestiality and bondage.
Is that dog food in the preacher's bucket? And is the holy man offering the gal a little fried chicken before Rover does his business? That's kind of him if he is.
More bestiality rears its furry head.
Has the lady slipped her panties down to entice the dog? Are dogs susceptible to titillation?
If you take a close look at the mutt, it becomes clear that he's not even looking at the woman. He's looking at something outside the picture.
This may explain the need to titillate the four-legged lothario. A vulgar display of bare flesh won't do it for him. On the other hand, a hint of ass will do it.
Before you could advertise your wares on the internet or in a free newspaper, you had to advertise them on a park bench. They weren't called the Good Old Days for nothing.
He's My Loving Beast, not My Lusting Beast or Horny Beast. That implies it's more than just sex for him. He's willing to share the household chores, support his gal, walk down the aisle, andbark "I do!" at the appropriate moment. What a guy.
You need a permit? Is that the permit she's holding?
Beautiful black and white image from Liverpool Press. The publisher's two-tone artwork was always high quality and extremely erotic. They even bothered illustrating backgrounds.
Ray Todd strikes twice in one post. Hot, trashy illustration from another Greenleaf classic.
She gets tortured before she spends her married life torturing him. The "tortured bride" theme was a popular one amongst porn paperback writers. Strangely, it's rarely been explored in realms outside literature.
When Andy Brooks (Richard Backus in an Oscar-worthy performance) inexplicably comes home from Vietnam, his parents explain to him that they were told he was dead.
"I was," he replies, not skipping a beat, then smiles.
This exchange sets the tone for an extraordinary film from director Bob Clark and writer Earl Ormsby (Deranged).
Made in '74, when Vietnam still lingered heavily in the public psyche, it is the best example I have seen of a film dealing with what is essentially PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder); Combat Shock also tackled the issue with sensitivity and intelligence.
It is also a prime example of how the horror genre can address serious issues in a fascinating way.
You see, Andy IS dead, but he's not yet buried or completely retired. He lingers in a sad, desperate, pain-ridden deathdream, and he survives by drinking blood.
His parents and sister embrace him immediately, but it soon becomes obvious that the Andy who left to go to war is a very different Andy now.
Some of the film's most effective scenes are of Andy immersed in replays of horrific memories mixed with the pain of a limbo-like existence.
Much of Andy's frustration is triggered by the inability of others to comprehend the hellish experiences he still carries with him.
When the local mailman greets Andy and begins callously discussing who died in Vietnam and who should have died ("...and there are some we should have lost...", Andy can barely stop himself from ripping the man's throat out.
As the returned soldier's psychological condition becomes more brittle, a fissure develops between father (John Marley) and son.
The fissure represents a classic generational clash, and Clark handles it like a conventional father-son conflict. Although there is a supernatural element underpinning Andy's actions, this aspect is allowed to simmer beneath the surface. As a result, it is much more effective as horror.
It is tragic to see Marley ordering Andy from his house ("Get out of my house!") only days after he was tearfully embracing his lost son.
Andy's mother (Christine Brooks) quickly falls out with Andy's father and focuses her protective nature on the disintegrating returnee. She gains greater strength after lapsing into emphatic denial of Andy's true nature.
Easily one of the saddest horror films ever made, Deathdream features a number of powerful sequences in which the torturous side of living death is explored. The short story on which it is based, 'The Monkey's Paw', gives the drama a deep foundation.
Andy enters a cemetery at night and begins inscribing his own name on an old tombstone. His wish to die and rest in peace is palpable. That he cannot do so, that he is being driven by a force beyond his command, makes for a devastating viewing experience.
It's understandable that Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night) has always been marketed as a horror film -- and it certainly is that.
Unfortunately, its deeper virtues have not been universally recognized.
"Something unspeakable has come home", the DVD cover art trumpets, but it's really the other way around.
SOMEONE HAS COME HOME TO SOMETHING UNSPEAKABLE is more accurate, for the film is about a veteran (like many) who comes home to a world in which his experiences can never be truly understood, appreciated, or acknowledged. As a result, he is totally alienated, and death seems preferable.
When Andy is visited by a group of local kids...
... he becomes frustrated and angered by their banter and trivializing of his wartime service.
Naively, they question him about weapons and ask him if he's ever killed anybody. His ultimate response to this is to shoot to his feet and wring the neck of his father's barking dog.
The denouement of this sequence is shocking, and it underlines Andy's displacement in a living, post-war world.
Unable to share his pain and confusion with anybody living or dead, Andy appears defiant.
With Andy's decline almost absolute, he is rushed to the grave by his caring mother, and she is forced to bury him in order to rid him of a life that begs for closure.
Andy's last minutes are a superb marriage of the macabre and humanistic, and director Clark achieves a watershed in the genre.
RIP Andy Brooks... and RIP Bob Clark, who died in a grisly auto wreck in 2007.
It's amazing how innocent Joanna Williams' Little Girls Blue (VCX, '78) feels today. It's like an Afterschool Special with Genitals.
A product of the late 70's, and released just after Debbie Does Dallas, it is a much more accomplished piece of erotica than Debbie. Though a notorious "stick film" due to its availability at the time, Debbie is a (mostly) drab piece of pornography with an occasional flurry of fully erect sexuality.
Little Girls begins with a surprisingly arty credit sequence, then launches quickly into its storyline.
Director Joanna Williams (perhaps a pseudonym for a male director?) was responsible for the relatively rough but overpraised Expensive Tastes, another '78 effort released prior to this.
Often referred to as a roughie, Tastes does feature light rape footage, but it's not a terribly visceral affair, and was easily eclipsed by works such as Zebedy Colt's Unwilling Lovers ('77)...
... and Shaun Costello's Forced Entry ('73).
Fans of Don Coscarelli's Phantasm will recognize the location standing in for a girls' school in this film.
Known as 'The Morningside Mortuary' in Coscarelli's surreal horror flick of '79, it is a boarding school for sexual shenanigans in this soft-hearted, hardcore effort.
I say "soft-hearted" because the sex scenes are extremely conventional and affectionate by today's pornographic standards. Although the content is definitely XXX-rated, the staging is surprisingly subdued and playful.
As turn-on material, it's very effective. The lighting is more than adequate and the couplings (and triplings) are allowed to develop and grow. It's refreshing to see a lady gradually losing her garments.
Personally, I can't stand extended blowjob scenes in pornography of any kind, so Little Girls loses a point or two for me for spending so much time on these.
Perhaps I'm alone on this matter, but filmed blowjobs do not make for exciting erotic footage. They focus primarily on a man's penis (for a hetero audience), and use up valuable screen time that could be better directed towards oral servicing of a woman's sexual regions.
Do male porn fans really demand on-screen blowjob, or do lazy producers just think they do?
Guys love lesbian porn because it's all about the female parts. Is that not instructive?
This fine frame grab redresses the balance and is an example of the film's superior lighting and naturalistic production design.
Several years later, directors Svetlana and David I. Frazer gave the world a wonderful, highly erotic trio of Hawaiian-set porn movies that included Surrender in Paradise, Hanky Panky, and Pink Lagoon.
This duet, who were also responsible for the great Sex Boat...
... and Bad Girls, had an intrinsic understanding of eroticism that does have its roots in films like Little Girls Blue.
Just as films like Saw have, unfortunately, redefined what horror is to some (thus turning them off a genre that is about so much more), so, too, has grotesque gonzo porn (from the likes of Max Hardcore and Rob Black) redefined what porn is to those who always feared the worst. It's a shame because the porn genre has many magnificent classics that could be enjoyed by a much larger section of the population if only it was prepared to take the plunge.
For every Saw VI there's a Grace or The Children.
And for every Cumstains 10 or Rough Sex there's a Little Girls Blue, Buttman's Revenge, Hanky Panky, 3AM, Blonde Ambition, Night Dreams, or Opening Of Misty Beethoven.
Spike Jonze's attempt to turn Maurice Sendak's small, wonderful book into a feature worked for me.
The book has fewer than 400 words, many amazing illustrations, and themes relevant to kids and adults. Jonze's feature-ization expands without padding and captures the care-free, anarchic spirit of Sendak.
The realization of the monsters (by the Jim Henson company) is faithful and fascinating. The Wild Things feel like denizens of the H.R. Pufnstuf galaxy gene-spliced to The Dark Crystal and Jim Henson's The Storyteller (one of my favorite series ever). The Sid and Marty Kroft Pufnstuf connection is pertinent because it got to the screen first in terms of realizing live action characters of this nature. Of course, Pufnstuf arrived six years after Sendak's tale was written in '63, so we know who really got there first.
One of the most admirable parts of this movie is its lack of exposition and verbal clutter. Like Jimmy in Pufnstuf, Max takes a boat to a distant land of wild things. Here, that land is represented by rugged, Victorian (Australia) coastline -- in fact, it's an area I know so well and love so much because I've visited it (and shot there) frequently over a period of thirty years.
I love how Max gets there quickly and without fuss; he's carried there by a pre-ordained vessel of fate . When he washes up, he introduces himself to the wild things by immediately participating in a destructive game.
That's it.
Before too long, he becomes their King because they need a King. Who's he to argue.
Most Hollywood films would explain and justify and make Max's entrance a big deal. This doesn't. It is a big deal that he's discovered an amazing new world, but Jones doesn't feel the need to underline and punctuate the weight of that fact.
When Max returns home, Jones makes another great decision that ends the story on a perfect note.
As a monster lover and a lover of the book, I was carried away by the techniques employed to give the monsters life and breath. They are more human than most humans, and certainly more human than the movie humans usually found in noisy, ADD-ridden kiddie flicks.
In so many ways, the experience of watching Where The Wild Things Are feels akin to reading a great book.
Just as children don't stop to reflect on and analyze their lives in mid-flight, neither does this powerful movie, and that's why it's so damn good.
I don't want to say anything that will spoil the experience of seeing it for the first time, but I do want to say that this film is fuckin' excellent.
It is hard and funny and riveting. It is based on the life of the man who is still Britain's most dangerous prisoner. He changed is name to Charles Bronson because it suited him. I'm happy to report that he lives up to it, thereby giving the late and great actor his due.
Director Nicholas Winding Refn previously made the Pusher films, which I didn't like much, and Fear X, a film I liked a lot. Bronson is his tightest piece of work.
Refn cites Kubrick as an influence. The smears of the late filmmaker are all over this piece. It is A Clockwork Orange that it most closely resembles. The juxtaposition of orchestral and ball-ripping electronic music with violent imagery, extreme slow motion, rigid composition, and barked streams of dialog feel very Kubrick-ian.
The film consciously or unconsciously references Sexy Beast, too, and you'll know what I speak of when you see it. Ben Kingsley's 'Don Logan' appears to inhabit the body of Charles Bronson in a couple of exchanges...
... and, composition-wise, there are further parallels.
Although Bronson borrows its presentation style from another portrait of a criminal, Chopper, it still manages to feel fresh and heartfelt.
Don't miss it.
Tom Hardy is magnificent as Bronson
An example of how fucked-up the world of cinema has become is the fact that this film is playing in just one cinema in Los Angeles while Couples Retreat plays in thousands. And this... in the so-called film capital of the world. DasKapital of Krap perhaps!
Simple erotic imagery doesn't get old (not for me, anyway). This iconic illustration from Ray Todd's The Horny Hitchhiker is a superb example of pornographic pulp.
As I am currently in production on a new movie in which a (possibly perverted) preacher plays an important part, this Greenleaf oldie is more relevant to my "pulp as a way of life" by-line than ever before.
More bestiality rears its furry head.
Before you could advertise your wares on the internet or in a free newspaper, you had to advertise them on a park bench. They weren't called the Good Old Days for nothing.
He's My Loving Beast, not My Lusting Beast or Horny Beast. That implies it's more than just sex for him. He's willing to share the household chores, support his gal, walk down the aisle, andbark "I do!" at the appropriate moment. What a guy.
You need a permit? Is that the permit she's holding?
Ray Todd strikes twice in one post. Hot, trashy illustration from another Greenleaf classic.
She gets tortured before she spends her married life torturing him. The "tortured bride" theme was a popular one amongst porn paperback writers. Strangely, it's rarely been explored in realms outside literature.
