A Giant Thank You To Everybody

This morning, the 109th Follower of this blog appeared. Less than twelve months ago, the blog didn't exist.

I started Phantom of Pulp because I've always had a strong desire to share my passions. I did it when I was a six year old, and I'm doing it forty years later. I'm the guy who's always driving to someone's house -- with my multi-system DVD player -- to show them an obscure movie or expose them to a bizarre book. With the internet and blogging, I figured it was time to share what electrifies me with many like-minded individuals (relatively like-minded, anyway).

I've always been attracted to the stuff you'll find on this blog. It feeds my hunger for brain food. It excites me. It fulfills me. It strokes my insatiable curiosity for everything. It makes life worth living and encourages exploration.

I didn't intend to create a horror blog or a movie blog or a book blog, and I know this doesn't fall into any of those categories. That's why I called it Phantom of Pulp. Pulp, top me, is the product of fertile, unfettered minds.

I post stuff that gets lots of feedback and no feedback at all. Reviews of current releases get quick responses. Reviews of older flicks attract comments, too.

Porno-themed posts run hot and cold, if comments are anything to go by. Porno paperbacks seem to hit the spot for a select few, while my pieces on extreme pornography assume orphan status; either nobody wants them, or nobody wants to be seen to want them. Who knows?

I'll keep posting because extreme pornography, to me, says so much about human nature and our extraordinary diversity as a species. Posts on illustrators such as Toshio Saeki (a favorite) are generally well received by a consistent few, as are posts on current and not-so-current horror books.

The 109 of you who officially "follow" this blog are, no doubt, as different from each other in some ways as we are similar in other ways. Those differences keep the feedback hopping.

Personally, I'm a creature of extreme contrasts. On a weekend, I can eat breakfast while reading Toshio Saeki, then spend the rest of the morning watching Fly Away Home before screening In A Glass Cage for a friend in the afternoon. Before I fall asleep, I will probably crack open an Enid Blyton picture book that has just arrived from England.

I am fascinated by everything. EVERYTHING! My intellectual curiosity is unlimited. Hopefully, this blog reflects that.

The words weird, disgusting, and shocking rarely enter my internal lexicon. I find some material confronting, but, almost immediately, it becomes fascinating to me and worthy of further investigation. New obsessions are as regular as sunrises for me. The richness of our world is something to celebrate. Those who push again the tide of mediocrity need to be honored, embraced, and encouraged. I honor them here.

I want to thank and honor my 109 official Followers and those who Follow this blog discreetly for allowing me to share my passions with you and for contributing to the enrichment of my psyche.

If you folks were running the planet, I wouldn't need this blog.

As filmmaking duty calls (THE CLOTH DAGGER, my new film, is in production), I wish you all a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

See you in 2010.

Red Cliff of Boredom

Saw this close to a year ago and wasn't impressed at all -- in fact, it made me sad.

I was one of Woo's biggest champions back in the mid-80's and 90's when I wrote my Chinatown Beat column for Michael Helms' wonderful FATAL VISIONS magazine. I still think Bullet in the Head, A Better Tomorrow, Just Heroes, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled are masterpieces. I have countless DVD's, LD's, and VHS versions of all the director's works. My love for these films will never evaporate.

Watching Red Cliff, I found myself bored. So incredibly bored. For some reason, Woo has gotten it into his head that endless battle sequences are entertaining. Why have one hundred warriors when you can create a million more in a computer? Why shoot fifty flaming arrows when you can shoot fifty thousand?

That's it, I'm done with "epic" battle sequences. They're so repetitive and boring and uninteresting. It started with Troy and the Rings films and it hasn't stopped since. Half the action pics out there are just collections of battle sequences that go on and on and on and signify nothing but noise and chaos.

Red Cliff, apparently, has a story, and, according to John Woo, fascinating characters. Really? I didn't care. I felt twenty times removed from everybody in the movie. The arch, stuffy style applied to the so-called drama left me cold. Impossible, right, with actors like Tony Leung? Apparently not. I wanted everybody to die so the movie would end.

Woo's best films bleed with emotion because the characters are the focus. There is plenty of action, sure, but within the action (especially in Just Heroes, The Killer, and Bullet...) the characters are still the point of the movie, and their journeys are fascinating.

In Red Cliff, Woo tries to dazzle us and assault us and overwhelm us with non-stop "action" (which now equals high end computer game graphics) because he's convinced we want that. This approach is akin to a baby screaming into your ear for the entirety of a flight from LA to Melbourne. Half an hour in the air with that baby is enough. Three hours is a nightmare, and you want to kill the kid and kill yourself. Woo is so impressed with Big and Epic and Long and Loud it makes me wonder what drugs he's taking these days.

Scenes in which the camera/computer follows a perfect arrow on its perfect course towards a perfect target lack any sense of spontaneity or unpredictability. Everything is so carefully staged and executed, it's like watching a cartoon. I hate it with a passion. And I never thought I'd say that about the major elements of a John Woo movie. Doesn't Woo recall what made his Hong Kong movies so great? Doesn't he remember why he fell in love with the work of Jean Pierre Melville? It was the characters, John, the themes, the focus on feelings, the alienation, the war within themselves.

Every time I read an interview with Woo these days, he talks about future epics, thousands of extras, huge budgets, and how getting Red Cliff financed was a cinch. Seems the Chinese investors fell over themselves to throw money at this overstuffed epic.

I officially hate CG-enhanced, epic fight scenes, and I no longer await the next John Woo film with an anxiousness once reserved for Santa.

The Scariest Film of the Year

The trailer for Precious, a drama about a fat, black schoolgirl, pregnant for the second time, living in Hell with her braindead mother, sells the film short. I had to drag myself to see it because the trailer turned me right off. It was so well-meaning and self-important and Oscar-baiting that I wanted to burn the theater down.

Check out the full title: Precious - Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Get the fuck out of here, right?! That was my first thought. Why that title? Why not go further and include a synopsis as part of the title, too? Or better, add complimentary adjectives about the flick.

Try this: The Amazing Precious - The Heart-Rending Motion Picture About the Mountainous, Knocked-Up Black Chick Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, the Black Chick Herself.

Does that do it for ya?

I'm sure you'll understand why I was driving around theaters to avoid this in its first week. Then, because I'm curious and because Paula Patton is hot, I decided to take the plunge.

It didn't help matters that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry's names were on the credit roll. I've seen two Perry films and I never want to see another Perry flick again. As for Oprah, I didn't figure her for a producer of anything but warmed-over cinematic milk. Then again, that view is unfair to Winfrey because she did produce Jonathan Demme's powerful, dark, and confronting Beloved in '98. I guess we're so saturated with Winfrey's talkshow image that anything contrary fails to penetrate the prejudice.

Perhaps I should have been thinking of Beloved instead of The Color Purple when the Precious trailer was doing its rounds; Bastard Out of Carolina wouldn't have been far off the mark, either.

What I wasn't prepared for was a drama that has more in common with Buddy Giovinazzo than a talkshow host turned producer. I kid you not. This is one damn fine drama with a dark, dark heart and a consistency of vision. It's depiction of a black family of degenerates is uncompromising, and some of its grittier revelations floored me.

Gabby Sidibe (who is amazing) plays the illiterate teenager Precious. Though she takes some getting used to when she first appears on-screen, her spot-on portrayal of the character quickly fleshes her out (pardon the unintended pun). We learn that Precious has been impregnated by her stepfather for the second time. Her mother Mary, played by the combustible Mo'Ninique, is cool with the pregnancy, and is unsympathetic to the rape Precious endured. Abandoned by her partner, Mary spends most of her time beating Precious and destroying her self esteem with words and fists.

Suspecting foul play at home, Precious's teacher (Paula Patton) takes an interest in her well-being and encourages her to transfer to a school for socially disadvantaged slow learners. Despite her mother's protests, Precious begins a frightening journey that ends up ripping her world and the world of her mother apart.

In synopsis, I know it sounds like typical Oprah material, but, in execution, the events of this film are as graphic as any Buddy Giovinazzo film -- or an early Hughes Bros. flick like Menace II Society.

Details of Precious's abuse at the hands of her stepfather are surprising for a mainstream release. When questioned about sexual abuse by a social worker played with grim determination by Mariah Carey (who is virtually unrecognizable)...

... Mary recounts how when she would have sex with her lover, he would drag the baby Precious into bed with them and fondle her as an appetizer. She also describes how the same man would steal the milk from her nipples after Precious was born, depriving the child of sustenance. A flashback of the underaged Precious being raped is intense and disturbing, and reminded me (visually) of the dog scenes in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (my favorite film of his). Mo'Nique's portrayal of Precious's mother is incredible and ranks right up there with great screen debuts such as Angela Bassett's bombastic bitch mother in Boys 'N' The Hood.

Director Lee Daniels sticks to the meat of the plot, keeping things visually and aurally interesting without overstylizing the details. Precious's penchant for daydreaming while being threatened or beaten is skilfully realized with a series of dream-like sequences.

Does the film finally collapse into cliche? No. I loved the ending. It's not what you expect at all.

Precious is being sold as something far less than what it is. Reviews have been positive, though, so perhaps it'll get seen.

Screw the horror remakes. This is the scariest film of the year.

A reader below (Mike Smith) has pointed out that Winfrey and Perry only came aboard the film after it was finished in support and distribution capacities respectively.

Ad Mats Rise From Nostalgia's Grave

The ad mat tells us that The Capitol Cinema "shattered world records with two great action movies, WHERE EAGLES DARE and THE DIRTY DOZEN.

"Now," it continues, "comes the most sensational, action-packed thriller of them all."

Well...no. The most striking difference between Clay Pigeon ('71) and Where Eagles Dare/The Dirty Dozen is that Clay Pigeon is totally terrible and the other pics are arguably two of the greatest war/action pics ever made.

Even the occasional slice of nudity could not save this mess.

It shattered no records, either.

One of Australia's best filmmakers, John Duigan, wrote and directed this gritty classic about homeless youth.

Duigan also directed the magnificent Lawn Dogs, Flirting, The Year My Voice Broke, and Romero.

I snuck into the city (downtown Melbourne) to see this movie because I knew it'd be something special. It bowled me over with its realism and unsentimental truth (and stellar lead performance by Kim Krejus).

Sadly, it's not available on DVD. A VHS was released.

Very mediocre Richard Fleischer film featuring an indifferent Michael Caine in the lead.

Slavery as entertainment has been well served in the cinema with works such as Farewell, Uncle Tom and Mandingo. In Ashanti, the subject is a dead one, and not even a diverse cast could rescue it from oblivion.

Should have seen this '77 trash classic at a drive-in because it's perfect drive-in candy. Since I wasn't old enough to drive or own a car at the time of its release, impersonating an 18-year-old by showing up at The Palace in a suit and lowering my voice several octaves was my only course of action.

The film is a celebration of being young, dumb, and full of cum. It didn't depict a lifestyle most Australians enjoyed, but its anarchic spirit was universal.

Director Sam Grossman's only other film was the 2000 sci-fi flick Static.

Wasn't a big fan of this, but always loved the ad mat.

At the bottom of the ad, the co-features are listed. I would have headed to the long-defunct Moorabbin or Frankston Drive-ins to see it with the far superior Who Slew Auntie Roo.

Dogma Unleashes Its Latest

Tohjiro, who has been directing some of the world's most groundbreaking, taboo-pushing pornography for some years now, has unleashed a torrent of fresh product in the last couple of months including the plainly titled Enema, Jet Vomit starring Marin Izumi; the flick is another in the M-Drug series.

Japanese pornography is sweet seasoning for the sexual anthropologist, and, in a country not constrained by the barbed wire of religion, it conveys a direct line between mind and body.

Totally Virginal M has inspired this provocative image.

Starring Saki Tsuji (of No Bra Salon - The Ultimate Treatment), the director subjects the actress to every known kink and had her exclaiming in a post-orgasm interview: "I lost myself completely."

Bondage Chair - The Complete Works is a mind-bending compilation of the strongest scenes from the director's Bondage Chair Trance series.

I admire Tohjiro's brave choice to go chair-only in the art and leave the rest (and, believe me, the "rest" is something to write home about!) up to the imagination of the carnel connoisseur.

Tohjiro capped the year off with the penetrating Complete Body M (with Marin Minami) while simultaneously running the Tokyo-based adult shingle and overseeing a stable of individualistic directors including Tenum, the Russ Meyer of Dogma.

Tenum's Boob Secretary (with Yuka Haneda) would have earned Russ's respect, although the lack of pubic hair would have rubbed Russ the wrong way as he preferred his females furry.

The director's Third D-1 Climax Open Audition (all 280 mins of it!) has been excerpted on various on-line venues and is something extraordinary and bizarre. With its glossy production values, it has the convincing appearance of a legitimate Japanese TV show, except it boasts volcanic X-rated content and a great sense of humor.

Original inspiration for this sex marathon, and the US sex marathons of Annabelle Chong and Co., was the Dutch Chick's Fuck Marathon, which was produced in the early 80's and was presented in a giant box on 2 x 2 hour VHS cassettes.

Alcohol Medicine Sex, with Hikari Hino (no relation to Hideshi), is an example of Dogma's enebriation genre.

Tohjiro, who created Dogma after pioneering independent erotic production in the 90's, has built a not modest empire that has taken full advantage of the internet's borderless nature.

Only one US company, kink.com, that has also focused on fetish, has enjoyed success similar to Dogma (moreso, actually!) working from an expanded business model.

Because of US content restrictions, kink's content is softer but no less interesting than Dogma's.

Ninja Aasassin

I still remember seeing Sammo Hung's Pedicab Driver on the big screen and marveling at the exquisite choreography of the brutal fight scenes. Hung, who is a masterful director, deftly draws for us the geography of the setting before tackling the action. Once the action begins, he assaults us, but never disorients or confuses us, let alone makes us nauseous. He designs a sequence that becomes art through its amazing aesthetics and pitch perfect editing.

In James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin, we get action choreography that is obliterated by misguided shooting and editing techniques. Clearly, someone got into McTeigue's head and fucked him up with theories suggesting chaotic action needs to be recorded and cut equally chaotically. Of course, this brainiac approach is akin to aborting a beautiful fetus with a rusty coat hanger.

Fuck this Hollywood bullshit!

Ninja Assassin represents a sad situation because it does have plenty good going for it, despite the fact that it steals set-ups (and images) wholesale from The Story Of Ricky, Ichii The Killer, and a hundred Shaw pics.

The training sequences with Sho Kosugi are strong, dark, and brutal. Kosugi is excellent, and the sequences he appears in feel like they were shot by another director. Korean-born Rain is well cast as 'Raizo', the supreme Ninja whose "issues" with Kosugi force him to go rogue. The lame contemporary story involves a government agency's hunt for modern ninja warriors who are being hired internationally as assassins (yawn!). Raizo is hunting them, too, and they're hunting him. None of this is well thought through, so coincidences and contrivances are piled high. As is typical for this genre, the script provides a framework to hang action sequences on. Nothing wrong or unusual about that. That IS why we're watching.

Unfortunately, aside from an impressive opening sequence inspired by Ichii The Killer, Ninja Assassin gives us very few reasons to watch.

My advice is to head to the DVD store or to your collection and run a mini festival of your own right away. Be sure to include Revenge of the Ninja, Burning Paradise, Sword of Vengeance, Lone Wolf and Cub (series), Operation Scorpio, Drunkenmaster 2, and Beach of the War Gods. These magnificent titles will reset your expectations just in case you've been deceived by this nonsense (as some have).

Rain does Fan Siu-wong

It's interesting how short many of this film's action sequences are because the reason points to the film's failings. The scenes are short because you can't watch material cut by ADD-ridden morons for longer than three or four minutes. Can you imagine for one moment watching the glorious final battle of Wang Yu's Beach of the War Gods if it was shot and cut this way? Wouldn't happen.

Criticisms I have read of the film have focused on its lack of illumination in key fight scenes; this criticism is valid. The film is very dark at times, and I found myself asking: If you want to showcase action, why hide most of it in shadow? Dipshits! Of course, it's the scenes themselves that really suck, and it's hard to see what's going on already because the cutting, fake blood, and spastic camera work are creating an unholy, expensive mess. Let's make it clear: These contemporary fight sequences are not fight scenes, they are fight soup -- sticky, steamy melanges of randomly tossed in ingredients that steam, boil, and burn until the kitchen stinks. There's no finesse to the coverage, no feel for the ballet of combat. The choreography, when you can see it, is strong, but it's stolen by retards who spend their days jerking off to CG-laden fantasies and blowing their loads on giant LCD screens .

In its final twenty minutes, Ninja Assassin becomes Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (replete with burning building), and Rain becomes Fan Siu-wong (replete with long hair and bloodied face).

Fan Siu-wong does Fan Siu-wong

This thievery of a humble, low budget classic reminds us that shitloads of money can't buy originality or love for this martial arts soup.

Depravity Served Wet by Bryan Smith

The dictionary.com definition of "depraved" is "corrupt, wicked, or perverted".

Like other words -- immoral, disgusting, deviant, for example -- that attempt to describe a certain type of behavior, "depraved" is a totally subjective term, and an often used and abused adjective.

The set-up for Bryan Smith's version of Depraved has more in common with the opening of Goodfellas than a standard horror novel. Jessica, the heroine, is driving down the highway with a live body in her trunk. The body belongs to Hoke, a Nashville music man who got a little rape-happy earlier in the evening. Jessica, who's not the forgiving type, plans to shoot and dump old Hoke. Of course, things don't work out that way.

Mr. Smith is a horror writer who clearly started life as a horror reader and viewer. Like all good work, his is a synthesis of disparate influences. Stuff goes in. Stuff comes out. But between the ins and outs, the stuff gets filtered, re-shaped, deep fried, and re-arranged. Smith adds his own genetic code, tosses in a salad of anger and frustration, and reduces the sauce with a Grand Guignol serving of humor.

In synopsis, much of Depraved is not blindingly original, but few things are in synopsis. One of my favorite film critics, Roger Ebert, once wrote: "...it's not what it's about...it's how it's about..." At the time, he was writing about Freeway, Mathew Bright's trash masterpiece; he was referring to Bright's kinky, warped, bizarre sensibility. Later on, that sensibility created the utterly wonderful Bundy, surely one of the sleaziest, sexiest, and most lurid serial killer pics in existence.
Well, Ebert could have been writing about Depraved because "how" Smith treats his subject matter is what makes the book a winner.

Mr. Smith's "influences" would not be strangers amongst my own. The opening feels like Scorsese's Goodfellas crossed with Laymon's The Woods Are Dark, a novel that, upon original publication, was mutilated by its publisher Warner Books. In Laymon's A Writer's Tale, my favorite book on writing, the author details what the publisher did to virtually rewrite the novel. In The Woods Are Dark, terrible things happen to not-so-terrible people. Behind the terrible things are a race of monsters called 'The Krulls'. In the original paperback, most of the background on 'The Krulls' was excised. It would have been awfully helpful to know more, but the publisher didn't think so. They opted for pace over every other aspect of the storytelling. The result for still a great novel, but it could have been so much better.

I mention The Woods Are Dark and 'The Krulls' because, in a strange way, Depraved feels (in spirit, at least) like what The Woods Are Dark would have been if the publisher hadn't hacked the living fuck out of it. Smith explains away the terrible things that happen to terrible and not-so-terrible people in his novel, and his explanation is solid. He takes the time and space to sketch a fascinating culture of depravity that has echoes of The Wicker Man (the original, not the shit-encrusted remake), but the acrid odor of extreme perversion.

Speaking of extreme perversion. Is the character 'Hoke' a distant relative of Hogg, Samuel R. Delany's vile creation from the long-banned book of the same name? The thought did occur to me right off the bat. Depraved also made me think of Last House on the Left, Two Thousand Maniacs, I Drink Your Blood, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Trapped, Captured for Sex 2 and Straw Dogs because it's spawned by that genre. But Mr. Smith takes these colorful canvases, stirs them lovingly and, viola!, pulls a snot-dripping rabbit out of his hat (with a killer Epilogue) that is pure B. (for "B-Movie" in this case?) Smith.

Depraved?

Well, maybe. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

***

The Killing Kind is Bryan Smith's next novel from Leisure.

Silent Scream

Labels can be very dismissive because of how narrowly they are perceived. They can totally denigrate a work and group it with the worst offenders of that label. An example of this is the "slasher" label that has been lazily attached to Denny Harris's Silent Scream ('80), an early 80's gem finally released on DVD by Scorpion Releasing.

To me, a "slasher" film is a work that focuses primarily on the actions of a mysterious or mindless killer. The Good, Bad and Ugly that fall squarely into this category are Halloween, Friday the 13th, Final Exam, He Knows You're Alone, Curtains, Madman, The Mutilator, Girls' Night Out, The Burning, and My Bloody Valentine. One stupid list on the internet suggests that Mother's Day is a slasher. I cry foul. Same with Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer. Henry kills, sure, but the film is NOT a slasher film because its focus is not on people being slashed and cut up.

I first saw Silent Scream at the movies in 1980. I took a trip to the city with a lovely gal I'd just started dating and we saw it at one of Melbourne's newest cinemas, The Bryson (now a multi-story parking lot on Russell Street). Immediately, I liked the movie because it begins like a police procedural with a slomo flash-forward then rewinds to tell its tale.

Scotty (Rebecca Balding), a uni student, is looking for a room. After striking out on several possibilities, she manages to rent one in a large, beachside house. Although the house is owned by Mrs. Engels (Yvonne De Carlo, who once played the unforgettable 'Lily Munster'), Scotty is obliged to deal with Mason (Brad Reardon), Lily Munster's odd son. Scotty befriends a couple of other boarders, and ends up bedding down with Jack (Steve Doubet), so life in the old, white house is looking up.

Well, if she had bothered to, literally, look up, she would have seen the face looking down at her from behind an air grate in the ceiling. The face belongs to a member of the Engels family who isn't the full dollar. In fact, she has a history of violence and is thought to be incognito by the local constabulary. Played with great intensity by the super-sexy Barbara Steele (Jesus, there is something so hot about her!) Victoria is the Engels' family's dirty little secret.

Not content to establish Victoria as a nut, set her loose, then make THAT the story, the writers cross-cut between what Scotty's up to and what Mason's struggling with -- namely, the filthy family secret that is destroying his life. Victoria starts killing again because, for the first time in years, the Engels' sorry financial state has forced them to rent out rooms to boarders. This gives Victoria access, and access is everything for a murderess. So good news for the the crazy Steele is bad news for boarders and Mason, who is jealous of his mother's dedication to Victoria's "problem" and fixated on his dead father's military history.

Silent Scream has been pretty much unavailable since its original release, so almost thirty years passed between my seeing it last week and seeing it one time only in 1980. Immediately, the great Roger Kellaway score struck me as quite brilliant and much imitated. Although parts of it clone sections from Herrmann's Psycho score, the quieter, more subtle cues with a creepy piano really gave me the willies (in the best way, of course). Interestingly, Kellaway also scored Evilspeak and an obscure favorite of mine, The Mafu Cage ('78).

By today's ADD-ridden standards, the film is slow, but it is directed with great skill, attention to small architectural details, and is big on atmosphere. You never get the impression that director Denny Harris is trying to capitalize on the success of John Carpenter's Halloween because the killings are minimal and the focus, as stated, is on Scotty's discoveries and the family's efforts to protect a nutter in their midst.

Brad Reardon, who is extremely sympathetic as Mason Engels, did not go on to do much after Silent Scream and that's a terrible shame. He invites us to sympathize with the tragic aspects of his family situation, and he takes us with him when he finally loses his head in a most interesting way.

Silent Scream is not a slasher film; it's a very good film (not perfect) performed, directed, and written with care. And Scorpion Releasing's DVD, which boats a terrific print of the film, commentary, and interviews, is a must-get.

Oh, yeah. I've decided that I could live with a dirty little secret like Barbara Steele in my attic.

Larry Wessel's All Access Pass

Cover art by Tora Wessel, Larry's co-conspirator

Documentarian Larry Wessel does not deny you access. He chooses a subject, fucks it, feels it, fondles it, finds its G-spot, X-rays it mid-coitus, then brings it to a simultaneous orgasm of Truth with the audience.

In Iconoclast (2010), his soon-to-be-finished documentary on Boyd Rice, a fellow who's been called everything under the sun from Prophet to Nazi to Racist Cunt to Stand-Up Guy, Wessel (whose production company is Wesselmania) uses his All Access Pass to birth a portrait of Rice that is fascinating and invigorating.

'Tiki' aficionado Boyd Rice

Quite clearly, the only person out there who knows Rice is Rice himself, and the doco doesn't pretend otherwise. Like all smart people with an evolving consciousness, Rice is complex, brilliant, musically gifted, provocative, and silly. The film states this, but it isn't so arrogant as to settle for absolute judgments.

Between '91 and '93, Wessel shot in the bloody bull rings of Tijuana and assembled the extraordinary Taurobolium, a confronting, uncompromising look at the religious fervor of bullfighting. The shedding of blood is never far from the worship of God and god-like entities, so to witness so much horrific bloodshed in these temples of war is to witness the embracing of primal drives.

After the fighting has faded, a group of women surround a matador (in Latin, it means 'one who subdues or kills') with autograph books. One young woman (a attractive young Latin) appears almost unable to make eye contact with the matador. As she waits her turn, she steals glances at him, but she seems to fear that her deep desire to be penetrated by him will be exposed. Wessel wisely zooms closer to this woman, isolating her from the others, and, in the process, communicates the God-like status of the sport's heroes . To fuck a god is the ultimate communion, is it not?

The fighting scenes are stark and gory. Bulls are stabbed, cut, speared and driven (by the matador) to excruciating levels of anxiety. Several sequences involving confrontations with matadors on horses are shockingly brutal, and it is a curious experience to listen to the cheering coming from the stands in these moments of defeat, surrender, and victory.

Wessel's way is not to comment, editorialize, or provide the predictable opposing view. His documentaries give us access to a culture, a way of life, and modes of thought that are rarely given a decent hearing because, lo and behold, it takes intelligence to listen; we already know the opposing view; we don't need to hear it again and again; it already dominates and stinks the place out.

When a defeated bull is carried from the stadium and immediately prepared for the dinner plate, a strange sense of natural process occurs. And that's the magic of the filmmaker at work.

More striking cover art by the indefatigible Tora Wessel

Wessel's approach to unearthing Truth is direct and unafraid. In Sex, Death, and the Hollywood Mystique ('99), stalwarts of an industry far crueler than any bull ring spill ugly truths and torch prevailing lies about the industry. Forry Ackerman takes us on a tour of his 'Ackermansion' (a priceless museum of silver screen ephemera) that, in retrospect, feels terribly sad because, prior to Forry's death, not a single Hollywood bigshot (and so-called friend of the man) contributed one penny to the preservation of the Ackermonster's priceless legacy.

Curtis Harrington, arguably one of the industry's greatest practitioners, ruminates on yesteryear from his humble Hollywood Hills tomb, and hints at the the forces that contributed to his contemporary irrelevancy. Author John Gilmore, a scribe and actor who knows where many of the corpses are buried, scratches scabs to remember his friendship with James Dean and the dubious hiring practices of the Hollywood studios.

Wessel's ability to get subjects to spread and smile results in works that are deceptively simple in structure, technically basic, but searing in their intensity and Truth.

He's a One-Man Cultural Coroner.

Masturbation in the Rue Morgue

I was contacted by Rue Morgue magazine's John Bowen (of "It Came From Bowen's Basement" fame) a couple of month's ago. He informed me that he wanted to do a piece on my film/vid The Masturbating Gunman aka Masked Avenger Versus Ultra villain in the Lair of the Naked Bikini.

True to his word, the piece appears in the November issue.

It would be unfair to the mag for me to scan the entire page here, so I'm just providing proof that the piece does exist.

Back when The Masturbating Gunman initially blew his load on VHS, Bowen wrote the first ultra-positive appreciation of its merits. He "got" the movie, which, considering the majority reaction, made my week, if not my month.

I'll leave you with his opening paragraph. Once again, Mr. Bowen has made my month:

Dig SPLATTER? OF COURSE YOU DO. How about chopsocky? Frankenstein? Troma? John Woo? Mexican Lucha Libre? Nunsploitation? Japanese "Pink"? Coffin Joe? Monty Python? Softcore porn? Theatre of the absurd? Goats? I wouldn't be surprised to hear a chorus of "Fuck, yeah!" to all of the above, but how many of you have seem them all deployed -- almost seamlessly -- in a single micro-budget film? I have, and if loving 'Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain in the Lair of the Naked Bikini' (2000) is wrong, I don't want to be right.

An AntiChrist Worth Heiling

AntiChrist, from director Lars Von Trier, possesses a purity that lifted me high.

It pans its unblinking lens towards a couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) whose relationship disintegrates in the aftermath of a tragic event (the death of a child).

Tragedy compels us to re-examine ourselves and our relationship with those around us. When my ex-wife's mother died stricken with pancreatic cancer, she (the ex-) began a re-evaluation of priorities that led, ultimately, to the abrupt dissolution of our relationship. We would have parted eventually, anyway, for we had been drifting in different directions for some years, but the death of her mother encouraged expedience.

Much has been written about Von Trier's alleged "misogyny". Many reviewers have called the film misogynistic. I have problems with the term and its casual application. A misogynist is a man who hates women. Hates them. Loathes them. Would rather stay clear of them. Unless you're a crackpot, you usually stay away from the things you hate.

Von Trier's producer, Meta Louise Foldager, a smart, creative, tough woman I've enjoyed brief correspondence with, is a woman. She produced AntiChrist, and she'll be producing his next film. If Von Trier's hate for women is as palpable as some critics suggest, Miss Foldager must be a masochist. If that isn't true, and she's not a masochist, it follows that Von Trier must not be a misogynist.

When a man depicts the genital mutilation or rape of a woman on-screen, he is accused of misogyny. When a woman such as Catherine Breilet does it in a film like the excellent Fat Girl, she is praised for powerful filmmaking.

Von Trier's AntiChrist is powerful filmmaking for reasons that include the graphic scenes but are definitely not confined to them. To me, the film is an honest, gentle exploration of both human nature and, as the top poster trumpets, "Nature as Satan's church" (an essay on how nature exists in a state of anarchy). In Von Trier's world, our primal instincts are easily triggered because they reside in shallow foxholes barely beneath our skin. When we appear to go haywire (embrace our primivitism), as Gainsbourg does, our "crazy" behavior becomes fascinating to ourselves and others, and we become participants in our own personal freakshow.

Dafoe's character, a psychiatrist, attempts to "cure" Gainsbourg as she flails in the midst of grief and depression. His cold, clinical response to her condition (treating her as a patient rather than a partner) becomes part of the engine that drives her animosity towards him.

The genital mutilation scenes are fairly graphic. Gainsbourg does slice off her clitoris as she gathers up her vagina lips. Dafoe's penis gets a serious beating, too, although we don't see much of its post-beating state. Oddly, the most disturbing act of violence in the film does not involve genitalia, but I'll leave it to you to discover it.

Is the film shocking? Not to me. It's simply a film of serious merit.

"Chaos reigns!" says a fox in one of the film's most surprising and hilarious sequences, efficiently expressing the glee with which Von Trier is attacking his subject. Although the set-up is deadly serious, the resolution underlines the fact that everything comes full circle, and nothing lingers forever.

In a world where unoriginality is currently reigning, AntiChrist is evidence that hope, at least, is circling the compound.

***

Stylistically, the film occasionally employs an effective super-slow motion technique that almost but not quite freezes the image.

This technique was employed by Tony Kaye in the superb American History X, and there is a shot of water cascading from a shower in Kaye's film that is replicated here -- coincidence perhaps, but worth noting.