Less Plastic Than Most Humans

 

Humans can be a disappointing lot. Most are interesting and individual when they're kids, but they tend to hit boring by the time they're thirty. By forty, they'll lost all trace of their former selves, and seem destined to be as narrow as their arteries are becoming.

There are exceptions, of course, and, if you're reading this, you're probably one of those.

 I collect dolls. Yes, I'm a male in his late forties and I collect dolls. The boring humans I'm talking about ask me idiotic questions about my collecting. Even though they ask these questions, they don't really want to know why I do it. They want to, in fact, get me to admit that my collecting is some symptom of a troubled childhood or manifestation of deprived infancy.

No adult male would love dolls for anything other than a twisted, suspicious reason, would he?

Finally, a book lands that communicates exactly why I love dolls.

'Mandingo', a personal best friend and frequent visitor to this blog, recently found and gifted to me this incredible little book. Ironically, he found it in a second hand store, possibly alongside rows of creatures akin to those showcased in the book. I am eternally grateful to him for this discovery and his perceptive, intelligent choice to hand it my way.

The photographs within its modest jackets are by a supremely talented young lady named Linsday Brice. Like no other, she has captured the brittle, sad, complex, tragic, and emotionally ethereal nature of dolls. Her sensibility fills me with awe for her eye, and strings an umbilical cord of shared understanding between us.  

If anybody cares to know why an adult male collects dolls, get this book. It's all in the photos.

If you're already of the faith, I'm sure you'll get it, anyway.

I feel great sympathy and empathy for old dolls and new. Their abandonment touches my heart and dislodges my tears.

These truly magical beings are less plastic than most humans.

It is for this reason alone that they should be saved and celebrated -- as Ms. Brice does in her outrageously beautiful photo-poetry.

Musician/Producer/Actress Kim Gordon contributes a heartfelt essay to this book, and describes Brice's dolls as "knowing, self-possessed beings". Her reference to Dare Wright's wonderful A Lonely Doll brought a smile to my face. Ms. Gordon gets it!

Also accompanying the photographs is Flannery O'Connors's 'Temple of the Holy Ghost', a shrewd choice.

Messiah of Evil

 

I've grown a bit tired of zombie movies. Everybody is doing zombies these days, even George Romero, the guy who shoved them into the mainstream in the first place.

Each film is a variation on dead people walking, just as each vampire film is a variation on fanged people sucking. I don't dislike zombie movies -- never have. But due to the onslaught of them recently, I feel minimal excitement when a new one is announced.

So I decided to go back to an old one. I read about Messiah of Evil eons ago. Whenever poor Howard the Duck was discussed in a predominantly negative light, director Willard Huyck and producer Gloria Katz would be discussed also.  Sometimes, their first feature film, Messiah of Evil, would get a mention.  Until recently, a decent version of the film has not been available.

Towards the close of 2009, Code Red released a special edition of Messiah on DVD. "Terror you won't want to remember in a film you won't be able to forget" ran the tag along the bottom of the cover sleeve.

I'm happy to say that I watched it over a month ago and haven't forgotten it -- but I'm happy to remember the terror.

When a woman (Mariana Hill) arrives in Point Dune, a strange California beach town, in search of her missing father, she is greeted without warmth or hospitality. Michael Greer, a strange fellow permanently flanked by two attractive women with continental cinema morality, offers Hill some vague information about her father's whereabouts, but he seems indifferent to her and everything else. We get the sense that the town has become a purgatory of sorts, a waiting room for souls bound for hell.

Hill's encounter with a scary looking albino man at the local gas station is more evidence that Point Dune may have slipped off the map entirely.

I experienced unique feelings watching Carnival of Souls for the first time, and these were stirred once  again watching this. Like Messiah's heroine, the heroine of Souls arrives in a new town that inspires more questions than answers. She was fleeing from an accident and starting a new job, but she took a detour through a strange mirage first seen on the horizon from the road. The mirage turned out to be real, but it provided no comfort in the end.

Messiah has a tone and atmosphere akin to Souls, and the musky scent of Richard Blackburn's Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural, one of my all-time favorite spook pics. As in Lemora, the air is thick with dread and apprehension here, and a troubling erotic siren calls to the characters.

The film is about discovery, and memory, and it's an exceptionally well made production with some stunning art direction. The massive murals that plaster the walls of the house where Hill's father once resided are shot in such a way that they encroach on the characters standing in front of them, and become participants in the film themselves.

The film's depiction of Point Dune is unique, and represents a deliberate choice that pays off. That choice is not to portray the town as abandoned or shuttered. Some infrastructure still exists. The heroine's trip to the supermarket ('Ralph's') is fraught with tension because the too bright lights of the store invite suspicion. Her subsequent visit to the cinema becomes one of the film's most effective set pieces, and is a textbook example of suspense building. Huyck, the director, maintains the tension by insisting on a sense of normality that screws with our assumptions. 


There are zombies and they do eat flesh. They're pale, sad, reluctant benefactors of a hell-born disease that is threatening to spread beyond the town. Hill's encounters with them drive her towards insanity when she comprehends the hopelessness of her situation.

The beach setting, and some ritualistic scenes of burying and burning on the beach, possess a Jean Rollin quality. The atmosphere of dread, and the odd sense that a greater, darker power is at work, is pure Lovecraft. The frantic flight of the couple in Narcisso Ibanez Serrador's tense Who Could Kill A Child? is also echoed here only because I saw Serrador's film first; Messiah, in fact, was produced in '73, prior to all the works I've referenced.

This creepy, sensual gem from the writers of American Graffiti confounds us with its ambiguous tone, quiet frissons, and relentless invention. 

***

Keep your eye out for director Walter Hill in a cameo.

Plague of the Ad Mats

More ad mats from my personal archive.

The Beware of the Brethren ('72) art seems to be channeling Squirm, but don't let that fool you.

The mighty Russ comes to Melbourne's Roma cinema, Village's dedicated flesh palace.

"A Real Blazing Bosoms" still confounds me.

Supervixens was, unfortunately, cut by the Australian censors. Charles Napier's violent stomping scene hit the cutting room floor.

This ad mat is pretty terrible; the film, I'm sure many will agree, is amazing.

If you haven't seen it, may God pity you.

Summer Night Fever ('78), though an adequate teen sex romp, was easily bested in every category by Alfred Sole's '76 masterpiece of Catholic terror, Alice Sweet Alice (aka Communion aka Holy Terror).

Paula Sheppard, who played Alice, later appeared in the bizarre Liquid Sky ('82) from director Slava Tsukerman. It was her final film role.

Brooke Shields played Karen, Alice's sister.

The Corgi Books novelization of the film, Communion ('77) by Frank Lauria, is a good read, and is just 179 pages long.

My father took me to see this. He fell asleep after the first ten minutes. That was fine by me. It meant I didn't have to listen to comments like "How ridiculous!" and "It's hard to believe that grown men are making these films."

A Peckinpah classic at the drive-in.

In order to see this R-rated movie, I tried telling my mother that it was a religious film about a cross of iron. She didn't buy it. Even she knew who Sam Peckinpah was.

Ransom ('75) is a plodding actioner, but Revenge of the Cheerleaders ('76) is a fun, campy softcore comedy that stars, amongst other luminaries, the late Rainbeaux Smith, who had previously starred in Lemora - A Child's Tale of the Supernatural ('73), a Lovecraftian film that I adore.