Spree

US | 2020 | Directed by Eugene Kotlyarenko

Logline: A lonely young man, working as a rideshare driver, and desperate for social media attention, puts a murderous live stream plan into action. 

Wobble Palace was one of my favourite movies from 2018. The director has turned his attention to the minefield of social media and the unfathomable thirst for attention it has spawned. This is a monster movie of a very different kind, and as far as crash-boom-bam cinema rides go, it’s a very spirited affair, but much of its intended satire is lost amidst the woke confusion and FOMO mayhem. 

Kurt Kunkle (Jo Keery) - “Hey, guys. What's up? It's Kurt here from Kurt's World” - is obsessed with the fame (and potential notoriety) that can be generated through social media. He wants so much to be a star, to go viral, the way Bobby Basecamp (Josh Ovalle) has done so effortlessly. Kurt used to babysit Bobby, but now Bobby considers Kurt a wannabe, a try-hard, and Kurt is determined to prove the arrogant influencer wrong. If only he can figure a way to get more social media followers, more viewers even. 

Kurt works as a driver for a rideshare app company called Spree. He fits out the interior with numerous mini-cams, has them linked to his social media profile, preps a whole bunch of water bottles (skilfully injecting them with a deadly poison), signs off with his mum, and heads out into the bright clear Californian day to begin picking up/off passengers for #TheLesson. 

What unfolds over the next 24 hours is a viral explosion that will shoot Kurt Kunkle into the social stratosphere and a psychological implosion that will result in carnage and Reddit chat fodder for many years to come.

Spree works best on sheer live-wire momentum. Shot in found footage format, much of it via social media apps, but mostly the mini-cams in Kurt’s car, the smart phones carried by passengers and by Kurt and his associates, or surveillance cameras. The editing is furious, the information that scrolls and pours across the screen is overload, but that’s part of the point. We live in an age of too much information, little time to process, and much of it is misleading or disingenuous. Kurt is essentially a victim of modern society. 

Spree’s tries to be oh-so-clever with its satirical edge - especially in dealing with contemporary racial and #metoo themes, and it kickstarts with a genuine feeling of authenticity, but the edge becomes more and more blunt as the movie progresses. The terrific performance from Keery (whom many will recognise from Stranger Things) slides between geeky awkwardness and wry cynicism, and as the movie rests on his performance, as he’s in almost every scene, Keery brings a fresh, skilfully nuanced energy.  

Props also to the performances of David Arquette as Kurt’s junkie DJ dad, and Sasheer Zamata as the black comedienne who inadvertently becomes the centrepiece in Kurt’s grand scheme. But the rest of the mostly unknown support cast all deliver, including a surprise appearance from Mischa Barton (where has she been hiding?!)

Very much a black comedy (pun unintended), though not as pitch dark as it could have been. It doesn’t possess the cringe-inducing sadness of Black Mirror’s brilliant “Nosedive” episode, or the minimalist, surrealist grimace of American Psycho. It’s more like the contemporary bastard child of Natural Born Killers, all garish, bloody extremes and over-the-top violent absurdity. Elements which the other movies have, but are more successful as satires because they are actually more believable, as crazy as that sounds! Spree just gets too silly for its own good (bad?) 

My biggest issue with this kind of found footage scenario is that the plausibility is irreparably damaged when you realise that someone has to have edited all of this together. The phantom storyteller. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it’s a bugbear of mine. But as I said earlier, Spree works brilliantly as a “ride”, including the sly play on the title, and hell, it’s an instant cult YOLO flick, no matter what.

Spree is currently available on PVOD with Foxtel and Stan in Australia until November 11th, and available to rent via iTunes, Youtube Movies, Fetch, Microsoft Store & Google Play from November 25th.

It also screens as part of New Zealand’s Terror-Fi Film Festival (Wellington/Auckland/Christchurch, October 28th - November 15th), click here for dates & times.

Beauty Day

2011 | Canada | Directed by Jay Cheel

Logline: A documentary that looks at the uneven career of Cap’n Video, who produced and presented his own zany stunt show on American cable television in the early 90s.

Canadian Ralph Zavadil a.k.a Cap’n Video had something to prove and the nonsense to do it. He created a showreel of wacky stunts and silly practical jokes. This eventually landed him his own spot on a local cable TV station, Cable 10 in the Niagara region of Ontario. This was before the Internet had exploded, and many years before the advent of youtube. In fact The Capt’n Video Show was the precursor to Jackass. I’m sure Johnny Knoxville must have taken a few pages from the blood, sweat, mucus, and tears of laughter of Cap’n Video’s books.

The Cap’n Video Show was put together on the smell of an oily rag. Literally. Ralph was a one-man show; videoed in his backyard, edited in his garage, he was the show’s host and (falling) star, armed with a couple of VHS cameras and a small off-line editing machine. The crazy Cap’n was a metalhead (and in his signature goggles, wild hair, and nutty attire he didn’t look too dissimilar to David Lee Roth), and his show featured music clips with his own bugged out, utterly stupid segments in between. It was the Cap’n’s crazy antics that people tuned in to watch; eating cat food, snorting raw eggs, blow-torching his lawn, smashing televisions, sledding off his rooftop, attempting to ski his neighbours’ clothes-line, and most (in)famously, attempting to dive into his covered swimming pool from the top of a high ladder balanced precariously against his backyard fence. The ladder shimmied unpredictably causing Ralph to plummet headfirst onto the concrete surrounding the pool and bounce. He broke his neck. But he lived to tell the story, and the video footage ended up on prime time free-to-air television.

Apparently, according to the Cap’n himself in a posted blog reply from 08; “America’s Funniest offered me a T-Shirt and a “chance” at winning 10k cash, but with so many cute babies and pets … why take the chance? NO GO with them. Real TV saw my footage at a cop convention in NYC … called Cogeco TV and got my # & Since then … I’ve sold it to 8 different shows to make 40k off a broken neck … and today I’m Beauty, Beauty Beauty!! 
I appreciate people digging my shyte and now your pal Jay Cheel has formed some kind of relationship with me to find out the actual history of how Cap’n Video came to be and may be documenting it for no-one to see. 
I’m glad that my nuttiness made you type all the words you did but I type with my nose and must take a nap now.”

Jay Cheel has indeed made a thoroughly fascinating documentary that is as compelling as a train wreck in slow motion. But there is a delicate poignancy infused in this tale of a man who escaped a mundane life, battled with booze, and strived to live a life full of goofy adventure despite the inherent problem of his own undoing. The dangerous stunts nearly cost him his life, the gross-out gags helped cement his cult following, and Ralph always stayed in character, keeping his loyal viewers pissing themselves with laughter or gagging with disgust … or preferably a combination of both.

Following an Easter Special that featured the Cap’n throwing eggs at a bunny rabbit and licking chocolate off the back of a puppy dog, complaints poured in from the Humane Society. The Cap’n Video Show was cancelled. Soon after Ralph was arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to supply. The Cap’n was forced to go even further underground. He didn’t surface again for another twenty years … in this wonderful documentary named after his kooky catchphrase.

Featuring interviews with his first serious girlfriend Nancy, his long-suffering mother Barbara, his adult daughter Jordyn, and his best buddy, Robert Buick, a glass sculptor. Beauty Day includes Ralph’s attempt – with Robert assisting in every which way possible without injuring himself – at convincing Cable 10 to broadcast a Cap’n Video 20th anniversary show that he produces in classic style (Ralph even dusts off his old editing gear, since he hasn’t quite embraced the digital age on that level). And therein lies much of the doco’s raw charm and spirit; Ralph’s unpretentious perspective on fame and joie d’vive, and the analogue fabric encasing the freedom of his pioneering misadventures. Beauty Day shines like a battered cassette with its magnetic tape exposed. You love it for everything it represents; warts, cuts, bruises, addictions, and its date-stamp trappings.

“There’s a fine line between living dangerously and putting your life in jeopardy, or living in a hermetically-sealed ball and living forever, but not really living … You gotta get out there, meet people, fart in the wind, sniff it, whatever …”

Guns Akimbo

UK/Germany/New Zealand | 2019 | Directed by Jason Lei Howden

Logline: A gamer geek is forced to partake in a deadly competition whilst he attempts to rescue his kidnapped ex-girlfriend. 

The much-anticipated follow-up to the hugely enjoyable splatstick horror Deathgasm is a satirical slap in the face to online gamers and Millennials in general. It’s essentially an action flick, with severed tongue lodged in cheek, chocka-full of expletives, assorted crude humour, and peppered with ultraviolence. It’s a deep, trashy rollercoaster ride, the kind you’d consume with multiple beers and pizza with the lot, if you were at home. 

Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is a loo-hoo-sir-her, stuck in a thankless job developing online games with a douchebag boss (Richard Zander) and a colleague (Deathgasm’s Miles Hawthorne in a bit-role) who isn’t much help. Miles is pining after his former girlfriend, the sunset-haired Nova (Natasha Lui Bordizzo), and one night after involving himself in a new and hugely popular online snuff game called Skizm - where armed contestants pursue and murder each other across the city - and taking it upon himself to troll all the armchair participants, he’s paid a rude and brutal visit from the underworld. 

Miles awakes to find he has two handguns bolted to his hands, and he has just twelve hours to find and kill his opponent, Nix (Samara Weaving), the reigning champion of Skizm, otherwise the gangsters, lead by psycho mug Riktor (Ned Dennehy), will chop his abducted ex into little pieces. Game on, it seems, by default. 

Howden’s flick balances precariously on the fence of tribute and vitriol. It’s hard to work out whether he’s taking the savage piss, or having an an inclusive laugh. The movie is undeniably entertaining, but also feels hollow and derivative. Much of the enjoyment comes from Radcliffe’s terrific performance, in fact I’d recommend the movie on him alone, I’d even go so far as saying this is the best thing I’ve seen him in. He is perfectly cast. He has a real flair for the comic stuff, especially this kind of physical comedy. He also reveals much more than anyone was expecting, but for the fans with crushes it’s a blink and you miss it moment, but I digress …

Samara Weaving chews the scenery with a variety of mug shots and one-liners. She’s immensely watchable, all punk spunk and feisty attitude, but I was reminded of her role in the movie Mayhem. She’s fast becoming the belle du jour, with a bunch of movies on the immediate horizon. I hope she makes some good decisions, and doesn’t get lost in the thick of it. Sh’s obviously having fun here, but I look forward to seeing her delivering serious acting chops in a contemporary adult drama/thriller.

The visual stylistics Howden employs is very much meant to mimic gaming techniques, but it becomes a bit much after awhile, less effective, more an annoying gimmick. But the impressive command of the mise-en-scene, coming off Deathgasm, reminds me of Sam Raimi and his career surge. I’m sure Howden is destined for a big budget extravaganza very soon (if he doesn’t sabotage his career through reckless social media behaviour first, but I digress again …). Some of the credit must go to his terrific cinematographer, Stefan Ciupek. 

There’s nothing particularly fresh in Guns Akimbo (the title refers to the handle attributed to Miles by the online hordes), you’ve seen it all before - even the “handgun” is a reference to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome - but Howden delivers with both guns blazing, splashing flourishes and spilling panache with sheer abandon, and it’s pretty funny to boot. The kind of movie that demands to be seen on the big screen with a big audience and a big bag of popcorn. If it sounds like your bag, get involved.

Phantasm

US | 1979 | Directed by Don Coscarelli

Logline: A teenage boy, with his older brother and buddy, face off against a mysterious and dangerous grave-robber. 

A phantasm is an apparition, a ghostly vision, or spectre. It’s also a creation of the imagination, a fantasy. Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (released as The Never Dead down under) is all that and more. It melds science fiction, mystery and horror into a feverish hybrid. No other movie is like Phantasm. It exists in its own fantastical realm, equally flawed and ingenious, dark cosmic trash. 

Young teenager Mike (Michael Baldwin) and his twentysomething brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) are living together as recent orphans. Tommy, buddy of Jody’s, has died in seemingly mysterious circumstances and Mike spies on Jody acting as a pallbearer at the funeral in Morningside Cemetery. Through his binoculars Mike notices The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) lifting the coffin by himself and heaving it into the hearse. It’s definitely a “wtf!” moment. 

Mike takes matters into his own hands and investigates further, seeing hooded dwarfs darting behind tombstones. Inside the cemetery mausoleum Mike witnesses extreme violent weirdness. He finally convinces his brother, and his brother’s mate Reggie (Reggie Bannister), to try and get to the bottom of it, and the three plunge headlong deep into supernatural trouble.

Don Coscarelli achieved a remarkable feat with Phantasm. At 24-years-old not only did he write and direct the feature, he also shot and edited the movie. His mother Kate was production designer, costume designer and make-up (under different pseudonyms), whilst his father co-produced alongside special effects whizz Paul Pepperman. Other key members of the crew doubled in various capacities, very much a skeleton crew-cum family affair, whilst special nod must go to the psychotronic synth score from Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrove. 

The movie was made for around $US300k. It made millions. Coscarelli went on to make the Tanya Roberts sword and sandal “gem” The Beastmaster, before returning ten years later for the first of several Phantasm sequels, each with varying budgets and box office success. Phantasm is so rich in wacky horror ideas and so curiously effective with its atmosphere and vibe that Coscarelli can rest on its laurels for decades to come. 

The acting is bad news, seriously bad. The dialogue is no better. But the screenplay twists and turns like a high fever bad dream, riddled with bizarre moments, my favourite sees Mike being chased by The Tall Man through the funeral home and managing to slam a heavy door just before the ghoulish suited man grabs him. Mike leans back catching his breath. There is a flapping sound and the camera pans slowly to the right to reveal The Tall Man’s hand trapped between door and the frame, his fingers flapping. Mike uses his knife and slices off several of the fingers. The Tall Man howls from behind the door. Sickly yellow blood spurts out and the fingers continue to wriggle on the floor. Mike picks up one of them and pops it into his breast pocket, and takes off. As you do!

Watching the movie again to celebrate its fortieth birthday, I’m struck by how all the elements of the movie are like a checklist for a mischievous adolescent boy (or an adult who still acts like one), while its sheer absurdity threatens to consume the entire movie. Like some strange alien demon teddy bear, so dodgy and wrong, but so damn endearing. Even the hokey-as-all-hell “It’s all a dream” cliché gets a solid workout … and works. 

Considering the movie’s low budget, and the inherent restraints this imposed on the production (filming took a year), Phantasm transcends its limitations. Okay, so silly insect effects aside, atrocious acting aside, and plot holes big enough for an ice-cream truck to drive through, it’s deep trash parading as high art, or perhaps its high art sleeping in the gutter, either way Phantasm rocks and rolls and swerves and spurts! Fear the Silver Sphere!

Messiah of Evil

US | 1973 | Directed by Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz

Logline: When a woman arrives at her missing father’s home she discovers the township is governed by a mysterious supernatural cult. 

Arletty (Marianna Hill) narrates her quest to find her missing father. She arrives in the eerie Californian coastal town of Point Dune. A prologue suggests she ends up in a mental institution, so her narration will prove unreliable. She settles in to her father’s deserted beach mansion filled with his surreal and unsettling paintings, many of which are giant staring faces and clusters of figures on the walls. 

The locals are hollow and weird. It seems a supernatural force has infected the town, gradually turning its occupants into zombies. They are the undead, but not the familiar Romero kind. Yes, they do crave raw meat and are in a slow state of decay, but they also manage to operate in a vaguely normal fashion, such as driving vehicles, and converse with strangers. 

Arletty reads her father’s abandoned diary and learns of his increasing unease, and later meets Thom (Michael Greer), a dapper sleaze, and his two female companions (lovers), the striking, feline Laura (Anitra Ford) and the boyish, child-woman Toni (Joy Bang). They are drifters, also intrigued by the town’s history, and plant themselves at Arletty’s father’s pad, much to Arletty’s bemusement. 

Events take a turn for the seriously weird, and soon the town’s dark and diabolical affliction is revealed, with its hordes and apocalyptic curse. 

It’s all hallucinogenic, phantasmogorical hokum, but Huyck and Katz pull it off with their intensely atmospheric and dream-like logic, a fusion of the Euro stylistics of Argento’s supernatural indulgences, but also Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance, with its multi-layered use of symbolism (religious cultism, sexual role-playing, identity and disguise, socio-politics, artistic expression) and a brooding sensuality. Indeed the movie looks and feels much more like a European film than an American one. Even the lead actors look foreign!

There’s ripe dialogue scattered throughout (curious to note Huyck and Katz would later do uncredited dialogue doctoring on the original Star Wars); Thom casually muttering “Give a girl a pair of shoes and she walks out on you”, Arletty’s opening spiel, “They say nightmares are dreams perverted …”

Performances are all assured with excellent casting of the leads and some intriguing support; the albino trucker (Bennie Robinson) is particularly unnerving, while Elisha Cook’s town drunkard is suitably amusing. Most striking of all is Stephen Katz’s saturated cinematography, Jack Fisk’s art direction (curiously he was the Man in the Planet in Lynch’s Eraserhead) and the mise-en-scene of rolling surf, luna in the night sky, empty streets and buildings, a cinema marquee - Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and one especially striking sequence where Arletty first descends down into her father’s studio where a massive jetty mural fills the wall. The succession of images, combined with the spare, haunting electronic score, courtesy of Phillian Bishop, is genuinely creepy. 

Originally titled The Second Coming (and also known as Dead People), apparently the abrupt ending was a result of Huyck and Katz running out of funds, being rushed into completion, and subsequently not being able to shoot the ending they had envisioned, which would tie the events into the return of a Dark Stranger. Subsequently, the real madness seems to lie in Arletty’s mind. Is the whole story a figment of her crazed imagination? 

Messiah of Evil is an elusive, low-budget art-horror delight, dabbling in abstract imagery and furtive ideas, meandering down strange avenues, staring off into the dark surf and up into a blood-red moon. 

Greener Grass

US | 2019 | Directed by Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe

Logline: In a distorted reality two suburban mothers are in a perpetual, unspoken competition to better the other’s position and achievements.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where everything appears to be normal and regular, yet there are oddities all around, and as the dream progresses and the irregularities spread, your sanity begins to fray, as the world you took for granted is turned upside down, inside out?

It’s become a crazy pink trash fire. 

This isn’t just about the shit-fight of keeping up with the Joneses, it’s about the rat race extremis terrorablis. Imagine if David Lynch and John Waters had got stoned and written and directed a mash-up of Square Pegs and Soap. This is a comedy of manners painted in cartoon-rich pastels, yet the tongue in cheek is black as soot. It’s a satire sharper than a bread knife, a parody of prime time domesticity, informercials, and self-help books - “Kids With Knives”, “Bald Men With Bouquets”, “Mating In Captivity” - so insightful you’ll need shades. 

Joint writers and directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe have created an absurdist masterpiece (joint being an operative word). Greener Grass demands instant cult status as intensely as a screaming toddler demands you answer their toy phone. It cannot be ignored, it cannot be denied, it’s making your ears ring, the irony so melodic, you might even bloody well sing!

Jill Davies (DeBoer) and Lisa Wetbottom (Luebbe) are suburban neighbours. Thirtysomething soccer mums, with matching braces on their perfect teeth, driving golf club carts as the family car, they dutifully attend all social events and school activities, and even though things don’t always go to plan, they grin and bear it in the most pristine and pleasant(ville) way. Oh, and they are married to deeply sycophantic men, one of whom decides that drinking the in-ground pool water is the new elixir. But someone is spying and sniggering …

To begin describing where plans go awry would be to spoil this movie’s delightfully twisted wrenching of the spanner-in-the-works. One has to experience Greener Grass first hand, soak it in, lap it up, swirl it around inside the mouth, savour the hideousness like glorious hors d’leurves from the late 70s/early 80s. Hopefully you’ll hoot and holler at the movie’s garish presentation, and the sheer farcical brilliance will make you cry with laughter. 

It’s SNAFUF: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up and Funny.

DeBoer and Luebbe, both veterans of the US theatre and television comedy scene, have expanded their 2015 short (which was directed by SNL’s Paul Briganti and won Special Jury Award at SXSW) into a debut feature and it works an absolute treat. It’s an Acquired Taste, but rare as hen’s molars are the American filmmakers that skilfully eviscerate with astute comic chutzpah the trappings that have made their daytime/primetime shows the butt of the joke over and over. 

The performances are bang on, especially DeBoer and Luebbe, also D’Arcy Carden as school teacher Miss Human, and all the child actors get bonus points. And purple hearts. Keep an eye out for Jim Cummings (Thunder Road) who very briefly turns on the waterworks in hilarious fashion (again). Love that guy.

The grass might seem greener in this “oh-so-pretty” hell, but this is the dark comic end of the suburban sack, a saccharine-kitsch apocalypse, a spectacular display of ruined entitlement and the futility of seeking approval and acceptance. The cruel world reigns supreme. Smiling depression, it’s the real thing. It’s a dream you can’t wake up from. 

I’ll go out on a limb and say Greener Grass would make the perfect viewing bedfellow with Steve Oram’s anarchic gem Aaaaaaaah! 

This is the deep trash treasure of the year. 

Greener Grass screens as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday, September 14th, 6pm, and Sunday, September 15th, 5pm, at The Factory, Marrickville. For more info and tickets click here.

The Wild Boys

Les Garçons Sauvages | 2017 | Directed by Bertran Mandico

Logline: After five adolescent boys commit a savage crime they are punished, sent to a strange remote island, mistreated by a cruel captain along the way. 

If you can imagine a movie born from the theatrical stylistics of Guy Maddin, the lurid transgressions of Kenneth Anger, and the surreal symbolism of David Lynch, you might be able to fathom the inherent weirdness, the icky uniqueness of this tale of morality, sexuality, and identity. It’s a most heady, intellectual concoction, given a deep pantomime touch, full of confronting moments bathed in a dream-like fabric. 

Unlike anything you’ve seen - or felt - before. 

Set in what feels like an alternate early 20th Century five teenage boys (played by young adult women, Pauline Lorillard, Vimala Pons, Diane Rouxel, Anaël Snoek, and Mathilde Warnier) collude with the aid of the occult - a deity known as TREVOR - and commit a sexual assault on a woman, and, subsequently, find themselves on trial and sentenced to an unusual punishment. They must set sail on a tiny, dilapidated boat, with a disgruntled bearded Captain (Sam Louwyk) who has his own agenda and strict rules. 

Eventually they arrive at their destination, a small, lush island, covered with thick vegetation that mimics human sexual anatomy. They are forced to continue eating the hairy, juicy (passion)fruit they were introduced to during their sentencing, which grows in abundance on the island. It is here that the Captain is reunited with Severin(e) (Elina Löwensohn) who has her own strange story and agenda. 

The island, La Réunion, is bewitched, and it is here that the five troublemakers will be confronted with their own demons, both real and imagined, masculine and feminine. It’s a dangerous and seductive place, endowed with powerful transgressive properties, and as such, the boys will slowly be transformed. 

Shot on 16mm, using vivid colour and high contrast monochrome, and a combination of real locations and very obvious sets, it’s Greg Arakki channeling Federico Fellini in French on class and gender, a rich, but difficult metaphor for contemporary times, using old school filmmaking techniques. It is simultaneously compelling and repellent, a lurid, homoerotic edge twisting into bold and surprising new para-sexual presentations. 

The Wild Boys will fill your water cooler conversation and, no doubt, inhabit your dreams, maybe even your nightmares, as this is a horror movie where the hirsute grotesque is bedfellows with the spurting sensual. It’s an exotic brew for acquired, adventurous tastes, and will reward a sweet and savoury palette by the time it reaches its delightfully perverse denouement. 

Mandico elicits excellent performances from his cast, and the command of his stylistic flourish is exemplary, definitely a movie to be lingered upon and relished like the best of enigmatic fringe fare. Oh, and hang around to the end of the credits for a little extra biscuit.

Future is woman, future is sorceress. 

The Wild Boys screens as part of the Alliance Française French Film Festival in Australia.

For screening venues, dates, and times please visit here.

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn

UK/US | 2018 | Directed by Jim Hosking

Logline: A dissatisfied and frustrated wife hitches up with a bumbling enforcer as she attempts to reconnect with a mysterious man from her past.

In what can only be described as a swerve off the highway melodrama, down the absurdist off-ramp into the suburb of what-the-vulgar-fuck, the agent provocateur responsible for The Greasy Strangler delivers his follow-up with complete disregard for any kind of commercial consumption. An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, despite the soft fluffy title, is as ripe as a gamey mango, as lurid as a large cucumber dipped in mayo. Very much an acquired taste, as delicate as fish eggs washed down with a large lager. 

Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza) is unhappily married to douchebag café manager Shane (Emile Hirsch), who is brownnosing for a promotion. Lulu works as a waitress for Shane, but she’s fired when cuts are ordered from central office. She lets Shane know her uptight adopted brother Adjay (Sam Dissanayake) has a lot of stashed cash. Shane organises a burglary. Adjay meets Colin (Jermaine Clement), who offers to get his cash back. Lulu discovers a romance from her past is in town. There’ll be cocktails and yarns and heartache before bedtime. Also some coughing and flatulence. And maybe a little disco. Everything will come to head. 

Imagine the surrealist, farcical humour of Comic Strip Presents, with added high cringe factor, infused with a kitsch, grotesque fashion aesthetic, as the movie takes place in some kind of alternate 80s hell, and smothered with a perverse sense of lust and deception. An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn is a truly splendid nightmare for romantic misfits.

The cast is exceptional. Jermaine Clement delivers a career performance, and Aubrey Plaza is pitch perfect as Lulu, both glamorous and tragic. Also of note, Matt Berry as Rodney Von Donkenstieger, Beverly’s long-suffering and equally tragic manager. Just as The Greasy Strangler was filled with all manner of unctuous freaks and geeks in small support roles, so is An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. It’s a smorgasbord of bad dream elements as delicious as a luke-warm tv dinner. Andrew Hung’s score adds milkshake harmony.

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn is the kind of bad haircut, foul-mouthed monstrosity that demands to be seen and relished in a cinema with an amped-up audience. Lubrication is recommended, though not essential. This is cult material oozing, dripping onto the worn carpet and leaving a love stain. It’s Supernature. It’s a Rum and a Ramble. It’s cheesy onion rings. It’s green tampons. It’s a bad cappuccino. It’s a folk song on a lute and recorder. It’s everything, all at once, like no oily comedy you’ve swum in before. Feel free to wet your pants. Feel free to order a Heather. “Words don’t come easy to me, this is the only way, for me to say, I love you …”

For one magical night only. 

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn screens Opening Night - Thursday November 29th, 8.30pm, Tuesday 4th December, 8.15pm (Lido), Friday 30th November, 6.30pm (Classic), and Monday 3rd December, 6.30pm (Cameo), as Melbourne’s Paracinema Fest. For full program and screening dates and times please visit here.

Liquid Sky

US | 1982 | Directed by Slava Tsukerman

Logline: A miniature spacecraft lands on a New York penthouse and the alien occupants proceed to kill various drug addicts in their search for heroin, but subsequently discover they prefer human endorphins.

Do aliens have orgasms?

Margaret (Ann Carlisle) is a model and junkie living high in Manhattan. Her roommate and lover, Adrian (Paula E. Shephard), is a drug dealer and club performer. Margaret is pestered by the perpetually sullen Jimmy (also played by Ann Carlisle), her narcissistic and embittered rival, who is a junkie too. She is sexually assaulted by a club patron who has come back to her pad, promising cocaine. The offender is inexplicably killed during the rape, murdered by aliens who have landed their tiny flying saucer on Margaret’s balcony! The aliens, in their intergalactic search for heroin, have discovered human endorphins, released during sexual climax, and now they have a taste for it. Soon Margaret will discover the naked truth and she’ll be possessed of a fierce desire for something beyond the confines of her earthbound existence. 

Russian ex-pat Tsukerman and his wife Nina V. Kerova arrived in America in 1976. Five years on and they were collaborating with actor Carlisle on a screenplay, and subsequently made Liquid Sky for around five hundred grand. During it’s first year of release it made a profit of over one and half million bucks. Heavily influenced by the burgeoning new romantic scene, and the DIY minimalist approach to filmmaking, embraced by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, whilst surrounded by the debris of the American punk ethic, Liquid Sky is an amalgam of new wave chic, post-disco excess, and a hazy social commentary disguised within arthouse exploitation. A definitive cult treasure beneath all that fabric and foundation. 

Indeed it is one of those movies where the tone and atmosphere is very difficult to describe in words, one has to experience the jagged melancholy first-hand. An acquired taste is putting it mildly. Liquid Sky makes big demands of its audience, but the rewards will linger, images burnt onto your retina … and that score, as if Art of Noise were still discovering how to make music on the Fairlight CMI. It is simultaneously annoying-as-hell and hauntingly good, fitting the film like elegant hand in long suede glove. 

This can all be explained … I’m a killer. I kill with my cunt. It’s fashionable.

Yuri Neyman’s vivid cinematography, the neon primary colours, looks fabulous, as does the elaborate date-stamped makeup and costume designs by Marcel Fiévé. These elements are ice cool and crucial, and along with the music, and the lo-fi optical effects (also by Neyman) give Liquid Sky its unique vibe. Also of particular note are the club scenes, the dancing and posing, and especially the piece, “Me and My Rhythm Box”, performed by Adrian. 

Liquid sky, the key to heaven, the milk of paradise …

Certainly the acting leaves a lot to be desired, but then, it was probably all deliberately directed that way. Carlisle's dual performance is the obvious stand out - occasionally Margaret's peroxide blonde armpit hair is seeking more screen time - but no one is free from the stilted, often unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Don’t worry, throw in another crazy club moment, and another chromatic polarised overkill. Tsukerman, who also co-edited, intercuts most of the scenes, injecting the movie’s narrative with a fractured, urgent edge to what is abstractly a smacked-out interpolation of dissociative science frictional behaviour. 

Liquid Sky is liquid sky is Liquid Sky, a stash of deep beautiful trash. 

“Cocteau was Cocteau before he ever did drugs.”

“What are you saying?”

“That’s it’s not going to help you.”

I beg to differ. I say get off your precious, lovely tits and soak up Liquid Sky on a big screen in a darkened theatre. Do it. Get involved. YOLO. 

Liquid Sky - a new digital restoration - screens as part of the 12th Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday, September 15th, 11pm, at Factory Theatre, Marrickville. For tickets and more information visit suff.com.au

Climax

France | 2018 | Directed by Gaspar Noé

Logline: A group of dancers living and rehearsing in a disused boarding school are subjected to an intense and horrific experience after inadvertently ingesting LSD.

The infant terrible returns with his latest extravagant indulgence, which will do for party Sangria what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean.

Set in the mid-90s, a group of urban dancers have gathered in a mostly empty, disused boarding school within a forest, blanketed by thick snow. It is here for three days they will finish rehearsing their show, and get to cut loose, let down their hair. They are a bunch of mostly ethnic, highly-strung, charismatic, arrogant, oversexed young adults. One of the eldest is Selva (Sofia Boutella). 

A prologue sets the mood, as a bloodied dancer stumbles through the heavy snow, crying out in anguish and pain. Then we have an introduction to all the dancers via individual pieces-to-camera being played back on a small monitor. Books and movies on either side of the television indicate sly references to Noé’s influences (Possession, Suspiria, Fritz Lang). We cut to the big red rehearsal room, and with a DJ at one end, the dancers launch into their choreographed show. It’s a single-take extended set piece with “Supernature” as the musical bed, and it’s a showstopper. In fact, it’s worth the price of admission alone. A sexy, sensual, elastic, hip-hop/disco ensemble piece that Noé films essentially in one wide take, occasionally floating the camera up over the dancers, then back down to near floor level. It’s Bob Fosse meets David Lynch on acid.

Yes, LSD is the silent partner of this ensemble horrorshow. After the rehearsal the dancers immediately move into party mode, imbibing, and dancing free form to the DJ’s thumping disco and new wave selections. There is a bowl of sangria that most of the dancers partake in. It has been spiked with acid, and it soon becomes apparent that this dose is a bad batch, sending many of the dancers spiraling into a psychotic meltdown. Hidden agendas are exposed, paranoia rears its ugly head, and accusations and bad behaviour spill forth.

Whilst a few manage to cling to their sanity through whatever methods of madness, others disintegrate psychologically, or are bullied and injured into a ruinous state. By morning light, as the camera visits each inert form, the party debris is wide and tragedy has struck. This climax is more la petit mort than orgasmic happy ending.

Apparently written, shot, and edited in four months, with just fifteen days of principal photography, Noé insisted on shooting as quickly as possible, in long takes, with the camera roving around the actors, like a character itself. It makes for a visually compelling experience, especially with its heightened sensory state of pulsating dance music, intense colour palette, and the induced hysteria that overwhelms the characters, but as a narrative overall Climax fails to illicit the kind of empathic response of his controversial and brilliant nightmare Irreversible.

The stunning Sofia Boutella is the obvious stand out, and her own quasi-dance acid turn is memorable. But the real star of Climax is the disco-electro soundtrack, featuring the aforementioned Cerrone song, a beautiful rendition of Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies” by Gary Numan , an extended instrumental version of Patrick Hernandez’s disco anthem “Born to be Alive”, the hip-house favourite “Pump Up the Volume”, and more sleazy club fare including Lil’ Louis’ “French Kiss”, Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker”, and the non-stop erotic cabaret of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go”. Finally there is a rare instrumental take of The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” … reverberating as the dawn light spills over the stained dance floor.

Climax is more of Noé purging his dreams and nightmares – throwing in pretentious platitudes as chapter inter-titles – but as the chaos erupts so early, and overwhelms so quickly, there is little to no time to get to know any of the characters, and as such, there is little empathy, little connection. The mise-en-scene becomes as unreliable as the dancers’ affected psyches. The volatile camera weaves this way and that, at one point remaining upside down for ten minutes or so as it snakes around the writhing, body-popping victims of this unexpected hellish trip. Ultimately Climax is much less the emotionally powerful psyche rollercoaster ride as it is a noisy endurance test with a bunch of self-involved, frequently obnoxious, mostly hysterical, albeit good-looking, wankers. Still, if that’s your cup of Mickey Finned punch, then jump in. If anything, for that amazing opening dance scene. 

Conan the Barbarian

US | 1982 | Directed by John Milius

Logline: A barbarian warrior embarks on a mission to avenge the death of his parents and tribe slain by a powerful and evil sorcerer when he was a boy.

A vicious horde of marauders attacks a Cimmerian village. A young village boy, Conan, watches as his father is savaged to death by dogs and mother beheaded by the evil leader. The boy is enslaved, forced to push the Wheel of Pain season after season for countless moons. Finally as an adult, yet still a slave, Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is released and thrust into the pit to fight as a gladiator where he refines his survival skills. Soon enough he becomes unbeatable and is sent to the Far East to train as a warrior and to learn the way of the sword. His enslaver eventually sets Conan free, after making sure Conan understands the discipline of steel, which echoes the words of his father to trust no one, but your sword. 

And so unfolds Conan the Barbarian, the iconic fantasy hero’s big screen exploits as penned and helmed by John Milius, co-written by Oliver Stone (one of Stone’s NYC School of Arts colleagues, Edward Summer, apparently provided the story, but was uncredited). At $US20 million, this was a big budget epic, but essentially it’s a elaborate B-movie, hampered by length and uneven pacing, and sporting a central performance that ranks amongst the worst ever.

But the movie is ripe with cult appeal; a lurid and leathery piece of deep trash that gleams like a stash of dirty gems.

Based on the short stories of Robert E. Howard, which were first published in Weird Tales magazine between 1932 -1936, Conan the Cimmerian lived during the prehistoric Hyborean Age, and was described by Howard as black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, treading the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet. He swore by a deity called Crom, and according to The Wizard, who saved his life, “Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

Conan is on a quest to solve the riddle of steel. Along the way he escapes the clutches of a cave witch (Cassandra Gava), befriends an archer, Subotai (Gerry Lopez), becomes lovers with a thief, Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), and sets out to rescue Princess Yasmina (Valerie Quennessen, who died tragically several years after the movie was released), the daughter of King Osric (Max Von Sydow), from the Snake Cult, and, ultimately, ending the sinister reign of its ruler, Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones).

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” say the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, which open the movie. Milius loves his mythology and his warfare (he provided much of Apocalypse Now with its mortal combat portentousness), and he wore a military beret through much of Conan’s shoot. Shot on location throughout Spain, the production values is impressive, especially the incredible Mountain of Power temple, a massive $250,000 set on the side of a hill (though much of the rest is hokey, by today’s standards). Much of the movie’s look was based on the brilliant art of illustrator Frank Frazetta, which production designer Ron Cobb had a field day with (in fact teaser poster art utilized a Frazetta original).

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physical presence is formidable, but his acting is awful (he was nominated in the 1983 Razzie Awards, but lost to Lawrence Olivier!) It’s curious to note that Sandahl Bergman, a lithe dancer with an equally impressive figure, scored a Golden Globe win as best adult newcomer, however her only other notable role was as co-star in Milius’s Red Sonja. Conan and Valeria exchange few words. In fact dialogue, ripe as it is, is kept to an absolute minimum throughout the whole movie, with nothing spoken on-screen for the first twenty minutes. Conan’s first utterance has become legendary; “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

Despite its endearing tackiness, the movie is simply way too long; as it passes its first hour the pace begins to drag terribly, and an uneven sense of humour begins to rear its head, for example Conan punching out a camel, or biting back a persistent vulture. By the time we’ve reached the climactic finale, Doom’s menace has evaporated, and Schwarzenegger’s attempts at dialogue and emotion have severely stretched one’s tolerance. However, like many cult movies, there is more than enough to enjoy along the way, especially if you embrace its inherent trashiness; Conan falling into a cave after being chased by savage dogs and discovering Kull the Conqueror (?), he then steals the king’s sword, climbs out, and with the help of a wolf, dons a fine suit of fur, and apparently a snazzy new haircut.

The elements of horror and supernatural menace provide the movie its best thrills; Thulsa executing Conan’s mother, Conan’s encounter with the Euroasian witch, the demon spectre trying to steal Conan’s spirit, Thulsa Doom’s transformation into the giant snake (a superb piece of animatronics and editing), Thulsa Doom’s snake arrows, and not forgetting the cult priestess ordered to step off a ledge and fall to her death (which set a world stunt record of 182 feet!)                                    

“So, did Conan return the wayward daughter of King Osric to her home. And having no further concern, he and his companions sought adventure in the West. Many wars and feuds did Conan fight. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand ... And this story shall also be told.”

But, alas, it never was, and I doubt it shall come to pass (the far less interesting Conan the Destroyer followed soon after, as did a woeful remake in 2011). But hey, we’ve always got the voluptuous indulgence of Conan the Barbarian, “Suffer no guilt, ye who wield this in the name of Crom.”

Starship Troopers

US | 1997 | Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Logline: Soldiers and pilots in the late 22nd Century must fight a seemingly invincible race of giant insects on an alien planet and stop them from destroying the human race.

Arguably one of the most misunderstood modern science fiction movies, but that doesn’t stop it from being a gloriously indulgent piece of supertrash. Based on novelist Robert Heinlein’s satirical stab at what he perceived as the inherent laziness of society, and influenced by his own experiences in military service during WWII, it tales the story of Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), a gung-ho student keen to join the frontline and become a bona fide man of the world, because the mobile infantry guarantees citizenship. Of course he wants his sweetheart Carmen (Denise Richards) by his side, but it becomes quickly apparent she has her own agenda, whilst tomboy Dizzy (Dina Meyer) tries her darnedest to steal Rico’s heart. Yes, all is fair in love and war. 

Adapted for the screen by Ed Neumeier, who scripted Verhoeven’s RoboCop, Starship Troopers takes no prisoners. It’s a nightmare collision of fascism, bravado, and cheese; comic book kitsch and graphic gore. Using the same cinematographer he used on RoboCop, Jost Vacano, Verhoeven has the movie glare at you from some alternate 80s universe (by way of the 70s Rollerball and Logan’s Run), but with the heavy influence of the WWII German SS military and paramilitary uniform designs. It’s no mistake that there is a strong odour of Neo-Nazism. Verhoeven was intent on slapping his audiences with the most vicious of ironies; depicting this uber-fascist future with people who look like shiny models brandishing huge guns, piloting fancy ships, declaring sickly-sweet platitudes, but ultimately having to fight terrifying arachnid beasts, in appalling conditions, who only want to tear them to shreds.

That fascism only leads to self-destruction is the sub-text, and that it’s hidden in plain sight is Starship Troopers badge of honour. “Naked force is the answer,” declares Lt. Rasczak played with grim determination by Michael Ironside (has he ever smiled in any movie?!) While Rico faces off against his parents disapproval the two women in his life are pulling him in opposite directions, and the other lads are giving him grief. It’s like a kind of perverted Archie Comics scenario, with Rico as Archie, Carmen as Ronnie, Dizzy as Betty, and Zander (Patrick Muldoon, the poor man’s Rob Lowe) as Reggie, with Ace (Jake Busey) and Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) combined as Jughead, hell, one could even project it as Future Archie in Punishment Park.

“The only good bug is a dead bug,” screams an angry soldier. There’s another, more controversial sub-text that suggests the re-interpretation of the alien invasion is of America vs. the Middle East, and with that in mind, Starship Troopers is more dangerously pertinent now than it was twenty years ago. But, let’s face it; the underlying politics of Starship Troopers isn’t really why it’s watchable. The movie works (and I use the term rather loosely, because one person’s trash is another’s treasure) through the juxtaposition of such extremes; the relentless savagery and ultraviolence amidst the romantic soap opera mechanics of relationships, performed badly (with the exception of Meyer) by glistening actors (most of whom no longer have careers) who look ten years too old for the roles they’re playing. It’s like a train wreck in slow motion; you can’t pull your eyes away.

"They'll keep fighting, and they'll win!"

Basic Instinct

US | 1992 | Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Logline: Whilst investigating a savage murder an edgy police detective becomes embroiled with the victim’s seductive and manipulative lover.

“A tale of love and murder so erotic, so unexpected, so bizarre, after you’ve read it you’ll make the one you love sleep on the couch… just to be sure.”

I can’t really remember my first impressions with Verhoeven’s third fully-fledged Hollywood production. It was slapped with an R18 classification, touting full-frontal nudity from Sharon Stone who had been on the verge of giving up acting, and a dark cocktail of Jack Daniels, lurid sexuality and brutal violence, a concoction that has always smelled so appealing to Verhoeven, the Dutch-born agent provocateur.

In many respects the director was remaking The 4th Man, his own Dutch-language erotic-thriller from nearly ten years earlier, about a man who should know better becoming involved with a dangerous woman who may very well end up killing him. Verhoeven had already enjoyed two successful science fiction movies with Tinseltown money, RoboCop and Total Recall. Now he turned his attention to a spec script that had sold at auction for $US3 million, the highest ever paid at the time. The screenwriter was Joe Eszterhas, who had penned Flashdance and Jagged Edge.

Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), of the San Francisco Police Department, along with his partner Gus (Goertge Dzundza), is investigating the death of a former rock star, viciously slain with an ice pick during sex. Curran is assigned to question the rock star’s girlfriend, Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone), who is a wealthy crime novelist. Sparks fly and before Curran has even time to blink he’s back on the booze and smoking again. Catherine has had quite the effect. Meanwhile Curran’s other romantic interest, Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), a criminal psychologist, is trying to look out for Nick, as she suspects Catherine is a hungry wolf in Merino wool.

Basic Instinct is Verhoeven doing later Hitchcock. It’s not quite as obvious or deliberate as the most well-known Hitchcockian, Brian De Palma, but the signs are there. The use of high angle establishing shots, the big close-ups, the back and front projection during interior car scenes, the femme fatale, the double-crossing, and, most overtly, a shot looking down a spiral staircase that echoes Vertigo, Hitchcock’s classic tale of a man obsessed with a woman and the manipulative shenanigans that ensue.

But what really shines is the performance Verhoeven elicits from Sharon Stone, easily one of the best of her career. She is truly the star of this movie. It’s hard to be convinced by Michael Douglas as the kind of man who her character would be attracted to, and certainly the main sex scene is less titillating because of this, however Stone oozes such smoldering sex appeal that she more than makes up for Douglas’s thin-lipped, sleazemongering insipidness. The over-lit nightclub scene has Douglas, blatantly over-aged in a plunging v-neck jersey, perving at Catherine, whilst her spunky lesbian lover Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) grooves in the background. I’m sure this risible scene planted the seed of Showgirls in Verhoeven’s mind.

It's curious to note special makeup effects whiz, Rob Bottin, with a major  opening credit, and another during end credits, complete with a visual effects crew, when there is very little on screen, except a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in the opening scene. Perhaps there was much more that ended up on he cutting room floor. Yes, the movie peters out during the last quarter, it would’ve been much stronger had it been fifteen or twenty minutes shorter, there's glamourised smoking, noticeable lack of DNA testing, and dodgy rough sex, but still, the sly twists and turns, the juicy dialogue, that interrogation scene, and, especially, the sexually-charged energy that Stone exudes makes Basic Instinct a noir-tinged late night shameless delight that still delivers, twenty-five years down the beaten track. 

Thundercrack!

US | 1975 | Directed by Curt McDowell

Logline: Two pairs of friends find themselves stranded in a remote household in the middle of a storm, swapping stories from their past, teasing the homeowner, and engaging in sexual activity.

“The coin of sexuality always has two faces.”

Not all yarns have happy endings, but some happy endings have a bit of a yarn in them. Certainly the homestead of Prairie Blossom has a few cracked tales between her legs, er, its walls. Mrs. Gert Hammond (Marion Eaton) is keen to spill a few, beans and all. But cocktails first, questions later. There’s a knock at the door, or was that another clap of thunder? Ol’ Gertie is a bit under the weather, and she prefers to be on top - reverse cowgirl, if you don’t mind me implyin’. A madam caller is here, a Miss Willene Cassidy (Maggie Pyle), wet through, but a little green behind the ears. But to her, Mrs. Hammond looks like something the cat dragged in! Soon ol’ Gertie is in the bath and Miss Willene is working her clean and dirty magic. 

As the night wears on, more strangers descend upon the creaky mansion. Chandler (Mooke Blodgett) and Bond (Ken Scudder), Sash (Melinda McDowell) and Roo (Moira Benson), and Toydy (Rick Johnson). These five cats and dogs have skeletons in the closet and they wish to rattle some bones. It will take the arrival of Bing (George Kuchar), late in the piece, a carnie with a hairy secret he’s itching to scratch, to bring everything to a throbbing head. But first, let’s lay down a few key strokes. 

George Kuchar was one of the pioneers of the American underground film scene. Along with his brother Mike, they immersed themselves in the DIY indie aesthetic of the period, along with other shakers and movers such as Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. Kuchar made more than two-hundred films and videos. He taught film at the San Francisco Art Institute for forty years, until his death in 2011. He became a close friend and mentor to Curt McDowell and he provided the screenplay for Thundercrack! based on a story idea of McDowell and Mark Eillinger, who scored the film’s Golden Aged music. 

Thundercrack! was in many ways a labour of passion between the two men. McDowell not only directed, but also shot and edited the two-and-a-half hour film (actually, two hours forty if you include its original ten-minute intermission!). George did the makeup and helped with the special effects and lighting. The producers were Charles and John Thomas, who financed the movie with funds from their fast-food chain inherited fortune. It was shot on 16mm in monochrome, an adventurous move for such an adult movie, as by the mid-70s there were no blue movies being made in black and white. 

But Thundercrack! is no ordinary blue movie. This “very strange film” (as one of its many tagline’s proclaimed) is a hybrid creature as alluring as it as alienating, as exotic as it is erotic, as daggy as it is perverse, and certainly as weird as it is wild. Imagine John Waters arriving at The Frankenstein Place from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, getting stoned and falling asleep and having a wet dream about Freaks. Maybe not. Maybe, I should just shut up and let you venture into Prairie Blossom abode and make your own mind up!

Just make sure you have a bunch of bananas with you. And maybe you should sniff the cucumbers before you take a bite. 

There is much to lap up and much to wrinkle your nose at, it depends on your disposition. Thundercrack! is an acquired taste, much like salty anchovies. I must champion the presence of Marion Eaton, whose performance as Gertie Hammond is like something out of a Shakespearean brothel. She binds the movie together like a yeasty secretion. You can smell her oozing off the screen, it’s something to behold. The men all have rubber arms, curling facial hair, and dicks just as pliable. Young Roo hops about like a mischievous little beast in heat, while voluptuous Sash will give any red-blooded male a boost in the trouser department. Everyone has wants, and everyone has agendas. But as we all know, there is no such thing as romance and adventure, only trouble and desire. Oh, and we mustn’t forget Medusa (played with gusto by “Pamela Primate”), and her jungle roar. She is the reason bananas are so important, and for a far different reason than those cucumber friends of Gertie’s. But I digress … 

Thundercrack! could have been a silent movie with inter-titles, but McDowell instead made a hardcore talking picture. The pursuit of ecstasy has never been so verbose. It’s a fusion of elements, boiled up, reduced, leaving a unique and sticky jus of dodgy melodramatics and sexual soap operatics. Leave all sensibilities out in the rain. Shed your inhibitions, maybe your clothes. Shake up a cocktail or five, stir up a lover or three, and don’t feel shy, hell, open up wide, after these players play you, you might even decide … to swallow.

“I had me my protein, now I want my starch!”

Rollerball

US | 1975 | Directed by Norman Jewison

Logline: In a corporate-controlled future a popular veteran in a powerful, but violent sport sets out to challenge and defy those who want him out of the game.

Based on his own short story titled "Roller Ball Murder" William Harrison provided the screenplay to the Hollywood production, one of many utopian/dystopian-style futurist science fiction movies from the early-to-mid 70s, of which A Clockwork Orange, Soylent Green, and Logan’s Run are three others baring a similar wary, but very dated vibe. Curiously Rollerball is the only one that has been remade (more on that later).

It is 2018. There are no more wars, but instead a violent indoor arena sports game, a circus-like cross between roller derby, gridiron, ice hockey, and wrestling that has the monopoly on conflict, as the world has become a global corporate state. Jonathan E. (James Caan) is the popular star of the Houston Rollerball team. He’s a ten-year veteran. But it is his flagrant Alpha male arrogance that is threatening the secret corporate purpose of the game - to expose the futility of individualism - of which Jonathan is determined to undermine, at all costs. 

The head of the Energy Corporation Mr. Bartholomew (John Houseman in suitably ripe and mannered form) attempts to lure the star player away from the game with all manner of incentives and gifts, including a new trophy lover Daphne (Barbara Trentham) to replace Mackie (Pamela Hensley) who had been the replacement for his wife, Ella (Maud Adams), who had been inexplicably removed from his life by executive order. Jonathan only wants to know why he must retire … so, game on. 

Like Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and A Clockwork Orange, Rollerball sports (excuse the pun) a fascinating and compelling premise, but is let down by ill-conceived production design that fails to portray the kind of future that would likely exist in terms of technology, fashion, and industrial design (though you gotta love the movie poster design). These are movies irretrievably trapped in their own time warp, which in many ways only adds to their curious nature. They are all incredibly earnest in their thematic intent, even their subtext, but are also strangely devoid of a sense of humour. When they are humorous it is unintentional, more a result of silly, garish design. 

Norman Jewison directs the Rollerball scenes with gusto, however, and much of the stunt work is solid. In fact, it was one of the very first Hollywood productions to properly credit the stunt performers. The use of classical music, in particular Bach’s brooding Toccata and Fugue in D minor, is notable, especially in the movie’s opening credit sequence, and in the movie’s nihilistic, final scene. 

Rollerball, with all its silly roulette and pinball collisions, ends in precisely the way you expect it to, but the journey there, though too talky for its own good as an action flick - there are only two Rollerball games actually depicted in the two-hour running time - does have a decent sense of momentum, carried by Caan’s charisma, but also his support cast, the striking Hensley and Trentham offer as much as they can, despite their thankless roles, as does Jonathan’s buddy and teammate Moonpie (John Beck), one of many who, none-too-surprisingly, sport a mo’ (sorry, it slipped out again).

Rollerball, in its day, would have been very much the kind of science fiction movie for those that don’t usually watch sf movies, particular as it was sold on its cold-blooded, visceral nature. It’s a violent movie, but tame by today’s standards. Curiously, the 2002 remake, directed by John McTiernan, was originally written as a much more powerful movie, in terms of its intellectual, socio-political content, but McTiernan decided audiences would want a bloody, all-out action flick and delivered a hard-R movie, which bombed with test audiences, resulting in a heavily re-shot and re-edited PG-rated wipeout. Ahhh, the irony. 

I’m still hanging out for a remake of Solent Green and Logan’s Run, perhaps another go at Rollerball could be made; a complete overhaul in terms of design, whilst keeping the sharp socio-political edge of the original, and pushing the ultra-violence and nihilism into the extreme. Let’s face it, 2018 is just around the corner, so let’s get real. 

Rollerball is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Via Vision Entertainment, featuring two audio commentaries from director Norman Jewison and screenwriter William Harrison, a making of featurette - "Return to the Arena", plus trailers and teasers. 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne

Docteur Jekyll et Les Femmes | France/West Germany | 1981 | Directed by Walerian Borowczyk

Logline: In 19th Century London a homicidal sex maniac infiltrates an engagement party and begins to terrorise and assault the guests and hosts. 

Has there been a tale told more times on the silver screen than "The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde"? Perhaps only the tale of "Count Dracula" in all his undead guises, or perhaps that other elegant ghoul, the "Phantom of the Opera". Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, apparently penned in a cocaine-fuelled three-day frenzy, is a true fable of human times, vintage and contemporary; the moral grey that seethes and recedes in the mind, the carnal desires, the fear and hatred, the sensual beast, the fragile creature, the civilised and bestial, the tempered and berserk. 

The late Polish maverick and ciné provocateur Borowczyk delivered two great indulgences in aberrant eroticism, Immoral Tales (1974) and The Beast (1975), although he had been making films since the mid-40s, but it is this loose adaptation, yet tight in amoral conjecture, of Stevenson’sfamous novella that is his crowning achievement, despite its cramped interiors and stilted performances. It is a phantasmagorical pantomime of perverse proclivities!

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) is hosting a small soirée to celebrate his engagement to Miss Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro). The guests; various dignitaries, officials and relatives, including Fanny’s mother, have arrived at the doctor’s Victorian residence, which also houses his laboratory. They mingle and admire the artwork and ornamental weaponry, whilst the doctor discusses his will with colleague Dr. Lanyon (Howard Vernon). Should something happen to Jekyll, the will can only be disclosed to his confidante, Mr. Edward Hyde (Gérard Zalcberg), whom no one has seen. 

Shortly after there is a violent incident within the household; one of the guests, a young ballerina, has been found raped and murdered, and the vicious intruder assaulted Miss Osbourne, and is now on the loose. It is every man and woman for themselves. The poor butler outside is mistaken for the killer and shot dead by General Danvers Carew (Patrick Magee). The psychopath is definitely still inside. 

Soon, the identity of the fiend is revealed, but the real secret is yet to be exposed. Miss Osbourne is desperate to be reunited with her fiancé, but he inexplicably eludes her, and everyone else. He has retreated once again to his lab, and to the security of his precious cache of Solicor, the transcendental medicine that is feeding his hunger for sensory exploration and moral abandonment. 

Bororwczyk’s intended title, and the one that it originally screened under at Sitges Film Festival, winning him an award for Best Feature Film Director, was rejected by his producers who insisted it be known as Dr. Jekyll and His Women. But the substitute title is entirely misleading, as Mr. Hyde doesn’t discriminate, ravaging and ravishing both men and women within Dr. Jekyll’s labyrinthine abode. Hyde is entirely amoral and polyamorous. He is also a sadist and a sensualist. Jekyll and Hyde are a contradiction and a juxtaposition, further complicated by the feminine spanner in his masculine works, Miss Osbourne, who is determined not to lose her lover. 

It is startlingly erotic (Mr. Hyde displays his engorged, scarlet member a couple of times, most notably as he takes a consenting blonde guest from behind as she fondles a sewing machine in front of her!) and wonderfully atmospheric, filmed by Noël Véry with a delicious diffused light, on what seems to be an elaborate multi-level set, both interior and exterior. The action takes place over one night - in fact daylight never makes an appearance, for this is a narrative that forges through the night time of the soul. While the movie’s most memorable scene, it’s transformative centrepiece, takes place in Jekyll’s secret bathroom, where he fills his bathtub with water and empties a vial of the active ingredient into it, then, in a seemingly unbroken shot the twitching Jekyll submerges his naked body into the sepia water and re-emerges as the lascivious, snake-like Hyde. 

Borowczyk has grabbed his tale by the horns and straddles the beast with theatrical zeal and surrealist pleasure. Indeed, this movie is a beast unto itself, snarling and snorting. Succumb, and acquire its coppery, salty taste, letting yourself be ravished by its oneiric, ripe design, complete with Bernard Parmegiani’s magnificent, minimalist score, so desolate and seductive. Admire Udo Kier in, arguably, his greatest performance, be mesmerised by Zalcberg’s grotesquerie, and delighted by Pierro, her voluptuous innocence dissolving, her passion smouldering … their union congealing. 

Love is a cruel, raw fever.

“Long live the novelty of my sensations!” 

The Fan

Der Fan | Germany | 1982 | Directed by Eckart Schmidt

Logline: A teenage girl, obsessed with an aloof pop star, finally descends into the macabre extremities of her adolescent fantasy. 

Simone (Désirée Nosbusch) is in love with “R” (Bodo Steiger), a successful West German new wave pop star. It’s more than infatuation, it’s an obsession. She’s written and posted a love letter to him. She skips class to wander around town in a dissociative daze, daydreaming about interludes with her new romantic lover. She hangs around the post office and grills the postman for a return letter from her dream paramour. But to no avail. Simone must suffer her indifferent parents and the blandness of her life, without “R” close to her. 

“R” has announced an appearance in Munich at the local television studio where he’ll be filming his next music clip. Simone makes her way to Munich and, because she is so pretty and dressed so alluringly in her dark chocolate leather pants and pure white cotton blouse “R” is immediately drawn to her, away from the rest of the nondescript teenage hordes clambering for an autograph. Simone remains by his side as he does his “Top Pop” thing. She has managed to enter his inner sanctum, her idolatry now made flesh. 

Schmidt’s tale of para-social obsession and deranged pseudo-psychosexual behaviour is, indeed, a strange and studied affair. Curiously intimate, yet still detached, with few speaking parts, and glacial in its tone and mood, the narrative drifts in and out of Simone’s perspective, at one point even drifting into her open mouth, an enigmatic piece of symbolism. It’s a very stylised take on the psychological thriller, providing precious little in the thrills department until the last twenty minutes, when Simone and “R” are alone in a mostly empty apartment exploring each other. 

It is the full frontal nudity in this sex scene, and the scene immediately following, that provides the movie with most of its notoriety. Désirée was seventeen when the movie was released. At the time she was an opinionated and successful music show presenter on German television, whilst Bodo Steiger was a shy and reserved musician in the band Rheingold, who provide the movie with its sparse, Kraftwerkian electronic score. Schmidt was keen on the cross-casting, having been influenced by the films of fellow patriot Douglas Sirk, and there is a kind of inverted parallel between Schmidt’s dream of love gone awry and the highly stylised female-centric melodramas. 

The Fan is curious in many of its elements. It feels like a short film that has been stretched to feature length. The stilted performances, the camerawork’s short depths of field, and the lack of convincing special effects makeup make it feel like a student production lost in the wilderness. These are all limitations, yet together they create a very particular atmosphere, or void. It’s hard to shake the vibe of this movie, especially the ultimate unhinged intent of its protagonist. She is a diehard romantic, oblivious to the implications of the real world. Yet her parents are as “damaged” as she is. 

It is the movie’s epilogue that reveals a final truth, where the true horror and perverse beauty become one, and it is a bizarrely satisfying denouement. The Fan is quite unique in its deep trashiness. 

NB: The Fan’s working title was Trance, and it’s the title it was originally released in the UK as, shorn of about ten seconds from the sex scene. A recent, restored Blu-ray release, as The Fan, is uncut. 

The Neon Demon

Denmark/France/US | 2016 | Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Logline: After an aspiring young model arrives in Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by several beauty-obsessed women who are determined to get what she has.

Beauty may only be skin deep, but the dedicated must get to the flesh underneath in order to taste success. In Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest endeavour he has pulled apart the beauty myth with the claws of a cougar, and laid bare the throbbing heart of jealousy and spite. The Neon Demon is a feminine fable of murderous ambition fashioned as mischief and desire, and draped in the pulsating palette of a giallo. As “NWR” he has concocted a cinematic scent as rich and ripe as the stench of sex and death. Not surprisingly it is his most polarising movie to date. 

Jesse (Elle Fanning) is a sixteen-year-old, fresh-faced in the City of Angels, with a portfolio shot by keen Dean (Karl Glusman, from Gaspar Noe’s Love). The pics are amateur hour to the modelling agency head (Christina Hendricks), but Jesse's naiveté and je ne sais quoi still impresses enough to warrant a shoot with surly photographer whizz Jack (Desmond Harrington), meanwhile makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone) befriends her and takes the ingénue to a flash party where statuesque models Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote) take an instant indifference. That soon becomes dislike, and then the loathing is intensified when Jesse begins moving swiftly through the ranks, leaving Sarah and Gigi frothing in rage. 

“They say women are more likely to buy a lipstick if it's named after food or sex. Just think about it. Black honey, plum passion, peachy keen.”

Jesse is seduced by her tinsel dreams and wakes into a bewitching nightmare. 

Diana is the goddess of the hunt, of the moon, a giant eye watching in the night sky. Countess Bathory murdered dozens of nubile girls and bathed in their blood in order to stay young and beautiful. The perpetual mythology of vampirism, the dark magic of cannibalism, the eating of one’s enemies in order to consume their strength, the hunger for vitality in the fickle world of modeling. A city that eats its young, a city, not of angels, but of witches and demons. 

Refn has loaded his movie full of symbolism, but also abstraction and mystery. Like Lynch he’s less interested in trying to provide easy answers or simple meanings, and is more concerned and intrigued by cinema as a powerful vessel for sensory experience lost in an emotional wilderness. The manipulation of the ego is high on the agenda, as is sacrifice and humiliation. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world out there, as cruel and grotesque as it is beautiful and absurd. 

Much of The Neon Demon’s extraordinary effect comes from Natasha Braier’s stunning cinematography and Cliff Martinez’s elegiac, electronic score. The title sequence alone is mesmerising, but Martinez delivers a career best with his retro synth-laden soundtrack reminiscent of Vangelis’s score for Blade Runner, the sweeping, melancholy work of Jean-Michel Jarre, and the pulsating edge of Giorgio Moroder. When I think of images from the film I’m immediately soaked by the gorgeous chillwave of Martinez’s music. 

The four female leads; Fanning, Malone, Lee, and Heathcote, all deliver superbly. I’ve always been a fan of Malone’s work, but I must single out Lee here, as she expertly captures that hypnotic combination of immaculate beauty and haunted, desolate intent. Curious to note that both Lee and Heathcote are Australians. Keanu Reeves plays a mean-spirited, unsavoury motel manager, and while his narrative thread seems a little superfluous, in the bigger picture he plays his part to the hilt. The red herring that turns blue. Reeves makes me chuckle, you can spot him in a movie a mile away from the way he walks, like Frankenstein’s Monster, but he gives a solid performance here. Also of note, although uncredited, is Alessandro Nivola, as a fashion designer who thinks Jesse is the perfect specimen. He complains about plastic surgery, but insists that “beauty isn’t everything, its the only thing.” Much to the chagrin of Gigi, standing there, humiliated, feeling like a bionic woman who’s just had her cyborgian strength zapped. 

There will be blood. 

The Neon Demon is a lush and pristine dream, pierced by the jagged shards of a black magick nightmare. A bittersweet sensation that fills the mouth like hard candy, coated with the viscous coppery taste of blood. You might gag, you might swallow. The ripe Eurotastic taste is an acquired one, and if you savour it, the deep trash lure and allure has worked a charm, and like Lynch, the oneiric qualities have caressed your sensibilities and pulled you over into the triangular abyss. 

So, are you sex or food? 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

US | 1986 | Directed by Tobe Hooper

Logline: A former Texas Ranger involves a radio host and her colleague as he seeks revenge on the serial killing family that murdered his nephew.

“After a decade of silence … the buzzz is back!” shouted the tagline to one of the craziest, silliest sequels ever. Watching it again on its 30th anniversary it’s easy to see where the movie gets its cult following from, the outlandish, black sense of humour, the surreal vibe, and Tom Savini’s graphic special effects makeup. But the movie is as ripe for “deep trash” plucking as they come!

Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedlow), the Cook from the original movie, has taken top prize again at the local chili cook-off. He reveals, “It’s no secret, it’s the meat. Don’t skimp on the meat. I’ve got a real good eye for prime meat. Runs in the family.” His boys, Bo “Chop-Top” (Bill Moseley) and Bubba “Leatherface” (Bill Johnson), have been playing silly buggers again, but they’ve brought some juicy victims back to the family homestead, a huge subterranean lair beneath a disused Texas Battle Land amusement park. Along with L.G. (Lou Perryman), whom Leatherface promptly starts to flay, is L.G.’s spunky radio colleague Stretch (Caroline Williams), host of KOKLA's Red River Rock'n'Roll Request show. She’s hoping mad hatter Lt. Lefty (Dennis Hopper), the vengeful, armed to the teeth “Lord of the Harvest”, will arrive in time to save her.

Tobe Hooper and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) screenwriter Kim Henkel’s original storyline for the sequel featured an entire Texan township of cannibals running riot, but Golan-Globus and Cannon Films wanted something on a much smaller scale - especially considering they’d produced Hooper’s previous movie, Lifeforce, which cost $25m and bombed - and as such L.M. Kit Carson, who had penned Paris, Texas, the Breathless remake, and the rare Dennis Hopper doco The American Dreamer, was brought in (perhaps on Hopper’s suggestion??) to write something on a more modest budget. In the end the estimated $4.7m movie made $8m.

Although the sequel is a dark comedy (much more so than the black-as-midnight-on-a-moonless-night original movie), a satire of 80s greed and excess, of political correctness, the tone scene-to-scene is wildly uneven. The worst stuff features the two yuppies in the opening scenes, and Lefty’s early shenanigans, the best stuff comes with the later scenes in the underground lair, which occupies much of the movie’s running time. Dennis Hopper had Blue Velvet come out the same year, and it’s quite obvious which movie his heart is in (yup, apparently he thought Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was the worst movie he’d ever been in).

Meanwhile Stretch’s cool credibility vanishes as screeching hysteria envelopes Caroline Williams’ performance and she becomes almost intolerable, while the histrionics of the Sawyer family, from Leatherface’s silly jig, Chop-Top’s insistent head-plate scratching, and the Cook’s vacuous rambling and leering, veers wildly into Lampoonville. Yes, yes, it all adds to the nutty, bad dream fabric, but this becomes a very tight, uncomfortable fit by movie’s end.

The freaky, cartoon-esque, fetishistic element of Tobe Hooper’s sequel is one of its strongest hooks, highlighted by Cary White and Michael Peal’s elaborate production design and art direction, all beautifully lit by cinematographer Richard Kooris, whom Hooper originally wanted for the first movie. Savini’s sfx crew deliver some astounding work, most notably on the skinned L.G., Chop-Top’s metal head plate, and the Dick Smith-inspired old man prosthetic work on Ken Evert as Grandpa Sawyer. It’s a real shame two of Savini’s other set-pieces – yuppies having their heads chain-sawed in half – were either left on the cutting room floor, or poorly edited into the final cut.

The harsh reality is Hooper was given a very tight release deadline, needing to deliver something in just a matter of weeks. The rushed result is obvious, indeed the movie is a hot, sticky mess, but quite unlike any other horror of the day. It's not scary like the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, not in the slightest. It’s the kind of deep trash nubbin’ you relish like a red hot sauce on a gamey hot dog covered with oozing jack cheese. Wash it down with as many Lone Star beers and Wild Turkey shots as you can get your hands on. Then light a really big reefer. You’ll need it. 

"Cook's out here chewing ass like it was steak ... We gotta run for that money now! Chase that dollar, boy! Gotta go fast to catch it," squeals Chop-Top ... "It's a dog-eat-dog world and from where I sit there just ain't enough damn dogs!" mutters the Cook.

Under the Cherry Moon

US | 1986 | Directed by Prince

Logline: A con artist, working as a pianist in the Riveria, along with his brother, attempts to scam a beautiful young women out of her wealthy inheritance, but falls in love with her along the way.

Prince’s first foray into filmmaking was an abandoned project known as The Second Coming, which was to be a documentary-style movie incorporating footage from the 1982 Controversy tour with a storyline in-between the songs. A year later he was knee deep in the production of the Purple Rain album and movie, which became a huge success in 1984. Now Prince had a serious taste for cinema storytelling, and within a year he was entrenched in the making of the Parade album and his first movie as director, Under the Cherry Moon. 

There are vanity projects and then there are vanity projects like Under the Cherry Moon, with Prince starring as musician, womaniser, and diehard romantic, also a scam artist and prankster, and a clown to boot. All wrapped up in the extraordinary wardrobe design of Marie France and finished off with Champagne and extravagant facial expressions. Under the Cherry Moon is an opulent disaster, a failed romance, a mostly unfunny buddy flick, and a musical that never really takes off. But, it stars Prince at, arguably, the height of his excess and success, and the music is sensational, even if much of it is just snippets and excerpts from the studio recordings that feature on the Parade album, or the b-sides of the singles. 

“Once upon a time in France there lived a bad boy named Christopher Tracy …”

Christopher Tracy (Prince) and his brother (from another mother) Tricky (Jerome Benton) living the Nice, in the south of France, living it up big time as dirty rotten scoundrels, wining, dining (and no doubt sixty-nining) the scores of uber-wealthy women, such as Mrs. Wellington (Francesca Annis), who pass through the Riveria looking for a little love action. They’ve done pretty well for themselves, “pretty” being the operative word, as both these gigalos seem to spend more time preening themselves than they do laying the ladies. 

In fact, there is a curiously strong level of homoeroticism that exists between them. They prance and dance around like a couple of immaculate queens, calling each other “honey” and “darling”, Tricky even states he doesn’t need friends, he’s his own man, just like Liberace, while Prince pulls more duck faces than an iGen white trash trying to take a selfie. It’s rampant. But this is the imp’s style. He’s having fun. Maybe it’s the movie’s biggest scam? Anyone watching Under the Cherry Moon looking for serious drama and romance has come to the wrong town, this is a “comedy” of manners, a "wrecka stow", indeed! 

Mary Sharon (Kristen Scott Thomas) is about to have a lavish twenty-first birthday party and is set to inherit $50 million smackeroos. Christopher and Tricky learn of this event and gate-crash with the intention of wooing Mary and swindling her wealth. Both brothers vie for Mary’s attention, but it’s Christopher who wins her affection, and he falls head over four-inch-heels for her. Mary’s father,  Isaac (Steven Berkoff) is not impressed, and he makes certain Christopher doesn’t elope with his naive daughter. 

Christopher drives a huge white Buick convertible with the numberplate “LOVE”, and claims that he does nothing professionally, only things for fun. At the Venus De Milo club he sits at an ivory flake K. Kawai grand and tickles the ivories playing An Honest Man. He tangoes Mary on the club balcony to the crooning guitar of Alexa De Paris, he makes love to her on a coastal retreat to the sweet sounds of Mountains. 

Mary Lambert, at that stage only known for a couple of promo clips for Madonna, was the movie’s original director, but Prince had her fired after a week over creative differences. Warner Brothers felt comfortable with their star taking over the reigns, but apparently legendary cinematographer Michael Ballhaus supervised much of the mise-en-scene and camerawork, uncredited, and certainly the two editors Éva Gárdos and Rebecca Ross would’ve had their work cut out for them in post. 

I’m very curious about the screenplay though. It’s credited to Becky Johnston, and it was her first produced screenplay. She went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for The Prince of Tides, so she's capable, but I wonder just how much influence Prince would’ve had, even though he isn’t credited with any of the story or screenplay? Indeed, it's easy to pull Under the Cherry Moon's screenplay to pieces, but the performances are all over the show. Prince and Jerome appear to be playing themselves, and relishing it. Kristen Scott Thomas has nothing good to say about her experience, and as her feature debut she’d probably prefer to leave it off her resume. Originally Prince’s fiancée, Susannah Melvoin, was cast in the role of Mary, but it was apparent very quickly that she couldn’t act. It's obvious Kristen struggles with much of her dialogue, but her ripe delivery is nowhere near as bad as Steven Berkoff. Terence Stamp was originally cast as Isaac, but he quit two weeks into production. Wise decision.

Under the Cherry Moon is a movie for Prince fans and no one else, and in that purple light, it shines. There’s a small booty of Prince treasures to be found within it, such as Sheila E.’s Sister Fate record cover in Christopher Tracy’s bedroom, or trying to listen out for Old Friends 4 Sale (it’s listed in the end song credits, but no one can locate it), or watching how many times Prince drinks. 

And, let’s not forget one of the most hideous kisses in screen history when Christopher plants his chimp lips on Mary in the phone booth and smooches away like there’s no tomorrow. Ewwwww! 

But hey, it's the thirtieth anniversary of Under the Cherry Moon this week, and Prince passed away a couple of months ago. I'm still mourning. 

“We had fun, didn’t we?”