THE URANIUM CAFE

THE URANIUM CAFE PIN UP GIRL/SYLVA KOSCINA

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:17:51 PDT

THE URANIUM CAFE MATINEE/THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:29:56 PDT

Muscleman Ohro travels to the sinful capital of Atlantis to rebuke its godlessness and hubris and becomes involved in the battle against its evil lord Yoh-tar and his hideous super-science schemes.

SEE THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS!!

THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS

URANIUM WILLY'S BULLPEN: REMOVAL OF A FEW POPULAR POSTS HERE AND WHY

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:48:03 PDT

My most popular posts here had become some Mexican fumetti type magazine covers with really outrageous art. Three particular posts had raked in over 10,000 page visits between them, and two others along similar themes were about 6000 between them. That's a lot of traffic and yet earlier today I decided to permanently delete those posts. Why? One reason is the content was always a bit extreme for me and I even feared they may get my site one of those adult content warning pages Google hands out for much less. I did paginate the posts with <more> tags, so you had to click on the READ MORE link to see the juicy stuff, but I always had ambivalence about those five posts. Not that I am some prude but rather that I feel the blog overall is a PG-13 site, with a few R rated pics here and there. Those posts were pretty perverse and I felt they did not really fit in to what I might be trying to do over all. The posts were popular and I liked the stats and had even put together a couple new posts with complete interior art, but the interior art was simply pornographic, X-rated, and I did not want to deal with it. Again, I am not saying I am against that stuff but it did not really fit in along side my other posts on obscure horror and exploitation films, or the westerns and film noir stuff I dabble in here as well.

As well another popular post was taken down, and that was my post on Warren Magazine's one shot magazine about Heidi Saha. You can research who she was what the controversy around her was and still is. I offered up all the magazine pages for download and yet never felt 100% comfortable with it. I was not trying to pander anything controversial just to draw attention to my blog, but thought I was just sharing an obscure Warren Magazine that is hard to find and little known of. A link for that from em is still available on line as as some links for some fumetti with full interiors. That is at a mirror version of this site at Wordpress and yet I am not going to post that blog link here. It can be found I think with very little effort, as can those deleted posts in their entirety.I do not really maintain that site except as a sort of backup for my material here.

I think too I was disappointed that those freaky magazine posts became more popular than any of my movie posts. I put those fumetti posts up in a hurray and did little research, if any really, on them, and yet my top three posts of all time were those, with the other two fumetti posts being in the top ten as well. I was not happy with that. I am almost at 200 posts and am working with the image of the blog right now. The background experiment and new banner I have will not last. I like them, but they do not work with my "vision". The background will wind up over at Necrotic Cinema I think. I will work on some new kitschy banner for here or go back to what I was using before. Will be working more and more on movie posts and less on comic books and music stuff here. Will not stop those types of posts, but I want to focus, as I always have, on giving reasonable impartial reviews of truly cult type films, a good example being my last post on The Brainiac. I will be more particular about my deviations in the future.

THE BRAINIAC (EL BARON DEL TERROR)/1962

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:05:11 PDT

THE BRAINIAC (El Barón del Terror)

1962/DIRECTOR: Chano Urueta /WRITER: Federico Curiel, Adolfo López Portillo

CAST: Abel Salazar, Ariadna Welter, David Silva, Luis Aragón, René Cardona

NOTE: After a long dry spell I am back to doing some movie posting. Have quite a few things in the old draft folder and will start things off with a K. Gordon Murray gem from south of the border called The Brainiac. I expect to posting a bit more regularly for a while and will focus more on movies than some other things I veer off into here, like music and comic books. Not forsaken those categories as they tend to be pretty popular overall, but I enjoy researching and writing about these old and obscure films more. So, on to The Brainiac!

As time has gone on I have developed quite a liking for Mexican horror and wrestling (luchador or luchadora depending on the gender of the wrestler) films. I had long been aware of the film The Brainiac (El Barón del Terror) because of its movie poster. I finally found a copy online and have to say that this genuine cult classic from director Chano Urueta (a man with no less than 117 director credits to his name) is all it is built up to be, at least in the cheezy, camp classic departments. In fact I can’t imagine people who ordinarily hate “bad movies” would not have a half way decent time watching this one. What are some of the selling points? Really classic goofy dubbing (I have the dual audio version and preferred the dubbed track for its corniness) from the K. Gordon Murray outfit. Really wacky special effects and sets, including one of the worst comet depictions ever put to film. Really bad and consistently over the top acting, by some actors who typically could do a little better. Some truly horrific moments that catch you off guard. And last but surely not least, a monster that will leave the viewer nothing less than awestruck in it not only its campiness, but also its genuinely bizarre creepiness.

The movie follows one of the most tried and true formulas of films from the late 1950’s -in particular Bava’s Black Sunday- on in to the early 70’s; and that is the storyline of the accused and convicted witch –or warlock in this case- being burned alive at the stake and with their dying breath cursing the descendants of the people, or the entire townsfolk, responsible for their grisly deaths. I imagine somebody could run a blog on solely this one theme and have a near endless source of material to draw from. And of course the curse always takes place in the time of the film’s production and with the same actors who placed the accusers and executioners playing the descendants. They will have the same hairstyles and body weight and even identical mustaches. I think I have seen a half a dozen films of this type in the last couple months alone. In this case the evil Vetelius Destera (Abel Salazar) is sentenced to death for various heinous crimes by what appears to be some form of the Spanish Inquisition. He goes to the stake laughing and pulling pranks on the guards and, or course, laying down a curse on the various judges’ descendants. One of the judges is played by Mexican horror and luchador director Rene Cardona whose impressive credits include Dr. Of Doom, Night of the Bloody Apes Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (all reviewed here) and a few of the better El Santo films. In no time we are in 1961 and get to witness the return of Destera as he descends to earth in a comet, that is at times a 4th of July sparkler and at other times a cutout drawing. The evil baron emerges, for some reason, from the capsule as a bizarre looking alien that can take human form when necessary. Of course it takes on the form of the warlock Destera and is soon wrecking his vengeance on the unwitting descendants of the tribunal that was probably right about burning the Baron Destera alive in the first place.

The sets, both inside and out, fluctuate between looking like something from an Ed Wood Jr. film shows the inspiration and influence of Bava’s atmospheric Black Sunday. Some of the interior action takes place in what can only be called chill out tiki lounges. The kitschy mood these setting provide is perfect for the film. The Baron has the ability to hypnotize his victim into a state of stupor –often with unintentionally comical results as in the case of actor German Robles whose bugged eyes hypnotic state is one of the film’s high points- and then proceeds to transform into the hokey and yet unsettling creature that sucks the brains from its victims via a long forked tongue. The creature’s face pulsates in excitement and while the head is utterly oversized the Baron’s body does not seem to change in size or appearance at all, expect for his hands. While the guy’s are in this transfixed state the Baron usually kills off the beautiful female first, while the hapless man watches, frozen, and waits his turn. The whole mesmerizing sequences have a sort of surreal quality to them and at first I was not sure what was even going on, as in the case of German Robles and his priceless expression.

As I said before, there are a couple shocking moments as well that give a film a fairly sinister tone. In one case a woman finds her husband hanging upside down in the bathtub, his feet tied to the shower curtain frame and with his head submerged in the bath water, before she herself is dragged off pleading in vain for her own life. In another scene the Baron slips off while entertaining future victims for a quick snack of brains he keeps hidden away in an ornate trunk. And he eats the brains and we get to see this. It is actually a bit freaky and unexpected. The local police detectives are hot on the tail of the killer who is draining the aristocracy of their brains and show up in the nick of time with flame throwers –yes, flame throwers- to save the day. Lots of plump and beautiful Mexican beauties, above average camera work at times, campy but decent set designs and an unforgettable monster make this a must for fans of campy cinema, and of great campy Mexican cinema in particular.

PSYCHOTRONIC PERSONAS: K. GORDON MURRAY

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:52:31 PDT

(I remembered I had this unpublished post in my draft folder while preparing to review the Mexican horror film The Brainiac aka El Barón del Terror and decided I would finally get this up. Big fan of the Murray dubbed films and there will be more from this guy here in the future have no fear) Kenneth Gordon Murray was born in the American heartland of Bloomington Indiana in 1922. His father was a funeral home director and young Ken,or Kagey, spent much of his time in the company of local carnys and circus workers who camped in the Bloomington area during the cold winters. By the time he was a teenager he was running bingo parlors and getting the knack for smooth talking the authorities. By the end of the thirties Murray was getting his circus pals small roles in films through casting directors he knew. He help to cast several height impaired persons (midgets, dwarves, dwarfs or whatever they are called these days) in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. This would lead to him helping to cast circus folk for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. By thins time Murray had moved to Hollywood with his wife Irene and learned some of the ropes of film production. While hardly worthy to tie the boot straps of someone like DeMille this did not stop Murray from heading to Miami Florida to set up his own production company humbly called K. Gordon Murray Productions.

It is from Miami that Gordon’s company would import and redub over two dozen foreign films, mostly from Mexico. He redubbed Santo the Wrestler films here as the character Samson. I honestly thought it was a whole other character for the first half of Samson in the wax Museum. Then my Sherlock Holms type reasoning kicked in and I thought, “just how many silver masked wrestler detectives from Mexico were there?” In no time I deducted that Murray had simply changed Santo to Samson. I was proud of myself for that one. I finally got in a copy of Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Monsters and will watch it eventually and do a post on it. His films are rather obscure and hard to find. He reissues them under various titles and most slipped off into public domain oblivion since he failed to manage them or even copyright many of them. Later the IRS would seize what films of his they could get their claws on and that only added to the difficulty in finding suitable prints of many of his imported and original films.

His films fall roughly into three categories. His imported and redubbed films, usually Mexican wrestling and horror movies. Then there are his fairy tale films that earned him the title of King of Kiddie Matinees. A couple of his more noted kiddie titles were Santa Claus, which enjoyed a long and lucrative run, and Puss and Boots,which I would love to see because I have read it is simply an abominable production. The last category consists of about a dozen original exploitation type films like Shanty Tramp which had an X rating. All told Murray released some 60 production that many people feel are almost all true cult classics. Almost impossible to find many of the any more, though Something Weird Video is releasing many that have thought long lost. Almost all are lacking in any real quality or even enthusiasm. The dubbing of the films (such as the Santo ones I have seen) are often quite hilarious. In fact I recently started watched Santo and the Diabolical Brain (considered one of the best ones) and it was subtitled and it just did not seem as cool as the cheaply dubbed Wax Museum one I had watched the night before. As silly as they sound Murray basically “invented” the looping style of dubbing that evolved into the system still used in modern pictures.

Somehow his names winds up in occult circles as well. Reportedly there are Satanic like cults built up around his films. I read this on the site dedicated him called Welcome to the Wonder World of K. Gordon Murray, which was supposed to be the title of a children’s themed TV show he did not get off the ground. He seems to be a real genuine independent film maker and gimmick maker. Not too much about him on the net though. I can only find this one picture which I edited because it was so washed out looking. There is a documentary on his life and films that is to be available soon and there is some info on that online, but again, not too much. He was just one of those crazy, workaholic film makers that the stuff of legend is made of. True film making legend. Expect a post on Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Monsters shortly K Gordon Murray and other gems that would have never seen the light of day (at least not with goofy dubbed English dialog) had it not been for his vision.

THE URANIUM CAFE VIDEO CAPTURE COLLECTION: THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 01 May 2012 18:15:10 PDT

THE URANIUM CAFE PODCAST: EPISODE 04

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:11:25 PDT

Had quite a few technical issues with getting this new podcast up and it almost did not make it. But in the end it made it. Not much here -as is typical I guess- other than me babbling about why I have not been doing podcasts or posting much recently. Some looking through my draft folder and bitching abut the quality of consumer goods here in China. Happy to be back podcasting and great that some issues with link enclosures and the new Blogger interface have been worked out. Hope to be doing more with podcasting here and at Necrotic Cinema. Some freaky glitch too when I tried to upload to my hosting page at Internet Archive but switched browsers and all that is okay for now. Some new posts in the works and hope this little podcast satisfies a few hungry souls out there. Not very focused but neither are most podcasts I listen to and yet they can be entertaining nonetheless.

THE URANIUM CAFE PODCAST: EPISODE 04
DOWNLOAD AND/OR EMBED THE PODCAST HERE

TWO NEW SIDE PROJECTS LAUNCHED: PROJECT TERROR and MIASMA INC.

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:47:17 PDT

CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO GO TO THE SITE

I have not been too active here at the The Uranium Cafe for a few reasons. One might be some slight burn out. That comes and goes. Plenty of stuff to write about and pander and will be getting around to that shortly. Spent some time transferring Necrotic Cinema over to this account and need to get some new posts going there, but some other blog stuff going on as well. Figuring out some new recording software and working with some music recordings (and the weird world of VSTs) and hope some of that will eventually be of a share worthy quality. Much of it is just fooling around, but may be some material worth sharing. While doing that stuff and moving Necrotic I went ahead and set up a music related site I have been wanting to launch for a while now. The site name is Miasma Inc. and it a term I use for my music projects and basically is an umbrella for all my blog projects. I will be just posting whatever comes to mind there that is music related and will be hosting original music there as well. I have an old Youtube site that is for some music and video projects and I will revive that and link it up to Miasma Inc. eventually.Not much there yet but please drop by and follow it if you want. Some stuff already up. I will continue to do some music posts here but may decrease those type of posts here at the Cafe and just link to posts over there. or, I may not since my music type posts here are some of my most popular. Who knows what will happen. May share posts between sites as well. Why not, right?

The other project is my Project Terror blog. It is a thing I have also had in mind for a while. Simply an image blog. Poster. Stills. Lobby cards. Trailers or full length films, and basically no text. I have seen some blogs that do this I really like the way they look. Can be something to do when I am not in the mood to write. I have lots of images here on my hard drive worth sharing, and in particular movie posters. May be putting up screen capture posts, both original and stuff I find online. Will try to only use what I think are good quality and harder to find images. Again, some stuff there. No traffic or followers to speak of. Only my buddy the blog legend King Ghidorah so far. But some cool stuff there so far I think and I like the way the site has developed in only a couple weeks or so. So while I have been remiss in updating my site here, my number one site and love, I have not been just lying around on my ass all day either. okay, I have been doing that too. But I have been up to some new stuff and plan on being back here shortly with some new material.

PLEASE SUPPORT AND FOLLOW NECROTIC CINEMA AT HER NEW HOME

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:45:12 PDT

As many of you (at least two or three of you, but in the horror blog world that is a lot) know I have struggled with another blog called Necrotic Cinema with varied degrees of success. The degrees tend to hover closure to failure really for several reasons. I have been trying to correct that for a while and recently decided to take a huge step and move the blog from the Blogger account it was hosted on to this, with The Uranium Cafe and the as yet to be revealed Project Terror site. That is in the future and more info on that as it develops. A couple problems I had not seem like was simply logging in and out of that account all of the time, when this is my primary account. Does not seem like that would matter but it does really. Another is that that account had some products shut down by Google, in particular my Picasa Pictures and my Youtube account. Guess that could happen again here too if I am not careful but I am going to try and be a good boy now.

Necrotic Cinema is my modern horror movie blog, with focus on films made after 1990 but with slasher style films from the 1980's showing up there as well. The 80's is the period where films clearly shift from Uranium Cafe type posts to Necrotic Cinema posts, but there is some blurring of the lines of course. But shyte, who the hell even cares. The real issue here is to get the blog up here at this account (it is now) and get on with some films reviews. The focus there, as well, is on reviews of films and eventually some essays on horror films and culture. No comic books or music there, though I want to try and launch a podcast cast from there (one successful test podcast so far). I watch a lot of newer horror films and I am not some guy stuck in the past with b/w giant insect movies. I watch lots of mainstream films as well but doubt I will ever do a mainstream blog as it would take my time and energy away from these two projects, which I neglect all too often as it is.

If you would, be so kind as to check out NECROTIC CINEMA for my slightly different approach to horror movies reviews.

THE URANIUM CAFE PINUP GIRL/KATJA CINTJA

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:37:02 PDT

THE URANIUM CAFE MATINEE: THE CREEPING TERROR

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 06:23:10 PDT

A creature that looks like a cross between a Chinese dragon puppet and the Pope sucks up people into its maw. A sheriff, his wife, and a "handsome" scientist battle it to the end, with a sub plot about the evils of bachelorhood.

SEE THE CREEPING TERROR RIGHT HERE >>

THE CULT CLASSIC THAT CHANGED THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY!

THE CREEPING TERROR

THE SADIST/1963/ARCH HALL JR.

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:33:02 PST

THE SADIST

1963/Director: James Landis/Writer: James Landis

Cast: Arch Hall Jr., Helen Hovey, Richard Alden, Marilyn Manning, Don Russell

AKA: SWEET BABY CHARLIE

I have been hurt by others. And I will hurt them. I will make them suffer like I have suffered.

Charlie Tibbs

Most all of the movies here The Uranium Café (though not all) are low budget and/or obscure films that I have learned to have some degree of respect for. If a movie is simply too bad or has no special qualities that helps them transcend their b-movie (or z-movie) status I do not do anything with them here. That’s does not mean anybody will like them of course. I love the ted V. Mikles film Astro Zombies as well as Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein, though most people just do not see anything redeeming in them at all. Sometimes a film exists out there that undeservedly gets lumped in with those odd sorts of z-movie schlock. Either they end up in the same category through “guilt by association” or by the fact they were drive-in movie fair at best when they were released. And yet truth be told sometimes they are pretty good movies and deserve much more recognition than they have garnered over the decades. Such is the case with 1963’s The Sadist, produced and distributed by Arch Hall Sr.’s Fairway International Pictures, and starring Arch Hall Jr. in what is surely his most memorable film role from his brief acting career. He would soon quit acting altogether and pursue his real dream of being an airplane pilot, and on the side would be a rock singer and later novelist.

Surely the film was a bit ahead of its time in its portrayal of young thrill-killers on a road rampage. No doubt inspired by the headlines out of Nebraska at the time that told the story of young killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate –the models for characters in later films such as Badlands and Natural Born Killers- The Sadist was an exploration of new types of horror that was emerging in American cinema. While monsters and mutant insects were still popular, the new type of terror patterned after Hitchcock’s 1960 genre masterpiece Psycho seemed to focus on the real dangers in the world, with stories of strange, twisted killers –presented as confused teenagers or nerdy, withdrawn hotel clerks- that were often lifted from headlines of the day. In the end nobody believes insects exposed to radiation will grow to enormous proportions and invade a small town, but everybody lives with the terror of being the victim of some deranged maniac who kills either because he is driven to do it by “inner demons” or because he just likes it. The Sadist is an unsettling film and a couple cases the violence jolts you in way that not too many films up to that time had been able to do.

Before going into an examination of the general story one cannot ignore the influence of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (credited in his early films as William Zsigmond). The name is more familiar to people who like to read the credits with movies like Close encounters of the Third Kind and The deer Hunter. But Zsigmond got his early experience working with b-movie auteurs like Ray Dennis Steckler (who appears to gotten his start working with Arch Hall Sr. himself) and Al Adamson. The Sadist is his first American film and it is quite an accomplishment, and much better than some of his later 60’s film work, like Psycho A Goo Go or Satan’s Sadists, to name a couple I can remember seeing. He uses black and white here to great effect. All the action takes place in a junk yard and that could be something that could get stale really quick, but it never really does. The camera moves around from various angles and sometimes we are inside a car looking out through a cracked, bloody windshield or we are staring down the barrel of a .45, feeling the helplessness of the victims in the film. At times he employs the use of a handheld camera that shows more restraint and experience than most all of the directors who the technique nowadays. If you like to study camera angles and lighting and how the camera can make a scene work (or ruin it) then you will not be disappointed in this one.

And that brings us to the story and acting. It was written and directed by James Landis, who does not have much credit under his belt and wrote mostly for TV, and did a couple other features with Arch Hall Jr. (Deadwood ’76 and the Nasty Rabbit, both which I now have but have not seen yet) before seemingly vanishing from the movie making scene, despite showing great ability with this feature. In particular he was able to help Arch Hall Jr. through coaching and rehearsing to help develop the truly despicable character of Charlie Tibbs. In the book I Walked With A Zombie, actor Richard Alden (character Ed Stiles in the film) tells Tom Weaver working with Landis was great to work with though Landis seemed to be a real outsider and not good at “kissing ass”. Most of the cast, other than Hall Jr. and Landis had little or no prior acting experience. Marilyn Manning had played along Arch Hall Jr. in Eaagh!, while Helen Hovey was Arch Hall Jr.’s cousin and Don Russell was not an actor, rather a friend of the Hall family it seems. He did do some further work with ray Dennis Steckler in front of and behind the camera and seems he directed a 60’s “nudie” film called Tales of a Salesman with an uncredited Zsigmond doing the camera work. But still, like the rest of cast (except “outsider” Richard Alden, who had to actually audition for his part as he was not a friend or member of the family) none were actual movie world people. At yet they all give fine performances (in particular Helen Hovey in her only screen appearance ever) under Landis’ direction. His script is filled with great lines of dialog of a near Jim Thompson quality. Too bad he did not make a few more films like this, but in the end we have this one great film to remember him by.

(SPOILER ALERT!) In The Sadist three school teachers are headed to a Dodgers baseball game in Los Angeles when they have automobile trouble. They pull into a service station and junk yard in the middle of the countryside only to find nobody is available to help them repair their broken water hose. They banter on about baseball, with Carl Oliver (Don Russell) trying in vain to explain the rules to clueless Doris Page (Helen Hovey). Sweet Doris blushes as fit Ed Stiles (played by Richard Alden who pumped weights regularly on the set t seems) takes off his shirt and begins working in one of those Archie Bunker sleeveless type t-shirts. Things seem a little eerie and out of place and they wonder where the owners and crew could be. An answer is soon provided the form of snickering and gun wielding Charlie Tibbs (Arch Hall Jr.) and his girl friend Judy (Marilyn Manning, who utters not an audible sound in the film but rather whispers everything into Charlie’s ear).

The pair is soon terrorizing the trio and forces Ed to continue working on the car, hiding little intention as to what their fate will be after his work is complete. There is plenty of sharp and most of the time clever dialog back and forth between Ed and Charlie. When Carl tries to reason with Charlie his promptly pistol whipped. Charlie is really on edge with the fact that the three are teachers, and that teachers have never thought too highly of himself or Judy, so why should he think highly of them in return. He takes pleasure in degrading Doris, making her eat dirt. In a scene that is shocking even by today’s standards he shoots Carl right in the face, after taunting him slowly while drinking a soda pop to cool off from the heat. The scene is very surprising and you just don’t see it coming (unless you have read this review first and I’ve spoiled it for you, sorry about that). It may be the first such scene in movie history, or at least where it is so graphic. You see poor Carl’s head take the impact. After this Ed and Doris know they are done for and Ed does what he can to stall Charlie. But Charlie ain’t having none of it. He lets know Ed he is dead one way of the other, but he live a little longer so long as he is fixing the car, but he had better hurry it up.

The tension in the scenes never really wears out as Ed and Doris stand off the best they can against the two thrill-killers. (I am not sure, but this may be the first film to coin the term thrill-killers. If anybody knows of a prior film to use the phrase please let me know and I will amend this.) Things shift gears when a pair of motor-cycle cops arrive to get gas. Charlie dispenses them without much problem, but it changes the situation enough to finally give Ed and Doris a chance to get free. After getting a face full of gasoline Charlie accidentally shoots Judy and Ed and Doris flee into the junk yard. Charlie is soon playing cat and mouse with them, but he has a gun and they are basically defenseless. The scene could grow tedious but the fine camera work keeps it going. Ed is often criticized as being a wuss but in fact he does the best he can do against a maniac with a loaded gun. In the end he almost even gets his hands around Charlie’s neck, only to be gunned down as he charges the killer lion a bull. It is good scene and we are rooting for Ed as Charlie’s gun start clicking on empty shells, but we all forget, as does Ed, that Charlie picked up and extra gun from the cops he killer earlier.

It is not a big surprise that Charlie gets what is coming to him as he chases Doris through the desert hills. But it is not the justice we really want. We want Doris to run a stick through his eye or something, but instead Charlie accidentally falls into a pit of rattlesnakes and is bitten over and over. Like the gun scenes that used live ammo, the snake scene used live venomous snakes and Arch Hall Jr. was none too thrilled with the situation. In the end Doris survives by a fluke of fate more than final girl skills and appears distraught and disoriented as the film closes. For a moment the film seems to go in the direction that Doris may meet a dealt end and that Charlie would survive to go on killing without Judy. But it ends the way a movie like this normally should end, with evil being stamped out and good prevailing but being pretty roughed up.

The film is full of little twists and surprises. Not the least of the surprises is the freaky performance by Arch Hall Jr. himself. Prior to The Sadist he had played fairly safe roles, good guys in Wild Guitar and Eaagh!, and a juvenile delinquent with a conscience in the Choppers. But here he goes all out and his over the top performance adds to the believability of Charile Tibbs rather than detracts from it. At first his squeaky voice and strange grimacing seem comical and you wonder what is going on, but by the time he blasts the begging Carl in the face with a .45 slug you have become fairly uncomfortable with the character. And while Judy is seemingly mute she is also dangerous and appears to goad Charlie on with whispered suggestions. Of course like movies of this caliber and budget there are some problems and this or that, in 20/20 hindsight, could have been done better. But those issues, as far I am concerned, are so few and far between I see no reason to mention them. Maybe you have heard of this film and have yet to get around to it since you associate Arch Hall Jr. with things like The Nasty Rabbit or Wild Guitar (which is a good movie too in my opinion) and think he is not able to carry the role of a “sadist” for an entire film. But the man does a great job, as did all the players in crew in this sadly over-looked and under appreciated thriller.

>>SEE THE SADIST AND THE CHOPPERS HERE<<

>>LISTEN TO SOME AUDIO CLIPS FROM THE SADIST HERE<<

LITTLE ANNIE FANNY/HARVEY KURTZMAN

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:32:34 PST

I was a mere lad when Playboy was being published in the 60’s and I usually got glimpses of the magazine when my brother’s and I went back to Paris Kentucky to visit my dad’s in the summer. It was actually at my weirdo cousin Allen Kenny’s house we found the magazines and look through in awe in the innocent days before pubic hair was even shown. One feature I always gravitated to was the amazingly drawn (painted actually) comic strip Little Annie Fanny that appeared in periodic issues. The strip was the creation primarily of former MAD magazine editor Harvey Kurtman who later enlisted fellow EC artist and writer Will Elder when the chore of meeting Playboy’s publication demands became too much for one genius alone. The strip was a development of Kurtman’s beaver Goodman Beaver comic strip that got him sued by the Archie Comics creators. But it got him connected with Playboy and got the attention of Hefner who gave Kurtzman creative freedom with the storyline so far as Playboy’s standards of perfection were met. They were met and exceeded by the painstakingly intricate hand painted panels and socially astute satire. Few comic strips have ever come close to achieving what Little Annie Fanny did in terms of presentation and content. And it happened, for the most part, during the sixties and the naive Annie drifted in a daze from one swinging adventure to another and never seems to (totally) lose her innocence, though she always lost her clothes. The strip was an obvious parody of the Little Orphan Annie strip by Harold Gray and Little Annie Fannie even proclaims “Leapin’ Lizards” in tough situation as did Little Orphan Annie. The strip was all but over by the 70’s though she made occasional Kurtzman/Elder penned appearances up to 1988. She made a reappearance in Playboy in the 90’s but as Kurtzman had died in 1993 it simply was not really the same. And by then Playboy itself had lost much, if not all, of the magic it had in the sixties.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS POST

SHERLOCK HOLMES/JEREMY BRETT

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:03:02 PST

Until only recently I had never seen a episode of the British television production, by Granada Television, of the 1984 to 1994 Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett as Conan Doyle’s master sleuth and David Burke and Edward Hardwicke taking turns at Dr. Watson. There were a few reasons for this that I will go into but in the end I think I may have been simply hard headed and biased towards anyone playing the role other than Basil Rathbone. But that is not the only reason and as time has gone on I can see some flaws in the Rathbone films, though not in his particularly perfect portrayal of Holmes. I picked up the boxed set a month or so ago and at the same time begin reading some of the stories in my two volume collection of the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes that I keep on my bedside table.

I went into the series with some skepticism, but not to the degree I went into the new Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. interpretation. My main concern was not with Jeremy Brett, who I knew nothing off other than his performance is praised, but with the fact it was a British TV production. I typically do not like British TV shows, with exceptions of course, simply because of the way they look. The sets usually look like sets and the camera work looks washed out, as if it were all shot on video rather than film. For all I know it may be. Sometimes the camera work is in and out of focus and the sound quality is flat at best. More like something you would see on PBS (which is where this version of Sherlock Holmes wound up) than on American prime time or cable, and not to say what shows up on US TV is really better in substance but is usually better in form than most British TV which is in opposition to the usually above average British cinema. While the visual quality was better than lets say Fawlty Towers (which I think is a superb comedy) my worries were soon confirmed and I had to force myself through to the end of the first couple episodes I watched but soon I was hooked by Brett’s riveting interpretation. Brett brought life to the Holmes character in a way I have moved over into my reading. The character I imagine still looks like Basil Rathbone for the most part but has more animation and emotion than before thanks to Jeremy Brett. Brett appeared to have a hard time after a while with leaving Holmes on the set and certainly suffered from the intensity he put into the role. He had personal issues as well dealing with manic depression and eventually persistent despair following the death of his wife. Brett, who died in 1995 from heart failure, was considered a kind and warm hearted man with a charming sense of humor. He hid these personal qualities in order to create the near misanthropic character of the brilliant but egotistical Sherlock Holmes whose passion for his work process rather than his love for mankind drove him onward.

I now have completely arrived at a state where I am not worried about how the series was shot and for the most part have changed some of my old opinions about the look of British TV shows. It all seems to work out fine. The show also addresses and corrects two major problems I always had with the Basil Rathbone films. First the series puts Holmes back into Victorian England where he rightfully belongs. The Rathbone films took the extreme liberty of making Holmes contemporary to 1940’s England and even created stories where he dealt with Nazi’s. To be fair at times the scenes in the film had a look and feel that slipped in and out of eras and certainly Rathbone’s Holmes was a man of the 19th century. But an even larger issue with the Rathbone films was the portrayal of his biographer, professional associate and only true friend Dr. Watson by Nigel Bruce. Now as a film partnership the dichotomy created by Rathbone’s shrewd and logical Holmes and Bruce’s simply bumbling and clueless Watson is great. I do not hate the way it comes off at all, but being a fan of the stories I always felt that Bruce’s Watson came nowhere close to the man in the story who actually assisted Holmes in the solving of the cases. Bruce’s Watson is usually shown mumbling to himself and essentially being intellectually worthless to Holmes. Burke and Harwicke present a Watson that is more worthy of being Holmes’ closest human companion.

The series tries to stay as true as possible to the stories but with some liberties of course. I just watched The Dancing Men and The Speckled Band and found them to be extremely close to the written stories. The series also touches on Holm dependence to various drugs such as cocaine and morphine during times when he has no work or a conundrum to solve with his exquisite mind. I certainly regret that my biases kept me from watching these shows until now but I am delighted that I finally got the series and have been watching a couple a night lately. I do not even know if I have the entire series or not since the information on the box and disc is in Chinese (I live in China for those who do not know) and I hope I have all the 41 episodes Brett did before his tragic death at 61 years old. Like Rathbone Brett’s performances as Holmes have become the roles that have defines his professional career, but what a grand thing to be remembered for. I can say with little reservation (but with fear of blasphemy) that Brett’s interpretation of Sherlock Holmes is the definitive one, even eclipsing Basil Rathbone’s brilliant performances. For what is worth coming in third place would be Peter Cushing in the atmospheric Hammer production of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Cushing did some more roles as Holmes for a BBD TV show as well as some radio broadcasts. Those TV shows are all but lost as the TV network reused the original tapes for taping other shows. I did manage to find a couple of the surviving episodes and will review those one day here.

PERFORMANCE/1970/JAMES FOX/MICK JAGGER

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:19:07 PST

PERFORMANCE

1970 / Directors: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg / Writer: Donald Cammell

Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton,

Amazingly this fairly historic and influential film was not released on DVD until February of 2007. It stars James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Palenberg. Palenberg also helped with writing some of the film script. Prior to Performance James Fox had played mostly proper English gentlemen of one sort or another. Here he convincingly plays the viscous and violent Chas, an East side London gangster who is the enforcer for boss Harry Flowers. Fox' s performance is chilling and has been cited as influential on the London gangster type that appear in the newer British crime movies by directors like Guy Ritchie. It is too bad Fox did not do more roles like this. In fact he would all but retire from acting after Performance and devote his energy to being an evangelical Christian, only appearing here and there over the years in films, most recently as Varuca Salt' s father in Tim Burton' s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The film itself was controversial at the time and Warner Brothers was shocked by what directors Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg delivered to them when they were expecting a pop-music movie similar to The Beatles A Hard Day' s Night. The film captured the darker feel of late 60' s period London and there is fairly graphic sex and drug use (some purported to be real). In one scene Anita Palenberg injects what we assume is heroin into her butt cheeks. Even by today' s "flexible" standards the scene is unnerving. There were rumors that Palenberg - who had dated Rolling Stone' s temperamental and star-crossed guitarist Brian Jones and then later became Keith Richards common law wife and mother of their three children - had an affair with Jagger during the filming. Neither have ever confirmed this and Palenberg has sharply denied it.

While Fox stretched his capable acting abilities and created the evil and yet ladish Chas, Jagger and Palenberg simply play themselves and yet it is a perfect balancing act between Chas' uptight and rigid sensibilities and Taylor and Pherber's "free love" and drug using inclinations. After Chas becomes a target of the mob he works for he goes into hiding while trying to escape the country to America where gangster like him are truly appreciated. He winds up staying in the bizarre and decadent household of reclusive rock star Taylor (played by Jagger) and his girlfriends Pherber (Palenberg) and Lucy (Michele Briton). Taylor does not warm up to Chas, but finally Chas convinces him that he needs a " Bohemian atmosphere " to hole up in for a short while. Chas and Taylor begin to get drawn into each other' s dangerous worlds and a twisted connection is formed. Pherber slips Chas some psychedelic mushrooms and Fox is soon wearing wigs and lipstick and searching his soul while grooving to some far out tunes. Jagger is great as the reclusive and jaded Taylor and performs a really good blues song on guitar in one scene.

The ending is somewhat odd and confusing but it seemed fitting really in this case. Normally I do not like a strange ending to a movie that leaves too many questions. The look and sound of the film is marvelous and it is supposed to have been the first full length film to employ what is known as the " cut-up technique " , formally used in literature by people like Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. It is the method of splicing random scenes together to create an effect of irregular yet seemingly purposeful continuity. It is a common technique in film anymore and you hardly think it is anything special now. The film had problems with release and distribution and was widely panned at the time of its release as lurid and exploitive (are those supposed to be bad qualities?), but has since went on to be considered one of the great films of British cinema. Some parts may seem dated, such as the strange synth tracks and experimental photography played at the beginning during a court room scene. Some other parts are ahead of their time even, for example a song sequence that predates MTV in the way it is done. It is tough and hallucinogenic at the same time. A hippie/gangster movie. Not a genre that was explored much. It does not become an " acid trip " movie in any way though some scenes have those elements.

Also check out Fox's excellent performance as Peter Marlowe in one of my all time favorite films, 1965's King Rat with George Segal and Tom Courtenay, about existence in Changi POW camp in Singapore during WWII. There will a post of that remarkable film coming soon.

Here is an article about the film showing the reactions to it in the early days and then how those opinions have changed. The statements are from the cast and crew.

As well here is a nice piece on James Fox from the Cinebeats blog by Kimberly Linbergs.

THE URANIUM CAFE MATINEE/THE VAGRANT/1992

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:53:58 PST

He's not just in your mind...he's in your house.

He's NOT home alone.

READ MY REVIEW OF THE VAGRANT OVER AT NECROTIC CINEMA HERE

THE VAGRANT

GIRLS WITH GUNS

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:58:11 PST

When I ran The Uranium Cafe over at my old and now defunct URL one of my more popular categories was my Girls with Guns. I am now reviving that category here and will try to be a bit selective with the images I post, as I usually am anyway. There is no shortage of girls and guns on the net but a lot of it simply is not really what I am into here. Does not mean those images are not cool or enticing, but they do have the kernel of uranium needed to make it here. They are typically cheap, and exploitative and sometimes simply degrading to women. Okay, not much different than what I am posting here, but some of mine are in black and white! Expect more as I have tons of this stuff. As always, enjoy.

THE URANIUM CAFE NECROFILES/THE GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW/MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND/SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED/THE SNOW CREATURE

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:26:45 PST

THE GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW

1959/Director: William J. Hole Jr./Writer: Lou Rusoff

Cast: Jody Fair, Russ Bender, Henry McCann, Paul Blaisdell

I am as big a fan of API films as any b-movie fan can be. Some of the best stuff of the 50’s and 60’s came out of the company. But Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow is nothing but a turkey and waste of time and all the more because it seemed like, going into it, that it was going to be something like the very entertaining Dragstrip Girl. The film runs a mere 65 minutes but the time is the only thing that drags in this mess since we only see a brief race at the beginning between two girls. The haunted house segment itself is not even introduced until the last 20 minutes of the film and plays no part in the previous 45. It is just sort of thrown in haphazardly and the movie wraps with a Halloween style party that also does not make much sense. Makeup artist Paul Blaisdell is the ‘ghost’. He dresses up in a slightly modified (sans boobs) She Creature costume and when his identity is revealed at the end he talks in the most annoy9ing falsetto voice you have ever heard and plugs a few other AIP films –something the company often did, plug one film from inside another- and whines and confesses he is haunting the place because AIP did not let him play the monster in some other films. I can’t imagine audiences of the time knowing who Blaisdell was or getting the ‘in jokes’. The longest 65 minutes of my life. The film does seem to earn it reputation as one of AIP’s truly worst films. And that is some dubious honor indeed.

MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND

1968/Directors: Gerardo de Leon, Eddie Romero/Writer: Reuben Canoy

Cast: John Ashley, Angelique Pettyjohn, Ronald Remy

Eddie Romero directed a trilogy of sorts of island movies. The first two were Terror is a Man (sometimes referred to as a very loose interpretation of the Island of Dr. Moreau. I do not have this film but am seeking it (NOTE: Since this writing I have gotten not only this film but all five, actually, Eddie Romero Island films in high quality AVI formats). I do have the 2nd film called Beast of Blood but I can’t locate it here in this mess but it will turn up one day. Mad Doctor of Blood Island is a super low budget story of chlorophyll blooded zombies on a tropical island and stars AIP regular John Ashley as the hero. The copy I have looks like hell but this film is pretty fun over all. A mad doctor with a limp, sexy island girls and ultra violent deaths –including disembowelments and beheadings- make up for the film’s shabby quality. I mean shabby even if you get a good copy and not one like I put together from Youtube and tried to restore with some software I have. Really annoying near vomit inducing camera work whenever the monster appears. Has to be seen to believed. The film was produced by Independent-International which also is the company responsible for unleashing most of those Al Adamson films on the world. Sadly coming from me that is a recommendation.

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED

1974/Director: Michael Findlay/Writers: Ed Adlum, Ed Kelleher

Cast: Alan Brock, Jennifer Stock, Tawm Ellis

Great title. Great poster art. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. A whacky college professor invites a group of students out to some remote island to confirm that a Yeti lives there (having got lost from the mountains of Tibet I suppose.) The students are treated to strange exotic foods and stories told by manservant Laughing Crow, who seems to be in competition with Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate for the coveted strangest manservant to a twisted master award. The editing and camera work is atrocious really and the acting –overacting more accurately- and dialog even worse. The Yeti is simply unbelievable and if you say to yourself “that looks like a guy in a fuzzy Halloween costume” you have unconsciously unraveled one of the film’s two surprise endings. I do not like to spoil all the surprise endings to an ‘interesting film’. So then nothing can stop me from disclosing that the other surprise ending is that the professor is actually part of a secret society of cannibals who lure students out to the island every few years to feast on them. For fans of z-movies only.

THE SNOW CREATURE

1954/Director: W. Lee Wilder/Writer: Myles Wilder

Cast: Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, Teru Shimada

This 1954 feature from United Artists may well be the very first Yeti/Abominable Snowman film. It may well have served as the inspiration for the much better 1957 film The Abominable Snow from Hammer. In this film however the Yeti is actually captured and transported back to LA where it escape from the refrigerator it is being kept in and runs amok in the sewers of LA. The film suffers from just too much dialog from the actors and not enough Yeti mayhem. The creature hurls a few stones but mostly we see it in the same repeated shot where it walks out of the shadows… the scenes cuts to the actors doing something… the it creature walks backwards into the shadows again. They must do this ten times during the movie. The yeti suit is really weird and I swear the thing has a square ass! Not as bad as Shriek of the Mutilated though and both films are for fans of Bigfoot/Yeti films.

THE URANIUM CAFE PINUP GIRL/BETTY BROSMER

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:25:46 PST

THE URANIUM CAFE AUDIO SAMPLES: THE SADIST

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:53:20 PST

In the process of preparing a post on one of my all time favorite films, and one that was a bit ahead of its time as we will explore shortly, 1963's The Sadist with Arch Hall Jr..One of several things that stands out in the film is the gritty Jim Thompson like dialog. Some of the exchanges between Hall's character, Charlie Tibbs, and the rest of the cast are just classic. In particular are the exchanges between Tibbs and school teacher Doris page, played by Hall's real life cousin Helen Hovey in her only, yet outstanding, film role. Right now getting some screen captures made and researching some back ground information on the film. Will probably have the post finished by tomorrow, but you can't rush a project like this. Glad to have received some encouragement on this from none other than Arch Hall Jr. himself and so the pressure is on. If we are lucky "Charlie Tibbs" himself share a few memories of his involvement in this great thriller. Lets keep our fingers crossed. For now check out some audio samples I put together and if if have not ever seen the film I am sure these will get you in the mood to check it out ASAP. You can sample the film here at The Uranium Cafe Matinee actually, but you need to get this film on DVD as the soundtrack and cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond can not be fully appreciated in streaming format. These are from Public Domain versions of the film from The Internet Archive and I think a restored and impressive Blu-Ray version is now available from Johnny Legend's DVD company is available here. Or Johnny, to avoid confusion, has given permission for interested fans and potential customers to contact him directly at his email and he will clear up and question about products there: johnnylegendrocks@gmail.com

INTRO NARRATION

TITLE SONG

WHEN THE PLAYER SWATS THE BALL

ENTER CHARLIE

MORE AUDIO SAMPLES FROM THE SADIST:

HOW CAN YOU BE SO INHUMAN

YOU'RE NO MORE THAN AN ANIMAL

EAT THE DIRT! TASTE IT!

SCHOOLS OUT TEACHER

YOU HAD A CHANCE MISTER

MY MUSIC COLLECTION/BOBBIE GENTRY/NANCY SINATRA/FREDA PAYNE/THRILL KILL KULT

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:45:52 PST

A new category here that shifts away from movies and comic books and into music samples, featuring the often extremely varied music styles I have grown up with and loved all of my life. This first post features all female singers and mostly from the 60’s (Freda Payne’s Band of Gold was 1970 but it is close enough to include into the 60’s I think) except for one song from The Thrill Kult, featuring some vocals by New York poet, “cinema of transgression” style actress and performance artist Lydia Lunch. Like the posts we refer to as eye candy I am going to call this ear candy and not go too much in some sort of history behind each song. Could do something like that in another style posts someday. Suffice to say that all of these songs are great and not really that obscure. But lets be honest, sometimes with music too obscure is a euphemism for not very good really. Who knows what the next post may feature. Prog Rock? Black Metal? Psychedelic or Punk? For now let the girls wail away.

BOBBIE GENTRY - SON OF A PREACHER MAN

NANCY SINATRA - THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKIN'

FREDA PAYNE - BAND OF GOLD

MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT w/ LYDIA LUNCH - DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

URANIUM WILLY'S BULLPEN/SPECIAL NOTICE

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:37:28 PST

I enjoyed uploading and storing stuff at my Rapidshare account and had a a lot of stuff set to go up there and then share here. The issue though of file sharing in any form has gotten pretty nasty here of late and it came to my attention that Google could ban my site and cancel my account for posting links to file sharing services like RS. So, for now those days are over and where you would have seen a link to a Rapidshare file before you will now see this notice:

I am very concerned about the recent crack downs on the net with file sharing services and have learned that Google could easily ban my site and cancel my account for providing upload links to places like Rapidshare. Google is now monitoring it sites more closely I read and I do not want my site taken down for providing upload links. I did not think it was a big deal to do this but it seems like it can be. After the seizure today (2 Feb 2012) by the FBI of data at places like Megaupload I have decided to remove all Rapidshare links from my blog. Very sorry about any inconveniences this may cause.

I will try to figure out a way to share links but if and when I do it will not be on this site or this Google account, nor even at Blogger. I may set up a Wordpress site for something like this. I actually have a sort of mirror version of The Uranium Cafe at Wordpress I did as an experiment and all back RS links are there and active, though you would have to search them out until I can think of something else like a sidebar banner with link. But for now, here at Blogger, I will just get on with blogging -as I am sorely behind on several posts in the draft folder- and not worry too much about it, though I hope all of this mess does not get too out of hand. Living in China I have come to rely on places like Rapidshare for things I would not be able to see or hear otherwise. Lets wait and see.

THE URANIUM CAFE MATINEE/DEVILS OF DARKNESS

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:31:49 PST

He's a Vampire with a Cult Following.

What Was This Sinister Evil That Robbed the Dead...And Killed the Living?

SEE DEVILS OF DARKNESS RIGHT HERE >>

Devils of Darkness from Bill Courtney on Vimeo.

DEVILS OF DARKNESS

THE URANIUM CAFE NECROFILES/EEGAH/WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET/UNTAMED YOUTH/THE BLACK SCORPION

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:16:55 PST

EEGAH!

1962/Director: Arch Hall Sr./Writers: Bob Wehling, Arch Hall Sr.

Cast: Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, Richard Kiel, Arch Hall Sr., Ray Dennis Steckler

Eegah! Was a vehicle by Arch Hall Sr. that was to help launch his son into acting and singing stardom. Maybe that did not really work out but Arch Hall Jr. was involved in a handful of pretty interesting film projects that include one of my favorites, the 1963 film The Sadist. He was never going to be the next Frankie Avalon or Elvis as his dad may have hoped for but whose to say that was ever the plan anyway. Eegah! (or sometimes just Eegah so you don’t get confused) was produced by Hall Sr.’s Fairway-International Pictures out of Burbank CA and features Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond flick the Spy Who Loved Me) as a caveman who has been living on a diet of sulpheric water that has kept him nearly immortal. He roams the mountains on the outskirts of Palm Springs and one day kidnaps Roxy Miller, one of those 30 something teenagers, who, along with boyfriend Tom Nelson (Hall Jr.) went searching for her father (played by Hall Sr.) in the desert. Her dad was out there to confirm the existence of said caveman and himself wound up it captive. Soon Eegah is being shaved and eating lather and putting some pretty forward mating moves on poor Roxy who keeps trying to distract him by wanting to look at his ‘etchings’. The films features a then unknown (and basically still unknown) Ray Dennis Steckler –who also worked as the cameraman- in a small part towards the end of the film. Steckler would later do Wild Guitar for Hall Sr. -appearing, I if I remember right, in the film under his actor name Cash Flagg- and have his The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Distributed by Hall Sr.’s Fairway-International. Hall Sr. just had that God-given gift for spotting young talent I guess.

WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET

1966/Director: Arthur C. Pierce/Writer: Arthur C. Pierce

Cast: Wendell Corey, Keith Larsen, John Agar, Irene Tsu

Directed by Arthur C. Pierce (Mutiny in Outer Space) and starring John Agar (the same year he did Larry Buchanan’s Zontar, the Thing from Venus) and Wendell Corey (Rear Window, Astro-Zombies), Women of the Prehistoric Planet is supposed to be, I have read, an attempt to deal with civil rights issues in the mid-sixties. Luckliy the film makers did not cast black actors as the ‘prehistoric’ inhabitants of a lost planet –that winds up being named Earth at the film’s end by the astronauts…ooohhh, what a clever twist that was- and instead decided to cast Asians as the Centaurians. Incredibly these alien Asians often talk in short little wise proverbs the way Asian always did in old films. The tag line - “It’s the battle of the sexes as savage planet women attack female space invaders!” is infamously misleading as nothing of the sort ever happens. The words “women of…” were added to the original title of The Prehistoric Planet by producer Jack Broder and some scenes of bathing native women were added –though the scenes are available only in the hard to find foreign release of the film and in the American trailer- and no combating prehistoric women are to be found. We do get see iguanas fried by ray guns and listen to long winded 60’s sci-fi style explanations about the effects of traveling at the speed of light but not one prehistoric woman cat fight. Wendell Corey slurs and mumbles his sentences and Agar is looking more and more uncomfortable in his films roles. Pretty hokey fun.

UNTAMED YOUTH

1957/Director: Howard W. Koch/Writers: John C. Higgins, Stephen Longstreet

Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson, John Russell

Most of the ‘great’ juvenile delinquent films were put out by the smaller independent studios like AIP and Allied Artists but big guys Warner Bros. put out the JD/rock-n-roll hybrid film Untamed Youth which seems to be little more than a showcase for Mamie Van Doren’s various tight, bouncy knit sweaters. The film looks and feels like an AIP production and features a cast of familiar faces to the JD films of the time, which while tame by today’s wanton standards were often to difficult to distribute with their themes of unwanted pregnancies, reefer use and good boys gone bad. The ‘kids’ in this film are really bad at all and are hauled off to a cotton farm top do cheap labor for the farm’s corrupt owner Russ Tropp (John Russell). Cotton picking gets boring and so sometimes Eddie Cochran starts playing air guitar and doing a poor man’s Elvis while the gang snaps their fingers and shimmy their hips. At night they all mill around the barracks and watch girl with satrs in eyes Penny Lowe (Van Doren) slink around like a stripper and sing les Baxter penned rock tunes that all sound like a Carl Perkins’ rock-a-billy tune. The old looking teens are stereotypes from every teenager film from the time and there is not much real action outside Van Doren’s cheesy song numbers. For JD fans only.

THE BLACK SCORPION

1957/Director: Edward Ludwig/Writers: David Duncan, Robert Blees

Cast: Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas

One of my favorite manly heroes Richard Denning (Creature from the Black Lagoon) manages to romance sultry Mara Corday (The Giant Claw) while, at the same time, finding time to save Mexico from giant scorpions unleashed from the earth’s depth by a volcanic eruption. The scorpions were designed by Willis O’Brian and many of the other monster in the film were ‘left-overs’ from unused scenes from the original King Kong. The greatest menace in the film is not the hungry scorpions (who all have straight white teeth!) or the other subterranean creatures but the little brat Juanito (Mario Navarro) who manages to screw up every imaginable situation trying to be a ‘big man’ and help out. At times it looks like Hank Scott (Denning) wants to toss the kid in a pit somewhere but the pain in the ass is Teresa’s (Corday) son and he needs to put up a decent front if he is goIng to get anywhere with her later. O’Brian’s work partner Pete Peterson did most of the actual animation and do to budget constraints much it was actually filmed by he and O’Brian in Peterson’s Encino, CA garage. The budget also prevented actual stop action animation from being used in many crucial scenes and rather you have the poorly double-exposed looking traveling mattes –an old process that can work well and is now basically called blue screen- that don’t look much better than the mutant lobster in Teenagers from Outerspace. Worth a viewing just for the times the scorpions actually look real and menacing.

PHILIP GLASS/NORTH STAR

the.uranium.cafe@gmail.com (Bill D. Courtney) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:32:01 PST

North Star was composed as a soundtrack for a film called Mark Di Suvero, Sculptor by Francois de Menil. I have never seen it but would like to if I get the chance. What is important about this album in my personal listening history is that it was the first real exposure to minimalist music I had outside Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and Discreet Music. Glass was an established composer and performer by the time I picked up the album at a little record store in San Antonio Texas in the mid 80’s but I had never heard of him. I picked up the album simply because it was on the Virgin label (back when the label design was by Roger Dean) and I had long identified Virgin Records with performers like Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield, both whom I liked at that time (and still do)very much.

I would later explore much of Glass’ other works and currently am listening to Music in 12 Parts and it is haunting and incredible. A lot of what he does, of course, tends to sound the same after a few records and yet I seem to have developed a strange liking for it. But the music on North Star is slightly outside what Glass normally does in that it is on the heavy side as far as the performance goes. The only other album I have ever heard that may remotely compare would be one called Organ Works, released much later than North Star which came out in 1977. The instruments on the piece were common equipment for 70’s rock and prog bands. They include Farfisa, Hammond and Yamaha organs, Fender Rhodes piano, as well as an ARP synthesizer. There are some curious vocal pieces on the album as well, one song being nothing but a choir doing a Glassesque minimalist chant that is nothing short of dizzying.

The two MP3 selections here focus on keyboard performance. The first one Victor’s Lament is an aggressive piece that churns forward with brooding intent while the second selection Age Des Orages is one of those swirling, hypnoptic type things Glass does so well but it is approachable because the song duration is short. In fact all the pieces are about three minutes long and even for people who detest Glass and the whole minimalist thing there may be at least one or two things they can relate to on this once hard to find album that has been recently re-released and added to Glass’ gigantic catalog. Philip Glass is not music for the masses by any stretch but if you like minimalist music like Eno, Fripp (sometimes) or Steve Reich you should enjoy Glass' dabbling here in, essentially, progressive rock music.

The text for this post was taken from a now defunct version of The Uranium Cafe at My Opera. Check that piece of history out here if you want.

Roger Dean's design for the original Virgin label.

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VICTOR'S LAMENT

ANGES DES ORAGES