Tag Archives: Underground

275. THUNDERCRACK! (1975)

March 22, 2017 El Rob Hubbard 1 Comment

“God gave him a calling in life, and that was to make pornography.”–George Kuchar on Curt McDowell

DIRECTED BY: Curt McDowell

FEATURING: Marion Eaton, Melinda McDowell, Moira Benson, Mookie Blodgett, Ken Scudder, Rick Johnson, Maggie Pyle, George Kuchar

PLOT: On a dark and stormy night in the Nebraska hinterlands, several individuals on the road end up taking shelter at “Prairie Blossom”, an old dark house that is the dominion of alcoholic matron Gert Hammond (Eaton). Everyone present has secrets and obsessions that are brought to light, and pair off in various combinations for sexual liaisons. The group also finds itself trapped inside the house by a gorilla rampaging outside.

Still from Thundercrack! (1975)

BACKGROUND:

Producers John Thomas (who briefly appeared as country singer Simon Cassidy) and Charles Thomas were film students of Thundercrack! actor/writer George Kuchar, classmates of director Curt McDowell, and heirs to a fortune from the Burger Chef fast food chain, which they used to fund the movie. They also provided a rooms in their home for the shoot.
George Kuchar was a legend in the underground film industry, making hundred of short, campy avant-garde films together with his twin brother Mike. Noteworthy titles include Sins of the Fleshapoids and Hold Me While I’m Naked (both from 1966).
Actress Melinda McDowell was director Curt McDowell’s sister.
Kuchar and McDowell were rumored to be lovers.
The movie was shot for $9,000 and $40,000 in deferred costs.
Buck Henry used his clout as a judge to set up a (scandalous) screening at the 1976 Los Angeles Film Festival.
The original negatives disappeared and only five 16mm prints of the film were struck. One print was seized by Canadian authorities and three had been edited in an ineffectual attempt to make the film more marketable. The badly-damaged but uncut fifth print was primarily utilized for the transfer of the 40th anniversary Blu-ray release by Synapse Films.
El Rob Hubbard’s ((Fun Fact: actress “Maggie Pyle” and her husband (one of the crew members) were my landlords for a short time in San Francisco in the early 90’s.)) Staff Pick for a Certified Weird movie.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Among the various obvious (and mainly pornographic) images to choose from, the one that sums up the spirit of Thundercrack! is the publicity photo of Gert and Bing in a melodramatic clinch—Bing in a wedding dress, Gert staring off into the horizon. It’s iconic, yet subversive, and pretty much encapsulates the film’s mood.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Versatile cucumbers; pickled husbands; amorous bipeds

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The collision of several elements: the lurid melodramatics along with the hardcore action, the visual stylization and the complex wordplay, all combine to make a film much more engaging and—dare I say it—innocent than one would expect from a mid 1970s hardcore sex parody film. Or, is it a parody film with porno elements? You decide…

Brief scene from Thundercrack!

COMMENTS: “What the heck is going on here—some sort of communal therapy group? Is that what this is?!!”—Bing

That’s probably a fair assessment of Thundercrack!, Curt McDowell’s Continue reading 275. THUNDERCRACK! (1975) →

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS (2016)

January 30, 2017 Giles Edwards Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: Daniel Fawcett, Clara Pais

FEATURING: Joana Castro, Bruno Senune, Carina de Matos, Falvia Barabas, Daniel Pires

PLOT: Shuffling between the interior and exterior of a building (with guest appearances from some jagged cliffside rocks), various symbolic events occur because of the actions of various symbolic people.

Still from The Kingdom of Shadows (2016)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This clutter of film scenes might be interpreted as “weird”, but I’m leery to describe the onscreen capering as a “movie”. Perhaps it’s just my staggering lack of interpretive skills, but when the characters are only somewhat explainable because you read the opening credits, I find the “movie” part a bit wanting. Not much is clear, and the lack of dialogue handily augments the altogether excessive incoherence of the narrative.

COMMENTS: I shall begin by saying that Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais may well have accomplished something impressive with their symbol-ridden film, The Kingdom of Shadows. Throughout the film there are little hiccups of inspired images that, in isolation, would make for compelling photographs to ponder. The lack of dialogue lends itself to a lack of explanation, but that allows for a mutuality of incomprehension across the globe. Unfortunately, it leaves the viewer grasping blindly for what it is the filmmakers are trying to say.

The story proper (I am guessing) begins weirdly enough with a pair of golden hands magically boiling up a pot of water. What ensues is a long-form mishmash of figurative images and sequences that vaguely intrigue, and certainly baffle, the viewer. A furtive young man appears during the bridging sequences, who may be acting as witness, along with us viewers. Inside a 19th-century (?) house, a clutch of people (indicated in the credits as “mother”, “daughter”, “uncle”, and so on) interact in strange ways with motives that are impossible to divine. An inspector comes along at some point (again, we know his vocation only from the credits) and twirls his mustache a lot. Eventually the gang inside the house takes up arms against the “daughter,” driving her outside. Interrupting the action is a pair of (usually naked) young people having quasi-dance-like interactions of joy, terror, and sundry other feelings.

As I’ve hinted in the preceding paragraphs, while there may be a lot going on in the movie, very little of it makes any sense. It would help if I knew what the directors were trying to say, and a commentary would no doubt be illuminating. That said, this presents a problem: any movie that cannot stand up to unsupervised viewing is of dubious merit. If there isn’t clarity, there needs to be a “vibe” of some sort, or at least an ambience. However, The Kingdom of Shadows is too scattered to have such a vibe, and any ambience is sabotaged by incoherent or careless touches. To support the latter, I give the example of a slow-moving “pursuit” scene through one of the house’s corridors. The turn-of-the-last-century feel is utterly destroyed by a very obvious smoke detector on the wall. Its square plastic frame and glowing electric light immediately crush whatever mood may have been built.

I have no doubt that all those involved poured their hearts and souls into making this movie, so it pains me a little to have to be so down on it. After the sturm und drang of various troubled moans from the young observer, after the not-quite balletic artiness of the “Adam and Eve” vignettes, and after the cranked up symbolism, we’re still left with something that’s a bit amateurish and more than a bit boring. If there were an unhealthy halfway point between How the Sky Will Melt and Begotten, this movie hits it, and hits it hard. E. Elias Merhige‘s piece—while perhaps incomprehensible—has that dream-like “thing” required for such an exercise in post-narrative film. That “thing” is never found by the directors of The Kingdom of Shadows, which is more the pity.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a film that does never try to make perfect sense, instead using impressive, often tableau-like imagery to get its point across… a film like this might not be for everybody, but those with open minds are up for a fascinating journey…”–Mike Haberfelner, [re]Search My Trash (contemoraneous)

Canonically Weird (The List)

264. THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971)

January 4, 2017 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies) 3 Comments

AKA Hot Number

“I said, anybody who makes dirty phone calls as a life’s project is a pretty weird person. So where am I going to get the kind of material that he would be speaking? He wouldn’t be speaking anything we know. He would be talking the kind of stuff that you see on men’s room walls. “–The Telephone Book lead animator Len Glasser on his inspiration for the final sequence

DIRECTED BY: Nelson Lyon

FEATURING: Sarah Kennedy, Norman Rose

PLOT: Oversexed Alice receives an obscene phone call and falls in love with the mellifluous caller, who reveals his name to be “John Smith” of Manhattan. She searches the telephone book to find him, encountering stag film producers, perverts and lesbian seductresses in her quest. When she finally tracks him down, they share the ultimate obscene phone call, whose orgasmic power is depicted symbolically as a crude, sexually explicit surrealist cartoon.

Still from The Telephone Book (1971)

BACKGROUND:

Andy Warhol “superstars” Ultra Violet and Ondine appear in small roles in the film. An “intermission” scene showing Warhol himself quietly eating popcorn was cut, and the footage lost. (Still photos of the scene do exist).
Writer/director Nelson Lyon went on to write for “Saturday Night Live” in its earliest years, but his career ended after he was involved in an infamous speedball binge that ended with John Belushi’s fatal overdose.
The film was a complete flop on release and quickly disappeared from circulation, preserved in rare bootlegs and only resurfacing as a curiosity in the new millennium.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In the animated sequence visually expressing the ineffable ecstasy aroused by John Smith’s erotic patter, the bottom half of a gargantuan woman—with rivets in her thighs, suggesting she’s an automaton—squats on a skyscraper and pleasures herself, while a man whose entire head is a tongue watches her with drooling interest. Sights like that have a tendency to stick in the mind.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: “Superstar” pontificating over a nude; rotating pig-masked man; tongue-headed cartoon libertine

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The last twenty minutes. Up until then, The Telephone Book is a mildly absurd pre-hardcore sexploitation comedy with art-scene pretensions; a long confessional monologue from a pig-masked pervert followed by a surreally obscene, obscenely surreal animated climax launch it into a different stratosphere of weirdness.

Original trailer for The Telephone Book

COMMENTS: The Telephone Book is a sex comedy dirty enough for Continue reading 264. THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema, List Candidates

POP MEETS THE VOID (2015, WILLIAM CUSICK)

May 19, 2016 Alfred Eaker 1 Comment

William Cusick‘s Pop Meets The Void (2015) is what independent film should be: an alternative to mainstream cinema, as opposed to a low budget imitation of Hollywood fare.

Cusick sees the artist as in revolt against common sense and repressive conventions of the social order. The musician protagonist of Pop Meets the Void encounters the fingernails-down-chalkboard inquisition that almost every artist endures from bourgeoisie muggles: “Are you a real artist or do you just wanna be?” Fill in the appropriate follow-up blank: “Are you famous? Are you rich? Do you have a recording contract with a big label? Have you published a book? Have you acted in a real movie, like the ones from Hollywood? Have you sold a painting for a million dollars yet?” Followed by “So, what’s the point?”

German Expressionist painter Franz Marc astutely addressed the artist’s encounter with the bourgeoisie in an entry from the famous “Blue Rider Almanac”: “It is strange that people should value spiritual treasures so differently than material ones. If someone conquers a new colony for his country, the whole country rejoices for him and does not hesitate to take possession of that colony. Technological achievements are met with the same rejoicing. On the other hand, if someone should think of giving his country a spiritual treasure, it is almost always rejected with anger and irritation; his gift arouses suspicion and people to try and do away with it. Why new paintings and why new ideas? What can we buy with them? We already have too many old ones.”

Painter Paul Gauguin advised young artists to worry less about the finished work and locate sacrament in the artistic process. This is Cusick’s spirit. He retreats and takes the role of artist as hermit, keeping his music attic-bound. As a hermit, his worldview encompasses the artist as misfit prophet.

Still from Pop Meets the Void (2015) The narrative of artist as contrarian to the world has been around as long as there has been artists, and will continue until the artist goes the way of the dinosaur. If Cusick had merely followed an orthodox route, his film would be dishonest and pedestrian. Cusick knows such a retreat must inspire a genre-rejecting, authentic composition, and Pop Meets The Void‘s fantasia qualities make it a startling work that validates the narrative as both immortal and relevant. History does not exist. Rather, the artistic expression is fluid. Marc sees continuity as opposed to an historical valve which shuts on and off: “Cezanne and El Greco are spiritual brothers, despite the centuries that separate them.” We can, of course, subscribe to the maxim there is nothing new under the sun, but Cusick stubbornly refuses to be fence-bound, charismatically imprinting his own process.

Criticizing the historical development of cinema, Luis Buñuel wrote: “Moving pictures merely repeat what we have been told for centuries by novels and plays. Thus, a marvelous instrument for the expression of poetry and dreams (the subconscious world) is reduced to the role of simple REPEATER of stories expressed by other art forms.” Cusick utilizes the liberty of dreams to convey boundless paradoxes presiding in the asphyxiating mirage of adulation and celebrity.

Smarter still, Cusick forgoes the aloofness which often permeates and hinders the surreal aesthetic. In ambitiously attempting to construct something akin to a Mahlerian universe, Cusick does not shy away from bathos. If it is all-encompassing, then his work must be imbued with all facets of the mortal experience. Pop Meets The Void is coarse and sleek, opaque and diaphanous, textured and emotional, a visual work about music. As the late composer Pierre Boulez advised: “We must be cultural omnivores and raid all the art forms to enhance our own medium.” Cusick’s impetuously earnest effort does just that, and is a List contender.

Capsules

CAPSULE: SCHRAMM (1993)

April 12, 2016 Giles Edwards Leave a comment

Schramm: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer

DIRECTED BY: Jörg Buttgereit

FEATURING: Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Monika M.

PLOT: Life ebbs from the body of Lothar Schramm after a fatal fall from a ladder. Memories of murders, self-loathing, hallucinations, and his love for his next door neighbor blink on and off the screen. What starts with the death of a murderer becomes a portrait of a grisly, nuanced soul.

Still from Schramm: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer (1993)

<br /> WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: As with his previous film, Der Todesking, Buttgereit somehow manages to ride the crest between gore and philosophy, making Schramm considerably more meditative than would be expected. Its (now) familiar “mind of a serial killer” theorizing does result in the occasional shock, but it certainly isn’t the weirdest thing you could see before breakfast.

COMMENTS: There is something to be said for efficient film-making. So often it seems the case that a director wants his or her film to go on for as long as it takes to say everything about its subject. Sprawling movies abound; some peter out, some take forever to find their target, and the worst neither gain momentum nor really tell much of a story. Such a curse is not suffered by Jörg Buttgereit, the affable German behind the underground horror hits Nekromantik (1 and 2), Der Todesking, and, the last feature of his early career, Schramm. In a tight sixty-five minutes, Buttergereit explores the final thoughts and days of the titular serial killer.

Schramm’s chronology is only slowly revealed, beginning, effectively, at the end of the story. Suffering a fall while painting a blood-spattered door frame, Lothar Schramm (Florian Koerner von Gustorf) collapses in the spilt paint, and time slowly rewinds. Our first living encounter with him shows him dispatching two altogether wholesome evangelizers. An impatient woman knocks on the door. Eventually things sift back further and we see what are likely childhood memories, interspersed with the scenes from the days immediately preceding the fall. Schramm’s manner and actions may now seem typical, but in 1992 (the year Schramm was filmed), the precarious mental state of a rather off-kilter man was quite a bit fresher. (As Buttgereit remarks in his charmingly cute introduction, the reason he made this film was he was tired of watching “chain-smoking detectives pursuing the serial killer”, instead of seeing things from the other side.)

As I mentioned, the film is brief. However, it gets everything done that it needs to in the run-time. In what has become almost standard in the genre, Schramm is a generally low-key, pleasant guy who enjoys jogging and chatting with his next-door neighbor (Monika M.), a prostitute who relies on him for company and, later, protection. Stylized flashbacks of murders, a kitchen drawer full of lipstick, and unsettling hallucinations of his own physical deterioration hint at his mental imbalance. (Taking a cat-nap in his taxi, he dreams about a dental appointment for a tooth removal that quickly escalates into an eye removal). While he’s keeping busy with loneliness and killing prostitutes, his neighbor gets herself involved with some rather demanding and unsavory older clients.

There is certainly a fair share of repellent material in Schramm, but anyone familiar Buttgereit’s work should be unsurprised. However, unlike the gross-out tours-de-force of his Nekromantik films, Schramm is more the sibling of his pensive work, Der Todesking. The violent scenes in Schramm are sparingly scattered, and all the more troubling for so being. With this release (and the upcoming über Buttgereit set), the people at Cult Epics have made available a neat little treasure that not only illustrates why this director deserves (a little) greater fame, but also that underground cinema has more to offer the public than just cheap thrills.