Mausoleum (1983)

Marjoe expresses the pain of watching this film

Mausoleum is the type of bad movie that makes you lose friends. Seriously, who needs to see a horror film with a 5 minute gardening sequence! Forget that this film had Marjoe Gortner in it. Forget that he dies a spectacular death. Forget that it has LaWanda Page of Sanford & Son and Laff Records fame. Forget that she’s playing a wildly racist stereotype. Forget that Playboy Bunny Bobbie Bresee bears her upper assets. Forget that she’s a bat-shit crazy house-wife possessed by an ancient demon that forces her to seduce men only to kill them after she gets upset by their advances. Forget that this film even has demonic boobies. Yes, demonic boobies!

You can try to forget all these wild aspects of this rather slap-dash, gutter-quality movie. What you will not be able to forget is that the film takes a break from building suspense to provide the audience with a clunky montage of landscaping and gardening. Why?

Big thanks to my longtime friend Don of Schlockmania. I’ll forever question your personal recommendations.

Shivers (1975)

The real disease is being bad on purpose.

Also known as They Came From Within, David Cronenberg’s early biological terror film should be mandatory viewing for the legions of young Turks who look to break big in the film business by producing a low-budget horror film.

Like an old Chinese proverb that states, “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought,” would-be filmmakers need to think of smart ways to reinvigorate the genre. Also, it doesn’t hurt to have some social commentary.

Starting with a brilliant opening that is as efficient with exposition as it is clever with design, Shivers establishes another key rule for budding horrorsmiths. Trap your characters. Whether it be in an upscale apartment complex, a farmhouse, or the woods, keep your characters confined to a single location. Its easier for your production and it creates more drama than you can probably dream up.

Back to being smart and not walking in others footsteps. Face it, there is nothing that new under the sun. Zombies existed before Night of the Living Dead, but they looked and acted nothing like Romero’s zombies. The same is true of the parasites in Shivers. For years, seen and unseen forces had been possessing the minds and bodies of men, but what Cronenberg did differently was make it sexual. His terror is both different from previous horror films and strikingly similar to contemporary issues. Suburbanites infected with a parasite that turns then into sex-crazed maniacs and looking to infect others feels like a condemnation of the more orgiastic aspects of the over-indulgent 70′s. The seemingly perfect and glossy world depicted in the opening credits is rife with a killer STD.

As story and violence goes, Shivers builds off the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. Those infected with the parasite seek love the way Romero’s zombies seek brains. Cronenberg is essentially not giving us anything new, just a new slant.

Call it a twist, albeit a rather smart, even funny one, aware of its time and its place. By place I don’t particularly mean an island near Montreal, but by place I mean its place in the movie world. Shivers is a b-movie, but one that takes itself semi-seriously. In more recent times, upstart horror films almost gleefully demean their own work. They revel in their flaws, making them jokes that ultimately overshadow any original ideas the film may have to offer. Some go so far as to be bad on purpose. I guess it is far better to knowingly make a fool of yourself then to try something daring and get laughed at.

Thankfully, directors like Cronenberg, not to mention Larry Cohen and George Romero, have sought to entertain great notions within the wildly entertaining genre of horror. Young filmmakers should seek what they sought.

Q (1982)

One of Saint Cohen's Miracles

Larry Cohen is a saint amongst sinners. In the gutterworld of cheap and quick filmmaking Cohen is a principled director, driven to making more than a buck on a tantalizing or gimcrack flick. Cohen doesn’t peddle in gore or sex. Those elements may exist in many of his films, but they aren’t the essence or the goal. Cohen deals first and foremost in characters.

Q is about a giant winged serpent terrifying the city of New York, but the winged serpent is perhaps the least interesting aspect of the film. Corny and obviously fake, there is little to no attempt to disguise the fact that Q is a special effect. Even in his commentary, Cohen makes little reference to the monster, how it was constructed, any funny stories about working with the creature, or if he thinks the effects are good or dated. Cohen is more interested in talking about Michael Moriarty or David Carradine or executive producer Samuel Z. Arkoff. People are what matter most in Cohen’s world of filmmaking.

When he does discuss the technical craft of filmmaking Cohen speak more about his guerrilla style of filmmaking; shoot first and ask permission. He also notes that his shaky hand-held camera was not an aesthetic, but a flaw. He jokes how that this look as become fashionable ever since NYPD Blue. It’s not with a favorable tone that he notes just how many movies and television shows are shot with shaky held cameras. Productions spend millions of dollars to try and get the gritty, authentic, from the hip, made-in-the-streets look that Cohen perfected, not out of want, but out of necessity. As the man himself says, he could probably shoot three or four (better) films for the price of one of these slick, soulless productions.

I believe him.

F for Fake (1974)

Is it art or con art? Is there a difference?

Does a documentary about fraud have to tell the truth? F for Fake is like a Three Card Monte game. Welles acts as the dealer promising the audience that their is validity to claims he’s about to make, that the stories he tells are real. He’s asking us to keep our eyes on the ace, but the film’s editing is rapid, almost dizzying. Images and information shuffle by at a phenomenal rate.  Orson Welles’ narration sounds like a guiding voice, providing context, background details, and insight, but like a magician, or as he prefers to call himself, a charlatan, his voice is really a distraction to keep us from discovering the truth. We lose sight of the ace (the truth). We get hypnotized by the rapid movement of the cards (images). It’s movie magic, it’s a magic trick. The trick being to engross the audience to the point that they believe everything you say.

It’s the promise of the documentary filmmaker to tell the truth. Welles appears to break this promise, he pulls a fast one, or does he? Welles starts the film off with a promise that implicitly says he will only tell the truth, up to a point. Can he be faulted for an audience that forgets this confession? Can he be faulted for an audience who doesn’t keep their on on the clock? Then again, who watches’ the clock whilst their head is swimming in such a grand tale of forgery. It’s just like Three Card Monte. If you take your eye off the ace, you are bounded to get taken for a sucker.

1990: I guerrieri del Bronx (1982)

The obvious influence upon 1990: I guerrieri del Bronx is Walter Hill’s 1979  The Warriors.  But did Godard’s Week End have an minute influence on this Italian exploitation film?

Early in 1990: Bronx Warriors a motorcycle gang returns to their turf  and finds one of their members dead along the riverside. For no explicable reason an unnamed figure sits beneath a bridge and bangs out a steady beat on a drum kit. The film suddenly takes on the editing style of an experimental student film, quickly cutting from artfully composed images of each biker’s reaction. The kaleidoscope of images goes on for a great stretch of time while a solitary drum track adds an emotional spine to the scene.

The inclusion of a puzzling drummer to a scene is vaguely familiar to a later scene in Week End, where a group of cannibal revolutionaries convene in the woods. Their leader plays the drums and reads Lautreamont’s Maldoror.  Godard is referencing historical and literary characters throughout this film and there is a high degree of intellectualism and social commentary in Week End that you won’t find in 1990: Bronx Warriors. However, the drumming in the woods is relatively inexplicable, but it is wonderfully visceral. That same sensation, witnessed in 1990: Bronx Warriors, is what drew my mind back to Godard’s film.

Now, I may be completely off my nut on this one. It would not be the first time my love of psychotronic and artistic films collided. I continually think that I am finding art films that are referencing exploitation films and vice versa. It’s probably just me.

Another State of Mind (1984)

Another State of Mind may be a tour video of Social Distortion and Youth Brigade, but for a young straightedge punk the real joy of the video was getting to see Ian MacKaye. The clean living lead singer of Minor Threat is works at a Häagen-Dazs and performs in his cramped basement with his fellow band members. These brief moments are humanizing and inspiring. The image of MacKaye is that a typical teen, who just happens to avoid vices like sex, drugs, and alcohol and vocalize his choices through hardcore music. He stands in sharp contrast to that of Mike Ness. The lead singer of Social Distortion operates in n the more traditional and socially expected mode of punk – outrageously dressed, rowdy, and often drunk. Ness perfects his image in front of a mirror and talks about wasting his days away watching television and waiting to go out at night and get drunk with his friends. The difference between the two lead singers shows seperate roads that a young punk could wander down, but both Ness and MacKaye end up on stage proving the legacy of punk – kids playing their hearts out for other kids.

Another State of Mind online

Lessons of Darkness (1992)

I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out, they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and advertisements that surround us in magazines, or I turn on the television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge posters with that same tedious and rickety image of the Grand Canyon on them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here. The biggest danger, in my opinion, is television because to a certain degree it ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossing hand-grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination and what we end up with are worn out images because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones. – Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness with its images of Kuwaiti oil fields on fire was like nothing like presented on television during the first Gulf War. It posses both more shock and awe than any grainy footage of air strikes and bombs dropped down air chutes.

Who is creating the modern equivalent of Lesson of Darkness, with images so eye shattering that they will shake us from this nightmare slumber of a war? More than oil is burn this time. Yet, all I see is more television, streamed across the Internet. It’s no wonder I have not been able to catch the Web 2.o mania. It’s just television made by the masses. It’s quite possibly worse than television. It’s nothing new. Where are the hand-grenades?

Inside the Casbah (1994)

Preconceived notions can spoil a perfectly rewarding experience. Thinking that Inside the Casbah: A History of Casablanca Records and Film Works  would be a penetrating look at the meteoric record and film company founded by Neil Bogart, I grew disappointed as a stream of promotional material never gave way to interviews or insight. I should have felt blessed that Damien Vivona took the time to track down all this wonderfully dated archival footage of KISS, The Village People, Donna Summer, and Parliament; the artists that made Casablanca Records rich. Instead, I questioned the use of the word ‘history’. There really is no story here and little study is given to the events that brought Casablanca and its artists to prominence. While the footage itself may hold historical relevance, there is very little holding together these clips other than a passive interest in the artists and films the label was promoting. If one is not already interested in the subject matter, there is scant argument made as to why you should be. Having a mild interest in KISS, my attention is piqued during the promotions for the famously face-painted quartet. Placed aside the Village People, KISS does not become more fierce, but actually loses some of its shock appeal. They look like a disco act and serve as a reminder that 70′s rock branched outwards in two distinct directions. KISS forged one path, while Black Sabbath paved another. The difference between the two is unmistakable. KISS will get you girls. Black Sabbath won’t.

Jandek on Corwood (2003)

In the Pacific Northwest there is Sasquatch. In the Himalayas there is the Yeti. In Scotland there is the Loch Ness Monster. In the world of outside music there is Jandek. At some point in time filmmakers have gone in search of these mythical creatures. Chad Friedrichs sought to expose the world to the mystery that has been Jandek.

The first record, Ready for the House,came in 1978. It was attributed to a group, known as the Units, but the the slow tempo, oddly tuned guitar accompanied by a wavering voice, singing a mournful variation of the blues, would be come typical of the Jandek sound. By the second album, Six and Six the music was being credited to Jandek. The discordant, repetitive songs one each album are nearly unidentifiable from one another. Only the most strident fans can recognize one song from the next, but as a whole the sound is unmistakable, perhaps listenable.

For over 25 years and 50 albums Jandek has released his very unique and personal on his own record label. Identified only by a post office box in Houston, Texas, Corwood Industries appears to be exclusive to the music of Jandek. For years, a simple advertisement stating “Jandek on Corwood” was the only promotion for this reclusive artist. It was the location of this post office box that lead to the speculation that Jandek, whoever he really was, called Houston home.

Out of focus, obscured images of a skinny, Caucasian male, with a dusty blonde hair provided a clue as to what Jandek might look like, if that was him at all. His blank stairs and shadowy figure only added to the mystery as well as the depressed state of his music. Rumors circulated that perhaps this was the work of a madman, some sort of music therapy. As new albums kept being released, sometimes two or three in one year, fans began to speculate that perhaps all the recordings were done in one huge marathon recording session and slowly released across the years. However, the music never stopped coming and subtle changes from guitar to piano to the accompaniment of additional musicians showed that Jandek was not afraid to change.

His anonymity, however, was something he refused to change. Outside of a phone interview in 1985 and another interview by outsider music expert Irwin Chusid, few people were ever able to speak with Jandek. As the legend of Jandek grew, music critics, college radio dj’s and other musicians all created their own theories to explain the man behind the music. Jandek on Corwood compiles these urban legends in a less than interesting fashion.

The film mixes overly staged images with uninteresting interviews resulting in a film that no more explains the mystery of Jandek than it deepens it. Often too literal with its imagery, the filmmaker’s use of imaginatively lit props and barren rooms work as poor static substitutes for a lack of visual material directly related to Jandek. The list of subjects paraded before the camera is less than spectacular and only the most devout of alternative music fans is going to recognize the various critics and artist interviewed. One must endure all of this for a payoff that comes in the last few minutes of the film, albeit it is one of the smallest payoffs in the history of film. Even for a Jandek fan, the promise of hearing that one recorded phone interview with Jandek is not enough to excuse the languid pace of this film or its less than committed approach.

When you set out to expose a mysterious figure like Bigfoot or Nessie or even Jandek you must do one of two things. You must either expose the creature in question, so that there is no longer a question or you must help to perpetuate the myth.

Just how it is that a musician has remained anonymous for over 30 years and 50 albums excites the imagination more than Jandek’s music. It’s the one question on every Jandek fan’s mind and its exactly what you suspect a filmmaker interested in Jandek would set out to answer. However, Friedrichs does no investigation what so ever, into just who Jandek might be. All the background information we are presented is gleaned from research that others have done.

During the course of the film it never comes to light that Jandek may be a fellow by the name of Sterling Richard Smith, the name to whom the copyright of Jandek’s music is accredited. A phone call to Corwood Industries will put you in touch with the Sterling Smith Corporation. Still, this is not the sort of limited insight people really crave. So, why is it that the filmmaker does not stake out the post office box or even interview the employees as the post office? Why not hire a private detective to help unravel the case of Jandek?

If the argument is made that the filmmaker was respecting Jandek’s anonymity and never looked to pull back the curtain, then I argue that the filmmaker must at least continue the myth, even add to it. If you are not going to burst the balloon and show the world who this mystery man is, you should at least introduce the larger world to the notion that there is this musician who simply cannot be identified. It’s a yarn worth spinning, but Friedrichs does not seem as interested as his interview subjects in speculating just who Jandek may be or why it is no one has been able to track him down.

Documentaries on legendary creatures like the abominable snowman or the Jersey Devil or even the question of where Jimmy Hoffa’s body rests tingle our spines and excite our imaginations because we really don’t want to learn the truth. We enjoy the puzzle. Solving the puzzle takes the fun out of guessing. When we watch filmmakers try to answer these urban enigmas we secretly hope they won’t be able to provide conclusive proof. We desire a level of wonderment in our world.

In light of all the technology and information we have access to in the present day, it seems implausible that someone could remain so anonymous, thus it seems that the filmmaker simply choses not to make use of modern resources to uncover the truth. Even if he were to discover who Jandek is and why he desires to keep such a low profile, that would not inherently mean that the filmmaker who uncovers this information would have to share it. Others, who have worked with Jandek or interviewed him have certainly not shared all that they know. Instead, they let the legend grow.

In 2004, Jandek did go public. Jandek (aka Sterling Smith) started playing live. There is no reason given as to why he suddenly chose to pull back the veil. Perhaps, Jandek on Corwood sent people in search of him. Still, little is known. The performances are rare and he still remained reclusive, never admitting that Jandek and Smith were one in the same. The mystery continues, but its no longer as alluring. The question of just who Jandek is has been replaced with the question of why he operates in the shadows has superseded it. This question still holds great interest, but it will take a far greater filmmaker than Friedrichs to keep this legend interesting.

Guide to Jandek

Huie’s Sermon (1980)

Without his iconic, monotone commentary it is hard to understand how Herzog perceives the charismatic preaching of Reverend Huie Rogers. Does he see the Reverend as a servant of the Lord with stylish flair? Is he questioning the Reverend’s  performance as something less than Christlike? Or is he merely an secular observer bent on capturing a unique orator show?

I am often suspicious of films about vocal gospel ministries, especially when the filmmakers are white and the preacher and congregation is black.  There is always a whiff of anthropology attached to these films. Subjects are put before the lens for consideration, but in a case such as this it is not the message of the sermon that one is being asked to think about, but its method of delivery. Even when race is disregarded, there is the aching question of how much the filmmakers believe what they are seeing.