The Mind is a Many Splendoured Thing

I had stayed up till the early dawn. And I had asked the little man who lives in my alarm clock to wake me at 2pm but I woke before that. My house is haunted and ghost banging on the walls usually mess up my sleeping. An hour before the alarm clock were to go off I was half asleep with a mind that drifted between a late night convo and images of distant lands. Then out of a sudden, as when your computer program crashes in a split second and your wallpaper is thrown in your face, I get this vivid image from a location I don't recognise. Thinking about it, it may have looked like a table at a travel office. My dad is sitting in front of me. He doesn't look at me but past me. His face is worried and it is thin. Not quite as thin as what it later became but thinner than those old Kodak memories that float in my mind. It's like getting a bucket of cold water splashed into your face. I was wide awake in a split second but right away tried to go back to that unknown desk in that unknown room in that unknown location. I got back but the picture was now frozen. I've got a slight headache now and it is a grey and cool day outside. It has almost got the feel of a 1970s' day. The mind is an odd creature that messes with you in surprising ways that you don't expect. It's annoying and I find it fitting that I end this by quoting my friend H.J. Simpson, "Brain, I thought we had an agreement; I leave you along if you leave me alone".

Here it is. The smoking gun. Evidence of a hard-boiled meeting. Once in a lifetime.

To any reader of hard-boiled crime fiction this is an amazing photograph. This is the only photographic evidence of the two masters of pulp fiction Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Changler ever having met. The fact that it's from a dinner party at Black Mask magazine in 1936 only makes it even more awesome.
- Chandler second from left at back, Hammett far right, back.


Everyone in the photo:
Back, L-R: Raymond J. Moffatt, Raymond Chandler, Herbert Stinson, Dwight Babcock, Eric Taylor, Dashiell Hammett.
Front, L-R: Arthur Barnes, John K. Butler, W.T. Ballard, Horace McCoy, Norbert Davis

Wish you were here

Bill Barounis (with cool sunglasses on the left) passed away today three years ago.

Bill ran the coolest dvd label ever, ONAR FILMS. I never met Bill but like a few of us I knew him through correspondence; through Cinehound worldweird film forum, and through trading films with him. He lived in Greece and saw it as his life project to track down lost Turkish cult films and release them. In 2009 he got brain cancer and passed away in 2010.

The guy on the right, grinning like an undertaker, is Tom from Switzerland who met him in 2010 during a period when we all thought Bill had beat the illness. With Jared Auner (of Mondo Macabro and "Worldweird" blog) I maintain the semi-official ONAR FILMS fb page.

Bill could be tough but he knew who his friends were. He is sorely missed.

Cult of J now on the toobe

While I took a break from posting on this blog and Facebook I travelled to India, Pakistan, and also I met the good people of Africa. I wrote a book about my 6 years as a white man among the Hottentots, and I recorded an album.
 
- Alright, alright, maybe I'm slightly exaggerating but I d-i-d open an account on Youtube and became part of the horror community there. The channel is called Psychotronic Broadcasting. I think it was partly Richard Schmidt from the Cinema Somnambulist blog [and insert 10-15 other blog/podcast/radio/zine names here that he does] who does awesome vlogs (not least the ones were he watches 10+ films in a row and reviews them all throughtout!!). Oh, the Toobe is a wonderful land, you should visit us sometime. I'll buy you a lemonade. Here's a presentation I did of a random dvd shelf. I'm not featured in it but I am in some (most) of the other ones.

Mex on SWV

Here's a photo of a few random video tapes on one of my shelves. Four old Mexican horror movies from the '60s on VHS from Something Weird Video. The movies are DR. SATAN, DR. SATAN VERSUS BLACK MAGIC, ISLAND OF THE DINOSAURS and ZORRO VERSUS THE TEENAGE MONSTER. The tape on the far left is also an old Mexican horror movie, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE. It is however not a SWV tape but a bootleg. Incidentally, the bootleg tape is the only one that is dubbed into English. The other four are in Spanish only (i.e. no dub, no subs). I bought them years ago on eBay. The films have been discontinued from the Something Weird catalogue for a long time; none of them made it to dvd or dvd-r (from that label, Bloody Vampire is out on a non English friendly dvd from Mexico).

Old devil cult movie?

Here's a cool new video by the band Black Prism for the track "Satan's Country". The video looks like an old movie from the 1970s about Devil worshipping! And the music sounds like a lost Black Sabbath record from that same decade. Pretty cool!

I found the video on a Danish blog called Fra Sortsand and I highly recommend you check it out if you read Danish.

New horror channel to celebrate Halloween

There's a new film channel on YouTube called HorrorGlobe and it's all about horror flicks, and it's going to cover every day of October! Here is the first review and I'm happy to report it's done by my buddy TJ Pyramid who lives in Salem!! (I won't spoil the fun and tell you it's a different Salem). They've invited me and, hey, I might even do a review or two there. ^_^

Bloody Weekend Horror Movie Festival (2013)

Today was the third day of the Blodig Weekend (i.e. Bloody Weekend) horror movie festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. I got home around midnight after a long but very cool day. The festival continues tomorrow. The full programme is listed here.

CAPOTE (USA, 2005) dir: Bennett Miller

I watched Bennett Miller's film CAPOTE tonight. It's basically the story of how the American author Truman Capote wrote his novel "In Cold Blood" about the two murderers who killed four people in 1959 with gun shots to the head. The film is very good but don't expect neither a serial killer film like HENRY or a horror movie. CAPOTE is neither. It is however a very good movie and Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is spot on. I watched the Danish dvd which came in a box set with Richard Brooks' film version of the book, IN COLD BLOOD, from 1967. I haven't watched the latter yet. The PQ on the dvd was good most of the time but shadows looked awful as they were full of pixellation squares. It looked like a fucking video-cd from Hong Kong!! I think I have the book somewhere.

Trailer for the Danish cult film STENBROENS "HELTE" now with English subs!

aka CITY STREET HEROES (Denmark, 1965)



This is the trailer for the Danish psychotronic masterpiece STENBROENS "HELTE" from 1965. It was directed by Poul Nyrup who only made three films and then disappeared back into obscurity. The film is a true CULT film in MY book but sadly almost only in my book; The rest of Denmark ignores it. Their loss I'd say. Unfortunately, a piece of pop culture can only gain cult status if the Americans have told the Danes that it's a cult film. And so since STENBROENS "HELTE" hasn't yet been discovered by the American cult movie fans we can't worship it in Denmark. Denmark, I despise you (somebody please get me out of here!). The film has (of course) never been released on dvd in Denmark, and it's not even been on TV. It was released twice on VHS in the '80s and there's a well known bootleg VHS from the '90s. The subs on the trailer were done by some crazy fanatic fan somewhere. The only Poul Nyrup film that exists on semi legit dvd is his second film, COPENHAGEN CALL-GIRLS (aka Villa Vennely) from 1964, which Something Weird Video put out on dvd-r (and probably also VHS) in the States. Their print is not the same as was used for the Danish VHS but an old English subbed cinema print.