Garden of the Dead (USA, 1972)

I came home yesterday after my last official day at the newspaper where I (kinda) work. I'd slept exactly one hour the night before and about three hours the night before that so the world was beginning to seem mighty surreal, I put my head on the pillow for two minutes and felt everything spinning and a headache working its way to the upper cortex, "fuck it" I though, I needta CATCH one piecea celluloid before I hit sleepyland. What did I dig out of the dusty archive? Why GARDEN OF THE DEAD naturally!! It's been sitting there unwatched for a couple of years and I figured the thought of ending the day with FORMALDEHYDE ZOMBIES (as the flipside of the cover promises) would be a SPLENDID way to finish the day (where I'd seen one of the editors getting the boot for being "too individual" gee gosh in mah book that's reason FOR HIRING someone!!!), and with a running time of 58 minutes there was even a chance of my actually making it to the end before dozing off. And I did and WOAH... I mean... man, FORMALDEHYDE ZOMBIES!!!

The plot: Inmates from prison camp are gone on smoking FORMALDEHYDE (!!!) and make a run for it only to crash their truck INTO A CEMETERY!! Shoot-outs with pursuing prison guards, lots of dead prisoners, formaldehyde seeps into the ground AT THE CEMETERY and y'all put two and two together and you've got the rest of the plot. Zombies attack the prison camp and they fight it out. Dead people. Zombies. Deteriorating faces. Awesome top of the crop makeup. I wish all films were like this.

The print from Something Weird Video is directly off a fullscreen 35mm print and look just fine. A little ragged at the edges but would you really want it any other way with these kinda trash-flicks!? The director is John Hayes and he also did GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE which I watched a few years back on VHS. Must rewatch that one soon. GARDEN is definitely recommended! FORMALDEHYDE ZOMBIES!!!

Wild 50s

Awesome high resolution poster. I haven't seen this flick but I'd love to. :D

Great news... and terrible news!

The bad news first: SensAsian in Malaysia has closed down!!! There's a message on their website! Boo-hoo!!!

And the good news: ThaiCDExpress in Thailand has reopened!!!

Maniac bites dog

Check out this awesome new 10 minute American short film called MANIAC. The film pays tribute to the old Belgian serial killer movie MAN BITES DOG (C'est arrivé près de chez vous) about a serial killer who is followed around by a documentary film crew as he bumps off people. They even shot it in French and black & white like the original film (but not surprisingly the drunk monkeys at IMDb got it wrong and listed the language as English!!!). MANIAC is directed by Shia LaBeouf and stars Scott Mescudi and Chris Palko; These people are apparently well known rap artists but on this here BLOG we're gone on garage-rock, 60s punk, and stuff like the Birthday Party from the 80s so obviously we (royal "we" there!) have no knowledge of that! However, that DON'T MATTER NONE as this short film is by NO means a music video or some such but a grim and very violent horror movie. It's a great short and I highly recommend it.

PS: You might want to watch the film directly on YouTube as the picture on the blog is a tad too small to read the subtitles properly.

Chrysalis (Julien Leclercq, France, 2007)

I dvd-r'ed the French sci-fi film CHRYSALIS off Danish TV a couple of weeks back and watched it this morning. I hadn't heard anything about the film and thus had no expectations what so ever, so it was a pleasant surprise when it turned out to be a very cool, dark, violent, and cynical sci-fi film set in what we could call "Neo Paris post Bladerunner"!! The plot deals with this cop who thru out the film has a puss that looks like he was weaned on a pickle. His cop wife is brutally murdered and there's memory loss and shit. Watch the movie and find out. I was certainly entertained 100% thru out the entire film. I checked Amazon.com for a DVD release but several reviewers (who obviously knew French) stated that the English subs suck ass so I think I'm just gonna stick with my TV print; at least the French TV translators on DK TV are good. There's also a UK DVD but I have no info on whether it uses the same subs. I found three different trailers on YouTube, two in French and one in English. However, pretty much like the reported English subtitles the English narrated trailer sucks ass too (notice how they only use scenes without any dialogue in order to hide that it's not an English language film!!). The French trailer that I didn't use spends half of the time on boring credits. The one I'm posting here is alright. Don't ask me why it has subs in Portuguese. ^_^

The Model

My... gawd! This is now my favourite fan made video. Pure perfection!! BIG BLACK's rendition of that ol'e Kraftwerk fave added to this old 3 minute amateur film, MALIBU MERMAID, from the 1950s starring an unknown model (Adele Doleman) is just spitzenklasse!

The footage is slightly censored but you can watch the uncensored complete film here (but without the cool music).

Upcoming SANTIAGO films have a release date

As I've mentioned here before the next DVD set from SHOUT! FACTORY to contain Filipino co-productions is Lethal Ladies vol. 2 which is going to contain FLY ME and COVER GIRL MODELS. Both films are directed by Cirio H. Santiago and now there's a release date: January the 24th!

Like I've said earlier it's VERY exciting that we're getting FLY ME as it's never before been released on DVD and the scarce video releases (only TWO afaik; one in the US and one in the UK, incidentally the latter a double feature with COVER GIRL MODELS) are both as rare as had they vanished off the face of the Earth!

The set will also include the movie THE ARENA which isn't from the Philippines at all but it stars babatious Pam Grier (who were in some very cool Filipino flicks!) so that's not bad at all. xD

Best toon ever recorded!!!

...and you should lissen to it owl nite!

PS: It's not Sonic Youth as the uploader claims but SICCONE YOUTH (which in reality is Sonic Youth, LOLZ).

TRANCEFORMER (Stig Björkman, Sweden/Denmark, 1997)

I bought Stig Björkman's documentary about Lars von Trier on DVD thinking it was something I hadn't seen before - but I realise I had actually already watched the film (and possibly also taped it) when it was screened on Danish TV a number of years ago. Oh well, at least I've got it on DVD now and it was cheap too.

The cover states the director followed Lars von Trier for two years and if that's the case I must say I find it's a pretty weak documentary! It clocks in after a mere 52 minutes and it looks totally like a docu made for television. I guess it was co-produced by Danish and Swedish television but that doesn't mean it has to have the look of it! Von Trier's films are also co-produced with various TV stations but you could hardly claim they look like telly movies!

The interviewer does get to ask Lars questions about his background, phobias, etc. and the film does have some depth - it's just not enough! Quite a few of the people who work with Lars, both behind and in front of the camera, are interviewed but nobody has anything negative to say about him or delivers any embarrassing stories. This is of course fair enough if they all love him but... it would have been nice if the director had included conversations with for instance some of the people who turned Von Trier down when he started out; At one point Lars mentions no one wanted to produce his films. Why didn't they? (obviously cos they were retarded but it would still have made for better documentary to hear their arguments/excuses).

To me the most fun moment is when Ernst-Hugo Järegård talks about one time at the Cannes Film Festival when Von Trier was extra nervous. The reason? He was wearing Carl TH. Dreyer's old suit from 1928 that he'd got hold of somewhere!!

All in all a decent documentary that ought to have been much better in my view. Too much info is left out. And why isn't MEDIA mentioned at all!?

It ought to be compulsory viewing for documentary directors to watch the two hour CRUMB (about Robert Crumb) before they're allowed to film anything! Now, THAT is what I'd call a well made, incisive and gripping documentary film!

The DVD has subtitles in English and Scandinavian. There's no extras. If you're in Denmark you can pick it up from TP Musikmarked at 50 kr. but their stock is low so be quick (I had to actually place an order for my copy).

The easy way out...

Well, out to read BANNED IN BRITAIN #2 that is!! I posted the issue here the other day but this here being a blog means you'll have to click and zoom in on every page. Someone somewhere in Cyberspace has just uploaded the very same issue to a site called Scribd.com and it's actually a much better way to read the mag as you can just flick thru (or scroll) the pages. Thanks heaps to the uploader! You can download the full zine as well but it seems you'll have to upload something first. For BiB #2 go here.



PS: if someone is reading about this for the first time let's just get the legal stuff out of the way: I publish "Banned in Britian" zine and you're allowed to download it for free and to further share it, as long as you don't make any money on it (but if you do please send me some as I'm totally skint!!)