Bury me an Angel - trailer

Someone mentioned BURY ME AN ANGEL from 1972 to me yesterday; I checked out the trailer and... whoah!... this looks totally rad! Unfortunately, it seems there's no official DVD release (there is a PD set that reportedly looks like ass!). Too bad. Check the trailer. Awesome voiceover! RATED RRRRRRRR.

James Chance and the Contortions - "Contort yourself"

You should have this on the turntable on "repeat" all thru the night. "James is a wild man so bug off!"

Killer Angels - again!

I'll be getting yet another version of one of my old HK faves, THE KILLER ANGELS starring cute ass-kicker Moon Lee. I'm exited about this version as it's the US Chinatown VHS in Chinese (I assume it's Cantonese) with English subs. Awesome cover too. I already own the unsubbed HK VCD, the English dubbed version on a bootleg DVD, and a Mandarin dubbed DVD with English subs from Taiwan (which is sourced from a video tape!!). There's a German DVD but I have no idea whether it's uncut or not and it doesn't have English subs (I'm not even sure if it only carries a German dub?).

New rags

The other day I told you about one of my new T-shirts (check here) and here's some more that I have received this week. Living in Shitsville used to mean it was totally, insanely and uber-ly, difficult to get cool T-shirts but with the invention of the Internet it's become a lot easier. That doesn't mean it's exactly easy to find the cool stuff, in order to get there you'll have to wade thru 3 billion tons of crappy shit shirts. TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS was one of the original no-wave bands from New York. The picture on the shirt is from a live cassette tape that was only available from Lydia Lunch's webpage. Unfortunately, I never got hold of the tape but at least I have the T-shirt now. ^_^

This one sports the cool picture from the French pressing of THE GUN CLUB's first album "Fire of Love" - the zombie cover. The original edition (and the new vinyl re-print) uses a much inferior picture if you ask me.

Nick Cave's old band THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Probably thee most dangerous band ever. They simply radiated dangerousness.

DNA!! Unknown to most. Adored by few. I'm one of the latter. They were also part of the no-wave movement in New York in around '78/79. The seller had sold out of L and didn't want to get more in as they were selling very slowly. I grabbed an XL and good thing too cos it turned out to be the last one! It's not that much bigger and I intend to get fat anyway so it's alright.

Some SONIC YOUTH T-shirts are meh but this one is cool. Actually so cool that I bought it again when I discovered that altho the first copy was the right size... it was a slim-fit for chicks. I put it on and looked like a human size condom. Hahaha. Anyhoo, it was my own mistake (gotta learn to READ the seller descriptions!!!) so I didn't wanna bother swapping it. Besides, I would have had to cover the return postage to the UK which would have made it even more expensive anyway.

Ghost on the Highway (USA, 2008)

Yesterday, I received the film GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY about the band THE GUN CLUB and its charismatic frontman JEFFREY LEE PIERCE and being a long time fan I could do nothing but dig into it right away!

What immediately struck me is a note on the back of the cover that states the film doesn't contain any music by the band whatsoever!! I've later learnt that the director tried to get music from the first two LP's but didn't have the money.

Too bad but in a way it's actually not that much of a loss as it keeps the documentary from becoming somewhat of a concert movie which often happens and which would have annoyed me endlessly. I'd rather see and listen to interviews by the people who where there. And we get that. Actually that's ALL we get!

There are interviews with the original old "disgruntled" (as Jeffrey Lee called them on the back of the cover of the album "Danse Kalinda Boom") members WARD DOTSON, TERRY GRAHAM and JIM DUCKWORTH. DEE POP (who was in the band on the "Death Party" EP is there too and thankfully also KID CONGO POWERS (who was also in THE CRAMPS of course). The always interesting HENRY ROLLINS is there too and so is MIKE MARTT from the awesome band TEX AND THE HORSEHEADS.

And there are more people who dealt with Jeffrey and the band too. Oh, and LEMMY from MOTÖRHEAD is interviewed (at a bar of course) but, uhh, don't get me wrong I love Lemmy and Motörhead but I fail to see why he's in the film. He's got nothing to say about the subject matter and he probably never even met THE GUN CLUB.

In about 95% of the film everyone talks shite about Jeffrey Lee and says what a cocksucker he was (except for Kid Congo) but I guess that's alright if that's how they feel. I would rather they spew out bile than give us the usual polished Hollywood bullshit in which previous back-stabbers kiss arse to make it seem like they were the main character's fucking soul mate or some such. You're hardly gonna get THAT impression of neither Ward Dotson nor Terry Graham after this documentary. I'm not blaming them by any means. If everyone says he was a dick then chances are he probably was.

But on the other hand sometimes the best and truest artistic creations come from people who lack basic skills in the social department. Artists who focus all their energy on creating something unique. And the music of Jeffrey Lee Pierce has been amongst my fave music for almost 30 years now and I don't see my love for that change just because it turns out he was a dick.

However, having said that, I do wish they would have found some old interview bits of Jeffrey and given him his own voice so to speak. He doesn't get to say his own piece in this film while almost everyone else is dissing him and that's not fair. It's a one-sided story.

Anyhoo, this is a crappy review so I suggest you go here and here to read some more incisive ones. The film runs around 96 minutes and despite its shortcomings it is highly recommended.

I ordered the DVD from CDBABY in the States. 25 dollars + postage.




By the way, I actually got to see THE GUN CLUB once. Like Jeffrey Lee Pierce I spent the late 80s in London and in 1990 I saw them at the Town & Country Club. I bought the "Mother Juno" LP the same year (check out the awesome track from it that I'm posting here). There were a couple of support bands, one of them being THESE IMMORTAL SOULS. I had the bootleg poster from the gig (it cost £1!) on my wall until very recently.

Ninja, Say Your Prayers!

Here's some rad scenes from Cinehound members Harm's unfinished film NINJA, SAY YOUR PRAYERS! It's the best I've seen in a long time. A crime to humanity he didn't finish it. Godfrey Ho would have been red with envy that's for sure! xD

Bowery at Midnight (Wallace Fox, USA, 1942)

At some point during the wee hours I ate fried rice and watched Bela Lugosi in BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT. It's one of the "quickies" he did for Monogram studios and if you check IMDb you'll see a bunch of whiners complaining about the movie. I don't know what these sorry ass wankers want from their old b/w horror movies; Obviously Bela couldn't keep re-making DRACULA and went on to do other exciting stuff. Hmm, come to think of it BOWERY isn't actually so much a real horror movie as it's a "evil no-gooder doing insane stuff" movie! Bela teems up once again with Dave O'Brien whom he also did the excellent horror movie THE DEVIL BAT with. And just like in that film Bela gets to play an insane criminal mastermind who... does criminal insane stuff like killing his own men and leaving a corpse every time he does a new robbery! What a trademark, eh! In THE DEVIL BAT he wanted to kill people for revenge, in BOWERY he's simply a schizoid loco. LOL.

There's also a good looking babe and a (I suppose) handsome looking male detective but - lo and behold - as something of a surprise they DON'T get to get each other in the end nor even fall in love. In fact the babe's douchebag boyfriend gets killed halfway thru the movie (or becomes a zombie, whichever fits the description, LOL).

BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT runs just over an hour and doesn't overstay its welcome. I wanted to get the restored DVD from Roan Group but it's unfortunately OOP and is now way too expensive so I bought a cheapie disc from a label called Imavision and expected it to look like ass but was pleasantly surprise to find that the print looks excellent!! The DVD is a release from Quebec (my first Quebec DVD actually) but apart from the address and optional French subs it didn't look terribly Québécois to me. The cover text is in English and the same goes for the menu. There's no extras. I'm not gonna bother checking but from memory I think I paid around £3 for it via Amazon UK. Oh, did I mention it has zombies!! But they're crappy ones. Don't buy it for the zombies, haha.




EDIT: I just checked Amazon.com after all and now the Roan bastard is down to 11 dollars and they're selling second hand copies for a buck, argh!! I hate you all, you scum Marketplace sellers!!!

The Expendables 2 trailer is here!!!

Homer Simpson drool here! ^_^

The first one was great fun. Not awesome and in no way worthy of even touching RAMBO 4's dirty boxers but then again few new action films are. LMFAO. I look forward to this one if it's at least as fun as the first one I'll be happy.

EL VAMPIRO Y EL SEXO (René Cardona, Mexico, 1968)

aka SANTO Y EL TESORO DE DRÁCULA

Ian Jane posted about this long lost EL SANTO film over on the ROCK!SHOCK!POP! forum. I haven't seen the film yet so I'll re-post his forum entry here (I hope he's alright with it). It certainly looks very cool! Also, check out this blog post over on the multo cool'o and imformativ'o TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK blog (which used to be a print fanzine altho I never got any of their issues). And there are some screen grabs on this Spanish lingo blog.

by IAN JANE

Santo fans have probably heard about the fabled 'sexy' Santo film that was made but which never saw the light of day. It was found a year or so ago and while Santo's son doesn't want it released (for fear of tarnishing the kid friendly image his father's movies had), it did get a TV showing recently and someone taped it, subtitled it, and uploaded it to a certain file sharing site.

I'm pretty stoked that even if this isn't amazing quality that it is at least available now, with subs no less. Hopefully the movie gets a proper release, as I'd love to hear a commentary from an expert on the Santo movies discussing the bizarre history of the film. If that'll happen or not, who knows - and the image quality of this isn't going to floor you, but just to have the chance to see it after reading about it years ago and figuring it would never surface warms my geeky heart.

There's a pretty interesting article about the find on Reuters here. Basically this is the color and sexified version of Santo In The Treasure Of Dracula which Rise Above made available a few years ago (I miss that company).

Update on the ONAR dvd sale - by Ali Murat Guven

By ALI MURAT GUVEN

Dear Turkish cult movie fans and friends of Onar Films,

We had a friend who was searching for the old fantastic Turkish movies, who dedicated his life to dig these lost jewels… We lost our dear fellow Vassilis Barounis or as we all know “Bill” in age of 48 in October 2011.

I met Vassilis Barounis in 2006 thanks to cinema historian Metin Demirhan who is another hero we lost couple of years ago. He was collaborating with Metin and asked me some technical help. So started our friendship...

First, I prepared interviews for “Tarzan İstanbul’da”, “Süpermen Dönüyor” and “Ölüler Konuşmaz ki…” Metin and we send them to Athens so we had a very nice way of working together.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Kunt Tulgar -famous Turkish producer, director and actor- went to Athens, Greece as a friendly representative to Bill's widow, Julia Barounis.

Julia knows us very well because we all helped to Bill for his commercial efforts many times.

Mr. Tulgar and his wife took many DVD's from Vassilis' home-office and carried them with their luggages as much as they can carry with themselves and returned to Istanbul two days later.

Now, we are trying to sell these first party of the Onar DVD's one by one.

This is not a commercial activity for me or for Mr. Tulgar. We, the Turks never forget our good friends and Vassilis was a very good friend. Everybody thinks that Turks and Greeks hate each other. But, we were "brothers". My nickname for Vassilis was always "brother" on his e-mail messages. Novadays, I try to deserve this emotional nickname.

All the payment which is coming from the sales is collecting in a bank account. We earn "zero" on this procedure. Everything is for Julia and her little daughter.

You may check this info by writing to Julia, to Athens. If you wish, I can send her e-mail to anybody. She knows everything on this sales operation, my friendly aim and trusts me. Therefore, you are buying this DVDs for "Bill's family", not for me.

After releasing these adverts on the trash film websites, everyday, I receive more than 20 messages from all around the world and reply all of them one by one.

I sold 120 DVD’s to date, in the first 10 days. And I sent all of them via registered airmail post to their owners from USA to Australia. And I added to all personal signed photos of Mr. Kunt Tulgar and Mr. Aytekin Akkaya. For only one DVD or for 10 DVD's, I always added 2 A4 color posters inside every parcel. This is our little present as the sales team for the supporters of this operation.

You must know this firstly... Only "Cellat" (The Executioner) finished... It was really and certainly finished. As the honorary representative of Onar Films in Turkey, I have only ONE COPY from "Cellat" in my library now. And Julia has not got this title in Athens. There was only 9 copies in Athens and Mr. Tulgar bringed them to me. And if we don't print a new 500 legal copies with Onar label as an independent work, it will never be again.

In the other side, "Kilink Istanbul"da is almost finishing. Last copies of this title are in Istanbul, in my office and I have only 25-30 copies from this title.

Another important info for you... "Karanlık Sular", "Kadın Dusmanı","Demirpence Korsan Adam" is AVAILABLE. But, their copies are in Athens now. Mr. Tulgar will fly to Athens again at the beginning of next May and will also bring me these titles.

I will keep you up to date via Murat Tolga Şen and Utku Uluer from Öteki Sinema (www.otekisinema.com) and Sinematik Yeşilçam (sinematikyesilcam.com) websites.
If you need any titles and want to support this operation, then write to me via:

onarfilms.lastfilms@yahoo.com

Best regards to all,

ALI MURAT GUVEN
Turkish film critic / Cinema historian
Onar Films’ Honorary Representative in Istanbul-Turkey