SLEAZE CINEMA: 10 SHORT REVIEWS OF CLASSIC SLABS OF TRASH

DVD: Island Of Death directed by Nico Mastorakis (1975)
Overall this flick is a series of cheap but effective laughs. A young couple Celia (played by amateur actress Jane Ryall) and Christopher (played by male model Robert Behling) arrive in Mykonos, and it quickly becomes apparent that they are a bit weird. For example, they call their mother in London and make her listen to them having sex in a phone box (at this point we don't know they are siblings, but we do know the woman hanging on the other end of the line is Christopher's mom). In a restaurant Celia and Chris ask a French painter over to their table, and the next day Celia seduces him outside the church he's renovating. The sex begins with Celia and the artist sploshing each other with paint, while Chris hides and takes photographs of the softcore sexual action. After the nookie, Chris and Celia murder the artist by crucifying him and then pouring paint down his throat, all the while taking snaps of what they're doing. But don't worry about Chris, before heading out that morning he was shown having sex with a goat and then slaughtering this innocent creature. Next a gay couple are murdered with a sword and a gun, and this is also photo documented.

Everything is reasonably fast paced but interspersed with shots of Mykonos to provide a bucolic contrast to the lightweight gore. The only downer is the soundtrack, the score is lousy but fortunately it is broken up with some amusing folk songs. Adding to the strangeness, Celia and Chris are supposedly both English - and while Brit amateur Jane Ryall has no problem with the accent, Robert Behling who plays Chris keeps slipping from obviously fake British intonation into his natural American drawl. Making things even more surreal, Behling looks remarkably like Richard Branson and even shares the Virgin entrepreneur's naff taste in jumpers. The perversions continue fairly thick and fast - Richard (opps I mean Chris) has sex with a middle-aged American nymphomaniac, then beats her up and decapitates her with the business end of a bulldozer; Celia is raped by a couple of hippie tourist hustlers and Chris kills one of them with a harpoon; Celia has lesbian sex with a girl called Lesley who proceeds to take a post-coital hit of heroin before Chris beats her up and burns the skin off her face; Chris also plunges a sickle thru the chest of a local woman who'd provoked him by taking a shower; and finally, a mute shepherd rapes Celia and beats Chris up, leaving him to die in a lime pit. Celia is attracted by her assailant and enjoys ecstatic consensual sex with him as her brother is burnt to death.

The gore in this film is no more convincing than the plot, but the direction is competent, the feel off-kilter, and the stupidity of the whole thing made me laugh. Among the rib-ticklers is Chris beginning beating up the middle-aged nympho as they make love, but when she breaks free and runs away he pulls his knickers on before giving chase and killing her - that's right kids, you gotta be properly dressed in a pair of briefs before you commit murder!. There isn't a cock in sight anywhere in this flick, but there is plenty of tits and ass, and the odd bit of bush. However, the guys keep both their knickers and their trousers on during the majority of 'humping'! Cheesy in the extreme but nonetheless with a better soundtrack this could have been a minor classic... and is still worth a gander except for one scene.

All but one of the killings in this movie are so kitsch and ineptly executed they are enjoyable. The exception is the lynching of a black detective called Foster. Now I couldn't work out whether this was meant to underline how horrible the lead characters are, or the director just wasn't aware of the historical associations - but to me it seems hard to believe it is accidental that it pans out this way since Foster is the only black character in the movie. A noose is also put around the neck of the first murder victim we see, the French artist, but it isn't used to kill him. Foster has the noose thrown around his neck and has to run after his own plane which Celia and Chris have hijacked, he manages to get on the wing and hang on for a bit, before falling back. Due to the historical associations with the slavery and post-slavery black holocaust I know a lot of people - me included - will find this scene unpleasant.

DVD: The Bronx Warriors AKA 1990: I Guerrieri Del Bronx directed by Enzo G. Castellari (1982)
"Bronx Warriors" works on the usual exploitation film premise of copying something successful from around the same time, in this instance attempting to cross "The Warriors" (the good) with "Escape From New York" (the bad and the ugly). Being an Italian production that wants to sell itself to English language audiences, it semi-pretends to be American (by pulling in some American names) but clearly isn't; as if not being Hollywood isn't a definite plus anyway. So a runaway heiress has gone to the Bronx to hang out with like 'real' people and Vic Morrow plays a futuristic fascist cop trying to bring her back to Manhattan and the corporation she owns. This is Morrow's penultimate flick, the one before he paid the ultimate penalty for doing big budget Hollywood dreck and was killed when a stunt involving a helicopter and illegally employed child extras (who also died) went wrong during the filming of "The Twilight Zone" movie. Mark Gregory is Trash the biker gang leader who has become the rich girl's lover, and he teams up with another gang banger played by Fred Williamson to rescue 'his' chick after she's been kidnapped by a roller-skating gang called The Zombies. In places this futuristic movie comes across like a spaghetti western, and contains a few good moments of 'high weirdness'. Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is perhaps the best known and most successful male blaxsploitation star, and yet here he's called The Ogre while Vic Morrow's character is named Hammer (a moniker most would associate with Williamson). There are a number of gory impalings but nothing on a par with the eye-gouging that goes on in the average Lucio Fulci flick. "Bronx Warriors" just about held my attention for half its running time, then I just got bored. You have more of Williamson in the second half which didn't help. Like this entire production, The Hammer's (Williamson's not Morrow's) approach is workman-like but not exactly inspiring- there's nothing technically wrong with it but at the end of the day it just comes across as dull.

DVD: Asylum Erotica AKA Slaughter Hotel directed by Fernando di Leo (1971)
Having seen several of di Leo's seventies gangster movies, I'd been meaning to catch up with more of this director's work, so when I stumbled across this Avenue Entertainment release in a bargain bin I grabbed it with both hands. The transfer isn't good and the pan and scan irritating in places, but this is still a fabulously insane movie from a director who really knows how to strut his funky stuff. Klaus Kinski plays a doctor and Rosalba Neri a lesbian nymphomaniac nurse in this exploitation shocker set in a clinic for women with psychological problems. As those familiar with di Leo's output would expect, his off-kilter camera takes in a lot of female skin and works off this enticing flesh to good effect. Meanwhile Kinski moves around in the way Mick Jagger would if only the Rolling Stones' singer had the German actor's sense of style. A masked intruder stalks the the clinic, while the attractive actresses get their kits off. Many of the murders, all committed with antique weapons such as a crossbow and a sword, are preceded by insane fast cut flash backs on the part of the women who are about to die. The slaughter of various males, three in total, are extremely perfunctory in comparison. Once the police are called they ask a cured inmate, Mrs Hume to act as bait to help them catch the killer. When the murderer is unmasked, he turns out to be Mrs Hume's husband; but he breaks away once his identity is revealed. The authorities conclude he was only pretending to be a homicidal maniac, with his real target being his wife, so the other women were only killed to cover his tracks. However, Mr Hume proceeds to break into the room where all of the pretty nurses from the clinic are holed up and he then bludgeons them to death with a mace. Blood splatters a wall with operatic self-importance and once the cops enter the room they shoot Mr Hume dead in a stylised slow-mo execution. The narrative isn't important and in many places it is completely overwhelmed by the visual style of this movie (which is stunning). If you don't know di Leo's work then check this out, or better yet have a gander at his masterpiece "Mister Scarface". Great Italian cinema doesn't stop with the likes of Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci, di Leo is another of its many wonderful facets.... BTW: There are no extras on this DVD, it doesn't even have a chapter menu!

DVD: Space Is The Place directed by John Coney (1974)
"Space Is The Place" stars free jazz legend Sun Ra robbed up in his Egyptian clobber as the coolest dude in the multiverse. Ra has found a planet on which his people can live free from the racism and hang-ups of Planet Earth. His spaceship lands in the Oakland ghetto and Ra raps to the youth who come to realise this badass messiah knows his shit. Apart from super-phat and groovy footage of the Sun Ra Arkestra in concert, Ra plays a game of cosmic tarot against the pimp-like Overseer to decided the fate of his people and gets kidnapped by whitey who tortures him with Dixie-style music. At the end Ra and the best of his people escape as the earth is destroyed. This is the full version of "Space Is The Place" with the comic sex scenes restored, revealing the movie to be the missing link between Melvin Van Peebles and Rudy Ray Moore. The colour on this is beautiful, and the costumes unbelievable. A stone-to-the-bone underground classic, imagine "Towers Open Fire" crossed with "Superfly" only better.... Myth, magic, music and science all in one celluloid wrap, you gotta see this if you ain't clapped your eyes on the full length version already.

Video: Scopitone: Die ersten Musik-Clips compiled by Werner Nekes
Well here's an oldie but goldie: a 1990 release from the Werner Nekes (pronounced 'knickers' by English speakers) Foundation. Basically these are old French and German music clips from the sixties made in 16mm to run on film (pre-video) juke boxes. The machines were quite incredible (one was on display at the "Eyes, Lies & Illusions" exhibition at the Hayward in London a couple of years ago), although unfortunately they never caught on in the British Isles. So what you get here is a load of German schlager music, plus a bit of Gallic easy listening. The visual themes are all very 1960s, starting with guys in flight attendant uniforms, and moving through 'dolly birds' to exotica with African drumming and topless female dancers. The music is,on the whole dreck, although possibly the lyrics are hilarious if you speak German. That said, the sixties styling, - clothes, haircuts, dance routines and just the overall quality of the film - are mesmerising. So probably the best thing to do is just turn the sound down on the TV and play something more interesting over the top, although I didn't think of doing that until after I'd watched thru the tape; the visuals were that entrancing...

Film: Putney Swope directed by Robert Downey (1969)
Putney Swope is a satire in which a crew of soul brothers and sisters take over a New York ad agency. It's in black and white except for the ads the team make which are shot in colour. Sample dialogue: "Mr. Victrola Cola: I got this great window cleaner. Cleans good and doesn't streak. Smells bad, though. Cleans good, but smells bad. Putney Swope: As a window cleaner, forget it. Put soybeans in it and market it as a soft drink in the ghetto. We'll put a picture of a rhythm and blues singer on the front and call it Victrola Cola." Yeah, this movie is every bit as good as the "Be Black Baby" sequence in "Hi Mom", but you get a whole feature devoted to satirising race relations and modern culture. Classic underground schlock from way back when, best thing I've seen since "Garage Sale" months ago now. Oh, the other thing about this movie is one of the supporting actors (and the best thing in it) is Antonio Fargas. You know: Huggy Bear in the original "Starsky & Hutch" TV show, Link Brown in the movie "Foxy Brown", Doodlebug in "Cleopatra Jones" etc.

DVD: Punk In London directed by Wolfgang Buld (1978)
The best thing about this documentary is all the shots of London in 1977. There is truly beautiful footage of decrepit railway architecture in and around Camden in north London. The coverage of clubs is nice too, and raises the question: 'did the Red Cow in Hammersmith have the worst pub wallpaper in the world ever?' There's a fantastic tracking shot of kids queuing up to get into the Marquee, shame they're going in to see the Boomtown Rats, a band to be avoided at all costs. I saw The Adverts several times at the Marquee but couldn't work out if footage of them here is of a gig I attended. The Adverts were never very good but this captures them at their 'best'; before the rhythm section was driven in two entirely different directions by the drugs of their choice (smack and speed). None of the performances rise much above the mediocre, and mainly they are pretty rough - doesn't make any difference whether you're talking about The Jam at the 100 Club, The Lurkers at the Fulham Greyhound or The Jolt at The Red Cow. Rehearsal studio run thrus by the likes of Chelsea, X-Ray Spex and Subway Sect, are no better. That said, Chelsea front man Gene October does look pretty but singularly fails to be electrifying when he talks. The worst band here are The Killjoys (featuring future Dexy's Midnight Runners front man Kevin Roland, who comes across as desperate for fame), the best are The Electric Chairs (featuring a pre-sex change Wayne County). There are interviews with 'punk' personalities; that is if you consider hustlers like Miles Copeland and a staff member from the "Sounds" music paper to be 'punk'. You get interviews with most of the featured bands as well as twits like Rodent The Clash roadie (a self-satisfied jerk like most of those close to the group). The Clash give an interview and are shown in concert too. If your idea of a good time is watching Joe Strummer acting like he's been doing amphetamines then this is definitely for you. Personally I could live without this 'star' turn. I liked the first Clash album but never thought they cut it as a live act. The best interview is actually with The Lurkers bass player, who sits beside a black and white television while "Top of the Pops" is on. This appears to be in the family living room and his mum and dad sit with their arms folded on either side of him; and when the Boomtown Rats make an appearance on the TV, he opines "Corrupt, sold out!" This is cinema verity at its best. Actually the construction of this documentary is on the whole better than the content. Think Robert Bresson, slow moving (often static) camera work, and a cast of what are essentially amateurs who've been instructed not to act in a traditional style. But as an early product of post-modernism, this film allows the audience to die of boredom, rather than presenting us with someone on screen snuffing it with dignity. This is a mondo movie that makes 'extreme' intellectual demands on any viewer with no emotional investment in its content; and it produces is a 'boredom' that will reward anyone who has grasped the dialectics of discontent.... Punk is dead and we are post-modern zombies!

Film: Primitive London directed by Arnold Lewis Miller (1965)
Here's a typical mondo movie from the mid-sixties, with strippers, show girls, topless fashion shows, mods, rockers, beatniks, a breach birth, auto-accidents, Jack the Ripper and Jack the Stripper (London serial killers of prostitutes of the 1880s and 1960s), key parties (wife swapping), the removal of foot corns, a meat processing factory, body builders, wrestlers and out of shape guys in a sauna. Among the most interesting sequences were interviews with beatniks; kids who didn't want to work, they wanted to be poets; their desires sound like a mantra. The British beatnik scene is under-documented and this is a nice warts and all slice of it from very shortly before it faded away. Even more fascinating to me were the sequences shot in Churchill's Club with show girls (my mother moved on from Murray's to Churchill's in 1964, so would have been working there on stage and as a hostess when "Primitive London" was shot). The cabaret is lousy and the Churchill's "good times" look like they'd kill me, but since this club provided my mom with an easy living, I ain't gonna knock it too much. The punters didn't really come for the onstage entertainments but the more fatal attractions of drink and the pretty girls who were paid to sit at their tables with them. Moving on, the stand up from Ray Martine shot at The Establishment Club is more polished and entertaining than the acts gracing the stage at Churchill's; but there is a tackiness to the show girls that has a more enduring appeal. Anyway "Primitive London" zips along for something like 84 minutes, never lingering too long on any one subject. Its a mondo movie and simultaneously a sleazy insight into London in the mid-sixties, with plenty of obviously staged fakery and zanny commentary.

DVD: Rude Boy directed by Jack Hazan and David Mingay (1980)
This film features a lot of great footage of late-seventies Britain but also unfortunately way too much of rock bozos The Clash playing live. The conceit behind this is nice, the central character is a complete asshole called Ray Gange (who plays an almost fictional version of himself). The film starts with Nazi and anti-Nazi demonstrators taking to the streets of London. Then things move on to Gange who works in a sex shop but would like a job dry humping gear for his favorite rock band The Clash. He eventually gets the break and blows it because he's always drunk and chasing women instead of concentrating on setting up and taking down the group's equipment. Nobody likes Gange, who comes across as the original Trustafarian Railton Road flake hoping for a ride via The Clash to somewhere more exciting than his dull and aimless life (some hope eh?). That said, you get some great shots of Gange walking thru Brixton Market (much better than the images of the same place in Patrick Keiller's 1992 potboiler "London"). You also get to marvel at Joe Strummer's teeth: drugs would seem to be about the only explanation as to how this over privileged diplomat's son ended up with his mush in such a shocking state... And despite his incredibly nobby family background, Strummer actually succeeds far better than Gange in his efforts to project himself as proletarian.

Leaving aside all the footage which shows just how decayed Britain was in the late-seventies, there are some extremely amusing moments to savior. The art critic and curator Lutz Becker (an expert on constructivism) makes a cameo appearance as a punter dressed in a white trench coat in Gange's porn shop. Unfortunately he doesn't have any lines (presumably so as not to give away the fact he ain't a native Londoner). Liz Young - who went on to become a noted literary critic and is sadly no longer with us - appears as one of Ray Gange's girlfriends and gives him a simulated blow job in a toilet. Oh, and if you look very carefully when The Clash come on stage at the 1978 Anti-Nazi League Carnival in Victoria Park in Hackney, you might just catch a glimpse of me in the audience.

I have to say that while I really liked the eponymous first Clash album, I thought the follow up "Give Em Enough Rope" was a heavy metal abomination. And unfortunately this film focuses on the period in which that was made, so its concert footage is really monotonous. Still it's curious to watch the lighting rigs and PAs improve in size and quality as we follow the band in their desperate attempt to scramble up the music biz ladder. The Clash didn't make their real break thru (America means money) until after this movie was wrapped, and their narcissism even as fledgling rock 'stars' is hilarious to watch. And even if you can't put up with the tedium of watching The Clash live, just stick your finger on the fast forward button during the concert footage.. and marvel at the onscreen parade of super-dumb sleazebags both in and around the group, not to mention some great footage of London in the late-seventies. Worth watching just to see how only The Clash could make the Sex Pistols appear credible

Film: The Passenger directed by Antonioni (1975)
Talking of pure surface, watching Antonioni's "The Passenger" on the big screen at NFT 1 was fabulous. The audience was mainly mid-fifties upwards, and despite the extended run on the film before it gets its UK DVD release, the place was packed. Personally I consider it very groovy to take a big Hollywood star like Jack Nicholson and attempt to strip him down to pretty much nothing, get rid of the mannerisms, stop him acting. Antonioni was right in thinking actors are unimportant. And I like the understated way he got Nicholson to non-act a man whose taken over a dead stranger's identity and barely knows how to pretend to be someone else. There's no depth to "The Passenger", just pure surface. That said, you still get to dig the gorgeous cinematography, a colour tone poem about alienation. Great shots of Africa, England, Germany and Spain. And when Antonioni uses as a backdrop bombastic Barcelona buildings commissioned by nineteenth-century industrialists with a hell of a lot more money than taste (you know I'm not even going to stoop to using the 'G' word by naming the architect), you too will believe you must have fallen asleep and woken up in a Jess Franco movie. Seeing is believing, and belief is the enemy. So pretty far out for 1975, indeed almost as good as his earlier film "Blow Up" from way back when in the swinging sixties!

Sleaze cinema 2 (more reviews)

Sleaze cinema 3 (even more reviews)

Sleaze cinema 4 (yet more reviews)

The films of Manchester exploitation legend Cliff Twemlow

The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky

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