Luigi's Mansion
Yessir, that Fellini sure could conjure indelible images and complex emotions. That Leone had a painterly eye that made his eerie westerns transcend national borders. That Argento used to make really strange, beautiful symphonies of violence and madness. That De Sica seriously made you feel like you were trudging around looking for a damned bicycle for an hour. That Pasolini really liked Jesus, the proletariat and big wangs. But I'm looking further down the well, where you can find names like Luigi Montefiori and Enzo G. Castellari. I bought myself four movies on Feb. 14, which combined somehow cost less than half of what I spent on the holiday last year. Why shouldn't that make me forlorn?
"Antropophagus" (aka "Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper") - For 25 years, the only way you could see all of Joe D'Amato's infamous slasher flick in America was on an overpriced, cobbled-together VHS bootleg. I broke down a few years back and rented Monterey Home Video's heavily edited 82-minute pan-and-scan version ("The Grim Reaper"), but it was seriously unsatisfying and the tape was almost completely degenerated. This was going to be one of my first purchases when I finally got around to getting a region-free DVD player. Yet while going through the potentially wrist-slitting process of buying my own Valentine's Day presents, I instantly brightened when I came across this Shriek Show set, and my reaction probably freaked out nearby shoppers when I saw the unbelievable $10.99 price tag. The flick's reputation is undeniable - it and its semi-sequel, "Absurd," were alphabetically at the top of Great Britain's list of "video nasties", and even today, the import specialists at Xploited Cinema report that copies of this very DVD are being confiscated by Australian customs. This smoke, however, does not signal fire. "Anthropophagus" (the *proper* spelling is up for debate) is certainly one of the better-made D'Amato pictures I've seen, with attractive cinematography reminiscent of Sergio Salvati's and more legit atmosphere than you'd expect from a horror movie set on a sun-dappled Mediterranean isle; it's not as boring and artless as many have claimed. It stars Tisa Farrow, better known as Mia's rattier sister and as the female lead in Fulci's "Zombi 2." Other familiar mugs include Zora Kerova, the girl who got hooks stuck through her boobs in "Cannibal Ferox," and Italian low-budget actor/writer/director/gadabout Luigi Montefiori (credited here with his frequently-employed, clever pseudonym, George Eastman) as Niko, the cannibal killer of the title. In a flashback, we see that he went nuts after he killed and ate his son and wife while adrift at sea, and now he holes up in an old mansion feasting on intruders. Tisa, Zora and a bunch of unsympathetic asshats land on his island, and he fucks them up. There's your plot. It's entirely the gore that created the "Anthropophagus" legend, and the effects are quite good except for the opening cleaver-in-the-face, the "trick" camerawork during which is the most inept I've seen since the pitchfork scene in "Fear No Evil". Some of the more infamous gross-outs include Niko yanking out a lady's fetus and taking a big bite (it was a rabbit), as well as feasting on his own entrails after he gets jabbed in the gut by a pickaxe. There's also a nicely-depicted hanging suicide and an effective sequence where Niko pulls a girl up through a hole in the roof by her hair, and her face gets shredded by splinters... you can see the skin peeling off in great detail. But is it worthy of bans and all that? Honestly, no. Although it hails from a time and place that produced some of the goriest, most outlandish horror films in history, one only need to look at any single movie by Jörg Buttgereit to see that "Anthropophagus." is not the sickest nor most disturbing picture ever made. It's still not a good first date movie, unless it's a first date with someone uncommonly cool. I was far less disappointed than I thought I would be.
"2019: Dopo la caduta di New York" (aka"2019: After the Fall of New York") - The cluster of post-apocalyptic action flicks produced in Italy during the early '80s is a real hole in my education, so I was pleased indeed that Shriek Show offers this and the following two flicks as a low-priced package. First off, the score by Oliver Onions is really cool, a dated, chilly synth job reminiscent of Simonetti's "Tenebre" or Frizzi's "Zombi 2" sound. This is a movie by Sergio Martino, the hack behind such undistinguished titles as "Screamers" (which had one of the best, most misleading exploitation ad campaigns ever) and "The Scorpion with Two Tails", as well as the mysteriously well-regarded "Torso". This one's a straight-up "Escape from New York" rip-off, with a dude comissioned to find the last fertile woman on the continent, who is holed up somewhere in a ruined future version of the Big Apple overrun by the villainous European/Asian/African union (with the cute moniker of Eurac). The dubious hero, played by scuzzy-looking Eurotrash model Michael Sopkiw, is named Parsifal, but that's the classiest it gets. He starts the movie by winning a souped-up post-nuke vehicle race, for which he earns cash and a curvy, dark-haired Italian lady who totally wants to bang him. Parsifal's first mistake is ditching the brunette when he starts his quest. His second is his ludicrous jacket, the arms of which I think are supposed to be made of chain mail but look more like part of a thick gray sweater. His third is hooking up with a bony blonde rebel chick while spurning the advances of an insanely hot Eurac bad girl. (His fourth would be getting back together with the skinny dame for Lamberto Bava's awful "Devil Fish", but that's another story.) So Parsifal, the anorexic and a couple of warrior dudes duke it out with various fall-out victims and Eurac toughs, and lots of heads are demolished in the process. They enlist a friendly dwarf and Big Ape, the real star of the show. He's the silk-shirted leader of a simian-human colony and played by good old Luigi Montefiori, looking even hairier and smellier than he did in "Anthropophagus." When the good guys finally find the girl who can spawn, kept alive and disease-free by her scientist pop in a cheap hibernation chamber, Big Ape gets a big hard-on, and it is implied that he possibly introduces her sleeping teen birth canal to Little Big Ape (offscreen). With lots of gleeful ass-kicking and general mayhem, weird characters, cheesy locations, hilarious dialogue, laser guns that make wicked noises and post-apocalypse-street-punk girls with little to no hair, "2019" is a no-brain winner. It's easily the best Sergio Martino movie I've seen, which isn't saying much.
"1990: I guerrieri del Bronx" (aka "1990: The Bronx Warriors") - "MST3K" fans are probably familiar with "Escape From the Bronx," the sequel to this minor classic which was mocked there under the alternate title "Escape 2000". At the center of both is a man named Trash, which we can assume is not his Christian name. Trash is a wispy goon, looks like a member of Bang Tango and here leads a gang of bikers who all seem a lot tougher than himself, surviving in a "future" version of the Bronx which has degenerated into the bad kind of anarchy since the cops gave up on it. Like "2019," the plot for "1990" is snagged from John Carpenter's "Escape From New York," but also spiced up with the grungy flash of "The Warriors." On his surreal commentary track, director Enzo G. Castellari claims he had not seen Walter Hill's gang warfare epic at the time, but someone on the crew must have. Trash goes head over heels for Ann, a mousy lass played by the director's daughter, who happens to be the daughter of some sort of arms magnate played by the director, and since Ann's not thrilled about taking over the family business she just shacks up with Trash and his swastika-sporting pals. The weapons company hires a sleazy cop to get the girl back, a dude called Hammer who is portrayed by Vic Morrow, who was actually born in the Bronx and was killed shortly after wrapping "1990" on the set of "Twilight Zone: The Movie." Hammer makes his move by trying to stir up trouble in Trash's gang, but then Ann gets nabbed by a rival clan of kung-fu hockey players on roller skates. Further complicating things is the presence of the "real" Hammer, the mighty Fred Williamson, chomping cigars and busting heads as The Ogre, leader of yet another gang. On the commentary track, when the interviewer brings up the "Hammer" coincidence, Castellari simply responds with a chuckle and an enthusuastic, "Yeah!" (This equally baffling and hysterical exchange occurs frequently during the commentary's duration. My guess is Enzo's got lousy English or he was hitting the vino.) Anyway, Trash and The Ogre have some history, and once they figure out someone's playing them, they team up to battle their way through your typical NYC wasteland populated with colorful hoodlums. A charmingly wooden pair they make. In his lengthy and very entertaining supplemental interview, Williamson reveals that Mark Gregory, who inhabited the role of Trash for two whole movies, is gay, and that his rigid-yet-fey demeanor was the result of being coached to walk and move in a butchier manner than was natural for the guy. The Ogre, on the other hand, isn't as catatonic, but if you've ever seen Fred Williamson beat someone up in a movie, you know how unconvincingly stiff the guy is, although as always he makes up with an arsenal of hilarious action-hero faces. He's got a tall blonde girlfriend in a hot outfit with a cape, the sort of dominatrix/fantasy-villainess duds I strongly believe Condoleeza Rice should don at all times to accentuate her evil sex appeal. The Ogre's final battle against the leader of the roller skate mafia - none other than Luigi Montefiori! - is amazing, but he and his gang are wiped out by Hammer and a squad of fascist flamethrower-wielding cops. With everyone he cares about dead, Trash rides into the sunset dragging Hammer's dying body, capping a series of mini-climaxes. Overall, "1990" is not as great as I was led to believe, but it's still a fun diversion. As a footnote, both it and "2019" show the World Trade Center towers as damaged yet still standing... at least it's plausible in this one, as it was set in the far-off future of 1990.
"I Nuovi Barbari" (aka "The New Barbarians"/"Warriors of the Wasteland") - Another Castellari special, this one made for the same producer as the "Bronx" duo (Fabrizio De Angelis, the moneyman who financed "Dr. Butcher, M.D." and most of Lucio Fulci's finest pictures), but with a fraction of the budget. The star of this "Road Warrior" wannabe is one Giancarlo Prete, a bland, square-jawed Italian who kinda looks like Mad Max if you squint real hard. As Scorpion, he roams around the bombed-out rubble of civilization, doing whatever in a bitchin' car with all sorts of weapons and gadgets popping out and an observation bubble that glows green at night. To match, he has a glowing translucent tent, which he shows off while he's porking an injured lady he picks up. Right there, we know Scorpion's smarter than Parsifal - his passenger is none other than Anna Kanakis, the smokin' Eurac girl the hero turned down in "2019." Anna's a former Miss Italy who, according to Castellari's somewhat more coherent commentary track, got the part because she was married to composer Claudio Simonetti. (The Goblin keyboardist did the score here, though it's not exactly his best work.) Fred "The Hammer" Williamson lends his magnificent mustachioed mug to Nadir, a lone wolf archer in a silly outfit who occasionally pals around with Scorpion. He follows his pal and his new squeeze around for a while, which is pretty creepy, especially when he hides in the shadows while they're humping. Eventually Nadir helps Scorp out of a jam with his trusty exploding arrows, and they hang together until they meet an outpost of folks who believe in something called "God" and are following a guy named Moses through the desert. Oh, those Italians love their Bible! You know the Templars, a squadron of violent, insane, queer nihilists laying waste to the wasteland, are the bad guys when their leader, One (yet again, the versatile Luigi Montefiori), tears a Good Book in half. Sporting shoulder pads and horrible hairdos, these men's men are the "barbarians" of the title, wiping out all breeders they encounter and hunting Scorpion to ingratiate themselves with their bewhiskered Tom-of-post-fallout-Finland boss. At one point, they kidnap Scorp and One tells him, "You didn't want to live like a Templar, but you're going to die like one!" One then proceeds to ass-rape the movie's hero, which is apparently the Templar initiation rite. (While the intention of making the baddies blatantly gay may or may not be evidence of raging homophobia on the filmmakers' part, I've got to admit this is not something that would happen in an American action movie.) Meanwhile, Nadir's been one-upping ol' Parsifal himself by shacking up with Iris Peynado, the hypnotically-eyed Dominican hottie Michael Sopkiw ditches to hook up with the blonde coatrack from "2019" in "Devil Fish." Nadir rolls off of Iris long enough to rescue Scorpion again, then the pair prepares for the inevitable Templar rumble by enlisting a child mechanic played by the ugly, big-toothed kid from Fulci's "House by the Cemetery" and "Manhattan Baby." The big showdown involves lots of explosions, which are exceptionally numerous in this movie, and Scorpion gets his revenge on One by reenacting the original cover of Pantera's "Far Beyond Driven" with the big drill on the front of his car. Order restored, Nadir heads off to plow his lady and Scorpion is reunited with his... well, they acknowledge each other, anyway. "Barbarians" actually ends with Scorpion taking the hand of the little blond boy, not having actually addressed poor Anna Kanakis. Before you can say "bizarre love triangle," it's over. Hooray!
This here quiz is interesting, in that it determines its answers by asking you questions unrelated to the output. For me, the results seem pretty accurate except the last one, as anyone who has been around me over the past year should know...
| Your Love Life Secrets Are... |
 Looking back on your life, you will only have one true love. You're a little scarred from your past relationships, but who isn't? You expect a lot from your lover - you want the full package. You tend to be very picky. In fights, you are able to walk away and calm down. You are able to weather the storm. Break-ups can be painful for you, but you never show it. You hold your head high. |
Finally... something American (a piece on rawkers Every Time I Die) and something Swedish. I believe this is the first video Katatonia's ever made. It is awesome.
posted by SoulReaper at 3:35 PM
2 Comments:
Kill the music
Every Time I Die take the road less traveled
Loved and hated for their brash, cocky demeanor, there’s an aura of danger that surrounds Every Time I Die, one so tangible it must follow the Buffalo, New York quintet off stage.
Yet last month, as guitarist Jordan Buckley drove the band’s tour van through Wyoming en route to a gig opening for Story of the Year, it was just coincidence that the vehicle hit a patch of ice. No one was hurt, but band members and crew found themselves upside down and freezing on the side of I-80, help slow in coming and four tour dates canceled.
True to form, the band issued a sardonic statement, vocalist Keith Buckley (Jordan’s brother) quipping about how their roadie "was thrown into a PERFECT 720 double backflip and totally stuck the landing, and my Long Island Iced Tea was spilt [sic] all over my ½ pound of Alaskan king crab legs."
Jokes aside, such an experience might keep one away from long-distance road trips. Not road warriors Every Time I Die, who play at Chicago’s House of Blues this Sunday. Also on the bill is Orange County’s Bleeding Through, whose own winter 2003 crash on I-80 landed them on one of those FOX police video shows. (It’s a perilous route: last Halloween, rising emo band Bayside wrecked on a Wyoming stretch of the same interstate, an accident which claimed the life of the band’s drummer.)
When Every Time I Die played the second stage at Ozzfest 2004, they stuck out among an assembly line of peers plying the standard “new metalcore,” an aggressive yet accessible mix of thrash metal and hardcore punk driven by guitar harmonies and predictable chugging. But here was Every Time I Die, firing nasty, bluesy hard rock riffs as fragments of frantic rhythmic twists, Keith twitching, strutting and hollering like Mick Jagger with a weasel in his knickers. Their fascinating racket scared a lot of old Ozzy fans back to the beer lines.
Then on last summer’s Sounds of the Underground tour, one of two Ozzfest competitors to emerge in 2005, Every Time I Die once again found themselves surrounded by a slate of burly metal bands, with only the chaos-core of Norma Jean able to compete for sheer eccentricity. This summer, they will be part of Warped Tour, where their abrasive sound will clash with a parade of sugary mall punks and emo pin-ups.
This is a band that doesn’t fit comfortably into any scene, yet can appeal to just about anyone who likes their rock loud and confrontational. Last year’s "Gutter Phenomenon" (Ferret) found Every Time I Die taking a slightly more focused approach that flashed some Southern rock guitar influences, less screaming and more singing. But the raucous rock n’ roll swagger remains, and on stage the band still seems a breath away from clattering into complete anarchy.
In a recent interview, Jordan Buckley discussed "Phenomenon," iconoclasm within a milieu of clones and the accident that launched a thousand snarky message board posts about his band’s name. Following is an edited transcript.
Q: So you were driving when the accident happened?
A: Yeah. Our merch guy was in shotgun and everybody else was sleeping.
Q: Has anything like this happened to you before? With all the touring you do...
A: No, nothing like this ever happened before. It’s gonna happen to everybody (laughs), that’s the way I see it, and we’re kind of new. We do bus tours, too, but this was our first van tour in a while. It was definitely a memorable way to start it off.
Q: Every Time I Die has done all of the major summer tours already.
A: We’re doing Warped Tour this summer, so this summer we’ll pretty much complete the trifecta of heavy summer tours. I think we’ll be the first band ever to do Ozzfest, Sounds of the Underground and Warped Tour. That’s the cool thing about our band: we just did a Story of the Year tour, now we’re doing a Bleeding Through tour, we’ve done Ozzfest, we’re doing Warped Tour, we did a My Chemical Romance tour. We fit the bill – no, let’s say we don’t fit the bill. We’re left of center with just about any band that we go out with. We’re as equally compatible or incompatible with Hatebreed as we are with My Chemical Romance. Some of their fans might like us, some of their fans might love us and some of their fans might not "get" us.
Q: Do you notice a certain type of crowd that responds better?
A: They respond in different ways. Where standing around, looking bored might turn you off from one crowd, it’s actually how another crowd really appreciates you. Not everybody wants to jump on their friend’s back and do cartwheels when they’re watching. Some people like to grab a beer and just stand in the back of the room and watch. That’s one of the major things I’ve learned by doing so much touring. Just ’cause another band has a bigger pit than you, it doesn’t mean they made any more fans than you did.
Q: Is not fitting into any scene perfectly a goal for Every Time I Die?
A: It works out well a lot, just because... well, take one of the summer festivals. You have people that are there all day long, and you know what? There’s a good chance that after watching twenty bands that they’ve never heard of, Every Time I Die is going to be the one band they remember. It’s not really a goal, it’s more of a blessing. Like I said, we might not have had the biggest pit of the day, but at the end of the day, people are like, "Oh, you know what band I really liked?"
Q: "Gutter Phenomenon" came out a while ago. How do you feel about it now that you’ve been playing out for about six months?
A: That’s a good question, because a lot of times you write songs and you don’t realize that you’re going to get sick of playing them next month. That is not the case with this music. The riffs are fun, playing it is still fun, and that’s what we kind of added to the songwriting process this time around — "What are we not gonna hate playing in two years?"
Q: Keith did a lot more singing this time.
A: We had a great producer this time around who was very vocal-oriented, and he kind of helped Keith steal the show. Machine — he did the last Lamb of God, he did a Clutch record, actually he’s doing the new Eighteen Visions as we speak. I don’t even know what they did. They’d just lock themselves in a room and we wouldn’t even know how things happened, but they happened. Sometimes we’d hear a lot of yelling — like, non-recorded yelling — and sometimes we’d smell a lot of, uh, illegal activity (laughs). I really don’t know what the hell went on in that room, but I’m glad it did.
Q: The production’s a little cleaner, but everything is laid out well, especially when you guys are going haywire, you can tell what’s going on all the time.
A: Uh-huh. I don’t really know much about producing, but I just assume you have to approach every record differently. That’s what attracted us to Machine. The Lamb of God record didn’t sound like the Clutch record, but they both sounded great because he brought out what the bands do best. I think he did that with us, too.
Q: With the cleaner singing and cleaner production, were you trying to make your music more accessible to people?
A: No, we really weren’t. People might not believe that, but it wasn’t the case. We just got together and jammed. If it sucked, we scratched it, and if it was awesome, we kept it. That’s always been our philosophy and always will be. Tastes change a little bit, but like I said earlier, we’re a little bit more aware of what we’ll get sick of in a month as opposed to three years down the line when we’re writing out our set list. That’s pretty much all.
Q: Because you really stand out and have a unique sound, I have a feeling you’re going to end up having more bands compared to you than vice versa.
A: That’s another thing I said after we recorded. I said, "I think people are going to listen to this and want to be in a band that does this," or they’re going to want the band they’re already in to start doing this.
Q: It seems like there are about four or five different schools of hardcore or whatever you want to call it, and most bands fall in line with those. Why does so much of it sound the same?
A: I think it’s just what happens when you’re young. You see a band, they’re on stage and they’re having a ton of fun, everyone watching them is having a ton of fun, and you kind of say to yourself, "I want to do that." Then once the bands start and start touring and create their own personalities, that’s when they say, okay, it’s not just about getting kids to stagedive and sing along anymore. It’s actually about, "Holy shit, we dropped out of school and quit our jobs to do this. Let’s be good at it. Let’s be original. Let’s leave our mark."
Q: Is there anybody in particular you feel is doing something innovative in hardcore these days?
A: The obvious one is The Dillinger Escape Plan. There is a lot of new stuff going on. That Minus the Bear band is great, I think Turbonegro is great. Even that Panic! at the Disco band, their name might be cheesy to say but you put it on and you really haven’t heard anything like it, which is cool. I give credit to anybody having fun and doing something new.
Q: I’ve got one last question that my editors asked us to bring up whenever we interview somebody this year. They’re going to compile them all into a story at the end of the year. The question is: What would you do if you were king of the world?
A: (background hollering: "That’s for shooting me last night, you son of a bitch!") Ow! I just got shot with a BB gun. Oh, man. King of the world, huh? I’d probably be pretty bad at that. Sirius satellite radio, I would buy everyone one of those because that keeps me so happy listening to Stern in the morning. It’s seriously my new favorite toy. That and a PSP, I would buy everyone a Sirius radio and a PSP. If you’re not fucking happy with that combination, you need some help that I can’t provide.
Franks. Granted, the comment's so long because the story's something I did for another venue and I don't want it appearing on search angines and whatnot. I mean, I generated the damned thing, I should be able to archive it for friends and the curious, and this is its raw-dawg, 100% uncensored XXX form.
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