No More Saturday Nights?

Elwy Yost.

This week it was announced that TVOntario is cancelling Saturday Night at the Movies at the end of this season, just one year shy of its fortieth anniversary. Saturday Night at the Movies is an institution among film fans in Southern Ontario, especially for the twenty-five years in which it was hosted by the affable Elwy Yost, whose infectious joy and enthusiasm was as delightful as the films themselves. Cinema lovers had the best TV date of the week every Saturday night, when they turned their lights down low and put their feet up to enjoy two movies, often sharing a similar theme, director or star. As if that wasn't enough, each film would be followed with celebrity interviews conducted by Mr. Yost himself, in his annual pilgrimages to Hollywood. This priceless archive of a quarter-century's culmination of footage is even more precious in that above and beyond the stars of Golden Age cinema, Elwy would equally devote interview time to directors, editors, cinematographers and musicians, in an effort to give viewers a complete mosaic of all the different hands that help to create the magic of the movies.

During the show's heyday (namely, when Mr. Yost hosted from 1974 to 1999), Saturday Night at the Movies gave another TV institution, Hockey Night in Canada a run for its money in terms of viewer ratings on Saturday nights. After Elwy Yost retired at the age of 74, there have been numerous attempts to keep the show running. The closest it came to retaining its legacy under Yost's reign, was fittingly enough, the first season after his retirement. Shelagh Rogers was a delightful host in her own right (handpicked by Mr. Yost himself) who still nonetheless kept his name alive via his incredible archive of interviews. However, due to conflicts with her other employer the CBC, she had to relinquish her post after just one season. For years, SNAM (as the show is known in short form) ran without any host. The films were coldly introduced with only an onscreen title card, and the interview segments were likewise clinically stitched together soundbytes. While the film programming may still have been impressive, the show had become disappointingly faceless- bereft of the warmth and joy distinguished in the years of Elwy Yost. Even with the re-introduction of a host (Thom Ernst) in 2010, the show still isn't the same.

TVO's decision to cancel its long-running show comes just one year after Elwy Yost passed away at the age of 85. If he had lived to hear this news, I think his heart would be broken. TVOntario's reason for axing the program is due to financial concerns, and a move for the station to solely concentrate on educational programs for children. However, once the news of SNAM's cancellation hit the internet, in short a petition began with signatures of those who are urging TVO to reconsider its decision to axe the program. 

Why? Even with the consensus that the show is a shadow of what it used to be? Perhaps it is an effort to keep the legacy of Mr. Yost alive (even though he is now absent from the show's content, his shadow still looms), and for that matter, what SNAM still stands for, despite the bumpy changes it has had since 1999. What with on-demand and specialty channels, one may argue that Saturday Night at the Movies is no longer needed, especially since Turner Classic Movies is now in the cable package of Ontario subscribers. Even in its current state, this show offers something unique. SNAM stands for more than just a couple hours of entertainment: it also studies the history and culture of that medium. TVO's decision to concentrate more on children's programming is ironic, since SNAM speaks to the child in all of us: this unique program makes wide-eyed youngsters of its viewers, as we witness the magic of the movies and summarily how that magic was created. After all these years, I still watch it, as it is one of the few intelligent and reverent programs devoted to the art and rich history of cinema.

Want to sign the petition? Here is the link.

Curse of the Living Corpse (1964)

Writer / Producer / Director: Del Tenney

Music: Bill Holcomb

Cinematography: Richard Hilliard

Iselin-Tenney Productions; 83 min; B&W

Cast:

Helen Warren (Abigail Sinclair), Roy Scheider (Philip Sinclair), Margot Hartman (Vivian Sinclair), Robert Mill (Bruce Sinclair), Hugh Franklin (James Benson), Linda Donovan (Letty Crews), Dino Narizzano (Robert Harrington), Candace Hilligoss (Deborah Benson), J. Frank Lucas (Seth Lucas)

One of the greatest double-bills in drive-in history is the pairing of two horror films by Connecticut-based auteur Del Tenney: Horror of Party Beach and Curse of the Living Corpse. Although independently produced, these movies were picked up as a double bill for distribution by Twentieth Century Fox for a successful run in drive-ins. Horror of Party Beach is the most famous of the two; a goofy outing about radioactive monsters terrorizing a seaside community. Both films are well-produced despite their meagre budgets and nicely shot by Richard Hillard: each fine examples of regional filmmaking, that transcend the accepted truth of such movies' poor quality.

Ghosts That Still Walk (1977)

Writer-Director: James Flocker

Producer: Lynn S. Raynor

Music: Hod David Shcudson, Ron Stein

Cinematography: Holger Kasper

Gold Key Entertainment; 96 min; color

Cast:

Ann Nelson (Alice Douglas), Matt Boston (Mark Douglas), Caroline Howe (Ruth Douglas), Jerry Jensen (Henry Douglas), Rita Crafts (Dr. Sills)

Sometimes the most obscure artifacts of pop culture get lodged in our collective subconscious. In the days before infomercials, this unassuming film made an impression upon UHF-surfing night owls, if for at least one image.  After six decades of fantasy cinema featuring humans besieged by numerous ghouls and goblins, Ghosts That Still Walk offers the intriguing premise of an elderly RV-ing couple being pursued by boulders! This sequence is surely reason enough to warrant a watch. However, as in the case of most films released by Gold Key Entertainment, this movie is better to have seen than to sit through. In the late 1970s through to the early 1980s, this fledgling company must have had a singular mandate to sell the most lethargic micro-budgeted science fiction or horror films to TV stations as late-night filler. Films like The Lucifer Complex, Captive, or Target Earth?, produced in the waning days of the public's fascination with paranormal, provided sleep aid to unsuspecting insomniacs. However, despite that many of these movies are a chore to sit through, they do leave a strange impression afterwards: much the same as after having had a long gruelling road trip through unknown territory. One's taxed stamina is the price paid for discovering something unusual.

Turhan Bey (1922 - 2012)

ABOVE: Turhan Bey (right) in The Amazing Mr. X

Actor Turhan Bey, a matinee idol in cinema's golden age, has passed away on September 30, a few months after his ninetieth birthday. His exotic good looks caused him to be dubbed "The Turkish Delight" in fan magazines.

Happy Ed Wood Day!

Today would be the eighty-eighth birthday of visionary writer-director Edward D. Wood Jr., who eked out a living on the margins of Hollywood, cranking out a signature filmography of financially challenged works featuring faded matinee idols, dime store props, a "golly gee whiz" demeanour, and a subtly subversive text that upturned the conventions of 1950s white-picket-fence Americana.

The Medveds' book, The Golden Turkey Awards, gave Mr. Wood the dubious honour of "The Worst Director of All Time". However, no body of work that is this entertaining can be the worst of all time. What he lacked in talent, he made up for with enthusiasm, and carved out an instantly recognizable body of work. In this regard, he succeeded beyond most other Hollywood players, who willingly became nameless slaves on the assembly line. Ironically, although Edward D. Wood would dearly loved to have made big studio pictures, it was his confinement to Grade-Z movies that gave him his artistic freedom. No one would notice or care about his subversive ideas:  Glen or Glenda (in which he also played the lead role) is a plea for tolerance; Bride of the Monster a sly commentary on the atomic age; and his signature film Plan 9 from Outer Space remains a Brechtian masterpiece that forces one to deconstruct the artifice in the art of cinema.

Sadly, the last two decades of Wood's life would be spent with further marginalization, writing porn novels and sex films. He died at the age of 54, penniless, forgotten and victimized by alcoholism. Only a few years later, the memory of Edward D. Wood Jr. was resurrected, as new generations discovered his work.  His emergence into our public conscious via numerous revivals of his most beloved films, culminated into a Hollywood biopic, made with the Hollywood gloss and production values that evaded all of Wood's filmmaking career. Although a box office disappointment, Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood however won glowing reviews. One of the least enthusiastic notices came from Globe and Mail critic Rick Groen, whose piece did however illuminate one interesting point. He opines that if Wood was still alive, he would probably be directing Halloween 9, while his idol Orson Welles (the actor-writer-director triple threat Wood admired and emulated) would still be trying to get financing. Everyone loves a comeback story, tangible or otherwise.

While perhaps 1994 was the apex of Ed Wood Mania, this serendipitous auteur has still not left our psyche. It is not for nothing that a legally recognized religion has been been named after him. Edward D. Wood indeed made a tremendous sacrifice and endured hardships to realize his unique visions for an uncaring public. However, his spirit has been resurrected so that the masses can continue to learn from him. The work of Edward D. Wood Jr. is a lesson to us all: pursue your dreams no matter how big the obstacles; let us be accepting of those different from ourselves; time reveals the true worth of everything.

Jack's Wife (1972)

Writer-Director: George A. Romero

Producer: Nancy Romero

Music: Steve Gorn

Cinematographer-Editor: George A. Romero

Latent Image; 104 min; color

Cast:

Jan White (Joan Mitchell), Ray Laine (Gregg Williamson), Ann Muffly (Shirley Randolph), Joedda McClain (Nikki Mitchell), Bill Thunhurst (Jack Mitchell), Neil Fisher (Dr. Miller), Esther Lapidus (Sylvia)

George Romero followed up his breakthough picture, Night of the Living Dead, with a trio of interesting pictures that were largely overlooked due to poor distribution.  Of these, The Crazies had gradually found an audience over the years (thus prompting a remake). There's Always Vanilla, was Romero's first film after his classic zombie movie, and a rare non-horror effort-- a counterculture comedy which played a week and disappeared.  His subsequent picture, Jack's Wife, brought Romero (obliquely) back into the horror genre. Jack Harris picked the movie up, retitled it with the unfortunate title, Hungry Wives (misleading one to think it was a softcore porn), and did no business.  This film was again re-titled for re-release in 1982, with its most colloquial name, Season of the Witch. People had mistakenly thought that it was newer than Dawn of the Dead (1979), or confused it with Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, that was playing in theaters around the same time.

DVD Releases We Dig This Week (10.02.12)

This week features a real (ahem) eclectic bunch of films for DVD release. Wong Kar Wai's visually sumptuous In The Mood For Love is the re-released from the Criterion family, with the usual truckload of extras. 

Classic comedy fans will want to check two boxed sets released by Universal. Don Knotts: Reluctant Hero releases features the comedian in: The Reluctant Astronaut; The Ghost and Mr. Chicken; The Shakiest Gun in the West and The Love God?. I hope this is a step up from the 2004 release that squeezed all four films onto one double-sided disk.

The Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road To Comedy Collection features four of their classic Road films (Road to Zanzibar; Road to Morocco; Road to Utopia; Road to Singapore). These are definitely worth having-- but four features on one double-sided disk? Oy.

Although it was a flop in its day because far too many fantasy films were released in that summer of 1982, the futuristic action movie Megaforce has since attracted a cult following.  It finally debuts on DVD, thanks to the fine folks at Hen's Tooth. I've never seen this Hal Needham vehicle, featuring Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror's Brad), but hope to soon!

And finally, a slew of titles from Olive Films. In addition to mining the vaults at Paramount, Olive has recently acquired a long list of movies from Republic. Today, a handful of "Three Mesquiters" westerns, featuring John Wayne (pre-Stagecoach), Ray "Crash Corrigan" and Max Terhune, are released: The Night Riders,  Overland Stage Raiders, Red River Range and Three Texas Steers. Of these, I'm most interested to see Overland Stage Raiders, as it features the legendary Louise Brooks in her final screen role.

ed.

Sugar Hill (1974)

Director: Paul Maslansky
Writer: Tim Kelly
Producer: Elliott Schick
Music: Dino Fekaris, Nick Zesses
Cinematography: Robert Jessup
American-International Pictures; 83 min; color

Cast:
Marki Bey (Diana "Sugar" Hill), Robert Quarry (Morgan), Don Pedro Colley (Baron Samedi), Richard Lawson (Valentine), Zara Cully (Mama Maitresse), Charles Robinson (Fabulous)

When Diana “Sugar” Hill’s boyfriend is murdered by racketeers who want to move in on his club, she seeks the help of her aunt, a voodoo priestess (played by Zara Cully- TV’s Mother Jefferson!) to raise the dead, and have the zombies carry out her bidding. Sugar Hill is among the horror-themed Blaxploitation pictures of the 1970s (a la Blacula; Blackenstein; Abby), and as far as occult-themed revenge films of the era go, it is more creepier than, say, Jennifer: The Snake Goddess (to name another movie that features a heroine reaching into her heritage to wreak vengeance), but perhaps has less conviction in the performance.

The Toronto Film Noir Syndicate

...and now that Word on the Street has past, it's time to continue to the next project I've been involved with for the past couple of months. Yours truly has joined Shirley Hughes and David Faris in The Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. This collective will be showing classic film noir several times throughout the year.

Tomorrow, Saturday Sept. 29 is our inaugural screening. This is the first of our fundraiser screening, in which we hope to raise funds and awareness for our plan to hold these events in the future at a theatrical venue.  Tomorrow's event will be held at the Dominion on Queen, 500 Queen St. #E.  The show begins at 8 PM-- admission is five dollars.

For further details, visit the syndicate's website by clicking here.

You can also like the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate on Facebook.

DVD Releases That We Dig This Week (09.25.12)

Brothers and sisters, if there is one DVD release this week that is after our own hearts, it is the set, Weird Noir: Six B-Movies, released from Something Weird.

How obscure are these films? Yours truly has only heard of half of them, and has seen none. All of these B-budgeted films noir harken from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Beverly Garland stars in Stark Fear (1962), who must convince people that her husband is going to kill her; detectives investigate a murder in a burlesque theatre in Girl on the Run (1953) (yup- that sounds like a Something Weird release….); Fallguy (1962) features a teenager who is mixed up in political intrigue and a murder he didn't commit; Jacques Bergerac (The Hypnotic Eye) and Mala Powers (Cyrano de Bergerac) star in Fear No More (1961), about a mentally unbalanced woman accused of murder on a train (and I LOVE train movies….); The Naked Road (1959) is a potboiler about a model who gets involved with a sleazy ad exec and other slovenly characters; and finally, there is The 7th Commandment (1961), directed and co-written by Irv Berwick (Monster of Piedras Blancas), about an amnesiac who is now a reverend, being swindled by an old flame. (I've been curious about this title for years!)

There you have it - a half-dozen little noir quickies that seem perfect for a rainy fall night. Does this mean that Something Weird is finally getting back into releasing factory DVDs? I sure hope so.

But wait! There's more! Today, Criterion also releases actor-director Paul Bartel's hilarious black comedy Eating Raoul (1982), also with his frequent co-star Mary Woronov! As bonuses, the package also features Bartel's early shorts The Secret Cinema (1968) and Naughty Nurses (1969).

All six of the popular Lone Wolf and Cub series of films (from 1972 to 1974) based upon the manga by Kazuo Koike are released in one set by AnimEigo, each featuring Tomisaburo Wakayama as the shogun hero: Sword of Vengeance (1972), Baby Cart at the River Styx (1973), Baby Cart to Hades (1972), Baby Cart in Peril (1972), Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (1973), and finally, White Heaven in Hell (1974).

Also, with ample time before Halloween, Redemption has released Mario Bava's underrated chiller Hatchet For the Honeymoon (1970).

Flicker Alley also has a couple of DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs for the widescreen aficionado this week. This week happens to also be the 60th anniversary of the widescreen process, Cinerama, which changed the scope of movies forever, in order to compete with television. 1952's This is Cinerama introduced movie goers to a whole new movie experience unlike any before. Also, lovers of the big screen process will be thrilled with another combo release: 1958's Windjammer: the Voyage of the Christian Radich. This chronicle of the Norwegian vessel, travelling from Oslo to the Caribbean was the only film to be shot in the Cinemiracle process. Largely unseen since its release, this has been painstakingly restored; and both of these are sure to be collector's items.

Issue #25 Debuts Sunday!

Wow. It's hard to believe that not only has ESR been in existence for eleven years, but our twenty-fifth issue debuts Sunday at Word on the Street. Perhaps that counts as a silver jubilee or something...

The blog has been largely dormant in the past few weeks, as we've devoted our time to preparing the new issue. Next week, after we've kicked off the launch of ESR #25, we will be back in the blogosphere and how!  Fall is now upon us. These next ten weeks of the year are what yours truly lives for. In addition just loving the season itself, I am enraptured by the many great cultural events during this time, and also delighted by the creative muse that revisits for this period of time. As the weeks progress, it is our intention to make our web presence come alive with more postings of reviews and events.

Oh yes. The new issue. Our silver issue continues to run the gamut of covering everything but current mainstream cinema, with articles on Laurel and Hardy's 1940s films, the gritty films noir of Andrew L. Stone, a detailed history and review of Grizzly 2, the independent works of Sara Driver, and lots of DVD reviews pertaining to recent releases of older, interesting pictures.  This is an action-packed 60-page issue, retailing for five dollars.

Our latest release also finds us in a transitional period. Because ESR publishes far less frequently than the old days, it is makes less sense to stay current in print. The blog has been used for, and will continue to be relevant with timely news pieces. As a result, the future of ESR's print edition exists with longer-format articles. This issue reflects our ongoing shift from a plethora of short works, to fewer articles of greater length. Within the next twelve months, the overall look and durability of our publication will be changing, and in addition I will be devoting some time to one or two print-on-demand book projects.

We're excited about our new release, and hope you can join in our celebration with the first stop on our fall tour. Word on the Street runs Sunday September 23 from 11 AM to 6 PM at Queen's Park Circle. We're at booth MM18. See you there!

For further details, visit the Word on the Street website.

Invasion of the Hecklers

I'm grateful to live in a city that is large enough to accommodate repertory screenings on a regular basis, and I try to see an older film that interests me on a big screen whenever possible. However, there is one thing that drives me crazy: it's having to listen to the "commentary" from the hecklers in the audience.

Whether it's at Vagrancy Films, Trash Palace or anywhere else that screens older films on a regular basis, one must always contend with these idiots who treat the cinema like their own living room, and feel the need to share their Mystery Science Theater-like commentary with everybody else in the theatre. The problem, of course, is that, well, MST3K was clever and funny.

(In fact, when I saw the documentary Corman's World at the Bloor, I went to the balcony to sit because the "renovations" on the main floor made the screen too high and the chairs too small, but quickly went back downstairs to squeeze my not-so-big ass into the plastic chairs because I didn't want to listen to the hipsters in the balcony.)

The problem is more universal than just with the posers in Toronto. Witness Matt Zoller Seitz's posting today on the Press Play blog, in which he laments over a recent screening of the classic James Bond movie From Russia With Love, which was sabotaged by people chortling over outdated technology and values. The following quote, uttered by his friend at the screening, I think says it all:

“Why pay twelve bucks to see an old movie in a theater, then sit there the whole time and act superior to it?” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me. If you act that way, you’re wasting your money. You’re not getting everything out of the movie. You’re not experiencing it".

One should try to see old favourites on a big screen whenever the opportunity presents itself, but is it any wonder people choose to sit home with a DVD or Netflix instead?

I've never understood this "holier than thou" attitude that pervades screenings of second-run or specialized fare. One assumes that in this modern age where everything is ironic, hipsters in the audience feel that they must exhibit their superiority over the material. And this is in an audience that is supposed to appreciate this marginalized fare?

So Wrong They're Right (1995)

Russ Forster’s own narration or onscreen introduction, not only offering a clever social commentary, but also giving a refreshingly personal touch to these diary-like narratives.

From 1990 to 2000, Russ Forster published the magazine “8 Track Mind”, for and about 8-Track tape enthusiasts.  The magazine received a warm response from people, having somewhat been validated in their particular fascination, and for the most part, having their own strain of pop culture recognized.  His film So Wrong They're Right is the result of his 1994 10,000 mile, $20,000 cross-country crusade to put faces to the names of those enthusiasts who supported his magazine in print, creating a document in film about people with a unique fascination.

At the start, one gets the impression that this assembly of 8-Track collectors has a more socio-political agenda.. Gen X Situationism, if you like.  Forster's  own narration introduces the film as “a statement of active outrage and rebellion from a group of people who have opted out of a disposable consumer culture laid out for them to embrace in the spirit of growth and progress.”  Or if you like, these people cling to the 8-Track, “the vanguard of the analog revolution”, out of protest against the “orchestrated demise” of one format, for the conglomerates to sell you back something you already had, however in a new format.

While I partially agree with this, perhaps the statements made by Phil Milstein, who also coined the film’s title, are more telling: referring to 8-Tracks as “the dumbest form of music… totally dumb and that’s what I love about them… big dumb and sweet.”  Because the sound quality may or may not be inferior to CD, a KA-CHUNK sound is heard in the middle of long songs as the tape continues to the next track, and people like Jeff Economy wonder “if this is the last time I’ll be able to hear this” before the cassette falls apart,  I think the film’s central question is why people will still hang on to obsolete formats. 

For instance, let us remember the boom of vinyl nostalgia right at the point in which CD’s became more affordable.  Will DVD and Blu-Ray be the next 8-track with the proliferation of Netflix? 

One remark in So Wrong They're Right resonates: people falsely believe that the new medium has the definitive catalog of anything ever released.  Quick, when did you last see Telly Savalas’ “Who Love’s Ya, Baby” on CD?  You may rightly ask, who would want to?  But uttering that statement is also to play into what is precisely a point of this movie:  anything seemingly throwaway is heartfelt by someone.

But it’s still even more surprising that a marketplace for this format still exists.  (Hmmm, maybe I’d better hang on to my pet rock.)  We see Sparks, Nevada enterpreneu Tim Hunter on the phone taking an order for Iron Butterfly’s “Heavy” on 8-Track, and even more elaborately, “Big Bucks’ Burnett in Texas telling us about his sale of “Never Mind the Bollocks” for 100 bucks.  And we have to admire his sensibility: Why listen to The Beatles for the fifty millionth time when you can listen to Tiny Tim on 8-Track?  It’s cultural snobbery in reverse.  When Corey Greenburg wrote something on 8-Tracks in the highbrow publication “Stereophile”, that further broke the stigma—suddenly it became all right for readers to talk about something as “common” as this medium.  But still, they’re not necessarily retro cool, as 8-Track DJ’s never have to worry about having their tapes stolen. 

So Wrong They're Right would be enjoyable alone for the aspects of people sharing the most offbeat selections in their collections, like the Rudy Ray Moore comedy albums, or Grand Funk’s “Shinin’ On” (with the 3D cover!)  We see how these cassettes work their therapeutic ways into their lives. Jeff Economy listened to Lou Reed’s “Berlin” one summer while he was depressed.  (In fact, Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground are staples in people’s collections here, which does make sense, because they’ve always spoken to the fringe dwellers.)  One humorous example features the band Gumball emanating the virtues of their great big mountain of 30,000 tapes as inspiration (and they always pack a bunch with them for spiritual purposes while on tour.)  Perhaps more revealing, one enthusiast drove down the street blaring Reed’s infamous “Metal Machine Music” (nothing but 80 minutes of feedback)- a more anarchist rebuttal to mainstream consumerism cannot be imagined.

But Russ Forster stretches the parameters even more.  Throughout the enthusiastic bubbling about “TNT” shaped tape players, we get little glimpses of their lives- how this hobby is a representative overall of their lifestyles   This film is perhaps less made for music-collecting enthusiasts, more for people in the fanzine nation (which of course makes sense because many of these subjects contributed to the magazine). The handmade title cards, introducing the next city or speaker, even the rubbery “home movie” kind of sound, and wonky easy listening music (which warbles like a broken cassette) all add to the “Do-It-Yourself” appeal- the mantra of the underground publishing world.  Indeed, the colourful people in this film mirror those who wander past my table at all these zine fairs.

And for some, these sequences may be over-indulgent.  For instance, Doug Von Hoppe’s “8-track delivery boy” sequence is like an educational film gone awry.  The scene of librarian-by-day, “ Swingin’ 8 Track Chick” Abgail Levine, all decked in her go-go boots, calling the Library of Congress to get “8 Track Mind” an ISSN number, is shot with all the lurid colour and cheesy lounge music of a late 60’s counterculture flick.  Yet, they do add an extra, unexpected dimension to the narrative- all representative ways in which people carve out a little corner for themselves in a corporately bland world.

Medicine Ball Caravan (1971)

Director: Francois Reichenbach

Writer: Christian Haren

Producer: Tom Donahue

Cinematographers: Serge Halsdorf, Christian Odasso, Jean-Michel Surel

Warner Brothers, 88min; color

Featuring:

B.B. King. Alice Cooper, Delaney and Bonnie, Doug Kershaw, The Youngbloods, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Stoneground w/ Sal Valentino

My next sentence is probably unique among any review of a rock and roll film.  You should probably read the book before seeing the movie.

It may be just as hard to see this 1971 Warner Brothers documentary, as it is to find Thomas King Forcade’s tell-all book, Caravan of Love and Money, which told what went on behind the scenes of the making of this film.  The Medicine Ball Caravan was a cross-country tour of 150 people, who would stop here and there to put on a rock and roll concert.  The whole point of the caravan, despite spreading peace love and good vibes on the way to their final destination (England- which is not shown in the movie), was to offer a counterpoint to Woodstock.  That 1969 festival is generally considered to be the signature event of the love generation, but still many felt that Woodstock was too commercial, especially once it became a franchise (with a record set and a movie), and did not give back to the counterculture which of course inspired the whole thing in the first place. Ironically, Warner Brothers, the same distributors of said record set and movie,  gave the green light to make this “anti-Woodstock”, which attempted to give an honest portrayal of what the love generation was really about.

Medicine Ball Caravan is unique among rockumentaries.  Monterey Pop, Wattstax and all the others would’ve happened even if the cameras weren’t rolling. Instead, the caravan was created for the camera.  In other words, it is a documentary in which fabrication is used to capture reality.  The end result however, is questionable in its truthfulness, as it features people who are way too conscious of the camera. Whether it’s cinema verité or reality TV, one fundamental is shared: the camera is too powerful a tool for people to ignore; it changes them- encourages them to be larger than life. Early on, we hear the Youngbloods do a rendition of the Beatles’ “Act Naturally” -a snarky aside to how all the hippies are supposed to be before the cameras.  (The song is even a mantra by some meditating longhairs).

Yet to understand all that subtext of the images between the musical acts, well, you have to read the book first.  For example, you find out that the supposedly candid moment of a hippie couple making love in the early morning is bogus because the man knew the camera was there, and his bravado was increased.  You also find out that the scene where everyone jumps in jello was a symbolic way of bringing all the people together.  Oh.  And perhaps most interesting, Sal Valentino, formerly of the Beau Brummels, is in a band called Stoneground, which is seen briefly in the movie, doing some Janis Joplin angst.   Thanks to the book, we are informed that this band is actually fictitious- it was formed solely for the movie, a house band for the caravan, and supposedly, their most inspired performances did not occur on film. 

What we get is a vague travelogue with musical numbers by B.B. King (doing a great “How Blue Can You Get”), Alice Cooper (before the horror show makeup, but still pretty wild), and finally, a bravura performance by East Side enfant terrible David Peel (the guy who released an album with the hilariously crass title “Have a Marijuana”), who provides the film some solely needed sparks. 

Otherwise, the movie’s drama is most potent in a sequence where the caravan happens upon a campus rife with protests of student radicals. The entourage is accused of exploiting their generation, whereas Peel counters that they don’t want this movie to be another Woodstock.  “The people we want to come are the shorthairs- long hairs stay away from this movie.”  This may be a naïve attempt at getting the establishment to understand the counterculture, but one can’t imagine anyone except a counterculture audience buying tickets for admission.

During this scene, someone offers the amazingly prophetic line: “We can’t get it together among ourselves, man”, which presages the self-destruction of the love generation.  If we are to believe what was written in Forcade’s account, the pretentious French director Francois Reichenbach always showed up too late to capture the authentic, unscripted moments on film, and had to ask people to recreate them.  And perhaps because the campus unrest was still in progress once the camera crew arrived, this sequence is the only one (other than the concert acts) that feels authentic.

For all of the filmmakers’ dissent towards Woodstock, this movie simply wouldn’t exist with it. It has the same structure, to say nothing of the same optical effects, as the filmmakers have no visual imagination of their own. So we see Doug Kershaw perform “Louisiana Man” in split screen, and Stoneground doing their thing with some acid-washed optical effects.-  they even employed the same editor to work on this movie (future Last Waltz director Martin Scorsese)! 

This is a dichotomy of a movie about the dichotomy of the love generation.  The filmmakers end up contradicting themselves just as much as their subject matter. Like the doomed generation captured on film, the people behind the camera can’t get it together amongst themselves either, man.

Turkish Star Trek (1973)

Director: Hulki Saner
Writer: Ferdi Merter
Saner Film; 72 min; color

Cast:
Sadri Alisik (Turist Ömer), Erol Amaç (Mr. Spak), Cemil Sahbaz (Kaptan Kirk),
Ferdi Merter (Doktor McCoy)

Filmmakers in the exploitation racket would shamelessly rip off one hot property with copycat films that would duplicate the success of that commodity for as long as they continued to sell tickets. However, of all the low-budget knockoffs “inspired” by a Western Hemisphere trend, none seem so blatant, or as delirious, as those produced in Turkey. Movies inspired by Star Wars or Superman would not only copy the storyline, they’d even incorporate some footage from the source material! It is small wonder that they are pure gold for collectors of video obscura. Even when they are presented without subtitles, these films delight fans with their wonderfully crass acts of plunder and cheesy production values.

Turkish Star Trek (original title: Turist Omer Uzay Yolunda) is not completely a riff on the classic Gene Roddenberry TV series, as the lead role is that of a vagabond-type character named Turist Omer, (played by Turkish character actor Sadri Alisik, who has played this role in at least four other films), who gets beamed up to the Enterprise in this instalment. His adventures (think “Topol in Space”) are sly spoofs on classic episodes of the Star Trek franchise.

The film begins with the traditional opening credits sequence from the TV series (tinted in red), with liberal use of the “Star Trek” theme, and the Enterprise flying by the screen, with “whoosh” sound intact.  The credits too are padded with some surf music playing over a slide of a spiral galaxy.

And wait till you see the interior of the Enterprise.  The ship looks like a factory boiler room with a bunch of silly video screens placed about!  In this version, their Captain Kirk appears rather prissy, as opposed to the usual skirt-chasing archetype who has a green girlfriend at every asteroid. He doesn’t overact as much, either.  Spock, or “Spak”, is played by an actor who wears these silly plastic ears which do not resemble his skin tones, and actually (wisely?) conveys more emotion than Leonard Nimoy ever did.  In Istanbul, Spock is a self-mocking existentialist!  Rock on!

Even though the version I watched is not presented with subtitles, the histrionics of the actors are enough that you do get a sense of the story.  First, we get a remake of the classic episode, “The Man Trap”, as the crew beams down to a planet where a scientist couple does research.  The wife, Nancy, is an old flame of Dr. McCoy. We learn that she can change her appearance at will- she lures a security guard away by looking like some steely blonde.  The man is found dead with a bunch of strange red sucker marks on his face.  (Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” is heard on the soundtrack!)

Oh yes. Before we continue, two important notes. First, in Turkish Star Trek, people beam down by having these squiggly lines drawn all over them followed by the camera going out of focus.  Secondly, it is the guys in the green shirts that always get killed!

Suddenly we cut to a wedding scene (!) in which a bunch of people in really bad striped pants swarm around this station wagon with “Just Married” accoutrements.  Our hero, Turist Omer is suddenly threatened by mob types brandishing guns to sign a marriage license.  During his overacting, Omer prays to Allah, and suddenly appears on the same rocky setting that our crew beamed down to.  He is captured by this guy wearing leopard underwear who walks around like a robot (accompanied by clunking noises on the soundtrack!).  Omer is brought to the scientist couple, and then Nancy suddenly starts sucking his fingers!  (This is where we begin to see her “salt vampire” motif , stolen from the classic Trek episode.)

The landing party members beam Omer back up the ship with them, and first the lecherous beast tries to come on to the women on the bridge.  Thankfully, the females in Turkish Star Trek are a lot more aggressive—they respond by pulling phasers on him.  (The phasers, by the way, look like vibrators with handles.)  Meanwhile, Nancy kills a scientist crewmember, assumes his identity and then gets beamed aboard the ship.  Once you have such an interesting creature, especially if you know the original episode, it is rather annoying not to really do anything with the menace.  Instead the plot spends more time with Omer bugging Spock, and playing with all the dials on the control boards.  (Where would any Star Trek rip-off be without one Dutch angle shot of the crew falling all over the place?)

However, Nancy, in the guise of said crewmember starts to hypnotize all the lovely yeoman ladies, runs his/her/its fingers across the victims’ faces, and then licks the fingertips afterwards.  The Roddenberry universe was never so kinky!  Anyway, they beam back down to the planet, and discover the dead body of the real crewman.  Then Kirk and Spock do battle with some bad monster wearing rubber mask, gloves and a flame retardant suit (!) Then our real creature appears in the guise of a temptress for Omer, even a Vulcan bride for Spock, which thusly allows the plot to diverge into an “Amok Time” rip-off, where this dime-store version of Kirk and Spock do battle with each other as part of the Vulcan marriage rite (dinner and a movie just don’t cut it on Spock’s planet).  Disappointingly, no “da-da-dada” Star Trek fight music is heard.

Nancy’s husband meanwhile attempts to thwart the crew by having the landing party do battle with a bunch of duplicates of that same weird robot we saw earlier.  Omer saves the day by screwing up the professor’s machine.  Apparently, the creature had beamed down in the guise of McCoy.  Then the real McCoy beams down, and we learn from the professor that his wife’s true visage is that of a vampire who draws salt out of its victims.  Then the creature attacks Kirk while Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” plays!!

Having almost saved the day, the crew beams Omer back down to where they found him —but not without the actor doing an endless pantomime in the transporter room, even padding screen time by kissing everyone on the cheek… Spock included.  Omer appears right back in the middle of his shotgun wedding.  He and everyone is stunned at his new physical attribute… Vulcan ears!  Suddenly, that gives him the idea that he can save the day by giving the mobsters the Vulcan neck pinch.  The end.  I have a sudden urge to watch Pink Floyd in Pompeii.

(adapted from an article in ESR #16 about Turkish rip-offs)

DVD Releases We Dig This Week (08.07.12)

In the past few months, we've been enamoured of the releases by Olive Films, who has been tenacious at putting out material never before seen on disk (let alone VHS). Olive has even more exciting releases down the turnpike, which will be discussed at the appropriate times. Right now, we're thrilled to report that our new favourite DVD company is releasing the 1981 horror fave, The Boogens, this week.

One of the most-requested titles for DVD or Blu-Ray release, this tale concerns some scaly monsters who are discovered in a mine during an excavation, and continue their bloodshed anew. This flick was given a positive notice by author Stephen King in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, and similarly won the hearts of those who had seen it during the drive-in glory days. Despite that the Republic VHS is still floating around, and that it has shown a couple of times on TCM, yours truly sheepishly admits to never having seen it, especially since it features cutie pie Rebecca Balding.

Ms. Balding was a teenage crush of mine after having viewed her good work in 1980's Silent Scream, in which the pretty young starlet showed strong dramatic talent and a spunky personality. That film and The Boogens hinted that she could have had a strong career in the 1980's as a new scream queen- alas she faded from the spotlight. 

Also of interest, The Boogens was directed by James L. Conway, who helmed many of those Sunn Classics paranormal documentaries in the 1970s, including In Search of Noah's Ark and Beyond And Back. Mr. Conway and Ms. Balding (who are married) are among those featured in the feature-length audio commentary track. Usually, Olive releases are bare-bones disks (which is a minor quibble since we're fortunate to see the films at all), but the commentary track should be a welcome bonus, especially since a mystique has developed around this little picture.

Check it out!

The Secret of Wendel Samson (1966)

Among the most durable and entertaining films from the proliferation of American underground cinema in the 1960s is the prolific work of twin brothers, George and Mike Kuchar. Whether they worked separately or together, their valentines to kitsch (B-movies, pop culture) are often amazing home movie wonders. These deliberate odes to trash culture also succeed because of the seams that show: the post-sync sound, tacky props or effects, cartoonish acting, and incongruous locations further make one aware of the shortcomings of the very kind of camp that has inspired their work. Although perhaps George Kuchar's work is the better known, it is Mike whose films first appeared on DVD. What further separates Mike's movies from his brother's is that in addition to the campy feel, there is also a nightmarish tone to the work.

Both of these tones are found in The Secret of Wendel Samson, a 33-minute wonder that features avant-garde visual artist Red Grooms (best known for his pieces which comment on pop culture) as Wendel, who is first seen bound in a spider web made from rope.  He is “tangled up psychologically”, confused about his sexual identity- keeping his homosexual encounters secret from his girlfriend Margaret (played by Mimi Gross, daughter of artist Heim Gross).

Mike Kuchar typically began this film with only a germ of an idea (the spider web), after meeting Grooms at a party and deciding to make a movie with him.  Then he customarily built the movie as shooting went along.  What results is a fascinating psychological mood piece, which is for the most part, a straight melodrama, with only slight comic relief (as we chuckle at the Brechtian feel of it all, with rubbery post-sync sound which Kuchar dubbed months later), campy voiceovers (60s underground siren Donna Kerness is the voice of Margaret) and thunderous canned music overemphasizing the drama.  It is also a marvel of storytelling with its fragmented narrative, weaved much like a web itself, as the story is several splintered moments of time, being told at once, as though they were fleeting impulses from Wendel’s mind.

Wendel is walking with Margaret when he spies two mysterious guys looking at him from across the street.  After he has a fling with a man named Terry (an actor that Mike Kuchar befriended on the daily commute), and a bravura performance in front of the mirror rehearsing ways to break up with him, he leaves the man’s apartment (actually Heim Gross’ apartment, splendidly decorated with artifacts and paintings), while Margaret and the two mysterious guys secretly spy on him.

One fateful night, Wendel fibs about having to stay home to fix the kitchen shutters, and goes to have a homosexual tryst instead.  Margaret pays him a surprise visit, and (gasp) the shutters aren’t done!!   Wendel’s voiceover, “Something tells me she’s here for more than just a chitchat”, proves correct, as she spends an inordinate amount of time snooping around while he tries to paint.  (In this interesting moment, Kuchar had just asked Grooms to start painting anything- and he makes an off-the-cuff picture of a bird, which subconsciously is fitting, as it represents Wendel’s yearning to fly away, break free of this indecision.)

Alas at this point, Wendel can only woo Margaret in his dreams, as evidenced by the fantasy sequence, set in a restaurant, where the pair drinks wine, as he snuggles up to her.  (In an interesting real life doppelganger, Mimi actually had the hots for Red, but he wasn’t interested in her.)  Yet, it is also in dreams where Wendel finally has to confront the truth about his identity.

This is where the film pulls out all the stops (“…like a badly dubbed Hercules movie…”) for a completely outrageous sequence, (admittedly influenced by Orson Welles’ The Trial), as Wendel experiences a nightmare while Margaret’s demands for copulation ring on.  As Bob Cowan’s trippy electronic music enhances all the weirdness, the two mysterious men seen earlier (one played by brother George) put a Luger pistol to his head, and he is taken to a room filled with a bunch of creepy people.  Wendel is accosted by a middle-aged blond woman toting a Super Patrol laser gun, who strips down to a swimsuit, dances provocatively and demands “Make love to me”.  This woman is the starlet Floraine Connors, who would continue to act in Mike Kuchar’s movies for decades. (She is featured prominently in the director's hilarious The Craven Sluck, which is also featured on the same DVD as this film.  (By the director’s own confession, she is “still a glamour puss at 80”, even though she can only work for an hour or so before getting tired).

This fantasy woman shoots a laser beam at Wendel’s leg, and these sleazy voyeurs throw him onto the bed.  This moment makes an ironic comment on machism,  brilliantly underscored by the introduction of the “Superman” TV series on the soundtrack.  Our hero naturally fails at “manhood”, and is pinned against the wall while people shoot toy cowboy guns and plastic machine guns with sparklers.  In hilarious pixilation, bullet holes appear on the wall.  This sequence is made even weirder by Kuchar’s wobbly post-dubbing.  Then we end where the film begins, where the shots of Wendel tied up, walking the lonely streets, and a decisive moment on a field, all logically converge in its own neatly designed web.

(The Secret of Wendel Samson is featured on the Other Cinema DVD of Kuchar's Sins of the Fleshapoids. Although that underground favourite is the headliner, for my money, the true jewels of the disk are the bonus Mike Kuchar shorts: the film reviewed above, and The Craven Sluck)

Skip Tracer (1977)

Director, Writer, Editor: Zale Dalen

Producer: Laara Dalen

Cinematographer: Ron Orieux

Music: J Dodd, Linton Garner

Highlight Communications; 94min; color

Cast:

David Peterson (John Collins), John Lazarus (Brent Solverman)

Back when Canada’s tax shelter movement was in full bloom, which encouraged dentists and lawyers to make movies with a 100% tax write-off, there were still films that didn’t attempt to be ersatz Hollywood commercial product, which was the norm for tax shelter fare.  Take Skip Tracer. This unsettling work opened in 1977 to good reviews on the festival circuit, and then, like all Canadian cinema not done by David Cronenberg, didn’t play well at the box office and slipped away, only to be occasionally revived in second-run venues whenever they do a “Best of…” Canadian retrospective, or to be shown on Bravo (when they still showed films to honour their CanCon requirements, instead of “Flashpoint” reruns. It only once made a fleeting appearance on home video (released to VHS under the title Deadly Business).

Skip Tracer is guerilla filmmaking at its finest.  Shot in roughly a month in the fall of 1976 for $145, 000, this is a lean, mean movie that unsparingly depicts the dirty things people must do to make a living.  Our “hero” is John Collins, a repo man who is in a slump.  Usually he is the top man of the year in terms of successfully collecting from delinquent debtors.  During his downtime, he shows the ropes to an eager young man, Brent Solverman. Through Collins, we learn that the trick to surviving this business is to be heartless.

Collins is a quick-witted cynic who seldom finds anything cheerful in his life.  When I first saw this film, I wasn't too crazy about David Peterson's performance: I thought he was straining too hard- straining with too much emphasis in his dialogue. On repeated glances, however, I realize that this is probably how Collins would act- playing over the top to perhaps disguise his shallow interior. 

Sometimes Collins doesn’t practice what he preaches, as there are moments when he lets his humanity precede his call of duty. Perhaps it is for this reason that he is no longer is the top dog of the company; as a result he no longer has a private office, and his effects have been moved to the common, open concept section of the bureau. It seems that Collins is as much at war with the competition in the office as the people who owe money. Most tellingly, he gets stabbed by someone he attempts to collect from. 

The key to Skip Tracer’s success is its constant element of surprise. The identity of his assailant remains unsolved.  Even the resolution of his consistent efforts to collect from a recurrent foil named Pettigrew, is shocking.  We are mostly observing a few moments in Collins' life.  Therefore the film is as disjointed and uneven as life is, just as in the films of John Cassavetes or his greatest disciple, Rob Nilsson.  All scenes in the film serve less to tell a story than to witness different facets of his character.  A more conventional film would naturally have the identity of the stabber resolved, or Collins' new partner would come to his rescue (if anything, Brent practically disappears from the plot, just as life could have it).  This incident nonetheless is the catalyst for Collins’ change in character.

Not too long before this scene, Collins is subtly trying to tell a client to get a loan through a bank instead of through his company, because the man would get charged a higher interest rate by this firm.  After he recuperates from his wound, Collins adapts a "fuck you" approach to everyone: the clients who always give him the runaround, and the agency that is always screwing him.

This striking film is written, directed and edited by Zale Dalen and produced by his wife Laara.  The film is mostly shot in long, single takes, which add to the element of surprise. The frame is so wide that anything could intervene.  One memorable segment features Collins hammering away at a drain pipe that one of his deadbeats is hiding in.  It is so uncomfortable to watch, as there are no safe cutaways- you are being forced to watch just what Collins puts up with in his daily routine.  But also Dalen has a great eye for detail.  Occasionally he will cutaway to involuntary gestures that people make, so you can really tell what they're thinking behind all that tough talk.

Filmed in canvases muddy browns and heightened whites, Skip Tracer has a washed-out look that compliments the gritty material.  Shot in the less picturesque avenues of Vancouver, this film is also an impressionistic essay about the cramped world in which Collins lives.  His realm is a claustrophobic office space with papers a mile high, a tiny bachelor apartment, seedy strip joints, bungalows with crying kids and expensive TV sets, and flat undeveloped suburbia with fancy houses in which ten-cent millionaires hide.

Skip Tracer puts to shame most of what passes itself off as Independent cinema today.  In contemporary usage, this term has been homogenized enough so that films with commercial ambitions made by smaller studios fall under this banner. It also puts to shame the mitigating factors that affect much of our country’s artists. After the critical success of this film, Zale Dalen’s follow-up picture, The Hounds of Notre Dame, was poorly handled, and has largely remained unseen, even in the usual slipshod ways in which Canadians must stoop to view their own country’s cinema. Dalen’s resume of sporadic feature films includes the futuristic punk fantasy Terminal City Ricochet, and the unreleased ensemble romantic comedy, Passion. Like many of our filmmakers who remained north of the border, he had spent much of his career directing television, as the feature films got fewer and further between.

Nonetheless, Skip Tracer is a dark horse milestone in Canadian cinema. It is a movie that didn’t deserve its early retirement from the limelight, but still, because it is an unsettling piece that one never truly shakes off, it keeps re-entering our psyche for play dates on the revival circuit. However you can see this, Skip Tracer is essential viewing.

(updated from a piece in ESR #3)

Who Is Bozo Texino? (2006)

“I guess you could say there’s a mystery to it; maybe you want it to be a mystery.”

The best film I saw in all of 2006 was Who Is Bozo Texino, a mesmerizing 55-minute black-and-white documentary by Bill Daniel.  The novel premise, about the search for the identity of a railroad graffiti artist, would already make for an intriguing film, but this piece is also a stunning decoupage of sight and sound- such a dense montage of striking visual compositions, and impressionistic voiceover. It is such a feast of a movie that one can scarcely believe it runs less than an hour.

Viewing Bozo Texino is to get the feeling of entering a secret society, and in fact, even attending the screening for it at Cinecyle in the fall of 2006 gave it that impression.  I had only learned about the event by one posting on a website, but the rest of the clientele however already seemed to be “in the know”.  The sense of being inaugurated into a subterranean culture is perhaps the perfect kind of inertia needed to view this film, which is in pursuit of an elusive subject.  (This screening opened with Bill Daniel’s two-minute short subject, The Underground Square Dance Association- a hilarious piece about another subterranean culture, which set the tone.)

The concept of people “riding the rails”, hobos hopping a freight train to a new frontier, harkens images of the Depression Era, yet, as one narrator suggests, the tradition dates back to Jack London era, the 1890’s. This custom of hopping on a freight train has outlaw romanticism, with the hobo (not a “bum”, but a “hobo”) as the classical renegade figure, defying responsibility and authority by charting their own destination on the rails. And to think that this tradition continues today is perhaps surprising, but that is also part of the film’s appeal. Although a lot of the people who speak on film are leathery, weather-beaten old men, one gets the impression that this tradition will continue, with the brief shots of young hippies running to catch a boxcar.  Very early in the film, we understand why this romantic notion continues in today’s society, with a breathtaking shot of a hobo in a boxcar looking at a mountain range.  It prefaces one man’s later observation: “To be absent from society is to be on a higher plane.”

During the making of this 16-year project, Bill Daniel has also edited for Craig Baldwin’s equally dense, found-footage collages.  That pursuit has served him well here, as it is a rhythm-perfect piece of film that moves like music, with crescendos and well-placed diminuendos.  Seeing this flurry of images and sounds in such a fragmented frenzy, one gets the whirlwind feeling of teetering from a locomotive.  And in moments when the film slows to a Zen calm  (where a single shot will play for a couple of minutes), it gives one the impression of a good rest at the end of a journey.

What is more, this remarkable film implodes the conventions of documentary, with its multitude of narrative viewpoints.  Its huge ensemble of anonymous voices is presented in as much a dizzying, disorienting fashion as the visuals.  Despite that we see some railroad riders onscreen in several scenes, they still remain as strangers to us: as phantom-like as the plethora of signatures and drawings on the trains that we see throughout.  A conventional A&E documentary would probably have started right off the bat with some exposition on Bozo Texino, yet we first see a (fleeting) shot of Texino’s drawing at the ninth minute, and only at the eighteenth (nearly one third of the film has already elapsed) does someone first mention his name.  Since this hour-long film is a condensation of a lifetime on the tracks, it makes sense that we only gradually learn of the central character, just as someone gradually would hear these stories as legends after time spent riding on the trains.

While perhaps documentary-like in its structure of talking heads, narration and candid shots of people catching rides on trains, this film more succeeds in giving the viewer a synthesis of what it is like to hop a freight train to parts unknown.  Its disorienting approach also compliments the fuzzy narrative, as this subculture is full of people who assume others’ identities.  John Easley, for instance, has adopted the signature of an older man named Coltrane (whose trademark is an Old West scout with long hair and a huge moustache).  As such, we hear conflicting opinions as to who is really signing the trains as Bozo Texino.  Unlike the case of Citizen Kane, perhaps we really don’t want to know the revelation of this “Rosebud”.

Because this subculture is so steeped in legend and lore, solving this puzzle perhaps robs it of its mystical quality.  This journey to uncovering Texino’s identity is another metaphor for the train ride—the destination matters less than the road trip.  On screen and on paper, Who Is Bozo Texino gives us a representation of a long exhilarating ride, with its blurry narrative and blinding editing, as a lifetime of memory and folklore is distilled into one hour.  Even more, each of these fleeting images is a miniature work of art in itself.  With the meticulous attention to frame composition and rich contrasts, Bill Daniel ably validates this vanguard lifestyle as an overwhelming experience.

It is perhaps over-simplifying this bohemian existence by romanticizing its freedom from the clutches of modern society, but how this film was being shown to the audience adds to that image.  Avoiding the usual trappings (literally and figuratively) of the film festival circuit, Bill Daniel would travel the continent in his van to show the film: fitting for the “wandering spirit nature” of its subject.  My seeing it in a cold, wooden screening facility (perhaps not unlike a boxcar itself) one October night further added to the visceral experience of this truly remarkable movie.

While you should see Who Is Bozo Texino on a big screen somewhere, somehow… you can purchase DVD’s of the film at www.billdaniel.net.

(originally published in ESR #18)