Even casual Americans will soon be called to bear witness to what promises to be the most bizarre elections in the history of our democracy, the battle between the mighty Donald, his hair Reichstag-fiery as he struts before his throng, and a woman. How did America get to this? The drive-in knows. That's where it all started, whatever it is, and it's been slithering up from those tawdry mosquito-covered screens, across the abandoned strip mall Blockbusters and up through Amazon Prime, waiting, for you! Presuming you have it (and if not, you should), will you walk tall, sit proud, and watch the skies... in HD?
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Switch it off or turn to STONE! |
I curated this list from Prime it's got the most and coolest niche pyschotronic cast-offs, even if 90% of their vast library is crap, cropped, or corny. It's worth digging anyway, if you have the right guide, some madman who likes to sink his hand into the muddy mire, but has a jeweler's eye for hidden sparkle and would only recommend things in anamorphic ratio!
(PS - All screenshots on this post taken directly by me from Amazon Streaming)
1. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE
(1967) Dir. Roger Corman
****
Never one to miss a chance for collateral production value, Corman utilized still standing Hello Dolly! period piece sets, docudrama procedural storytelling, punchy vibrancy, and a wryly iconic narration from the great Paul Frees. What a cast: Alex Rocco, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, John Agar, and Studs "Lloyd the bartender" Turkel in bit mobster parts; Jason Robards, way-too-tall to be Capone, but plenty feral; Ralph Meeker a good-natured, slightly slovenly Bugs Moran; George Segal, a key provocateur in heating up the war between the North and South sides. The sexy Jean Hale (below) is the only major female character-- and her knockabout brawl with Segal is a funny, over-the-top centerpiece that provides a nice break from the boardrooms and hit planning without dragging on forever. And of course... there's Dick Miller. The print Amazon's been streaming is HD perfection.****
Trump Factor: Check Robards' eyes in this shot above, as he prepares to 'fire an apprentice.'
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2. GAS-S-S-S
(1971) Dir Roger Corman
***
Corman's final film as a director, it's a countercultural 'comedy' (written by George MIAMI BLUES Armitage) wherein a military poison gas kills everyone over thirty, lifting the world out of the button-down conservative repression of the older generations and into some kind of San Francisco guerrilla theater troupe / Firesign Theater post-apocalyptic wild west. Across this wasteland and empty Main Streets wanders a ragtag love-seeking group in search of a thriving commune they hear about on the radio, in Mexico! They run into all sorts of tangles and 60s sociopolitical roadside attractions as they bop their way across the great Southwest. The most successfully realized episodes involving a deranged but charismatic college football star quarterback who's dissolved the already flimsy difference between a college football team and a bunch of rape-and-pillaging thugs; and a pack of bikers who have taken over a golf course/country club and turned it into a microcosm of bootstrap economic hopes and dreams. Edgar Allen Poe and Lenore and their pet raven watch from high on the hill making lofty comments, as does God (offscreen) in a New York Jewish accent. Oy vey!***
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You can hear Johnny Depp stirring in his day care center nap room. |
That all said, the Biker golf club and football marauder sections expertly straddle the difference between CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Firesign Theater's WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN OR SOMEONE LIKE HIM, and Terry Southern-style savagery-as-American-policy deadpan jet black pep talks ala DR. STRANGELOVE (which GAS-S-S clearly emulates with its alternate title "How it became necessary to destroy the world in order to save it.") and CANDY (1968). Like ORANGE, the football rape and loot practice sequences are genuinely anarchic, far more so than, say, the doctors shouting "Kill! Kill!" during their own game in the much more favorably reviewed M*A*S*H (1970). If it stayed at that dark comic level, Corman's film would fit right next to Godard's WEEKEND (1967) or Malle's BLACK MOON (1975) in its absurdist assault on the cinematic conventions of bourgeois patriarchy. It might be blind to its own (what they called back then) male chauvinism, but it's also realistic about the difficulty of staying peaceful and nonviolent when your community is threatened by an invading malevolent force. (BILLY JACK had made a tidy bundle that same year) and actually finds a solution far more radical than just kung fu or hiring seven samurai.
Trump Factor: Several of the eccentrics the gang run into on their journey pontificate in political bluster underneath which you can read plenty of gangster-like insanity. The "free-spirited independents trying to make peace with those still clinging to the crumbling mantle of hetero-white-Christian-male authority" aspect is more relevant than ever (if we're to believe TV). Based on all those Trump rally disruptions, it's a lesson the once-loving left has clearly forgotten, if indeed they ever learned it all, outside of that hippie chick who put that one flower in that guard's gun in that picture...
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3. UNHOLY ROLLERS
(1972) Starring: Claudia Jennings.
**1/2
An early roller in the 70s' lady roller derby phase (Raquel Welch's KANSAS CITY BOMBER, from the same year) this is a fine example of what I've just now termed 'libsploitation,' i.e. relating how much sexual harassment a hot mess athlete has to put up with in the lowdown world of bloodsport while at the same time taking full leering locker room privilege. Luckily super brawler Claudia Jennings was always up for both aspects. When the violence and hypocrisy gets too much, she bashes the team owner over the head with her trophy and goes on a parking lot rampage. Anyone who was a kid in the 70s has a 'soft' spot for this type of film, for it's drive-in gold- w/ a plot you can follow just by listening in at the next car's speakerbox while trying to find your way to the snack bar after ten whiskies. And I love badly choreographed fights, where it's clear everyone's pulling their punches, the way I used to fight with my brother and neighborhood kids, where if someone throws a slow motion punch at you, you're duty bound to react (exaggeratedly) as if you'd been socked hard for real, also in slow motion. For we had grown up watching BATMAN after school then running out to the yard to play fight and shout BAM! BIFF! POW! If that kind of thing doesn't grab you, there's more going on: Claudia Jennings once again brings the glint of genuine madness to her feral character, and rolls with the orgiastic vibe all the way into legend.
TRUMP-Factor. - Crass, blunt, effective and all about turning a public event into a shouting match for the sake of ratings and whipping up the blood frenzy in rowdy audiences. Claudia Jennings character says and does anything she feels like and her managers can't argue since her outrageous behavior gets her in the news, i.e. no such thing as bad publicity. As her momentum builds her rivals become more and more abusive, and the crowds more and more infused with bloodlust.
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4. TERRORVISION
(1986) Dir. Ted Nicolau
***
Good natured mid-80s MTV/New Wave/mall culture/punk horror/sci fi comedy in the vein of EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, NIGHT OF THE COMET, REPO MAN, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, and BUCKAROO BANZAI, it's the story of an ugly but hilarious blob-crab-style alien materializing via a state of the art satellite TV newly installed in the home of a looney upscale Malibu family. Cult icons Mary Woronov and Gerritt Graham are the swinging parents; Diane Franklin their Cyndi Lauper-ish teen daughter; Chad Allen the tow-head gun nut child under the tutelage of his crackpot war vet grandfather (Bert Remsen). TV horror hostess Madame Medusa (Jennifer Richards); a pair of fellow swingers (Alejandro Rey and Randi Brooks), and Jonathan Gries as the daughter's metalhead boyfriend, show up as delicious guests. The whole cast is on the same page sitcom-from-Hell overacting-wise which makes it all click together deliriously. Underneath the gross-outs and decadence lurks a loving spirit that situates it all up on the same cloud as John Waters, Tim Burton, and Roger Corman (I kept expecting Dick Miller to show up as a cop or salesman).
Trump Factor: I could make some parallel with the TV-erupting all-devouring monster and Fox News (and Hillary as the benevolent alien trying to clean up the mess and get the family's attention but not being heard over the din), but I'd rather just consider it a pleasing reminder that the American nouveau riche family in the 80s weren't all insufferably materialistic or rabidly conservative. Zeroing in on the macabre heightened reality in the cracks of mall culture rather than just being 'quirky,' TERRORVISION brings back memories of the early days of VHS when whole families would get together to watch X-rated movies they'd rented from the appliance store. I'm always wondering if it was the dispiriting fall-out of that sudden ceaseless onslaught of video smut and gore that turned middle America into the panicky prude it is today, or whether we're just trying to get our innocence back so we can once again have fun losing it. Trump is a creature from that earlier time of Plato's Retreat let-it-all-hang-out city freedom, and would fit right in at the Caligula-like marble jacuzzi room of this crazy family, despite his half-assed nods to the conservative Christian sect. His popularity now, is proof that America will never be fully Fox News square; it will always will be ready to party with the devil and say fuck it to the buzzkill hypocrite pulpiteers. We might forget how hard we rock sometimes, but it's only 'cuz we rock so hard. (Filmed in Italy)
5. THE VISITOR
(1979) Dir. Giulio Paradisis
***
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Most 70s of all is its use of ancient alien theory, Gnosticism and Buddhism rather than the usual Catholic iconography to underwrite its high strangeness. If you've read my 'other' blog, Divinorum Psychonauticus, you know I support that decision. Franco Nero with his electric yellow hippie wig makes a great Jesus, and Franco Micalizzi's funk-galactic score effectively conjures memories of 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as re-imagined by Meco! (How the fuckwas that ever a hit?)
Trump Factor: A scheming CEO being pressured into a virulently pro-life position by Satanic illuminati benefactors, Raymond lacks only Trump's questo cazzo to up his polls. Hillary could be the ex-husband abortionist and America is poor Barbara. And maybe that's the message we come away with: No matter how persistent and bluntly the devil woos us, even if he arranges 'accidents' to make us dependent on him, we needn't vote for him. God aka Lord Enki (alias Jerzy aka The Visitor) is pro-choice, but picking his side means having your selfish malice ripped from your soul by cleansing bird swarms aka paying higher income tax.
Have you paid yours yet, dear reader? Capone didn't. Does he look worried? Salute!