Ride Easy...

"This is the way the fucking world ends!
Look at this fucking shit we're in, man!
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack."

- Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now

Splice

US and German one sheets for Splice have quietly shown up over at Impawards. They certainly aren't shying away from revealing Dren in all her glory.

Oh, Linda!

In collaboration with a selection of the finest film blogs the infranet has to offer Unflinching Eye is proud to contribute this quality post to Blair Week, a six day extravaganza expounding on the virtues of Linda Blair and her legacy of quality motion pictures. Don't believe me? Just read on...

Sweet little Linda Blair was only 14-years-old when she portrayed Regan Teresa MacNeil in The Exorcist. My niece is 14 this year too. She's into fashion and stuff, and I'm pretty sure she dreams of gracing the cover of some stylish magazine someday. However, I know for a fact that she would NOT want to be portrayed on said magazine cover thusly:


That can't have been easy on the fragile psyche of a young girl at precisely the age when her self-image starts to mean everything. Then there's this:


I'm no expert on adolescent psychology, but I doubt that this image of a BARF BAG had a nurturing effect on Linda's early sexual development. It's not really a stretch to imagine that she'd want to alter her perceived public image to be seen as anything but a puking, obscenely blasphemous, vag-stabbing demon. So, maybe that desire to leave behind her image of Pazuzu-Vessel led her to over-compensate a little in her future choice of magazine covers...

...just sayin'.

To celebrate the end of Blair Week, I give you Redd Kross' first album from 1982 (as Red Cross), appropriately titled Born Innocent. According to legend (Wikipedia), in 1980 Red Cross came up with their name based on the crucifix-masturbation scene from The Exorcist. Makes sense, because the song "Linda Blair" drops references to about half the movies covered this past week by my fellow Blair Week contributors. The McDonald brothers were obviously fans:

In the Exorcist, baby
You were really insane
You got busted, you got dusted
You got busted for cocaine
You're born innocent, girl
And that ain't all
You got it for the first time baby
In a shower stall

Kidnapped, raped and possessed
Linda is the Best
She used to be on the run
But now she thinks it's a lot of fun
She takes her cigarettes from her sleeve
Now she never wants to leave
Not even when she's eighteen

Liiiiiiiiiiinda, Liiiiiiiiiiinda, Liiiiiiiiiiinda, Liiiiiiiiiiinda

Finally, a 1968 ad for the same Parker Brothers Ouija Board that Regan uses:

The board:

Born Innocent

A big thanks to Seth, of Lost Video Archive, for making this thing happen.


BLAIR WEEK

Mon
Lost Video Archive - Savage Streets
Satan's Hope Chest - Chained Heat and Savage Island

Tues
Camp Movie Camp - Grotesque
The Horror Section - Hell Night
Full Moon Reviews - Bailout

Wed
Illogical Contraption - Repossessed
Lines That Makes Things - original Linda inspired artwork
Breakfast In the Ruins - Exorcist II

Thurs
B Movies and Beyond - Summer of Fear
Camp Movie Camp - Nightforce

Fri
The Manchester Morgue - Rollerboogie
Happy Otter - The Chilling
Ninja Dixon - The Witchery

Sat
Lost Video Archive - Born Innocent

Frazetta Is With Crom Now

Just a few weeks ago when I was writing my post on Andrei Bouzikov, I was wondering how old Frazetta was and how long he had to go in this world. Now - unfortunately - I know.

At the end of the '70s, when Frazetta was at his most popular, I was at just the right age to fall in love with his work. I was reading Robert E. Howard's Conan books, was obsessed with Tolkien and loved Ralph Bakshi's Wizards and Rings. Milius' Conan The Barbarian and the Bakshi/Frazetta collaboration Fire And Ice were just about to hit. And when I say "fall in love" with his work I mean it literally. Those curvaceous slave girls, warrior princesses and necromantic witches made quite an impression on my randy adolescent psyche. Boobies!

The Death Dealer has come, and taken one of the great fantasy visionaries with him. Frank, may you ever sit at the right hand of Crom.

Chiba City Nights

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

Reading those words in 1985, I had no idea how prophetic they would become. William Gibson's Neuromancer was a life changing novel for me, opening my world to a whole universe of ideas about the potential of computers and the power of information; our relationship with (and addiction to) technology; and very plausible speculation about a future of post-human evolution through neural augmentation. It isn't hard now to imagine us becoming so immersed in our tech that it becomes an extension of ourselves. I'm already completely dependent on my computer for access to music, movies, comics, news, communication, creativity, stimulation, relaxation.

Last night Fangoria reported that the reigns of the floundering Neuromancer adaption have been handed over to one of the most visionary and intelligent film-makers working today - Vincenzo Natali. This is very exciting news, and if you have any doubt about his suitability for the project, check out his cult cyberpunk sleeper Cypher.

I'd all but lost hope for a good Neuromancer film, because last year the direction it was heading in was looking very, very dire. Some complete hack of a director attached; that no-talent nancy-boy from the Star Wars prequels cast as Case and some pre-production art that made it look like some kind of horrible steampunk abortion. Uuuuurrgh.

The question is: can Neuromancer still be relevant in a world where Gibson's ideas have been so ruthlessly pillaged by every facet of our culture for 25 years (technology, design, philosophy, fashion, movies like The Matrix, eXistenZ, Sleep Dealer, Ghost In The Shell, etc)? In a world where so many of his once fantastic concepts have more or less passed into the realm of the banal? A world where the legacy of the great cyberpunk writers - Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, Jack Womack, Neal Stephenson and their progenitors PKD, Alfred Bester, Ballard and Burroughs - is sullied by those shamefully idiotic steampunk ninnies? Not to mention the whole cyberpunk "sub-culture", which has always been a pathetically sad affair (art is art, why do people need to pretend it's real?).

With Natali at the helm (and rewriting the screenplay), I think Neuromancer could be subtly tweaked into something that is once again cutting edge SF. Last year's brilliant Mexican indie Sleep Dealer, Duncan Jones' upcoming Source Code and this year's mega budgeted Inception prove that we're still fascinated with the concepts that lie at the heart of cyberpunk. After all, although much of Gibson's Sprawl series is now hopelessly dated, the essence of it still looks like a future that we're moving towards (corporate supremacy, sensory immersion in technology, physical/neural modification, AI, over-population, environmental disaster - dystopia).

But where does all this leave Natali's long mooted adaption of J.G. Ballard's High-Rise?

Dren

A real teaser poster for Natali's Splice has finally appeared. Can't wait to see the final one sheet.

Buried Death

Soon my neighbourhood will be pulverised to atomic dust, as thousands of Sydney residents die screaming under gigatonnes of molten skyscraper wreckage. Even now, the bringers of our impending Doom prepare their campaign of annihilation from deep beneath the rain-slick streets of Tokyo. We are as ants before their mercilessly crushing onslaught.

Am I talking about a city-razing battle between Hedorah and Gojira? No, although the destructive force to which I allude could be compared to Hedorah: 48,000 tons of corrosive, poisonous SLUDGE!


The monstrosity of which I speak is Tokyo's dealers of death and doom - COFFINS. They've announced a whirlwind Aussie tour in September, and having had my face melted off by Osaka's Birushanah at Dirty Shirlows just a couple of months ago, I can't wait to witness more mayhem from Japan.

Get their 2008 album Buried Death. It's kaiju heavy.

COFFINS

Biomechanoid

I stumbled on this little gem at Pink Tentacle yesterday and was suitably blown away. It would appear that in 1984/85 H.R. Giger quietly recycled some of his iconic production artwork for Alejandro Jodorowsky's unrealised Dune adaptation. Not for use in another movie, but a Japanese ad campaign for Pioneer's ZONE home entertainment system.

This brief glimpse of Giger's dark vision for planet Arrakis makes me lament the death of this project more than ever. The combination of Giger's nightmarish design and Jodorowsky's unconventional and surreal approach would surely have resulted in a cult SF film quite unlike anything we've ever seen.

As everyone knows, shortly after the collapse of Dune, Jodorowsky's core creative team of Dan O'Bannon, Giger, Chris Foss and Moebius all went on to contribute their talents to Alien; thus making O'Bannon's bastard child of Dark Star and Dune the closest we'll ever get to seeing What Could Have Been.

Of course this is all ancient history and common knowledge, but seeing these TV and print ads makes me wish anew that Giger's brilliance was further utilised at the height of his ability. I could watch an entire film - devoid of any actors, dialogue or story - of nothing but Giger's art, brought to life by '80s practical FX: sets, miniatures, models, animatronics, puppetry and matte paintings. A sort of biomechanical perversion of Koyaanisqatsi.

Surgical Prep

Dr. Josef Heiter MBBS, MChir, FRCS:

"...a Siamese triplet, connected via the gastric system...

...the Human Centipede...

...FIRST SEQUENCE.

We start with cutting the ligaments of the kneecaps..."

Their Flesh Is His Fantasy

ギニーピッグ

Is there a moratorium on mentioning the Guinea Pig films, and if so, has it been lifted?

Eight or nine years ago the Japan Shock double feature of Mermaid in a Manhole/Android of Notre Dame and the lovingly produced Devil Pictures boxset were two of the most talked about and sought after horror DVD's around. I was on board that particular gore-hype express, and can remember the day that my Mermaid/Android DVD arrived in the mail. My excitement at finally seeing it was tinged with a delicious trepidation that I might be about to watch The Goriest Thing I Had Ever Seen (Mermaid delivered, Android did not). Cut to 2005, and by the time the series had it's US disc debut on Unearthed Films, I was already pretty sick of hearing about Za ginipiggu. My curiosity satisfied and my blood lust sated, I sold my German boxset (for a tidy profit, but I wish I'd kept that t-shirt!) and moved on to other, as yet unseen gorefests.

"You're next Charlie!"

The other day, for the first time in years, I revisited the only two entries in the series that ever really made an impression on me - Mermaid and Flowers of Flesh and Blood, both directed by the venerable Hideshi Hino. Much to my surprise I found that I was enjoying them more than ever. There's something about the deliberate pacing and gloomy atmosphere of both films (but particularly Mermaid), that I find mesmerising. They play more like televised theatre than films, and although that's obviously a by-product of budgetary constraints, it really works in the films favour. It turns them into intimate little chamber pieces that draw the viewer into their claustrophobic confines, and once there, pummels them mercilessly with some of the most shockingly transgressive images ever filmed.

With their combination of poetic surrealism and hardcore gore, I think these two little films represent an unusual nexus of art and horror. Other art/gore films, like Karim Hussain's Subconscious Cruelty, that try too hard to be arty, invariably come off as being pretentious. It feels to me as if Hussain is trying to legitimise his love of blood and guts by attempting to "elevate" it to the status of art. In the case of Flowers and Mermaid I think the opposite is true - Hideshi Hino (a genuinely eccentric artist) set out to make simple gore flicks with the sole intention of shattering taboos, but couldn't help infusing them with his bizarre artfulness. The result is a sort of unintentional performance art/kabuki/splatterfest.


I've never been tempted to delve into the dauntingly vast world of printed manga, but when I was recently introduced to the incredible work of Maruo Suehiro (and Guro art in general) at the suffer for a world of silence blog, my interest was piqued. I started seeking out horror manga (an excellent blog for this is Flying Teapot), and in so doing stumbled on the printed works of Hideshi Hino (which in turn led me to revisit his two Guinea Pig entries). I was delighted to find in his manga all the obsessive imagery that is present in Mermaid in a Manhole. Sewers depicted as a fantasy underworld, discarded foetuses, living putrefaction, disease, creepy crawlies, pus oozing and spurting everywhere and above all, a gloomy feeling of social alienation and lonely despair.

100% Medically Accurate!

This is the new one-sheet (thanks to CHUD) for Tom Six's The Human Centipede (First Sequence), one of my most anticipated 2010 movies. It's a perfectly designed horror poster - simultaneously repellent and luridly beautiful. I want to see this now.

The Apocalypse According To Bouzikov

Andrei Bouzikov is a 31 year old painter and illustrator who emigrated to the US from his native Belarus in the mid '90s, eventually settling in San Francisco. I'd seen some of his eye-catching album covers around, but it wasn't until I stumbled on a link to his blog over at Illogical Contraption that I had a name to put to the artwork.

Using an eerie, ultra-lurid palette, he paints awesome cult SF/horror tableau's that sometimes remind me of classic Frazetta. There's also a kind of Death Rattle/Slow Death comic vibe to his work that I love (the ecological themes?). Comparisons aside though, Andrei manages to subvert all those old traditions a bit, and the result is something unsettling and uniquely his own.


The imagery is saturated with horror that for me recalls Bava, Fulci and Luigi Cozzi, but it's not all of the exploitation variety. The oppressive (and very real) spectres of tyranny, war and environmental destruction loom grimly over these apocalyptic vistas of bombed, burning cities and ravaged, poisonous landscapes. In other words, there's more going on here than meets the eye.

As well as doing amazing artwork for punk and metal bands/record labels the world over, Andrei plays bass in Oakland/SF hardcore band Deadfall. He's also a cool guy who had no problem with me posting his work here.

"Guts"

Nocturnal Graves/Hell Spirit split on Nuclear War Now! Productions

Lahar/Stolen Lives split on Insane Society/Phobia Records


Autopsy demo on Nuclear War Now! Productions

for a Peruvian psychedelic band

for Aussie pop-punk band The Decline

The Decline back

The Decline inner

Andrei's site and blog

Kicked!

Just an update to this post to say that the Popcorn Taxi screening of Kick-Ass was a lot of fun last night. The capacity crowd was probably the geekiest I've seen since going to Kraftwerk a few years ago, and the excitement in the lobby was palpable. It couldn't even be dampened by the overzealous security measures that saw everyone's phones confiscated at the door for the duration of the screening. Was that really necessary?

The movie mostly lived up to my expectations and the crowd ate it up, cheering raucously at the lethal bad-assery of Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Chloe Moretz really does steal the show, but Nic Cage is seriously back in "Sailor Ripley" form here and has by far the funniest moments in an already hilarious movie. It's good to have him back after 15 years of non-stop dreck, and I can't wait to see him devour scenery in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. My one minor gripe was that it wasn't as gory as I'd anticipated, nowhere near the giddy heights of splatter seen in the comic. The film is very bloody but not overly visceral.

The Q&A afterwards was lively and Matthew Vaughn was affable and funny. He's excited about the prospect of a sequel, but hesitant to talk it up lest Kick-Ass gets it's ass kicked at the box office (It was almost completely independently financed - including mortgaging Vaughn's house - so there's a lot riding on its success). He did talk a little about the follow up comic series, and said that Millar and Romita are thinking of introducing a new (not so)superhero character named either Motherfucker or The Cunt. LOL.

He also talked enthusiastically about his use of almost entirely practical action in the movie, citing his hatred of modern action techniques such as shaky-cam, ADHD editing and an over-abundance of CG. Amusingly, they did switch to CG blood after just one day of shooting, because it was taking too long to clean the set and re-costume the actors after each take. I barely noticed it though, it's an effect that they are finally getting right (I'm looking at you Land Of The Dead!).

Having just screened The Wolfman and Daybreakers, Popcorn Taxi is being very friendly to genre fans so far this year. Next stop for the Taxi in April is Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans with Werner Herzog Q&A. Bring on the iguanas!

The Day The Universe Ceased

I am Providence

So reads the inscription on H.P. Lovecraft's modest tombstone at Swan Point Cemetery in Rhode Island. Nick Blinko also invokes these most heavy words at the end of the song The Only Child on Rudimentary Peni's 1987 HPL concept album Cacophony.

When I wrote my last post acknowledging David Cronenberg's birthday on March 15, I was unaware that the date also marks the death of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (thanks to the excellent Lovecraftian cinema blog, Unfilmable, for passing on this eldritch lore). That makes the day one of ominous portent for me as the two men are respectively my favourite horror director and writer.

This album freaked my friends and I out when it was released. We really just wanted another Death Church, so this weird assortment of in-jokes and occult ramblings was kind of baffling to us. At first I just latched onto the more rocking tracks like Architectonic and Dominant and Sunset for the Lords of Venus, but over the years I've come to love and appreciate the whole bizarre mess for the crazed genius that it is.

I know it's not very inspired of me to post Cacophony as a tribute to HPL, as it's probably the most obvious choice and has been posted on a hundred other blogs, but to hell with it - I love the Peni. Lovecraft baby!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!