CineFile Video

Plot outline: A “Decline of Western Civilization” covering the Icelandic scene in ‘82! How specific!

The film chronicles 19 different bands, and has much performance footage, but one major complaint some I know who’ve seen it have against it is that there’s not enough cultural background. I don’t have that big of a problem with that specific issue; I think it’s equally as fun as “Urgh! A Music War”. The film was produced for Icelandic television, and I can only imagine what Icelandic housewifes and captains of industry must’ve thought about it — but then again, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be Icelandic at all, given my rotted-out American brain.

Some random Bjork fan site sez:

“It took punk two years to travel across the Atlantic all the way to Iceland back in 1979. ‘Rokk í Reykjavík’ is an ambitious 2CD-compilation that gives you a great overview of the Reykjavík-anarcho-scene as it contains contributions from lots of different punk-bands ranging from many different directions. It was recorded in 1982, when the era was about to fade and a lot of bands split up. You’ll find some quite traditional, left-wing-radical UK-type three-chords-aggro-stuff performed by bands such as Vonbridgi and Fraebbblarnir. Some other bands are heading in a more pop-oriented, guitar-solo-based direction. The Björk-fronted Tappi Tíkarrass adds elements of funk and jazz to their music, which makes it a good counterpart to the more traditional UK-oriented acts. Another band worth mentioning is Q4U, a riot-grrrl-combo in the vein of Siouxsie & the Banshees, with very humourous lyrics. ‘Rokk í Reykjavík’ also contains contributions from some experimental, freaked-out surrealist acts like Sjálsfróun and Purkur Pillnikk, fronted by a very young Einar Örn Benediktsson (later with The Sugarcubes.)

Some of the best songs are performed by the band Theyr, which featured the drummer Siggtryggur Baldurson (later with The Sugarcubes), as well as one actual former Killing Joke member. Their music is slower and more gothic-oriented compared to the other punk-acts and the singer has an audible David Bowie-complex. My definitive favorite on the album though, is the dark, haunting and heavily Joy Division-influenced ’Where Are The Bodies,’ performed by post-punkers Bodies. The song was recently covered by Utangardsmenn, the most popular rock-band in Iceland today and it’s so advanced I’m surprised it didn’t give Bodies a breakthrough outside their native country. The CD version of ‘Rokk í Reykjavík’ contains one piece by oddball noise-avant-gardist Bruni BB and some traditional Icelandic Middle Age chanting by Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, the founder of the Icelandic pagan-worshipping community.”

“Rock In Reykjavik”, disc 1 (ZIP file)
“Rock In Reykjavik”, disc 2 (ZIP file)

For a seven-month run (June ‘06-January ‘07), Cinefile friend Nate Thompson did a great, great soundtrack blog called 7 Black Notes. At the end of the seven months, Nate grew tired of Rapidshare deleting everything he’d posted, so he gave up the ghost, and now 7 Black Notes is no more — but — he’s graciously let us re-post some of our favorite soundtracks that he’d initially unleashed on the world. First from him is a three-volume Italian soundtrack compilation, called “Italian Blend”. Here’s what he originally had to say about it:

“Here’s a little project I’ve been tinkering with for a while, and it’s a bit different than past posts. Given the huge amount of great film music never commerically released in any format, I decided to cut together a series of suites of some outstanding titles that deserved some notice; here the spotlight turns on some of the great (well, in most cases) Italian composers whose work has often never gotten the credit it deserves. Taken from a variety of sources (video, M&E tracks, or whatever’s handy), these have been tweaked to sound as good as I can make ‘em; hopefully you’ll discover a few new gems in this three-part collection, entitled ‘Italian Blend’. Running times have also been included to give you an idea of how much music to expect.”

Italian Blend: Volume One
1. The Witches (Piero Piccioni) (10:41)
2. Images In A Convent (Nico Fidenco) (9:04)
3. Baba Yaga (Piero Umiliani) (2:16)
4. A Virgin Among The Living Dead (Bruno Nicolai) (12:42)
5. Queens Of Evil (Angelo Francesco Lavagnino) (9:34)
6. Knife Of Ice (Marcello Giombini) (2:56)
7. Burial Ground (Elsio Macuso & Burt Rexon) (3:00)
8. Death Smiles At Murder (Berto Pisano) (7:02)
9. A Blade In The Dark (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (5:26)
10. Beast With A Gun (Umberto Saila) (4:15)
11. Plot Of Fear (Daniele Patucchi) (2:59)
12. The Great Alligator (Stelvio Cipriani) (4:11)
13. Do You Like Hitchcock? (Pino Donaggio) (3:26)

Italian Blend: Volume Two
1. Eugenie De Sade (Bruno Nicolai) (8:27)
2. Footprints (Nicola Piovani) (8:51)
3. 2019: After The Fall Of New York (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (3:55)
4. A Whisper In The Dark (Pino Donaggio) (13:41)
5. Yellow Emanuelle (Nico Fidenco) (8:30)
6. Waves Of Lust (Marcello Giombini) (2:05)
7. Orgasmo Nero (Stelvio Cipriani) (15:42)
8. Caligula: The Untold Story (Claudio Maria Cordio) (2:08)
9. Patrick Still Lives (Berto Pisano) (2:37)
10. The Man From Deep River (Daniele Patucchi) (5:35)
11. Zeder (Riz Ortolani) (1:30)
12. Body Count (Claudio Simonetti) (1:57)

Italian Blend: Volume Three
1. Suspected Death Of A Minor (Luciano Michellini) (8:30)
2. House On The Edge Of The Park (Riz Ortolani) (4:06)
3. Strip Nude For Your Killer (Berto Pisano) (6:04)
4. The Pyjama Girl Case (Riz Ortolani) (7:18)
5. Nightmares Come At Night (Bruno Nicolai) (9:35)
6. The Lickerish Quartet (Stelvio Cipriani) (11:45)
7. Porno Holocaust (Nico Fidenco) (22:13)
8. Porno Shop On 7th Street (Bruno Biriaco) (9:27)
9. The Big Racket (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) (6:11)

“Italian Blend”, Vol. 1 (ZIP file)
“Italian Blend”, Vol. 2 (ZIP file)
“Italian Blend”, Vol. 3 (ZIP file)

“Flash Gordon”. One of our favorite sci-fi films, with one of the best soundtracks in the history of soundtracks, courtesy of Queen. It’s been out-of-print on DVD here in the U.S. for years now, but it’s still available in the U.K., complete with a director’s commentary track by Mike Hodges, who also helmed “Croupier” and the original “Get Carter.”

On the track, Hodges reveals that he took over for fellow British director Nic Roeg during pre-production, and that during the shooting of the film, basically he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and was making everything up as he went along with the cast and crew day-by-day. Not exactly the kind of thing an uber-fan of a film wants to hear, but we’re still no less entertained by the film after having known this. And — we know this isn’t exactly music, but it’s better filed under the “Movie Music Archives” banner than the other categories we have going.

“Flash Gordon” Region 2 DVD commentary track - Mike Hodges, director (MP3)

There’s too much for me to say about David Cronenberg’s 1982 film in the time I have today to get this off, so suffice it to say that it speaks to me in a way that few other sci-fi films do, or indeed any of his other films do. Howard Shore’s score for the film is a deeply integral part of why it all works: its liquid synthiness approximates orchestral dread very, very clearly. Shore’s work perfectly compliments James Woods’ descent into madness, the psychosexual tension between him and Debbie Harry, and Cronenberg’s thesis of the 20th century video image as “the retina of the mind’s eye”, as the character Prof. Brian O’ Blivion states in the film.

“Videodrome” soundtrack LP (ZIP file)

Plot outline: Mr. Freedom is a pro-America superhero who fights for God and Country by beating, robbing, raping and killing anyone who looks like they might disagree with him. When he hears that France is in danger of falling to the Commies, Mr. Freedom heads overseas to set things right. When the welcome he receives isn’t quite as warm as he expected, he gives up hope of steering the French away from the Reds and decides to salvage what he can by destroying the entire country

American ex-pat artist William Klein’s most prolific filmmaking period came in the mid-60s, after he abandoned his original medium of photography. The films he made during this period reflect his scathing political outlook and caustic sense of humor, both of which are overwhelmingly present in “Mister Freedom”, a nonstop gutbusting satire on American imperialism, which Michael Sullivan of The Unknown Movies accurately calls “the world of Sid and Marty Kroft filtered through the eyes of Stanley Kubrick.” Sullivan goes on to say:

“Admittedly, ‘Mister Freedom’ is at times pretentious, wrongheaded, and about as subtle as a jackhammer to the forehead. But it’s also a sometimes hilarious and unpredictable satire of imperialism in the guise of a superhero movie. It sometimes plays like an issue of Captain American written by Rush Limbaugh…[m]ixing pop art with ‘Mad Magazine’-style satire, ‘Mister Freedom’ is filled with larger than life costumes and sets, purposely overheated dialogue, and cartoonishly over the top characters. Because of this, it had the potential to turn into something shrill and obnoxious. But thankfully, Klein balances out the campier aspects with searing social commentary, and the cast knows when to rein themselves in and avoid becoming pathetic Charles Nelson Reilly clones…[a]side from the Roy Lichtenstein-like set design, the most memorable aspect of ‘Mister Freedom’ is John Abbey’s crazed performance in the titular role. Abbey truly threw himself into this character, and almost seems to relish doing things like beating up French tourists (and robbing them), forcing a maid to strip at gunpoint, and spouting hilariously nonsensical pro-American speeches (’You want a piano? Here you go. Want two pianos?’)”

Mister Freedom - “Balls!” speech (MP3)
Mister Freedom - end credits theme (MP3)

With all this recent talk on this blog of cable TV memories, I thought I’d make some of the haziness a little more concrete. Here’s some audio from vintage HBO promos and bumpers that are sure to evoke some Pavlovian responses out of you —

HBO In Space (”Feature Presentation”): This is the “floating in space thing” that HBO would show before almost every single feature film, from sometime between 1983 and the late ’80s. There were three versions: the 60-second flying-through-the-cityscape-and-then-onto-the-floating-HBO-logo version, the 30-second space-only version, and the 70-second one that was a mirror of the 60-second one, only with a short scene of a family turning on the TV and sitting down (shot through a living room window) tacked onto the very beginning. The 30-second one is the one they showed most often, but here for download is the full 60-second version.

“HBO In Space” feature presentation bumper music (MP3)

HBO Movie bumper, late 1980s: This one’s got more plastic pompery, what with the neon glow and the shredding guitar solo. This one got heavy play up until sometime in the mid-’90s. Cinefile employee Damon instantly recognized what this was by name, after only hearing the first few seconds of it from across the store.

“HBO Movie” feature presentation bumper music, late 1980s (MP3)

HBO Movie Marquee & Coming Up Next On HBO, early 1980s: These go back a little further than I can remember. My family got cable in the household in ‘83, around the time the “HBO In Space” thing premiered.

“HBO Movie Marquee” feature presentation bumper music, early 1980s (MP3)
“Coming Up Next On HBO” bumper, early 1980s (MP3)

The Best Time On TV Is HBO, late 1980s(?): Someone in the HBO head offices must’ve absolutely loved the work of painter Piet Mondrian with a passion, for the graphic look that the channel adopted for almost a year reflected a direct rip-off of his aesthetic. Check out the faux pleasure with which the session singer nearly blows a load in his pants over HBO!

“The Best Time On TV Is HBO” promo, late 1980s (MP3)

HBO Video Jukebox, 1981-1986: According to Wikipedia, “a typical episode of ‘Video Jukebox’ consisted of seven or eight music videos and lasted roughly 30 minutes, and the lineup changed in the middle of each month…[i]n the late 1970s (and before the MTV network debuted), HBO was already airing one or two music videos (or ‘promotional clips’ as they were known at the time) as filler in between their feature films and other series. These short clips also carried the ‘Video Jukebox’ moniker. When Video Jukebox premiered as a half-hour series in December 1981, HBO reached more households than MTV (which was launched only four months earlier), so a video that aired on Video Jukebox actually received more exposure than it would on MTV, a claim that would be short-lived as MTV quickly gained more cable markets…[a]t the peak of its popularity in the mid-1980s, Video Jukebox spawned many ’special edition’, including Christmas Jukebox, Country Jukebox, Comedy Jukebox and other editions featuring songs from movies and Grammy winners.” Here’s the brief theme music from both versions of the show’s opening credits through its five-year run.

“HBO Video Jukebox” themes, 1981-1986 (MP3)

No Place Like HBO commercial, early 1980s: I don’t know if this saccharine jingle (done in the popular commercial spot style of the time) was something that only aired on HBO itself, or if it was on network TV at the time, in order to entice new customers to the then-burgeoning subscription service. Kenny Rogers makes a cameo appearance (visual only, not singing) in the montage of folks of various ethnicities plopping themselves down in front of a TV in order to regale themselves with entertainment from the likes of pay cable.

“No Place Like HBO” promo, early 1980s (MP3)

Inside HBO, early 1980s: At the time, most everyone was “new” to pay movie channels, so HBO thought it needed to explain to cable subscriber neophytes exactly how the laws of HBO physics worked. The channel produced a series of animated FAQ-style promo spots that answered such questions as “Why does HBO show things it’s shown before in the past?” and “Why does HBO show movies I haven’t heard of before?” Such questions seem ridiculously quaint now, in light of our current media culture avalanche. Here’s a montage of four of these “Inside HBO” question-answering spots.

“Inside HBO” montage, early 1980s (MP3)

Cinemax Movie bumper, late 1980s: Wikipedia sez: “Cinemax launched in August 1980, introduced by its then on-air personality Robert Kulp. Kulp told viewers that Cinemax would be about movies and nothing but movies. At the time, HBO featured a wider range of programming, including documentaries, children’s entertainment, sporting events, and entertainment specials…Movie classics were a mainstay of [Cinemax] at its birth, “all uncut and commercial-free” as Kulp would say. A heavy schedule of films from the 50s-70s made up most of Cinemax’s program schedule.” Cinemax was often way cooler than HBO for me as a child, mainly because they simply showed a better selection of stuff — AND had the Max Headroom talk show! I remember catching this particular bumper in front of movies that I would watch at a certain friend’s house as a kid; my parents had the HBO cable package, but never wanted to cough up the extra dough for Cinemax.

“Cinemax Movie” feature presentation bumper music, late 1980s (MP3)

Plot outline: A fast-paced docu-comedy alternating between film-within-a-film hazardous stunts done by Grant Page (the Aussie stuntman who was co-ordinator of dangerous things for “Mad Max”), and a concert film of Sorcery, a KISS-esque D&D-themed hard rock band. Occasionally the two threads intertwine.

We Cinefiles were lucky enough to attend a 35mm theatrical revival screening of this just a few days ago, and while some of us had seen the film before, we’d forgotten just how wicked awesome the thing is. The film’s director, journeyman Brian Trenchard only had 15 days to shoot the whole thing back in ‘78, and not only is it wildly entertaining, but it shows just what you can pull off with a shortened budget if you’ve got your filmmaking chops together (the film looks like it would’ve taken three times as long as it actually took to film, with probably three or four cameras shooting the entire time.)

Trenchard-Smith not only was present at the screening, but he had invited us to the thing in the first place via e-mail. Here’s what he wrote upon reflection about his own creation:

It’s an oddball piece. Quite lively but quite wacky and strange. As you know I’ve made a lot of trailers over the years. In its way, this is like a 90 minute trailer. I had this idea in the shower one morning. Australian Stuntman meets American Rock Band…much stunt and much rock takes place, the kids will tear up the seats. Perhaps I should have stayed unwashed that day. To my immense surprise, my 6 page treatment was financed by a Dutch company within a month and I was on a plane to LA immediately. It had to co-star Verhoeven favorite actress Monique Van Der Ven, and be ready for screening in Dutch theatres in 4 months. Who was I to say no? When my father-in-law saw the end result, he said that he had not experienced so much noise since he was under bombardment in the Pacific.”

By far, the most palatable song that Sorcery does in the movie is their tribute to Grant Page, fittingly enough called “Stuntrocker.” It shows a lot of melodic promise, and if only all their songs were as good as this one, they might’ve gone far —

Sorcery - Stuntrocker (MP3)

Plot outline: The competition heats up as a young man on the cusp of adulthood in Brentwood, CA, prepares for his upcoming bar mitzvah, and his father strives to outdo the gargantuan coming-of-age bash recently thrown by his number-one nemesis, in a madcap tale of Hebrew rivalry.

We were prepared for the wurst when we noticed that Garry Marshall had a supporting role in the film, but were pleasantly surprised to find that he’s actually the most interesting and low-key thing in it. There’s also a handful of genuinely funny set pieces throughout, like the “Titanic”-themed bar mitzvah that takes place on a cruise liner. During that sequence, hip-hop MC DJ Quik (who recently did a five-month stint in jail for assaulting his sister) makes a surprise appearance during the traditional chair-raising Hora dance —

DJ Quik - “Hava Nagila, Beer Wine, Tequila” (MP3)

Tom Sutpin, writing in the Bright Lights Film Journal, sez:

“Portrait of Jason”, for those like me who weren’t around back in ’67 for the halcyon days of the New American Cinema, is a black-and-white, 16mm, 105-minute film wherein a bespectacled, aging African-American hustler, looking dapper in a white shirt and blue blazer, rehearses his life, times, ambitions, and philosophies of livin’ before a single camera that does its best to keep up with him and often succeeds quite beautifully (Jason’s rap does occasionally exceed the amount of film in the camera, causing a blank screen from time to time). It’s been described as so many things through the years that one possible explanation for the persistent unavailability — except for a rare, out-of-print VHS tape from Mystic Fire Video — of a film so exceptional has been its unusual way of eluding all categorization. It isn’t a documentary, really; it isn’t even a “cinema verite” exercise (it’s been referred to as both repeatedly, in some instances by critics who are halfway perceptive). Many of the newspaper and magazine reviewers who covered it during its initial run wrote it off as yet another low-budget Underground freak show, the kind of movie Andy Warhol and Jack Smith and the Kuchar brothers might have conjured if they’d all somehow hooked up at the right time (a prospect as forbidding as it is intriguing). “Portrait of Jason” isn’t really an interview either, since the closest thing to a coherent question throughout is Carl Lee’s repeated prodding of Jason from just off-camera (”Hey, Jason . . . tell the Cop story”; “Talk about Brother Tough”). Waxing poetic, Clarke’s Film-makers’ Cooperative confrere Storm de Hirsch called it a “bold, incisive choreography, a dance of the human ego in all its ugly, beautiful nakedness”; Ingmar Bergman simply said it was the most fascinating movie he’d ever seen (Bergman, of course, was checking in from Sweden, where black homosexual male prostitutes with a compulsive showbiz bent have never exactly been . . . underfoot).

Going on stage, while it could have put some much-needed bread in his pocket, would’ve been awfully redundant.

The film was re-released on DVD in the U.K. in 2005. Here’s the audio track from the film in its entirety, which works remarkably well like a good episode of “This American Life” would.

Shirley Clarke - “Portrait Of Jason (audio track, MP3)

Plot outline (having just about nothing to do with the first two “Halloween” films: A Halloween mask-making company has plans to kill millions of American children with something sinister hidden in Halloween masks. Druids, laser beams and the flabby chest of Tom Atkins all collide in a thrill ride for the ages.

With “Assault On Precinct 13″ and “Halloween”, John Carpenter displayed considerable muscle both as a filmmaker and a musician. His title themes for both films are instantly recognizable, hummable — and also sound great when played on any cheap synthesizer. The scores for “The Fog” and “Halloween II” are less interesting but still good (heavy on the atmospherics), but it’s the one-two punch of the music from “Escape From New York” and “Halloween III”, both done in collaboration with Alan Howarth, that make me shiver with child-like excitement.

“Halloween III” also happens to be, believe it or not, my favorite horror film of the ’80s, even beating out the impeccable “Monster Squad” (the only PG-13 film I know in which a vampire antagonist calls a 4-year-old a “bitch” right to her face). Dean Cundey’s cinematography is just great, the script (first drafted by “Quatermass” creator Nigel Kneale) is genuinely funny, and Dan O’Herlihy’s easily as good here as the villian as he is in “The Last Starfighter”, playing that half-man/half-turtle dude. It is weird, though, how Carpenter chose to score this film and not direct it, when compared with “The Thing” in the same year (1982), which he directed but did not score (Morricone did that one.)

John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - “Halloween III: Season Of The Witch” soundtrack (ZIP file)