Look at me, all caught up like I was a responsible member of the cabal or something…
Black Narcissus (1947), in which Respected Artists can get a Condemned rating from the Legion of Decency, too…
Danger: Diabolik (1967), in which it’s expected for once that we’re all rooting for the bad guys…
Dune (1984), in which the “YOU TRIED!” star genuinely is something to be halfway proud of…
The Human Tornado (1976), which eats easily 30% less rat soup than the original Dolemite…
Infra-Man (1975), in which we can all have such a thing…
Multiple Maniacs (1970), in which John Waters is forced reluctantly to concede that not even Divine can upstage Charles Manson…
Water Power (1976), in which there really is a mafia-financed porno movie loosely based on the case of the Illinois Enema Bandit, and I apologize to you all for bringing that to your attention…
and…
The White Buffalo (1977), in which all of Dino De Laurentiis’s mid-70’s obsessions come together in a single picture at last.
#1 by Anna on August 9, 2016 - 8:57 pm
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I was hoping you were going to review “Dune”. I’m one that read the novel before the film was released, so I’ve always enjoyed it, and wasn’t lost, despite the flaws. Visually, the Dune movie is spectacular, (the visual aesthetic still influences things like Games Workshop’s miniature wargames to this day) and some of the set pieces and performances have stayed with me for all these years. I “hear” Patrick Stewart’s voice as Gurney when I re-read the book.
I wish Lynch had been allowed to do his 3 hour +/- version. Lynch’s vision is of course very weird, but it certainly kept ‘Dune’ from looking like another Star-Wars-a-like. I don’t love the sound weapons, and I have to agree that a super Kung-Fu knife battle would have been awesome. If you saw the Sci-Fi Channel’s miniseries adaptations, they portrayed “Wierding” as a teleportation-style speed of strikes and evasions. I also think a more standard narration, perhaps by Irulan, would have served the movie better than the whispery-thought overlays. But as flawed as Lynch’s Dune is, I love it, I just re-watched it this past Sunday.
#2 by The Rev. on August 10, 2016 - 1:15 am
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I have never seen Dune or read the book. I did have one of those record/storybook things for it, though. (Kids, ask your parents!)
Infra-Man was an early score for me after getting my license and a Blockbuster card. The cover art and title made me think of Ultraman; the pictures of rubber monsters on the back sealed it. However, I had no idea what a glorious time I was in for, and I ended up watching it three times, then having my friends come over for a fourth. I kept trying to get them to sell it to me, and despite my multiple rentals, and my no doubt being the only person to do so, they wouldn’t do it. Happily, nowadays I can glance at my DVD collection and see it there in a place of prominence, ready and waiting for me to decide it’s time to watch She-Demon again. Oh, and the rest of the monsters, too.
#3 by supersonic man on August 10, 2016 - 1:40 am
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DeLaurentiis’s crappy movies did not infrequently show their best sides in the sets, costumes, and art design, even without a Lynch to do the visionarying.
It’s interesting to me that the title character of Black Narcissus gets only one brief mention in your review.
I saw that movie decades ago on public TV and I think I missed parts of it, so I don’t have much memory of the real story.
#4 by El Santo on August 10, 2016 - 7:16 am
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“It’s interesting to me that the title character of Black Narcissus gets only one brief mention in your review.”
It’s worse than that, even. I would argue that the real title character is Sabu’s perfume, and I didn’t mention that at all!
#5 by ronald on August 10, 2016 - 7:07 pm
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“in which it’s expected for once that we’re all rooting for the bad guys”
Yeah, I still don’t get that about a bad guy who kills not “just” other criminals but pretty much whoever gets in his way. Oh well. Maybe one has to be European to get it.
#6 by ronald on August 10, 2016 - 11:29 pm
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Re Water Power: I can’t say it ever before occurred to me whether or not there was an “amputee porn queen,” so thanks for that, anyway. In case anyone was wondering, as I wondered, according to IMDB, Ms. Silver has a “missing foot,” but Wikipedia clarifies that one of her legs has been amputated at the knee.
Again according to the IMDB, Jamie Gillis appeared in 415 films. Nice work if you can get it. 😉 Somewhat disappointingly, one of Gillis’s films, “Captain Lust,” is evidently a pirate film, not a super-hero film. Shrug.
#7 by supersonic man on August 17, 2016 - 12:31 am
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A friend of mine once had the unenviable experience of going through a deceased sibling’s personal stuff and finding a large cache of amputee porn.
#8 by Jason Farrell on August 11, 2016 - 1:00 pm
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Type your comment here
#9 by Jason Farrell on August 11, 2016 - 1:08 pm
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I sure I am not alone in having read about DUNE’s post-production issues in that two-parter in HARLAN ELLISON’s WATCHING. It’s just weird how Seventies the film seems to me now: David Lynch directs a future DESPARATE HOUSEWIVES cast member, a non-Catwoman, Professor X, a Sting who was appearing every hour in the MTV at that time, an art-direction that looks like the effects people got into in the Spice stash, all with a score by Toto?
That is just as weird (or weirder) as anything Jodorowsky would have come up with.
#10 by Jason Farrell on August 11, 2016 - 1:53 pm
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Oh, and where is the big-budget RKO-281 about the making of WATER POWER?
#11 by ronald on August 11, 2016 - 7:06 pm
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Regarding your wondering, the White Buffalo is a sacred figure in the faiths of many Native American tribes. One of the Lakota’s culture heroes is White Buffalo Calf Woman. The birth of a white buffalo was part of the X-Files episode “Paper Clip.” It’s a recurring motif in both faith/myth and popular culture. So, y’know, there’s that. 🙂
AFAIK The White Buffalo and The Beast of Hollow Mountain are the only film “kaiju” of the American Old West, which is two more than a lot of people would suspect existed.
#12 by The Rev. on August 12, 2016 - 10:26 am
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Well, if we’re counting Beast, we should also probably count The Valley of Gwangi. Outside of that, though, I’m not coming up with any others.
#13 by ronald on August 13, 2016 - 10:14 pm
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follow-up questions on Water Power:
1. If the Gambinos didn’t want an “enema movie,” why did De Bernardo and Levine think that they did? That seems like kind of an odd breakdown of communication.
2. Please excuse my cynicism, but I’m politely dubious as to the notion that career mobsters would have the same visceral reaction to rape as most other people, so I presume they were disgusted by the “enema” part of enema rape (in contrast to consensual enema sex, about which I know just as much nothing as I knew about enema rape before learning about this film). As a porn director, a porn director in the SEVENTIES, Costello, of course, should’ve had no particularly strong reaction about either rape or shoving things up a woman’s [ahem]…
#14 by El Santo on August 14, 2016 - 3:34 pm
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1. The miscommunication wasn’t between De Bernardo and Levine and the higher-ranking Gambinos, but rather between De Bernardo and his customer base. That’s one mystery I wasn’t able to solve: how exactly did De Bernardo get it into his head that there was a significant unserved market for enema porn in the first place?
2. Oh, it was definitely the enemas that De Bernardo, Levine, and Costello found bizarre and off-putting, rather than the rape. In the interview with Costello that was my main source for the behind-the-scenes stuff, he remarked that the mafia guys always went to great lengths to distance themselves from weird stuff like that, as if they were afraid that their peers and rivals would otherwise assume that their perversions were the driving force behind what went on in the films they commissioned. I suspect it’s because they were all heavily invested in a self-image as old-fashioned macho men– and good Catholics to boot!
#15 by Anna on August 18, 2016 - 12:41 am
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OK, I obviously need to track down a copy of “infra-Man” as well. It sounds like a demented remix of “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers”, and I adored the first season of Power Rangers.
I have to agree that things like this, and kaiju, and similar, have a sense of fun and joy that just seem to have disappeared from live-action Western pop culture anymore.
Also too, had I a lick of musical talent, I would start a hard rock band and call it “Thunderbolt Fisting”.
XD