After Grog Blog

THERE WILL BE BUD

(By Nabakov.)

Given the recent discussion here about “Underbelly” and that it’s just been announced that Bud Tingwell is now permanently resting between engagements, I think it’s an opportune moment to revisit Uncle Bud’s performance as a really good bad guy in a tasty little and sadly neglected Australian crime flick, “The Money Movers.”

(1978. Colour. Script: Bruce Beresford. Direction: Bruce Beresford. Cinematography: Donald McAlpine. Score: NA.)

In the special edition 30 years on bonus special features docu, Bryan Brown shrewdly observes that MM was Australia’s “Reservoir Dogs” long before “Reservoir Dogs”. While it lacks Quentin’s smartarse flashbacks and flashforwards, MM has a very similar plot. And much tougher acting.

A bunch of crims planning a big heist, a mole in there somewhere and a bloody fucked up finale. And a much more squirmy torture scene, not least because lovable Uncle Bud is calmly and judiciously overseeing what happens when a pair of boltcutters explicitly meets a pair of feet. Yep this is the original “toecutters” flick. No namby-pamby cutaways to a dancing Michael Madsen, just an intense business negotiation. Conducted on plastic sheeting to protect the carpet.

Bud’s not the only well known Australian actor appearing against type in this tight and gritty thriller. Bruce Beresford had just returned to Australia and not seen much local TV for quite a while. So he cheerfully cast a lot of well-known faces without realising the characters they had built up in various comparatively innocuous TV series. And the actors apparently leapt at the chance to get down and dirty.

So MM features a whole bunch of veteran TV players like Bud, Terence Donovan, Tony Bonner, Ed Devereaux, Terry Camilleri and even Lucky Grills all gleefully swearing their heads off and rooting and shooting all over the place. And yes an excellent Bryan Brown performance before he started impersonating himself.

It’s one of very few Australian films where the dialogue in a daily workplace and of people under pressure sounds utterly believable. OK it’s the late seventies so the backchat and body language between the sexes is not all that PC these days (Watch Lucky Grills’ wandering hands. I suspect he wasn’t really acting at all) – but it all rings quite true for the time.

Another charming thing about MM is that it was based on a true story filtered through some intriguing possible bullshit. Specifically a novel by Devon Minchin who ran a security company in Sydney that was robbed in very similar way to the MM story. Some have speculated that Devon himself was in on the heist and wrote about it as a veiled taunt.

MM certainly depends on inside men and insurance company shenanigans as part of its plotting. But basically it’s a sharp, fast and bloody noir (albeit in Sydney sunlight) thriller bristling with Australian criminal machismo, triple crosses, quirky little touches and eye wrenching 70s décor.

And Uncle Bud Tingwell as one of the suavest criminal masterminds ever to grace a local film and keep the other bad guys on their toes. Or not as the case may be. Wherever you are now Bud, I’m sure everyone is tapping their feet along with you…whether they want to or not.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “If one of your mob told me, "Good morning," I'd put on my pajamas and go to bed. " 7 out of 10 toes.

Coming soon: “You will if you stick me with me darling.” – Lucky Grills (trad arr.)

PIMPERIUM

(By Nabakov.)

As part of Grogflog’s ceaseless quest to bring you the finest in obscure cinematic gems, I was the other day rummaging through a tray of discount DVDs and pulled out a neglected masterpiece of historical drama about ancient Rome. However, as it was only five bucks, I bought ‘Caligula’ instead.

(1979 and 1984. Colour. Script: Gore Vidal (credited despite his best efforts), Bob Guccione, Giancarlo Lui and Franco Rossellini (uncredited). Direction: Either Tinto Brass or Bob Guccione (depending on who you speak to). Cinematography: Silvano Ippoliti. Score: Bruno Nicolai and Renzo Rossellini.

After watching ‘Caligula’ for the first time in 25 years I am delighted to report it lived up to all my memories of it as a vast, bloody, ridiculous, campy and ornate mess overseen by a bunch of oversexed venal Italians with grandiose ideas. Bit like ancient Rome itself circa 40 AD.

The credits above hint at the kind of clusterfuck (literally in some scenes) the project became as all the principals fell out with eachother and lawsuits and alternate cuts started flying around.

‘Caligula’ went from a bold and noble vision to a gaudy pornographic pageant in about the same time that it took its namesake to go from popular young prince to psycho party tyrant. The unintended parallels you can keep drawing between the film and its subject matter is one of its effable charms.

Yes ‘Caligula’ does have some charms despite the fact it is an enormous freestanding gilt and plaster turkey.

The art direction, while quite possibly perhaps not 100% historically accurate, is pretty damn striking and I think probably captures the flavour of the times quite well. Not the ancient Rome of austere marble, military and senators but the gaudy cosmopolitan capital of empire.

There’s also some gaudy cosmopolitan acting as well. The posh English talent hired to add a bit ‘o class, know what I mean squire, generally seem to be enjoying themselves and don’t hold back. Helen Mirren proves again there’s more to being sexy than just looking sexy while Malcolm McDowell as Caligula and Peter O’Toole as Tiberius, rather alarmingly, don’t appear to be acting at all. Only Sir John Gielgud as a court advisor seems to be looking forward to dying as soon as possible.

And if your taste runs towards to gorgeous women in scanty clothing and modish gladiator sandals you might find the odd enjoyable hour or two here and there.

The version I just acquired contains all the naughty bits shot by Guccione Caesar with a bunch of Pets and well-endowed extras who I can assure you are definitely not acting in the orgy scenes. However the inclusion of these scenes is an excellent example of the lack of direction, in every sense, that assailed the project. There’s not enough to make the flick truly pornographic and too much to make it erotic. Personally I found the most arousing moments were generated by Helen Mirren’s expressions and body language in certain comprising but tastefully inexplicit scenes.

The funniest moments are not in the film itself but in the extras which included a “making of” documentary - actually shot during pre-production, once again displaying the narrative ineptitude typical of the whole project.

In retrospect, the doco was probably made to raise more funds from investors as Guccione Caesar reeled from being overcharged by the locals. Shades of Emperors staging games on credit to get the backing for campaigns to find the loot to pay for the games. The parallels continue.

Anyway, between footage of the vast sets being um…erected underneath breathless commentary (“a visionary undertaking…master craftsmen from across Italy…no expense spared..”), the key players talk about their great expectations for this grand project.

Guccione Caesar is funny enough as he sits, shirt open to the navel to display some serious seventies bling in his chest hair, in his gold and marble dining room (apparently not used as a set because it would have been too over the top) talking in monosyllables about why it’s such a serious artistic endeavour. “I feel ancient Rome much to teach about today, y’know?”

The real hilarity though is watching a suave and urbane Gore Vidal fluently and intelligently discussing his original script, completely unaware of what’s already going wrong behind the scenes and how the whole thing will end up. “The underlying question is how would someone act if they had been given absolute power of life and death over everybody else in the whole world.”

After watching the rushes, Gore would have had a good answer. He was so appalled that he traded his 10 points of the gross (that’s gross not net folks!) in exchange for having his name removed from the credits. But not before one version was released, billed as ‘Gore Vidal’s Caligula’ – leading to the waggish logline “Or least he wishes he was.”

But don’t let this Grogflog put you off lashing out five bucks if you come across ‘Caligula’ while fossicking around in a bargain bin. At the very least you’ll enjoy how the spirit of Little Boots lives on in some corners of today’s movie industry.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “You're an honest man, Proculus, which means a bad Roman! Therefore, you are a traitor! Logical, hmm?”

Two out of ten laurel wreaths. Oh Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus! I didn’t see you there. Did I say two? I meant two hundred! No, two thousand!

Coming soon: The end of the world featuring the United Fruit Company, the kind of animated feature Pixar will never make and some blatant salosism.

BAA BAA BLACKSMITH

(By Nabakov.)

When Tony once pointed out that my post on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar generated more comments that any of the Grogflog reviews, I realised that it wasn’t culture you mob were interested in but punch-ups and war machines.

So with the kind of swift and decisive action characteristic of all great commanders, I now present three and half years later another post on military history and technology. A homage to the second most beautiful machine ever to take the skies – the Avro Vulcan.

It’s a remarkable aircraft and not just because of its looks. It represented an amazing technological leap forward, one of England’s greatest writers trained to fly it and its first combat missions were also its last.

Let’s start with the fact the Hawker Siddeley subsidiary Avro went from this to this in around one decade, admittedly with the help of some captured German swept wing design research.

However a certain operational research “Never mind the science Prof, how does it actually work?” attitude was never far away during the Vulcan’s development. Like strapping a photographer to the front landing gear to take photos during the brake-testing phase – while taxiing at full landing speed. Or like Roly Falk taking the Vulcan up for its first demonstration flights and rolling the 200,000 lbs, 100 ft wingspan monster while properly attired in tweed suit and tie.

Despite, or perhaps because of this, the chaps at Avro came up with an absolute masterpiece of a plane. Yes, the Vulcan’s V-bomber stable mates, the Handley Page Victor and Vickers Valiant also had an ineffable Dan Dare charm about them but neither could match the Vulcan for sheer futuristic beauty. Not to mention Avro had also unwittingly stumbled across one of the secrets of stealth technology twenty-five years before the yanks. The smooth delta profile proved to have an extremely low radar cross section, later echoed in the design of the B-2 Spirit.

Also worth noting here is that the Bristol Olympus jet engines developed for the Vulcan ended up also powering Concorde, the third most beautiful plane of all time.

The Vulcan also handled superbly, more like a fighter than a bomber with reports of it out-turning F-15 Eagles during exercises. An example of how well it flew was its famous leap off the runway like it was homesick for the sky.

Perhaps this was why J.G. Ballard joined the RAF to, as he said, fly a Vulcan “with a splinter of the sun in its belly”. However he dropped out after primary flight training at a NATO flying school in Canada. Interesting to think though that in an alternative world, the author of ‘Crash’, ‘High Rise’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ could have been piloting one of these beasts across the Arctic wastes to vapourise Murmansk with a Blue Danube nuclear bomb. Could be a book in it Jim.

Another design peculiarity of the Vulcan was how the shape of the air intakes generated a distinctive wailing moan during takeoff. This may not have had much practical application but I bet it bucked the erks up no end as they watched their charges thunder down the runway. “Oh yeah baby!”

But during the fast evolving technological landscape of the cold war, the Vulcan struggled to find a lasting strategic application. Originally designed to fly high and fast (and painted white to help reflect the heat flash from its nuclear payload), the Vulcan performed so well that during the 1961 SKYSHIELD exercise to test the US’s air defence systems, one Vulcan, supported by some virtuoso ECM action by three of its mates, pulled off a completely undetected mock attack on New York. Undetected that is except by the presence of rowdy RAF bomber crews in local bars afterwards.

However the Vulcan soon became outmatched by new generations of high-altitude interceptors and missiles so the RAF reconfigured it as a low level bomber instead to scoot underneath the Russkie radar, camouflaged like its ancestor the Lancaster with an abstract evocation of a green and pleasant land. This role turned out to be a great fit for the Vulcan’s brilliant flying characteristics, to the point where bits of vegetation were found caught in control surfaces, where one brought down a powerline by flying up into it and where a photo was displayed at Nellis AFB after a RED FLAG exercise of the furrow left in the Nevada desert by the wingtip of a banking Vulcan that survived with no more than a touch up of paint. Try that with a B-52.

Once again though technology outstripped the Vulcan. The low-level penetration bomber role, lugging around a WE 177B nuke, could be better performed by aircraft like the Panavia Tornado while the Senior Service was now well tooled up for the deterrent role with their Chevaline-enhanced Polaris system.

(A fun diversion here. Chevaline was a UK project to boost the ability of Polaris missiles to evade Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile defences, masterminded by a British boffin who was also one of the world’s leading authorities on Morris dancing. A quote from Francis Spufford’s ‘Backroom Boys’ – “These Morris men came dancing up the street, led by this big fat bloke in a kind of Andy Pandy outfit, who was bopping people on the head with a pig’s bladder – and I said to my wife, “Sweetheart, you won’t believe me but that man is one of the brains behind Britain’s nuclear defence.”)

And by now the Vulcans were getting old, fatigued and a bit cranky and the decision was taken to retire the fleet in the early 80s without it ever having been used in anger. Then the Falklands War happened.

While the RN and the Army scrambled around assembling a taskforce, the RAF, feeling a wee bit left out, proposed some long range bombing raids. The arguments were a) cratering the Port Stanley runway and taking out radar systems would deprive the Argentineans of a lot of local air superiority and anti-craft capability, b) if the RAF could reach the Falklands, then it could also reach Argentina, which would provide some food for thought for Galtieri and co and c) the UK armed forces would be seen to be doing something at least while the taskforce got its shit together – Immediate action! Always a key issue for politicians.

So the RAF put together Operation Black Buck based around Britain’s last operational heavy bomber, the Vulcan. It was simple in concept. A bunch of Vulcans would fly from the UK to Ascension Island, load up with twenty-one 1000 lbs general-purpose bombs, drop them on the Argies and fly back.

Except for the fact the last leg would involve a return flight of around 12,000 kms through some of the world’s most inhospitable skies in planes well overdue for retirement and which learnt to shave before many of their crew.

Undaunted, and no doubt inspired by memories of Barnes-Wallis and Biggles, the RAF went ahead anyway. Under canvas on Ascension, blokes in Bombay bloomers (shorts, tropical, for use of, RAF) that exposed their knobbly knees developed intricate in-flight refueling plans that involved up to 11 Victor tankers per mission shifting kerosene between each other and the Vulcans in flight down the long stormy South Atlantic like some hi-octane version of pass the parcel while back in the UK, erks frantically worked to remove the speed governors from the Vulcan’s Bristol Olympus 301 engines, renovated bomb racks and reinstalled refueling systems, which involved at one point “foraging” for extra parts in stealthy raids on display Vulcans at museums and airparks. (I think that last sentence needed in-flight refueling too.)

And it worked. Sort of. Five Black Buck raids were conducted, the longest bombing missions to that time, with all targets being hit and without any loss of RAF personnel. Although one Vulcan had to divert to Rio after its in-flight refueling probe broke. There the plane and crew were interned for nine apparently very hospitable days before being returned by Brazilian authorities impressed by the RAF’s élan and amused by the discomfort of their belligerent Southern neighbour.

Tactically, the merits of Black Buck are debatable. Strategically it led to the Argentineans keeping some their best fighters on the mainland in case Vulcans appeared over Buenos Aires. And sent a clear message the Brits were taking the whole thing very seriously indeed.

And for the Vulcan, it was a fitting end. The fleet was retired shortly afterwards as a bunch of clapped-out old warhorses who showed at last they could do it when it mattered. Thank god though they never had to carry out the original mission for which they were designed.

But let us at least thank Sir Roy Chadwick and his Avro team for creating one of the most beautiful machines ever to slip the surly bonds of earth.

134 Vulcans were built and today only one remains flying.

One day I hope to see it personally roar overhead with a Supermarine Spitfire at its wingtip. The first most beautiful aircraft ever built. But that, as they say, is another story.

THE U-SUAL SUSPECTS

(By Nabakov.)

If you’re going to Beat The Devil, then who better than with a crew like Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, John Huston, Truman Capote and Bernard (“Q”) Lee larking about in the sunny post-war Mediterranean?

(1953. B&W. Script: Truman Capote and John Huston. Direction: John Huston. Cinematography: Oswald Morris. Score: Franco Mannio. Ex-bullfighter’s limousine: Hispano-Suiza. Stills photographer: Robert Capa - yes, the Robert Capa.)

BTD was based on the eponymous novel by larrikin British journalist Claude Cockburn (under the pen name James Helvick) who, amongst other moments in his highly checkered career, had his 1930s current affairs magazine The Week shut down by a law suit after its film critic, one Graham Greene, suggested in his column that Shirley Temple’s screen persona was deliberately exploited by her handlers to appeal to pedophiles.

So as you’d suspect, the book was a pretty dark and very funny satire about a motley bunch of adventurers chasing after the rights to African uranium deposits. But after Truman Capote and John Huston spent many nights together on location consuming mucho whiskey to turn it into a film script, often producing pages barely in time for the next morning’s shoot, BTD metamorphosed on screen into Casablanca on nitrous oxide.

The plot is a farcical collection of double, triple and quadruple crosses where everyone’s lying, even when then they lie about why they are lying. Bogie, whose independent production company Santana financed the flick, apparently gave up on trying to follow the story and decided to just trust that Huston and Capote knew what they were doing.

Which was writing brilliant lines for and getting brilliant performances out of a brilliant cast in locations from a lugubrious Italian port hotel to the rust bucket tramp steamer the SS Nyanga, captained by Captain Haddock’s Levantine cousin, to flyblown Moroccan prisons presided over by fez-wearing, hubble bubble-smoking suavely corrupt bureaucrats.

And BTD is also beautifully lensed by in sunny noir by Oswald Morris whose other DOP credits include ‘Lolita’, ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ which has some interesting resonances with BTD. Huston seemed quite drawn to the theme of Western hustlers becoming unstuck in foreign lands.

Bogie cheerfully sends up his usual hard-bitten soldier of fortune with a heart of gold character, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre take turns outdoing each other as two of the most implausible, hapless and entertaining screen villains ever and Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida are equally gorgeous and completely crazy femme fatales. Especially Jennifer, who in a seemingly artless way, turns everyone else’s nefarious schemes completely on their heads.

All the secondary characters get right into the spirit of it as well, not least the Nyanga’s droll deadpan purser (Mario Perrone) who apparently has dealt with far worse than this mob and the Galloping Major (Ivor Barnard), five feet of  knife-wielding fizzing rabies in a bowler.

I’ve always felt a easy way of padding out a film review was just to cut ‘n’ paste some juicy screen quotes. However I am above such lazy devices.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “I’m a typical rare spirit. I was an orphan until I was twenty, then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.” 8 out of 10 lies.

Coming soon: Burt Lancaster and his deadly typewriter, a surprisingly submersible Gene Hackman and GrogFlog’s all-time top 10 movie themes which should inspire the kind of gracious and reasoned comment thread that has made the blogosphere what it is today.

IN THE BEACH

12th September, 2009. Tonight, if you aren't watching Collingwood v Adelaide, check out this fillum which is on ABC2 at 8:30.

We open on a early sixties English seaside resort town promenade. Rockers lounge in menacing attitudes. The soundtrack - a crude yet potent piece of proto-psychobilly (“Black Leather, Black Leather, Kill, Kill, Kill”). Whip pan in on the gang leader, a very young and slim Oliver Reed, sardonically toffed up in a tasty hacking jacket and black gloves, hanging his umbrella off the horn of a massive statue of a unicorn. Surely these must be the damned. But no…

(1963. B&W. Script: Evan Jones, Direction: Joseph Losey, Cinematography: Arthur Grant. Score: James Bernard.)

The one or two of you left that are still are aware of Grogflog can break out the champers now – I’ve finally got around to this Oliver Reed fillum I’ve coyly mentioned over the years. But enjoy that drink while you can. 'These Are The Damned' is one of the darkest, most brooding, nihilistic movies you’re ever likely to see during your short miserable life.

On the bright side, a 23-year-old Ollie is excellent in it, radiating screen charisma from every orifice, Joseph Losey demonstrates he can make a great film without a Harold Pinter script and it is the most truly horrifying product ever to come out of Hammer at its peak.

For the first act, you think you’re watching some weird psycho-sexual melodrama involving bikie gang incest and an hapless American tourist, intercut with a passionless affair between a sculptress and a top secret boffin.

But then the story starts to knit these characters together to drag us into a real horror buried underneath the ruggedly picturesque Dorset coast.

And what makes this horror really um…horrifying is that the people responsible have the best intentions and that those who stumble into it are doomed by those they reluctantly try to save. No monsters, no blood, just the awfully decent stiff upper lip chaps of the Brit science-military-security establishment calmly and logically walking down a sterile CCTV-surveilled corridor to eternal damnation - for the very best of reasons. Trying to be as humane as possible about how they go about preparing for the unthinkable. If this is what takes to save the human race, are we really worth saving?

Or to look at it another way, no way Hollywood (or even the 28 Zombies Later crew) could ever remake it now without smoothing over the central appalling sting. Well maybe Cronenberg or Romero but they’ve already got their own riffs about hell going on.

Even though the movie’s over forty years old and the tech has dated massively, it’s still a nightmarish noir techno-chiller, not least because you just don’t see the big idea coming for the first half. OK, well now maybe you will. But what you won’t see coming are the weird human relationships that poisonously blossom under such unnatural circumstances.

It’s great looking film too, all moody craggy black and white. And with brilliant sound design as well that moves from crazed pyschobilly to the detached and controlled breathing of the State. There are echoes of Nigel Kneale, John Wyndham, John Blackburn and JG Ballard but the central sound is a genuinely chilling cry from tiny mouths.

And the ending holds out no hope for anyone. Just the prowling blank-faced helicopters (WS-55 Whirlwinds, natch) watching the damned die, only following the orders of the equally damned.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “Help me! Help me!” 8 of 10 dead kids.

Coming soon: When the fuck is my local DVD parlor gonna get the “Phantasm” series in on disk? Don Coscarelli was on some kinda crazed surrealistic roll there for a while. Not worth ordering online but certainly worth a Grogflog.

TWO-BIT BLACKTOP

Grogflog returns. And returns to its original mission statement as well. Which was not just to say good things about good movies, but also bad things about bad movies as well.  And “The Brown Bunny" is very very bad indeed. Not even in a “so bad it’s good way” or superbad dogz! or bad in a way that challenges conventional wisdom. It’s just bad - and bad in a way that really leaves a nasty taste in the mouth and the mind.

(2003. Wan colour. Script: Vincent Gallo. Direction: Vincent Gallo. Cinematography: Vincent Gallo. Score: Vincent Gallo. Producer: Vincent Gallo. Set design: Vincent Gallo. Costume: Vincent Gallo. Makeup: Vincent Gallo. Hair: Vincent Gallo. Catering: Vincent Gallo, etc, etc)

I thought I should finally check this one out because of the various controversies surrounding it. Like getting booed at Cannes (well OK, that sounds interesting) and Chloe Sevigny sucking the Gallo genitalia for real in front of the camera (which sounds like a refreshing change from doing it to get in front of the camera).

The IMDB synopsis blandly states: “Professional motorcycle racer Bud Clay heads from New Hampshire to California to race again. Along the way he meets various needy women who provide him with the cure to his own loneliness, but only a certain woman from his past will truly satisfy him.”

There is however a twist at the end which I won’t spoil, mainly because the nearly two hours of utter bloody tedium leading up to it will do that first.

I can handle cryptic narratives that never quite knit themselves together, deal with viewpoints that take me outside my comfort zone, appreciate the subtle nuances of emotionally allusive landscapes and don’t automatically equate lack of technical flair with lack of good storytelling. 

But "The Highway Hare" commits the ultimate filmmaking sin. It’s as fuckin' boring as batshit rabbit poo.

At least fifty percent of the screen time is taken up by Vincent brooding over his rugged looks in the rear view mirror as he drives through the dullest bits of the American Midwest and Southwest.

The women he meets along the way are given desultory parts that require them to be irresistibly and unthinkingly drawn to this magnetically monosyllabic loner on his odyssey of the soul across the lower 48.

The hand-held, grainy 16mm blown up to 35mm cinematography and crackling ambient sound-heavy audio are trying very hard to signal this is like real, man, it’s like the authentic voice of a damaged poetic soul. It makes your teeth hurt to watch how he strains to make it look like the kinda film he's not actually making.

Do you really reckon a quite soigne and MILFy indeed Cheryl Tiegs, while leaving a gas station, would spontaneously initiate a, like just like real life dude, heart to heart conversation with some strange, mumbling and utterly uncharismatic ferret in a leather jacket that looks like it was bartered for a gram of bad speed? The whole scene played like a bad porn setup without the actual bad porn. That pretty much sums up the whole "The Road Rabbit" experience in toto for me.

Well perhaps Vince does have hidden charms. If you’ve got a spare 50K, why not find out for yourself? Ladies only though. And naturally born too. I’d like to think he was tongue in cheek with that offer but judging from "The Bronze Beast”  I suspect he really thinks he’s a walking wet dream. Which maybe he is, but only in his shaky, grainy, blown-up hands.

And yes, the blowjob scene with Chloe? Short, frank, utterly unerotic, no pop shot and as hamfistedly and coyly faux naturalistic as the rest of the flick.

To be fair, some of the on the road scenes did capture a certain vibe about motoring through the USA which I enjoyed for the first 30 seconds or so. But really I found this flick as tedious as watching some inner city adland hipster carefully shape his facial hair for 119 minutes to look like a street desperado. A truly pretentious art film pretending it’s not. Which is far worse than other way around.

It's such bad faith in all senses of the phrase. Implicitly claiming to be emotionally real and so powerful because of its studied cruddiness yet quite unable to deliver any believable characters, interesting story or creative va-va-voom. The perfect mirror image of some honestly shitty straight to DVD movie that knows it's not much chop but hopes you'll get a kick, and they'll get a dollar, out of some hearty exploitation of base human desires.

Did I mention "The Lurid Lupine" is also just bad in the classic sense of the word? Bad. Narcissist newt waste nodules. Preening poodle hemroids in fitful motion. Really bad. I'd feed the master reel and its creator to a feral pig if I could possibly find one willing to stoop that low and open up that wide. It's bad. Complete crap really.

The most entertaining thing to come out of “Vincent Does Himself” was a great exchange of insults after Roger Ebert shitcanned it.

Vincent: “Ebert is a fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.”
Roger: "One day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny."
Vincent: “I put a hex on your colon and hope you die of cancer.”
Roger: “Enduring a colonoscopy would be more entertaining than watching The Brown Bunny”
Vincent: “I was misquoted. I meant his prostrate.”

If only the flick itself had such quality dialogue.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “I'm not going to be okay, Bud.” 1 out of 10 rabbit droppings.

Coming soon: Look, I will write about this amazing Oliver Reed flick soon, I promise. Or hands up anyone for a Phantasm retrospective with The Tall Man as guest commentator. And also an elephant stamp* for any one who can pick this fillum quote: “Our complaints are brief. We make them against the nearest wall.”

*Competition not open to Aftergrogblog employees and their families.

HOT CROSS STUNNER

So you've seen Lock, Stock, Honour and Obey Sexy Gangster No. 1 Layer Cake and you think yer hard? Well yer nothing, not even a fuckin' toe rag, until you've clocked the biggest, baddest Brit gangster movie of 'em all, The Long Good Friday.

(1980. Colour. Script: Barry Keeffe. Direction: John MacKenzie. Cinematography: Phil Meheux. Score: Francis Monkman.)

It's Good Friday and Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) has just Concorded back to London from the other side of the pond. He marches through Heathrow as the credits roll over the brassy bouncy theme song (think Roy Budd meets Elton John), every cocky little inch the Napoleon of the London underworld ("Who's big enough to take you on?" "Well, there were a few." "Like who?", "Yeah, they're all dead.").

He's got bent city aldermen and the filth on his payroll and he's about to go seriously legit, having stitched up a pact with the US Mafia to wash their casino skim through redeveloping the London Docklands.

To seal the deal, he just has to wine, dine and sweet talk a Yankee mob boss (the late great Eddie 'Alphaville' Constantine) over the long Easter weekend while showing off his London manor. Piece of cake, right?

But someone has just declared war on Harold. ("Nothing unusual," he says! Eric's been blown to smithereens, Colin's been carved up, and I've got a bomb in me casino, and you say nothing unusual?")

So for starters, Harold and his faithful minder Razors ("Or as the youth of today call him, the human spirograph.") start checking a few leads out ("Go on shoot him! Put some muck on the walls.").

But no joy there, chummy, and things keep escalating ("You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!"). Someone out there really wants the big smoke's godfather wrecked and ruined.

Meanwhile his upper-class mistress (Helen Mirren) tries to hose down the Mafia bigwigs ("The Yanks love snobbery. They really feel they've arrived in England if the upper class treats 'em like shit.") who are getting freaked out by the level of violence in merry olde England.

So Harold pulls out all the stops, sending his mob-handed and weaponed-up crew out ("Remember, scare the shit out of them, but don't damage them. I want 'em conscious and talkative. And lads, try and be discreet, eh?") to literally turn the London underworld upside-down.

And just as Harold finds out whom he's really up against, the Mafia bails 'cos it's just getting too rich for their blood. Harold takes this badly ("A sleeping partner's one thing, but you're in a fucking coma!") but remains undaunted and decides to go all continental instead ("I'm setting up the biggest deal in Europe with the hardest organization since Hitler stuck a swastika on his jockstrap.").

All he has do now to win his promised world is personally settle one outstanding account. And he does. But the other side doesn't keep books like decent gangsters. Also they employ a silent but nubile young Pierce Brosnan as one of their main killers.

The final scene between him and Bob Hoskins, underpinned by Francis Monkman's killer soundtrack, is pure "Death On The Serengeti" evil cat meets big elephant face off with neither twitching more than an odd muscle. Best screen showdown ever. And I say that as a hardcore Sergio Leone aficionado. It really is that good. (OK, your mileage may vary here, you fucking toerag.)

GrogFlog’s verdict: "It's Good Friday. Have a Bloody Mary." 9 out of 10 thumps around the earhole.

Coming soon: Yes, finally Oliver Reed and irradiated kids, how opera and splatter flicks can play together well and a big rabbit punch for a truly crappy movie that tried to sell itself otherwise.

LAND OF POD

Why remake good films when you can improve bad ones instead as Michael Caine observed just before cheerfully accepting a wad of cash to appear in a crappy remake of Get Carter.

Now apparently they've remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers again with the Nicole Kidman pod in the lead (Didn't she learn anything from the The Stepford Wives fiasco?) and a bloke who directed Inspector Rex eps at the helm.

Why not instead extend the franchise sideways like Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues did?

(1993. Colour. Script: Raymond Cistheri and the inimitable Larry Cohen for screen story and Stuart "Re-Animator" Gordon, Denis Paoli and Nicholas St John for screenplay. Direction: Abel Ferrara. Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli. Score: Joe Delia.)

Body Snatchers was clearly packaged as a low budget, straight to video movie, probably just to exercise the screen option before it lapsed. But producer Robert H. Solo, whose credits range from Russell's The Devils to the 1978 Snatcher remake, assembled the likes of Larry Cohen, Stuart Gordon and Abe Ferrara (if you know whom none of them are, then I suggest you’re a pod person yourself) and probably told 'em "we've got fuck all budget but it's already in profit on video pre-sales so do whatever you like."

And what they did was come up with a film that excellently updated the creeping noir paranoia of the original. Among the clever twists are setting it on an army base where identically clad people unemotionally follow orders whether they have been podded or not and intelligently reworking the rules of the Body Snatcher universe.

Given the low budget, the special effects aren't too bad at all. But Larry, Stuart, Abe et al were all smart enough to realize the best special effect of all is great acting driven by great scripts.

Body Snatchers most powerful moments come from unexpected plot twists and great lines delivered by great actors. Like R. Lee Emery as the Base Commander who just can't wrap his head around what's going on, Forest Whitaker as the Army psychologist who does his head in when he realizes what is going on and Gabrielle Anwar, whose seductive full frontal nude scene takes place under circumstances that'd turn your trouser tent into a sleeping bag for a peanut.

And there's Meg Tilly's utterly chilling and precisely delivered speech that captures the spine of the movie, and which starts like this - "Where you gonna go, where you gonna run, where you gonna hide? Nowhere... 'cause there's no one like you left." – and then it gets even more spooky.

There are some bullshit happy ending explosions at the climax but it still has a suitable ambiguous conclusion. Look we're not talking a milestone in western cinema here but if you like a good creepy SF horror thiller that's much better than its cover art would suggest, do yourself a favour.

GrogFlog's verdict "We'll give 'em hell, Malone! We'll show 'em what the human race is really made of!" 7 out of 10 pods.

Coming soon: More "coming soons".

IN LIKE FREUD

Even despite Mike Meyer's best efforts to turn the genre into Carry On Farce, swinging sixties spy movies still offer some unique charms. As does any good satire about the mores of its time. And there is one film which manages to combine both in a way not seen very much at all – The President's Analyst.

(1967. Colour. Script and Direction: Theodore J. Flicker. Cinematography: William A. Fraker. Score: Lalo Schifrin! With occasional songs by Barry "Eve of Destruction" McGuire)

And starring the late great James Coburn (with his teeth gleaming like scrabble tiles as usual). But this is not the James of In Like Flint etc. Instead he's Dr Sidney Schaefer, a cheerful New York psychiatrist into Zen Buddhism with a cool batchelor pad, a sweet young girlfriend and living the good life.

Until he's hired as the President's analyst. At first Sidney's delighted and honoured by this opportunity to help secure the future of the free world until he discovers just how much analysing the Oval One needs. In fact Sidney can't have a quiet meal, go to the john or snuggle up his girl without being interrupted by an urgent summons from the POTUS.

So Sidney flips out and goes on the run, now pursued by the world's secret services who want to get their hands on his body because they want to know what's inside the Prez's head. So much for the plot which is basically an excuse to take the piss out of everything and anyone prominent at the time – from spy movies and cold war politics to hippies and J. Edgar Hoover to chardonnay liberals and head shrinkers.

For starters, the main CIA and KGB agents are old acquaintances equally cynical about their employers.  Hoover's a paranoid puritanical midget, as are all his agents, and more at war with Alan Dulles' tweedy collegiate CIA than with the commies. The flower power and British beat bands show more enthusiasm for drug deals than peace and love. Every analyst is in therapy with another trick cyclist. The liberals are heavily armed and taking karate lessons to protect themselves against their neighbours. And even the kids have their own "little bugger" phone tapping kits.

There's also lashing of classic swinging sixties spy and "it's a happening, baby!"  business as well.  Psychedelic VW buses full of stoned hippies, sinister assassins with blowpipes, silencers and garottes, acid freakouts, funky New York art galleries, cars that turn into boats and room sized computers that blink and beep.

And lurking and waiting, the ultimate bad guys with a really appalling master plan. In fact this flick has the all-time fiendish mastermind – one that actually exists for real man! and is still manipulating our lives today for their evil ends. You'll know it when you see it in this wacky zany Get Smart for grownups romp.

Beyond that, there’s lots of tasty little extras like Jill "Spider Baby" Banner as a hippie chick, the first ever on-screen reference to the Canadian Secret Service, a lovely 60 foot motor yacht called the "Mata Hari" and some surprisingly poignant and pointed backstories for the main CIA and KGB dudes. And at least one "Dizzy Gillespie for President" t-shirt.

It’s a lotta fun, very funny peculiar and full of some serious funny ha ha business as well. And James Coburn's groovy threads are the shizzle.

GrogFlog's verdict: "If I was a psychiatrist, which I am, I would say that I was turning into some sort of paranoid personality, which I am!" 7 out of 10 blowpipe darts.

Coming soon: Humphrey Bogart in a customized bullfighter's limo, my mea culpa for Daniel Craig as Bond and the real secret behind Thirty Two.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Who doesn’t like a nice hand of poker occasionally? Especially when you’re playing for not having your kneecaps smashed by a Russian mobster who listens to his Oreo cookies before shoving his chips out. By now you’ve probably guessed I’m talking about Rounders, one of the most criminally ignored taut little melodramas of recent times.

(1998. Colour. Script: David Levien and Brian Koppleman. Direction: John Dahl. Cinematography: Jean Yves Escoffier. Score: Christopher Young sounding like a jazzier Barry Adamson.)

Miramax basically dumped this small (US$12 million) flick on the market with fuck all promotion ‘cos they were getting jiggy at the time about hitting the big time with Shakespeare In Love and ‘cos none of Rounders’s cast were big draw cards back then.

But we're talking here about an utterly inimitable flick that's gonna be revived many times long after Paltrow, J. Fiennes, Affleck and co have gone to the great test screening in the sky. We're talking about a flick that features Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Turturro, Martin Landau, Famke Jansson and John Malkovich, all delivering brillant performances as a bunch of hustlers, mobsters, fuckups and femme fatales playing poker for high stakes in low dives across New York.

Both the screenwriters used to be ‘rounders’, poker players who make the rounds of floating games and the plays, beats, jargon and dialogue just crackles with insider knowledge. In fact, apparently the US DVD includes a commentary track from four World Champion Poker players.

But you don’t have to be a pokerhead to enjoy this razorsharp, gritty and chip-chewing flick directed by John Dahl, who’s made some of the best contemporary modern film noir flicks around like The Last Seduction and Red Rock West.

He brilliantly captures a semi-covert world where Texas Hold ‘Em is played for money, love, power and ego by Russian gangsters in illegal gaming dens, yuppies in cigar bars, union officials in meeting halls, golf pros in country clubs, cops in hunting lodges, trust fund babies in Yale Association clubs, judges, DAs and law professors in City Hall and by suckers at Atlantic City.

The story is centred around Matt Damon as a failing law student and ambivalent rounder who starts off trying to build his stake for an entry fee to the World Poker Championship in Vegas, but blows it all and cashes in his chips to go straight. Then his old childhood friend and former hustling partner, Edward Norton (who gives what I think is his best performance ever - as a charming, brillant, sleazy fuckup) is released from prison and wants to start up the old team again and then everything goes right off the rails.

And even if they do manage to get back on track, waiting at the end of the line is Teddy KGB, a sinister and eccentric Russian mobster with a cookie fetish and the worst dress sense you’ve ever seen on screen, who relishes fucking people up across the poker table. No prizes for guessing which actor called John Malkovich plays Teddy.

Not only is the acting uniformly brilliantly even down to the extras with one line of dialogue, Rounders has a great look and feel as well. All the locations seem utterly believable as they range across the whole socio-economic spectrum of New York from blowjobs in manky strip club toilets to the polished brass and bullshit of yuppie hangouts. You can actually smell these places. And a note perfect soundtrack that captures the emotional highs and lows of living a life of nerve, chance, well-fingered Benjimans and pissed-off lovers.

And even though I’m not much of a poker player and a lot of the plays and jargon went right over my head, the big games in the flick themselves are incredibly suspenseful, and not always for the reasons you may think. One of the most scrotum-tightening lines during a game in Rounders is “Wow! That’s one big fucking elk’s head!” which has nothing to do with the actual fall of the cards. Yet.

Look boys and girls, GrogFlog’s never steered you wrong before (aside from that ill fated post about the South Korean edit of “The Sound of Music” with all the songs cut out, which Tony fortunately deleted before it emerged online). Trust me on this call. Honestly. You can't see any tells here can you? So take a punt and see Rounders. Dahl and co flopped a nut straight here. You don’t have to like cards to enjoy it. Just movies.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.” Four aces out of five.

Coming soon: John Huston and Truman Capote get it on, James Coburn drops acid, Harvey Keitel behaves badly and Jennifer Tilly wants your body.

STRIKE UP THE BLONDE

"Put no lights on the Christmas tree mother, I'll be in the electric chair tonight."

Yes, there's only one film where you'll hear a mobster pitch that line as a song title to a Tin Pan Alley publicist dealing with a client who's only musical talent is impersonating a steam whistle. And that flick is, has to be, and is got to be The Girl Can't Help It.

(1956. Technicolor! Script: Frank Tashlin, Garson Kanin & Herbert Baker. Direction: Frank Tashlin Cinematography: Leon Shamroy. Score: Too many good musicians to mention. Just watch the bloody thing.)

Imagine a Warner Bros cartoon version of Some Like It Hot in glorious gaudy Technicolor with a much much better soundtrack.

Frank Tashlin directed quite a few Warner Bros cartoons before he started working with live actors in "Girl". But it was still all one big cartoon to him, opening and closing with Duck Amuck funny business playing games with the fact you're watching a movie.

And in the hour and half in between, you're treated to a brilliantly-coloured screwball comedy about mobsters and showbiz that just barrels along constantly flinging out single, double and triple entendres, setting up scenes of classical farce and showcasing some of the best rock and roll and r'n'b talent ever.

It's got Jayne Mansfield showing she was an even funnier and more um, upfront comedienne than Monroe, B-movie stalwart Edmond O'Brien as a bullheaded mobster, Tom Ewell as the often flustered but always fast-talking press agent trying to stay afloat, Barry Gordon as a wisecracking paperboy who's perhaps growing up a little too fast and Henry Jones stealing every scene he's in as O'Brien's lugubrious sidekick. And the sets and clothes are also perfectly cast - from the niteclubs and batchelor pads to the fedoras and slinky tuxes and nightgowns.

Did I mention it's also got some good music too? Like beautifully shot and recorded live performances by Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, the Platters, Eddie Cochran, the Treniers and more, all capture at the height of their powers.

And the whole package was co-written and directed by one of the main people behind Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Porky the Pig and who's now jiving along to Little Richard and Gene Vincent while asking Jayne Mansfield to sashay a bit more as she walks along a hot New York street clutching bottles of milk to her bosom.

Frank then went to make Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and a bunch of Martin and Lewis flicks including Artists & Models. But I reckon “Girl” is still his masterwork, a gorgeous cartoon of our dream of America at it's funniest, craziest, sexiest, most stylish, zany, rock 'n' rolling peak. I can also testify from personal experience it's a great date movie, leaving whoever has accompanied you laughing so much they can't help it. It certain beats the pants off and then delivers a massive Looney Tunes wedgie to Be Cool.

GrogFlog verdict: "If that's a girl, then I don't know what my sister is!" 6.89655 out of 10.

Coming soon: GrogFlog contemplates its freshly extracted digit. Actually I'm sorta in a Dean Martin, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum groove at the moment. So if you're looking for a critical re-evaluation of the role of the Matt Helm movies in dealing with the shifting personas of male sexuality in the sixties, you're fresh out of luck. It's Dean's suits I'd rather blog about.

LOUT OF AFRICA

There’s been a lot of yarpie bashing here lately. And quite rightly so. They really are so bashable. But in the interests of fair play, can I draw your attention to a great little South African (SA) noir action movie, Stander? Ja? Hank yew?

(2003. Colour. Script: Bima Stagg. Direction: Bronwen Hughes. Cinematography: Jess Hall. Score: David Holmes and Neil Sparkes plus an eclectic mix of old, new and just out there first and third world pop songs.)

Despite the crappy cover, Stander is really worth a punt at your local movie mart if you’re into gritty yet stylish crime thrillers with sly humour and some unexpected twists in the tale.

Firstly because it’s based on a true story that would be unbeliveable if it was presented as fiction. Andre Stander’s short and colorful life was sorta like the Postcard Bandit meets Roger Rogerson meets Ned Kelly - but as a wild colonial boy in a wig and false ‘tache hooning in a yellow Porsche Targa through the streets of Jo’burg after knocking over yet another bank...sometimes the same one twice in the same day. Yes, that really happened, amongst many other Stander outrages against the public order.

Secondly because it is a beautifully shot flick. Think Michael Mann’s Heat or Collateral set in 70s South Africa. OK, take your time to digest that concept. I’m talking stunning landscapes intercut with super kitsch period interiors, all shot with crisp cool and deft but subtle emotional angles. A lotta thought was put into making the scenery and sets help carry the story here. And this flick sounds great too. The soundtrack effortlessly segues between cool black African music and really ball the wall rock. (I'd nominate Stander for best use of an Iggy and the Stooges song in a bank heist.)

Thirdly, it’s got both an excellent script and plot (No Virginia, they’re not the same thing.) They take a bit of license with the original story, but not that much, and only really to deliver a couple of clever  twists at the end.

Fourthly, it’s got some really kiff acting man. Deborah Unger’s in there as the main boy’s love interest, all fiery cheekbones and nude conscience wrestling. Ashley Taylor plays it very low key yet with a lot of power as Stander’s former best friend and fellow cop ordered to shoot him on sight ‘cos Stander’s brazen outlawry has utterly humiliated the SA police/security establishment. There’s Marius Weyers, last clearly spotted as the male lead in “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, who is also pretty damn good as the aging SA Police General looking for religious consolation to deal with a son turned rogue elephant.

And the always entertaining Dexter Fletcher as Stander’s unstable Aussie sidekick - who fails to escape as disguised a Hassidic Rabbi escourted by his shapely blonde shoplifting “niece” when he could, and instead checks out permanently in a blaze of glory, facing down a SWAT tean while sporting nothing but two pistols and a pair of silk boxer shorts.

However the actor really using more than enough gun here is Thomas Jane, who is brillant as Stander himself, the smart, cocky and charismatic SA police detective on the fast track to the top. But who then has a ”fuck it all” moment after shooting an unarmed man in a riot and instead becomes SA’s greatest bank robber, a master of disguise and subversive media folk hero. Basically Stander is sorta like a Wilbur Smith/Robert Ruark anti-hero - a tough bastard who turns on a immoral and corrupt society...and one that's so regardless of skin colour. This flick's subtext is that apartheid fucked up everyone from Afrikaans Police Generals to Soweto gang leaders.

However it’s no bleeding heart movie. Appalling and violent behaviour comes in all colours here. But essentially it's a shit-hot, wryly funny and sunny noir thriller with stunning action sequences, set in a strange and beautiful land at a time when everyone had problems seeing their own worlds in black and white. And yes, it is a TRUE STORY. Weird place, weird times, weird guy, weird life, great flick.

GrogFlog’s verdict “Everyone else is on riot duty now? A white man could get away with anything today!" 8 out of 10 hi-speed getaways in blond wigs.

Viewer tip: There’s no subtitle option on the Stander DVD I watched and those yarpie accents do get up your nose a bit.

Coming soon: Yeah, yeah, I will get around to the irradiated Oliver Reed and James Coburn on acid flicks eventually. But after watching Stander, I sorta feel like shooting up a really bad and corrupt film now. Any recommendations? The winning suggestion scores a free hyperlink to IMDB.

TITS ONLY ROCK n ROLL

GrogFlog's back from the hols, tanned, rested and ready. When we started this thing, sex and violence were highlighted as key themes so inevitably we'd get it on with Russ (big tits!) Meyer sooner or later. So we'll start with the first film he ever made for a major (big tits!) studio, Beyond The Valley of The Dolls for 20th Century (big tits!) Fox.

(1970. Colour. Script: Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger (small tits!) Ebert) and Russ Meyer. Direction: Russ Meyer. Cinematography: Fred J. Koenekamp. Score: Lynn Carey, Paul Marshall, Stu Phillips, Bob Stone and The Strawberry Alarm Clock. And a special shoutout to hair stylist Edith (big tits!) Lindon who went well above and beyond the call of duty on this one.)

We open on a sweet, naive girl pop group (with big tits!) from the sticks, heading for the big time in LA - only to be plunged into a maelstrom of kinky sex, bouffant hairdos, drugs, sleazy lawyers, polyester shirts, big tits! even more kinky sex, greedy flower children meeting tawdry showbiz tinsel, lesbians with big tits! acid rock, black magic and big tits! But true love (and genuine big tits! as opposed to fake ones) triumphs in the end and the gentle people live happily ever after while the baddies all die by the bullet and the sword. So much for the plot (but not the big tits!).

You cats should really dig this flick. It's a real gas man. The costumes, the hairstyles, the sets, the big tits! the art direction and the actors and other props all come across like something out of an X-rated Brady Bunch. And it's chock full o' lines like: "I'd like to strap you on sometime.", "Lance Rocke is no Prince Valiant.", "There's juice freaks, and pill freaks, and then everybody's a freak! What you need is grass or a downer or something.", "I beseech you to get thine ass in gear and garb your angry loins.", "You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance." and that old pickup line we've all used so many times "I've got a wading pool of mayonnaise!"

Not to mention yer classic scenes of loving couples (with big tits!) running through sunny meadows in slo-mo, freakout parties full of big tits! in Hollywood hot tubs, old straight guys getting stoned for the first time in hippie pads and hip photographers coaxing hot vogueing out of strategically nude models with big tits!

And Beyond is populated by characters like porn star Ashley St Ives sporting at least two sets of false eyelashes (and big tits!), the "World Boxing Champion" who seems strangely unable to afford a shirt (apparently so he can keep showing off his big tits!), a sword-wielding pop Svengali (with big sideburns!), the young Pam (big tits!) Grier already getting her foxy brown on, Martin (medium sized tits!) Bormann moonlighting as a bartender...and entering upstage right into various party scenes, a much-loved Russ Meyer regular - Charles Napier's chin, followed only a few minutes later by Charles (big jaws!) Napier himself.

But wraparound kitscharama (and big tits!) aside, Beyond the Dolls is also worth seeing 'cos Russ is actually a technically brillant flick helmer. The narrative accelerates like a '70 Corvette (with big tyres!), the cinematography is super crisp, shots are vividly lit and framed (especially when they feature big tits!) and the razor-sharp editing should be taught in film schools now. Plus some of the music still holds up pretty well in a Nuggets lost psychedelic treasures kinda way (You can really shake your big tits! to the soundtrack).

Basically, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls is well beyond parody - and yet weirdly perceptive about the riffs, characters, big tits! and general vibe of swinging sixties LA crashing headlong into the whole Manson Family thing. Watching it now, it's clear some of the actors ( and their big tits!) were already about to get lost forever in the murky canyons of fin de siècle LA back then. But the flick itself is still a fucking hoot. Such is the godlike, pre-pomo genius (and big balls!) of the man that us mere mortals knew as Russ Meyer.

GrogFlog's verdict: "This is my happening, and it freaks me out!" 6 out of 10 big tits!

Viewer Tip: Watch it with subtitles enabled. There's some funny and seriously whacko lines that get lost among the overlapping party dialogue and big tits!

Coming soon: Burt Lancaster and his deadly typewriter, secret Government experiments on kids, James Coburn getting in like Freud and big tits!

HAMELOT

If you're a young first time feature film director who's assembled a cast that includes Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Ralph Meeker, Toshirô Mifune, Richard Boone and Elizabeth Taylor, then you better have a damn good story to tell boy! Well William Richert found one in Richard Manchurian Candidate Condon's novel, Winter Kills which became the movie called, um, Winter Kills.

(1979. Colour. Script & Direction: William Richert. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Score: Maurice Jarre doing Bernard Herrmann.)

Winter Kills is all about the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma packaged as a complete mindfuck about who really shot President Keegan in Philadelphia in 1960. It's in the tradition of great seventies paranoia films like The Parallax View and Three Days Of The Condor except it's also bloody funny – a deadpan black comedy full of great one-liners and absurdist setups. And yes it does reveal who took out the contract on Keegan.

It's pointless outlining the plot 'cos by about halfway through you're as baffled as the dead President's hapless half-brother (Jeff Bridges) who's trying to follow the thread through the labyrinth.

Just sit back and enjoy the ultimate conspiracy fairytale played out with gusto by some great actors playing great characters. There's Tony Perkins in charge of a supercomputer that can blackmail anyone, Sterling Hayden in a biblical beard leading his own private tank corps, Elizabeth Taylor as the President's foul mouthed procuress, Eli Wallach playing Jack Ruby bullied and manipulated by Ralph Meeker's mobster, Richard Boone acting sideways to everyone else as an oil rig foreman and Toshirô Mifune musing on the futility of it all.

But it's really John Huston's film. He reprises his Noah Cross role as a Joseph Kennedy (who Huston knew and disliked) patriarch with immensely ruthless and amoral glee. Often surrounded by bimbos ("You reckon they're feeling my nuts under the blanket son?"), handing out blackjacks and brass knuckles ("Look after them. They have sentimental value."), guarded by M-16 wielding doctors during his regular blood changes and with the CIA smuggling his cigars in from Cuba, Pa Keegan steals every scene he's in and a lot more too ("I'm the Jupiter of thieves.").

The story behind the making of Winter Kills also fits the overall vibe. The initial money was put up by big time pot smugglers who washed their ill-gotten gains through the Emmanuelle flicks before decided to invest in a "proper film". But when one was found handcuffed to a hotel room bed, shot through the head, and the other got sent down for twenty years, production on Winter Kills stopped for 18 months until Richert raised the rest of the money by making a quickie film in Germany in the meantime.

Winter Kills has now been re-released in a very nice DVD package with some excellent extras, including the complete script as a PDF file, some of the best production design sketches I've ever seen and a great interview with a very funny and charming William Richert. So if you want to know who really shot President Keegan, this is the film for you. It makes JFK look like an Oliver Stone flick.

GrogFlog verdict: "They will pile falsehoods on top of falsehoods until you can't tell a lie from the truth and you won't want to know the truth." 7.7 out of 10.

Coming soon: Fatal kids in secret labs, eyes without a face, gay US Treasury agents on acid and James Coburn gets Jungian.

NELSON'S COLUMNS

Two hundred years ago to this very day (about tea time), a weedy little bugger who couldn't clap his hands together or really use binoculars won one of the biggest history-changing battles in um...history.

And he did it through the subtle and cunning tactic of charging headlong into the larger enemy fleet, breaking up their line of battle and turning the engagement into a bunch of head-butting, snarling, ball-kicking, splinter-ripping, bone-smashing, cursing and stabbing, hot lead and cold steel melees. It was a very very nasty and bloody shitfight. The sand they spread below decks to sop up the blood quickly turned into sticky red clay.

But when the smoke finally cleared, when the blood, bone and flesh was washed off the decks and when the screaming and swearing wound down, Boney was left with only five seaworthy vessels out of the 33 big blustering ships of the line he sent in to take down the Royal Navy. Once again the invasion of England had to be postponed. (Drake and Downing look up from the back nine at Rye and nod.)

And the Brits were left with the slight, wispy blond, rather fey and very crippled son of a country parson, one Horatio Nelson, dying from a musket-ball shattered chest in the Captain's cabin of HMS Victory - dying just as he became the absolute dead set legend who completely and utterly won one of the all time great battles ever. And he did so by being far more bold and nasty with it than his opposite numbers could imagine. Not bad for a cunning, charismatic, ambitious and ruthless Norfolk lad.

Yes, today's Trafalgar Day. Hurrah! Hurrah!

Since it's impractical to light a bonfire on a blog, I offer instead some RN communications sent in somewhat of the same spirit as Nelson's "Engage the enemy more closely" ....

RN sub signal to surface fleet CO during the Munich Crisis after eyeing up a large, low in the water and slow German freighter passing nearby – "Request permission to start the war".

Signal to RN ship in December 1941 - "Commence hostilities with Japan."
Response -  "Request permission to finish breakfast first."

RN sub to surface escort - "In case of attack by heavy surface vessels I will attempt to stay on the surface"
Surface escort - "So will I."

Admiralty signal - "Norwegian coast defence ships Eidsvold and Norge may be in German hands. You alone can judge whether in these circumstances attack should be made. We shall support whatever decision you take."
Lone RN destroyer's response - "Am going in."

From the memoirs of Capt Jack Broome RN, WWII convoy commander:
"On this occasion he rounded off the meal chewing up the Army Padre's spectacles."

Message painted by the RN on captured German torpedo: "I missed you. A. Hitler".

Extract from RN Fitness Report -  "I object to the fact that this Medical Officer has used my ship to carry his genitals from port to port, and the other members of the Wardroom to carry him from bar to bar."

Dolphin (submarine) Code signal No. 119 – "Whilst I have the necessary fuel, skill and experience for the task you suggest, I do not hunger for glory. Please feel free to give it to someone else. I won't be upset."

And although this one's from a US Admiral, it has very much the Nelsonian touch -  "The war with Japan will end at 1200 of 15th August. It is likely that kamikazes will attack the fleet after this time as a final fling. Any ex-enemy aircraft attacking the fleet is to be shot down in a friendly manner."

RN escort frigate signal to wandering WWII convoy in mid-Atlantic fog - "Join me. Where am I?"

So why not light a bonfire on Trafalgar Day anyway? Or at least a flaming zambucca or a good cigar. Fire it up for the seagoing hoons and commissioned pirates that blasted the shit out of the other poor bloody bastards so you wouldn't have to read this post in French, Spanish, German or French.

GONE TO GODBER

"The marvelous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing."

-- Ronnie Barker

Ronald William George Barker OBE -- The Guardian has lots -- has just shuffled off the mortal coil.

The UK and Australia has lost one of the best naughty uncles we grew up with. A right lad who you wouldn't trust in a pub with your money but who'd you'd always trust in a trench or on a foredeck with your life.  Well sort of. The kinda bloke for whom the term "larrikin" was coined if he'd grown up in Straya. Arfur Daley without the bullshit. And with a brillant deadpan delivery of some the finest lines that that great writing team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ever penned.  Met him once. A bloody nice bloke.

"We'll continue our investigation into the political beliefs of nudists. We've already noticed a definite swing to the left."

The fact there's no need to recount his career here tells you just how well known and loved he was. Sorta like a piece of the furniture.  But with a upholstery spring that would pop up just there when the bank manager's wife was getting comfortable.

Ronnie Barker in his own words.

"To get a job where the only thing you have to do in your career is to make people laugh-well, it's the best job in the world"

And it's good night from ... this phrase; time it was ... ahem ... Slade to rest.

UPDATE! Well, "Slade to rest" in your more standard "until something better comes along" kind of way, at any rate. It really is an excellent image, don't you think.

TWO LEGGED FREAKS

Suicide Girls? Hah! Middle-class art school dropouts who have never hacksawed to death an innocent postman in their tiny little lives. If you really want hot sexy killer gothic chicks, then you cannot afford to pass by "Spider Baby".

(1968. B&W. Script: Jack Hill. Direction: Jack Hill. Cinematography: Alfred Taylor. Score: Ronald Stein with Lon Chaney Jr singing the title song.)

T'was actually shot in 1964 by horror and exploitation schlockmeister Jack Hill ("The Big Doll House", "Foxy Brown" and "Coffy" are some of his more notable accomplishments) but not released until 1968 – mainly I suspect because no one knew how the fuck to market the thing. Alternative titles were "Attack of the Liver Eaters" (no livers are actually eaten) and "Cannibal Orgy - or the Maddest Story Ever Told" which is sorta half right.

The fixings for this feast are all tried and true. Weird genetically disordered family in gothic mansion, the loyal old family servant as surrogate wrinkled-browed father, distant grasping rellies who come to a sticky end, creaky cobwebbed corridors, moonlit forest strolls, disgusting dinners and something really foul lurking in the cellar.  Beautifully filmed too.  The best artfully artificial cinematic chiaroscuro since "Night Of The Hunter" – which also shares the same demented noir fairy tale approach.

But "Spider Baby" serves up the old ingredients with a flavour that's like nothing else you've tasted.  It's really a very sweet 'n' sour movie. "Nothing is really bad" as the wrinkled retainer Lon Chaney Jr says at one point. It's not supposed to be a comedy but can't stop quietly cackling to itself be a real horror movie. Someone described it as  "Luis Bunuel meets the Addams Family" but even that doesn't really capture the tone.

And the tone is set by some amazing acting. For starters it's Lon Chaney Jr's last role and he's never been better since. Carol Ohmart is wonderful as the gredy low-rent black widow-in-suspenders cousin, as are Quinn Redecker as her amiable and dopey husband and Karl Schanzer as their fussy pompous lawyer.

And in one way or another, they all meet their end at the cutting-edge hands of the gorgeous murderous Merrye sisters, Elizabeth (a blonde Beverly Washburn) and "Spider Baby" herself, Virginia (the brunette Jill Banner).

Beverly is great (I wouldn't kick her out of my deathbed) but it's really Jill Banner's film. She is fantastic as the title character, a sweet deadly gothic Lolita who can't tell the difference between affection, sex, procreation and death. For those of you down the back, let me repeat myself. JILL BANNER IS FANFUCKINGTASTIC AS "SPIDER BABY"! She can hatch my eggs anytime. Hundreds and hundreds of 'em.

...

OK, I've finished hyperventilating into a brown paper bag from Safeway. If you get a chance to see it, do so. (I meant the movie not the brown paper bag). You'll never look with true lust in your heart at another Suicide Girl again.

Oh yes, I'd also like to say Rock Hudson is excellent in this flick too. But honestly I can't. Mainly 'cos he's not in it. "Spider Baby" is gravid with sly early 60s Mad magazine put-ons like that. And the exteriors are dog-eared postcards of the then remote and dusty LA valleys that later spawned the likes of Charles Manson's homicidal harem.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it's bad." 6 out of 10 for the film. And 18 out of 10 for Jill Banner.

Coming soon: "Black leather, black leather, smash, smash, smash", "I'm the Jupiter of Thieves",  "I guess it's just one of those ex-felon, pro-acid kind of non-smoking homes" and "You told me fairy tales... about the President getting shot... and your erect nipples."

PET SOUNDS

Well we've had healthy lashings of sex and violence here recently but the Ashes aside, perhaps it's time GrogFlog spruiked something that's more of a family flick. If the adventures of a young lad and his loveable mutt are more your thing, then why not check out "A Boy And His Dog"?

(1975. Colour. Script: LQ Jones from a short story by Harlan Ellison. Direction: LQ Jones. Cinematography: John Arthur Morrill. Score: Tim McIntire, Jaime Mendoza-Nava and warped snatches of John Philip Souza.)

It's all about the merry japes of Vic (Don Johnson) and his dog Blood (a largish scruffy wire-haired terrier voiced by Tim McIntire) in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. What? Sorry, didn't I mention the flick starts with an atomic explosion montage wrapped up by a title card that reads "World War IV lasted five days. Politicians had finally solved the problems of urban blight"?

So anyway we have Vic and Blood making their way through a mise en scene that predates the Mad Max movies when it comes to paying with rusty tins of food and checking in weapons to get into dusty anarcho oasises for a night of relative safety from the bandits and muties.

It's in one of these desert dens that Blood tells Vic he smells a disguised woman (Oh yeah, also forgot to mention that Blood is telepathic and Vic is perpetually horny) who turns out to be the bait to lead Vic to a massive underground bomb shelter where a "Committee" is trying to keep the Norman Rockwell dream of America alive despite somewhat trying circumstances. Which includes the fact that the men living underground for so long in a radioactive world are now all shooting blanks. Quite unlike the young rude, crude but very virile alpha male Vic - who soon gets introduced to technology more often seen in Royal Agricultural Shows.

And then the film gets really weird.

But what holds it all together is LQ Jones' (A rugged old industry pro - google his acting credits for starters) sturdy but thoughtful direction and a lotta fucking great acting.  A young and callow Don Johnson is actually pretty damn good playing a young and callow hyper-aggressive male predator. Jason Robards is even better as the ruthlessly urbane head of the troika running the "Committee", effortlessly stealing scenes just by eating a sandwich or sternly questioning an innocent Maltese terrier.

The real star though is the dog playing Blood. The best animal acting you will ever see, regardless of CGI'd pigs and all that jazz. LQ Jones said in the DVD commentary the dog was seriously considered for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and I believe him. I'm sorry I can't dig up the dog's real name but he (at least I think it's a he) really is so bloody brillant as the boy's best friend, hiding his true feelings behind sardonic one-liners. And he and Don do make up the heart of what is basically a great buddy movie. Women? By the end, they're just something to jaw about by the campfire.

All weirdness aside, it really is a great story of a boy and his dog. Get it out for a nice family night in…and down deep under.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Right now I'm hungry and I want to get laid, so find me a broad and we'll go to the promised  land."  7 out of 10. Or 11 out of 10 if yer are the proverbial dog on the internet.

Coming soon: Oliver Reed remains irradiated,  gay communist torture, the Addams Family for grownups and who really shot President Kerrigan.

GRIND GUIGNOL

Call me a bit of a romantic if you like, but I can't help feeling productions like "Mandingo Ass Blasters #17" didn’t quite deliver on the promise of porn's golden age. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, they put some time, money and effort into adult flicks like "The Opening Of Misty Beethoven", "Babylon Pink" and "The Devil In Miss Jones". And then there was (cheesy jazzfunk soundtrack screeches to a stop)… "Café Flesh" (1982).

(At this point I'd normally provide production credits, but in this case they're not helpful in sourcing the flick or would be spoilers for the rest of this GrogFlog. So read on gentle reader.)

To be fair, you couldn't really call Café Flesh a porn movie. Yes, there is some penetration and ejaculation but sexually arousing you is not the aim of the folks behind this bizarre V-movie. You'd spend more time pinching yourself than touching yourself inappropriately while watching this crazed little number.

Written pre-AIDS but set in a post atomic war future, Café Flesh sets the scene with title cards and a VO about how after the Nuclear Kiss, 99% of the survivors are sex negatives who can't do it anymore without getting really sick – while the 1% who are sex positives and can get off with nothing worse than le petit morte, have to perform for the sterile majority’s pleasure at Café Flesh. It’s a real eros/thantos dichotomy thang, complete with a coherent plot, symbolic caged songbird shit…and lashings of hair gel.

Café Flesh the venue is a strange, neon-splattered bunker of a nightclub, run by "Mum" with Mr Joy as a proto-Buscemi doorman sardonically tending a bank vault-like entrance - and presided over on stage by Max Melodramatic (Andrew Nichols), a mutant cross between Cabaret's Joel Grey and Lenny Bruce at his foulest.

In fact the whole flick is like Cabaret meets Liquid Sky with a soundtrack by Devo gone sleazo. Or this case, a soundtrack by Mitchell Froom, who went onto produce acts ranging from Los Lobos to Cibo Matto, become a de facto member of REM and marry Suzanne Vega. And the scriptwriter, "Herbert W. Day" is actually Jerry Stahl who also moved on write episodes of "Twin Peaks", "Northern Exposure", "ALF" and several other TV series before penning "Permanent Midnight" about how his smack habit fucked up his writing career (until he wrote a book about it though).

To cum to the point, Café Flesh is a seriously strange movie – partly because it's trying to be seriously strange on a small budget and big coke-addled hopes, and partly because the hardcore sequences are staged as seriously strange and very unerotic and twisted performance art numbers.  Rat-nosed milkmen, back projected oil pumps, bone-wielding babies, nude babes with monocles and Hitler mustaches and finger clicking tuxedo arms sticking out of the floor take what prosaic porn plumbing there is in the flick well into some XXX Twilight Zone freakiness.

And throughout it all Max Melodramatic is taunting both the nightclub audience and you the viewer about why you like to watch. He's rubbing your nose in the fact he's getting off on the fact you need to watch the show to get off. But I defy anyone to get off, or even wood, while watching this very very very peculiar piece of Nu Wave polyester art anti-porn.

GrogFlog verdict: "Welcome to the carnal charnel house." 1 out of 10 if you're there for the sex. 7 out of 10 for the high weirdness.

Coming next: Oliver Reed gets irradiated, Don Johnson gets hoisted with his own petard, Lon Chaney Jr gets blown up and Jason Robards eats a sandwich.

HAMMER TIME

Welcome to a new dynamically-enabled paradigm shift in delivering content-rich online experiences to generate more sticky eyeballs. Yep our host, that great raconteur, humanitarian and patron of the arts, Tony the T, has generously allowed me to do a little Grog Flogging (film blogging) here from time to time - basically about odd little films I think are unjustly overlooked… or bloody overrated. And since blogland has the attention span of a dog just let out of the car after a long drive, I'll try and keep it short and mainly about flicks with lots of sex and violence.

I'll start gently with a well-known cult classic (ie: bloody hard to see and some confusion over the director's intended ending) that’s now finally on DVD - half a century after it was made: "Kiss Me Deadly".

1955. B&W, natch! Script: Albert Isaac Bezzerides. Direction: Robert Aldrich. Cinematography: Ernest Lazlo. Score: Frank De Vol, also feat. Nat King Cole, Franz Schubert and strange hissing noises.

So what's the fuss about? Well, it's the atomic-powered, crazed mutha of a movie that stomped classic film noir into the gutter. Before it, there was there was "The Big Sleep", "The Third Man", "Pickup On South Street", "The Lady from Shanghai", "The Killers" (the 1949 version) and "Criss Cross". But after they spawned their sneering, swaggering bastard child, "Kiss Me Deadly", there was nowhere really left to go but "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" and eventually "Night Of The Living Dead". It was the genre's Gotterdammerung.

Deadly kept all the ingredients of the original Mickey Spillane book. Mysterious damsels in distress, urbanely evil masterminds, nympho gangster molls, glinting drug-laden hypodermics, stone-faced henchmen, cynical wise-cracking cops, hard-boiled but soft-curved blondes with snub-nose .38s and a merry sidekick who dies hard. And bourbon. Lots of bourbon.  But then Deadly got really wild.

For starters, our main boy, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a completely amoral, sleazy ratbag. He slaps innocuous folks around at the drop of a fedora, his private dick operation is basically a sexual blackmail racket that would make Jake Gitties blanch, he treats his luscious jazz ballet dancing secretary, Velda Wakeman (Maxine Cooper) like shit and he keeps stealing other people's smokes (the whole bloody packet too). However Mike seems be to be raking in the mazuma, even though he's a thieving bastard with the Lucky Strikes. He drives a succession of classic 50s roadsters even shapelier than his women and his "What kind of man reads Playboy?" pad has one of the first answering machines ever seen on screen – all bakelite console and big tape spools.

But what really makes Deadly leap off the screen and slap you around is the utterly bravura filmmaking that delivers a very post-modern (ie: no one gives a shit if it makes sense or not) story. The lighting and camera angles often push noir conventions till they scream for mercy, while even the bit players seem to have stepped out of a stag film parody of the original Twilight Zone. It opens with a metaphorical bang and closes with a literal one. And in between it’s grainy, grimy 50s LA gothic at 120 mph. There's a brainsnapping title sequence (reverse credits, rolling backwards as well, over a car windshield and accompanied by sobbing and panting overlaid on a moody jazzy ballad) followed by an artfully just off-screen torture scene that gives you the willies even now. And that's just in the first few minutes.

And a savage, smirking but increasingly baffled Mike Hammer stalks through this nihilistic, shadow-sodden, off-kilter world, pulling judo moves here, smashing fingers and Caruso records there and puzzling over a clue hidden in a Christina Rossetti love sonnet, but always blind to what's really going until the light's so bright, it burns everything up.

No wonder Lynch, Scorsese, Tarantino, Ellroy, Frank Sin City Miller, and so many others, deftly lifted moves, motifs and riffs from this flick just like Mike Hammer would your cigarettes. See it or take one in the kisser, pal.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Va-Va-Voom! Pretty POW!" 8 out of 10.

Coming soon: 70s sci-fi porn, the young Oliver Reed, arthouse coprophagia, telepathic dogs and wrinkled retainers.