Reviews were never the intention of the Highland Cinema. What came to mind, now
that was the intention. So here's a few thoughts I had during this one:
(1) There's no reason you should listen to shitty music. None. You have no excuse. I'm not here to convince you Roky Erickson is some genius or visionary or that he's the reason you shouldn't listen to shitty music, but in this
sad and beautiful world where there's so many fucking bands out there you're a real idiot if you're gonna listen to junk like
"Ridin' With the King." See, here at the Highland Cinema we thought we knew everything we needed to know about the cool and angry post-punk rock music of the 1980s. We had all the Big Black and Butthole Surfers records. We knew the names of the guys in the Birthday Party and the Swans. But you know what? We found out there was a whole shitload of music we didn't know
anything about! Nothing. Turns that before Reagan took office there was a whole lot of fucked up proto-industrial noise and weird rock bands out there.
Whitehouse, NON, Helios Creed,
Chrome, Throbbing Gristle...the list goes on and on and on and on. And how about
Jandek or Can or
Keiji Haino? Guys who've been putting out wicked strange records for a long long time. There's a TON of really really really interesting music out there, music you may not like or get, but music that you might as well expose yourself to since you're just gonna die pretty soon and no one wants to hear you complain about Nickelback all day. Lucky for you, this modern age has rendered your musical pretension only a few clicks away! Why, just look at me! Thanks to
Mark Prindle,
Electrical Audio, and
Steve I listen to all kinds of stuff I never would've found on Clear Channel. In just the past few months alone I bought a
super-girlified pop record, the
Pig Destroyer catalog, and sat through two hours of
shrieking bass feedback. I might just pick up some more
ambient drone before I listen to even more black metal. Keep in mind that all this stuff is completely new to me and I didn't think I'd ever dig any of it. It's all stuff I found out about
as an adult and then really enjoyed
as an adult. There's no reason to grow out of anything.
(2) Just like
Crumb, this Erickson family is fucked up. If you just peruse
Roky's bio you'll see a big ol' tragedy of mental illness, but when I sat here and watched this thing I had a hard time getting past the fact that Mama Erickson has some serious problems of her own what with her hoarding and religious fanaticism and vehement distrust of the medical industry. And then there's younger brother
Sumner Erickson, a guy who seems so noble the way he fought a court battle to get custody of the middle-aged Roky just so he could get the guy's schizophrenia under control and turn him into a productive citizen. Looks like it all worked out so well, right? Not three months back Roky played right down the street at
Bumbershoot like a real functional music-makin' adult would. But watch
You're Gonna Miss Me's bonus feature and catch how Sumner talks about how mental illness is a way of acting rather than a chemical imbalance. Wait,
what? Are you
serious? His story's just as much documentary fodder as Roky's is, no doubt.
Picture it: younger brother of nutcase cult rocker rises out of his dysfunctional family to become wealthy Philharmonic tuba player and New Age devotee. Wow! Sign me up!
(3) This movie was really good. It's always nice to know that you started a movie feeling like you didn't know shit about someone and by the end feel like you truly
got it. All of it. Why the music was important. Why the story was important. Why Thurston Moore,
Byron Coley, and the fucking
Austin City Limits give two shits about the guy. Bravo.
I think it's funny how my desire to visit the Czech Republic stems from my amazement with this piece of Polish animation. It's like I think anything weird is automatically Slovakian even when I know damn well it ain't. Little Otik, by the way, is both Czech and strange so maybe my borderline irrational assumption isn't entirely off the mark.
There's this guy on the Electrical Audio forum who has the Pixote poster as his signature. That means that three or four or (most likely) five times each and every day I see that weird lookin' movie pic with the even weirder lookin' kid staring at me. Eventually I figure, shit, I oughta look up this Pixote flick to see what the deal is, and thanks to the magic of these here Internets I find out it's a critically acclaimed picture about Brazilian street kids! Real life kids plucked right off the street and told to play fictionalized versions of themselves just for your viewing pleasure. "Whoa, sign me up!" I said.
Look, we've all been watching Behind the Music these past ten years. We've all seen Nikki Sixx talk about shooting up and dying and then OD'ing immediately after. We all know how Zeppelin put a shark in that lady's special place and how Def Leppard enjoyed mother-daughter teams under the arena stage. So why should anyone care about Phil Varone? He played with..who?...oh, yeah, Saigon Kick and then for the post-Baz Skid Row. Wow. He's addicted to coke and has less than $2 in his bank account, and all he wanted to do with his life was play the drums. Hey, it's not like I'm saying his story isn't sad or unfortunate, but I think it's safe to say that if any one of us wants to hear about the perils of rock and roll decadence there's a ton of better places to do so.
Y'know, "Predator" really didn't do it for me at first. I mean, I liked that opening grumblin' riff and cymbal crash, but those vocal lines during the verses just sounded so clumsy and awkward. But then in no time, I wised up and realized "Predator" was the greatest song by the greatest band of all time. Stick around? You bet.
The nice tale of a lady born and raised to exact vengeance on the fellas that abused her poor mama. Classic Kill Bill-influencing stuff where the blood gushes from every wound until the precise moment just before it becomes absurd and the swordplay is no-bullshit spartan stabs and jabs. We're sure we missed out on the intricacies of seventeenth century Japanese culture, but them poetic subtitles sure were classy.
"People said his brain was infected by devils."
Some years ago Cage and Camu Tao put out a record as Nighthawks where they bust dirty cop rhymes over Miami Vice beats. So of course when I see the Nighthawks feature film on the boob tube I think I'm in for a ninety minute tale about a pair of bad lieutenants policing a TBS world. Look! Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Lindsay Wagner, and Billy Dee! Fuck yeah. Let's see some windblown coiffures, 9mm's, and crooked cops breaking drug dealin' faces.
As part of our continuing effort to expose ourselves to the most hideous things in the history of all existence we decided to watch Hated for the second time. Yeah, I can't believe it either. Wouldn't you think our need to watch a jockstrap-laden psychopath rub his own poop on his face, throw some chick into a wall, and slice himself with razor blades had already been satiated? Did we really need to hear #1 GG fan tell us about Allin's pen pal friendship with other waste-of-life John Wayne Gacy? Or see shocking Polaroids of these naked sleazebag Murder Junkies in various states of arousal? Probably not. I think we just like talking about Todd Phillips.
More of the goopy body politicking from our good friend Canadian Dave. We sure love the Croney so of course we got a kick out of his debut even though it didn't quite deliver the goods the way his subsequent flicks do. Shivers still hit us with a bitchin' plot 'bout a lab-borne clap-ridden parasitic slug that turns high-rise condo tenants into sex-crazed zombies. We dug the mid-70s Earth tones, the way that dude puked up bloody chunks on an old lady's umbrella, and we especially enjoyed the blatant Romerian finale where a hillside of the stumblin' dead force our protagonist into a poolside Dionysian/pseudo-Sapphic orgy the likes of which you won't admit to having ever seen before! This flick is most likely some sort of comment on the changing sexual standards and practices of the post-Pill, dusk of Free Love generation, but we'll hold off on our dissertation until at least a second viewing.
Combat Shock is the type of flick that actually deserves its Kaufman-awarded "Troma Classic" status and we're darn certain that had Buddy G gone onto other big-time pictures you'd hear about this one soooo much more. Dude, the last scene is a guy shooting both his pregnant wife and crying mutant infant son (the Lynch has to be gettin' a cut)! Then he drinks down last year's chunky milk and pastes his gray matter on the filthy kitchen wall!
The rumor is that Charlie "don't call me Estevez" Sheen nabbed a copy of this way back in '85 and then narced to the Feds thinking it was an actual snuff movie. Now that's a story that's waaaay too good to be true. Come on, dude, a snuff movie? You honestly think you could get your hands on pure cinematic death? Of course you couldn't! And if you could it sure wouldn't look like this. Sure, this whole thing looks like every shitty Korean program on your UHF dial, but we're saying that a real deal snuff flick would have one static camera and maybe some POV. It sure as hell wouldn't have close-ups of syringes pricking latex skin and it surer as hell wouldn't cut between limb severing and the severer's maniacal grins. Jesus. And it'd be at least a fifth-generation VHS dub by the time you saw it anyway. Fuck you, Sheenie. Get a clue.
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