Tobe Hooper

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, November, 2006.

Tobe Hooper really likes Dr. Pepper. Because of this fact, I no longer judge people who drink the stuff, although I still stay away from it. (That goes for any drink with benzoate in its makeup. Look it up on Alternet or Wikipedia.) That’s the power of cinema. My love for Hooper’s work is so great, I am now willing to look past my own social experience with a terrible soft drink, and see that geniuses can be Peppers, too.

Hooper has several new DVD’s out right now. His recent Masters of Horror episode, comes from a story by the great Richard Matheson. Matheson’s prose is responsible for some of the greatest fantastic film and television of the last century. He is perhaps best known for novels like Hell House and I Am Legend, his Twilight Zone episodes and stories-turned-movies like Duel and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Hooper’s episode, “Dance of the Dead,” is a post-apocalyptic zombie story, starring Robert Englund as master of ceremonies to the ultimate humiliation: reanimated corpses are forced to perform on stage. I feel it’s a perfect example of what every Masters show should have: replay value. I can watch this episode several times. God bless Austin.

My favorite thing about this show, other than Englund’s performance (as over the top as he’s ever been), is Hooper’s use of superimposition. I knew I’d been watching movies for too long when I could tell the trick was done in-camera, rather than on someone’s laptop. Darren Aronofsky had a similar trick in Requiem for a Dream, but Hooper’s more chaotic vision required special cameras that could shoot, backwind, and re-shoot at the camera operator’s discretion. If the end result makes you nervous, Hooper’s done his job.

To be fair, a lot of fans really hate this episode. That’s happened to Hooper’s work plenty of times. Back to that in a moment.

            I don’t ordinarily double-dip on DVD’s. Satisfaction is usually achieved the first time around, particularly if the special features are genuinely special. Pioneer’s old DVD of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a great product for its time. Before box sets for a single movie were in vogue, Pioneer did a great job of giving rabid Leatherheads exactly what they wanted: a commentary, outtakes, deleted scenes and trailers. Unfortunately, the transfer looked like it was shot through a screen door. Hooper’s masterpiece deserved better.

            Yes. “Masterpiece,” I said. The original Chain Saw is the primary reason I’ll still pick up a movie camera. I don’t need Quentin Tarantino to tell me it’s a better, more important movie than Easy Rider. I knew that in middle school. Maybe I like the film too much. I did a fan commentary for it a few years ago, and got a little coverage in Salon and on NPR. They got a laugh out of it.

The new edition from Dark Sky Films contains all of the extras from the original DVD, plus a beautiful new image and even more extra features, including a second commentary and the “lost” documentary, The Shocking Truth. A new interview piece is scored by Austin’s own Russell Clepper, and it fits the mood beautifully. If you’re one of those poor saps who only knows about Leatherface from New Line’s godawful remake, now’s your chance to get the real thing. (I mean, come on. In the remake, Leatherface isn’t even a cannibal. Maybe he should take up macramé while he’s at it.)

It took nearly fifteen years for the original film to get a sequel (not to mention compound word status for its title tool), but the result was yet another cult classic. No one I knew felt this way about Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 when it was new. Nearly everyone hated this movie. Feeling that too many people failed to see the humor in the original, Hooper dared to make Chainsaw 2 into a barely-veiled parody of the first. James Whale did the same thing with Bride of Frankenstein, and as did Joe Dante with Gremlins 2.

Not your cup of tea? What if I told you that Dennis Hopper runs around in a cowboy hat, with chainsaws strapped to his waist like six-shooters? Plus, you get Bill Moseley as Chop-Top, the Nam vet with a very visible metal plate in his head. He has to scratch it with a coat hanger. Plus, Leatherface falls in love. It’s beautiful.

It’s time we recognize Tobe Hooper’s skill as a director. By “we,” I mean Earth people. Texans have known about it from the jump.

I’m still not drinking Dr. Pepper, though. Unless I can find the new Eaten Alive DVD. Then I’ll drink one.

Weird Al Show, Pee-Wee Herman Show, Faith No More, Vince McMahon, The Big Buy

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, October, 2006.

The Weird Al Show was gaudy, obnoxious, and nerdier than the Drafthouse on anime night. It was obviously a kids’ show, which was okay, because it was far funnier than its Saturday morning time slot deserved. It was 1997, about six years since tabloid TV “news” had demolished Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Someone needed to fill the void. For one season, “Weird Al” Yankovic would deliver a fairly worthy successor. Sure, it had lame guest stars like Drew Carey and Hanson, but it was still better than anything your kids have been subjected to since. The new three-disc DVD comes with commentaries and some behind the scenes stuff. Fire up the accordion, fix some Twinkie wiener sandwiches, put on a Hawaiian shirt and do a rubber man dance. Perhaps Al-TV won’t be too far behind.

Speaking of Paul Ruebens, you can’t go wrong with his Playhouse prototype, The Pee-Wee Herman Show. This is the HBO special from 1981, several years before the silver screen, the weekly series, or all those jokes about Abraham Lincoln. He wasn’t quite the guy from Nice Dreams anymore, but this was no kids’ show, either. Shoe mirrors, fake dog doo, a Shaft reference, Kaptain Karl getting blitzed, Jambi’s joke about his new hands: it’s all risqué, perhaps even more so today than when it was new. (If that last thought makes you shudder, we should hang out.) There are no extras, but the show itself is brilliant, and the price tag is low. Plus, you get guest stars like Phil Hartman, John Paragon, a barely recognizable Tito Larriva, and the incomparable Lynne Stewart.

Mike Patton must have seen The Pee-Wee Herman Show, as it contains a classic children’s educational film about minding your manners, lest you become a “Mr. Bungle.” Patton would reach a larger audience with Faith No More, who has a double-feature DVD out now. Live at the Brixton Academy, London was on VHS and CD during the band’s Real Thing heyday, and features a fantastic concert with songs from the era. Patton flops like a fish during “Epic,” breaks wind into the microphone and swears it was real, and even belts out a couple of tunes originally sung by Faith No More’s first frontman, Chuck Moseley. Who Cares a Lot? The Greatest Videos covers the band’s entire career, and made me wonder why these guys had to break up. I mean, we lose an innovative, imaginative, songwriting machine like Faith No More, but the Chili Peppers get to release the same album every few years?

I haven’t watched McMahon, but I know it exists, because I’ve seen it in stores. I even held it in my hands, but I put it down before the curse could affect me.

Let’s face it: I’m a big dork for wrestling. You know those anime guys I made fun of in the first paragraph? They have nothing on wrestling fans when it comes to utter silliness. Some of us have limits, though. Mine is McMahon. He runs the whole show, some old robber baron’s version of action storytelling, where the racial and gender stereotypes are worse than anything that upset Pauline Kael. And he gets away with creating really bad television (and now, really bad movies, thanks to Lion’s Gate and Fox), because he’s the last one left. (TNA? Please. I’d love to see those guys succeed, but I’m not staying up until eleven on a Thursday night – or whenever they’re on this week – in the hopes that Impact will at least be slightly better than Raw or WWECW.)

So, no, I won’t be paying money to watch the old fart pretend he can wrestle. I also won’t be buying any autobiographical DVD’s from Steve Jobs or Rupert Murdoch. I love wrestling, but there’s better, more entertaining stuff out there.

The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress is for fans of an entirely different variety of wrestling. Our state’s favorite disgraced congressman finally gets his own movie, and it’s an eye-opener. This is the guy who said, in 1994, that having no federal government at all would suit him just fine. Over the course of a decade, DeLay did all he could to make this happen. The movie comes from Disinfo, the same bunch who brought you Outfoxed. Check it out, especially for the killer jazz score.

Andrew WK, Poison, Rolling Stones

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, September, 2006.

            Someone should remind Andrew W. K. that rock has always been about having a good time. Do it quick, before he writes another song with “fun” or “party” in the title.

            The hype machine behind this guy turned me off from the beginning.

“Ooh, he has a huge nosebleed on his album cover, and the record company censored it up with a big red sticker!” (Did the imagery hit too close to home for certain record executives?)

“All of his songs sound exactly the same! He’s like Wesley Willis with money!”

“He can’t sing! He can’t play! His band is atrocious! Let’s pretend he’s an underground sensation then put him on SNL!”

            Sign me up.  I’ve been known to stop thinking on occasion. Plus, I’ve always wondered how the collected works of Jim Steinman would sound played by the most bored-looking speed metal band on the planet.

Who Knows? is Andrew’s idea of a documentary/concert film. You get to hear Andrew talk about himself (a lot), and his mission to bring absorbing, provocative material like “Party Hard” and “Girls Own Love” to the masses. Whether or not the irony is intentional doesn’t matter: it still isn’t all that interesting. If he’d show off his piano chops more often, his music would have staying power. Even the footage of Andrew staring into camcorder in various hotel rooms is better than the musical parts.

His sound is raw yet melodic, his demeanor populist, and his audience working class. None of this would strike me as negative if his body of work didn’t sound like it took all of thirty minutes to write. He’s like a record executive’s version of Mike Patton: weird, but with no interest in evolving. Patton does something different every time he enters a studio. Andrew pretends to.

There’s a school of thought that insists if you want to rock, there isn’t much to it. Is it loud, fast, and catchy? Is it mind-numbingly simple enough to get onto corporate rock radio? Will frat boys like it? Welcome, graduates!

Rock desperately needs a new school, and Andrew W. K. desperately needs to attend. His parties would be more fun if he went in a new direction.

Not that it would matter. Poison still gets on TV. Seven Days Live covers their 1993 show at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. Like Andrew, Poison is all about the good time. Like Andrew’s music, Poison’s is aimed squarely at regular folks. Unlike Andrew, though, the guys in Poison wrote songs. It was all cheesy MTV junk, but at least they never tried to pretend they were anything more than that.

Die-hard Poison fans – the ones who own a copy of that horror movie with Bret Michaels as a serial killer – know this version of the band features Ritchie Kotzen on guitar, not C. C. DeVille. Ritchie’s a better guitar player, and the songs arguably sound a little better than they did originally.  Poison, however, was always more about personality than musicianship. Poison without C. C. is like a box of Cracker Jacks without the prize: neither are very good for you, but if you’re going that route, go the distance.

This concert shows Poison at a crossroads. They weren’t quite the same band as before, but they weren’t about to change their look or sound to fit the grunge mold. They stuck with what had worked before. Whether it works for you depends on how much you like guys who dress like girls. For the record, Bret Michaels plays harmonica fairly well…

…At least as good as Mick Jagger. Enough with the disposable stuff, already. Sexy Intellectual’s new Rolling Stones DVD, Under Review 1962-1966, covers the original Stones, in what some fans consider their greatest period. I’m more of a Sticky Fingers guy, but the footage in this film is fascinating to watch. This is the band in its rawest form, when Keith had the blues and Mick didn’t dance around so much. It’s a version of the Stones that wasn’t quite as sure of itself, a band whose great covers of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly barely registered with the public. It wasn’t until “The Last Time” and “Satisfaction” that things really got rolling.

By honing in on the formative years of the band, this documentary makes you see what other movies couldn’t: future rock icons struggling just to have their music heard. More importantly, you get an idea of how great these guys used to be, long before ridiculous ticket prices and jokes about wheelchairs.

Under Review, Robin Trower, Dimevision, Bruce Dickinson, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, August, 2006.

            If you see a DVD from Sexy Intellectual’s Under Review series, buy it.  Watch it a million times, then invite your friends over and watch it a million more times. I don’t care if you’ve never heard of one particular band or another. It doesn’t matter. If these British geniuses took the time to put together a documentary, it’s worth seeing. Think of it as the auteur theory, applied to music criticism.

            This is, no doubt, criticism, in the purest sense. This isn’t VH-1; you won’t find a bunch of fake stand-up comics opining about Black Sabbath’s penchant for preacher bling. These guys are serious music fans, who know that fans of the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, and the Smiths are looking for something more than, “Hmm, I wonder if Morrissey was gay? Did Beefheart ever shave? And what’s with Warhol’s wigs?” These are full histories, and every moment is fascinating.

            The biographies are unauthorized (wouldn’t an authorized biography be an autobiography?), so it’s easy to confuse them with the slew of junk out there. Don’t be fooled. For one thing, they tend to pick subjects that haven’t been covered on DVD. In the case of Beefheart and the Velvets, there are no other documentaries available.

            It’s exhilarating to know that someone is doing this kind of work, and it’s lovely that this stuff is region-free.  Unlike most American releases, these can be watched all over the world. The same holds true for Germany’s Ruf Records, and their new DVD from Robin Trower, Living Out of Time. We’re all Trower nuts in my family: he’s right up there with Johnny Winter and Rory Gallagher. He’s one of those names you hear if you hang around guitar players long enough. (Or, if you remember the movie Rush, here’s another clue: Trower’s masterpiece, “Bridge of Sighs,” bookends the movie, scoring Gregg Allman each time he walks to his car. Yeah. That song.)

Trower ought to be a household name, as evidenced by this concert. Recorded at the Rockpalast Crossroads Festival in Germany, last year, it’s a little over an hour of some of Trower’s finest work. I say “some,” because there’s a little too much emphasis on new material. Not that any of it’s bad. I’m just an old fan. Plus, he doesn’t play “Long Misty Day.” Drag. Other than those few quibbles, you can’t beat him. If there’s an Eric Clapton fan in your family, slide this one their way.

Three new heavy metal releases have surfaced, and they’re all worth picking up. Big Vin Records brings us the long-awaited Dimevision, a frenzy of footage showcasing Big Vin’s little brother. If you know Dime, you know what to expect. It resembles the old Pantera home videos and Metallica’s Cliff Em’ All, for obvious reasons. Its most somber moments are the still frames: fan photos, pictures with other musicians, and magazine covers. There’s even a montage of fan tattoos. Its happiest moments show Dime at his finest: playing guitar and having a good time. No one did either like Dime. Best of all, there’s vintage stuff. See Dime, Vinnie, and Rex  with teased hair, playing “Seek and Destroy!”

Bruce Dickinson Anthology is a three-disc set with a decent price, covering the solo career of Iron Maiden’s legendary front man. Through various line-ups, you can hear how Dickinson’s sound has changed over the years, from the pop-rock Tattooed Millionaire days, to the alterna-rock Skunkworks, up to the crushing power metal of Accident of Birth, Chemical Wedding and Tyranny of Souls. You get three concerts and all the music videos, plus a rare look at Bruce’s first band, Samson. For a guy whose solo career started as a one-off track for an Elm Street sequel, he seems to have done fine. The best part is that he’s juggling the solo stuff with the new Iron Maiden. The man is unbelievable. (Ask his fencing friends at Texas State University.)

If you can only afford one DVD this month, check out Sam Dunn’s documentary, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Dunn is an anthropologist, and makes that his angle as he travels around the world, interviewing people like Dickinson, Tony Iommi, Rob Zombie, Ronnie James Dio, those nerds from Slipnot, those geeks from Mayhem, and lots of metal fans. Plus, he gets face time with a self-styled moral crusader who has never heard of Cannibal Corpse. He explores the roots of metal, from classical to the blues. He even investigates those church burnings in Norway. Heavy metal is often misunderstood, but anyone who sees this movie, be they fans or just curious, will come away with a deeper knowledge of one of rock’s longest-lasting subcultures.

Giuseppe Andrews, Shane Douglas

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, June, 2006.

  Whether they know it or not, filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews and hardcore wrestling icon Shane Douglas play to the same audience. They’re part of an underground gestalt, an amorphous blob of culty weirdness that somehow finds its way into your shopping bag every few weeks, along with the latest issue of Rue Morgue and those cheap, public domain sci-fi box sets. When you get home from your favorite pre-fab, monolithic, income-snorting big box store, you may find yourself wondering what you just spent half your check on. It’s okay. If you bought Giuseppe’s Trailer Town, Touch Me in the Morning, or Period Piece, or either of Douglas’s (heretofore referred to as the Franchise) Hardcore Homecoming shows, you can rest assured you’ve gone beyond the range of the average home theater consumer.

            It would be unfair to compare these two to their mainstream counterparts (say, Kevin Smith and Vince McMahon). Sure, they’re all vying for that coveted 18-34 year old male demographic, but something seems more genuine about Giuseppe and the Franchise. Maybe it’s the homebrew, barely-digital video quality of their respective productions. Or, it could be that anything seems more genuine than Jersey Girl and Monday Night Raw. (Speaking of apples and oranges…)

            Regular readers of this column have probably figured out by now that I lean more towards the small press variety of home entertainment. Given the choice between the tenth re-release of Highlander 2 or a weird little movie from some folks I’ve never heard of, I’ll likely save Christopher Lambert for another evening. (Wait. Virginia Madsen’s in Highlander 2. Choices, choices, choices.) When you grow up around tape recorders and video cameras, you tend to appreciate entertainment that’s a little closer to home. It may be more exciting than that chop-up snippet tapes you made in high school, but it’s hardly overproduced. That’s cult. That’s fun. I’ll take a micro-budget rip-off over a big-budget remake any day.

            Both of these guys are low-budget, but neither of them are rip-offs. Giuseppe’s style owes a bit to John Waters, Dolemite, and, frankly, the VCR, but he’s his own creation. His movies, for the uninitiated, are adult comedies, shot mostly on hand-held video, featuring gin-you-whine, California trailer park residents as actors. There’s always a story, sometimes several, but the narrative rightly takes a back seat to the jokes. And there are lots of jokes, all of them dirty, some of them genius. Idiots who complain about adult content in sitcoms and reality shows have no clue what lies beyond American Idol.  If That 70’s Show seems risque to you, just keep writing those FCC letters. Stay away from these movies.  You won’t like them, and you’ll hate the people who do.

            Giuseppe’s detractors will tell you all of his films are basically the same. Anyone who’s seen at least two of them knows this isn’t true. His short Dribble (featured on Best of TromaDance Volume 3), has people reading monologues in nearly every scene. Trailer Town has subtitles. Touch Me in the Morning is in black and white. Period Piece is an anthology. These seem like minor deviations at first, but they genuinely change the pace and feel of each movie. In each case, what would be just another silly, sicko comedy becomes more visceral.  And if you meet me, I will make you watch all of them.

            The Franchise made history in the wrestling world, when ECW was just starting out. Big-time wrestling fans know the story: when ECW was just another subsidiary of the old NWA (that’s the National Wrestling Alliance, which has no affiliation with MC Ren), the Franchise won the NWA title, then threw it down and declared ECW the real deal. It was the closest thing to the Protestant Reformation professional wrestling had ever seen. (And, I swear, it was frickin’ real!) Eastern Championship Wrestling became “Extreme” Championship Wrestling, a new era began, wrestlers started walking out to Pantera songs; you know the drill.

Then, ECW closed up, was bought out by WWE, and, naturally, someone got mad at someone else. The result is, basically, two ECW’s. (Just don’t tell McMahon.) You have the WWE version, set to resurface this summer with ECW One Night Stand and a regular TV series. Hardcore Homecoming, needless to say, is more like the original ECW product. It’s cheap, it’s lewd, and it’s bloody. There is no storyline. If you like wrestling action, you could do worse (say, Monday Night Raw).

The product is in its infancy, and you can bet the bigger promotions have taken notice. That may be one of the reasons why the Dudley Boyz (Team 3-D, if you prefer) don’t appear on this release. ECW was the pinnacle of independent wrestling in the 90’s. They were the company that “almost made it.” Hardcore Homecoming (and its sequel event, November Reign) may not be the most professional product, but it does recapture that spirit.

Andrews and the Franchise both play to the same audience, even if it is just me and my crazy friends. I’m waiting for the analogies: “Tyree is to Terry Funk what Walt Dongo is to the Sandman.”

Yes. There is someone in this world named Walt Dongo. You must not fear.

Masters of Horror, Sci-Fi Boys

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, May, 2006.

            There are scenes in The Sci-Fi Boys that resemble a Mr. Show or Kids in the Hall sketch.  It happens when you’re into this kind of thing.  For every Ray Harryhausen monster whose name you remember, every Forry Ackerman catch phrase you can recite by heart, and every main title theme you can hum (and harmonize, because you’re just that great), you become more unintentionally funny.  You become a Giant-Sized X-Men #1-sized nerd.  Brian Posehn has made a career out of it.

            I’m nuts for this stuff.  Like the boys profiled in this documentary, I’ve been into science fiction, fantasy, and especially horror since I could eyeball a screen.  And yeah, they’re all boys.  The only women in this documentary are the black and white ingénues carried off by the monsters.  While fans and creators of contemporary fantastic cinema now come in all shapes and sizes (isn’t one of the Wachowskis becoming a lady, or was that an internet April Fool’s prank?), the absence of women in this documentary is a reminder that guys like Ackerman, Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury and the like are still weird little boys at heart.

            That’s part of the reason why the movie loses its steam.  It’s so wrapped up in nostalgia, it sentimentalizes when it should be having a laugh.  Not that it’s a bad movie.  Seeing these guys (as well as Roger Corman, John Landis, Peter Jackson, Rick Baker and others) talk about their influences and pay tribute to the greats is always fun for me.  Yeah, it’s a Universal disc, so you unfortunately have to sit through clips from junk like Van Helsing and The Mummy remake, but most folks won’t mind.  Truth be told, this would make a decent starter kit for anyone new to genre fandom.

            You could have a worse companion to The Sci-Fi Boys than the first two volumes of Masters of Horror.  Anchor Bay is giving each episode of the Showtime series the dripping-red carpet treatment, with commentaries, behind-the-scenes stuff, DVD-ROM scripts and more.  The first two episodes are John Carpenter’s “Cigarette Burns,” based on a script by some Ain’t It Cool News guys, and Stuart Gordon’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” from a story by H. P. Lovecraft.  Each episode is its own little one-hour film, with its own look and style, a feature that makes this show unique.  Even with anthology shows, most episodes look alike, so it’s nice to see this one give its directors more leeway.

            Stuart Gordon does what he does best with his episode: he’s the only filmmaker to do Lovecraft with a genuine love for the material.  (Carpenter himself came close with In the Mouth of Madness, but that wasn’t an actual Lovecraft story.  If you’ve read this far, you know that already.)  There’s a rat with a human face (good acting there, by the way), a dimensional gateway, a redhead, and some shocking baby abuse.  There’s also the prerequisite Lovecraftian self-doubt and slow, creeping insanity.  And, again, the redhead.

            “Cigarette Burns” is the most hyped of the episodes, probably because of its internet pedigree.  The results are surprisingly good, and probably the best thing John Carpenter’s done in fifteen years.  I say this as a die-hard Carpenter fan, by the way.  The man is made of gold to me.  (I saw Escape From L. A. five times at the McCreless Mall dollar theater.  I have a girlfriend now.)  I’m a fan, but I recognize peaks and valleys when I see them.  “Cigarette Burns” is a peak.  It has an angel and a Dario Argento reference.  No redheads, but this one’s probably still the better of the two.

New York Dolls, God Save the Queen, Metallimania, Testament

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, April, 2006.

            My father will never be a fan of punk rock.  He has too much Johnny Winter and Pat Travers in his system, too much of that blues-based, seventies rock genius.  He hears one Ramones song, and has pretty much heard them all.  It’s a taste issue.  It kind of reminds me of those “punker than thou” punk rock fans, who hate Iron Maiden because Bruce Dickinson can actually sing.

            As a child, my brother learned how to play guitar by studying my dad’s albums.  Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, Frank Zappa, Black Oak Arkansas, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, all that beautiful stuff.  It was as amazing to him as punk rock is to the average newcomer.  My brother inescapably inherited my father’s musical snobbishness.  For a few years there, if it had no connection to a time before he was born, he wasn’t interested.

            So it’s pretty cool that the New York Dolls were an early seventies band.  Otherwise, New York Dolls: All Dolled Up wouldn’t have been another bond for me and my brother.  (Dad’s next.  I commit myself to this cause.)  Releases like this (and recent DVD’s for the Ramones, Clash, etc.) have successfully turned my brother on to the beauty of early punk.  It helps that it’s a documentary about weirdos in a band, on the road, doing weird stuff.  (Kind of like 200 Motels, but for real.)  To top it off, the footage was shot with black and white, reel-to-reel videotape, so you can see David Johansen and Johnny Thunders ham it up, looking like something out of a backyard horror movie.  Except, of course, the backyard is America, and the horror is touring.

            A TV reporter describes the band as a cross between the Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper.  Fans know they were definitely more than that.  Like the MC5 and the Stooges, the Dolls were a landmark band, as goofy-sounding (and influential) as the best of their progeny.

            Yikes, Johnny Thunders looks young in this video, halfway energetic, even.  The same can’t be said for his performance on God Save the Queen: A Punk Rock Anthology, but it doesn’t matter.  This is about history.  The DVD collects performances from several eras, and serves them up in a farily decent sampler.  The Dead Boys perform “Sonic Reducer,” from a previous MVD release.  Iggy and the Stooges reunite for “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”  There’s vintage footage of the U. K. Subs (with animation!), the Germs, and the Exploited.  You get Generation X, long before Billy became the Idol.  Forward-thinking folks will love Chelsea’s “Right to Work” as much as I do.  And the Buzzcocks, bless them, outlive that little SUV commercial misstep they took a few years ago.  There’s a little filler, but not too much.  If you want to turn an impressionable youngster on to punk rock before MTV does, this is a good place to start.

            As for your heavy metal friends, there’s no better reason to call up old high school buddies than Testament: Live in London.  Testament’s a band that never quite got their due outside of the thrash subgenre.  It may have something to do with guitar wizard Alex Skolnick leaving the band in the early nineties.  They never quite regained the oomph that came with albums like Practice What You Preach.  It didn’t help that singer Chuck Billy went death metal a few years later, forever marking Testament as followers of a trend.  Meanwhile, Skolnick established himself as a guitar virtuoso, with his jazzed-up acoustic arrangements of hard rock classics.  (You know times have changed when they’re interviewing guys like Skolnick on NPR.)

            Testament can still do it, as this concert proves.  Not only is Skolnick back, but the entire line-up is of the classic variety.  They change drummers about halfway through the set, so you get a taste of how the band sounded in two separate eras.  It’s a welcome change from the average reunion line-up that, somehow, always manages to leave someone out.  The fans are rabid on this one, and I swear I saw a cute girl or two in the crowd.

            There are no cute girls on Metallimania.  Just morons.  Lots of them.  And I’m not talking about Lars.  (That’s Some Kind of Monster.)  I’ve been a Metallica fan for years, and I’ve heard the criticisms from day one.  Going backward:

            “Man, Jason Newsted was rad.  Who’s this Trujillo guy ever played with?”

            “I was still with em’ on that symphony album, until they ruined ‘Hero of the Day.’”

“I was still with em’ on Load, but Re-Load was too commercial.”

“Man, Jason Newsted’s lame.  They should have kept Cliff in the band.  I don’t care if they’d have had to go to a witch doctor to do it.”

“Man, Kirk Hammett’s lame.  They should have kept Dave Mustaine.  I’ve heard all a five minutes of that old stuff, and it’s phenomenal.”

“Man, Cliff Burton was lame.  Ron McGovney was the bomb.”

And on and on and on.  That’s who this documentary is about: the overly-verbose, unbelievably cynical Metallica fans who criticize the band at every opportunity, but still fork it over for albums, T-shirts, and concert tickets.  In other words, garden-variety idiots who think “Disposable Heroes” should be the national anthem, “Because, you know, it’s about political stuff.”  (And, because Cliff played on that song, not Jason or Rob.)

Of course Metallica got lame.  It happens to any overly-successful artist.  Anyone who becomes a pop star, from Axl Rose to Paul McCartney, is, by nature, overrated.  That’s pop.  Sorry.  Maybe you should stop buying everything KLBJ or KISS tells you to buy.

I should be on this video, sandwiched somewhere between the gun nuts and the adolescent boys who want to see the Apollo Theater blown up.  I’d say something like, “This band never got what was rightfully theirs.  They had all the talent in the world, and they never wasted a minute.  And yet, they’re still this little cult band.  But you know what?  Their fans really, really appreciate them.

“This is about Manowar, right?”

Parts of the Family, Tales from the Crapper

Parts of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, March, 2006.

            Every studio does it: if you don’t give the bosses the movie they want, they’ll take your baby away and hack away at it, until it at least resembles something that can be sold.  Orson Welles was already selling wine in the sky before we saw his cut of A Touch of Evil.  Horror classics like James Whale’s Frankenstein were trimmed by local censor boards and even a few loony projectionists.  The Weinstein brothers’ efforts to trim every Miramax acquisition – whether the movies needed cutting or not – is the stuff of legend thanks to books like Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures.

            The rule, apparently, is if you put your heart and soul into a vision, some studio will turn it into easy money.  Unless, of course, that studio is Troma.  If you want your movie re-cut by Lloyd Kaufman and the gang, make sure it’s really awful the first time around.

            Parts of the Family and Tales From the Crapper are the two newest examples of Troma’s making something out of nothing.  The story behind both movies is the same: Troma fronted money to filmmakers they trusted, and were rewarded with something that was barely comprehensible.  The original Parts of the Family is directed by Leon Paul de Bruyn, who, ages ago, gave Troma a hit with Rabid Grannies.  The original Tales has a list of directors longer than a mop handle, including, of all people, B-movie starlet and not-quite-supermodel Julie Strain.

The stars seemed right, or as right as they can be in Tromaville.  Both movies featured all of the great Troma standbys, and a general disregard for authority.  So what went wrong?

I can’t tell you.  There is no original cut of Tales, and although the original Parts is included on the DVD, I can’t sit through it without feeling bad about myself.  There is a silver lining (or perhaps a mercury one; keep your fingers out of your mouth and you’ll do okay).  Unlike most studio cuts of lost classics, the Troma Team edits of these movies actually add value to them.  It’s as if Troma is showing the majors how to make something out of nothing, rather than the other way around.  They’re not perfect, and can be downright tedious at times, but they’re still better than the old Warner Brothers cut of Blade Runner.

For starters, the Sklar Brothers have returned.  Now the stars of ESPN Classic’s Cheap Seats, they were introduced to Troma fans years ago as wisecracking news anchors in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV.  They reprise their roles here, and deliver the funniest moments of both movies.  Troma standbys like the morbidly obese Joe Fleishaker make appearances.  King Kaufman himself is misused in the original cut of Parts, but, of course, beefs up his role to the point where he’s commenting on his own product.  He is better as Tales From the Crapper’s Crap Keeper, a weird guy with a microphone, a camera, and a plastic garbage bag over his head.

So, why should you see these movies?  Unless you’re a film student or a major Troma nerd, you shouldn’t.  Even Sklar fans will be disappointed, as the brothers probably have less than ten minutes of screen time in both movies combined.

Samhain, Great Kat, Human League

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, December, 2005.

Samhain – Live 1984 Stardust Ballroom

“Hey. They’re towin’ cars over at Alpha Beta, so if you’re parked there, you better move, or… ‘Cause I didn’t park there, so I don’t care. This is an oldie…”

All the murder, all the guts, and all the fun are here…but since it’s from MVD, it’s only 48 minutes and comes with no extras. (Okay, so there is a pretty rad Samhain sticker in there. That may justify the purchase: being the one hard rock guy on your block to have Samhain swag instead of another Misfits skull.)

Just who or what is a Samhain? Watch Halloween II for Donald Pleasence’s take on the subject. To metalheads, Samhain was a major turning point. Having left the Misfits behind, singer and songwriter Glenn Danzig chose to take the horror-rock sound into darker territory. Sahmain’s first album was like the Misfits’ “Earth A. D.,” had the songs been written by Anton LaVey. Samhain also marks the debut of Eerie Von, who would later play bass on Danzig’s first four (and best) solo albums.

This DVD features Samhain’s first LA show. It’s all on video, and rawer than roadkill, but the sound is surprisingly good. The filmmakers had the common sense to use a multi-camera setup, so you’re not stuck with Cliff Em’ All shots the whole time. The results are more professional than the average underground punk or metal video. It’s like a public access show with good sound: the quality is there, but nothing is sacrificed for the sake of slickness. Not that fans of Samhain would care. The historical value outweighs any potential quibbles here.

It’s hard to say which Danzig project I love the most. The Misfits, however overexposed they’ve become in recent years (every teenybopper in America knows that skull from somewhere…), wrote some great songs. Danzig’s solo albums were a welcome diversion into blues-based doom metal. Black Aria, his classical album, was creepy and great for RPG sessions. (There. I’ve admitted it.) Samhain had the best of all worlds: all that had come before, and much of what we’d hear later.

Horror-rock would never be this good again.

 

The Great Kat – Extreme Guitar Shred

The first thing you see when you start this DVD is a quote from Guitar One magazine, calling the Great Kat one of “the top ten fastest shredders of all time.” Just in case you forgot. I didn’t. I remember “Beethoven Mosh” all too well. The Juke Box Network used to play it all the time. (Remember them? You’d call a 1-900 number and pay money to watch music videos. You’d get Slayer’s “War Ensemble” one minute, and Kid Frost’s “La Raza” the next.)

Indeed, the Great Kat can play. She plays “shred guitar” and “shred violin.” She performs all “demonic vocals.” She wears shreddin’, demonic outfits, tortures men who dress like that guy from Candlemass. She wraps herself in the flag and screams “kill, kill, kill,” over footage of WWII, the Holocaust, and 9/11, spliced with bad video footage of her band in camouflage, toting plastic guns.

It’s like someone took everything I love about heavy metal and women-in-prison movies, but still got it wrong. If this were just a piece of camp, I’d giggle a bit, then watch another Gwar movie. With the war stuff, though, it’s beyond tasteless, and not much more.

Still, in proper company, this may be an interesting party video. The next time the Alamo Drafthouse shows This Is Spinal Tap, this would be great fodder for the pre-show.

Why else shouldn’t you buy it? It has the word “extreme” in the title. I’ll only let that slide in wrestling.

 

The Human League – Live at the Dome

Do your best Paul Ruebens, and say it with menace: neeeeeeeeewwwww waaaaaaave! I still like it, if only a little. It’s eighties synth-pop, but more saccharine and less interesting than Devo. It’s still the easiest music in the world to play. Practically anyone could get a synthesizer and make music. I’ve done it.

Still, if you grew up on this stuff, Human League’s silly, slick charms may work on you to this day. To me, they come off as the Smiths, Depeche Mode or Material Issue, but way too upbeat and with awful lyrics. Every song sounds like the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack, without the cool words.

When I turn this DVD off, I’m going to say I’ve forgotten all about it. Then I’m going to look over at that keyboard, and all that music software, and sigh. Human League has influenced me to make music that makes fun of Human League. Awesome.

Lloyd Kaufman, Bela Lugosi

Lloyd Kaufman’s Make Your Own Damn Movie!

Lloyd Kaufman could very well be the last good, old-fashioned showman in independent film. He’s William Castle, Mel Brooks, and David Koresh all rolled into one. Troma movies have been around for a long time, and Kaufman (along with co-founder Michael Herz) has kept its fire lit for nearly 30 years.

Is he a genius? Yeah, probably. Anyone who can make the Toxic Avenger a household name, spark a cult following that rivals that of any mainstream, pre-fab superstar, get hundreds of beautiful women in his movies for free…you figure it out.

Should filmmakers listen to him? Absolutely. In his own words, Lloyd has been making ten-cent movies for a very long time, without any kind of major studio backing. He’s silly, crude, and completely insane, but he knows what he’s talking about.

First of all, the thing is epic. Five discs covers a lot of ground. What sets this apart from, say, Charles (Full Moon) Band’s overpriced instructional set, is its sheer depth. Financing, budgeting, casting, special effects, editing, marketing, distribution, and potential screw-ups are all covered. Want to know why you don’t give your actors real alcohol on a bar set? Watch the making of Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace, where the film’s star has had more to drink than everyone in Metallica. It isn’t pretty.

The set features some outstanding interviews, with horror superstars George A. Romero, Stuart Gordon, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. There is also advice from Lloyd’s old friends John Badham (Saturday Night Fever), John Avildsen (Rocky), and Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park). Marvel’s Stan Lee and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman talk about making their own damn comic books. And if you’d rather show movies than make them, there are sections on running independent video stores and movie theaters.

Of course, there’s also plenty of Troma madness. Some members of the Troma team go dumpster-diving at CBS headquarters. There’s footage of a drunken idiot defiling a man’s suitcase. Lloyd harasses a little dog with his camcorder. I told you he’s a genius.

The Bela Lugosi Collection

Don’t let the packaging fool you. First of all, it’s a flipper disc, with five movies spread over two sides. Universal can overprice it all they want, but the fact remains that they’re gypping monster fans once again. Flipper discs are the worst. Secondly, there are no extras to be found. This is pretty much a movie-only affair.

The movies, though, are a lot of fun. Four of them are the legendary Lugosi-Karloff team-ups, including the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired classics, The Raven and The Black Cat. Lugosi goes gangster in Black Friday. Weird science abounds in The Invisible Ray. The Karloff-less Murders in the Rue Morgue is still fun, particularly if gorilla suits are your thing.

Truth be told, even though I hate the packaging (two discs would have been better) and the price (two discs would have been worth it), this set is historic. The DVD’s for Dracula, Frankenstein, and others could only tide us over for so long. The movies aren’t flawless, but completists will flip.