Episode 10 - I Saw the Movie

Marty and Mike talk about 2011's I Saw the Devil from Korean director Jee-woon Kim. This bloodthirsty and brutal tale of revenge blew them both away and they talk at some length about how this film is different from others in the genre. The conversation continues and involves the surprisingly good Piranha from 2010. Enjoy the conversation and be sure to let us know what you think on Facebook or at flickersfrom@yahoo.com.

Episode 9 - Mi Dispiace Lucio

In episode 9 of the podcast, Mike and I attempt to make amends for all the bad things we've said about Lucio Fulci. We talk about two of his films that really impressed us both, 1972's Don't Torture a Duckling and 1982's The New York Ripper. These are both wonderful films that are distinctly and obviously "Fulci-films". These two are very different from each other, and even though "Don't Torture a Duckling" is focused on the murder of children, it ended up being far less grim and graphic than "New York Ripper" which is still very shocking in it's portrayal of sexualized violence. This podcast episode is quite a bit longer than our normal show, we began to ruminate on Lucio and lost track of time. We hope you enjoy it and that you will contact us with suggestions for future shows.
-Marty

A Very Serbian Holiday

So, over the recent holiday break, in an attempt to break out of the annual cycle of It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, I watched two films that I have heard a lot about, 2010's A Serbian Film and 2009's The Life and Death of a Porno Gang. To say that these films are the polar opposites of my standard holiday fare would be an epic understatement.
Where to begin...
If you read anything about either of these dark Serbian visions, then you may know what you're in store for. If you haven't heard of them, that might be for the best, since these are some of the most bleak and nihilistic movies I have experienced. Both were very slickly produced and extremely well acted, maybe a little TOO well acted in spots.
Porno Gang focuses on a young wannabe filmmaker who ends up working in the adult film industry in Serbia and finds freedom in the sexual liberation of that environment. However, he has a larger dream, he wants to create art and not just simply a marketable product. He gathers a motley group of acquaintances and they form a troupe, a Porno Gang, that travels the Serbian countryside in a van, covered with hand-drawn genitalia, putting on a live sex show for the folks in the hinterlands. The local farmers come to see the show but the leaders of each little township do not want such a corrupting force to stick around, and so the porno gang is chased out of town after town. The leader of the troupe, Marko, is approached at one point by a German who is living in Serbia, and he is offered a lot of money to help make snuff films, which the German has an apparently large market for. The setup is that, as they go to each community, the German will find people there who willingly ( sometimes eagerly ) offer themselves up to be filmed as they kill themselves ( or are killed ). Each of these people has a story about why it would be better for them to die than to continue living, so Marko and his cohorts agree and the viewer is treated to several brutal scenes. I know what you're thinking, this sounds like ideal Christmas fare, but wait, it's at this point that things turn from bad to worse, eventually slipping all the way over into totally f-ed up.
The Life and Death of a Porno Gang was not simply an exploitation film, I think there was truly something being said about the state of life in Serbia. These hopeful miscreants were truly trying to do something different and beautiful, to spread a sexual enlightenment through the backwards countryside. It was as though they wanted to instigate a 60's-style sexual revolution through their presentations. At each turn though, their dreams were stifled by the repressive religious and cultural forces in each township. It is during this moment of seeming defeat that "big business" steps in, waving money around and promising to make everything ok. What ends up happening is that these idealistic upstarts sacrifice themselves and their countrymen for the prurient desires of the rest of the decadent world, until, at the end, there is only one, final, ultimate way out.
I felt like there was only one way to follow up on Porno Gang, so I finally watched the copy of "A Serbian Film" that I had been keeping at arms length for at least a month. There has been much written of the scenes of depravity and violence that are on display in this film. I, and maybe you do too, already knew what I was going to be shown, and it really was worse in my mind than it ended up being in the actual film itself. I am not going to try to act tough here though, even knowing what was coming, I was shocked, even sickened by what was shown. There were certain moments, little revelations, that I am likely to remember forever. The production values are really top-notch, the acting and writing all ring true, the music set the perfect tone throughout, and the special effects were far too believable at times.
The story, which has been recounted several times online, is of Milos, a legendary, semi-retired porn actor in Serbia who is married and the father of precious little boy. He is trying to get by on his savings from his days as an "Artist of F--k". Much like the characters in Porno Gang, he is approached by a wealthy filmmaker who offers a huge amount of money to Milos to make "just one more film", promising him that he and his family will have enough money to take care of his son through his old age. Milos, being a devoted family man, reluctantly agrees and the film begins it's spiraling descent into darkness. Again similarly to Porno Gang, this film that is being made is a sexually violent snuff film with artistic trappings. Milos resists at first, not comfortable with some of the scenarios he is forced into. It is at this point that the unsavory filmmaker subjects Milos to injections of a horse aphrodisiac which turns him into a slavering, unthinking beast who wants only to fulfill his sexual cravings. During this phase of the movie, Milos awakens in a daze, with several days missing in his mind. He returns home to find his wife and young son missing, and he returns to the locations where the snuff film was being shot, in search of them and of answers to the missing time. This is the most "movie" moment in the film, with Milos discovering tapes of what had transpired and seeing the depths he had sunk to in his drug-induced haze.
If you've read as much as I have about this movie, then you know several of the key scenes, and yes they do happen, and yes they are shocking, but the visuals aren't as graphic or shocking as they could've been ( thankfully! ). It is the ideas of these situations that are truly horrifying and soul-crushing. Once again, though, this is not just pure exploitation. Some have argued that the filmmakers have tried to assign meaning to the events portrayed in the film after-the-fact, but I would disagree with this assertion. Director Srdjan Spasojevic clearly had a vision of what he wanted this movie to say, and it is far to beautifully constructed for me to think that his goal was simply to throw sex and violence on the screen. Is it a moral statement on the porn industry, saying that it leads to only violence and the destruction of lives on every level? Is it an allegorical tale about Serbia as a country, and how it tried to climb out of a dark period, lured by promises of wealth, only to have the truth of the situation bring everything crashing down. There is much to chew on here, but there will not be many people who can make it all the way through "A Serbian Film" much less ruminate about its true meaning after the fact.
Of the two films, A Serbian Film was for more slick and shiny, with an obviously higher budget. I had heard so much about this movie that I think it served to diminish its impact significantly. I was prepared for much worse than I was given. Porno Gang, on the other hand, was something I was much less familiar with, and I expected much less emotional impact from it, and it was the emotional aspects which really delivered the most vicious blows and left me shaking at the end. Perhaps this is what happens when you come into a film with so many preloaded expectations. If you are someone who, like me, tends towards the transgressive, these are two films that must be seen, if for nothing else than to put a couple more notches in your belt. Christmas 2010 will be my Serbian Christmas I suppose, and it left me with more than visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
-Marty

Episode 8 - Cornbread or Communion Wafers

Episode 8 of the podcast features two wonderful films ( this time we aren't putting that word in quotes ). The first film we cover is 1975's Poor Pretty Eddie, starring Shelley Winters, Leslie Uggams, Slim Pickens and Ted Cassidy. It is an amazingly twisty and twisted story of backwood, hayseed, intrigue that gets into some very surreal and uncomfortable areas. The second movie is 1976's Alice Sweet Alice which features Brooke Shields in her first film role. It is a striking film that deals with the murder of a child, and the turmoil that would arise from such a nightmarish situation, and the attempt to find out who was responsible. In a bit of a departure from the norm, both of these movies are great and we totally recommend them both to all of you. We hope you enjoy the conversation and please keep writing to us, perhaps with ideas for other undiscovered gems.

Episode 7 - Fist Full of Fulci

Episode 7 is a full-on Fulci-fest. We talk about two of Lucio Fulci's "classic" films. Zombie from 1979 and Gates of Hell from 1980. You will ask yourself why we subject ourselves to such inhumane situations, but I am afraid that we can not provide a sensible answer. Make sure your clothes have been scotchguarded, or else you might get some on you.

-Marty

Trick Baby

Last night I watched the 1972 film Trick Baby from director Larry Yust. The film is set in Philadelphia and focuses on two main characters. Blue Howard played by Mel Stewart and White Folks played by Kiel Martin. Martin's character ( who is only referred to as "Folks" in the film ) is the child of a black mother and white father. Despite his mixed heritage, Folks looks totally white and this is the key plot device that is exploited in the film. Folks and Blue are con-men and their cons are impressive bits of deceit. You get the feeling, while watching the movie, that they have kept their sights on smaller fish for the most part. A confluence of events, though, conspire to bring these two small-time hustlers into contact with a very dangerous group of individuals including corrupt cops and members of the mob. The plot is well laid-out and developed but it is fairly cut and dried. Director Yust manages to shoe-horn a good bit of character development into the proceedings and this is what really raises Trick Baby above other films of its ilk. Blue thinks of Folks as a black man, and it seems that Folks also feels the same. All the people around them though, both white and black, don't trust Folks and make no bones about saying so. Folks is a character who uses his apparent whiteness as a key component of the cons that he and Blue pull. It is an ultimate disguise and it raises questions of what really constitutes "race". At certain key moments we are shown contrasting views of white and black culture and the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions. We will see footage of a fancy dinner party attended solely by wealthy white people and interspersed throughout will be scenes from a bar with only black patrons. This sort of juxtaposition is not subtle, but it did not seem to be intended to illustrate any single specific idea. There was no "This is good" and "This is bad" statement applied in these comparisons, just the presentation of two very separate worlds. I think it forces the question of just how different are these worlds really, and if we were able to choose which world we wanted to live in ( which the Folks character could do ), which one would we choose. The bottom line on Trick Baby is that it is a well-told story of two charming con-men. There is also a lot in there to make you think about race in a broader context. Like the best blaxploitation films, there is more than meets the eye if you want to open yourself to it.
-Marty

Messiah of Evil

Messiah of Evil, aka Dead People is a 1973 film from director Willard Huyck who is probably more notable for his writing credits than his directing work. Don't let the fact that he directed Best Defense or Howard the Duck discourage you from checking out this atmospheric little known shocker. The story concerns a young woman traveling alone to a remote sea side California community to reconnect with her father from whom she's become estranged. She had been in communication with him via letters he would send to update her on his progress in regards to his work as a painter. His character being an artist allows for some really interesting set design when she finally arrives at his home. As his letters begin to take on a dark and somewhat sinister tone she feels compelled to go investigate the situation for her self. Along the way she begins to have strange encounters with an increasingly curious assortment of townsfolk. The film's sense of oddness within the confines of a seemingly average small town, put me in mind of David Lynch, but the overwhelming influence in my opinion is clearly H.P. Lovecraft. To reveal much more about the plot would be a disservice to you, as the way the story slowly reveals its self is what I found to be such a pleasure about this movie. There are some wonderfully creepy set pieces and the supporting cast all do a good job carrying things along. The film, although clearly a low budget effort, manages to have more of the creeping sense of dread and foreboding, the hallmark of Lovecraft's writing, than almost any film I've seen based on his writing directly. Clearly John Carpenter should have sat down and watched this before wading into Lovecraftian territory with In the Mouth of Madness, a mysteriously overrated film in my opinion. The gore in minimal, but effective and it is much more about the atmosphere and the feel of the film than pure shock value at any rate. I would highly recommend that any fan of 70's genre movies seek this little jewel out.

-Mike

Macabrelujah

Although Marty and I are currently in the process of developing some seriously insidious, CIA level market research information gathering technology, we have as yet been unsuccessful so we have no real way to determine what the exact demographic make up of our listeners might be. This being the case, I'm not sure how many of you folks are familiar with the original syndicated run of Elvira's Movie Macabre. This wonderful nugget of early to mid eighties cheese was, for me at least, an integral part of my development film wise and well...let's just say that there was alot of things for a teenage boy to enjoy about Movie Macabre. The reason for this post is to happily announce Elvira's triumphant return to the syndicated airwaves. The first episode of the new series even featured Night of The Living Dead as the feature film. It's unclear at this point if she intends to feature more quality films, NOTLD in my opinion is a classic, or if she will return to her more B movie roots, we can only hope. Long pre-dating MST3K, the lovely Mistress of the Dark's commentary about the films was almost always as entertaining as the films themselves. I would encourage you all to give Elvira a shot, I'm sure you'll find something to enjoy about Movie Macabre. Whether it's nostalgia for the days when horror hosts were a fixture of local Saturday night programming or a chance for some of our younger listeners to glimpse the good old days, I'll spare you the "back in my day" speech, I think we can all agree that Elvira's return is a welcome one for genre and B movie fans everywhere. Follow this link, Elvira on HULU, to get a little taste of the original series. Check your local listings for show times.

-Mike

Episode 6 Posted!

In Episode 6, Mike and Marty discuss two "classics" from the 80s that tried to cash in on the success of Ridley Scott's blockbuster 1979 film Alien. The films covered are 1980's Contamination from italian maestro Luigi Cozzi, and 1985's Creature from William Malone and featuring the inimitable Klaus Kinski. These are both low-budget, earnest efforts from guys who really really love to make movies, and though neither can be considered a total success, they are both worth your time if you can find enough patience to ignore some of the more glaring problems they each have. Enjoy the podcast and let us know what you think at "flickersfrom@yahoo.com".
-Marty

Italian Cinemeh

In Episode 5 of the podcast, Marty and Mike talk about two "epics" of Italian sci-fi, 1979's The Humanoid and 1978's Starcrash. These two are wonderfully bad with some recognizable faces littered amongst the cast. If you were a reader of Starlog magazine in the Star Wars era, you are probably familiar with at least Starcrash, and ,if you are like me, all it took was knowing that Richard Kiel stars in it to make me desperate to watch The Humanoid. These are far from good films, but they both are so utterly charming that, each time I would wake up from being bored to sleep, I found myself really enjoying them in all their ineffable badness. Enjoy the show and let us know what you think! Oh, and if you're concerned about whether your hog is on meth, here is a PSA that will give you all the information you need.
-Marty