Clean-Up Time: A Note on Some Older Posts

Greetings. I have gotten a couple of emails recently from readers alerting me to the fact that photos aren't showing up on a number of the pre-2010 posts here at Fascination. It looks like the problem is with the Zooomr, the image-hosting server I used here some in the early days of the site. Apparently Zooomr has crashed and burned and the photos are no longer accessible. Luckily I have all of the images on my hard drive so I can reload them to blogger but it will take awhile. So for those perusing the archives here, thanks for your patience as I go back and redo some of the older posts. I'm sorry I wasn't aware of this but I stopped using Zooomr quite awhile ago after Blogger added a lot of additional space for photos. I promise I will get the back-pages looking good again as I want this to be a great place for fellow Jean Rollin fans to come and hang-out.

Young Man With the Big Beat Out Now

One of the most important archival music releases in recent memory landed in stores this week and I wanted to take a moment to mention it. The five-disc Young Man With the Big Beat from Sony Legacy is the ultimate celebration of the historic year Elvis Presley had in 1956. The beautiful oversized box includes all of the 1956 RCA master recordings
remastered, outtakes, live performances (including an entire unreleased concert) and rare interviews. It also includes a near 100 page coffee-table book and various memorabilia such as concert poster reproductions and even a copy of the Venus Room Flyer from Elvis' infamous 56' New Frontier Hotel Appearance. For those who can't splurge for the box-set, Sony is also offering a condensed 2CD Legacy Edition of Presley's legendary first album. Both collections are invaluable and offer up some of the best music ever recorded in deluxe packages that are essential for Elvis fans or for anyone interested in the year rock really exploded.

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Stephanie Rothman's The Velvet Vampire (1971) on DVD

The Velvet Vampire, one of the most interesting if little seen horror films from the early seventies, has just been given its first proper DVD courtesy of Shout Factory's Roger Corman's Cult Classics Collection. Stephanie Rothman's fascinating chiller, which features a lovely Celeste Yarnall as its title-charcter, has been grouped in an odd collection entitled Vampires, Mummies and Monsters and it shares space with Lady Frankenstein, Time Walker and Grotesque. Even though it has been released as part of a collection, Shout Factory has given The Velvet Vampire slight deluxe treatment and the film features an audio commentary with Yarnall and film-historian Nathaniel Thompson. Plus, Rothman's film has never looked better and comes in 16:9 enhanced widescreen. The Velvet Vampire is a flawed but important work from the undervalued Rothman and I am glad to see it has finally been given a good home on disc after years of shoddy treatment.

Lou Reed and Metallica's single "The View" now available

"The View", the first single from the upcoming Lou Reed and Metallica collaboration Lulu, is now available to download via iTunes. Here is the full track to listen to from Lulu's official site. People who know me know that there isn't anything in the world that excites me more than a new Lou Reed album so I am counting down the days till the full length album lands right around Halloween this year.

This is How it's Done: John Carpenter's The Ward

While I am one the biggest Ghosts of Mars fan on the planet, I think that John Carpenter’s latest film The Ward may very well be his best work in more than twenty years. Carpenter’s first feature-length film since Ghosts of Mars a decade ago might not be as ambitious as his In the Mouth of Madness (1993) or as exciting as his Vampires (1996) but he hasn’t delivered a work directed quite as beautifully directed since They Live, his sadly undervalued masterpiece from 1988.

Set in the mid-sixties and starring the fascinating young actress Amber Heard (finally an ‘it’ girl with some real chops) as Kristen, a troubled girl who ends up in an all-female wing of a mental hospital after burning down a farm house for no apparent reason, The Ward is a smart and sneaky fright-film from the pen of Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, a young writing and directing team responsible for 2005’s Long Distance. While there isn't anything particularly original about the script and the film's ending is perhaps a little too transparent, The Ward is a real filmmaker's film as Carpenter's skill behind the camera easily makes up for any pedestrian moments the plot suffers from.

While Carpenter's direction controls the film, The Ward is a production overflowing with talent in fron of and behind the camera. With its splendid supporting cast, including Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Laura-Leigh, Lyndsay Fonseca and the always great Jared Harris, lively score courtesy of Mark Kilian (sitting in for Carpenter who opted out of providing the music for this one), and eerie photography by talented cinematographer Yaron Orbach (a man not usually associated with horror films), The Ward is an extremely well-rendered film that is so much more successful as a true fright-film than any other released in 2011.

Even though Amber Heard is absolutely terrific as the lead, the real star of The Ward is indeed Carpenter’s direction, which is at its confident and controlled best. When I met John Carpenter a few years back, around the time he had finished up working on his Masters of Horror episodes, about the last thing he seemed interested in was directing another feature so to see him come back with a work so polished, muscular and beautifully finessed is a really fabulous. The Ward is also incredibly contemporary feeling and outside of a marvelous visual and musical cue inspired by Halloween this is not at all Carpenter in summation mode…this is the man firing on all cylinders again and the news that he is preppy another film is extremely welcome.

Like most of John Carpenter’s great films, The Ward was released to a mostly hostile critical reception earlier this year and sadly it didn’t even have a chance to become a popular success as its time in theaters was limited at best. Pity, as this is a wonderfully elegant and well-made horror film overflowing with style. Watching this I kept saying to myself, 'This is how you do it…this is how its done', and I felt truly privileged to watch a new film by of our great American masters, who has been out of sight far too long.

The Ward looks fabulous on both DVD and Blu-ray but sadly it has arrived with only extra, an enjoyable audio commentary track from Carpenter and Jared Harris. While many have gone out of their way to trash The Ward, I found this to be quite a return to form for the great Carpenter even if it finally doesn't rank among his very best, as it doesn't have the transformative power of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, Escape From New York or Christine. I am confident that time will catch up with The Ward though and it will eventually be viewed as quite a special little-film from one of our great American auteurs.

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The Loneliness of the Short Distance Driver: Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011)

Every time I go to the movies I hope and pray that I will come across a new film that moves me as much as my favorites from the seventies and early eighties. With each passing year it seems like I find fewer and fewer modern works that spark that special flame in me but when I do I am both exhilarated and grateful. Drive, the masterful new film from director Nicolas Winding Refn is one of those rare new movies that hits me as hard as those films that I routinely list as my favorites, like Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas. It’s an audacious, gripping and absolutely pulverizing work that combines the themes of the seventies existential neo-noirs with the dazzling style of the eighties Cinema du Look.

Like a film that it owes much to stylistically and thematically, Paul Schrader’s still-stunning American Gigolo (1980), Drive is centered on man who has become a prisoner of a persona he has tried so hard to cultivate. Like Schrader’s lonely Julian Kaye, Drive’s unnamed main-character is a man who has worked his whole life pushing people away when all he truly wants is to let someone in. As played by Ryan Gosling, who delivers a elegiac and poetic performance that stands with the best I have ever seen, the character in Drive is a man who seems to be having a constant inner-monologue...a man who finally realizes that beneath the cool façade he has worked so hard to create lies a human being with the capability of doing something meaningful and pure. As my buddy James Hansen writes in his eloquent piece over at Out 1, "He is nothing if not a reluctant super hero decidedly unaware of his powers due to their quotidian function in his life."

Opening with a long near-silent sequence that pays homage to the works of Michal Mann (who owed much to Jean-Pierre Melville), Drive suddenly becomes a work driven by sound during its striking opening credit sequence, which seems to pay homage to incredibly both American Gigolo and Risky Business. From the first frame to the last, Drive is a stylistic triumph for Refn but it's also filled with the kind of emotional depth rare for American films released today, especially the many modern action films that Drive could have become in less intelligent and thoughtful hands.

Directed with a fierce fluidity by Refn, Drive is a, rightfully, propulsive experience that manages to feel frenetic even when it is chillingly still. While the film features several of the most shocking and well-done sporadic moments of violence I have seen in quite a while, Drive is at its most potent in the scenes between Gosling and the character played by Carey Mulligan, who says more with her touching smile than most actresses can say with the best dialogue at their disposal. The two have a palatable chemistry that radiates off the screen, and at times it feels like Refn is allowing us to look at a private, but destined to be doomed, intimacy we probably shouldn’t be allowed to see.

While the film is controlled by Gosling and Mulligan’s poignant performances, Refn has gathered together a truly outstanding cast of supporting players including a magnificent Albert Brooks, a menacing Ron Perlman and a wonderfully damaged Bryan Cranston, who plays Gosling’s mentor and only friend in the world. Christina Hendricks (good in a part originally meant for Bobbi Starr), Oscar Isaac and Andy San Dimas also pop up in the film, one of the most perfectly cast of the year.

Along with Refn’s confident and expertly handled direction, and the performances given by his cast, much of Drive’s success is due to the wonderfully sleek and shimmering photography of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, a gifted artist who has usually been confined to photographing films that aren’t deserving of his talents. With Drive Refn really allows Sigel to shine, and if all the film had to offer was its look it would still be among the most notable of the year.

Also delivering devastating work is composer Cliff Martinez, as his score here joins the ranks of his best (which include Solaris and the more recent Contagion). His music, as well as the songs carefully selected for the film, tells us as much about Gosling’s character as Tangerine Dream’s score did for James Caan in Thief or Moby’s "God Moving over the Face of the Waters" did for De Niro and Pacino in Heat. Martinez's score becomes its own character in Drive, a work in which each sound seems as carefully chosen as every movement.

Drive has had its critics (including my friend Tony Dayoub over Cinema Viewfinder) but it moved me like no other film has in a very long time. It even provoked a physical response as I left the theater shaking and I have barely slept since I saw it, as images of Gosling’s haunted stare keep replaying in my head. Drive left me feeling shook-up, dazed and, like my favorite films, if left me feeling like I had been granted a glimpse into part of myself that I didn’t know (or had forgotten) about.

Moments with Brigitte Lahaie: L'exécutrice (1986)

In the fifteen plus year period between her roles in Jean Rollin's The Escapees and Two Orphan Vampires, Brigitte Lahaie maintained a fairly prolific pace in French Cinema and television. About five years after The Escapees failed to captivate audiences, Lahaie shot one of her most intriguing productions away from Rollin, the cheesy but fun L'exécutrice. Available on DVD outside of the US (as well as being available via a fan-subtitled version on the web) L'exécutrice has yet to find an official American release so I thought I would present some screenshots of Brigitte in the film for fellow devotees here.

L'exécutrice is a fairly routine police-based action thriller centered on a young detective named Martine, played by Lahaie, who is attempting to track down a young girl who has been kidnapped by a seedy gang of pornographers. Even though it is directed fairly-well by adult-filmmaker Michel Caputo, L'exécutrice would probably be mostly forgettable if it wasn't for Lahaie, who is both compelling and convincing in the lead. Caputo and Lahaie had worked on numerous adult productions before L'exécutrice and they both seem to be relishing the opportunity here to step out of the box and make something altogether unexpected for either of them. L'exécutrice benefits greatly from the stylish cinematography of Gérard Simon, an artist who has gone on to a lot of varied work in France, and is drenched with that Cinema-du-look feel that was so in vogue by the mid-eighties. L'exécutrice might be fairly by-the-numbers but it's fun and fans of Brigitte Lahaie will get quite a kick out of seeing her play a part that could have been written for Alain Delon or even Clint Eastwood had this been an American production.

Sergio Martino's Torso on the way from Blue Underground

Blue Underground is getting ready to unleash Sergio Martino's Torso (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), one of my favorite films from the seventies, in a couple of weeks on brand-new DVD and Blu-ray versions and I wanted to make special mention of it here and supply links. Martinos ferocious 1973 Giallo starring the dream-team of Tina Aumont, Suzy Kendall and Luc Merenda is absolutely brilliant and hugely influential, more than any other film Torso laid the blueprint for the so called Torture-Porn (a term I despise) genre that came about this past decade, and it has lost none of its power. Eli Roth's equally brilliant Hostel Part 2 is particularly indebted to Martino's shocking classic, and it would make a perfect companion piece for a DIY double-feature. Written by the great Ernesto Gastaldi, Torso will be released on September 27th on a DVD featuring the uncut English language version of the film and Blu-ray, which comes armed with the uncut Italian version as well. Both also feature a new interview with Martino and information can be found at the above links.

Jean Rollin Opening Titles: The Iron Rose

Jean Rollin Streaming at Netflix

I was very happy to discover recently that Netflix is now offering several of Jean Rollin's key films in their streaming program and I wanted to alert fellow members. The films currently available for streaming are Rape of the Vampire, The Nude Vampire, Shiver of the Vampires, Requiem for a Vampire, Demoniacs, Lips of Blood, Night of the Hunted, Living Dead Girl, Two Orphan Vampires and Dracula's Fiancee. With Netflix's prices for shipping discs on the rise, their streaming content is really the economical way to go and I was happy to see that they offer these Rollin titles.

20 From 20 Years Ago

I have to admit that 1991 has been on my mind a lot lately. I suppose that is to be expected since I graduated from High School in '91 and my twentieth class reunion just came and went (I didn’t attend btw). It’s fitting that it has been the music of that 12 month period that has been gathering so much attention as of late because, when I think about my life if ’91, it is the music that first crosses my mind. My God, what a pivotal year it was and I was the perfect age for everything that was gathering steam that year from Grunge to Trip-Hop to Shoegazing. Looking back at the recordings that were released in 1991 I am dumbfounded by just how many great albums came out (the list below is just a small sample) and how much my memories of the period are wrapped up in them. I must admit that it has only been recently that I started listening again to so much of the music that obsessed me in that period because I have so many mixed-emotions about my life in the early nineties. I have happily found though that reintroducing myself to a lot of the music again from that important year has proved a rather healing and celebratory experience for me.

I made mix-tapes (remember those) constantly in 1991 for friends, girlfriends and myself. I was John Cusack in High Fidelity struggling for the perfect mix that would somehow communicate whatever particular message I was trying to get across. Thinking back to those tapes and looking at all of the amazing albums released that year brought a flood of memories back. Everything from sitting in sixth period science class passing notes with my long-lost (and much-missed) friend Allyson in that final run of high school, to driving to the first Lollapalooza in Chicago with my friends Brian, Dave and Bryan, to entering college with all of the confusion and expectations that any 18 should have…and through it all was the music and the year that my time finally, for a brief period, caught up with my tastes.

So to pay tribute to a pivotal year in my life, now twenty years gone, I thought I would present my personal picks for the twenty best albums of 1991 and my favorite songs off them. Hopefully some of these titles might bring back some memories for my readers here as well, as I know many of us are about the same age and might be going through the same sort of nostalgia. Perhaps some of my musical heroes from the early nineties might have failed me (turning up dead before their time or, worse, on reality TV shows) but, to paraphrase Iggy Pop, at least when they played their music they played it like nothing else mattered...and, for a time, nothing did.


1. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless



Favorite Track: "Sometimes"

2. Massive Attack: Blue Lines



Favorite Track: "Safe From Harm"

3. Hole: Pretty on the Inside



Favorite Track: "Pretty on the Inside"

4. Throwing Muses: The Real Ramona



Favorite Track: "Hook in her Head"

5. Pixies: Trompe le Monde



Favorite Track: "Letter to Memphis"

6. The Smashing Pumpkins: Gish



Favorite Track: "I'm Going Crazy"

7. Pearl Jam: Ten



Favorite Track: "Black"

8. Dinosaur Jr.: Green Mind



Favorite Track: "I Live for that Look"

9. Fugazi: Steady Diet of Nothing



Favorite Track: "Exit Only"

10. Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard: Shotgun Wedding



Favorite Track: "Endless Fall"

11. Feelies: Time for a Witness



Favorite Track: "What She Said"

12. Guns n' Roses: Use Your Illusion 1+2 (I have always considered this a Double Album)



Favorite Track: "Coma"

13. Nirvana: Nevermind



Favorite Track: Territorial Pissings"

14. Blur: Leisure



Favorite Track: "There's No Other Way"

15. Elvis Costello: Mighty Like a Rose



Favorite Track: "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4"

16. Diamanda Galas: Plague Mass



Favorite Track: "Confessional (Give Me Sodomy Or Give Me Death)"

17. Butthole Surfers: Pioughd



Favorite Track: "Hurdy Gurdy Man"

18. B.A.D. II: The Globe



Favorite Track: "Innocent Child"

19. Pigface: GUB



Favorite Track: "Weightless"

20. Mudhoney: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge



Favorite Track: "Let it Slide"