TRAILER PARK OF TERROR

My review of TRILER PARK OF TERROR is now posted online over at DVD Holocaust at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=499

A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

My review of Lucio Fulci's classic 1971 giallo A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is now posted online over at DVD Holocaust at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=496

HIP POCKET SLEAZE Update

The revised and updated edition of my book Hip Pocket Sleaze is due to be published by Headpress in the coming months, check out this link for more info:

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=98

Hip Pocket Sleaze is an introduction to the world of vintage, lurid adult paperbacks. Charting the rise of sleazy pulp fiction during the 1960s and 1970s and reviewing many of the key titles, the book takes an informed look at the various genres and markets from this enormously prolific era, from groundbreaking gay and lesbian-themed books to the Armed Services Editions. Influential authors, publishers and cover artists are profiled and interviewed, including the "godfather of gore" H. G. Lewis, cult lesbian author Ann Bannon, fetish artist par excellence Bill Ward and many others.

A companion to Bad Mags, Headpress' guide to sensationalist magazines of the 1970s, Hip Pocket Sleaze also offers extensive bibliographical information and plenty of outrageous cover art.

"John Harrison's pioneering work in this fascinating book of sexy pulp fiction will open up an entirely new area of scholarship, collecting and just plain fun to readers and fans the world over." -- Gary Lovisi, editor of Paperback Parade; author of Dames, Dolls & Delinquents; The Sexy Digests

"A lifetime of research and reading is dished out with gloops of anecdotal sleaze and unique insight ..." -- Jack Sargeant, Deathtripping; Naked Lens; Lost Highways

THE HURT LOCKER

2009/USA/Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

The war film genre has always been a continually evolving one. And it’s probably no coincidence that the depiction of war on film has reflected the way in which its coverage in the media is also constantly morphing with the advances in communications and technology.

In the 1940’s, we huddled around the radio or sat in cinemas watching carefully edited and cheerfully narrated newsreels of gung-ho allied soldiers, charging into a wall of enemy fire with a smile on their face and their national flag in their hearts. In the 40’s, the line between good and evil, and us and them, was clearly defined and mostly unquestioned.

As the late-1960s rolled along to the beat of psychedelic pop and the pungent odour of marijuana, the Vietnam War brought the horrors of armed conflict straight into the living room. With nightly reports being filed from the front lines, and broadcast live on the evening news, the politics of war became more complex, and trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys wasn’t so easy anymore.

In 2010, with the second US-led Iraq conflict still unresolved after six years, it seems as if very little is able to be kept from us anymore. Photos of degraded Iraqi prisoners confront us from the front page of every newspaper in the world, followed shortly by ghastly internet videos depicting Americans being beheaded by extreme Iraqi militants (in what can be seem as one form of semi-legitimized snuff film). Even grainy mobile phone footage of a dishevelled Saddam Hussein swinging from the gallows can be accessed and watched at the stroke of a keyboard button, mere hours after the actual event.

In many ways, the Iraqi conflict has progressed into some kind of ultimate-stakes, multimedia reality show, and it’s from this smoky atmosphere that The Hurt Locker materialises. The latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days) is an intense, fairly relentless war movie that deals primarily with the issue of combat as a drug, and an addiction that can mean sudden, violent death for anyone around them.

Following a small bomb disposal unit as they go about their treacherous business, The Hurt Locker doesn’t exactly have a complex, plot driven storyline. It’s basically a character study that’s structured around a series of individual set pieces. What makes it work is the almost continual thread of tension that weaves its way throughout the entire film, with the viewer always expecting, but never really knowing when, the next moment of violence will suddenly erupt (and when it does, it’s almost a relief). And when the tension’s not on the battlefield, it’s in the barracks, as the once cohesive unit comes to odds with their new, brash and seemingly irresponsible adrenalin junkie team leader, Sergeant William James (brilliantly played with a white trash edge by Jeremy Renner, who has early stunned me with his portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 Dahmer biopic).

With the gritty edge of a frontline television report to it (though thankfully not overly heavy on the shaky hand-held camera), and with its indelible sense of ‘stranger in a strange land’ isolation (it was filmed in Kuwait and Jordan), The Hurt Locker is one of the best American films I have seen for some time (even though its third act is something of a comedown after the first two), and an almost instant addition to the list of classic war cinema. A real triumph from Kathryn Bigelow and all involved, and one which I’d love to see Bigelow rewarded with an Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards. If she happens to win, it will be one of the most deserved winners in the Oscars’ recent lacklustre history (and apart from being the first female to win a Best Director Oscar, it would also be great to see Bigelow upstage former husband James Cameron by denying him a win for the entertaining but way overbloated and hyped Avatar). A win for Renner as Best Actor would also not go undeserved.

Here’s hoping.



Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

THE WOLFMAN

2010/USA/Directed by Joe Johnston



Along with Dracula, the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman was one of the ‘big four’ of horror characters featured by Universal Studios in their genre films of the 1930s and 40s. First featured by the studio in 1935s The Werewolf of London, the character would enter its classic period six years later when Lon Chaney Jr. played the title character in The Wolf Man, reprising the role in four follow-up films for Universal: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and the comedic classic Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Subsequent decades saw variations of the lycanthropy curse featured in such diverse films as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Hammer’s masterful The Curse of the Werewolf (1961, my personal favourite werewolf film), a string of Spanish horror films starring and directed by Paul Naschy, the 1971 biker flick Werewolves on Wheels, the 1981 double-whammy of Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (both enjoyable but somewhat overrated in my book) and the Michael J Fox spoof Teen Wolf (1985). And of course, who can forget Michael Jackson’s hairy transformation in his classic Thriller video.

Now Universal is attempting to resurrect their line-up of classic horror characters with this updating of the werewolf legend. One of the more troubled productions in recent Hollywood history, The Wolfman (the abbreviation of the title stops here) was initially set to be directed by music video veteran Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and David Self (Road to Perdition). Sets were built at Pinewood for a February 2008 shoot, but Romanek quit four weeks before filming, citing creative differences (apparently Universal execs wanted much of the psychological angle cut out in favor of a more action-oriented film). Enter Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III), who is bought in to helm the film with barely a few weeks notice and is given little time to plan how to put his own stamp on the film. Even Danny Elfman’s gothic score is scrapped and replaced by a more modern industrial soundscape composed by Paul Haslinger, before they eventually went back to Elfman’s original soundtrack. As studio and director bickered over the final cut (with rumors that two different cuts of the film were being prepared, one by Johnston and one by the studio) and special effects constantly getting tinkered with, the release of The Wolfman continued to get pushed back, from November 2008 to February (then April and November) 2009, until the film finally saw the light of the cinema projector in February 2010.



With the addition of a couple of clearly telegraphed ‘twists’, Joe Johnston’s finished film is a fairly faithful remake of the 1941 original, with Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, a stage actor in 1880s England who returns home to his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins) following the violent killing of his older brother, supposedly by a wild animal. While visiting a gypsy camp, Talbot is bitten by a wolf and soon succumbs to the curse of lycanthropy, sprouting excess body hair and snarling wildly as her terrorizes (and tears apart) the local countryside, before he’s captured and put in an asylum, given ice baths and exhibited to a medical board, and led on a chase across the rooftops of London (highlighted by a stunning shot of the creature perched on a gargoyle, howling at the full moon), all the while trying not to disembowel his brother’s fiancée Gwen (Emily Blunt), with whom he’s fallen in love.



So, after all the struggles to get the Wolfman howling again on screen, was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. Many critics of the film have signalled out its pacing and, at the risk of being clichéd, it is a valid criticism. Nowhere in the film is the behind the scenes bickering more evident than in its pacing. Slow as molasses in some parts, jarringly fast in others, the film never seems to find a natural rhythm. The combination of old-school make-up and modern CGI never quite melds, although thankfully the CGI is not of the ‘video game’ variety, and with the way the filmmakers wanted the wolfman to look and move, it’s clear that CGI was the only viable option. A lifelong dream project for him, Benicio Del Toro (who also co-produced) certainly does his best to look tortured, but never seems to really convince as Talbot (and he lacks the good-natured ‘chumminess’ that made Chaney Jr. so endearing in the role). And Anthony Hopkings puts in another fairly clichéd, by-the-numbers performance of the kind that he has been telegraphing in for the past decade. In Silence of the Lambs, I see Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, a complex, unnerving sociopath. In The Wolfman, I see Anthony Hopkins as, well, Anthony Hopkins. It’s almost as if he has become a caricature of his former great self. Emily Blunt is good but underused, and Hugo Weaving adds a bit of needed weight as a detective on the trail of the beast.



However, that isn’t to say The Wolfman doesn’t have a lot of good things going for it. It does. The cinematography by Shelly Johnson is dark and moody, foreboding and foggy but still wonderfully lush, and many of the sets and locations give the film a nice, epic feel. The film drips with a thick, gothic atmosphere, and Rick Baker’s make-up is once again superb, the veteran artist creating a wolfman that combines elements on Lon Chaney, Paul Naschy and Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf. There’s a few genuine scares (even if they are of the ‘quick shock’ variety) and the film has a surprisingly visceral edge, with bloody limbs flying everywhere during the wolfman’s rampaging outbursts. As he showed more successfully in The Rocketeer, Joe Johnston (soon to helm the Captain America movie) clearly loves genre material, and that love does show itself throughout The Wolfman, and it is just plain great to see a good old-fashioned monster movie up on the screen, one that is not populated by idiotic teens looking to have sex and party down before getting tortured and skinned alive by some generic psychopath.

While far from being the disaster it could have been given the film’s troubled production, The Wolfman is unfortunately not the definitive modern interpretation of the iconic character that many of us were hoping for. But it’s still a solid, reasonably entertaining and occasionally arousing production, and a much more genuine evocation of classic Universal horror cinema than the studios' string of recent Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser. It would be great to see a sequel that irons out all the wrinkles but, given the film’s much-plagued road to the screen, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

BLOOD LUST

BLOOD LUST

by

John Harrison

Creeping tails of wispy fog slithered their way up the tall window panes, shimmering with an eerie and ethereal glow in the cold light of the bright, full moon.

On the other side of the majestic glass, alone within the cavernous expanse of the isolated castle, Eva slept. Sheets of cool red satin hugged and highlighted her alluring naked form as she lay motionless on her back, as still as the night outside, and so deeply in sleep that she didn’t even sense the fog seeping it’s way through the keyhole and fine breaches in the window’s ornate frame.

The fog hugged the high walls and lushly carpeted floor as it slowly, purposefully made its way towards the bed, as if it had a heart and a soul lurking within its vapour, and was being driven by pure boiling lust. As the bluish-hued mist slowly nudged its way up under the sheets from the foot of the bed, Eva stirred slightly, her body stretching as she did so, but did not wake.

Beneath the sheets, the fog began to amass and attach itself around the silky skin of Eva’s lower legs, before it worked its way up around her thighs, the tingling sensation of arousal registering in the woman’s unconscious mind, causing her breath to deepen as her legs parted slightly and her hands flayed out to grip the sheets. Glistening with sweat, her chest began to heave upwards as the fingers of fog explored her torso, finding form and substance as they did so, until it was a pair of powerfully strong yet sensitive male hands that were travelling her body, bringing her every erogenous zone to life with an experienced precision that could have been mastered over centuries by the nosferatu that now had the woman in his grip, his handsomely cruel face breathing the hot air of passion over the nape of her neck, as he studied and drank in the beauty of the woman he was about to take and make his own.

Eva’s hands flung back and entangled themselves in her hair, rich and dark and flowing, as soft moans began to emanate from her moistened lips and her dreams became filled with flashing images of a powerful prince of the night, as much wild animal as he was passionate man, with blood red eyes that couldn’t be looked away from, and a body that was a sinewy mass of power and muscle.

Her body a simmering cauldron, Eva’s eyes opened and she awoke from her dreamy state just as her passion was about to be released. She stayed conscious for a mere split second, just long enough to see the man bare his taloned teeth and sink them into her soft, tender neck, feeding on her life’s blood as her body simultaneously climaxed. A scream that no one would ever hear echoed and reverberated around the halls of the castle as the visitor once again became sheathed in a web of fog and escaped into the night, leaving Eva exhausted, satisfied, and soon to be one of the beautiful undead.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

HALFTONE HEROES

Halftone Heroes is an exhibition featuring, and paying tribute to (via the art of Matthew Dunn), the long lost work of wartime artist William Henry Fletcher (WHF). With the majority of his original art destroyed shortly after his death, and any publications featuring his work being long out of print, this is a rare opportunity to journey into the world of WHF.

Location:The Owl And The Pussycat Gallery, 34 Swan Street, Richmond
Time:6:00PM Thursday, January 28th

VALE THE TOTE

It’s been a few years since the Tote Hotel in Collingwood was any sort of major hub for my social activities, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to stay away from the place during its final weekend of trading. The Tote has never been ‘my’ pub, and I had no desire to show up like an incongruous ghoul in order to lament the demise of a place I haven’t really frequented for some time.

I saw some great (and some less than great) live bands at the Tote, but the main thing I will miss about the place had already been taken away several years ago. Situated above the main bar and band room was the exotic confines of the Cobra Bar, decked out in bamboo with framed posters from old snake themed movies lining the walls, Phillipa would hold court behind the bar, lighting your cigarettes and serving up her superb cocktails with a fine hand and a sharp tongue.

Here in this often sweaty and cramped environment, we would gather to watch screenings of old 8mm films (some of which I organised myself), take in scatological plays performed by the Sissies & Sluts theatrical troupe, listen to DJs like Bebe Bombora and Betsy Jinx, watch burlesque dancers shake and shimmy, attend art exhibitions, or just sit and shoot the breeze over a cool beer, a hot pizza and some great music.

Things were never the same once Phillip gave up the reigns on the Cobra Bar – the name stayed the same, but the atmosphere was gone, and soon so was I. Going there became too depressing, like trying the chase the ghosts of a past. I kept the memories and moved on….

FAREWELL AUNT PEG

Golden Age adult film star Juliet Anderson, AKA Aunt Peg (one of the original mature age porn film identities), was found dead at her home in Berkeley CA on Jan 11. She was 71 and had been suffering from Crohn's Disease for some time.

Besides her trailblazing adult career in the late-1970s to early 1980s (which she started at the ripe old age of 39 and performed with the likes of John Holmes, Desireé Cousteau and Ron Jeremy), she was, at different ...times, a massage therapist, a relationship counselor & a teacher. Her real name was Judith Carr.



Juliet Anderson: Selected Filmography

Pretty Peaches (1978)

Inside Desireé Cousteau (1979)

Taboo (1980)

Aunt Peg (1980)

Talk Dirty to Me (1980)

Aunt Peg's Fullfilment (1981)

Fox Holes (1983)

DEATH & THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD

The porn industry is one which has thrown up more than its fair share of casualties. Murder (Artie Mitchell and the Wonderland Murders involving John Holmes) and scandal (such as the underaged career of super-starlet Traci Lords) sit side by side with the burn-outs, rampant drug use, falsified AIDS tests and reported involvement of organised crime which help shatter the fragile illusion that porn is somehow a legitimate offshoot of the mainstream film industry. But in the meat grinder world of American Adult Entertainment, where pretty and often naïve and vulnerable young women are both its greatest asset and its most disposable commodity, it is the self-inflicted death of a starlet which, to me, most vividly echoes all that is dark and disturbing about the industry.

The first suicide to rock the smut bizz in a big way was that of Colleen Applegate. A naturally pretty blonde and high school cheerleader with all-American looks, Applegate left her small hometown of Farmington, Minnesota in 1982, at the age of 18, and headed for California with her boyfriend, Mike Marcell (later, it would emerge that she left the small town after a suicide attempt some months earlier had been made public). Arriving in Los Angeles, Applegate and Marcell struggled for several months before an interview with World Modeling Agency owner Jim South led to Applegate posing for layouts in low-rent skin rags like Club, before quickly graduating to the prestigious publications such as Hustler and Penthouse.



Applegate’s wholesome looks and naivety eventually attracted porn film producers, and after her boyfriend split to join the U.S. Army, veteran adult producer Bobby Hollander dreamed up the screen name Shauna Grant and put Colleen to work in such hardcore flicks as Summer Camp Girls, Private School, Sex Games, Paper Dolls, Suzie Superstar and Centerfold Celebrities. Her shamed family back home tried to put on a brave face as Applegate’s star rose, although her increasing cocaine consumption made her unreliable, which combined with her unenthusiastic onscreen performances (she hated having sex in front of an audience), saw her career dry up as quickly as it had ignited. She quit the adult industry less than a year after she had entered it (and with over 30 movies to her name) and moved to the desert resort town of Palm Springs with Jack Ehrlich, a 44 year-old cocaine dealer. The following year, Ehrlich was sentenced to five years imprisonment for cocaine possession, cutting off both Applegate’s livelihood and drug supply.

Applegate could have returned to Minnesota to make a new start – her parents had offered to pay for her travel and college expenses – but the thought of how she would be received back home was too much to bear, and she decided to take an easier way out. On March 21st, 1984, the depressed, high-as-a-kite Colleen Applegate shot herself in the head with Ehrlich’s .22 caliber rifle. She died in hospital two days later, after never having regained consciousness.



The porn industry tastefully cashed in on Applegate’s suicide, rushing out a compilation video titled Shauna Grant: Every Man’s Fantasy (there was also a tribute magazine of the same name). Even mainstream Hollywood felt compelled to deal with Applegate’s story, producing the better than average 1987 TV movie Shattered Innocence, the same year Applegate was also found herself the subject of an excellent PBS documentary, The Death of a Porn Queen.

Applegate’s story wasn’t a whole lot different that Michelle Schei’s. Born in Oakland, California on March 2nd, 1964, Schei suffered regular beatings and emotional torment from her sadistic mother. She tried to escape by running away from home at 14, was working in a Guam massage parlour two years later, and by 18 was stripping at the famous Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, before beginning her adult film career in 1987. Schei acted under a variety of pseudonyms, including Carolyn Chambers and Heather Newman, but in most of the 130+ films in which she performed she was billed as Megan Leigh. Some of the titles on her resume include Sex Lives of the Rich & Famous, Hot Scalding, Goin’ Down Slow and Lips on Lips.



Shei rarely looked like she was enjoying herself in front of the camera, and developed a healthy dependence on Quaaludes to help her cope. But she still couldn’t escape the clutches of Mrs. Schei. On June 16, 1990, after another flaming row with mommie dearest (who had chastised her for entering into a same sex relationship with another adult film performer), and a high level of Valium in her system, Schei finally set herself free by putting a .38 revolver into her mouth and pulling the trigger. Ironically, Schei had purchased a $500,000 house for her mother less than a month prior to her suicide, as a way to try and resolve the long-standing dysfunctional relationship.



But the biggest porn star suicide still remains that of Shannon Wilsey. Born in 1971, Wilsey entered the screen smut scene in 1990 under the name Silver Kane. After appearing in a couple of one-day wonders like No Boys Allowed and Raquel’s Addiction, the platinum-capped starlet underwent cosmetic surgery, changed her name to the exotic and Southern sounding Savannah, and became the biggest adult film star of the early-nineties, grinding out features like Telemates, Hurts so Good and Blonde Forces. She also developed a penchant for dating rock stars, among them Billy Idol, Gregg Allman, Motley Crue singer Vince Neil and guitarist Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses. Despite her stardom, Wilsey never looked enthusiastic while having sex in her films (have you noticed a pattern developing here?), and often just laid back and let her on-screen partners do all the hard work.



The last piece of work which Wilsey was involved in occurred after she crashed her Corvette on the night of July 11, 1994. High on heroin and sinus tablets, she freaked out over the broken nose she had suffered in the accident, petrified that it would scar her for life and diminish her work prospects. Rather than face that possibility, she ran home and shot herself in the head with her .40 calibre baretta. Showing great taste, High Society published a tribute to the late porn goddess, including photos of her brain matter sprayed all over her garage floor. Even the September 9, 1994 edition of the short-lived Aussie rag The World ran a five page cover story on the suicide. Their article featured a full-page photo of Wilsey with a superimposed, bloodies handgun resting on her naked breasts, with the headline ‘Dead Gorgeous’ emblazoned across the photograph.

I guess that’s just the kind of respect your death gets when you make your living by having sex on film.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

OTHER NOTABLE AMERICAN PORN STARLET SUICIDES:

Alex Jordan - Age 31
Alex entered the adult business in her mid-20s, an age when most actresses are getting out. She and her husband thought it would be a good way to finance a comfortable middle class future. She won the 1993 Adult AVN Awards for "Best New Starlet". Jordan's best friend was her parrot, and when it died, she went crazy. Speaking on the telephone to her husband, she accused him of not caring about her. His crime? Lack of sensitivity to her feelings about her bird's death. She wrote a note describing her depression over the loss of her bird, and on the 27th of June, Alex hung herself in her closet.

Trinity Loren - Age 34
Loren began her porn career on screen in late-1985, and quickly achieved renown as one of the first starlets of the straight-to-video era of adult films. She retired from pornographic films in the early-1990s, fearing the threat of the AIDS virus.

In 1998, Loren's boyfriend, pornographic director Joe Gallant claims that the pair were about to start doing some sex scenes together as a start of Loren's comeback into the adult industry. Trinity Loren died on October 25, 1998 due to an overdose of prescription painkillers.

Teri Diver - Age 29
Diver was one of the most prolific porn stars of the 1990s, appearing in over 200 movies. Diver was a migraine headache sufferer for years, which led to her death on January 2, 2001. She apparently took an overdose of her migraine medication, which caused her to go into cardiac arrest.

(Thanks to www.hellandjustice.com)

REX SIKES INTERVIEW

My interview with Rex Sikes, who played Rodney in Rene Daalder's cult 1976 exploitation film Massacre at Central High, has been posted on the DVD Holocuast website at the following link:

http://dvdholocaust.com/feature.php?id=17

My original review of the film has also been re-posted on the site at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=473

THIS BED WE MADE

The taste of cigarettes and red wine was stale in my mouth as I lay naked on my back, my eyes contemplating the old ceiling fan that whirred slowly overhead but my mind barely taking in its existence. Instead, I could think only of the soft hands that ran slowly and sensuously over my body, the sharp tips of their blood red nails leaving soft trails in my skin, and the sweet smell of perfume that hit my nostrils and seemed to seep into every part of my being like some insidious and instantly addictive narcotic.

The motel was seedy, but the rooms were dark, the price was right, and it was just enough off the beaten track to not attract too much attention. As our bodies began to intertwine and become lost in the heat they were generating, I guessed that it wouldn’t have been the first time that more than one of the Ten Commandments had been broken within the seamy walls of Unit 12, with the cracked plaster and peeling paper that looked like it hadn’t been changed – or even properly cleaned - since the 1970s.

I looked up and caught a glimpse of her face as it became momentarily illuminated by the glow of the blue and purple neon that buzzed off and on outside our window, advertising the motel and its vacancies as if it were a dirty set of cheap womens’ underclothes. I was in love with this woman, and I needed her to live as much as I needed the oxygen that filled my lungs, but I knew what we were doing was immoral and wicked, and as much as I tried not to give a damn, I was always fighting within myself to overcome the feelings of guilt and uncertainty that often flowed and ebbed within me, like a tsunami that washed up onto a shore before receding, leaving a trail of annihilation and broken lives in its wake.

She was the first dame I’d met in well over twenty years who made me go weak at the knees, and tremble inside like some pathetic little school kid who’d just been hit by his first case of puppy love. As much as I hated the mental seizures she brought about in me, the touch of her hand and the warmth of her lips were like no other, and when I was able to push aside my fear and anxieties, she was able to take me as close to heaven on earth as I’m ever likely to come.

Where things are likely to go from here, I don’t think either of us really knows. Perhaps we don’t want to know. As much as we may try to deny it – to both ourselves and each other - the excitement and danger of the unknown is one of those invisible ties which bind us so tightly together, and makes staying alive worth the effort.



Copyright John Harrison 2009

AND PARTY EVERY DAY

AND PARTY EVERY DAY:
THE INSIDE STORY OF CASABLANCA RECORDS
By Larry Harris (with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs)
(Backbeat Books, USA, 2009)

In the 1970s, no independent record company embodied the fast paced, drug fuelled, hedonistic lifestyle of the decade as much as Casablanca Records. Founded in 1973 by the enigmatic Neil Bogart, Casablanca was America’s premier disco label, even though their biggest (and first) signing was the New York glam rock band Kiss. As a kid growing up a huge Kiss fan, I was always fascinated by the exotic look of the Casablanca label design…it appealed to me not only because I was a film buff who loved Bogie in Casablanca, but Casablanca’s was also the name of the sleazy Fitzroy Street disco which I used to frequent as an underaged patron (I can still picture the huge front door with it’s intimidating peep hole, and the bouncer taking seemingly forever to size me up and down before the door would finally open to usher me in).

In And Party Every Day (its title taken from a line in the famous Kiss track Rock & Roll all Nite), author Larry Harris (who worked at Casablanca from its inception, becoming Vice President in 1976 before leaving the label three years later) charts the beginnings, rise and ultimate fall of the Casablanca label, tying it in inexorably with the era (accentuated by the various side bars which encapsulate major events and pop culture moments of the time).

After struggling to survive through the first three Kiss albums (the band were building a huge live following but record sales were sluggish) and suffering a major flop in a compilation album of classic Johnny Carson Show moments, Casablanca finally hit pay dirt in 1975 with the release of Kiss’ double live landmark LP, Kiss Alive! Rather than concentrate on other similar hard rock acts (although they did sign LA glam rockers Angel), Casablanca eventually focused much of their effort on the burgeoning disco and dance craze, signing artists such as George Clinton and Parliament, Donna Summer, Cher and the Village People to their roster of talent. At the height of their success, the label branched out into filmmaking, although their only notable achievement was the 1978 disco flick Thank God it’s Friday.

As much as it is a history of the label, And Party Every Day is also a biography of Neil Bogart, who was undoubtedly the energy, the heart and soul behind Casablanca, and whose decadent lifestyle rivalled that of rock journalist Lester Bangs. Like Bangs, Bogart’s time on earth was short, after he died of cancer in 1982 at the age of thirty-nine. Larry Harris and his co-authors Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs (who co-authored the extensive reference work Kiss Alive Forever: The Complete Touring History) as an energetic svengali, talented and full of passion and seemingly limitless energy, but also a man whose grand vision would often stretch a company beyond its means, and whose escalating drug consumption would cloud his own judgement.

Refreshingly, And Party Every Day comes off as something a lot more than just another Kiss related book. Naturally, the authors realise that the Kiss connection will be a prime factor in sales and promotion, and to that end they certainly don’t skimp on information and stories regarding the band (in particular, their early years as Casablanca’s initial act, as well as the disastrous 1978 Kiss solo albums, which saw over two million unsold LPs being shipped off the flea markets for quick, cheap sale).

But make no mistake that Kiss are just a supporting player in this book, which is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the history and workings of record labels, during a time where office furniture was literally covered in a layer of cocaine dust, Studio 54 was the place where record deals were made, chart positions were bought with money and drugs, and work was just one big party...with an ultimate price to pay.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2009

TORSO

1973/Italy/Directed by Sergio Martino



A prime example of vintage Italian giallo (a term derived from the series of mystery/crime pulp novels first published in Italy entitled Il Giallo Mondatori, taking their name from the yellow cover background), Torso is a brutal, at times shocking thriller about a psychotic killer doing away with young women from a local college campus. When four of the girls head for the supposed safety of a mountaintop country villa, the killer tags close behind and the terror continues.

Starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont and Luc Merenda, Torso can be seen as something of a template for the wave of slasher films that became popular in the late-seventies and eighties, and features some gruesome murders, groovy fashions, great locations, cool music (by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) and lots of beautiful European dames! It has also been released under the titles Bodies Bear Traces or Carnal Violence and just Carnal Violence. The print of the film I watched this morning was from the DVD released in the US by Blue Underground, which replaces all the trimmed scenes of violence and gives you the option of watching the film in Italian or English dubbed language (although unfortunately there are no English subtitles for the Italian language track).

Copyright John Harrison 2009

KISS: SONIC BOOM

Get ready to party like it’s 1975 (and occasionally, 1985).

With Kiss seemingly happy to spend the last decade as little more than a travelling nostalgic circus, and it’s two founding members pushing ever closer to pension age (Gene Simmons has just hit 60, Paul Stanley is 57), I honestly never thought I’d live to see another full album of original material by these guys. After their last studio effort, 1998s ill-conceived and disjointed Psycho Circus, Simmons and Stanley have both bemoaned the fact that the music industry is dead, killed by illegal downloading and an audience mostly apathetic to new releases by ‘heritage’ acts.

Produced by Stanley and recorded in the old-fashioned analogue way, Sonic Boom is much better than any Kiss album produced at this stage of their career has the right to be. While it might not be the vintage sounding recording that the band were hyping it up to be, it does combine elements of their most successful epochs into one tight, cohesive little package. Opening with Modern Day Delilah (which bases itself around a heaving, swaggering riff that could almost pass itself off as an obscure 1970s stoner rock classic), Sonic Boom ploughs through its ten tracks in just over 40 minutes, ensuring a brief but savage aural attack that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Refreshingly ballad-free, Sonic Boom may rank as one of Kiss’ most consistent albums, with not a weak track in sight. Only When Lightning Strikes (sung by lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, wearing the Spaceman make-up made famous by Ace Frehley) comes close to being considered filler, although Thayer’s blistering fretwork throughout the album more than compensates (even if he does ape many of Frehley’s trademark licks and solos in order to achieve that classic Kiss sound). Even drummer Eric Singer is given a chance at the mic, with great results, on the rousing All for the Glory.

While Stanley the Starchild handles the more commercial material (the anthemic closer Say Yeah sounding like it could have come off one of the band’s mid-1980s recordings), it’s Simmons who is clearly the star here, with the Demon coming up with possibly his strongest contributions to a Kiss album to date, combining a thumping bass tone with his typically lascivious lyrics (“Baby, feel my tower of power”) on tracks like Russian Roulette, Hot and Cold and the album’s high point, Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect), a rocking boogie shuffle that could easily be an outtake from 1975s Dressed to Kill.

While it’s unlikely to win them an army of new fans, Sonic Boom should restore the faith in many die-hard followers who have stuck with the band throughout their 35+ year history, and is a powerful reminder that, beneath all the make-up, bombast and crappy merchandising, Kiss remains one hell of a good hard rock outfit. If this is to be their last offering, then it is a fitting and memorable swansong.



Copyright John Harrison 2009