THE TOWER RECORDS STORY

Last night's viewing. A pretty good 2015 documentary by Colin Hanks which looks at the foundations, success and ultimate downfall of Tower Records, the iconic American record store chain which was founded in Sacramento in 1960 and eventually spread across the US and several foreign markets, before the death of physical media and rise of the internet and file-sharing sites led the company into bankruptcy 45 years later. It's a familiar story shared by many other large music and video retailers in the past 15 years, but ALL THINGS MUST PASS manages to draw the viewer in thanks to engaging anecdotes from the curious assortment of people who operated the business, as well as the great collection of old photographs, archival film footage (including a young Elton John going on one of his regular Tower Records sprees) and radio ads (including one by John Lennon), and just the simple nostalgia of documenting a retail ritual that has become virtually obsolete but was a vital part of the discovery and obtainment of music for many fans over many decades.

I can still recall my first visit to Tower Records, at the Hollywood store on the Sunset Strip in 1981. It was like a mecca and far beyond anything I had seen at any Brash's of Coles record bar back home. Among the LPs I bought on that first visit were: the soundtracks to FLASH GORDON, THE AWAKENING and THE SHINING, a couple of KISS albums I only had on dubbed cassette at that time (HOTTER THAN HELL and DRESSED TO KILL), and a vinyl recording of the original WAR OF THE WORLDS Orson Welles radio broadcast.

THE AMUSEMENT PARK

A young, and very thin, George A. Romero on set for his 1973 production THE AMUSEMENT PARK, a film that was long thought lost until it was found a few years back, and has now been cleaned up and released to Shudder, as well as playing at several film festivals and events. A 53-minute educational film initially made for the Lutheran Society, who ultimately shelved it after deeming it unsuitable, I've heard a few people exalt about THE AMUSEMENT PARK, with some saying it ranks amongst Romero's most disturbing works.

Sadly, I wasn't as taken by the film as much as many others were, and having watched it twice I would have to place it in the "interesting" rather than "excellent" basket. There's no doubt that the theme of the movie - aging, and how we get treated differently as we age - is an important one, and can be a thought more terrifying than any horror fiction, to many (most?) people. How deeply this movie affects you may depend greatly on your age when you watch it, and your own views towards aging.

As a fan of old educational and industrial films, I did enjoy the look and style of THE AMUSEMENT PARK. Romero captures some great shots here, not to mention lots of haunted, lost faces, and an effective overall ambiance of helplessness and gloom, and there's a few moments that absolutely recall his work within the horror genre (not to mention a little hint of what was to come with KNIGHTRIDERS several years later).

Of course, being a lover of old amusement parks, one aspect of the movie which I totally dug was all the great footage of West View Park in Pennsylvania, where it was filmed. West View had already been around for nearly 70 years at that point, and was only a few years away from closing its doors for good, so it's nice to see a lot of it documented. The Bat-Chute ride sounds cool, and likely a leftover from the mid-60s Batman craze.

THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST

Tonight’s movie, via the new local Blu-ray release from Imprint. The first film to be greenlit by the infamous Robert Evans in his role as head of production at Paramount, THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST (1967) is one of the greatest near-miss cult films of the sixties. It has never really enjoyed much recognition beyond a very small but devoted fan base, but hopefully this new Blu-ray will help change that. It’s certainly a hard film to easily define – it’s equal parts political satire, paranoia thriller, groovy spy spoof, and counterculture head trip, all captured through a strange, almost MAD Magazine-styled, lens.

Written and directed by Theodore J. Flicker (perhaps best known as the co-creator of the classic BARNEY MILLER sitcom), THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST stars James Coburn, at the epitome of his 60s cool, as New York psychiatrist Sidney Schaefer, who is recruited to work exclusively as the personal analyst to the president of the United States. On call 24/7, it isn’t exactly the dream gig that Schaefer first imagines it to be, and he soon finds himself overwhelmed and exhausted by stress and paranoia, and the very real feeling that various local and foreign organisations are coming after him, all with their own agendas to either use him to influence the President’s policy decisions, glean whatever secrets he has learned from his private sessions, or simply to silence him altogether.

THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST is one of those movies where the narrative continually dips between reality and paranoid illusions, and the soundtrack score by Lalo Schifrin (and the way it is mixed) provides an impressive and suitable sense of aural schizophrenia. Coburn is great, but Godfrey Cambridge, as the agent who recruits Schaefer for his important new role, is sensational, his opening scene in the movie being particularly potent and powerful (and certainly not the way you might expect the movie to begin). And its depiction of telecommunication companies being all-invasive and controlling seems scarily prophetic in retrospect.

Thankfully, this print of THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST includes the original music by Barry McGuire, which was replaced due to rights issues on TV and early VHS prints. McGuire, well-known for his classic 1964 protest song “Eve of Destruction”, also has an onscreen role here, as the leader of a travelling hippie commune that Schaefer spends time hiding out amongst. Extras on the Imprint release include the original theatrical trailer, a video appreciation of the film by UK author Kim Newman (who interestingly compares it to the works of Philip K. Dick), and an audio commentary by film historian and writer Tim Lucas, a lifelong admirer of the film who provides a good balance of production information and analysis (I am intrigued and excited by his suggestion that THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST contains the film debut of MANIAC’s Joe Spinell!).

CINEMA OF THE 70s RETURNS!

The second issue of CINEMA OF THE 70s magazine is now out, featuring my article on ROLLERCOASTER (1977) amongst its contents. Full colour throughout, it's available within Australia from Amazon Au at the link below, other countries check the relevant Amazon in your region, it should be available in most locales. Like its debut, this should make for required reading for lovers of this great decade in film.

CINEMA OF THE 70s No.2

VIOLENCE USA

My review of the stunning new local Blu-ray release of THE KILLING OF AMERICA (1981) has been posted over at FilmInk. Clink on the link below to access. Congrats to Leon and those at Ex Film for putting such care into this release. A distressing and depressing, yet brutally honest and galvanizing piece of documentary filmmaking.

THE KILLING OF AMERICA: Blu-Ray Review

DEVIL IN DISGUISE

A recent true crime watch. I figured Gacy would be a logical choice for Netflix to cover given the spate of true-crime docuseries that they are turning out at the moment, but after a couple of episodes of this, I am figuring there would be little need for anyone else to try and redo the subject. Comprised of six 50-minute episodes, JOHN WAYNE GACY: DEVIL IN DISGUISE is certainly shaping up to be a comprehensive look into the life and crimes of this notorious killer of 33 teenaged boys during the mid-70s, the bulk of the bodies of which he kept buried in the crawlspace beneath his unassuming suburban Chigaco home.

A lot of this series is comprised of an extensive interview with Gacy himself, given in prison in 1992 and conducted by the late FBI profiler Robert Ressler. With Gacy's execution looming, the interview provides a terrifying but engrossing, and very important, psychological profile of a deranged homicidal mind, one that is in complete denial of any responsibilities for his actions. But there are also interviews with retired cops that worked on the case, parents and relatives of victims, and even the photographer who snapped many pictures of Gacy, including the infamous photos of him dressed up as Pogo the Clown. Not to mention plenty of original news footage and photographs.

There's also a rather distressing audio interview with Carole Hoff, Gacy's wife at the time he began his killing spree, who recalls her continual complaints to Gacy that there was a bad stench permeating their home, which she believed was caused by a dead animal under the house, never imagining the horrifying truth until after she had moved out and Gacy's stiflingly private homicidal life became public. There were likely some strange things going on with Gacy's late mother as well, who may have had knowledge or suspicions about her son's activities, but stayed silent to protect him. And I'm intrigued to see where the story leads in regards to David Cram and Michael Rossi, two 18-year-olds who worked for, and likely had sexual relations with, Gacy. They both claimed to have no knowledge of Gacy's murder spree, yet they were the ones who dug the holes in Gacy's crawlspace, where the bodies were buried, and they also accepted gifts given to them by Gacy that were taken from his victims, including a car, without asking any questions about where the gifts were coming from.

THE PARK IS ON FIRE

Last night's watch. The first of a two-part documentary that investigates the 1979 fire that tore through the Ghost Train ride at Sydney's Luna Park, a tragic event that claimed the lives of seven people - a father and his two young boys, and four schoolboys who were enjoying their first night out without parental supervision. While faulty wiring was the official cause of the blaze, arson has long been suspected, and in this documentary, Caro Meldrum-Hanna investigates the event, sifting through the volumes of documents, photographs, and tape recordings which Martin Sharp, a Sydney artist who helped revive the park in the early-70s, compiled over the last thirty years of his life.

There are some devastating moments in this documentary. I was a boy of around the same age as the young victims when this happened, and can remember it being all over the news. As a kid who grew up just around the corner from Melbourne's own Luna Park, and who frequented it and the rides often, it haunted me for a long time. One of the most harrowing moments in EXPOSED: THE GHOST TRAIN FIRE involves the recollections from people who were outside the ride as it happened, listening to the chorus of terrified, high-pitched screams coming from within as the structure was quickly engulfed in flames.

It is sad to also see how much guilt remains in the minds of many - the parents who decided to let their kids go into the city on their own for the first time, the friend of the four boys who had to ride in a separate car and was plucked from it just in time, and the people who spotted the fire when it was still small and containable, but failed to report it to anyone when they emerged from the ride (they were kids themselves at the time, and since the fire broke out in a section of the ride that featured a fake fireplace, they all assumed the fire was a part of the attraction). Also heartbreaking is the recollection of the wife and mother of the man and two boys killed, who missed getting on the ride because she was buying an ice cream cone, and had to watch on in horror as the ride burnt to the ground.

There is a lot of old footage, photos, and news reports featured in this doco, which in Australia can be viewed on ABC i-view (not sure if it can be watched from outside Australia). The concluding episode airs this week.

FIVE ARE ALIVE

Sunday matinee. First time viewing of this low-budget 1951 film from writer/director Arch Obeler, and what a haunting experience it is. One of the first movies to try and realistically depict what life may be life after the ravages of an atomic war, FIVE is a very baroque and grim movie, as a handful of survivors hole up in an amazing mountaintop home (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), trying to decide whether to stay put or go in search of other survivors. There is no radioactive monster, or even much visual action, in FIVE, but its remarkable bleakness, and genuine intelligence, draw you completely into its world. Some of the ideas and themes in the movie seem quite brave for its time, the character dynamics are terrific and the small cast is all great, especially James Anderson as a racist South African explorer, who brings tension and violence into an otherwise balanced environment.

ANGEL OF THE CITY

“High School Honor Student by Day. Hollywood Hooker by Night”

The seedy side of Hollywood has long held a fascination for filmmakers, particularly those low-budget exploitation producers who saw the commercial potential in taking their audience on a rocky ride through the sleazy underbelly of Tinseltown. The Sunset Strip of the 1960s-80s was the L.A. equivalent of New York’s infamous Times Square and 42nd Street of the same era, though the later did not have the Jekyll & Hyde facade that L.A. radiated as it shifted between day and night (while the Times Square of old, according to tales told by those who lived through it, was an intimidating danger zone 24/7).               

The late-sixties saw movies like Dave F. Friedman’s sexploitation film Starlet (1969) depicting the sordid side of the Hollywood rainbow, while Ray Dennis Steckler’s astounding The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979) captured enough of the grotty locales of the area to make it an indispensable document for sleaze scholars to study. The early-to-mid-1980s, however, seemed to be a particularly fertile period for films which took the viewer on a low-budget trawl through the dark alleyways, cheap hotels, grimy adult shops, and neon-lit streets on which the denizens of Los Angeles sought an easy score, anonymous sex, and a brief respite from life’s drudging realities. Vice Squad (1982), Death Wish II (1982), 10 to Midnight (1983), Alley Cat (1984), The Glitter Dome (1986), and Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) were just some of the titles turned out during this period that wallowed in the kind of violence and lurid excess which the City of Angels had to offer. But the film which best encapsulated the flashy fantasy of early-eighties seedy L.A. noir was, perhaps, Robert Vincent O’Neil’s Angel (1984) and, to a lesser extent, its three subsequent sequels.

Donna Wilkes as the original, iconic Angel.

Angel tells the tale of fifteen-year-old Molly Stewart (Donna Wilkes), an A-student at an exclusive prep school in Los Angeles who, once the sun goes down, teases her hair, paints her face, and dons stilettos and leather mini-skirts before heading out to the Sunset Strip, where as “Angel” she turns tricks in order to keep a roof over her head, since both her parents had abandoned her some years earlier, a fact which she keeps to herself. Looking out for Angel on the streets is a memorable cast of eclectic characters including Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun), an aging star of western movies who now spends his nights wandering Hollywood Boulevard in full cowboy regalia, Mae/Marvin Walker (Dick Shawn), a transvestite who lives in the same apartment building as Molly, and Solly Mosler (Susan Tyrell), her foul-mouthed landlord who also paints childish abstracts.                                        

It’s a good thing that Molly has such people minding her back, as there is a vicious serial killer with necrophilic tendencies (played by John Diehl), who is stalking the Strip carving up prostitutes, much to the frustration of Lt. Andrews (Cliff Gorman), the cop who is assigned to the case. The terror hits closer to home when two of Angel’s streetwalker friends, Crystal (Donna McDaniel) and Lana (Graem McGavin), fall victim to the vicious killer, with Angel clearly next in the unnamed psychotic’s sights. With Lt. Andrews and high school teacher Patricia Allen (Elaine Giftos) closing in on the truth behind Molly’s lack of parental guidance, not to mention the extra harassment from a group of her obnoxious male classmates who stumble upon her dual identity, Angel helps herself to Solly’s long-barrelled magnum and, with the aid of Kit Carson and his colt 45s, confronts and takes care of the psycho killer in a memorable finally that is fitting of Carson’s Wild West persona. We last glimpse Molly as she walks away from the crime scene with a wounded Carson and Lt. Andrews, presumably to leave her alter-ego behind for good.                          

Angel and some of her crew.

Though surprisingly restrained for an exploitation film which such a provocative theme and potential for titillation, Angel works so well because it delivers on tension and character, and features an effective and endearing performance from Donna Wilkes in the role of Molly/Angel. Wilkes, who was twenty-four at the time of filming and was best known for her role as teen Jackie Peters in Jaws 2 (1978), really handles the dual elements of frightened innocence and provocative sexuality that was pivotal to her character, and gets terrific support from her main co-stars, who help create a unique world for Angel to exist in (Wilkes researched her role by spending time with real Hollywood hookers, street kids and members of the L.A. Police). The use of real locations on and around Hollywood Boulevard also helped add to the film’s air of authenticity, and the El Royale Hotel on Ventura Boulevard, which features in the movie, is still standing and has been a been a haven for struggling writers, directors, actors, and musicians, not to mention curious Hollywood sightseers, since the 1940s.

Angel also benefits from a great soundtrack, propelled by the film’s highly-infectious theme song, “Something Sweet”, which was composed and performed by The Allies, a new wave-tinged pop/rock band formed by guitarist/vocalist Matt Preble and Pam Neal, who played the L.A. and San Francisco. 

Released in the US on January 13, 1984, Angel’s initial opening weekend proved to be somewhat disappointing, but positive word of mouth helped turn the film into a substantial hit for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, with the movie eventually raking in nearly $20 million on a $3 million budget. Not surprisingly, a sequel was soon put into production, and Avenging Angel (1985) hit the screens exactly one year after the original. Once again directed by Robert Vincent O’Neil from a screenplay co-written by himself and Joseph Michael Cala, Avenging Angel saw the title role being recast, with Donna Wilkes replaced by Betsy Russell, starting a trend of revolving lead actresses which would continue through the two subsequent sequels in the series (Wilkes reportedly did not reprise her role due to a salary dispute).                        

In Avenging Angel, Molly Stewart is off the streets, out of high school, and studying hard at UCLA to make it as a lawyer. But she soon brings Angel out of retirement, and back on the streets, upon learning that Lt. Andrews, the man who helped save her in the first movie, has been murdered. Enlisting the help of her old friends Solly and Kit Carson (the later of whom she has to break out of a sanitorium to which he has been confined), Angel sets out to avenge Andrews’ murder and uncovers a scheme to buy up Hollywood Boulevard properties, which a feared gangster is instigating, using violence and intimidation to persuade those owners reluctant to part with their businesses.

Betsy Russell takes over the title character in Avenging Angel.

While it has its moments, Avenging Angel did not build on the promise of the original, and the film failed to make any significant dent at the box-office, barely ear1977), the later starring Jack Wrangler and a favourite of John Waters. Under his real name, DeSimone also helmed the infamous sex comedy Chatterbox (1977), starring Candice Rialson as a hairdresser with a talking vagina, before moving on to cult exploitation and horror fare like Hell Night (1981), The Concrete Jungle (1982), and Reform School Girls (1986). He was also an uncredited co-director on Danny Steinman’s brilliant Savage Streets (1984), a story of female street justice which certainly took some of its ques from the first Angel film, and featured a soundtrack by none other than a pre-Whispering Jack John Farnham!                                                                                          

While it has its moments, Avenging Angel did not build on the promise of the original, and the film failed to make any significant dent at the box-office, barely earning a quarter of what Angel took in the year before. The absence of Wilkes certainly hurt the movie, though Betsy Russell tries her best, and at least Rory Calhoun and Susan Tyrell return to provide a bit of continuity. The film proved to be significantly more popular on home video, however, which led to a third film being put together under the guidance of a completely new production team. Angel III: The Final Chapter (1988) was written and directed by Tom DeSimone, whom under the name of Lancer Brooks had developed his filmmaking skills in the burgeoning gay XXX market of the early-seventies, helming such choice titles as How to Make a Homo Movie (1970), Swap Meat (1973), Black Heat (1973), and the classic 3D porn, Heavy Equipment (1977), the later starring Jack Wrangler and a favourite of John Waters. Under his real name, DeSimone also helmed the infamous sex comedy Chatterbox (1977), starring Candice Rialson as a hairdresser with a talking vagina, before moving on to cult exploitation and horror fare like Hell Night (1981), The Concrete Jungle (1982), and Reform School Girls (1986). He was also an uncredited co-director on Danny Steinman’s brilliant Savage Streets (1984), a story of female street justice which certainly took some of its ques from the first Angel film, and featured a soundtrack by none other than a pre-Whispering Jack John Farnham!

Taking over the titular role in Angel III was the exotically-named Mitzi Kapture, who would later go on the play Sgt. Rita Lee Rance in the first five seasons (1991 – 1995) of Stephen J. Cannell’s long-running late-night crime drama Silk Stalkings. Kapture plays a more mature Molly Stewart in Angel III, which sees the character now working as a freelance photographer in New York, a far cry from the burgeoning lawyer we saw in the previous entry. While on assignment at an art show, Molly faintly recognises a woman who turns out to be her long-lost mother, whom she follows back to L.A. and gets reacquainted with long enough to discover she has a younger sister she did not know about, who is in grave danger at the hands of some mysterious criminals. Unfortunately, mom gets tragically killed by a car bomb soon afterwards, forcing Molly to once again hit the streets as Angel as she tries to rescue her sister Michelle (Tawny Fere) from a white slavery prostitute ring ruthlessly overseen by a woman named Nadine (Maud Adams).

Mitzi Kapture: the third Angel in as many films.

Featuring plenty of sleaze and nudity (a DeSimone trademark), Angel III is probably the most enjoyable of the three sequels, moving along at a decent pace and featuring an interesting cast of supporting players including Richard Roundtree (the original Shaft himself), cult favourite (and Roger Corman regular) Dick Miller, and Toni Basil as a posh art gallery owner. Though well-known for her catchy 1982 pop hit “Mickey” (and its inventive music video), the multi-talented Basil has had a fascinating and varied career dating back to the 1960s, dancing in Beach Party and Elvis movies, choreographing David Bowie tours, and appearing in films such as Easy Rider (1969), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), and Slaughterhouse Rock (1988). As the villainous Nadine, Maud Adams channels the same measure of glamourous menace which she projected in her two James Bond outings, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and Octopussy (1983). Also popping up in the movie are XXX star Ashlyn Gere, late scream queen Roxanne Kernohan (tragically killed in a car accident at the age of only 32), and Tom DeSimone’s younger brother Bob (ironically cast as a porn film director).

Despite its subtitle, Angel III did not prove to be the final chapter in the Molly Stewart saga, which would come six years later in Angel 4: Undercover (1994). Now played by Darlene Vogel, Molly is reinvented as a blonde in her fourth (and last, to date) cinematic outing. Now putting her skills with a camera to work as a police photographer, and romantically involved with a local DJ, her alter ego emerges once again when an old friend from her street days arrives in town to catch a rock band and soon turns up dead. With the killing linked more to the rock & roll scene rather than prostitution, Angel this time assumes the guise of an eager groupie in order to turn up evidence that the brilliantly-named, and extremely drug-addled, British rock singer Piston Jones (Shane Fraser) is responsible for her friend’s death.

Angel in name only.

Directed by Richard Schenkman under the alias of George Axmith, Angel 4 was unfortunately a pretty disappointing note for the series to end on. Schenkman’s background in music videos and Playboy video documentaries certainly hold him in good stead when it comes to the flashy visual side of the production, but it ultimately comes across as an Angel film in name only, and more of an illegitimate daughter than an official continuation of the same character’s life journey. With only a slumming Roddy McDowall providing any real interest amongst the faces in the cast, Angel 4: Undercover (also known as Angel 4: Assault with a Deadly Weapon) was a rather sad ending for a memorable character who perhaps should have stayed in the big hair and neon-electric colour palette of the 1980s, the decade for which she was created and felt most at home in.

While Angel 4 has so far only surfaced on VHS and laserdisc, the first three films finally received the release they deserved when Vinegar Syndrome issued The Angel Collection Blu-ray box set in November of 2019. House in a creative slip-box, The Angel Collection featured stunning, restored transfers of each film, which instantly rendered previous bare-bones DVD releases obsolete, along with a number of interesting featurettes (particularly on the first film). A good companion piece to the Blu-ray set is the nice single-disc soundtrack CD, released by BSX Records by 2014, featuring music from the first three films (though the version of “Something Sweet” included is sadly a recent re-recording, performed by Melody Michalski).

Vinegar Syndrome's impressive Angel Blu-ray box set.

Copyright John Harrison 2021

WE BELONG DEAD!

Received my contributor's copy of WE BELONG DEAD #25 from the UK a few days back, containing my seven-page article on classic monster model kits from the 1960s and 70s. Looks like lots of great stuff in this informative, fun, and beautifully designed magazine.

TONI BASIL

A new piece I have written on the fabulous, and multi-talented, singer/dancer/actress/choreographer Toni Basil, now posted over at the FilmInk website. Click on the link below to read!

Time After Time: The Invention (and Continual Re-Invention) of Toni Basil

DAY OF THE LIVING ME

My review of American filmmaker Jeff Lieberman's highly entertaining new book, DAY OF THE LIVING ME, has now been posted over at the FilmInk website. Grab a copy now! (Amazon Australia link is included at the bottom of the review).

DAY OF THE LIVING ME: FilmInk Review by John Harrison

MASSACRED IN HD!

What a treat to see this excellent 1976 exploitation film finally get the release it deserves. Like I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958), MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH has some very clever ideas and subtext hiding beneath its memorably exploitative title, and superficially simple plot. Yet it also delivers satisfying helpings of all the popular drive-in staples of the time. The background of Dutch writer/director Renee Daalder clearly helped provide him with a unique take on the American teen, and it's easy to see its influence over the later, and still much better known, HEATHERS (1988). The new Synapse Blu-ray release of MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH retains some grain but is lush and absolutely pops in places, it's the best the film has looked since its original theatrical release, without a doubt. I'll keep my original Australian Merlin Video VHS release for nostalgia, but glad I can finally ditch my dodgy UK DVD release, which was just a sub-standard VHS rip. Severin has put some nice touches to their Blu-ray, presenting it in a steelbook format and sheathing it in a cardboard slip. There's also a booklet with liner notes on the film by Michael Gringold (who first saw the movie on a New York double-bill with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!), and the disc has all the usual trailers, TV and radio spots, and other promo material, along with audio interviews with the late Daalder and various cast members, and an enjoyable 45-minute making-of featurette. My only minor complaint is that it doesn't include the alternate Italian cut of the film, which was re-titled SEXY JEANS and had hardcore XXX shots edited into it (they do touch upon it in the making-of featurette, however, with cast members expressing their bemusement over the odd retitling).

TINTORERA!

Recent Saturday afternoon movie. A Mexican killer shark movie directed by the notorious René Cardona Jr., TINTORERA (1977) enjoyed a decent box-office run thanks mainly to two things: the phenomenal popularity of JAWS (1975) and the interest in all things shark-related that it brought with it, and an effectively lurid publicity campaign. The plentiful flesh that is on display throughout also likely had something to do with its appeal. Sadly for horror buffs, there's a lot more focus on titillation, menage a trois action, and bad disco music in the movie than there is on tension or terror, though Cardona Jr. does come through with a couple of grisly shark attack sequences, and there's no doubting the attractiveness of the cast and the lovely East Mexican beach locations, both of which look quite stunning on Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray release. The authentic shark hunting sequences, as well as the killing of a beautiful large turtle and manta ray, are a bit tough to watch though, and the HD transfer enables you to clearly see the wires attached (likely by hook) to the mouths of the shark and several other large fish, used no doubt to pull the poor creatures in the direction the camera wanted them to. It definitely give the film an unpleasant edge that is hard to ignore.

NIGHT STALKING HEAVEN'S GATE

Two newer true-crime documentary shows that I have watched recently.

NIGHT STALKER is a pretty brutal, slick, and exploitative examination of the horrendous crimes of Richard Ramirez, who terrified the L.A. area in the mid-80s. As a police procedural and document of the police investigation into the case, it is very good. Where it lacks is in the background examination of Ramirez himself, and what turned him into such a true monster of a human being. His story is mostly relegated to the final episode. I am certainly fine with the series putting an emphasis on the police manhunt and the impact the crimes had on the surviving victims and relatives, but I do feel an additional episode, devoted to the further exploration of Ramirez himself, would have given the series a bit more balance and made it more definitive. NIGHT STALKER features some pretty grisly (though still censored) crime scene evidence, and does a good job of capturing the overall sense of fear that Ramirez spread across the city, a panic no doubt exacerbated by the extreme heatwave that accompanied the arrival of his murder spree. The truly terrifying aspect of Ramirez's crimes is that, while he clearly harboured sexual deviances, he never favoured a particular "type" - male, female, young, old, together or in pairs, everyone in the city thought of themselves as a potential target.

HEAVEN'S GATE: THE CULT OF CULTS is an engrossing, and ultimately rather sad, four-part investigation into the suicide of 39 people outside of San Diego in 1997. Members of a UFO religious sect headed by Marshall Applewhite, the cultists believed that by killing themselves they would gain admission to a giant alien spacecraft which they believed was travelling unseen within the flaming tail of Hale-Bop, a comet that was flying closer to Earth than it ever had. I watched and read all the news items about Heaven's Gate when it occurred, and bought a VHS of the infamous 'recruitment video' from Polyester Books, but hadn't really done a deep dive into the story (the only book I have read on the case was a quickie paperback rushed-out by The New York Post). So a lot of the details of the story were unknown to me, which this series does a terrific job of documenting.

Though the media tied the Heaven's Gate cult to the internet age, the group actually had a history dating back to the early-70s, when former hippies were exploring New Age ideas and philosophies, and books like CHARIOTS OF THE GODS, and TV shows like STAR TREK, had people seriously contemplating the existence of UFOs and their role in our life and creation. By the mid-nineties, however, co-founder Bonnie Nettles had been dead for a decade, and Applewhite was also failing physically, and desperate to find a way to fulfill his teachings and promises.

It's fascinating watching the Heaven's Gate cult develop and change between the 1970s and their eventual 1997 mass suicide. There's a ton of great, rare archival footage of the group and their town recruitment meetings, news reports, etc., along with some very effective, whimsical animation sequences. There was nothing violent or salacious about this cult, they were all clean-cut, polite, and well educated, and lived a life of celibacy. In a way, it makes their final act even more strange and fascinating to ponder.