Drunken Bakers is probably the most subtle and, in a way, philosophical Viz strip ever. Unlike the rest of the comic's more usual fare, it's not a satire on anything in particular and, despite the subject matter, is totally dissimilar to Eight Ace, the other regular Viz dipso. I've seen Drunken Bakers compared to Beckett in print before and think that's about right. The characters' drunkenness isn't funny, they're not comedy drunks - these are broken men, and men whose pain and suffering we only come to understand slowly through tiny snatches of information which occasionally bleed into the strip.
This edition of Drunken Bakers, taken from the October 2009 issue of Viz, is a probably the best yet published and one in which we learn a great deal more about the downfall of at least one of the titular dough-kneeders than ever before. Their presence in Viz might not elicit the same sort of broad, hearty belly-laughs as, say, Johnny Fartpants, but to my mind they lend Viz a literary air and hint that beneath the jokes about knobbing and farting, the people behind Viz are in touch with the same thoughtful, despairing view of human life which drove Beckett to create Vladimir and Estragon and Rik 'n' Ade to pen Bottom. Or at least, as this strip demonstrates, that they know how to draw a very funny depiction of a bloke wearing a dead man's glasses.Enjoy.
There have been a lot of fairly hefty celebrity deaths in 2009: Farrah Fawcett, Ludovic Kennedy, David Carradine… when the lead singer from the Jackson 5 went off to that great theme park in the sky, the world at large took note. Another mortal coil was shuffled off this year, one which the tabloids didn’t pay much attention to but which meant a lot more to me, that which belonged to Dickie Peterson, who died on October 12.
Peterson was the vocalist and bassist of Blue Cheer, a band held sacred these days by the type of rock enthusiasts inclined to dip into the Woodstock generation‘s stash for thrills. The Cheer (who probably aren’t ever referred to as such but, m’eh) are one of those bands along with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Budgie and doubtless others who ‘invented heavy metal’in the late 1960’s. While that fact’s debatable and the subject for far more scholarly work than my own, what’s not up for debate is the quality of the music they made.
Blue Cheer, like countless other bands made up of kids who love rock ‘n’ roll but can’t play, initially specialised in chunky renditions of blues standards in their salad days in the bars of ‘Frisco. Their one and only big hit was a cover of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and their first album, Vincebus Eruptum, is a six-track, 30-minute blast of raw, heavy blues. Three covers and three Peterson-penned originals, the album is a perfect snapshot of the musical period’s transition from Yardbirds-style cutesy blues appreciation to the sort of shit-yer-pants experimentation that Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi were beginning to unleash on the world.
However, the Cheer’s only drawback was that they really couldn’t play very well. I’m not being a snob and, frankly, I think Peterson’s bass lines, his singing and the drumming on the record are punky-to-good, but the band’s guitarist was no Clapton. It’s intriguing to note the ways in which the band tried to get round the fact that their guitar parts sounded more leaden that lead, such as recording two solos and using both at once in the same portion of a song, but while Page would lay down solos which dropped the jaws of anoraks and novices alike, the Cheer did more to try and convey a feeling or energy. In their approach they were like a punk band who’ve smoked that bit too much pot and discovered the joys of side two of My War, and they made music that, for anyone who’s ever felt the sheer exhilaration which comes from getting a twelve-bar blues progression right on guitar or bass for the first time, was just…well, right on.
Live, they must’ve sounded phenomenal. They were managed by a Hell’s Angel fantastically named Gut and apparently were the loudest band in Frisco. Considering Canned Heat were playing around this time with a rig so loud that their guitarist could stand in front of his amp, lean back and remain supported upright on the sound-waves alone, they must’ve been ear-splitting.
And beyond their passion and volume lay the band’s counterculture credentials in the form of uninhibited drug experimentation and promotion. The fact that they were named after a type of high-grade blotter acid and played a song of Peterson’s called ‘Doctor, Please’ left no doubt in the minds of listeners and fans that this was a band who were turning on and tuning in as well as dropping-D. Peterson regretted the band’s youthful enthusiasm for late-night pharmaceuticals later in life, but this was a band in touch with the sort of Tim Leary, Discordian idealism which permeated the mainstream and which these days seems incredible. In their personal lives, Blue Cheer were a sort of musical version of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, an artefact of a more hedonistic, carefree age.
It’s the band’s first album that it’s fashionable to cite as a favourite in stoner rock circles these days but the band’s post-Vincebus career was replete with glory too. Their follow-up, Outsideinside is a gem of a record, which sounds these days like a precursor of grunge, not least for Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger, which Mudhoney paraphrased on their first LP. Subsequent albums saw a huge number of line-up changes and Peterson relinquishing sole vocal duties, but they still churned out some cracking tunes. Good Times Are So Hard To Find is a song which perfectly encapsulates the souring of the hippie dream in the early ‘70s and Pilot is as good an example of a beautifully realised red-eyed pop song it’s possible to find. The band’s activity became more sporadic as the ‘80s hoved into view but rock’s nice habit of paying heed to its founding fathers meant that again, like Budgie, the band’s memory was kept alive.
In later years Peterson moved to Germany and Blue Cheer capitalised on the vogue for Woodstock-generation bands, playing their greatest hits around the world. In fact it’s funny to note how they took note of the nods given them by heavy metal bands over the decades on their Live in Japan album. If you’re on Spotify give the solo on this version of Out of Focus a listen. See what I mean?
Dickie Peterson means a lot to me because, when I was a struggling young dreadlocked student, fumbling away on my bass, I listened to his music and thought - ‘great, that’s the sort of thing I’m trying to do!’. I remember the evening when I first cracked the bass line to Out of Focus and the glee I felt at playing along with a righteous tune from an era that fascinates me by musicians who were as unpretentiously keen as myself. Blue Cheer inspired a lot of people, made a lot of brilliant music that we’ve got forever and are rightfully acknowledged along with their Woodstock contemporaries as being one of the more important bands of the mid-twentieth century. Dickie might’ve only been 63 when he headed off into the sunset but, wow, what a life he led…
I’ve often wondered what the most patently absurd film in existence could be. Before last night I’d always assumed that it was a toss-up between The Hottie and The Nottie and Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler, but it turns out I was wrong. You see, before last night I’d never seen The Dragon Lives Again.
In order to understand this film, it’s necessary to learn a little about a movement in Hong Kong cinema known as bruceploitation. The term’s a portmanteau of Bruce, as in Bruce Lee, and exploitation. When Bruce Lee unexpectedly died in 1973, movie producers in Hong Kong panicked, fearing that international audiences wouldn’t care for films from Hong Kong not starring The Little Dragon, and subsequently produced a slew of Bruce Lee-themed movies, some bearing titles similar to genuine Lee movies (Re-Enter the Dragon leaps to mind) and others starring Bruce Lee lookalike actors, most of whom sported names like Bruce Li, Brute Lee, Lee Bruce and so on.Most of these so-called bruceploitation movies were pretty generic martial arts flicks, released purely to cash in on audience ignorance and confusion, but The Dragon Lives Again is a different beast indeed: definitely the most bizarre of the bruceploitation films, and probably one of the craziest movies ever committed to celluloid.
The movie opens in the Underworld, a place apparently between Hell and Earth, where departed pop culture icons go to…well, it’s not entirely clear what they’re supposed to be doing in the Underworld but, m’eh, they’re there.We open on Bruce Lee (well, actually, Bruce Leung) lying in state before the King of the Underworld and his court, apparently suffering the effects of rigor mortis most profoundly.
In fact Bruce’s dong is discussed at some length in this film, if I can put it that way, with the King’s concubines wittering endlessly in stilted Dublish about his ‘endowment’. But to the court’s shock and disappointment, the bulge only turns out to be a set of nunchucks, which Bruce awakes from his eternal slumber to retrieve from the King.
It is worth pausing at this point to consider one glaringly obvious problem with this film: Bruce Leung looks nothing like Bruce Lee. Not even a hint of a resemblance. Nada. I mean, look. However, the writers get around this monumental problem by having the pair of penis-obsessed courtesans discussing Bruce’s ‘changed appearance’. Apparently ‘when you die, your body and face undergo a profound change’. So that’s that, then.
Anyway, when Bruce is told to show reverence to the fringe-crowned monarch he initially scoffs but is rendered speechless when the King demonstrates his power: shaking a big red pillar in his throne room, which causes earthquakes throughout the underworld. Suitably awed, Bruce agrees to respect the King before jump-cutting into a diner, apparently in the Underworld’s party district. But Bruce Lee’s not the only pop culture icon in this café. No, sir. Why, look – here’s Popeye.
Despite the oddness of his fellow patrons Bruce settles down to a well-earned meal before running afoul of Japan’s premiere blind swordsman, Zatoichi, for some trivial offense or other and it’s not long before Zatoichi brings in some of his dastardly allies – namely James Bond and Clint Eastwood. Yes, in this film 007 and The Man with No Name both work for the forces of evil and are part of a bizarre syndicate of international pop culture icons who are planning a coup to take over the Underworld.
In fact the choice of villains in this film is probably the best demonstration of Chinese supremacy I’ve ever seen in my life. The nefarious cabal consists of the following international icons, all of whom are bested by Bruce Lee (China/Hong Kong): James Bond (UK), Clint Eastwood (USA), The Godfather (a piss-poor Al Pacino lookalike, Italy), Emmanuelle (the soft-porn character, France), The Exorcist (one of the priests from Linda Blair’s pea-soup commercial, and bizarrely sporting a French accent). Oh, and Dracula acts as a sort of contractor for this dastardly team of rogues too. Initially I thought this group was pretty random, but as a collection of characters all of whom chosen to represent other cinematic territories, it’s a fairly well thought-out bunch.
So Bruce ends up meeting up with the syndicate after having the stuffing knocked out of him by Clint, Bond and a pack of zombies and predictably refuses to join them. Naturally, their only option is to snuff him out (although how you can ‘kill’ someone who’s already passed on is never touched on in the film – maybe the makers were hoping to sow the seeds of philosophical debate in the audience), and in fact the remainder of the film essentially consists of the attempts of the cabal to whack Brucie.
I was going to offer a concise summary of the rest of the movie’s plot but narrative consistency is not one of the film’s strong points. Still, pressing on, Bruce finds himself in a quarry for no particular reason where he’s ambushed by Zatoichi, who attempts to off Bruce with some of the most quirkily named martial arts moves I’ve ever heard.
But before long the nunchucks come out and Zatoichi is sent packing. Emmanuelle is up next, threatening to use her womanly wiles to lure Bruce to his doom. Alas we’re spared her seduction technique, for no sooner has she announced her intention at that morning’s Cave of Evil general meeting than the film cuts to her inexplicably in bed with Bruce. Unfortunately for Emmanuelle her decadent ways mean that she quickly moves in to give Little Bruce a kiss and reveals the evildoers sneaking into Bruce’s room. However, despite having caught him with his pants down, the baddies choose to retreat. Bruce follows, and despite both Bond and Clint pulling their guns on Bruce, he’s allowed to leave unharmed. Makes no sense, but there we are.
Next we’re treated to some Henry VIII-style marriage management by the King of the Underworld, who is gifted Emmanuelle by the Exorcist as a replacement for his two current brides, both of whom have been cursed by drinking a potion they intended to poison Bruce with, which has rendered them ugly as Bernard Manning’s greyest pants.
Bruce meanwhile bumps into and defeats Dracula and a another herd of zombies in the quarry before running into James Bond outside the King’s palace and, in the film’s shortest fight scene, accuses him of harbouring ‘stolen money’ before dispatching Bond with a flurry of roundhouse kicks. I can only assume Bond puts up virtually no resistance because the only white fellow they could find to stuff into the cheap tux sported by ‘Bond’ didn’t know any martial arts.
Clint’s up next, as Bruce once again finds himself in the quarry with no explanation. The Man with No Name puts up a valiant effort but his pistols and clumsy kicks are easily overcome by Bruce who offs Clint, reducing the evildoers’ camp down to two.
The Exorcist and The Godfather are both naturally displeased that their crew is being pared to the bone and decide to go for broke and assassinate the King. They storm the palace and confront the monarch, easily overcoming his guards and forcing the King into his chamber where, in an attempt to scare off the marauding fiends, he shakes his pillar like it’s never shaken before, causing massive earthquakes throughout the Underworld. These earthquakes raze most of the kingdom to the ground, causing many, many deaths, which angers Bruce who is caught up in the middle of it all. However, back in the throne room, The Exorcist and Godfather advance on the King, who has literally nowhere left to run…
So of course the film jump-cuts to the quarry again at this point, with both the Exorcist and Godfather striding towards Bruce, who seems to have appeared from nowhere. Combat ensues for about 10 minutes of screen-time before both are dispatched. However, Bruce can’t let the King’s negligent treatment of his subjects pass unanswered and threatens to topple the King. Enter the King’s sorcerer from stage-left, who promises to protect the King with a troupe of mummies he summons up and calls his ‘demon dozen’. While the fight initially looks unwinnable, Bruce’s allies Popeye, Caine and One-Arm come galloping in and assist with vanquishing the Andrex-clad demons. The sorcerer is drawn into the fray after Popeye wolfs down some spinach, and is eventually stabbed with his own scimitar. With no allies left, the King attempts to flee, only to be cornered by an angry crowd of his subjects. Cornered, he pleads with Bruce for his life, which Bruce agrees to grant him if only he will send Bruce back to Earth. The King readily agrees, casts a spell and, in a scene very reminiscent of Bjork’s video for It’s Oh, So Quiet, sends Bruce hurtling upwards and Earthwards, watching the crowd of Underworld dwellers wave him off from below.
As you can now hopefully understand, not much about this film makes a lot of sense. The dialogue is nonsensical and the dubbing atrocious, the fight scenes aren’t especially well choreographed, everything looks like it had next to no budget behind it, and the plot is so disjointed it feels like the kind of dream you have when you’ve been snacking on Leerdamer before bed. But despite all this, The Dragon Lives Again is one of the most bizarre but also most enjoyable exploitation movies ever. Sure, it’s not high art but it puts a whole new spin on the bruceploitation movement and, well, the site of a big-sideburned Englishman and a Chinese fellow in a beard approximating James Bond and Clint Eastwood is almost too delicious. Bizarre, hard to follow, but buckets of fun, The Dragon Lives Again comes highly recommended. As the whole thing’s on YouTube, I think all I need do now is link you to it and send you on your way…
Ah, exploitation cinema… Like the adverts for Burger King’s ‘steal’ meal deal or the blurb on a packet of legal ‘weed’, b-movies so often promise a lot more than they deliver, and their main method of generating sizzle to disguise a lack of steak is a suitably lurid title.
I’ve been interested in cult films for a fair while now and in that time I’ve encountered some truly wonderful movie titles, usually attached to some truly lousy films, and so I thought it’d be fun to put together a list of ten suitably wonderful titles to demonstrate the range of schlock on the market. Obviously everyone’s got their own idea of what makes a cracking movie title and there are doubtless some titles so tasteless, so ridiculous and so obscure that I’ve not encountered them. Still, it’s not like I’m Empire magazine, so I don’t have to be definitive. Oh, and a word before we start – I know that the world of pornography has produced more rancid, hilarious, OTT and tasteless titles than ‘legitimate’ cinema ever could but there’s no fun to be had topping horror movie titles with The Assprentice with Sir Alan Fucker is there? By the way, I just made that one up. Any porn producers reading, I want a cut! Or possibly a role… Anyway, on with the list! And we’ll start at the bottom:
The Ronseal of lurid movie titles, as the film does indeed feature strippers who are zombies. Jenna Jameson stars as a Nietzsche-reading pole-dancer who becomes zombified, only to find that wiggling her maggot-ridden backside around earns her (and the club’s seedy owner, played by Robert ‘Freddy Krueger’ England) more money than mortal gyrating ever did. I came away from this film worried that I might be a necrophile, but would sex with a zombie technically count as necrophilia? Hmm… that aside, Zombie Strippers is that rarest of rare beasts: a movie with a lurid title that’s actually well-worth watching. It’s a hoot, plus it’s got a metal soundtrack and a fat, moustachioed comedy Mexican. What’s not to love?!
Good old oedipal Russ Meyer. This is probably the most famous of Meyer’s movies, thanks in no small part to its stonking title. Faster Pussycat tells the tale of three ruthless go-go dancers who end up killing a man in a drag race, abducting his girlfriend and then attempting to seduce and fleece a farmhouse of typical dumb hicks. Unusually for Meyer there’s no nudity in this film, but it’s a fun romp nonetheless.
8. Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid!!
Gah, talk about a good title covering a shameful pile of dross. A film so poorly executed, badly written and laughably acted that it barely deserves comment. Two guys decide to break away from the 9-5 world and embark on a cross-country tour, unaware that a fat, ever-silent man has stowed away in their car. Along the way they break wind in restaurants and break up a wedding. Yawn, yawn. Interestingly, IMDB lists the film under the title ‘Zeisters’, which makes me think that crafty Lloyd Kaufmann of Troma just decided to slap this silly title on it in the hope of getting schmucks like me to bite. Your life is perfectly complete without seeing Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid.
7. KISS meets the Phantom of the Park
So KISS, already one of the most OTT rock bands ever to take to the stage, decide to up the ante even further by granting themselves super-powers in a made-for-TV movie from the late ‘70s. So Family Guy already exploited this – so what?! Any film which features Peter Criss blessed with the actual abilities of a cat is worthy of further acclaim. The film concerns an evil scientist who’s created an evil robot version of KISS in order to take revenge on the band for a perceived injustice. The film culminates with a good KISS vs evil KISS brawl on-stage, before a KISS concert is played. Campy? And how! See it and you’ll forgive Gene Simmons that reality series…
And naturally I follow that with a hearty (sic). This film is more commonly known as either The Beast in Heat or SS Hell Camp and follows the attempts of a Nazi dominatrix in the Ilsa mould to genetically engineer a creature which will, literally, hump Jewish POWs to death. A funny little fellow called Sal Boris plays the horny little goblin and has a whale of a time mugging to camera and wolfing down pubic hair, but the film is hampered by its budgetary constraints and lack of technical expertise. The director, Luigi Batzella, didn’t have enough footage or money to make a complete film, so while the torture scenes all take place within one room, they are bookended with footage spliced in from one of his earlier (and dull as dishwater) war movies. The result isn’t impressive but this is probably the only film of its ilk in existence. By the way, the film is also known as ‘Horrifying Experiments of the SS Last Days’, but the title card reads as I have rendered it above. That should tell you all you need to know.
Bloodsucka! Deadlier than Dracula! Yes, with the ‘70s came blaxploitation and after the action genre had been done to death, directors turned their attention to other areas, in this case Hammer Horror (God alone knows why…). In 1780, Count Dracula, who turns out to be a racist, places a vampiric curse on an African prince condemning him to immortality in the form of Blacula, who goes on to terrify Los Angeles two centuries on. Blacula is hugely entertaining and blaxploitation aficionados will love it. I’ve never been able to track down a copy of its sequel, Blackenstein, but with a title like that you know it’s got to be worth a look…
“You bastard! What have you done with my balls?!” is probably the best line in this movie, and indeed the best thing about it full stop. An absolute waste of time on all fronts, this film. The plot revolves around a concentration camp commandant who had his testicles bitten off by a Russian POW and seeks to acquire himself a new pair of Nazi knackers. To do this, he enlists some very Italian-looking Aryans to come and stay at his camp to use the female POWs as temporary sperm buckets. One of these hunky guards proves to have the gonads the commandant wants and is relieved of them, apparently without notice, causing the poor eunuch to come crashing in to the commandants office, demanding to know the whereabouts of his manhood. All this sounds entertaining but the film is so dark, grainy, poorly-paced, badly acted and boring that there’s literally no point in putting yourself through the ordeal of watching it. I read a book through the film the first time I saw it; my brother fell asleep. You have been warned.
Another film with Nazi themes, although this time with a more unique spin on things. The citizens of a town called Watts are under constant assault from the Mafia and form a people’s army to combat the Mafioso, the titular Black Gestapo. However, a power struggle between the group’s leaders cause one leader to become vilified and attempt to avoid being wasted along with the Mafiosos. Not remarkable as blaxploitation films go but the sight of black fellows in SS garb will linger, and mentioning the title to a film bore at a dinner party will make you seem the wit of the evening. I think…
2. Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler
I wanted to include They Saved Hitler’s Brain on this list but then I read about this lil’ nazisploitation atrocity. As is typical for the genre, this film follows the plight of a Jewish POW who is ensconced in a concentration camp that acts as a bordello for German soldiers. Naturally the film’s choc-full of sex scenes, torture and perverse scientific experiments but the cake has to be taken by a dinner scene in which a pot roast of Semitic foetus is served up. Lovely. I doubt you’ll be able to track this one down but it makes the film Caligula look like Bambi by comparison.
Possibly the best movie title ever. Just try and imagine all the possibilities open to a director charged with lensing a project called Porno Holocaust. Oh, and before anyone shouts, this was marketed as a legitimate horror film back in the day, hence its inclusion on this list. How could a project which sounds so very, very promising possibly fail? Sadly, director Joe D’Amato just doesn’t deliver with this sorry cheapie about a group of scientists on an expedition to a tropical island to find out about a monster, which is apparently murdering local fishermen. There’s lots of sex, granted, but it all involves people so unattractive it’s like watching cattle rut and despite the film’s ‘monster’ boasting a third leg which could legitimately support his weight, which he uses as his primary weapon (no double entendres, please), the whole exercise is a fairly pointless, grainy mess. It does star George Eastman from Anthropophagus the Beast, which is a bonus of sorts, but ultimately Porno Holocaust is a title better savoured by the imagination than a film to be watched.
So there we have it. Ten of my favourite movie titles, definitely not ten of my favourite movies. If you know of any better titles which didn’t make my list, do let me know. Happy viewing!
Anyone interested in horror movies, particularly those films at the trashier end of the spectrum, must at one time or another have seen, read up on or heard about Lucio Fulci's 1980 horror classic Zombi 2 (or Zombie, or Zombie Flesh Eaters or, well, a whole host of other titles) and the bewildering array of sequels which followed it. While the horror genre is renowned for milking its franchises to death and wringing every last bit of life from a successful film, the saga of the Zombie series demonstrates this practice taken to its logical conclusions.
Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Amytiville Horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street, all these films and many, many others spawned endless, increasingly crummy sequels, which eventually rendered the original films laughable. But the Zombie series of films is probably the most interesting horror franchise of all to examine, purely because it is so fragmentary, so unofficial and so dogged by the cynical marketing ploys of home video companies that it is positively bewildering to contemplate. Let's see if we can untangle its threads and chart the development of this bizarre and schlocky bunch of films.
In 1979, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead was released in Europe and became an overnight smash-hit. Zombie 2, which was actually written before George Romero completed Dawn, was released in Europe as an unofficial sequel to Romero's movie. You see, Dawn of the Dead was released in Europe with the title Zombi, so those cagey marketing men in Rome decided to cash in on the success of Dawn by releasing Fulci's outing as Zombi 2 (or Zombie 2. From here on out I'm going to refer to the films using the title Zombie rather than any other variant - there are literally dozens of variations of the titles of all the films in the 'series').
However, something very odd happened to this quickie cash-in: it was a hit at the box office. A huge hit in fact. In Europe Zombie 2 was as successful, if not more so, than Dawn of the Dead, and this isn't as unbelievable as you might imagine.
While most film buffs and movie critics agree that Romero's Dawn of the Dead is a thoughtful allegorical film about American consumerism, the response to Zombie 2 was, and remains, fairly sniffy. The film was lambasted as a generic exploitation flick with very little merit, a criticism which I find unfair.
I mean, any film featuring a scene in which a zombie fights a real-life shark under water deserves at least a modicum of respect, right?
Hell, I got a real kick out of that scene again just finding the YouTube link. But novelty isn't all the film's got going for it. The make-up and gore effects in the movie are so impressive and revolting that it wasn't until as recently as 2005 that the movie was released uncut in the UK. Anyone who has seen the infamous eyeball-meets-splinter scene will doubtless wince at being reminded of it, and the offal-munching scenes and zombie get-ups are superb. Even the soundtrack's great:
Sure, the movie's hampered by bad dubbing, a few logical inconsistencies and occasionally sluggish pacing, but it's no worse than most of the schlock churned out of Hollywood and it's an enjoyable romp, in no way deserving of the critical scorn poured upon it.
Still, no matter. Zombie 2 made money so, naturally, Zombie 3 had to be shot. Although interestingly, here's where the infamously odd and semi-official nature of the Zombie 'series' begins to make itself known. The film released as Zombi 3, directed by Lucio Fulci (in the main) was not released until 1988, - a full 8 years after Zombie 2, which appeared in cinemas in 1980.
In the interim however, two other zombie movies were unleashed which could have been deemed 'sequels' to Fulci'sZombie 2. Zombie Creeping Flesh, while technically not part of the Zombie series, acts as a sort of unofficial prequel to Dawn of the Dead, in that it features four boiler-suited marines who bear more than a little resemblance to those seen at the start of Dawn as the film's main protagonists. It's also a thoroughly inane but harmless movie, noteworthy only for its atrociously bad dubbing, piss-poor humour, anundant stock footage and a brilliant soundtrack by Goblin (although that was half-inched from the film Contamination but, m'eh). It was also directed by one Bruno Mattei, who we'll come back to shortly.
A more serious contender for the dubious honour of following up Fulci's film was MarinoGirolami'sZombie Holocaust, which stars Ian McCulloch (the star of Zombie 2) and features Dakkar, who also appeared in Fulci's movie. Jay Slater points out in his brilliant book Eaten Alive! that the producers of Holocaust used Zombie 2 as the template for their film and simply chucked in a few cannibalistic elements to justify the presence of the word 'Holocaust' in the title. According to IMDB, Zombie Holocaust was actually released as Zombie 3 in America before Zombi 3, which was subsequently released in the States with the 'e' absent from the film's title. Confused yet? This 'series' only gets more and more mind-bending in complexity as it goes on.
Anyway, Fulci began filming Zombie 3 in the Phillipines in the latter half of the 1980s with a script written by Claudio Fragasso, who also happened to pen Zombie Creeping Flesh. All was not well however, with Fulci being taken violently ill during the shooting of the film and directorial duties were handed over to Bruno Mattei, the man who brought us Terminator 2 and Jaws 5.
The resulting motion picture is probably (and undeservedly) the most villified of the Zombie films. Sadly, because this is the official sequel to Zombie 2, expectations were high and the hodge-podge turned in by Mattei (but released with Fulci alone credited as director) did not compare favourably with its predecessor. Zombie 3 was not released theatrically outside Italy but was a firm favourite with low-rent video firms, who ensured its notoriety world-wide.
After this embarrassment Fulci ceased to have any involvement with the Zombie films, but this didn't stop a cabal of writers, directors and producers from releasing further installments to cash in on the cult reputation of Zombie 2, which by this point was infamous in the UK and world-wide for being included on the DPP's 'video nasty' list. Indeed, Zombie 3 was let loose in the UK under the title Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, making the most of the UK title of Fulci's original film.
Zombie 3's writer Claudio Fragasso would lens the next in the Zombie series, originally filming his movie under the title After Death. As was only natural, the resulting shambolic mess that Fragasso produced was released on home video in the States and Europe as Zombie 4: After Death, and in the UK as Zombie Flesh Eaters 3, despite the fact that the plot of the film itself has nothing whatsoever to do with the preceding movies. Zombie 4 itself is truly awful, looking like an Iron Maiden music video and boasting the kind of cheesy score that seemed to infest b-productions produced in the '80s. The fact that the film's male lead had a day job as a porn star should tell you what kind of territory the movies were now entering. Logic and good taste were entirely cast aside but thanks again to the series' notoriety, the movie was a financial success on home video, paving the way for Zombie 5.
Zombie 5, as it appeared in the USA, is the strangest and most tangential of all the Zombie series. In actual fact it was shot two years before Zombie 4 with the title Killing Birds. As The Cinema Snob has pointed out, Zombie 5, despite its title, isn't actually a movie about zombies at all: instead it's a god-awful cheapie about a murderer blinded by birds, whose wife returns from the dead to exact revenge on her bloodthirsty husband. (Actually, I should point out that's just my interpretation of the plot - the presence of the movie's 'mummy' creature is never explained in the film itself). This film has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Zombie series but thanks to cynical video companies exploiting the Zombie name it has become canon.
Shockingly enough, a Zombie 6 was released in America after the abomination of Killing Birds. This time a 1981 horror movie starring George Eastman of Anthropophagus and Porno Holocaust fame with the title RossoSangue was forced upon unsuspecting movie fans as Zombie 6: Monster Hunter. However, this film is better known as Absurd, the sort-of sequel to Anthropophagus, and has about as much to do with zombies as Casablanca.
This is what I mean about the Zombie series making an interesting cinematic case-study. While Halloween III is probably the most infamous horror sequel to bear no relation to the films preceding it, the diverse and sometimes completely irrelevant Zombie movies make that film look positively proper. The sad thing about the Zombie films is that, bar Zombie 2, they are unwatchable garbage, released purely to cash in on the underground notoriety and name value of Fulci's first movie. Indeed, as with most of the video nasties, had these films not been attached to the Zombie series, they would have long-ago have faded into complete obscurity. But it is now the case that you can purchase a legitimate DVD release of, say, Killing Birds which features extra features such as interviews with the cast. Imagine that: a name-only, crappy 'sequel' to a low-brow horror film is now available to own with more extras on the disc than the original release of (Cameron's, not Mattei's) Terminator 2. Boggles the mind, eh?
So what have we learned here? Well, apart from not to waste our collective time actually watching Zombie 5, the best thing we can take away from the Zombie movies is perhaps this piece of advice I'll offer to aspiring horror directors: shoot your living dead movie on 20-year-old film stock, fart all over it with synths and try to get it released as Zombie 7: Beyond the Grave. Shriek Show are bound to put it out and sad, nerdy horror fans like me will buy it, dissect it, analyse and argue about it, and you'll go down in history along with the likes of Fulci, Mattei, Fragasso and their ilk... Wait, wait! Come back! I was only talking hypothetically...!
On last night's edition of Top Gear the show's infamous 'fourth presenter', the Stig, removed his helmet on-camera for the first time in the show's history. Jeremy Clarkson had warned the nation in his Sun column that the programme's proceedings would offer viewers a TV moment so significant that it would, in his words, be like 'Neil Armstrong walking on the corpse of JR Ewing'. Of course Clarkson's tongue was firmly planted in his cheek, but at around 8:30pm the Stig removed his helmet and 'revealed himself' to be none other than F1-goliath and Ferrari poster-boy Michael Schumacher.
Of course this was all in good humour and nothing more than a stunt to make the first episode of this new series of Top Gear special, but the reaction to this 'revelation' has been astonishing. I've seen a lot of astounded, confused and disappointed reactions to the Stig's 'identity' in my Facebook news feed today, and one of the lead items on BBC News features an article in which a BBC spokesperson has had to officially deny that Schumacher was the 'real' Stig, and reassure the public that 'we'd never reveal the Stig's identity'.
Put bluntly, the Stig's identity can never be 'revealed' because 'he' is bigger than anyone who could emerge from beneath 'his' helmet. Top Gear have subtly created a modern myth in the Stig; a creation who actually transcends mere humanity. The Stig, like the Simorgh in Attar's Conference of the Birds, is a creation we all participate in. 'He' is a gestalt, a projection of our expectations. 'His' uniform exists only to make 'him' otherworldly and anonymous, and it is we (well, and Clarkson) who imbue Stig with his 'character'. The Stig is, essentially, like those 'ghost cars' the player can manifest in racing video games, which demonstrate the best route around the track; almost a neutral archetype of perfect driving. Stig, like the idea of 'Christ', is supernatural and transcendental. And decidedly not Michael Schumacher.
Clarkson was right when he said "I'm not sure Michael Schumacher is the Stig". Now stop worrying!
This year's Download festival kicked off in fine style for me, with a Faith No More gig held at Brixton Academy the night before I was due to leave for Donnington. Even though Wednesday evening was the night of a strike on the Tube, my brother, Tom and I made it to the gig and back as smoothly as possible. I shan't go on and on, but Wednesday's return to their old stomping grounds saw Faith No More in fine form.
The journey started well enough around midday on Thursday, despite a small haze-induced mishap getting onto the M1. To our horror, some thoroughly selfish and melodramatic chap had decided to attempt suicide on the road itself near Birmingham, leading to a three-hour detour through East Anglia up to Donnington Park for us. Still, the irritation of nearly 6 hours of travelling was eased when Benj, Tom and myself met up with my brother and his friend Becky with ease by the campsite and pitched in for the evening. Rob's girlfriend arrived a bit later on bearing whisky and snacks.
After getting settled and getting suitably merry and red-eyed, we explored the extortionate fairground and Village, bought a few essentials and braced ourselves for a freezing cold night. My appalling lack of foresight saw me pack neither a bedroll or a pillow, so I spent the first night shivering in the foetal position using my rolled up trench coat as a makeshift cushion. Still, I was bladdered and so, naturally, content...
Friday began with a trip to the on-site supermarket to pay a stupid amount of money for tuppence ha'penny's worth of cooking stuff and we began the day with a barbecue and I braved the loos for the first and only time I spent at the fest. (Without wishing to dwell on the subject, to use a horrible cliche, you can't judge a book by its cover: a huge, long-haired bearded man emerged from the loo before me, bog-roll in hand and sweating, so naturally I feared the worst. Lo and behold, the Portacabin was positively sparkling!)
The entertainment kicked off, after a half-hour trudge to the arena, with a terrible band called The Blackout, who had the audacity to cover Faith No More's Epic. I couldn't understand the appeal but, m'eh, to each their own. We pitched up and opened beers, amazed by the blazing sunshine and the beards of some of our fellow revellers. Staind came next, so I spent some time getting into a Dutch sort of mentality.
I couldn't be bothered with the emo rumblings of Billy Talent on the main stage, so I abandoned our little party and went over to the Bedroom Jam stage to catch a band called White Man Kamikaze, who were really neat and seemed genuinely amazed at the size of the audience who'd turned out for them.
Killswitch Engage started on the main stage soon enough and sounded really tight. Again, they weren't really my thing being technical, rather than riff-based, but their set was pretty powerful, plus their rendition of My Last Serenade reminded me of countless nights spent in the Met Lounge in my younger days.
Not thinking I'd enjoy Limp Bizkit, I was quite surprised by how restrained they seemed and they genuinely gelled well. Korn, who followed, seem to have lost everyone but Jon Davis and Munky since I was last bothered about the band, but, again, they made me feel warm and fuzzy with nostalgia, so, m'eh, that was pleasant.
We headed down to the front of the stage during Korn's cover of 'Another Brick in the Wall' to prepare for Faith No More. I lost everyone else when I went off to buy cider but got in down the front by myself. The show, when it started, looked and sounded amazing and I loved leaping in unison with the crowd to From Out of Nowhere. Less fun was feeling my right leg to discover that my wallet had vanished. I looked in vain but the crowd was so huge that there was no way of fighting the tide. Thinking that action sooner rather than later would be the best course, I spent the remainder of Faith No More's set cancelling my debit card. I got back to camp alone and thoroughly annoyed that night, devoid of money or the means of getting hold of any more. Sleep was only possible after very heavy sedation.
Saturday started with my brother collapsing with heatstroke and so Tom, Benj, Beck and I marched off to the arena alone. Benj and Tom, being thoroughly lovely chaps offered to buy me the odd pint during the day and Becky bought me a pasta salad for dinner. God bless 'em...
Anyway, we kicked off the day with Devildriver, who managed to dish out the word 'motherfucker' with such carefree abandon that it ceased to mean anything at all by the end of their set. Mind, their riffs were neat and their gimmick for the day involved inviting the Guinness World Records people to witness the world's largest circle pit. From my vantage on the hillside, I could see this pit open up like a crop-circle and watched the dust start to fly. The band made their record comfortably.
Hatebreed gurned their way through a set of gym-metal before Down came and smoked out the whole arena with their icky-sticky riffage. Phil Anselmo looks just like he did in the video for Cowboys From Hell again these days and the band were just anthemic. Bury Me in Smoke simply blew me away.
Considering how hard my friends had been laughing about DragonForce, I was thoroughly amazed by their musicianship. If they'd been around in the 1980s, they'd have been one of the biggest bands in the world. I've never heard shredding like it.
We left the main stage after DragonForce to catch Lawnmower Deth on the Tuborg stage, who were hilarious. Song titles like Did You Spill My Pint?, midlands-accented stage banter, instrument destruction, a 'fish dance', 'Deth had it all. They also showed us how to combine the devil's horns hand sign with a closed fist to make a snail, which was nice of them.
I staggered over to the main stage again with the others for Marily Manson, who was simply abominable. To call his band the worst act of the entire festival wouldn't be going too far. Manson finished just as Prodigy were due to start on the second stage, so I hurried over with a fresh cider in hand after my brother had lent me £20.
Prodigy were astoundingly good, if a little quiet, and their recycling of the Breathe guitar riff to make a 'Breathe Version' made for entertaining listening. After about half an hour the band launched into Firestarter, which bores me to tears so I made the best decision I made in the time I was in Leicestershire: I went to see Anvil.
Anvil, stars of the recent movie Anvil: the Story of Anvil, were simply incredible. Their riffs were monstrous and pure, no-nonsense heavy metal. Lips' voice was powerful, his between-song banter endearing and the band's drummer was astoundingly talented. The band introduced ' a song about our favourite strand of pot' called White Rhino, which made me smile. Metal on metal sent me into a frenzy of windmill headbanging which barely ceased until the band had wrung the last out of their set's ending. Simply perfect, Anvil were my band of the festival.
I had just enough time to catch the end of Slipknot's set and hear Corey Taylor taking exaggeration to its logical conclusions as he urged us to sing along so loudly that 'the whole fucking world' would hear. Yes, quite. Still, I was gonzoed enough by this point to hurl my hair along with them with glee before heading back to camp.
I'd only got £4.75 in my pocket by this point and needed £5 to buy a 4-pack of cider so I did a bit of begging and scrabbling around for change, which was thoroughly embarrassing, before having to scrounge coppers from my tent. Mind, when I returned to camp, the others had arrived and were chatting and drinking. Callum, a chap who lives 'round the corner from me, stopped over for a couple of beers and we lit a barbecue for warmth. It was a heartwarming evening, even if my voice was utterly shot by this point.
Sunday began with cider for breakfast and a jaunt up to the Domino's pizza stand with Tom and Benj for £30(!) worth of pizza, which we scarfed in short order. Tom and I then headed to the arena in search of my wallet and some 80s metal. We wondered over to the Jaegermeister truck, which was a sight to behold, surrounded as it was by giant, inflatable bottles of the rancid stuff.
Tom and I had just enough time to catch the end of Tesla and a bit of Skin's set, both of whom were far heavier than I imagined they'd be, before queueing up for what seemed an eternity at Lost Property. Eventually I retrieved my wallet, minus my debit card and cash, and headed back to camp to meet the others who were packing up, thanks to the folks with cars having to work early on Monday. Tom and I bumped into our old friend Tobias as we were leaving, which was totally unexpected as we'd not seen him for years and was a nice way to end the festival. We all humped our piles of stuff along for what felt like an eternity and made off into the Leicester countryside, sun burnt, ravaged, sweating but happy, chattering about Lawnmower Deth and Slipknot's stage show...
A short and entirely un-scholarly look at the future of human evolution
On Monday 01 June 2009 ITV1 will broadcast a documentary entitled Supersize Teens: Can't Stop Eating, a documentary on tennage obesity. A Radio Times billing for the programme summarises the show's content thusly:
"We follow two morbidly obese teenagers as they risk everything - including their lives - in a bid to lose weight. Laura is a 24 stone 13-year-old, and is one of the youngest patients ever to have the high-risk gastric bypass operation, while Victoria is 14 and is paying 25,000 dollars for a reversible gastric band."
These are shocking cases of morbid obesity in two very young children, but more remarkable still is the fact that, in this day and age, such stories are commonplace. 2009 alone has seen the likes of Georgia's Story: 33 Stone at 15, Gok Wan: Too Fat, Too Young and Extraordinary People: The World's Heaviest Man grace mainstream, prime-time UK television. The digital channels, particularly those aimed at women or themed around 'health' abound with endless weight-loss comptitions of freak-show documentaries about whale-like Americans. Indeed, to mention our cousins across the Atlantic isn't to score cheap laughs, it's to highlight the extent of the problem. The Radio Time continues about "the situation in America, where more than 200,000 children a year undergo weight loss surgery."
This is staggering! Why has this occurred? We, the human race, have mastered this planet. We've tamed the beasts of the wild, we've explored and documented each and every nook and cranny of the lands of this planet (and a good deal of the waters too), we can predict the weather, communicate golbally, we have knowledge of physics, biology, mathematics... In short, we understand this working of this planet and have carved it to suit our needs. Why, then, have our very bodies failed us? Why have they, to paraphrase an episode of Transformers, become weakened and totally useless?
Think of any technological development you like and ask yourself what purpose it serves. All technology is designed to overcome the shortcomings of our physical or mental abilities. The chair, something we all take for granted, overcomes the cumbersome nature of our physical form, overcomes fatigue and serves as the best possible means to rest a body 'in neutral', as it were. The roof over your head prevents hypothermia. The car you drive propells you to your destination far faster than your legs or horse ever could. I could ramble on; the point to bear in mind is that everything we have developed from the knife and fork to the microprocessor is in some way intrinsically connected with our biological needs.
However, nature has been developing technology for far longer than we have. Think of your body, comprised as it is of limbs, a torso, a skeleton, a myriad of senseory receptors, an internal communication and electrical system in the form of the nervous system and so on. Each part of your body serves specific funtions. Think of the arm and the hand. These are your body's primary tools. Consider the versatility, sensitivity and ingenuity of the human hand and contemplate the many functions the hands perform. These are tools carved by evolutionary need.
But sadly evolution, being a crude process of trial-and-error, has not made us perfect. We can marvel at the human eye and ponder the wonders of its workings but we know, categorically, that our visual spectrum is very limited. One only has to blow a dog whistle and watch the reations of any nearby canines to know that we perceieve but a fraction of the audio signals around us. Our sense of smell is nothing compared to that of a dog. And these shortcomings are nothing compared to those that instinct forces upon us: hunger, thirst, sexual desire and more abstractly chemical moods like anger, misery, despair and so on. Schopenhauer was correct in proclaiming that we are all slaves to insatiable desire and will always remain so.
Since we have taken our evolution into our own hands, as previously stated, we have developed an alarming array of technological solutions to our various biological shortcomings, and herein lies the problem. We have been too ingenious too quickly. Our minds, natures, technologies and so on are of 2009 but our bodies might as well exist in the Stone Age. And it is for this reason that we are stagnating and in danger of degenerating.
Our young are fat because food is no longer a challenge. They do not have to pick it or hunt for it, they no longer slog it home or exist in states of perpetual feast-and-famine. It's not their fault; it is perfectly sensible to streamline the production and availability of something as biologically essential as food, but the abundance of food, and often refined and alien produce at that, has unwittingly caused a problem. Our prisons are perpetually full to bursting with rapists and drug abusers, all of whom are merely retreading crimes perpetuated since the dawn of man, but crimes borne of their own chemistry rather than conscious malice. We no longer have to move now that we have the car, and so on, and so on...
Humankind is at a crossroads: we can either face up to the fact that our very natures (i.e. taking the path of least resistence in all situations) are incompatible with our physical forms in the world in which we now live and seek to use our technological developments in order to evolve, or slide into a state of increasing physical weakness and frailty.
Radical biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is currently seeking a means of prolonging human life through prevention of "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us", and compares his view of 'repairing' human beings to the notion of a mechnaic replacing parts on a car. This is all very well in its way, but we have already proven that, by using technology, we have become capable of superhuman feats. With the telescope we can stare deeply into the heavens at any time we desire; with the motor car we can travel at huge speeds, we have learned how to fly, we have developed machines capable of great physical strength and versatility, as well as things such as calculators, communication technologies and the means to artifically maintain the health of bodily organs.
In my view, the next stage in humanity's development will be the widespread physical replacement of biological limbs and organs with technological equivalents. Indeed, think of the pacemaker, the prosthetic limb, the hearing aid and so on - such technologies are already in common use. Such a situation poses no end of philosophical problems: is identity something local to merely the brain, is it an illusion, what does it mean to be 'human', and so on but, in my view, if we are to finally overcome our biological and chemical dilemmas, we must now put into practice on ourselves the same technological mastery that we have wrought on the world.
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The resulting motion picture is probably (and undeservedly) the most 
