Time to Feed the Alien

John Carpenter has earned a reputation as the ultimate shoestring auteur. From his D.I.Y. synthesizer scores, to using a turned inside out William Shatner mask to create Halloweens iconic villain, nothing’s too cheap for him.

Four years before Halloween made him a huge success; Carpenter wrote and directed the sci-fi oddity known as Dark Star. The story of four bored astronauts on a decades long mission to blow up unstable planets using intelligent atomic weaponry. Essentially a parody of Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, it seems Carpenter went out of his way to make the films as bizarre as possible.

The astronauts are essentially apathetic proto-slackers, whose boredom has degenerated into a full blown existential crisis, having been travelling and blowing up planets for 20 years (though by some hyperspace fluke they have only aged 3). Compared to the pristine interiors on 2001 the Dark Star ship is the intergalactic equivalent of 1975 Skoda, Nothing works, the crew sleep in a converted food locker and the ships computer (who sounds suspiciously like HALs bitchy, overly educated, little sister) plays the kind of country and western popular, during the early 70s, with the stoner crowd.

As with everything Carpenter does, he manages to get a lot from fuck all. The special effects are, quite frankly, awful, looking like they were made on a budget of a crinkled five pound note. However as they were probably made on a budget of a heavily tarnished twenty pence piece it is rather impressive. Nothing demonstrates this more than the pet Alien the crew have picked up on their travels. Essentially a large orange beach ball with a pair of gloves stuck to the bottom of it. It makes early Dr. Who look like James Cameron’s Avatar. The film has a kind of 80s arcade game quality to it (think Asteroids), and depending on your point of view this is either Quality kitch, or massively shit.

Now this isn’t the greatest thing that John Carpenter has ever made (in my opinion that’s gonna be Big Trouble in Little China) but it’s a good example of his early work, complete with synth soundtrack and wry humour, and is a must see for any of Carpenters diehard followers, and maybe a curiosity for more casual fans.

Rebels Without a Pulse

Despite popular opinion the 70s were a golden age for cinema, especially for the underground. One of the true lost classics of the era was a little known Brit horror from 1971 called Psychomania.
Tom, the leader of a (oddly middle-class) gang of outlaw bikers, finally unlocks the secret of eternal life from his barking mad, spiritualist mother. After killing himself he returns from the grave and convinces the rest of his gang to do the same. Mayhem promptly ensues as the newly undead bikers murder and pillage their way across the home counties.
While this may sound like pure occult/horror nonsense (no bad thing) the film has been blessed with some awesome visuals. The title sequence for one, featuring slow motion footage of the bikers, skulls emblazoned on their helmets, riding in formation around a circle of standing stones in the grey dawn light, sound tracked by a slab of eerie, Sabbath-esque, downer rock.
Tom’s funeral is another beautiful soft focus scene, where his comrades bury him in the centre of the standing stones, upright, on his bike. The group sit around making wreaths from wild flowers while one of their number plays a piece of trippy acid folk, celebrating the freedoms of the open road. It’s cheesy as, but it beautifully captures the nature of the outsider. The scene is only rally beaten by Tom’s eventual resurrection, with the sound of a revving engine coming up from the soil and the bike exploding forward out of the grave. How is that not cool?
The film is steeped in 70’s camp and bad acting, which to me at least is almost half the fun. The gang act like nihilistic maniacs, but sound like a bunch of Etonians on a punting trip. Tom’s mother (played to perfection by Beryl Reid) is the kind of mad medium who seemed to only have existed in Shepperton studios while her man-servant, Shadwell, is a suitably creepy.
Despite its rather limited availability (it hasn’t been out on DVD for years) the films influence is vast, with everyone from Gabba DJs to Doom Metal bands sampling the film and various experts on British horror championing it as a high water mark.
This movie isn’t going to appeal to everyone, let’s face it the cheese factor is gonna be too much for some people, and the idea that Bikers, even in the early 70s, were as hippyish as this lot is laughable. However for those with a taste for the Satanic, the kitch, or the just plain fucking weird, it is a movie well worth tracking down.

Dungeons, Dragons, and Muppets

The subject of this week’s DVD Darkplace is a personal favourite from my childhood, Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal. Released in 1982, predating the more successful Labyrinth by four years, the movie flopped financially for a number of reasons, one being it had the same opening weekend as Spielberg’s E.T. However over the years the movie has gained a cult following and seems to leave an impression on anyone who sees it during their formative years.
Like a lot of family films The Dark Crystal took its story straight from the same well spring that Tolkien and the Stars Wars trilogy took theirs from. Jen is the last of his race and he must quest to find the missing shard of the Dark Crystal to defeat the evil Skeksis, save the world, and get the girl. It’s essentially Lord of the Rings crossed with the Muppet Show.
uUnlike a lot of family films, it doesn’t shy away from occasionally scaring the shit of the kids. The Skeksis, for a start, are hideous, vulture like creatures that torture and kill other cuter puppets for their own amusement. But they are nothing compared to their henchmen, the Garthim; huge half crab, half spider type monsters that even at the supposedly mature age of 22 still give me the creeps. I don’t know if they are entirely to blame for my arachnophobia but I’m sure they didn’t help.
Re-watching this movie you realise just how charming the world that Jim Henson and (conceptual designer) Brian Froud created is. The visuals are stunning and have the kind of imaginative quality that children latch onto and never let go of.
Obviously all this wouldn’t really mean anything if the story wasn’t any good. While of course the good vs. evil plotline is a staple of almost any movie ever, The Dark Crystal has more to it than that, introducing kids to ideas like duality and sacrifice. This movie makes children smarter. Fact.
Now with all this said it pains me to admit that it isn’t as good as I remember it, but then it was never going to be. While it’s still enjoyable as an adult, I’ve lost that innocence (massive cliché I know) that made this film, along with The Never Ending Story, Princess Bride, and The Labyrinth, such a big part of my childhood. This doesn’t really matter, because I’m sure this film still has the power to enthral and thrill kids even today. That’s the films real power. One thing’s for sure, if I ever have kids, Pixar can fuck off, Dark Crystal all the way.

Come to the Sabbat

Film history is a little bit like a haunted house, a movie makes one wrong move and it can end up lost for decades. Take the Danish obscurity Haxan, made in the early nineteen twenties, by mad auteur Benjamin Christenson; the film explores the role of witchcraft and devil worship throughout the centuries. When compared to the arty nature of early German expressionism though, the film was deemed a semi-pornographic curio and was promptly consigned to the trash heap of cinema. Over four decades later three men set about re-editing and re-scoring the film, they were British avant-gardist Antony Balch, French jazz player Daniel Humair and the third was writer, poet, occultist and world famous smack addict William S. Burroughs. It was this most unusual of films that I found myself watching on all hallows eve.
Shot like a documentary the film doesn’t really have much of plot, it’s more a series of odd dramatisations held together by Burroughs creepy narration. The first thing that grabs you about the film is Humair’s score, a manic session of avant-jazz more in line with a French New Wave film than early gothic cinema. The score adds a kind inappropriate humour to the film, for example watching a coven dancing round the fire at the sabbat is somehow less scary when they’re accompanied by bossa nova drums and a great horn section.
Burroughs musings, which overlay most of the action, aren’t just window dressing. His narration is loaded with implied cynicism and sarcasm. When describing the methods of torture used on witches he seems to be laughing at them (either because of the rampant stupidity involved or because of his own rampant misogyny). He was however a devout follower of the left hand path, thus giving the film some authoritive clout, as well as beat generation cool.
Say what you like about the implanted counter cultural chic of the late 60’s cut, there is one thing that means this film (and its myriad other cuts) should be regarded as a cinematic trailblazer, its visuals. Say what you like about Christenson (and many people have over the years) he was a great director and one of the early pioneers of visual effects. There is a moment in the film when a small stop-motion demon eats its way through a door which is still shit-your-pants scary after 87 years, that’s no mean feat. The film is awash with moments like this, covens of witches riding broomsticks through the night, satanic orgies, and the rather grim witch trials thmselves.
Haxan is the perfect stoned Halloween movie, complete with trippy visuals and an underlying sense of menace.