Tonight our homey Marco Morales joins the gang for his first GGD adventure. Come through and join the party if you're out and about wanna hang with some of the city's finest.
As for the rest of the month, in typical GGD fashion, the programming remains characteristically bad ass:
04/14 - DJ's Hess and Pr3-Frosh
04/21 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest John Simmons
04/28 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Scotty Brandon
Tonight we'll welcome Diamonds of The Glamour to our weekly Get Get Down party adventures and it's gonna be a hot one. The weather is finally beginning to turn around and what better way to complement the summer-y vibes we experienced today than with a little bit of French house (or rather, a lot of it). We'll be focusing this evening's proceedings on the classics sounds of France and all that it has since inspired. Rest assured, it's bound to get rowdy tonight.
Stay tuned because next week I'll be announcing all of April's guests to boot...
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
The directorial career of Doris Wishman is among the very most prolific of any woman in the history of the cinema and is itself a singularly eccentric body of work unlike any other. Much has been made of her reputation as the "female Ed Wood" and while that summation is of course too reductive to adequately tell the whole story, it's at times hard to deny some of the similarities between the two and their mutual go-for-broke artistic sensibilities. While I generally try to stray from this particular brand of descriptive, anecdotal shorthand while attempting to define a person's entire career, this is perhaps one of those rare instances where, in the very most basic terms, the expression might actually be useful on a purely conversational level. Because like Wood, Wishman's films seem to defy narrative and aesthetic logic in such extremely baffling ways that they become their own kind of outsider art form occupying a kind of bent-logic universe unique unto themselves. Additionally, and like with Wood's films as well, we're all better for the viewing experience at the end of the day.
Having spent the bulk of her career creating nudist and sexploitation features in the 60's and her own kind of sex-comedy camp films in the 70's, Wishman made her stab at slasher-styled genre filmmaking in the early 80's with 'A Night To Dismember'. The film revolves around an American family (the Kent family) and a series of bizarre, interwoven murders among their various members. Truthfully though, the less said about the film's messy and incoherent plot, the better. The real reason to watch the film is to revel in its aesthetic shortcomings (and believe me, they are ever-present) rather than concern yourself with the details of its story.
The myriad production problems Wishman experienced while making this film are well documented but apparently (and to keep it brief), through some unfortunate case of industry foul play regarding the production company involved, much of Wishman's original footage for 'A Night To Dismember' was either stolen or destroyed (she explains this in a riotously entertaining audio commentary track accompaniment on the dvd), leaving the film to be cut exclusively from out-takes, spare parts and leftover footage and meaning that she had to create an entirely new narrative based around unwanted footage alone. While the performances and production values of her final product and her rich history of directorial ineptness lead me to believe that her intentional version of the film would itself have been an undeniable camp classic, the end result that is 'A Night To Dismember' is perhaps the most breathlessly discontinuous and unintelligible film I've ever watched.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
'A Night To Dismember' reaches stratospheric levels of ineptness that border on the transcendent. I honestly doubt I'm equipped with the vocabulary to truly clarify the experience. It is such an outright mess of conflicting film stocks, contradictory music choices, senseless production decisions and confusing sequential details that the whole thing integrates into its own unique kind of nightmarish and dreamlike, dark comedy unlike any other I've ever seen. 'Blood Freak' is the only film I know to tread such similarly elusive territory of near-psychadelic shittiness.
The film has the look of something that was created at least a whole decade in advance of when it actually was and employs a narrator for its entire duration. As far as I could tell, the narration was never better suited as an expository device than the actual action might have been if left to play out by itself and the horribly edited audio and voiceovers were so comprehensively detached from the reality of what was taking place on screen that the cumulative effect resulted in something akin to a surreal hallucination or a bad drug experience. Both spoken words and significant visual cues are often obscured by bad editing and the sound quality of both the dialog and the music are slapped together in a style so abrasive that the film demands a constant state of remote-controlled volume regulation on the behalf of the viewer.
While watching the film I experienced a kind of immutable internal curiosity over how such an oddity could exist; or how such a group of people could come together with the mind to intentionally create something like 'A Night To Dismember'. The reality of the matter is that movies like this one cannot be created intentionally; they are both in practice and by definition the compounded byproduct of circumstantial failure and technical incompetence; the kind of which, given the heavy financial investments required to bankroll a film of any variety, are seldom unveiled for the world in such gloriously, outrageously artless fashion. It is unclear to me how to define such a thing but the end product is itself undoubtedly a kind of amazing, unintentional art form that cuts to the core of what the 'Bad Meaning Good' movie night was made to celebrate. I loved the film and would call it an absolute, undeniable camp classic equally qualified for both party viewing and academic dissection alike.
It's not easy to come by but if you can get your hands on it, 'A Night To Dismember' is an unforgettable cinematic experience. Highly recommended.
This coming month, the twelfth edition and one year anniversary of our Bad Meaning Good movie event will go down at the Burlington. We'll be featuring the two film triumphs commonly known as 'Hard Rock Zombies' and 'Rock N Roll Nightmare', two of the most batshit insane pieces of cinematic joy I've had the privilege of experiencing.
Tonight we've got Chicago heavyweight and one of the finest selectors around, Diz joining us for my birthday edition of GGD! It's gonna be good one, folks! Party rages from 11pm onward...
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
This week we welcome local jocks Pickel and Kool Hersh for this week's installment of GGD. It's the first beautiful day of the year so we're expecting big things!
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
'Brain Damage' is the second film from famed cult director Frank Henenlotter and the 1988 follow-up to his much-beloved 'Basket Case'. While 'Basket Case' has endured a larger and more renown cult status over the years (I, for one, have made my case - no pun intended - for the film before on this very website), I was shocked to find that 'Brain Damage' might somehow be the better of the two and that Henenlotter's bag of tricks is indeed full to the brim with inspired grotesqueries of surreal proportions.
In brief summary, both films deal with innocent and seemingly uncorrupted young men who become subservient to the fiendish and murderous needs of biologically perverse monsters... And the similarities don't stop there. Additionally, in each of the films, the protagonists find themselves retreating into the depths of 1980's NYC's sleazy underbelly and shacking up in fleabag motels in order to mask their newly-acquired homicidal tendencies on society's fringes.
This film though is a kind of sci-fi/exploit crossbreed that shares thematic connections with stuff like Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft adaptation 'From Beyond' and borrows a good deal of inspiration from some of David Cronenberg's very grossest biological horror moments. Make no mistakes about it though, 'Brain Damage' deals with terrors of an entirely different breed and the specific terror at play in this film is a heinously repulsive creature named 'Aylmer'; a tadpole-like, phallus-monster from antiquity with the power to transform ostensibly normal folk into drug-addled degenerates acquiescent to his needs. And what exactly are his needs, you ask? Human brains. The character latches onto people in parasitic fashion and injects a blue fluid through the back of their necks and onto their brain, causing them to hallucinate and experience something akin to an opiate-induced euphoria. In return, he expects them to provide him, or at least lead him to the human fodder from whom he sucks the brains out, allowing him to carry on his vicious cycle.
In short our hero, a young man named Brian, is unwittingly enslaved by Aylmer's "juice" and plunges into a downward spiral of death and depravity. Will he escape the creature's grasp or become just another among the many whom Aylmer has ruthlessly subjugated throughout the ages? This is the dilemma at hand.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Henenlotter's got a real gift for hilarious sleaze and in that regard, this one is a real hoot. Additionally, the Aylmer character is such a nauseatingly charming little fucker that despite his unquenchable bloodthirst, you'll begin to root for him and anxiously await his next killing. His first screen appearance is such a laugh-out-loud, rewind-inducing, WTF! sort of moment that alone, it justifies the viewing of the entire film. Aylmer also serenades Brian in a motel room and generally provides more delirious laughs and whimsical magnetism than I had previously thought possible from an obviously fake, rubber monster of his ilk.
In one particularly memorable sequence, Aylmer prompts Brian into an underground punk club called 'Hell' (the kind that probably only existed in 1980's Manhattan) where Brian, high on the juice, catches the eye of a trampy, young lady on the dancefloor. Little does she know, as she drags him out to the alleyway for an unsolicited beej on the low, that Aylmer is eagerly awaiting her arrival from the inside of Brian's pants. What follows is perhaps cinema history's very most obnoxiously tasteless and repulsive blowjob death sequence... The kind that once viewed, will sear itself onto your brain for the remainder of your lifetime. Whether or not this is a good thing is perhaps a matter of opinion but um, yeah... I laughed. A lot.
There's also a truly disgusting spaghetti and meatballs (er, rather "brainballs") dinner scene, a super gnarly ear-removal hallucination, a number of brain sucking deaths on the behalf of Aylmer, a hilarious impromptu diatribe on the history of the creature, and enough brain-eating to satisfy the needs of a half dozen zombie flicks combined.
For fans of exploit, sleaze, gross-out horror and gritty 1980's NYC trash, this one is a must. For fans of 'Basket Case', it's nothing short of an absolute imperative. For the rest of you, I'd urge you to approach with caution... This one does not go down easy.
Tonight we welcome Mister Joshua of the Chicago Workgroup for another go-round of the GGD party funtimes. Per usual, the party starts at 11pm and goes until 4 in the AM... And is FREE of charge all night long.
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
In honor of one of my very favorite American actors currently working, I'm dutifully bringing to your attention the gloriously awesome Nic Cage as Everyone blog... It's really quite simple and self-explanatory: you click the link, have a browse, and laugh. A lot.
A few of my favorite examples below:
Nic Cage as Young Albert Einstein
Nic Cage as Turbo & Ozone
Nic Cage as Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi
... And there's a whole lot more where that came from. Additionally, since we're on the subject, check out this reel of highlights from Cage's awesomely unhinged and over-the-top performance in the remake of 'The Wicker Man'...
Tonight at Get Get Down we'll be welcoming DJ Weaponry of the Chicago Workgroup for the third installment of our disco-intensive 'Disco's Revenge' edition which runs on the fourth Wednesday of every month.
As for the coming month, we've got a gang of awesome guests in store for March:
03/03 - Mister Joshua (Dialogue Inc./Chicago Workgroup)
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
