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:
'Frogs' is a 1972 eco-horror thriller that plays out like a modest, low-rent knock-off of 'The Birds' (which has aged in similarly less-than-stellar fashion) and a decades-in-advance pre-cursor to the somehow even more ridiculous M. Night Shyamalan crime against humanity known as 'The Happening'. It also works equally as a vehicle for a young, strapping Sam Elliott to bare his perfectly manicured and impeccably chiseled chest in all its masculine glory. One might even consider the possibility that his every hair follicle were hand delivered from the gods of hairy-chestdom and custom-placed for maximal female heart-melting effect. I, for one, wouldn't dare deny the plausibility of such a scenario. But I digress...
Elliott plays the thoughtful, mild-mannered Pickett Smith, a freelance photographer documenting the effects of pollution and environmental hazards in Florida's gulf coast. While out on the job and photographing from his canoe, he becomes the unfortunate recipient of a rude waterlogging at the hands of a drunken, recklessly speeding boater named Clint Crockett (played with pompous, asshole-ish gusto by Adam Roarke) who is on holiday at his father's nearby estate. Being the closest thing to an ecological expert in the area, Elliott winds up, in a roundabout way, spending a significant amount of time on the Crockett estate investigating the growth of the local frog population (which has become a major source of annoyance to those living on the property).
It turns out that Jason Crockett (played or rather, "scene-chewed" by Ray Milland), the owner of the estate, has been poisoning the local wildlife with repellents, insecticides and other various toxins in order to keep the frog population at bay. His stubborn insistence on using his wealth and resources to obliterate the frog population at all costs backfires though as mother nature begins to put up a fight and just may put his entire family at risk in the process. Sensing that something is dramatically amiss, Smith tries to talk some sense into the old coot but Crockett will hear none of it and a vicious fight for survival ensues.
Family members and other assorted workers of the estate are knocked-off in increasingly ridiculous and impossibly clumsy death sequences and we're treated to an endless and often tiresome array of ominous shots of brooding frogs seemingly plotting their master plan against the authoritarian ways of the evil rich. There is wildlife EVERYWHERE in this movie. Every variety of creature the Florida landscape has to offer is in on the plan but the implication is that the frogs are the ones running the show. We see snakes, lizards, alligators, salamanders, monitors, tarantulas, slugs, birds, turtles, crabs... Hell, even butterflies; all unleashing the diabolical death-doings of mother nature's awesome fury. There's also something of a leftist, socio-political message at play about how the high-handedness and environmentally insensitive ways of the American conservative class can offer both instant karma and bitchin' repercussions at once (this being a prescient 30 years in advance of the Bush years).
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Most of the fun in this movie is derived from watching the more waspy and self-entitled members of the Crockett clan get theirs. And get theirs they most certainly do. We see one man consumed by mossy forest growth, another man poisoned to death by co-conspiring lizards, a woman chased to her death by butterflies, another woman sort of walked-on-to-death by a sea turtle ... All kinds of stupid shit. We also see the senior Crockett blast a snake off of a chandelier with his six-shooter. Sam Elliott delivers the goods as our hero too and in one sequence smashes riversnakes with a boat paddle and then more or less explodes an entire gator with one shotgun blast. It's pretty fuckin' rad.
However, one must be forewarned... This film moves at a snail's pace (I cringed as I just typed that) and nearly EVERY single scene in the movie includes an additional close-up shot on a frog's face as he croakingly plots his next move. It gets totally out of hand and I'd be willing to to bet that 20-30% of the entire film is composed of frog footage alone. I imagine one could construct one hearty cocksucker of a drinking game if they were to have a sip every time a frog were on the screen. Including such a drinking game would make the movie significantly more enjoyable as well so perhaps that's something to realistically consider if you intend to ever give 'Frogs' a go.
In retrospect, I'm finding myself laughing more at the thought of the movie than I ever did during the movie itself. The unrelenting barrage of frog footage gave it a slow-as-mollases, NatGeo quality that undoubtedly knocked some points off of its rating (no joke, it at times visually resembled 'Aguirre: The Wrath Of God' in it's docu-drama stylings and pacing). Truth be told though, there's a lot of charm to this underdog and moreover, a few good laughs to be salvaged from the experience.
I've posted a new track I recently produced to the mp3 player in the multimedia section. The song is called "Nightswim" and it's something I've been playing around with for a few months now.
It's primarily just a looping synth chord and additional note with a whole lot of warped string samples swirling around it... Just a simple, little beatless ambient tune in the vein of Tim Hecker, Fennesz or perhaps even Aphex Twin I suppose. I'm certainly not suggesting it's as good as the music of any of those people of course, just that for comparative purposes you might hear trace elements of those sorts of artists within it.
I had originally had my friend Stephanie Lee record violin parts over the simple, looping groove and then I spat them through a shitload of fx and processes until they were more or less alien versions of their original selves... And then that was that.
So... Here it is in all it's modest glory. It is unmixed and unmastered but will of course be given that treatment once I have enough new material prepped for a proper release.
Feel free to post any thoughts, ideas or criticisms... Whatever. Cheers!
This coming Wednesday we'll be hosting a live appearance from Milwaukee's chief musical export Juiceboxxx at Get Get Down. Not sure what to say or think about this but it at very least should be a colorful and interesting show. What's even better is that there's an additional opening duo called Pooper & Pizza Dog. I'm expecting unapologetic ridiculousness and a pretty surreal experience all around.
The party's being hosted by Colt 45 and I'm hoping there's free 40's because that of course would be awesome.
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:
Imagine for a second that you are Doran, the warrior king of the forest. You live modestly, in relative peace amongst a virtuous, salt of the Earth sort of people, in the kind of society where the children are taught from a young age to construct their homes by hand. The men are the hunter gatherers of your tribe and your women are somehow reminiscent of the D-grade, soft-core porn stars you watched on cable when you were 13. Actually, your women ARE the D-grade, soft-core porn stars you watched on cable when you were 13. And you... You are, more specifically Deron Mcbee, also known as 'Malibu' on the hit television series American Gladiators. You are one seriously chiseled, muscle-bound, loin cloth-wearing son-of-a-bitch. All things considered... Life is pretty fuckin' sweet.
One day you decide to head into the forest for your daily hunting duties. While away, your wife Lystra and a few of her buxom homegirl-hotties head off to the local hot spring to do a little bit of topless pond-frolicking because, you know, that's like, what women do and shit. Suddenly, amid their bare-breasted lagoon-romp, this hairy, Glen Danzig-meets-Tony Larussa-looking motherfucker named Mandrak shows up to crash the party and shit gets totally out of control in the worst kind of way.
You return from your hunt and are confronted with the devastating reality that Lystra and her girls have been raped and left for dead... But suddenly, without warning a mysterious woman manifests out of thin air (or rather from what could only be the artificial jetstream of a smoke machine) purely to tell you that it is up to you Doran, you alone to seek out the evil wizard Mandrak and avenge the deaths of your sweet, sweet womenfolk, lest you be labeled a punk-ass bitch by everyone in your kingdom.
You then manage to somehow break the space-time continuum and land yourself in current day Los Angeles (as opposed to the current-day studio lot your make-shift forest likely existed on beforehand) in search of the dastardly Mandrak (he himself inexplicably being of the time-travelling persuasion). You enter the new world just in time to save a pretty and helpless news anchorwoman (who looks suspiciously like your lost love Lystra) from a street-level assault at the hands of some unmistakably Troma-fied, gutter-punk looking bad dudes. In your new reality, this woman is to be your hot, hot tour guide. But let us not forget that you are a bad, bad man and you have your eyes on the prize. Potential sexual encounters-be-damned, you WILL NOT be deterred on your quest for vengeance and you proceed to pretty much beat the ever-loving shit out of anyone who stands in your way.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' is it?:
I wish I could tell you. The audio track on this movie was of such piss-poor quality and so poorly mixed, its dialog so unclear that even its laughably elementary plot points (really the ONLY thing a movie needs to get right) were rendered unintelligible at best. I am of course in no way saying that the film is remotely difficult to understand (I'm quite certain a brainless sea-sponge could make sense of what takes place over the course of its merciful 96 minutes)... I am however warning all potential viewers to keep the rewind button within striking distance if they intend to understand every line uttered over the entirety of this mindless piece of shit.
In fairness to what was surely an unpretentious and simple little production though, I did manage a hearty chuckle during a scene in which Doran confronts a group of would-be attackers by saying "your swords match your manhood" in as stiff and dim-witted a fashion as humanly possible, and then proceeds to kick much, much ass. Shortly thereafter was a mildly humorous fight sequence where Doran uses Mandrak's severed hand as a weapon and back-handed, bitch-slapping device against Mandrak himself. Additionally, I found it amusing on a completely dork-minded, referential level to see a brief cameo from Jeffrey Culver (who you might know as the old man from the much-beloved cult flick and Bad Meaning Good mainstay 'Hobgoblins') but that is purely the stuff of the advanced nerds among us and truth be told, barely deserving of mention at all. The whole affair was incredibly short on craft and even shorter on laughs. The makers of this movie seem to have had no ambition for it beyond simply seeing it through to completion.
As a historical document, it remains a throwback to the days of low-rent, late-night cable fodder and beyond that, offers very little in the way of entertainment, be it intentional, unintentional or otherwise. If you happened to be an adolescent male around 1990-1991 (when this movie was traversing the after-hours cable airwaves), I imagine you may have found something to like about it given that there's nary a breast on any female character that goes unexposed over its total run-time.
Trust me though, YOU can sit this one out... Even if you're 13 years old RIGHT NOW. We have the internet now.
I recently picked up a re-issue of 'Surf's Up' and have been (somewhat embarrassingly) learning a good deal of the record for the first time. I had always known songs like "Surf's Up" and "Til I Die" but there's a good deal of additional material on this record that I was unfamiliar with until recently so I'm awfully glad to finally own a copy.
The Beach Boys' struggles (both artistically and personally) during much of this era of their career are all well-documented and frankly, I in no way resemble the kind of expert on the subject that has any business acting like I should be writing about it.
So... I'll instead simply take this opportunity to say that there's a huge amount of unsung greatness to this record and a lifetime's worth of drug-induced, existential dread within it as well. This is some painfully beautiful stuff. I encourage any and all to get familiar with it.
... Not much that needs to be said about this one. Read the review, you'll enjoy it. The movie's hilarious. It's about a surgically-removed and severely deformed Siamese twin and his separated brother seeking sweet, sweet vengeance on the doctors who split them apart. What's not to like about that?
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago. 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:
How's this for a premise sent direct from the B-movie gods?... An American scientist/anthropology professor named Harry Beckmeyer comes into possession of a grainy home video on which Aborigines appear to have slain an actual werewolf. His growing obsession with tracking the elusive beast of lore leads him to Sydney, and later the Australian outback where an underground society of marsupial werewolves (yes, you did indeed read that correctly) derived supernaturally from the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger, have remained hidden from greater, civilized society for nearly a half-century.
One such marsupial werewolf, a smoking-hot young lass by the name of Jerboa, ventures away from both the confines of the werewolf society and the tyrannical rule of her stepfather Thylo, in search of a new life and the allure of the free world. She quickly learns that the level of difficulty involved in remaining an anonymous marsupial werewolf in plain site of the public is no small task. Before long, the clash between the werewolf underground and The Man is at full-throttle.
Having grown increasingly alienated by the government's refusal to let the werewolf population peacefully integrate into society, the humanitarian within Beckmeyer forces him to take up arms with the werewolf underground in a fight for the freedom of werewolves everywhere.
Along the way, there are two separate werewolf-human love stories, a brief glimpse into the world of low-budget filmmaking, an amusing mini-horror film spoof, a terribly inept military-on-werewolf strike gone wrong, an excruciatingly gross part-human/part-marsupial-werewolf birth and about ten additional films' worth of sideplots to spare. We meet werewolf nuns, a Russian werewolf ballerina, an undead werewolf skeleton obliterated by machine gun fire and a werewolf big enough that "if he put one tooth down in your mouth... It'd come out of yer asshole."
It also deserves to be noted that the movie has seemingly no direct connection to either Joe Dante's original 'Howling' film or that film's own loosely-related sequel, 'Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch' (a clear-cut finalist in any competition for the greatest title in film history). 'Howling III' is its own ridiculous, stand-alone feature that shares a title alone with the other films of the series and virtually nothing else.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' is it?:
If you've read this far you're probably asking yourself how this film could possibly fall anywhere short of some explosively hilarious, B-movie gold. Well, I'll tell you why it ultimately does...
The film is about 70% camp-comedy-horror fun and 30% compassionate, message-driven drama. A great deal of energy is spent trying to convince the viewer that, by God, werewolves are human (or at least part human) too! And it's really a shame because I can think of hundreds of better venues to discuss werewolf inequality than within the context of what could have otherwise been an awesomely-bad piece of 80's horror-schlock for the ages. I'm left with a small sense of bitter disappointment in the director and crew who couldn't find it within themselves to embrace the utter stupidity of it all and make the film's ridiculousness unrelenting from start to finish.
At the end of the day, I can deal with it though because while the total run-time of this film was probably about twenty minutes longer than necessary, there's enough idiotic fun to get you through the proceedings and some hearty laughs to be had to boot.
Let's start with the brilliantly hammy performance by celebrated bit-part actor Frank Thring as Jack Citron, a Warhol-ian, Rod Steiger look-a-like film-director... I mean, this was the dude that played Pontius Pilate in fucking 'Ben Hur'. Needless to say, the expression "slumming it" has now been properly defined.
And I mean, let's face it... We are talking about a movie about marsupial werewolves so the film's overall potential for absurdist humor begins at somewhere around 11. There are any number of moments in the film where said creatures are every bit as funny in execution as you've imagined them in your mind and any scene involving human-to-werewolf transformations (the "money shot" of any werewolf film worth a damn) achieves this very feat in spades. The acting is atrocious... The script is mostly utter horseshit with the exception of a handful of laugh-out-loud moments... The effects budget probably didn't top 10 or 20,000 dollars... But all things considered, even though it's never once even remotely scary, this somehow still manages to be a pretty amusing little werewolf crap-fest within its limitations and modest means.
Tonight we'll be celebrating Zebo's b-day in grand fashion at Get Get Down at Berlin. We'll also be visited by local selector and DJ favorite Hess for what will surely be a top-notch guest set for the occasion. There will be no cover from 11-4am so come by and show some love on one of the Chicago's finest DJ's day of days!
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago. 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:
A young, timid man by the name of Duane Bradley arrives in a deeply seedy, pre-Guiliani Times Square with a basket's worth of baggage... Literally and figuratively. Born with a semi-formed, conjoined twin brother attached to his side who is surgically removed during the brothers' teen years, our hero has ventured into the big city, basket in tow, in order to right his wrongs and seek revenge on the sleazy network of doctors who forced he and his telepathically-linked brother apart.
What might otherwise be a compelling premise (akin to something like, say, 'Dead Ringers') on the surface is rendered ridiculous beyond belief though (in a good way of course) as we realize that Duane's brother Belial is in fact what could best be described as a fully-sentient, gelatinous and squid-like blob replete with vaguely human characteristics and an uncontrollable penchant for gruesome murder. The end result is something much more like 'It's Alive' in practice and we get some serious mileage out of our comically absurd mini-monster as he cycles through his various rampages and frenzied terror sprees.
Duane is sidetracked along the way by what is surely one of the most weird, stiff and chemistry-free, love-related subplots in cinematic history but that is of no consequence for the tragically alienated Belial who will stop at nothing on his bloodthirsty quest for vengeance and reciprocation.
The movie also functions as a sort of time-capsule film that perfectly illustrates the bedraggled, unkempt cesspool of urban decay that made up that part of Manhattan for much of the 80's. Along the way we meet a wide variety of hustlers, prostitutes, thieves, rapscallions and just about every other manner of unsavory individual one could imagine; all helping to provide a suitably vulgar canvas on which the film paints it's broad strokes of absurdity.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' is it?:
Technically speaking, 'Basket Case' is an objectively terrible movie on nearly every level (its Wikipedia page cites the film's budget at $35,000). If director Frank Henenlotter deserves anything resembling credit for actual dramatic affect though, it should indeed be noted that the film's direction delivers a great deal of 'Elephant Man'-styled pathos to the proceedings. The average viewer will likely feel at least some vague sense of sadness on the behalf of the film's anti-heroes and their unfortunate circumstances. With that in mind, the movie strays just a little too far from the kind of over-the-top ridiculousness necessary to achieve the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' formula. In other words, a viewer looking for something truly, sublimely ridiculous MIGHT be slightly put-off by the film's ability to make a person actually feel something... But just A LITTLE. Because on a comedic level, this movie often comes up all aces and when it does, you'll find yourself laughing out loud.
The Belial character is simply one of the most ludicrous murderers in cinematic history. It goes without saying that the mere existence of such a living, breathing person would defy nearly every known law of biology and physics, and that the cold, harsh realities of our world would surely render such a creature's life very short-lived. It is of course this very fact that makes the character so laughably awesome and the sight of Belial doing his awkwardly violent deeds is the stuff of comedic genius.
So... Those of you who are finding yourself imagining what it would be like to watch said creature wander about in some wickedly dated stop-motion effects, decorate a woman's face with razor-sharp scalpels, eat a dozen packaged and uncooked hot dogs, grope the boobs of the fairer sex, or grasp a man's balls and lift him completely off the ground with one hand will find a lot to love about this movie.
I realize entirely that this isn't exactly brand new "news" per se but it is new Burial music and for that reason alone, it is more than noteworthy. The tune came off of the new 'Hyperdub 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub' compilation and what a tune it is! There's really not much that needs to be said about it... It's Burial. It's great.
As for the Hyperdub compilation itself, it appears to be the kind of 5 year celebratory release that you'd expect from such a fine label... It features both a first disc of brand new, exclusive material from the likes of Burial, Flying Lotus, Martyn, Zomby and others and a second disc of hits from the catalog's past, namely the difficult to come by "South London Burroughs", the first ever release from both the label and from Burial himself.
Big respect to Kode 9 and the ongoing Hyperdub saga!
