Deathblog: Wings Hauser (1947 - 2025)

So first off - a quick note to any remaining loyal readers, to clarify that I didn’t really intend for this to just become an obits blog going forward, but a total absence of time to write, combined with blogger’s increasingly disruptive barrage of log-in requests, content blocks and cookie pop-ups, make it difficult to envisage a return to regular posting in this space. I have however been diverting my faltering energies into some other projects - which I will hope to update you on soon.

But now, on to more important matters.

I hate to be the one to tell you if you’ve not heard the news elsewhere, but Wings has left the building.

There is, of course, a corny line to be inserted her about bells ringing and angels - but this is a sad time, so I’m not going to be the one to do it.

Wings! What an incredible human being. What untold joy he has brought to those of us who persist in believing that watching low budget genre films made in Los Angeles in the 1980s / 1990s is a respectable use of our time on earth. Truth be told, he personally provided a fairly hefty percentage of the force behind that belief, and he asked so little in return.

Long-term readers will be aware of the respect I hold for actors with the courage to GO BIG in small films, and rarely has a jobbing thespian routinely gone bigger than Wings, a man who seems to have approached the task of playing the baddie in a DTV action flick with the same dedication a professional athlete brings to running a triathlon - commanding the screen, flattening the opposition, capturing the audience in his mad glare like an unshackled psycho about to stick a shiv in the camera operator’s gut.

FUN was always the name of the game with Wings; even on the rare occasions when he was allowed to sink his teeth into a more quote-unquote ‘serious’ role, he gives every impression of having a blast with it, and his energy is infectious - a talent honed no doubt during his apprenticeship as a rock singer (and what I wouldn’t have given to have been able to attend one of his gigs in the ‘70s - at least if ‘The Neon Slime’ [see below] is any indication of his preferred musical oeuvre).

Despite all this though, I am astonished to note that the Deadline obit piece I have linked to above does not mention Hauser’s appearances in motion pictures at all, instead framing his legacy in terms of his prolific TV work and parenthood of his apparently-more-famous children.

I mean, we really do live in a parallel universe here, don't we people?

How has the Cult of Wings been allowed to remain such a fringe concern?

Beats me, but in fairness, in the early days of this blog, I was equally clueless - reviewing Nico Mastorakis’s ‘The Wind’ aka ‘The Edge of Terror’ in 2010 [I won’t link, because those early posts an an embarrassment], I made fun of his name, and remained non-committal on the quality of his (no doubt wonderful) psychopath acting.

Since then though, having obtained a more informed overview of the cinematic hinterland, I’ve naturally seen the light, allowing Wings to ascend to “I will pay to watch anything this man is in” status in my personal pantheon (a pledge which, believe me, has proved painful at times), and experiencing an acute sense of joy each time I see his name fade up, third or fourth billed, in a set of opening credits, probably accompanied by ominous, synthesizer sludge and ‘Terminator’-esque snare drums.

In spite of everything though, there are still some crucial entries in the Wings filmography which I’ve not gotten around to at the time of writing; his surely magnificent top-billed role as ‘The Carpenter’ (1986)? [I’m waiting to pick up that new blu-ray on import.] His collaboration with the equally legendary Brian Trenchard Smith on ‘The Siege of Firebase Gloria’ (1988)? [I have it lined up, but my partner doesn’t care for war movies.] Or what of ‘Skins’ aka ‘Gang Boyz’ (1994), his self-directed skinheadsploitation epic with Linda Blair?!

All of these and more will no doubt find a place in my future viewing schedule, helping to ease the pain of a world without Wings.

Meanwhile though, and bearing in mind the above caveats re: films I’ve not yet seen, here are a few picks of my favourite Hauser performances, to hopefully help the uninitiated get a handle on the achievements of this unique and already missed performer. 

 

Vice Squad (1982)

Hauser’s breakout role (to the extent that he ever really ‘broke out’), and probably most fans’ pick for his definitive performance. It helps of course that ‘Vice Squad’ is one of those films which is about x100 times better than it has any right to be, as director Gary Sherman takes what could have merely been a sleazy ‘hookers on the Strip’ exploitation piece and transforms it into one of the best and most exhilarating American crime movies of the 1980s… but if there is one thing everyone remembers from the film, it is the central presence of Ramrod.

On paper, the figure of the Elvis-obsessed, faux-cowboy psycho pimp, keeping his girls violently in line through the liberal application of his ‘pimp stick’ (don’t even ask) could have made for a fairly routine / comedic villain… but, as so often, Wings really takes it to another level. Channelling his frustration at spending three years stuck on the soap opera treadmill of ‘The Young & The Restless’ into a hyper-energised performance (even by his standards), he turns Ramrod into an obscene, unstoppable force of physically intimidating chaos, lashing out in all directions with a mixture of unhinged menace and pitiful grotesquery, cutting a bloody swathe through the Hollywood underworld with an intensity which is frankly jaw-dropping.

Feeling very much like a ‘80s analogue to Richard Widmark’s turn in Kiss of Death (1947), it’s hardly surprising the ‘Vice Squad’ opened up a new career for Wings as a go-to guy for scene-stealing villainy. And when, after Ramrod has met his inevitable demise at the hands of the far-less-memorable cops, as the camera gratuitously crane-shots above the urban wasteland and the man himself launches into the aforementioned ‘Neon Slime’, you’ll be hard-pressed not to physically cheer / applaud /salute the magnificent, nihilistic insanity of the whole enterprise. What a movie.

 

Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987)

In a film loaded with unhinged, oversized macho performances, corralled by an even more unhinged, oversized egomaniacal writer-director, Wings still manages to come out as top dog, grinding the competition into the dust as his foul-mouthed, priapic closet-case monster-cop Luther Regency rides roughshod over the privileged populace of Provincetown, Massachusetts, getting so up-in-the-face of bewildered hero Ryan O’Neill that at one point he manages to make a windswept cliff-top feel claustrophobic and sweaty.

I attempted to write about my love for this astonishing, uncategorisable film as part of one of my ‘Best First Watches of 2022’ posts here, but needless to say - despite reportedly being given a hard time by Big Norm on set, Wings fits into Mailer’s toxic, coked out world like a filth-stained leather glove. 

 

Nightmare at Noon (1988)

Quite possibly the aforementioned Nico Mastorakis’s masterpiece, you can read my thoughts on this classic piece of b-movie junk here, but specifically in terms of Hauser’s performance, I find it interesting the way he upturns expectations by playing his everyday-guy-in-an-RV protagonist / hero character as an absolute, raging asshole - whining, wheedling, selfish, he has that nails-down-the-blackboard annoyance down pat, until a “shit just got real” revelation eventually causes him to simmer down and become a helpful part of the bro-hero zombie-fighting team alongside Bo Hopkins and George Kennedy - a beautifully played transition.

 

Pale Blood (1990)

In this entertaining low budget vampire epic from Chinese-American director V.V. Dachin Hsu, Wings essays the role of a Van Helsing-descended vampire hunter with an ancient magic sword, posing as a sleazy, Richard Kern-esque video artist in contemporary L.A. Need I say more?!

I mean, if you’re on the scene in 1990, looking for an actor who’s going to turn up on time everyday for whatever pitiful rate your non-union picture is paying and breath life into a character like that… there’s only one guy you’re gonna call, right?

I can’t quite claim the resulting film is a stone-cold classic, but if you’ve sat through as much horror / sci-fi drek from this era as I have… keep your expectations in check, and you may be pleasantly surprised, let’s put it that way. 

 

Champagne & Bullets [aka ‘Geteven’ aka ‘Road to Revenge’] (1993)

In interviews, Hauser often spoke about his wild, hard-partying lifestyle during the 1980s, and nowhere can you see the weird aftermath of all this hedonism quite so clearly as in this astounding, once seen / never forgotten vanity project from Los Angeles lawyer John De Hart.

One of several b-movie stalwarts drafted in to lend a fig leaf of legitimacy to the production, Wings plays De Hart’s character’s best friend / partner ‘Huck Finney’, and… well, I should emphasise at this point that everything else I’ve ever read about Hauser gives the impression that he was a dedicated, hard-working professional, but let’s just say that he spends the majority of his screen time here instead giving a pretty good impression of being completely out of his mind.

He’s under control and hits the required beats in some scenes, so I’ll assume he was at least aware that he was in this movie, and wasn’t just hanging out at De Hart’s house being covertly filmed or something, but the rest of the time…? We’re deep into “point the camera at him and see what he does” territory here.

In one scene, he seems to be having a conversation with a wooden Cigar Store Indian; in another, he’s lolloping about senselessly in De Hart’s swimming pool, outlining his plan for starting a new religion based around ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. I may be misremembering, but I think he spends some time theatrically downing and crushing cans of beer, in response to his character’s marital difficulties, or something?

I have no idea what is going on with all this. Did De Hart pay him in bourbon (or worse)? Or did Wings simply respond to the amateurishness of the production by throwing caution to the wind and going full-on Dr Gonzo? Who can say.

Whatever the case, Hauser’s performance ranks as about the 86th most uncomfortable thing in the gruelling duration of ‘Champagne & Bullets’. 

 

Mutant (1984)

And finally, I don’t think anyone on earth would pick this poverty-stricken alien/zombie flick from director John ‘Bud’ Carlos as an all-time favourite, but if you’re a tolerant viewer who likes this sort of thing, it’s certainly worth a watch.

With the exception of top-billed Bo Hopkins, Wings is clearly the best actor on the movie by a factor of ten, and I recall being touched by the way that, rather than simply steamrolling his younger, inexperienced co-stars and leaving the production a smouldering ruin (as he could so easily have done), he reins his performance in beautifully, considerately leaving space for the other actors to fill, and using his own presence to prop them up.

In particular, my memory is that his scenes with female lead Jody Medford feel more like acting workshops than anything else, as he patiently tries to help her through her faltering performance, revealing what I would like to think is a generosity of spirit rarely glimpsed in his more over-sized roles.

--

And, that’s about it for now I think, but in closing - I recommend opening your windows, cranking your speakers, and paying tribute to the late, great Wings Hauser by exposing your neighbours to an undiluted dose of The Neon Slime…. you know you want to.

Deathblog: David Lynch (1946-2025)

Of all the obituary posts I’ve felt obliged to hastily bang out for this blog over the years, this loss is perhaps the one which has proved most difficult to process, or to find words for.

When looking at a figure like Lynch - who has been a giant presence within any kind of art or culture I’d deign to care about, throughout my life - it would be all too easy to begin throwing ill-judged superlatives around.

For instance, in terms of what we might colloquially refer to as “being weird” - or, more precisely, using art and narrative to open the gates to previously unknown realms within/without/above/beneath the fabric of quotidian reality - I’d tend to remove him from any discussion around late 20th/early 21st century filmmakers, and instead place him in the same category as figures as diverse as Lovecraft, Burroughs (W.S., not E.R., although he’s cool too), Blake or Dali.

Like all of the above, his explorations of unmapped terrain are so totally suffused with his own personality, his own background and aesthetic concerns, they’ve become melded into a totally singular body of work, which for the most part defies comparison with that of any contemporaries in their chosen field. Instantly recognisable yet totally inimitable, impenetrable as an eerily misshapen hunk of granite in the middle of the cultural highway.

Unlike the others on the above list however, Lynch consistently managed to filter this vision through an industry requiring millions of dollars, labyrinthine layers of corporate approval and hundreds of collaborators, and still somehow managed to deliver it to receptive audiences in a form which felt like more-or-less 100% proof.

And, in stark contrast to the aforementioned exemplars, he achieved all this whilst still giving every impression of being a real swell guy, whom I’m sure most of us would have loved the opportunity to share a cup of (damn fine) coffee with - his sense of humour and unflappable, humane optimism as unique and cherished as his approaches to art, craft, metaphysics and whatever else.

But, yeah - overblown superlatives and vast generalisations. Probably not helpful.

Strategy # 2 when composing an obit post meanwhile, is to take the personal angle, so let’s do that.

Have I ever told this blog the story of how I first discovered the work of David Lynch? I don’t believe I have, so, ok, here we go…

I must have been about 14 or 15 years old, and (being a slow starter in this regard, with censorious parents and little access to non-mainstream culture to draw upon), my entire knowledge/experience of cinema comprised science fiction (which I loved across all media), dumb blockbusters and even dumber comedies. Maybe the occasional black & white classic mixed in there, but that was about it.

David Lynch, at the time, was going through an extended period of critical disapproval / disappearance from The Official Culture (post-‘Fire Walk With Me’, pre-‘Mulholland Drive’), and as such his name meant nothing to me.

‘Twin Peaks’, at this point, seemed to be treated as a quirky cultural phenomenon which had come and gone some years beforehand, mentioned in print only in relation to the various cast members whose careers it had helped launch, whilst a year or two later, I recall ‘Lost Highway’ achieving only a very marginal release in the UK (did it even go straight to video?), and receiving Ebert-esque reviews of the, “oh, is this guy still making his pretentious, sleazy films which make no sense” variety.

This was the late ‘90s, pre-internet void in other words, and if you were looking for “weird movie directors” and had no access to somewhat more enlightened alternative/underground print media, you were pointed straight in the direction of Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam - do not pass Go, and do not collect $200.

BUT ANYWAY. One day during the school holidays, my parents had assigned me the task of going through a box of unlabelled, recorded-off-TV VHS tapes, to find out what was on them, and to determine whether or not it was worth keeping. (Nearly three decades later incidentally, it occurs to me that this chore sounds like pretty much the most fun day that I could possibly imagine having - but, I digress.)

So, you probably saw this coming, but, second or third tape out of the box - it was ‘Blue Velvet’.

(How it got there, I have no idea, but I can only assume it was a result of my parents’ habit of occasionally setting the video to record a movie which had been given a five-star rating in the Radio Times, then either forgetting about it or deciding they didn’t like it, or something along those lines.)

Not only was it ‘Blue Velvet’ furthermore, but (presumably due to the fact that either the video player’s timer or the TV schedules were constantly fucking up), the tape had missed the entire opening of the movie (including the all-important credits), beginning - so memory serves - shortly before the moment in which the camera descends into the severed ear.

You can picture the instant “what the fuck is THIS” reaction from teenage me, and likewise imagine the effect which the rest of film had on me; an overwhelming mixture of danger, terror and total bafflement / disorientation which I daresay I’ve been searching for in cinema ever since.

This must have been a BBC broadcast, because there were no ad breaks, and no on-screen idents to let me know what I was watching, or to reassure me that it was actually a commercially released motion picture and not some insane, Videodrome-esque televisual hallucination. (In analogue, pan-and-scan form, with all detail and texture rubbed off the images and sound, such distinctions could easily get a bit blurry.)

The only thing which served to ground me through this fateful viewing was (ironically enough, given how terrifying he is in the film) the fact that I recognised Dennis Hopper. So I knew this thing was… at least kind of legitimate?

With the unlabelled tape subsequently ferretted away somewhere as a powerful piece of contraband, the next thing I recall - imagine this, youngsters - actually going to the local library, finding some massive movie reference book, and looking up the entry on Hopper to try to figure out the identity of this insane spectacle which had wreaked such untold havoc upon my impressionable young mind.

Naturally enough, it was easy to pinpoint the culprit as ‘Blue Velvet’, to follow this to the corresponding entry for David Lynch… and what follows from there is fairly self-explanatory.

My brother and I were just reaching the age where our parents were easing up and allowing us to buy / rent tapes without close supervision, and so a weird twofer of ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Wild At Heart’, the first season of ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘The Elephant Man’, ‘Dune’, the initial VHS release of ‘Lost Highway’ and (wow) a DVD of ‘Fire Walk With Me’ were gradually acquired over the next few years, as we spent our days muttering darkly about fire, cherry pie and the nature of “the other place”.

I’m not going to say that this process was directly responsible for my signing up to take an A-Level in Film Studies aged sixteen (by then toting Lynch, Cronenberg and Romero as my heroes, despite having only seen a merest handful of each of their movies), or for anything that’s happened since as I’ve moved deeper into an obsession with / appreciation of film during my adult life; but it definitely played a part.

I’m sure that others, across multiple generations, have similar tales to tell, which is all basically a long-winded way of getting around to the point that, whilst the appeal of Lynch’s work will probably never be universal (and I can easily sympathise with the frustration those immune to its charms must feel as the likes of me bang on, and on, about it), he nonetheless managed to reach an almost unfeasibly large number of people across the globe, and to touch and change each one of us more deeply than we perhaps know how to understand.

He has left us with feelings, ideas, images and sounds which will remain with us throughout our lives, but which will never become settled, nostalgic, over-familiar; they will always be alive, always changing, always lurking just around the corner, behind the trash cans outside Winkies - always wild.

And, churlish as it may seem to make such a comment about an artist whose achievements were so unprecedented, and who left us with eighteen solid hours of new directorial material (which I must get around to re-watching, incidentally) just a few short years ago - it still pains me deeply to realise there will now be no more of them.

Deathblog: Roger Corman (1926-2024)

 (A flyer for a series of Corman screenings which I picked up in Tokyo circa 2011.)

Yes, I know that he had a great run, that he lived a long and rewarding life, and that ‘celebration’ rather than ‘sadness’ should usually be the watchword when a beloved individual passes away at the age of 98…. but damn it all, I was really hoping Roger Corman would make it to 100. I mean, that would just have perfectly capped a life of such great and indefatigable achievement, wouldn’t it?

To be honest, I was already vaguely planning the party, but we’ll just have to have it now instead, I suppose.

Trying to summarise the full scope of his work and influence across the decades is a daunting prospect, so for now, I’ll just say that, whenever I hear some accursed young person utter that insipid phrase “living your best life”, my mind automatically flashes to Roger Corman.

Because, yes, I know he had some difficult moments in his career, and I know he sometimes made some questionable decisions, but for the most part, whenever he put his hand to something, he aced it.

As both a filmmaker and an enabler of other filmmakers, he created an incredible body of work, changed the face of American cinema on all levels and exerted an influence on culture (both the kind we celebrate on this blog and the more mainstream variety) which is truly incalculable. But, the kicker is, he did this whilst simultaneously making a shedload of money, living a long, happy and fulfilling life, and even (for the most part) playing fair and treating other people well along the way.

That’s a combo I feel very few people in the entertainment industry have managed to achieve, and - though again, he didn’t always manage it perfectly - the way he consistently found a way to square the circle between art and commerce is exemplary. Cutting the bullshit from the creative process and following a straight path from lofty inspiration to exacting planning, necessary compromise, hard graft, successful execution and ensuing reward - he’s the American Dream personified, let’s face it!

If yr proverbial (wo)man on the street knows one thing about Roger Corman, it will be his reputation as ‘King of the Bs’ - the all-time don of schlocky ‘50s monster movies, cranking out double feature 60 minute wonders (primarily at the behest of the fledgling American International Pictures) which a speed and sense of budgetary efficiency which must have shaken his competitors to the core of their being.

This rep is all well and good, but what people who haven’t bothered to watch the films he made as producer/director during this period so often fail to appreciate, is that a fairly high percentage of them are actually really good as well.

Despite focusing on a field (low budget sci-fi/horror) which the the film industry in that era still regarded as sub-normal junk, Corman never looked down on his audience, and took the work seriously, going all-out to deliver films which were well-written, funny, fast-paced, and which explored unusual / intriguing ideas, in spite of their modest means. As a result, the vast majority of his early quickies remain engaging and entertaining to this day, whilst the best of them stand up as classics.

Meanwhile, if our proverbial street person reaches thing number # 2 about Roger Corman, it will probably be pen portrait of the time he spent heading up New World Pictures through the long 1970s - a more cynical, more divisive and (famously) more tight-fisted figure perhaps, as he moved into a role as shaper and controller of other peoples’ art, but still an eerily benevolent and even-handed overseer of the decade’s grindhouse carnage.

Stories from this era tend to focus more around the frustrations of his protégées as they tried with varying degrees of success to resist Corman’s often crass, commercially-minded demands (details of which we needn’t go into here), or struggled to bring projects in on the oft-impossible budgets he had set for them. But for all that, it’s rare to find a New World veteran unwilling to laugh off his unreasonable demands and occasional lapses of judgement, with most instead praising him for his mentorship, wisdom and willingness to listen to their crazy ideas and/or admit his mistakes - virtues not noted in many studio bosses in the cutthroat world of independent commercial cinema.

Without wishing to digress too much into specifics, I’ve always thought that one particularly interesting example of the “have yr cake and eat it” balance Corman struck between idealism and cynicism during his New World / Concorde years concerns his oft-noted championing of female filmmakers. (See for instance a great quote from Gale Anne Hurd, stating that she initially thought Hollywood was a really cool, equal opportunities workplace, until she left New World and immediately encountered a barrage of sexism from the major studios.)

All of which is very admirable, but if you check the stats, you’ll soon realise that Corman almost exclusively assigned female directors to projects with potentially misogynistic subject matter and demands for copious nudity - presumably in the expectation that the presence of a woman at the helm would help nullify criticism and keep the feminists off his case. (You can see this pattern all the way through from Stephanie Rothman making ‘The Student Nurses’ in 1970 to Amy Holden Jones directing ‘The Slumber Party Massacre’ in 1982, Katt Shea’s ‘Stripped to Kill’ in 1987, and probably beyond.)

Just one example of the jaw-droppingly ruthless / ingenious, high risk tactics Corman employed in his years as a producer of theatrical features - but at the end of the day, for every New World movie which emerged as an ill-judged, misbegotten mess, there were three or four which just plain rock, and probably at least one which (once again) is now recognised as a canonical genre classic. And thus, his batting average remains impeccable, right into the gaping maw of the late VHS era.

BUT ANYWAY - rewinding a bit, if you’ve been lucky enough to have picked an especially hip and well-informed person off the street, the third Roger Corman they might be inclined to tell you about is probably Corman the auteur - the thoughtful, cultured director who allowed his fascination with European art cinema, Freudian psychology and altered states of consciousness to filter through into his landmark series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations during the first half of the 1960s.

Drenched in purest decadent aestheticism, this incredible cycle of films, whose status as beloved comfort objects for multiple generations of horror fans hasn’t prevented them from simultaneously remaining provocative, multi-faceted and deeply weird, swing from canonical gothic beauty to raging sexual hysterics, from cosmic terror to broad comedy - all delivered within the same frantic five year period which also saw their creator’s creative flame burning bright on such fascinatingly outré projects as the harrowing civil rights drama ‘The Intruder’ (1962) and existential / proto-psychedelic SF fable ‘X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes’ (1963).

And, somewhat adjacent to Auteur Corman of course, we have Corman the counter-culture instigator - the curious, avuncular, slightly older guy who spent time hanging out on the Venice Beach / Santa Monica beat scene of the late ‘50s / early ‘60s, livening up the texture of the movies he made during those years with way-out artwork, freaky personalities and eerie locations drawn directly from that pungent milieu, before later - in a characteristically careful, pre-planned manner - he tripped his brains out on LSD and parlayed his pre-existing interests in fringe psychology and psychoanalysis into a brave (and possibly ill-judged) attempt to create an entirely new, thoroughly psychedelic form of popular cinema.

Somewhat to the alarm of his more straight-laced partners at AIP, the forty-year-old Counter Culture Corman let his freak flag fly (for a considerable profit, of course) through the wild and woolly years of ‘The Trip’, ‘Psych Out’ and - perhaps most significantly - 1966’s ‘The Wild Angels’, a film which not only kick-started the biker craze which fed directly into the production of ‘Easy Rider’ (and, by extension, the subsequent convulsions which brought about the birth of “new Hollywood”), but also managed to pre-empt the nihilistic aesthetic of early punk rock, exploring the notion that its teen biker anti-heroes don Nazi regalia purely to piss off their WWII veteran elders, and directly inspiring the wardrobe and attitudes of confrontational bands like The Stooges in the process.

Then, zooming forward again, on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got Concorde-era Corman - battling his way through the tail-end of big screen exploitation cinema and on into the straight-to-video era with a steady stream of kickboxers, barbarians, latex suits and big tits, restricting himself by this stage largely to backroom pursuits of ruthless, Reagon-era number-crunching and sharp-toothed deal-making, leaving the ‘creative’ end of things to a new, rather more utilitarian, generation of protégées - artistic wings clipped, commercial expectations made clear, and close supervision no longer really necessary.

I’m not sure that effectively becoming a competitor to Charles Band or Lloyd Kaufman in the DTV realm really befitted the great man all that well in his old age to be perfectly honest, but he certainly never faltered in his output, that’s for sure, and it is from this era, and on into the even gnarlier hinterlands of the post-2000 cable/streaming market, that the vast majority of his 495 IMDB producer credits were racked up.

And, even though in later years, especially following his association with the SyFy Channel, these credits begin to appear almost exclusively on the kind of films which few sane and sober people have even heard of, if you run the numbers on Concorde’s output, you’ll still find a wealth of minor highlights and memorable oddities - a direct extension in a sense of the “make ‘em cheap, pile ‘em high but don’t forget the make ‘em INTERESTING” methodology upon which Corman launched his career half a century earlier.

There are other Cormans out there too, I’m sure, many of them. And, perhaps we’ll begin to identify some of them as I try to revitalise this blog over the next few weeks / months by watching Corman-related films which I’ve never seen before, and trying to write something about them.

So, RIP to one of the absolute giants of popular culture, and, don’t touch that dial, folks.

Deathblog: Shinichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba (1939-2021)

It goes without saying that I was incredibly sad to learn on Thursday that the great Sonny Chiba (‘Chiba-chan’ to many of his fans in Japan) has passed away at the age of 82, following a ten-day battle with covid-19.

Normally when a noteworthy figure passes away at a reasonably advanced age, we’re inclined to fall back on clichés of the “he had a good run” variety, but in Chiba’s case, it instead just seems heart-breaking that a man who remained so vital and energetic throughout his life, hitting his ninth decade still fighting fit and looking far younger, should meet such a miserable end. A terrible reminder (lest we needed one) of what a curse this damned virus continues to be.

Trying to summarise the entirety of Chiba’s career in film and TV is a daunting task. From his early days as a fresh-faced juvenile supporting player at Toei, he swiftly worked his way up to heroic leading roles through the ‘60s, appearing in that capacity in such delightful sci-fi/monster romps as ‘Golden Bat’ [‘Ogon Batto’] and the U.S. co-production ‘Terror Beneath the Sea’ (both 1966).

Ahoy mateys: Chiba in the early ‘60s.

Even in these early films, the energy and charisma he brought to the screen was formidable, but it was towards the end of the decade that, alongside an inevitable parallel career as a supporting player in the studio’s ninkyo yazuka dramas, before he began to reinvent himself as a martial arts / action star, soon cementing himself as Japan’s foremost exponent of screen-fighting and stunt work in a long series of increasingly outrageous karate, crime and exploitation movies.

Outside of the generally ultra-violent / adult-orientated movies he made for Toei, millions across Japan also soon knew him as the star of the somewhat more family friendly ‘Key Hunter’ and ‘The Bodyguard’ TV series, and as the founder of the self-explanatory Japan Action Club, through which he attempted to develop the nation’s stunt performers and choreographers to a level which would allow them to compete with Hong Kong’s supremacy in the field, mentoring such stars as Hiroyuki Sanada and the ever-incredible Etsuko Shihomi in the process.

On the other side of the Pacific meanwhile, Chiba gained an entirely entirely audience, becoming an unlikely American grindhouse icon after the fledging New Line Cinema, ever on the look-out for a “new Bruce Lee”, recut and redubbed Shigehiro Ozawa’s staggeringly excessive karate/gore exploiter ‘Gekitotsu! Satsujin Ken’ [‘Sudden Attack! Killer Fist’] in 1974, transforming it into ‘The Street Fighter’.

Arguably featuring a more extreme approach to on-screen violence than had been seen on U.S. screens up that point (excluding perhaps the unrated gore movies of HG Lewis and his imitators), ‘The Street Fighter’ predictably proved a box office smash in inner-city theatres, prompting New Line to repeat the procedure with just about every one of Chiba’s equally crazed early ‘70s pictures they could get their hands on, as well as Shihomi’s signature ‘Onna Hissatsu Ken’ [‘Sister Street Fighter’] series and sundry other Toei product besides.

Back home meanwhile, Chiba had repeatedly proved his thespian chops in a somewhat more serious context by this point, continuing to take supporting / second lead roles in the hard-edged jitsuroku yakuza films which dominated Toei’s A-picture output through the early ‘70s, generally playing to type as wild / out-of-control ‘human dynamo’ type characters - most memorably perhjaps in ‘Hiroshima Death Match’, the excellent second instalment of Kinji Fukasaku’s epochal ‘Battles Without Honour and Humanity’ [‘Jingi Naki Tatakai’] series (1973).

 Chiba with Meiko Kaji in ‘Wandering Ginza Butterfly: She-Cat Gambler’ (1972)

The respect gained from these more quasi-realistic yakuza roles led (or so I’ve always tended to assume) to Chiba subsequently establishing himself as a stalwart presence in the succession of more ambitious, ‘blockbuster’-style projects which came to dominate the Japanese box office once the increasingly unsustainable ‘production line’ ethos of the major studios more-or-less ground to a halt as the industry contracted in the latter half of the ‘70s.

Considerably lightening up his hard-boiled image, Chiba switched back to his ‘60s ‘heroic lead’ persona to play the driver of the titular shinkansen in Junya Satô’s ‘Speed’-inspiring epic ‘Bullet Train’ [‘Shinkansen Daibakuha’] in 1975, before moving on to such big budget productions as Fukasaku’s ‘Star Wars’-inspired ‘Message From Space’ (1978), Kôsei Saitô’s jaw-droppingly macho time travel battlefest ‘Sengoku Jieitai’ [‘G.I. Samurai’] (1979), and, most significantly, playing a long succession of brooding patriarchs and aging master swordsmen in the series of historical / fantasy epics which more or less defined commercial Japanese cinema through the early ‘80s, beginning with Fukasaku’s ‘Yagyu Clan Conspiracy’ [aka ‘Shogun’s Samurai’] in 1978.

Reprising his role as real life figure Jûbei Yagyû (‘Lone Wolf & Cub’ fans take note) through several further movies and TV spin-offs, Chiba also portrayed legendary swordsman Hattori Hanzô in several further TV series - by which point I think it’s probably safe to say his place in the popular culture of a new generation was pretty well defined.

In subsequent decades, he made a speciality of the scene-stealing cameo, regularly turning up to bring some gravitas to grizzled, former hard man yakuza / samurai roles in everything from humble V-cinema action flicks in the ‘90s to ill-starred Hong Kong co-productions, epic historical/fantasy reboots in the early ‘00s and - inevitably - Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ movies, all whilst also keeping to plates spinning vis-à-vis his presence as a much-loved media personality, martial arts/fitness guru and general elder statesman of Japanese commercial cinema.

And, all this of course barely scratches the surface. I wish I had the capacity to try to do it all justice. For a wider appreciation of Chiba’s contribution to cinema, I’d recommend spending some quality time with the estimable Sketches of Chiba blog, and, right here on BITR, why not have a look at my creaky old 2013 review of one of his earliest action vehicles, 1970’s Yakuza Deka: The Assassin, or the trailer gallery for one of his craziest and most essential movies (a film so extraordinary in fact that I found it impossible to review in a more conventional manner), 1974’s inimitable Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope.

More Chiba tribute content may or may not follow soon, time allowing, but for now, to quote the retitling of New Line’s U.S. version of 1973’s ‘Bodigaado Kiba’: Viva Chiba!

Deathblog: Norman J. Warren (1942-2021)

Back to the deathblogs yet again, as yesterday morning brought the terrible news that the great Norman J. Warren has passed away at the age of 78.

Surely one of the best-loved directors of British horror films (if not, necessarily, the director of the best-loved British horror films), Warren’s work has always been close to my heart, even though, inexplicably, I’ve never got around to writing about it on this blog.

All five of the horror films he directed between 1976 and 1987 are good-bordering-on-great, full of real charm and ingenuity, and the fact that he and his close collaborators managed to bang them out on shoe-string budgets during a period when the genre had otherwise pretty much disappeared in the UK lends them a very special feeling.

Beyond that though, Warren will also be remembered simply as a thoroughly nice man. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting him myself, stories of his good humour, gallantry and all-round friendliness are legion. (I’d always vaguely hoped I might bump into him one day at a London movie event and get a chance to tell him how much I appreciate his work - but sadly it was not to be.)

Listening to him speak in interviews and commentary tracks is always a joy, even as hearing him discuss the many amazing projects which he tried to get off the ground over the years, only for plans to collapse at the last minute, is pretty heart-breaking.

For readers in the UK, Warren’s work will likely need no introduction (stumbling across 1978’s ‘Terror’ post-midnight on BBC2 and thinking “what the hell is this?!” must have been practically a rite of passage for movie fans in my own age group), but for anyone who needs a refresher, I think we at Breakfast in The Ruins owe him at least a quick career overview/appreciation, which I will post within the next few days, as soon as I’ve had a chance to sit down and write it.

In the meantime though - R.I.P. Norman. I’m sorry I never got the chance to offer you an over-priced BFI pint and tell you that ‘Prey’ and ‘Satan’s Slave’ are tops, but I’m sure that many others said it for me.

R.I.P. Todd Stadtman.

Please excuse this brief interruption to our first-viewings countdown, but I need to take a moment to express my great sadness upon learning today (via tribute posts on Teleport City and TarsTarkas.net) that Todd Stadtman – proprietor of the Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! and Lucha Diaries blogs, amongst many other things - passed away earlier this month.

Unlike the authors of the aforementioned posts, I can’t claim to have known Todd personally (my interactions with him have been limited merely to a few exchanges of blogger comments over the years), but his writing on film, and his relentless enthusiasm for shining a light on the stranger and more culturally distant corners of what we might broadly term ‘international pop cinema’, has always been a great inspiration to me – not to mention a veritable fount of knowledge when it comes to uncovering wondrous realms of world culture which, despite his noble efforts, remain terminally obscure bordering on actually-totally-forgotten to this day.

Oft was the time, back in the glory days of both 4DK! and his work for Teleport City, that I’d find myself overcoming the boredom of my day-job by covertly clicking across to a web browser to read, dumbfounded, about the latest extraordinary, subtitle-free discovery he’d dug up from the darkest VCD-trading corners of Taiwan, The Philippines, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Mexico, Argentina or goodness only knows where else. Who knew, prior to Mr Stadtman’s evangelism, that pretty much the entire globe had once been busy cranking out rip-roaring, culturally specific entertainments full of garish colours, monsters, robots, disco dancing, high-kicking heroines, spies, cavemen, mini-submarines and guys in skeleton suits? Well, I’m sure some people did – but not I.

All these years later, I’ve only managed to watch the tiniest fraction of the stuff Todd wrote or spoke about online, but, speaking as someone who always enjoys learning about other nations primarily through their pop culture, I found his work hugely educational, as well as funny, concise, unpretentious and – crucially – always respectful of the people and cultures who created these amazing movies, retaining a tone of open-minded bewilderment which I’ll always take hands down over the kind of misplaced mockery and snark which tends to predominate whenever fragments of this kind of stuff find themselves washed up on English-speaking shores.

Todd’s 2013 book Funky Bollywood is a fantastic read (although I’ve STILL not managed to find a source through which to acquire most of the movies discussed within it), and his myriad podcasting endeavours have always been worth a listen, most particularly the long-defunct Infernal Brains series recorded in collaboration with the aforementioned Tars Tarkas. It’s no exaggeration to say that almost every episode of this podcast will take you to a place on the cinematic map you never even knew existed, and their series of episodes on the work of Taiwanese action heroine/director/mysterious lost genius Pearl Cheung-Ling borders on the life-changing. (Well, it certainly changed my bank balance slightly at any rate, as I scoured the shadier corners of the internet trying to track down watchable copies of her films.) [Links: part one, part two.] 

Outside of film, even the briefest scan of Todd’s blog reveals that he was something of a renaissance man to put it mildly – a novelist, musician, songwriter and DJ, just for starters – and, having followed his endeavours from a distance for over a decade at this point, I would also venture to suggest that the picture which emerges from all of his work is that of a very nice man indeed.

Even in a many-steps-removed online kind of way, his presence will be greatly missed. My thoughts go out to his family and friends, who must miss him terribly. R.I.P.

Deathblog: Ennio Morricone (1928-2020)

(Cross-posted with Stereo Sanctity.)

Of course we knew this day would come, but still.

So, let’s get straight to the point here – Morricone IS film music, so far as I’m concerned. Even if he didn’t contribute to it all directly, a vast swathe of the cinema I love would sound very different without his influence.

Years before I actually saw any of the Leone films, hearing Morricone’s themes from them pop up on the radio (which they sometimes did in those days) was an event. My Dad (who, like many dads, had a yen for all things cowboy-related) would turn up the volume, and for a few minutes we’d soak it in. The drama, the atmosphere, the wild sounds were just completely intoxicating. They didn’t need any context – as always, Morricone’s music creates its own context. That was almost certainly the first time I stopped to think about music in films, about a kind of musical vocabulary which extended beyond lyrics and pop songs, and about the different ways in which sounds and images can combine to create emotion and excitement. Thirty years later, I’m still thinking about those things.

The medium by which I enjoy the Leone scores has moved over the years from radio, to parental vinyl, to CD, and back to my own vinyl, and during my adult life I’ve of course hovered up all the other Morricone I can find within my price range (which of course still only represents the tiniest fraction of the monolithic range of his total achievement).

From what little I know of Morricone’s beliefs and personality, I think it’s probably safe to say that he would wish to be remembered to the world for his work rather than his biography, so instead of rabbiting on further, I’ll share a swiftly cobbled together mix of fifteen (which could easily be thirty, or one hundred) personal favourite smash hits from his vast catalogue, assembled in no particular order. I’ll keep commentary to a minimum, because otherwise my responses to most of these tracks would just be variations on a theme of holy fucking shit.

Though the magic which Nicolai, Dell’Orso, Alessandroni and so many others brought to his recordings cannot be overlooked, Morricone remains a giant – one of the greatest composers and musicians of the 20th century, no questions asked.

For ease of ad-free listening, I’ve compiled these fifteen cuts into a mix on Mixcloud (embed below), but will also go through them one-by-one via Youtube links for those who wish to pick and choose.




1. ‘Titoli’ from ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964)

Here’s where it all began.



2. ‘Il Grande Silenzio (Restless)’ from ‘Il Grande Silenzio’ (1968)



3. “Valmont’s Go-Go Pad” from ‘Danger! Diabolik’ (1968)



4. ‘Svolta Definitiva’ from ‘Violent City’ (1970)



5. ‘La Lucertola’ from ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ (1971)



6. ‘Guerra E Pace, Pollo E Brace’ from ‘Grazie Zia’ / ‘Come Play With Me’ (1968)



7. ‘Giorno Di Notte’ from ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ (1971)



8. ‘Magic and Ecstasy’ from ‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’ (1977)



9. Main theme from ‘The Thing’ (1982)



10. ‘Canzone Lontana’ from ‘Il Serpente’ (1973)



11. ‘Fraseggio Senza Struttura’ from ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’ (1970)



12. ‘Ballabile No. 2’ from ‘La Cosa Buffa’ (1972)



13. ‘Titoli’ from ‘A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof’ (1968)



14. ‘Astratto 3’ from ‘Veruschka’ (1971)



15. ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ from ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)

This theme makes me involuntarily break down in tears each time I hear it. Really, every time, like clockwork. Which has proved quite embarrassing whenever I’ve watched the film in company.

My reaction has nothing to do with any personal/biographical connections, or anything in the film itself (incredible though it is). The sound of the music is just completely overwhelming.

It is simply one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded, and any classical buffs who want to fight about that are welcome to. Everything that is worth feeling within the human experience, I can hear in this.

R.I.P. Il Maestro.

Deathblog: Stuart Gordon (1947-2020)

Yesterday morning, I received the terrible news that Stuart Gordon, whose classic debut feature ‘Re-animator’ we were discussing on the blog just a few weeks ago, has passed away at the age of 72.

There is so much that could be said in the course of paying tribute, but to begin by reiterating something I wrote in those aforementioned ‘Re-animator’ posts, Gordon is one of very few directors in the genre/low budget realm of whom I can truthfully say that I have seen (nearly) all his films, and have enjoyed every single one of them.

I won’t run through the entire list here, but suffice to say, scanning his filmography is like reliving a parade of great memories – decades-worth of weekend movies nights and late night screenings with friends, each of them objectively classifiable as a blast.

Like many others I suspect, it was the Lovecraft connection which initially drew me to Gordon’s work, before I’d really developed a more general interest in lower budget horror movies. I can still remember my excitement at finding a VHS copy of ‘From Beyond’ in a charity shop at a point when that film was otherwise unavailable, and at paying what seemed at the time like a small fortune for a copy of ‘Dagon’ as soon as it was released in 2001-ish. As my movie fandom has grown in subsequent years though, gradually catching up on the rest of his output has been a real pleasure, and, as stated above, he’s never let me down.

Not all of Gordon’s films were masterpieces, but whether making personal passion projects which overcame budgetary constraints and producer interference to hit all the right notes, or work-for-hire assignments which turned out way better than they had any right to be, he had a Bava/Corman-like knack for making the absolute best of the circumstances he found himself working in, his craftsmanship, dedication and sincere love and respect for his pulp / genre subject matter shining through in every frame. Again and again through the late ‘80s and ‘90s, he managed to turn projects which I’m pretty sure would have been forgettable guff in the hands of most other directors into solidly crafted, entertaining and hugely likeable movies.

It’s instructive in this regard to compare the quality of the films Gordon made for Charles Band’s Empire and Full Moon Pictures to most of the other stuff they produced at around the same time, presumably on comparable budgets. I don’t want to rag too hard on the non-Gordon Empire/Full Moon films (there are certainly a few hidden gems in there), but by and large, there’s simply no comparison, to the extent that my standard refrain whenever I find myself watching a disappointing, schlocky American horror film has long been “I WISH STUART GORDON HAD DIRECTED THIS”.

Getting into specifics, I’ve always loved the way that Gordon managed to maintain a connection to the classic horror films of the ‘60s (and perhaps even the ‘30s?) in his work, particularly in terms of their painstaking production design, and of his direction of actors (which clearly draws greatly on his background in theatre, allowing performances to ‘go big’ without becoming campy or annoying), whilst at the same time avoiding the temptation to revert to mere nod-wink nostalgia, and always remembering to deliver tons of the assorted good stuff that contemporary fans of horror / sci-fi / action / whatever want to see.

Another thing which sets his horror films apart meanwhile is the sparks that fly as a result of the uneasy balance between humour and horror, lending them a unique and unpredictable tone that has often been imitated, but never quite equalled. Even in the most light-hearted of his films in the genre, there is always at least one scene which seems designed to push viewers way beyond their comfort zone, as if to remind us, “hey, you signed up to see a HORROR film, remember?”

More than anything else I’d imagine, it is these jarring moments of nastiness (from Herbert West tormenting the broken-backed cat in ‘Re-animator’ to the Zadok Allen character being skinned alive in ‘Dagon’, and many more besides) that must have prevented Gordon from pursuing the kind of mainstream acceptance that his obvious talent and flair for comedy and adventure material (not to mention his pivotal role in creating the ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’ franchise) might otherwise have prepared him for.

Admittedly, Gordon’s short run of sci-fi films during the ‘90s did see him branching out somewhat in this direction (most notably in his major studio debut, the totally awesome Christopher Lambert vehicle ‘Fortress’ (1992)), but even here, he still had a tendency to knock us off balance with some fairly, uh, uncompromising content (think for instance of the moment in ‘Robot Jox’ (1990) when a stand full of innocent spectators gets crushed and we’re suddenly seeing ersatz news footage of weeping relatives searching through the rubble, or of the depredations of Charles Dance and his petrol-powered penis in ‘Space Truckers’ (1996)). Perhaps this tendency goes back to the confrontational / ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ type stuff he used to get up to in his early theatrical days, who knows..?

Which leads us neatly onto Gordon’s parallel theatrical career, which, although time and space have conspired to prevent me from witnessing any of it first hand, would no doubt be considered by many to be of equal (or possibly even greater) importance to his film work.

Beginning as a self-confessed hippie radical, Gordon founded the Screw theatre company whilst attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968, overseeing a production entitled ‘The Game Show’, which, according to Wikipedia, “..locked the audience in the theater and seemingly humiliated, beat and raped them (audience plants were used). Every performance ended with the audience rioting and stopping the show.”

This was soon followed up by “..a political version of Peter Pan that got him and his future wife arrested for obscenity”. Incorporating nudity, drug use and a psychedelic light show, this production was apparently inspired by an incident which saw Gordon tear-gassed by Chicago police during an anti-Vietnam protest.

After severing ties with the university, Gordon and his wife, actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, founded the Chicago Organic Theater Company, with whom they would continue to work until (I believe) Gordon was forced to resign from his position as Artistic Director as a result of controversy arising from the production of ‘Re-animator’ in 1985. In the intervening years however, the Organic Theater Company seems to have carved out an important niche for itself within the American theatrical landscape, not least through producing two early works by David Mamet (‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago’ and ‘Bleacher Bums’), both of which were directed by Gordon – a relationship which was revived in 2005 when Gordon directed the film version of Mamet’s play ‘Edmond’, starring William H. Macy.

In fact, the final decades of Gordon’s life seem to have seen him returning to his theatrical roots in a number of ways, cross-pollinating them with his subsequent horror career via his work on Jeffrey Combs’ one man Edgar Allan Poe show ‘Nevermore’, and the self-explanatory ‘Re-Animator: The Musical’ (either of which I’m sure would make for a great night out), whilst also directing a two-hander cannibal drama named ‘Taste’ and shifting the focus of his film work more toward similarly small scale / real world projects such as ‘King of the Ants’ (2003, based on the Charlie Higson novel) and ‘Stuck’ (2007).

(Somewhere amongst all this though, we should note, he also found time to direct his two episodes of the ‘Masters of Horror’ TV anthology - based respectively on Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’ and Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’ - both of which are very good indeed, and come highly recommended if you’ve not seen them.)

But – I’m rambling here. Beyond all of the above, the main thing to remember as we look back over Gordon’s life and career is that he always came across in interviews as a really smart, humble, big-hearted and hugely likeable guy, and I’m sure that everyone around the world who knew him or knows his work is going to miss him terribly. R.I.P.

Just a Quick Note...

...to let you know that I had been planning to share a few more paperback scans with you over the next few weeks, to cover the time I'll be out of the country. Unfortunately however, a few days before I went on my holidays, my trusty old laptop pretty much packed in, severely limiting my ability to carry out computer-related tasks.

Researching, buying and setting up a replacement will have to wait until I get back in June, and could prove an ardous process, given my fervently held belief that home computing technology reached its peak in about 2006. Actually, my old printer/scanner is on it's last legs too, so I should probably get a new one of those whilst I'm at it, so.... what I'm trying to say is, there could be delays. My apologies in advance. Blame the devil-gods of Built-in Obselescence.

Deathblog: George A. Romero (1940 – 2017)

Like most people reading this I’m sure, I was saddened to wake up this Monday morning to the news that George Romero has passed away.

Turning on the radio whilst I made my breakfast, I was slightly taken aback to hear, of all things, Ed Harris enthusiastically reminiscing about working with Romero on ‘Knightriders’ in 1981 – and, a few seconds later, the penny dropped. Receiving the news via the gracious and heart-felt recollections of Mr. Harris was surely a hell of a lot better than catching Radio 4’s presenters delivering some sardonic, and-in-other-news bit about “the man who invented zombies” or somesuch, so – thanks for that Ed, I appreciate it, and thanks too to whoever at the BBC decided to give him a call.

A death like this represents a lot of stuff to unpack, not only for horror fans, but – I would like to stress – for anyone who gives a hoot about independently minded American cinema in general. I don’t have anything like the time or means to embark on a full scale obit today (hopefully we can return for some follow ups later), but let’s start out on a personal level and see where this goes.

I was a pretty late comer to horror movies – through my teenage years I was far more devoted to science fiction and quote-unquote “serious cinema” – but when I did begin to become fascinated by the genre, Romero was my way in. Probably this was because, whilst the majority of his films are IN the genre, they rarely seemed OF the genre, if you get what I mean.

His voice, his sensibility, his ideas, all seemed to come from somewhere else - Pittsburgh, specifically, although I didn’t really have a grasp of this at the time. He was clearly coming from somewhere outside of the ‘industry’ anyway, somewhere outside of the cultural and market trends that, though he may have helped shape them from time to time, he never followed if he could help it.

‘Night of the Living Dead’ (recorded off the TV) was one of a very small handful of movies I would obsessively watch over and over again through the years on either side of my twentieth birthday. There’s probably not much I can say about it that hasn’t been (exhaustively) said before, but something about it (the sheer, uncompromising, punk-spirited grimness of the whole venture and it’s refusal to collapse into camp despite the cheap/pulpy context,  I suspect) kept me coming back for another dose, and, though I perhaps would no longer deem it The Best Horror Movie Ever as I did in 2011, to this day it remains one of those films I could watch pretty much every day without getting tired of it.

Inevitably, ‘Dawn..’ and ‘Day..’ (both also recorded off TV) followed, then ‘Martin’ and ‘The Crazies’ (bought second hand on Redemption VHS). All of these were – and are – fucking brilliant, and by this stage in my descent into cinema fandom, Romero was The Man as far as I was concerned.

In my mind, I built him up as a truly heroic figure, and never tired of telling people how great I thought he was. Conspicuously ignoring some of the more errant entries in his filmography, I saw him as the guy who never put a foot wrong – this bad-ass auteur who systematically rejected Hollywood bullshit, but wasn’t some pretentious arthouse type either. An underappreciated genius who had to fight to make his films, and who only ever rolled camera when he was sure he could do so on his own terms, with his own people – that’s how I saw it. Mighty George Romero, shakin’ the world once or twice a decade with works that were intelligent, imaginative, exciting, fast moving, socially conscious, harrowing, anti-authoritarian and authentically (though not gratuitously) violent. He made movies that treated their audience with respect, and didn’t let them down. A filmmaker of the people! A Cassevetes of the grindhouse!

And, as far as the selected canon of films I’ve referenced above is concerned, I think such hyperbole is still entirely justified, to be honest. But, had I dug deeper and come up with some of the maestro’s, uh, let’s say, slightly more questionable projects (‘There’s Always Vanilla’, ‘Two Evil Eyes’, ‘The Dark Half’, etc.), my enthusiasm might have been more sensibly tempered for his 21st century comeback.

As it was though, my anticipation when ‘Land of The Dead’ was announced was into the stratosphere. I had faith. And so, needless to say, I was pretty devastated when finally I saw the damn thing.

I know ‘Land..’ has gained some degree of retrospective appreciation within horror circles since its release, but at the time I hated every single thing about it, and have never had the stomach to revisit it. That The Great George A. Romero could take probably one of the biggest budgets he’d ever been accorded and return with a bunch of crap that resembled one of the dumb direct-to-video flicks I’d rent to kill time in the late ‘90s was a disappointment I just couldn’t even comprehend.

Today of all days though, we should probably draw a veil over the past few decades of creative frustration and disappointment, and just reflect that, hey, how many great independent/genre filmmakers *didn’t* hit similar brick walls after the year 2000? (I’m no industry insider, but suffice to say, I don’t think it was mere personal failings that similtaneously stopped the wheels rolling for Carpenter, for Argento, for Lynch, Franco, Hooper, Don Coscerelli, Ken Russell… and so the list goes on.)

Nowadays, I hope I have managed to attain a somewhat more nuanced take on Romero’s legacy, and am happier to embrace the strange and sometimes misguided places that his idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking took him in-between his aforementioned ‘hits’.

Looking over Romero’s filmography today, by my count he directed seventeen films, of which *seven* could conceivably be termed masterpieces – a hit rate not many Hollywood directors could compete with, and an especially remarkable achievement given the marginal/cash-strapped circumstances under which he usually worked.

Thus far unmentioned amongst those golden seven, I have of course come to love 1982’s ‘Creepshow’ as a wonderful Friday night horror flick, a total 180 from the stark realism of his other horror films and one of the best ever attempts to transfer a comic book aesthetic to film, but the one I keep coming back to, and that I immediately wanted to watch again upon hearing the news today, is ‘Knightriders’ – one of the most ambitious, and undoubtedly the most personal, project on Romero’s CV, and arguably his defining statement as a director, from a purely auteurist standpoint.

It is, admittedly, a hugely indulgent, over-long, melodramatic, shamelessly self-mythologising piece of work – but when it comes to a director like Romero, I’m willing to indulge. As a two hour plus tribute to the kind of independent creative spirit in which he believed, and to the extended filmmaking family in Pittsburgh who helped him realise his vision, ‘Knightriders’ is a uniquely moving film. The celluloid equivalent of a ragged victory banner waving in the breeze, it was doomed to commercial failure from its very inception, and is all the better for it.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that, if you’re thinking of paying tribute to Romero by watching some of his films this week, perhaps put the zombies to one side for five minutes and instead cue up‘Knightriders’ for a broader appreciation of the man whose voice and vision American cinema has lost this week. (And when ol’ Ed Harris returns to claim his crown at the end, there won’t be a dry eye in the house, I’m telling you.)

R.I.P.

Lost 0bjects.

For the past five years or so, I have been a reader of, and contributor to, the collective blog Found 0bjects, until recently located at http://found0bjects.blogspot.com/.

Unfortunately however, it has disappeared this week – presumably deleted or (here’s hoping) removed from view by an unknown person with admin rights.

Discussions between contributors have thus far drawn a blank re: establishing what happened, but, given that the blog was still regularly visited and intermittently updated, and that it contained a huge backlog of interesting content, it seems a shame for it to have been arbitrarily terminated.

If any readers here have any further info (or mere speculation) on the condition or whereabouts of Found 0bjects therefore, please let me know via the usual channels. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, and if it turns out someone is holding it hostage – let us know, we can talk.

Thanks for your time.