Cormania: Gas-s-s-s! Or, It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It (Roger Corman, 1970)

If we were to chart Roger Corman’s engagement with socio-political issues in his work upon some kind of hypothetical scale, then at the opposite end of it from the uncomfortably effective The Intruder, we would find ‘Gas-s-s-s!, or, It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It’ [henceforth ‘Gas’, just for the sake of our sanity], an inexplicable, rather hare-brained movie which, over fifty years later, is difficult not to see as one of its directors greatest failures. (I mean, say what you will about Creature From The Haunted Sea, but at least it had reasons for being crap.) (1)

This is extremely regrettable, given that the project represents an important milestone in Corman’s career on a number of levels. Not only does it mark the conclusion of his cycle of ‘counter-culture’ films (following on from ‘The Wild Angels’ in ’66 and ‘The Trip’ in ’67), but also his final collaboration with American international Pictures (following fifteen years of fruitful co-dependence), and in fact his final work as a director of independent commercial cinema in the United States. (2)

So, what’s ‘Gas’ all about then? Well… it’s difficult to say really, and that very uncertainty soon becomes a pretty big part of the problem.

A pastel crayon animated prologue introduces us to some high ranking military officials (including such personages as ‘General Strike’, and ‘Dr Murder’ - and if you find that magazine cartoon level of humour uproariously funny, there’s hope you might enjoy this movie yet), who, in the process of attending a ceremonial function at a chemical research base in Alaska, accidentally uncork a beaker containing a cloud of custom-made poison gas which now promises to spread across the earth, killing everyone aged over twenty-five.

Moving into live action post-credits, we meet a long-haired, wise-crackin’ campus troublemaker (Bob Corff) and his adorable, only marginally less wide-crackin’ girlfriend (Elaine Giftos), who depart Dallas in a salmon pink Cadillac and promptly get involved in a series of tiresome comical capers, eventually joining forces with a group of other sketchily-defined, more-or-less hippie-aligned young people (including amongst their number both a young Bud Cort, and one Tally Coppola, later to become Talia Shire). Together, this merry band traverse a marginally post-apocalyptic version of the American South-West, enduring a multitude of symbolic / quixotic encounters and threats as they vaguely pursue an Oz-like quest to consult an ‘oracle’, whose billboards (including a count-down in miles) they spot along the highway.

And… that’s about it, really. I mean, I wish I could tell you what the wearying procession of factions, marauders, aggressors, cultists, herd-like victims and all-purpsoe extraverted weirdos our protagonists run into along the way were actually meant to represent, but, as the film’s attempts at satirical humour alternate wildly between blunt, eye-rolling obviousness and head-scratching, lost-in-translation obscurity, it is honestly difficult to locate anything here which we squares might term a ‘point’.

Which might have been all well and good, if only Corman and his collaborators been able to wrangle some other value from these narratively unglued proceedings, but, sadly, the kind of pupil-dilating visual excess and subversive, taboo-breaking chaos which defined the era’s more successful underground/counter-cultural filmmaking is in very short supply in ‘Gas’.

Shot in a range of uninhabited / wreckage-strewn desert locations across Texas and New Mexico, the film’s footage soon becomes fairly monotonous, in spite of the natural beauty of the surroundings and some intermittently impressive photography from DP Ron Dexter. The tone of the action meanwhile remains cloyingly light-hearted, employing a gratingly twee take on hippie-era surrealism, whilst the characters remain vacant, distant and uninteresting.

Even the garish, mid-century Americana of the costumes and production design simply remain… standard issue, for the most part. Please bear in mind that I say all this as a viewer who usually maintains an extremely high tolerance for what Kim Newman has termed ‘Weird Hippie Shit’, but in a word, ‘Gas’ simply feels tired.

Just a few short years earlier, Corman could reasonably have claimed to have had his finger on the pulse of the intersection between popular culture and the underground (after all, ‘The Wild Angels’ not only launched a whole new era-defining genre, but provided direct aesthetic inspiration for generations of proto-punk rebels in the process).

The shadow-haunted autumn/winter of ’69 though found Corman and screenwriter George Armitage (future director of ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ and the fantastic Miami Blues) beginning work on ‘Gas’ at precisely the moment in which the optimism of the 1960s evaporated, leaving something darker and more fragmented behind it, ready to curdle as the decade turned… and ensuring that the film’s happy-go-lucky, flower-child hipster-isms must have felt painfully irrelevant by the time their film finally opened in September 1970. (3)

In this context, scenes which may have passed as wild, Godardian po-mo provocations back in the mid-‘60s (such as the film’s lampoon of a western shoot-out, in which characters point their fingers at each other whilst shouting the names of famous cowboy actors) simply play out as eye-rolling tedium - self-satisfied acting class wheezes dragged out for far longer than is really necessary.

Indeed, for a Corman production, ‘Gas’ feels uncharacteristically bloated and excessive. Shot across multiple locations in several states (and dogged by inevitable weather-related delays along the way), he seems to have become fixated here on mounting vast public spectacles of one kind of another.

The finished film is stuffed full of marching bands and parades, crowds of extras fleeing through the streets of Western town sets pursued by gangs of stuntmen on brightly painted bikes and sidecars, convoys of golf carts, JCBs and tooled up dune buggies (triggering entirely accidental flashes of Mansonoid paranoia), cheerleaders, football teams and hundreds of people crammed onto a remote mountaintop for the film’s conclusion… all, ultimately, to very little effect.

Amidst all this sound and fury, it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that the man who once shot a film as beautifully crafted as ‘Little Shoppe of Horrors’ on a single set in two and a half days has lost his way very badly somewhere along the line.

Perhaps the sole quantifiable pleasure I took from ‘Gas’ in fact came from the music - and this is entirely due to the fact that I’m a big fan of the perennially underrated Country Joe & The Fish, and in particular of their gifted lead guitarist Barry ‘The Fish’ Melton, who was charged with composing ‘Gas’s songs and incidental cues (as heard in the rare moments when the brass marching bands, cheerleading chants and honking car horns shut up for a few minutes). (4)

It’s nice to hear the various bits and pieces Melton came up with (recordings never otherwise released, insofar as I’m aware), and we also get to enjoy some choice footage of the band in full flow at some kind of outdoor festival held at a drive-in theatre, backed up by a bitchin’ psychedelic light show, inter-cut with footage of two of the young hippie characters making out during an acid trip, and accompanied by subliminal flashes of underground movie-style abstract imagery.

Arguably the film’s strongest sequence, the overall effect here is only partially spoiled by the presence of Country Joe McDonald (who I’m fairly sure would not have made the twenty-five year old cut-off point required for this movie’s plot, incidentally) doing some kind of terminally unamusing skit about how he’s an omnipotent, god-like figure named ‘A.M. Radio’, or somesuch. (My god, this obnoxiously performative, satire-lite fucking hippie ‘humour’, I swear… it’s enough to make me want to shave my head and enlist in the nearest para-military organisation post-haste.)

Aside perhaps from hardcore C.J. Fish fans though, it’s difficult to imagine that anyone at the time of ‘Gas’s original release was actually digging what Corman was laying down here. Whilst ‘straight’ audiences must have simply been confused and alienated by all this mystifying hullaballoo, the campus radicals and garage band suburban punks the movie was presumably supposed to appeal to would surely by this point have felt patronised and turned off by its parade of quirky, central casting hippies mouthing half-baked flower power witticisms, long past their sell-by date in the hyper-accelerated climate of mid-century pop culture.

Even within the sphere of disastrous, released-too-late hippie movies, ‘Gas’ ranks low, lacking the lo-fi earnestness of the Firesign Theatre’s “electric western” ‘Zachariah’, the wild artistic vision of Dennis Hopper’s ‘The Last Movie’ or the magisterial visual gimmickry of Antonioni’s ‘Zabriskie Point’.

But the saddest thing of all is that, despite all this, ‘Gas’ seems to have been a project which mattered to Corman a great deal.

He spends over five pages of his 1990 memoir ‘How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime’ discussing the film, acknowledging the gruelling nature of the production, and regretting his decision to begin filming without a finished script. But, he also speaks enthusiastically of his success in creating “an apocalyptic, Strangelovian satire,” - one which, sadly, sounds a lot more exciting in Corman’s recollection than any of the footage which actually ended up on the screen;

“My films and my politics were getting more radical, more “liberated,” as the 1960s were coming to a close. I was truly beginning to believe I could do anything, which is why the picture ran a little out of control. Any idea that came to us, we would put in.” 

[…] 

“We ended up with some pretty wild and surreal images. We had a group of Hell’s Angels riding in their colors in golf carts instead of their choppers. The Texas A&M football team became a band of marauders on dune buggies, terrorizing the Southwest. We had Edgar Allan Poe speeding through the frame on a Hell’s Angels chopper with a raven on his shoulder, making comments from time to time. […] We re-created the Kennedy assassination while it was sleeting. Then we finally got to the Acoma mesa, which is virtually cut off from civilization, accessible only by a steep and winding dirt road.”

Although everything Corman describes can kind of be seen in the movie if you squint hard enough, I think the failure of any of it to actually make much of an impression on the viewer simply goes to prove that, much as I love him, Roger Corman was no Alejandro Jodorowsky. Logic, working within fixed limits and careful advance planning were the engines which powered his best cinema, and the mellow ideals of middle class So Cal suburbia remained his aesthetic base-camp, even as the wily tendrils of psychedelia and European decadence repeatedly threatened to drag him further afield. At the end of the day, maximalist cosmic wig-flipping was simply not his bag, man.

Nonetheless, Corman remained extremely unhappy about a number of cuts he claimed were made to ‘Gas’ in post-production, and which he blamed primarily on AIP’s James H. Nicholson, whom he felt had become increasingly conservative and intolerant of risk-taking in the films his company released, citing these arbitrary cuts as reasons for the film’s incoherence and commercial failure.

Strong words perhaps from a man who in later years would become famous for insisting his protégés’ films came in at under 88 minutes in order to save on film canisters, but above all, AIPs decision to cut the film’s intended final shot remained a source of great bitterness to Corman, ending one of the longest and most productive relationships in the history of independent cinema on an extremely sour note;

“The unkindest cut of all was the last scene. I ended the film with a spectacular shot from on top of the mesa, with a view sixty, seventy miles to the horizon. We had the entire tribe there and everyone else who had been in the film. It was a celebration. The leading man kisses the woman and I zoom back. It was a cliché I had never used to end a film. I did it precisely because it was a cliché. I had the entire marching band of the local high school. I had a whole group of Hell’s Angels. I had a bunch of guys on dune buggies. I had a football team. I had our whole cast in this wild celebration as the camera zoomed back and over the shot. God, who was a running character throughout the film, made his final comments on what went on. 

There must have been three hundred people on top of that mesa. It was one of the greatest shots I ever achieved *in my life*. And AIP cut the entire shot. They ended the picture on the couple’s clichéd kiss - because they didn’t like what God was saying. The Picture ended and made no sense.”

For a more revealing take on Corman’s state of mind during the production of ‘Gas’ though, I think the last word must go to production manager Paul Rapp, quoted in the same book;

“The ‘Gas-s-s-s!’ shoot was the toughest one I ever saw Roger go through. I had never seen Roger in a nasty, bad mood like that. He seemed very down, snarling and weary. The Dallas sequences were around Thanksgiving and they had all-time record cold and blizzard conditions. It was miserable. Roger was shivering the whole time, wearing the same parka he had for ‘Ski Troop Attack’. 

[…] 

The day we set up the last sequence at the mesa Roger seemed really adrift. The Indians were terrible to work with. He seemed isolated, almost directing like a robot. The last scene was a big action shot with the entire cast, dune buggies, motorcycles, and the whole Indian tribe coming together. The first take was a complete mess. Roger just sat there. I got everybody back in their positions for a second take and looked over at Roger. He just nodded. I called action for him, and surprisingly, this time it went perfectly. Roger got up from his chair slowly, thanked everybody, and said very quietly, “Let’s go home.” (5)

---

(1)According to IMDB trivia, ‘Gas’s lengthy sub-title was inspired by an unnamed Major in the U.S. Army, who is alleged to have justified the total destruction of a Vietnamese town and its inhabitants on the basis that, “it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it” - a reference which would have stood as the darkest and most effective piece of satire in the entire picture, if only an effort had been made to draw the audience’s attention to it.

(2) The WWI aerial combat epic ‘Von Richtofen and Brown’, which Corman shot in Ireland for United Artists, saw release in 1971, and subsequent to that he did not return to the director’s chair until 1990’s ‘Frankenstein Unbound’ - a film which I would argue stands more as a one-off vanity project produced by his own studio (albeit, a very worthwhile and interesting one) than as a strictly commercial proposition.

(3) Ironically in view of how badly the film falls victim to it, it’s interesting to note that Armitage’s script for ‘Gas’ is both aware of the hyper-accelerated fashion cycle of the ‘60s, and indeed pokes fun at it via the character played by Cindy Williams, a devotee of ‘old timey’ pop music who hangs around the jukebox listening to “golden oldies” by the likes of Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead; a familiar motif found in near-future fiction written at the time by slightly bamboozled older geezers, and in Thomas Pynchon novels all the way up to 2009.

(4) It seems that Corman had originally planned to make ‘Gas’ with The Grateful Dead appearing on-screen and providing the soundtrack, only to end up - in characteristic Corman fashion - telling them to get lost when they turned up demanding more money than had been agreed upon, and immediately getting Country Joe on the line instead.

(5) All quotes in this review are taken from ‘How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime’, by Roger Corman with Jim Jerome (De Capo press edition, 1998), pp. 162-167.

Horror Express: The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes (David Kramarsky / Roger Corman, 1955)

Over the past few years, I’ve got into the habit of tuning in to ‘50s American sci-fi/monster movies for a dose of comforting, mid-week escapism. Perhaps it’s just me, but somehow, that distinctive combination of remote desert town settings, flat, TV-style staging, woozy theremin music, reassuring techno-babble, clean-cut squaresville vibes and that distant patina of eerie, cold war paranoia… all of this just goes down perfectly with a whisky & soda after a hard day in the office (and the short run-times help, too).

Imagine my consternation then when 1955 ‘The Beast with a Million Eyes’ brutally overturned my expectations. Despite boasting Roger Corman as an executive producer (and uncredited director), the opening half hour of this extremely low budget, Palm Springs-shot outing feels a world away from the cheery hi-jinks of Not of This Earth or It Conquered the World. Instead, it presents us with a vignette of bleak, psychologically harrowing b-movie existentialism which Corman’s later collaborator Richard Matheson would have been proud of.

Our setting is an isolated, family-run ranch which has been steadily losing money for three years, or so husband/father Allan (Paul Birch) tells us in voiceover. He feels like a failure, having lost his family’s affections as a result of this financial turmoil, but is unable to find a way to reverse their sorry fate.

Allan’s shrewish wife Carol (Lorna Thayer) is meanwhile introduced to us as a seething vortex of negativity. Trapped in a kitchen she clearly hates with every ounce of her being, she spends her days labouring away at the Sisyphean task of trying to bake cakes, repeatedly burning them, and flying into a rage as a result.

So bitter is Carol that she won’t even allow the couple’s teenage daughter Sandy (Dona Cole) to leave to go to college. “Why should she get the chances I never got?”, she demands to know. Sandy in turn bitterly resents her mother for condemning her to a life of drudgery on the isolated ranch, all culminating in an atmosphere which at times feels as suffocating and inescapable as the pit in which the characters toil in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s existentialist classic ‘Woman of the Dunes’ (1964).

As if all this wasn’t bad enough meanwhile, the family’s problems are silently observed by a lumbering, mute simpleton (Leonard Tarver) who - for reasons that are not really made sufficiently clear until the film’s conclusion - lives in a shack adjoining their house.

Charmingly, this fellow is known to the family simply as “Him” (“he can’t tell us his name, assuming he ever had one,” Sandy sneers), and he seems to spend much of his time shivering on an unkempt mattress next to wall covered in girly pictures - when he’s not spying on the family members or lurking about with a wood axe, that is. Allan insists that “He” is harmless, but the women aren’t so sure, treating him with a mixture of fear and outright contempt.

At the heart of this tsunami of bad vibes, Allan himself remains an inert, helpless figure. Staring out into the desert, he meditates on the threat posed by the dry, lifeless expanse which stretches beyond the limits of his unhappy homestead. “Maybe the hate started out THERE…,” he muses, gazing at gleaming animal bones in the sand.

Already living in vision of the American Dream transfigured into a hermetically-sealed, loveless hellscape, it’s safe to say the last thing any of these folks need is the arrival of a Beast with a Million Eyes. Thoughtfully though, when the film’s allotted visitor from another world does eventually make an appearance, it does so in a manner which initially feels more annoying than actively apocalyptic.

The Beast’s ship (or meteorite, or whatever it is - the nature of the vessel is never really made clear) overshoots the ranch house, breaking all the windows, and shattering Carol’s beloved glassware. Her sense of futile, outraged frustration in the face of this inexplicable domestic calamity feels horribly palpable; as she gazes forlornly at the shards of a water jug, it honestly feels for a moment or two that she might be about to slash her wrists.

Long before it deigns to make any kind of physical appearance however, it becomes clear that The Beast’s modus operandi involves taking psychic control whatever ‘inferior’ intelligences happen to be hanging about in its general vicinity of its landing zone, dispatching them on malign and destructive missions on its behalf. (Herein lies the rationale for the creature’s purported “million eyes”, or so I’m assuming, as it sees through the optics of all the local insects and animals, etc etc.).

So, first a flock of suicidal birds attacks Allan’s station wagon, before the film reaches what is surely it’s nadir (in both emotional and cinematic terms) during a sequence in which the family’s beloved sheepdog Duke allegedly ‘turns bad’ under the influence of the alien entity and attempts to attack Carol whilst she is alone in the house.

I should clarify that, up to this point, ‘The Beast with a Million Eyes’ has been reasonably well made on its own low budget terms, but the problem here is that the production obviously had no means of creating the illusion that poor old Duke had gone crazy / become rabid. True, they manage to rustle up a few close-up insert shots of him growling and bearing his teeth, but in the long shots which comprise the majority of the scene, he just looks like a normal, happy doggie, making Carol’s decision to run screaming in fear and subsequently blast him with a shotgun seem entirely inexplicable in visual terms - as well as making us hate her even more in the process - even as we grudgingly acknowledge the idea the script is trying to convey.

Strangely, the catharsis caused by Duke’s death (along with the impact of the other low level disasters the family have suffered) somehow succeeds in bringing them back together, allowing them to escape the depressive fug in which they were previously trapped and reminding them of the familial bond they all share -- and it is here that the essential point of Tom Filer’s screenplay finally becomes clear.

It is soon noted, y’see, that the alien’s hypnotic powers only have an effect on people when they are alone. When we’re together, when we have LOVE, we’re safe! (Like all malign invaders/super-computers/killer robots etc, the Beast is flummoxed by by the concept of love, although its clumsy voiceover here at least acknowledges a distant, historical memory of such a thing once existing on its long-dead home planet.)

Corny as it may seem in retrospect, this grand theme is actually quite effectively unpacked by Filer’s script, aided by a set of characterisations which are more multi-faceted and psychologically realistic than those generally encountered in ‘50s monster movies. Crucially, the core idea that, beneath all the dysfunctions and resentments inherent in family life, we still share an unbreakable bond with our relatives and life partners, is allowed to develop naturally here, rather than just being preached in our general direction, as was more standard in this genre/era.

Unfortunately however, nobody thought to include poor old “Him” in the group hugs, so… you can probably guess how that whole plotline plays out, although there is at least quite an interesting, socio-political twist thrown in vis-à-vis the revelation of who the hell “He” actually is, which I won’t spoil for you here.

Thematically speaking, I found this story’s emphasis on the virtues of togetherness - and its implied rejection of individual agency - quite interesting, in view of the anti-communist / pro-‘freedom’ ideology which (in allegorical terms at least) was pretty much obligatory in American SF films of this era.

But then, if you look at it another way, I suppose the alien entity’s attempt to create a kind of invasive hive mind provides just as good a stand-in for the Reds as anything else, so ok - fair enough. Nothing to see here folks, just a bit of unusually thoughtful ambiguity on the part of the scriptwriter - let’s move on.

Of course, the philosophical resonance and character drama in ‘Beast with a Million Eyes’ could have soared to Shakespearean heights of achievement, and it still wouldn’t have saved the film from living in reviled infamy in the minds of the millions of ‘50s monster kids who presumably sat bored out their minds in matinee screenings, demanding to know: where in the fucking hell is the Beast with a Million Eyes?!

Legend has it that this was also the reaction of producer James H. Nicholson, whose American Releasing Corporation financed and distributed the film shortly before morphing into the legendary American International Pictures. True to form, they already had the movie pre-booked with title and poster artwork ready to go, so…. WTF are you trying to do to us here, Roger?

Having committed the cardinal sin of turning in a monster movie without a monster, ‘executive producer’ Corman was thus allegedly dispatched to make right on his mistake with a mere $200 in hand, hooking up with master monster sculptor Paul Blaisdell to produce… well, for the most part, they seem to have resorted to just using a kettle with some flashing lights on the top, to be honest.

Seen in insert shots earlier in the film, this object seems very small (like some kind of sensor or radio receiver or something?), so when we see the surviving characters approach it during the film’s final minutes and discovering that it is actually supposed to be big - like, a spaceship, with a monster in it - the effect is disorientating.

When the door on the side of thing finally opens, we belatedly get a 30 second glimpse of some kind of scary, brain-headed monster thing (with TWO eyes, for the record), somewhat reminiscent of the creatures from the same year’s ‘This Island Earth’. In an attempt to boost the impact of this revelation, these shots are super-imposed with the image of a big, throbbing eyeball, lending them a rather wild, proto-psychedelic quality which could, at a stretch, perhaps be seen as a very early indicator of the direction Corman’s directorial work would take during the 1960s.

All this is actually quite cool, and psychotronic as heck, but it’s likely audiences at the time merely saw it as a load of cheapjack crap - a pathetic, last minute attempt to try to justify the movie’s title and poster artwork, delivering far too little, far too late -forever condemning ‘Beast..’ to the lowest rungs of the monster movies canon.

Viewed with nearly 70 years-worth(!) of hindsight however, ‘Beast with a Million Eyes’ feels like a more-than-respectable addition to the Corman/AIP catalogue. Sure, it suffers more than usual from budgetary constraints, and the lack of a tight directorial hand on the reins allows some extremely clumsy elements (eg, the dog scene and the monster’s ridiculous voiceover) to make it into the final cut, but at the same time, the film’s strong writing and well-rounded characters nonetheless keep us engaged throughout.

As such, it to some extent helped establish a formula which Corman would re-visit again and again over the next few years, with increasing confidence and success each time around. In marking the start of this cycle, it deserves to be viewed sympathetically as a minor landmark in American genre cinema, as well as for its own not insignificant points of interest.

FRANCO FILES: Macumba Sexual (1981)

AKA:
Amazingly, this appears to be a Jess Franco film only ever issued under one name.

Context:
Of the numerous films Franco made in the early ‘80s for Spain’s ‘Golden Films Internacional’, many seem to be pretty lightweight softcore flicks, leading me to speculate that they must have been somewhat taken aback when they threw on the reels for this one and discovered that their man had been inspired to deliver something wholly other on this excursion.

Content:
In narrative terms a straight rehash of the familiar ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ plot-line, ‘Macumba Sexual’ finds Canary Island-dwelling real estate agent Lina Romay (sporting a blonde wig in her “Candy Coster” alter-ego) being summoned to remote spot that’s either on the North African coast or a fairly large, sparsely inhabited desert island (it’s kind of unclear..?), where she finds herself falling under the psychic and sexual control of a possibly-undead African witch named, I’m afraid, Princess Obongo, played by infamous French sex/sleaze star Ajita Wilson.

Kink:
Although packed from start to finish with writhing naked bodies and orgasmic sex rites, including a few moments that are bordering on hardcore (I think the BBFC must have been sleeping on the job when they gave this an uncut ‘18’), ‘Macumba Sexual’ is not really the kind of thing that’s liable to get any well-adjusted individual ‘in the mood’, exactly.

Instead, it is one of a select handful of Franco films (his best ones, usually) in which sex is treated not just as fun and games, but as something far more dangerous and unsettling – as a means of attaining psychic domination over others, as a kind of hysterical compulsion, or a gateway by which dark forces might enter. Touching on all of these troubling notions to some extent, ‘Macumba Sexual’ is a pretty heavy trip through the darkest corners of Franco’s erotic imagination - not just a horror film with sex, or a sex film with horror, but a film in which the sex IS the horror.

Also, you get to see Antonio Mayans’ wang, and Lina walking around in some denim and lace-based outfits that present a significant challenge to the notion of ‘acceptable public apparel’. 4/5

Creepitude:
Presented by Franco as stifling, claustrophobic fever-dream where unchecked sexual dementia blurs into the menacing, repetitive trance of a folk-magick hex, the whole film has the feel of a series of hallucinations brought on by extreme heat and dehydration. The use of ‘sinister’ African imagery and fertility charms only occasionally borders on the goofy, and you can practically feel the deadening tropical heat oozing from the screen.

Often described as an “alleged transsexual”, whatever that’s supposed to imply, Ajita Wilson simply looks fucking terrifying here, and the blurry, sun-damaged footage of her striding through the sand of Lina’s dreams with her two drooling, dog-walking human slaves is truly the stuff of nightmares.

For any viewers still trying to hang on to the idea that they’re watching a conventional sex film even after all that business, the fearful mood is further enhanced by a soundtrack of droning electronic feedback and echoed faux-hoodoo vocal chants that is altogether more menacing than the kitschy fare that usually predominates in these kinda things, and Franco ups the ante further by busting out some impulsive moments of startlingly disorientating, near avant-garde filmmaking technique. 4/5

Pulp Thrills:
Nada. With the stylistic excesses of the ‘60s and ‘70s behind him, Jess is jamming econo here, and the film’s dark tone leaves little room for any genre-bending frivolity. Whether Princess Obongo’s assorted black magick fetishes and rites have any legitimacy beyond Franco’s warped imaginings and the handful of ropey props he picked up down the local tourist market is doubtful, but nonetheless the film’s magical/supernatural elements are played out in a surprisingly naturalistic and believable manner. 1/5

Altered States:
What…? Where am I? Did that just… happen? I don’t feel too good… there are sexy pictures in my mind, but they’re all kind of frightening. I think I’m going to go curl up in the corner, until it goes away. Can you open the windows, please? 5/5

Sight-seeing:
Of all the jarring modernist edifices and brutalist hotel blocks that Franco’s keen eye discovered knocking about in the Mediterranean during the ‘70s, the location used for Princess Obongo’s residence is definitely one of the most memorable – a complex of visionary Afro-futurist buildings overlooking a shimmering desert coastline, it lends an even more sinister and otherworldly quality to the events that transpire within. Elsewhere, long camel rides across the windswept desert, scruffy North African(?) harbour towns and footage of Lina travelling between islands on what appears to be an old fashioned sailing ship all combine to make ‘Macumba..’ feel somewhat like a holiday brochure put together by the Marquis DeSade. 5/5

Conclusion:
When Jess and the gang cruised out to some exotic locale to make a cheap porno in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, most of the time they just came back with a cheap porno. But the fact that occasionally, when the stars were right, he could still knock out something as haunting and unhinged as ‘Macumba Sexual’ stands as a testament to the man’s unique talent, and as a welcome reminder of the reasons why some of us are driven to spend so much time to watching, reading and writing about his films, despite their often-pretty-questionable nature.

The Devil’s Rain(Robert Fuest, 1975)

As I found myself preparing to watch ‘The Devil’s Rain’ last week, I thought it might be fun to do something a bit different with this review - kind of a ‘Live Blog’, recording my observations as they occur to me whilst viewing. So, headphones on and VLC Player and Word document open side by side, that’s exactly what I did. Grammar, phrasing and fact checking have subsequently been revised, but aside from that, what follows is an exact record of the transactions that took place on that fateful night, between this 1975 motion picture and my brain.

00:35 Hieronymus Bosch credits sequence. Inspired or lazy? Your call. Either way, something tells me ‘The Devil’s Rain’ is unlikely to be able to live up to magnified details from ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ presented here.

01:00 One of those movies where you feel like the casting director (Lea Stalmaster, take a bow) should be driving around in a golden Cadillac. Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino, William Shatner and a pre-fame John Travolta – together at least.

01:20 Anton LaVey as ‘Technical Advisor’? Gimme a break. Total mersh Satanist movie.

01:40 Until his credit popped up, I had no idea this was directed by Robert Fuest (‘The Abominable Dr. Phibes’, ‘The Final Programme’). Expectation.. rising.

05:40 “Winds…. knocked the lines down!” – ah, William Shatner. How have I managed all these years, watching films that he’s not in?


07:20 So… Shatner’s father has returned home, cryptically noted that ‘Corbis’ is waiting in the desert, waiting for the book, then promptly melted into a pile of multi-coloured poster-paint goo, right there on the doorstep. Ida Lupino has intoned the words “In nomine Satanis” for presumably the first and last time in her storied career, and Shatner’s reaction shot says it all. So far this is… awesome? Well it depends on your point of view I guess, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are shaping up.

9:00 Grimoire hidden under the carpet. They’ll never find it there! I like how this book is being imbued with such vast metaphysical import. Kinda reminds me of those Lovecraft stories wherein even being in the room as the Necronomicon is enough to drive you to a state of nervous paralysis.

10:00 Shatner’s got a magnum and a cowboy hat. He’s going to fight the devil… on his terms. I can scarcely wait.


11:45 Goddamn. I was going to crack wise about the family’s strange, kindly-old-man servant (I think he’s a servant of some kind? Although he could just as easily be an uncle or something? I don't think it's ever made clear..), but this scene in which Shatner finds him tied to the ceiling by his feet, shrieking like a trapped beast, is actually incredibly upsetting. A very peculiar and unnerving performance from TV actor Woody Chambliss (who also played the kindly old man in Jim McBride’s unusual post-apocalypse movie ‘Glen & Randa’).


14:00 Man, the composer is reeeaaallly pushing that creepy dissonant, scraping glissandro string stuff. It can still be a great effect on soundtracks when done well, but the way he’s hammering it here is just beyond ridiculous, blasting it beyond cliché and out the other side.

16:00 Great, dreamy landscape shots illustrate Shatner’s journey to ‘the desert’. Loving the abandoned chapel set against the sky. For a mainstream(ish) studio picture, ‘The Devil’s Rain’ has a very disconnected, otherworldly atmosphere going on – reminds me slightly of dope-addled hippie era horror movies like ‘Werewolves on Wheels’ and ‘The Velvet Vampire’.


16:30 I love the way that the abandoned settlement where the Satanists dwell is obviously just a backlot Western town; “Be careful stranger, no one’s set foot in that there ghost town since they finished doing second unit work on ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ last month…”

16:59 Tumbleweed!

18:00 Borgnine!


18:20 Borgnine’s water is bitter…but it’s a sweet way to end a thirst. Do I detect a certain fairy tale quality to this story?

20:33 A challenge! Shatner’s faith against Borgnine’s! I don’t know what to think.


21:40 Chanting… altar… pentagram. Job’s a good ‘un.

23:20 “Come forth from the abyss… open wide the gates of hell” – hmm, pretty corny stuff this. Old Anton earning his cheque, no doubt. Awesome stain glass window though, and I appreciate the shots of the dude playing the organ.

27:00 Satanists bleed multi-coloured goo. Protective talisman turns into a snake. Eyeless Lupino (un)stares on, and Shatner’s on the run. This whole sequence is really well shot.


29:00 Whoa, sudden scene change! Ok, so… is everything we’ve seen so far actually taking place in the subconscious of a woman (Mrs Preston? Shatner’s moustachioed brother’s wife?), who is taking part in some kind of ESP experiment in front of a lecture theatre full of students…?

31:30 Well, no, actually. Turns out that was just some kind of inexplicable diversion. Now we’re back down to… well I hesitate to say ‘earth’, but wherever it is the preceding scenes have been taking place…where Moustachioed Bro and his wife have returned home in search of his vanished family. The sheriff says half the county’s been washed away by the floods and he can’t possibly spare any men, but uh, if you guys want to grab some guns and go hunting for yr missing relatives in that old Western backlot town, be my guest – gimme a call in the morning or whatever and let me know how it goes. Now that’s the kind of light touch approach to law enforcement I can get with.

34:00 William Shatner fears not the torments of hell. In case you had any doubts.



37:00 Beautifully symmetrical long-shot of the car pulling up outside the frontier chapel… hokey as all this is, Fuest seems to be doing his best to build a real strong sense of oneiric disorientation…

43:00 Ladies and gentlemen, introducing John Travolta in his debut screen appearance, being kicked down the stairs by a dude with a moustache.

44:45 Red-tinted flashback to the Satanists’ origins as a heretical puritan sect back in colonial days. I’ll admit that my grasp of American history might be a bit shaky in places, but I wasn’t aware that many 17th century puritan sects made it out quite as far as Southern California..?


46:50 Love Ancestor-Borgnine’s faux innocence: oh, tis a mob of flaming torch weilding villagers at the door. What brings you fellows out here so late in the evening?

47:20 “Thou art the one… SLUT!” – another dialogue first for a great actor.

49:00 Ernie pulls some real oomph into his obligatory burned-at-the-stake “I curse you all” speech.

52:00 Ok, so thus far I wouldn’t go as far as to say this movie is ‘good’ exactly, but I certainly respect the filmmakers’ decision to turn in a film for a Hollywood studio that not only goes for a full-on delirious/dreamy fantastique atmosphere, making *no attempt whatsoever* to frame its action in the real world, but also seems to have been scripted by a somnambulant wino who once read a Dennis Wheatley book…

52:30 Holy shit! Maybe it’s just because I’m watching this with headphones on in the dark, but that wholly predictable backseat-of-the-car jump scare really put the wind up me. For all that I dissed the soundtrack above, the sound mix here was fucking murderous.

55:00 I wish I could have been there when they were filming this mass Satanist rally in the desert. Looks like a beautiful evening. All the open flame blowing in the breeze, sackcloth against yr skin… ah, that’s living.



56:15 So, uh… there was just a sudden insert shot of a dynamite explosion and now Ernest Borgnine has turned into a furry-faced, horned goat-man.

58:00 You too may wish to by sprinkled with ‘the waters of forgetfulness’ after watching Goat-Borgnine torture a shirtless William Shatner.

60:00 Goat-Borgnine looks too mischievous and lovable to really be a decent villain. I want him to caper off and lead us to a whimsical fantasy adventure of some kind, not stand here droning on about the doom that awaits our immortal souls.


70:30 This ‘devil’s rain’ vessel full of howling souls thing is a neat special effect. Very much reminds me of the kind of tricks Fuest was pulling off in ‘..Dr. Phibes’.

77:00 Vengeance of Goat-Borgnine forestalled due to melting.

79:30 More inexplicable dynamite blasts, to accompany the melting. You’d think God was some sort of unhinged mining prospector, the amount of bang-sticks he seems to be throwing around the place.

82:00 You know, everything I’ve read about this film over the years has mentioned the ridiculous amount of time dedicated to the melting of the cultists, but now that I come to watch it myself, I’m kinda disappointed. I was expecting a sequence of unparalleled repetitious madness, but actually the time allotted to the melting seems fairly reasonable. I mean, they clearly had a lot of cool melting effects to show off, and nothing much else to offer by way of a finale (give or take a few sticks of dynamite), so four or five minutes of melting doesn’t strike me as particularly excessive. In fact I could easily have gone for some more melting. I wanted a whole endless, senseless psychedelic melting extravaganza, goddamnit!


84:00 Chapel explodes – again, for no reason.

85:00 Well, there we have it folks. ‘The Devil’s Rain’. It is what it is, I suppose. Despite being probably one of the silliest films ever bankrolled by a Hollywood studio, it’s certainly worth a watch for us weirdo horror fans. It has some great ideas and distinctive visuals, and if they’d focused more on the darker aspects of the story and not made the portrayal of black magic so cartoon-ish and OTT, it could have been a pretty effective weirdo horror film. As it is though, the writing is intolerably flimsy (even from a Euro-horror fan’s POV), the acting is jaw-droppingly bad (ditto), the pacing is all over the joint, and the whole thing never quite comes together the way it should. Ah well – I still kinda enjoyed it, and I’m glad they had the guts to make it the way they did, rather than just doing some lifeless Exorcist/Omen knock-off and pleasing the suits. It brought us the sight of Ernest Borgnine turning into a giant goat and melting into a pile of poster paint goo, and for that I am thankful.


And thus ends our survey of '70s Backwoods Satanist Movies That Inexplicably Feature Great, Sam Peckipah-affiliated Actors. If anyone can think of any more that I might have overlooked though, please let me know, and I'll track them down post-haste!

Godmonster of Indian Flats (Fredric Hobbs, 1973)

When we last encountered cracked conceptual genius Fredric Hobbs on this blog, he was busy trying to squeeze our brains through the sieve of the unforgettable Alabama’s Ghost. Needless to say, after a few months spent recovering from that experience, I was primed for more, and thankfully, so was Hobbs. In the brief window between wrapping up work on his magnum opus and witnessing its presumably disastrous unveiling on the grindhouse circuit, some damn fool gave Fred the green light once again, and production began almost immediately on 1973’s ‘Godmonster of Indian Flats’.

Perhaps they figured, well, how far off the rails can he go with a straightforward monster movie anyway? I fear you and I both know the answer to that question.

Having said that though, it’s clear from the outset that ‘Godmonster..’ is a far more low-key affair than ‘Alabama’, rarely seeking to replicate the overdriven freakery and psychedelic excess of its predecessor. More of a slow-burner in the weirdness stakes than an OMFG mindblower, close attention and contemplation nonetheless reveal it to be an equally inexplicable proposition; a bilious and indigestible film, by turns frustrating, whimsical, beautiful and genuinely upsetting, ‘Godmonster..’ is unmistakably the work of a creative mind running on a completely different set of rails from the rest of mankind, and for that alone it should be celebrated.


As Hobbs relates in an interview (more of a vast, disjointed monologue really) conducted by Stephen Thrower for his indispensable book Nightmare USA, the seeds of ‘Godmonster..’ were sewn largely from the director’s connections with the community of Virginia City in Nevada, a former goldrush city built on the profits of gold extracted from the legendary ‘Comstock Lode’, and subsequently preserved for the ages as a kind of period-authentic tourist town.

Hobbs created much of his best-known artwork during sojourns in Virginia City, as well as assisting in the restoration of town’s historic buildings and co-authoring the book ‘The Richest Place on Earth: The Story of Virginia City and the Heyday of the Comstock Lode’ (1978). So setting his film there, taking advantage of unusual architecture, awe-inspiring scenery and the goodwill of the local community, must have been a no-brainer really, and indeed ‘Godmonster..’ is in many ways a tribute to the strange atmosphere of Virginia City – full of local tales, local people and local peculiarities, even if it is not, I should imagine, the kind of homage many residents might have anticipated.

In classic ‘50s monster movie style, the film posits an isolated laboratory in the hills outside the town, where Dr Clemens (“head of Anthropology at the University of Reno”) and his perpetually dazed flower-child assistant Mariposa are working on unspecified matters requiring a great deal of secrecy and isolation. (In another great example of Hobbs’ knack for enhancing his movies through use of ‘found’ locations and props, Dr Clemens laboratory is housed in an incredibly sinister looking concrete pile that is apparently an abandoned US government cyanide factory.)


One night, Doc Clemens encounters Eddie, a simple-minded local sheep-farmer who has ended up penniless after a night of drinking following a fruit machine jackpot in Reno resulted in his being fleeced and run out of town by the Virginia City locals. Drunkenly collapsing amid his beloved sheep after the Doc drives him home (“how’s God’s children tonight?” he asks them), Eddie witnesses something that the film seems to invite us to interpret as a divine/miraculous happenstance.

First he sees a blinding light in the sky, and glimpses strange, swirling creatures in the darkness above him. Churning, super-imposed sheep imagery fills the screen and loud bahhing mixes with religious choral music on the soundtrack as a flash of lightning descends from the heavens, and Eddie awakes to find himself cradling a mewling, misshapen mass of newly-birthed sheep-flesh.




When he checks in on Eddie the next morning, the Doc apparently recognises the birth of this misbegotten creature as “an amazing event, almost incredible from a scientific standpoint… possibly the result of chromosomic breakdown and cross-fertilisation”, and immediately rushes it back to his lab, installing it in an incubator for further study. And, just when we’re wondering why the head of an anthropology department would need a fully-functioning medical lab equipped with a high-tech incubator and an all-purpose assortment of other mad scientist equipment, Clemens helpfully fills us in at length regarding the reasons he really came to the Comstock – namely, the investigation of “..a certain theory of cellular realignment..” inspired by unusual fossil imprints found in the abandoned mines, and goldrush-era legends concerning a supposed ‘mine monster’. Pity the poor clerk at the University of Reno who had to process the invoices for that one.

Meanwhile, back in town, other business is afoot, and Hobbs wants to make sure we know all about it. Mayor Silverdale – patriarchal head of the Virginia City Historical Society and also, allegedly, of a secret society known as the 601s who ‘protect’ the city’s interests – is having breakfast with one Mr Barnstable (played by Alabama himself, the one and only Christopher Brooks). Barnstable has come to the town on behalf of a Howard Hughes-esque billionaire named Rupert Reich with the intention of persuading the townsfolk to sell their mining concessions, allowing the Reich Corporation to commence a programme of economically-devastating industrial stripmining.



Understandably, Silverdale – whose desire to preserve the status quo upon which his power rests verges on fascistic paranoia – is less than sympathetic to Reich’s overtures. When the charismatic Barnstable refuses to take no for an answer and leave town though, Silverdale and his cronies decide to take more drastic action.

Somewhat uniquely, this action consists of seeking to ruin Barnstable’s reputation in the eyes of the townspeople by encouraging him to take part in a shooting contest during the town’s ‘Bonanza Day’ celebrations, then framing him with the death of a beloved local dog (whose owner, the local sheriff, instructs the beast to play dead).


Several long scenes are spent elaborating the details of this unfeasible ruse, as we hear about how the dog has been deposited with the sheriff’s nephew in Albuquerque for safe keeping, and witness the tearful funeral that is held for the purportedly slain mutt in the town’s central church. (“He was only a dog, but he filled out lives with joy and gaiety.. until a bullet struck him down” opines Silverdale’s lackey Maldove in the midst of the most solemn and overblown dog funeral oration in cinema history.)

In spite of his new status as a pariah and dog murderer though, Barnstable continues his quest to try to win over the townsfolk, experiencing much toing and froing and double-crossing that we won’t bother going into here, until he eventually finds himself on the verge of being lynched by the black-shirted 601s, after discovering that Silverdale has already gone over his head and sold out the town directly to Reich.

Escaping the lynch mob with the help of brothel proprietor/clairvoyant Madame Alta, Barnstable seeks sanctuary with Doc Clemens at Indian Flats, and it is during the subsequent tear gas assault by Silverdale’s men that the now fully-grown ‘Godmonster’ makes its inevitable escape.


It must be said at this point that, in purely technical terms, ‘Godmonster of Indian Flats’ is not really a great work of cinema. In keeping with what you might expect from a largely unheralded regional genre film, the pacing is pretty sluggish and the direction perfunctory (give or take the occasional moment of oddball inspiration). In spite of the remarkable shooting locations and the often astounding imagery presented on-screen, Hobbs works predominantly in bland medium and long shot, with camera movement clearly at a premium. Unconvincing post-production audio inserts are sometimes used to enhance or replace dialogue from original shoot, whilst the music track is largely comprised of stock ‘suspense’ cues and outdated theremin jams seemingly pulled straight from a ‘50s sci-fi/monster flick.

The performances – though less blunt than those in ‘Alabama’ – are still of the declamatory, am-dram variety common to many off-the-map independent films, meaning that if characters don’t QUITE enter a scene with the fingers looped in their belt buckles and say “WELL, I DO DECLARE..”, they constantly seem to be on the verge of doing so.

Not every story needs nuanced, method style intensity to get where it’s going though, and likewise, ‘Godmonster..’ doesn’t really *need* to be a great technical achievement to make its point, when the wayward imagination and unguessable sideways logic that Hobbs packs into his screenplay instantly serves to separate him from the Don Dohlers and William Grefes of this world.

By necessity, ‘Godmonster..’ is a slower, more realistic venture than ‘Alabama’, but even in his most earth-bound moments, Hobbs can’t help but get a bit weird. In the film’s opening few minutes depicting Eddie’s night out in Reno, rows of slot machines wheeze and drone like part of an alien landscape, as salty characters ramble their way through sprawling mouthfuls of quintessential Hobbsian dialogue. (“It’s getting’ up into drinking time… it’s the golden hours, boy… full of banjo-dust and starry-eyed broads, lookin’ for a good time…”, announces one Elbow Johnson, apropos of nothing, as he props up the bar.)

Elsewhere, Hobbs’ obvious love of street parades and Western culture is in full effect as he comes on like some cranky, cowboy Fellini during the scenes depicting Virginia City’s ‘Bonanza Day’, filling the screen with leering, drunken faces, blaring oom-pah bands, cheering prostitutes, pie-eating contests, railroad spike-driving demonstrations, sixgun-blasting yahoos and you name it.



As the film progresses, it starts to accumulate some heavy psychedelic and spiritual undertones too, regardless of Hobbs’ apparent efforts to try to ground his tale in scientific/economic reality.

Making their way through Virginia City’s hilltop graveyard, Eddie and Mariposa witness Madame Alta pushing her face against the branches of a tree, apparently in some kind of supernatural trance. Sitting beneath an impressive obelisk (‘Captain Storie’s Monument’), Eddie gives his own impressionistic account of the ‘Godmonster’s birth (“when I had this.. vision.. it seemed like the whole sky opened up.. filling the barn with gold-dust..”) whilst Mariposa chimes in with some trippy local folklore (“the Indians say they owe their origins to the marriage of a white wolf and a princess.. the wolf turned into a rock at the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain”).

Occult vibes continue to predominate when Alta gives Mariposa a particularly eerie fortune reading, warning her against “..a great machine, a machine of science, a machine of death..” as bead curtains swing in the breeze and the theremin goes into overdrive. “I’m clairvoyant remember… I see in the dark” Alta announces, before the scene cuts to a POV shot of railway tracks rumbling through the darkness in an abandoned mine tunnel.




This strange thread of mystical / emotional logic, which seems to be embodied by both of the film’s noteworthy female characters - in stark contrast to the boorish materialism exhibited by most of the males - is further explored in one of the film’s most peculiar and memorable scenes, when Mariposa corners the escaped monster and tries to communicate with it and soothe its anger. Engaging it in a kind of strange, cosmic dance, she attempts to lead it down the mountain…until Eddie stumbles onto the scene and thoughtlessly hurls a rock at the frightened creature.


And at the emotional heart of the film of course lies the ‘Godmonster’ itself. Designed and created by Hobbs in his trademark ‘eco-art’ style, it is one of the most hilarious, pitiful, godforsaken beasts imaginable - a shambling bag of fur and bone that looks like the contents of a KFC bucket wrapped up in a moth-eaten carpet, topped with a head that could have been stolen from a mummified camel. With opaque, black eye sockets, the creature appears to be blind, swinging a grotesque, overgrown limb ahead of itself like a kind of primitive feeler as it endeavours to keep its unstable frame upright.

Probably the most achingly sad creature ever created for a movie, just seeing the poor thing (which looks to be about the size of a large cow) painstakingly drag itself up the hillside on underdeveloped legs, shuffling about confusedly as Silverdale’s rough-riders surround it with lassos, is absolutely heartbreaking.

Only the cruel idiots who make up most of this film’s cast of characters could possibly deem this unfortunate animal a ‘monster’, and even its obligatory ‘rampage’ is lovably pathetic (it inadvertently destroys a Chevron gas station when it knocks over a petrol pump, then frightens some children by stealing their picnic food).



After the creature is captured, Silverdale calls an impromptu gathering at the town dump, and, absurdly, announces the poor beast – now confined in a giant parrot cage strapped to the back of a pick-up truck - as ‘the eighth wonder of the world’, outlining his plans to make a fortune charging tourists to see it.

The assembled townsfolk recoil in horror when the repugnant sight of the wounded, hog-tied beast is revealed (“kill it, kill it!”, someone shouts in disgust), and the crowd, who by this point have caught wind of the fact that Silverdale has sold them out to The Reich Corporation, attempt to charge the creature, pelting it with rubbish as the gathering collapses into chaos.

Coming totally out of the blue, the sheer, directionless frenzy that follows is really quite unsettling. “Kill them, kill them, run them down!”, Silverdale yells to his outriders as they lay into the crowd. A frightening and tragic scene of destruction ensues, as cars burn, citizens scream in each other’s faces and fight in the dirt, and horses trample screaming innocent bystanders. It’s not exactly the Odessa Steps I guess, but something about the modest staging of the scene, the way Hobbs is able to suddenly create a kind of apocalyptic fervour with about forty extras and a few cars and horses scattered around a bit of Nevada wasteground, is truly horrific.



In the end, the selfish, squabbling humans barely even notice as the long-suffering ‘Godmonster’ is pushed down the slope to its fiery death; a failed messiah whose brief and pointless tenure on earth has yielded nothing but pain, confusion and fear. As it suffocates beneath a mountain of burning trash, perhaps it remembers those few fleeting seconds of inter-species communication, when Mariposa led it in that strange dance on the mountainside, before a well-aimed rock ended even that glimmer of mutual recognition.

“People have said, ‘Why does everyone go crazy at the end?’,” recalls Hobbs in the Thrower interview. “Well it’s in the dialogue – they’ve been had! Even the distributor, who’s a smart guy, said, ‘Everybody goes nuts at the end! Is that what you always do, Hobbs? In every movie you make everybody always goes nuts at the end!’ I said, ‘No, for chrissakes listen to the dialogue!’ It’s in there – people in the crowd shouting ‘Silverdale’s got our money!’ But you know what? The images were so strong that nobody listened. That’s why some of my movies fail, in some things. People say, ‘Oh, the story’s weak, Hobbs doesn’t know how to do stories.’ That’s bullshit! My imagery is so powerful that they can’t listen.”



As the film ends, the camera pans upward to frame Silverdale, still ranting like a maniac, as a charred, apocalyptic landscape stretches before him. A few sheep graze contentedly as noxious sulphuric gas seeps up from earth around them, and the theremin wheezes on tunelessly.

Thus ends the cinematic career of Fredric Hobbs, wrapping up the strange tale he’s been stringing us along with for 85 minutes in about the bleakest, most misanthropic manner imaginable.

Some may question the proposition that independent American cinema has been significantly poorer for his absence in subsequent decades, but it’s certainly been a hell of a lot less strange, and that, I think, is a shame.