MOORE, MOORE, MOORE

 

By 1974, Henry Moore was popular enough to warrant a wax figure in Madam Tussauds, not a bad accolade for a contemporary sculptor whose best work was innovative and experimental. Tussauds resisted the opportunity to do something abstract with his figure, and instead fashioned a fairly good likeness of the 76 year old Yorkshireman, although it did have the somewhat rough-hewn, pock-marked look that wax figures often had at the time. When finished, his nattily dressed facsimile stood alongside Picasso. 

Wax figures are a great interest of mine, particularly because they tell you a lot about the interests and priorities of the society which produces them. They are always ephemeral: they come and then go, usually for good. As such, I don't know whether Moore's figure was still on display when its real life counterpart died in 1986, but I suspect not, David Hockney had almost certainly crept in by then.

EASIER READ THAN DONE

 

From 'How To Make Dinosaurs' by Eve Barwell (Studio Vista, 1974).

VARTOX

 

The Bronze Age (1970-1985) is my favourite period for American comics for lots of reasons, not least because that was the period I grew up in, and I found Marvel, DC, Charlton, Gold Key, Atlas (and other) comics terribly exciting and alluring, especially as they were still quite hard to come by (I don't think I ever read consecutive issues of any US comic until the late 80s). It was also a period when things got weird and groovy and kind of cosmic in a way that dull people might attribute to drugs, but someone more astute might say was the zeitgeist, a time of extraordinary creativity, curiosity, freedom of expression, war, protest, music, film, technology, alternative religions, the occult, and, yes, drugs, and lots of them.

Superman, however, stayed kind of boring. Perhaps wary of besmirching the good name of their golden goose, DC kept Superman safe and stuffily heroic, and the stories that featured him were noticeably more staid and steady than those of most of his competition.

In this issue, from November 1974, the villain is called Vartox (no prizes for guessing what wild film release of the same year inspired this character), and the cover at least offers a hint of deviance that lasts a mere couple of pages before settling into a fairly mundane battle between supreme good and the mildly naughty (Vartox isn't that bad, just a bit of a dick).   

I love Zardoz too much not to appreciate this shameless steal, so I now have two Superman comics*. Purchased from e-bay, the buyer baited the trap by describing it as having a 'slightly gay' cover.

*  The other comic, issue 261, has a cover that references feminism, BDSM and a foot fetish, but goes absolutely nowhere interesting with any of it.

FEEL THE BURN

 

I'm still on a TV movie kick, and I have absolutely no regrets. One of the additional benefits to watching these things is that often the only copies available now are digitised from video tapes, so the viewing experience is characterised by specks, lines and signal loss, drained or other saturated colour, and quiet, distorted or intermittent sound. It's not a problem for me, I like it. 

Here's a degraded scene from The Savage Bees, an ABC TV Movie Of The Week from 1974. It's disappointingly light on killer bee action, but has a weird gothic vibe going on that almost (but not quite) makes up for that. That's Gloria Swanson, by the way, in her last acting role. Her first film was in 1914, so it can't be said that she didn't make an effort.

SCENIC

Series 4, d. Norman Gregoire (1972)

The National Film Board of Canada website describes this short film as something that 'documents the clash, sometimes obsessive, sometimes glorifying, between humans and their mechanized environment'. Not sure why everyone in it has to be naked, but there are some nifty visual effects and some early computer graphics, so I'm happy just to go with the flow for seven minutes.

OH, LUMME!

In American TV Movies, nothing says you have arrived in England more than a badly put together sign and a random red bus. Only bettered if paired with a burst of 'Rule Britannia' on the soundtrack. 

From 1974's The Questor Tapes, a Gene Rodenberry production about a super-advanced android and his search for meaning in an incomprehensible world. To his credit, he finds his purpose in about three days, which is 21,013 days ahead of where I am in life - and counting.

RED (K)NIGHTS

Nuits Rouge, d. Georges Franju (1974)

Georges Franju's last film (a low budget French-Yugoslav-Italian TV production) has some of the kinetic energy of Judex, and even a little of its poetry, but only in very short bursts. 

The plot, which is a load of Tin Tin type nonsense about the lost treasure of the Knights Templars, allows for action, intrigue and a somnambulistic Gayle Hunnicutt in a Catwoman outfit, killing people with deadly darts launched from a blow pipe. 

It all ends in a James Bond style 'assault on the secret base' finale, which is quite hard for a director to pull off with seemingly only twenty people at their disposal. Franju manages it, of course, he's Franju.

YOU'RE FADING IN AND OUT IV

Threshold Of The Void, d. Jean-Francois Davy (1972)

Young artist Wanda Leibovitz (Dominique Erlanger) travels from Strasbourg to Paris to escape an unhappy love affair, and moves into a large but antiquated room in an old apartment. Within the room is a locked door, and beyond the door is The Void - a formless, soundless, limitless black space which she is initially wary of, but eventually becomes addicted to. She finds that she paints better when working in the hallucinatory darkness of The Void, and although she becomes successful, things begin to fray within her. 

All Voids are inherently sinister, even the metaphorical ones, and they often want things: things to fill them, things that will stave off heartache and loneliness and existential dread, something to counter the depthless darkness. And this Void? This Void wants Wanda.

NO, I'LL DIE WITH YOU!

From Triumph of the Champions of Justice (1974) AKA Blue Demon Straight Up Murders Two Alien Dwarves Who Tried To Take Over The World Whilst Masquerading As Circus Performers.

HEY LADIES

Delusional French hippy (1974).

1,758 FEET UNDERGROUND

Chosen Survivors, d. Sutton Roley (1974)

Briskly ticking pretty much every box on my mental clipboard, Chosen Survivors is a 1970s US sci fi drama set in a sealed military bunker which quickly becomes a horror and disaster movie. The titular survivors arrive drugged and disoriented by army helicopter, and are herded into the shelter by soldiers just a few minutes ahead of a worldwide nuclear apocalypse. The race and gender balanced group are from all walks of life, and are people prominent in their own fields selected to be preserved for posterity, i.e. it’s going to be their job to repopulate America (they’re all a bit too old for this, by the way, surely what you’d really want is a few teenagers?).    

The trouble with this deep shelter set in an ancient cave system, however, is that the hole is already populated – with millions of vampire bats – who are both pissed off at the intrusion and delighted that their larder has been filled. What follows is messy, as (poorly) optically imposed bats feed on middle aged character actors, some of whom fight back and some of whom just flap and flip around until the bats empty them. It’s good fun. To observe as fictional entertainment, I mean, I can’t imagine the reality of it would be anything other than nippy and unpleasant.

Here’s a spoiler: the best thing? It’s not even a real nuclear war, it’s just a drill. Oh, the irony!  

HIT BY A TRUCK

Truck Turner, d. Jonathan Kaplan (1974)

It looks like murder, but it's actually (sort of) self defence. Isaac Hayes plays bounty hunter and Magnum toting bad ass Truck Turner in the meandering, wish fulfillment fantasy film of the same name. I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but couldn't that pimp have found a better outfit to wear when trying to kill a man? I can't help but think if he'd have selected his clothes with more care the outcome might have been different.