RIGHT GRIER, RIGHT NOW

The amazing Pam Grier spent her onscreen career being treated appallingly, then getting revenge. In Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) she has a brief but pivotal role as a drug addicted prostitute who, unable to take any more shit, goes on a killing spree. Spree makes it sound tres jolie: it isn't, and it doesn't do Pam any good, either, as she, in turn, is killed shortly afterwards, her body fly-tipped on one of the Bronx's numerous building sites.

In a few key scenes, Pam conveys the abject misery and hopelessness of life on the street, and the overload of mental anguish that has led her to murder. It seems obvious to say that her character deserves better, almost everybody in this rather depressing film does.

AN IRONIC SORT OF END

Enter The Ninja (1981) is actually a decent enough movie, especially when you consider the appalling quality of the majority of films of this type. Franco Nero is a slightly leftfield but ultimately rather good choice as the Western Ninja Warrior, but the addition of Christopher George as the main villain is a masterstroke. 

George's Charles Venarius is a multi-millionaire playboy who lives in a penthouse with a harem of beautiful, adoring women he is training to be a synchronised swimming team. Venarius is flamboyant, camp, spoiled, petulant, ruthless and totally incredulous that his numerous minions can't seem to do anything right, including dispose of one lousy Ninja. 

When Venarius finally meets his end, at the sharp points of Franco Nero's throwing star, he meets it wryly, simultaneously amused and amazed that anything as vulgar and ordinary as death could touch someone as wonderful as he believes himself to be. 

BRIGHT STAR

 

Fear No Evil, d. Frank LaLoggia (1981)

An atmospheric, slightly hysterical movie teling the hitherto untold tale of the son of the Devil's troubled teenaged years in in the suburban hell of Rochester, New York, Fear No Evil has a great punk / new wave soundtrack, an often unwholesome blend of sex and violence, and a genuinely exciting, partially animated climax in which Lucifer Jr. is destroyed by the coruscating, cleansing light of a processional cross to semi-psychedelic and eye rubbing effect.

FILE UNDER POST PUNK

 

Bee Vamp: Valium Girls / Lucky Grills / With Barry in Bengal 

Monster in Orbit Records (1981) 

'Well tell me, do you ever get headaches?'

One in three of all post punk bands came from Liverpool. Probably. You may not know this, but the city apparently has a rich musical heritage. Bee Vamp won't be getting a statue, a coach tour or a commemorative tin of shortbread biscuits any time soon, but they did leave behind two nice singles, the first of which is the quietly extraordinary Valium Girls.  

Intoxication is a standard subject for popular music in all its forms, particularly the getting high and the coming down. Fewer songs tackle domestic addiction, however, the epidemic of ordinary people in the thrall of prescription or over the counter remedies which now, apparently, affects nearly a million people in the UK alone. This song both parodies and celebrates the public’s obsession with pain killers, sounding like an art rock version of a pharmaceutical ad. The lyrics convey a grim kitchen sink vignette in a few well-chosen words: a young woman, ‘protected by her National Health prescription’ spends her days drifting aimlessly and thoughtlessly from room to room in her flat, numb, blank, drinking endless cups of Nescafe. We’ve all been there.

Like a lot of post punk music, this track features saxophone, but here it is played well rather than merely enthusiastically, much more Eric Dolphy than Eric Morecambe. The sax interpolations are played on the very edge of atonal, squeaky and squawky without quite becoming annoying. The guitars are bitty and intermittent, like somebody absently scratching their arm until it’s raw. There is a clever false ending that never fails to provide mild surprise. The bass and drums are good, too, never quite playing what you expect. It’s an excellent track all round, really, go and listen to it.

      

The b sides are much less interesting, but have verve, edging perhaps ill-advisedly into Pigbag territory, all happy horns, busy bongos and twangy tremolo arms. Bee Vamp were apparently great improvisers, and these tracks perhaps reflect what their live shows may have been like: energetic, chaotic, sweaty.   

As a final note, thinking about pain killers, isn't pain a vital message in bodily terms? I mean, isn’t it actually exceptionally important? Shouldn’t it be cured rather than killed or, rather, temporarily dulled? I don’t blame the addicts, but I do wish they could get more help with it. If this blog has any wisdom to impart (it really doesn’t), it's this: if it hurts, get it looked at it.

YOU'RE FADING IN AND OUT III

Julie Christie flits between dimensional barriers in the underrated Memoirs Of A Survivor, a 1981 film based on Doris Lessing's dystopian sci fi novel.

THREE SHOTS

From Road Games, d. Richard Frankin (1981)

PSYCHEDELIC SCHOOLDAYS

School In The Crosshairs, d. Nobuhiko Obayashi (1981)

I've been watching a lot of Japanese genre films* lately. They can occasionally be lurid, and are sometimes obviously driven by dramatic conventions that I'm not particularly familiar with. They veer between tasteful restraint and hyperbolic fantasy. There is lots of shouting, screaming and the metallic quivering and wet thunks of sword blades slashing at flesh. It's good value, and there's lots of it: dozens of mad movies about yakuza gangs, delinquent girls, women in prison, travelling samurai warriors, groups of kooky kids trying to find their own way in a mixed up, often dangerous world. 

School In The Crosshairs has an awful lot going on, and calls to mind a haphazard mix of Grease, The Omen and drugs. The story of a high school infiltrated by evil aliens who install a fascist prefect system, it was directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, perhaps best known for horror comedy film Hausu (1977), a film that has wormed its way into the vocabulary of film hipsters all over the world. I don't say Crosshairs is a superior film, but it's just as much fun, and deserves to be better known. 

* I don't actually know what genre School In The Crosshairs is.

THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY

Scanners, d. David Cronenberg (1981)

Tense, nervous headache? You probably have a Scanner in your noggin. There's no disengaging, just disassembling. It's going to get messy but, on the plus side, your skull ache will soon be gone.

I love 70s and 80s Cronenberg very much, but I also love the work of Brian De Palma from the same period. It's worth pointing out that Bri covered this very phenomenon in his 1978 classic The Fury, blowing John Cassavates into offal using only the power of Amy Irving's mind. If you ever want a high quality exploding human double bill, you know what to do.  

THE PRESENCE OF PLEASENCE

 

Donald Pleasence makes for a helpless and fearful President of the United States in John Carpenter's Escape From New York, but then has had to survive a plane crash, a series of beatings and being used as a human target by Isaac Hayes. His character isn't even given a proper name. The point is, I suppose, that sometimes the position is great, not the man. 

WHAT POSSESSED THEM?

Possession, d. Andrezj Zulawski (1981)

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure what Possession is about. I mean, I’ve watched it, and I could tell you what happens, and how I feel about it, but I have no clear and concise view on what it means. An angry film of crushing intensity soaked in blood and gore and goo, it starts with a marital breakdown, progresses to emotional and physical violence and then culminates in monsters, bestiality, madness and death.

The cast are madly committed to their roles, and are encouraged to take their characterisations to the very edge: Isabella Adjani is so fragile that you fear for her health all the time, even when she’s doing terrible things. Sam Neill, resembling Peter Gabriel, is so odd and intense that he seems likely to catch fire. Mind you, he had just played The Antichrist in Omen III: The Final Conflict.     

Director Andrezj Zulawski died in February, so I’ve re-watched a few of his films and been amazed at their consistently nihilistic, hysterical tone. Not surprisingly, his work in his native Poland was considered controversial enough to be banned on a number of occasions by the communist authorities, so Possession was made in West Germany, albeit in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. It’s a frenzied, dread filled piece of work, a true horror film. It took me three attempts to watch it, not because it was bad, but because it was overwhelming and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with it.  

Watch it, please, but make sure you’re in a safe place and feeling good about yourself. It’s strong stuff, take with caution.   

ASSIGNED

 

Has there ever been a stranger prime time television show than Sapphire and Steel? That’s not even a question. Interdimensional medium weight elements are given human form in order to investigate and repair anomalies in time. It wavered between terrifying and ridiculous,but, for better or worse, it was out there, so much so that it is full of odd, irrelevant shots and details, as if even the director didn’t understand it, so filmed everything just in case it was important. 

Here are some screenshots from their third adventure, The Creatures Revenge, which can be summarised as ‘people from the 35th century get trapped in 1980 and are attacked by a malevolent force representing the extinct flora and fauna of the future’. It’s very odd telly, but standard Sapphire and Steel.