FSR

A very brief sojourn into the wild world of Flying Saucer Review, first published in 1955, and apparently going strong. The truth is still out there, just not in W.H Smith.

EYE IN THE SKY

A menacing presence in the sky that calls to mind the constant scrutiny of our CCTV monitored existence. It doesn't seem to bother us much, but then humans have always been surprisingly comfortable with the idea that someone in the sky watches everything we do and silently judges it. 

From  Tashio Matsumoto's disquieting 1975 experimental short Phantom.

A WOMAN IS A WEAPON

Valie Export was once loosely aligned with the Viennese Actionists, a group of confrontational performance artists who sought to challenge the post-war complacency of Austrian society, particularly with regard to their conveniently forgotten / ignored complicity with the Nazi regime. Whereas many of the Actionists were macho and aggressive, Valie was an avowed feminist, and much more subtle, though no less thought provoking.

In Tap and Touch, she walked the streets of Vienna, a large box attached to her chest. Passing men were offered the opportunity to reach inside the box, where they would be able to fondle her bare breasts. Watch the film. For all their old world respectability, the Austrian men are eager to cop a feel, queuing up to intimately touch a stranger in a way that, if it happened to their wife, girlfriend, daughter or mother, they would be horrified. Naturally, the media blamed the breasts, not the fondlers, even going as far as to suggest that Valie was a witch who should be burned.

Action Pants: Genital Panic is not only the greatest title for any work of art ever, but it is also a brilliantly simple but incredibly clever concept. Valie, her hair wild and strange, is photographed holding a machine gun. Wearing crotchless trousers, her exposed genitals are obviously the focus of the piece, but it takes a while for the eye to register her exposure, which makes it about her, rather than us, the observer. She looks like a dangerous revolutionary, a precursor to the Red Army Faction, but she knows that her vagina is the source of her power, not the gun.

A TO Z

The Alphabet, d. by David Lynch (1968)

This film, his longest since Six Figures Getting Sick, cost $1,000, and was inspired by his wife Peggy's niece, who once recited the alphabet during a nightmare. A room was painted black and Peggy was painted white to provide a suitably unsettling visual effect. The soundtrack includes a montage of unsettling things like the wind, a siren and a baby crying, all captured on a broken tape recorder. 

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE DAY

From I Saw The Devil, d. Kim Jee-woon (2010).

THE PRESENCE OF PLEASENCE

Multiple maniacs during a powercut slasher film Alone In The Dark (1982) features dear old Donald Pleasence at his most free-wheeling and jocular, playing Dr. Leo Bain, the head psychiatrist at an asylum where treatment is a journey, a voyage of self-discovery. In his corduroy suit and Adidas trainers, Donald has obviously been touched by the psychedelic brush of hippydom, and still lives by those tenets, not least when he fills a pipe with ‘Oregon Sensimillia’ and puffs away in front of a bemused junior doctor (played by Dwight Schulz, Howling Mad Murdoch from The A-Team, ironically the sanest character in the film).

Donald plays Bain as a cuddly, enthusiastic, sensitive, supremely eccentric man: someone who could just as easily be inmate as overseer. Bain is clearly a mickey take of R.D Laing, and his nuthouse is a haven where the patients are encouraged to find their own cure – or not, it’s entirely up to them. This liberal attitude proves to be his undoing, unfortunately, as it turns out that psychotic maniacs (played by a wildly wigged Martin Landau and the always terrifying Jack Palance, amongst others) just aren't that easy going.

CARD TREK

Star Trek Primrose Confectionery Cards, 1971.

DRONE DIDDLEY

As far as I am concerned, there are three types of people: those who love Bo Diddley, those who haven't heard him yet, and idiots. On their album Dawn of..., The Double play a classic Diddley Daddy-esque riff for forty minutes, and all sorts of strange stuff emerges as you listen. If you've ever wanted a soundtrack for driving into the sun, you need look no further. 

SPOILER

Oh no, it's the Phantom of Vasquez!

'Well, well, well, if it isn't our old friend, Bluestone The Great, an ex-magician wanted in six states'

THREE THINGS (1.0)

THREE THINGS, 1.0

INTRODUCTION:

I got a new telly box recently. It does lots of things I don't really need, but it does allow me to play Youtube videos on the big screen,so I've been making playlists and sitting on the sofa and watching short film after short film, even programming in archive adverts so it feels like I'm watching my own commercial station.

I have no intention of asking any of you around to my house, so I thought I'd share some of the links with you - and some of my enthusiasm for where they will perhaps take you. It's presented in no particular order, I don't really work that way. Why not save up the links and have your very own IiE-TV marathon one day? It's up to you. Do what you like, you always do.    

ONE: DREAM JOURNAL (2017)

All dreams are mad to a certain extent, even the boring ones, but Jon Rafman's nocturnal processing is bloody and horrific, seemingly inspired by late night viewings of Dune and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and far too much cheese. If the disembodied monkey heads, occult raves and deaths by fire don't make you uncomfortable, they are further made jarring and horrible by being rendered in Hobbyist 3D, a fairly basic computer animation package that has a garish, unfinished feel that might be naive and sweet if done for a school project, but here seems deeply unwholesome.

There are a number of films in the series, a wormhole that I'm still trying to extricate myself from. Rafman is a dangerous person, not least because his odd world is so damn mesmerising.   

2. THE FATAL FLOOR (1973)

I grew up watching Public Information Films, in the days when they were broadcast between shows like trailers for forthcoming disasters. Some terrified me, some amused me, but my general response was a bit of both. Certainly I was fascinated by them, and, like many people who’s brains were soft at the time, bits of them became indelibly etched onto my memory.

My favourite PIF has always been The Fatal Floor, a masterpiece of the genre. With a few brief strokes, the film masterfully paints a hugely detailed picture: a young married couple’s house is being busily tidied by their Mum/Mother in Law, who is getting everything ready for the arrival of her daughter, son-in-law and new baby, coming home for the first time. To make everything perfect, she vigorously polishes the hallway floor, and then places a rug on the shiny surface. She might as well be setting a man trap…

PIF’s made the mundane and everyday seem almost supernaturally evil, and brought mortality into sharp focus for generations of previously fearless children. Although things like pools of water, abandoned fridges, railway lines, electrical substations and grain pits perhaps pose an obvious threat, household rugs are very low down on most people’s danger lists, so this film remains relevant and always will.

I am always reminded that Health and Safety was once an advisory matter in which the bulk of responsibility fell to the individual. My Mum told me about a recent amateur production of Bugsy Malone she attended which was extremely long and boring, mainly because every time someone threw a pie or used a splurge gun the stage would have to be thoroughly cleaned before resuming the show to ensure that no-one slipped on shaving foam. She concluded by saying, as I knew she would, that it was ‘Health and Safety gone mad’ and, this time, at least, I could hardly disagree.

3. MUSIC FOR A SOLO PERFORMER (1976)

Alvin Lucier first conceived this ground-breaking work in 1965, but this recording wasn’t made until over a decade later. It’s a wonderful, deadpan slow burn, starting in tight close up and gradually moving back to take in the rest of the room. Alvin, who has a great moustache and a natty suit, stares impassively at the camera, seemingly in a trance. When asked to do so by an assistant, he turns his head slowly, sleepily, totally compliant. Perhaps he is drugged, or in a meditative state, preparing himself for the mental effort needed for the show ahead.

Electrodes are lubricated and attached to his temples, in a scene that is reminiscent of the preparations for an electrocution, an impression reinforced by the headband he is wearing and the simple wooden chair he is sitting on. Alvin closes his eyes and somewhat ostentatiously begins to concentrate, occasionally bringing his hands up to his face and gripping the bridge of his nose. An ominous hum builds and the camera pulls back to reveal a variety of closely mic-ed percussion instruments and household objects around the room which, somehow, seemingly begin to respond to his brain waves: creaking, clicking, expanding and contracting, taking turns and getting louder and louder.

It seems like it must be a trick, but Lucier is a respected composer and musician and wouldn’t resort to such cheap tactics, even if he does have the demeanour of a stage conjuror or escapologist. I suppose I could easily find out the science behind it, maybe even see a wiring diagram, but I’m happy to put my trust in Alvin and see it as something perplexing and slightly miraculous. Ultimately, like all the best magic, I don’t need to know how it works, I’m just happy that it does.  

EPILOGUE:

What have we learned? Well, it took me forty five years but I finally realised that The Fatal Floor is not only a brilliant PIF, but also a world class pun. Where has my head been since 1973?