PSYCHEDELIC PINK

Finally (for now), some screen shots from Psychedelic Pink (1968) in which our hero walks by an esoteric bookshop, is hypnotised by an cosmic eye painted on the door and is projected into a frightening dreamscape of bad drugs and bizarre hallucinations. Yes, really. 

FACT: In the 1984 reboot The Pink Panther and Sons, The Pink Panther is an incidental character, as the stories focus on his kids, over-confident teen Pinky and the cute but mischievous toddler Panky. Feel free to go and find it, but, beware, later on, you won't believe it really happened. But it did, you saw it. 

PINK OUTS

Pink Outs is prime Pink Panther. It consists of twelve vignettes, some only a few seconds long, which are a mix of slapstick and the startlingly surreal. Because of its fragmentary nature, it was later cut up into linking sequences for 'The Pink Panther Show', you know, the one with the live action titles featuring lots of crazy animals, the pink car driven by a kid and an absolutely immortal theme tune.

FACT: In Germany, the character is known as Paulchen Panther (Little Paul the Panther), which completely misses the point: he's pink, for fuck's sake, he's a PINK panther, a rinky dink panther!  

PINK PHINK

I hate Pink Panther films, but I love Pink Panther cartoons. 

The cartoons are inconsistent, and some feature The Panther as a mere bit player in a seemingly pre-drawn scenario, or as a schmuck at the mercy of outside agencies. The true Pink Panther character is, however, a ruthless, selfish, pitiless maniac, an unemployed, unattached creature that walks the earth being a nuisance, sashaying unbidden into peoples lives and fucking them up.  

Take The Pink Phink, the award winning first ever Pink Panther cartoon (it won an Oscar for the best animated short of 1964). The Panther is mooching around smoking when he comes across a big nosed workman (usually known as 'the Little Man'') who is painting a house blue. The Panther decides he wants it pink. Positively pink. What follows is a six minute duel between the two characters and the two colour schemes. 

In the end, the Little Man man has a nervous breakdown as the house, the garden, the sky, even the sun, all turn pink. As a final display of his uncanny, monstrous power, the Pink Panther paints the Little Man pink, too. 

Bastard. 

TWELVE WRESTLERS

MAD MAGIC

Magic Of Spell, d. Chui Chung-Hing (1988)

Magic Of Spell (ignore the typo in the title card) is an utterly insane, completely idiotic, enormously likeable Taiwanese childrens fantasy martial arts film jam packed with wizards, ghosts, monsters and walking, talking ginseng roots. Apparently a sequel, it is a wonderful, stupid thing, with some amazing hair do's and some epic scraps.

Taiwan used to be called Formosa up until the end of World War 2. I personally think it's a nicer name, but what the hell has it got to do with me?    

SHIMMERING SOUNDS

In The Grove The Moon Is Drowned With Stars

Bundle Of Flames

The Edge Of The Sky On Either Side

Over Seven Mountains, Over Seven Plains

I have recently become rather caught up in these four CDRs by Tuluum Shimmering. Each album is different, but contains a single blissfully repetitive track, a long looping exercise in guitar and flutes and hand percussion accompanied by wordless, abstract vocals. It's all apparently the work of one man, a gentleman called Jake Webster, and I don't know how he does it. Actually, I don't need to know, I'm quite happy in my belief that he is simply some sort of wizard. 

More here, though not much more, they are nothing if not enigmatic.

HIM, CLAUDIUS

HEAD OF THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS (2015)

I was born in Colchester, the former Roman capitol of Britain, a place full of the debris of history. I grew up visiting the Castle Museum, built on the foundations of the Temple of Claudius, which was burned to the ground by Boudicca and the Iceni in AD61.

One of the museum exhibits was a replica* of a life size bronze head of the Emperor Claudius, clearly torn from a statue. The head was rediscovered in a Suffolk river in 1907, and is often assumed to be a discarded relic of the brutal sacking of the town. As a child, I was appalled by the disembodied head with its huge, empty eyes**, and fascinated by the face of a man who had ruled a great swathe of the world and died 1,914 years before I was even born.

Claudius’ appearance is verified by any number of extant busts and statues, and Roman figurative art is of such quality and consistency that this picture simply combines six separate depictions of the Emperor to create an eerie composite. 

* The original is somewhat inexplicably in the British Museum, with all the rest of the plunder.  
** The empty sockets would once have held glass or porcelain eyes, which must have been somewhat disturbing.

SO NOW YOU KNOW

From Jose Mojica Marins' The End of Man (1970).  I like this blog. I'm going to keep doing it.

FOUR WRESTLERS

NEON WRESTLERS 2 and 3 (2015)

Coming soon, a new publication from Spirit Duplicator Press: 'NORTHERN RING GOSSIP'.