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.  

MAKE YOUR OWN REALITY

From Incredible Self-Confidence (1987)

DISINTEGRATION

Poor quality analogue + digital = the strange psychedelia of decay.

YOU GOT ME STAR TREKKING

Astonishing outsider funk from Forrest Terry, originally released in 1980 but recently made available by the good people at Athens of the North. I love everything about this lo fi sci fi track: its murky sound, its muddled structure - the fact that Forrest had the foresight to make a video - and his superlative work on the Tri-speed Moog Keytar Synthesizer Guitar, an instrument that he invented. 

LUNATIC FRINGE

Wolfguy, d. Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (1975)

Based on a Manga, Wolfguy stars the amazing Sonny Chiba as Wolf, a roving reporter and troubleshooter who is also the only survivor of a clan of wolf people. The details of this are a little confusing as, unlike a common or garden werewolf, he doesn't transform into something hairy and vicious every full moon but instead becomes endowed with super strength and kung fu abilities, as well as the most un-lupin-like ability to leap thirty feet in the air and be shot with a machine gun over and over. 

None of this matters, of course, especially as he is investigating a series of bloody murders committed by a victim of gang rape who is so angry at being infected with syphilis that she is able to project her rage into the form of an avenging tiger. Naturally, a shadowy government department is interested in both of these unusual people, wanting either their compliance or their blood, hoping to use it to create a cohort of unstoppable super assassins.  

Bloody, kinky, full of fighting, jumping and running around, Wolfguy also has a groovy soundtrack. Seriously, what's not to like? 

THE ONOMATOPOEIA OF WAR

SALT AND CORROSION: THE INFAMOUS OLD ENEMIES OF THE CRIME FIGHTER

When I was a little kid, my heroes were all action men: Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Batman. I used to like Batman so much that on a Saturday morning I'd pester my Mum to take me over to my Grandparents house which, despite only being a few miles away, was sufficiently more westerly to pick up London Weekend Television instead of Anglia. There, I could watch Batman in glorious black and white, unknowingly missing at least fifty percent of its pop art appeal. It didn't matter, I loved it.

Adam West has died at the suitably ripe old age of 88, and the world is a worse place. He may not have always had great roles, but he was a great actor - intelligent, funny, knowing, camp as a row of tents. It was his personality that shaped his Batman more than anything else, and much of the credit for its short-lived but phenomenal and indelible success belongs to him. RIP, Adam.   

MYTHOLOGIES

Temptation

Frustration

Salvation

After Franz Stuck (2017)

CHALLENGE FOR TODAY

CYMATICAL

From Cymatics: Bringing Matter to Life with Sound (1986)