Another track from Rein, because I've been listening to the record a lot and really dig this song. Rein's official site is HERE and the Bandcamp is HERE.
Watch:
Dario Argento's Dark Glasses last night at the Aero in Santa Monica was great, and we had the distinct pleasure of James Branscome introducing the flick for Beyondfest 2022. Nice to put a face to the voice of one of my favorite podcasts, James co-hosts Cinematic Void along with Nick Vance, and if you're a Horror or Exploitation buff, you need this one in your life.
As for the film, Dark Glasses is by no means a top-tier flick from the iconic Italian Director, but it's a return to his Giallo obsession and as much, a lot of fun. Don't necessarily expect things to make a lot of sense, but if you're an Argento fan, you probably already know that. The water snakes scene was laugh-out-loud riotous, and probably my favorite moment.
Tonight's movie is 2007's Trick 'R Treat, with Director Michael Dougherty in attendance for a Q&A.
If you haven't seen Trick 'R Treat, you have done yourself quite the disservice.
Playlist:
Front 242 - Geography
Dio - The Last in Line
Tiamat - Clouds
Slipknot - The End, So Far
The Misfits - Static Age
Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Idles - Joy as an Act of Resistance
Rein - Reincarnated
Card:
A reminder to reach beyond the attainable and try for something more.
The Founder/Guitarist from iconic Horror Soundtrack Prog group Goblin passed away at 70. Goblin has many amazing tracks and albums, this may be the greatest.
Also, along with guitars, Morante played the bouzouki. How about that? If you're like me, you might find yourself suddenly wondering if that's the instrumental layers in some of their music you could never quite place before.
Watch:
I know there's not a lot of Goblin's music in the intro scene to Dario Argento's Suspiria, however, it feels like there's more than there is, right? I believe that's because Goblin crafted such a fantastic score - and I'm under the (possibly mistaken) assumption that they wrote the music without having viewed the final cut of the film - in such a way that it mixes perfectly with the nightmare logic of Argento's cinematic aspirations.
I love the way the music hard stops when they cut from what Susie sees to the medium close-up of her walking. The direction, editing and score suggest she's not seeing what is actually there, which, if you think about it, fits the film perfectly from start to finish. Or rather, she's seeing what is there but what no one else can see. She's entering a Nightmare. Massimo Morante ladies and gentlemen. Rest in Peace, sir.
Playlist:
Orville Peck - Pony
Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl
Gordon Lightfoot - Greatest Hits
The Soft Moon - Him (pre-release single)
Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell
The Essential Dolly Parton
Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
Card:
Open to new influence, awareness and new life. Not sure any of that really does me any good at the moment. Both K and I are having MASSIVE doubts about our plans for TN. There are a ton of reasons, but a lot of it boils down to it may not be exactly what we thought, we're priced out of the area we wanted and our second choice isn't nearly the same, and even though we've seen some houses we love and almost jumped on, there's the idea that, find the perfect home, move in, and if you have nothing around it to make you happy, in six months it's a prison and that will make you resent it and maybe your partner. And fine, so don't move, but the thing is, I really don't know where the hell we're going to live if we don't move here. Stay in LaLaLand paying insane rent? There's really nowhere else we've thought of, so we would have to take some serious time. In my head, there's also the idea that, if this shit with my lungs goes south, I want to be able to get her into a house that's hers before I check out. That's probably paranoia, but that doesn't mean it isn't clouding the situation.
My trip has pushed my October waaay back; I'm only just now starting on any semblance of an attempt to do 31 Days of Halloween. My good friend Missi suggested doing 31 Movies instead of days, that way, I can make up for the days I miss by watching extra on the days I have time. Sounds like a pretty good plan, but before I get into my list, here's an often-overlooked track from Sisters of Mercy's seminal Floodland album, always an October staple in our house.
Watch:
Last night was my first night of Beyondfest 2021 at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre (The Egyptian is, sadly, still under construction). This will most likely be my last Beyondfest, since we're aiming at completing Operation: Escape From L.A. by April of next year. That said, if I get to keep working for the same company I do now by reconfiguring my position to be solely work-from-home, I might be able to persuade my boss to fly me out next year. One can hope. Anyway, last night we saw Gaspar Noé's new film Vortex. Starring Dario Argento, Françoise Lebrun and Alex Lutz, Vortex is an insanely profound piece of Cinema that painstakingly chronicles the daily lives of an elderly couple in Paris who are slowly succumbing to the Horrors of age. Not a Horror film proper by any imagination, I still think it will easily be the scariest film I've seen in years. I say this because, of course, I may love Horror flicks, but adulthood and life experience make it pretty hard for a movie to scare me (not impossible, though). What does scare me? Losing my memory, my mind, my youth, and my health. And of course, putting topics like this on display is Noé's bread and butter.
Next up was the West Coast Premiere of the new 4K restoration of
Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 classic Possession. I hadn't seen this film until earlier this year - not for lack of trying, mind you - but last night was my third viewing in six months. Seeing Possession with a crowd put an entirely new spin on it for me - while there are obvious absurdities in the film that evoke mild laughter, a lot of the more serious aspects of the failing relationship between Sam Neil's Mark and Isabelle Adjani's Anna came coaxed pretty big laughs from the crowd, and of course, that can be infectious. During my previous two viewings I had interpreted many of these same scenes as dire to the point of anxiety, so it was interesting for a different interpretative lens. That's not to say the entire film had that effect. Quite the contrary. This is a harrowing film, and that sentiment was never very far away,
So, here's the list thus far:
1) VHS 94 (don't waste your time)
2) The Mutilator
3) Demons
4) Vortex
5) Possession
Playlist:
The Chameleons UK - Strange Times
Crowded House - Eponymous
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Rebirth Brass Band - Why You Worried 'bout Me?
Rebirth Brass Band - Rebirth of New Orleans
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Motley Crüe - Theatre of Pain
Card:
The Wheel, in my current mindframe, tells me what I already know: I'm repeating myself. I need to politely step away from a pretty nice opportunity that may come up tomorrow. Tempting, but it's not the road I currently plan on walking. No need to go around and around again, expecting different results.
Friday nights have been a thing of beauty and comfort ever since Shudder brought Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In back. This week, JBB did Frank Henelotter's bat-shit crazy Brain Dead and Dario Argento's Profundo Rosso (Deep Red). What a line up!
Watching Deep Red, I'd forgotten how much I love this score, and I'm kicking myself for not buying it when Waxwork Records put it out a few years ago. That said, finding the original version on Apple Music this morning, I realized that there's so much music on this one overall, I find myself wondering if the WW edition only has the Goblin stuff, which while iconic and amazing, would miss what might be my favorite track on the soundtrack altogether.
Originally, I'd mistaken this track for Goblin, however, Italian Jazz musician Giorgio Gaslini is the actual author. I love all the music in Deep Red, but this one... this gives the iconic theme from the film a run for it's money.
**
TKO Studiosis creating major waves with an amazing business model. This is a new comic publisher, with exclusive, new titles by established creators, who sell online AND give 50% of the price to any comic book store you choose. I just placed an order for Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta's Sentient and sent half of the $19.99 for the trade paperback to Atomic Basement Comics in the LBC. Next up, probably Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli's Murder Mystery Goodnight Paradise, so I can send half to The Comic Bug.
This is the kind of business ingenuity that will see our beloved Comics Industry through the current crisis, and I'm proud to help out. I've been trying to patronize both my shops when I can, but with their limited, by appointment hours, it's been tough to balance it with my schedule. TKO is definitely going to help with that.
**
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - Memorial Vista III (Saturnian Poetry)
X- Under the Big Black Sun
Blut Aus Nord - MoRT
Blut Aus Nord - Deus Salutis Meae
Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liver III EP
White Ward - Love Exchange Failure
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Blut Aus Nord - Odinist: Destruction of Reason By Illumination
Crystal Castles - (II)
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing To Taste
Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
Hall and Oats - Essentials
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Roachpowder - Atomic Church
Ministry - From Beer to Eternity
Ministry - Alert Level (Quarantine Mix) Single
White Lung - Paradise
The Neighbourhood - Wiped Out
The Neighbourhood - I Love You.
X- Alphabetland
Lead Into Gold - The Sun Behind the Sun
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Revocation - Deathless
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Goblin/Giorgio Gaslini - Profundo Rosso
A little Siouxsie and the Banshees in honor of Susie Bannion and the fact that we have now entered the final stretch toward Halloween. I still have quite a few movies I want to watch, so I'm going to start working some into the daylight, in the background. This is something I purposely never do, as a way to maintain the sacred reverence I try to hold for movies. That said, I'll look at it as a recreation of discovering horror on television as a kid. I have the original Suspiria on while I'm writing this, just as a counter point to Luca Guadagnino's version we saw last night. How was the new Suspiria?
Not an easy question, as there's a lot to unpack.
Guadagnino's iteration of Dario Argento's classic is not so much a horror movie, as it is a Film that happens to center around horrific events and characters; it's a horror movie in the same way Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a horror movie, that is to say not beholden to genre tropes and mores. I know some folks who would say my evening saying that is pretentious, but here's why I disagree.
Before Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hollywood didn't manufacture blockbusters. With the European influence that came in to take the place of the drift that set in after the studio paradigm died, Directors became revered as Auteurs. Films were made with artistic intentions, and this was not considered a bad or pretentious thing. It goes to show how corporatized we are as a society now, with the number of people who roll their eyes to my oft-preached delineation between what constitutes a Movie and what constitutes a Film.
During this Auteur period, the box office was topped by films that got people talking. Think Chinatown, a movie that would most likely never be made by a major studio today. This championing of the Director as Auteur ended after Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate disaster bankrupted United Artists. From that point on, studios began to take control back from Directors, and simultaneously began looking for 'sure-things'.
Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders provided the template for this.
I liken Guadagnino's Suspiria to the Auteur era; it's artistic yes, but not without purpose. One interesting note, without going into spoiler territory, is that Dario Argento's Suspiria takes place in 1977 Germany, and that makes the setting Divided Germany. This never factors into Argento's film, though. That's not a criticism, just an observation, and one that only ever occurred to me now because the new film hinges on this fact. As Susie Bannion's story plays out in the foreground, the background of the film is set against the climax of the Baader-Meinhoff kidnapping, and this too factors in, as does WWII, for Lutz Ebersdorf's character.
In the end? I thought Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria was an excellent film. Will it garner the fun, cult following the original has? No. Will it incite the same kind of celebratory, rewatch fervor Argento's film does? No. That doesn't mean you shouldn't see it, you definitely should. In a theatre if you can. But it does mean a lot of horror fans who hold the original Suspiria dear need to step around their expectations and keep an open mind.
31 Days of Horror
10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
10/12) George A. Romero's Day of the Dead
10/13) George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
10/14) The Apostle
10/15) Phantom of the Paradise
10/16) Candyman
10/17) Ghoulies
10/18) John Carpenter's Halloween
10/24) Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/25) Ghost Stories
10/26) John Carpenter's The Fog
10/27) Suspiria (2018)
After the movie, K and I drove around Hollywood a bit, windows down, marine layer in the air. Closest thing I can remember to Autumn in Los Angeles in some time. The cool, moist air added a certain electricity to the evening that was only amplified when we arrived at the Horror Writer's Assoc. party. Robert Payne Cabeen and his wonderful wife Cecile put on a hell of a shindig - the entire front of the house was lavished with decorations that fit the season, music blared from the inside, and people in costumes strolled around the grounds. It was marvelous.
Incidentally, I finally procured a copy of Robert Cabeen's Stoker-aware winning novel Cold Cuts, so I'll be starting that shortly. I had been picking at short stories for the last week or so because despite beginning Neil Gaiman's much-lauded novel The Graveyard Book, I just cannot get into it at the moment. The plan is to move to Cold Cuts next and then go back to Gaiman.
Completely forgot to post here that the newest episode of The Horror Vision went up last Wednesday. Su nioj for Anthony, Chris, Ray, and my own picks for must-watch Halloween season movies. On Apple Podcasts and The Horror Vision.comnow.
Playlist from yesterday was literally only my Halloween Playlist, which you can find on Apple Music if you follow me there. Cities of Dust is on it, as are a lot of other awesome tracks hand-picked to accentuate the Autumn mood I have to manufacture most days here in LaLaLand.
Halloween Playlist:
1) Black No. 1 - Type O Negative
2) Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
3) Cities in Dust - Siouxsie & The Banshees
4) Park Around the Corner - Ritual Howls
5) The Monk Song - Miranda Sex Garden
6) The Days of Swine & Roses - My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult
7) Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
8) Graveyard Girl - M83
9) A Dance for the Saints - The Final Cut
10) Mask - Bauhaus
11) Tear You Apart - She Wants Revenge
12) Skin of the Night - M83
13) Zemmoa - Ritual Howls
14) Everyday is Halloween - Ministry
Card of the day:
From the Grimoire, "Balance. Nine = Collected; stable. Cups = Emotion"
Claudio Simonetti and the Goblin crew are responsible for some of the greatest horror soundtracks of all time. Goblin surprised everyone by touring this year - first ever North American dates. And available at those gigs? A limited edition vinyl EP wherein they have re-recorded four classic pieces: Profondo Rosso (Deep Red), Roller (Non-ST track), Suspiria and Tenebre. I was unable to obtain tickets to the LA show but my good friends Chris and Tori attended the Chicago show (with Secret Chiefs opening!!!) and grabbed me a copy of the record! So psyched. Thanks guys.
