Skip to main content

Treasured Trash


Jesus FrancoIsn't it something how DVD helped usher in the new era of concern for image quality and filmic integrity while simultaneously glutting the b-movie market, including everything from European trash by the likes of Jesus Franco and Jean Rollin to thousands of other cult films such as Weasels Rip My Flesh? Never mind that the films are total crap, they're finally presented in their correct aspect ratio and fully uncut! Take Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead for example, which is only one of several titles the film is known by because there are several different versions of the film, and really what difference does it make since every version is still one of the worse films ever made. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of enjoyable bad films. But let's face it, dressing up a Jesus Franco film as a pristine digitally remastered DVD is like putting a freshly pressed tuxedo on a piss-stinking bum.



Skeletor in Bloody...As for those enjoyable bad films, on my shelf at home is a bootleg of The Touch of Satan. The name may sound familiar to all of you Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans. It was episode number 908. For some reason I love this abysmal movie, but I prefer watching it without Mike Nelson, Tom Servo and Croooow on the bottom of the screen. They're great company and all, and that line "Well, hello, pile of dung" is classic, but The Touch of Satan is totally watchable without the touch of MST3K. I also have the Something Weird Video DVD of Bloody Pit of Horror, and I admit to being a little disappointed that they couldn't find a clean film element for the full first twenty or so minutes of the film, since the scene where one of the guys climbs the ivy to get into the mansion was cut out of the cleaner version. What a shame that Bloody Pit of Horror couldn't have gotten the full restoration treatment that, oh, say, Gone With the Wind was lavished with. I mean, Bloody... is totally the better movie, right?


(This was originally written, in a slightly different version, for FavoriteMedia on December 20, 2007).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Ever Beats a Fable

What are the chances that I would be reading about Michael Jackson in Lipstick Traces on the day he died? It freaked me out a little. Typically, the only time anyone reads about Michael Jackson nowadays is when he is in the news for having done something terrible. Just a weird coincidence, then, but still. What follows is a chunk from the book that especially stood out. Read on: By 6 July 1984, when the Jacksons played the first show of their "Victory" tour, in Kansas City, Missouri - thirty years and a day after Elvis Presley made his first record in Memphis, Tennessee - Jacksonism had produced a system of commodification so complete that whatever and whoever was admitted to it instantly became a new commodity. People were no longer consuming commodities as such things are conventionally understood (records, videos, posters, books, magazines, key rings, earrings necklaces pins buttons wigs voice-altering devices Pepsis t-shirts underwear hats scarves gloves jackets - and why
Post a Comment
Read more

Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido

After several years of searching, I finally learned the name of the painter and the title of the work I noticed in The Limits of Control . Very little is available in English on Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, but it was his painting, a portrait of his daughter in a hallway, that triggered a need to know more about his work. A substantial article in Spanish can be found here . Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, painter and poet, was born in 1881 in Villacarrillo, a city in the south-central province Jaén in Spain. He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Cordoba with Rafael Romero Barros and then in San Fernando in Madrid with Alejandro Ferrant. From 1902 to 1914 he lived in France, Belgium and Holland, studying under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1910 he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. In 1917 he won third prize, and in 1920 Tierras de labor won second prize. In 1925 he participated in the exhibition and in the manifesto of the Iberian Artists Hall,
Post a Comment
Read more

Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse

Of the many movies on my very long yet-to-see list, I was able to shorten it by one on an evening that, as I would soon learn after a quick internet search, was only several weeks after its director, Juan Luis Buñuel, had passed away. While he will not enter into the horror pantheon with the likes of Tobe Hooper or George Romero, who sadly both passed away in 2017, Juan Louis  Buñuel nevertheless made a meaningful contribution to, and arguably left an influence on, horror film in the form of  Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse (1973), aka At the Meeting with Joyous Death, or Expulsion of the Devil in the US. The film is certainly more than a mere footnote in Gérard Depardieu’s acting career or simply interesting for no better reason than having been made by the son of the great Luis Buñuel. In fact, I think Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse  was recycled into countless horror movies that followed. It’s a safe assumption that Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse was inspired by
Post a Comment
Read more