Because it’s Thursday (truly one of the tougher, more unappreciated days of the week) and because it’s always thrilling when a venerated classic from my bootleg tape-trading days resurfaces on Youtube, here’s a “blooper” gem from the vaults.
As legend has it, the voice-over talent for this regional PSA got bored and decided to record an “alternate” version. I totally picture him dressed like Walter Matthau’s character from The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three and knocking back fifths of Chivas Regal while a golden retriever blows him under the table. UNION.
Above is Kenneth Anger‘s 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in its entirety. A film critic friend pointed me to it, with the simple statement “it’s weird, you’ll like it.” This came up along with news that Anger, 81, is terminally ill.
In some ways this seems a film out of time. It presages ’60s psychedelica (and would be re-released in a “sacred mushroom” version in 1966), yet the style is enmeshed in the occult revival of the fin de siècle. Watching it the first time, I couldn’t but see it as a glimpse into an alternate universe where the silent film era never ended and Aleister Crowley took the world by storm instead of dying in a flophouse.
With its lush array of images and allusions, Pleasure Dome is made to be unraveled – and indeed, there’s plenty of theories about it out there. Filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain sees communion, and writes “the movement of the film is essentially the passing of the gifts from one guest to another as they advance into a state of transpersonal ecstasy.” But film critic Doug Pratt perceives a hollow heart in the same revels: “an appropriately decorated Hindu-like myth re-enactment, with its spiritual core utterly rotted away; a disturbed revelry of desperate souls clinging to the outdated fashions and orgiastic memories of their lost time.”
Which is it? The absurdity’s there. Yes, that’s Anais Nin with a birdcage on her head. Yes, the Scarlet Woman gets her cigarette lit in the middle of the damn thing. Yes, jewelry gets guzzled in copious amounts.
But like any good ritual experience, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Turn the lights off, watch deeply, let the images pile up and hear Janá?ek’s Glagolitic Mass swell in the background: the whole scene takes on a strange, unexpected power.
Post-Nerd Prom portrait of your pitiful narrator, afflicted with the dreaded Con Plague, or perhaps some form of eyeball-displacing orbital tumor.
Apologies for not updating in “real time” on Sunday, but I’ve been slimed. That is to say, I have succumbed to the dreaded Con Crud, and could not muster the strength to lift my fingers (blackened, trembling, tumescent with pus) to type this missive until now. Tonight (scabby, delirious, drowning in my own phlegm) I’d like to share a consolidation of ComicKAAAAAHHHHN postcards, and quite possibly my death rattle, with you.
To start things off, here’s a chick straddling a seahorse monster:
This cover image of The Fabulous Women of Boris Vellejo & Julie Bell is fabulous indeed. It would be even more fabulous with the addition of some strategically placed tiny bubbles, don’t you agree?
Don’t know what to get Granny for Christmas now that her collection of Hummel figurines is complete? How about this winsome “Bunny Sees Boobs” sculpture by Colin Christian? Think about it.
Huzzah, comrades! I’m here at the 38th annual San Diego Comic Convention, the smelliest largest comic book and popular arts convention in the entire world. ‘Tis a strange and wondrous place, brimming over with fascinating media, enthusiastic people, stimulating conversation, and entertaining outbursts from shut-ins with socially crippling personality disorders. Over the next few days, I’ll be sending you postcards from the proverbial edge. To start things off, here’s some free product placement for the new iPhone:
“Pardon! Bonjour! Fromage!” (photo by Rafe Baron.)
One balmy summer’s eve a couple years ago, Herr Titler came into my life. I was standing in the wings of an ancient Brooklyn theater, reeling in the chaos of Amanda Palmer’s boisterous Fuck The Back Row film/music/theater revue night, when I beheld a broad-shouldered figure in a slinky cocktail gown and perilous high heels. With his sultry voice, his sharply parted/pomaded hair and villainous moustache, Titler was simultaneously demure yet forceful, domineering yet somehow… dainty. I tell ya, he KILLED it that night.
Having basked in his commanding presence, I have trouble understanding what zealots on either side of the ongoing Dr. Steel vs Dr. Horrible debate are getting their jodhpurs in such a twist over! For my money, Titler is all anyone could ever want in a singing musical madman, with the unexpected (but welcome) bonus of a truly fetching décolletage.
Intellectual property is an ever-raging discussion here in The Age of The Internet. Often the lines between inspiration and imitation are blurred but today I give you an interesting case. You decide!
Long-time mad scientist Doctor Steel has, over the course of many years, made himself an infectious image. To do this he’s combined vintage war propaganda aesthetics, catchy tunes and an image of an asylum escapee who plots away in a secret lab and seeks to improve Earth with toys and total world domination. Through his website he’s pulled together an entire army of fans called Toy Soldiers, who organize events and distribute various Dr. Steel propaganda.
Left: Doctor Steel. Right: Doctor Horrible
Now there’s come along a Doctor Horrible. Produced by Joss Whedon and starring Neil Parick Harris, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is a website dedicated to video blogs starring a 30-something mad scientist who sings and wants to take over the world. In the site’s Master Plan, Whedon invites fans to spread the word, offers propaganda-style banners and promises a DVD release later.
Similarities beyond the singing mad doctor character include aforementioned propaganda-inspired banners, shiny gloves, goggles and an “Ask Dr. Horrible” segment – not unlike these “Ask Doctor Steel” videos. There is also the matter of the title itself : “Sing-Along Blog” is reminiscent of Doctor Steel’s Read-A-Long album.
Doctor Steel feels slighted by this endeavor and is rallying his troops in retaliation. Now that you’ve seen the evidence it’s time to cast your votes. Personally I’d like to see a bit of Doctor on Doctor boxing, shiny gloves and all.
Like every other sentimental mooncalf who watched too many Merchant Ivory flicks as a young girl, I continue to allow the actor Julian Sands to occupy a very special place in my heart, despite everything. Never mind Warlock. Or Harem. Forget Boxing Helenaand Biker Mice From Mars. Put these sundries from your minds, my dears. Recall only A Room With A View, and Sands’ convincingly heterosexual ravishing of Helena Bonham Carter in a field of poppies.* It remains, to this day, one of my top picks for Most Romantic Moment in Cinema (seconded only by this tender scene from Myra Breckenridge).
I also happen to be a HYOOOGE fan of the Italian horror director, Dario Argento, so when I heard that he and Sands worked together ten years ago on an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, I was quite curious! Why had I never heard about this movie before? Why?! I promptly Netflixed it.
“I gotta be MEEEEEEE.” Julian Sands in Il Fantasma.
Why, oh, why, indeed. Yes, Sands and Argento work seamlessly together… in a So-Bad-it’s-a-Festering-Masterpiece kind of way, their combined efforts cradling the budding psychosexual genius of Asia Argento like two slices of moldy sourdough bread wrapped around a generous dollop of indeterminate ooze in a rat salad sandwich.
The movie is quite long, and something tells me few of you will appreciate the full length version as much as I did. Luckily, Genevieve, a brilliant columnist over at Defenestration Magazine, has provided us with this MST3K-worthy “abridged version”. I laughed, I cried, it was better than… that other Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Enjoy:
