It should be pointed out that I never claimed any great love for humanity. Cloistered as I am deep in the warrens of the Catacombs I do not profess to be my brother’s keeper. Here, shuttered in nigh total darkness, chained to the floor in front of a rickety desk and computer, no human contact save for when my editors send down one of their smooth, mahogany-skinned eunuchs to push a bowl of thin, watery gruel through the slot in my door, I have nothing but the internet and my own disdain for the outside world to warm me. I can replay the events leading up to my current imprisonment a hundred times over and I will never fully understand just how I came to be here. All I know is that I am here and you, you dear readers are up there. Up there, free and traipsing in the sun and eating anything but thin, watery gruel and I loathe you.
Oh you vicious creatures and your traipsing! How many nights have I tortured myself with these thoughts? No matter, for today I have my revenge. Today I have been given the power to break minds and make men weep like children, to make women crush their babes to their breasts in lamentation. Today I have been given a clip of a tour of the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland, circa 1964, narrated by hell’s own ringleader Walt Disney. May the endless, infectious repetition of the Sherman Brothers’s insipid song burrow deep into your minds! May the wooden shoe children of Holland crush your souls and may the wee bagpiper of Scotland haunt your dreams!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go. It is coming on midnight and that’s when the…ah, it doesn’t matter. It’s just time to go.
Two acquired tastes: British comedy, and the type of laughs that come within milliseconds of uttering the phrase “what did I just witness? That was so wrong.” If you’re allergic to either brand of humor, particularly the latter, stay back. Click away, because these clips will take you to a dark, dark place. To the rest of you assholes who think that dead babies are funny: welcome to the world of Jam, the most twisted sketch comedy series ever produced.
Jam is one of those great shows that’s been reduced to YouTube tatters due to music licensing issues. The episodes are interlaced with dreamy, ambient sounds by the likes of Low, Beta Band, Aphex Twin and Brian Eno. If you’ve never seen the show, let us begin at the beginning. Below is Episode 1, Part 1. It begins with “an invocation of sorts” (there was one of these at the beginning of every episode; here’s another opener), and leads right into “It’s About Ryan,” a sketch about two concerned parents asking their child’s godfather to gain the affections of a local pervert in order to keep him away from their boy (UPDATE: that video was removed by YouTube, so I’ve replaced it with a clip of “It’s About Ryan,” without the intro):
When dancing… lost in techno trance. Arms flailing, gawky Bez. Then find you snagged on frowns, and slowly dawns… you’re jazzing to the bleep-tone of a life support machine, that marks the steady fading of your day old baby daughter. And when midnight sirens lead to blue-flash road-mash. Stretchers, covered heads and slippy red macadam, and find you creeping ‘neath the blankets to snuggle close a mangled bird, hoping soon you too will be freezer drawered. Then welcome… blue chemotherapy wig, welcome. In Jam. Jaaam. Jaaaaaaam…
The show, written by Chris Morris (with occasional help from the cast) is a successor to Blue Jam, which ran on BBC Radio 1, and was described by the Beeb as “the funniest nightmare you never had.” In some ways, the radio show (which you can listen to here) went even further than the televised version. But since I love the look of the actors (particularly the crazy gleam in Mark Heap’s eye!), the TV version has always been my favorite.
Many of my most beloved Jam clips are now impossible to find online. They disappear, audio tracks get erased by YouTube. So watch these while you can! Type “Chris Morris Jam” into YouTube and enter a world stranger than you ever imagined. Below are some highlights:
I’m unsure what to make of Colin, the newish, ultra low-budget zombie film from Nowhere Fast Productions. When I say ultra low-budget I mean ultra. The entire cost of filming Colin was roughly $71.00, the most extravagant expenses, according to director Marc Price, were “a crowbar, some mini DV tapes and some tea and coffee – but only Tesco Value tea and coffee, not any expensive stuff.” He was able to convince actors and make-up artists to contribute their services in order to help flesh out their portfolios. Whether this was done using blackmail or blowjobs was not specified.
This same movie is set to explode at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, according to the Daily Mail, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why from the, albeit brief, teaser trailer. The concept itself is interesting, a movie shown from the perspective of a person turned into a zombie, but to my eyes the sub-hundred-dollar budget shines through in a particularly ugly way. Part of me wonders if this is merely a case of critics enamored with process — the story of an unknown filmmaker with some chutzpa making a movie with limited resources — over product. Still, I’m eager to actually see the thing; far be it from me to ignore a zombie flick.
Like cherubs stuffed to their breaking point, Cheng Fei’s figures revel in vice. Their corpulent bodies, drenched in lust and gluttony, roil and roll on the canvas. Faceless, save for collagen plumped pornstar lips, their appendages have ballooned and bloated so that they are nigh unrecognizable. Incapable of seeing, hearing, or smelling they can only imbibe and consume, feeding their own, selfish desires. Some, their skins forced beyond the confines of their elasticity, split asunder, revealing a beautiful and ghastly store of jeweled offal; strings of pearly entrails; the digested result of their hedonism which, even in death, they claw at.
Cute and macabre they manage, mostly, to draw the viewer in while simultaneously repulsing them. They are undeniably repugnant, embodying as they do the most base facets of our society, culture, species, what have you; but they do it with a greeting card sensibility which is, perhaps, what makes them so effective. It’s an interesting dichotomy, regardless of the message.
From Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, whose previous efforts include hanging Björk and pimping Nichole Kidman, comes Antichrist starring Willem DeFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. IMDB’s synopsis runs thusly: “A grieving couple retreats to their cabin ‘Eden’ in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.” So it seems that a couple had a child, who died. Overcome with grief the mother succumbs to the overuse of mood-altering prescription drugs. Seeing their marriage falling apart the husband convinces her to get rid of them and join him in their cabin in the middle of the woods. There, crazy shit occurs.
To be honest I’m quite unsure as to this latest effort from von Trier. The idea that he would feel the need to make a genre film of this sort is a strange one. After all, the man has been making horror movies in one form or another his entire career, and the instances where he has succumbed to the need for traditional horror have been tedious affairs (see The Kingdom). It could merely be that von Trier wants to join the ranks of directors who have filmed sex scenes featuring Willem DeFoe.
Still, a von Trier/DeFoe pairing, in spite of the aforementioned Gollum-esque sex scene, is intriguing and lately I’ve been feeling perhaps a bit too upbeat so a dose of unyielding, soul crushing angst would probably go a long way in bringing me down a few pegs.
Howdy! How about a lively morning cartoon to go with your fruity pebbles? Zoetica’s recent post on the lamentable declension of MTV’s programming reminded me of this little gem:
Created as a senior project by animator and RISD legend, Christy Karacas, “Space Wars” aired internationally on a charming, offbeat MTV show called Cartoon Sushi back in 1997. The content and mood of Cartoon Sushi was sort of a cross between Liquid Television and Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Sadly, it barely lasted a year on the air. Suprise, surprise.
A couple of years later, Karacas joined forces with Stephen Warbick to unleash BAR FIGHT upon an unsuspecting world. The film “was rejected from every festival it was ever entered in” and it’s a bit… well, let’s just say it’s more a Better Than Beer experience –or possibly Better Than Dimethyltryptamine– than anything else. Still, it’s under the cut if you think you’re feeling up to graphic, color-saturated gore and toilet humor this early in the morning.
Nowadays, we have no shortage of psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness mindbuggery from Karacas/Warbick; their show Superjail! premiered on Adult Swim last year. (Bless you, Cartoon Network, for picking up where Liquid Television left off.)
1950s Vogue meets Zombie in these inspiring paintings by Fernando Vicente. The textured cyan background works beautifully with the fleshy yellows and reds. I love the Hepburn-like aristocracy of the women in these portraits.
For many more images from this series, go to Fernando Vicente’s website, click NOVEDADES, and then click VANITAS. His website’s in Flash, so I can’t link directly to the images here. Some more favorites, after the jump.
For those of you who have yet to “taste the unko“, Kago has produced some of the most disturbing manga imagery you’ll ever see short of Suehiro Maruo‘s or Keiji Nakazawa‘s… only his output is as likely to give you a bad case of The Totally Inappropriate Giggles as make you gag. These new animations, while crude in comparison to his more elaborate illustrated work, will likely do both.
A while back, Coilhouse covered the bleak, beautiful art of the late Polish painter, Zdiszlaw Beksiński. Beksiński’s star has been steadily rising over the past decade, thanks largely in part to increased exposure on the internet, and a phenomenal volume in the Masters of Fantastic Art series published by Morpheus Press.
This coming Thursday at 7:30pm, Beksiński’s long time friend and agent, Valdemar Plusa, will be joined at the Egyptian Theater in LA by several heavy-hitting horror directors: Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Stuart Gordon, Mick Garris, and William Malone. They’re gathering together to chat about Beksiński’s life, art and influence on film. After the talk there will be a screening of William Malone’s latest project, Parasomnia, which prominently features Beksiński’s art as CG dreamscapes (honestly, I’m not completely sold on that concept, but who knows…it could be amazing).
All proceeds from the event will go to the American Cinematheque and MOCA’s Art Education Programs for children in Los Angeles. More info here.
Belzebuth (aka Belzebub, Beelzebuth), whose name means “lord of the flies” is prince of demons according to the Scriptures. Milton calls him foremost in power and crime after Satan, and most demonographers call him supreme chief of hell. Belzebuth is also known to rid harvests of flies. His favorite color is chartreuse.
Even if you’re not remotely interested in the occult, chances are you’ve been exposed to at least a few of the critters compiled in that hugely influential Dover collection, Treasury of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures; it’s been kicking around for decades. Several of the most fascinating and grotesque beasts contained therein are from a series of 19th century illustrations produced for Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy‘s Dictionnaire Infernal, aka, Demonographia. Louis Breton drew the set of 69 illustrations of various demons as described by Collin de Plancy, which were then engraved by one M. Jarrault.
Did you know that in addition to vomiting flames and commanding forty legions (most of these dudes seem to command an awful lot of legions… or, alternately, inflict lesions), the Egyptian deity Amon has the power to reconcile differences between friends? Or that Ukobach the Inferior, a lesser minion who maintains the oil in the infernal boilers of hell, also probably invented deep-frying? Is that wild? That is wild! Did you know that? I did not know that. Weird, wild stuff.
For a while, proper reprints of the grimoire were very difficult to obtain. In fact, they’re still pretty pricey, but you can download the entire book in PDF form (in fairly good quality).
Furfur: a count of hell who rules 26 legions. He appears as an angel or a stag with a flaming tail and speaks only lies unless enclosed in a triangle. He speaks in a raucous voice. Furfur sustains marriage, can cause thunderstorms, and speaks on abstract things. He has also been known, on occasion, to “get Yiffy wid’ it.”
Several more frisky demons and (paraphrased) descriptions from Demonographia after the jump.
