Thousands of people hold their breath as they watch a gleaming white spacecraft descend. It touches down in a cloud of steam and the door drops to reveal a beautiful shiny humanoid, chrome helmet and armor. He emerges, reserved, as the screaming swells all around him. Is this the Second Coming? Holy fuck-christ, is it Xenu!?
No, little ones. Look on in awe as rows of marching helmeted men line up all around. Look and know that you’re about to let Michael Jackson rock your very asses. And know that you’re lucky, because there will never be another tour in the history of music like the Dangerous tour.
The cross makes me think of death, but the ivy is life. Sort of the tragic and hopeful, you know.
Ah, Poison Ivy. It had it all – big hair, teen lesbian lust, daddy complexes, public sex, irreparable emotional trauma and even death.
The players
Sylvie Cooper: A pre-Goth introverted high school student [Sarah Gilbert ]
Ivy: miniskirt-wearing, tattooed, broken doll-faced Lolita of a girl [Drew Barrymore]
Darryl Cooper: Sylvie ‘s father, a wealthy lonely man [Tom Skerritt] with a wilted rose as his dying wife [Cheryl Ladd]
The plot
Sylvie meets & swoons over wild Ivy and invites her into her home along with disaster. She can only look on in horror and confusion as Ivy slowly takes over her life.
What reads like a recipe for generic Hollywood fodder, instead focuses on acute loneliness, obsession and despair as much as on Barrymore’s physique and is actually a strangely moving and beautiful film. The acting is just ok, but Barrymore’s portrayal of a love starved teenage desperado is involving and bouncy, and the cinematography is great, with most of the particularly dramatic moments are shot in twilight rain. This movie probably did some goth-o-fying to herds of restless teenage girls in the 90s. Shakespearean high drama, Freudian tension and Fellinian perversion – I can’t help but love it all!
Nnnf. No words, really. Well, except perhaps to remind readers that this is a woman who demanded that Max Factor sprinkle half an ounce of gold dust in her wigs to keep them sufficiently glittery, sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight, and whose make-up artist once divulged that Marlene Dietrich kissed so hard, she needed a new coat of lipstick after every smooch. The tuxedoed “Queen of the World” is as commanding and stylish today as she was when Morocco was filmed in 1930.
Heads up, Pennsylvanians. Cabaret noir performer Nicki Jaine will host an evening of Dietrich’s music in honor of the singer/actress’ 106th birthday on Thursday, November 8 at the Stockton Inn.
Nicki Jaine’s velvety contralto is sure to thrill Dietrich fans to their very marrow. Talk about two great tastes that taste great together. Just like strawberries hotdogs and champagne (once said to be Marlene’s favorite meal) only decidedly less zaftig.
I didn’t even know there was such a thing as industrial music when I stumbled onto Janet’s Rhythm Nation 1814 film in my pre-teens, but I knew that I’d made a very important discovery. Later there would be the mix tapes and the radio shows that exposed me to my favorite music in its true form, but until then, isolated in suburbia and still learning English, Janet’s video was my first glimpse into the aesthetics of my favorite musical genre.
Having re-watched Rhythm Nation today, I have come to a very important conclusion: Janet Jackson is even more ÜBER than I initially thought. Here’s why:
The uniforms! God, the uniforms. Those gloves with the riveted metallic plates? Hot.
“We are a nation with no geographic boundaries, bound together by our beliefs.” NSK State, anyone? Laibach, take note: Janet beat you to it by 4 years.
The entire clip takes place in a steamy factory that recalls Test Dept’s Total State Machine.
Despite the strong percussion and electronic elements, I’d be pushing it if I claimed that this awesome song was industrial. But you know what? Janet created this socially-conscious record on her terms, in the face of a record company pressuring her to only sing about love and relationships. Who knows what this could have been, had there not been that pressure at all?
The brilliant songwriter was fond of slathering himself in various forms of goop and leaping into his audiences, as well as “playing instruments with his head”, but apparently the world just wasn’t ready for that sort of thing back in 1982. Despite being a huge influence on later luminaries of the gothic/industrial movement, Fad Gadget remains relatively obscure.
