Look out! He's got a knife!

Quiet

So much for my giallo project and my Friday music project.

I'm going away for the long weekend, and when I get back there will be lots of lovely music and deranged rantings about Italian horror movies, and maybe even some more pictures of naked people. Hurrah!

I dare you to

watch Cannibal Holocaust on google video. And if you don't do it now you won't get another chance 'cause it'll be taken down real soon for inappropriate content.

You won't watch it, of course. Coward.

Giallo: All the Colours of the Dark

Jane (Edwige Feneche) has cool, surreal nightmares that cause her to freak out and take showers with her clothes on. Her boyfriend Richard (George Hilton) seems to think it's a vitamin deficiency and gives her strange coloured liquids to drink. Her sister Barbara (Nieves Navarro/Susan Scott) thinks she should see a psychiatrist. Her neighbour Mary (Marina Malfatti) suggests she try joining a satanic cult.

Guess which option Jane goes for.

In front of and behind the camera, All the Colours of the Dark features many prolific giallo practitioners: director Sergio Martino, co-writer Ernesto Gastaldi, stars Feneche, Navarro, Hilton and Ivan Rassimov, composer Bruno Nicolai (who orchestrated most of Ennio Morricone's giallo scores as well as writing many of his own), etc.

Look, something is totally the f**k wrong when it takes me over three days to write a review of a trashy Italian horror movie. I started this mofo at 4:18pm on Sunday, and I still can't work out what to write next. So here's some pictures.

Friday music

Almost missed it!

Today, we've got Warren Zevon. If you don't know who he is, well you're about to find out.

First up, from the album Sentimental Hygiene is the song "Boom Boom Mancini", about the boxer of the same name. Zevon's band on this song is REM minus Michael Stipe. This was recorded between Green and Out of Time if anyone cares.

Second up, from the solo live album Learning To Flinch, is "Play It All Night Long". For a guy who played essentially MOR music, Zevon sure wrote some memorable lyrics. No wonder Bob Dylan likes playing his songs live.

Last, from the infamous Excitable Boy, comes Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner". This would eventually be the last song Zevon ever performed in front of an audience, on an episode of David Letterman, and was supposedly written in collaboration with an ex-mercenary.

If you'd rather just read entertaining reviews of sf & horror movies, check out And You Call Yourself A Scientist! I've been going there for years, and it's still \my favourite fan review site.

Further study: lychrel numbers

To grok my next post on the giallo phenomenon, you'll need a solid understanding of lychrel numbers.

Here's a good starting place for your research.

Now go froth, my children.

World Cinema Showcase

I only saw 2 movies in this festival this year, one yesterday and one today.

Yesterday was Across the Universe, the third movie from director Julie Taymor (Titus, Friday). I loved both of Taymor's previous movies; this one is just as visually stunning as those, if not more so, but is basically a rotten movie with no decent story and no interesting characters. It's vaguely held together by the conceit of having the characters sing Beatles songs to express themselves; this comes off as a contrived gimmick. Some scenes are marvellous fun, and I wasn't bored, but the extremely lazy script (by Ian LaFrenais & Dick Clement, from a story by them & Taymor) was irritating in that it seemed like it could have been quite good if they'd just tried harder. The cast is also very dull and unmemorable, particularly Rachel Evan Wood - the movie has a love story at its centre, but it's impossible to care about such dull people who break up and get back together almost arbitrarily. This is a movie where the highlights are cameos by Bono and Joe Cocker, neither of whom I like.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was a Romanian movie set towards the end of the Ceauşescu administration, about an illegal abortion. While not as harrowing as some have made it out to be, this is an excellent movie with some nail-biting suspense that I would highly recommend to anyone who doesn't need their movies to be high-gloss, happy and shiny, and neatly wrapped up in a tidy little bow at the end.

Neither movie is a complete waste of time in my opinion, but one is a nearly brilliant while the other is bubblegum that loses its taste before the end.

Look out! He's got a knife!

I thought it was about time that this blog lived up to its title for a while. Hence, I've started killing people I'm going to write about the Italian movie filone known as giallo for a while.

I first got into gialli through Dario Argento's movie Suspiria, which changed my life forever at the tender age of 17. I already loved horror movies, but this may have been the one that pushed me over the edge (it was either that or Dawn of the Dead). I am by no means an expert, but I've seen a number of these movies now.

Giallo is of course the Italian word for yellow, and gets its name from a series of thriller books published from the 1930s with yellow covers (a similar situation to film noir). The movie genre did not get going until the 1960s, spearheaded by Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (which introduced elements like the amateur detective misinterpreting what she sees) and Blood and Black Lace (which introduced elements like the black-gloved & raincoated killer and aesthetically creative death scenes).

The filone draws inspiration from things like the German Edgwar Wallace adaptations of the '50s, Psycho and Peeping Tom but quickly developed its own path. It subsequently was the prime influence on the '80s slasher movie, particularly via Halloween (which John Carpenter acknowledges was inspired bySuspiria) and Friday the 13th (which producer/director Sean S. Cunningham has said wouldn't exist without Mario Bava's influence, particularly Bay of Blood).

The genre has all but died out in the last 25 years or so, although Argento still directs genres (though sadly they are very lacklustre compared to his prime) and the advent of dvd has reinvigorated interest in many of the old movies.

Sexually ambiguous, confused and/or complex killers, often psychedelic imagery and tricky camera work, nonsensical or even irrelevant plots, and extremely beautiful women. This is some of the stuff of giallo, and so it'll be the stuff of this blog for anywhere between the next 23 minutes and 23 years, depending on stuff.

Bad Biology trailer - NOT WORK SAFE

After the cut is the trailer for Bad Biology, the new movie from Frank Henenlotter.

Henenlotter is the writer/director behind the unhinged cult classics Basket Case, Brain Damage and Frankenhooker and judging from the trailer this looks like his most extreme movie yet.

The movie has been produced with a lot of help from the NY hip-hop community; the script is co-written by R.A. the Rugged Man, the soundtrack is by Prince Paul, many rappers make cameos, and Jedi Mind Tricks helped with the financing.

The trailer is not safe for work. Don't watch it there. I don't want to be responsible for you getting fired.

Friday music

Today's song has nothing to do with the above image.

Thing that annoys me today: people who write "penultimate" as a synonym for "ultimate" - seeming to think it means very ultimate or something. Buy a fucking dictionary. (And while you're reading it, look up "atypical" and "literally" as well; those probably don't mean what you think they do either. Illiterate swine!)

Pay the motherf**king writer

Harlan Ellison is here to teach you a lesson.