DAY 2-- All Night Exploitation
I had three hours sleep in the last 28 hours going into a 14 hour marathon of exploitation films going from 1900 hours (cool standard time) Saturday to 0900 hours (cool standard time) Sunday morning. I haven’t slept now for 42 hours and I’m going to try to type something... anything to keep my promise to you.
Without looking at my notes I seem to remember midget pickpockets, loinclothed german gal that spoke jungle speak, ants controlling Joan Crawford who screams out “Trog” as Dr Phibes killed his nine and a tarbaby gangster catches a bunch of italian mafia dudes as a woman details her personal relationship with a cockroach and her spurning of a rat with yellow teeth as Robert Forster compliments a reptile expert on her amazing tits as an Alligator chows on Buck Roger’s Killer Kane and we were told that Roman Polanski could do it to us like no other and as the Tall Man with his silver ball tortured and killed and a Pack of savage dogs tore through children as a 16 year old country western wannabe virgin is raped by an obese version of Richie Cunningham and an Italian two bit collector hooks up with Joe Pesci and out does Scorsese’s CASINO and GOODFELLAS 15 years before and an elderly dwarf fucks the All American Cheerleader style hooker from hell as a demon plants the seed of his demon child in Julie Christie and I learned about A Baby Needing a new pair of shoes as Black Belt Jones hurls deadly red cotton panties and a 50 ft ape thing lusts and destroys all...
That’s what just happened.... I survived.... Later I may detail it all... but for now.... now, I will simply sleep and see what Quentin’s warped programing has done to my subconcious. Let’s see.... if I awake.... later....cxvxczzvx
DAY ONE....
Moriarty and his pack of henchmen (Salma Stalker, Free Loader and The Second Brain) had been on the road 20 hours. Robogeek was flying on a secret mission to Los Angeles, and I was recovering from whatever had struck me down.
Film fans from across the country were en route as I rolled out of bed this morning. I stayed away from keyboards and computer screens... my eyes and thoughts were on one thing. QTIII... It was only a few short turns of a clock away.
Annette Kellerman had arrived two days earlier... She was here early for the tribal rites of preparation to survive the oncoming test of our film going mettle. This isn’t like The Man Called Horse, this test was one we would enjoy... in fact it’s a test that all film fans should undertake. This isn’t about posturing or lectures... The Tarantino Film Fests are about the pure joy of film going.
Our sleep schedules were all wrong, so we turned them like a clock crossing the Atlantic.... A few twists of the biological knobs and we were on the right timezones....
The phone begins ringing... it’s beginning. There have been fears of missing prints, of delayed plane flights... But it’s all coming together... Adrenaline is beginning to coarse... Glen launches the first signal flares to herald the arrival of Moriarty.
Father Geek, Tom Joad and Annette Kellerman rendevous here at Geek Headquarters, then we launch our campaign in my recently purchased Kirby-Mobile (named after God... Jack Kirby, king of cool).
We capture Moriarty and his lot and take them to the heighth of white trash edible confection locations... CHUYS. A restaurant with such a lack of class that it acheives a new form of class all it’s own. Dishing up burritos, who’s sole reason in being is to split the bellies of mortals that dare to consume them all... The nine of us... we dare....
Then... Then it was to the Alamo. Like a Mexican army of long ago, a line of filmic frontiermen lay siege to this cinematic chapel. Quint laid in wait for us, as we gather up our passes, lay the chains around our necks, we wait for the battling ram to lay waste to the doors so we could pass.... the anticipated time would be.... 1915 hours (Cool Standard Time)
We are standing about when suddenly, geeks begin coming over to meet me. I wonder... who in this lot will become a permanent friend. The prior two fest netted me 6 of my closest friends. What lay in wait for me now?
Suddenly this guy from PLAYBOY magazine shoves a mini-recorder beneath Father Geek’s bearded chin and begins asking him about the line ups... I forget what Father Geek said, but I broke in.... I didn’t stop talking for 35 or 40 minutes... (my recollection of the passage of time, faulty due to telling of an epic tale) The thoughts of being in PLAYBOY talking about this... the coolest of film fests was... well, I have to say it... COOL.
During the telling of past QT FILM FEST tales Johnny Wad and Copernicus arrive. Followed by The Great White Black Man, and a bevy of others. Critical mass was pushing on the doors till they gave sway and we rushed up the stairs, hungry to push into the chapel... to order our inebriated nectar and to partake of the silver screen.
We take up the entire 2nd row of the Alamo... Stretching from one end to another... the AICN crew formed a front line of entrenched film goers with FULL ON passes. A few folks come up and talk to me and to join the group’s conversation... One even brought a gift of GODZILLA’S REVENGE on DVD... Coooooooooooool!!
I’m rocking back and forth... Dying to get underway. This is my adrenaline injection for film loving that lasts an entire year and more. Oh the joy, the thrills... What pop culture pleasures would I pick up this time out. This has a lot to live up to, and I know that it will kick my ass, and I can’t wait for the bruises...
On screen is playing various commercials for vintage toys. This one self defacing PIE throwing device meant to push pies into your own face. Another has a young Kurt Russell and a toy bazooka ad, another ad... a scary one, one that frightened me is about a talking baby doll who’s eyes dart from side to side... not in that “wink wink” sorta way, but in the slow “I’M POSSESSED AND WILL NOW EAT YOUR MISERABLE SOUL” sorta way. I’m scared... Annette’s tender counseling enables me to reopen my eyes.
Then... a Light is thrown on stage, while Tim begins speaking from a microphone hidden on the opposite side in shadows. He begins hyping upcoming coolnesses like THE GOONIES and THE OSCAR PARTIES he’ll be hosting. Yes, this man is the coolest theater dude the world has spat out yet. He quickly turns things over to Richard Linklater...
Linklater does the inevitable thanking of everyone that sponsored the event... announches the upcoming FILM SOCIETY events of WING COMMANDER at the Paramount theater, and EDtv which WILL NOW BE AT..... THE PARAMOUNT!!!!! YIPPEE!!!! That’s one for us good guys!!! Who says that fanatacism can’t get you anywhere?
Then Rick began the process of introducing Quentin. He’s done this a lot, and Rick has a hard time with it, because... well... it feels unnatural to introduce a friend to a large audience of people that you know for a fact already know who the hell you’re talking about so what the fuck are ya doing introducing the guy, but ya have to cause it’s just the way things are done. So he does something really funny... to me.
“Ok, and I’ve got one thing that I’m going to ask you people to do for me. Quentin didn’t ask me to do this, I’m just doing it as a favor to me. Don’t go up to Quentin and ask for an autograph... Cause then I’ll have to sit there or stand there over and over again listening to Quentin saying ‘listen let’s just watch the movies together, this is like my church man, we’re just watching films together alright?’”
The audience started clapping, Quentin starts smiling and I start giggling... I’ve heard that retort... oh... perhaps a dozen or so times, and it’s always delivered with the most honest heartfelt feelings. Next, Rick turned it over to Quentin...
Quentin was wearing blue jeans, a blue t-shirt and a black leather jacket. He darts behind the microphone, leans in, and makes fun of Linklater’s impersonation of him. Then he began his introduction.
He starts off with a correction of mental attitude for the audience. There is a general perception in the mainstream media that Quentin’s fest is about bad films and the celebration of them. WRONG... “It’s like... say I invited you over to my house for like meatloaf see... and then you talk shit about my meatloaf... this is my meatloaf”
This couldn’t be truer. You see the films that Quentin shows here are films that generally aren’t thought badly of... the just aren’t thought of much. Name the last time you heard someone talk shit about TWISTED NERVE or THE DION BROTHERS? Never... you know why? Cause they’re forgotten films... except I remember them... they’re known to me... They are GREAT films that noone has seen in years theatrically.
Quentin began talking about the death of revival houses, how towns like Austin and similar cities would once have 5 or 6 of them playing double bills of classic and unknown films... but now... Well, now the revival theater has fallen to the almighty VCR. “Movies were meant to be SEEEEEEEEN theatrically,” Quentin said, and I couldn’t agree more. Film is a communal experience. A film cries out for a reaction as big as the image, and that doesn’t come from an individual, “laying on the couch watching a film and playing a crossword at the same time,” as QT put it. Outside before all this I was talking to the PLAYBOY guy about how this fest was about experiencing these films with an audience... a great Austin audience. I then went off on critics that panned FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS that saw it in an empty theater... That was an AUDIENCE FILM... it cries out for reactions.... And really... when you get down to it... that is what these films are. They are movies that provoke reactions... Positive, negative... they leave you with something to say afterwards. And for Quentin.. they are movies he loves and wants to see an audience fall for, they’re his pride and joy... his love, and he wants to share that with others.
Then he began talking about the Personality of the fest. How, as this fest goes... how we’ll begin to feel a personality and see common faces, and communal eccentricities that will pop up.
Then he declared a warning about Laughter in the films. BLESS YOU QUENTIN!!! This has been a peeve of mine that I haven’t really experienced at the Alamo’s revivals, but at the Paramount’s Revivals it’s like a plague. “Laugh when it’s funny... Don’t laugh because you are superior or something...” Abs-afriggin-lutely. You have to put yourself in the mental attitude of the times that these films were made. You can’t really look at films from a nineties perspective and totally grock them.
Next Quentin began to introduce the first thing up for the night... The trailers of past and coming attractions. As he said this, Copernicus shrieked out... GHETTO FREAKS, a trailer that became a thing of legend throughout last year’s fest... Quentin says that the first group of trailers will be of films he’s screened at past fests, and then after the DION BROTHERS trailer... it would move on to trailers for films... coming in the next Nine Days...
.........TRAILERS.......
1. MARCH OR DIE -- This trailer is sooooo bad ass, I need this film badly in my collection. It kicked ass with Trinity in the Foreign Legion under the command of Gene “I kick Ass” Hackman. Ian Holm looking like a mean muther... Cool.
2. SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON -- David Chiang is a God! A cool as hell SHAW BROTHERS film about seven kickass kung fu warriors from hell that use the most deadly techniques that allow them to KILL A THOUSAND WAYS EACH... Tis a shame about the censorship boards that govern trailer making, as many of the methods of death could not tragically be included within this trailer...
3. ELECTRIC GLIDE IN BLUE -- “ A five foot four inch motorcycle cop in a six foot two world” “Did you know lonliness would kill you deader than a 357 magnum?” This film was intense last time out...
4. CANNONBALL -- There are more car wrecks in this trailer than in the entirety of THE BLUES BROTHERS... it’s amazing...
5. THE DION BROTHERS (aka GRAVY TRAIN) -- As Guillermo Del Toro says, “Every person on the fucking planet should see this movie, It’s a classic” Folks... this movie is sooooooo good, Johnny Wad bought it in 16mm just so he could show it. He loves the film as do all that see it.
6. MOTHER, JUGGS AND SPEED -- “They don’t call me Speed for nothing” -- Harvey Keitel says, to which Raquel Welch says, “Let’s hope they don’t call you that for everything” YEESSSSSSSS!!!
7. NAVAJO JOE -- Burt Reynolds as an Indian? I don’t know, I’ve had the poster for years, but I’ve never seen the movie. I’m dying to see it though...
8. JUNIOR BONNER -- Here’s a trailer I’ve seen perhaps 100 times since I was a kid, but I’ve never seen the film...
9. FREEBIE AND THE BEAN -- “I spent half my life in toilets” Holy shit this looks to be a cool movie. Damn. The overlapping dialogue, and the fucking car crashes... there’s this one where it... Damn, ask me in person about it, I need the use of my hands to try to describe it. But it’s cooool.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS and THE FOUR MUSKETEERS
After the trailers, Quentin came back out to introduce the THREE MUSKETEERS and FOUR MUSKETEERS. Turns out that in Richard Lester’s original conception, these films were to be a single film. There was to be an intermission, and before each part there was to be a sub-title beneath the “Three Musketeers” for the first part it was, “THE QUEEN’S JEWELS” and for the second, “REVENGE OF MI’LADY”. And it was to be a four hour epic.
Sigh....
Alas ‘the money grubbing producers’ cut the movie in half and kept the film from being joined. Quentin isn’t a big Richard Lester fan, and as for A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, “I’m not a big Beatles fan,” so I take it he’s an Elvis man. Quentin does like the JUGGERNAUT (1974), but he absolutely feels that these two films (the musketeer flicks) are in the top 3 or 4 epics made in the Seventies. He feels it works as an adventure, a satire of adventure films and on about a half dozen other levels I didn’t catch cause I got distracted by a filling glass of Guinness before me.
Next Quentin chimed in on GIANT cast films, and how they usually get this great cast together... but they just don’t do all that much, but that here... Here everybody delivered right at their best work... Some of their best performances. He then went down the line from Charlton Heston to Christopher Lee “who made over 300 films... ...next to HORROR OF DRACULA this is his best role...”
Then he came to OLIVER REED... heh heh heh... God, me and Quentin are in such agreement about Reed... “Oliver Reed is a fucking god in this movie!!!!!” Quentin heralded. Then he went into a story he heard from Rodriguez about how Robert was going to use the same Fight Choreographer from this film for his Zorro film before walking off that project. It turns out that Reed soooooo threw himself through the stunt process that the other actors felt they all had to like triple their efforts to keep Reed from just walking away with the film.... which he does anyway.
“No finesse... he’s a bull”
Then Quentin drew a parallel to the SHAW Brother’s Kung Fu flicks... saying that “swordfighting is fetishized like Kung Fu is fetishized in Kung Fu movies” Next he said this film has the best Slapstick since Buster Keaton...
Then he left us with the movie.
I ABSOLUTELY ADORE THESE TWO MOVIES. I’ve seen them countless times as a kid. I worshipped Oliver Reed and Michael York. Still when I see these two actors I forgive them any problems or quirks they’ve acquired because... well, they’re the dudes man!
On the big screen though, I love a recurring shot that features the majority of the foreground frame filled with flowers, grass, weeds, ice... whatever, with the Musketeers riding in the midground with similar vegetation stretching out into infinity.
Heston, Lee, Dunaway, Welch, Reed, York and the rest are all just note perfect. Dead on. BUT... still, I love the Gene Kelly, Van Heflin version more now. For years I preferred the Richard Lester versions, but... I prefer the action and the acting of the Lana Turner, Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, Vincent Price, Frank Morgan, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn, etc... Perhaps it’s the romanticized version of it all, perhaps that it’s more in the style of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, but ya know... I really like both. They are significantly different in styles so that it’s like comparing Sweetened tea to Unsweetened... it’s all in how you like your tea... me... I like sweetened.
HOWEVER... for the next film....
ZULU DAWN...
I stand in awe of this film. It just gets me giddy. The ZULU films, ZULU, ZULU DAWN and SHAKA ZULU, which should be viewed in reverse order, are fantastic films. They are on a scale... like nothing you’re likely to see acted out for real... ever again.
For all the shots we’ve been seeing in GLADIATOR, it just won’t compare to the scope of something like ZULU DAWN.
ANYWAY... before we get to ZULU DAWN, I have to talk about Moriarty and his crew of triple A batteried henchmen.... They come stumbling over as if put through a meat grinder... mumbling something about the 22 hour straight drive they made in the last 30 hours, and how if they are expected to survive the next night... they need their beauty rest... WUSSES, I cry out. Then I begin riding them and their pampered lives on Melrose. SO they stumble off.... perhaps Moriarty isn’t as cool as I was led to believe....
THen Quentin comes out and begins to introduce ZULU DAWN. “That Faye Dunaway was a BITCH or what,” he started off with. Then Quentin began giving us all a history lesson on what happened between ZULU and ZULU DAWN in the world of film and the U.S.
Ya see, when ZULU came out... it was... kinda OK to be glamorizing Imperialism, but then... well a social revolution came about that kinda made popular opinion go.... “I want all those natives to kill those bloody mutherfuckers!!!” as Tarantino said. When this film came to the U.S. it wasn’t given a huge release, instead it was double featured with SILENT SCREAM, an old Barbara Steele horror film that...well, it wasn’t that great a film, and certainly was never meant to be double billed with ZULU DAWN.
My Dad brainwashed me with the ZULU films since the dawn of time it seems like. I love them. Especially this one, cause it’s where them red coats got their ass whupped something fierce.
The film had me on the edge of my seat for a great deal of the feature... and Tom Joad... he kept exclaiming... “Oh fuck” everytime the screen was filled with hordes of Zulu warriors. I love the cultural inter-cutting that happens in this flick, where you’ll have proper British society, cut with the Zulus beating their shields and chanting to their king. And I love it that the King isn’t portrayed as some mindless savage, but as someone that is worried about preserving his people rights and customs. Fucking A man.... I love that.
Just as these films were set to get underway, a new Babe joined our midst from that Babe factory to the north in Oklahoma... Her name will be....Cora Smith. She’s got that whole hot geekish femme fatale thing a going on, she seemed pleased at the ability to buy Shiner Boch at gas stations in Texas.... YEAH!!! I like that too.
Well folks.. the batteries are running low... I have to be awake and at the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE in about 6 hours, and I still have to HTML this document.... so till Sunday Morning, I’m bidding you adieu.... Exploitation is en route....
Oh... and by the way, under the cover of darkness... Moriarty... came back like the man that he was... and saw it all. Maybe he is cool... Hmmm, we'll see if he's at the kiddie matinee today...
