Reviews

Of the experimental animation done by the California Rebels, I was the most impressed by Allures. A precursor to Lazer Shows (though mind-bogglingly better than any lazer show) and an homage to Oskar Fishingker. Spiritualist Belson wrote the score for this visual tone pone, and it remains one of the top five of my favorite viewing experiences. Its like seeing visual sound (like Mary Ellen Bute) that transcends into the spiritual domain. The IOTA Center in SoCal is working on a restoration. When they are finished, I advise finding a compilation of all of Belson's wonderful, overlooked, experiments!

I never said a little Demille doesn't go a long way...but something about this movie erotically charged me. Not quite the sex appeal of Claudette Colbert like in that brilliant tracking shot in Cleopatra, but still, no one overdoes a sex scene quite like the cultural fascist Demille. If you want an arousing cross-class fantasy, in spite of Demille's immoral classism, The Cheat is waiting...

Like Percival's quest for the grail, I have come upon this piece of cinematic transgression after endless peril. Like the other video nasty that has paraded before my eyes, the arbitrary rock band Gwar has created such a work that will cause endangered animals everywhere to hide (watch out Emmett Otter, and hide your Jug-band)... I could make a joke like, this was Magical Mystery Tour crossed with Don't Look Back for the 90's, or that the intro was reminiscent of the protestors in Zabriskie Point (some reviewers would give better notes to Gwar). Instead I will say this, for those whose gaze must seek out all the underground trash video, after watching Phallus in Wonderland do me two favors: take a long shower, and watch Vincente Minelli's Meet Me in St. Louis, okay, thank you, good night...

It was this film alone that drove me into an intense obsession with cinema. Mizoguchi is the great Japanese master, and Osaka Elegy reveals his genius. From his long take compositions that are taxed with complexity and tension, to his ambigious depictions of character, I felt like I had grown after I had seen this film. Notice the national allegory at the film's conclusion, a confused and lonely Japan. And his inconclusive final shot taken many years before the well known 400 Blows. The devastating melodrama is not undercut by any cinematic manipulation. I highly recommend this to any lover of the cinematic medium. Also, I am a sucker for self-reflexive Kabuki theater sequences...

There are probably three perfect films in existence. 2001: A Space Odyssey, for reinventing film language and raising the American film to an art form. Seven Samurai, for mastering preexisting film language and raising classical Hollywood grammar to its highest level. And of course, Birth of a Nation. For introducing to the world for the first time, a full-length narrative feature. D.W. Griffith, like Abraham Lincoln, was a great man with a character flaw, he was a racist. Richard Wagner made the finest of operas, and he too was an anti-semite, like Griffith. Many artists have bad ideologies. Thank God, that an ideology does not reflect on an artform. After Griffith invented the crosscut and the closeup (as well as a textbook full of language that is now taken for granted) he finally created Birth of a Nation, a silent work of cinema poetry. The war sequences are on a grander level than many today, the love story will make you weep, the assassination of Lincoln will make you gasp for breath. The final hour of the film is notorious, but only a powerfully good film could offend so many people 85 years later. Because people are more racist now than ever before (movies like, Big Momma's House, for example), they have criticized the man who invented the narrative film in order to mask their own problems. It is a shame and disgrace that we are all so sensitive now and politically correct that an artist responsible for the creation of cinema, no longer has an award named after him. The film is flawless, and the man is a genius, in spite of his racism and anti-semitism. View the work of poetry and pure cinema, you will agree that it is a wonderwork. The corrupt capitalistic North, led by Silas Lynch is combatted by the KKK in the South, with the lovely Lillian Gish (her greatest performance until Broken Blossoms, where she dies of heartbreak) caught in between the chaos of war. Certainly there are mature enough people to handle the fact that black men are evil in the film. A masterpiece has to stand the test of time, it does not have to convey a popular ideology. A TIME TO KILL for instance, is a film that is anti-KKK but it is an incoherent, stereotypical pastiche of To Kill A Mockingbird. There is no film cut together with the style, grace, experimentation and audacity of D.W. Griffith. Like Wagner's ring cycle, it stands as a great artistic achievement that does not deserve detractions from liberal, godless, nihilists. A film that ranks high in aesthetic value, being the founder of all of the language used today, has a level of complexity in its history of the American character and racism, creates a beautiful film diegesis of civil war torn south, has the courage of its racist convictions, and is beautifully coherent working with only the moving image of the silent era; a purely cinematic artistic achievement. If you are willing to trade all this because of your petty liberal sentiments that really have no impact but a negative one on our present day racist situation (perpetuated by such films as the Godfather that outright refer to black people as dogs) have been made uncomfortable, then rewrite cinema history to make yourself feel better.

It is clear by my previous irrational comments that I have been far too harsh towards this video treasure, and I would just like to clear the record. A postmodern reworking of BLOOD FEAST, BEASTIES maintains the integrity of its predecessor by introducing the subplot of OSIRIS the Egyptian Sun God (also heavy-metal and punk rock afecianado...of course, if Jesus Christ is allowed to rock 'n roll in a boring Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, than why can't OSIRIS?) and it never quite gels with the ongoing plot that plays out as a mediocre version of Troma's KILLER CONDOM. The actors in BEASTIES positively received their degrees from the Herschell Gordon Lewis school of theater, however the women are far less attractive than the girls of the WIZARD OF GORE. Even the mise-en-scene in BEASTIES is hacked from Lewis', leading me to believe that the film was actually trying to modernize the gore genre, with an unfortunate lack of sex and blood, the key components that gave strength to the memorable 60's underground horror movies. I have to say that it is a truly rotten movie, in that the content is entirely too clean and yet still referential to the b-movie God (perhaps Lewis' IS more popular than OSIRIS)...RANK:#10 in my TOP TEN WORST FILMS

There is nothing redeemable about this film that I consider to be among the worst of the worst. There is an awful musical number on the way to the campground which is more brutal just to listen to than to watch the cannibals attack the camp. The music is wretched, the film was made with a handicam...and not a very good one at that. I do find a certain appeal in the utter lack of talent and some of the gore is just not reproduceable in any way. The embryo scene...that's all I will say. And the whole movie almost made me go blind.

For those who have sought long and far for the worst movies ever made, may Beasties soon find them. It has awful muppets combined with even worse Egyptian gang war gods, not too mention some of the worst original synthesizer music in a film. This may very well be one of the top five films ever made. Don't blame me if you become a worse person for viewing it or if your VCR bursts into flames when inserting the tape. And don't go parking when you are out of gas, or the Beasties may get you!!!