Camp Fires and Klimovskiana
Now Playing: Icarus Syndrome--"The Donut Shop"
Saturday night I saw Starling Electric at the Ann Arbor Neutral Zone, in what was probably the most aesthetically pleasing show I've been to in Michigan, with the possible exception of last summer's finale show at the Madison House. The Neutral Zone was established several years ago as an arts/performance space for high school-age youngsters, thereby shielding them from more nefarious environments such as Wobbly meetings or pool halls or whatever the hell they do these days (full disclosure: the NZ has a pool table). It's set in an old warehouse of some sort, the brick walls and low ceilings framing a series of windows, the northern set of whch face the hill that commences downtown Ann Arbor. As shows play into the evening, one can look through the music and see the cars plod along Main Street, their headlights taking the sun's natural place as the day dwindles.
Starling Electric are probably the best band, melodically speaking, in Ann Arbor. The songs invoke and interpret the best kind of 60s sunshine pop, but with a more grounded feel. The guys (Caleb Dillon on keyboard and vocals, Christian Anderson and Jason DeCamillis on guitar, and John Fossum on drums) give a great stage show, helped by the dapper glam-rock fashions, the smoke machine, and the ivy on Caleb's keyboard. The audience was small yet rapt, the scene pleasantly intimate. By the time the smoke came on, the magic was there. Towards the end, during "Camp Fire," Jason tossed me the tambourine, so I tried following along as best I could, and it didn't seem weird in the slightest. I hadn't actually heard them in ages, and it was great to sit transfixed for such a wonderful show. Honorable mention goes to their openers, the Ultrasounds, who delivered a splendid and eclectic set of pop, with some of the same retro style. If they aren't going places, then they
should.
The retro-glam thing brings me to my DVD player's most recent inhabitant. While grocery shopping at Meijer Saturday morning (during which time I also got a proper tart pan, so I can actually make tarts and quiches), I ran across a set of 5 movies on 2 DVDs, all billed as
The Vampire Collection, Volume 2 and priced at $5.99. All were horror-sleaze products of the early 1970s (at least one having absolutely nothing to do with vampires). I've now seen three, two by Spanish-Argentine director Leon Klimovsky and one by future
Porky's and
A Christmas Story director Bob Clark at the start of his career.
Note: Reviews edited day after posting for more smartass comments the critic forgot the first time around... Klimovsky's
Werewolf vs. The Vampire Women (1970) and
The Vampires' Night Orgy (1973) both have about eight jillion other titles and are basically good as they sound. I think that I may have spoiled myself a little by getting used to all the classy horror movies; my tolerance for entertaining drivel needs a little rejuvenation.
Werewolf stars Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy (a.k.a. Jacinto Molina), a cross between Peter Boyle and John Belushi, as a mysterious landowner who tries to protect two bitchin' hot grad students against sinister forces (in the course of which, one might imagine, a werewolf tangles with nasty vampire women). Despite execrable digital transfer, it's worth a look, with the occasionally genuinely haunting moment (and Barbara Capell, as the hapless Genevieve, is
gorgeous).
Orgy is much wackier, with widescreen presentation, a Madonna-doppelganger heroine, a creepy, voyeuristic "hero" who sleeps in what appear to be gold lame pajamas, a pointless and nasty plot development that only briefly threw me off, random Shakespearean monologues, actual shocks, some bracing (as opposed to pretty) scenery, inappropriate, mildly sleazy humor, and above all the unstoppably groovy, frequently insane soundtrack. It's no
Five Dolls For An August Moon, but it'll do. An interesting phenomenon: Werewolf's grad students and Orgy's "itinerant service workers" all traipse around in this incredibly groovy, fashionable gear that must have cost wads. I've been both a grad student and an itinerant service worker, and would definitely never have been able to stretch to
that. Either life in the overeducated underemployed was much different in 1972 or I just don't get it. Or both.
Clark's
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) is apparently something of a cult classic (as described on the back cover of the collection), "one of the most inventive movies to come out in the wake of George Romero's
Night of the Living Dead." It's also "chilling, tension filled and only for people with strong stomachs." It flatters itself, but the Romero comparisons fit to a point, as
Children essentially involves people holding their own in an abandoned shack against a zombie invasion. I don't find it all that inventive, at least as far as the scariness goes, but it's great fun. For the first half of the movie, just about any terror flies out the window as the viewer sits awestruck at the antics of the monumentally annoying cast. They're all actors in the questionable employ of Alan (Alan Ormsby), who really must be seen to be believed (as must his pants). I currently don't remember a more grating character in a movie I've seen--alternately fey and ruthless, dominant and cowardly, it's not a performance that's easily forgotten (and I'm
still not really sure whether it's a great performance or an awful one). The rest, not-so-willingly taking part in Alan's plan to have fun by raising Satan, fit the stereotypes pretty well--the dippy ingenue Terri, the dumb jock Paul, the (really,
really) unfunny "comic relief" Jeff (who actually does have one very good line towards the beginning), and the snotty "artiste" Val. The last named delivers
Children's most jarring moment when she usurps Alan's ceremony, first in an overly theatrical Cassandra-like tone and then by channeling Molly Picon from
Fiddler on the Roof. Alan's faithful lackeys Roy and Emerson are such classic 70s gay stereotypes that they make Sean Hayes look like Yakima Canutt. And then there's insane, death-obsessed, birdlike Anya (Anya Ormsby; no idea how she's related to the "star"), who I now not only want to marry but also want to get with child. There's incredibly bad, "hip" humor, Val's nonstop, oh-so-sophisticated bitching, Alan's laughter (it actually manages to be more irritating than that of my boss), a refreshing zombie attack and subsequent body count, and themes that still remain relevant today--relatively intelligent people forced to work crap jobs for dipshit bosses and eventually being ground down to the bone by life (or unlife, in this case). My sympathy for the characters' plight* didn't stop me from wanting to slap each character at least twice throughout the movie (except for Anya). Even so, when all's said and done, the financial and psychological hold Alan has on his "troupe" is possibly the movie's most frightening aspect. Don't miss the "manning the barricades" scene in which a brief shot makes it look like Paul's masturbating. There's another "appreciation" of
Children here.
*If "plight" it is; can Alan
really fire people for refusing to take part in necromancy? Can't they
sue him for that? Don't unemployment checks (with which he threatens Val) generally pay more than obscure theater work
anyway? Besides, aren't all these people supposed to be in shitty service jobs? Shouldn't they be concentrating on blowing the floor manager in order to score the patio section Friday night? Either life in the overeducated underemployed was much different in 1972, etc. etc.