Author Archives: R.D Francis

Mona et Moi (1989), aka Mona and I

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Guitarist Johnny Thunders and vocalist David Johansen were the garage-punk coefficient of the Rolling Stones’ “Glimmer Twins” Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. They were the “Toxic Twins” before Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Steven Tyler. Before there were Sex Pistols, there were New York Dolls. As with those British-screaming snots, the “Gemini Snots” defined a scene: the ‘Dolls were New York. Bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, formed out of “The Bromley Contingent,” the Sex Pistols’ fan-clique based around London’s 100 Club. The Buzzcocks (!) birthed because of the ‘Pistols. There’d be no Clash or the Ruts or the Stranglers without ‘Pistols. In New York, bands formed out of the ‘Dolls’ audience at The Bowery-based CBGBs. There’d be no Blondie, Ramones, Television, or Talking Heads without the Thunders-Johansen dichotomy.

But not every gunslinger of the six-string electric is destined to be Thomas Edison: sometimes you’re Nicola Telsa.

While their Todd Rundgren-produced (Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell was the ex-Nazz leader’s big one; he produced Sparks (of Rollercoaster fame) as well) eponymous debut on (Mercury, 1973) is regarded as a “rock classic,” no classic rock radio station will ever play them. (Nor will any of today’s alt-rock stations spin the ‘Dolls’ as “golds” analogues to classic rock radio’s spins of the Rolling Stones.) The ‘Dolls’ debut was—as with most “innovators”—a resounding marketing failure compounded by the release of their appropriately-titled sophomore-final, Too Much Too Soon (Mercury, 1974). And, with that, the New York Dolls—along with, to an extent, their Detroit-based inspirational precursors the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges—singlehandedly soured major records labels on punk snot . . . at least until some blonde-haired kid from the Pacific Northwest decided (well, the X-Generation decided) to become the new Jim Morrison. By the time the Sex Pistols first took to the stage in 1976, the ‘Dolls’ were punk vestiges, but not enough in ruins that megla-Svengali Malcolm McLaren (The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle) didn’t want to sink his fangs and extract the last ounce of snot. But it gave him the idea to “form” the Sex Pistols <eye roll>, so it all worked out.

In the midst of the fad-driven major-label mania over rock “supergroups” (that run the gambit from Blind Faith in the 60’s to KBG in the ‘70s to Asia—the last of them—in the ‘80s), there was (before some kid named Tom Petty absconded it as a suffix-moniker) (The) Heartbreakers—a ‘Dolls’ phoenix stoked by Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan with ex-Television (formed out of the ‘Dolls’ audience, natch) bassist Richard Hell. As with all supergroup outings (Fastway comes to mind: UFO’s Pete Way was out before Motorhead’s Fast Eddie Clark and Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley recorded their debut album proper and became the “No False Metal” voice for Sammy Curr in Trick or Treat), Hell was out before Thunders and company recorded their first album in England (where the ‘Dolls’ had a rabid fan base as much as they had an indifferent fan base in America), L.A.M.F (1977). And, with that, Richard Hell was off to form the Voidoids.

Could you imagine—if he wasn’t so ambivalently indifferent in perpetuity—Kurt Cobain being talked into taking an acting role, say like the Kurt-divergent Eddie Vedder appearing in Cameron Crowe’s “grunge Friends” flick, Singles?

Well, Thunder’s ex-Heartbreakers’ mate Richard Hell used his infamy for a quick stage-to-film transition in Blank Generation (1979). It would be a decade before Thunders repeated the cinematic leap made by Hell (and Debbie Harry in Union City, Iggy Pop in Cry Baby, or the Ramones in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School)—and Thunders had to cross an ocean to do it.

Initially shot in 1984 in a start-stop-start, financially-plagued production schedule (and released three years before his 1991 New Orleans death; it was released in 1988 in France; then Europe in 1989), this acting debut by Johnny Thunders is, needless to say, an extremely rare VHS that’s impossible to find outside of its native country of origin. Alongside with a little-to-nothing to say Jerry Nolan and Billy Rath from Heartbreakers, Thunders stars as Johnny Valentine: a troublesome New York rock star (not far removed from his own self, natch) that’s left in the charge of a music manager assigned to “babysit” the hard-living artist for a week. The thin premise for the drama is a down-and-out rock promoter flying Johnny into Paris to headline a concert. The romantic triangles tinkle as Thunders falls in love with Mona, the manager’s girlfriend. And if that sounds a lot like the character and pseudo-plot of Richard Hell’s Blank Generation, then it probably is. And if the “babysitting” manager angle sounds too much like Get Him to the Greek (with Russell Brand’s obnoxious-oblivious-rocker Aldous Snow—only with less heroin sheik and more Apatow raunch), then it probably is.

While Hell was clean (we think) and coherent in his role in Blank Generation, it’s hard to watch Thunders swagger-stagger through the film either drunk, stoned—or both. Regardless of the cool factor in having one of punk’s forefathers in an acting role (and truth be told, Thunders isn’t half bad at it), it’s nonetheless heartbreaking (sorry) to see a clearly broken Thunders squeezing out (or manipulated into) his last ounce of fame infamy—especially when considering the mainstream film appearance of his clean and sober ‘Dolls’ mate David Johansen in hit films such as Scrooged and Married to the Mob.

While Thunders was (always) a musical-footnote oddity in the States, he was, nevertheless, a celebrity in France—alongside ex-U.S. punks Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys and Willy DeVille of Mink DeVille. So, in that country, he continued to record and perform in concert—long after the early ’70 glam and late ‘70s punk halcyon days. In a historical twist, his solo debut, So Alone (1978), featured the backing of ex-Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Director Lech Kowalski (D.O.A) examined the troubled life of Thunders in Born to Lose (1999) and offered additional insights with the direct-to-video New York Doll. The Polish director also shot and recorded a pair of shows with Thunders for his heroin-document Gringo, aka The Story of a Junkie; while that film-music partnership floundered, the footage ended up in Lech’s subsequent Thunder-documentaries.

An extremely clean rip of the Mona Et Moi—with subtitles—is offered on the You Tube page of Cult Fusion TV — and we found an extended clip to enjoy. You say you need more Johnny Thunders? Then check out the fictitious take on his life with Room 37: The Death of Johnny Thunders, available on DVD/Blu-ray and Amazon from Cleopatra Entertainment.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) and The Filth and the Fury (2000)

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“The gospel according to the Ayatollah Malcolm.”
— Johnny Rotten

So agent provocateur and clandestine entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren owns a London fashion shop called Sex . . . eh, we don’t need to go that far back. . . . So co-founder/bassist/chief songwriter Glen Matlock is kicked out the Sex Pistols for “liking the Beatles. . . .” No, we don’t need to go that far back. . . .

When it came to the Sex Pistols, it was all about the marketing manipulation and McLaren the Machiavellian squeezed out every last drop of the group’s nihilistic sociopolitical ejaculate from their fourteen-month existence (November 1976 to January 1978). Regardless of their extensive discography that, by 1990, swelled to 20-plus albums, the group recorded only one actual studio album: the high-expectation and commercially-disappointing Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977). (The “flop” in the U.K. and Euro-markets was result of the album’s composition from the band’s already released 45-rpms and a “legal” 1977 bootleg album, Spunk.) And part of McLaren’s high-profile manipulations was to create a punk version of Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night—with Johnny Rotten refusing to have anything to do with the project. The “project” was initially developed by—of all peoples—Russ Meyer, with snobby film critic Roger Ebert as the screenwriter, in tow—both who had a little experience in the rock ‘n’ roll genre with their “epic” about the rise and fall of the Carrie Nations, 1970’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls . . . but Meyer also had lots of experience with large-breasted women (1965’s Motor Psycho and 1966’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!).

Yeah, this is going to work just fine. . . .

Well, it didn’t.

So, two-plus years later of false starts and stops with an array of people and footage shot here and there—which produced the Meyer-unfinished Who Killed Bambi?, British music video-artist, filmmaker, and ‘Pistols running mate Julien Temple (1989’s Earth Girls are Easy) got the Alan Sacks job of “doin’ a duBeat-eo” with the hours upon hours of narrative footage and concert clips of the Pistols during their heyday, along with surreal Kentucky Fried Movie-esque skits (that go beyond the funny into the silly . . . and the outright stupid).

Now, for those of you wondering: “What da frack does ‘Doin’ a duBeat-eo’ mean . . . and who is Alan Sacks . . . and what does this all have to do with the friggin’ Sex Pistols?” Well, impatient one, here’s your answer:

Alan Sacks came to fame as the creator of ’70 TV’s Welcome Back, Kotter; you know, that’s the show with the “Ooo! Ooo! Mr. Kotter!” pop culture catch phrase . . . the show that gave John Travolta his start. (He was most recently in the one-two punch bombs The Fanatic and Gotti.) And Alan Sacks got the job of taking the analogously dead pet-project of America’s Malcolm McLaren-doppelganger, record producer-songwriter Svengali Kim Fowley who, ironically ripping off McLaren’s idea, wanted to put his own “female” version of the ‘Pistols, the Runaways, into a “Beatlesesque” movie. (Remember: the ‘Pistols had “Anarchy in the U.K.” while the Runaways had “Cherry Bomb” as their signature tune.) Failed-developed as We’re All Crazy Now, Sacks got the Julien Temple-job of creating coherency out of chaos—and came up with duBeat-e-o, a film that has as much to do with the Runaways as The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle has to do with the Sex Pistols.

So, what did Temple come up with?

Well, he cut Who Killed Bambi? into the film. Sid Vicious—post-Sex Pistols—cut an album, Sid Sings (1979), and cut a video for that album’s centerpiece: a cover Elvis’s and Frank Sinatra’s signature tune, “My Way”—so Temple cut that into the film. (Warning: Sid pulls a gun and shoots into the audience.) And since Johnny Rotten wanted nothing to do with the project from the get-go, Temple opens the film with the snotty lead singer burned in effigy . . . and created an animated sequence that chronicles a beating the vocalist behind “God Save the Queen” took at the hands of Queen Mum-lovin’ thugs. And guitarist Steve Jones’s Rio de Janero visit with infamous British bank robber Ronnie Biggs is cut in. (Jones, ironically, along with Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, worked with Joan Jett on her self-titled solo debut, aka Bad Reputation.) And yeah, and Kurt Cobain Sid Vicious and Courtney Love Nancy Spungen, aka the punk rock John and Yoko, go through their own little psychodrama safety-pin voguing on screen. And, instead of Sex Pistols tunes: you get disco versions of Sex Pistols tunes by a group called the Black Arabs.

You can check out the track listings for each soundtrack on Discogs: Swindle and Fury.

. . . and the ‘swindle’ continues . . .

So Temple decided to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the film with a “sequel”. . . that cut The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’s footage into the—admittedly—more coherent The Filth and the Fury (1990). And, if you’re keeping track . . . marks the third film chronicling punk’s most notorious band: the second was Alex Cox’s (Repo Man, Tombstone Rashomon) spunky, but not wholly historically accurate, Sid and Nancy (1986)—which Johnny Rotten also hated, natch.

With The Filth and the Fury—and without Malcolm McLaren’s marketing imperialism (. . . did you know he embarked on a “solo” career: with producer Trevor Horn, he assembled (McLaren never creates; he can’t. He thieves.) 1983’s Duck Soup)—Temple secured the full cooperation of Johnny Rotten, along with drummer Paul Cook, guitarist Steve Jones, and ex-bassist Glen Matlock, each who provide a new series of interviews, along with “new” interview footage of the late Sid Vicious not seen in Swindle. The interviews are well-executed: Temple peels Rotten-Lydon’s acidic layers and exposes his emotions over Sid’s decline and death. And there’s plenty of “new” footage, albeit, sometimes (most times) with grainy and out-of-sync sound, but kudos for Temple preserving those decrepit 16 mm and shot-on-videotape analog artifacts for the now, digital generations.

Temple was also able to circumcise McLaren’s cultural plundering of punk’s esthetics by showing us that punk rock wasn’t just about flogging the dead horse of Black Sabbath-inspired progressive rock and replenishing the wheezing lungs of rock ‘n’ roll. Punk was an artistic expression of the frustrations the British working class and unemployed (which include Rotten-Lydon’s contemporaries) against the stodgy and greedy British class system (a country where everyone’s on the dole, in poverty; meanwhile, Princess Di and Prince Charles have a huge matrimonial blowout). To that end, Temple also includes new footage of the protests, riots and unrest of the times (think of today’s Black Lives Matter movement and the upheaval in today’s Portland, Oregeon). So while Swindle was a “Swindle” to a point—which wasn’t Temple’s fault, he did a great job with whom and what he had to work with—Fury gets the facts straight and conveys the spirit of the times. So, as you watch both films as a double feature all these years later: you get Malcolm McLaren’s side . . . and the Sex Pistols side. And the twain shall never meet. Not even in the hands of Alex Cox.

The Great Rock ‘n Roll Music Trivia Swindle (you knew there was going to be a trivia sidebar): Before McLaren sunk his incisors into the Sex Pistols, he managed a down-and-out and ready-to-implode New York Dolls, which culminated with the 1975-recorded live, Euro-only album, Red Patent Leather (1984; which features new tunes not available on their two Mercury studio albums).

Also in Mal’s Svengali-stable was the burgeoning Adam and the Ants, who he subsequently “broke up” to provide musical backing for his own “Runaway” embodied in fifteen-year-old singer Annabella Lwin. Upon the eventual implosion of Bow Wow Wow (You do remember “I Want Candy,” right?)—as McLaren turned his Runaway into a singular-named solo artist, you know, like Madonna (not!)—guitarist Matthew Ashman formed Chiefs of Relief. And that band features another musician from the McLaren stables: Sex Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook (produced one eponymous debut album for Sire in 1988).

Prior to the Chiefs—and post-Sex Pistols (by the end of that band, only Steve Jones and Paul Cook were left to finish off a light smattering of tracks to close out that band’s career)—Jones and Cook formed the Professionals (with guitarist Ray McVeigh and bassist Paul Meyers). And, if you’re keeping track of your rock ‘n’ roll flicks, the “band” appeared—sans McVeigh and Meyers—with Paul Simonon of the Clash and British actor Ray Winston in their places, in Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains.

Steve Jones’s solo career culminated with his forming a band around Iggy Pop, which recorded a couple of “comeback” albums for Detroit’s Jim Osterberg in the burgeoning years of the Year of our Lord Kurt Cobain. Johnny Rotten, as you know, reverted to his given name of Lydon and created the band Public Image, Ltd. with ex-Clash guitarist Keith Levene. Ex-Pistols’ bassist Glen Matlock formed the less-punk-more-Knacky new wave the Rich Kids with future Visage and Ultravox members Midge Ure and Rusty Egan, which scored a minor hit single with the title cut song from their lone album, 1983 Ghosts of Princes in Towers. Matlock eventually ended up in Concrete Bulletproof Invisible (an outgrowth of Doll by Doll that recorded one album for MCA Records) which released one pre-grunge album, Big Tears (1988).

Both films and their related soundtracks are easily available as DVDs and CDs, with the films as VODs and PPVs on multiple, international online platforms (hopefully, since these are “official trailers,” we won’t lose them to the black box of death!).

Update, August 2022: Our gratitude for the kindness and positive vibes from Aaron Hunter and his You Tube-based video blog on film (1.7 million followers and counting!), citing this review in his materials.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine (2020)

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Boy Howdy! Another rock-doc about Detroit? We’re still coming down from the high of Detroit’s Suzi Quatro’s career chronicle with the Australian-made Suzi Q. And how can we forget Louder Than Love, the chronicle on Detroit’s famed The Grande Ballroom?

Before the D.I.Y punk ethos of Britain in the late ’70s, that D.I.Y spirit began in the late ’60s with a staff of overworked and underpaid writers, editors, and photographers back by a mascot—Boy Howdy—a faux beer label designed by Robert Crumb, the underground comic book artist behind Fritz the Cat. (Crumb’s life and career is preserved in 1995’s Crumb; you can see Crumb characterized on film by James Urbaniak in 2003’s American Splendor.)

Originally known as Boy Howdy: The Story of CREEM Magazine, this Scott Crawford-directed rock doc chronicles the seminal music magazine from its 1969 launch in Detroit to the untimely death of its publisher Barry Kramer in 1981—and to the magazine’s 1989 demise. And the tale began in a ramshackle office in a burnt-out building in 1967 post-riot Detroit (when it ended: 43 people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and 7,000-plus National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service) as the underground, counterculture newspaper rose to national prominence to go head-to-head with the “sellout” rock publication, Rolling Stone magazine. CREEM covered the bands the mainstream press dared to touch and gave said bands their first national coverage.

December 1974 issue of CREEM featuring Iggy Pop and Ray Manzarek with Jim Morrison’s fabled “ghost,” the Phantom.

While we get to see archive footage of the iconic Lester Bangs (portrayed on film by Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2000’s Almost Famous; Patrick Fugit was Cameron Crowe), along with those in the CREEM bunker and Detroit trenches with writers Crowe and Dave Marsh, along with Alice Cooper, Wayne Kramer of the MC 5, and Suzi Quatro—as any film on Detroit should—we get a little bit too much of the impressions and “what CREEM meant to me” insights from its musician-readers, such as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Chris Stein of Blondie, and the J.Geils Band’s Peter Wolf.

Sure, those musicians played shows in Detroit and the magazine supported their early careers, but the film needed a little less of them and more from the Detroiters—regardless of their obscurity or lack of national fame—in the proceedings. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS also offer their insights; however, not only was Detroit a major tour stop for—and early supporter of—the band, Simmons was a part of the “scene” as result of his clandestine recording sessions at Detroit’s Fiddlers Music with that studio’s engineer, Scott Strawbridge. (Scott Strawbridge discusses his Detroit reflections in the Medium article “Happy Dragons, Phantoms, Fiddlers, Rockets, and Spliffs: The Career of Scott Strawbridge.”) And do we really have to mention that KISS song?

While some of the Detroit scenesters I’ve spoken with from back in the day have their passionate qualms about the film, as to whom was in the film and who wasn’t, it’s my feeling those omissions are the result of the unavailability (and sadly, deaths) of those individuals and not cinematic ineptitude—not when one considers the filmmaking pedigree behind the film. Plus, I’d have to add: Clevelanders I know—who were close friends with the late Stiv Bators—were none too happy with Stiv (2019), the document on the late Dead Boys’ singer; in fact, MTV’s Martha Quinn, who dated Stiv Bators in the ’80s, was absent from the film.

And so it goes . . . you can’t please everyone when it comes to rock docs. There’s always going to be detractors who feel the film is “incomplete,” one way or another.

Screenwriter Jaan Uhelszki, an American music journalist who was the co-founder of CREEM, was one of the first women to work in rock journalism. Uhelszki’s August 1975 feature article, “I Dreamed I Was Onstage with KISS in My Maidenform Bra,” documents the night she performed in full costume and makeup with KISS—the only rock journalist ever to do so. She also traveled with Lynyrd Skynyrd for a feature article about their second-to-last tour (be sure to check out our review of the 2020 Lynyrd Skynyrd bio flick Street Survivors). And I’d have to point out: Jaan Uhelszki was born and raised in Detroit and worked as a “Coke Girl” selling sodas at The Grande Ballroom—yet, she does not appear in the documentary Louder Than Love about the Grande. (FYI: Suzi Quatro also started out as a “Coke Girl” at Detroit’s Hideout Ballrooms operated by Bob Seger’s manager, Punch Andrews.)

You’ve seen Jaan Uhelszki’s film work before with the absolutely stellar documentary about the tragic, unsung career of Chris Bell, along with Alex Chilton, with Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012). (You can catch the film as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV.) You can spend more time with Jaan and look through her photo archives at her personal website.

Director Scott Crawford made his feature film debut with the worldwide, critically-acclaimed document, Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC 1980-90. If you’re a fan of Bad Brains, Minor Threat (Ian McKay of Another State of Mind), and Scream (Dave Grohl’s band before Nirvana), then that film is a must watch. Crawford grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and published his own CREEM-inspired ‘zine in his teen years; he understands the mid-western D.I.Y ethos that also drove the punk scene of his hometown.

This is a truly great, American Rock ‘n’ Roll Movie about America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine. Watch it.

You can learn more at the film’s official website and you can stream it at Amazon Prime, You Tube Movies, and other VOD platforms. For the hardcopy version, you can check out CREEM writer Robert Matheu’s 2007 book of the same name, available on Amazon.

Update: As of November 24, throughout the U.S. and Canada, you can purchase the DVD of CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine through Kino Lorber. You can learn more about Kino Lorber’s complete roster of films at their official website and Facebook, and watch the related film trailers on You Tube.

From the Shamless Plugs Department: Since we’re on the subject of Detroit rock ‘n’ roll and honoring those fading memories of the musicians and the times: I wrote two books about the 1974, Detroit-born mystery and myth of Jim Morrison’s etheral doppelganger, The Phantom—with the books The Ghost of Jim Morrison, The Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock and Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis. Both books are available worldwide through all online retailers for all eReader platforms, and as Amazon-exclusive softcovers.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Why Haven’t They Fixed the Cameras Yet? (2020)

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If you’re a frequent visitor to B&S About Movies, you know of my admiration for Law and Order: TOS and SVU. However, while expertly produced and acted, my precious exploits of Captain Olivia Benson and her squad (and Blue Bloods, I think) sometimes falls back on the ol’ the-car-won’t start-at-the-most-inopportune-moment trope of the ol’ our-security-cameras-haven’t-worked-in-months-and-our-bosses-are-too-cheap-to-fix-‘em trope.

But guess what?

It’s not a screenwriting trope. I’ve witnessed four incidents during my 9 to 5 lifetime where crimes-incidents (yes, people do spike coffee pots and icepick tires and key paint and steal food and spread icky-sticky things around and go into cubicle “smack down” mode) occurred in my workplace—and the cameras were broke. And yes, back in the pre-digital epoch when VCRs interfaced with those cameras—the VHS tapes really were “taped over” every 24 to 48 hours. And security cameras really are the new “digital mailboxes,” as wayward teens like to either—due to a lack of a “canvas” to craft an epithet on—spray paint the lenses or give ‘em a whack with a baseball bat, you know, for fun. Those rascally scamps.

Courtesy of digital technologies and through constant hardware miniaturization upgrades, security cameras—that you don’t know are there and everywhere—are recording everything. And if there’s not a camera to capture our societal faux pas, someone is at the smartphone-ready—recording everything. Then there are those high-tech-toys-not-meant-for-boys drones that, as with any piece of technology, are a benefit to man in the right hands—and a nefarious tool in bad hands. And if those technologies aren’t capturing us in an innocent Ridiculousness moment, the digital ethers chronicle our not-so-innocent-moments; ubiquitous technologies that leads to nary the pass of a day that our local and national news or browser portal feeds go without a newsworthy event or crime—thought private—that becomes our “forever” moment. . . .

A young office worker is thrust into that world of false security set forth by those omnipresent cameras capturing our forever moments—cameras that really are sometimes malfunctioning or vandalized and never repaired by our bottom-line employers. And if you’ve worked odd-ball hours in the big city, then you’ve experienced the reasonable fears of those remote, concrete wildernesses known as a parking garage. . . .

And, for this young office drone, that broken security camera in that desolate parking garage becomes a catalyst: her life is about to change . . . but is it for the better . . . or the worst?

Spoiler Alert: Watch the short, now, in its entirety, before scrolling onward.

Prior to watching and reviewing this debut work by Austin, Texas-based writer and director Travis White, I wrote an upcoming review for our October “All Slasher-All Horror Month” for Thom Eberhardt’s (Night of the Comet) horror-thriller Naked Fear (2007)—a film that concerns a woman’s emotional breakdown and catharsis at the nefarious hands of others.

The reason for my critical analogy of these two decade-apart films is that I see the possibilities of White’s short film—which is exactly what a short film is supposed to do: leave you wanting more; to serve as a visual business card to pitch a feature film development deal.

I’m not privy to reading “Why Is It Always So Dark Here?,” the short story on which this film is based, but I look forward to learning about this office worker’s exploits that—considering Thom Eberhardt’s work with the great Sir Michael Caine (1988’s Without a Clue)—remind of one of my favorite films starring Sir Michael: A Shock to the System (1990). In that film, the accidental death of a hated co-worker at Caine’s hands starts off an anti-hero murder-to-right-the-wrongs-and-for-workplace-advancement chain of events.

Office Parties: I hate people, but love gatherings. Isn’t it ironic?/courtesy of Wet Demin Productions

You can watch the complete film—and other productions—courtesy of Wet Demin Production’s You Tube page. And, in a special treat, we have an opportunity to share the film’s storyboards completed by writer-director Travis White. As you can see, no matter how long or short the film, an incredible amount of thought, time, effort, and planning goes into a film. It’s not about the length. It’s always about the content. Always.

If this is what Travis White (and producer Madison Phillips) can do in less than five minutes with his debut work, then we’re looking forward to see what he can do with his future works. In fact, he’s currently in the pre-production stages of his next short-narrative, Man Seeking Man (beware of those who ask for “favors”), which will see release in 2021. And you’ll hear about it first, at B&S About Movies.

And bigger things are on the horizon for actress Lee Eddy, here as the nameless office worker. She’s currently in pre-production on Richard Linklater’s (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure, a coming-of-age story set in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, in the summer of 1969, centered on the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. That film stars Zachary Levi (Thor: Ragnarok and Shazam!) and Jack Black (Jumanji: The Next Level). Eddy’s husband, Macon Blair, won the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival for the Netflix-released I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. Fans of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard may want to check out the film (it’s great, by the way) as it co-stars lead vocalist David Yow (Under the Silver Lake).

Disclaimer: We were provided a screener by the film’s public relations firm. That has no bearing on our review.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Water (2020)

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“Uh, Mr. and Mrs. Yates? How do you like your hedges trimmed?”
“I don’t know. Darling, do you like your bush, square or round?”
—Mr. Yates multitasking ‘breakfast sex’ and getting rid of Daryl the groundkeeper

For most people residing in the wilds of Arizona (Pinnacle Peak outside of Phoenix/Mesa), when a mountain lion wakes them from a poolside nap . . . well, I know what “function” my body would do. Then there’s Phillip Penza. The beastly encounter inspired him to make a movie: he started to think about the “safety” of the pool; that jumping in the water—if the lion had charged, instead of running off—would have saved his life.

Now, as we’ve said many times before at B&S About Movies: when it comes to the low-budget films that cross our transom, it’s all about the cast that makes us hit that big red streaming button. And in this case, it wasn’t the ubiquitous Eric Roberts—it was Lorenzo Lamas, aka Reno Raines from our beloved 1992 to 1997 syndicated series Renegade (I never missed it!). Lamas currently resides in Arizona and previous worked on Penza’s debut film, My Name is Nobody (2014), along with the just-released (to Amazon Prime) vampire romp, Real Blood: The True Beginning. (Penza’s other films are 2016’s Movie Madness, and 2019’s Fire and Rain.)

We won’t sugar coat: the IMDb and Amazon streamingverse hasn’t been kind to Penza’s third (out of five) film. But again, like we always say here at B&S About Movies: you have to cut generous slack for the filmmakers and actors in the indieverse and view their films through a less judgmental set of eyes. Acting faux pas are par for the course. There’s going to be directorial, cinematography, and editorial stumbles. But there’s bad acting and filmmaking: then there’s filmmakers that are trying. And in the case of Phillip Penza and his crew and cast of unknown, Phoenix-based filmmakers, they’re pleasantly gallant in their efforts.

And Penza certainly knows his way around a script (the well-written line, noted above, spoken by Mr. Yates, himself a successful screenwriter, brought on a laugh-out loud moment). At first, it looks as if we have ourselves a low-budget desert noir of the old ‘90s USA Network variety (back when that channel produced original content before becoming an aftermarket shill for NBC-TV series), with the Yates—the home’s new residents—suffering a violent, home-invasions fate brought on by the home’s previous residents.

Then it veers off course.

When we meet Frank (Lorenzo Lamas), a well-off psychiatrist (They’re always more “defective” than their patients, aren’t they?) with a private, home-based practice inside his desert-mansion spread, he’s in the midst of a poolside tryst with his wife’s best friend—who’s returned early from a business trip. The ensuing knife fight results in Frank drowning his wife—and his lover urging him to “chop up the body and burn her in the outdoor fire pit.”

Yeah, Frankie knows how to pick ‘em. Good Headshinker. Good judge of character.

And Frank—who’s always in it for the nookie—does the deed. And guess who gets the next whack of the ax? Eh, you know how it is when your “disappeared” wife’s $11 million life insurance policy pays off—thanks to your buddy in the police department closing the case: there’s no sharesies for the side action in your life. Ah, but ol’ Frankie made one fatal mistake: he dumped his wife’s ashes in the pool. And she’s pissed off, rightfully so. Yep. This film noir just went supernatural on your ass with “killer water” spilling out of faucets and showers, less-than-forthcoming real estate agents, flickering lights, creaking chairs, missing Santeria priests, J-Horror Yūrei’s disappearing down sink drains, kids walking on water and talkin’ to disembodied playground swings—and one bitch-ass of a backyard pool (that dispatched Frank’s latest secretary-squeeze).

There’s been a lot of aquatic horror movies (we burned through some of that water-resume with our review of 2020’s Underwater); however, for the life of me, I can’t recall any films with “killer water” flowing through a home’s plumbing system. So, to that end: Phillip Penza certainly impressed me with a unique twist to the haunted house genre (which, again, I thought I was getting a neo-noir)—a house lost somewhere between Wes Craven’s “electrified spirit” serial killer romp, Shocker (1989) and the Bruce Dern-starring The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971).

That latter film is recalled courtesy of Big Brody’s effective turn as Daryl Brown (also reminding of the late Michael Clarke Duncan of The Green Mile), the desert abode’s low intelligence-gentle giant that reminds of John Bloom’s heartfelt turn as Danny Norton in that early-70s AIP drive-in classic. But those are more than likely coincidental—and not direct, inspirational similarities—pulled from my personal, analog-film snob cortexes. But what we do get with Water is decent I-didn’t-think-this-was-going-this-way plot twists and a couple of eye-widening, noirish character-defective moments paired with atmospheric cinematography and genuinely creepy special effects.

In the end, the indie spirit of Phoenix, Arizona, is in Phillip Penza’s capable hands. So take a dip in his supernatural neo-noir, will ya? The water’s fine (sorry).

While you can watch Water ad-free on Amazon Prime for a very affordable price, it recently made its debut as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. You can learn more about Phillip Penza’s works at the official website and Facebook page of Little Book Films. Penza also discusses the making and release of Water in a radio interview posted on You Tube.

Oh, and speaking of Eric Roberts (The Arrangement and Lone Star Deception): there he is, again! The master thespian co-stars in Phillip Penza’s webseries Scrutiny, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo on Demand.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Disclaimer: We were not provided a screener nor received a review request from the filmmakers or their P.R firm. We discovered this film on our own and genuinely enjoyed movie.

Ji (2019)

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We’ve gone down the DUST rabbit hole once before — as part of last year’s Scarecrow Video of Seattle’s Psychotronic October Scarecrow Challenge of watching 31 movies in 31 days. For the 24th day of the challenge, the theme was “Short Attention Span Theatre: Watch Some Shorts or Anthology Things.” And I chose to meet the challenge with a pair of short films from DUST: a You Tube-based, social media portal that features science fiction shorts from emerging filmmakers obsessed with aliens, robots, space exploration, technology, and the human experience in space.

During my last year’s DUST excursion, I felt moved to the point of wanting to review two of the many wonderful films on the DUST platform — and chose to review Colin West’s Plastic Pink Flamingos and Marko Slavanic’s Skyborn. This year, I was wowed by the writing and directing, narrative-fiction debut of Ben Griffin, a filmmaker who earned his bones in the music video field with the likes of Demi Lovato, Imagine Dragons, Machine Gun Kelly, and Metallica* (2019’s Metallica & San Francisco Symphony). (We previously reviewed A Clear Shot, the latest feature film by Nick Leisure, himself a writer-director who rose up through the music video field ranks.)

Lewis Tan (Shatterstar in Deadpool 2; Gaius Chau on AMC’s Into The Badlands; Lu Xin Lee in Netflix’s Wu Assassins) is Ji, a modified human and commanding General in a military unit protecting the mechanized exo-planet Nilo. His artificial life on his artificial home world is perfect — yet, he hungers to learn of his human roots.

Against orders and abandoning his post, Ji sets off for Earth and comes to discover it’s not the wasteland he and his people were told. Upon arrival, he meets an Earth woman (Eva De Dominici, of the upcoming Bruce Willis sci-fi actioner Cosmic Sin and TV’s Hawaii Five-O) and falls in love. You’ll also recognized Peter Adrian Sudarso (Marvin Shih and Preston Tien in the respective Power Rangers‘ spinoff series HyperForce and Ninja Steel) as Ji’s commanding officer who ventures to Earth to return him to Nilo.

Ben Griffin’s debut is the epitome of skilled filmmaking at its finest, complete with a top-notch, imaginative script flowing in perfect harmony with a solid cast and stunning special effects: a highly recommended watch that’s worthy of expansion into a feature-length film. The last time I was this enraptured with an action-oriented short film, was Brando Benetton’s top notch college thesis project, Nightfire. Which proves my ongoing point: it doesn’t have to be long to be good: it’s in the content, not the length.

You can learn more about the works of San Francisco’s Ben Griffin and his Prime Zero Productions at their official website, Facebook and You Tube pages. After completing a successful film festival run, Ji is now available at DUST You Tube as of July 30, 2020.

* We previously reviewed Metallica’s support of Spencer Susser in 2010’s Hesher (Will somebody please back Spencer and let him make another feature film, will yah? Hesher is so good.)

Disclaimer: We were not sent a screener or received a review request for this short. We discovered it on our own and truly enjoyed the work.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Run (2020)

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If you haven’t noticed: I write a lot of reviews about films at B&S About Movies. And when I am not writing about movies, I’m talking about films—both in the fingering-digital and lipping-physical realms. There nothing quite like hanging out during a Groovy Doom Saturday Night Double Feature Watch Party (Ugh, more shameful plugs!) and chatting with the digital patrons or at a sports bar with your fellow actors and filmmakers, discuss-debating films and examining the industry (sorely missed during these COVID days)—while the Steelers dominate the gridiron, and the Pirates, the diamond.

The revamped streaming one-sheet

One of those discussions was in regards to attending movie theatres vs. streaming and, to that end, which streaming service: Hulu or Netflix. The general consensus: Hulu is the cut-out bargain bin of streamers; they’re the $5.00 impulse-buy barrel on the aisle sandwiched between the home goods and electronics section. Netflix is where people actually log-on to see a film. Yep. It’s the old My Space vs. Facebook and Facebook vs. Snapchat argument, again. Ugh!

And my buddy, Eric; he who despises all thing Seinfeldian (Oops, sorry Sam!) and minces no words when expressing his disdain for failures in the artistic realms, added this observation: “Why the frack is friggin’ Sarah Paulson always friggin’ ranting, bawling, and running around like madwoman in every movie?”

Eric’s also never heard of writer-director Aneesh Chaganty. But I have. And I really enjoyed his previous film, Searching. Chaganty’s adept at the Final Draft and framing the Canon Reds; therefore, I have no doubt that, with his skills as a filmmaker, in conjunction with the always-very-good Paulson as his lead actress (12 Years a Slave, TV’s Law & Order), I had a feeling Run was another worthy streamer on his behalf—regardless of the opinion that “Hulu is the dumping ground for projects studios have no faith in.”

Ah, but the studios do.

Lionsgate had Chaganty’s sophomore effort penciled for a national theatrical release three months ago, back on May 8. Then the pandemic hit and shut down the big theatre chains in March. And while the theatre chain operators are none too happy, the major studios are thankful that we’re living in the digital clouds of 2020; if the COVID virus hit in the Soylent Green-year of 1975, when there was no streaming . . . perish the thought. So, for reasons that aren’t of our middling consumer concerns: Lionsgate cut a deal—instead with Netflix—to stream on Hulu. In fact, another of Lionsgate’s films, the Janelle Monae-horror Antebellum, had its theatrical rollout axed for a September 18 digital premiere.

Even without a pandemic, the fact remains: the brick-and-mortar theatreverse is in a competitive battle—first with cable television, then with PPV, and now with streaming services. Today, theatre chains are all about tentpole-films and summer blockbusters. Those ‘90s-halcyon days of driving to an outside-of-the-big-city six-plex with a screen or two dedicated to a Miramax or Fox Searchlight release (starring Steve Buscemi and Crispin Glover!) are over. Low-to-mid budget movies from mini-majors in the big-city plexs—like Lionsgate, with films like Run and Antebellum—are over. The new, congealing distribution model seems to be forgoing traditional theatrical releases and issuing indie-flicks straight into the home digital markets. In a 28-plex behemoth marketplace, how will audiences find these smaller genre films, like The App from Elisa Fursas and Jason Lester’s High Resolution?

Hello, streaming service.

So, what are we babbling about here? As his previous movie Searching proves: Aneesh Chaganty is a solid filmmaker. And as someone who streams more than his fair share of indie streamers—especially in the horror genre—I’m grateful that he’s giving us a film that’s of a quality that’s head and shoulders above steaming norms. For me, it’s not the service that delivers the film: it’s the film itself. So the mindset here is to cut Aneesh Chaganty some slack and not predisposition his sophomore effort as “awful” just because the backing studio made a deal with one streaming service over the other.

Are we now maligning films over the streaming platform that distributes the movie? Is that what all of this COVID news-cycling has done to us?

The original threatical one-sheet with a nice ’70s retro-Giallo vibe

Aneesh Chaganty has taken an already terrifying, destructive mental illness, one that also manifests itself as a multi-physical illness in another—Munchausen by Proxy—and turned the admittedly tired stalking genre (deluded by Lifetime’s endless stream of psycho-antagonists vs. damsel-in-distress flicks) upside down.

Diane (Sarah Paulson) is a mother whose love runs deep—deep enough that’s she put her daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) into a wheelchair. And because of the bullying and discrimination that accompanies a handicap; Diane holds her daughter in a home school isolation that’s slowly built since Chloe’s birth. Diane’s method of control: she medicates her daughter into a mystery- debilitating illness that results in a perpetual round of surgeries and more medications. Now a teenager, Chloe beings to suspect her mother’s love isn’t one of compassion, and not one of a mental illness out of her mother’s control, but one of a sinister, ulterior motive that has nothing to do with love.

You can keep up to date on the release rollout of Run and the ever-expanding library on Hulu at their website or Twitter and Facebook pages. You can also get more info at Lionsgate.com.

UPDATE: Hulu set a premiere date for November 20, 2020.

Disclaimer: We weren’t provided with a screener nor received a review request from the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Cruel Peter (2020)

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Surfing TubiTV’s digital library is a byte-shoot on the digital felts of the cloud. Most times you stream 2, 3 and 12s; but sometimes you’ll upload 7s and 11s. If one exhibits patience—and cross-references with the IMBb—they’ll 7 and 11 well-made overseas films that, in the horror oeuvres, are on equal with any of the U.S. domestics from the commercial A24 and Blumhouse slots. And many of these under-the-felts streaming cherries come courtesy of the industry’s leading indie-film streaming purveyor Wild Eye Entertainment (along with other distributors, such as Gravitas Ventures, Indie Rights, Uncork’d Entertainment, and ITN Studios), which has been importing some very impressive foreign horrors: the neo-giallos Dark Sister (aka Australia’s Sororal) and Evil River (aka Italy’s Shanda’s River) are two of those recently spun jackpots. Other recent, satisfying byte-shoots were the Asian horrors Daughter (aka Hong Kong’s Shuang shen) and 0.0 MHz (South Korea). Then there’s the inventive found-footage tale Cold Ground (France’s Sol Froid), the creative zombie tale Inmate Zero (aka, Wales-Ireland’s Patients of a Saint), the radio station-based thriller When Murder Calls (aka Canada’s Radio Silence), and the Liam Neeson-styled actioner Revenge (aka, France’s Revanche).

Sadly, many movie lovers see these films as “three lemons” on the ol’ roulette app because the indie distributors, as you can see, forgo the films’ original titles from the respective country’s initial theatrical release and digitally rebaptize the films for American-domestic consumption—and pair the rechristened films with admittedly well-drawn/shot, but low-grade, sensationalistic-to-cheesy streaming one-sheets that make the films look like so many of the other (amateur-to-lower budget) sensationalistic-to-cheesy indie streams out there; you know the type: the films where the incident/character on the poster never occurs/appears in the film. The aforementioned Daughter and Evil River—with their respective, stringy-haired possessed girls crucifixion-floating above their bed under the sign of a wall-scribbled pentagram and rising out of mucky river waters in front of a remote, rural cabin—are the worse-case examples of a great movie hidden under deceptive-discouraging J-Horror-inspired art work.

And that brings us to the English-language Italian import Cruel Peter. You’ll notice that the streaming one-sheets—as do all streaming one-sheets, because of the size-diminishing of a movie’s poster in an online library—forgo tagline and credits: instead you get artwork (rebooted-sensationalistic, natch) and a title. That’s it.

Of course, Cruel Peter churned out of the digital-distribution sausage processing centers relatively intact. But still: That red-hued poster makes me think that some kid with a Jess Franco-level grease paint-cum-oatmeal gook-acne problem, under the direction of Don Dohler, is wreaking havoc in a small town. And I am burnt out on A) Shaky-cam cheap horrors, B) Zombies, especially of the kid variety or any creepy brats of the low-budget variety, C) If I want to see a Don Dohler movie (e.g., Night Beast), I’ll watch an actual Don Dohler movie, and D) Don’t mistake celluloid ineptitude as a “retro-homage” to a ’70s drive-in ditty, because, well the classy-majesty of The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), Messiah of Evil (1973) and The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974) are never going to be duplicated.

Which is why you need to hit the big red streaming button and byte-shoot the digital felts and let the 1s and 0s roll stream for at least 10 minutes . . . and in the case of this second feature film collaboration from writer/directors Christian Bisceglia and Ascanio Malgarini, I am glad I took the digital gambit.

The duo’s first effort was the under-the-radar The Haunting of Helena (2012); which, natch, got the ‘ol U.S. distribution reboot retitle-cover art boondoggle as Fairytale. Based on that female-centric corpse from the Sam Raimi School of Witch Bitches and Cellar Dwellers screaming through the window, I probably came across it on a streaming platform—and passed on it because I don’t take well to scary toys, dolls, freak clowns (real or puppet), or fluttering Lord of the Rings-inspired fairy-creatures due to my own childhood traumas. But that’s my loss. Based on my enjoyment of Cruel Peter, I’m seeking out The Haunting of Helena—now that I know the film’s true title vs. its deceptive title.

What we have here with Cruel Peter is a psychological, neo-Gothic flick that expertly pays homage to the ’70s productions of Hammer and Amicus Studios. As the characters navigate the remodeled, rural Italian villas, overgrown cemeteries, and crumbly crypts, we drift back to the Italian and Spanish, old-school horrors of yesteryear by Armando De Ossorio (his four-film “Blind Dead” series) and Paul Naschy (Horror Rises from the Tomb); a film awash in superb, picturesque locations—only with the high production values afforded to an A24 or Blumhouse domestic U.S. production—sans the mainstream “jump scares” modus operandi of those studios’ resumes.

We’ve got animated, articulate corpses, demon wall-crawling, shadowy ghosts rising out of floors, hands emerging from a murky sink waters, witchcraft, necromancy, and poltergeists afoot in a creepy, slow burn that dispenses with the been-there-and-done-that blood n’ guts slasher-gore and trades up for an articulate approach of dripping-with-atmosphere cinematography and plotting. Cruel Peter is a horror film just like the ‘70s used to make—before John Carpenter’s Halloween reinvented (for better or worse; opinions vary) the horror genre and drowned ‘80s home video shelves with an endless stream of implement-slashing, woodsy stalkers.

The film begins in 1908 in the village of Messina, Sicily, where a rich, English-bred mother coddles her 10-year old son’s sociopathic tendencies. Peter’s prone to slashing a servant girl’s face, dousing a caged field mouse with lighter fluid to watch the poor creature burn, and buries the dog of a house servant’s son alive. It’s also believed Peter murdered his own father. But the dog’s death was the last straw: the children of the villa’s servants ambush Peter and bury him alive.

And in the case of the “Devil looks after his own”: an earthquake strikes and kills thousands—and decimates the town’s cemetery where Peter was buried. And he’s forgotten. . . .

In the present day, Norman, a widowed British archaeologist—with his own bag of demons and closeted bones—along with his resentful, strong-willed and deaf-mute daughter Liz, relocate (and take up resident in Peter’s old villa home) for Norman’s latest assignment: excavate and restore Messina’s long-neglected cemetery. Courtesy of her father and late mother’s work, Liz also has an interest in the past—a deeper past of the supernatural and occult where she spends her days examining grimoires as she plays with a Ouija Board-inscribed crystal ball that displays letters on the wall—all in the efforts to contact her late mother.

During the excavations, Norman discovers Peter’s lost grave—and a small box of Peter’s belongings. Now freed, Peter, through Liz’s occult interests, makes contact—which she thinks is her mother. As Peter’s possession is fully realized, Liz’s personality changes and Peter extracts his long-simmering revenge.

During this article’s search-and-destroy Intel mission, a constant comment by threaders on the Amazon Prime and Netflix frontiers: the film is too dark; you can’t see anything. And the TubiTV stream I watched—in a darkened room with no light glare—was dark; characters and sets washed-out in shadows. Monitor adjustments didn’t help. So we’re not sure if that’s the result of a cinematography snafu, a post-production oversight, or an artistic choice of using a real location’s (not a stage set) natural light. But what it actually seems to be is a screen-ratio issue. Cruel Peter, based on its stellar, high production values—while it’s been primarily seen outside of its native Italy (and probably Europe) as a cable PPV and, more likely, as an online VOD—isn’t just another direct-to-streaming production: it’s a theatrical feature film, again, of an A24 and Blumhouse-level, meant to be seen on the big screen. It seems the image compression for streaming devices compromised the film’s cinematography and caused the “too dark” issues. The solution: watch on a laptop, sit closer, and angle the screen until you find a comfortable position.

It’s worth the effort. Cruel Peter is a great horror flick to nosh popcorn by—just like the ‘70s used to pop—without the slasher-bloody buttery aftertaste.

Netflix gave Cruel Peter its U.S. debut proper in June. It’s now available as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv; you can also watch it on You Tube/Amazon Prime. The Haunting of Helena is not available on TubiTV, but is available as a VOD on You Tube/Amazon Prime.

Disclaimer: We weren’t provided a screener nor received a review request from the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review. We discovered this film on our own and genuinely enjoyed the movie.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.

Drive-In Friday: Documentaries About Directors Night

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“Documentaries are boring. Who wants to watch a bunch of talking heads bragging about themselves?”
—Eric, purveyor of film quality and all things Sein(feld)suck.

And to a degree, I agree with my running-bud Eric: unless you have an interest in the subject matter at hand. As someone who’s spent his life in radio broadcasting and enamored with the craft of filmmaking, I’ve watched more than my fair share documentaries on the subjects of broadcasting and radio personalities, and film with its related actors and directors. And, even in person, those creative individuals can push self-aggrandizing into the new limits of boredom.

Don’t believe me?

The Snack Bar is Open! Free Dove Bars if you buy a hotdog. Darn freezer’s broke again!

Go to a party or any social gathering. Find yourself an actor or director. And I am not talking about running into a well-rounded, educated fellow like Werner Herzog with whom you can have a meaningful conversation about anything from soup to nuts. I am talking about the (always) one-the-way-up-and-after-one-film-they-think-they’re-Elvis types. But since this is in reference to film: Steven Spielberg. And actors are worse than directors. Christian Bale and Klaus Kinski earned the right to set-rant. You, Mr. DeMille and Ms. Desmond, do not.

Don’t believe me?

Watch The Disaster Artist, the (excellent) dramedy about the making of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. There’s a telling scene in the film where actor Greg Sestero confides his career frustrations to a fellow thespian—and all the other actor can do is drone on and on about how great his career is going. And as someone with lots of “under the tent” experience in holding areas, I’ve seen and heard it all, ad nauseam. Sestero tells it true.

And screenwriters? Well, I’ll spare you that paragraph, but here’s the equation: Director ego x Actor oneselfness = the greatest screenwriter in the world, aka “Listen to me, for I am the lord god of all scribes surveyed.”

And heaven forbid if you don’t like that up-and-coming Elvis-Spielberg’s latest entry to their no-one-has-ever-heard-of-or-seen oeuvre, aka a celluloid nobody and never will be: be prepared for the bowels of hell to rip open and for the lathes of heaven to crash into the fiery abyss and scorch to embers. Yeah, sometimes (almost always) the auteur is just another egomaniacal Billy Walsh (know your Entourage trivia) who blesses you with the distinct privilege of viewing their master(shite)piece—just because it received a set of “Official Selection” leaves from some obscure, off-the-circuit, emo-haughty film festival that won’t be in business next year and mainstream Hollywood doesn’t acknowledge because, well, Hollywood is already full up with more talented haughties than yourself. But thanks for asking! We’ll be looking for that star on the walk of fame, DeMille.

But even the established directors can be a handful, as evidenced in The Man You Love to Hate (1979), about the uncompromising director of silent films, Erich von Stroheim (acted in Sunset Boulevard). There’s Luchino Visconti (1999), about the iconic neorealist behind (the incredible, must watches) The Leopard, Death in Venice and Ludwig. There’s Felini: I’m a Born Liar (2002), Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier (1995), about the director behind the seminal vampire flick, 1932’s Vampyr, and Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Film Maker’s Life (1971). And you can go on and on . . . with docs about Robert Altman, a couple regarding Woody Allen and Roman Polanksi, along with Orson Wells, Howard Hawks, Bergman, Kurosawa, Kurbick, and even producer Robert Evans. The documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls examines the industry and careers of ‘60s “bulls” Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich, and Sam Peckinpah. And, speaking of Werner Herzog: Burden of Dreams (1982) follows the German (deserving of the noun spoken in the same sentence as his name) auteur as he deals with difficult actors, bad weather and getting a boat over a mountain during Fitzcarraldo.

But this is B&S About Movies . . . and you know us crazy, frolicking lads in the wilds of Allegheny County. We’ve got to go just a little bit deeper into the films—the realm of documentaries about directors. You may not know them. You may know them and hate them. But you know what: they don’t care. They, with a Kurt Vonnegut tenacity, just keep on creating. And that’s cool with me.

Image available across multiple sites; source unknown

Movie 1: The Insufferable Groo (2018)

At the time of the filming of this documentary by Scott Christopherson, Provo, Utah, resident Steven Groo’s resume encompassed 166 films—after its release, his resume grew to 200 films. A lesser documentarian would most likely—as so many internet warriors—slag Groo’s ultra-low-budget tales. Instead—what makes this film so lovely and tragic at the same time—is that Christopherson focuses on Groo’s determination to tell his stories. While Groo can be admittedly abrasive, his tenacity paid off with the patronages of actor Jack Black and director Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre fame. And Jack Black starred in Goo’s Unexpected Race (2018). In the end, you root for Groo.

You can watch The Insufferable Groo as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. You can also watch Unexpected Race on the platform, as well. Since Groo participated in its making and approves of the film, you can still find this document out in the Internet ethers. The same can’t be said for our next feature. . . .

Movie 2: Neil Breen Movie Magic (2020)

When Tommy Wiseau’s name drops, the name of ultra-independent filmmaker Neil Breen follows. And if you’re a hardcore fan of ultra-low budget films, Cybela Clare—with her equally incompetent-to-obsessive films about humanity, animals, and aliens rife with awful CGI set design—name drops after Breen’s. To say Breen is a film cult icon is an understatement. Plug Breen’s name into You Tube or Google and you’ll discover the rabid fandom of his works. His films couldn’t be more polarizing: they’re either IMDb-rated as 1-star or 10-star . . . although it’s obvious the 10-starrers are pure parody-sarcasm, at best.

Anyways . . . a licensed architect by trade who made his money in real estate, Breen self-financed/produced, directed and starred in his debut feature, Double Down (2005). As of 2018, he completed five films and has since launched pre-production on his sixth film: Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2023).

You may love ‘em. You may hate ‘em. You may say they suck—and they ultimately do—but courtesy of an underground fan base cultivated via social media, Breen’s films—in a Wiseauian twist—have been picked up by arthouse theatres and film festivals around the world.

Sadly, you can no longer watch Neil Breen Movie Magic on You Tube. Yeah, it seems ol’ Neil can’t take criticism: the film wasn’t favorable to his works, so he’s since had the film pulled; however, to Neil’s credit: it did use his intellectual property without his approval.

So, as any narcissist would: Breen released his own documentary in response: Neil Breen’s 5 Film Retrospective, in May 2020. As with Neil Breen’s Movie Magic: it is another must-watch for Breen fans. You can watch Breen’s insights on himself on You Tube.

Needless to say: The trailers for Neil’s movies are as bloated as his films . . . so strap in for a 9-minute trailer to Neil’s self aggrandizing documentary. A nine-minute trailer? I guess it’s justified, considering the movie itself is five-hours long. For reals.

Don’t worry. Neil’s not offended. He’s gone on record to say he doesn’t read his reviews (but had Movie Magic pulled, so . . . okay) a few which this Las Vegas Weekly article features.

Intermission!

Back to the show!

Movie 3: Will Work for Views: The Lo-Fi Life of Weird Paul (2019)

Say what you will about Pittsburgh You Tube star Weird Paul—but the dude has 34,000-plus subscribers. People love him. You can’t help but dig him and his unique brand of retro-‘80s video productions, which he’s been posting since signing onto You Tube on Feb 4, 2007. I’ve been a fan of Paul’s ever since. And so should you. He’d make Kurt Vonnegut proud.

You can watch Will Work for Views as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV.

Movie 4: Overnight (2003)

It amazes me that for as many people that have watched Boondock Saints—and quote the film, wear the t-shirts, and even have Boondock Saints “double gun” lamps on their end tables in their media room—have no knowledge of this documentary shot by writer-director Troy Duffy’s former friends.

You may have heard the stories about Duffy’s meteoric rise and even quicker fall, but here’s your chance to see it all up close and personal. Even if you aren’t a fan of documentaries or have not the need-to-know about what goes on behind a camera, you’ll be fascinated by this document that tells us the story of a (film and music) career that might have been. For bless the “Holy Fool.”

You can watch Overnight as a free with-ads-stream on TubiTv. Unlike Breen: Since Duffy authorized the cameras filming his every move during the making of his film, he couldn’t stop this film from being seen.

“Documentaries suck and are made by people who can’t make a real movie. I’d rather sit through a TBS Seinsuck marathon.”
—Eric

Indeed, Eric. Indeed.

Like I always say: Friends and film, huh? But chicks and film is (always) worse. (A woman who digs Klaus Kinski and knows Paul Naschy’s works is out there, somewhere! I can hope.)

Again, in the eyes of the many: documentaries just aren’t their canister of celluloid. Yes, documentaries—if you’re not into the subject at hand—can be as pedestrian as a CBS-TV 48 Hours segment or as bone-dust dry as a PBS-TV chronicle. But that’s not the case with these four heartfelt, well-made documents of their equally talented, intriguing subjects—each who make Vonnegut proud.

Hey, Eric, be sure to check out all of the films reviewed during our “Documentary Week” feature.

“Fuck off, R.D!”
—Eric

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

No Way Out (2020)

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“You’ve got to get out of here by morning.”
— says the ski-masked clad man with a shotgun pointed at you

Nine years ago, actor, writer, and director Chris Levine wasn’t an actor, writer, or director. He was a marketing director for an online company, living large on the beach in Boca Raton, Florida — and one day, woke up unhappy. A set of headshots and a few film school shorts and indie shorts six months later, his wanderlust-infection was complete. Hollywood was calling. (And he didn’t need a ski-masked clad man with a shotgun pointed at him to tell him to get out by morning.) So Levine did the most sensible thing a person could do: move to the town that chews up and squeezes out the tinsel-tainted dreamers on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in steaming piles at two and three at a squeeze.

Only the monster of Hollyweird didn’t count on Chris Levine blowing into town. Look out, Oscarzilla. Monstervine is here to kick your arse.

Teaming with experienced film editor and visual effects artist Landon Williams (in the producer’s and director’s chairs), Levine wrote, produced, and starred in the obsessive tale about a young man’s quest for the perfect body in Anabolic Life (2017), which starred the familiar Daniel Baldwin (TV’s Cold Case Files and Hawaii Five-O) and Sharon Lawrence (Showtime’s Shameless, TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles). The film received five nominations at the 2017 Orlando Film Festival, with Levine walking away with a “Best Actor Award.” (He’s also worked on the award-winning short film, concerned with a traffic stop gone bad, The Ice Cream Stop and is currently starring on the currently-in-production indie-actioner, The Handler.)

Encouraged by the film’s reception, the duo created the Van Nuys-based London Levine Pictures as Chris Levine set out to write and produce his next feature film, the horror-thriller No Way Out (formerly known as Cryptid), which shot in the wilds of Alaska.

Trying to salvage their romantic-personal relationships, two couples go on a weekend camping trip in the Alaska wilds — only to discover that they aren’t alone in the woods they’ve found themselves lost in. And the others don’t know the cabin they’ve squatted sits on land that once belonged to Blake’s (Chris Levine) family. And these woods are the source of his childhood trauma-hang ups about “the woods,” which triggers nightmares in quick succession. Of course, when spoiled city kids vacation in the woods (instead of Hawaii, as one character laments) and squat cabins and a hunter’s unattended campfire, Chris’s tweaks are the least of their worries: they’re just asking for the ol’ Happy Valentine’s Day-chop n’ stab from a masked deep-breather.

No Way Out has a sharp opening credit sequence on par with any A-List film in the horror oeuvres and the soundtrack is effectively creepy when it needs to be, and fairy tale-like when the mood calls. The same holds true for the cinematography (the prologue before-the-credits introduction of our gas-masked friend encourages viewing) that’s crisp and moody. And there’s a welcomed restraint in the editing suite. Oh, the B&S crew can’t tell you how many indies we’ve watch (we’re nice about it) meandering towards a patience-trying two-hour mark (my pet peeve) or lacking in narrative structure and woefully short, with extensive end credits to pad the short running time to a distribution-acceptable 80-minutes (Sam’s pet peeve). Team Levine-Hamilton know that they’re not a proven commodity and that they’re asking a lot for us to purchase a stream — so they keep the narrative down to a tight 78 minutes. Perfect. So kudos to production designer Joe Hamilton, in his directing-producing debut, for giving us a product that’s above the horror-streaming norms.

However, when the Blair Witch POVs started as we first meet the sides of our romantic rectangle, there was a fear that we were venturing into the twisted Myrick-Sánchez-Raimi wood with another found-footage after-the-fact cabin slaughter narrative. (Or a Bigfoot would show up, ugh. More Bigfoot analogies, later). But that’s not a deal breaker, as we enjoyed the not-a-trope POV handheld rollout with the intelligent alien-horror romp Case 347 by Chris Wax and Fabien Delage’s somewhat No Way Out-similar, quality wooden-romp, Cold Ground.

What’s appreciated is that Blake’s (non-found footage) madness-descent isn’t driven by drug abuse or demons or detox-intervention — but by his psychology. And the possibility that his “weird family” is still out there. And that Blake may have serious Sybil-issues compounded by a gas mask fetish. And that there’s really no one out there: only him.

The romantic (Devil’s) rectangle: Johanna Rae, Jennifer Karraz, Christopher McGahan, and Chris Levine

Now, you might yawn and say “we’ve seen this all before,” but you have to cut respectful slack with indie films. Unknown actors trying to develop resumes, frustrated at their lack of castings, need to take matters into their own hands (which we discussed extensively in our review of the radio-dramedy Loqueesha). So, to that end, you can’t go into No Way Out (or any horror streamer) expecting an A24 or Blumhouse shock-scares romp with Tobin Bell or Tony Todd or Lin Shayne buoying the show. Off-the-radar actors, as well as directors, want to create and want to share their skill sets with the world. And you have to shoot ’em cheap. And the woods are a great, non-permit method of storytelling. The Halloween-cum-Friday the 13th slasher ’80s thrived on it. But while No Way Out has an ’80s slasher vibe, it’s shot better and scripted smarter than an ’80s slasher flick. (Case in point: Go back and watch the ’80s Halloween rips Slaughter High and Don’t Go Into the Woods, spotlighted during a recent Drive-In Asylum Saturday Night Double Feature Online Watch Party for evidence of that fact. BTW: Saturday’s at 8 PM on Groovy Doom — shameful plug.)

From the watch parties, and Bigfoots, and shameful plugs departments: During the course of preparing this review for No Way Out, Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom and Sam Panico of B&S About Movies hosted another Drive-In Asylum Saturday Night Double Feature Online Watch Party (Sorry, Chris!) and screened Shriek of the Mutilated, Michael and Roberta Findlay’s 1974 shaggy-dog bigfoot version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (aka 1939’s And Then There Were None). And (probably to Chris Levine’s chagrin) my analog memory cores critically connected the two.

Does that mean Chris Levine saw Shriek of the Mutilated? No. Personally, I never saw that semi-inept drive-in ditty until the Van Ryn-Panico Borg assimilated me into the Groovy Doom collective. (And I’ve watched an insane amount of movies across the UHF and VHS spectrums. See? You can’t see ‘em all.) So while I’ve critically scribbled a Findlay-Levine throughline in my review notes, there’s no mistaking No Way Out is the winner in the wooded-betrayal sweepstakes.

Sure, Shriek is an over-the-top, emulsion-scratched ‘70s oddity that offers us good ol’ cheesy fun. But No Way Out offers us a digital clarity of intelligence and craft that informs you — and Hollywood — that LevineFoot has arrived. And he’s not a goofy shaggy-dog Bigfoot. Chris Levine is a skilled actor and filmmaker on the way to a sidewalk star in the city of dreams: a dream that will become reality.

The bottom line is that Chris Levine and Joe Hamilton have the skills. And we look forward to their next films. And they’ll be reviewed here, first. And we won’t need a ski-masked clad man with a shotgun to encourage us.

Currently rolling out on the film festival circuit and film markets, you’ll be able to stream No Way Out in the coming months. You can currently stream Anabolic Life via Gravitas Ventures on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, and You Tube Movies. So look for No Way Out on those platforms as well.

Update: You can now enjoy No Way Out on Amazon Prime through Gravitas Ventures.

You can learn more about Chris Levine’s acting and filmmaking endeavors on Facebook and London Levine Pictures and watch the company’s short film projects on You Tube. And our thanks to Voyage LA for their assistance by introducing us to Chris Levine in the preparation of this review.

Chris Levine’s new feature, the action-packed The Handler, coming December 14, 2021, from Uncork’d Entertainment on Amazon.

Disclaimer: We were provided a screener for the film. That has no bearing on our review.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.