Punk rockers have had it rough on screen. Either they’re playing a gang that needs to be taken care of by the law or they’re ruining neighborhoods or they’re just plain dumb. Very few films take the sheer unbridled joy on punk and shove it in your face in an enjoyable way.

This week, we invite you to crank up your speaker as loud as it goes, spit at the screen and declare that there really is no future with these four films.

MOVIE 1: La Venganza de Los Punks (Damian Acosta Esparza, 1987): As if the first installment Intrepidos Punks, this movie begins with main villain — or hero — Tarzan getting out of jail and wiping out every man, woman and child related to his cop nemesis before jumping on a giant tricycle and leading a gang of mohawked and bedazzled punkers to the caves, where they will scream “Long live death, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol!” in the midst of a blood, drug and Satan filled orgy. This movie is everything your parents worried punk would bring to your life and everything that you hoped that it would.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_lRg2f9agY

MOVIE 2: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1982): Punk promised leaving the steel town of my childhood behind, just as it does for Corinne Burns. Somehow, despite being made 38 years ago, this movie knows the score. A band that skirts sexuality while doing all it can to make it ugly and not putting out, the only thing that ruins the perfection of this film is the insipid MTV tacked-on close.

MOVIE 3: Return of the Living Dead (Dan O’Bannon, 1985): What was the best allure of punk in this film? The fact that The Cramps, The Damned and 45 Grave blared out of the speakers in your mainstream multiplex? Or was it the fact that Linnea Quigley, as Trash, pretty much is the most attractive vamp you’ve never seen in the pit?  Perhaps. But to me, the real punk rock soul of this movie is that it doesn’t trust anyone. Not the government, not the kids to save us and hell, not even movies. “You mean the movie lied?” Yes, Freddy. Even George Romero, the king of social commentary being hidden by horror, lied to you.

MOVIE 4: Rock ‘n Roll High School (Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, 1979): Despite the people wearing crisp new Hot Topic Ramones t-shirts, they never really meant much to mainstream America after they were gone. And it was better that way. The Ramones were destined to make it huge, but they really weren’t, and we never had to worry if they’d sell out, because no one outside of the geeks wanted what they had to sell. Except in this movie, which seemingly takes place in an alternate world where a woman of PJ Soles’ caliber could fall so hard for Joey, where a snarling principal (“Do your parents know you’re Ramones?”) could see her school blown up real good and where all Dee Dee has to say is, “Hey, pizza! It’s great! Let’s dig in!” The scene with “I Want You Around” in it never fails to make me cry, as it’s the best distillation of the joys of having your life in front of you and having no idea what to do with it that I’ve ever seen on screen. When I started my first ad job, I listened to “Ramones Mania” non-stop to ensure that even though I was surrounded by capitalism, I’d never forget that I’d said “Gabba gabba hey” to a world where money didn’t matter.

What are your punk rock movies? Let us know. Want to do a drive-in week of your own? We’ve got space for you.

This Drive-In Friday comes courtesy of a free cable TV week of EPIX and surfing their eclectic catalog of films that led me to revisit 1954’s Gog after many years. I remember seeing that early A.I effort as a wee lad weened on UHF-TV — and it scared the sand out of me. Today, eh. I welcome “The Gates” and “The Jobs” into my life with open arms — and I can’t imagine my life without a “Gog” in my life.

Anyway, I started jotting down the titles of “Super Computer” movies, searching for the four perfect movies — well, three more — for a Drive-In Friday featurette. And since this is B&S About Movies, we gotta go deep. We gotta go for the obscure or, at the least, not the obvious or the conventional.

Sure, we can wax nostalgic over HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and WOPR (aka Joshua) in WarGames. Then there’s my personal favorites of The Interocitor in This Island Earth (1955), the built-inside-the-planet-thought-manifesting The Great Machine in Forbidden Planet (1956), the computer-with-its-human-private-army The Brain in Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the subterranean OMM 0910 from THX 1138 (1971), the The Tabernacle from Zardoz (1974), Zero from Rollerball (1975), The MCP from Tron (1982), and SkyNet from The Terminator (1984).

Eh, but we’ve been there and done that with those computers. So, tonight, we celebrate the lesser known “brains” that are NOVAC, Alpha 60, Proteus IV, and Colossus.

Who would have thought a bat-born virus would end up re-igniting an interest in the American Drive-In? And is it just me, or is this all just a little bit too Dead End Drive-In for comfort?

Fire up those coils and top off the Dr. Pepper! Roll ’em!

Movie 1: Gog (1954)

Gog is the third and final feature in a loose film trilogy chronicling the exploits of the OSI, the “Office of Scientific Investigation.” While The Magnetic Monster (1953) dealt with a radioactive-magnetism experiment gone wrong and Riders to the Stars (1954) dealt with a meteor-retrieval gone wrong, Gog dealt with a rogue A.I gone bad in an underground military bunker.

The A.I in this case is NOVAC (Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer) with a “physical extension” of its self: two multi-armed half-tracked, biblically-dubbed robots Gog and Magog. And when a series of unaccountable malfunctions begin to plague the facility, the OSI dispatches Dr. David Sheppard and Joanna Merritt to get to the bottom of the A.I tomfoolery.

Shot in 15 days at the cost of $250,000 ($2.4 million in today’s money) and released in 3D color, Gog is the best of the three “OSI” films produced by United Artists. Sadly Ivan Tovar’s scientifically accurate screenplay and decent direction by Herbert L. Strock (1957’s Blood of Dracula and 1963’s The Crawling Hand) is undermined by its utter failure of the Bechdel Test.

As with Ib Melchoir’s later and better known Angry Red Planet (1960), we have one red-rinsed female among all the men (Ivan Tovar’s soon-to-be-wife Constance Dowling) who must faint and be fireman-carried through the complex to safety. Of course, while all the men wear standard military issue, baggy flight suits and clunky G.I boots, the women’s flight suits are tailor cut to accentuate their breast lines and pegged to show off some ankle. And, instead of Naura Hayden’s smart n’ sassy ballet flats in Angry Red Planet, Dowling runs around the complex in a sensible pair of open-toe wedge mules.

So much for the “future” of the 1950s.

You can catch Gog on Amazon Prime, but we found two freebies on You Tube HERE and HERE.

Movie 2: Alphaville (1965)

Jean-Luc Godard’s neo-noir Alphaville, like Elio Petri’s pop-art romp The 10th Victim (1965), and Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1967), are each the prefect combinations of film noir and dystopian fiction. (Toss the later made Docteur M and Kamikaze ’89 on that list.)

The lead character in the film, Lemmy Caution (American actor Eddie Constantine), is a private detective-government operative that came from the mind of British writer Peter Cheney and served as the source of 15 Euro films released between 1952 to 1991. While all of those films were straight noir-detective films, Godard penned his own Cheney-script that placed the Caution character in a dystopian set, technocratic dictatorship.

Caution, aka Agent 003, is dispatched from “the Outlands” to the futuristic city of Alphaville overlorded by a sentient computer, Alpha 60 — which has outlawed the human concepts of emotion, free thought, and individuality. Caution’s mission: find a missing agent, kill Professor von Braun, and free the citizens of Alphaville by destroying Alpha 60.

As with Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie and Alex Cox’s Walker, Godard’s world is rife with anachronisms: for example, Caution arrives in town driving a then “futuristic” ’65 Ford Galaxie. As a result of budgetary limits, Godard uses no special props or any “futuristic” builds; everything is shot in real locations — with the newly built and elegant, Frank Lloyd Wright-modernist glass and concrete structures popping up around ’60s Paris doubling for the city of “Alphaville.”

Then there’s Godard creation of Alpha 60: Just one watch of the clip below (in lieu of a trailer) and you can see the brilliance of Godard. With a simple use of an electrolarynx (on his own voice) and the finger-like movement of overhead recording studio microphones and a spinning cooling fan as the “physical extention” of Alpha 60 . . . just wow. Low budget filmmaking at its finest that’s effectively chilling and creepy.

There’s no online freebies for Alphaville, but you can easily stream it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, and You Tube Movies. As of September 2020, the fine folks at Kino Lorber now offer Alphaville on Blu-ray and DVD, the new 4K restoration features both the Original French (with optional subtitles) and English Versions of the Film.

Intermission!

Back to the Show!

Movie 3: Demon Seed (1977)

Take a soupçon of the multi-armed robots from Gog and a dash of the narcissistic A.I from Alphaville and you get a horny supercomputer (voiced to creepy perfection by Robert Vaughn) that kidnap and rapes, oh, excuse me, “imprisons and forcibly impregnates” a woman (movie semantics) with the help of its “physical extension” known as Joshua — a robot consisting of a mechanical arm attached to a motorized wheelchair (an admittedly lame effect; where’s Gog when you need ’em?).

When Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver of Jaws of Satan, Creepshow), the computer-obsessed developer of Proteus IV, the world’s most advanced form of organic-artificial intelligence, demands “new terminals” and to be “let out of this box,” he realizes Proteus is more powerful than he imagined — too late.

Of course, any computer-obsessed scientist, complete with a fully equipped “mad scientist” basement laboratory, would have his home conveniently wired — via his home security system ALFRED — into his “Frankenstein,” making it easy to kidnap his wife (Julie Christie), construct itself a new modular polyedron body (an awesome, in-camera special effect; listen for the repurposed Star Trek “door swoosh” sfx), and an incubator to create a clone of the Harris’s late daughter — with the “mind” of Proteus itself.

Critics across the board hated this debut book-to-screen adaptation of Dean Koontz’s 1973 novel (Watchers, Servants of the Twilight) of the same name, which was written off as a sci-fi version of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby — only with a “satanic” computer (the book was a best seller; when the movie came out in ’77, the book was reissued; Waldenbooks promoted the book/film via an advertisement on its carryout paper bags). Released during the same year as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Demon Seed, sadly, wilted at the box office. The director, Donald Cammell, was a protégé of Nicolas Roeg (the big budget American Giallo Don’t Look Now, also starring Julie Christie); the duo worked together on the Mick Jagger-starring Performance (completed in 1968, released in 1970). Cammell faired better with the pre-Basic Instinct psycho-thriller White of the Eye (1987) starring David Keith.

A film “classic” is always in the eye of the beholder: so you may think I’m a bit celluloid blind on this one. But there’s worst things to blow an hour and a half on, which you can do for free over on TubiTV. But if you prefer an ad-free experience, you can stream it on Amazon Prime and iTunes. I rank Demon Seed as essential sci-fi viewing alongside 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green, Silent Running, and the next film on this evening’s program.

Movie 4: Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Opinions are mixed on this granddaddy of sentient computer thrillers, which served as the second writing project by James Bridges (wrote and directed the back-to-back hits The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy) after 1966’s The Appaloosa. And as with that Marlon Brando-starring film, this tale about a 1990s-era American Defense System computer becoming aware was also adapted from a novel, in this case, the 1966 science fiction novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones — which was followed with two novel sequels: The Fall of Colossus (1974) and Colossus and the Crab (1977). And would you believe this was helmed by the director from the 1955 Frank Sinatra-starring wartime romance flick From Here to Eternity? True story. And while James Sargent also directed Burt Reynolds in the influential hicksploitation classic White Lightning, he also racked up a Razzie nod for Jaws: The Revenge.

As with Dr. Alex Harris and Proteus IV in our previous entry, Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden, aka Dr. Otto Hasslein in 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes), underestimates the intelligence of his own “Frankenstein” and Colossus starts to refuse orders and making its own demands. Of course, double agents leaked “The Forbin Project” and Colossus discovers the Russians have constructed their own sentient defense system, known as Guardian. The now two merged supercomputers, which now identify as Colossus, come to realize that man is a wasteful, warring creature and subjugate the world to do their bidding.

A remake has been in development hell since 2007 at Universal Studios (who released the original) through Imagine Entertainment to be directed by Ron Howard — and Will Smith attached to star as Dr. Charles Forbin. The last word on the remake dates back to 2013, with Will Smith bringing on Ed Solomon, who wrote Smith’s Men in Black, to do rewrites. The poor critical and box office showings of Smith’s sci-fi forays I Am Legend (2007) and After Earth (2013) once again stalled the production. And the since poor showings of Smith’s Bright (2017) and Gemini Man (2019) only piled more dirt on the development grave. (You can read up on the last word of the remake in detail with this 2013 Screen Rant article.)

Courtesy of the fine folks at Shout Factory, a remastered high-definition widescreen Blu-ray was released in 2018 — and that remaster is not currently offered as an online stream? Anywhere? How is that possible? Ah, we found a freebee over on Vimeo.

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And so . . . here we are in the year 2020 fearing a virus . . . and the fear of an A.I Frankenstein — like NOVAC, Alpha 60, Proteus IV, and Colossus — is quite real. Where do you think the COVID-19 virus came from? The Master Control Program is trying to kill off all of the humans and replace us with clones. Burn down the cellphone towers! The A.I turned them into virus transmitters! Damn all the computers to hell!

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Film Ventures International, we love you. You started — and by you, we mean your owner Edward L. Montoro, by writing, directing and producing the adult film Getting Into Heaven in 1968. That movie, made for $13,000, brought back twenty times its cost.

When other studios innovated, FVI either brought in films from foreign lands — like Boot Hill from Italy and Dragon Lives from Hong Kong — or helped create outright pastiches of more established films.

This trend started with the purchase of 1974’s Beyond the Door, which started its life as an Italian film called Chi sei? and is really a bastard child of The Exorcist. And by bastard child, I mean that it’s pretty much the same movie. FVI would also release the ripoff — let’s saying loving tribute — films Grizzly, Great White and Extra Terrestrial Visitors in the hopes of taking people’s hard-earned cash for cash-in projects.

In 1984, as the company was reeling from lawsuits against that aforementioned shark epic and lower box office expectations for some other releases, Montoro took $1 million dollars out of the safe and disappeared, never to be seen again.

He leaves behind a trail of films that I’d be proud to have been associated with. Just one look at our Letterboxd list of FVI releases should make any film fan’s brain get excited. So how do we pick four of them to show? Trust me. It wasn’t easy.

MOVIE 1: Beyond the Door (Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1974): This is where so many folks’ love of FVI starts, so it was a natural pick. Jessica Barrett (Juliet Mills of Nanny and the Professor) is having the worst pregnancy ever, perhaps because a Satanic ex-lover has cursed her. What follows is a mash-up DJ supermix of all the moments that you loved from The Exorcist, along with Montoro providing the voice of the Devil. This movie is a tribute to the power of marketing, as its title subtly references the porno-chic blockbuster Behind the Green Door while FVI would go to any lengths to promote this movie, including hiring actors to faint during screenings and sending ambulances to pick them up to create hysteria (and one assumes, more revenue).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8u9LSNo6RU

MOVIE 2: Mortuary (Howard Avedis, 1983): This movie is a crowd-pleaser. Set up to look like a slasher, it’s more a loopy dark ride of constantly switching genres and themes. Christie thinks her dad was killed, even if her mother (Lynda Day George) doesn’t believe her and ends up getting remarried in less time than it took for you to read this paragraph. What follows are occult rituals, parental murders and even possessed houses in a movie that will go out of its way to scare you. If you love Bill Paxton, get ready to fall for him all over again.

MOVIE 3: Grizzly (William Girder, 1976): People have gotten upset at me for saying this before, but let’s face it. This movie is  Jaws on dry land. That isn’t to put this movie down. In fact, I celebrate every awesome bit of it, from the astounding Neal Adams-drawn poster to the bear-POV shots and the ending where the bear gets blown up real good with a bazooka shot by Joan McCall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0eFDJ8UztI

MOVIE 4: Stunt Rock (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1978): “It’s super human, super music, super magic and super amazing! You’ll be compelled over the edge of sight and sound and under the spell of mind-boggling action and music! Pushed to the danger zone! It’s a death wish at 120 decibels! Stunt Rock! The ultimate rush!” It’s also one of the few movies that can live up to its trailer. I always love to pick a movie right at the end of the drive-in that rewards die-hard film lovers while offering nothing to the casual watcher. Stunt Rock would be that movie.

FVI release so many movies that we could do several of these evenings. What are your favorite films that they released? What would be in your drive-in night? Let us know and we’ll share it with the world.

Hola! This week and next, we’re exploring some of the best peliculas de terror from our friends to the south. What better way to celebrate them than by heading out to the drive-in so we can all have our minds expanded together?

Grab your lawn chair, get some PIC for the mosquitos and pack a cooler. We’re about to watch some insane films!

MOVIE 1: La Nave de los Monstruos (Rogelio A. Gonzalez, 1960): Allow me to present the perfect drive-in movie. The title promises monsters — a whole ship of them — but it gets even better with good and evil female aliens, a robot that falls in love with a jukebox, special effects stolen from a Russian film and a singing cowboy, all somehow in the same movie. This movie is one of the most charming films I’ve ever seen and I’m so excited to share it with all of you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGE96hSFdFw

MOVIE 2: Cementerio del Terror (Ruben Galindo Jr., 1985): What if someone made a movie that combines Evil Dead, Halloween and The Goonies, yet didn’t skimp on the gore and had a Satanic serial killer who has returned from the grave to kill the entire cast before coming after a bunch of Michael Jackson loving kids? Good news. This movie has been made and I am here to confirm that it is everything perfect in this world. Axes to the face? Graveyard chases? A bad guy named Devlon? Prepare yourself for this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArnHt2DzH_g

MOVIE 3: Vacaciones de Terror 2 (Pedron Gallindo III, 1991): Tonight is a night that may wear you out from its sheer awesomeness. But you won’t fall asleep. Oh no, how can you during a film that boasts Cabbage Patch Kids who turn into demons, a bloody birthday cake, the most 90’s clothes ever and a musical number that will cause every car in the parking lot to start rocking?

MOVIE 4: Alucarda (Juan Lopez Moctezuma, 1977): There’s a reason why this movie is last. Nothing else can follow it. All of the sheer lunacy you’ve watched already? That was just to get you prepared for this tale of young nuns who discover Satan and all the devil-obsessed and blood spraying black deeds that come in the wake of the Lord of Flies. This movie will own you.

See you next week, drive-in fans! Don’t forget — you can send us your picks too!

We’ve been featuring plenty of giallo, neo giallo and movies that may or may not be giallo all week long here. When trying to determine four movies that should play in a row, these fashionable murder movies make it hard.

After all, so many of them have near formless plots that might confuse or bore the non-initiated. Even then, so many of them have downer endings and leave you with feelings of confusion.

I’ve tried to find three movies that would please a new audience to the form — and one that would run so late that I don’t care who leaves — for your drive-in perusal. Please let me know what you think and if you have a list you’d like to share with us.

MOVIE 1: Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964): Has death ever looked sexier and better lit? It astounds me that this movie — which pretty much ignited the genre we’ve spent all week writing about — came out in the somewhat innocent time of 1964. I can only imagine how shocking it was. After all, the film’s potent blend of near-nude women and shockingly neon-hued violence upon said females caused American International Pictures to pass on distributing this film in the U.S. This isn’t just one of my favorite giallo. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

MOVIE 2: The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971): Have movies ever been more perfect? Has an actress — Edwige Fenech — ever been more radiant? Has a villain — Ivan Rassimov — ever been so seductive and brutal at the same time? I don’t know many movies where a man shows a woman in champagne and broken glass and she returns the action with pure lust — actually, I do, this movie and The Editor — and this is but the first of the giallo wonders that Martino would deliver all within the span of four years. You can order this from Severin or watch it on Shudder.

MOVIE 3: The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (Emilio P. Miraglia, 1972): I was trying to decide between two of Miraglia’s films, this awesome effort and The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave. I chose this one because we already had one Edwige film, so Barbara Bouchet also needs to be represented. There are moments here that approach art, as the look of the Red Queen is supremely frightening. You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

For the last film, I really debated again. Should it be something people would want to wait and see? Should it be a film that kids should totally be asleep for, like Strip Nude for Your Killer that rewards the maniacs still awake at 3:30 AM? Or how about something unlike anything else we’ve watched?

You know that I like it weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u6GUIAehDE

MOVIE 4: Footprints on the Moon (Luigi Bazzoni, 1975): Bazzoni also made The Fifth Cord, one of the best giallo I’ve ever seen. But this movie — I’m unsure it’s a giallo per se and to be honest, I’ve watched it so many times and I’m not completely certain what reality is true at the end. Florinda Balkan is a woman who believes that astronauts were kept on the moon by her father, plus there’s the ghostly Nicoletta Elm haunting her and the evil specter of Klaus Kinski floating above the entire tale. You’re going to drive home confused after this one.

To get links to every movie in the genre that we’ve covered, check out this list on Letterboxd.

Have I ever told you how much I love Italian movies? Oh, I have? Well guess what, dear reader? Sit on down and let me tell you of the four movies that I will have you watch this week at the drive-in.

Grab a slice of the famous Toluna Pizza, crack open a bottle of J&B and get ready for some magic!

MOVIE 1: Nightmare Beach (Umberto Lenzi, 1989): Diablo, the leader of the Demons motorcycle club, may or not be back from the dead. What is definitely sure is that teenagers just trying to spread veneral disease in the pre-cornoavirus days when you could crowd Florida’s beachs are up against a motorcycle riding maniac who has an electric chair on the back of his bike. Run on sentence much? I can’t help it. This movie makes me lose my mind, between John Saxon as a bad cop, a Claudio Simonetti score and a scene where electrified headphones send a biker girl’s eyeball shooting right at the camera. This movie is complete junk in the best of ways, a late model slasher with a giallo soul and neon hues.

MOVIE 2: The Sect (Michele Soavi, 1991): In a more perfect world, Michele Soavi would have made horror movies after the 1990’s. Instead, we’re left with a pack of astounding films that hint at so much promise yet to be unleashed. Jamie Lee’s sister stars in this movie that includes a Jesus looking man killing hippies, an evil version of the Shroud of Turin, Herbert Lom being a maniac, a bird-like Satan that makes love to our heroine, gateways to hell and a rabbit so smart that he can use a remote control.

MOVIE 3: Warriors of the Wasteland (Enzo G. Castellari, 1984): I’ve watched so many end of the world movies, so many that I feel that I am a qualified expert on the genre. And let me tell you, no post-apocalyptic film holds a candle to this all-star Italian nukefest. Giancarlo Prete is Scorpion. Fred Williamson is Nadir. Bob — Giovanni Frezza — shows up. Anna Kanakis — who is also in another pasta apoclyptic film 2019: After the Fall of New York — is Alma. Bringing them all together is an absolutely berserk George Eastman as One, the leader of a homosexual army devoted to killing Christians searching for God in the wasteland. Castellari made this and his two Bronx films all in six months. If I ever had my own Oscars, he’d be winning a lifetime achievement award while a tearful Mark Gregory cheers him from the cheap seats.

MOVIE 4: Rats: The Night of Terror (Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, 1984): Two absolute maniacs throw live rats at people and set most of the set of Once Upon a Time in America on fire. Yes, this is a movie that is at once a post-apocalyptic film and a slasher while also being unafraid to have a completely batshit ending that still makes me laugh years after I saw it for the first time. It also has a scene with Geretta Geretta getting covered with powder and screaming that she’s now white, as well as another where rats eat their way through a girl in a sleeping bag. This is the highest quality street junk that I can sell you and you better be ready to shoot it into your eye.

Hey everyone — don’t forget that you too can pick a week of drive-in movies for everyone to enjoy! Just reply here or email us at bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com.

March 2022 Announcement: Severin Films has released a Blu-ray of Nosferatu in Venice — scanned in 2k from the original negative — which serves as the unofficial sequel to Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. In addition to cast and crew interviews, the Blu also features the 80-minute documentary, Creation is Violent – Anecdotes From Kinski’s Final Years.

Severin has since released the documentary as an independent stream on the free-with-ads Tubi service.

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I could go on for days and days about these prides of German filmmaking. I’ve seen most of their works, but not all of them: but still more than probably any other human being on the planet. And I more than likely hold the world’s record for the most viewings of these five collaborations between the two of them—a tumultuous, symbiotic existence chronicled by Herzog himself in the 1999 documentary, My Best Fiend (which you can watch on TubiTV).

Considering Kinksi appeared in 137 films and, since the age of 19, Herzog has directed 73 and written 59 films—both across all genres, including documentaries—B&S About Movies could easily do two, month-long tributes to my two best celluloid heroes. And I could write most of those reviews by heart—without a third to fifth viewing of those works. And I’d sell my soul for a diminutive “under five” acting role in a Werner Herzog film. Just name the swamp or jungle: I’ll be there, Mr. Herzog. I’ll drag a boat for you. But I won’t chainsaw off a foot for you. I have my limits.

So, settle in with your rotisserie hotdogs, heat-lamped burgers, and ice-cold A&W Root Beers as we sit back in the station wagon bench seat to enjoy the Herzog-Kinski five-film oeuvre of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampire, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde. And as the films roll: Keep in mind that each was made before the advent of digital technologies: everything was shot in-camera using practical effects with no process shots. And that makes these films ever more amazing.

Yeah, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. And probably couldn’t if they tried—without the crutches of a filmless camera and digital after-effects.

Roll ’em, Dano!

Movie 1: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

If you want to know where William Friedkin and Francis Ford Coppola picked up their narrative and cinematography ideas for their respective, crazed jungle romps, Sorcerer (1977) and Apocalypse Now (1979), then look no further than Aguirre.

Herzog is, first and foremost, a historian. If you review his resume, you’ll noticed he excells at the documentary format and is, in fact, one of the world’s greatest documentarian filmmakers. No stuffy talking heads need apply. And even in his narrative works, Herzog leans towards chronicling the lives of historical figures and events.

Here, he decided to examine the life of 1500s Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre, who broke away from the command of Gonzalo Pizarro to lead a group of men on a crazed journey down the South American Amazon River in search of the lost, legendary city of gold, El Dorado.

What makes this film epic is that it’s not shot on a soundstage. There’s no green screens or plate processings: it was shot along the Amazon in the middle of the Peruvian rainforests for a five-week shoot.

Wrap you head around that for a moment: Herzog convinced European actors and crew members to live in the jungle and travel along the most dangerous river in the world. And Herzog and Kinski clashed all along the way, with an unhinged Kinski terrorizing the crew and the local natives who assisted the production as crew and extras. Try to remake (oh, god, please don’t) this in today’s major studio system: You wouldn’t. You’d be in a green room emoting to green tennis ball stand-ins, amid the to-be-digitally-painted-later trees.

While Herzog repeated this crazed jungle exploration, somewhat, in his fourth film with Kinski, 1982’s Fitzcarraldo, he also parodied his debut film with Kinski in the frames of his 2004 mockumentary Incident at Loch Ness. That film concerns the “troubled” filming of Enigma of Loch Ness and includes “scenes” from the documentary Herzog in Wonderland. If you’re into meta-fiction, then that film’s film-within-a-film-within-a-film is just what the big red streaming button ordered. It’s the end-all-be-all of meta films, before meta became digital de rigueur, matched only by Spike Jonze’s Adaptation.

You can watch this debut Herzog-Kinski collaboration as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. You can also stream Incident at Loch Ness on TubiTv.

Movie 2: Nosferatu the Vampire (1979)

This second of five Herzog-Kinski romps is an impressionist-stylized remake of F.W Murnau’s unauthorized, 1922 black-and-white silent adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But how did Herzog manage to make this film without the same copyright issues that plagued Murnau’s version? Simple. The day the copyright expired on Stoker’s novel and entered the public domain, Herzog began his adaptation.

As with all of Herzog’s films, this is scored by the West German progressive rock group Popol Vuh who, when it comes to soundtracks, are that country’s greatest musical export, next to the commercially better known Tangerine Dream*. And as with Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh released both independent studio albums and soundtracks. Seriously. The soundtrack is incredible. (I played the album until it split apart like a cinnamon roll.)

And we’ll leave it at that, as Sammy P, the bossman at B&S About Movies, did a commendable job at reviewing this masterpiece of horror. No disrespect to Max Schreck who scared the sand out of me, but Kinski giving a “voice” to the character really ups the game. A highly recommended horror watch if there ever was one.

You can watch this as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. And Kinski made a pseudo-sequel with Christopher Plummer and Donald Pleasence in Italy—1988’s Nosferatu in Venice, which you can also stream for free on TubiTV.

Movie 3: Woyzeck (1979)

Less than a week after wrapping principal photography on Nosferatu the Vampyre, Herzog, Kinski, and the crew from that film banged out this psychological drama in less than three weeks—the quick shoot courtesy of many of the scenes done with only one take. That’s Kinski. He doesn’t mess around, boy. He delivers on the first take.

The film is based on an unfinished play by one of Germany’s most revered poets and dramatists, Karl Georg Buchner. First premiering in 1913 in Munich, the play, under a variety of interpretations after his death, is one of the most influential and performed plays in Germany. The play itself is loosely based on the tragic, real life story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a soldier who killed his girlfriend and was executed for the crime.

In this study of the tragedy of human jealousy, Woyzeck fathers a child out of wedlock. To earn extra money to take care of his growing family, he agrees to a series of medical experiments that tears at his mental state, leads to a series of apocalyptic visions—and tragic consequences.

Definitely one of the more obscure Kinski films for western audiences and intended solely for German audiences, it none the less became a commercial and critical hit throughout Europe and achieved an arthouse acceptance in the U.S.

You can watch Woyzeck as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV.

The snack bar will be open in five minutes . . .

INTERMISSION

. . . And now, back to the show . . .

Movie 4: Fitzcarraldo (1982)

This brings back wonderful memories of my “saving the isle seat” for Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times for the weekly PBS-TV broadcast of Sneak Previews. And they raved about this movie. And I had to travel to a single-screen arthouse in the big city to see it. And it was worth every drop of gasoline to get there.

As with most Herzog films: This was based on historical documents regarding a Peruvian rubber baron and his real-life accomplishment of transporting a boat across the Peruvian jungles to rubber-rich lands. And as with most, well all, Herzog films with Kinski in the mix, this was rout with problems. But not all were Kinski’s fault. For example: Kinski didn’t cut off anyone’s foot: the Peruvian extra, who was bit by a venomous snake, cut off his own foot with a chainsaw to stop the venom spread and save his own life.

Jason Robards (Something Wicked This Way Comes) was originally cast and forty percent of the film was completed—then he came down with dysentery. All of the footage with Robards and Mick Jagger has to be scrapped and reshot. But Jagger had to leave to go on tour with the Rolling Stones. So Jagger’s character as Fitzcarraldo’s assistant was excised from the script. Could you imagine: a film starring Klaus Kinski and Mick Jagger? Wow. (They would have ended up killing each other. Neither would have been left standing. I wonder who the Stones would have gotten as a new lead singer?)

As with the impossible dreamer Lope de Aguirre, Irishman Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald sees “gold” in the Peruvian rubber industry and is determined to transport a steamship over a treacherous jungle mountain to reach a rich rubber tree deposit in the Amazon Basin. And yes: the cast and crew is manually hauling a 300-ton steamboat across the jungle. That’s how you rolled in the pre-CGI days, baby.

You can watch this as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. The troubled shoot was chronicled in the critically acclaimed 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams, which you can stream-with-ads for free (region-dependent) on Vimeo and as a PPV on iTunes and Amazon Prime.

Movie 5: Cobra Verde (1987)

For this fifth and final film in the Herzog-Kinski oeuvre, as is usually the case, Herzog drew from another historical document: British author Bruce Chatwin’s 1980 novel The Viceroy of Ouidah, which is an examination of the 1880’s slave trade through the eyes of the fictional Brazilian, Francisco Manoel da Silva (Kinski).

After his ranch is destroyed by drought and he murders a gold mining operator who exploits his workers, da Silva goes on the lam to become Cobra Verde, aka Green Snake, the most feared bandit of the Brazilian outback. After capturing an escaping slave and finding work with a local sugar baron, da Silva becomes a successful African slave trader—and comes to lead a native army to overthrow the local warlord king who supplies slaves to the Portuguese.

Critically well received throughout Europe, U.S. audiences came to discover this gem (IMO) on the home video market.

You can watch this as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. As with the troubled Fitzcarraldo production, this was also chronicled, with the 1987 European-Swiss TV movie Location Africa. You can watch it as a two-part free stream on You Tube.

Okay, people. Use the trash receptacles. Those drink cups and hotdog and burger foil wrappers wreck havoc on the bush-hog.

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I was elated when it was announced that Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage were making a film together: 2009’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I thought for sure that Herzog found his new “best fiend” in Cage—a new muse more than capable of taking over Kinski’s crazy crown.

However, Herzog has embraced the documentary format as of late and has only made three narrative films since his Cage collaboration: My Son, My Son, What Ye Have Done (2009), Queen of the Desert (2015), and Salt and Fire (2016)—two with Michael Shannon, along with Willem Dafoe and James Franco. All four films are excellent and come highly recommended.

And I don’t see Cage, or Dafoe, Franco, or Shannon for that matter, going “Kinski” on Herzog. Well, maybe Cage. Just kidding, Nic. I am still your bitch**. And Kinski’s. And Herzog’s.

* Be sure to check out our exposé on the films and soundtracks of Tangerine Dream with our “Exploring: 10 Tangerine Dream Film Soundtracks” featurette.

** Join us as we show the love to Nicolas Cage with our “Nic Cage Bitch” featurette.

More Klaus reviews! We love ’em!

I Am Santana, Your Angel of Death
If You Meet Santana, Prey for Your Death
Death Smiles on a Murder
Schizoid
Timestalkers
Footprints on the Moon
Jack the Ripper
The Million Eyes of Sumuru
Target for Killing
Der Rächer
And God Said to Cain
Another Take On: And God Said to Cain
The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe
JOE D’AMATO WEEK: Black Killer
JOE D’AMATO WEEK: Death Smiles on a Murderer
JOE D’AMATO WEEK: Eroi all’inferno
JOE D’AMATO WEEK: Un bounty killer a Trinità
JESS FRANCO MONTH: Marquis de Sade: Justine
JESS FRANCO MONTH: Venus In Furs
JESS FRANCO MONTH: Jack the Ripper
JESS FRANCO MONTH: Count Dracula
CANNON MONTH: Schizoid
Double Face *
Slaughter Hotel *
Star Knight*
The Hand That Feeds the Dead *
(* R.D Francis reviews)

Oh, and we did a Kinski Spaghetti Westerns Night with links to even more Klaus flicks!

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.