Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd. 

Despite breaking up in 1971, The Monkees remained in syndication throughout the decade, and that’s when I discovered them. Despite being a band created for a TV show—a burst of comedy, silliness and catchy songs—The Monkees instantly appealed to me.

Initially formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the band was Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. Producer Don Kirshner initially supervised the band’s music, with songs written by the songwriting duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. The four band members were on set filming for nearly twelve hours a day, so session musicians originally played most of their tunes (that said, Nesmith did compose and produce some songs, with Tork playing guitar and all four contributing vocals).

By the TV show’s second season, The Monkees had won the right to create their own music, marking a significant shift in their artistic journey. They effectively became musicians, singers, songwriters, and producers. This growth was further evident in their fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., where the band collaborated with respected session and star talents like the Wrecking Crew, Glen Campbell, members of the Byrds and the Association, drummer ‘Fast’ Eddie Hoh, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. This artistic growth is a testament to their determination and talent.

However, the Monkees continually battled against the notion that they were a manufactured band. Sure, that’s how things started, but they weren’t that way anymore. While their TV show remained successful, they were bored with its conventional format. They proposed making the show a variety program, a format that would allow them to showcase their musical talents and experiment with different styles and genres. But NBC objected, and by then, most of the band wasn’t getting along anyway.

The film’s title, Head, is a nod to the band’s desire to break free from their manufactured image and the constraints of their success. It’s a reference to the phrase ‘to get your head ‘, meaning to understand or grasp something, which reflects the band’s journey of self-discovery and artistic expression. After The Monkees was canceled in February 1968, Rafelson co-wrote and directed this film with Schneider as executive producer. Jack Nicholson, the other writer — a virtual unknown at the time — worked with the band and Rafelson in a jam session weekend with plenty of weed on hand. Later, under the influence of LSD, Nicholson would rewrite the stream-of-consciousness tapes into the script.

When the band learned they would not be allowed to direct themselves or receive screenwriting credit, every Monkee except Peter Tork had a one-day walkout. The studio agreed to a larger share of the film’s profits if the band returned, which ended the professional relationship between the band and their creators.

The filming of Head resulted in a movie that completely alienated their fanbase. Both Nesmith and Tork felt that this movie was a betrayal, a murder of the band by its creators, who seemed to have their eyes on bigger goals. This sense of disillusionment is palpable in their reactions, adding a layer of disappointment to the narrative.

At the dedication of the Gerald Desmond Bridge, an old man politician struggles with his speech. Suddenly, The Monkees appear, racing through the officials and creating chaos. Micky jumps off the bridge to the water below as we hear the words of “Porpoise Song. ” The lyrics intone, “A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice.” He floats under the waves until mermaids find him and bring him back to life.

After a kissing contest with all four Monkees being called “even” by Lady Pleasure (Mireille Machu, Nicholson’s girlfriend at the time), they launch into a distorted version of the TV show’s theme song:

“Hey, hey, we are The Monkees

You know we love to please

A manufactured image

With no philosophies.

You say we’re manufactured.

To that, we all agree.

So make your choice, and we’ll rejoice

in never being free!

Hey, hey, we are The Monkees

We’ve said it all before

The money’s in, we’re made of tin

We’re here to give you more!

The money’s in, we’re made of tin

We’re here to give you…”

BAM! A gunshot interrupts the proceedings, with the famous footage of the execution of Viet Cong operative Nguyen Van Lem by Chief of National Police Nguyen Ngoc Loan being shown. Head has no interest in being subtle.

From here, the movie becomes a kaleidoscope of ideas and pastiches as each Monkee gains a moment in the spotlight, yet none of them are thrilled with their situation, and each feels trapped. Any escape attempt — whether it’s through dance (Davy has a great scene with Toni Basil, who choreographed Head more than a decade before her hit song “Mickey”), punching waitresses, blowing up Coke machines with tanks, attending a strange birthday party (shot on one of the sets of Rosemary’s Baby, which was under production at the same time), a swami who claims to have the answer and even a rampage through the movie set itself, the boys can’t escape their prison, which is a large black box.

That box could symbolize the lounge area built for the band during the filming of their television show. When they first started filming, the band would wander the set between takes, bored by the filming speed. They’d often get lost, so Screen Gems built a special room where they were forced to remain, smoking cigarettes, playing music and studying their scripts. Whenever a band member was needed on the stage, a colored light corresponding to that member would inform them.

Throughout the film, the band runs into a massive cast of characters, with everyone from Mickey Mouse Club star Annette Funicello, Carol Doda (considered the first public topless dancer), Sonny Liston, Frank Zappa, Teri Garr, Victor Mature and Dennis Hopper.

After evading the box and all of their enemies in the desert, The Monkees run back to the film’s beginning and all leap from the bridge, this time to the triumphant return of “Porpoise Song.” But it’s all another sham: as they swim away, we see that they’re stuck in an aquarium, another big box, and taken away on a truck.

Unyielding sadness. It seems a far cry from “Hey, hey we’re The Monkees and people say we monkey around.”

Head bombed hard on release, bringing back only $16,000 on its $750,000 budget. It may be the ad campaign. While trailers say the “most extraordinary adventure, western, comedy, love story, mystery, drama, musical, documentary satire ever made (And that’s putting it mildly),” none of the band would appear in the ads.

The Monkees were trapped by another fact: younger and more mainstream audiences rejected the more serious side of the band, along with their new sound. While critics agreed that this was the band’s best music ever recorded — Carole King and Harry Nilsson co-wrote much of the music — serious hippies wanted nothing to do with a band they perceived as plastic and pre-manufactured.

Nesmith said, “By the time Head came out, The Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection…and it was over. Head was a swan song.”

At the end of the film, a still shot of a stylized Columbia Pictures logo appears before the movie skips frames, gets tangled and melts as we hear the soundtrack continue and the laugh of Lady Pleasure. Maybe some joy has escaped the box that The Monkees are trapped in. I want to think so, as Head may have been a failure upon release, but when viewed more than fifty years later, it transcends the divide between real and fake, manufactured and created, commerce and art.

Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

Shot directly after Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik, this Roger Vadim-directed movie is based on the comic book of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Vadim’s then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella, a United Earth agent sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity.

Vadim was hired to direct this film after producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights. This led to Vadim looking to cast several actresses in the title role, including Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot (that’s who the character was originally based on) and Sophia Loren before ending up picking his wife.

In case you’re wondering why this movie is such a mess, Charles B. Griffith was the last writer to work on it, saying that he had done uncredited work on the script after fifteen other writers — including Terry Southern — worked on the movie.

This film is packed with fashion, amazing sets — you can credit Bava’s film for some of that, and great characters, like John Phillip Law (who used the break in shooting to be in the aforementioned Danger: Diabolik) as Pygar the angel, Anita Pallenberg (Performance) as the Black Queen, Milo O’Shea as Durand-Durand, Marcel Marceau in a rare speaking role as Professor Ping, David Hemmings (Deep Red) as Dildano and even cameos from Fabio Testi and Antonio Sabato (who was originally to play the role that Hemmings ended up doing).

So yeah. This is a gorgeous film that makes no sense whatsoever. Is that such a bad thing? I first watched this as a child on HBO and I think when the part came in which the birds tear apart Barbarella’s clothes, my parents decided that it was time for me to go to bed. I was hooked on movies that were seen as being wrong for me to watch and Italian-shot films.

A sequel was planned with producer Robert Evans called Barbarella Goes Down, but it never happened. Nor did a 1990 remake, a Robert Rodriguez idea or a potential project with Nicolas Winding Refn, who moved on to other projects, saying, “…certain things are better left untouched. You don’t need to remake everything.”

This begins with a bomb threat on an airplane, which is soon hijacked, with pilot Ei Sugisaka (Teruo Yoshida) and stewardess Kuzumi Asakura (Tomomi Sato) held at gunpoint. As the plane changes course to Okinawa, a UFO smacks into their flight path and causes them to crash, killing everyone except Mrs. Neal (Kathy Horan), Senator Mano (Eizo Kitamura), weapons dealer Hirofumi Tokiyasu (Hideo Ko) and his wife Noriko (Yuko Kusunoki), space biologist Professor Saga (Masaya Takahashi), psychiatrist Dr. Momotake (Nobuo Kaneko), the boy who called in the bomb threat and the hijacker, who takes Kuzumi and makes his way toward the UFO, which splits his head open and sends a blob into his body.

Dr. Momotake is attacked by the teenager and knocked off a cliff, where he finds the hijacker, who drains the blood from his body. It soon kills Tokiyasu and possesses Noriko, speaking with the voice of an alien race through her body. The Gokemidoro have invaded Earth and no human will survive. She falls off a cliff and instantly turns into a corpse.

The survivors lock themselves in what’s left of the plane, but the teenager explodes his bomb, allowing the hijacker to kill Mrs. Neal. Mano locks all of them out of the plane as they set the hijacker on fire, but even that won’t stop the alien, which kills everyone but Sugisaka and Kuzumi, who find every car empty on a highway and every human dead.

Nearly every character — other than the survivors — is a horrible person and does just as much to kill people as the aliens. As it is, even when the two characters survive, they only will live long enough to see the invasion begin, unless a miracle occurs after the credits.

If you ever wondered why the sky is so red when the Bride lands in Japan during Kill Bill Volume 1, this movie is the reason. Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan of it.

Directed by Hajime Satô, who also used the Westernized name Terence Ford and also  directed The Golden Bat, this was based on the tokusatsu series Gokemidoro. This feels like The Blob meets The Thing and then space vampires in a world where everything is neon and even birds realize that things are hopeless and commit suicide. 1960s Japanese science fiction horror made by people that know that mankind is hopeless because while other filmmakers made movies about the horrors of nuclear war, they had already survived it and knew everything was darkness.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Also known as Peony Lantern and by its Japanese title, Botan doro, The Bride from Hades starts at the Obon lantern festival, which is when spirits return to visit their relatives and the newly dead go to the afterlife. A man named Shinzaburo (Kojiro Hongo) meets a gorgeous woman there, Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza), as well as her maid Oyone (Michiko Otsuka).

After the death of her samurai father, Otsuyu has had to become a sex worker to pay off the debts of her family. Shinzaburo falls in love with her, even though he has an arranged marriage planned by his family. Before she goes into the brothel for life, she wants to lose her virginity to him and does, yet his servant Banzo (Ko Nishimura) notes that she has no feet and therefore, must be a ghost. He uses symbols to close the home from the undead, but when his wife begs him to take the money they have offered, the spirit returns for one more night, taking his master to the grave.

The truth is that unless Otsuya makes love on this night, she will be alone for eternity. While a ghost story, this is just as much as romantic film. Director Satsuo Yamamoto makes this a serious film, more than the 1972 remake Hellish Love, which was part of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno series and concentrates more on the sex than the ghosts. In this take, love seems to triumph even when an entire village shows up to chant a specter out of having sex with you.

Past of the Daiei Gothic: Japanese Ghost Stories set from Radiance Films, The Bride from Hades has the following extras: an audio commentary by author Jasper Sharp, a new interview with filmmaker Hiroshi Takahashi, a trailer and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

You can purchase this set from MVD.

An expanded adaptation of the Yuki-onna short story from the 1904 collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn, The Snow Woman was released in the U.S. — with subtitles — in 1969 under the title Snow Ghost. A similar story also is in the movie Kwaidan.

Director Tokuzo Tanaka directed many of Zatochi movies for Daiei, as well as the films Bad Reputation, The Haunted Castle and the incredible Killer Whale.  The script was by Fuji Yahiro.

An old sculptor and his student Yosaku (Akira Ishihama) are carving a statue of a goddess and looking for the perfect tree. As they shelter themselves from the snow, they meet a woman in white who freezes the master but allows his apprentice to live, as long as he never reveals that he saw her. If he does tell anyone about her, she will return to kill him.

Later, Yuki (Shiho Fujimura) comes to live near the apprentice, who waits five years for the tree to dry so that he may sculpt it. He’s dealing with a bailiff who kills the wife of the master sculptor, who reveals that her dying wish is that Yuki marries the young sculptor. The bailiff tries to make Yuki his concubine but she freezes him and all of his men, revealing herself, as the sculptor speaks of the night he met her. She leaves, rather than fulfill her oath to kill him, as she can’t leave their son an orphan.

This story had to have inspired the final story in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. My favorite part of this movie is how any time the snow woman appears, the movie make an obvious removal from reality in color and brightness. What a gorgeous story.

Past of the Daiei Gothic: Japanese Ghost Stories set from Radiance Films, The Snow Woman has the following extras: a new interview with filmmaker Masayuki Ochiai, a visual essay on writer Lafcadio Hearn by Paul Murray, a trailer and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista.

You can purchase this set from MVD.