Drama, Erotic, Imaginary US Cinema

#102 – Invitation to Sin, An

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(1976, US, 95 min) Dir Art Blitzen. Cast Angela Raider, Morty Handlon, Sissy Pfister.

Another exercise in inappropriate sexploitation from ‘Artless’ Art Blitzen. Despite no one liking it, 1974’s What Did They Do To Patricia was a success, perhaps for those who enjoyed The Exorcist and Deep Throat but wanted one film that would do the job of both. Newly emboldened by this random occurrence, Art indulged in that vice which strikes the surprised successful – that of an inflated ego. An Invitation to Sin was to be his classy film, the one that transcended the smut genre and oozed across and into the mainstream. Fair intentions but unfortunately for Art his nickname wasn’t ‘Artless’ just because it was a fun play on his first name, he really had no idea about aesthetics at all. So what’s the package? An Invitation to Sin centres around a young woman’s mysterious invitation to a masked ball at a country estate where she becomes embroiled in a seemingly endless orgy where every kind of vice and perversion is indulged. The concession to class seems to rest solely on the fact that the setting is a country estate and that the characters dress in fancy period finery (though what exact period that is supposed to be is left somewhat vague). Despite the awfulness the film was another success for Blitzen as there really is a lot of filth in it. The bad news is that that led to more films but the good news is that his next one was his own personal Heaven’s Gate – the science fiction sex odyssey Sex Beyond the Stars.

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Drama, Erotic, Imaginary French Cinema

#101 – Fusil Rose, Le (Pink Musket, The)

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(1976, Fr, 98 min) Dir Catherine Dominique. Cast Adrianna Belle, Jean Fillet, Hans.

Riding the crest of the wave started with Emmanuel, Catherine Dominique traded in art house experimentation for feminist sexploitation with Le Fusil Rose. “Emmanuel, we all hated,” she said in 2010 at a retrospective in Berlin, “I wanted to make a film where the woman make the choice, you understand? Like me, in life.” A discussion of Dominique’s life is better left for a review of Madame D, the documentary about her, but it’s hard to miss the parallels between this and it, even though Le Fusil Rose centres around a female highwayman character and not a twentieth-century film director. Like Dominique, the Pink Musket is in reality the sweet and mild daughter of a landowner. The both of them dressed up to go out at night and take what they wanted  from men – Dominique using the power of her body over them and the Pink Musket her weapon. Both also had the law on their tails but for Dominique it was for the provocations of her art and unlike the Pink Musket it never came in the form of Jean Fillet and his swimmer’s physique. At the end of the film he and the Pink Musket come face to face in a battle of physical strength that is far removed from the kind that you would expect at the end of a Clint Eastwood movie for example. Brazenly erotic and unashamedly political it’s great to see Dominique enjoying a resurgence of interest in recent years.

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Black and White, Imaginary British Cinema, Science Fiction, Silent

#100 – One Hundred Years From Now

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(1914, GB, 104 min, b/w) Dir Albert Adlington. Cast Herbert Baum, Eleanor Tatchell, Simon Fisk.

A large budget production for the time – partly funded by entrepreneur and utopian Sir Robert Sockton-Mogg – detailing the glorious future that lay ahead for the British Empire. As ever with these kinds of films it’s as entertaining to see what they got wrong as they did right. In the former camp there are the fashions which have remained curiously immobile from the Edwardian era and the biplanes that everyone has in their driveway. More poignant is the idea the film predicts that in 2014 that the British Empire would be celebrating one hundred years of peace and stability around the world but of course how could they have then predicted the First and Second World Wars, the dissolution of the Empire and all that followed. What they got right is interesting with a ‘Cinematograph’ is on the wall in every home like a flat screen TV, for example, or submarines travelling the oceans. Besides this and some ahead of their time special effects the film isn’t great, as stodgy to sit through as 1933’s similar Things to Come. It remains a valuable cultural artefact however and the mostly complete silver nitrate print in the BFI’s library is a wonder to behold. Maybe not perfect but a historical moment for sure.

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Drama, Imaginary British Cinema

#99 – 99 Red Balloons

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(1993, GB, 101 min) Dir Adrian Fisher. Cast Alan Paul, Peter Capaldi, Susan Trevlyn.

The threat of nuclear annihilation had only just dissipated when, ever the contrarian, Adrian Fisher produced this, a strange kind of love story to the spectre of mutually assured destruction. It’s 1984 and Harvey’s parents are building a bomb shelter in the back yard. He’s doesn’t see this as some dire portent of doom however – on the contrary he finds the prospect of nuclear war very exciting, dreaming of a bright and beautiful mushroom cloud filling the skies over his hometown and telling his teacher that his classes don’t matter because he and all the other children will be dead before they’re grown up. When a teacher finds his notebook filled with drawings of atomic explosions, crumbling buildings and irradiated corpses with their skin melting off they naturally call in his parents who it turns out are just as pessimistic as their son. Of course this being a Fisher film the fantastical is never far away with their neighbour across the road being, as Harvey sees it, a Soviet communist spy who, again as Harvey sees it, must be encouraged to endanger everyone’s life and trigger the inevitable apocalypse. This was produced on the back of the surprise success of By the Light of the Blood Moon and the bigger budget is certainly visible. The titular song gets a good workout too, embodying Harvey’s ideal of happiness in destruction.

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Animation, Childrens, Imaginary US Cinema

#98 – Grandfather Clock

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(1976, US, 73 min) Dir Dean Wold.

An altogether more down to earth follow-up from Dean Wold after his unintentionally trippy Walking on a Moonbeam and intentionally so: “I never approved of the attention I received from the so-called hippy community,” said Wold in his last pre-seclusion interview in 1978, “They couldn’t conceive of the process of producing an animated film or how difficult it would be to make on mind altering substances – of which I have never tried, I hasten to add. The fact that Moonbeam was quite obviously indebted to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo was completely lost on them too.” In addition to this Moonbeam, despite its popularity, didn’t make Wold a whole lot of money and this seems to have been a conscious attempt at a more mainstream kind of film, as unsuccessful and misguided as that attempt turned out to be. Based on the Danish folk tale ‘The Knowledgeable Birch’, Grandfather Clock finds young Harris and Daisy mourning the death of their Grandfather Pip only to hit on the idea that his spirit has taken residence in the titular timepiece that their parents have just bought. The two children, behind the backs of their parents, start reading the clock stories, leaving food in it and even take it out in their sled – basically behaving as though it were another family member. Of course this can’t go unnoticed from their parents for long… A fantastically evocative soundtrack from renowned flautist Avlar Biskint complements the deliberate pace and earthy, melancholy palette of this sweet and sad little film which broke the heart of a whole generation while on heavy public television rotation in the eighties.

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Animation, Childrens, Imaginary French Cinema, Imaginary US Cinema

#97 – Walking on a Moonbeam

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(1968, US/Fr, 80 min) Dir Dean Wold.

After a proposed Little Nemo feature fell through Dean Wold had to span the Atlantic for his first feature, the funds for an idiosyncratic non-Disney animation such as this not immediately forthcoming in his home country. Whether this contributed to his decision for the film to be entirely dialogue free is open to debate – the man himself has given contradictory accounts in his rare interviews. Either way the decision works and no doubt contributed, along with the stream of consciousness plotting, to the film being embraced by the counter-culture on its release. Not that this isn’t a children’s film because it most certainly is. A unnamed boy is woken in the night by a beam of moonlight under his bedroom window’s blind. He pulls up the blind to investigate further and sees, to his surprise, a cat outside the window frolicking on the beam as though it were a solid road leading to the moon. He lifts the sash window and tentatively steps out to follow the scampering kitten and ends up travelling all the way to the moon where it appears all manner of creatures live – men made of melting cheese, hot air balloon heads floating through the skies and, in a fit of virtuoso animation, a ball room made of shimmering glass populated by similarly glistening glass dancers. As this description might suggest the influence of Nemo is writ large here. These adventures end with the boy back in his bed, tucked in for his parents to find him in the morning, both of them baffled by the appearance of a new pet cat in his room. A charming and inventively made film that brought the unknown Wold to the world’s attention.

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Animation, Childrens, Imaginary US Cinema

#96 – Why We Hibernate!

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(1963, US, 24 min) Dir Dean Wold

A nice little educational film made by the now famous but then not Dean Wold about the mechanics of a world in which people, along with animals, hibernate during the winter. Young Donny is excited about the upcoming Hibernation Day and goes with his Mom to the supermarket during the Hibernation Sales so that they can stock up for the big meal before sleeping and get Donnie his very first nesting bed. “You’re too big to be hibernating with your parents now Donnie!” says his Mom as she and the salesman fit him out for the bed (which is kind of like if an overstuffed sleeping bag and a dinghy had a child). Back home Dad is getting his and Mom’s nesting beds out of the attic. They all sit down for their last big meal and then Mom sends Donnie to his nest with a snack pack in case he wakes up hungry during the winter. Along the way various facts about hibernation are doled out as Donnie learns all about it – the biological reasons for it (such as they were understood), the different animals that do it and so on. The film ends with the reveal that this is just a day-dream by the real Donnie, sitting in his classroom with the bare trees and snowy ground outside the window. A bit rough around the edges but with enough of that playful, colourful Dean Wold touch.

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Comedy, Imaginary Irish Cinema

#95 – Father Faith

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(2011, Ire, 109 min) Dir Phil Neeson. Cast Pat Shortt, Phil Neeson, Isaach de Bankolé.

Fathers Jimmy Faith (Shortt) and Mickey Batt (Neeson) are new arrivals from Ireland in the fictional African country of Chango-Monin (which is, geographically, “out the west, like Galway.”), both there for reasons hinted at but not specified during the film. While Batt is perfectly content to stay there, Father Faith is desperate to get back to his home country to the point where he greets every new convert by running from the building and back to his lodgings where he can call ‘The Head Office’ and ask whether, since he’s found another new soul for the Lord, he can come back. The answer is always no. Will he ever find a reason to stay? Will he ever come to love the locals, who he hates without pretending otherwise? A pretty scabrous film with no love in evidence for the institution of the church – it makes Father Ted look like The Fluffy Bunny Show. Good performances from Shortt and Neeson (here also directing his second feature) can’t disguise the awfulness of the characters and your feeling for the film will depend on you ability to spend close to two hours in the company of such a pair of corrupt, racist clergymen. Special mention must go to de Bankolé who is hilarious as their local colleague who spends the film pretending to like them through gritted teeth.

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Black and White, Comedy, Imaginary Dutch Cinema, Silent

#94 – Zwarte Piet (Black Peter)

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(1921, Neth, 27 mins, b/w) Dir Dick Binger. Cast Annie Dommelen, Oscar van Victor, B. A. van der Veer.

Not so much a film as an extended skit, pretty much, this silent comedy film about the then fine and now controversial Dutch Christmas character Black Peter was a great success at the time of it’s release and until very recently was a TV seasonal fixture. To the uninitiated Black Peter is the companion to Saint Nicholas (or Sinterklaas in the Netherlands) who doles out sweets to the good children and, to the bad, a whipping with a bundle of birch twigs. The controversy? Well, Black Peter is a moor you see, who is traditionally played by a blackfaced actor in a curly wig with big red lips. In addition to this he is played in this film by Annie Dommelen who is, as her name might suggest, a woman. Needless to say debate about the suitability of this character continuing to play a part of the celebrations of Sinterklassavond on December  5th each year continues to rage. But anyway – now that the layers of cultural context are peeled back, what of the film? Well Black Peter is hopping from rooftop to rooftop as the film begins, consulting his list and tossing sweets down the chimneys of the  good. Before long he happens upon the house of a bad child and, birch bundle in hand, climbs down with great enthusiasm to beat him. A frantic chase about the house commences with Black Peter eventually coming out on top. A strange little film with more about it to frighten than amuse for this viewer but were I a Netherlander of a century ago would my opinion be different?

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Comedy, Imaginary Japanese Cinema, Imaginary US Cinema

#93 – I Love Japanese Punks

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(1984, US/Jap, 104 min) Dir Rachael Gaudi. Cast Rosanna Arquette, Lea Thompson, Miyuki Ono, Kō Machida, Cobra.

The first film from video artist Rachael Gaudi, inspired by her time in Japan in residence at the Tokyo ‘Shoebox’ and the punk scene there. Arquette and Thompson are Split and Max, a pair of New York new wave punks bored with life in the USA and whose only idea for getting by in the world involves hanging around the punk scene until something happens. Split is obsessed with Japan and, in particular, with Japanese punks and misappropriates Max’s winnings from a daytime quiz show to invest in a pair of one way airplane tickets to the land of the rising sun. From there it’s culture shock comedy all the way but at the same time acting as a document of the punk music scene in Japan at the time, the only such window onto that world for Western viewers. Before long though Split and Max’s dreams have come true – by hanging around the punk scene in Japan they get noticed and are soon making a living as crazy American punk girls advertising cola and deodorant and the like. But have they sold out? A sweet, silly film and not at all as you would expect from Gaudi, whose internationally renowned gallery pieces are of an altogether more eye-watering cast.

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