Welcome to a new regular feature on the World of Mondo, the Weekend Triple Feature! I’m Tommy and each week I will be suggesting a thematically linked series of films for your viewing consideration. Thanks to Justin for inviting me onto the blog. I hope to recommend some interesting, undiscovered and entertaining stuff. Enjoy!
THIS WEEKS THEME: THE CHINATOWN UNDERGROUND
The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 stands as a political testament to the rampant and pervasive anti-Chinese racism of America’s past. But while a passionate and hallucinatory fear of the “Yellow Peril” gripped the nation and picaresque police reports of mysterious Tong Wars captured people’s imaginations, the overwhelming fear and fascination with Chinese culture found its most lasting expression in the sordid pages of the pulps. From Fu Manchu in his Limehouse lair, diabolically plotting world domination (not to mention his many literary clones like the Mysterious Wu Fang, the Yellow Spider or Wu Chung Fu) to the “slant-eyed immigrants” who practiced “nameless rites in honor of heathen gods” in the notoriously xenophobic stories of the otherwise brilliant H.P. Lovecraft, the Chinese were generally presented as a bunch of sinister fiends. Philip Francis Nowlan’s first Buck Rogers story, Armageddon 2419 A.D., is an example of pure Yellow Terror; and even well respected authors, like Jack London in Unparalleled Invasion, sometimes wondered at the awful fate which could befall America at the hands of the “heathen chinee.” But there was also a certain allure to the far East and its mysterious, possibly occult secrets which can be seen in characters like Milton Caniff’s seductive Dragon Lady or that great practitioner of Buddhist magic, the Green Lama. The detective Charlie Chan was created, with all his fractured-English wisdom, as a rebuke to the negative portrayals of Chinese in popular storytelling and he, of course, inspired his own thinly veiled rip-offs, among them Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong (the Mr. Moto movies with Peter Lorre are especially good, in my opinion). So it is out of this convoluted melange of attitudes and imaginings that a sort of mythic and fantastical notion of what secrets might be hidden beneath the crowded, foreign streets of Chinatown is dreamt up. Each of these three movies takes us further down into those perplexing passageways hidden beneath Chinatown in search of the many ancient and mystic secrets of the Orient.
The Secrets of Chinatown (1935, Dir. Fred C. Newmeyer)
Cultists hidden beneath black hoods, deadly knife-throwing assassins, men hypnotized to kill, coins of death, and a mystic cabal of evil opium smugglers are just some of the excitements to behold in this super entertaining but rickety, Z-grade programmer. A man dining in a Chinese restaurant discovers an ominous coin in his soup moments before being mysteriously murdered. The police investigate, but their top detective also turns up dead. The case is left in the hands of Donegal Dawn, an amateur sleuth with a strong imperialist inclination. He shows up at the Mayor’s office offering to take the case while, for some unimaginable reason, disguised as a Hindu (he’s even wearing blackface!). None of his many crime solving techniques are any less inscrutable than his ostentatious and misguided disguise but he somehow manages to get all the pieces in place. The movie is rich with atmosphere and somewhat surprisingly doesn’t try to explain away any of its supernatural elements. The opium smugglers actually are practitioners of black magic! It wasn’t just a Scooby-Doo style ruse. Another unique thing about this movie is that the Chinatown is question is actually in Vancouver, B.C. The film was shot in Canada with Hollywood money by a bunch of mavericks looking for loopholes on the limited import quotas for American movies in Britain. Since Canada is technically part of the British Commonwealth, Americans were able to covertly shoot movies there and pass them off as authentic “British” product, circumventing the cap on American imports. The somewhat disreputable films briefly made under these circumstances before the authorities caught on are, today, either totally forgotten or unfairly reviled. But this movie is true pulp of the most purely entertaining kind. Also it’s barely an hour long, a running-time more movies should aspire to.
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Dir. Albert Zugsmith)
Vincent Price, in a treasured non-horror performance, is an international adventurer who arrives in San Francisco during a Tong war at the turn of the century and discovers an illegal trade of slave girls inside a maze of chambers and passageways beneath the streets of Chinatown. This eerie, somnolent film has nothing to do with the Thomas de Quincy book from which it gets its name and is actually pretty difficult to explain. It has the claustrophobic intensity of a fever dream. People are caged, beaten, drugged, and disappear through secret passageways, trapdoors and sewers. As Price descends into a miasmic, opium-induced stupor, he’s lead on a chase through a seemingly endless procession of twisting corridors and underground rivers. Spouting a steady stream of pulpy philosophical platitudes, his nightmare culminates in a whole hallucinatory five minute sequence shot entirely in slow motion. Directed by Albert Zugsmith, who’s responsible for producing a number of excellent films in the 50′s including several Douglas Sirk movies and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Opium Eater is one of the most strangely poetic and unnervingly fatalistic pieces of genre exploitation ever made.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986, Dir. John Carpenter)
No need to explain this gem. And no excuses if you haven’t ever watched it and are over 10 years old. Kurt Russell goes deep down underground and gets mixed up in some dangerous Chinese mysticism. One of the many things that’s entertaining about this movie is its knowing use of blatant stereotypes. Once again there’s some evil Oriental shenanigans afoot and a heroic white guy there to save the day. But where the film gets its satiric edge is by making this main character an arrogant, hubristic, smart-mouthed idiot. The crucial strength of this movie is in Kurt Russell’s swaggering, obliviously insensitive performance. The frantic, live-action cartoon pacing and non-stop gags and effects make it into an eternal 80′s classic and a bittersweet reminder of when John Carpenter was a totally infallible filmmaker. A perfect end to the triple feature.
Earlier this year I was lucky enough to meet the legendary actress Barbara Steele, and spent a few minutes talking with her about her performance in the Mario Bava masterpiece LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO (1960), better known in the United States as BLACK SUNDAY.
Over the years, several stunning posters have been created to promote this film. Given that today is Sunday (and a particularly dreary one… at least in my neck of the woods), I thought it would be fun to toss up four of my favorites (click on any of the posters for much larger versions):
LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO - Italian Artwork
BLACK SUNDAY - U.S. Artwork
LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO
LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO
The first version is my favorite of the four. Although I haven’t been able to track down an original one-sheet with that artwork (and doubt I’d be able to afford it even if I could), Ms. Steele graciously agreed to autograph a smaller high-quality reproduction for me:
Black Sunday - Autographed With Love By Barbara Steele
Alright, if you haven’t seen INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS yet; 1. Stop reading now. There are mild spoilers ahead and 2. Why haven’t you?! It’s incredible!
Before we get going, let me explain about the title of this blog post a little. I’m not great at history, but I’ve heard stories of WW2 vets cutting off Nazi ears and keeping them as souvenirs, so I suppose that it might be possible that what the Basterds were doing wasn’t that much of a stretch. Whether or not the ear trophy thing is true, I’m pretty sure we didn’t kill Hitler. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Some things in the movie were definitely fictionalized, but burning down a theater with 350 Nitrate film? TOTALLY legit! Many theaters got torched because of projectors malfunctioning and igniting the film. One of the most notable was the Charity Bazaar fire in Paris in 1897 where over 120 people were killed, mostly women, by a combination of burns and people trampling each other trying to get out!
About 5 years ago, I started to collect 35mm films. While other people my age were dating and socializing, I was digging through copies of TEEN WOLF 2 in grocery store basements. There are several different things you learn immediately when you catch the collecting bug. Some of the basics include the difference between flat and scope, the sad reality that every time a movie 20 years ago was printed in Eastman color that it would inevitably turn red and last but not least… DON’T FUCK WITH NITRATE FILM! One of my first large collections of prints contained LOTS of nitrate film prints (which we actually sold on eBay and mailed to the buyers in regular old cardboard boxes. OOOPS!) After clearing out what we thought was all of the nitrate film, we chose a few films to watch. One was BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, which was on safety film and the other was a Flash Gordon film from 1936 called ROCKETSHIP. We researched online and found that it had been re-released in the 50′s and because of the immaculate condition it was in, we decided that it couldn’t possibly be a nitrate print and had to be the print from the 50′s. We threaded it up and as we were projecting it, realized that it was the most stunning black and white film I had ever seen. Everything was so crisp. Then, after it was over, on the tail end of the last reel it said NITRATE in big bold letters. We were so lucky that the house didn’t burn to the ground as we were projecting out of a small room on a portable 35mm projector in my friends basement. TO YOUTH!
If you remember in BASTERDS, there is the little history lesson on how nitrate films burn 3 times faster than paper. This is totally true and here’s a real video to prove it:
Not only does it burn super fast, it also does so under water. This stuff doesn’t need oxygen to burn!
Remember the Universal Studios fire last year and how it messed up a ton of 35mm prints, particularly 50′s movies that will never be restruck due to lack of interest in the repertory market? Well, imagine how terrible that would be if home video hadn’t been invented yet and the only known copies were stored in studio film vaults such as the Fox Film vault in Little Ferry, NJ:
Silent film actress Theda Bara has another claim to fame besides being in 44 films of the silent era; she has one of the lowest film survival rates as only about 6 of the 44 films exist today. The rest were lost in fires like the one in New Jersey. Nitrate films were common place until about 1951 when they started printing on acetate. If you want to read more about film stocks and the scientific explanation on why Nitrate film can burn under water, click HERE.
Mondo is super happy to announce that Tyler Stout has once again teamed up with Quentin Tarantino and produced this amazing poster for QT’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS!
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS by Tyler Stout
24″x36″ 4 color screenprint, hand numbered with an edition size of 450. We only have super limited numbers of these for sale as we gave Cinemapocalypse attendees first crack. LIMIT 2 PER PERSON.
Also available is this gorgeous variant edition.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (VARIANT) by Tyler Stout
The edition on this particular poster is only 80. LIMIT 1 PER PERSON. Both were printed at D and L Screenprinting.
Print Mafia also got to take a shot at Hitler and as you can see…mission accomplished!
Hitler Target (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) by Print Mafia
4 color screenprint. 17.5″x23″. Hand Numbered.
Last but not least, the movie that started the “men on a mission” genre…THE DIRTY DOZEN!
THE DIRTY DOZEN by The Silent Giants
Edition of 90. 18″x24″ Signed, numbered and hand screened by the artist.
Cinemapocalypse was IN-SANE! My first show ever at the Alamo Drafthouse was the Best of QT Fest so Saturday night brought back a whole lotta memories for me. One of my favorite moments of the night was getting to sit next to one of my favorite living actors, ROBERT FORSTER!
In between movies we chatted about Wings Hauser, his hair loss and how he was pals with almost everyone in THE LOSERS. Truly nerdy stuff. Both of his Q&As were oustanding as well! If you ever meet him, ask him to do his Jon Huston impersonation. GOLDEN!
He came out as a special guest as we were showing VIGILANTE as part of the show.
Everything about VIGILANTE is PERFECT…especially the score which I found HERE. Vulcan and I Luv Video have this for rent in the Austin area. You can buy it on Amazon and it’s for rent on Netflix. However you swing it, SEE THIS MOVIE!
-Justin
P.S. In case you were wondering, the full line up of CINEMAPOCALYPSE was:
Brooklyn got first chance at them last week at the Rooftop Films Screening and now this shirt can be yours! Coming in both black and NILBOG Green, this shirt is available exclusively through Mondo.
This weekend, I was hanging out with Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson while they were having their shows in Austin and Houston. On the Houston part of the trip, we had a few hours to kill before Mark’s show started and decided to hit up the Nasa exhibit of “artifacts” from the films of George Lucas.
What really put me over on going to see this was the promise of props from EVERY movie Lucas had ever been involved with including HOWARD THE DUCK! Take a look at the pictures below, but be warned…I refused to take any photos of the INIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL parts. They had Shia Lebouf’s motorcycle and Harrison Ford’s fedora and whip from the movie, but who freakin’ cares…that movie doesn’t exist in my world.
If you’re in Houston, I’d recommend stopping by if for nothing else to read George Lucas’ original notes for STAR WARS. Drastically different from what ended up on screen.
Put the Wii stick down, come out of your parents basement and step out into the light this weekend. There is SO much stuff going on this weekend here in Austin (and Houston). First, we have the massive NIGHT OF THE CREEPS reunion screening at the Ritz. If you haven’t got your tickets yet….OOPS! They’re all gone. There will be a poster for sale for the event, so you can still own a piece of greatness. (I’ve seen it…you’ll like it.)
Next, we have the ROT RALLY. I heard Robbie Knievel is going to jump multiple somethings in front of the Capital downtown. Robbie isn’t near as cool as his dad, but I watched his reality show and he jumps stuff for a living so he’s way cooler than any of us based on that fact alone.
MARK TODD is in the house this weekend (literally for me). He and his wife Esther Pearl Watson are going to be hanging out at Domy for their solo shows.
Esther will be at Domy Austin Friday night.
Mark will be at the Houston Domy. I’ll be at both events with Mark’s Badasses print set and the Badass Cinema shirts he did for us. Come and hang out.
Four of us went to see this last night. Don’t be fooled, it’s a shitty movie, but that’s obvious by the trailer. The real mystery is if this movie was deliberately made to be shitty or just a gloriously failed attempt at greatness. I’m guessing the former. What are your thoughts?
If you don’t know who Frank Henenlotter is, click HERE right now. If you’re into horror movies, you’ll love him as this guy was killing it in the 80′s. Literally.
Today’s murder Monday is from BRAIN DAMAGE.
Anyone recognize the voice of Aylmer the drug pushing alien? It’s horror host Zacherley!
Henenlotter also did cool things like cross characters over from his other movies. For instance, you can see the man holding the basket from BASKET CASE riding the subway in BRAIN DAMAGE. Never seen BASKET CASE? Well, here’s a clip dubbed in Italian:
(If anyone knows if this prop still exists, get ahold of me. No joke, I’ll pay whatever you want for it.)
Check Henenlotter’s movies out. You won’t be disappointed.
