Third Eye Cinema / Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine podcast: Recent Episodes
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Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Tonight, we’ll be talking a set of films that almost form a genre of their own.
These films were often, though not always, “respected” by critics and the general public at large, but all bore that dark, almost despairing claustrophobia and realistic feel of what I and others were living every day out on the streets locally, far from the dayglo nonsense of the 60’s reruns or the sunnier Hollywood based fare of the day.
The streets were crowded, filthy, filled with the detritus of the post-hippie era – the junkies, the odd artsy types, the gangs, the whores. The days where you were damn glad to see Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels on a subway…if you were crazy enough to use them at all. Everything covered in graffiti, buildings collapsing into tenements, crack houses, illicit hookup spots for rough trade cruising types. Garbage in the streets, and decay in every sense of the word.
These are films that wallow in what in later years would be referred to as urban blight, but not so much “celebrating” as providing a window into all the palpable danger and decline of an impoverished post-blackout Manhattan in the days after the Watts and Newark riots, not long past Ford telling the mayor and city to go screw ourselves when asking for Federal relief.
These were the days of Studio 54, CBGBs and the original Saturday Night Live – but filled with menace. Hard drug use was rampant. Muggings were so commonplace as to be a shrug of the shoulders. Nobody in their right mind stepped into Central Park after sunset. Washington Square was known for decades as Needle Park. And the East Village? Forget about Alphabet City, the Bronx or Brooklyn.
This was a special breed of film, that focused on crooked, flawed cops working outside a busted system…but not with the heroic vibe of Reaganite action heroes. These guys paid for painting outside the lines. The denouments were never triumphant, all victories were pyrrhic. Vigilante justice and community action were about as fantastic as these films got, and as close to actual comeuppance as anyone got.
This is the story, in a way, of our childhood and early youth to young adulthood, as told in some very memorable films.
So join us as we go dumpster diving in the back alleys of most dangerous of neighborhoods, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 111 (11/30/23): Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s
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Take a Bite of the Rotten Apple - NYC cop/crime films of the 70s
Archibald Alec Leach was born in Bristol, England at the turn of the century, January 18, 1904 to a tailor and a seamstress.
A theatrical tour of NYC led him to emigrate at the ripe old age of 16, where he became a vaudeville song and dance man on the same circuit as the likes of the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello and Ted Healy and his Stooges.
Moving to Hollywood at the height of the Depression, he wound up cast as handsome young men and rich playboys in a handful of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West films, the latter of which elevated him to leading man status.
But it wasn't until the rise of the screwball comedy that he truly made his mark, starring in several of the best known entries thereof. A long run of similar if, by the late forties, increasingly inferior efforts was salvaged by four well regarded films for the great Alfred Hitchcock, which subverted his image in favor of a darker, more realistic persona.
These quartet of roles almost led to his casting as the first James Bond in Doctor No, but he would only commit to one film in what was always intended as an ongoing series...and the rest is history.
After a handful of interesting if decidedly flawed oddities, he finally retired from film in the mid 60s, leaving behind more of a unique character and persona than there ever was a consistent body of work to be remembered by...those Hitchcock films aside.
So join us as we take on the inimitable Cary Grant, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 110 (11/16/23): Cary Grant
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The French crime film is different from those of other countries for several reasons. While some, certainly Jean Dellanoy's Soleil Des Voyeux (aka Action Man) draw elements from the German Krimi and the George Nader Jerry Cotton films and even the serial (particularly those of Feuillade, whose Fantomas and Les Vampires remain surprisingly gripping and modern in feel and approach), the overarching vibe is less that of contemporaneous American crime films or Italian poliziotteschi than it is, as you might expect from the nation that coined the term, the American film noir and gangster pictures of the late 30s and 1940s.
And as with the idiosyncratic and often groundbreaking critics turned directors of the Nouvelle Vague, the French crime film less pays strict homage to than integrates the driving elements and visual aesthetic of American noir in a more contemporary sense, improving and updating them to something more suited and appealing to a modern audience: think much venerated names like Jean Pierre Melville, Rene Clement, Georges Lautner, Jean Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon.
So join us as we discuss one of the most notable and influential genres of its type, the French Crime film, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 109 (11/2/23): Crimenaux ala Francais - Crime The French Way
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Roy Harold Scherer Jr. was born smack dab in the middle of both the Roaring 20’s and the country in Illinois, Thanksgiving of 1925.
Of all the gay and bisexual actors and actresses we’ve covered, Hudson was easily the most elusive and convincing in his career long presentation as a very straight screen idol and leading man. While known to many in Hollywood circles, his private life only came to public light over three decades into his career, when he was one of the earliest celebrities to openly discuss his being stricken with AIDS.
A naval veteran and strangely enough, a lifelong Republican and de facto Goldwater Girl (!) he pursued his dream of acting despite a pronounced and career long difficulty in remembering lines, being rejected from drama school and wasting no less than 38 takes to deliver a single line in his first onscreen role – a testament to his All American good looks and winning personality, to be sure.
After being signed to Universal, he was cast in several forgettable and forgotten cheesy period westerns, pirate and supposed adventure films before landing industry attention with his Oscar for the execrable James Dean/Elizabeth Taylor melodrama Giant. But it was with his oddly fortuitous pairing with Doris Day and neurotic comic relief sideman Tony Randall in a series of fluffy and decidedly conservative romantic comedies at the end of the 1950s that he truly attained marquee leading man status.
Going on to star with Italian sex symbols Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale, as well as other attempts to replicate the Hudson/Day formula with lesser lights like Leslie Caron and Paula Prentiss, Hudson began to tire of these sort of light comedy roles, moving to television for the highly enjoyable and well remembered McMillan and Wife alongside the equally loveable Susan Saint James and gay icon (and Rosie the paper towel lady!) Nancy Walker
for a several season, nigh-decade spanning run.
His latter roles tended towards the decidedly idiosyncratic: John
Frankenheimer’s existential paranoia opus Seconds, Alastair MacLean’s flawed if enjoyable Cold War spy film Ice Station Zebra, Roger Vadim’s sexploitation slasher/comedy Pretty Maids All In a Row, entertaining disaster epic Avalanche and the pensive meditation of a miniseries that was The Martian Chronicles.
So join us as we take on the All-American leading man who hid a surprising edge behind the surface veneer, the one and only Rock Hudson, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 108 (10/19/23): Hide in Plain Sight: the Life and Career of Rock Hudson
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Hugh John Mungo Grant was born at the start of September, 1960, Live at Hammersmith, London to a Highlander turned carpet salesman and a music and multilingual language teacher.
A 1st XV division rugby player with a background in English literature who turned down an offer for a PhD in art history at London University, he instead took up drama at Oxford. Kicking off his career in Merchant Ivory stinker Maurice, he got his first major role in Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm, followed by a headlining turn in Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon before striking
international box office with Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Splitting his career between twee faux-arthouse fare like Sirens, Sense and Sensibility and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain and more populist roles in comedies like Notting Hill, Small Time Crooks, Love Actually and the Bridget Jones films, Grant would often strike gold with rom com fare like Two Weeks Notice and Music and Lyrics before a lengthy hiatus
from film peppered with occasional guest roles ranging from the highly entertaining The Man From Uncle and the pandering Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
A noted curmudgeon and on-set perfectionist, Grant has a notedly embattled relationship with the tabloid press, and was a major player in stopping the detestable Rupert Murdoch and the practice of celebrity phone tapping. And who can forget the whole Divine Brown affair?
Join us as we take on the loveable and eternally youthful in spirit Hugh Grant, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 107 (10/5/23): Still a Bit of a Lad: The Bumpy Career of Hugh Grant
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Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. was born in November of 1925 in Wales to an hard drinking coal miner cum absentee father and a pub barmaid.
Growing up in a rough steel mill town under the roof of his older sister and her husband, he left school to work in the mines after his sister’s husband (like both parents before him) fell ill, due to the unregulated, non-unionized working conditions, before joining the RAF, where he served as navigator.
His omnipresent sideline in theatrical productions led to adoption by acting tutor and schoolmaster Philip Burton, and he fell under the wing of none other than Sir John Gielgud. As part of a Gielgud-led touring company, he came Stateside, winning both a World Theatre Award and a succession of Hollywood film roles.
His leading role in The Robe both kicked off a proper filmic career and entangled him in a decades long, fiery on and off relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, who'd star with him in numerous films and tabloid headlines throughout the 60s and 70s.
Starring in everything from critical accolade-bedecked dreck like Look Back in Anger, Equus and Night of the Iguana and excellent films like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, 1984 or Where Eagles Dare to cult absurdities Candy, The Medusa Touch and Exorcist II, Burton was arguably more famed for his offscreen
antics than his own theatrical talents...and had a rollercoaster of a career that reflected both his notable highs and precipitous lows.
Join us as we take on one of the most notorious thespians to walk the boards and chew the cinematic scenery, the late great Richard Burton, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 106 (9/21/23): Who's Afraid of Liz and Dick? The Tempestuous Career of Richard Burton
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Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born in the Bronx's Castle Hill, in July 1969 to an Army guy turned computer tech and housewife turned gym teacher. Her decision to take up dance led to a major falling out with her mother, leaving the aspiring terpsichore living at her dance studio for months thereafter.
Kicking off her career as an In Living Color Fly Girl, her big break came when she costarred in the Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson reunion Money Train, followed by a starring role as the late Tex Mex icon Selena, the absurd Anaconda and a string of successful rom coms like The Wedding Planner, Marry Me and Shotgun Wedding.
A third and simultaneous shift into dance music led to 9 albums and a long run of chart topping hits in conjunction with big names like Pitbull, Wisin Y Yandel, Big Pun, Fat Joe and Ja Rule (just to name a few!)
Her much vaunted curvature actually led to an entire sociocultural shift in what American males find sexy in a woman, and her troubled love life has been top drawer fodder for tabloid coverage for decades, culminating in a surprising second time around reunion with the other half of Benifer (Mark I AND III), Ben Affleck just a year or so back.
Nominated for dozens of awards in both music and film over the years, she's been called one of the world's most influential people, and she continues to deliver light if entertaining product right to this very day.
Join us as we take on the "triple threat" queen of media, the one and only Jennifer Lopez, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 105 (9/7/23): Ride the rollercoaster - the life and career of Jennifer Lopez
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Sandra Annette Bullock was born on July 26, 1964, in our nations capitol, Washington, D.C. to a German opera singer (and daughter of a rocket scientist!) and an Alabama career military man who, perhaps surprisingly, was also a voice coach.
A military brat, she spent her youth in Nuremberg, Vienna and Salzburg, before returning to attend school in Virginia and North Carolina and a bid for stardom right here in New York City.
As lucky in her rise to prominence as she was unlucky in love, she broke into the bigtime with the one two punch of Keanu Reeves turn to action hero, Speed and the Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes sci fi action epic Demolition Man, before starting her own production company and breaking both records and hearts with big hits like Miss Congeniality, While You Were Sleeping and the Hugh Grant starring Two Weeks Notice.
But problems in her personal life took her out of the spotlight and slowed her relentless run of box office smashes...until a surprise comeback with the Ryan Reynolds (and Betty White) opus The Proposal, pensive Keanu Reeves reunion The Lake House, the likeable all-female Ocean's 8 and the recent Channing Tatum/Brad Pitt comedy/adventure The Lost City.
Join us as we take on the queen of the rom com and Hollywood power player Sandra Bullock, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 104 (8/24/23): Hail to the Queen: the rise, fall and resurrection of America's Sweetheart Sandra Bullock
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Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone was born in the heyday of Mussolini, Rome 1934 to an engineer turned railway worker who may or may not have been descended from a Viscount and a piano teacher/local actress who he never married, hence leaving Loren and her mother in poverty.
Finalizing in local beauty contests under the assumed name Sofia Lazzaro brought her to the attention of film mogul Carlo Ponti, who changed her name and got her signed with Paramount for a string of big budget films that brought her to international prominence.
In an era defined by blowsy blondes like Monroe, Mansfield and Van Doren, Loren became one of the first and biggest of the far more naturalistic and earthy European competition, without question only surpassed by the even more existentially authentic Brigitte Bardot, who we quite deservedly devoted an entire show to.
Popular and prolific throughout the 1960s, she made a huge sensation with a handful of films she’d done with Vittorio de Sica, often in conjunction with male sex symbol of the era Marcello Mastrioanni, before marriage to Ponti and a conscious decision to more or less step away from cinema in the 1970s.
Join us as we discuss one of the world's most beloved sex symbols, the one and only Sophia Loren, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 103 (8/10/23): Sex Italian Style: The Life and Films of Sophia Loren
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Born to the trade right here in Manhattan, April of 1932, Tony Perkins was the son of theatrical actor Osgood (most notably appearing alongside Boris Karloff, George Raft and Paul Muni in Scarface the very same year.)
Raised almost entirely by his mother and a French nanny, he self-avowedly "became abnormally attached to" his mother, developing "an Oedipal Complex in a pronounced form", which became further complicated by misplaced guilt when his father died backstage only 5 years later. Continually conflicted in his orientation, he married photographer "Berry" Berenson (sister of Marisa), with whom he bore two children...despite being involved with any number of men since his teens.
With his quirky, “sensitive” demeanor and strong hints of a darker undertone to his persona, he was, perhaps unusually, often cast as an off kilter romantic lead, the sort of oddball outsider character later essayed by the likes of Christian Slater or Crispin Glover. But it was his shockingly convincing portrait of Norman Bates for the great subversive film technician Alfred Hitchcock that both defined and, for a large part of his career thereafter, typecast him domestically for a series of darker, more villainous if not psychotic roles thereafter.
Having starred with the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Paul Newman, he moved from domestic churn ‘em out studio fare to a far more interesting sideline in the French cinema of the 60’s and early 70’s.
Briefly settling into the more auteurist work of 70’s British and American film, he took a deep dive into cult cinema throughout the 80s, working for folks like Ken Russell and bringing his Bates character back for a better than average slasher series based on the 1960 original.
Cowriting the highly subtextual The Last of Sheila with then-partner and musical theater impresario, he further tried his hand at directing, first in two stage productions, and later a pair of films (one of which he starred in.)
He even had a short lived sideline in schmaltz, releasing four albums in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, which showed him (perhaps surprisingly) possessed of a pleasant, syrupy tone very much along the lines of Jack Jones.
Join us as we discuss one of the great character actors of our time, the multilayered Tony Perkins, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 102 (7/27/23): A Man of Unusual Talent: The Life and Career of Tony Perkins
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Born in Newark, NJ in September of 1940, Brian DePalma went from physics student to student filmmaker in the heady height of the hippie era, with his early experimental films introducing none other than the much feted Robert DeNiro to the world at large.
Following a surprising run of perversely Hitchcockian works like Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out and Body Double (and a few strangely beloved cult oddities like Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise,) DePalma made a hard right turn into populist crime films like Scarface and Carlito's Way, the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film and Disney CG fest Mission to Mars before descending into a ghetto of direct to video style "erotic thrillers" oddly peopled by the likes of Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, Antonio Banderas and Scarlett Johanssen.
So join us as we attempt to dig into the notable highs (and precipitous lows) of Brian DePalma, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 101 (7/13/23): The Modern Day Hitchcock or Hapless Hollywood Hack? From Auteurist to Churn 'em Out Company Man: The Decidedly Bumpy Career of Brian DePalma
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Santa Monica, Thanksgiving of 1958, Jamie Lee Curtis was born to screen idols Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.
Left to be raised by a single mother as a toddler, Curtis dropped out after a single semester at law school to take on the wild world of thespianism as a television bit player in notable episodes of The Shaun Cassidy/Parker Stevenson Hardy Boys, Buck Rogers, Charlies Angels and Columbo, before a recurring part on the short lived Operation Petticoat sitcom.
But a prominent screen debut in John Carpenter’s soon to be iconic slasher Halloween led to a succession of similar roles both in and apart from the franchise that resulted, in such well remembered efforts as The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train and Road Games (not to mention Halloween II, H2O, Resurrection and the recent revival trilogy under David Gordon Green.
Concerned about being typecast, she began to branch out into comedy, appearing (and generally stealing the show) in box office hits like Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, Freaky Friday and the recent Everything Everywhere All At Once as well as more dramatic roles in films like Perfect, Love Letters, Blue Steel and True Lies.
Join us as we take on the original "Final Girl", scream queen, comedienne and more, the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 100 (6/29/23): Jamie Lee Curtis
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Born in NYC way back in 1938 to a garment district worker, Richard Benjamin met his wife to this very day, fellow actress Paula Prentiss, and would appear with her in several theatrical, filmic and televised roles (starting with late 60s sitcom He & She, oft referenced as a template for the iconic Mary Tyler Moore show.)
This short lived but critically beloved series kicked off a long career in both comedic and dramatic cinematic roles that began with 1969's box office smash Goodbye Columbus alongside Ali McGraw, and went on to include such cultural touchstones as Catch 22, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Portnoy's Complaint and Westworld.
Later works included the wide ranging Buck Henry science fiction satire Quark (which took on everything from Star Trek, Star Wars and 2001 to Zardoz in its all too brief late 70s run), Love at First Bite, Scavenger Hunt and How to Beat the High Co$t of Living, before moving into an exclusively directorial role with the Peter O'Toole vehicle My Favorite Year, and a short run of successful comedies like Tom Hanks' Money Pit, Melanie Griffith's Milk Money, Whoopi Golberg/Ted Danson film Made in America and the Cher/Winona Ryder hit Mermaids.
Join us as we talk a true 70's icon (and 80's hit director), the one and only Richard Benjamin, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 99 (6/15/23): Richard Benjamin, Class(y) Clown
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John Adam Belushi was born in Chicago, 1949...and like so many bright lights of the counterculture, left us at a disturbingly young age, only 33 years later at the dawn of March, 1982.
A candle burning at both ends, this somersaulting, volatile, pratfall prone comedian stole the spotlight wherever he went, in both personal and onscreen life, from Chicago's Second City to National Lampoon to a fabled stint with the original Saturday Night Live ensemble.
A sideline performing high energy schtick-based (but strangely both serious and more than competent) classic blues and soul covers with veterans of the scene went from local club dates to album releases, eventually resulting in an enduring modern era movie classic: The Blues Brothers.
But an all too brief run in filmmaking was not without its own perils, and his personal indulgences were all too encouraged in the circles in which he ran.
After delivering a handful of off kilter (but towards the end, surprisingly good) films that showed there was more to the man than a juvenile, slovenly life of the party type, he was gone, leaving a short but memorable legacy that endures to this very day.
Join us as we wrestle with a true live wire, the bombastic John Belushi!
Weird Scenes Week 98 (6/1/23): High Voltage and Wired: The Life and Career of John Belushi
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Born in 1962 in Disneyworld territory, Orlando, Florida, Wesley Trent Snipes grew up on the mean streets of the Bronx, before shuttling back to Florida as a teen and then doing college out in California.
After some awkward beginnings as a drug dealer in Miami Vice and the heavy in a Michael Jackson video (and losing out on a pair of high profile opportunities to the likes of LeVar Burton and Tymak), Snipes broke out in a brief but notable run of New Jack gangsta films for the likes of Mario Van Peebles and Spike Lee before making a name with smash hits like White Men Can’t Jump and an unexpected turn in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar...while simultaneously pumping out a surprising number of no budget direct to video affairs of varying quality.
With a wide ranging background in martial arts and a side hustle providing bodyguard muscle for celebs, he found a new career in high profile action films like Passenger 57, Rising Sun, Demolition Man and the Blade series...before running into a number of headline baiting legal troubles which resulted in a three year incarceration.
Since then, he's been making a return to notable film roles with a very central character in the latest entry in Stallone's all-star Expendables series and Eddie Murphy's long overdue return to form, Coming 2 America. Could Snipes, like a good fighter who's taken a few hard knocks, find himself on the upswing once again?
Join us as we take on the rollercoaster career of the one and only Wesley Snipes!
Week 97 (5/18/23): In The Court of Chaos: Up (and Down) with Wesley Snipes
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Caryn Elaine Johnson, was born in Manhattan in 1955. A Trekkie since childhood, she would eventually go on to a recurring (if oft uncredited) role on the successor series to that very show...
Working an unusual, character based standup in the vein of Carol Burnett or Tracy Ullman, it was none other than Steven Spielberg who pulled her from handling hecklers to marquee lights with his The Color Purple, setting her on the road to a lengthy career in film, where she headlined a trio of interesting action comedies before making a name in such populist fare as Ghost, Soapdish, Boys on the Side, Girl Interrupted, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Made in America and Sister Act...and more interesting if seldom discussed efforts like Eddie, The Associate and what remains the definitive adaptation of Stephen King's sprawling postapocalyptic parable, The Stand.
Since taking the lead chair on the popular daytime sociopolitical chat show The View a full decade and a half back, she's begun to further pursue a role in producing documentaries relating to black figures in history and entertainment.
Join us as we take on what most would agree to be the most unexpected subject in our hundred episode history, the inimitable Whoopi Goldberg!
Weird Scenes Week 96 (5/4/23): Sometimes You’ve Just Got To Let One Go: The Atypical Career of Whoopi Goldberg
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Edward Regan Murphy was born in Broooklyn's dicey Bushwick district, 1961, to a transit cop and ill fated aspiring comedian. Raised by a single mother (after a lengthy stint with foster parents!) and idolizing the similarly minded 70's standup star turned film lead Richard Pryor, he rose to fame as a four year veteran of Saturday Night Live, becoming one of its most universally beloved alumni in the process.
Turning to Hollywood, he then became one of the earliest SNL cast turned film stars, eventually fathering a daughter with none other than 90's icon Mel B aka Scary Spice.
One of the few to successfully navigate the strange transition from raunchy standup comedy to late night television fame through wildly popular, even decade defining action comedies, Eddie seemed to be on top of the world...before a string of flops that left his career devolving into the decidedly juvenile and embarrassing (if well paying) world of fat suit fart joke crap for the mentally challenged under the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.
Join us as we pull no punches with the meteoric rise (and decided fall) of famed funnyman and Hollywood headliner Eddie Murphy!
Weird Scenes Week 95 (4/20/23): From Horse Laughs to Hollywood to Fat Suit Hell: The Rapid Rise and Precipitous Fall of Eddie Murphy
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Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset came into this world in the latter days of WWII, in the Fall of 1944 to a Scotch GP and French lawyer cum housewife who biked her way into an airlift out of Occupied France and her new life in the rather rural climes of Surrey.
A short modeling career led to roles in such disparate films (in quality as well as
type) as The Knack and How to Get It, Audrey Hepburn vehicle Two For the Road and Roman Polanski's Cul de Sac, launching her into a career in cinema marked by roles in such highlights as The Detective (with Frank Sinatra), Bullitt (with Steve McQueen), Le Magnifique (with Jean Paul Belmondo), The Mephisto Waltz (with Alan Alda) and Truffaut's excellent Day For Night, before settling into big budget all star oddities like the multi-director Casino Royale, Airport, the Albert Finney Murder on the Orient Express, Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (with George Segal), St. Ives (with Charles Bronson), The Deep (with Nick Nolte) and even Wild Orchid (with Mickey Rourke), smoking up the screen in a manner not altogether dissimilar to the previously covered Charlotte Rampling and earning herself both Golden Globes and France's Legion d'Honneur for her efforts.
Join us as we talk another of our favorite ladies of 70's cinema, the lovely and talented Jacqueline Bissett!
Weird Scenes Week 94 (4/6/23): Class and Style: The Unusual Career of Jacqueline Bissett
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Born Francis Albert Sinatra in lovely downtown Hoboken, NJ, Frank so idolized 1930s swing singer and the man they coined the term "crooner" over, Bing Crosby, that he decided not only to emulate his hero, but to effectively BECOME him in the eyes of the American public. And for all intents and purposes, he succeeded.
Possessed of a lighter, more lyric tenor with an amazing degree of breath control, Sinatra, even before becoming a stylist par excellence (to this day, mostly unparalleled) matched his predecessor in wooing temporary wartime widows and proto-bobby soxers alike, and may in fact have topped his idol in building a tremendous following of mostly female fans. They were the Elvises or Beatles of their day, only Frank, unlike the others, improved his craft throughout the 50s, becoming an American icon.
But his success wasn't limited to the world of music - like Elvis (who we also did a show on,) he further found himself drawn into the world of filmmaking, holding his own against some of the greats of his era and even producing and directing a few along the way.
So join us as we delve into the life and career of the epitome of swingin' style, the one and only Frank Sinatra!
Weird Scenes Week 93 (3/23/23): Come Fly With The Chairman of the Bored - The Films of Frank Sinatra
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Manhattan’s own George Segal Jr. was an interesting actor, moving deftly between solid and quite serious dramatic roles to a career in far broader, if generally still intelligent comedies in the 70s.
One of the first "ethnic" actors of prominence to leave his name unchanged, he specialized in easily frustrated, angrily gesticulating types, lashing out at the vagaries of life and the world surrounding with arms flailing and temple blood vessels throbbing. But it was almost always for a cheap laugh, and he always came off likeable in the end.
After a stint in the army during the Korean War, he signed up to learn The Method with Lee Strasberg and wound up working bit parts in both film and television in the early 60’s, before kicking off a career that spanned everything from James Clavell's grim POW opus King Rat, war film classic The Bridge at Remagen, chilly 60's eurospy The Quiller Memorandum and the Ernest Tidyman scripted Burt Reynolds crime film Stick to classic (and often heady) comedies like The Owl and the Pussycat, Fun With Dick and Jane and Carbon Copy, where he costarred with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda and a young Denzel Washington.
Join us as we talk the surprisingly varied and many-faceted career of George Segal!
Week 92 (3/9/23): George Segal
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Clint Eastwood, Jr. was born into wealth in San Francisco, complete with in-ground pool and country club membership. Despite being drafted into the Korean war, never saw a lick of combat, serving as lifeguard at Fort Ord for his entire stint in the military, all very much belieing his later "tough guy" image.
Lambasted as a terrible actor by Hollywood filmmakers and acting coaches alike, he nevertheless managed to land a few walk on roles in classic 50s sci fi monster flicks and television westerns, based entirely on his looks.
But by another huge stroke of luck, his role on TV's Rawhide got him a role in an Italian western when his costar turned it down...and that film and its sequel launched an entire genre.
A trio of films with Sergio Leone and a 5 film run as maverick cop Dirty Harry spanned two full decades, making this very lucky fellow an actor, director and producer...and moreover, an American icon.
Giving right wing sacred cow Ronald Reagan one of his most trademarkable catchphrases and delivering the most unintentionally amusing bits of impromptu political theater ever recorded with his last minute "empty chair debate" at the 2012 RNC, Clint also delivered popular favorites like Every Which Way But Loose, Escape from Alcatraz, Kelly's Heroes, The Gauntlet and The Unforgiven...plenty of juicy backstory and cinema for us to dig into (and we do, in our own inimitable manner!)
Join us as we alternately celebrate and have some well deserved laughs at the expense of the oft problematic but ever fascinating career of the inimitable Clint Eastwood, only here at Weird Scenes!
Weird Scenes Week 91 (2/23/23): Clint Eastwood Makes Your Day
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Edward Regan Murphy was born in Broooklyn's dicey Bushwick district, 1961, to a transit cop and ill fated aspiring comedian. Raised by a single mother (after a lengthy stint with foster parents!) and idolizing the similarly minded 70's standup star turned film lead Richard Pryor, he rose to fame as a four year veteran of Saturday Night Live, becoming one of its most universally beloved alumni in the process.
Turning to Hollywood, he then became one of the earliest SNL cast turned film stars, eventually fathering a daughter with none other than 90's icon Mel B aka Scary Spice.
One of the few to successfully navigate the strange transition from raunchy standup comedy to late night television fame through wildly popular, even decade defining action comedies, Eddie seemed to be on top of the world...before a string of flops that left his career devolving into the decidedly juvenile and embarrassing (if well paying) world of fat suit fart joke crap for the mentally challenged under the likes of Disney and DreamWorks.
Join us as we pull no punches with the meteoric rise (and decided fall) of famed funnyman and Hollywood headliner Eddie Murphy!
Weird Scenes Week 95 (4/20/23): From Horse Laughs to Hollywood to Fat Suit Hell: The Rapid Rise and Precipitous Fall of Eddie Murphy
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Born at the dawn of the talkies in 1930, Richard St John Francis Harris was born to a “flour merchant” in Ireland, where he intended to become a rugby pro. With best laid plans derailed by a bout with disease, he decided to pursue a career in acting, only to find himself rejected as "too old" at the whopping age of 25.
Nonetheless, he perservered for over a decade before demanding - and receiving! - third billing against Marlon Brando on Mutiny on the Bounty and working with arthouse favorite Michelangelo Antonioni and Stateside auteur John Huston, before a starring role in the popular Camelot and a top 10 hit with the odd but much beloved "MacArthur Park"...despite the fact that he, self-admittedly, couldn't sing a lick.
But it was in the 70's (and early 80's) that he delivered his most interesting work, a rollercoaster ride that went from the likes of A Man Called Horse, Juggernaut, the Cassandra Crossing and The Wild Geese to the lows of Dino DiLaurentis' Orca and the Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man.
Always a contentious sort and prone to the arch theatricality of his early stage work, join us as we discuss the odd but fascinating career of Richard Harris!
Week 90 (2/9/23): Richard Harris in the 70's
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Harvard Literature major turned Biological Anthropology BA and medical school student turned author Michael Crichton penned no less than 26 novels...of which at least 9 were made into feature films.
Turning screenwriter, he quickly shifted chairs to direction, delivering several memorable films (and scripting and producing even more.)
With interesting pictures like The Andromeda Strain, Coma, Looker and Runaway (not to mention popular favorites like The Great Train Robbery, Twister and, well, Jurassic Park), his background in medicine and overarching fascination with cutting edge technology played a major part in his work, either predicting or latching onto the first advances towards things like computer generated imagery, artificial intelligence, smart technology (particularly weaponry) and robotics in a series of well crafted efforts.
Hearkening back to the glory days of science fiction, when new technologies, ideas and Imagineering of yet untapped vistas still recognized the inherent dangers of a flawed mankind meddling in things they honestly do not fully understand, no discussion of the science fiction genre would be complete without speaking to the films of…Michael Crichton.
Week 89 (1/26/23): The Films of Michael Crichton
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Tonight, we’re talking to a modern day doom metal giant. Originally working in a very different band and genre, Christian Hector and Daniel Droste ventured off into the rarified world of funeral doom…and transformed it into something all their own.
With a focus on late 19th century whaling and nautical literature, particularly those tomes of a darker bent, they quickly drifted beyond the expected borders of the subgenre’s sound and focus with their third, clean vocalled and far more progressively inclined album, 2012’s The Giant, which so impressed us, we had Chris on the show to discuss its many merits.
But after a well received followup with 2015’s Boats of Glen Carrig, there was a decidedly long silence that left fans wondering if they’d gone the way of far too many other doom bands of note…until now.
Join us as we welcome back, after over a decade(!) Christian Hector of Ahab for a stiff pint of grog and a sea dog's tale well spun...Week 96 (Sun. January 22) - Chris Hector of Ahab (10 years on)
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The 1970s. A turbulent and important time, marked by the decline and fall of the hippie movement that took the world by storm with the 1966 "summer of love" and introduced several generations to alternative religions and new age spirituality...often enough landing on some spectrum of the occult.
But the spirit of Woodstock and the ethos of peace, love and music had been subverted by a violent reaction from conservative forces, and together with a few grim and headline grabbing reality checks (Altamont, the Manson Family, the Weathermen and the iconoclastic discovery that so many of their new heroes and gurus bore feet of clay) combined with later disillusion brought about by political scandals, the seemingly endless (and ultimately failed) war in Vietnam, a plethora of self serving and destructive religious cults, drug casualties, the emergence of the serial killer and the failure of the idealistic commune lifestyle led to a very different tenor to the decade from the one that preceded it.
In short, the Age of Aquarius had revealed itself as the Aeon of Horus (if not the dawn of the Kali Yuga) in no uncertain terms, and with a shocking suddenness.
As a reflection of the times, a widespread interest in Witchcraft and Satanism were all the rage, and cinema, from mainstream blockbusters like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and the Omen series straight down to the level of adult film and even (if not most especially) the TV movie marketed to housewives and youngsters weekday afternoons, spoke to a new preoccupation with occultism.
So prevalent was all of this obsession with all things dark and dangerous that it very much defined the decade, far moreseo than any that preceded or followed.
Join us, as we delve into some of the best examples of what ultimately became a tidal wave of satanic terror, specifically limited to those centering on literal, if oft self styled cults of devil worshippers and their works...
Week 88: Satan in the 70’s (a discussion of satanic cult films)
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Born in Paris in the early 1930s, Roman Polanski lived a life marked by many tragedies.
From seeing both parents taken away to the camps during the Nazi occupation of Poland and forced to live with a series of clandestine foster families to a later youth under the equally horrific oppression of Communist Russia and the Poland of the Iron Curtain, he came to the attention of the film community with his debut film Knife in the Water, quickly moving on to a series of British and American successes.
But even then, tragedy struck, with his new wife and future child murdered viciously by the Manson Family, with all these experiences feeding into his grim, fatalistically existential narratives onscreen. Later (rather compromised) court matters led to his being scapegoated and rendered fugitive, forced to continue his directorial endeavors in a handful of European countries not subject to extradition laws (a matter that returned to public attention in the early millenium.)
His is a cinema marked by both Decadence and doom, grimly determinist and Kafkaesque regardless of genre or subject, from Hitchcockian narrative to spy thriller to outright horror.
Oft feted and nominated (and winning) laudatory awards both domestically and abroad (in England, France and Europe per se) and much discussed in critical circles, he nonetheless remains something of a controversial figure, most often due to circumstances entirely out of his control or driven by self-serving accusatory figures in the media, courts and even public opinion. But do these accusations paint as clear cut a condemnation of the man as it may seem?
Join us as we discuss the life and films of Roman Polanski, and decide for yourselves...
Week 87: Paranoia, Decadence and Dissolution – The Films of Roman Polanski
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Hail Hydra! Immortal Hydra! Cut off a limb and two more shall take its place!
No, we're not doing another superhero cinema and television show, but making an apt metaphor about the neverending horror story that is MAGA and the pernicious spread of Trumpism in the corridors of American power.
Despite effectively cutting the hydra off at the head in the 2020 election, the movement continues unabated, aided, abetted and energized if not driven by a stonewalling collective of 51 malfeasants who, like a bunch of cut rate dimestore Gandalfs, declare "you shall not pass!" to any and every bill the American people demand, or that may actually alleviate all the financial crises and domestic terror incidents that beset us on an increasingly regular basis.
Why? In the name of power. At any and all costs, including the future of this country.
Defaming the Constitution and the principles our Founding Fathers and a few foresight blessed men (like Teddy Roosevelt, with his muckraking and trustbusting Square Deal, FDR with his social program creating New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, which gave us such things as social security, medicare and medicaid, fair housing, integration and more), these atavistic corporate owned plutocrats stoop to one new low after the next, distracting, dividing and using every dirty trick in the book just this side of legality (and often not) to rig the game in their favor. A minority seeking total control - including the right to your own body and destiny, romantic or otherwise - over the will of the majority.
And we remain apathetic, fighting amongst ourselves over petty "wedge issues", while the American conservative of old seemingly vanishes into history, and a literal cult of death and "burn it all down" nihilism driven by false narratives, false "theocratic" support, propaganda and social division-fomenting "talking points" takes its place.
If you're not part of the cult, whatever direction your politics lean, you have to know this is wrong, not to mention completely unAmerican.
And Covid, "monkey pox", an ongoing invasion of Ukraine and longstanding supply chain issues resulting from the aforementioned (and a drunken ship captain clogging up the main sea based global shipping route for weeks on end), not to mention trying to clean up the dumpster fire the Trump "Presidency" has left us with, have given a new leader the most difficult year and a half in office in living memory, with no feasible route to correct it all.
Because of 51 selfish puppets, dancing to their masters' tunes and denying any corrective measures in the hopes of regaining total control...and ending the "Grand Experiment" our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.
Add in a rash of hate crimes around the nation, hitting one group or demographic after another, with and without military-grade hardware, from senior citizens to children, from malls to concerts to protest marches and 10K runs, right down to schools. Even walking the streets of our cities, in broad daylight. The body count rises, and they refuse to take action or allow anyone else to.
All in the name of power, and the nihilistic urge to "burn it down".
After our Marlowe show a few weeks back, here we rejoin the audience with another impromptu get together, talking these and many other pressing issues afflicting the state of the union, and suggest what should be some simple solutions everyone can enact, to hopefully turn this sinking ship back on course...and away from this road to certain destruction and a resurgent fascism, not to mention a return to serfdom for all not among their ranks in power and riches.
Then we'll wrap it all up by decompressing with some good laughs and banter about this, that and the other...
Weird Scenes Season 11 Episode 2: State of the Disunion - Guns n Russians and the Neverending American Horror Story
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Tonight, we’re doing something different. Rather than tackling a genre, director or actor, we’re actually going to take on a fictional character as represented in film.
Raymond Chandler was a dual citizen of the UK and US who turned to writing when he lost his job as an oil exec in the Great Depression. In addition to co-scripting Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder, Strangers on a Train with Alfred Hitchcock and writing The Blue Dahlia which starred Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, he wrote 7 ½ novels in his lifetime, and most of them were turned into film…some several times. And the character? Philip Marlowe.
Some of these films were produced under different titles, or in established B-picture film series revolving around established radio detectives like The Falcon and Michael Shayne, others became much celebrated entries in the noir and neo-noir genre and high points in the filmography of big names like Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and Elliott Gould. And with directors like Howard Hawks, Edward Dmytryk, Robert Altman and Michael Winner, we’re not exactly talking programmers here…
Join us as we talk the films of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 86: The Hard Boiled Exploits of Philip Marlowe
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We’d talked the early, more progressively minded SF of Charlton Heston in a recent show, and the life and career of the ubiquitous Roddy MacDowall not very long ago. One series of films notable for featuring both iconic actors in primary roles remained glossed over, however, despite spurring a personal revisitation of the original 5 film run after the MacDowall chat. Unaddressed, that is, until now.
Marked by a then relevant if somewhat naïve by modern standards allegorical exploration of race relations and nuclear brinksmanship, the series was a true cause celebre in its heyday, resulting in all sorts of spinoff items: MEGOs, action figures, comic magazines, paperback novellas, a popular book and record series, games, jigsaw puzzles and plastic models, even a short lived TV series. Like the later Star Wars, the Apes were inescapable throughout the early to mid 70’s…then, just like that? Utterly forgotten.
Despite a post millennial attempt to revive the series in a disturbingly far lesser CG based trilogy of films, the Apes films seem locked in time, a 70’s concern that left a huge mark only to disappear, seemingly without trace.
What happened? How did such a force of culture defining cinema, rivaled only by the Bond series, smaller scale works like the Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman franchise and the brief popularity of blustery stuntman Evel Knievel for its sheer broad impact, simply drop off the radar, seldom if ever to be referenced again?
And then, seemingly out of the blue, comes that 2011 reboot series…
So join us tonight as we pick some nits off each other, and speak once again of those hoary days before Spielberg and Lucas turned cinema into a wasteland of brainless popcorn fare, and realize that 40 plus years back, this was about as lowbrow and brainless as things were ever likely to get.
My, how things have changed...
Week 85: Go Ape! The first major multimedia craze and how it disappeared into the vaults of time
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Born and raised in the Bronx, Stanley Kubrick started off as a photographer for magazines noted for such like Look, and that’s something that carried through in most dramatic fashion in his subsequent film career.
Almost uniquely in Hollywood, he managed to move from totally self-produced outsider cinema to decades funded by more traditional channels…and yet otherwise entirely self-directed, produced, scripted and more. The man managed to have a cottage industry for his films, allowing for more quirks and control over the final product than even much feted auteurist directors like Hitchcock have ever been able to claim.
And yet, for all that financial and distribution advantage and personal control, he really seemed to choose some questionable material to tackle, and while much feted with awards and accolades, delivered a stream of very rocky pictures, more head scratching if visually sumptuous misses than enduring hits. His demanding nature led to many a conflict with his casts, and where most directors of his era easily produced twice if not three times as many films within the same span of time, he ultimately only dropped a handful of films, whose ultimate merit is all over the map.
Ultimately, all he left us was a trio of awkward no budget noir crime films in the 50s, a few scandalous oddities in the 60’s and very early 70s, one dour historical that lacked either enough erotic or comic content to link it to the trend, a much beloved if unusual horror film of sorts and literally one film each in his two final decades: one attempt to tackle the then de rigeur Vietnam reminiscence and one seemingly Decadent erotic horror that attaches the expected spice to the tangled occult skein of films like The Order to the Ice Storm like loss of passion in a marriage and how a trip to the edge and near misses with realistic consequences (like nearly spending the night with an HIV positive partner) bring a straying couple back home to each other.
Join us tonight as we talk one of the most praised yet controversial and ultimately in most ways quite spotty directors in American cinema, the one and only Stanley Kubrick, right here on Weird Scenes.
Week 84: Questions Within Enigma: the films of Stanley Kubrick
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It's hard to believe in the modern age of sheer bombast and explosion filled CG lightshows for their own sake, but not that long ago, the world of science fiction, yes, even that of the American cinema, tended to be devoted to a very different purpose and aesthetic.
Like their low paid visionary scribes from the likes of Welles and Verne in the 1800s to the pulps of the 20's and 30's and the edge of current science devotees and aspirationists of the 1950s, the science fiction authors of the 1960s and early 70's had far more in mind than a cheap hour or two of mindless escapism from an increasingly dreary corporatocratic nightmare world we've all come to accept as if it were predestined master rather than an out of control dog to be brought to heel.
For a few decades in particular, a hard SF mix of utopian aspiration and dystopian commentary and warning about then-new trends arising in contemporary society informed nearly every instance of same, from the lowest of budget to the highest of the highbrow, from the critically feted to the mocked and hated.
Many of these names have gone on into legend: Orwell, Bradbury, Ellison, Ballard, Dick, Zelazny. And many films built off or inspired by such literary works have held their place in pop culture circles: The Planet of the Apes films, 2001: A Space Odyssey...and many of the otherwise unrelated films we'll be discussing this evening, like Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running, A Boy and His Dog and Damnation Alley.
So join us tonight as we speak of those hoary days before Spielberg and Lucas turned cinema into a wasteland of brainless popcorn fare, and realize just how many of the horrors warned against may already have come into being in our day and age, begging the question: why didn't we listen? Come and see what answers await, as we talk the thought provoking dystopias of the counterculture era, right here on Weird Scenes!
Week 83: SF with a message - the dystopic visions of the counterculture era
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This week, join us as we speak to pioneering all-femme Japanese hard rock/heavy metal band Show-Ya!
Dropping no less than 8 solid albums of smooth yet punchy keyboard and guitar driven hard rock leaning ever more towards metal between 1985 and 1990, bluesy frontwoman Keiko Terada and "the three Mikis" ("Captain" Nakamura, "Sun-Go" Igarashi and "Mittan" Tsunoda) alongside Satomi Senba on bass were so well beloved as to be tapped for a major Coca Cola campaign in the days when rock and metal were still considered "scary" persona non grata to mainstream society.
Over the course of a mere 5 years, the unusually prolific band subtly shifted style from their very anime style early sound to something more akin to American metal and even a bit of the Hollywood Guns N Roses sound (on the English lyriced songs of Hard Way) before Terada departed for a successful solo career.
Soldiering on for two further releases with fellow J-rock maiden Steffanie (Borges) and the punkier Yoshino, Show-Ya finally closed up shop in the 90's.
But a 20th reunion tour of the original lineup in 2005 led to renewed interest in the band, inclusive of two successive sets of remasters (the latter with bonus tracks like the aforementioned Coke commercial, surprisingly catchy tune that it is), and by 2012 they were back in studio, releasing material that sounded surprisingly like their mid 80s heyday, and even an all covers album that features their takes on hits from nearly every great J-rock and J-metal band of the 80's and 90's, from Luna Sea, X and Kyosuke Himuro's Boowy to Loudness, Earthshaker, Glay and L'Arc en Ciel.
Now partnering with Blizard's Nozumu Wakai as songwriting partner and producer, they've released an album that simultaneously sounds familiar and uniquely new in Showdown, which gets international release through Metalville this coming month.
Join us as we have a brief if entertaining and decidedly good humored chat with Keiko Terada and "Captain" Miki Nakamura (plus surprise guest Mirai Kawashima of Sigh, of all people!) only here on Third Eye Cinema!
Week 96: Show-Ya
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Starring in at least 12 films that are or have been associated with the Film Noir genre (a retroactive designation courtesy of France’s Cahiers du Cinema crowd covering American B pictures with cynical, compromised heroes, vicious femme fatales and a gialloesque immersion in a dark underworld where all is not as it seems and everyone is guilty and menacing), Robert Mitchum brought a less comical, far less telegraphed Dean Martin style insouciance to his work.
Tall and manly enough to stand his own in a fight, yet sleepy eyed and laid back enough to be led along by the nose to his doom by the many vamps and tramps he’d encounter, much of his onscreen persona appears to have been presaged by his own life.
The son of a working class dock worker and railroad man, he wound up living under a resented military stepfather to the point where he wound up riding the rails and bumming his way around the country in his early teens, supposedly winding up (and escaping!) Sullivans Travels style on a southern jailhouse chain gang for his efforts.
An early advocate of the wacky weed, he wound up in prison for a second time over pot possession right in the middle of his noir career, threw a studio manager into a lake (literally) and more, in a career which at times found him working alongside two of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes girls (Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell) and eventually starring in two much overhyped films late in the genre, Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear. He’d then return to prominence over a decade later with three notable films in the 70’s neo noir revival before closing out on then much hyped television miniseries The Winds of War...and that stupid Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged (oy, what a way to go!)
Join us tonight as we speak of another cinematic epitome of tough guy cool, the one and only Robert MItchum, right here on Weird Scenes!
Week 82: Ridin' the Rails with Rob - the unflappable cool of Robert Mitchum
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Born in abject poverty to a Hungarian immigrant tailor, a young Bernie Schwartz learned one of life's most important lessons at a tender age: you can't rely on anyone but yourself.
Making his way through adversities of language, impoverishment, deaths of loved ones and even a stint in an orphanage, he turned things around after service in the military, using the G.I. Bill to fund his attendance in acting school. One quick change of name, and straight out of some absurd Horatio Alger story, he wound up fast tracked to Hollywood and fame.
Following a run of big budget historical epics, he found a niche in fluffy, sexless comedies, somewhere between the goofy antics of Martin and Lewis and the pillow talk of Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Young, handsome and affable, he became a darling of the teenage fanclub set, to the point where he even spoofed himself on an episode of the Flintstones, voicing a thinly veiled cartoon analogue. Falling on hard times and still striving for stretch roles outside this typecast safe zone, he wound up shaking the tree in extremis with a dramatization of early serial killer Albert DeSalvo, finding himself critically acclaimed...but seemingly unable to land further roles of note. Struggling with drug use, he still managed to bring a unique character and often riveting if decidedly off kilter sensibility to films as diverse and often absurd as The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, The Manitou and the Mae West oddity Sextette.
Turning increasingly to television in his later years, he used a sleazy Hollywood gossip show as a platform to share some wholly unrelated memories of his past career, drumming up enough interest to publish a successful autobiography and launch a late sideline in painting, before taking one last truly bizarre turn at the very end of his life...
Join us tonight as we speak to the quirky, often questionable but undeniably loveable Tony Curtis, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 81: Bronx Boy Breaks Box Office - the unusual tale of Tony Curtis
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While you were all out busy churchin' and pretending to be all religious and whatnot and dragging the brats to creepy furries in bunny suits at cheesy smalltown egg hunts, the Maven of Sleaze and yours truly were havin' us a meetin'! Hallelujah!
With all the tentside revival of an ersatz campside clergy, two dark but loveable souls convened to chat about this and that, waxing poetic and pontificating polemics in regards to everything from vinyl vs. CDs, prog rock, gothic rock, Dennis Wheatley vs. his Hammer adaptations, the state of The State, the pandemic and vaccination, Columbo, Kolchak and Quinn Martin productions like The Invaders, Dan August and Cannon...and plenty more besides!
As we work our way towards the Tony Curtis podcast, enjoy another impromptu chat, with all the divergences and tangenital side debates and discussions you love us for, only here on Weird Scenes!
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A former railway clerk and wireless operator for the RAF, he came out of WWII to build a career as a manically nervous, occasionally imperious and often downright perverse character actor in a stunning range of film and television appearances across any number of genres. In fact, he's done so much work, he could almost be compared to Jess Franco with nearly 250 credits to his name...!
Join us as we pick out a number of favorites and a few odd surprises along the way, as we touch on everything from arthouse to war and comedy to horror, only here on Weird Scenes!
Tonight, it's the dayglo 80's, and as Donald moves into the twilight of his career, he turns up in any number of cult oddities, from Italian horror to slasher films, Uli Lommel, the Pumaman and much, much more…
Week 80 - Donald Pleasance: Final Stage
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A former railway clerk and wireless operator for the RAF, he came out of WWII to build a career as a manically nervous, occasionally imperious and often downright perverse character actor in a stunning range of film and television appearances across any number of genres. In fact, he's done so much work, he could almost be compared to Jess Franco with nearly 250 credits to his name...!
Join us as we pick out a number of favorites and a few odd surprises along the way, as we touch on everything from arthouse to war and comedy to horror, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 79: Donald Pleasance: Dawn of the Deviant
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Holy Orange Goblins and Commie Turtles, Batman, this year of horrors JUST. WON'T. DIE.
wait, wha? It's a new year, you say? Sure enough, it's the eve of Kiss Our Collective Ass Day to the Madman Formerly Known as...well, 45. We haven't had an actual President since 2016...
But even now, at the dawn of a hard fought, embittered struggle towards new hope, the uncertainty remains. Can it really be over, especially with the treasonous "Freedom" Caucus clowns and their ilk, fresh off their Capitol Recon Tours for Murder Inclined Terrorists, still in office and pretending irrational lies are truth?
Whether out of craven self interest, cowardly fear or a Machiavellian pursuit of power at any price or cost to self worth, personal dignity or any trace of basic human respectability, the unacceptable has been tacitly ignored, allowed the unspoken approval of failing to remove each and every one from office immediately to face due prosecution.
And their mad, self absorbed, regularly self-fouling leader (cue another wet loud one, crinkled noses and expressions of disgust and if we're all particularly unlucky, a big brown skidmark for all to see) still plays games, plotting and scheming even to the last minutes of his removal.
The former Loser of the Free World, who sat back, lied and regularly golfed his way into a far longer and deadlier plague than this nation ever need have seen, who at all turns screwed the average American in favor of his own personal circle of sycophants, paid cronies and sharpsters trying to take advantage of him in return, wants a Stalinesque tribute of military parade, all jet fighters and missiles and tanks escorting him on his way, leaving the first legitimate President we've had in years to an already Covid-diminished, now hunkered down under massive military protection. Ain't he cute?
And you wonder why we're all so stressed out, on edge, ready to snap. Some turds just refuse to be flushed.
Well, as that damn two part Donald Pleasance show enters the final stages of editing (we talk about it), here we rejoin the listener with another impromptu get together, talking the inevitable state of the union, the podcast, what we've been watching and listening to and much, much more.
Dig in, join us in venting for a bit, then decompress with some good laughs and banter about this, that and the other...
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Ah, Corona, the gift that keeps on giving. The more it hangs around, the more we all get tired of social distancing and staying cooped up in our individual caves...and the more casual we get, the more we're persuaded to pretend we can all go back to "business as usual", the more it spreads.
Most amusingly, straight to the White House who trumpets how much it's "beaten". After not lifting a finger to help. After actively denying it even exists, and thereby directly causing an ongoing nationwide spread. And now actively bringing this fruitcake of a regifting from the hothouse superspreader base of this joke of a presidency straight back to his supporters at mass rallies, standing arm in arm with uncovered faces. What a stable genius!
After a longer than intended hiatus, we've managed to get you the edit of that just-pre pandemic Burt Reynolds show out to you...and two off the cuff Coronavirus Week Zero Updates, just to let the fans in on what we've been into and up to, and that we're still here for ya, and eventually shall return to a more normal release schedule (well, for us...)
We've just recorded a two part, two week tribute to Donald Pleasance, that will doubtless take some time to get edited and out to you - figure on at least the first part arriving sometime in November. But in the meantime, here is the edit of a de facto third Coronavirus Update show, which was just our usual bonus content intro/outro chat, amplified to nearly an hour just because, well, we hadn't been in touch since the second update was recorded!
Cheers, hang in there, and by all means, vote, and vote straight up and down ticket Team Blue. There's enough generational damage and dismantling of the Grand Experiment our Founding Fathers established already...it's been one doozy of a four year season in hell. End it. Vote these bastards and enablers out, to a one.
Enjoy, and stay tuned for the Donald Pleasance two parter!
Weird Scenes Week Zero Plus Three Coronavirus Update: The Dump Trump Special
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Like him or not, Burt Reynolds left a formative decade in cowboy films and television to become one of the biggest box office draws (and objects of female lust) of the 70’s.
With a nearly unbroken string of box office smashes, he showed up in everything from Woody Allen and Mel Brooks comedies to sports melodrama, from movies built entirely around his down home good ol’ boy charm, often in connection with his good friend and former stunt double cum director Hal Needham (White Lightning, Gator, Smokey and the Bandit) to weird ‘stretch’ things like the musical At Long Last Love or Robert Aldrich’s odd neo-noir Hustle (with arthouse fave Catherine Deneuve, no less!)
Kicking off the 80’s still in full swing, he kept on with Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run films and similar fare like Stroker Ace, Hooper and the film adaptation of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (with Dolly Parton) before making yet another career switch into a sort of grumpy old man Dirty Harry/Paul Kersey lite in films like Sharky’s Machine, Stick, Heat, Malone and Physical Evidence, finally settling into sporadic television cameos thereafter.
And we didn’t even mention his naked centerfold and very public affair with aging swing chanteuse cum talk show host Dinah Shore…
Join us tonight as we discuss the true force of nature, who wiped a grand swathe across the cinematic landscape of two whole decades(!) – the one, the only, Burt Reynolds.
Week 78: A wink and a smile with a fist to follow: the Good Ol' Southern Charm of Burt Reynolds
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Geez, a month and a half and still no word from the Weird Scenes front?
Well, you know us, we can't just leave our faithful fans and fearless followers hanging like that!
So driving at high speed on ice and flying by the seat of our pants without a harness, here we come again, without even the slightest of background notes, structure or plan, pulling an old school At Eye Level style podcast, 100% improv!
Of course, we'll be talking the State of the (Dis)Union and the lay of the land as we see, live and experience it, what our latest music obsessions are, and what we've been up to in (more or less) solitary confinement, as you wait with baited breath for that damn Burt Reynolds show (it's coming, Jimmy! The Bus is Coming!)
Join us for an ongoing apocalypse chat, when we're all yearning for that cool postapocalyptic world all those cheesy 80's SF films from Italy and late night cable promised us...hell, I'd settle for the zombie apocalypse! Head shot, motherfucker! Time to pull out the axe...
...oh, well. I guess we'll have to settle for wearing uncomfortable masks and not being able to hang with your friends or shop like a normal human being. Kinda lame for an apocalypse, ain't it?
Week Zero Plus One: Yet another missive from behind enemy lines from the battle hardened mercenary elite at Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
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And now for something completely different...
With the ever worsening community spread and resulting hibernation lockdown were all facing globally, business as usual is proving to be decidedly unusual...if not pretty much impossible.
Don't worry, though, we're not going anywhere...and in the meantime, we've pulled together this missive from the bunker, a transmission from our underground cavern fortress at the end of the world as we knew it. And because it's us, you know we can't take all of this shit too seriously: or as Valeria said to Conan, "two fools who laugh at death."
After a chat about our respective experiences in the year of cholera...er, corona, we get into the status on our Season 10 opener, what we've been viewing and immersing ourselves in musically during the siege, and chat about recent podcast appearances and what's been going on over at Third Eye...with plenty of laughs and nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout like jewels in Smaug's mountain cavern.
We'll leave the last word to Sandahl Bergman, in her defining film role:
"Do you know what horrors await within? Then you go first!"
Week Zero: Report from the survivalists at Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
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Back at the dawn of the millenium, still riding high and flush with the runaway success of Buffy (and to a lesser extent, its weird spinoff Angel) and not long before his foray into comics as writer of one of the bigger X-Men titles, Joss Whedon struck gold of a sort with perhaps the most viral and notable of his fan favorites: Firefly.
While having a decidedly troubled history with the network (who aired episodes out of order and with long breaks, before taking the series off air without even showing all the material filmed (!), Whedon's quirky take on a self-made 'family' of misfits in a postapocalyptic feeling sci-fi/western struck all the right notes, from excellent casting to strong writing and memorable performances, even managing to pull in a few notable cult guest stars during its brief run.
With a vocal fanbase chomping at the bit for the series' return and strong sales of the DVD releases, Whedon was able to convince an unrelated major studio to fund what should have brought proper closure to the abbreviated TV series and its many hanging plotlines...but which failed miserably at that very task, pulling off into some very odd, dark directions and suffering from worse looking CG than the series that preceded it.
Some of the cast would continue on in Whedon's other works (from a still ongoing Buffy and Angel to Dr. Horrible) and either hail from or move on to sporadic work in other cult series (The Guild, Doom Patrol, Alias, Cleopatra 2025, V, Stargate Atlantis, Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Magicians, Gotham). One would even memorably grace a major comic book film (Deadpool). But most would wind up in the comparative oblivion of cartoon voice over work, leaving this one series as their collective high point of creativity and notability.
So all you Browncoats, dust off your battle jackets and join us, as we delve as deeply as we dare into the dusty, lawless frontiers of the outer galaxy, with the fractious family...er, crew of the Firefly class Sirenity, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 77: Calling All Browncoats!
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This Sunday, February 9, join us for Week 94 of Third Eye Cinema with the living legend herself, Doro Pesch!
Surviving a near fatal bout with illness, she decided at the ripe old age of 16 that she would devote her remaining years to music...a choice she never relented on, even in the darkest days of grunge.
Releasing four classic albums with the band Warlock and steering that ship through label shifts, lineup changes and demands to lighten the sound and image to a more 'pop' 'radio friendly' approach, she kept things rolling through an enforced band name change, the infamously heavy producer's hand of none other than Gene Simmons and a decade or more where her albums were both unreleased and unavailable here in the States, still releasing quality records and touring Europe.
As a result, she weathered the storms that took down nearly an entire genre of bands and careers, to find herself a much sought after guest vocalist and noted as an inspiration to hard rock and metal frontwomen across many subgenres and around the globe, garnering much acclaim and still working a busy recording and touring schedule after all these years!
So join us as we squeeze as much friendly chat and amusing anecdotes as we can out of her busy schedule, when we welcome the loveliest of valkyries and most diehard of metallers, the inimitable Doro Pesch of Warlock and Doro, only here on Third Eye Cinema!
Week 94 (Sun. Feb. 9) - Doro Pesch of Warlock and Doro
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One of the most recognizable names in blaxploitation, and we’re not even talking about one of the guys.
Starting off as a receptionist and switchboard operator, she was quickly snapped up to feature roles in five of the earliest Women in Prison films for Roger Corman, where she impressed enough in a series of soundalike roles to work her way into commanding full marquee value and headliner status all her own, just inside of 3 years!
One of the first and certainly the most important female action stars, this former army brat became the queen of blaxploitation throughout the 1970’s, shifting into stranger waters with the changing decade – Disney, socially minded policier and even costarring in the first Stephen Seagal film, before taking a few roles for a faltering John Carpenter, doing a Bill & Ted film and winding up in one of the worst Eddie Murphy vehicles ever committed to celluloid…and starring in a Quentin Tarantino homage to her earlier work that revitalized her cachet to a new generation.
Join us as we talk the First Lady of Blaxploitation, the one and only Pam Grier, here on Weird Scenes!
Week 76: Coffy is the Colour - the Films of Pam Grier
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Sunday, February 2, join us for Week 92 as Third Eye Cinema...goes straight into Moving Towards Light territory.
Tonight, we’re doing something very different. This is not your typical Third Eye interview, so be warned...
We'll be holding one of our patented informal fireside chats with a musician, founder and former distro owner of one of black metal's most solid and trustworthy labels, Saturnal Records.
Breaking out first in a surprisingly deeper reaching than usual act in the overcrowded and quite honestly, poseur filled realm of black metal, he eventually found himself leaving the label behind and putting his main act on the back burner, channeling his energies more into the direction of a highly psychoactive and quirky dance industrial act who both simplify and sweeten the message while still retaining the same points, aims and lyrical focus of his earlier band.
We'll be talking all of that, but that's just a precursor to some much deeper (and darker) subject matter of a decidedly esoteric bent.
No, this is not one for the typical Third Eye listener.
Those who will, join us as we speak with a certain Frater Zetekh, also known as King Aleister Satan...the one and only Aleister "Santtu" Kainulainen.
Week 93 (Sun. Feb. 1) – Third Eye Special with Aleister "Santtu" Kainulainen of Saturnian Mist and King Satan
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With a colorful background and love of fast living, his real life exploits put to shame anything seen in his films.
A noted motocross aficionado and racecar driver, Steve McQueen was born of Scotch roots in the throes of the Great Depression to a flying circus stunt flyer who abandoned him at an early age. Difficult family relations led to a hardscrabble youth as a real life juvenile delinquent and gangbanger, leaving him living on the streets at one point before being consigned to juvenile hall.
He later joined the merchant marine, went AWOL, worked in a whorehouse, on an oil rig, as a carnival barker and roustabout, joined the Marines, went AWOL again, did time in the brig…no question, he earned his reputation as a tough guy.
Turning to acting relatively late in life, he was already approaching the ripe old age of 30 by the time he landed his first notable role...as a teenager, mind...in a low budget sci fi horror film that would become a classic of the genre, The Blob.
With a lucky break in a Sinatra picture not far behind, McQueen proceeded to appear in a number of accepted classics: The Magnificent Seven. The Great Escape. The Thomas Crown Affair. Bullitt.
But a run of questionable choices and roles in less successful films left his last decade on much shakier ground, despite being the highest paid actor of his day, and much feted on television and even in commercial advertising...until one of his earlier decisions came back in the form of a terminal disease that took him from us at the relatively young age of only 50.
Join us tonight as we talk the highs and lows, triumphs and struggles of a man still put forth as a tough guy's tough guy, the inimitable Steve McQueen!
Week 75: The Quiet Cool of Steve McQueen
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Born right here in NYC at the very cusp of the Fin de Siecle, Christmas Day 1899, Humphrey DeForest Bogart came from a moneyed family as the scion of an early feminist suffragette. Intended to be brought up in "proper society", he blew his shot at Yale by tossing the headmaster into a local pond - his penchant for two fisted belligerence and a taste for strong, even "difficult" women present from an early age. "I wouldn't give you two cents for a dame without a temper," he once said...
Joining the Navy at the height of the Great War, he came back from his experience "a liberal who hated pretensions, phonies, and snobs, defying both conventional behavior and authority"...very much a man after my own heart.
Breaking into film in a recurring, even typecast role as a gangster of one sort or another (supposedly due to a resemblance to folk hero gangster John Dillinger, but I'm not seeing it), he worked that niche for 6 years and dozens of films before landing the role that made him a star: Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon.
Following up with the much beloved Casablanca, it was his films with a certain someone that really cemented his position as a true Hollywood icon: To Have and Have Not. The Big Sleep. Dark Passage. Key Largo.
It took him three bad marriages (the last of whom burned down their house, went after him with a knife and slit her own wrists several times) before he finally met his match in the sultry Lauren Bacall, who was both his longest and final spouse...and less than half his age. They met on the set of To Have and Have Not, and the heat carried offscreen, with the two remaining a couple through his death 12 years on.
Always open about his issues with directors, actors and producers so often left on a pedestal, he both stood up rather openly against McCarthy's blacklist that was hitting so many in Hollywood at the time and even started his own production company (Santana productions), the working outside the system nature of which likely occasioned his run of far lesser (if occasionally much feted) final films, of which In A Lonely Place is easily the strongest contender.
Further the man who coined the term "the Rat Pack" and dubbed the "PR director" of its earliest iteration (which included Bogie, Bacall, Sinatra and Judy Garland and her husband, among others), join us as we talk one of the true legends of the studio era, the inimitable Humphrey Bogart!
Week 74: We’ll Always Have Paris – the films of Humphrey Bogart
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Born in Brooklyn, the former Carmine Orrico started out as an old school studio contract player, starring in healthily budgeted but forgettable films alongside the likes of Mamie Van Doren, Esther Williams, Sal Mineo, Fay Wray, Jimmy Stewart, Fabian and Sandra Dee as a succession of JDs, teen idols and romantic interests, before carving out something of a niche in film and television westerns.
But it was when he first ventured out to Europe that his filmography got interesting, working with the likes of Mario Bava and in a pair of notable SF films in the UK and for Sam Arkoff, and with the dawn of a new decade, an unforgettable leading role in the classic Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon.
With a string of Italian poliziotteschi, a pair of Gene Roddenberry pilots and a succession of oddball efforts like Joe Don Baker's much lampooned Mitchell, Claudia Jennings hicksploiter Moonshine County Express and the delirious Mexican eco horror The Bees, Saxon moved deftly through cop films, blaxploitation, Filipino and Italian horror, Corman sci fi and a number of slasher films throughout the 70's and 80's, lending his presence to dozens of cult films (and nearly as many television appearances!) across genre and covering major swathes of global filmmaking!
Join us as we discuss the slick to suave but always likeable genre standby John Saxon!
Week 73: Cops, mobsters, heroes, monsters, cowpokes and kung fu - the wild career of John Saxon
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Born in, of all places Harlem and raised in the Bronx, forced to leave an already broken home when he made the choice to pursue acting, Al Pacino was born tough and lived it as well (being known as a troublemaker and fighter in school)
He actually won the “triple crown” in getting not only an Oscar, but an Emmy and a Tony for work across film, television and stage…which is a fairly rare achievement, to say the least. He did study under Strasberg and the hated Method, but he graduated to that after honing his craft at another New York based theatrical school, which may account for his rising above the usual mumblypeg and borderline schizophrenic “I AM the devil” absurdities you see in folks like Brando, De Niro or Pitt…and which took down more fragile egos like Dean and Monroe.
Impressing Francis Ford Copolla enough to get cast in what wound up being three Godfather films in the pivotal role of Michael Corleone (perhaps appropriate, as his family hailed from that city in Italy), Pacino wound up starring in several films that were touchpoints of a generation: Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon. And Justice For All…all of which featured him as a sort of counterculture antihero, standing up to a corrupt system at great personal cost.
Alternating his later career between various mob film roles trading on his Godfather cachet and more interesting oddities like Cruising, Sea of Love and even the much beloved Scent of a Woman, join us as we talk one of the greatest, most intense yet nuanced actors of our time, the one and only Al Pacino!
Week 72: An Actor's Actor - Al Pacino
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From a local child prodigy in karate and competitive bodybuilding to one of the first and most influential kickboxing film stars, tonight we talk a man who supposedly inspired the entire Mortal Kombat series, whose oft referenced but seldom imitated balletic approach to full contact martial arts is positively legendary.
Starring in a number of films whose tropes were copied and repeated in other, often lesser films and series within the nascent kickboxing genre (the futuristic Cyborg-style, the Bloodsport/Kickboxer “fight your way through increasingly dangerous proto-MMA challenges to avenge a fallen brother/friend” template, the time traveling and/or fighting videogame crossover), JCVD seemed positively unstoppable for a full decade…before lawsuits and personal issues brought the man down for the count.
Only recently starting to regain some of his former standing and respect among fans, join us as we delve into the rather bipolar career of Belgium’s best, the truly nonpareil homme du cinema karate, the one and only Jean Claude Van Damme!
Week 72: The Muscles From Brussels: An Evening With Jean Claude Van Damme
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When it came to movie tough guys, Eastwood was your strong silent type, Stallone your streetwise paisan, Schwarzenegger your jokey bruiser…and Bronson the hard ass, vindictive son of a bitch nobody wanted to deal with.
Making his way up from decidedly humble roots in Pennsylvania coal mining and a veteran of WWII, this unlikeliest of action heroes came to prominence well past accepted Hollywood vintage (his first notable ensemble roles came when he was in his forties, and his earliest European headlining roles a decade after that!), working his way through several major western, war and even a belated beatnik film with Liz Taylor before finding success with a quartet of Euro crime pictures…and a long, solid run of hardline American ones that stretched from 1972’s much beloved The Mechanic straight through the dawn of the 90’s.
While his no-nonsense gruffness (and a few major successes) tended to pigeonhole him in the gritty revenge film ghetto, he still proved capable of many a “stretch” project, which resulted in his stony visage in everything from period dramas to contemporary spy films and even a neo-noir along the way.
Equally beloved and reviled for his body of work during his lifetime, modern audiences tend to appreciate them for their grittiness and uniformity of tone, with his long run as a pillar of the Cannon Films line being the locus around which fans gravitate.
So join us tonight as we load our piece and take on the scum that fills our streets with the grimmest of filmic avengers, the one and only Charles Bronson, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 71: Do You Believe in Bronson?…Because You’re About to Meet Him!
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Notable for playing nebbishy if likeable everyman types, the former Elliott Goldstein was something of a unique type who could pull off comedy and serious melodrama equally believably.
Born and raised in the heavily Italian immigrant neighborhood of Bensonhurst Brooklyn, he spent about five years working in theater before being given his first film role. Interestingly, it took another five years before his defining turn in 60’s sexual revolution dramedy Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, which followed by his part in yet another generation touchpoint, MASH led to a memorable run of quirky films throughout the 70’s that saw him becoming something of an ersatz sex symbol alongside arguably similar if lesser types like Richard Benjamin and Alan Alda.
With a propensity towards darker, more loaded and nihilistic comedies offset by cheery, lighthearted takes on heavier genres like war, crime and noir, Gould straddled a middle ground shared by very few actors of his day, the sort who could (and did!) darken a Disney film, but on the flipside, brighten up the grimmest of scenarios.
Staying active in more recent years with recurrent parts in much beloved 80’s drama ER, 90’s yuppie lodestone Friends and the Ocean’s Eleven series and surviving not only a brief marriage to Babs Streisand, but two consecutive marriages to the same woman (!), join us as we talk perhaps the unlikeliest of sex symbols and most nihilistic (yet amusing!) of everymen, the inimitable Elliott Gould, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 69: Elliott Gould: The Dark Side of Humor (a very 70's sex symbol)
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From humble roots in the dust bowl of Oklahoma, Carlos Ray Norris took his post Korean war-era stint in the Air Force and turned it into what became a black belt in three separate disciplines (Korean karate, Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo) and international karate championships, where he met and trained further with the man, the myth: Bruce Lee.
Tapped by Lee for his Way (nee Return) of the Dragon, he shortly found his way into film, starting with the trucker and CB craze hicksploiter Breaker! Breaker! and parlaying his success into a chain of strikingly unique and philosophical karate-based action films: Good Guys Wear Black, A Force of One, An Eye for an Eye and Forced Vengeance.
He single handedly kicked off the international ninja craze of the 80's with The Octagon and crossed over into the contemporaneous mania for slasher films with the strikingly bizarre Silent Rage, before signing up with the legendary Cannon Films, where he shifted into a strangely jingoistic run of over the top oddities like Lone Wolf McQuade, the Missing in Action films and the Delta Force series...not to mention the deliriously hilarious action/paranoia flick Invasion USA.
Peppering this run with a few attempts at a broader acceptance (cop potboiler Code of Silence, likeable Indiana Jones knockoff Firewalker and minimalist Silent Rage throwback Hero and the Terror...even the weird cartoon iteration, Chuck Norris' Karate Kommandos!), Norris would give himself over to the televised cheese of Walker, Texas Ranger and a decade or more hucking home fitness equipment before turning into a tongue in cheek all powerful meme in the internet age...
Join us as we contemplate the uniquely introspective and philosophic early films...and over the top right wing cheese that came thereafter! of the man who can apparently do anything, the inimitable Chuck Norris!
Week 68: You’re Simply Not Tough Enough for This Show: The films of Chuck Norris
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This time, we're taking on another counterculture icon!
Tonight we take on a Canadian actor and former radio newsman hailing from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in his younger days. As such, it's probably no surprise he hails mainly from Scotch stock (with a bit of German in there for good measure)...
He double majored in, of all things, engineering and drama, quickly dropping all the dry bourgeoise practicalities of applied math to pursue acting across Western Europe, doing a lot of work in cult British television and horror films before finding a niche as a rebellious hippie outsider type in several celebrated war films of the late 60's and early 70's - the Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, the Eagle Has Landed...and he introduced the pivotal role of Hawkeye in the original film version of M.A.S.H., later to make Alan Alda quite possibly the biggest star of the 70's and oft referenced sine qua non of the sensitive post feminist "New Man" of the decade.
Front and center in a number of important films throughout the 70's - Klute, Don't Look Now, Eye of the Needle, work with Fellini and Bertolucci, even Animal House - he'd close the decade with an even more paranoid and effective update of the 50's sci fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, before falling into a long run of workaday films that kept the bills paid but offer little of interest to the cult film aficionado.
well...there IS Buffy the Vampire Slayer to contend with, and the tween Sci-Fi bowlderization of Battle Royale, The Hunger Games. Hell, he even wound up in a Kate Bush video!
So join us as we talk one of the true icons of 60's and 70's cinema and Canada's finest, the one and only Donald Sutherland!
Week 67: Stranger in a Strange Land: the Counterculture of Donald Sutherland
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Charlotte Rampling, like Diana Rigg and many others of her generation, began her career as a 60's fashion model.
After bit parts in such well remembered films as A Hard Days Night and The Knack and How to Get It, she stepped into a major role in the seminal Swinging London kitchen sink drama Georgy Girl, which got her noticed and brought over to Italy where she showed up in two WWII related epics that made her famous (and perhaps unintentionally helped kick off a certain infamous and short lived exploitation subgenre in Italy, France and the US): Visconti's The Damned and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter.
Making minor waves and memorable if brief appearances in everything from existential counterculture opuses like Vanishing Point and much feted dramedies like Woody Allen's Stardust Memories to neo-Noirs like Farewell My Lovely and Angel Heart and cheesefests like Zardoz and Orca, tonight we celebrate the cool yet sexually charged Emma Peel-style appeal of the lovely Charlotte Rampling, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 66: That Knowing Smile, That Piercing Gaze: The Tao of Charlotte Rampling
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Born to a poor Cockney fishmonger and charwoman (you know, the folks that come around after hours to clean the office?), Michael Caine quickly discovered some important things about himself and the world around during a then-mandatory stint in National Service…a shattering of ivory tower illusions about communism, and a zest to live each day as if it were your last.
Making his way up through the usual bit parts on television and film, his first big break came when cast in a fairly major part in a tale of a ragtag band of wounded soldiers against an army nearly thirty times its size in Stanley Baker’s Zulu.
Not long after, he’d make his way through a trio of films based on (and a few along similar lines to) the gritty, more realistic answer to the James Bond films, Harry Palmer, starring in well remembered films like Alfie, the Italian Job, Get Carter and the Destructors, cementing his reputation as a likeable, down to earth leading man before lapsing into paycheck jobs like The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and The Hand, and more infamous fare like Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill and Jaws 4: the Revenge, before winding up cast as Alfred in Batman Begins, Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises…
Somewhat controversial for his years in tax exile and support of Brexit, the man nonetheless leaves behind a plethora of memorable film, both in the accepted and camp sense of the word…and to quote the man himself:
Not many people know that!
Week 65: From Brixton to Brexiteer: The Films of Michael Caine
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With his sleepy eyed look and tousled blond locks, he came across as some amalgamation of Robert and Chris Mitchum...with more than a touch of Paul McCartney as a finisher. Generally strolling through films as oddly passive, even disinterested, he could flip to a crazed enervation unexpectedly, leading him to serve as the ultimate outsider figure: either failing to react or overreacting to the events onscreen, in turn.
Seldom a lead but always a presence, he effortlessly shifted from star boy soprano under famed modernist composer Benjamin Britten to child actor to that rarest of transitions: a popular adult career in cinema, as both actor and eventually director of film and television.
Having starred in a handful of the most celebrated films of our time (Blow Up, Deep Red, even the strangely popular Barbarella), he’d wind down his career working through increasingly obscure parts in nearly forgotten films across the UK and Italy, before making a long and successful end run in American television throughout the 80’s and 90’s, where most of his directorial work took place.
Join us as we discuss the genre oddities and decidedly quirky career of David Hemmings, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 64: Disreputable: the cult cinema of David Hemmings
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Born into a stiff, lower middle class Austrian background just after the war, Arnold Schwarzenegger rebelled from his rigid father and proscribed life at an early age, eschewing the family plans for his life and career to pursue a rocky road in the dubious world of bodybuilding.
Idolizing the likes of up and coming cinematic pepla stars like Steve Reeves and especially Reg Park, the young Arnold followed his dreams from breaking into local gyms to work out on off hours to participating in international contests and a solo move to America, without even possessing a proper command of the English language.
Catching the attention of big names in the physical fitness field like Britain's Wag Bennett and America's Joe Wieder, the young up and comer became the face of Wieder's supplement and equipment empire for many a year, his association with the famed Muscle and Fitness magazine running well into recent years.
Taking major titles like Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe multiple times apiece, by the time the documentary Pumping Iron popularized what had been seen as something of a mockable geek sideshow into the exercise craze of the past 40 years, he'd already starred in two feature films as lead or top billed costar to big names like Jeff Bridges, Sally Field and even ubiquitous comedian/voice actor Arnold Stang...and the best was yet to come.
For with the dawn of the 1980s came a starring role in a grim, philosophical take on Robert E. Howard's famed barbarian warrior and king...and a long career in quip-heavy, surprisingly light hearted action cinema began.
Parlaying his successes in both bodybuilding and cinema into a political career, he's become not only a two term state governor, but expanding his ostensible party politik to become one of the more outspoken voices both for green initiatives and against perhaps the most corrupt administration ever to sit in office...
Always surprising, never stagnating, tonight we celebrate the life and films of the Austrian Oak and Governator himself, the inimitable Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Week 63: He Always Comes Back: the life and films of Arnold Schwarzenegger
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Our late in the run At Eye Level correspondent from Scotland regularly brought up, as a sort of bemused reality check, the fact that his grandmother's milkman was none other than Sean Connery. A prophet has no honor in his own country...
Supposedly an amateur bodybuilder (though you'd probably never know it from what we see on celluloid) and ex-Royal Navy man, Connery was a milkman both as a youth and an adult, a truck driver, a grave digger, an artist's model and a laborer. But that all changed.
Turning down all manner of blue collar jobs and manual labor (supposedly even a shot at being a pro footballer), he made a crucial right turn into acting...and give or take ten years working his way through inconsequential bit parts in westerns, Disney pictures and such, the rest is history.
Because in 1962, he took on the role of Ian Fleming's superspy James Bond, one rejiggered to the fantasies and hopes of its day, all tech gadgets and Cold War gravitas kneaded into a pulp action adventure series unlike any other...but which spawned literal hundreds of imitators globally, most notably the krimis, Edgar Wallace and Mabuse films and Jerry Cotton series out of Germany and ridiculous numbers of Italian, French, British and Spanish Eurospy pictures. Hell, even washed up crooners like Dean Martin and tongue in cheek types like Tony Randall and the James Coburn In Like Flint series got in on the act, domestically...
Tonight, we're going to tackle some of the notable films he's been front and center for, from poorly sung Irishmen chasing leprechauns to taut thrillers, from bizarre Eurowesterns and gritty, soul searching 70's cop dramas to weird allegories about sex and society, lousy disaster films, midgets, monks, evil knights, badly Russian accented sub commanders, awkward Alan Moore adaptations...even Indiana Jones' father!
We've taken on his more famous series twice over, but this is virgin territory...
So stay tuned as we tackle the (non-Bond) films of Sean Connery, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 62: Sean Connery - Beyond Bond
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A British character actor, who made precious few films outside the US.
A former child actor who made his fortunes more on his adult career than what came before.
A man who’s starred in well over a hundred films and dozens of television shows, many falling well inside the realm of cult, SF and horror, but seldom as more than a minor role, even a cameo.
And yet, he’s the one you’ll remember when the credits roll…
Join us tonight as we wend our way through some highlights of a significantly lengthy career of one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved character actors, the inimitable Roddy McDowall!
Week 61: Roddy McDowall - a true character
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Hells Kitchen brought the world two rather formidable things: my grandfather and the Sylvester Stallone.
The son of...of all things, a beautician and an astrologer (!), Stallone survived a difficult birth and life on the mean streets of what had already become something of an ethnic ghetto to star in a notorious off Broadway play soon to wind up as a Radley Metzger film: Score.
Following theatrical work with a number of walk ons and bit parts (including the infamous Italian Stallion aka Party at Kitty and Studs, Woody Allen's Bananas, Death Race 2000 and episodes of Police Story and Kojak), Stallone rose to sudden and unexpected fame when he scripted...and demanded the leading role in, despite studio pressure to use established marquee names...the story of a washed up never-was who made a surprise bid at the big time...namely, Rocky.
Going on to star in several films in this franchise, he'd strike gold for a second time when he starred in a film adaptation of a hicksploitation novel about Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD in a nation that looked down on their efforts...First Blood, the first of the Rambo pictures.
Alternating ongoing box office successes in those two series with a number of interesting, but critically much maligned box office flop attempts at stretching as an actor, his work throughout the 80's and 90's would veer wildly between weird fish out of water comedies like Rhinestone and bottom of the barrel efforts like Stop or my Mom Will Shoot! and Judge Dredd to...er...Over the Top cop films as different in tone as Cobra and Tango and Cash, before once again hitting box office success with Cliffhanger, Demolition Man and the recent Expendables series.
So join us as we put on our paisano, to take on the inimitable Sylvester Stallone!
Week 57: The Italian Stallion: the Films of Sylvester Stallone
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Elvis Presley. The very name conjures a host of associations, both general and particular to the individual. The young trucker with a golden voice, making his way through the tough Southern rockabilly circuit before emerging as the posterboy for everything rock n' roll - the positive liberation of an emergent youth culture and the first musician to truly "cross the color line" of the era, the negative associations of stiff necked traditionalists and conservative fearmongers, damning everything from rock n' roll to comic books for their children's nascent rebellion from conformity. The clean cut army brat with the whirlwind (and presumably chaste) romance with a teenaged Priscilla Beaulieu. The surprisingly adept actor and musician, contract bound into a decade worth of million dollar a picture films, seemingly unaffected and siloed away from a rapidly and dramatically changing world. The high overlord of Las Vegas, one of its biggest draws and chronicle of his ongoing downfall, a spiral of cheesy balladeering, noticeable weight gain and increasing wackiness, from karate and UFO obsessions to meetings with the controversial Richard Nixon and using an honorary law enforcement badge to pull over random strangers and give them a cadillac, all eventually culminating in an ignominious demise consuming truckloads of drugs while, as the coroner's report notes, "straining at stool" in his lavishly appointed bathroom. There are at least three distinct Elvises, each with its own gaggle of posthumous impersonators (who can marry you in a quickie Vegas wedding!) and fans - a figure of bizarrely literal worship to some (many of whom eagerly devour Weekly World News 'sightings' and entertaining conspiracy theories that he may actually still be alive...), a figure of camp to others, but a versatile performer to all. Tonight, we celebrate perhaps the strangest element of Elvis' life and career: his films. A cinema that occupies its own bizarre, detached universe, as different from pale imitators like the Frankie and Annette beach party films or the many JD films of the 50's and early 60's as they are from traditional musicals or cinema proper; neither television-style sitcom or hard edged "rebel without a cause" teenaged outsider film, but standing somewhere crossing all of those, and coming off far superior in terms of budget, supporting casts and general quality of entertainment than any of its putative rivals. Join us as we share an appropriately balanced mix of both well deserved laughs and due respect to these unique bits of Americana, only here on Weird Scenes! Week 56: The King died on the throne: the weird world of the Elvis movie https://weirdscenes1.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenes1 https://twitter.com/WeirdScenes1 (@weirdscenes1) https://thirdeyecinema.podbean.com/
We've talked superhero television (and the serials before them) in an earlier show, now buckle in as we take on the long running, seemingly inexhaustible run of superhero cinema, from the serials to its (mostly televised) fits and starts of the 1970s and 80's through the Fox Studios licenses of the early millenium to the ever more interconnected Marvel Studios universe of today!
In our final show, we pick up where Marvel Studios begins, finally bringing the outsourced characters home to roost and building a still evolving (and surprisingly still popular, after so many years and films) Marvel Cinematic Universe!
Join us for the finale of our trilogy of exploration (and occasional evisceration) of superhero cinema, as we take on the Marvel Studios superhero films, only here on Weird Scenes!
Wk 58 Superhero cinema from the 90s to today pt 3: Marvel Studios steps in (or superhero cinema as you know it)
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We've talked superhero television (and the serials before them) in an earlier show, now buckle in as we take on the long running, seemingly inexhaustible run of superhero cinema, from its fits and starts of the 1970s-early 80's Superman series and 1989-present Batman series through the Fox Studios licenses and DC revival of the 1990s to the ever more interconnected Marvel Studios universe of today!
In our first show, we take on the earliest days, once again paying visits to those seminal Superman and Batman runs through darker times to follow before digging in to modern day DC properties, all the way to the much feted Wonder Woman!
Join us for the first part of our exploration (and occasional evisceration) of superhero cinema, as we take on the films of DC, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 56 - Superhero cinema from the 90's to today pt. 1: DC
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We've talked superhero television (and the serials before them) in an earlier show, now buckle in as we take on the long running, seemingly inexhaustible run of superhero cinema, from its (mostly televised) fits and starts of the 1970s through the Fox Studios licenses of the early millenium to the ever more interconnected Marvel Studios universe of today!
In our second show, we take on the earliest Marvel properties based films, from the Corman pictures (both released and not) and the Blade series through the Fox Spider Man, X-Men, Daredevil, Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four films...there's a whole lot of proving ground to cover before the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally takes center stage!
Join us for the midpoint of our trilogy of exploration (and occasional evisceration) of superhero cinema, as we take on the early Marvel superhero films, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 57 - Superhero cinema from the 90's to today pt. 2 : early Marvel
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The show that launched not only a sequel a decade and a half on, but an equally popular movie series two full decades thereafter, the tropes and score of Mission Impossible have been used, referenced and celebrated throughout popular culture well past any similar series' shelf life.
Despite avoidance of actual characterization or backstory, this unique spy cum heist series went on to be nominated for and win any number of awards throughout its run (6-10 Emmy nominations a year for the Landau/Bain era and 1-3 Golden Globe ones for 5 seasons)...no mean feat, for a low to middling budgeted, mainly set-bound mid-60's television series!
With a rotating cast centered on a few central figures (themselves often rotating in and out of the series over the course of its lengthy run), the series was later followed by not only a surprisingly good late 80's revival series (with a nearly all-Australian cast and setting, and despite its partial "direct remake" of previous series scripts) featuring return appearances from several veterans of its 1966-73 forbear,
but further by two of its leads' entree into the pensive hard SF of Gerry and Silvia Anderson's UK based Space 1999, which married the format of Star Trek with the aesthetic of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 before imploding following a major, controversial overhaul in season 2 that saw most of its core characters, themes and tropes overturned, betraying nearly everything that made the first season so fascinatingly special...
Join us as we discuss the long and winding fuse that ties these three series together, as we talk the good, the bad and the ugly of both series of Mission Impossible and Space 1999!
Week 55 - This podcast will self destruct in 5 seconds - Mission Impossible and Space 1999
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If you’re going to discuss Sam Sherman and American International Pictures, Roger Corman and Hemisphere Pictures, there’s simply no way you can avoid bringing up the cult cinema of the Phillipines.
While other directors like Cirio S. Santiago would carry the nation’s coproductions into a plethora of increasingly pointless lookalike Vietnam war pictures throughout the 80’s, what will immediately spring to mind for most film aficionados are the weird, almost 50’s style rubber monster pictures that kicked off the genre: The Blood Island Trilogy.
Preceded by the moodily incestuous family dramas cum Hammer style horrors of frequent co-director Gerardo De Leon (Terror is a Man, Blood of the Vampires, The Blood Drinkers), Romero would continue on to both high points like the surprisingly metaphysical Beast of the Yellow Night and lows like The Twilight People and Savage Sisters before making way for even more entertaining Fillipino productions to take center stage, like the quirky Donald Pleasance vehicle Night Creature, the Corman blaxploitation crossover Night of the Cobra Woman, the crazed action/spy efforts Wonder Women, They Call Her Cleopatra Wong and For Your Height Only and the dark occultism of the Tom Selleck Daughters of Satan and the unbelievable Killing of Satan.
So join us as we discuss Eddie Romero, Gerardo de Leon and the horror and cult cinema of the Phillippines, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 54: Eddie Romero, Gerardo de Leon and the horror of the Philippines
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Only in the 70's could a beefy, drawling television character actor change gears and morph into not only an action hero, but even some measure of sex symbol to an audience bedazzled by an aging, Vegas Elvis and the good humored down home charm of Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson...
After nearly a decade toiling away in bit parts on series from Honey West and Gunsmoke to the Mod Squad to Mission Impossible, Texan good ol' boy Joe Don Baker brought a likeably rootsy appeal to his roles, from the corn pone Death Wishisms of breakthrough hit Walking Tall to roles with kung fu specialist Robert Clouse (Golden Needles), as hard boiled, vaguely noiresque detectives (Mitchell, Speedtrap), in outright horror films (The Pack) and as crusty authority figures (To Kill a Cop, Power), sometimes even in comedies (Fletch, Joysticks, Leonard Part 6)!
Eventually landing a recurring role in both the Dalton and Brosnan runs of the James Bond franchise, he'd spend later years filling in for Carroll O' Connor on In The Heat of the Night and working artsy critical faves like Cape Fear and Reality Bites, even dropping in for a spot in the late 90's comedy smash Mars Attacks!
Remembered more these days for being sent up mercilessly in no less than two memorable episodes of MST3K, join us as we delve deep into the Deep South, braving those crawdads, polk salad, chitlins and greens for some tasty down home cinema, to talk the films of the inimitable Joe Don Baker, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 53: Walk softly and carry a big stick - the films of Joe Don Baker
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One of New York's own, scion of an acting dynasty that includes his famed father, controversial sister and indie film regular daughter, Peter Fonda walked a very different path from the man who raised him, in short order becoming the figurehead of a generation.
From an oddball pair of Roger Corman quickies that barely seemed to grasp the counterculture they centered on (and were ostensibly marketed towards), Peter Fonda took on the role of a lifetime in a film that was just as loose, wild and freely improvised as the spontaneous youth productions of the era, and yet more profound and incisive than any dozen deliberately crafted "arthouse" and "message" films.
Following up with similarly "loaded" and relevant films that still adhere to and fall under the umbrella of cult and genre film of the era like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, the Last Movie and even Futureworld, Fonda would make a sideline in both rural action films and low key dramas throughout the 70's, appearing in cultier fare like Spasms and Certain Fury in the 80's and the arthouse cinema of the early 90's before one last gasp as Old Nick himself, in the Nicholas Cage Ghost Rider...
Join us as we talk the man who positively embodied the 60's and 70's, the one and only Peter Fonda, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 52 - Easy Ridin' with Cap - the films of Peter Fonda
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A man of contradictions whose name's literal derivation is "from the shadows", yet is one of the most recognizable, well beloved cultural icons of our time. A Canadian actor, nearly all of whose performances were both lensed and based in the States. A "singer" whose recordings consist of hilariously bombastic theatrical spoken word readings...mostly of popular hits of the day. A persona noted for his onscreen virility, despite spending the better part of same busting out of every suit he's seen in, right from the dawn of the 80's.
Beloved and mocked in equal measure by cultish fanboys and mainstream audiences alike, oft imitated but never paralleled, we could only be referring to one man: the legendary William Shatner (née Schattner).
In honor of these many, often glaring contradictions, we're going to completely avoid (or at least significantly gloss over) the role he's best known for in television and film, to talk his most interesting (and to hear him talk of it, desperate) era: the lean years prior to and between said role...when he did some of his greatest, and most absurdly entertaining, work in cult television and cinema.
So join us as we talk everything from Thriller, Incubus and Shame to Impulse, Kingdom of the Spiders, The Devils Rain and the Horror at 37,000 Feet, when we speak to the Shatner That Matters, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 51 - Esperanto, Molestation, Spiders, Satan and the Klan - the "other" career of William Shatner
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Born in the Bronx at the dawn of the Great Depression, a young man falls in love with film...and specifically the burgeoning European arthouse cinema coming in from celebrated critical darlings all over France, Italy and even Sweden, whose loftier and more visual (if not downright highbrow) approach to film would later inform his own strange career.
From humble beginnings in film editing and dubbing, he formed the celebrated Audobon Films, responsible for the importation and distribution of numerous well known European erotic and crime films, only to use this as a springboard for his own directorial career not long after.
Working a surprisingly lush and Decadent aesthetic in a number of jet setting European and New York set softcore melodramas like Camille 2000, The Image and Score, he eventually moved with the trends of the time straight into more pointedly adult fare, most of his films (as "Henry Paris") remaining among the most celebrated and enduring classics of the entire genre: just mention the names Misty Beethoven, Pamela Mann or Barbara Broadcast and wait for the praise to gush.
Hell, his work even made it to the permanent collection at MoMA...
Join us as we wend our way through the weird and wild career of Radley ("Henry Paris") Metzger, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 50: Radley Metzger - a dash of Euro Chic
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At the very dawn of the 1960s, a then-typically "Anonymous" book of erotica appeared on the shelves of the more specialized and discreet booksellers and bodegas of Paris.
Generally considered to be autobiographic fiction, Emmanuelle was penned by a Thai expat going under the pen name of Emmanuelle Arsan. While the book was later widely reattributed to her French husband, Emmanuelle was an amazing novel, rivalled only by Pauline Reage's Story of O and the works of Sade as a quintessentially French admixture of hot erotica and Decadent philosophy, taking the swinging suburban roulette schtick to both exotic locales and thoughtful intellectual extremes in a way seldom seen since the heyday of Decadents like Huysmans, Mirbeau and Rachilde.
Finding its audience and influence greatly expanded upon the release of Just Jaeckin's groundbreaking 1974 cause celebre of a film adaptation, Arsan herself took the helm for the quite similar Annie Belle feature Laure, handling both scripting and direction and even making one of her rare appearances onscreen therein.
But even more importantly, from such humble beginnings sprang a plethora of sequels, offshoots, variants and oddities that spanned more than a decade, inclusive of a number of related series that spanned the globe, from its strongholds in France and Italy to entries hailing from Greece, the UK, the US and even so far afield as Japan and China!
Join us as we wend our way through the tangled skein of 70's softcore cinema, as we take on a fictionalized "true story" of a swinging couple cum Sadean philosophy treatise...or is that globetrotting photographer cum adventuress? - the woman that changed and defined a decade, Em(m)anuelle!
Week 49: ...Io, Emmanuelle - an exploration and overview of the global Em(m)anuelle filmic phenomenon
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A Russian-Pole cabaret singer and contemporary (and collaborator!) of Edith Piaf, Eddie Constantine made his fame in the bohemian Left Bank of Paris…first as a proto-Serge Gainsbourg chanteur…but more famously, as the unlikely star of a long running series of generally hard boiled neo-noir (but just as often, self-mocking and comedically oriented!) crime pictures.
Much beloved, oft imitated but never paralleled, Constantine would appear in films by the likes of Jean Luc Godard and Jesus (Jess) Franco, appearing in contemporaneous and parallel series as long running detective novel standby Nick Carter and his own Lemmy Caution, as well as any number of similarly-minded one off roles to which he brought simultaneous good humor, a hard luck “tough guy” noir ethos, likeability and gravitas.
Join us as we celebrate one of the greats of French cinema, the inimitable Eddie Constantine!
Week 48: Watch Out, Baby…it’s Eddie Constantine!
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In the wake of the surprising runaway success of the Hammer Horrors, any number of budget conscious producers suddenly saw gold in them thar hills, ranging as far distant as Roger Corman's California production house (with the much lauded Hammer-derived "Poe cycle") and as close to home as Kevin Francis' short lived Tyburn, Tony Tenser's far more credible Tigon...and a Shepperton Studios based, yet American founded company with an obsession for EC Comics and the portmanteau format, namely Amicus films.
Featuring a plethora of both Stateside and UK luminaries of the silver screen past and present, Rosenberg and Subotsky's English cash cow dropped many a Saturday afternoon syndicated chiller on television audiences (and the filmgoers whose airings preceded such), featuring trilogies, quartets and quadrilogies of short form shudders for the "monster kids" of the 60's and 70's.
But equally if not far more interesting were their non-anthologized efforts, which ranged from a pair of oddly juvenile (even abysmal) Doctor Who opuses based on previously aired (and far more po-faced) serials and two of the most mocked science fiction films of their era (The Terrornauts, They Came From Beyond Space) to a trilogy of quirky Burroughs Pellucidar adaptations...
...but more importantly, a handful of fascinating horror films: The Skull, The Deadly Bees, the Cushing/Lee misfire I, Monster, ...And Now, The Screaming Starts and the delightful "werewolf break" sporting blaxploitation crossover, The Beast Must Die. Who knows, we may even touch on Subotsky's post-Amicus efforts The Uncanny and The Monster Club as well...
So prepare to Scream, and Scream Again as we talk one of the strongest, yet most strangely flawed pretenders to the Hammerian horror throne, the fascinatingly bizarre Amicus Films!
Week 47: In the Shadow of Giants: the Weird World of Amicus films
How does a nice British girl out of Liverpool wind up as the figurehead of Italian horror cinema?
One of thousands of feckless art school attendees during the beatnik era that both preceded and prefigured the sweeping cultural change of the British Invasion and subsequent hippie movement, Barbara Steele's striking, yet severe looks landed her roles in several classic Italian films, even catching the eye of Federico Fellini himself while creating an all too brief series of gothic horror efforts that all but define the genre.
Working alongside the now-much feted likes of Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda, Antonio Margheriti and Sergio Corbucci, Steele all but personified the Italian mala feminina, the most deadly of femme fatales: because in the right hands, the Steele anti-heroine embodied the inescapable allure of the thanateros, the morbid obsession, even passion and longing for the dissolution into the other, most pointedly in the finality of death.
Parlaying her Italian fame into roles for Roger Corman, Michael Reeves, Vernon Sewell, Joe Dante and David Cronenberg (not to mention an abortive starring role against none other than Elvis Presley!), Steele would find work in horror and cult cinema throughout the 60's and 70's, eventually settling into a role as coproducer (and occasional onscreen presence) for the inimitable Dan Curtis, even landing a production gig on (of all things) Queer Eye...
Join us as we wend our way through the funereal gothicism and necrophilic allure of Barbara Steele, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 46: The Icy Eyes of Death - the films of Barbara Steele
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We’d previously discussed the life and career of one of his most famed (and controversial) collaborators, Oliver Reed…and now we go whole hog and dive in for the full monte. Just pardon us if we don’t wrestle in the buff…
A wild visionary filmmaker, England’s Ken Russell has traversed the heights of critical approval and fame and wallowed in the swamps and sewers of their approbation throughout his long and winding career. While many would laud his efforts with Reed (and takes on Who-penned rock operas), who but us would equally (if not moreso) both defend and celebrate such efforts as Altered States, Gothic, Whore, Lair of the White Worm and Crimes of Passion…most of which yours truly greatly prefers to their more popularly beloved forebears?
So join us as we delve into the classicism, phallic obsessions, homoeroticism and all out madness of one of arthouse (and sleaze)’s most controversial cinematic auteurs, the legendary Ken Russell!
Week 45: Embracing Mania – Ken Russell in the 80's
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Groomed as a potential leading man and heartthrob for the Hollywood studio system of the 1950s, George Nader went from a debut in an acknowledged camp classic (Robot Monster) through roles alongside the likes of Tony Curtis, Maureen O’Hara, Esther Williams, Hedy Lamarr and John Saxon, eventually winding up in the career-defining role of FBI G-man Jerry Cotton in an unforgettable series of two fisted German action films that drew equally from the Bondian excess of the Eurospy craze and the wild and wooly vibe of the Edgar Wallace krimi.
With their gritty vibe, surprising stunt sequences and dark undertones, these 8 films even seemed to draw from the contemporaneous NYC sexploiter, while bearing enough lineage with the Wallace (and arguably, Mabuse) films (whose recurrent director Harald Reinl helmed three entries, and whose go-to composer Peter Thomas composed the films’ jaunty theme and provided most of their scoring) to elevate the second tier Hollywood expat to the second most popular film star in Germany!
Join us as we return from a long hiatus to zcover these highly entertaining films, as we discuss the “first gay action hero”, George Nader and the Jerry Cotton series!
Week 44: The First Gay Action Hero? George Nader and the films of Jerry Cotton
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Next Sunday, October 15, join us for Week 92 of Third Eye Cinema with one of the founding and longest standing members of a band whose very name has become synonymous with the term "US power metal"!
Releasing their first legendary EP back in 1983, Coloradans Jag Panzer have weathered many a storm, not to mention a lineup change, over the decades...and yet not once did they throw in the towel, until very recent days.
Now back in full fighting form with their most beloved and justly celebrated lineup, they've crafted a comeback album to beat all, hearkening back to their mid-80's glory days so strongly, it's almost shocking it was only recorded this year!
Join us as we navigate the tangled web of power metal history with Mark Briody of Jag Panzer, only here on Third Eye Cinema!
Week 92 (Sun. Oct. 15) - Mark Briody of Jag Panzer
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join us for Week 91 of Third Eye Cinema with the one and only Dan Watson, guitarist and driving force behind cult US power metal band Hexx!
Making their debut way back in 1983 as Paradox, Hexx worked the San Francisco Bay Area scene, opening for bands like Quiet Riot, Lita Ford, Exodus, Vicious Rumors and more. Signed to the legendary shred label Shrapnel Records, Hexx put out two unimpeachable slabs of molten steel...with two very different vocalists.
But all was not well behind the scenes, and subsequent years would find them eschewing both traditionalist frontmen and style in favor of first a thrash, then more of a death metal orientation on successive releases, before folding in the wake of an unstoppable wave of very 90's bad taste Stateside.
Reforming with the last decade and cycling through numerous members of earlier lineups along the way, Hexx has just released a surprisingly solid return to their earlier form, Wrath of the Reaper!
Join us as we talk the often harrowing trials and travails of trying to make it in the 80's metal scene and much more with the surprisingly forthright and amusing Dan Watson, only here on Third Eye Cinema!
Week 91 (Sun. Oct. 8) - Dan Watson of Hexx
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The Third Eye Cinema podcast returns with our (official) 90th episode, as we catch up with one of our very first guests and interviews and discuss his newest venture!
Back in late 2011, we'd met with Mike Raso of EI Entertainment, Retro-Seduction Cinema, Shock-O-Rama, Camp Motion Pictures and many more sub-labels of indie film goodness. Aired as the second week of our brand spanking new podcast in January of 2012, we covered everything from SOV to classic sexploitation directors to the pending decline and fall of home media.
Now a good 6 years, nearly 100 podcast episodes (not including nearly 200 episodes of sister podcast At Eye Level and a good 50 of Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine, among others) and thousands of pages of print reviews of film, music, literature and audio drama later, we've come full circle, once again meeting up with Mike to catch up on what he's been up to all this time, his exciting new Blu-Ray restorations and discoveries of previously lost films in the Joe Sarno archive and partnership with Something Weird video to reissue and restore films from the likes of Doris Wishman and Barry Mahon, the changes and ongoing travails of the home media industry in the nigh decade since and much more!
Join us for a Hendrixian "Slight Return", as we circle back, catch up and update listeners on the lay of the land here in mid-2017...
Week 90
Mike Raso, Joe Sarno and Film Media - Slight Return
In a baffling conundrum suitable for Miller & Liu's Holmes and Watson, upon the approach of our 6 year anniversary, show cohost and founder Matt G has vanished like Sherlock after Reichenbach Falls, pulling the plug and disappearing from both the online and interpersonal world, for the nonce.
Join us as we discuss this unusual situation and look towards where things may or may not go from here, in terms of the network christened after our reclusive compatriot, the archives for all four podcasts and at least the view on this show for the short term...
...plus Squiggly's Netflix...er, "movie" Reviews and our usual parade of perverts, clowns and attempts to keep up with our First Fuhrer's attempts to dismantle America and screw over both its own populace and constituency and in fact the entire Free World in as speedy and unchallenged a manner as possible...
As the Nina Hagen reference indicates, things may be about to get weird...
And here you thought you heard it all the first time around...
The long awaited finale to Week 42's incomplete revisitation of Bond covering everything from Never Say Never Again through Spectre...and even a little more!
The last gasps of Connery and Moore! Dalton! Brosnan! Craig! Hell, there's even a nod to both versions of Casino Royale...
More laughs! More gaffes! More unexpected shifts in opinion, and why! And a whole lot more edutainment!
It's all in there...plus a special bonus interview with Scotland's finest, courtesy of his new friend, At Eye Level's Damn Squiggly...
Week 42b
Revisiting Bond: the Finale
“There is no great genius without some touch of madness,” Aristotle once penned, as quoted by Seneca.
And in no case does this aphorism greater apply than with respect to the inimitable Klaus Kinski.
Famed for his work with the similarly mad Teutonic filmmaker Werner Herzog (whose highly amusing relationship with was documented in My Best Fiend), Kinski had spent over a decade working in German Edgar Wallace krimis and Italian and Spanish “Spaghetti and Paella” Westerns before ever meeting Herzog…and would spend the better part of the next decade starring in ever quirkier Eurotica and US slasher film productions, while delivering bizarre spoken word performances where he’d work himself into a lather claiming he was Christ (!)
And then there’s All I Need is Love…
Join us as we stare into the Nietzchean abyss that is the life and career of Klaus Kinski!
Week 43
Into the Mouth of Madness with Klaus Kinski
We’d previously addressed the cinema of Ian Fleming’s favorite son, a gritty MI6 man turned urbane jet setter and lounge lizard cum male fantasy figure (come on, who out there didn’t want to be Bond…or bag the plethora of global lovelies he made his way through in one epic adventure after another?) in our second season.
But with a recent upgrade to Blu Ray, the household of yours truly has spent the last few months wending our way through Britain’s favorite son once more, from the quirkily formative fantasia of Dr. No through the oddly flawed and gritty Daniel Craig era (with a few of the later entries, for the very first time in fact!).
In the wake of our delve into the wide world of Eurospy (both in film and television) and more recent efforts like the Henry Cavill Man From UNCLE and Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible series, how do these venerable classics hold up?
Well, to be honest…hold on to your hats, because everything we’d said previously? Has changed, often quite radically.
It’s time to stir the cloudy waters of that improperly shaken vodka martini and see where all the chips fall…
Week 42: Revisiting Bond
In the wake of the surprising worldwide success of the James Bond films, moviemakers around the globe raced to put forth their own homegrown versions of M16's favorite son.
Occasionally utilizing pre-existing detective/spy stories (Belgium's Francis Coplan, Germany's Rolf Torring) but more often creating their own from scratch, directors from such nations as Italy, Spain, Germany and France in particular would release a flurry of pictures revolving around such recurring characters as OSS 117, Kommissar X, Agent X 1-7, Jerry Cotton and even Lemmy Caution.
We've already addressed many British TV spy series, Germany's Edgar Wallace (and Dr. Mabuse) krimis and James Bond himself...join us this week as we take on the rest of the Eurospy canon, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 41
Spies, Thighs and Private Eyes: Eurospy cinema
While American audiences would later thrill to the likes of Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen and James Coburn, one of the earliest "tough guy" actors of their vintage actually hailed from the UK.
Noted as much for his personal volatility and drunken escapades as his intense, "angry young man" portrayals of out of control teddy boys and suchlike, Oliver Reed would display a surprising versatility, covering musicals, literary classics and Shakespearean roles with the same panache as he would Hammer films, cult sci-fi affairs and wildly homoerotic Ken Russell libidofests.
Rivalled only by the mad German-Pole Klaus Kinski for his sheer insanity both on set and off, join us as we talk one of the most controversial (and beloved) figures in British cinema history, the late great Oliver Reed!
Week 40
the Angry Young Man in Winter: Oliver Reed
Set up at the turn of the century, The Nikkatsu Corporation halted production during the war years, only to return with a vengeance in the mid-50s for a long run of genre-defining cinema.
From the "Sun Tribe" films of a new, more freespirited youth culture to a strong (if somewhat belated) Japanese take on Film Noir through to their famed "Borderless Action" films, Nikkatsu was the go to company for such internationally feted directors as Keiichi Ozawa, Yasaharu Hasebe, Chusei Sone, Koreyoshi Kurahara and the much beloved Seijun Suzuki!
Introducing the world to such Asian screen icons as Akira Kobayashi, Jo Shishido, Yujiro Ishihara and Meiko Kaji, Nikkatsu would eventually leave their gangster films, action and even "pinky violence" epics behind in favor of a more cost-effective (and quite voluminous) exclusive focus on "pink film" (with starlets like Naomi Tani, Ran Masaki and Junko Mabuki in tow).
Join us tonight as we speak to the earlier end of the Nikkatsu history, as we talk Sun Tribe, Nikkatsu Noir, Borderless Action and Seijun Suzuki, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 39
Nikkatsu pt. 1: Sun Tribe, Noir, Borderless Action and Seijun Suzuki
West Virginia born Roger "Tony Anthony" Pettito made a name for himself when he moved to Italy and starred in the Stranger series, presenting a uniquely sleazy, sneaky and quite amoral antihero fairly far removed from the likes of Clint Eastwood, Gianni Garko, Franco Nero, William Berger or even Lee Van Cleef!
Breaking ties with original director Luigi Vanzi, Anthony came to even greater prominence (and more entertaining films) in partnership with Ferdinando Baldi for the Ringo Starr-ing Blindman, the genre blending Get Mean and the two films that kickstarted the short lived early 80's 3D cinema revival, Comin At Ya! and the Indiana Jonesesque Treasure of the Four Crowns!
Join us as we take the last train to Clarksburg, and talk the brief but fascinating career of Tony Anthony, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 38
Tony Anthony, still Stranger
In the second installment of our look into cinema south of the border, we head to sunny Mexico!
One of the most recognizable (and recognizably insane) subgenres of cinema is that of the luchador: featuring well known masked wrestlers facing off against mummies, mad scientists, zombies, vampires, sinister dwarves and more!
Often paired with other notables (and rivals in the ring), tonight we talk the surprisingly lengthy film career of the legendary Enmascarado de Plata (Man in the Silver Mask) El Santo, his longtime foe (but cinema bestie!) Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, Superzan, Tinieblas and more!
Week 37
Mexican Horror pt. 1 - Lucha Libre contra Los Monstruos
As promised, we're picking up the pieces and gathering up the bits we never got to due to the inevitable ticking of the clock. This week, we take on the second director intended for our American Gothic show!
College professor and documentarian Tobe Hooper seemed to come out of left field with his gruesome (yet strangely bloodless) take on the Ed Gein murders, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Parlaying the film's unprecedented success into a career in oddball horror, he would give us strange but often effective chillers like Eaten Alive, Salem's Lot, The Funhouse and Lifeforce, not to mention the strangely mainstream CG-fest Poltergeist!
Join us tonight as we dive into the spotty but often quite fascinating career of another leading light in American horror, Tobe Hooper!
Week 36
American Gothic pt. 2: Tobe Hooper
Without parallel, the single most influential and beloved British cult television series this side of Doctor Who was the quirky, often campy take on the 60's spy genre was Sydney Newman's (and later Brian Clemens') Avengers.
Starting life at the very dawn of the 1960s as a gritty, nigh-street level crime series (with covert government involvement), Patrick MacNee's iconic British Intelligence man John Steed cycled through a succession of civilian partnerships, moving from a suave yet icily cold blooded black ops type to a far warmer, even goofily campy father figure throughout the series' long run.
Join us as we work our way through the Dr. Keel and Venus Smith era to the outstanding Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) eras, to the more questionable Tara King (Linda Thorson) and New Avengers (with Gareth Hunt and Joanna Lumley) runs, as we bring a touch of class to our usual espionage...
Week 35 Champagne, Bongos and Brolly Sword Canes: John Steed and The Avengers
This week, we go south of the border to sunny South America!
A true pioneer in outsider cinema, Jose Mojica Marins fought both poverty and governmental censure to create and release his homegrown cinema of philosophical and literal transgression, using throwaway celluloid short ends and scratching "special effects" directly on the emulsion to bring his uniquely Nietzchean anticlerical Xe do Caixao (better known on these shores as Coffin Joe) and faux-messianic madman Finis Hominis to an outraged (but fascinated) citizenry!
Allegedly (re)discovered by and granted his English language moniker by none other than Something Weird impresario Mike Vraney, their VHS reissues of these forgotten early 60's-mid 70's pieces of art maudit brought what had been an exclusively South American boogeyman (complete with a series of horror comics hosted by and featuring him) to a somewhat controversial international attention!
We'll also be moving further south to chat about free spirited zaftig Argentinian hot tamale Isabel Sarli and her enabler Armando Bo (Fuego), and the quirky sex-horror of Emilio Vieyra (Feast of Flesh/The Deadly Organ, Blood of the Virgins, Curious Dr. Humpp)!
It's a party down South of the Border, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 34
Cinema South of the Border - Coffin Joe, Emilio Vieyra and Isabel Sarli
We've already spoken at length in prior episodes to Jess Franco, El Hombre Lobo Paul Naschy and Director of the Blind Dead Amando de Ossorio...tonight, we fill in the gaps on the short lived but much beloved Spanish horror scene!
We'll touch on everyone from Naschy collaborators Leon Klimovsky, Carlos Aured and Javier Aguirre to the likes of Eugenio Martin (Candle for the Devil, Horror Express), Jorge Grau (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie), Eloy de la Iglesia (Cannibal Man), Narciso Ibanez Serrador (Who Can Kill a Child, House that Screamed), Jose Larraz (Vampyres, Black Candles), Vincente Aranda (Blood Spattered Bride), Claudio Guerin (A Bell from Hell), Pieces/Slugs/'Pod People' helmsman Juan Piquer Simon and many more!
Join us for a final exploration of the grim world of Spanish horror, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 32
Spanish Horror
Kicking off his career as a lowly production assistant under Roger Corman, Dave DeCoteau went on to helm dozens of films for Full Moon and its offshoot Torchlight Pictures throughout the 1980's and 1990's before establishing his own homoerotically oriented Rapid Heart Pictures.
Charles Band continued his father's theatrical tradition, enlisting his brother for soundtrack composition and establishing first his own Charles Band Productions, then the even more successful Empire Pictures and finally the label he's best known for, Full Moon!
With a history of highly entertaining films produced on a low budget but with aesthetic values and quirky concepts that belie their financial origins, Band produced and directed over a hundred films between his late 70's debut and the early millenium, and remains active in more of a niche, rather un-Full Moonlike market to this day.
Join us as we talk the rise and fall of Charles Band, Empire and Full Moon, plus his most consistent (and consistently entertaining) contributor, Dave DeCoteau!
Week 31
Full Moon Rising: Dave DeCoteau, Charles Band, Empire and Full Moon
In the short lived but much beloved Spanish horror scene, after Paul Naschy and perhaps the more internationally inclined Jesus Franco, one name stands out above all the others: Amando de Ossorio.
Starting off as a documentarian and veering off briefly into adult film, de Ossorio is known on these shores for quirky late night favorites Night of the Sorcerers, Fangs of the Living Dead and Demon Witch Child...but without a doubt, his most famed creation is those zombified agents of repression, those soullessly evil enemies of the living, the Knights Templar...better known as the Blind Dead.
Helming four films of fairly consistent quality and suffused with all the grim, fatalistic atmosphere the Iberian horror film is known for, de Ossorio would both share actors with and lose films to the aforementioned Naschy and Franco before terminating his decade and a half in cinema after one final disappointment...
Join us as we delve once more into the grim world of Spanish horror, and talk Amando de Ossorio!
Week 30
Podcast of the Blind Dead - the films of Amando de Ossorio
This week, we discuss two men who started off as prominent assistant directors (and in the case of the latter, onscreen bit player), later to move on to carve a niche all their own in the annals of Italian cult cinema!
Michele Soavi worked his way through the Italian film industry, first as an onscreen actor in minor roles for the likes of Fulci, Castellari, Deodato, Cozzi, D'Amato and even Lamberto Bava himself, before becoming AD on several Argento, Bava and D'Amato affairs. But it was a documentary on Dario Argento that brought him into the directorial seat, from which he'd go on to create four of the most distinctive and visual horror films of the late 80's and early 90's!
Lamberto Bava would cut his teeth directing second unit and serving as AD on his famed father's productions for over a decade, also putting in time under the likes of Dario Argento and Ruggero Deodato along the way before graduating to the director's chair on Shock (alongside his father), Macabre and the justly feted Blade in the Dark.
Working in tandem with Dario Argento, Bava would make his name with the Demons films, putting out a few more notably odd efforts like Delirium, Blastfighter and Monster Shark before moving into telefilms such as the excellent Brivido Giallo series and the Alta Tensione series. And let's not forget Body Puzzle...
Join us as we return to the ever-flowing stream of Italian cult cinema, to discuss Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi!
Week 29
Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi
Tonight, we leave European shores to discuss two prominent directors of homegrown cult cinema!
Worshipping at the unlikely altars of John Ford and Howard Hawks, USC Film School student John Carpenter dropped out to kick off what was one of the most distinctive American directorial careers of the 1970's and 80's!
While few would defend his post-1995 productions as a rule, it's unquestioned that for almost 20 years, John Carpenter was one of the most important American directors.
From classics of urban action like Assault on Precinct 13, biopics of Elvis and postapocalyptic favorites like Escape From New York to one of the most famed slasher franchises ever and some of the most distinctive horror films ever made, John Carpenter kept his options open and made as many non-genre oddities as he did cult classics, right from the dawn of his career.
College professor and documentarian Tobe Hooper, on the other hand, seemed to come out of left field with his gruesome (yet strangely bloodless) take on the Ed Gein murders, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Parlaying the film's unprecedented success into a career in oddball horror, he would give us strange but often effective chillers like Eaten Alive, Salem's Lot, The Funhouse and Lifeforce, not to mention the strangely mainstream CG-fest Poltergeist!
Join us as we discuss two American cult film directors, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 28 American Gothic: John carpenter and Tobe hooper
Coming off of his hit transformation of gothic soap opera Dark Shadows from a vaguely Rebecca-esque turn of the century gothic into an all-out monsterfest, Dan Curtis proceeded to both theatrical release (House/Night of Dark Shadows) and a decade long run as the king of TV movie horror!
Often in partnership with Richard Matheson, Curtis would not only tackle adaptations of traditional horror classics (Jekyll & Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Gray, Frankenstein and Turn of the Screw), but create several of his own, with efforts like The Night Stalker/Strangler, The Norliss Tapes, Scream of the Wolf, Dead of Night, Burnt Offerings and Trilogy of Terror!
Join us as we delve into some decidedly dark and shadowy areas of the televised medium, as we talk the heyday of Dan Curtis Productions!
Week 27
Even Darker Shadows - Dan Curtis in the 70's
Formed way back in the days of silent film, two of the four Shaw brothers (Run Run and Runme to be precise) turned an unspectacular business concern into the greatest of all Asian action film companies!
Rivaled only much later (and to a far lesser degree) by Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest, Shaw productions were known for their revolving casts, stunning sets and costumerie and over the top mixtures of myth, fantasy and horror with some fairly grounded martial arts technique, with both barehanded and exotic weapons fighting coming into play!
From core directors like horror experts Ho Meng Hua, Chih-Hung Kuei and the gothic-leaning swordplay of Chor Yuen, we'll proceed to the true masters of the genre, graceful fight coordinator cum director Lau Kar-Leung and the incomparable father of heroic bloodshed, Chang Cheh!
Join us as we talk everything from Wang Yu and David Chiang to Ti Lung and the Venoms, only here on Weird Scenes!
Week 26
Flying Fists and Shining Swords - speaking of Shaw Bros.
Starting life as a low end distributor of Joe Sarno's Swedish-era softcore epics, the advent of Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus elevated Cannon films to the top tier of cult cinema, specifically in terms of action films!
From early slasher films, Luigi Cozzi oddities and breakdance films to a nigh-exclusive hold on the ninja film craze of the 80's, Cannon took action heroes like Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson and even Michael Dudikoff and drove them to new heights (or lows, depending on how you look at it) of explosive action cheese, garnering both po-faced and tongue in cheek accolades from generations of fans in the process!
Join us as we talk one of the most consistently crazed and entertaining film production companies in exploitation, the legendary Cannon films!
Week 25
Lights! Camera! and a whole lot of Action!
From its roots in the chapterplay serials of the 1930's and 40's, the superhero comic book made a short lived but still notable mark on the airwaves of the mid to late 1970's, with everything from The Secrets of Isis and Wonder Woman to the early Marvel productions like Spiderman, Doctor Strange and the odd success of the Incredible Hulk.
After a decades long hiatus, with a notable blip or two along the way (The 1990 Flash, Lois & Clark, Smallville), the superhero has returned to television with a vengeance.
Join us as we talk the history and current favorites like Constantine, Arrow, The (modern day) Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and even iZombie!
Week 24
Look! Up in the Skies! superhero and comic book television
Who would ever have imagined that a turn of the century British mystery writer would prove so influential in postwar Germany?
And yet, the surprisingly prolific German krimi became the staple of Teutonic cinema throughout the 1960's, with colorful, serial-inflected comic book style Edgar, Bryan Edgar and faux-Wallaces comprising what seemed to be the entire filmic output of the central European nation for over a decade! Tag in the similar if related Dr. Mabuse, and that pretty much covers it...
So join us as we talk Harald Reinl, Alfred Vohrer, Eddi Arendt, Joachim Fuchsberger, Heinz Drache, Klaus Kinski and Karin Dor, plus the more sedate British B-feature variant series, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 22
Hallo! Heir Spricht Edgar Wallace!
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Tonight, we put on a stiff upper lip and offer a touch of class!
From cold war, Bond-inspired spy shows to atmospheric occult and sci-fi miniseries and telefilms, we talk everything from Jason King, Adam Adamant, the Persuaders and The Avengers in all its incarnations through ostensible "children's programming" like The Tomorrow People, Into the Labyrinth, Children of the Stones and King of the Castle to Zodiac and the yearly ghost stories for Christmas, with semi-comic SF oddities like Star Maidens, The Secret Service and Space 1999, top-notch Brian Clemens Thriller!s and one offs like The Nightmare Man, Casting the Runes and the Louis Jourdan Dracula along the way!
We're pulling in as much non-Who British cult telly of the late 60's-mid 80's as we can manage, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 21
Classic British Cult Television
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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This week on Weird Scenes - we're setting sails for sunny Italy!
Among the many subgenres of cult film the Italians co-opted and proceeded to perfect was one of the wildest, most consistently entertaining and grim of the bunch: the poliziotteschi.
Marked by extreme violence, gorgeous women, corrupt politicians and police and stylish if dangerous mobsters with a code of ethics all their own, the Italian crime film surpassed its Stateside, UK and French forebears by amping up the action, the body count, the speed and explosiveness of it all. Packed to the gills with wild car chases, stunt-filled shootouts on crowded streets and abandoned industrial complexes and backroom double dealings, there is quite literally nothing else like them in cinema!
With directors (Lenzi, Damiani, DiLeo, Massi, Castellari, Sollima) and stars specializing in and rising to fame mainly based on their efforts herein (Maurizio Merli, Thomas Milian, Gian Maria Volante, Luc Merenda, Fabio Testi) and others establishing deep roots in the genre (Martin Balsam, Adolfo Celi, John Saxon, Telly Savalas, Henry Silva), the Italian crime film has finally achieved reappraisal late in the DVD era, with many of its key efforts only now making their way to domestic shores.
Join us as we try to cozy up to the right people and pay proper respect to the people who matter, to get things done (if you know what I'm saying, capisce?)
Week 20
Kiss the Ring - Italian poliziotteschi and crime cinema
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Tonight, we're gettin' down and taking on The Man!
One of the most consistently entertaining of genres, the blaxploitation film was an ersatz lovechild of the civil rights movement, often helmed and produced by established white directors (Jack Hill, Greydon Clark) but tailored to inner city urban audiences.
Simultaneously "realist" in their gritty, no holds barred depiction of ghetto life and utterly fantastic (crazed kung fu, often unrealistic scenarios), these pictures offered the promise of empowerment and more importantly, pride to a community emerging from the shadows to take a more equal place in American society throughout the late 60's and 70's.
Packed to the gills with soulful, funky soundtracks (often quite essential in and of themselves), no holds barred action, crime and ersatz appropriations from the concurrent kung fu craze, these films feature stylish fashions of the era, sports heroes, martial arts stars, sex and most importantly, tales of the victory of one man...or a united community, against corruption in high places - cops, government, mobsters, you name it. And to quote a much later film, they do it with style...
Join us as we talk flying fists, funky 'fro's and flashy fashion, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 19
Fight the Power!
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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This week on Weird Scenes, we take on the two most important directors in 70's British cinema!
Think about it: outside of Hammer, Tigon and Amicus (and perhaps short lived wunderkind Michael Reeves), how many British "new look" cult directors of the era can you name? And yet, Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren have managed to carve themselves something of a conjoined niche unto themselves, outside the larger studios.
With their efforts gracing grindhouse theatres and syndicated programming alike throughout the 70's and 80's, their names have become synonymous with concurrent sidelines in sex and horror, often featuring some very well established names in the business!
Join us as we speak to the dark and gritty (or saucy and bouncy) boundary pushing efforts of Norman J. Warren and Pete Walker!
Week 18
Keeping the British End Up - a friendly pint with Norm and Pete
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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This week, we're talking the undisputed king of classic Italian horror!
From his roots as a cinematographer for forgettable neo-realist dramas and sword and sandal pepla, Mario Bava rose from uncredited co-direction to full fledged auteurism on many of the all time classics of the horror genre!
Nearly singlehandedly creating the Italian Gothic, the Giallo and the 80's slasher film well before these subgenres would flourish, Bava languished without any real critical approval for decades, only coming to appreciation long after his death in the DVD era. A genius at staging (it's said he could take a few potted plants and a column or two and turn them into at least four completely different sets), he was a man noted for his sense of humor and dismissiveness about his own work...and yet, he crafted some of the most morbid, dark and for the time, extreme visions in cinema.
Join us as we talk one of the true greats in Italian cult cinema, and obvious inspiration for so many even more famed auteurs (and genres) to follow somewhat slavishly in his footsteps - the inimitable Mario Bava!
Week 17
Ciao, Mario
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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This week, we discuss the life, filmography and singing career of one of the world's great beauties, the incomparable Brigitte Bardot!
Kicking off her filmography at the tender age of 17, the woman who would become both international sex symbol and model for Marianne, the symbol of France would embark on a career encompassing more than 40 films in nearly 20 years, including work for such highly regarded auteurs as Louis Malle, Jean Luc Godard, Edward Dmytrk and Jean Cocteau.
With first husband and regular collaborator Roger Vadim, she starred in a film that singlehandedly kicked off the sexual revolution, much to the distress of censors and the forces of puritanism around the world. While their relationship and Vadim's rather Sadean influence led to a tumultuous personal life and involvement with any number of costars and jetsetters of the era, Bardot would emerge as a confident and outspoken presence who cut her career short to pursue a very public role in animal activism.
And yet, the lady is best known for and truly excels in the role of comedienne, of which she has left us several enjoyable celluloid examples...and did we mention her sideline as a pop singer, in regular collaboration with the legendary Serge Gainsbourg?
Join us as we delve in to the life and career(s) of the legendary Mme. BB!
Week 16
Dear Brigitte
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Birthing in the early 1960s with such works as Astro Boy and Gigantor, the art of Japanese animation arrived on domestic shores not long after. Things would change radically as we moved into the 1970s and such widely beloved cult series as Yamato (Star Blazers), Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets) and Macross (Robotech), even in their somewhat bowlderized and sanitized variants aired Stateside, blew the minds of kids accustomed to Hanna Barbera/Filmation/Warner Brothers style fluff with their comparative realism and mature themes (inclusive of such heady matters as interracial relationships, real-world style romances, character deaths and more)!
Becoming a genuine underground cult craze among the youth of the 1990's, such late 70's/80's era space operas as Mospeada, Megazone 23, Dirty Pair and Bubblegum Crisis were joined by the syndicated television likes of Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2), Akira Toriyama (Dragonball), Voltron and Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon), opening the floodgates for a proliferation of anime magazines, late night/Saturday AM blocks on networks like TBS, TNT and Sci-Fi Channel, and entire stores dedicated to the sale of anime and related materials.
With the dawn of "meta" series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, the "harem anime" (starting with Tenchi Muyo) and crossovers to the tabletop and videogame RPG (Slayers, Dragon Half, etc.), anime went from comparative obscurity and often isolated, small-scale fanbases to a global phenomenon overnight.
Join us as we talk the days of actual hand drawn, boundary-pushing animation, with nigh-adversarial relations between original language subtitle fans and the dubbing-only crowd, where fans would gather together based on a dawning appreciation of what remains many steps above the standard domestic, toddler oriented cartoon.
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This week, we're digging down for a new low!
In Season 1, we'd addressed some of the leading lights of Italian cult cinema (Argento, Fulci), with the great Mario Bava and the men behind the poliziotteschi on tap for this season. But there are many directors who "fall between the cracks", as it were: auteurs known best for their lack of inhibitions and willingness to jump on a popular trend and drag it down to new lows of seediness, bizarreness, even arguable haphazardness.
We've already attempted to rehabilitate the reputation of Aristide "Joe D'Amato" Massacessi...can we possibly salvage the likes of Umberto Lenzi, Rino Di Silvestro, Bruno Mattei, Andrea and Mario Bianchi, Renato Polselli, Luigi Baztella, Sergio Garrone, ALberto Di Martino and Sergio Martino?
Join us as we dig even deeper than usual, when we tackle some of the seediest directors in Italian cult cinema!
Week 14
Italian Sleaze
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This week, we'll be talking Bond and other spies!
In the earliest days of the Cold War, unlikely monikered producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and his partner Harry Saltzman tapped into some very variant elements of the late 50's/early 60's zeitgeist and created the defining example of a martini-sipping, jet setting lounge lizard fantasy of an international spy. Simultaneously able to work contemporary political tropes of anti-Communism and the hip, swinging macho dream of every potbellied suburban overlord, their version of Ian Fleming's 007 overtook the original and spawned a literal army of filmic and televised knockoffs, from the successful (Jerry Cotton and the Eurospy craze, John Steed, Jason King, Adam Adamant, Alexander Mundy, Simon Templar, James West and Artemus Gordon, the I.M.F.) to the strangely popular and comic oriented but failed (Man From Uncle, Get Smart, I Spy).
Join us as we separate the wheat from the chaff, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Week 13
Shaken...not stirred
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Welcome to Season 2 of Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we discuss the beloved, the hated, the weird and the wonderful world of cult film, music, television and more.
As ever, we'll be covering classic films, shows, musicians and literature of the past, with an eye towards what new visions may still arise from the soullessly derivative mire of our modern age.
Tune in, turn on and take a step outside the mainstream as we dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
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First up, we're talking Who!
With one of us quite well versed in and oriented towards the Classic 1963-1989 Seven/Eight Doctor run and the other more of a Newvian (i.e. a died in the wool Nine-Twelver), sparks are sure to fly, and opinions will certainly beg to differ! And then there's the whole Bill Baggs and Big Finish audio sidelines to consider...
Hop in the Tardis and join the two Timelords as we sit in judgment and praise of one of the longest running and most beloved of science fiction (and pseudo-historical!) series ever aired. We promise, it won't be in Old High Gallifreyan...
Week 12
Who's Next
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we're finally going for the throat!
After kicking things off back in June with fellow Italian grindhouse legend Dario Argento and wending our way through such cult luminaries as Jess Franco, Paul Naschy and Joe D'Amato, we're finally bringing you the show you've all been waiting for: this is where we take on the infamous Lucio Fulci.
The undisputed king of 80's zombie films and co-leader of the Italian extreme cinema movement, Fulci was actually quite a complex character, with roots in the industry dating back to the 1950s!
Moving on from Franco & Ciccio comedies, Jack London knockoffs, early giallos and particularly angry, bloodthirsty takes on the western, Fulci at last came into his own with a series of controversially extreme, logic-defying metaphysical meditations on death and the unfairness of existence...buried beneath wild setpieces of undead mayhem and a level of blood spattering grue seldom if ever seen to that time.
Beloved by death metal bands, grindhouse patrons and video hounds alike, Fulci came into his own with the dawn of the DVD revolution, where his efforts were shown in their proper aspect ratio, uncut and restored to their original cinematic intent at last.
Is he the hack some still claim? Or is there something more enduring than a mere tip of the hat to Lovecraftian ethos and the films of George Romero to be found in his work?
Join us as we delve deep into the mysteries of cult film history, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
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Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we're going for a dash of the old slap & tickle!
While there are some similarities to the later "teen (skin) comedy" and the Teutonic variant running concurrently throughout the decade, leave it to the British to put a stiff upper lip and panto-flavoured double take on the more prurient end of cinema...
Join us as we work our way from the televised boundary nudging of Benny Hill, Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft and Richard O'Sullivan to the even bawdier filmic efforts of Robin Askwith, Linda Hayden, Barry Evans and Sue Longhurst.
We'll be tackling everything from the early works of Pete Walker to David Sullivan, Mary Millington and the all-too short career of Julie Lee, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
Your hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we're giving another look at the perennially divisive Jesus Franco Manera, favorite son of Spanish (and French, and German...) cult film aficionados everywhere.
Once popularly derided and critically despised, a large percentage of Franco's extensive filmography has since been given a reappraisal in the light of HD restorations from any number of cult "boutique" labels in the DVD era.
Tonight, we pick up after the Soledad Miranda era, when Franco regrouped and came back swinging with his longtime open relationship domestic partner (and eventual wife) Lina Romay, who would stand with him through the remainder of his 1970's heyday and endure if not drive his long decline into the hardcore arena, before his belated resurgence of popularity and move into the very personal if admittedly flawed shot on video arena.
We've spoken to the extremely prolific Senor Franco twice before, so let's see just how far we can get before the clock runs down on us once more!
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we we take a step outside the mainstream and dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we're taking a break from our more traditional cult horror orientation to delve into the final frontier of independent, underground cinema!
Kicking off with a nod to its roots in the burlesque loop and the short lived but entertaining early '60s nudie cutie craze, we're talking the surprisingly mainstreamed era of "(adult) chic", when everyday couples and trendy hipster types would venture into the seedy, sticky floored grindhouses of Times Square and the like, taking wallet, jewelry and life in hand to catch the latest hardcore effort, to share their experiences with likeminded friends and maybe learn a new technique or two in the process...
Join us as we speak to the days when fallen (and occasionally rising) cult film auteurs and slumming theatrical types joined forces to express post-hippie idealism and attempt to create some measure of "art" amidst the lowest and most unsavory of companions and financiers...with the threat of arrest and wage impoundment hanging over their heads at all times.
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Those old commercials had it right: reading is fundamental.
Spiritual texts. The importance of literacy and critical thinking. There are many things being said out there, and a lot of them are crap. You need to know what to look for and when to pay attention amidst all the detritus on display.
And more than that: you don't want to railroad yourself by working from a limited palette. If you want to get anywhere or touch anything of value, you'll want to draw the truth from different sources...while rejecting the misinformation and lies.
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...regular listeners know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Service. Most belief systems and practically applicable philosophies preach similar core tenets: help those less fortunate, be an active member of your community, treat others with the same care, respect and value as you do yourself and those you love...so why exactly do so many of us...hell, all of us, get so hung up on hating "outsiders" of whatever stripe?
It's time to get real with ourselves and recognize the importance...the basic human need for self examination and genuine humility. It's high time we actively practice getting over ourselves, and recognizing none of us are the only (or best) person or persons on Earth.
We're all in this together - time to own up to the fact.
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...regular listeners know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Tonight, let's talk about s*x!
While more Puritanical forces tend to dissociate body and spirit, the fact is that man is a complex entity, with physical, mental/emotional and spiritual needs intricately intertwined. Many religions and more enlightened seekers recognize this, some more openly and directly than others.
But is there as simple a formula as schtupping your way to nirvana? We've touched on the existence (and feasibilty) of tantra and s*xual magic but what does that imply, and more importantly, what does it mean to you?
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...regular listeners know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we'll be talking El Senor Lobo himself, the legendary Jacinto Molina Alvarez, better known by his chosen nom du guerre, Paul Naschy!
Laughed at and ignored in his native Spain, former bodybuilder and professional strongman competitor Naschy pursued his childhood love of Universal horror throughout the 1970's under an oppressive fascist regime, forced to film in both sadly bowlderized "censor" versions for hometown screenings and in far superior "unclothed and bloody" international ones for the rest of us, to little acclaim.
Despite succumbing to a certain notable measure of bitterness over the years, Naschy's pulpy, naive, art brut contemporary homages to such classic horror figures as Dracula, the mummy, mad scientists, hunchbacked manservants and especially the figure of the werewolf have endeared him to generations of "monster kids" who encountered his films on such forums as WOR's Fright Night, as well as the VHS and DVD releases of numerous (though sadly far from all) of his works.
Join us as we talk devil worship, cannibals, psychotic women, mad templars, yetis, zombies, evil gurus, sinister inquisitors, vampires and of course werewolves, only here on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine!
hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we'll be talking the mighty Hammer films!
Critically derided and viewed as sordid for their emphasis on (for the time) gruesome horror and sexuality, Hammer Films rose from a no-budget film noir and Hitchcock knockoff concern to one of the most recognizable and universally beloved producers of gothic horror!
Driven by regular airings on syndicated television throughout the 1960s-1980s, Hammer, alongside its classic Hollywood predecessors at Universal, practically singlehandedly spawned the "monster kid" generation who drove the fanzine and DVD revolution we're still reaping the benefits of to this day, not to mention revitalizing and inspiring interesting copycat concerns throughout the previously moribund British film industry throughout the 1970s.
Join us to see just how far we can get through the vast Hammer filmography before the clock runs down...
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Tonight we're talking The personal Cult of Janna.
Are you the founder of your own religion? You should be!
As an individual seeker, eschewing the blind faith and sheeplike adherence to an established religion, authority or rulebase, you will therefore have to establish and justify your own spiritual practice(s) through the filter of your brain. So are you serious about leading yourself? And how does one walk their own path in spirit and in truth without turning into a megalomaniac?
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...if you've been with us for the last six shows, you know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Tonight we're taking it back to basics!
As discussed in the promo and dating way back to our very first episode, we're dialing things back to the core dichotomy cum union of the "male" vs the "female" approach to spirituality. Yin and yang, the patriarchy vs the goddess, "bright" and "dark", the sword and the chalice, pleasure and pain. Ostensibly, each of these is an "equal but opposite". But are they truly mutually exclusive, or even two sides of the same coin?
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...if you've been with us for the last five shows, you know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we'll be talking more about the contentious-even-among-cult-film-fans director/producer Aristide Massaccesi, better known on domestic shores as Joe D'Amato.
With both his own work and his company Filmirage funding and steering efforts by such oft beloved, yet equally oft derided Italian horror directors as Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Michele Soavi and Claudio Fragasso in addition to being primarily responsible for the film career of Laura Gemser, D'Amato's name is practically synonymous with "bottom feeder crap"...and yet many of these films are among the most absurdly entertaining, extreme and/or sexy films in the entire canon of 1980's Italian horror, and the man himself is often spoken of fondly by both directors and stars of his efforts.
Perhaps it's time to revisit Signore Massaccesi, and take a look at his films in a very different light...
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we we take a step outside the mainstream and dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Tonight we're talking discipline!
How many of us have found our daily lives getting in the way of more metaphysical endeavors? How is meditation or its equivalent just like exercise - including why we often find ourselves not wanting to do it? Janna offers: "In my mundane life, I am trying to improve my diet and exercise so that I don't die of a heart attack before turning 60. But I'm also trying to improve my spiritual life to help prepare for my eventual death. Sometimes, I "get in the zone" where everything runs great. Other times, I am barely faking my way through...or worse, completely fall off the wagon and have to start over from square one. How does one obtain the discipline to get up early each morning to hit the gym...and remember to feed my spiritual self by practicing meditation every day?"
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom...if you've been with us for the last four shows, you know the score!
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.
Welcome to Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine - your essential guide to all things wild and wonderful in the world of cult entertainment!
This week, we'll be talking more about the perennially divisive Jesus Franco Manera, favorite son of Spanish (and French, and German...) cult film aficionados everywhere.
Once popularly derided and critically despised, a large percentage of Franco's extensive filmography has since been given a reappraisal in the light of HD restorations from any number of cult "boutique" labels in the DVD era.
Tonight, we pick up where we left off with the dawn of his more famed 1970's era, where he would simultaneously attain his greatest heights and weather some notable lows. And as always in our Dinner With Andre meets Mindwalk format, we'll see just how far we can get before the clock runs down!
Drop in for a spell, and join hosts "Doc" Savage and Louis Paul as we we take a step outside the mainstream and dig deep into the rich vein of cult cinema, music and television, right here on Weird Scenes inside the Goldmine!
Good evening, fellow seekers, and welcome to Moving Towards Light, a forum where we discuss and provide some hard earned insight relating to our own explorations of the many roads and methods which promise to lead us to the ultimate answer: a higher purpose, the meaning of life.
Tonight we'll be talking the contentious topic of judgment. Generally serving as a negative and something to be avoided, are there positive aspects to the subject to be found as well? Discernment, wisdom, common sense and awareness all involve some degree of judgment, a weighing of the positives and negatives of a given situation. Is there a "good side" or "pluses" to judgment?
Plus our usual tangenital flow of thought and transference of deep knowledge and esoteric wisdom - regular listeners know the score.
For all those frustrated in their quest, who've been through various stops on the spectrum of spirituality and found them ultimately unfulfilling:
Join hosts "Doc" Savage and Janna (the "Esoteric Mom") as we share both hard learned lessons and thoughts on potential new directions in the quest, on our journey towards light.