Flesh Gordon

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Ridley

There are two movies that for some reason I have never watched, but know practically everything about: The Nine Live of Fritz the Cat and Flesh Gordon. Just thought I’d post this so you can get an idea as to why I haven’t seen it, although watching it now, it doesn’t look much worse than the actual Flash Gordon movie that came out 6 years later…

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Moustache Thursday: Sparks “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us”

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Ridley

Once again I am growing a glorious 70s porn moustache for the Movember campaign to raise money to fight prostate cancer. What is Movember? I’ll let the Movember guys tell you.

The Mo, slang for moustache, and November come together each year for Movember.

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.

The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The plan was simple – to bring the moustache back as a bit of a joke and do something for men’s health. No money was raised in 2003, but the guys behind the Mo realized the potential a moustache had in generating conversations about men’s health. Inspired by the women around them and all they had done for breast cancer, the Mo Bros set themselves on a course to create a global men’s health movement.

In 2004 the campaign evolved and focused on raising awareness and funds for the number one cancer affecting men – prostate cancer. 432 Mo Bros joined the movement that year, raising $55,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia – representing the single largest donation they had ever received.

The Movember moustache has continued to grow year after year, expanding to the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, the Netherlands and Finland.

In 2009, global participation of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas climbed to 255,755, with over one million donors raising $42 Million US equivalent dollars for Movember’s global beneficiary partners.

So it’s a great cause and I’d love it if you could donate. How do I do that? I hear you ask…

- Click this link http://us.movember.com/mospace/254046/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account
- Write a check payable to Movember, referencing my name or Registration Number 254046 and mailing it to: Movember, PO Box 2726, Venice, CA 90294-2726

If you do, you are officially ace. Thanks.

In honor of this month, I’m declaring the next two Thursdays Moustache Thursday, and no one rocked a Mo like Ron Mael of the way-ahead-of-their-time synth-rock band Sparks. There are maybe three people in the world who can get away with a toothbrush moustache: Charlie Chaplin, comedian Richard Herring, and Ron Mael. That’s right, Hitler doesn’t count because he’s evil, you knuckleheads.

So, this bright and cheery Moustache Thursday, please enjoy the mad performance of brothers Russell and Ron Mael, who despite being brilliant still managed to scare the pants off of me as a child. If you have a drink, chug it if you see Ron Mael blink.

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Trailer Tuesday: 70s Grindhouse and Underground Cinema

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Ridley

Quentin Tarantino may have worked in a video store, but I grew up in North London, home of the glorious Scala Cinema in Kings Cross, where arthouse met grindhouse. You could go there one night and see Cinema Paradiso and go back the next night and see Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! They ran Monty Python all-nighters and spaghetti western double-bills and movies you simply couldn’t find anywhere else. Sadly, it closed in the early 90s after a legal battle against Stanley Kubrick when it decided to show A Clockwork Orange, which was still banned from public viewing in the UK (imposed not by censors, but Kubrick himself) and is now reborn as a music venue, but its time as the dirty little picturehouse on Kings Cross Road was an essential part of my 80s teen experience.

So, why am I even mentioning this if the Scala only really existed in the 80s? Well, because it was the only place where I could watch this kind of cinema on the big screen. Now you may understand why I’m rather twisted…

[just assume they're not totally safe for work or small children]

Of course, the British experience of watching trailers couldn’t possibly be complete without seeing some Pearl & Dean cinema commercials at the end. Watch these and enjoy your feature presentation…

Finally, some classic Pearl & Dean local ads. Most of these were actually generic commercials with the name of the business local to the cinema dropped in at the end. There are definitely a few I remember seeing with local Camden Town shops at the end. Ah… I can already smell the cigarettes from the smoking side of the auditorium wafting over and ruining my Maltesers…

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What Can Stop Them? NIGHT OF THE LEPUS Trailer 1972

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Ridley

Okay, so I missed Halloween. Now, to make up for missing that, I’m supposed to post some stuf about John Carpenter’s classic horror movie set during that most spooky of holidays, but I’m not that kinda guy. I’m the kinda guy who, on a whim, will force you to watch really cheesy films about hordes of killer rabbits because… Well… Killer rabbits, come on!

Now, this isn’t the only film in the 70s that features killer rabbits, after all there’s the great scene from Monty Python & The Holy Grail which features one that can only be killed using the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. It also isn’t the best of the “When Nature Attacks” films that became prevalent during the 70s thanks to the growing ecology movement (many films of the time were based on genetic experiments or other tampering with nature, and the best is probably either Willard or the animated The Secret Of Nimh). However, I have a massive soft spot for this film. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it has the greatest sound effect for what a swarm of 200 lb flesh-eating rabbits might sound like.

Also, if you don’t feel like renting it, or trying to find it on TV, I believe someone has actually posted the entire movie in 9 parts on YouTube. Check it out, 70s cheese fans, it’s fantastic.

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A Cheesy Seventies revival – Fondue

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Ridley

Interesting article today from Britain’s The Independent, a newspaper which didn’t exist in the 1970′s, on how Seventies food classics, such as prawn cocktail (not quite the same as the US Shrimp Cocktail), Black Forest Gateau and Fondue is making a comeback.

Fondue: Its a cheesy Seventies revival – Features, Food & Drink – The Independent.

I’ve always been quite fascinated by the concept of food fashions. What is it about Fondue that makes it as unfashionable as iron-on “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts? Is it memories of Blue Nun liebfraumilch, and cocktail onions on a stick, or a simple need to move on and find new flavors? I mean, when’s the last time any of us brought a bottle of chablis to a sophisticated dinner party?

Come to think of it, when’s the last time anyone admitted going to a “sophisticated dinner party”?

Whatever the reason is, what’s exciting is that while our tastes change and we may drop old foods like we do our childhood toys the recipes live on and fashions can always return, including long-forgotten social behaviors. I mean, on the face of it, a “bread and melted French cheese party” doesn’t exactly sound like fun, but it does bring people to sitting around a table they probably haven’t seen in a long time: the one in the dining room – and it also tends to involve groups of non-related adults eating at home, which is something our society is sorely lacking too.

I don’t exactly remember my family engaging in many fondue parties in the 70s, as it probably would have taken up space on the kitchen table best reserved for extra Watney’s Party 7 beer kegs, but I did have the pleasure of joining some other families for a raclette party last year which made me feel extremely grown-up and cosmopolitan.

Word to the wise 70s-type, however: all that melted cheese does tend to end up in your mustache, so remember the old adage – Eat responsibly.

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Lego Logan’s Run

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Ridley

This isn’t really an actual 70s thing, but to follow up on my post about the movie Logan’s Run, here is a recreation of the Domed City scenes from the film in nothing but Lego. I’m constantly astounded by people’s creativity when it comes to these little plastic guys and the colorful brick universes they build, so I just had to post this.

What’s happening on the crosswalk there? Yep, a Sandman is taking down a runner. Brilliant!

Logan’s Run – a set on Flickr.

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Kate Bush lover reveals classic secret

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Ridley

As my mother is always happy to mention at the drop of a hat, my first celebrity crush happened to be Kate Bush. To be honest, I still have a crush on her, not just for her looks, or for her dancing on Top Of The Pops in a skintight leotard, but also for her extraordinary voice and songwriting ability. So it’s with deep sadness that I discover today that one my favorite Kate Bush songs, The Man With A Child In His Eyes, was not written about me at all, but about her first boyfriend, who has decided to put a copy of the lyrics she gave to him when she was 13 up for auction. The Daily Mail has the full story here:

The Man With The Child In His Eyes: Kate Bush lover reveals classics secret | Mail Online.

There is a performance of the song embedded in the Daily Mail article, but to be honest, I’d rather post this one, as it doesn’t involve her superimposed on a piano or with an ill-advised crimped hair-helmet. Either way, she’s still gorgeous, and the track is tied with Judie Tzuke’s Stay With Me Till Dawn and Joan Armatrading’s Love And Affection (both of which I also include here because you should hear them) as my top love song of the 1970s, if not of all time.

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Classic Rock Friday: Television – Marquee Moon

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Ridley

You can probably trace the guitar sound of a thousand bands from the opening chords of Television’s Marquee Moon. Its influence can be heard from Joy Division through The Smiths and The Pixies to Interpol and Editors.

To many Television, coming out of the CBGB school of art-punk may not be considered “real” classic rock, I mean, it’s no Lynyrd Skynyrd, and even as an album at the time, Marquee Moon barely touched the US charts back in 1977, but there is no doubt that Television’s legacy is that it was way ahead of its time. Look at the accolades it has received from those who grew up with it:

  • Rolling Stone (October 16, 2003, p.90) – 5 stars out of 5 – “One of the all-time classic guitar albums….MOON still shimmers with urban grime and psychedelic imagination.”
  • Spin (December 2003, p.125) – “It’s the first punk jam album and a thing of swooning, brawny loveliness.”
  • Entertainment Weekly (September 26, 2003, pp.94-5) – “One of the era’s masterworks, a multilayered thrill ride of interlocking stun-gun guitars and leader Tom Verlaine’s nervous vocals.” – Rating: A
  • Q (May 2002 SE, p.143) – 5 stars out of 5 – Included in Q’s 100 Best Punk Albums
  • Q (January 2003, p.132) – “A brutally stark, yet intricate weave of guitars and affectingly passionate vocals.”
  • Uncut (November 2001, p.134) – “Television may have vowed to ‘pull down the future’, but no one knew they’d reinvent it. Proof that lightning can, indeed, strike itself.” – Ranked #2 in Uncut’s list of the Greatest Debuts (runner-up to The Velvet Underground & Nico)
  • Mojo (March 2003, p.76) – Ranked #32 in Mojo’s Top 50 Punk Albums – “A graceful new wave bite that betrayed delicate hints of neo-psychedelic sophistication.”
  • NME (September 18, 1993, p.19) – Ranked #10 among The Greatest Albums Of The ’70s
  • NME (2003) – Ranked #4 in NME’s list of the Greatest Albums Of All Time
  • Pitchfork Media – Ranked #3 in Top 100 Albums of the 1970s.

My own personal relationship with this song actually comes from the 1980s, via BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale, who ran a Sunday afternoon/evening request show from the late 70s right through the whole of the 1980s and early 90s. That smoky-voiced temptress introduced me to a ton of punk, post-punk and early new wave tracks that came out in a strange dark period in my musical life between 1978 and 1980 (when for some reason, probably to do with Star Wars, I had become disinterested in music and just wanted to be a writer instead… If you want to know what got me back into music again, go buy my non-existent book “Madness: The Band That Got Me Listening To Music Again”). Annie Nightingale’s audience was primarily made up of students sitting in dingy bedsits on a Sunday night smoking roll-ups and writing missives to her to play Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Psycho Killer, or Making Plans For Nigel… Or, at least once a month so it would seem, Marquee Moon.

The only regret I have is that I’m unable to find a live, full-length version of the title track to post here – this is the radio edit made for the single set to a presentation of still pictures of the band – even so it still clocks in at four and a half minutes, whereas the full album version, supposedly recorded in one take (the drummer thought it was a rehearsal), is a whopping 10 minutes 40 seconds, and even that had to faded out on the original vinyl pressings at 9:58 because they had run out of space on the LP.

As always, I hope you like my choice for CRF this week, and feel like incorporating it into your playlist of 70s Classic Rock standards. It’s a fantastic song, from a masterpiece album, and it has become a major influence in my musical taste over the years.

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Sesame St: Katy Perry’s Got Nothin’ on Buffy

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Ridley

One of the big stories in entertainment news today involves an episode of Sesame Street where current popular singing sensation Katy Perry sings and dances with the far more popular furry red squealer muppet known as Elmo. Apparently, the dress Perry wore for the number was considered inappropriate, showing too much cleavage and, well, jiggle-age for the toddlers to bear. However, having looked at the Katy Perry/Elmo footage, which was available for a little while on YouTube, it was fairly obvious that Miss Piggy has gotten away with more revealing outfits than Ms. Perry’s, not to mention that her boobs are bigger.

Now we all know that the 70s were sometimes a more risque time when it comes to sexuality on television, yes even US television, and I wondered what kinds of controversy Sesame Street managed to get itself into back in an even more open era. After all it was controversial from the start – Mississippi tried to ban it because “Mississippi was not yet ready” for the multi-racial cast, there were complaints that there weren’t enough Hispanics on the show, then too many Hispanics, that the women were subservient and weak, then people complained there were too many strong single women on the show. It would seem whatever they try to do Sesame Street can’t win, and yet it always does. Katy Perry’s clip has been pulled from the show before it was even aired, and the clip they themselves posted has been taken down.

So I wonder how long a segment like this would last in today’s show? Canadian singer-songwriter and Sesame Street’s resident Creative Native, Buffy Sainte-Marie. in an episode from 1977 breastfeeding her child Cody (or rather Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild), while explaining to Big Bird what it’s all about. Is there anything sexy about it? Of course not, it’s Buffy Sainte-Marie for crying out loud, but at the time, it was just as controversial, and back then the Street had the balls to go for this kind of stuff.

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Forgotten Cinema: Freebie and the Bean

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Ridley

Freebie and the Bean

When you think of great buddy cop movies, how many of you can recall the plot of the movie? No? What about all the great back and forth interplay between the two buddies? Of course you can. Now imagine a buddy cop movie which is entirely made up of banter and the plot is almost completely incidental, and you’ve got Freebie and the Bean. It’s got insane stuntwork, much of it done by the actors, and two main leads who continuously fight. Caan and Arkin’s chemistry is excellent, and apparently they developed a deep friendship making this movie as director Richard Rush (who later made the excellent The Stunt Man) endeavored to put his leads in more and more dangerous situations while making it. I love this movie, can you tell?

So the question is, the un-PC-ness of having a Mexican character played by a slightly over-tanned Alan Arkin aside, why the hell is this hilarious buddy cop movie from 1974, starring Arkin and James Caan who are not exactly D-list stars not released on DVD? And by that I mean properly: a print on demand DVD transfer from an old VHS copy from WB is nothing more than a bootleg. I might have to start a letter writing campaign to Warner Bros. Who’s with me?

Here’s an example of one of Freebie and the Bean’s great car chases.

If you get a chance to catch this on TV, watch it… It won’t disappoint you. Until then, I’ll still keep searching on Netflix to see if it ever gets released. If I can rent godawful Terence Hill and Bud Spencer movies such as Crime Busters, I should be able to rent this one, darn it! While we’re at it, I’d like to give a big shout out to another Forgotten Classic buddy cop movie from the same year, The Supercops, a movie I haven’t seen since it was released on VHS back in the early 80s that even managed to spawn a short-lived TV series. Track both of these down and see them if you can, but please avoid Hill and Spencer movies at all costs.

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