Weird Worlds: The Magazine for Proto-Heads

I recently dug up Weird Worlds #5 in my garage. It was the original copy that I got through the Scholastic Book Club in my fifth grade class when I was ten (1980). Despite only being 40 pages from cover to cover, it's loaded with enlightenment, inspiration, and general neat stuff:

 -An article on cult movies, describing such non-kiddie fare as The Harder They Come, El Topo and Reefer Madness

- A graphic three-page horror comic drawn by Steve Bissette (one of his earliest jobs)

- A five-page color monograph of paintings by the Hildebrandt brothers

-A Ripley-style compendium of odd facts and freaks from the news of the day

-"Wolfie's Howlers", a collection of monster-themed jokes ("I sent my girlfriend a heart for Valentine's day." "So? Everyone does that. I sent my girlfriend a heart, too." "Yeah, but this one was still beating.")

-Short stories by Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury

-An interview with the inventor of the Laserium light show

-Fortean articles about UFO's, the Hollow Earth Theory, psychic dogs and the Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919

 

-And a feature about the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with a fold-out poster.

That's all in one issue, and it came out frequently, while it lasted. Edited by R.L. Stine (who went on to success with Goosebumps), it ran just eight issues for one and a half years. #5 is the only copy I still own, but I once had 6 and 7 as well, and I remember them being just as interesting.  I carried #6 to and from school for a few weeks, because I couldn't stop looking at the portfolio of paintings by Rene' Magritte during class. And issue #7 was especially treasured, because it had an article on the Flash Gordon movie, with a fold-out poster of a concept painting: Flash on his rocket cycle, with his army of hawk men swarming War Rocket Ajax. I hung that over my bed, it was so boss.

Weird Worlds seems to have been largely forgotten, which is… weird. There's no wikipedia page, even. I think it's very readable to this day, and much of the content belongs more in a head shop than in a Scholastic publication. These guys were heads.

They're rare, but not too expensive considering their rarity. Last week I bought a couple issues for $6-10 each through ebay and Amazon third party. I probably won't be inspired to acquire the whole run, but I haven't yet found the elusive #7 for sale at any price, so let me know if you do.

Tales from the Crypt: Three Somewhat Good Episodes from a Generally Terrible Series

Tales from the Crypt ran seven seasons. Most of the stories had potential, but were ruined in translation by bad television tropes: overacting, lowbrow "black" humor, boring production design and music cues, and the gratuitous violence and language audiences demanded in the early days of the premium cable TV series. It had no sense of atmosphere, in other words. This is perhaps best exemplified by two things: Danny Elfman's typically carnivalesque theme song, and the Cryptkeeper, who looks about as scary as Count Chocula, and has the voice and dialogue of an abusive lounge comedian. Oh lord, how I hate the Cryptkeeper. It's no wonder that he became a Saturday Morning franchise. Anyway...


So with these three episodes that I consider to be exceptional with a grain of salt, credit mostly goes to the writing team of William Gaines and Al Feldstein, creators of the original comic stories. These are all fairly successful translations of the originals' Eisenhower-era comic book vibe, without too much of the stylistic awfulness that defined most of the series.

Dead Right (Season 2, episode 1)



This was one of my favorite stories from the original Shock Suspenstories comic, since I read it in a reprint when I was 12. You can see the end coming from a mile away if you have any familiarity with E.C. plotting. But it has a cool period atmosphere and nice comic book art direction and pacing. The young Demi Moore looks like she was drawn by Jack Kamen, holy smokes.
(sound mutes for a short time in the middle, due to a music copyright)

Abra Cadaver (Season 3, episode 4)



Variations on this have been done better in film, dating back at least to Vampyr (1932). But it's suspenseful, and it takes a couple of unexpected turns.

Three's a Crowd (Season 2, episode 5)



A tragic and horrific story of marital jealousy, miscommunication and self-hatred, the kind Gaines and Feldstein specialized in (was there ever a single E.C. story that ended with a happily married couple?) Be warned, this one has especially upsetting content, and use discretion in general with the whole series: no episodes of this show are family-friendly or work-friendly. Violence, swears, tits, etc.

Movie of the Week: Blastfighter (1984)

Hey cool, this is the first Lamberto Bava movie I've seen that I really like. And it's very atypical for him, looking more like a PG-rated action movie from a major U.S. studio. 

There are probably some debts to First Blood (1982) here, as well as the Death Wish franchise and Deliverance. But never mind the predecessors, this stands on its own as a well-paced thriller, with a grueling manhunt sequence that lasts for over 40 minutes (until our hero gains access to his futuristic SuperWeapon, and the true Blastfighting begins, only to end a few minutes later to roll the credits). I'm just going to spoil it for you: a whole town full of demented hillbillies with guns chase a guy for a long time, then he turns the tables and blows them all up. It's very edifying.

This Italian production was filmed entirely in Georgia, where life is cheap. Nice original score by Fabio Frizzi, who also composed for Fulci's best known films (The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, Zombie). 

If the movie's title seems inappropriate, it's because the production company was planning on a science fiction film. When they lost the budget, they made this instead, but were locked into using "Blastfighter" as the title. Hence the deus ex machina ending. 

Labor Day Weekend Special: Alone in the Dark (1982)

I've been searching for this in Youtube at a near-weekly basis for about four years now, ever since I started the Movie of the Week feature on this dumb blog. And now, for this Labor Day weekend, the fruit of my labors is finally here, to remind me (a) to cancel my Netflix subscription, and (b) that I have great affinity for some things that I can't begin to explain to myself.

Why does it have such strange appeal? Outwardly, it's a formulaic early 80's slasher/thriller, but in many other ways it's like nothing else. There's a certain honesty here; the kind that makes the audience feel complicit, for better or worse. "You're really there.... you know? You're really there...." I find this moral ambiguity to be both disturbing and funny. I'm having a hard time validating it, but it sure is entertaining.

With star turns from Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence and Martin Landau. Plus we get the massive mountain of a man who stole the show in Stir Crazy, The Wanderers and The Running Man, and a very special and pivotal role by punk-novelty band The Sic F*cks, performing, among others, their Solid Gold hit "Chop Up Your Mother". One of the killers wears a hockey mask, a year before Jason started doing it in the Friday the 13th movies, but who cares. Filmed entirely in New Jersey.

SPECIAL PRELIMINARY FEATURETTE: Also from 1982, the seven-minute cable TV classic must-see short  The Dummy (not embeddable).

Saturday Night at the Drive-In, Summer 1981 Edition: Dead and Buried

A Pair of Russ Meyer Classics

Since Haji died a few days ago, I thought I'd look up whatever Russ Meyer films were currently accessible on youtube.

As far as legit home video is concerned, all of his movies except for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (made for Fox studios) seem to be tied up in litigation; the reason Meyer got so rich is because he was his own producer and distributor, so whether it was theatrical prints or home video, he got all the profits. He passed away a while ago, so availability of DVD's from "RM International", now handled by his estate, have been declining. Anyway, I found a double feature from his late (1970's), most raunchy period, Supervixens (1975) and UP! (1976).

 How can anyone pick a favorite Russ Meyer film? I certainly can't, but perhaps it would be easier if I were to divide his oeuvre into three chronological eras:

 First Wave- Little more to offer than footage of nude women: The Immoral Mr. Teas, Eve and the Handyman, Wild Girls of the Naked West, Mondo Topless… this comprises at least half of his filmography. Burlesque dancers take off their tops. It's all very dated, and doesn't interest me much, although, like all of his work, they're very well shot and edited.

 Second Wave- His exploitive Southern Gothic morality plays: Mudhoney, Faster Pussycat, Lorna, Motorpsycho, Black Snake… titillating around the edges, but with a deeply cynical core. Good stuff.

 Third Wave- Finally, his colorful, fun, hyperactive, hyper-sexualized cartoons: Vixen!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens… and the two films we'll be seeing here tonight on Futurechimp.com.

 I still can't pick a favorite, although UP! is definitely in my top three. It opens with Hitler getting sodomized, then becomes progressively more outrageous from there. And if you haven't seen these before, then, like, definitely NSFW. They're rated X, and look to be uncut. Also, they each contain individual scenes that I still find to be very off-putting for their extreme misogyny. I love them anyway, against my better judgement.


 

Futurechimp Theater: Curious Alice (1971)

R.I.P. Karen Black 1939-2013

Depressing Dog Days of Summer Special: Degrassi High - School's Out (1992)

Several months ago, catalyzed by a sudden change of lifestyle, I began watching Degrassi Junior High from the first episode of the first season onwards. I was a little too old to see it back when it aired on the local PBS station in the late 80's, when I was in high school, but had no problem discovering it at the age of 43. Plus the episodes were 25 minutes, almost perfect for a bottle feeding / burping / rocking session at 4:30 in the morning.

Then I moved on to the two seasons of Degrassi High (which was still excellent by any empirical television standard, but a little trite when compared to its predecessor, ironically). Then I finished with School's Out, a post-graduation followup TV movie that only aired in its native Canada. And this, readers, is the movie I offer to you today as the 1,320th post of Futurechimp.com.

I'll try my best to curb my ecstatic fanaticism for the entire Degrassi saga, except to say that if you've never seen the show, and plan to, definitely do so before seeing this (if you're subscribing to Hulu Plus, all of the Degrassi universe, including this movie, is available there). And I recommend approaching it the same way I did, from the beginning. If you aren't sold by the third episode of the first season, then you can feel free to quit, but give it a chance until then.

However, if binge-watching five seasons of a TV series from the 80's that was made for children doesn't seem appealing to you, then (a) you're a well-adjusted adult with better things to do, and (b) the movie holds up fine enough on its own, and can be seen regardless of familiarity with the characters, so I think you should trust me and give it a go.

It's set during the Summer after High School graduation, and the realism of that retrospectively short time - the feeling that you're growing apart from your closest, oldest friends and starting a new path… it's something I believe most of us can relate to, bittersweet and perfectly realized. And if you've seen even a handful of episodes of the television show, then you know to expect one happy ending for every four tragic endings. It's a sad and dangerous world, but it never preaches or provides easy answers, it only prepares kids to make difficult decisions for themselves.

This was allegedly the first time the word "fuck" was used on CBC. And it's not simply used as an expletive, but in its literal meaning as a verb, in one of the most heartbreaking scenes you'll ever see. It's not exploitive, it's painfully familiar. Quite a moment for a show whose audience was 11-year olds at the beginning. But what made Degrassi so great is the way it evolved with its audience over the five-year run, and continued to respect its intelligence and maturity. It makes Beverly Hills 90210 and everything on the Disney channel look even more like the phony pandering boring corporate consumerist bullshit than it already so obviously is.

(movie is not embeddable: click the links below)

part one

part two

part three

part four

part five

part six

part seven

part eight

Postscript: The cast were mostly untrained as actors, so the show's creators seemed to go through the effort of learning who they really were, and writing those qualities into the characters they played.  For example, while looking up this movie just now, I learned that the most consistently troubled character on the show, "Wheels", was played by a kid who grew up with alcoholic parents. His father died of cirrhosis early in the production of the show, when his character was still in the seventh grade. In the second season of Degrassi Junior, Wheel's TV parents were both killed in a car accident. His personal turmoil was written into his character, and he continued to play the role of a deeply disturbed teenager for another three years.

Real life "Wheels" ending up dying alone in a trailer in 2007, at the age of 35. His body wasn't discovered until 2012. Not everyone is granted the privilege of a Disney ending.

Movie of the Week: Get Crazy (1983)

Allen Arkush's highly underrated and supremely entertaining followup to Rock and Roll High School is finally on Youtube in its entirety, lucky you. As far as I know, it's otherwise only available on VHS. Why is that? Music licensing issues? And why didn't it catch on the first time around, when it played theaters? It should have become a midnight movie. 

But maybe it was too late, because I personally consider Get Crazy to be the last studio movie of the counterculture, before the Reagan era destroyed everything fun. After this film, 80's pop culture was all about materialism and complacency and conformity and wealth. So it's a little out of its time, maybe, but that makes it all the more exceptional. A threadbare plot about a New Year's concert serves its purpose to throw as many jokes as possible onto the screen. It's Rock and Roll High School on speed, and I think it's the bee's knees.

Allow me to describe a small portion of the cast:

Lou Reed, poking fun at himself for a change

Malcom McDowell drops acid and hears voices from his penis

Ed Begley Jr. as an archetypal 80's yuppie

Lee Ving, who steals the whole Goddamn movie

Paul Bartel and his movie-partner Mary Woronov

Lori Eastside, front woman of Kid Creole and the Coconuts

Robert Picardo of The Howling and one of those Star Trek television series

Linnea Quigley as a groupie

Derf Scratch of FEAR as Reggie's guitarist

Plus the little sister is played by the hottie "tsatske" from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, who, as a teenager, dated Woody Allen and was the inspiration for the Mariel Hemingway character in Manhattan.

Also keep an eye out for Dick Miller, Clint Howard and Fabian. There are a bunch of other faces I'm recognizing here, but I'm not going to look them all up.