Someone Of No Importance: Evelyn Waugh and inter-war Futilitarianism

 

The news that one of your favourite novels is being made into a film or TV show is never straightforwardly pleasurable; yes, there’s an excitement about seeing scenes from the page (and from your own imaginings of them) on screen, but there’s a certain amount of apprehension too. Nobody will look right (at first anyway), they may not sound right, and if you don’t like them you may be stuck with them whenever you re-read the book (especially if you didn’t have a particularly clear image of them in your mind in the first place or if, like me the image you do have often bears strangely little relation to the writer’s actual descriptions). Then there’s the tone and authorial voice/point of view, the inner life of the characters… It’s actually surprising there are any good adaptations of books. But there are many, the best of which (to me at least) are those that capture the essence of the book without necessarily being ‘faithful adaptations’ (Catch-22, Ghost World) or which use the book as a launchpad for the filmmakers’ own ideas (Blade Runner, Jaws). Most adaptations are of course neither of these. Which brings us to the BBC’s ‘not bad’ version of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall.

It’s first of all a strange book to have chosen; a black comedy whose fans – as with fans of JG Ballard’s Crash, William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho – know in advance to expect an approximate, rather than precise rendering of. Decline and Fall is not an extreme book in the graphic sense that those three are, but, like at least two of them, its humour is grounded in its unremitting unpleasantness and in the end it’s a bleak, essentially misanthropic, nihilistic kind of comedy, tellingly completed before Waugh’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. For a variety of reasons, though, ‘bleak’ isn’t how the TV version feels.

But before moving on to the show, it’s worth looking at why the book is the way it is. Firstly, and most importantly, it’s an exaggerated reflection of certain aspects of its creator’s personality and an expression of his sense of humour. Even post-conversion, when there is a modicum of compassion for some of the characters in his work, Waugh’s books – with the exception of Brideshead Revisited – are mostly funny but extremely mean-spirited black comedies full of caricatures and snobbishness made extremely funny by his writing style, and in his first few novels that’s pretty much all there is. The surprising depth of feeling in even these books comes from the fact that Waugh allows that his characters – even a relative cipher like Decline and Fall’s bland non-hero Paul Pennyfeather – have human emotions, even if they are rarely respected by others or the author. In Decline and Fall , the snobbishness, misogyny and the – to modern readers – strange treatment of child abuse in which certain pupils seem partly culpable in their encouragement of the paedophile (I hope that most of us would now agree that the victim of child abuse can’t really be complicit in it), can be explained pretty simply: it was the milieu that the young Waugh knew. His education at an all-boys public school and his subsequent university life and work as a teacher in (again) an all-boys public school were overwhelmingly male experiences and child abuse was, if not actually legal or even acceptable, then at least a tacitly accepted if not much written about part of public school life. Nowadays, we might find it odd for a writer to include that kind of thing in a book where the original author’s note reads ‘Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.’ but although the novel was self-consciously outrageous, the aspects that most trouble modern readers; abuse, misogyny, racism, were probably not that much dwelt upon in the late 20s.

The reason that Waugh’s comedies are so rarely successfully adapted into other formats is that their action is farcical, but not complicated. In 1920s comedy, PG Wodehouse is the obvious star, and his work lends itself naturally to stage and television adaptation thanks to his intricate joke-like plots (complete with a punchline at the end). The comedy is there in the story and the writer’s style is the dressing that brings it to life. Waugh’s early plots meanwhile are loosely constructed to non-existent and chaotic and often implausible (yet somehow also more realistic than Wodehouse) and his writing style is everything. It’s a weird, slightly unworkable comparison, but now that I’ve made it; with Wodehouse, his stories are like a kind of pantomime or fairytale, played out by characters the author loves and which are completely ludicrous but make perfect sense on their own terms. With Waugh, it’s often as though a real (perhaps even tragic) story about real people is being told by someone who finds the whole thing funny and has little to no sympathy for the fools and the predicaments they find themselves in. Wodehouse orchestrates the events like a stage director, while Waugh reports them like a condescending gossip. To me, he is the funnier of the two, but his presence is also necessary; if you remove Wodehouse the narrator from his stories, you are left with characters that embody the warmth and silliness of the narrator’s voice, acting out stories which are in themselves funny. If you remove Waugh you are left with people you never really know making fools of themselves in painful ways. If you had never read Waugh but only watched adaptations of his work, one might expect his books to read something like a posh version of Tom Sharpe; which they definitely don’t.

The other main reason that Waugh’s early books are the way they are is because he was part of that couple of generations who lived through the First World War, but who were too young to take part. The impact this had is undeniable and the British literature of the 20s and 30s is filled with very different books by very different writers which nevertheless have various things in common with each other and which I like very much.  The early 21st century may be in some ways a far more cynical time than the 1920s, but in effect it is both nicer and nastier. Most of us no longer accept the inequalities of the class system, or discrimination in race and gender. We are also no longer surprised that human beings can slaughter each other in their millions in mechanised ways; but while being used to that idea, it’s also true that, unlike Waugh’s generation, we (at least we in the UK) haven’t had the experience of half of the adult males that were there in our early childhood simply not existing anymore, or living in a country where almost every town and village doesn’t have a monument to those killed in a war we remember. A large part of the literature of the 20s and 30s consists of writers either trying to find meaning in a society whose way of life has been changed forever, whose old beliefs; in religion, in tradition, no longer seem to have any meaning, or of trying simply to escape the realities of modern life altogether. In the mid-to – late 1930s, politics would take centre stage in British literature, but for a period from around 1920 to 1935 the anxieties of the country’s younger writers were revealed in a series of strangely formless but oddly similar novels, which were once labelled ‘futilitarian’.

booox

These are my favourites, might as well do this chronologically…

Aldous Huxley – Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923) and Point Counter Point (1928)

antic

Huxley was in fact slightly older (20 when WW1 broke out, whereas Waugh was only 11) but he could not take part in combat due to his chronically bad eyesight. His early novels (I think Antic Hay is the best) make a very interesting comparison with Waugh’s, because at first they seem fairly similar; modern comedies where the storylines (such as they are) mostly revolve around the social lives of young, wealthy and irresponsible people. But the tone and content is very different. While Waugh was at school during WW1, with not only all the jingoism and propaganda that that entailed, but also the noticeable absence of adult male teachers and role models, for Huxley, WW1 was the period of Bloomsbury (he worked as a farm labourer at Garsington Manor, home of the society hostess and patron of the arts Lady Ottoline Morrell. For him, social life meant intellectual conversation; the discussion of art and modernism, conscientious objection, philosophy, pacifism. The comedy in novels like Antic Hay comes mainly from his satirical portrayals of the kinds of people he was mixing with but they are funny in both a broad way (the hero Theodore Gumbril’s invention of ‘pneumatic trousers’) and a deeper one (relationships and their difficulties). The main difference from Waugh is that whereas the comedy in a book like Waugh’s Vile Bodies arises from the somewhat desperate attempts of the main characters to have fun in the face of the meaningless void underlying modern life, in Huxley’s works the comedy arises from the characters’ often farcical and pretentious attempts at finding meaning through conversation, art and philosophy. The contrast between Huxley’s novels and an apparently very similar one – Wyndham Lewis’ great satire The Apes of God (1930) is especially striking because the milieu the books are set in almost identical (they knew many of the same people) and because, like Huxley, Wyndham Lewis was not nihilistic. He was however, immensely negative and the fact that he had seen active service in WW1 and was also himself a pioneering artist made him extremely impatient with what he saw as the wishy-washy dilettantism of the Bloomsbury artists and writers and their detachment from real life. The contrast between Antic Hay and The Apes of God is the difference between an affectionate Max Beerbohm cartoon and a merciless James Gillray caricature.

Evelyn Waugh – Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930)

Viles_Bodies

What makes these books distinctively post-WW1 is the nihilism at their heart. The younger generation of the 1920s were probably more different from their parents (products of the Victorian era) than any generation before or since (excepting maybe that of the 60s) and the tone of Waugh’s novels is resolutely modern and, despite its insistence on/preoccupation with social class, the feel is one of fragmentation and instability, especially in comparison with pre-War literature. When older people are presented, it is almost always as an archaic survival from a distant era. If the war is mentioned at all, its in an almost nostalgic way by people for whom it was the backdrop of their youth or childhood. The most surprising thing about Waugh’s books is the unexpected poignancy that comes from his mostly unsympathetic handling of his characters; Vile Bodies, probably his most determinedly unpleasant book, is also his funniest (aside from the grotesque later masterpiece The Loved One).

Anthony Powell – Afternoon Men (1931)

afternoon men

Of all the books here, Afternoon Men feels perhaps the least ambitious, but makes me laugh the most. I have read some of Anthony Powell’s other books (and started but not finished his Dance to the Music of Time series), but they just aren’t the same. The story is almost identical to those of Huxley and Waugh – a group of young people meet up socially and drink a lot, have affairs etc – although the social class of Powell’s protagonist William Atwater is lowly enough that he actually has a normal, office-based job – a rarity in any of these books. Atwater’s friends and acquaintances are the usual mixture of bohemian high society people but it is Powell’s abrupt, lightly modernistic writing style and feel for dialogue that makes it work so well:

“’I work in a museum’, said Atwater. He was getting sleepier and felt he ought to say something. He had begun to be depressed.

‘That must be very interesting work, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t it really?’

‘I often think of running away to sea.’

‘I think it must be very interesting.’

‘Do you?’

* * * *

‘What about your books?’ Atwater stood up. He could not do all the stuff about the books. He was too sleepy. He said:

‘There are these. And then there are those.’”

(Afternoon Men, p.35-6, 1963 Penguin edition)

As a writer, Powell is far more deadpan and less misanthropic than Waugh, but he creates a similarly poignant effect; it would be quite possible to film this novel and, used verbatim, the dialogue might still be funny, but what essentially makes the book work is the style in which it is written.

Cyril Connolly – The Rock Pool (written 1935. published 1936)

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The Rock Pool is the only novel by Connolly – best known as a literary critic – and it is one of my favourite books. Connolly was the same age and (more or less) social class as Evelyn Waugh, and the novel is the portrait of a snobbish young man of means who goes to the French Riviera to observe life in an artist’s colony, with the explicit intention of writing a period piece about the kind of carefree1920s-style life of leisure that no longer existed in the London of the 30s, but might still be going on there.  In fact, it isn’t  – and instead he finds himself drawn into the lives of the impoverished artists, conmen and bar owners there until it becomes clear that he is not the detached ironic observer he imagined, but has in fact found his niche and his people, whether he wants to have or not. In comparison with Waugh and even Huxley, Connolly is far more sympathetic to his characters and the tone is completely different from Waugh’s slightly contemptuous detachment:

“’Tell me, why do you come here if you are such a snob?’

‘Who said I was a snob?’

‘Why, everybody… I’m sure it must be very amusing.’

He felt old and miserable, going through life trying to peddle a personality of which people would not even accept a free sample.”

(The Rock Pool, p.90-91, Penguin edition, 1963)

The fact that The Rock Pool is a product of the mid-30s and not the 20s is part of its charm. While Connolly’s contemporaries and peers were becoming interested in philosophy and science (Huxley), religion (Waugh) or politics and social commentary (George Orwell, Christopher Isherwood, WH Auden etc), Connolly accepted, with insight, the aimless, aesthetic worldview of his 20s generation, even as it became obsolete.

Christopher Isherwood –  Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935)

mr norris

Isherwood’s first two novels, All The Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932) are also relevant here, but Mr Norris… (probably best known, with its semi-sequel Goodbye To Berlin (1939) as being the inspiration for the musical Cabaret) have more in common with the books described above. While both of his earlier books dealt specifically with the generation gap that had resulted from the First World War (and The Memorial is explicitly concerned with the effects of WW1 on British society), Mr Norris is, although very different in tone, essentially similar to The Rock Pool – a comical story about the adventures of a young upper class person out of his element. Although famous for its evocation of the politics and life of late Weimar and early Nazi Berlin, the novels were born from Isherwood’s desire – in 1929/30, rather than the mid-late 30s of the novels – not for any kind of social or political commentary, but to escape the milieu of upper class England and experience the hedonistic lifestyle of Berlin. As with most Waugh and Powell, the book’s main protagonist is less vividly drawn than the more extreme characters who surround him, and in many ways Isherwood accomplishes a kind of heightened, occasionally grotesque realism something like the Neue Sachlichkeit artists (Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter, Christian Schad etc) who were working in Germany in the same period, and whose paintings have often adorned the covers of his books. The fact that his books are partly autobiographical (and written in the first person, as ‘William Bradshaw’, Isherwood’s own middle names) means there is little of the distancing effect of Waugh and although there is much humour in Isherwood’s early novels, often at the expense of his characters, they are written with a warmth and compassion that makes them translate to the screen without losing too much of the feel of the novel – with the exception of the narrator himself, who suffers by being mostly a nondescript bystander, so that in Cabaret, the Christopher Isherwood/William Bradshaw character has to become the very different Brian Roberts.

oh – not chronological now, but also – Stephen Spender – The Temple (written 1929, published 1988)

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While Isherwood was in Berlin with WH Auden, their friend Stephen Spender found his way to Hamburg, seeking not only the hedonistic freedom of Weimar Germany, but also freedom from censorship. As Spender wrote in the introduction to the (very) belated first edition of The Temple, England in 1929 was a country where James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned, as was Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. In going to Germany, his motives were at least partly artistic, and as he noted, “The Temple is pre-thirties and pre-political.” The same could be said of all of the novels discussed here. In that sense, The Temple sits strangely, but appropriately, in the company of the books of Waugh, Anthony Powell and co. In comparison with Isherwood’s Berlin stories, Spender’s novel is far more concerned with the inner life of its narrator and his Hamburg is less vividly drawn, but at the same time the book is far more explicit about sex than Isherwood (though to be fair Spender revised The Temple before publication in the 80s so it isn’t clear how much of the explicitness existed in 1929 – enough to prevent it from being published though). It’s a summery, if slightly troubled book, not improved by the author’s retrospective awareness of how fleeting the freedom it describes would be. Also, although Spender was himself far from humourless, there’s an earnest quality that makes the tone of the book unique in this list; it’s far more of a considered portrait of a time, than a story about some young people.

Decline and Fall – the TV show

decandeff

So, finally – to that TV adaptation of Decline and Fall. It wasn’t actually bad at all (vastly better than the mystifyingly titled 1969 movie adaptation, Decline and Fall…of a Bird Watcher), but despite all the positive reviews it wasn’t (to me anyway) right either; how come? Firstly, the book was published in 1928 and had a contemporary setting. That means that it is now a period piece, which on the screen, gives an instantly distancing effect. The twenties in particular (actually, the twenties and thirties; TV rarely discriminates between the two) has evolved a certain lighthearted and somewhat cosy screen presence on television over the years, from the nostalgic adaptation(s) of Waugh’s very different Brideshead Revisited to gentle Sunday evening drama of The House of Elliot to Jeeves and Wooster and even You Rang M’Lord.

Thanks to these shows and others like them (not to mention films like Bugsy Malone and The Great Gatsby in its various versions) there’s a kind of visual shorthand for the twenties, consisting of; striped blazers, flapper fashions, art deco, the Charleston and hedonistic and/or gormless aristocrats, the fantasy of being independently wealthy, plus the odd Moseley-inspired fascist and monocled lesbian; all of which fits Decline and Fall pretty well, in a superficial kind of way. But while nostalgia is, appropriately, an element in all of the aforementioned programmes (not so much The Great Gatsby, ironic given how the film version traded on the visual aspects of its high society settings etc), it should really have no place in Decline and Fall. Nostalgia can’t help being present though, just through the accumulation of period detail and the kind of broad acting that a comedy set among the upper classes in the 20s seems to require. This broad approach is again fair enough in a way, since Decline and Fall is essentially a novel where the characters are close to being caricatures anyway.

The most obvious place the book differs from the television adaptation is that in the book, the mostly innocent and bland fish-out-of-water main character, Paul Pennyfeather doesn’t have to be – and often isn’t – particularly likeable; the reader doesn’t have to like him or identify with him to find his story funny and anyway, Waugh makes it explicit that we are not seeing Pennyfeather at his best or most typical or indeed in his element at all. Considering the ridiculous (and at times heartbreaking) circumstances he finds himself in, his outbursts of bitterness are surprisingly few and far between. Presenting a not-very-likeable character having misadventures with even less likeable characters is not, however a particularly ratings-grabbing idea, so it’s not surprising the BBC didn’t play it that way. It would never have occurred to me to cast the comedian Jack Whitehall in the leading role, but the hapless/diffident/youthful/naive sides of Pennyfeather’s nature are not that far removed from Whitehall’s usual persona and I don’t mean it as an insult when I say he captures the somewhat one-dimensional, nonentity-like aspect of Pennyfeather quite well.

But, in the bigger picture, the fact that the BBC is spending money on an Evelyn Waugh adaptation at all may not really be a good sign. As Jon Savage wrote in 1986 (re. the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited):

Waugh’s elevation into legend – as the house god of literary London – has come at the same time as, and may have fuelled, a concerted ideological attack on the social gains of the whole post-war period.” (Jon Savage, Waugh Crimes, The Face, September 1986, in Time Travel – Pop, Media and Sexuality 1976-99, Chatto & Windus 1996, p. 206).

The adaptation of Decline and Fall in 2017 says as much about the current rise of conservatism as the success of Brideshead Revisited did about Margaret Thatcher’s mid 80s, both about the nature of the conservatism itself, and the ways society has changed since the last strengthening of the right.  The choice of Brideshead to capture a conservative zeitgeist was an obvious and safe one; Waugh’s least characteristic, if most successful novel, it is (or at least it can be easily adapted as) a straightforward nostalgic paean to/romanticisation of the leisured life of the aristocracy in the pre-WW2 period, the last time they could be seen as  the leaders of fashion and in a real sense ‘the ruling class’, with an Empire and subordinate classes to (literally) ‘lord it’ over. Then as now, the appeal of traditional ‘Britishness’ was strong, both with the kind of conservative, older elements in society/in charge and those who see progressiveness only in terms of threatening change/instability. Back in 1986, the ‘golden age’ of Brideshead Revisited was still remembered by the older generations, including many who were still active in the political life of the country.

But although the BBC made a costume drama, perhaps the most conservative television form, and although Waugh was a lifelong conservative and reactionary, Decline and Fall the novel, as discussed above, is hardly conservative at all; it doesn’t stand for anything, and its guiding principle seems to be that people are foolish and stupid and ruin their own lives and the lives of others without caring or even noticing. It’s a book which mostly gets away with its casual misogyny and racism because of its overwhelming misanthropy; if these people are laughable and stupid and ridiculous then at least he doesn’t show us anyone that isn’t; the fact that one of the book’s most likeable comic characters is a teacher who is not only a bad teacher, but a serial child abuser shows just what an odd choice it is for a BBC costume drama. The way the BBC tackled the more problematic aspects says a lot about where society is in 2017. In the novel, the (in modern terminology) paedophile teacher Captain Grimes’ abuse of the children in his care is seen by the other characters as distasteful and disreputable, as well as criminal, but is still seen as something one can be funny about. Somewhat surprisingly, this element made it to the screen more or less untouched, albeit without the flirtatiousness of Grimes’ favourite victim (as we, but not he, would see it), Clutterbuck. It is interesting though, to note that when reviewing the show, the word paedophile has almost always been replaced by the equivalent but somehow less inflammatory word ‘pederast’; somehow enjoying the comical exploits of a fictional paedophile might not be okay. It’s presumably the respectability of the source material (Decline and Fall may be outrageous, but Waugh is a pillar of British literature), the broadness of the comedy and the relative vagueness of the acts that makes it acceptable. And I think that’s right in a way; the element is there in the novel, it’s supposed to be and is uncomfortably funny in the novel (Waugh really was a kind of anti-Wodehouse at that point in his career), even though child abuse itself is obviously not funny. It can be assumed I think that the makers of the programme are not condoning anything, and hand-wringing self-censorship would not make the programme better; but there seems to have been a certain amount of that anyway, as we shall see.

Jack-Whitehall-Decline-And-Fall

As the misanthropy of the novel is reduced in the TV version largely because of Jack Whitehall’s sympathetic portrayal of Paul Pennyfeather, the misogyny of the book more or less evaporates onscreen, largely because the female characters are no more or less caricatures than the male ones, and are played by real women. In the book, the women are mostly predatory in one way or another and are strictly there to be admired, feared or despised – and the admiration always ends in disillusion. In Waugh’s mature books (even his best ones like A Handful of Dust) it could be argued that this feeling never significantly changes.

Where the BBC seems to have been most squeamish is with the novel’s racism. Although the anti-Welsh feeling made it to the screen more or less unchanged and again, partly neutralised by the fact that almost all of the characters were played so broadly, the episode featuring Margot Beste-Chetwynde’s African-American boyfriend Sebastian “Chokey” Cholmondley is more problematic. In the adaptation, Chiké Okonkwo plays the character exactly as written; he is articulate, urbane and enthusiastic about ecclesiastical architecture; but, when he says in the novel, “You folk think that because we’re coloured we don’t care about nothing but jazz. Why, I’d give all the jazz in the world for just one little stone from one of your cathedrals”, it’s supposed to be funny, not just because of the naivety of the lines, but because they comes from a black character. His entry into the book as Margot Beste-Chetwynde’s companion at the school games sets the tone for the whole episode:

“’I hope you don’t mind my bringing Chokey, Dr Fagan?’ she said. ‘He’s just crazy about sport.’

‘I sure am that,’ said Chokey.

’Dear Mrs Beste-Chetwynde!’ said Dr Fagan; ‘dear, dear Mrs Beste-Chetwynde!’ He pressed her glove, and for a moment was at a loss for words of welcome, for ‘Chokey’, though graceful of bearing and irreproachably dressed, was a Negro.” (Decline and Fall, p. 75)

Throughout the scene that follows, Chokey talks about church architecture, music and his race, and did so in the TV version, but the fact of his articulacy and the idea that his presence among high society people is in itself funny remains inescapable in the novel.  Also, what the BBC understandably didn’t include, was the way that almost every other character present comments on Chokey’s presence, or the abusive terms they use when doing so. I’m not sure what else they could have done while remaining at all true to the novel. On the one extreme, removing the single black character from a TV show in the name of  not upsetting people with racism would make no sense, and on the other, having Jack Whitehall say, as Paul Pennyfeather does in the novel, “I say Grimes, what d’you suppose the relationship is between Mrs Beste-Chetwynde and that n—–?” would – to say the least – have spoiled the show and made Pennyfeather a less sympathetic character than the BBC want him to be. But possibly they should have?

When writing about Waugh in 1986, Jon Savage wrote;

“It is extremely important that British culture develops a way of addressing the present and the future rather than the past, that recognises our pluralistic, multiracial society and our position, finger-in-the-dyke of trends in world politics” (Time Travel – Pop, Media and Sexuality 1976-99, Chatto & Windus 1996, p. 207)

and that’s still true – indeed, it’s more true now than it was even five years ago. But Decline and Fall isn’t it. Obviously, its anarchic vision isn’t as straightforwardly nostalgic and conservative in 2017 as Brideshead was in the 80s, but that’s partly because popular culture, post-Brass Eye, post-I’m A Celebrity and post-Operation Yew Tree is massively more coarse and more receptive to deliberate bad taste than the 80s was, or the 20s were for that matter. In its concern with period detail and its twee Jeeves and Wooster-ish execution, the makers of Decline and Fall have swapped the viciously funny nihilism of Waugh’s 1920s for a slightly cosy bad taste pantomime world which is equally as uncomfortable in its own very different way and leaves a comparable, but again different funny taste. Still; it wasn’t awful.

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Belated weekly update: If You Want To Feel…

So, I’m taking far too long faffing with the more (relatively) substantial things I’ve been working on, so in the meantime I will try to reinstate the weekly updates. Just to stop the whole thing becoming too repetitive, this one is in a very slightly different format from the usual playlist etc (though not massively different to be honest). So anyway; here are some things…

If You Want To Feel… slightly heartbroken, in a teenage kind of way…

Listen to – American Anymen + Lise – Oui EP

American Anymen + LIse - Oui EP
American Anymen + LIse – Oui EP

I love this beautiful little release. It’s a lovely collection of wistful, charming songs that reminded me in various ways of Daniel Johnston, Bright Eyes, Jad Fair, BMX Bandits and other groups whose work is similarly uncluttered and direct. People label this kind of thing twee, but if it is then I guess my feelings are twee, too. Oh – and this is available for FREE! 


 

 

If You Want To Feel… like you belong to the Multiverse…

Ethel Moorhead
Ethel Moorhead

Find out what was going on in your local area, in a period that interests you. It’s easy and fun, unless of course you find it difficult & boring. Previously I have read about The Beatles in Kirkcaldy (a surreal thought) but I was recently reading about about the local activities of the suffragette movement and discovered several things that I felt I should have known for years. Not only was a local railway station which I have been to many times rebuilt in 1913 after being burned down in (allegedly) a suffragette attack, but, more definitely, the prominent suffragette, Ethel Moorhead, has very local (to me) connections. She left her childhood home in Dundee to study as a painter in the studios of Whistler & Alphonse Mucha – which is interesting enough – but a few years later, after joining the WSPU, she was arrested many times, being subjected to the usual sadistic treatment under the ‘Cat & Mouse Act’.  After one of her lesser offences, she was locked up in a jail (nowadays just offices) that I walk past almost every day. She then proceeded to wreck the bathroom and flood the building. This happened in the town where I went to High School, but the (mostly very good) history teachers I had either didn’t know about it, or didn’t think it worth telling the pupils about. And yet, knowing this kind of thing makes history far more vivid and alive (and paradoxically ghostly) than the kind of standard issue textbook things that are (or were; not been to school for years) usually taught. Incidentally, I think the school really should have explained the horrors of the Cat & Mouse act. Saying women on hunger strike were ‘force-fed’  is not untrue, but doesn’t really capture just what the authorities were doing; especially here in Scotland.

 If You Want To Feel… like the 80s cyberpunk future  is still the future

Listen to – Anvil StrykezAnvil Strykez

Anvil Strykez
Anvil Strykez

I have written a review of this great album for Echoes and Dust so won’t say much here. But if you were living in an early William Gibson novel, or the kind of 80s cartoon that is at least 50% chase or fight sequences, this would be the soundtrack

 

 

 

 

If You Want To Feel…like simple concern for your fellow human beings is less important than political ideology

Look at every major political party in the UK right now. If however, you don’t want to feel that way, look at the many people and institutions fighting for the rights of people of all kinds and trying to improve the lives of people and make your own opinion known. There are probably more people fighting and campaigning for human rights and equality than at any time in the history of the western world; this is a good thing. One of the saddest things about UK politics in 2017 is that there are many such people even within the main parties; but on the whole, their voices are being made subordinate to the political aims of those parties.

If You Want To Feel… like the internet is like all the encyclopaedias in the world, only better 

Sign up for some of the many great newsletters put out for free on the web. Your interests may not be the same as mine, but I have never yet had a single newsletter from any of these without finding something of interest:

Messy Nessy – this site covers so many areas; culture, pop culture, history, art, architecture, society – and its regular newsletter is great

The New Yorker – you already know what The New Yorker is – brilliant journalism, politics, art, culture, cinema, fiction, you name it; they recently had an unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story for christ’s sake! For free!

FEMigré – Vonny Moyes’ blog is fairly new, but has already built up an extremely thoughtful & considered series of articles, looking at society & the world from a feminist viewpoint, which challenges not only the cultural status quo, but dogma of all kinds.

Gail Carriger’s Monthly Chirrup – mainly for fans of Miss Carriger’s books perhaps, but in addition to news relating to her steampunk fiction, the Chirrup often takes in Victoriana of all kinds, fashion and humour and is highly entertaining in its own right.

Zero Tolerance Magazine – okay, I write for ZT, but the newsletter includes lots of extreme metal-related news/offers etc as well as keeping readers up to date with the ZT blog

Museums & Galleries – most really good museums & galleries have worthwhile newsletters, the Tate & V&A etc are good but one of my favourites is The National Museum of Women in the Arts which has links to their excellent blog as well as the usual updates etc

If You Want To Feel… like you’ve run a marathon while being hit over the head with a hammer – but in a good way

Listen to Never – Demo 2017

Never - Demo 2017
Never – Demo 2017

Never are a punk band from Brighton and play intense, cathartic & exhilarating hardcore/noise-ish music with lots of heart. It makes you feel better by making you feel worse

 

 

 

 

 

If You Want To Feel… like the music scene in 2017 is as vibrant and essential as it always is, here’s a current playlist – why break with tradition entirely?

Ghost World – Ghost World (Svart Records)

ghost

 archetypically teenage neo-grunge, Finland’s Ghost World have made a fine debut album which, incidentally, includes my favourite ‘ooh’s of the year so far (on the track ‘Drain’, if you’re interested)

 

 

 

 

The Moon & The Nightspirit – Metanoia (Prophecy Productions)

TMATNS-MetanoiaBundle

Hungarian pagan folk music which is probably as influenced by fantasy as by actual folk traditions; but it’s a lovely, slightly spooky and thankfully not very cheesy album nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

Ummagma – Winter Tale/Frequency

ummag

Ummagma’s almost unclassifiable* mix of dreampop, shoegaze, ambient electronica, synthpop etc etc (*see?) is at its best on the Frequency EP, a collection of extremely fresh and delicate but never throwaway tunes made with the collaboration of luminaries such as Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins & OMD’s Malcolm Holmes. Winter Tale is jointly credited to Ummagma and equally-unclassifiable (or maybe not)  dreampop pioneers A.R. Kane; and  it sounds like both groups, which should please anyone who likes to float on a dreamy cushion of beautiful, harmonious noise.

 

 

 

wildcard: Coldfells – Coldfells (Bindrune Recordings/Eihwaz Recordings)

coldfells_Cover2

I’m not actually sure how much I like this yet; rough, harsh, Thorns-like black metal/doom with strangely melodic choruses. Hmm. A few listens in and the riffs and rough bits are great – the choruses take some getting used to, in this context though. But interesting and I’m sticking with it, so definitely not a thumbs-down.

 

 

 

Current Reading: I’ve been on an Orwell bender of late; currently reading his diaries, which are alternately great and dull, as one might expect of something that is in part a record of how many eggs his hens are laying etc.

Also –

  • The Vorticists (ed. Mark Antliffe & VIvien Greene)
  • Gail Carriger – The Finishing School (series)
  • Samuel Beckett (shorter prose works)
  • Steffen Kverneland – Munch
  • The New European (newspaper)

Current Viewing:

  • The Last Kingdom (series 2, BBC)
  • Logan (pretty good, if ridiculously violent & bleak)
  • Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Hitchcock masterpiece with Joseph Cotten at his charmingly sinister best

So anyway, enough for now? Until next time!

REAL-TIME REVIEWS: YAADON KE BAARAAT (1973)

Something of an experiment; reviewing an album while actually listening to it. As will be seen, the downside of this approach is that there isn’t much time for fact-checking and so forth and it leads to a lot of description rather than actual criticism, but I thought I’d leave it as it is to give the most immediate response to the record. In this case, a record I have heard lots of times before, which is helpful (and, if there were rules, cheating; but there aren’t). Anyway; the info:

Yaadon Ki Baaraat Original Soundtrack (Odeon Records, 1973)                                                               Composer/Musical Director: Rahul Dev Burman

Firstly; the sleeve for this record is a fantastic pop art design, presumably echoing the poster design. I haven’t checked to see what the story is about, but the cool guy with the guitar and the possibly less cool singer standing in front of a drum kit with ‘The Avengers’ written on it suggests a preoccupation with western pop/rock music, which is also evident on the soundtrack itself. Also worth mentioning is the lovely thick and heavy vinyl. But putting the record on now…

guitarman

This amazing soundtrack suggests that for Bollywood, or at least for Rahul Dev Burman, whatever the calendar may have said, the year was really 1966; that heady period of spaghetti westerns, garage rock, late surf, early psychedelia, James Bond and Adam West’s (and Nelson Riddle’s) Batman. All of that is telescoped into the eighteen thrillingly eccentric minutes of side one; it may be (in fact the pictures from the sleeve suggest) that this for-the-time retro sound has something to do with the film’s storyline.

Side One
lekar ham diwana dil
Beginning with a roared ‘Hey!‘ followed by thumping, echo-laden percussion, fuzz and wah-wah guitars and a main theme which could be described as ‘Surf Munsters Go James Bond’ with added spaghetti western trumpet, this first track really has everything. There’s even what sounds like go-go dancer girls (how can it sound like go-go dancers? It just does!) singing a ‘shake-shake’ refrain, before Kishore Kumar sings the actual song with some classic Bollywood strings coming in for good measure. The verse is then sung again in the amazing unearthly high tones of (‘brimful of’) Asha Bhosle. There’s a great swinging beat – which in fact remains much the same for the majority of the album, and an expressive guitar solo and wah wah organ(!) This track sets out the basic texture of the album; distorted, strummed acoustic guitars (I think) with heavy percussion, all swimming in swimming-pool reverb. Kumar and Bhosle sing together, Bhosle groans sexily, there’s a bit of heavy brass and beat break with added ‘shake shake’s, lots of drama and then the track ends with a reverberating wah-wah-ed chord. One of the grooviest pieces of music you will ever hear.label1

aap ke kamre men                                                                               The rest of side one is taken up by aap ke kamre men, a peculiar, live-sounding medley of song fragments linked with dialogue (with odd phrases in English) and lots of rapturous applause.
Beginning not with a ‘hey’ but with a guttural ‘HAA!!’ and some extremely piercing reverb/fuzz guitar and deep, churning percussion, the first part features an instrumental break strangely reminiscent of the Rawhide theme and then abruptly ends with an eruption of rapturous applause. There follows some dialogue (sounds like a compere of some sort), mostly in Hindi except that it begins ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’ and ends ‘the song goes like this...’
The next segment of the (sort of) medley is one of the album’s best tunes and pops up again and again through the rest of the soundtrack. It’s the ‘Yaadon Ke Baaraat’ tune, which starts out as a haunting, atmospheric, (again) reverb-laden flickering guitar part and a singer (probably Kishore Kumar again) humming and then singing the tune. After a couple of minutes there’s a very odd interlude with strangely watery-sounding beat guitars and a guy singing ‘zoo zoo zoo zoo’ before dissolving into laughter and more applause. ‘Ladies and gentlemen…. ‘ some hindi dialogue and another great guitar intro and more humming with more rapturous applause. As the not-quite-medley continues, it wanders down some strange avenues, not least a strangely bare segment where a male voice, accompanied only by bass, percussion and a deep halo of echo sings a peculiarly wandering melody. Even the most haunting segments are brief though, brutally cut off by the applause-and-announcer and once by a brilliant reverb guitar break.

About half way through the track there seems to be some kind of audience participation section, where the crowd joins in on a section with a folky beat flavour. At eighteen minutes, the long medley isn’t really all that long; but it includes several resprises of the ‘Yaadon Ke Baaraat‘ theme, a minimalistic drum solo, lots of laughter, strummed acoustic guitars and more Asha Bhosle; it’s groovy.
Side Two
o meri sonilabel2
This moodily dramatic song is perhaps the most (to Western ears) typically ‘Bollywood’ track on the album and opens with soaring strings over richly textured acoustic strumming. Kishore Kumar’s impassioned vocal has a slightly sillly ‘I loooove yooou’ chorus, but the not-unlikeable cheesiness becomes something far more substatial (but still a bit cheesy) with a great bass/guitar/string break and ascending string. The melody wanders and Asha Bhosle joins in with her own piercing beautiful ‘I love you’s and another verse/chorus. The song ends as a duet, accompanied by organ and strings; it’s very cool and then fades out
yaadon ki baarat – This time Asha Bhosle sings the atmospheric tune acapella before the brilliantly shimmering guitar part is reprised. The mysterious atmosphere is enhanced by multitracked Asha Bhosles, strings and organ; and then it;s over all too soon.

chura liya hai tum ne – This is one of the most beautiful of Asha Bhosle’s performances on the album. The song has a slow beat and big jangling guitar part and even a hint of Spaghetti Westernish sounding trumpet. There’s also a lovely violin solo

yaadon ke baaraat – The theme tune appears one last time, now sung by three male voices. The tune is as lovely as always but lacks the Asha Bhosle magic. It’s very possible that (as with opera) I just prefer female Bollywood voices to male ones.

As will be obvious, I know very little about Bollywood musicals or their soundtracks. What I have learned from the five or six I own though, is that Rahul Dev Burman was some kind of musical genius and Asha Bhosle sings like an angel. Both of these factors are prominent on the Yaadon Ke Baaraat soundtrack, which is a masterpiece of slightly kitchy grooviness, brilliantly performed and recorded.

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The Lucky Ones Were The First To Die! The 1980s post-Mad Max Apocalypse

Escape from Mad Max 2

However successful George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max movie was, for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to have the impact of the second (and by extension, the far superior first) one did; the release of 1981’s Mad Max 2 (known internationally as The Road Warrior) coincided with the boom in home video (specifically home video rental; those were the days when to actually buy a movie on VHS cost outlandishly vast sums) and the fact that it was set in a barren landscape with details (cars, clothes, technology) that were recognisably contemporary, but generally beaten-up, rather than gleamingly futuristic meant that its look and feel was easy to imitate on an extremely low budget. The storyline, too, was simple and dynamic in the style of a spaghetti western; requiring only a few key locations, a small cast and some action, it was apparently eminently imitable. Except of course, that George Miller is a masterful director and the pre-Hollywood Mel Gibson was an immensely charismatic and capable actor.

There was also the atmosphere of the early 80s; people may now, on the whole, be more scared than they were then, but the threats of the 21st century are rarely as monolithic and inescapable as the fear of nuclear war once was. The cold war, pre-Gorbachev, created a paranoia that pervaded not only obvious movies like Wargames (US) and When the Wind Blows (UK), but also silly flag-waving nonsense like Rocky IV. Not surprisingly, this is a feature of life in the 80s rarely acknowledged by the nostalgia industry.

ravagers1

Aside from Mad Max 2, the other cinematic progenitor of the 80s post-apocalypse straight-to-video movie was John Carpenter’s 1981 masterpiece(ish) Escape From New York. In fact, so influential are these movies that many of those that follow could (and will) justifiably be referred to as ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ movies. Most of the classic derivative B movies can be easily identified by the presence of a post-Mad Max/Snake Plissken hero – lone, brooding, grizzled, leather clad, often with unacceptable hair.

Due presumably to it’s powerful final scene, the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes is evoked every now and then, albeit on a less epic scale; even less obvious, but arguably still there, is the distant influence of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, with its vision of a small ‘civilised’ ruling elite (Eloi) living in comfort and bestial devolved humanoids (Morlocks) roaming the wilds. A debased version of this idea; a small group of nice, civilised people terrorised by a group of not-nice, non-local people, helped by a nice, non-local person or people is so widespread in cinema (westerns, samurai movies, Night of the Living Dead etc etc) that it’s hard to say where exactly it originated (actually, probably somewhere quite obvious/well known, but I will look that up after it’s too late for this article).

Since the 1920s, most Hollywood movies have historically tried to sell themselves with a snappy tagline; as you will see, these movies have some of the best ever coined. So here is a selection of worthwhile post-apocalyptic movies that gives an idea of how varied even such a narrow subgenre can be…

Countdown to Apocalypse…

Technically pre-dating the 80s straight-to-video post-apocalyptic cycle (and influencing it?) but definitely worth a mention is

Damnation Alley (1977)
Tagline: You Have Seen Great Adventures – You Are About To Live One

damnation alleyBasically a bunch of TV and B-movie actors driving around the desert in ridiculous Robot-Wars-looking modified vehicles.  Many of the factors that would become clichés are firmly in place here; a shattered, post-apocalyptic world (cheap desert locations), a ramshackle group of survivors (though less fashionably ramshackle than in Mad Max 2 and its imitators), a pretty basic ‘quest’ style theme (in this case a search for fellow survivors).
In terms of general filmmaking competence and originality this, though not great, is far above the standard of the general 80s movie of this type.

damnation

Another early entry that sets the tone for what was to follow is…

Ravagers (1979)
tagline: 1991: Civilisation is Dead

ravagersIt really IS dead; in this yawn-apocalypse, Richard Harris tries to find a way to safety through a decaying post-civilisation landscape populated by warring gangs. It is far less exciting than one would think possible.

 

 

 

 

Post-Apocalyptic Raids

Not surprisingly, the true Escape from Mad Max 2 subgenre was defined by the work of Italian B-movie/exploitation directors. One of the true genre-setting movies, and pretty ubiquitous in video shops back in the 80s is Enzo G Castellari (director of Jaws ripoffs, horror movies and The Inglorious Bastards (1978))’s opus:

1990; The Bronx Warriors (1982)
tagline; The lucky ones were the first to die!

bronx-warriors-2

The disclaimer here is that there is no apocalypse as such; but the movie is 100% in the post-Escape From New York genre, with the Bronx declared a warzone and sealed off from the rest of the world, left to the feuding gangs that inhabit its decaying tenements and warehouses.

In fact, the movie is kind of an amalgam of several sources, most notably Walter Hill’s all-time great The Warriors (1979) and it owes as much to Romeo & Juliet and to spaghetti westerns as it does to the usual subgenre films. It is fun, more or less, but it has serious pacing problems (not to mention dubbing issues) that put it firmly in the z-list. The characters too are confusing – storyline-wise Mark Gregory’s ‘Trash’ should logically be the hero or the villain but isn’t really either. On the plus side, though, there is a character called ‘Toblerone’!  This movie was part of a seam of post-apocalyptic movies with ‘Bronx’ in the title, possibly influenced by the depiction of the Bronx as violent no-man’s-land in Paul Newman vehicle Fort Apache The Bronx (1981)? Bronx Warriors itself is followed by the very similar but not-at-all-better Bronx Warriors 2 (Escape from the Bronx). Everything you need to know about that one is on this better-than-the-movie poster:

bronx 2
Another, but better Escape from Mad Max 2 movie is Fred Olen Ray associate Steve Barkett’s

The Aftermath (1982)
tagline; Hell in the Aftermath; who will survive?

the_aftermath_1982Mad Max‘s bizarre mutant biker-gang leader was (strangely yet memorably) called Toecutter. The Aftermath has a gang of mutant weirdo bikers led by B-movie god Sid Haig’s ‘Cutter’. Despite the utter lack of originality, the story (slightly influenced by Planet of the Apes: astronauts return to Earth to find it a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by gangs of violent criminals et cetera) and direction actually make this a very watchable B-movie.

 

 

 

 

Sadly, the same cannot be said for:

She (1982)
Tagline; Sandahl Bergman tempted Conan and now she is ready to take on the World

She
Even the truly great Sandahl Bergman (of Conan the Barbarian etc) can’t save this plodding post-apocalyptic updating of H Rider Haggard’s classic adventure novel She. There are lots of excellent and bizarre elements; werewolves, gladiators, mad scientists and so on – but (a key genre fault, this) the pacing is bad and the atmosphere flatter than a dust-swept wasteland. A sad waste of talent, especially since it was directed by non-schlock Israeli director Avi Nesher.

 

 

 

 

 

Similarly unambitious but more fun is giallo maestro Joe (Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals) D’Amato’s…

Endgame (1983)
tagline; For An “Endgame” Champion In The Year 2025, There’s Only One Way To Live. Dangerously

Endgame

‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ again; this film shares many parallels with the later The Blood of Heroes (see below) and looks forward to The Running Man, but is much more fun than either. Telepathic mutants, violent game shows, warriors, what’s not to like?

 

 

 

 

 

Similar but SO much better; perhaps the ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ movie of all time also arrived in ’83, in the shape of Italian exploitation master Sergio (La Montagna Del Dio Cannibale) Martino’s opus…

2019: After The Fall of New York  (1983)
tagline; Mankind will prevail if it can survive the year 2019…

2019-After-the-Fall-of-New-York-C

After a nuclear war, naturally, (this film, like John Carpenter’s, actually names the – now alarmingly close – year, rather than giving the usual vague-but-infinitely-more-sensible date of ‘the near future’) society has broken down, technology has failed and gangs of radiation-infected mutants roam the ravaged wasteland blah-de-blah.
In this case, what’s left of society is being led by the evil and repressive “Euraks”, while a rebel Federation fights for the survival of the old ways of life (presumably those same ways of life which led to the apocalypse, but that’s people for you).

In a blatant ripoff of Escape from New York, the Federation hires a mercenary (though not a nothing-to-lose criminal like Snake Plissken) called, somewhat loftily, ‘Parsifal’, who, naturally owes allegiance only to himself and his own survival and *snoooooore* but nevertheless accepts the mission to travel into the heart of New York(!) to retrieve the only fertile female left on earth.
The key to this film’s enjoyability is its utter trashiness, and to be fair, the survival of the human race does seem like more of a ‘prize’ than the life of the President or fuel. Fun, nasty and definitely unboring, like B movies should be.

Speaking of ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’

Stryker (1983)
tagline; After the holocaust, nothing matters but survival also, perhaps better; The Odds are a million-to-one. And Stryker is the one.

stryker-movie-poster-1983-1020695957

Uninspired taglines for an uninspired movie; Filipino exploitation master Cirio H. Santiago (TNT Jackson, Nam Angels) directs this opus in which, after the inevitable apocalypse, the world is running out of water (of course), and a group of Amazons guard the last known freshwater spring but are attacked by a gang of blah blah blah, until moody, monosyllabic tough guy “Stryker” turns up to help them out. You know the rest.

 

 

more of the same in….

 

 

2020 – Freedom Fighters (1984)
tagline; When earth becomes an arena… murder becomes a way of life.

2020 Texas Gladiators_

Joe D’Amato again, but on much weaker form, this super cheap plodathon tells the story of a band of grizzled warriors fighting against fascism in post-holocaust Texas.

2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business as usual in Bobby (The One-Armed Executioner) Suarez’

Warriors of the Apocalypse (1985)
tagline: They turned paradise into hell!

warriorsAlthough firmly in the Escape from Mad Max 2 mould, there is a welcome flavour of heroic fantasy in this movie. After civilization has inevitably been wiped out by nuclear war, a ridiculous leather-clad adventurer leads a group of wanderers on a search for the fabled Mountain of Life, on the way encountering mutants, pygmies, ladies in fur bikinis etc. FUN.

 

 

 

 

A very welcome if sadly very bad addition to the genre is…

Robot Holocaust (1986)
tagline; It’s machine versus man in the ultimate battle for the future!

robot

Finally, someone (in fact Tim Kincaid, director of Bad Girls Dormitory and gay porn) realised that there might be robots after the apocalypse! In this timeless masterpiece (as much heroic fantasy as anything else) a ‘drifter’ called ‘Neo’ and his rusty robot sidekick battle evil authorities who are using slave labour to run their power station, with extremely low budget results.

 

 

 

 

More typical (but less fun, and shockingly an even weaker premise) is…

Steel Dawn  (1987)
tagline; there are several, none great. Best is probably In this frightening time, one man makes a difference

steeldawn1

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an evil gang are menacing a peaceful group of survivors because they want to steal their water. *YAAAWN*, and then a ludicrously bearded warrior in the shape of the late, great Patrick Swayze(!) arrives to sort everything out. Yep, it’s ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ again, only more good-natured and much less fun.

But what happens when you cross ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ with the superior 70s sci-fi movie Rollerball, I hear you ask..?

 

The Blood of Heroes (ridiculously aka The Salute of the Jugger) (1989)
tagline; The Time Will Come When Winning Is Everything

the-blood-of-heroes-poster1

The second half of the 80s produces especially threadbare variations on the post-apocalyptic straight-to-video movie and this is one of the worst; in this future, the ragged survivors of nuclear war aren’t looking for fuel, Presidents, ladies or even water; they are playing a nasty yet somehow extraordinarily dull version of football. ‘The Time Will Come When Winning Is Everything’ – hopefully not for a while yet though.

 

 

 

 

 

Fred Olen Ray got a brief mention earlier, and it would be strange if one of the ultimate Z-movie directors of the era hadn’t dabbled in a (presumably lucrative) straight-to-video genre: of course he did!

Warlords (1988)
tagline: He came out of nowhere. A stranger, a soldier… and maybe a saviour

warlords

Seriously cheap (though less so than Olen Ray’s Lovecraftian yawnathon, Phantom Empire) this endlessly boring Escape from Mad Max 2 movie has a cast of maybe 10 people, several of whom play handily-masked mutants that hero David Carradine despatches every 10 minutes or so. The ‘plot’; Warlord (Sid ‘the Cutter’ Haig) kidnaps a girl and takes her into the mutant-ridden wastelands. David Carradine rescues her. Even the fairly formidable quantities of gratuitous nudity that 80s B-movie directors revelled in fail to make this watchable to post-adolescent people.

 

Almost too late, but just about worth a mention is

World Gone Wild (1988)
tagline; 50 years after the end of the world the only ones left are nuked-out, zoned-out burnouts. The wildest adventure of all is about to begin.

world-gone-wild-poster

Actually it really isn’t. A small role for Adam Ant as a bad guy is perhaps the most memorable thing about this ‘ragtag bunch of survivors protecting dwindling water supplies’ movie, but it is more-or-less watchable and fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                        AFTERMATH…
More-or-less watchable and fun’ may be a modest achievement, but it is but an unattainable dream for the most recent additions to the genre. There are (leaving aside ‘big’ movies like The Road and The Book of Eli which, whatever their faults, are not B-movies in the usually accepted sense) comparatively few these days, but those that there are (that I have seen) are on the whole not even as enjoyable as the lamer entries here, and in some cases (Doomsday (2008)) fall into all of the old ‘Escape From Mad Max 2‘ cliches, without even the excuse of cashing in on a recent, fashion-changing blockbuster. And then there is the new Mad Max. But if Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy and actually being released in cinemas just seems too commercial, there is enough of the 80s apocalypse out there (if not available on DVD, let alone Bluray) to keep even the most hardened leather-clad mercenary busy for some time...

madmax2imagesnake

“Cheap Turd”: the mysterious charm of Valet Girls (1987)

Valet Girls

Valet Girls (1987)
Dir. Rafal Zielinski
Starring. April Stewart, Meri D. Marshall, Mary Kohnert
Valet Girls is a poorly made, badly paced, atrociously acted, flatly filmed, desperately unfunny, trashy near-exploitation movie; it has almost no redeeming features; so why is it so great?

val2Mostly, this must be due to ‘period charm’ – they probably do make crappy movies like this nowadays, but somehow the tone of the modern post-Farrelly brothers, bottom-of-the-barrel comedy is incredibly charmless even by the standards of the z-grade sub-Police Academy humour that plagued straight-to-video films 30 years ago.

What’s funny (peculiar) about Valet Girls is that it doesn’t even have the courage of what convictions it has – the movie poster and publicity suggests a raunchy (indeed, near-pornographic) teen movie, but it is in fact, significantly less titillating than Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds or even the aforementioned Police Academy itself.

val3The perfunctory storyline can be summarised extremely briefly; three girls (April Stewart, Meri D Marshall and Mary Kohnert – only the latter was to make further appearances on film) start working as valet parking girls in LA in order to make it in show business. Ironically, the film seems to have been in part an unsuccessful attempt to launch the music career of the appealing but not overly star-powered Meri Marshall; as far as I can tell she had some success in Germany. To that end, she sings a handful of forgettably likeable synth-pop songs, somewhere between Tiffany and Debbie Gibson stylistically.

MeriD

So what is the appeal of the film? Partly the utter woodenness of the three leads –  their intense anti-charisma becomes, to the sympathetic viewer, a kind of endearing charisma. The same can’t be said for the irritating young men who are outwitted by the girls throughout the film and whose names I can’t be bothered to look up. Probably the biggest names associated with the film are John Terlesky (best known to sci-fi/fantasy fans as the title character in the below-par comedy sequel Deathstalker II) and Ron Jeremy, in one of those roles that demonstrates why his career never took off when wearing clothes. Naturally, being the kind of film this is, it wants to have its cake and eat it; we are supposed to see the girls as go-getting young business women, aiming for the stars, but doing it all for themselves; all well and good; and in fact they are both smarter and tougher than the males in the film. As luck would have it for the people trying to sell Valet Girls to a youth audience, though, the girls’ business venture requires them to be sexy (at least I presume they are supposed to be sexy) and to dress (relatively) sexily throughout.

val

Mainly though, it is that ‘period charm’ – modern movies set in the 80s may carefully research and study the hairstyles, the fashion and music of the time to give an authentic 80s appearance for those too young to remember, but Valet Girls is a compendium of the kind of attempts at fashion that were unsuccessful then and have never been revived, but which were nevertheless a pervasive part of the 80s pop culture universe; witness for example the majesty of the jerky new wave-ish cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ played by ‘The New Psychotics’; an 80s movie producer’s idea of what the kids might (but didn’t) think was cool. All eras have these kind of things, but the time preserved here has, like the 1920s seen through John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, a poignancy even in its silliest details; for those of the right age, this was their youth and is an era which shall never return.

newpsych

Valet Girls may be the longest 90 minutes or so you will ever watch – and in terms of plotting, acting, comedy and direction it makes Weekend At Bernie’s 2 look like Weekend at Bernie’s, but on the other hand, if you are old enough to remember the 80s (or wish you had been alive then) and wallowing in amateurish anti-nostalgia appeals to you then you could possibly do worse.

Footnote: the title of this article isn’t just me being mean, it comes from a ‘hilarious’ moment of Police Academy style humour where one of the girls insults one of the many irritating men who populate the film:

Rosalind (April Stewart): “Cheap turd!”
Archie Lee Samples (John Terlesky): “what!??”
Rosalind: “I heard”


For similar experiences see also:
Biggles; Adventures in Time (1986) (80s nostalgia)
Mesa of Lost Women (1953) (50s B-movie nostalgia)
Her Reputation (1933) (30s B-movie nostalgia)
Grange Hill (1978-1990-ish) (an authentic British 80s childhood experience, only without the swearing)

 

Once Upon a Time in Argentina: Swords & Sorcery, 1980s style

If the heroic fantasy movie has become synonymous, since Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, with state of the art special effects, epic locations and massive budgets, there was a time, not so very long ago, when its natural home was the video rental shop and its scope, although theoretically limited only by the imagination, was in fact reliant on hackneyed, ready-made formulas  and the cheapest epic locations that small studios could afford; usually, it turns out, in Argentina.

But although its ambitions were often as modest as the talent of its actors and its ideas were at best second (or third) hand, the 1980s swords & sorcery genre is not without its merits. Like the post-apocalyptic sci-fi with which the fantasy genre sometimes crosses over, most of the films under discussion here were basically the aftershocks of a couple of hugely successful films. Although not in the swords & sorcery mould, Star Wars (1977) and its sequels, were very influential on the genre, simply because they set the standard for fairly basic (and familiar) mythology-derived plots (well, less mythology than pulp literature, especially the works of Robert E Howard and his imitators) as vehicles for spectacular action. But again with the fantasy films, only theoretically spectacular; on the whole there is nothing more dramatic than swordplay and possibly a few flashes of crudely animated magic.

Related, but not so influential on the fantasy genre was Desmond Davis’ cheesy classic Clash of the Titans (1981), which to an extent revived an interest in mythology and adventure, but mostly renewed the popularity of Ray Harryhausen’s earlier masterpieces. John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), too, was a high profile release, but although loved by many (myself included), it remains – like Boorman’s sci fi masterpiece Zardoz –  something of an acquired taste, too specialised (and perhaps too British) to have much effect on the low budget video scene.

conan

The biggest influence of all though – and the initiator of 80s swords & sorcery cinema proper – was John Milius’ epic, if plodding Conan The Barbarian (1982). Visually beautiful and symbolically powerful, Conan is in a different league from its imitators, but alas, many of them suffer from exactly the sort of pacing issues that make Conan feel like such a long two hours. The simple ‘orphan-seeking-revenge’ plot is one imitated again and again throughout the great sequence of cheap 80s fantasy movies. There were of course genuinely good, interesting and/or enjoyable fantasy movies made in the 80s; Ridley Scott’s flawed Legend has its good points, as do Ladyhawke, Labyrinth and even The Dark Crystal, but this article is not about those.

In the 80s, the shelves of the local video shops were heaving with ‘genre’ movies: endless numbers of post-Porkies, sub-Police Academy risqué comedies, post-Star Wars sci-fi adventures like the Ice Pirates, The Last Starfighter et al, horror series galore (a long article could be – and probably has been – written about Cannibal movies alone), a fertile seam of post- Mad Max, post-apocalyptic adventures.

This list isn’t anywhere near complete (as with all of these niche genres, the sheer quantity of these kinds of movies is amazing), not all of these movies are very watchable but I think they are all worth mentioning. Starting near the top end of the genre, an archetypal 80s Swords & Sorcery adventure is…

Beastmaster (1982)

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Essentially Conan with ferrets, Beastmaster tells the tale of the He-Man-esque ‘Dar’ (Marc Singer), who goes on an animal-aided quest for revenge against those who killed his family.
The storyline, basic though it is, allows for the usual combination of encounters with bizarre creatures, evil warriors and comical companions. Less usual are the beasts that give Dar his title; a slightly aged-looking black panther, a bird and a bag of ferrets. What Beastmaster has that many of its peers (and influences) don’t, is watchability. It’s silly, it’s cheap and sometimes dubiously acted, but it isn’t boring.

Beastmaster has a particular kind of sequel, shared by others in the genre; the (presumably even cheaper) ‘fantasy hero goes through a portal into modern day USA’ plot. These are worthy of (and may get) an article of their own some day; the undisputed genre classic is of course Dolph Lundgren’s immortal Masters of the Universe (1987).

beast1

Where Conan the Barbarian was unusual was that, thanks to Arnie’s famous physique, it effortlessly lived up to its Frank Frazetta-style poster. The poster was in fact almost as influential as the movie; Peruvian fantasy art icon Boris Vallejo single-handedly made many a B-movie actor and actress look puny and pallid in comparison with his Olympian depiction of them. Boris is arguably one of the most accomplished painters of the 20th century, but it’s fair to say that his heroic, dynamic poster designs are one of the reasons that the Deathstalker series feels so disappointing. Worth a look though, especially…

Deathstalker (1983)

Boris Vallejo gives the Deathstalker series a consistency that the films lacked

Post-Conan in the extreme, Deathstalker tells the story of a – by Conan/Boris standards – not-quite-muscular enough dork called Deathstalker, who is sent on a quest to find various objects and free a princess from a magician. If you had never read a single fantasy novel or seen a single fantasy movie this would still feel hackneyed and unremarkable. But if you like the clichés of the genre it’s plodding but enjoyable. In Evil Dead style, (though far less inspired), the first Deathstalker sequel was not to be a true sequel at all, more of a lampooning of the first movie and of the fantasy genre. And it went by the thrill-inducing name of…

Rick Hill as the original Deathstalker

Deathstalker II (1987)

The ‘story’ of this movie is perfunctory in the extreme, with Deathstalker (now portrayed by the hardly-muscular-at-all John Terlesky) mainly indulging in smart-arsey wisecracking dialogue. Although the ratio of lame to funny is definitely weighted heavily towards the ‘lame’, there are a few funny lines and the overall feel of the movie is likeably silly. The hero may be less heroic, the scantily clad beauties less scantily clad, but as a film it is probably superior to the original nonetheless.

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Deathstalker (John Terlesky) meets the legendary (but real) wrestler Queen Kong

 

Deathstalker III  – Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell (1988)

The third instalment of the Deathstalker saga introduced another lead actor (John Allen Nelson), an even cheaper production, fewer jokes and an almost statically aimless plot. The original Deathstalker, Rick Hill, returned for the final instalment (Match of Titans) in 1991, but although it retained some of the humour of the other sequels, it was, alas,  severely lacking in the mayhem, violence and gratuitous nudity which gave the original movie what flavour it had and was therefore pretty pointless; great Boris poster/box cover art though, even if by the 90s the whole swords & sorcery genre seemed dated and lame.

Similar, but a lot better is…

Amazons (1986)

Amazons (poster)

The key to the appeal of Amazons; basically another limp quest movie, is that despite the perfunctory plot, bad acting and very poorly staged fight sequences, the characters are extremely likeable and their soap-opera relationships are very watchable, even though the low-key villain (some bearded guy) undermines the drama a little. Unpretentious, trashy fun, but with a lot of heart and not at all boring; great Boris poster/cover also, obviously

 

exceptionally likeable Mindi Miller and Penelope Reed-Woods in Amazons

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fondly-remembered, if somewhat boring movie, Hawk the Slayer (1980) is a modest British film rather than a modest US production. Hawk…  predates most of these movies, and is a wooden, plodding film, but a lot of fun for those who like the ‘unlikely band of adventurers; dwarf, elf, giant and man’ type of quest movie. Long stretches of it seem to consist of people aimlessly wandering around the woods, but the heavy breathing Jack Palance makes an excellent (if obtrusively American) villain as the scarred Voltan.

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Sorceress (1982)

sorceress

Inept, badly acted and so cheaply made that even though it was clearly acted in English, parts of it had to be dubbed later, this is nevertheless a fun and completely watchable movie. The plot doesn’t really bear repeating; there’s a sorceress in it.

 

And if watchable cheese is what you want, you could do far worse than…

Barbarian Queen (1985)

barbarian_queen_xlg Very like Amazons, only delivering more of the gratuitous nudity implied in its cover art, Barbarian Queen is a simple revenge thriller/plodder. It’s a tougher and less sentimental movie than Amazons but you miss the heart of Amazons and its relative coldness makes it more perfunctory and less memorable. It does, however satisfy on the cheesy B-movie level as no doubt intended and honestly although its production values are abysmal in comparison with Milius’ Conan, it does at least move along at a reasonable rate

There’s yet more of the same in…

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Warrior_and_the_sorceressposter

Despite his undoubted talent, David Carradine’s presence was rarely the indicator of a good movie, and this is no exception. It’s a simple story based on Kurosawa’s classic Samurai drama Yojimbo. Carradine is a nameless, moody swordsman who becomes involved in the feud between two villages who are competing for the ownership of the only well in the district. A simple, dramatic plot can be no bad thing, but here the pacing and dialogue make for a long 81 minutes, despite the generally well-staged fight scenes and mainly decent acting.

the-warrior-and-the-sorceress

 

 

 

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Honourable mentions:
The Sword and the Sorceror (1982) Silly sword, fun cast
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985) Childish, has one of those portal-through-time sequels
She (1984) The great Sandahl Bergman in a post-apocalyptic swords & sorcery movie, blah but fun
Ironmaster (1983) Cannibal movie director Umberto Lenzi tries his hand at something different, with tedious but not uninteresting results

By the early 1990s, the heroic fantasy genre seemed to have run its course and, despite the occasional one-off, it lay dormant until the twenty-first century, when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy brought swords and dragons back into the mainstream once again. The genre has never really taken off again, but cheap LOTR cash-ins continue to proliferate (as do expensive ones, like World of Warcraft). The plots may remain the same, but changing filmmaking techniques, the tides of fashion and advances (and retreats) in special effects mean that now the old straight-to-video 80s swords & sorcery genre feels as remote and archaic as Cimmeria….