Chopping Mall
Chopping Mall was my first blog, which I started way back in 2009. It was dedicated exlcusively to ridiculous and terrible films, which I watched a lot of back then. (So much time, so little work!)
I’ve resuced the posts from oblivion, to be preserved here for …uh… whatever.
It’s a pretty clunky process getting them out of blogspot (XML export, eww) and into here, so there may be a few formatting issues.
El Crack
When you think of film noir, you think of it’s true home - America. We think of corrupt cops, mean streets, whisky on the breath of hard-working loner detectives and screeching tyres through the city.
As you turn towards the 70s, the real Noir has long ceased to be and is now replaced by the neo-noir. The relationship between these films and the original classic Hollywood output is confusing and often contradictory. They are at once parodies of classic noir, re-imaginings of the genre and cinematic love-letters to a genre left behind.
This brings all sorts of other concerns; unless they go to the extent of setting themselves within the time period of the classic noir, contemporary issues become involved, the world had changed between the 40s and 70s and so the hard-boiled detective story had to as well. Similarly, if we move the narrative away from America, the different geography brings it’s own tensions, styles and attitudes. The final product is, in many respects, a million miles away from the film noir, yet somehow remains linked.
In real terms, films like El Crack (Spain, 1981) are as far removed from true noir as American teen slashers of the 90s are from Italian giallo thrillers. Only a few core elements are left to connect the two genres yet somehow you can’t help but see a link.
In making El Crack, they certainly intended the link to be visible; from the opening dedication to Dashiell Hammett to the corruption, gunshots and nighttime city, this is both desperately seeking comparisons to American noir and making a statement of Spanish independence. It is both derivative and original. It’s also pretty good fun.
Alfredo Landa plays the central detective, Germán, excellently. It is his performance that both links and distances this from the American noir. He is an ex-cop, a workaholic detective who is too honest and honourable for his own good. He passionately works late into the night on his case - a missing girl - fuelled by coffee, cigarettes and (asserting the Spanish-ness) the odd calamari sandwhich.
The other characters are mostly ‘by-numbers’ hard-boiled characters; Germán has a slimy ex-thief assistant and lives in a world populated by crooked cops and businessmen who think themselves above the law. Where it branches far from Noir however, is Germán’s love interest. I don’t know whether it came about as a result of Spanish Catholiscism, a deep-routed belief in the family unit or whatever else but, rather than the femme-fatal of the American noir, charged with sex and danger, Germán is pursuing a relationship with a pretty but conservative nurse. It’s all very civilised; he picks up her daughter from school while she works, they go for strolls in the woods or off to see a film. It’s all very… nice.
These niceties only serve to make the brutality of the last third of the film more brutal. Germán may be a much milder man than the creations of Chandler or Hammett, but when he’s pushed he acts surprisingly coldly in pursuit of justice.
The only real criticism of the film is that the pacing is a bit awkward. European films do tend to be a lot slower than American films; we seem to prefer slow build rather than a rollercoaster of climactic moments, but this one is decidedly on the slow side of ‘slow-build’. The first half and hour to forty minutes do drag somewhat but, I promise you, it’s worth persevering as the film builds slowly but surely towards a thrilling ending.
Poster Hunt #8 - Goliath and the Vampires
This gorgeous piece of retro poster-art looks back to a day when a film could be sold entirely on the strength of a poster. And looking at this one, you can see why!
SEE: The Revolt of the Faceless Humanoids? Count me in!
Big Screen Big Tune #2 - Django
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know that Ennio Morricone was the true king of the Spaghetti Western soundtrack but there were definitely some others out there too!
For the second Big Screen, Big Tune, we present Luis Bacalov’s theme song for Django.
Chorus: django!
Django, have you always been alone?
Chorus: django!
Django, have you never loved again?
Love will live on, oh oh oh…
Life must go on, oh oh oh…
For you cannot spend your life regreatting.
Chorus: django!
Django, you must face another day.
Chorus: django!
Django, now your love has gone away.
Once you loved her, whoa-oh…
Now you’ve lost her, whoa-oh-oh-oh…
But you’ve lost her for-ever, django.
When there are clouds in the skies, and they are grey.
You may be sad but remember that love will pass away.
Oh django!
After the showers is the sun.
Will be shining…
[instrumental solo]
Once you loved her, whoa-oh…
Now you’ve lost her, whoa-oh-oh-oh…
But you’ve lost her for-ever, django.
When there are clouds in the skies, and they are grey.
You may be sad but remember that love will pass away.
Oh django!
After the showers is the sun.
Will be shining…
Django!
Oh oh oh django!
You must go on,
Oh oh oh django…
Emily Booth
Emily Booth has, on reflection got to be pretty much the coolest women in horror. There are precious few people who take horror and genre-films very seriously and fewer still who try to drag it kicking and screaming, bleeding and oozing, into the mainstream’s attention.
In this respect, we ought to forget about Emily Booth being one of the coolest women in horror. She is one of the coolest people in horror. I mostly know her from the sublimely awesome show Shock Movie Massacre. You could probably count the number of recent television programmes about genre film on the fingers of one hand. Perhaps even after several of your fingers were sliced off in a Hong Kong based revenge epic…
But Shock Movie Massacre IS a genre-horror tv programme, and best of all: it’s really good. I’ve read interviews with the producer (I think) who sadly claimed that it was unlikely ever to get a proper release as a series on DVD as the numerous gory cult-movie clips were only ever licensed for TV. This is sad. But don’t get too down about it, the entire series is (sssshhh, wisper it!) available online if you hunt around a bit.
Perhaps we shouldn’t bother turning back to this series though; she’s now presenting a new series, Gorezone Movie Massacre that you can get on the cover DVD with Gorezone magazine (which I sadly haven’t seen) as well as producing her own (excellent) series Emily Booth’s Behind The Screams (available on YouTube). The most recent of these takes a peek behind the filming of Doghouse, in which Booth played the awesomely terrifying “Snipper”, zombie hairdresser on a rampage!
What comes out most clearly when watching her shows - whether she was chatting with Paul Naschy, diving out of cars or learning how to fake a good decapitation - is that she clearly loves the films she’s talking about. As the horror-fan is typically confined to basements and attics, shying away from daylight as if they were vampires, it’s refreshing to see people speaking publicly and passionately for horror films.
Keep doing it, right?
World Gone Wild
After wading through a lot of horror recently (especially Vampires!), I was begining to feel the need to turn my gaze to something a little different. At this point, I usually sit down to choose between my other two favourite genres; is it to be Spaghetti Western or camp 80s Dystopian thrills?
I chose the camp 80s dystopia and World Gone Wild certainly didn’t disappoint.
Made in the 80s? Check.
A desert world where water has become the most precious commodity? Check.
Adam Ant as a bad guy? Check.
Killer frisbees, motorbikes, gunfights and moonshine? Check, check, check, check.
It would be grossly unfair to call this a b-movie by numbers - it’s not, it’s exciting and original - but I think it’d be true to say that it does more or less some up my idea of what a b-movie is.
From the opening voice-over telling us just how ruined the world is (no rain in 50 years), the crappy camera effects in the opening credits and the entirely amazing theme song (AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE HERE) you just know what kind of movie this is going to be. The bad guys will sneer, the world will be full of wreckage and rubble, people will have regressed into a shouting, snarling, gambling, boozey mass, a dashing hero will save the day, everything will be fine. Needless to say, all of these things are true. The thrill of World Gone Wild is not that any part of it is unexpected, shocking or particularly innovative, just that it’s really good fun!
Disengage brain, open a beer, cook some popcorn; this is a film that is made to be enjoyed. From Adam Ant’s wonderful smirking bad-guy to the villagers with their 80s haircuts, defending their livelihood with a wall of abandoned cars, if you like dystopian films, 80s cheese or b-movies in general, you can’t fail to enjoy this.
