Italian horror maestro Mario Bava was an unbelievably skilled craftsman. One of Bava's greatest stylistic achievements is Hercules In The Haunted World (1964), his first color film following the unforgettable gothic chiller Black Sunday. On an extremely low budget, Bava was able to actualize ominous atmospheres and fantastical scenery using the barest of elements and filmiest of scripts in the most tired sub-genre: the Italian "Sword & Sandal" film. Bava succeeds in creating several different compelling worlds, including a stark view into the realm of Hades, only using a few pillars, fake trees, stones, painted backdrops, a smoke machine, and a lavish lighting scheme.
Hercules In The Haunted World's efficient economy of the set design and special effects are an art onto itself. There is a charm to this style of genre filmmaking which seems long-gone today with the integration of CG effects and digital cameras. I know its a tired gripe, but I believe there is merit for an aspiring filmmaker to learn from the expert genre craftsman of cinema's golden age. So many contemporary indie genre films seem to suffer from creativity in execution and most importantly -- style.
Bava applies his minimalistic craft work into completely selling a sequence where our heroes cross a bubbling pit of lava with use of hand and rope. All you need is some lights, foam, miniatures, and clever cut-aways.
Last year I was working for Troma producing their DVD releases. A close friend of mine had suggested that we reissue a classic, forgotten slasher film buried in the Troma library. This film was The Last Horror Film (also known as Fanatic), which stars the late, brilliant Joe Spinell. He was a character actor commonly type-casted in small roles because of his rugged appearance (Taxi Driver, The Godfather Part 1, 2, Rocky1, 2, The Sorcerer, Cruising, The Ninth Configuration, etc). Spinell is most remembered for his unforgettable starring performance as the depraved, psychotic serial killer in Maniac.
JOE SPINELL IN MANIAC
SPINELL IN THE LAST HORROR FILM
The Last Horror Film was a decent effort attempting to cash in on the success of Maniac. The film takes place during the Cannes Film Festival where Spinell plays a disturbed fanatic stalking a beautiful actress played by Caroline Munro (who also co-stars in Maniac). I began working on the DVD extras for the The Last Horror Film by interviewing Maniac director William Lustig. He had told me that if I wanted a wealth of incredible onset stories, I had to get in touch with Luke Walter who was Spinell's closest friend.
I phoned Luke, and he agreed to be interviewed for the disc. I remembered Luke as he was heavily featured in the Joe Spinell Story documentary available on the Maniac DVD.
LUKE WALTER IN THE JOE SPINELL STORY (2001)
I met Luke at a rundown strip club in Queens where he had frequented with Spinell in the 80s. Luke was with Spinell the night before he died at this very strip club. Spinell slipped in the shower, injured himself and bled to death -- he was a hemophiliac. Luke hadn't been back to this strip club until we shot him for the DVD.
Luke had always been at Spinell's side. When Spinell auditioned for Taxi Driver, Luke was there. In fact, Spinell recommended to Scorsese that Luke screen test for the Secret Service bodyguard character on the basis that Luke was shot several times with an Uzi while working security at a bank in New York. Intrigued, Scorsese agreed, but sadly Luke didn't get the part.
JOE SPINELL WITH DE NIRO IN TAXI DRIVER
Luke was also present during the filming of Maniac. The car used in the infamous scene where Spinell blows a victim's head off with shotgun pointblank through a windshield was Luke's old car! Luke also shot scenes in Maniac with Spinell on his own, which are arguably some of the greatest segments in the film. In particular, the scene where Spinell is seen peering into storefront windows, panting, and oogling at mannequins. The shots were fuzzy, disconnected, raw, and unconventional for a horror film. It gave Maniac a meandering feel. Observing sequences like these, added a sympathetic complexity to the nature of Spinell's creepy character. These interludes help make Maniac the definitive horrid plunge into the mind of a serial killer.
A SCENE LUKE SHOT IN MANIAC
Luke had an appreciation for experimentation and art which thoroughly showed in his contributions to Maniac and hearing him speak about acting and filmmaking. Luke is quite the character, he has Brooklyn running through his veins. Luke was part of a theater troupe in Europe in the 60s comprised only of ex cons. Luke wasn't a criminal, but they let him join because he always carried a gun. The troupe performed plays loosely based on the crimes they committed in the past.
When Luke showed up to the strip club, he was instantly very outspoken about his personal life as if we had known him for 25 years. I was immediately compelled. He told us jaw-dropping stories during the Last Horror Filmproduction where he and Spinell ditched a hotel in France for $25,000, stumbled in the streets drunk throwing bottles at cars, and Spinell's fascination with wearing woman's clothes or nothing at all in public. Luke also told us about impromptu sequences he shot for The Last Horror Film, including a scene with Spinell and Karen Black in a bathtub (sadly didn't make the final cut)! This fascinated me and from that period onward, I knew I wanted to make a film with Luke. Luke might be 72 years old, but he has an undeniable youthful energy and spirit.
LUKE IN MY BEST MANIAC FEATURETTE ON THE LAST HORROR FILM DVD
LUKE LOOKING FOR SPINELL'S GRAVE
I had said to a friend of mine, 'we need to make a film this weekend, I don't care what it is we just need to do something." The concept began as being a 'rugged' film starring Luke. I imagined an image for the film where Luke was standing on top of a truck wielding a sledgehammer into the car's windshield -- and the film would be titled: SLEDGEHAMMER.
I phoned Luke the next day and asked him if he would be interested in starring in a film this weekend where he would be wielding a sledgehammer through Queens. He laughed and agreed.
The idea started as a comedy, but became a study of a 72 year old man's grim decent into uncontrollable anger. The story was about a man who had recently gone though his third divorce, and is now living alone for the first time in 50 years in a shithole Queens apartment. He is a mad as hell how much New York has changed. Old friends have passed on, and familiar hangouts have closed. He still has ambition to be something great, and fears dying alone. So he hits the streets to desperately find something -- work, women, old friends. He then finds a sledgehammer in an alleyway. Hammer in hand, he threatens to beat the shit out of the next door neighbors he hates who plays loud music. ANGER. Fascination with destroying things and venting anger with use of the sledgehammer progress uncontrollably leading him to petty crime, possibly murder.
That's all we had developed (if even that much), before we began shooting. It seemed like an interesting exercise in improvisation, which Luke was keen on. I wanted to see how Luke would channel anger into this character.
Spinell also had a knack for improvisation and experimentation. Shortly before Spinell's death, he hooked up with Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock) in 1989 to make the unofficial sequel to Maniac titled Mr. Robbie. Spinell's idea was to play a kiddie talk show host that would seek murderous revenge on abusive parents (a loose remake of The Psychopath). Buddy got together with Spinell for a few creative sessions, but ultimately began shooting with no financing, a very small crew, an unfinished script, and a cast comprised of Spinell's friends and people he had met the bar the night before. Sadly, Spinell had passed before they finished shooting. However, the result of what they were able to accomplish is fascinating. Its revoltingly gory, the locations are gritty, the sound design is ominous, and Spinell is completely convincing. I had seen the Mr. Robbie footage prior to filming Sledgehammer, and it heavily influenced me to go out and shoot a film with the tools I had at hand.
JOE SPINELL IN MR. ROBBIE
FULL MR. ROBBIE FOOTAGE INCLUDING INTERVIEW WITH BUDDY GIOVINAZZO
Luke met us promptly at 8am at a Brooklyn breakfast spot where we discussed the filming details. Luke pulled up in his Suburban blasting Lord Buckley, an eccentric spoken word artists from the 40s who was once Al Capone'sprotege.Luke knew every word to the Buckley piece complete with authentic hand gestures. I actually joked about having a scene, which now seems like a great idea: Luke's character looking at himself in the bathroom mirror rehearsing his outlandish Lord Buckley performance which he would then shop the routine around clubs and bars in a 2009 New York.
We arrived at my apartment a few hours later. We begin to set up the camera and audio equipment (a microphone stuck in a shoe), in the living room of my then apartment in Queens. The dusty living room was empty besides a chewed up ugly white couch, a crappy coffee table and rocking chair. Coincidentally (on a Maniac level), I had a green mannequin torso in my living room at the time. Luke immediately zeroed in on it, and before we could even set up the equipment properly or any direction was given, he was on my floor, weeping and holding it tightly. Rolling back and forth on his back clutching the mannequin he began to cry out, "why did I do this to you?"
I quickly turned the camera on and began rolling. Luke delivered a 13 minute take. Luke caresses the breasts of the mannequin. He stood up. Peered out the windows, plotting. Screams. Shouts. Crys. Hides underneath the coffee table for minutes. Ravages through the house to find the sledgehammer. Kisses it. Wields it.
"Ok, cut." Luke says. Dumbfounded, I cut the camera and walk up to Luke who is on his way to my patio for a smoke. Luke turns to me after he centers himself.
"I think I found my character's motivation."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"You see this mannequin over here? This represents a woman I used to love. I cut her body up into a thousand pieces. I'm sitting here on this couch, dreaming. I'm imaging a wasteland. There I am. I am smashing through things trying find where I had hidden her body parts."
Luke had found something real in this scenario. We decided to keep filming with this concept in mind.
After shooting in the apartment, we went over to a friend's junkyard in Queens where we had access to copious amounts of bathtubs, toilets, sheets of glass, cabinets, etc to smash with the sledgehammer.
I shot some exteriors while Luke was shopping for things to break. Luke came to me with the idea that he was going to begin rummaging through a large industrial dumpster, smashing things and throwing objects out of it. I had never seen a 72 year-old man this agile. After smashing pieces of wood and throwing a microwave, Luke screams 'WHERE ARE YOU!?' and jumps down from the dumpster to annihilate a toilet and a sheet of glass. Luke lies on the ground, rain pouring. He screams again. Luke enters the frame, crying, yelling. He sees a wooden cabinet. He studies and it and then smashes it to bits.
"CUT!"
We took a walk around the junkyard looking for locations. Tucked away behind the facility was an abandoned truck. Luke asked me if I wanted I to get the shot I had envisioned: Luke standing on top of a truck, smashing the truck's windshield. I could not resist. We shot the scene and ran.
Luke's next moment of inspiration is that he wanted to bring in a refrigerator from the junkyard warehouse. As his character walks up to it to break it, he stops and looks inside. Inside the refrigerator would be the head of the girl he had brutally murdered. I explained to Luke that we have filmed a lot today and we can come back another time and shoot that.
Luke drove us home. He recalled the time we shot his interview for The Last Horror Film -- combining that experience and what he had just filmed for SLEDGEHAMMER had helped him "keep Spinell alive."After viewing the footage, it was clear to me that Luke was channeling Spinell.This was awe-inspiring to me. Luke genuinely loved Spinell.
During the following months I wasn't confident in this footage. We sadly have not resumed shooting since this day. However, this experience was cathartic for Luke and for myself. At the time, I wasn't sure if the direction Luke wanted to go with the character interested me, but in hindsight, I should have continued filming the following weekend and rolled with the punches as this was an experiment from the beginning.
Recently, I've been eager to continue this project with Luke's ideas intact. Perhaps I'll give Luke a call one of these days.
"One of cinema's most stunning extravagances, and the most frightening art film you will ever see," says Film Comment's Michael Atkinson about this banned science fiction epic by controversial director Andrzej Zulawski. The Polish Ministry of Culture halted production On The Silver Globe in 1978, and until the fall of communism in 1986 when Zulawski completed the film, it remained both his best-known and least-seen work. In this surreal and disturbing mix of 2001 and Lord Of The Flies, a group of space pioneers starts a colony on the moon. As the adults die off, the children revert to primitive forms, creating their own myths, deities, and social classes. Years later, a politician from earth arrives and - fulfilling the moon people's prophecy - is hailed as their great messiah.
Background: Andrzej Zulawski started work on On the Silver Globe in 1976 and was nearing the end of shooting when the Polish government shut down production in 1978. The sets and prints were destroyed, but the director and members of his cast and crew managed to smuggle some of the pieces out of the country. Zulawski then returned to the relatively open Poland of 1986 to try to finish his movie. He didn’t quite succeed, but what he ended up with is fascinating.
On The Silver Globe is one of the most delirious and viscerally intense experiences I've ever had ever viewing a film. Think of the beautiful, languid cinematography of the Zone in Tarkovksy's Stalker, the madness of Jodorowsky's films (without the shallow visual metaphors), the sexual insanity of Ken Russell's The Devils, the ambitious costuming in Kurosawa's Ran, and you might have something close to this film.
At the film's peak of insanity, there is a sequence which features a dozen or so people impailed on 100-foot stakes... on the beach...on the moon!? The camera, which is inexplicably floating over the impailed, stops on a man and holds steady as he delivers his dying words
Stylus Magazine on On The Silver Globe:
"There are all kinds of “lost masterpieces” in any field of art, from great non-albums by The Beach Boys and Captain Beefheart to missing Da Vinci paintings. Add one to the list for cinema. It is tempting to wish Zulawski had had a chance to finish his movie on his own terms, but I think maybe it’s better this way. It seems almost as though this film’s natural state is one of incompleteness, and it is hard to imagine what completion would add. No matter how finished it is, it’s not a likeable movie, not a reasonable one, and while no amount of polish could make me like it, no amount of roughness can keep me from loving it."
"To please the majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema. As far as I'm concerned, I don't make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing about their own existence."
Andrzej Zulawski
This is an incredible film. There are only few films that have a strange power over me, that manage to keep me hooked from the very first scenes, making impossible for me to look away until the very end -- the dialog between Dr. Raglan and his patient in the opening of The Brood, when automated doors burst open in the airport and Suzy enters the cab in Suspiria, the opening sequence in Zulawski's later film (and equally insane) Possession, and the opening to On The Silver Globe is no exception, it is remarkably haunting -- an shadowy black figure with beautiful costume excess (almost Native American) rides a horse through a snowy, otherwordly setting to a human bunker/compound where he delivers unsettling news in his bizarre home language. Seek this one out. It doesn't matter if you like this film or not, it will have an effect on you.
One of the greatest artists to emerge form original HEAVY METAL MAGAZINE gang. Looking at one his graphic novels in the flesh is fucking jawdropping. Druillet also lent his talents in art direction on William Friedkin's underrated film The Sorcerer. Check out some highlights of his work below.
I first discovered Salvator Rosa from reading H.P. Lovecraft's Colour Out Of Space, where Lovecraft described a torn, warped landscape post alien infection as "too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa". Rosa was a Italian Baroque painter. Check it out.
Marcus Keef kicks fucking ass. He's most famous for Black Sabbath's self titled album cover. Very distinct style & uses false colour landscape photography. Not much information out there about this artist at all !
