Essential Film Guides I Can't Live Without

This Top 10 List goes to...Way Beyond!

Playing the "Top 10 Movies Game" with my cineasta pals Marc Sober and James McGlothlin (and our Facebook Family) got me thinking about a new game: Top 10 Movie Books. But who am I kidding? I can't limit it to just 10...or 20, 30, 40...how about 50? These are the books that Marie Konda will have to use a crowbar to pry from my cold, dead fingers. I only pray that my wife will find a good home for them when I perish and fight the urge to dump them at the local Goodwill for a tax write-off. So, without further ado, I give you my "Essential Film Guides I Can't Live Without (And Which I'll Probably End Up Rereading If This Quarantine Continues)":

1. INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILMS (RE/SEARCH #10) by V. Vale

RE/Search #10 certainly lives up to its title. Profiles of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, Larry Cohen, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ted V. Mikels, Doris Wishman, as well as "Industrial Jeopardy Films." Cover from Julian Roffman's 3D classic THE MASK (1961).

2. FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART by Amos Vogel

Before many of us even knew these films existed, the images contained within made us seek them out like a quest for cinenatic Holy Grails. If a picture ever spoke a thousand words...and sometimes the stills gathered here were the only proof of an obscure film's existence. Cover from Dusan Makvejev's W.R.: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM.

3. CULT MOVIES by Danny Peary

Danny Perry, curator pat excellence, with Volume 1. A charismatic cult leader of the only cult I'd consider joining.

4. CULT MOVIE 2 by Danny Peary

But wait...there's more! 50 more! The sequel we all asked for, Vol. 2 introduced me to MORGAN, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, A BOY AND HIS DOG, THE WICKER MAN and ZARDOV. Not to mention cult cutie Claudia Jennings in THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE.

5. CULT MOVIES 3 by Danny Peary

A Three-peat treat, Vol. 3 featured BLADE RUNNER, DIVA, GLEN OR GLENDA?, THE NAKED LISS, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL, DR STRANGELOVE, IN A LONELY PLACE, THE ROAD WARRIOR and WALKABOUT.

6. GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC by Danny Peary

Even more capsulized cult movie reviews that couldn't fit in the first 3 CULT MOVIE volumes. See also: Danny Peary's List of "Must See" Films from GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC (1986) and 2,600 Additional "Must See" Films from Danny Peary's GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC.

7. FILM NOIR: AN ENCYCLOPEDIC REFERENCE TO THE AMERICAN STYLE edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward

Alain Silver is my go-to sensei for all things Noir. Released in 1979, this was the first comprehensive survey of film noir published in English. Arranged alphabetically like an encyclopedia, this was also the first book to list a personal fave, John Berry's TENSION (1949). Respect!

8. THE SAMURAI FILM edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward

Need I mention that Alain Silver is also my go-to sensei for all things Samurai, as well? Silver's razor-sharp "first cut" swipe at the genre IS the deepest.

9. HOLLYWOOD BABYLON by Kenneth Anger

Kenneth looks back in Anger, and fondly too, at all the dishy dirt beneath the Hollywood Dream. A hardback tabloid.

10. SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS by Leonard Maltin

No one knows Shorts like Maltin. It's all here, from OUR GANG and THE THREE STOOGES to Robert Benchley (pictured on the cover), W.C. Fields, Charley Chase, Joe McDoakes' SO YOU WANT TO...and BEHIND THE EIGHTBALL shorts, Pete Smith's MGM Specialties...you name it, Maltin's seen it!

11. MIDNIGHT MOVIES by Stuart Samuels

Before Netflix, before video stores, before cable, there was only one way to see the weird shit: staying up late! The original Sublime 9: ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, THE HARDER THEY COME (the only one I never saw), REEFER MADNESS, HAROLD AND MAUDE, ERASERHEAD, PINK PLAMINGOS, KING OF HEARTS, EL TOPO, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

12. REVOLUTION! THE EXPLOSION OF WORLD CINEMA IN THE SIXTIES by Peter Cowie

Cowie covers the children of the revolution: Godard, Truffaut, Pasolini, Bertoluci, Oshima, Tocha, Polanski and Cassavettes. All leading up to the Cannes Film Festival riots of 1968 . Viva la revolution!

13. VISIONARY FILM: THE AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE 1943-1978 by P. Adam Sitney

Sitney, quite simply: master of the experimental film. This is the essential book to read on the American Avant-Garde: Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, Harry Smith, James Whitney, Maya Deren...and all the usual unusual suspects.

14. THE AVANT-GARDE FILM: A READER OF THEORY AND CRITICISM edited y P. Adam Sitney

Another essential P. Adam's Sitney collection.

15. SEX AND ZEN & A BULLET IN THE HEAD by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins

My favorite guide to Hong Kong Cinema's 1990s' Renaissance and the global emergence of John Woo, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and others.

16. HOLLYWOOD EAST by Stefan Hammond

More Hong Kong Phooey from SEX AND ZEN & A BULLET TO THE HEAD author Stefan Hammond.

17. MONSTERS ARE ATTACKING TOKYO! by Stuart Galbraith IV

Renowned Godzilla scholar Galbraith's guide is essential reading for all fans of Japanese fantasy, kaiju eiga and terroryaki!

18. DVD DELIRIUM edited by Nathaniel Thompson

DVD DELIRIUM is an encyclopedic guide to 1,000 obscure films that have fallen between the cracks of recognition...until the DVD Era led to their excavation and rediscovery. Heavy on cult, horror, exploitation, sleaze and arthouse.

19. THE PARADE's GONE BY by Kevin Brownlow

Silent Is Golden: Kevin Brownlow is THE bible of the silent era. He was able to interview many of the pioneers while they were still alive. A celebration of what Brownlow considers cinema's peak period, superior to all that came thereafter.

20. IMMORAL TALES by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs

Tohill & Tombs's terrific tome (say that three times quickly!) covers the sexy horror films and filmmakers others consign disparagingly to "Eurotrash": Jean Rollins, Jess Franco, Walerian Borowczk, etc. This was the first book to treat them with FILM COMMENT-style reverance.

21. MONDO MACABRO by Pete Tombs

Tombs's followup to IMMORAL TALES is even better, as he shifts his focus from Europe to Bollywood; Hong Kong Kung-fu; Chinese Ghost and Hopping Vampire stories; Mexican masked wrestlers (El Santo!) and monsters; Turkish ripoffs of Dracula, Superman and Star Wars; Filipino spy-spoof FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY (starring midget Weng Weng as Agent Double 03 1/2); Japanese Pink Films and J-Horror. What's not to love.

22. A HUNDRED YEARS OF JAPANESE FILM by Donald Richie

You can't love Japanese Cinema without reading what Donald Richie has to say. A critical master who lives, breathes and eats all things Nipponese. The cover features "Beat" Takeshi Kitano as The Blind Swordsman Zatoichi.

23. THE YAKUZA MOVIE BOOK by Mark Schilling

Mark Schilling writes film reviews for JAPAN TIMES and his YAKUZA MOVIES collects the best writing on Japanese gangster films and filmmaker auteurs like Kinji Fukasaku, Takashi Miike, and Takeshi Kitano. The cover features the Japanese Robert Mitchum, Bunta Sugawara, in a scene from Kinji Fukasaku's BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY (1973).

24. OUTLAW MASTERS OF JAPANESE FILM by Chris D.

Chris D's OUTLAW MASTERS covers genre films - samurai, yakuza, pink, horror - and filmmakers like Seijan Suzuki (BRANDED TO KILL), Kinji Fukasuka, Kiyoshi "The Other" Kurosawa (CURE), Yaseharu Hasebe (BLACK TIGHT KILLERS)and Masahiro Shinoda. Plus great profiles of superstars Meiko Kaji (LADY SNOWBLOOD, STRAY CAT ROCK, FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION) and Sonny Chiba.

25. THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE by Michael J. Weldon

This is an update, as well as a sequel, of Michael J. Weldon's THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM (1981), itself an anthology of his reviews from PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO mag (I still have all my issues of this pop cultural treasure trove!).  Booklist described Weldon as "the leading authority on films deemed to be "psychotronic," a designation he stretches to encompass horror flicks, spaghetti westerns, low-budget quickies, exploitation films of all stripes - in short, anything disdained by the critical establishment." In other words, my kinda movies!

26. NO BORDERS NO LIMITS: NIKKATSU ACTION FILMS by Mark Schilling

This is Schilling's examination of the stylish crime exploitation movies from Nikkatsu, the B-movie AIP of Japan's studio system, whose most famous director was Seijan Suzuki (Branded To Kill, Tokyo Drifter). Nikkastu's modern yakuza stories were considered "borderless" because they borrowed heavily from international influences, like Hollywood gangster films and the French New Wave (i.e., Godard's Breathless). We get profiles of the "Diamond Guys" (Yujiro Ishihara, Keiichiro Akagi, Tetsuya Watari and guitar-toting singer Akira Kobayashi of the Wataridori "Rambler" films) and the Westernized Joe Shishido (he of the artificially enhanced cheekbones, pictured on cover), female stars (Mie Kitahara, Ruriko Asaoka, Izumi Ashikawa, and the mesmerizing cult heroine Meiko Kaji); and studio auteurs like Seijun Suzuki, Yasuhara Hasebe (Black Tight Killers), Toshio Masuda (Velvet Hustler, Rusty Knife) and Koreyoshi Kurahara (I Am Waiting, Black Sun).

27. HOLLYWOOD LESBIANS by Boze Hadleigh

All the usual suspects (confirmed or otherwise). I like this interviews collection because it's got one of the few chapters devoted to personal favorite, the icy-cool French star Capucine (THE PINK PANTHER, WALK ON THE WILD SIDE), FELLINI'S SATYRICON).

28.  EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS by Peter Biskind

Subtitled How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, Biskind's book is a Who's Who of the movers and shakers who made their mark in 1970s Hollywood, a period of American film known for the production of such films such as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Jaws, Star Wars, The Exorcist, and The Last Picture Show. Most of the young Hollywood film directors (aka "movie brats") profiled have disavowed Biskind's interviews with them, with Spielberg remarking, "Every single word in that book about me is either erroneous or a lie." Fascinating reading, though, with all the usual (disavowing) suspects on hand: Altman, Ashby, Coppola, DePalma, Evans, Friedkin, Lucas, Rafaelson, Schrader, Scorsese, Town.

29. SPIKE, MIKE, SLACKERS & DYKES: A GUIDED TOUR ACROSS A DECADE OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA by John Pierson

The title refers, of course, to Spike Lee (of whom's She's Gotta Have It indie distributor Pierson was a staunch supporter), Michael Moore (Pierson was his rep for Roger & Me), Richard Linklater (Slacker) and various female directors/films (Susan Siedelman of Smithereens and Desperately Seeking Susan, Lizzie Borden of Working Girls, Donna Dietch of Desert Hearts), with the decade being the 1980s - the decade that saw the rise of video as a conduit for distributing otherwise neglected films by rising auteurs whose ranks included not on Spike, Mike, et al, but also Kevin Smith (of Clerks fame, who provides intermittent commentary via humorous Q & As with Pierson throughout the book), Pierson favorite Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law), Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Videotape), Hal Hartley (Trust, The Unbelievable Truth) and countless others.

30. HARD-BOILED HOLLYWOOD: THE TRUE CRIME BEHIND THE CLASSIC NOIR FILMS by Max Decharne

Berlin-based British writer Max Décharné chronicles 11 gangster films, not all of which would be considered "classic" noirs, such as LITTLE CAESAR and GET CARTER. But no matter, he looks to the books that inspired these films as much as the celluloid end-product, with a passion and detail that impresses, especially his chapters on Robert Aldrich's KISS ME DEADLY (based on the Mickey Spillane novel), John Boorman's POINT BLANK (wherein I discovered the great "Parker" crime novels of Richard Stark, alias of Donald Westlake; this film was based on the first Parker book, 1962's THE HUNTER), Mike Hodges' GET CARTER (based on Ted Lewis's JACK'S RETURN HOME) and Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (based on Dorothy B. Hughes's titular novel - I discovered Hughes after reading this chapter and discovered that the book, told from the point of view of the killer, is even better than the movie, is even better than the movie, which offered a watered-down version of protagonist Dix Steele because having Humphrey Bogart portray a psycho killer was too dark for Hollywood). Of negative reviews of IN A LONELY PLACE, Decharne quotes one of my favorite lines: “If the director had taken the trouble to be French, we would be licking his boots in ecstasy.” Love that! Of course, it can't top Bogart's classic quote from the film: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me." One for the Film Noir ages.

31.  THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE & OTHER UNFORGETTABLE FILMS by Barry Gifford

Barry Gifford takes his title from a 1947 film noir starring Lawrence Tierney as sociopath Steve Morgan (of whom Gifford says, "evil doesn't lurk in his face, it gloats"). The author of countless books, his 1989 novel "Wild at Heart," was made into a David Lynch film the following year. In 1997 Gifford co-wrote the screenplay for Lynch’s, LOST HIGHWAY. Gifford's short, punchy two-page capsule reviews give an idea of what Charles Bukowski would be like as a film reviewer.  An expanded edition of 1998's THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE, called OUT OF THE PAST: ADVENTURES IN FILM NOIR, came out in 2001. Ted Hicks has a great profile of Gifford at his Films, Inc. blog.

32. MENTAL HYGIENE: BETTER LIVING THROUGH CLASSROOM FILMS 1945-1970 by Ken Smith


In their day, the educational films shown in school were considered the future of liberal education, providing educators an opportunity to indoctrinate captive audiences in the proper ways of mental hygiene and physical safety. From the classic era of the ‘50s and ‘60s right up until ABC’s star-studded after-school TV specials in the ‘70s and ‘80s (which featured future celebs like Jodie Foster and Scott Baio), these cautionary tales covered everything from dating do’s and don’ts to the perils of drug abuse and wreckless driving in a hard-hitting style full of tragedy and devoid of subtlety. They were scary, yes, but also titillating – after all, where else could kids get the cheap thrill of seeing the kind of gratuitous drug use, sexual situations, death, destruction, and mayhem typically reserved for mature audiences in restricted motion pictures and late-night TV?

According to genre expert Ken Smith, author of Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945-1970, these films constituted "a uniquely American experiment in social engineering" whose message was to “fit in” and follow “correct behavior” in grooming, manners, and citizenship. Smith synopsizes well more than a hundred leading examples, including Soapy the Germ Killer, a film tailor-made made for our COVID-19-challenged times.

33. HONG KONG ACTION CINEMA by Bey Logan

Bey Logan was one of the first to cover the exciting Hong Kong Action Cinema phenomenon when it was happening in the mid-'90s (now every Johnny To-Come-Lately has a book out about the genre), and this lavishly illustrated guide covers all the essentials, from Peking Opera to Chang Cheh (the master auteur!) and the Shaw Brothers, from Tsui Hark's fantasy warrior epics to John Woo's "Heroic Bloodshed" bullet ballets. Profiles of male stars Bruce Lee, Danny Lee, Chow Yun-Fat, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Aron Kwok, Andy Lau, Yuen Biao, Simon Yam. Salutes to female stars Angela Mao Ying, Chang Pei Pei, Michelle Yeoh, Bridgette Lin, Chingmy Yau, Anita Mui, Sibelle Hu and Maggie Cheung. And a chapter on the oft-neglected "Chinese Ghost Story" films, including all those wild "Hopping Vampire" movies starring Mr Vampire himself, Lam Cing Ying. Cover depicts Chow Yun-Fat in Ringo Lam's Full Contact.

34. FILM NOIR READER edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini

There are several sequels to this ongoing series, but none better than the first, which compiles key early writings on film noir with newer essays. The best part is the "Case Studies" section, which profiles some of my favorite films and filmmakers, especially Mia's dad and "unsung auteur" John Farrow (THE BIG CLOCK, HIS KIND OF WOMAN, WHERE DANGER LIVES, NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES); Robert Siodmak's THE KILLERS and his Cornell Woolrich adaptation PHANTOM LADY; Jules Dassin's NIGHT AND THE CITY ("I can think of no other title that better satisfies the formal criteria of the noir movement and...that delineates the noir universe so immediately for the uninitiated viewer," writes DVD TALK editor Glen Erickson), Otto Preminger's ANGEL FACE, Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE, the films of Anthony Mann, and Alain Silver's own essay on "KISS ME DEADLY: Evidence of a Style."

35. THE GREAT MOVIES by Roger Ebert

Over 300 films cited as "landmarks of the first century of cinema" by the late great "Everyman" film critic, Roger Ebert.

36. 100 GREAT FILM PERFORMANCES YOU SHOULD PROBABLY REMEMBER - BUT PROBABLY DON'T by John DiLeo

DiLeo covers everything from Lillian Gish in Way Down East (1920) to Renee Zellweger in Nurse Betty (2000). Standout shout-outs include praise for Charles Laughton in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley (1947), Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter (1955), Barbara Stanwyck in Remember the Night (1940), Claudette Colbert in Midnight (1939), Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop (1956) and Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In Out of the Cold (1965).

37.  TOMS, COONS, MULATTOES, MAMMIES & BUCKS by Donald Bogan

The classic study of black images in American motion pictures, from The Birth of the Nation to Malcolm X. What it lacks in dynamic prose style it more than makes up for with its extensive documenting of African-American film history.

38. LEONARD MALTIN'S 151 BEST MOVIES YOU'VE NEVER SEEN by Leonard Maltin

Props to Maltin for resurrecting lesser-known worthies such as Man Push Cart, Matewan, The Tao of Steve, Idiocracy, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Duck Season, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Harmonists, Rian Johnson's Brick and Roy Del Ruth's 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon starring Ricardo Cortez in place of Bogey.

39. VIDEOHOUND'S CULT FLICKS & TRASH PICKS edited by Carol Schwartz and Jim Olenski

As an Amazon reviewer put it: "This is a book that any cult movie lover should own. If the names Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman, Ray Dennis Steckler, David Lynch, Frank Henenlotter, Jack Hill, Herschel Gordon Lewis, Dario Argento, Paul Bartel, Russ Meyer, Terry Gilliam, Alex Cox, Edward D. Wood, Ken Russell, George Romero and John Waters mean anything to you then you need this book." Reviews of hundreds films, bios, pictures, pull quotes from featured movies and category indices (a Videohound specialty!) to help you find exactly what you're looking for.

40.  VIDEOHOUND'S DRAGON: ASIAN ACTION & CULT FLICKS by Brian Thomas

This is the Bible of Asian Cinema. From blockbuster's like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to cult faves like Mothra, and classics such as the Seven Samurai, readers will be treated to insights and highlights of the movies, casts, directors, and influences.

41. CARTOONS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CINEMA ANIMATION by Giannalberto Bendazzi

Where to begin? I'll leave it to Library Journal: "This chronological history analyzes animated film as an autonomous art form that has nevertheless been affected by the economics of live-action cinema as well as social and political forces (e.g., the dislocation of Continental Europe's animators by World War II). This comprehensive study describes concepts and practice, profiles innumerable animators, and concludes with a chapter on computer animation. Because of truly global coverage (from Mali to Mongolia), Cartoons introduces such important animators as Russia's Alexandre Alexeieff and Scotland-born Canadian master Norma McLaren while providing details on familiar names like Disney, Walter Lantz, and Tex Avery. Despite the subject's popularity, this should not be considered a coffee-table book but a scholarly reference whose notes and bibliography are valuable sources for further study."

42. OF MICE AND MAGIC: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN ANIMATED CARTOONS by Leonard Maltin

The definitive guide to the history of American animated cartoons, covering the first 100 years up through the 1980s, including the "Golden Era" of '30s and '40s Warners Bros. and Disney 'toons, of which Maltin is the de facto expert. T-t-t-t-that's all folks!

43. THE ANIMATED MOVIE BOOK by Jerry Beck

Going beyond the mainstream hits of Disney and Dreamworks, Beck reviews every animated movie ever released in the United States, covering more than 300 films over the course of nearly 80 years of film history.

44. THE ROUGH GUIDE TO ANIME by Simon Richmond

From Amazon: "The Rough Guide to Anime provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse and amazing world of animation from Japan. Combining a critical approach with all the essential background information – from history and short biographies of the key people in the industry to the different genres, themes and cultural references of anime – this is the ultimate guide to Japanese animation. The book introduces the creative talents behind the major anime movies, TV series and OVA (original video animation) – from the Oscar-winning Spirited Away to classic works like Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and the iconic shows Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer and Robotech. Written by anime expert Simon Richmond, features include the Top 50 must-sees, with details on the most influential directors and creative artists. There''s an exploration of the art form''s history, plus information on the anime conventions and manga-related attractions in Japan. Newcomers will love the glossary of all the anime slang and jargon, while devoted fans will relish the fresh exploration of themes, genres and obsessions in the colourful anime universe."

45. THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILM BOOK by Jonathan Ross

This is a spin-off of English presenter Jonathan Ross's Incredibly Strange Film Show, a 12-episode television series examining "Psychotronic" B-movies and the low-budget filmmakers - John Waters, T.V. Mikels, Russ Meyers, Ed Wood Jr., Ray Dennis Steckler and Herschell Gordon Lewis - who made them. With a title referencing his TV show (which took its name from the RE/Search book Incredibly Strange Films), The ISFB examines those aforementioned heroes as well as gimmick-King William Castle, agromegaly-afflicted "Creeper" villain Rondo Hatton, drive-in movie schlock and "J.D." films.

46. THE COMPLETE THREE STOOGES: THE OFFICIAL FILMOGRAPHY AND THREE STOOGES COMPANION by Jon Solomon

The Complete Three Stooges is the reference guide for die-hard Stooge fans (I proudly count myself in that demographic), with detailed synopses, production notes, and anecdotes on every single short and feature-length film ever made by Les Stooges Trois, presented in chronological order (from their Rube Goldberg written first, 1930's Soup To Nuts to 1970's vacation travelogue Kook's Tour with Joe DeRita), as well as a handy-dandy detailed index.

47. EXPANDED CINEMA by Gene Youngblood

This 1970 book was the first to consider video as an influential media art form. Youngblood describes special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments and holography that "expand" the concept of filmmaking. Filmmakers reviewed include Jordan Belson, Patrick O'Neill, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Michael Snow, John Whitney, Paul Morrissey, Aldo Tambellini, Scott Bartlett and Nam June Paik.

48. FILM NOIR edited by Paul Duncan and Jurgen Muller (a Taschen book with texts by Alain Silver, James Ursini, et al.)

A typically gorgeous, copiously illustrated example of the Taschen treatment of subject matter, in this case the dark and brooding world of  Film Noir from 1940-1960, an essential guide brimming with the  "private eyes and perfect crimes... corrupt cops and doomed lovers...enigmatic dames, desperate gangsters and psycho killers that continue to cast a long and captivating shadow over cinema." The editors have a personal Top 10 (Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, T-Men, Detour, Criss Cross, Gun Crazy, Touch of Evil, In a Lonely Place, The Reckless Moment and Kiss Me Deadly), as well as a chronological Top 50 - from Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) to Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - that makes up the latter part of this chunky-with-goodness little tome. The first part of the book is broken into critical analysis chapters (What Is Noir, The Caper Film, The Private Eyes, Women in Film, Love on the Run, etc.) that explore the genre's various themes (The Haunted Past, the Fatalistic Nightmare), archetypes (The Truth Seeker, The Hunted, The Femme Fatale), signature visual iconography (Chiaroscura Lighting, Odd Angles, Moving Camera, Urban Landscape, Flashback and Subjective Camera) and diction (Hard-Bitten Poetry and Voice-over Narration).

49. DOCUMENTARY: A HISTORY OF THE NON-FICTION FILM by Erik Barnouw

One of the best historical overviews of documentary film, though somewhat dated. I had the 1983 edition, which has subsequently been brought more up to date to reflect the technological upheaval of digital film and smaller, more intimate-access camera techniques (looking at you here, Errol Morris). Still, I like Barnouw's approach of presenting thematic chapters devoted to Prophet (Louis Lumiere), Explorer (Robert Flaherty of Nanook of the North), Reporter (Kino-Pravda's "Man with a Movie Camera" Dziga Vertov), Advocate (modern documentarians like John Grierson, Axis of Evil advocate Leni Riefenstahl, Pare Lorentz of The River), Bugler (Frank Capra's Why We Fight war series), Prosecutor (post-WWII films like Alain Resnais' Night and Fog), Poet (post-war neo-realism from Rossellin's Open City, Arne Sucksdorff, Bert Haanstra), Chronicler (Colin Low and Walter Koenig's 1957 Oscar winner City of Gold, which told the story of the celluloid treasures buried beneath a Yukon Gold Rush town years before Bill Morrison's 2016 film Dawson City: Frozen Time), Promoter (corporate-sponsored films), Observer (Karel Reisz and Lindsey Anderson of Britain's so-called "Free Cinema" movement, Richard Leacock, Robert Drew of Primary, Albert and David Maysles, Fredrick Wiseman), Catalyst (Jean Rouche), Guerilla (Cold and Vietnam War-era stark "black films") and Discoverer.

50. 100 DOCUMENTARY FILMS by Barry Keith Grant & Jim Hillier

This is one of those great BFI Screen Guides, and it's hard to argue with any of the choices, from Jean Vigo's A Propos de Nice (1930) to Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait - the latter following the football superstar Zinedine Zidane through the course of a 2005 match between Real Madrid and Villareal, with a soundtrack by Mogwai. I haven't seen that film and, in fact, I haven't seen most of these docs, but I use this book as a handy little reference guide to what I need to see and check off my non-fiction bucket list. I especially liked the inclusion of Arthur Lipsette's Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), an extremely short 7-minute film composed almost entirely of still photographs gleaned from the files of his fellow National Film Board of Canada filmmakers. This is one of my favorite films that I discovered in the Enoch Pratt Library's 16mm film collection, and I was delighted to see it turn up as #94 in the alphabetic film chronology here. Lipsette, a former associate of Norman McLaren, depicts Western society as "alienated and determined by mass culture, advertising, consumerism, and militarism." His film-ending comment, "Bravo...very nice, very nice," is a cynical savaging of the shallowness of contemporary culture.

Kanopy Spotlight: NIGHT TIDE (1961)

Night Tide
Directed by Curtis Harrington
(1961, 86 minutes, black and white)

One of the perks of browsing through Kanopy, Enoch Pratt Free Library’s free video streaming resource, is discovering how many “hidden gems” are in their collection. While other streaming services concentrate purely on popular, mainstream movies, Kanopy has something for everyone - even Cult and low-budget B-movie fans. Case in point, Curtis Harrington’s 1961 sleeper Night Tide. 

Curtis Harrington is regarded as one of the important avant-garde directors of the 1940s, as well as an early influential figure in what would come to be known as "New Queer Cinema," in no small part due to his 1946 short film The Fear of Seeking, made a year before Kenneth Anger's Fireworks. As film critic Andrew Male observed, Harrington was a director "with one foot in the avant-garde, one foot in Hollywood, and never a part of either" ("On Stranger Tides," Sight & Sound, March 2020).

Night Tide was Harrington's first feature-length film, shot in and around Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier, and was described by critic Andrew Male as "existing in a strange, fugal netherworld of its own - somewhere between queer independent American cinema, Val Lewton horror and the poetic dream cinema of Jean Cocteau."  The influence of the thoughtful and moody Val Lewton-produced film chillers of the 1940s (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Isle of the Dead) as well as Herk Harvey’s surreal Carnival of Souls (1962, also set at a carnival and available from Kanopy) - in which you’re never sure whether what’s happening is real or imagined is unmistakable.

Harrington's film tells the story of a young sailor, Johnny Drake (woodenly played by a baby-faced Dennis Hopper, in his first proper starring role), who falls in love with a carnival sideshow mermaid named Mora (played by Linda Lawson), who may or may not be the real thing. Mora certainly thinks she is and Johnny soon comes to believe that Mora might be a siren who draws men to a watery death during the full moon - after all, her two previous boyfriends drowned, making her a literal femme fatale. 

Of special interest to cult film fans is the appearance of Marjorie Cameron (pictured right) as an ominous sea-witch whose siren-call lures Mora back to the water. Cameron was an American artist, poet, actress, and occultist; she was a follower of "Thelema," the religious movement established by English occultist Aleister Crowley, and was married to rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons. (Parsons was convinced she was his "Scarlet Woman," the incarnation of what he had been searching for in his "sex magick" experiments.) Cameron also appeared in Harrington's The Wormwood Star (1955) and Kenneth Anger's The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1956).

Night Tide was ignored at the time of its release in 1961, paired on a double-bill with Roger Corman's The Raven, and died a quick death, only becoming an acclaimed cult film with the rise of home video and DVD. By the way, the soundtrack music is by David Raskin, who scored the music for the classic film noir Laura (1944).

Though it has all the trappings of a low-budget horror film, Night Tide can also be seen as a doomed love story, its moody atmosphere reflecting the fear and anxiety of romantic obsession.

Kanopy also offers The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection, which includes his early experimental films Fear of Seeking (1946), The Four Elements (1948) and The Fall of the House of Usher (1949).

Tomology: Ten Things, March 2020

Another month wherein I muse about whatever pop cultural artifacts (books, movies, commercials, overheard conversations) catch my addled fancy.

10 THINGS ON MY MEANDERING MIND - March 2020

1. Nippon Girls 2: Japanese Pop, Beat & Rock 'n' Roll 1965-70 (Ace Records, 2014)

Another great Ace Records collection featuring detailed liner notes by Girl Pop (especially J-Pop and French Pop) connoisseur Sheila Burgel (music writer, record collector and DJ of Cha Cha Charming and WFMU's Sophisticated Boom Boom fame)!

Of particular interest in this anthology is the appearance of Anne Mari, the half-Indian, half-Japanese teen pop star who went on to portray an ice-cold assassin Misako Nakajo in director Seijan Suzuki's cult classic Branded To Kill (1967).

Anne Mari in Branded To Kill (1967)

Sheila Burgel notes of her striking entrance in that film - where she announces, "I despise men, and my dream is to die" - ""The image of Anne Mari as a vicious femme fatale is hard to reconcile with the finger-snapping, fresh-faced teen on the cover of her 'Wild Party' single, released on King Records in 1966."

Anne Mari and Kazuya Nishikawa duet on "Wild Party" (King Records, 1966)

She adds, "That 'Wild Party' is so wonderfully whacked out - a dizzying mish-mash of shambolic surf-rock, questionable vocal ability and a whole lotta wah-wahs and go-go-gos - is a testament to the wildly unpredictable, carefree, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink spirit of post-war Japanese pop."





2. Gillian Hills - Zou Bisou Bisou: The Ye-Ye Years 1960-1965 (Ace Records, 2017)

This 22-track collection of "Ultra-chic yé-yé" from the Cairo-born cult movie star (Beat Girl, Blow-Up, A Clockwork Orange) - who was billed as "the new Bardot" when discovered as a 14-year-old by Roger Vadim (who should know from Bardots!), who cast her in 1959's Les Liasions Dangereuses - comes with an outstanding booklet (as expected from Ace Records - the "Criterion Collection" of eclectic vinyl/CD compilations - and surprisingly not penned by Francophile Sheila Burgel), including a new exclusive interview with the artist.

As a teenager, she recorded everything from ballads to ye-ye novelty songs ("Tut Tut Tut Tut" is a personal favorite), as well as her own compositions, for the Paris-based Barclay label in the '60s, where she worked with musicians like Paul "Love Is Blue" Mauriat and Yank ex-pat guitar maestro Mickey Baker. Yet by the time Gillian was 21, her recording career was all but over and she returned to acting. But a revival of sorts began in 2012 when this anthology's title track, "Zou Bisou Bisou" (literal translation: "Oh! Kiss Kiss") was featured in a Season 5 episode and ending credits of AMC's Mad Men - later covered by actress Jessica Paré (Don Draper's tres sexy French-Canadian wife, Megan Draper). Pare's rendition has also been used for an international L’Oréal shampoo campaign.




3. Action Time Vision: A Story of UK Independent Punk 1976-1979 (Cherry Red Records, 2016)

A birthday present from my ever-loving wife Amy (who always knows what I like!), this 4-CD box set of 111-tracks with an indispensible 64-page booklet of liner notes (including authoritative band bios by Andy Davis and a foreword by Kris Needs, then editor of Zigzag magazine - which produced the first directory of Indie labels - and later frontman of the Vice Creems) may just be the best-ever 1st generation punk compilation. Released in Autumn 2016 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of "the British musical revolution that was Punk Rock, fan-fared by the release of ‘Anarchy In The UK’ by the Sex Pistols and ‘New Rose’ by The Damned," it focuses on the "independent punk scene, which was born with Punk and thrived outside of the major label framework." That means a lot of one-and-doners, artists that had one moment of vinyl glory, as well as some folks later to move up to fame and fortune, among them Killjoys singer Kevin Rowland (later of Dexy's Midnight Runners), Riff Raff singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, Nipple Erectors frontman Shane McGowen (a future Pogue). Similarly, Johnny and the Self Abusers evolved into Jim Kerr's Simple Minds, while Demon Preacher turned into Goth darlings Alien Sex Fiend and The Pack became Theater of Hate. (Oh, speaking of Demon Preacher, Nik Demon's ditty "Little Miss Perfect" celebrates Joyce McKinney, who was accused of kidnapping a Mormon missionary in 1977 and forcing him to have sex with her, as documented in Errol Morris' 2010 film Tabloid; in 2008 McKinney gained additional notoriety for being the first person to have a pet cloned - her deceased pit bull!)

There's so much good stuff  here - from big names like The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers, The Ruts, Angelic Upstarts, 999, UK Subs, Sham 69, The Rezillos, The Adicts, Alternative TV (from whose single the collection takes its name), et al - that I may only make it through Disc 1 for all of March! See for yourself - here's what's on offer:

And not all of it falls under the generic genus of "punk," as evidenced by the inclusion of such melody-friendly ilk as The Only Ones ("Lovers of Today"), The Rezillos (""I Can't Stand My Baby"), The Wasps ("Teenage Treats"), The Stoats ("Office Girl"), and The Carpettes ("Radio Wunderbar").

Just a few tracks in, I heard The Lurkers' "Shadow," which I had always thought was a Judies Fixation (an Annapolis, MD punk band) original! (Both versions are great!) Amy and I agree that our faves so far are of the more obscure-but-hilarious in nature, to wit: The Sniveling Shits, The Jerks and Puncture, though Amy also is keen on The Flys' "Love and a Molotov Cocktail" (which sounds like The Clash in everything but name).

The Sniveling Shits were a "shady punk conceit" rather than a proper band, consisting of three rock journalists - vocalist Giovani Dadomo (who co-wrote two Damned songs, "I Just Can't Be Happy Today" and "There Ain't No Sanity Clause"), guitarist Pete Makowski, bassist Dave Fudger and Eddie and the Hot Rods drummer Steve Nichol. Their "Terminal Stupid" is kind of like what Pere Ubu would sound like if they had a sense of humor (and is also the term I use to refer to many of the glass-eyed library patrons I've encountered over the years), with raucous guitars, verbal vitriol and farty synth toots and squeals as Giovani sneers something along the lines of "You're a damp squid" (the kind I prefer to ingest) at the end...




The Jerks' "Get Your Woofing Dog Off Me" is rather self-explanatory, but they printed the "Woof Woof Woof Woof Woof Woof" lyrics on the back cover, just in case the point was lost on their audience)...

The Jerks - "Get Your Woofing Dog Off Me" (Underground Records)

Lyrics included for Open Mic Poetry readings!

Puncture's "Mucky Pup" (the A-side of a single whose flip was the hard-to-argue-with complaint "You Can't Rock 'n' Roll (In a Council Flat)") is sung in an accent so strong both Amy and I thought they were singing "I'm a lucky punk" instead of "mucky pup" (whatever that is), Puncture celebrate the bodacious ta-tas of English news presenter Angela Rippon (who must of been dear to their heart, and other vital organs, back in the '70s).

"I pick my nose and I eat it up/I'm a real humdinger, I'm a mucky pup...I don't take drugs, I've given glue up/But I sniff people, I'm a mucky pup...I see pretty girls and I hitch it up/Then the nipples go poink poink, I'm a mucky pup...The nine o'clock news is something to trip on/I bleedin' lover 'er, Angela Rippon."

Buxom Beeb broadcaster Angela Rippon

4. The Red Balloon (Le Balon Rouge, Albert Lamorisse, 1956).




House cleaning recently, I came across my video of this childhood classic that every Baby Boomer of my generation grew up seeing in the classroom on 16mm film. And you know what, it stills holds up over 60 years later! Amy and I enjoyed watching it again this morning, though I couldn't convince her to watch another French short, An Occurrence At Owl Creek, after it. "That film creeped me out," she said. (She probably saw it when it aired on The Twilight Zone in 1964.) But Amy did enlighten me about director Albert Lamorisse, when, after finishing a book about the history of board games, she informed me that he was the only Oscar winner (Le Ballon Rouge, Best Original Screenplay, 1956) to have invented a board game: Risk (1957)!

By the way, The Red Balloon was a "family film" in many ways: the boy was Albert's 6-year-old son Pascal and the little girl with the blue balloon was his daughter Sabine. Pascal Lamorisse appeared in two more of his father's productions (Stowaway in the Sky and White Mane) and, after Albert was killed in a helicopter crash while shooting a documentary near Tehran in 1970, Pascal took over his father's film company (Films Montsouris), dedicating himself to restoration of his films.

5. Diary of a Bookseller by Sean Bythell (Melville House, 2018, 320 pages).

"Would I like to be a bookseller de metier? On the whole - in site of my employer's kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop - no." - George Orwell, "Bookshop Memories," London, November 1936

Ginger-haired bibliophile Shaun Bythell runs The Bookshop in Wigtown, which is Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, with over a mile of shelving supporting over 100,000 books.

The Book Shop in  Wigtown, Scotland

Since I work in a similar environment - a library (yes, we still have books, too!) - I browsed through this book to see what shared experiences we might have and immediately discovered my Scots alter ego ("impatient, intolerant, antisocial" - me, me, me!), for, like me, Shaun loves books but loathes his customers! I purchased the book immediately after reading this passage and sensing a kindred spirit:

"Orwell's reluctance to commit to bookselling is understandable. There is a stereotype of the impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor - played so perfectly by Dylan Moran in Black Books - and it seems (on the whole) to be true. There are exceptions, of course, and many booksellers do not conform to this type. Sadly, I do. It was not always thus, though, and before buying the shop I recall being quite amenable and friendly. The constant barrage of dull questions, the parlous finances of the business, the incessant arguments with staff and the unending, exhausting, haggling customers have reduced me to this. Would I change any of it? No."

Alas, I too and drawn to the library, despite its inhabitants and their aggravations. Books and other physical media have this allure I find irresistible, in spite of the challenges their preservation entail. Horror and joy, in equal measure.

That Look: Dylan Moran as Bernard Black of  Black Books

Oh, and as to the Dylan Moran analogy, here's a typical comment about customers:

"One of the shop's Facebook followers came in to buy books today. She and her boyfriend want to move here and I overheard her whispering 'Don't say anything stupid or he'll post it on Facebook.' I will write something mean about her later." LOL!

And here's the bookseller's "no hard feelings" reference for a former employee that showcases his dark wit:

6. Hooked by Frank A. DeFilippo.

In addition to being the best political writer in Maryland journalism during a storied career at The News American and Baltimore City Paper - and now online at Maryland Matters.org- Frank DeFillipo was a creative artist and lover of low-brow local color. Hence, I was delighted to come across his lone foray into fiction, 2005's  Hooked, one day when I was down in the stacks of the Enoch Pratt Library. Described as "a roman a clef that juxtaposes two evils - Baltimore's randy Block and Maryland's comic-opera politics," DeFilippo's protagonist Richard Dart is a modern-day Damon Runyan, an "ace hunting-dog reporter and all-around wiseacre" working the city's gutterscape erogenous zone as he rubs elbows with "bimbos, misfits, trenchermen, ladies of the night and accidental tourists" to solve a mob-related murder on the "primeval bog known as the Eastern Shore." But what I love best is DeFilippo's hard-boiled language and shout-outs to landmarks familiar to native sons, such as this description of downtown Baltimore: "Its harbor was now decorated with municipal Tinker-toys - mirrored hotels, million-dollar condos, needle-nosed fish tanks, world class yachts, twin ballyards, expensive restaurants and America's largest yogurt stand, Harbor Place."

7. TD Ameritrade's "Get Smarter" commercial.





The Old TV Nostalgia Commercial Trick! In case you missed it (by that much)...Just when you thought only GEICO and Progressive could pull off great commercials, my wife turned me on to this smart blast from the past. It reminds me of all the secured doors I have to swipe my access card at just to reach my desk at the library (a future commercial I will call "Get Irritated!").

8. The Cowsills retrospective in Retro Fan magazine (March 2020).

I had to buy this Baby Boomer magazine after I saw it had one of my fave pop bands, The Cowsills, on the cover. The real-life family band that spawned The Partridge Family (and no hard feelings - they were fans of David Cassidy, too) had great early success - Bill and Bob's early (pre-Mom and Susan), raggedy garage-rock "All I Wanna Be Is Me" single for Johnny Nash's Joda label actually topped Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" in a radio listener's poll - only to be undone by their dysfunctional family dynamic. Namely, patriarch Bud Cowsill, who was to the Cowsill boys (and lone gal Susan) what Murray Wilson was to the Beach Boys: an abusive, unloving, violent, destructive force.





A paranoid, alcoholic control freak, Bud Cowsill was a Navy man who tried to discipline his family like Humphrey Bogart's Captain Queeq tried to discipline the USS Caine: by making anyone stepping out of line walk the plank. Along the way, he sabotaged many lucrative deals (a 10-episode, million-dollar gig on the Ed Sullivan Show) and essentially killed the group when he fired no. 1 son Bill for smoking pot and giving dad the finger. It's all covered in Bill Filipiak and Louise Palanker's 2011 documentary Family Band: The Cowsills Story (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube). All was not as wholesome (or as safe) as milk...

Of the seven Cowsill siblings, three boys (Richard, Bill and Barry) are dead, while Bob and Paul continue to play with Susan and little drummer boy John now splits his time touring with The Beach Boys and playing alongside his wife (former Bangles guitarist) Vicky Peterson and Lost In Space TV star and music vet (America, Barnes & Barnes of "Fish Heads" fame) Billy Mumy in The Action Skulls.

Still, the music lives on. The Cowsills had great voices and they all, after the initial LPs, played their own instruments. Their melodic, soaring harmonies ("The Rain, the Park and Other Things," "Hair," "Indian Lake," "What Is Happy?", "Love American Style") still provide my earlobes, as their famous American Dairy Association Milk ad once proclaimed, with "the big lift that lasts."



9. Criterion's Polyester Blu-ray/DVD (2019) Supplements.

Polyester Supplements

I recently bought the Criterion Polyester DVD when they had their half-price sale, mainly for the supplements - the special feature extras. Basically, these represent most of the extras that were included on Criterion's excellent 1993 laserdisc edition of the film (Criterion Collection #210), with the addition of the 20-minute Dreamland Memories documentary and a new interview with critic Michael Musso, but the unfortunate omission of Robert Maier's Love Letter To Edie (1975) - the latter probably because Maier sells his film on his own website .

Among the treasures are John Waters' famous "No Smoking in This Theater" PSA (familiar to anyone who saw arthouse films at Baltimore's Charles Theater back in the 1980s!); the 1993 short documentary Dreamland Memories, which begins with raw video footage of a scraggly-looking John Waters and assorted Dreamlanders at the 1976 grand opening of Edith Massey's thrift store "Edith's Shopping Bag" at 726 S. Broadway in Fells Point and includes scenes of a young Dr. Ron Israel (looking like a blond version of Deep Throat star Harry Reems and later to become a filmmaker, producer and manager of NYC's "Naked Cowboy," not to mention Atomic TV's mentor during our brief reign on Baltimore City public access channel), who made Edie a new set of false teeth after hers were stolen by a purse-snatcher; a WJZ-TV People Are Talking segment promoting the production of Polyester; another local TV profile called John Waters In Charm City, wherein the director takes viewers on a guided tour of his favorite haunts, including the pre-Club Charles bar The Wigwam ("Studio 54 for bums!"), Jonestown (Baltimore's slum area between the Inner Harbor and Fells Point that was named after the Jones Falls waterway but also makes Waters, thinking of Jim Jones, quip "It's embarrassingly named 'Jonestown' - can you imagine seeing a sign 'Welcome to Jonestown. If you lived here, you'd already be dead'?") and East Baltimore ("home of teased hair"); a 1978 WJZ-TV Evening Magazine profile Edith: Queen of Fells Point (in which Waters perfectly captures his star Massey's appeal: "Beauty is looks you can never forget. In that sense, Edie to me is truly beautiful."); footage from Baltimore's Craziest Entertainers supplied by Siobhan Hagan of MARMIA (Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive); and Waters on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, which I haven't had the courage to watch because, well, it features chain-smoking megalomaniac Tom Snyder!

Edith's Shopping Bag (1976), directed by Laurel Douglas, Peter Koper and Charlie Ludlow

A long-haired Waters interviews Edith Massey at her grand opening

Dr. Ron Israel fixes Edie's chompers

Four more extra features "From the Archives"

A 1978 WJZ-TV profile of Edith Massey for Evening Magazine

Charm City's projects, not to be confused with Jim Jones' Guyana township: "If you lived here, you'd already be dead!"

Before the Club Charles, there was The Wigwam, Baltimore's "Studio 54 for Bums"!

10. Twinkle, "Tommy," from Golden Lights anthology (RPM Records, 1996).

Though Tommy is my name, I've always hated the Who song about the deaf, dumb and blind kid who plays a mean pinball, and have had to suffer through years of people humming it whenever I tell them my birth name. Thanks goodness, then, for The Talented Ms. Ripley (Lynn Annette Ripley), the Swinging '60s songbird who recorded as "Twinkle" on Decca Records. Though best known for her maudlin teen biker tragedy "Terry" (a UK #4 hit, thanks to being banned by the BBC!) and "Golden Lights" (which fanboy Morrissey loved so much he had The Smiths cover it), as well as her signature thigh-high kinky boots and leather "John Lennon"-style chapeau (as pictured above), it's Twinkle's "Tommy" that I claim as my go-to theme song. For, like me, this Tommy, while initially a real charmer ("Tommy would always send me pretty flowers/Tommy would call me on the phone and talk for hours"), turns out not to be "the same boy I knew back when" but at times a right bastard. It truly is the story of my life, profiling an emotionally vacillating initial charmer who can turn into quite a cold-blooded prat as time goes on ("He's not so sweet and he's far from polite/Hardly ever calls me, and goes to pick me up late every night").





I've had "Tommy" on constant auto-play in my car CD player ever since I rediscovered a mix tape I made for my wife during our courtship phase over 15 years ago. Apparently, there's also a German-language version of my namesake as well, which gives the song a smidgen of added schadenfreude. Regardless of the language, Twinkle admits that she can't seem to keep him off her mind and, although "he's not the same boy I knew back when," professes "I love Tommy more than I did then." Poor Twink. A glutton for punishment!

Death's mortgage on their bodies will never transcend music's lien on their souls

I'm stealing a line from Greil Marcus (who can spare one or two from his extensive critical canon) as I reflect on the deaths of a spate of local musicians and music-loving friends who would be my contemporaries, had they not passed prematurely. Namely: Mark Linthicum (aka "Harpo," "Mark Harp," "The King of Peru," et al), Kraig Krixer ("Trixie),  Roger Anderson (The Marble Bar), and most recently, Chris Dennstaedt and DJ/music historian John Rouse. To wit...

"Death's mortgage on their bodies will never transcend music's lien on their souls."- Tom Warner, paraphrasing Marcus (on Dylan, Levon Helm, Buddy Holly, et al.)

Roger Anderson, d. 1986.

Mark "Harp" Linthicum, d. 2004

Kraig Krixer, d. 2011

Chris Dennstaedt, d. 2019

John Rouse, d. 2020

Tomology: A Tom Top Ten

I'm stealing this idea from Greil Marcus' brilliant "REAL LIFE ROCK TOP TEN" column that he wrote from 1986-2004 for the Village Voice (and later Artforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview and The Believer), wherein the rock critic wryly mused about whatever pop cultural artifacts - books, movies, commercials, overheard conversations - caught his fancy. It's a format widely copied (Matt Groening employed it often at the LA Reader) but rarely equaled. It sure won't face any competition from me, but the format perfectly matches my sporadic, random, attention-deficited mind. See what ya think...

10 THINGS ON MY MIND - FEBRUARY 2020

1. "Fifteen Million Merits," - Season 1, Episode 2 of Black Mirror (Netflix).

From Charlie Brooker and Annabelle Jones' Inside Black Mirror: "In a society wallpapered with endless video screens, Bing and his fellow citizens earn 'merits' by riding stationary bikes. When Bing falls for gifted singer Abi, he decides to use his enormous stash of merits to buy her a place on the popular talent show Hot Shot. Horrified by the results, vengeful Bing sets out to rage against the machine."



Though I love this long-running British anthology series, I somehow missed this early episode from 2011 which was written by Charlie Brooker and his wife Konnie Huq; the latter's observation that her technology-obsessed husband would be content to live in a room covered in iPad screens provided the inspiration to comment on our increasingly digital "wall of screens" world of laptops, tablets, cell phones and flat-screen TVs that isolate and insulate us from interacting meaningfully with others. Brooker and Huq further use the X-Factor/American Idol-inspired Hot Shot and its glib celebrity hosts Judge Hope (Rupert Everett, channeling George Michael with an Aussie accent), Judge Charity (Julia Davis) and Judge Wraith (Ashley Thomas) to make the point that people want to be famous, but have no idea what for. The judges award TV shows to winners that come in three non-threatening varieties - vacuous pop entertainment, mean-spirited fat-shaming game shows or porn. (The first two varieties could all get commissioned on Fox TV.) Young Kate Bush lookalike Abi Khan (Jessica Brown Findley, best known as Lady Sybil Crawley on Downton Abbey) hopes for the first, but ends up as a drug-numbed porn Wraith Babe on the last.

Abi gets to sing a wonderful song called "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" - the 1964 Irma Thomas song written by Jeannie Seely and Randy Newman that was the B-side of her "Time Is On My Side" single - that in her folky rendition reinforced the Kate Bush analogy even more for me. In a world in which the bike-pedaling worker bees are allowed no personal possessions, she makes and secrets away little origami figures, a defiant gesture of free will and creative spirit in a dumbed-down world. But the real revelation of the episode is Daniel Kaluuya as Bing. He'd done some Brit TV shows like Skins and The Fades before this, but it was seeing him in this episode - specifically his defiant Hot Shot speech in which he threatens to cut his throat unless he gets to "rage against the machine" - that convinced Jordan Peele to cast Kaluuya in his critically acclaimed 2017 film Get Out. That Bing himself eventually sells out, is yet another example of how dark and cynical the vision of Black Mirror is.

2.  Shut It! The Music of The Sweeney (Sanctuary Records, 2001)

My wife I and I spent the previous month binge-watching all 53 episodes of The Sweeney (1975-1978) on Britbox and loved its dated, politically incorrect vibe and cockney rhyming slang - the series title itself comes from cockney rhyming slang for the Flying Squad ("Sweeney Todd/Flying Squad"), which was the London Met's Robbery & Violent Crime division. The clothes and hairstyles are hideous and future Inspector Morse star John Thaw looks like he's 50, even though he's only 32 in Season 1! Thaw played Jack Regan and his sidekick was future New Tricks star Dennis Waterman as George Carter, whose sideburns clearly mark him as a Slade fan. The chemistry and witty repartee between John Thaw and Dennis Waterman is amazing and Thaw's unhinged Jack Regan trumps his later incarnation as the erudite Morse in every way. As a DVD Savant critic described the series: "Some points of reference for those who still haven't a clue what the series was about? If you could imagine teaming Bobby Crocker with Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson, giving them both a couple of extra lessons in Harry Callahan style insubordination/attitude and a spoonful of the kind of political incorrectness that featured in most 70s cop/action features, before flying them out to investigate the events that unfolded in Mike Hodges's Get Carter....you'd be almost on the right track." Or as a book about the series was titled, it's all about Fags, Slags, Blags & Jags.




And while The Sweeney may easily be the most political incorrect mainstream crime series we've ever seen, it is also arguably the greatest UK cop series of all time - and a big part of that is its superb soundtrack. So, to fill the void left after watching the final episode, we moved on to listening to The Sweeney. And our lobes are nicked and we can't quit! Named after Jack Regan's infamous expletive, Shut It! is the first release to commemorate music from the groundbreaking ITV series and includes Harry South's memorable opening and closing themes and Dennis King's equally timeless pilot movie theme, along with funky incidental music from various music libraries, some of which was written especially for the series. But even better than the music are the sound bites taken from various episodes that begin and end most of the 26 tracks, like this typical Regan rant: "I hate this bastard place, it's a bloody holiday camp for thieves and weirdos, all the rubbish. You nail a villain and some ponced up pin stripe Hampstead barrister screws it all up like an old fag packet and pops off for a game of squash and a glass of Madeira. He's taking home 30 grand a year and we can just about afford 10 days in Eastbourne and a second hand car. Nah, it's all bloody wrong, my son." Pure poetry, my son, like a Brit update of Jack Webb's Dragnet soliloquys from across the pond! Now off you go, on your bike, and go buy this platter with gobs of chatter! (To hear even more background music, click on this link: The Sweeney Background Music)

3. Love Sculpture, "Sabre Dance," from Classical Gassers (Ace Records, 2016)





This revved-up take on Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" from Gayaneh Ballet became a Top 5 hit in 1968 for the Cardiff-based blues-rockers - led by guitarist Dave Edmunds, with bassist John David and drummer Rob "Congo" Jones - thanks to catching the ear of DJ fan John Peel. If you ever had any doubt about Edmunds' guitar wizardry, give this one a listen. Classical makeovers were a thing at the time (thanks, Keith Emerson!), and Love Sculpture carried on with the gimmick on their second LP, Forms and Feelings (1970), covering Bizet's "Farandole" and Holst's "Mars" (from The Planets).

4. Les Lionceaux, "SLC Jerk," from Cyclone! Gallic Guitars A-Go-Go 1962-1966 (Ace Records, 2019)





OK, let's get this out of the way: The French CAN parlez le rock 'n' roll, as evidenced throughout this fun Ace Records compilation! Though mainly a vocal group, including many Beatles covers, this raw fuzzed-up rocker finds the Reims-based group sounding like Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. The French radio show Salut Les Copains featured the Jack Burns composition as its theme song 1965-1966. Les Lionceaux later backed up Memphis Slim and Johnny Halliday before disbanding in 1967.

5. Jon Savage's 1968: The Year the World Burned (Ace Records, 2018).

This double-CD compilation is arguably the best of Jon Savage's comprehensive '60s year-in-review music series for London's Ace Records (for which his earlobes gratefully thank pirate radio), from Martha & the Vandella's Motown opener "Honey Chile" all the way 47 tracks later to the closer, featuring the MC5 anticipating the end of one era and the coming of another with the punk's-a-comin' clarion call, "Kick Out the Jams" (actually an early preview pressing version given away at their raucous Fillmore East show of December 26, 1968 - some of the 500 limited copies were thrown at the group during a stage-storming riot!). Standouts tracks include The First Edition's  fuzz-toned psychedelic ("I tripped on a cloud and fell eight miles high") #5 hit "Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In" (back when Kenny Rogers was cool - no really, it's true!)...




...The Pretty Thing's even better Mellotron- and sitar-flavored psych-popper "Talkin' Bout the Good Times," The Move's poppy "Omnibus," The Creation's Mod drone "How Does It Feel To Feel,"  Apple Records darlings The Grapefruit's baroque popper "Dear Delilah," Mason William's "Classical Gas" (I still remember hearing this on The Smothers Brothers Hour!), Kak's psychedelic weather report "Rain," the Ceyleib People's (LA music vet Mike Deasy backed by an all-star band including the Wrecking Crew's Larry Knechtel, Jim Gordon and Ry Cooder) raga-rock oddity "Changes (Tygstl)," The French Fries' "Danse a la Musique" (a Gallic version of Sly & The Family Stone's "Dance To the Music"!), and Lothar and the Hand People's Devo-esque update of Manfred Mann's '66 musical machination, "Machines"...




The compilation's subtitle title refers to disc 2's opener, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire," which, over 50 years later still holds up, as Savage astutely observes, as "an apocalyptic record for inflammatory times." More than the Stones' "Street Fighting Man" or The Beatle's "Revolution," he adds, "'Fire' is THE sound of 1968, the year the world burned."

6. Soul of a Nation: Jazz Is the Teacher, Funk Is the Preacher (Soul Jazz Records)

Another fine release from Soul Jazz Records, this collection compiles samples of "radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap in the era of Black Power" circa 1969-1975. The vibe is equal parts self-respect, righteousness and anger, not surprising given the background; in the space of just a few years, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated, John Coltrane had died, the Vietnam War was raging and people were rioting in the streets. It's all captured here in the diverse soundtracks accompanying these tracks by artists including Art Ensemble of Chicago, Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron, Don Cherry, and Gary Bartz and Nu Troop.

Highlights include the Art Ensemble of Chicago's opening "Theme De Yoyo," featuring Fontello Bass ("Rescue Me") spouting Noreen Beasley's surreal lyrics ("Your head is like a yo-yo, your neck is like the string/Your body's like a camebert oozing from its skin") over an irresistable funk-avant-jazz groove, courtesy of saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell combined with trumpter Lester Bowie, drummer Don Moye and bassist Malachi Favors; Gil Scott-Heron channeling The Last Poets and Langston Hughes in his sarcastic take on America's Space Program, "Whitey On the Moon"; and poet Sarah Webster Fabio's "boss soul" poetic workout, "Work It Out" (detailing "what it is to be Black in this time and space," and advising "Tighten Up, Hully Gully awhile/Funky Chicken and Shotgun, chile")












7. A THOUSAND CUTS: THE BIZARRE UNDERGROUND WORLD OF COLLECTORS AND DEALERS WHO SAVED THE MOVIES by Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph (University of Mississippi Press, 2016).

Essential reading for all hoarders (and I regrettably count myself as one!) and film lovers (ditto!). Unfortunately, it's also a book about the death of film - not movies, which continue to propulgate digitally, but film. This "candid exploration of one of America's strangest and most quickly vanishing subcultures" - that homogenous community of middle-aged, middle-class, single white guys who collect 16mm and 35mm film prints - details the obsessions of the colorful individuals (including co-author Jeff Joseph - busted by the FBI in 1975 and sent to jail for film piracy - Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson, the late great Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video, and Al Beardsley, perhaps best known as O. J. Simpson's memorabilia dealer who was involved in O.J.'s infamous and ill-fated Las Vegas arrest). Why do people hoard film prints (or videos, DVDS, books, for that matter)? Many make the argument that they're preservationists, buying prints as a window into a distant past. "Movies are like a time machine," says Hillary Hess, the lone female collector. "You're seeing the preservation of a time and people who no longer exist, or no longer exist in that way." Film's very DNA is subject to decay, thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, yet another example that nothing lasts forever. The title comes from a quote uttered by Mickey McKay, a New York City union projectionist lamenting the death of his livelihood due to the digital technology: "That was horrible, going digital. It's death by a thousand cuts."

8. The Beatoes, "Mad Dog 20/20," live from The Scott and Gary Show.

Because Chris Dennstaedt passed away in December 2019 and my wife Amy and I recently attended a memorial service for him in his adopted home of Philadelphia, here's a remembrance of arguably his greatest tune (along with "I'm Too Ugly for MTV") from New York's cult public access program, The Scott and Gary Show. Chris was a self-effacing musical genius who gave us many great songs in many great bands (Beatoes, Casio Cowboys, Poverty & Spit). Thankfully, he left a musical legacy and memories his friends will never forget. He wasn't supposed to live this long, so we were lucky to have him as long as we did. Still, you get greedy when someone special gives you so much over the years.




9. Manchester: A City United In Music (Ace Records, 2019)

All the usual suspects, the Mancunian Candidates if you will, are on display here  - roll call, please!: The Hollies, Stone Roses, Herman's Hermits, 10cc, Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, Oasis, Buzzcocks - in this two-CD compilation spanning 55 years and 45 songs (and great liner notes) to support Manchester's claim to be Britain's second (if not first) musical city. But it's the fringe players popping up along the edges of the punk, pious and pure baggy beats that put the bomp in this comp for me, namely the primal punk swagger of the Salford Jets ("Who You Looking At?" - "Who you looking at? It'd better not be me!"), the sad sack twee-romanticism of Jilted John ("Going Steady"), the punk poetics of John Cooper Clarke with the Curious Yellows ("Innocence"), and the "pure pop for record store people" of The Freshies ("I'm In Love With the Girl On the Manchester Virgin Megastore Check-out Desk"), the latter's single providing the album's cover photo, which refers to the ever-picky BBC forcing them to change the shout-out from "Virgin Megastore" to "a Certain Manchester Megastore" in order to get airplay because they claimed it was free advertising, even though they were OK with singer Chris Sievey (later to become the musical comedy character "Frank Sidebottom," as portrayed by Michael Fassbender in the 2014 film Frank) name-checking every record label in existence in the final verse. In the bins, you may meet the best people, but at the point of purchase is where you hand over your heart: "She takes money/She gives change/She sells records/And that's special." Thankfully, this is the original recording, BBC be damned! All the evidence is here for Manchester being Music City UK. This case is closed!

The Freshies, "I'm In Love (Etc.)":


Salford Jets, "Who You Looking At":



10. Mute Records: A Visual History, From 1978-Forever, by Daniel Miller and Terry Burrows (Thames & Hudson, 2017).

Mute was the one-man indie created by Daniel Miller to release, as The Normal, his pioneering DIY debut single "Warm Leatherette/T.V.O.D" (MUTE 001, 1978) - one of my most prized possessions! - eventually going on to be one of the most influential electronic-oriented indie labels, with artists ranging from Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode (whose first two singles put Mute on the commercial map) to Moby, Goldfrapp and both Nick Cave's The Birthday Party and his Bad Seeds. One of my favorite Mute singles was actually a re-licensing of "Fred vom Jupiter" - a Kosmonaut beloved by all Earth girls - by Die Doraus & Die Marinas (actually teenage prodigy Andreas Dorau backed by some of his female high school classmates), that in its innocent, kitschy simplicity reminded me of Gong leader Daevid Allen's "Zero the Hero" musical mythology.

As a J. G. Ballard devotee, I naturally loved that his controversial novel Crash inspired "Warm Leatherette," but it was the even more Ballardian vision of technology run amok, "T.V.O.D." ("I don't need a TV screen/I just stick the aerial into my skin/And let the signal run through my veins"), that really captivated me. This visual history has great artwork, as well as details about the making of the label's extensive back catalog, like Miller recalling that he printed the address of his mom's house in Decoy Avenue, in northwest London, on all of the early Mute releases. "For years afterward, my mum had Depeche Mode fans turning up on her doorstep. She loved it!"