More On Movies... the return part V

The House That Vanished (1973)

British giallo directed by Jose Larraz. It's all about the stunning Andrea Allan's hair and well she gets her tits out too. Dilapidated mansions, black gloves, shine-y knives, masks, murder, boobs, sleazy photography, dark rooms, gloomy weather, fog, scrap car yards, shonky dudes, foxy ladies, incest, rape, birds, pet monkeys, the 70s, 70s furniture, 70s cars, 70s fashion, 70s England, 70s hair, 70s busters... 

Hell Or High Water (2016)

Good lil' low-key contemporary noir-western/crime drama. Good. Written by Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone fame. 

Somewhere In The Night (1946)

Paranoid amnesia noir. If Joe Mankiewicz had removed half an hour of fat from his flick it would be an all time top 10 of Film Noir instead of the underrated flabby coulda-been a masterpiece that it is. The captivating Nancy Guild shines here yet she was only in a handful of movies. 

Call Northside 777 (1948)  

Tedious ripped from the headlines crime noir... just who fucking cares?

1984 (1984)

Welcome to 2024. Your nightmare was foretold many years earlier. The drab omnipresence of the globalist unaparty is here. When are the thought police catching you.

California Split (1974)

Peak Bob Altman. Peak Elliot Gould. Peak George Segal. Peak 70s. Peak America... even the seedy underbelly was better back then. Peak film-making. 

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The omnipresent Bond fans are so insufferable it's hard to care one iota about their beloved slice of pop culture but this is a bit of fun if you're in the right mood. Most notable for Barbara Bach's charms and the awesome submarine car. Roger Moore is best Bond, the only Bond really.

Carry On Abroad (1972)

The Carry On movies had been repeated on Aussie telly ad nauseam since I was born then to my surprise Morrissey did an article, in the pages of NME during the 80s, on his love for these movies. I've never had the appetite to investigate wether his point of view was valid or not until until now. 

I could not believe how much I enjoyed Carry On Abroad. Much to my amazement there were some hilarious jokes amongst the lame ones. The ensemble cast and their acting chops is what is really impressive here. Obviously Kenneth Williams is obviously the star, I mean it's obvious but actually they're all stars. 

Carry On Screaming (1966)

This one's all about the foxy Fenella Fielding, she was a goth icon 10 years before Siouxsie. Also stars handsome Harry Corbett as Fielding's love interest. Kenneth Williams as the mad scientist is outstanding. This is a Hammer horror parody with some pretty weird bits, I mean kidnapping young pretty ladies and turning them into mannequins to sell to department stores isn't your usual movie plot line. Probably the best atypical Carry On movie.

 

Carry On Henry (1971)

Sid James as Henry VIII who wont shag his new missus Marie Of Normandy (Joan Sims) because she's got bad breath, let the ribald shenanigans begin. Kenneth Williams plays Thomas Cromwell. It's historic.

Carry On Loving (1970)

A dating agency is run by Sid, Hattie and a room sized computer. Let the romantic misadventures begin. 

Carry On Doctor (1967)

I found this one just tedious... quite unbearable really. I mean Talbot Rothwell wrote 20 scripts in 10 years or something so.... Still the mismatched romance scenes with Kenneth Williams as Dr Tinkle and Hattie Jaques as Matron are brilliant and iconic!

Carry On Camping (1969)

The Carry On movies were way more about sexual repression than anything else although spoiler alert Sid gets his end away at the end of Camping but with his actual girlfriend Joan Sims and not Babs who he'd been ogling for the second half the movie. Also features a scene with a rather delightful disdain for hippies at the end with Kenneth & Hattie spraying a field of hippies with disinfectant - punk! 

The Faculty (1998)

Surprising monster movie from the 90s. I missed this Invasion Of The Body Snatchers meets The Breakfast Club meets The Thing mash-up at the time. Usher is in it. The Faculty though is most notable for possibly the worst haircut on a lead actor in film history on this dude named Josh Hartnett, absolutely shocking, a crime against humanity.

The First Omen (2024)

Spectacularly put together sound and vision experience like a good music video but a pretty daft, incoherent and surprisingly un-horrifying story. Abortion subtext: Nobody cares.

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Managed to avoid seeing this my whole life until now despite it always popping up in books on cult movies. I guess I always thought this kinda shit was for dorks. There are some funny moments like when Conan chucks a devil woman into the fire and when he punches a camel but is that enough though...

Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter & Alan Howarth

tune... the long version no less... ominous... 

Alan Howarth released these original unedited long versions on a homemade 2cd back in the 00s via his website just prior to the synthwave kids blowing up with their wholesale appropriation of the Carpenter/Howarth aesthetic.

Now it's the soundtrack of our overlords ordering the suppression of ordinary Aussie citizens into legislation via the misinformation bill.

You are a pleb. You are a deplorable. Your views shall not be heard or thunk, in fact we a going to criminalize them. There is only one viewpoint, the state sanctioned one. No more parody. No more dissent. No more memes. No more thinking for yourself. Your fun and freedom is over and it's about time!

The gloomy Prince Of Darkness theme was also used to great effect in the Adam Curtis' documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (2004)

NRBQ - Ridin' in My Car

[1977]

The greatest golden oldie that wasn't even a hit. 

Cars and girls: You really can't beat it as a pop song theme/concept/aim. This is a vibe but I feel like it's a lost vibe and it crushes my soul that we all aren't striving to be living this romantic carefree feeling on a daily basis in 2024.

Then when you actually have a think about the lyrics its really kinda sad and not particularly care free. This dude's spent a year and a day thinking about a girl he hardly even had a romance with. She's all he can think about while he's in his car... yet there's a romantic innocence to it all and it seems a bit like he enjoys ridin' in his car thinking about this girl and a love that could have been. Also he seems to really like riding in his car.  

Anyway what a bittersweet tune. It's pop perfection innit.

...can't forget you while I'm ridin' in my car... 

...best outro ever.

Nut-E-1 - Underwater Fireworks

Nut-E-1 - Underwater Fireworks (1993)

A frantic Amen smasher with supreme ghostly eeriness followed by otherworldly change up at 3.11. An industrial dub bass line, philosophical sci-fi dialogue and cracking choppage until its all engulfed into the pitch darkness. Atmosphere provided by two Jean-Michel Jarre samples.

Peak darkside jungle.

The Foot Soldier - Give It to Me Baby

The Foot Soldier - Give It to Me Baby (1993)

Prime uncanny darkside whilst still retaining all the vitality of hardcore. Frantic, hallucinatory darkened delirium... utterly unique. 

The best.

Chimeira - Deeper Life

Chimeira - Deeper Life (Northern Connexion Remix) - (1994)

Classic 94 jungle bizniz (....er sorry but I couldn't help it). Top Amen choppage with added mental pitch-shifted drummage, beautiful bass booms and spectacular time-stretched diva. 

 

Chimeira - I've Got What You Need (1994)

The flip was minimal, meticulous and moody. Rimshot choppage, sneaky skedaddle snares, soothing sub bass plus excellent backwards bits. Total atmosphere without resorting to a long note for five minutes.  

Colon

"No one's heard anything like this before!

They would rather DIE than compromise!

Everything you know is wrong because Colon are here"

Redlights · Salem

Frost - Salem (2009)

Now for some more rumbling bass. This time from the noise-y bass drones and synth sludge of Salem. For a couple of minutes in 08/09 Salem were the most exciting new group on the planet. Frost is still infectious with its occult drones, electro surges, delirious trap beats, insane low end and windy ghost vocals.

Redlights - Salem (2008/2010) 

Even if the hipster faux sordid degeneracy image of the group was way too retarded for you it was impossible to deny a pop tune like Redlights. When I say pop tune, I mean a droning hypnagogic haze of a goth-shoegaze-trap anthem. All of the hypnotic ethereal incantations, grinding bass waves and maximum haunted synth sludge.

 

King Night (2010)

Drum machine rattling trap beats, a distorted haunted choir in a cyclonic squall, dense layers of menacing sombre synths and blasts of blurry in the red bass. King Night is an audacious apocalyptic cathedral of woozy sound.    

Byetone - Plastic Star

Byetone - Plastic Star (2008)

Now for more bass rumble in a more stripped down elemental electronic style. Plastic Star is phenomenal brutal minimal electro techno-rock. Maximum impact from seemingly minimal input. The children of Pan Sonic, why wasn't there a thousand more...

Extraordinary track really.

Music's Hypnotising · PFM/Raw Silk/Psychotropic/DJ Massive/4hero

Hypnotizing - PFM [1995]

I've been playing these jungle/dnb tunes to test out the capacity of these new speakers I got. Having proper bass in my ears seems so deluxe and extravagant in this day and age of not having great quality or beautiful things anymore from cars to shoes to clothes to music to movies to journalism to all the ugly new houses, streets, towns and suburbs and the ugly fuckin' wind/solar farms. Ugly lack of style and quality disguised as refinement. It's just cheap, low expectations, demoralising. Everything has had its bar lowered due to the bottom line and is just not as good as it should and used to be. The demise is here and no-one's even trying to elevate to a higher level. It's like they can't even imagine it so it's just pound shop world. So these speakers which aren't even high end posh have given me some respite amongst the infinite greyness.

Here's another track and I know it's just not hardcore anymore and the jungle is heading into the dnb but the luxurious atmosphere here is undeniably soothing & sweet along with the awesome deep sub bass and good choppage. 

The "Music's Hypnotising" vocal sample was so ubiquitous by this stage it was a cliche in dance tunes, having already been used in many a house, freestyle, garage, bleep and breakbeat hardcore classic from the ultra underground to the chart-busting mainstream. Actually I think it had already been used in a jungle/dnb, maybe 4Hero, tune so PFM wasn't even the first to use it in this new paradigm.

Raw Silk - Do It To The Music (1982)

Speaking of luxurious, this is where the vocal snippet "Music's Hypnotising" comes from. An impeccable slice of early 80s funky post-disco. Peak boogie. 

Psychotropic - Only For The Headstrong (1990) 

The best use of the Raw Silk Music's Hypnotising sample in my book. Is it house, bleep or early hardcore or an intersection thereof. This is something else whatever it is. Dreamy, hypnotic yet real rough, barely functioning. Absolutely fascinating artefact. Hang on! Somebody in the comments on discogs nails it: Tranquil Hardcore.

DJ Massive - Hypnotiser (For The Ladies) (1993)

More music's hypnotising samples. The hardcore rave aesthetic going into 93 seems a bit late but the insanity here is infectious. Sirens, crazy beats, bleeps, some kind of chicken dance and check out that deep torpedoing sub bass. 

4hero - People Always Criticise Us (1994)

Ok this has become way too trainspotter-y! So actually 4Hero sample the line before Music's Hypnotising where it apparently says No time for criticising but it's in the same melody as Hypnotising in this remarkable state of the art tune where nothing seems to actually happen. I guess an ambient stillness is achieved. A blank feeling in the air.