David Bowie has been dead for 7 years, but people are still desperate for any sliver of new information about him and his work; which is a bit weird given how much he liked to talk. So, if you are desperate for a couple of previous never-before-seen footage, and a bunch of bits you possibly forgot you have already seen, then this estate-approved might be for you. Or it could just be a nice trip down a rather clean memory lane.
Continue reading
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I finally got around to watching this “must see classic” of trash/psychotronic culture. Obviously, having read about it in a thousand cult movie guides, I was expecting the constant presence of sex and violence that is Tura Satana and the satirical sleaze of Russ Meyer’s oeuvre, of which this film delivers in spades. But I wasn’t prepared for what else was lurking under the tight top of this juggernaut of a cinematic experience. Continue reading
Jack Perez is hardly a household name and MTV Studios is hardly a benchmark in quality entertainment, so to find out that they got together and made a Straight-To-TV ironic-comedy monster movie in the mid-2Ks is to fill your heart with low expectations. That the trailer is heavily focused on cameos by Carmen Electra and Adam West, and stars some generic, moody-heartthrob bloke you’ve never heard of is to possibly fill you with more inertia. But at Trash or Treasure we make a giant-bee line for that kind of thing, and this film reminds us why. Continue reading
According to Dave Grohl, this movie happened because whilst recording the Foo Fighter’s tenth album he had an idea to do a very cheap slasher video about the band and the studio, like a little youtube home movie, and then suddenly there were millions of dollars in production money and John Carpenter doing the soundtrack. I’ve got no way of knowing if it’s true or marketing hype, but I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot in his world and it probably explains why this film exists. It also explains why it can only exist because the Foo Fighters are in it, and why this ends up being “A Hard Days Night” done by Hooper and Craven.
Continue reading
Pitching itself as “an apocalyptic fairy fail”, and featuring the praise of both Llyod Kaufman (head of Troma Studios and psychotronic cinema royalty) and Richard Elfman (brother of Danny), I had never heard of this film until my father-in-law dropped it off as one of his £1 charity shop finds. Whilst the ridiculous cover drew me in, I was also interested by it being a “Von Piglet Sisters” movie. I wanted to see what director/producer Sue Corcoran and writer Angie Louise could come up with, as female created films are still less uncommon in Bargain Bin genre flicks, so sat down in anticipation and wondered “how crazy could this be?”
Continue reading
Rock and Roll and horror movies have always been connected at the swaggering hip. From the ’50s onward they have shared an undying bond of heightened emotions, juvenile daydreaming, cheap production values, the mystique of delinquency, and high tempo drama. So, getting Guitar Wolf, arguably the finest garage rock bands to have come out of the 80’s Tokyo punk scene, and putting them in a zombie movie is a bit of a no-brainer. That the movie is this fast, chaotic, and unwilling to slow down for anyone just makes it even more perfect. That Takeuchi Tetsuro, a prominent music video director, directed this 1999 psychotronic rock-&-roll fable is just the cherry on top of the Molo
Continue reading
There are some films where you just know the producer hammered two random things together in the hopes that the result would be entertaining. Snakes and planes, sharks and tornadoes, Nazis and any excuse to see them brutalised. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it doesn’t work on a level that just fills you with awe at the majestic beauty of how misshapen and proud the final creation is. There is no way you can convince me that the people behind “Beach Girls And The Monster” knew what they were doing, on any level, as no one could ever intentionally put together such an epic piece of ridiculousness. They just went “people like Beach Girls and Monsters… now go and write that script”.
Continue reading
Because Todd Philips is in the news (and in my spare time I’m a screaming muso and punk aficionado) we’re looking at a documentary that is his earliest work. Shot in 1993, Hated follows around notorious shock-rocker/dangerous lunatic GG Allin as he lives out his rock-and-roll nightmare. Whilst GG had some reputation on the US punk scene, this 53 minute film sent him to notoriety and onto many “most degenerate person in music history” listicles. As for Todd Philips, it might show a lifelong appreciation of performance dickheads and happens to be the highest grossing student film of all time.
Continue reading
18
When people describe a film as having “a singular vision”, they normally mean something like the perfection of The Godfather, the scale of Heaven’s Gate, or the symbolism of 2001: A Space Oddity. They normally don’t mean “so bugnuts crazy, that it’s the only example of its genre ever likely to exist”, but Lance Mungia’s 1998 independent work Six String Samurai can only be described as such, because if there exists another post-apocalyptic samurai rock ‘n’ roll road movie homage of the book the Wizard of Oz, then I sure as hell don’t know about it – and trust me, I’ve looked!. Having seen it, you’ll understand why it’s a both a pity and a grace that this is the case, because it does what it sets out to do with so much style and swagger, and you’ll be convinced that no other attempt could ever get it so right.
Continue reading
Trash or Treasure 