URANIUM WILLY’S BULLPEN/SPECIAL NOTICE

I enjoyed uploading and storing stuff at my Rapidshare account and had a a lot of stuff set to go up there and then share here. The issue though of file sharing in any form has gotten pretty nasty here of late and it came to my attention that Google could ban my site and cancel my account for posting links to file sharing services like RS. So, for now those days are over and where you would have seen a link to a Rapidshare file before you will now see this notice:

 

I am very concerned about the recent crack downs on the net with file sharing services and have learned that Google could easily ban my site and cancel my account for providing upload links to places like Rapidshare. Google is now monitoring it sites more closely I read and I do not want my site taken down for providing upload links.  I did not think it was a big deal to do this but it seems like it can be. After the seizure today (2 Feb 2012) by the FBI of data at places like Megaupload I have decided to remove all Rapidshare links from my blog. Very sorry about any inconveniences this may cause. 

I will try to figure out a way to share links but if and when I do it will not be on this site or this Google account, nor even at Blogger. I may set up a WordPress site for something  like this. I actually have a mirror version of The Uranium Cafe at WordPress I did as an experiment and all back RS links are there and active. though you would have to search them out But for now, here at Blogger, I will just get on with blogging -as I am sorely behind on several posts in the draft folder- and not worry too much about it, though I hope all of this mess does not get too out of hand. Living in China I have come to rely on places like Rapidshare for things I would not be able to see or hear otherwise. Lets wait and see.

THE URANIUM CAFE MATINEE/DEVILS OF DARKNESS

He’s a Vampire with a Cult Following.

What Was This Sinister Evil That Robbed the Dead…And Killed the Living?

Devils of Darkness from Bill Courtney on Vimeo.

DEVILS OF DARKNESS

THE URANIUM CAFE NECROFILES/EEGAH/WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET/UNTAMED YOUTH/THE BLACK SCORPION

EEGAH!

1962/Director: Arch Hall Sr./Writers: Bob Wehling, Arch Hall Sr.

Cast: Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, Richard Kiel, Arch Hall Sr., Ray Dennis Steckler

Eegah! Was a vehicle by Arch Hall Sr. that was to help launch his son into acting and singing stardom. The problem was that Arch Hal Jr. could neither sing or act and along with an irritating talking voice he had one of the oddest faces you will ever see. Strangely these features worked in his favor in the 1963 film The Sadist but he was never going to be the next Frankie Avalon or Elvis as his dad may have envisioned. Eegah! (or sometimes just Eegah so you don’t get confused) was produced by Hall Sr.’s Fairway-International Pictures out of Burbank CA and features Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond flick the Spy Who Loved Me) as a caveman who has been living on a diet of sulpheric water that has kept him nearly immortal. He roams the mountains on the outskirts of Palm Springs and one day kidnaps Roxy Miller, one of those 30 something teenagers, who, along with boyfriend Tom Nelson (Hall Jr.) went searching for her father (played by Hall Sr.) in the desert. Her dad was out there to confirm the existence of said caveman and himself wound up it captive. Soon Eegah is being shaved and eating lather and putting some pretty forward mating moves on poor Roxy who keeps trying to distract him by wanting to look at his ‘etchings’. The films features a then unknown (and basically still unknown) Ray Dennis Steckler –who also worked as the cameraman- in a small part towards the end of the film. Steckler would later do Wild Guitar for Hall Sr. and have his The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Distributed by Hall Sr.’s Fairway-International. Hall Sr. just had that God-given gift for spotting young talent I guess.

WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET

1966/Director: Arthur C. Pierce/Writer: Arthur C. Pierce

Cast: Wendell Corey, Keith Larsen, John Agar, Irene Tsu

Directed by Arthur C. Pierce (Mutiny in Outer Space) and starring John Agar (the same year he did Larry Buchanan’s Zontar, the Thing from Venus) and Wendell Corey (Rear Window, Astro-Zombies), Women of the Prehistoric Planet is supposed to be, I have read, an attempt to deal with civil rights issues in the mid-sixties. Luckliy the film makers did not cast black actors as the ‘prehistoric’ inhabitants of a lost planet –that winds up being named Earth at the film’s end by the astronauts…ooohhh, what a clever twist that was- and instead decided to cast Asians as the Centaurians. Incredibly these alien Asians often talk in short little wise proverbs the way Asian always did in old films. The tag line – “It’s the battle of the sexes as savage planet women attack female space invaders!” is infamously misleading as nothing of the sort ever happens. The words “women of…” were added to the original title of The Prehistoric Planet by producer Jack Broder and some scenes of bathing native women were added –though the scenes are available only in the hard to find foreign release of the film and in the American trailer- and no combating prehistoric women are to be found. We do get see iguanas fried by ray guns and listen to long winded 60’s sci-fi style explanations about the effects of traveling at the speed of light but not one prehistoric woman cat fight. Wendell Corey slurs and mumbles his sentences and Agar is looking more and more uncomfortable in his films roles. Pretty hokey fun.

UNTAMED YOUTH

1957/Director: Howard W. Koch/Writers: John C. Higgins, Stephen Longstreet

Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson, John Russell

Most of the ‘great’ juvenile delinquent films were put out by the smaller independent studios like AIP and Allied Artists but big guys Warner Bros. put out the JD/rock-n-roll hybrid film Untamed Youth which seems to be little more than a showcase for Mamie Van Doren’s various tight, bouncy knit sweaters. The film looks and feels like an AIP production and features a cast of familiar faces to the JD films of the time, which while tame by today’s wanton standards were often to difficult to distribute with their themes of unwanted pregnancies, reefer use and good boys gone bad. The ‘kids’ in this film are really bad at all and are hauled off to a cotton farm top do cheap labor for the farm’s corrupt owner Russ Tropp (John Russell). Cotton picking gets boring and so sometimes Eddie Cochran starts playing air guitar and doing a poor man’s Elvis while the gang snaps their fingers and shimmy their hips. At night they all mill around the barracks and watch girl with satrs in eyes Penny Lowe (Van Doren) slink around like a stripper and sing les Baxter penned rock tunes that all sound like a Carl Perkins’ rock-a-billy tune. The old looking teens are stereotypes from every teenager film from the time and there is not much real action outside Van Doren’s cheesy song numbers. For JD fans only.

THE BLACK SCORPION

1957/Director: Edward Ludwig/Writers: David Duncan, Robert Blees

Cast: Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas

One of my favorite manly heroes Richard Denning (Creature from the Black Lagoon) manages to romance sultry Mara Corday (The Giant Claw) while, at the same time, finding time to save Mexico from giant scorpions unleashed from the earth’s depth by a volcanic eruption. The scorpions were designed by Willis O’Brian and many of the other monster in the film were ‘left-overs’ from unused scenes from the original King Kong. The greatest menace in the film is not the hungry scorpions (who all have straight white teeth!) or the other subterranean creatures but the little brat Juanito (Mario Navarro) who manages to screw up every imaginable situation trying to be a ‘big man’ and help out. At times it looks like Hank Scott (Denning) wants to toss the kid in a pit somewhere but the pain in the ass is Teresa’s (Corday) son and he needs to put up a decent front if he is goIng to get anywhere with her later. O’Brian’s work partner Pete Peterson did most of the actual animation and do to budget constraints much it was actually filmed by he and O’Brian in Peterson’s Encino, CA garage. The budget also prevented actual stop action animation from being used in many crucial scenes and rather you have the poorly double-exposed looking traveling mattes –an old process that can work well and is now basically called blue screen- that don’t look much better than the mutant lobster in Teenagers from Outerspace. Worth a viewing just for the times the scorpions actually look real and menacing.

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF HEIDI SAHA/WARREN MAGAZINES/RAPIDSHARE LINK

In this post I try to briefly explore the fallacious near urban legend surrounding one of the most obscure of all Warren Magazines, An Illustrated History of Heidi Saha. Heidi was the daughter of science fiction editor Art Saha who was also pals with Forrest J. Ackerman. She accompanied Forry to the 6th annual Comic Art Convention in 1973 dressed in Vampirella garb and took home a couple prizes for her attire. Later a one run magazine tribute to the 14 year old Heidi was published and a bit of a stir was caused. I remember Heidi Saha when I was a kid and collecting Warren magazines and to this day I cannot believe some of the wild speculations about Forry’s intentions in publishing the magazine. I will only believe he was a good man and the magazine was put out in more innocent times. There are no nude pictures of Heidi in the magazine unless you count the one where she is a baby. The picture caption on page two that says “Looking at Heidi can be Hobbit forming” is pretty bizarre by modern standards and may be a bit in bad taste as are some of the images of her in jungle garb. But the idea that Forrest J. Ackerman was some sort of pedophile grooming his victim is something I have a hard time accepting.

The book was only printed in one run of 500 copies and has even become something of a legend among Warren collectors. I managed to find jpeg copies of the entire magazine online and saved them. together into a folder. I do not really want to upload all 36 images here and so I made a PDF file of the magazine. As far as I know this may be the only full PDF version online but I am not sure I have read blog posts that refers  to a digital copy, but I can not find a full copy in PDF or CBR format and so made this one up myself. The quality is off and on but you are not going to find this in better shape I think and if you do please send me the link.

I uploaded the PDF and CBR (which ever you prefer) to my Rapidshare account here:

>RAPIDSHARE LINK TO HEIDI SAHA PDF

>RAPIDSHARE LINK TO HEIDI SAHA CBR

PHILIP GLASS/NORTH STAR/RAPIDSHARE LINK

North Star was composed as a soundtrack for a film called Mark Di Suvero, Sculptor by Francois de Menil. I have never seen  it but would like to if I get the chance. What is important about this album in my personal listening history is that it was the first real exposure to minimalist music I had outside Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and Discreet Music. Glass was an established composer and performer by the time I picked up the album at a little record store in San Antonio Texas in the mid 80’s but I had never heard of him. I picked up the album simply because it was on the Virgin label (back when the label design was by Roger Dean) and I had long identified Virgin Records with performers like Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield, both whom I liked at that time (and still do)very much.

I would later explore much of Glass’ other works and currently am listening to Music in 12 Parts and it is haunting and incredible. A lot of what he does, of course, tends to sound the same after a few records and yet I seem to have developed a strange liking for it. But the music on North Star is slightly outside what Glass normally does in that it is on the heavy side as far as the performance goes. The only other album I have ever heard that may remotely compare would be one called Organ Works, released much later than North Star which came out in 1977. The instruments on the piece were common equipment for 70’s rock and prog bands. They include Farfisa, Hammond and Yamaha organs, Fender Rhodes piano, as well as an ARP synthesizer. There are some curious vocal pieces on the album as well, one song being nothing but a choir doing a Glassesque minimalist chant that is nothing short of dizzying.

The two MP3 selections here focus on keyboard performance. The first one Victor’s Lament is an aggressive piece that churns forward with brooding intent while the second selection Age Des Orages is one of those swirling, hypnoptic type things Glass does so well but it is approachable because the song duration is short. In fact all the pieces are about three minutes long and even for people who detest Glass and the whole minimalist thing there may be at least one or two things they can relate to on this once hard to find album that has been recently re-released and added to Glass’ gigantic catalog. Philip Glass is not music for the masses by any stretch but if you like minimalist music like Eno, Fripp (sometimes) or Steve Reich you  should  enjoy Glass’ dabbling here in, essentially, progressive rock music.

The text for this post was taken from a now defunct version of The Uranium Cafe at My Opera. Check that piece of history out here if you want.

Roger Dean’s design for the original Virgin label.

 

VICTOR’S LAMANT

AGE DES ORAGES

THE BLOODTHIRSTY TRILOGY/VAMPIRE DOLL/1970

VAMPIRE DOLL

1970/Director: MichioYamamoto/Writers: Hiroshi Nagano, Ei Ogawa
Cast: Jun Hamamura, Yukiko Kobayashi, Kayo Matsuo, Yôko Minakaze, Atsuo Nakamura

Also Known As: Chi wo sû ningyô: Yûrei yashiki no kyôfu/Bloodsucking Doll/Chi o suu ningyô/Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodsucking Doll/I klironomia tou vrykolaka/The Ghost Mansion’s Horror: A Bloodsucking Doll/The Legacy of Dracula/The Night of the Vampire/The Vampire Doll

I recently got in this batch of films called The Bloodthirsty Trilogy, all from TOHO pictures and directed by Michio Yamamoto and co-written by Ei Ogawa (who wanted his professional name to sound like Edgar, as in Edgar Allen Poe). I don’t gather that the films were actually intended as a trilogy and that was most likely a packaging gimmick, but the films do have some similarity in terms of themes and production that link them together more in terms of appearance and atmosphere than actual storyline.  I am using the title Vampire Doll for the review here though the title of the film appears as Bloodsucking Doll on this, the British release called Legacy of Dracula, or The Bloodthirsty Trilogy. The other films include Lake of Dracula and Evil of Dracula, and those films too have a long list of confusing AKAs. But Vampire Doll is the first of the three films in terms of chronology and, like the other films in the series, what makes it stand out as a movie is the apparent influence on the film’s look and story by the Gothic films of the west, and in particular the successful vampire movies produced by Hammer studios during the late 50’s and through out the 60’s. That is not to say that Vampire Doll and the next two films are remakes or redoing of western vampire films without reference to Japanese horror lore. There is in fact a successful blending of Asian and western horror themes here that, along with the Terence Fisheresque sets, make the Bloodthirsty Trilogy an enduring little collection of movies.

It can be debated, I suppose, whether or not the first film, Vampire Doll, is really even a vampire movie at all. The antagonist, Yuko, is called a vampire by the people seeking her but she has more the elements of a zombie (she is being animated beyond death, we find out later, by hypnotism). She also has the qualities of the vengeful, wrathful spirit one finds in many Asian horror movies, returning to wreck vengeance on people who betrayed her during her life. Important in this type of Asian story is the link between the vengeful spirit and its family surviving family members. And such is the case here with Yuko and her mother and later her father, whose identity is revealed in a perhaps unnecessary plot twist at the film’s end. And believe it or not there is an actual “Vampire Doll” in he film, but I will let you discover that scene for yourself.

The film starts off in classic Gothic horror style with Yuko’s boyfriend, Kazuhiko Sagawa, traveling in a taxi in a stormy downpour to the home of his beloved Yuko. The house, on the inside and out, look more like the House of Usher than something you may find in the Japanese countryside, but that never seems to be an issue with the story’s credibility. The house sets the mood for the film and the viewer can rest assured that they will be in for a spooky ride throughout the film. And for the most part they are. The movie does not disappoint if you are a fan of atmospheric Gothic horror. The story eventually follows the plight of Sagawa’s sister, Keiko, and her boyfriend Hiroshi, as they try to him after he has not been heard from since his trip to visit Yuko. Like Sagawa they soon discover from Yuko’s mother that Yuko has died, killed in a car accident a few weeks before. But of course there seems to be more to the story than her mother lets on about and the pair find excuses to stay around the house long enough be harassed by the hunchbacked handyman and hear and see apparitions of Yuko. I have to be honest, I am not really sure whatever happened to Sagawa now that I think about it. I will assume he was disposed of by the hunchback Genzo, but I can’t recall that ever being made clear, though Genzo does have a knack for violently accosting the male guests, including Sagawa. The appearance of Yuko is an effective mixture of Gothic vampire and Asian ghost, and is something is fairly common in Japanese and Asian horror these days, to the point of being a little trite in fact. But the image of the haunted, madly gazing ghost girl is something ingrained in Asian horror culture and in this film Yuko’s frightful appearance is most effective. Much more so than some of the newer Japanese ghost stories in my opinion, though some of the new stuff is okay too.

The weak point of the film is the ghastly (but not spooky ghastly) score by Riichiro Manabe, who has the dubious distinction of being TOHO’s worst film composer. The opening theme music is not too bad, but the rest of the film’s music is inappropriate and in particular the harpsichord parts. On this point the filmmakers should have let the Gothic mood alone as it sounds more like The Munsters at times than Dracula. But other than that issue –and it is a minor issue really- the film is a nice work and in some people’s view the best of the three films. The next two movies actually try to deal with a Dracula like vampire character and in doing so those stories became a tad bit campy, while Vampire Doll retains enough of the genuine feel of classic Japanese horror as to be a great film all on its own, with its references to British and old American horror classics being marginal at best. Reviews of the other two films in the works, so check back soon. Also noticed there were not many great images for this film online, so I made up a healthy little collection of screen captures for you to enjoy, along with a couple original GIFs as well.

TRAILER FOR VAMPIRE DOLL

THE INCIDENT/1967/MARTIN SHEEN

THE INCIDENT

1967/Director: Larry Peerce/ Writer: Nicholas E. Baehr

Cast: Martin Sheen, Tony Musante, Beau Bridges, Ruby Dee, Jack Gilford, Ed McMahon, Donna Mills, Brock Peters

Written by Nicholas Baehr and Directed by Larry Peerce, 1967’s The Incident is a gritty and disturbing film whose explorations into human cruelty and passivity have lost none of their topical value. I was surprised to find out that Baehr’s screenplay (based on his teleplay Ride with Terror) was never a stage production as the film has all those qualities. Almost all of the action takes place  one setting, that of a New York City subway train. The mixed cast deliver an outstanding ensemble performance. It is shot in b/w (as was his film One Potato, Two Potato, which dealt with interracial relationships in America, and racial issues play a theme in the Incident as well) which lends a documentary style to the movie that adds to its realism more than takes away from it. If you look at the scenes shot of the actual subways stations the camera work is shaky and out of focus at times. This is because the New York Transit Authority refused Peerce and crew permission to shoot location scenes, but in guerilla fashion the scenes were shot by cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld anyway, using hidden cameras, sometimes concealed in bags whose whirling motors drew the attention of subway authorities at times. When the police became overly suspicious Hirschfeld and his clandestine cameramen left the scene and returned later to finish the shots.

Joe Ferrante (played by an edgy and at times over the top Tony Musante in his first screen role   ) and partner in crime Artie Connors (a young Martin Sheen also in his first big screen film role) are a couple punks out looking for kicks. Their idea of kicks is mugging and terrorizing the citizens of late night New York who are unfortunate enough to cross paths with the pair. Joe is pumped up and simply psychopathic. Though it is not implied in the script we take a guess and assume he and Artie may be hopped on some sort of amphetamines. They do share swigs from a bottle of cheap wine or whiskey hidden in a brown paper bag. Artie is more of a follower and seems to do some of the things he does in an attempt to impress or gain approbation from Joe. The pair board a subway car that populated with people, mostly couples with one exception, we are introduced to, along with their personal problems, at the film’s beginning. The passengers are made-up of familiar faces from film of the late 60’s and early 70’s and include Beau Bridges, Jack Gilford, Gary Merrill, Brock Peters, Donna Mills, Ruby Dee and, in a surprisingly convincing role, Ed McMahon of The Tonight Show fame. Each person and couple have serious issues and problems and weaknesses that Joe and Artie, like true predators, home in on and exploit. Of particular note are the issues with:  a man who is the early stages of recovery from alcoholism and is desperate for a second chance in life, a young man struggling with expressing his homosexuality, a couple whose marriage is under strain from raising their child and making ends meet, and a black man who is bitter and angry at the cards he has been dealt in life.

As the film progresses Joe and Artie go from passenger to passenger and basically terrorize them. and egg them on, seeking a confrontation. While some people say that the passengers are collectively passive and back down from the two thugs I do not feel this is entirely true. The alcoholic (played by Gary Merrill) stands up to them as best he can when they torment a passed out bum. But in the end he can physically do nothing against the pair. An elderly women (Thelma Ritter) and her husband (Jack Gilford) refuse to be pushed out by these young and disrespectful punks, and Ritter’s character actually slaps Joe at one point, but in the end they are defenseless and Joe shows self-control in not beating the old pair to a bloody pulp. Ed McMahon’s character, a husband worried about his job and family, refuses to allow Joe to stroke his daughter’s hair and set the scene for the final climatic conflict in the film between Joe and his one true rival, a young soldier with a broken arm from Oklahoma (played by a cherub faced Beau Bridges).

Much can be said about the passivity of the passenger and yet when we put ourselves in their position how can we be sure we would act. Nice to think we would be like the heroic young army soldier from the south who ultimately is the one to stand alone against Joe and Artie, but I am not so sure. There are a couple younger and strong looking characters who could have certainly assisted young Pfc. Felix Teflinger (Bridges), including his timid Army buddy, but they all sit and do nothing when the time comes. If they had all stood up at the film’s end they could have easily taken Joe, knife or no knife. But like a herd of zebra they sit passively and watch while the predators attack what appears to be a weak member of the herd, grateful, that they have been spared. The final scenes where they file out of the subway car one by one is depressing and, unfortunately, too true to life to be comforting. And even more disturbing is the idea that this happened at a time when riding a subway in an American city was probably a hundred times safer than it is nowadays.

CLIP FROM THE INCIDENT