Holiday Gift Guide: Movies, TV, and Music

In this, the gift-giving season of 2019, we find ourselves at a strange technological crossroads. In years past, I have wrapped and given, and received and opened countless CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, you name it. For two generations, we have given each other *a* movie or *an* album we think will mean something to the recipient. But now, suddenly, with the proliferation of streaming services, we can give someone...*all* the movies. Or *all* the albums. It's a huge shift, and one that will continue to play out for many holiday seasons ahead, but this year it creeps into our Gift Guide. What will Gift Guides of Christmases-Yet-To-Come hold? Only Criswell knows for sure. - vk.

Joe:
Disney+

It is the height of consumerism to recommend Disney+. It's the new streaming service on the block and there have been some technical hiccups in the roll out, but I have two small children and there is just so much goodness available and more on the way. From the Pixar movies to Marvel to Star Wars to Disney animated classics to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (I've got small kids) to the wealth of 90's cartoons (Darkwing Duck, we're looking at you) - Disney+ has something for the whole family.

The G:
Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (Criterion Collection Edition)

Did you like Chernobyl? What about Annihilation? Men in Black? Mash those three together and then crank the weirdness factor up to 11 and you’ve kinda sorta got Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of the classic SF novel Roadside Picnic. Not for the faint of heart, and like a lot of European arthouse cinema, it requires a good deal of patience. But the viewer’s patience is duly rewarded in spades.

Vance K:
The Criterion Channel

Filmstruck is gone, and the Criterion Channel has taken its place. This streaming service boasts access to the Criterion Collection library, but there are licensing deals on certain titles that mean they'll either never show up on this platform, or will only be there for a little while. This is familiar to all of us who have watched things disappear from our Netflix lists, so we know the drill. But in addition to bringing film nerds (like me!) the works of Bergman, Kurosawa, Ray, Tarkovsky (see above), and other legends of world cinema, the channel is also doing a great job of curating new and under-appreciated talent. With showcase collections about women filmmakers, LGBTQ+ cinema, various spotlights on specific areas of the world and filmmakers from there, animation, and other specialties, it's a rewarding streaming option on several fronts.

Brian:
Shazam! by David F. Sandberg (director)

It’s easy to be skeptical of the DC comic universe of movies. They’ve had a rough launch. But Shazam! requires none of the backstory of those movies, and it’s easily the most fun. Billy Batson is a teenage orphan who suddenly finds himself with super powers. It’s a stark contrast between the dour Superman we’ve seen recently, and a kid who wasn’t born Superman but needs to learn some of the same lessons. It doesn’t bury you under mountains of comic book history. It gives you a quick supervillain origin, a quick superhero origin, and then lets those two forces collide. If you’ve been disappointed by DC’s previous comic book movie outings, forget about them and give Shazam! a shot. It’s just a fun superhero movie, which is what this universe of films should’ve kicked off with in the first place.

Shazam! is available on most major video media formats, streaming, physical, and otherwise.

1000 Gecs by 100 Gecs

1000 Gecs might break your brain. I know it broke mine the first time I listened to it. Coming in from having listened to Stupid Horse on repeat for it’s ska-influence, I wasn’t sure just what in the hell I was listening to. But the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. I’m not a music critic. I don’t know anything about music, and I have bad taste. But 1000 Gecs sounds different. It sounds fresh and new. It’s a brisk 20-something minutes of the best post-pop I’ve heard in a long time.

1000 Gecs is available on almost all music streaming platforms.

Phoebe:
There Existed an Addiction to Blood by clipping.

For the hip-hop fan, the horror fan, the narrative fan — heck, the Hamilton fan — in your life, may I recommend clipping.'s latest album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. Some folks might be aware of their Hugo-finalist album Splendor & Misery (a narrative story about an AI and a prisoner), but this album shakes things up by going full horrorcore. Each song is a story all in itself, ranging from cannibals to werewolves. That being said, the songs don't get lost in the story and remain tracks ready to break out at the next Halloween party. While the songs definitely have a Halloween flare — perfect for its October release — the atmospheric elements will engage speculative fans all year long.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012.

Microreview [film]: My Name is Julia Ross

A long time coming, but worth the wait

Out of the ashes of the late, lamented FilmStruck streaming service, comes the Criterion Channel. When it launched this month, the Criterion Channel came out of the gate with a showcase of Columbia Film Noir, and one of the films included was 1945's My Name is Julia Ross. Since 1945, the movie hadn't been easy to see. I found out too late that it had been included in a retrospective at one of the art house theaters here in LA about a decade ago, but it never had a home video release of any kind until it was briefly issued in a box-set of backbench noir films issued by Turner Classic Movies in 2011. I missed that one, too. But the retrospectives had the effect of creating a kind of aura around this film   one of the great noir films you couldn't see. It was referenced in DVD commentaries and articles about other, better-known noir films, but was itself hard to put your eyes on.

It certainly didn't help matters that the lead actress, Nina Foch, told me in her 80s that it was one of her favorite roles, even more than the film for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Nina taught for decades at USC, and was an inspirational figure for hundreds of students like me throughout the years. So why couldn't I see her favorite role?!?!

So, thanks, Criterion Channel. Plus, watching this movie in 2019 offers additional joys that it maybe wouldn't have had I caught it at that retrospective all those years ago. Because My Name is Julia Ross is about gaslighting. We get the term "gaslighting" from the 1944 George Cukor movie Gaslight (the most popular rendition of a story that began on the stage in 1939), and I'm here to tell you folks, the term should be "Julia Rossing." I think My Name is Julia Ross is the better movie (produced with a tiny budget and with only a 64-minute running time), and for a number of reasons.

Here's the plot: Julia Ross, an American living in London, answers an ad for a personal assistant for Mrs. Hughes, a wealthy old widow with an adult son, Ralph. Julia gets the job. After Mrs. Hughes sends Julia away with some money for shopping and packing her things, she tells the woman staffing the temp agency that they can close up shop. Like, all the shop. Like, disappear. So what's up? Julia reports for work, and wakes up in an entirely different place, surrounded by Mrs. Hughes, her son, and the servants, who all call her "Marion," Ralph's wife. They tell her she's been ill, and confused, and she never was any "Julia Ross." She's been there at the seaside house, recuperating, for months. So we know the Hughes family is trying to brainwash her, but to what purpose?

What makes this movie so awesome, apart from Nina's performance that really anchors us to Julia and a Gothic-noir atmosphere, is that Julia is always herself, and always fighting. I have a number of issues with Gaslight, from Charles Boyer's performance to the way in which Ingrid Bergman's Paula character is written in a fainting, sort of damsel-in-distress manner. But Julia Ross don't play. I kept worrying that her derpy boyfriend, left behind in London, was going to be maneuvered into saving her, but I needn't have been concerned.

This movie was killer in 1945, and through the machinations of social discourse in 2019, it has additional resonance and a hero we are happy to root for.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for Nina Foch's magnetic performance in the title role; +1 for a kick-ass heroine who isn't here for these rich people's legal problems; +1 for taking the noir out of the gutter and sticking it in a Gothic setting

Penalties: -1 for the 64-minute running time

Cult film Coefficient: 8/10, well worth your time and attention

Posted by Vance K — co-editor and cult film reviewer for nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, Emmy-winning producer, and veteran of two semesters with Nina Foch.

Interview: Matthew Irvine on Carnival of Souls

Matthew Irvine is a film professor, producer, and director. He is also the rights-holder to one of my all-time favorite cult films, Carnival of Souls. The movie was made in 1962 by a team of filmmakers in Kansas who worked together making industrial and educational films for their day-jobs, and decided to make a feature film after director Herk Harvey found an abandoned amusement park in Utah. It had a quiet reputation as a gem of truly independent horror films, but for years, collective wisdom held that the film was in the public domain, so terrible copies of it proliferated. But now there's an unbelievably gorgeous version out from the Criterion Collection that just arrived in stores. I got to talk with Matthew about how he got involved with the movie, and some of the backstory behind how we got here.

NF: What's your connection to Carnival of Souls? What drew you to it?

MI: I got involved in the film a long time ago when I got out of film school. A few people including my manager, thought my MFA Thesis film had a tone to it similar to this old cult film called Carnival of Souls. I had never seen the film until my Thesis film was screened at the Tokyo International Student Film Festival. While there, a few audience members, usually older folks, wanted to talk with me about my film as it gave them the same feelings that this old film did back in the early 1960’s, Carnival of Souls. The funny thing was that the non-Japanese people at the fest didn’t really respond to my film, so I guess you could say I was “big in Japan” for a short time. When I got back to the states I made sure I got a hold of CoS (on VHS I believe) and finally watched it. At the same time that was happening, I was stating to work with Peter Soby, Jr. who was at Shoreline Pictures, I believe. He saw my film and the two of us connected right away. As fate would have it, he was involved in getting a sequel to CoS made. So, my connection all kind of came from that. I wrote what I thought was a damn good and faithful sequel and it eventually landed at Trimark Pictures. Well, at least the concept of doing a sequel did. My understanding was that Trimark got Wes Craven interested in lending his name to the making of a sequel and when that happened, well...it’s a common story of how people get their first entry into the business. My friends Steve Jones and John McNaughton told me that you have one choice on how you enter the film business and that is to either bend over or lay down because either way, you’re gonna get screwed. Being from Chicago though, I didn’t take kindly to that so I pursued obtaining all rights to the film as the Trimark pictures sequel was a one-off. Peter Soby and I hired an attorney to do a chain of title on the film to make sure the film was not in public domain, as many people falsely believe it is. The chain came back totally clean and we went directly to Herk Harvey and John Clifford and offered to purchase the negative and all rights to the film.

NF: At that time, did CoS already have the reputation of being a public domain film?

MI: I made sure it was NOT in public domain before I pursued the rights. The film has been floating around for some time with the belief that it is Public Domain but that is just not the case. We have done cease and desist actions over the years because people think it is in Public Domain. There are still those that could care less whether it is in Public Domain or not, they are going to do what they want with what they have to make a buck. Most every dvd, even the “colorized” version are from crappy prints that are not worth watching, IMHO. Peter and I just expected that there are people that will never be convinced that the film is not in Public Domain. Not everyone thinks that way though. A lot of people have approached us over the years asking if they could screen the film at festivals here and there and we almost always grant the request as long as no money is involved because I like to know the film is still being shown and appreciated. It screened at the Louvre a couple years ago and they contacted me before they included the film in their film retrospective. Of course I said yes. I think Herk would be pretty proud to know that his film screened at the most famous art museum in the world.

NF: Do you know where the public domain assumption came from? How did you go about finding the chain of title and verifying it was still protected?

MI: There was a bankruptcy thing that occurred where the distributor closed shop and it was assumed that CoS was part of their library, which it was not. But Herk and John had real jobs and did not have the time to pursue anything legally until interest in the film was revived in the late 90’s. They then did a director’s cut of the film and re-established copyright ownership on the film and story. The negative was being stored at the Eastman House in New York and all other elements to the film were with Herk and John in Kansas.

Herk Harvey, director and head spook in Carnival of Souls

NF: There are a number of other DVD releases — including at least one colorized one you mentioned — from video distributors that specialize in Public Domain films. When Criterion initially released the film on DVD, were they aware that it was still under copyright protection?

MI: Yes. We made that deal with them originally, but through MPI Media as an intermediary. MPI made an agreement with Peter and myself, and then made a deal with Criterion for a remastered DVD. I provided all the elements for that release and it was done with my full cooperation. Unfortunately I didn’t see a dime from that but I didn’t get involved in CoS to get rich, I got involved because it was a film worth saving and treating with respect and care.

NF: What went into creating this blu-ray release? What was the process like for restoring the film and working with Criterion?

MI: The Academy Archives did the remastering of the negative. And I believe Criterion worked with them on the Blu-Ray. I know the people who did the restoration and they love the film and treated every frame as though it were Citizen Kane.

NF: It's the rare totally independent horror film that rises to the status of curation alongside Bergman and Kurosawa movies. I mean, it's definitely rough around the edges, but the movie seems to sort of rise above. What do you think it is about Carnival of Souls that makes it a standout when so many films of similar pedigree were only at their best when they were fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (RiffTrax has tackled CoS but the movie stands alone - ed)?

MI: I think it was the way it was shot. Herk wanted to make a different film. Different from what most “Hollywood” films were like. I think this helped influence the way it was shot. It really has a weird tone to it. Yes, it is cheesy in spots but it only adds to the overall surreal quality to the movie, in my opinion.

NF: When can we expect Herk Harvey action figures in the Entertainment Earth catalog? Or, what's next for the film?

MI: We have been talking about doing a straight-remake of the movie for some time now. We actually have a couple producers interested. But at this point, I’m like I don’t care to make a schlocky remake for a fast buck; that already happened (Wes Craven allowed his name to be put over the title in a 1999 re-imagining of the movie that should be avoided at all costs. - ed.). If we do a remake it will be something worthy of the original film. Something that is different, weird, creepy, original. Something that would make Herk proud. I don’t have “Fuck You” money but I do have “Fuck You” time. I have been involved in CoS for so long that I won’t do anything with it until the right people come along and want to treat it seriously, like Criterion and the Blu-Ray. We had other offers for a Blu-Ray release but went with Criterion because, they’re like the Cadillac of that particular film market.

Posted by Vance K - cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, musician, and Emmy-winning producer.

Microreview [film]: The Atomic Submarine

The Meat

It pains me to admit that -- despite how much I love the Criterion Collection -- they just don't seem to know what makes a B-movie a cult movie. You can't just trot out any picture that was shot in six days sometime in the 1950s and expect it to be engaging. Sadly, that is the case with The Atomic Submarine. Even sadder, though, is that now I've watched the entire Criterion Monsters and Madmen collection, and I have to report that none of the movies are particularly noteworthy. The Atomic Submarine has the flaws you'd expect on a movie shot in six days (and probably written in even fewer) -- bizarre and nonsensical dialogue, utterly inexplicable character motivations, hundreds of feet of stock film footage, and strange lapses in logic or narrative -- but the biggest problem with the movie itself is the fundamental place that it's coming from.

In the movie, submarines exploring the Arctic Circle are being mysteriously attacked by some type of energy that's sending them down to Davy Jones' locker. The U.S. Navy puts together a crack squad of seamen and sends them off aboard the Tiger Shark, the baddest mamma-jamma in the whole fleet of atomic submarines. Nobody except a random Englishman aboard seems to know what they're all doing there, but apparently the plan is to spend the next few months making a big, bow tie-shaped path over and around the North Pole in the sub. As it happens, the disturbance that's been sinking subs is actually an alien spaceship that's been staying underwater, since it originated on an aquatic planet. Once the crew of the Tiger Shark figure this out, boy howdy is it killin' time.

The movie really loses points due to this shaky moral footing. This is First Contact with an alien race, and not only are the humans immediately resolved to kill it, but the movie holds up their mindset, pursuit, and actions as right and just. If a movie has something interesting to say, I'm willing to forgive...well, pretty much every single failing in Plan 9 from Outer Space...but The Atomic Submarine represents the kind of belligerent jingoism that left the entire world on the precipice of self-destruction for basically the entire second half of the twentieth century.

The Math

Objective Quality: 3/10

Penalties: -1 for making human nature look particularly brutal and thoughtless; -1 for an alien that looked like a live-action Mr. Hankey and made my stomach hurt.

Bonuses: +1 for the interesting idea that the reason flying saucers were never seen more than once was because they were submersed underwater; +1 for fun with miniature submarines and a fishtank

Cult Film Coefficient: 3/10. Very little good I can say about this.

Howdy Ho! I'm here to colonize your world!

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]

Microreview [film]: La Jetee

The Meat

Chris Marker died last week on his 91st birthday. The French experimental filmmaker, artist, and documentarian is best known -- especially since its Criterion DVD and Blu-ray release -- for his 1962 short film La Jetee. It's one of the more influential sci-fi films out there that relatively few people have seen. In 27 minutes, it tells a story about time travel set in a post-apocalyptic Paris. We spend time underground in the shelters that the survivors have made for themselves to avoid the nuclear contamination on the surface, we return to the past of the 1960s, and we go ahead to a distant future to see what lies in store for mankind.

And we do it all in still photographs.

Chris Marker's favorite film was Hitchcock's Vertigo (you can see over here the appreciation I wrote about that one after it was named the best film of all time, also last week), and echoes of Hitchcock's meditation on memory and obsession, which was made four years earlier, pervade Marker's sci-fi short film. You could even argue that in many ways, Le Jetee tells the same story as Vertigo, but through a sci-fi lens, in the same way Forbidden Planet is generally considered a sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

But La Jetee's real accomplishment is a lyrical and emotional evocation that is as close as anything I've ever seen to actual visual poetry. My experience of La Jetee is like my experience of T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings. On an intellectual level I understand what's happening -- what the words and images literally mean -- but I cannot consciously account for the emotions they evoke. To try to analyze it and tear it all apart would be to rob the work of its magic. And there is a tremendous amount of magic here.

The Math

Objective Quality: 7/10. Somebody basically gave Marker an old Pentax camera and a nickel and said "Here you go, kid. See if you can make a picture." So if you can see some of the photo matte work here and there, it's forgivable.

Bonuses: +1, because Terry Gilliam re-made La Jetee in 1995 as 12 Monkeys; +1, for the still photos, because it would not have been as nearly as good as a live-action film; +1 for the profoundly French quality of the narration ("Memories are just like other moments. They are only made memorable by the scars they leave behind.")

Penalties: None.

Cult Movie Coefficient: 10/10. Mind-blowing/life-changing/best ever.

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]

Micro Review [film]: The X From Outer Space

The Meat

Look, I'll be honest, the only thing I really understand about this movie is that I love it. Starting with the swingin' 60s intro music that includes a spoken conversational break-down between a man and a woman that goes something like "Look, what's that up ahead? It's the future!" "Come on, everybody, let's embrace it!" to the fact that the name of the monster in this Japanese movie is filled with Ls, which are hard for Japanese folks to say, this movie is a masterpiece of oddity.

An entry in the Japanese kaiju genre (translation: "big friggin' monsters stompin' on stuff"), of which Godzilla is the most famous example, The X from Outer Space is about a group of Japanese astronauts (and one white girl) flying back and forth from Earth to Mars and the moon, maybe, while being regular 60s swingers. I think it takes them about a half hour to get to the moon, so when they return to Earth and figure out they forgot something, they just hop back on their ship and pop back to the moon real fast. On one of their trips, though, they get some gunk on their spaceship and it turns out to be an egg for a big monster that wants to get in on the action and step on Tokyo. Stepping on Tokyo is like the Super Bowl for giant alien/radioactive/mutated creatures. This particular monster's name is Guilala, and he's a giant space-chicken. Not kidding. Not one bit. He eats nuclear fuel, spits fireballs, and his only weakness is this foam that looks like fire extinguisher filler called "guilalanium," which causes him to shrink. This movie is bad in a very unique and magical way, and deserves to be more widely known. You could think of this as the Plan 9 from Outer Space of kaiju movies -- it's not "good" in any reasonable sense of the word, but there are definitely worse movies, and this one lives at the intersection of terrible and entertaining that makes it a truly rare bird of cult movies.

I caught this on TCM Underground a few years ago, and it's not on DVD. If you have a subscription, you can watch it on Hulu, thanks to their deal with Criterion.

The Math

Objective Quality: 5/10

Bonuses: +1 because the monster is a space chicken; +1 for the utter disregard for anything even approaching "science"; +1 for being so fundamentally Japanese; +1 for Guilala's recent and unexpected resurrection in a commercial for The Ladders job-seekers website:

Penalties: None. Like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, if the description above sounds like a movie you'd enjoy, then there's no reason to dock it points for things like coherence, logic, or production value.

Cult Value Coefficient: 9/10

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]

Micro Review [film]: Hausu

The Meat

Sometimes it's possible to have high expectations for something, and then feel a little disappointed when you experience it and discover it was exactly what you expected. It didn't have that little extra tweak that puts you just enough off-balance to get swept away. That's how I feel about the 1977 Japanese horror movie Hausu. It's the story of a group of schoolgirls who decide to spend their vacation at their friend's aunt's house. The girls all have names like Gorgeous (or Angel), Sweet, Kung Fu, etc., based on their personalities, and the aunt may or may not be dead, or a witch, or a cannibal, or all of the above, or she may just be a manifestation of the evil house. It's not important. And also, I think someone turns into bananas at some point.

This movie is totally bonkers, and from the very first shot - which is super cool - probably very different from anything else you've ever seen. It delivers on the promise of the genre, if the genre is "insane Japanese haunted house slasher movie," but it reaches its peak of weirdness early, and plateaus, which is kinda too bad. It's definitely worth a look, though, and if you're hoping for a big, climactic bloodbath, boy are you going to get your wish.

The Math

Objective Quality: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for its early mix of horror and comedy; +1 for the fact that the director also made this utterly amazing commercial with Charles Bronson:



Penalties: -1 for brief but squirm-inducing, not-sure-if-she's-18 nudity

Cult Coefficient Value: 7/10

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]