Friday's best pop song ever

Friday's best pop song ever

Saint Etienne - You're In A Bad Way by WBRNewMedia

Sugar Is Not Sweet, aka Nam Tan Mai Wan (Thailand, 1965)

My viewing of Sugar is Not Sweet provided quite a contrast to my typical experiences of watching Thai films from the 60s. The Thai Film Foundation’s subtitled DVD of Sugar features a print that measures up as nearly pristine when compared to the savaged condition of most everything else that’s available from the era. On top of that, director Rattana “R.D.” Pestonji, while essentially working on the fringes of the Thai film industry at the time, paradoxically worked to a technical standard that put the country’s mainstream product to shame.

Pestonji -- whose reputation has in recent years been rescued from obscurity thanks to his influence upon contemporary filmmakers like Wisit Sasanatieng -- was a technical pioneer in Thai cinema. While the standard practice was to shoot films on 16mm color reversal film stock and either dub sound later or have it added live-in-theater, Pestonji insisted on shooting on 35mm in synch sound, despite the prohibitive cost of processing (which, until the late 60s, required that the unprocessed stock be shipped to the UK).

Also a staunch supporter of Thai national cinema in the face of Hollywood’s encroaching dominance in the local market, Pestonji was nonetheless clearly influenced by America’s cinematic output –- though how much reverence he held that output in is arguable. As such, Sugar Is Not Sweet, his final film, comes across as sort of an anti-version of the typical Hollywood romantic comedy, though sadly one whose cynicism ultimately outweighs its abundant charms.

Sugar centers around the family of Jaroenkesa (Saneh Komlarachun), a wealthy Thai Chinese who has made his fortune with a hair growth tonic called “Boon Treatment”. The formula for Jaroenkesa’s cash cow was the work of his late business partner, a resident Indian whom Jaroenkesa chooses to honor by marrying off his own layabout son, Manas (a young Sombat Methanee), to said partner’s orphaned daughter, Sugar (Metta Rungrattana). By this means, Jaroenkesa hopes to both provide financially for Sugar while, at the same time, putting a permanent wedge between the dissolute Manas and his gold-digging girlfriend Watchari (played by Preeya Rungrevang, who carries on her shoulders the task of providing all of the film’s cheesecake and teasing near-nudity).

Manas, for his part, is none too happy about having to marry a “Roti” (the movie presents an interesting cross-section of inter-Asian prejudice without seeming to comment upon it much), but is more than pleased by the two million baht that his father offers in return -- as is Watchari, whom Manas has promised to share the loot with once the marriage has been officiated. Once the innocent Sugar arrives from Bombay, Manas makes no secret to her of his relationship with Watchari, and tells her in no uncertain terms that theirs is to be a marriage in name only, after which he banishes the girl to the separate living quarters that have been provided her. Little does Manas know, however, that Watchari is herself having an affair with Thawin (Ruj Ronaphop), the singing spokesman for Boong Treatment’s ubiquitous television commercials, and has made a pact to leave Manas for him once she receives her share of the wedding graft.

Despite being played by the handsome and charismatic star Sombat Methanee, Manas is about as repellent a center for a romantic comedy as one could imagine. Yet it is indeed Manas who functions as our protagonist, with the infinitely more sympathetic Sugar afforded nowhere near the same amount of screen time. (Which, to be fair, could also be the result of Metta Rungrattana’s noticeably less sure-footed acting chops.) Given this, it goes without saying that the plot’s greatest pleasures comes during that portion of the film in which Sugar manages to turn the tables on Manas, and we see his life incrementally unraveling around him.

To my mind, Manas’ karmic downfall would have made a wholly satisfying ending point for Sugar Is Not Sweet. Yet, in defiance of my wishes, Pestonji and it soldier on, seemingly motivated by the grim determination to honor the romantic comedy mandate that the male and female leads must be somehow united in the end, no matter how improbable or insanely ill advised that may be. This is motivated, on Manas’ part, by his desire to fulfill his -- at this point late -- father’s wishes for grandchildren, and, on Sugar’s part, by absolutely nothing anything that has yet been established about her character could support. Ultimately, Manas gets his way by way of trickery and implied marital rape, the film closing with him contentedly basking in the undeserved fruits of his bastardry. It’s an oppressively dispiriting resolution. Though, if one were looking for a silver lining, you could look upon it as a prescient commentary on the Hollywood romantic comedies of today, whose plots seem driven far more by inertia than actual logic or character dynamics.

Throughout Sugar, Pestonji displays enough endearing directorial quirks to keep us purring contentedly throughout most of the film’s running time, even if no amount of charm could ease us over that final hurdle. The film’s straightforward narrative is apparently not enough to keep its director from becoming distracted, and so is interrupted by a second act consisting entirely of a party at which numerous musical numbers are performed, several of them American-style rock-and-roll tunes performed by a combo fronted by a Caucasian-looking woman singer. This sequence ends with a protracted drunken brawl, which, like everything else in the scene before it, does little or nothing to move the ostensible story forward.

Pestonji also lets us know right off -- via a prologue in which an off-screen narrator introduces both the characters and the actors playing them -- that this is going to be a production heavy on artifice, and then follows through with a presentation that is resolutely theatrical in its staging. Most of Sugar’s interior scenes are filmed statically from a removed angle that takes in the entirety of the set, with very few close-ups or reaction shots. This conservative approach is offset by a wild use of color that makes many of those sets look like an explosion in a paint factory, albeit a paint factory that only produces varying shades of red and pink. Added to that are moments of giddy irreverence, such as the repetition ad absurdum of the dippy Boon Treatment jingle, which, as elements of manic consumerist satire, suggest the influence -- like that seen in Japanese director Yasuzo Masumura’s Giants and Toys -- of Frank Tashlin.

Sugar Is Not Sweet is unquestionably an important film in the history of Thai cinema, as is R.D Pestonji an important director. And it is for that reason that I feel pressed to applaud Pestonji for not delivering the resolution that ages of genre film immersion have conditioned me to both expect and hope for, even though sitting through the forced march that that entailed was an inarguably unpleasant experience. I can’t, however, overcome my ambivalence to the point of advocating that aspect of the movie as being something anyone else should trouble themselves with. I will instead say that it’s a film worth enjoying for the many enchantments on display in its first and second acts, and that, after that, you’re pretty much on your own.

Rita of the West (Italy, 1967)

I miss old school pop music movies.

That thought occurred to me while, of all things, attending a press screening of the Taylor Lautner movie Abduction that a friend of mine invited me to. Lautner's performance in that movie was so much of the classic non-actor variety that, for me, it would only have been forgivable if he had been some freshly minted pop sensation making his svengali-mandated screen debut. It would even have made the movie more enjoyable if this alternate universe Lautner of mine had periodically whipped out his guitar and serenaded his female co-star with one of his current hits, even if those hits were terrible (as I imagine they would be). Maybe then the action could have also been interrupted intermittently by scenes in which Taylor's overzealous fans tried to gain access to him by a variety of comically improbable means. Yes, there would be fake mustaches involved.

I'm not a graphic artist.

If Abduction had been a quickie pop star vehicle in the mode of, say, Fabian's Hound Dog Man -- or, hell, even Cool As Ice -- it would at least have been even less able, and hence less ill-advisably inclined, to try to disguise its true nature as a cynical cash-grab aimed at separating teenage girls from their allowances. It also would have benefited from some of such movies' innate, frothy charms, all of them being so ephemeral and chained to their specific cultural moment that, even viewed fresh, each successive frame might seem to recede into nostalgia in its passing.

Sadly, such films -- cheerfully slapdash genre pastiches existing for the sole purpose of allowing fans to gawp at their non-actor musician stars on the big screen -- seem to have ceased being the preferred mode of cinematic exploitation for today's music industry. Instead, a misguided, wholly boring, and completely ersatz notion of "realness" seems to be guiding things, with the result that what pop star film vehicles do get made are either concert films or lionizing documentaries. And I am not including here the pop music-heavy product turned out by Disney, since that is less about good old idol worship and more about the type of aspirational nonsense that encourages its young audience to identify with their rock star protagonists because they are every bit as special as they are!

In fact, the final gasps of the classic pop movie seem to have occurred during the 90s, back when Prince made the last of his awful but completely hysterical movies, and during which we saw the release of Spice World, a late-to-the-game classic of the genre. But, of course, to truly experience the genre at its peak, you'd have to go back to the 60s. It was then that the success of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night and Help! inspired slapdash cinematic imitations on the part of practically every also-ran British Invasion group, from The Dave Clark 5 to Herman's Hermits -- a phenomenon which crossed hemispheres in the form of similar capers featuring Japanese "Group Sounds" bands like the Spiders and the Jaguars. Italy, a country robust in both its cinematic and pop music traditions, was also not immune to the trend, as demonstrated by Ferdinando Baldi's pop-heavy Spaghetti Western send-up Rita of the West.

Rita of the West features pint-sized belter Rita Pavone in the role of itinerant gunslinger Little Rita. Pavone at the time was not just a huge sensation in Italy, but throughout Europe as well. The combination of her diminutive size and brash, aggressive singing style -- coupled, no doubt, with her alarmingly hyperkinetic dancing -- gave her enough novelty appeal among American record consumers to drive her song "Remember Me" (sung in an endearing, heavily accented English) into the nether reaches of the U.S. Top Forty, and resulted in her becoming, if briefly,  a recurring presence on American television, with numerous appearances on both The Ed Sullivan Show and Shindig, among others.

Much is made of Pavone's slight stature in Rita of the West. And to be honest, with her short-cropped hair, freckles, and child-sized cowboy attire, she looks very much like a twelve year old boy.  At one point a bartender calls her "kiddy" and refuses to serve her. But, playing on this, Rita of the West also makes her invincible, a shootist so supernaturally skilled that she is capable of felling even the most iconic gunfighters in the Spaghetti Western universe. Here, working with the Indian tribe of Chief Silly Bull (Gordon Mitchell), her plan is to rid the world of all of its gold, and hence the source of all of its evil. This naturally involves her stealing the gold of literally everyone in her environs, after which the idea is to seal the entirety of it in a cave on the reservation, where it will be blown up with dynamite. Say what you will about this scheme, but in the world of Spaghetti Western plots -- which have the tendency to frequently crib from one another -- it at least has the virtue of being unique.

Yet, while Little Rita preaches peace and sings of the power of smiles, her methods lean more toward mayhem. Not realistic mayhem, mind you, though it is tempting to wonder what Fulci would have done with this material. During a gunfight with "Ringo" (played by Peplum star Kirk Morris, looking much more like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name), the antagonists' expertly aimed bullets continually stop each other mid-flight, until an even more expertly aimed bullet of Rita's blocks the barrel of Ringo's gun, after which the two engage in a parodic karate fight. Finally, frustrated with Ringo's implacability, Rita cheerfully blows him up with a giant golden hand grenade. Later, she uses a similar weapon to explode a band of fiesta-ing Mexican bandits, whose smoking limbs can be seen flying every which way. Rita's ultimate act of Spaghetti West domination, however, comes during the film's latter half, when she cooly guns down Django himself (played by Franco Nero ringer Lucio Rosato, who both drags a coffin and sports bandaged, bloodied hands).

In most cases, the aftermath of this carnage provides the opportunity for a song, usually an upbeat number that inspires the assembled townsfolk to engage in wild, choreographed dancing like some kind of frontier flash mob. All of these are sung by Pavone with various of her co-stars, who include a number of other figures from the Italian pop music scene. Lucio Dalla, then at the beginning of what would become a long and venerated career as a singer-songwriter (among his compositions are a couple that have become Italian pop standards), portrays Rita's German sidekick Fritz, while the town's ineffectual sheriff is played by 50s crooner Teddy Reno. Reno, who discovered Pavone, was the singer's manager at the time and, a year later, would become her husband -- an arrangement that provoked scandal due to the twenty year age difference between the two.

I should also mention that almost every song sung my Rita and her partners in the film is about how wonderful Rita is, with lines like "Little Rita, Sweet and clever" being fairly representative.

There are a lot of factors that make Rita of the West a compelling watch, not the least of them being the film's manic combination of goofy "up with people" exuberance and pitch black gallows humor. Genre workhorse Baldi accentuates this further by providing a credible Spaghetti Western framework -- complete with beautifully shot, scope-enhanced vistas and lots of claustrophobic, sweaty close-ups -- for all the irreverent pop art antics to play out within. Furthermore, Pavone, while perhaps no great thespian, is a charming presence with a truly infectious enthusiasm, as is Dalla. And there is no end of pleasure in seeing a cast of genre stalwarts -- which, in addition to the previously mentioned Mitchell and Morris, also includes Trinity himself, Terence Hill, as Little Rita's love interest Black Stand -- who themselves seem to be taking great pleasure in sending themselves up. Nor is their little delight in seeing so many of the classic Spaghetti Western sets and locations used here play host to such atypical goings on.

To return to my opening tirade, they don't make films like Rita of the West anymore. And, to a certain way of thinking, that is as it should be -- as Rita of the West could easily serve as a textbook example of disposable filmmaking. But, for a person like me, that disposability makes the act of plucking it from the trash that much more thrilling. It's the kind of movie whose true enjoyment, to my mind, requires an act of mental time travel back to that moment, both incredibly specific and flittingly brief, during which it was culturally relevant -- and even then, perhaps only marginally so. And when you're really able to tune in to that, it's like feeling the buzz of the fly trapped in amber. If the songs are rocking, the stars appealing, that makes it just that much better.

Friday's best pop song ever

Friday's best pop song ever

The Infernal Brains Podcast, Episode 8: THE WORST!

This latest is a very special episode of The Infernal Brains, for in it Tars Tarkas and myself draw upon our vast respective trawlings through the world of obscure global cinema to share with you, our fans, those particular films that have most horrified and sickened us -- films that, as this podcast will make painfully clear, still haunt us to this very day. Yes, people, it's The Worst of The Infernal Brains! As per usual, you can download the episode here, or stream it below while weeping uncontrollably at the shocking visual evidence provided by the accompanying slideshow.

Friday's best pop song ever

The Fury of Hercules (Italy/France, 1962)

One of the things I love about the bustling Italian film industry of the 1960s is how its constant demand for onscreen talent made it a stopping point for such a wide array of characters from across the pop cultural landscape. Body builders, beauty queens, and stars both down-trending and slumming from around the globe all made their way to Rome at one time or another to get a piece of the action, as well as did performers and artists from other disciplines who just needed the extra cash. It is for this reason that today we can look upon such surreal spectacles as that of Southern California born muscle/stuntman Brad Harris locked in mortal battle with iconic French pop provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.

The Fury of Hercules was the second of two peplums that Gainsbourg appeared in for director Gianfranco Parolini during 1961, both of which were filmed in Zagreb and starred Harris (an apparent favorite of Parolini’s who would later star in the director’s Kommisar X eurospy series.) These followed close on the heels of Gainsbourg’s Italian screen debut in another sword and sandal adventure, Nunzio Malasomma’s Revolt of the Slaves, in which he also played a heavy. The singer was well into his career as a songwriter-for-hire and cabaret performer by this time, but was a few years off from the pop success that would lead to the legendary status he holds today, so it can be assumed that these were acting gigs taken to keep food on the table. It was an arguable boon, then, for Gainsbourg that his distinctive look –- which the recent biopic Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life explicitly paralleled to the caricatures of “the evil Jew” found in Nazi propaganda from the 40s -- made him an apparent strong candidate for playing villain roles in the Italian genre films of the day.

Fury finds Harris’s Hercules arriving in the city of Arkad, hoping to pay a visit on its king, a friend of his from previous adventures. Instead, Hercules finds that the King has died, and that his daughter, Queen Canidia (Mara Berni), who has risen to the throne in his stead, has fallen under the sway of her power hungry advisor Menistus (Gainsbourg). Under Menistus’ guidance she has turned Arkad into something of a national security state, following his directive to build an enormous wall around the city at the expense of many slaves’ lives. In response, a rebel movement has sprung up within the kingdom, one on which Menistus hopes to pin the blame for his planned murder of Canidia, after which he intends to seize power. After a number of failed attempts on the part of Menistus and his cronies to get Hercules out of the way, the hero joins up with the rebel forces and leads an attack that will end his malevolent reign once and for all.

Given the flat, American-accented dubbing of his character in the English version of the film that I saw, it’s difficult to gauge Gainsbourg’s performance in The Fury of Hercules. I will say, though, that it stands out against the typical scenery chewing of Italian genre movie villains of its day for its very low key nature. Rather than furiously projecting menace, Gainsbourg instead relies upon what seems to be his natural ability to exude an air of casually sinister, feline decadence. Menistus seldom shouts or declaims, but instead quietly insinuates his menace, like the hushed narrator of one of Gainsbourg-the-singer’s more debauched lounge numbers.

As for The Fury of Hercules as a whole, it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill peplum, one that would likely rate little more than a dismissive footnote for any chronicler of Gainsbourg’s career. Even so, its classic B movie trappings -- styrofoam boulders, inopportunely blinking corpses, mangy gorilla suits -- might make it an irresistible anecdote to include in the tale of a figure ultimately destined for greater things. As for the man himself, I sincerely doubt that the film would rank very highly in the hierarchy of memory for one who counted bedding Brigitte Bardot among his many accomplishments, but I would nonetheless be curious to know what Gainsbourg made of the whole adventure. He was, after all, a man with both an artistic soul and a keen knack for pop exploitation (this is, don’t forget, the guy who once promoted himself by tricking a teen starlet into singing a song about a blowjob) and here he was, not just commenting on, but actually collaborating in the very trash cultural “Pop! Bang! Whizzz!” that he would later ironically celebrate in the song “Comic Strip”.

At the end of The Fury of Hercules, Menistus dies an ignominious death at the hands of his oppressed subjects, which I have to admit was an outcome I found a little disappointing. Perhaps made greedy by the many possibilities suggested by the film’s odd confluence of talent, I was really hoping to see Hercules toss Serge Gainsbourg into a volcano or something -- not the least so that I could have the pleasure of typing that sentence. Of course, the producers very well may have thought that having the hulking Harris square off physically against the slight crooner would have undermined their hero’s sportsmanlike image, and I don’t blame them. Still I am grateful that, for a brief moment, such a possibility even existed. And for that, Italian cinema, I thank you.

Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (Turkey, 1970)

In my review of Casus Kiran, Turkish director Yilmaz Atadeniz’s remake of the 1942 Republic serial Spy Smasher, I described that film as being “in constant, rapid motion from beginning to end, presenting more of a continuous event than an actual story”. I further went on to opine –- quite pithily, if I do say so myself -- that “trying to impose the strictures of plot upon it is sort of like trying to identify the conflicts and character arcs within a hurricane or brush fire”. With that in mind, you’d have to think that any sequel to such a film would have no choice but to pick up where the former left off -- to just keep rolling out that one continuous event to the point when all allotted time and resources were exhausted.

Add to this the fact that all Turkish pulp superhero films of Casus Kiran’s ilk, when taken as a whole, are themselves something of a blur and a picture like Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (“Spy Smasher: The Man With Seven Lives”) comes across as being more intended to further obscure such distinctions than it does to expand upon any particular previously existing property.

Of course, simply picking up where Casus Kiran left off is not an option for Yedi Canli Adam, because seemingly much has changed in the intervening years. Producer-and-distributor-turned-star Irfan Atasoy indeed returns in the lead role, but is mostly surrounded by new faces. And even the costume he wears as Spy Smasher has been changed, now more closely resembling the getup worn by the hero of Atadeniz protégé Cetin Inanc’s earlier Iron Claw the Pirate, a film that was already tough enough to distinguish from Casus Kiran as is.

Also subject to the old switcheroo is Spy Smasher’s sexy lady sidekick, played in the original by Sevda Ferdag and here by Feri Cansel -- playing a character who, in accordance with Turkish pulp movie naming conventions, appears to also be named Feri. Happily, what has not changed is the fact that Spy Smasher and his sexy lady sidekick have just about the best marriage in all of superhero-dom. They just really enjoy beating up and killing their enemies together, and often trade admiring glances and laugh lustily while doing so. You get the sense that they have really amazing sex afterward. Furthermore, while she is twice more likely to end up picturesquely tied to a post, Feri is the Smash-meister’s equal in both dishing out and taking punishment, and is also no slouch when it comes to talking some vicious smack (something that, even in an unsubtitled Turkish film, needs no translation).

One lamentable way in which Yedi Canli Adam does maintain the status quo, I’m sorry to say, is in its inclusion of an in-name-only comic relief sidekick for our heroes. That character, Bitik, is this time, however, kitted out in a Sherlock Holmes outfit. Atadeniz apparently really liked this idea of a gibbering comic foil named Bitik annoying his superheroic betters by bumbling around in a deerstalker and cape, because he also included that character in his subsequent film The Deathless Devil. There, however, the character was portrayed by Erol Gunaydin, a different actor from the one who plays him here, although Erol Gunaydin is, in fact, in Yedi Canli Adam, only playing an entirely different role. Yilmaz Atadeniz, you have officially blown my mind.

And then there are our villains. While Casus Kiran made one of its rare concessions to the actual plot of the film it was ostensibly remaking by featuring a mysterious hooded villain in the grand 1940s movie serial tradition, Yedi Canli Adam’s choice of heavy is more indicative of its time. Here the bad guy is a foppish, floppy haired libertine in ascot and shades, with a crew who are a bit scruffier than the generic black hats seen in the first film, some of them even having the beardy look of student radicals. In keeping with that, the gang conducts much of their business surrounded by blissed out hippies in a psychedelic nightclub, a setting that provides for such indelible musical moments as a group frug to the Standell’s “Riot on Sunset Strip”, as well as other timely favorites.

Together this motley collective goes about the general business of being enemies of Turkey, which here mainly involves carrying out assassinations and the kidnapping of a prominent scientist and his young daughter. This, naturally, means that it won’t be long before Spy Smasher and Feri are roaring down the highway after them, burning rubber on their twin motorcycles as a surf cover of the In Like Flint theme plays on the soundtrack. (A healthy chunk or John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service score and Peter Thomas’ jaunty Jerry Cotton theme also get quite a workout.) This sets in motion the usual cycle of our heroes repeatedly chasing and then engaging in frenetic tussles with the baddies, leading to each having multiple opportunities to both be captured and to rescue the other from capture. Throughout this, it must be said that Irfan Atasoy pulls off some deeply impressive acrobatics and stunts, although they do require one to willfully ignore the very many times the villains could potentially have shot him while he was executing all of those show-offy serial back-flips and handstands.

While the enjoyment I took in Yedi Canli Adam derived in great part from happy associations with every other pulp Turkish superhero film I’ve seen, I regret that watching it has placed even further from recall any of those other films’ specifics. I mean, how many nominally unrelated Turkish superhero films featuring comic relief characters named Bitik who dress like Sherlock Holmes is one man expected to keep track of? Or how many featuring pairs of motorcycle riding his-and-hers heroes, especially given that their costumes are virtually indistinguishable from one another? The answer may be that the whole of Turkish pulp cinema is really meant to be experienced as one big intoxicating morass, rather than as a collection of discrete works. I’m beginning to suspect that Yilmaz Atadeniz saw it that way, at least.

Friday's best pop song ever

Drive-In Mob Tonight!: Dracula A.D. 1972 and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

To be honest, I get hammered for every Drive-In Mob, and tonight that will be doubly the case. This time we'll be tweeting along to the Hammer classic Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, as well as the somewhat anti-classic Dracula A.D. 1972 (both of which are available on Netflix Instant). The fun starts at 8pm EST with Dracula, and continues with Frankenstein at 10pm EST. You can play along at home by using the Twitter hashtag #DriveInMob. I myself will, as usual, be sitting out the first feature, but you can count on me to weigh in on Frankenstein. Be sure to check out the official Drive-In Mob site for full details.