Aspirin ‘zine #3

Posted on July 31, 2014 by deadthyme

This was a great ‘zine that suffered from bad printing. I have to apologize for how faded and terrible it looks- it was bad when it came out, and has only gotten worse over the years. But the content was fantastic- an excellent mix of grindcore, death metal, hardcore, and black metal with a bunch of my fav bands. This issue was huge, and had interviews with PROCESS REVEALED, MY MIND’S MINE, NECROPHILE, RADIATION SICKNESS, KOVEN, LEGION OF DEATH, LIBIDO BOYS, NOCTURNUS, REDNECKS IN PAIN, SADUS, BOLT THROWER, SMOLDERING REMAINS, BLOOD, TOXODETH, OLD LADY DRIVERS, ROTTING CHRIST, and SORE THROAT, as well as ‘zine and music reviews and ads, and a couple of live show reviews to finish it out.

Here are some pages from it for you to check out:

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

Posted on July 23, 2014 by deadthyme

Just a quick one here, to let you guys know about the surprise of the summer for me.

I did not see the original movie The Purge, because it looked fairly typical of modern horror movies, pretty predictable, and (worst of all) was produced by Platinum Dunes. The overrunning plot, in which all crime in America is legalized for 12 hours (from 7 PM to 7 AM on March 22 every year) was intriguing, but the home invasion story just didn’t appeal to me much.

This new one looked a little more interesting to me, so I took a chance on it and I’m glad I did.
It begins a couple of hours before commencement of The Purge (the event, not the first movie) and the people are preparing in different ways- some are boarding up their houses and arming themselves, some are trying to cash in by selling weapons and security equipment, and others are preparing to go out during The Purge and commit crimes. We are introduced to three sets of people- a waitress and her daughter and father, who are very poor and live in an apartment; an estranged couple who are going to a relative’s house to wait out the Purge; and a mysterious man who is arming himself with guns and a bullet proof vest, preparing to go out during the Purge on an unknown mission.

Events conspire to bring these people together, as they try to make it through the city in the middle of a warzone, where almost anything is legal.

Tho it is a lot more involved and updated, it brought back fond memories of old urban wasteland movies like The Warriors, Escape From New York, and 1990: The Bronx Warriors, which is a genre you don’t see much anymore (the last one I can think of was Neil Marshall’s Doomsday (2008), and this one is much better). There are no big actors (the only one I recognized was Frank Grillo, who had a smaller role as Crossbones in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and almost no CGI was used. I would have liked there to be just a little more gore and exploitation elements, but this movie still blew away most horror and action movies that come out these days. There are several ham handed attempts at social commentary (some work well, while others lay it on a little thick), but that doesn’t get in the way of the entertainment (and a lot of it is actually quite relevant and timely).

It is still out in theaters, so you have a chance to go see it if you haven’t already. We here at PMT recommend it, and we don’t do that with many modern movies.
There was a trailor for the Cannibal Holocaust/ Cannibal Ferox/ Trap Them and Kill Them, etc. homage The Green Inferno before it, which also intrigues us, tho it looks just a bit too clean and modern to these eyes. Going into it with hopes but strong reservations.

Killdozer (1974)

Posted on July 21, 2014 by deadthyme

Oh, man, the TV movie- can anything be more insipid? Usually with a low budget, bad acting, and bad production values, this doesn’t necessarily make a bad movie (I love tons of movies made with these detriments) but made for TV movies usually have one thing that can’t be forgiven: they’re boring as hell. Part of this has to do with television censors not allowing much of anything all that interesting to take place on screen, but mostly it’s because these movies are made in a hurry by people who don’t care, and are designed to do one thing: fill a two hour hole to sell commercials during. But in the ’70s, there arose quite a few decent ones made with some amount of talent and inspiration. Gargoyles, Salems Lot, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Trilogy of Terror, and Dark Night of the Scarecrow (which wasn’t released until ’81) are a few examples of ’70s TV movies which actually went above and beyond their job description and entertained (even thrilled at times).

Killdozer is another decent one, perhaps not as thrilling as the best of the ones mentioned above (it is a little slow moving in places), but just the name and overall plot is more interesting than most TV movies (or even a lot of theatrical ones).
Written by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon (who also co-wrote the screenplay), it’s about six men building an air strip on a remote (and presumably deserted) island in the Pacific. When one of them digs up a meteor, a malevolent entity ‘possesses’ the bulldozer and begins attacking and killing them.

Let’s not mince words here- the storyline is ridiculous. After it kills several of them and they figure out that it is alive, it shouldn’t be too hard to keep out of reach of a slow moving bulldozer (and watching the bulldozer stalk them, hiding in the bush and watching for it’s chance to strike is pretty amusing). The thing that makes it tolerable is the brisk running time (just 73 minutes) and the absolute earnestness of the cast. This is a cast of grown men playing no nonsense construction workers, and they sell it. Every one of them is a typical square jawed ’70s working man, and they play their roles seriously. That includes fighting a sentient serial killing bulldozer. There’s no cuteness or tongue in cheek winking, they all work very hard at making it believable.

There isn’t much in the way of special effects (mainly a man with radiation burns), but everything looks authentic and realistic and the acting is good (featuring actors such as Neville Brand (Eaten Alive) and a young Robert Urich (The Ice Pirates)). It’s also shot with a bit more care and artistic flair than your typical TV movie, and looks great- obviously a better stock of film was used to shoot it than your average TV production..

While it probably would not thrill modern audiences in the least, it is still worth mentioning for the ambitiousness of the producers to greenlight such an absurd concept, the dedication of the cast to sell the plot with everything they’ve got, and it’s historical significance (it is one of the very first killer vehicle movies, predating The Car, Christine, Maximum Overdrive, and most any other killer vehicle movie I can think of except for Spielberg’s Duel (1971), which was also a TV movie). I have to say that if I was a kid sitting at home in 1974 and it came on TV, I would have thought it was pretty damn cool.

That’s not to say, however, that I don’t wish this was an R rated theatrical production. I’d love to see a sentient killer bulldozer wreck some real carnage with a bit more money and some gore thrown into it. Now that would be a true cult classic.

Wizards (1977)

Posted on July 15, 2014 by deadthyme

Though there were a few examples in earlier decades, the 1970s is the decade when animation grew up. Movies like Watership Down, The Last Unicorn, and Castle of Cagliostro brought animation out of the realm of kid’s stuff and into the world of PG (and R) rated movies. Spurred on by the popularity of adult underground comics by people like Robert Crumb and the importation of Japanese anime, more and more adult animated movies began appearing in theaters until it’s zenith with Heavy Metal in 1980. But before that director/ animator Ralph Bakshi made quite a few adult animated movies, starting off with Fritz the Cat and following it up with several urban adult animated movies (even earning an X rating on a couple). By 1977, he wanted to make an adult animated fantasy film and developed War Wizards at Fox.

The story tells of a post apocalyptic future in which the Earth was destroyed by nuclear war and covered in radiation for thousands of years. What was left of mankind either became mutants or evolved into elves, dwarves, and fairies. Into this was born two children- Avatar, a good elf; and Blackwolf, an evil mutant. Blackwolf was banished to Scortch, a poisoned wasteland where he gathered other mutants to him and studied black magic, eventually raising an army of demons from hell to join him and his minions.
Still, his evil army could not defeat the elves and fairies, until he discovered a secret weapon. Technology (which had been banned for thousands of years, because it had destroyed the Earth) and in particular an old film projector, which he infused with his magic to call upon the images of an evil from the far distant past to help him defeat the legions of good.

Avatar sets out on a quest with an elf prince, a fairy princess, and a robot to stop Blackwolf from defeating the forces of good permanently.

The movie starts out with narration by an uncredited Susan Tyrell (Andy Warhol’s Bad, The Forbidden Zone, Flesh + Blood) who later lamented that she wished she had not been uncredited. Mark Hamill also does the voice of a fairy (and Bakshi actually changed the name of the movie from War Wizards to just Wizards at George Lucas’ suggestion because he let Hamill off filming Star Wars for a few days to do the voice acting), and Bakshi himself does several voices.

Somewhere in the midst of making it, he ran out of money, and Fox would not give him more. He then started pouring his own money into the project, and in order to keep the costs down he used rotoscoping (in which an animator uses photos or film cels and paints over them). He painted over several scenes from old movies such as Zulu and The Battle of the Bulge to get the dynamoc battle scenes he wanted, and combined that with more conventional animation. The effect is pretty original looking, and mildly creepy at times (with the armies of hell descending on the good guys in rotoscoped semi-realism).

The backgrounds are beautiful, and several scenes (especially at the beginning of the movie) are still shots of paintings, which make the movie feel like you are watching a living comic book in places. He used two different background artists (including Marvel Comics’ Mike Ploog) to create the feel of the gloomy and dark radiation-filled land of Scortch and the bright, magical land of Montagar.

The movie makes a lot of veiled commentary on things like war, technology, propaganda, and religion (which Bakshi apparently considers silly and unhelpful in any way), and is a very strange mix of mildly sleazy and creepy adult scenes and more whimsical and absurd (even goofy) kid-friendly themes and parts (Bakshi actually considered this his first “family picture”).

I really enjoy the offbeat jazzy and mildly psychedelic background music which gives it an otherworldly feel (70’s movies are filled with Moog synths, which make them sound uniquely ’70s, and this one is no exception).
It has been released on both dvd and blu ray with Bakshi commentary, and is definitely worth seeking out for fans of animation, fantasy, or weird ’70s movies.

Post Modern Trashaeology

excavations in non-pop culture

Monthly Archives: July 2014

Aspirin ‘zine #3

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

Killdozer (1974)

Wizards (1977)