Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou”, a short experimental film made in 1928, opens with a man sharpening a cut-throat razor. Finished, he walks out of the room onto a balcony where there is a woman already seated. Approaching her, he places his left hand over her face, stretches her left eyelid open and slices her eye with the razor. This is the first example of graphic eye violence on film.
In the years that followed there were few examples of eye violence, mainly due to what was or was not acceptable on screen. Something that didn’t prevent Roger Corman from making ‘X – The Man With X-Ray Eyes’, in 1963, in which Ray Milland takes a biblical quotation all too literally and scratches his eyes out because he can’t handle what he can see. Of course, it was Herschell Gordon Lewis in the 1970’s who showed what the intelligent movie-going public wanted to see and more than succeeded with both ‘The Wizard of Gore’ and ‘The Gore Gore Girls’ (on which, see later).
Apart from those, the 70’s were kinda quiet. ‘Massacre Mansion’ (aka Terror of Dr. Chaney; Mansion of the Doomed) and ‘Headless Eyes’ dealt with nutters removing people’s eyes. It even filtered through into a mainstream film – ‘The Omen II’; I’m sure many of you have a special place in your heart for the scene in which Joan Hart has her eye pecked out by a raven from hell and wanders into the path of an eighteen wheel Peterbilt truck.
In 1979, the whole show really kicked into action. An elderly, unknown Italian director named Lucio Fulci was hired to direct a rip-off of George Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ which had just been released. History was made – even those who think the rest of ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ is junk love the scene where a woman is pulled through a door by a zombie, with her eye meeting a nine-inch splinter of bamboo on the way. In many ways this is the best example one can produce of eye violence. The scene in question is slow, painful, graphic, you really feel for the actress; it is marred only by a dodgy effect. This scene gave Fulci’s career a new life – sure as shit is shit you wouldn’t have heard of him if he hadn’t filmed it.
So what is the appeal of seeing orbal punishment inflicted on someone else? Many can’t “see the point” to it, but there are still those who sit up in their seats when a sharp object comes into view, while all around them hide behind a cushion or place a hand over their face. Perhaps it’s because the eyes are one of the few organs visible on the outside of the body and are vulnerable to external forces, so when someone has their eyes poked out, you are thankful that yours are still safe in your head. This can be backed by considering the on-screen knee in the gonads. I’ve seen people double up and scream in pain when this has happened; the one difference between your eyes and your testicles (ladies excluded!) is that you can ALMOST carry on with your life as normal without your testicles.
What follows is a list of 20 great scenes of eye violence. Not all are violent, not all are graphic, but all should make you wince. Alas, it seems the golden age is over. But wait, someone HAS recognised the significance of losing your eyesight – stand forward Margaret Thatcher. Not content with having her own blind followers, she now attempts to make everyone else blind by unnecessary charges for eyetests…
ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (below). ‘Nuff said.
UN CHIEN ANDALOU. What? You’ve forgotten already?
NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES. Julio the bloody ape vents his anger by gouging an eye from a passer-by, who is so scared that his face turns into a latex mask.
EDGE OF SANITY. Eyeball scraping with scalpel. Not gory or violent, but YEEUUCH!
DEAD & BURIED. A burned photographer recovering in hospital has a syringe stuck in his one visible eye by the bitch who got him there in the first place.
EVIL DEAD. Ash takes NO MORE SHIT. Lifted up by his possessed pal, Ash does what any quick-thinking gorehound would do and pushes his thumbs DEEP in Scott’s eyes
MUTATIONS. A segment with freaks has one guy get on stage, utter total drivel & pop his eyes in and out of their sockets without using his hands.
CANNIBAL FEROX. John Morghen helps a cannibal native remove a particularly nasty foreign body from under his eyelid, with the use of a knife.
ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH. The most original. A lady scientist has her tongue cut out and a zombie places its hand in her mouth and push her eyes out from inside.
DEMONS. Bugger what Jim says, at times it’s interesting, the main highlight : a blind geezer having his eyes scratched out by a demon with it’s priorites wrong.
NEW YORK RIPPER (above). The ‘Ripper’ drags a razor down a girl’s face via her eye which splits and lolls in the vitreous & aqueous. The BBFC didn’t see the humour (sic)
DESPERATE LIVING. John Waters’ film: Mole McHenry, shown in flashback battering an opponent to death with a stiletto and stamping on his handily fallen out eye.
GORE GORE GIRLS. One unfortunate victim has her eyes pulled out, pierced with a fork and SQUEEEEEEEZED at the camera.
ZOMBI 3 aka Burial Ground. Number 1, restaged with a glass splinter.
REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD. A stiletto clad zombie(?) pushes a victim to the ground and stamps on her eye with the heel. The systeme sanguine follows.
THE FOURTH MAN (See Film Blitz). Car drives into back of lorry carrying steel rods, one of which pierces a character’s head clean through.
SALO:120 DAYS OF SODOM. On the last day, one victim has an eye removed by knife. A low budget mean a loss of impact; spent the cash on fake shit, no doubt.
THE BEYOND. Chcok-a-block, this one. Gouged out, eaten by spiders and one head implaed on a nail in the wall, leaving an eye on it. All UK releases are cut…
OPERA. Apart from needles under the eyes and Daria Nicolodi getting shot im the eye, the best bit has ravens pecking their friends’ killer’s eye out.
ZOMBI HOLOCAUST aka Dr Butcher MD. Another gouging – tricks you by cutting away at the last possible moment and then immediately cutting back. Meaty.
The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenburg) & Amityville II : The Possession (Damiano Damiani) – The Lutz family move into their dream house, and all goes well until a series of bizarre events, climaxing in Lutz Sr. cracking up and attempting to kill his family (never have happened if they’d bought a Barratt home). Contains some good shocks and is supposedly based on fact – Rod Steiger puts in an appearance as a priest who discovers the house is evil. The sequel, made in 1982, is actually a prequel, which tells the story of the previous occupants who weren’t so lucky; their son is possessed by the house and shotguns his family to death, tho’ not before the usual things happen (taps drip blood, spooky noises, etc). These all contribute to a film which is as good as, and perhaps slightly better than, the original, even if the climax is a rip-off of ‘The Exorcist’. 5/10 & 6/10 respectively.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick) – The story goes this was pulled from circulation by it’s director when the BBFC wanted it cut for a re-release, after passing it first time round. The death threats he received didn’t help things. In the 18-odd years since, it’s been ‘unobtainable’ in Britain, yet has still acquired a huge cult status – witness it’s high position in the Time Out poll. I’m no great Kubrick fan, but this oozes style and unsettling imagery. especially the opening, which is a nightmare plunge into the ‘hero’ Alex’s ultra-violent world – things calm down after he is betrayed by his gang and sent for rehabilitation, with the prison scenes adding little to the film. Kubrick has remained faithful to the novel’s spirit, except at the end where he dropped Burgess’s ending (annoying the author) and there are flashes of genius such as dropping the camera off a roof to capture Alex’s suicide attempt. Malcolm McDowell captures the character of Alex perfectly – “Singing in the Rain” will never seem the same again. Interestingly, in February next year, the Royal Shakespeare Company are putting on a play based on the book, with Phil Daniels (“Quadrophenia”) as Alex, and music by U2’s The Edge. It promises to be notably different to the film by all accounts – I may well try and get to see it. Oh, and 7/10 for a film, real horror-show in chunks.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway) – Cannibalism, fork stabbings, people eating dog-shit, vomiting at the dinner-table & screwing in the toilet. Ah, but this is Art, and the director is an Artist, so he can get away with it! Michael Gambon is the Thief, a psychopathic boor who eats every night with his cronies in the restaurant he owns. His Wife (Helen Mirren) meets her Lover there, and they snatch brief, torrid moments together. Then the Thief finds out about it, and swears to kill and eat the Lover. Sumptuously shot with gorgeous use of colour, stunning costumes (by Jean-Paul Gaultier) and sets, good performances, especially from Michael Gambon who projects an aura of seething insanity, and a haunting score make this about the artiest ‘video nasty’ I’ve seen. 9/10 for pushing the limits.
Dead Time Stories, Vol 3. (David Wickes/Paul Verhoeven) – 3 episodes of a Canadian (I think) TV series. The first has Robert Vaughn as a plastic surgeon who cocks up an operation because of a sex & drugs session with Sybil Danning the night before – his mutilated patient takes revenge; also in it is Sonja ‘Videodrome’ Smits. Part 2, (Verhoeven’s), has a director relying on odd methods to get a performance out of his Linnea Quigley-ish leading lady, and the third stars Klaus Kinski as a musician whose hi-fi takes a dislike to him. The plots are all a little thin – none could be stretched to a full-length movie but at 25 mins each they’re fine. Good acting all round and plenty gratuitous nudity : 1st episode 8/10 (bonus point for Sybil), 2nd 7/10 (Verhoven directs well), 3rd 5/10 (plaintive cry of ‘not enough Kinski’!!).
The Doctor and the Devils (Freddie Francis) – Based on the Dylan Thomas play, with the names and ending changed for no good reason. Full of British actors (Jonathan Price, Timothy Dalton, Sian Phillips + Twiggy as a Cockney tart – what she’s doing in Edinburgh isn’t clear!) and directed by a Hammer stalwart, this still has an American air, perhaps due to Mel Brooks being the executive producer. Fortunately, it’s not too intrusive – most of the performances are good and the sets & costumes seem appropriate. Pity it never breaks the ‘TV drama’ mould. 6/10, mostly harmless.
Earth Girls Are Easy (Julian Temple) – The best way to describe this indescribable film is as a musical version of “Revenge of the Teenage Vixens From Outer Space” with the sexes swapped. That was, unsurprisingly, several orders of magnitude worse than this, which isn’t bad at all. Jeff Goldblum is the lead alien, his wife Geena Davis is the Valley Girl who finds ET’s in her pool, and introduces them to life in California. Some very silly moments and a good soundtrack outweigh the odd dullish chunk and you have to keep on your toes to spot all the references and background joke. 7/10 and a good time was had by all.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling) – Amiable teen romp, now out on sell-through, that meanders along amusingly enough without going anywhere. Worth watching for three reasons: Sean Penn (of all people) is great as a vacuous surfer dude, Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh are pleasantly scenic and there is one awesome, pointless moment of poor taste : a guy jerking off in the toilet while fantasising about Miss Cates is rudely interrupted by the entrance of his object of desire. 6/10, takes me back to my schooldays (tho’ not, of course, the last bit!).
The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven) – This predates, is completely different to, and is even better than his other works, “Robocop” and “Flesh & Blood”, which is saying a lot since they were by no means bad. A bisexual writer (Jeroen Krabbe), obsessed with death, shacks up with a beautician (Renee Soutendijk) so he can seduce her boyfriend. He has visions and premonitions of death before he discovers she has already buried three husbands. Will it be him or her boyfriend who gets to play the title role? Disturbing use of religious imagery, ‘real’ hallucinations and brilliant camerawork combine with believable, frightening performances (especially from Soutendijk as the Black Widow) to make this one a real find, though not one the whole family can enjoy, shall we say! Whether it has the required staying power to last repeat viewings is unknown – until then, let’s make it the first film to get ** 10/10 **
Getting It Right (Randall Kleiser) – Another very British film, with ‘class’ written through it like a stick of rock. Jesse Birdsall plays a 32-year old, virgin hair-dresser who gets entangled with three totally different women. Helena Bonham- Carter shows again why she’s about the best actress around, as the anorexic daughter of a millionaire seat-belt manafacturer, played by Sir John Gielgud – he’s about the only one who out-acts her, though all the cast are excellent (with the exception of Lynn Redgrave as the Older Woman, who’s oddly out of synch). A lot of needle-sharp observations on the British class system, love, art and life in general more than balance a schmaltzy ending, leaving this one I enjoyed. 8/10
Heathers (Michael Lehmann) – Veronica (Winona Ryder) is in with the in crowd, but doesn’t want to be. Egged on by JD (Christian Slater), she poisons one and then finds things are getting out of hand. Described everywhere as ‘black’, I felt it was a little tastefully done; only one sequence hit really low, where Veronica and JD execute two jocks and make it look like a homosexual love pact, after the jocks claim to “have had a sword-fight” in Veronica’s mouth. How much of this is due to studio intervention is uncertain – they insisted on a less bleak ending than the director wanted, where Veronica blew herself up! Still, nicely acted – Slater’s been watching old Jack Nicholson movies and Ryder is fine too, but Shannon Doherty as Green Heather out-acts (and out-cutes!) her, transforming from meek to bitchy when opportunity knocks. Teenage angst with a body count. 7/10
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh) – I last met any Shakespeare at school, where sitting down, reading it out aloud did a damn good job of putting me off, though I did enjoy Polanski’s ‘Macbeth’. This is similar – real ‘ac-tors’ doing real ‘ac-ting’, nearly all of them household names. It takes a while to get used to the prithey-ing and thou-ing and Branagh’s added scenes which added nothing for me. However, it gets better as it goes on; the battle scenes are well staged and it’s easy to see why Branagh has been critically acclaimed. 7/10 for being different.
I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Keenen Ivory Wayans) – It’s always interesting to note how Mel Brooks can get away with things, such as “The Hitler Rap”, because he’s Jewish. Similarly with Wayans, director, star & writer of IGGYS – no white man would dare stage a “Pimp of the Year” contest, featuring a poem called “Ma Bitch Better Have Ma Money”! The film parodies the blaxploitation movies like “Shaft”, but you don’t need to be black or know anything of the films to find this broad, ‘Airplane’ style spoof funny; platform shoes with live goldfish in them are bizarre enough to make anyone laugh. Wayans resembles Eddie Murphy a little, tho’ fortunately he knows there is more to comedy than saying ‘fuck’ every second sentence. 8/10, Spike Lee with a sense of humour.
Lethal Weapon 2 (Richard Donner) – The most outstanding things about this movie are Patsy Kensit’s nipples. Neither the action sequences nor the characterisations are as good as in the original; Mel Gibson especially has lost all his suicidal sharpness. And the plot!! South African diplomats running drugs stretches even my credulity, and when the US government fails to take any action at all, such as expelling them, said diplomats then declaring war on the Los Angeles police for no good reason, I’m afraid it’s all too much. 5/10, including two for Miss Kensit.
Nightmare City (Umberto Lenzi) – This is also known as ‘City of the Walking Dead’ and contains the fastest moving zombies ever seen. The film is directed with Lenzi’s usual flair and some scenes are funny (unintentionally, I think) – witness with horror the scenes of flesh-hungry zombies invading a TV station full of dancers; gasp with amazement at the ‘surprise’ ending; die laughing at the terrible dialogue and crappy acting. Criticism aside, in fact I did like this one. The six cans of Harp did help a little. 5/10
Phantom Empire (Fred Olen Ray) – Look at any article on Sybil Danning and there’s a good chance you’ll see a still from this movie, with SD showing phenomenal amounts of cleavage. Don’t be conned. This is another Fred Olen exploito-pic, with SD not appearing at all in the first half of the film and even she is hard pressed to resuscitate this movie. An expedition into some caves meet monsters in cheap costumes, scream and run away into a land at the centre of the earth, ruled by Sybil. They scream & run away from HER, she stalks them, they get back to the surface. The usual cast and budget of Ray’s plus a less than average plot, even by his standards, leave this one looking like a bad Dr Who episode. 3/10.
Pray TV (Rick Friedberg) – A lost opportunity here. What could have been a savage satire on American religious TV runs out of steam after 20 minutes and peters out into a limp drama. Starts off hopefully enough, when a cheap & shoddy TV channel is bought up by a Murdoch-style entrepreneur and turned into KGOD-TV. A couple of the skits – an “Exorcist’ parody, a Hare Krishna barbershop quartet – are witty, but these are too few and far between. Not even a brief appearance by Devo can save this wimp-pic. 3/10, someone should be nailed to a cross for this.
Psycho III (Anthony Perkins) – Norman Bates is back to normal, but Mother’s off her rocker again. The usual mix of kooks at the Bates Motel – a suicidal nun who sees ‘Mother’ and thinks it’s the Virgin Mary, an investigative journalist and an insane C & W singer – help Norman out with the usual mix of murder, mayhem and mother-fixation. None the less enjoyable for it, with Perkins good value for money as ever and showing a few neat touches from the director’s chair too, even if the film doesn’t get into top gear until five minutes from the end. 6/10
Sante Sangre (Alexander Joderowsky) – Not shown at Shock for contractual reasons, maybe a good thing, as I don’t know what the crowd there would have made of it. Not to say it isn’t good – you just don’t realise until the end how it all fits together and at Shock, they might not have had the patience! The first third tells of Fenix, an 8-year old living in a circus, whose mother finds her husband with the tattoed lady and pours sulphuric acid over them – he responds by cutting her arms off, in imitation of the religious martyr she worships. This, understandably, traumatises Fenix and he spends years pretending to be an eagle before his mother returns and she compels him to be her ‘hands’ and extract revenge. Or is she dead, and he merely hallucinating? A slow starter, spends most of the flash-back building ‘atmosphere’ with a lot of irrelevancies – when Fenix & Mother get together, it livens up fast and the sequences of the son/mother pairing are astonishing. The director’s son Axel and Blanca Guerra are excellent in the lead roles and even if it does bear a certain resemblance to ‘Psycho’, there are more than enough original ideas and thoughts to make this one worth seeing. 8/10.
Stage Fright (Michele Soavi) – The first feature from the director of ‘The Church’ (see TC2) is ‘A Chorus Line’ crossbred with ‘Friday the 13th’ – a group of actors is locked in a theatre with a homicidal maniac, who picks them off one by one; an almost plausible plot compared to some Italian films. Though that aspect lacks originality, lots of directorial flair helps overcome the deficiencies and some scenes are startling; an owl wielding a chainsaw!??! It’s almost Mario Bava quality, and it certainly isn’t Lamberto – sheer gratitude for that alone gets it 7/10.
Surf Nazis (Peter George) – Having managed to lose the “Must Die” suffix on its title, this Troma film is a post-apocalyptic beach movie; California has been wrecked by an earthquake (sorta topical) and the beach gangs rule – the Surf Nazis want to take over and are generally not nice to everyone else. Padded out with lots of surfing sequences, it steps up a gear when the mother of a victim of the gang’s Nazi-ness (well played by Gail Neely) heads out for revenge. 6/10 for running over people in motor-boats, a couple of original ideas and general tastelessness of the characters & subject matter.
Zombie Oasis – As opposed to ‘Nightmare City’ (see above), this one contains perhaps the SLOWEST moving zombies ever seen, almost as lethargic as the film’s pacing. When the final, ‘exciting’, ‘climactic’ battle arrives, the knackered zombies are killed with ease. Maybe they ought to rename this one ‘Zombies – Yawn of the Dead’. 1/10
Most people at sometime or other will have come across some obscure item which they feel they have discovered. They will then expose their friends to it, in the hope that they will acquire the same devotion for the subject as themselves. In this way, a cult following is eventually built up around it. One of three things can then happen: it can fade into obscurity, sustain it’s cult/underground following or, worst of all, become popular! In the last case, it doesn’t matter whether it gains it’s success from selling out or not, to a cultist his ‘find’ will no longer be what it was and he will abandon it to the masses.
And so to Rowland Rivron, a man of extreme greatness who has appeared in some of the best trash television ever, and has a dedicated cult following. Unless I’ve missed anything (in which case – bother!), he’s been quiet (very quiet) of late; except for his small but beautifully formed appearance in one of the recent re-runs of ‘The Young Ones’ he hasn’t been on the box since his series ‘Rivron’ finished around May. Is it obscurity for the man of gin? I think (and bloody hope) not. What follows is how I became acquainted with RR, and his career as I know it.
We start on a Saturday morning, some two & a bit years ago, at around 1.00 am. I stagger home to my parents’ house after a heavy session. I scale the stairs to my room and unearth a four-pack from the cupboard. I then rewind the tape that’s waiting in the video : that night’s episode of ‘The Last Resort’. I lie back on my bed, start the four pack and begin to enjoy the show. It’s not long before my first encounter with the man himself, in his legendary first appearance as Dr. Martin Scrote and his awe-inspiring “Bag o’ fun” from which he produces various human organs and gives alternative suggestions for their use.
The next day I ask my mates if they saw this joker called Dr. Scrote on “The Last Resort” but they hadn’t. A quick visit to my house rectified the situation and after a screening, some were impressed while others weren’t. I couldn’t get enough and on Fridays, I’d eagerly return from the pub in the hope that he would appear on the show. He often did, and those episodes I remember most fondly are: him trying to stop cars for an interview by standing in the middle of a busy road (but to no avail); one where he has invented a safety device to stop you from being beaten up or falling over when you’re down the pub – it was in fact a large cardboard box; one where he described the benefits of swimming pools for pregnant women, including his pregnancy surf-board and one from the London Palladium where Harry Dean Stanton, upon seeing Dr Scrote dressed as a clown and stuck in a trap door in the middle of the stage, said “Who the fuck’s that chap?”. Nice one, Harry. Best of all, however, was the show broadcast from somebody’s house in which he handed out tips on safety in the kitchen, during which he is stabbed and set on fire.
Aware of him at this time only in his Dr Scrote incarnation, I nearly gave both my parents a heart attack when I cried out “IT’S HIM!” upon seeing him on ‘French & Saunders” one night. He appeared as Dwayne Bishop, drummer of a two-piece band called ‘Raw Sex’. As I was to later learn, it was with Raw Sex that Rivron had started his career, touring with the likes of French & Saunders and Nigel Planer. In fact, he and his Raw Sex partner, Simon Brint, had been knocking out quite a few TV signature tunes including the aforementioned F & S, “London’s Burning” and most of “The Comic Strip Presents”.
But then in August ’88, it was college for me. There I met a guy who shared my interest in Dr. Scrote and one night while he was watching “Night Network”, they had a trailer for the following night, which included the start of “The Bunker Show”. So we sat through ‘Video Vote’, etc until the magic moment. It’s arrival was not disappointing – it must rank in the top three all time greatest TV programmes.
“The Bunker Show” is a chat show where RR is the host, conducting an interview with a guest celebrity down in a bunker after the bomb has gone off. During it, much alcohol (and on one occasion, meths!) is drunk, mostly by RR, and a vast amount of gibberish is talked, never more so than on the first show. In this incredible moment of television history, Danny Peacock discusses with RR such things as why Norman Wisdom wasn’t in “Ghandi”, the motorbike stunt cut from the same film (and how the bike was smuggled into the country in a turban), how to annoy Michael Caine by beating him at pool, what happened to the original UB40 before the likes of Mick Jagger & The Beatles left and Danny’s first sexual experience with a girl called Cathy while she was unconscious after being hit on the back of the head by an apple that he had thrown! A well dodgy confession.
The rest of the shows featured Freddie Starr, Derek Jameson, the lead singer of Fairground Attraction, Spike Milligan and Cleo Rocos. Whilst none were as funny as the first, the final one of these was particularly funny, ending with Rowland posing the offer “I’ll give you a quid if you show me your gusset!!”.
It wasn’t until this show that I became aware that Rowland Rivron was my idol’s name, and the man’s greatness was to be confirmed one night during a screening of the all-time-greatest-no-discussion-on-this-matter-thank-you-very-much programme ever made, “Mr Jolly Lives Next Door”. Up flashes the credit, “Written by Rik Mayall Ade Edmondson & Rowland Rivron”. If you haven’t seen this classic Comic Strip episode, then consider your life meaningless and hope, no, pray that Channel 4 repeat it soon. If I ever see a programme funnier than this, I fear my head will fall off.
It wasn’t long after “The Bunker Show had finished” before Rowland had a new show on the telly, Again, it was a winner, the likes of which had never been seen before. ‘Groovy Fellers’ starts with Jools Holland and Tom, the cameraman, standing in a pub waiting for something to happen so they can make a documentary around it, when in walks a naked man who it transpires is The Martian (RR). For the next six weeks, they drive around the country in a Rolls explaining to the Martian what we Earth people do.
Largely improvised, it makes for a very odd piece of TV – there were four incredible highlights to the series : i) In the second episode, they visit the house of Dave Sullivan where RR, indulges in a spot of skinny-dipping with a couple of the “Sunday Sport” girls. ii) In the fourth programme, they go to a night-club in Deptford where RR ends up very well-oiled, starts kissing everyone (male AND female), gets in a fight, falls down a flight of very steep stairs, and ends up in the ladies toilet where he revels in a spot of “wrestling toilet women”. iii) The 5th episode has an excellent birth by Caesarian section but best of all iv) The part in programme 3 where they drop in on an upper-class dinner party. During the dinner, RR again gets canned but the funniest aspect is a bird in her forties who is constantly trying to chat him up. You begin to squirm in your seat at the come-ons she gives him!
Again, after ‘Groovy Fellers’ had finished it wasn’t long before he had another new series. Going under the name of ‘Rivron’, it was simply ‘The Bunker Show’ relocated IN the Thames. Originally made for ‘Night Network’, when that ceased to be, Channel 4 came to the rescue and put them out as programmes in their own right. It was from this show that his romance with that talented girl [ and well known antithesis of everything bimbo-ish ] Wendy James sprung.
The show was certainly ‘wacky’, and RR is in great form. However, it lacks the alcohol content of ‘The Bunker Show’ and after a while, the novelty of them being in the river wears off. The best show is the one with Tony Blackburn, in which RR subtly takes the piss out of him.
But what’s happened to him since? Maybe he was working on his relationship, but seeing how he’s now split up with that talentless bimbo [You don’t mean Wendy??], he’ll maybe be making a return to the telly. He’s meant to have written a series about Dr. Scrote and his five brother who are a boxer, a tramp, a farmer, etc. Whether this has been made or ever will be, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to “keep ’em peeled”…
**** 6. “While everybody else is opening up their presents, they’re opening up their wrists.”
**** 7. “Couldn’t enjoy it any more, Mum. Mmmm-mm-mmmmm.”
Imagine if you will a film where characters are sliced up with wire, hit on the back of the head with a hammer and have nails implanted in their flesh. “Hellraiser”? No. This film predates it by over 40 years, has been shown on TV uncut and was passed by the BBFC with a U certificate. I have to admit it’s a cheat, though. For what we are discussing is not a film, but a cartoon series…
When compared with the appalling animation so often shown on TV today, Tom & Jerry stand out like a nugget of gold. While “Thundercats” and “The Real Ghostbusters” are largely drawn by computer, with the minimum of complexity (characters walking are often shown only from the waist up because legs are ‘difficult’), the drawing in T&J is superb, with no skimping and sequences are frequently included that can only be appreciated using the PAUSE button.
Overall, between 1940 and 1967, MGM made 161 cartoons – that’s about 1.75 million hand-drawn frames. At their best, the animation is well up to Disney standard: in the decade beginning 1943, T&J received Oscar nominations for Best Animation EVERY year and won SEVEN, including FOUR on the trot – a record far in excess of any live-action star. And remember, this was the same era as Warner Bros. were producing Bugs Bunny and Disney weren’t exactly slacking either – further proof of MGM’s strength.
The main element running through nearly all the cartoons is surreal violence. T&J live in an alternate universe, where gravity functions only when you realise you’re standing on air, canaries pull 2000 lb. weights from off-screen and all flesh is infinitely deformable and semi-liquid – both characters often have their topology severely altered through being cut, chopped, broken and burnt beyond recognition.
Yet they always seem to survive. I say ‘seem’, for death is an overt theme in several cartoons. In ‘Heavenly Puss’ (1949), Tom will only be allowed into heaven if he can get Jerry to sign a contract of forgiveness. And, even worse, ‘Blue Cat Blues’ (1956) is a horrendously pessimistic love-story in which Tom becomes an alcoholic and attempts suicide. The ending is equally grim, both characters sitting on the railway track with a train approaching. Not often shown on TV and yet to appear on the videos, it is conclusive evidence T&J is not a kiddies’ cartoon. On a lighter note, this can also be seen in ‘Yankee Doodle Mouse’ (1943), where the closing scene asks you to ‘Buy War Bonds’.
The early cartoons seem quaintly naive, with Tom (or Jasper as he’s called in ‘Puss Gets The Boot’ (1940), the first film) not looking much like the suave cat he was to become. The characters developed over the years up until Fred Quimby’s departure in 1955, which marked the end of what is almost universally thought of as the best period; the cracks began to show and the ideas were starting to run out. “Life With Tom” (1953) is just an excuse to clip together bits from three old cartoons and “The Egg & Jerry” (1956) is a pure remake, virtually frame for frame, of the earlier “Hatch Up Your Troubles”.
Therefore, it wasn’t so great a surprise when the series was eventually cancelled in 1958. However, three years later T&J made a comeback under the guiding hand of Chuck Jones. The changing economics of animation forced modifications in the style – the backgrounds are no longer as detailed as they were – and the content, with human characters being introduced; in previous cartoons only people’s legs had ever been seen. These cartoons, though quirky and amusing in their own right, take the cat & mouse struggle out of the arena of the home far more often than previously and are often highly derivative. To be fair, some are very funny – ‘Bad Day at Cat Rock’ (1965) is lovely visual humour, even if it is more than a little like Wile E. Coyote v. Roadrunner, which Jones did a lot of for Warner Bros. The end has virtually all the combinations possible of a cat, a see-saw and a building site…
1967 saw the final T&J film, ‘Purr-chance to Dream’ (totally ignoring Hannah- Barbera’s TV massacre of them in the 70’s), yet the BBC’s sterling use has helped ensure that generations not born when the cartoons were made have grown up knowing and loving them. A whole industry of annuals, soft toys, clothing and comics has been sustained by them – I recall having every issue of ‘Tom and Jerry Weekly’ and imagine they’d be worth a fair bit now had I kept them!
Although the main struggle throughout is Cat vs. Mouse, other combinations are often seen. Cat against two mice, cat against dog and mouse, cat and mouse against cat or dog or robot. Yet conflict is not a vital component. The classic ‘The Night Before Christmas’ (1941) has more real Yuletide spirit in each second of it’s nine minutes than an entire Russ Abbott Christmas Special. ‘Mouse in Manhattan’ (1943) is also non-violent, showing Jerry’s adventures in the Big Apple – Tom only appears in the final few seconds of this one.
Tom and Jerry’s humour is timeless and international, thanks to it’s visual style and lack of any significant dialogue, compared to Bugs Bunny, for example. France has gone for them in a big way, thanks mainly to the efforts of Patrick Brion, whose mammoth tome ‘Tom et Jerry’ remains THE work on the subject, lavishly illustrated but hideously expensive, it’s forty pound price tag putting it out of reach of all save the rabid, hard-core fan. However, six videos of the duo are now available for under a tenner and any one of these will give you hours of entertainment.
To sum up, Tom & Jerry are essentially a distillation of all violent humour from The Three Stooges through to Sam Raimi, and prove again that fictional nastiness has no effect on the individual. Perhaps, after all, the difference between them and “Hellraiser” wasn’t quite as wide as we thought…
Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond Steve’s control (like his PC vanishing without a trace), we are unable to bring you the advertised edition of The San Futuro Chronicles. Instead, in it’s place, you get yours truly waffling on about his favourite comics in a little more detail than I had room for back in Issue 0 (copies now available, 50p, plug, plug).
Steve and I have a good few comic favourites in common. This isn’t all that odd, since it was Mr. Welburn who was really responsible for nurturing the sapling of my vague interest into a full-scale hobby, and another pit into which to pour far too much money, by lending me large chunks of his collection. However, there are some noticeable exceptions and it’s these I’ll concentrate on in the main.
The first comic book I ever bought as an adult was when I was on holiday one summer in France. The French have a far better attitude than us to ‘bande dessinee’ as they call them – in the UK, comics are only just beginning to crawl out of the ghetto of Marvel superheroes and Biffo the Bear, where they’d been languishing, but in France, comics are accepted as valid adult literature. This means that they cover a wide range of topics – this can be slightly disconcerting to the British reader, used to escapist fantasy. However, the book I bought was a ‘comic’ in the true sense that it was funny. “Natacha l’hotesse d’air” caught my eye initially because of it’s title, but beyond that is a great read, even with my limited (and dictionary boosted) French.
Beyond being about the eponymous heroine, the books have little in common – she can be fighting head-hunters, digging for religious relics or getting kidnapped. The only other constancy is her modesty – due to their adult appeal mentioned above, French comics are a lot more graphic, especially in terms of sex, than we are used to. Yet Natacha always keeps her clothes on – something parodied superbly in “Nathalie, le petit hotesse”, a Dutch satire which has her engaging in virtually every sexual antic conceivable. Other French strips are just as good; Moebius is the best known artist, but no matter who draws them, they’re all a great way to brush up your French!
It was after this that I was loaned Steve’s collection, and the one that really caught my eye was “Hellblazer”. Despite having suffered a title change due to a certain Clive Barker film, this one is a continual barrage of interesting ideas. Steve gave you details last time, so I’ll pass on quickly, adding only that Issue 3 is probably my favourite single issue of any comic, and that after a worrying spell when the hero, John Constantine, was in danger of becoming a hippy, he is now back to his normal style and the two most recent issues have returned to their old, grim ways!
The obvious thing to do now was wander round the comic shops for myself and see what else was available. My next two favourites were both discovered about this time, though they could hardly be more different. “Laser Eraser & Pressbutton” (above, aka “Axel Pressbutton”) is perhaps the series I enjoy most, and is highly recommended to trashophiles for its mix of sex, violence and humour. Axel used to be a mild- mannered florist until an unfortunate encounter with a carnivorous, though extremely polite, plant left him with half a body. The surgeons fashioned a replacement, complete with a titanium scythe attachment and a button plugged directly into his pleasure centres to make up for the loss of his family jewels – hence his name. Mysta Mystralis, the Laser Eraser, is a cloned assassin with a penchant for tight- fitting costumes and together, they roam the galaxy ‘killing things’ (especially plants, in Axel’s case) and encountering weird creatures such as Zirk. He/It’s a melon-shaped alien with a penchant for bimbos and avocado puree, simultaneously…
From the sublime, to the just as sublime. The Japanese are THE most comic-oriented country in the world; everyone reads them, watches film versions of them and absorbs them, willingly or otherwise, in every aspect of life. As in France, the adult market has demanded adult comics – this has been taken to extremes in the highly notorious “Rapeman” series, featuring a super-hero who cures women’s sexual hang-ups by raping them. This has, unsurprisingly, not yet been translated into English. Plenty of other, more pleasant ones have – the best of which in my opinion is “Mai, the Psychic Girl” (below). This is a very visual comic, which may explain it’s successful crossing of language barriers – this one relies on visuals more than texts, with four pages being used to describe a car-crash for example. The plot is about a girl having to come to terms with her telekinetic powers, while simultaneously trying to avoid the Wisdom Alliance, an international conspiracy, who wish to subvert her abilities to their own ends.
From there, back to America and a swift steal of Steve’s thunder, as I know he was going to talk about ‘Slash Maraud’ (top). Alien invasion is the theme here, with the ET’s firmly in control and trying to change Earth to be more like their home planet. Unfortunately, this will also cause it to become uninhabitable by Earthlings, but nearly everyone is resigned to the fact, save our hero, Slash. He, and his motley crew of society’s dregs, take on the aliens, culminating in a battle at the Eiffel Tower, which is being used to fill the Earth with alien junk. The whole thing shoots along at a dazzling, lickety-split pace with not a dull moment in the six episodes.
Comics, as a whole, stand midway between the film, the painting and the book – the best ones combine pure imagination and superb visual imagery with evocative writing that can almost stand on it’s own, without any pictures. The range of comics available ensures that there is something for everyone to enjoy; anyone who writes the genre off as ‘childish’ just doesn’t know what they’re missing!
