It’s 12:10 on Sunday, April 14th. Arsenal are 2-0 down after 10 minutes of the FA Cup Semi-Final against Terry Venables’ bunch of bankrupts. I am not a happy man, which may be reflected in the tone of this column. Apologies if it sounds like Stefan Jaworzyn is editing this issue…

Mark Stevens, Rugby – “Blade Runner bit [TC8] ok if you’re into that over-rated borefest. The article shows up what seems to me to be a TC fault – only trying to look for arty subtexts in a film if it’s visually stunning  and entertaining  first  off  (and looks  as if  it’s meant to be deep, a bad sign). Any Dario flick, or even Cannibal Ferox, is worthier than Blade Runner…Your Driller Killer review illustrates my Blade Runner gripe. I find it to be of high artistic content and many respected critics agree (not that I thought of it first!) and just because it isn’t dazzling and doesn’t have N.Kinski in it doesn’t mean it’s no good. There is actually a good reason for it’s being shot in a dull tone (to reflect that way of live) and hence it’s deliberateness makes it not dull, for me at least (could you understand that sentence? Because I’m having trouble on re-reading it).”

Nope, no problems with that one – it was the previous sentence, with the quadruple negatives, that got to me… I feel that deep down, most shallow exploitation films are exactly that – shallow exploitation. However, I may have missed the ‘subtexts’ inherent in the bit where the bloke gets his dick cut off, the artistic content of the animal torture and the whole point of movies that, no matter how well done they are, remain for me just a series of atrocities strung together for a cheap thrill. Anyone can make a sick puppy film, but it takes skill to hold an audience’s attention by appealing to their brains rather than their psychoses – me, although I like both sorts, I never make the mistake of confusing them!

Tony Lee, Isle of Wight – “I can hardly believe you found Wings of Desire boring! Yes, a bit slow, but sometimes quite imaginative and easily the best thing Wenders has done! Transylvania 6-500 was at least mildly amusing, if not actually very funny. And as for saying Jeff Goldblum has “no talent for comedy at all” (!) have you never seen TV’s Tenspeed and Brownshoe? – and what about Buckaroo Banzai? Earthgirls Are Easy, and the latent humour of Into the Night? Or for that matter, The Fly? Goldblum is a master of subtle character based comedy”

Yes, I was rolling in the aisles at The Fly, just like the rest of the audience. From what I can see, where Goldblum’s films are funny, this tends to be despite, rather than because of him. Witness the recent series of adverts for Holsten Pils (there’s a novel idea, advertise a beer by getting a tall foreign actor to be weird!) – I rest my case. And now for a couple of people who seem a little unhappy with the state of fandom, starting with the sort of unsubstantiated insinuations that letter columns were invented for:

William Kilfeather, California – “This is an open letter to all movie zines. Please see the attached review of Michael Flores’s (It’s Only A Movie). If more zines were brave enough to print a review like this, fewer of us would have been ripped off and in some cases for a lot of money.”

The review mentioned is from an un-named publication and the bit highlighted reads as follows:

“We owe it to our readers who may wish to subscribe to It’s Only a Movie to mention that Flores has a reputation for not fulfilling orders on subscriptions and videos. Use caution!”

Douglas Angel, Gt.Yarmouth – “Funny you should be criticising Samhain in your pages, I quite agree that it’s going downhill, has been for a couple of years I’d say. I always laugh at their pretension of the horror zine scene being “healthy”, a lot of them are utter ****! One I paid £1 for had about ten single-sided badly photocopied A4 pages with almost no text and some badly swiped photos, all of which have been seen in lots of publications over the years. Take away **** like that and the foreign zines that appear and you don’t have that many left. I only feel that there are only a handful that are worth buying.”

Now, here are two nuggets of trivia that might be very important (on the other hand, they might be totally irrelevant), some comments on financing T-shirts and an entirely unjustifiable speculation on the reasons behind my change of address:

Alun Fairburn, Ammanford – “Did you know that when Ripley activates the launch sequence in the escape shuttle towards the end of Alien, the message that appears on the monitor (‘ENVIRON CTR PURGE 24556 DR 5’) is the same message (and in the same colours) as a message that appears in the police car as Deckard and Edward James Olmos lift off near the beginning of Blade Runner?…Did I mention the Robocop 2 ‘joke’? In a scene in which Belinda Bauer/Dr.Faxx looks at the broken down Robocop & we get a view from his point of view, a load of rubbish scrolls up the screen, among it a line of hex which when translated says ‘Peter Kuran is a great guy’. Kuran was one of the computer FX people. I must be bored or something.”

Daniel Cox, Greenford – “I have already begun to raise the cost of the T-shirt in three desperate ways:

1) a swear box. With this I have already amassed 6p, which only goes to show what a vulgar person I can be under pressure.

2) sponsored suicide. With this I was able to raise over œ12,000,000 but I chickened out and had to return the money.

3) by looking for money. A simple but ingenious idea. I have already found 42p simply by looking for it on the ground. What are the limits to this method I ask myself.

Anyway, to date I still only have 48p and some way to go for a TC t-shirt, and even though through self-awareness classes I have been able to reach a state of mind which allows me to view the piggy bank as being half full rather than half empty, financially that doesn’t seem to make any bloody difference…”

Glyn Williams, Derby – “Is this constant changing of addresses entirely innocent? It’s tempting to think that an incident involving a combination of your passion for French teenage girls and melted Belgian chocolate may have meant an enforced move.”

I deny everything. We simply ran out of room in the old house – there’s a limit to the number of chocolate-coated Euro-bimbettes one can keep in the fridge at the same time… Till TC10…

I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking, did he fire five shots or six? Well, to tell the truth, in all this confusion I forgot myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, and the most powerful handgun in the world – it can blow your head clean off – you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?

Since the late ’60s, audiences worldwide have been fascinated by Eastwood’s style. His no-nonsense approach to the most demanding of situations has fired the imaginations of millions. It has also been widely copied and caused much controversy.

So when you think of Eastwood, the first image conjured up is probably that of a superhuman cop or western outlaw with a thin snarl on his lips, a squint and a poor “punk” at the wrong end of some serious weaponry. Oh, and you want him to pull the trigger! Just what is it about Eastwood that makes his popularity so universal? In a strictly sociological sense, much of his success can be attributed to the era from which his type of “hero” arose. Stateside, the sixties were violent, reactionary and anti-establishment. The classic film formula of sex, destruction of property and abuse of authority was the inevitable result. At the time heroes like Paul Newman and Marlon Brando may have defined the “antihero”, but the backgrounds of the characters they played always excused them as either victims of their environments or lovable rogues.

Eastwood strode onto the screen in A Fistful of Dollars as a man seemingly devoid of the simplest emotions or sympathetic actions. He exuded the absolute certainty of one who stood above the rest of mankind, and that there was no-one he couldn’t or wouldn’t kill. Above all he was in complete control of his environment and completely certain of his actions. Here was a new kind of hero.

And therein lies his appeal to audiences. He was – and still is – the fantasy answer to our real life problems. People’s desires are reflected in the heroes they choose, and who wouldn’t want to possess the fast thinking and accurate decision making needed to take on the all pervasive society which renders us impotent. And to take it on and win! Go on, admit it – you’ve fantasized about delivering the line “make my day” with a Colt Magnum to underline it. Who hasn’t!

Sergio Leone’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, made with a working title of The Magnificent Stranger and financed by a German-Italian-Spanish production company, ran into problems when both Henry Fonda and Lee Van Cleef rejected the part of “The man with no name”. The story goes that when the production team met, the only suggestion raised was that they try out a tall soft-spoken American actor who had a supporting role in the long running black-and-white serial Rawhide.

Eastwood, a relative unknown, saw it as a holiday for himself and his wife Maggie, a break from the serial, a fifteen thousand dollar fee and a chance to demonstrate his independence from CBS, who would neither release him from his contract or allow him to direct an episode. Most tellingly, he was confident that the film would never be shown in the US, and as the only one on the set of The Magnificent Stranger with any experience of the Western (and the only one who could speak English), he decided to take his character to the limit. Marlon Brando wouldn’t even get out of bed for fifteen thousand dollars!

It was not until ’67, after The Good, the Bad and the Ugly had been completed, that A Fistful of Dollars was bought by U.A. and shown in the States to huge audiences and awful reviews:

• A Fistful of Dollars: “Mr. Eastwood shows a talent for squinting and mouthing a cigarillo.” — Judith Crist, New York Tribune
• For a Few Dollars More: “A treat for necrophiliacs. The rest of us can get our kicks for free at the butcher store.” — Judith Crist, NBC Today show
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: “… must be the most expensive, pious, and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre.” — Reanata Adler, New York Times

Eastwood’s friendship with Don Seigel (who directed Coogan’s Bluff and nominated Eastwood for membership of the Director’s Guild so he could make Play Misty For Me) resulted in one of the most controversial films of his career to date, Dirty Harry. The film quickly became a cause celebre with the media who felt that the film condoned fascist police actions, and the police who saw it as a sympathetic treatment of an honest man’s frustrations at police work.

Dirty Harry is pretty representative of Eastwood’s style, and the direction of his films subsequently. Filmed on location, on a low budget (well, low by Warner Bros. standards), under schedule and with Eastwood’s famous insistence on doing his own stunts, most notably the leap from a trestle bridge onto a moving school-bus. Its also a film in which the “hero” gets beaten physically. The first shootout (from which the above dialogue is taken) takes place outside the “Kwik Lunch” sandwich bar, which is next to a movie theatre. Have you noticed which film is playing? Incidentally, the poster copy for the film ran “You don’t assign him to murder cases, you just turn him loose”!

The critics were a little less hostile to the Dirty Harry series:

• Dirty Harry: A fast-paced detective story. Eastwood is excellent.” — New York Daily News
• Magnum Force: “All that Eastwood can manage is a frown that suggests tension. The excitement is mainly in the camera work, which is stunning.” — Nora Sayre, New York Times
• The Enforcer: “The Enforcer is the third or fourth Dirty Harry movie with Clint Eastwood blowing people’s heads off and creating the kind of havoc Batman would find juvenile…It all went out of style years ago with Clint Eastwood’s mumbling.” — Rex Reed, New York Daily News
• Sudden Impact: “Sudden Impact has all the action anyone could want..This movie’s a whirligig, an explosion, and absolutely senseless.” — Archer Winsten, New York Post

Eastwood’s Malpaso (false step) production company was founded as a vehicle to make Eastwood’s fast and cheap brand of escapism. In the mid seventies, among much talk of the death of the Western, Eastwood worked through High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales, films notable for their decidedly offbeat/supernatural character and the lack of a single likeable character! These are films where the quality of the direction stands out in generating atmosphere and terror in low key, disconcertingly normal situations.

Over the years, Eastwood has turned down starring roles in Apocalypse Now and The Killing Fields, preferring to experiment with scripts like Tightrope and Bird. He has been displaced at the box office by ’80s heroes (Murphy, Stallone, Cruise), but in the author’s opinion he’d blow them away in a straight fight!

Filmography

• 1955  – Revenge of the Creature (b/w)
          Francis in the Navy (b/w)
          Lady Godiva (GB: Lady Godiva of Coventry)
          Tarantula (b/w, uncredited – above)
• 1956  – Away All Boats
          Never Say Goodbye
          The First Travelling Saleslady
          Star in the Dark
• 1957  – Escapade in Japan
• 1958  – Lafayette Escadrille (GB: Hell Bent for Glory)
•         Ambush at Cimarron Pass
• 1964  – A Fistful of Dollars (orig: Per un Pugno di Dollari)
• 1965  – For a Few Dollars More (orig: Per qualche Dollaro in piu)
• 1966  – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (orig: Il buono, Il bruto, Il cattivo)
• 1967  – The Witches
• 1968  – Hang ‘Em High
          Coogan’s Bluff
• 1969  – Where Eagles Dare
          Paint Your Wagon
• 1970  – Kelly’s Heroes
          Two Mules for Sister Sara
• 1971  – The Beguiled
          Play Misty for Me (+ dir.)
          Dirty Harry
• 1972  – Joe Kidd
• 1973  – High Plains Drifter (+ dir.)
          Breezy (+ dir.)
          Magnum Force
• 1974  – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
• 1975  – The Eiger Sanction (+ dir.)
• 1976  – The Outlaw Josey Wales (+ dir.)
          The Enforcer
• 1977  – The Gauntlet (+ dir.)
• 1978  – Every Which Way But Loose
• 1979  – Escape from Alcatraz
• 1980  – Bronco Billy
          Any Which Way You Can
• 1982  – Firefox (+ prod/dir.)
          Honky Tonk Man (+ prod/dir.)
• 1983  – Sudden Impact (+ prod/dir.)
• 1984  – Tightrope (+ co-prod.)
          City Heat
• 1985  – Pale Rider (+ prod/dir.)
          Vanessa in the Garden (TVM)
• 1986  – Heartbreak Ridge (+ prod/dir.)
• 1988  – The Dead Pool
          Bird (prod/dir)
• 1990  – White Hunter, Black Heart (dir)
          The Rookie

Does Wendy James wear knickers or not? Those of you who saw BBC1’s “Going Live!” on April 13th will have seen Bendy Wendy perform Transvision Vamp’s latest single (since she’s always careful not to exploit her body, I must have been hallucinating when I saw her clad in a skirt so short it barely covered her panties, grinding her crotch at the camera, stroking her inner thighs and squeezing her small-but-perfectly-formed breasts – ditto, the cover of The Face magazine, which had Wendy just-about wearing bits of a coat-hanger). There followed this interesting exchange with presenter Sarah Greene:

SG: Do all your knickers match your frocks?

WJ: No, I don’t usually wear them.

SG: <Long pause> You’re not scared about catching cold then?

[2020 update: God bless YouTube for preserving the above conversation]

In the investigative spirit for which TC is famed, I’ll be going to see Transvision Vamp in concert before next issue and will be down at the front checking to see just how natural a blonde Wendy really is…

One final tweak to the top 10 films of 1990, following Xmas viewing. ‘Meet the Feebles’ doesn’t stand up to repeated viewing so is replaced by ‘In the Line of Duty 4’, which gets better on reviewing. And a comic book to recommend: ‘Squeak the Mouse’, Tom & Jerry crossed with every splatter movie you’ve seen. It was recommended to me some time ago by a reader (can’t remember who!) but it’s taken a while to get hold of a copy, since Customs seem to have been great fans of it… ‘Meet the Applegates’ did indeed improve on a second viewing – while it’s still no ‘Heathers’, it’s a neat little movie. I saw a trailer for Michael Lehmann’s next film, ‘Hudson Hawke’ recently: I’m not overly optimistic…

Next issue: I feel something Oriental creeping on. It’ll have been four issues (= a year [near enough!]) since the last one, so it seems a good time to loose my predilection for lingerie-clad Japanese gothettes. Precisely what this means for TC remains to be seen. It’ll probably involve a cold shower or two.

Thanks are due to Steve Rag, Dan Pydynkowski, Graf Hauser and Claire Blamey (all of whom have been feeding my NK obsession), Andy Waller, Paul Higson, Helen McCarthy, Stefan Kwiatkowski, Anthony Cawood, George Houston, John from Barlaston, Jay Felton, Tim Paxton, Damien Drake and Steve Moss. Congratulations to Fantasynopsis and Imaginator for taking the top places in Samhain’s ‘zine poll – definitely worthy winners. TC8 was available from Forbidden Planet, Fantasy Inn and Psychotronic Videos, London, plus Videodrom, Berlin and Forbidden Planet, Cardiff – maybe the last named will get round to paying me for the issues I sent them at some point?

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Film Blitz: Stop Press

Silence of the Lambs – Jonathan (Married to the Mob) Demme directs the adaptation of Thomas Harris’ excellent novel of the same name. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster star as psychopath and trainee FBI agent respectively. Sounds like a strange combination? Well, it works brilliantly: Hopkins will win next year’s Best Actor and the film will be nominated for Best Film. The story concerns Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), a psychiatrist turned psychopath incarcerated in a top security mental institution – Clarice Sterling (Foster) is used to try and gain Lester’s help on the case of ‘Buffalo Bill’, a serial killer who skins his female victims. The most terrifying thing in the film (and the book) is the interplay between Sterling and Lecter – Hopkins is just totally charismatic as the too-intelligent-to-be-sane psychopath and plays Lecter to perfection. Honestly, the film haunts me even while I’m writing this… 10/10. (AC)

Trash City – Issue 9

Spring 1991.

TC-shirts!

After consultation and market research, the final design is front: Kinski pic + “Trash City – the T-shirt they tried to ban!”. back: most will have the text, “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw…” (a ‘Heathers’ quote, so it’s not totally gratuitous) but some won’t, and may be worn in polite company. A printer has now been found with sufficiently few scruples to do them (though he doesn’t know about the quote yet!) – the bad news is that the back-printed ones will cost more – not sure of exact cost at the moment, but you will be told in due course. New readers wondering what we’re discussing are invited to send for further details, if they are interested in clothing with a full-colour picture of a blood-spattered German actress…

Congrats to my two favoured ice-hockey teams, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Minnesota North Stars, for both getting to the Stanley Cup final when neither has ever won it before. You are urged to watch Liquid TV (BBC2: Monday 1915), the most innovative and interesting program on TV at the moment. This issue was brought to you by the letter Ö, the number e3, 2 quarter tabs of beta-blockers, more Winona Ryder pics than the human mind can comprehend and a driving licence. Yep, passed this time!

CREDITS

• Produced by: Jim McLennan.
• Directed by: Per Porter.
• From an original script by: Anthony Cawood, Des Lewis, Jim McLennan, Paul Mallinson, Martin Murray, Per Porter, Dan Pydynkowski and Steve Welburn.
• Key grip: Copyprint, London

Sub. rates (min. 2 issues) are 75p/issue UK, $1.50 Europe, $3 elsewhere. A label on the envelope tells you the last one you’ll get + how much is left over after it. Note the price increase for UK issues – this is still brilliant value (I reckon), you pay for the ‘zine, I pay for the postage. Single issues are œ1 ($2,$4), including postage – this just about breaks even. I sell copies to shops for 75p, so a œ1.25 shop price seems fair. Cheques/PO’s to Jim McLennan. Contributions are welcome, and I reserve the right to publish correspondence unless specifically asked not to. Send everything to :
Jim McLennan, 7 Tummons Gardens, S.Norwood Hill, LONDON, SE25 6BD
which has changed as well. Eagle-eyed readers may notice the post-code is not the same as on the change of address slips I sent out – that was wrong, the one above is official and Post Office approved. And since we’d no room on the cover, this is a more sensible than usual list of:

CONTENTS

1-3	The Usual stuff	27	Song lyrics from Hell!
4-7	Clint Eastwood: the Magnum man	28-29	The Chicago Bares…
8-9	They came from inside the envelope…	30-35	Film Blitz
10-13	The search for intelligent life in Streatham	36-38	Read by Dawn: ‘zines ‘n’ stuff
14-17	Incredibly Bad Film Show: Iron Angels	39-41	Music for Eurocrats
18-21	Conspiracy Corner: War, huh!	42-43	Martin & Me
22	How to make a martial arts movie	44-47	Recommended For Mature Readers
23-26	Golden Showers	48	…and you thought we’d forgotten her!