Mad Dog is probably one of the prime examples of the Italian exploitation film from the ‘70s. All the hallmarks are here: blonde-haired, blue-eyed police hero; vicious psychopathic villain; gratuitous violence; and a smattering of nudity from an actress who is barely clinging onto her status as a cinematic drawcard; and a smidge of titillation from a new actress (Marina Giordana) who may have been on her way up. In fact Giordana never really took off. IMDb only list eight film productions, and she only appeared in five after Mad Dog. Mad Dog is still a by-the-numbers crime thriller, raised a notch by the strong central performance by Helmut Berger (this guy is just a nutter), and ably supported by old stalwarts, Richard Harrison and Marisa Mell.

This May, a couple bands I grew up with but haven’t seen since the early 1990s, are getting back together for a one-off benefit show back in Louisville. Cerebellum and Endpoint comprised a hefty portion of my high school soundtrack. Long nights spent loitering with them and other friends from the Louisville punk scene in the Deer Park Ave parking lot, or skating Bardstown Road or the parking garage at the Federal Building downtown, or sitting around outside after a show at Tewligans or CD Graffitis (a Lazer Tag maze that was converted to a teen dance club/music venue when Lazer Tag stopped being popular), the fire hazard Zodiac Club, or the Vogue Theater parking lot (yes, I went in and watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show a lot) — it may not be the stuff of teenage legends, but it was a lot of fun.

Yakuza Deka: The Assassin is the second film in the Yakuza Deka series. The film was released in America as Assassin. This lot lighter in tone, and subsequently far more enjoyable than the first Yakuza Deka film, although it is essentially a remake. The Assassin is better than the first film Secret Police — but due to the familiar casting of Ryohei Uchida once again, and a plot that is so similar to the first film, it feels like an also ran or a remake. I would suggest that if you chose to watch them, do not do it in close succession like I have, because it will take some of the gloss off all that this film has to offer.

Yakuza Deka is fairly action packed, but at the beginning it has a confusing directorial style. The story makes sense by the end of the film, but all throughout are these little action set pieces that seem to have little purpose. Only after the scene, is the plot explained. I guess in some ways the film is like an old school detective film and you only find out what is going on as Hayata does. The action sequences however, are not like an old school detective film. Yakuza Deka is tough and violent with a healthy dose of martial arts thrown into the mix. The last twenty minutes of this film is packed with fights, shootings, electrocutions, explosions, leaping from rooftops, and car chases. There’s even a pesky helicopter dropping dynamite on our hero.

The film opens with the villain of the piece, who is simply referred to as ‘Boss’, watching as a woman madly flees from a house. In terror, she gets into a car and drives off at speed – excessive speed. She is driving so fast she cannot control the car and starts swerving across the road (this may be because her brakes lines have been cut — but don’t quote me on that). This comes to an end when she crashes through a stone barrier and drives off a cliff. Now how do we know that the man watching must be a villain. Well he is dressed in a hat and wearing sunglasses. Furthermore he is wearing ‘weird’ red gloves and is stroking a cat which he cradles under his arm. If that isn’t visual shorthand for ‘villain’, I don’t know what is.

The title Shadow Music of Thailand evokes ideas of ancient and mysterious folk traditions. A CD with such a title, one might assume, could offer the listener a portal to arcane, culturally insular sounds that were never intended for Western ears. The truth, however, is a wee bit different. In 1960s Thailand, the term “Shadow Music” was used to refer to current groups whose sound was influenced by the British instrumental combo The Shadows. Originally formed as a backup band for singer Cliff Richards, The Shadows, while never making much of a dent in the U.S. charts, were an international sensation throughout much of the 60s, scoring hits at home and abroad with tunes like “Apache”. Their sound was similar to that of America’s Ventures, consisting of upbeat instrumentals centered around twangy, reverb-drenched guitar melodies.

So, yes, if you’ve seen a James Bond movie, you know exactly what tropes Altin Cocuk holds in store. But the film nonetheless offers distinct pleasures in the course of watching them unfold. When sour-faced Goksel Arsoy and the unnamed woman don their scuba gear and prepare to make their descent down to the evil genius’s lair, the thrill we feel is like a muscle memory, coming almost in spite of the fact that we know full well that we’re not going to see events play out on the scale we imagine. The fact is that, by this point, Altin Cocuk has demonstrated enough of a good faith effort that we’re willing to sign on, buy in, and perhaps fill in the gaps ourselves when necessary.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I never finished reviewing all the Bond books by Ian Fleming. In a way, that in itself is a fitting review of the final of Fleming’s influential adventures starring international pop culture icon James Bond. There is nothing about The Man with the Golden Gun that I would call bad. But there sure is a lot of it — as in all of it — that I would call unmemorable. Fleming was dying (some people say he even died before he finished, and what remained was polished off by his long-time friend Kingsley Amis). He was sick of Bond. But he’d had the bad fortune of ending the previous, and one of the best, Bond books on a cliffhanger, as he had taken to doing with most of the stories once he realized this was going to be his career. Well, this, and spokesman for cigarette holders.

The success of this first wave of sword and sorcery films paved the way for a second wave. Amongst this crop was The Beastmaster. The Beastmaster, like the others was not a runaway hit when it was released. To be fair though, it was up against some pretty stiff competition, including ET – the Extra Terrestrial, An Officer and a Gentleman and The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as it will always been known to me). But the film did reasonable business, making around three-million dollars in the United States, which was about a third of the films production costs. The film did well in Europe, on video, and became a mainstay on cable television. It has been reported that a comedian remarked that the meaning of HBO was not ‘Home Box Office’, but ‘Hey, Beastmaster’s On’.

First we headed up to the Museum of Modern Art to check out the Tim Burton exhibit. We’ve been trying to go for a while now, but scheduling conflicts and sold out shows kept us away. Eventually Ellie just bought a membership to the museum, so we can mosey in any time we want like we own the joint. The Burton exhibit was worth the effort to go, even if my two favorite Tim Burton movies (Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Sleepy Hollow) were sorely under-represented. The bulk of the show is the hundreds and hundreds of sketches — everything from doodles to artwork to production sketches and storyboards — by Burton and whoever was working with Burton at the time. His own “Clown Series” is as big a nightmare as you would assume.

Dracula’s Music Cabinet was part of a wave of horror-themed novelty albums released in Germany during the late 60s and early 70s, all of which were seemingly inspired by the very type of horror films that Europe was producing at the time, as best exemplified by the work of our own beloved Jess Franco. The liner notes to UK Label Finders Keepers’ recent CD reissue of the album refer to it as a soundtrack to a nonexistent film, which is pretty much right on the money. Like the soundtracks to many Euro-horror films from the 60s, much of the music on Music Cabinet consists of vaguely psychedelic lounge jazz that in itself doesn’t suggest any traditional kind of horror ambiance at all.

There was a time, starting in the 1970s with funk and overflowing into the nascent hip hop scene, when people really liked singing about outer space and the future. Whether it was Parliament and Funkadelic dressing up like outer space super heroes (plus a guy in a diaper), The Jonzun Crew’s Elizabethan space dandy look, Earth Wind and Fire fighting robots in a post apocalyptic future, or Sun Ra creating an entire, elaborate personal mythology involving outer space, alternate universes, Atlantic, and Egypt, the pervading sentiment was that one day, black people would pack up in a bunch of UFOs and get the hell off this shitty planet and go somewhere way more awesome. If they had to wear silver pyramids on their heads to do it… well, everyone has to make sacrifices.