Festivity, Revels, and Nocturnal Dalliances
Before he was “King,” he was Nathaniel Adams Coles. Alabama born, Chicago raised, LA forged. In the 1930, he put together a rowdy jazz trio that was a lot different than the Nat King Cole most people know.
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The Slow Grind Fever series is a fascinating collections of creepy, crawly R&B in a minor key; some songs and artists major hit makers…others mysterious and obscure. It’s proper music for smoky juke joints, rowdy house parties, and dangerous liaisons.
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In the 1950s, film began to move away from romantic or bombastic orchestral scores and toward a more varied landscape. One of the styles that started making its mark on cinematic soundtracks during this period was jazz.
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A pioneering work of “space age pop,” Music out of the Moon was a collaboration between arranger Les Baxter, composer Harry Revel, and theremin player Samuel Hoffman.
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This is no unique story. Soul Discharge was the gateway for a lot of people who, like me, saw it one day and wondered what the hell it was.
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Langston Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea, deserves to be counted among the great works of travel literature. Also, there is Jocko the monkey.
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On Diabolique: My three-part article, “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio,” examines A Chinese Ghost Story, the original story by Pu Songling, and the Shaw Brothers’ Enchanting Shadow.
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Back in the day, Jimmy Wang Yu was one of my favorite punching bags, and I’m glad I was never a punching bag for him. Because I hear he was actually pretty tough.
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On Diabolique, I’m writing about the surreal Polish fantasy film The Hourglass Sanatorium and the malleable nature of how we remember our past.
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On Diabolique, I am writing about the Czech fantasy film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and how it reflects Czechoslovakia during the rebellious Prague Spring.
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On the Cultural Gutter, I am Searching for Odin, My Love — one of the most expensive, most lavish, most boring, and most infamous anime flops of all time.
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The Japanese entries into the Invisible Man sweepstakes might not have been an official part of the series, but they certainly hold their own against Universal’s films.
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World Without End is an action-packed, low-budget blend of HG Wells’ The Time Machine and Planet of the Apes, which it predates by many a year. That’s time travel for ya.
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Strip Nude for Your Killer is a sleazy, offensive bit of giallo trash, but at least it wastes no time letting you know exactly where you stand.
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Sex, the Italian coast, outlandish murders — everything in The Sister of Ursula operates under the directive of “This should be good, but we’re going to mess it up.”
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