Painting With Mike &
The Only Performance
That Counts...

'Good Dog' by Mike Dooney, (c) 2006

There's more exciting Mario Bava DVD news on

Tim Lucas's February 5th post on the Video Watchblog,

which I urge you to pop right over to pronto if you've any interest at all in Bava's rarest of all films. I'll leave it to Tim to tell you about it...

But my mind wanders to something else -- I've unpacked my old LP collection and been spinning many of my favorite vinyls. Prominent among those is Performance, which I was spinning a fair amount before our move, for reasons I can neither articulate nor divine.

For some reason, the film and score have been much on my mind of late, in part due to my own struggling through a comics story I'm working out in my sketchbook that's clearly informed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's approach to Performance (a 'fragmented narrative' orientation that Roeg explored more adventurously than any other filmmaker, to my mind, and which I trace back to a fave film Roeg photographed but did not direct: Richard Lester's Petulia).

I first saw Performance on the expansive screen of Burlington, VT's Strong Theater (sadly, long gone now) with my best high school friend Bill Hunter; we were teenagers, and completely unprepared for the film and its impact on our tender teen psyches. Like the underground films (which we'd begun to sample, thanks to two competing underground film societies that sprang up in Burlington and on the UVM campus at the same time) and comix (thanks to my high school art teacher Bill Cathey, who could have lost his job for turning me on to Zap, which forever changed my life and made me want to draw comics forever) I was just beginning to explore, Performance completely demolished all previous modes of cinema I'd ever experienced. It quite literally blew my mind, as surely as any illegal substance I'd later dabble with ever did or would (I was not a stoner in high school, had never smoked a joint or even been drunk before graduating high school: in terms of body and brain chemistry, straight-arrow Boy Scout, that was me).

It forever altered not only how I experienced movies, but how I saw and experienced life. Bill, I recall, loathed the film, so I drove myself back to the Strong the very next night to see Performance again, both shows, back-to-back. Remember, this was the pre-home-video era, and I feared I might never, ever get to see the film again. I had to experience it anew, plunge into its maze and sort out what I could from its strange multi-tier layering.

Like almost every film I loved from that period in my life, the American critics reviled the film; if memory serves, John Simon scribed the single most scathing review, treating the movie as an infectious viral aberration. That it was, but like so many other films of the time, I was glad to have caught the contagion.

In that pre-video era, too, the only artifact most films offered that one could take home to preserve memories and/or further explore the experience were paltry and few. Some films had paperback adaptations, some had comic book adaptations -- neither a reliable companion to the cinematic experience, though still treasured -- but many had soundtrack LPS, and Performance's was a doozy. Given the limited time I have this morning, I can't come close to the eloquence of

Tim Lucas's shared memories of the impact of the Performance soundtrack album, which I urge you to go and read right now,

but I have to stress my experience was quite different from Tim's, in that I'd seen the film, three times, before bringing the LP home.


Still, Tim's post rings lots of bells for me, as that album has been a key one in my collection since I first picked it up back in '71, days after seeing the movie. Jack Nietsche's score -- and the album -- are among the best ever wed to a film, and that record turned me on to Randy Newman, The Last Poets, Ry Cooder and, natch, Nietsche. Too bad he scored so few films; one of my (and Tim's) favorite cuts on the album, "Harry Flowers," has another association for me: it anticipates the lovely concluding passage of Nietsche's fantastic score for Robert Downey's Greaser's Palace (a score never released on LP or CD, to my knowledge), another of my favorite '70s movies (and a viewing experience which I'll rhapsodize over another time).

I'm glad I caught Performance three times in its original X-rated run at the Strong (no, I wasn't 17; the Strong always accepted my ticket money, whatever the rating of the film showing) because here in the US, the film never, ever unreeled in that complete a state again. I know, I've screened it many times since: the film was re-rated 'R' in every incarnation since (a fact Tim seems to misremember).

I showed it on 16mm at Johnson State College to kick off our Nicolas Roeg retrospective, heartsick at the minor cuts and missing bits of vital tissue; it was among the first videocassettes I ever rented, or purchased, though the video version was even more truncated than the 16mm print I'd projected onto the Dibden Theater screen -- and the cuts were odd: plucked piecemeal hither and thither, like tiles chipped from a fresco with no discernable reasoning (note that Ken Russell's The Devils -- also first seen by this sick puppy at the Strong! -- suffered the identical fate: someone, or someones, at Warner Bros. had it in for their most daring 1971 films). A few years ago, a British fan of my comics work helped me secure a copy of the UK video release, and despite the inevitable degeneration of even the best available transfer (from PAL to vhs), that release was closest to the film I'd seen back in '71.

Thankfully,

Tim's analysis of the new Warner domestic DVD release of the film is heartening,

and I'll be picking up my copy later today when I visit my old day-job digs at First Run Video in Brattleboro, after speaking to two sessions of the Center for Digital Art filmmaking class.

I'm eager to pop Performance into the player and savor the first near-complete (note Tim's picking up one inexplicably dropped line from the opener of the unforgettable "Memo from Turner" sequence), and once again split my skull for love of cinema.

I'll just remember to personally lip-synch Mick's "Here's to Olde England!" toast at the appropriate moment.

______________

And now, for something you'll really like!

Away down in Massachusetts, in the land of Mirage Studios, lives one hell of an artist (among many) named Michael Dooney, who I've now known for some twenty-odd years. Mike's got a great site up posting his "sketchbook paintings," which habitually knock my best paintings in the dirt.
The man's got the touch, as these portraits should demonstrate, and you can see more

on Mike's site, "Sketchpaints!"

Lest you think these exquisite portraits are solely representative of Mike's abilities and vision, pop on over to

Mike's main site and have a peek,

you won't be disappointed!


There's also

Eric Talbot's site to savor, packed with whacked imagery and juicy delights,

and both Mike and Eric have mucho links to other fine cartoonist and artist sites to share. Check 'em out!

OK, I really, really have to run.

See ya later in the week...

(Eric Talbot mummy, but not his mommy: (c) 2006)

Well, while I'm bumming you all out, here's a post I intended to post before the catastrophic events of this week -- somehow, still appropriate, though inconsequential by comparison...

One of the true Holy Grails of horror film buffs quietly surfaced about two years ago, and I personally recommend any of you even vaguely interested seek out that Grail immediately. Here's the scoop:

Alois Detlaff died last month -- what's one more death, you say, given the calamities of this week (Hurricane Katrina, the horrific Iraq panic and bridge collapse that killed one thousand, etc.)? Bear with me --

Tim Lucas, fearless Video Watchdog editor, sent this to me from an online source:
______

Police Find Cudahy Man Dead In His House
Alois Dettloff Owned Original 'Frankenstein'
POSTED: 11:48 am CDT July 28, 2005

CUDAHY, Wis. -- The badly decomposed body of a Cudahy man was found inside his home Tuesday morning. Police said he had been dead for about a month. Police found 84-year-old Alois Dettlaff lying in the living room of his home. The medical examiner said he died from natural causes.

Authorities said the man's daughter, who lives just down the street from him, called police concerned because she hadn't seen him in some time. Police said the man rarely went out and didn't like to deal with people so it wasn't unusual for him not to answer the phone or door. Neighbors said they're shocked about the news. "That's just such a terrible, lonely thing. I'm very sorry," neighbor Heather Dishinger said. Dettlaff owned the only known copy of Thomas Edison's 1910 version of the movie "Frankenstein." Experts consider this the first horror film ever made.
______

Sad story -- but before his lonely death, Alois Dettlaff had given his best shot to bringing his treasure, the only known surviving print of Edison's Frankenstein, to the public.

The DVD release of MOVIES FIRST MONSTERS: 1910 FRANKENSTEIN & 1922 NOSFERATU (A.D. Ventures) was sadly underreported by the genre press (only Scary Monsters, to my knowledge, played it up, giving it a cover and feature article, which alerted me to the release; I also found some online announcements and reviews, but it was still grossly underreported). It's an essential DVD purchase, and still highly affordable (online venues are still offering it for the $20 retail price Dettlaff established -- quick, snap it up!), though the film itself is a mere 12 minutes long.

I've written a full, in-depth review that will appear in the upcoming October issue of Video Watchdog, so I'm not going to say much here about the film itself. Suffice to say it's a gem that lives up to its historic stature as the first cinematic Frankenstein, and quite inventive for a 1910 production. There's an alchemical 'creation' sequence that uses a crude, organic form of articulated live-action puppet animation that will amuse the uninitiated (prior experience with silent cinema is recommended, and a passing acquiantence with the films of George Melies and other period fantasists will provide a richer context for viewing), but is quite enchanting and gruesome. It's sort of a reverse-motion precursor of the clay-animated demise of The Evil Dead and even some of Svankmajer's imagery, quite unlike any other movie Frankenstein ever made. True to its era and period, mirrors play a critical (and mystical) role, linking the film with early adaptations of Poe, key silent Russian horror film shorts (like the one on The Viy DVD, also highly recommended), the various silent Students of Prague, and its DVD co-feature Nosferatu.

Thanks to archivist and private collector Dettlaff and his family (together, A.D. Ventures), the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN was released on DVD in late 2002/early 2003 at a highly affordable $19.50 retail. The DVD did not score any mainstream distribution; LRS Marketing and various individual online and convention dealers offered the DVD for sale. After my acquisition of the DVD in March of 2004 (from a dealer at the Syracuse, NY CineFest), I found all postal queries to A.D. Ventures in Cudahy, Wisconsin remained unanswered (as did email and mail inquiries about Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr.’s companion book on the film, promoted in the DVD materials -- anyone know if it existed at all, or where I can get a copy?).

No doubt, Defflaff (who had reportedly refused all offers to purchase or license the print) hoped to earn some significent income from the DVD release, but alas, a self-manufactured, self-distributed DVD was less than a speck of plankton in the vast, Hollywood-studio dominated DVD ocean of 2003. Not one of the video industry trades mentioned it.

Whatever his original distribution deal, Defflaff aka AD Ventures severed relations with LRS Marketing by last spring. The site designated on the DVD's own sleeve and interior booklet has since read:

August 19, 2004 - We are no longer offering the 1910 Frankenstein Film. LRS Marketing is no longer working with A.D. Ventures on the distribution of this film. No additional information is available at this time. We thank you for your interest and patience. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Less than a year later, the insular man who saved Edison’s Frankenstein died alone, and the fate of the singular print itself that he had protected most of his life is unknown at the time.

You’d be wise to snap the DVD up while it remains available.

We thank you, Alois Dettlaff; you deserved better.

May you rest in peace.