Scotland at 17

It's Not Polite to Ask...

Does anyone else remember the mostly excellent and cancelled-too-soon 1977 - 1978 TV series "James at 16?" James (Lance Kerwin) and I were the same age, going through many of the same things. Of course there was one big difference: James was straight. I could only relate so much, you know?

Today, Scotland advanced into the 21st Century and became the 17th country to legally recognize Marriage Equality. My heart was lightened just ever so much at this news. And while I know that at my age, it is very unlikely I will find someone I actually would be willing to marry, it's good to know that those who will come after me will someday live in an enlightened society. 

And who knows? George Takei and Jim Nabors both met their husbands when they were my age. I've told several friends that I've given up looking. And I have. Still... I'd like to believe my grandmother when she said "There's a lid for every pot. But sometimes, you have to root around the cabinet to find it."

Congratulations, Scotland! Thank you for coming to your senses!

More, anon.
Prospero

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Damned If You Don't

Alexandra "Xan" Cassavetes (daughter of actor/director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands) has directed a 21st Century take on the old Hammer vampire movies of the late 1960's and early-to-mid 1970's with her fictional feature debut Kiss of the Damned. Sexy, gory and loaded with old-school Hammer imagery, the trailer for Kiss... very much reminds me of the old Christopher Lee Dracula films churned out by Hammer studios when I was a kid. 

French actress Josephine de La Baume is the vampire Djuna. Young hottie Milo Ventimiglia ("Heroes") is her victim and Roxane Mesquida (Rubber) is Djuna's sister, Mimi. 

Cassavetes seems to have pulled out all the stops on this over-the-top SXSW fan-fav, using everything she learned from her father's films combined with the Hammer pantheon to create a vampire movie 1000 times sexier (and probably 10,000 times better) than anything starring that Uber-Creepy Flat-Faced Brit and the Girl Who Can't Act to Save Her Life.

Released by Magnet (the same studio who gave us the sentient tire movie, Rubber), Kiss of the Damned will be available OnDemand March 28th and in limited theatrical release on May 3rd. You can visit the film's Facebook page here. I'm hoping it will play locally and will post my review as soon as I have seen it. The Red Band trailer below may be NSFW, depending on where you work.

More, anon.
Prospero

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Vive La Vie Boheme!

I was in high school when Queen released their signature anthem, "Bohemian Rhapsody." At the time, it was a song the headbangers didn't get; the Disco lovers despised and all the artistic kids adored. I'll let you guess into which category I fell.

In college, a group of theatre friends and I would get together at parties and thanks to our piano playing friend Micheal L., would sing this song until the neighbors called the police. 

The 1992 comedy Wayne's World used it most effectively and many of my friends and I will stop and sing along anytime it plays on the radio. 

Indiana University's Jacob School of Music's ad hoc orchestra just released this video of their sublime orchestral version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." I know that all of you who love the song as much as I do, are singing along, despite the lack of vocals:

Uncle P has been dealing with Mom's health issues and I'm frankly, exhausted. I haven't been sleeping, I'm worrying about all sorts of implications and financial fall-out this might have and I am worried that despite being moved to the ICU Step-Down unit, Mom may not make it home.

I'll try my best to keep posting this month, but can't guarantee any regularity. Stick with me. 

More, anon.

Prospero

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Blasts from the Past

Ah... the 70's. They weren't all Disco, cocaine and Studio 54. The 70's were a time when Independent Cinema grew into its own and experimental "Art Rock" bands were paving the way for the Punk and New Wave movements of the 80's. 1979 saw the release of Pink Floyd's best-selling album ever, The Wall. My musical education truly began with that album. While several years earlier, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; the first album I actually purchased for myself and the first time I realized that Elton was probably gay.

Having grown up with a Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner-loving father and an Elvis-idolizing mother, I must thank both of my parents for letting me know that while not all music is equal, good music can be... transportive. I may have mentioned that I attended Saturday Night Fever High. I had a 3-piece cream suit and dark brown Qiana shirt for the big dance on the last night of our Senior Class trip to Orlando (the very first time I set foot inside the Magic Kingdom and several years before EPCOT existed).

Earlier today, fellow blogger and often hilarious Facebook friend Pax Romano posted that he was listening to Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of  The War of the Worlds, which immediately made me think of YES keyboardist Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Center of the Earth and finally to YES' weirdest and most amazing album, Tales from Topographic Oceans. It came in a fold-old sleeve with some amazing art by Roger Dean and each side of the 81:15 minute long concept album is just one song. I was introduced to the album by my first out-of-high-school boyfriend amid a cloud of smoke and vodka and I wasn't sure which of the four of them was more intoxicating...  Many years later, I was surprised to learn a later BF loved the album, as well. We spent a July Saturday afternoon in Provincetown with this album blaring on his Pathfinder's stereo.

If there is anything I really miss about the music industry when I was growing up and learning to love an even wider variety of musical genres, it's great album art.

Here's some awesome music from when Skrillex and Dead Mau5's parents were kids:






And here's some random bad album cover art:

A Warhol Wannabe?

No, Let ME Touch Him

Move Along. Nothing Gay to See Here

As What, a Giant Q-Tip?

Bwomb-Chicka-Wow-... Oh, Hell No!

Hope I made you smile, at least!

More, anon
Prospero

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The Saddest Thing I'll Post This Week

I often joke that I went to "Saturday Night Fever High." In the mid-70's, one of TV's hottest sitcoms was "Welcome Back, Kotter" about a teacher (comedian Gabe Kaplan) who comes back to teach remedial ed in the Brooklyn high school from which he'd graduated. The remedial students he taught were referred to as the 'Sweat Hogs.' Their bad-attitudes and hijinks were source of most of the show's plots. The kids did something bad (though not really, especially by today's standards) and Mr. Kotter would teach them a valuable life-lesson around what they had done. 

And while John Travolta's Vinnie Barbarino was the breakout character, I was always much more attracted to Robert Heyges' Juan Epstein, a Puerto Rican Jew who always managed to have a forged note signed 'Epstein's Mother.' Of course, I've always found darker-skinned, compact, hirsute men attractive. Heyges, at the time in his mid-20s, certainly filled the bill. While Travolta may have gone on to become a super star, thanks in part to his turns in films such as Carrie; Saturday Night Fever; Grease; Face-Off; Pulp Fiction and Hairspray, Heyges continued to work in TV and film (including a gig on "Cagney and Lacey") until his official retirement in 2002.

Heyges passed away today at the far-too-young age of 60, of an apparent heart-attack. And while officially retired, he was still reportedly involved in promoting local arts projects in his native New Jersey.

Nothing makes Uncle P feel older than hearing news like this. While it only ran for four seasons on ABC, "Welcome Back, Kotter" still holds a place in my heart as one the shows that defined my own high school experience. And Heyges' Epstein will always hold a place in my heart as one of my teenage crushes. 

With his gap-toothed grin, crazy afro and very hairy chest, Hegyes managed to push all the right buttons with me. Of course, with the right wig, I can see D playing the part of Epstein in a stage musical based on the show. And while I'm already too old to play Kotter, I might get away with playing Principal Woodman. 

RIP, Robert Heyges. Another part of my youth slips away... sigh...

More, anon.
Prospero

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I Miss '70's Blaxploitation Horror

No idea what prompted this post. I suppose it's all those Children of the 70's gifts my high school Facebook friends have been sending me, lately. Or, maybe it was just running across the first trailer below, completely by accident.

Many cineasts refer to the 1970's as Hollywood's "Second Golden Age." And admittedly, a lot of great films came out of that decade. Patton; The French Connection; The Sting; The Paper Chase; Young Frankenstein; Cabaret; Alien... the list goes on and on. Fueled by the eradication of the Hayes Code and the unprecedented social unrest brought on by Vietnam and the Hippie movement, filmmakers found themselves free to experiment and create edgier, grittier films with social messages and even pornographic films were household names (Deep Throat; The Devil in Miss Jones; Behind the Green Door).

Horror movies were very big in the '70's. Britain's Hammer Studios was in its heyday, pumping out Dracula movies starring Christopher Lee and AIP was making comedic horror gems like The Abominable Dr. Phibes. The demented H.G. Lewis was still making his godawful (though highly entertaining) drive-in gorefests, while directors like Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven were cutting their very sharp teeth on movies like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And of course, there was what many (though not yours truly), consider to be the scariest movie of all time, 1973's The Exorcist.

The '70's were also when African-American filmmakers really found their voices, making films that spoke to Black urban audiences in a way they had never been able to, before. Films like Shaft; Superfly and Cleopatra Jones packed theaters with audiences hungry to see life portrayed as they lived perceived it to be. 20 years later, the term "Blaxpolitation" would be coined to describe these movies, though the filmmakers of the time certainly never thought of them in that way. The natural progression toward Blaxpolitation Horror was inevitable.

Released just one year after William Friedkin's The Exorcist, Abby is often referred to as "The Blaxorcist," though I think it probably owes more than a nod of debt to the early zombie films of the 30's and 40's.

And just the year before, "Dracula's soul brother," Blacula was released:



Blacula was soon followed by Blackenstein:



And then there's the 1974 Voodoo Zombie thriller Sugar Hill:

And let's not forget the Rosey Grier/Ray Milland "shocker," The Thing with Two Heads:

Ah, the good old days. I miss 'em! And oh, how I wish the tagline at the top of the Blackula poster read: "Bloodsuckah!" Anyone else long for those bygone days of cheap, ridiculous and exploitative horror movies?

More, anon.
Prospero

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