You Can't Handle the Tooth -- Mondo Macabro's Pete Tombs on the Films of Jess Franco

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Back in 2004, I met up with Mondo Macabro's Pete Tombs and Andy Starke, who were in town working on the supplements to their then-upcoming DVD of Parts: The Clonus Horror. Over the course of the night, as we guzzled beer and chowed down Ethiopian food, conversation inevitably turned to film and my personal Mondo Macabro wishlist.  Pining for the likes of Robert de Nesle-produced Franco fare, especially Lorna the Exorcist and The Perverse Countess, Pete chimed in, "Oh, we know where the rights are..."

Six years later, my favorite label has just issued a superlative edition of Jess Franco's classic, Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac -- an easy inclusion for my upcoming Top Ten DVDs of 2010 list -- finally wrestled free of its tangled rights nightmare.  In celebration, here's a little chat with Pete about the obscenely prolific director and the effort put forth to do his films up right.  

Cinema Arcana:  What is it about the films of Jess Franco that, for all his faults, makes his output so alluring?

Pete Tombs:  I guess Franco is someone who always went his own way.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but there's usually something memorable, in even the smallest of his films. Sometimes just a scene, sometimes just the mood or atmosphere.  It has to be said that there are many who don't like what he does and to try to defend him from the critical brickbats of his detractors is not a task I would wish to take on.  (Not that he needs me to do it!)  What was it Donovan sang?  "Someone's opinion of moonlight..."

CA:  What are your personal favorites?

PT:  The Francos that I find most memorable are Lorna the Exorcist, Sinner, Eugenie, Diabolical Dr. Z, Shining Sex...

CA:  The Robert de Nesle-produced films have had a notoriously rocky road to their DVD debuts.  What exactly did you have to go through to get this deal made?

PT:  I could write a book about the travails we went through to get the de Nesle films licensed.  But I won't.  I'm happy to let the bad memories fade.  Let's just say that there were numerous personal, legal and financial hurdles to jump and at one point it seemed like new hurdles were being added every week.  Anyway, who cares at the end of the day?  We got a couple of them out there and they're good ones.

There are some interesting extras on both.  We get Stephen Thrower's thoughts on the films and on Franco - ahead of the mammoth and essential book-length study he's currently working on.

We also get, for the first time as far as I'm aware, an interview with Gerard Kikoine giving us his memories of Robert de Nesle and working on the Franco films.  Lots of interesting stuff there, much of it new to me.

CA:  You've talked a bit on blogs and messageboards about the problems with the original elements to Lorna the Exorcist.  What sort of shape were they in?  How did you manage to piece together your final transfer?  Is there any more unseen footage besides the legendary dildo bit?

PT:  The Lorna negative supplied to us (and so far as we can see, the only materials available) had been edited by de Nesle and turned into a porno movie.  And it looks like whoever did it threw away or misplaced the footage they cut out.  Certainly we couldn't find it.  However, thanks to the indefatigable Lucas Balbo we were able to locate some rare 35mm prints of the film.  To our great delight, both contained scenes that had not been in any of the video versions of the film we had seen, which meant that we were able to reconstruct what we believe to be the original near 100-minute cut of the film that was widely thought lost forever.  Some of the material is in pretty poor condition, but we spent a small fortune doing as much as we could to make it watchable - and I think it looks very good now.  Some of it looks spectacular.  There are a number of extra scenes and lots of extended bits that will be new to viewers in this version.

CA:  With Sinner now available and Lorna on the slate for January, what else can we look forward to from Mondo Macabro in 2011?

PT:  Our next release is a complete contrast to the Franco films.  It's Strip-Tease - the 1962 French film starring Nico, of Velvet Underground fame.  This has never been issued on any form of home video before and has only been rarely seen since its initial release.  For Nico fans (and I hope there's a lot of them out there!) this will be a must buy.

Thanks, Pete!  The photos of Jess on set come courtesy of Mondo Macabro.  For more Mondo Macabro news, check out their website and blog.

© 2010 -- Bruce Holecheck. All Rights Reserved.

It's Always Bloody in Philadelphia -- Programmer Travis Crawford on the Danger After Dark Film Festival

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A celebration of the weird, shocking, bizarre and offbeat, Philadelphia's annual Danger After Dark line-up presents a selection of the best the film world has to offer - for ten years and running now!  It's been host to premieres and screenings of hotly-anticipated items like Oldboy, High Tension, Suicide Club, Bad Biology and Lady Vengeance, to less known, but no less worthy, outings like The Uninvited, Strange Circus, Acacia and The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai.  The 2010 edition runs July 9th through the 19th at The Ritz on the Bourse in downtown Philly, and showcases eleven titles sure to please.  Returning Festival Programmer Travis Crawford was kind enough to answer a few questions for us.

Cinema Arcana: In the past, Danger After Dark has been a subcategory of the annual Philadelphia Film Festival; why make it its own entity this year?

Travis Crawford:  Most of that was rooted in the unfortunate cancellation of this year’s installment of CineFest.  When the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance and the Philadelphia Film Society parted ways last year, and CineFest and the Film Festival became two separate events, it created a sudden financial strain on the Cinema Alliance, and they were unable to fully fund a complete film festival as usual in April.  But I had already returned to the fold to program Danger After Dark before the cancellation occurred, and had many films lined up already, so everything was just sort of left in limbo back in the spring. However, the Cinema Alliance had already committed to doing their annual Qfest in July, so Ray Murray, our artistic director, came back and told me that they might have additional theater space available during the same time frame as QFest, and asked if I would be interested in creating a sort of “mini-festival” for Danger After Dark that would operate consecutively with Qfest – using some of their same resources – but as its own separate, distinct event.  I agreed, since by that point, I not only had some of the titles left that I had wanted to program back in April, but I had also discovered some newer films too, like Big Tits Zombie 3-D.

But I think that also, making Danger After Dark its own entity had the additional effect of reviving that particular program and sort of indirectly announcing that I was returning as programmer for the series, after having been gone for two years.  I mean, that wasn’t particularly why it became its own festival this year – the reasons were, like I mentioned, a lot more pragmatic – but, hopefully, that might wind up being a bonus result.

CA:  What can fans look forward with this separate installment?

TC:  It’s strange, because I think the program is both more expansive and far-reaching, and yet simultaneously more focused too.  It’s more challenging and experimental in its selections than it’s probably ever been before, and as a result, there are admittedly fewer straightforward genre movies – I mean, there are still some, like Robogeisha and Vengeance.  But this time, Danger After Dark obviously leans a lot more towards unclassifiable and offbeat movies like Temptation of St. Tony, Enter the Void and Dogtooth.  And even the films that would superficially appear to be more traditional thrillers, movies like Amer and Red White & Blue, are actually very experimental interpretations of the genre.  Then of course, there are just purely off-the-wall oddities like Gone with the Pope.  So, I think fans should be really excited about the line-up this year, because I think Danger After Dark feels really invigorated and revived, and it’s exciting to me again after all these years.  It’s the same strong genre program that it’s been for a decade now, but it also really feels like there’s new blood coursing through its veins – it’s not the same old stuff.  But, having said that, movies like Life and Death of a Porno Gang are definitely going to require that longtime Danger After Dark fans come to the theater feeling a little, uh, open-minded and adventurous.

CA:  How do you decide what plays and what doesn't?

TC:  Well, the easiest answer to that is also the most honest – and that it often comes down to what films I just personally respond to, what films really connect with me.  But I’m not totally that arrogant.  I definitely think of the audience too, and what I think a crowded theater will really appreciate, and I’m always watching films with that consideration in mind.  But I think that comes into play more in terms of how the entire series is assembled, rather than individual selections.  For example, I know that a film like Temptation of St. Tony is only going to appeal to a limited number of people, and as much as I personally love that movie, I have to then take that into consideration, and make sure that – if I program a movie like that – there needs to be a weekend-slotted crowd-pleaser like Robogeisha also programmed to balance it all out.  And I like Robogeisha, don’t get me wrong.  But that’s a case where I might think about how much an audience will enjoy it too.  For example, two of the most popular Danger After Dark films that I ever programmed would probably be The Descent and A Tale of Two Sisters.  And you know what?  I really liked those two movies – but I didn’t necessarily personally love them.  But I knew that a large audience in a theater would really respond to them, so I’m more than happy to program titles like that to balance out those other esoteric films that I love, but I’m also thinking in the back of my mind, “OK, if I can get, like, twenty friends of mine to at least show up to this screening, then I guess I’ll be satisfied.”  So it’s a balance, but a lot of it does come down to personal preference for the films.

CA:  I'm sure you have to turn down quite a few worthy titles due to space restraints.  Is there anything you've skipped booking that you've regretted?

TC:  Actually, if I wound up skipping something purely because of space constraints, then, no, I don’t really wind up regretting it.  I mean, I might have liked a movie, but if I really felt that passionately about it, I would have found the room for it, so if it was just because of space issues, I don’t think about those titles too much once the programming is locked down.  The ones that you remember are the ones that just didn’t work out because the films weren’t available for various other reasons outside of your control as a programmer.  This year, there were films I was really trying to get – Serbian Film, Mutant Girls Squad, We Are What We Are, really worthwhile movies like that – but they just weren’t available for the festival.  And, I should point out, in each of those cases, the distributors were incredibly helpful and were trying to assist in getting us the films, but there were just various factors – scheduling with other festivals, format availability, rights issues, etc. – that interfered and the movies just weren’t able to be programmed.  So those you remember…but you try to not dwell on them.

CA:  Are there any films you've booked from fests past that you feel are still criminally overlooked or underrated?  I'm astonished titles like Survive Style 5+ and A Bittersweet Life haven't received a domestic release.

TC:  It’s funny, because I guess since I attend other film festivals, I buy import DVDs, and I receive screeners from international distributors and sales agencies – frankly, by the time I wind up programming something for the film festival, the movie is sort of “done” for me in my mind, and I don’t really pay attention to what happens to most of them in the American marketplace after that.  I hope that doesn’t sound callous, but I just move on.  I mean, honestly, I didn’t even know that A Bittersweet Life still hadn’t had any sort of release in America until you just said that.  I programmed it, I bought the Korean DVD, and then that was it for me.  Survive Style 5+, on the other hand, is one of the few that definitely did stand out, though, in terms of me being really disappointed that it never received any distribution in America outside of film festivals.  I gather that’s because of the music rights issue involving the Cake cover of “I Will Survive” that’s used in the final sequence, from what I’ve been told.  I thought about American distribution more when I was working on acquisitions for the Danger After Dark DVD line through TLA, when we were releasing titles like Suicide Club, 2LDK and Meatball Machine, but that line isn't exactly active at the moment, so I’m not really currently taking that into consideration.  But sometimes people will ask me about some Danger After Dark film that I programmed nine years ago or something, and where they can see it again, and I’m just kind of clueless that it’s not available here.  Unless I get back into acquisitions again, I suppose I feel like I’ve finished my relationship with a film after I’ve shown it to a theater full of appreciative people.

Thanks, Travis.  For more information on the 2010 Danger After Dark Fest, including its complete schedule, check out its official website. 

 

© 2010 -- Bruce Holecheck. All Rights Reserved.

Resurrecting the Pope -- Bob Murawski on the Restoration of Duke Mitchell's GONE WITH THE POPE (1975)

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It's here.  Can you believe it?

On Friday, March 12th, 2010, Duke Mitchell's never-released Gone with the Pope will finally have its world premiere at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  Filmed in 1975, the film sat unfinished until ace editor and Grindhouse Releasing head honcho Bob Murawski decided to take a crack at it.  Little did he know just how long it would take...

Cinema Arcana:  When did you first get interested in the films of Duke Mitchell?

Bob Murawski:  Back in 1995, Bill Lustig and I watched the Video Gems VHS of The Executioner (aka Massacre Mafia Style).  I think Sage Stallone had given him a copy, but I hadn't met him yet.  We both thought it was one of the funniest, most off-the-wall and entertaining movies we had ever seen.

CA:  How did the finding and restoration of Gone with the Pope come about?  What did the restoration require?

BM:  After watching The Executioner, we said we've gotta find this guy Duke Mitchell and meet him.  Bill called around and discovered that Duke had died in 1981.  We were pretty saddened to find that out, but a couple of days later Bill called me and said he found Duke's son, Jeff.  He was living in an apartment in Hollywood only about two blocks from where Bill was living!  So I went over to Bill's place, met Sage for the first time, and the three of us went over to Jeff's place.  We told him we were big fans of his father and wanted to find his movie The Executioner and re-release it.  Jeff said he had no idea what happened to that movie, but said he had another feature that his Dad made after The Executioner that was shot but never finished.  He said he didn't think it had even been edited, and if we wanted to take it and try to do something with it then go ahead.  Of course, we said, "ABSOLUTELY!"

We went down to his parking garage and pulled a bunch of dusty old boxes out of his storage closet that had been there since Duke passed away.  Everything was there—the negative, sound tapes and work picture, along with some paperwork that helped us piece everything together.  There was no shooting script, per se, just a lot of scenes written out in notebooks, loose pieces of paper, and, in a couple of instances, backs of envelopes and cocktail napkins!  There was a very crude rough assembly of the movie, but it was long and nowhere near being finished.  17 reels and, of that, reels 9-13 were totally missing and never found.  We screened the reels and found it to be incredibly entertaining—totally different than The Executioner, but still a Duke Mitchell movie through and through.  However, since it was in such rough shape, we knew finishing would be a big job and would probably take a few years.  It ended up taking sixteen!  We started trying to fine cut the movie, working from the assembly, then going back to the trims and outtakes when necessary to smooth things out and make the scenes and story flow better.  For the reels that were totally missing, we carefully went through the original negative to determine what we didn't have, and made fresh work print of that material, which was then edited from scratch.  Two other friends helped me with the editing -- Paul Hart and Jody Fedele, both of whom had worked with me on a lot of other movies like Army of Darkness and Hard Target.  The whole thing was a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Very time consuming.  I worked on it whenever I had time between my real editing jobs over the past 15 years.

I finally finished the picture cut in the time I had between Spider-Man 2 and 3.  We then started the soundwork, which was just as difficult.  I hired the best soundpeople to do the work -- Paul Ottosson, who I had worked with on the Spidey movies and who had been nominated for an Academy Award; Robert Troy, the dialogue editor, and John Sanacore, the foley artist, both from The Hurt Locker; and Marti Humphrey and Brad Semanoff, who had done the sound mix on Drag Me to Hell.  There were numerous problems with the sound, but through the skill of the sound crew, who employed all the newest, most state-of-the-art digital technology, we created a great soundmix for the film last summer.  The final step was scanning all the original camera negative and doing full restoration at Fotokem Lab in Burbank.  Over 1000 hours were spent cleaning up the picture, removing dirt and camera scratches.  The color and density were graded by ace colorist Alastor Arnold over a period of 4 months.  Additional work was done at HTV/Illuminate to restore sharpness as much as possible to some out of focus shots.  Finally, about two weeks ago, we filmed out the negative and saw a complete 35mm print.

CA:  Gone with the Pope's premiere is the same week as the Academy Awards (Bob and his wife Chris Innis are nominated in the Best Editing category for their work on The Hurt Locker). Which one are you more excited about?

 

BM:  It's an honor to be nominated for an Academy Award after over 20 years working in the movie business, but I must admit I'm even more excited about the premiere of Gone with the Pope.  That movie was 35 years in the making!

 

CA:  What can fans expect from the DVD releases of Pope and Massacre Mafia Style?

 

BM:  The utmost in picture and sound quality as well as great packaging with all the exhaustive extras you have come to expect from Grindhouse Releasing.  However, we feel strongly about the theatrical experience, so we will be trying to book the movies in as many cities as possible.  Watch for them, coming soon to a theater near you!

 

CA:  Any other Grindhouse Releasing news worth discussing?

 

BM:  An American Hippie in Israel is coming up; we did a beautiful new HD transfer and have incredible, in-depth interviews with stars Asher Tzarfati and Schmuel Wolf that we shot in Tel Aviv earlier this year.

 

Thanks, Bob.  For more information on theatrical screenings of Gone with the Pope, check out its official website.  For more on Grindhouse Releasing, click here.

© 2010 -- Bruce Holecheck. All Rights Reserved.