Month: July 2025

Black Pit of Dr. M (1959)

I always thought that if there’s a gothic cinema in the way there’s gothic literature, then signor Bava’s Black Sunday had to be the prime example of such a thing. I have now discovered another contender for that crown, made in Mexico the year before. GodDAMN this is good. Director Fernando Mendez is someone I know nothing about beyond the bugger all that IMDB says, but apparently he was something of a pioneer in Mexican horror in the late 50s; his 1957 film The Vampire (which is now on its way to me from the good people at Indicator/Powerhouse) was apparently the first such film to depict a vampire with fangs. Otherwise I don’t know much else about him or any of the performers, but oh my; no vampires in this one but there is a sort of walking dead… the titular “black pit” is more metaphorical than actual, but Dr. Mazali certainly finds himself stuck in one. He’s made a pact with his fellow doctor, Aldana, whereby whichever one dies first promises to return to show the other what lies on the other side of death, but the other gets to come back alive. Such a simple plan, who could imagine anything going wrong with it or that there might be complicating factors? Well, the fact that Mazali oversees a mental institution might wind up being one of those… This is terrific stuff, beautifully filmed and full of atmosphere, leading to a bit of a fucking-hell climax, and along with Der Hund von Baskerville it might just be the best film I’ve seen for the first time in the Century of Cinema project so far. Let me end with some screen grabs from the blu-ray (click to expand to full size):

Goddamn it, Chud

I’ve been rewatching some of Pat Finnerty’s stuff lately, so the YT algorithm has been suggesting more, including this one which I somehow had missed before. Not only did it introduce me to “San Quentin” (not a Johnny Cash cover, fortunately), it also introduced me to the even more egregious “Figured You Out“, which just… Christ. So yeah, I just got one but TWO new reasons to despise Nickelback. I don’t usually expect much from a Sunday night, but that’s a lot more than I usually get.

Well said

Mushroom Cock is currently in Scotland:

And yes, this was the actual front cover of The National newspaper for that day. Phenomenal

And people aren’t feeling it:

And there’s been a bunch of protests with a bunch of signs, but I don’t think I’ve seen one that goes quite so hard as this one. That’s just… fucking hell. I don’t think I need to say any more.

Oh, and this guy died too, brother

Yeah, Hulk Hogan shuffled off his mortal coil last night too. Funnily enough, I’m not seeing nearly as much affection on his passing as I’m still seeing for Mr Osbourne, which I suppose indicates a certain… difference between the two. Hogan was famous enough that even I kind of knew about him in the 80s, and I knew nothing about wrestling; I only started becoming even dimly aware of what it was all about once the Internet started seriously becoming a thing at the start of the oughts, but it was my housemate and bandmate Joe who taught me more about it cos he was a big wrestling nut and had actually run some shows here… so that was also how I kind of discovered just how rotten the business is, and how Mr Bollea above was one of the most rotten figures in it. Whatever else could be said against Ozzy—and let’s be honest, there is quite a lot—I don’t think he ever claimed to be something he wasn’t; conversely, Hogan’s stardom was built upon him doing just that, using the stage figure of Hulk to hide the fact that the real Terry was a bit of a shit. And, as time passed, people became increasingly aware of that as he became increasingly shitty… but what about Hulk, instead of Terry? Steve Shives, an actual lifelong wrestling fan, had some thoughts I found interesting, so I’ll let him speak:

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

I first (and last) watched this about 15 years ago, at which time I was so perplexed by it that I was tempted to just make the review of it on my old film blog “what the fuck” and noted that repeat viewings would evidently be necessary. I am only slightly less perplexed by it now, having finally undertaken that repeat visit 15 years later. If I try to sum it up, the best I can do is “a teenage girl has her first period, then there’s vampires, and other things happen”. I understand that it comes from surrealism, I know it’s from a novel by Vitezlav Nezval, who was one of the main movers of the Czech surrealist movement in the 1930s, and I get all of that. (On which note, the introduction on the old Second Run DVD I watched reckons it’s not actually a surrealist film as such, just one that employs surrealist techniques. If you insist.) I’m still left perplexed by what I’m supposed to do with the damn thing or how to respond to it. It is, obviously, a thing of beauty to actually watch and listen to, the visuals are amazing and so is the score, but beyond that I don’t know if I even like it or not. And I have experience with properly non-narrative avant-garde cinema, it’s not that I can’t cope with that sort of thing; I could still tell that I liked Zorns Lemma but kind of hated The Hart of London, to name two of Valerie’s contemporaries. Valerie herself just left me kind of bereft of even that little. I suspect I do like it more than I don’t, but… yeah. It was like that.