ATLRetro

By Mark Arson, Contributing Writer

Splatter Cinema Presents GHOULIES (1985); Dir: Luca Bercovici; Starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance; Tues. May 10;  9:30 pm; Plaza Theatre; $10. Trailer here.

GHOULIES (not to be confused with GOONIES) came out one year after GREMLINS. You could almost call it part of a wave of GREMLINS-sploitation; the following year there was CRITTERS, and later MUNCHIES. All these films revolve around tiny monsters, but GHOULIES is the only one where they are creatures summoned by a satanic ritual. The basic plotline involves a man named Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) who has just inherited a house with an evil history and his gradual discovery that he’s from a long line of, you guessed it, satanic cult leaders. Liapis gets more screen time than the titular creatures, and honestly, he deserves it. The thing that sets this film apart from the other GHOULIES films (as well as many of the aforementioned similar films) is his totally unhinged performance.

GHOULIES. Empire Pictures/MGM Home Entertainment

One might consider such a performance to be “overacting,” I’d say personally that there is no such thing as overacting in a movie where a man summons evil creatures and dwarves with satanic rituals. If there’s anyone who is a match for Liapis in this film, it would be Michael Des Barres as Jonathan’s late/undead/much more evil father Malcolm. The whole descent into madness/family destiny thing could easily be interpreted as a metaphor for alcoholism or abuse. I just think it’s great fun to watch actors see how far they can push their craft over the edge into something that resembles sheer madness. How loud can they scream during their unholy rituals? Pretty loud. Oh, and Jack Nance is in it too, but not for as long as you’d want him to be.

Peter Liapis and Lisa Pelikan in GHOULIES. Empire Pictures/MGM Home Entertainment

The other attraction here (the main attraction for most people, I’d think) is the ghoulies themselves. They were designed by the great Stan Winston (ALIENS, TERMINATOR), who gave them plenty of charisma. At times it even seems like they’re channeling the Muppets (that’s a good thing). They drool and squirm and their eyeballs roll back into their head. They also hide in toilets and other places, and kill people. Did I mention there were other people in this film? Well, they are mostly just there to do drugs, fall under Satan’s hypnotic trance, and get killed by ghoulies. It’s that kind of party, people. If you can’t enjoy a bunch of squirmy creatures running around attacking people and an angry satanic priest screaming with glowing green eyes, then you don’t know what fun is.

By Mark Arson, Contributing Writer

2011 Atlanta Film Festival Presents TAXI DRIVER (1976); digitally restored 35mm print; Dir: Martin Scorsese; Starring Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster; Introduction and post-screening Q&A by cinematographer Michael Chapman; Thurs. May 5;  8 PM; Plaza Theatre; Trailer here.

Everyone knows that TAXI DRIVER features a guy talking to himself in a mirror holding a gun, but only those who have seen it know just how disturbing that can be in context. Of course, Robert De Niro‘s character, Travis Bickle, is the movie’s main focus. In a big way, TAXI DRIVER is a character study about someone who is completely detached, a loner who just can’t seem to connect with others, adrift in a sea of what he considers more and more repulsive until he can’t stand it any more. The catch is that the film is really a thing of beauty, the New York that once was coming through like an urban kaleidoscope, thanks largely to Martin Scorsese‘s direction and (perhaps even more so) the razor-sharp cinematography of Michael Chapman. Bernard Herrmann‘s score also complements the urban setting perfectly with dissonant, muted jazz. As I said before, though, this movie isn’t about a city, it’s about a person, one who happens to be quite insane. Warning: this review contains SPOILERS (Sorry, I just find the major events too interesting to gloss over)

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures.

Travis Bickle doesn’t sleep. It’s laid out first thing in the film, as he offers to take taxi shifts “anytime, anywhere.” It’s mentioned briefly in the film that Bickle is an ex-Marine, but there are no flashbacks, no evidence. In this sense, it is ambiguous whether he is suffering from madness brought on by the trauma of war, or perhaps even imagined the whole thing. It’s overwhelmingly clear that most people aren’t even interested; in fact, most other characters in the film just react to Bickle like he’s just a bit strange or enthusiastic. Much like Peter Sellers‘ final film, BEING THERE (1979), this movie is about a strange person set loose in a world that is too busy to notice something being a bit off.

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By Mark Arson, Contributing Writer

Silver Scream Spookshow Presents THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958); Dir: Nathan Juran; Starring Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Torin Thatcher; Sat. April 30;  kids matinee at 1 PM and adult show at 10 PM; Plaza Theatre; Trailer here.

The Internet has changed our lives in immeasurable ways. The availability of near-limitless information has made audiences more savvy and sometimes more fickle. That doesn’t even include the extras on a DVD that a consumer buys for next to nothing at the grocery store. There’s almost no point in making entertainment that breaks the fourth wall any more, since audiences are hyper-aware of the fourth wall in the first place. As such, the standard for special effects has changed. You can count on every member of the audience knowing how practical effects work and when and where to spot CGI. Strip away the end result though, and it’s hard not to notice hard work and creativity being poured into the handling of the special effects on a film.

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Welcome to Blake Myers’ nightmares. Or are his horror short films the American dream? Audiences will get to decide for themselves at 7:30 PM on Wed. April 27 when BLOOD, GUTS & ROBOTS, a retrospective including eight of these will screen at the Plaza Theatre. Then next Wednesday at the Plaza, see a different side to the filmmaker with the world premiere of his first feature-length documentary DISABLED BUT ABLE TO ROCK, the true story of Betsy Goodrich, a high-functioning autistic woman with a heart of gold with the not-so-secret alternate identity of singing superhero Danger Woman. That screening is part of the 2011 Atlanta Film Festival (April 28-May 7) which also will be showing two 1976 classics, NETWORK and a digitally remastered cut of TAXI DRIVER, at the Plaza on May 3 and 5 respectively.

Blake Myers mixes blood to be used in one of his horror shorts which will be screened Wed. April 27 at the Plaza..

The J.J. Abrams-directed/Steven Spielberg-produced SUPER 8, out June 10, starts with the magic of a boy and his Super 8 home movie camera, on which he captures proof that the government is covering up aliens on a crashed train. As far as we know, none of the monsters in Blake’s shorts are real, but these films, though not for those who are squeamish about a bit of homemade blood and gore, do capture that raw joy and magic of DIY special effects and guerilla filmmaking. Now everyone can do it with a digital camera, but back in the day, that wasn’t the case and these kinds of raw, no-budget, for-the-love shorts were the jumping board for many of today’s top directors from Spielberg to Peter Jackson.

Blake also is the festival director of the Buried Alive Film Festival, an annual horror movie festival at the Plaza Theatre which is steadily gaining a reputation for screening some of the most cutting-edge shorts and independent features in the genre. This year’s BAFF is Nov. 10-13, and the call for entries is open.

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The zany font, the pompadour, the Jerry Lee Lewis moves and the video from Hawaii complete with ukulele crooning “It’s a way cool world that we’re living in.” Then something about “a fun-loving trailer park femme fatale.” ATLRetro barely took a glance at unhitched.com, the Website of Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours, playing at Red Light Café on Saturday April 23, before we knew we’d found the unquestionable Kool Kat of this week.

From Route 66 to the Athens Highway, musicians have been eulogizing America’s obsession with being “on the road again” since the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. But for Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours, the meaning of life literally is as close as an silver metallic Airstream, fueled by a passion for making people happy and a keenly observant sense of humor. A modern minstrel mixing rockabilly, country, R&B and swing, McClain ousted an award-winning career as an illustrator and designer to follow his bliss about a decade ago, first trying the conventional route with a Nashville record deal and then taking the driver’s seat to produce, art design and merchandise his work on his own.

That decision to drive his own destiny was a risk that paid off for the self-employed father of five.  His quirky and original “Enjoy the Ride” music quickly attracted a legion of fans who call themselves Flamingoheads, after the quintessential American lawn ornament, and the attention of such music pros as Willie Nelson, David Wilcox, Tommy Emmanuel and Lindsey Buckingham. The latter two have even guested on some of Antsy’s albums. Oh and if you aren’t convinced yet, music critics have likened him to Doctors Hook and Demento, and his song titles include “Primer Gray Impala,” “Wreck of the Bookmobile” and “It Ain’t Home Til You Take the Wheels Off.” For more reasons, why you aren’t a real Retro American if you miss this Saturday’s show, here’s Antsy…

How did you come up with the idea of staging your live shows from a small, fictitious trailer park called Pine View Heights? You grew up in a mobile home, right?

It was the early ’90s, and Sammy Kershaw‘s “She’s the Queen of My Double Wide Trailer” was a big hit on country radio. That song—masterfully written by one of Nashville’s underdog songwriters and one of my favorites, Dennis Linde—was everywhere that summer. The lyric, “he’s the Charlie Daniels of the torque wrench” just floored me, rhyming with park bench. The lyrics are funny, but they’re also good, tight poetry, and I admire that.

Well, I had written a few songs along the same lines and was just starting to try my hand at performing. I was also familiar with Garrison Keillor‘s fictitious Lake Wobegon and tried meshing all the influences together. Seeing that so many artists take themselves so seriously, I wanted to be the antidote to that in Nashville and beyond.

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