Watched it tonight.
I hadn’t read anything ABOUT it (other than the most vaguest of references/recommendations), so I went in almost completely cold.
What a ride, ahhahahaha!!!
I really liked it. I love that I don’t know if I was too drunk or not drunk enough for it. I’ll definitely RE-watch it a few times. It seemed to be a movie that gave very few fucks and was really unapologetic about it’s inspirations/influences… I like movies like that and really loved when I’d see something in the film that I felt sure of as an inspiration/influence. Texas Chainsaw (1 and 2, haha), Dr. Who, Heavy Metal, Rambo/Mad Max, etc. It was a fun film and I look forward to watching it AGAIN when my wife isn’t home to complain about the noise, hahaha!!!
Yeah dude you pretty much nailed the influences dead on…I love that film…it just feels like you are dropped into this weird hallucinogenic alternate reality nightmare and ya just gotta ride it out…and what other film starts with King Crimson music playing ?..
And who can ever forget the Cheddar Goblin!!!
Love this fucking film,can’t wait for my upcoming viewing…
Some Twin Peaks/ David Lynch action, True Detective, and definitely Natural Born Killers too, haha. Been so long since I’d seen NBK, though. Probably gonna order the DVD now that I’ve thought of it. I think this is a movie that makes you want to not only re-watch the film itself, but see a bunch of films that it reminds you of.
Speaking of the drugged out brilliance… I love that there is a weird surreal crossover where you’re not totally sure what is “real”, and what is either fucked up drug trip or maybe even actual supernatural.
And I feel like making the biker gang fully faceless was really something fresh and special. It took away all humanity from them. They were more like berserkers (Clive Barker’s “Nightbreed”) or a depraved army of gimps (“Pulp Fiction”/ “8mm”) than anything resembling people, despite their shape and means of travel.
I love the use of music in this film and I also love that the director was ballsy enough to do a good number of the scenes with no musical accompaniment at all. The music is ethereal but also oppressive. It was kind of bugging me trying to think what it reminded me of, and today I realized that I was thinking of the mood in THE SHINING – the way that there’s just a complete atmosphere of cold creepy weirdness. It’s not just the antagonistic characters that exude evil and sickness, but it’s everything around them (plants, mountains, buildings, etc.) that oozes an organic and tangible malice. And the moody unsettling score really adds to that . . . and the scenes that lack any scoring stick out as even more unnerving by default.
Wish I could watch it with you! I’d love to booze it up and then babble on into the dawn talking about it and stuff it made us think about. (I’m trying to read what I just wrote in a non-gay way, but it seems impossible, haha! Whatever.)
Dude,gay away…I’m all in hahaha
…maybe when I finally get back out to Cali we can do a concert and screening…crank up some Twister Sister and drink excessively…!!!
It’s an old movie from about 1964 that I loved as a kid whenever it came on TV. It’s still great. Tony Randall plays this old Chinese dude who brings his Circus to town, and he plays 6 other goofy characters in the circus too.
Haha Dr.Lao is a fucking blast!!!..I liked the description of it once when I saw they were going to show it on TCM ,so I taped it…totally silly but also smart and eccentric…Tony Randall is so great in it…he is so convincing in every role…Im glad you mentioned it cuz I gotta see it again…
I was looking deeper into it over the weekend and found that it was adapted from a popular book in the 30’s called “The Circus Of Dr. Lao”. The original editions featured illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff, an artist I’d never heard of but am now obsessed with. He does an insanely beautiful and whimsical style which feels to me like an Art Deco version of Basil Wolverton (another favorite).
Check out some of his “Machinalia” series below. I want to buy some gallery prints or something now. This stuff is just so good and it feels like such a shame that he’s not a household name.