RED LIGHT BYTES: Red Light Roundup (7-3-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
OVERVIEW
True-to-form with my work on this project, the review period on the Kickstarter is the fly in the ointment.
Oh joy.
So while we don’t have the prelaunch page live just yet, subscribing to us here on Substack is your one-way ticket of knowing when it does go up, and of course, when the crowd-funder itself is live. You will not want to miss this, we have A LOT planned to make 2025 a golden year for 365 Infantry.
In the meantime, I come bearing mid-century jazz, and a special round of classic film reviews from the archives. Let’s dig in!
REVIEW: Roadracers (1959)
The raw emotion of Elia Kazan.
The camp of King Vidor.
The angst of American International.
Whatever the fuck Roadracers is, it sure did…something for me. The tale of a dad who imposes his will upon his son, ultimately sending the young man down a vindictive, self-destructive path, proves bizarrely dread-laden, oft-times confounding, and ultimately uneven. This is possibly the first time I've ever seen one of these pictures from AIP that actually tries to be a sincere melodrama, and somehow manages to fail and succeed all at once.
Its failings are in its defiling of "in medias res." None of the beefs in this thing feel sufficiently established. I don't understand the father-son dynamics, I don't understand the relationships, I don't understand the motivations; it's a literal car wreck. Nothing feels satisfactorily paid off. We don't really see a rekindling or comeuppance or anything; the film just ends. With all these problems, how does it even approach succeeding?
The simple answer: atmosphere.
There is a thick cloud of doom hanging over this film. From the moment it starts, we believe it is about a racer who is trying make a comeback from a horrible accident that leads to the death of another racer, but it then becomes this story of a father and son clashing, a dynamic which proves destructive to all those around them. The dad's an asshole, the kid's an asshole, actors John Shay and Joel Lawrence sell the living shit out of this troubled dynamic, the other characters barely have any character, and yet my heart was beating out of my chest in the film's climactic race sequence (credit to studio veteran Ronald Sinclair for the editing on that front). And credit where credit’s due, the film is aided by its cool array of classic cars (with location filmmaking allegedly taking place during the 1958 United States Grand Prix) and the hard bop score by TV's own Richard Markowitz compliments those kinetic races.
With Arthur Swerdloff’s perfunctory direction at the wheel, Roadracers is a 70-minute soap opera and you just can't turn away from as it all keeps devolving. Not even out of the film’s production values dwindling, but the actual narrative itself. You want to see where this English-language telenovela is heading. Setting aside the rotten script, the two out-of-nowhere songs, and the plot’s thin nature, the sheer force of his tragic devolution transcends all fault to become a bizarrely arresting watch. Another curio from the rock-n-roll days of American International, before they were the house that Beach Parties and Edgar Allan Poe built. Available on Tubi.
REVIEW: The Human Satellite (1979)
Sometimes, you just wind up watching shit because it looks cool. You’ll have no idea what’s going on, what’s trying to be said, you just look at it, go “damn, that’s a vibe” and move on with your life. Such is the case with this British short from Jon Brooks and Simon Holland, the latter of whom specializes in Ufology.
Too much of a narrative blur to gleam much from, there's a certain charm to the The Human Satellite. Equal parts street art and Heavy Metal Magazine, and backed by a hypnotic score from synth-pop band The Human League, the story seems to be an alternate reality snapshot of the late 70s where the destruction of a Soviet satellite above Canada has adverse effects on the cityscape (which looks like a cartoon version of 80s cult favorite Night of the Comet), and a particular person with celestial powers.
Again, not really the most coherent, but to put it simply, the style overcomes the jumbled substance. Like an overlong MTV bumper or an undercooked segment of Liquid Television, this British short has an assured (if phrenetic), sense of pop-art-pizzazz worth checking out.
REVIEW: Le Samouraï (1967)
Now it’s time to take that rule of cool and put it to use in one of the all-time greats. We’re talking cooler than a walk-in freezer on 90-degree day, cooler than the wind hitting your skin at 105 in a Chevelle, close to taking the Miami Vice nonchalant crown levels of cool.
Le Samouraï is a crystalline work, a film chilled to a glass-like gleam. Crime cinema savant Jean-Pierre Melville was one of the best to ever do it, be it France or the world at large. From the muted art direction to Henri Decaë’s picture-perfect cinematography to François de Roubaix’s smooth, jazzy score to the absolute masterclass that is Alain Delon's portrayal of the ice-cold hitman Jef, Melville orchestrates a classy yet grim study in the morality within crime, with Jef caught in the crosshairs of both the police and his contractors, locked in his own, self-sustaining principles.
It takes a while to settle into the rhythm of the film, but from the moment that first shot rings out, you are glued to your seat as you watch the inner machinations of the whole thing get set into motion. Melville paces the film to perfection, and when paired with that darkly infectious organ theme and the staggeringly well-composed camerawork, it feels like a prelude to the thoughtful, visually stunning crime cinema of the great Michael Mann. I encourage everyone to watch Le Samouraï, a bona fide beauty of a film.
I own it on blu-ray thanks to the Criterion Collection release, though if you need a test drive before committing, it too is available on Tubi.
REVIEW: Disc Jockey (1980)
Of all Czech animator Jirí Barta's work, even his immaculate 1986 Pied Piper adaptation, Disc Jockey is the film of his gravitate towards almost involuntarily. It’s a film that I discovered in the days spent of gorging myself on art and cult cinema during high school, and yet I could never fully articulate why it stuck out to me. Part of it is the overall gimmick; telling the story of a DJ's nightly routine through the many circles in his life, from the records he plays to the pills he takes (and takes and takes and takes). Part of it is that it's one of the few cutout animated films of a career defined by stop-motion. And of course, for a composer and craftsman who takes music seriously, there is the innate relatability of a film about someone who spins records for a living. But I think the biggest thing that struck me about Disc Jockey is something textural.
The film FEELS of its time. Not in terms of rote pop cultural cliché, or a caricature of the time hails from. From the DJ's denim jacket to the vintage company logos strewn about, to the subdued color palettes and airbrushed shading, Disc Jockey feels like a late 70s magazine ad come-to-life, and sits neatly with the DJ's cyclical routine and the commercial world in which he resides. The way the music evokes day-to-day routines suggests to me either the fantasies of this DJ or perhaps a reflection of the crowd he spins these records for. We never see the crowd, so it's possible the scenarios painted via each record correspond to the various club-goers (workers from the fields, store owners across town, etc.).
Also, the gnarly turn the film takes as the credits roll strikes me more as a passive surrealist twist rather than an indictment of anything, because Barta shows nothing worth condemning. It was most likely a move on his part to get the film thru Czech censors, tacking on a vague, tertiary indictment of the decadence of capitalist/consumer culture in what is otherwise an observational piece about the circular patterns within a DJ’s life.
In the end, Disc Jockey is a neat little film nestled in the early days of a diverse career. I'll keep returning to it from time to time; a cycle of my own, if you will.
CONCLUSION
A quartet of fine films for you to savor, be it for camp or classic status. The evergreen phrase “variety is the spice of life” is more than true, it’s a healthy practice for any creative or audience member to keep the palette fresh and the mind sharp. I’m getting better about it myself, honest!
Seeing as tomorrow will be Independence Day, give our flash anthology 4th in the 25th another read, and if the muses are extra chatty, you might even see a special Quick Byte to mark another year in our nation’s long, storied history.
May God Bless You & This Force!
I'll take a look ~