RED LIGHT BYTES: Red Light Roundup (7-31-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
Yes folks, it’s back and living up to its name for once! Been sitting on this rant for weeks, but wasn’t able to get it cut together thanks to all the shenanigans of work. But it’s here, I’m going to do my damndest to keep Quality Candor weekly. We now release every Friday morning, so you guys will be catching up on last week’s episodes from here on out. If you want them the second they drop, however, as every hacky YouTuber has ever said: “REMEMBER TO LIKE & SUBSCRIBE!”
Enough of that, time for some cool shit.
KICKSTARTER: John Carter of Mars: The Audio Series
As you may have surmised, we here at 365 Infantry are fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his seminal space hero, the fine Virginian gentleman turned Martian Warlord. It was to my absolute elation that the Burroughs Estate and the fine folks at Pocket Universe Productions have arranged for John Carter to make another leap from the pages, this time to the theater of the mind. Funded in 90 MINUTES, and with plenty of time to show just how terrific this sci-fi institution was, is, and shall always be!
Set to star Sean Patrick Flanery (Boondock Saints, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) as our favorite, gravity-defying hero in an adaptation of A Princess of Mars, the 1912 classic that changed the face of modern fantasy and science fiction forever. You had me at that promise alone, especially after finishing the Scott Brick audiobook (I’m onto Book 2, The Gods of Mars now), but I’m totally suckered in by the promise of a Woola plush, for Woola is the original best boy. It’s time we remember who we have to thank for an entire generation of genre-defining science fiction. Before Star Wars, before Flash Gordon, hear the call of Mars and remember the name that started it all: John Carter!
PLAYLIST: Instrumental Might
To my absolute elation, British production music label Bruton has finally begun the process of bringing its massive, storied library of late 70s/80s electronica to music streaming and digital purchase, and to celebrate, I now make public one of my many, MANY production playlists that have been powering this series since 2021 (or 2022 in this particular case).
“Instrumental Might” gathers literal days-worth of vintage film music, library tracks, and honest-to-goodness electronica and jazz. From films like Tenebre and Escape From New York to television shows like Miami Vice to animation like Riding Bean and The Plague Dogs, all these and more blend into a near 1400-track cocktail of thumping riffs, mellow and searing horns, atmosphere galore, all ready to set the scene for your mind’s eye.
I am particularly pleased by Bruton joining the likes of KPM, Sonoton and Parry Music because the track you see at the top of the list, “Telecom” by James Asher, has been the starting point for every work session I’ve ever gone into with this series. From the climbing arpeggio to its spacey reverb to its bounding bass line, if there was ever a song that most perfectly encapsulated the wonder and mystery of all great speculative fiction, “Telecom” is that anthem.
Now I get that Spotify has its problems (a lot of problems mind you), but its functionality has been immeasurable to the series, hence the three series playlists I’ve made public. That said, to those who are opposed (and you have every right to be), you will find all the good obscure shit in our pared-down YouTube production playlist with “Telecom” still sitting high on the mast. On Spotify, I went for quantity, but on YouTube, I went for quality, as there a lot of tunes lost in licensing agreements and publishing memory holes. Either way, both represent the sonic backdrop to which I create the series. Do enjoy!
REVIEW: Beat Girl (1960)
Let’s round things out with a hop, skip, and a jump across the pond to a very different kind of teenaged rocksploitation affair, quite possibly the sleaziest juvenile delinquent film from the late 50s/early 60s boom period.
Beat Girl has it all. It’s got family melodrama stirred up by a discount, mini-Brigitte Bardot in Gillian Hills, whose turn as Jennifer is unwaveringly uncomfortable in her defiance, to the point that the British beatnik crowd she falls in with don’t know what to do with her. We've got a snazzy score by the legendary John “James Bond” Barry in a breakout effort. We've got games of chicken, hot rods, English rocker Adam Faith as a true-blue JD, a disgustingly brilliant Christopher Lee in a break between Hammer classics, strip teases that push the boundaries of 1960 content standards, and most importantly: slang.
An anonymous student in the film described the whole gig as an American import, and it feels like director Edmond T. Gréville and writer Dail Ambler want to make that explicitly clear. The teens sound like robots, chasing trends rather than pioneering, espousing phrases with frequency and rapidity to such a degree that they cease to sound even real. Faith fires off the word "square" so damn much, you'd be forgiven for believing the whole world's a square, even the beat lads & lasses in it. And that's the point. These are the scrapheap kids, the youth of the mid-century who are lost in so many ways. So what else can they do other than adopt some beacon of youth culture like the beatnik look & the sounds of jazz & rock-n-roll?
In a way, it gets the message across better than American JD flicks. For America, all of this stuff was incredibly pioneering. Rock-n-roll truly has become a part of Americana, lending these films a rebellious nature, with sincere joy taken in the drag racing & jukebox jam sessions. In Beat Girl, it all comes off as a façade, a coping mechanism for those who can't deal with the reality of their lives. It’s a kitchen sink drama about escapism tucked between the gyrating parties and street races. While the American motion picture does all but explicitly celebrate youth of the time with well-meaning (often hilarious) melodramas, Beat Girl feels like a genuinely dangerous world to be in. Not an outright condemnation, but a fascinating piece concerning the youth of England roaring over the edge.
Available now on Plex.
Keep digging for gold, soldiers! Godspeed.
Nice. A bit busy these weeks, so I'll catch up on the 23rd of August, maybe?