RED LIGHT BYTES: The Red Light Roundup (5-1-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
Introduction
I think Red Light Roundup is quickly becoming one of the most important parts of the week for me, if only because it forces me to do more of what I love. It forces me (under threat of not having anything to say every Wednesday) to explore the various mediums I work in and enjoy far more frequently than I otherwise might if left to the ceaseless grind of production. So for that, this part of the week has my eternal gratitude. On wit da cultah!
Quick Classics: DRAGSTRIP GIRL (1957)
The Year is 2020.
I’ll let you all take a moment to overcome your many repressed memories and varied traumas. You set? Excellent.
The year is 2020, and college has thrown me down the path to becoming the manic multimedia craftsman you see before you by sending my ass home and making me do what I do best: hunker down and dig some movies. One particular double bill cemented a love affair with the 1950s Hollywoodland fantasy of being a teenager. The A-Picture that night was the astounding 1977 James Bridges drama September 30, 1955, starring Richard Thomas as a James Dean obsessive, shattered in the hours after the idol’s infamous demise.
The B-Picture was Dragstrip Girl.
Over on movie review site A Fistful of Film, I had done retrospectives on both the rock-n-roll teen boom of the 50s and the nostalgia cycle of later decades. And yet, for all the praise I heap upon this unique, frothy subset of cinematic delight, I never actually paid dues to the film that lit the fuse. Until now!
Dragstrip Girl was a blind buy on my part. I bought it from the groovy folks over at The Video Beat, a purveyor of fine OOP rock-n-roll-era entertainment. I have known and adored AIP on the back of their work with pop cinema pop Roger Corman alone, so I figured I’d be in for a good time, even if none of the producer’s trademark gothic stylings or anything resembling the horror genre was apparent. And much to my delight, I wasn’t disappointed.
The tried-and-true Sam Arkoff formula (one founded on heart-pounding action and teenaged fantasy) is firing on all cylinders in this low-budget exploit. Chock full of hot rods, rock-n-roll, and juvenile delinquency (what else), Dragstrip Girl dishes up a gearhead love triangle when Fay Spain’s “Louise Blake” rolls into town. Mad about boys and mad about cars, she becomes the source of in-fighting among the local dragster clique, and it’s from there that all sorts of piping-hot melodrama come roaring down the pike for the next 70 minutes.
Standouts include teen-heart throb John Ashley with his classic dime-store-Elvis good looks and charm, the legendary impressionist Frank Gorshin in an early role, hamming it up with his James Cagney-good looks, and the positively alluring Spain as the indecisive, eponymous speed demon.
Now, the film's biggest fault is its cripplingly formulaic writing.
Shocker, I know.
And I don’t say this to be coy, or to impose “modern sensibilities” on a film old enough to collect a pension. It really is a tough sell when you can see every twist, turn, and beat of contrived drama from a mile away, even if you if you set your brain to comatose status. Fortunately, the plot can go suck a lemon, for there is plenty to save this film from its own mediocrities. Lou Russoff dishes up sharp dialogue, said dialogue is handed to a cast competent enough to deliver it with conviction, the film is loaded with fun hot-rodding set pieces, and then there’s that blink-and-you'll-miss-it runtime of 70 minutes. Not to mention all those sweet drive-in vibes. From the cars to the fashion, pastiches of the decade will never come close to feeling as comfortably 50s as Dragstrip Girl does. Cheap-as-free, and available on Tubi and Shout TV!
Indie Spotlight: Flying Sparks Vol. 1
We’re going to open with the highest praise I can give this comic: I ain’t a superhero guy, and I’m digging Flying Sparks. Now, that’s not out of any contrarian angst or burnout over the 20-year caped crusader love-in that’s been happening on the silver screen, but because of how I got into comics:
Heavy Metal Magazine.
Not exactly a fount of spandex-clad titans, now is it? The SFF bande dessinée staple helped shape what comics I wanted. That doesn’t even get into the fact that I was born well after the ‘93 Comic Crash, which to my layman’s eyes, helped drive all the superheroes out of the grocery stores and into boutique comic shops. My intro to comics not only came when I was in my teens, but in my own tastemaking vacuum. No shared cultural history, nothing.
After striking a deal with the man himself, Mr. Jon Del Arroz, I lucked into the entire Flying Sparks series, which can lay claim to the title of my first-ever set of superhero comics. Arroz & Company had already earned my respect with the astounding sci-fi graphic novel Overmind so there was no need to twist the arm to get these funnybooks on my shelves. And upon finishing Volume 1, I think the deal made was an excellent one.
Flying Sparks is a high-octane love story about physics student Chloe Anderson and coffee shop owner Johnny Benvinuiti.
Or at least, that’s what they know about each other.
Through the gadgetry of Professor Fitch, Chloe transforms into crimefighter Meta-Girl, who is still learning the ropes of how to be a caped crusader. Meanwhile, Johnny is one of the underworld’s go-to fences, cursed with mysterious, electrifying powers, and caught up with some dangerous mobsters. It’s a duplicitous duo that can’t keep their secrets from each other forever, and that moment of truth may come crashing down before they know it.
It’s a straight-down-the-line superhero drama, told through the unpretentious, stylish art of Jethro Morales and the quick wit of Del Arroz. The book moves like a freight train on amphetamines, keeping the action flowing and engaging, while still taking time for readers to appreciate our likeable leads’ chemistry and to sew the seeds of grander narratives to come.
And then there are panels like this that made me roar with laughter.
I can’t wait to whip through the rest of Flying Sparks. Volume 1 is charmingly written, wonderfully illustrated, tautly paced, and centered on a couple you’re hoping will make it out alright in the end, and my gut tells me there’s plenty more where that came from. Available through JDA’s website.
Streetwise Caviar
I seem to be losing the battle to my muses which insist upon older fare, but in the spirit of equal time, we’ll give an indie album the top-slot first.
Spacetudes Fight by Binaural Space is a soundtrack to a film that never was or has yet to be, and is he latest chapter of an ongoing saga within the ambient maestro’s body of work. Through incredibly brief, but remarkably rendered analog synth compositions, a grand narrative of robots realizing their sentience and acting upon this knowledge emerges. It’s warm, yet cold. Hypnotic, yet distant. It feels like I raided someone’s reel-to-reel archives; the highest compliment I can pay to someone writing with analog synths.
I’m still “processing” these if that makes any sense, so best I can say for now is as follows: like Tangerine Dream scoring Dimension X, the Spacetudes series is one I hope to go through top to bottom and savor its unique impressions of a grand epic. Binaural Space is a terrific project of endless imagination and well worth your time and support. His new album Meditations releases today, so go give it a look and listen as well.
My classic for the day is also a soundtrack in nature, but for a film that exists beyond our imaginations and in this corporeal realm.
The Russia House represents to many one of the crown jewels in the work of Hollywood legend Jerry Goldsmith. While the composer has mingled with jazz plenty of times before 1990, from early career scores like The Prize to out-and-out classics like Chinatown, his music for the John le Carré adaptation starring espionage veteran Sean Connery is an album that I discovered in high school and couldn’t put down if you paid me.
With a sensational core trio of session legend Mike Lang on piano, the prolific John Patitucci on bass, and the brilliant Branford Marsalis on soprano sax, Goldsmith weaves together a haunting, tragic, and uniquely sensual tone poem for a post-glasnost Russia, and the many figures tangled in this peculiar spy yarn of nuclear secrets and the publishing industry. The main melody of the piece, “Katya,” was one Goldsmith carried with him from several abandoned scores, and wouldn’t you know it, third time made for a helluva charm. Through the icon’s deft touch and incredible sense of emotional resonance, The Russia House stands as the most elegant of all jazz scores committed to celluloid.
Lastly, a quick shout out to Friend of the Force Detective Wolfman and his on-going crusade for the airwaves with ON THE BEAT. This is a killer of radio show from a pavement-pounding hound who has an ear for the good stuff. I discovered him back in college and have been digging his shows ever since. This latest episode is all about “High Strangeness” and sauntering down those darksome, preternatural paths. Tunes by Primus, Blue Öyster Cult, Wall of Voodoo, and more. As the P.I. himself would say, “DIG IT OR DIE!”
As always: stay searching, stay jamming, and always dig where no one else will. Be seeing you, soldiers!
8 STORIES, 2 HEROES, ONE THRILLING COLLECTION!
Serve Justice Throughout The Universe with JD Cowan’s STAR WANDERERS! From Cirsova Publishing & Featuring The Music of Jacob Calta.
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