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Batman Dracula (1964)
Warhol in his weirdness
Originally shot silent, Warhol overdubbed a soundtrack that includes The Velvet Underground & Nico from 1966-67. I gather that was believed a 'lost film' but I'm watching it right now, though it's shorter than the time listed. It appears to be a video recording off the screen of a closed-circuit TV broadcast. No plot to speak of. It reminds me of Kenneth Anger's ''Invocation of my Demon Brother'' in some ways. Inscrutable.
Fantastic Animation Festival (1977)
Odd Midnight Movie Animation Fare from the 70's
This film had a bit of everything, a classic Max Fleischer ''Superman'' cartoon, music videos of Pink Floyd's ''One Of These Days'' and Cat Stevens ''Moonshadow'' some examples of very psychedelic advertising from the early 70's, some *great* claymation, early Bill Plympton, it was a great collection that turned a lot of Heads on back in Midnight Movie days of the late 70's. Years before ''Heavy Metal'' or ''Spike & Mike's Animation Festival'', we had this to compare with Ralph Bakshi's ''Heavy Traffic'', or Picha's ''Tarzoon'', and not a lot else, really. Independent animation was in a terrible state in the 70's. This film shows some of its' highest points.
Hawkwind: The Chronicle of the Black Sword (1985)
Only a document, not a documentary...
This documents Hawkwind's performance/tour of ''The Chronicle of the Black Sword.'' It was filmed, but the tape is plagued by the limitations of video of the day-- Rock show stages came across as very dark on video tape due to the contrast caused by all the spotlighting, this was the same trouble Pink Floyd faced when filming ''The Wall, Live'' a few years before. Furthermore, the audio comes straight from the video camera's feed, not from the stage audio mix or monitor mix (if there was one). I've got bootleg DVDs of other bands that look and sound better than this authorized release, but Hawkwind video of any kind is scarce.
Laserblast (1978)
Fun bad no-budget 70's Sci-Fi
I guess I love this bad film because I caught it on its' initial release in a drive-in on a hot summer night in 1978, well provisioned with a bag of Colombian Gold Buds and a couple bottles of Boone's Farm. We'd seen a still of the stop-motion animation scene in Starlog Magazine, and were quite curious. Wonderfully dreadful and delirious, the animated sequence at the beginning of the film is really the only thing this film had to recommend it. David Carradine's "Deathsport" was worse than this, as I recall, but it's not as good as Marjoe Gortner's "Starcrash"...
The Wall: Live in Berlin (1990)
A total suck-fest
It *sounded* like a good idea. But the cast reads like a series of "Where Are They Now" episodes for VH1, and their performances are truly terrible. Waters still had *some* of his voice left, and it's a shame that he didn't use his own pipes more, Joni Mitchell is truly wretched; this project is the biggest loser she's been involved with since she used to date David Crosby! Sinead O'Connor shows why she was a one-hit wonder, the Scorpions seem to have been thrown in to appease the Kraut-centric Berlin audience, Bryan Adams (who?) is totally forgettable. One also finds it hard to believe that Jerry Hall knows how to act based on her performance here...I *will* give this show an extra star for Snowy White's outstanding guitar work, it's the only thing that kept me listening all the way through. His performance is far more than a mere imitation of David Gilmore.
An actual performance (several, actually) of the *real* Pink Floyd performing "The Wall" at Earl's Court is available through various fan-trading clubs and bit-torrent sites. They are a *little* dark in places(the reason an edit was never commercially released) but they beat THIS suck-fest hands down! The best of the bunch is described here: http://www.harvested.org/DVD006/index.html
You Are What You Eat (1968)
Rather boring anti-documentary
OK, to answer a few questions that others seem to have had:
1. Yes, this film *is* available, after a fashion. It's out there in collector's circles. I recently found a copy recently on a pirated DVD-R for under $20.00. It is the complete version, not the edited version. The transfer quality was excellent, whereas the quality of the original film reel was only good to very good.
2. The film soundtrack was released several years ago on CD. You can occasionally locate copies of it on E-Bay. That's where I got mine.
3. This is a very disjointed and boring film. If you are a Tiny Tim fan, or a Peter Yarrow fan, you will probably not be disappointed, but otherwise, unless you were part of the San Francisco Scene in the Summer of Love, you'll probably be as bored to tears as I was: this film was, according to the Album's liner notes an "anti-documentary" "about a particular moment in time." If you were there, you'll probably spot some familiar faces in the "Family Dog" sequence and in the "Be-In" footage. If you weren't, you'll see "just these spotty, dirty, kids" as George Harrison once described them-- it's clear this was not the Clearasil generation...
4. There is no logic, rhyme or reason to this film. No continuity. No order. Unrelated footage cuts in and out of scenes for no discernible reason.
5. The Tiny Tim sequences were filmed in the basement of Bob Dylan's "Big Pink" house with "The Band" (in their last appearance as "The Hawks" )as his back-up band in Woodstock, N.Y. Why Yarrow included them on this film, that otherwise limits itself to San Francisco is beyond reasoning. The raw tapes of this session are available on the bootleg "Bob Dylan, Tiny Tim and The Band: "Down In The Basement". What Mr. Tim (a New Yorker) has to do with the rest of the film, set as it is in San Francisco, and why they interspersed one of his performances with audience shots of the Beatles fans at Candlestick Park from two years earlier, is beyond explanation. (The only Beatles/Tiny Tim connections I know of are that the Beatles attended Mr. Tim's debut at the Royal Albert Hall in '68, and Mr. Tim later sang "Nowhere Man" on the Beatles 1969 Beatles Fan Club Christmas Record-- both of which are antecedent to this film's release.) Tiny's duet is with the lovely Elanor Baruchian, a young lady of his accquaintance (not his girlfriend as reported on The Band's website)who used to appear on the same bill with him at The Scene Club in New York City in 1966. Ms. Baruchian changed her name to Chelsea Lee and was a founding member of the Psychedelic Folk Rock trio "The Cake" and later was a vocalist in Ginger Baker's Air Force, and one of Dr. John's Nighttrippers. It was Tiny Tim's appearance in this film that opened the door for him to his invitation to appear on Laugh-In, The Tonight Show, and all of the subsequent fame to follow.
6. Frank Zappa, near as I can tell, does not appear in this film. His music certainly does not. Another reviewer claims that he is sitting on a chair on the side of the stage during the psychedelic light show of the topless go-go girl dancing... frankly, I nearly went blind trying to determine that the girls were, in fact, topless, and didn't notice Mr. Zappa anywhere on this film. The band playing during the Psychdelic Lightshow & Topless Go-go dancing was The Electric Flag, not The Mothers of Invention, who were an *L.A* Band, not a Frisco Band.
7. David Crosby *does* make a five second cameo in this film. He has no lines.
Dr. Caligari (1989)
Mondo Bizzaro!
This is simply one of the strangest films ever made. Directed by Stephen Sayadian, the man that gave you the Sci-Fi Porn Thriller, "Cafe Flesh", "Dr. Caligari" is one of the 80's cult films that is *so* strange, *so* bizarre, that it defies ordinary description. More Mondo than "Forbidden Zone", more inexplicable than "Eraserhead", more indescribable than "Invocation of my Demon Brother", it's a psychotic psychodrama romp semi-sequel to "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"; it seems Dr. Caligari's grand-daughter has opened her own asylum for the sexually maladjusted, and is experimenting on her patients. Words cannot do this film justice. It's a shame it's out of print. It's totally brilliant!!!