reggae

Popcorn (1991)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

The 1991 novelty slasher Popcorn has a fairly straightforward premise: What if William Castle was a serial killer? That setup makes for a much meaner, zanier William Castle homage than Joe Dante’s Matinee, one where Castle’s signature theatrical gimmicks get directly involved in increasingly silly kills instead of being deployed as mood-setting kitsch. The Stepfather‘s Jill Schoelen stars as a film school weirdo whose struggling department decides to raise production funds by hosting an all-night horror marathon in a traditional single-screen theater. They figure they can charge extra for tickets by bringing back the original theatrical gimmicks from the 1950s creature features they’re screening, like ziplining a giant mosquito prop over the audience during the atomic-age sci-fi parody Mosquito (an effect they call “Projectovision”, modeled after Castle’s “Emergo!” gimmick) or zapping the audience in their seats during key shocks of The Amazing Electrified Man (“Shockoscope”, modeled after Castle’s “Percepto!” gimmick). Only, a mysterious killer is loose in the theater and is picking off the film school students & staff one by one. The mosquito is rigged to crush an unsuspecting victim; the seat buzzers are cranked to lethally high voltage; the “Aromarama” gas deployed during The Stench is, of course, poisoned. While Schoelen’s softspoken auteur-to-be should be worried about what ridiculous retro-schlock gimmick is going to eventually be wielded against her, she’s instead perversely excited by the deaths’ potential as inspiration for her next screamplay, keeping the mood defiantly light despite all of the violence. Popcorn is a wonderfully silly 90s slasher with a wide range of imaginative kills and a fun all-night-party atmosphere, one that panders so shamelessly to its target audience that it’s an easy instant favorite for any genre-literate horror nerds.

Popcorn is pretty blatant about its William Castle homages, which range from the more obvious go-to references (like hiring a uniformed nurse to issue life insurance policies in the lobby, in case the audience dies of fright) to the deeper cuts (like its “Shock Clock” prop referencing the “Fright Break” countdown in Castle’s Homicidal). That’s what makes it so strange that Castle’s name isn’t mentioned once during the hours of bonus features on the film’s recent Synapse Blu-ray release. The retro horror parodies that fill out the movie theater’s all-night schlock marathon are referred to as broad homages to 1940s & 50s horror classics on the disc’s commentary track and in the accompanying feature-length “Making Of” documentary, without ever specifically mentioning Castle’s legendary gimmickry as an influence on the text. That concept-to-screen disconnect is likely a result of the film’s tortured history of authorship, with its final cut encompassing the work of three different directors working towards three different ends. The story goes that Popcorn‘s first hired director Alan Ormsby was really into shooting the 1950s creature feature parodies, at the expense of shooting the 1990s wraparound slasher that contains them. When he was fired from the project, Ormsby was drastically behind schedule but had delivered a group of highly detailed, reverential homages to vintage horror schlock. Producer Bob Clark (who had collaborated on Dead of Night with Ormsby, a friend he lost to that business decision) was reluctant to put his name on another horror project after becoming a more mainstream commercial director, so he hired one of his trusted actors from Porky‘s, Mark Herrier, to take the reins. Cast & crew have since confirmed that Clark essentially shadowdirected the picture, guiding a lot of Herrier’s day-to-day decisions and shooting substantial amounts of B-unit footage to get the project back on schedule. You can feel Clark’s influence throughout, especially in scenes where he voices threatening phone calls from the anonymous serial killer villain, just as he had in his breakout slasher Black Christmas. You can also feel the film’s divided authorship in how its obvious original intent as a William Castle homage has been lost in the handovers, like a game of telephone.

Luckily, the William Castle throwback gimmicks aren’t the only thing Popcorn has going on. The killer who weaponizes those gags is suspected to be a filmmaker of an entirely different era: a hippie freak who made ritualistic art films of the Kenneth Anger & Anton Lavey variety. Our hippie Satanist first appears to Jill Schoelen in a sweaty, Ken Russell-inspired nightmare sequence, calling out to her through the psychedelic afterlife. The second she wakes up, she starts scribbling details from that nightmare into her journal, insistent that it would make a great film. It turns out what she was dreaming was already a film, a scratchy 16mm short from the 1970s titled Possessor, which its director Lanyard Gates concluded by committing in-the-flesh murders during its climax at its premiere. Gates was apparently radicalized by audiences’ tepid reaction to his art films, deciding to get violent revenge on crowds who would rather watch goofy genre fluff instead of real, meaningful cinema. That hostile artist-audience dynamic continues from beyond the grave, when the film school’s all-night horror marathon is interrupted by a renegade screening of Possessor, which the captive crowd boos off the screen. The question of whether the long-dead Gates has supernaturally returned to this mortal plane to get his violent revenge on that audience or if his work is being continued by a more plausible, in-the-flesh suspect is answered in such a bizarre, spectacularly convoluted way that I wouldn’t dare spoil it here. What’s more important than who’s doing Gates’s work is what that work represents. Years before Wes Craven was interrogating horror audiences’ disconnection with the meaning behind their go-to genre’s violence & narrative tropes in New Nightmare & Scream, Clark & co. were already calling out the horror-hungry masses for not sincerely engaging with the art behind their entertainment. The art of cinema and the cheap thrills of horror gimmickry are directly opposed here, with open resentment expressed over how the former needs a little of the latter to earn its funding. That’s what makes reading Bob Clark’s authorship into the text its most satisfying angle, even if the truth is more of a three-way compromise.

Popcorn is not only disjointed in its directorial vision and its art-vs-schlock sentiments, but it’s also disjointed in its setting. The story is set in the suburbs of Smalltown, America, but the production was shot entirely in Kingston, Jamaica, making extensive use of an abandoned old-style movie theater located there. Some of the Jamaican touches to the production are subtly underplayed, like how the majority Black cast of extras are made to appear more diverse by wearing Halloween costumes to the horror marathon. Others are less subtle, like how this is the rare slasher that features an all-reggae soundtrack (including a movie-themed reggae parody of “Under the Boardwalk”). The illusion really breaks down when the power goes out during the marathon and a local reggae band is invited on stage to entertain the crowd by flashlight, turning the theatrical audience into a dancehall dance party. Like the rest of Popcorn‘s behind-the-scenes production anomalies, the chaotic relationship between its setting and its shooting location is just part of the fun. This is a pizza-and-beer VHS rental to be enjoyed with your nerdiest horror-loving friends, so you can all be poked fun at by a movie that doesn’t take you or your preferred genre seriously. As lovingly recreated as the vintage William Castle segments feel in Ormsby’s movies-within-the-movie vignettes, there’s something genuinely heartfelt in Clark’s overall hostility to the fun-loving, novelty-seeking horror audience who wouldn’t turn up or fund more serious art. If nothing else, Clark’s reluctance to put his name on the project betrays some kind of lingering, Gates-style resentment for the artistic limitations of the genre. He doesn’t let that professional bitterness get in the way of throwing a good party, though, just like he doesn’t sweat the logical details of how that party should be soundtracked.

-Brandon Ledet

Babymother (1998)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

One of the great public services in recent internet history is the Instagram account @firefitsneworleans, a “New Orleans Street Style” archive that highlights “the best looks on the streets of our beloved city documented by a group of friends.”  Not only is it just a beautiful collection of D.I.Y. fashion stunts, it’s also a vital record of the incredible visual art of local Black style – especially home-made outfits designed to draw attention at second lines.  Of course, New Orleans’s second line tradition is its own unique cultural niche, but I was thinking a lot about @firefitsneworleans while watching the low-budget musical Babymother, set in the dancehall reggae scene of late-90s West End, London.  Babymother is a distinct work in many ways, not least of all in its billing as “the first Black British musical.”  I was most impressed by it as a lookbook of dancehall fashion stunts, though, as every scene-to-scene costume change dropped my jaw.  What’s most incredible about the film’s D.I.Y. Black fashion stylings is that most of the outfits would feel perfectly at home on the @firefitsneworleans page two decades later, without feeling retro or costumey.  We’re in the exact sweet spot where late-90s nightclub fashion is hip again instead of feeling passé, and Babymother is itself an excellent snapshot of that moment in Black fashion history.

This is my favorite kind of musical: one with catchy pops songs I’d listen to in my free time anyway, ignoring musical theatre tradition.  The titular babymother is an aspiring dancehall M.C., Anita, whose dirtbag boyfriend is already a minor celebrity on the reggae charts.  Anita’s boyfriend wants her to abandon her dreams of starting her own music career so she can focus on raising their kids while he disappears on tour for months on end.  She defies his demands and starts a small, all-girl reggae group with her friends, renaming themselves Neeta, Sweeta, & Nastie.  The only problem is that all three members of the group are single mothers who struggle to find babysitters so they can perform at nightclubs or record singles, while their knucklehead boyfriends enjoy a much greater freedom outside the home.  As wonderful as Babymother is as a vintage reggae musical and Black fashion lookbook, it’s also a surprisingly complicated drama.  The movie starts with sitcom-style opening credits where every person in Anita’s life is introduced by their relationship to her: “her friend,” “her rival,” “her mother,” etc.  That turns out to be a helpful guide, since the movie often swerves into shocking family secrets & betrayals that force Anita to overcome much more internal, complex conflicts than merely sneaking around a controlling boyfriend.  The movie is set up to be A Reggae Star is Born, but it’s something much thornier than that.  There’s a quiet exchange of glances during the inevitable battle-of-the-bands climax that genuinely choked me up, which is hard to do in a musician’s rise-to-success story this narratively familiar.

Even if Babymother weren’t an emotionally fulfilling drama, it would still be Essential Cinema just as a late-90s fashion lookbook.  I love the 90s NYC club-kid relic Party Girl, but I can’t claim that its half-invested romcom story template means all that much to me emotionally.  That movie’s charms rest entirely on Parker Posey “finding herself” while looking cute and modeling outrageous outfits.  And it rules.  Familial drama aside, Babymother is a similar pleasure, just with a different nightclub soundtrack and a different cultural context for its fashion stunts.  In a better world, both films would’ve been hits, and we’d have a modern New Orleans-set indie drama following in their dance steps – this time with a bounce soundtrack, duh.  As fabulous as it is, I don’t know how permanent of a local fashion archive @firefitsneworleans can be in the long-term, since the social media serververse is still untested when it comes to decades of cultural longevity.  Meanwhile, even as a movie that bombed in its time, Babymother was recently restored in crisp HD detail by The BFI and presented on The Criterion Channel as part of their streaming collection “Roots & Revolution: Reggae on Film.”  Cinema has a way of preserving niche pop culture iconography in a way other mediums cannot, and I am grateful that Babymother is still around as a snapshot of West End dancehall fashion even though it was not well seen or respected in its time.

-Brandon Ledet

Grace Jones: Bloodlight & Bami (2018)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

Both the concert movie and the musician’s hagiography are difficult to pull off with any cinematic finesse. With few exceptions like Peter Strickland’s concert footage of Bjork’s Biophilia project and the bizarre tale spun by The Devil & Daniel Johnson, the musician’s documentary is usually flatly crafted, relying on the audience’s interest in the subject to meet the filmmakers halfway. The recent Grace Jones documentary Bloodlight & Bami curiously splits its time between both troubled mediums, the concert movie and the musican’s hagiography, and opens itself up to both’s follies in the process. Its concert footage is no-frills, matter-of-fact documentation of recent Grace Jones performances in Dublin, exerting only a minimal amount of artistic energy into an occasional crane shot in-between its more static edits. Its interview footage, which comprises most of the runtime, is the exact kind of meandering, low-fi/low-effort hangout energy that can sink a musician’s profile in for-fans-only tedium. Somehow, though, the movie transcends these limitations in medium and offers something that feels like a rare, unearned blessing: Grace Jones. Jones saves Bloodlight & Bami from any potential tedium by simply being a living, breathing phenomenon. The movie requires massive patience, but her mere presence makes it frequently fascinating, if not essential viewing. We are extremely lucky to have access to Grace Jones at all, in any form, something Jones herself seems to know more than anyone else in the world.

A Jamaican-born pop singer who made huge waves in the 1970s & 80s through the androgynous sexuality of her high fashion imagery just as much as through the strange tones of her post-reggae music, Jones is a long-established legend. Early in Bloodlight & Bami, Jones is swarmed by intensely dedicated fans after a performance—strangers who greedily drink in her every word & physical motion as if she were a deity. That’s not the Grace Jones this movie is about. You can glimpse her attention-commanding power in the interspersed concert sequences, where she models various exquisite headpieces & black lingerie while singing to an appreciative crowd of hundreds, like a demonic Eartha Kitt. Most of the film, however, is an effort to humanize the pop culture icon, hanging out with her between gigs, often at home with family. The high production value of the concert footage is clashed with the serene calm of Jones’s return trips to Jamaica, framed in a cheap digital haze. The conversations captured in this off-stage downtime range from small talk with strangers & petty disputes with session musicians to deeply painful reminiscing of childhood abuse & long-dead romances. There’s no historical hagiography of Grace Jones’s top-of-the-pop-world heyday, only a document of her current art as a stage performer & her current relationships with an inner circle who knew her as a person, not an avant-garde deity. The movie is in no rush to impress you with the enormity of Jones’s achievements or legacy, relying instead on her natural charisma to hold your attention as the digicam footage gets distracted by images as inconsequential as a car mirror ornament or a flashing streetlight. It’s a gamble that takes for granted that audiences’ minds won’t wander off in its long moments of quiet, one that mostly pays off.

As entertaining as her music can be, Grace Jones is most distinctly impressive as a visual artist & a performer. It seems counterintuitive, then, to strip her of all her visual gloss in a documentary that often looks like it was filmed on a flip-phone. Jones is, to this day, still a phenomenal performer, even shown hula hooping in high heels while singing a vocal-intensive stage number, never missing a beat. Director Sophie Fiennes also has an early credit as an art department contributor for The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, one of the most exquisitely staged films I can name, so it’s presumable her eye for visual craft is at least somewhat comparable to Jones’s. The aggressively low-fi, meandering aesthetic that guides most of Bloodlight & Bami must be understood as a deliberate artistic choice. Jones is stripped of the gorgeous lighting & costuming she wears like armor onstage (the headpieces are so extravagant that there’s a “hats by” credit included in the opening title cards) to demonstrate how naturally fascinating & culturally essential she remains without them. Even when she’s not making bawdy sex jokes about the mussels she’s eating for dinner or explaining to an ex-lover why all men should be penetrated (at least once), she naturally commands attention. There’s a fierce, no-bullshit way she carries herself that makes her come across like an undeniable force of Nature, even when she’s just waiting around in a recording studio for stubbornly lackadaisical musicians to arrive or lightly bickering with her mother. Even including the more immediately arresting concert footage, the most fascinating sequence of Bloodlight & Bami is a lengthy montage where Grace Jones applies her makeup in the hours leading up to a performance, oblivious to the world outside her mirror. She compels the eye.

Late in the film, Jones boasts that even without costumes or amplification or even lights, she would still be able to entertain her crowds alone, in the dark, with nothing enhancing the spectacle of her being. Bloodlight & Bami is proof of the veracity of that claim. If you want a document of Grace Jones the otherworldly icon, the 1982 concert film Grace Jones: A One Man Show is likely much more useful than the stripped down, low-fi hangout rhythms of Bloodlight & Bami. This movie is more proof that she does not need production spectacle to make her fascinating & idiosyncratic. Those qualities come to Grace Jones naturally and we should be grateful to be blessed with her existence in any form we can get it. Even when presented in the most plain, genre-burdened version of the musician’s documentary imaginable, one where she’s shown in as pedestrian of a light as possible, Grace Jones still feels like a divine gift we do not deserve.

-Brandon Ledet