Imaginary gardens with real toads in them

Grotto in the Bomarzo gardens, Italy

At this moment someone in Uzbekistan or in Zimbabwe is writing a book which reveals more about life on earth than one year of television or a ton of newspapers …The Scream by Munch or a story by Kafka predict more than a thousand futurologists, a chapter by Proust reveals more than a hundred analytical sessions, a page of Kawabata tells more about eroticism than 10 Kinsey reports. Poetry, fiction, imagination, it’s always about – as Marianne Moore has stated inimitably – imaginary gardens with real toads in them, and try catching those. — The Abduction of Europe (1993) – Cees Nooteboom

Russ Meyer documentary

Supervixens (1975)

The British Channel Five produced documentary about legendary Sexploitation master and lover of unfeasibly large breasts, Russ Meyer, is now available in six parts on YouTube. Enjoy… part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6
via Retrofap via PCL.

In his early career, Russ Meyer was a director of nudie films. His films were always more more ribaldry than pornography, and seem unusually focused on women with large breasts. His later films are almost entirely devoted to this vision; his discoveries include Kitten Natividad and Uschi Digard. He co-wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with film critic Roger Ebert. Faster, Pussycat. . . Kill! Kill! is usually considered to be his greatest, or at least his most idiosyncratic, picture.

Interesting about the documentary are the people interviewed: John Landis, Dita Von Teese, the founder of Troma Films, Richard Kern, film critic and cultural historian Jack Sargeant, Kim Newman, Jim Morton (who contributed to Incredibly Strange Films (1986)) etc …

Update: I just watched the six part documentary and it was fun but well travelled territory. And everyone is going on how erotic his films are, and fun at the same time. I’ve found them strange … and decidedly unerotic.

No, what I am waiting for is a documentary based on Pete Tombs’s 1994 book Immoral Tales: Sex And Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984 which covers European exploitation cinema of the this era with profiles of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, José Larraz, José Bénazéraf, Walerian Borowczyk and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Soft knocks at the door

The Tenant (1964) – Roland Topor
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

The Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment. More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment. With an introduction by Thomas Ligotti. The novel was adapted to film by Roman Polanski in 1976.

The above is a new edition of the 1964 The Tenant, a novel by Roland Topor which is better known in the film adaptation by Polanski.

Topor is one of my canonical artists for his satirical wit and his unique crosshatched drawing style which is somewhat reminiscent of that of Alfred Kubin. His ‘nodes’ are just as interesting as his work, he is connected to Fernando Arrabal, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Roman Polanski, Daniel Spoerri and René Laloux.

Amazon’s similar items connects him to Thomas Ligotti, Theodore Sturgeon, William Hjortsberg, Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Alfred Kubin and William Browning Spencer, none of whom are familiar to me.

Take pleasure in change and transitoriness

Le Voyageur (1972) – Schizo
cover of the 7″ vinyl

“Le Voyageur“/Torcol (1972) is a seven inch single by Heldon. It features Nietzsche lyrics recited by Deleuze on music by Richard Pinhas:

“He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth – and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.” –from The Wanderer, in the first volume of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human

The track is available on:

Radio Nova presents: Underground Moderne (2001) – Various [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

More here.