Coonskin (USA, 1975)

Nine Things About the Movie Coonskin

1. Animator/director Ralph Bakshi helped define alternative and independent film in the 1970's. He is probably most famous for Heavy Traffic and his version of The Lord of the Rings. He made the first X-rated cartoon, Fritz the Cat. But I think Coonskin could be his masterpiece. It's probably also his least seen movie.

2. Coonskin is harsh, vulgar, and challenging, especially (but not exclusively) in terms of race relations. Depending on your perspective, the movie is anti-black, anti-white, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-religion, or anti-America. Or all of them. It offends everybody. It's an amazing piece of film-making and cultural commentary. And this movie would never be made today.

3. The movie mixes live-action and animation to tell several different stories. It has an all-black cast, and Bakshi made the rare decision to hire black animators and graffiti artists to make the cartoon sequences. The animation is in his usual crude, street-wise style (he calls it "Ghetto Art) in an attempt to symbolize the way in which he and his friends grew up.

4. The movie is best appreciated if you have some knowledge of black history and urban culture. The main story is a cartoon about Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Brother Fox (get the reference?) who move from the American South to Harlem after they lose their house. There, they run into a con man named Simple Savior, who claims to be the cousin of "Black Jesus". Simple Savior is a powerful man who makes a living by convincing the people of Harlem to give him money so he can buy them guns so they can go kill white people. Things happen, and Brother Rabbit ends up in charge of Simple Savior's operation.

5. There are several short stories interspersed in the main narrative. There is a series of vignettes in which a sexy woman symbolizing America seduces and then kills a black man.

6. Bakshi saves some of his harshest criticism for organized crime, and the way America has romanticized the Mafia. "The Godfather" is severely mocked in very disrespectful ways.

7. While the movie is crude in both subject matter and style, that doesn't mean it's dumb. Just the opposite: it's an intelligent, sophisticated satire. It carries both razor-wire and a club, sometimes sharply cutting through American hypocrisy and sometimes bludgeoning issues until there's nothing left to say.

8. When the film was finished, nobody knew what to do with it. The NAACP watched the movie and said that while the movie was "difficult", they supported the film. However, another civil rights organization, CORE, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, condemned the film without seeing it. They protested and threw smoke bombs into movie theaters. Theater owners were intimidated, and the movie was pulled. It never received a proper theatrical release.

9. This is a hidden American gem that is just now being re-discovered by modern audiences. It sucks in all the racism, sexism, homophobia, and violence of America and furiously vomits it back in the audience's face, making no apologies. It should be seen by those that have the guts to admit that the movie is a mirror of ourselves - even 40 years after it was made.

Shivers [aka "They Came From Within"] (Canada, 1975)

Nine Things About the Movie Shivers [aka They Came From Within]

1. Made in 1975, this was David Cronenberg's first film. As one of the godfathers of the "body horror" film genre, this film shows his first attempt at the topic of the human body as a frightening, strange, and grotesque process of destruction.

2. It's a strange little movie about rich, bland people living in an exclusive apartment complex on an island. A crazy doctor wants to get people to stop acting so boring and rationally. So he puts a creature in a girl that is designed to make her want to have sex, and then reproduce and spread to others like an STD. The parasite spreads to people in the apartment complex, and they all start trying to have sex with other people - willingly or not.

3. Now that I think about it, I think this is the only movie I've ever seen about sex zombies.

4. On one hand, this movie is a pretty bad exploitation film. The acting is amateur, and the script is clunky. The concept is ludicrously impossible. It made me laugh a few times when it wasn't supposed to. The special effects are... not very special.

5. On the other hand, this is a surprisingly original idea, especially for 1975. If you can get past the story, and pay attention to what Cronenberg is actually trying to say, it packs a nice little punch. Cronenberg said that the movie should be viewed "from the point of view of the disease".

6. All sexual contact is treated the same in this movie. Straight or gay, through incest or pedophilia, it's all depicted as grotesque and threatening.

7. The movie was pretty controversial for its time. Mixing sex and violence and monsters was not something that the general public was ready for.

8. The movie is also worth seeing just for the groovy 1970's fashion and style.

9. While not Cronenberg's best film, it's still very valuable for its ideas and as a way to see the evolution of his style and topics in later films.

Driller Killer (USA, 1979)

Nine Things about the Film The Driller Killer

1. This movie is about a New York artist named Reno who can’t handle the daily pressures of life and has strange visions.

2. When Reno sees a commercial for a portable battery pack, he buys one and uses a power drill to kill homeless people and relieve his stress.

3. This movie is interesting mostly for historical purposes. It’s the first movie that underground director Abel Ferrara directed, and he also stars in it. Also, it serves as a bridge between the early 70’s slasher films like “Halloween” and the 80’s interest in gore.

4. It’s super low-budget, with terrible acting and a terrible script. And random lesbian scenes.

5. But it also has a genuine punk rock sensibility that really works in its favor. It’s an early, grungy, punk version of “American Psycho”.

6. As a horror film, it’s pretty boring. There’s a lot of talking, and even more scenes of rock bands playing and rehearsing. Perhaps the movie’s biggest value is in it’s depiction of the late 1970’s New York punk scene.

7. While mild by today’s standards, the kill scenes are more brutal than I was expecting.

8. The movie was officially banned in Britain until 2002.

9. People who are interested in the evolution of the American horror film need to see this. Otherwise, there’s not much point to it.

Eraserhead [USA, 1977]

Nine Things about Eraserhead

1. This surrealist masterpiece by David Lynch is in my Top 10 List of Strange Films. It could be considered an early example of the “body horror” film genre. It also has strong absurdist elements that are sort of funny. Sort of. This is not a comedy.

2. It fills me with a sense of awkwardness, hopelessness, and an undefinable dread every time I watch it. I have to be in just the right mood for it.

3. Visually and sonically, it’s about a man who lives in an industrial dreamscape where it is never sunny and where nothing nice ever happens.

4. The plot has something to do with this man, Henry, who may have gotten his girlfriend pregnant. He ends up raising a deformed child-thing in his tiny apartment and being distracted by a lady that lives inside his radiator.

5. What I just described above doesn’t even come close to explaining what happens in the movie. The less said about it, the better.

6. Even though this is Lynch’s first movie, he has always refused to explain it. One of the consequences of being so unforgivingly surreal is that the movie has about as many interpretations as viewers.

7. One obvious interpretation of the movie is that it is a metaphor for the fears that come with being a responsible father. I used to agree with this interpretation. But there are too many elements that don’t fit.

8. Now, I think it’s about a man who is so alienated and isolated from others that he feels powerless to create the life he wants for himself. Any efforts he makes are either rejected, or are so deformed and shameful, that he doesn’t even understand what he did.

9. Despite being in my personal Hall of Fame, this is a movie that I don’t really recommend to anyone. Like all of Lynch's movies, people need to decide for themselves if they should watch it and what they think of it.