Reflections on ... My Favourites of 2024!

 

/ Pictured: portrait of Kim Gordon by Danielle Neu, 2024 /

Better late than never, let me regale you with my “Favourites of the Year!” 

To start: Song of the Year. On her challenging and confrontational solo album, The Collective (released in March 2024), the now 70-year-old former Sonic Youth singer-bassist, multi-disciplinary conceptual artist and intensely fierce babe Kim Gordon reasserted her status as the epitome of unassailable, ineffable deadpan cool with nonchalant authority. Understandably, listeners went nuts for crunching first single “Bye Bye”, in which Gordon hisses and whispers what sounds like a “to-do” list (“Buy a suitcase, pants to the cleaner / Cigarettes for Keller / Call the vet, call the groomer, call the dog sitter / Milk thistle, calcium, high-rise, boot cut, Advil, black jeans / Blue jeans, cardigan purse, passport, pajamas, silk …”) over juddering, anxious trap beats. But my song of 2024 was the ominous industrial grind of follow-up “I’m a Man”, on which Gordon (who’s always loved a feminist diatribe) steps into the psyche of an alienated alt-right man to icily scrutinize toxic masculinity (“Dropped out of college, don't have a degree / And I can't get a date / It's not my fault … I'm not bringing home the juice / I'm not bringing home the bacon …”). “I’m a Man” makes a political point (Gordon’s lyrics demonstrate more empathy than you might expect) AND rocks like a mutha. Watch the video below:

Most noteworthy passing: American author, playwright, actor, essayist, art critic and all-round bête noire Gary Indiana (né Gary Hoisington, 16 July 1950 – 23 October 2024) died of lung cancer aged 74. (As Indiana told an interviewer in 2014 “I’ve been smoking since I was practically two years old.” His brand of choice was Camel Filters. It’s amazing the dissolute Indiana lasted this long, considering his peers were people like David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar and Cookie Mueller). Anyway, words like “lacerating” and “scathing” barely suffice when discussing Indiana’s oeuvre. When I was in my twenties, buying each new work by Indiana and Dennis Cooper was de rigueur. (I probably purchased them at the long-defunct radical Compendium bookstore in Camden Town). I moved around a lot and wound up re-selling them to used bookstores for a pittance. Then Indiana’s books mostly lapsed out of print! (In more recent years, they’re gradually being reissued by Semiotext(e)). It didn’t help that Indiana gleefully burnt bridges throughout his life. As one of his associates noted almost admiringly, “He went through agents the way I go through T-shirts.” Some of his most noteworthy books were speculative fiction inspired by true crime figures like the Menendez brothers (Resentment: A Comedy (1997) and Andrew Cunanan (Three Month Fever (1999). (The viewers who clutched their pearls over Ryan Murphy’s recent Menendez miniseries would REALLY lose their shit over Indiana’s book. Indiana would have swooned over Luigi Mangione). For anyone interested in investigating Indiana, his memoirs I Can Give You Anything But Love is available in paperback. And his interview with Butt in July 2024 is essential. (I assume it's Indiana's last-ever interview, but don't quote me on that). As its intro summarizes: “Gary earned his notorious reputation over the course of his unflinching, decades-long career. He writes about addiction, alienation, corruption, exploitation, obsession, perversion, power and sexuality with unfiltered candour, leaving no room for politeness … His tendency toward destructive obsession was kept in check by his brilliance, cutting humor and heart.” 

/ Pictured: “Gary Indiana Veiled” by Peter Hujar, 1981 / 

“Maybe one reason I like female-fronted punk bands is my mother was a yeller. Gives me a homey feeling,” Nate Lippens muses in Ripcord (my favourite book of 2024 – well, tied for top spot with Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr). “The anger of my old punk albums is still fresh. This fearful rage sung in wild harmonies with sped-up rockabilly guitar riffs is about careening drunk through disappointment and sadness as time slips away, leaving something half-healed and half-wounded. The singer keens, “A life of intermission, a life of intermission …””. Even if you don’t recognize the lyrics to “Beyond and Back” from their 1981 album Wild Gift, you’ll instantly identify the unnamed band Lippens cites as X. The definitive and most enduring of original Los Angeles punk bands released their ninth and final studio recording Smoke & Fiction in August 2024, and it’s my album of the year. All the essential components that make X unique are present and correct. Brevity (the album is 28-minutes long). Despairing low-life beatnik poetry. The fiery zap of Billy Zoom’s punkabilly guitar. Exene Cervenka and John Doe’s signature dissonant, spine-tingling harmonies. And they wail and shred like their lives depend on it. (X still sounds reassuringly desperate!). But Smoke & Fiction is also rueful, with reflections on ageing and the passage of time. Its messages are bittersweet and unconsoling. “There is no upside / Only your flipside / That's where the dark side resides” they conclude on “Flipside”, while on the title track Exene laments “Wrapped up tight in twilight / In a bed I am borrowing / My face turns to sorrowing / When I'm dreaming about tomorrowing / I still hurt a little bit / But there's no cure for this.” If this is indeed X’s swansong (and let’s face it, considering their ages and Zoom’s health travails it probably is), they are ending on a dignified creative high.

/ Above: portrait of Exene Cervenka of X. Below: the video for "Ruby Church" /

And finally, the cinematic event of 2024 MUST be French director Coralie Fargeat’s disturbing and provocative modern horror The Substance. Pal and I revisited it on Amazon Prime on New Year's Eve (crashed out on the sofa, drinking prosecco) for the first time since seeing it at the cinema (it hadn’t occurred to me that The Substance is the PERFECT film to watch on New Year’s Eve night!). What I love about The Substance: how it combines universal anxieties about aging with classic tropes of David Cronenberg-inspired “body horror” and hagsploitation (I see The Substance as an update of late 1950s movies The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman), all filtered through an ultra-stylish, coolly detached European art house sensibility. The pervading sense of dread from the very beginning. Its alienated, almost post-apocalyptic “outsider” view of Los Angeles with perennially deserted streets. (This is partly because The Substance was entirely filmed in France, masquerading as Hollywood! The palm trees we keep seeing are in Antibes!). How the luxuriously appointed, pink-carpeted penthouse apartment of protagonist Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) - with its eerie, cavernous, white-tiled bathroom - gradually becomes the epicenter of hell. And the gutsy, committed performances of Moore and Margaret Qualley. (Moore’s is truly the comeback of the year. That Golden Globe award was well deserved). Of course, The Substance - with its prosthetics and geysers of blood and gore - works as a gross-out satirical black comedy, but its quieter moments are haunting, like Elisabeth savagely smearing red lipstick across her face in the bathroom mirror in a fit of self-loathing. Or her jittery, panic-stricken trips to the derelict graffiti-scarred building (with the metal shutter that only partially opens!) to collect her refills of The Substance – the indelibly chic image of Elisabeth in THAT yellow coat, sunglasses and gloves! My second favourite film of 2024 was Love Lies Bleeding by Rose Glass (female directors were on fire last year). Further reading: I originally wrote about The Substance here. 

Next Lobotomy Room film club: Dead Ringer (1964) on Thursday 16 January 2025

 

For the first film club presentation of the New Year, Lobotomy Room comes screaming back (out of the gutter and into your arms!) with ultra-campy 1964 psychological thriller Dead Ringer (aka Who Is Buried in My Grave?)! Thursday 16 January at Fontaine’s! Starring volcanic grande dame of golden age Hollywood Miss Bette “Mother Goddamn” Davis in dual roles! (As Eric Henderson of Slant magazine puts it, “It features the compelling spectacle of Bette Davis competing for screen space with the only actress capable of upstaging her: Bette Davis”). 

Made between What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, it sees Davis portraying long-estranged identical twin sisters (Margaret is now an affluent socialite, while Edith is impoverished, seething with resentment - and vengeful). Veteran Davis’ career was so long at this point she’d already made a variation of this film in the 1940s with A Stolen Life (1946)! Packed with juicy suspenseful twists and turns, Dead Ringer is a blast! And Davis in full blowtorch abrasive, gloriously self-parodic Medusa-like mode is simply magnificent. (This is precisely the incarnation of Davis that nightclub female impersonators like Charles Pierce and Craig Russell would seize on). 

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. (Fontaine’s is closed until 10 January so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back until later in month). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page. 

And remember -- the only thing more fun than a movie starring Bette Davis – is a movie starring TWO Bette Davises!

Watch the trailer below:

Reflections on ... Scorchy (1976)

 

Recently watched: low-brow 1976 grindhouse crime thriller Scorchy. IMDb’s ultra-concise plot summary: “Connie Stevens is Jackie "Scorchy" Parker, the hottest undercover agent the Feds have ever known. She makes fast friends - and deadly enemies.” 

I’d always yearned to see this one, but found Scorchy somehow not quite as juicy or fun as I hoped, especially considering its outrageous tagline (“She's Killed a Man, Been Shot at And Made Love Twice Already This Evening... And The Evening Isn't Over Yet!”). The storyline sees spunky fun-loving narcotics agent Jackie (Stevens) orchestrating an elaborate undercover operation to nab heroin-smuggling drug baron Philip Bianco (Cesare Danova). There are shoot-outs and car chases - AND helicopter and speedboat chases! (Considering Scorchy’s director Howard Avedis mainly focused on sexploitation fare like The Teacher (1974) and Dr Minx (1975), he shows a real flair for action sequences). 

/ Representative glimpse of the ultra-seventies hair, clothes and decor in Scorchy /

Scorchy frequently suggests a 1970s Blaxploitation flick, but with honkies in the central roles. Like, it feels like it should be Pam Grier playing Jackie, but it’s Connie Stevens. (And Grier’s superior 1975 film Friday Foster hits some of the same trashy sweet spots as Scorchy). Anyway, the then 38-year-old Stevens seizes the opportunity to distance herself from her ingenue days as Cricket Blake in TV’s Hawaiian Eye. There are glimpses of her bare breasts, a gratuitous skinny-dipping scene and raunchy dialogue aplenty delivered in Stevens’ trademark whispery babydoll voice (in the context of Scorchy, 1970s women’s liberation equals Jackie exclaiming about getting laid. In one exchange, she teases her boss Chief Frank O’Brien (Norman Burton) with “You look tense. You need a blowjob!” Perhaps understandably, he responds, “You’re a fruitcake, you bitch!”). I know the character is based on Stevens’ sex kitten contemporary Joey Heatherton, but with her frosted pale lipstick and feathered blow-dried hair, in her close-ups Stevens frequently resembles Catherine O’Hara as Lola Heatherton in SCTV. Anyway, you also get the backdrop of Seattle in the 1970s AND hunky young male starlet Greg Evigan before B J and The Bear. Weirdly, in theory “Scorchy” is meant to be Jackie’s nickname but I don’t recall any of the characters addressing her by that in the entire film?

/ Above: Catherine O'Hara as Lola Heatherton in SCTV. Below: publicity shot of Connie Stevens for Scorchy (clearly, the movie's poster was adapted from this pic) /

Watch Scorchy on YouTube. (Because of the sex and violence on offer, you will need to log-in!).

Reflections on ... The Unholy Wife (1957)

 

/ Illustration by Olivier Coulon /

Recently watched: The Unholy Wife (1957). Tagline: “Half-angel. Half-devil. She made him half-a-man!” 

This pedestrian but enjoyably sordid film noir is unique for being made in scorching colour. Even in the faded print circulating on YouTube, British sex bomb leading lady Diana Dors’ gleaming platinum hair and skin-tight costumes in royal blue, fuchsia and ice pink are eye-popping. (Director John Farrow was no hack: he made some of Robert Mitchum’s greatest films (Where Danger Lives (1950), His Kind of Woman (1951). He clearly had an “off day” here). 

The Unholy Wife offers a portrait of a dysfunctional marriage in the verdant sun-dappled vineyards of Napa Valley. Or as the publicity blurb promises “This is the wine cellar of the most respectable house in the Valley. This is where she met them, made love to them, laughed with them at her husband … at the man who gave her a name, a home and a heritage – the man she wanted to destroy!” The action unfolds in flashback, with present-day Phyllis (whose name evokes the Barbara Stanwyck character Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944)) in jail, recounting the events that led to her imprisonment. (In these scenes, jailbird Dors is seen scrubbed of make-up and sporting brown hair, which can’t help but recall her earlier British film Yield to the Night (1956)). In a role originally intended for Shelley Winters, Dors is a seething, manipulative married woman scheming with her lantern-jawed, broad-shouldered lover San (hunky Tom Tryon) to murder her cuckolded husband, vineyard owner Paul (played by Rod Steiger – in a role originally intended for Ernest Borgnine - in the then-fashionable mumbling Actor’s Studio tradition). Wringing her hands in the background is mother-in-law Emma, played by Beulah Bondi (a part intended for Ethel Barrymore). 

/ Tom Tryon and Diana Dors in The Unholy Wife /

Watch for one truly glorious sequence of Phyllis and her pal Gwen (hard-boiled, nicotine-saturated noir icon Marie Windsor) toiling as “hostesses” at a low-down gin joint. While the blowzy resident nightclub singer (Maxine Gates) wails “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road”), Phyllis – sheathed in sensational silver lamé - kvetches, “Not much action around here tonight.” Windsor’s appearance is fleeting and makes you wish The Unholy Wife was mainly 90-minutes of just her and Dors hanging out. The commercial and critical failure of The Unholy Wife ultimately cut short Dors’ brief and unhappy sojourn in Hollywood, and she returned to the United Kingdom. (For gossip-hungry sensationalism freaks, Dors and Steiger - both married to other people - had a fling during production).

/ Frustratingly, I couldn't source a good colour image of Marie Windsor and Diana Dors online in this nightclub sequence. (Windsor's dress is bright red). /

Watch The Unholy Wife here.

Reflections on ... Death at Love House (1976)

 

Recently watched: 1976 ABC Movie of the Week Death at Love House. Joel and Donna Gregory (Robert Wagner and Kate Jackson) are a husband-and-wife writing duo collaborating on a biography of the doomed Hollywood star Lorna Love, who died tragically young in 1935. (Coincidentally, Joel’s artist father had an impassioned affair with Lorna and painted a portrait of her). And for reasons never fully explained, the couple move into Love’s totally intact Hollywood mansion to research their book (Love House was shot on location at the former estate of silent movie star Harold Lloyd). 

Creepily, Lorna’s perfectly preserved, eternally youthful corpse is on permanent display – Snow White-style - in a shrine on the premises. Strange occurrences immediately start happening. Who is the ethereal “woman-in-white” Donna glimpses in the garden? Why are there macabre occult symbols everywhere? Who was Father Eternal Fire, Lorna’s satanic looking “spiritual advisor”? And who tried to kill Donna in the locked bathroom by carbon monoxide poisoning? 

Obviously, almost anything produced by Aaron Spelling is bound to be campy fun. Raspy-voiced, gorgeous young Jackson is always an engaging screen presence. With its emphasis on occultism, golden age Hollywood and lurid showbiz tragedies (Lorna is clearly inspired by Jean Harlow), Love House suggests a page torn from Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. It will also remind you of other, infinitely superior movies: Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), Fedora (1978). And like 1944 film noir Laura, characters spend a lot of time staring, mesmerized, by an oil painting of a dead woman. For verisimilitude, supporting parts are played by actual classic Hollywood veterans like Sylvia Sidney, Joan Blondell, Dorothy Lamour and John Carradine. (The Gregorys’ literary agent is played by Bill Macy - Walter from Maude!). 

Less happily, zero effort is taken to make Lorna 1930s “period appropriate”. (She’s seen in flashbacks portrayed by Marianna Hill - cult movie fans will recognize her from Messiah of Evil (1973) and The Baby (1973) - with a feathered blow-dried 70s Farrah Fawcett coiffure). And the ending is worthy of an old episode of Scooby-Doo! Smudged, murky prints of Love House are easy to find on YouTube.

Dame Zandra Rhodes' Christmas Pop-Up on 28 November 2024

 

Last week, venerable fuchsia-haired doyenne of fashion Dame Zandra Rhodes threw open the doors to her salon to the public for her annual Christmas pop-up – and I attended on Thursday 28 November with my glamourpuss German friend Anne Kathrin! 

For the uninitiated, Rhodes resides in the palatial “Rainbow Penthouse” above the bright orange Fashion and TextileMuseum in Bermondsey. Every time I attend an exhibit there, I wonder, Is Zandra at home? Can I pop up, say Hi and check out the view from her terrace? Well, reader, I finally got up there! Here’s my scene report! (The event was rammed with people but I did manage to snap some photos!). 

/ Life-size cardboard figure of Zandra Rhodes in the corner. /

/ Caftans. Caftans. CAFTANS! Rhodes is of course synonymous with filmy, float-y bedazzled chiffon caftans. /

/ Pop art portrait of Rhodes in hallway to her powder room. /

/ Decor in Zandra Rhodes' corridor. /

/ Diva summit meeting: Anne Kathrin with Dame Zandra Rhodes. By the way, Rhodes is standing in this pic - she is diminutive! Must be about 4'11"! /

/ Me in front of Zandra Rhodes' wall of faux Warhol portraits! /

Reflections on ... Rent-A-Cop (1987)

Recently watched: Rent-A-Cop (1987). When Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli were originally teamed for the 1975 film Lucky Lady, the result was a notorious and expensive mega-flop. So, I could kiss on the lips whoever approved reuniting the duo for crime thriller / romantic comedy hybrid Rent-A-Cop, the acme of gleefully enjoyable 1980s schlock. 

When a police sting operation goes horrifically wrong, gruff tough-as-nails Detective Tony Church (Reynolds) joins forces with kooky free-spirited escort girl Della Roberts (Minnelli). Della, you see, witnessed the carnage and is the sole person who can identify masked gunman Adam "Dancer" Booth (played by James Remar. Sex and the City fans will recognise him as Samantha Jones’ on-off boyfriend Richard Wright. Remar also made his share of good movies, like The Warriors, Cruising (both 1979) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989)). But not if Dancer kills her first! Or, as Rent-A-Cop's tagline exclaims “There’s a killer on the loose and the lady is the target.” 

Inevitably – after some wacky hi-jinks - the sparring odd couple of Tony and Della gradually fall in love. Aside from a cameo appearance in The Muppets Take Manhattan, this represents Minnelli’s first screen role after a gap of five years following her highly publicized stint at the Betty Ford Clinic (her previous major part was Arthur in 1981). Awash in sequins and mugging furiously, this is certainly Minnelli at her most “Minnelli”. Della’s sex work is depicted as a wholesome TV sitcom-friendly lark (she offers her johns the gamut of “his mommy, Little Bo-Peep, or Helga the Bitch Goddess”. It should be noted that the same year, Minnelli’s peer Barbra Streisand also unconvincingly played a high-price prostitute in Nuts). 

Anyway, Rent-A-Cop abounds with “what-the-fuck?” moments: Dancer inexplicably performs a sweaty homoerotic Flashdance-style number in front of a mirror. A bewigged drag queen at a nightclub accosts Della with “I love your muff!” Guest star Dionne Warwick portrays Della’s madam. Weirdly, Rent-A-Cop is set in Chicago and exteriors were shot there but the interiors were filmed in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. And the screenplay was written by Michael Blodgett – best-remembered by cult cinema fans as hunky Lance Rock in the 1970 Russ Meyer sexploitation classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls! Reynolds and Minnelli were both nominated for the 1988 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor and Worst Actress (Minnelli won). 

Further reading: the Cranky Lesbian blog’s shrewdand in-depth analysis. She quotes Reynolds' not very chivalrous but frank recollection on acting opposite Minnelli: “She’s not the easiest person in the world to act with. She’s never quite with you. It’s like she’s reading something somewhere off-camera. Yet she’s amazing as a live performer.”