For New York Cinephiles

I have contributed an introductory essay to accompany this Monday's screenings of Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Georges Franju's Judex at The Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn. The double feature -- billed "Arch Criminals Revisited" --  was programmed by my good friend at Screen Slate, Jonathan Dieringer, as part of his "Screen Slate Presents" series. I'm stuck in Chicago on Monday, but I implore all those in and around NYC to take advantage of this rare opportunity to see two unjustly obscure masterpieces.


Details for the screening can be found here. Special thanks to Screen Slate for the assignment!

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“Weird Al” Yankovic’s

UHF

In honor of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s modestly-scaled resurgence, today’s image was taken from his sole feature film, UHF.[1] A cult favorite since its 1989 release, UHF runs through a barrage of inspired slapstick gags, fleeting throwaway bits in the mold of ZAZ (the group behind Airplane and Kentucky Fried Movie) and countless pop cultural parodies at an admirable pace. The film’s popularity among stoners and Midwestern family folk alike is a testament to Al’s enduring ability to produce rude, screwball humor that neither patronizes nor offends. Despite a puzzling PG-13 rating from the MPAA, UHF tiptoes around the subversive potential of family fare without plumbing the depths. If only Kevin James vehicles were so bold. The satire doesn’t bite so much as it slaps and pinches, but the result never feels like a pulled punch. In its earnest populism and well-mannered vulgarity, UHF foreshadows another overlooked tribute to media memory, Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. Here’s hoping the renewed interest in Al’s schtick yields another film or two from a natural comedic presence yet to receive his cinematic deserts.   

In a persona he would later tune down in order to endear Cosmo Kramer to sitcom viewers, Michael Richards plays a mildly retarded janitor-cum-television-host whose onscreen antics save Al’s struggling broadcast station from a greedy tycoon. In the film’s best bit, the young boy pictured above wins the “find the marble in the oatmeal” contest on Richards’ show and is eager to claim his prize, “a drink from the fire hose!” The excited child inexplicably dons a cowboy hat and mounts a hobby horse before Richards blasts him across the room with the hose to the studio audience’s delight. Integrating several motifs of American childhood – firefighters, cowboys, breakfast cereal, marbles, television – UHF creates a moment that is broadly absurd, vaguely menacing and exceedingly chipper. The same could be said of Yankovic’s oft-neglected comic voice.    

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[1] Al has made the podcast and blog rounds in support of his latest record, Alpocalypse which has been generally well-received. The AV Club recently published a retrospective interview that captures the scope and charm of his music career: http://www.avclub.com/articles/weird-al-yankovic,58244/

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Edgar G. Ulmer's  

The Man From Planet X

The claustophobic fog that pervades much of Edgar G. Ulmer’s work foregrounds budgetary limitations at the same time as it constructs an unsettling, evasive visual atmosphere. More than any other poverty row auteur, Ulmer integrates the ostensibly risible trappings of B-Picture coarseness (background paintings, scale models, stock footage) into the very fabric of his films. The effect is an oneiric quality in which the external world -- the environment typically realized through rear projection, fog machines or unconvincing models -- exudes a discomforting force when compared to the tight, nondescript confines which house the interpersonal drama of his films. The starkness of the motel room in Detour is contrasted with the surreal emptiness of the highway and the fog-obscured urban streets just as much the above image, taken from The Man from Planet X (1951), serves as a counterpoint that film’s unimaginative interiors. The gray mists of both films are simultaneously full and empty, vacant and engorged. They are thus more active and obscure than the dense black voids found in the work of Ulmer’s fringe contemporaries Anthony Mann and Jules Dassin. Mist is here presence and absence, not entirely real yet antagonistically joined to the prosaic.