Exploitation Directors a Go-Go (or is that Boo Boo?) The Incredibly Strange Film Show

Forget Hulu. Forget these uploading sites that try to compete with YouTube, offering us major-corporation sanctioned movies and TV episodes. Some of it is indeed worth watching, but for the true scavenger of pop-culture, and “everything from high art to low trash… and back again” (our Funhouse motto, which I haven’t used in this blog since I started the damned thing), the site of choice is still YT.

And why would that be? Well because posters like PaulKuk, as he is known, have uploaded some major must-see programs onto the site. There were a few milestones in the study of crazy exploitation — the Kings of the Bs, the first Psychotronic publications (Xeroxed and then mag-ged), and yes, even the Golden Turkey book by the now intolerable Michael Medved and his brother (although the last-mentioned simply roasted the flicks and offered little info of substance). The finest guide to way-out exploitation was the Incredibly Strange Films book by the Re/Search folks, which I believe has remained in print in the quarter-century since it first came out. That particular book was never built upon in American culture, but it did spawn (without residuals for the original writers including V. Vale, I believe) a British TV documentary series that, for exploitation fans, has never been equaled in terms of offering an introduction to the filmmakers who are must-sees for those about to embark on a regimen of innovation-trash viewing.

The host was Jonathan Ross, who when the program appeared in the early ’90s was a charmer, at least to American viewers who hadn’t been exposed to his snarky, witty British chat show (which I do wish was on BBC-America in place of Graham Norton). The people interviewed and profiled on the program were a very good first sampling of the best of the weirdest low/no-budget filmmakers out there. Paul on YT has uploaded the entire series of shows, which aired here in the States on the Discovery Channel (if memory serves) and have never been rerun to date, and have never been issued as a DVD set over here. They are all indispensable viewing, and I’m glad they are now readily available for free on the Net (I think only the Mexican wrestling episode is missing).

The show offered profiles of gents who have of course bobbed into the mainstream like John Waters, George Romero, Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, Jackie Chan (when he was awe-inspiringly terrific, the episode is superb), and one of the greatest Hong Kong filmmakers of his generation, Tsui Hark. Also, low-budget moviemaker Fred Olen Ray put in an appearance, right after his Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers had hit video shelves over here. The programs that desperately cry out to be seen, however, are those covering the Old Masters of exploitation. An Ed Wood profile gave us the brass tacks about our favorite Angora-wearing auteur, while Ross and company also delved into the work of Funhouse guest Herschell Gordon Lewis:



He also drew back the veil on the mystery that is the great Ray Dennis Steckler, madman comedian and frightmaster from the old school, creator of the uncategorizable Rat Fink a Boo Boo.



We got to see the legendary Doris Wishman, the best known female exploitationer of the era, a woman whose utter lack of interest in depicting sex in a sexy fashion (and radically weird incompetent editing style) made her one of the most outrageous softcore directors of all time.



I have to single out, of course, the hour-long portrait of the mighty Ted V. Mikels, a man who has lived a few lives in his time on this planet and is still cranking out low-budget features from his home base in Las Vegas. I interviewed Ted in the mid-90s on the show and did my best to convey the complexities of his story; I also wrote a piece for Time.com on his way-out oeuvre. The Ross documentary is a good quick primer for those who want to see him in his element, supplemented by interviews with his "castle ladies."



Perhaps most importantly Paul has uploaded the Russ Meyer episode, which was NOT shown over here, as Russ has holding on tight to his copyrights at that time, and didn’t want the many clips included by the British producers shown on American TV (at least that was the story that circulated ’round these parts).

Between Allen Funt and Guy Grand: the "street" comedy of Dom Joly

Okay, so I’m not quibbling with the cellphone as a concept, it’s a linchpin of modern civilization for better or worse. The "whole world as open-air phone booth” concept still has me at wit’s end, though — to hear so many voices with so little to say, and saying it so loudly! The women are hopeless chataholics, the guys are absolute morons repeating their locations over and over (or their educated counterparts, the show-off preppie assholes having a work conversation in public). So what can we do in the face of such overweening “sharing” of one’s every single move, every single thought, motion, decision? Make fun of it, of course!

To this I leave Dom Joly, a British comedian/entertainer/writer whom we don’t know at all on these shores. His absolutely BRILLIANT (to use the fave Brit adjective) Trigger Happy TV had a short run over here on Comedy Central, but it was quickly relegated to the very late-evening hours, and according to what I’ve read online, was a watered-down version of the original (even thought what I remember of it was still pretty witty and downright strange). Joly does the Candid Camera thing, oh yes he does, but there is actual thought and (gasp) an actual point to most of his in-public pranks and experiments. Yes, Allen Funt claimed his show’s intention was to show how people responded to various unusual situations, but we all know that this cornerstone of American cruelty TV was actually a joy to watch because of its focus on the embarrassment and stupidity of its subjects. When he was able to branch out, Funt did a film (1970’s What Do You Say To a Naked Lady?) which proved that the sociological was less at work than the prurient and gaze-at-a-car-crash impulse in the Candid Camera equation.

Anyway, Joly is an extremely savvy British humorist who devoted Trigger Happy TV to on-street pranks that had a point or, better yet, were completely surreal (most involving animal costumes which, hey, are always a nice little counterweight to the realism of any urban street corner). Some classics of his lower-key bits are his Grim Reaper appearing around London, his “burglar” character,, ”stalker mice”, a bit in a hedge-maze, and a gag from a later series in which he shows up in front of some of the world’s wonders and offers an opinion to a fellow tourist.

His “louder bits” include a wonderful French lesson , a public-performer character he calls “Krazy Kat,” some brilliant abuse of the Guardian Angels, rabbits who can’t control their lust in public, and the perennial asshole with loud headphones in the subway or other public place. Oh, and the very reason I created this post, his genius bit “taking the piss” (as the Brits say) out of every moron talking loudly on a cellphone. I don’t know the guy's lengthier works (or writings), have only seen his work in these small snippets available on the Net, but he is a minor god who in his comedy is operating on the same principles that moved Guy Grand in Terry Southern’s classic The Magic Christian. “Making it hot for them,” indeed.



The crowning touch to his work is the fact that he doesn’t punctuate the stuff in the way that every American Candid Camera show has — he lets the gags run without a narrator (subtlety, who’d’a thought that would make things funnier?), using the actual street sound and slightly subdued present-day indie music on the soundtrack, and NO LAUGH TRACK to indicate when’s something is funny. One of my favorite touches was the use of a Jacques Brel song under one gag (which is not all that funny — guys in dog suits do kung fu — but hey, the Brel sets it off, man!).

Joly has continued to do this kind of work on other UK TV shows we haven’t seen over here, including World Shut Your Mouth and The Complainers. I think he’s brilliant and deserves some BBC-America exposure (remember when PBS used to air this kind of sharp comedy? That was one lifetime ago.), but I assume the failure of the Comedy Central Trigger Happy has prevented that from happening thus far. So we can take comfort in the fact that he is very well represented on YouTube, and in fact has one poster who has specialized in putting up his gags.