A site devoted to rare foreign and U.S. features

I have avoided spotlighting sites that offer streaming video of copyrighted films and audio. A site appeared earlier this year, however, that is focused on uploading subtitled copies of foreign features that have no U.S. distributor (thus no DVD release) and American oddities from the pre-Code era, as well as titles made during the most fertile time for oddball productions, the Sixties. Rarefilmm is a very ambitious endeavor that may not be around for long, but the moderator's attention to obscurities that have fallen “through the cracks” of cinema history is most appreciated.

The moderator, who goes by the name “Jon Rarefilmm,” has thus far posted links to 644 films that are housed on other sites (first YouTube, then another upload site); he takes requests for film titles on the site's Facebook group, so presumably he himself is posting these films on those sites – I'm not certain whether he's digitizing the films himself, but the number of titles he's made available in just 12 months makes that highly unlikely.

Jon doesn't offer any opinions on the material he's posting, although he has created a side menu linking to films he's uploaded that were made by great foreign filmmakers. Thus I thought I should zero in on the more significant and entertaining features that have shown up on this odd site, especially in light of the fact that Jon has noted he will be putting up a “pay wall” on January 1 (see update below). If foreign and pre-Code film fans are interested in the material, they can check it out for free for the next week.

If I had to chose one title to recommend above all others currently on the site, it would be Resnais' 1997 film On connait la chanson (“Same Old Song” in English). It is perhaps the late New Wave master's most charming picture, a modernist musical dedicated to the memory and genius of TV deity Dennis Potter. The film is currently unavailable in the U.S., because its American distribution was handled by New Yorker Films, which went out of business several years ago and its titles are currently lurking in limbo.

In the Potter tradition, Resnais' characters express their frustrations and ecstasies through popular song, lip-synched to classic old recordings. The screenplay by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnes Jaoui is a delight, and Resnais' fragmented approach to Potter's technique is glorious, both for what it says about the characters' inner lives and popular culture's hold on the imagination and emotions. The post for this film is here.

Another truly rare item posted on the RF site is The Devil's Cleavage (1975) by George Kuchar. The film is George's longest-ever feature (running over two hours) – his other long works were composed of shorter “episodes,” or were screenplays directed by other filmmakers, as with the amazing Thundercrack!. 

Cleavage is a fun feature with some great, torridly melodramatic sequences (in the classic Kuchar style), but it's a bit too long for its own good. If you've ever seen George's great short works, try it out for a bit – it includes (for those who want to see underground comix artists undraped) a topless Art Spiegelman in one scene. The film is posted here.

Another must-see is a film that is so insanely egomaniacal that it's hard to describe, Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1970). It's a classic Sixties misfire that mimics 8 1/2 but retrofits it to accommodate Newley's lusts (he wants us to know all about his womanizing), his family (including then-wife Joan Collins), and oddball guest stars (Fellini's embodiment of death was a beautiful woman, while Newley's is Georgie Jessel). The post for Heironymus is here.

Another film of note that's been posted by Jon is Alain Corneau's sublime Jim Thompson adaptation – for my money the single best Thompson adaptation ever – Serie Noire (1979).

The film stars Patrick Dewaere (whom we lost way too young, a suicide at age 35). He plays a door to door salesman/con man who concocts a plan with a quiet girl to rip off her rich aunt. The film is wonderfully underplayed and Dewaere beautifully cast as the amoral lead. The post for that film, thus far unavailable in the U.S. on VHS or DVD, is here.

A final spotlight should be thrown on yet another French feature that lurks in distributor limbo, Rivette's Haut Bas Fragile (1995). The film is a joyfully self-conscious affair that is similar to Godard's Une Femme Est Une Femme, offering stars who can only mildly carry a tune acting out the most blissful of movie-musical cliches as they sashay around the set. Like most Rivette titles, it's a long feature, but worth the time spent. The post for the film is here.

Other notable foreign items on the RF site include Scola's The Family, Varda's Kung Fu Master!, Sternberg's Anatahan, Antonioni's La signora senza camelie, Losey's The gypsy and the gentleman, Ophuls' La signora di tutti, Bunuel's Wuthering Heights and The Monk (based on an unproduced script he cowrote), Mizoguchi's Love of the actress Sumako, Oshima's Boy, Rohmer's Les rendezvous de paris, Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck, Maxmilian Schell's End of the Game, and Paul Verhoeven's The Fourth Man.

Arthouse items worth checking out include Robert Frank's Me and My Brother, The Wild Duck with Jean Seberg (her last film), Anna Karina as a non-Godardian hooker in Le Soldatesse, Marcello in Everything's Fine, the caper film Rififi in Tokyo, the only post-Breathless reunion of Belmondo and Seberg in Echappement libre, and the only pairing of Belmondo and Moreau, Moderato cantabile. 

Some vintage Hollywood titles: Clara Bow in Call Her Savage, the wonderfully titled Are Husbands Necessary?, and the Spencer Tracy pic Now I'll Tell, costarring Helen Twelvetrees and Alice Faye (based on the memoirs of Mrs. Arnold Rothstein!). Also, Hawks' Ceiling Zero, Capra's Dirigible, and a later oddity, William Castle's Let's Kill Uncle.

A number of lesser known noirs are up on the RF site, including The Night Has a Thousand Eyes and Hugo Haas' immortal Pickup. You can see Tim Carey do a lovely little dance in Bayou and watch one of Dean Martin's most underrated performances in Career.

Rarities that Jon has posted include Bette at her kitschiest in Beyond the Forest, Otto Preminger's misbegotten Porgy and Bess, the patriotic Song of the Open Road (with a W.C. Fields segment), the Dean Martin comedy Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?, the rare comedy Funnyman with Peter Bonerz, the trippy Sixties pic TheTouchables, the Patty Duke vehicle Me, Natalie with Al Pacino's screen debut, The Dion Brothers (aka “The Gravy Train”) scripted by Terrence Malick, The Incredible Sarah with Glenda Jackson, Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman, the female buddy movie Heartaches with Margot Kidder and Annie Potts, and Paul Bartel's farce Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.

Fans of cinematic bombs and oddities will want to check out Mickey Rooney with a talking mule in Francis in a Haunted House, the ridiculously titled Cottonpickin Chickenpickers with the immortal Sonny Tufts, the beatnik oddity Once Upon a Coffee House featuring the movie debut of Joan Rivers, the big giant bomb Che with Omar Sharif as Guevara, the Filippino variant on The Most Dangerous Game called The Woman Hunt (take a guess), the rock fantasy Oz: a Rock and Roll Road Movie, the Doris Dorrrie comedy Me and Him with Griffin Dunne and his talking penis (no kidding), and something that sounds like it will either be very funny or quite awful (but is most likely both), Jesuit Joe.

Feast while ye can, and happy holidays to all! 

Thanks to John W. for pointing the way.

UPDATE: The "download" feature is still working on the film entries, as of 1/3/15. You click the link and then you have a choice of MP4 download "sizes."

New, free (legal!) download of ‘The Dream World of Dion McGregor’

I noted in my last blog entry on the strange phenomenon that was, and is, Dion McGregor that it is surprising (and welcome) to find that there is new material available from the renowned “sleep talker.” Now the friendly folks at Torpor Vigil Records have made the long out-of-print 1964 LP by McGregor, The Dream World of Dion McGregor — yes, the one with the Edward Gorey cover — available as a high-quality, totally remastered, legal download. For free, even!

Many audio and video rereleases use the phrase “remastered,” but in this case the folks at TV went back to the original tapes of McGregor’s monologues made by his roommate Michael Barr back in the Sixties to obtain better-sounding versions of the material on the LP. So this isn’t just a digital rendering of the original record, this is a clearer version of the material (specific notes about the process are available at the download page).

McGregor, for those who are unaware, was a songwriter (now deceased) who has acquired a cult not for any of his music, but for the bizarre and dark monologues he delivered in his sleep. The situations he would craft are disturbing (the best example is the piece about people in a swimming pool that is slowly getting hotter and hotter) but his “concerned observer” narration is what sells the pieces.

I discussed in my last post how I had a problem with the notion that McGregor was fully asleep; arguments to shore up that position, provided by Torpor Vigil founder Steve Venright, are in that blog entry. In the time since, I came across a very interesting NPR discussion about McGregor’s monologues, in which two experts on sleep discussed what state he might have been in — one of the two maintains he was “sleep talking from a sort of atypical REM stage.”

Whatever the hell he was doing, McGregor produced surreal and grimly funny material that was not his forte in the waking world (it’s even more bizarre to consider the fact that he had this stuff locked up inside his mind and never became a humor writer of any kind). The first LP was a distillation of the “best” (at that point) of McGregor’s monologues, replete with the traffic sounds of midtown Manhattan in the background.

Dion in a 1972 de Rome film.

There definitely would seem to be a documentary in all this, and yet there may never be one, due to the fact that most people who knew McGregor have died. The most recent was his roommate before Barr, the pioneering experimental gay porn filmmaker Peter de Rome, who is the subject of the new documentary Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn — which I can heartily recommend for those interested in experimental filmmaking, gay porn, portraits of eccentric and endearing artists, and those who love seeing vintage footage of NYC in the Sixties.

In any case, although I don’t think there is a McGregor monologue that directly concerns the Yuletide season, this free, vastly improved digital version is a very nice Xmas gift for the listener who likes strange and dark humor. There is ample information on the download page concerning the other McGregor albums, which are all available on CD. As for explaining what it was that McGregor was doing, nothing beats just sampling the monologues, which can be done directly on the page.

Sweet Dreams!