CREEMEDIA

Drive In Saturday

Famous Ashtrays

Does television control your life? Do you wake in the morning and require a fix of Make Room For Daddy? Do you squeal with joy during Family Feud when some lettuce farmer’s slack-jawed wife hollers “Good answer!”? Do you actually watch MTV? Does your TV set ever breathe unnaturally? Do hands from the screen ever reach out into your living room, threatening to engulf you? Do you have a cavity just above your belly button into which one can insert videocassettes?

If you answered “Yes” to one or more of these questions, you should have more than a passing interest in Videodrome, the latest creation of David Cronenberg, whose Scanners led to the exploding heads party game rage of a few years back. A native of Canada—do they have television up there?—Cronenberg, with this film, shows himself to be a director of remarkable courage. What else can you call a man who casts Deborah Harry in a major role?

The outlandish plot concerns Max Renn (James Woods), a sleazoid cable TV producer in Toronto who is constantly searching for new programming ideas. This causes him to become obsessed with Videodrome, an underground sex and torture show emanating from, of all places, Pittsburgh—perhaps the only city in North America a Torontoan can feel superior to.

Renn’s other infatuation is with phone-in media personality Nicki Brand, played by Debbie, who intones breathy psychoanalytical advice to sickies out in Radioland.

A poor man’s Ruth Westheimer, Nicki is also a masochist, who drags Max into the sack and then begs him to put cigarettes out on her chest. And, when she isn’t using her gazongas for an ashtray, Nicki is —you guessed it—part of a worldwide conspiracy to control our minds and turn them into porridge. (Funny, I always thought that’s what Blondie was.)

Deb packs her bags and splits to Pittsburgh where she gets to guesthost on Videodrome and say lines like: “Let’s open those neural floodgates.” Still in Toronto, Max is reduced to addicted viewer status and soon becomes a slobbering hallucinator. (Reminded me of myself during the ’60s.) Meanwhile, the sinister forces continue to grow, manufacturing, as one spokesman explains, “everything from inexpensive glasses for the Third World to missile guidance systems for NATO.” (Rather a good line, that one.)

The bad guys also operate something called the Cathode Ray Mission, a Salvation Army type refuge where derelicts are fed massive doses of daytime television. Another nice touch—in fact, I’m beginning to realize I’m making this movie seem a lot more interesting than it really is.

Okay, then, the adequate special effects. They include the above mentioned pulsating screen and chest orifice. Sexual connotations of the latter were not lost on the Times Square audience with whom I shared this flick, though some on hand probably had similar massive wounds in their torsos, which could account for their squirming. As for me, I left Videodrome feeling vaguely disappointed and wondering if I could make it home in time for Lie Detector.

Skip Videodrome and leave your neural floodgates alone.

☆ ☆ ☆

Remember Barbara Hershey?

For a while there, she was Barbara Seagull and mixed up with David Carradine. Or was it Keith Carradine? No matter. She’s Barbara Hershey again—guess she couldn’t shake that chocolate empire monicker—and she stars in The Entity, one of those atmospheric horror films The Dauph normally abhors on sight (not enough gore), so how come I liked this one?

Fans of the Frank DeFelitta novel had warned me this was a nasty little sage—supposedly based on a true incident in California—in which a mother of three is repeatedly ravaged by a demonic spirit. Still, it sounded like standard supernatural fare, nothing to rivet Edouard to his popcorn-crusted seat. Wrong, chowderbrain—The Entity is that rare breed of shocker, logical intelligent and lingering. The kind that returns to you in the dark at 4 in the morning when about the only return I’m expecting is that Chicken McNugget with clam sauce I devoured around midnight.

Faced with these unseen attacks, Hershey (or is it Seagull?) resorts to a psychiatrist who diagnoses them as hysterical nightmares and then falls in love with her. But the vicious assaults go on, proving that not even the love of a chauvinistic boob can conquer the supernatural. Eventually, Seagull (sorry, Hershey) experiments with frozen helium in an effort to catch The Entity in the act. This makes for one of the movie’s most frightening sequences—in fact, you’ll be tempted to never again freeze this particular gas in your home again.

Or was it John Carradine?

Geek Maggot Bingo. In the windswept waters of movie reviewing, certain titles are like welcoming beacons. Lure of this grunge flick was further enhanced by a cast featuring Richard Hell (as The Rawhide Kid); erstwhile Shock Theatre/FM deejay John Zacherle; and netherworld film doyenne (not to mention; lady wrestler) Donna Death. Plus it was directed by Nick Zedd, who once gave us—though we tried to return it—They Eat Scum. The Dauph reached the screening room early.

What he found was a cheap, sometimes slapdash, cheerfully horrific entertainment with lots of geeks, nary a maggot and precious little bingo, but enough homages to classic horror films to choke a platoon of cineastes. The plot?

Who cares? There’s a mad scientist, a two-headed monster in sneakers, a scantily clad temptress, a laconic gunfighter, a hump-backed lab assistant who looks like he escaped from The Plasmatics, and a mob of vampires, led by the alluring Ms. Death whose batwing lips may provoke a whole line of Revlon products.

Fiendishly tasteless fun and how can you not like a film whose makers provide a free drool cup 1 with each admission? By the way, GfeeJc Maggot Bingo was brought in by director Zedd for $8,000 and every dollar is up there on the screen.

The Mondello Curse!

I NEED MORE: The Stooges And Other Stories by Iggy Pop with Anne Wehrer (Karz-Cohl) '

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. ”—Hegel

“We must act out passion before we can feel it. "—Sartre “Now I wanna bd your dog. ’’—Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop has long embodied and represented the human id/Iibido trapped in a passionless society, but another special charm has been his upique world view and philosophy. During their heyday, the Stooges were sort of like' a non-intellectual version of the Doors in that Iggy depicted and laid bare the naked human psyche, and a large part of the magic from that point on has been his ability to combine the “stoopid” with the profound in his universal idiot persona.

I Need More is a series of biographical anecdotes from the polymorphous perverse prince, recorded and transcribed by Anne Wehrer, and the book—which reads like Iggy in conversation— features the same intriguing duality that can be found in Iggy’s music, lyrics, statements and onstage antics. To paraphrase Marshall Crenshaw, Iggy generally never bothers with (or focuses on) the usual things, and it’s both fascinating and hilarious to “hear” Iggy relate the events of his formative years right up through the Stooges’ brief but legendary career. (“These guys were the laziest juvenile delinquent sort of pig-slobs ever been... We couldn’t play our way through a Chuck Berry song...

I love people, you know, sort of a decent young man. On the other hand, anything the Stooges would touch turned to shit.”)

Not only will you find the man who’s acted out some of our deepest, darkest fantasies onstage in I Need More, but you’ll also discovej James Osterberg, a sickly (asthmatic), sheltered child, raised in a Michigan trailer camp, who discovered at an early age that he “hated the bourgeoise” (“I just got a bad feeling from what I saw of bourgeois life, and I certainly didn’t want to be a laborer. I just found everything around me very brutish, especially the kids at school. So I decided to gamble with music to escape from all that. I’d just die not to gamble a big gamble—something natural, something you could touch and grasp”). All the earliest details are here from his first sexual encounters to his first drug experience (an intentional overdose of asthma medication) and his first musical awakenings (the sounds of a technological environment).

Trivia is abundant (i.e., his brief marriage, what Nico “taught” him, etc.), but what I enjoyed most were the “words of wisdom,” as Iggy comments on everything trom the military (“I couldn’t stand the idea of being a pawn of the sick society of America, dominated by men”) to “fear” (“So many people are scared of their hearts. You don’t have to be scared of your heart. You just have to find a new road”) to the Midwest (“it produces a lot of great minds that revolutionize, it really does”) to the ultimate explanation of how he sees his role in life (“The population is akin to a bunch of illiterate Mayan descendants running around through the ruins of a once-great civilization—having no idea of the skills and the craftsmanship that went into building such a city—just playing in the rujns. Well, I don’t want to play in the ruins”). And then there’s just the genuinely comical (“Who’s Who In America sent me their thing: ‘Dear Mr. Osterberg, you have been selected for inclusion’... They have things like list your outstanding achievements, corporate positions held. I would have said something about my prick...”).

His self-destructive tendencies are touched on briefly at various points in the book, but even though Iggy sometimes comes off as a selfindulgent asshole (let’s face it—that’s always been part of his persona), something positive should be said about a person who manages to transcend his own selfdestructive urges (with “a methadone-golf-valium treatment”), especially in a medium that encourages such moronic behavior. And in this age where many people are finally coming to the wise realization that selfdestruction is nothing to glorify or romanticize (even if the death instinct is part of the id), Iggy offers no excuses or apologies, other than “I was stupid enough to shoot things into my arms.”

The book’s design is excellent, and the photographs are exceptional. Pictures of Iggy as a baby, as a Cub Scout, with early bands and during the Stooges’ Funhouse/Raw Power phase—not to mention drawings by both Ig and David Bowie—make I Need More a must for any Iggy Pop fan. The only fault the book has is that it includes very little about the later years following his ’77 “comeback.” Fortunately, former Detroiter Dorothy Sherman is currently in New York writing a detailed biography of Iggy, so perhaps, combined with this book, we’ll have a definitive account of James Osterberg’s life.

Even though I’d defend Iggy to the end for refusing to become a comic clown like most of today’s “outrageous” rock pranksters (1 can find at least one great song on each of his LPs, excepting Zombie Birdhouse which I haven’t given much of a chance yet), it might be argued that I Need More is probably Iggy Pop’s best “product”/ statement in years.

Bill Holdship

Reality, Only Better

AMAZING 3-D

by Hal Morgan and Dan Symmes

(Little, Brown and Co.)

What it is, is 3-D’s been done in by bad company. Remembered

mainly as a schlock fad of the early 50’s, forever tainted by its association with soporific B-movies, it’s an effect that seems archetypally tacky, not only dumb but a little desperate. Actually it’s a great idea -'that’s never been given a proper chance, and one that has a history that goes back a bit further than House Of Wax (’53). You could, like the authors of this book, trace it back to ancient Greece where its principles were expounded by Euclid, but, even though other professional expounders took a crack at it, you’d have to wait until the 19th century before you found it being put to any good practical commercial use. With the advent of the stereoscope, a device for looking at twin photographs simultaneously thus achieving the illusion of depth, the history of 3-D faddery really begins. As often happens, the original invention was obscenely huge and had to be hoisted erect by three or four stouthearted manservants while the master of the manor languidly sipped mint tea and viewed three dimensional depictions of the latest progress on this or that canal.. .well, maybe not that huge, but big nonetheless, growing smaller and smaller as the device was perfected, until it disappeared altogether. The stereoscope gave way to the 20th century viewmaster, which is with ys yet, a little plastic thingee into which you insert round cards with pictures of cartoon characters, or travelog stuff, or fairy tales, great fun. Aside from these two biggest of the pre-1950 3-D fads, there were also random experiments with movies, never amounting to much, as well as a vogue for 3-D cameras of the family snapshot variety just after WWII, although nobody in my family ever had one (and since my father was a nut for state-of-the-art entertainment gimmickry—I think MJe got our first TV in 1903—1 wonder if maybe this book that I’m eventually going to get around to reviewing doesn’t exaggerate the extent of the 3-D camera “craze” just a-wee bit). Here, then, was an effect with an almost primal ability to excite (reality, only better!) and all it was used for, with the exception of some aerial photography during WWII, was enhancing already existing “low” entertainments. Apparently, what these pre-WWII dabblers were doing was, as Euclid might have put it, dicking around with the thing rather than exerting any concentrated imaginative effort. It took the threat of television to engender any heavy 3-D action, when the movie moguls responded to the dwindling audiences caused by the small screens with their customary short-sighted greediness—why not use 3-D, not in any serious way, of course, but to embellish the sort of B-rnovie bombs that the public was wisely staying away from? They may not be willing to pay to see Robert Stack in a lame jungle flick when they could stay comfortably home and watch Lucy, but what if they promised “a lion in your lap!”

Which is what killed 3-D’s chances, seemingly forever, of becoming more than a gimmick—of the 51 movies made in 3-D during ’51-’53, only four are generally agreed tp be good (House Of Wax, Kiss Me,

Kate, Hondo, Dial M For Murder), another four have their defenders {It Came From Outer Space, The Charge At Feather River, Inferno, Creature From The Black Lagoon), while the remaining 43 are elstinko, ranging from the insanely " inept {Robot Monster, The Maxe, Cat Women Of The Moon—Sonny Tufts!) through stilted “action” epics (Sangarpe, Jivaro), doomed melodramas {Flight To Tangier,

Miss Sadie Thompson) and a whole slew of anonymous westerns. Naturally everyone was curiousabout 3-D, so initial box office returns were boffo until the public caught on, rather quickly, that the movies themselves weren’t going to get any better. The moguls took the resulting sharp decline in b.a as an indication that it was time to drop 3-D anyway. And besides, everyone was getting hot about the idea of Cinemascope, a cheaper, less troublesome “revolutionary” effect which has, along with moguls and B-movies, long since gone the way of the dodo. Since this total fiasco (the movies were followed, in rise and decline, by 3-D comics) there have begn a few halfhearted attempts at revival, most notably the Warhol films (“an intestine in your face!”). Recently some showings of 3-D movies on TV were very popular, but no one seems to know what do next.

This history of 3-D is related with somewhat more detail, and considerably more accuracy, in Amazing 3-0, a book whose main point of interest is that it features a lot of actual 3-D news photos, movie stills, and comic book excerpts, done in the two-color analglyphic style, easy-to-use glasses provided. Jhese analglyphs are intriguing although there'is no illusion of “reality,” even in the photographs, since the depth in the pictures is between groupings of distinctively flat objects—still, the effects potential is glimpsed, if not as an apex of reality, then as a possibly more expressive artistic tool. The text is crammed with the names of inventors, inventions, and dates, perhaps too much so for the non-hobbyist (I found the first third of the book, dealing with steroscopes, viewmasters, and cameras, endless) but I only spotted one mistake—Robert Flaherty didn’t direct This Is Cinerama (’52), possibly because he was dead at the time—which is pretty good for this sort of survey. And at least as interesting as the pictures are the not:in-3-D movie ads wherein the hucksters unselfconsciously hype the gullible ’50s public (doesn’t it seem like people were a lot stupider back th£n? no?) E.g., Man In The Dark offers new “scene-sations,” a picture of Jane Russell thrusting her mighty talent at the audience in The French Line has the tagline “J.R. in 3-D—need we say more?,” an ad for “Inferno” shows the audience so overwhelmed by the 3-D effect (though none of them are wearing 3-D glasses—?) that a few of them are looking backwards over their shoulders to catch it all and, in a burst of poetic deception, it Came From Outer Space, whose black and white was tinted brown for dubious effect, is advertised as being in “scientifically perfected eye-resting Full-Sepia Mono-Color!” Aw right!

All told not bad, though the book’s price is a little steep, especially for the chintzy book club edition I ended up with (hey, it doesn’t have to be bound in virgin fawn foreskin but this aggressively ugly colored cardboard, which wrinkles and curls if exposed too long to ordinary lamp light, seems to go beyond the call of reasonable recession-era thrift). Anyway, reading this book one gets the impression that 3-D has only been timidly exploited and that its reputation as a lost cause is undeserved—if, a couple of thousand years after Euclid, the best anyone can come up with is Cornin’At Ya, then obviously nobody’s really trying. Amazing.

Richard C. Walls

Walnuts Over New Rochelle

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW: Anatomy Off A Classic By Ginny Weissman and Coyne Steven Sanders (St. Martin’s Press)

In these Z-laden days of television situation comedies that, instead of going for your funnybone’s throat, would rather “stink to please” (as one critic put it), the operative viewing factor is not so much what you watch, but what you don’t turn off. This is comedy we’re talking about, after all, so let’s get serious.

. Virtually none of today’s sitcoms are'what you’d call epic, classic, or very much better than cluster headaches. M* A *S *H is over, Taxi is doomed and the best of the new ones (Cheers, A-Team) are no big deal.

So when it comes to selecting the “greatest” sitcoms in TV history, all of the candidates are items from the Way-Back Machine: The Honeymooners, Leave It To Beaver, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Jane Froman’s U.S.A. Canteen and, of course, the Dick Van Dyke Show.

The main brain behind DVD was a former Sid Caesar crony, Carl Reiner. In 1959, he put together a pilot he called Head Of The Family, featuring the same basic format as DVD but with different actors.

When it later became apparent that Reiner would be better off behind the scenes, a search for the best , Rob Petrie turned up two prime candidates: Broadway whiz Dick Van Dyke and a young Nebraskan comic by the name of Johnny Carson. Whew, close call!

When Dick was finally convinced to take the part, the other characters were then hand-picked by Reiner and co-creator Sheldon Leonard. Cagey comedy vets Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam were the first to be signed-up, followed by actor/director Jerry Paris (spotted while eating a hotdog at a Dodgers game), Jerry’s best friend’s wife, Ann Morgan Guilbert and an obscure 23-year-old actress known best for her characterization of Happy Hotpoint, a tiny burner sprite who danced on stove tops in appliance commercials, Mary Tyler Moore.

DVD was anything but a smash hit. Up against popular favorites like Bachelor Father, Laramie and Perry Como, it was almost cancelled after the first season. But Leonard, refusing to give in, lined up a new sponsor and made a few changes in the show itself. “We put a pair of balls on Rob Petrie,” Leonard himself says. Better than a pair of ceramic windmill salt and pepper shakers! Anyhoo, the show clicked and remained a hit for four more seasons.

The best thing about DVD was the characters: Mel Cooley, eternally abused producer and-brotherin-law of the star; cynical comedy writers Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell (the human one-liner machine); Jerry and Millie Helper, my own all-time favorite wacky neighbors, and Rob and Laura Petrie, best described by Sheldon Leonard as “the first pair on TV that may be having some fun in the hay.”

Whoa—I’m so gushed-out, I almost forgot this is a book review. And what a top-notch book this is, packed solid with historical, anecdotal ahd character info. Not to mention excellent pix and stills and an episode guide indispensible to the Van Dyke fanatic.

Buzzing through the episode quide is even more fun than vacuuming ping pong balls or taking a class in Reverse Proctology. The one show everybody remembers is “It May Look Like A Walnut!,” where Rob, “under the influence of science fiction,” gets the idea that aliens from the planet Twylo—who have three eyes, no thumbs and no imagination—are taking over Earth with the help of doctored walnuts. When it comes to sex on TV, the sight of Laura rolling out of the closet on 1,100 pounds of walnuts permanently warmed the author’s walnuts at a formative age. Even today, f consider nutcrackers to be a cruel and unusual utensil.

Then there’s “Never Bathe On Saturday,” where the Petrie’s second honeymoon is ruined when Mrs. P. gets her toe stuck in the bath spout; “Pink Pills And Purple Parents,” in which Laura, nervous about meeting Rob’s parents for the first time, pops a couple of Millie’s calmatives, flips out and ends up eating dessert off the floor Cherri Boone-style and many more. All of ’em, if you ask me.

How about a little trivia before we unlock the blocks? Did U. Know: Petrie was originally pronounced “pee-tree” in the pilot?; that the rock-in-the-basement episode was based on Carl Reiner’s actual home?; that the Twylo story inspired rookie director Jerry Paris to create Mork from Ork years later?; that the live audience often laughed so hard that sound engineers had to “doctor them down?;” that in 1974, there were 55,000 radios in use in Botswana?

Of course you didn’t. If you want more fax, run out and buy this book right now! It’s only $9.95! I’d go on 'forever, but I have some very important brain death I want to accomplish. Now.

Rick Johnson