Special Guest: Nicoletta Ercole Guest Co-Hosts: Heather Drain, Kat Ellinger
It's less than two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. Our Eastern Neighbors are being quarantined from the corona virus. And here we are talking about the end of the world as shown in 1969 by director Marco Ferreri. The Seed of Man / Il seme dell'uomo stars Marzio Margine as Cino and Anne Wiazemsky as Dora, the only lovers left alive after a plague has wiped out most of the world's population. The two live in a seaside home where Cino has a museum of trivial objects. He feels that he has to repopulate the world but Dora has other ideas.
Our appreciation of 1969 continues with a look at Piero Schivazappa's Femina Ridens / The Laughing Woman. Also sometimes known as The Frightened Woman, the film stars Philipe Leroy as Sayer, the head of a charity foundation, and Dagmar Lassander as Maria, one of his employees. She she expresses an interest in writing an article about male sterilization, he takes that as his cue to invite her to his house and enslave her. What else can a good chauvinist do?
Our appreciation of 1969 continues with our second look at an adaptation of Edogawa Rampo’s work, Blind Beast. Directed by Yasuzô Masumura, the film stars Mako Midori as Aki Shima, a model, and Eiji Funakoshi as Michio, a blind sculptor who becomes obsessed with her. He and his mother kidnap Aki and keep her in his warehouse studio where the two become engaged in a game of cat and mouse as he tries to create a new form of art that only the blind can appreciate.
Coffin Jon and Elric Kane join Mike to discuss the film specifically and Masumura's work generally.
Our appreciation of 1969 continues with a look at Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men. Based on the writings of Edogawa Rampo, the movie tells the tale of Hirosuke Hitomi (Teruo Yoshida) who we first see locked up in an insane asylum. Things only go downhill from there...
Taking its title from the notorious book by Leopold von Sacher-Mascoch, Jess Franco's Venus in Furs (1969) stars James Darren as Jimmy Logan, a musician who can blow a cool horn. He finds the corpse of a woman he had seen at a party, the mysterious Wanda (Maria Rohm). When Wanda shows up -- alive and seducing -- shortly thereafter, Jimmy becomes obsessed with her, despite his loving relationship with chanteuse Rita (Barbara McNair).
Brad Jones and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss Franco's film as well as an alternate cut of the movie along with a few other adaptations of the Sacher-Masoch story.
Our appreciation of films from 1969 continues with a look at Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile. It's two stories in one -- the first is about a young man (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s capitalist footsteps nor in those of a student radical. The second is about a fine young cannibal (Pierre Clémenti) who ravages the countryside.
Music:
"Piggies" - R.A.M. Pietsch
"March of the Pigs" - Nine Inch Nails
"Pigs in Zen" - Jane's Addiction
"Do The Pig" - Merced Blue Notes
"Piggy in the Middle" - The Rutles
Based on a book by Vasilis Vasilikos, Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969) stars Yves Montand as a political activist who is killed after a rally. The film also stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as the investigator of the incident who manages to uncover a vast conspiracy.
Keith Gordon and Eric Cohen join Mike to discuss this political thriller which is a thinly veiled re-telling of the events in Greece of 1963 and the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis.
Special Guest: Dick Stegewerns Guest Co-Hosts: Chris Stachiw, Samm Deighan
We’re kicking off 2020 with one in a whole series of films that were released in 1969.
Up first is a film that captures the essence of the Japanese New Wave, Yoshishige "Kiju" Yoshida's Eros + Massacre. The film sets up two parallel stories, one set in the late teens/early twenties of the 1900s and the other in the contemporary 1969. The early story concerns the anarchist Osugi Kasae (Toshiyuki Hosokawa) and the three women in his life, most pointedly Ito Noe (Mariko Okada). These true figures from history are contrasted with the fictional characters of 1969 which include Eiko, Megumi, and Wada.
Samm Deighan and an irate Chris Stachiw join Mike to smugly discuss the film. We're joined by special guest Professor Dick Stegewerns, author of Kiju Yoshida: 50 Years of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Post-War Japan.
Special Guest: Nicoletta Ercole
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