I’ve wondered for a couple of days whether to write about this film. I’m fascinated by Russell mostly because it’s interesting to see what happens to a director that had a very specific artistic vision that falls way out of favor with the public and film financers.
Since leaving Hollywood, Russell has taken his strong interest in classical music and literature and erotica and managed to keep busy directing British and Candian TV specials and documentaries, including one I’m keen to see on the origins of British folk songs. But for a guy whose highly stylized features were in vogue for a number of years, (1969’s Women in Love to 1991’s Whore), I have to wonder if he’s content not to direct features any more.
So I was excited to find a copy of Russell’s take on all things Poe from a couple of years ago: The Fall of the Louse of Usher, written, directed, shot, and edited by the man, as well as playing one of the main roles.
In addition to cribbing from a dozen Poe stories and poems all at once, it’s also a kind of rock musical, even starring a genuine rock “star,” James Johnson of the very Nick Cave influenced band, Gallon Drunk. The film is just disastrous of course. It’s shot on DV and tells the story of Usher, who is accused of bricking his wife up in a wall with her chihuahua, and is sent to a mental instiution run by a mad man, played by Russell, named Dr. Calahari. I had hoped that was weird red make-up on Russell’s face (everyone else had tons of makeup on), but I think he just looks old, unhealthy, and remarkably crimson.
Russell certainly isn’t making any bids to be welcomed back to the studios and given some stars and a few million dollars here. He seems content to just indulge his whims and have a lot of fun with a sexily dressed nurse, who is the best actor of the bunch. Her name is supposedly Tulip Junkie and she’s not acted in anything else (except another Russell short). There are no special effects, or even attempts to make anything look real, though the sets are lit at least. None of these technical things would bother me really if the sexy bits were sexy, the funny bits were funny, the musical bits were pleasing or the horror bits were scary. But they’re not.
All that said, I watched the whole damn thing, and enjoyed it more than anyone has the right to. I’d not recommend this to anyone, and yet, I am somehow drawn to it, just because it’s a remarkable example of the end period of a startlingly original film director. (I’m not trying to predict Russell’s death here, but I do doubt that his work will be re-discovered soon and he’ll be lauded or given the chance to make real films again.)
And just so I’m not finishing on a negative note, a quick look through Russel’s imdb catalog shows a huge number of TV films done during the 1960s on all sorts of composers, poets, architects and writers. The man knows his arts very well, and I have little doubt there are total gems to be found in those BBC vaults, assuming they were’t just taped over. And nothing he does now coul lessen my admiration for films like Mahler, Gothic, Altered States and Tommy.
Oh! And Lair of the White Worm, which may be the most purely enjoyable of all.
I have in my queue an idiosyncrasy in Russell’s oeuvre, which is going some (given all those idiosyncrasies): Billion Dollar Brain, a Michael Caine “Harry Palmer” spy story, with Noel Coward on hand. I’m skeptical, and I hear it’s kind of Russell-light, but… yeah, he can be pretty interesting.
Ahh yes – His first feature I think, based on a Len Dieghton thing? I’m sure he played it relatively safe, but I’d be really interested to know if it’s worth checking out. I’ve never seen it.
I did however do my homework and watched Black Narcissus. I stayed away from the commentary and bonus features so that you could look extra-smart and perceptive.
I had only managed to watch a little of it on TCM last year, but it really is quite impressive.
Did he do Tommy? absolutely unwatchable.
‘Lair of the White Worm’ was pure joy, and nice to see Hugh Grant in something sleazy. I actually read ‘Billion Dollar Brain’ (I have read everything Len Deighton has written, however bad) but I didn’t know they made a movie from it. The book was a mess. I’d love to see your Netflix queue, Mike. I’m amazed at what movies you have come across.
I saw Tommy at the Captial Theater in Frankfort, Kentucky about six times in 1975 (unfortunately the Capital was razed a couple of years later to make way for a “state of the art” twin cinema in an ill-conceived mini-mall on the outskirts of town). I thought Tommy was the greatest movie ever. Sure, I was 13 or thereabouts, and I did have posters of Elton John plastered all over my bedroom, but it was a cool movie and certainly an odd film for a kid who had not yet been introduced to art house fare. Ken Russell’s Women in Love holds up pretty well, I think, and Altered States was another favorite as a freshman in college (and by then I knew a thing or two about altered states, which made that film, along with William Hurt’s charismatic film debut, potent sci-fi pulp for an impressionable, dazed and confused, eighteen-year-old).
By the way, we can all be each other’s Netflix “friends” if we were so inclined. Then we would always know what each of us had on hand as well as on queue. Could be amusing in a Orwellian sort of way.
nobody sees my queue…you might misunderstand my interest in Swedish erotica.
And I’m not in Netflix…
Was watching TCM the other night and they showed a short promo film about the making of “The Boy Friend” a 1971 Ken Russell nightmare of glitter and art deco and more glitter starring Twiggy in her first acting role.
There were apparently two taglines for The Boy Friend:
“EMI-MGM Presents The Return Of Entertainment”
“A Glittering Super Colossal Heart Warming Toe-Tapping Continously Delightful Musical Extravaganza”
I had not even heard of this film, but could tell it was directed by Russell after watching all of 30 seconds of the footage.
It was absolutely painful to watch just the promo film, as choreographers, actors and singing coaches try to turn Twiggy into someone that can be perceived to at least understand the rudiments of dancing, acting and singing, even if she can never be said to actually do those things herself.
Twiggy starred in the Broadway musical My One and Only opposite director/choreographer/leading man Tommy Tune. The show (a 1920s pastiche utilizing songs written by the Gershwin brothers) ran for a couple of years during the early eighties, and I remember she got pretty decent reviews (singin’ and a dancin’). Tune won Tony Awards for leading male in a musical and choreography.
Tommy Tune is actually in The Boy Friend as well. He must have taught her well. It looked pretty dicey in ’71.
But, I just looked on imdb and apparently I’m off base on thinking it was awful. It was nominated for, and won, several awards that year, including a Best Actress Golden Globe win for Twiggy. How bout that.
I’ll remind you that Pia Zadora won a Golden Globe for best actress, for her role as a sexy sexy innocent girl (adopted? raised?) living with tempted old lech Stacy Keach in Butterfly. At least that’s what I think it was called. I even saw it, I think on a dare. I recall nothing about it. There was lots of pouting, as I recall. By Keach as well as Zadora.
I have Billion Dollar Brain at home right now–I should probably watch it. It’s one of those films I get from Netflix then sit on for seven weeks, thinking “Oh, maybe I’ll watch that tomorrow.”
Okay, watched Brain, and it is recognizably Ken Russell–so probably of some interest to you, Mark, and any other fans.
The good: Michael Caine reprising his excellent cool attitude as the not-terribly-Bondish (and wonderfully named) Harry Palmer. A lot of crazy conspiratorial fever-dream political scenarios. And the frequent cool Russell touches: a gorgeous deep wide-frame composition of Palmer and another figure on the ice in Finland, silhouetted, cut to an extreme close-up of a beautiful woman’s face mouthing the “code words,” cut back to the wide-shot. No home seems to be without a lurid, often erotic painting on the wall, so that Russell can close scenes with a turn to the art. A tonally-jarring handheld fight between Palmer and aforementioned beautiful femme fatale.
The bad: well, it’s a sixties spy film, reliant for its central plot upon a supercomputer that reads cards (and it’s hard to get past that, almost as jarring a technologically-distant object as the Finnish ferris wheel made from wood and spun by hand which we glimpse earlier on in the film). There’s also a crazy jingoistic Texan anti-communist played by Ed Begley (Sr.) as if on meth, and while of a piece with some other Russell-directed performances, it’s rather dull or rather annoying, depending on the scene.
I enjoyed it. And, hell, why don’t they make another Harry Palmer film? I’m sure Deighton gave up the rights–I’d love to see Caine return to something like this, and forego the Sandra Bullock comedies.