The Opening: Again

Despite being titled “AGAIN” this is actually, potentially, the first in a series.

To develop what our chum Keats calls my “negative capability” — roughly speaking, the ability to appreciate things without rationally understanding them, I thought I might look at the openings of some films, films I know almost nothing about, and then not watch the films.

(Robert Anton Wilson recounted coming across the words NO WIFE NO HORSE NO MUSTACHE in a Readers Digest magazine, and swiftly flapping it shut, because the phrase was so wonderful on its own he never wanted to know what it referred to or where it came from. Of course, in this internet age, one can uncover the facts in an instant. I once did so, but I have forgotten the answer. Don’t remind me.)

This quest for lack of understanding is made easier in the case of Julio Buchs’ LAS TROMPETAS DEL APOCALIPSIS (1969), also known as AGAIN, since the film is in Spanish and no subtitles or dub seem to be available, and I understand Spanish only slightly better than Rin Tin Tin, and he’s dead.

I swear this is the first movie I tried this with! And everything in the first two minutes is INSANELY entertaining!

A green-hued London night. We get a London bobby AND a London bus to make sure we’re oriented. Then, peculiar attention to a window. I immediately suspect someone is going to come flying through it, because one thing I do know is that this movie is a kind of Spanish giallo. As is appropriate to that genre, for some reason, the emotion associated with the anticipated defenestration is not dread, but a giddy glee.

Here he comes!

CRUMP

TOOT of police whistle.

Disco lights and celebratory music — the soundtrack assures us that our sadistic chortles are entirely appropriate. Detail shots of lights lead us, in an Ozu-like progression, to a swinging scene. Lots of suspiciously tanned/dusky people in hippy wigs gyrate atmospherically. One girl has a vertical LOVE necklace hanging between her boobs, on each of which a heart symbol is inscribed in red. Maybe she’s a Time Lord?

One particular guy sits in a booth, a somewhat disengaged DJ flicking through a newspaper while chewing gum. Love the art direction: there may really have been a poster with THE BOB DYLAN POSTER printed on it. Maybe that was a thing? Or maybe the art director was asked to knock up a Bob Dylan poster in English, but no title was provided? If you have the answer, I don’t mind having this mystery cleared up.

But wait! Bored DJ is no longer bored! Something has caught his attention!

And I promise, I had planned to edit the clip so you could see the headline that’s arrested our bewigged record-spinner, but I swear to God, AVI Trimmer+ is kind of imprecise and it deliberately chose to make this clip more mysterious than I’d intended. But I’ll have mercy on you —

There! Now you can enjoy how the story is badly pasted into the financial column. The English in the headline and story itself is disappointingly good, but it doesn’t sound like a newspaper, does it? “[…] apparently took his life last night by jumping from a second story window of his home here in London.” Here in London where this journalist is writing this and you are reading it. Because we’re in London. Did I make that clear? It may be important later.

OK, that’s all you’re getting! Possibly you will never get to see the rest of this film. How do you feel? Better or worse?

 

What I Owe Tod Browning

I guess DRACULA (1931) was the first horror movie I ever saw. Not a bad starting point, historically, as it’s possibly the first American supernatural horror movie. I always had a great interest in monsters, perhaps stemming from the times I was frightened by the cyclops in THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and the giant walking statue of Talos in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, monster movies which would play on kids’ TV.

So when, one summer in the 70s, BBC2 put on a season of Saturday night double-bills, I was agog with wonder. My parents were less keen. It was ruled that I could stay up late and watch the first film, but not the second — so I didn’t get to see FRANKENSTEIN until years later. And my Dad would stay up with me.

DRACULA was, in many ways, deeply disappointing to my young self — there was little action, no fangs, and all the spooky stuff was front-loaded at the beginning. The makers seemed scared of being scary. But I was still fascinated — as the musician Moby has said, the thing about monster movies when you’re that age is that the alternative is movies with NO monsters — an alternative not worth thinking about.

And Tod Browning, whose silent Lon Chaney vehicles often featured geographically inappropriate wildlife as plot points, did successfully blow my barely-formed mind by including armadillos amid the fauna of Castle Dracula.

“Dad, why is there an armadillo?”

“I don’t know,” Dad said thoughtfully. “They must have just thought it looked strange.”

Since dads as a species are known or their expertise in every subject, this was interesting information — a question my father could answer only in the most vague and hesitant terms. An introduction to Keats’ concept of negative capability.

Still don’t know what this little guy is.

Since I have an inclination towards rationalism and problem-solving, which is often useful in filmmaking but which sometimes gets in the way of appreciating a real mystery, it was useful to me to get inoculated with negative capability at an early age. I could probably have used a stronger dose, if anything.

Theory: an injection of negative capability leaves two small puncture-marks on the throat.

US shoppers go here: Dracula – The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula’s Daughter / Son of Dracula / House of Dracula)

UK shoppers go here: Dracula [DVD] [1931]