Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

Yeah, considering some of the official stuff isn't the best quality (like the Hollywood Bowl show on the Ladyland box), I've no deep desire to dig into the boots just yet. My tolerance for bad recordings has diminished over the years.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Yes, the Allman Brothers is that band for me, so I totally get it. And Dead fans have an advantage there because not only were they improvising, but the set list was fluid as well. This was not the case with the Allmans during the Duane era. So if you have 20 Allman shows, you've got 20 versions of every song. And yet I keep buying them.

Same. I'm an Allman fan and I love bluegrass so there's every reason for Jerry to be my guy, so I can't explain why it hasn't happened for me.

Aaaah, the iconography! That's the part that hurts the most. I don't have to tell you that the whole Mouse/Kelley thing is completely up my alley, so I would very much like to be a fan just so I can buy the merch. I mean, I CAN buy just the merch technically, but things like that just aren't done.

Kate sounds very judgmental for a Deadhead. I thought yall loved everybody.
(I kid.)

So where does Grapes of Death rank on the Rollins-o-meter here.


Definitely top half, right? Just like his preferred nudity.

Ya know, I have to admit, while I am kinda known for being a Rollin fan, I have never seen GoD.

This is an interesting one. Tapes from a clav and flute player jamming with Hendrix in Woodstock, has a lo-fi Sun Ra-ish feel. Permutated into several releases, all of them lie about the origins. Adjacent to the "deceptive crap" category, but at least it's actually Hendrix, and fairly rare and at times quite nice, despite the single microphone in the middle of the room sound quality.



There's a small galaxy of "early" Hendrix rip-offs, countless reissues of questionable material that are only not considered bootlegs because the tapes have no legal basis to begin with. Roots (with kalediscopic cover) has the genuine Lonnie Youngblood recordings (though still padded with non-Jimi material) so it is quite worthy, especially if you have the gatefold poster intact. I hate to break it to you though, but Moods is not Jimi Hendrix, and falls directly into the 'deceptive crap' folder.



These are all great sets. Along with Hendrix in the West, I would grab most of the early 70s Reprise/Polydor LPs. War Heroes is lean and mean, one of the strongest sets of his funk/rock deep cuts (except, blech, "Three Little Bears"). Nine To the Universe has some great stuff but, being a budget release at the time, the vinyl quality is thin. The main feature, "Young/Hendrix" with its Bitches' shuffle, is available in full length and better sound on Seattle Boy. That box set and Delta are probably the two best Estate releases.

One of my favorites of his live shows, there's also a box set covering all six shows, but they really should just release all of it by now (like the Gypsies/Fillmore shows).


I love Dagger Records, the fan-oriented sublabel of the Hendrix Estate that specializes in more arcane and, well, bootleg-quality material. Oakland is a good show from spring 69, but there's better ones (LA Forum, San Diego), and a quality example of a good audience recording.


Morning is a nice collection of improvs and demos as an illustration of just how many musical ideas Hendrix still had left in the can. It ends with a full half-hour acoustic tape of entirely unheard material. This, along with the other Dagger studio collections Hear My Music and Burning Desire are much better than most of the more official releases over the last decade, most of which seem to feel compelled to squeeze another outtake of "Fire" or "Red House" to make it commercially viable.


Well, Every Way To Paradise and Randall's Island are bootlegs. It's nothing to be ashamed of!

Wow. Those are some deep takes. I didn't know EWtP was bootlegs exactly, I've had it since about '97 and MSI since maybe 2000/2001 and those were the first really outside, deep-cut things I had. I got Monterrey Pop back in like '86 or something (back then it was a double-album with Otis Redding's set from Monterrey, also amazing) and Winterland in maybe '87 or '88, and those (along with BoG 1&2, which all my friends had back in the late 80s) were the only live Hendrix I had for about a decade. When BoG 2 was released in the late 80s, everybody I knew was into Hendrix so everybody had it. It was as ubiquitous as Led Zeppelin IV, believe it or not, when I was in high school.

I watched 10-12 of his within a month a few years ago, so they've all blended together in my brain. It's about time I revisited some of them. The only thing I've retained is that Iron Rose was by far my favorite, and that in the later 70s an extraordinarily attractive actress was in a few of them. (the scythe woman from Fascination)

Grapes of Death is one of his more distinctive films. It's seems to drop much of the European eroticism, and almost completely jettison's the philosophical mumblings of what always appears to be his increasingly bored actors, and is an almost nihilistically streamlined survival film. There isn't an ounce of fat on it. I don't quite think its as good as his best (which for me is easily Fascination) but it retains just enough of his lazy/dreaminess to feel somewhat otherworldy and nightmarish, even if the effects are only slightly better than they are in Zombie Lake. At least none of them wash off when the characters get wet here, though. It seems he taped his blood packets on Real Good this time around.


Professionalism!

I liked Lips Of Blood a good bit.

Some of his most prominent ones weren't available to me at the time, and this was one of them. Maybe this will be the year I reacquaint myself with Monsieur Rollin.

And regarding the cheesy effects, I think that might be why I liked Iron Rose so much. His only job was to film the graveyard. Hard to screw that up.

I need to try Rollin again. His sensibilities seem like something that should appeal to me but Fascination was his only film I found myself able to complete.

He and Jess Franco just seem to lack the technical proficiency and artistry in their Eurotrash smutt to be my jam.

But it's been over a decade since I tried. I hope they're still streaming somewhere.

"Technical proficiency", LOL

This reminds me that possibly the first thread I ever started at RT was during my Rollin marathon. I didn't know what the Horrorcram was yet, so I started a thread asking what others thought about him. I knew he had a following, but all I was seeing were vampires in Count Floyd costumes so I wondered if I was missing something. After about a month's worth I started to come around but I never did achieve "fan" status, other than Iron Rose.

I felt like Fascination had the occasional striking image and I can't fault his penchant for exploitatively injecting nudity and lesbianism into his films but it all felt particularly crude and sloppy to a level I couldn't over look.

At least his camera seemed to stay in focus, which is more than I can say for what I've seen from Franco.

Funny, the first time I saw Rollin I was in love.
Exactly my kind of bizarre, European, nightmarish trip, I didn't give much of a **** if any of them had stories.

I really like a couple of his movies, but mostly just like the idea of Rollins. Enough to watch any that I come across, even if some are not so good. I have a similar feeling about Andy Milligan movies. They are a bit of a chore to watch, but I like being witness to the fact they exist. It makes me happy

And I think I like Jess Franco even more than Rollins. Not when it gets too lost in the soft core scenes though.

Yes, I thought the scorpions in Vampyros Lesbos was a pretty effective touch.

And, as cheap as it is, I really got something out of A Virgin Among The Living Dead. Beyond the most awesome poster ever.

Grapes of Death is quite good, and Brigitte Lahaie's scene is pretty aces, but I think I prefer Rollin's style when applied to dreamy, sometimes vampire-centric narratives. I would put it below Fascination, The Living Dead Girl and The Night of the Hunted. The last one has the best performance from Lahaie, who's probably the best actress he ever worked with. (I understand he cast her in Grapes after working with her on one of his pornos; that side of his filmography does not seem easy to come across however.)



As for the Franco comparison, Rollin has a very "light" style but it seemed to me a lot more consistent than what I've seen of Franco. I don't know if I can really describe it beyond very superficial adjectives, but watching a few of his films in a row brought the feel of his style into focus and allowed me to see, if not necessarily how the style differed (which it didn't noticeably), but how it played differently off the subject matter of his movies.


There's a sense of purpose there that I didn't always get with the Franco's I've seen, but to be fair, I realize I've seen very little of the latter's work or even his key films. The looseness in his style, while frequently boring as **** to watch, does seem somewhat intentional (when compared to his earlier films like Succubus and The Diabolical Dr. Z, which are far from sloppy) and also a product of his production methods (aside from being insanely prolific, I understand he would frequently lose interest while making a film and start planning for the next before he finished). From my experience Franco works best when he has a strong lead presence who can force him to actually pay attention. Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed With Ecstasy are the best I've seen from him, and it's largely because of Soledad Miranda.


(Yes, I realize I have another Franco leading lady in my avatar, but I haven't seen the movie it's from I'm only wearing it because she looks cute in a hat. Judge not that ye not be judged.)


Stephen Thrower did two giant-ass books about Franco that I intend to read at some point, although I'm bad enough at getting through the books I already own and probably don't need new reading material right this moment.

Rollin is a much more sensual filmmaker than any of the other noted Eurotrash directors of the time, even though each of them have some favorites (Franco - Count Dracula; Margheriti - Castle of Blood; D'Amato - Devil's Wedding Night) they all seem to peeter out into crass apathy.


I would place Rollin more alongside Harry Kumel or Borowczyk on firmer art-film ground.

I need to see more Kumel. Daughters of Darkness is so good.



9 Sparkling Delphine Seyrigs out of 10