Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

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The story of the movie being "lost" is really curious. The way it doesn't add up and the way the cinematographer talks about it like it was never lost at all (of course, he had a print of it and could have produced it at any time for Wishman) is really interesting to me. What is that situation about? Why would allegedly spend 8 years of her life cobbling together a bizarre, totally unworkable "film" from bits and pieces, re-writes and new shoots, rather than just cut her losses and walk away, if the film was lost (to her at least), or why didn't she literally just ask the cinematographer if he had another print, which he did?
What the **** is the real story here?
Sounds like he had a copy on tape but the original negative was damaged.*


https://www.filmtrap.com/watch-the-l...-to-dismember/



Victim of The Night
Sounds like he had a copy on tape but the original negative was damaged.*


https://www.filmtrap.com/watch-the-l...-to-dismember/
ah, excellent, thank you

I had read this before in my research on the film and it still seems to bring into question whether or not the original was ever actually lost or destroyed.



A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER: OR RATHER, YOU ARE NOT DREAMING, YOU ARE DYING






Let’s be clear. The effect A Night to Dismember has on its audience should not qualify it for the lofty status of a cinematic dream. While it might taffy-pull all sense of time and proportion out of shape and its story may hover around a few recognizable figures and shapes, as we are dragged face first through the collage of fragments the rest of the film has splintered into, please, let’s not talk about the somnambulistic state it only mimics out of necessity. At no point does its logic show any evidence of having some delicious fever that is going to break. And as you inevitably become lost in it, or angry at it, or begin kicking at the sheets in hopes of pulling yourself from its discombobulating influence, it's important to be aware none of this confusion was by design. Or was even the desired effect.

Instead, the distracting and eerie noise it ultimately will kick up in your mind, is actually something much more likely to keep you wide awake and not dreaming at all. It is the frantic scrambling of something simply struggling to exist. The kind of thing you might find half dead in the garden and keep in a box next to your bed. Even though it is only a fragment of what it once was, and what remains is only barely clinging to its moist bones--shivering, wounded--what we are hearing is nothing but this pitiful specimen scratching away through the night. Somehow, still alive. Hardly in any state to transport you anywhere but exactly where you already are, sitting, staring, watching this thing gasp for breath and trying to figure out who is worse off. You, for bearing witness to its wretched company, or it, because it just won’t die already.

So instead of a dream, let’s instead think of it as a race towards death. You will sense its cries for a mercy killing within moments of it beginning. They will be the same cries that director Doris Wishman paid no heed to as she simply would not let it go peacefully, and for four long years, continued to stitch back together, using whatever pieces she could find that survived the disaster that destroyed the rest of the original print. What we are seeing is all that is left, and what these four years of Frankensteining amounted to. One scene after another still can’t help but unfurl in random bursts of narrative, each coaxed to the surface of the camera's eye by the endless stream of narration that hopes to explain exactly why each image follows the next. Only then, once seen long enough to confound, can they then retreat quietly back to the oblivion from where they came.

As a result, not all of these moments will be remembered. Some, in fact, will never be heard from again and we will be left wondering if we simply imagined them. It is why when trying to describe what happens over the course of A Night to Dismember, we can only recall its wandering images (a woman wearing a wig, lying dead on the floor), and a voice explaining them (“Susan fell on an axe and she was dead”). But rarely will we know exactly how they relate to any of the other moments that surround them. Our conscious mind won’t permit it.

But, no, this is not a dream.

One might then wonder, why watch such a thing as this? Or why watch it many times over the course of a lifetime, paying little heed to the sound of our own body failing as we sit and stare at it. It can’t possibly be the allure of stock footage lightning strikes. Or the sound of flute solos as danger nears. Or decapitations, which are less acts of violence, than the sight of heads simply resigning themselves from the bodies they sit atop of with a shrug. As characters run screaming down hallways that simply will not end, and a blank white wall unfurls into an entire galaxy to be chased along, it will be while we are caught in this infinity loop, we will find ourselves granted the time we need to consider that maybe it isn’t simply what is on screen that is part of the allure. Maybe there is a dream outside of the film for ourselves to become lost in. Maybe the productions weird and sketchy backstory is silently playing a part.

In trying to push ahead towards the end of this movie, it definitely helps to try and imagine exactly what it was that happened to those mysteriously missing reels of film. To dwell on how what is playing in front of us is all that could be rescued from that lengendary Parisian asylum fire, or fished out from the bile of a whale’s belly, or whatever dank sort of place we can imagine such a film crawling into to allow itself to be forgotten by existence. It gives everything a particular aura. A lack of permanence. That what we are seeing simply should never have been in the first place and is always teetering on the verge of vanishing forever.

But placing the film into such an existential context can only go so far. At what point should we pull back a little and start considering our own decomposition while we watch it? Should we ignore the death rattle of our evening as we put it on, yet again, slowly destroying another weekend over the course of its hour and six minute running time? Maybe, we wonder, it would have been better if every morsel of it had just been digested and shat out towards the bottom of the ocean. Incinerated along with all of the other shrieking maniacs. Been allowed to die when it was its time, and not bring us along with it.

Except, if I really am awake, and this movie truly does exist, shouldn’t we instead stand up and applaud, all by ourselves, before the nurses arrive to take it away from us forever?





Hey now, In Rock's my favorite, but as far as I'm concerned, every single record that DP released from '68-to-'75 was at least good, if not great (yes, even Who Do We Think We Are?). I mean, Burn, baby!:


I like a few of their other records. MachineHead is good, it's got some solid singles and Lazy. And I remember Fireball being alright. I barely remember what I thought of Who Do We Think We Are (Woman from Tokyo is on that, right, errrr, not terrible I guess). I even had a compilation of their earliest incarnations and they had some fun goofy **** from those years as well (Neil Diamond covers, I also remember their song April, with the whole of the London Symphonic Orchestra accompanying, just to make it extra stupid). But I don't get excited but much of it. In Rock though, that is like an essential record for me.



Victim of The Night
A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER: OR RATHER, YOU ARE NOT DREAMING, YOU ARE DYING






Let’s be clear. The effect A Night to Dismember has on its audience should not qualify it for the lofty status of a cinematic dream. While it might taffy-pull all sense of time and proportion out of shape and its story may hover around a few recognizable figures and shapes, as we are dragged face first through the collage of fragments the rest of the film has splintered into, please, let’s not talk about the somnambulistic state it only mimics out of necessity. At no point does its logic show any evidence of having some delicious fever that is going to break. And as you inevitably become lost in it, or angry at it, or begin kicking at the sheets in hopes of pulling yourself from its discombobulating influence, it's important to be aware none of this confusion was by design. Or was even the desired effect.

Instead, the distracting and eerie noise it ultimately will kick up in your mind, is actually something much more likely to keep you wide awake and not dreaming at all. It is the frantic scrambling of something simply struggling to exist. The kind of thing you might find half dead in the garden and keep in a box next to your bed. Even though it is only a fragment of what it once was, and what remains is only barely clinging to its moist bones--shivering, wounded--what we are hearing is nothing but this pitiful specimen scratching away through the night. Somehow, still alive. Hardly in any state to transport you anywhere but exactly where you already are, sitting, staring, watching this thing gasp for breath and trying to figure out who is worse off. You, for bearing witness to its wretched company, or it, because it just won’t die already.

So instead of a dream, let’s instead think of it as a race towards death. You will sense its cries for a mercy killing within moments of it beginning. They will be the same cries that director Doris Wishman paid no heed to as she simply would not let it go peacefully, and for four long years, continued to stitch back together, using whatever pieces she could find that survived the disaster that destroyed the rest of the original print. What we are seeing is all that is left, and what these four years of Frankensteining amounted to. One scene after another still can’t help but unfurl in random bursts of narrative, each coaxed to the surface of the camera's eye by the endless stream of narration that hopes to explain exactly why each image follows the next. Only then, once seen long enough to confound, can they then retreat quietly back to the oblivion from where they came.

As a result, not all of these moments will be remembered. Some, in fact, will never be heard from again and we will be left wondering if we simply imagined them. It is why when trying to describe what happens over the course of A Night to Dismember, we can only recall its wandering images (a woman wearing a wig, lying dead on the floor), and a voice explaining them (“Susan fell on an axe and she was dead”). But rarely will we know exactly how they relate to any of the other moments that surround them. Our conscious mind won’t permit it.

But, no, this is not a dream.

One might then wonder, why watch such a thing as this? Or why watch it many times over the course of a lifetime, paying little heed to the sound of our own body failing as we sit and stare at it. It can’t possibly be the allure of stock footage lightning strikes. Or the sound of flute solos as danger nears. Or decapitations, which are less acts of violence, than the sight of heads simply resigning themselves from the bodies they sit atop of with a shrug. As characters run screaming down hallways that simply will not end, and a blank white wall unfurls into an entire galaxy to be chased along, it will be while we are caught in this infinity loop, we will find ourselves granted the time we need to consider that maybe it isn’t simply what is on screen that is part of the allure. Maybe there is a dream outside of the film for ourselves to become lost in. Maybe the productions weird and sketchy backstory is silently playing a part.

In trying to push ahead towards the end of this movie, it definitely helps to try and imagine exactly what it was that happened to those mysteriously missing reels of film. To dwell on how what is playing in front of us is all that could be rescued from that lengendary Parisian asylum fire, or fished out from the bile of a whale’s belly, or whatever dank sort of place we can imagine such a film crawling into to allow itself to be forgotten by existence. It gives everything a particular aura. A lack of permanence. That what we are seeing simply should never have been in the first place and is always teetering on the verge of vanishing forever.

But placing the film into such an existential context can only go so far. At what point should we pull back a little and start considering our own decomposition while we watch it? Should we ignore the death rattle of our evening as we put it on, yet again, slowly destroying another weekend over the course of its hour and six minute running time? Maybe, we wonder, it would have been better if every morsel of it had just been digested and shat out towards the bottom of the ocean. Incinerated along with all of the other shrieking maniacs. Been allowed to die when it was its time, and not bring us along with it.

Except, if I really am awake, and this movie truly does exist, shouldn’t we instead stand up and applaud, all by ourselves, before the nurses arrive to take it away from us forever?


You are a funny person.



I like a few of their other records. MachineHead is good, it's got some solid singles and Lazy. And I remember Fireball being alright. I barely remember what I thought of Who Do We Think We Are (Woman from Tokyo is on that, right, errrr, not terrible I guess). I even had a compilation of their earliest incarnations and they had some fun goofy **** from those years as well (Neil Diamond covers, I also remember their song April, with the whole of the London Symphonic Orchestra accompanying, just to make it extra stupid). But I don't get excited but much of it. In Rock though, that is like an essential record for me.
Yeah, Fireball's really good, and you can hear the influence of that double bass drum on the title track all over other British bands later in the decade, like with Judas Priest's "Exciter" or Motörhead's "Overkill", although the album itself gets lost somewhere in the mid-section of their discography when I rank it, not because it was underwhelming at all, but because they did so many great records, it's hard to keep track of 'em all. Who Do We Think We Are is one of their weakest from their first run of records, if not THE weakest, but it's still pretty good, and "Rat Bat Blue"'s a good tune on it, and as for their other records that haven't been mentioned yet, I'd recommend The Book of Taliesyn and their self-titled for a softer, more psychedelic, late 60's shade of Purple, as well as the funkier stylings of Stormbringer (which featured a pre-White Snake David Coverdale on vocals!):









I mean, it's definitely icky, the forced-striptease murder and the weird thing with the little girl make it pretty nasty and the main character really is just unpleasant but... I guess I've seen so many bad movies now, ya know?
*
It's mix of sex and violence is pretty standard unpleasantness. It's more the use of his relationship with the child, which at times almost seems to be used to generate sympathy for him, or show his more gentle side, even as his feelings become increasingly troublesome. Thats where most of the ick was coming from for me, even if that wasn't the intention of the director.


Like I've said, I don't think it is a particularly good movie, even grading on a curve, but it made a small impression on me nonetheless



Victim of The Night
*
It's mix of sex and violence is pretty standard unpleasantness. It's more the use of his relationship with the child, which at times almost seems to be used to generate sympathy for him, or show his more gentle side, even as his feelings become increasingly troublesome. Thats where most of the ick was coming from for me, even if that wasn't the intention of the director.


Like I've said, I don't think it is a particularly good movie, even grading on a curve, but it made a small impression on me nonetheless
Likewise.



*
It's mix of sex and violence is pretty standard unpleasantness. It's more the use of his relationship with the child, which at times almost seems to be used to generate sympathy for him, or show his more gentle side, even as his feelings become increasingly troublesome. Thats where most of the ick was coming from for me, even if that wasn't the intention of the director.


Like I've said, I don't think it is a particularly good movie, even grading on a curve, but it made a small impression on me nonetheless
I'll give you the same recommendations I gave to @Wooley in regards to I Dismember Mama. Two sort of similar films that are, in my opinion, both better and more icky; Mosquito the Rapist and The Killer of Dolls.
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My watchlist has been properly updated with I Dismember Mama and A Night to Dismember.
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No mention of "Hush"?

No.

No no no. No no no. No no no.



Every Beatle movie I own is a poor substitute for owning Yellow Submarine. Which I don't. And which is clearly the cause of all my current unhappiness


**** Help!



No mention of "Hush"?

No.

No no no. No no no. No no no.

I never heard Hush until way into my Deep Purple listening. I think the first time was in some kind of Sarah Michelle Geller horror movie. So at that time in my life, with Speed King obviously being their signature song as far as I could tell, it was second class.



And it still is. But at least now I'll admit it's better than their cover of Kentucky Woman. Which should have probably been obvious years ago, but wasn't, because as usual Neil Diamond is standing directly in the way of my better sense.



"As long as the future remembers me as clearly as they will one day remember Paul Simon", Neil Diamond hopes, wonders, stares at his reflection in the wishing well.


"Not if I have anything to do with it", a winged demon with the head of Bob Dylan laughs hysterically as he scratches the face of Neil Diamond beyond recognition. "You will all be a footnote to me, hahahahhahahahahahhah!"


*Paul Simon enters, strumming a guitar, willing to take requests*


THE VOID: (screaming) GO AWAY PAUL SIMON, TO WHENCE WE WILL NEVER GATHER YOUR VISAGE AGAIN!


*Paul Simon vanishes from the Earth*


*Bob Dylan enters stage left, has forgotten to bring his guitar with him, sobs uncontrollably*


In the distance, there is the sounds of locusts, low, murmuring, quiet yet impossible to ignore.


*lights dim*



AN ODE TO APOLOGIZING TO HELP!
I think that in due time, when it's finally released, that Peter Jackson's new Let It Be film will have me apologizing for liking the original 1970 cut. It's definitely dour, but I don't buy the recent narrative that it wasn't a fundamentally accurate portrait of the sore feelings of the time. It's just so condensed in sourness that it's easy to point to exceptions during the sessions where things weren't quite so bad. The narrative is already changing to one of director Michaeel Lindsey-Hogg deliberately choosing ugly and dispirited moments out of some kind of spite. I think the counter narrative will be at least as misleading. The fact remains that, within months, the band was kaput and on the verge of a bitter decade-long legal dissolution. That didn't come out of nowhere. And the fact remains that Harrison quit the band, on camera, in the middle of sessions, or that Lennon on multiple occasions, including in front of visiting TV interviewers, puked on camera from heroin. There is a spiritual truth in Lindsey-Hogg's cut, and obviously he had uglier scenes to include if he wanted to but chose not to.


Most fans have booted copies of the original verssion, but it isn't likely to ever see a legal release anytime soon. In a way, it's like the book, The Love You Make, the first and most accurate tell-all, but a book that McCartney hated and has long been out of print, replaced by more sanctified renditions.