To all of our readers in the States, please accept a Happy Thanksgiving from all of the cats and humans at the Shattered Lens!
And happy birthday to the Nice One!
To all of our readers in the States, please accept a Happy Thanksgiving from all of the cats and humans at the Shattered Lens!
And happy birthday to the Nice One!
Now that you’ve watched Blood Freak, be sure to take part in another great Thanksgiving tradition and spare 18 minutes to learn about the day that Arlo Guthrie was arrested for littering and how that heinous crime later effected his draft status.
On its 50th anniversary, enjoy Alice’s Restaurant Massacree and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Lisa gave you the poster, now here’s the movie! Happy Turkey Day!
Before you eat all that Thanksgiving turkey, save some room for a real MOVIE turkey about a man who becomes a hopeless pothead, eats some tainted turkey, and winds up turning into a giant turkey craving the blood of stoners! Sound bizarre? You bet your giblets it is! Hosted by YouTube’s “Al Omega”, here’s 1972’s BLOOD FREAK! Gobble, gobble!:
Today’s artwork of the day has a Thanksgiving theme!
Now, it may not be obvious from looking at the poster above but 1972’s Blood Freak is a film that is uniquely suited for today’s holiday. What’s the film about? Well, in short, it’s about a kinda beefy dumb guy who gets a job working at a turkey farm. He spends all of his time surrounded by turkeys. Well, except for the time that he spends smoking dope!
That’s right — marijuana! The weed with roots in Hell!
He takes a few hits off a joint and, when next he awakes, he discovers that he has been transformed into a blood-thirsty monster that has the body of a man and the head of a turkey!
No, this movie is not a comedy. At least not intentionally. However, it is a classic. And so is the poster! Needless to say, the woman on the poster never appears in the film but the artist, whoever he was, did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the turkey monster.
The only unfortunate thing about the poster is that it doesn’t include a picture of the narrator. That’s right, Blood Freak has a narrator. He pops up randomly through the film, sitting behind a desk and smoking a cigarette. At one point, his narration is interrupted by a sudden coughing fit.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Happy birthday, Erin Nicole!
(And if you want to read more about Blood Freak, check out my review here!)
Happy Birthday, Erin! If it weren’t for your Artwork of the Day posts, then these posts probably wouldn’t exist. I can’t thank you enough.
Okay, so why did I pick out this particular music video?
Speaking of Kenny Ortega, he has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments over the decades.
There was some justice on that fifth one. Based on his music video credits on mvdbase, it appears that after Rock Me Tonite, almost nobody wanted to work with him. That wouldn’t matter too much though since he was also working on films like St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), and Dirty Dancing (1987), to name a few, before also going on to direct Newsies (1992) for Disney.
As for The Tubes, they are a San Francisco band that has important connections to the formation of MTV.
In the early days of MTV, one of the things they were in desperate need of was cable subscribers. One of the most successful ways they spread cable was through the infamous “I Want My MTV” slogan. That goes back to the funny $1 story with Mick Jagger. Another way they got cable subscribers was by proving the network was having an effect on the record industry rather than just being a curiosity. This is where The Tubes play a big part.
John Sykes and Tom Freston were sent by Bob Pittman to Tulsa, Oklahoma because that was where they had the highest concentration of subscribers according to Freston. One night Pittman got a call from them with some news. They noticed that a record store in the area was sold out of The Tubes. Since they were the only one playing The Tubes, according to Pittman, they knew it had to be them. Pittman said that was the first evidence they had that they were causing records to be sold.
The music video for their song Prime Time was played on the first day of MTV. They also had a few more made in 1981 before having a big hit with She’s A Beauty. It was in heavy rotation on the network. It’s a prime example of the kind of music The Tubes made. They were known for things like What Do You Want From Life? (consumerism/media), Talk To Ya Later (sex/politics/media), and the song White Punks On Dope, which is about their own fans.
That’s the one where their lead singer would come out as the character named Quay-Lewd wearing ridiculously high platform heels while being dressed like some combination between a classical musician and a punk. In the performances I have seen on YouTube, they would have him get pinned down by a falling stack of amps during the instrumental portion. You can see a reference to that when “Beauty” and the kid plow through a stack of amps.
Chuck, my new concert correspondent, has this to say about seeing them live (you can also read it in the comments below):
There are very few bands I haven’t seen in concert at least once. The Tubes in concert were right at the top of my “best” list. They were absolutely incredible. If you didn’t love them when it started, you certainly did when it ended. They weren’t really concerts, but life changing, spectacular events.
At one of their concerts in Santa Monica, the ensemble on stage during their last song of the night included a full choir, three or four high school cheerleader squads, the UCLA drum corps and marching band, around 70 jugglers, dancers, acrobats, various musicians, circus animals, (including an elephant) The Tubes themselves, and gawd knows what else. Everyone in the audience was jumping on their seats, which isn’t easy in folding theater seats. We were all hoarse from singing along (screaming along?) during “WPOD”
… and all this was AFTER most of the audience had the crap scared out of them during a way too real “terrorist takeover” lead-in to “Funky Revolution.” Something no band would dare attempt nowadays.
The kid was played by the late Alexis Arquette. It was her first acting job at the age of 13.
Enjoy! Also, Happy Thanksgiving!