All posts by Louis Fowler

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Sacred Spirit (2021)

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Between the unsettling visions of the great beyond and an unwavering devotion to depicting a dark, sad reality, The Sacred Spirit rides the line between unexplained phenomena and drastic sobriety. And not in the way you might think.

You see, Spirit is about the innocent layers of a fractured soul. Eventually, it gets to a rotten core that slashes and burns everything around. It’s a reverse ugly-duckling scenario that still shakes me after the credits rolled.

José (Nacho Fernández) is a simple guy who works at a small-time tapas bar with quirky regulars and personable clientele. After closing, he’s part of a UFO cult that believes spacemen are coming back — and very soon. While the community wrestles with finding a missing girl — José’s niece, mind you — he comes off like a somewhat dopey, but harmless crackpot.

Meanwhile, lamenting the loss of their beloved leader, the cult members trek to his grave on the town outskirts to pay their respects. There, José drops a child’s pink-bunny backpack into the river. While the police investigate, José takes his other niece, the missing girl’s twin, to an “astral plane” discussion, telling her stories about a UFO coming to take them away that evening to live in paradise.

It doesn’t happen, but what does is far worse.

At first, Spirit is about crazy UFO culture and their followers’ belief systems. But as the New Age group Sacred Spirit’s “Yeha-Noha” plays over the end credits, it’s methodically razed the whole area to ash in beauty and shame, purification and purification.

Chema García Ibarra’s bait-and-switch direction is close to the crazed realism depicted in Jose’s UFO books, with the Sphinx and other Egypt-centric items he imagines in his life. If you go into this wanting a flying saucer debate among the backroom crazies, sorry, it’s not here. The Sacred Spirit is a calm, almost mumblecore depiction of analog beliefs in a broken world. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)

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In the early ’90s on the most basic of cable, I saw Withnail and I, Bruce Robinson’s acerbic dramatic comedy that’s basically an acid-laced coming-of-age tale, except the protagonists are failed actors already-of-age in their late 20s.

Along with The Young Ones, Time Bandits and a supple diet of Benny Hill, this film gave me the basic groundings of British comedy, one I fell in love with over its “God Save the Queen” pathos that embrace the rigid anarchy of the UK punk subculture I wished I were a part of.

Growing up in Blooming Grove, Texas, I reached for the entertainment section of each Friday’s Dallas Morning News. It ran small ads for an indie, esoteric and outré theater called the Inwood, which showed titles so outrageous and provocative, it made me wish I had cool parents with a sense of pop culture but, you know, whatever. The ad for How to Get Ahead in Advertising always stuck with me, wondering about this monstrous movie from the guy behind Withnail.

This week, these two life-influencing greats came together in a way I wasn’t expecting: I finally got to screen Advertising. It’s a semi-monstrous monster film — as much as brash, witty and brazen indies could be then — about slick ad exec Bagley (Richard E. Grant) and the somewhat sleazy ways his marketing campaigns become successful.

He’s working on a pimple cream campaign with no luck — until a small pimple fortuitously grows on his neck. The zit develops eyes, a mouth and, eventually, a speaking voice. Of course, it makes Bagley’s life hell. Like David Cronenberg’s The Brood, but far more stiff-upper-lipped with a starched white collar, the living canker sore engulfs Bagley and his whole persona. “Boils,” he says, “are beautiful.”

Like many things in 1980s Britain, How to Get Ahead is a rancid, devious take on the politics of Thatcher (which I was far removed from then and now) and the dark policies of coke-sniffing, ink-suffering capitalism that smothers every man, woman and child in a drowning pool of commercials.

Grant is more nuanced than usual as the staid Bagley, then becomes more manic as the film goes on, looking like Rik Mayall’s older, calmer brother. With machine-gun barbs, his performance is so cutting, it’s better than Withnail and I. I’m glad I finally saw it.

Today, the Inwood is still a movie theater, but mainstream, with screenings of A Minecraft Movie and other non-indie films. I guess How to Get Ahead in Advertising‘s selling-out prophecy came through in spades. That, I can truly say, is the worst. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Space Is the Place (1974)

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Sun Ra’s Space is the Place is a cautionary, evolutionary and revolutionary tale of interplanetary spiritualism, interstellar revitalization and mnemonic congruence.

If you know what any of that means, you are in store for the low-budget, mind-bending delights this long-lost Afrofuturist film offers. In other words, if Rudy Ray Moore became an avant-garde musician and wanted to preach the world of his gospel, you still don’t even know what you’re in for.

A cult jazz icon, Sun Ra and his Arkestra put his science-fiction testament on true celluloid, one that the public wasn’t ready to see. It sat on the shelf for two years and even then was barely released. I guess the money men tried to dismantle, disentangle and destroy the very word.

More of an irreligious fever dream at the end of the world, a chant begins as a dildo-onic starship sails though the cosmos. The ship’s denizens including Sun Ra in a thrifty but stylish futurist/neo-Egyptian garb. He has a monologue about the impending doom of the planet Earth, then teleports his body and soul through the interstellar plane on musical vibrations. At least that’s what we are told …

Unexpectedly, we are in Chicago 1943, where Sun Ra creates freeform avant-garde jazz with a bevy of beautiful strippers. As the world rattles and smoke emanates through his fingers, we meet the villain of this piece, the pimpish Overseer (Ray Johnson, The Human Tornado).

In the desert, the two play a game of cards to decide the fate of the world. Sun Ra’s wobbly starship comes to Earth. With the help of his Arkestra, he gives the world a musical message at a concert the next day.

Meanwhile, the Overseer snaps a guy out of a coma, then proceeds to inseminate the attending nurses. That’s okay, because Sun Ra had formed a cosmic employment office, complete with a revolving door of hopefuls who, sadly, do not like the pay.

With the youths debating whether Sun Ra is a sell-out, a couple of whiteys kidnap him and try to brainwash him with stereotypical big-band music. The doubting teens find him and get him off the stage to “30 million galaxies” on tap for his message. 

It ends with the world burning in a globe-melting fire, for real.

To be fair, those are just some of the highlights from a film that has a million of them. While Sun Ra is a remarkable musician — and quite the character — he retains a god-like veneer that seems like its riding the line between celebrated messiah and apoplectic cult leader.

Good thing, because no matter what his ethereal bag is, it’s a truly complex, utterly bemudded and completely mesmerizing body of soulful work. And, as far as the movie goes, to see Sun Ra and his Egyptian birdmen driving around town in a stylish convertible as unsuspecting passersby look … well, that must been amazing to view and, years later, watch on television.

If anything, I want to get into Sun Ra’s selected discography. If anyone have strong recommendations, either for physical media or metaphysical waves of sound vibrations, let me know … —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Action

El Mariachi Narcotraficante (1999)

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In the wake of Robert Rodriguez’s lo-fi sleeper El Mariachi and the bigger-budgeted hit Desperado, the Mexican movie industry was somewhat reinvigorated to make more films in a similar vein, with much cheaper effects, more exploitive set pieces and far bloodier product.

One of these forgotten flick is the mostly shoddy El Mariachi Narcotraficante (or The Drug-Trafficking Mariachi) in 1999. As to be expected, it’s really not that great, but better than a lot of straight-to-video dreck back in the day.

Over the pre-millennium Videonics title cards, a young man (the middle-aged Sebastian Ligarde) and his pretty pathetic mariachi band are trying to play for a shitty club owner who, in a fit of rage, unloads on him and makes a run for it.

The mariachi’s home life isn’t much better, as his wife is kind of a bitch and he dotes on his mom who, melodramatically, has heart problems as she cries on her bed. Man, does this guy need a change of scenery or what?

Meanwhile, a slick “narco” character makes an official drop, presumably over large quantities of drugs. Making a deal, they are ambushed by the husky, plainclothes cop (the husky, plainclothes Jorge Rey) over oil barrels with his .357, squibs-a-popping.

Eventually, the Narco and the Mariachi cross paths — apparently, they are old friends — and, in a torrent of bullets, they go on the run and combine forces. Initially, they are successful. But after the Narco is gunned down and his mom is kidnapped, the Mariachi goes on a mission with, of all weapons, simulated swordplay.

After all parties are summarily executed, the surviving Mariachi has a good time with laughs and love with his mom as a freeze frame ends the whole movie.

With these narco-set 1990-something crime films taking the place of the sexy comedies of the 1980s, the macho façade that most of the protagonists project are here — and more than erect, with their steel guns (and flaccid dialogue) taking up most of the screen.

Sure, the direction is more “push a button” than anything else, with the film’s moneymaking intentions right there on its mariachi-ed sleeve. To be fair, it tries to be something different than a typical narco film, even if it doesn’t work much of the time.

In other words, unlike like Rodriguez’s flicks, El Mariachi Narcotraficante was a bad action movie with entertainingly good intentions. So, that’s something, right? —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Rock ’n’ Roll High School Forever (1991)

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A movie like Rock ’n’ Roll High School — one of my favorites and with an awesome Ramones soundtrack — should have a riff-blowing sequel. Should have.

See, when I noticed Rock ’n’ Roll School High Forever at my video store in the early ’90s, I was quite ecstatic and, of course, I rented it. And watched it.

And became visibly sick.

My preconceived notions rubbed out like a GPC cigarette on the wet pavement, I took the tape from the VCR — being neither kind nor rewinding, natch — and dumped it back into the shop’s return box, thoroughly disgusted at what I’d seen.

Thirty-plus years later, the sequel is one of the bonus features on the original film’s 45th anniversary edition in 4K Ultra HD (my 10th time to buy the movie). I popped in the disc and, like a fetid stream of A/V puke, once again dropped out of Rock ’n’ Roll School High Forever.

It starts out somewhat promising, with the re-named Ronald Reagan High School and various teenagers plotting a PG-13 rock ’n’ roll insurrection. But as once-popular star Corey Feldman turns directly to the camera and sneers, “Are you ready to rock and roll?,” I guess we’re not ready at all.

Instead, in his standard and strange Michael Jackson mimicry, Corey overflows the school toilets and tears off the skirt of a comely student, all as the title theme by The Pursuit of Happiness (whoever they are) warbles on the soundtrack. Ha-ha?

The plot, as it stands, is about Corey and his “band,” The Eradicators, trying to play their substandard covers of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” at the school dance. Meanwhile, the school gets a new vice principal in Miss Togar Dr. Vadar, reprised (?) by Mary Woronov. To be sure, she rules with an iron fist — and a robotic hand on her left.

With needless help from the apparent heir of illustrious scrounger Eaglebauer (no relation to Clint Howard) and the Spirit of Rock ’n’ Roll (Mojo Nixon in a low-budget fantasy sequence), Corey and bad company crash the prom. Utilizing dated sequences from the first movie, they take Togar Vadar down and burn down the school.

By the time the credits roll, it’s apparent that rock, finally, is dead.

With the combined failed efforts of director Deborah Brock (Slumber Party Massacre II), whichever distribution outfit Roger Corman had at the time and the sheer ugliness straight-to-video movies at the time were going for, Forever remains was an unmitigated disasterpiece. With Feldman on the soundtrack, the deceased Ramones are defiantly spinning in their graves. Gabba gabba nay. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.