CAIN’S FILM Production: UK, 1969 Director: Jamie Wadhawan Category: Documentary Biographical documentary on Scottish beat/junkie writer Alexander Trocchi, author of Cain’s Book, which deals with drug addiction. The film details how the book was banned for its sex and drug references, and features commentary from William S. Burroughs, who described Trocchi’s Continue Reading
Drugs
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM Production: USA, 1955 Director: Otto Preminger Category: Drug Addiction From the drug novel by Nelson Algren, the first big-budget Hollywood treatment of heroin addiction came in the wake of numerous cheap exploitation movies on a similar subject. As such, the film actually violated Industry Continue Reading
I CANTI DI MALDOROR
I CANTI DI MALDOROR (“The Songs Of Maldoror”) Production: Italy, 1977 Director: Alberto Cavallone Category: Madness/Drugs Inspired by, but not really based on, Lautréamont’s classic proto-Surrealist anti-novel Les Chants De Maldoror, Cavallone’s film shows the decline of a movie director (Gianni Garko), obsessed with a female photographer, who commits suicide after excessive drug-use. Continue Reading
AMERICAN DREAMER
AMERICAN DREAMER Production: USA, 1971 Director: L.M. Kit Carson & Lawrence Schiller Category: Documentary An amazing documentary on actor/director Dennis Hopper, shot at the time he was editing his oblique masterwork, The Last Movie, and was generally wasted on drugs and alcohol. Hopper is filmed at his home in Taos, New Continue Reading
THE LAST MOVIE
THE LAST MOVIE Production: USA, 1970-71 Director: Dennis Hopper Category: Drugs/Experimental Posted by The Purple Gas
THE HOOKED GENERATION
THE HOOKED GENERATION Production: USA, 1968 Director: William Grefé Category: Drugs/Crime Posted by The Purple Gas
THRILLER – EN GRYM FILM
THRILLER – EN GRYM FILM (“Thriller – A Cruel Film”) Production: Sweden, 1973 Director: Bo Arne Vibenius Category: Drugs/Sex/Violence Bo Arne Vibenius’s ultra-sleazy, ultra-violent exploitation movie must be among the most extreme of its kind ever to emerge from Sweden. Christina Lindberg suffers with an almost serene passivity as Frigga, Continue Reading
BRUJO
BRUJO (“Shaman”) Production: Mexico, 1978 Director: Georges Payrastre & Claudine Viallon Category: Documentary/Witchcraft A powerful 55-minute documentary on shamanism amongst the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and among two groups of Mayan Indians in southern Mexico and Guatemala. Sequences show a shaman exorcising a spell from a woman by a Continue Reading
ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO
ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO Production: USA, 1969 Director: Robet Thom Re-release title: Cult Of The Damned Category: Freak Scene Psychedelic trash about a rock star and his sidekicks; he rapes a fat girl and seduces the rest of her family (of both genders), before killing two of them. It bombed, so Continue Reading
ONE-WAY TICKET TO HELL
ONE-WAY TICKET TO HELL Production: USA, 1955 Director: Bamlet L. Price Jr. Category: Juvenile Delinquency/Drugs Posted by The Purple Gas