RockRock Rock

Empiricism is a philosophical belief that states your knowledge of the world is based on your experiences, particularly your sensory experiences. According to empiricists, our learning is based on our observations and perception; knowledge is not possible without experience.

Tune In Tuesday: Grave Robbers (1988)

Nora Mae Edwards had always dreamed that a handsome and wealthy man would offer to marry her, but she never expected to find love while working the night shift at a sleazy diner. However, when John Henry Cox proposes to her within moments of their meeting, Nora can't help but say yes. Whisked off to John's home town of Newbury to live in his family's mansion, Nora discovers that her new husband's profession is that of an undertaker, and that the local death toll is disproportionately high. As the joys of marital bliss soon give way to increasingly violent nightmares, she begins to suspect that her seemingly gentle husband may be harboring a dark secret, especially when she learns that she's far from the first 'Mrs. Cox,' but even more terrifyingly, that while her husband desires her body, he'd prefer it cold and  dead..

*There is A Spanish Movie called Grave Robbers from 1989, Which I will review at some point.*

Though made in the late 80s, this movie with its dreamlike atmosphere, deliberate pace, post acid flash philosophical narration, and themes of a woman entering into a strange marriage for the benefit of bettering her situation, it feels much more like 1971. I Would recommend this with let's scare Jessica to death, it's poster and time period do not represent its art movie haunting quality, and a truly bizzare and out of place american graffiti like ending. Worth seeing.

Can't Wait for the new Toxic Avenger. Doing a full rewatch of everything Toxie on Tromanow.

More Canadian Lowbudget oddities

METAL MESSIAH:

An anti-rock oddity that revels in rock and roll.

BULLIES:

80s canadain deliverance. 

FREAKSHOW:

Creepshow on 1/8th the budget.

MIDNIGHT MATINEE:

Kind of like popcorn (1991) if it was really boring.

Down The Tubi's: The Stay Awake and Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy

Welcome to A new series: Down The Tubi's: Random finds on the free ad supported channel Tubi that are worth your time.

A science fiction enthusiast discovers that he has the ability to make whatever he thinks come true when he discovers a group of aliens he had imagined on a remote island.

Eastern European Scifi Madness. A great sense of fun and spectacle. What a midnight movie is and should be. Great effects, a movie to ponder over a good hit of weed. Laser eyes and creatures from other planets killing the bourgeois for pure enjoyment,  beneath the surface some psychonaut philosophy. 

Students at St. Mary's School for Girls find their fund-raising stunt jeopardized by the appearance of a demon.

A Hippie Ripper executed in 1969 returns as a demon to slaughter Reagan era teens at a girls school in Europe. If you like late 80s slashers this will check your boxes. Over and under acting, a destined for the video store aura, minimal gore, but lots of atmosphere and goofy but fun monster effects. Gloriously bad dubbing.. Aerobics and some demonic pov camera add to the sleazy charm. Don't overthink this one,  just dig it.

Canada lowbudget Double Feature

This one has all the glorious trappings of a mind fried 1980s campus comedy,  wild radio station vs a crusty dean. It's knowingly camp Almost to the point of vaudeville,  but something about Canadian productions always show there love for the runts of the litter. Also a mind control plot, with Heavy Metal as the great Liberator!

 Good pairing w class of nuke em high or the under achievers 

Late 50s JD, Canada style, the difference is the bikers are not the bad guys, they are framed by the bad guys. Another instance of Canada relating to the outsider,  an American movie would scoff at anticonformism, this one celebrates it (as much as a 1959 teen picture could)

Tune In Tuesday: Horror House On Highway Five

A mysterious killer, wearing a Nixon mask, terrorizes and murders a young couple. A professor assigns his students a project investigating the strange events connected to a possibly dead Nazi scientist, Dr. Fredrick Bartholomew. The doctor's assistant kidnaps students, holding them hostage and torturing them. Meanwhile, Nixon stalks the night!

This one's out of print but Worth finding.  The director has roots in punk rock and it shows. I Would have liked to make a movie like this, slasher elements of a killer in a Nixon mask mashed up with two weirdo brothers obsessed with V2 rockets, a assignment from a teacher that leads to kidnapping, a general sense of the absurd ala a ionesco play, but with a grindhouse flick filter. Worth watching several times. Commentary is a good time, director seems like a cool older guy who would tell you stories about cool punk clubs

 Of the early 80s.. 

Tune In Tuesday: Downtown '81

Legendary painter, graffiti artist, poet and musician Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was only 19 years old when he played the lead in DOWNTOWN 81, a striking "lost" film that chronicles the explosive early-'80s Manhattan art and music scene. Completed and theatrically released two decades later, it's the story of a charismatic artist who attempts to sell a painting amidst the rappers, junkies, strippers, models and art-world matriarchs of a pre-Giuliani Lower East Side. This vividly entertaining slice of life is also a fabulous showcase for the music of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Tuxedomoon, The Plastics, DNA, The Lounge Lizards, and Basquiat's own band, Gray. Shot on location, DOWNTOWN 81 not only captures one of the most important and provocative artists of the 20th-century as he is poised for worldwide fame, but is also a vivid snapshot of a New York City that no longer exists.

Watching  Downtown 81, as the great artist Basquiat's dream voiceovers season scenes of him walking the early 80s NYC streets, we know the end is nigh, that the city as mecca for REAL artists was dying a quick death, but what a beautiful corpse this film is. To see these avant artists like DNA play there skronk exhilarates, but the bad taste of Art and the life of the Artist becoming  a commodity for those who can afford it is disheartening.  Maybe we can dream of a new wasteland the Have's, for once, won't wanna snatch away. Then those that live to create can go home again.  In the meantime watch this DVD, it was as much a reality as it was a dream.

Tune In Tuesday: Skateboard

Skateboard was the first feature film to depict the height of the 70s skateboard craze. Many refer to it as the Bad News Bears of the sport. A Hollywood agent finds himself in debt to a powerful bookie. To make a fast buck, he creates a team of exceptionally talented skateboarders and enters them in a downhill race. If they win, they will get $20,000. It’s star studded cast includes Alan Garfield, 70s teen idol Leif Garrett, skateboarding legend Tony Alva, and iconic female freestyler and member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame Ellen O’Neal.

Ambitious opening scene from inside a tube as righteous socal dudes skate inside. The one sport I would have jumped on as a kid if music didn't get there 1st. I Always loved the vibe. We got the standard Schlub (the wonderful Alan Garfield) has a debt and his only chance at a clean slate is some kids for some reason.  Lots of great footage of 70s kids skateboarding. That could be a new ASMR. Def worth it more for its unintentional time capsule elements than anything else. Also Leif Garrett.

Advice From A Dead Father

"Tell me A story, dad" said Tyson. I thought for a moment. "Do you wanna hear a story about grandpa talking to me in my dream?" I said. "A Dream isn't real" Tyson said. "I know buddy, but it's just pretend." 

"Start story" Tyson said.

It was a lot like that early riddle of steel scene in the 1982 Conan The Barabarian movie. Conan's burly dad talking to a little Conan,  except it was Grandpa and me. Your grandpa had a way of dispelling wisdom with such a coolness and casualness, something so opposed from my neuroses and wiry energy. The compulsion to overtalk. Your Grandpa knew when to leave things unsaid..

Me and Grandpa sit atop a snowy mountain  cliff that is also somehow the roof of a tenement building in East Ethertown. He is sipping at a light beer from its can. His face is covered in a clean but full dark brown beard,  his hair thinning but slicked back. His eyes pierce with wisdom, but the rest of his face betrays a life of hard breaks. He looks over to me with that steely seriousness that would shoot heated blasts of anxiety into my chest as a child. "You're doing good, don't.  Fuck. It. Up." Then he turns back to look out at the Desolation in the sky in front of us. The words sink into my heart. He's right.  He usually was. In my mind I was ready to reply with something I had read out of the book of existentialism, or some pop psychology, that I felt through a deep soul searching and skimming from the top of various eastern beliefs that I was self-sabotaging myself, whereas he had self sacrificed. But it was a physical reaction to a moment for him,  it wasn't  deeply thought. It was just what you did when you had kids.

"I guess that's how I feel about you sometimes buddy," I said to Tyson.  "Sometimes I don't know how to connect with you, so I just go along with whatever you want to do. But you won't grow that way. You need to be lead by me as well. But like Motorcycle boy says, if you lead people, you gotta have somewhere to take them. That's true of parents and kids as well, I guess."

I knew early on I was gonna make art as Long as I could. It was never a choice,  it was a compulsion,  A need to be satisfied. Me and Grandpa kind of got into it over that in my teens, because he was a talented artist as a kid, you should of seen him draw,  he even won an art award in school.But he gave that up early on when he heard artists starve. I relegated myself early on to be working all my life and never even considered making art as a living, but I sought out ways to maximize the time and attention I could give it. But with you Buds, you can do anything. I know how much you love science and the arrangement of time. You can make a whole life from that. The world is what you make of it. In his own way, grandpa was trying to tell me that."

"Dad?", Tyson says to me, his head resting on my arm as the television hums cartoons slowly in the background, snug under our blankets.  "Continue Story"..

-Lou Toad Jan, 2024.