Radio On - Christopher Petit - 1979

I like to simplify Chris Petit’s debut down to the ‘high concept’ pitch of “Get Carter as envisioned by an early 70’s Wim Wenders”. But this of course would be selling this classic understated post punk road movie short.

The film follows Robert (David Beames), a late night factory DJ in London, who after we have followed him listlessly attending to his daily routine for a while, is informed that his brother has died mysteriously in Bristol. Robert therefore decides to take a road trip to Bristol to deal with any matters that may need clearing up.

Rather than the embrace of the road as a site of freedom and mobility as seen in the American road movie, (even the existentialist malaise ridden classic that is Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop (1971) had a free spirit and the excitement of the never ending highway). Radio On is a distinctly British take on the genre, this is a place where the road will soon come to an end, the endless horizons replaced with concrete wastelands (echoes of J.G. Ballard are numerous and clearly intentional) and utilitarian motorways. Even when our protagonist reaches the countryside he faces an unwelcoming hibernal bleakness still stuck sometime in the mid 1950’s. this is On the Road as written by Orwell instead of Kerouac.

The car as well as being symbolic of the freedom of the open road can just as easily be turned inward into an examination of alienation, the car as an autonomous unit, a metallic lump of detachment, who needs to communicate anymore when we have our own private space in which to hide even when travelling?

And so this struggle to communicate becomes the films central metaphor. The film’s opening scenes present a dystopian London crumbling under the weight of government mismanagement. Our protagonist attending to his job as a factory DJ, alone in his booth playing music to uninterested factory workers, non-descript in their identical white overalls. It’s in image of alienation as potent as anything seen in Antonioni’s work.

The theme continues throughout, our protagonist making diminutive attempts to connect with other equally displaced characters on his journey. An Army deserter, a German woman looking for her daughter and even a young Sting as an obsessive Eddie Cochran fan living out of a caravan in a desolate petrol station.

The central narrative of the dead brother in the end proves to be somewhat of an enigmatic macguffin, an incidental event to allow the narrative to propel forwards. Though the narrative appears to matter little if at all to Petit, who instead concentrates the film’s energies on a veneration of the image and the soundtrack.

His mise-en-scene of a pre-Thatcherite Britain in post industrial decline (filmed in startling high contrast by Wenders regular cinematographer of the time, Martin Schafer) is backed by a Teutonic futurist soundtrack of Kraftwerk and Berlin era Bowie. Even that ode to youthful rebellion that is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is presented in a disjointed and fractured way by virtue of its Devo cover version, draining away any hint of youthful abandonment.

Petit doesn’t appear to select the songs for their suitability within the image, if anything it seems to be the other way round. The images are an excuse for the songs, which are often presented in their full versions. For example check out the audacity of him having Robert sit virtually motionless in a pub for three minutes just so we can hear all of Wreckless Eric’s touching punk by way of 50’s teen bop romancer that is “Whole Wide World” on the jukebox. Hell, even the film’s title is taken from a Modern Lovers lyric.

Overall then, a magnificent film for the worshiper of the image as god, aesthetically this is an exceptional film and about as close to a real ‘road movie’ as British cinema can get. It will surely find favour with fans of Antonioni, Two Lane Blacktop and early Wenders.

Blood For Dracula - Paul Morrissey - 1974

Whilst Paul Morrissey made Blood for Dracula back to back with Flesh for Frankenstein (using virtually the same cast), rather than the loopy histrionics, 3D visual effects and tongue in cheek Hammer satire of the Shelly bastardisation, here he attempts a considerably more restrained, almost ‘art-house’ attempt at the Stoker legend.

Udo Kier reins himself in considerably after his frenzied Dr. Frankenstein. Here he appears as an anaemic Dracula, the vampire of strung out heroin chic rather than charismatic sexual predator. From the film’s opening onwards he is painted as a tragic character, all melancholy and malaise, a character tired of his centuries of increasingly desperate existence. We watch as he uses make-up to disguise his aging features, methodically applying lipstick and dye to his hair in front of a mirror in which he can’t even see the results. The film humorously chooses to play fast and loose with Stoker’s rule set though, the usual cross/daylight cliches just serve as minor irritants in Morrissey’s rendition.

The film centres on Dracula’s need to leave his native Romania where he has exhausted the local populace of remaining “wirgins”. He travels with his assistant to Italy where it is presumed local catholic dogma will mean a surplus of virginal women; they manage to convince the desperate faded aristocracy that is the Di Fiore family to take them in. Unfortunately for Dracula, some of the four supposedly virginal daughters of the family have been attending secret liaisons with the family groundskeeper, an aspirant Marxist revolutionary played by Morrissey standard and Greek adonis for the pop art generation that is Joe Dallesandro.

The film riffs repeatedly on the fading of traditional class boundaries and religion, it’s no accident that the film is set during the decadent years of the 1920’s as societal structures morphed and the potential virtues of communism looked like they might just possibly change the world.

This still being a Morrissey/Kier film though, the film does not aim for anything too profound and refuses to take itself seriously. Hilarity is often provided purely by virtue of the ridiculous variety of accents on show, throwing the balance of the film wildly off kilter. Whilst the immaculate sets provoke images of thespian dramatics, we are provided with Kier and his thickly accented German, Dallesandro who despite being cast as a European peasant Marxist still plays the role as a swaggering 42nd street hustler. Dracula’s assistant Anton (Arno Juerging) plays like a cousin to Joseph Goebbels. Lady Di Fiore (Maxime McKendry) comes across as Margaret Thatcher’s slightly more elegant sister, whilst Il Marchese DI Fiore is played by Neo-Realism legend Vittorio Di Sica (yes the same one who directed The Bicycle Thieves) of all people, and he gamely fights a losing battle with the English language, as do most of the daughters (Also look out for a humorous cameo from Roman Polanski, who again proves his comedy chops).

Like the previous Flesh for Frankenstein, most of the intentional humour is of the blackest possible variety. Dracula’s recurring vomiting of ‘tainted’ blood set to the strains of a classical score, and the wild and delirious grand guignol of the closing five minutes of the film being typical of the contorted sense of humour.

Overall it’s hard to call the film a classic, its cult status is tarnished by its lack of frequent re-watchability, and as funny as the stilted first take style of acting is, this does tend to make the film drag on for longer than it should. Morrissey also can’t help but let the film descend into occasional bouts of Jess Franco style euro soft-core, with Dallesandro’s character’s penchant for casual rape as the answer to the vampire problem also being somewhat... well ... questionable...

Certainly though the film is worth at least one trip, it’s not without redeeming features and a back to back evening with... yes you guessed it Flesh for Frankenstein, will provide a night of twisted and perversely entertaining takes on the Universal classics.