An unmitigated, preposterous and unashamed load of trash is on offer at this year’s film festival – and I can already smell that popcorn.
Cinephiles who like lashings of cult with their culture can flock to the Monument for a nine-hour ”exploitation flick” suckathon featuring six of the worst films ever made.
These so-called psychotronic marvels are icons of Sixties and Seventies cinematic kitsch. Sometimes shot in as little as two days on ludicrously low budgets, exploitation films were usually screened as double-feature bills at independent drive-ins and grindhouse theatres which couldn’t afford the major studio productions of the mainstream circuit.
They exploited virtually any subject that was remotely filmable – slapping catchy titles on to the generic, high camp melodramas their predominantly young audiences favoured. Schlock, in other words.
Grahamstown’s late-night hall of shame boasts siren of the scream screen Ingrid Pitt (star of The Vampire Lovers and The House that Dripped Blood), who plays the blood-curdling she-vamp in the Hammer studio classic Countess Dracula (1971).
Following the then burgeoning fad for female horror stars is The Revenge of the Blood Beast (1965) and They Call Her One-Eye (1972).
Then there’s Hell’s Belles, aka Girl in the Leather Suit (1969) and The Devil’s Rain (1975) – which marks John Travolta’s cinematic debut and stars Ernest Borgnine and the Church of Satan’s Anton la Vay. Jack Hill’s The Big Doll House (1971), which set the precedent for a spate of ”jailbird” flicks (and Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown), is the only ”blaxploitation” pic in the group. Bring on the B-grade …
But they’re hardly to be scoffed at, especially since actors such as Jack Nicholson and directors like Francis Ford Coppola cut their fake fangs in the field.
At the time, these flicks were scorned by the ”serious” critics, who fawned over Frederico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard’s rejection of Hollywood conventions.
Now, however, they’re not only firmly canonised in the annals of pop culture, they’ve been feverishly enlisted by an academy set on storming the barriers between high and mass culture.
These days Doris Wishborn, one of the few female auteurs working in the genre, and that black-and-white master of sex and violence, Russ Meyer, are swamped by autograph-hunters during lecture tours.
But exactly how have the ”bizarre, sanguine, soiled and depraved”, as the programme pitches them, made their way to Grahamstown with such post-modern irreverence?
For film festival director Trevor Steele Taylor, the distinction between high art and popular culture is a flimsy one. ”I see no difference between these films and those of the so-called art-house circuit. A film that has subtitles is not a work of art,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
Besides being one of the original founders of Cape Town’s Labia Theatre, Steele Taylor has worked in the industry in London, did a stint on the Durban Film Festival and co-ran The Weekly Mail Film Festival for many years. He takes over the national arts festival and the Cape Town International Film Festival from the late, dedicated James Polley, who died in January.
In addition to an extensive, interesting programme featuring visiting directors, producers and speakers, audiences can hit The Chinatown Beat – a tribute to Hong Kong action cinema and all the great trash movies.
While there aren’t any Meyer classics, nor anything from the prolific Roger Corman, the six films chosen ”are extremely rare”, explains Steele Taylor. ”Some were saved from old cinemas which were being torn down, or were bought from distributors who had no use for them.”
Thankfully the festival’s adventurous new line-up – no doubt dedicated to the lost, lonely and vicious among us – shows an appreciation for the real worth of the hopelessly bad.