The Howl

Just viewed "The Howl" in its entirety on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater here in Hollywood tonight. Aptly named. Italian Freakout '70. Makes "Gas-s-s-s" (1970) look like a brief Sunday school production. Some very compelling scenes. But a bit of an endurance test. Avoid if you can't take watching a duck get its head lopped off in closeup (the lady behind me didn't like that too much). Lots of nudity, lots of talking, a fair amount of violence, and, being a late-60's/early-70's movie, lots of people running around outside. Zero story. Big on visuals, social commentary, and ideas. Surreal, somewhat disturbing, at times beautiful. They sure don't make 'em like this any more. Pretty interesting soundtrack, as well. The sound was REALLY good on the print I just viewed.

"2 Eggs; to break, broke, broken", the only English phrase spoken and theme song in Tinto Brass' "L'Urlo". What a film! The only available version of this film I could find had no subtitles. Either way it doesn't matter since it is very visual. When most people here the name Tinto Brass, right away they think of the horrid sleaze epic "Caligula", or some might name "Salon Kitty". If your lucky, you'll here of some who have seen his fun slapstick sex comedies from Italy like "Miranda" and "All Ladies Do it". Known mainly for his lighthearted sex romps with curvy women, Tinto Brass' earliest experimental films were much different. Heres a recipe for a film like "L'Urlo". Take some Fellini, add some Jodorowsky/Arrabal and a little table spoon of Godard for extra kick, stir and you got yourself "L'Urlo". One crazy psychedelic, surrealist anti-war art orgy. A bus is lit on fire! Hippies are chased by riot cops. There's stock footage of Vietnam and other wars with a machine gun showdown! S&M, slapstick sexuality, a man's pursuit of a beautiful lady... abstract art and nudity galore! Most memorable is a man in a gas mask jumping around with nude people while goose feather's fill the air! One amazing experimental protest movie! Rebel art at its finest! The films music and images are amazing! This is one film that screams for a DVD release, not to mention a soundtrack. The one song during the burning bus scene sounded like the punk band "Dead Kennedys", almost 10 years before they were around. This film is pure punk rock, before punk even existed. Who says that political, subversive films can't be fun? This ones a must see!

I am not a fan of some of the more random ¨art¨ produced in the 1960s and 1970s because it strikes me as the simple product of powerful drug effects on the brain. L´urlo is a case in point. Basically it´s a long string of mostly unrelated scenes depicting the breaking of taboos and flouting of all forms of accepted authority, convention, rules, morality, decency, etc. Psychedelic drugs have the effect of causing people to see things differently and to question what seemed to be obvious truths. But when art is produced as a simple re-creation or reflection of the ephemera released from the brain as a result of the ingestion of novel psychotropic chemicals, I find it often soulless, as in this case.

To begin with, I do not consider myself a fan of Italian sexploitationer Brass; however, having enjoyed a couple of his atypical earlier work – the Spaghetti Western YANKEE (1966) and the pop-art giallo DEADLY SWEET (1967) – I expected more of the same to be of comparable quality (for the record, I have three others still to check out from this vintage). Anyway, I was deeply disappointed by the film under review – especially after reading it was deemed surreal (in retrospect, it is much closer to the style of fellow Italian Federico Fellini or Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose brand of weird I particularly deplore, rather than that of my all-time favorite Luis Bunuel). Well, bizarre (and virtually plot less) it certainly is but, as to engaging, quite the opposite – making for an annoying and downright repellent experience! Just about its sole saving grace, in fact, is the hauntingly beautiful presence of leading lady Tina Aumont: she, a bolting bride, and popular Italian comic Gigi Proietti are the 'heroes' who go from one wild encounter to another – notably an orgy, a cannibal family and a city under siege (from what I can recall, since the film has already started to fade from my memory, within the space of just one week!); an inspired self-referential moment even has the central couple literally running into Jean-Louis Trintignant, protagonist of DEADLY SWEET!