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Post by dem bones on Aug 21, 2010 18:05:24 GMT
Ghosts .... Of The Civil Dead (1988) Intense. The IMDB list this one as 'Drama/ Horror' which is perhaps not the most accurate classification. What it certainly isn't is an easy film to watch. Set in the sweltering Australian desert and told in documentary style, John Hillcoat and Evan English's deadly grim Ghosts ... Of The Civil Dead charts the events leading to the imposition of 24 hour lock-down at the high-tech Central Industrial Maximum Security Prison following the brutal murders of a warden and at least three inmates. The staff's lot has become impossible since the prisoners in General Population were deprived of the heroin, violent porn and satellite TV that keeps them relatively docile. With the majority of the cons going through enforced cold turkey, the administration - intent on inciting a riot to illustrate the need for a new, even harsher institution to contain these monsters - next transfer in the psychopaths, the most spectacularly disturbed of whom, Maynard (Nick Cave), stokes the resentment between prisoners and staff with his round-the-clock howling. The powers that be eventually get what they wanted when a violent headcase, brooding over a strip search by riot cops, procures a blade and goes to work on a guard to the rapturous encouragement of his fellow cons. As far as i recall, we're not told what crime(s) new arrival, Wenzil (Dave Field) has been convicted of, but it's clear he's a first timer and totally out of his depth. The Central Industrial's resident tattooist, Robbins (convincingly played by Freddo Dierck, one of several ex-cons or former jailers in a cast which can boast only four professional actors), does his best to show him the ropes, advising him to serve his sentence junked out of his skull and get plenty of tattoos! Unfortunately, to pay Robbins for his services, Wenzil steals a radio belonging to a drug dealing heavy who, with the support of his equally imposing minder, beats him senseless. The new boy gets his permanent ink; the word 'c**t' scrawled across his forehead. By close of the film, and, if he wasn't one before, Wenzil is now a murderer, having smashed out the brains of the glamorous, glue sniffing transvestite Lilly (an incredibly degenerate performance by Dave Mason of the Reels. Mick Harvey of The Bad Seeds is in there somewhere too) on a toilet bowl. Despite the incident being caught on CCTV, Wenzil is released back into the community, in worse mental condition and a far greater menace to society than when he went inside. We last catch sight of him descending the escalator on the underground, eyeing up the woman in front .... Our other lead, Correctional Officer David Yale (Mike Bishop), is based on David Hale, a former US warder who witnessed first hand the grisly events at Marion Penitentiary on which Ghosts ... Of The Civil Dead is loosed based, the other major inspiration being Jack Henry Abbott's memoir, In the Belly of The Beast. In the film 'Yale' is a hard-nut (he'd need to be) but just about the closest thing we get to a sympathetic character this side of Robbins and the aging con, Glover. He realises the Administration are deliberating provoking the prisoners but can do nothing about it beyond making sure his men follow every safety precaution. Inevitably, it isn't enough. His face when Maynard is inflicted upon him reads like the end of the world, and he's not far wrong. Extracts from an interview with Hale are incorporated into the soundtrack album to good effect, more on which, possibly later. clips: Trailer. Nick Cave's extraordinary acting debut.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 31, 2010 18:32:14 GMT
Sounds better than the last prison-based movie I watched - Shadow: Dead Riot. Don't let the title and the presence of Tony Todd fool you, it really is dross. Insanitarium, on the other hand, was a barrel of laughs. S & M, mind games, and psycho bloodbaths. And nurses, for those who appreciate these things; in my case, Peter Stormare has such a naughty, naughty way with him...
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Post by dem bones on Sept 1, 2010 12:40:05 GMT
Insanitarium looks like it's a whole load of fun from this 6 minute teaser. Some extraordinary face-pulling action and I like how that guy wrenches the cat's head off. What's with Ms severe with the riding crop? We don't get to see enough of her in that clip and some of our more perverted members (not this one i hasten to add. i merely look after them: it's a kind of care in the community arrangement) need to know these things. Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld - Ghosts .... Of The Civil Dead (Mute, 1989) 1. The News [Voice: Michelle Babbit] 2. Introduction-A Prison in the Desert 3. I've Been a Prison Guard Since I Was 18 Years Old 4. I Was 16 When They Put Me in Prison 5. You're Danglin' Us Like a Bunch of Meat on a Hook 6. Pop Mix 7. We Were United Once 8. The Day of the Murders 9. Lilly's Theme (A Touch of Warmth) 10. Maynard Mix 11. What I'm Telling Is the Truth 12. Outro-The Free World 13. One Man Released So They Can Imprison the Rest of the World"A whole load of fun" is not really an accusation you could lob at Ghosts ... with any justification. Unrelentingly cheerless is nearer the mark. The Cave/ Harvey/ Bargeld soundtrack compliments it perfectly. A Prison in the Desert is the only track that has any lyrics and they only amount to "This Is The House That Jack Built - and he ain't never coming back", sung by longtime Birthday Party/ Bad Seeds collaborator Anita Lane in her patented ethereal tones. It's actually quite boppy in light of what's to come. Blixa Bargeld, the then-Bad Seeds lead guitarist who loathes lead guitar, gets to play his favoured ugly-beautiful soundscapes to winning effect, and there's a bizarre, utterly cheesy excursion into 'seventies MOR with Lily's Theme - i saw the film at the ICA with an audience of Cave fans: we'd been watching in perfect silence until that moment and then an outbreak of spontaneous hilarity. Straight away we cut to the psychotic, piano-key stabbing Maynard's Theme and every-one's shut up again.
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