Friday, April 1, 2022

The Hippy Hippy Fake

Danger: Diabolik (Valmont's GoGo Pad scene)
(Mario Bava, 1968)

 
Didn't need films like Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's overrated Performance (1970), to always know that the flower children of the sixties were nothing more than a bunch of drugged-up dossers. A promising British gangster movie takes a turn for the worse once Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenburg start hoggin' up precious screen time and wasting it with pseudo-intellectual babble. Since half the writing credit goes to a glorified Rolling Stones' groupie, I'm guessing Anita is the one to blame for making a hash of this film.

Praise Mario Bava then for successfully bringing to life the Italian fumetti, Danger: Diabolik (1968) with technicolour confetti, in what's arguably one of the best comic book movies hardly anyone ever mentions. Our man Diabolik has it all: Cool whips? Check! A dope underground crib? Hell yes! A fly honey? You betcha! Greatest achievement for me though, is the scene from Valmont's gogo club. A dreamy stoner nirvana that looks awesome, accompanied by an underrated Morricone jam. I find that scene way more enticing than any of the Woodstock Festival shite. That rare instance where I wouldn't have minded being a hippie, other than that time Sid James and the gang went undercover and sabotaged that hippie rave over in the adjacent field in Carry On Camping (1969).

4 comments:

  1. Man, Morricone had styles upon styles upon styles.

    Did you know that Harry Dean Stanton's agent tried to convince Alex Cox to forget Harry and hire Mick Jagger for Repo Man instead? Imagine little Mick mincing his way around L.A with Emilio Estevez riding shotgun.

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  2. Didn't know about that, but I knew Cox cast Vonetta McGee in Repo Man, simply because she was in The Great Silence, though.

    I think Herzog gave Jagger the heave-ho from Fitzcarraldo, since he was cut from the film.

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    1. This is what Cox said:

      All seemed to be going properly and professionally, so I paid a courtesy visit to Harry's agent at the most famous Hollywood agency. This was an eye opener. I spent 20 minutes chatting to the agent about what a great actor Harry was, and the wonderful work he'd done. The agent listened and then said, ‘Harry Dean's okay, but he's past it. You need someone younger, more up-and-coming. I also represent Mick Jagger. Why don't you offer Mick the part?’

      This gobsmacked me. First, Jagger was completely wrong for the role of a grizzled, burned-out L.A repo man. And second, the agent was out of line. We'd offered Harry the part, and here his agent was trying to do him out of the job. It was immoral, surely a breach of contract, and stupid. I replied that Harry's age, experience, and nationality made him the best choice, made my excuses and left.

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  3. Hope Cox told Stanton, that's a shady agent. Stanton should have dropped his agent A.S.A.P if he hadn't already.

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