Above: Barrie contemplating his imminent takeover of the universe? No, it's Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon serials.
TRASH AND TERROR STRIKES BACK!
The negative of Murnau's Nosferatu was burned. Todd Browning's Freaks was banned for thirty years. His promoters disguised the films that made Paul Naschy the most widely shown film maker of Spain's Franco years. The survival and the potency of the trash film represent a phenomenon in itself. Some determined movie watchers never see anything else.
They walk the streets among us!
Barrie Pattison, author of "The Seal of Dracula" and contributor to specialist magazines, including Fatal Visions and Shock Express, has spent an unhealthy amount of time peering at cinema of the extreme, in flea pits and Schlock festivals round the world. In an attempt to raise the level of sensitivity among us all, he is presenting his TRASH COMPACTOR event at Paddington Town Hall's Chauvel Cinematheque, on Saturday November the 17th at 12 noon, as a lead-in to the screening of his unreleased feature THE ZOMBIE BRIGADE FROM LIZARD GULLY showing at 6:30 the following Monday, November the 19th.
Above: Still from Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Trash Compactor shuffles German Expressionism, Randolph Scott, Flash Gordon, Orson Welles, Santo the Man in the Mask of Silver and other rich and strange experiences from down the years and across the planet, in original and often rare film prints - some the only copies in the hemisphere.
Still from Santo Vs the Mummies of Guanajuato.
The Zombie Brigade (from Lizard Gully) was just about the last feature film to be made under the tax concessions, which terrified the powerful Australian
Film Funding bureaucracy by showing that more films were being made on tax breaks - and they could always turn out like The Zombie Brigade from Lizard Gully.
Above: Barrie gets a hand directing Zombie Brigade.
This one surfaced to meet the demand for trashy entertainment that had been generated by the spread of multiplexes. It continues to be seen round the globe, though it has never had a Sydney release.
The Zombie Brigade was the first film of star John Moore Moore (Pitch Black, The X Files) who became the leading young black Australian actor of his generation. Hero Moore squires Kihm Lam through a battle with the undead of three wars, precipitated by setting up a land deal that sells off the site of a Vietnam memorial for Japanese developer Adam A. Wong's cartoon character theme park. Can the survivors shelter in their Leagues Club during the long night the Risen War Dead march through the Australian one time home, which has turned its back on the values that they died defending? Thrill to a Town Torn by Terror!
ENQUIRIES Phone 9211 6514
Left: Still from Zombie Brigade
