Word: gothic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...punk-gothic horror movie about a gang of vicious hot-rodders who terrorize the few survivors of an atomic apocalypse, and who are tracked down and slaughtered by a draconian police force. As a story, the film makes for overwrought, even repellent melodrama. The movie has little feeling for, or interest in, the human idiosyncrasies of its characters; they are glorified stunt men, stock figures in stock cars. But Mad Max is not a "people picture." It is an action movie whose subject is machines, and the sophisticated killing ma chine man could become. The hardware is the star here...
Chiles is a quintessential case of Texas Gothic. He began his broadcast free-enterprise crusade after hearing about Network. Though he never saw the movie, he recognized a kindred spirit in Newscaster Howard Beale and adapted his crazed cry of "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!" The money behind Chiles' mouth ($1 million annually) comes from the Western Co. of North America, an oil well service and offshore drilling firm that he helped found in 1939 and still runs. Chiles, who worked as an oilfield roustabout before earning...
...will sit with the punky-elite remains to be seen, but the fact remains that this disc reveals levels of talent that even the most perceptive of critics would never have thought Lunch possessed. She fits together such divergent elements as no wave, big band torch singing, Nicoesque arch-gothic vignettes, and mid-'60s bubble gum rock as if they were somehow destined to coalesce. Without ever having indicated that there was anything up her sleeve--much less between her ears--Lunch has made a tremendous musical leap of faith that will force even the most diehard of critics...
...Flattery" with "Gloomy Sunday," an organ-laden bit of doom straight out of Nico's Desertshore. Pat Irwin distinguishes herself on oboe by floating chromatic leads over the top, more than similar in style to Roxy Music's Andy Mackay. Lunch whispers her way through the materials, setting up gothic imagery much better than one might have imagined. In fact, the complete song is quite effective, not unlike reading one's first Roald Dahl story. The true thrust of the album is found in this crosscurrent of styles. Lydia Lunch definitely draws on these particular resources...
...Beat the Devil, Freud and Reflections in a Golden Eye. This time, Huston has found material that was all but guaranteed to fuel the battiest recesses of his imagination. Wise Blood is based on Flannery O'Connor's extraordinary first novel, which infused the conventions of Southern gothic fiction with fiery Catholicism and surrealistic wit. Huston takes to O'Connor's hothouse style like a gambler to a royal flush. The inevitable results are the very essence of weird...