____________
Sean Landers Various, 2017-2018
‘In the beginning was the word and the word got fleshed out. That would be the opening line in Sean Landers’s version of his Bible, were he to write one. It would be a kind of secular new testimony because, for him, language is the medium and the message. When I say, the word gets “fleshed out,” I mean it literally. Both his written paintings and [sic], his quasi-fictional, quasi-factual Bildungsroman, are overflowing with the pleasures and the anxieties of the flesh. He presents himself as two characters, one who is a writing self and the other a fictive self, and together they tell the story of Sean Landers. He says the fictive persona not only makes things more interesting, but it also provides him “with a fig leaf to hide behind.” There are occasions when that cover falls off and he ends up being full-on leafless. His early videos and language paintings are delightfully outrageous acts of exposure. Were he to make one, his philosophical declaration would be Discoperio ergo sum. The translation goes something like, “I uncover and lay bare; therefore I am.”’

 

____________
Jillian Mayer You’ll Be Okay, 2014
‘You’ll Be Okay is a 4 minute looping animation of the title’s reassuring text written against a background of white clouds in a blue sky, composed to appear as if a skywriting plane had created the text. Set to time-lapsed clouds, the words of the message fade away over several minutes before slowly being re-written in a continuous pre-programmed loop of reassurance.’

 

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Ronnie Van Hout Various, 2016-2017
‘It’s performance, so I was also interested in the stage. I was into the punk rock music scene when I was younger, which worked with the idea of taking away the stage. A lot of punk gigs were just on the floor, with the band on the same level as the audience, in a non-hierarchical situation. I’m interested in that in relationship to the performer’s position. In stand-up there’s an intimacy that’s created through the performance, which is different to theatre. You have to laugh. It’s not funny and it’s not a joke until someone laughs at it. My high school yearbook quote was: “The difference between people and animals is stand-up comedians.”’

YOU!, 2016

I Know Everything, 2017

 

____________
Paul Thek You Cannot Resist My Wave, 1979
Ballpoint on paper, 11 1/2 x 9 1/4 x 5/8”

 

____________
Cécile Babiole Copies conformes, 2017
une oeuvre réalisée grâce à une imprimante 3D

 

____________
Catherine Élise Müller Martian Language, 1897
‘Catherine Élise Müller (1861-1929) was a Swiss woman based in Geneva who, as a spiritualist medium, became known as “Hélène Smith.” In 1891, she attended her first séance, experienced hallucinations, and discovered her paranormal ability. Between 1895 and 1900, Théodore Flournoy, a psychology professor at the University of Geneva, observed Smith’s automatic writing, trances, and claims about channeling the spirit of Marie Antoinette and being psychically transported to Mars. Smith “wrote” in hitherto unknown languages, including, she said, those of Mars and Uranus.’

 

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Tim Rollins and K.O.S. Darkwater (after W.E.B. DuBois), 2013
‘Rollins and K.O.S. begin with important literary and musical classics as the inspiration for their artwork, which is typically produced directly on the pages of books, cut out and laid in a grid on canvas. This is their signature style, which was developed early on in their collaboration. To create Darkwater (after W.E.B. Du Bois), Rollins introduced Dubois’ seminal text to the IS 218 students during a weeklong workshop. By dipping 72 pages from a first edition print of the book into black and gold watercolor, the students responded to issues discussed in ‘Darkwater’ – relating to race, class and gender – through the process of art making.’

 

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Adam Pendleton Various, 2016-2019
‘Adam Pendleton is a conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video and performance. The artist’s work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the re-contextualization of history through appropriated imagery to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, as the artist has explained, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist.”’

 

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Matt Donovan & Hallie Siegel Landscape, 2012
Mixed media installation 16′ x 10′ x 10′

 

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CB Hoyo Buy Art Not Drugs, 2018
‘CB Hoyo is a self-taught Cuban artist, who lives and works in Europe. He is also very active on social media, starting conversations with his followers about art, about the issues which he addresses, about very awkward and personal subjects.’

 

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Robert Lyn Nelson Beatles Tribute, 2020
‘Years of painting and creating works has helped Robert to be able to create a vision in his mind and transfer it to canvas without the use of studies in most of his works. Robert’s Beatles Tribute Series, which he started in 2008, allows him to explore and discover different avenues of surrealism. Interpreting the songs and lyrics of the music of The Beatles like “Hey Jude” to create visual art has taken him on a surrealistic journey….expanding his artistic range, which is how you do an art study.’

 

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Nathan Carter TRAVELING LANGUAGE MACHINE WITH #3 FREQUENCY DISRUPTOR AND DISINFORMATION NUMBERS STATION, 2007
‘Carter matter-of-factly declares, “This is a radar reflector,” [Gestures wildly] and this [Gestures wildly] is a traveling radio station.” He’s a guy who imagines the letters of a text message floating in a jumble up to bounce off a satellite, then back down to fill the recipient’s phone.’

 

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Lawrence Weiner As far as the eye can see, 1998-2015
‘The artist may construct the piece. The piece may be fabricated. The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.’ – Lawrence Weiner

 

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Gabriel Kuri Various, 2003-2006
‘Gabriel Kuri is renowned for sculptures and collages made from the remains of everyday purchases and found objects. Kuri reconfigures meaning from tickets and receipts, retail supplies and slabs of marble, stones and other incongruous materials of related to consumption. Both his objects and images are often created from the residue of monetary exchanges and the consumed goods that the artist collects on a daily basis.’

 

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Glenn Ligon Various, 1992-1995
‘Glenn Ligon’s early love of literature evolved into a fascination with the political and social uses of language, which informs much of his work. Ligon’s paintings and prints contemplate issues about the formation and perception of identity and race. Ligon is perhaps best known for paintings that feature carefully selected phrases or sentences taken from literary sources such as Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Mary Shelley, and Jean Genet. Ligon’s manipulations of the text call into question the difference between seeing and reading, and the reliability of the ways in which people see and read each other.’

 

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Claire Fontaine Various, 2008-2021
‘Claire Fontaine is not just a conspicuously feminine name for an artists’ collaboration. “She” cannot be mistaken for a woman, because she is already something else: a brand of French notebook, more ready-made than fictional character. Since 2004, Fontaine has, with her Paris-based “assistants,” Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, produced textual and object-based inquiries into the legacies of the left, most explicitly May ’68 and Italian movements of the 1970s, in an almost forensic search for the secret freedoms that might be cultivated under capitalism, a search whose tactics they refer to as “human strike”—radical secession from much that comprises contemporary subjecthood (work, consumption, and so-called individuality).’

Please come back, 2008

Evil/Good, 2017

Sputiamo su Hegel: La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale brickbat (2015)

Dior Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 Show

 

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Louis Wain I Am Happy Because Everyone Loves Me, 1928
chalk and coloured ink on paper

 

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Jesse Howard Various, 1958 – 1966
‘He was named one of the ten most important folk artists in America before his death, his works hang in the Smithsonian and around the world, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes described him as the “Grandma Moses of print culture;” yet, few in his hometown of Fulton would remember Jesse Howard as anything but an eccentric crank. As the years have passed, Howard is more renowned for his art outside of Fulton than within it, which might just be appropriate because it was Howard’s uneasy relationship with this community that inspired his best work.’

 

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Emily Dickinson One sister have I in the House, 1859
‘What was Emily thinking when she “wrote” this? Was it the start of a poem? What was she feeling?’

 

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Ken Lum Time. And Again., 2021
‘Ken Lum is known for text-based photographs that challenge notions of cultural identity and multiculturalism by exploring interactions of language, kitsch, image, and narrative. All of the ideas explored by Lum are defining characteristics for shareable memes online.’

 

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Joseph Kosuth TITLED (ART AS IDEA AS IDEA), 1967
photographs mounted on sintra PVC

 

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Marcel Broodthaers La Pluie, 1969
‘La Pluie (The Rain) was filmed in the garden of the rue de la Pépinière during the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section XIXe siècle period. The film shows Marcel Broodthaers trying to write while the rain constantly washes away the ink. In the final scene, during which the artist gives up and drops his pen, the inscription “Projet pour un texte” (Project for a text) appears.’

 

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Rana Hamadeh Can You Pull In an Actor With a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue With a Rope? 2015-2016
‘Rana Hamadeh’s “Can You Pull In An Actor With A Fishhook Or Tie Down His Tongue With A Rope?” is an eight-channel sound play that departs from a claim that regards justice as the extent to which one has access to the dramatic means of representation – the measure to which one can access theatre. The performance takes the Shi’ite ceremony of Ashura, alongside the political, military and legal actualisations of this ritual within the Lebanese and Syrian contexts, as a field for commentary and research. Ashura is a theatrical religious ceremony that re-stages the battle of Karbala during which Imam Al Hussein (626–80 AD), the grandson of Prophet Mohammad and an allegorical reference to the figure of the oppressed, was killed. Through a series of rites and orations over the course of ten days each year, Ashura mourners recount the battle’s events, weep and inflict wounds onto their bodies. Fluctuating between the theatrical and the actual witnessing of the crime, Ashura mourners constitute themselves as testimonial subjects while embodying the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed at once. Treating Ashura as a dramaturgical framework that underlies the entire politics of oppression in Lebanon and Syria, Hamadeh’s performance decodes, reorders and re-choreographs the ceremony’s theatrical components, proposing with that a possible language through which the history of the region’s violence can be re-read. The work considers whether it is possible to script Justice – to rehearse, narrate, weep, chant, choreograph, or even spectate justice.’

 

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Lee Ming-Wei 100 Days with Lily, 1995
‘100 Days with Lily was created at a time when I was grieving the death of my maternal grandmother. I chose to live with it 24/7 for the following 100 days, as a form of ritual grieving for her. From the day I planted the lily bulb, through its germination, sprouting, blossoming, fading and death, I experienced at close hand a full cycle of its life and, by extension, my grandmother’s and my own. I randomly chose a moment in each day to document what I was doing with the lily present.

‘In the final presentation, text was overlaid onto five of the photographs to create images showing both various stages of lily’s life and my activities at various moments: day 1, 10:23, planting lily; day 2, 06:34, sleeping with lily; day 3, 12:05, eating with lily; day 4, 09:14, walking with lily; day 5, 07:12, meditating with lily. Lily died on day 79, at which point I postponed the exhumation and carried the now dormant lily bulb in my hands for the remaining 21 days as I ate, walked, slept, gardened, bicycled, shopped, cooked, read, and contemplated, until I had lived with the lily for the full 100 days.’

 

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Konrad Smolenski The End of Radio, 2012
‘The End of Radio is an installation of two hundred microphones, which emit two hundred field recordings of people talking on the street.’

 

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Rene Ricard Various, 1989-1997
‘Known as “poem paintings”, Ricard merged imagery and text onto antique prints or old photographs that he would find in second-hand stores – layering his words over the original surface or covering it entirely.’

 

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Dennis Oppenheim Theme for a Major Hit, 1974
Aluminum, felt, plastic, wood, electric motor, spotlight, and other materials

 

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Mel Bochner Untitled, 2015
‘For more than 45 years Mel Bochner has explored the intersections of linguistic and visual representation. As one of the pioneers of conceptual art during the ‘60s, Bochner developed a body of work that causes us to read and see simultaneously, to “think” as we look. Mel Bochner has taken an unusual turn toward painterly expressiveness during the past two decades.’

 

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Art & Language Now They Are I, 2015
144 parts, ink and paint on paper

 

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Shilpa Gupta Words come from Ears, 2018
Motion flapboard

 

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Barbara Brandel Sampler (Jacket), 1995
dyed cotton, silk, and wool

 

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Frances Stark Osservate, leggete con me, 2012
3-channel digital video for projection, black and white with sound

 

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Matt Siber Various, 2003-2006
‘Matt Siber’s work is characterized by the intervention on urban photographs where the focus is on traffic signs, advertising posters on the roads, or the most influential capitalist consumerism brands. Using Photoshop, he eliminates the support structures of these objects so that the logos are left floating. Using this action, the artist removes all visual distractions to only pay attention to the text or the logo.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Tomk, With a capital ‘T’ no less! Any part that this place might have played is a source of immense pride, maestro. I hope your head rests so lightly on your neck it feels like a whiffle ball today. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Tough choice, no question there. Yes, tickets to-and-fro LA are secured. Leave here on the 17th, return here on November 11th. And those will be the blog vacation dates too, of course. Thank you, love. That soundtrack switch would absolutely and entirely recreate my relationship to my upstairs’ temporary neighbors. I would even bake them a cake or something. Love successfully bribing me with Mexican food to return his affections, G. ** Misanthrope, You must be right, but an LLC was no tripping of the light fantastic. Yeah, I don’t care about Harry Styles. *ducks* You must really like him because most people I know say his acting abilities make Madonna seem like Isabelle Huppert. *ducks* Oh, yeah, man, you and me, we just get studlier by the minute. I’m always really surprised that the US still celebrates Columbus Day. Happy to hear you’re putting writing at the fore, natch. Ah, but your straight out of the gate fart reference might make Amphetamine Sulphate and Infinity Land Press drool. ** David Ehrenstein, That I did not know. How curious. Thank you! ** Tea, Well, while they were briefly or sort of briefly imprisoned in the meat locker they would have heard the sound of a tape recording of me and my friends screaming into an old reel-to reel tape recorder’s microphone that had been slowed down to make it sound not like just a bunch of kids screaming intone microphone if that counts as music? Yay, you’re a ‘Grounded’ guy too! What were the odds? I love so many of theirs. ‘Starlings in the Slipstream’ pops into my head. I did read, I think, that the new Swans is the last Swans, but, you know, Michael did that before and it didn’t stick. No new fetish stuff from me either, I don’t think. Alas. My day was kind of inflated in a funny way. I hope your day’s only limits are scat, blood, and children. ** Jamie, Hey, pal. I need to do that horror update too, but I haven’t yet. I’m still just trawling for haunted houses and gory props and stuff. I too am most curious how Bret responds to my question. He likes me so maybe he’ll cut my question some slack. I had a friend in high school who died because he was huffing aerosol from a paint can and didn’t do it right and filled his lungs with paint, so the thought that people do that always gives me chills. It’s aways best to push yourself beyond your current limits and then pare back if need be. I do that all the time. You’ll get your ending. It’s fated. I got my tickets to go to LA, and I bought tickets to see Destroyer play on Friday night, so those made yesterday something. And other stuff of no excitement that didn’t undercut that something. So, did ‘Celtic’ win, and is ‘Celtic’ related to the Boston Celtics? Sports and I are barely familiar with each other. I have not seen ‘The Wolf House’, no, but it will be my first Halloween movie, if I can help it. Hello-there-ladies-and-gentlemen-hello-there-ladies-and-gents-are-you-ready-to-rock love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, You nailed precisely what he is admirable for and impeccably, sir. Oh, no, so sorry you’ll miss that event. Grr. ** Steve Erickson, I’m not sure. I’m not even sure when it’s being conducted. Presumably timed with ‘The Shards’. Everyone, Steve’s ‘October music roundup for Gay City News, featuring Shygirl, Ezra Furman and the Recitals, came out today.’ Zero interest in seeing “Blonde’. Nothing about it lures me in at all. I’ve heard that about ‘My Policeman’ and about Mr. Styles’ performance, and you had better hope Misa didn’t read your comment about Mr. Styles’ acting chops because he might just train into NYC and whomp you upside your head. ** Robert, Hi. Oh, Not infrequently do I not read an entire novel, but not because I dislike it necessarily, but because I pretty much read for style and structure and stuff, and sometimes it only takes a chapter or whatever to figure what the writer is doing, and then I lose interest because I don’t really believe in fiction enough to care about the characters and story. When I hate a novel, it usually only takes me about ten sentences before I close the cover. But I totally get you. I don’t know, I think your highly selective manner of reading is the sign of someone who gives a huge shit about what you’re reading which quite possibly makes you a great reader, in fact. You and your standards have my complete admiration. ** Paul Curran, Hi, P! Excellent! And I am not even surprised, dude! Interlocking devil horns! I pray for some form of Halloween within easy distance of your hideout. But in the meantime, yes, J-novel advancing, please, pretty please. ** Right. I hope you liked my recent ‘Words’ post because today you get its sequel. See you tomorrow.

* (Halloween countdown post #10)

 

‘Edward L. Cahn was an American second-feature director of Polish ancestry. His brother Philip Cahn worked in the industry as editor. Edward worked in films from 1917 as a production assistant. He later joined his brother in the cutting room of Universal, eventually becoming one of the studio’s top editors (he did the last-minute re-cuts of the prestigious war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)). From 1931, Cahn assumed the director’s chair, turning out cheap and cheerful crime melodramas and comedies. He became a mainstay of the MGM shorts department from 1935-49. He is best known for directing Our Gang comedies from 1939 to 1943. Having gone pretty much unnoticed, his directing career began to pick up in the 1950s. Ever conscious of public demand, the imperturbable pipe-smoking Mr. Cahn turned his attention to trendy teenage rebellion films and schlock science-fiction (with a special penchant for zombies).

‘His films during this period range from the sublime to the absurd, from the inspired to the ridiculous. Some are bad enough to be (almost) enjoyable (particularly after a glass of wine or two). Point in case: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), which somehow manages to combine mobsters, Nazis, zombies and atomic power, all in one package. Just as awful was The She-Creature (1956), featuring the lovely Marla English reverting into an extremely silly looking anthropomorphic sea monster (Cahn was able to re-use the same papier-mâché-and-plastic creation for the equally inept Voodoo Woman (1957)).

‘Rather more fun (though little more than a pastiche of The Mummy (1932)) was Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), in which a 2000-year-old calcified creature found near Pompeii returns to life to claim a lost love. Invasion of the Hell Creatures (1957) was unintentionally funny, but at least featured decent creature effects. Sadly, dialogue and script were corn straight off the cob. It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) was arguably the best of Cahn’s offerings (it was said to be the inspiration for Alien (1979)). It was tautly directed and (as so often happens) only let down at the end by the monster being revealed as just another guy in an unshapely rubber suit. The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) resumed Cahn’s preoccupation with zombies and voodoo. At the center of the plot is an evil head-shrinking Swiss anthropologist (a suitably sinister performance by the brilliant Henry Daniell) who just happens to be a reincarnated Ecuadorian witch doctor. Unfortunately, though there is some visual style to the enterprise, the film as a whole can only be described as tame.

‘Cahn maintained an extremely prolific output through the early 1960s, working for AIP and United Artists on westerns and teen exploitation dramas right up until a year before his death at the age of 64.’ — I.S.Mowis

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Edward L. Cahn @ IMDb
The Films of Edward L. Cahn – by Michael E. Grost
ELC @ MUBI
“Fast Eddie” – the Films of Edward L. Cahn
ELC @ Letterboxd
Edward L. Cahn | The Invisible Man
EDWARD L. CAHN: L’Empereur du Drive-in
Bertrand Tavernier on Edward L Cahn’s ‘Afraid To Talk’
The Road to Hell: Three Early Films of Edward L. Cahn
INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN

 

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5 Our Gang Comedies directed by Edward L. Cahn

Fish Hooky (1933)

Our Gang Follies 1935

Our Gang Follies of 1938

Waldo’s Last Stand (1940)

Our Gang Follies of 1942

 

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The Doomed and The Damned: When The Clock Strikes and the Films of Edward L. Cahn
by Winston Wheeler Dixon

 

“Sitting in his chair, waving his pipe, he came on like [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt with a cape. He was the first one who gave me a cold chill of what it must be like to be a has-been.”
— Charles B. Griffith, screenwriter (as qtd. in McGee, 51)

“Eddie Cahn was the kind of a fella, especially on a small show, that wanted to show how fast he could go. So he’d start a scene and then step in front of the camera and yell ‘Cut!’ and then point to the next place where the next set-up was going.”
— John Agar, actor (as qtd. in McGee, 51)

“It isn’t what I want — it’s what I must do.”
Henry Daniell as Dr. Emil Zurich in Cahn’s The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)

I’ve never met Dave Kehr, who writes a column on DVDs for The New York Times, regularly contributes to the journal Film Comment, and also maintains a blog on the web, or even corresponded with him, but it seems that we have similar tastes. I write on Josef von Steinberg’s Shanghai Express (1932), and so does he; I praise noir director Bernard Vorhaus in a post in my Frame by Frame blog, and in the pages of Film Comment, Kehr weighs in on Vorhaus’s career as well. I’m not implying any “cause and effect” pattern here — it’s simply obvious that we both admire the same sorts of films. So I was pleased to read Kehr’s excellent essay, “Shadow World,” published in the November / December 2011 issue of Film Comment, on the maudit director Edward L. Cahn, one of the truly damned and doomed figures of the cinema. Not that many people appreciate Cahn’s work – he’s hardly a household name, for many reasons – and Kehr’s piece came as a welcome surprise. As Kehr wrote of Cahn,

With remarkable consistency for so prolific a filmmaker, he portrays a world of relentless cruelty and callousness, where even cowboy heroes kill without compunction and where betrayal within a couple is simply something to be anticipated and planned for. His characters move through a half-formed shadow world of flimsy surfaces and generic, impersonal objects; they lurch along seemingly sapped of all independent volition. At best, they are impelled by greed (the crime films are frequently centered on a treasure hunt), rage (Cahn’s Western heroes are almost always out to avenge the murder of a father or brother), or sheer, mindless destructiveness (embodied by the many different varieties of zombies that inhabit Cahn’s horror films). But in the end, all they know is that they must keep moving — it’s that or cease to exist.

Yes, they didn’t call him “Fast Eddie” for nothing. Despite his considerable bulk, Cahn could move through a script at lightning speed, knocking off setups with an inspired, manic precision that only the truly gifted — or cursed — possess. In his lifetime, Cahn directed no fewer than 71 features and innumerable shorts before his death in 1963, and his distinctly detached visual signature, coupled with the unremitting bleakness of his personal vision, is present in nearly all his work. Born on February 12, 1899 in Brooklyn, NY, Cahn attended UCLA and broke into the film business in the mid 1920s as an editor at Universal, working at night to pay his college tuition. This apprenticeship served him well in his later career, as Cahn early on learned how to piece a scene together with minimal, yet efficient coverage, and by 1926, Cahn was head of the Editorial Department at Universal. So, for the moment, his career seemed on track. …

Finally, in late 1955, Cahn got his break, directing the astonishingly graphic and bizarre horror/crime/science-fiction thriller The Creature with the Atom Brain, in which the reanimated bodies of dead gangsters, remotely controlled by an unscrupulous criminal mastermind and his assistant, a renegade ex-Nazi scientist, wreak havoc by pulling casino robberies, committing murder, and thus amassing a “war chest” of stolen funds with which to take over the United States government.

Some measure of the sheer viciousness of The Creature with the Atom Brain can be gleaned from the film’s opening moments, in which one of the revived corpses, possessed of super human strength, breaks into a mob-run casino, lifts a mob leader over his head, and without a moment’s hesitation, snaps the hood’s body in two like so much firewood. Made for Columbia in a mere six days, under the notoriously penurious producer Sam Katzman, The Creature with the Atom Brain managed to do what all of Cahn’s other work had not — it put him firmly on the map as a feature director, but with one qualification — his films were now mostly 6-day affairs, with budgets in the $100,000 range, and he would never again have a shot at the true “A” feature.

But there was plenty of work, and suddenly Cahn was in demand. The then-fledgling American International Pictures grabbed Cahn and put him to work directing lurid teen exploitation films such as Girls in Prison, The She-Creature, Run Away Daughters, Shake, Rattle and Rock (all 1956), and then Voodoo Woman, Dragstrip Girl, Invasion of the Saucer Men and the bluntly named Motorcycle Gang (all 1957). By this time, Cahn had established himself firmly as a “speed artist,” someone who could bring in any picture, regardless of genre, in on time and on or under budget, but paradoxically, his work never betrayed the haste with which it was made. As Kehr accurately observes,

[. . .] Cahn seemed to embrace the aesthetic of speed with a passion and personal commitment not always apparent in the work of his more feverishly productive Poverty Row peers. On a level of production where simple coherence is rare, his work seldom if ever seems sloppy or indifferent. The framing is careful and varied, the lighting studied and expressive, the eyeline matches execute with classical precision — all evidence of the extensive planning that Cahn (who began in the silent era as an editor) invested in his work, and which reportedly allowed him to film an astonishing 40 setups a day.

Indeed, although their subject matter was very different, Cahn’s late films remind me inescapably of the work of Robert Bresson, the idiosyncratic French director known for his assured, measured style, in which each shot follows the one before it with almost mathematical precision. And, like Bresson – director of the noirish existential thriller Pickpocket (1959) and other equally dark films – Cahn seemed to identify with his protagonists; they’re society’s outcasts, the losers, the ones who can’t win. They’re Cahn’s people; he knows them, and they know him.

Then, in 1958, stepping way from AIP, Allied Artists and Columbia, Cahn found the perfect partner for his brutal, unrelenting, hyperdriven vision: Robert E. Kent, a producer and screenwriter so prolific that he scripted his films under not only his own name, but under a variety of pseudonyms as well. In Edward L. Cahn, Kent found a soulmate — someone who wanted to make genre films quickly and efficiently, and at the same time, bring their own mordant worldview to the screen, in the guise of genre entertainment. Working under a variety of corporate banners, such as Vogue, Zenith, Harvard, Peerless and Premium, and releasing their films, astonishingly, through the rather upscale company United Artists, Kent and Cahn formed a team that would create a blistering barrage of films that form the bulk of the director’s true legacy. Cahn’s bleak worldview – fatalistic, stillborn, embracing nihilism as its guiding light, was at last allowed free reign.

Starting with It! — The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), which famously served as the template for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) 21 years later, Cahn and Kent began knocking out a wild series of outré, violent noir/crime thrillers, of which the title usually tells all — Curse of the Faceless Man (the dead return to life); King Kong Confidential (exoticist crime in Asia); Guns, Girls and Gangsters (is any explanation needed?), Jet Attack (got it?) and Suicide Battalion (again, a war picture with a pretty obvious narrative trajectory). Astonishingly, all these films were made in one year — 1958.

(cont.)

 

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Edward L. Cahn’s 11 horror films

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The Gas House Kids in Hollywood (1947)
‘The last of the three Gas House Kids films, the very poor man’s Bowery Boys, is a threadbare comedy/spooker with Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer and a trio of chums visiting Hollywood to meet a star. Instead, they cross paths with a mad scientist, a dead body, a gruff cop and gangster Douglas Fowley = not good. One for Edward L. Cahn completists and/or fans of BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952).’ — DFvideodiary

 

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Creature With The Atom Brain (1955)
‘HERE IS HORROR THAT CAN HAPPEN NOW… TO YOU! Murders, with victims dying from spines broken by brute strength, erupt in the city and the killers, when encountered, walk away unharmed by police bullets which strike them. A police doctor’s investigation of the deaths leads to the discovery of an army of dead criminal musclemen restored to life, remotely controlled by a vengeful former crime boss and a former Nazi scientist, from the latter’s laboratory hidden in the suburbs.’ — Letterboxd

Trailer

the entirety

 

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The She-Creature (1956)
‘Propelled by a dynamite poster, The She-Creature is a prime example of a ’50s monster movie. This one can boast a terrific, fairly original concept that’s never allowed to achieve its full potential. The idea comes straight from the culture buzz surrounding the contemporary Bridey Murphy controversy. A carnival mountebank keeps a beautiful young woman under his hypnotic control, combining the Bridey Murphy reincarnation-regression hokum with visual opportunities from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Svengali. The script might remind people of MGM’s Forbidden Planet as well: the primordial monster in this show is basically an “Id Demon” set loose from a female soul. “Hell hath no fury,” the saying goes.’ — Glenn Erickson

the entirety

 

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Voodoo Woman (1957)
‘From Edward L. Cahn and American International Pictures comes the pulpy horror stuff of Voodoo Woman.

‘Somewhere in the depths of Africa, an American mad scientist attempts to mix “black voodoo” with “white” science with an eye to creating a superhuman. When his experiments on a native woman fail to bring sustainable results (she’s too nice, won’t kill on command), he turns to black-hearted treasure hunter Marlilyn (a vampy, oozy, and excellent Marla English), who has no such qualms.

‘The stereotypes of the black characters depict a deeply baked in racism. Not that Voodoo Woman is any worse than many others, but rather that these were pretty standard caricatures common to popular culture of the day. Marla and her nasty lowlife chums add a seediness that gives this otherwise unimpressive monster movie grit and teeth.

‘“What’s in it for you, Doc? The usual?”
“The…very unusual.”’ –– Ken Coffelt

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Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)
‘A young woman returns to her grandmother’s residence on a forgotten island. She has dedicated her life to being basic and forgetting her dark upbringing, where voodoo and zombies were part of her traumatic childhood. On the way to the house, her driver callously runs over a shambling, seaweed-encrusted figure. The woman is shocked to her core but the driver merely says, “It was nobody”. Wow. Quite an introduction.

‘My thesis is that producer Sam Katzman and director Edward Cahn were pioneers of the zombie genre, though hacks that they were. Katzman kept returning to zombie themes in his B movies and Cahn, even under other producers, did several of these films. Romero took the theme and made it iconic in 1968.

‘I would like to see Del Toro or James Wan take this script today and do their thing. There is a germ of a great zombie movie embedded in this slapdash Columbia production, but the puritanical self-imposed codes of the day wouldn’t allow the potential. Still, there’s something creepy here about the zombified crew of an old ship, cursed to spend eternity guarding the treasure of their sunken and decomposing hulk from greedy adventurers.’ — julianblair

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Invasion of the Hell Creatures (1957)
‘There is not a lot of plot to Invasion of the Hell Creatures as its 69-minute running time consists mostly of a bunch of idiots stumbling through the woods – this includes the stupid aliens – and we also get the standard generation gap conflict between teens and authority, with the police not believing Johnny and Joan about little green men, and the subplot concerning the military’s investigation of the landed flying saucer circles the drain for awhile before exploding in a burst of flames – apparently trying to cut through the hull of a flying saucer with an acetylene torch is not a good idea – because these aliens didn’t spend the extra money to get one of those invulnerable flying saucers found in The Day the Earth Stood Still, so even if our teen heroes didn’t defeat these little buggers they were still stranded on Earth.

‘I’ll give it that the aliens in this film are decidedly creepy, special effects technician Paul Blaisdel did a great job in creating this particular alien menace and the disembodied hand of the dead one roaming around gets bonus points for creativity, but while this film was originally intended as a serious science fiction/horror film it gradually developed into a comedy and the score by Ronald Stein sounds sound so much like a sitcom that you almost expect to hear a laugh track and it really comes across as weird and out of place.’ — Michael Brooks

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Motorcycle Gang (1957)
‘The title tells practically all in the American-International exploitationer Motorcycle Gang. The film’s main conflict arises from the rivalry between “good” cyclist Randy (Steve Tyrrell) and his “bad” counterpart Nick (John Ashley). Recently released from a jail term, Nick forces Randy (who received probation for the hit-and-run accident which landed Nick in the slammer) into a clandestine race. Despite the fact that he’s a “clean” cycle-hog who likes to keep on the right side of the law, Randy agrees to the race, with near-disastrous results. One of the featured cycle punks is played by Carl Switzer, who despite his raffish appearance still closely resembles the “Alfalfa” character he’d essayed in the Our Gang comedies.’ — Hal Erickson

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It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
‘Extremely influential sci-fi romp involving a blood gorging alien wiping out members of a spaceship crew headed back to earth. Obviously a huge influence on Alien (airlock, tunnels, etc) but also one of John Carpenter’s favorite films and an influence on The Thing as well. I couldn’t help but also get a Howard Hawks Thing from Another World influence here as well, just not as quick or snappy.

‘There’s a slight lag in the middle before it picks up again for a smooth landing. The It is pretty cool but definitely a little cheesy looking (awesomely cheesy tbh) and makes me appreciate The Thing from Another World’s realistic monster portrayel even more. Watched with my huge 50’s sci-fi fan Dad, a glass or two of J & B, and popcorn. We had a blast :)’ — Ian West

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John Carpenter on “It! The Terror from Beyond Space”

 

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Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)
‘A mummified gladiator recovered from a Pompeiian excavation gets energized by x-rays and takes a shine to a rock-jawed researcher’s comely fiancee.

‘The only things keeping this from being a straightforward mummy movie are the European setting (ably played by some California cliffs) and the fact that this undead lover is ensconced in stone rather than bandages (ably played by something far more flexible than any stone I’ve seen). It’s not gonna change the way you think about mummy flicks, but as no-frills shambling monster movies shot in six days go, this is pretty near the cream of the crop. The creature looks suitably creepy, the leads keep straight faces, and Edward L. Cahn does his usual solid job of sneaking in a few striking compositions while keeping things under budget and devoid of logic.’ — Ira Brooker

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The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)
‘The plot involves a curse placed on the family of our main character, Jonathan Drake. Seems that there was a Drake that was involved in a massacre of indigenous peoples in the Amazon two centuries ago…and every Drake male since mysteriously dies at age 60…and is beheaded! (Though no one knows who or what is doing the beheadings).

‘The actors move through the story as though they are in a dream…like a sepulchral kabuki play (sans the histrionics). This is very effective but one doesn’t know if this was intentional or the byproduct of a rapid shooting schedule and less than top-tier thesping.’ — julianblair

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Invisible Invaders (1959)
‘This was one of John Carpenter’s VHS’s sent to me. I was sent 9 random VHS along with an autographed photo after purchasing one of his “VHS mystery boxes” from Stormking comics.

‘Not terrible, but god this is cheap. You can tell it was shot in about two weeks on a budget of about $500. Very upbeat ending. The guns used to kill the aliens are annoying as hell when they fire.’ — BryceNeel/Comrie

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p.s. Hey. ** Tea, Hi, Tea. I would trade my non-kingdom for 36 hour days, you bet. When I was a kid I made a walkthrough haunted house in our basement every Halloween. It wasn’t very gory, but I did shove the visitors in a big meat locker and close the door and not let them out for a while. I think anyone who didn’t choose infinite wishes as one of their original three would be a moron frankly. Yay, Pavement. Awesome, I love them to death. They played here recently, and at first I didn’t get tickets because the whole ‘reunion’ thing bugs me when bands do it, but then I realised I was being an idiot, but by them it was sold out. My favorite Pavement song is ‘Grounded’. What’s yours? ** tomk, I’m partial to that one too. Ouch: neck. Any better now? It’s so cool to see your book being so warmly written about and you talking all around the literary internet, man. So sweet. ** Jack Skelley, Eskelleyator! Why didn’t we do one of those in front of Beyond Baroque back in the day, I’ll always wonder. The 23rd is so plausible it aches. I wish my voice sounded like the Melvins. I know, who doesn’t. Cut you off at the pass. xo ** Dominik, Hi!!! If it exists, it’ll bathe in your eyesight. Ha ha, proofing the escorts and slaves sound actually be a challenge given that their poor English and misspellings are often the key to their beauty. Thanks re: ticket. I’m hunting everywhere. Good pick by Mr. love there. Me? I do think that I would pick that especially scary one with the safe dropped on the dummy’s head ‘cos I’m a sicko, don’t you know? Love making the people currently staying in the Airbnb apartment above mine realise that they actually hate Billy Joel, G. ** Regina Agutter, Well, hello there. If I’m not mistaken, it’s been a while since I last crossed paths here with you, and welcome back, if so. Oh my goodness, you’re too kind. I am merely horror’s obedient intermediary, but I will accept the compliment and endeavor to continue doing my job adequately. Maybe you could give my blog a nice review on Yelp if you have a second. ** Den Nilsen, Some of my friends call me Den. ** Jamie, Three wows! I’m humbled, maestro. Sadly, the US owns Halloween. It’s not fair, and it’s very impractical, but there we go. Is the Daney only in hardback? Yikes! Weird for Semiotext(e). It must be library-friendly move on their part. Great about your draft! Let it wander. Words should always be like lost children. At least in the early drafts. Interview Magazine is asking a bunch of ‘famous’ people to ask Bret Easton Ellis one question for an interview their doing with him, and they asked me, and my question was “A nerdy but sincere question: Please describe, if you can, what makes a sentence you write in your fiction acceptable to you? And same question about your paragraphs if you’re feeling ambitious. Thanks!” I asked because Bret hates talking about his process, and I want to try to corner him. We’ll see. My day was okay. Eileen Myles is visiting, and she and Zac and I went to opening of the Joan Mitchell retrospective last night at the Fondation Vuitton, and the show was unexpectedly great, and the trio stuff was fun. Otherwise, film stuff and this and that. Did you write all day today or what in world did you do? I’m thinking maybe ‘The Wolf House’ might have been featured in the fairly recent Werewolf Day? That’s a guess. I hope your day is stoking up the bong or doing blotter, I don’t know which … which … witch! (courtesy of Mr. Malkmus), Sinned backwards aka me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh my god, ha ha! I must pass that along. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic: ‘Kind of relevant to [yesterday’s] post, today this 1:25 mini horror scene was posted to Twitter featuring UK light entertainment icon Mr Blobby inserted into it the film of IT. Defo the scariest thing I’ve seen of late.’ Signing day! That’s big. Oh, man, oh, man, can you really almost be there at last? A billion votive candles. ** Bill, Agreed! Happy you liked ‘Event Factory’. She’s one of my really big favorites. ** Steve Erickson, Strange how people complain more about fake lynching Halloween displays than about the real thing. Or not strange. Nope, I haven’t creased the billy woods yet, but I intend to. Everyone, Steve has weighed in via Artsfuse about the execrable seeming BROS here and, in happier news, interviewed filmmaker and programmer Adam Baran about his “Narrow Rooms” series at Anthology Film Archives here. Bon day! ** T, Ha ha, yes, I see your proposition leading to a world of wonders. No, I haven’t been to Nigloland. I want to know. I do hope to go to the Parc Asterix Halloween makeover very soon, as it has proven very fun in previous years. Want to join? Saw your ‘e’. Getting to it today. Yay. Oh, for a day like the one your imagination portends or should portend. I hope your day makes cocaine seem like Shakira, xo D. ** Brendan, Big B! I should be in your neck of the woods smelling fog machines’ output very soon! Apropos, thank fucking god if the heat is subsiding, and go Dodgers, and I got your horror movies right here right in front of you today! Whoa! Love, me. ** Paul Curran, Thanks, bud! God knows you would know! I think I should have the post all polished off today, no sweat. News hopefully by the time your famous sun has set or soonish thereafter. Any Halloween shit of note taking over Tokyo or tiny pieces of it this year? ** Okay. Normally I try to give you a breather between Halloween things, but I just decided to transport you directly from cheap horrors to cheap horrors without a break today to see what would happen. So, … what happened? See you in the aftermath tomorrow.