Where is God in Ken Russell's 'The Devils'?

Oliver Reed gives a tortured performance in The Devils.

I don't know who or what runs the universe. It might be a wise, benevolent, and all-powerful God. It might be nobody at all. Either answer is bound to disappoint somebody. But what I can be fairly sure of is that anybody who claims to know definitively what God is and what God wants—and has the evidence to "prove" it—is either being dishonest or delusional. 

I don't necessarily mean that as a complaint. There are considerable benefits to people claiming to speak on God's behalf, even if it's all baloney. In his "Sky Cake" routine, comedian Patton Oswalt explains how there would be no civilization as we know it today if "weaklings" in the past hadn't invented religion. But, human nature being what it is, we invariably take it too far. People will always want power, money, and status. We also want to impose our personal beliefs on large portions of the population, the more the better. And these desires have driven us to do awful things to one another in the name of God.

All this brings me to Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), a long-suppressed, much-censored film just now being released to theaters in its uncut glory. I'd been hearing about this infamous movie ever since I started hanging around Usenet movie forums in the 1990s, but I'd never even bothered to track down any version of it, since I knew I'd just be seeing a censored print. Now that an uncensored Devils is playing on theaters across the country, however, I knew I had to see it. 

Was 'Help!' the first Beatles concept album?

The Help! soundtrack captures The Beatles at a transitional time.

The Beatles evolved a great deal between their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and their farewell album, Let It Be (1970). During those seven incredibly eventful years, the group's songs became more adventurous and experimental, both lyrically and sonically, and their albums became more ambitious in scope. There's a world of difference between Beatles for Sale (1964) and Abbey Road (1969), even though they were recorded by the same four guys from Liverpool, just a few years apart.

On the cusp: The Beatles in 1965.

In the early days, The Beatles' albums were extensions of their live concert performances. Each LP was simply a grab bag of whatever tracks the group happened to be working on at the time, generally a combination of Lennon-McCartney originals (with occasional Harrison contributions) and some rock, R&B, and country covers. It was a good formula that resulted in several classic LPs that remain popular today. 

But the Fab Four stopped touring in mid-career, which in many ways liberated them creatively. They no longer had to reproduce their songs onstage, so they were free to make music that could only emerge from a recording studio with all its sonic trickery. The group's lyrics changed, too. While their early albums are dominated by simple love songs—boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, etc.—their later LPs could tackle any number of social or psychological themes or even indulge in surrealism and pure abstraction.

There is so much difference between the group's early work and its later work, in fact, that most fans tend to divide their albums into two major categories: Early Beatles and Late Beatles. But some experts have proposed a third category: Middle Beatles, referring to that brief but productive time circa 1965-66 when they were first showing signs of artistic growth and dabbling in Dylanesque folk rock. The two best-known Middle Beatles albums are Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). But I'd like to add a third LP to this roster: the soundtrack to the group's second movie, Help! (1965). In revisiting this somewhat-neglected and underappreciated album, I have discovered some remarkably consistent themes throughout it. Help! is so cohesive that I would be comfortable calling it The Beatles' earliest concept album, predating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Does that sound preposterous? Stick with me. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 294: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 1]

Actor/lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl and his attorney, Paul Caruso.

Actor Timothy Farrell.

Ed Wood fans know mustachioed, curly-haired actor Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) from his roles in Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and The Violent Years (1956). A veteran of the Los Angeles theater scene, Farrell appeared in films and TV shows fairly regularly in the 1950s. His acting career seems to have petered out sometime in the 1960s. The IMDb says he worked on the cautionary educational films of producer Sid Davis as late as 1968, but I'm not convinced of this. I know I spotted him in a 1964 episode of the soap opera Day in Court. 

Apart from the Wood movies, Tim's greatest accomplishment as an actor was playing the villainous Umberto Scalli in three low-budget flicks produced by George Weiss: The Devil's Sleep (1949), Racket Girls (1951), and Dance Hall Racket (1953). (I may have to cover the Umberto Scalli trilogy someday.) While Farrell was occasionally cast as authority figures, like cops and doctors, I find him more convincing as slimy underworld types. There's just something vaguely unwholesome and unsettling about him. His most convincing performance is as the volatile, easily-agitated crook Vic Brady in Jail Bait. When Vic warns his young accomplice Don (Clancy Malone), "I'll fix you but good with the cops," you believe him.

Using his real surname, Sperl, Timothy had a lengthy but troubled career in law enforcement that eventually ended in scandal and disgrace. I find this terribly interesting because it suggests that the impatient, snarling hoodlum we see in Jail Bait is closer to Timothy's real personality than the reasonable and understanding Dr. Alton in Glen or Glenda. To test this theory, I thought I'd see what the Los Angeles newspapers had to say about Mr. Sperl, both the actor and the cop, over the years.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 293: The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969)

Kathy and Ed Wood at Kenne Duncan's wake. Note the book Ed is holding.

Awake, a wake.

There is a sweetly sad quality to the photos of Ed Wood taken in the last decade of his life. Eddie was in freefall by then, physically, personally, and professionally. Years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his face and body, leading to his early death at age 54. His career in show business was faring no better. He was supporting himself entirely through his work in the adult film and publishing industries. And even there, he had to maintain a furious pace just to (almost but not quite) keep up with his creditors. As he spiraled into addiction and poverty, he often took out his frustrations on his wife, Kathy. Ed Wood's last decade was marked by disappointment, uncertainty, violence, and desperation.

And yet, the man in the pictures looks cheerful and content. Not a care in the world, this guy. Sure, you could say that he was simply too soused to worry what was happening to him. He found a fool's paradise at the bottom of a glass and stayed there. But I'd like to think that the optimism that brought him to Hollywood in the 1940s had not abandoned him entirely in the 1970s.

One of the most compelling latter-day photos of Ed Wood was taken at the wake of actor Kenne Duncan in 1972. After years of declining health and declining fortunes, the famed cowboy actor ended his own life by overdosing on barbiturates. Some time later, Eddie and Kathy celebrated his memory by throwing a wake in his honor. They invited such luminaries as Paul Marco, Criswell, David Ward, Nona Carver, and Hope Lugosi. A somewhat grainy, underlit black-and-white photo—complete with handwritten notes by Kathy—captures all of these people, plus figures I believe are Marg Usher (Paul's agent) and actress Mona McKinnon. Eddie, drunk as a lord, is leaning against Kathy and holding a book: Ernest N. Corneau's The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969). 

Naturally, I was curious. What was this strange, obscure book? What secrets might it contain?

Podcast Tuesday: "Twenty Feet from Fonzie"

A Fonzie presidency would bankrupt this country.

The dinosaurs are long gone, but some of their footprints still remain on the surface of the earth. You don't even have to leave the United States to see some of them. There are dino prints in Connecticut, for god's sake. Think of that: these huge, terrifying creatures lived millions of years ago before going extinct, and yet their tracks are probably within driving distance of a Target today.

I think you know where I'm going with this. The nostalgic sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984) has been off the air, extinct, for over 40 years, and yet its tracks can still be seen. If you know where to look, that is. While the show debuted in January 1974, it didn't really become a multimedia pop cultural phenomenon until 1976 during its third season. This was a pivotal year for Happy Days. The show's breakout character, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), moved in with the Cunninghams, and the entire series was reformatted so that it could be filmed in front of a live, boisterous studio audience. It also gained an immortal catchphrase: "Sit on it!"

The schlockmeisters and opportunists smelled money in the air, and they didn't wait to cash in. Soon, stores were flooded with Happy Days and Fonzie-branded merchandise—some of it authorized, some of it bootleg. In the spring of 1976, London Records wanted a piece of the action, so they released a novelty single called "The Fonz Song" by a manufactured group called The Heyettes. It was a breakthrough hit in several markets and even made the national charts. Was that enough? No. London Records decided that a full-length Heyettes album was in order. The result was Fonzie, Fonzie, He's Our Man. Naturally, we're talking all about it on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Some real talent went into this LP. The Heyettes were accomplished session singers, and the producer and arranger were longtime music industry veterans. But does any of this add up to a great (or even listenable) album? My cohost and I have some thoughts, and you can hear them by clicking on the podcast below.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 292: The Lascivious World of A.C. Stevens & Ed D. Wood, Jr. (2008)

Of all the Ed Wood sets ever released, this is definitely one of them.

lascivious [las·​civ·​i·​ous, lə-ˈsi-vē-əs] (adj.):

filled with or showing sexual desire; lewd, lustful

Over the decades, Ed Wood's films have been bundled together in various box sets, first on VHS, then DVD, and now Blu-ray. I've definitely purchased my share of them over the years. Maybe you have, too. There's a strange quality in Eddie's movies that makes you want to see more of them right away, so it makes sense to sell them in bulk. They're like potato chips or pretzels, difficult to stop at just one. Let's see now....

The monolith.

• The first such anthology I ever bought was Rhino's The Ed Wood Collection (1995), a three-tape set that came in a faux-angora box and included Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Bride of the Monster (1955). That pink, fuzzy monolith still sits among my Wood memorabilia today. I vaguely remember a blue version existing, but I can't find it. Did I dream it?

• Then there was Image Entertainment's The Worst of Ed Wood (2000), a four-DVD set. It contained the same films as the previous Rhino set, plus Jail Bait (1954). Its Plan 9 disc also included the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). When I think of this set, I remember buying it at a Borders in Flint, MI on a freezing cold day, using money I'd made as a customer service rep for General Motors.

• Just a few years later, Image released The Ed Wood Box (2004), a six-disc collection that included everything from The Worst of Ed Wood but added Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1996). It handily makes the previous Image set obsolete, but I never bought it because I already had Night and Haunted separately.

• A staple of cutout bins for years was Passport Video's two-disc The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (2007), which included Plan 9, Glenda, Bride, Ghouls, Jail Bait (in its rare director's cut form) and The Violent Years (1956), plus a bonus featurette called The Ed Wood Story. For some reason, this once-plentiful title has become scarce in recent years. A shame, too, as it contains the longer Rhino cut of Glenda rather than the shortened, censored version included in the Image sets.

• The landmark DVD collection that inspired this series of articles was S'more Entertainment's Big Box of Wood (2011), a six-disc set that included Plan 9, Bride, and Jail Bait, but added The Violent Years (1956), The Sinister Urge (1960), Fugitive Girls (1974), Drop Out Wife (1972), Hot Ice (1978), The Snow Bunnies (1972), The Beach Bunnies (1976), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), and Crossroad Avenger (1953). The set included new introductions (by Ted Newsom) and various commentary tracks, plus trailers and interviews with Dolores Fuller, Joe Robertson, and Kathy Wood.

• It's not a multi-disc set, but After Hours' Cinema's single-disc Ed Wood's Dirty Movies (2014) contained Eddie's final directorial effort, The Young Marrieds (1972), plus two additional titles: Nympho Cycler (1971) and Shot on Location (1972). Eddie's participation in Nympho is undisputed—he cowrote the script and appears on camera in a supporting role—but whether he worked on Shot is controversial.

• The most significant Wood collection of recent years has been Severin's three-disc Blu-ray set, Hard Wood (2024). It contained The Young Marrieds, plus Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus a variety of loops, featurettes, and commentary tracks. 

I think you can agree, that's a lot of Ed Wood collections and box sets. And there are still more I don't own, like The Ed Wood Curiosities Collection (2023), which adds the much-disputed Revenge of the Virgins (1959) to the mix. Then there's The Ed Wood Collection, Volume One (2009); The Ed D. Wood Jr. Collection (year unknown); and Ed Wood: The Dark Collection (unknown). Most of these are simply recycling the same old titles: Plan 9, Bride, Glenda, the usual suspects. But today, I want to talk about a three-disc DVD collection that's been largely ignored by the Ed Wood fan community.

The value of art can't be listed, measured, graded, or ranked... and we need to stop pretending it can be

This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide.

The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching. 

Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.

There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle. 

The strange, twisted world of Beatles soundalikes!

These lovely ladies are not The Beatles, as you may have guessed.

I wish I had a great story about becoming a Beatles fan, but in truth, I found the group's music in a clunky, roundabout way. That's the case with most of my lifelong interests. In the late 1980s, when I was in junior high school, my older sister briefly became friends with a somewhat artsy girl whom I will call Willow. That friendship ended acrimoniously, but it lasted just long enough for Willow to dub some cassettes of a few Beatles albums for my sister. And she, in turn, dubbed some copies for me. 

That's how I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles (White Album) (1968), and Rubber Soul (1965): through muddy, third-generation cassettes that I listened to on a portable tape player. I can still remember how I'd listen to "Within You, Without You" and imagine myself as an English secret agent deployed to India, chasing some scoundrel through a public market. There was just something about that track, with its exotic instrumentation and dry, reserved vocals, that ignited my imagination.