Labyrinthine Phenomena

Somewhere in the Alps, in a region thought of in folklore as “the Swiss Transylvania”, young tourist Vera Brandt (Fiore Argento) just missed the bus she needed to catch. With no bus coming any time soon, Vera sets off hiking to see if she can find help. Coming across an isolated house, she enters… and somewhere inside the house, someone who’s been chained to the wall breaks their bonds. The unseen prisoner, now freed, slays Brandt and her body falls into a rushing mountain stream, speeding it away from the murder site swiftly.

Eight months later, a string of women of about the same age have disappeared in the area, and the police have only found a few body parts. Inspector Rudolf Geiger (Patrick Bauchau) and his unnamed assistant (Michele Soavi) resort to seeking the help of Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasance) – a forensic entomologist whose expertise allows him to assess the approximate age of the grisly finds based on the extent to which insects have fed on them and spawned maggots within them.

The Professor has every reason to want to help them; his assistant Greta disappeared some time back, and given the profile of the girls who have disappeared he has every reason to believe she is another victim of the killer. Alas, an accident has left him using a wheelchair – though he’s not without help, especially in the form of his highly talented chimpanzee friend Inga (played by Tanga, also a chimp).

And more help is on the way. Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), daughter of Hollywood heartthrob Paul Corvino, has just arrived in the area to take up a place in the Richard Wagner International School For Girls, a private school based out of one of the buildings in Wagner’s old estate, as staff member Frau Brückner (Daria Nicolodi) is proud to declare. Jennifer has a tendency to sleepwalk, and seems somehow telepathically aware of the killer’s activities, being prone to visions when they are taking place. She has also has an astonishing affinity for insects – so powerful that it can inspire a male beetle to start emitting his mating pheromones even though it isn’t his species’ mating season, or a nocturnal swarm of flies.

When Jennifer and the Professor cross paths, he turns out to be the best ally she can find in the area, especially after Jennifer’s roommate Sophie (Federica Mastrolianni) is slain by the killer. The school headmistress (Dalila Di Lazzaro) and the other students hate and fear Jennifer for her abilities, but the Professor sees them as a gift – a gift which might make Jennifer a uniquely capable detective. But this is a Dario Argento movie, so you know the killer’s not going down easily…

Footprints In the Sands of Time

One of the interesting developments in rock music as the 1960s gave way into the 1970s was the diversification of styles. The loosely connected genres of folk rock and psychedelic rock had made a case for popular music in general and rock in particular to be a medium for genuine, grown-up artistic expression, rather than disposable entertainment for teens; but once you say “this doesn’t have to be like that“, you invite people to imagine all sorts of different ways it could be.

Folk rock and country rock singer-songwriters used the medium to examine tradition or social roots, critically or uncritically. Glam rock took the popular acclaim and youth appeal of earlier years, teased out the sexuality, and made it a bit more ambiguous. Blues rock gave way to hard rock if it still cared about being sexy, metal in slow and fast flavours if it went for other moods. Progressive rock groups explored just how far you could stretch the rock format, cramming in tools from classical or jazz as necessary to broaden the field available to them.

In a decades-early preview of the musical fragmentation we see today in this Bandcamp age (where nobody has to listen to exactly what everyone else is listening to and it sometimes seems there’s more microgenres than musicians), the experimental wings of rock music ended up spawning bands with astonishingly distinctive personalities. Oh, sure, you could sort them under one broad umbrella or another, and there were plenty of me-too groups out there inspired by others’ sounds, but within prog (for example) you’d never mistake Jethro Tull for Yes or King Crimson for Genesis.

Three Play Loud In Birmingham

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

The ringing is slowly fading from my ears as I write this, in the wake of Alice Cooper’s concert at the Birmingham NEC on the 10th November 2007. Supported by Joan Jett (known in this country for I Love Rock and Roll on the Guitar Hero soundtrack and… little else) and Motörhead (known for Ace of Spades and a million million million other songs which sound exactly like Ace of Spades), the show turned out to be a four-and-a-half hour celebration of loud guitars and distinctive lead singers. But are trashy New York punk, gruff British speed metal and heavy Detroit glam rock musical flavours which go well together?

The Venue

For those of you who’ve never been to a concert there, incidentally, the NEC Arena isn’t at all bad. Clearly signposted from the M42, it has plenty of conference facilities – which means you’ll usually be able to grab a moderately-priced and moderately-bland dinner before the gig if you’re hungry – and the arena itself is well-lit, has plenty of toilets, snack food stands and (most importantly) water dispensers, and for this gig offered both standing and seated tickets. It’s the hallowed ground where such cultural icons as Wolf, Shadow, and Panther reigned supreme in Gladiators, back before we realised that it was just a tame and less entertaining form of professional wrestling, and it doesn’t seem to have changed a bit since then. The floor is sticky, but not as sticky as, say, those in the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford. Some of the toilets are unpleasant.