It’s time for a product spotlight! This is an occasional feature on the Hemlock Bazaar blog where we highlight some of the weird, wacky, or otherwise wonderful products we have for sale, talk about their history, etc. Today, March 6th, 2024, we’re talking about Global Cinema, Silent Film, and Local Music with the following four products:
51 Miles from Nowhere – Doctor Deathray and her Implements of Destruction
51 Miles From Nowhere – Doctor Deathray & Her Implements of Destruction
Doctor Deathray, AKA Violet Hunter, is a relatively recent Ellijay Transplant, having drifted here from many other places, but most recently 51 miles north of here. She gathered together a band of freaks and weirdos, and recorded an album of the heaviest, fuzziest blues based rock produced in the last decade. The album was recorded at the Ellijay Makerspace and is distributed by Analog Revolution.
Listen along:
John The Balladeer – Manly Wade Wellman
John the Balladeer – Manly Wade Wellman
John The Balladeer or Silver John is a folkloric figure created or discovered by Manly Wade Wellman in the 1960s. John is a traveling musician, wandering the hills of Appalachia with a silver stringed guitar, which he uses to fight the occult. These stories are steeped in the tradition of Appalachian Folk Music and Folk Stories. Once widely popular, but out of print for a number of years, this collection of tales from John The Balladeer was brought back to circulation by Valancourt Books.
How The World Remade Hollywood
How the World Remade Hollywood: Global Interpretations of 65 Iconic Films – Ed Glaser
How The World Remade Hollywood by Ed Glasser is an exploration of transnational film adaptation. It is the easily accessible, mass market foil to the much more dense and academic tome covering the same subject The Hollywood Meme. Over the course of this volume, Glasser highlights dozens of examples of global re-interpretations of popular American films, and discusses how they were made, what elements of them were changed, and what the resulting film says about Hollywood, and about the culture from which it emerged.
It is a fascinating and well researched piece, absolutely guaranteed to introduce you to a variety of films you almost certainly weren’t expecting to exist, but which you will feel compelled to seek out. Some highlights featured in the book include:
- Our Friend Power Five – a South Korean film in which a planet of Ninja Turtles battles against a planet of evil rats, using giant cartoon mechs.
- 3 Dev Adam – a Turkish film in which El Santo and Captain America team up to take on an evil Spiderman who mutilates people and can make copies of himself.
- Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek – another Turkish film. This time, a remake of two episodes of Star Trek, but with a rural Turkish tourist inserted in to the mix, creating a fish out of water comedy. Honestly, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen.
Watch Tourist Omer in Star Trek:
Filibus
Filibus (1915) – (Blu-ray)
Filibus is a silent heist film originally released in Italy in 1915, about a woman who captains a technologically advanced airship, commits several thefts, and disguises herself as a man in order to seduce the sister of the detective who is chasing her. It is Incredible.
It is a synthesis of many of the most fantastical elements of the popular fiction of the day, along with some of the most politically and socially progressive ideology, into an action film unlike anything else that existed at the time. Mere months after DW Grifith released his regressive, racist, a-historical film lionizing the Ku Klux Klan, Mario Roncoroni released this forward looking adventure.
You can see the first chapter of this 5 part film here, with a score by Connor Dylan: