Whispering Pines 6,7,8 (2006)

There are few films I find to be a truly pure incarnation of my aesthetic. The 'Neon Boogers' category exists as a kind of sliding scale for the qualities I look for. Sometimes I'm a little more lenient in gauging whether or not a film is deemed a 'Neon Booger', but other times its so glaring it's like the filmmaker and I share the same brain.

Whispering Pines is a series of shorts created by and starring Shana Moulton as 'Cynthia', a woman who's on a personal journey of betterment through manufactured objects and self-exploration. There's an every-woman-ness about Cynthia. She reads the magazines, buys the products, lives her life in a constant limbo of health and beauty fads. There's a commentary at work here but before I get into that I need to discuss the cosmetic appeal of the world Shana Moulton has created for 'Cynthia'.

The character may have an emptiness inside of her, but like me, she's a tchotchke queen. The placement of objects in itself is an art. Muted pastels, house plants, marble side tables and trinkets from the Asian dollar store. The sets look like shoe-string Ettore Sottsass installation, with a dash of Leslie Hall. So while I'm fully aware that there's an anti-establishment  message, I too am seduced by Cynthia's synthetic reality.

There are five episodes before the three I'm covering here and I believe two after, but these three (and a random episode 3 on youtube) seem to be the only available ones on the net. As they came together attached in one swoop, I'm reviewing them as one film. Like a mini-anthology.


Episode 6:

While doing a puzzle of a waterfall, Cynthia realizes she's missing the final piece. Panicked, she searches the living with no avail. Feeling lost, she finds herself in a New Age store that sells waterfall statues. She buys yet another waterfall for her home in hopes that the sound of the rippling water will give her the clarity she needs to find the missing puzzle piece. Once home all of the water devices are turned on, including an electric waterfall picture. She plays a meditation tape and the sounds put her body in a state of emotional out-pour. Once enlightened she knows to look deep inside the waterfall picture for the missing puzzle piece. As she places the final piece in the center of the puzzle the camera zooms in to reveal Cynthia's own crying face in the water.

Episode 7:

While gazing upon herself in a vanity mirror, Cynthia notices some unsightly black heads. She reaches for her holographic box which contains several packets of pore strips. The camera zooms in on her black stippled nose as she performs her skin care ritual. As she patiently waits for the strip to dry she stares at her distorted image in the mirror. Suddenly a sphinx-like creature with her own face appears. It sings "Now That I'm a Woman" from the Last Unicorn. A song about the unicorn's sad transformation from a strange creature to an ordinary woman. Little pore strips fly around them like doves. The sphinx disappears and she slowly removes her pore strip to reveal an inspirational quote from 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'.

Episode 8:

Best for last. Unsatisfied with the state of her plant arrangement, Cynthia embarks on a Crystal Light induced creative journey in sand art. She listens to Enya's 'Orinoco Flow' and re-imagines her once drab vase. She dumps colored craft store sand, pearls, plastic gems and fake flowers in a casserole of kitsch. She creates designs in sand directly on the table, embellishing them with crystals. Her whole house comes to life. Soon all of her plastic belongings are singing and dancing. One by one she adds them to the magical concoction of ornamental decor, creating a Chakra of artificial soil for her new flower arrangement. Once finished she places the vase by the couch and immediately begins to feel unfulfilled despite her new creation. After a few moments have passed, the vines from the arrangement grow into a magical ladder. She climbs it and enters a door that transports her to a lively rave set to an electronic remix of  'Orinoco Flow'. She joins the party until she realizes that she's just been poisoned by the Crystal Light and that it was all and hallucination. She vomits herself back to reality.

I have this thing for commercial meditation products. I collect new age cassettes and nature videos whenever I encounter them at thrift stores. The idea that this analog version of nature can bring you some kind of inner peace is fascinating. When I started collecting these types of things I was doing it in an ironic way. There was something "funny" about it. But I've discovered there is kind of a science to it. When I listen to or watch this stuff, I think it may actually work. Or at least I think it's working while I'm participating. Like some kind of neo-shamanic ritual of the digital age. Put on a tape and all of your problems will melt away. Cynthia is a prime target for this kind of advertising duplicity. When you look in a magazine and see lots of happy women, the idea is if you do as they do you also will be happy. It could be as little as one product that changes your whole life. Cynthia aspires to be the woman on the Biore box and to feel like she's in a Crystal Light commercial. That's the witchcraft of consumerism, the promise of the thing you desire leads to a momentary high and then an empty realization that not only does it not work but you're worse off than before. Shana Moulton has created a really likable character and Universe to satire these ideas.

As a multi-media artist, Moulton's work has been limited to mostly galleries. Still active today, you can see a few excerpts on her Vimeo. I'm not sure if a commercial release is her style, but if that were to ever happen I'd be first in line to own these brilliant pastel fever dreams.

Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge (1999)

When I was younger I assumed that at some point I would have seen enough movies where I would feel "satisfied". Not that it would make me slow down, but a general contentment would be reached and I would be enlightened to a higher plane of movie-zen. It hasn't come yet, and as time goes on I'm forced to find weirder - often in a strange borderline boring and surreal kind of way-  films to satiate my addiction. I become more and more humbled by the idea of all the movies I haven't discovered. When I encounter something new to love I think about how it was there all along and it's just coincidence mixed with my obsessive internet research k-holes that I found it at all, and what are the things I will NEVER find?? Where are they?? What are they?? It's maddening.

I can't remember when exactly I had the epiphany about Shot on Video films. I remember that the first I saw was the Last Slumber Party, and it left an indelible impression. But it would be years before I realized that there was a small unspoken revolution in the form of directors like the Polonia Brothers, Tim Ritter and Todd Sheets. For every prolific director there are an immeasurable amount of guys making even lower budget movies, sometimes far more interesting than what it's riffing off of (sometimes not). When I discover one of these buried diamonds, I'm over the moon. Such was the the case when I encountered Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge.

Stacey (played by Debbie D.) works at a "cosmetic and fashion company" - according to the description on imdb, it isn't made at all clear from the film itself - and is up for a promotion. Her scientist friend in the lab has created a shrinking gun which is actually a squirt gun spray painted grey. When she gets her promotion she intends on using this technology to further her career (again, I have no idea what this has to do with cosmetics or fashion). After meeting with her boss she discovers that she's lost the promotion to a colleague. Her female boss explains that though she is very pretty, she needs the most "attractive" woman in the office to deal with the male clients they interact with. A plot device executed with the utmost sincerity, I absolutely laughed out loud. Stacey becomes angry, but not at her insane sexist boss. She takes it out on her competition and steals the shrinking gun to use on the newly appointed executive. Barging in on her in the shower, Stacey shrinks her in the nude and then eats her whole. That's what this movie is about. Eating little nude live women.

The effects on this thing had me slack-jawed. It was almost transgressive - reminding me somewhat of Nick Zedd's Tom Thumb in the Land of the Giants, but with no artistic motivation. The most simplistic green screen/super-imposed in-camera editing graphics were used. The imagery is so bizarre it actually is a little bit disturbing.

This angle is really awkward and unflattering, but I respect the effort.

Stacey realizes that she enjoys the taste of little tiny women, so when she discovers that she wasn't second in line for the job, she shrinks and eats the back-up choice as well.

Even though the same techniques were used over and over and, at only 30 minutes, Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge was the perfect length for something like this. Debbie D. knew exactly what to do with the crappy dialog and seemed to have fun with it. There's something about this crap that's really fascinating. It leaves you feeling kind of gross because of the sexual context of the material, but it's so incredibly UN-sexy. The perverse nature of the subject, despite being treated lightly, with the extremely low quality of production gives the sensation of watching something you shouldn't be watching. Which leads me back to the the appeal of SOV films. They're voyeuristic and personal, like someone's home recorded pornography. This movie has the presence of cheap porn even without sex.

I have a purse almost identical to this, this is need to know information, readers.

I couldn't get this movie out of my head after it ended. I was curious about other films by director Gary Whitson. Is this just a fluke or are there others this strange? After a bit of digging I discovered that he's made a startling 250 + films! Way more than what's covered on IMDB. Whitson's company W.A.V.E. Productions used to feature ads in Fangoria, Alternative Cinema and various horror fanzines in the 90's. Their business model was: You write the script and pay them to make it into a movie. Not a bad little niche as it could potentially yield a plethora of material. It attracted mostly men who would pay this money to see women act out their fetishes. Upon discovering the website and the overwhelming catalog, I began to understand their schtick. With titles like "Kidnapped and Chloroformed",  "WAVE'S Best Drowning Clips", "Strangled 8" (As in, the 7th sequel to the first Strangled), and "Bikini Girl Maid Service". These titles don't leave much to the imagination.

I was unfamiliar with the term "Vorarephilia" until I watched Eaten Alive and started doing some research. It's a fetish related to eating someone or being eaten. There's "Soft Vore", which is the fantasy of being swallowed whole while alive, and then there's "Hard Vore" which is a much more violent, cannibalistic form of Vorarephilia. Eaten Alive falls under Soft Vore - and was clearly made to satiate some random dude's weirdness.

There's something undeniably yucky about the whole thing. This film, and W.A.V.E. in general. After I watched Eaten Alive, I spent hours on the website reading synopsis' and looking at strange pictures. They seem to be violent in nature, towards women. Not in a way I'm necessarily used to from horror movies. The idea of an individual paying money to see women asphyxiating in quicksand is unsettling. Yet here I am, a woman, spending my time researching it. I became curious about Gary Whitson and found this interview, by Tina Krause who I immediately recognized as one of the actresses from Eaten Alive. It's a very generic, survey-like interview. One that seems coerced and completely biased. My first thought was that it sounds like Whitson wrote the questions to accommodate the answers he wanted to give. Though it did clear a lot of things up, like his response to being considered a fetish filmmaker...

 "What I’ve always tried to do is make a movie with a beginning, middle, and end. Something with a real storyline. I’ve refused numerous storylines whose only objective was to show some violent or sadistic scene. This isn’t to say I don’t do violent movies. But I try to make them within the context of a real story. And my feeling is everything is a fetish of some kind or another. People may just not call it that."

Fair enough. Also, I do respect that he never crossed the line to hardcore pornography. Not that I have a problem with porn but you can either make strangulation films or porn, to do both is just excessive. It seems like it would be the natural progression, but instead he built this weird little empire. I've since seen two more movies from the W.A.V.E. catalog and surprisingly with mostly female casts, there hasn't been a lot of male aggression directed towards women. I'm sure I just lucked out there, but it's worth noting. I also like that most of the actresses seem to return for every movie which somehow softens the blow of the subject matter. Not to mention that these are campy as fuck. It's not all rooted in sexual proclivities either, they also make adventure film inspired by old serials, Sci-Fi and your run of the mill vampire/zombie/monster movies. I'm especially intrigued by a few Mermaid fetish films on the site. I will SHELL out money to see that! I feel like I stumbled into this unlimited resource of whathaveyous that are untouched by man. Not all of them, but well over half I can find no mention of anywhere on the internet except the website itself. At $20-$30 a pop, this should keep me busy for years or until I lose interest.

Eaten Alive was followed by trailers and alternate variations on the effects.

Despite it's reputation, W.A.V.E Productions has my full attention.! I have a few more queued up to be watched and a list of titles I plan ordering from the website soon! I don't anticipate anything will ever live up to Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge, but I'll never know unless I do the work! Feel free to explore their website yourself!...



W.A.V.E    P.R.O.D.U.C.T.I.O.N.S

Das Triadisches Ballett (1970)

I always felt that ballet was the art of pushing the human body to move naturally in unnatural ways. Das Triadisches does the opposite, these dancers are stiff and inorganic. They glide around like little wind-up toys. Putting you under hypnosis in a minimalist waltz. Developed by Bauhaus mastermind Oskar Schlemmer, who has painting, sculpting, choreography and all areas of design to his credit. He was hired as the Master of Form at the Bauhaus Theater Workshop in 1922. He choreographed many ballets in his duration, Das Triadisches being the most famous.

Translating to "the Triadic Ballet", it unfolds in three parts which can be distinguished by colors and high evocative costumes. Almost unreal geometric figures that's mobility feels rooted in some kind of dark magic. In 1970 is was made into a 29 minute color film directed by Marianne Hasting, Franz Schombs and Georg Verden with a contemporary score by Erich Ferstl.

Part one features a sunshine yellow background with robot-like figures and a faceless ballerina. Emoting a clinical and space-age vibe.

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Part two features a very bubblegum inspired pink background and more humanoids...

The male figure looks like a buff Ultraman.

She is too cool for words.

My favorite dance, still part of the second act...

She's like a confectionary work of folk art. Gumdrop skirt and headdress. The music in the sequence is absolutly perfect. I imagine little children in the Bavarian Forest would play with these toys on Christmas day, or something terribly charming like that.

Part three, all in black, possible the most dramatic, expressive and frightening of the three....

This amazing get-up reminds me of a snail, or something aquatic. Maybe she's Venus? There's something mysterious and goddess-like about her.

Then there's these terrifying warrior figures - or at least that's what they seem like to me. Somewhere in between a luchador, a Roman mercenary and a Japanese masked hero - these guys are 100 % no-bullshit. Don't mess with them.

Then we have possibly the most dangerous looking costume. I say this because no one will convince me that her tutu and head piece is not made out of razor wire. In my perception, this black cloaked world is like a very dangerous game of chess and she is the queen. She WILL fuck you up, like a wasp, she was programmed by aliens to destroy us all. God help us.

There is no escape, you are going to die.

The segment ends with this animated figure, which I haven't decided if he represents failure. The inevitable captivity of the player, or if he represents the player himself. You've failed so now you're apart of the world, stuck in a motionless statue.

Of course nothing I've said is true. It's just how watching this makes me feel, which I love. It's one of my favorite things I've seen all year. It experiments with time and movement. I'm convinced that I've fallen into this world of giant dancing toys, like some kind of Bauhausian Wonderland. Filled with both enchanting beings and ghastly villains.



Oskar Schlemmer seemed to have influenced a lot of things I love. Notably my favorite of David Bowie's 70's looks...

On the left, Schlemmer's costume from the early 20's, on the right Bowie wearing a strikingly similar costume by Kansai Yamamoto.

Bowie's Bauhaus inspired boxy tuxedo (Nomi on the right)

Klaus Nomi's iconic simplified German Expressionist version, which I prefer.



And there's something about the ballet that feels like a live action Piotr Kamler film, particularly my favorite of his shorts, One Ephemeral Mission.

And lastly I'm convinced that it influenced Barry Levinson's Toys, particularly Joan Cusack's character...

I promise to review this movie some day. I have plenty to say about it and I want to take no less than 200 screen grabs.

These all have flutters of beauty that are rooted in the Bauhaus movement and at the center is Oskar Schlemmer and his contributions. I couldn't recommend this short film more. So if you please, pour yourself a beverage and take a half hour break from your day to enjoy this quizzical objet d'art.