#BLACK WIDOW 1970

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"THE LADY OF THE MOON, MY BRIDE -- ASTAROTH HER NAME..."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a photograph of vocalist Kip Trevor of Leicester's occult rock band BLACK WIDOW, and famous British Witch, Maxine Sanders, engaged in a live onstage ritual. The photo was later used as the picture sleeve art for the rare Japanese 45 vinyl pressing of "Come to the Sabbat/Way to Power" on CBS Records/Sony, c. 1970.

"The Lady of the Moon, my bride -- Astaroth her name, Side by side we wove the spells that drove mere men insane, "Get thee hence and scour the world -- seek and you shall find," Read my books, yes, learn from, and Power you shall gain."

-- "Way to Power" (1970) by BLACK WIDOW

Source: www.picuki.com/profile/rise_above_records_and_relics.

[comic-covers]

(1970)

[browsethestacks]

Original Art - Champions #012 Pg 02-03 (1977) by John Byrne And Bob Layton

[diceriadelluntore]

Storia Di Musica #318 - Black Widow, Sacrifice, 1970

Nella scelta di raccontare gruppi che hanno black nel nome, non si poteva non toccare il lato esoterico della musica: c'è tutto un filone metal, detto black metal, che porterà all'estremo queste tematiche, con un gusto quasi parossistico dell'orrido diventeranno una sorta di clichè. Il gruppo capostipite furono i leggendari Black Sabbath, ma qualche mese prima un altro gruppo che aveva black nel nome partorì un disco che se musicalmente si allacciava alle nascenti sonorità folk-prog nelle tematiche iniziava, in maniera tanto elegante quanto esplicita, l'anima nera della musica rock.

Il gruppo in questione si chiama Black Widow. All'inizio erano un sestetto, che si chiamava, nel 1966, Pesky Gee. Ne facevano parte: Kay Garret (voce), Kip Trevor (voce, chitarra e armonica), Jess "Zoot" Taylor (pianoforte e organo), Jim Gannon (chitarra e voce), Clive Jones (sassofono e flauto), Bob Bond (basso) e Clive Box (batteria), e con questa formazione pubblicano un album, fino a pochi giorni introvabile (ci sarà una ristampa ad aprile 2024), dal titolo Exclamation Mark nel 1969, che è un tentativo di farsi strada nell'affollatissimo panorama inglese di blues rock: il disco passò inosservato. In quell'anno Kay Garret lasciò il gruppo, che si riformò con il nome di Black Widow a partire dal 1970. E il batterista Cox ha un'idea. Affascinato dal mondo dell'occultismo, convince la band a recuperare materiale: leggono per settimane qualsiasi cosa riguardi l'argomento nella Biblioteca della città di Leicester e arruolano un maestro Wicca per raccogliere informazioni. Ne viene fuori così un disco sicuramente affascinante, dove alla musica sofisticata e dalle soluzioni particolari si canta in maniera spesso senza filtri di un rito ancestrale per richiamare entità misteriose. Sacrifice esce nel 1970, stesso anno del primo disco dei Black Sabbath, ma fu registrato nel 1969 e prodotto da quel Patrick Anthony Meehan che sarà produttore degli stessi Black Sabbath fino al 1976 (il loro periodo d'oro) per la CBS.

In Ancient Days parte con un sinistro organo hammond a cui in serie si aggiungono gli altri strumenti ed è "una chiamata del male" che subito muta in Way To Power: c'è l'introduzione di una sezione fiati (che sarà uno dei pilastri di tutto il disco con il rullare tribale della batteria). Il brano ricco di cambi di tempo e dai cori fa da apripista al loro brano più famoso. È sempre il flauto di Clive Jones il protagonista di Come To The Sabbath, che simboleggia con maestria l'abilità del gruppo di rifarsi a canti mistici tribali. Qui è l'andamento a crescere della velocità e dell'ossessivo ritmico ripetere del ritornello evocativo (Come, Come To Sabbath, Satan's There) a rendere la canzone ansiogena ed affascinante allo stesso tempo. Diventerà poi uno della cover preferite dai gruppi heavy metal, e persino i Black Sabbah e i sanguinosi Death SS ne faranno una riproposizione. Ma il disco è un susseguirsi di sorprese: Conjuration è il brano più dark, dalla ritmica marziale e sofisticata dove è facile sottolineare la bella voce di Kip Trevor. A questo punto c'è una sorta di parentesi gioiosa: Seduction e' una ballata meravigliosa che combina momenti jazz rock ed echi di bossa nova che stridono con il testo, vibrante e sensuale: Would you have me stay with you?\Squeeze and hold you tight?\Soothe you with my tongue and touch\Share your bed at night. Il disco si conclude con due brani: Attack Of The Demon con l'armonizzazione affidata all'organo (non c'e' praticamente chitarra ritmica) e la lunga e magnetica Sacrifice, che nei suoi 11 minuti si sviluppa in una lunga improvvisazione strumentale. Tutti i brani hanno apporti davvero minimi di chitarra elettrica, caratteristica che già ne fa un unicum. Il disco ebbe successo anche perchè la band organizzò uno spettacolo dal vivo dove oltre che cantare si esibiva in una sorta di vero rituale: ad un certo punto dello show, sbucando da parti diverse a seconda del luogo del concerto, si presentava in scena la moglie di Clive Box, che attraverso l'uso di fumogeni e carrucole sembrava volasse tra il pubblico, finchè, sul palco mentre suonavano, veniva distesa e "sacrificata". Il caso volle che una sera, presenti dei fotografi del News Of The World, il famoso tabloid scandalistico, la spada del sacrificio lacerasse il vestito della donna, che alla fine rimase nuda. Per alcuni show successivi, la trovata fu organizzata apposta, ma la foto sul giornale fece il giro di mezzo mondo, attirando le feroci critiche sulla band, alimentando lo scandalo sulle pratiche occulte seguite dai componenti del gruppo.

Inspiegabilmente, il gruppo abbandonerà le tematiche gotiche e mistiche, per riproporsi in veste folk prog nel secondo lavoro, Black Widow (1971): il segnale fu l'abbandono del batterista Box per Romeo Challenger. Rimangono un ascolto particolare e storico, sebbene in molti articoli vengono considerati fondatori del doom: possono esserlo per le tematiche, anche se il loro approccio fu quasi sistematico e pieno di fonti e non estemporaneo e spettacolare come altri, ma non lo furono certo per lo stile musicale, che rappresenta davvero un evento nel binomio rock ed occultismo.

[marveltimewarp]

Jodie Foster as Yelena Belova

[manifesto-of-a-femcel]

Beautiful Movies All Girls Should Watch

A list of movies that touch on coming of age, romance and complex female emotions.

May (2002): A socially awkward veterinary assistant with a lazy eye and obsession with perfection descends into depravity after developing a crush on a boy with perfect hands.

Audition (1999): A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all.

Helter Skelter (2012): Top star Lilico undergoes multiple cosmetic surgeries to her entire body. As her surgeries show side effect, Lilico makes the lives of those around her miserable as she tries to deal with her career and her personal problems.

Ginger Snaps (2000): Two death-obsessed sisters, outcasts in their suburban neighborhood, must deal with the tragic consequences when one of them is bitten by a deadly werewolf.

The Craft (1996): A newcomer to a Catholic prep high school falls in with a trio of outcast teenage girls who practice witchcraft, and they all soon conjure up various spells and curses against those who anger them.

Malèna (2000): Amidst the war climate, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.

Perfect Blue (1997): A retired pop singer turned actress’ sense of reality is shaken when she is stalked by an obsessed fan and seemingly a ghost of her past.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.

The Virgin Suicides (1999): A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid 1970s.

Sucker Punch (2011): A young girl institutionalized by her abusive stepfather retreats to an alternative reality as a coping strategy and envisions a plan to help her escape.

Piggy (2022): An overweight teen is bullied by a clique of cool girls poolside while holidaying in her village. The long walk home will change the rest of her life.

The Love Witch (2016): A modern-day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, with deadly consequences.

Pearl (2022): In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation and lovelessness of life on her parents' farm.

Girl, Interrupted (1999): Based on writer Susanna Kaysen's account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the late 1960s.

Black Swan (2010): Nina is a talented but unstable ballerina on the verge of stardom. Pushed to the breaking point by her artistic director and a seductive rival, Nina's grip on reality slips, plunging her into a waking nightmare.

Gone Girl (2014): With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Jennifer’s Body (2009): A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

Bones And All (2022): Coming of age romance about two cannibals

In the Mood for Love (2000): Two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.

Brokeback Mountain (2005): Ennis and Jack are two shepherds who develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Their relationship becomes complicated when both of them get married to their respective girlfriends.

Call Me By Your Name (2017): In 1980s Italy, romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old student and the older man hired as his father's research assistant.

Maurice (1986): Two English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. To regain his place in society, Clive gives up Maurice and marries. While staying with Clive and his wife, Maurice discovers romance in the arms of the gamekeeper Alec.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001): In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.

Caroline (2009): An adventurous 11-year-old girl finds another world that is a strangely idealized version of her frustrating home, but it has sinister secrets.

Corpse Bride (2005): When a shy groom practices his wedding vows in the inadvertent presence of a deceased young woman, she rises from the grave assuming he has married her.

[cleolinda]

Just for fun, since people kept mentioning that Mattel made a Diahann Carroll doll—it was before 1970, in keeping with the @hotvintagepoll rules, but it was for a TV (not movie) character, nurse and widowed single mother Julia Baker:

NBC changed the title [of the show in development] to “Julia,” and cast young Marc Copage as Julia’s son, Corey Baker. Veteran movie and TV star Lloyd Nolan was given the role of Dr. Morton Chegley, Julia’s employer. The cast was one of the first multiracial ones in American TV history, and it featured black actors in non-servile roles. Rather than playing chauffeurs, maids, cooks, and underlings, the African-American actors in “Julia” broke new territory. Here, they were cast as doctors, professors, health care professionals, and other positions that demanded education and training.

[…]

When asked about her connection with the character, Carroll was of two minds. She acknowledged that the nurse was dreamed up by a white producer and scripted by white writers. Still, she was always proud that she literally changed the complexion of TV. “For many people, ‘Julia’ was a fantasy show. It represented a mutual respect and a friendly work atmosphere that didn’t exist in many places at that time,” Carroll said. “If our show helped to show that that was possible, I’ll take that as an accomplishment to be proud of.”

[harrisonarchive]

George’s Radford Mini De Ville GT (in photo 1, outside Kinfauns); photo 1 by fan Michael Herring.

“Painted metallic black when Harrison bought it in 1965, the Cooper was sprayed red before Dutch art collective The Fool gave it a custom ‘psychedelic’ paint job that included images adopted from the book Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, in early 1967. This Mini was featured in the Magical Mystery Tour film. Distinctive Radford custom features include a full-length sunroof, horizontally mounted Volkswagen tail-lights, and hood-mounted rally fog lamps.” - Guitar Aficionado, Vol. 4, No. 1 “Mini created a Harrison-inspired 2009 Special Edition to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2009. The car was auctioned to benefit the Material World Charitable Foundation, an organization that Harrison founded in 1973. At the time, Harrison’s widow, Olivia, said of the one-off, ‘George was a huge Mini fan and he would have enjoyed this new version.’ […] [The car’s] styling features included a full-length sunroof, horizontally mounted Volkswagen taillights and hood-mounted rally fog lamps. The Mini’s transformation continued when Harrison commissioned Dutch artists Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koger — known collectively as ‘The Fool’ — to paint it bright red and add mystical signs taken from the book, ‘Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics,’ in 1967. […] Shortly after production wrapped for ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ Harrison gave the head-turning Mini — with reg plates LGF 5960 — to close friend and fellow musician Eric Clapton. Clapton returned it to Harrison in the 1970s, but not before it was completely repainted.” - Hagerty, April 26, 2016 You can also spot George’s Mini in the “Any Road” music video.

[gatheringbones]

[“By the time Mabel arrived in 1924, Bedford was no longer the site of the tortures and abuses laid bare in a March 19, 1920, New York Tribune exposé: “Bedford Cruelty Charges Against Officials Upheld.” Not so long ago, women, Black and white alike, had been tied to their cots or handcuffed to their cell bars with their feet dangling inches above the ground. Even if Bedford had reformed, I doubt it was the good time Mabel tells Joan it was. We made whiskey. We made wine . . . We had parties there. Each night you slept with a different woman if you wanted to. Me, I was havin’ a ball. Superintendent Barker saw Bedford Hills not as a center of surveillance, the panopticon of prison we know today, but as a benevolent institution of moral reform, a safe haven away from the dangers and carnal pleasures of the city that might lead any young woman astray.

After serving seven months, Mabel was paroled with a foster family in Jersey City and worked as a domestic nearby. Bedford’s hold did not end here, though. The prison was a pipeline feeding domestic labor to well-off white ladies who lived outside the pull of New York City’s whirlwind hedonism. Mabel’s foster family reported her movements to Dr. Barker, and when she strayed into the City of Pleasure, she had to return to Bedford to continue serving her sentence. Then there was yet another domestic labor parole placement before Mabel’s discharge papers arrived in October 1926. “I do not want you to feel that our interest in you ends with the mailing of these papers,” Superintendent Barker wrote. “It is always my hope that should you at any time experience difficulties, there would be no hesitation on your part in getting in touch with the Institution.”

To Bedford Hills, Mabel was always “wild and wayward,” in need of reform. Their records are concerned only with the timeline—the dates of her incarceration and release—and the irrelevant facts they were asked to collect—a description of her nose, her IQ. An administrative accumulation we are told comprises a history.

To Joan, Mabel was an “icon,” always Ms. Hampton, an address of respect never afforded in her prison records or by the wealthy white families, much better off than Joan’s, that employed her. Joan tries to pin down the order of her hero’s journey—���And what year is this, about? We always try and do the year so people know.”—but that’s not what Mabel wants us to remember. She can hardly remember it herself. The oral history is the kind of record I crave not for its attention to dates or names or accuracy but for the dialogue. Joan asks the direct questions I wish I could have posed to Mary.

Joan’s interview style was shaped by a series of 1970s oral history workshops aimed at empowering people to record queer stories. She spent hours with friends drafting “questions that we thought would elicit the kind of history we wanted. What did you call yourself in the twenties? How did you and your friends dress in the forties? What bars did you go to?” These are not the questions of a doctor intent on diagnosis, or a sociologist intent on reform. If, for instance, W. E. B. Du Bois had drifted from 1890s Philadelphia to Mabel’s doorstep while undertaking his 2,500-household survey, he simply would have asked if she was married, single, or widowed. Joan asks instead how Mabel liked to have sex, and Mabel responds with a series of gestures, lost to us now. “They can’t see your hands,” Joan says. I imagine the middle and pointer fingers of both hands spread wide like legs, meeting at the vertices, the international symbol for scissoring. Or the same V held against her mouth, tongue poking through. But I’m getting lost in my own inventions. The Mabel I have come to know would never have been so lewd.

Joan brings to the tapes an awareness of her own bias, and a reminder of my own. She knows her presence in the room, the framing of her questions alone, shapes what comes out of Mabel’s mouth. Joan was raised by a single mother, Regina, who worked as a bookkeeper, who was let out on parole after embezzling money to provide for her daughter, and who remained poor and overworked until the day she died. “I know what it was to be marginal,” Joan says into the tape recorder, evidence that she shares some of Mabel’s working-class background. “From every eviction notice that was tacked on the door, every time the men came with flashlights to reclaim the beds or the furniture.” Still, Joan was first introduced to Mabel as the family housekeeper after Regina first met the “small black Christian woman” not at the Bronx Slave Market, street corners and intersections where Black women hoped to find a day’s work cleaning the homes of the wealthy, but at a luncheonette in Bayside, Queens. When Regina couldn’t afford the help anymore, the two women became friends and would go to the racetrack together. It was to Mabel that Regina turned when she suspected her own daughter might be a lesbian. “I’m gonna kill myself. My daughter is a lesbian,” she said. “Regina,” Mabel calmly replied. “What are you talking about? So am I. So am I.”

When Joan grew up, she developed a friendship with Mabel all her own. It was a friendship marked by question and answer, call and response, Joan’s attempts to understand the lesbians who came before and Mabel’s insistence that Joan gets her story right. “Mabel, I want to ask you a question.”

You already asked me seventy eleven! How many more you gonna ask me?“]

amelia possanza, from lesbian love story: a memoir in archives, 2023

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

I URGE YOU NOW TO FIND MY BOOKS AND READ THE TALES AND SPELLS, THAT TURNED THE WHOLE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN -- CONFUSION EVERYWHERE."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on Leicester, UK occult/prog rock band BLACK WIDOW's "Come to the Sabbat/Way to Power" 45 vinyl single, issued as CBS/Sony CBSA 82068 in Japan, c. 1970.

EXTRA INFO: Very rare and exclusive picture sleeve featuring BW vocalist Kip Trevor and famous British Witch, Maxine Sanders, engaged in a live onstage ritual.

"I urge you now to find my books and read the tales and spells, That turned the whole world upside down -- confusion everywhere. The four of the Apocalypse on horseback ever wait, The Talisman of Set was mine -- the Horsemen did my bidding."

-- "Way to Power" (1970) by BLACK WIDOW

Source: www.picuki.com/media/3096046465305295704.

[maddie-grove]

Most Common Problems Faced by My Childhood Dolls (Grouped by Type of Doll)

Baby/Companion Dolls: life-threatening diseases; bullying by other dolls at school; my dubious discipline style; my divorce from my imaginary husband Jake.

Groovy Girls: bullying by other Groovy Girls; life-altering gymnastics accidents; feet too unwieldy for go-go boots.

Barbies: false witchcraft accusations; real witches; tuberculosis; kidnapping; the time Ken and his brother Adam started a polygamous cult; bullying by other Barbies (whether in a normal high school or a beauty pageant or a cult); basically anything bad that happened to female movie stars in Hollywood under the studio system; the challenges of raising a million Chrissies and Kellies and Stacies and Skippers and similarly sized off-brand child dolls with little help from Ken or Adam; sibling rivalry (including an East of Eden-style mess between Ken and Adam).

Dollhouse Families: my friend Emily C. (I was Emily S.) stealing the mom doll from my old Fisher-Price family, leaving John (the dad) a widower, so when I got a new family a few years later, I decided that John should marry Patricia, the mom of the new family, which made it necessary for me to interpret Robbie (almost certainly meant to be a dad doll) as Patricia's teenage son, which was obviously very emotionally confusing for Robbie and exacerbated the usual tensions of a newly blended family.

Clothespin Dolls: Nancy, Alice, and Lily, the three charming clothespin dolls made by my genuinely talented great-aunt Beth in the 1960s or 1970s, were grown-up sisters who had a complicated dynamic (both Nancy and Lily had serious psychological and/or substance abuse issues, so Alice had to take care of them and Nancy's children and her own children) and also experienced nineteenth-century-literature-style problems, like diphtheria and ice-skating accidents and bear attacks. The clothespin dolls that I created myself as a tween/young teen were not as well-made, but their problems were generally limited to normal high school bullshit (not even the kind where you get poisoned or kidnapped!).

Miscellaneous Medium-Sized Figurines (mostly fast food toys of Disney characters and mini-Barbies): various passive-aggressive rivalries between groups (mini-Barbies vs. movie/TV characters, Disney vs. non-Disney, movie vs. TV, protagonist vs. non-protagonist, etc.); a lack of eligible bachelors (leading to unwise marriages, such as Belle from Beauty and the Beast marrying a temperamental Space Jam monster); ennui.

Playmobils: the Playmobils had a nearly utopian society, relatively free from poverty and class snobbery, and generally this diverse group of Union soldiers, stuffy Victorians, pirates, outlaws, royalty, horse girls, milkmaids, and fairies were able to work out their differences peacefully. However, all that progressive modernity had a dark side, most clearly illustrated by the Kafkaesque ordeal of Oliver, a boy who was imprisoned for no discernable reason by an evil psychiatrist and his social worker girlfriend despite the desperate efforts of his mother to free him. Intense wartime romances and infectious disease outbreaks were also common themes.

Fisher-Price Great Adventure Action Figures: these rather hideous but very fun toys (consisting of an anachronistic mix of knights, pirates, cowboys, and Robin Hood's Merry Men) belonged to my seven-years-younger brother, so we would play with them a lot while I was looking after him. Naturally there was a lot of military conflict and criminal activity built into our play (will Robin Hood and his friends be able to steal the treasure from the castle? Will the golden knights or the black knights win the big battle? Who will stop the stagecoach robberies?), but, to entertain myself, I would introduce storylines such as "the Golden Sword Knight is tired of being bullied by the other knights, so he runs away and goes to live in the forest with Robin Hood's gang, where he falls in love with a female outlaw" and "Little John starts a AC/DC-style rock band with two of the black knights and everyone hates it."

Fisher-Price Little People: easily the most provincial of the doll groups, the Fisher-Price Little People struggled with extreme class/wealth inequality, widespread adultery, child abuse, teen homelessness, practically non-existent resources for the disabled, sexual repression, a character known only as "The Pervert," and a killer clown. Every day they went to school and work, and every night they tried to find someone to hook up with and maybe got kidnapped. I only wish my brother and I had been in possession of the motel playset. Think of all the extramarital affairs and drug deals that could have happened there!

Polly Pockets: the Polly Pocket community was dominated by two wealthy factions, a nouveau riche pair of brothers with a beach party house and the royal family. Due to a severe job and housing shortage, plus the local men's habit of not acknowledging their natural children, ordinary Polly Pockets had to struggle and scrape. Compared with the Barbies, there was a lot of solidarity among women (and also Josh, the one working-class boy Polly Pocket). Many of the Polly Pockets were very fragile, including the alcoholic Cowgirl Becky and the agoraphobic piano player Penny.

Paper Dolls: intense status jockeying over who had the most/best clothes, mainly. They also fought about friendships and (if there were any of them) boys, but it ultimately came down to clothes.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

Stats from Movies 1201-1300

Top 10 Movies - Highest Number of Votes

Splice (2009) had the most votes with 854 votes. Dark Cloud (2022) had the least votes with 290 votes.

The 10 Most Watched Films by Percentage

Ghostbusters (1984) was the most watched film with 83.3% of voters out of 756 saying they had seen it. T Blockers (2023) had the least "Yes" votes with 0,3% of voters out of 732.

The 10 Least Watched Films by Percentage

Salem's Lot (1979) was the least watched film with 64.4% of voters out of 449 saying they hadn’t seen it. A Snake of June (2002) had the least "No" votes with 6,9% of voters out of 391.

The 10 Most Known Films by Percentage

Ghostbusters (1984) was the best known film, 0,5% of voters out of 756 saying they’d never heard of it.

The 10 Least Known Films by Percentage

A Snake of June (2002) was the least known film, 90.8% of voters out of 391 saying they’d never heard of it.

The movies part of the statistic count and their polls below the cut.

Bingo Hell (2021) The Descent: Part 2 (2009) The Reckoning (2020) The Lair (2022) Dream House (2011) The Other Lamb (2019) Unsane (2018) Children of the Night (1991) Manichithrathazhu (1993) They Live (1988)

Chasing Sleep (2000) The Special (2020) Grabbers (2012) Blood and Roses (1960) Eating Miss. Campbell (2022) Violated Angels (1967) A Snake of June (2002) The Alligator People (1959) eXistenZ (1999) Blood Widow (2014)

Blood Widow (2020) Honeymoon (2014) Uninvited (1987) Scarecrows (2017) Talon Falls (2017) They Reach (2020) Devil's Gate (2017) Killer Sofa (2019) The Ghost Within (2023) Hidden 3D (2011) Grave of the Vampire (1972) Lamb (2021) See No Evil (2006) Planet Terror (2007) Lights Out (2016) Gerald's Game (2017) Webcast (2018) The Love Witch (2016) No One Gets Out Alive (2021) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Wounds (2019) Paintball Massacre (2020) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) Charlie's Farm (2014) Child Eater (2016) Monster Brawl (2011) 247°F (2011) Dark Cloud (2022) The Hole (2001) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Hazard Jack (2014) Pumpkinhead (1988) The Resurrected (1991) Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) The Curse (1987) The Dunwich Horror (1970) Earth vs. the Spider (2001) The Fan (1982) Mute Witness (1995) The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

The Suckling (1990) It Conquered the World (1956) Bug (2006) The Signal (2007) Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) Gehenna: Where Death Lives (2016) Monsters (2010) YellowBrickRoad (2010) The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) T Blockers (2023) The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow (2008) The Mothman Prophecies (2002) Baba Yaga (1973) Kill List (2011) Splice (2009) The Crazies (2010) Fire in the Sky (1993) Banshee Chapter (2013) Angel Dust (1994) Blood and Black Lace (1964)

It Came from Outer Space (1953) TerrorVision (1986) Lurker in the Lobby (1998) A Night to Dismember (1983) Altered States (1980) Cube²: Hypercube (2002) The Dark Half (1993) Darkness (2002) Ghostbusters (1984) The Keep (1983)

Cobweb (2023) The Empty Man (2020) Bloody Hell (2020) The Green Inferno (2013) Turistas (2006) Salem's Lot (1979) Stir of Echoes (1999) Christine (1983) Found (2012) The Hole (2009)

[comicsart3]

Black Widow has a reasonably long comic book history, making her first appearance in Tales of Suspense #52 in 1964 but has arguably only recently come into her own thanks to reboots from the 2000s and the character’s appearance in the Marvel Comics movie franchise (Iron Man 2 in 2010). Despite being the creation of Stan Lee, Black Widow was a rather two dimensional Cold War figure, whose real name was Natalia (Natasha) Romanova who operated as a seductive Soviet spy and assassin in the 1960s, usually pitched against Iron Man and fellow Avengers. She was later portrayed as something of a brainwashed dupe, controlled by her sinister Communist Russian bosses, until at last, she discovers the joys of American individual freedom and defects to the USA. After this the character somewhat loses her point, working occasionally with The Avengers and briefly becoming Hawkeye’s love interest. In the 1970s, the character was relaunched as a crime-fighting espionage “babe” complete with tight leather costume, her flowing iconic red hair and a jet set lifestyle, perhaps manifesting Marvel’s ongoing struggle with feminist portrayals of its (few) major female characters.

The character dropped from sight in the 1980s and made fleeting appearances the following decade, usually allied to Tony Stark and was a sometime member of The Avengers. Her contributions were often linked to her former role as a Soviet operative, particularly after the Russian Communist regime collapsed in 1991.

In the more nuanced world of the 2000s, Black Widow has become a more standard sexy-but-lethal espionage character, generally working with the good guys against international threats, but her fraught background makes her a morally ambiguous figure, prone to rogue behaviour. In the page featured, Black Widow takes on Alexei Shostakov, Natalia’s original husband. Shostakov began as the Soviet version of Captain America, Red Guardian, frequently working with his wife on anti Western missions during the Cold War. Alexei became estranged from Natalia after her defection, and in the post-Soviet era, the need for Red Guardian was no more, so Shostakov took on the role of Ronin, a more conventional super assassin for hire, although he retained a love for Mother Russia. Working with a terrorist group known as the Dark Ocean Society, Ronin was eventually taken down by a number of Avengers, including Black Widow, and was actually, rather embarrassingly for him, captured and incarcerated by his ex-wife.

Black Widow, for me, falls rather unfortunately between the stools of more convincing DC heroines/villainesses such as Catwoman and Huntress and never quite equals either, her earlier politicisation as a character perhaps not helping. Her current role as a modern Modesty Blaise-type figure perhaps suits her best.

Sources: Black Widow and Red Guardian Wikipedia entries and ReadComicsOnline.

[justforbooks]

Trina Robbins

American cartoonist and author whose pioneering work in comics included being the first female artist to draw Wonder Woman

The American illustrator and writer Trina Robbins, who has died aged 85, began her career in comics in her native New York in the 1960s as a contributor to the counterculture newspaper East Village Other. She also drew and wrote strips for Gothic Blimp Works, an underground comic.

Then came comic strips, covers and spot illustrations for the underground publications Berkeley Tribe and It Ain’t Me, Babe, often described as the first feminist newspaper, before before she put together an all-women comic, It Ain’t Me, Babe Comix (1970), followed by the anthology All Girl Thrills (1971) and the solo comic Girl Fight Comics (1972).

Her black heroine, Fox, was serialised in Good Times (1971) and another of her characters, Panthea, who first appeared in Gothic Blimp Works (1969), was a regular in Comix Book (1974-76).

She also became one of the 10 founders of Wimmen’s Comix, an all-female underground comics anthology published from 1972 to 1992, and in the late 70s was a contributor to High Times, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon and Playboy.

Later she adapted the 1919 novel Dope, by Sax Rohmer, for Eclipse Comics (1981-83) and wrote and drew Meet Misty (1985-86) for Marvel. She was also the first woman to draw Wonder Woman, in The Legend of Wonder Woman (1986).

Robbins’ wider interest in the history of girls’ comics led her to co-write a book about the genre, Women and the Comics (1986), with Catherine Yronwode, and later A Century of Women Cartoonists (1993), followed by a number of biographies of female comic pioneers, including Nell Brinkley, Lily Renée, Gladys Parker and Tarpé Mills.

Born in Brooklyn, she grew up in Queens, where her mother, Bessie (nee Roseman) was a teacher. Her father, Max Perlson, was a tailor who later wrote for Yiddish-language newspapers and published a collection of stories, A Minyen Yidn (1938), that was turned by Trina into a comic anthology in 2017.

At the age of 10 she graduated from reading wholesome animal comics to Millie the Model, Patsy Walker and others with female protagonists. The Katy Keene comic was especially influential, as it encouraged Robbins to make paper dolls and design clothing for them. She was also a huge fan of the jungle adventuress Sheena.

Having discovered science fiction at 14, Robbins began attending conventions, and at one such gathering she met the short story writer Harlan Ellison. At 21 he was five years her senior, but they dated briefly and he later wrote her into his film The Oscar (1966) as Trina Yale, played by Edie Adams.

Trina attended Queens College before studying drawing at Cooper Union, although she dropped out after a year. In 1957 she married the cartoonist Art Castillo; they moved to the Bay area of Los Angeles until he disappeared to Mexico and the relationship ended.

Working for a time as a model for men’s magazines, she was a cinema usherette when she met Paul Robbins, whom she married in 1962 following Castillo’s death. Her new husband wrote for the LA Free Press, which gave her access to the Byrds, Bob Dylan and other musicians, and she began making clothing to sell to musician friends, including Mama Cass.

Returning alone to New York in 1966 (she and Robbins eventually divorced, in 1972), she opened a boutique called Broccoli on East 4th Street, making clothes for exotic customers and having flings with a number of them, including the Doors’ singer Jim Morrison and the activist Abbie Hoffman; she also had longer relationships with Paul Williams, editor of Crawdaddy magazine, and the cartoonist Kim Deitch, with whom she set up a cartoon art museum on East 9th Street.

Her clothes-making got her into a song by Joni Mitchell, who wrote in Ladies of the Canyon that “Trina wears her wampum beads / She fills her drawing book with line / Sewing lace on widows’ weeds / And filigree on leaf and vine”.

After she had sold her boutique in 1969 and began to make her living in comics, there was no looking back.

Apart from her writing and illustrating activities over the years, in 1994 she became one of the founders of Friends of Lulu, a US-based charity that promotes the reading of comic books by women and the participation of women in the comic book industry.

Her later work on the history of women in comics produced three further books, From Girls to Grrrlz (1996), The Great Women Cartoonists (2001) and Pretty in Ink (2013).

She also wrote a number of books for children, starting with Catswalk: The Growing of Girl (1990), and including the Chicagoland Detective Agency series (2010-14) of bizarre high school mystery adventures.

For adults she wrote The Great Women Superheroes (1996), Eternally Bad: Goddesses With Attitude (2001), Tender Murderers: Women Who Kill (2003) and Wild Irish Roses: Tales of Brigits, Kathleens and Warrior Queens (2004).

Her most recent comic was Won’t Back Down (2024), a pro-choice anthology.

She is survived by her partner, Steve Leialoha, a daughter, Casey, from her relationship with Dietch, and her sister Harriet.

🔔 Trina Robbins, writer and illustrator, born 17 August 1938; died 10 April 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[world-cinema-research]

Short Essay: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

by Rachel Powers

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a story about Emmi, an older German widow, and Ali, a young Moroccan immigrant. The two meet by chance in a bar and ultimately fall in love. Taking place in 1970’s Germany, this film highlights the racial tensions during this time. Emmi and Ali struggle with judgement and ostracization from the people around them, as their friends, family, and society at large do not agree with or condone their relationship.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was released in 1974. With an estimated budget was 260,000 DEM, it made $16,243 worldwide. Fear Eats the Soul was Fasbinder’s first international success, which allowed him to pursue larger budget films and explore different kinds of filmmaking. He completed 44 projects from 1966 to 1982, when he died at age 37. Many of Fassbinder’s films were focused on exposing the moral hypocrisy of German society.

A historically significant event shortly before Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’s release was the Munich Olympics Massacre in 1972. This was the first Olympics hosted in Germany since 1936’s games in Berlin. In 1936, Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Olympics as “a platform for the propagation of Nazi ideology” and there was “blatant racism and anti-Semitism that characterized the Games.” The 1972 Olympics in Munich was meant to “offer the world a contrast to the horrifying spectacle of Berlin.” Unfortunately this event became memorable for other reasons. At the Munich Olympics, eight members of Black September, a group affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, infiltrated the games in order to take the Israeli Olympic Team hostage and demand the release of hundreds of prisoners being held in Israel. This did not go according to plan, and resulted in the deaths of 11 of Israel’s Olympic team members, 5 members of Black September, and one German policeman.

This event undoubtedly increased racial tensions during this time, which is highlighted in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Before making their relationship public, Emmi tests the waters to see how people will react to her relationship with Ali. Her coworkers react horribly to the topic of immigrants. When Emmi tells her family about her relationship with Ali, her son kicks in her television screen. The neighborhood grocer refuses to serve Ali when he comes in for margarine. Emmi’s family stops speaking to her, she is ostracized at work, and the only person she has left is Ali.

As an immigrant in this environment, Ali was already exposed to racism and mistreatment by most Germans. The judgement that he received from his close circle about his relationship with Emmi seemed to be more about her age than her race. His friends said that it would never last, but they let Ali make his own choices and were not nearly as harsh as the people around Emmi.

Fassbinder captures these themes in the look and feel of this film. His composition frequently uses walls and doorframes to box the characters into the frame, where they are alone and isolated.

“Fassbinder borrows from Sirk the technique of framing shots so stringently that the characters seem fenced in, limited in the ways they can move. He’ll lock Emmi (Brigitte Mira) in the foreground and Ali (El Hedi Ben Salem) in the background in such a way that neither could move without leaving the frame, and make you aware of that: He’s saying visually that they are locked into the same space, without choices.” -Roger Ebert

This image shows how Fassbinder uses the door frame to confine Ali and Emmi, giving the viewer the sense of viewing a private, almost secret, conversation. This boundary also foreshadows the limits that their relationship will have in the future.

The composition of this shot shows Emmi and Ali at a cafe, with every chair around them empty. The empty chairs symbolize the isolation and abandonment that they have experienced because of their relationship.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is unconventional, especially for its time. The story is not familiar, as the relationship between Ali and Emmi was very much against the social norm - and still is. The story is easy to understand, although the viewer must have a willingness to understand it on a moral level.

“Fear Eats the Soul is urgent and contemporary: it means something relevant in 1974, and in 2017.” – Peter Bradshaw (2017)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is just as important now as it was in the 1970’s. It is not simply the love story of an unlikely couple, but a reflection of the prejudices in race, age, and class that still exist in society today.