The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965)

The idea surrounding "lost" films is so fascinating to me. That X amount of people worked together to bring an idea to life is a feat in and of itself. To have it slip away from the public's pop culture consciousness is... relatively sad. To have it almost entirely erased from film history due to poor storage conditions is just tragic. This is exactly what (almost) happened to the exploitation film, The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds.

The history of this rediscovered cheapie is a bit vague as there's not too much information about it available online, but it seems that the film was considered lost forever after a storage unit containing the original negative went up in flames. Yet lost films work in mysterious ways and a private collection was sold to the good people over at the Harvard Film Archive for safekeeping, which eventually came to the attention of Nicolas Winding Refn. Refn has been prepping byNWR for sometime now (which is now up and running here), which is designed to serve as a free streaming space for lost and forgotten exploitation/trash/tasteless films. And on top of that, all the films have received new transfers! I had honestly forgotten about this project till I stumbled across the above poster earlier this morning and immediately dove in.

Written, produced, directed by and starring Bert Williams, Cuckoo Birds is a trashy Southern Gothic. Imagine a cheap Tennessee Williams play adapted by a Floridian exploitationeer, complete with mad dashes of brilliance that wouldn't be seen again till two years later with Spider Baby or  (much later) with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eaten Alive films. Just don't let the word "brilliance" throw you off. This is not a good movie by any means. It's an underground hodgepodge of "huh?" and "huh." It's an oddity, for sure, complete with crocodiles, terrible makeup and a naked lady who stabs people by the swamp as fast as the undercranking would allow her. Yet there was something here that I just couldn't shake, something that kept me compelled to finish this with as little interference as possible.

Perhaps it's the idea that a "new", "lost" film has premiered in our circuit. If there's one thing that genre fans love it's elder worship. Tell us that the newly discovered "X" film has roots that ties into "Y" film and people will flock to see it, including me. And, since we're all really just chasing the high of the first season of True Detective, I'll jump at any chance to see a Southern Gothic.

And for you genre history buffs, a little anecdote: this film was made around the same time fellow Florida exploiters Doris Wishman and Herschell Gordon Lewis were creating their own trashterpieces. But, is this movie even worth seeing? Depends. Do you house a passing desire to watch some old exploitation? You can do better: watch Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, or The Last House on the Left. Already seen those and want to dig deeper? Then definitely check this one out.

Hi and Hello (An Introduction in One Part)

Sunday mornings can be tough. Sometimes you wake up in a haze, last night's aftereffects still lingering in your vision and brain, and want nothing more than to just lay it all off in bed. I don't consider myself to be a heavy drinker but still, the ever-taxing work week makes one yearn for those few extra hours in bed with nothing but a full day ahead of them (judging that you wake up at a relatively decent hour). Today was no different in that regard but I did feel a flicker of something that has been dormant for sometime. 

Some hobbies come and go with time. For instance, a mere decade ago I was completely enamored with electronic dance music, a phase that I look back upon with equal parts fondness and disappointed grimacing that would make the Grimace jump off a bridge. Yet some hobbies defy phases and linger with you for your entire life, and I guess this is where true passion begins to take hold. Music has always been a passion of mine, something I hold very dear to my heart to the point where it helps explain my identity in a certain, weird way. Film is another other passion I hold deep within me, the other side of the coin, a fiery love that sparked long before I even started to avidly listen to music. 

I'm the kind of guy that, when I first get into something, whether it's a band's discography or a director's filmography, I dive in head first. I love learning the history and knowing the roots of what I love. I become completely enamored. I guess you could even call it rampant fanboyism, though I like to think I can contain it better than most. But once you get me going, boy, I won't stop until I clamor up, thinking that perhaps I said a little "too" much. You see, when I take the leap off the diving board I swim as hard and as fast as I can to reach the bottom. Only thing is I run out of breath, race to the surface and realize that there's so much pool left to explore. I want to swim over there and touch that pool light! I want to wade out of the shallow end and see how far I can tippytoe before I can't touch the bottom anymore! Oh, wait! I want to get out and take another deep dive and touch the bottom again!

It's equal parts invigorating, exciting, overwhelming and exhausting. It's easy to get burned out on something you love. Sometimes you need a break to help recalibrate yourself. Separate yourself so you can take a long, hard look at it all. Sometimes you turn your head and walk away (sorry, EDM). And other times, after taking a small detour, you come running back.

And that's essentially how I feel about genre films. I grew up addicted to all things horror/sci-fi/general-movie-weirdness and still feel strongly connected to it, but sometimes life gets in the way. When you get older your priorities begin to shift. Part-time jobs become full-time gigs. A full night's sleep becomes evermore important. And sometimes, if you're lucky, a special someone walks into your life that you want to spend every waking minute with. You start using your free time more wisely. You read less, you watch less, you might stay less connected with new releases and genre news. Passion may ebb and flow, but rarely does it ever go away.

And sometimes, given enough time, you can strike a beautiful and inspiring balance between life and passion. Writing about movies used to be a big part of my life. I would volunteer for websites and write small film reviews and general film musings, while hosting my own blog at the same time. And, unlike wobbly bass drops, this is a time I look back on with nothing but smiles and, perhaps, a little envy. As fun as writing about film was it also proved to be very cathartic to sit in front of a screen and click-clacking away into the wee hours of the night. This is something I stopped doing for years despite the little tic in the back of my brain going, "You maniac(s)! You blew it up!" Even now my brain still runs of pop culture genre beats.

This is supposed to be an introduction with what I plan on doing with this space, and I could cop out by killing this tangent right here and now, but I won't. What I'm really trying to say is that the hunger I felt in my college years is finally coming back in a productive way. Like I mentioned earlier, the itch has been here ever since but it really didn't dig in with megalodon-sized teeth until I read a mainstay column over at Birth.Movies.Death. entitled "Collins' Crypt". I ate it up. I haven't found genre pieces like this in so long... this is exactly what I needed to get my juices flowing again. After spending too much time at my job reading these articles I became excited. Like, really excited. Excited to start writing again about what I love most: genre films.

Which now leads to what I plan on doing. Genres easily bleed into one another and horror is no exception. There are more ties to horror than there are hooks in Franks body by the end of Hellraiser. Horror can lead one to the vaguely-defined thriller genre, or exploitation, and BOTH of those genre have bridges to action, which can lead to martial arts films, and so on and so on. I don't need to tell you how, living in the internet age, there are more films readily available than ever before. We all know that. So I'm going to take advantage of that.

Again, this is less of an introduction than it is a stream-of-consciousness rambling about rediscovering a part of me that has long been dormant. I plan on doing more digging that I've ever done before. Discovering new ties, lost films, old favorites and just some genuinely tasteless weirdness. So, please, feel free to check in from time to time. Hit me up and talk about movies with me. Let me bore you with useless histories regarding certain sub-sub-subgenres. Let's get weird.