QUOTE TIME AGAIN;

“Some artists see an infinite number of movies. Hutchinson, for instance, instead of going to the country to study nature, will go to see a movie on 42nd Street, like "Horror at Party Beach" two or three times and contemplate it for weeks on end. The movies give a ritual pattern to the lives of many artists, and this induces a kind of "low-budget" mysticism, which keeps them in a perpetual trance. The "blood and guts" of horror movies provides for their "organic needs." Serious movies are too heavy on "values," and so are dismissed by the more perceptive artists. Such artists have X-ray eyes, and can see through all of that cloddish substance that passes for "the deep and profound" these days.”

- Robert Smithson, 'Entropy and the New Monuments'

My brother sent me a link to the above essay, and skim-reading it I wondered why, as, being the two-fisted pop culture mystic I like to pretend I am when it comes to discussion of art and philosophy, Smithson’s chilly brew of obtuse conceptual art, modern architecture and speculative science conveys about as much to me as a cat learning to tap out morse code in Russian.

Reaching the above paragraph though, my brain sparks and my nerves jangle – fuckin’ A!

I’ve been trying to come up with a decent explanation recently of why on a basic level I consistently get more enjoyment and meaning out of weird horror and cultish kitsch movies than I do out of the majority of more high-minded, artistic cinematic fare, despite being smart enough to appreciate the latter, and not having any particular appetite for the gore, sex, sadism and unintentional laughs that horror fans are assumed to get their kicks out of (well, ok, the unintentional laughs are quite good..).

And it’s a hard one to argue, I’ll admit. WHY precisely do I get more jollies out of Jean Rollin than I do out of Bergman..? I dunno man, I just do! Yes, perhaps the fact that the former favours 80 minute concoctions of sexy vampires and surrealist antics with a freak-beat soundtrack over 3 hour investigations of existential dread probably plays SOME part in my thinking, and yes, there’s a certain punk rock spirit to low budget, "low culture" film-making that always appeals to me, but..... somehow there’s MORE to it than that, you know what I mean?

My (entirely fictitious) high culture supporting aggressor in this argument would not know what I mean, and would scoff at me, dismissing my love of horror and exploitation as the result of laziness, lecherous thrill-seeking, shallowness and a lack of intellectual enegagement.

This is the point in proceedings at which I would hurl the above quote at him or her – "Robert Smithson, 'Entropy and the New Monuments', motherfucker! I, the MORE PERCEPTIVE artist, have no use for the CLODDISH SUBSTANCE that passes for 'the deep and profound' these days! You can keep your value-choked 'serious'movies! For what I need is a fix of primal imagery! Of pure LOW-BUDGET MYSTICISM!" – mm, yeah, words to conjure with.

I get the feeling Robert Smithson is generally not a person with whom I would have much in common, but nonetheless I’ll raise a glass to him tonight for putting this important concept into words for me.

Possibly this post can be considered a primer for the bumper addition of my Horror Movie Journal I shall hopefully be posting within the next week or two.. watch this space.

(DISCLAIMER: It should be noted that I do not seek to align myself entirely against the world of 'art cinema', much of which is of course genuinely superb and staggeringly effective in every respect. But as Theodore Sturgeon sagely reminds us, "90% of everything is crap", and on an aesthetic level much of it fails to engage me where certain less celebrated forms of cinema succeed.)