Warped & Faded

AGFA
La Vista,
Baby!

Warped & Faded
by Lars Nilsen and Friends
Edited by Kier-La Janisse
Mondo Press
ISBN: 9781733333627

Subtitled on the cover as Weird Wednesday And The Birth Of The American Genre Film Archive, this beautifully designed paperback called Warped & Faded, put out by the Mondo label (who have very close ties with all the people and organisations covered in this book), is as much about the history of the Alamo Drafthouse cinema as anything else.

Well, I say cinema because, living in the UK with the only real reports about the Alamo coming from sources like Ain’t It Cool News back in the day, I’d just assumed it was one magical cinema in Austin Texas but the first section of this book, a tome which is split into four main sections, is more or less an oral history (I hate pretentious terms like that on books but, that’s pretty much what the first and fourth sections here are) of recollections by the people who were either running, working or being customers at the Alamo and it soon became clear that, after moving locations a few times, it became a chain of cinemas.

Following an introduction, the book is, as I said, split into four main sections (with many subsections) comprising Weird Wednesday - An Oral History In Six Parts, The Weird Wednesday Compendium,The Weird Wednesday Hall Of Fame and Epilogue: The Birth Of AGFA.

So the first section presents the recollections, by many varied people such as Tim and Carrie League (who originally set up and still, I believe, run part of the chain), Lars Nilsen and the famous Kier-La Janisse... which are thrown into paragraphs and put into some kind of order to tell the story of the Alamo and, also, the main focus of the book, the Weird Wednesday screenings (which still run, in a progressed form, to this day). It starts off telling the problems of buying and moving a huge old, legacy collection of films from a warehouse and how these ‘warped and faded’ prints, showing the wear and tear of their battle against vinegar syndrome, became the backbone of the original Weird Wednesday screenings, shown for free late on Wednesday nights (I think it eventually went to charging a dollar entry at some point in the history of the series) to try and keep what are, in some cases, quite obscure films in the public consciousness to an extent.

The second section, The Weird Wednesday Compendium, is the heavily illustrated main section of the book, presenting the various listing summaries of each of the many screenings up until a certain date, by the likes of Lars Nilsen (who did the lion's share) and Tim League. So, for UK readers, if you think of the old SCALA cinema fold out programmes... well the Alamo Drafthouse had their own equivalent of those and that’s where these highly amusing descriptions were culled from. Presented alongside colour stills and poster artwork for quite a lot of the titles you will find in this section. For film enthusiasts who want to know more about what’s out there, this is a gold mine of stuff, some of which has made its way onto Blu Ray in the intervening years and much of which is still missing in action as regards to any kind of home video release of the titles. Indeed, there were even a fair few films in here that I hadn’t heard of myself and a few made my list although, many of the ones I want to see now don’t seem to be available. But this is where you’ll find out about films like ‘thanksgiving favourite’ screening Blood Freak, where a guys takes a drug and his head turns into the head of a chicken, before he goes on a bloodthirsty killing spree yelling ‘gobble gobble’... yeah, I really need to see this one. Or Super ManChu, Master Of King Fu who, in the words of the poster art, is “Cooler than Bond!” Yeah, I noted a few titles down to be on the lookout for and, I’m pretty sure I can guess which US based boutique Blu Ray labels might have a chance of putting some of these out at some point (I’m looking at you Severin and Vinegar Syndrome... not to mention AGFA, of course). One caveat on this section is, I believe all the films are listed under the titles on these particular release prints so, in the case of a few titles, these aren’t necessarily the title the film is best known by these days.

The third section, The Weird Wednesday Hall Of Fame, is comprised of essays by various writers, some very famous in critical circles, writing about key directors, producers or actors who would have been represented in a big way in the Weird Wednesday slot. So you have the following ‘personalities’ - Al Adamson, Andy Milligan, Arthur Marks, Claudia Jennings, Eddie Romero, Gary Kent, George ‘Buck’ Flower, Henry Silva, Jamaa Fanaka, Jess Franco, Joe Sarno, John Carradine, John Saxon, Laura Gemser, Lee Frost & Wes Bishop, Matt Cimber, Mimsy Farmer, Stephanie Rothman, Susan Tyrrell and Vic Diaz - written by such notables as Tim Lucas, Lars Nilsen, Kier-La Janisse, Stephen Thrower, Maitland McDonagh, Kat Ellinger and, in a bizarre occurrence of one of the subjects of a subsection writing about somebody else, Gary Kent.

Finally, the epilogue, The Birth Of AGFA, details how the archivists working at the Alamo started off AGFA to try and preserve these films for future generations. Okay, so if you’re living outside of America like me (and every other person I’ve mentioned AGFA to)... we’re not talking about the very famous printing and IT solutions company, which has been around for decades. We’re talking about the American Genre Film Archive, which specialises in keeping these prints in their best condition and loaning them out for screenings. Not to mention of course, their Blu Ray label which has been releasing some of these movies into the ‘home video wild’, partnering up with the likes of Vinegar Syndrome and, just recently in the UK, 101 Films.

And, yeah, all in all this is a brilliant and informative reference book which would delight, I’m sure, any cineaste who is open minded enough to recognise the obvious merit of rescuing these trashy titles from oblivion and preserving and showing them for the hidden treasures they often are. I did have two very minor problems with the book (because, I have to find something, right?) which are probably not worth mentioning but I will anyway.

One is that two of the films in the Compendium section have had their titles missed out. One of them I could figure out by the accompanying artwork and, luckily for me, I’d seen the other film so I knew exactly the title relating to the description. The book is really well designed, actually, with some superb layouts so, I bet the designer who put this one together is kicking themselves for the oversight. It’s a bit of a shame.

The other slight problem I had was the scorn that some of the programmers and writers in the early sections of the book were pouring on the idea of a film being ‘so bad it’s good’. Now, I have no problem with that particular phraseology and mindset because, unlike the supposed perception of it here, I don’t automatically use this term myself as a particular form of disrespect to the people who worked on these movies. I can imagine how hard it must be to get any of these things made and, even if I do find them funny in their incompetence at some level, it’s never intended as a mean spirited engagement with the film, for sure. However, I can completely respect this attitude and I would have been fine with it... if not for the fact that many of the descriptions in the Compendium section, written by some of these same people, certainly do seem to be trading on that very ‘so bad and ridiculous its laughable’ kind of attitude... so, yeah, I’m not going to lose any sleep over this one, for sure.

And that’s me done with one of the more valuable, illuminating and entertaining film books for anyone’s personal library. Warped & Faded is a real gem of a tome and worth the debilitating shipping fees required to ship this from Mondo in the US, who put this one out and are pretty much the only place you can get it to the UK from. I can’t say I regret my decision to purchase because I’ve had a really great time with this one and I think there’s a very strong audience for this book. You don’t want to miss out on this one, for sure.