Who Is Bill Rebane?

Acid Rebane

Who Is Bill Rebane?
UK 2021
Directed by David Cairns
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

After mostly enjoying my experiences with low budget film-makers courtesy of Severin’s Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection (the index of reviews of all the movies in this set can be found here) and Arrow's own He Came From The Swamp - The William Grefé Collection (reviews under titles in index), I thought I’d give Arrow’s next ‘low budget/big box set’ production a go in the form of a film-maker I wasn’t familiar with at all (or so I thought), so I took a gamble with Weird Wisconsin - The Bill Rebane Collection in the hopes that, like those two prior box sets I mentioned, the gamble would pay off. The set collects together six of the director’s pictures alongside a brand new documentary and, like those former box set experiences, I plumped to watch the documentary, Who Is Bill Rebane?, first so I could get an idea of what this guy was all about.

The film starts off with one of two very small clips of famous film critic and director Mark Cousins who is asked where he places the work of Bill Rebane and his one line, quizzical response, gives the documentary its title.

I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by the quality of this documentary, as I had been on those other two box sets but I don’t think it’s the fault of the writer/director... who supplies a kind of intensely driven, almost poetic voice over narrative to link the various clips of talking head interviews of people who are either deeply appreciative of Rebane or who have worked for him in some capacity or another (usually lots of capacities, I guess, since these kinds of low budget films usually have everyone pitching in to do everything they can).

Born in Latvia in 1937, young Ito Rebane managed to survive the Russian invasion and war, somehow, moving with his family to the USA in the 1950s, when he changed his name to William Rebane. He invented a 360 degree film projection system called the Cinetarium which was ahead of its time somewhat and which failed to garner much interest or be in any way successful. His first film was shot in stages as money ran out, meaning characters dropped out halfway through and prompting, in one instance, an actor playing a character who was already dead returning to play that character’s brother for the next segment of the film. The film was eventually ‘ballasted out’ with even more inserts added in by the Godfather of Gore himself, Herschel Gordon Lewis and released as Monster-A-Go-Go (it’s the first film in this set so, yeah, expect a review of that one here sometime soon).

After stupidly turning down the chance to make a picture for Sam Arkoff, Rebane moved to Wisconsin, which everyone interviewed for this film agrees is a very strange and off kilter place to live (they only decided necrophilia should be made illegal in 2008)... and built a studio there, where he made low budget movies which, sometimes gave good returns but, he rarely saw any of the profits himself. His wife was his producer and sometime assistant director and it sounds like he’d get his whole family involved on occasion. Perhaps the stark, driven but flattened quality of Who Is Bill Rebane? is such as it is because, from the sound of it, many of the films Rebane made dealt with big background ideas that rarely manifested themselves overtly in his films but were constantly talked about and which, it seems, often featured endings which were ambiguous at best.

Perhaps his most famous movie, The Giant Spider Invasion (not included in this set, sadly) is one of a couple of exceptions to this rule because, you do see a VW bug made up to look like a giant spider. It sounds ridiculous and, when you look at it... it really is ridiculous. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a movie by Rebane but, when one of the people being interviewed describes how well, against all odds, that movie played with cinema audiences and then described a scene about a lady accidentally drinking a drink made when a tarantula is liquified in a blender, I actually remembered the scene and recalled I’d actually seen this movie play at a cinema in Enfield Town, here in the UK, back in the late seventies as part of a double bill. And yes, I do remember the audience reaction for this scene being really big... I also remember not liking the movie that much though so, there’s that. However, having said that, I now feel the need to seek out a copy of the movie from somewhere and lay that ghost to rest.

Actually, one of the things this movie has highlighted is that some of the more interesting looking Bill Rebane movies, featuring monsters like Big Foot and a swamp creature, are not actually included in this set. However, it does have a few films with some interesting premises to them at the very least so, yeah, I am still looking forward to exploring these sometime soon.

And there’s not much more to be said about this. If you want to hear stories of how Rebane shot a private eye mystery which involved a talking bear played by a man in a suit (another one not included here and which I absolutely have to see) or how pop legend Tiny Tim starred in a slasher movie for Bill but also replaced all the light bulbs in his room in Bill’s house with 250 watt light bulbs and expanding the water bill with his 45 minute showers, then Who Is Bill Rebane? is definitely the place to find out about this stuff. It’s not the most entertaining documentary in the world, it has to be said but, it’s done nothing to dispel me from watching the six films in this set and I am suitably intrigued and ready to delve into the somewhat deadpan world of this weird Wisconsin director. I’ll let you know how that goes.