Frederic Hobbs, a famously reclusive indie cinema dissenter, upreared a brief but somewhat celebrated index of offbeat pictures during the 70s...movies so waywardly absonant and creatively impulsive that only a highly preferential entente is likely to apprize them. Case in point...ALABAMA'S GHOST.
The demented story(which is overdeveloped to Rube Golberg proportions) concerns Alabama, a San Francisco jazz club employee, who discovers by mere chance the hidden bounty of a legendary magician. Among the relics is an experimental Nazi drug confection which has been long sought-after by a groovy underbelly society of music industry vampires. These creatures of the night learn of Alabama's discovery, and devise a scheme to make him an unwitting gambit in their sinister world domination plot.
As is case with the director's other projects, ALABAMA'S GHOST exhibits more streamlined professionalism than the wackadoodle material really calls for. It presents well-defined characters, variably solid performances, and acceptable effects for the time. To think that genuine erudition and skill were applied to this kaleidoscopic hash-dream is mystifying...but maverick 'metteur en scene' Hobbs did it again with GODMONSTER OF Indian FLATS, an equally nonrepresentational but surprisingly well supervised celluloid freakshow.
An exotic truffle enjoyable to only the most...ehh...distinguished palates.
6/10.
The demented story(which is overdeveloped to Rube Golberg proportions) concerns Alabama, a San Francisco jazz club employee, who discovers by mere chance the hidden bounty of a legendary magician. Among the relics is an experimental Nazi drug confection which has been long sought-after by a groovy underbelly society of music industry vampires. These creatures of the night learn of Alabama's discovery, and devise a scheme to make him an unwitting gambit in their sinister world domination plot.
As is case with the director's other projects, ALABAMA'S GHOST exhibits more streamlined professionalism than the wackadoodle material really calls for. It presents well-defined characters, variably solid performances, and acceptable effects for the time. To think that genuine erudition and skill were applied to this kaleidoscopic hash-dream is mystifying...but maverick 'metteur en scene' Hobbs did it again with GODMONSTER OF Indian FLATS, an equally nonrepresentational but surprisingly well supervised celluloid freakshow.
An exotic truffle enjoyable to only the most...ehh...distinguished palates.
6/10.