Book Review: CONQUEST OF THE USELESS: A REFLECTION FROM THE MAKING OF FITZCARRALDO by Werner Herzog

Director Werner Herzog is one of the most versatile film makers working in the industry today and he is also one of the most infamous.  His onset escapades with both actors and crew members are legendary and most infamous on the set of his film Fitzcarraldo which went through complete cast changes, controversy with the locals, and natural disasters that prolonged the film’s production.  So much drama went into the making of the film that he released his onset diary as a novel called Conquest of the Useless: A Reflection from the Making of Fitzcarraldo.

 

Herzog’s odyssey with Fitzcarraldo begins in 1979 and will not come to an end until 1984 so the book covers a huge span of time in which things on a film set can go wrong.  The book is meticulous with details in regards to the process and needs of the filmmaking but Herzog doesn’t dwell on those details.  He is more concerned with the minutiae of living in an exotic place filled with an exotic people and culture and trying to bring all this together to complete his massively ambitious film.

Herzog’s reflections are very much like a catalogue of what happens each day on set whether it is important or not and most of the time it’s just his simple observation of things that never seem to change on a day to day basis over the many years of production.  With all of the problems and obstacles put in the way of the production you’d think he would’ve given up on the film.  There were major cast changes, sets were destroyed and lost in the swamp, crew members quit on a daily basis not to mention the locals and their many cultural differences.  The amazing thing is that Herzog never gives up (although there were several times where he thought about it) but instead uses each obstacle as a means to push forward in order to complete the film.  It’s an amazing look at how life can imitate art since the major obstacle in the film is a man who tries to move a ship up a mountain (no easy feat since Herzog and crew were doing this practically whereas in today’s world it would just be a CGI effect).

This is like a written behind the scenes documentary which Herzog is very familiar with since he has produced a plethora of documentaries.  If you are a fan of Herzog’s work and want to know how the man truly thinks while making a film then this is a book right up your alley.  It’s also a great means to get into Herzog’s mind during his early years as a film maker.

Book Review: Inside Teradome: An Illustrated History of Freak Film by Jack Hunter

The “freak” film is a sub genre of horror film that has mostly been over looked by modern audiences but it was once something far more common place in the 50’s to 70’s.  Nowadays most audiences only know of the auteur works of John Waters (Pink Flamingoes & Female Troubles) or David Lynch (Eraserhead & The Elephant Man) and the early films of David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers & Shivers) but there is a history of freak film that stretches across continents and genres and cultures and that is what Jack Hunter’s book Inside Teradome: An Illustrated History of Freak Film delves into.

In order to under the freak film you must define what it is and what types of films are included and that is exactly what Hunter does with the first half of the book (while the second part focuses on the films themselves and the film makers behind them).  For those who don’t know (and generally speaking I was one of those people at first) the so-called freak film includes not only films about people or cultures with abnormal ways of life but also those who live such a life and have taken up the film industry as there profession.  As described by Hunter, “The ultimate strain of bizarre cinema, a psycho-sexual fusion of the grotesque and perverse, haunted by primal specters of deformity and mutilation.”  The book focuses mostly on Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) because this is not only a film that featured so-called real life “freaks” and circus performers but it also portrayed them in a sympathetic light as opposed to the “normal” people in the film.  It is through the initial failure of this film (it did more or less kill Brownings career in films) and it’s now infamous undying cult status that Hunter explores the culture and importance of this genre of film.

The first part of the book describes all real manner of freaks such as those that suffered from all types of genetic maladies (as could be seen in the circuses up until the 70s) as well as those through mutation (due to the bomb) or war (mostly WWI vets who were disfigured).  The book does go into the fall of the freak film as SFX in cinema began to rival anything that could have been seen in the real world.  Hunter not only describes all of the maladies but has also put together an amazing collection of photos from all over the word (and illustrations and drawings as well) to show just how real some of these people suffered in their real lives only to replay them in front of a camera.

The second part of the book focuses on the film makers and films that embraced this type of taboo material from the before mentioned films of John Waters to the more obscure films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo and Santa Sangre) Werner Herzog (Even Dwarfs Start Small) and actors such as Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes, Deadly Blessing) and Rondo Hatton (Jungle Captive, House of Horrors).

Hunter does an excellent job of presenting these films in way that will give readers an understanding of why they were so popular at one time in history and why there popularity has dwindled over the years to the point of having almost all but been forgotten.   For those interested in this genre of film this is a great book to get you started.