Cinematica! Apocalypse Normal

La Mama Theatre’s response to the continued lockdown of live theatre in Melbourne is Cinematica! – a collection, or showcase, of short and experimental films, music videos and ‘avant-garde cinema.  The idea is that it’s an alternate way of bringing people together.  You log on and beside the online cinema screen, there’s a  chat window, so the audience can exchange quips, greetings and comments on the movie and video offerings.  As an event, Cinematica is intended to continue quarterly – perhaps depending on its success – so extending into when things get back to ‘normal’ and La Mama is able – or permitted – to resume its live presentations of adventurous, experimental theatre, poetry and music.  

For this premiere, Apocalypse Normal – in homage to Halloween - we get a bizarre 1967 self-slasher short, The Big Shave, from (who knew?) Martin Scorsese, with Tommy Dorsey soundtrack.  We get Tracy Moffat’s 1989 stylised allegorical and bitter Night Cries (starring a younger but just as powerful Marcia Langton), and the main feature, Carnival of Souls  - the only movie made by one Herk Harvey in 1962. 

The curator is Tessa Spooner, La Mama’s new Acting General Manager – and she’s roped in Jaimie Leonarder, aka ‘Jay Katz’, and his wife (I’m quoting the press release) Aspasia aka ‘Miss Death from Sydney’s Mu Meson Archives to present the main feature.  I guess it comes from their Archive and that’s why they’re there.  Pre-movie, Katz and Miss Death mix praise for La Mama artistic contributions and appeals for donations for its rebuild with the historical background spiel for the movie.  (The original iconic building in Faraday Street, Carlton, burned down in 2018.) 

Whether these two aficionados of schlock and the obscure will be fixtures as Cinematica continues remains to be seen.  Nevertheless, their enthusiasm for a movie I’m guessing hardly anyone’s seen since 1962 is, well, helpful.  Carnival of Souls isn’t quite as bad as, say, something by Ed Wood, and its B&W images are very often accomplished, and indeed, for a ghost movie, haunting.  Katz and Miss Death claim the movie inspired such folks as David Lynch and George Romero.  But it does still fall into that camp category of ‘it’s so baaad it’s good’ – a category I’ve never quite understood. 

Here, the one-damn-thing-after-another story is that of the sole survivor of a car crash who is more and more susceptible to the souls of the dead – and is she dead herself? - even while she is sexually harassed by a sleazoid guy in her rooming house.  As someone commented in the chat window, he’s scarier (and more compelling) than the ghosts, who, after all, don’t do much except appear…

Much as we are missing live theatre, I’d wonder how this experiment is any kind of even a pale substitute for it – especially in the competitive context of a plethora of online stuff – some of which is as inept as Carnival of Souls but which also includes high quality dramas, documentaries, classics and better curiosities.  We shall see.

Michael Brindley