Here is a genuine picture of a ghost [cue static shot of a blurry black and white photograph that might show a cat, or a goat, or your mum, for all that’s visible]. What are its plans? Is it staring out at us, longingly, trying to send us a message from the void?
Look at the moon! Our majestic, silent companion! Did you know the number of UFO sightings increases on nights of the full moon? What do these visitors from outer space want from us? Do they fear like we do, love like we do? Or is this the beginning of an invasion? Why is it that the number of reports of ghosts increases whenever there are more UFO sightings?
Here is a picture of Nessie.
And so on, and so forth. If this sort of thing droned in an endless dramatic monologue performed by actor Sidney Paul’s (disembodied, obviously) voice over a backdrop of blurry photos, archival footage, mondo style nonsense and shots of outer space floats your boat, this late 70s documentary devoid of arguments, facts, or logical progression of thoughts or themes may very well become your new favourite movie. Sometimes, Paul’s monologue is even connected to the pretty pictures; sometimes, 70s racist assumptions meets bizarro nonsense; sometimes, it all turns to ambient noise devoid of meaning despite the use of actual words, put into order one assumes would make them sentences, before one gets distracted by Nessie.
Also included is what I can only be assume to be a pretty impressive assemblage of library music ascribed to one Jim Cookman that wavers between some lounge, quite a bit of lite acid rock and pleasant amounts of woozy synth drones that turns the whole affair even more bizarrely cosy, at least if you’ve got my aesthetic preferences.
It’s actually pretty amazing, as if a High Strangeness doc had turned into some kind of off-beat poetry project as written by people who never, ever should have been allowed to write poetry. Amazing, this most certainly is.
Posts
