When a friend recommends a film for review, I shut them out of my life. Who has time for that kind of meddlesome behavior? I don't. Of that, I can assure you. If that seems harsh, you should know that I've acquiesced in recent years. Troy Harrison recommended that I rent Anaconda in seventh grade. They never did find his body. Again, I find myself tempering my stance. I've heard the scuttlebutt; I've seen the glowing, near-berserk praise in chat rooms (hehehe). People are digging this documentary. I'll fess up and concede that I haven't put many of Adamson's pictures in my holster. Why doesn't the world call movies "pictures" anymore? It's cool! Isn't it?
Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson looks at the auteur's bold career and features interviews with dozens of relevant faces. For the most part, this is a frolic for cheese connoisseurs. I had fun learning about the man and his filmmaking philosophy (I can't believe that Roger Corman didn't come up in conversation, so to speak). And then WHAM! The viewer hits a wall. The wall isn't bad from a critic's perspective. How do I word this? Aliens. While doing research for a documentary on UFOs, Adamson dropped the project after his probing groundwork (hey, no smirking) came a little too close to the government.
Roughly a year later, he was dead. Was he snuffed out by a man in black? No. The UFO bit is wedged in a strange spot, but there was little that director David Gregory could feasibly do about it. He literally documented Adamson's life. The sequence of events was out of his hands. So how did the manic mastermind responsible for The Naughty Stewardesses perish? By the way, I don't feel like these are spoilers per se. If you disagree, all I can do is offer my condolences to you and your family. In lieu of flowers, please accept tasteful photographs of my dick.
The third act is jarring. I'm not sure if the shift in mood is handled with care. On one hand, a film should carry a flowing lilt, a consistency in tone. Contrarily, what is more jarring than death? From an artistic angle, it makes sense for the final chunk of Blood & Flesh to be more grim than every other chunk combined. Perhaps the scaffolding is perfect. The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson echoes the life and death of Al Adamson. Isn't that the whole point of a documentary?
NOTE TO SELF: Check out Nurse Sherri, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Doctor Dracula, Satan's Sadists, Cinderella 2000, and CB4. Adamson had nothing to do with that last one. I just want to see it.
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