ODDO (1967)
PART OF THE SAN FRANCISCO SEX COLLECTION
Directed by Nick Philips aka Nick Millard
Retro-Seduction Cinema DVD
THE FILM
Let's get negative.
The title track of The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" LP kills me. It's like a furious french kiss in broad daylight, sloppy and electrifying in its brevity and imperfect perfection. Then, "The Gift" kicks in, an eight minute, slack-rock narrative which extols the merits of smart-ass nihilism. "The Gift" directly opposes "White Light". It's less pop, more cynical experiment, and not built to be appreciated on any sort of wider level. But I never skip it.
Nick Millard's Oddo opens with a backwoods folk song and a collage of negative photography. There are jungles, bombs, knives, stabbings, slaughterhouse butcheries, and the pinnings of medals to chests. Like most of his films, scant rationality commingles with a creative language that is understood by Millard, and Millard alone. The opening of Oddo makes little sense. Sixty minutes later, the movie is over. And it still makes little sense. But one scene explains all. Towards the middle of the film, our protagonist carves something on a tree. He turns, faces the camera, points a gun to the sky, and reveals the carving:
"I HATE YOU"
Oddo isn't as satisfying as Nick Millard's "hits". It lacks the frantic consistency of Criminally Insane and Satan's Black Wedding and the inhuman madness of .357 Magnum and Death Nurse. Makes sense. This was 1967. Millard was just warming up. The leather shoe fetish is present and accounted for. The perpetual jump-edits are not. But while Oddo may move slowly and establish an actual attention span, however arduous, the film's culmination as a hazy, pessimistic anomaly makes me smile. Even if it hates me.
An unnamed psychopathic soldier returns to San Francisco from Vietnam, while a narrator, intoning much like John Cale on "The Gift", shares a running stream-of-consciousness rant while the soldier does things. Like beating the shit out of hippies. And murdering his lesbian step-mother. And receiving a topless shoe-shine. There's a lot of roaming, street typography, pop iconography, and inexhaustible semi-sex scenes which are really just women stripping and rubbing up against people, shoes, or mirrors. It's all very distant and cloudy. The ending commences a trend of dejected, 'Nam-vet angst that would continue on with stuff like My Friends Need Killing years later.
Removed from the context of Millard's filmography, Oddo is an amusing project. In form, it's like Godard's Vivre Sa Vie floating by on a ten dollar budget and an undergrad's dream. In content, it's not much of anything. Messages are muddled, sex is evaded, and violence is dull. Lulls hold precedence over peaks. Despite the beautiful handheld photography and righteously discordant soundtrack, this is Nick Millard filling up space. Of course, the same can be said about Death Nurse. But Death Nurse coerces boredom into a cunning muse. You never know what's coming next, and what comes next is often so strange that it feels profane. Therein lies the thrill. Oddo isn't as mythical or staggering. But it's still a notable experiment in underground negativity, working for Millard in much the same way that "The Gift" worked for The Velvet Underground.
And that's why I'd never skip it.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
Black and white blow-outs, overdriven microphones, bleary cityscapes; as time goes on, I want more and more of these things.
EXTRAS
I'm pretty sure that DVD technology was invented so that three late-60s Nick Millard films (Oddo, Scyla, How I Got My Mink) could be matched up with ten vintage Nick Millard trailers and one set of articulate and well-informed liner notes from Ed Grant of MediaFunhouse.com for the sole purpose of making my day.
FINAL THOUGHTS
When appreciation is loyal, it's likely that you'll value an artist's work in whatever form it manifests. That's Oddo for me. Unfocused and hesitant, the film isn't entirely successful as stand-alone exploitation. Yet, my continued fascination with Nick Millard's earnest, individualist filmmaking made a viewing well worth the time. So yeah, Oddo -- I DON'T HATE YOU.
— Joseph A. Ziemba, 06.30.11 |
|
