Mondo 70's Kevin Gilbert (a.k.a. "Samuel Wilson"), prolific master of diversity and ecclectic cinema

Max Ophuls's 'Lola Montes' is a longtime Samuel Wilson favorite

by Sam Juliano

Among the Albany Public Library’s more inconspicuous contributions to the film community is it’s formidable archives of obscure and eclectic titles that offer the most enterprising card-holders a treasure trove of off-the-beacon-track rarities and prompt current updates. For an unbeatable price it’s a way to gleefully indulge oneself in many works that can’t be obtained in many on line retail stores.

Fecund and remarkably prolific writer Kevin Gilbert (who goes by the pen name of ‘Samuel Wilson’) has parlayed this unique availability into the main source material for a now three-year-old blogsite named Mondo 70, which represents a labor of love for one of the internet’s most gifted writers. Born in Troy, a neighboring suburb of New York State’s capital, “Wilson,” who holds a PhD in history from the University of Massachusetts, humbly insists he’s not especially knowledgeable in any particular subject, but the scholarly heft of his prose and the level of depth in his comments suggest otherwise. Launched in November of 2008, Mondo 70, whose title pays homage to the Italian cult cinema that Wilson has a hankering for -and has developed a remarkable aptitude for- is a place for the online cineaste with enterprising interests to indulge in engaging, often extraordinary essays of world classics and genre movies that may have slipped by the collective radar. Indeed in an extensive e mail interview completed two weeks ago Wilson asserted: “My actual model are the cult movie magazines, whose readers expect to discover things eccentric and exotic, and in my case sometimes artistic as well.” Wilson is making reference here to Tim Lucas’ Video Watchdog (a popular long-running bi-monthly on specialized horror and fantasy) and Shock Cinema among others. Wilson confides: “While I still like American horrors best, their Italian counterparts have impressed me the most cinematic-ally. There is so much to the cinematography, and the often contra punctually pleasant music -and sometimes even the gore- do much to inspire disquiet that theirs may be the ultimate horror cinema.”

Wilson’s exceeding grasp and appreciation of film criticism and volumes by the most celebrated writers has enhanced the scholarly heft and scope of his online presentation, but it has also afforded him the opportunity to grace the film community with some remarkable rhetorical erudition in applying his own individual insights. Blogsites that are lucky enough to receive visits from Wilson are invariably treated to thoughtful, high-octane submissions, that reflect a wide scope and knowledge of literature, history, form and style, and a filmmaker’s philosophy, politics and manner of artistry. Wilson is almost always generous with the length of his comments, and unlike some other bloggers, he is far less interested in cheer-leading than he is furthering the artistic appreciation inspired by the original posts. For Wilson the “film’s the thing”, and wasted rhetoric is seen as a missed opportunity. Yet Wilson is polite, warm and even-tempered, and never displays the slightest contentiousness to any budding disagreement either at Mondo 70 or at other blogs.

One of the better ways, it seems, to provide a brief but serviceable survey of Wilson’s taste and diversity in assessing film would be to consider his response to a query that asks him to name his favorite film volumes. Wilson opines: “The one I re-read most often is Walter Kerr’s Silent Clowns, even though I can refute some of his observations from direct experience of the films he wrote about. It combines nostalgia and criticism in perfect measures. I also admire David J. Skal’s “The Monster Show”, Ronald Haver’s “David O. Selznick’s Hollywood”, Christopher’s “Spaghetti Westerns”, Thomson’s “Biographical Dictionary” and all the volumes I’ve read in the University of California Press’ “History of American Cinema series.” Like a good number of movie aficionados, Wilson cites his younger days as a time of idols and strong impressions, a time when the aforementioned silent clowns inspired both a biographical and artistic interest. In subsequent discussion at Mondo 70 and at Wonders in the Dark Wilson admits he has always ‘been torn’ when attempting to answer the inevitable question as to ‘who is better, Chaplin or Keaton?’ The gifted blogger-writer hedges his bets in responding, asserting that Chaplin was the more versatile, but Keaton (as the “first action hero”) and the most perfect architect of silent comedy stakes his own claim to the top spot. The Albany blogger talks of ‘movies as a cultural phenomenon’ as an outgrowth of his early viewing of Days of Thrills and Laughter, considers James Whales’ Frankenstein his favorite of all films, and presently manages about a dozen film viewings at home. While the majority are seen on DVD, Wilson sees a fair amount in the movie theater.

The weekly feature “Wendigo Meets Vampire Films” is posted in deference to a revered high school friend with a lifelong affinity to vampire cinema, and it has helped to define cult underpinnings of Mondo 70. Ever the thoughtful and creative blogger, Wilson offered up a novel approach in reviewing the Oscar winner The King’s Speech, while penning some astonishing traditional essays on a wide range of directors and stars including Bertolucci, Malick and Harry Langdon, all of which were comparable to the bests essays available online. He regards the four-part series on Jacpetti and Prospero’s magnum opus Goodbye Uncle Tom (“in which I addressed the two versions available and their different messages as well as issues of racism, sexploitation and political analysis”) as the most the most auspicious he’s ever showcased at his blogsite, while is is proud of the comprehensive defense he made for Capra’s 40′s classic Meet John Doe.

Wilson has long been an avid fan of the ‘movie epic’ and admits that when a kid, this genre pretty much justified a film’s existence. Says Wilson: “They seemed like the reason big screens were made, while more conventional dramas and romances may well have been put on television, and for a long time I associated length with quality. I’m more critical towards epics now, but I’ll still defend the best against those who dismiss what they see as mere bigness. Something like Anthony Mann’s El Cid needs no apology, and Kubrick’s Spartacus doesn’t need much, but I also retain considerable respect for admittedly flawed by heroically ambitious epics like Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told and John Wayne’s The Alamo.

In a wholly fascinating and intricately candid interview that broaches prevalent issues of taste, influences and blogging approach (as well as some personal revelations) Wilson reveals some of the clues as to why is has come to be regarded by his peers as one of the most talented writers in their midst, and to why Mondo 70 has taken on a reverent regard among the most discerning of cineastes.

SJ: What inspired you to launch Mondo 70 and how long has the site been running?

SW: The blog began in November 2008. I occasionally reviewed movies earlier on my more political blog, The Think 3 Institute, but I wanted to do more than I could justify with political context, and I also liked how bloggers could create equivalents online to the movie fanzines (Video Watchdog, Shock Cinema, etc) I enjoy reading.

SJ: You are one of the film blogosphere’s most versatile writers, covering a wide scope of cinema from the US and abroad. What would you say is your specialty, and the tradition that may inform it?

SW: I’m reluctant to call myself a specialist in any field, since I know bloggers who are far more knowledgeable than I am on any given front. I prefer to think of myself as a generalist on a mission to reconcile the disparate movie fandoms by providing a common ground for grindhouse, arthouse and much in between. In terms of what I like most, I’d cite U.S., Italian and Japanese genre cinema geographically and movies from the 1970s and earlier chronologically.

SJ: Who is “Wendigo” and what role does he/she play in your review presentations at Mondo 70?

SW: “Wendigo” is a friend of mine dating back to high school who’s a lifetime horror film fan with a special preference for vampire films. “Wendigo Meets” vampire films on my blog on an approximately weekly basis, and beside reviewing the immediate film in question I provide him a platform to defend the full diversity of vampire cinema against critics and haters who argue absurdly that vampires can’t or shouldn’t be one thing or another.

SJ: Would you say your passion and expertise in American history inspired you to choose Samuel Wilson as your internet ‘pen’ name? Why Samuel Wilson?

SW: I was born in Troy, New York, recognized by Congress as the home of the real-life meatpacker Samuel Wilson who came to be identified with the United States when soldiers took the U.S. brand on his products to stand for “Uncle Sam.” So it’s local pride as well as a historical consciousness that motivates my nom de blog. Part of it is also my belief in the virtue of anonymity. If it was good enough for Publius, it’s good enough for me.

SJ: How would you size up the major differences seeing films at home on DVD or in theaters?

SW: In some ways DVD can enhance my appreciation of cinematic composition by reducing the frame to a manageable size, but movies still need to breathe. Nothing really beats the immersive experience of a big screen in the darkened vastness of a theater, and I also enjoy the communal experience of moviegoing, obnoxious individuals notwithstanding.

SJ: Has the current blu-ray phenomenon in your view changed the general parameters for the general home viewer, and does the high definition match the theatrical experience at least in terms of transfer quality?

SW: To date I’ve seen relatively few blu-rays, and I have to confess to some skepticism on the subject. I’ve seen mere DVDs that are fairly unforgiving toward older films, particularly their special effects and especially when viewed on an HD set. But I’ll have to finally get a BR player of my own before I can speak meaningfully on the topic.

SJ: You often mention the Albany Public Library as a major source for your video acquisitions. Would you say this loaning district has allowed for the discovery of a number of the eclectic features that you are well known for covering at your site? Have you always lived in Albany?

SW: I moved to Albany in 1998 while continuing to work in Troy. The Public Library has a strong commitment to foreign cinema and often manages to acquire films from off the most-beaten paths beside the better-known arthouse product. What it does best for me is put something in my face that I might not have heard of before or might not have sought out otherwise. Those random discoveries are often among the most productive.

SJ: What single review or series of reviews are you most proud of?

SW: My most ambitious work on the blog was probably the four-part series I wrote in 1999 on Jacopetti & Prosperi’s magnum opus Goodbye Uncle Tom, in which I addressed the two versions available and their different messages as well as issues of racism, sexploitation and political analysis. Apart from that, I like to think that I made a strong case for Frank Capra’s still-underrated Meet John Doe last December.

SJ: Despite the fact that you are easily one of the brightest and best writers on the online film scene, Mondo 70 remains to a degree as a well-kept secret as a result of your predominant focus on hard-to-find-rarities and genre films. Do you feel that catering to a larger general audience at the expense of introducing your readership to some wonderful finds is large undesirable?

 

SW: A lot of bloggers seem to feel obliged to see every new release, perhaps because they actually review movies for a living. I don’t see myself as a rival to the Christy Lemires and Mick Lasalles out there, and I don’t expect to attract people who want an opinion on what’s playing right now. If anything, I have an aversion to the contemporary that’d rule me out of such a role. My models are the cult movie magazines whose readers expect to discover things eccentric and exotic, and in my case sometimes artistic as well. If anything limits my readership it may be a lack of any kind of focus. On the other hand, it still surprises me that 221 people (as of this week) actually consider my blog worth following.

SJ: If one were to attempt to judge the quality of comments posted at other sites, yours may well be the most consistently scholarly and astute of any blogger out there. What do you attribute to your ability and propensity to be so prolific at other sites, and to regularly raise the bar with your regular brilliance?

SW: Shameless pretension and a gift for gab in writing. Actually, I really feed off the perceptions and passions of the bloggers I read, so they (and that includes you) deserve much of the credit for inspiring the ideas I occasionally contribute.

SJ: How much time to you spend a week reading the reviews of others, and what are some of your favorites blogs?

SW: Being relatively unsociable in the real world, I’m reading the blogs practically every day. Apart from Wonders, some of my favorites are Antagony and Ecstasy, Acidemic [Sam, you should definitely check out Erich Kuerstein's review of Tree of Life], Agitation of the Mind, Cool Ass Cinema for in-depth criticism of genre films, MMMMMad Movies for hilariously irreverent (or sometimes hilariously reverent) reviews of cult films, Greenbriar Picture Shows for classic Hollywood reviews encompassing detailed production histories and an extensive collection of theater promotional materials. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind, and you’re in good company with them.

SJ: At what age did you get bitten by the movie bug, and what who were the artists that made the deepest impression on you in the early years?

SW: Nearly everyone likes movies as a kid, but my particular movie bug was probably transmitted when I was about eight or nine years old by a TV viewing of Robert Youngson’s compilation Days of Thrills and Laughter, which first gave me a sense of movies as a historical phenomenon and a somewhat poignant or morbid appreciation of the transience of styles and stardom. The silent clowns were probably my first idols, the first movie personalities in whom I had a biographical interest. My interest broadened into silents in general as the local PBS channel began running the classics of that era as well as Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood:The Pioneers series. In my teen years the Albany film scholar Arthur Lennig, a biographer of Stroheim and Lugosi, would present silents and early talkies at the Troy Public Library that further enhanced my interest in older films, while I was still enjoying the Lucas and Spielberg stuff at the multiplex. But the bug was actually latent for some time until I discovered cult movies and cult movie magazines in the early 1990s; these dramatically heightened my auteurist sensibility while broadening the scope of my curiosity. Many of the creators who form my personal canon now were virtually unknown to me before then.

SJ:Where did you attend grammar, junior high and high school? Do you hold a B.A. and/or an M.A., and have you taken cinema classes?

SW: While attending Troy High School (Class of 1983) I attended a “Social Studies Through Films” class that was more about artistic appreciation than historical relevance. I managed not to take any film courses during my entire collegiate run — I milked the system all the way to a Ph.D.(UMASS-Amherst, 1997), for all the good it did me — but somehow ended up teaching a film history course for one semester at a junior college circa 1990. It was a stimulating challenge to select the films, but it was one of the experiences that taught me that I wasn’t cut out for teaching.

SJ: You have proven without question that you are a master of the horror genre. What horror directors and/or national cinemas have made the most profound impression on you?

SW: While I still like American horrors best, Italian horrors have impressed me the most cinematically. James Whale’s Frankenstein is probably my favorite horror film period — it has a certain stark perfection that might not have been possible just a year or so later — but the Italians do so much with cinematography, their often contrapunctually pleasant music, and sometimes their gore to inspire disquiet that theirs may be the ultimate national horror cinema. Ruggiero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust may be unethical in some ways, but it’s one of the most powerful works ever of moral horror, while Mario Bava’s best works are exploitation classicized.

SJ: You also have a rich background in silent comedy. Could you talk a little about that period and of how it has influenced the form since?

SW: It looks like I’ve already answered this question in part, but the influence of silent comedy on modern cinema is immeasurable. Buster Keaton is really the first “action hero” in the modern sense of the word — as opposed to swashbucklers like Douglas Fairbanks,– with The General the first action movie. I’ve always wondered whether the Keaton cult as it grew during the 1960s had a direct influence on what we’ve come to call “roller-coaster ride” movies of nonstop stuntwork (aka “gags”) and effects. If so, too many filmmakers have lost the point of the gags. In a reverse of natural history, the evolution of modern action movies from silent comedy is birds turning into dinosaurs.

SJ: Likewise, you have also shown a special regard and knowledge of film noir. Can you frame that regard?

SW: You may overrate me here but from studying the noir countdowns by Maurizio Roca at Wonders and Dave at Goodfella’s Movie Blog I’ve developed my own theory of noir’s evolution as a synthesis of hard-boiled crime cinema from the Thirties with a gothic sensibility that flourished in the early 1940s and justified the inclusion of expressionist visual elements into crime stories. It’s almost a slap in the face to read through Manny Farber’s reviews from the period and find him regularly dissing noir for visual and other kinds of pretentiousness. But as a pessimist myself I enjoy noirish fatalism, with Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross perhaps the most enjoyable example of it.

SJ: How many movies do you generally watch per week, and has that number risen in recent years, with the wider of availability of product?

SW: The number has grown since I bought a computer with a DVD drive and signed up with Netflix, to something like a dozen in a good week.

SJ: How do you regard the general state of film criticism today as opposed to the glory days of Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kauffmann and Dwight MacDonald among others?

SW: Nobody writing for print today is getting a volume in the Library of America from what I can see. The wire-service reviewers (Lemire, Lasalle, etc.) are smothering most of the local newsprint critics, which leaves the field to us bloggers. David Thomson is probably the dean of critics today, but I wouldn’t give him much credit for changing how anyone sees movies.

SJ: What are you favorite film volumes?

SW: The one I reread most often is Walter Kerr’s Silent Clowns, even though I can refute some of his observations from direct experience of the films he wrote about. It combines nostalgia and criticism in perfect measures. I also admire David J. Skal’s The Monster Show, Ronald Haver’s David O. Selznick’s Hollywood, Christopher Frayling’s Spaghetti Westerns, Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary and all the volumes I’ve read in the University of California Press’s History of American Cinema series.

SJ: You have long respected the film epic. Can you shed a little light on the major accomplishments in this genre?

SW: For a while when I was a kid, the epic mode justified movies’ existence. They seemed like the reason big screens were made, while more conventional dramas and romances may as well have been put on television, and for a long time I associated length with quality. I’m more critical toward epics now, but I’ll still defend the best against those who dismiss what they see as mere bigness. Something like Anthony Mann’s El Cid needs no apology, and Kubrick’s Spartacus doesn’t need much, but I also retain considerable respect for admittedly flawed but heroically ambitious epics like Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told and John Wayne’s The Alamo.

SJ: Are there any upcoming films that have you excited, and what directors today always capture your special interest?

SW: Right now I’m looking ahead to two of the biggest avant-pop events of 2012, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Each is a risky venture and easily botched, but both could be pop classics if the directors play their cards right. But my ears will also prick up if I hear of new projects from the Coen Bros., P.T. or Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Olivier Assayas, Werner Herzog, Marco Bellocchio, Takeshi Kitano, Manoel de Oliviera, etc. etc.

SJ: Are you planning to continue posting at Mondo 70 for some time into the future, and if so, are you pleased with what you’ve put out there to this point?

SW: Sometimes I think that I post too hastily out of fear that people will lose interest if they don’t see something new every other day, but I’m satisfied with the blog overall so far, and have no plans to give it up anytime soon. I do it for my own gratification above all, but if it gratifies others, that’s even more gratifying to me.

SJ: Only if you wish, would you speak a little about your present work position?

SW: Just to say that I write (but don’t review) for a local newspaper as well as working on the production side.

Note:  This is the tenth feature in a series on bloggers who have made a big difference online.

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