5 Jun 2009

RIP David Carradine, wasteland warrior

Posted by Teapots Happen

I love post apocalyptic wasteland warrior movies.

I’ve been trying to get a website about them off the ground for over seven years now, but it never really makes it to life – I tend to get manic and watch tons of them and scribble tons of notes in a short period of time … and then be so burned out on it all that I can’t even dream of writing about or building a site on the subject.

 

my post apocalyptic wasteland warrior movie collection

my post apocalyptic wasteland warrior movie collection

I did finally get most of them transferred from VHS into digital format the interest-surge before last, and since then have posted some film clips on Youtube. The first simple video I ever uploaded to Youtube was a random clip from the movie “Dune Warriors,” a post-apocalyptic wasteland warrior retelling of Seven Samurai / The Magnificent Seven.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpeaHlCRcuU]

Yesterday I opened this day-old email I’d received in my Youtube account:

Subject: Dune Warriors…

Howdy, where did you get the footage from Dune Warriors, I’m in that movie.

Check out the first guy that gets shot, the fellow that says theres “water in Chinlee”

Cheers,

Mark

I couldn’t recall off the top of my head which movie Dune Warriors was (I always mix it up with the Lou Ferrigno crapfest “Desert Warrior”), so I pulled it up and watched a the opening scene he described, which starts immediately after the clip above ended …

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5zZhhhETa8]

I was amused but didn’t write him back – I’m dormant on the wasteland warrior project now, and didn’t find the motivation.

But today , unexpectedly,- I did write him back – after I heard the news that David Carradine had just been found dead in a Bangkok hotel – because, well, here’s – see for yourself – this is where that clip above left off:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr16bDgFUbc]

Subject: Re: Dune Warriors…

Awesome! I have it on VHS, have been collecting old wasteland warrior movies for years … Dune Warriors is a fun one. Sucks to hear about David Carradine … loved him in DeathRace 2000 and the like. I hope he died having fun in that Bangkok hotel!

The news hadn’t even hinted that there was anything sexual about his death at that point, but something about “Bangkok hotel room” just made it seem likely. And of course, later that afternoon, I found out that David had, indeed, “died having fun” – in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident.

But before that news broke, Mark wrote me back:

Subject: Re: Dune Warriors…

That’s weird, I just got breaking news that David’s dead, just as you wrote me.

I’m in the Philippines still now, so it must have happened this afternoon.

Coincidence, eh?

I broke out laughing – everywhere I turn lately I am surrounded by coincidences and people talking about them, unprompted, from all areas of my life …

hell, on another post-apocalyptic note, just yesterday evening, after taking a break from writing on this blog, I was reading a collection of Harlan Ellison short stories – a massive collection, over 1200 pages.

I’d bought it months and months ago, to get the story “A Boy and his Dog” – a post-apocalyptic tale that had later been turned into a wasteland warrior movie, several years before ‘Mad Max’ stormed the world.

I realized soon enough, reading through the rest of the book, that for the most part,  I didn’t really like Ellison’s stories very much. They were well-crafted and easy to keep reading … but they left a bad aftertaste – it seems like he was an angry and bitter man for much of his life, and most of his stories reflect this. And like a grease, it comes off on your brain when you read hundreds of pages of his often-autobiographical tales.

But for some reason I kept reading the giant tome, although I complained about it more than once to my girlfriend, and I’d put the book aside many months ago, only recently picking it up again after finding it under the bed, bookmark still midway through its impressive girth.

The bleak tales were certainly an odd counterpoint to the mystically-inclined mindset I sought to cultivate, dwelling on synchronicity and mystical consciousness while writing this blog.

But like “Dune Warriors,” which I would never have thought would be a pathway to synchronicity, so did ‘The Essential Ellison’ bring it all back to “coincidence,” when I turned the page and was greeted by this:

synchronicity everywhere

synchronicity everywhere

synchronicity

surf to a random post

subscribe by email

subscribe w/ a reader

Subscribe to Comments

4 Responses to “RIP David Carradine, wasteland warrior”

  1. heh, I don’t know if this string of minor coincidences “really counts” as a synchronistic experience, but it was too fun to write up – timely with hot news and such fun to get to put up a post with wasteland warriors and decapitations …. 🙂

    Although … now that I think of it, these aren’t the only post-apocalyptic synchronicity I’ve experienced … and Mark emailed me back saying that he expected that we’d be seeing the post apocalypse for real in the coming months … man, I hope this blog doesn’t turn into another “New Age Apocalypse 2012” thing because I’m so not into it!

    lol

     

    teapotshappen

  2. Have you ever read about the mystical experiences that the author P.K. Dick had, where basically all past eras of history existed simultaneously and information was fired into his brain from a divine source? His last novels before he died, the VALIS trilogy, were his attempt to make sense of it all, but odd stuff happened: his son’s hidden medical problems were beamed into his head, his cat started communicating telepathically and then died of tumors, he spoke ancient languages he never had known, etc… Not exactly synchronicity, maybe closer to apophenia, or perhaps a literary hoax even, but fascinating stuff.

    This synchronicity stuff is kind of dangerous to open the mind to, because it’s like leaving your front door open: you never know what will come crawling in.

     

    noise bursts

  3. I have heard a bit about it, but that was “pre-teapots” so I didn’t really take it in very much, I may look into it again now, although maybe I don’t want to give my brain any other templates toward dissolution or insanity … one one hand I have a drive to keep my shit /ego / functional illusions reasonably intact, which works against my drive to figure out reality, which is pretty clearly far too much for a feeble, stable, utilitarian human mind to even shimmy up close to without blowing the gaskets and stripping some gears.

    But lately I’m feeling like it’s getting to be time for a entheogenic whalloping, we’ll see where that leaves me I reckon. I’m not much for locking doors.

     

    teapotshappen

  4. That is an awesome collection of post apocalyptic movies!

    If you didn’t already know there is UK website dedicated to PA movies, indeed there are hundreds of Mad Max rip-offs, the website even has a full list. About 400 in total I have seen so far.

    I have a collection myself but nowhere as big as yours, I am sure I will get there one day though!

    Just watched interzone the other day, was a good one. My favourite PA has to be stryker, sad ending though which is annoying. But that is such a great film. Best action in my opinion. I have also seen Dune Warriors also a pretty good film. Email me some time. I love discussing PAs.

     

    darryl