Like fellow Dutchmen Paul
Verhoeven and Jan De Bont, Rene Daalder was drafted by Hollywood to make genre
films, though his inclinations ran a little artier. Daalder achieved some cult
success with the 1976 drive-in classic Massacre At Central High; then Russ Meyer asked him
to work on the star-crossed Sex Pistols movie Who Killed Bambi? Newly infatuated with punk
rock, Daalder struck up a friendship with Tomata Du Plenty, leader of the
theatrical L.A. synth-punk act The Screamers. Throughout the first half of the
'80s, Daalder and Du Plenty tried and failed to get multiple music-video
projects off the ground, until in 1986, they finally released Population: 1, a quasi-science-fiction
art-punk musical cobbled together from pieces of footage Daalder shot with Du
Plenty over the years, cleverly layered with the help of state-of-the-art
image-manipulation effects.
Population: 1 stars Du Plenty as a man
who survives a nuclear holocaust and proceeds to deliver an hourlong beatnik
monologue—punctuated by musical numbers—about the decadence of
Earth's final days. The "I remember when" format gives Daalder leeway to work
in a lot of his old footage while experimenting with the new. Population: 1 features Du Plenty
getting groomed by stop-motion animated razors and hair dryers, goth vamps
singing in front of World War II stock footage, a skiffle band playing on a
rotating dais (including a prepubescent Beck Hansen on the accordion), Du
Plenty ranting about being "Holden Caulfield… Huckleberry Finn… James Dean in East
Of Eden,"
and multiple sequences in which jaded youths dance spasmodically while vintage
skin flicks and/or tinny new-wave music plays.
Population: 1's hodgepodge of
avant-garde techniques and proto-MTV imagery—all more a function of
necessity than design—might strike some as pretentious and shrill, but
it's also evocative and energetic, and in keeping with Daalder's other work. In
addition to Population: 1, Cult Epics recently released Daalder's Here
Is Always Somewhere Else, a documentary about his friend Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch
performance artist who also came to L.A. and became infatuated with how the
city reflected social decline. In Population: 1, Daalder distills his
fascination and disgust with America into 60 solid minutes of pop-surrealism
and Chroma key abuse.
Key features: Interviews with the cast and crew, bonus
Screamers performance footage, and the short film "Je Maintiendrai," which
spoofs the Dutch invasion of Hollywood.