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A surreal and borderline unwatchable Powers of Horrorrr vid on DARK FACTORY by Kathe Koja [put out by Meerkat Press] that is actually very watchable cos of the soundtrack and visuals [carefully sourced by me typing ‘80’s Japanese experimental synth’ into YouTube]

Somehow it all works, even the red couch scene. Especially the red couch scene. I didn’t mean for it to happen; I was just trying to obsessively/neurotically stretch that scene past the nine-minute mark and there were still three and a half minutes left to fill.

Other highlights:

Christopher Lee talking about the occult/satanism overlaid onto Valerie’s tour of the Silver Factory from I SHOT ANDY WARHOL.

The opening minute, with a slowed down track from the BBC kiddie series DARK SEASON.

The BLOOD FOR DRACULA and FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN trailers.

The final 5 minutes…which actually turned out so well – specifically the matching of the animated part to the abstract-short overlay, the timing of my voiceover lines with the images on screen – that I started to believe in some form of divine entity suicidally invested in helping me churn out surreal/unwatchable videos for YouTube. Really, I didn’t directly edit most of that scene, it just 95% lined up itself. The beauty of collage experimentalism!!!

Could be paranoia but my own voice audio might be a bit hard to catch sometimes, either muffled by the ‘delay’ aspect or drowned out by the background music. Think of it as intentional mumblecore, if that helps.

Gotta say the novel, DARK FACTORY, turned out to be a great source for all this, which, if I’m reading the immersive aspect correctly, is the whole point of the thing. I tried to mimic the continual flow of the text from the novel i.e. scenes don’t really start and stop, they sort of mesh into one another, melding and mutating what is present, what is past, what might be future, but I’m not sure how successful I was.

I should add, DARK FACTORY is the first book of three. Hopefully, there will be a Powers of Horrorrr for DARK PARK and DARK MATTER coming sometime before the end of 2026.

Films/music used:

Flesh for Frankenstein [1973]

Blood for Dracula [1974]

Suspiria [1977]

Outer and Inner Space [1965]

Chelsea Girls [1966]

The Foreigner [1978]

Metropolis [2001]

Genius Party Beyond [2008]

The Velvet Vampire [1971]

Performance [1970]

I Shot Andy Warhol [1996]

Christopher Lee interview about the occult

Barbarella [1968]

Vampire’s Kiss [1988]

Santa Sangre [1989]

Curse of the Crimson Altar [1968]

Nowhere [1997]

Lola [1981]

Kathe Koja interview clip

Liquid Sky [1982]

Morvern Callar [2002]

Angel’s Egg [1985]

Synchromy no.4 [1937]

Opus 2 [1921]

Video Weavings [1976]

Genesis [1971]

Satyricon [1969]

Music:

Parallelisme // Miharu Koshi

Nagai Owakare // P.T.A’S

Angela’s Theme // Frankie Vinci

Dark Season OST

How are you- whyou // RNA Organism

Do We All Need Love // Name