SLIFF Interview: Stace England of Screen Syndicate – A Tribute to Roberta Collins

Screen Syndicate, a side project of Southern Illinois-based Americana band Stace England and the Salt Kings, explores the fascinating history of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and the exploitation films made by the company in the 1970s. The life of actress Roberta Collins — a Hollywood story of sadly unfulfilled promise — is the vehicle used to navigate the period. Collins lit up the screen in films like THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, WOMEN IN CAGES and DEATH RACE 2000. But Collins was unable to break out of the B-movie grind, playing minor roles in increasingly poor productions before finally exiting the business. She died in obscurity in 2008. Screen Syndicate combines original songs, film clips, trailers, and other material into a unique live-music experience that pays tribute to Collins. The band has performed at numerous film festivals in the U.S. and Europe — appearing twice at SLIFF — with shows about pioneering African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and Cairo, Ill. The concert will include a screening of the 1974 women’s prison opus CAGED HEAT which co-starred Collins.

The event takes place beginning at 8pm Saturday November 22nd on the stage at KDHX (3524 Washington Boulevard‎ St Louis, MO 63103) Ticket information can be found HERE http://cagedheat.bpt.me/

Stace England hails from southern Illinois and found his creative footing in Chicago during the early ’90s with House Afire, one of the first country/roots bands in what was to become a very vibrant alt-country scene. England returned to southern Illinois and recorded a project of aggressive folk material under the name Tecumseh, releasing the well-received “Bearings” in 1995. His next musical adventure was with the alt/slasher/country-rock outfit Jubilee Songbirds, which released the eclectic “Birds of North America” (Western Front) in 1997. England released his first solo record, “Peach Blossom Special” (Relay) in 1999, and a power pop CD in 2003, “Lovey Dovey ALL the Time” (Gnashville Sounds).

England’s concept/historical album “Greetings From Cairo, Illinois” traced Cairo’s history from 1858 to the present through the Civil War, lynchings, the blues years, civil rights struggles and spectacular decline. England was joined on the CD by other top musicians. With 2007’s “Salt Sex Slaves” England, along with his band The Salt Kings tackled another bizarre slice of unknown US history weaving true stories of brutal salt production, slave breeding, kidnapped free blacks and murder in a supposed Free State, and the Land of Lincoln.

With 2010’s “The Amazing Oscar Micheaux” England and the Salt Kings set their sights on the life story of Oscar Micheaux, born in Metropolis, Illinois.  Micheaux formed his own film company and wrote, filmed, produced and directed the sprawling epic, THE HOMESTEADER in 1919.  It was a sensation in Chicago and other cities. Then, in a direct challenge to D.W. Griffith’s racially charged Birth of a Nation Micheaux released his masterpiece, WITHIN OUR GATES in 1920, a film thought lost for almost 60 years until a copy was finally discovered.

Stace England took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about Roberta Collins, Oscar Micheaux, and his past, current, and future projects.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 3rd 2014

We Are Movie Geeks: I want to talk to you a bit about your show here on the 22^nd. You’ve got this tribute to Roberta Collins. Why her?

Stace England: Basically my interest in that genre was really peaked by a documentary made in 2010 called MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED which is a fantastic production. I’ve watched it six or seven times now and it made me want to go back and watch those movies, so we did that as a band and we kept noticing Roberta in the sea of acting mediocrity and to us she really stood out as somebody having some depth. I’m a huge Pam Grier fan. In those early films she’s a little shaky but she gets better, but Roberta seemed to have some stature and she’s the only actress that we wanted to Google and find out more about. As we did that we sort of got sucked into the whole thing. Hers wasn’t quite a Rainbeaux Smith kind of tragic thing with a death at 47, but she did die a typical Hollywood death of drugs and alcohol. Nobody is sure whether or not it was a suicide. We began watching the films and wondering if anyone else had seen that there was something clearly going on there. We were speculating about that and a bunch of songs just started happening from all that dialogue and debate about that. The whole genre is fascinating. The whole thing with Roger Corman sending crews to shoot in the Philippines and that kind of stuff. The final hook that really got has them was all the writing out that described these films as women empowerment films. That was the final hook that got us. John Landis is great in MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED laughing about that, but there are serious people writing about that, about these strong woman characters annihilating their oppressors. We tend to be attracted through the looking glass about that and this really fit the bill and she really becomes a vehicle for us to navigate that period, something to latch onto and weave through it.

WAMG: Have you done the Roberta Collins performance before?

SE: The show that we’re doing there in St. Louis we’ve done once before at a local event here in Carbondale.

WAMG: Did you show CAGED HEAT?

SE: No we just played our set at an event and it went over very well. People came up to us asking us questions about the genre and Roberta afterwards so we were pleased about that, but we haven’t done the show before with CAGED HEAT.

WAMG: Was CAGED HEAT your choice for the film to show and do you think it’s the best choice to showcase Roberta?

SE: I think Cliff Froelich (Executive Director of Cinema St. Louis) there talked about that and asked about either DEATH RACE 2000 or CAGED HEAT. We really didn’t have a preference. We like both of those films. He really made the call on that.

WAMG: So you’ll be showing images and clips of Roberta Collins while your band is playing, is that how it works?

SE: Yes, we perform first and then CAGED HEAT will show after that. We’re using available materials – trailers and things like that. All of the songs are one of her films we have THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, WOMEN IN CAGES, CAGED HEAT. It tracks right along in order of her work. I think her performance in WOMEN IN CAGES is fantastic. I think it’s riveting on multiple levels but when we finally get to HARDBODIES parts one and two, it’s pretty hard to watch. You’re at a point where you knew what could have been, and especially that first HARDBODIES film. We didn’t fast-forward through them though, we sat through them all to absorb it.

WAMG: Is UNHOLY ROLLERS in there?

SE: Yes, that’s a great movie even though she doesn’t skate much, It’s one of my favorites out of the whole thin,g so yes we have a song called Unholy Rollers.

WAMG: And EATEN ALIVE?

SE: Absolutely, we have a song called eaten alive and we have a Japanese trailer that we’ll incorporate and some other things.

WAMG: What would you say her most famous role was?

SE: Certainly DEATH RACE 2000. That’s a wonderful film on multiple levels. You would think coming out of that with people like Sylvester Stallone and Fred Grandy and others, that she might have gotten some traction out of that and then she went right to EATEN ALIVE. I think CAGED HEAT is a great movie and the director Jonathan Demme did a great job with that, so it’s hard to say I would say either DEATH RACE 2000 or CAGED HEAT.

WAMG: seems like  Simone Griffith had the bigger role in DEATH RACE 2000, more the female lead and Roberta was more like a guest villain.

SE: We started watching all of Roberta Collins is stuff. She was in a Kolchak the Night Stalker  episode and she comes in and just nails her scene. Then I watched the movie WHISKEY MOUNTAIN which is out there on YouTube. It may be one of the worst films I have ever seen but she’s solid in it. She plays a rape victim and she’s really good. THE BIG DOLL HOUSE for us becomes a euphemism for Hollywood in our songs and how to navigate that and the tens of thousands of stories that broke in the same direction where nothing really transpired.

WAMG: Have you talked to any of Roberta Collins costars or family members?

SE: No, I mostly just followed all the blog material out there. I haven’t really taken it to the next step though I’d like to do that if we keep this show going and reach out. It’s sort of amazing that when she died none of the trade papers really even mentioned her death. I do find the stuff about her and Glenn Ford interesting.

WAMG: Tell me about that.

SE: Toward the end of her life she was a family friend of Glenn Ford. She was a home health aide. She saw herself as a natural healer and spent time with Ford at his house taking care of him. We speculate about that in a song. You’ve got this industry titan sharing a room with someone who was mired in B-movies. There had to have been some interesting conversations.

WAMG: So you guys watch the films and do you write the songs and throw out ideas as the film is unspooling?

SE: Typically the way I do it is to watch the film and sort of absorb it and then the ideas will start to come. It’s rare that we are sitting there taking notes about a particular scene although we do that sometimes. One of the things that we strive for, and we did this with the Oscar Micheaux project, is try to make the songs a little more universal. That way if you don’t know anything about Roberta Collins, you can still sort of latch on to it, maybe with a melody that is compelling. The songs don’t tell the story of the movie scene per scene, it’s more like how it hit us or how it felt to us and how that can translate into some sort of message about what we are going through. We did watch her films in order. That gave us a real sense of her career trajectory and that was pretty jarring as you see how her life unfolded.

WAMG: You’ve incorporated movie figures into your show before with the Oscar Micheaux project. How did you get the idea to incorporate these obscure movie figures into your music?

SE: We’ve gotten labeled, I think rightly so, as music historians. All of our albums are concept records that tell a broad story and we’ve always used multimedia in all those shows from Cairo Illinois to the old Slave House project that we did over here. And we found Oscar Micheaux because he was from Southern Illinois and his story was so fascinating. That was really our entrée into using the film in the show. That went over really well. It took us to a lot of interesting places and we found that we really liked it and we found that film people are really cool! Our idea for Screen Syndicate is to keep this going. We’d like to be to talkies what the Alloy Orchestra is to silent films. We’re big fans of those guys.

WAMG: We’ve got a silent film orchestra here in St. Louis called the Rats and People Orchestra.

SE: I’ve heard of them but I have not seen them perform.

WAMG: Oh I saw them last week at the St. Louis Art Museum accompanying NOSFERATU and they will actually be playing at the St. Louis international film Festival in a couple of weeks accompanying the 1913 version of Ivanhoe starring King Baggot who was from St. Louis.

SE: That sounds great. I may have to attend that.

WAMG: So you’re from Cairo Illinois originally?

SE: I’m from southern Illinois. I’m a farm boy from west of Mount Vernon but I’ve been living in Carbondale for the last 20 years.

WAMG: Did you used to come in to St. Louis for concerts when you were younger?

Absolutely, yes I saw The Stones in St. Louis and The Who. St. Louis was the major market to see all those acts when I was a kid.

WAMG: What is the name Salt Kings a reference to?

SE: I had done a record about Cairo Illinois but I didn’t have a band then. I had put a studio project together about the old Slave House which is one of the most bizarre places you could ever encounter. It was sort of a reverse Underground Railroad in Illinois. The guy who did that was named John Crenshaw, Who was called the Salt King. We needed a band name so we appropriated it for that project. That record did really well so we needed to have continuity for the name so that came from Crenshaw who was running sort of an evil Empire around the 1840s.

WAMG: Was Oscar Micheaux the first movie figure that you guys based your shows on?

SE: Yes he was and we were all riveted by his story. He made approximately 40 films but only about 13 of them are available, not lost. We watched all those and came up with our show. Cliff asked us to score his most famous movie with and our gates. We had never done that. We did it for SLIFF and it went over well there and other places and we found it to be such an enjoyable experience perfroming it at different festivals.

WAMG: Is there another movie figure that you perhaps have in mind for a future movie project?

SE: We’ve been talking about that. I’m fascinated by Joseph Cotten and I’m starting to rewatch all of his Films. Up until about 1953 every film he was in was just like a masterpiece CITIZEN KANE, THE MADNIFICENT AMBERSONS, THE THIRD MAN, so something may gel out of that because he was such a compelling guy that seem to be in these amazing movies.

WAMG: Of course he did schlock near the end of his career. He was in LADY FRANKENSTEINadn BARON BLOOD, you could go into that part of his career as well.

SE: Yes when you look at that arc of a career like Oscar Micheaux or Roberta Collins, that’s part of it, they got to keep working.

WAMG: Are you going to be speaking about Roberta Collins or is all of this just going to be coming out through the songs?

SE: Mostly through the songs we may talk briefly to set the tone and the mention how it came about and things to look for and answer some questions if people want to do that. We’re also going to do a few Oscar Micheaux songs with footage from him to fill out the set because people have never seeing that footage and it’s pretty compelling. Paul Robeson for example, was in BODY AND SOUL and that’s a really dramatic thing to see.

WAMG: Good luck with the show here in St. Louis on the 22nd as well as with all of your future projects.

SE: Thank you.