Population
Cast & Crew
Read More
Rene Daalder
Director
Tomato Duplenty
Himself
Mike Doud
Sheela Edwards
Beck Campbell
Tommy Gear
Film Details
Also Known As
Population: One
Genre
Musical
Release Date
1986
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 10m
Synopsis
Director
Rene Daalder
Director
Cast
Tomato Duplenty
Himself
Mike Doud
Sheela Edwards
Beck Campbell
Tommy Gear
Jane Gaskill
Susan Ensley
Gorilla Rose
Crew
Kk Barrett
Art Director
Kk Barrett
Set Designer
Frans Bromet
Cinematographer
Frans Bromet
Other
Bianca Daalder
Producer
Rene Daalder
Music Producer
Rene Daalder
Screenplay
Tomato Duplenty
Other
Greg Farber
Executive Producer
Joe Kaufman
Executive Producer
Dominic Orlando
Animator
Daniel Pearl
Other
Daniel Pearl
Cinematographer
Daniel Schwartz
Music
Carel Struycken
Editor
Carl Struycken
Associate Producer
Jurg V Walther
Cinematographer
Jurg V Walther
Other
Woody Wilson
Editor
Film Details
Also Known As
Population: One
Genre
Musical
Release Date
1986
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 10m
Articles
Population: 1 - The Screamers' Tomata Du Plenty, Vampira, Fluxus artist Al Hansen, Beck and Others in POPULATION: 1 on DVD
What began as a "disco Caligari" paean to German Expressionism morphed over the course of several years (due in large part to the eviction of Daalder et al from their Melrose Avenue film studio) into Population: 1 (1986), a thematic sci-fi crossdressing of Citizen Kane (1941) and Glen and Randa (1971). To make nominal sense of the accumulated puttanesca of vignettes, music videos and B-roll, Daalder devised a framing device focusing on the last survivor (Du Plenty) of a nuclear holocaust, who recollects and reviews a highly dubious personal and national history from the safety of a submerged fallout shelter. Marching through the narrator's fractured consciousness is a fool's parade of some of the shining lights of the Hollywood music and avant garde scenes of the mid-Eighties, including Los Lobos saxophonist Steve Berlin, Avengers front-woman Penelope Houston, Plan 9 from Outer Space star Vampira, Netherlands-born actor/photographer Carel Struycken (later the cadaverous valet Lurch of Barry Sonnenfeld's The Addams Family movies), Eldon Hoke (aka El Duce, lead singer for The Mentors and a prime suspect among conspiracy theorists in the alleged murder of Kurt Cobain) as well as session musician David Campbell, Campbell's father-in-law Al Hansen (a colleague of Andy Warhol, John Cage and Yoko Ono) and 12-year old son, who grew up to be Grammy Award-winning recording artist Beck. But despite the jaw-dropping procession of talent in front of and behind the camera (Texas Chain Saw Massacre DP Daniel Pearl helped out between higher-paying gigs), it is the puckish Tomato Du Plenty who keeps Population: 1 focused and entertaining even at its most piecemeal. Du Plenty (who was diagnosed as HIV+ around the time of shooting) is an endearing and ingenuine screen presence, combining a Candide-like ingenuineness with the physical elasticity of a silent screen comic. Du Plenty is well-served by leading lady Sheela Edwards, a crack-toothed punk chanteusse who appears siren-like as the narrator's lost love and croons infectious covers of "Jazz Age Vampire" and "Ten Cents a Dance."
Daalder's "total chromakey freakout" had its premiere on January of 1986 at the Four Star Theater in Los Angeles, where it was heralded as a "no-holds barred assault, (as if) Frank Zappa and Hieronymus Bosch took angel dust together and created a nightmare." Although the film tourned the festival circuit, it was as good as lost to the public consciousness after only a few years. While the digital jiggery-pokery used throughout Population: 1 was pioneering, especially considering its co-option by MTV through the next decade (Daadler himself would go on to a sideline career as a digital consultant on such films as Robocop II, Blink and What Dreams May Come, among others), the film's politics and local flavor ghettoized it as strictly cult material. Never forgotten by those who saw it way back when, Population: 1 has been resurrected and restored in a two-disc special edition DVD offering Rene Daadler's director's cut of the film. It's great in and of itself to have the (barely) feature the standard frame image looks on par for an 80s movie shot without much money but sweetening the deal are an impressive roster of supplements that place Population: 1 within the context of the careers and aesthetics of its many collaborators. Most valuable among these are a contemporary interview with Daadler, in which he relates the project's tortured history. The funniest bit has Daadler recalling that Tomata Du Plenty's apartment was used for the bomb shelter set, which forced the actor to live with that art design for an entire year; the saddest is his testimony to the utter poverty of many of the principals, who lived for art that did not pay them a living. The remainder of the roster of extras includes (but is not limited to) original music videos, concert footage, short films (Daadler's 1973 LA-set spoof Je Maintiendrai), trailers, a documentary short on Al Hansen (who died in 1995), an excerpt from a forthcoming documentary on Vampira (who died in January 2008) and a tribute to Tomata Du Plenty, who left the building in 2000.
To order Population: 1, go to TCM Shopping.
by Richard Harland Smith
![Population: 1 - The Screamers' Tomata Du Plenty, Vampira, Fluxus Artist Al Hansen, Beck And Others In Population: 1 On Dvd](https://prod-images.tcm.com/img/film-participant-detail/Featured-Artilce_Placeholder.png)
Population: 1 - The Screamers' Tomata Du Plenty, Vampira, Fluxus artist Al Hansen, Beck and Others in POPULATION: 1 on DVD
Dutch filmmaker Rene Daalder had completed a few short subjects and one feature-length film (The White
Slave was cowritten with architect Rem Koolhaas and Belgian writer-director Harry Kümel and photographed
by Jan De Bont) in the Netherlands before crossing the Atlantic to try his luck in the American movie
business. Falling under the wing of softcore sultan Russ Meyer, Daalder became the recipient of a cast-off
project offered to "King Leer" by a group of Chicago investors an exploitation film bearing the prefab
title Massacre at Central High (1976) and boasting no less than eight onscreen deaths. Although he
had no particular taste for the material, Daalder took on the assignment and turned it into a slyly
subversive political allegory masked as a body count movie just a few years before John Carpenter's
Halloween (1978) and Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) turned dead teenagers into a
growth market. At the best of Malcolm McLaren, manager of the UK band The Sex Pistols, Meyer and Daalder
began drafting a treatment for Anarchy in the UK, a punk answer to A Hard Day's Night (1964).
Due to the clash of extreme personalities, the project came to naught even with the participation of film
critic Roger Ebert, who had scripted Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in 1970. (McLaren did
use the resulting material for his 1980 faux documentary The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.) Undaunted,
Daalder continued to pursue his interest in the LA punk rock scene. Impressed by the onstage presence of
the "synth-punk" outfit The Screamers and its kinetic frontman Tomata Du Plenty, Daalder began to devise a
film vehicle for the group using the then cutting edge medium of video tape and the gimmick of digital
compositing (or "chromakey"), which would prove to be a versatile tool for the nascent music video
industry.
What began as a "disco Caligari" paean to German Expressionism morphed over the course of several
years (due in large part to the eviction of Daalder et al from their Melrose Avenue film studio) into
Population: 1 (1986), a thematic sci-fi crossdressing of Citizen Kane (1941) and Glen and
Randa (1971). To make nominal sense of the accumulated puttanesca of vignettes, music videos and
B-roll, Daalder devised a framing device focusing on the last survivor (Du Plenty) of a nuclear holocaust,
who recollects and reviews a highly dubious personal and national history from the safety of a submerged
fallout shelter. Marching through the narrator's fractured consciousness is a fool's parade of some of the
shining lights of the Hollywood music and avant garde scenes of the mid-Eighties, including Los Lobos
saxophonist Steve Berlin, Avengers front-woman Penelope Houston, Plan 9 from Outer Space star
Vampira, Netherlands-born actor/photographer Carel Struycken (later the cadaverous valet Lurch of Barry
Sonnenfeld's The Addams Family movies), Eldon Hoke (aka El Duce, lead singer for The Mentors and a
prime suspect among conspiracy theorists in the alleged murder of Kurt Cobain) as well as session musician
David Campbell, Campbell's father-in-law Al Hansen (a colleague of Andy Warhol, John Cage and Yoko Ono) and
12-year old son, who grew up to be Grammy Award-winning recording artist Beck. But despite the jaw-dropping
procession of talent in front of and behind the camera (Texas Chain Saw Massacre DP Daniel Pearl
helped out between higher-paying gigs), it is the puckish Tomato Du Plenty who keeps Population: 1
focused and entertaining even at its most piecemeal. Du Plenty (who was diagnosed as HIV+ around the time
of shooting) is an endearing and ingenuine screen presence, combining a Candide-like ingenuineness with the
physical elasticity of a silent screen comic. Du Plenty is well-served by leading lady Sheela Edwards, a
crack-toothed punk chanteusse who appears siren-like as the narrator's lost love and croons infectious
covers of "Jazz Age Vampire" and "Ten Cents a Dance."
Daalder's "total chromakey freakout" had its premiere on January of 1986 at the Four Star Theater in Los
Angeles, where it was heralded as a "no-holds barred assault, (as if) Frank Zappa and Hieronymus Bosch took
angel dust together and created a nightmare." Although the film tourned the festival circuit, it was as
good as lost to the public consciousness after only a few years. While the digital jiggery-pokery used
throughout Population: 1 was pioneering, especially considering its co-option by MTV through the next
decade (Daadler himself would go on to a sideline career as a digital consultant on such films as Robocop
II, Blink and What Dreams May Come, among others), the film's politics and local flavor
ghettoized it as strictly cult material. Never forgotten by those who saw it way back when, Population:
1 has been resurrected and restored in a two-disc special edition DVD offering Rene Daadler's director's
cut of the film. It's great in and of itself to have the (barely) feature the standard frame image looks
on par for an 80s movie shot without much money but sweetening the deal are an impressive roster of
supplements that place Population: 1 within the context of the careers and aesthetics of its many
collaborators. Most valuable among these are a contemporary interview with Daadler, in which he relates the
project's tortured history. The funniest bit has Daadler recalling that Tomata Du Plenty's apartment was
used for the bomb shelter set, which forced the actor to live with that art design for an entire year; the
saddest is his testimony to the utter poverty of many of the principals, who lived for art that did not pay
them a living. The remainder of the roster of extras includes (but is not limited to) original music
videos, concert footage, short films (Daadler's 1973 LA-set spoof Je Maintiendrai), trailers, a
documentary short on Al Hansen (who died in 1995), an excerpt from a forthcoming documentary on Vampira (who
died in January 2008) and a tribute to Tomata Du Plenty, who left the building in 2000.
To order Population: 1, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Richard Harland Smith
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States May 14, 1986
Released in United States on Video October 28, 2008
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1986
Shown at Cannes Film Festival May 14, 1986.
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1986
Released in United States May 14, 1986 (Shown at Cannes Film Festival May 14, 1986.)
Released in United States on Video October 28, 2008