SIN STREET SLEAZE

PAPERBACK PARADE

2012-01-14T04:09:00.000-08:00

Another interview with me has just been published in the new issue (#80) of Gary Lovisi's terrific, long-running magazine PAPERBACK PARADE. Published by Gryphon Books, PAPERBACK PARADE is available from their website and is must reading for anyone interested in the world of vintage pulp paperbacks.

GRYPHON BOOKS

There is also a scan of the article/interview posted on the Headpress website at:

HEADPRESS: PAPERBACK PARADE

Headpress also have an archive of HIP POCKET SLEAZE reviews posted on their Press page at:

HIP POCKET SLEAZE: PRESS

SKIN-TERVIEW

2012-01-14T04:02:00.000-08:00

New interview with me has been posted over at the Mr Skin website, discussing HIP POCKET SLEAZE and some of my favourite moments in adult sinema:

MR SKIN INTERVIEW: JOHN HARRISON

MONSTER MASH

2011-12-26T19:32:00.000-08:00

New issue of COLLECTABLES TRADER magazine (Jan-March 2012), featuring my article on 60s monster movie memorabilia, is now on the newsstands (in Oz, at least)!

HIP POCKET SLEAZE REVIEW

2011-12-06T01:17:00.001-08:00

A new review of HIP POCKET SLEAZE has now been posted on the Polari Magazine website at:

POLARI MAGAZINE - HIP POCKET SLEAZE (Review)

HUMAN CREEPY CRAWLIES

2011-12-06T01:10:00.000-08:00

Survived a midnight viewing of Human Centipede 2 - nice to see a horror sequel try something a little different, a brave play on the perceived 'horror film as evil influence' themes which the safe media often love to play-up. Stark, bloody and disturbing, very evocative in B&W and dominated by an incredibly unsettling (and virtually silent) performance from Laurence R. Harvey - one of the great performances in modern horror cinema. Despite its confrontational visuals and themes, does NOT deserve its Australian banning - although that will only help to increase the film's notoriety (though on the negative side the filmmaker's pockets will unfairly suffer thanks to online downloads).

THE BOOK SHOW

2011-11-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

My recent appearance on ABC Radio National's The Book Show, discussing Hip Pocket Sleaze and the vintage paperback genre, is now available to listen to/download at the following link:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3364026.htm

MAIL-ORDER MYSTERIES

2011-11-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

MAIL-ORDER MYSTERIES:
REAL STUFF FROM OLD COMIC BOOK ADS!
by Kirk Demaris
(2011 Insight Editions/USA/156 Pages)

Growing-up as a kid obsessed with American comic books, I was always fascinated by the advertisements for strange and cool gizmos, gadgets, toys and other goodies that would fill the pages of every new Marvel and DC title I would pour through. From x-ray vision glasses and miniature spy cameras to hypno-calls and 100 piece toy soldier sets, it seemed as if there was a lifetime of fun and adventure to be had, and all for usually less than a couple of bucks a pop.

Of course, living in Australia, these products always seemed so exotic and agonizingly out of my reach. There were never any ordering instructions for people who lived outside the US, and even if there were, the coupons were so tiny I don’t know how anyone could have fit their whole address on it. Eventually, as I reached my mid-teens and started an after-school supermarket job, I did start sending away some of my hard-earned cash to Captain Company, the mail-order department of Warren Publications in New York, who sold a plethora of great monster related merchandise through the pages of their classic Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. But over the years I would still look back over some of the ads from my collection of old comic books, and wonder just exactly what kids received when they bought these items.

Now, I need wonder no more, thanks to Kirk Demaris' marvellous new book Mail Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads!, which blows the lid on the reality behind more than 150 of these far too good to be true items. Divided into eight categories (Superpowers and Special Abilities, War Zone, House of Horrors, High Finance, Better Living Through Mail Order, Top Secret, Trickery and Oddities), each item covered includes the original advertisement accompanied by at least one photo of the actual item being hawked. Text is kept to a minimum, with each item receiving a brief ‘What they promised’ and ‘What they sent’ blurb, as well as a brief, satirical summation of imagined customer satisfaction (or, usually, dissatisfaction).

Needless to say, the majority of these items could not live up to their promise. The classic x-ray vision spex were nothing more than cheap plastic (later, cardboard) glasses with bird feathers pressed between the lenses (which created a ghostly outline around objects when held up to bright light). The seven foot long Polaris Nuclear Submarine was a couple of painted cardboard boxes that usually fell to bits as soon as it touched some dewy grass, while anything that was advertised with a ‘You control it!’ blurb usually meant that the item came with a long piece of string for you to pull it along with. Sometimes, however, the companies did deliver on their promise. The famous miniature spy camera did indeed work (although finding replacement film was apparently a pain the ass), while anyone who ordered the six foot tall ‘Monster Size Monsters’ received a beautifully rendered colour portrait of either Dracula or the Frankenstein monster.

In many ways, these products were no different to the exploitation and drive-in films being produced at the time, where the advertising and ballyhoo was always much more important than the actual product delivered. In the words of pioneering sexploitation film producer David F. Friedman: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”

Mail Order Mysteries is a wonderful trip down memory lane, and rather than spoiling some of the magical memories of my childhood, it has only made me appreciate these items all the more. In fact, I’m off to trawl eBay for some of them right now...

Review Copyright John Harrison 2011

X MARKS THE SPOT

2011-11-23T01:03:00.000-08:00

Really enjoyed Jon Hewitt's new film X, an intense, violent erotic thriller set in the seedy underworld of police corruption and the red light district of Sydney's Kings Cross. In turns grimy and slick, it features great performances by the two female leads, a nice ambient soundtrack, some impressive cinematography and editing, and a pretty tight script by Hewitt and Belinda McClory. Hewitt's best works since 1999's Redball. Proof that Australian filmmakers can still do great things on a tight budget. Starting in a limited release in Aussie cinemas this week...check it out!

Trailer:
http://youtu.be/lA_PLMaB7wo

ED WOOD PAPERBACK EXHIBITION

2011-11-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

Sounds like this would be well worth checking out if you are in the New York area over the next few weeks...

ED WOOD'S SLEAZE PAPERBACKS

CURATED BY MICHAEL DALEY AND JOHAN KUGELBERG
EXHIBIT OPEN EVERYDAY 11AM-6PM
Wed, Nov 2nd to Sun Dec 4th

Boo-Hooray
265 Canal St, #601, New York, NY 10013

For press inquires contact: Heidi Sanders press@boo-hooray.com

The antiquarian mystique surrounding Edward Davis Wood Jr.’s career as an author of pornographic pulp fiction is legend. He wrote under a variety of pseudonyms, books were published and re-published under different titles, and occasionally under different author names. Multiple authors would share the same pseudonym, and the companies that published the titles weren’t the kind of operations that kept any kind of records, nor paid royalties, nor really existed in the manner that most are to expect of book publishers.

The paperbacks are truly rare, even in an age of mass-searchable used book engines, and google ferocity. Ed Wood’s sleaze fiction is also as strange, idiosyncratic and out of step with his times and mores as his infamous movies. Wood would write porn inter-spliced with lengthy philosophical, sociological and psychological discourse, he’d write first person narratives of life as a transvestite in the buttoned up America of the 1950’s. He’d riff on psychosexual themes, and unleash his id, his ego and his superego in turn, sometimes in the same chapter. He’d write about sex and the human condition without veneer or filters, offering up the damaged and anguished voice of a desperately soul-searching drunk with a sense of self-worth that would stand in dichotomy to his self-pity.

His descent into alcoholism and poverty was mirrored by the publishers that employed him. Towards the end of his life he wrote pornography with decreasing amounts of the strange flourishes of his eccentric personality. He died in 1978 of an alcohol-induced heart attack. His friends say the porn killed him. For further information see Rudolph Grey’s masterful biography Nightmare of Ecstasy.

This is the largest assembly of Ed Wood publications exhibited to date. Boo-Hooray has tracked down roughly seventy of his books and publications. Some collectors claim that he wrote dozens more. Entrepreneurial book dealers often indulge in Ed Wood pseudonym speculation. A ten dollar paperback can thus become an antiquarian rarity, even with flimsy or non-existent evidence. A handful of these are in the show.

The collection has been sold to the Cornell University rare book library where it will become a part of their human sexuality archive.

The exhibition is curated by Michael Daley and Johan Kugelberg.

An illustrated and annotated exhibition catalogue is available in a regular and deluxe edition. The deluxe edition of 250 numbered copies comes in a silk-screened slipcase with a 7-inch vinyl record of Chain Gang vocalist Ricky Luanda performing two homages to Ed Wood.

The exhibit will be open everyday 11-6 from November 2nd to December 4th. Closed Thanksgiving weekend Nov. 24 - Nov 27.

Exhibition opening night will be Nov. 2nd 6-9. Attendance for opening night is limited, an RSVP is required for admittance. Please RSVP to attend at this link: http://boo-hooray.com/rsvp

Catalog and Deluxe Edition available in Webshop
ORDER NOW

This exhibition is dedicated to enthusiast and scholar

Robert Legault 1950 – 2008

For more info please visit the Boo-Hooray website at: boo-hooray.com

HELLO DOLLY

2011-11-01T21:59:00.001-07:00

HIP POCKET SLEAZE REVIEWS

2011-11-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of early reviews for Hip Pocket Sleaze:

It's hard to believe time really happened; under tall oaks the text-covered leaves... Is then is then and now is now? When I contemplate the spellbinding Mysteries behind old school adult exploitational pulp-print I'm not so sure... I go there with them. Anyhow, if you share my obsession with this lovely garish genre you will thrill to Hip Pocket Sleaze, a "celebratory overview" of said genre from the 1940s onwards. It's truly a wonder, a marvel. Evoluting out of the author's digest fanzine that he began in 1999, the most capable Mr Harrison has cultivated nearly 400 pages chock full of fascinating reviews of choice examples, interviews and essays concerning the major pulp writers, artists, imprints and collectors, and useful lists of what's out there, augmented by many b&w reproductions of the fantastic front covers of these publications and the advert-smut they contain.

It's wide in scope: a short history of the phenomenon; lesbian and gay material, Armed Services Editions, drugs and counterculture, horror tie-ins, gore novels, witchcraft and the occult, offbeat and esoteric titles, the sex film mags, plus a look at porny Super-8, photo sets and audio. It also confirms the organised crime involvement in this murky trade, including rumours of people snuffed for demanding withheld payment - art imitating life and vice versa as the characters step out of and into the magic pages.

Hip Pocket Sleaze is a top notch tutelary goldmine that will gift hours of fruitful delight to the newcomer or seasoned connoisseur alike. A pervert's bible kind of trip, surely destined to become (or already be) a standard reference work.

Reviewed by Mark Reeve

http://www.okok.org.uk/Articles/Hellhound/HellhoundReview.htm#HipPocketSleaze

People interested in the world of adult paperbacks and trashy novels (most not really porn) have had to glean information from obscure journals, and quite a few of those accounts end up in John Harrison's excellent book. But there is also a tremendous amount of original research. You'll find checklists, writers, artists and publishers. It's really a look back at the way America used to be, back in the days when it was possible to be sleazy; now, all the strictures of society have fallen away. What's taboo anymore? This is a wonderful examination of a time when our morality was delineated by what we kept under the counter or in plain brown wrappers. This book is a great resource for both the collector and the social historian.

- Ralph Vaughan (70s/80s adult paperback publisher)

MANSON MADNESS

2011-09-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

My review of the tacky 1970 Manson-inspired paperback The Hippy Cult Murders now posted over at Headpress as the first instalment in their Hip Pocket Sleaze Files. Check it out at the link below...

THE HIPPY CULT MURDERS

42nd ST SLEAZE

2011-09-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

Check out Mitch O'Connell's blogger page for some absolutely incredible, vintage photos of New York's 42nd St in it's sleazy, lurid prime! So stark, beautiful and haunting...and sadly, now lost forever.

VINTAGE 42nd STREET

JFK

2011-09-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

Have had several new reviews (written under my 'Graveyard Tramp' pseudonym) posted over at DVD HOLOCAUST, including my latest on for the double-disc JFK COLLECTION.

2011-09-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

HIP POCKET SLEAZE is now available via Amazon US:

ORDER HIP POCKET SLEAZE

Was delighted to see it hit #11 on Amazon's Best Sellers in Books : Antiques & Collectibles Category!

THE REAL DIRK DIGGLER

2011-09-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Finally caught up this morning with The Real Dirk Diggler: The John Holmes Story (actually a UK doco from 2000 originally titled XXXL: The John Holmes Story), which I’d recorded off Foxtel earlier in the week - covers most of the same territory as the great Wadd documentary from 1998, and revealed nothing really new about Holmes fascinatingly sordid and surprisingly complex life, but was still worthwhile for some of its great clips of old Sunset Strip motels and Pussycat adult cinemas, and some rare memorabilia and behind the scenes footage from one of Holmes’ Johnny Wadd porn film sets. Not to mention the interview footage of Holmes’ last significant partner, poor deluded Laurie Rose (aka ‘Anal Queen Misty Dawn’), who moments after telling us she never touched drugs points to the bathroom window of the old Hollywood house she lived in and refers to it as “a great room to freebase in”. She remains convinced that Holmes truly loved her, displays painful inner turmoil and denial when being confronted with hearing that he loved having ‘warm-up’ sex with his co-stars, and still believes he treated her like shit for “my own protection”.

VALE JIMMY SANGSTER

2011-08-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

Was saddened to hear of the passing of screenwriter Jimmy Sangster at the age of 83. Best known for his work for Hammer Film Productions in the UK, Sangster wrote the scripts for X: The Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula and many other horror classics. He also directed The Horror of Frankenstein, Lust for a Vampire and Fear in the Night in the early 70s, and penned the scripts for many popular American genre TV shows throughout that decade, including The Night Stalker, Wonder Woman, Ironside, McCloud and The Six Million Dollar Man. Probably the first screenwriter whose name I first started recognising and taking notice of as a kid discovering horror movies on late-night TV.

HIP POCKET SLEAZE Now Available!

2011-08-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

New from Headpress:

HIP POCKET SLEAZE
The Lurid World of Vintage Adult Paperbacks
by John Harrison

drugs
incest
witchcraft
and more....

Your comprehensive guide to the original pulp fiction
Nearly 400 pages bursting with timeless smut...
An essential companion to the Bad Mags books...
Click here to buy Hip Pocket Sleaze for just £14.39
(http://headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=98 )

Click here to watch an outrageous selection of Hip Pocket Sleaze illustrations in our exclusive photobook
(http://www.worldheadpress.com/hip-pocket-sleaze-sample-photobook-203 )

Click here to learn more about Hip Pocket Sleaze author John Harrison
( http://www.worldheadpress.com/john-harrison-196 )

Click here to read an exclusive extract from Hip Pocket Sleaze, When Softcore Hardened and the Sleaze turned Sick
(http://www.worldheadpress.com/hip-pocket-sleaze-extract-202 )

HIP POCKET SLEAZE is an introduction to the world of vintage, lurid adult paperbacks. Charting the rise of sleazy pulp fiction during the 1960s and 1970s and reviewing many of the key titles, the book takes an informed look at the various genres and markets from this enormouslyprolific era, from groundbreaking gay and lesbian-themed books to the Armed Services Editions. Influential authors, publishers and coverartists are profiled and interviewed, including the "godfather of gore" H. G. Lewis, cult lesbian author Ann Bannon, fetish artist parexcellence Bill Ward and many others.

A companion to Bad Mags, Headpress' guide to sensationalist magazines of the 1970s, HIP POCKET SLEAZE also offers extensive bibliographical information and plenty of outrageous cover art.

Find out more about Hip Pocket Sleaze at Worldheadpress

Headpress
(http://www.worldheadpress.com )
Suite 306, 2a Abbot St.
London, E8 3DP, UK
Office: +44 (0)208 888 0781 / Orders: 0845 3301 844

THE SHRINES OF PHILLIPA BERRY

2011-08-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

Phillipa Berry is a Melbourne based artist whose passionate admiration for personalities who exist primarily on the fringes of cinema and rock & roll - along with a healthy worship of Mexican masked wrestling - manifests itself in the amazing shrines which she creates in honour of those who have entertained, influenced and intrigued her. Many of the people she pays tribute to in her shrines are names which have either been long-forgotten by the mainstream, or were never acknowledged by them in the first place. As Berry says, “The world doesn’t need another shrine to Elvis...”

Below is a cool little documentary on Phillipa and her work, as well as her amazing collection of memorabilia...

The Astonishing and Fantastical Shrines of Phillipa Berry! from SundayDriversPress on Vimeo.

BLUE DEMON

2011-08-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

A few great vintage 1960s Mexican comic books featuring the adventures of their beloved masked wrester/film star, the Blue Demon!

CAPTAIN AMERICA

2011-08-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Thought Captain America: The First Avenger, while hardly anything ground-breaking or visionary, was a solid and fun comic book movie, one of Marvel's better efforts so far! Highlighted by it's retro 1940s set design and period setting, nice nods to the character's long history, and enjoyable performances from all of the main leads. A well-deserved success for the often-malinged (and often deservedly-so) director Joe Johnston.

BLAZING COMBAT!

2011-08-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

A peak at my little collection of vintage 'war stuff'....always loved a good Sat afternoon war movie matinee as a kid, followed by a backyard G I Joe battle when I got home!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

2011-08-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

As a big Apes fan and collector since I was a kid I thought Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an enjoyable enough film, solid without being spectacular. Much more faithful in concept and tone to the original films than Tim Burton's 2001 remake, and it's nice to see it doing well with critics and audiences as I'm certainly up for more big-screen Apes adventures! I do miss John Chamber's Oscar winning make-up though, and it's unfortunate that the trailers pretty much gave away the entire plot of the film, and the human characters and actors (apart from John Lithgow) were very wooden and little more than caricatures.

I also found that the abundance of references and in-jokes to the original films went too far....one or two are fine, I liked the bit with Caeser building the Statue of Liberty model and the news clip of the Icarus lift-off, but the others were a bit too forced and obvious, and the "damned dirty ape" line should never have been used - it is such an iconic line and it belongs to Heston alone, not handed down to some kid who was probably the worst actor and most cliched character in the entire film.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes got me thinking of the fourth film the original series, and the one which this new film most resembles in tone and theme, 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Conquest was the first Apes film I saw in a cinema, when my English teacher took me and a couple of other classmates to a screening of it at the old Airport cinema in Melbourne (this was back in the days when a school teacher taking a few of his 12 year-old students to the movies on a weekend wasn't considered anything to get overly suspicious or concerned about). He was a bit of a Star Trek/sci-fi nerdy/buff-type and I guess in us he maybe recognised (and took pity on?) a few like-minded kids. The only other Apes film I had seen up until then were Beneath the Planet of the Apes (a 16mm screening in our class thanks to a student whose dad had a bit of pull at the Channel 7 TV studios) and about the first half of the original Planet of the Apes when it aired on Sunday night television (was forced to go to bed just after Taylor spoke - school the next day).

So I hadn't seen Escape From the Planet of the Apes and knew very little of what Conquest was about and it was quite a shock to see the apes roaming not a primitive wasteland but a modern city, and the humans talked but most of the apes didn't? I suppose at the time it was something of a let-down, as the imagery of the talking, powerful apes roaming this eerie, barren Forbidden Zone strewn with the ruins of nuclear-ravaged cities, was one of the aspects of the first two films that most appealed to me, and Conquest obviously lacked that tone. But I was still sitting in a cinema watching an Apes film so I certainly still loved the experience, and over the years Conquest has definately improved for me, I appreciate more it's tone and themes now than I did as a kid, it has that great early-70s American sci-fi vibe, and I love the cold concrete feel of the Century City locales. The original can't be touched, but Conquest runs very close with Beneath as my second favourite entry in the Apes saga.

THE GREEN SLIME

2011-08-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

1968/Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

I’m sure I wasn’t the only monster-loving kid on the verge of puberty who was entranced by the cover art for Famous Monsters of Filmland No. 57, which featured a shapely female astronaut in a skin-tight spacesuit being menaced by a typically lurid, green one-eyed space creature. The art was a detail from Vic Livoti’s original poster for The Green Slime, a 1968 American/Japanese co-production which was one of those films that I never got a chance to see until I recently acquired the widescreen DVD released by Warner Archives.

When a huge meteorite is discovered on a collision course with Earth, a space team mount an operation to land on the object and destroy it with explosives. The mission succeeds, but the team unwittingly bring back a pulsing, luminous green ooze which quickly mutate into an army electricity-shooting tentacled monsters who take over the revloving space station Gamma 3. The obligatory love triangle is provided by Richard Jaeckel, Robert Horton and Italian stunner Luciana Paluzzi (my favorite Bond bad girl) Featuring some elements later found in big studio films like Alien and Armageddon, The Green Slime is a fun slice of swingin’ sixties sci-fi, with mini-skirts and beehives, a colourful pop-art production design, cool monsters that would not have looked out of place stomping across a miniature city in a Toho production, and a classic psychedelic-tinged theme song composed by Charles Fox that was later covered by the Fuzztones!

What more could you want?

ARTISTS & MODELS

2011-07-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

Had to send off to Italy to get a copy of this 1955 Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin combo on DVD, but it was worth the effort. Directed by Frank Tashlin and filmed in glorious VistaVision, Artists & Models was always my favourite of the Lewis and Martin comedies when I was a kid - its mixture of slapstick comedy and comic book industry setting made it irresistible, and having not seen it for a good 20+ years I was happy to see how well it held up. Like many of the pair's films it has some embarrassing moments, and some of the musical numbers and extended Lewis comedy skits become a bit torturous, but it has some genuinely likeable characters, beautifully lush production design, and a terrific performance from Shirley MacLaine that is as sexy as it is kooky (not to mention energetic). 56 years after it's release, it has also transformed itself into a nostalgic and endearing time capsule that reflects the moral outrage and concern that was directed towards violent crime and horror comics at the time.

FROM THE VHS VAULT...

2011-07-14T02:34:00.001-07:00

SAVAGE STREETS
(1984 CBS/Fox)
Directed by Danny Steinman

Along with Chained Heat (1983), the trashy, violent vigilante flick was responsible for giving former child star Linda (The Exorcist) Blair a second career shot and the grindhouse cult stardom she enjoyed for a period in the mid-eighties. It’s set in Hollywood, where Linda and her high school friends cruise the streets looking like extras who were rejected from Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield music video. When her innocent, deaf sister (future scream queen Linnea Quigley) is gang raped by a bunch of sorry looking street punks. Linda dons black leather and stilettos, arms herself with a crossbow and goes after the lowlifes responsible. As the school principal, John Vernon tells the female students how well their bodies are developing and has lines like "Go fuck an iceberg", while the teachers allow the kids to smoke in class and have discussions on giving head, and the girls in gym class dress like they are on their way to a part-time job in a local brothel - no wonder I used to daydream about going to school in America when I was a kid!

Savage Streets is a prime example of mid-eighties exploitation fodder, and was heavily cut on most VHS releases around the world (including the Australian release on the CBS/Fox label). Surprisingly, a pre-Whispering Jack John Farnham provides several of the songs on the soundtrack LP, which was released by MCA (and is probably the only Farnham related recording I am ever likely to own). Director Danny Steinman made Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the same year.

(USA/Colour/89 mins)

DVD Availability: Released uncut (93 mins) in the UK in 2011 by Arrow Video, with audio commentaries, interviews with cast members, booklet, fold-out poster and reversible sleeve.

HIP POCKET SLEAZE UPDATE

2011-07-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

Publication date for Hip Pocket Sleaze grows slowly but surely nearer. Hopefully I should be seeing a pdf proof of the final layout in the coming week. Keep an eye on the Headpress website, who have added a brief bio of me to their author profiles page:

www.worldheadpress.com/john-harrison-196

COFFIN JOE

2011-06-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

THE STRANGE WORLD OF JOSE MOJICA MARINS
Directed by André Barcinski & Ivan Finott
Brazil/2001

Though somewhat short on length (an extra 15 minutes could have been devoted to some uncovered/glossed-over periods) and rather cheaply shot on video, this documentary provides an excellent overview on the life and career of Jose Mojica Marins, with a heavy emphasis of course on the films of his most famous creation, the charismatic and primal undertaker Zé do Caixão/Coffin Joe, the onscreen alter-ego of Marins himself, who went on to become an icon of Brazillian horror cinema and something of a folk hero to the people of Brazil itself.

Via interviews with regular early collaborators such as actor Mario Lima, screenwriter Rubens Lucchetti (whose house resembles a library, with its labyrinth of shelves harbouring neatly stacked movie and pulp magazines), editor Nilcemar Leyart and cameramen Virgilio Roveda and Isaac Floor – as well as input from his aunt Conceircao and son Crounel – The Strange World of Jose Mojia Marins traces Marins’ life as a poor youth growing up in an old movie theatre in Vila Anastacio, an environment which naturally helped develop an intense love of – nay, obsession for - cinema, through to his early filmmaking efforts like the 1958 western The Adventurer’s Fate and 1961’s My Destiny in Your Hands, to the creation and popularity of Coffin Joe. After finding himself under heavy fire from police, politicians and censors in the late-sixties, Marins subsequently struggled to fund projects throught the 1970s, eventually turning to alcohol for solace and hardcore pornography to pay the bills, in a decline which eerily mirrored that of American filmmaker Ed Wood. However, unlike Wood, Marins was able to pull himself through his tough times to enjoy the rennaisance and cult status which his early films received when they were finally released in the US by Something Weird Video in the early 1990s

Of course, Marins himself is also interviewed at length, wandering around his small apartment cramped with videos and 16mm film cans, showing off his bound collection of Marvel comic books (and dismissing Batman because of the perceived homosexual connotations he had with Robin), and visiting the studios and cinemas of his youth (all of which have been sadly turned into decaying parking lots or garages). Laconic and enthusiastic, and often clutching a cigarette between his long-nailed fingers, Marins reflects back on a career that was creatively rewarding but financially disastrous, discussing his filmmaking techniques (which often involved ingesting substantial amounts of amphetamines to make it through long shooting sessions, and ‘testing’ the resolve of his actresses by having poisonous snakes and spiders crawl over their often naked bodies), and the aura of superstition that often hung over his productions (highlighted by the sudden deaths or serious illnesses of several of his actors and crew members).

Some of the most revealing moments in The Strange World of Jose Mojia Marins are provided by the rare archival footage which the filmmakers have uncovered, including his visit to a Spanish horror film festival in the early- seventies (accompanied by his big, black and bald bodyguard Satan) and an amazing sequence from 1980 where Marins – in full Coffin Joe regalia – conducts an acting class to a large auditorium full of students. Whipping his students into a frenzy as he commands them to imagine that they are aboard an airliner that is about to crash, Marins directs the crowd with the fervour of a revival tent preacher, sweat dripping down his face as his pupils convulse wildly as if in the grip of an exorcism. Incredible stuff, which goes a long way in helping to cement the Coffin Joe myth.

The Strange World of Jose Mojia Marins is available as part of Umbrella Entertainment's 4 disc Coffin Joe box-set.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2011

Note: The above review was originaly written for the New Zealand website DVD Holocaust. Check out more of my reviews (posted under the name 'The Graveyard Tramp') on their website at:

DVD HOLOCAUST

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

2011-06-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

Was quite impressed with Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, a cool reboot/prequel with a 1962 setting that gives it a nice James Bond/Cold War thriller flavour to offset its more fantastical elements. Highlights were January Jones as the lovely Emma Frost, Kevin Bacon as Nazi villain Sebastian Shaw and, above all, Michael Fassbender, who injects the young Magento with a definite pinch of Don Draper debonair. He is a shoe-in the be the next 007.

COLUMBO VS MANSON

2011-06-01T04:09:00.000-07:00

COLUMBO: THE HELTER SKELTER MURDERS by William Hartigan
(1994 Forge/USA)

One of the more bizarre pieces of Manson related literature published, this fictional novel sets up the premise that Columbo (the scruffy, bumbling detective played on television in the 1970s by Peter Falk) was one of the first cops on the scene at the Tate murder at 10050 Cielo Drive, and had been in personal contact with Manson during his initial interrogation (where Charlie gave Columbo the nickname Crisco). The story then cuts to the present, where wealthy department store owner Joe Khoury and his mistress murder his wife and lover, planting clues at the scene which will hopefully lead police to believe that it is a Manson copycat killing (a tactic planned after Khoury learns that one of his secretaries is a still loyal Manson girl named Cathy Murphy – or Puss Dogood, as Charlie has dubbed her).

The Manson connection in Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders is almost superfluous, since Columbo decides to immediately start concentrating on Khoury and his mistress Kimberly Dana (a beautiful but talent starved aspiring actress). Naturally, in order to rule out the Manson girl, he does talk to her several times, as well as interviewing another – and younger – Manson girl named Melissa ‘Boobs’ Mead, who is revealed to have also spent some time as a Khoury employee. Columbo also travels out to Folsom Prison to pay Charlie a visit, but the subsequent (and very brief) face-to-face between the fictional detective and the real convicted killers is hardly riveting or disturbing material:

“Remember me, Charlie?” Columbo asked.

“Lieutenant Crisco,” said Manson, grinning. “I don’t forget anybody. I remember everybody. Everything….It’s gonna make a difference to you someday whether I remember you as friend or enemy. The day comes, you know. It comes. For sure.”

Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders is written in a style that successfully reflects the characters and style of the television series - like the TV show, we know from the start who the killers are, so the interest in generated not by the mystery but the way the seemingly incompetent and bumbling detective pieces together the clues. Author William Harrington, a former criminal layer, also penned Columbo: The Grassy Knoll, which had the detective cracking the JKF assassination conspiracy!

(285 Pages/Hardcover/ISBN 0-312-85537-0)

Review Copyright John Harrison 2011

INSIDIOUS

2011-05-09T05:19:00.000-07:00

Thoroughly enjoyed James Wan's Insidious, a refreshingly non-gory horror film that mixes elements of The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson into something that, if not wholly original, is certainly creative, atmospheric and genuinely creepy. Listening to Tiptoe Through the Tulips will never be the same again...

DEADLY EARNEST!

2011-05-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

For Aussie folks in Melbourne...can't wait for this! And at the grand old art deco Astor, only 10 minutes walk from me...this screening is part of the St. Kilda Film Festival. Each state in Australia had their own Deadly Earnest on television...at least one has passed on. The Deadly that is showing up for this event is the original Melbourne one, as played by Ralph Baker.

DRIVE IN DELIRIUM'S HORRORPALOOZA! - a selection of trailers from the 60s and 70s

THE ASTOR THEATRE

SATURDAY 28 MAY 10.30PM - 12AM

He’s back! From late night Fridays, way, way, back in the 1960’s, the one and only DEADLY ERNEST, Australia’s pioneering horror host, will emerge from his creaking coffin to introduce this program of blood-drenched, flesh-filled, skull-splitting terror that’ll stand your hair on end.

Come join us for this eye-popping, jaw-dropping trip back to the gory days of big screen exploitation with the most insane horror film trailers ever to up-chuck on to the giant Astor screen!

Horrorpalooza guarantees ninety delightfully depraved minutes of non-stop violence, monsters and Scream-Queen mayhem — not to mention numerous undead armies of flesh-feasting freaks running amok.

Programmed by Mark Hartley and Jamie Blanks, the makers of Not Quite Hollywood and Urban Legend, a mind-numbing cinematic orgy you won’t want to miss!

http://www.stkildafilmfestival.com.au/2011/page-88/Horrorpalooza

NEW REVIEWS POSTED

2011-04-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

Some new reviews have been posted over at DVD Holocaust, including the following (click on the titles to access the review):

HELL DRIVERS

HIGH ANXIETY

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE/SOME GIRLS DO

MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT

2011-03-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

As with Scary Monsters and Little Shoppe Horrors, it's always great to see a new issue of Monsters from the Vault sitting on the racks of the local comic book store, keeping alive the tradition of the old-school, printed monster movie magazine. With its thick, glossy stock, superb photo reproduction and gorgeous original cover art, Monsters from the Vault is as near a pro-zine as you can get, and is clearly a labour of love for publisher/editor Jim Clatterbaugh.

The latest issue (#28) highlights a marvellous retrospective of James Whale’s classic The Bride of Frankenstein on its 75th anniversary, with essays on the film contributed by a variety of writers, and filled with some incredibly rare photographs (including some great behind-the-scenes shots supplied by Ronald Vorst). Complimenting the article is Daniel Horne’s stunning cover painting of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride. Elsewhere in the issue, articles cover director Roy William Neil (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, The Spider Woman, Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear), a retrospective of the 1931 John Barrymore thriller The Mad Genius and an intriguing look at a stage production of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi which was held in the auditorium of a Florida high school in the early-1950s.

A great read, although not quite as enjoyable as the issues which cover some of the more B-grade or exotic/oddball fare, such as the previous issue’s articles on Don (The Giant Gila Monster) Sullivan and The Monster of Piedras Blancas, or the coverage of Mexican monster movies featured in issue 24 (my fave issue of MFTV so far).

For more information and ordering instructions head on over to:

MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT

DOWN IN THE LAB

2011-02-26T03:23:00.000-08:00

A pic of my latest completed model kit - Revell's reissue of the classic Aurora Monsters of the Movies Frankenstein Monster from the early-70s.

COLLECTABLES TRADER

2011-02-26T03:18:00.000-08:00

Below is a sneak peek at the first couple of pages of my article on Batman memorabilia, which will be published in the upcoming March 2011 issue of the Australian magazine Collectables Trader.

DVD HOLOCAUST

2011-02-26T03:03:00.000-08:00

A couple of my new reviews have recently been posted over at DVD Holocaust, check 'em out at the following links:

FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC

VAMPIRE CIRCUS

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

2011-01-02T03:24:00.000-08:00

1980/USA/Directed by Barbara Peeters

It’s not too surprising that Humanoids from the Deep would prove to be one of the bigger hits of producer Roger Corman’s prolific career. Like Joe Dante’s Piranha (another Corman production released a year earlier in 1979), Humanoids from the Deep contained all the elements that brought kids and young adults to the drive-in and suburban cinemas in droves during those last few glorious years of the grindhouse, before the burgeoning home video market exploded and enabled many of us to indulge our cinematic perversions in the comfort and privacy of our own lounge room.

And paramount among these elements was, of course, the melding of sex and horror, precariously balanced so that the women averted their eyes in terror and revulsion while the male sitting beside them try to desperately hide (or relieve) their hard-ons.

Inspired by The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Jaws (1975) and the aforementioned Piranha, as well as Del Tenny’s fun 1964 romp The Horror of Party Beach, Humanoids from the Deep follows a similar plot device used in many of the ecological horror films of the 1970s. In the small Californian fishing village of Noyo, a conglomerate planning to build a huge canning factory nearby has been experimenting with a growth serum designed to increase the size of the local salmon, but instead succeeds only in creating a school of green, humanoid-like creatures who rise out of the ocean to tear apart the men and (surprise) mate with the women. Naturally, by the time our hero (fisherman Doug McClure) and heroine (scientist Ann Turkel) figure what is going on, it’s too late to stop the creatures from going on a rape and kill rampage during the opening night of the annual village carnival.

While it’s an overall enjoyable romp that hits all the exploitation targets, Humanoids from the Deep unfortunately stops short of being a genuine cult pleasure. Joe Dante’s Piranha worked so well because it combined the director’s genuine love for the genre with John Sayle’s witty screenplay and a roster of actors who bought the characters to life - including Bradford Dillman, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, Kevin McCarthy and Heather Menzies. In Humanoids from the Deep, the cast seem to be mostly going through the motions, alternately looking bored and confused, with only Vic Morrow as a gruff, booze-swilling fisherman providing any real frisson.

When director Barbara Peeters handed in her finished cut of the film, Executive Producer Corman felt the film was lacking in the required exploitative elements, and had second unit director James Sbardellati beef-up the sex and blood quota, including some explicit shots of the humanoids raping bikini-clad beach gals which left Peeters very unimpressed.

Highlights of Humanoids from the Deep include the creature costumes designed by future make-up/FX superstar Rob Bottin, James Horner’s music score, the sight of young ventriloquist David Strassman getting torn apart just as he (and his dummy) are about to score with a young nubile nude in a tent (this will please those who found Strassman’s frequent appearance on Hey Hey It’s Saturday throughout the 90s to be extremely grating), and an all too brief appearance by bubbly blonde (and criminally underused and underrated) Linda Shayne as the Salmon Queen.

Shout! Factory’s 30th anniversary DVD release of Humanoids from the Deep gives the film the full treatment, including a new anamorphic widescreen transfer of the uncut international version of the film (which bore the simple title of Monster), deleted scenes, making-of featurette, trailers and radio/TV ad spots, a short clip of Leonard Maltin discussing the film with Corman, and a color booklet.

Copyright John Harrison 2011

VALE JEAN ROLLIN

2010-12-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

Another horror icon sadly gone...RIP poetic French director Jean Rollin, who created some of the most surreal, atmospheric, erotic and beautiful horror films ever made. I remember buying David Pirie's 1977 book The Vampire Cinema while on vacation in Cairns (Far North Queensland) when I was a kid, and was mesmerized by the stills and poster images from Rollin's films that were in it...I was in love with his films for years before I even got to see any of them, and when I finally did I fell in love with them all over again and in a totally different way...

http://www.shockingimages.com/rollin/interview.htm

KILLER CRABS Paperback Review

2010-12-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

KILLER CRABS by Guy N. Smith
(1978/New English Library/UK)

Often downgraded as the poor man’s James Herbert (The Rats), Guy N. Smith was one of the most pure pulp writers of the 1970s. With no pretence to literary art, Smith authored some of the most visceral, arousing and downright exciting horror novels from that era, all of which were tailor made for the paperback medium.

A published writer from the age of 12 (when he contributed to his local newspaper), Smith had a career in banking forced upon him by his father, before he broke the shackles with his first book Werewolf by Moonlight, published by NEL in 1974. It marked the beginning of an intensely prolific career for Smith, who now has over 60 horror novels to his credit, not to mention a number of crime thrillers (he wrote a serial killer book, The Hangman, under the pseudonym of Gavin Newman), and his 1996 volume Writing Horror Fiction (A&C Black), a how-to manual for aspiring writers wanting to break into the genre.

Killer Crabs was the second and best of Smith’s series of Crabs books (the original, Night of the Crabs, having been published in 1976), and provides a great summation of his prowess as a writer. The premise of the series is one of pure B-grade schlock: an army of giant, ravenous crabs bob up from time to time at various exotic locales around the globe, wreaking havoc and snacking on the locals.

After being driven out of Wales in the first novel, the crabs this time resurface in the sunny far north of Australia, where they settle down to spawn in the mangrove swamps not far from the popular Hayman Island holiday resort. After treating us to an expected opening chapter crab attack (aboard a small fishing trawler), Smith settles in to introduce us to his cast of cliched but delightfully sleazy cast of characters, including Klin, the ruggedly-handsome, G I Joe - type action man, big game hunter Harvey Logan, British scientist Clifford Davenport (returning from the first novel), and holidaying sexpot Caroline du Brunner, who beds everything in sight bar the crabs, and whose sexual adventures Smith details with an enthusiastic gusto that would have doubled the pleasure of any young male who had picked the book up expecting a mere horror story.

‘Klin began to push forward with his thighs, slowly and purposefully at first, then speeding up as his tension mounted. Her eyes were closed. She was breathing heavily, her whole body stiffening, jerking, convulsing inwardly. Her legs shot upwards bicycling, faster and faster, and her fingernails tore viciously at his shoulders and back. Seconds later she was going crazy with passion beneath him, pushing her thighs at him, grinding her pubic bone on his as she sought desperately for an even deeper penetration.’

The scenes of carnage in the book are equally exciting, as the crabs multiply at enormous rate and move inlands towards the resort, a trail of death and destruction littering their wake. Smith revels in describing these scenes with a sadistic glee, bringing forth images of a gaudy, EC-inspired 1950s horror comic, as this passage describing the demise of a Japanese fishing captain amply illustrates:

'The crab was astride the captain, its legs holding him firmly, whilst the pincers, almost delicately, explored his body in search of another limb to amputate.

Helplessly the crew watched, some of them being sick with revulsion. It reminded them of a spider finding a fly caught in its web, and instead of devouring it immediately preferring to torture its victim by ripping off a leg at a time.

The severed wrist still spouted blood, a bright red fountain which sprayed over the crab, rendering it an even more horrific spectacle. Almost effortlessly the pincer found the shoulder joint and with a loud crunch removed the whole arm. Then, seconds later, the captain’s other arm suffered an identical fate.’

With its winning combination of action, gore, sex and never a dull moment plot, it’s surprising that an adaptation of Smith’s crab paperbacks never made it to the cinema (or even the straight-to-video shelf). With the plethora of shoddy Jaws clones that were festering flea pit cinemas during this time (Tintorera, Grizzly, etc.), I would have thought that a film about man-eating crabs would have had every cigar chomping schlock producer foaming at the mouth (I can just see the poster, depicting a horde of the ugly titular creatures emerging from the red-tinged surf, a screaming, bikini-clad young woman clenched between the triumphant claws of the leader crab!).

Copyright John Harrison 2010

THE KILLING KIND

2010-11-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

USA/1973/Directed by Curtis Harrington

Directed by one-time experimentalist filmmaker Curtis Harrington, The Killing Kind remains one of the best examples of early-seventies sick sinema. The film borrows its ideas and themes from a number of sources - most notably Psycho - and blends them into a strong psychological thriller that is murky and dark without being relentlessly depressing.

The film opens on a deserted beach, where a group of male youths are enjoying their pack rape of a young tease named Tina (Susan Bernard, the pretty little imp from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!). Although Terry (John Savage) is an unwilling (and unable) participant in the activities, he is the only one who is charged for the crime, and ends up spending two years in jail. Upon his release, he returns to live with his mother (Terry Southern) in an old, moody boarding house filled with mostly elderly women for tenants.

Almost immediately, we can see that the relationship between Terry and his mother is a little bit off-kilt. He calls her Thelma instead of ‘mom’, they kiss each other on the lips, she fondles his hair playfully, and they indulge in physical wrestling matches. Although Harrington never fully exploits it, there is an obvious sexual tension between mother and son, and the performances by Savage and Southern are terrific, and the chemistry in their scenes together strong and electric.

The Killing Kind is a film filled with ugly, repressed characters. When a frustrated neighbour (the wonderful Luana Anders) visits Terry at night, she tells him “It must feel wonderful….being raped. I wouldn‘t have told on you”. Oddly enough, it’s Terry who emerges as one of the film’s most sympathetic characters - even though he degenerates into a sadistic, psychotic killer, he seems as much an oedipal victim as a brutal monster.

What little humour is present in The Killing Kind is extremely black in tone. Terry and Thelma work themselves into fits of laughter talking about how one of the elderly boarders died after having a seizure and falling into the frozen foods cabinet at the local supermarket. In the words of Thelma: “She became a frozen stiff”. In another surprise sequence, when pretty young Lori (future Laverne & Shirley star Cindy Williams) tells Terry to “Loosen up”, he responds by trying to drown her in the swimming pool!

By the end of the film, we realise that Terry’s time in jail have had little to do with his present state of unbalance. The character he has become is what he was always destined to be, probably since early childhood. His killing of Tina and the female lawyer he holds responsible for putting him behind bars doesn’t purge him of his homicidal rage. It merely opens the floodgates to his true self, and he soon turns his attentions to the innocent Lori.

A film deserving of more praise than it currently receives, The Killing Kind was for years only available on long out-of-print VHS, until finally being released on DVD in 2007 by Dark Sky Films in a nice, uncut anamorphic widescreen print (along with an interview with Harrington recorded not long before his death).

Copyright John Harrison 2010

MACHETE

2010-11-13T02:17:00.000-08:00

USA/2010/Directed by Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Maniquis

In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, perhaps the ultimate ‘fan boy’ directors of the past 15 years, teamed up for Grindhouse, their valentine to all those gloriously tacky, often violent and always sexy drive-in exploitation double-bills of the 1970s. Unfortunately, the finished film turned out to be little more than an interesting misfire, amusing and enjoyable but one that could have - and should have - been so much more.

But one clear highlight of Grindhouse (in its original cinematic format) were the fake trailers shown at the beginning of the film and in-between the two features (Planet Terror and Death Proof). In particular, the faux trailers for Eli Roth’s sick slasher Thanksgiving and Rodriguez’s revenge actioner Machete garnered great audience reaction and were singled out as being worthy of expansion into features.

While we’re still waiting for Roth to come through, Rodriguez (along with co-director Ethan Maniquis) has answered the call by turning his two-minute long Machete trailer into a 104 minute ballet of outrageous and highly stylised comic book violence. Low on plot, high on splatter, tongue planet firmly in cheek.

Machete (Danny Trejo) is a former Mexican Federale, now an illegal immigrant doing day labour jobs on the streets of Texas after he is left for dead (and his wife is killed) by slimy drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal, pilling on the pounds and sporting an hilarious toupee). Reluctantly, Machete accepts an offer from spin doctor Benz (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) a corrupt Senator. The expectant double-cross sees Machete on the run, hacking his way through the bad guys with everything from weed whackers to surgical instruments and seeking help from a sultry taco slinger and leader of a rebel group (Michelle Rodriguez), his Padre brother (Cheech Marin), and the sexy immigration agent Sartana (Jessica Alba, who has the distinction of being both the film‘s worst actor and it‘s best-named character). Also along for the ride are Don Johnson as a trigger-happy border vigilante, make-up effects maestro Tom Savini as a hitman and Lindsay Lohan, who seems to have every one of her vices and exploits etched on her 24 year-old face and spends most of her scenes drugged-out or naked, before donning a nun’s habit and going postal (in what is either a smirk at Lohan’s public persona or just a simple nod to Zoe Tamerlis’ character in Abel Ferrara’s 1981 classic Ms. 45).

Naturally, this being a homage to low-grade seventies sinema, the film has a washed-out look, with deliberate scratches and jumps, retro fonts on the opening credits and some funky porn music on its soundtrack (not to mention a pretty silly nod to the famous bionic sound effect used in The Six Million Dollar Man). But while Rodriguez clearly has a genuine affection for the cinema that inspired Machete, and it shows his commitment in that he went ahead with the film even after the box-office failure of Grindhouse, there is still something disappointingly fake about the movie. Perhaps it’s all the blatant CGI violence, so over-the-top at times that it actually becomes quite tiresome. Or maybe it’s because these films weren’t made to be shown in suburban multiplexes filled with bratty designer-clothed kids and the latest Harry Potter epic playing next door. They were made to be watched as the bottom feature on an all-niter at the suburban drive-in, or in grotty, musty shoebox cinemas that have stained screens and play hardcore porn films every other day.

Maybe it’s because you just can’t make ‘em the way you used to, no matter how sincere you might be.

Still, if you can deal with the film’s forced hipness, Machete, anchored by the presence and raw charisma of 66 year-old Trejo in his first starring role, offers up enough visceral thrills to make a passable time-filler, best enjoyed with a couple of friends and a few cold beers. But it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

A TEENAGER IN BABYLON

2010-10-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

(Note: the following short story was my entry in the 2010 'Essence of St. Kilda' short story competition. Unfortunately it didn't win, which was not a big surprise to me as, as I had suspected, the judges and sponsors seemed to favour the stories which exhalted what a 'cool, hip and chic' place St. Kilda is in 2010. Something which I have no desire to write about. It seems that St. Kilda's unique, sordid past is being swept under the rug. Cafes and cake shops is all anybody seems to care about these days. While I congratulate the winners wholeheartedly, one thing which participating in this competition has shown me is that the St. Kilda I grew up in has had the life strangled out of it. It is dead, and can never be resuscitated).

A TEENAGER IN BABYLON
by John Harrison

St. Kilda in 1981.

Twenty-nine years ago.

If I close my eyes and try hard enough, I can often still smell that distinct, peculiar odour of rotting carpet, dirty ice and teenage sweat that would fill the dank, cavernous expanse of the St. Moritz ice skating rink which sat on the rim of the Upper Esplanade, overlooking Port Phillip Bay, the majestic art deco arch of the Palais Theatre and the iconic, gaping big-mouth entrance to Luna Park. St. Moritz had first opened its doors in 1921, and had been the place where my parents had met many, many midnights earlier, but by 1981 the building - just like much of St. Kilda itself - was in a state of decay and disrepair, and was only a few months away from closing its grand doors for good (after which it would stand deserted until gutted by fire three years later, it‘s charred innards coldly hauled away by Whelan the Wrecker).

St. Moritz became one of the hubs of my rapidly expanding universe in those days. Ice skating was my elective ‘sport’ of choice while I was a student at the Christian Brothers College in East St. Kilda, and every Wednesday after lunch period a group of us would take the chaperoned walk down Dandenong Road and onto Fitzroy Street, my small group of friends and I (school misfits, all) lagging behind so we could share a stolen cigarette and drink in all the lurid sights the area had to offer back then, the drab, dirty greyness and rustic brick of the landscape providing a suitable milieu for the diversity of people who inhabited it - the drunkards whose better days were decades behind them, musicians and new wave hipsters doing their best to look elegantly wasted and fashionably streetwise, the sickly junkies either looking in desperation for their next hit or stumbling around in the midst of it, the prostitutes who took us in with wary eyes as they chain-smoked and looked for trade, and the collection of other unique characters and desperados who wandered aimlessly and seemed to be doing nothing but killing time and waiting anxiously for darkness to fall. At the time, St. Kilda was still looked upon as a dirty and dangerous place, full of intrigue, crime, sleaze, sex and corruption, and Fitzroy Street was seen as the beating heart that pumped out all of this vice to the surrounding areas, a continual parade of buzzing neon, greasy hamburger joints (where it was always rumoured you could order a hit of smack with your Chicko Roll), badly-lit amusement arcades, seamy sex shops, skid row apartments, grotty milk bars, and the odd backroom gambling den.

The highlight of our walk would invariably be the sight of our horrified chaperone frantically waving us past the Ritz Hotel, ordering us to avert our eyes lest they be tainted forever. Long before it became just another in a long line of a faux ‘traditional’ British pubs, the Ritz gained notoriety as one of the seedier hotels in the St. Kilda area (no mean feat, indeed). Built in between world wars, by the 1960s it had become a respite and watering hole for hookers and local lowlifes, and in 1970 played host to Melbourne’s first drag shows. The entrance to the Ritz, loudly advertising their striptease shows and burlesque dancers - This Is The Show! - was a work of garish art that should be proudly on display in a museum someplace.

As 3:30 rolled around I would start the short walk from St. Moritz to the relatively straight and secure confines of my weatherboard Elwood home. Usually I would stop by the Acland St. McDonalds, hoping I’d be served by the cute girl with the blonde sharpie hairdo (short and spiky on top, wispy rat tails at the back) and silver lightning bolt earrings, the glittering outline of her homemade AC/DC shirt clearly visible through her uniform. She was probably no more than a year or two older than me, but already seemed light years out of my fumbling league. I’d sit at a table with my fries and shake and watch the parade of shady characters as they wandered in and out of the notorious Esquire Motel, scene of many drug overdoses and even a gangland killing before it was renovated and re-opened as an Easystay, providing a clean and safe environment for guests and maids you can trust, but robbing the place of its ambience and sense of sordid history.

On the days it was open, my nights back then were almost always spent haunting Luna Park. How cool it was to have such an attraction a mere ten minute walk from your front door. Many locals may have taken it for granted, and some no doubt thought the place was behind the times and ready to be bulldozed, but that was one of the reasons why I was drawn to it so strongly and so consistently. Walking the outskirts of that archaic, wooden white frame and entering that creepy, gaping clown’s mouth, it was like stepping back in time, to an era of rattling, death trap rollercoasters, dodgem cars that showered a continual rainbow of electric sparks over your head, a ghost train whose scariest feature was the occasional derelict slumped in the corner cradling a half-empty bottle of cheap red, and huge bundles of wispy, sickly sweet pink fairy floss that had you running around on a sugar high for the next week. It was a slice of Coney Island in my own back yard, and how could you not love the names of those rides and attractions? The Big Dipper, the Rotor, the Whip, the River Caves, the Giggle Palace with its psychotic laughing clown looking down at you from his throne. All that was missing was the row of sideshow tents featuring tattooed women and two-headed fish boys. It was a magical and beautifully gaudy electric wonderland, one whose exterior still looks very much the same today, though the interior will break the heart of anyone who remembers and loves the place for what it once was.

After leaving high school at the end of 1981, I spent the remainder of the decade riding the coattails of all the things that made living in St. Kilda at the time so exhilarating for me. They were simple but grand days: My years behind the counter of St. Kilda Video, on the corner of Acland and Barkly Streets (now the Big Mouth Café), where the customers often provided more drama, humour and horror than any of the movies we rented out. Long drinking and bullshit sessions at the Doultan Bar, when it was still just a dim, smoke-filled little cubicle frequented by the same tiny group of regulars and the odd blow-in. Devouring slices of Tony’s pizza - randomly cut in odd, almost Picasso-esque shapes - while marvelling at the huge collection of postcards from around the world that lined the wall of his Acland St restaurant (Tony would eventually die doing what he loved doing, keeling over at his pizza oven in front of horrified and hungry customers). All night dope-fuelled marathons popping coins into the latest games at the Red Cave Amusement Arcade, just down from the Greyhound Hotel. Dancing with drag queens at Bojangles and spilling out from the cramped confines of the Linden Tree and onto Fitzroy St just in time to see the dawn break. Feeling the visual and aural assault of the Bad Seeds, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Wall of Voodoo, the Huxton Creepers and others from the centre of the Venue’s sticky, beer stained floor.

Unfortunately, good times seldom last, and by 1988 the party was already beginning to break up. St. Kilda Video closed its doors, friends moved to outer suburbs to start families, the Village Belle got an upgrade, Chopper Read shot someone dead outside Bojangles, property went through the roof and sent many of the more interesting denizens fleeing in search of cheaper digs, and the café culture started seeping in, which was when I sensed my time was just about up. I still call St. Kilda my home, but its essence has been diluted and all but evaporated for me now. There are a few side streets and the occasional sight and sound that still take me back to those days, but more and more I’m a stranger in a strange land, living in a world populated by people I’m not sure I want to know, and haunted by the ghosts of my past. The St. Kilda of today prospers and thrives with a cosmopolitan elegance that attracts people from all over the world, but for me its true spirit will forever be contained within the dark shadows of its seedy past. It was a world I never fully appreciated while I had it, and it’s a world I’ll forever miss.

St. Kilda in 1981.

Twenty-nine years ago.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Copyright 2010 John Harrison

Below: the demolition of St. Moritz Ice Skating Rink, 1982.

COLLINS ST. STYLE?

2010-09-26T04:43:00.000-07:00

A new pic of me snapped by Galenya K for her website Collins St. Style...

http://collinsstreetstyle.blogspot.com

BACHELOR PAD #12

2010-09-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

Another recent article published in Bachelor Pad #12, this one devoted to classic girlie magazines of the 1950s & early-60s.

COLLECTABLES TRADER

2010-09-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

Have recently strated writing regular articles on vintage memorabilia for the glossy Australian magazine Collectables Trader, which is avialble from most bigger newsagents. Topics I have covered in articles so far include Planet of the Apes, James Bond, Kiss and - coming up in the new issue - pulp fiction paperbacks.

UPDATE

2010-09-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted here for a while, but will be updating more often from now on. Some new reviews have been posted over at DVD Holocaust, including:

Russ Meyer's Finders Keepers,Lovers Weepers/Pandora Peaks
http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=556

42nd Street Pete's Night of Perverted Pleasures
http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=565

ANIMAL KINGDOM

2010-06-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

Australia/2010/Directed by David Michod

Written and directed by the little-known David Michod, Animal Kingdom is the latest local film to come along that’s being touted as the saviour of Australian independent cinema. I’m always dubious when a film is hailed as such, but there’s no denying that Animal Kingdom is an engrossing and powerful crime film that puts the sex ’n’ drugs gloss dross of the last two series of Underbelly to shame (and if you go along to this film expecting it be an amped-up Underbelly, you’re bound to come away disappointed).

Set in Melbourne in the late-1980s, Animal Kingdom is loosely (but quite clearly) based on the life of infamous crime matriarch Kath Pettingill, whose clan of children (including sons Dennis Allen, Victor Peirce and Trevor Pettingill) created terror and mayhem as they ran amok across the city, dealing heroin, robbing banks and committing murders seemingly at will, until an incident involving the Armed Robbery Squad and the killing of Victor Peirce’s close friend and crime partner, Peter Jensen, led to the cold-blooded execution of two young police officers in a darkened street in South Yarra in 1988.

Following the overdose death of his mother, teenager Joshua ‘J’ Cody moves in with his grandmother Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody (Jacki Weaver) and is quickly sucked into the full-time crime lifestyle of her three sons - bank robber Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), wired drug dealer Craig (Sullivan Stapelton) and the naïve young Darren (Luke Ford), who has little options in life but to follow in his older brothers’ footsteps. When Pope’s best friend and crime partner, Barry (Joel Edgerton), who is sick of the lifestyle and plans to go straight, is shot dead by the police in cold blood, the Cody boys decide to get revenge by taking down two of the cops’ own. As tensions and paranoia within the family grow following the police killings, a senior homicide investigator (Guy Pearce) zeroes in on Joshua as the potential weak link who’s most likely to cave in and turn witness for the prosecution.

An true ensemble piece, Animal Kingdom is a slow burner, filled with an ominous atmosphere of continual tension, which occasionally erupts into moments of sudden, and often unexpected, bloody violence. The cast is uniformly top notch, from the experienced likes of Weaver (who’s face delivers a superb evil glare), Mendelsohn and Pierce to the relatively unknown Sullivan Stapelton. Even newcomer James Frecheville delivers the goods as the vapid, monosyllabic lost youth Joshua.

For the most part, the film delivers a genuine sense of Melbourne suburbia in the 1980s (I never thought I’d appreciate hearing Air Supply in a movie), although a few time-warp glitches appear throughout (people have tiny mobile phones and huge televisions, and I’m certain I spotted a rack of DVDs in the background during one scene). The film might also disorient any viewers who go in expecting a more accurate re-enactment of the facts, but these are minor quibbles in a film that might hopefully put Australian crime cinema back on the right, gritty character-driven track.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS Nos. 23/24

2010-06-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

It’s always a thrill when an issue of Dick Klemensen’s long running Hammer magazine Little Shoppe of Horrors turns up in my letterbox, and the latest two issues are no exception.

Issue 23 covers two of my favourite, somewhat lesser known, Hammer Horrors from the mid 1960s, The Reptile (1965) and The Plague of the Zombies (1966), including interviews with Reptile star Jacqueline Pearce, the late great character actor Michael Ripper, and a rather incendiary interview with the director of both films, John Gilling, who has some very strong and not so flattering things to say about most of the people he worked with at Hammer (and kudos to Klemensen for running the interview as is, in what is mostly a Hammer friendly and positive magazine). Other features in this issue include an interview with Michael Gough (Konga, Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera, Horrors of the Black Museum), Michael Carreras on 10 Seconds to Hell and more.

The current issue of LSOH (24) is devoted to the Mummy movies produced by Hammer (The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Shroud and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb), and with its plethora of rare pics and detailed production information, is a must-have for any fans of the series, including an interview with the stunning female star of Terrance Fisher’s sumptuous The Mummy, Yvonne Furneaux.

If you love Hammer Films, or admire vintage British horror cinema in general, you’d be doing yourself a big disservice if you don’t pick up this publication. Apart from all the in-depth interviews and information it contains, the magazine is also beautifully designed, printed on quality glossy paper, profusely illustrated with often rare photos, and features some gorgeous cover and interior art by the likes of Bruce Timm, Mike Schneider and Mark Maddox.

www.littleshoppeofhorrors.com

PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE

2010-05-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE:
THE LOST ART OF THE VHS BOX

by Jacques Boyreau

As an admirer and something of a collector (but by no means a completist) of early exploitation/horror/sleaze films on VHS, I keenly picked up this book when I spotted it on the racks at Alternate Worlds (Chapel St, Windsor). Unfortunately, despite it’s great title and novel design (the cover looks like a VHS cassette and comes in a blood-splattered slipcase like an old sell-thru video tape), this colour compendium of vintage 1980s American video box art misses the mark almost as frequently as it hits it. With each video sleeve taking up a double-page spread (reproducing both front and back covers) author/compiler Jacques Boyreau certainly comes up with a few rare, lurid gems (The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Black Panther, Nightmare Circus, Night of the Strangler, One Armed Executioner) he also throws in a few choices that had me scratching my head as to just what exactly Boyreau’s idea of a ‘grindhouse’ film may be (with the inclusion of baseball, war and hunting documentaries, Saturday morning cartoons, Jerry Lewis comedies and even a Barbie and the Rockers video and a Gary Coleman home safety instructional tape!). The text is minimal and limited to just a few page introduction, making Portable Grindhouse something more for the casual fan who wants something to display next to their shelf of Tarantino DVDs rather than the exhaustive study which the subject deserves.

(Fantagraphics Books/USA/2009/200 Pages)

Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

GRINDHOUSE: SEX, DRUGS & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

2010-05-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Director: Various
Cast: John Ashley, Andrew Prine, Arch Hall, Jnr., Johnny Carrol
Studio: Umbrella Entertainment
Aspect Ratio: 2:3 Widescreen and 2:3 Full Frame
Region: NTSC All
Running Time: 514 Mins
No. Discs: 4

The latest in Umbrella’s line of ‘Grindhouse’ releases (following on from their Ted V Mikels and Retro Sexploitation sets) is comprised of releases put out by cult film critic/musician/writer/wrestler Johnny Legend on his own Legend House label in the US, and focuses primarily on vintage juvenile delinquency (or JD) cinema from the 1950s and early-60s, with a few oddities thrown in for good measure.

ROCK BABY, ROCK IT (1957/B&W)
Directed by J. G. Tiger

A grimy obscurity filmed in Dallas, Rock Baby, Rock It tells the predictable tale of a teen dance club being shut down and taken over by rock & roll hating gangsters. Filled with clichéd jive dialogue (“Play it cool, Kitten”) and featuring mostly local actors with some very un-Hollywood like faces, this film does have its own strange, low-rent charm, and is filled with some great little-known rock & roll and rockabilly gems from the likes of Johnny Carroll (who also stars), Don Coats & the Bon-Aires, Preacher Smith & the Deacons and The Cell Block Seven.

TEEN MANIA (2007/Colour/B&W)

Compiled by Legend, this 66 minute party tape dishes out some choice clips from such 1950s & 60s teensploitation gems such as Rockabilly Baby, Untamed Youth (with platinum blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Beach Ball, Hot Rods to Hell, Riot on Sunset Strip, The Love-Ins and more.

HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960/B&W)
Directed by O’Dale Ireland

Minor teen idol John Ashley stars as a rich, spoiled bully who rigs the election to become school president and proceeds to intimidate the students and bleed them dry, all the while keeping a dopey accountant and team of leather-jacketed hoods forming a shield around him at all times. It all leads to the usual tragic consequences and eventual comeuppance. A moderately entertaining but fairly staid and unexciting late-period JD film, highlighted by a rollicking theme song belted out by Reggie Perkins (“He’s the gangster in our school…He’s cool, he’s like a freezer…That’s why we call him, High School Caesar”). Ashley went on to appear in beach party movies in the 1960s, then reached an exploitation career high by producing and starring in a string of sleazy Filipino horror films directed by Eddie Romero (including the classic Mad Doctor of Blood Island).

NAKED YOUTH (aka WILD YOUTH, 1960/B&W)
Directed by John Bushelman

A group of overaged delinquents break out of a detention farm and get hooked up with drug smugglers operating out of Mexico (who hide their heroin inside piñatas). Another seedy, low-rent JD wonder from Johnny Legend’s seemingly bottomless vault of cinematic scuzz.

PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1950/Colour)
Directed by Albert J. Cohen

Having nothing to do with rock & roll, this early sexploitation pot-boiler has curvaceous, primitive jungle women driving their menfolk crazy with their frenzied dancing and evil temptations. Told mainly via narration, it’s like an old episode of Wild Kingdom, with big bosoms and long legs. Stars Laurette Luez as the glamazonian Tigri, queen of the prehistoric women.

SPIES A GO GO (aka NASTY RABBIT, 1964/Colour)
Directed by Nicholas Merriwether

A pretty silly rock & roll/spy farce, inspired by the Cold War and the emerging James Bond craze, about a Russian plot to infect America with a deadly bacteria smuggled into the country inside a rabbit. A spy who doubles as a rock & roll singer foils the plot. Worth watching for star Arch Hall Jnr. (who is much better in Wild Guitar and The Sadist), the cool guitar-twanging, and the cinematography by future Hollywood heavyweights Vilmos Zsigmond and Lazlo Kovaks.

BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD (1974/Colour)
Directed by Gerald Cormier

The real odd one out in this set, Barn of the Naked Dead wallows in an atmosphere of grimy backwoods sleaze, as three aspiring, Vegas-bound showgirls are kidnapped by a tight-jeaned young maniac (a creepy and effective Andrew Prine) and held captive (along with other women) in his barn, where they are whipped and forced to perform circus tricks (!). Those who don’t comply get doused in blood and chased down by the madman’s hungry cougar. A ludicrous subplot has the psycho’s radiation-scarred father wandering the desert killing people. Although not reliant on nudity or overt lesbianism, Barn of the Naked Dead is nonetheless an interesting and unique riff on the WIP (Women In Prison) films which enjoyed a brief run of popularity in the early 1970s. The creepy electronic score (by Tommy Vig) is offset by the inclusion of a cheesy lounge-like pop vocal (Evil Eyes performed by Pamela Miller).

Extras included on this set include a number of Johnny Legend ‘surprises’ (clips/trailers/anecdotes, etc), an interview with Andrew Prine and an edition of Legend’s video show Gore Beat, co-hosted by John Landis and covering the films of Fred Olen Ray, Brian Yunza and the late, great Ray Dennis Steckler.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

BETTY PAGINATED #31

2010-05-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe it's been almost TWENTY years since an issue of Betty Paginated first filtered through my mailbox. A lot has happened in the world (and in my life) during that time, but it's great to see Dann Lennard still with a fire in his belly, spewing out his views on all the tangents of pop culture which pique his interest - specifically, movies, music, wrestling, comics and porn, along with some more personalised reflections on what has been going on in his life since the last issue surfaced a couple of years back (including a collapsed lung and dose of glandular fever that struck him in 2009).

Standout pieces from the latest issue include an in-depth review of Mark Hartley's brilliant Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood (written by fellow zinester Kami), a (justified) rant against comic books artists stealing other peoples' work (including Nick 'son of Gene' Simmons), interviews with veteran Aussie film stuntman Grant Page (Mad Max, The Man from Hong Kong), and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, wild 80s pro-wrestler Chris Colt, and much more within it's 36 pages (not to mention all the freebie comics, zines and other goodies Dann usually throws in).

Check it out!

www.bettypaginated.blogspot.com

THE CHEATER: THE KILLING OF WALTER SCOTT

2010-04-24T00:57:00.000-07:00

“Look out for the cheater, make way for the fool hearted clown, look out for the cheater, he’s gonna build you up, just to let you down.”

In the mid-1960s, the classic (though somewhat forgotten) pop song The Cheater became not only a one-hit wonder for Bob Cuban and the In-Men, but a grim foretelling of the fate of it’s singer, Walter Scott.

Hailing from St. Louis, Missouri (launching place for the careers of Chuck Berry and Tina Turner), Walter Scott was a wiry, handsome singer, with an energetic stage presence and wide vocal range that made him a natural frontman for a pop combo.

Released in 1966, The Cheater would eventually climb to number 12 on the American pop charts, selling over a million copies and landing the band a spot performing the song on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Unfortunately, like so many acts, the band were never able to replicate the song’s success, and for the majority of the 1970s and early-80s, Walter Scott eked out a living playing the gruelling low-rent nightclub circuit, where The Cheater became his signature tune and the highlight of his cabaret-like set.

Although his star had faded, Scott still caught the eye of many of the local women in the small towns he performed in, and he often indulged in one-nighters while still married to his first wife, Doris. The relationship inevitably dissolved and Scott married Joanne Calcutta, a rather harsh looking woman that the singer had met while on the road. But Scott’s second marriage - and the lessons he should have learned from his first - didn’t stop him from initiating an affair with one of his back-up dancers, a leggy blonde named Suzanne Flynn. Joanne retaliated in kind by starting up an affair with Jim Williams, a large, bear-like electrician she had hired to do some work around the home. In what was rapidly descending into some bizarre, cheap-thrills soap opera, Williams was also cheating on his wife of twenty years, Sharon.

In October of 1983, Sharon Williams was killed in an automobile accident, when her car ran off the road and burst into flames. Although Sharon had suffered a serious head injury, the car itself received only minor damage, and Williams took his wife off life support the following day, after doctors advised him she was likely to remain in a coma for the remainder of her life.

Two months after the death of Sharon Williams, as Christmas approached, Walter Scott mysteriously disappeared. Scott’s parents immediately smelled a rat when, the day after Walter disappeared, they discovered Jim Williams at their son’s home, appraising his substantial jewellery and gun collection. Joanne also aroused suspicion when she immediately cancelled all of her husband’s future engagements. While Scott’s car was found in the parking lot of the St. Louis airport, there was no record of him having booked a flight under his own name, and investigators combing the icy surrounds uncovered no trace of the singer. The trail soon turned cold. Not long after, Joanne Scott married Jim Williams.

When forensic pathologist Mary Case was bought in by the St. Louis hospital to go over the case files of several suspicious deaths, she soon uncovered irregularities in the fatal car accident of Sharon Williams. The drivers’ seat of the car had been pushed all the way back, even though Sharon was a small woman, and hospital staff who worked on the woman felt she had the smell of gasoline on her when she was brought in. Sharon’s body was exhumed, and an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be two blows to the back of her head with a blunt instrument. Her death was subsequently ruled a homicide, and Jim Williams became the prime suspect. Police also suspected a link between the death of Sharon Williams and the disappearance of Walter Scott, who had now been missing for over three years.

It was Jim William’s estranged son, Jimmy, who would eventually provide police with the vital piece of information needed to crack open the case. Serving time in a Florida prison, Jimmy sarcastically teased detectives about their inability to locate Walter Scott, then revealed that, not long after Scott disappeared - and in the middle of a freezing winter snowstorm - his father had suddenly build a large flower box over the cistern in his backyard. Police took out a warrant to search the Williams home, and after removing the flower box and digging through the layer of thick concrete that had been laid across the cistern, they looked down into the pool of foul smelling water and discovered the decomposed body of Walter Scott, bound by rope and weighed down by bricks. He had been shot in the back at point blank range. His body was dressed in what his parents described as Scott’s lounging attire - track suit and socks - indicating he had been murdered at home.

Amazingly, Jim Williams denied killing Scott or having any involvement in his disappearance ("If I’m gonna kill a man I’m gonna shoot him right between the eyes, I ain’t gonna take the chance on missing the heart by shooting him in the back.”). Authorities didn’t buy Williams’ suggestions that his son Jimmy may have set up the killing as a way to get back at his hated father , and he was arrested for the murders of both Walter Scott and his former wife Sharon. Joanne Williams was also charged in relation to Walter’s murder.

Jim Williams was subsequently found guilty of two counts of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison, without parole. Thanks to the presence of only circumstantial evidence, Joanne Williams’ trial never made it to a courthouse, although she did serve 18 months for hindering an investigation. To Walter Scott’s parents, however, who believe only one person could have gotten close enough to their son to shoot him in the back at close range in his own home, their former daughter-in-law got away with murder.

Watch out for the cheater, indeed.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

TRAILER PARK OF TERROR

2010-03-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

My review of TRILER PARK OF TERROR is now posted online over at DVD Holocaust at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=499

A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

2010-03-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

My review of Lucio Fulci's classic 1971 giallo A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is now posted online over at DVD Holocaust at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=496

HIP POCKET SLEAZE Update

2010-03-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

The revised and updated edition of my book Hip Pocket Sleaze is due to be published by Headpress in the coming months, check out this link for more info:

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=98

Hip Pocket Sleaze is an introduction to the world of vintage, lurid adult paperbacks. Charting the rise of sleazy pulp fiction during the 1960s and 1970s and reviewing many of the key titles, the book takes an informed look at the various genres and markets from this enormously prolific era, from groundbreaking gay and lesbian-themed books to the Armed Services Editions. Influential authors, publishers and cover artists are profiled and interviewed, including the "godfather of gore" H. G. Lewis, cult lesbian author Ann Bannon, fetish artist par excellence Bill Ward and many others.

A companion to Bad Mags, Headpress' guide to sensationalist magazines of the 1970s, Hip Pocket Sleaze also offers extensive bibliographical information and plenty of outrageous cover art.

"John Harrison's pioneering work in this fascinating book of sexy pulp fiction will open up an entirely new area of scholarship, collecting and just plain fun to readers and fans the world over." -- Gary Lovisi, editor of Paperback Parade; author of Dames, Dolls & Delinquents; The Sexy Digests

"A lifetime of research and reading is dished out with gloops of anecdotal sleaze and unique insight ..." -- Jack Sargeant, Deathtripping; Naked Lens; Lost Highways

THE HURT LOCKER

2010-02-26T20:35:00.000-08:00

2009/USA/Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

The war film genre has always been a continually evolving one. And it’s probably no coincidence that the depiction of war on film has reflected the way in which its coverage in the media is also constantly morphing with the advances in communications and technology.

In the 1940’s, we huddled around the radio or sat in cinemas watching carefully edited and cheerfully narrated newsreels of gung-ho allied soldiers, charging into a wall of enemy fire with a smile on their face and their national flag in their hearts. In the 40’s, the line between good and evil, and us and them, was clearly defined and mostly unquestioned.

As the late-1960s rolled along to the beat of psychedelic pop and the pungent odour of marijuana, the Vietnam War brought the horrors of armed conflict straight into the living room. With nightly reports being filed from the front lines, and broadcast live on the evening news, the politics of war became more complex, and trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys wasn’t so easy anymore.

In 2010, with the second US-led Iraq conflict still unresolved after six years, it seems as if very little is able to be kept from us anymore. Photos of degraded Iraqi prisoners confront us from the front page of every newspaper in the world, followed shortly by ghastly internet videos depicting Americans being beheaded by extreme Iraqi militants (in what can be seem as one form of semi-legitimized snuff film). Even grainy mobile phone footage of a dishevelled Saddam Hussein swinging from the gallows can be accessed and watched at the stroke of a keyboard button, mere hours after the actual event.

In many ways, the Iraqi conflict has progressed into some kind of ultimate-stakes, multimedia reality show, and it’s from this smoky atmosphere that The Hurt Locker materialises. The latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days) is an intense, fairly relentless war movie that deals primarily with the issue of combat as a drug, and an addiction that can mean sudden, violent death for anyone around them.

Following a small bomb disposal unit as they go about their treacherous business, The Hurt Locker doesn’t exactly have a complex, plot driven storyline. It’s basically a character study that’s structured around a series of individual set pieces. What makes it work is the almost continual thread of tension that weaves its way throughout the entire film, with the viewer always expecting, but never really knowing when, the next moment of violence will suddenly erupt (and when it does, it’s almost a relief). And when the tension’s not on the battlefield, it’s in the barracks, as the once cohesive unit comes to odds with their new, brash and seemingly irresponsible adrenalin junkie team leader, Sergeant William James (brilliantly played with a white trash edge by Jeremy Renner, who has early stunned me with his portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 Dahmer biopic).

With the gritty edge of a frontline television report to it (though thankfully not overly heavy on the shaky hand-held camera), and with its indelible sense of ‘stranger in a strange land’ isolation (it was filmed in Kuwait and Jordan), The Hurt Locker is one of the best American films I have seen for some time (even though its third act is something of a comedown after the first two), and an almost instant addition to the list of classic war cinema. A real triumph from Kathryn Bigelow and all involved, and one which I’d love to see Bigelow rewarded with an Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards. If she happens to win, it will be one of the most deserved winners in the Oscars’ recent lacklustre history (and apart from being the first female to win a Best Director Oscar, it would also be great to see Bigelow upstage former husband James Cameron by denying him a win for the entertaining but way overbloated and hyped Avatar). A win for Renner as Best Actor would also not go undeserved.

Here’s hoping.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2010

THE WOLFMAN

2010-02-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

2010/USA/Directed by Joe Johnston

Along with Dracula, the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman was one of the ‘big four’ of horror characters featured by Universal Studios in their genre films of the 1930s and 40s. First featured by the studio in 1935s The Werewolf of London, the character would enter its classic period six years later when Lon Chaney Jr. played the title character in The Wolf Man, reprising the role in four follow-up films for Universal: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and the comedic classic Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Subsequent decades saw variations of the lycanthropy curse featured in such diverse films as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Hammer’s masterful The Curse of the Werewolf (1961, my personal favourite werewolf film), a string of Spanish horror films starring and directed by Paul Naschy, the 1971 biker flick Werewolves on Wheels, the 1981 double-whammy of Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (both enjoyable but somewhat overrated in my book) and the Michael J Fox spoof Teen Wolf (1985). And of course, who can forget Michael Jackson’s hairy transformation in his classic Thriller video.

Now Universal is attempting to resurrect their line-up of classic horror characters with this updating of the werewolf legend. One of the more troubled productions in recent Hollywood history, The Wolfman (the abbreviation of the title stops here) was initially set to be directed by music video veteran Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and David Self (Road to Perdition). Sets were built at Pinewood for a February 2008 shoot, but Romanek quit four weeks before filming, citing creative differences (apparently Universal execs wanted much of the psychological angle cut out in favor of a more action-oriented film). Enter Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III), who is bought in to helm the film with barely a few weeks notice and is given little time to plan how to put his own stamp on the film. Even Danny Elfman’s gothic score is scrapped and replaced by a more modern industrial soundscape composed by Paul Haslinger, before they eventually went back to Elfman’s original soundtrack. As studio and director bickered over the final cut (with rumors that two different cuts of the film were being prepared, one by Johnston and one by the studio) and special effects constantly getting tinkered with, the release of The Wolfman continued to get pushed back, from November 2008 to February (then April and November) 2009, until the film finally saw the light of the cinema projector in February 2010.

With the addition of a couple of clearly telegraphed ‘twists’, Joe Johnston’s finished film is a fairly faithful remake of the 1941 original, with Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, a stage actor in 1880s England who returns home to his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins) following the violent killing of his older brother, supposedly by a wild animal. While visiting a gypsy camp, Talbot is bitten by a wolf and soon succumbs to the curse of lycanthropy, sprouting excess body hair and snarling wildly as her terrorizes (and tears apart) the local countryside, before he’s captured and put in an asylum, given ice baths and exhibited to a medical board, and led on a chase across the rooftops of London (highlighted by a stunning shot of the creature perched on a gargoyle, howling at the full moon), all the while trying not to disembowel his brother’s fiancée Gwen (Emily Blunt), with whom he’s fallen in love.

So, after all the struggles to get the Wolfman howling again on screen, was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. Many critics of the film have signalled out its pacing and, at the risk of being clichéd, it is a valid criticism. Nowhere in the film is the behind the scenes bickering more evident than in its pacing. Slow as molasses in some parts, jarringly fast in others, the film never seems to find a natural rhythm. The combination of old-school make-up and modern CGI never quite melds, although thankfully the CGI is not of the ‘video game’ variety, and with the way the filmmakers wanted the wolfman to look and move, it’s clear that CGI was the only viable option. A lifelong dream project for him, Benicio Del Toro (who also co-produced) certainly does his best to look tortured, but never seems to really convince as Talbot (and he lacks the good-natured ‘chumminess’ that made Chaney Jr. so endearing in the role). And Anthony Hopkings puts in another fairly clichéd, by-the-numbers performance of the kind that he has been telegraphing in for the past decade. In Silence of the Lambs, I see Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, a complex, unnerving sociopath. In The Wolfman, I see Anthony Hopkins as, well, Anthony Hopkins. It’s almost as if he has become a caricature of his former great self. Emily Blunt is good but underused, and Hugo Weaving adds a bit of needed weight as a detective on the trail of the beast.

However, that isn’t to say The Wolfman doesn’t have a lot of good things going for it. It does. The cinematography by Shelly Johnson is dark and moody, foreboding and foggy but still wonderfully lush, and many of the sets and locations give the film a nice, epic feel. The film drips with a thick, gothic atmosphere, and Rick Baker’s make-up is once again superb, the veteran artist creating a wolfman that combines elements on Lon Chaney, Paul Naschy and Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf. There’s a few genuine scares (even if they are of the ‘quick shock’ variety) and the film has a surprisingly visceral edge, with bloody limbs flying everywhere during the wolfman’s rampaging outbursts. As he showed more successfully in The Rocketeer, Joe Johnston (soon to helm the Captain America movie) clearly loves genre material, and that love does show itself throughout The Wolfman, and it is just plain great to see a good old-fashioned monster movie up on the screen, one that is not populated by idiotic teens looking to have sex and party down before getting tortured and skinned alive by some generic psychopath.

While far from being the disaster it could have been given the film’s troubled production, The Wolfman is unfortunately not the definitive modern interpretation of the iconic character that many of us were hoping for. But it’s still a solid, reasonably entertaining and occasionally arousing production, and a much more genuine evocation of classic Universal horror cinema than the studios' string of recent Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser. It would be great to see a sequel that irons out all the wrinkles but, given the film’s much-plagued road to the screen, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

BLOOD LUST

2010-02-13T17:25:00.001-08:00

BLOOD LUST

John Harrison

Creeping tails of wispy fog slithered their way up the tall window panes, shimmering with an eerie and ethereal glow in the cold light of the bright, full moon.

On the other side of the majestic glass, alone within the cavernous expanse of the isolated castle, Eva slept. Sheets of cool red satin hugged and highlighted her alluring naked form as she lay motionless on her back, as still as the night outside, and so deeply in sleep that she didn’t even sense the fog seeping it’s way through the keyhole and fine breaches in the window’s ornate frame.

The fog hugged the high walls and lushly carpeted floor as it slowly, purposefully made its way towards the bed, as if it had a heart and a soul lurking within its vapour, and was being driven by pure boiling lust. As the bluish-hued mist slowly nudged its way up under the sheets from the foot of the bed, Eva stirred slightly, her body stretching as she did so, but did not wake.

Beneath the sheets, the fog began to amass and attach itself around the silky skin of Eva’s lower legs, before it worked its way up around her thighs, the tingling sensation of arousal registering in the woman’s unconscious mind, causing her breath to deepen as her legs parted slightly and her hands flayed out to grip the sheets. Glistening with sweat, her chest began to heave upwards as the fingers of fog explored her torso, finding form and substance as they did so, until it was a pair of powerfully strong yet sensitive male hands that were travelling her body, bringing her every erogenous zone to life with an experienced precision that could have been mastered over centuries by the nosferatu that now had the woman in his grip, his handsomely cruel face breathing the hot air of passion over the nape of her neck, as he studied and drank in the beauty of the woman he was about to take and make his own.

Eva’s hands flung back and entangled themselves in her hair, rich and dark and flowing, as soft moans began to emanate from her moistened lips and her dreams became filled with flashing images of a powerful prince of the night, as much wild animal as he was passionate man, with blood red eyes that couldn’t be looked away from, and a body that was a sinewy mass of power and muscle.

Her body a simmering cauldron, Eva’s eyes opened and she awoke from her dreamy state just as her passion was about to be released. She stayed conscious for a mere split second, just long enough to see the man bare his taloned teeth and sink them into her soft, tender neck, feeding on her life’s blood as her body simultaneously climaxed. A scream that no one would ever hear echoed and reverberated around the halls of the castle as the visitor once again became sheathed in a web of fog and escaped into the night, leaving Eva exhausted, satisfied, and soon to be one of the beautiful undead.

Copyright John Harrison 2010

HALFTONE HEROES

2010-01-23T19:28:00.000-08:00

Halftone Heroes is an exhibition featuring, and paying tribute to (via the art of Matthew Dunn), the long lost work of wartime artist William Henry Fletcher (WHF). With the majority of his original art destroyed shortly after his death, and any publications featuring his work being long out of print, this is a rare opportunity to journey into the world of WHF.

Location:The Owl And The Pussycat Gallery, 34 Swan Street, Richmond
Time:6:00PM Thursday, January 28th

VALE THE TOTE

2010-01-17T01:51:00.000-08:00

It’s been a few years since the Tote Hotel in Collingwood was any sort of major hub for my social activities, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to stay away from the place during its final weekend of trading. The Tote has never been ‘my’ pub, and I had no desire to show up like an incongruous ghoul in order to lament the demise of a place I haven’t really frequented for some time.

I saw some great (and some less than great) live bands at the Tote, but the main thing I will miss about the place had already been taken away several years ago. Situated above the main bar and band room was the exotic confines of the Cobra Bar, decked out in bamboo with framed posters from old snake themed movies lining the walls, Phillipa would hold court behind the bar, lighting your cigarettes and serving up her superb cocktails with a fine hand and a sharp tongue.

Here in this often sweaty and cramped environment, we would gather to watch screenings of old 8mm films (some of which I organised myself), take in scatological plays performed by the Sissies & Sluts theatrical troupe, listen to DJs like Bebe Bombora and Betsy Jinx, watch burlesque dancers shake and shimmy, attend art exhibitions, or just sit and shoot the breeze over a cool beer, a hot pizza and some great music.

Things were never the same once Phillip gave up the reigns on the Cobra Bar – the name stayed the same, but the atmosphere was gone, and soon so was I. Going there became too depressing, like trying the chase the ghosts of a past. I kept the memories and moved on….

FAREWELL AUNT PEG

2010-01-15T22:25:00.000-08:00

Golden Age adult film star Juliet Anderson, AKA Aunt Peg (one of the original mature age porn film identities), was found dead at her home in Berkeley CA on Jan 11. She was 71 and had been suffering from Crohn's Disease for some time.

Besides her trailblazing adult career in the late-1970s to early 1980s (which she started at the ripe old age of 39 and performed with the likes of John Holmes, Desireé Cousteau and Ron Jeremy), she was, at different ...times, a massage therapist, a relationship counselor & a teacher. Her real name was Judith Carr.

Juliet Anderson: Selected Filmography

Pretty Peaches (1978)

Inside Desireé Cousteau (1979)

Taboo (1980)

Aunt Peg (1980)

Talk Dirty to Me (1980)

Aunt Peg's Fullfilment (1981)

Fox Holes (1983)

DEATH & THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD

2009-12-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

The porn industry is one which has thrown up more than its fair share of casualties. Murder (Artie Mitchell and the Wonderland Murders involving John Holmes) and scandal (such as the underaged career of super-starlet Traci Lords) sit side by side with the burn-outs, rampant drug use, falsified AIDS tests and reported involvement of organised crime which help shatter the fragile illusion that porn is somehow a legitimate offshoot of the mainstream film industry. But in the meat grinder world of American Adult Entertainment, where pretty and often naïve and vulnerable young women are both its greatest asset and its most disposable commodity, it is the self-inflicted death of a starlet which, to me, most vividly echoes all that is dark and disturbing about the industry.

The first suicide to rock the smut bizz in a big way was that of Colleen Applegate. A naturally pretty blonde and high school cheerleader with all-American looks, Applegate left her small hometown of Farmington, Minnesota in 1982, at the age of 18, and headed for California with her boyfriend, Mike Marcell (later, it would emerge that she left the small town after a suicide attempt some months earlier had been made public). Arriving in Los Angeles, Applegate and Marcell struggled for several months before an interview with World Modeling Agency owner Jim South led to Applegate posing for layouts in low-rent skin rags like Club, before quickly graduating to the prestigious publications such as Hustler and Penthouse.

Applegate’s wholesome looks and naivety eventually attracted porn film producers, and after her boyfriend split to join the U.S. Army, veteran adult producer Bobby Hollander dreamed up the screen name Shauna Grant and put Colleen to work in such hardcore flicks as Summer Camp Girls, Private School, Sex Games, Paper Dolls, Suzie Superstar and Centerfold Celebrities. Her shamed family back home tried to put on a brave face as Applegate’s star rose, although her increasing cocaine consumption made her unreliable, which combined with her unenthusiastic onscreen performances (she hated having sex in front of an audience), saw her career dry up as quickly as it had ignited. She quit the adult industry less than a year after she had entered it (and with over 30 movies to her name) and moved to the desert resort town of Palm Springs with Jack Ehrlich, a 44 year-old cocaine dealer. The following year, Ehrlich was sentenced to five years imprisonment for cocaine possession, cutting off both Applegate’s livelihood and drug supply.

Applegate could have returned to Minnesota to make a new start – her parents had offered to pay for her travel and college expenses – but the thought of how she would be received back home was too much to bear, and she decided to take an easier way out. On March 21st, 1984, the depressed, high-as-a-kite Colleen Applegate shot herself in the head with Ehrlich’s .22 caliber rifle. She died in hospital two days later, after never having regained consciousness.

The porn industry tastefully cashed in on Applegate’s suicide, rushing out a compilation video titled Shauna Grant: Every Man’s Fantasy (there was also a tribute magazine of the same name). Even mainstream Hollywood felt compelled to deal with Applegate’s story, producing the better than average 1987 TV movie Shattered Innocence, the same year Applegate was also found herself the subject of an excellent PBS documentary, The Death of a Porn Queen.

Applegate’s story wasn’t a whole lot different that Michelle Schei’s. Born in Oakland, California on March 2nd, 1964, Schei suffered regular beatings and emotional torment from her sadistic mother. She tried to escape by running away from home at 14, was working in a Guam massage parlour two years later, and by 18 was stripping at the famous Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, before beginning her adult film career in 1987. Schei acted under a variety of pseudonyms, including Carolyn Chambers and Heather Newman, but in most of the 130+ films in which she performed she was billed as Megan Leigh. Some of the titles on her resume include Sex Lives of the Rich & Famous, Hot Scalding, Goin’ Down Slow and Lips on Lips.

Shei rarely looked like she was enjoying herself in front of the camera, and developed a healthy dependence on Quaaludes to help her cope. But she still couldn’t escape the clutches of Mrs. Schei. On June 16, 1990, after another flaming row with mommie dearest (who had chastised her for entering into a same sex relationship with another adult film performer), and a high level of Valium in her system, Schei finally set herself free by putting a .38 revolver into her mouth and pulling the trigger. Ironically, Schei had purchased a $500,000 house for her mother less than a month prior to her suicide, as a way to try and resolve the long-standing dysfunctional relationship.

But the biggest porn star suicide still remains that of Shannon Wilsey. Born in 1971, Wilsey entered the screen smut scene in 1990 under the name Silver Kane. After appearing in a couple of one-day wonders like No Boys Allowed and Raquel’s Addiction, the platinum-capped starlet underwent cosmetic surgery, changed her name to the exotic and Southern sounding Savannah, and became the biggest adult film star of the early-nineties, grinding out features like Telemates, Hurts so Good and Blonde Forces. She also developed a penchant for dating rock stars, among them Billy Idol, Gregg Allman, Motley Crue singer Vince Neil and guitarist Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses. Despite her stardom, Wilsey never looked enthusiastic while having sex in her films (have you noticed a pattern developing here?), and often just laid back and let her on-screen partners do all the hard work.

The last piece of work which Wilsey was involved in occurred after she crashed her Corvette on the night of July 11, 1994. High on heroin and sinus tablets, she freaked out over the broken nose she had suffered in the accident, petrified that it would scar her for life and diminish her work prospects. Rather than face that possibility, she ran home and shot herself in the head with her .40 calibre baretta. Showing great taste, High Society published a tribute to the late porn goddess, including photos of her brain matter sprayed all over her garage floor. Even the September 9, 1994 edition of the short-lived Aussie rag The World ran a five page cover story on the suicide. Their article featured a full-page photo of Wilsey with a superimposed, bloodies handgun resting on her naked breasts, with the headline ‘Dead Gorgeous’ emblazoned across the photograph.

I guess that’s just the kind of respect your death gets when you make your living by having sex on film.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

OTHER NOTABLE AMERICAN PORN STARLET SUICIDES:

Alex Jordan - Age 31
Alex entered the adult business in her mid-20s, an age when most actresses are getting out. She and her husband thought it would be a good way to finance a comfortable middle class future. She won the 1993 Adult AVN Awards for "Best New Starlet". Jordan's best friend was her parrot, and when it died, she went crazy. Speaking on the telephone to her husband, she accused him of not caring about her. His crime? Lack of sensitivity to her feelings about her bird's death. She wrote a note describing her depression over the loss of her bird, and on the 27th of June, Alex hung herself in her closet.

Trinity Loren - Age 34
Loren began her porn career on screen in late-1985, and quickly achieved renown as one of the first starlets of the straight-to-video era of adult films. She retired from pornographic films in the early-1990s, fearing the threat of the AIDS virus.

In 1998, Loren's boyfriend, pornographic director Joe Gallant claims that the pair were about to start doing some sex scenes together as a start of Loren's comeback into the adult industry. Trinity Loren died on October 25, 1998 due to an overdose of prescription painkillers.

Teri Diver - Age 29
Diver was one of the most prolific porn stars of the 1990s, appearing in over 200 movies. Diver was a migraine headache sufferer for years, which led to her death on January 2, 2001. She apparently took an overdose of her migraine medication, which caused her to go into cardiac arrest.

(Thanks to www.hellandjustice.com)

REX SIKES INTERVIEW

2009-12-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

My interview with Rex Sikes, who played Rodney in Rene Daalder's cult 1976 exploitation film Massacre at Central High, has been posted on the DVD Holocuast website at the following link:

http://dvdholocaust.com/feature.php?id=17

My original review of the film has also been re-posted on the site at:

http://dvdholocaust.com/review.php?id=473

THIS BED WE MADE

2009-12-05T22:16:00.000-08:00

The taste of cigarettes and red wine was stale in my mouth as I lay naked on my back, my eyes contemplating the old ceiling fan that whirred slowly overhead but my mind barely taking in its existence. Instead, I could think only of the soft hands that ran slowly and sensuously over my body, the sharp tips of their blood red nails leaving soft trails in my skin, and the sweet smell of perfume that hit my nostrils and seemed to seep into every part of my being like some insidious and instantly addictive narcotic.

The motel was seedy, but the rooms were dark, the price was right, and it was just enough off the beaten track to not attract too much attention. As our bodies began to intertwine and become lost in the heat they were generating, I guessed that it wouldn’t have been the first time that more than one of the Ten Commandments had been broken within the seamy walls of Unit 12, with the cracked plaster and peeling paper that looked like it hadn’t been changed – or even properly cleaned - since the 1970s.

I looked up and caught a glimpse of her face as it became momentarily illuminated by the glow of the blue and purple neon that buzzed off and on outside our window, advertising the motel and its vacancies as if it were a dirty set of cheap womens’ underclothes. I was in love with this woman, and I needed her to live as much as I needed the oxygen that filled my lungs, but I knew what we were doing was immoral and wicked, and as much as I tried not to give a damn, I was always fighting within myself to overcome the feelings of guilt and uncertainty that often flowed and ebbed within me, like a tsunami that washed up onto a shore before receding, leaving a trail of annihilation and broken lives in its wake.

She was the first dame I’d met in well over twenty years who made me go weak at the knees, and tremble inside like some pathetic little school kid who’d just been hit by his first case of puppy love. As much as I hated the mental seizures she brought about in me, the touch of her hand and the warmth of her lips were like no other, and when I was able to push aside my fear and anxieties, she was able to take me as close to heaven on earth as I’m ever likely to come.

Where things are likely to go from here, I don’t think either of us really knows. Perhaps we don’t want to know. As much as we may try to deny it – to both ourselves and each other - the excitement and danger of the unknown is one of those invisible ties which bind us so tightly together, and makes staying alive worth the effort.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

AND PARTY EVERY DAY

2009-11-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

AND PARTY EVERY DAY:
THE INSIDE STORY OF CASABLANCA RECORDS
By Larry Harris (with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs)
(Backbeat Books, USA, 2009)

In the 1970s, no independent record company embodied the fast paced, drug fuelled, hedonistic lifestyle of the decade as much as Casablanca Records. Founded in 1973 by the enigmatic Neil Bogart, Casablanca was America’s premier disco label, even though their biggest (and first) signing was the New York glam rock band Kiss. As a kid growing up a huge Kiss fan, I was always fascinated by the exotic look of the Casablanca label design…it appealed to me not only because I was a film buff who loved Bogie in Casablanca, but Casablanca’s was also the name of the sleazy Fitzroy Street disco which I used to frequent as an underaged patron (I can still picture the huge front door with it’s intimidating peep hole, and the bouncer taking seemingly forever to size me up and down before the door would finally open to usher me in).

In And Party Every Day (its title taken from a line in the famous Kiss track Rock & Roll all Nite), author Larry Harris (who worked at Casablanca from its inception, becoming Vice President in 1976 before leaving the label three years later) charts the beginnings, rise and ultimate fall of the Casablanca label, tying it in inexorably with the era (accentuated by the various side bars which encapsulate major events and pop culture moments of the time).

After struggling to survive through the first three Kiss albums (the band were building a huge live following but record sales were sluggish) and suffering a major flop in a compilation album of classic Johnny Carson Show moments, Casablanca finally hit pay dirt in 1975 with the release of Kiss’ double live landmark LP, Kiss Alive! Rather than concentrate on other similar hard rock acts (although they did sign LA glam rockers Angel), Casablanca eventually focused much of their effort on the burgeoning disco and dance craze, signing artists such as George Clinton and Parliament, Donna Summer, Cher and the Village People to their roster of talent. At the height of their success, the label branched out into filmmaking, although their only notable achievement was the 1978 disco flick Thank God it’s Friday.

As much as it is a history of the label, And Party Every Day is also a biography of Neil Bogart, who was undoubtedly the energy, the heart and soul behind Casablanca, and whose decadent lifestyle rivalled that of rock journalist Lester Bangs. Like Bangs, Bogart’s time on earth was short, after he died of cancer in 1982 at the age of thirty-nine. Larry Harris and his co-authors Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs (who co-authored the extensive reference work Kiss Alive Forever: The Complete Touring History) as an energetic svengali, talented and full of passion and seemingly limitless energy, but also a man whose grand vision would often stretch a company beyond its means, and whose escalating drug consumption would cloud his own judgement.

Refreshingly, And Party Every Day comes off as something a lot more than just another Kiss related book. Naturally, the authors realise that the Kiss connection will be a prime factor in sales and promotion, and to that end they certainly don’t skimp on information and stories regarding the band (in particular, their early years as Casablanca’s initial act, as well as the disastrous 1978 Kiss solo albums, which saw over two million unsold LPs being shipped off the flea markets for quick, cheap sale).

But make no mistake that Kiss are just a supporting player in this book, which is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the history and workings of record labels, during a time where office furniture was literally covered in a layer of cocaine dust, Studio 54 was the place where record deals were made, chart positions were bought with money and drugs, and work was just one big party...with an ultimate price to pay.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2009

TORSO

2009-11-05T19:58:00.000-08:00

1973/Italy/Directed by Sergio Martino

A prime example of vintage Italian giallo (a term derived from the series of mystery/crime pulp novels first published in Italy entitled Il Giallo Mondatori, taking their name from the yellow cover background), Torso is a brutal, at times shocking thriller about a psychotic killer doing away with young women from a local college campus. When four of the girls head for the supposed safety of a mountaintop country villa, the killer tags close behind and the terror continues.

Starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont and Luc Merenda, Torso can be seen as something of a template for the wave of slasher films that became popular in the late-seventies and eighties, and features some gruesome murders, groovy fashions, great locations, cool music (by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) and lots of beautiful European dames! It has also been released under the titles Bodies Bear Traces or Carnal Violence and just Carnal Violence. The print of the film I watched this morning was from the DVD released in the US by Blue Underground, which replaces all the trimmed scenes of violence and gives you the option of watching the film in Italian or English dubbed language (although unfortunately there are no English subtitles for the Italian language track).

Copyright John Harrison 2009

KISS: SONIC BOOM

2009-10-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

Get ready to party like it’s 1975 (and occasionally, 1985).

With Kiss seemingly happy to spend the last decade as little more than a travelling nostalgic circus, and it’s two founding members pushing ever closer to pension age (Gene Simmons has just hit 60, Paul Stanley is 57), I honestly never thought I’d live to see another full album of original material by these guys. After their last studio effort, 1998s ill-conceived and disjointed Psycho Circus, Simmons and Stanley have both bemoaned the fact that the music industry is dead, killed by illegal downloading and an audience mostly apathetic to new releases by ‘heritage’ acts.

Produced by Stanley and recorded in the old-fashioned analogue way, Sonic Boom is much better than any Kiss album produced at this stage of their career has the right to be. While it might not be the vintage sounding recording that the band were hyping it up to be, it does combine elements of their most successful epochs into one tight, cohesive little package. Opening with Modern Day Delilah (which bases itself around a heaving, swaggering riff that could almost pass itself off as an obscure 1970s stoner rock classic), Sonic Boom ploughs through its ten tracks in just over 40 minutes, ensuring a brief but savage aural attack that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Refreshingly ballad-free, Sonic Boom may rank as one of Kiss’ most consistent albums, with not a weak track in sight. Only When Lightning Strikes (sung by lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, wearing the Spaceman make-up made famous by Ace Frehley) comes close to being considered filler, although Thayer’s blistering fretwork throughout the album more than compensates (even if he does ape many of Frehley’s trademark licks and solos in order to achieve that classic Kiss sound). Even drummer Eric Singer is given a chance at the mic, with great results, on the rousing All for the Glory.

While Stanley the Starchild handles the more commercial material (the anthemic closer Say Yeah sounding like it could have come off one of the band’s mid-1980s recordings), it’s Simmons who is clearly the star here, with the Demon coming up with possibly his strongest contributions to a Kiss album to date, combining a thumping bass tone with his typically lascivious lyrics (“Baby, feel my tower of power”) on tracks like Russian Roulette, Hot and Cold and the album’s high point, Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect), a rocking boogie shuffle that could easily be an outtake from 1975s Dressed to Kill.

While it’s unlikely to win them an army of new fans, Sonic Boom should restore the faith in many die-hard followers who have stuck with the band throughout their 35+ year history, and is a powerful reminder that, beneath all the make-up, bombast and crappy merchandising, Kiss remains one hell of a good hard rock outfit. If this is to be their last offering, then it is a fitting and memorable swansong.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

THE DEVIL DANCED IN DENNIS ALLEN

2009-10-19T04:08:00.000-07:00

A name that seems to have been pushed back somewhat from the public psyche – thanks in no small part to the more headline-grabbing exploits of the violent Carlton Crew/Carl Williams drug war (as detailed in the series of popular Underbelly books and the top-rating television mini-series of the same name) – Dennis Allen was a man fully deserving of his fearsome reputation. While he only spent a few brief years at the top of Melbourne’s criminal hierarchy, it was enough time for Allen to spread fear through even the most hardened of souls who treaded the murky waters of Melbourne’s underworld, leaving behind a trail of dead bodies that helped give credence to his self-appointed (and fully-deserving) moniker of ‘Mr Death’.

Dennis Bruce Allen was born to crime patriarch Kathy Pettingill in Carlton on November 7, 1951, and grew up in a housing estate in Heidelberg (originally built for athletes competing in the 1956 Olympic Games and turned into public housing afterwards). By the time he was 20, Allen – a social misfit - had already amassed a decent rap sheet for fights, thefts and petty crimes, before serving his first significant jail time when he was put away for ten years after raping a young woman in a Sandringham flat in October 1973. He would only serve four of those years, but quickly found himself back inside for harbouring his 14 year-old brother Jamie, who was at the time an escapee from the Turana Youth Detention Centre in Parkville. While on day release to visit his grandparents in October 1981, Allen skipped custody and was later found in a Richmond pub in the company of a prostitute, so drunk that he was vomiting up blood.

It was after his release from incarceration on July 2, 1982, that Allen’s reputation grew, as he quickly established a booming heroin empire from behind the fortified walls of his Richmond base. At the time, Richmond was looked upon as one of Melbourne’s seedier and less-desirable suburbs, and Allen snatched up a number of residential properties in the area, always paying cash for the transactions. By the first half of 1984, Dennis Allen’s drug empire had already become so prosperous he had managed to plunk down $28,000 for 108 Stephenson Street (which Kathy Pettingill ran as a brothel while living next door, dealing heroin to customers through a hole in the wall), 102 Stephenson Street ($37,000), followed by Nos 35 and 37 Stephenson Street ($58,000 total). Not bad for a man who had been unemployed since his release from jail.

It was 37 Stephenson Street that Allen decided to call his home, employing a renovator (whose name has never been released) to live at the property while he installed exposed beams, skylights, additional rooms, and a 3.5 metre fish tank that took up an entire wall. While his dealing was known to the police and came under frequent surveillance, Allen had uncanny luck when it came to avoiding charges, thanks to investigations that often broke down or went nowhere, and the fact that Dennis was not only paying off corrupt cops but was working as a police informer. Coming from a family of criminals also helped him avoid prosecution, as he often called upon his brothers to help him commit his crimes and dispose of evidence.

The Cherry Tree Hotel, just around the corner from Stephenson Street, became Allen’s base away from home, and he was often seen drinking at the bar throughout the day, downing Southern Comfort and Coke’s and chain-smoking Viscounts. Flaunting his success, his heavily tattooed, streetfighter’s body would usually be adorned by up to $250,000 worth of gold necklaces, rings and bracelets, which provided a strange juxtaposition to the bib and brace overalls he would usually favour.

On a winter’s afternoon in 1984, Dennis Allen’s propensity for sudden, swift violence made its presence known when the renovator and his wife (who also has never been named) were having a drink while listening to the Sandown horse races at 37 Stephenson Street. As the afternoon wore on and Allen became increasingly more drunk (and likely stoned – he consumed a prodigious amount of amphetamines), a young blonde-haired man named Wayne Stanhope arrived at the house and began to party with the occupants. According to statements given years later by the renovator and his wife, Allen and Stanhope acted like friends, popping down to the Cherry Tree for a quick drink between races and returning with bottles of Southern Comfort. At one point, the pair went into the kitchen and injected themselves with speed.

As evening came on, the small group continued to drink heavily as they listened to loud music. At one point, Stanhope climbed out of his chair to change the record when Allen suddenly pulled a gun from out of his pants and fired a fusillade of shots into the man’s shoulder, chest and head. As Stanhope slumped down onto the carpet, Dennis went to the bedroom door where his young nephew Jason Ryan was staying and retrieved another handgun, which he emptied point blank into Stanhope’s head. Although the man was clearly deceased, Allen demanded his girlfriend fetch him a kitchen knife, which he used to slit Stanhope’s throat, before ordering a clean-up. The terror stricken witnesses had no choice but to comply – they didn’t want to end up the same way – and before long, three of Allen’s brothers (including Jamie and Trevor Pettingill) arrived to help dispose of the corpse. While the burned out remains of the Ford Escort panel van which he had borrowed from his grandfather was discovered in shrubs in the Brisbane Ranges the following day, Stanhope’s body has never been found, and it remains a mystery to this day where his remains ended up.

Exactly why Allen killed Stanhope has never been firmly established. He may have owed drug money that was unlikely to be paid back, or he may have been suspected of having a big mouth. But just as possible, Allen may have killed Stanhope on nothing but a spur of the moment impulse…maybe he didn’t like the way he looked at him, or disagreed with something he said. Maybe he just didn’t like Stanhope touching his state of the art stereo system. When you choose to live in this world, death can often come violently, suddenly, and without reason.

Helga Wagnegg, a 30 year-old prostitute whose best days were well behind her, was another name that ran head-on into the malevolent face of Dennis Allen and wound up stone cold as a result. Allen believed Wagnegg – a regular visitor to his den – to be the police informant that led to an earlier raid on the property, which yielded drugs, firearms and sticks of gelignite buried in the backyard. Allen’s retribution for this act of betrayal (either real or imagined) was to administer Wagnegg with a ‘hot shot’, a lethal injection of heroin well beyond the addict’s normal level of tolerance. Over a period of two hours on an evening in November 1984, as she sat slumped in his backyard, Allen injected Wagnegg no less than four times, including once in the neck. He then ordered Jason Ryan to fetch a bucket of water from the nearby Yarra River, submerging the unconscious girls’ head in it in an attempt to make it appear as if she had drowned when her body was later retrieved from the river.

But it was the killing of 33 year-old Anton Kenny on November 7, 1985 that became Dennis Allen’s most notorious, and well publicised, crime. Kenny, a former Hells Angel who was kicked out of the club when he gave a statement to police (an unforgivable betrayal in the bikie sub-culture) was shot five times with a .32 calibre pistol during an afternoon of drinking at Allen’s house (it was his 34th birthday). According to a witness, Kenny was murdered because he called Dennis Allen a ‘rat’. Treating it as though it was nothing more than a piece of meat that was in his way, Allen disposed of Kenny’s body by cutting off its legs with a chainsaw and stuffing it inside a 44-gallon drum, where it made local headlines when it was pulled out of the Yarra nearly four months later.

A classic sociopath, Dennis Allen did his own killing for a number of reasons. He enjoyed it, and the rush of power and adrenalin it brought him, and taking care of business himself eliminated the risk of having to look for hired hitmen. But above all, it enhanced his reputation as a man who was not to be crossed or trifled with. Most people who owed Dennis Allen money made sure they paid it back on time and in full.

By 1986, Dennis Allen’s empire – and his life – was already verging on self-destruction and burn-out. Years of massive drug and alcohol consumption finally caught up with his body, leading to a debilitating heart condition that slowly sapped him of his health and strength. With his grip on the heroin trade slipping, people started coming out of the woodwork to provide statements (mostly as a way to barter better deals for themselves) and police eventually put together enough evidence to charge Allen over Wayne Stanhope’s murder.

But as he had done on several occasions throughout his life, Dennis Allen would cheat the judge and avoid his day in court. Confined to a wheelchair, his once imposing frame enfeebled and shrunken by the loss of nearly 20 kilos, Allen died of heart failure in April of 1987. Ironically, his death was soon followed by the rise within the underworld of his clan of brothers, two of whom, Victor Pierce and Trevor Pettingill, were later tried for (and found not guilty of) the brutal 1988 slayings of two young policemen in Walsh Street, South Yarra (Allen’s nephew Jason Ryan also testified to be present when the Walsh Street killings were planned). After Victor Pierce was shot dead in 2002 (purportedly by Andrew Veniamin), his widow Wendy told a reporter for The Age that her husband was guilty of the police killings all along.

In the pantheon of colourful criminals who operated during those increasingly distant and gloomy days of Melbourne in the 1980s, Mark ‘Chopper’ Read may have come away with the glory, the talk shows, the books and the movie, but Dennis Allen took with him something that few people possess, and which still remains intact more than 20 years later: the power to invoke fear and anxiety from beyond the grave.

Copyright John Harrison 2009
(Note: the above is a portion of a much longer planned piece which I am currently working on)

ROSS KEMP ON GANGS

2009-10-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

Hosted by UK actor Ross Kemp – best known for his role as tough guy Grant Mitchell on the UK soapie Eastenders – Ross Kemp on Gangs is an investigative series which takes us into the inner sanctums of some of the worlds most notorious and dangerous street gangs. What could have easily been a glossy puff-piece series is given weight and made engrossing by the level of access which Kemp is given by some of the gang leaders and the fact that the host is prepared to take some obvious risks, putting himself in potentially dangerous locations and situations in his quest to get himself as close as he can to the pulse of these tribal organizations (whom, despite their different ideologies, are essentially fighting for the same thing - protection and ownership of their own backyard).

Some of the cities and countries which Kemp visits over the course of the 12 episodes in this series include El Salvador (where he investigates the notorious M 13 gang), St Louis (one of America’s most gangster rife cities, where the Bloods and the Crips fight an ongoing turf war), Poland (a vicious gang of neo-Nazi soccer thugs who make English football hooligans look like a Wiggles audience), Kenya, Bulgaria and Los Angeles (where the rising Latino gangs are rapidly outnumbering the blacks).

I’d never heard of this BAFTA award winning series until a review copy of it filed into my PO box last week…apparently it has been shown on Foxtel here in Australia at some point. If you are an anthropologist or just a casual true crime fan with an interest in the subject matter, it’s well worth picking up this three disc set when it is released in Australia on October 16.

John Harrison

HORRORCORE MUSICIAN ARRESTED FOR MASSACRE

2009-10-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

The small town of Farmville, Virginia – with a population of just 7,000 - played host to a shocking multiple-murder back on September 18, when one of its pastors, his daughter, wife and a friend of the family were slaughtered in a manner which was not only brutal and senseless, but has once again thrown a spotlight on both extreme music and the impact and influence it has on its fans.

The young man accused of the crime, Richard Samuel McCroskey III, is a 20-year-old rapper who goes by the name of Syko Sam in the music genre known as "horrorcore", an extreme mutation of hip hop and death metal which features lurid lyrics based around fantasies of murder, maiming and other acts of violence. Some of the more notable bands in the horrorcore genre include Insane Clown Posse and Necro.

The victims of the McCroskey’s alleged crime were 50-year-old Mark Niederbrock, pastor at the Walker's Presbyterian Church, his 16-year-old daughter Emma, his estranged wife Debra Kelley, 53 and Emma's 18-year-old friend from West Virginia, Melanie Wells.

McCroskey had been invited to Farmville by Emma, who flew in from his home in northern California to meet up with the girl. They had planned to attend the Strictly for the Wicked Festival, a Horrorcore music event in Michigan.

No priors have been found on McCroskey's criminal record, although police have revealed they have uncovered found videos of him holding various weapons and rapping about "murderous rages" and disposing of corpses. While no specific details regarding the crime scene have been released to the press, police officers have said that all four of the deceased appeared to have fallen victim to 'blunt force trauma'.

The accused came into the picture at 4pm on Friday, September 18, 2009, when tow-truck driver Elton Napier received a phone call to assist McCroskey, whose car had broken down. Napier told police that when he arrived on the scene, McCroskey was wearing a black hoodie and that the young man "was really smelling bad, like real bad. I can't describe it."

After two deputies arrived on the scene and ticketed McCroskey for driving his Honda - which belonged to the Niedercrocks - without a valid licence, McCroskey then accompanied Napier in the cab of his lorry and Napier recalls that "I just held my head out the window so the wind would hit me in the face. That was the stinkiest rascal I've ever smelled."

McCroskey was dropped off at a newsagents about four miles away, where he retrieved a black bag from the towed car while Napier headed inside for a cup of coffee. McCroskey later caught a taxi to nearby Richmond International Airport where he spent the night. In the meantime, police had discovered the murder scene back in Farmville and quickly issued an arrest order for McCroskey. He was picked up at the airport the next day.

The deeply religious town are still in shock about what has transpired, but have dismissed McCroskey's claims that "Jesus made me do it" as Satan talking. If convicted in the state of Virginia, McCroskey will almost certainly face the death penalty, with Virginia being the second biggest endorser of capital punishment in the United States (behind Texas). 103 people have been executed since 1976 with 21 people currently on death row.

John Harrison, October 10 2009

RACE WITH THE DEVIL

2009-10-04T01:15:00.000-07:00

1975/USA/Directed by Jack Starrett

This effective little horror/action/road movie hybrid is the type of film that 1970s suburban drive-ins used to thrive on. However, despite its roots being planted firmly in the low-budget exploitation genre, Race with the Devil also manages to capture that distinct sense of ‘stranger in a strange land’ alienation and paranoia which also permeated some of the more mainstream Hollywood films of the time, such as John Boorman’s Deliverance.

After an atmospheric opening credit sequence (made all the more effective by Leonard Roseman’s sinister score), we are quickly introduced to our main protagonists. Frank (Warren Oates) and Roger (Peter Fonda) are best friends and partners in Cycle World, a rising company which manufactures racing dirt bikes. Together with their wives Alice and Kelly (Loretta Switt and Lara Parker), they decide to take off for the ski slopes of Aspen, Colorado in Frank’s brand new, state of the art recreational vehicle.

Working their way through Texas on the first day of their journey, the couples pull off the highway and decide to set up camp for the night by an isolated and tranquil creek bed. Late that night, with a few drinks in the bellies, Frank and Roger inadvertently witness the execution and sacrifice of a young woman by a group of robed Satanists. When the coven discover they are being watched, it sets of a tense cross state pursuit, with the four holidayers not knowing where it’s safe to stay, or just who the hell to trust.

Apart from a couple of minor flaws (one of which is the rather flat, TV movie look which the film sometimes exudes), Race with the Devil manages to hit its mark on just about every required level. Director Jack Starrett (who reportedly came in at the last moment, after Two-Lane Blacktop helmer Monte Hellman pulled out) keeps the film pacey and tight, its 84 minutes racing by like the pages of a tacky paperback novel (of the type whose subject matter could easily have inspired Lee Frost and Wes Bishop’s screenplay). There are some effective moments of suspense, as well as an eeriness which pervades certain scenes, such as when Kelly gets the uncomfortable feeling that everyone is watching her and plotting against her while she is swimming in a trailer park pool.

Without doubt one of the finest American actors of the sixties and seventies (and sadly one not fully appreciated until after his premature death), Warren Oates delivers yet another finely drawn-out performance. Gruff, at times laconic and at others explosive, Oates had the ability to make his characters so believable and real, even when working with sub-standard material, and he interacts well with Peter Fonda, who also delivers one of the more enjoyable performances of his post-Easy Rider career. Although Loretta Switt (best known as ‘Hot Lips’ Houlahan on the long-running M*A*S*H television series) and Lara Parker also assimilate into their roles well, they are not really given much do do – women’s lib had yet to make its way into the horror genre as yet - and are relegated mostly to looking scared and screaming hysterically.

A rollicking piece of classic grindhouse fodder, Race with the Devil is nowhere near as well regarded by cinephiles as it deserves to be.

Review Copyright John Harrison 2009

PINK SLIP

2009-10-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

Equal parts disturbing, shocking and hilariously cheesy and inept, Pink Slip is a classic piece of vintage Classroom Scare cinema from the early 1970s.

JASON VOORHEES

2009-09-06T06:12:00.000-07:00

Some more of my model figure kit work - this is the Jason Vorhees model kit released by Screamin' in the early 1990s. I sold this kit as a built-up on eBay a while ago.

ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT DJ

2009-09-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

A few pics of the promo diorama I made for Melbourne exotica DJ Bebe Bombora, customized from various model kits, action figures and Hot Wheels cars:

I'll be posting more pics of some of my other action figure/model kit work (both customized and non) in the coming weeks.

A PEEP THROUGH THE GLORY HOLE

2009-09-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

THE MURKY WORLD OF EARLY, HARDCORE QUEER CINEMA

While the history and impact of straight, ‘mainstream’ adult cinema has been well covered and documented in the past decade, via films such as Boogie Nights, documentaries like Wadd (about the legendary John Holmes) and in the pages of several books (The X Factory and The Other Hollywood are two excellent tomes that immediately come to mind), early gay hardcore cinema has remained consigned for the most part to the dark back alleys of film history. In fact, many people still seem surprised that these films even existed at all, so obscure have they remained over the years.

The origins of modern gay porn cinema can be traced back to the strengthening of the gay rights movement in the late 1960s, when open and proudly homosexual characters began to appear more regularly on film, although it was mostly via the work of underground filmmakers like Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising) and Andy Warhol (Bike Boy, Blowjob). Some low-budget exploitation filmmakers tried to cross pollinate genres, but the result was not always a success (the 1971 flick The Pink Angels, about a gay biker gang who get lynched on their way to a drag ball, was a miscalculation that appalled homosexual viewers and alienated the straight drive-in crowd).

Loosening censorship laws and the increased distribution avenues for independent cinema in the early seventies saw the emergence a run of grimy, softcore gay features with titles like Stud Farm, Meat Rack (a Freudian tale of a mother-hating male hustler) and Sticks and Stones. Mostly these films would be screened in the small number of adult cinemas that were cropping up across the United States with the aim of catering to an exclusively gay clientele.

Gay porn became of fully-fledged genre unto itself once the door to hardcore cinema was kicked in by the likes of Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones. The demand for gay sex films became so strong that New York alone had over a dozen cinemas devoted to screening all-male features. Of course, many of these cinemas were of the ‘storefront’ variety (small shops that were cheaply converted into makeshift movie houses), and had names like The Gaiety, The Jewel, Eros, The Kings and The Ramrod.

It was within the darkened confines of these tiny, musty cinemas that one room weekend productions like Midnight Geisha Boy, How to Make a Homo Movie, Gay Guide to Campus, Confessions of a Male Groupie, Hold Your Piece and Swap Meat were screened, usually on rickety 16mm film equipment, the whirr of the sprockets providing an additional aural accompaniment to not only the onscreen soundtrack but the illicit action that was often taking place between anonymous audience members.

While the seventies didn’t produce a landmark gay porn classic on the level of Deep Throat or Debbie Does Dallas, a few interesting gems did spring up to distinguish themselves from the pack. Boys in the Sand and L.A. Plays Itself, both released in 1972, managed to break through and receive some positive attention in the mainstream entertainment press, inspiring even some chic hetero couples to venture into the cinema to wallow in their ‘decadence’, while 1977s Heavy Equipment, starring Jack Wrangler (one of the decade’s biggest names in gay porn and currently a prominent producer of musical theatre) has the distinction of being the first hardcore feature to be filmed in 3D.

Naturally, like their straight counterparts, most of these cinemas offered not only live stage acts, but also encouraged patrons to get together after (or during) the film in one of their special rooms they had furnished either out the back or upstairs. The Ramrod had its Stud Room (‘Always Open!’), the Rendezvous had its After Dark Lounge, while the Gaiety promoted its Apollo Room (‘Where Boy Meets Boy!’). The Night Shift cinema (situated on New York’s 8th Avenue) outdid them all, setting up a prop subway car, park bench and a few fake trees to try and re-create the Big Apple cruising experience.

For those people who were unable (or too embarrassed) to attend a gay adult cinema, release could be sought in the form of 8mm ‘loops’, short films that were usually shot without sound and lasted on average around eight to ten minutes and were sold via ads in the back pages of gay (and the odd straight) sex publications, to be viewed in the comfort and convenience of your own lounge or bedroom. For those without access to a projector, the mail order companies (who were invariably based on the fringes of Hollywood) offered little plastic handheld movie viewers for a few bucks a pop, or would throw one in for free if you purchased three or more loops at once.

Today, original 8 and 16mm reels of early gay hardcore films are considered important cultural artefacts, and are highly sought after by collectors and historians, while those who want to recreate the heady and somewhat illicit atmosphere of those long gone early days can do so thanks to pioneering companies like Something Weird, who offer up a lot of these vintage films on VHS and DVD (visit them at www.somethingweird.com). For those who really want to experience the full gay grindhouse experience, Something Weird even offer up copies of Heavy Equipment that comes with two pairs of 3D glasses – one for you, and one for your bud!

Copyright John Harrison 2009

SOMETHING WEIRD REVIEW INDEX: A

2009-08-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Thought I would start posting an archive of all the reviews I have contributed to Mike Vraney's groundbreaking Something Weird Video company over the years. Used in their catalogues, on their website and on their VHS and DVD sleeves, I will be posting these reviews alphabetically over the coming weeks. I have decided to post the reviews as originally submitted, even though many of them I would probably write a little differently today (bear in mind too that these reviews were written specifically for the company to help promote it's releases).

ADVENTURES OF BUSTY BROWN
1964/USA/B&W/Directed by Barry Mahon

Another two-day wonder from the mind of producer-director Barry Mahon, The Adventures of Busty Brown is a sleazy slice of sex noir starring the lovely Laurie Dane as the titular character, a svelte private eye hired by an Asian importer to locate his young daughter, Lotus Lee, who’s been kidnapped by feared local gangster Limey, and forced to dance topless at his seamy nightclub in an attempt to blackmail the rich old man into handing over half of his business operations.

Fronting up at Limey’s club, it doesn’t take long for Miss Busty to land a dancing gig at $150 per week, and she’s soon wowing the patrons with her wild go-go routines (which she performs in white boots and to the accompaniment of a bad guitar pop band). Meanwhile, Lotus Lee is being held at a nearby seaside motel -- where Limey puts his girls “who can’t dance” to other kinds of work -- and is threatened by both Limey’s henchmen (“I just want to find out if what they say about Chinese girls is true!”) and the head honcho himself. (“They don’t even have enough guts to rape me,” Lotus spits out to Limey about his kidnapper thugs.)

Ensconced at the same motel, Busty creeps into Lotus’ room and explains that she has been hired by her daddy to rescue her. “I’ll do anything you say,” Lotus meekly replies as Mahon throws in a little mild lesbianism by having the two girls sleep together. Meanwhile, some goons from a rival underworld gang raid the motel and try to make off with some of Limey’s working girls, but are quickly overpowered and held captive in the room while Limey’s gals cavort and indulge in various acts of erotic shenanigans.

At dawn the next day, Busty and Lotus sense the opportunity to escape, and take off on two horses conveniently left standing around outside the motel. With Limey in hot pursuit, the exciting chase comes to an abrupt conclusion at the edge of a cliff where Busty gains the upper hand by spraying Limey in the face with a gas-shooting pen gun....

With a soundtrack full of cool nightclub lounge tracks and clichéd oriental gongs, The Adventures of Busty Brown showcases Mahon’s economical creativity at its grimiest, while exhibiting all the hokiness of a typical Get Smart episode. Except, of course, that this comes complete with bare tits.

AFTER THE BALL WAS OVER
1969/USA/B&W/Produced by Distribpix

This bizarre sixties shocker utilizes a storyline which frequently popped up in those classic 1950’s EC crime comics such as Crime SuspenStories and Shock SuspenStories: namely, the greedy husband who tries to drive his wife insane to get his mits on her fortune. Of course, the big difference here is that the EC comics never displayed this much hot, naked female flesh.

Pretty Evelyn Lloyd (Suzzane Landau of The Three Sexateers and Four on the Floor) is a well-off wife whose husband, Richard (Neal Taylor) has been acting very strange of late. He invites young couple over to their pad and openly invites them to have their way with his confused wife. At one such get-together, a strange stag flick is screened. As Richard’s buddy, Kenneth, paws at Evelyn, she finds herself getting turned on despite her disgust: “I did hate it, but I didn’t want him to stop!”

From here on, things get weird. Her chauffeur (who looks a lot like legendary – and shamed - music producer Phil Spector) appears out of nowhere to snap lewd pictures of her, and a visit to a phony shrink results in her being given hallucinogenic sleeping pills. Of course, all this is part of Robert’s plot to drive Evelyn into an asylum so he can take over the family business.

After a couple of drug-soaked sexcapades, a stoned Evelyn is chased around the apartment by goons wearing a variety of rubber monster masks (photographed by lots of great, twisted camera angles and distorted lenses). She races into the bathroom only to see a body rise from the bathtub and reach out for her (in a scene reminiscent of the French classic Diabolique). This is too much for Evelyn who promptly collapses. But just when Robert thinks he’s done with his wife, she turns the tables with a rude surprise for him...

After the Ball Was Over is definitely a strange brew. Produced by New York’s Distribpix (with no director credited), it reminds one of Doris Wishman’s black & white roughies, particularly since it seems to have been shot without sound or dialogue. The only talking we hear is a voice-over conversation between Evelyn and her lawyer. Some of the dialogue reads like a tacky old adult paperback (“His hands and tongue were never still!”), and the great musical track is quite experimental at times.

With his black rimmed glasses and thinning hair combed unruly to one side, Neal Taylor, who plays Robert, looks like a beefed up Woody Allen. I just can’t help wondering why he went to so much complex trouble to get a hold of Evelyn’s money. Whatever happened to the good old days of 1940’s film noir when the gold-digging husband simply shot the wife dead?

ALL AROUND SERVICE
1974/Germany/Colour/Directed by Jonnig Wyder

A German sex comedy in a similar vein to the popular English Confessions of... series of films, All Around Service sets out to amply demonstrate that whatever the British can do, the Germans can do a whole lot dirtier!

Frank is one-half of "Frank & Fred’s All Around Service," a two-man maintenance company who take care of the needs of a large apartment complex. Naturally, they also take care of the needs of the frustrated housewives who dwell within that complex. Of late, however, Frank has become more of a one-man band since Fred has spent the past year in the company of a rich socialite named Vicki... who obviously likes her men lanky, draped in bad leisure suits, and sporting very dodgy beards.

"Normal people screw at night," Frank’s girlfriend Nana tells him after an early morning romp in his caravan. Thoroughly shagged out (literally) from his job, Frank is relieved when Fred finally returns to the fold after Vicki gives him the boot on their first anniversary! A young gay kid whom Frank had to hire to help out gladly takes a hike to make way for Fred’s return - the kid’s sexual proclivities provide the source of much juvenile amusement between the two - and it isn’t long before Frank and Fred are back on the job. Without a place to stay, however, Fred ends up sharing the caravan bed with Frank! (And they were the ones making fun of Frank’s gay assistant?!!) What follows is a string of sexual misadventures within the apartment complex, highlighted by a scene in which a woman feels-up and straddles her hubby who’s sitting on a sofa focused intently at a televised soccer match.

In a strange turn of events which the screenplay never really explains, Vicki (Fred’s ex) teams up with Nana (Frank’s current) in an attempt to put an end to Frank and Fred’s swingin’ ways. They type up a letter detailing the pair’s daytime adventures and distribute it to all the husbands in the complex. Vicki then arranges for the guys to get a maintenance job at another complex, one supposedly inhabited only by old people and single men but - oops! - turns out to be yet another breeding ground for tender young flesh!

The boys’ troubles haven’t stopped however, as a group of angry husbands from their former complex hatch a plan to pounce on the couple and teach them a lesson. More specifically, they intend to teach their overactive private porn a lesson. Luckily for the two studs, one of the housewives - a large woman who could easily pass for Divine’s stunt double - gets wind of the plan, manages to thwart the attack, and ends up wrestling her big bald husband outside Frank’s caravan....

Filled with a typically funky soundtrack, the sex scenes in All Around Service are somewhat raunchier and more explicit than those found in similar Euro softcore features of the day. It also demonstrates once again that the term ‘German comedy’ is indeed something of an oxymoron.

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO
1961/USA/B&W/Directed by Brooke L Peters

This compact, no-budget teen crime flick is an interesting curio as it represents one of the last JD films to retain that classic fifties feel before the ideals, fashions, and music of the sixties changed everything.

After an alleyway bottle fight leaves him with a scar down the side of his face, Chet (Darrell Howe), a brooding, troubled young man whose older brother, Duke has just hours to live on death row, sets out to exact revenge on those who sent him to the gas chamber. Unfortunately, Chet's sister Patty (The Tingler's lovely Pamela Lincoln) is dating clean-cut Mickey (Ronnie Burns, son of George and Gracie), whose father was the prime witness at Duke's trial.

Embarking on a campaign of terror, Chet and his gang don Elephant Man-style hoods and savagely beat up the son of the local D.A. After next giving his trampy girlfriend a little goodbye 'action' when she tries to give him the heave-ho, Chet then burns down the house of Judge Brennan during a rather posh party. Understandably worried that her brother is rapidly losing it, Patty sends Mickey to Chet's shack to talk some sense into him. The resultant confrontation quickly turns violent with Mickey self defensively stabbing one of Chet's cohorts in the stomach. Rather than helping his wounded friend, Chet pushes the knife in deeper (a surprisingly galvanizing scene) in order to frame Mickey for murder...

Starkly filmed in glorious black & white, Anatomy of a Psycho's opening scenes are quite foreboding, and convey the pulpy sensibilities that made all those great Confidential-style magazines so easily digestible. Director Brooke L Peters (who also helmed the Ed Wood-scripted Shotgun Wedding in 1963 under his real name, Boris Petroff) manages to bring a few nice creative touches, such as a close-up of Chet's somber face superimposed over footage of his brother being led to the gas chamber. An a nice little buildup of tension is created when two boys start bouncing a ball against the side of a car inside of which hides Chet, waiting for his victim to approach.

As Chet's doomed friend Moe, co-screenwriter Larry Lee gives himself the grooviest lines of dialogue ("I don't like the heat waltzing into my pad!"), and sharp eared viewers may recognize the same stock music from Plan 9 from Outer Space which is played over the early alleyway fight scenes!

Anatomy of a Psycho is an essential JD purchase.

ANN AND EVE
1970/Sweden/Colour/Directed by Anne Mattson

A delightfully lurid piece of Euro art/trash, Ann and Eve is one of those films which helped convince any hormone-crazed teenage boy that Sweden was a country completely overrun by insatiable sex addicts.

"No man has ever satisfied me," middle-aged Ann (Gio Petre, resembling at times a more hardened Honor Blackman) announces to her younger and far more naive friend Eve (Marie Liljedahl, star of Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults and Jess Franco's incredible Eugenie). Moments after a surreal opening sequence in which Ann fantasizes that she guns down a man in a tent...or, perhaps, really does kill the poor bastard. Faced with making a choice between nymphomania and lesbianism, Ann seems to have decided on a bit--or, rather, a lot -- of both, becoming along the way "Sweden's most hated journalist!"

With Eve's marriage just around the corner, Ann decides to take her friend on a holiday to Yugoslavia, all the while encouraging Eve to "experience something unusual," and subjecting her (and the audience) to a number of tirades on the ugliness and futility of matrimony, love, and happiness. Initially scornful of Ann's views, Eve is eventually worn down and, after a brief fling with a married sailor, embarks on a series of torrid one-niters which trigger doubts about her previously rock-solid belief that her soon-to-be-husband Peter is her one true love: "Now that I've done it, I want to do it again!"

At this point, Ann and Eve begins a headlong descent into truly bizarre David Lynch-style territory, as Eve is seduced by a chubby female opera singer, is placed on an altar and fondled by several women at once while a midget accompanies the action on piano(!). and is gang raped by a bunch of gritty labourers on the back of a dirty flatbed truck--after the men play a game of cards to see who gets her first! There is also a strange little interlude where Ann attends a film premiere with the entire sequence played as a film-within-a-film (complete with credits).

Finally, after sharing a brooding handyman with Ann, Eve realizes how disgusted she has become with herself and her debauched behaviour ("You're vile!" she scowls to her reflection), and the film ends on a rather sudden and perplexing note as Ann receives a telegram revealing some startling and grim news about her former lover ("The best I ever had")...

From the vaults of Harry Novak, and filled to the brim with sixties Euro fashions, sports cars, and futuristic architecture -- as well as highlighting the combined talents of the female leads from Inga (Miss Liljedahl) and I, A Woman Part II (Miss Petre) -- Ann and Eve ends up being the cinematic equivalent of all those naughty magazines we all used to keep safely hidden under the mattress as a kid...

Reviews Copyright John Harrison

SERIAL COLLECTORS

2009-08-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

True Crime Memorabilia:
Preserving Dark History, or Celebrating Madness?

As instinctual, curious human beings, it is in our nature to be fascinated by extreme acts of human aggression and deprivation….it’s what makes us devour newspaper stories and huddle around the water cooler at work, speaking in shocked and hushed tones whenever a new act of human deviance is uncovered for the masses to try and comprehend and digest. And no one really seems to question the motives of someone who merely reads true crime books, or watches the rash of crime documentaries and reality shows which flood our television screens

Why is it then that many of these same people look down with horror and disgust at someone who takes their interest in true crime that one step further by collecting memorabilia and artefacts relating to their favourite cases and/or criminals? Is it because the thought of true crime collectables conjures up misguided images of sick and disturbed kids sitting around trading serial killer cards the way we once swapped football player cards?

“I’ll trade you two Dahmer’s for a Manson.”

While true crime cases have been the occasional subject of mass-market paperbacks since the early 1950s, it wasn’t until the Tate-La Bianca murders, perpetrated by Charles Manson’s followers in 1969, that the modern crime collectibles genre was born and became a big financial commodity. The extreme violence of the crimes, the involvement of a Hollywood starlet, the fact that the killers were members of society’s so-called ‘peace and love’ movement, and the enigmatic magnetism of Manson himself, all helped to galvanise the public, and publishers were quick to cash in on the case, rushing an avalanche of titles into print, all of which purported to tell the ‘true, full story’ behind the murders. The early wave of Manson books would range from the engrossing and revealing (prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, John Gilmore’s The Garbage People and Ed Sanders’ The Family) to the bizarre and ridiculous (Reflections on the Manson Trial by Rosemary Baer and Ray Stanley’s fictionalized 1970 paperback The Hippy Cult Murders).

Magazine editors also clamoured over each other to cash in on the case, with publications such as Life and Rolling Stone running cover features on Manson, and trashy tabloids and detective rags covered the more salacious aspects of the killings and subsequent trial (as perfectly demonstrated in the August 1971 issue of Uncensored, whose cover screamed: ‘Sex Capers of the Manson Jury!’ ).

Exploitation film producers also began to realise that dollars could be made from the public’s fascination with true crime during this period, and the early 1970s saw a number of sleazy, violent (and again, highly fantasised) low-budget movies emerge, devoted not only to Manson (1970’s The Helter Skelter Murders, 1971’s The Love Thrill Murders with former teen idol Troy Donahue in the Manson-like role of Moon, and Kentucky Jones’ rare The Manson Massacre from 1972), but other high profile cases that had the public fascinated (and living in fear) at the time (such as the The Zodiac Killer from 1971, about the still-unsolved series of shootings in San Francisco which would also inspire the first classic Dirty Harry film).

The seeds of true crime’s prominence in pop culture had been well and truly sown, although it would be almost twenty years before the crops would sprout into some strange and very bizarre directions.

Murderabilia

It was Andrew Kahan, Director of the Mayor’s Office in Huston, who is said to have first coined the term ‘murderabilia’, used to describe the new wave of true crime collectibles which began to hit the market in abundance in the early 1990s. For a while, it even became fashionable amongst some of Hollywood’s elite young actors to be in possession of serial killer artefacts (Johnny Depp at one point had a huge collection of original John Wayne Gacy art, but later sold it when he garnered negative criticism for it).

Modern true crime memorabilia invariably does focus on that produced in connection with infamous serial or ‘spree’ killers – those crimes which always fascinate and terrify us the most, due in no small part to the often complete randomness of the acts. A rundown of some of the more controversial true crime collectables would include:

Original Art

The most contentious of true crime memorabilia, original artwork by convicted serial killers also brings in huge sums of money because of their uniqueness (although the artists themselves are unable to profit from any of their work due to the ‘Son of Sam’ law).

Among the most popular – and accomplished – serial killer art are the works painted by notorious Chicago boy killer John Wayne Gacy, who managed to sell over $100,00 worth of his original painting before he was executed by lethal injection (which naturally saw the value of his art increase even more). Gacy’s colourful, surreal and often disturbing portraits encompassed subjects such as Snow White’s seven dwarfs, other notorious killers and even self-portraits of himself in his Pogo the Clown persona, which he would often don to entertain sick children in hospital wards (wouldn’t that be a story to pass on to your grandkids – being a sick child and laughing at the antics of one of the world’s most perverted killers).

In other solitary confinement and death row prison cells across the United States, Charles Manson makes bizarre puppets out of socks and any other material he can get his hands on, Lawrence Bittaker (who tortured and killed teenaged girls in the back of his ‘Murder Mac’ van during the late 1970s) makes unique ‘pop-up’ greeting cards, Hong Kong born Charles Ng (who with his partner Leonard Lake tortured at least a dozen people to death) makes and sells origami, while Night Stalker Richard Ramirez entertains himself and his legion of (mostly female) followers by doing crude drawings of devils, stabbings and dismemberment.

Personal Effects

Incarcerated killers without an artistic streak can still satisfy the demands of their collectors by offering up anything from swatches of clothes to nail clippings and locks of hair (as does Sunset Strip killer Douglas Clark). Nothing proves your loyalty as a fan more than owning an actual piece of your favourite serial killer.

Letters and Autographs

Correspondence is one of the favourite pastimes of the long term incarcerated, a means to pass the hours of boredom and maintain some social contact with the outside world, making letters, envelopes and other hand written material a relatively easy and affordable item to acquire (at least until the convicted is executed). There’s also something personal and an element of uniqueness in collecting correspondence, which can often reveal an insight into the author’s reasoning and state of mind.

T-Shirts

Axl Rose transformed the Manson themed ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ t-shirt into a controversial fashion item by wearing it onstage at Guns ‘n’ Roses concerts in the early 1990s, when the thought of wearing a shirt emblazoned with the image of a mass killer would have been considered taboo. Now, companies such as Rotten Cotton proudly hawk their lines of serial killer t-shirts at comic book conventions, offering up fine cotton wear bearing the likes of Aileen Wournos, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jim Jones, O. J. Simpson and just about any other sociopath with anything resembling a cult following.

Comic Books

The Manson killings occurred at just the right time to be taken notice of by the burgeoning underground comics scene (headed by names like Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez and Gilbert Sheldon).

One of the first and most compelling appearances of Manson in comic book form was in the 1971 one-shot The Legion of Charlies, published by Last Gasp. Written by Tom Veitch, and featuring the artwork of the late Greg Irons, the book begins with a four page prologue in which the Manson killings are compared to the horrific My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March of 1969 (in which US Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr. was found guilty of the premeditated murder of at least 22 South Vietnamese civilians).

More recently, the early-1990s say a resurgence of independent comic books which focused on unique topics, including rock and porn star biographies. Comic Zone, a New Jersey based publisher, debuted their Psycho Killers title in December 1991, with the first issue devoted to Manson. Drawn by Stan Timmons and Blackie Neilson, from a Jack Herman script, the comic is presented in a very chaotic format, and does have a certain hallucinogenic feel to it, particularly in the sequences which illustrate the Family‘s life out in Death Valley.

The black & white artwork is generally sketchy, dark and abstract, with occasional photo images inserted into the panels for effect (the cover also consists of a number of photographs, assembled into a collage and tinted with green, pink and yellow, presumably for psychedelic effect).

Subsequent issues of Psycho Killers were devoted to Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, The Moors Murders and others.

One highly recommended true crime comic is My Friend Dahmer: A True Story by Derf, a disturbing and at times even poignant one-shot underground comic book, written and illustrated in 2002 by John Backderf, who recounts his experiences as a high school classmate (and superficial friend) of Dahmer's during the late-1970s.

Action Figures

Spectre Studios are an online company based in Denver, Colorado who specialize in creating hand painted action figures of some of the world’s most notorious criminals and serial killers, including Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy (in his Pogo the Clown costume) and of course, Charles Manson, who is available in two versions - the long haired messiah and the shaven head prisoner with the swastika forehead.

Approximately six inches in height, the figures are packaged like most mainstream action figures on traditional backing cards with bubble plastic, but while novel they are not especially well-crafted (with the exception of the Gacy/Pogo figure), and with a price tag of US $40.00 each, make for a pretty expensive curio (sculptor David Johnson, who started the line when a friend commissioned him to produce a Ted Bundy figure, was auctioning his figures for as much as US $130.00 on the online auction site eBay, before they began to place restrictions on the selling of items which they felt glamorized violence and crime).

Naturally, this article only touches the tip of the iceberg (or should that be stiletto knife?) as far as true crime collectables go. Is it all in dubious taste? Probably. But time has a habit of changing society’s perception. People visit London’s infamous Black Museum and extol the virtues of preserving those dark instruments and mementos of murder from the 1800s. So too will future anthropologists come to appreciate – and learn from – the modern day artifacts inspired by the madness within man.

(Note: Top portrait of Charles Manson drawn by Melbourne artist Matthew Dunn - http://www.matthewdunnartist.blogspot.com)

OLD MELBOURNE GAOL

2009-06-23T03:08:00.000-07:00

Me behind iron doors during a night time 'ghost tour' of the Old Melbourne Gaol (hanging place of Ned Kelly), June 19, 2009.

http://www.oldmelbournegaol.com.au

NEW WRITING

2009-06-23T02:53:00.000-07:00

Issue 8 of the cool retro mens' digest magazine Bachelor Pad has just hit the streets, featuring my piece on vintage Las Vegas, as based on my memories of my first visits to that once sinful and alluring town as a kid in 1980 and 1981.

Check out the magazine's website at:
http://www.bachelorpadmagazineonline.com/

SPOOKY SPROCKETS:

2009-05-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

COLLECTING VINTAGE 8mm HORROR DIGEST FILMS

Prior to the home video revolution of the early-1980s, movie buffs were rather limited in the access they had to their favourite films. They either had to catch them at the cinema at the time of their release, or wait until they eventually showed up on television. The only real avenue which people had to enjoy films of their choosing (and at a time of their choosing) in the comfort of their own living room, was via 8mm film, a format that had been popularised in the 1950s when, thanks to its relative affordability and the fact that it was much less bulky than 16mm, home movie cameras became a common site at everything from backyard barbeques to family vacations and major sports events. With projectors and roll-up screens being a required part of the whole technical process of being able to view home shot films, it seemed a logical extension that 8mm prints of commercially produced films were made available for family lounge room viewing.

Of course, most commercially available 8mm produced between the 1950s to 1970s were merely digest releases, usually containing between 10 to 20 minute highlights from a particular film, depending on the length of the reel (200 and 400 foot reels were by far the most popular formats). While it was a different experience from watching the whole film, the great bonus about this truncated format was that, if properly edited, they condensed all of the most exciting moments from your favourite films into a fast paced thrill-ride. Most titles were released in both the Super and Standard 8mm formats and in a variety of versions (colour/B&W/sound/silent).

Horror movies in particular proved to be very popular with home cinema enthusiasts, and today that genre remains a favourite of those who collect these now-antiquated pieces of 8mm nostalgia. Universal Studios had great success with their home movie division, Castle Films, who released digest versions of all their classic horror hits, both past (Frankenstein, The Mummy, Dracula, The Invisible Man, etc) and then-recent (Psycho, Tarantula,The Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequels). Aside from the sheer quality of their productions, Castle Films distinguished themselves by their beautiful and dramatic box art, as well as the impressive editing jobs performed on their films. The company continued to thrive even into the late- 1970s, releasing 400’ editions of It Came from Outer Space and The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the 3D process, which included pairs of stereoscope glasses with which to view the films. Castle also seemed to cover every potential customer’s pocketbook, offering many of their films in 50’, 200’ and 400’ editions, as well as in both silent and the more expensive sound formats.

With the success of Castle Films, other studios such as United Artists, Columbia and 20th Century Fox set up their own 8mm sales divisions, while independent companies like United Arista and the prolific (and highly collected) Ken Films licensed films from the studios for home distribution. In the UK, Derann and Walton Films kept the creature feature flag flying, releasing a slew of gothic terror classics from England’s famed Hammer Studios. Some distributors, like Americom, compensated for people who didn’t have sound projectors by releasing several of their films (such as The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula) with accompanying floppy disc records containing narration and sound effects, which you could play along on your record player while watching the movie.

Today, vintage 8mm horror film releases are popular genre collectables, and are an important artefact of the explosion in popularity which anything remotely related to monster movies enjoyed in the mid-1960s. Most people collect them today because they look great propped up on display next to their old Aurora monster model kits and early issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (from whose pages most of these 8mm digests were sold via the publication’s vast mail-order catalogue). However, there remains plenty of enthusiasts out there who still actually screen these films, both for themselves and their family or friends who are huddled around the lounge in darkness, or for strangers sitting in clubs and exotic cocktail bars, where retrospective screenings of 8mm films are held and enjoyed by patrons who are eager to recreate the fun and atmosphere of a simpler and more innocent time.

Fortunately, it is still quite easy, and relatively inexpensive, for the novice to start building a collection of 8mm horror film digests (or any other genre, for that matter). Considered a long obsolete format, most 8mm digests can be found at memorabilia fairs, backyard sales and on online auction sites for very modest amounts. Most sell for between 5 – 10 pounds, although as with anything there are exceptions (a Ken Films print of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and a still-sealed 200’ silent reel of Castle’s The Deadly Mantis recently fetched over US $30 each at online auction), and it’s always easy to see prices soar if you get caught up in a bidding war over a particular item. Condition naturally plays a big part in desirability and value – those who collect these films with the intent to screen them are obviously more concerned with the quality of the film itself (and sound prints are more highly prized than the subtitled silent ones), while the person who collects them primarily to put on display is attracted more by the condition of the packaging and the box than any wear and tear the film print may have suffered. Original sales catalogues, insert pamphlets, store display racks and other promotional material are also sought out by some collectors looking to enhance their display.

Now, excuse me while I pop some corn and fire up the old Royal Sound 8mm projector which I have set up on my tiki bar…I have a newly acquired print of Bert I Gordon’s The Spider that I want to check out.

CREEPY IMAGES

2009-05-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

A new publication from Germany, Creepy Images is a cool A5 (digest) magazine devoted to 'Horror and Exploitation Movie Memorabilia'. Printed on quality, glossy paper that befits its subject matter, the debut issue of Creepy Images features nice reproductions of the German lobby card set for Joe D'Amato's Anthropophagus, the French lobbies and posters for Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Italian cards and posters for Shock Waves and more. With heavy emphasis on the visuals, Creepy Images is light on text but makes a great reference work for collectors. Hopefully the magazine will find a big enough audience amongst fans to warrant further issues.

For further details and ordering info visit the Creepy Images website at: www.creepy-images.com

BLIMEY! THE HAMMER STUDIO COMEDIES

2009-05-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

By 1970, England’s Hammer Studios, who had established their reputation during the late 1950s and 60s as the undisputed kings of gothic, colour saturated horror cinema, had begun to fall on hard times. Finding it increasingly hard to compete with the emergence of the new wave of independent American horror, which upped the ante with flicks like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Hammer tried to stay relevant (and commercially viable) by introducing a stronger mix of violence and sex in their films, particularly their female-led ‘Karnetsin’ vampire trilogy: The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (also released in ’71). While these films still managed to find an audience, and today are rightfully regarded as cult classics of a kind, the rich atmosphere and unique class which Hammer had so beautifully generated in films like Horror of Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and The Curse of the Werewolf (1960) had all but evaporated, and the writing seemed to be on the wall for the company.

In 1959, Hammer adapted the popular Granada TV series The Army Game into a feature film, retitling it I Only Arsked, and featuring future Carry On movie regulars Bernard Bresslaw and Charles Hawtry amongst its cast. The success of I Only Arsked (which took its title from a phrase which Bresslaw often used on the series) may have been a deciding factor in prompting Hammer to try and boost their coffers by adapting another popular television comedy into a feature.

When On the Buses debuted on TV in 1969, it was an instant success, both in England and in a number of countries abroad, especially Australia. Set in the disorganized Luxton & District bus terminal, the show starred Reg Varney as bus driver Stan Butler, who together with his leering conductor Jack Harper (Bob Grant) spent as much time chasing the ‘clippies’ (female bus conductors) as they did on their bus route. Constantly trying to keep them in line was their ever frustrated, Gestapo-like Inspector ‘Blakey’ (Stephen Lewis), whose catchcry of “I’ll get you, Butler” became one of British television’s most enduring phrases. Subplots in the series were usually provided by Stan’s dysfunctional, constantly bickering family – mum (Doris Hare in most episodes), sister Olive (Anna Karen) and his brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins).

Hammer’s 1971 film version of On the Buses was directed by Harry Booth, from a screenplay by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney. The plot has the bus company branching out to employ women drivers, something which doesn’t make Stan and union boss Jack very happy, as it threatens to reduce their overtime. One of the subplots has the bumbling Olive taking a job at the bus terminal canteen, then losing it when she falls pregnant to Arthur. There’s also time for plenty of girl chasing, and fans of cult horror director Pete Walker will get a kick out of seeing Ivor Salter (the lorry driver in House of Whipcord) bob up as a policeman. The inclusion of a cheesy but snappy theme song ("Oh, it’s a great life on the buses” ), performed by one Quince Harmon, helps make On the Buses an enjoyable slice of grimy UK working class comedy.

Shot at the EMI-MGM Studios, as well as in the surrounding streets of Borehamwood, On the Buses proved to be a huge hit for Hammer, with the UK gross even surpassing that of the then-current James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever. An inevitable sequel was soon put into motion, and Hammer set up a competition for the readers of the The Sun newspaper to come up with an appropriate title. The aptly-named Bob Butler (a real life bus driver) won the thousand pound first prize with his title Mutiny on the Buses, which was released in 1972 and once again directed by Harry Booth from a Ronald Wolf and Ronald Chesney screenplay (Wolfe and Chesney had also created the television series). Mutiny saw the Luxton bus company expanding their services to include a tour of the Windsor Safari Park (an idea that quickly ends in disaster after Butler and Blakey conduct a test run of the tour), while Arthur becomes a bus driver after getting retrenched from his job with British Rail.

The third and final entry in Hammer’s Buses films, Holiday on the Buses, appeared in 1973, and was something of a step-up from the rather bland Mutiny. While Wolfe and Chesney once again scripted, director Bryan Izzard (a veteran of 17 episodes of the television series) was brought in to give the story and characters a more familiar feel, along with a boost of energy. Holiday sees Butler, Jack and Blakey all getting the chop from the bus company, only to resurface at a tacky Pontin’s holiday resort, where Blakey has taken a job as head of security, while Stan and Jack conducts bus tours of the area for the holidayers. As in the first two films, Stan seems to do all the work chatting up one of the lovely young birds, only to have his good mate Jack pounce on her behind his back. What a friend! (As Jack himself explains it to Stan: “I don’t know what you’re so worked up about, mate. It’s only a bit of crumpet…There’s plenty more of that about” ). Bob Grant’s hair has turned almost silver in this movie, and Stan’s family, more white trash than ever, turn up looking for a cheap vacation (which gets off to a not so wonderful start when most of their clothes end up in a dirty river before they’ve even reached their destination). Guest stars included Wifred Branbell (Steptoe & Son) as an old lech who hits on Stan’s mum, and Kate Williams (Eddie Booth’s wife in Love thy Neighbour) plays a nurse at the holiday resort who, for some strange reason is attracted to Blakey (but also can’t resist the charms of Jack).

Shortly after the release of Holiday, Reg Varney left the television series. Although the show struggled on briefly without him, Hammer wisely decided against making any further On the Buses films.

But the studio was far from done with their television adaptations. Apart from Holiday on the Buses, 1973 also saw the release of a Love Thy Neighbour feature, which brought together all the regulars from the series (which had debuted in 1972). Produced by Hammer vet Roy Skeggs and scripted by the show’s creators, Vince Powell and Harry Driver, the film was directed in a rather flat and lacklustre fashion by John Robins. Cantering around a local ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ competition, the Love Thy Neighbour film recycled many of the same racial jokes and gags from the series, with the only real new angle being the introduction of Eddie Booth’s mother, who comes to visit and ends up going out with Bill’s father.

In the following twelve months, four more Hammer TV adaptations were released: That’s Your Funeral, Man at the Top and Nearest & Dearest all appeared in 1973, while their version of Man About the House followed in 1974. I don’t recall ever seeing any of these films at any point, so I’m not entirely sure about the quality of them, although I imagine for the most part they would be pretty dire and dated, but as a sucker for almost any early seventies UK working class comedies, I'd certainly be keen to pick them up should they ever surface on disc locally.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

Above: CD compilation of music from Hammer's comedy films, released in the late 1990s.

Oh! It's a great life on the buses,

there's nothing like it, you'll agree.

Take a ride on the buses,

because there's plenty you can see.

Oh! It's a great life on the buses,

there is no better place to meet.

So why not look around you,

no need to leave your seat.

Oh! It's agreat life on the buses,

no matter what the time of day.

You can see the world up on the buses,

were on our way.

There's so much feeling on the buses,

as people fumble for their fare.

It always happens in the cruches,

they take there chance while it's there.

It's so exciting on the buses,

when some one is fumbling next to you.

And when the traffic jams in rushes,

there's little else to do.

There's always gay life on the buses,

make sure you leave your bird at home.

You'll see so many on the buses,

you won't be sitting on your own.

It's so romantic on the buses,

you'll find it thrilling when you ride.

And you can get it on the buses,

upstairs or down inside.

Oh! It's a great life on the buses,

no matter what the time of day.

You'll see the world on the buses,

were on our way.

Music by Geoff Unwin.

Lyrics by Roger Ferris.

Sung by Quince Harmon

THE GOLDEN AGE OF BURLESQUE CINEMA

2009-05-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

Some people might be surprised to discover that during the height of its 1950s popularity, the art of burlesque thrived not only on the stage but on the screen as well.

Of course, even those with just a passing interest in burlesque are aware of such films as Striporama (1953), Varietease (1954) and Teaserama (1955), all of which attained a new level of notoriety in the early-1990s, thanks to the appearances in them by Bettie Page, whom at that stage had been rediscovered and established as the defining cheesecake pin-up of her generation. Some people may even be aware of mainstream films which flirted with the art, such as the 1943 Barbara Stanwyck B-picture Lady of Burlesque. However, the burlesque film genre runs surprisingly much deeper than these few titles.

While traditional burlesque as a live performance art has been around for over one hundred years, its cinematic popularity peaked in the in the first half of the fifties. Spurred on by a slight relaxing in film censorship laws, as well as the huge influx of young GIs who had returned from combat in Europe and the Pacific – where they had no doubt been exposed to forms of entertainment more risqué than what they had been used to seeing at home – the burlesque film genre began to appear more and more often, usually screening in small, low-rent cinemas that catered to exploitation films, as well as in men’s clubs and even as warm-up entertainment for live girlie shows themselves.

Extremely simplistic in their production, most burlesque films from this period were little more than live shows captured on celluloid, an economic move on behalf of the filmmakers which fifty years later makes them authentic (and important) time capsules of their era, as they often included not only the dancing and stripteaser girls, but the ‘comedy’ and variety acts that were used to pad out the shows and keep the audience entertained while the gals backstage changed costumes and got ready to take the stage once again. Apart from the aforementioned Bettie Page, other notable performers who appeared in vintage burlesque films include Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm and Blaze Starr.

One of the most popular types of burlesque film were those which focused on the naughty nightlife of a particular (and usually exotic) city. The notorious George Weiss (Glen or Glenda) was one exploitation producer who favoured this style of film, putting together a string of ‘After Midnight’ titles in the early-fifties, including Paris After Midnight (1951), Bagdad After Midnight (1954) and Tijuana After Midnight (also 1954). Other similar titles in this genre include Burlesque in Harlem (1950), Burlesque in Hawaii (1953), Naughty New York (1959) and 1964’s Naughty Dallas (directed by schlockmeister Larry Buchanan of Mars Needs Women fame and filmed inside Jack Ruby’s nightclub).

Occasionally, some burlesque films would try to incorporate some semblance of a plot into them. In Joseph P. Mawra’s The Peek Snatchers (1965), a small TV-like device discovered by two perverts allows them to tune in and watch dancing girls perform on stages all over the world, while Striptease Murder Case (1950) injects some cheesy whodunit elements into its proceedings (with predictably ludicrous results).

Apart from features, burlesque shorts were also a popular form of entertainment amongst hot blooded men during the 1950s. These were usually shot on 8mm and presented as ‘loops’ in peep machines, or sold through the pages of men’s magazines for home viewing (they would become particularly popular at stag parties).

As nudie-cutie and sexploitation films became more popular – and risqué - in the early 1960s (thanks to filmmakers such as Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman and Herschell Gordon Lewis), the burlesque genre eventually withered and died, only to live again decades later, thanks to the home video and DVD revolutions.

Sources:
Many of the films mentioned in this article – as well as many others – are available on VHS and DVD from Something Weird Video (www.somethingweird.com), while original 8mm burlesque shorts often turn up for sale/auction on eBay, at varying prices (depending on quality, rarity and featured performer).

John Harrison 2009

ANN BANNON: QUEEN OF LESBIAN PULP FICTION

2009-04-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

Story & Interview by John Harrison

Ann Bannon is without doubt the best-known and most respected of the vintage lesbian pulp authors. Born Ann Welby in 1932, Ann Bannon was raised in Joliet, Illinois. Introduced to the works of Ann Aldrich (writing as Vin Packer) and Radclyffe Hall while still in college, Bannon used these writers as her inspiration and - integrating observations which she had made about her two college roommates - authored her first novel, Odd Girl Out (1957). Having married after graduation, Ann’s husband forbade her from using his surname on her writing, leading her to choose the pen name of Bannon. After giving birth to two daughters, Bannon earned her Ph.D in linguistics at Stanford, before divorcing and moving to California, where between 1959 and 1962 she wrote her next five (and best remembered) novels.

Unlike the tackier lesbian themed paperbacks which were being ground out to satiate a mostly male audience, Bannon’s novels are regarded as an accurate and insightful depiction of lesbian life during this period of social and sexual repression (although the cover art and photographs designed by the publishers made no attempt to illustrate this fact). Carrying the lives of her major characters over from one novel to the next, Bannon created fully-developed and refined characters, who exist within plausible story lines.

Of Bannon’s lesbian works, Beebo Brinker is the best known, and is something of a prequel to her other works, establishing the popular character featured in her earlier books. Published by Gold Medal in 1962, it tells of Beebo at age eighteen, arriving in Greenwich Village fresh off the farm, her worldly possessions inside an old wicker suitcase, a worn old copy of the Guide to Greenwich Village clutched in her hand. Stuck firmly in the closet for the first third of the book’s narrative, before finally coming out to her gay roommate Jack. From there, Beebo quickly makes the transition from shy farm girl to dominating butch, falling into bed with Mona, then Paula, before finally getting snared by Venus, a glamorous film star.

Her final novel for Gold Medal, Beebo Brinker was originally issued with a cover painting which plainly illustrated the publisher and artist’s misconception of (or total disregard for) the content of the book. Conceived by Bannon as ’tall, strong, handsome and blue-jeaned ‘, she is presented on the cover (by Robert McGinnis) as a nerdy, private school girl type, standing under a sign subtlety marked ‘Gay Street’ (and in case we miss the point, another street sign above her head reads ‘One Way’. The cover blurb boldly proclaims:

Lost, Lonely, boyishly appealing - this is Beebo Brinker - who never really knew what she wanted, until she came to Greenwich Village and found the love that smoulders in the shadows of the twilight world.

In 1984, Bannon appeared in Robert Rosenberg’s documentary film Before Stonewall, which chronicled the history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. Two years later, her early paperbacks were re-issued by Naiad Press, a Florida based publisher who specialised in lesbian works. This time around, the covers used a very simplistic, blue silhouette design, which helped shift the emphasis away from the vicarious exterior and onto the content, earning Bannon her due recognition as a pioneer of lesbian fiction, and establishing Beebo Brinker as a gay icon of her times.

Ann Bannon: Selected Bibliography

Gold Medal:

Odd Girl Out (1957)
I Am A Woman (1959)
Women In The Shadows (1959)
Journey To A Woman (1959)
The Marriage (1960)
Beebo Brinker (1962)

INTERVIEW: ANN BANNON

Ann, can you tell me a little about your childhood and growing up in Joliet, Illinois? What sort of place was it at the time, and how do you think it influenced your later writings?

Actually, while I was born in Joliet, I grew up in Hinsdale, Illinois. It was small and beautiful, a suburb of Chicago that almost looks today like a museum of handsome old Victorian homes deployed on acres of emerald lawns. My family started out with substantial resources and ended up with almost nothing, so I experienced the town from a variety of perspectives, some of them painful. I always felt profoundly different from the other kids--and indeed, was--but found ways to look, talk, dress, and act like the rest. It was a survival strategy, which gave me a secure cover, but always made me feel like a spy among my age-mates.

How did you first approach Gold Medal with your idea for your first paperback? Was it a cold submission of a freelance manuscript, or did you sell them initially on a synopsis?

Luck was with me on this one. I should be able to tell you that I struggled for years and papered my bathroom walls with rejection slips. But in fact, I had initiated a correspondence with Marijane Meaker, who was writing lesbian pulps for Gold Medal Books at the time under the pen names of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich. Somehow, we hit it off in the correspondence. I was newly married, living in Philadelphia then, and when she learned I had a manuscript, Marijane invited me to New York to meet her editor at Gold Medal--Dick Carroll. I took with me an overwritten and overwrought manuscript about 650 pages long. Dick read it over a two- or three-day period, out of friendship for Marijane, I'm sure. He gave me good advice: "Cut the length in half, and focus on the two young women. That's your story." I was abashed, but went home and did as he said. It became Odd Girl Out, my first novel, and Gold Medal published it without changing a word. Talk about luck! Carroll told me he received 400 unsolicited manuscripts a month, and couldn't possibly do justice to them all.

Were you ever approached by any of the sleazier publishers to write lesbian books for them, or did you ever consider working within this field?

None of the sleaze folk ever came courting, probably because I was doing so well at Gold Medal and they just figured I couldn't be pried loose--which was in fact the case. I was always grateful to Dick Carroll, and to Knox Burger, who succeeded him, for taking good care of me and the Beebo Brinker Chronicles. And Of course I had no way of knowing back then that my books would develop a life of their own far into the future.

What was your opinion of the more lurid lesbian paperbacks? Did you ever read any of them, or did you make a concerted effort to distance yourself - and your own work - from them?

I thought some of them were kind of fun and intriguing--sort of a romp through as many bedrooms and sexual configurations as the readers' short memory span could endure. But there were many others that were dripping with misogyny and homophobia, and those I gave a wide berth. I never really tried to emulate either genre, since I always believed I was writing lesbian love stories, not sleaze per se.

Was there much editing/rewriting done on the manuscripts by the publisher? If so, were you given a final draft of the novel to approve prior to publication, or was it pretty much out of your hands once the completed work had been handed over?

After I submitted a completed draft, it would take a couple of months before I heard back from Gold Medal. But were they busy editing and rewriting? Mercifully, no. They did almost none of that. (Perhaps they should have!) Now and then they would scold me for trying to use a phrase like "shit list." It's one of the few they told me to change. When I balked, I discovered they had done it themselves, and it came out "black list." Those were the days of the post-Victorian era in publishing! We thought we were pretty cutting-edge, but we were still pretty bound by tradition and convention--in print, anyway.

After a couple of months, I would get the galley proofs in the mail, read through them for errors, and return them to Gold Medal. I think I made relatively few changes myself. I was usually into the next book when the preceding one was in production, so my imagination had already flown ahead to new ideas and events.

Ann, I understand that when you completed Odd Girl Out, your husband at the time forbade you from using his surname on the book, which led you to create the Bannon pseudonym. How did this make you feel? Did it have a big impact on your relationship, and was their any major factor which led to you choosing the name Bannon?

My husband at the time I was writing didn't so much forbid me to use his name as he expressed dismay at the possibility of seeing it splashed all over a semi-draped bosom on the cover of a pulp paperback novel. Despite a few chuckles at the prospect, I knew he meant it. But that was fine with me--I had no wish to be an embarrassment to his family or to my own. I was both afraid that what I was writing would never find an audience, and afraid that it would. I didn't want to fail, but I didn't want to become a pariah among family and friends for writing on such a controversial subject, either. And it was very difficult for me to judge my own work. Was it good enough to hold a readership? I honestly didn't know till Odd Girl Out was published and became a hit. By then, Of course, I had chosen the pen name of Ann Bannon. It actually came from a list of prospective clients my husband, then a salesman, had left lying on the desk one day. I liked it because it's Irish, like a lot of my family, and it encapsulates my own first name. (Whether my ex ever sold anything to the Bannon family, I never knew!)

Do you recall where you got the inspiration for the Beebo Brinker character? You introduced her in your early novels, before expanding upon her in her own book in 1962. Did you decide to write Beebo Brinker because of reader feedback, or was she your favourite character whom you wished to give a bigger picture of?

Beebo was floating around in my head for years before I ever dreamed of writing a book, much less a book about her. She was always big, assertive, handsome, self-confident, and BUTCH! And in my daydreams, she looked, as I've said elsewhere, like a cross between Ingrid Bergman in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Johnny Weismuller in his Tarzan drag. There were some qualities in some of the young women I knew--high school and college friends at that point--that Beebo shares. But no single individual quite lived up to all of the fantasies I projected onto the character. By the time I wrote her into her own book, Beebo Brinker, she had matured in my imagination, even while I was taking up the story line of her younger years. I did the book mainly because I wanted to tell that tale, but it wouldn't be fair not to acknowledge the interest that fans had shown in Beebo. In fact, that novel was the only one Gold Medal let me specify the title for, and they did it because they knew I had enough readers who would recognize the name.

In your forward to Strange Sisters, you tell a wonderful anecdote about the cover art for your novels, and the trepidation you would feel when unwrapping the package which contained copies of the published novel, dreading what kind of cover art they had dreamed up this time....

I got lucky here, too. Three of the books were adorned with photos, only one of which was really effective (I Am A Woman, with a sultry brunette gazing provocatively up at the reader). Mostly they were fairly innocuous. But Odd Girl Out shows Beth and Laura and the famous backrub scene. Actually, the original cover was redone when I complained that it looked so 1930s, no-one would be interested in it. I was wrong, fortunately, but Gold Medal got Barye Phillips, the artist, to rethink his first effort and redo it. The ladies come out looking much more Glamour Girl Fifties than Boarding School Thirties in the second version. When Beebo Brinker was in production, Gold Medal switched back to a painted cover. It was done by Robert McGinnis, who was a better artist, in my view, than Barye Phillips. But oh! what he did to Beebo is a crime. He obviously hadn't the faintest clue what to make of a lesbian hero, so he made her look like a Cosmo cover girl, with a trendy flip hairdo and makeup. But somebody must have told him (in a stage whisper, I presume), "She's a dyke!" So he put her in men's brogans. But as an afterthought, he added pink bobby sox. And to perfect the scene, he posed her under a street sign in Greenwich Village that says "Gay Street--One Way." Talk about heavy-handed symbolism! At least I was spared some of the more lurid covers, many of which promised more than the text inside them could deliver.

Looking back, what is your reaction to the covers of your early books, given that some people collect them primarily for the artwork? Did you have any input into the cover art when Cleis Press recently re-issued several of your books?

I've never had much input into covers, alas. Gold Medal never consulted me at all. Books just arrived in their plain brown wrappers, and you had to hold your breath and cross your fingers that what you were about to behold would not give you dyspepsia or scare the horses. Naiad Press simply made silhouettes of several of Tee Corrinne's photos, not all of which translated well into that mode. (Interestingly, however, the Naiad cover for Beebo Brinker is pretty good, since the original photo had sufficient outline detail to make the resulting silhouette forceful and readable.) Cleis Press has done a brilliant job of retrieving some of the 50s and 60s covers that are now out of copyright, and re-using them on my books. I've liked them all so far, although the Odd Girl Out cover is a shade less successful. Again, they didn't consult me first, but once I realized how they were proceeding, I did ask them to consider several old covers I really like for the forthcoming edition of Journey to a Woman. The reproductions and the brilliant background colors have made these jackets among the best and most eye-catching of all my editions. Incidentally, when the Quality Paperback Book Club brought out an omnibus edition of four of my books in the 90s, they simply reproduced the original Odd Girl Out cover on their version.

Considering that I had a quite sheltered upbringing in many ways, and was influenced by a genuine Victorian (my grandmother), I tend to present a rather formal front. It would have been disorienting to find myself, even via my nom de plume, associated with some of the more lurid cover art. I recognize, however, that it is fascinating stuff to collect, and have attended Vintage Pulp Paperback Book Shows where for many people, it's the main attraction.

How high a profile did these books bring you? Did you ever have any correspondence from readers forwarded onto you by the publisher?

The books gave me an incredible following--something I really never anticipated. I heard from hundreds of women all over the country--thousands, actually. Many of them were isolated, scared, ashamed, and convinced that there were no other human beings on the planet who shared their feelings. I had no idea how much angst there was out there. For a few years, when the books were current, the mailman used to stagger up the walk with bags of letters for me, all forwarded from Gold Medal. I tried conscientiously to answer them all--some better than others--with the message that the writers were not alone, that there was hope, that above all, there were others and not to give way to despair. I kept those letters for many years, until, during one of many moves we made during my married life, they were lost. I greatly regret the loss and wish now that I had them back. They would make eye-opening reading for young members of the gay community, and for others wondering what it's like to be in a marginalized group.

In the 50s and 60s, when I was first writing, we were deep into the era of Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was a scary time to hold contrary political views, much less to discover that you were a sexually contrary being. I think if I had ended my marriage early on and struck out on my own as a writer, I'd have had a rewarding career and a much higher public profile than I had. But by the time I began to realize that my books had taken hold on the public imagination, I was a mother of two little children, and I had to put them first. The real notoriety didn't begin until the Naiad re-issues in the early 1980s, and it has built steadily from there.

What was the media reaction and coverage like for your books? Were they favourably reviewed, or was there any backlash against them because of the content? Were you contacted by the media for interviews and promotions, etc?

Wow--WHAT media reaction!? Those of us writing pulp fiction were distinctly infra dig in those days. No matter what your topic or how seriously or genuinely presented, if you were in paper covers, you were writing sleaze. And you sailed along well below the critical radar screen. No self-respecting literary critic would have stooped to reviewing a paperback novel. We had to wait for the Beatles to come along and write a song about us before people began to think it was a glamorous profession. Some of us resented being so utterly ignored by the literary establishment. But in retrospect, there was a silver lining: we were allowed to say pretty much what we wanted to say, to explore topics that very few others, and certainly even fewer "respectable" writers, were exploring, and to open new ground and new topics to the world of fiction. It's interesting to speculate what might have happened to us if we had shown up on the pages of the New York Times Book Review, only to be reviled and subjected to the castigation of the fundamentalist right. It might have set back avant-garde fiction by decades! So our relative anonymity served the purpose of keeping a dangerous backlash at bay. There were rumblings against some of us, but I was never targeted, as far as I know--unless, that is, the F.B.I. was keeping a file on me back then! I wasn't contacted for interviews, but it's of some interest that Gold Medal at least made an effort (unsuccessful) to sell some of my books to the movies. And I was certainly contacted by organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, to whom I occasionally spoke.

Nowadays, as you can imagine, things have changed a lot. Everybody wants an interview, and I can hardly keep up with invitations to lecture around the country. How times have changed!

What sort of publicity push did the publisher give your book, and other books in the genre? Was there much advertising and promotion, or did they let the books (in particular, the cover art and sensationalistic blurbs) pretty much sell themselves?

I used to see ads for my books in magazines that were part of the Gold Medal empire, such as fan magazines and the like. Gold Medal never alerted me that they were going to do it--I had to pick up one of the fanzines, usually by sheer accident, at a bookstall somewhere. But they, and most of the big, successful paperback publishers, were adroit marketers. They saw to it that these books were plentifully available in every sort of commercial and public gathering place where a simple shelf or kiosk could be set up. They made a fortune with them, simply distributing them to drugstores, bus stations, train terminals, airports, newsstands, and anywhere else people could walk in and casually pick up something to read. They were distributed in the hundreds of thousands. I remember Dick Carroll telling me at the time that he considered sales of about 200,000 for a given title to be solidly profitable. This is an amazing number. Ten thousand copies of a hard-cover book will usually break you even or better financially.

As for letting the covers and the blurbs sell the books, they did a handsome job of that. The women were always depicted as flirty, sexy, very femmy, very beautiful, often in their undies, often shooting one another smouldering looks. Men loved them and lapped them up. Women learned to read those covers iconically, as stories with a lesbian content, and stripped the kiosks bare. I didn't know it back then, but I had, in effect, caught a wave: the post WWII generation, pre-Women's Movement, pre-Stonewall and Civil Rights Movements, when people were just beginning to snap the bonds of sexual convention and delve into innovative relationships. It was a lucky confluence of social momentum and a young writer's need to challenge custom.

I read somewhere that in the early-1990s you were working on a new book which would examine the mature Beebo Brinker's life. Did you ever complete this book?

There's a manuscript on the shelf above my desk as I write this, looking at me reproachfully. People are asking me the same question all the time, and I'm running out of excuses! Yes, there's a book, and yes, it needs a great deal of rewriting before it deserves to be unveiled publicly. And yes once more, it's about Beebo. After all, she's still a handsome woman, still kicking butt, and still interesting to read about. Not many people have tackled love among the elders, and I'd like to give it a try. It was one of my sources of pride that I wrote about black-on-white romance in the 50s, about gay men and lesbians getting together and/or marrying when they wanted to have a child, about problems with domestic abuse, that almost nobody else was trying to examine back then. So why not take on a woman in her later years, still beautiful, still funny, still sexy, and let her show her stuff? But--it will be a while before I can clear the decks to get to it--probably early next year. Till then, I'm booked pretty solid on the lecture, interview, and writing circuits.

When did you first start to realise that your books were being admired and collected by a new generation of readers? Was it when Naiad Press re-issued them in the mid-1980s?

It was in the mid-80s, when the Naiad editions were doing so well, that it began to sink in. I had never thought that my books would have more of a lifespan than most other original paperbacks...which is to say, not much longer than six to eight months after they're published. I thought mine had gone to that Great Paper Shredder in the Sky by the early 1960s. To my astonishment, the New York Times came calling in the early 70s and asked to include them in a hardcover series they were planning to publish through their subsidiary, Arno Press, called Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History, and Literature (New York, 1975). Then, in 1981, I heard from Barbara Grier of Naiad Press, and we were off and running yet again. I owe Barbara and her partner, Donna McBride, a debt of gratitude for their faith in the books. And because they were the largest and most successful lesbian publishing house of their day, their edition made a huge impact. We did a promotional tour and I made a couple of documentaries as a result: Before Stonewall, and Forbidden Love. It was a lot of fun, and I thought I had had an incredible run of good luck. But then the aforementioned Quality Paperback Book Club edition came out, and following that, Cleis Press wanted to do a new edition. By this time, I think I am well and truly convinced that people have cared about and enjoyed these books through several generations of readers. Perhaps it's the social history they capture and reflect for younger readers interested in the gay and lesbian past. Perhaps it's their role as ground-breaking fiction in a repressive era. But more likely, it's the sheer emotional punch of the characters themselves. Christopher Nealon, who has written an interesting study of the pulps in his book Foundlings (Duke University Press, 2001), points out that the transcendent emotion evinced by characters in the lesbian paperbacks was a sort of heroic defense against the homophobia of the times. I think he hits it dead on. And it was certainly a compelling feature of these stories that grabbed readers and held on to them.

How do you feel about the attention which your books attract today? Do you enjoy meeting collectors at the paperback shows? Do you find that it's one particular type of person who approach you at these shows, or is it a real across-the-board audience?

It has been a lot of fun, not to mention an interesting revelation, to meet people at the Vintage Paperback Shows. An amazing variety of collectors show up, and they seem to enjoy collecting every conceivable genre of story. I was intrigued the first year I attended to find that one of the exhibitors had arranged his books in big cartons, all labeled by type. He had "Romance," "Science Fiction," "Detectives," "Westerns," "Mysteries," etc., and one irresistible category labelled "Sleaze." The next year he had added "Super Sleaze" and "Extreme Sleaze," This year came the capper: he had a new box labelled (you guessed it) "Beyond Sleaze." Fortunately, Beebo and the gang were only in the "Sleaze" box, although I had hoped to find them in "Romance." But that was before I realized that "Romance" was for dopey tales like The Cottage by the Sea and Little Women. Beebo would never have fit in. If by some mischance she had got herself stuck there, she would have dragged all those saccharine ladies back with her to the "Sleaze" box in short order. At these shows, I usually sit at a table with the likes of Forrest Ackerman, Ray Bradbury, or some of the famous cover illustrators, and enjoy two hours of chatting with fans and collectors of every stripe, from sweet old ladies to leather men to young families with kids. It's really surprising to discover how many people have been bitten by the paperback collecting bug and come to trade and play at the shows. I've enjoyed the contact, learned a lot, and bought a few books to keep for myself.

As for the attention my books are getting now, I'm delighted and a little overwhelmed by it--surprised, grateful, and still wondering what the girl I was all those years ago would have made of it, if there had been any way for her to peer into the future. It's an extraordinary validation of the lives and loves of the women I was writing about, and even of the pulp medium itself. How good to know, after all these years, that our once-scorned genre was capable of producing works with staying power and enduring interest for succeeding generations of readers.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

(Note: the above is a modified piece from my Headpress book Hip Pocket Sleaze).

LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS

2009-04-10T02:45:00.000-07:00

A magazine I've been reading consistently for over twenty years, it's always great to see a new issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors appear. Devoted mainly to the great old genre films produced by England's Hammer studios between the 1950s - 1970s, each issue of Dick Klemensen's 'fan' publication features exhaustive, well researched articles along with interesting, revealing interviews, rare photographs and stunning color covers.

The latest issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors (#22) has a fabulous piece on Hammer's much-maligned modern day Dracula films of the early seventies (the swingin' Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula), including interviews with stars Caroline Munro, Christopher Neame and Valerie Van Ost. Elsewhere in the mag we find an interesting examination of the lesser known noir films which Hammer produced before they struck gold with their Frankenstein and Dracula films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the late fifties.

Bookending the magazine are gorgeous covers by Mark Maddox (front) and Bruce Timm (rear), as well as interior cover color portraits of Cushing (by Frank Dietz) and Lee (by Norm Bryn).

In an age when self-published niche magazines are either going exclusively online or disappearing altogether, Klemensen and his team of contributors and helpers deserve to be commended for keeping Little Shoppe of Horrors going for so long and at such a high quality, and it is excellent to see the magazine coming out even more frequently than usual. The history of Amicus Productions (Hammer's main rival in the UK) as presented in issue #20 was like a book unto itself, and I'm already looking forward to reading about the production of Hammer's great 1966 double-bill Plague of the Zombies/The Reptile that is slated to appear in the next issue.

For ordering info visit the magazine's website at:
http://www.littleshoppeofhorrors.com/

A SAMPLE FROM 'KILL ME, MY LOVE'

2009-04-10T02:36:00.000-07:00

Below are the opening pages of a new work I started over Christmas, a planned murder mystery set in St Kilda in the early 1980s. I am planning for it to be either a long novella or short novel in the vintage pulp paperback vein, depending on how it pans out. At the moment, the working title of the piece is Kill Me, My Love.

PROLOGUE

When the girl stepped through the doorway with the good looking, well-dressed older gentleman, she had no idea that the dingy, dimly lit room would be the last thing she would ever see.

Her evening had started off badly, fuelling even more unwanted nervous energy to the bolts of anxiety that had been pulsing throughout her body since she woke up at 2pm that afternoon. The drugs had run dry the day earlier and she was already getting the shakes. She would have to get through the evening straight, at least until she turned enough tricks to be able to cop a hit. She also knew that Bodie, the violent burn-out of a boyfriend that she shared a crash pad with, would likely fly into a rage if she came home without enough cash and smack to keep them going for at least a few days. Another black eye and bloodied lip didn't tickle her fancy at all. She needed to cop an early trick to take some of the pressure off.

"Fuck it all", she cursed under her breath. Another glorious night of being a hooker and a junkie in St Kilda ahead.

As she made her way up and down the tenebrous street, she pulled the black leather jacket...at least two sizes too small...tight across her chest to block out an imaginary chill. She sensed there was nothing happening where she was, and turned back down onto Fitzroy Street, where with the nonchalance of a hardened beat cop she made her way past the seemingly endless parade of cheap motels, all-night sex shops, gaudy neon-lit tattoo parlours, grotty fish and chip shops and dive bars so sleazy and full of local colour they took on a glorious, almost otherworldly decadence all of their own.

She turned into the bottom end of Acland Street to try her luck, then paused and produced a cigarette from her cheap leopard skin shoulder bag. Sliding it between her cherry-red lips and inhaling deeply, she looked up and briefly contemplated the full moon above. There was a time, long ago, when the moon was considered an object of beauty and magic, to be worshipped and looked upon with reverence and awe. Now, partly obscured by clouds and seas of thick smog, it looked more like a symbol of absolute evil, beaming down its macabre approval over the prostitutes and their pimps, the dope peddlers and the gutter-bound drunks, happy just so long as their stash holds out.

"Luna, the ancient symbol of madness."

She spun around, startled, to see the man standing within two feet of her. She had not heard him approach.

"What?," she mumbled, off guard and somewhat disoriented.

"I saw you looking at the moon." He reached out and confidently took the cigarette from her lips and crushed it under his foot, his eyes never leaving hers the entire time. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's smoking."

The girl studied him, as best as she could under the dim street light that didn't do her short-sightedness any favours. With his thick shock of dark hair and handsomely chiselled features, he seemed the type who would have little trouble in attracting the opposite sex, even if he did seem to be well into his fifties. A well-cut, expensive charcoal suit accentuated what she thought would be a trim and finely-honed body. He reeked of money, but she had long ago stopped wondering why people like him felt the need to turn to prostitutes to satiate their urges. The young and the desperate, the ugly and the pathetic, the sad and the lonely...it was a lot easier to understand where they were coming from.

"You a cop?," she asked out of necessitation and habit.

"No, I'm not a policeman." His voice sounded as calm and confident as his manner, nothing like the sweaty, nervous language of most johns, who were usually desperate to get themselves and their prey away from prying eyes and behind looked doors. "Do you have a place?"

"Sure, we can grab a room just up the road. It's a hundred for regular, one-fifty for oral and regular, and..."

The man placed his finger against the girl's lips, hushing her. She could almost taste the gold of his wedding band as his other hand reached into his suit pocket and produced a wad of crisp fifty dollar bills, which he waved teasingly in front of her face.

"Money talk is so distasteful. All you need to know is that I have more than enough to buy one each of whatever you're selling. Now, let's go find that room."

**********

The door to the Esquire opened with a noisy squeak. A horrible, musty smell wafted into the girl's face. The dimness of the hallway light illuminated the small room just enough to make out its bare contents. Apart from a double bed, a chipped dressing table and a few framed landscape prints that looked like they were well overdue for a trip to St Vincent's, the room was completely empty. Off to one side was a door that led to a small, corroded bathroom. The wallpaper bore a garish, yellowing flower pattern, while the walls themselves looked like they would be a sarcophagus for dead rats.

Entering and turning on the dressing table light, she turned and saw the man standing against the far wall, as if afraid to go near the bed and caught in an unexpected moment of uncertainty. She thought of the money he was holding and didn't want to let the fish off the hook.

"Be with you in a minute honey." She flashed him a seductive but insincere smile and moved over to the bathroom. "Why don't you get out of the suit and get between the sheets?"

"Don't get undressed in there...I want to watch you."

"Sure thing, lover."

She closed the bathroom door and filled up a dirty glass with cold water and used it to help her get a valium down. She didn't even bother to check herself in the mirror, satisfied that the peroxided rats' nest, heavy eye make-up, fishnet body stocking, stiletto heels, and red patent leather mini-skirt had already done enough to earn her first pay check for the night. She sprayed some cheap perfume across her prominent cleavage and up between her thighs, hoping the sweet scent might hasten the man's climax, then turned off the light and opened the door...

It was virtually over before she even realised what was happening. Exiting the bathroom, she was surprised to see that the bed was still empty, and the man was nowhere to be seen. By the time she had closed the bathroom door and saw him standing there, it was far too late to do anything. She caught a quick glimpse of cold blue eyes and a brief glint of light reflecting off razor sharp stainless steel before her body and soul simultaneously erupted into a single, searing outburst of unbearable pain.

As the steel twisted savagely inside her, amongst all the madness and craziness and pure galvanizing terror that gripped her, she had a brief moment of clarity, a split-second understanding that everything she had ever been, everyone she had ever known, everything she had ever accomplished, and everything she was still hoping to someday accomplish - it was all going to end here, at that very moment, in a dirty low-rent motel room at the hands of a complete stranger. Life can be very random like that.

The man withdrew the knife from her chest and she fell forward, mercifully dead before she even hit the floor. A deathly silence fell upon the room, the only sounds being the faint traffic noises that drifted their way up from the street outside. Seemingly devoid of any emotion or concern at detection, the man calmly knelt down and gently kissed the already cool and clammy forehead of the lifeless shell he had left in front of him.

"Sleep tight, my sweet little one..."

With those words, the man tightened his grip on the handle of the knife as he proceeded to unleash all of his pent-up nightmares of aggression and frustration in an explosive outburst of violation that created an obscene mess out of the young girl who knew no other way of life and had simply very much been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Meanwhile, outside, far above the steaming city streets, Luna, the full moon, ancient symbol of madness, continued to beam down its malevolent approval.

**********

Two hours later, another hooker stumbled upon the grisly scene...she was young and new to the game but she grew up quick smart when she walked into that motel room, and if she had any sense in her messed-up head she'd get on a bus first thing the next morning and go back to wherever she came from, before the place got to her like it got to every other girl who worked the streets for a living. The john who was with her took one look at the slaughterhouse and left the girl standing there, screaming and rigid with fear, to deal with the mess on her own.

Within fifteen minutes of the discovery, everything was in chaos a few k's down the road at the St Kilda CIB. Floor by floor, the message was being spread like an incendiary that took only six words to ignite: "Looks like we got another one."

ONE

Kristina Neal sat up from her bed with a start, then slowly eased herself back down onto it after glancing at her clock and realising she hadn't slept in. She hated it when daylight savings ended and the morning sun tore through her bedroom curtains an hour earlier than she was used to. She was much more manageable when she woke up in semi-darkness and slowly eased her way into the day.

Rather than wait for the radio alarm to suddenly spring to life with some bouncy Top 40 pop hit...about the last thing she wanted to hear at this moment...she decided to jump into the shower early and grab some take-out breakfast on the way to work. Snap, Crackle and Pop didn't appeal to her this particular morning, nor did the thought of having to sit at the breakfast table and look across at Anthony, her boyfriend with home her relationship was becoming increasingly strained. She briefly studied his shape, motionless and still asleep under the sheet next to her, and thought of how he was little more than a stranger to her now, cold and distant. She often wondered if he was having an affair, and how much easier it would be if he was.

"Get it together, girl," she told herself as she stripped off her black singlet and panties and stepped under the shower, letting the warm jets of pulsating water massage her back as she washed her long, deep chestnut hair that she always seemed to be experimenting with.

Wrapping a towel around her body and another around her wet hair, she made herself a cup of coffee and sat herself down at her dressing table, wondering what sort of look she might be able to get away with for the day. She had been told by jealous and spiteful superiors at the medical insurance company she worked at to tone it down, but what she had couldn't be contained. When she tried to hide it, it just made her even more desirable. The smart corporate attire she donned failed to disguise the voluptuousness of her figure, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to work out why she made so many of the women who worked around her feel uncomfortable. Most of them could only dream of having a body like she had been blessed with. What burned them up even more was the fact that she didn't have to work hard at maintaining it. She was just the way that God or the Devil or whoever the hell hands out our genes decided she was going to be.

She was a waif but she was no shrinking violet, and you could bet there had been more than one man in her life who had found out the hard way that she was not a woman to be messed with. Like the most desirable of women, she was equal parts fire and ice, and was no doubt at her best when she put the two together and unleashed them upon you with complete abandon and unfettered fury. She was that rare kind of woman who could knock you for a six with a warm, wet kiss to the lips or seduce you into her bed with a cold, hard slap across the face.

Ultimately, she decided to snake herself into a plain but stylish longblack pencil dress which hugged her curves nicely but would hopefully keepher out of too much trouble. A pair of black stilettos, a silver braceletthat clung to her upper forearm, a dash of Chanel and some Cliniquelipstick and minimal mascara to highlight her auburn eyes, completed thetransformation. She didn’t bother fussing with her hair, letting it hang inloose natural ringlets that framed her thin face and lightly bounced as she walked.

“Not too shabby”, she thought as she quickly checked herself in thefull-length mirror, running her manicured hands over her hips to straightenout the dress before swinging her black and white Lafinia handbag over hershoulder and walking out the room, happy to be leaving her home life behindfor a day.

It wouldn’t be long before she was wishing she was back in bed with the covers pulled tightly over her head, and the world outside was just another bad nightmare.

HIP POCKET SLEAZE

2009-04-10T02:23:00.000-07:00

Cover design for my Headpress book Hip Pocket Sleaze - The Lurid World of Vintage Adult Paperbacks.

PORTRAIT OF ME AS A ZOMBIE!

2009-04-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

The above illustration of me was done by Melbourne artist Matthew Dunn, who writes and illustrates the horror comic Lonely Monsters. Visit his blogger page at:

www.matthewdunnartist.blogspot.com

WATCHMEN

2009-03-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

2009/USA/Directed by Zach Snyder

While it’s not the first film based on a comic book to be aimed squarely at an adult audience (think Sin City), Watchmen may be the first Hollywood film featuring what appear to be ‘classic’ superheroes that explicitly excludes kids from its potential audience demographic (and sacrificing quite a bit of box-office potential in the process).

Based on the landmark 1986 graphic novel, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons (originally published by DC Comics as a 12 issue mini-series), Watchmen casts itself in the reality based world on mid-1980s America. However, unlike Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (which cast Batman in a recognisable real world), the 1980s depicted in Watchmen is that of an alternative reality. A wonderful opening title sequence, accompanied by the laconic strains of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are-A-Changing, takes us on a journey through the past decades as they happened within the film’s world: America has won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still the President of the USA, and a group of self-styled costumed superheros calling themselves ‘The Watchmen’ have virtually taken over the role of the uniformed police.

By the 1980s, however, things have changed. Superheroes have been outlawed, and America and the USSR tetter on the brink of annihilating each other through nuclear assault. When one of the original Watchmen, the cigar chomping Comedian, is thrown to his death out of a high rise window, the remaining members of the group start to debate whether or not the Comedian’s murder was an isolated incident, or if they are caught up in a plot to rid the world of all its former masked heroes. Around this simplistic but effective noirish set-up, the story piles on layers of exposition and character development and interaction, as the Watchmen slowly find themselves drawn back to each other to confront a plot to assure world peace by the most insidious of methods.

The characters in Watchmen were inspired mostly from obscure comic book characters of the 1940s, something which is clearly evident in the style of their outfits and mannerisms. Nite Owl features owl themed gadgets, while the original Silk Spectre (her daughter goes on to take up the mantle) looks like she stepped straight out of the nose art of an American World War II bomber. Dr Manhattan, formerly the scientist Jonathan Osterman who was transformed into a quantum being that can command particles after he was trapped in a ‘Intrinsic Field Subtractor’ in 1959, is the only Watchman with any real super powers, and recalls the great science-fiction characters often found in Marvel Comics in the early 1960s.

Certainly, these aren’t your ordinary superheroes, and while they may break the clichés usually found in this genre, they do often conform to other well-established character stereotypes (the Comedian, for example, is a misogynistic rapist and woman killer with incestuous leanings, the type we have seen many times in other films outside of the superhero genre). By far the most interesting, and strongest, character is Rorschach, a small statured but lithe and volatile character who wears a grey mask that features a constantly changing ink blot pattern on its face. Continuing the fight against crime despite his outlaw status, the scenes where Rorschach is locked up in a brutal prison (where he must confront many of the sociopaths whom he helped put away), as well as a flashback sequence where he tracks down a child killer and makes his transition from crime fighter to vigilante, provide some of the film’s most powerful and memorable moments.

At nearly three hours long, Watchmen demands a lot of attention and concentration from its audience. Let your mind wander for a moment, or duck out for a quick bathroom break, and you may struggle to find your way back into the film’s narrative. Director Zach Snyder (300) deserves credit for treating his source material with respect, as well as for eschewing a big name cast in favour of an ensemble of lesser names who work well together, although Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach provides the only real stand-out performance.

Technically, the film is a mixed bag. Some moments of stunning visual impact are offset by some rather lacklustre CGI effects, while the soundtrack too often utilizes pop music numbers in an attempt to create an ironic juxtaposition with the violence occurring on screen.As he has done with every filmic adaptation of his works (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta), writer Alan Moore, who hates Hollywood and its ‘blockbuster’ mentality with a passion, has refused to allow his name to be attached to the project, with the film’s credits making no mention of the man whose pen inspired it (Moore also refuses any monetary remuneration for films based on his work, donating all of his fees and royalties to the other artists who were involved in the original comic book project).

Ultimately, Watchmen succeeds as a well-crafted and occasionally intelligent piece of adult filmmaking, but I found it to be a somewhat dispassionate and uninvolving cinema experience – something to be admired rather than enjoyed, which is an admirable accomplishment on its own, but not exactly the first thing I look for in a comic book film.

Review by John Harrison
Copyright 2009

FRIDAY THE 13th

2009-03-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

USA/2009/Directed by Marcus Nispel

Nearly 30 years after its original 1980 release, Friday the 13th remains one of the most seminal and influential horror films of modern times. While John Carpenter's classic Halloween (1978) set the template for what has become invariably known as the 'splatter' or 'slasher' film, the genre did not really explode until Friday the 13th’s surprise success at the box-office (the years immediately following its release saw a rash of similar themed films such as Prom Night, He Knows You're Alone, The Prowler and Alone in the Dark dominate the independent horror cinema scene).

Originally conceived as a low-budget, exploitation potboiler that was bound for a short run at drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas, producer/director Sean S Cunningham hit paydirt when Friday the 13th was picked up for distribution by Paramount, who dumped the film into thousands of mall cinemas across America, giving the movie a level of exposure that the filmmakers would never even have imagined during production.

The status which the Friday the 13th films have established for themselves in modern pop cinema is puzzling to most, including an admitted fan like myself. While Halloween exuded a genuine sense of mood and atmosphere, and directorial flair, and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) explored some interesting themes regarding the power of dreams and their effect on the psyche, the Friday the 13th movies are little more than disposable junk. Entertaining junk certainly, but completely superficial, with little artistic flair (save for the creative make-up effects) or intellectual depth, and working purely on a cathartic level. The fact that they are still producing Friday the 13th movies three decades after their inception is a testament to not only the longevity of Jason Voorhees – the iconic central character of the series – but of the timeless allure of fiction and fantasy which plays upon our primal fears.

After eleven movies where he’s been chopped up, burned, axed in the head, drowned, re-animated as a rotting zombie, shot spears at the audience in 3D, invaded Manhattan, spent time in Hell, pitted against a psychic and gone mano e mano with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees now finds himself victim to Hollywood’s latest horror curse: the remake.

Directed by German born Marcus Nispel (who also helmed the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this Friday the 13th tries to broaden its appeal by being both a remake and pseudo-sequel. Because it wasn’t Jason Voorhees, rather his mother, who did all the killing in the original film, a literal remake would not have been a wise commercial move. Thus, the first twenty minutes of the film take care of the remake portion, recapping the story of Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp for kids which becomes cursed after the mongoloid (can we still use that term in these PC times?) child Jason Voorhees seemingly drowns in the lake. Blaming the inattentive (and oversexed) teenage counsellors for her son’s death, Jason’s mother goes on a killing spree across the camp, dispatching the counsellors one by one until she in turn is beheaded. Years later, Jason turns out to be very much alive and out for vengeance against the world, picking off a group of young adults who venture into his picturesque wooded domain in search of a rumoured cannabis crop (a plot point which has had some conspiracy theorist fans in the US claiming that Jason is really a drug harvester who’s simply protecting his stash!). The plight of a second (and much more annoying) group of young intruders provides Jason with the bulk of his exercise and entertainment.

There's really nothing new to be found in this Friday the 13th reboot. The characters are just as clichéd, obnoxious and idiotic as always (and thankfully so, as it would be a lot tougher to watch characters you cared about being the victims of wholesale slaughter). However, one thing that is new is the level of brutality and viciousness on display, which is in keeping with the recent trend in horror movies, as witnessed in films such as the Saw and Hostel series’, and in the works of Rob Zombie (House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, the Halloween remake). In previous Friday the 13th movies, Jason was depicted as very instinctual and shark like, doing simply what he needs to do with cool and calculated precision. His victims died horribly, but at least they died relatively quick. Here, we get more of a sense that Jason actually revels in and gains pleasure from his killings. We also get to see where Jason hides from the world, and where he stashes his collection of mementos from his kills (something never really touched upon in previous films).

Despite its overall familiarity, there are some definite highlights to be found here. The opening twenty minute sequence is great – compact and taut, and presented on a slicker and more grander scale that what we have seen before. The rest of the film never really lives up to it, but there are enough good scares peppered throughout it to make it worth the journey. The film looks great (and nice to see they have used original Texas Chainsaw Massacre lenser Daniel Pearl as cinematographer). More advantage is taken of the naturally foreboding elements of the woods at night, and there are some nice references to the older films, such as Jason’s original sack mask (as seen in Friday the 13th Part 2), and the obtaining of his now famous hockey mask (actually given a different origin here than in Part 3). The film also benefits from a moody score by Steve Jablonsky (although the awful rap tracks I could have done without).

If you hated the movies that came before it, this is not likely to change your opinion one bit. Die-hards will nitpick it, but should also realise that what they got was a pretty good addition to the series, certainly the best film since 1984’s Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter). Undemanding fans who like their horror movies simple and bloody should lap it up and devour it.

At the American box-office, Friday the 13th has already taken more money than any other film in the series save for 2003’s Freddy Vs. Jason (which obviously benefited from having two horror icons as its focus). When they first started churning out the sequels, I remember reading (probably in the pages of Fangoria) that the producers’ ultimate goal was to produce a fitting total of thirteen films in the series. But considering the way people are still turning out in droves to see Jason Voorhees do his thing, I’m sure they’ve got no intention of stopping there...

Copyright John Harrison 2009

THE EXOTICS THIS FRIDAY! WITH LUX TRIBUTE

2009-02-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

My flyer for the Exotic's upcoming gig at the Greyhound Hotel, which will include a tribute to Lux Interior,

IT WAS A SAD DAY FOR THIS OLD ROCKER

2009-02-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

It’s taken me a couple of days to really come to grips with the passing of iconic Cramps frontman Lux Interior. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it, hoping that it was just gonna be another elaborate, cruel hoax…after all, it wouldn’t be the first time that Lux had been proclaimed dead, only to rise again (a famous 1978 hoax had him prematurely dying of a heroin overdose). But as the story started to appear on some of the more reliable news and music websites, it appeared there would be no relieving punchline this time.

While Kiss were the first band I ever felt passionate about, The Cramps were the first band to ever dictate and influence my lifestyle, my attitude, my way of thinking and – dare I say it? – the way I walked and the way I talked. Their music (and in particular, their majestic 1985 album A Date With Elvis) provided the soundtrack to many seminal moments (both sunny and dark) of my early 20s. Their encyclopaedic knowledge (and obvious love for) obscure pop culture led me to seek out film and music which has remained inspirational and integral to my life to this day.

Revolving around the nucleus of Lux and his life partner Poison Ivy Rorschach, the Cramps took everything that was great about obscure surf and rockabilly music, combined it with their genuine love of B movies and classic horror pulp comics, imbued it all with a punk aesthetic and created a unique sound that could often only be described as swamp rock from another planet. Often imitated, never equalled. Their live shows were equally as otherworldly, an aural and visual assault on the senses that never let up throughout their 30+ years of touring – even as he hit 60, Lux was still performing with such manic energy that the sweat would literally have to be poured from out of the skin tight vinyl jumpsuits he’d often favour. One need only watch the video of the concert they performed in front of inmates at the Napa State Mental Hospital in 1978 to see what a manic and galvanising live band the Cramps were.

I am old enough to remember the day I walked into class and my English teacher, Mr Devry, told us that Elvis had died. I remember the scorching hot day I was talking on the phone to my best friend David while my mum lay on the banana lounge in the hallway to catch the breeze when the radio she was listening to came to life with the news that John Lennon had been shot dead outside his New York apartment. And I remember getting the call from my friend Simone telling me that Kiss drummer Eric Carr had finally succumbed to horrendous heart cancer and brain haemorrhages (on the same day Freddie Mercury succumbed to Aids).

As we grow older, it’s only natural that the cultural heroes of our youth start to leave us. But for some reason, the passing of Lux has hit harder than most., and I’m struggling to realise why. Maybe because I’m at an age now where I’m looking at the reality of my own mortality. Maybe it’s because, unlike people like Elvis, Lennon and Johnny Cash, the loss of Lux is likely to go unnoticed and uncared about by the vast majority of people. Or maybe it’s because his death comes during a period when many of my favourite creative minds have left us (Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J Ackerman, 1950s pin-up legend Bettie Page, Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and cult 1960s filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler, among others).

It’s a stinking hot day here in Melbourne, but to be honest I can barely feel the heat. I’m spending my day drinking cold Mexican beer and blasting my way through the entire Cramps discography. And while I do so I shall not only celebrate the life and work of this truly unique American artist, but I will be sending warm thoughts to Poison Ivy who has lost the love of her life, and I shall also be saying farewell to that special part of my youth that has left me forever.

I can never see there being another one like him.

Stay Sick! 1946 - 2009

John Harrison, Feb 7, 2009.

Live TV Clip of Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?:

Bikini Girls With Machine Guns Video:

Garbage Man Video:

VIDEO TOUR OF WONDERLAND MURDER HOUSE

2009-01-31T15:41:00.000-08:00

For the true crime buffs, a tour through the Wonderland Ave home where porn star John Holmes (allegedly) watched (and allegedly participated in) the brutal lead pipe murders of 4 drug addicts who ripped off Starwood club owner Eddie Nash, with the help of Holmes (a friend of Nash who left the kitchen door open so the Wonderland gang could bursy in and rob him). As depicted in the film Wonderland with Val Kilmer a few year ago.

Contains footage from the original police crime scene video (the first case where video evidence played a big role) and a walk through of the house as it is today:

RIP RAY DENNIS STECKLER

2009-01-09T00:43:00.000-08:00

Found out earlier today that one of my all-time fave low-budget exploitation filmmakers, Ray Dennis Steckler, passed away in LA last night....I knew he had recently been in hospital for a heart operation but his death still comes as a shock as all indications had been that he was on the mend.

Steckler's reputation was based primarily on a bunch of unique backyard productions which he made throughout the 60s, such as Wild Guitar, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (a brilliant Batman and Robin spoof starring the great Ron Haydock, who also provided the film's killer rock & roll soundtrack), The Thrill Killers and the beautifully shot (by future Oscar winner Vilmos Zsigmond) The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!

As Cash Flagg, Steckler often acted in his own movies, as did his then wife, the leggy Carolyn Brandt. He continued to make films into the 80s and beyond, and I recently posted a blog on some of his better films from the 70s (which you find via my profile page).

In the mid 1990s, I remember talking to Ray over the phone several times, when I was ordering copies of his films on VHS from his shop in Vegas. He was always very friendly and chatty, happy to discuss his films and he always included a couple of signed photos with every order, sometimes he'd even throw in a free video if there was spare room in the package. And I'm sure just about everyone else who ever met or talked to Ray would have similar stories...he was one of the genuine nice ones.

Ironically, I only this week upgraded all my Steckler films to DVD (which I'd bought as a big lot on eBay) and I was considering throwing out all those old VHS tapes I bought from him, in order to save space. But now, I think I'll hang onto them for sentimental reasons.

Steckler was 70 years old.

BILLY THE KID

2008-12-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

Director: Jennifer Venditi (USA, 2007)

“I’m not black, I’m not white, not foreign…just different in the mind…different brains, that’s all.”

Having not heard anything about this documentary film, the first thing that struck me about it was how much the font on the DVD cover reminded me of the 1979 Kiss album Dynasty. It turned out to be a fitting observation, as the subject of the film is a young Kiss fan who, for reasons known only to himself, wants to grow his hair so it looks just like Gene Simmons’ infamously grotesque brillo pad ‘do!

In many ways, 15 year-old Billy Price is like most other teenage boys growing up in a small town in Maine and coming to grips with the pains of adolescence. He digs rock music and video games, fantasises about being a superhero, plays guitar, rides his bike around the neighbourhood and has his keen eye on the girl who works in the local diner. However, Billy has some major behavioural issues (his mother was told when Billy was a child that he may likely have to be institutionalised) and is anything but a ‘normal’ kid. The music he listens to is mostly old school (Kiss, Van Halen, AC/DC), he refuses to shoot women in video games (even if they are baddies) and the girl he has fallen for (a sweet, nearly blind kid named Heather) is quickly scared off by Billy’s intensity and desire for commitment.

Apart from the scenes which show Billy attempting to woo Heather (which can’t help but bring back memories – both happy and painful – of our own attempts at expressing young love), the best moments in Billy the Kid are those which reveal, either in words or facial expressions, the often suspicious way in which Billy is viewed by the adults around him: Heather’s step-father, while remaining silent, is clearly not impressed when one of the first thing Billy says to him is how much he loves violent slasher movies (which makes his reluctance to kill women in video games something of a contradiction) and the concerned school librarian immediately contacts Billy’s mother when the kid checks out a few books on serial killers.

There are also a few moments of genuine (if sometimes awkward) humour, such as Billy attempting to play guitar while watching Kiss perform God of Thunder on TV, telling a kid at school that movie monsters like King Kong are not real (“I’m not that stupid” ), and trying to impress Heather with tales of John Wayne movies.

Upon its release in the US, Billy the Kid seemed to garner wildly varying reviews, with many critics loving it but many also being somewhat repulsed by it. Curiously, I found myself sitting somewhere in the middle, detached and unable to be completely absorbed into Billy’s world by director Jennifer Venditi. It’s easy to see what attracted Venditi to Billy and why she thought he would make he perfect subject for a documentary, but I found the use of multiple camera shots, and the niggling feeling that Billy was playing up to the cameras, made the film seem at times more of a mock drama than a documentary.

Nevertheless, the film does paint an effective portrait of alienated youth, coming off almost like a filmic version of some bizarre My Space profile, and lovers of the documentary genre should find it interesting and rewarding viewing.

'DEATH CULTS' INTERVIEW

2008-12-14T00:13:00.000-08:00

Thought I would post this interview with me that was conducted a few years back for a Melbourne newspaper, to tie in with the publication of the Virgin Books title Death Cults, in which I contributed two chapters (one on Jim Jones/Jonestwon and the other on David Koresh/Waco).

Why do you think people seem so fascinated by characters such as David Koresh and Jim Jones?

I think a lot of it stems from the same fascination people have with serial killers and other true crime cases. Look at the way TV news ratings soar whenever there's a terrorist attack like September 11 or Bali, or when O J Simpson is being pursued down the Californian highway by a procession of cop cars and television news. It wasn't all that long ago that the market for true crime books was a very specialised one, and was usually relegated to covering the more notorious cases. Now almost every bookstore has its own true crime section, with mass-market paperbacks devoted to even the most obscure of crimes. Maybe reading about suffering and misery is a way of convincing ourselves that our own lives aren't as bad as what we sometimes think they are.

I think it's normal, healthy human nature to be drawn to and intrigued by tragedy. For most people, that simply equates to watching the news, reading the paper and indulging in some classroom psychology with workmates around the water cooler. For some, the fascination goes much deeper, and in the case of Koresh and Jones, I think part of their 'appeal', if I can use that term, is in the sheer enormity of their respective tragedies, and trying to comprehend how one person can induce such a large group of followers into committing mass suicide.

As independent, strong-minded people, we're fascinated by how these people think, and how they are seduced into genuinely believing that another person is the true Son of God. The mass suicide committed by the Heaven's Gate group is another idyllic example - how do nearly thirty people become convinced that by killing themselves they will be picked up by a spaceship travelling in the tail of a comet and transported back to their home planet? It's beyond the rational thinking of most people, yet the members of Heaven's Gate were by all accounts intelligent, highly educated people.

Had each of these characters envisaged themselves as necessarily dying and taking their followers with them? In other words, were Waco and Jonestown necessarily the logical outcome of the actions and philosophies of these men, or did they become death cults by default?

In the case of Jonestown, Jim Jones had on several occasions held rehearsals for a planned mass-suicide, often giving his followers no warning that it was in fact just a rehearsal....it was a deliberate test of faith, to weed out those who would not be prepared to sacrifice all for their leader.

I don't know if the Jonestown suicides was an inevitable outcome for Jones and his Peoples Temple. Jones was abusive - both physically and psychologically - and a sexual predator, but had the US government, and Congressman Leo Ryan in particular - not been so intrusive into the cult's affairs, I think he would have been quite happy to continue his life ruling over his own little world in the jungles of Guyana. It was Jones' paradise, and it was only the thought of him losing it, and his followers, that drove him to the mass suicide. It's the same predilection as when a parent in the grip of a bitter custody battle prefers to take their life and the life of their children rather than hand them over to the spouse, or when a child would break a new toy rather than have to give to someone else to play with, only on a much larger scale, of course. "If I can't have them, no one else can either".

Waco, on the other hand, seemed almost destined to end in a hailstorm of violence. Koresh had been stockpiling weapons for years prior to the Waco siege, and always preached about the inevitable showdown with the authorities. It was an apocalypse that was necessary to fulfil Koresh's interpretation of The Seven Seals, the passage of the Bible on which he based his entire religious philosophy.

The deep sense of "End Times" each of these men seemed to have has been felt by vast numbers of other "fundamentalist" Christian and associated groups, from the Puritans through the Jehovah's Witnesses to the Southern Baptists that spawned Jim Jones, yet they did not necessarily spiral out of control into "death cultdom", even when they had messianic and charismatic leaders. Was that just the sheer luck of, say, the Mormons "hiding away" from mainstream society long enough to establish their "credentials" before the stain of "cultism" could be imposed? In other words, is this kind of death cult as much a product of mass media as it is mass hysteria?

That's an interesting question. Certainly since the vicious killings committed by the Manson Family in 1969, the word 'cult' - when used in any form of religious context - inspires paranoia and fear, and a lot of that is fuelled by media hype and hysteria. While I doubt that groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses would have gone the way of Waco or Jonestown, I'm sure they would have been looked upon and treated differently - and a lot more suspiciously - had they first emerged in the post-Manson age. As it is, these groups still evoke a paranoia and suspicion in some, but because they have been around for so long, and in such enormous numbers, most people do not look upon them as any kind of dangerous minority faction.

Do you feel that the fundamentalist leaders of the Muslim suicide bombers must also obviously fall into the same league as Koresh and Jones in the sense that they too urge fanatical commitment and death as an escape from the sinfulness of this life and reward in the next?

Only in a very vague way - I think it would be dangerous to categorise them as a cult. Many of these groups are seeking retribution for what they see as decades, even centuries, of repression by other countries, and their actions are often seen as both political and religious statements. These movements will continue long after their current leaders are gone, which is why the so-called War Against Terrorism will be almost impossible to win outright. The beliefs of cults, on the other hand, usually die along with their leaders.

What is it in human nature that seems to make us prone to being seduced by ideas that must inevitably see our selves completely immolated? Obviously dying for "King and Country" isn't that far removed from the sort of loyalty that saw people die in Waco and Jonestown.

The majority of human beings are terrified at the thought of death being the end of it all - that big, black and eternal void which no one can escape, regardless of wealth, social standing, political power or any other factor which shapes their mortal life. Death really is the big equalizer, and no doubt many people follow their own religion because it is based on the promise that there is some kind of paradise waiting beyond for them.

I see dying for King and Country as more of a political self-sacrifice - we are willing, or at least prepared to take the chance, of being killed in battle because it is seen as a way of defending the things we love and hold scared, such as country, family and way of life. The stakes are clearly defined, and conscription notwithstanding, the choice is usually ours to make. By the time a cult decides to mass-suicide, their choices - along with their ability to form independent thoughts and rationales - have usually been taken away from them.

LONELY MONSTER: AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW DUNN

2008-10-31T23:32:00.000-07:00

by John Harrison

Matthew Dunn is the Melbourne based creator and artist behind the Lonely Monsters series of comic books and graphic novels (see my piece on the first issue of Lonely Monsters, which I had the privilege of contributing to, in a previous blog on my My Space page), as well as several offshoots such as the Savage Bastard web comic. With his first exhibition coming up on Friday, November 7 at Melbourne’s 696 Gallery in Brunswick (see flyer below), I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up with the artist and grill him with a few questions about his art, the exhibition, his influences and future plans.

John Harrison: Tell me a little bit about where you come from as an artist? Who were your earliest influences?

Matthew Dunn: I've been reading and drawing comics for as long as I can remember. My first comic was a crudely drawn collection of lame "gags" back in primary school featuring Australian animals. Unfortunately I shortened all their animal names in order to give them their character names, and as a result had a Wombat named "Womb" (which, at that tender young age, seemed totally fine to me).

Early on I was heavily influenced by the greats (Kirby, Ditko, Adams, etc) but would go out of my way to track down copies of the old black & white masterpieces like Creepy and Eerie, and to this day I still find that stuff amazing. Then as a teen I picked up a copy of Gotham By Gaslight which was the start of my ongoing love affair with the work of Mike Mignola. Although in the last 5 years the affair has been threatened with my infatuation of Ashley Wood's work.

JH: What mediums to you work with, and do you have a preferred or favourite one?

MD: Comics, comics, and more comics, with the occasional larger canvas piece. I work with whatever suits what I'm trying to do at the time, but mostly use various inks and push things around in Photoshop. My Photoshop work doesn't involve much filtering, mostly just layering textured pages on top of each other. I've also broken out the acrylics recently to work on some larger pieces for the exhibition and that's been a nice change of pace from the storytelling aspect of comics (which can really break your brain sometimes).

JH: Zombies have always proven to be consistently popular in pop culture, particularly in terms of film and comic books/graphic novels, but in recent years they have broken out into other fields as well (I recently saw a flyer for a Zombie finger puppet show!). What do you see as the primary appeal of the living dead, and to what do you attribute their current popularity to?

MD: Zombies are, in my opinion, the scariest of all horror fiends. They're relentless monsters who wish you nothing but harm, however the biggest fear is that you will become one yourself. At least if you're a vampire or werewolf you still retain a part of your personality/soul and are able to keep living in some capacity. But as a zombie you don't have anything but hunger that overrides every other desire and cannot be satisfied.

Part of their current popularity just has to do with people finally making really strong zombie movies/comics/etc/etc. Zach Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead as well as the hilarious Shaun of the Dead definitely helped to get them in limelight, as did Marvel's hilarious Marvel Zombies series, and the utterly amazing novel World War Z by Max Brooks. But for me the highpoint has got to be Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood's Zombies VS Robots series (following by Zombies VS Robots VS Amazons, and with more craziness coming in the future) which was just pure insane bliss.

People also apply a social commentary more often than not within the zombie genre these days, and I think that just makes it a more complete, real, and satisfying experience.

JH: What was the inspiration behind the whole Lonely Monsters concept? Is it something that you see continuing and evolving or does it have a set life span?

MD: Lonely Monsters started out as a 6 page short story that I put together to send around in an effort to break into the industry. At the time I was also working my ass off for a guy in the US who had a comic in the works that was a "sure thing" with one of the larger companies. I spent a few months working on that only to discover it wasn't a "sure thing" at all and I had in fact been completely wasting my time. This really bummed me out so I focused my energies on finishing the 6 page sample, and once it was done I had enjoyed it so much (and was happy with the results) that I decided to just dive right into making it a comic series.

I was going to release it as a quarterly comic, and did in fact release a first issue, but wasn't happy with the finished pages at all and decided to redo them. In the process I thought rather than re-release the first issue the story would work best within the larger page-count of a graphic novel.

At this stage Lonely Monsters is going to be a series of 5 graphic novels, but there may be more books depending on where things go. Book 1 is basically my love letter to zombies, and Book 2 is my love letter to Mad Max-style road movies, then Book 3......well I don't want to give anymore away so I'll leave it at that.

JH: What can we expect to see at your exhibition opening?

MD: More zombies than you can handle, including people in make-up wandering around making others feel uneasy (and maybe even a zombie DJ). There will be a stack of first prints of the book, a few special limited edition prints I've done for the night, as well as t-shirts, a bunch of large acrylic and stencilled canvases, and more.

JH: Have you thought much about your future plans beyond the gallery showing?

I've been running on 4 hours sleep a night for the last month so I can barely remember my name at the moment, but I do have a few things planned. But for now the focus is on putting together the best possible solo show I can.

I do plan on doing something special with a US band named The Hope Symphony, who have provided a soundtrack for Lonely Monsters (which will be packaged on CD with the book itself). The music is beautifully creepy and fragile and weird and wonderful and I just can't get enough of it, so I hope to do more with them in the future.

Anyone wanting to keep up with what I'm working on can visit me at www. lonelymonsters. blogspot. com or www. myspace. com/lonelymonsters