JASON VOORHEES

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

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

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

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

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.

Copyright John Harrison 2009

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

OLD MELBOURNE GAOL

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

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/

CREEPY IMAGES

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

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

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

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

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'

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.

Copyright John Harrison 2008