Los Monstruos del Terror!

(via Popcorn & Sticky Floors)





Happy Halloween!

Talking Heads on The Old Grey Whistle Test (1978)

Here's a clip of Talking Heads performing "Psycho Killer" on the UK music program, The Old Grey Whistle Test in January 1978. Mr. Byrne is at his tightly-wound, Norman Bates best here and the ferocious, extended dueling-guitars showdown at the end of the song is a fucking scorcher. The band would release their second (and finest) album, More Songs About Buildings and Food six months later in the US. Under the influence of Brian Eno's production, they found their previously-minimalist sound fleshed out and enriched dramatically, and it's fascinating to hear how differently they approached playing their signature song in this performance just one year following its original release in '77.

Dennis Dermody: Descent Into the Cinemaniac's Lair

For years now, writer Dennis Dermody has been unleashing his hilarious, sharp and refreshingly unpretentious takes on horror, cult and exploitation films upon the world, regularly for PAPER Magazine and occasionally elsewhere. He's appeared in documentaries about James Bidgood (The Queer Reveries of James Bidgood) and longtime friend John Waters (the excellent Divine Trash) and - reaching all the way back to 1981 here - can be seen in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance as a patron hastily exiting Mr. Fishpaw's raided porno palace in Polyester. A regular go-to guy for when a knowledgeable voice on the seamier side of cinema is required, Dermody's moniker of Cinemaniac is richly deserved. When he really loves a movie, you know it...you're already adding the title to your Netflix queue before you've even finished reading his review. I can't begin to list how many gloriously warped movies he's pointed me towards via his writing, but it's high time for an anthology of his reviews and essays to be bundled into a book.

Here's a fun 2007 clip, produced by PAPER Magazine, featuring Dermody conducting a guided tour of his movie and mayhem-memorabilia-packed NYC apartment. Dig those beautiful framed Tenebre and Let Me Die a Woman posters!





You can visit Dermody's frequently-updated Cinemaniac blog over on the PAPERMAG site....his recent reflection on the heyday of 42nd Street's movie houses (wherein he recounts - accidentally - sitting on a live cat in one darkened theater, as well as someone trying to set his hair on fire (!) during a viewing of Invasion of the Blood Farmers in another) is a wistful, filth-caked love letter to the Deuce's grimy glory days.

Gallery 1988 Presents: CRAZY 4 CULT 3-D

It's back! Crazy 4 Cult, Los Angeles' ongoing exhibition of cult film-inspired artwork has returned to Gallery 1988 in the all-new Crazy 4 Cult 3-D show, up now and on display through August 8th, 2009. Featuring 100 artists working in media ranging from painting and illustration to plush toys, sculpture and beyond, this third installment (while a bit heavy on Big Lebowski tributes....am I really the only person in the world that doesn't slavishly worship this overrated, endlessly-gushed about film?) is a worthy successor to its two predecessors and a definite must-see if you're in the L.A. area over the next few weeks.

Here's a small sampling of what you'll see adorning the walls of Gallery 1988 during the exhibition. Carlos Ramos' Showgirls piece, as well as Lauren Gregg's heartbreaking Dawn Weiner tribute are undoubtedly my favorites.

Jeff Ramirez

"Mouth"
oil on panel
10 x 20 inches
(Blue Velvet)

Justin Parpan
"They Live Customizable Monster Kit"
digital print on archival paper
(They Live)

Lauren Gregg
"Wienerdog"
acrylic on wood
18 x 22
(Welcome to the Dollhouse)

N.C. Winters

"I Am Jack's Broken Heart"
acrylic and resin on wood panel
16 x 20 inches
(Fight Club)

Mari Inukai

"MILK"
17 x 21 inches, framed
oil on canvas
(A Clockwork Orange)

Lauren Gregg

"Harold"
acrylic on wood
16 x 22 inches
(Harold and Maude)



Shark Toof
"Shark Toof's Chainsaw Massacre Starring Jessica Alba and Mike White"
screen print on archival paper
24 x 36 inches

Carlos Ramos

"Showgirls"
48 x 24 inches
cel paint on wood
(Showgirls)

Eric Fortune

"Rising Son"
acrylic on watercolor paper
15.5 x 22 inches
(Army of Darkness)

Dave Perillo

"Pee-Wee's Big Adventure"
giclee print on archival paper
16 x 20 inches
(Pee-Wee's Big Adventure)

Julian Callos
"Class Dismissed" (from Crazy 4 Cult 2)
giclee print on archival paper
11 x 14 inches
(Battle Royale)

Billy Perkins

"Mushroom Cloud-Layin' MF"
100lbs cover stock 4 colors
20 x 26 inches

(Pulp Fiction)

Andy Kehoe
"Leatherface Wanders Alone"
acrylic and oil on panel
18 x 18 inches
(The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Crazy 4 Cult 3-D runs from now through August 8, 2009. Call G88 for exhibition hours and purchasing inquiries.

Gallery1988
7020 Melrose Ave.
Hollywood, CA 90038
(323) 937-7088


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Stephen Thrower: NIGHTMARE USA

Without a doubt, one of the more comprehensive and awe-inspiring film books released in the past few years is Stephen Thrower's mammoth 2007 volume, Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents (FAB Press). At over 500 pages, and spanning the key 15 years of the American exploitation film genre (1970-1985), Thrower's exhaustive, entertaining history is unmatched in its ambition and scope.

As explained in the book's preface, a mere 500 pages (as well as five years of research) just wasn't enough to cover every film and director he'd wanted to; amazingly, a second volume is in the works, with over 120 more films yet to be covered. Thrower's knowledge of (and admiration for) the films he writes about is vast, and despite Nightmare USA's encyclopedic heft, things are kept moving along at an engrossing, engaging pace throughout. Containing twenty five exclusive interviews with cult filmmakers - including Douglas McKeown (The Deadly Spawn), David Durston (I Drink Your Blood), Joseph Ellison (Don't Go in the House), Gloria Katz and Willard Hyuck (Messiah of Evil) and Robert Endelson (Fight for Your Life) - and over 175 films reviewed, Nightmare USA is the ultimate exploitation film afficiando's bible.

Besides having previously edited the horror cinema magazine Eyeball: The European Sex and Horror Review, as well as authoring one of FAB Press' other finest titles, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, Thrower also spent many years as a member of British experimental group Coil, co-authoring two tracks ("Solar Lodge" and "At the Heart of It All") on their 1984 debut full-length, Scatology.



Upon the release of Nightmare USA in 2007, Thrower curated a UK-based film festival in Hammersmith themed around the book and a handful of the films contained within. In this episode of Alex Fitch's I'm Ready for My Close-Up (originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM), Thrower is interviewed, among other topics, about the festival, the history of the American exploitation film, the marketing of horror movies and the room-clearing powers of a well-timed Herschell Gordon Lewis DVD.

Listen: Stephen Thrower on I'm Ready for My Close-Up, May 2007.

Season's Slayings

This appears to be a Spanish commercial for satellite provider DirecTV with a holiday theme and some very special celebrity appearances. That's about all I know about it, other than that it's completely fucking genius, as well. No, it's not one of those disgusting American DirecTV ads wherein Sigourney Weaver or someone else you used to love dessecrates the memory of one of your favorite movies of all time or anything. This is something else entirely. The gift-bearing Samara is my favorite.

Black Widow Lolitas: Jack Hill's SPIDER BABY (1968)

The early 1960's must have been pure monster heaven for morbid children. You could get your ghoul on with any number of creepy-crawly TV shows, movies, comic books or toys....as long as your parents didn't put the kibosh on the nightmare-inducing entertainments. Fiends, beasties and mutants skulked from every dank pop-culture corner, infesting everything from cereal boxes to pop 45's to t-shirts.

A later by-product of this craze was undoubtedly Jack Hill's 1968 oddity, Spider Baby (shot in '64, and also known as: Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told, Attack of the Liver Eaters and Cannibal Orgy). Infused with a pitch-black sense of sick humor and working wonders with a minuscule budget, Spider Baby tells the twisted story of the three remaining members of the Merrye Family, teenage psycho-sisters Virginia (Jill Banner) and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and their cat-eating, infantile maniac brother Ralph (Sid Haig). Afflicted with a mysterious genetic disorder that causes them to mentally and physically de-evolve (into - yes! - savagery and cannibalism) once they've hit late childhood, the orphans are kept hidden from the outside word by their loyal, loving caretaker and family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). When a trio of distant, conniving relatives arrive to claim the estate - thereby splitting the family up and bringing the outside world into the Merrye's home - things get real murderous, real quick.



The Merryes are nothing if not hospitable. Once the outsiders have dropped in, the family and Bruno treat them to a luxurious supper of inky-black spider soup and roasted cat. I've always had a soft spot for dysfunctional family dinner scenes, and this one is a gem.



Admittedly, the interlopers are bit on the slow side to pick up on the impending danger they're in. Emily, the calculating, sexy viper that's come to seize the estate, is so oblivious that after she's been shown to her dilapidated room for the night, she proceeds to dance around in her kinky unmentionables rather than boarding the doors and windows up.



A handy B&B hint I've picked up on my travels: if a family of creepy shut-ins shows you to a guest room that has a naked Raggedy Ann doll nailed to a crudely-scribbled spiderweb on the wall, you should make a quick mental note of the closest exits/possible weapons, rather than indulging in a lingerie-posedown.

Despite the homicidal tendencies of the girls, there's an undeniably childlike sweetness to their creepy ways and the sheltered, cobwebbed lives they've created for themselves in Merrye Manor. Virginia, Elizabeth and Ralph would love nothing more than playmates who share their love of the dank and squishy, and resort to murder only when they're threatened and intruded upon by the "normals" outside. Hill effectively switches gears from grisly and goofy to heartbreaking when Bruno, his eyes brimming with tears, explains to the sisters that even if these intruders are vanquished, there will be further (and nastier) attempts to take them away and split up the family. The end of the family and the intrusion of the outside world is inevitable, and it's this sad reality that gives the film an unexpected bittersweetness and resonance beyond just being a parade of grotesques.



In a lesser director's hands (and without the performances of the cast, especially Chaney Jr. and Haig, both of whom are excellent), this might not have been the case. At the core of its black little heart, and for all its gross-out humor and monstrous morbidity, Spider Baby shows an endearing, touching affection for its family of misfits.



Here's the (very '60s-style) animated opening credit sequence, featuring the film's theme song as performed by Chaney (which was released as a flip side of Bobby Pickett's "Monster's Holiday", no less).



Comic artist Stephenie Gladden was commissioned by TCM Underground to create a mini web-comic based on the opening credits song that you can take a look at here. The concept behind creating the comic is explained as such:

Although it didn't see release until 1968, Jack Hill's SPIDER BABY was made in 1964, at the height of the "Monster Craze" of the early 1960's. Monsters were menacing every aspect of American popular culture, from prime-time TV to mainstream magazines, gum cards, toys, bubble-bath dispensers, and more. Hill's film is introduced in novelty-tune fashion by Lon Chaney Jr. accompanied by simple comic drawings. In storybook style, we have elaborated on this premise, rendering Roland Stein's song in full - complete with 1960's-appropriate sick humor and ghoulish cameos.

The Spider Baby: Director's Cut DVD is available from Dark Sky Films.