With the Beyond the Darkness title stemming from a Joe D’Amato film and the subtitle cult, horror and extreme cinema, the typical reader of this blog can probably expect that Phil Russell’s book is going to be of interest to them, whether as a source of new films to track down and see or to simply see how another fan’s tastes diverge and converge with your own.
Rather than plunging straight into the alphabetised reviews of roughly 160 titles across 420 or so pages, Russell sets out his criteria in the introduction: No, this is not a comprehensive discussion of cult, horror and extreme cinema, nor could it ever be. No, this is not an “entry level” book, where no prior knowledge is expected.
At this point the prospective reader might wonder what “entry level” means and whether they are just going to get another discussion of, say, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer or The Beyond. Well, yes, both these titles are present and correct.
Crucially, however, the wide geographical and temporal range in the films discussed, from North America, Europe, and East Asia, and from the late 1950s to the present, should mean there are titles you haven’t seen or may not even have heard of.
Another important factor here is the gamut of positions the films discussed occupy in relation to art, auteur, experimental and/or exploitation cinemas. This is sometimes seen within a single film (e.g. Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant or Nacho Cerda’s Aftermath) and sometimes within the broader career of a given auteur (e.g. David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future to Shivers to Dead Ringers).
Importantly, Russell also here establishes his limits, particularly around the inclusion of actual death footage. Accordingly those expecting a run through of interminable Faces/Traces of Death sequels may be disappointed.
The reviews themselves are informative and even-handed, avoiding fan-boy type hyperbole, whilst still often couched in Joe Bob-Briggs type language. There’s a levelling effect, where Jesus Franco’s “Bloody Moon is far from being a masterpiece but is entertaining from start to finish” whilst Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch is essentially a hit or miss affair”
In addition to the reviews there are also some longer pieces, such as a reprint of the Cinema of Transgression’s manifesto and an interview with Nick Zedd, or a discussion of horror and censorship in late Franco Spain.
Some apparent misspellings (“Marchians” for Martians in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars) and awkwardness in the formatting (though no worse than other print-on-demand type titles I’ve seen) aside Beyond the Darkness can be recommended.
Showing posts with label trash culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trash culture. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 March 2013
Thursday, 13 August 2009
British Low Culture
The first thing to say about British Low Culture is that it's an academic rather than a popular book, author Leon Hunt being a lecturer in film and TV studies. The second is that this shouldn't be a deal breaker for the cult film fan, inasmuch as Hunt prefers to build up from the objects themselves rather than imposing a theory upon them from above.
The book, published in 1998, is perhaps now dated in the way that any study looking at one decade from the perspective of another is going to be, in that now we're well into nostalgia for the 80s. It's also perhaps been superceded in some areas by more recent work, such as Steve Chibnall's study of Pete Walker's films or Simon Sheridan's guide to British sex films, while the references to Gary Glitter are obviously before that performers paedophiliac predilections came to light.
Nonetheless, it's still a valuable read on the whole and a useful introduction to a wide range of 70s “low” culture – low being distinguished from the “popular” in terms of its double marginalisation, as neither part of the 'official' high cultural canon nor of the 'alternative' cultural studies canon as it has emerged.
What this means in practice is that Hunt concentrates not so much upon the now-recuperated and respectable likes of Powell and Pressburger and Hammer horror, but upon the likes of the Carry On films, the Confessions series, On the Buses – whose films were Hammer productions, and highly successful ones at that – and the independent post-Hammer productions of Walker, Norman Warren, and James Kenelm Clarke. Or, in that he does actually discuss Peeping Tom, it's more in relation to Pamela Green and Harrison Marks's involvement.
As a consequence, the discussions tend to be more socio-political than aesthetic, as these texts, with their endemically problematic discourses around class, gender and race are read in relation to the various crises and discontents of the time. If much of this is predictable, it's also interesting to read how Carry on at Your Convenience, set in a lavatory factory, engaged with the subject of industrial unrest and unionisation – or, rather, the awkwardness of its engagement as a sign of a collapsing consensus.
The chapter on the New English Library, coming at a time when the Skinhead novels of Richard Allen had been reprinted – and thus perhaps already begun to become part of a cultural studies canon – but Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange not yet re-released again serves as a reminder of how things have changed: What do Anchor Bay's handsome DVD box-sets of Walker and Warren mean for their recuperation? Is it is now possible, or even necessary, to look even lower?
If Hunt's endnotes provide indications for where such a project might go, towards the likes of Harrison Marks's Corporal Punishment magazines or Hellcats Female Mud-Wrestlers, the issue for the potential scholar is precisely there triple marginalisation, that these are things relegated to the sidelines even here. (While Ramsay Campbell has written about CP stuff, he is a successful horror author rather than an academic.)
Another project that suggests itself is looking at British East Asian representations and experiences around this time, with 1970s racist discourses as they are discussed structured very much in terms of 'Blacks' and South Asians. (An essay on Me Me Lai's film and television career anyone?)
The book, published in 1998, is perhaps now dated in the way that any study looking at one decade from the perspective of another is going to be, in that now we're well into nostalgia for the 80s. It's also perhaps been superceded in some areas by more recent work, such as Steve Chibnall's study of Pete Walker's films or Simon Sheridan's guide to British sex films, while the references to Gary Glitter are obviously before that performers paedophiliac predilections came to light.
Nonetheless, it's still a valuable read on the whole and a useful introduction to a wide range of 70s “low” culture – low being distinguished from the “popular” in terms of its double marginalisation, as neither part of the 'official' high cultural canon nor of the 'alternative' cultural studies canon as it has emerged.
What this means in practice is that Hunt concentrates not so much upon the now-recuperated and respectable likes of Powell and Pressburger and Hammer horror, but upon the likes of the Carry On films, the Confessions series, On the Buses – whose films were Hammer productions, and highly successful ones at that – and the independent post-Hammer productions of Walker, Norman Warren, and James Kenelm Clarke. Or, in that he does actually discuss Peeping Tom, it's more in relation to Pamela Green and Harrison Marks's involvement.
As a consequence, the discussions tend to be more socio-political than aesthetic, as these texts, with their endemically problematic discourses around class, gender and race are read in relation to the various crises and discontents of the time. If much of this is predictable, it's also interesting to read how Carry on at Your Convenience, set in a lavatory factory, engaged with the subject of industrial unrest and unionisation – or, rather, the awkwardness of its engagement as a sign of a collapsing consensus.
The chapter on the New English Library, coming at a time when the Skinhead novels of Richard Allen had been reprinted – and thus perhaps already begun to become part of a cultural studies canon – but Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange not yet re-released again serves as a reminder of how things have changed: What do Anchor Bay's handsome DVD box-sets of Walker and Warren mean for their recuperation? Is it is now possible, or even necessary, to look even lower?
If Hunt's endnotes provide indications for where such a project might go, towards the likes of Harrison Marks's Corporal Punishment magazines or Hellcats Female Mud-Wrestlers, the issue for the potential scholar is precisely there triple marginalisation, that these are things relegated to the sidelines even here. (While Ramsay Campbell has written about CP stuff, he is a successful horror author rather than an academic.)
Another project that suggests itself is looking at British East Asian representations and experiences around this time, with 1970s racist discourses as they are discussed structured very much in terms of 'Blacks' and South Asians. (An essay on Me Me Lai's film and television career anyone?)
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Bad Mags 2
Published by Headpress, Tom Brinkman's Bad Mags 2 is perhaps less a follow up to Bad Mags than a continuation of it, as signalled by the fact that the page numbering for the 260-odd page volume starts at 312.
Not having read the original, I can't say how it compares in terms of content, though I can say that if the first volume is anything like this I will definitely be getting a copy of it as soon as possible.
Brinkman's subject matter is, as the cover blurb states, "the strangest, most unusual and sleaziest periodicals ever published".
How far that's true on a wider basis, given the geographical and temporal frame of the US and occasionally Canada between the 50s and 80s is perhaps debatable, but only in terms of being stranger, more unusual, or sleazier in a pissing match way that is part and parcel of cult territory.
Indeed, this is something Brinkman confronts but then assiduously swerves away from in introducing the first of his subjects, magazines dealing with the occult and eroticism, insofar as he mentions Nugget as a fetish magazine that was launched in the wake of Playboy but which has "definitely mutated" since; I'll say no more on the subject here, but rather leave it for the curious to investigate at their own convenience. (Curiousity may be aroused or diminished by the toilet and pissing metaphors...)
What impresses in the discussion itself are the way it charts the cultural developments of the 50s, 60s and 70s, from the magazine Satan with its relatively vague use of an iconic Devil as a counterpoint to the Playboy bunny onto slightly more authentic publications, and as an organic introduction to what follows:
The dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the establishment of the Church of Satan are followed by two chapters on the murder of Sharon Tate and on Charles Manson that neatly show up the confused and contradictory situation in the USA circa 1970, while also illustrating how little has changed since.
Reading the headlines pertaining to Manson and the most famous victim of his cult, along with those focusing on other celebrities of the day, it is amazing how easily you could simply change the names and the graphical style and have a contemporary publication.
This quasi-random / Markov Model approach to text generation is something that also comes through in the fourth chapter, which discusses the career and work of Myron Fass, the king of US pulp in the 1960s and 1970s.
Quite simply, Fass did not care what crap he published, so long as it sold enough copies of a given title. His gimmicks included offering student discounts, without bothering to check the subscriber's credentials - who cared, as he was still making money anyways? - and, with his Official UFO magazine, presenting the incredible story - as in beyond credibility - of one Buddy Weiss, a Kasper Hauser / Brother from Another Planet type (Weiss even has a wooden horse!)
Often laugh out funny, the chapter provides a welcome respite from Manson and the fifth chapter, which discusses true crime and atrocity magazines, including the infamous Violent World, as immortalised by The Misfits in the song of the same name.
Lodi's finest are, however, conspicuously absent from the final chapter, on 'punk' magazines; I use the scare quotes because the difference between these opportunistic magazines' version of punk and the 'real', 'authentic' thing is a key theme.
Maximum Rock and Roll these magazines were not: they had no ideology, other than (an unironic) implicit endorsement of capitalism and consumerism, about as far from (idealist) punk anarchism as you can get, except when you consider that Malcolm McLaren had already subverted Situationism into a chaos = cash syllogism with his Sex Pistol puppets...
Yet, at the same time, one also thinks of Black Flag's 'creepy crawl' tours across the USA, or the Bad Mags style headline collages in Dead Kennedy's LP inserts, and thereby realises the way it all fits together; to paraphrase a Misfits bootleg, "If You don't know [what I'm talking about] then what the fuck are you doing here?" (These magazines would never try selling such bands - can you imagine Minor Threat or The Minutemen's responses?)
The appendix provides a checklist of Ed Wood's writings for 'Bad Mags' in the 60s and 70s. One of his pseudonyms was, tellingly, Ann Gora....
Brinkman is definitely someone who knows his (US) trash culture, whether noting the appearances of porn star Rene Bond in satanic/occult magazine layouts or the use of stills from Love Camp 7 and Snuff in their true crime/bondage counterparts.
In a word: essential.
[Bad Mags 2 is available from http://www.headpress.com]
Not having read the original, I can't say how it compares in terms of content, though I can say that if the first volume is anything like this I will definitely be getting a copy of it as soon as possible.
Brinkman's subject matter is, as the cover blurb states, "the strangest, most unusual and sleaziest periodicals ever published".
How far that's true on a wider basis, given the geographical and temporal frame of the US and occasionally Canada between the 50s and 80s is perhaps debatable, but only in terms of being stranger, more unusual, or sleazier in a pissing match way that is part and parcel of cult territory.
Indeed, this is something Brinkman confronts but then assiduously swerves away from in introducing the first of his subjects, magazines dealing with the occult and eroticism, insofar as he mentions Nugget as a fetish magazine that was launched in the wake of Playboy but which has "definitely mutated" since; I'll say no more on the subject here, but rather leave it for the curious to investigate at their own convenience. (Curiousity may be aroused or diminished by the toilet and pissing metaphors...)
What impresses in the discussion itself are the way it charts the cultural developments of the 50s, 60s and 70s, from the magazine Satan with its relatively vague use of an iconic Devil as a counterpoint to the Playboy bunny onto slightly more authentic publications, and as an organic introduction to what follows:
The dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the establishment of the Church of Satan are followed by two chapters on the murder of Sharon Tate and on Charles Manson that neatly show up the confused and contradictory situation in the USA circa 1970, while also illustrating how little has changed since.
Reading the headlines pertaining to Manson and the most famous victim of his cult, along with those focusing on other celebrities of the day, it is amazing how easily you could simply change the names and the graphical style and have a contemporary publication.
This quasi-random / Markov Model approach to text generation is something that also comes through in the fourth chapter, which discusses the career and work of Myron Fass, the king of US pulp in the 1960s and 1970s.
Quite simply, Fass did not care what crap he published, so long as it sold enough copies of a given title. His gimmicks included offering student discounts, without bothering to check the subscriber's credentials - who cared, as he was still making money anyways? - and, with his Official UFO magazine, presenting the incredible story - as in beyond credibility - of one Buddy Weiss, a Kasper Hauser / Brother from Another Planet type (Weiss even has a wooden horse!)
Often laugh out funny, the chapter provides a welcome respite from Manson and the fifth chapter, which discusses true crime and atrocity magazines, including the infamous Violent World, as immortalised by The Misfits in the song of the same name.
Lodi's finest are, however, conspicuously absent from the final chapter, on 'punk' magazines; I use the scare quotes because the difference between these opportunistic magazines' version of punk and the 'real', 'authentic' thing is a key theme.
Maximum Rock and Roll these magazines were not: they had no ideology, other than (an unironic) implicit endorsement of capitalism and consumerism, about as far from (idealist) punk anarchism as you can get, except when you consider that Malcolm McLaren had already subverted Situationism into a chaos = cash syllogism with his Sex Pistol puppets...
Yet, at the same time, one also thinks of Black Flag's 'creepy crawl' tours across the USA, or the Bad Mags style headline collages in Dead Kennedy's LP inserts, and thereby realises the way it all fits together; to paraphrase a Misfits bootleg, "If You don't know [what I'm talking about] then what the fuck are you doing here?" (These magazines would never try selling such bands - can you imagine Minor Threat or The Minutemen's responses?)
The appendix provides a checklist of Ed Wood's writings for 'Bad Mags' in the 60s and 70s. One of his pseudonyms was, tellingly, Ann Gora....
Brinkman is definitely someone who knows his (US) trash culture, whether noting the appearances of porn star Rene Bond in satanic/occult magazine layouts or the use of stills from Love Camp 7 and Snuff in their true crime/bondage counterparts.
In a word: essential.
[Bad Mags 2 is available from http://www.headpress.com]
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