Crimson Celluloid and Aussie Zines

CRIMSON CELLULOID was a great little Aussie 'zine (from Sydney) that covered porn, Asian cinema, horror, American exploitation, and everything lurid and bloody in between.

Editors were Brett Garten, the great David Nolte (all-round genre and serial killer authority), and Ant Timpson. I knew Brett and David personally, but didn't meet Ant at the time the mag was being published because he wasn't in Sydney when I'd visit the CC boys. He went back to New Zealand, I think. I later met him and his brother at a couple of Melbourne Film Festivals.

Still, what a stellar mag from a rarefied period just before the internet changed a lot of things.

The review below of Nekromantik is by the indefatigable Michael Helms, who went on to create and edit FATAL VISIONS, the legendary Melbourne-based 'zine. I wrote a Hong Kong film column myself for FV called 'Chinatown Beat'.

Below is an early Australian review for A BETTER TOMORROW written way before almost any Westerner was writing about Woo films. 

Tony Egan, who became a solid friend of mine, wrote often for CC, and was a die-hard HK film fanatic. Tony is also a film director/writer/sharp editor. He cut my film SENSITIVE NEW AGE KILLER with MASTURBATING GUNMAN actor Robin Brennan.

Also below is a Timpson review of the Sammo Hung vehicle DEAD AND THE DEADLY.  

As noted below, other contributors to CC were Joey Inferno (aka Wally Ramborama aka Peter ?), who also went on to create his own 'zine, PSYCHO IN THE DARK. Years later, he'd open a collectible store in Melbourne, and rumor has it, the store is still going strong.

Shane Harrison contributed to FV also; and Richard Kuipers went on to produce SBS's 'The Movie Show' and edit the Australian arm of Variety.

Another interesting 'zine from Melbourne was SEPSIS. 

Consistent with its title, it focused on the grislier side of life, dishing up porn reviews, galleries of deformed Brazilian babies, and articles on flesh-eating diseases. 

The mag was also one of the first to cover the European 'Shit Lovers' series from Choc, a real company. These VHS's (pirated, of course) were even sold from a South Australian PO Box for a while.

I'd post scans if I could find my collection of SEPSIS, but I don't have the energy right now to move fifty boxes of shit. 

Another terrific Sydney-based 'zine was BETTY PAGINATED. A fantastic mag with a strong focus on porn -- although the issue below also featured a great piece on Mark 'Chopper' Reid.

Takeshi Miike's LESSON OF THE EVIL

Takeshi Miike's LESSON OF THE EVIL, just seen fairly recently, blew me away. In many respects, this is as bonkers and audacious as ICHII THE KILLER, and throws in elements of COLD FISH, BATTLE ROYALE, ELEPHANT, AMERICAN PSYCHO,and VIDEODROME.

Simple set-up sees a teacher saddled with the task of eradicating cheating during exams at a high school. When the task proves an impossible one, he takes drastic measures. To put it lightly.

No synopsis can do justice to LESSON's parade of perversion, blackmail, bullying, bloody violence, and outright insanity.

A couple of reviews have criticized the film's pacing, a charge I don't understand at all. From frame one, Miike creates a creeping, cloying sense of tension as he deftly sketches the lives of both teachers and students, and imbues every scene with a shattering inevitability that is paid off in spades.

In light of recent school shootings and reports of increasing campus violence, the film is so utterly relevant, it will be tough going for many, if not most, viewers

Although there is harsh violence throughout, the climax depicts one of the most merciless rampages I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty. It is not a menu of 'creative killings', a fact one moronic reviewer lamented, but is shocking for its brutal banality, its relentless nihilism, its sickening force. 

Audacious and brilliant, LESSON THE EVIL is simply the best film of the year so far, and, as Miike flicks go, right up there with ICHII THE KILLER, VISITOR Q, GOZU, 13 ASSASSINS, GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, THE MAN IN A WHITE SUIT, and THE CITY OF LOST SOULS.

I fuckin loved it!

Paper Beasts On The Rampage

Not to be confused with Nick Sharman's THE CATS, this is Berton Roueche's first person account of cats gone wild on Long Island. Very brief at 126 pages, it moves at a quick clip and dishes up some vivid grue.

I've always liked the bloody-faced kitty on the cover.

Roueche's effort was the first cat novel out the gate, and though it is copyrighted 1974, the same year Herbert's THE RATS appeared in the UK,  I can't find an American copy to confirm whether it was published that year. It was first published in the UK in 1975.

Published in '79 when mad animals, insects, and reptiles were all the rage (thanks to James Herbert and Guy N. Smith), this Hamlyn paperback original focused on the building of a resort on top of a snake colony. No points for predicting some resistance from the creepy crawlies.  

A new copy of the American/Signet paperback of this book is rushing out the door for $193 this week at Amazon. 

More killer cats in D. Gunther Wilde's CLAWS (Leisure; 1978), a novel that came after  Roueche's THE CATS, but before Nick Sharman's attempt to demonize the little fluffs in the early 80's.

Quite a fun read.

If you're looking for the best in killer mantis fiction, you've hit the mother lode, old chap.

I fail to find another novel in existence that I can compare to Nace's EAT THEM ALIVE. 

As the cover blurb screams, it really is A NEW PEAK IN HORROR.

One of the best reads ever. Much better than ULYSSES.

Wonderful Guy N. Smith-style horror about a mad fungus infecting, mutating, and ugly-fying all and sundry.

Lots of funny stuff, too.

Harry Adam Knight was Aussie writer/film critic/novelist John Brosnan, who died in 2005.

The first of his non-fiction books I read was THE HORROR PEOPLE ('76), then FUTURE TENSE - THE CINEMA OF SCIENCE FICTION ('78).

THE FUNGUS is also known as DEATH SPORE.

The Joy of Sex (Pulpy Porn Style)

It's a sexual smorgasbord out there, with the emphasis on 'bored', I'm afraid. It's a deluge. We have graphic images. We have mountains of explicit pornography. We have machine gun-style fucking and sucking. It's all just a few mouse clicks away. 

Still, there is nothing quite like the written word. Nothing. And there's nothing like a lurid illustration to accompany it.

Roll up, roll up, brothers, sisters, and feast your eyes on these artifacts of a bygone era, these lost exhibits of the lavishly lurid.

The sex novels of the 60's, 70's, and 80's tackled subjects that are off-limits today -- 'politically incorrect' -- because some tit-sucking momma's  boy, some blubbering milquetoast with his wife's panties on his head and balls in her pocket, decided to become a 'victim' of them, decided he'd  'clean up' society by demonizing them... all the while taking bribes for political favors, and using his elevated station in life to  rob, rape, and Reverse Robin Hood the people who voted him in.

There was a time, not long ago, my friends, when there was a clear distinction between fantasy and reality, when 'victims' were the physically and mentally abused, when sex was a playground, and make-believe was just that.  It was a simpler time.   You knew where you stood.  The agendas were clearer.

Now, despite the propaganda that it's an 'anything-goes' world, the reality is that anything will offend somebody, and that somebody is gonna cash in.  

It's a sadder world today when a Wall Street banker cops a slap on Rolex for his mass destruction of middle class lives while prosecutors are aggressively busting children for trading 'naughty pictures' with each other on their cell phones.

Makes sense in a way. Sex has always been an easy target for those engaged in distracting us from their crimes of affluence. It's become the indefensible, the accusation that turns the old 'innocent 'til proven guilty' mantra upside down. It may appear we have more freedoms, but we really have more rules, more policing of our thoughts, our fantasies, and our dreams.  

Hopefully, the world will turn full circle again, and the hysteria and hypocrisy associated with depictions of human sexuality will dissolve, and pulpy porn excellence, almost quaint now, will make a welcome return.

Jack Vance, A Giant Of Fantasy, Has Died

Jack Vance, a fantasy writer I'm been in awe of since childhood, has died. He was thee years shy of a hundred.

He left a body of work that is truly staggering in its volume, scope, and quality.

I first stumbled on Jack in Melbourne's Space Age Books, a long gone palace of fantastique delights for fantasy and SF fans that was located a few doors north of Swanston and Lonsdale Streets.

The book I picked up was City of the Chasch,  the first volume in the stunning PLANET OF ADVENTURE series. It was the word ADVENTURE that hooked me.

More than other other fantasy writer, I found Jack's work magical and truly transporting. He cooked up fully-fleshed-out worlds of mind-bending wonder with just twenty-six carefully heated alphabetical ingredients. His works, set in galaxies a million light years from here, and in times few of us could even imagine, were so utterly complete, so real, so authentic in their customs, social structures, and histories (past and future), I never stopped wondering how the hell he did it, how he managed to get everything so right. And that's why I'm still in awe of his talent up to this very day. A sad day.  

Whenever friends or bloggers lament the sorry state of cinematic fantasy, I always think of Jack. My mind automatically turns to a man who set a literary standard that no film could possibly meet. Of course, someone will create a cinematic world based on Jack's imaginings, and someone will pilfer elements of what made Jack so visionary (Cameron did it in AVATAR), but nobody will do Jack as Jack did Jack. Nobody will get it right without surrendering quality and intelligence.

Before Jack, I read Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Ballard, Moorcock, Leiber, Van Vogt, Malzburg (Barry), Ellison, Bester (Alfred), and others too many to list here. I ate their works up. They took me to places beyond my experience, beyond my childhood when childhood wasn't so sweet.  When its realities felt harsh.

When I met Jack, I journeyed further, and I encountered a type of science fantasy that, though set in remote places, blended the grand adventure of R.M. Ballantyne (a favorite of my pre-teen years) with the exotica of fully realized alien worlds. His prose soared, his characters sweated 'til we smelt them, and his affinity for invention colored every chapter. One couldn't read about things like 'sky rafts' and not be pulled into Jack's boundless creations.  

If you've never met Jack, I envy you your first handshake. You won't let go. 

John Holbrook Vance, RIP

Why We Need Charlie Casanova

One imdb reviewer of CHARLIE CASANOVA described its characters as "barely recognizable as human".

Let me think about that for a moment.

Yes... yes... perhaps... maybe...could be somewhat accurate... IF YOU'D NEVER STEPPED OUTSIDE YOUR FUCKING DOOR!!!  Which is clearly the case with anybody who doesn't find immediate commonalities with this accomplished low budget psycho-drama and its stellar cast of flawed earthlings.

Jesus Christ, this is one intelligent, raw, emotionally gory autopsy of human behavior, its central focus being on  the man/woman thing, hypocrisy and lies (same thing), and the role fate plays in our lives.

Not a wise thing to give too much away because some of the revelations are like a surprise right hook to the head, but here goes a taste:

Charlie Barnum (Emmett Scanlan), a caustic, entitled, upper middle class bully who rides roughshod over his intimidated mates and their partners, is responsible for the death of a working class girl. In the tradition of Luke Rhinehart's THE DICEMAN, where fate is sealed by the roll of a dice, Charlie, in the immediate wake of her demise, consults cards to determine his course of action. The result of his choice gives him a newfound freedom with its inevitable consequences, and subjects everybody around him to the living hell of their true selves, and the pain of their own inertia.

Irishman Terry McMahon, the film's writer/director, has produced a work birthed by his outrage at what we settle for, what we take for granted, and what we pretend is happiness. It's a loud and beautifully articulated wake-up call to lives lived in a state of apathy.  Festering apathy.

Seems the film's copped predictable criticism from women, the Irish film "establishment", and anybody else who's not too happy to see their own soiled toilet paper draped over the local town hall. The film's portrayal of hopelessly broken male/female dynamics is spot on, and McMahon has as much venom in reserve for men as he does for women. Charlie's best friend is a prime example of a male who's had his balls torn off by a woman. Weak, pathetic, and convinced that submission will keep the peace, he is, like many men, unable to re-assert his masculinity in a world where male submission to convention is seen as acceptable and preferable. Of course, conventions such as marriage favor one sex and tend to enslave the other. Ultimately, both are enslaved because the fantasy writes checks that reality can't cash.

CHARLIE CASANOVA asks us to think, to question, to rage against the bullshit we're fed. Until we all do that, we'll be needing fellas like Charlie.

Available now on DVD from Amazon US and the UK. Also on VOD.

US distributor is BRINK.

 My radio mate Tom Leykis has been transmitting messages similar to Charlie's for more than a decade now.

He can be found at: www.blowmeuptom.com