Bread and Vampire Circuses

Is there anything better than a circus of vampires?

The mere idea is pregnant with bloody, sensual possibilities.

My journey to this circus was a circus and an ordeal combined, and I would encounter creatures as hideous as those found in the movie.

The British House of Hammer magazine was the much more serious cousin of Famous Monsters.

I had to ride my bike five miles to pick up each monthly issue. My local newsagent didn't stock it. Why? I was told by the owner's wife that "the covers scare people". I was "people", too, wasn't I? I was paying "people", a guaranteed sale each month.

"No. We're not stocking THAT anymore," she told me with smug satisfaction.

Fine, so I'd hop on my bike every fourth Monday afternoon and ride along the creek for four miles, often encountering the dreaded "Monkeyface" along the way. Then I'd ride the final mile in traffic.

What Nelson Muntz is to Springfield...

...Monkeyface was to Mt. Waverley, my home town.

I have never understood how, but Monkeyface, who was a good five years older than everybody he harassed, was, like Visa, "everywhere you wanted to be", only you didn't want him to be there at the same time as you.

To me, he'll always be tall and towering because he'll always be older. His face had a pointed, pinched appearance, similar to that of a monkey.

A good looking version of the real Monkeyface.

It was as if an invisible hand were pinching his nose and pulling his whole face forward. His eyes were pink, pus-filled slits, and his face...

Jesus, his ... face ...

It was a living pepperoni pizza of weeping acne. It was his greatest weapon of intimidation.

When he came for you, he came with red, blazing sores, and a forehead that was a petri dish of every skin infection known to man. From his skull hung a mop of straight, greasy hair that partially obscured his eyes. This seaweed-like mass was surely responsible for spreading his acne and infesting his eyes with diseases usually reserved for Third World hellholes.

Although he operated under the name of Gary (last name unknown), the "Monkeyface" moniker was issued to him by my brother and I after a close encounter at the local creek. He'd spotted us and chased us for a mile on his 50CC minibike.

A bike similar to Monkeyface's war machine

We'd deserted our pushbikes and taken off into the swamp-like surroundings. Whenever we'd pop our heads up from our hiding place, we'd see the acne-ridden face of our pursuer bobbing above shafts of gently wind-blown sword grass.

It was Onibaba Meets The Zit Monster.

If you got off the train at Mt. Waverley station, Monkeyface would be there. If you decided to walk along the train tracks in the direction of Jordanville, an area notorious for its thick infestation of Skinheads and Sharpies, Monkeyface would be there, hanging by the tracks placing rocks on the silver rails.

The Mt. Waverley train line where Monkeyface
held sway in the 70's.

He was like Santa. If he saw you, you'd better run. He wasn't one to let bygones be bygones, even if those bygones didn't exist. His motto seemed to be: If I see you, you're fucked!

A reasonably accurate police sketch
of Monkeyface.

On many occasions, Monkeyface would be accompanied by the area's local cripple, "Hoggy Hitchhiker".

Hoggy (also first name Gary) suffered from a debilitating bone disorder that gave him a severe limp. When he walked, his right arm would swing like a pendulum in front of him, giving him the appearance of a spastic hitchhiker attempting to thumb a ride.

Although it was clear that Monkeyface had turned Hoggy at some stage, the guy didn't elicit much sympathy, even when he was working solo.

One incident defined his reign of neighborhood terror. My brother and I had been playing a game of cricket at the local park. Some other boys had joined us. The game ended in a fight, as usual, and someone got branded on the head with a cricket ball. Cricket balls hurt a lot.

Take your pick. They all deliver
a serious headache.

Collecting my brother's football (which we'd been kicking around before we had enough bodies to play cricket), we left the park. We walked home, but decided to stop by the Milk Bar for some lollies/candy. As we turned the corner to head down a narrow alleyway, we found it blocked by a massive piece of lumber held by Hoggy Hitchhiker. We froze in our tracks, not even thinking to back up and run.

Hoggy was an intimidating figure of menace. On top of his limp and hitchhiking swagger, he was cross-eyed. Not just a little bit cross-eyed, either. He was the Cross-Eyed Poster Boy. This prick's eyes did tricks that would have Jim Rose beating down his door today. He'd be screaming at me, but his eye would be tilted to to the sky. Or he'd look at me directly while ordering my brother to "Shut up or die!" Those eyes were godless.

So we froze and almost pissed ourselves. "What the fuck are you two doing?" Hoggy inquired, struggling to hold the road block he'd stolen from a building site.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit!"

Hoggy almost dropped the lumber on his foot and reached down into his pants to pull out a massive loaf of unsliced bread. He had a rep for doing that.

His was a thick, fresh tube of white bread just purchased from Miss Coffee at the Milk Bar. It had a serrated pattern on it. I knew this type of loaf well because my mother often sent me to get one. Hoggy gripped it in one hand and stabbed the end of it with his filthy fingers. He reached into the doughy body and started excavating clumps from it. He mashed them into his face as he eyeballed both of us. We didn't run. We didn't hide. We didn't apologize for living. We just stared in shock as Hoggy ate the entire loaf in front of us.

Hoggy's arsenal of intimidation.

When he was sated, his eyes danced about and he staggered forward. He raised his hitchhiking hand and pointed to the football my brother was carrying.

"What's in the football?" he asked.

"What?"

"What's in the fuckin' football? You got drugs in that football?"

My brother was speechless and confused.

"Huh?"

Hoggy raised his fist and his eyes turned inward to his nose.

"You want a bashing?"

"No."

"Then tell me what's in the football?"

"Nothing."

"That's bullshit!!!" Hoggy spat bread and saliva on us both. "Give it to me."

"No."

This was a touchy moment. My brother loved that football. He'd already lost one to Monkeyface. Now there was a second one heading for their clubhouse of ugly criminals.

Hoggy shook his head, his eye finding mine as he spoke to my brother. "Give me the ball or I'll bash you silly, freak!"

Reluctantly, and on the edge of teardom, my brother surrendered his allegedly drug-laden football to Mr. Hitchhhiker. Then he dropped his head in anticipation of the ball's fate...or prayer.

Hoggy's goofy eyes darted all over the place as he held the ball in his slippery grip and reached into his jacket for something. It was a long, mean blade.

It scared the fuck out of us.

"What are you going to do?" I asked Hoggy.

Kill you if you don't shut up, his look told me.

Hoggy dropped to his knees and placed the ball on the ground. He raised his knife, as if getting ready to stab it.

"I'm cleaning up drugs in this area," he said. "I don't like drugs."

Hoggy was lying on two counts:

#1 Drugs were as common in Mt. Waverley as Times Square hookers, and

#2 If anybody liked drugs, it was Hoggy and his mate Monkeyface

My brother and I watched helplessly as Hoggy thrust the knife downwards, bursting the ball open instantly with his hitchhiking power.

We watched in horror as the rubber bladder inside the oval-shaped football deflated and made a final, argumentative whistling sound.

Hoggy cut the bladder open and checked it for drugs.

Finding nothing, he stood, dropped the ball (which now resembled a giant's used condom), picked up the massive piece of lumber, and re-blocked our path.

"You can go now," he said. "But I don't want to see any drugs around here."

Hoggy turned the lumber ninety degrees to let us through.

We forgot all about the lollies.

As I rode those four miles beside the creek each month to pick up my copy of House of Hammer, the journey was fraught with the possibility that I would encounter Monkeyface and Hoggy Hitchhiker. These creatures from a circus of their own making ruled Mt. Waverley. The only person who didn't know that was the Mayor.

When I did finally snag my monthly copy of House and returned home safely with it, I savored it just that little bit more because I'd run the Monkeyface gauntlet and survived.

I'd disappear into my bedroom and post a "Do Not Enter" sign on the door. Hastily scribbled.

This edition, # 17, with a female vampire from Vampire Circus on the cover (art by Brian Lewis), looked like a winner from the get-go.

I wasn''t wrong.

Traditionally, the mag featured adaptations of popular Hammer films (past and present) in comic form.

It was a great way for its juvenile readership to get an illustrated taste of movies they weren't old enough to see.

The comic adaptation of Vampire Circus ('72) was a bottler, featuring magnificent, kinetic art by Brian Bolland:

When I was through, I was shaking with excitement.

I HAD to see this film.

A couple of problems presented themselves:

A) It wasn't on in Australia yet, and

B) It was probably going to be rated R

The first one I couldn't do much about, but I could work on the second.

Several months later, my Thursday morning routine of reading the new film listings delivered me a gift from the pulp gods:

Vampire Circus had started, and, yes, it was R-rated as expected.

However, it was double billed with a cartoon. A cartoon! Cartoons were for kids, right?

But, hang on, this cartoon was also R-rated. What? Surely that was a mistake.

Why would a cartoon be R-rated?

"We're a new breed of cat, baby!" was all the ad said.

How my ten year old mind read that was: "We're a new breed of cat-baby!" My entire childhood is compromised of warped misunderstandings of things I'd read.

So the film was about a cat-baby? A baby that was half a cat? Or a cat that was half a baby?

Why would that be rated R?

It didn't matter.

I now had a clever angle for approaching my mother.

Positive outcomes in my negotiations could usually be attributed to the time of day they occurred and the place. The ideal time was after dinner. The ideal place was the kitchen sink. I was the family's chief dish and bottle dryer, so I chose to pop the question when I was almost done drying the night's dishes.

"Mum, can I see a cartoon?"

My mother kept washing. "Where's it on?"

"At the drive-in."

"I don't know."

"It's about cats."

I mentioned cats because my mother loved cats. We had one called Tiger at the time, and we'd buried several over the years. Most were found squashed like pancakes on the road.

"I haven't heard about that," my mother said.

"It just started," I explained. "It's only on for a week."

"We'll see."

That wasn't good enough for me. We'll see usually meant No.

I finished the last dish and began stacking them in the cupboard.

"We could see the cat film on Friday or Saturday night."

"See what?"

"The cat cartoon."

"It's a cartoon?"

"Yes."

"What's it called?"

"Fritz The Cat."

The name didn't register with her.

"Never heard of it."

"He's new."

My mother shrugged and took off her smelly, rubber gloves.

"It starts at seven-thirty. It's on at Burwood."

I mentioned Burwood because Burwood was the closest drive-in. And my most beloeved.

The Burwood Drive-in in its heyday.

"Where's the paper?"

Finally a bone was thrown my way.

I'd already cut the ad out and pasted it into my scrapbook, so I went and got it quick.

I laid it on the table and opened it. My mother watched and said: "You've already cut it out?"

"Yeah."

My mother looked angrily at me: "What if somebody wanted to read that page?"

I wasn't prepared with an answer.

"The people over the road get the paper, too," was all I could manage.

A shaken head was her reply to that. It was a common reply, actually.

I flipped to the page where the Fritz The Cat/Vampire Circus ad mat was pasted.

"Where is it?" she asked.

I pointed to the ad.

"THAT'S the cat film?"

"Uhuh."

"What sort of film is it? It looks like a cartoon."

"That's what I told you."

My mother took a closer look at the ad.

"It looks ridiculous," she said. "What's it about?"

"It's just about cats."

"Is it?"

Silence fell on the conversation.

"But it's rated R."

"Huh?" I did my best to feign ignorance.

My mother looked at me long and hard.

"Yes," she said slowly. "It is."

"That's a mistake," I said. "Lots of kids are going to see it."

My reply was yesterday's fish and my mother wasn't buying it.

"What kids? Anybody I know?"

I fumbled for a response.

"Just some kids at school. Their mother's taking them."

"Name one. I'll call her and have a chat."

This was going badly.

My mother shook her head in exasperation. Clearly, doing the dishes had done nothing for my credit with her.

She inspected the ad again.

"And what's on with it? It's not some vampire thing, is it?"

I took a close look at the ad and shrugged. "I dunno."

"Vam-pire Circus," she said. She shook her head. "Good Lord, it sounds terrible!"

And that, folks, was that.

I didn't see Vampire Circus in its entirety until I was thirty years old.

Despite my mother's rash assessment of the film, it turned out to be the opposite of terrible.

I loved it so much.

It even had Dr. Who's Mrs., Lalla Ward, in it. She strips off everything in a very erotic dance scene and plays a beautiful vampire

Old Darth Vader himself, David Prowse, turns up as a muscleman, too.

It's almost perfect, a brilliant concept, and it was a refreshing diversion for Hammer.

The Region 4 DVD, "Hammer Horror Collection", also includes beautiful prints of Hands of the Ripper and the wonderful Twins of Evil, one of my absolute favorite erotic vampire flicks; those Collinson twins are double every kind of possible fun.

I don't know what happened to Monkeyface, and I lost track of Hoggy Hitchhiker, too.

I do know they no longer rule Mt. Waverley.

Now the Mayor can sleep at night.

"Fuck You!" Filmmaking

I'm uncomfortable and somewhat uneasy discussing my own work here, but since this blog is autobiographical by design, perhaps my discomfort is unjustified.

Afterall, my exposure to exploitation (sex and violence) at a very early age, and subsequent addiction, is part of what compelled me to make some films of my own, as minor as they are.

Is necrophilia still rape when a corpse can't consent?

"PULP AS A WAY OF LIFE", my description of this blog, ought to cover how pulp has affected my life, and my work. If it doesn't, it's derelict in its duty.

One's passion for literature and film and illustration (and variations thereof) permeates our everyday lives.

Not an hour goes by that is not colored by a thought, a memory, a recollection, or a recreation (in our minds) of something fantastique that has moved us.

It is always there.

It lives and grows and mutates inside us, giving rise to a fresh, new synthesis of its purest elements

Until very recently, Australia was a heavily censored country. The theatrical releases of The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn of the Dead, Maniac and Zombie Flesh Eaters were all cut.

Last House on the Left was banned for almost thirty years.

When I was a young boy, even a teenager, I could only imagine the true extent of the grisliest, most violent content released overseas. I could only dream of and speculate about what I was missing.

Or maybe I could create it myself... within the walls of censorship? .

In the late 70's, I got hold of an American X-rated film periodical called Adult Cinema Review.

In it, a film called Weekend Fantasy ('84) was reviewed. The film starred a bloke named Bill Margold as the leader of a gang of miscreants (male and female) who kidnap and sexually enslave various women as part of a secret sex club. According to the review, the film's standout scene of degeneracy featured a rape by Margold in a chicken coop. During the scene, Margold's penis really got bitten and blood spurted out of it. Like a trooper, he continued with the scene through to its conclusion.

Imminent castration by garden shears

After reading this account, I felt like I'd been tapped on the shoulder and anointed with a mission to create a Weekend Fantasy of my own, a home-grown strike against Australia's draconian censorship laws.

The descriptions of the film's sexual anarchy touched a nerve in me. They lit a wicked fire.

All X-rated films were banned in Australia at the time. There wasn't any possibility that I would get to see Weekend Fantasy or its ilk anytime soon. How far these films really pushed the envelope I didn't know. I only had stills to go on, and stills can be deceptive.

Very weak cover art

But these images of long ago (which I have no access to now) inspired me to take a crack at creating my only sexually violent hell on Earth... on Super-8!


Simple-set up: Three friends on a cross-country walk stop to relax in the ruins of an old house.

The weary travelers take a break

Almost immediately, they are attacked and raped by two savages who reside in the ruins. In the process of destroying the bodies of their victims (who are predominantly male), the savages gain great physical power and an extension on their mortality.

Most importantly, the victims who are witness to the destruction of their friends, begin to enjoy what they are witness to, and become reluctantly "infected" by the sexual violence, as if it is some kind of contagion.

The victims become the voyeurs...

... and the voyeurs become the new aggressors, embracing their primal natures.

Perversion can be contagious.

None of this is explicitly stated in dialog (there is no dialog), and the film has no hardcore sex, but this theme of submitting to perversion's power is what drove the concept.

When my brother and I screened these films at a well known community film festival in Melbourne's St. Kilda area, we were shown the door. Although we had been accepted into the festival, nobody had watched the films themselves. Screened beside meaningful lesbian love stories and accounts of community do-gooding, our poems to sexual anarchy got no respect (and rightly so).

My brother Colin as the face of the Beyond the Pale films.

Because the festival was government subsidized, there were complaints to government administrators about the single screening of these films with complainants arguing that such "rubbish" had no business being screened at a tax payer-funded festival.

Although I had made close to forty Super-8 shorts before these two, these were the most satisfying of my experiences in filmmaking.

The simple scenario permitted total creative freedom.

At the time I was obsessing about contrast and juxtaposition in art, so here was a great opportunity to experiment with the beauty/brutality mix that was firing my passion; finally I was stepping beyond simple depictions of aesthetically satisfying mayhem (not that there's anything wrong with that!)

When the films were screened at various festivals, my brother and I were always asked by audience members why the film's sexual violence was mostly homosexual. Surely there were complex, deeply considered reasons?

Not really.

Whether you're male or female, rape is a terrible, invasive act, even if only imagined.

If I wanted to depict it, gender wasn't especially relevant to me.

The fact is, as a Melbourne teenager, I simple didn't know any girls who would agree to participate in such a film.

The guys I knew didn't have a problem doing anything. They just loved making movies.

They turned up and did their part.

End of discussion.

What are friends for?

Interestingly, whenever these films were screened, males either loved them or got mad at me for making them.

The male/male rapes bothered some men a lot.

One guy threatened to hit me at a New Year's Eve bash when a friend suggested I screen the films in a lead-up to the the Witching Hour. I did try to explain that the films weren't really an appropriate entree into the New Year, but the ears of my friend (God bless him) were clearly painted on that night.

Richard Wolstencroft, creator of the infamous Melbourne
Underground Film Festival (MUFF), rebels against
draconian censorship.

I don't like a lot of what I've done. I'm very, very critical. Much of it feels compromised and uneven.

I do like the Beyond The Pale flicks , though, which I made with my brother.

They're my example of Fuck You! Filmmaking, a type of filmmaking that the worship of the almighty dollar has virtually destroyed.

But, you know what? It's coming back! It's coming back because the old distribution ways for indie films are no longer working.

The dolls from my collection find employment.

Our beloved classics of pulp in film, literature, and illustration (and variations thereof) were forged with a Fuck You! attitude and no concessions to mediocrity.

For anything truly original, no other approach will do.

You'll only have to kowtow to the mediocre when the mediocre are funding you.

I was inspired by the "idea" of Weekend Fantasy, but what I ended up with was something entirely different, a pure synthesis of personal perspective and diverse influences.

Calm before the carnal storm

I met Bill Margold, the man in the chicken coop, a couple of years ago, and I related to him my story of how he lit a wicked fire inside me.

He smiled, walked me to his office, and introduced me to his collection of Garfield-like stuffed cats. He called me "Kid" a lot, and talked about Viper, the love of his life, a woman (now gone) for whom he still carries a flaming torch nothing will ever extinguish.

I have caught up with Bill on several occasions and am always so impressed with his brutal honesty and capacity for tenderness and humor.

Bill with actress Drea

These are traits I find often in most true apostles of pulp.

I must confess, however, that it can be hard sometimes to reconcile Bill with the chicken coop of my teen dreams.

My brother as the savage rapist of the Beyond The Pale films

The Calimero Connection

I never met a wooden boy I didn't like.

The idea of a person forged from natural ingredients has always interested me.

There have been many interpretations of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (1882) over the last 100+ years.

Disney took a shot at him, but they played down the darker, tragic aspects of the tale.

In '02, director/actor Roberto Benigni attempted to crack the Pinocchio code, too. He didn't shy away from the darkness, but he made the suicidal mistake of casting himself as the wooden boy.

His monstrously miscalculated decision rendered the film a wretched disaster that insulted the ghost of Collodi.

In '88, artist Roberto Innocenti, working from a '74 translation of the original Collodi text by E. Harden, achieved greatness with his visualization of the wooden boy's incredible journey.

It captured the essence of Pinocchio, a tale of a young boy's search for identity and decency in others.

Benigni played the boy as a part time buffoon, but there is no buffoonery to be found in Collodi's creation.

Give me a fuckin' break!

The tragedy and melancholy in Pinocchio...

...is balanced by its celebration of courage and individuality.

Ironically, the only other character, to my mind, who has shared a journey akin to Pinocchio's is Calimero, also the creation of Italians.

In '72, a Japanese production company adapted the character for animation, and one of the saddest, most moving pieces of television ever made was created. It ran for two years.

When I first saw it in '73, I was hypnotized by its unbelievable atmosphere of tragedy and hopelessness.

In each episode, poor little Calimero would get taken advantage of by people he trusted.

He would cry: "It's an injustice, it is," and the curtain would come down on another episode.

The seed of Calimero is Pinocchio.

This 1st edition of The Adventures of Pinocchio, with art by Roberto Innocenti, was published by Jonathan Cape, Ltd. in the UK.