I was sitting outside a newsagent’s shop on a pavement bench, idling the time of day by watching people going in and out…

Until I realised, and I don’t know when I first realised it, or how, and whether I am a special sort of person to notice it at all, but the people going in were always different from those coming out.

After quite a long while, I went in to investigate and discovered there was another entrance to the shop round the corner. On coming out, I wondered who that geezer was sitting on the bench, staring at me so strangely! I must have met him once in a dream.

Talking about dreams, I once had one where I was a cashier in a canteen, totting up all the items on the trays passing before me, and accepting the luncheon vouchers and tannersworth…

Strange, I was a woman in the dream, complete with shapeless torso and a wicked, gossiping tongue. The boobs felt funny hanging on my man’s chest like polythene bags full of plum pudding.

But that wasn’t the strangest thing, for the food-bearing trays gradually turned nastier. At first I thought the steaks Chef was serving up were getting rarer and rarer but they were, I finally guessed, thinly disguised bits of raw human bodies…

The customer who came last had what looked like a coiled penis on a bed of pilau rice, garnished such that it almost looked tasty…

I woke with a start, sweating like a pig on heat; I fumbled for what I thought would be proof of my manhood and was devastated ( if that’s strong enough a word ) to find the dream was too close to home for my liking.

No wonder that chap coming out of the newsagent ogled me as I sat crosslegged upon the bench. He sat down next to me and whispered that he would like it “off the bone”. I smiled knowingly, as dinner ladies sometimes do.

Splatterfest ’90 takes place at the Scala on February 24th – unless it’s all a con, I should be going to it, so any subscribers also going who need a floor on Friday night or who want to head out for a drink then, please feel free to get in touch.

**** 2. “I will not be threatened by a walking meat-loaf!”

ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE S.S. (Don Edmonds)

As far as titles go, it’s difficult to think of one more calculated to ruffle the sensibilities of censors & bleeding-heart liberals alike, promising as it does sex, violence & very dodgy politics. On the other hand, it’s acquired total cult status among fans of weird movies, so which view is right? Is it an unjustifiable exercise in sadism or an classic example of sheer, black, humour?

The story-line, such as there is, goes as follows : Ilsa is the commandant in charge of a Nazi prison camp, in the last days of WW II. She has a theory that women are better able to stand pain than men, and spends her time attempting to prove this by the simple method of being very nasty to a lot of people while also carrying out her ‘official’ work – other, equally unpleasant, medical experiments. Her prisoners attempt to stage a revolt and very nearly succeed before both sides are killed by Nazi High Command, who’ve decided the camp is not the sort of thing they want the Allies to find. Two prisoners survive, to tell the story to the world…

I believe two things prevent this movie from slipping beyond the limits of the acceptable. Firstly, the directorial stance is unashamedly exploitative. Though it purports to be a ‘dramatised reconstruction’, this is about as plausible as the voice-over at the start of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, which claims that all the events THERE really took place.

This warning at the start also provides the makers with their ‘justification’; they’re only depicting these things to stop them from ever happening again. Not that this, or the fact that Ilsa gets her head blown apart at the end ( Gee! I’ve given away the plot ), stopped them from making two sequels, when they saw how successful this one was! These follow-ups, which are much gentler, and to be honest, more entertaining, prove there was never any intention of glorifying the Nazi regime – they demonstrate their political impartiality by setting “Ilsa: Tigress of Siberia” in a Russian labour camp though needless to say, they weren’t accused of glorifying Stalin’s purges…

In fact, the death-camp setting is totally irrelevant. ‘Jew’ is not a word ever mentioned in the film – indeed, the prisoners include an American. It’s just a handy ( and cheap ) back-drop, an excuse for some eye-watering violence and softish-core sex. No doubt if they were being made today, we’d have “Ilsa: Dragon of Tian-ne-min Square” or “Ilsa: Springbok of the South African Secret Police”.

The second barrier to it being considered beyond the pale is Dyanne Thorne, the actress who plays Ilsa. Now, whatever her attributes, and they are considerable ( if you know what I mean, and I think you do, to borrow a phrase ), they do not make her an appropriate figure to play an evil, sadistic Nazi in a pseudo-documentary. She is simply not credible – her attempts at a German accent leave her sounding more like Avengers girl Honor Blackman than Mrs. Joseph Mengele. She would fit in perfectly to either of those other paragons of good taste, “‘Allo, ‘Allo” and “Reform School Girls”, and the whole film seems to me to be a bizarre hybrid of the two.

Despite this, she’s still highly watchable. In fact, her presence is the main thing that drags this picture out of the category of short-term novelty to the status of underground cult movie. Whether being nasty in the name of medicine, urinating on a visiting general, or just noisily having an orgasm courtesy of the aforementioned American prisoner, Dyanne Thorne is compelling. It’s just that I find it a little difficult to believe that Nazi officers went around with the top four buttons of their tunics undone, flashing copious cleavage to all and sundry.

I can certainly understand why not everyone likes it. There are some nasty scenes – it’s like a cinematic assault course and sometimes it does go a little far in it’s wanderings along the border between acceptable bad taste and offensiveness. However, there are so many ludicrous moments, ideas & characters ( the ‘German’ guard whose entire vocabulary is ‘Los!’ & ‘Schnell!’ with the odd ‘Achtung!’ for variety ) that the overall result is quite surreal. Like “The Toxic Avenger”, this movie patently sets out to shock, trash taboos and be generally controversial, which leaves me just as certain not to let it offend me! All of which carefully sidesteps the issue of ‘good taste’. Such a nebulous concept is so personal as to be nearly useless. Perhaps ANY use of a concentration camp as a setting for ANY form of entertainment is hard to justify, but I found the comic book ‘Maus’, with anthropomorphic animals playing Nazis & Jews, far more repellent than ‘Ilsa’, which was completely impossible to take seriously.

Thus, while I don’t think we can look forward to an early showing of the film on British TV, I do feel that it doesn’t deserve the reputation it has gained ( mainly among those who haven’t seen it ) for being THE sadistic outrage of the century. It does deserve A reputation – that of being one of the most outrageous examples of exploitation yet made.

“Of course, certain people are very offended by the language. When you have a 16- year-old blonde teen queen say “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw”, alarms go off in a lot of people’s heads…”

Michael Lehmann, director of “Heathers”.

**** 1. “Wake up – time to die!!”

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us… Gee, to think it was a year ago that Issue 0 of Trash City oozed into the world. 36 A4 pages, corner stapled, I was as proud as punch of it.

Which is odd, because it wasn’t very good.

I remain astonished that anyone saw fit to subscribe to it. I read through it when I was working on the reprint, and the urge to take a red pen to it was almost overpowering. It has a certain naive, rough-hewn charm to be sure – beyond that, every second sentence made me wince. There were nearly no pictures. No front cover to speak of. Every page reeks of inexperience. Just about a total waste of good rain-forest.

Hopefully we’ve come on a little since then, even if I expect to do a similar piece in TC8 saying how awful TC4 was! To commemorate our anniversary, I’ve gone pro, or at least, the printing has – the first 100 copies have been done by a PROFESSIONAL, rather than on the office copier at unsociable hours. This cost a lot more that you might think (tho’ not as much as it could have – one place quoted 2.40 per copy!). To be honest, I over-ran on space, so eight pages are done in the old way – they can act as a comparison, though since they’re picture-free, and the main reason for going pro was to get good artwork reproduction, it’s not strictly fair.

It’s only eight weeks since last time, because this is the result of me clearing out the file of ‘things I wanted to print, but didn’t have room’. A lot of these are contributed pieces (oddly enough, I usually managed to fit MY articles in!) which seem to me to give this issue a broader variety of styles, which you may or may not regard as a good thing! It also meant a lot of awkward gaps at the ends of pages, which I’ve had to fill with my usual egotistical ramblings. If you like it, so much the better, if not, well, (ab)normal service will be resumed next time.

One possibility is that I keep up this professional printing, which will improve the regularity since I’ll no longer have to spend time hanging around said office photo- copier, looking guilty and having a litter of kittens every time someone comes in. This is good. However, it would mean a price-hike – although I consider TC a hobby and not a money-spinner, there are limits to the amount I am willing to spend on it. The subscription rate would probably be 70p or so per issue, as against 40p now, and even that’s significantly less than cost. Let me know if you think it’s worth that for a regular, pro-printed ‘zine with more illustrations.

“There’s a million dollars of violence in my heart,
but you won’t find any in my soul.”

Hey! Look! Page numbers on EVERY page!! [and exclamation marks on every sentence!] Told you I’d do something special to commemorate our first birthday…

TRASH CITY – Issue 4

Winter 1989

Being the story of a young man whose interests include ultra-violence, Nastassja Kinski, exploitation in entertainment, beauty, death, computer games, travel, UFO’s, general weirdness and anything else he gets talked into printing. The style is best described as ‘conversational’ and ‘informal’ – the emphasis is very much on the words though the picture quality shouldn’t be too bad for once since it’s been professionally printed : it’s number ____ of the 100 done.

TC is currently only available by subscription; send 40p/issue in cheques/p.o./cash (made payable to Jim McLennan where appropriate, 60p/$1 EEC, $2.50 elsewhere) to the address below; your name and address might be a good idea too. Get in now while this lasts – see the editorial for the reason why. If you’re already a subscriber, the number next to your name on the envelope tells you how much of your sub is left – if it’s less than one issue’s worth, time to renew it; if it’s negative, we’ll be round for your intestines shortly. Contributions are extremely welcome – get in touch for details.

• Issue 0 is back in print! 50p gets you a photoreduced copy of my first attempts, complete with illegible artwork & incoherent text. Kinski, the Human League, Hellbound & H.G.Lewis. 2nd generation copy, so not up to our normal standard!
• Issue 1 (Black Sunday, Kinski, Half Way to Heaven, Salo & DIY flame-throwers)
• Issue 2 (Shock, Kinski, Reform School Girls, Sherlock Holmes & A Road Accident) &
• Issue 3 (lots of lists, Cicciolina, comics, Linnea Quigley & the New Avengers) are still available – 50p including p&p.

Texts: in alphabetical order; Alun Fairburn, Mike Kosminski, Des Lewis, Jim McLennan, Steve Moss, Martin Murray, Per Porter, Richard Owen, Steve Welburn and Glyn Williams.

Back Cover: The Victorian equivalent of “Trash City”? Anyone fancy a serialisation of this 1886 story, found in a junk shop?

The views expressed in this ‘zine are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher, and may well simply be an excuse to insult Dustin Hoffman, Linnea Quigley or anyone else the editor feels miffed at.