Trials of Traci (Jerry Ross) – Traci Lords. Jamie Gillis, Ginger Lynn.
a.k.a. Talk Dirty To Me, Part 3

“Traci Lords, America’s top adult star looks stunning in a film that has everything including a host of beautiful women” —- Video box blurb.

I didn’t want to buy this video, honest. I was forced into it. Y’see, last year I made the mistake of joining the Britannia Video Club, seduced by their three-films-for-a-tenner offer. I did notice the you-must-buy-three-videos-per-year clause, but thought they’d surely have three films I wanted in twelve months.

Wrong. Coming to the end of my first year, having bought precisely NO films. I decided I might as well get a couple of movies I’d probably be too embarrassed to buy from a shop – ‘Trials of Traci’ and ‘Emmanuelle 5’ (see below) were the most intriguing of the two so I sent off my form and the tapes duly arrived. So, does it live up to the description? No, it doesn’t have “everything”. There no cyborgs. car chases, zombies. aspidistras, microwave ovens or (what else can I see from where I’m sitting?) word processors. This is no great problem. What might be considered a problem is the lack of plot, believable characters, good acting and exciting direction – except. of course, you don’t buy this sort of video for those sort of things. And the BBFC have done their damnedest to reduce the amount of what you did buy it for – the ’18’ rated version sold by Britannia comes in at eleven minutes less than the ’18R’ version, and even that was cut.

The story is definitely reminiscent of ‘Splash’ – a mermaid (Miss Lords) goes up onto the land to try and find a lover. Her landfall is in a naturist reserve where she falls in love with one of the residents. Jack (Gillis) whom she follows around on his sexual exploits. At some point she’s befriended by some female residents (one second she’s wandering around alone. the next she’s happily swimming with them. tail & all – clearly. “befriending mermaids” is something the BBFC comes down heavily on), and there’s a baddie who wants to capture Traci and use her for financial gain. Naturally. this is an ecologically sound porno film, and the mermaid eventually escapes to the sea, taking Jack with her: fortunately. if a little mysteriously, he becomes a merman or it could have been the shortest romantic liaison on record.

All of the above, naturally. is an excuse for lots of flesh, both male and female. This is a bit of a shame, as the most memorable moments aren’t when some nondescript airhead is taking her clothes off (not Traci. who has more charisma and acting ability than the rest put together) but result from the mermaid’s attempts to learn/speak English. “What’s this? It’s a pussy. Say it – pussy”. says one of Traci’s friends. “Poo-see”. replies Traci. eager to learn. Another slightly amusing scene has Traci listening to a couple making love and using the phrases overheard to simultaneously carry on a conversation.

Directorially, it’s not impressive. There’s one visual idea in the whole 53 minutes, with a shadow of two naked actresses (and I use the term loosely – with their clothes on they could be used as bookshelves, but they fake a mean, and very noisy, orgasm) being cast onto a wall. That this totally contradicts the lighting in the rest of the scene is irrelevant – it’s an idea, and it’s presence should be welcomed without carping about trivia like the laws of physics…

The cuts are never particularly subtle – the most noticeable of them has a man getting up from a chair. then next frame, he’s sandwiched between the two bimbos mentioned above. What’s left is a great deal of breast-nibbling and fondling. a fair amount of ‘poo-see’ and the occasional witty, but only if. shall we say, it resembles last week’s green salad. Odd how vascular pressure can make something obscene. Plenty of female orgasms, no male ones – it’s a tough life for us blokes in the BBFC approved universe.
If it weren’t for the presence of Traci Lords (who deserves to be a major international star) this film wouldn’t have a great deal to recommend it. I may be old-fashioned, but I still prefer my lingerie to be wrapped round a plot, as well as a pack of nubile actresses. This one won’t be replacing ‘Gwendoline’ in the archives. tho’ I may find a use for bits when I do the next unofficial Transvision Vamp promo…

Emmanuelle 5 (Walerian Borowczyk) – Monique Gabrielle.

Discovering who the director of this film is was a little like finding out David Cronenberg had signed up to do ‘Friday the 13th Part IX’. [Of course, a decade after I wrote this, Cronenberg appeared in ‘Jason X’!] Borowczyk has in the past been responsible for some of the most originally depraved films ever made in the genre – ‘Within Convent Walls’ is the most viciously anti-religious film I’ve ever seen. depicting as it does all religious figures as insane, sexually perverse. or bothm and ‘The Beast’ is probably even more warped. It was thus somewhat of a surprise to find him directing this sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel. but the end result still bears the unmistakable hallmarks of a truly deviant mind.

Emmanuelle (Gabrielle – see also ‘The Incredibly Bad Film Show’) is at Cannes promoting her latest torrid movie, ‘Love Express’ when she meets and has an affair with a rich industrialist. Charles Foster (who seems to be the son of a Howard Hughes figure). Then, she is kidnapped by Prince Rashid of Bengalhistan (!)) and added to his harem. Mr Foster isn’t standing for that, and mounts a rescue…

None of which sounds startlingly original. The execution, however. is well weird, giving the impression of having stumbled into someone else’s wet dream. Closeups of object. both inanimate and female, spatter every sequence in Borowczyk’s usual way. Long sequences don’t make a great deal of sense at the time, adding nothing to the plot and often occurring totally out of order. Even the story has weird and wonderful twists – the last five minutes has Emmanuelle convincing Charles to try and fly the plane his father built (the Heron, which is close enough to Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose). The plane crashes, Emmanuelle escaping by parachute just before it blows up; the explosion is intermingled with shots of Emmanuelle’s naked body.

Borowczyk hasn’t mellowed his religious views in his old age – this time, it’s Hinduism that gets stick for encouraging a sheep-like mentality and treating women like chattels. Other blasts suggest the Cannes festival has become a vipers’ nest of corruption and hangers-on and that the US military is at the beck and call of the wealthy. This isn’t your usual one-sex-scene-every-five-minutes dirty movie.+

The characters are still fairly flimsy, admittedly, tho’ much of this may be Borowczyk assuming that if we don’t know enough about Emmanuelle from the first four films, we can’t be all that interested. Not a great deal of acting is required from anyone, another common Borowczyk fault, since he seems to believe it’ll distract us from the more visual elements. And since you need all your concentration to work out what’s happening, he may have a point. Still, Monique Gabrielle does what is necessary and she is pretty, in less of the airbrushed Barbie doll way than I expected.

It suffered a little at the hands of the BBFC, losing 2:41 minutes to give a running time of 76 minutes, less than 4% cut (compare ‘Trials of Traci’, approaching five times that), and the staccato nature of the film means that often the soundtrack jumping is the only clue to the cuts. It still occasionally was obvious, most notably a scene in the harem when Emmanuelle helps a prospective (coerced) wife to lose her virginity, with the aid of a rolled up towel. Can’t say I’m overly distressed by having missed that.

How it compares to others in the series I can’t say, since I haven’t seen them, but ‘Emmanuelle 5’ is odd, intriguing, artistic, confusing and erotic by turns, well photographed and high-grade stuff overall. It’s certainly more evidence that the French possess a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to depicting sex as more than a clinical exercise and imbuing it with classical beauty.

Monique Gabrielle filmography (Alun Fairburn)

• 1984  Hard to Hold
        Bachelor Party
        Hot Moves
• 1985  Deathstalker 2
• 1986  Screen Test
• 1987  Weekend Warriors
        Amazon Women on the Moon
• 1988  Emmanuelle 5
        Not of this Earth

“For the mind to change and to understand more, the body will have to change.”

David Cronenberg

While most films are about the changes that take place to a character or characters over a period of time, David Cronenberg’s movies rarely restrict the alterations to the psychological or emotional. In almost every case, his heroes/heroines change physically, becoming mutated and abnormal, usually with tragic consequences – the mortality rate of his leading stars is closer to 100% than any other director.

The key phrase for Cronenberg’s films is ‘body horror’; the threat comes from within, rather than being an external threat as in monster movies. “My films are very body conscious”, he said once and it can’t be denied that biological change is the most pervasive themes in his work – others include the breakdown of civilization, sexual deviation and disease).

The causes of the mutations may be divided into two groups – we’ll take one from each for further investigation later :

Self-induced psychological

• THE BROOD
• DEAD RINGERS
• THE DEAD ZONE
• SCANNERS/STEREO

Artificially induced physical

• THE FLY
• VIDEODROME
• THEY CAME FROM WITHIN
• RABID

These aren’t clear-cut – a case could be made for putting ‘Videodrome’ in the first section, as the film provides no evidence that Max Renn’s experiences are really happening. However, the tumour initially responsible for the hallucinations IS artificially induced, though it could be considered minor compared to the massive ‘mutations’ which follow. Anyway, it offends my sense of order to have unequal halves!

Similarly, the physical/psychological barriers become blurred; mental problems slop over into the physical world in ‘The Brood’ and ‘Scanners’, and the reverse is true in ‘Videodrome’. Although the modifications generally prove ultimately disastrous, it’s often the case that the sufferer/mutant can live with them initially, until an outside agency decides to interfere.

Enough general chat, let’s get down to specifics, starting with a film that was critically slammed at release, yet crops up again and again these days on ’10 Best’ lists.

Videodrome (1982) – James Woods, Debbie Harry

Max Renn (James Woods) run a seedy TV station, Channel 83, and is on the lookout for some new shows. When his pet technofreak gives him some pirate tapes of a satellite transmission, he senses something new, even though the show, called Videodrome, is nothing more than torture and sadism. On a talk show he meets media guru, Brian O’Blivion and radio DJ Nicki Brand (Harry). He shows her the tape and she shows him some interesting tricks with a cigarette end, a needle and an ice-cube (not in the original video version – in an act of rank cowardice, CIC Video cut the film themselves ‘just in case’ it might be seized, and removed several ‘offensive’ sections. The sell-through version recently released is a hell of a lot better.

Max begins to suffer increasingly bizarre hallucinations – his TV becomes a living creature, corpses appear in his bed and his stomach develops a video-cassette shaped slot, in which he ‘loses’ a gun. He turns for help to Professor O’Blivion, only to find O’Blivion is dead – he exists only as a vast collection of video tapes, looked after by his daughter, Bianca (Sonja Smits). Meanwhile, Nikki has vanished, in search of the makers of Videodrome – that she’s found them becomes clear when Max gets a tape showing HER torture.

Matters come to a head and Max discovers he’s been the guinea pig in a bizarre mind control experiment. The tapes were NOT satellite broadcasts but were planted on him by his engineer – they contain a subliminal signal which causes the visions. He is ‘programmed’ to kill his colleagues at Channel 83, but after he has done this, Bianca helps him control the hallucinations and he destroys the people responsible before committing suicide.

Apologies for this lengthy synopsis, but no shorter one would make sense; you can’t envisage anyone presenting a 25-word pitch on it to a coked-up studio executive. The film is astonishingly non-Hollywood – how many other films end with the hero blowing his brains out? But what is it all ABOUT? Let’s take a few choice quotes, and see how much of my English O-grade teaching I can remember…

“[Videodrome] has a philosophy, and THAT’S what makes it dangerous”

The most obvious theme is the impact of television and other such media on the audience – I think Max Renn is meant to represent David Cronenberg, a comparison made explicit during one scene in an opticians when James Woods tries on a pair of Cronenberg-style glasses. The message is, it’s not what you show that’s important, it’s the underlying meaning which counts, as against Channel 83’s policy of showing anything likely to get an audience.

“We’re entering savage new times, and we’re going to have to be pure and direct and strong if we’re going to survive them”

Cronenberg is worried about what happens when someone becomes unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy – the hallucination sequences are played totally straight, with no clear border to give the audience something to hold on to. It’s especially worrying when ‘reality’ is being controlled by someone else – in this case, a multinational conglomerate, of uncertain right-wing mores, who discover the power of Videodrome while experimenting with night sights for soldiers (a fact not really made clear in the final cut of the film).

“To become the New Flesh, you first have to kill the old flesh”

One of the many interesting side avenues to this video-eye view of the world is Bianca O’Blivion and the Cathode Ray Mission she runs. This is a pseudo-religious sect which gives down-and-outs the chance to watch TV; it helps “patch them back into the world’s mixing board”. The religious angle can be extended further – “I am my father’s screen”, says Bianca at one point and the relationship between her, the Professor (who exists only on tape) and Max Renn is almost a holy trinity of Virgin, Holy Spirit & Christ, with Christ/Renn dying yet expecting to rise again as the New Flesh.

“Television is reality, and reality is much less than television”

Very little of our world view is based on personal experience. Beyond our immediate area, we rely on television, and have to take on faith that what it’s showing us is actually happening. Simultaneously, all we see on TV are edited highlights, which means that most of our lives are less funny, exciting, scary, fast-moving, sexy and entertaining than an average evening on the network.

The entire movie is DEEP. And that perhaps it why it’s appeal has taken so long to filter through. On one viewing, it’s difficult to take everything in; given enough effort, however, it’s one of the finest, most genuinely thought-provoking films of all time.

The Dead Zone (1983) – Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt

This was originally supposed to have been shot by Cronenberg before ‘Videodrome’, but due to a mix-up, Lorimar (who had the rights at the time) offered it to another director as well as Cronenberg. Though
he lost out, that project was shelved – the option was sold to De Laurentis and happily, THEY took Cronenberg on.

It’s based on a book by Stephen King, although the screenplay combines the three parallel views of the story in one. Walken plays Johnny Smith, who wakes from a five-year coma to discover he has the power to see incidents in peoples’ pasts or future by touching them. Although he has misgivings, he lets the local sheriff (Skerritt) talk him into using this ability to help
track down a murderer. He succeeds, but the end result is further deaths (the gazebo where Smith has the vision of the murder became something of a cause celebre in the town. It was built for the film and a debate followed after shooting between those who wished to keep this architecturally correct prop and those who wanted to tear it down for the lumber. The former group won!).

The crunch comes when Smith shakes the hand of presidential candidate Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), and sees a vision of him beginning World War III. Should he try to stop the man? After much thought, he decides to assassinate Stillson, despite the fact that his ex-girlfriend is helping in the campaign (she does play a bigger role in the film than this!). The attempt fails when Stillson snatches the girlfriend’s baby and uses it as a shield, and Smith is shot, but as he lies there dying, he has a final vision, of Stillson’s ruin and eventual suicide after pictures of the event are seen around the world.

In many ways, this isn’t a standard Cronenberg film. Unlike his others, he didn’t write the screenplay, although he did have a good amount of creative input. Despite this, and a lack of diseased sexuality, it still has some of the elements discussed above i.e. Smith is able to live with his ‘gift’, more or less happily, until people such as the sheriff come along to ask for his help.

Christopher Walken is pretty good as Smith – this film dates back to when his career was still above water – and the rest of the cast provide solid, if not outstanding, performances. The vision sequences are very effective; the start of World War III, with Stillson launching the ICBMs, is chilling stuff. “Hallelujah, the missiles are flying”, he says with a smile.

King’s movies are admittedly tough to film, the best results being where much of the wordy crap, for want of a better phrase, and dead characters are cut. Thus ‘The Shining’ becomes an almost totally different story, and the same can be said of ‘The Dead Zone’, to quote scriptwriter Boam: “The book is not structured for film, it rambles”. Hence, the removal of various sundry subplots and characters.

The effects in ‘The Dead Zone’ are rather subdued when compared to almost all his other films, or at least it’s restricted to relatively mundane things such as fires and blood squibs. One scene that did fall foul of the video censor came when the murderer sought by Smith commits suicide by falling face-first onto an open pair of scissors – only the after effects are shown, in a brief flash, but even that had to be excised. Note for trivia buffs : the effects crew on the movie included the daughter of Martin Scorsese, Cathy.

Probably Cronenberg’s most mainstream and accessible film to date, it gives us perhaps the best example of the mutant as hero, another popular theme of his. If the results of the #1 horror film director making a film based on the #1 horror novel author aren’t everything we hoped, it could certainly have been a whole lot worse.

Continued from TC6

On the Sunday, after more unhealthy American TV, it was check-out time. Managed to leave all the bags behind, which was a good thing, given the junk I’d accumulated, and headed towards the World Trade Centre. Took my life in my hands and went by subway – not so much because of muggers or anything like that (I kept an eye out for a dishevelled man with a wicker basket), just because the Underground is a lot better signposted internally. Went up top of the WTC and wandered round two sides admiring the view, taking pictures as I went. Then, bang, the weather closed in and it started to snow – at least it was snowing at the top, but at the bottom it was raining. It chucked it down – I don’t think I’ve seen such aggressive rain before – which killed the plan to take the Staten Island Ferry and get a better view of the Statue of Liberty (although you could see it from the WTC, it was further away than I expected). Took shelter in a pizza parlour instead and gained a new appreciation of the word ‘pizza’. Totally unlike the tasteless, bland, tiny items sold in the UK, I ordered 3 slices, but could only manage 1 1/2 – at a rough guess, each slice (an eighth of a full one) must have weighed about the same as a Pizza Hut 9″ one.

Took a taxi to JFK airport, with the first really voluble NY cabbie I’d seen – all the others communicated in grunts, but this one expounded his view of life, the universe and everything in the 50 minute drive. Checked in, and discovered that JFK airport is even duller than Gatwick – got on with ‘Silence of the Lambs’. On the plane back, my seat was next to an emergency exit, which meant more leg-room and also that I was sitting opposite a couple of the stewardesses but I was too busy worrying about why they get full harnesses while the passengers have to make do with wimpy lap belts. The film on the way back was ‘Family Business’, with Dustin Hoffman, so I had no trouble drifting off to sleep.

Back here, the luck that supported me through five Inter-rails ran out. I was stopped by Customs. The limit on all goods from the US is only 35 quid, and let’s say I was pushing the limit in books alone. After being reminded of the limits and asked if I’d packed the bags myself, the customs officer rooted through my bags and dragged out the Kinski autobiography. “Do you need this for your studies?”, he asked. I embarked on a nervous lecture about KK, without going into details about my lust for his daughter. He flicked through the book, presumably looking for naughty pictures and returned it – fortunately, he didn’t read any or I’d still be in custody… Now, despite feeling like I’d spent the weekend in a 50-storey glass-steel washing machine, I did enjoy it, bag men, Robo-cops, subways, mutant English and all. Some ways it wasn’t as expected, in others it was; in any case it was one hell of an experience!

20 Films Set in New York City

Genre	Non-genre
Splash	Crocodile Dundee
Angel of Vengeance	Do the Right Thing
King Kong	Wall Street
Q – the Winged Serpent	The Seven Year Itch
Gremlins 2	After Hours
Inferno	Fort Apache, the Bronx
Escape From New York	Every damn Woody Allen film
Rosemary’s Baby	Cruisin’
Taxi Driver	Miracle on 34th Street
Ghostbusters	Serpico

Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-In – Joe Bob Briggs (No British Publisher)

JB2 had this to say about sequels: “If you know what you’re doing, the sequel can be exactly the same movie as the first one”. Unfortunately, what he said about films is also true for books and this sequel (surprisingly not titled “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In II”) is exactly the same as the original. Only less so. While the first book was a film column with odd bits about JB2, this one is little more than an ego trip for the author, with the reviews themselves being shortened or entirely missing in any given column, because someone took the rest of the space bragging about how he appeared in TCM 2, or whining about how said scene was removed from the final print.

Even the reviews themselves seem strangely subdued – although he does review ‘Reform School Girls’ & ‘Gwendoline’, he also does ‘Rambo’ & ‘A Chorus Line’ and the worrying thing is that they all gave exactly the same impression to this reader. There are still occasional flashes of the old Joe Bob, but as a rule of thumb these come when he is working with a well-known and loved film – I always feel that a critic should be able to convey enthusiasm for a film to an audience who know nothing about it and JB2 just doesn’t do this.

The book gives the impression that this critic is now more important than the works he’s reviewing, which is in its own way just as hypocritical as the stars JB2 attacks, who put down their earlier movies in the exploitation field. Just about gone are the characters of red-neck Texas from the first book – in it place is some not particularly subtle ‘satire’ on world i.e. American events and mores. Overall, this book has to be regarded as a disappointment, with Joe Bob beginning to look distinctly like a one-hit wonder. One star, wait till it hits the bargain bookshops.

The British film industry is not in a healthy state. Few films are wholly home-grown, and there’s a tendency to pander to the American market, producing costume dramas, or, even worse, to Channel 4, by making isn’t-Thatcher’s-Britain-shitty films i.e. ‘Letter to Brezhnev’, ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, etc. Did Hammer die in vain?

Not quite. Keeping alive the spirit nowadays are stubborn individuals who make films on minimal budgets, replacing money with ingenuity, imagination and plenty of red food colouring. ‘Back From the Dead’ is one such short film, by Paul Mallinson. The film takes place in Rochdale: round about ten minutes long, it’s a mini-zombie pic – two men are attacked by a group of the living dead, who kill and dismember one of the men and drive the other into a multi-storey car park. He is eventually tracked down and also killed, but when day-break comes, his eyes suddenly open, and he too is back from the dead.

I asked Paul Mallinson to discuss some of the joys, perils and troubles of low budget film-making, starting with the obvious question :

TC: How much did it cost?
Paul Mallinson: Altogether, I’d say round about £200 – that covered just about everything. A large proportion of the money was used on Super 8mm film, which is £6 for 3½ minutes, and lighting; we rented a powerful (and noisy!) generator and halogen floodlamps. Other money was spent on blood ingredients, editing tabs (which are very expensive), plaster of paris, make-up and fuel for transport and the generator. It also cost about £15 to transfer the final cut to video, which I wasn’t too pleased about, quality-wise. My Dad lent me all the money to make the film with [which is how John Waters started, too! Ed], and I worked to pay it off at a later date.

TC: Which came first, the locations or the story?
PM: I chose the locations for practical purposes – I didn’t fancy building any sound sets! I’d been around the large car park in Doncaster quite a lot an envisaged a few good ideas and thought to myself “This would make a good, atmospheric location for a film”.

TC: Did you have much hassle getting permission to use places?
PM: The main problem was all the bloody red tape to go through to get permission to use the council car-park, Eventually, they gave the go-ahead on the condition we didn’t go throwing dead bodies from the top storey! We also had to inform the local police of our activities so that we didn’t get arrested mid-shoot.

TC: Presumably, the next stage was the script.
PM: There was no ‘script’ as such, everything took the form of a storyboard which I intended to stick to as closely as possible. In the end, I’d say we stuck to it for about 80% of the way, but sometimes we had to improvise due to some problem or another.

TC: You didn’t shoot things in the order of the storyboard – how did you work out what should be shot when?
PM: After I’d drawn the storyboard, I then had to estimate how long the whole thing would take to shoot (five nights), and I broke all the scenes down into separate sections and allocated them to the correct day for shooting i.e. the scenes where I needed lots of zombies were shot on the Tuesday, the special FX scenes were left until the last two days and so on. The timescale I’d set was about right, although there were days when we didn’t finish until 3 or 4 in the morning and others where we finished at 11 o’clock. apart from that, I was amazed at how everything seemed to slot-together nicely.

TC: How many of the scenes worked first time?
PM: Most of it was one-take material, but there were a few scenes we had to re-take. The scene where Man #1 runs up to the camera then stops and looks up took about five tries. The first attempt was unsatisfactory so we tried again – this time it was even worse, the nearby pub was emptying and a few pissed-up ‘ladies’ kept walking in front of the camera! Some scenes I shot a few times so that I could choose the best one for the final cut.

TC: What about continuity?
PM: I tried to keep an eye on the continuity and for most of the scenes everything was fine but the scene where Man #1 bumps into Man #3 in the car park was shot in bits on separate days. On the first day, Jon (Man #3) arrived in a yellow T-shirt, on the next day he wore a white T-shirt by accident – I didn’t notice this until I edited the scene together, which meant I had to reshoot the scene some three weeks after all the shooting had finished!

TC: Did you have have many serious problems?
PM: Problems – that’s a good one! Where should I start? We were plagued with some problem or other during the whole five day shoot i.e. actors arriving late, FX not going quite so smoothly, stopping the actors from laughing while filming a scene. The first near disaster happened before we began shooting – I was fiddling with the camera on the tripod when it suddenly fell off onto the concrete; luckily, it was okay. The second, and biggest, problem was lighting. Even though we had very powerful floodlamps and three cars on full-beam lighting up the place, the light-meter inside the camera still insisted there wasn’t enough light. We carried on shooting regardless – we’d gone too far to risk calling it off. Again, we were lucky, as everything came out okay. When I eventually had the final cut transferred to video, I wasn’t totally happy because some scenes came out too dark – I should have sent it back to get redone, but never got round to it. I could go on for ages about the problems but you get the picture!

TC: You added the titles and music to the video tape, didn’t you?
PM: I did all the titles myself on my Atari ST computer. I hand drew most of the lettering, slotted them all together with an animation program and transferred them to video. The last thing was the music – originally, I planned to make a proper soundtrack but decided against this due to lack of time. I chose Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother’ because it seemed to fit in quite well. Most people seemed to like it but I think I could have done better.

TC: Why did you use the bottom end of the film range rather than video?
PM: I prefer film, even Super 8, to video for quite a few reasons. Firstly, with video, there’s very little atmosphere – the medium doesn’t seem to ‘distance’ the viewer enough from what they’re watching, it’s too much like being there which, I think, is not a good position for a film to be in. Also, the video medium flattens things out too much, reducing the feeling of depth. I found Super 8 a very worthwhile alternative, because it captures the atmosphere quite well, is easier to use and gives the whole thing a grainier, sleazier look that I quite liked. I’ve used video and although I’d hate to make a film with it, it does have it’s advantages and can be very effective.

TC: With the benefit of hindsight, would you do anything differently?
PM: If I could do it again, I’d definitely need a better camera for better results. I’d leave all the scenes, etc as they are but maybe try a few more, different camera angles. I’d also try and get more help than I had with my first attempt!

Next up for Paul is a series of 4 or 5 short Super 8 films, located in a range of places – the locations have been found and the storyboards are beginning to take shape. Once again, his father will be offering the initial finance but there’s some distribution planned for this one, through a European company specialising in off-beat movies. The only problem, says Paul, is finding the time to make it, but he’s sure of one thing – it’ll be a million times better, even than ‘Back From the Dead’!!

Imaginator 6 (36 A4, £1.95): if TC grows up, I’d happily look like this glossy, well-produced item. There’s a section on Hong Kong films, complementing TC6’s Japanese section, and interviews with Ray Harryhausen, Patty Mullen & Steve Apostolof among others. Next is a two-in-one ‘zine. Headcheese & Chainsaws 5 with Sludgefeast 1 (each 24 A5), not forgetting a pair of comics. The entire package is yours for a quid or so: the doubling up means some duplication of coverage but where this occurs, the editors’ opinions differ so markedly it’s a miracle they ever produced a joint issue! Both are well laid out and have an informal, friendly style. Strange Adventures 17-19 (16, 20, 20 A4, 95p) will soon catch up Samhain in number of issues. Continues it’s massive task of trying to cover the all fantastic media; I especially liked a ‘Cat People’ piece by some guy called Jim McLennan…

Down at the bottom end in cost terms, we have Neros (28 A5, send an SSAE). Plenty of exercise to be had here – you have to keep turning the damn thing as every page seems to be at a different angle! Very funny piece discussing the uncut Tom & Jerry cartoons is the highlight, hidden deep in impenetrable layout. Also free is Psychotic Reaction 1 (12 A4, SSAE again), all reviews in this issue. Plain and sparing with the artwork, but early days yet – as ever, I dislike commenting on first issues! No such problems with Creeping Unknown 14 (36 A5, 85p) – some editors sweat over covers, Nick just bleeds on it. Very artistic, and hopefully free from any blood-borne diseases… Distressingly, they’ve started printing page numbers, but this is offset by the ploy of having two page 2’s, one after page 34. Joking apart, it’s good as usual, concentrating on loads of reviews.

Black 6 (20 A4, 60p) is here, with a Cicciolina poster in it, some favourite Zombie movies and enough sleaze to keep you going until Dave Flint produces the next Sheer Filth… Pardon me while I drool over the layout (and the poster!). Eyeball 2 (28 A4, £2) has taken a long while to get here; more reviews of highly obscure European i.e. Italian movies. Almost like a telephone directory and thus tough to read, but worth the effort and a Barbara Steele paper doll adds a welcome note of levity to things. Bloody Hell 1 (21 A4, £1.50) is an interesting if expensive read (Fulci, censorship, etc) but needs to improve it’s appearance; TC0 was better, to give you some idea: at least we were double sided!

Slightly away from the film scene is Green Goblin 14 (28 A5, 50p). Superbly clear print, a Call of Cthulhu scenario (must get back into FRP one of these days!), bits about computers, an infuriating spot-the-lyrics quiz and a neat ‘ghost’ (for want of a better word) story. Across the Atlantic now, title of the month goes to Cadavers, Fruit & Government Forms 1 (36 A5, $2.50?), more of a music ‘zine, with lots of reviews of records by mostly thrash metal bands (tho’ since I’ve not heard of them, I may be maligning them seriously!) but also films, computer games, TV and some chat, plus a handful of flyers, etc. Another editor who likes to rotate alternate pages, pah! Runner-up in the title stakes is another TC, Trash Compactor Vol 2, #4 (36 A4, $3.50). This one is a celebration of gay films – did you spot the homosexual subtext in ‘The Hitcher’? No, me neither – read ’em and worry… Midnight In Hell 2 (16 A4, ???) is a Lovecraft special – a bibliography, some film reviews and five pieces of fiction, which vary in quality from good down to fairly pointless, as such things do. Finally, two American slimzines I must mention; Monster 30-40 (8 A5, $1?) is hyper-frequent (fortnightly!) and specialises in monster movies, tho’ this is loosely defined (more on this one next time, no space here!) + Scareaphanalia 90-92 (8 A5, $1), definitely recommended for reviews of hot new product.

• Black – Mikael Bomark, Aspv. 28, 14141 Huddinge, Sweden.
• Bloody Hell – David Prothero, 11 Clos-Yr-Wenallt, Rhiwbina, Cardiff, CF4 6TW.
• Cadavers, Fruit & Governmnt Forms – Jeff Dworak, 442 Route 146, Clifton Park, NY 12065, USA
• Creeping Unknown – c/o 33 Maltby Road, Mansfield, Notts, NG18 3BN.
• Eyeball – 20 Kintyre Court, New Park Road, Brixton Hill, London SW2 4DY.
• Green Goblin – John Breakwell, 170 Caversham Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 8AZ.
• Headcheese & Chainsaws – Rob Bewick, 33 Ernwill Ave, Castletown, Sunderland, SR5 3EB.
• Imaginator – Unit 1, Hawk House, Peregrine Park, Gomm Rd, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP13 7DL.
• Midnight in Hell – G.N.Houston, The Cottage, Smithy Brae, Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire, PA13 4EN.
• Monster – Kronos Productions, MPO Box 67, Oberlin, Ohio 44074-0067, USA.
• Neros – 57 Chedworth, Kingsbury Park, Yate, Bristol BS17 4RY.
• Psychotic Reaction – Spencer Hickman, 50 Wingfield Road, Great Barr, Birmingham B42 2QD.
• Sludgefeast – Paul Mallinson, 12 Daneshill Road, Leicester, LE3 6AL.
• Strange Adventures – Tony Lee, 13 Hazely Combe, Arreton, Isle of Wight, PO30 3AJ
• Trash Compactor – 253 College St, Suite #108, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1R5.