Steve Aylett – Bigot Hall, Serif, £8.99, pp153. Aylett’s first book, ‘The Crime Studio’ was reviewed last TC, and was a highly enjoyable selection of hyperviolent splinters in a fast, loose style. “Bigot Hall” replicates the short vignette approach, but is notably less successful. The hero remains nameless, a child advanced for his years, trapped in a family of misfits and weirdoes. That’s it, which is the main problem. While “The Crime Studio” had enough characters to mean the interplay between them offered sufficient variation for latitude, here the restrictions prove too much. There is no detectable character development; at the end, something happens; precisely what is impossible to say.

On the bright side, Aylett’s technique remains as sharply infectious as ever, his ear for the English language is great. Someone should hire the man to beef up movie scripts; if it’s sharp word-play that you want, he can out-Tarantino Quentin, with one frontal lobe tied behind his back. I mean, “the lake was infested with boss-eyed cartoon characters which ghosted up, stared like lost souls and dipped away again. Inbetween were swirling volume levels and swarms of seahorses with tiny training wheels“. So what you have here is a book where the sentences are pretty good, and anything beyond the paragraph is on shaky ground. More rigour needed, please.

John McCarty (ed) – The Sleaze Merchants, St.Martin’s Griffin, $16.95, pp211. It’s interesting to compare and contrast the style of this book with ‘Immoral Tales’, as both cover the world of exploitation film. ‘Immoral Tales’ deals with the European flavour, and this one mostly looking at its American brother — the only common name is Jess Franco. Apart from him, it’s a trawl from the early pioneers, David Friedman et al, through those McCarty describes as the “Honorable Practitioners” (Franco, John Waters, Al Adamson and Ted V.Mikels) up to those who’ve carried the torch for sleaze in the 1990’s.

Some of the choices seem slightly arguable, and appear to be a case of, “well, we can talk to them, let’s give them a chapter”. Why else does Bret McCormick (yeah, who?) get one of his own, but not Roger Corman? Generally, the best sections are those that divert from the standard interview technique — though Fred Olen Ray comes over as well as ever — and go into more analysis. Lots of illos, ad-mats and photos (David DeCoteau looks exactly like you’d expect) enhance the flavour, though it’s nowhere near as ground­breaking as McCarty’s earlier ‘Splatter Movies’ book. It’s a solidly researched and interesting book, which never attempts to attach artistic pretensions where none were intended. Given the near-death of the B-video here, this is sadly as close as most people will get to the recent works of Jim Wynorski!

Edward Margulies + Stephen Rebello – Bad Movies We Love, Plume, £8.79, pp330. There’s a great book waiting to be written, about the ethos of bad movies, their appeal, how and why they become that way, and so forth. It’s still waiting: this book proves even worse than the much-loathed Medved Brothers’ ‘Golden Turkey’ works. It shares a common meanness of spirit: the authors don’t appear to actually love bad movies, They love being snide about them, trying to prove a superior intellect through vapid insults, they love to poke ‘fun’ at them. Ho-ho-ho: it’s a good measure of how effective their criticism is, that they spent an entire chapter trashing Sharon Stone, and she still writes their foreward! She clearly  doesn’t give a damn what they think, and neither should anyone else.

Worse still, writing about bad movies should be fun, reflecting the enjoyment they offer. This book fails even on that score. What might have been entertaining as one-off articles — the book started off as a magazine column — rapidly becomes grindingly repetitive. With no variation in style, the authors have all the imagination of a literary pit-bull. There is not one single movie in the book where reading the review makes you want to see it.

There’s little challenging about their targets: the movies in their “Hall of Shame” had an average age of over 30. Taking the piss out of old films is like stomping on puppies, no measure of skill is needed at all. And once you’ve read their opinion on ‘9 1/2 Weeks’, why bother with their views on ‘Zandalee’ (we get the point), ‘Two Moon Junction’ (We Get The Point), or even both ‘Wild Orchid’ and ‘Wild Orchid 2’ (WE GET THE POINT!). Dreadful, truly dreadful. About the only thing in its favour, is that it makes you want go and do better yourself. In which case, expect the ‘TC Book of Badfilm’ before this year is out.

Michael Sauter – The Worst Movies of All Time, Citadel Press, £11.99, pp342. After the above debacle, this book came as a breath of fresh air, mainly since it’s written in a far better spirit. The central thread is a look at fifty films, from 1932’s ‘Sign of the Cross’ to ‘Christopher Columbus: The Discovery’ from 1992; there’s also a random grab-bag of almost bad-enoughs, and a broad selection of B-movies, including the usual classics from Ed Wood and others of his ilk.

The book is not perfect. To start with, it’s far too American-oriented, with all 50 of the “worst” coming out of Hollywood. No book about bad film can be thought of as complete unless it includes something by Jess Franco. The author also has a tendency to twist facts to fit his views: misattributing dialogue from ‘Faster, Pussycat’, and claiming that the spoof ‘Casino Royale’ “was the Bond spoof to end all Bond spoofs”, forgetting perhaps the best of them all, ‘Top Secret’. However, it covers a broad spectrum of eras, without any obvious axe to grind against specific genres, and, most importantly of all, you come away from the reviews actually wanting to see a lot of the films (though there are exceptions to this, it would take a better writer even than myself to make anyone want to see ‘Howard the Duck’).

Most of the targets are obvious ones such as ‘Ishtar’ and ‘Heaven’s Gate’, though many of the older titles were new to me; I’ll be scanning the daytime TV schedules for ‘The Fountainhead’! But if you want coverage of turkeys from major Hollywood studios, this book is hard to beat.

David Kerekes and David Slater – Killing for Culture, Creation Books, £12.05, pp286. Now issued in a revised second edition, bringing it up to date with recent developments — though embarrassingly, since the first edition never made it off my “books I ought to buy” list, I can’t give any specifics about new material. What I can say is that it remains a comprehensive review of that mythical creature, the “snuff” movie, in all its forms from mondo to mainstream.

The book is at it’s best with a clinical deconstruction of all such alleged snuff films, calmly and logically pointing out the factors which prove they are faked or staged.  The authors do so with a clear critical eye, unhesitatingly scathing when they feel it’s deserved. Copious footnotes and references back it up and give some much-needed authority, in a field dominated by the hype and the gory. On the down side, the book sometimes slides into a catalogue of atrocities, listing the nastiness in films whil avoiding much comment on why these films are made, or remain so popular. This is especially true with some of the pictures: blurry, b/w screen shots of state treasured Bud Dwyer committing suicide are a pointless exercise in geek-show mentality, and almost turn the book into mondo of its own. Otherwise, it’s immeasurably useful, essential reading for anyone who wants an informed viewpoint on the topic. Sadly, those most in need of reading it — certain MP’s, media pundits, and indeed Hollywood stars like Charlie Sheen — are unlikely to do so.

Geoff Davis – Nnn goes mobile, Juma, £3.95, 114pp. Sent to me by TC’s ex-printers, with a “this seems like your sort of thing” message, Davis writes parodic cyberpunk characterised by a charming, deliberately incoherent depiction of what the world might become i.e. a total mess. The hero, Nnn, has risen from the gutter to become a technical innovator specialising in nanotechnology. He’s just invented a living zipper, but is then kidnapped by guerillas keen to use his talents. His employers send out two hitmen, Fluffy and Kitch, to get him back before he does something they might regret. In this future world, Prague has been successfully duplicated, and the Old Kent Road has relocated to cyberspace.

And it’s in there that Davis’s strength lies; none of Gibson’s sleek data blocks exist in Nnn’s world, VR looks more like a drug trip animated by crazed Nintendo employees and directed by Ed Wood, Jr in one of his more enthusiatically ambitious moments. There are a lot of madcap characters here, and warped imaginings of self-propelled computers with personality disorders, public domain cultural icons based on Mickey Mouse, and eyepopping virtual sex. This is hideously plausible, as futures go — can’t wait, personally. Flashy, fast and effective. [Juma, 44 Wellington Street, Sheffield, S1 4HD]

Where I work, I don’t tend to go out at lunchtime, preferring to relax in air-conditioned comfort instead of sweating through the City fug. But people tend to assume that if you are at your desk, you should be working, so it’s necessary to adopt an elaborate set of rituals to convince people that this is actually your break that is being disturbed, and would they please go away and find someone else to do it. Icons used in the process may, for example, include an open pack of sandwiches,  to indicate that You Are Not Available. Another possibility is some form of reading material: a newspaper, book or magazine, obviously not work-related. The ideal publication would, I suppose, be ‘Doggie Love’ but failing this (I like my job. No, actually I don’t. But the pay-packet is curiously appealing), the next most viable is one of the plethora of ‘male interest’ magazines now on the shelves. In the interests of research, I stacked up on a pile of these, thereby turning my desk into the office reading room. When I eventually prised them from the hands of my colleagues, I was able to read and review ’em…

Arena #59 – “The original men’s magazine”, it calls itself. S’funny then how it’s managed fewer issues than most of the competition. Maybe it refers to their writing? Not going by the relentlessly Anglophile footie piece (tenuously linked to the European football championships), a feature of every magazine surveyed. Ah, I guess what it means is the term “New Lad” was first used here in ’91. Zzzz. Gets the Best Pictures award for a gross portrayal of the effects of a land-mine (another reason not to want to live in Bosnia, should you be considering it) and some striking pictures of Demi Moore as a bloke. The articles lack the same punch, though there’s occasionally a well-written paragraph which salvages things by hitting the nail squarely on the head. Slightly interesting, and certainly makes an attempt at intelligence, even if it sometimes ends up so wide of the mark you wish they hadn’t bothered.

• Highlight: the I-Spy guide to anti-personnel mines.
• Lowlight: Sean O’Hagan’s whining, complete with excessive use of the word “ironic”, or rather “”ironic””, complaining that “New Lad” doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean. So what? Is he going to hand back the money he’s made from pontificating on the topic?

Esquire Vol.6 No.5 – For quality writing, this one is probably the winner, with a huge range of pieces on everything from Nelson Mandela to jungle survival and corruption in the Yemenese British embassy. This variety is the stand-out feature, there seems no editorial philosophy, though this does mean it feels like “Reader’s Digest” occasionally and it does come over as being dry, like a hard-copy version of Radio 4. Subdued babe-count makes it a safe bet to leave around at home. One interesting sidelight is the lack of any real review material; while most of the others delight in telling you what they think about the latest book, film, CD or whatever.  Esquire avoids this, demonstrating either a commendable desire to avoid freebie whoring, or a complete lack of personality. It says something about Esquire thatI’m not sure which is true. Like a bottle of Evian, it’s good, but ultimately bland and tasteless.

• Highlight: a piece on dominatrixes, in which for once the reporter doesn’t make his excuses and leave. And regrets it.
• Lowlight: four pages of Tarantino’s latest screenplay. Oh, joy.

FHM #77 – Hadn’t realised this one has been around for over six years, but even after so long, there appears to be a ferocious internal struggle for control happening. Half the magazine is terribly earnest – there are two female columnists and readers’ problems include tooth discolouration and shaving rash (the free gift is a sample tube of face lotion) – yet the picture editor is clearly trying to compete with Sports Illustrated, given the number of bikini shots. Nary a nipple in sight, but undeniably chauvinist, this side of the magazine reached a glorious high in October ’95, with their “100 Sexiest Women” supplement, which my girlfriend rapidly reduced to confetti. [It therefore joined the ‘Tokyo Decadence’ laser-disk, two posters of Nastassja Kinski — eyes gouged out — and an issue of Cameron Scholes’ She magazine, all of which have met similar fates. A higher compliment is hard to imagine.] However, overall, the useable content of the mag is too diluted to be of regular interest.  Browse carefully.

• Highlight: “Annoy that customs officer: strap your midriff with six sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. Imagine how pleased the man at the Blue Exit will be when you reveal the novel way in which you chose, quite legally, to transport a packed lunch”.
• Lowlight: an article where women discuss what they don’t like about their men — the correct response being, of course, “Who cares?”.

GQ #84 – The thickest of ’em all, thanks to paper carved from mahogany slabs, and a massive triumph of style over content. More ads than anywhere else, including a 20-page property supplement of Belgravia flats and country estates (anyone got £2.75m?), and lacking a single article of any interest.  Not one. An interview with Burt Bacharach? Nein, danke. They did get rapped by their publishers a while ago for getting too sexy, and certainly this issue lives up to it’s ‘Gay Quarterly’ nickname by having few babes, beyond four pages of “Nicole” from the Renault adverts in a push-up bra. Had a free gift: a teeny paperback of short stories which I lost inside 24 hours. I’m not heartbroken. The target audience for this issue appears to be millionaire homosexuals with no sense of humour.

• Highlight: Er…a page on sporting alternatives to the European championships?
• Lowlight: Most of it. Particularly dire “single lad’s diary” was neither plausible nor amusing.

Loaded #26 – This is the upstart which blew the Y-fronts off the competition, pioneering the New Lab spirit of beers, steers and leers.  It still remains the most politically incorrect of all the mags, with more actual breasts than any of its competitors. It’s all a bit relentlessly drunken though, an attitude which pales eventually and you yearn for a slightly more intelligent approach to life. There is more to New Laddism than alcohol induced vomiting, and boasting about it after.  Half the articles seem to be “We went to Sydney/South Africa/a Scottish island, and drank till we puked”. Perhaps the closest in spirit to TC, and mercifully free of articles on skin care, though still with too much fashion i.e. any. In terms of volume, the pick of the bunch, you’re looking at three lunch-hours minimum to get through it all.

• Highlight: the ongoing comic adaptation of ‘Get Carter’, done in true 70’s fashion. “Your eyes are still the same, Eric. Piss ‘oles in the snow.” Anyone remember ‘Hook Jaw’?
• Lowlight: A pointless article on Demi Moore illustrated by blurry screen shots from a David Letterman appearance. Arena did it much better.

Maxim #14 – New kid on the block, barely a year old, and nearly missed from this survey since the July issue turned up before I got round to buying the June one (a tip of the TC hat to Pascale at work, who supplied the missing link). A slim creature, at a mere 160 pages, yet it fights back with a lot of good, solid content. The interest in health is worrying – the only mag to give more space to it than to clothes. Yet here there is a nicely ironic approach which helps defuse the tedium: the main fashion item is a selection of Greek statues in shorts. Sleaze factor moderate: gratuitous swimwear and women talking about masturbation – the former with lots of pictures, the latter regrettably without. Steers a difficult path with some skill, managing on the whole to be intelligent and entertaining and on this month’s showing, the best read.

• Highlight: Probably the blackline racing piece, about the real speed kings, but lots of good stuff.
• Lowlight: A well-intentioned but pointless article on sexual harassment.

Conclusions: So, after £15.30 and 1140 pages, what have we learned? I know more about overpriced clothes than before. I am aware that the European Football Championships are on, featuring England and a load of foreigners. I own a Danni Minogue poster, some facial scrub and enough scratch-and-sniff after-shave ads to stock a Turkish whorehouse for years. And ‘Fargo’ is a good movie, apparently (actually, didn’t like it much myself). I detect hints of a New Lad backlash, which is odd, given the whole thing is pretty much a backlash anyway. Some questions remain, such as why Arena has a large ‘E’ on the spine. But what was perhaps surprising was the differences rather than the similarities; while undoubtedly male, each had a personality and could be matched to, say, movie stars. The following chart does this, in order of TC appeal, shows the pages each gives to various areas, and provides other useful statistics:

	Pages	Ads	Fashion	Health	Useful	Babes	Price	Cover Star	Personality
1. Maxim	160	49	6	11	94	17	2.50	Elle McPherson	Pierce Brosnan
2. Loaded	236	103	11	1*	121	47	2.40	Chris Tarrant	Charlie Sheen
3. FHM	180	73	30	12	65	28	2.50	Gena Lee Nolin	Tom Cruise
4. Esquire	194	78	15	3	98	11	2.70	Salma Hayek	Dustin Hoffman
5. Arena	172	35	23	8	108	14	2.50	Demi Moore	Kevin Costner
6. GQ	198	118	27	11	42	10	2.70	Andy Garcia	Richard Gere

My overwhelming feeling is relief. I’ve stared into the drunken, impeccably well-coutured face of New Laddism, and will not be taking out a subscription. While they all had their merits, the last thing I’m in need of is a magazine to tell me what to wear, watch and do. That’s what girlfriends are for, isn’t it?

Empire is one of the few publications I regularly buy. But this once-decent magazine has collapsed into a self-parody, which each month takes less time to read. Gradually, Empire has less and less to do with films. Each issue seems to have a new irrelevant section, reviewing CDs, computer games, or god help us, beer. Is this freebie whoring at its most pathetic? If I want to read about music, I’ll buy ‘Q’.

The editor must take the blame for this dysfunctional deviance, happy to commission and publish tedious, opinion-based lists of “100 best”, letting his writers stuff their views down our throats. Pieces such as “100 best opening sequences” grind film into snippets for multiplex idiots with no attention span. Almost inevitably containing the complete works of Tarantino i.e. both movies, Empire (The Mag That Believes The Hype) and Quentin (The Man That Believes The Hype) jerk each other off with tiresome regularity. He says what a great magazine Empire is; they reciprocate, using some feeble excuse to tell him what a great film-maker he is. The January 1996 issue (“100 Greatest Films Ever Made”) does both: “Empire readers salute their favourite movies”. Note the logic: “favourite” = “greatest”. No actual film criticism here in Empire, populism rules. The “Greatest Film Ever” is, surprise, surprise, ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is #3. If these people picked the England football team, Tarantino would be captain, striker and manager. Then there’s the quote from him, completing the circle-jerk: “I’m thrilled that ‘Pulp Fiction’ has been voted the best film ever by Empire readers”. Yeah, me too.

However, it tells us about the reader to whose tendencies they pander. The sole concessions to world cinema were five foreign-language movies in the top 100 — and I suspect most who voted for ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ didn’t know it was Italian. These handful damningly highlight the readers’ ridiculously Anglocentric view. But how should they know otherwise? When Empire sent a reporter to Japan to write about ‘Ghost in the Shell’, he demonstrated his ignorance by interviewing a ‘Byuichi Tezuka’. Bad news, guys; Tezuka died years ago. Do they perhaps mean Byuichi Terasawa? Seeing such slipshod journalism in an area I know a bit about, gives me no confidence in their accuracy elsewhere. Screw facts, let’s have another list.

Such as “Top 100 Sexiest Movie Stars of All Time” — or rather, “Top 100 Sexiest Hollywood Movie Stars Now”. Bar token Eurobabes like Beatrice Dalle, that list again spurned everyone off the London-LA axis, illustrating the obsession with current hip (it’s amazing QT wasn’t #1), and regardless of the fact that cinema just had its’ centenary. Have the 90’s seen an exponential beauty surge? Suggesting Johnny Depp has more anything than Marilyn is ludicrous, even allowing for personal taste. Needless to say, being neither from Hollywood nor currently fashionable, Kinski didn’t merit a place. Harvey Keitel did. But he helped Tarantino get his big break, which must make him very sexy in Empire‘s eyes.

It’s relentlessly predictable: January rolls around and there will be a review of the past year; February, they will look forward to the next one, and six months later, there will be a summer preview. Plus (yawn!) inevitable reports from Cannes and the Oscars. Perpetually pushing the Hollywood publicity wagon, you can usually guess who’ll get the cover. The only mild interest is when megahype movies open simultaneously: Judge Dredd or Batman Forever?  Zzzzzz…

A further example of their editorial courage happened when the Empire editor had the last interview with Hugh Grant before his evening out. This could have provided an important insight into Grant’s mental state but their chat mysteriously only appeared when Grant’s movie, ‘Nine Months’, needed the hype. Things like this give the impression Empire has its tongue jammed right up the bum of the marketeers, and runs scared from doing or saying anything that would upset or annoy them, for fear of (shock!) not getting any more interviews.

Frankly, this’d be no loss: their technique is so blandly non-confrontational you might as well read the press releases. “How much is a pint of milk?” may be a ‘joke’ question but is no worse than many they ask. These ‘profiles’ have been occupying increasing space but if all else fails, they reprint a transcript of a press conference. This scores high for lazy journalism, as does the ‘classic scene’ feature: an easy way to fill a page by copying dialogue from a script.

There are occasional flashes of honesty and wit: publicising Tarantino’s theft of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ from ‘City on Fire’, a sharply aggressive demolition job on the plot of ‘Waterworld’, though these hardly repay the acres of publicity both got. Some writers do know what they’re talking about, with Kim Newman an especial aberration in this department, but this makes things worse, showing what Empire could aspire to. Few of the rest display any individual personality or approach, churning out nothing but homogenised pap. Anything slightly more challenging than the latest studio product is ignored or treated with feeble attempts at sarcasm.

The very first issue I bought had as its cover stars two relatively unknown actors, starring in a quirky low-budget film, with a no-name director, from a minor studio. Those young newcomers were Christian Slater and Winona Ryder; the film was ‘Heathers’. If that film was to be released today, the chances of it making the cover would be very, very slim indeed.

Empire is the leader in its field, undeniably, but that’s only because of the lack of competition. Take Premiere, a hodge-potch of elderly reprints from its American parent, held back until the film’s British release. Beating that should be at best a light thrill, like taking your grandmother on in a bout of full-contact karate. I’ve little doubt that there is a market for a film magazine that would provide intelligent criticism, without toppling into the self-indulgent masturbation too often found in Sight and Sound. I’m 100% certain that I’d buy such a publication. And I’m just as sure that Empire isn’t it.

Warning: gentle readers, irony & sarcasm can be hazardous in inexperienced (or American) hands. This piece was written by a trained professional. [Yeah, right…]

‘Satan’s Angels Exposed’ by Salem Kirban,
AMG Publishing, pp.292, £4.90

This issue’s helping of loonie fundamentalist Xtian nonsense, comes to us courtesy of Salem Kirban. With that name, he clearly is not going to be a rock musician – the title ‘Witchfinder General’ must surely also be his. However, wild speculation and religious fundamentalism is not the only string to his bow. As well as ‘How to Be Sure Of Crowns In Heaven’ and ‘Questions Frequently Asked Me On Prophecy’ (I imagine number one is “shouldn’t that be about prophecy?”), Mr.K is the author of a wide range of books. These include two novels, ‘666’ and the sequel, ‘1000’ — worthy of an entire article in themselves for their straight-line, literal interpretation of rapture, Armageddon and the rest of Revelations – and, oddly, a series of health-care volumes including ‘How To Keep Healthy and Happy By Fasting’, and the delightfully titled ‘Unlocking Your Bowels’.

‘Satan’s Angels Exposed’ was written in 1980 as part of a trilogy, together with ‘Satan’s Mark Exposed’ and ‘Satan’s Music Exposed’. The style of the pages is interesting; the right-hand side is full text, the left dedicated to cryptic paragraph headings, like “The Sinister Seduction of Gradualism”, “Towards A New World Order” and “Originated With John Ruskin”, to take two  pages at random. BLOCK CAPITALS, bold print, and underlining are the order of the day, and Kirban also tends to use imaginative line-breaks to convert quotes from other sources into something resembling blank verse, i.e.

“In the realm of banking
the name of Rothschild
is still one to conjure with.
One of the great ceremonies
of the financial world
occurs on each trading day in London
when five men gather in the same room
to set the opening price of gold
on the world market.
Of these five expert money managers,
one is representative of the
house of Rothschild
and the room where they meet
is in the Rothschild bank”

Got a kinda nice rhythm to it, hasn’t it?

The best conspiracies force together wildly disparate elements into a global paranoia where everything can be explained with a wave of dogma. In Salem’s world all of them are true. Masons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, the Fabian Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Common Market(!) are given equal weight in Kirban’s world-view. They’re all plotting America’s — and hence  freedom’s and Christianity’s — downfall. And who’s behind it all, the conspirator behind the conspiracies? Satan! Who else? Hence a cover blurb which states (in yellow) “That popular religious telecast you are watching may be subtly manipulated by the Illuminati!” and (in pink) “Those contemporary ‘Christian’ records you listen to may be produced by non-believers who are controlled by Satan’s angels!“. Phew. Lucky I only watch trash and listen to industrial technogoth.

Each page has a heading such as “Sinister Plans for Future Control”, designed like a tabloid paragraph header to suck you in. Then he hits you with a blast of rhetorical questions: “Is there a conspiracy? Are the Bilderbergers part of it? Or are they merely another group of would-be do-gooders used and manipulated by other unseen forces?” (that’s a sample from a run of seven consecutive sentences which end in question marks).

Salem starts by giving us some tips on how to spot a Satanic influenced organization. Number one is “Do they have a love for money?”. Well, I guess that’s it – every company in the FTSE 100 is a front for Satan. He then goes on a quick tour through the major religions of the world, pointing out how they stray from God’s word (er, that’s the Bible) though the greatest vitriol is reserved for Humanism which is even (gasp!) compared to Communism.

I am very sceptical about his criticisms. For example, when discussing the Druids, he says they “….celebrated a number of feast days. At dawn on the 25th of December, the birth of the Sun God was celebrated, The Druids had a Madonna, or Virgin Mother, with a child in her arms; and their Sun God was resurrected at the time of year at which we celebrate Easter. It is amazing how Satan becomes the great imitator.” Damn clever of those pagans to work out Jesus’s birthday and sneak in there several hundred years beforehand – December 25th wasn’t fixed as Christmas Day until a papal decree in the 4th century AD, and even Kirban admits the Druids date back to the second century BC. Sorry, who was the great imitator?

After this bigot’s guide to the world religion, ol’ Salem gets down to the core of his conspiracy. Though ‘core’ is more solid than it ever gets, a rambling concotion of innuendo, rumour and downright paranoia. I’d have said that there was more hard evidence for aliens controlling the US government (TC12) than there is for Satan doing so. The basic theory is, “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” and since there have been any number of groups which couldn’t quite see the relevance of Christianity to hard economics, Kirban assumes they’re satanic.

More dodgy history follows: “At that time, they [the Russians] drew their own satellites together into a Warsaw Treaty Organization in 1955, emulating the European economic community“…which was actually founded two years later! This sums up the book – basically, it’s a load of rubbish, but at least it is wonderfully large-scale, ultra-paranoid rubbish which proves if you’re going to see conspiracies, it helps to have all facts surgically removed first.

Since the book appeared, events have overtaken Kirban. Take this passage about the EEC: “The Bible tells us that in the last days, an alliance of ten nations, from out of what was once the Roman Empire, will control the economic and political life of the world…It is possible that one of these ten nations may drop out of the Common Market, thus making it possible for the United States to become eventually the final 10th nation!“

The marginal plausibility of this, to put it mildly, must have been badly shaken when Spain and Portugal became the eleventh and twelfth members, and has surely evaporated as EC numbers head towards twenty. However, maybe it just proves that we’re not yet in the last days, which is itself somewhat comforting. Guess we’ve just about got time for another pint, then…

Waco: The Big Lie 1+2 (Linda Thompson)
– £15, 2 hrs, Nexus Magazine, 01342 322854

On this tape are two documentaries which detail the alleged cover-up over the incidents surrounding the deaths of David Koresh and his followers at their ranch in Texas last year. According to attorney Linda Thompson, what happened was highly illegal, and totally disregarded the human rights of the victims. No-one has ever been brought to justice for the events, the official investigation clearing all those responsible.

The thrust of the accusations is two-fold: firstly, the initial charges levelled against the cult were unfounded, and secondly, that the deaths of the Branch Davidians were not accidents, but murder. The first of these would seem to have some bearing in fact: the allegations came from the infamous Cult Awareness Network, who habitually level the same charges of child abuse, sexual promiscuity and brainwashing, at any group who come into their sights. The purpose of the original raid was to search for an alleged machine-gun, but the evidence for this also seems to be weak and tenuous at best. On the other hand, it was staggering to discover that the cult had purchased over 200 guns from a single shop. Under these circumstances, it is easy to see why the BATF went in, if not with guns blazing, then with guns certainly ready to blaze.

The second phase is even less fuzzier. It relies heavily on video evidence of non-pristine quality, and as this tape is a couple of generations down, you’ll need a good TV and eagle-eyes to make out some of the supposed points. The most startling piece of evidence is footage of what looks like a tank with a flame-thrower at the front, seen operating shortly before the fire started which razed the compound. However, even this is inconclusive, there have been suggestions it is just sunlight flaring off metal. Possibly more convincing is gunshot analysis which strongly suggests the BATF agents killed through “friendly fire” rather than Davidian action. Again, it isn’t surprising they were just a bit twitchy — and once nerves set in, loosing off rounds at anything that moves is easy to do, as anyone who’s played ‘Doom’ will agree.

The general impression it made on me was that, yes, there may be a cover-up, but I remain unconvinced it is anything more than an understandable desire, to avoid being blamed for what looks suspiciously like another government cock-up. While it is startling that the BATF agents killed had all been bodyguards to Bill Clinton, this does not yet a conspiracy make, though I’ll be watching for developments. Let’s face it, if the intention was really to deliver Koresh’s Armageddon all along, the Pentagon could have done it from a long way off, and in spades.

‘Behold a Pale Horse’ by Milton William Cooper,
Light Technology Publishing, pp 500, £16.99

Never judge a book by its cover, so the saying goes, but in this case the psychedelic awfulness of the William Blake-like artwork on the front is a fairly good indicator of the state of mind to be found inside. This isn’t to say that it’s dull — the book is a grandiose piece of entertainment — just that if you want anything remotely connected with reality, try Enid Blyton. Or, jeez, try a cornflake packet, you’ll learn more about what’s going on in the world.

In small doses, this book almost clings onto the far edge of sanity. It is just plausible that aliens operate in collusion with the American government. It’s conceivable that the UN are plotting to set up a single world government. It could be that JFK was shot by his driver, because he demanded that the CIA stop its drug-running operations. But when you take these conspiracies, and many more, and claim that they’re all true, it’s stretching credulity just a teeny bit. In many ways, this is worse than Kirban’s book — at least he had an over-riding force, even if it was Lucifer. Here, Cooper’s theories simply end up contradicting each other: in one the UN is limited to being a patsy of the Trilateral Commission (or is it the Bilderberg Group? Or the Council on Foreign Relations? I forget…), in the next, they themselves are the cabal out to overthrow the Constitution of the United States (starting with the right to bear assault weaponry, apparently).

There are a host of factual errors ranging from the trivial (The Hague in Switzerland?) to the monumental: it’s hard to credit anyone accepts The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, even as neo-fact. On the (marginal) plus side he reprints the document, which I’d never seen in its entirety before. Replacing “Jews” with “Illuminati”, as Cooper recommends, doesn’t help much.

This book was read over a week’s holiday in Greece, and that just about sums it up. File with Jeffrey Archer and all the other purveyors of paperback nonsense, fit only for beach browsing.

For the past few years, as readers know, I’ve been engaged in a sparring duel with the monolithic sensibilities of HM Customs & Excise. They keep opening parcels I’m sent from overseas, and I keep writing sarcastic articles about them. However, the balance in this relationship of Mutually Assured Distrust was shaken last October, when I returned from Scotland to find the letter opposite waiting for me.

I knew what it was immediately — it had to happen eventually, I suppose – ­but was surprised at how calm I felt. There was a time when such a letter would have had me frantically shipping half my possessions to a lock-up garage in Lewisham, but those days of paranoia are long past. I knew I was safe because of the word “knowingly” — as in, “knowingly concerned in importing prohibited items”. This time, for once, I was absolutely innocent, simply because I hadn’t expected ‘Funeral Party’, the magazine in question, to pose any significant threat on the Customs and Excise front. Let’s be honest, I am not so stupid as have severely dodgy material sent to me — at least, not in my own name, to my home address.

I’d first come across ‘Funeral Party’ on the Internet, where one of the editors had posted an ad (above) in the cult movies newsgroup. It sounded interesting, so I wrote, offering to trade some TCs for a copy. This was accepted, and it was dispatched by sea mail, to cut back on postage costs. The weeks casually drifted past, and I all but forgot about it — sea mail being what it is, I wasn’t holding my breath. However, the next thing to turn up was the letter from Customs, saying they weren’t going to let me have it at all.

The most aggravating thing was the total lack of information, beyond that ‘Funeral Party’ was “considered to be indecent or obscene”. Now, this might be sufficient for a copy of ‘Debbie Does Dallas’, but in this case scarcely counts as adequate data on which to judge whether or not to mount a court case. A swift re-read of the ad threw up a few possibilities: Peter Sotos and H.R.Giger were perhaps names familiar to the Customs boys. But this was all speculation, I wrote back requesting more detailed information, in order to make a decision. On the off-chance, I also requested a copy of the guidelines used to determine whether material is indecent. Two weeks passed, with nothing save notice that my letter had been forwarded to Headquarters, who’d made the original decision. Then, the reply came back:

“The magazine contains a cartoon on pages 100 and 101 which includes a graphic and explicit depiction of the buggery of a mutilated body. Although the depiction is in cartoon form, such images are still considered to be obscene. In addition, the magazine contains other questionable pictures at pages 19, 25, 39, 98 and 105. To varying degrees, all of these images depict the tying of people in unnatural positions or sexual acts where actual penetration is shown. Taken together, these depictions are considered to justify seizure of the magazine as obscene and therefore a prohibited import under s42 of the Customs Consolidation Act 1876.”

My first reaction was to take them to court. Very obviously, they had taken the material completely out of context: only seven of the 100+ pages were even “questionable”, and two of those were a cartoon! I got back to the publisher, Shade Rape, and asked him for his opinion:

“100 and 101 – This is so pathetic. From a very well-known Spanish comic book artist named Miguel Angel Martin. He does children’s strips and strips for the daily paper in Madrid.  He also likes to do these bizarre violence and disease stories that are drawn in extremely simple shapes (but distinctly his style). There is one panel where this is occurring and you only see one line to suggest the male character’s penis. Two round lines suggest a butt. 

19 – A still from a Richard Kern movie, I forget which one. The still, in this instance, is used for a flyer promoting a film screening in Seattle. The date and address of the show are printed on the flyer, and also includes right on the image, set diagonally, “Warning!  Guaranteed Politically Incorrect.”  These flyers were just pasted on lampposts.  This is so dumb.

25 – A still from Jim VanBebber’s ‘The Last Days of John Martin.’ I knew very little about printing when we ran this book and I ended up setting the photos a little too dark, for me at least (no one else sees what I mean). A couple people have commented on this image. The film is legally available here through Film Threat Video on a tape which also contains Jim’s more recent short feature ‘My Sweet Satan,’ and a very early one he produced and Mike King, his cinematographer, directed called ‘Doper,’ about, you guessed it, potheads.

39 – A Chas. Balun video box cover. This is on display in video stores. It’s a fucking drawing.

98 – Now, this one is weird.  Dame Darcy did this drawing.  She has a comic book called ‘Meat Cake.’  The girl in this drawing is lying dead in a pool of blood with flowers coming out of her mouth, chest and vagina.  I just don’t get it.  Darcy’s also put out records and sells handmade dolls to a store here, Danse Macabre, and to Courtney Love.

105 – A Timothy Patrick Butler illustration.

Ya know Jim, it’s really funny writing this because as I put the book together I really felt that it was very tame.  I actually thought about a commercial audience.  Reading what I’ve been writing, this seems like the book we’ve all been looking for! It’s much like Shock Xpress but more varied.  Lot o’ film but also art, comics, performance, etc.”

We clearly had a difference of opinion here, but without a copy of ‘Funeral Party’ to look at myself, I was left high and dry — how could I now prepare an adequate defence without being able to see the magazine? I came very close to getting it: one major mail-order outlet had bought copies when visiting the States, but their copies had already been sold. In the end, with Christmas looming, the four weeks Customs allowed for an appeal slid gently past. Presumably, ‘Funeral Party’ went into the incinerator, alongside ‘Teenie Pissie #27’ or whatever.

However, neither I nor the publisher were quite finished. At the start of March, through alternative lines of supply, a copy of the magazine finally made its way into my hands. Civilisation has not collapsed. Life has gone on. And Customs’ action has completely backfired, because the seizure has guaranteed that more people see it. If they hadn’t bothered, it would probably only have been myself and Lino; instead, I’ve already shown it to people at work, canvassing their opinions. Even among the relatively staid people I work with, most thought it “strange”, but no-one found it obscene, and so far, nobody has become a serial killer.

Additionally, scattered throughout this article are a selection of the “questionable” and “obscene” images, so you can make up your own mind. According to Customs, this should corrupt at least some of you. Please write in if you feel notably more depraved as a result of viewing these illustrations. Bear in mind that they were spread out through a 112-page book, rather than shown in the ‘concentrated’ form here.

Personally, I was  disappointed: not with ‘Funeral Party’ itself (well-produced, resembling a perfect-bound issue of ‘Divinity’ or ‘Headpress’, with many interesting interviews and articles). No, the letdown was the “graphic and explicit depiction of the buggery of a mutilated body“. It’s shown on the left. I’m baffled as to how they are so sure it’s buggery, but am prepared to bow to C&E’s apparent experience in this area. However, it requires a major redefinition of “graphic” and “explicit” to make them fit this particular cartoon. The standards applied by Customs seem to me to be those of a Puritan era. Personally, I see more obscene things on the nightly news.]

With regard to the rest of the “questionable” illustrations — which, as Shade points out include a video sleeve, an event flyer, and a photo from a film set — it’s clear that Customs haven’t a clue. About the only one I might be inclined to accept is the truly bizarre illustration at the top of the next page, though at less than three inches square, it is scarcely obvious, and the surreal and fantastical nature leave it in the same realms as H.R.Giger.

Overall, had I known back in November just how “obscene” the magazine was i.e. not very, I might well have gone to court, and think I would have had a fair chance of winning, though in terms of time and effort, it’s been a lot easier just to bypass them.

So what lessons are to be learned. Firstly, don’t believe a word Customs say — but you should know that already! Next, don’t send stuff sea-mail, it seems to increase the chance of examination. Presumably Customs think that they can delay a surface package by a week without anyone noticing, while doing the same to an air-mail package would be obvious. Better still, use a courier. If the package is moderately heavy, the cost isn’t much more than posting it, and delivery takes about two days, leaving Customs with almost no chance to interfere.

Let’s also take a look at what Customs say they are looking for, in their answer to the “bonus question” in my letter to them. It starts thus: “there are no guidelines available to the public on what constitutes indecent or obscene material“. That’s a lot of help. This does tie in with what happened when a friend tried to import a laser-disc, but had it stopped by Customs, who said it was on their banned list. When he asked for a copy of this, he was told it wasn’t a physical list, just that certain film titles were illegal as far as they were concerned. At least this silence makes it easy to plead ignorance; it must be all but impossible for anyone here to knowingly import  obscene material in, when no-one will  explain what obscene means.                  

However, the letter does go on:

“A useful ‘rule of thumb’ for importers is that if a depiction of a sexual act is sufficiently explicit that it is clearly actually taking place (eg. if penetration can actually be seen during intercourse) then it is likely that a court would consider it to be obscene. This applies to drawn as well as photographic material. Depictions of people bound (especially if gags are also used) are taken very seriously by the courts, particularly if the victim is a woman, with courts prepared to condemn comparatively ‘tame’ material of this kind. I trust that this has clarified the position”.

I suspect the last sentence may be a rare display of irony, since to my mind, the explanation just confused things even more! The drawing they claimed was obscene doesn’t actually qualify by their own “rule of thumb”, since it’s impossible to tell from the image in question whether anything is “actually” taking place. This is leaving aside the little matter of whether anything can be said to “actually” happen when it’s not “actually” real, just lines on paper.

Interesting to note that the above comments fail completely to mention violent material. It appears that you can import anything you want as long as no-one has sex or is tied up. I think I shall keep the letter to hand, so that when they come to batter my door down after I try and import, say, ‘Blood Feast’, I’ll just smile, say “No bondage or sex”, and they’ll go away again. Why do I suspect this might not be how it would work in practice?

My cynicism about Customs and Excise grows stronger every time I have to deal with them. It’s impossible to work out who they think they are protecting, and from what. In these days of global communication and travel, they’re rapidly becoming an anachronism, a bunch of King Canutes floundering helplessly against an incoming tide of cheap booze, electronic smut, and American horror magazines. It was with great delight that I read about Knockabout Comics, who recently went into battle with C&E after they seized a shipment of comics. It turned out Knockabout had actually previously printed the same comics in this country with no problems. Ker-ching! Six thousand pounds costs against the boys in (navy) blue. This goes to show that it can be done, if Customs’ cynical exaggeration and narrow-mindedness don’t succeed in getting you to back down. Next time, I might not be so easily cowed…