Reflections on ... Dracula's Daughter (1936)

From the Facebook event page:

Who doesn’t love a lesbian vampire movie? Decades before Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers (1970), Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness (1971) or Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983), the original Sapphic glamour ghoul was Dracula’s Daughter (1936)! Embracing the macabre spirit of Halloween, on 17 October Lobotomy Room presents this compelling classic from the same cycle of 1930s Universal Pictures horror masterpieces that includes Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1931) and Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Accompanied by her faithful hunchbacked assistant, mysterious and wraith-like Hungarian Countess Marya Zaleska (portrayed by the morbidly beautiful Gloria Holden, sporting a dramatic wardrobe of capes and gowns) arrives in London following the death of her father Count Dracula. Offered a glass of sherry, the Countess quotes her late father (“Thank you. I never drink . . . wine”).  Before long she’s leaving a trail of drained corpses in her wake! The most elegantly Art Deco of vampire films, Dracula’s Daughter is the ideal choice to watch over cocktails at Fontaine’s.

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. We can accommodate thirty people maximum on film nights. Arrive early to grab a seat and order a drink!

So, is Dracula’s Daughter the original lesbian vampire movie? Let’s have a heated debate! The strictly-enforced prudish Hollywood Production Code of the era means Countess Zaleska’s lesbianism can only be implied (overt depictions of homosexuality were strictly verboten), but the queer implication is there if you want it to be! Certainly, the scene where she hypnotizes (or should that be “seduces”) helpless female victim Lili – the Countess’ dark glistening eyes seemingly bulging with desire - is tense and seething with suppressed sensuality. All these decades later, it still feels forbidden and taboo! Not for nothing does Bright Lights Film Journal praise Countess Zaleska as “an impressive Euro-butch dyke bloodsucker”, further arguing “modern audiences will respond to Holden’s striking, mask-like face and haunting, luminous eyes as the intoxicating essence of transgressive lesbian power.” Countess Zaleska’s DNA circulates in all subsequent cinematic lesbian vampiresses, from Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness (1971), to Celeste Yarnall in The Velvet Vampire (1971) to Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983).

/ Above: Nan Grey as Lili and Gloria Holden as Countess Zaleska /

/ Above: Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness (1971). Below: Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983) /

Dracula’s Daughter wasn’t a commercial success in 1936 and is considered the last in the cycle of iconic 1930s Universal horror movies that include stone-cold masterpieces like Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolf Man. Universal wouldn’t risk another horror film again until 1943 (with Son of Dracula). It didn’t help that apparently the film went wildly over budget during production. Certainly the luxe production values show onscreen (Dracula’s Daughter is the most sumptuously Art Deco of 1930s horror films).

One weird and noteworthy thing: the action in Dracula’s Daughter is meant to pick up exactly where the original Dracula (1931) finished – but that film was set in the 19th century and this one is clearly set in 1930s!

Dracula’s Daughter isn’t “perfect” by a long shot. Who knows what might have happened if original choice James Whale (1889 - 1957) – the true, inspired poet of the horror genre responsible for Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - had directed it instead of the merely competent Lambert Hillyer (1893 - 1969). It must be said, an attendee at the film club at Fontaine’s complained afterwards that Dracula’s Daughter wasn't remotely scary. Its second half hurtles towards an abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion. The weakest bits: the gratingly unfunny scenes of “comic relief” (which most Universal horror films include for some reason) and the totally unengaging love story subplot (I doubt you will care much if the couple in question get together!). That’s not to suggest Dracula’s Daughter doesn’t exert its own perverse, cobwebbed allure. The segments with Countess Zaleska and her creepy loyal assistant Sandor in her shadowy lair are magnificent. (I’m not sure why I described Sandor as “hunchbacked” in the event page – he isn’t! He’s played by the ever-intense Irving Pichel (1891 - 1954) with a severe centre-parting, flared nostrils and Cossack-style tunics.  Pichel was great at essaying sinister roles like this (I love him menacing Tallulah Bankhead in The Cheat (1931)). 

Another aspect in its favour: it’s been noted that Dracula’s Daughter is perhaps the original “psychological horror film”. The tormented Countess Zaleska is a reluctant vampire who believes she is “cursed” and seeks psychiatric help to “cure” her compulsive vampirism. In this respect, the plot strongly anticipates Val Lewton’s Cat People (1942).

One thing to watch for: Countess Zaleska meets socialite Lady Esme Hammond at a high society cocktail party – who’s played by Hedda Hopper (1885 – 1966) before she became a much-feared show business gossip columnist! (Anyone who watched Feud: Bette & Joan needs no introduction to the gleefully malicious Hopper).  In the same scene: when offered a glass of sherry, the Countess memorably quotes her father (“Thank you. I never drink . . . wine”).  

Best of all, Countess Zaleska is unforgettably portrayed by London-born actress Gloria Holden (1903 – 1991). This was Holden’s one big starring role (it’s like she emerged from nowhere to play it, and then vanished there again) and she reportedly accepted it only warily, fearing she would get typecast in nothing but horror films afterwards. (With some justification, Holden probably saw Bela Lugosi’s post-Dracula career as a cautionary tale). She was probably right to be cautious: if you look at Holden’s filmography on Wikipedia, she continued to work steadily in films right up until her retirement in 1958 (so for more than two decades after Dracula’s Daughter) but never again in a glamorous lead role like this. Still, if this was Gloria Holden’s sole shot at a starring vehicle, she could have done infinitely worse. She plays the title character, gets beautiful shimmering close-ups (the camera is mesmerised by the angular, unconventionally beautiful Holden’s cadaverous pallor, dark eyes, strong jaw and high cheekbones) and wears a spectacular wardrobe of hooded cloaks and batwing-sleeved gowns (check out the “bandage dress” midway through the film). Holden imbues  the tragic Countess with a mournful Garbo-like quality. Her performance is genuinely haunting and memorable.

/ Below: "She gives you that weird feeling!" Some of the strikingly beautiful 1930s posters promoting Dracula's Daughter. These images are so powerful it could be argued the actual film itself could never possibly live up to them! / 

/ It's worth pointing out that Gloria Holden wasn't the first actress to play Dracula's daughter onscreen: one year earlier, Carroll Borland portrayed Luna Mora, the daughter of Bela Lugosi's Count Mora in Mark of The Vampire (1935).

Further Lobotomy Room dates for your social calendar - now that you're in a Halloween frame of mind! Friday 26 October 2018!

It’s creepy and it’s kooky … mysterious and spooky … it’s all together ooky … it’s the Lobotomy Room Halloween dance party! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll on Friday 26 October at the punkiest, Cramps-iest, kitschiest low-brow Halloween bash this accursed month! Downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!). 

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Campy 1950s and 60s Halloween novelty songs played LOUD, with added Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities! Think John Waters soundtracks and Songs The Cramps Taught Us! Vintage horror films played on the big screen all night!

Featuring special guests:

Hailing from New Zealand, instrumental electric guitar duo SPARKLING DUET (the Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of Stoke Newington!) will be playing a special Halloween preternatural edition of their show, covering classic and obscure 50’s and 60’s surf, psych, exotica and rockabilly tunes with a haunted twist! 

AND conjuring 1950s platinum blonde bad girls like Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren - burlesque showgirl deluxe, TRIXIE MALICIOUS!

Fontaine’s special Halloween-themed cocktail menu available on the night!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Event page

Further reading:

In August I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

Listen to my Halloween playlist on Spotify! 

Reflections on ... Nico in The Closet (1966)

/ Nico and Randy Bourscheidt in The Closet (1966) /

(In honour of what would have been Nico’s 80^th birthday (16 October 1938), here – a day late! – is my analysis of her first-ever Andy Warhol film collaboration, The Closet (1966). I saw it many years ago when the British Film Institute held a comprehensive retrospective season of Warhol films).

The Closet (1966) was Nico's first film with Pop Art visionary Andy Warhol and represents her cinematic unveiling as a Warhol Superstar. It would be a fruitful relationship. As the Factory's inscrutable Garbo / Dietrich equivalent she would star in several more Warhol films (most famously Chelsea Girls) while also featuring as chanteuse for Warhol's "house band" The Velvet Underground.

The "plot" is absurdist and minimal: a couple living in a closet kill the time (they make small talk, split a sandwich, share a cigarette, kvetch about their cramped surroundings) and contemplate leaving but never do.

For the first few moments the camera is focused on the exterior of the shut closet door in grainy black and white as we hear only their voices (audible but muffled; in fact the sound remains muffled for the rest of the film, poor sound quality being a stylistic trademark of Warhol's films at the time). Creeping horror that the entire 66-minute film will stay like this is averted when the door belatedly does open and we are finally permitted to see Nico and leading man Randy Bourscheidt (a preppy, cute art student-type) seated inside the closet surrounded by hangers, ties, clothes, etc. While the couple talk or sit in silence, Warhol's camera either sits totally stationary or prowls restlessly and randomly.

The film is unscripted: instead we get an improvised, wandering conversation between the duo who have obviously been instructed to ad-lib for the 66-minute duration. Most Warhol Superstars were amphetamine-fueled, garrulous exhibitionists; Nico and Bourscheidt are atypically more reticent. Both seem shy and hesitant and their conversation is often stilted but characterized by a genuine sweetness on both parts. Some viewers have deciphered the hint of a physical attraction between them which is complicated by the pretty, long-lashed and collegiate-looking Bourscheidt's apparent homosexuality (I could be wrong about this. The expression "coming out of the closet" was probably already in use in the 1960s and could be a relevant coded meaning to the film's title).

Certainly Bourscheidt seems dazzled by Nico, which is understandable: The Closet presents her at the height of her flaxen-haired beauty. It also reveals the complexity of her persona. The performers in Warhol films are essentially playing themselves, so The Closet is a snapshot of Nico the woman at this particular point in her life rather than an actress performing a role. She looks like a statuesque Nordic Amazon but is wispily-spoken, reserved and uncertain rather than intimidating or forbidding -- her sweetness dispels the cliché of Nico as ice maiden. And her voice - routinely described as guttural or "Germanic" - is infinitely softer than you expect.

As an avant-garde filmmaker Warhol withholds most of the conventional pleasures audiences expect from films (narrative, character development, editing, technical proficiency , etc) but with his Superstars in lead roles he does provide one of the enduring attractions of film-watching: scrutinizing beautiful people. So while "nothing happens" in The Closet, we do get to appreciate the physical attractiveness and hip wardrobes of both Nico and Bourscheidt at great length. Nico wears what was then her signature look: an androgynous white pants suit, turtle neck and boots combo that would be the pride of any Mod boy, feminized by a curtain of long blonde hair.

Nico would have been in her late twenties by the time of The Closet, and Bourscheidt (at a guess) between 19 and 22. She speaks to him in tones that are somewhere between maternal concern and big sister-ly teasing. Both seem vaguely embarrassed and self-conscious on screen, but unlike Bourscheidt Nico has the poised armour of sophistication: by 1965 she had already modeled since her teens, spoke several languages, acted in films like La Dolce Vita (1959) and Strip-Tease (1963) in Europe, was the mother of a young son, and had started her singing career.

She also has the skills of a fashion model: she is clearly un-phased by the camera's roaming gaze and is skilled at graceful self-presentation. She has a neat trick of looking down moodily so that her long blonde bangs obscure most of her face and then suddenly looking up and tilting her head, dramatically revealing sculpted cheekbones, Bardot lips and sweeping false eyelashes.

"Are you afraid of me?" Nico suddenly asks Bourscheidt towards the end of their awkward filmic encounter. He looks startled and doesn't know how to reply. "I'm not trying to embarrass you!" She assures.

At the the film's conclusion Bourscheidt teasingly asks Nico if she's forgotten his name. She has, and tries to cover by asking him, "Is it Romeo?" He says no and she says, "Why not?" He asks if she wants him to be Romeo and should he get down on one knee. She replies, "Oh, no. You be Juliet and I'll be Romeo."

Further reading:

I’ve blogged about the Nico - the doomed chain-smoking Edith Piaf of the Blank Generation - many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; When Patti Smith Met Nico; Nico in the film Le Bleu des origines; Nico in the Warhol film Ari and Mario; Leonard Cohen's personal and musical fixation on Nico.  

Reflections on ... Autumn Leaves (1956)

Friday night (5 October) we watched the gloriously tortured melodrama Autumn Leaves (1956) – an ideal way to conclude the British Film Institute’s Joan Crawford retrospective (Fierce: The Untameable Joan Crawford, August - October 2018). 

I was very disciplined about this Crawford season and only saw two other films: the freaky silent horror movie The Unknown (1927) (all about extreme body modification / amputation and obsessive love, which teamed young starlet Crawford with Lon Chaney as an armless knife thrower!) and A Woman’s Face (1941) (in which Crawford portrays an embittered facially-disfigured criminal who changes her ways once she undergoes plastic surgery and finds love). 

In the fifties, cinema’s bitch goddess extraordinaire Crawford made a whole cycle of middle-aged women-in peril-films that found her in love with dangerous younger men (see also Sudden Fear (1952) and Female on the Beach (1955)) - all of them great. In Autumn Leaves Crawford is Millicent Wetherby, a prim, lonely and quietly desperate forty-something spinster who finds herself unexpectedly romantically entangled with dishy, significantly younger man Burt Hanson (Cliff Robertson). They impulsively marry, and Millicent soon discovers – too late! – that she knows almost nothing about her profoundly troubled, weirdly childlike and secretive new husband. 

Millicent is meant to be a frumpy and sexually repressed typist, thus Crawford’s onscreen wardrobe is mostly restricted to high-necked, ultra-modest blouses and full skirts, with cardigans draped around her shoulders – but that “mousy” wardrobe is by Hollywood costume designer deluxe Jean Louis! Think haute couture librarian. (Crawford also wears a seriously pointy and gravity-defying underwired bullet bra throughout).

(An aside: Crawford was the original choice to play the role of Karen Holmes in the film From Here to Eternity (1953). Deborah Kerr was ultimately cast instead when the producers balked at Crawford’s demand that she bring her own cameraman. The single most famous image from From Here to Eternity is of Kerr and leading man Burt Lancaster kissing passionately on the beach while the surf crashes and foams around them. Interestingly, Autumn Leaves painstakingly recreates this scene!).

If – like me – you love watching Crawford undergo heavy emotional anguish, this is the film for you! In a mesmerizing, almost operatic performance Crawford’s face gradually becomes a taut, tense mask of suffering. (No one does eyes-glistening-with-tears quite like Crawford). Cliff Robertson is impressively tormented as Burt (a study of 1950s masculinity in crisis to compare with Robert Stack in Written on the Wind or James Mason in Bigger Than Life) and is fit as fuck (especially when wearing a white t-shirt so tight the outlines of his nipples are visible!). Stir into the mix Nat King Cole crooning the lushly romantic title track, Lorne Green and Vera Miles as a pair of genuinely sleazy villains, a  shocking scene of domestic violence and brutal close-ups of electric shock therapy and you get a vividly memorable and exemplary atomic-era “woman’s picture”. 

Perhaps the zenith of Crawford’s performance is when she encounters Green and Miles on the street and tears into them with a vengeful rant. "Where's your decency?” Millicent demands. “ In what garbage dump, Mr Hanson? And where's yours, you tramp? You his loving, doting fraud of a father and you, you slut! You're both consumed with evil so rotten your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself!" 

Autumn Leaves was directed by the hard-boiled Robert Aldrich (who makes some virtuoso, jarring stylistic choices. I especially love Aldrich's strange, dream-like flashback to Millicent's life as a younger woman). As viewers of Feud: Bette and Joan already know, Crawford and Aldrich would triumphantly reunite in 1962 for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Lobotomy Room DJ Set List at Fontaine's 28 September 2018

/ Twist like Jayne Mansfield - at Lobotomy Room! /

From the Facebook event page:

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s most unique nite spot Fontaine’s! Friday 28 September!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Bad Music for Bad People! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell. Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure!

One FREE signature Lobotomy Room cocktail for the first twenty entrants!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Lobotomy Room: Faster. Further. Filthier.

It’s sleazy. It’s grubby. It’s trashy - you’ll love it!

A tawdry good time guaranteed!

/ Pagan! Primitive! Taboo! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll – when incredibly bizarre dance party Lobotomy Room returns to Fontaine’s on Friday 28 September! /

Phew! The September 2018 Lobotomy Room dance party downstairs in the Tiki paradise of Fontaine’s Bamboo Lounge progressed dreamily. This was a massive relief because the July club night was catastrophic and really shook my confidence (let’s just say I DJ’d to a completely empty room for most of the night!). That’s why I never even bothered posting a July 2018 DJ set list on here. (We skipped doing an August 2018 Lobotomy Room club night because it fell on a bank holiday weekend – always a dicey time to do a club night). But flash-forward to end of September and we managed to pull a glamorous, sexy, hip and appreciative clientele. (No of course there are no photos from the night – you’ll have to just take my word for it!). In this racket, I’ve learned to take nothing for granted. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came! To quote the great Lola Heatherton: I want to bear your children!

/ Scala Cinema flyer from 1982 /

In other news: two nights before Lobotomy Room, it was divoon to DJ at London's Scala for Jane Giles’ book launch on Wednesday 26 September 2018! (Giles was one of The Scala Cinema's former programmers. Her book – a lavish history of the much-missed temple of cinematic sleaze / Sodom Odeon entitled simply Scala Cinema: 1978 – 1993 - is an exquisite deluxe coffee table tome). To be honest, I was thrilled just to be asked. Luckily, I moved to London just in time to experience the final year or so of the Scala Cinema. (I remember feeling bereft when it closed!). The first double bill I ever saw at The Scala was within a month or two of arriving in London and it was Girl on a Motorcycle / The Wild Angels – in other words, both Marianne Faithfull and Nancy Sinatra as black leather-clad biker mamas! This was when Kings Cross was still a genuinely dangerous grungy red-light area / junkie central (just getting from the tube station to the cinema felt like risking your life!). From there, I plunged into underground classicks (sic) like Pink Narcissus, Thundercrack and double-bills of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Richard Kern and Bruce LaBruce films. The Scala truly warped me at an impressionable age! It shaped me into the dysfunctional hot mess I am today. Wandering the staircases and corridors of The Scala on Wednesday felt Proust-ian because – since the cinema closed in ’93 – I’d never really spent much time there. Popstarz was never my bag (I’ve never been an indie kid!) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a music gig there. Someone had expertly-edited together five-hours’ worth of representative Scala film trailers playing on an endless loop on the big screen. It included films I personally associate with The Scala from first-hand experience (Daughters of Darkness, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Myra Breckenridge, Polyester, Glen or Glenda?) and films that were big at the time that I’d pretty much forgotten (The Fourth Man, Down by Law, Drugstore Cowboy). I DJ’d for an hour (in a cage!). My first job was to evoke the seedy sexploitation / grindhouse ambiance of The Scala with Divine, Elvis, Jayne Mansfield, The Cramps, punk, rockabilly, surf instrumentals and selections from films like She-Devils on Wheels, Pink Flamingos and Scorpio Rising. My second job: to keep the bevy of glamorous onstage go-go dancers shakin’ it hard! I hope I succeeded! 

Anyway, here's what I was laying-down at the September 2018 Lobotomy Room:

Der Karibische Western - Lydia Lunch
Steel Pier - The Impacts
Road Runner - The 5.6.7.8s
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Mau Mau - The Fabulous Wailers
Katanga - Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Esquerita and The Voola - Esquerita
Working On Me, Baby - Tiny Topsy
Fever - Edith Massey
Money Money - Big John Taylor
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Drive Daddy Drive - Little Sylvia
The Swag - Link Wray
She Wants to Mambo - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Mambo Baby - Ruth Brown
I Don't Need You No More - The Rumblers
Ridin' with a Movie Star - L7
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramonetures
Three Cool Chicks - The 5.6.7.8s
Salamander - Mamie Van Doren
Woodpecker Rock - Nat Couty and The Braves
Year 1 - X
Vampira - The Misfits
Pedro Pistolas Twist - Los Twisters
Bombora - The Original Surfaris
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Miller
Lightning's Girl - Nancy Sinatra
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Touch the Leather - Fat White Family
Bad Boys Get Spanked - The Pretenders
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Breathless - X
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Bottle to the Baby - Charlie Feathers
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
The Big Bounce - Shirley Caddell
Juvenile Delinquent - Ronnie Allen
I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent - Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
Fools Rush In - Rickie Nelson
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Big Maybelle
Run Chicken Run - Link Wray
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
Chicken - The Cramps
Chicken Rock - Fat Daddy Holmes
Jukebox Babe - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Forming - The Germs
Margaya - The Fender Four
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Batman - Link Wray
Boss - The Rumblers
He's the One - Ike and Tina Turner
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
I Just Don't Understand - Ann-Margret
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
One Night of Sin - Elvis Presley

Further reading:

In August I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

Upcoming dates for all your Lobotomy Room-related needs:

Wednesday 17 October 2018

Who doesn’t love a lesbian vampire movie? Decades before Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers (1970), Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness (1971) or Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983), the original Sapphic glamour ghoul was Dracula’s Daughter (1936)! Embracing the macabre spirit of Halloween, on 17 October Lobotomy Room presents this compelling classic from the same cycle of 1930s Universal Pictures horror masterpieces that includes Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1931) and Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Accompanied by her faithful hunchbacked assistant, mysterious and wraith-like Hungarian Countess Marya Zaleska (portrayed by the morbidly beautiful Gloria Holden, sporting a dramatic wardrobe of capes and gowns) arrives in London following the death of her father Count Dracula. Offered a glass of sherry, the Countess quotes her late father (“Thank you. I never drink . . . wine”). Before long she’s leaving a trail of drained corpses in her wake! The most elegantly Art Deco of vampire films, Dracula’s Daughter is the ideal choice to watch over cocktails at Fontaine’s.

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. We can accommodate thirty people maximum on film nights. Arrive early to grab a seat and order a drink! Full gruesome details on event page.

Friday 26 October 2018

It’s creepy and it’s kooky … mysterious and spooky … it’s all together ooky … it’s the Lobotomy Room Halloween dance party! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll on Friday 26 October at the punkiest, campiest, kitschiest low-brow Halloween bash this accursed month! Downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!). 

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Bad Music for Bad People! Campy 1950s and 60s Halloween novelty songs all night, with added Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell. Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Vintage erotica projected on the big screen for your adult viewing pleasure! Fontaine’s special Halloween-themed cocktail menu available on the night!

One FREE signature Lobotomy Room cocktail for the first twenty entrants!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Lobotomy Room: Faster. Further. Filthier!

Full putrid details here.