Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Berserk! (1967) on 20 November 2025

 

OK, so Halloween is over but let’s extend the horror vibe this November when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (committed to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents ultra-kitsch, gloriously lurid British-made shocker Berserk (1967)! 

“This absurd suspense melodrama was the next-to-last film of Joan Crawford’s career. She’s cast as Monica Rivers (a typically glamorous Joan Crawford character name), owner and ringmistress of a circus where strange murders occur. In the very first scene, a tightrope walker falls to his death. Joan takes charge immediately, shooing away the paparazzi and sending out a contingent of clowns, who flap their arms to amuse and distract the audience. “We’re running a circus, not a charm school!” she points out, “and, most importantly, people have to be entertained!””

/ From High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films Volume 2 (1997) by Paul Roen /

Never was a film more aptly titled – and boy, does it earn that exclamation point. Highlights to anticipate: 1) 62-year-old leading lady Joan Crawford (in her second last film) is on fearsome scary diva form as hard-as-nails circus ringmistress Monica Rivers (a serial killer is gruesomely picking-off her circus’ performers one by one). Crawford’s portrayal can be summarized as “lipstick over concrete.” And don’t even get me started on the insane auburn wiglet Her Serene Crawfordship wears, or the special “glamour lighting” that ensures a flattering dark shadow is cast under her chin at all times. 2) Anytime impossibly hunky Ty Hardin (Crawford’s love interest) takes his shirt off. (Hardin is so devilishly handsome he’s like a homoerotic Tom of Finland illustration came to life). Note also that Hardin’s death-defying tightrope act involves him wearing a face-obscuring hood, which enables a body double to do it all on his behalf! 3) Zaftig British sex goddess Diana Dors’ juicily bitchy performance (and her straw-like bouffant hairstyle) in a supporting role. 4) The plot is considerably padded out with circus performance footage (which you see in all its plodding entirety), but Phyllis Allan and her Intelligent Poodles are delightful! 5) Not a spoiler, but the abrupt, lunatic ending (just after the murderer exclaims, “I killed them ALL! I HAD to! Now I’m going to kill YOU!”) ensures the scriptwriters are freed from explaining how any of this could have been feasible! 

“Berserk! was a lurid tale of murder in the circus and while it offered little to challenge Crawford’s dramatic talent, she was still able to display here commendable figure in a leotard as ringmistress. “What about these?” she said, exhibiting her breasts to her producer Herman Cohen. “And no operations on ‘em, either.” She wore her own clothes in the film - “Save your money, Herm; I’ve been hustling clothes all my life” – but asked that Edith Head design the leotard.”

/ From Joan Crawford: A Biography by Bob Thomas (1978) / 

Join us at Fontaine’s on 20 November to embrace the full lunacy of Berserk! (over cocktails!). Reserve your seat by emailing bookings@fontaines.bar. Full details here. 

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club committed to cinematic perversity. Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s site. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Reflections on ... Dead Beat (1994)

/ Bruce Ramsay in Dead Beat (1994). Tagline: "A tale of deep love ... and shallow graves" /

“Famed not so much for his mid-sixties killings of three teenage girls as for his mind-boggling fashion statements, he was sentenced to death, one suspects, for his atrocious taste. “Smitty”, as he was called, pompadoured his dyed jet-black hair and wore a thick coat of pancake over his dirty unshaven handsome face. His Casanova lips were covered in white lipstick, and he designed a quarter-size beauty mark made of putty that resembled a hideous cartoon witch’s mole. His ultimate accessory was the large filthy bandage he wore on his nose for no apparent reason. Like all models, he wished he were taller, so he stuffed his boots with a three-inch layer of tin cans and rags …” 

That’s John Waters describing Charles Schmid Jr (aka the “Pied Piper of Tucson”) in his 1983 volume of essays Crackpot. Schmid’s story is loosely adapted for the screen in deadpan black comedy Dead Beat (1994) by first-time director Adam Dubov. “Smitty” is reimagined as Elvis-worshiping small-town Lothario Kit (Bruce Ramsay) (pictured. As you can see, they dispensed with the nose bandage!). For cult cinema aficionados, Dead Beat overlaps with the cinema of Waters and David Lynch in terms of style, content and casting. Its pastel-hued kitschy retro art direction evokes Waters’ Hairspray (1988), complete with neon signs, cars with fins and bouffant hairstyles. (And Deborah Harry appears in both films). Surf rock instrumentals by Link Wray and Dick Dale rumble on the soundtrack. (So do some rockabilly tunes by James Intveld – who provided the singing voice of Johnny Depp in Waters’ Cry-baby (1990)). Balthazar Getty and Natasha Gregson Wagner would go on to feature in Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997). And of course, the presence of Gregson Wagner recalls her mother Natalie Wood, who starred in the Rolls Royce of juvenile delinquent movies, Rebel without a Cause (1955).  

/ Above: the real Charles Schmid Jr /

Ramsay attacks the role of Kit with wolfish lip-smacking elan. (Watching him makes me wish Waters had cast HIM in Cry-baby instead of Depp). But my favourite performance is by a virtually silent Sara Gilbert (Darlene from Roseanne). Also noteworthy: Meredith Salenger, who I remember with affection from schlocky 1988 horror movie The Kiss. And cult director Alex Cox (of Repo Man (1984) and Sid and Nancy fame (1986)) also makes a memorable cameo appearance. 

Not all of Dead Beat works by any means, but it’s stylish (Dubov does wonders with a shoestring budget), provocative and worthy of investigation. You can find it on YouTube. 

Remembering Jean Hill (15 November 1946 – 21 August 2013)

 

“The doorbell rang, I opened the door and there she was – my dream-come-true, four-hundred pounds of raw talent. I carefully invited Jean in, and the first thing she did was goose me to totally unnerve me. She asked for a drink and got it. She laughed and said she had no objections to nudity (“I’ve got a lot to show, honey”), would certainly dye her hair blonde (“Big deal. I’ve had blonde hair twice before”) and asked for a special chair that wouldn’t break when she sat on it. After listening to her give a hilarious reading from the script, we went over the contract, I gave her an advance on her salary, and it was settled.” 

/ John Waters recalling his first encounter with Jean Hill when she auditioned for Desperate Living in the book Shock Value (1981) / 

“Could the mighty Jean Hill in her very heart have been a deeply sincere, vulnerable and perhaps even a (gasp!) shy person? Actually, I think she was, and her outrageous persona was a way to compensate for this and connect with people and get them to drop the bullshit, prejudice and affectation and deal with her person-to-person. She refused to be labelled. She was fat, she was black, and her health problems forced her to become a kind of permanent “patient,” and she was sometimes on welfare, so she was also filed as a “charity case,” but she refused to be put in any of these boxes or to be looked down upon. She was forged in defiance. There is nothing unique about that — the ghetto is full of defiant people, but it becomes special when that defiance is coupled with intelligence, wit, humour, compassion and a flair for the absurd, and that’s what made Jean stand out in any crowd.” 

/ From the Bright Lights Film Journal's lyrical, sensitive obituary for Jean Hill by Jack Stevenson / 

Died on this day ten years ago: John Waters’ majestic “soul diva” Jean Hill (15 November 1946 – 21 August 2013), unforgettable as Grizelda in his 1977 bad taste punk classick Desperate Living. (She also makes a fleeting but vivid cameo appearance in Waters' 1981 film Polyester). 

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Lady in a Cage (1964) on 20 July 2023

 

“Help! I am trapped in a small private elevator!” Seriously - don’t you just hate it when that happens? That’s the dilemma that befalls genteel, affluent widowed poetess Cornelia Hilyard (Olivia de Havilland). She’s recuperating from a broken hip; her son is away for the weekend – and the small private elevator in question malfunctions, leaving her trapped between floors. And just then, when Cornelia is at her most vulnerable, a gang of feral delinquents break into her home …

Berserk 1964 thriller Lady in a Cage is firmly in the post-Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? hagsploitation tradition (interestingly, the lead role was originally offered to Joan Crawford.  And the same year de Havilland co-starred opposite Bette Davis in that other hagsploitation classic, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)). Won’t you join us on Thursday 20 July when the free monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents Lady in a Cage? But take note of the leading lady’s warning: “Do Not See Lady in a Cage Alone! It is a shocking picture with a terrifying theme! No holds are barred in Lady in a Cage. So, take somebody along and hold onto them – for dear life!” There will be safety in numbers downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge – and stiff cocktails to steady your nerves!

 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page.

/ Below: the truly nutty original trailer for Lady in a Cage / 

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: The Flame of the Islands (1956) on 18 May 2023

 

Let’s face it: spring 2023 has been a grey, dismal bust so far! To remedy that, this month’s Lobotomy Room cinema club whisks you away to torrid tropical climes with a presentation of Flame of the Islands (1956) - the irresistible acme of juicy, pulpy and garish fifties b-movie melodramas via poverty row studio Republic Pictures, shot on location in the Bahamas, filmed in scorching Trucolour and starring tough, sensual and glamorous atomic-era brunette sex goddess Yvonne De Carlo! Yes – that Yvonne De Carlo, television’s Lily Munster, in what I’d argue is her best screen role (and, yes, I am including her performance as Moses’ wife in Biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956)). 

Flame shares the same premise as many another fun campy film: a brassy good-time girl (usually some variation of “nightclub singer”) rocks-up in some exotic locale and her mere presence - and disruptive sexuality - can’t help but wreak havoc. Think of Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners (1940), Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) or Jane Russell vehicles like His Kind of Woman (1951), Macao (1952) or The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956). De Carlo gets to sing (she has two kitschy calypso musical numbers, one of which is entitled “Bahama Mama”), conceal a painful secret, fight-off unwanted romantic overtures from multiple men and pursue the man she really loves, complete with spectacular wardrobe changes (including a fluffy angora sweater that Ed Wood Jr himself would covet). So, won’t you join us for “the hottest thing in the tropics” on Thursday 18 May? 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £6 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. For more info, see the Facebook event page. 

/ Seriously, you will want to see Zachary Scott wearing this outfit! /

Reflections on ... The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968)

Recently re-visited: The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968). Tagline: “Overnight she became a star. Over many nights she became a legend.” 

Klaxon!! A pristine version of this widely reviled misbegotten camp oddity is currently viewable on YouTube – and it’s compulsory viewing for devotees of “bad movies we love”. I hadn’t seen this one since I was a teenager - and in fact even then I’m not sure I made it to the end. 

Sultry Kim Novak stars as decadent German screen diva Lylah Clare (think Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo), who died in her prime in murky circumstances – and urban myth has it she was initially discovered working in a “brothel that catered to some pretty peculiar fantasies.” Now, twenty years after her death agent Bart Langner (Milton Selzer) has terminal cancer and his final wish is to produce a tell-all Lylah Clare biopic. But when Langner pitches the idea to Lylah’s temperamental husband and director Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch), he’s dismissive anyone could do Lylah justice (“Dreary little pussycats come mincing in here like bitches in heat doing their dirty little business!” Zarkan fumes). But then Langner introduces his discovery and proposed leading lady - a mousey unknown wannabe actress called Elsa Brinkmann (Novak again wearing glasses and a brown wig). “Shoulders. Hips. Cheekbones. Just like Lylah. It’s uncanny!” he raves. 

When she arrives at the mansion Zarkan shared with Lylah, the meek Elsa seems oddly mesmerized by a huge oil portrait of Lylah – and the sweeping dramatic staircase where she plunged to her death. (To be fair, it is a total death trap!). And when the tyrannical Zarkan manhandles her, the angered Elsa suddenly exclaims, “Keep your feeelthy hands off me!” in Lylah’s guttural Germanic voice - and in fact, seems to be possessed by her! (Note that Lylah’s “baritone babe” voice is dubbed by the great German actress and singer Hildegard Knef). Uh oh! From here, things just get weirder and messier … 

Director Robert Aldrich sure loved recycling the show biz-is-hell theme: The Big Knife (1955). Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). The Killing of Sister George (1968). For good measure, Aldrich also throws in references to other peoples’ movies like Sunset Boulevard (1950), Vertigo (1958) and Valley of the Dolls (1967). (More recently, Lylah Clare belongs in the same lineage as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006) and the ultra-divisive Blonde (2022)). 

Downsides: characters endlessly pontificating at length about the dog-eat-dog cruelty of Hollywood. The furiously hammy spittle-flecked performances of Finch and Ernest Borgnine are insufferable. There’s zero attempt to capture period verisimilitude in the flashbacks to the 1930s (or is it the 1940s? It’s impossible to tell!). Coral Browne plays a malicious dragon lady gossip columnist loosely based on Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. The cruel humour poked at the fact she’s disabled and wears a leg brace has aged like an avocado. 

But Novak is always compelling to watch. This is her equivalent of Boom! or Secret Ceremony, the freaky “failed art movies” her peer Elizabeth Taylor made in the same period. Interestingly, Aldrich’s first choice for Lylah was French actress Jeanne Moreau (her presence would have made it feel more cerebral and European art cinema) – which feels inconceivable today considering Lylah Clare (with its themes of shifting female identities and men obsessively making-over women) seemingly makes deliberate allusions to Novak’s earlier film Vertigo.  (Novak had been absent from the screen for three years and Lylah Clare would be her final major starring role). 

Critics were mostly hostile, but some were prophetic. "Not merely awful; it is grandly, toweringly, amazingly so,” Richard Schickel wrote in Life magazine. “I laughed myself silly at Lylah Clare, and if you're in just the right mood, you may too”, while Roger Ebert concluded, “Like the Burton-Taylor Boom, it provides its own grisly satisfaction: You can have fun watching it be so bad.”

Judge for yourself!

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: This Woman is Dangerous (1952) on 19 January 2023

 

“Every inch a lady – until you look at the record! Part of her was Ritz – part of her was “racket” – all of her was exciting! Beth Austin – stylish dame with a stylish name who lived by jungle law in a big city and clawed her way to where the money was …”  

From the trailer:

 

“It’s that Austin woman!” 

“She’s front-page dynamite!” 

“How does she get away with it?” 

“Yes, they talked about this woman whose name was in the social register – and the police blotter. This lady who graced a millionaire’s mansion one night and a mobster’s hideout the next. Living dangerously, loving dangerously, she used each new romance to claw her way from the rackets to the Ritz. Into the careers of many men – into the hearts of two. One who saved life. One who took life. And she made them both pay the price of her reckless ambition.”

“A rancid melodrama” is how Joan Crawford’s biographer Bob Thomas disparages this low-rent 1952 noir crime thriller. "I must have been awfully hungry,” La Crawford herself bemoaned. “The kids were in school, the house had a mortgage. And so, I did this awful picture that had a shoddy story, a cliché script and no direction to speak of. The thing just blundered along. I suppose I could have made it better, but it was one of those times when I was so disgusted with everything that I just shrugged and went along with it. It was the worst picture I ever made." And remember - she’s including Trog (1970) in that assessment! 

In Woman, Crawford is Beth Austin, ersatz high society matron and mastermind of a criminal hold-up gang. (I love the idea of Crawford as a decorous “lady mobster” wearing little gloves and fur stoles, whose brooch matches her earrings). Oh, and did I mention Beth is wracked by headaches, at risk of going blind and urgently requires vision-saving experimental surgery? Seriously, she has a LOT on her plate! 

Is This Woman is Dangerous the worst film Crawford ever made? And what if you (like me) like “rancid melodramas?” Judge for yourself when the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents This Woman is Dangerous on Thursday 19 January in the glittering Art Deco environs of Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page.

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Dear Dead Delilah (1972) on 20 October 2022

 

October means Halloween (or “gay Christmas” for those in the know) – which means as per tradition, this month the Lobotomy Room film club is presenting a horror movie on 20 October. And boy have we dug up an oddity for you this time! 

Nasty, grubby, gruesome but perversely captivating, low-budget exploitation slasher flick Dear Dead Delilah (1972) conveys a genuinely bizarre vibe: think Southern Gothic horror as directed by William Castle, with verbose and meandering faux Tennessee Williams-like dialogue and scenery-chewing soap opera acting punctuated by blood-splattered decapitations. In other words, Dear Dead Delilah has something for everyone! 

Filmed on location in Nashville, Tennessee, it stars that reliably fierce ne plus ultra of Golden Age Hollywood character actresses Agnes Moorehead (Endora from TV’s Bewitched) in her final appearance in the titular role of Delilah Charles, a wealthy and shrewish dying Southern matriarch confined to a motorized wheelchair. (Moorehead herself was in declining health and would die two years later aged 73).  

Firmly in the post-What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? hagsploitation tradition (although updated for the splatter-hungry drive-in circuit), Delilah calculatingly references earlier films like Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) (in that one, Moorehead had a secondary role as Bette Davis’ housekeeper. Here, she gets to play the ageing Southern belle lead) and Strait-Jacket (1964) (they share the same premise of a mentally unstable axe murderess freshly-released from an insane asylum).  When we get a glimpse of Delilah ascending in her “personal elevator”, it can’t help but recall Katharine Hepburn in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) or Olivia de Havilland in Lady in a Cage (1964)! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to the cult, the kitsch and the queer! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum. Inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! (Any difficulties reserving, contact me on here). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Passport to Shame (1958) on 28 July 2022

This month the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents for your delectation tense, irresistibly trashy black-and-white British b-movie Passport to Shame (1958)! See the film described by Radio Times as “a cheap, tawdry and utterly fascinating piece of vintage sexploitation” that aims to expose the shame of London’s prostitution rings! As a bonus: Passport co-stars 26-year-old Diana Dors - British cinema’s reigning bad girl - at her pouting sex goddess zenith!  Thursday 28 July 2022 downstairs at the fabulous Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! (Note: the film club is normally third Thursday of every month - but this month it got bumped to the following Thursday! Don't get it twisted!). 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the free monthly film club devoted to the cult, the kitsch and the queer! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston's most unique nite spot)! Two drink minimum. Inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential.  Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! (Any difficulties reserving, contact me on garusell1969@gmail.com). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page. 

/ Diana Dors in Passport to Shame (1958) /

/ Passport to Shame was released in North American markets as Room 43 / 

Read more here. 

Reflections on ... Summer Storm (1944)

 

Recently watched: Summer Storm (1944). Tagline: “The Most Beautiful Woman God Ever Forgot to Put a Soul Into!” 

“George Sanders and Linda Darnell drifting to their destruction in the best Hollywood adaptation of a Chekhov story.” 

/ Andrew Sarris in his groundbreaking essay “Those Wild and Crazy Cult Movies” published in The Village Voice in 1978 / 

“Before this adaptation of Chekhov’s 1884 novel The Shooting Party, Linda Darnell was valued for her beauty rather than her acting ability, but her role here as Olga, a peasant girl who ruins the lives of three men in her quest for wealth and social standing, relaunched her career. She’s brilliant, particularly in her wedding scene, where she is aware of the patronising scorn of the aristocrats around her, adding fuel to her plan to improve her station. George Sanders gives one of the best male performances in Sirk’s canon, as the weak judge who falls in love with Olga. The critique of the limited options available to women is pure Sirk, while there is a moment of suspense that recalls Hitchcock, when a maid sees something disturbing from her changing room. The ending, where the judge has a life-changing decision to make, shows Sirk’s eye for human fallibility at its keenest.” 

/ From Douglas Sirk: 10 Essential Films by Alex Davidson, 2016 /

I’ve always wanted to see this early Douglas Sirk curiosity, which seems to be entirely out of circulation. (Summer Storm isn’t streaming anywhere. The DVD that Cinema Paradiso sent me dates to 2009 and is probably long out of print). In the Andrew Sarris article cited above, he lists Summer Storm as a film that should be embraced by cult movie aficionados. Obviously, that never happened. It’s minor Sirk, but hell, minor Sirk is more fascinating than most filmmakers on their best day!

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Mahogany (1975) on Thursday 16 June 2022

 “There’s only one word to describe rich, dark, beautiful and rare. I’m going to call you … Mahogany!”

Yass, Queen! In honour of Pride Month, the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), presents Mahogany (1975) starring fierce pop diva Diana Ross! Thursday 16 June downstairs at the fabulous Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! 

Seize this opportunity to celebrate Ross as an unassailable gay icon while she’s actually gracing our shores with her glittering presence this summer (she's performing at the Platinum Jubilee concert, a sold-out stint at the O2 Arena AND the “legends slot” at Glastonbury) with this berserk so-bad-it’s-GREAT camp classic in the tradition of Valley of the Dolls, Mommie Dearest and Showgirls! (Critic Roger Ebert dismissed Mahogany as a “big, lush, messy soap opera” - as if that’s ever a bad thing!). 

In this lurid rags-to-riches melodrama, Ross portrays Tracy Chambers, a poor but determined aspiring fashion designer from the gritty slums of Chicago. Instead, she’s “discovered” by a photographer (played by Tony Psycho Perkins) and winds up transformed into international supermodel Mahogany. But is success - and her decadent Euro-trash existence in La Dolce Vita Rome - all it’s cracked up to be? See the film that inspired everything from Beyonce to RuPaul and generations of drag queens to Paris is Burning! Throw on a chiffon cape, drip candle wax all over yourself and embrace the sequined lunacy of Mahogany on 16 June! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to the cult, the kitsch and the queer! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum. Inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page.