Lobotomy Room Film Club in Review: January 2018 – February 2020!

We are living through gruesome times. The monthly Lobotomy Room film club - focusing on the kitsch, the cult and the queer (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) - is on indefinite hiatus while our beloved  venue Fontaine’s bar is shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. To paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara, as God as my witness we will return to the Bamboo Lounge and get drunk together again when this scourge is finally over! But in the meantime, let’s indulge is in some misty-eyed nostalgia for when we could all assemble to watch trashy movies over cocktails and bowls of complimentary popcorn.

Previously, I’ve posted about what we screened from 2015 - 2016 and 2017.  Now, let’s take a sentimental journey re-visiting the roster of Bad Movies We Love we showed from January 2018 - February 2020. (Proceedings ground to a halt before the March 2020 film club, of course).

17 January 2018 – Strait-Jacket

On Wednesday 17 January Lobotomy Room shamelessly jumps on the Feud: Bette and Joan bandwagon (I mean, embraces the spirit!) with a screening of campy horror masterpiece Strait-Jacket (1964) – starring Joan Crawford as a deranged ax murderess! 

Call it “hagsploitation” or “psycho-biddy”, Strait-Jacket (directed by low-budget trash maestro William Castle – one of John Waters’ primary influences) is a stark, vicious little b-movie featuring a truly berserk and mesmerizing performance from bitch goddess extraordinaire Crawford! If you liked What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, you’ll LOVE Strait-Jacket!

21 February 2018 - Hairspray (30th anniversary)

Rat-up your hair like a teenage Jezebel and apply a thick layer of frosted white lipstick on Wednesday 21 February 2018 when Lobotomy Room commemorates the 30th anniversary of one of John Water’s best-loved movies – Hairspray! (The film premiered in Baltimore on 16 February 1988 and went into general release on 26 February). Rest assured we’re showing the original definitive camp classic starring Divine, Deborah Harry and Ricki Lake – most definitely not the 2007 abomination with John Travolta! So learn how to frug and Watusi and come see Hairspray, described by Rolling Stone as “a family movie both the Bradys and the Mansons could adore!" It promises to be a night of hair-raising fun!

21 March 2018 – I Am Divine (30th anniversary of Divine’s death)

This month we’re making it extra filthy and depraved – with a tribute to the fabulous Divine! Wednesday 21 March! Formerly known as Harris Glenn Milstead (19 October 1945 – 7 March 1988), Pope of Trash John Waters’ 300-pound drag queen leading lady of choice, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, disco singer, all-round freak diva extraordinaire and eternal role model for misfits everywhere died thirty years ago this month! And we’re commemorating this historic occasion with a screening of the glorious 2014 documentary I Am Divine.

18 April 2018 – Vixen

Previous film club triumphs have included b-movie maestro Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. On Wednesday 18 April 2018 the featured selection is Meyer’s 1968 sexploitation shocker Vixen! An exercise in bad taste! Rated “X” upon its release! Something to offend everyone! Vixen! Is she woman or animal? A study in nymphomania starring the voluptuous Erica Gavin!

Read more here.

Reflections: previously we had rowdy full houses for Russ Meyer’s cult movie staples Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. We got only a fraction of that for Vixen – indicating that perhaps it’s still regarded as one of his more problematic, troubling and misunderstood works. 

16 May 2018 – Shanghai Express

The fourth of the seven sumptuously kinky films director Josef Von Sternberg and leading lady / muse Marlene Dietrich made together, Shanghai Express was the most commercially successful of their collaborations (it was the highest-grossing film of 1932) and widely considered their definitive masterwork. Set during the Chinese civil war, it stars impossibly sultry German glamour-puss Dietrich as “the notorious white flower of China” Shanghai Lily (“it took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily!”). She’s described as a "coaster" or "woman who lives by her wits along the China coast" (1930s shorthand for prostitute). When her fellow passengers on the express train from Peking to Shanghai are taken hostage, Shanghai Lily – the woman who “wrecked a dozen men up and down the China coast” - seizes the opportunity to redeem herself. A shimmering Art Deco spectacle, Shanghai Express is the perfect film to watch over cocktails in the splendour of Fontaine’s Bamboo Lounge!

20 June 2018 – Mansfield 66/67

Skulls! Pentagrams! Heart-shaped swimming pools! Chihuahuas! Mansfield 66/67 contains all the components essential for an irresistibly campy cult film-in-waiting. Think of Todd Hughes and P. David Ebersole’s wildly enjoyable 2017 documentary (“a true story based on rumour and hearsay”) as When the Sex Kitten met the Satanist. It speculates about just what happened when Hollywood’s doomed, bosomy platinum blonde glamour queen Jayne Mansfield (1933 - 1967) encountered charismatic young devil-horned founder of the First Church of Satan Anton LaVey (1930 - 1997) during the messy final year of her life – in particular, whether he placed a curse on Mansfield, causing her fatal 1967 car crash. Featuring guest appearances from John Waters and Mamie Van Doren, a twangy surf guitar soundtrack, interpretive dance and animation, Mansfield 66/67 plays-out like a delirious hot-pink fever dream and is a suitably adoring valentine to Jayne Mansfield – the Patron Saint of Lobotomy Room!

A special-offer pink Jayne Mansfield cocktail was available on the night.

Read more here.

18 July 2018 - The Wild One / Scorpio Rising

/ The gang's all here! Johnny Strabler (luscious young Marlon Brando at the height of his beauty) with the members of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club /

In honour of Pride this month we’re taking you on a journey deep into the fetishistic Leather Jacket Jungle with a double-bill of sexy homoerotic biker classics: Kenneth Anger’s notorious underground occult masterpiece Scorpio Rising (1963) AND swaggering young Marlon Brando in motorcycle gang / juvenile delinquent exploitation movie The Wild One (1953)! (Yes – the one where Brando is asked, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” and he snarls, “"Whaddaya got?"). So, don your Levis, leather and chains and join us Wednesday 18 July!

/ "She wore blue velvet ..." Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising /

15 August 2018 – Viva Las Vegas

Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977. In theory, Lobotomy Room should have organized a 40th anniversary tribute last year – but it totally slipped our minds until it was too late! Instead – ever perverse – we’re commemorating the 41st anniversary of The King’s death at the August film club on 15 August with a screening of Viva Las Vegas (1964)! 

Let’s face it: all Elvis Presley films are terrible - but Viva Las Vegas is easily the least worst! It’s filmed in glorious lurid Technicolour, features some sensational musical numbers and is set in glittering, neon-lit “old Vegas” in its kitsch atomic-era prime. (Trust me: Las Vegas does not look like this anymore!). Best of all, Viva Las Vegas co-stars Presley’s greatest leading lady – definitive sex kitten-gone-berserk, that red-headed vixen Ann-Margret!

Read more here.

19 September 2018 – Nico: Icon (30th anniversary of Nico’s death)

International supermodel. Warhol Superstar. Moon Goddess. Velvet Underground chanteuse. Heroin-ravaged punk diva. Possessor of the most haunting wraith cheekbones of the 20th century. The eternally enigmatic Nico (née Christa Päffgen) was all of these and more! 2018 represents a double anniversary for the inscrutable Marlene Dietrich of Punk: she was born 80 years ago (16 October 1938) and died 30 years ago (18 July 1988). On Wednesday 19 September the Lobotomy Room film club pays tribute to the doomed femme fatale’s memory with a screening of the 1995 documentary Nico Icon.

17 October 2018 – Dracula’s Daughter

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.

Read more here.

21 November 2018 – Seven Sinners

The seven films director Josef von Sternberg and his muse and leading lady Marlene Dietrich made together between 1930 and 1935 were dark, erotic, witty and sublime works of art. Together they honed Dietrich's complex, sultry and feline persona and brought a whiff of genuine Weimar decadence to mainstream Hollywood. By comparison Seven Sinners (made after Dietrich and Sternberg’s personal and professional relationship imploded) is pure trash - but campy, enjoyable fun trash of the highest order! It’s a romantic comedy starring Dietrich as good time girl nightclub chanteuse Bijou Blanche, set adrift and stirring up trouble in a South Seas port, while pursuing a hunky naval officer (played by a young and still relatively unknown John Wayne). Just wait until you see perennial Lobotomy Room favourite Dietrich crooning “The Man’s in the Navy” in full butch military drag king mode!

Come sink a few cocktails, surrender to the allure of Marlene Dietrich and celebrate the cinema club’s third birthday on Wednesday 21 November!

Read more here.

19 December 2018 – Polyester

For the final cinema club of 2018 (on Wednesday 19 December), let’s wind things down with a crowd-pleaser – John Water’s delirious 1981 black comedy Polyester! A parody of 1950s “women’s pictures”, Polyester sees 300-pound drag monster / leading lady Divine cast against type (and giving one of his definitive performances) in a rare sympathetic role, as long-suffering suburban housewife Francine Fishpaw! It’s an apt choice for last film of 2018 for two reasons: 2018 represented the 100th anniversary of the birth of beloved punk granny Edith Massey (1918 –1984) and Polyester represents her last appearance in a John Waters film. And dreamboat leading man Tab Hunter (1931 – 2018) died earlier this year.

Reflections: previously, anytime we scheduled a film by eternal Lobotomy Room favourite John Waters we were ensured a rabidly enthusiastic response. To our dismay, when we screened Hairspray (to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of its release), the documentary I Am Divine (to honour the thirtieth anniversary of Divine’s death) and Polyester, the audience stayed away in droves. My conclusions: the dreadful 2007 remake of Hairspray has permanently and unfairly tarnished the reputation of Waters’ 1988 classic original. I Am Divine is easily viewable at home on Netflix. And I can only assume that Polyester – a masterpiece! - is Waters’ most underappreciated film.  

16 January 2019 – Sudden Fear

For the first Lobotomy Room film club of the New Year, let’s revel in some old-school pagan diva worship with Sudden Fear (1952) starring cinema’s bitch goddess extraordinaire (and eternal Lobotomy Room favourite) Joan Crawford! Wednesday 16 January 2019!

In the 1950s the perennially-fierce Crawford made a cycle of melodramas in which she played middle-aged women-in-peril tormented by younger lovers, including Autumn Leaves and Female on the Beach. All these films are genuinely great, but the zenith is hard-boiled film noir thriller Sudden Fear in which Crawford is a wealthy San Francisco socialite menaced by the duplicitous Jack Palance and the pouty and perverse Gloria Grahame. (Bad girl Gloria Grahame and Joan Crawford in the same film?! You DON’T want to miss this!).

Read more here.

20 February 2019 - There’s Always Tomorrow

Considering February is the month of Valentine’s Day, we’re presenting a love story: irresistible tear-jerking melodrama There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) by Hollywood’s undisputed maestro of deluxe “women’s pictures”, Douglas Sirk! Wednesday 20 February! Warning: this film is a masterpiece of romantic agony – you will cry! You bring the tissues, Fontaine’s will provide the cocktails! 

There’s Always Tomorrow is unusual in the Sirk canon for two reasons: it focuses on the heartbreak of a man rather than a female protagonist. And it’s in black and white instead of Sirk’s trademark vivid Technicolour. Despite his outwardly perfect life, Clifford Groves (Fred MacMurray) is an affluent but unhappy Californian toy company executive in late middle age, taken for granted by his selfish family. Out of the blue, Norma Vail (Barbara Stanwyck), a former employee he hasn’t seen in years (now a chic and successful fashion designer) returns to his life – and represents one last chance at happiness. Will Clifford succumb to temptation?

Reflections: I needed trauma counselling after this night! The worst-case scenario happened: full house, everyone was enthralled by Sirk’s virtuoso storytelling and then 45-minutes in, the DVD froze and stopped playing! Nothing would get it to work again. (I was frantically blowing on the DVD, rubbing it on my t-shirt and re-inserting it with trembling hands). It was horrifying! For the first time, I had to apologize and send everyone home without seeing the rest of the film. It turns out the DVD had some microscopic scratches that made it unplayable after a certain point. (To be fair, I hadn’t watched it in many years). This was by far the nadir of my years organizing a film club! 

20 March 2019 - Cobra Woman

Call it a South seas adventure. A pagan sensation. An epic kitsch extravaganza. A so-bad-it’s-GREAT camp classic! For the March Lobotomy Room film club, we’re presenting Cobra Woman (1944)! Wednesday 20 March 2019!

Thickly-accented Queen of Technicolour Maria Montez stars in a dual role as twin sisters of the tropics vying for love! One is virtuous, one is evil! Venomous in hate, rapturous in love! In a story containing all that you desire in romance and adventure! See the horror of masses terrified by the power of King Cobra! See the thrill of sinuous beauties in the dance of the snakes! All the matchless thrills of fiery adventure! All the forbidden wonders and dangers of the tropics! Witness snake worship! (Including some frankly rubber-looking ones!) Virgin sacrifice! Harem dancers! Erupting volcanoes! Nubile leading man Sabu frolicking in nothing but a skimpy loincloth! And best of all, a monkey threading a needle! Your mind will boggle! Hail King Cobra!

Read more here.

15 May 2019 – There’s Always Tomorrow (take two!)

Reflections: There's Always Tomorrow is clearly a cursed movie for me. I bought a pristine new DVD for this re-scheduled screening after the February debacle, and this time only a handful of people turned up. I admit defeat! Which is sad, because There's Always Tomorrow is perhaps Sirk's unsung chef d'oeuvre.

19 June 2019 – Friday Foster

In the action-packed but incomprehensible plot, glamorous, gutsy, fun-loving and intrepid ex-fashion model-turned-photojournalist titular heroine Friday Foster (fierce Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier) gets caught up in a complicated and impossible-to-follow narrative about an assassination attempt against the world’s wealthiest African-American magnate Blake Tarr. From there: something something … her fashion model best friend Cloris gets murdered … something something … the action keeps shuttling between Los Angeles and Washington … something something … an assassin who knows Friday know too much keeps trying to kill her … something something … Friday has an obligatory nude shower scene … something something … Friday steals a hearse from Cloris’ funeral to evade her killer … something something … car chases and shoot-outs ensue … something something … a genuinely tense and suspenseful chase scene in an abandoned warehouse … something something … private detectives and political conspiracy theories … something something … political intrigue, murder and a conspiracy theory called “Black Widow” ... something something … helicopters! All set to a blistering retro porn funk soundtrack, Friday Foster is vividly entertaining with a genuine ambiance of sleaze! And just wait until you see veteran sex kitten Eartha Kitt’s guest star appearance! 

Remember: “Her name is Friday, but you can love her any day of the week!”

Read more here.

Reflections: there is apparently zero demand for blaxploitation movies in present-day London. A grand total of two people showed-up to watch Friday Foster - some kind of record for the film club! To be fair, they both loved it!

17 July 2019 – Plan 9 from Outer Space

My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space? Can you handle unspeakable horrors from outer space paralyzing the living and resurrecting the dead? If so, then do we have the film for you! 

Gloriously inept and twisted b-movie visionary Ed Wood Jr unleashed Plan 9 from Outer Space – his much-ridiculed el cheapo sci fi horror thriller – on an unsuspecting world on 22 July 1959. Come celebrate the 60th anniversary of this notorious cinematic atrocity on Wednesday 17 July when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room sinema club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love presents Plan 9 from Outer Space!

Starring horror legend Bela Lugosi (in his final film appearance), hulking Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson and wraith-like glamour ghoul Vampira, the plot - incorporating flying saucers, zombies and nuclear war - offers a nightmare scenario about what happens when aliens administer long distance electrodes into the pineal and pituitary glands of the recent dead, bringing them back to life! A true cult classick, Plan 9 simply must be seen to be believed and will improve immeasurably by drinking Fontaine’s frosty cocktails!

Is Plan 9 from Outer Space one of the worst films ever made? YOU be the judge on 17 July!

Read more here.

21 August 2019 - The Devil is a Woman

If visionary director Josef von Sternberg was the Leonardo da Vinci of cinema, then German glamourpuss leading lady Marlene Dietrich was his Mona Lisa. The Devil is a Woman (1935) was the last of the seven exquisite films the duo collaborated on together. And boy, did they conclude in high style! Sumptuous and bizarre, it’s a kinky and cruel black comedy about sexual humiliation, tinged with sadomasochism, and offering one final swooning and ambivalent valentine from Sternberg to his gorgeous muse. 

Set in a dream-like, deliberately artificial turn-of-the-century Seville, it stars Dietrich (clad in a wild wardrobe of lace mantillas) as heartless gold-digging femme fatale Concha Perez (variously described as “the most dangerous woman you’ll ever meet!” and “the toast of Spain!”) cruelly pitting virile young Antonio Garvan (Cesar Romero at his most handsome) against the self-destructively besotted Captain Don Pasqual Costelar (Lionel Atwill – deliberately styled to resemble Sternberg himself) for her own amusement.

The Devil is a Woman is a deliriously perverse, borderline-surreal spectacle! Come see the movie the Spanish government successfully banned and that Dietrich herself called her favourite (“because I was most beautiful in it”) on Wednesday 21 August!

Read more here.

18 September 2019 – Andy Warhol’s Heat

Together the inspired trio of pop art visionary Andy Warhol, director Paul Morrissey and leading man / homoerotic beefcake icon Joe Dallesandro collaborated on three notorious underground films. Cinema’s Sultan of Sleaze John Waters has hailed Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972) as “the trilogy that changed the rules of male nudity in modern-day cinema both underground and in Hollywood.” While all three movies are gritty, sordid classics of style and substance, I’d argue that Heat (the final and most polished of their efforts) is the most entertaining – and it’s this month’s Lobotomy Room film club selection! Wednesday 18 September!

A freaky and twisted black comedy, Heat is a loose remake of Sunset Boulevard (1950) set amidst the desperate low-rent fringes of Hollywood’s underbelly. Dallesandro stars as a coldly calculating wannabe actor and hustler who finds himself caught between an aging washed-up actress (the magnificent Sylvia Miles – who died this June aged 94) and her mentally unstable daughter (doomed Warhol Superstar Andrea Feldman). Trust me - you’ve never seen anything quite like Heat! If you enjoy the squalid early “gutter films” of John Waters, Heat is a must-see!

Read more here.

16 October 2019 - Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Attention, Scream Queens! In honour of Halloween, for the October Lobotomy Room film club presentation we’ve scheduled the apogee of the “hagsploitation” genre Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) starring Bette Davis at her most frenzied! Wednesday 16 October! Come and settle-in for an evening of spine-tingling Southern Gothic horror in the Tiki splendour of Fontaine's Bamboo Lounge!

Read more here.

20 November 2019 – Too Late for Tears

“In one terrifying moment she realized what she had done … yet it was too late to turn back … too late for tears!”

Lizabeth Scott (1922 – 2015) was the most haunting and memorable of forties and fifties film noir actresses. Because of Scott’s languid mane of ash blonde hair, smoky eyes, sultry demeanor and raspy voice “that sounded as if it had been buried somewhere deep and was trying to claw its way out” she’s been frequently (and unfavorably) compared to the more famous Lauren Bacall. In fact, Scott was a much stranger, more intense and harder-working actress than Bacall, and made more interesting choices. And on Wednesday 20 November the Lobotomy Room film club presents her definitive movie - the tense 1949 film noir Too Late for Tears. It stars Scott at her most enthralling, almost serpentine as a suburban Los Angeles housewife with a treacherous and homicidal dark side.

Reflections: It gives me great satisfaction to declare that the criminally underrated Lizabeth Scott won a legion of new fans after this screening! I’d argue Scott is the last great “undiscovered” Golden Age Hollywood star. We urgently need a documentary or biography about this actress (or even a The Films of Lizabeth Scott book) or - when they eventually re-open – for the British Film Institute to screen a season of her movies to belatedly bring her to a wider audience.

18 December 2019 – The Girl Can’t Help It

“It’s Got the Heat! And The Beat!” Yes! For the last film club of the year, let’s end things on a high with a FREE screening of the irresistible Mercedes Benz of rock’n’roll musicals – The Girl Can’t Help It (1956)! Starring perennial Lobotomy Room favourite, squealing and cooing sex kitten-gone-berserk Jayne Mansfield in one of her most iconic roles! And featuring performances by a star-studded who’s who of 1950s rock’n’roll greats including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Fats Domino – all captured in glorious DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope! Wednesday 18 December!

16 January 2020 – The Damned Don’t Cry

For the first Lobotomy Room film club of 2020, let’s bask in some old-school pagan diva worship! As is tradition, the first film club of the New Year stars eternal Lobotomy Room favourite - Golden Age Hollywood’s bitch goddess extraordinaire Joan Crawford! (In January 2018 we screened Strait-Jacket. In January 2019, Sudden Fear). 

If you enjoy watching the reliably intense Crawford suffering in mink, irresistibly tawdry noir melodrama The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) is the movie for you! Thursday 16 January! Hear her snarl hard-boiled dialogue like “Don’t talk to me about self-respect! That’s something you tell yourself you’ve got when you’ve got nothing else!” No spoilers, but it begins with Crawford as downtrodden housewife from the wrong side of the tracks Edith Whitehead, who climbs to the top of high society … one man at a time! (Edith’s mantra: “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life. And I’m going to get it!”). Unfortunately – she soon finds herself embroiled in the murky realm of organized crime (and sexy gangster Steve Cochran!).

Read more here.

20 February 2020 – Love Has Many Faces

This month, the Lobotomy Room film club (devoted to Bad Movies We Love) presents tantalizingly trashy melodrama Love Has Many Faces (1965) starring 44-year old screen diva Lana Turner at the height of her mature glamour! 

The steamy action is set in sun-drenched Acapulco amidst the amoral la dolce vita milieu of the jaded idle rich, where tanned half-naked gigolos ply their trade on the beach to sex-starved affluent society matrons. The hedonistic idyll is abruptly interrupted when Billy Andrews, one of these beach boys-for-hire, washes-up dead on the shore. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? A bracelet on his wrist (engraved “Love is Thin Ice”) links him to married 40-something heiress and playgirl, Kit Jordan (Turner).

Come watch the glorious Lana Turner suffer, emote and hide a painful secret, drink and smoke too much, wear sunglasses, dramatically ascend and descend a spectacular staircase, impatiently snap orders at servants in Spanish and repeatedly changes clothes (Turner’s garish Edith Head-designed wardrobe cost an estimated $1 million). No one over-acts quite like Lana Turner. Is she awful or majestic? YOU be the judge!

Read more here.

And there you have it! The March 2020 film club was meant to be Desert Fury (1947) starring Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster and Mary Astor but in the current climate it’s indefinitely postponed. Who knows what the future holds? In the meantime, “like” and follow Lobotomy Room on Facebook for when normal service does resume. Stay safe!