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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
/ 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 /
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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!
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.
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!
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