Reflections on ... Russ Meyer's Vixen (1968)

“Russ Meyer’s Vixen! The story of a girl who loves the joy of being alive and gives herself innocently to the merry chase of life! But like any other game, life has its rules – and if we trespass beyond them, the game can become deadly! Vixen! An adult motion picture experience which is rated X!” From the trailer for Vixen

“Basically, this is a woman that is a racist, a sex fiend, an incest partner, a lesbian … an all-American girl that saves a plane from being hijacked by the communists.” Actress Erica Gavin on the title character of Vixen

“Turn on the sex. Be voluptuous, evil, sinful. Look satanic. Conceive of yourself as a female animal.” Russ Meyer’s acting directions to Gavin

“The look of calculated lust with which she views every living thing is worth the price of admission, as striking in its own right as any of the more famous close-ups of Garbo or Dietrich.” Esteemed high-brow critic Kenneth Tynan on Gavin's performance in Vixen 

From the Facebook event page:

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer!

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!

Doors to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. Arrive early to grab a seat and order a drink!

From my pre-film introduction:

Russ Meyer’s Vixen is a sensitive, thoughtful and tasteful examination of the psychological condition of nymphomania. Only kidding! This is probably the most offensive and filthy film we’ve shown to date! Trigger warning!

Rated “X” upon its release, Vixen is structured like a porn film with (almost) each scene culminating in a sexual encounter. In some ways it's comparatively tame by 2018 standards - but it still feels genuinely grubby and sleazy! 

Seen today, the most disturbing aspect is the race angle. Meyer was a white middle-aged WW II veteran with conservative social attitudes, but he would have been very aware in 1968 that the civil rights / Black Power movements were hot topics and he would have wanted to muscle-in on that action to appear current and “with it.” Which he does – in an entirely tasteless and insensitive way! He is, after all, an exploitation director! The racist character in question learns the error of her ways by the end, but in the meantime a lot of unpleasant racist language is used.

Vixen gets roughed-up and slapped-around a fair bit and there are some uncomfortable “rape-y” moments. Once again, that’s common for its time. Meyer helped create a strain of sexploitation films called “roughies.” But it wasn’t just Meyer: see also Meyer's contemporary, the female director Doris Wishman (1912 – 2002) with films like Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965).

Vixen was Erica Gavin’s film debut. She’d previously go-go danced at the same topless night clubs as Tura Satana and Haji from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and they encouraged her to audition for Meyer. She was only 19 when she filmed this and admitted that seeing herself onscreen for the first time was so traumatic it led to her having a serious eating disorder for many years. She’s now 70 and is fine. Gavin made only one more film with Meyer – Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in 1970. She eventually drifted out of acting, but Vixen has ensured her b-movie cult status.

Finally: there is speculation that Divine’s performance as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble was at least partially inspired by Erica Gavin in Vixen. The shout-y, snarling style of acting can definitely been seen as a clear influence.

Three final words: Erotic. Fish. Dance.

Further musings: I love how there is no “explanation” or justification for hot-pool-of-woman-need / cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof Vixen’s wild amorality. There is zero “back story” to how she came to be this way. She’s simply bad!

Vixen was filmed in six weeks, cost $72,000 and grossed $7 million in its first year. (Leading lady Gavin was reportedly paid $350 a week). Meyer estimated it eventually earned about $26 million! (It was this astronomical financial success that led Twentieth Century Fox to commission Meyer to make his next pop culture outrage Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for them – his first big-budget, major studio film). 

/ Artist at work: director Russ Meyer and leading lady Erica Gavin filming Vixen /

Gavin’s wild, slanting devilish eyebrows in Vixen demand special mention. “Vixen-era Gavin is fleshy in the most delectable way, lust personified, sporting a pair of thick, antennae-like eyebrows more appropriate for one of those disquieting translucent masks hanging by an elastic band on the joke shop wall,” is how Jimmy McDonough describes them in Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer (2005). Their precise origins are shrouded in mystery and subject to dispute. In his 1981 book Shock Value, John Waters ( a Meyer acolyte) raised the issue directly with Meyer. “I read an article where Erica Gavin says you forced her to wear those weird eyebrows in Russ Meyer’s Vixen.” Meyer retorted, “No, it’s not true. Erica is prone to make a lot of statements about what I forced her to do. I’m very indebted to her for what she did for that film, but hell I don’t know anything about makeup!” In McDonough’s biography at least, Gavin seems to take responsibility for them. He recounts Meyer and Gavin’s tempestuous working relationship: “At least at first, Gavin saw Russ as a father figure and when Big Daddy was pleased – as when Erica came up with the famous Vixen eye makeup – everything was groovy. “As soon as he said, “I love those eyebrows,” that was it. Anything to make him happy.””

Most of the factoids in this post have been gleaned from From Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer. Highly recommended!

Further reading:

Read my reflections on Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! here

Read more about the free monthly Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film club here

For all your Lobotomy Room needs, "Like" and "Follow" the official Facebook page

Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's 31 March 2017 DJ Set List

From the Facebook events page:

“It’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps / One half hillbilly and one half punk …”

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s! Friday 31 March! 

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Punk! Twisted Tittyshakers! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other weird shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Now with vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure! Come for the special offer cocktails - stay for the putrid music and dirty movies!

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!

/ Twist like Jayne Mansfield - at Lobotomy Room! /

This installment of Lobotomy Room got off to a nerve-shredding, nail-biting start. For the first tortuous ninety minutes, I was entirely alone in the Bamboo Lounge! Even after several years now of club-promoting, that fear (“no one is coming!”) is agonising. It never gets easier. So, when the first group of three people came down the stairs, I was ready to kiss them. And then later a whole gang (mostly female) who’d been drinking in Fontaine’s main-level bar all night ventured down and pretty much instantly started raucously dancing and screaming. This is pretty much what all DJs yearn for; I kept them whipped-up in a frenzy with surf instrumentals and punk. So yeah - heartfelt gratitude to all the Lobotomy Room attendees! The night was salvaged. And when I played Bow Wow Wow’s “Aphrodisiac”, one of them rushed up to me and exclaimed, “Yass bitch!” Probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me in all my years of doing Lobotomy Room.

Dream Boy - The 5,6,7,8s
Little Darlin' - Masaaki Hirao
Town Without Pity - James Chance and The Contortions
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
Vampira - The Misfits
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Solitary Confinement - The Weirdos
We're Desperate - X
Love Me - The Phantom
People Ain't No Good - The Cramps
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Action Packed - Ronnie Dee
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Margaya - The Fender Four
Wipe-Out - The Surfaris
Bombora - The Original Surfaris
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
What Do You Think I Am? Ike and Tina Turner
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Boss - The Rumblers
Meu bem lollipop - Wanderlea
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Intoxica - The Centurions
Carbona Not Glue - The Ramonetures
Teenage Lobotomy - The Ramones
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Breathless - X
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao

Other upcoming events - for all your Lobotomy Room needs! Scrawl the dates in blood!

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film club on Wednesday 26 April: 

“I’m a thief and a shitkicker and - uh – I’d like to be famous!” Divine as Dawn Davenport

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! Cinema’s Sleaze Maestro (and Patron Saint of Lobotomy Room) John Waters turns 71 in April. To celebrate, this month’s presentation is Waters’ definitive trash epic Female Trouble (1974) on Wednesday 26 April! See freaky 300-pound hog princess Divine in his greatest role as unrepentant bad girl and criminal Dawn Davenport!

In his 1981 book Shock Value, Waters himself outlines Female Trouble as “the story of a headline-seeking criminal named Dawn Davenport (Divine). The film traces her life from teenage years as a suburban brat to her untimely death in the electric chair.” As Jack Stevenson eloquently argues in his essay on Female Trouble in issue number five of Little Joe Magazine: “Waters’ films have been called comedies but this one is full of horror … the chemistry of the cast sets this film apart and makes it Waters’ most collaborative and yes, spiritual work. It was the film they were all put on earth to make, the culmination of a collective vision. The unjustly more celebrated Pink Flamingos is lifeless in comparison and was really just a dress rehearsal for Female Trouble. For Female Trouble Waters functioned more as a psychic medium than a movie director, populating his all-American disaster story with a large movable feast of cast, crew, friends and oddball “discoveries”, tapping into the spirit of the times as well as the spirit of a specific rebel milieu in Baltimore. Then he spiked it with energy, attitude and weirdness, and zapped it to life.”

The film is FREE but seating is limited (we can seat about 30 people in the Bamboo Lounge). Contacting Fontaine’s in advance to reserve a guaranteed seat is highly recommended: email ruby@fontaines.bar or call 07718 000546. Doors to the Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm. You won’t want to miss John Water’s putrid masterpiece! Now repeat after me: “Liquid eyeliner …” 

Events page

Lobotomy Room Dance Party on Friday 28 April 2017:

“It’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps / One half hillbilly and one half punk …”

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s! Friday 28 April!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Now with grainy flickering black-and-white vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure! Come for the special offer cocktails - stay for the putrid music and “blue” movies!

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!

Events page

Further reading:

Read about all the previous antics at Lobotomy Rooms to date here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Follow me on tumblr for all your kitsch, camp, retro vintage sleaze and fifties homoerotica needs!

Follow me on twitter!

"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare!

Reflections on ... Sid and Nancy (1986)

/ Top: Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Bottom: the genuine articles. Just to confuse things, I'll be alternating photos of Oldman and Webb and the real Sid and Nancy throughout this post! / 

From the Facebook events page:

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer!

Considering February is the month of Valentine’s, we’ll be embracing a romantic theme with … Sid and Nancy (1986)! Hey! It’s a love story! (Well, director Alex Cox himself describes the film as “a horrific love story”. Its original title was going to be Love Kills). It outlines the doomed tragicomic “amour fou” between punk’s Romeo and Juliet: Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and his heroin-addicted groupie girlfriend Nancy Spungen … and let’s just say it all ends messily.

So – why not throw on a black leather jacket, stick a safety pin through your nostril and join us on 22 February for a quiet night with Sid and Nancy?

Added incentive: in honour of Valentine’s Day, Fontaine’s is being sponsored all month by the fancy French raspberry liqueur Chambord! So there will be special offer cocktails on the night – and they will be pink!

Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. Grab a cocktail and come down early! I'll be playing punk music and vintage erotica on the big screen before the main feature.

/ "I'll never look like Barbie. Barbie doesn't have bruises." Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen /

Happily, we had another full house downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s on 22 February for my presentation of Alex Cox’s confrontational 1986 biopic covering the whirlwind, drug-fuelled and ultimately homicidal 19-month love affair between Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (10 May 1957 - 2 February 1979) and downtrodden groupie Nancy Spungen (27 February 1958 - 12 October 1978). It was great to see so many new faces. And the screening was appropriately rowdy and boozy! Well, until the film’s despairing closing scenes – when everyone was so rapt and hushed you could hear a pin drop.

Sid and Nancy was a key film for me as a teenager (I taped it from cable TV onto VHS and watched it so many times I could probably recite screeds of dialogue from memory!).  Until Wednesday night, it had been a good twenty years since I last re-visited it. How great to see it’s as powerful, scabrous and disturbing as I remembered! Thirty-one years later, Sid and Nancy still packs a nasty punch. The film is like staring into a raw open wound.

/ The real Sid and Nancy (I love Sid's engineer boots) /

The early scenes set in London – covering the rise of the Sex Pistols and Sid and Nancy’s burgeoning romance – are brash, rowdy in-your-face bad taste black comedy. Once the Sex Pistols acrimoniously implode and an increasingly heroin-addicted Sid and Nancy find themselves adrift in New York (especially once they check into their squalid room at The Chelsea Hotel), the tone turns progressively, almost unbearably bleak and claustrophobic. (Bizarrely, one of the most common criticisms levelled at Sid and Nancy upon its release was that it irresponsibly glamorised heroin use. Which raises the question: what film did they watch? It depicts addiction as a nightmare!).

I love maverick director Alex Cox's weird flourishes of romantic, art-y magic realism or poetic realism or whatever you want to call it. I think that aspect confused people at the time who expected something more straightforward. For a brief period, he was a genuinely distinctive and vivid original voice in British cinema. Sadly, like leading lady Chloe Webb, in recent years Cox seems to have entirely vanished off the radar.

Not that Cox doesn’t make some jarring false notes, and Sex Pistols fans could certainly pick holes with the accuracy of certain segments. We catch a glimpse of a band meant to be X-Ray Spex belting out “Oh Bondage Up Yours” and they look wrong, wrong, WRONG. What a disservice to Poly Styrene! The fictional glam rock star Rock Head who crops up in a few scenes (who is he meant to be? Iggy Pop? Johnny Thunders?) feels terribly ersatz and unconvincing. 

To be fair, though, Sid and Nancy was never meant to be a documentary: it’s Cox’s idiosyncratic interpretation of their story, with artistic license. When it was released in ’86, Vicious had only been dead for seven years and his story was still fresh in peoples’ minds. More than thirty years later, we can watch Cox’s film more objectively and appreciate it on its own merits.

/ Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as Sid and Nancy /

On a purely superficial level, for aficionados of punk fashion, Sid and Nancy offers a bonanza. Sure, Sid and Nancy were stoned, destructive and barely-functioning hot messes, but boy did they have outlaw style. Their wardrobes encompass studded leather bondage belts and wristbands, black leather biker jackets, the unravelling mohair sweaters synonymous with Vivienne Westwood and McLaren’s SEX shop, green nail polish, tartan, laddered fishnet tights and painted-on skinny black Levis. (Special mention must go to Nancy’s sensational gold leather micro-mini skirt. In real life Nancy Spungen seemed to sport a distinctive “gun” necklace in every photo ever taken of her; it’s weird Cox didn’t get Webb to wear a replica). I love the padlocked chain around Sid’s neck (a gift from Nancy. When Nancy lovingly puts it around his neck and clicks the lock shut, Sid says, “Cool! Where’s the key?” Nancy replies, “What key?”). 

Sid’s best accessory, though, is his starved-to-perfection skeletal body straight out of an Egon Schiele painting or Giacometti sculpture. (In later scenes Oldman pretty much entirely abandons wearing shirts. To achieve Sid’s emaciated physique, Oldman reportedly undertook such a drastic diet he was diagnosed with malnutrition at one point).

/ The real Sid and Nancy /

All these years later, the performances of Oldman and Webb still astonish. Both are hilarious in perhaps my favourite scene when Nancy takes Sid home to meet her horrified suburban family. Black tragicomedy at its finest! This was one of the early roles that launched Oldman as one of the best and most versatile Brit actors of his generation. Poor Web was every bit as exemplary as Oldman, but she never seemed to catch another good break after this and seemingly disappeared into obscurity. Read any book about punk history and Nancy Spungen is perhaps the most reviled figure of the whole era. She was profoundly troubled: diagnosed with schizophrenia at 15, expelled from multiple schools.  At 17 she’d run away to New York, supporting herself via stripping and prostitution and embraced groupie-dom (she was already "affiliated" with bands like the New York Dolls, Aerosmith, The Ramones and the Voidoids by the time she met Sid). Webb portrays the damaged Spungen with humanity and compassion. For me, Webb’s two finest moments are her junkie freak-out shouting at her mother in a phone booth ("he loves me more than you do!") and then later Nancy’s rambling, croaky monologue about a dream she’d had, delivered to an unconscious Sid next to her bed. She rasps something about “we had a little dog and we loved it … but it died and we didn’t know where to bury it … so we ate it.” It sums up their toxic love and it’s like an eerie premonition about what lies in store.  

/ Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as Sid and Nancy/

Anyway, to introduce the screening I quickly Googled and compiled some “fun facts” about Sid and Nancy. Here are a few!

Daniel Day Lewis was short-listed for role of Sid before Oldman got it.

A young unknown Courtney Love unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Nancy. As consolation Cox gave her a supporting role. It’s fascinating to see Love’s almost unrecognisable original pre-plastic surgery face.

Sid and Nancy was originally intended to be filmed in black and white but the financiers vetoed that idea. I think it would have felt even harsher in grainy black and white!

Cox’s original choice for the title was Love Kills right up until the time of release - when he was advised someone else owned the legal rights to that name and would sue. Calling it Sid and Nancy was a last minute compromise, but I think it works: it’s terse and it evokes Bonnie and Clyde. When it was released on video in Mexico, the Spanish title translated as Two Lives Destroyed By Drugs. My own alternative title would be Baked Beans and Champagne: The Sid and Nancy Story.

/ Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as Sid and Nancy /

Further reading:

Read more about the Lobotomy Room film club here

Loverboy magazine ventures into the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room 

Follow me on tumblr

"Like" and "Follow" my Facebook page for all of your Lobotomy Room needs!

Cockabilly at The Glory DJ Set List 4 February 2017

As I posted on Facebook on Saturday 4 February:

I know it’s ultra-short notice, but … calling all leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages! We’re having a mini Cockabilly reunion TONIGHT at the fabulous Glory! Saturday 4 February! Mal Nicholson is DJ’ing upstairs and I will be joining him for a guest slot!   Expect all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers! Daring and virile! Chains, whips, knives and leather belts all swished around together in bone-jarring rock and roll! Way-out sex and sin for those who like it that way! Why not drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock? Tonight!

The Glory 281 Kingsland Road E2 8AS
10 – 2 (Free before 10 pm!) 

/ Classic beefcake model Cherokee (aka Everett Lee Jackson) photographed by Kris Studio circa 1955 /

I’d love to announce “Cockabilly is back!” In fact London’s only regular queer rockabilly club night (freaking out the squares since 2008!) is still on hiatus ever since we got unceremoniously turfed from our last venue (which shall remain nameless!). But for now at least, Saturday 4 February was a bit of a one-off Cockabilly reunion when Mal and I guest DJ’d at Haggerston’s epicentre of happiness and gay bohemia The Glory! 

It’s virtually impossible to not have a blast at The Glory (their generosity with the drinks tickets certainly helps) and I grab every opportunity to DJ there that I can. (In an ideal world, Cockabilly would re-launch in 2017 with The Glory as its new permanent base – hint, hint!).

/ Mal and I sweating to the oldies /

Anyway, I did a guest spot of about 90-minutes. Here’s what I was laying down: 

Rip it Up - Little Richard
Let's Have a Party - Wanda Jackson
Three Cool Cats - The 5,6,7,8s
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramonetures
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Margaya - The Fender Four
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Gostaria de Saber (River Deep Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
He's the One - Ike and Tina Turner
Year 1 - X
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Boss - The Rumblers
The Swag - Link Wray
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Ultra Twist - The Cramps
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave
Road Runner - The Fabulous Wailers
Cry-baby - The Honey Sisters
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Mills
My Way - Nina Hagen

Updated news for all your Lobotomy Room-related needs: there are two upcoming opportunities to get down and dirty later this month at Dalston sin bin Fontaine’s! Jump on them!

Wednesday 22 February is this month’s film club. Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is, of course, the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! (The January presentation of Russ Meyer's magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was triumphant!).

Considering February is the month of Valentine’s, we’ll be embracing a romantic theme with … Sid and Nancy (1986)! Hey! It’s a love story! (Well, director Alex Cox himself describes the film as “a horrific love story”. Its original title was going to be Love Kills). It outlines the doomed tragicomic “amour fou” between punk’s Romeo and Juliet: Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and his heroin-addicted groupie girlfriend Nancy Spungen … and let’s just say it all ends messily.

So – why not throw on a black leather jacket, stick a safety pin through your nostril and join us on 22 February for a quiet night with Sid and Nancy?

Added incentive: in honour of Valentine’s Day, Fontaine’s is being sponsored all month by the fancy French raspberry liqueur Chambord! So there will be special offer cocktails on the night – and they will be pink! Full details on the Facebook events page. Read more about my sin-sational monthly film club here. 

Friday 24 February 2017

“It’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps / One half hillbilly and one half punk …”

It’s back! The first Lobotomy Room of 2017!

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s! Friday 24 February!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Now with vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure! Come for the special offer cocktails - stay for the putrid music and dirty movies!

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!

Full sordid details on the Facebook events page

/ As ever, if you've read this far you get rewarded! /

Further reading:

Read about all the previous antics at Lobotomy Rooms to date here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here!

Follow me on tumblr for all your kitsch, camp, retro vintage sleaze and fifties homoerotica needs!

Follow me on twitter!

"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare!

A Year and a Bit of The Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies Club!

Now that 2016 is circling the drain, won’t you indulge me in reminiscing a bit about Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies? My free monthly film club (focusing on the cult, the kitsch and the queer!) in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s Art Deco fleshpot Fontaine’s is just over one year old. Let’s get all retrospective and wistfully re-visit the titles we’ve presented over the past year.

Let the countdown commence!

Seven Sinners (1940) – 24 November 2015

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 von Sternberg’s personal and professional relationship imploded) is pure trash - but kitschy, 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).  Event page.

Pee Wee’s Christmas Playhouse Special (1988) - 15 December 2015

In honour of the holiday season, let’s get festive and combine some Christmas cocktail capers with the most kitschy and campy of all TV specials – Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special from 1988! In which that bow-tied perverse brat Pee-Wee Herman welcomes a mind-boggling selection of special guests to his playhouse - including Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, Joan Rivers, Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oprah Winfrey and kd lang! [Note: the TV special is actually just under an hour long, so before and after I will play my most abrasive atomic-era Christmas tunes to pad things out!]. So … won’t you join me for a snowball, glass of prosecco or mulled wine and learn about the true meaning of Christmas with Pee-Wee Herman? See you there!

Kitten with a Whip (1964) - 27 January 2016

The featured presentation this month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip – starring quintessential atomic-era sex kitten-gone-berserk Ann-Margret. This sleazy little black and white B-movie urgently poses the question: why do the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws? Fresh from cavorting with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, red-headed vixen Ann-Margret plays a vicious teenage sociopath escaped from her high-security juvenile detention centre – who then takes hostage and torments straight-laced local politician John Forsythe in his palatial suburban dream house. (Yes – a cardigan-wearing and still dark-haired John Forsythe as in Dynasty’s silver fox Blake Carrington!). From there, Ann-Margret’s gang of thug friends turn up – and things just get wilder!

Morocco (1931) - 24 February 2016.

Considering Valentine’s Day falls this month, February’s selection is a love story. But bear in mind this is, after all, Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies – so the love story is a twisted, high camp tale of amour fou. In Morocco (1930) – directed by visionary maestro of kinky exotica Josef  von Sternberg – dissolute nightclub chanteuse and woman of mystery Amy Jolly (German screen diva Marlene Dietrich in her sensational Hollywood debut) finds herself adrift in North Africa and caught in a love triangle, torn between a handsome amoral Foreign Légionnaire (lanky young Gary Cooper at the height of his beauty) and a wealthy playboy (Adolphe Menjou. Perversely, Menjou is meant to represent von Sternberg himself – who in his complex off-screen relationship with the bisexual Dietrich stoically stood by and watched her seduce legions of men and women both). Depending on your sensibility, Morocco culminates in an ending which you’ll either find irresistibly romantic or totally absurd. Either way, the film is a blast!

Desperate Living (1977) - 23 March 2016

The featured presentation this month will be John Water’s ultra-twisted punk-y black comedy Desperate Living (1977). It’s one of his relatively lesser known gems (probably because his usual muse and leading lady - three hundred pound drag queen Divine - isn’t in it). The genuinely nasty Desperate Living has something to offend everyone! See the film that Variety lambasted as “amateur night on the psycho ward” and that Waters himself has called “the worst of all my films. And it’s the grimmest!”

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968) - 27 April 2016

Rated “X” upon its release in 1968, the ultra-trashy faux documentary chronicles the kinky globe-trotting misadventures of Hollywood sex kitten-gone-berserk Jayne Mansfield.  Watch agog as kitsch icon Mansfield - the punk Marilyn Monroe, revered by John Waters and Divine (and “the face” of Lobotomy Room) - visits the hedonistic “sin spots” of the world, encompassing topless go-go clubs, gay bars, drag queen beauty contests and nudist colonies, usually accompanied by her pet Chihuahua! The low-budget Wild, Wild World was in production 1964 - 1968. Bear in mind Mansfield died in 1967. Part of the fun is spotting how the producers cobbled things together after Mansfield’s death in order to complete the film. Watch for the (many) shots of a body double filmed from behind wearing Mansfield’s dishevelled blonde wig. And the sound-alike who delivered the voice-over narration (nailing Jayne’s breathless babydoll coo) deserved an Oscar!

Valley of The Dolls (1967) – 25 May 2016

“You have to climb Mount Everest … to get to the Valley of The Dolls.” Before Mommie Dearest … before Showgirls … the original “What the hell were they thinking?” Bad Movie We Love was Valley of the Dolls. A perennial favourite of drag queens and a cult classic for connoisseurs of kitsch, the unintentionally hilarious and wildly entertaining 1967 film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s lurid 1966 bestseller took the already trashy source material – and went even tawdrier with it! (At the film’s premiere, an outraged Susann reportedly called the film “a piece of shit!”). A cautionary tale about the perils of show business, it follows the travails of three ambitious casualties of the glamour jungle: friends Anne, Neely and Jennifer. (The “dolls” of the title refer to the fistfuls of uppers and downers the characters pop like Tic Tacs throughout – usually washed down with booze). Valley of The Dolls packs everything discriminating thrill-seekers demand in its lunatic two hours: hammy performances, pill-popping, bouffant wigs, cat-fights, slurring drunken scenes, rehab, drug-fuelled meltdowns and crap-tastic musical numbers.

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966) – 27 July 2016

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favourite mantle still remains: sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy – it creates and moulds as well! Let’s examine closely, then, this dangerously evil creation, this new breed, encased and contained within the supple skin of woman… the softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female. The surface shiny and silken. The body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution – handles with care and don’t drop your guard! This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level! Any time! Anywhere! And with anybody! Who are they? One might be your secretary! Your doctor’s receptionist! Or a dancer in a go-go club!” Yes! The Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film selection this month in the Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s is ultimate sexploitation B-movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966). Perhaps cleavage-fixated director Russ Meyer’s defining masterpiece, it follows a trio of vicious thrill-hungry go-go dancers going on a homicidal rampage in the desert. As cinema’s sleaze maestro John Waters argues, “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is beyond a doubt the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future!”

[Pussycat! was our biggest hit to date - the first time we had to post a warning on Facebook that if you hadn't already reserved a seat in advance, don't turn up on the night!]

La Dolce Vita (1960) – 28 August 2016

Attention, jaded Continental sophisticates! Embrace the spirit of Eurotrash hedonism (and pretend we’re still in the EU) when Lobotomy Room presents a FREE special decadent Bank Holiday Sunday screening of Federico Fellini’s carnival-esque and hallucinatory epic masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960)! You know that iconic image of voluptuous Swedish sex bomb Anita Ekberg frolicking in Rome’s Trevi Fountain? That’s from La Dolce Vita – one of the most stylish movies ever made! It captures the acme of Italian glamour: the cars, the clothes, the nightlife (no one films debauched nightclub, party and orgy scenes like Fellini in his 1960s pomp) and most of all – the sunglasses! While you watch the film, take the edge off your hangover with negronis or glasses of Prosecco! Needless to say, it’s illegal to smoke in the Bamboo Lounge, but feel free to keep your shades on! 

Blonde Venus (1932) – 28 September 2016

Of the seven sublime films director Josef von Sternberg and leading lady / muse Marlene Dietrich made together, surely the wildest and weirdest is Blonde Venus (1932). It stars sultry German glamour puss Dietrich as a hausfrau and mother forced to resume her career as a nightclub chanteuse due to circumstances too complicated to go into here – and then finders herself entangled in a romantic triangle between her sick scientist husband and a suave millionaire (played by a very young Cary Grant). But none of that is important! It’s mainly an excuse to luxuriate in Dietrich’s shimmering close-ups, multiple extravagant costume changes and sensational musical numbers. Most notorious of the latter is the riotously kitsch and freaky “Hot Voodoo” sequence. If you’ve never seen it before I won’t spoil it for you, but 1) “Hot Voodoo” is the campiest thing you’ve ever seen, 2) watching it might turn you gay and 3) over eight decades later, the likes of Grace Jones, Madonna and Kate Moss are still referencing it in videos, concerts and photo shoots. 

[This was the third Dietrich film I’ve screened. The previous two – Seven Sinners and Morocco – both bombed big-time and just didn’t lure any punters in – which was really demoralising, as Dietrich is possibly my all-time favourite actresses and I'd hoped to make her films Lobotomy Room staples. In retrospect, the main reason the two earlier two screenings belly-flopped was because I hadn’t yet mastered the dark art of promoting them properly online – which is, to shell-out loads of money to Facebook every month to reach more people! Happily, Blonde Venus was a maximum-capacity, red-hot triumph! It restored my faith in the allure of Marlene Dietrich!]

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) – 28 October 2016

Embracing the spirit of Halloween, the October presentation is … Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)! A gleefully low-brow, raunchy broad comedy starring buxom, beehive-haired horror movie hostess Elvira, the beloved cult figure for generations of punks, psychobillies, Goths and misfits of all description. In the film, Elvira inherits a haunted house en route to making her Las Vegas debut – but really, it’s all mainly an excuse for endless boob jokes. If you’re a fan of trashy eighties cinema or the humour of Pee-Wee Herman and John Waters, this is the Halloween movie of your (wet) dreams! 

Sextette (1978) – 23 November 2016

This month we’re really scraping the barrel with perhaps the WORST film we’ve screened to date – Mae West’s infamous final film Sextette (1978)! Think of it as an unintended camp classick – or a freaky Diane Arbus photograph come to life! Bewigged, carefully shot in ultra-soft-focus, virtually immobile and never making eye contact with any of her co-stars, West frequently looks like she has been mummified or taxidermied. Just how nuts was West? When West and [Timothy]Dalton duet on the Captain and Tennille soft rock hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” (did I mention Sextette is a musical?), West insisted the original lyric “young and beautiful / someday your looks will be gone” be changed to “young and beautiful / your looks will never be gone!” Gasp in astonishment at the mind-boggling Sextette – one of the most wildly misjudged films ever made! See the movie that made The New York Times declare, “Granny should have her mouth washed out with soap, along with her teeth!"

Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special (1988) – 2 December 2016

Christen Christmas party season 2016 on a sweaty, desperate note – at Lobotomy Room! When we transform the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s into Santa’s grotto! Friday 2 December! For the final festive and boozy Lobotomy Room of 2016, we’re combining the film club and the dance party! COME for the FREE screening of the most kitschy and campy of all seasonal TV specials – Pee-Wee Herman’s 1988 Playhouse Christmas Special! Watch agog as bow-tied perverse brat Pee-Wee welcomes a mind-boggling cavalcade of super star special guests to his playhouse - including queer favourites Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, Joan Rivers, Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oprah Winfrey and kd lang!

And so we conclude by coming full circle with Pee-Wee Herman. (His Christmas special is an annual festive tradition! Sadly, I’ve deduced from bitter experience that both Pee-Wee and Elvira – for me, beloved cult idols – just aren’t that well-known or appreciated in London judging by the tepid responses to the Halloween and Christmas screenings. And I blew a lot of money promoting these! For the most part, Brits – especially the millennials – just don’t know who they are!).

So - who knows what 2017 holds for Lobotomy Room Goes the Movies? The first film club of the New Year will be Wednesday 25 January and the title is yet to be determined. (An announcement will follow soon!). Some potential clues for upcoming selections: John Waters – the Peoples’ Pervert, revered Filth Elder and a holy religious figure for Lobotomy Room – celebrates his birthday in April. And June 2017 represents the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Lobotomy Room’s patron saint, definitive doomed Hollywood Babylon starlet Jayne Mansfield (19 April 1933 - 29 June 1967). You’d better believe we’re going to commemorate that! Suffice to say, I’ll be endeavouring to excavate more cinematic curios and oddities to titillate and corrupt! Follow me on Facebook here and/or here to keep informed.

Read more about Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies in Loverboy magazine

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