Outrageous! (1977) at The Nickel Cinema on 7 October 2025

KLAXON! Boy, am I excited to make my debut at London’s red-hot new grindhouse cinema, The Nickel [117-119 Clerkenwell Road EC1R 5BY]! I’m squealing like a hungry, grasping starlet! Join me on Tuesday 7 October when I introduce 1977 Canadian cult classic Outrageous! 

Set in snowy Toronto, Outrageous! is a wistful slice-of-life character study about the friendship between Liza Connors (Hollis McLaren), a schizophrenic woman fresh out of a mental institution and Robin Turner (Craig Russell), a gay hairdresser with showbiz aspirations. Seen today, Outrageous! is a gritty and invaluable social document of LGBTQ life in the seventies, capturing the period of gay liberation between the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the advent of AIDS. The gay bars are frumpy, cluttered and populated mostly by leather daddies and mustached clones – and look like a blast! And rest assured, the drag scene depicted here is rough and ready, done on a tight budget and bears little resemblance to RuPaul’s Drag Race. Outrageous! also preserves the late Craig Russell’s nightclub act: in a tsunami of old-school diva worship, he impersonates the likes of Mae West, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. (Pictured above: Russell as Tallulah Bankhead). And its messages about embracing nonconformity, celebrating small victories and taking a compassionate tone towards societal outsiders feel more relevant than ever. Buy your ticket here NOW!

Reflections on ... The Substance (2024)

 

/ Demi Moore in The Substance (2024) /

Hagsploitation truly is the horror sub-genre that keeps on giving. Sparked by the unexpected success of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in the 1960s and 70s, maturing female stars of golden age Hollywood extended their careers by swallowing their pride, embracing their inner scream queen and plunging into exploitation shockers: think of Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Olivia de Havilland, Agnes Moorehead and Shelley Winters starring in the likes of Strait-Jacket, Hush … Hush … Sweet Charlotte, Berserk, Lady in a Cage, Die! Die! My Darling, Dear Dead Delilah and especially the “question movies” Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, What’s the Matter with Helen? and What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? 

Roaring back from career doldrums (I last remember her playing Miley Cyrus’ mother in 2012), 61-year-old Demi Moore finds herself in a similar position in director Coralie Fargeat’s grisly and stylish satire The Substance. In a gutsy, exposed (in every sense) performance, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a middle-aged television celebrity abruptly fired by ageist and sexist network executive (Dennis Quaid, really chomping the scenery). Despondent, Elisabeth takes desperate measures to rejuvenate her “best self” with a mysterious unregulated black market scientific procedure called The Substance … and things swiftly unravel. 

Characterized by stunning art direction and a visceral sound design that emphasizes every repulsive squelching noise, The Substance ratchets up maximum dread and offers a goldmine of knowing movie references: Basket Case. Carrie. Death Becomes Her. The Elephant Man. The Shining. Every single David Cronenberg “body horror” flick but particularly The Fly. Thematically, it reminded me of two specific b-movies from the late 1950s: The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman, in which the anti-heroine experiments with science (or voodoo) to restore youth and beauty with monstrous consequences (and – it must be noted - these films make their point with a fraction of The Substance’s budget and two hour-and 40-minute running time). 

The Substance is bound to be divisive. There was multiple “walk outs” when I saw it yesterday. Does it critique society's youth fixation or wind up reaffirming it? And has Fargeat lost control of the material by the ultra-gory splatter fest finale? However you cut it, it’s a wild ride and destined for cult status.

Reflections on ... Thundercrack! (1975) and The Scala Cinema

/ George Kuchar and Marion Eaton in Thundercrack! (1975) /

To commemorate the release of the excellent new documentary Scala!!! Or the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits (2024), the British Film Institute is currently holding Scala: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Cinema, a season of films associated with London’s notorious, much-missed repertory cinema. 

Reader, I was one of the mixed-up generation of misfits warped by the Scala at an impressionable age. (I moved to London just in time to experience its final year or so; I remember feeling bereft when it closed). The first double bill I ever saw there was within a month or two of arriving: Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) / The Wild Angels (1966) (in other words, Marianne Faithfull and Nancy Sinatra as black leather-clad biker mamas). This was when Kings Cross was still a genuinely dangerous grungy red-light district / junkie central (just walking from the tube station to the cinema felt like risking your life).

From there, I plunged into essential underground classicks by the likes of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Richard Kern and Bruce LaBruce. But for me, the film synonymous with the Scala will always be Thundercrack! (1975). It was a blast to revisit it on Sunday afternoon with friends. In this triple X sensual and depraved oddity written by George Kuchar and directed by Curt McDowell, a motley crew of freaky outsiders seek shelter at an isolated old dark house one rain-lashed night. The house in question is called Prairie Blossom and its chatelaine is the eccentric, drunk, reclusive and deeply horny Mrs. Gert Hammond, a Blanche DuBois-type wearing Anna Magnani’s black slip. 

/ Marion Eaton as Gert Hammond /

If you’ve never experienced Thundercrack!, anticipate hardcore sex scenes interspersed with verbose faux Tennessee Williams dialogue (“Take me away from all this! I’ve got money, a car and a body – and they’re all yours!”). You get a measure of Thundercrack! immediately when Gert vomits into a toilet, her wig falls into the bowl, and she simply slaps it back onto her head to answer the front door. (“Who’s there that speaks to me in the voice of a woman? It’s been years since those doors felt the touch of a human knuckle!”). As Gert, the remarkable Marion Eaton’s gutsy and committed performance deserves to be proclaimed alongside Divine’s in Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble in the gutter movie pantheon.

/ Ken Scudder's deeply memorable jockstrapped crotch in Thundercrack! Read his story here /

Scala!!! is in cinemas now and will be available for streaming soon. Thundercrack! is apparently available on Blu-ray, but really, you wanted to watch it in a cinema full of rowdy drunk people - ideally at midnight! 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge for yourself!

Reflections on ... Summer Storm (1944)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on ... Multiple Maniacs (1970)

[I reviewed Criterion's new Blu-ray release of John Waters Multiple Maniacs for gay arts and culture website HISKIND in March 2017. Read it here.  Disappointingly, they edited the hell out of it, deleting all my efforts to put the film into context – so I’m posting it here in its uncut / uncensored original version!]

It’s looking increasingly unlikely cinema’s high potentate of trash John Waters will ever make another movie following 2004’s commercial flop A Dirty Shame. (In recent years, the 70-year old “peoples’ pervert” has successfully diversified, spreading his joyous message of filth via books and spoken word tours instead of films). 

But happily for Waters’ legions of fanatics ravenous for a lurid sensationalism fix, they get to rediscover one of his freshly-exhumed obscure classicks (sic). For decades, Multiple Maniacs (1970) - which Waters himself calls his “celluloid atrocity” - has been virtually impossible to see.  A grainy, scuzzy VHS was issued in the eighties, then it occasionally surfaced as a poor-quality pixelated bootleg (Waters’ legal team promptly deletes it every time it crops up on YouTube) - but until now it’s never officially been available on DVD or Blu-ray. And now Criterion has handled Multiple Maniacs like it’s a prestigious art movie, giving it a loving deluxe digital remaster treatment. Watching this crystalline deep velvety black-and-white revival of Multiple Maniacs is like experiencing a whole new film.

/ Divine as Lady Divine in Multiple Maniacs / 

Forty-seven years later, the restored, reviled and revolting Multiple Maniacs hasn’t lost its capacity to startle. It still feels insanely raw, nasty, punk and queer. And it’s essential to understanding Waters’ subsequent films (Multiple Maniacs suggests a preliminary sketch for his next film, 1972’s more famous Pink Flamingos). In her first starring role, Waters’ 300-pound hog princess drag queen leading lady and muse Divine portrays Lady Divine, the cruel and amoral proprietoress of traveling freak show “The Cavalcade of Perversions” of assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps. (The sensational revue incorporates vomit eaters, bicycle seat lickers, a junkie writhing in withdrawal and “two queers actually kissing on the lips like lovers”). When we first encounter Lady Divine, she’s lounging stark naked on a bed and barking orders at her minions – think Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. Upon learning her carnival barker boyfriend and criminal accomplice Mr David is leaving her for another woman, a homicidal Lady Divine embarks on a berserk rampage.  The film concludes with a cannibalistic blood orgy (Multiple Maniacs – made in ’69 – was Waters’ response to the Charles Manson Family murders in same way Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was for Russ Meyer). Oh and – spoiler alert – a giant lobster is involved.

/ David Lochary as Mr David in Multiple Maniacs /  

Sure, in technical terms neophyte Waters’ filmmaking is frankly amateurish (which makes Multiple Maniacs feel like a lunatic home movie) and the actors sometimes stumble over the verbose script. But there is much here to make a Waters devotee swoon in frenzied ecstasy. The cast features Waters’ familiar stable of regular actors at their most heartbreakingly youthful and fresh-faced, like David Lochary and Mink Stole (Raymond and Connie Marble, the villains of Pink Flamingos), Mary Vivian Pearce, Cookie Mueller as Divine’s hard-boiled lisping (frequently topless) juvenile delinquent daughter and – in her film debut - the beloved snaggle-toothed outsider actress and punk granny Edith Massey.  The vicious dialogue is predictably quotable (“I love you so fucking much that I could shit!” “And all at once she inserted her rosary into one of my most private parts …”) while the soundtrack encompasses ominous rumbling surf instrumentals and twangy rockabilly. Thematically, Multiple Maniacs sees Waters lashing out at his Catholic upbringing:  the “rosary job” Divine receives from perverted religious whore Mink Stole and the blasphemous re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross still feel taboo and sacrilegious. 

/ Edith Massey as The Virgin Mary in Multiple Maniacs / 

Best of all, Multiple Maniacs captures iconic freak diva Divine-in-embryo, still a fleshy young starlet or ingénue on the ascent.  Mincing around like Jayne Mansfield in a skin-tight leopard print pencil skirt and brunette wig, snarling her lines and sometimes actually foaming at the mouth in excitement, this represents early Divine at the height of her monstrous beauty.

The promotional tagline for Multiple Maniacs screams, “Better than amyl nitrate! Better than Carbona! Better than heroin!” What other film could live up to those claims? It’s like an intravenous jolt of bad taste. For long-term Waters aficionados, the Blu-ray release of Multiple Maniacs is the equivalent of Christmas day. For newcomers to Waters’ oeuvre, it offers an excellent introduction. Get corrupted!

MULTIPLE MANIACS - available to buy on Blu-ray from 20th March 2017 from the Criterion Collection 

Further reading: Read my epic 2010 interview with John Waters here

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.

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Love is Strange: Reflections on ... The Honeymoon Killers (1969)

/ Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoler as Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck in The Honeymoon Killers (1969) /

I was buggin’ out with excitement to re-visit The Honeymoon Killers (on Thursday 12 February 2015 to be precise) when The Barbican screened it as part of their My Twisted Valentine mini-season. It’s been well over twenty years since I've watched this vicious 1969 black comedy cult movie. I know because I last saw it at London’s much-missed grindhouse repertory cinema The Scala in then-derelict Kings Cross which was defunct by 1993. It absolutely blew me away then. Happily, I can report The Honeymoon Killers is un-mellowed by time. It still packs a nasty jolt!

A true tale of amour fou, The Honeymoon Killers is based on the lurid true story of serial killer couple Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez. Dubbed “the Lonely Hearts killers” by the tabloids (they lured their female victims to their deaths using personal ads), their homicidal rampage between 1947 and 1949 and subsequent trial gripped the public’s imagination. Both were ultimately executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in 1951, still declaring their devotion to each other.

Director Leonard Kastle’s film (the only one he ever made) recreates their story in grainy, atmospheric black and white. The Honeymoon Killers looks and feels harsh, stark and immediate - like a gritty documentary or a Diane Arbus photograph come to life. The murder scenes, captured by tense and jittery handheld camera in long real-time takes, suggest a gruesome and nightmarish home movie. They force you to contemplate how long it takes and how unpleasant it is to actually kill someone. Forty-five years later, these sequences still disturb.

The Honeymoon Killers explores the banality of everyday suburban evil:  this is a realm of stifled and compromised lives, disappointments, Catholic kitsch, comfort-eating and lace doilies.  Perhaps because of budgetary constraints (the film was made on $150,000), The Honeymoon Killers makes no attempt to recreate the 1940s in costumes or decor – it’s firmly set in the late sixties (thus presumably unintentionally, it evokes the spectre of the Charles Manson murders). Like the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, it is inspired by the story of the real-life murder spree couple rather than slavishly faithful to the facts. The details are pared-down, simplified to just the austere essentials. For example, the actual killers reportedly murdered twenty women; in the film, they are only shown killing a handful. It also omits the fact that Martha had children by a previous relationship, which she abandoned to be with Ray.

Sold to contemporary audiences as a straight exploitation horror movie (see the misleading trailer), The Honeymoon Killers is stranger and more original than that.  The tone is unsettling: it frequently feels like broad black comedy with deliberately overripe acting, predicting the cinema of John Waters. There are arty avant garde moments (the climactic underwater bit where Martha tries to drown herself in a jealous rage; soaring classical music on the soundtrack). The film bristles with paranoia and thwarted lust.

The casting of the murderous lovers is inspired. Tony Lo Bianco’s gigolo Ray is a swarthy and manipulative charmer with a thick Spanish accent, a toupee and Latin rhythm in his hips. (As an added bonus, the fleeting glimpse of Lo Bianco’s pert naked cafe con leche butt certainly makes an impression).With her freckles, mane of teased hair, 1960s eyeliner and steely demeanour Shirley Stoler is riveting as the imperious and petulant Martha. Stoler (1929-1999) went on to have a distinguished career as a character actress, specializing in sinister villainesses in both film (Klute, Desperately Seeking Susan) and TV (soap operas The Edge of Night and One Life to Live, Charlie’s Angels, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse). Her towering performance here anticipates Divine. Is there any higher compliment?