Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's DJ Set List 29 January 2016

/ Lobotomy Room - it leaves a taste of evil in your mouth! Seriously - who is this woman? What film is this from? Anyone who knows, get in touch! /

From the Facebook events page for the 29 January 2016 Lobotomy Room:

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - at LOBOTOMY ROOM!

Yes! Leave all sense of shame and propriety at the door - when LOBOTOMY ROOM returns to the subterranean Bamboo Lounge of Art Deco vice palace Fontaine's! Friday 29 January!

LOBOTOMY ROOM! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! 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 Cretin Hops! 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 wall for your adult viewing pleasure!

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!

/ Ai chihuahua! Flyer (of Jayne Mansfield and canine companion) by Ego Rodriguez Illustration /

Yikes! I’m catastrophically behind with my “art projects”. I’m only getting around to posting about the January 2016 Lobotomy Room now. This one was actually pretty successful! Not thanks to any of my friends turning up or any promotion on my part – a girl opted to have her birthday party downstairs on a night that coincided with Lobotomy Room and her friends packed The Bamboo Lounge out! I asked beforehand, Will she be cool with the music I play? What if she requests stuff I don’t have? I’m pretty “niche” after all! Fontaine’s ultra glam boss lady Ruby assured me she already told the girl what to expect from Lobotomy Room – but perhaps I shouldn’t play any of my vintage fifties and sixties homo porn on the big screen this time! In fact, I needn’t have worried. As the night wore on and they consumed more and more cocktails, the crowd really loosened-up and they began to thrash, flail and contort themselves to some of my more hardcore and outré selections (they seemed to particularly love Edith Massey and The Germs!). 

As you may have gathered from my posts, endeavouring to do your own regular club night requires advanced masochism. I’m currently embroiled in an epic ongoing battle with faceless corporate behemoths Facebook. If you want your event to reach a wider audience (as in outside of your own circle of friends), it’s pretty much compulsory to pay capricious internet overlords Facebook to “boost” it (something I can ill afford to do!). Before your proposed ad goes “live” online, you submit it to Facebook for their approval. For my March Lobotomy Room (Friday 25 March! Downstairs at Fontaine’s!) I’ve so far submitted about six potential ad campaigns now - and each one has been rejected for the following official reason: “Your ad wasn't approved because it doesn't follow Facebook's Advertising Guidelines for language that is profane, vulgar, threatening or generates high negative feedback. Ads can't use language that insults, harasses or demeans people, or addresses their age, gender, name, race, physical condition or sexual preference.”

Now pretty much everything connected to my club nights like Lobotomy Room and Cockabilly is vulgar, “blue”, adult and overtly sexual by nature. That’s just how my mind and guiding aesthetic works – but I’m no moron! I ensure the ads are relatively tame while also giving a titillating flavour of what to expect.  In February I tried to use this striking portrait of a (clothed) bouffant-haired 1960s stripper. Facebook vetoed this image as being too “sexually explicit”. Bear in mind I cropped the picture so tight in landscape rather than portrait format it was essentially an extreme close-up of her beautiful face (not even a glimpse of her cleavage). It was essentially an examination of her thick liquid eyeliner and false lashes. But apparently her lolling tongue alone was so lewd it violated Facebook guidelines! So I withdrew that photo, substituted it with a brutally-cropped close-up of Divine’s acid-scarred screaming face as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble – and that did get approved.

/ Unsafe for Facebook! Apparently her name was Aminta. I'd love to know more about her! Hopefully this image will wind up being a Lobotomy Room flyer at some point /

My initial attempt for the March club was this photo with the strap line:

“Lobotomy Room! Come for the cocktails, stay for the putrid music and dirty movies!”

That was instantly rejected. I suspected Facebook didn’t appreciate me flagging up that I show raunchy films in the ad. I re-submitted it again with the wording changed to: “Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll at Lobotomy Room!” Once again it was vetoed.

Next I tried again with this shot of a hillbilly offering beer to a chicken with the same wording. It was declined for language violations, too. (I thought maybe Facebook would reject the photo it for “animal cruelty”!). It dawned on me including the word “sleaze” in my blurb is potentially problematic for Facebook. So I kept the shot of the hillbilly and beer-drinking chicken, but changed the wording to just “Incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room! Downstairs at Fontaine’s! Free!” Unbelievably, that got refused for language violations. This time I’ve officially appealed their decision and asked Facebook to report back to me about what precisely is offensive about the wording “Incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room! Downstairs at Fontaine’s! Free!” Whose feelings could that possibly hurt?! I’ve had no response and I suspect won’t be getting one any time soon. Facebook is quick to reject, but not to actually respond! I also don’t know whether these decisions are made by an actual human individual or algorithm-based software.

/ Unsafe for Facebook! Beer-drinking chicken. Surely to reject this shows discrimination against hillbillies? /

Since then, I've experimented with a few more combinations of words and images and each one has been refused. Now what I’m increasingly thinking is the very fact my club night is called “Lobotomy Room” is the issue for Facebook. Does the word “lobotomy” breach their taste guidelines? (If so, this is a new development as previous ads for Lobotomy Room have been approved and I’ve stayed entirely consistent in my wording). In which case, any ad I possibly submit for Lobotomy Room will be refused – and a forum for reaching a new audience for my club will be closed to me.  It's scary how powerful Facebook is in 2016. For me to even attempt to promote Lobotomy Room there is no other equivalent to Facebook!  

Anyway - this is what I played at the January 2016 Lobotomy Room:

Night Scene - The Rumblers
Dangerous Lips - The Drivers
Beatnik - The Champs
Beat Generation - Mamie Van Doren
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Taboo - The Shangaans
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
Bohemian - The Twilights
Little Queenie - Bill Black's Combo
Sheba - Johnny and The Hurricanes
Point of No Return - Gene McDaniels
Jungle Drums - Earl Bostic
Slow Walk - Sil Austin
Mambo Baby - Ruth Brown
She Wants to Mambo - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Babalu - Yma Sumac
Misirlou - Bob Kames
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Mau Mau - The Wailers
Bossa Nova - Elvis Presley
Dona Wana - Wanda Jackson
I Learn a Merengue Mama - Robert Mitchum
Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
Wiped Out - The Escorts
Bombora - The Original Surfaris
Dance with Me Henry - Ann-Margret
Black Tarantula - Jody Reynolds
The Coo - Wayne Cochran
Mama's Place - Bing Day
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Mills
Yummy Yummy Yummy - Rita Chao
I Wish I Were a Princess - Little Peggy March
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Meu Bem Lollipop - Wandrelea
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Lee Hazlewood
How Does That Grab You Darlin'? Nancy Sinatra
Wailin' - The Wailers
Let's Go - Billy Eldridge
Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
He's The One - Ike and Tina Turner
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
I Live the Life I Love - Esquerita
Drummin' Up a Storm - Sandy Nelson
Booze Party - Three Aces and a Joker
Here Comes The Bug - The Rumblers
Heartbreak Hotel - Buddy Love
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki Hirao
Love Me - The Phantom
Raging Sea - Gene Maltais
Wiped Out - The Escorts
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Batman - Link Wray
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Little Girl - John and Jackie
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Breathless - X
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
Jukebox Baby - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Howling at The Moon - The Ramones
Science Fiction - Divinyls
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
Your Phone's Off The Hook - The Ramonetures
Year One - X
Whistle Bait - The Collins Kids
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Beat Girl - ZZ und der Maskers
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Gostaria de saber (River Deep Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Boss - The Rumblers
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Ah Poor Little Baby - Billy "Crash" Craddock
Lover Boy - Gene Wyatt
Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave
Deuces Wild - Link Wray
Bottle to The Baby - Charlie Feathers
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Krushchev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Twist Talk - Jack Hammer
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Pass The Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Forming - The Germs
Margaya - The Fender Four
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Intoxica - The Centurions
Twistin' The Night Away - Divine
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
Can't Stop Thinkin' About It - The Dirtbombs
Johnny Are You Queer? Josie Cotton
Cry-baby - The Honey Sisters
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
Blitzkreig Bop - The Ramonetures
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Action Packed - Ronnie Dee
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Can Your Pussy Do The Dog? The Cramps
My Way - Nina Hagen

Further reading:

Dates for your social calendar!

Time to start contemplating your Spring / Summer 2016 wardrobe?

In the meantime ... drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – at COCKABILLY!

COCKABILLY is triumphantly returning to a new venue on Wednesday 9 March 2016: the louche surroundings of The Bloc Bar in Camden! And every second Wednesday night of the month henceforth!

Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Nicholson and I (Graham Russell) spinning 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!

The Bloc Bar: 18 Kentish Town Road London NW1
8-midnight
FREE

The featured presentation of the next Lobotomy Room Goes to The Movies film club downstairs at Fontaine's is Wednesday 23 March. 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 events page.

/ Pictured: the fabulous Liz Renay (1926 - 2007) as Muffy St Jacques in Desperate Living /

The next Lobotomy Room club night in The Bamboo Lounge is Friday 25 March. Events page.

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

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

Reflections on ... Kitten with a Whip (1964)

From the Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movie's Facebook events page for my 27 January 2016 screening of Kitten with a Whip:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s FREE weekly film club? As winter draws in, how better to break the monotony on a Wednesday night than watch a FREE film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

The featured presentation this month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip (1964) – 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!

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to catch this should-be cult classick and genuine curiosity: Kitten with a Whip is not available on DVD in this country and never crops up on TV. It’s got it all: a genuinely feral wild child performance from Ann-Margret at the height of her bad girl beauty, dramatic shadowy film noir photography, a finger-snapping Henry Mancini-style cool jazz score and cringe-worthy faux beatnik hepcat dialogue galore. (Samples: “Ooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!” “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?” “Now cool it, you creep, and co-exist!” “Hands off, buster! Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”).

Perhaps the highest compliment of all? Kitten with a Whip is a sentimental favourite of John Waters’. (In 2011 he introduced a screening of it at Anthology Film Archives in New York). He’s described it as “almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits” and reminisced, “Divine and I saw this movie together, definitely. Several times, actually. And he loved it, too. It was very much a big influence on us. And in 1964, I was a senior in high school, so on LSD, so angry, so insane, and so it came at one of the most insane periods of my life as far as being a disturbed teenager. I mean, we wanted to be Ann-Margret! Divine was my Kitten with a Whip, in a weird way.”

As usual: arrive circa 8 pm to order your drinks and grab the best seats. The film starts at 8:30 pm prompt!

/ John Forsythe and Ann-Margret in Kitten with a Whip (1964). Virtually all photos via  /

Happily, this was my most successful Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film night so far (well, it was only the third to date!). The basement Bamboo Lounge was full and the hip audience totally got the trashy magic of Kitten with a Whip. They were also drinking Fontaine’s potent cocktails – which probably contributed to their enjoyment. As they arrived and filed downstairs, I was already blasting Ann-Margret’s irresistible cocktail lounge 1960s tunes and had my grainy black and white vintage homo porn projected on the big screen just to add to the sleazy Lobotomy Room ambiance.

/ "She reached for evil with both hands ..." Believe it or not, Kitten with a Whip is a literary adaptation! It began life as a 1959 pulp novel by Wade Miller /

Kitten with a Whip is crying out to be discovered and embraced by a new generation. In an ideal world, it would be cherished as a cult film with rapt audiences repeating its endlessly quotable dialogue. Sure it is kitsch as hell (mainly due to its sensational tone and bludgeoning lack of subtlety), but it’s also a wildly entertaining, tightly-constructed, suspenseful little B-movie. It also anticipates both the “yuppie-in-peril” genre of the eighties (think After Hours, Something Wild [the Jonathon Demme film, not the 1961 Carroll Baker film!], even Desperately Seeking Susan) and the “home invasion” horror genre.

Even its occasional incompetence is fun. As Slant magazine points out (in a bit I have to admit I’ve missed despite repeated viewings!): “Toward the end, there's a lot of driving around in front of rear projection, and at one point, as Jody is at the wheel, there's no dashboard in front of her, as if somebody just forgot to put it there, and this signals the film's almost avant-garde ineptitude.”

/ "Luscious - and only seventeen ... she's all out for kicks ... and every inch of her spells excitement!" Original ad campaign for Kitten with a Whip in 1964. Seen today, that lecherous barely-legal / jail-bait angle looks pretty sordid! /

Mainly, though, I treasure Kitten with a Whip as an ideal vehicle for Ann-Margret, who I revere as a berserk mid-century sex kitten second only to Jayne Mansfield. After several musicals in a row [State Fair (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964)] which emphasised her considerable singing and dancing talents, Kitten with a Whip represented an opportunity to showcase the red-hot young Swedish-American starlet as a “serious” dramatic actress. And boy did she embrace it over-zealously! In fact you could say Ann-Margret sinks her claws into the role. The film is like a mouse she subjects to a full feline attack! 

Ann-Margret’s frenzied full-throttle performance as Jody is one long continuous mood-swing, temper tantrum or “glamour fit”. She is so genuinely feral using female animal comparisons feel obligatory: she evokes not just “kitten”, but “tigress”, “minx”, “vixen” or “lynx.” Ann-Margret’s cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof portrayal was savaged by critics at the time (the film’s commercial and critical failure threatened to torpedo her initially promising career) and then later more kindly reappraised as campy and so-bad-it’s-good – but in fact (in the tradition of similarly histrionic actresses like Elizabeth Taylor or Karen Black), she collapses hidebound conventional distinctions between “good” and “bad” acting. If Ann-Margret’s performance in Kitten is “bad”, it is fiercely, awesomely bad – and never dull for one second. (For me, her overripe, bravura acting contrasts beautifully with John Forsythe’s wooden, straight-laced approach). As Slant magazine’s Dan Callahan argued, watching her in Kitten “I was reminded of the novelist Manuel Puig, who was a mentor to my friend Bruce Benderson, and a famous routine he had about Ann-Margret. Whenever A-M came up, Puig would ruminate, very seriously, in his Argentine accent: “Ann-Margret! Sometimes you think she is a good actress, and sometimes you think she cannot act at all. Sometimes you think she is a good girl, and sometimes you think she is a total slut! Ann-Margret!” he would cry, and take a momentous pause. “She is anything but reassuring.””

Like Marianne Faithfull with Girl on a Motorcycle or Patti Duke with The Valley of The Dolls, Ann-Margret was apparently mortified by Kitten with a Whip, considering it one of the nadirs of her acting career. By the time I saw the then-64 year old durable show business veteran perform her sparkly cabaret revue at the now-demolished Stardust Casino in Las Vegas in 2005 (the show was a kitsch hallucinatory fever dream!), her attitude had seemingly softened. Reflecting on how as a young starlet her looks saw her typecast in bad girl roles, Ann-Margret joked,"I call it my Kitten with a Whip phase. Sometimes I still feel like that little kitten. It's just getting a little harder to crack the whip. But I still manage."

/ "Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.” /

Additional reading:

From the Shock Cinema website:

“On the heels of her show-stopping numbers with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, Ann-Margret decided to take the low road with this no-budget, b&w melodrama: a surprisingly sleazy juvenile delinquent flick, with a killer performance from everyone's favourite sex kitten. John Forsythe stars as a suave, fat cat politician, whose palatial house is 'borrowed' by a bleach blonde cutie named Jody (Ann-M), dressed in nothing but a nightgown. Not unlike Goldilocks, Forsythe discovers Jody napping in his bed, and the guy is mildly intrigued by this disheveled dish with the crazy curves. And (since his wife is conveniently away) Forsythe's sympathy goes out to the teen when she tells him she a runaway from an abusive home. But he quickly learns that Jody's not your ordinary jailbait. She's on the run from the cops, after breaking out of a detention home, setting fire to the place and stabbing a guard. And pretty soon the tables are turned, with Ann-M playing mind games on the increasingly nervous dweeb and threatening Forsythe with rape charges. A few thrill-crazy (though unbelievably clean cut) hoods join the party and provide a smidgen of bloodshed, but Ann (as well as the viewer) quickly gets bored with their cretinous hijinx, and she eventually dumps the punks and takes Forsythe on a Mexican joy ride... Lemme tell you, this flick is without a doubt the finest showcase of Ann-Margret's talents. She's a tough, no-nonsense bitch, using sex 'n' a smile to get what she wants, and this harder edge makes her more alluring than ever. When she snarls and brandishes the broken end of a whiskey bottle -- well, I think I'm in love. Plus, Forsythe is such a cardboard clod, overflowing with morality, that you can't help but enjoy watching her make him squirm. Douglas Heyes' direction is cheap but energetic, complete with an endless supply of hip dialogue and a no-compromise finale that had me cheering. Kitten is a much-loved, vicious li'l B-movie with Ann-Margret proving once and for all that she's a slut goddess extraordinaire." 

Excerpts from John Waters discussing Kitten with a Whip in Interview magazine in 2011:

“[Ann-Margret] never looked greater. She is fucking gorgeous in this movie. When I was young, I had movie posters in my house everywhere. Now, in only one place where I live do I have a movie poster, and it's Kitten with a Whip.”

On Kitten’s reputation as a terrible “bad movie we love”/ "so bad it's good"-type film:

“I think it's not one bit terrible. It reminds me of a film noir. It's almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits. There was a whole bunch of movies from that period that started with people in turmoil, like with someone breaking into a house. You know what I mean? Like Lady in a Cage, or Penthouse—all these movies about juvenile delinquents taking over. And I think it was a period when a lot of movie stars tried to make these arty ones. Carroll Baker made a movie called Something Wild. There was a movie that I really love called A Cold Wind in August ... They were these early-'60s art films that were American, but yet were made with movie stars that wanted to be cutting-edge and prove they could act rather than be sex kittens.

“Look, it's a great film, and you know I'm screening this film not as a camp movie, but as an undiscovered art movie that people should see for real ... Kitten never became a midnight movie. It might be too arty to be a midnight movie, although I can imagine people standing up and shouting out some of that dialogue. It's just an art film that fell through the cracks, and has a title that is notorious, basically. And that poster is notorious. It's a movie that takes itself fairly seriously.”

/ "She's all out for kicks! And every inch of her spells excitement!" /

Waters nails perhaps one key to Kitten’s failure at the time: it’s made in ’64, but feels like a 1950s film. [You could easily imagine it made in the mid-fifties with Mamie Van Doren as Jody, with only minimal changes].

“It's fun to watch Ann-Margret be a juvenile delinquent, all juvenile delinquent movies are fun, but this is a juvenile delinquent movie too late. Because those movies were in the 50s. This is a 50s movie made too late. When the neighbours show up, it's very Douglas Sirk. That's very Magnificent Obsession.”

Read the essential Dreams Are What Le Cinema is For blog's analysis of Kitten with a Whip here.

Think of Kitten with a Whip as being sandwiched between two other essential Ann-Margret films ...

/ Above: Viva Las Vegas (1964) /

/ Above: Tommy (1975) /

The next Lobotomy Room Goes to The Movies film club is Wednesday 24 February 2016. Details below:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s FREE weekly film club? How better to break the monotony on a bleak wintry Wednesday night than watch a FREE film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

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!

Morocco represents the first glimpse American audiences got of Marlene Dietrich (she and Von Sternberg had already triumphed with the German filmThe Blue Angel (1930) but it wasn’t released in the US until afterwards. They ultimately made seven movies together – each one a wild, decadent masterpiece!). It’s a chance to see the origins of the Dietrich myth. Morocco is the film in which she first famously donned a man’s top hat and tails, a daringly butch look which would become her signature. Morocco is also significant in terms of queer cinema history for the notorious musical number in which Dietrich – in male drag – nonchalantly kisses a female audience member on the lips. All these decades later, the scene still feels taboo and transgressive.

Note! The management of Fontaine’s says: drag up as Marlene Dietrich on the night, get a free drink!

Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! Show up circa 8 pm to order drinks, food and grab the best seating! I’ll be blasting Marlene Dietrich tunes LOUD as you arrive.

Events page

/ Above: Marlene Dietrich in femme mode as Amy Jolly in Morocco (1930) /

The next Lobotomy Room club night is Friday 26 February. Details here /

Anna Karina at The British Film Institute

/ The sublime Danish actress Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962) /

Anna Karina – the elfin Bambi-eyed star of French New Wave 1960s cinema - graced The British Film Institute in person on Saturday 16 January 2016 last night as part of its Jean-Luc Godard season. (Godard and Karina were married between 1961-1967. She was Godard’s muse and the leading lady of his definitive early films). First was a screening of Godard’s sublime 1962 nouvelle vague masterpiece Vivre sa vie (in which Karina plays a wannabe actress who drifts into prostitution with tragic consequences. She is wrenching in the film). Then Karina was invited onstage for an interview (by film critic Jason Solomons) followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Pal and I were in the back row, but I can confirm the 75-year old Karina is still svelte and her heart-shaped cheekbones still intact, although her voice is now a raspy croak – Karina has evidently smoked a lot of Gauloises (or Gitaines?) over the decades. She was endearingly dotty and eccentric – clearly still a mischievous free spirit and bohemian. It’s hard to believe Karina isn’t French (she’s Danish, born in 1940 in Copenhagen): her accent sounds impeccably French, her demeanour is so old-school Parisian and she’s the absolute mistress of the dismissive Gallic shrug.

And Karina did a lot of Gallic shrugging! There was definitely a language barrier. Karina’s answers would drift, dither and meander, sometimes missing the point.  After an audience member would ask a question, Karina would turn to the onstage interviewer with a quizzical expression. After a while Solomon exclaimed, “Don’t look at me – I didn’t ask the question!” When someone asked what her strangest experience was working on a film, she snapped “Strange? What’s strange?” When people probed too deeply about Godard’s motivations and thought processes, she replied, exasperated, “I didn’t direct the film!” Asked whether it was provocative or scandalous to play a prostitute in 1962, she demurred, “Because I played a prostitute didn’t mean I was a prostitute!” (But Karina added the Parisian “working girls” she encountered on the street afterward would approach her and say they approved of her portrayal and found it truthful).

/ Above: some pretty grainy and pixellated shots of Karina onstage at The BFI with journalist Jason Solomons (Pal took them on his iPhone from the back row!) /

The questioners seemed fixated on Karina’s hairstyle and wardrobe in Vivre sa vie, which she accepted with good grace. Was the black bob inspired by Louise Brooks?  Karina revealed her hair in the film was actually a wig. It began as a very long wig and the stylist kept cutting it shorter and shorter. She didn’t know – maybe! People compared it to Louise Brooks afterwards. As for the clothes: they look astonishingly cool to modern eyes - that late fifties / early sixties period was the acme of style for both men and women (same era as the early seasons of TV's Mad Men).  The 22-year old Karina certainly looks sensational in her simple pencil skirts, ruffled blouses and cardigans – although she would have looked chic in a potato sack.

One annoying question actually led to an interesting response. Weirdly, one woman asked Karina what young modern actresses she admired. (Did the questioner honestly think Karina was going to reply, “Jennifer Lawrence!”?) Karina seemed nonplussed, asked her to repeat the question and then confessed she has a hard time keeping track of new actors, there are so many. They don’t usually make an impression on her unless they’ve been around a few years and become established. Then somehow the subject changed to what actresses Karina admired when she was growing up and the answer was more illuminating: Judy Garland, Ava Gardner and Edith Piaf. In terms of warmth, radiance and the capacity for expressing both hurt and happiness, you can clearly see the influence of Garland and Piaf on Karina’s acting.

I learned afterwards of one fascinating movie factoid from one of Karina’s other onstage interview sessions for a different film at The BFI. (Karina was interviewed about three times at The BFI while she was in London). She was asked about Godard’s Le Mepris (1963), in which Karina herself does not appear. Instead, Brigitte Bardot gives one of her best performances in the role of Camille. Bardot was always Godard’s first choice – but according to Karina, the producers pressured Godard to consider another great European art cinema leading lady of the period – Italy’s tousle-haired blonde lioness and Michelangelo Antonioni's muse, Monica Vitti. I revere the gorgeous Vitti and she would have been great – but very different – as Camille. Godard met with her in Rome to discuss Le Mepris. Vitti arrived an hour late and reportedly stared out the window the whole time, indifferent. So the role went to Bardot instead and the rest is history. Interestingly, for segments of Le Mepris Bardot dons a short jet-black wig that recalls ... Anna Karina in Vivre sa vie!

/ Brigitte Bardot in Le Mepris (1963) /

My highlights: Karina described how, when she first arrived in Paris as a 17-year old runaway, she was “discovered” in the cafe Les Deux Magots and snapped-up to be a fashion model. One day on a photo shoot she was telling the hair stylist or make-up artist she wanted to be an actress; an older woman with a big hat smoking a cigar overhead and inquired what Karina’s name was. When Karina replied “Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer”, the woman announced, “You should call yourself Anna Karina!” Afterwards Karina learned the mysterious older woman was – Coco Chanel! The final question of the night was: what was Karina’s mindset as a teenager, hitchhiking to Paris on her own, not speaking a word of French? Karina recalled how poor she was on arrival (she owned one pair of high heels and one black dress) and expressed astonishment at how brave and gutsy she’d been. (Karina admitted her motivation was to escape her unhappy home life with her mother and abusive stepfather). How lucky for generations of cinema goers Anna Karina that did flee to Paris when she did!

Further reading:

Anna Karina: Two or Three Things We Know About Her: You can watch videos of Karina's Q&A sessions at The BFI here

A sweet and very revealing interview with Karina in The Guardian

Dr Sketchy at Fontaine's DJ Set List 12 December 2015

/ Stripper, Miss Sata Lyte, in her dressing room, 1962. Photo by Diane Arbus /

After an ultra-lengthy absence, Saturday 12 December 2015 found me back behind the DJ decks for Dr Sketchy. Checking my records, the last time I DJ’d at a Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School (“where life drawing meets cabaret”) was May 2014. Since then, Dr Sketchy has continued at various venues after the residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern ended but none of them had DJ’ing facilities so my services weren’t required.  Now it looks like Dr Sketchy has re-located to the bijou Mondo Tiki basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s in Dalston (hopefully permanently!) so happily I was back on board.

To paraphrase my patron saint Jayne Mansfield, it felt divoon to be DJ’ing at Dr Sketchy’s again. For one thing, I had accumulated a backlog of bump’n’grind tittyshaker stripper music I was dying to play and I finally had a context for it! The plush and intimate Polynesian surroundings of the Bamboo Lounge provided the ideal setting for Dr Sketchy. Intoxicated by Fontaine’s potent cocktails, the enthusiastic sold-out crowd were ripe for an afternoon of adult "blue" humour, anything-goes drawing, cheeky onstage virtual nudity and daytime drinking.

Best of all was the glittering line-up of talent on the bill. Effervescent mistress of the ukulele Tricity Vogue was the tightly-corseted, blue-wigged mistress of ceremonies. A real trooper, Tricity battled-on despite being struck down with a cold and laryngitis. She told me at one point she had two more gigs later that day where she had to sing.  With her hoarse and raspy croak of a voice, I helpfully proposed Tricity change her act into a tribute to Marianne Faithfull.  

The two featured models and performers for this Dr Sketchy were Marianne Cheesecake and Trixie Malicious.  Two equally great burlesque artists with completely different contrasting personas and approaches,  which inspired the music I played for their poses. I’d never had the pleasure of working with Trixie – aka The Blonde Who Really Does Have More Fun – before. She evokes platinum blonde 1950s rock’n’roll bad girls (think bullet bra'd Russ Meyer starlets or the vixens from sordid pulp novel front covers come to life). Tracks by sex bombs like Mamie Van Doren, Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot, The Cramps and the opening theme tune from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! therefore felt obligatory.

Dr Sketchy veteran Marianne Cheesecake, meanwhile, conjures a classical 1920s or 30s Folies Bergère / Art Deco vibe (think Josephine Baker-meets-Anna May Wong). One of the advantages of DJ’ing at Dr Sketchy as opposed to, say, Lobotomy Room or Cockabilly is that I can drop the volume and play quiet, eerie, delicate songs and create a whole different ambiance.  For Marianne’s poses, I went for a ghostly spine-tingling David Lynch-ian feel: multiple versions of “Blue Velvet” and ghostly, heartbroken torch ballads by the likes of long-forgotten 1950s cool jazz chanteuse Linda Lawson and the Nico-like strains of San Francisco punk band The Nuns’ icy front-woman Jennifer Miro. When Trixie and Marianne posed ensemble at the end, I cranked-up Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It” (a Dr Sketchy staple) and Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” (it was, after all, the lead-up to Christmas and it occurred to me I hadn’t packed any campy festive tunes! Luckily that song was already on one of Eartha’s greatest hits compilations in my bag).

/ Trixie Malicious and Marianne Cheesecake. Photo swiped from Facebook! /

Noteworthy date: 11 January 2016 represents the first anniversary of the death of the truly statuesque and Amazonian Swedish-Italian actress Anita Ekberg (29 September 1931 – 11 January 2015). In truth few of Ekberg’s 1950s Hollywood films are memorable (with the exception maybe of the lurid 1958 exploitation B-movie Screaming Mimi in which Ekberg plays a stripper menaced by a serial killer). Her appearance in Federico Fellini’s decadent masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960), though – frolicking in Rome’s Trevi fountain - ensured Ekberg immortality.  I wonder if this revealing glamour shot squeaked past the Hollywood censors in the 1950s? (It's got to be said - those are great raspberries!).

Love Song of the Nile - Korla Pandit
Wimoweh - Yma Sumac
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Quiet Village - Martin Denny
Monkey Bird - The Revels
La-bas c'est naturel - Serge Gainsbourg
Mau Mau - The Fabulous Wailers
Lust - Bas Sheva
Coconut Water - Robert Mitchum
Don' Wanna - Wanda Jackson
Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren
Beatnik - The Champs
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Vesuvius - The Revels
One Monkey Don't Stop No Show - Big Maybelle
Honey Rock - Barney Kessel
Tonight You Belong to Me - Patience and Prudence
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Life is But a Dream - The Harptones
I Want Your Love - The Cruisers
Night Scene - The Rumblers
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Drive Daddy Drive - Little Sylvia
Sometimes I Wish I Had A Gun - Mink Stole
Tough Chick - The Rockbusters
Beat Girl - ZZ und der Maskers
What's Inside a Girl? The Cramps
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The Bossweeds
Ooh! Look-a There Ain't She Pretty? Bill Haley and His Comets
The Girl Who Invented Rock'n'Roll - Mamie Van Doren
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
No Good Lover - Mickey and Sylvia
Sheba - Johnny and The Hurricanes
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
Sittin' in the Balcony - Masaaki Hirao
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
Boss - The Rumblers
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Night Flight - The Viscounts
Hiasmina - Jean Seberg
Blue Velvet - Isabella Rossellini
Where Flamingos Fly - Linda Lawson
Lazy - The Nuns
Blue Velvet - Lana Del Rey
Perdita - Rubber City
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
Mack the Knife - Hildegard Knef
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
Chattanooga Choo-Choo - Denise Darcel

Further reading:

The next Dr Sketchy at Fontaine's is likely to be circa Valentine's Day in February 2016. I'll post the details once they're confirmed.

Upcoming Lobotomy Room-related antics for your social calendar:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s free weekly film club? As winter draws in, how better to break the monotony on a Wednesday night than watch a free film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

The featured presentation this (Wednesday 27 January) month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip (1964) – 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!

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to catch this should-be cult classick and genuine curiosity: Kitten with a Whip is not available on DVD in this country and never crops up on TV. It’s got it all: a genuinely feral wild child performance from Ann-Margret at the height of her bad girl beauty, dramatic shadowy film noir photography, a finger- snapping Henry Mancini-style cool jazz score and cringe-worthy faux beatnik hepcat dialogue galore. (Samples: “Ooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!” “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?” “Now cool it, you creep, and co-exist!” “Hands off, buster! Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”).

Perhaps the highest compliment of all? Kitten with a Whip is a sentimental favourite of John Waters’. (In 2011 he introduced a screening of it at Anthology Film Archives in New York).  He’s described it as “almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits” and reminisced, “Divine and I saw this movie together, definitely. Several times, actually. And he loved it, too. It was very much a big influence on us. And in 1964, I was a senior in high school, so on LSD, so angry, so insane, and so it came at one of the most insane periods of my life as far as being a disturbed teenager. I mean, we wanted to be Ann-Margret! Divine was my Kitten with a Whip, in a weird way.”

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/ Look deep into my eyes ... you will come to the next Lobotomy Room ... /

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when LOBOTOMY ROOM returns to the subterranean Bamboo Lounge of Art Deco vice palace Fontaine’s! Friday 29 January!

LOBOTOMY ROOM! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! 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 Cretin Hops! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs The Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr. Sketchy London 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 wall for your adult viewing pleasure!

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!

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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 and here.