Reflections on ... Sins of Rachel (1972)

It’s been suggested that – while Fontaine’s bar is temporarily shuttered due to the coronavirus scourge and the world is socially-isolating itself – the Lobotomy Room film club (specializing in the cult, the kitsch and the queer!) could continue online for the time being. I’ll be occasionally posting fun oddities and obscurities that are viewable on YouTube for your delectation. Remember: Lobotomy Room is the home of Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) so watch at your own risk! 

There’s putrid trash … and then there’s Sins of Rachel (1972). Tagline: “Oh Rachel, my love, the lives you shatter … if you should die, would it really matter?” Brief synopsis: in an unnamed Los Angeles suburb, blowzy middle-aged cocktail lounge singer Rachel Waring is found brutally murdered in her home. Could it be because Rachel was about to write her salacious tell-all memoirs, blowing-open the town’s long-suppressed secrets? The intrepid police inspector interrogates various potential suspects (including her sensitive and sexually uncertain son, her parasitic younger lover and the local reverend) and in flashbacks we see their tortured relationships with the dead woman and their motivations for why they might have killed her.

/ Our first glimpse of a carefree, fun-loving sensualist Rachel Waring in the film's "cold opening". Little does Rachel suspect she has a date ... with death! (Note: Sins of Rachel is so obscure there are no decent stills or photos online, so these are my own inexpert screen grabs) / 

Filmed in a process called “Texturetone” with the threadbare production values and grungy vibe of a seventies porn film, Sins of Rachel is sometimes misrepresented as a gruesome horror movie (it could be loosely categorized as “hagsploitation”, and there is one gory Herschell Gordon Lewis-style close-up of the murder victim’s blood-drenched face, but the special effects ain’t exactly convincing). Sins is truthfully more of an ultra-lurid, heavy-breathing soap opera crossed with a crime who-done-it, all overlaid with a frankly queer sensibility and an ineffable veneer of sleaze. In other words: our kind of movie!

/ Above: the blood-drenched fate of Rachel Waring /

/ What was Texturetone? If Sins of Rachel is meant to be an example of the glories of Texturetone, no wonder it never caught on! Zenith Films was the same production company director Richard Fontaine used to release his earlier beefcake homo porn short movies like A Date with the Boys (1956), Days of Greek Gods (1954) and Hot Harem (1965) /

/ The emphasis on homoerotica already begins in Sins' opening credits with shots of Peter Thomas (Chase Cordell) moodily roaring down the freeway on his hog. The theme tune is a gorgeous adult contemporary ballad called "What Does a Bird Do?" by Jerry Kane. There is virtually no information on the song or the singer online, sadly /

The director Richard “Dick” Fontaine, an associate of Athletic Model Guild’s Bob Mizer, had an extensive background in the realm of mid-century beefcake homoerotica and Sins’ cast is “fleshed-out” with a lusciously buff selection of sinewy male actors who certainly look like escapees from a hardcore gay porn set of the period (think shaggy hair, mustaches, mutton chop sideburns). Clearly a connoisseur of firm male flesh, Fontaine finds copious opportunities for them to do things like strip down to their tighty whitie underwear, ride shirtless on motorcycles and exchange sexually-charged glances, and keeps his camera securely focused on their pert asses in tight pants. (No complaints here!). I own a DVD of Fontaine’s vintage homo physique work (Thirteen Apollo Films: 1954 – 1965) and he displays genuine flair and artistry in baby oil-and-posing-pouch territory. As a “regular” mainstream director, though, he’s catastrophically Edward D Wood Jr-level inept. (At one point, two characters exchange some crucial dialogue and Fontaine films them at length completely obscured by a fireplace in the foreground).

/ The framing I refer to above, worthy of Ed Wood or Doris Wishman - this is actually a key scene! /

/ Director Richard Fontaine's "queer eye" for sun-kissed male flesh (actor Bruce Campbell as Rachel's nubile son Jimmy Waring in The Sins of Rachel) /

/ An example of the beefcake / physique photography of Richard Fontaine. Model: Clark Hunter, circa 1968 /

/ Detective Bruce Jennings, investing Rachel Waring's grisly murder. As far as I can discern, actor and mustached cutie Brett Marriott made only one further film after Sins - the intriguing Blood Orgy of The She-Devils in 1973 /

The suspects include:

/ Rachel's grasping lounge lizard toy boy lover Hank. Actor Jerome Scott had already collaborated with director Richard Fontaine and Ann Noble on the 1971 short film Threads of Man and went on to make just one further film appearance (as "Adult Film Director" in something called Drop Out (1973)). His nude scene is one of Sins' highlights  /

/ Rachel's sensitive, closeted gay son Jimmy Waring. Did Rachel's dysfunctional, borderline incestuous relationship with him push Jimmy over the edge?!  Sins is the sole film appearance by Bruce Campbell. Cute as he is (those thick lush sideburns!), acting wasn't really his forte /

/ Patricia Rees as Jimmy's sexpot blonde girlfriend Shirley Taylor - who does not appreciate having to share him with his needy mother Rachel! According to IMDb, Rees may have gone on to make fleeting appearances on TV shows like Cagney & Lacey and Growing Pains in the eighties /

/ Swiftly to replace Shirley in Jimmy's affections - the ruggedly handsome and brooding Peter Thomas (I'm unsure why some characters are afforded surnames and others aren't?). We've already seen the enigmatic Peter driving his motorcycle over Sins' opening credits (sans shirt and helmet). Director Fontaine also seems to delight in showing Peter doing shirtless martial arts. The skimpy filmography of actor Chase Cordell (great name worthy of Henry Willson!) is sprinkled with titles like The Curse of a Faithful Wife (1972), November Children (1972) and Track of the Moon Beast (1976) /

/ Or could it be Chester Brown - the suave and urbane publisher of Rachel's sensational autobiography? (Actually, no - that makes no sense and the character has zero motivation). Making his film debut in Sins, durable actor Fred D Scott would proceed to have the most impressive acting career of anyone in the cast. His numerous acting credits on IMDb encompass blaxploitation cinema (Black Shampoo (1976)) and numerous television roles on everything from Sanford and Son, Roots, Knot's Landing and Murder She Wrote! /

/ And what's the deal with Reverend Taylor, father of Shirley ... who recoils in undisguised horror when Jimmy confides in him about his homosexuality? Reverend Taylor is (hammily) portrayed by actor Stephen Lester - who was Ann Noble's off-screen husband! More about him later on /

Full credit where it’s due: Sins of Rachel is laudably positive about the erotic awakening of anguished mama’s boy Jimmy and his eventual acceptance of his own homosexuality in the arms of his buddy Peter. (This was, after all, the post-Stonewall era of gay liberation and Sins seems clear-eyed about who its intended audience is). Ann Noble was clearly an ally! Not that the word “gay” is ever uttered, and Jimmy and Peter never kiss onscreen. (Seriously! I was shouting, “Kiss! Kiss!” at the screen). 

/ “I’m all mixed up inside!” The adorable Jimmy /

/ Jimmy halfheartedly attempting a facade of heterosexuality with Shirley /

/ Below: the scenes between Peter and Jimmy crackle with homoerotic tension / 

/ The look of love /

An admission: I’ve become fixated on portly leading lady-of-a-certain age Ann Noble, who not only stars in the title role as the doomed Rachel, but wrote the screenplay (take that, Barbra Streisand!). For Noble, Sins was clearly a profound personal statement, a labour of love a and a cri de coeur. But who was this unsung Renaissance woman? What motivated her? Noble has no Wikipedia page and the information on her IMDb profile is sparse to say the least. (For example, it provides no birth and death dates for her. Noble is presumably long dead by now). She made only a handful of movie appearances in the early seventies when she appeared to be already in her fifties, all on the grubby outer fringes of reputable film-making: horror movie The Corpse Grinders (1971)  (seemingly her debut), Threads of Man (1971) (a homoerotic short film also directed by Richard Fontaine,  unavailable online), Sins of Rachel (1972) and two triple-x  gay porn flicks, Hollywood Cowboy (1972) (in which her character is credited only as “Barfly”) and The Light from the Second Story Window (1973). After that – total silence. An outrageous and bizarre queer Valley of the Dolls-style exposé about the sheer hell of getting ahead in the cutthroat show business glamour jungle, The Light from the Second Story Window merits its own blog post (and will get one!). Billed as “Vicki Mills”, Noble’s performance in the secondary role of Alma is equal to her efforts in Sins (her opening line: “I’ve been waiting all night to get fucked!”) and let’s just say she seems convincingly intoxicated in her drunk scenes. (I haven’t explored Hollywood Cowboy yet).

From my own online sleuthing, I’ve deduced that Noble originally hailed from Portsmouth here in the United Kingdom (hence the unmistakable plummy British accent) and her “government name” was Mrs Irene Philcox. (Ann Noble. Vicki Mills. Irene Philcox. She was a woman of many aliases).  A local newspaper article from 1972 headlined “Movie star came home to Portsmouth” documented a rare visit home to see her parents, Mr and Mrs P Noble-Airy, as if Noble was a noteworthy local dignitary (it must have been an extremely slow news day?). Presumably Noble fudged the precise nature of her movie work, but the piece does mention Sins of Rachel: “Miss Noble carried out promotional work, and made personal appearances in connection with Sins of Rachel, an intriguing look at life, death, social morality and love, which she wrote and starred in.” The article also mentions “for the second successive year, she received a best-actress-of-the-year award in Hollywood.” What could this weirdly non-specific award have been? I love how they leave it vaguely unclear, as if it may well have been an Oscar! Also name-dropped is Noble’s husband, Mr Lester Philcox “who was also in show business.” His stage name was Stephen Lester – and he appeared onscreen opposite Noble in The Corpse Grinders, Threads of Man, Sins of Rachel (he plays Reverend Taylor), Hollywood Cowboy and The Light from the Second Story Window. So, the duo was clearly the low-rent sexploitation equivalent of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh or Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. (One possible theory: Mr and Mrs Philcox were financial investors in these shoe-string movies – on the condition they also got to appear onscreen?).

/ Ann Noble (or should that be "Irene Philcox"?) en famille. At left is her husband, Lester Philcox (aka Stephen Lester) /

Anyway, back to Sins. Noble had clearly watched and absorbed her share of old Joan Crawford, Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor melodramas over the decades and seized this opportunity to make her own “star vehicle” in this vein (albeit updated for the "permissive age"). Sins was filmed on location in Noble’s own home, which explains all the flattering and idealized portraits of herself bedecking the walls. (Her choice in interior décor is as frou-frou and chi chi as you’d expect). She also inevitably wears her own personal wardrobe onscreen and frolics in all her best finery: ruffled blouses, chic pantsuits, cocktail dresses, peignoirs trimmed with feathers and – in one eye-popping sequence – spilling out of skimpy lingerie.

/ Glimpses of Rachel Waring's / Ann Noble's interior decor: note the flattering photos and portraits of herself displayed everywhere /

/ “I need someone! I’m a lonely woman! I need the warmth of another human being!” At her most tormented, hot-pool-of-woman-need Noble seems to be channeling Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) / 

/ The manipulative Rachel quickly deduces that Peter represents a threat to her unhealthy hold over Jimmy in this high-voltage confrontation /

Sins’ script takes pains to stress that the volatile Rachel was a local celebrity (as well as being – as a bartender bluntly puts it – “a pretty good lay”), with awe-struck characters repeatedly emphasizing what a great “star” she was in her prime (“she was quite a performer in her day!”). And Rachel – who certainly behaves like a queenly grand dame - maintains a voluminous scrapbook filled with clippings about herself.  (But then she also argues, “As far as this town is concerned, I’m more “notorious” than “prominent””). The evidence for this stardom is weirdly unclear, though. Rachel was supposedly a celebrated nightclub chanteuse, but Noble never once sings in the film. But then neither does her scheming, much-younger stud muffin gigolo lover, aspiring singer Hank (although on the plus side, director Fontaine ensures we get a lingering look at actor Jerome Scott’s memorable naked ass). Throughout, Noble’s cat-on-a-hot-tin roof performance - clearly striving for Bette Davis-like intensity - is gloriously overripe, whether chain-smoking and swilling sherry (it must be said that Noble’s demeanor is believably “tipsy”), engaging in shrewish mood swings or lustfully groping her significantly younger leading men (including – gasp! – her own son!). Credit where it’s due – Noble grasps her moment in this film, understandably earning comparisons to fellow “outsider actress” Edith Massey, "Hermione Baddeley crossed with some moldy Yorkshire pudding" and even “Marlene Dietrich after a two-week bender.” 

/ Rachel in seduction mode /

/ Coquette-ish Rachel toys with her with sherry glass when she encounters Hank for the first time /

/ The film could just have easily been entitled Vices of Rachel. Was the alcohol in these glasses real, I wonder? /

/ Below: raw sensuality, scorching the screen! Last of the red-hot mamas Rachel and Hank romping in bed together /

/ Your reward for reading this far: Hank's memorable nude scene. I don't know about you, but I'd like to see more of actor Jerome Scott /

Sins is what trash auteur John Waters would admiringly term a “gutter film”, and it abounds with Waters-style moments (especially the broad, shout-y acting. Watch for the secondary characters of Rachel’s gossipy female neighbour and her housekeeper, who bitchily speculate that Rachel “wears padded bras”). Like its star Ann Noble, the film is simultaneously appalling and majestic. The Sins of Rachel is a rancid cult film waiting to be discovered.

/ Refugees from a John Waters movie? Rachel's nosy neighbour and her cleaning lady gossip about her /

Watch Sins of Rachel here!

Read more here.

Reflections on ... Cristina (1959 - 2020)

The sad thing about unsung cult artists is it often takes their death for them to be properly reappraised and appreciated. Take confrontational post-punk No Wave chanteuse Cristina, who has died aged 61 (on 1 April 2020) from coronavirus complications. I’ve known who Cristina (full name: Cristina Monet Zilkha) was since I was a teenager (I’m old, remember) and was of course familiar with her two stone-cold classics (her listless and irreverent interpretation of Peggy Lee’s cabaret anthem “Is That All There Is?” and the gloriously downbeat Christmas staple “Things Fall Apart”) but for some reason I never properly delved into her oeuvre until now. And she’s a revelation! (Thank God Cristina’s entire discography – admittedly small – is represented on Spotify. She made precisely two barbed, weird and distinctive albums – released by the cutting edge ZE label - that flopped commercially and then retired from music).

Some quick reflections on this totally unique and neglected talent. Like many abrasive early eighties New York No Wave / punk funk musicians (see also: James Chance of The Contortions), she may initially work best in small doses and for many may be an acquired taste. But think of Cristina as analogous to Campari – once you acquire that taste, you wondered how you ever lived without it! Also: Cristina’s trademark is setting jaundiced, scathing sentiments to perky up-tempo music, and she mostly writes and performs within the persona of a debauched, jaded party girl or gold digger (a tradition that dates to Mae West and Eartha Kitt).

Self-titled debut Cristina (1980 (reissued in 2004 as Doll in the Box) is her mutated disco-not-disco dance album. Lushly produced by Kid Creole of the Coconuts, it’s campy fun with Latin rhythm in its hips (if you like cowbell, this is the album for you!), but I prefer the follow-up, the tougher, darker and more cutting New Wave pop of Sleep It Off (1984). If embittered songs like “Rage & Fascination” and “He Dines Out on Death” remind you of Broken English-era Marianne Faithfull, they were co-written with Faithfull’s long-time collaborator and guitarist Barry Reynolds. (And in fact, Cristina’s material is considerably stronger than the songs Reynolds and Faithfull rustled-up for Dangerous Acquaintances (1981), the tepid follow-up to Broken English). And Cristina’s cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine” is superior to Cyndi Lauper’s.

Cristina’s venomous, spikily funny satirical lyrics work as wry poetry already, but then she enunciates them in an alienated, deadpan can't-be-bothered snarl (she has “resting bitch voice”, occasionally punctuated with a Johnny Rotten sneer). Here’s a sampling of her wit and wisdom: “My life is in a turmoil / My thighs are black and blue / My sheets are stained, so is my brain / What's a girl to do?” from "What’s A Girl to Do?" is as lacerating as anything found on Lydia Lunch’s 1980 death kitten magnum opus Queen of Siam. “Don't tell me that I'm frigid / Don't try to make me think / I'll do just fine without you / Don’t mutilate my mink” from “Don’t Mutilate My Mink” (which I’d argue is Cristina’s punk masterpiece. In their tribute to her, The Guardian newspaper describes it as sounding like Audrey Hepburn fronting the Sex Pistols). And on “Things Fall Apart” Cristina pithily condenses the end of a relationship into two lines: “And then one day he said, “I can’t stand in your way - it’s wrong.” “Way of what?” I asked, but he was gone.”

In closing: how did Cristina not become a major star in the eighties? She had it all!  Talent, beauty, mystique, wit, an utterly original pop vision. But let's embrace her now. Cristina’s jagged, anxious music is the perfect soundtrack for our current situation.

/ Sadly, there's almost no trace of Cristina on YouTube and what's there is in grainy poor quality. Here is her 1984 video for "Ticket to the Tropics." You can see her version of The Beatles' "Drive My Car" here./

Read The New York Times' obituary for Cristina here.

Reflections on ... Queen of Blood (1966)

It’s been suggested that – while Fontaine’s bar is temporarily shuttered due to the coronavirus scourge and the world is socially-isolating itself – the Lobotomy Room film club (specializing in the cult, the kitsch and the queer!) could continue online for the time being. I’ll be occasionally posting fun oddities and obscurities that are viewable on YouTube for your delectation. Remember: Lobotomy Room is the home of Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) so don’t “at” me if you wind-up hating the movie and asking yourself, “What the fuck did I just watch?”

Our first film selection is Queen of Blood (aka Planet of Blood), an el cheapo 1966 science fiction movie (the meagre budget was reportedly $50,000) directed by Curtis Harrington. Not to be confused with Queen of Outer Space (1958) starring Zsa Zsa Gabor! Tagline: “Hideous beyond belief … with an inhuman craving!”

As was a common convention for producer Roger Corman’s b-movies of the period, this American flick incorporates (or “recycles”) footage from a 1959 Russian film. (The special effects and relatively impressive “outer space” scenes spliced-into the action are from the bigger-budgeted Soviet source). This ultra-terse synopsis I found online is more succinct than anything I could come up with: “astronauts go to Mars and return with a green vampire woman.” And boy, does she stir up trouble! In fact, in no time the corpses of astronauts begin piling-up, mysteriously drained of blood! (It takes everyone a while to discern the alien woman is a vampire. It’s been noted this aspect of Queen’s plot – the vulnerable space crew being picked-off one by one by a monster - anticipates Ridley Scott’s Alien).

Director Harrington (1926 - 2007) was a genuinely maverick, intriguing and durable talent with an overtly queer / camp sensibility. Queen is very much an example of Harrington being handed lemons and attempting to impose a bit of flair to the material. His wayward career encompassed the occult / underground art film fringe (he was an associate of Kenneth Anger, and appears in Anger’s 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome) to wildly entertaining hagsploitation horror movies in the early seventies (What’s the Matter with Helen? and Who Slew Auntie Roo? both starring Shelley Winters, Killer Bees with Gloria Swanson) to mainstream television establishment (he directed episodes of TV series Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman and Dynasty!).

The pleasures of this film: 

Some of the cannibalized Russian special effects are genuinely haunting, eerie and dream-like. (In fact, my tip is to drown-out the wooden acting and tedious dialogue, don’t try to make sense of the narrative and just let the movie wash-over you like a dream). 

The soundtrack of spooky “the-future-is-scary!” theremin music. 

Queen has a fun, kitschy sherbet-coloured retro-futurist look (it’s meant to be set in the year 1990 – which must have felt like the distant future in 1966), with lots of starkly minimalist space-age décor in the control centre and spaceships, and the astronauts wearing cling-y quilted athleisure wear outfits.  

Judi Meredith as coolly efficient astronaut Laura James sports truly impressive immobile and gravity-defying bouffant helmet hair that screams “1966”. 

It offers a sweet reminder of just how dreamily cute young heartthrob leading men John Saxon and Dennis Hopper were at this early point in their careers.

/ The look of love: Florence Marly and Dennis Hopper in Queen of Blood / 

But truthfully, the film is owned by the Queen of Blood herself. Honey, she is fierce! Played entirely mute (like Vampira in Ed Wood Jr’s Plan 9 from Outer Space) and possessing a glistening livid green complexion, sunken Marlene Dietrich cheekbones, glowing blood-shot eyes and a remarkable vertical fright wig hair-do (think troll doll), she is the film’s single greatest special effect. (I’d argue she’s an influence on the Martian vixen Lisa Marie plays in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!). Watch for how the alien smilingly (hungrily?) appraises the male astronauts - and then her lip curls disapprovingly when she spots Laura!  Producers pressured Harrington to cast someone younger, but 47-year old Czech actress Florence Marly memorably instills the role with unearthly inscrutability and menace. She alone makes Queen of Blood worth investigating. Spoiler alert: the ending involves repulsive pulsating “alien eggs” served on a tray of lime gelatin - an appetizer from an atomic-era dinner party gone horribly wrong.

Lobotomy Room DJ Set List 28 February 2020

/ Make new friends - at Lobotomy Room! Pictured: Bay Area chapter of the Hells Angels, 1964 via /

From the Facebook event page:

For your dancing pleasure, the strange’n’sleazy sounds of Lobotomy Room return to the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s bar on Friday 28 February!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A night of Vintage Sleaze-o-Rama! Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Twisted Tittyshakers! Wailing Rhythm and Blues!! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell. Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Wow - we are living through scary and gruesome times. This was the first Lobotomy Room club of 2020 and it's hard to gauge when there will be another one. (The next Lobotomy Room is meant to be last Friday of May 2020, but in this uncertain current COVID-19-ravaged hellscape, who knows?). Like all of London's bars and clubs, Fontaine's has shuttered for the time being. When life does return to some semblance of normality, please come back and show us some love.

/ Rat your hair up like a teenage Jezebel and come to incredibly bizarre rock’n’roll dance party Lobotomy Room! Photo by the great Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger (1921 - 2006) /

What’s extra-bittersweet: this was one of the best Lobotomy Room clubs in ages! As you can see from the playlist, I DJ’d for hours because the krazy kittens on the dance floor were shakin’ their asses until about 2 am. And they were impressively hip and broadminded: no matter what freaky shit I threw at them (No Wave noise, greasy Ike and Tina Turner b-sides, surf obscurities, amphetamine-induced hillbilly rock’n’roll), they just kept dancing!

Anyway, here's what I was laying-down.

Twenty Thousand Leagues - The Champs
Katanga - Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Intoxica - The Revels
Ocean's Devil - Hawaii's Samurai
Adult Books - X
Thunder Cloud - Al Casey
Surf City - The Ramones
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
Gostaria De Saber (River Deep, Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki Hirao
Three Cool Chicks - The 5,6,7,8s
Dangerous Charms - The Delmonas
Magneto - Messer Chups
Jukebox Babe - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Riding with a Movie Star - L7
Apache 95 - Satan's Cheerleaders
Strychnine - The Cramps
Black is Black - Big Maybelle
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Nothing Means Nothing Anymore - The Alley Cats
I Don't Need You No More - The 5,6,7,8s
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge and The Fireballs
Killer - Sparkle Moore
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
I Can't Believe What You Say - Ike and Tina Turner
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Egyptian Shumba - The Tammys
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
The Swag - Link Wray and The Wraymen
Miserlou's Dream - Satan's Cheerleaders
Nausea - X
Your Phone's Off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Forming - Germs
C'mon Everybody - The Sex Pistols
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Cha Cha Twist - The Detroit Cobras
Ultra Twist - The Cramps
Bird Dance Beat - The Trashmen
They Call Me Zombie - Messer Chups
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Batman Theme - Link Wray and His Wraymen
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
Train to Nowhere - The Champs
Woo-Hoo - The Rock-A-Teens
Little Queenie - The Bill Black Combo
You Give Me Worms - Turbonegro
Club Delight - Jack Jolly
Garbageman - The Cramps
Esquerita and The Voola - Esquerita
Boss - The Rumblers
Tina's Dilemma - Ike and Tina Turner
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Juvenile Delinquent - Ronnie Allen
Wailin' - The Fabulous Wailers
Year 1 - X
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Whistle Bait - The Collins Kids
Action Packed - Ronnie Dee
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Breathless - X
Wild, Wild Party - Charlie Feathers
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramonetures
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Pedro Pistolas Twist - Los Twisters
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Gunnin' for Peter - The Fabulous Wailers
Bop Pills - Bill "Skip" Macy
Shucks Baby - Tiny Topsy

/ The mighty Ike and Tina Turner Revue freaking TEARING IT UP at The Skyliner Ballroom in Fort Worth, Texas in 1964. Check out the Ikettes' electric green cocktail sheaths, with shoes dyed to match. So fierce! /

I've knocked-together a Spotify playlist based on what I played, but the usual caveats apply: 1) the Spotify playlist isn't 100% representative, because not everything I DJ'd is on there. It pains me that Lydia Lunch's magnum opus Queen of Siam has been deleted from Spotify. How can the oeuvre of Masaaki Hirao (the Japanese Elvis) not be represented on there? Or atomic-era Brazilian pop siren Wanderlea's Portuguese language version of "River Deep, Mountain High"? For shame, Spotify - for shame! And 2) disable "shuffle" option and listen to it in sequence for the "you were there" experience. Anyway, you can listen to it here.

/ In the meantime, before signing off ... an urgent public service announcement from Francine Fishpaw. Via /

Further reading:

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

Follow me on twitter!

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

I have serious issues with the frankly homophobic, puritanical, hypocritical and censorious Tumblr these days, but you can follow me on there. 

And I'm now spreading my message of filth on Instagram!

Reflections on ... The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

From the Facebook event page for 16 January 2020:

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

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

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the camp! Third Thursday night of the month. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! We can accommodate 30 people maximum on film nights. Remember: the film is FREE so you can buy more cocktails! (One drink minimum).

/ "She’s as tempting as a cupcake - and as tough as a 75-cent steak!” / 

It was never intentional, but in recent years it’s become a Lobotomy Room film club ritual to screen a Joan Crawford film to usher in the new year. Maybe it’s a subconscious act of pagan goddess worship? Anyway, we showed Strait-Jacket in January 2018, Sudden Fear in January 2019 and now The Damned Don’t Cry in January 2020. When I introduced Damned onstage, I quoted Crawford’s line of dialogue from the film, “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life - and I’m going to get it!” and urged the audience to embrace this mission statement as their new year’s resolution for 2020.

/ “Call me CHEAP?” Nothing’s cheap when you pay the price she's paying! /

After Crawford’s Oscar-winning, career-reviving comeback victory with Mildred Pierce (1945), her studio Warner Bros clearly decided: don’t mess with the formula. Subsequent films like Flamingo Road (1949), The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) and This Woman is Dangerous (1952) are all increasingly threadbare and repetitive variations of the Mildred Pierce template, cleaving to the same essential noir crime melodrama style and theme. As The Chiseler concisely summarizes, the narratives of these Crawford pictures all “follow a woman as she claws her way out of dreary poverty, attains a pinnacle of penthouse luxury, and plunges from there into the abyss”. So yes, it’s a formula - but hell, it’s a juicy, lurid and insanely enjoyable formula, and these films are understandably embraced today as both exemplars of mid-century “women’s pictures” and camp classics.  Think of it this way: imagine there was an all-night Joan Crawford film marathon on TV. If you started watching The Damned Don’t Cry, fell asleep mid-way through, woke up in middle of This Woman is Dangerous and continued watching, you probably wouldn’t notice any discrepancy. (It helps that Crawford co-stars with silver fox David Brian Flamingo Road, Damned and This Woman is Dangerous!).

/ Joan Crawford with David Brian in The Damned Don't Cry /

As a Joan Crawford star vehicle par excellence, Damned certainly delivers on showcasing the diva’s considerable mid-period strengths. It ticks all the boxes: Crawford gets beautifully lit and flattering close-ups, copious costume changes (charting her trajectory from drab housewife to upper-crust socialite), gets to have big emotional confrontations, snarl hard-boiled dialogue and slap men’s faces. (Just to shake things up, in Damned, Crawford herself also gets slapped around and roughed-up a lot). Characteristically of this period, Crawford’s leading men are mostly secondary considerations, with minimal threat of challenging her dominance. (The exception: smoldering noir tough guy Steve Cochran. More of him later).

/ Suffering in mink: Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

/ Check out those gams! Yes! Scary diva Joan Crawford at full voltage in torrid melodrama The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) /

Vincent Sherman directs Damned with verve and economy, ensuring the story unfolds in broad strokes and dramatic flourishes. Boiling with ambition and hunger, Crawford swaps identities with remarkable ease, swiftly re-inventing herself from frumpy small town hausfrau Edith Whitehead to elegant heiress Lorna Hansen Forbes (“the darling of café society”) under the tutelage of her new friend, shifty posh-voiced grifter Patricia Longworth (exquisitely performed with the perfect amount of patrician anxiety by scene-stealing Selena Royle). Sherman neatly contrasts the visual signifiers of Crawford’s new realm (cocktails (vermouth and cassis!), gold cigarette cases, mink coats, orchids, swimming pools) and her discarded working-class origins (derricks pumping in the Texas oil fields belching sooty plumes of pollution, blue collar men in hardhats and overalls, a wardrobe of cloth coats and aprons, no make-up, scraped-back hair).

Initially Damned positions Crawford in a conventional romantic triangle. Edith / Lorna must choose between impoverished, honest (and dull) accountant Marty Blackford (Kent Smith) or sociopathic but rich and suave organized crime kingpin George Castleman (David Brian). But then mid-way through the film Castleman’s dangerously volatile mobster associate Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran) arrives and explodes the movie apart. If you’re unfamiliar with hirsute and broodingly handsome Cochran (1917 - 1965), he’ll be a revelation. Probably best-remembered for the film White Heat (1949), Cochran is worthy of comparison to peer Robert Mitchum: both invested unexpected complexity and humanity to their portrayals of sexy noir thugs. 

/ “A woman who crossed the paths of many men … and double-crossed every one of them!” Steve Cochran and Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

Great as Crawford is – she is never less than majestic and mesmerizing to watch here – she is also sticking with what she already knows in Damned. (By 1950 Crawford could play a role like Edith / Lorna with her eyes closed). I’d argue Damned really belongs to Cochran, whose performance feels modern, nuanced and surprising. For a macho gangster, Nick (as Cochran plays him) reveals intriguing fissures of sensitivity and insecurity seething below the surface. At times, Cochran almost suggests Nick is a little boy playing at being a mobster. For example, even while Nick strives to maintain his taciturn demeanor, it’s also clear he’s astounded a classy high falutin' dame like Lorna could be romantically interested in him (watch the way Nick proudly escorts her through his swanky Palm Springs nightclub, hoping to impress her), and he’s quick to bristle with offense when he suspects she’s belittling him. Cochran does nothing to solicit the audience’s sympathy – and yet Nick is easily Damned’s most compelling character. He’s also sex on legs: watch for the poolside scenes of Cochran in clingy swimming trunks or a terry cloth robe, with his impressive chest pelt on full display. The cruel and sensual face, lush dark brows and mane of oiled, combed-back black hair also anticipates Elvis Presley. Read more about essential noir icon Cochran in this lyrical, perceptive essay.

Speaking of male pulchritude, Cochran is rivaled here by Richard Egan (1921 – 1987) as Roy Whitehead, the laborer husband who Edith abandons. Egan's appearance is fleeting but – phew! – memorable. With his brawny physique, stubbled face, leather jacket, pomaded hair and visible chest hair, Egan suggests a hunky escapee from a Bob Mizer / Athletic Model Guild beefcake photo shoot. Interestingly, there is reason to believe that various points, the cougar-ish Crawford was romantically involved with virtually every man involved in The Damned Don’t Cry. She’s been "linked" to director Vincent Sherman and leading men David Brian, Steve Cochran and Egan.

/ Above: Egan with Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and below in a candid social shot from what appears to be the early sixties /

 / Above: as a bonus for reading this far, some beefcake pin-ups of the wondrous Richard Egan. You're welcome! Read more about him here /

/ Two things: apparently at some point Crawford had off-screen "intimate knowledge" of each of her leading men in this shot (and director Sherman). And I love how this smiling publicity photo wildly misrepresents The Damned Don't Cry as a romantic comedy / 

/ Portrait of a bitch goddess extraordinaire: Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry /

To the surprise of no one, now that London is on lock-down with the dreaded Coronavirus, the monthly film club is on indefinite hiatus. (We were meant to screen Desert Fury in March). But as god as my witness, Lobotomy Room (and Fontaine's bar) will be back! Watch this space.

Further Reading

Read my analysis of the Joan Crawford films Sudden Fear (1952) and Autumn Leaves (1956).