Phantom of Pulp

Mexcian Magnificence

2012-01-24T16:53:00.000-08:00

Last post for a while as I'm traveling for work and have some pressing script deadlines.

Enjoy these wonderful cover images.

The Women of Sagawa's Psyche

2012-01-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

Just as Playboy delights in showcasing the women of a particular institution or college ('The Women of Walmart', for example, or 'The Women of UCLA'), it seems fair to provide an album of women favored and adored by Issei Sagawa, Japan's Godfather of Cannibalism.

Recently, he admitted that his penchant for European women has finally been sated, and he's focusing his appetite on the creamy delights of his home country.

Of the beautiful Aya Ueda (above), he said: "She is too good to eat." I say: "Literally, perhaps, but..."

The gorgeous Kyoko Hasagawa (above) is another lass who has captured a cannibal's heart. "Her legs are beautiful," he said in Vice.com's 2010 documentary

Akiko Yada, another beauty from Okinawa, Sagawa's preferred destination for Nippon delicacies, has also earned a place on the flesh eater's bedroom wall. It's hard to argue that his tastes aren't impeccable.

Finally, Erika Toda, who appeared in the filmic adaptation of popular manga Death Note, is another favorite of Mr. Sagawa. When he beholds these dreamy ladies, he "feels an appetite".

Not entirely surprising.

Sagawa's Last Supper

2012-01-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

This was Issei Sagawa's last supper, a carefully prepared meal of French female.

As is well documented, the infamous Japanese cannibal, sometimes referred to as 'The Godfather of Cannibalism', spent very little time in French prison, and was speedily returned to Japan for psychological assessment (finding: insane). Soon afterwards, he was released.

These scans are from a Japanese publication that, according to Sagawa himself, caused him a lot of trouble.

Although the book contains mostly Japanese text, there are 16 pages of truly grotesque crime scene photos, some of which I had never seen before.

I find this photo of the suitcase Sagawa dumped in a park to be the most disturbing. Note the severed foot.

The cannibal's decision to leave this item in a public place resulted in his apprehension.

If you're an admirer of John McNaughton's Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer, you will recall the final scene where Henry dumps a suitcase containing the dismembered body of his unofficial girlfriend Becky. Although the suitcase is sealed, we imagine its contents. The above photo comes close to what I imagined.

In a recent interview, Sagawa expressed his wish to be eaten by a beautiful woman. This raises some questions: Is this wish indicating a desire to be punished in kind for his crime? -- or is it an extension of his perversion?

Sagawa also explained that he is no longer obsessed with European women. His "tastes" have changed. He has finally found several Japanese women whose thighs, in particular, appeal to him.

An admitted "pervert", he lives a lonely life writing, reflecting, and appearing occasionally in the media.

When he was young, sex was "a taboo subject".

Seems that approach to the birds and bees worked out well, didn't it?!

"By shooting a bullet as small as my fingertip, I have hurt and changed many people"

-- from Issei Sagawa Part 1; h**p://vice.com

More Mexican Masterpieces

2012-01-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

As I am now collecting these myself, I have more to share... and I thought it was time I got into a little more detail.

I've heard Mexican culture critics describe these as trash while at the same time acknowledging their worth as trash.

Personally, I don't subscribe to back-handed compliments like this. It comes from a school of thought that bases its criteria more on subject matter than methodology; a flawed, narrow approach. This is "trash" because it's sexual, violent, unashamedly lurid, and focuses on a strata of society that is grouped with rabid dogs and crack whores.

I reject the 'trash' label. These are works of art by extremely talented artists who deserve to be acknowledged for their brilliance.

They make you feel, think, and dream -- everything that the best does.

Fuck the high and low.

This is simply damn good art.

Deal with it.

And lose the condescension.

It's Not Easy Being a Saucer-Man

2012-01-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Invasion of the Saucer Men has been part of my life since I was old enough to crawl. It's tattooed onto my psyche. And will remain there, I'm sure, until the day (or night) I die.

Like The Man From Planet X, these guys get my sympathy rather than my outrage. Although they appear to be bent on invading the world and, more importantly, enslaving women, I was never convinced that they were fair dinkum about it. Not with looks like that. Even if they could get a woman into the sack, do you really think she'd juice up for them? -- for such puny, sickly looking jokers with faces full of veins and skin a permanent shade of jaundice? Not likely. If they were rich, maybe... but my sources assure me that these dudes don't have two dimes to rub together.

Aliens like this can only be rapists, I suppose. They're destined to spend their nights applying lube to places they're not exactly welcome to enter, and employing bowie knives as instruments of foreplay. Even lube dries up eventually, and a guy's gotta get tired of constantly re-applying it. And what about chaffing? Pushing your extraterrestrial johnson into an earth woman's dry, unyielding vagina, lube or no lube, is going to take its toll eventually. When you insist on raping outside your species, you do pay a steep price. Ask any zoophile!

This great still has always been a favorite of mine. It tells us that these guys are no fans of human romance. They're no suckers for the Valentine's Day bullshit that every man dreads each year. In fact, when these intergalactic yahoos see examples of it, they want to fuck it up. And who can blame them!? In this documentary image, it's hard to tell if that clawed hand with the pointy fingers is getting ready for a grope, or itching to strangle the stuffing out of the bloke because he's wearing a suit and tie at the drive-in (surely a hangable offense in anybody's book). Aliens are definitely jealous bastards. They can't stand it when earth men (in suits!) dare to snuggle with earth women (in next to nothing). It really gets their goat. Unleashes the Green-Eyed Monster. Come to think of it, the original Green-Eyed Monster was probably an alien, and that's where the expression came from.

This little green pervert is really taking his chances, though. What if he gropes the bloke instead of the dame? How can he see where that hand's going? Does it have its own set of built-in eyes? Well, yeah, it does, but I'm not so sure the view was clear. I reckon the guy's a gambler, and he knows his odds are even. He's getting off on not knowing whether he's about to become a fiend or a fag.

Speaking of fags...

I've always had my suspicions about the Liberace lookalike above -- he's wearing black lipstick by Crikey! He's very well dressed, too, and his Dracula hairstyle looks a little too camped for my liking. Sir Christopher Lee was never this poofy.

So why then is Saucer-Face strangling him? Do Saucer-Men hate fags? According to a certain Baptist church in the South, God hates fags, but is it fair to assume that because God hates them, aliens do, too? Is our tall, green friend strangling Liberace with the intention of killing him, or is he strangling the late, great piano player in order to help him achieve orgasm? If the latter is the case, aliens are clearly attuned to the needs of fags, and ought to be acknowledged for the contribution they're making to queer culture.

Finally, let's address the issue of the name 'Saucer-Men'. If you were an invader from space with a penchant for the orifices of both sexes, a homicidal contempt for romance, and a psychotic desire for the destruction of entire planets, would you be cool with being called a 'Saucer-Man'? It's not the most masculine name, is it? It doesn't grab you by the throat and make you shit your pants.

Saucer. Man.

Oh, let's give the little green man his saucer and milk, children.

Hey mom, look at that cute little flyer saucer and the funny green man inside it.

Speaking for these aliens, I wouldn't be too happy with the name. It definitely demeans my ambitions. How can I be expected to instil fear in Earth women when my name makes them think of something you place a cup of tea on?

How can I rape with a mean spirit when my crib is a fucking saucer? A saucer!!! At least call it a spaceship. A spacecraft. A star destroyer! I like that one. Invasion of the Men From The Star Destroyer. Yes, that carries weight! It creates a picture of fearsome beings traveling with big guns.

Some alien invaders get the good names. Xtro, for example. If an Earth woman were to receive an email telling her that "Xtro is Coming", she'd be locking the doors and windows and calling the police. On the other hand, if she got word that a visit from a Saucer-Man was imminent, she'd stay in her chair for a while, get up slowly, then open the window to let him in for a laugh.

No woman (or man) calls 911 when a Saucer-Man's at the door.

If you do, however, you're a goddamned Saucer-Pussy (Yes, you, too, ladies!)

A Big Thank You To You All

2012-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

This blog now has 536 'Followers'. I'm really grateful for that. Thank you, folks!

I started this blog to share the things I love -- movies, books, music, illustration, graphics, painting, and people whose take on the world is somewhat unique. Like AIDS, I like infecting humans with stuff they won't be able to shake so easily.

I'm not quite sure how often a 'Follower' of this blog drops in, but, since I'm a 'Follower' of a stack of blogs myself, I figure no answer to that question is going to fit all.

I'm pleasantly surprised that I have a mix of male and female readers because, traditionally, much of the content I post has been considered male-oriented. It gives me optimism to see women (and men, of course, my 'Followers', not approaching pornographic material from a position of offended hysteria. Despite the truth that I derive some sexual stimulation from some of the sexual material I post, my primary reason for posting it is that I believe it has serious artistic merit. I believe that it deserves consideration, or debate, and I certainly believe that it contributes to a better understanding of our darkest, deepest selves.

It is the deep, dark self that I am most fascinated with. Since you're a casual reader and/or a 'Follower' of the blog, I'll confidently assume that you're also interested in the deep, dark self.

From childhood, our deep, dark self is a friend and an enemy. It gives us comfort, satisfaction, and euphoria, like a drug, but it also isolates us from others, and when you're living in a world that is working hard to bump you onto the grid, the isolation can be painful.

I started to like horror and the bizarre because it took the edge off my loneliness. It felt like a friend who'd somehow avoided the grid. It didn't attempt to lure me with lies and empty rhetoric, and it didn't molest me while smothering me with kisses. Horror movies, bizarre images, books of the fantastique, literature of dubious parentage, and what my parents called weird stuff, got me through the long night of childhood. These treasures were a warm hand to cling to, a suggestion that my life didn't have to be a carbon copy of lives endured by others. I had choices. I'd have to fight for them like a fucking pit bull, sure, and nothing would last, but at least there was something else on the horizon.

I hope this blog is a reliable haven of pulp for you, an organic forum for material that gets dismissed elsewhere, totally ignored, or stripped of its worth by mass media with big agendas. I hope it's also a place of truth, where you can proclaim your love for the most marginalized of diamonds, or your disgust for that which all others love.

Thank you for deeming this humble gallery of a thousand voices worthy of your time.

For reasons I can't explain, I feel obliged to provide metaphorical shelter to the cultural miscreant in you, and I take my obligations seriously.

So, be yourself while you still have time, and fuck the rest sideways.

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."

--Charles Bukowski

The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, 1998

Freaks Always Welcome Here

2012-01-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

From Brazil they came, and they're welcome on my blog.

Would they be welcome in your house?

Would you feel comfortable having these human beings -- these fellow human beings -- to dinner?

Personally, I'd welcome them, and I'd like nothing more than to listen to Mr. Music strumming away while his forehead drips down his face.

As I'm in the midst of writing a film (my next) based around folks of this persuasion, I'm even more partial to 'freaks' right now than usual.

Phantom's Book Round-Up

2012-01-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

I read every day, and I hunt books down like a shepherd hunts sheep. I can't go anywhere without taking a book with me, even though I don't always read it. Books are comforting. They're someone's imagination and knowledge knocked up into a neat package. What a privilege it is to swim in the mind of another.

These are a cross section of books recently experienced.

Trevor Brown's Black and White (Timeless; 2011), with a foreword by Romain Slocomb, is a superb collection of the artist's non-color works.

Brown's work is confronting, sublime, beautiful and intensely erotic.

Not one to pass up if you're inclined towards the raw and savagely sensual.

Easily the best book I've read recently about the sexual mind and the genesis of an array of paraphilias.

I walked away with a very different perspective on the forces that shape us.

Money has done exceptional clinical and research work in the field of development sexology (I also recommend his excellent Venuses Penuses: Sexology, Sexosophy, and Exigency Theory), and here delivers one of his most enlightening arguments here.

There is an excellent chapter on John Harvey Kellogg, the miserable fuck who invented 'Corn Flakes' as an anti-masturbation food. Kellogg was degeneracy theory's fiercest anti-masturbation advocate. To stop boys from masturbating, this dangerous fool recommended sewing up the foreskin with silver wire and did not oppose circumcision without anesthesia; to prevent girls masturbating, he recommended burning out the clitoris with carbolic acid(!). A successor to the Reverend Sylvester Graham (purveyor of Graham crackers and the public's first crusader for degeneracy theory), Kellogg believed that substituting meat with cereals and nuts would retard the sexual impulse.

Not a surprise that his company later sold 'Fruit Loops', a cereal containing enough sugar to kill any human impulse or organ.

For die-hard Who fans only, a thorough and exhaustive study of the Daleks from go (in the early 60's) to wo (now).

More than you ever wanted to know about Bronson and the Death Wish movies. Extensively researched chapters on each movie cover pre-production, production, critical reaction, and the sometimes mind-boggling shenanigans behind the financing and distribution.

Charlie, it's revealed, didn't have much love for the films after the first one, but sure loved the staggering pay checks.

As someone who is reasonably obsessed with health and fitness, this is a Holy Grail of research on the subject the title implies. Extremely detailed, it focuses on teeth and what they tell us about a society's nutritional habits.

Although first published in 1939, its theories and recommendations are as current as tomorrow's newspaper.

Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped and held prisoner in a California backyard for eighteen years by the psychotic Phillip Garrido, who also impregnated her twice, tells a shattering story of survival in her own words.

Interesting how adaptation and acceptance became her survival mechanisms.

The mundane rendered hysterical by a master wordsmith. Also try Platform.

The Dawn of Real Cannibalism

2012-01-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

As far as I know, close to the first porn flick to feature actual flesh eating. From Japan, of course.

In the 70's, German fetish series such as Pain, Violence, and Slave Sex covered most of the ground depicted on this video sleeve including the nailing of body parts to tables, extreme piercing, and genital suspension.

These Euro films did not, however, cover initialing the body with knives and needles, and they did not feature a scene in which a piece of the body is removed with a knife and eaten for real.

Truly a film for a narrow, specific market.

Produced by Dragon Image.

***

I haven't seen the film myself, but verification of its content comes from a totally credible source.

Geek Love

2012-01-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

While working out of state recently, I was emotionally moved by a TV dating show called 'Geek Love'. Yes, emotionally moved. Affected.

Did the producers of this trinket take their title from Katherine Dunn's fantastic novel, a big favorite of mine? Maybe. Of course, the geeks of Dunn's novel are the carny-type geeks who bite heads off feathered animals and ingest liquids deemed toxic to the rest of us. The geeks of 'Geek Love', the TV show, are obsessed fans of Buffy, Lost, Star Wars, Star Trek, Twilight, Iron Man, X-Men, and anything else deemed worthy of worship. At school, these folks were treated worse than chicken head eaters, I'm sure. I know I was.

The purpose of the show, beyond making profits for MTV!, is getting geeks tethered. Based around geek gatherings like San Diego's Comic Con, the show throws the geeks into a speed dating situation where they are forced to sell themselves to each other. Each endures thirty dates. Afterwards, the geeks ruminate on their dates and pray that someone out there will "get" them.

The show focuses on specific geeks, and we follow them through the process. Some score, and waltz away tethered, smug, and content; others return to their geek isolation. There's lots of sad and a little bit of happy. It was refreshing to see a broad age range amongst the geeks. Some were in their thirties. Most were in their early twenties or late teens. The message was clear: When you're a geek, finding love is like punching your way through a brick wall with the fist of a mortal.

The young Phantom: Geek in training!

I warmed to this show because I was/still am a geek. Actually, I was a geek way before a place existed for geeks to gather and way, way before the internet provided a refuge for our type. When I was a pint-sized, pre-teen horror and sci-fi fan, I was the school freak, and my geekery was not welcome. I had terrible trouble recruiting pre-teen vampire brides for my Catholic school re-staging of 'Count Yorga Vampire'. Only one lass was willing to allow my teeth in her neck. Most potential brides wouldn't even stand close to my cardboard coffin.

Things got ugly at high school. By then, my geek-a-philia had turned chronic, and I was walking the playground with a James Blish Star Trek novelization in my blazer pocket, Starlog #1 (wrapped in plastic!) in my hand, and James Herbert's The Rats in my other hand. I whistled the Star Wars theme at morning tea, played Johhny Williams' Lost in Space theme from my portable cassette player at lunchtime, and hummed the Space:1999 theme (second season) at afternoon tea. If anybody identified it, I'd grill them about what season it was from. If they got it wrong, the sky would fall. I'd won my cassette player as a geek twirling a yo-yo at a local competition run by Coca Cola. My record was 800 loop-the-loops. I'd beaten a kid who managed only 779 loops and looked like a junior heroin junkie. On the following year, he was referred to a 'Heroin Kid'. I eventually mastered the 'rollercoaster', too, a neat trick, and came close to wielding two yo-yo's at once without getting the strings tangled.

My penchant for bringing geek things to school backfired on me the morning I proudly presented the first six back issues of Starlog (cost: a damn fortune!) to an up-and-coming geek I was grooming. As he marveled at their graphic ingenuity and a choice Mr. Spock (not 'Dr. Spock', morons!) cover, the school bully, Dibby Brash, ripped them from my apprentice's hands and stomped them into crinkled balls in front of both of our disbelieving eyes. My geek apostle froze like stone and I launched myself at the Brash heathen. I wasn't stronger than him or fiercer, but my geek anger bestowed on me five seconds of immortal power that enabled me to apply a balled fist to his acne-infested face. He crashed to the cold concrete of the dark corridor and never, ever, ever came near me again. Now and then, as I would sit on a bench at lunchtime reading a Dr. Who novel (thanks, Terry Nation), I'd look up to see Brash slipping by quietly, his pizza face hiding eyes that wouldn't meet mine.

I attended an all-boys school and had minimal exposure to females outside of my (much-despised) sister, and mother -- who weren't officially females in my twisted book, anyway. I enjoyed weekends with the gorgeous Gilling sisters (close neighbors) and practiced the odd intimacy with them on the grassy cliffs by the motorbike tracks. Again, they were neighbors, not unknown females, so courting rituals weren't necessary components of my interaction with them. The courting -- if you want to call it that -- began when I was forced to take ballroom dancing lessons at sixteen. I flat-out refused at first because, as far as I was concerned, ballroom dancing was for poofters (Australian for queers, fags, fruits, and anybody who wore white socks) like that future Aussie film director with the same birthday as me: Baz Luhrmann. He grew up and made Strictly Ballroom. What hetero male does that with balls hanging proudly? Seriously! If he's not a poof, I'm a Bangkok trannie. But he's married, you argue! So was Elton John, I scream back.

Elton marries...what were you thinking, mate???!!!

Anyway, I only agreed to learn poofter-approved ballroom dancing because it got me out of the house on Sunday nights and gave me access to girls.

Well, access to girls is one thing is one thing, but gaining it without the help of a ski mask and a Rambo knife is another thing altogether. Gaining it requires conversation. A type of conversation that I couldn't make. Not to a satisfactory degree, anyway.

When your head is loaded with Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, Lost in Space, Dr. Smith, Dr. Death, Dr. Cyclops and lesbian vampires, starting conversations with snotty girls from private schools isn't easy. Once you're done with the small talk ("What's your name?" "What school do you go to?"), the space between you and her is an almighty gulf, a gulf that Klingons, Daleks, giant rats, and Sucking Pits (thank you, Guy Smith) just can't bridge. The truth was, I wanted to touch their vaginas and inspect their breasts, and maybe they were game for it, but I didn't own the magic words to open those doors. I knew words like "Exterminate!", phrases like "Live long and prosper!," and reprimands like "Shut up, Booby, or I'll take a stick to your bubble." None of these lines got you laid back in '78 with non-Geek sheilas (Aussie and informal for anything young and female).

Now, the Geek boys have 'Geek Love' to assist them with their courting... and the Geek sheilas, like the cutie above, are out of the closet, and they want love, too. I'm sure that a young fella's idea of love still remains at odds with a young woman's idea, but at least they're starting the process on common ground.

When you're born off the grid, it's pleasant to discover other subterranean grid dwellers. A TV show that embraces and acknowledges them is a bonus.

South of the Border Pulp

2012-01-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

Trouble brews now that my 'interest' in these comics has moved from collecting cover scans to buying the comics themselves and scanning the covers. Apart from a fine eBay purchase, I found a tiny bookstore in Downtown LA that sells these by the hundreds. They seem to stock old and new. If it didn't sell, it's there until it does.

Surprisingly, some of these (the above) are in full color throughout.

I love where the artist has positioned the explosion here. These are truly sensational works of art, cinematic, lurid, and filled with enormous energy.

This one looks more European than Mexican to me. Not sure why the woman's chest is not exploding into crimson.

Beautiful Western image with a strong erotic edge.

Perhaps a publisher such as Taschen will assemble these masterworks into a thick, heavy, coffee table book one of these days.

These comics are beggin' for it!

Worst Films of 2011

2012-01-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why I see so many movies because I expose myself to an awful rooker full of shit. The truth is, I'm addicted, I'm addicted to possibility. To potential.

Is there such a thing as a degenerate optimist? I guess there is, because that's clearly what I am. Shit, I'm a filmmaker, aren't I? Few things require more psychotic optimism than movie making.

Like a village idiot, I attend every movie with high hopes, good intentions, and an open mind. I'm not lying about that. Why else would I dare see Tom Hanks in Larry Crowne if I didn't think it would be good? Despite the awful poster (Hanks looking like a dick on a Vespa with Julia Roberts!), I still rolled the dice on that turd.

Anyway, I rolled the dice on Uncle Boonmee, too, and that's got a very cool poster.

It's on top of my Worst of 2011 list because it was an interminable bore. It got praised by professional critics and ended up on some 'Best' lists. Well, it ended up right here on a different list. Seriously, if this film had been in English instead of Thai, it would have been crucified for the steaming turd it is.

Could this have been good? I don't think so. All the talk about how shocking and confronting and genre-bending it was amounted to nought. Apart from the crimes committed by its cliched script, most of the acting was totally off pitch and over the top. "Health hath no fury", raved the poster. Yes, hell hath no fury like me (a Ketchum fan of thirty years) suffering through this tonal misfire.

Mickey Rourke's career is in a second major decline. The guy's talented, so why can't he recognize a stinker when he reads it? Or did he even bother to read it? Nothing in this script would have signaled greatness.

Vile garbage. Just plain evil. I rest my case.

Pretty and lifeless. Like a Supermodel.

Get off the fuckin Vespa, Hanks, and give Roberts the heave-ho. She's no good for you! You've done good work in the past, but to depart 2011 with this and the cliche-ridden, horrendous Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud under your belt is a crying shame.

What a stinking crock of celluloid pus. Spending more than a hundred bucks on swill like this was as immoral as it gets. Think of the kids whose senses have been incinerated by this.

Good intentions and big checks can't pump life into a rotten, confused script. Watching this was like watching Hollywood burn.

An earlier attempt to do the 'Dylan Dog' property was the beautiful and horrific Dellamorte Dellamore (directed by Michele Soavi). Did nobody take a look at that first? Obviously not.

This take on the character was as poetic as a prostate exam, as interesting as Barbara Bush's vagina, and as disturbing as Count Chocula.

Lots of money and nostalgia thrown at a script containing no logic whatsoever. Awful because a smart rewrite would have repaired its flaws. I wrote about this shit at length in a previous blog.

Human Centipede 2 is on this list because it's tedious, not because it's disturbing.

A triumph of smart marketing and a poster child for amateurishness disguised as meaningful chiaroscuro.

Truly, truly awful and boring black comedy with no laughs and confused intentions.

The more recent Young Adult, with the luscious and talented Charlize Theron, succeeded completely at what this stinker failed to do.

Films I'm Looking Forward To in 2012:

Himizu

The Theatre Bizarre

Motorway

Du Zhan

Last Stand

Bullet To The Head

Only God Forgives

Stoker

Savages

Django Unchained

Fuck The Fucking Shame

2012-01-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

America is a strange, troubling country, a country that treats sex as a commercial commodity to sell products, and then tries real hard to make you feel real bad for wanting to actually do it.

Advertising positions sex as something you must pay for. And pay dearly. If you have a luxury car, you get sex. If you don't, fuck you! If you're good looking, wealthy, arrogant, smooth, well educated, and swim with the sharks in the right circles, all the sex in the world is yours.

If you're none of the above, fuck you, Charlie!, and, even better, we'll bust you for leering at teenagers, those same teenagers we exploit to sell our products to gullible cretins with money and "status". And, hey, we'll shame the fuck out of you for masturbating to pornography and getting erections.

If you're poor or not on the approved grid, you get nothing, fucker! Actually, I'll do you one better than that: You get prison AND eternal condemnation.

What I love love love about Oscar Bazaldua's masterful work is its utter contempt for polite (read: corrupt) society. This guy does not drink the Kool-Aid.

Clearly, he doesn't subscribe to the polished bullshit that every American is fed from birth 'til death. He doesn't play favorites. He's not afraid of sex. He's not afraid of desire. He's simply not afraid.

His art portrays a world not perverted by religion, not twisted by hidden political agendas, and not hideously dishonest like the one we're all supposed to aspire to so the rich can get richer.

Bazaldua's people are my people. They fuck, they love, they hate, they feel.

They're humans.

You won't ever see real humans on the commercial TV networks... but you will see them here.

Cheers, Oscar, you're a true Apostle of Pulp!

Dandelion Wine

2012-01-05T14:23:00.000-08:00

Not only a favorite book of mine from a favorite author, but a favorite piece of cover artwork. It is beautiful!

By the talented Peter Goodfellow, it evokes a time, a place, and a mood -- and conveys the presence of dark deeds with poetic precision.

From the 1987 Panther Books (UK) edition.

Dandelion Wine was first published in 1957.

Best Retro DVD's/BR's OF 2011

2012-01-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Best New Films Of 2011

2012-01-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

Jan Sverak's Kucy se vraci (Kooky; Czech Republic; 2010): a truly intelligent and innovative fantasy.

Tsumetai nettaigyo (Cold Fish; Japan; 2010): Cinematic acid for the eyes, ears, and synapses. Like director Sono's previous film Love Exposure (another diamond), this goes where convention fears to tread. A (mostly) true story that will drop your jaw.

Jutro Bedzie Lepiej (Tomorrow Will Be Better; Poland; 2011): another searing study of a child's passage into adulthood from Dorota Kedzierzawska.

Koi no tsumi (Guilty of Romance; Japan; 2011): Incredible erotic adventure, and one of the purest studies of depravity, paraphilias, and desire ever committed to the silver screen.

Hwanghae (The Yellow Sea; Korea, 2011): Fierce and emotionally punishing action/drama boasting one of the best villains of the year.

Do-ga-ni (Silenced; Korea, 2011): Devastating true story of rampant sexual abuse at a Korean elementary school. The incendiary subject matter is not treated with kid gloves.

Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins; Japan, 2010): Stellar action adventure from the still prolific Takeshi Miike.

Melancholia (Denmark; 2011): Emotional wreckage wrought by a novel science fiction premise. Extremely honest study of depression.

Nanjing! Nanjing! (City of Life and Death; China; 2011): 'The Rape of Nanking' from a surprisingly even-handed Chinese perspective. Staggering action sequences never stomp on the emotional intimacies.

Drive (US; 2011): most purely cinematic event of the year.

Tyrannosaur (Ireland; 2011): Blisteringly frank character study of a decent man handicapped by himself.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (UK; 2011): best look at a damaged brain for quite some time.

A Dangerous Method (Canada; 2011): Thought-provoking and focused cinematic essay on sexuality and its complex psychology.

Akmareul boatda (I Saw The Devil; Korea; 2010): The darkest of thrillers in which violence and depravity take on an almost erotic glow. Truly sublime.

Runners-Up

The Skin I Live In (Spain)

TinTin (US/NZ)

Shame (UK)

My Joy (Russia)

Confessions (Japan)

Rampart (US)

Terri (US)

Young Adult (US)

Tree of Life (US)

Caterpillar (Japan)

The Ides of March (US)

Pan Negro (Spain)

Serbis (Phillipines)

Point Blank (Fr)

Snowtown (Oz)

Target (Russia)

The Last Circus (Spain)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (US)

Terraferma (Italy)

Hanna (US)

Hugo (US)

A Separation (Iran)

Heather O'Rourke Remembered

2011-12-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

Young Heather O'Rourke died of Crohn's Disease on February 1, 1988.

Her birthday was yesterday.

Her death, apparently, sabotaged the publicity campaign for her last film, Poltergeist III, because it was felt that the film itself was cursed.

RIP, Young Lady.

***

a certain troll and occasional contributor of worthwhile

comments to this blog inspired and encouraged this post

More Seen and Unseen deMullotto

2011-12-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of a close friend of Mr. deMullotto comes this selection of seen and unseen work.

In the past, some have complained that the CGI pieces are primitive and unconvincing. Please understand that Mr. deMullotto was one of the very first practitioners of the art to attempt 3-D graphics of this nature. To criticize these for their technical crudity is akin to unfavorably comparing the first black and white TV's to the plasmas of today. The plasmas are impressive, but the real magic of the form was in its invention.

Some of these examples of the artist's work have appeared previously in books and on his defunct website.

He remains an unsung master of the form alongside Robert Bishop, John Willie, Eric Stanton, and Tom of Finland.

I have more of these, and will post them within the next two weeks.

Fincher's Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

The original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a favorite of mine. Lurid sex, feisty women, grisly violence, bloody crime scenes, rape, perversion, action, murder... as Mary Poppins once said, "these are a few of my favorite (cinematic) things..." Ugly material works in the movies because it elicits a reaction from the audience and is sure to provoke a reaction dramatically.

David Fincher, the director of the American version of the story, is no slouch. His Zodiac is a favorite of mine, and I'm quite partial to Seven also. He's a director who applies his mind to a film's details and clearly has a plan. His films never feel like they're driven by a paycheck or a crass commercial motive -- not that a film shouldn't make a tidy profit (it actually needs to), but we shouldn't smell the urine-scented sweat of the accountants at the ledgers.

Fincher's Dragon Tattoo is not a lot different from the Swedish version. It's not quite as sexual, and it's colors are much more muted than those of the original, but it retains its source's essence of vice and corruption. The Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score is more soundscape than musical accompaniment and is all the better for it. Rooney Mara, who plays the sensuously named Lisbeth Salander, is totally convincing, hot as coals, and compelling in the lead role. Daniel Craig, taking a break from Bond, acquits himself very nicely as the American version of Mikael Blomkvist.

Before coming to this version, I feared that elements of the original would be toned down or changed. Does Salander seduce and fuck Blomkvist in Fincher's take? With gusto? Yes. Does Salander get thoroughly sexually abused in this take? Yes. The abuse is not as explicit, protracted, or depraved as it was in the Swedish adaptation, but we get the point.

I didn't enjoy Fincher's version as much as Niels Arden Oplev's version because I knew the story too well. I didn't know the points Fincher changed, but there were few surprises for me. None of this is to say you shouldn't give it a go, even if you have seen the original. On the contrary, mainstream rarely gets as dark as this.

Still, for me, the American version is a little too visually calculated and dour. But it was great to see some honest fucking in American movies and take a message home that someone, at least, is comfortable telling us that not all sex without matrimony leads to despair, depression, and disaster (eventually).

Poster for the original: more sexual, more 'European' in a Eurosleaze way

Mission Impossible 4

2011-12-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

Publicized and reviewed (perhaps the same thing?) as the best of the series, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is surprisingly languid and uninvolving. Generic set-up has Tom Cruise's team disavowed by the people who pay them and compelled to stop yet another nuclear maniac from destroying the world. They operate as "ghosts", so to speak, which explains the silly title. Every second action film these days focuses on the tired exploits of "rogue" agents or skilled individuals who are abandoned by their bosses. It's getting old.

The film, directed by Brad Bird, who made The Incredibles and The Iron Giant, can rightly brag about two excellent action sequences -- the first of note involves Cruise (who is, admittedly, very good in this film) dangling from the world's tallest building; the second (and best) feels like an extension of a specific action scene in Jackie Chan's Twin Dragons. Cruise and the villain trade blows in an automated parking garage where expensive cars are rotated, parked, and dropped by high tech machinery. The dueling duo have a brilliantly brutal time going up and down and falling from impossible heights as they both attempt to acquire a case containing a computer.

Certainly a film to be appreciated on the big screen, but not the best cinematic thing since sliced bread.

Tohjiro's Output

2011-12-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of Tohjiro's work/output for quite some time. He's taken porn in very unusual directions. Recently, "output" describes the content he's focusing on.

Frankly, I don't find excessive vomiting terribly erotic, although it does possess a certain Grand Guignol audacity.

The freak show dominates the director's work and, to some extent, that of other Dogma 'auteurs'. Japan's bizarre censorship laws permit explicit focus on the anus and its expulsions while draping quivering mosaic shapes over the vagina and its surroundings.

Ultra-hard S/M remains a constant on Tohjiro's horizon. Although the covers convey a rich aesthetic, the productions themselves often lack such riches -- reduced, unfortunately, to handheld, poorly lit tableaux.

My introduction to Tohjiro was a screening (approximately ten years ago) of the best piece of lesbian erotica I've ever seen. It was a film he produced prior to forming Dogma and involved two beautiful women in a traditional Japanese setting.

6000 Seconds of Silliness for 10 Billion Cents

2011-12-08T00:32:00.000-08:00

Tarsem, please stick with commercials, mate. You're a very decent teller of the thirty second story with a product at its center. Unfortunately, you're all at sea when you have six thousand seconds to fill with something other than product -- at least, we expect something other than product. Is that unreasonable of us?

I must confess that I find anything to do with Greek Mythology terribly silly. It reads OK in books, but when you portray absolutes like gods of this and gods of that on the silver screen, it's dull and stupid. Greek Mythology makes for good, symbolic story fodder, but it's non-intimate essence makes for godawful fucking drama.

The gods in Tarsem's Immortals do what gods usually do: They look down on things from an elevated position of authority and smugness. These bored pseudo-Bohemians throw comments about, bicker amongst themselves, and create rules that suit themselves. We don't care really. They can suck their own dicks. We're as bored as they are.

As he did in The Fall, Tarsem focuses 99% of his energy on the visuals and 1% on characters who wouldn't need such visuals if they were interesting. The entire film takes place on sets against green screens and it looks like it. The skies are impossibly beautiful, the ocean is impossibly perfect, and the rocky escarpments are too polished to be real. As for the people... it's a stretch to call them that.

The story involves a quest for a bow that fires an arrow made of lightning. Mickey Rourke, looking fat and pleased with his paycheck, plays the bad guy. He sports a scar and kills his help when he feels like it, or when the writers need to wake the audience. Henry Cavill, who plays Superman in the upcoming "reboot" (fuck, I hate that word!), is Theseus, the hero given the job of locating the bow and arrow by Zeus. Along the way, Theseus beds a pretty virgin (pictured below) with a great, art-directed ass, and has trite ego clashes with Stephen Dorf, who's totally underutilized.

Although the action isn't non-stop, the non-action involves a lot people standing near cliffs spouting utter shit about life, liberty, immortality, and future outcomes they know nothing about. There's not a human being to be found. Ex-Elephant Man John Hurt shows up now and then to fireside chat with Theseus because Theseus has no friends. Like everybody else, Hurt's wise old codger talks a brand of of goop that's stultifying.

When the action comes, it's as bloody as CG can be and confusing to watch. Hundreds of thousands of CG-spawned soldiers attack a hole in a wall and exchange steel blows in a corridor with a low ceiling. The outcome is predictable.

This cost more than a hundred million dollars. Couldn't 5% of that be spent on a decent script?

Pompous and boring: That's what you get for your ten billion cents when you embrace the silliness of Greek Mythology.

POND SCUM Trailer (HD)

2011-12-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

Indie filmmaking is about persistence.

A large dose of psychotic optimism doesn't hurt, either.

I'm grateful for the stellar human beings who are taking this tough journey with me. You all know who you are.

Despite the fact that Pulp IS a way of life, I'd be careful who I recommend it to.

Special People

2011-12-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Not special enough

Not for long

Promises made

Easy

Promises kept

Hard

Smiling in limbo land

Gazing forever

Reported lost

Wanted not

Why?

No answers

Just the silence of the grave

That you can trust

Slow death

Accelerated life

I found these tragic people in a small curio store close to the border of Texas and Mexico.

A modest rescue was enacted.

The Sweet Darkness of Miss Christine Wu

2011-12-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

The work of Christine Wu (website: http://misschristinewu.com) really resonates with me. Like a relentless echo.

In fact, her work depicts life as a force dislocated by time.

That's how I see it, anyway. Doesn't mean I'm right. In every sense, this is vital art that commands attention.

The dead linger with the living, and are often the same. The emotions are deep and raw.

Truly sublime this. The violence. The focus.

Dislocated grotesquerie. An erotic jigsaw.

Christine has a showing of her work at the Luis De Jesus Gallery (in Los Angeles) from February 3, 2012.