This very website serves as an extension for a DIY magazine I produced for a dozen years, beginning in 1993 around the height of zinedom. Titled Hitch: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity, the more-or-less quarterly specialized in reviews of films — the more outré, the better — which took up the better part of each issue’s back half.

While I’m glad to be out of the zine scene (it’s a ton of work to put out anything of quality), I hold affection for those times, partly for the movies and subgenres to which I became exposed. I feel like I have found a counterpart of sorts in Australia’s Michael Helms, whose Fatal Visions zine celebrated “sleaze, violence and sexploitation in the cinema” for a decade.

Fatal Visions: The Wonder Years 1988-89 collects the first six issues in paperback, complete except for the excision of reader letters. Each issue among the dirty half-dozen is devoted almost exclusively to reviews of flicks then new to theaters, via VHS rentals or airing on Melbourne TV stations.

A majority of the films are United States productions, so the Down Under viewpoints of Helms and his review crew grant an added level of interest to their rough-and-tumble criticism. While you’ll find all-American blockbusters like Tim Burton’s Batman covered, titles lean heavily on sequels, horror, Troma, Jackie Chan, Roger Corman and assorted trash.

Longer pieces include a Q-and-A with gore king Herschell Gordon Lewis, memoirs of an X-rated paperback novelist, a brief look at Bruceploitation and, better yet, a three-part series that “reviews” the local porn palace theaters, then near-extinct. Only an extended essay on Aussie censors comes off as a little too “had to be there,” yet it’s always nice to see intelligent voices fighting the good fight against those who wish to legislate their own religious beliefs onto the populace.

Much of Fatal Visions‘ nostalgic charm stems from the wealth of clipped newspaper ads — a lost art dearly missed in this online-ticketing era of Fandango and Moviefone. Charming, too, is Helms’ writing style, built more on passion than polish. Readers should be warned that this book hasn’t cleaned up the original errors, which number many, coming from a cut-and-paste zine and all. Those who used to send stamps or a few bills in the mail in return for such homemade publications won’t care. —Rod Lott

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Had I not just read Jimmy McDonough’s acclaimed 2001 bad-moviemaker bio, The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, I would have found Rob Craig’s new book on the same subject much more enlightening.

Don’t get me wrong: Gutter Auteur is recommended to fans of grindhouse flicks; I just feel like much of the über-eccentric filmmaker’s story read as repetitive. (Craig cites McDonough’s book throughout as a source.)

However, I’m guessing many film fanatics haven’t read The Ghastly One. After all, it’s now a dozen years old, out-of-print and, therefore, insanely expensive; Andy Milligan is far from a household name à la Ed Wood; and the only reason I read it is because, having devoured McDonough’s bio on Russ Meyer, Big Bosoms and Square Jaws, a year earlier, I simply wanted more words from him, no matter the subject.

The big question is whether room exists for two books on such a niche personality. Of course! It helps greatly that Craig is not interested in retelling Milligan’s life story beyond a 20-page summation. Instead, he aims his critical eye at examining the man’s movies closely.

Admittedly, it takes a little time to get there — about 120 pages — because preceding the meat are chapters that set up the pervading culture of the late-’60s era in which Milligan began to toil, particularly as the times related to homosexuality (Milligan was gay, to an unnatural degree of hate for heteros) and the sexploitation film. While doing so is necessary, one could argue against the inclusion of two of these chapters: one explaining the Times Square grindhouse, which is the equivalent of choir-preaching here, and the other a biographical sketch of Milligan’s regular producer/distributor, William Mishkin. Whose bio is it anyway?

When we do arrive at the Milligan filmography, rife with underfunded weird-horror efforts that include 1970’s Guru, the Mad Monk and 1972’s The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!, Craig’s book comes alive, ably conveying the seediness and sleaziness of their content.

I should note that I’ve never seen a Milligan movie, and yet, as with McDonough’s Ghastly book, Gutter Auteur hooked me. From all accounts, however, I sense Craig may be ascribing a tad more depth to Milligan’s work than is there. (We soon shall see, as finishing Gutter Auteur prompted me to place an immediate order of Something Weird’s double-feature DVD of 1968’s The Ghastly Ones and Seeds of Sin.)

Of course, it should be considered praise that I found the study so compelling, given my utter lack of exposure to the films delved into so thoroughly. Poster art and stills sprinkled throughout complement Craig’s descriptions and deconstructions of Milligan’s wicked little morality matinees of malfeasance and madness. —Rod Lott

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Just because it’s currently cold outside doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave. In fact, since Thomas Lisanti’s book is dedicated to the sunniest of cinematic comedy subgenres, it might even make winter life more pleasurable.

The title of this paperback — a more affordable reprint of the book’s original hardcover release in 2005 — tells you everything you need to about it, as Lisanti provides the reader without spirited overviews of arguably the first 32 films, from the ones that birthed the craze to the ones that killed it.

Ironically, I’ve never seen Gidget, which started the craze, nor any of AIP’s Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello pictures, yet I’ve consumed more beach movies than I had realized, including the horror spoof The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini; the early Sharon Tate vehicle, Don’t Make Waves; the original Where the Boys Are; and Catalina Caper, thanks to its now-legendary appearance on the second season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Well, Lisanti has seen them all, and now I pretty much want to, as well. Even when he dogs a picture, there’s an affection to his voice — especially given the bevy of bikini babes who romp through these pictures with the skimpiest of coverage; not for nothing did he have to type the phrase “buxom blonde” so often. (With the book being published by McFarland, scads of photos are contained within, in case the reader desires visual proof.)

These films represent a squeaky-clean Americana that likely never truly existed outside of the screen, but they’re a blast to visit and revisit. Through his gossipy but substantive behind-the-scenes stories culled from many personal interviews (many of which also informed his recent, recommended Drive-In Dream Girls), Lisanti guides us through the gamut, from terrific to terrible.

He notes not only which flicks succeed on their merits, but delves deep into those merits, from whose curves best filled swimwear to whose songs fell as flat as a surfboard. (Semi-related on that note: his takedown of The Supremes’ appearance in 1965’s Beach Ball: “Diana Ross is a fright with her chipped tooth and big beehive wig. Her close-ups are scarier than anything found in The Horror of Party Beach.”)

At nearly 450 pages, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave concludes with profiles of 23 actors often associated with the subject, including John Ashley, Yvette Mimieux, Sandra Dee, Chris Noel, Quinn O’Hara, Shelley Fabares, Aron Kincaid (who provides the book’s foreword) and — meow — Susan Hart. It says a lot when you can get joy from reading on-set stories for movies of which you’ve never seen a frame. I’d love to see what Lisanti had in store for The Second Wave, but considering this First Wave hit seven years ago, I’m guessing we may not be so lucky. —Rod Lott

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