Exploitation Nation

GODS IN POLYSETER and GODS IN SPANDEX are two books put together by Suzanne Donahue and Mikael Sovijarvi that traverse the twisted landscape of the 70’s and 80‘s indie exploitation scene. But these two intrepid authors took a novel approach to the material by deciding to let those who lived through the fire tell the stories themselves. So each book is literally anecdotes from the trenches from these incredible producers, directors and performers that have all made our lives richer over the years. If you are a fan of exploitation cinema at all, there is no reason you shouldn’t have these books in your collection. You really, really cannot live without them.

GODS IN POLYESTER is first up and it is a muscle builder at close to 500 pages, large format coffee table size. This sucker has to weigh several pounds at least! Each section is broken down by year, prefaced by a short rundown of the notable events of that year, then dives into the meat of the matter as each filmmaker or performer writes something about a film that came out in that year. Some people have very short to the point stories like Richard Harrison who tends to be very blunt about the films he was involved in, taking up nary a paragraph (which often tends to stray into how he always saved the production in some way) to the longest chapter in the book from Bruce Glover (yes, Crispin Glover’s Father) who talks at length about his life, how he grew up, race relations, and just about everything else, before finally getting down to what it was like shooting the first Walking Tall movie. The thing is, he manages to make the whole story pretty much tie together! That same chapter also has many sketches from Bruce that he had drawn over the years as well, which were a nice touch. Some of the other stand out T.G. Finkbinder talking about his acting gig as the psycho in one of my favorite 70’s slashers, The Redeemer: Son of Satan, Don Dohler (R.I.P) and his leading man George Stover talk about The Alien Factor, Bill Rebane talks about the insanity of making The Giant Spider Invasion, George Barry on how Death Bed: The Bed That Eats became a lost film only to be found by a late night on the internet, several incredible stories from the awesome William Grefe, but the Whiskey Mountain being the best tale, William Shatner talks about being in his finest film Impulse (also by William Grefe) the indefatigable Leo Fong on how he made so many drive-in chop socky movies for pocket change. And so much more, Geroge Buck Flower, Hy Pyke, John Phillip Law, Carol Speed, Ted V. Mikels, Ferd Sebastion, Linea Quigly and so many more contribute as well. This is a treasure trove of invaluable information of a time long past. One thing all these entries (well most of them anyway) have in common is that they genuinely loved making these films. There is passion literally bleeding from the pages.

GODS IN SPANDEX is more of the same just covering the 80’s scene. The usual suspects make their appearances with Richard Harrison talking a bit more about acting in all those Filipino action movies and the horrors of shooting them. In fact many of the people in the book who mention working on these epics all tell the same horror stories of badly treated crews, shitty hours and nightmarish conditions. Seems that the only way to get something done was to pull a little star power and refuse to work until the crew got paid. That story crops up more than once here. Cool people in this book include the blaxsploitation God Jamaa Fanaka talking about his Penitentiary films (and how he is buddies with Robert De Niro), Gerry Ciccoritti who directed a favorite of mine the vampire cabbie classic Graveyard Shift, Bill Malone of Scared To Death, Mark Piro talks about his super 8 epics like Curse of the Queerwolf, Jon Mikel Thor remembers Rock & Roll Nightmare, Stephen Sayadian talks about his neon colored nightmare Dr. Caligary (his story about Abbie Wool and the blow job is priceless). Plus the regulars like George Buck Flower, John Phillip Law and Hy Pyke all make their contributions as well. Unfortunately all of them are no longer with us at this point. Hy Pyke gets a very loving tribute in the book, but the others passed since it was published.

Reading these books is like sitting down with the elders of some lost exploitation tribe and getting the stories of the past passed down to you. This is what it was like to fight for the glory to make films you believed in. Nowadays, indie film has been eaten up by Hollywood and corporatized, or bastardized by no budget backyard burnouts. On either end of the scale the result is the same; unwatchable, self-indulgent dreck that is made without an iota of the passion and love these guys put into their films. Read these books and maybe, just maybe some of that passion will rub off on you.
Available from headpress books
www.headpress.com

Andy Copp

2008-08-22 00:26:30

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