A scene that influenced generations of writers, filmmakers and fans, XEROX FEROX is the first book to cover the horror film fanzine and the culture it spawned. From Famous Monsters of Filmland to Fangoria and everything in between, XEROX FEROX is much more than a book about monster magazines. It examines the home-grown DIY fanzines that dared to dig deeper than the slick and shiny newsstand mags ever would... or indeed even could. The titles are as lurid as the films that they covered. Gore Gazette. Deep Red. Sleazoid Express. Before message boards, before blogs, before the Internet itself, the fanzine reigned as the chief source of news and information for horror fans worldwide. Often printed on the cheap and sold for the price of postage, madcap and irreverent mags like Slimetime, Subhuman and Shock Xpress travelled the globe, creating a thriving network of fans and professionals alike. XEROX FEROX traces the rise of the horror film fanzine, from the Famous Monster-starved kids of the 1960s to the splatter-crazed gorehounds that followed. Featuring in-depth interviews with fifty writers, editors, and industry pros, XEROX FEROX is the final word on an era that changed the world of fandom forever.

"Brings together scholars from film and media studies for the definitive academic study of 'real death' on screen - from horror cinema, to pornography, to online 'shock videos'"--

The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director's work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.

The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema offers an overview of the field of cult cinema – films at the margin of popular culture and art that have received exceptional cultural visibility and status mostly because they break rules, offend, and challenge understandings of achievement (some are so bad they’re good, others so good they remain inaccessible). Cult cinema is no longer only comprised of the midnight movie or the extreme genre film. Its range has widened and the issues it broaches have become battlegrounds in cultural debates that typify the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Sections are introduced with the major theoretical frameworks, philosophical inspirations, and methodologies for studying cult films, with individual chapters excavating the most salient criticism of how the field impacts cultural discourse at large. Case studies include the worst films ever; exploitation films; genre cinema; multiple media formats cult cinema is expressed through; issues of cultural, national, and gender representations; elements of the production culture of cult cinema; and, throughout, aspects of the aesthetics of cult cinema – its genre, style, look, impact, and ability to yank viewers out of their comfort zones. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema goes beyond the traditional scope of Anglophone and North American cinema by including case studies of East and South Asia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, making it an innovative and important resource for researchers and students alike.

This volume explores the lower reaches of cinema and its paradoxical appeal. It looks at films from the B-movies of the 1930s to the mockbusters of today, and from the New York underground to the genre variations of Turkey's Yesilçam studios (and their YouTube afterlife). Critically examining the reasons for studying, denigrating, or celebrating the detritus of film history, it also considers the place of a trash aesthetic within and beyond 1960s American avant-garde and looks at the cult of trash in the fanzines of the 1980s. It draws on debates about cult, paracinema, and camp, arguing that trash cinema exists in relation to these but brings with it a particular history that includes the ordinary as well as the strange. Trash Cinema places these debates, and the strand of self-proclaimed low culture that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, within a historical and international perspective. It focuses on American cinema history but addresses Eurotrash reception as well as the related field of garbology, examining trash cinema as a distinct but fluid category.

New York City, 1976. Newspaper ads dare the denizens of Times Square to see a morbid little movie called The Incredible Torture Show. The film is yanked from theaters before it finds its audience. Years later it is retitled Blood Sucking Freaks and hits pay dirt, playing to shocked crowds and becoming a perverse cult classic. Its writer and director is Joel M. Reed. Like his films, the life of Joel M. Reed is a crazy cocktail of New York satire and sleaze, from swanky supper clubs in the 1950s through to the decrepit grindhouses of the 1970s. Using Reed and his films as its cornerstone, this book — twenty years in the making — is a dirty snapshot of the last gasp of Times Square before AIDS, crack cocaine, and anti-pornography laws strike their final blow. Strap yourself in for an unforgettable journey.

How porno chic became porno hell. In the early 1970s, outrageous claims were made of a new blood-spattered cinematic extreme. This was the legend of the ‘snuff movie’, which promoted the inhuman notion that a woman had been murdered to satisfy the sexual appetite of a jaded public. The story was produced by a kind of madness incarnate, but it reflected the desperation of America in cultural turmoil. ‘Snuff’ was a backlash against the naïve liberalism of the counterculture, embraced by people who preferred to believe the worst about their society. Once unleashed the concept was embraced and manipulated by the tabloid media and a variety of political and social crusaders, each using it to further their own cause. Brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief, snuff became an iconic urban legend. This book is the true, startling and hideously exploitative history of that legend and how it was created. SNUFF—THE BLOODIEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED IN FRONT OF A CAMERA!

BLEEDING SKULL! A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey is the definitive resource on 1980s trash-horror cinema. BLEEDING SKULL! features 300 in-depth reviews of movies that have escaped the radar of people with taste and the tolerance of critics. Black Devil Doll From Hell, A Night To Dismember, Heavy Metal Massacre, The Last Slumber Party — this book gets deep into gutter-level, no-budget horror, from shot-on-video (SOV) revelations (Doctor Bloodbath) to forgotten theatrical casualties (Frozen Scream). Clown midget slashers! The Indonesian Jason! A pregnant woman in a bikini who eats fried chicken before getting her fetus ripped out by a psychopath! It’s all here. And it’s all curated by the enthusiastic minds behind Bleedingskull.com, the world’s foremost authority on trash-horror obscurities. Jam-packed with rare photographs, advertisements, and VHS sleeves (most of which have never been seen), BLEEDING SKULL! is an edifying, laugh-out-loud guide through the dusty inventory of the greatest video store that never existed.

“In SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE, Nick Cato becomes the Marcel Proust of trash cinema, resurrecting memories of the kinds of late, lamented, Mom and Pop fleapits in which seeing an anti-social movie with your buddies was a gloriously anti-social act.” — Michael Marano, movie columnist Cemetery Dance Film review books may be a dime a dozen, but how many include the actual experience of witnessing the movie in a theater? Zine editor and online columnist Nick Cato shares his time growing up in seedy NY and NJ theaters, and how these screenings helped to shape opinion of the movies. Whether one of his beloved local theaters in Staten Island, NY, or at a double feature at the infamous 42nd Street in Times Square during its heyday, audiences were always lively and outspoken. Part memoir, part film criticism, SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE looks at the audiences as much as it is a book about exploitation movies themselves.