FATAL VISIONS - THE WONDER YEARS (2015); Paperback
The LedaTape Organisation, 250 pages, Used (Rare)
A collection of FATAL VISIONS, Melbourne's own infamous trash film zine, has congealed into perfect bound format. Proving that dead tree technology has not entirely slipped into a coma this compilation covers the earliest and rarest entries in FVs decade-long publication history. Devoted to sleaze, violence and sexploitation in the Cinema and wherever it appears on video, TV & in print, FATAL VISIONS went to places where few other Australian publications even knew existed: bottom of the package video titles, late late night TV movies, films that played announced as drive-in supports and in hard tops where they were lucky to play for one week only. Profusely illustrated - with index! Includes: Film in Fiji - Jack Ferguson Banned Toys - MH Divine Obit - Fred Burger Wes Craven interview - Paul Harris Film Censorship in Australia 1988 - Joey Inferno Posthumous Bruce Lee films - Spike Des Mangan Interview - MH Mark Savage Interview - MH Confessions of a Porn Novelist - Kris Gilpin Deep Inside Melbourne Porn Venues - Jack Ferguson Candida Royalle Interview - MH David Nolte Interview - MH Zlatko Kasumovic Interview - MH Porn on Film manifesto - Jack Stevenson Plus hundreds of sleazy film, tv and book reviews and much much more!
DEATHTRIPPING: The Cinema of Transgression, Jack Sargeant (1999); Paperback
1999 reprint, Creation Cinema Collection 272 pages, Used
Deathtripping is an illustrated history, account and critique of the "Cinema Of Transgression", providing a long-overdue and comprehensive documentation of this essential modern sub-cultural movement and its roots in the New York art/rock and underground film scenes. Excellent and thoroughly detailed book on cinema of transgression. A must read for fans of Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Lung Leg, etc. Brilliant resource for fans of the genre. Rare!
SAVAGE CINEMA (Hardcover) Rick Trader Witcombe (1975); Book
Books of this quality are like a drug for cinema fetishists of a certain disposition... of course it is'dated'... there are even a few morsels of arcane trivia/inaccuracies (the days when rumour held a firmer sway over the imagination) that might raise an eyebrow ... You only want it for the cover anyway, and that's fine. All the film books in this series (Ape: The Kingdom of Kong, Cut - The Unseen Cinema) are extremely sought after by the cool people, and that's all who need to know...... Rare.
BLOOD DUSTER - THE SHAPE OF DEATH TO COME (2005); DVD
Mucic/Live/Grindcore/Australian DVD (with bonus poster!)
This is a fairly hefty DVD, split into two sections. One section contains a feature length mix of live gigs dating back to the early 90's intersperced with the lads crazy touring antics...serious antics. Eating spew off the ground, throwing piss at one another, and consuming copius amounts of drugs are only the beginning. Considering much of the live music footage in this section is bootlegged, the quality of vision and sound is excelent. Also the choice of songs that have been included is a good cross-section of the Blood Duster era's.
The second section of the DVD is a full concert recorded at the Ding-Dong in Melbourne. This innitially might be a dissapointment to those who like their crisp, clear sounding live DVD's but once you can accept the sound this gig is pretty fucking great! It's also a good representation of what Blood Duster shows were like. I have also included with this, an original 1997 'Straight outta Northcote' LP promo poster!! Oh yeah.........
GRINDSTONE REDUX: The story of the 1980's US underground music network (2009); DVD
Music/Art/Culture/Documentary DVD
GRINDSTONE REDUX is the story of the underground music network of the 1980s?and how it transformed the music business. In response to an industry with a narrow spectrum of work being released and promoted, artists decided to self-publish and distribute before the internet made it commonplace. The advent of affordable recording equipment, synthesizers and photocopiers made it possible for musicians and bands to form a network by producing home recordings and exchanging them through the mail. For the first time, musicians were able to produce and distribute their work without a major record company. They formed their own record labels, produced independent magazines and began the first generation of radio shows devoted to independently-released music. The network was supported by small, independent record stores (which have all but disappeared) where musicians could place their work for sale, as well as discover other like-minded artists and 'zines.
FUCK...I'M DEAD - GORE GRIND THRASH ATTACK LIVE (2006); DVD
Music/Grindcore/Live, DVD + CD set
Brutal Melbourne Goregrind legends "Fuck...I'm dead" released this live recording bootleg DVD, 40 tracks, mainly recorded at the ARTHOUSE in Melbourne in 2006. Includes all their classic radio hits including.... Anal abattoir, Bury the cunt in shit, Burnt to an absolute crisp, Inject me with AIDS, Toilet tantilizers, Slowly raped with a chainsaw and Spray me with fecal matter. The CD contains the first 26 tracks from the DVD at the Arthouse, tidied up a bit...... Brilliant!
FLYIN' CUT SLEEVES (1993); DVD
Documentary/Gang violence DVD
FLYIN' CUT SLEEVES, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. The project grew out of the experiences of Rita Fecher, the film's co-producer, who taught in a South Bronx school in the late 1960's and early 1970's, became intimately involved with the gangs, their leaders, and the leaders' families and began to document their lives. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence. Neighborhood teenagers responded by organizing into street groups known to the members as "families", but labeled in the most alarming terms as violent gangs by the press. In fact, the "families" had a stabilizing effect, enabling the youths to cope with their troubled environment. The political climate at the time, movements of national liberation and such organizations as the Black Panthers and Young Lords Party influenced the young gang leaders to aspire to be more than warriors and to become, to some degree, a positive...
THE KILLING OF AMERICA (1981); DVD
Documentary/Shockumentary/Cult DVD
Documentary featuring footage of some of America's most well known murders and assassinations. It's filled with a lot of statistics and done with a very serious tone giving it a sort of newsworthy 'importance'. (If narrator Chuck Riley's voice got anymore resonate of stern you'd swear he'd have to be a robot.) Yet it offers no real solutions and after ninety minutes of almost complete carnage does it only briefly mention the issue of handgun registration. Thus despite it's pretensions it's really at home with the rest of it's mondo/exploitation brethren which were made simply to cash in on the shock value of it's content. Just the way we like it....
GRAPHIC NOVELS! MELBOURNE! (2014); DVD
Art/Documentary DVD
Graphic Novels! Melbourne! uncovers an energetic, diverse and productive comics culture on the streets of Melbourne. It investigates the life and work of four graphic novelists in particular: Pat Grant, Nicki Greenberg, Mandy Ord and Bruce Mutard. There are also interviews with four international comic book luminaries: Scott McCloud, Shaun Tan, Dylan Horrocks and Paul Gravett, all of whom lend their perspective to the development of comics culture in Melbourne. Graphic Novels! Melbourne! is the definitive introduction to the Melbourne comics explosion!
BENJAMIN SMOKE (2000); DVD
Cult/Documentary DVD
This highly unorthodox documentary follows the crooked path of Benjamin (no last name). He lives in a hidden neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia called "Cabbagetown." Drag-queen, speed-freak, all-around renegade, Benjamin left the straight (in every sense of the word) world behind a long time ago.
SHUT UP LITTLE MAN (2011); DVD
Cult/Documentary/Art DVD
In 1987 San Francisco, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Deprey began recording the squabbles of their stranger than fiction neighbors, the bigoted Raymond Huffman and the out and proud Peter Haskett. The recital of the pair's outrageous reality quickly took on a life of its own. This darkly funny documentary chronicles the history of Raymond and Peter, as well as what happened to former slackers Eddie and Mitch, who paint a picture of not only their outrageous neighbors, but also of San Francisco's Lower Haight neighborhood in the late 1980s. Interviews with others who were influenced by the recordings document their broad influence on a variety of artists, near and far.
THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS/THE PLUMBER Peter Weir Double Feature; DVD
Art/Australian/Cult DVD
Here on one disc are two apprentice-era offerings by Australia's most consistently successful international director, Peter Weir. On this disc are Weir's first offering as director, 1974's The Cars That Ate Paris, clocking in at a neat 84 minutes, and The Plumber from 1978, running at an even neater 74 minutes.
Cars is an exercise in surrealistic black comedy, about a small New South Wales country town which survives on carnage. The townsfolk arrange smashes of innocent folk driving by in their Holdens, Falcons or even Jaguars. If the drivers are dead, they're buried and forgotten. If they survive, they're quickly given power-drill lobotomies and treated quite fondly as the town's vegetables.
The Plumber is a very well structured thriller with elements of black comedy - it's very Pinteresque in that the suspense and drama come through its words and atmosphere, not through explicit action. Plumbing maintenance turns into psychological and class warfare. White-collar confronting blue-collar across a chasm of sinks and sewerage. The ending is both surprising but somehow inevitable in this little bathroom-sink drama. Excellent!
