Bad Girls Go to Hell. Cannibal Holocaust. Eve and the Handyman. Examining film culture's ongoing fascination with the low, bad, and sleazy faces of cinema, Sleaze Artists brings together film scholars with a shared interest in the questions posed by disreputable movies and suspect cinema. They explore the ineffable quality of "sleaze" in relation to a range of issues, including the production realities of low-budget exploitation pictures and the ever-shifting terrain of reception and taste.Writing about horror, exploitation, and sexploitation films, the contributors delve into topics ranging from the place of the "Aztec horror film" in debates about Mexican national identity to a cycle of 1960s films exploring homosexual desire in the military. One contributor charts the distribution saga of Mario Bava's 1972 film Lisa and the Devil through the highs and lows of art cinema, fringe television, grindhouse circuits, and connoisseur DVD markets. Another offers a new perspective on the work of Doris Wishman, the New York housewife turned sexploitation director of the 1960s who has become a cult figure in bad-cinema circles over the past decade. Other contributors analyze the relation between image and sound in sexploitation films and Italian horror movies, the advertising strategies adopted by sexploitation producers during the early 1960s, the relationship between art and trash in Todd Haynes's oeuvre, and the ways that the Friday the 13th series complicates the distinction between "trash" and "legitimate" cinema. The volume closes with an essay on why cinephiles love to hate the movies.
Contributors. Harry M. Benshoff, Kay Dickinson, Chris Fujiwara, Colin Gunckel, Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Matt Hills, Chuck Kleinhans, Tania Modleski, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Greg Taylor
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part 1: Sleazy Histories
Pandering to the "Goon Trade": Framing the Sexploitation Audience through Advertising / Eric Schaefer 19
Women's Cinema as Counterphobic Cinema: Doris Wishman as the Last Auteur / Tania Modleski 47
Representing (Repressed) Homosexuality in the Pre-Stonewall Hollywood Homo-Military Film / Harry M. Benshoff 71
Pornography and Documentary: Narrating the Alibi / Chuck Kleinhans 96
El signo de la muerte and the Birth of a Genre: Origins and Anatomy of the Aztec Horror Film 121
Art House or House of Exorcism? The Changing Distribution and Reception Contexts of Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil / Kevin Heffernan 144
Part 2: Sleazy Afterlives
Troubling Synthesis: The Horrific Sights and Incompatible Sounds of Video Nasties / Kay Dickinson 167
The Sleazy Pedigree of Todd Haynes / Joan Hawkins 189
Para-Paracinema: The Friday the 13th Film Series as Other to Trash and Legitimate Film Cultures / Matt Hills 219
Boredom, Spasmo, and the Italian System / Chris Fujiwara 240
Pure Quidditas or Geek Chic? Cultism as Discernment / Greg Taylor 259
Movies: A Century of Failure / Jeffrey Sconce 273
Selected Bibliography 311
Contributors 321
Index 325