TheThe RevengeRevenge StrikesStrikes BacBackk I should write an article, for a zine preferably, called “What to Expect When Your Favorite Podcast Signs Off” The end would be - Don’t Worry, it’ll be back. The good fellows at The Slums of Film History have dropped Season 6, and so far it’s awesome! The second episode featured a shout-out to this very pub- lication!!!!! It was awesome, and i really like those guys, so it’s great to have them back and to start to re-listen and write about all the amazing episodes they’ve done. MY faves that have gone and come back, includ- ing the very real possible loss of You Must Remember This, isn’t a perfect record, Bay Area Mystery Club and Thinking Sideway are still the undiscovered Ceolo- canths of my podcast world, but they’ll end up on a line someday! I’m only talking about Season Three. In short, new job leaves little time for writing or layout, and I’m behind on Ceinquest viewing. Sigh. In a few issues, I’ll have a look at Season Four and another chunk of our interview! Also, I’m the NASFIC Editor Guest of Honor next year!!! I’m so excited! There’s going to be a lot of stuff leading up, and I’m hoping for a Drink Tank and a Journey Planet meet up at the con. I’ll also be putting out multiple issues as a way to get y’all into a froth about going! In October, my Gramma died. It wasn’t sudden, but it was sad.. Her funera wasl yesterday. The Boys and Vanessa got to meet a bunch of the Mexican side of my family. The boys were VERY shy, which isn’t unusual, when one of my Aunts asked why he was so shy, my Uncle said “Well, I bet he’s never seen this many brown people before!” We cried, we did the stand-up/sit-down Catho- lic thing, and neither boy jumped into the baptism basin. Then I grilled a steak. We all grieve in our own way... The Slums of Film History earned its place in my heart because of episodes like this one. An in- credibly interesting topic, explored thoroughly, with a comedic take. This is the best of the Season de- buts, but more importantly, it’s the best examination of how the LGBT Psychopath concept has evolved. It’s also not an overly complicated episode. It simply covers the topic, does it well, and has some great moments. There is also a clip from KTVU they include about when the filmCruising was filming in SF! I don’t remember seeing this clip, though I watched the 5 o’clock news every day, but I remember some of the commotion. That, by the way, is the best section. The way Slate looks at Cruising totally reminded me of what a huge deal it was, especially within the Bay Area LGBT community, which other than perhaps Fire Island was the geographic center of Queer Consciousness in the US. . It was a turning point, and the film itself was pretty danged bad. That’s not true; it just wasn’t anything special., and the messaging wasn’t a positive at all. I think this is where I first heard the word ‘Queersploitation’ used. The way they cover Silence of the Lambs was impressive too. There’s a film that really made the pointed decision to play with the LGBT psychopath, take the content of the book it was based on, and then play with it in a way that brought it further over the top. It was a pretty powerful portrayal at the time, and when I re-watched it recently, I discovered that it 100% held up, even with the problematic por- trayal of Buffalo Bob. LGBT And yeah, it’s REALLY problematic. And that’s the thing about LGBT psycho- paths, is that there ARE psychopaths in the LGBT Psychopaths community. Names like Dahmer and Gacy come to mind when you hear the phrase, no? But there are also psychopaths among Straight America, and non-binary, and on and on. There is no bounding box for psychopathy, and I would doubt that the rates are any higher among the LGBT community than any other group. The thing is, in fiction, too frequently the addition of a gay character in a genre piece is to allow for that psychopath to exist. When a film likeMonster comes out, based on a literal LGBT Psychopath from real life, it’s a reinforcement tool for the attitudes of a lot of people who see homosexuality itself as a sort of criminal psychosis (and the DSM-5 chnged the official psychological definition for it!) so it’s easy to take in. When you compare the story ofMonster to that of an equivilent straight female serial killer, and there are a couple, you can see that the choice of Aileen Wornous was the easy one that gets mentioned, even in those times when serial killer movies weren’t exactly burning up the screen. Slate takes a good point to give the important impression, that it’s still OK to have an LGBT Psychopath, so long as the LGBTness of the villain isn’t the reason they’re the psychopath. There has to be more, it takes work now. It’s not just the erasure of the expectation that gays are abnormal, and therefore dangerous, it’s the idea that a character can not be a psychopath with no reason except they’re gay. Layering is key, and while LGBT psychopaths have fallen out of favor, they are still here, just done better.

Hey, another gross one from Tom! That’s ac- tually not entirely true, though parasites and some of the discussion certainly falls into the realm of the gross, but it’s actually an incredibly informa- tive and fun episode, and one of the ones that I’ve gone back to more than once. Here, Tom does something really smart – he ties the films he discusses in with actual parasites, making it more a list of topics that fit in with the real world terror-inducing parasites. It’s actually pretty amazing how many real world things inform, or at least tie in to, real parasites. The terrible, yet kinda neat, William Castle film The Tingler, is discussed fully, and with good reason. The film is possibly the best William Castle gimmick (the Tingler, which is a sort of seat-based joy-buzzer), and Vincent Price is actually pretty good in it! Tom notes there are actual parasites that attach to the nervous systems of various animals that take control as they eat it from the inside. The way Tom talks about The Tingler is an excellent example of why I love this podcast so damn much! You see that image over there? The one of what you think is a fish that other fish swallowed? Nope, it’s a parasite that actually takes over the fishes tongue and lives as its tongue, eating what- ever it can that the bigger fish eats. Tom covers it, and it sent me down a research rabbit hole. Yes, this was part of the idea for Alien. There’s discussion of some other great films, Bug, a very good little frightflick, and a couple of Croenenberg classics, but mostly, it’s The Tingler that impressed me! A really good episode, and the dis- cussion of the Jewell wasp, and the story that Slate tells about a grasshopper, urination, and a mess of worms, are all highlights.

Parasites OK, let’s start with me making a startling confession – I love dolls. I do, and not just action figures, which are also dolls. I played with all sorts of dolls, though I never had a My Buddy doll. I had a Cab- bage Patch Kid, name of Billy Arnie, and a Barbie or two, and I had Gi Joes and many random figures and dolls from all over the place! So, it would make sense that I LOVE Devil Doll movies. You see, I think they’re awesome, so when they turn awe- some, aren’t they expressing my personal darkside? Wait… I don’t have a dark side. Anyhow, Slate takes this one all the way to awesome, and of course, he adds a delightful personal story of a creepy-ass doll! I did get the feeling that there were a lot of films missed from the Silent Film period. I would imagine that J. Stuart Blackton and Georg Melies would have done something in that area, but I haven’t found it. It would make sense as a lot of the early films featured things like dolls coming to life. I must do more research!!! This episode is a great intro to the idea of Devil Dolls, and as a Slate episode, it digs in an interesting way while sticking with a more literal timeline. This feels a lot like the idea that Slate attaches to topics like LGBT Psychopaths and various others. What’s so great is how Slate chooses so many great films and looks at them with a suitable amount of skepticism and reverence. The look at Puppetmaster and Magic is great. The best part of that is that Tom mentions that the trailer for Magic scared the ever-loving shit out of him. You and me both, Tom. You and me both. Seriously, this was a major fear-inducer for me, but at least it didn’t turn me off from Dolls overall. The way that he looks at the doll Annabel is really inter- esting, and where I get to name-drop! My dad knew the Warrens, the famed paranormal researchers/schysters, a little bit. I met them a few times, and Annabel is the most important of all their discoveries. The idea is that the Ragedy-Ann doll is possessed. Now, I asked Lorraine Devil Warren about Annabel once, and she said that it was easily the most evil item she’d ever encountered. It’s creepy, and maybe it’s just that it’s had so much attached to it in the mythos of Paranormal investigation. Dolls Still, if you look at the photos, they do give a bit of a shiver. Tom had the best stuff in Season 3! The Fun with Nazis episode might be the most fun of all of them. It’s all about the idea of Nazis as comedic element as op- posed to Nazis as the big baddies of the 20th Century. And it’s exceptionally funny! The look at the actual history, particularly how it relates to the Nazi view of film and Hollywood. Yeah, Hitler loved movies, understood their power to influ- ence, and worked to get inroads into Hollywood itself. There’s a lot out there about the influence of Nazis on Hollywood, most interestingly in The Collaboration: Hol- lywood’s Pact with Hitler. It’s much worthy of your time. The Nazis are great shorthand for evil. That’s a clear point, and the way that Hollywood has used the imagery of Nazis is borderline fetishistic. It’s been downright fetishized in The Spirit, where I must admit, Scarlett Johannsen in a Nazi uniform might have been the hottest thing I ever saw, which I think speaks to the Third Reich’s understanding of cut when it comes to uniforms. The Great Dictator is one of the finest films ever made. It’s got moments of incredible impact, some up- roarious comedy, and some of that trademark schmaltz that Chaplin always managed. The film was beloved in Germany, where it was re-cut to make it show Hitler in a good light! That is a bit they use in the filmIron Sky to great effect! There is one area where it’s a little light on cov- erage. While Tom mentions that Der Fuhrer’s Face and a couple of other of the World War II cartoons, it’s a bit light on the ones that were written by Dr. Seuss, ani- Fun mated by Chuck Jones, and voiced by Mel Blanc. The Private Snafu films were far more about the Japanese war, and grossly stereotypical, but were shown to near- With ly every GI and became so very influential. You can see much of what became the mainstream of Underground Nazis! animation in the 1960s and onwards. Films like Iron Sky are an important aspect of what makes Fun with Nazis possible. It’s a genre comedy, which makes it OK to play with There’s a sense that it’s possible to play with darker tropes and concepts, which makes it all a little easier to digest. The Producers was a really important film in a lot of ways, but it’s also one of the fw points where you could see a filmmaker come of age. Mel Brooks was obviously about to break big, and the work he did on The Producers showed not the direction he was going to end up going, but how he would construct his films, because his movies, while silly, are brilliantly built, even when they fail. The way he covers stuff like Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S., and Bedknobs and Broomsticks is great, and how had I forgotten that Bedknobs & Broomsticks was about WWII?, but really, it’s how he covers something that was completely new to me that made the biggest hit – Heil Honey, I’m Home. Now, I had never heard of it, but it was a TV show, in the mode of The Honeymooners, but with Hitler and Eva as the main characters. They play a short segment, and it was REALLY bad. I mean REALLLLLLLY bad. It totally felt like an SNL sketch, but they were trying to make it a series. It only made it one episode, which seems like it went too long at that. It’s terrible, not only in the conceptual stage, but the delivery of the lines is garbage, even when you take it as an homage to The Honeymooners! Pure, straight, uncut garbag! . It’s a really good episode, and Slate sorta plays the role of sly-commenter, which is a really strong role for him! son thatisincredibly strong. Rural America. with deal that films the the of idea the with dealing seriously see, he’s not making fun of the realm of Hicksploitation, buthe’s so clear here, and the point of view is exceptionally clear. You knows whythe concept of hisepisode. itslotsinwith This is he film, but particular a about lot a know not Yeah,might he ents things with total and completely clarity of presentation. another wrestler. person ever tothrowa judotoss, mewith andPepper Martin, tures Judo Gene LeBell, a personal fave and the second coolest Don Baker. It’s a good performance, but it’s also a film that fea- the manIfeel couldbethePatron SaintofHicksploitation, Joe ly better than you’d expect. It’s of a Sheriff played the story by Buford Pusser, atruestory, isincredible, andthemovie’s actual- of es over isWalkingfilm! story fascinating The Talla is ,which 1970s andearly 80sintoperspective. The onethingSlategloss the best Peckinpah films, really puts the entire explosion of the movies of the 1970s.important The look at most the isode.flick,great of It’s visceral, incredibly a one and film the at look best single focusing onExploitationflix. Rural life wasafavorite subjectfor early actualities, butthey’re Bumpkinidea is great,at theCountry pretty and starts early. takes a detailed look within a chronological frame. The look pleasantly surprised by how much there washere! Slatealways good thingtoadd. whichwasn’t as fuck’ apology country really necessary. Itwas a a ‘Yeah,give we’reSlate end,both Tom and the at South,and feels a little more natural here because these two are from the stereotypical talkin’. Which was to be expected, but it actually

I love thisepisodeand it works amazingly well ina sea- My favorite thingaboutSlateepisodes is thathepres- the Probably are awesome! about talks Slate films The Now, this ain’t a subject I understood goin’ in, and I was Also, Tom wrote a They open with thetwo of them doing the backwoods Smokey & The Banditplay asakid. Deliverance is contained in this ep- Straw Dogs, one of - Hicksploitation Blaxploitation Slate sings Old Man River. That’s a Highlight of the ENTIRE series! This is a two-parter, and one where Tom gets very much Slate! They break it into the Beginning of Film to 1973, and then 1973 onwards. It’s just about the perfect break-point. The idea of Blaxploitation is that in the late 1960s, large strides forward had been taken by African-American filmmakers, who had not been given real opportunities in the Hollywood system. There had always been Black cinema, starting with Race films and stars like Bert Williams having made some films that made money within the community. These films were actually fairly ahead of the mainstream for the time, but often were also about taking films that had done well with white audiences and re-imagining them for the African-American audience. By the late 1960s, a few black filmmakers had managed to begin making exploitation films geared towards African-American audiences. The films they were making tended to be lower-budget, with genre films being the rule. These films were often violent, featured anti-heroes more often than not, and were heavy with sex and drugs. This was an interesting mix, and filmmakers like Gordan Parks and Melvin Van Peebles were given great chances and put out very interesting movies. There were several good movies that could be seen as Blaxploitation, including Cotton Comes to Harlem and The Black Angels. None had the deep impact that the two big ones of 1971 managed. The film that kicked it into high gear was Sweet Sweetback’s BaadAsssss Song. Melvin Van Peebles directed and starred in the film which was very much a film that had sex and drugs at the forefront. Tom does a good job talking about it, and credits it with being the most important starting point. I’d tend to agree, but the biggest one to break the ground was Shaft. Now, what I didn’t know, but should have, was the Shaft was a major studio picture, but just about every Blaxploitation film was informed by it. Richard Roundtree was amazing, just flat-out amazing, and you can see the influence on just about every film released after 1972, and things like Slaughter, Trouble Man, and Black Eye certainly use the attitude, though Slaughter might have been made prior to the release. Shaft was a huge hit, and not only with black audiences. It was a major cross-over hit, making 12 million bucks in first release, and running in some areas for as long as two years. Gordon Parks is really one of the most interesting humans of the 20th Century. He wrote The Learning Tree, directed and wrote the film adaptation, was a legendary pho- tographer, and composer, and was all-around incredible. Tom pays extra attention to the music of the early films, notably Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, who both pretty much defined the sound of Blaxploitation. I did not know that Earth, Wind, and Fire had done the music for Sweet Sweetback, which really got me listening to it. I would argue that the films helped pave the way for the evolution of Funk (this was the time before the work of George Clinton had fully matured, for example) into the dominant form of R&B for the later 70s. The focus of the second part of the dos-parter is The Big Three: Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly. That’s a good way to break it up, and I was glad to see that he also gave both Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones) and Pam Grier (Coffy, Black Mama, White Mama) the credit they deserve. The women in Blaxploitation films where men were the stars tended to be either prostitutes or women in peril, though when they would give women leads, they were far more representative of a new form of female empowerment. They cover the horror films of Blaxploitation, which was an important part of the story, and it’s important to note exactly how much genre played a role in the ability to make cheaper movies. Audiences in the early 70s had lower expectations of production values for SciFi, horror, and fantasy, so it’s no wonder that’s where a lot of emphasis was placed. There’s no way they could have covered everything in the Blaxploitation space. There are some that felt like they were missed because they’re kinda hard to put into a single mold. Prison films were popular in Blaxploitation (Black Mam, White Mama, Peniteniary), but that’s to be expected. The cross-over between Mar- tial Arts films and Blaxploitation gets touched on, but the reasons for that (ie. The Shaw Brothers distributing films in the US and playing many of the theatres that also featured Blaxploitation flix) didn’t really get brought up. Then there’s Dolemite. I got to meet and chat with Rudy Ray Moore at Cinequest in 2003 or so. He was awesome! Still dirty as fuck, but he 100% had the kind of charisma and charm you need to carry a film. Now the Dolemite movies are not technically good, though there is a charm to them. The movies were really important in bringing in a newer generation of Blaxploitation fans, and in the end made a good bit of money. What Dolemite represented was the ability of an indy filmmaker to go deep and make the catch. Moore wasn’t just an indy, he was super-indy, outsider almost, and he was awesome at his thing. It wasn’t great cinema, and folks in 1993 were saying the same thing about Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez. That’s actually an awe- some comparison, because while both Clerks and El Mariachi were much more technically proficient, neither had the sort of charm behind them, and really while both of those films became franchises, none had the depth of impact on the audiences of the day that Dolemite did. Tom talks about the 90s generation of Black filmmakers like Spike Lee, John Singleton, and The Hughes Brother. He notes that they all sorta left Blaxploitation behind and would always note folks like Scorcese or Truffaut as their influences, leaving out Gordon Parks and the various others who defined the Blaxploitation genre. Who Tom didn’t mention was Rusty Condief, who WAS making films that consciously referenced Blaxploitation films. In fact, his Tales from the Hood would 100% qualify as being within the Blaxploi- tation horror genre. It was an AWESOME movie too, and should be considered! Films like Pootie Tang, Undercover Brother (which I think is highly underrated), and Black Dynamite get good attention, but it was too early for the resurgence of the African-American Horror and Sci-Fi film that is happening. A REALLY good two-parter that I really think defines the 3rd season nearly as well as Fun with Na- zis and Parasites! This one got me. I mean, all killin’ gets me, which explains my fascination with the whole True Crime thing. Kids who kill is like “WHOA!” to me, and always has been, not just since I got to be a Dad. So, this is an interesting episode, and a darkly funny one, but it also kinda covers pretty shallow ground. The only issue I had with it? The cut-ins. They use these for some episodes, and usually it doesn’t bug me, but the “Give Me Back My Shoes!” yelling was a bit much somehow. Sigh. That said, the episode is a good, smart episode, and one that starts with the real world kids who killed. There are a lot of them and the brief look was a nice set-up! It was then the time to get into the films, and that’s when it got good! You see, films like The Bad Seed and Who Can Kill A Child are well-worth looking into, though they both take a completely wrong-headed look at the genius piece of cine- ma that is The Good Son! I mean seriously, it’s a GREAT film! It’s wonderful and worthy of deep-viewing! The look at The Exorcist is absolutely phenomenal! I usually look at it as a film that is digging into the meaning of religion and faith as it can be tested in the outer world, but looking at it as a Kid that Kills film, that is it a story of a child going through with their darkest thoughts, even if enabled by the Devil (Hail Satan!) that brings a new sort of clarity to the film. In that first light, it’s a psychological thriller; this way it’s a straight-up monster horror film. The Omen, a film I always kinda hated, but have to admit had a great ending, super-twisty. It actually ties the Presidency to the idea of satanic influence. One thing Tom didn’t mention was how the Satanic Panic was so greatly Kids helped by kids who kill movies, as well as the rise of the role-playing game. Pretty much every film after the 1980s either used the satanic concept to justify the murdering That child, either literally or in a kinda-sorta hand-wavery, which is where we get Children of the Corn and the like, or we might get the Humanity is Naturally Evil and Without Adult Influences Kids Are the Worst! Like Lord of the Flies. These KILL!!! two paths, with the prior being the one that’s much more frequent, seem to be where the sub-sub-genre heads. I love Russ Meyers. I always have. We have similar tastes… His films are pretty great, so much more impressive than you’d think. He had a great eye, and when he was given a bigger budget, he made a movie that was mondo out there. He made his mark with films that emphasized large breasts and violence. He went through several phases, going into the Roughie genre, then to road trips movies, then something along the lines of the Naturalist films. There’s a lot to like, and to criticisize as well. The Filmmaker Profile episodes that Slate does are all awesome! I’m of the opinion that they would make a fine book on their own. Part of it goes beyond the amount of information on the filmmaker and into the impact of the individual. There’s no ques- tion as to the impact of Russ Meyer, but more impor- tantly, Slate gets across the importance of Russ Meter to film fans. That’s important, because the impact that Russ had on the industry was a strong ripple, but the impact on film nerds was gigantic. He basically defined a kind of film that would make genre films something that is not actually bound to the traditional form of cinematic quality. Yes, Ed Wood was around prior, and so was Corman, but it was really Meyer that brought it all about. The entire world of Psychotronic film fandom comes from the works of Russ Meyer, in my view at least. The look at the films is good, but even bet- ter, is Slate’s way of presenting them. I love Russ’ films, at least Faster Pussy, Kill, Kill, Lorna, and The Immoral Mr. Russ Meyer T’s. He gives him the credit he is due, which is actually pretty rare, and the discussion about the collaboration between Russ and Roger Ebert is excellent! Boob Dynasty A wonderful episode and one that y’all should listen to! Another icky one from Slate, though this time, it’s not too icky. Let me start with an amazing doc y’all need to watch – Sex(Ed). https://firstrunfeatures.com/sexed.html. They cover how Sex Ed films have been shown and used over the decades, and a LOT of them are about VD in various forms. There were A BUNCH of films about Venereal diseases made for the Army during World War II. They mention a couple, but there were ones created specifically for Black soldiers as well. Watching that doc you’ll get a taste, but so many of these are available on YouTube and it’s funny aesthetically now, but it’s kinda terrifying in a view of morality and science. Slate starts off with a look at real venereal diseases, which is a nice touch, as he covers it with a smart eye... er, mouth. He’s a funny guy, and he makes the seriously gross, and sometimes prob- lematic, into comedy gold... or at least silver. The two filmsDamaged Goods from 1937 and 1964, though I believe they’re both at least influenced by an amazing, and lost, silent from 1914 called Damaged Goods that was about being kinda chill before marriage and the devastating power of venereal disease. I’ve seen the play that’s based on the script, and when it’s put on these days, it’s done for camp. The 1937 film is pretty bru- tal, and it has that relatively-early Talkie acting that I am not a fan of. I’ve never seen the 1964 one, but it’s apparently basically the same film with slightly better acting. If you’ve ever seen the VD films of the 1970s, you’re lucky. This was the only period where the quality of filmmaker was near- ly up to cinematic par. There were hundreds of them, and you saw films in the 1970s in the mainstream tackling things like herpes and the Clap. Often, these were used the same way that a rape in a backstory is used today; it is a marker of past tragedy that is easily understandable. I had forgotten about the VD angle in Madonna’s Truth or Dare. Slate apparently loves that film, which makes sense, be- cause it’s a great document of a great period of a great artist’s Venereal career! A curse on you that think it wrong! WAtch it, and then watch any other music documentary of the 1980s with the excep- Disease tion of the Fall of Western Civilization or Stop Making Sense. None of them hold up to cinematic scrutiny like Truth or Dare! They cover Philadelphia, which is the first time that Tom Hanks 100% lost me. I mean, he’s good in it, but my God how did such a great actor become such a schmaltz dispensory? The fact that this got so much attention from the critics, and especially the Oscars, is a big deal, because it showed that AIDS wasn’t a niche topic, or just a ribbon that the more 80s-woke wore, but a topic that could be tackled. Also, the film is really what pushed Antonio Banderas into the spotlight! That’s a good thing! The film that is my favorite on the list isEasy A. It’s a vehicle for Emma Stone, and it’s really good! While not entirely about VD, it plays an important role. It’s a GREAT film, with a super-smart script and it’s The Scarlet Letter for a new generation. The way that VD is treated as an easy way to confirm brutal truths is really smart. It also deals with how we look at girls in school, and how VD is as much a mark worn by the infected as the A on Hester Prynn’s smock. I loved the film, I’ve seen it a dozen times, and the performances of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are a delight! I wrote a VD film script. It was called 5 Suicides, and it used a small mountain town where five kids killed themselves and it’s the job of a young newspaper reporter to figure out why. Turns out they had all given each other HIV and since it was set in 1989, that was still seen as a death sentence. The script dealt with many of the ideas of Easy A, as well as The Last Days of Disco. It’s more about how a young reporter is trying to get her head around the idea that when her high school boyfriend killed himself, she looked for the easy answer, which she assumed was herself, instead of digging to any serious degree. Someday I’ll make it, and maybe they’ll talk about it on the sequel podcast episode! It’s a heavy one, and one that leans heav- ily on a few key films that are truly important to the concept. The fact is rape revenge is a long-standing genre, though in the old days, it was usually the man who begins courting the woman afterwards that takes the revenge. There is a lot of true crime in that concept, perhaps most famously in the story of Stan- ford White and Harry Thaw. This has been tackled in a lot of movies, and in real life, it led to the first rushed-into-production True Crime exploitation film, The Rooftop Murder. The topic has been tackled in everythign from Ragtime to The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing. There are a lot of actual rape revenge stories, I believe the film Extremities was one of them, though that may not have been rape, but a mugging. Still, it was easily Farah Faw- cett’s best acting role, and one of the better revenge films of the 1980s.

They talk a lot about I Spit On Your Grave, and rightfully so. It’s an intense film. Set aside the more troubling exploitative aspects, and it’s a perfectly serviceable little revenge picture. Put it alongside films like Death Wish and you can see there’s a place for it. The filmmaking is fairly weak, though there are far worse, but it’s a heavy heavy heavy film. Ebert hated it, felt that the rape scenes were overly long and oppressive, and I don’t disagree, but there is a message of empowerment, and in- Rape Revenge credible violence. That’s the story I take from it, as much as this is the most brutal film I’d ever seen!

The film that I had never heard of was A Gun For Jennifer, which sounds like it needs a deep-dive into the making. A total production that could have an entire podcast created around it. Looking at the description, it’s, as Slate would say, bonkers. There’s a documentary called In The Belly of the Beast which details the sex work background of the film, along with the embezzlement that happened in the production. I always like stories like that. Of course, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is discussed, and quite well. I actually love the American version for the use of audio, a brilliant move to improve the pacing, and one of the best shot films of its kind ever made. The Swedish one is all about the acting, and how they build things so wisely, though a bit slowly. Also, in the American version, you’ve got that wonderful performance by the exceptional Robin Wright. The thing about the two films, and I think they hit on this, is that the Swedish one is a Swedish Political Conspiracy film, while the American one is more about Lizbeth Salander. I would argue that the Swedish one is about the case of the jour- nalist dealing with the matter he’s been assigned to, while the American is the straight Rape Revenge story with the rest tacked on. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the difference is highlighted by the acting. One thing I walked away from this episode with was the idea that Rape Revenge films are basically a way for us who watch them to take away an idea that the victims of sexual violence can rise up and take matters into their own hands. That’s a difficult matter, largely because there’s more than just the attacker standing between a victim of rape and revenge; the way the entire system is almost completely designed to keep those who are assaulted not only from taking revenge, but even delivering any sort of justice. That makes the idea of a Rape Re- venge film even more fantastical, but at the same time, I see the value. They re-made I Spit On Your Grave, and there are sequels that are related to the originals, and also kinda separate. It’s weird. They’re vetter filmmaking, but they’re just as oppressive, because they were made with the post-Saw/Hostel concept of what Cinematic violence is. One thing they cover a touch is the way these films were sold as sexy. The poster for I Spit On Your Grave, both of them actually, are mostly about ass. Ms. 45, a film I know I’ve seen, has a poster than is basically a Noir-es- que pin-up shot from behind showing off a shapely set of gams. A Gun for Jennifer is sold with a naked woman with her forearm across her breasts. It certainly backs-up Eberts assertion that I Spit On Your Grave attracted guys who were certainly participating in a celebration of rape culture. Over all, a difficult episode, but one that is undoubtedly worth every minute! Street Gangs

YES!!! I’d been waiting for a thorough shake-down on The Warriors, and this is one of the most fun out there. Tom seems to love it as much as I do, and I had 0 idea about the making of the film, or the way it was received by critics and audiences. That is one of the great things about Slums, it gives me that context when I often have none whatsoever. If you’ve never watched The Warriors, do it now. It’s a beautifully constructed film and one that plays with viewer exploitation while also making sure that its as exploitation flick. Directed by Walter Hill, it’s an amaz- ing film that combines all the elements of the 1970s. It’s an adventure film. It’s a gritty crime drama. It’s a road movie. It’s just about everything you could want. It has post-apocolyptic elements, which is shocking because it’s also incredibly realistic, portraying New York (mostly Brooklyn and The Bronx) as they really were, in some ways far more realistic than we would care to think of our most major city. Hill’s eye is amazing, and the cinematog- raphy is not New York cinematography; but Polish or Hungarian cinematography. There’s an eye towards mood and texture. This is not the New York of today, but of a yesterday that somehow was both fantasy and reality. It certainly seems to be taking place in a world after the fall, and the fall the audiences of 1979 would have expected wasn’t what it was. Many of the locations they visit have since been gentrified. Sigh. I had seen The Wanderers, a Philip Kaufman picture, that was pretty good, a nice vehicle for Karen Allen in the late 1970s, but ultimately, it can’t hold a candle to The Warriors, and they were in something of a battle to see which of them would get out first. I don’t think of it as a competing film, but more as a film that plays in a similiar sandbox. The fact is Kaufman was more interested in the setting, while Hill was far more interested in the idea of the gang. It’s why it’s stood the test of time. The look at Death Wish 3, a film that is actually pretty decent considering, is really interesting. The shooting of The Giggler by Charles Bronson becomes a running thing in the episode, but most importantly, it’s an important film because it attempts to show how communities that can’t stand up to their oppressors will cheer a savior, but at the same time it’s incredibly problematic in the way that it presents Charles Bronson as a hero when he’s a vigilante who is WAY over-the-top in his violence in a community that is not his own. It’s a play on the Western trope of a New Sheriff Comes to Town (or perhaps more accurately, stuff like Tom Mix’s Hell’s Hinges) but it’s also way troubling. At nearly the same time, we had the Subway Vigilante Bernard Goetz, and the various form of ultra-violent reaction that we were seeing on the news. And of course, there were the Crips and the Bloods. It’s nearly impossible to state how films like Colors and Boys in the Hood played with the idea of gangs of various types. That’s a part of both the Black FIlmmaking Rennaisance of the 1980s and 90s, but also it feeds a bit away from the Blaxploitation ideas, which did have Street Gang elements in many of the films. WHat I do love is how they deal with the ethnic inclusivity of the gang, and Tom calls it out perfectly. It’s always a double-edged sword. In The Warriors, there’s representation of LGBT people, but at the same time, it’s as a part of a street gang called the Lizzies. There’s a mix of African-American, Hispanic, and White gang members, but they’re also all gang members, and the White guys seem to always be the leaders. You have the best speech in the history of film (Can You Dig It???) spoken by an African-AMerican, but he’s speaking out against the cops, that they could easily over-run the city with crime. It’s a major issue that is probably bigger than an exploitation film can tackle. And this is where Slums of Film History works in a fascinatingf way. It’s not about Street Gangs, it’s about Street Gang movies, but at the same time, it examines how those movies exist in a world where there are actual street gangs! That’s the combination that works best in the world of Podcasting, because it can explore what is the reality of the world of thw worlds that filmmakers create. This is a solid episode, but ultimately, it made me super-happy to hear Tom talk about The Warriors!