Stefan Jaworzyn - Shock

[dem bones]

Stefan Jaworzyn (ed.) - Shock: The Essential Guide To Exploitation Cinema (Titan, Sept. 1996)

"The immortal Mickey Hargitay in Bloody Pit of Horror"

NO AREA IS TOO OBSCURE, NO BUDGET TOO LOW, NO SUBJECT TOO GROSS FOR THE ATTENTION OF 'SHOCK

In this all-new collection you will find idiosyncratic musings on the world of exploitation cinema, including:
Lucas Balbo on legendary Italian schlockmeister Massimo Pupillo
Anne Billson on the guilty pleasures of the Art Movie
Ramsey Campbell examines schoolgirl chastisement
Colin Davis discovers necrophilia in the cinema
Jane Giles on surrealist French film-maker, Jean Painleve
David Kerekes on cable movie madness
David McGillivray confesses to
Kim Newman on McCarthyism and the Red Menace
Jack Stevenson reconsiders the infamous Freaks
Damon Wise gets to grips with Traci Lords
Plus sixties satire The President's Analyst!, zero budget movie-making with Gary Graver! a guided tour of American sleaze cinemas! and much more..
Plus rare photos, front-of-house stills, lobby' cards and poster's.
WARNING: CONTAINS ADULT MATERIAL

Ain't that the truth?

"He chose his weapon ...
He selected his victims ...
He picked his nose ...
He changed into a girl

Carl Zschering is The Nostril Picker!

That's just from the introduction, disingenuously titled New Age Aquarian Meditations. Take a few squelchy steps into the book proper and you'll find all manner of weirdness, studied or otherwise, never less than entertaining and with some serious points to make along the way. Kim Newman is on excellent form with Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...?, a thoughtful examination of the American movie industry during the height of Cold War paranoia, paying particular attention to the insincere patriotic I Married A Communist drivel peddled by directors keen to keep senator McCarthy off their actors and writers' backs. Newman argues, convincingly, that the real spearhead of the Reds Under The Beds hysteria wasn't McCarthy, something of a short-lived if fearsome phenomena, but life-long anti-Pinko J. Edgar Hoover. David Taylor's Don't Overact With Your Fingers! turns out to be eleven fun-packed pages on the making of Blood On Satan's Claw) and for those with a fancy for rumpy pumpy with the dead, look no further than Colin Davis and A Coffin Named Desire, a sordid history of post mortem sex in the cinema. Ramsey Campbell reveals something more than a working knowledge of the British spanking films of the 'seventies which he compares, in terms of mild titillation and (intentional?) comedy to the Carry On's, so expect a season at the Barbican any time soon. Finally, for now, David "I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight" McGillivray - a man who clearly relishes a challenge - reminisces on his experiences working as a screenwriter for, among others, Pete "Schizo - When the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing!" Walker. A fitting companion to Jaworzyn's Shock Xpress 1 (Titan, 1991)

[Johnlprobert]

This was meant to be 'Shock Express Volume 3' after two previous volumes but a change of publisher meant it came out as just 'Shock'. Stefan Jaworzyn always struck me as rather an angry sort of fellow and his acidic diatrbies veered between the brilliant and the hilariously hysterical. The Blood on Satan's Claw article in this book is brilliant, as is David McGillivray's third part of his UK sleaze career reminscences.

[dem bones]

Don't have Shock Xpress 2, but i see Shock as a template for how the Paperback Fanatic book will look once some astute publisher catches up with what Justin's doing: quality articles and interviews given the breathing space they need, plenty of illustrative material and a full colour centre-spread devoted to pulp paperback cover heaven and hell. Replace 'Exploitation Cinema' with 'Brit Pulp' and you're there!

To be honest, he's clearly a man of vision, but i've not found Mr. Jaworzyn's contribution the most interesting aspect of the Shock's, though that's probably down to him playing an unobtrusive role (except where the captions are concerned, and he's pretty hit and miss), but he certainly gets the best out of his contributors.

[pulphack]

as it happens, they're all the same publisher but it was to do with distributors and creeping censorship, as i think the unpronounceable editor rails about.

all three books are great, and he does what an editor does best - keep his head down and marshal the troops. they all have great pieces in them and are worth searching out.

but yes, dem, i think you're on to something. mr j's misanthropy is a little wearing - and if you really feel that way, then why bother editing a book that isn't going to pay much? - and a trifle forced. he used to live (maybe still does) up north chingford way, near the edge of the golf course and epping forest. very nice, and how you could be miserable in those semi-rural surroundings is beyond me. it does strike as abit of a pose, as he was also part of that whole pseudo-nihilist everything-is-shit crossover scene between psychedelia, lo-fi and industrial that was flourishing then (and also gave us the bloke who did 'Nightmare Of Ecstasy', thus reinforcing the trash-culture obsessions of that scene).

mr j was guitarist in duo skullflower - him and a drummer, who used to collaborate with loads of others on various formats, limited editions, etc, in a basically improv scene. i only have the one cd, but it's a gem - sludgy instrumental black sabbath riffing that breaks into freakout sections, overlaind with clouds of feedback and noise. an acquired taste, perhaps, but excellent of its kind. used to read a lot about that scene in the Ptolemaic Terrascope 'zine, which was an odd mix of old psych and prog inetrviews and new music from the underground, which had become pretty amorpohous around then. there was some great music, but i used to get arsed at how everything had to be 'dark' and 'edgy' and how shite everything was accfording to them - the apocalypse is coming and all that. well maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but being a miserable sod isn't going to help.

i wonder what he did for a living, and if he was so misanthropic at work? bet he wasn't. they probably all loved him (maybe still do).

anyway, i'd recommend those on here to look out for all three Shock/ Shock Express books and ignore the miserable git of an editor. messrs Campbell, Newman, Bryce, etc don't fit into that, and it's a mine of fascinating information and insight.

[bushwick]

Shock Xpress was a great magazine, really appreciated before the internet days. Used to have excellent, intelligent articles from the likes of David Kerekes (who I used to write alongside in David Flint's 'Sheer Filth' zine, when I was a green little 16 year old).

I'm sure Jaworzyn was in Whitehouse for a very short while. I have some Skullflower, good dark stuff. He also did a guitar-improv thing called Ascension a few years ago, who I managed to miss when they supported Merzbow in Leeds a few years ago. He also used to (maybe still does) run a distro specialising in noise, free jazz, power electronics etc.

Reading back over old issues, I see that a lot of late-80s generic slasher movies get absolutely slated, stuff that's pretty good fun to watch, in retrospect, though I guess at the time all this stuff was seen as 'the enemy' by a lot of quarters...the cinematic equivalent of 'hair metal' I suppose...

[bushwick]

That 'Nostril Picker' is terrible btw, way less interesting than it sounds...although I had an old Vipco DVD so it may well have been cut to ribbons..

[dem bones]

Mar 22, 2009 19:12:49 GMT bushwick said:

Shock Xpress was a great magazine, really appreciated before the internet days. Used to have excellent, intelligent articles from the likes of David Kerekes (who I used to write alongside in David Flint's 'Sheer Filth' zine, when I was a green little 16 year old).

It's the only issue i have, i'm afraid, and i don't think you're in this one - unless you were The Sleaze Kid?

Which reminds me: i've four issues of Bomba Movies and a copy of Weird Zines from late 'nineties (?)/ 2000 i've had hanging around doing unseemly things to themselves and snarling "review me! review me" for ages. You may or may not know the publication, but most of you are certainly aware of the editor!

[bushwick]

I had some stuff in a couple of issues after that - couple of cartoons (one about 'Momma Man' skullfucking someone...i was 16...jeez), some reviews, some little cartoon-lettering section headings, an article about R Crumb, few other bits. Think I still have copies at my ma's somewhere. It was a good little zine. God it takes me back...funny how things go full circle innit

[bushwick]

Mar 15, 2009 11:44:35 GMT pulphack said:

mr j was guitarist in duo skullflower - him and a drummer, who used to collaborate with loads of others on various formats, limited editions, etc, in a basically improv scene. i only have the one cd, but it's a gem - sludgy instrumental black sabbath riffing that breaks into freakout sections, overlaind with clouds of feedback and noise. an acquired taste, perhaps, but excellent of its kind. used to read a lot about that scene in the Ptolemaic Terrascope 'zine, which was an odd mix of old psych and prog inetrviews and new music from the underground, which had become pretty amorpohous around then. .

I wonder if you used to read John Bagnall's 'Hairy Hi-Fi', pulphack? that covered similar ground. to be honest, house music, raving and general drug nonsense took me away from all that scene...but perhaps it laid the foundations...