Book Review: Mondo Macabro

January is Trash Cinema Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Mondo Macabro' by Pete Tombs

 

'Mondo Macabro' (192 pp.) first was published as a trade paperback in the UK in October, 1997. A U.S. trade paperback edition (below) was released in December 1998. There also is a Kindle edition available.

'Mondo' is one of two volumes on trash / exploitation / cult cinema authored by Tombs, the other being the immortal 'Immoral Tales.' 

 

'Mondo' is affiliated with the 'Mondo Macabro' website, founded by Tombs and Andy Starke, that sells exotic DVDs. 

One thing that stands out: 'Mondo' is not easy on the eyes of the elderly, with a font that must be 4 point at its largest. I needed reading glasses for this book. That's how life is, when you're an old fart........

While 'Immoral Tales' focused on European trash cinema, with an emphasis on horror films, 'Mondo' takes a look at cinema in other continents and hemispheres. So in the pages of 'Mondo' you'll read about films made in South America, South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific. And while some of the profiled films are horror, there also is coverage of melodramas, comedies, softcore porn, and science fiction.

As with 'Immoral,' Tombs understands he is writing for a 90% male audience, so the pages of 'Mondo' heavily are salted with black-and-white stills designed to appeal to the that demographic.

The films of Japan and Hong Kong get the most plentiful treatment, with three chapters each.

Contributor Giovanni Scognamilla assists Tombs with an overview of strange films from Turkey, while Diego Curubeto contributes a chapter on Argentine cinema, and Mexico is handled by David Wilt. These contributors, and Pete Tombs, recognize that they're writing for trash film fans, not academics, so the book's prose is straightforward and devoid of pretense.

At the time of its publication, 'Mondo' offered insights into films that otherwise were difficult to view. In the ensuing 29 years the internet has corrected this barrier, and now it's possible to see many of the films via YouTube or other portals. For me, this meant that some of the book's contents turn out, with the passage of time, to be a bit underwhelming. This is true of the chapter that Tombs devotes to Brazilian director and actor Jose Mojica Marins, aka 'Coffin Joe,' aka 'Zé do Caixão.' Seeing Marins's films at YouTube reveals that they are low, low budget enterprises, static and talky, and (in my opinion, at least) don't live up to the accolades that Tombs gives them in 'Mondo.' 

And, I can’t say I was all that excited about the chapter on Bollywood films, but if you want to go in that direction, well, ‘Mondo Macabro’ has you covered. 

 

As is the case with 'Immoral Tales,' 'Mondo Macabro' features a color insert of stills and movie posters drawn from the profiled countries.

 

I’ll close with the common question: who will want a copy of ‘Mondo Macabro’ ? If you’re a dedicated fan of trash and exploitation cinema, then having a copy of the trade paperback (asking prices for which start at $30 on eBay) may be warranted. But all others likely can get by with the Kindle edition, which at $3 (last time I checked) is much more affordable. 

 

(A lengthy video review of 'Mondo Macabro' is available here) 

Robocop Vs The Terminator

Robocop Vs The Terminator

by Frank Miller (story) and Walter Simonson (art)

Dark Horse Comics, 1992

One of the best comic book series of the 1990s was the four-issue series 'Robocop Vs The Terminator,' published by Dark Horse Comics, from September 1992 to December 1992. I remember collecting these comics when they first were published, and hanging on to them for more than 30 years now.

At that time Dark Horse owned the licensing rights to both franchises, and while much of those early 1990s iterations of both the Terminator and Robocop titles were mediocre, with 'Robocop Vs The Terminator,' the company produced an exceptional series.

 

 

It helped that Dark Horse editor Randy Stradley (or maybe it was publisher Mike Richardson ?) recruited Frank Miller to write the series. Miller had participated in writing the script for the Robocop 2 film, and understood the nature of both franchises. With 'Robocop Vs The Terminator' he avoided making the plot too complicated, and came up with an energetic storyline that delivered action and mayhem, while avoiding contrivance. 

And Miller being Miller, there are notes of sarcastic humor throughout the series:

Walter Simonson, at that time one of the foremost artists in comics, undoubtedly had more work than he could handle in terms of his assignments for various publishers, but his pencils for Robocop Vs. Terminator display care and imagination and really bring Miller's conceptions to fruition. Lots of that early 1990s flavor for superheroes and big guns, explosions, and set-piece battles. Lots of violent deaths, too ! Even little kids and the blind are not spared death at the hands of the robots !

 

 

I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say that the initial issues of the series tread familiar ground, with Terminators dispatched via time machine to Detroit, there to shape the future by selected intervention in the timeline. Of course, a resistance fighter (in this case, a young woman named Flo, sporting a bowl-cut hairdo) from the future also travels back in time to try and thwart the Terminators.

 

It turns out that for the 'Terminator future' to be realized, a cyborg policeman named Alex Murphy, aka Robocop, must merge with Skynet and precipitate Judgment Day and the triumph of the machines.

In the latter issues of the series, Miller takes things in a 'cosmic' direction, outside the normal boundaries of either franchise, and I've not seen such an imaginative treatment of the franchises since 'Robocop Vs The Terminator.'

As 1990s comics, 'Robocop Vs The Terminator' had to have some gimmicks, and in this case, it's cardboard cutouts stapled into the midsection of each issue:

Unfortunately, here in 2025, getting copies of 'Robocop Vs The Terminator' is not easy. The individual issues still are available, but are a bit pricey ($12+ each). 

 

  

In 1992 Dark Horse issued a trade paperback, copies of which are quite rare. In 2014 Dark Horse reissued the series as a hardcover edition, but being out of print for over a decade now, that hardcover has exorbitant asking prices ($121 on up for copies in 'acceptable' or 'good' condition, with one speculator at amazon asking $274 for a 'good' condition copy).
 

If you want to get your hands on 'Robocop Vs The Terminator,' your best approach is to try and get the four individual issues. Either that, or hope that at some point in the future Dark Horse decides to make a second printing of the 2014 compilation.......

'Fruitman' by Kool and the Gang

This is a groovy track from the 1974 album Light of the Worlds. 

 

It didn't get as much attention as 'Summer Madness,' another track on the same album, but it's a great song and deserves a wider appreciation. Much as Billy Preston did in the same era with many of his recordings, it relies on a booogie-woogie piano rhythm to propel the song...... 

Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square

December is Trash Cinema Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square'

by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford

 

In 1999 Bill Landis and his wife Michelle Clifford returned to zine publishing with the stapled, 8 x 11 inch zine Metasex. 

 

Landis had by that time attained a quasi-mythological status both among trash film fiends and highbrow culture, no mean feat. That momentum led to the publication in 2002 of the trade paperback 'Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square.'

'Sleazoid' (Fireside / Simon and Schuster, New York) is 315 pages in length and a well-produced book, with a large, easy-on-the-eye font. There are full- and half-page black-and-white stills, and scans of old advertisements, scattered throughout the text. 

 

The book's chapters are organized around theaters made famous in the 42nd street grindhouses during the 'Deuce' days of the 1970s and 1980s. Each theater is associated with reviews and reminiscences concerning a particular genre of exploitation films; thus it is that (for example) the Rialto is the home base for memorable horror films like Blood Feast, I Drink Your Blood, Last House on the Left, etc.

One thing about the Landis & Clifford exposition on the grindhouse features: they disclose spoilers ! Readers may want to keep this in mind.......... 

Save for occasional quirks (the use of the Latin noun 'ipsissimis,'which apparently means someone who is at the peak of their profession) the prose in 'Sleazoid Express' is straightforward and intended for a generalist audience. But then, Landis never was reverential towards the highbrow / academic style of film criticism.

The text of the book adheres to the mixture of ironic humor and insight that exemplifies Landis's approach to film commentary:

 

New Line Cinema got accustomed to bad taste through distributing John Waters's work, so it didn't balk at releasing the freak-exploitation movie The Crippled Masters (1981) starring grown-up Thalidomide babies who were born with flippers instead of arms.

 

(A trailer for the film can be seen here.)

Reading this 2002 book leads to all manner of revelations about trash cinema; don't be at all surprised if you finish a chapter with a list of far-out films that you need to look up. And frequently, I found myself laughing out loud at Landis's remarks about trash films and the places where he saw them. That's Sleazoid, for you.....!

It's hard to finish reading 'Sleazoid Express' without feeling some regret over Landis's early demise. But 'Express' does stand as the keystone of a career that brought a new level of appreciation and expertise to the cavalcade of underground and exploitation cinema. This book is a must-have for all aficionados of trash cinema, especially with copies in good condition available for only $22 at your most prominent online book retailer.

At Wonder Book and Video December 2025

Traveling to my hometown for the Christmas holiday, I passed through Frederick, and decided to stop in at Wonder Book and Video. The last time I'd been there was something like 4 or 5 years ago.

They had a sizeable shelf of new vintage paperbacks, but these were priced at $10 to $15 each, a little too high for my budget, so I refrained.

Their section for comics and graphic novels remains impressive, but the same phenomenon: higher prices than I remember, also was operating for this media. Although I must point out that they had a large selection of bandes dessinees for about $4 each:

I wound up paying $10 for a Very Good copy of a Charles Beaumont sci-fi anthology, along with getting some $5 vintage paperbacks, and a hardcover John Christopher novel.

Wonder Book and Video remains a destination for Paperback Fanatics but this must be tempered with an awareness that prices have jumped quite a bit......

Empire by Delany and Chaykin

'Empire' by Samuel R. Delany and Howard Chaykin

Berkley Windhover, 1978

 

'Empire' (112 pp.) was published by Berkley Windhover under the Byron Preiss Visual Publications imprint. This was one of the more high-profile entries in the Preiss catalog, designed to take advantage of the burst of popularity in sci-fi following the release of Star Wars in May 1977.

 

I first learned of this new 'visual novel' when 'Empire' was excerpted in the December, 1978 issue of Heavy Metal magazine. But I didn't pick up a copy of 'Empire' until some twenty years ago. 

 

One thing that immediately is apparent is that illustrator Howard Chaykin did a tremendous amount of work for this graphic novel, at a time when digital artwork and desktop publishing and drawing tablets still were some 15 years (or more) in the future. The pencils and coloring all had to be done by hand, on paper.

It's also apparent that the printing technology of the late 1970s was not up to the task when it came to the process color separations in 'Empire.'  Even when making allowances for the fact that the book is nearly 50 years old, the printing is disappointingly murky and underexposed. In too many panels, the text barely is legible......

Contrasting the graphic novel image obtained by my scanner (top) with that appearing in the excerpt in the November Heavy Metal, printed using spot color on 'slick' paper (bottom), clearly we see that the magazine treatment best represents the artwork.

 

 

As for Delany's writing, well, as a New Wave author heavily invested in figurative narratives and prose, perhaps he was not the ideal choice to pen a space opera aimed at the readership of Star Wars. But he does seem to understand that he is writing for the space opera audience.

 

Delany incorporates motifs from that film, such as the 'brash young man' counterpart for Luke Skywalker: in this case, archeology student 'Wryn.' Serving as a combination of Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi is the alluring and mysterious Qrelon. The role of Darth Vader is taken by a blonde-haired man named Loiptix. In place of the Millenium Falcon, we get Qrelon's versatile ship Proteus. And standing in for the Empire are the malevolent Kunduke.

 

The plot involves efforts to overthrow the tyranny of the Kunduke by Qrelon and her rebel alliance. A key to this mission is finding a set of six crystal fragments of rare design that, when assembled, form a sculpture with the potential to disrupt the AI that enables the Kunduke to control their far-flung empire.

I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say that Wryn finds himself accompanying a driven Qrelon in her travels throughout the galaxy, searching for the crystal fragments and hoping to acquire them before the pursuing Kunduke catch up. There is plenty of action and the storyline climaxes in a suitably apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of freedom, and those of tyranny.

Should you get a copy of 'Empire' ? Well, with copies in 'good' condition starting at $34 at amazon, and one speculator asking for $646 (!!), this is no small purchase. Unless you're  a hardcore Delany fan, I would counsel waiting to see if at some point in the future arrangements are made to reissue this graphic novel in an 'enhanced' version, one that benefits from modern techniques for improving the coloration and resolution of the artwork. Hopefully this overview will guide you in your decision-making.

Book Review: Xerox Ferox

December is Trash Cinema Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Xerox Ferox' by John Szpunar

 

In June of 1980, Bill Landis (1959 - 2008), a 21 year-old New Yorker who had an affection for the louche life, handed out the very first issue of his zine, Sleazoid Express. 

The xeroxed, one-page, typewritten sheet covered such films as Mad Max, Humanoids from the Deep, and Let Me Die A Woman. Within a few months Sleazoid had attracted a following among both trash film fans, and the more sophisticated set who referred to movies as 'cinema,' and called themselves 'cineastes.' 

Landis's combination of shoe-leather film criticism, and 42nd Street anthropology, gave the zine a sensibility that was unique.

Across the USA, and eventually in other Anglophone countries, fans of trash cinema began producing their own xeroxed zines, such as Gore Gazette, Psychotronic Video, Cinema Sewer, GICK !, etc., distributing these at theaters, book and record stores, hipster gatherings, and, for some zines, even newsstands - !

The creators, editors, and contributors to these zines were Baby Boomers who grew up on the old monster films airing on TV shows hosted by Zacherly and other horror movie emcees. Baby Boomers who as kids, eagerly grabbed issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein, and assembled the monster model kits issued by Aurora.

As adults, these horror fans set out to produce zines on topics near and dear to them, and found receptive audiences. This zine culture helped spur the Midnight Movie and Cult Cinema movements. The advent of VHS tapes in the 1980s, and DVDs in the 1990s and 2000s, further enhanced the value of zines as guides to the best of all the material popping up on the shelves of Blockbuster, and the myriad smaller, independent video dealers (like Mike Vraney's 'Something Weird').

While I wasn't a hardcore horror zine reader and collector (I never subscribed to Fangoria), every now and then, when I was in Atomic Books in Baltimore, I'd pick up one or two zines. So the zine phenomenon stayed on my radar until the later 2000s, when print zines began to transition to websites.

'Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine,' published in 2013, is a tribute to the horror and trash film zines (and professional magazines, like Fangoria), that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. 

One thing to mention: don't get this from your 'usual' online book retailer ! It's over-priced. You can order an eBook, a trade paperback, or a hardcover edition of the book directly from the Headpress website. The trade paperback edition cost me £24.48 (including shipping) which is just short of $33 US. The book itself is printed in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, as a print-on-demand title, so it's shipped from there directly to your address.

This book is a little bit bigger in size than a mass-market paperback, and at 800 pages, it's a ‘thicc’ little package. 

The book compiles 47 interviews with the writers and publishers of trash cinema zines (along with a trio of low-low budget filmmakers profiled in the 'Lost Zine' section of the book). 

Among those represented are Jimmy McDonough, Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, Chas Balun, ‘Bhob’ (i.e., Robert Stewart), Jim Morton, Steve Puchalski, and Nick Cato. 

Crammed in among the tiny-font text are black & white, low-res scans of media from the zine era, and photos of the creators of the profiled zines.

There are hours of reading to be had from this book. It’s fun dipping into, here and there, for morsels and revelations of pop culture knowledge and nostalgia. For example:

● Bob Martin, the editor of ‘Fangoria’ magazine, once took a writing workshop put on by Henry Beard, a founder and editor of the National Lampoon, and Tony Hiss, son of the accused Cold War spy Alger Hiss ?!

● Kris Gilpin’s interview features an anecdote, about a Times Square video smut booth, that simultaneously is hysterically funny, and utterly repellent.

● David Nolte, an Australian who created that continent's first horror film zine, Crimson Celluloid, maintained pen-pal status with notorious serial killers such as Douglas Daniel Clark, John Wayne Gacy, Otis Toole, William Bonin, and Arthur Shawcross, among others !!!

● Dennis Daniel is yet another Baby Boomer who, as a child, had his life irrevocably warped by exposure to Jay Robert Nash's iconic 'Bloodletters and Badmen.'

● When Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog) was 14 or 15 years old (circa 1970 or 1971) he published his first zine, a mimeographed zine titled Apples Woofer. A contributor to that zine was a science fiction writer Lucas had befriended at MidwestCon: Andrew J. Offutt !

Here's Offutt's son, Chris, on attending an early 70s Midwestcon science fiction convention:

That summer our family attended MidwestCon, which turned out to be my last con. The minute we arrived at the hotel, Dad began operating in full John Cleve mode, refusing to acknowledge his children. The only other teenager at the con was the fourteen-year-old daughter of a minor SF writer who also wrote porn. We talked the first night. Tessa had run away to New Orleans for a while but now lived with her father, whom she hated. He ignored her, and he drank and had too many rules. I told her I knew exactly what she meant. We agreed on everything—fans were the biggest weirdos in the world, cons were boring, and our parents didn’t care.

....At the elevator, I heard the sound of an opening door. Down the hall, my father stepped from a room. He said something low, and a woman responded with laughter. Dad closed the door behind him and straightened his hair. I pushed the elevator button repeatedly, fearful that Dad would see us. Tessa and I descended to the lobby without talking. Dazed and happy, I wanted to remain in her company, but she avoided me for the rest of the con.....

Interestingly, in his interviews, which were conducted in 2010 - 2012, editor Szpunar asks his subjects about the state of the zine culture. Most interviewees respond that zines have been replaced by online portals. Back 11-12 years ago, that may have looked like the forward path. However, what we since have seen is the rise of the print-on-demand (POD) 'bookzine,' media pioneered by Justin Marriott and his Paperback Fanatic franchise (the first issue of which was published in 2007). Indeed, you now can go online and find a number of POD publications devoted to trash films.

Summing things up, who will want to read 'Xerox Ferox ? Certainly, Baby Boomers with a nostalgia for the horror and trash cinema genres of the 1970s and 1980s, and the VHS era, will find much here to enjoy. But modern-day trash cinema and zine fans also will find content in 'Xerox' that will inform their own endeavors in film and self-publishing, as the authors profiled in the book all have messages of perseverance and dedication: if you really love what you are doing, then in the end, it's all worthwhile.