Sketchy Details Emerge From Bug Powder Dust.

Some recent rummaging in the bottom drawer turned up this quickie sketch of Peter Weller, playing everybody's favourite Exterminator in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. Really had forgotten about this one - made at a time when some friends & I were trying to figure out a good plot for a gangster-monster clay animation. We watched & read a LOT of pulp, but sadly never did quite crack it. I guess this pic must be about 15 years old now.. drawn by pausing the VCR & working out or fudging details through the videotape haze, just using pencil on cheap butcher's paper. It's rough, but seeing it again I didn't mind it - worth sharing for the Weller/Cronenberg/Burroughs fans out there anyways. And I still think a gumshoe splatter flick would be fun. You know the drill - something boiled so hard it's head explodes. Down these tentacle-infested streets a man must go who is not himself tentacle-infested, and so on. Yeah. Hard to give up on that. Maybe one day..

This Lady Reanimates Parts The Others Can't.

I love a good bit of exploitation. Or is that a contradiction? Good exploitation? Regardless, it's a love that's led to the presentation of Arsegravy's first Beautiful Trash entry - 1971's Spaghetti-Horror exploitation classic, Lady Frankenstein. The director of this film, Mel Welles, was a New York clinical psychologist, fluent in five languages, who traded the couch for the camera while also finding time to be a radio DJ, writer, producer & actor. You might recognise Mr Welles' face from Roger Corman's original 1960 Little Shop Of Horrors, in which he appeared as Mushnik, the undertalented but edible florist.
Welles' association with Corman proved to be a lucky one in the making of Lady Frankenstein. Just as production was about to begin in Italy, one of his financiers wrote a dodgy cheque - leaving him short $90 000. With actors & crew already hired & sets built, he made a last minute appeal to Corman, who was happy to make up the shortfall on a film that already looked like one of his own.  Mixing the faded star of Joseph Cotten with the undisputed talents of game Eurohotty Rosalba Neri, as well as some truly appalling monster makeup & an entirely overdubbed cast of backing players..well, it's obvious this is one for the ages.
But none of that would matter if it weren't for the poster. The poster is what thrusts this film's mismatched head & shoulders above the Beautiful Trash competition. Looking at the handmade movie art of this period through the photoshop-montage dulled eyes of today is a wonderful and tragic thing for an old school illustrator. Maybe it's a side-effect of the corporatisation of production - fun or invention in design are often minimised as too risky. (A similar effect can be seen in trailers - the early 90's saw studios make it a standard contractual agreement that directors would have no say in cutting the trailers for their own films, so the marketing department & nervous execs took over, resulting in the substitution of enticement with synopsis.) Sorry, digressing..  Poster.  In a nutshell, it's work made on a shoestring budget with a crazy deadline to hustle punters for cheap thrills, yet with a style & vibrancy that really grabs you & stays in the memory.  Also it's hilarious. Talk about selling the sizzle. That creature is seriously packing.
I'm not saying it's high art. It's pulp. But in its own trashy way, I think it's beautiful. 

Did I mention how much I admire the art of old Detective magazines & 70's comic books? This's surely a close relative.
And you've gotta love a movie that doesn't even spell the director's name right on the poster.