THE ONE AND ONLY JOHN WATERS!

"There is a temptation to praise the film, however grudgingly, just to show you have a strong enough stomach to take it. It is a temptation I can resist."

- Roger Ebert on "Pink Flamingos"

No discussion of exploitation filmmaking would be complete without mentioning John Waters. Born in Baltimore, Waters grew up unlike most other kids, with an obsession for violence and gore. He began his movie career filming amateur movies in 8mm and 16mm and showing them at various rented church halls around town and attended via word-of-mouth and distributing leaflets.

The movies were an avant-garde mix of violence and strangeness, but audiences grew large enough for the Baltimore papers to take notice and voice their outrage regarding their content.

His first feature film was 1969's MONDO TRASHO, but he didn't gain wider recognition until the release of PINK FLAMINGOS in 1972, often called one of the most disgusting films ever made. Her scandalous scene of picking up dog shit off the sidewalk and eating it ranks among the most revolting in cinema history. Two of his more successful "mainstream" films were POLYESTER (1981) and HAIRSPRAY (1988).

Below is an interview with Waters from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MAGAZINE from April, 2012. It is followed by a promotional fake scandal sheet newspaper, NATIONAL PEEP from 1972 that I picked up at a theater. Copies of this rare publication sell into the hundreds of dollars.

THE BIGGEST MONSTER OF THEM ALL!

This one's literally a whale of a tale. Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was a sailor and a whaler before he turned his hand to writing. Considered to be one of the great American novels, he wrote Moby Dick (serialized as The Whale in the UK) which took him a year-and-a-half to complete and was published in 1891 as a single volume in the US.

What people may not know is that Melville based Captain Ahab and his crew's famous encounter with the huge sperm whale on a real-life event. In 1819, three whaling ships sailed out of Nantucket, Massachusetts bound for the Pacific Ocean. They traveled south around Cape Horn and then north. When they reached their destination they were thousands of miles from the nearest land. Encountering a pod of sperm whales they began their work of spearing them from smaller whaling boats and hauling them back to the ship where they would be processed for their oil. Sperm whale oil during this period was highly valued as it was used for lamps and many other uses.

One day, when the men were out in their boat, a large bull whale estimated to be over 80 feet long rammed their ship, the Essex not once but twice, and eventually sank it. It was the first known attack of a whale on a ship on the high seas. The ensuing story is an astounding tale of survival and hardship for the men who drifted for months -- eventually resorting to cannibalizing the crew members who had died -- before being rescued.

This article from VANITY FAIR (May, 200) describes the harrowing event in detail,

BASIL A-GOGOS!

When I purchased the hardcover slipcase edition of Vanguard's FAMOUS MONSTER MOVIE ART OF BASIL GOGOS back in 2005, it arrived with a few surprises. The Creature painting is 8 1/2" x 11" and the others are postcard size.