Smut, Paris and Ed Wood
Two not-quite-classic Paris-set smut novels, one written by Ed Wood
BETTY BLUE
A sprightly account of a tragic love affair that was made into an enormously popular 1986 film. The book’s better.
MADNESS (1969)
The concept of an insane asylum as a metaphor for modern civilization didn’t originate with this Estonian import, but the film did provide this particular movie model with a quintessentially Eastern European highlight
JOYRIDE
The word for this splatterific book is fun—dumb fun, yes, but fun, nonetheless
GHOSTBURB PSYCHO
From the land down under, a black-humored exercise in demented misanthropy that recalls FANTAZIUS MALLARE and FIGHT CLUB.
THE BRIDGE
One of the bleakest, nastiest, most despairing dystopian novels of the 1970s, written, ironically enough, by a devout Christian
THE TRAP DOOR
Arguably the most interesting of the late 1970s-early 80s no wave films of Beth B and Scott B
LEGACY
“A rich woman deteriorates mentally” is the plot summary provided by the imdb about this film, and those five words do indeed adequately sum it up.
2025: The Year in Bedlam
Looking back over the film releases of 2025
Tatsuya Nakadai: 1932-2025
Who is the greatest actor you’ve (probably) never heard of? I’d nominate the recently deceased Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the major players in classic Japanese cinema