Above is the cover of Scroobius Pip’s new collection of illustrated poems, entitled ‘Poetry In (e)motion’. It is released in a week or so by Titan books and you should most definitely all buy yourselves a copy.

It features work by yours truly.

Yes, I can finally announce that I was selected alongside several other artists to have my work represent the words of Mr Pip.

This is a massive honour and I am greatly excited about it all (I haven’t seen the finished product yet!). Many, many thanks to Scroob for deeming my doodles appropriate and worthy enough to include in this collection.

You can pre order the book HERE.

I can’t wait to read the  introduction by Nick Frost as well. ^_^

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Screen Based Frivolity.

Get Your Greasy Mitts Stuck In.

An hour of brilliant selections from Movies and Tv, tenuously linked by an internal narrative that will be lost on the rest of the world. Oh well.

Click HERE To Download

Tracklisting Is As Follows:

1: ‘Welcome To Lunar Indistries‘ : Clint Mansell ‘Moon’
2: ‘The Rainstorm‘ : Bernard Herrmann ‘Psycho’
3: ‘Summer Overture‘ : Clint Mansell ‘Requiem For A Dream’
4: ‘Alvin’s Theme‘ : Angelo Badalamenti ‘The Straight Story’
5: ‘Suspiria‘ : Goblin ‘Suspiria’
6: ‘Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles‘ Captain Beefheart ‘The Big Lebowski’
7: ‘I’ll Be Your Man‘ : The Black Keys ‘The Big Come Up / HBO’s Hung’
8: ‘Fast Shadow‘ : Wu Tang Clan ‘Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai’
9: ‘Jaan Pechechaan Ho‘ : Mohammed Rafi ‘Ghost World’
10: ‘Tony’s Got Hot Nuts‘ : Faye Richmonde ‘A Dirty Shame’
11: ‘Brand New Key‘ : Melanie ‘Boogie Nights’
12: ‘Only A Woman‘ : Trey Parker ‘Team America World Police’
13: ‘Bad Things‘ : Jace Everett ‘True Blood’
14: ‘Wave Of Mutilation‘ : Pixies ‘Pump Up The Volume’
15: ‘Vessel In Vain‘ : Smog ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’
16: ‘In Dreams‘ : Roy Orbison ‘Blue Velvet’
17: ‘Let It Be‘ : Nick Cave ‘I Am Sam’
18: ‘Chariots Rise‘ : Angelo Badalamenti and Lizzie West ‘Secretary’

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So, I did this little tribute to Jamie Smart’s ‘Bear’ comic recently and lo and behold, it got posted the other day on none other than BEARFOO.COM !

It was an idea that Mr Simon Stone and I had been working on for a while and it’s really cool to see it up alongside all the proper ‘Bear‘ art.

Many thanks to Jamie Smart for being kind enough to post these demented scribblings and significantly diminishing his stock value in the process. This was a pretty big deal for me. I will always remember sitting on the long cross country bus trip that I took the first time I picked up a copy of ‘Bear’ I re-read that little bugger many times and thus a love affair was born. Ok, so maybe that’s not the most interesting of stories, but what do you want from me, eh? I suppose you don’t ‘read’ a comic for the first time, you ‘ingest’ it or ‘absorb’ it or some such nonsense.

Do you know what? I’m sorry I said anything now. That’ll show me for trying to share a seemingly significant moment of my life with the internet…..

Sod off, go on, just sod off with you. >_<

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I was startled when I discovered this recently. I was never aware up to now that our old friend Dwain Esper (Reefer/Sex Madness) was the man who acquired the rights to ‘Freaks‘ in the late 1930’s.

I always knew that it was initially disowned by Tod Browning’s studio. In fact, it had a very damaging effect on MGM and caused Browning to be outcast from the movie industry. What I did not know, was that Dwain Esper bought it up and toured with it. There is no mention of Browning on this poster whatsoever.
In true Esper style, he added an extra reel featuring nudity, just to entice a few more thrill seekers through the carnival doors. This poster gives us a great example of Esper’s sideshow mentality and sensationalist ethics. He ignores the central theme of the movie, apparently missing it altogether, and sells it as a sex oddity.

‘Do Siamese Twins Make Love?‘, ‘Can A Full Grown Woman Truly Love A Midget?‘ and ‘What Sex Is The Half Man Half Woman?‘ Are all questions heralded underneath the banner:’ The Story Of The Love Life Of The Sideshow’

These issues are barely touched upon in the film itself, but in classic Exploitation style, Esper shows us that more than any other, it’s the audience and their expectations that are really being exploited in these instances. We will find as we go that so many of these movies relied heavily on their posters to drag people in or entice them to part with hard earned money to see the movie in question. It is important to historically contextualize things as well. We are talking about Depression era America and a very new medium of entertainment.

The majority of early cinemagoers were labourers, immigrants and unsavory types. This was why topics such as sex, drugs and human trafficking (which we are yet to touch upon) were forerunning subgenres of the decade. The films contain common themes but are so diverse and interesting when placed as an alternative counterpart to the Hollywood output of the same time. Keep checking in as we delve further into the 1930’s as Exploitation Season continues here at Zombiehamster.com.

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The infamous tale of Jane Bradford ‘The Cocaine Fiends’ aka ‘The Pace That Kills’ (1936) is a rather high quality affair. The sets are quite resplendent and the performances higher than one might initially expect from one of the ‘Cautionary Tales’ that we have been watching sofar. The gangsters are well presented James Cagney types, all trilbies and loose ties, the best kind.

We follow the story of two ladies, both of whom have hooked up with the wrong individuals. Falling foul to lines such as: ‘Say, I know a fella that’ll put you in a show right away’, the girls enter what they believe to be a glamorous world, but its murky undercurrents do not take long in revealing themselves.

Both of the heroines are given cocaine under alternate pretences at the start, but soon realise what they are becoming addicted to. The movie then examines the easy spread of the addiction, with a soda pop waitress supplying some to a naïve co-worker who is complaining of tiredness. It is this couple that remain the most riveting to watch for the duration of the feature. It begins, as all drug stories, on a whirlwind high, as our pair attends some rather debonair nightclubs. The impression being given is that this is an affliction that is penetrating every area of society. In fact, the introductory reel states very clearly that it is up to the viewer to spread awareness of this terrible sickness.

‘The Cautionary Tales’ fit into the Exploitation genre because they stood as a moral compass for the masses. The true intentions that lay behind the productions were to scandalise and depict socially unacceptable behaviour (drugs, nudity, prostitution etc) in extremely graphic detail. Whilst some of the scenes contained in them may seem somewhat tame in our desensitised times of apathetic audiences, some still pack a significant punch.

One such scene in ‘The Cocaine Fiends’ is when, after losing their jobs through their problem, our ex service staff are now living in a squalid bedsit (and behind in their rent). He writhes on the bed and proclaims: ‘I gotta have dope, I’m a hophead, I’d sell my soul for just one shot’.

She looks deeply into his swollen, blackened eyes and then walks slowly to a mirror and readjusts herself. She may not have a soul left to sell, but she does have a body. The streetwalking scene is so swift that it is over in an instant, but through its use of shadows is a brilliant exercise in the art of ‘what we don’t see’.

She brings him his shot. It transpires that he is Jane Bradford’s brother, who came to town in search of his missing sister. The family are shown at home, in small town America, fretting for the disappearance of their daughter, who is embroiled in a destructive relationship with her gangster boyfriend and is being kept captive by some form of madam.

The boiling kettle is used as a focal point in later scenes, symbolic of the building tension and uncontrollable nature that resides within our characters. It spirals quickly into rough territory, displaying just what an ambitious little film it is.

As a bonus, there is a scene in which our heroine goes to score at an Asian opium den, where there is both a midget and a monkey buzzer. The circle is complete.

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‘Human Wreckage‘ was an alternate title for ‘Sex Madness‘, I found this beautiful rare poster in a book recently and thought I should add it to our ongoing collection of Exploitation goodies.

Dwain Esper (1892-1982) becomes more intersting all the time, it transpires that he was a WW1 veteran, who was later known as the ‘King of the Celluloid Gypsies’. It was Esper who broke endless boundaries in his field, showing nudity and explicit drug use in his movies long before many of his contemporaries would dare.

One of his movies which we will have to feature is ‘Narcotic‘ which shows graphic injection methods and whilst showing the picture, Esper toured with a real corpse known as ‘Elmer The Dope Fiend‘, for added effect. It turned out however, that the corpse belonged to a former highwayman that Esper had bought from a circus. This was the body of Elmer McCurdy, who we mentioned in the ‘Sex Madness’ review.

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A temperance movement is a social movement against the use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence, or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation. I mention this, as it was Timothy Shay (T.S.) Arthur (1809 – 1885) who originally wrote the highly successful temperance novel ‘Ten Nights In A Barroom’. The novel was so popular that it was made into several movies throughout the silent era and a very well received play.

The version that I am reviewing is the 1931 adaptation. It begins as a simple tale of a miller, Joe Morton, a teetotaling put upon family man, whose daughter is very ill with a mystery illness. Hope is brought to the Morgan’s (Joe, his wife, mother and young daughter) with the arrival of a young doctor. This comes as a huge relief to the town as they had to: ‘Drive out to see Dr Spock, ever since Dr Burton died!’ Joe tracks down the new doctor to the local tavern, where he is antagonized by the snide manager (‘Are you too good for my place Joe?’).

It is here that Joe gets involved in a fight and afterwards partakes in one celebratory drink. There is a bizarre comedy moment when a man falls through a door, knocking down the cleaning lady. She is helped up by a sinewy old codger who asks: ‘Did it hurt ya Fanny?’ to which she replies: ‘No, it hurt my elbow’. Comedy gold people. The saloon is full of Barbershop Quartets and young roustabouts who moonwalk and tumble for the punter’s entertainment. If there is one thing that public houses are missing in this day and age, it’s young men who are willing to tumble for the amusement of their peers.

A few short hours later and Joe is on top of the world, as well as being pissed as a coot. He falls in the door shortly afterwards, dismissive of his nagging mother, who proclaims that ‘There isn’t a Morgan man who won a battle with the whiskey’. Oddly enough, making a very early reference to the ideal that alcoholism is hereditary and a disease, something that would not become a common opinion for several decades.

Joe’s decline into the bottle is a swift one. Within six months he wears nothing but black, unshaven and crazed looking; he begs, borrows and steals drinks wherever and whenever he can. Nothing more than a barfly, he sinks so low as to sign over his house to the bar manager in a bid to clear his tab and buy more. He sinks to new lows as his family start to depend on local charity and Joe gets an unsavory reputation.

In structure and tone, this is the classic story of the alcoholic. It has been retold many times in recent decades and this piece holds its own very well. Considering its age of over 80 years, it remains a startling piece of cinema. A great deal of which can be attributed to the climactic finale, which is one of the most unexpected and shocking that I have seen of late.

The main surprise is just how enjoyable this film is, far from being the dull, preachy rhetoric that I expected; it was a delight and a pleasure to watch.

A brief snippet can be seen HERE.

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I may have missed it by a few minutes by the time this uploads, but I have been running around waiting tables for sullen looking couples all day.

Zombiehamster Mixtape #14 is a special selection of songs that make me think of my Lady P, who this is for. However, there is a distinct possibility that they will appease some of you as well.

Ours is a tale that goes back almost a decade now, and I wouldn’t change a day of it for the world. I haven’t really seen her today and she is working the night shift tonight, so I won’t until about 8am tomorrow. Even so, this is for you Paula, Happy Corporate Love day. ^_^ You are still the only thing that keeps me sane.I love you.x

This has now used up my yearly quota for mentioning my ‘feelings’ in the public domain. Midgets and Boobie Movie reviews resume as normal forthwith.

Click HERE To Download

Tracklisting is as follows.

1: Joe Tex ‘Hold On To What You’ve Got‘
2: Lovage: ‘To Catch A Thief‘
3: Radiohead: ‘I Might Be Wrong‘
4: Elliott Smith : ‘A Fond Farewell‘
5: Portishead: ‘Sour Times‘
6: Julian Plenty: ‘Only If You Run‘
7: Tool: ‘Schism‘
8: Nine Inch Nails: ‘La Mer‘
9: Lou Reed & Antony: ‘Fistful Of Love‘
10: Rufus Wainwright: ‘Chealsea Hotel No2‘
11: Tom Waits: ‘Come On Up To The House‘

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This is a very good interview with Zombiehamster favourite Bruce Campbell. Not only does he get to do a bit of his regular schtick, but he also gets a few nice little digs in at the movie industry.

He voices concern over the state of Hollywood’s output in a very truthful, eloquent manner. His cases are sound and incredibly relevant. Enjoy.

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‘The Wolfman’ (2010) had originally been scheduled for a release last Halloween; however, it was put back several times and now finally sees the light of day over valentine’s weekend. This can only be good news for anyone who didn’t fancy seeing ‘It’s Complicated’ or something with Sandra Bullock in it (Seriously, why is that woman getting so much work at the moment? Have we forgotten people, have we forgotten? Four words: ‘Speed Two: Cruise Control’).

I hadn’t followed the hype monster for Wolfman, due to a plethora of cinematic disappointments over the last 12 months. The very idea of another remake provoked nothing more than a half hearted shrug of vague interest. In short, I expected nothing from it, and boy was I rewarded for this.

There is very little messing around, the movie gets right into the action and never really lets up. It’s a faithful and simple story, which allows for all involved to really get their teeth into the picture (sorry). Benicio Del Toro is Lawrence Talbot the prodigal son of Anthony Hopkins’ Sir John Talbot. Cast out by his father at a young age after witnessing his mother’s suicide, he was committed to an asylum before turning his hand to the stage (to great acclaim).

The disappearance of Lawrence’s brother motivates his widow Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) to write to him, requesting that he return home. Upon his arrival he discovers that his brother’s body has been found. This is where the mystery begins.

The most prominent feature about ‘The Wolfman’ is that you never feel you are watching an actor. Del Toro, Hopkins and (later) Weaving assimilate into their roles, allowing the viewer to focus on the story, the mark of a consummate professional. If it were say, Brad Pitt onscreen, it would be a case of watching Brad Pitt in a movie about ‘The Wolfman’, and no amount of Victorian posturing would detract from that. I have been a fan of Del Toro since I was about 8 years old and saw him as a sleepy looking henchman in ‘Licence to Kill’ alongside 80’s favourite Robert Davi. He excels in this.

The slow descent into lycanthropy and the specifics that surround it are not something that should be purveyed by some jumped up little internet reviewer. That is why I shall give you a simple recommendation to see this in the cinema for yourself. For a few brief and beautiful hours, my cynicism was washed away, I felt as if I was transported to the time of the big screen Horror classics. All involved have embraced the genre with love and care, replicating without regurgitating, creating homage without farce or unnecessary adaptation.

The sets and costumes are remarkable and the ghoulish Victorian atmosphere is stylish and believable. Following the absolute travesty that was ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and witnessing the damage that can be caused to a franchise by contextual reworking and insertion of 21st Century attitude, ‘The Wolfman’ shows that when it’s done correctly, a remake can be a thing of great love and wonder.

It was nice to see that Andrew Kevin Walker was the main screenwriter on this piece, his work was always of great quality (Se7en, Sleepy Hollow, The Game etc) and it’s great that he’s back on the scene. All of the actors involved were superb and the direction was concise and effective. The best Friday night I’ve spent at the cinema in a long, damn time.

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