A brief aside written at 4am.

Dear fellow travelers,

I know you've been patiently following me down the documentarial path and I express some gratitude, yet it's now time to stop by the wayside, walk into the tall grass and meander down into that muddy gully that is Exploitation Cinema. Let us tread lightly through its shallow waters being careful not to mame or mangle any of the decrepit life that lurks and slithes in what is debatably mud. Let's fish gently in the tepid waters for the gornatodes hidden under clods of taboo (am I taking this analogy too far?). We will breath in the air heavy with sex and death which I imagine smells a lot like Gauguin's Monao Tupapau. We will bite into the hard sensationalist candy shell to get to the perverse and gory nougat (suspend your disbelief and imagine nougat inside a candy shell, gross, I know). Please also suspend the disbelief in trying to relate this entry to the rest of the site, I assure you it has nothing to do with documentaries. It does, or would like to, discuss briefly and encourage the viewing of exploitation films.

Last week I watched Cannibal Holocaust. It was terrible. But the fact that it exists within a larger genre fascinated me. It was like stumbling across the first circle of hell and realizing there were 8 more circles below me filled with unspeakably graphic and lurid content. So immediately after viewing I went to the library to order a slew of other films like it. For now, I'm trying to get a sampling of all the sub-genres. So on my queue I have Blacula, Mondo Cane, The Street Fighter, and 2000 Maniacs. Suggestions would be fantastic. I feel like I'm arriving a little 40 years late on the bandwagon, but I can't blame late conception for everything. Also, I suppose the interest has been sparked with my new (sort of) fascination with death and the ways in which different cultures confront the issue which is equally important as the way they view sex. I suppose this entry also functions as a warning in that I will be writing some low-brow and lurid entries on this topic in the future.

sincerely,

your humble fabulist