Horrors! Enough to Wake the Living Dead

Filmfax Covers the Ghoulish in a Retro, Cheesy Kind of Way

"Monsters Crash the Pajama Party"?

Yes!

"Werewolves on Wheels"?

Absolutely!

How about "Teenagers From Outer Space" and "Evil Brain From Outer Space" and "I Married a Monster From Outer Space"?

Yes, yes and yes! You can buy all of these timeless classics of the modern cinema on DVD from those wonderful folks at Filmfax magazine, each for only 15 or 20 bucks! But wait, there's much, much more! You can also buy "Fiend Without a Face" and "Devil Girl From Mars" and "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and . . .

Oh, sorry about that. I guess I got a little carried away there.

I'm supposed to be writing my usual high-tone scholarly textual analysis of the articles in Filmfax magazine and here I am getting all excited about the ads. Filmfax has page after page of ads for DVDs of the kinds of films you just don't see on Turner Classic Movies -- movies like "Monster A-Go-Go" and "Saturn Avenger vs. the Terror Robot" and "They Saved Hitler's Brain."

But the thing is: In Filmfax, the articles and the ads are, as they say in the quality lit-crit biz, all part of an organic whole, a veritable Weltanschauung. Filmfax, which bills itself as "The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television & Retro Pop Culture," is the bible of B-movies, Kama Sutra of kitsch, the Bhagavad-Gita of so-bad-it's-good cheesiness. For 23 years, Filmfax has been covering the auteurs who created movies such as "Invasion of the Bee Girls" with the same reverence that Cahiers du Cinema reserves for Jean-Luc Godard.

In the current issue, which is the 117th issue of this influential cinematic quarterly, the cover story is an interview with actor William Shatner about his role in the 1962 Roger Corman film "The Intruder." It's an unusual piece for Filmfax because Shatner is actually, you know, famous. Most Filmfax interviewees are utterly obscure, except to the kind of fans who know everything there is to know about the cast and crew of "The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism."

The best article in this issue is a six-page homage to William Smith, the actor who appeared in "The Ghost of Frankenstein" and "High School Confidential" and "Grave of the Vampire," but who really built his reputation as a brawling biker in such classic motorcycle movies as "Angels Die Hard" and "Chrome and Hot Leather." The high point of the piece is a description of the legendary fight scene between Smith and actor Rod Taylor in the 1970 noir film "Darker Than Amber," a scene that Filmfax hails as "a benchmark in screen violence."

"Taylor used the opportunity to see how tough Smith could be by deviating from the planned action to pummel him with body blows that broke several ribs," writes William Fogg. "He responded by breaking Taylor's nose as the cameras rolled. At the end, both actors were bruised and bloody, and Smith's knee was compromised when Taylor hit him with a board that somehow missed the protective kneepad."