Trust the Witch: How Witch Films Mirror Feminist Movements and Born-Again Backlashes in Payton McCarty-Simas’s “That Very Witch”
Books / Film

Trust the Witch: How Witch Films Mirror Feminist Movements and Born-Again Backlashes in Payton McCarty-Simas’s “That Very Witch”

Thank the filth elders above that Connie Marble somehow survived her attempted execution for assholism and skulked from Baltimore to small-town Pennsylvania to live out her sunset years! That was the first thought that crossed my mind as Aunt Gladys rounded the corner of Pepperidge Farm, crap cereal, and hot dog enthusiast Principal Marcus Miller’s … Continue reading

Royalty Loves an Occasional Roll in the Gutter: The Glorious Camp Excess of Sequinette Jaynesfield’s Films
Film

Royalty Loves an Occasional Roll in the Gutter: The Glorious Camp Excess of Sequinette Jaynesfield’s Films

The porch goose, or as I mistakenly called it before googling for this article, lawn duck, is the unsung hero of lawn ornament kitsch. Sure, everyone loves a pink flamingo, which proclaims its bad taste proudly with that gaudy, garish pink rammed into a browning lawn at an awkward angle. That’s not even taking into … Continue reading

Bow Down Before Jayne Mansfield, the Queen of Low-Brow Trash Culture
Film / Role Models

Bow Down Before Jayne Mansfield, the Queen of Low-Brow Trash Culture

Jayne Mansfield was the ultimate sex kitten-gone-berserk, the eternal starlet grasping for fame with both hands, Kenneth Anger’s cooing, squealing Hollywood Babylon made flesh. What, one might justifiably wonder, must it have been like having this outrageous creature for a mother? Considering she was only three years old when Mansfield died in her gruesome 1967 … Continue reading

Your Being Manipulated: “Eddington” Is the Definitive Commentary on the United States’ 2020s Batshittification
Film

Your Being Manipulated: “Eddington” Is the Definitive Commentary on the United States’ 2020s Batshittification

After seeing Ari Aster’s newest “divisive” ride, Eddington, I returned home and put on Darryl Cooper’s three-hour marathon “Jeffrey Epstein: This was your life!” episode of Tucker Carlson. While I didn’t make it through that long haul in one night, Cooper’s deep dive into Bill Barr’s daddy and Epstein’s first employer after dropping out of … Continue reading

Paul Vecchiali’s “Rosa la Rose, Fille Publique” Is a Berserk Amour Fou for Francophone Trash
Film

Paul Vecchiali’s “Rosa la Rose, Fille Publique” Is a Berserk Amour Fou for Francophone Trash

Does anyone love their job quite as much as Rosa, the bright-eyed and bushy-haired sex worker and l’amour de tout le monde à Paris in Paul Vecchiali’s 1986 doomed and demented romance flick, Rosa la rose, fille publique? It’s hard to imagine. She’s even working on her twentieth birthday! Currently screening at Metrograph on the … Continue reading

I Shamefully Ignored “The Straight Story” Until David Lynch’s Death: It Might Be His Masterpiece
Film

I Shamefully Ignored “The Straight Story” Until David Lynch’s Death: It Might Be His Masterpiece

I didn’t know what to write about David Lynch. Sure, I knew that I had to write something in tribute to our preeminent filth elder (tied with John Waters)—the dreams of Filthy Dreams. But…what? Scroll through this website’s archives and you’ll already find pages upon pages penned on the man, his quinoa recipe, his paintings … Continue reading

“Bye Bye Love” Is a Gender-Fluid Romance Movie for the Criminally Insane
Film

“Bye Bye Love” Is a Gender-Fluid Romance Movie for the Criminally Insane

“Help! There’s a pervert after me!” A gorgeous woman (or so we assume) with petite features, framed by her pencil-thin eyebrows and gigantic 1970s bug sunglasses, dashes up to a man with mussed hair and a blue and red striped shirt, rudely interrupting his shouty breakup phone call with a soon-to-be ex: “Only losers get … Continue reading

It’s a Joy Seeing You…but Also a Strain: Work Out Your Matriarchal Madness This Christmas with “The Disappearance of Aimee”
Camp / Film

It’s a Joy Seeing You…but Also a Strain: Work Out Your Matriarchal Madness This Christmas with “The Disappearance of Aimee”

“I’ll take Jesus for mine! I’ll take Jesus for miiiine! You can have the whole wide world, but I’ll take Jesus for mine!” Just try to dislodge this song from your overheated brain after watching The Disappearance of Aimee, an oldie but also a so-baddie-it’s-goodie Hallmark TV movie (Thank friend of Filthy Dreams Graham Russell … Continue reading

“Megalopolis” Isn’t So Bad It’s Good: It’s Sublime
Film

“Megalopolis” Isn’t So Bad It’s Good: It’s Sublime

You must understand two things to appreciate the overblown, overindulgent glory of Francis Ford Coppola’s crackpot masterpiece Megalopolis. First, the most pie-in-the-sky fantastical architecture that Coppola can muster is apparently a waving, gelatinous, see-through, glimmering moving walkway as if Hudson Yards’ suicide shawarma, The Vessel, traded its now-fenced-in staircases for technology largely found between far-flung … Continue reading