The Sleaze Merchants: Adventures in Exploitation Filmmaking [Paperback]

John McCarty (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Tim Burton's Ed Wood, a 1994 film profiling an ungifted but persistent director, focused some attention on exploitation movies. McCarty's book assesses Wood along with 14 other purveyors of this alternative cinema. Although Albert Zugsmith (Sex Kittens Go to College), Larry Cohen (It's Alive), and Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case) are absent, many of exploitation's exemplars are discussed, and their achievements are evoked by provocative stills and promotional ads for the movies. There are terrific interviews with Fred Olen Ray (The Tomb), William Lustig (Maniac Cop), and the makers of the 1963-64 cult classics Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs, Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman. While some argue that The Corpse Grinders, The Astro-Zombies, and The Lustful Turk demonstrate that civilization can't be taken for granted, this book's able dissection reveals that these films have a place in film history. Recommended for strong film collections.?Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Genre film surveyor McCarty (The Fearmakers , Hollywood Gangland [1993], etc.) presents a passel of entertaining and informative essays on the giants of grade-Z cinema. "Nudie-Cutie" movies; teen-themed hot-car, drug, and gang pictures; low-budget space operas and monster movies; and the amazing symphonies of sleaze composed by John (Pink Flamingos) Waters--they're all represented here by means of profiles of the likes of (besides Waters) Sam Katzman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Fred Olen Ray, the now famous (thanks to the Tim Burton movie) Ed Wood, and many more. Still-living auteurs are interviewed, and their words frame their filmographies with insights at once laughable and telling. Today's direct-to-cable productions and mall-theater fodder are very much higher-tech extrapolations from the drive-in dreck these guys made. So learn something about where all that stuff came from--get to know our greatest purveyors of cinema sleaze through this seminal collection. Mike Tribby

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312118937
• ISBN-13: 978-0312118938
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,213,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John McCarty is a full time author. His book Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to "The Sopranos" (Da Capo Press, 2004), was produced as a major documentary by Hugh M. Hefner's Alta Loma Entertainment, for the Starz/Encore cable network; it aired in 2005 and 2006 and has been released on DVD by Image-Entertainment.

Additionally, he is the co-producer, co-writer, and co-director of The Fearmakers: Masters of Screen Suspense and Terror, a 10-episode documentary series of profiles of some of the world's most influential makers of classic suspense and terror films, among them Tod Browning, Jack Arnold, Terence Fisher, Roman Polanski, Roger Corman, and Tobe Hooper. The series is based on his 1994 book of the same title published by St. Martin's Press. It was released on DVD by Elite Entertainment, Inc. in May 2007.

The author of more than 20 non-fiction books of his own on film and entertainment subjects, John has appeared in conjunction with his work on such national media programs as the Sundance Film Festival's online "Film Talks," Fox News Saturday, CNN.fn's mid-day news, A&E's Biography, the Bravo network series Backspin, the ICONS Radio Hour hosted by Stephen Bogart (son of screen icon Humphrey Bogart), Neal Conan's "Talk of the Town" on National Public Radio, the Wall St. Journal, and many other major market periodicals and media outlets.

John has also has collaborated on many high-profile books with leading experts in their fields, among them: Julie Morgenstern on her New York Times best-selling Organizing From the Inside Out, and IRA expert Ed Slott on his top-selling The Retirement Savings Time Bomb...And How to Defuse It (Viking, 2003), (1998) - both of them Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com "Hot 100" sellers.

Born in Albany, New York in 1944, John attended Boston University, where he graduated with a degree in communications (broadcasting & film) in 1966. A former Peace Corps volunteer, he later wrote several un-produced scripts for the hit TV series Family Affair and Death Valley Days during a sojourn in Hollywood (1968-1970). He then worked in broadcasting and as a copywriter for General Electric Company. He published his first book in 1978 and became a full-time author in 1983. Some of his other books about the world of movies include: Hammer Films (2002), The Films of Mel Gibson (1998); Thrillers (1992); The Modern Horror Film (1990); The Complete Films of John Huston (1992), and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985). He has also been adjunct professor of cinema in the Department of Theatre at the University at Albany.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting subject, but with some lack in quality., October 21, 2000

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"carl_j_johansson" (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sleaze Merchants: Adventures in Exploitation Filmmaking (Paperback)

If I would rate this book on just the subject matter alone then it should get five stars. With chapters about Ed Wood, Jess Franco, Andy Milligan, H.G. Lewis, John Waters and Ted V. Mikels to name a few, this could be a winner. But the quality of the essays are in some cases rather bad. The Ed Wood chapter is just a shortened version of Rudolph Grey's superb book 'Nightmare of Ecstacy', including quotes from interviews from 'Nightmare...'. The chapters about Franco and Milligan for example is just reviews of some films the author has seen. But some chapters have interviews like the ones about H.G. Lewis and David F. Friedman for example. The quality is a bit changing, caused by that the chapters was written by different writers. But cause of the subject matter I give this book 4 (weak) stars anyway.

5.0 out of 5 stars its a good book, June 15, 2009

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Don A. Trusty - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sleaze Merchants: Adventures in Exploitation Filmmaking (Paperback)

its a pretty good book its not the back bone exploitation as a pornographer its a good read for someone just learning the business.