\u201cThe New York I grew up in and love doesn\u2019t exist anymore,\u201d says Frank Henelotter, cult icon of exploitation cinema, director of Basket Case and Brain Damage, and in Edinburgh as guest of honour at this year\u2019s Dead By Dawn film festival. The 62-year-old talks quickly in an accent not quite Noo Yoik, but close. Vowels to the fore. \u201cAt the time it was fun to show that dirty, ugly side of it \u2013 and it was real! We were shooting Brain Damage on 33rd St between 10th and 11th Avenue on the West Side. On that street there was a row of industrial buildings on one side and on the other the train tracks. Because of the layout that block was hooker central. Every morning I\u2019d walk there and the sound effects under my feet were either a gushy sound from stepping on a used condom or a crunching from crack vials. That\u2019s all that was on the sidewalk in the morning, crack vials and condoms. I saw it [crack] hit New York and it was like an epidemic overnight and it was like, \u2018Oh well, maybe there\u2019s something I can do with this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Henenlotter tells me all this with a mirthful grin. The film he eventually dragged out of the misery of the 80s drug scourge was Frankenhooker, a seemingly low-rent flick. But appearances are deceptive. Here, a spoonful of gore helps the medicine go down. \u201cThat is the purpose of making exploitation films,\u201d Henenlotter explains. \u201cUsually you don\u2019t have the money to compete with Hollywood so you compete by making it about something that Hollywood isn\u2019t interested in embracing. Any time Hollywood has embraced a controversial subject there\u2019s been an exploitation film or a hundred who have been there first.\u201d So, if you want to dissect everyday misogyny, why not through a man reconstructing his dead girlfriend from prostitute spare parts? \u201cA film has to be about something,\u201d he continues. \u201cI mean Frankenhooker, he didn\u2019t just bring his girlfriend back to life, he wanted to fix her. She was heavy; he wanted to turn her into a centrefold. That\u2019s the fucked-up aspect of that film, that\u2019s why he must pay for his sin. I\u2019ve always been fond when women embrace Frankenhooker because they see past the t-and-a and realise that that son of a bitch tried to fix her!\u201d<\/p>\n
Fake blood flows easily around this underbelly of the film industry, but cashflow doesn\u2019t. It congeals at the top, with many mainstream blockbusters nothing more than financial and cultural blood clots. Films, which Henenlotter suggests have far less to say than most $50,000 movies destined for the grindhouse: \u201cTo me, B-movies today are the crap Hollywood\u2019s releasing, but they\u2019re not doing it on a B-movie budget. How can this world have Transformers? If ever there was a B-movie that should be made with 50 thousand dollars it was that thing. One hundred million dollars and they\u2019re gonna pretend it\u2019s an A film, a quality film. It\u2019s crap, we all know it.\u201d <\/p>\n
While cash is king for these films, with return the only priority, it\u2019s also a constraint that files down any controversial edges, relegating them to banal fodder. In comparison, the exploitation genre isn\u2019t necessarily brave, it just has nothing to lose \u2013 in Henenlotter\u2019s case at least. \u201cI\u2019m not making films for everybody, I\u2019m not a commercial filmmaker. I don\u2019t have to worry about making back 100 million dollars. If it gets released and gets sold in the video stores it\u2019ll make its money back. I can take chances and be more anti-social, more of an anarchist. I don\u2019t need to be safe.\u201d This \u2018don\u2019t give a fuck\u2019 attitude spawned a dark breed of filmmakers in 80s New York, and I ask about this scene. \u201cI knew Jimmy Muro, who did Street Trash. I\u2019d met Abel Ferrara [Driller Killer], I\u2019d met Bill Lustig [Maniac and Maniac Cop] but we weren\u2019t hanging out. I never knew what they were really doing. I worked in a vacuum. It\u2019s not like we had a New York club house where we all got together, no no no. If there was I wasn\u2019t invited.\u201d<\/p>\n
His protestations contradict the fact that something intrinsic in this time and place germinated this civil disobedience on celluloid. Perhaps it was the dying afterglow of punk\u2019s anarchic energy or a simple rebellion against mainstream studio politics after the creative high water mark of the 70s had faded; the real power snatched back in-house from young megalomaniac directors. The 80s became a time when most were singing from the hymn sheet instead of rallying against the pulpit. And so this amorphous insurgency were destined to come up against the establishment, and the censors. \u201cWith Brain Damage they went apeshit.\u201d says Henenlotter. \u201cSame thing with Frankenhooker. They were also a corrupt agency. You gotta remember the ratings board in America was then and is now funded by the major companies. That\u2019s why Warner Bros. can come in with something and say we want an R on this and the ratings board say, \u2018Oh, well cut these four frames.\u2019 And I\u2019ll walk in and they\u2019re gonna say ‘cut your whole piece of shit out.’\u201d He gives me an example of this butchery: \u201cWhen we brought Frankenhooker to the MPAA the head of the board at the time called up our company and the guy said to the secretary, \u2018Congratulations, you\u2019re the first film rated S.\u2019 And she said \u2018S? For sex?\u2019 And they said \u2018No, S for Shit.\u2019 And this is the ratings board!\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an agency Henenlotter finds unqualified to judge such cinema. Just as Hitchcock concocted handcuffed scenes to circumvent the censors and allow intimacy, the B-movie outlaws had to bend the rules their own way, sometimes by amplifying gore to such an extent it couldn\u2019t possibly be taken seriously. \u201cI think excessive gore is often hilarious,\u201d says Henenlotter. \u201cIt\u2019s not realistic, it\u2019s not violence, it\u2019s just blood squirting all over the place. That was always my argument with the ratings board. How can you be taking all this seriously? You\u2019re going to give Basket Case an X rating because an unconvincing puppet is throwing blood around? Are you guys nuts? What are you protecting kids from?\u201d
\n\u201cTo me, B movies today are the crap Hollywood\u2019s releasing, but they\u2019re not doing it on a B movie budget\u201d \u2013 Frank Henenlotter<\/p>\n
The British Board of Film Classification have hopefully now burst confidently through their own period of heavy censorship, a corrective reaction to their draconian Video Recordings Act in 1984 and the \u2018video nasty\u2019 fiasco where films were at times judged purely upon their VHS covers or outrageous titles \u2013 a particularly sad irony as exploitation cinema has little else with which to market itself. Henenlotter\u2019s contact with the BBFC came in a different time but echoed an unnerving past. \u201cWhen we premi\u00e8red Bad Biology [2008] in London I had dinner the night before with a bunch of people and one was a member of the BBFC. I said to him, \u2018I\u2019d love to know your opinion after the film, unofficially of course.\u2019 I said, \u2018How much trouble are we in?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Oh Frank, you\u2019re not in any trouble at all, this is hilarious and harmless.\u2019 Then he said, \u2018But if this was 20 years ago we would have had you arrested.\u2019 And that\u2019s kind of chilling, you know?\u201d But still a long way from the censorial excesses of the 80s and the Puritanism of even earlier days. \u201cThey just put out a restored version of Dracula with footage that was banned way back then,\u201d he tells me. \u201cThe big surprise was a shot where [Christopher] Lee is smiling and caressing a girl and then opens his mouth to reveal his fangs, and that was censored? You look at it now and think, how can that ever be transgressive let alone censorable? That mix of sex and horror always upsets everybody, which is why I like playing with it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he does in the 1982 cult classic Basket Case, a malignant jack-in-the-box tale with the strapline: \u2018It\u2019s mother conceived it, you won\u2019t believe it.\u2019 In the film it takes a single act of depravity to turn the tables on conjoined twins we had once sympathised for. But Frank has always been interested in creating a dissonance between how we should feel, and how we actually do, refusing to paint an easy villain. \u201cWho\u2019s the villain of Faust? The Devil. But really, what about the Faust character? He fucks up and does everything wrong and he\u2019s pitiable and he\u2019s punished. That\u2019s what Brain Damage is: anyone of us assholes seduced by the Devil. To me, that\u2019s drama. Maybe not classic drama, but B-movie drama.\u201d <\/p>\n
It seems like these days are over and our taste for the cheap maverick delights of exploitation are gone. Or have they simply bled into mainstream cinema, their spirit sadly diluted? \u201cB-movies should be a thorn in the side of mainstream and compete and play the same drive-ins. That doesn\u2019t happen anymore, so B-movies are really negligible, including my own. I told everybody involved with Basket Case, \u2018No one will ever see this film. It\u2019ll play for a week or two weeks on 42nd St and disappear and nobody will know it was ever made.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Tell that to the die hard fans and hordes of Dead by Dawn, hungry for an autograph, relishing his cult classic works after almost thirty years: all too aware that nowadays there just isn’t such heart and soul in blood and guts.