Taiwan Night Market (2018)

I made something.

An experimental documentary filmed in Monterey Park on February 3rd 2018. I've always felt at home in Monterey Park, a small patch of Chinese hills in the San Gabriel Valley, catty-cornered to East LA. Where vastly different cultures are separated by one or two blocks. Home of ghost malls and pastel treats. Boba shops are like check points and restaurants are open 24 hours a day.

I've always loved walking down Garvey street and admiring the buildings and aromas with the soundtrack of Mandarin chattering. So I decided to turn a camera on and film it at least once.

https://vimeo.com/268862961

TITanic 2000 (1999)

I've been thinking about my attraction to 90's/00's softcore and it really all boils down to my childhood and the provocative clothing I observed. BOLD colors, colors men want to see on a woman's body. Usually black and red. A touch of animal print. So predictable and yet almost "classic".

I've always had an obsession with stripper clothes. When I was little my Mom used to get the Fredrick's of Hollywood catalog in the mail. Looking through it was such a thrill. Midnight blue lace and black catsuits made the models look like super heroines. Someone to be worshiped? We didn't have a Fredrick's store in my hometown, our substitute was "Condom Knowledge", your one stop shop for crotchless panties, Djarum Blacks and penis shaped pasta for your bachelorette party. They also sold pleather school girl outfits and stiletto boots that lace up to your thigh. I've never been able to wear these things, perhaps a few accents during my gothic phase when I was a teenage alcoholic but I've never grown tired of looking at bedroom clothes. Bedroom clothes and beyond. Cherry Sweet Dreams and Salvia nights in Panama City.

I'm attracted to these movies because I'm attracted to the trash sex culture that I was unavoidably exposed to. I want to forever look at the lace goddesses commanding your attention in G-String paradise, tits affixed in silicone. Always and forever.

♥ Happy Valentines Day ♥

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

My previous experience with the Slumber Party Massacre series can be summed up in this brief timeline...

-2001: I discover Slumber Party Massacre 2 at a Flea Market. It's described to me as "A real Diarrhea flick" by the redneck who sold it to me. I disregard it as being a sequel and watch it first. LIFE CHANGING. I watch it at least a dozen times. It's all I watch that year.

-2002: ...still watching.

-2003: And I continue watching still, only now I have also become immersed in Troma. My taste is taking shape.

-2004/2005: Having done almost no research online I finally take an interest in seeing the the original. I wondered if it featured the same killer or was a musical. I watch The Slumber Party Massacre and am immediately put-off by the different tone, different killer and soundtrack I found completely uninteresting. To my 18 year old schlock obsessed brain, this was too serious and failed in entertaining me in the way I had come to expect. It's worth noting that I almost always have gravitated to the less-serious sequels in horror franchises. They speak to me.

-2006/2007: I stumble across a copy of Slumber Party Massacre 3. I know that I inserted the tape into the VCR, but all memory beyond that is null. Which probably means I experienced a similar disappointment and then fell asleep.

-2016: I recently picked up the DVD collection so I can re-visit the series with an open mind. Starting from square one, I put on the first. I warm up to it in the opening shot. Where Part 2 is all kinds of in-your-face weird, the original is also kind of strange but in a more subtle, read-between-the-lines kind of way. It really doesn't "feel" like any other slashers, not in the way that slashers notoriously mimic each other. For starters, you see the killer's face immediately. There is no mystery to the identity of Russ Thorn. I may not have understood this in my teens but as an adult, I admire the approach. He's just a man, and men are scary. Men kill women. It's very simple, and it works here.

Slashers had been around for a while, and there certainly wasn't anything ground breaking about teenagers in peril. What feels fresh to me about the Slumber Party Massacre films is a specific feeling I get from the Southern California landscape and how these teenagers exist in it. Filmed in Venice beach, Slumber Party Massacre opens with a shot of palm trees. Funereal synth music plays over the credits, and our (first) leading lady Trish dresses herself for school. The nudity in this film is especially cold and deliberate. Amy Holden Jones was clearly adding it out of obligation so these scenes are completely devoid of sexuality. Kind of a "just get it over with" approach. The sex is in the subtext.

The thing about this film and the sequels that's so remarkable to me is; yes, there's nudity, yes they're getting murdered with a phallus but I've always picked up on a strong sense of female unity. I love the way Amy Holden Jones films these girls and shows them interacting with each other. It's very clearly the mark of a female, and likely feminist filmmaker. The idea that strong female personalities can't exist in exploitation films is a misguided opinion that has always frustrated me. The friendships in the first film seem especially real. What drew me to these as a teenager is that I had dreams of idyllic slumber parties with my girlfriends. I wanted the pizza, the popcorn and the glowing TV lighting our coven. In a way I've modeled my lifestyle around this desire. All I really want is to watch horror movies with friends and eat food I shouldn't be eating and pretend it's 1982. Is that so much to ask?

Courtney, we will be seeing her again in a different incarnation.

I still have less to say about the original than it's handicapped siblings. It's very direct and I still find it mostly humorless despite claims that it was intended to be a horror comedy. It laid the foundation for what was to come, and for the ME that was going to blossom from the soot of a Panama City Flea Market because of spell that would soon be cast by a certain Drill-Guitar wielding Rockabilly Killer.

Stay tuned for my review of Slumber Party Massacre 2, and don't forget...

"I love you."

Donna Mills - The Eyes Have It (1986)

GURL, please. Put down the blue eye shadow and step away from the sparkly pink lip gloss. You are forty-six years old! Donna Mills proudly boasts that she does her own make-up. This video exists so she can demonstrate for we women of lesser competence, how to properly cake ourselves in layers of pasty opaque sludge. Cucumber slices on the eyes? Try an entire cucumber ON YOUR FACE. No really...

She repeatedly refers to her cosmetic style as "natural", while constantly looking like she's posing for a boudoir photo at Sears Portrait Studio. Fully airbrushed, contouring meant to cover a beard, hair teased to the heavens, Dairy Queen Glamour Shot Valentine's Day 2 for 1 special.

Then we get to see her do a little fashion show, take a bath and demonstrate the exact same make-up tips in different lighting and with colored contact lens'. C'mon Donna, you're reaching. She even shows us how to wash our own face, because we've come this far without having these skills.

I'm a fresh faced gal, do you want to know the real secret to looking young(er)? Try NOT spackling your face with nasty drywall clown paint. Eyes and lips? sure. A little concealer or powder on occasion, of course. But the Foundation/concealer/powder/blush quadroplaster? OY! She literally instructs people to PRESS POWDER FIRMLY INTO THEIR SKIN SO IT WON'T COME OFF. Just rub it in, fill those pores. It's fine, you can remove it with your phallic vegetable astringent.

In all sincerity, I fucking LIIIIIIVE FOR THIS SHIT. It's the kind of thing Shana Moulton is parodying in 'Whispering Pines', or material you'd find on 'Womans-Day', the greatest tumblr of all time. Donna Mills is selling a product you can't buy at the store. Something unattainable and phony. She's selling a false sense of self-worth. And yet, I could watch this aging soap actresses do her make-up and have fashion shows in her living room all day. This is a historical relic because, simply put, they don't make 'em like this anymore! Make-up tutorials are one thing, but we're not buying the instructions, we're buying Donna and basking in her frivolous bullshit lifestyle. If I didn't love it so much it would make me SICK. And for the record, I've been dying to play with my make-up ever since I watched this. I'm not immune!

So what have we learned today?

• How to feather brown eyeliner 40 different ways (spoiler: they're all the same)
• How to wash our face
• How to NOT dry our face (pat, do not rub) 
• The Mills' household has no shortage of over-sized cucumbers in the fridge.
• Donna suspiciously doesn't seem to own any cats.
• Frosted lip gloss is a friend to NO ONE.
• Donna has a seemingly endless cache of lighted mirrors, and assumes that we all do too.
• To be attractive you must be rich, coagulating in rouge, blonde and being white doesn't hurt.(Subtext, Donna. Not buying your "brown eye" tutorial for a second)
• Donna is an asshole, one can only assume.
• ABC Movies' of the Week clearly do not pay enough for Donna to hire someone to do her make-up PROFESSIONALLY.

The nefarious pink lip gloss, in action.

Don't forget to admire yourself for hours after, days even.

Shortly after my pal Warren bestowed this priceless treasure upon me, I found myself in this weird shop on Hollywood Blvd that sells nothing but old porno mags and shell art. A harmonious marriage of objects. Given that I'm both a collector of kitschy shell crap and any ephemera of interest, I had a good time digging around. I made an amazing discovery; a publication I was not previously aware of: "Valley Magazine" - a fashion mag for women who live in the Valley. That's the stuff dreams are made of. And who do you think graces the cover of this coveted holy book?

Miss Donna Mills, THE SAME YEAR AS 'THE EYES HAVE IT'! It was a busy year for our amateur cosmetologist. And now that you mention it, she so totally would live in the Valley. It's just glaringly obvious to me now.

I might add that this issue includes a Christmas shopping guide for the Sherman Oaks Galleria, aka: the Mall you've seen in EVERY movie from the 80's and 90's. Envy me, for I hold in my hands the mystic scroll...

As if your day couldn't get any better, here are some choice threads from the Winter of '86.