Breaks my heart in bidding goodbye to Robin Bougie's utterly depraved and thoroughly addictive comic book style filmzine, Cinema Sewer. The lauded collected trade paperback (the comic books were harder to find) which covered a plethora of film genres and related subject matter in a similar way to Warren Oates with a Gatling Gun in The Wild Bunch (1969), had its its eighth and final volume published this summer.
With a hunger for exploitation films, it was only natural that I would eventually stumble upon these books at some point in time. Cinema Sewer was always presented in a crudely unorthodox and amateurish style; it consisted of hand written body text, low-res black and white photos, archival flyers and wildly pornographic drawings. The Marmite of film literature, if you will. This resonated with me more than any expensive, film-related, coffee-table book. Bougie's primitive scrawlings and rants wouldn't be amiss on the walls of a festering public urinal, but they also happened to drop some serious knowlege, and schooled me on a vast array of films.
Admittedly, Bougie's primary passion for pornographic film would often usurp his coverage of other content at times. However, his sleazy critiques would often prove invaluable. They would permeate into more traditional film reviews/coverage, resulting in some hilarious quotables. Here's an extract from Bougie's review on the film-noir, This Gun For Hire (1942):
"Ellen is smoothly played by the incomparable Veronica Lake, who looks fantastic in every single goddamn frame of this movie, and makes my dong wish that it could take a nice vacation fifty years in the past and go nestle itself between her perfect ass cheeks for a weekend." - Robin Bougie, Cinema Sewer Vol. 4, FAB Press, 2013.
Cinema Sewer was like a spiritual cousin to one of my favourite ever books, Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists. I love lists and Cinema Sewer loved lists, so it was a match made in heaven reading through a bukkake load of unique movie themed compilations. As a tribute to Robin Bougie's irreverant ramblings, reviews and listmaking, here are my faves:
Top 25 Favourite Cinema Sewer Articles:
1. Defending De Palma
2. Cinema Sewer's 50 Must-See Golan-Globus Cannon Productions!
3. 25 Cinematic Cliches I Never Wanna See Again
4. Teenage Thunder: The Juvenile Delinquent Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s
5. I'll Kiss Anything that Moves: TV Just Castrated My Favourite Movie
6. The Top 5 Made-For T.V. Horror Movies
7. Action Slashers: The Rise and Fall of a Genre
8. Cocks@cker Blues: The 10 Best Dramas to Take Place in the Porn Industry
9. The Top 10 Head Explosions in Cinema History
10. The 10 Most F@ckable Moms in TV Sitcom History
11. Kill Yourself on Live TV: A Complete History of the Practice
12. Chicks in Chains: The Filipino W.I.P. Cinema of Roger Corman
13. Hollywood Urban Legends
14. The 100 Worst Porn Movie Titles
15. How I Became an Action Movie Star in Indonesia: The Awesome Story of Peter O'Brian
16. The 25 Best Movies Adapted From Comic Books
17. The 75 Most Entertaining Documentaries Ever Made
18. The Day Blaxploitation Died
19. They Kidnapped Chaplin's Corpse
20. Tinto Brass Molested My Ass
21. Cinema Sewer's 7 Favourite Helicopter Crashes
22. The Top Twenty Most Underrated American Films of the Eighties
23. Cinema Sewer's 50 Fave Films Made by Women
24. The 20 Most Underrated and Undiscovered Must-See Movies of the 1990s
25. Why is That Japanese Porn So F@ckin' Rapey?
Cheers for all the schoolin', Robin! All the trivia! And most of all, thanks for all the laughs! Farewell Cinema Sewer!
