After settling into life as a husband, father, and author in the 90s, it seemed that Landis had turned a corner-but the ghosts of Times Square were never far behind him.ĭead at the age of 49 on the eve of what should have been a successful comeback, his legacy has nominally been forgotten, most of his work lost, and his memory relegated to a footnote in journalism history. Sleazoid' persona and double-life as an adult film star masked the pain behind the excess: a child genius whose intellect alienated him from his peers a sexual abuse survivor who numbed his trauma with drugs a consummate outcast who only felt at home among other outcasts.

Profiled in Film Comment and Rolling Stone for his pioneering work, Landis' over-the-top 'Mr. While other magazines were concerned with behind-the-scenes information, tributes, and SFX tutorials, Landis' Sleazoid Express was one part film journal and one part anthropological study, seriously critiquing the grindhouse movies that played the theaters of 42nd Street while also documenting the dying subculture that had grown up around them. With wit, intelligence, and an unflinching eye, Landis and Clifford offer the definitive document of cinema's most intense and shocking moments as they came to life at a legendary place.At the dawn of the 1980s, there was one serious name in horror and exploitation film criticism: Bill Landis. Both a travelogue of the infamous grindhouses of yore and a comprehensive overview of the sleaze canon, Sleazoid Express offers detailed reviews of landmark exploitation classics and paints intimate portraits of directors whose notorious creations played the back end of triple bills for years on end. In Sleazoid Express, Landis and Clifford reproduce what no home video can - the experience of watching an exploitation film in its original fight-for-your-life Deuce setting. For dedicated lovers of extreme cinema, buying a movie ticket on the Deuce meant putting your life on the line.Īuthors Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford came to know those grindhouses better than anyone else, and although the theaters were gone by the mid-1980s, the films remained. If the gore epics, women-in-prison films, and shockumentaries showcased within their mildewed walls didn't live up to their outrageous billing, the audience shouted, threw food, and even vandalized the theaters. In a bygone era, when Times Square was crammed with porn shops, gun stores, and drug pushers, disenfranchised moviegoers flocked to the grindhouses along 42nd Street. Warning: Watch your wallets and stay out of the bathroom! Pop Culture / Music / Humor / Biographies / Cookbooks Local Lore: Appalachia & WNC Myths, Ghosts, Witchcraft & More!Īctivity / Coloring / Pop-Up / Sticker Books

Sleazoid Express by Bill Landis