Personal / Website News
Book Review
First article for the new year is now online!
Check out my book review of Vilioti Vintage by Jimmy Vargas and Lady Medusa, which can be read here. he book contains an interview with Ken Holewczynski, the dude behind Exotica Moderne, a magazine I’ve contributed to many times. So, definitely check out the review and the book proper.
Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance
My first podcast guest appearance for 2024 is over at the Fan2Fan Podcast!
In this episode we talk about the classic Italian gothic horror film, Castle of Blood. This was a lot of fun to revisit as it has been years – I dived deep into this movie over a decade ago when writing my thesis and since then I’ve grown to appreciate it more.
The episode can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn website, via the embedded player below, or through your favorite podcast app.
Castle of Blood – Fan2Fan Podcast
And, of course, I’d be remiss without showing our copy of Castle of Blood, autographed to Michele and I from both Barbara Steele and Edoardo Margheriti, son of director Antonio Margheriti:
Emmanuelle Legacy CFP Re-opened + Bibliography
Since garnering publisher interest, I’ve re-opened the CFP for the Emmanuelle legacy book. The updated CFP can be found here.
I’ve also started annotating Emmanuelle scholarship and posting it here at my website so other scholars have a nice bibliographic resource. The bibliography and annotations can be found here and it’s a major WIP.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
New Edge Sword and Sorcery Issues 3 & 4
At the tail end of 2023 issues 1 and 2 of New Edge Sword and Sorcery, which has been previously Kickstarted, was unleashed upon the world. I received my copies:
The Fall 2023 issue has an advert for H. P. Lovecast, how cool is that! Also, a reminder, I did a write up about issue 0, which can be read here.
On February 15th there will be a new crowdfunding campaign to publish issues 3 and 4. You can sign up for when the campaign goes live at this link. There’s details there of what to expect from the new two issues. Check it out!
Recent Pepla Acquisitions
Recently plucked up copies of Gold for the Caesars and The Tartars, both from Warner’s Archive Collection. If it’s a peplum film Warner had a hand in back in the day, they kept decent prints of them over the years and give them decent releases:
The Tartars star pepla starlet Bella Cortez. Michele and I are probably going to do a retrospective of her pepla appearances, talking about different movies of the next few episodes of Scholars from the Edge of Time. I’ll be turning those discussions into articles for my Peplum Ponderings series which has been severely neglected.
Rest in Peplum Jesse Jane
This past week erotic actress Jesse Jane passed away. Jane appeared in many adult movies, including two pirate porno pepla: Pirates 1 and Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge. Had the honor, way back in the late aughts, to meet not only Jesse Jane, but co-stars Stoya and Riley Steele at a meet and greet: won a raffle and received copies of both of the Pirates films in which the actresses autographed. Here is a mini-slideshow (NSFW images):
I have a polaroid somewhere as well documenting the meet and greet, soon as I find it I’ll add that to the gallery.
Autographed Stuff
Here is a summary of some of the autographed stuff from my library over the past two weeks on social media.
Robot Jox
Actor Gary Graham passed away on the 22nd. He didn’t star in anything I’d consider peplum, but he starred in lots of sci-fi movies and shows. Michele and I met him at a Hollywood Collectors show way back in the day. I had him sign my copy of Robot Jox:
As you can see, I’ve had quite a few people autograph Robot Jox over the years: Graham, director Stuart Gordon (RIP), producer Charles Band, and writer Joe Haldeman. It’s a fun mecha film. We see lots of mechs in anime and video games, but live action, not so much (but the ones we get, like Pacific Rim, turn out to be cult hits later on).
The Plain Janes
Here are copies of The Plain Janes and Janes in Love signed by author extraordinaire Cecil Castellucci.
And:
When we lived in Orange we would see Castellucci at many of the local cons and she was always awesome to say hi to. Michele moderated a panel on Star Wars at a Long Beach Comic Con that Castellucci was a panelist on.