ALL-NEW SECTION!! Welcome to Vomit Bag Video's articles and reviews page!  Here you'll find some older articles i wrote for my xeroxed fanzine, VOMIT BAG VIDEO, along with some film reviews, ads from yesteryear, and other items of interest to sleaze and exploitation fans. Please take the time to check out this page while visiting and going over the catalog online. Enjoy!! WALKING DOWN 42ND STREET By Shawn Johns   To me, as a teenager. New York’s infamous 42nd. st. was the greatest place on earth. It contained everything you’d never see in mainstream america, and for the mature and brave at heart, it’d provide thrills no circus or carnival could ever hope to show you. I’d usually walk over into Times Square from the Grand Central Terminal after taking a 45~min. train ride in from Westchester Co. Mixed in with a sea of homeless vagrants, hookers, pimps, mental cases mumbling to themselves, conmen trying every kind of hustle known to man, street gangs, scores of old pedophiles trying to pick up young boys, winos, and other assorted psychos. there were those bright, glaring neon signs of the 42nd. st. moviehouses, enticing you in with all manner of lurid delights. Double, and triple, bills of gory horror. kung~fu, violent porn, and action films lined up the street in every one of the 10 or so theatres open their huge marquees displaying the most violent scenes from each film. Most of the films showing wouldn’t see the light of day in any suburban theatre, some would only play on 42nd. st. for a week or less, then be gone forever. Films like CRY RAPE, NAZI LOVE CAMP 27, SLAVES IN CAGES, MEAN MOTHER, TORTURE DUNGEON, MY FRIENDS NEED KILLING, and THE KILLER WORE GLOVES. Even with today’s massive video releases, many strange little films that were on 42nd. st never have showed up anywhere else. At the age of 14. one of my greatest thrills was going to see ILSA. SHE WOLF OF THE S.S. at its "world premiere" at the Apollo 42nd. st. theatre. Even the normally rowdy times square audience was shocked to silence at many of the film’s extremely bloody torture scenes. It truly was an experience i’d never forget. I’ll also never forget the angry crowds of young blacks lining up to see the N.Y. premiere of NIGGER LOVER~ playing with THE HOT BOX at the Lyric Theatre. At a showing of LORD SHANGO and A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES at the Harris, someone snatched  a woman’s purse in the balcony and took off into the street, the woman screaming for help from an usher. Some members of the audience tell the woman to "shut upl". The funniest incident occurred at the New Amsterdam one night they were showing THE RUNAWAYS. A guy suddenly lets out a tremendously loud fart, causing the audience to go into hysterics! That one literally brunq the house down that night! It was sleazy-funny moments like these that made moviegoing on 42nd. st. so enjoyable. Between the years of 1974-1977, i tried to make at least weekly trips into Times Square to go see all sorts of bizarre films. Not too many would venture into the freezing winter cold to see SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED and MOON CHILD on 42nd. st, but i would, without thinking twice. My devotion to the world of 42nd. st. and Times Square had become an obsession. I’d become determined to see EVERY obscure, sleazy, violent cult film ever made. and at that time. the ONLY way to see them was to go to Times Square. Sometimes. i had to get my courage up with a bottle of s’angria mixed with appedrines to get the old adrenaline flowing, but once i did. I was set to enter the bizarre world of the Deuce. Now,  virtually all of Times Square has been destroyed and all the great moviehouses closed in order to "clean up the area" to make it palatable to all the mindless zombie-like masses out there that worship disney and the "NIMBY" way of life. But my memories of 42nd. st. are always fresh and are kept alive by my writings and watching sleazy gore flicks on my VCR. My hat’s off to all the great 42nd. st. theatres like THE HARRIS. LYRIC, SELWYN, APOLLO, NEW AMSTERDAM. LIBERTY. ANCO. CINE 42 TWINS. and TIMES SQUARE, because my teen and growing up years would’ve been MUCH emptier without them! THE END. REAL-DEATH IN MONDOS. by Shawn Johns.   Mondos and documentaries featuring real death footage and scenes of forensic pathologists performing grisly autopsies seem to be the most popular form of the mondo cinema, especially on video. For example, no video series has been more successful than the FACES OF DEATH films, vols. 1-4, and the ‘WORST OF FACES OF DEATH" compilation tape, released by M.P.l.Maljack Prods., also known as Gorgon Video. The first FACES OF DEATH film has some of the most gruesome autopsy scenes ever shown, shot at the los Angeles County morgue in Ca. Heads are drilled and sawed open, brains removed, entire intestinal tracts taken out, and damaged livers and other organs are carefully washed down and examined in the chilling atmosphere of a room full of the dead. FACES OF DEATH 1 had some very limited theatrical release in the u.s., mainly on N.Y.’s 42nd. st., as early as 1981, where it played on a double-bill with JOURNEY INTO THE BEYOND. It’s biggest film release was in Japan, where it was a smash hit, rivalling even STAR WARS and E.T.!! Of course, the Japanese have a totally different "world view" than us sensitive Americans, and violence and gore in cinema is a major part of their culture. When FACES OF DEATH got released on video over here in 1983, however, everyone wanted to see it, and virtually all the video stores needed copies of it to rent out constantly. Shortly afterwards, in 1984, the first sequel was released on video, FACES OF DEATH 2, although it’s not nearly as graphic as the first one. The other two sequels, 3 and 4, had "death" sequences that had become more and more fake.4obking and fabricated, with even less autopsy or gory real death footage. In Germany, a part 5 was released, which DID have lots of graphic autopsy and dead bodies footage, but also contained a lot of stuff lifted from other videos, news reports, and some italian mondo films. Gorgon Video also released to video the obscure french death docu. called OF THE DEAD, from 1972, which unlike the FACES OF DEATH films, has mostly REAL footage shown. It takes ~ deadly serious look at death and dying, and shows bodies being cremated, autopsies, a mexican stabbing victim dying of his wounds in a hospital, and footage of a roadside execution in South America. One of the most graphic and depraved death video’s that never got any major video release is the 1982 british underground gore-music video called S. P.K.-DESPAIR. They were an Australian "industrial noise" band, whose members were supposedly released ex-mental hospital patients, one of whom performs live on stage with a dead horse’s severed head, which he takes tums biting the rancid flesh off of while projected scenes of autopsies, dead babies in jars, nazi death camp reels, and animal mutilations play on a screen behind him. Also on the same video is scenes with jars full of severed human heads, a disgusting live sex act of necrophilia, wherein a dead corpse’s head is manipulated up and down on another corpse’s rothng penis to simulate a blowjob, a very graphic autopsy where loops of intestines are removed, and another totally insane segment where a nude, mentally unbalanced young man, painted grey-black from head to toe, mutilates and tears out chunks of raw flesh from a dead sheep in an open field with a hunting knife, eating pieces of the meat on camera. Pretty sick stuff, indeed! Other equally graphic and sick videos on death md. DEATH SCENES 1, 2, and 3, TRACES OF DEATH #1-5, PHASES OF DEATH, DEATH-THE ULTIMATE HORROR, EXECUTIONS 1 and 2, WORLD OF DEATH, MANY, MANY FACES OF DEATH, #1-8, FACEZ OF DEATH 2,0001, 2, and 3, SNUFF VIDEO: VOLUME RED, DEATH FACES #4, and many, many more!!! Some italian-made mondos featurin’g graphic death md. MONDO CANE 2,000: L’INCREDIBLE from 1988, with a hideous testicle-slicing scene done on a man’s corpse, and on a baboon used for experiments, MONDO CANE OGGI:L’ORRORE CONTINUA from 1986, with body cavities of men, women, and small infants being used to smuggle cocaine into the u.s. and elsewhere, as well as a gruesome brain removal scene, and NOTTI PORNO NEL MONDO 1, a.k.a. SEXY NITE REPORT 1 from 1977, with Laura Gemser narrating a~ mondo on strange practices in the world’s niteclubs and by native tribes, in which a hideously real-looking execution and castration is shown being performed in the cambean somewhere by a black tribe on an adulterous couple for punishment. The man’s penis is cut off(which is shown THREE times for added shock effect!!), then the woman has her head gorily hacked off with a machete in full view of the camera. Is this scene of death real? YOU be the judge! A tribute to ANDY MILLIGAN: A LATE, GREAT MASTER OF TRASH, SLEAZE, AND GORE! By SHAWN JOHNS~   Not too many people were big fans of mr. milligan’s work, but i became an instant fan of his films after seeing his doubIe~bill of BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS and TORTURE DUNGEON back in 1970 on their first N.Y. area run.. The first film was based On Sweeney todd’s demon barber of fleet st., set in London and dealing with a barber and bakery-shop murder team that gruesomely slaughtered their victims for money and jewels, then chopped up the remains to be used in meat pies. At the time i saw it, the print was UNCUT and full of gory scenes of legs cut off, disembowelment, hackings, heart removal, etc.  Unfortunately, no uncut print seems to exist as of this time, With all the video release prints cut by 5 or more mins. of gory mayhem. The second film was about an evil duke murdering those in his way to the throne by chopping off heads, impalements, executions, etc. The video print of this also appears to be cut, but only with some of the cheezier sex and nude scenes, as the violence is tamer in this one. Both films were "period pieces", and although taking place in England, were shot on N.Y.’s Staten Island in 1969-70. Both films, as with almost all  of andy’s movies, have that ugly, seedy charm to them that any mainstream cinema tries to avoid in it’s work. In TORTURE DUNGEON, for example, there’s an ugly old hag ranting in the dungeon about revenge on the duke, a hunchback slave who has 3-way sex with the duke and his many brides, and the duke himself says he’s "not a homosexual, not bisexual, but tri-sexual, ill try anything for pleasure!", and proves it In one scene by kissing the hunchback on the lips! Not the kind of scenes you’d see in many of the HAMMER period-horror pieces also playing at the same time, that’s for sure!  Milligan’s films displayed an overwhelming atmosphere of ugliness and the trash of humanity, mixing it with random bursts of insane violence and sleazy dialogue from the assorted low-lifes in his films, who all seem to occupy the same ugly, hopeless world similar to that of a street junkie, crackhead, or mental case roaming the streets. Seeing his films on n.y.'s 42nd St, youtd almost get the sense that the "actors and actresses" in his films were amongst you in the audience(more than likely, a few probably were!). This is one of the reasons his work left such an impression on me, even tho his films were very low budget and could be overly talky at times. One classic bit of dialogue can be found in DUNGEON when the hunchback, who’s later killed with a pitchfork, tells the woman he’s about to screw about how his mother had 3 of her "men-friends" hoId him down on a table and jump,punch, and pounce on him, breaking his back so he’d "be a better beggar and bring more money in" as a child, resulting in his humped back. This makes the woman display more sympathy for the hunchback, even if he’s still a perverted freak and degenerate, and brings an even rougher edge to the already sleaze-filled script, making up for the sometimes dragged out plot. One particularly nasty scene in BUTCHERS has a hooker-girlfriend spit in her lover’s mouth after a heated argument with him. No doubt about it, life is cheap, tawdry, and ugly in andy’s films, and it’s displayed like a shoddy badge of honor! {probably one reason why his films never appear on cable!). Milligan made many more horror, sleaze, and sex features, incl. GURU THE MAD MONK, THE BODY BENEATH, THE RATS ARE COMING!, MAN WITH TWO HEADS, BLOODS, THE GHASTLY ONES, LEGACY OF HORROR, GIRLS ON 42ND STREET, MONSTROSITY, and THE WEIRDO, before tragically succumbing to the AIDS virus after moving to hollywood in 1990. A fitting tribute to this sleaze-master would be a long-awaited UNCUT DIRECTOR’S PRINTS of ALL his great, trashy pieces of cinema history, with all the trailers, stills, etc. from his many films. Alas, this is but a dream as of this time, until someone decides to do this that has access to all Milligan's work. Whether you loved his films or hated them, andy milligan left his grimy mark in horror-trash history for the world to see, and he definitely was one-of-a-kind. THE END. Editor's note: I wrote this back in 1998, and there's STILL no director's cuts of ANY of MIlligan's films on dvd anywhere!   GRUESOME TRIBAL RITUALS IN MONDO FILMS by Shawn Johns.(1998)       One of the more unique sequences in many of the mondo films is the often brutal and barbaric ‘~tribal ritual footage", usually consisting of scenes of tribal scarification, circumcisions, clitoris cuffing of young females, drinking of bizarre and sickening potions made by witch doctors, and depraved initiation rites involving sexual perversions such as rape, whippings, and sodomy. Some of the most gruesome and gory tribal footage can be seen in films such as THE LAST SAVAGE 2, AFRICA AMA, WORLD OF THE LAST MAN, THIS VIOLENT WORLD, LE NOTTI PORNO NEL MONDO with laura gemser, MONDO MAGIC, SAVAGE MAN, SAVAGE BEAST, SWEET AND SAVAGE, JOURNEY INTO THE BEYOND, SAVAGE ZONE, and AFRICA ADDIO. There is unflinching scenes of cruelty and human and animal butchery in each of these films, but the worst two as far as circumcision, clit-slicing, and scarring rituals are concerned would have to be THE LAST SAVAGE 2 and AFRICA AMA(a.k.a. AFRICA UNCENSORED). THE LAST SAVAGE 2:SHOCKING AFRICA, a.k.a. AFRICA, VIOLENT AND SAVAGE and FACES OF PAIN, was released in 1982 to a very limited audience(i doubt if it played here in the u.s.), and was from the italian brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, who made many more mondo sickies together, like WORLD OF THE LAST MAN and MONDO MAGIC in the 70’s. The main focus of the film is on the brutal rites practiced within the tribes of africa, particularly on the young boys who need to be circumcized in their puberty. There’s an incredibly sick scene where one dick after another is whacked with a rusty knife held by the local witch-doctor performing the task, and the narrator comments, "if he misses and accidentally castrates or kills one of the boys, he’d be taken out and executed on the spot"(i sure wouldn’t want his job!!). Also shown is an extremely grotesque and disturbing "scission of the clitoris" done on a young girl, who goes into shock while the blood pours down between her legs, her stomach muscles pulsating and beating with fear, while the camera shows us every last sick detail, sparing us nothing. We’re also treated to equally gross scenes of a guy eating scorpions alive, and a woman having a snake inserted into her vagina, as well as grisly teeth-chiselings and scarifications, complete with running and dripping blood seeping from the wounds. The entire tone of this mondo, however, is done in an educational-type style, and less of an exploitational tone than some of their other mondos like WORLD OF THE LAST MAN. Even so, it’s still not a film i’d take my schoolteacher to see, or anyone squeamish about graphic material! AFRICA AMA from 1971, and dir. by the same brothers, is no picnic in the park, either. This film actually caused a smaIl riot in N.Y.C., of all places, where it played as AFRICA UNCENSORED and after two days, had to be pulled due to angry protests by~some really pissed-off blacks, who weren’t overjoyed by the film’s scenes of finger amputations, c-section abortions, little black kids eating and laying in shit, a very small female girl having her clitoris cut, circumcisions, tribal dogs strangled to death and having their noses cut off and put in a stew, people eating flying bugs, and a splattery childbirth scene, with the commentor claiming, "all black men are born white"(that statement sure wouldn’t go over too well in harlemII). For a review of their other, and possibly sickest, mondo atrocity WORLD OF THE LAST MAN, see the article on that film elsewhere in this issue. Another mondo gross-out by the Castigllonis, which managed to get some good video release here in the u.s. back in 1986, was the 1976 film MONDO MAGIC, a.k.a. MAGIA NUDA and SHOCKING CANNIBALS. One hideously gross bestiality-themed scene shows a guy blowing air and sucking into a cow's vagina, which makes the cow take an enormous shit that comes very close to landing on the nutty fucker’s head at the time! There’s also a woman breast-feeding a dog, a really sick tribal dance where two guys bite on a dead goat’s corpse, one munching on it’s genitals, people piercing themselves with large meathooks, and a vicious ritual where adult males simulate sodomy on younger men, to teach them not to fear any form of sexI Real family fare, huh?! Back in the 70’s, of course, most of this stuff wouldn’t even bat an eyelash, but in today’s lame, dull "politically correct" climate, the two brothers would probably face 20-30 years in the slammer for even THINKING about makin’ anything like that in 1998!!     THE END. WANT-LISTS!! Below is a want-list of films i'm looking for in ANY format(dvd, VHS, 16mm, 35mm, 8mm, etc.). These are the RAREST of the rare, and i would be glad to work out a trade with someone who has them, or will consider buying a copy from them if that's preferable. Please get in touch with me at my e-mail address: SJohns07@hotmail.com  if you have any of these and wish to work something out. Thanks! VOMIT BAG VIDEO WANT-LIST 2014(UPDATED). 1. SADISMO(1967) 2. BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS(1970, uncut version only!) 3. MAN WITH TWO HEADS(1971, uncut version only)   4. BLOOD DELIRIUM(1988, director’s cut) 5. SECRET AFRICA(1969) 6. CANNIBALI DOMANI(1986) 7. CRY RAPE(THE BRUTES, 1973) 8. VIOLATED!(1974, aka THE RAPIST.) 9. BOGARD(1974, uncut of BLACK STREETFIGHTER.) 10. NAKED ENGLAND(1969, Mondo sleaze.) 11. VOODOO HEARTBEAT(1972) 12. HONG KONG CONNECTION(BLACK GUIDE, 1973.) 13. AFRICA NUDA, AFRICA VIOLENTA(1974) 14. SECRET RITES(1971) 15. MISS LESLIE’S DOLLS(1972) 16. WHITE SLAVERY IN NEW YORK(1976) 17. MACABRO(1966) 18. NAKED WORLD(1963) 19. WOMEN FOR SALE(1975) 20. SERIAL RAPE:DEVOUR BIG TITS!(1992, Jpn.) 21. SEX DEMON(1975, gay porn with violence.) 22. THE DEGENERATES(1967) 23. DEPRAVED!(1968, Andy Milligan.) 24. NEST OF THE CUCKOO BIRD(1965) 25. SUPERDUDE(1974, aka HANGUP.) 26. NAKED TEMPTRESS(1964, Andy Milligan.) 27. DIRTY DOLLS(1974) 28. MORO WITCH DOCTOR(1964) 29. DRUM(1976, TOTALLY UNCUT version w/gory castration, stabbing, etc.) 30. HIGH YELLOW(1965) 31. RAVAGED(1961) 32. FLAME AND THE FIRE(1966) 33. PARIS SECRET(1964) 34. MANIA(1973) 35. BLOOD OF KUNG-FU(1975) 36. EROTICON(1973) 37. THE WEIRD ONES(1962) 38. THE DEVIATES(1970, xxx.) 39. GUTTER TRASH(1969, Andy Milligan.) 40. CAIU DE BOCA(1986, Sady Baby.) 41. WILD, WILD WORLD(1965) 42. THE FILTHY FIVE(1967) 43. TRICKS OF THE TRADE(1968) 44. NIGHT OF THE FLOWERS(1971) 45. BLACK THE RIPPER(1975) 46. TWILIGHT OF THE DAMNED(1970) 47. FEVER(1971) 48. SOLOMON KING(1974) 49. HOUSE OF THE SEVEN BELLES(1973) 50. LIZ(THE PROMISCUOUS SEX, 1963) 51. KISS ME, KISS ME, KISS ME(1967) 52. DE C.....PRA CIMA(1985, Brazil sleaze.) 53. AS MIL E UMA POSICOES(1985) 54. A PRAIA DA SACANAGEM(1985, Sady Baby.) 55. GHETTO RAT(1968) THE END(FOR NOW!!).