Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 13, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Walking across a Fango convention floor, scanning the tables in the dealers’ room, your eye is immediately drawn to one vendor space where a number of vintage posters are spread out and displayed on easels. These one-sheets advertise all manner of horrific and exploitational flicks, evidently from the ’60s and ’70s, with a no-nonsense garishness that has been all but lost in the modern age of slicker, subtler genre marketing. One title in particular stands out, apparently a lost, raunchy comedy called That Fuckin’ Cat. Your mind searches back through its catalog of mindless movie trivia, unable to call up any recollection of such a film, or any of the names associated with it. And then you take a closer look at the faces in the black-and-white photos crudely reproduced along the left side…is that Don Coscarelli?
Indeed it is, and his presence tips off the fact that That Fuckin’ Cat, its alleged creators and this 27x41 piece of promotion have all been made up. Their inventor is Stephen Romano, an author and artist of the macabre who co-scripted Coscarelli’s Incident On and Off a Mountain Road among many other credits, and has now embarked on one of the greatest homages to B-cinema ever undertaken. Shock Festival, a coffee-table book that IDW Press will publish October 25, is a massive history of fright flicks, sci-fi schlockers, sex romps and other low-rent cinematic fare that never existed…but really should have. It combines ostensible interviews with and histories of the prime movers of this alternate-universe drive-in scene, but the tome’s real attraction is the art that illustrates it: hundreds of posters from both the U.S. and other countries, ad mats, tie-in novel and soundtrack-album covers, etc., all lovingly created by Romano and his art team.
“I came up with this idea when I was about 13,” he says, “because I’ve always drawn fake movie posters just for fun. I really love the whole exploitative quality that [promotional art for] horror films and black exploitation films or whatever had. So when I was a kid, instead of doing my homework, I would create these posters and have them directed by guys like John Carpenter—’Toolshed, a David Cronenberg Film!’ I’ve had the idea floating around in my head awhile, and then last year I came out with The Riot Act, a collection of short stories that was very dark, very personal. It’s gotten rave reviews, but when you write that kind of stuff and put yourself into that sort of serious, very dark place, it can really mess with you, and some of the fun goes out of it.
“My fun factor tends to center around films like Frank Henenlotter used to make,” he continues, “the crazier horror films that might even be a little serious in their sleaze or whatever. They’re so much fun to watch, and to look at the posters for. My house is literally wallpapered with hundreds and hundreds of them, everything from Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror [the original title of Galaxy of Terror] all the way around to TNT Jackson. So I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if someone did a book of these fake movie posters?’ I was talking about it with one of my writing buddies, and he suggested I come up with stories about all of them. I thought, ‘Hmm, now that’s interesting. What if all these movies really did exist, and I really did grow up watching them?’ ”
Without a publisher attached to the book in advance, Shock Festival was as grassroots a project as the sort of movies it celebrates. Nonetheless, despite limited funds, Romano sought out other artists to help fill its pages. “It was kind of my El Mariachi, a rebel-without-a-crew kind of deal,” he says. “I employed about six other artists to help fill certain gaps, because I knew that if I did all the artwork myself, maybe that would tip my hand a little bit and it wouldn’t be as authentic, because it wouldn’t have a variety of styles. So I worked with Michael Broom, who is an excellent designer for movies like The Mist and Aliens vs. Predator—Requiem; don’t blame him for that last one, he only designed the monsters. He works with guys like KNB and Amalgamated Dynamics, and he’s great. I also used a guy named Martin Houdlen, a British kid who’s only 18 years old. I discovered him on a website called Deviantart.com and asked him, ‘Would you like to work with me on some of these?’ So he did some of the artwork.
“But on each and every single poster, no matter who did the key art, I was the always the de facto designer,” Romano notes. “I wrote all the ad copy and did all the design work, right down to the copyright information at the bottom. I really went out of my way to make these things as authentic as possible. The idea is to fool even people like Quentin Tarantino into going, just for just a second, ‘Is this real? Could this possibly have been real?’ ” To that, certain posters bear direct echoes of genuine articles from 30 years ago; sharp eyes will notice visual homages to the ad art for William Girdler’s Grizzly and John “Bud” Cardos’ The Dark, among others.
A few of Romano’s industry pals served as models for the creator and his team; in addition to Coscarelli, these included actor Thomas Jane (The Mist) and Hellraiser starlet Ashley Laurence. “She’s a dear friend of mine,” Romano reveals, “and agreed to come in to play this sort of sultry Nastassia Kinski type named Natalya Ustinov—though in America, her agent made her change her name to Natalie for most of the films she did. Ashley actually suggested the titles of the movies she wanted to be in, like Bad Kitty 69, Good Cat, Bad Cat and Misty Blazer Behind the Iron Curtain, which was this spy movie she did before she disappeared at the end of the ’70s. There’s this whole history about her; in fact, all of her chapters are done as excerpts from her supposed autobiography, so it’s all told in her voice, and again all treated with total respect and reverence.” (See below for more details of Jane and Laurence’s contributions.)
The seamier side of exploitation history is explored as well, albeit with a deadpan satirical edge. “There’s a lot of racy content,” Romano says. “This is not a book that tells lies about the way things really were in black exploitation, and there are films with the n-word in the title. There were very offensive movies out there, and the book deals directly with that in a thoughtful way, not an irresponsible way. We look at it and examine it and comment on it.”
And what’s the story with That Fuckin’ Cat? “That’s a movie by this sleazy director who’s played by Jack Ketchum in the book. He wanted to make a Disney-style thing for children, but he found out he couldn’t have kids, so he rebelled against the whole idea and instead of doing some sweet, happy film, he made That Fuckin’ Cat instead. It’s mostly live-action, but he had this cartoon cat slithering around every now and then making dirty jokes. And supposedly, the voice was a porn star of the time who really hated the filmmakers.”
