Whether defined by the carnivalesque excesses of Troma Studios, the art-house erotica of Radley Metzger and Doris Wishman or the narrative experimentations of Abel Ferrara, Melvin Van Peebles, Jack Smith or Harmony Korine, underground cinema has achieved an important position within American film culture. Often defined as 'cult', 'exploitation', 'alternative' or 'independent', the American underground retains separate strategies of production and exhibition from the cinematic mainstream, while its sexual and cinematic representations differ from the traditionally conservative structures of the Hollywood system.

Underground U.S.A.: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon offers a fascinating overview of this area of maverick movie-making by considering the links between the experimental and exploitation traditions of the American underground. The volume brings together leading film theorists, critics, exhibitors and film-makers who take as their focus those directors, films, and genres typically dismissed, belittled or ignored by established film culture. The contributors thus consider the stylistic, generic and representational strategies that have emerged in the alternative American film scene from the 1940s to the present.


Xavier Mendik is the director of the Cult Film Archive at University College Northampton, UK, and general editor of the AlterImage series. He is co-editor of Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945, and has published widely on the topic of cult and underground cinema.
Steven Jay Schneider has published widely on the horror film and related genres and is the author of has published widely on the horror film and related genres.

2002
224 pages
978-1-903364-49-9    £16.99 (pbk)


view contents


chapter samples
Foreword by Lloyd Kaufman
Introduction by Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider


reviews
'The writers of this book shine light into some of my own very favourite darkened corners of American cinema…'
Jim Jarmusch

'An exciting and innovative collection on one of the liveliest areas of Film Studies: the wild and transgressive world of American avant-garde and exploitation movies … by far the most intelligent, comprehensive and accessible guide yet published to some of the strangest and most uncompromising films ever made.'
I. Q. Hunter, De Montfort University

'As vast and variegated as the American underground itself, this exciting collection bypasses Hollywood for a wide intellectual ride through Indiewood and beyond … an unflinching guided tour of cinema's least-explored caves and caverns, combining sophisticated theory and history with unabashed affection for the screen's most subversive, rambunctious visions.'
Prof. David Sterritt, Long Island University

'Underground U.S.A. is a fascinating mixture of the academic and the alternative, the high brow and the trashy. We explore everything from film theory and symbolic motifs within specific films (American Beauty seems to be a favorite) to the sexual abandon of Doris Wishman and Radley Metzger. Many chapters chart the development and stages of a given film-maker, so, for example, we get a fascinating overview of the career of Doris Wishman through Nudie Cuties through Roughies to
unique exploitation classics such as Let Me Die a Woman.
There is a great chapter on Herschell Gordon Lewis who single handedly moved the underground from “roughies” to splatter with his ground breaking gore film Blood Feast which remains a classic of gore exploitation today, we also get insight into how Troma, the pinnacle of cult filmmaking, works. Other chapters discuss film cooperatives, distribution and the art of underground filmmaking.

Underground U.S.A.: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon is a well balanced presentation of a wide range of essays. While some will appeal more to the academic and others more to the interested
devotee of cult films; it does offer something for everyone.'
Synergy Magazine, December 2007

‘These critics explore the various strategies of style, representation and genre characterising a diverse and playfully outrageous collection of films and filmmakers … Contributors range from Joan Hawkins’ worthy examination of Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction– a film of existential academic discourse, theodicy and redemption – to Mendik’s colourful interview with Herschell Gordon Lewis and the editors’ pursuit of the gross-out aesthetics of directors like John Waters. These well-written essays will feed the particular perverse appetites of those fascinated with the shadowy realms of shock, sadism, transgression, exploitation, obscenity and avant-garde cinematic experiments.’
CHOICE

‘This is not a book that looks at celebrated independent names. You will not find Lynch, Soderbergh or Tarantino here. From the experimental films of Warhol to exploitation traditions of Radley Metzger, this collection of essays and articles explores the darker corners of the US underground scene and provides the reader with an intelligent and sophisticated tour through American cinema … President of Troma Entertainment Lloyd Kaufman’s foreword is a highlight, whose passion and enthusiasm for underground cinema is palpable … Underground cinema, a long neglected area of film studies, gains some deserved exposure from this book and provides the reader with an overview of the complexities and vicissitudes of this overlooked field. Mendik and Schneider’s knowledge and understanding of the underground scene is evident; the collection of essays covers the topics one would expect, plus a few more surprising entries. Given its intended readership, Underground USA hits the mark: it is not a particularly light read and is of a decidedly academic nature, although it would undoubtedly appeal to the specified audience … An engaging discussion for a little explored area of film which will no doubt contribute to the myriad ways in which American underground cinema is thought of and written about.’
www.popmatters.com

‘This collection of essays bring texture and nuance to our understanding of postwar American cinema, as well as being an important contribution to our perspectives on some under-appreciated filmmakers … This book makes us look again at what we mean when we talk about the American underground … In an era in which arcane labels have become sexy ways of differentiating products, and domestic delivery systems have made celluloid interestingly available to sustained scrutiny, Underground USA becomes a handy map of the American cinematic boondocks … Proffering the American underground as a living adventure playground, this attractively produced and illustrated book goes a long way towards accommodating the American cinematic unconscious into the mainstream of film reception.’
Flickhead

‘This collection of essays by academics, theorists, journalists, directors and exhibitors is a celebration of American underground’s diversity, boldness and plain weirdness … Underground USA offers a historical, economic and cultural – as well as aesthetic – map of this strange land. From Doris Wishman to Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, from the New York Filmmakers’ Co-op to Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, the result is an adventurous book … With increasing numbers of avant-garde film becoming available on DVD and video, and writing on New Media making a new generation aware of alternative and unofficial imagery, watching and thinking about avant-garde is burgeoning area to which Wallflower’s wacky but rigorous collection makes a worthy contribution.’
Richard Armstrong, www.audiencemag.com

‘Underground U.S.A: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon is the first of several texts in the AlterImage series, a series which aims to integrate theoretical work in the field of cult, horror, avant-garde, exploitation, alternative and experimental cinema with critical and production accounts of film and its audience. This first title combines a set of specially commissioned articles from leading film theorists, journalists, exhibitors and directors in the field including Jonathan Crane (Terror and Everyday Life: Singular Moments in the History of the Horror Film, 1994), Joan Hawkins (Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, 2000), Sara Gwenllian Jones (Fantastic Cult Television, 2002) and Steven Jay Schneider (Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror, 2003) … In the introduction to this volume, Xavier Mendik points out that very few academic texts have been produced which critically explore the American underground scene. We are then informed that that those few volumes that do examine this marginalised area of film studies have restricted themselves to looking at a range of cult texts as specific case studies, without taking into account the various modes of production, distribution, exhibition and audience reception that such a study should embody. From this perspective then, we are told that this volume adds to existing work in the field by providing suitable methodologies that examine the ‘historical, economic and cultural emergence of a range of film experiences beyond the mainstream’. Underground U.S.A. does offer an invaluable addition to the field, due in part, to the fact that the text covers such various and diverse strands of American underground cinema as ‘a powerful and subversive medium functioning through a fragmentation of official modes of production and distribution’ … Although I am not suggesting that this book represents the whole of the underground film experience, the text does in fact offer an important strategy for examining a range of auteurs, icons, films, film cycles and genres that have been ‘typically dismissed, belittled or ignored by established film culture’. Underground U.S.A. takes issue with films as diverse as The Gore Gore Girls (1972) and American Beauty (1999) and genres that span the sexploitation text to the snuff film. However, what unites the articles in this volume is ‘the belief that the American underground is a vibrant domain that defies the broad classifications of mainstream cinema’. In this respect, many critics in this volume view the underground film scene as ‘a space where art-house stands shoulder to shoulder with spectacle-based atrocity, and where experimentation is a regular feature of exploitation’ … While all of the articles in the book are well-written and thought-provoking, I would recommend readers to pay particular attention to those articles that take issue with the representation of sexuality and graphic nudity in the underground canon such as Gorfinkel's work on taste and aesthetic distinction, Sargeant's research on voyeurism and sadistic transgression and Bowen's work on the violent eroticism of what he terms the ‘roughie’. The work on the sexploitation film is interesting in terms of a discussion of taste formations and cultural distinctions, but more importantly (in terms of the aim of this book), the sexploitation film is interesting due to the fact that such films provide a ‘shadow history to cultural and social events’ of particular historical periods. Such work will, in time, encourage further research to explain the social, sexual and political representations of such underground U.S.A. filmmaking beyond the Hollywood canon … I would strongly recommend this title to anyone interested in the avant-garde, experimental cinema or the cult film canon. Such readers may also be interested to learn that further editions of the AlterImage series are … each specially-themed, containing 12–15 key academic articles alongside shorter critical accounts and interviews with cult filmmakers and exhibitors.
Rebecca Feasey, Scope

books of related interest
The Cinema of George Romero: Knight of the Living Dead
The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror
The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions
The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch
Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945
Sex and the Cinema