Given the Cramps’ love of trashy Americana and vintage monster movies—witness their adoption of Cleveland’s legendary schlock-horror TV host Ghoulardi—it perhaps isn’t so surprising to stumble across this fabulous photo spread they did for The Face in the July 1980 issue. Give The Face credit: The Cramps had been bouncing around for a while but their only LP to that point, Songs the Lord Taught Us, had come out in May. The pictures repurpose lines from the Cramps’ song “Voodoo Idol,” which didn’t even make it onto an album until a year later, when their I.R.S. debut Psychedelic Jungle came out. The cover of the issue had Bryan Ferry on it, and the same issue also had items on Ian Dury, John Cooper Clarke, Howard Devoto, and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Not bad.
The title of the photo essay (?) is “Tales from the Crypt,” which of course calls to mind the comic book series that inspired the band’s creeptastic logo. The photographs were by Alain de la Mata, who went on to produce some interesting movies a couple of decades after this shoot, and the series of pictures was “scripted and performed by the Cramps,” which is certainly an unusual credit. “The Underestimator,” whose Tumblr I spotted these on, speculates that these marvelous pics may have been taken during the “Garbageman” promo video shoot at the Shepperton film Studios, in Middlesex, UK.
(Click on the above image for a larger view.)
