’Cafe Flesh,’ US 1 sheet for sale at Westgate Gallery
The world wasn’t supposed to end like this. Not if you were brought up, like we were, on the most deliciously lurid horror and exploitation films of the 1960s - 1980s. As a global society, we’ve been bracing for nuclear annihilation since 1945. Whatever was left of civilization would crumble into scattered, desperate pockets of humanity, mentally and physically scarred, and as depicted in the smash-hit Australian Mad Max trilogy, and the subsequent wave of cheaper, wilder Italian post-apocalyptic ripoffs like Warriors of the Wasteland (aka New Barbarians, 1981), traffic laws and vehicular safety regulations would become a distant memory as aggro alphas battled for precious petroleum to fuel outlandish road-machines used to subjugate the weak, who could look forward to imprisonment, slavery and rectal trauma at the merciless hands (and wangs) of sneering brutes in scavenged ensembles of Folsom Street finery. And that’s if a new breed of fiendishly clever mutated super-rodent didn’t rise from the ruins of a decimated metropolis (or the Cinecitta Studios backlot) to finish off you and your punked-out pals in a variety of unpleasant, micro-budget ways, as in Bruno Mattei’s 1984 Rats: Night of Terror.
“Social Distancing’ was taken to then-new and overheated heights in the 1982 Stephen Sayadian/Jerry Stahl cult classic Cafe Flesh. In this remarkable, highly stylized bone-bender — part-Cabaret, part-MTV, part-porno chic — after the ‘Nuclear Kiss,” 99% of the population cannot touch another person without immediate and severe nausea, so the remaining 1% — including studly circuit-star Johnny Rico (Kevin James — not the one from King of Queens) are governmentally conscripted to perform together in subterranean cafes for the huddled, irradiated, voyeuristic masses (including a youngish Richard Belzer). Nick and Lana (fan fave Michelle Bauer aka Pia Snow), “the Dagwood & Blondie of Cafe Flesh”, find their loving asexual coupledom threatened by a sordid secret — Lana’s actually sex positive — and yearning for some good, hard, old-fashioned nookie!
Before COVID-19 we were, of course, familiar with the concept of a pandemic — but a different, more dynamic, unambiguous, way less meh pandemic, rendered in clear black and white, with accents of dripping blood-red. George Romero set the new bar in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead: the at-risk demo was limited to fresh corpses, who promptly rose up and sought out healthy humans to consume — an army of indiscriminate cannibals, unstoppable short of fire or a bullet to the head. Romero cemented the modern zombie template in his stunning full-color sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978), Tom Savini’s jaw-dropping gory makeup effects compelling young horror fans to evade the unrated film’s self-imposed “No One Under 17 Admitted” by any means necessary. Produced by Euroshock maestro Dario Argento, Dawn did especially phenomenal box-office in Italy, igniting a Spaghetti Splatter subgenre kicked off by Lucio Fulci’s expertly crafted, pulpy, EC Comics-flavored Zombie (1979) and Antonio Margheriti’s 1980 Invasion of the Flesh-Hunters (aka Cannibal Apocalypse).
With the steady onslaught of gut-munching imports eagerly savored at local grindhouses, on pay-TV channels after dark, or as VHS and (briefly) Betamax “Video Nasties,” in 1985 Hollywood responded with glossier, widely released fare like Dan O’Bannon’s Romero-unrelated Return of the Living Dead, Fred Dekker’s retro revenant rodeo Night of the Creeps, and Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, a Cannon/UK co-production that detailed in big-budget, MPAA-baiting graphic detail a world apocalypse via extraterrestrial vampires led by foxy, frequently naked Mathilda May. It’s amassed a heavy cult following since bombing at the US box office — if Cannon had used any of the skull-frying Italian poster designs, things could’ve been quite different.
Let’s not forget that being dead was hardly an iron-clad prerequisite for succumbing to contagion — in a dizzying, nerve-shredding array of terror triumphs rampaging across screens both large and small, characters in surgical masks weren’t speculating about coughing Whole Foods co-shoppers. Plague victims wore it loudly, proudly and homicidally, whether infected by tainted meat-pies in the gleefully disgusting shocker I Drink Your Blood (1970); a sexually transmitted parasite in David Cronenberg’s body-horror debut They Came From Within (aka Shivers, 1975), or a stinger concealed in the silky armpit of Marilyn Chambers in his equally ferocious 1977 follow-up Rabid; or guzzling bargain-priced hooch from a Skid Row liquor mart that’s not only corrosive to the liver… we get liquefied, exploding winos, as it wipes out Street Trash (1987) more efficiently than a fun-hating, Deuce-phobic NYC mayor.
For many of us, being trapped at home these many weeks has triggered re-decoration impulses, and now Dangerous Minds’ favorite original movie-art webstore, WestgateGallery.com, has it made it frightfully easy. All of the posters seen here, as well as their entire massive international inventory of rare gems, are now 50% off for a limited time only, by using the discount code CRUELEST20 at checkout… and as part of their biggest-ever summer sale, they’re offering further incentives to sweeten the deal: spending various amounts ($400/750/1000) unlocks escalating bonus store credit ($100/250/600) — meaning $1000 buys you $3200 in list-price wall-candy. Displaying any of these posters is the perfect way to commemorate surviving COVID-19… and if we’re all doomed, then why the hell not splurge?
’Dawn of the Dead,’ Italian 4F, 55” by 78”
’Escape from New York,’ Japan, 20” by 29”
‘I Drink Your Blood,’ Italian 2F Manifesto, 39” x 55”
’Invasion of the Flesh Hunters,’ Japanese B2, 20” x 29”
More after the jump…