Films such as The Naked Witch, Zontar, The Thing From Venus and Mars Needs Women have gained large cult followings, and movies like A Bullet For Pretty Boy, Free, White and 21 and Goodbye, Norma Jean became box office hits. Still, no other independent filmmaker of the latter 20th century may elicit such a disparity of response from general movie audiences and cult film buffs alike as the late, legendary Larry Buchanan. This study, the first serious examination of Buchanan's body of work, addresses consistent themes such as the end of suburbia, the rebel outsider, the oppressive establishment,...

Filmmaker Ed Wood was controversial and critically maligned, even labeled 'the worst director of all time', yet he achieved cult status and remains of great interest today. This book frames Wood's work, such as the cross-dressing themed Glen or Glenda? and the haphazard Bride of the Monster, as reflections of the culture of their era. Wood invariably worked with infinitesimal budgets, shooting at breakneck speed, incorporating plot twists that defied all logic. Yet there was a tangible if unfocused thematic thrust to Wood's films, which meditate fitfully on gender, religion and society,...

Grindhouse filmmaker Andy Milligan has been the subject of a revealing biography, and boasts a grassroots fan base, but his remarkable work has thus far received no serious critical overview. Working virtually alone, on infinitesimal budgets, often using a used 16mm newsreel camera, Milligan crafted some of the most unique melodramas of the 1960s and 1970s. Often mounted as period pieces, using costumes sewn by the filmmaker, Milligan's gritty, bizarre films come across as inimitable meldings of the avant-garde theater of Jean Genet, the experimental films of Jack Smith, and the random cinema...

America in the 1950s was a cauldron of contradictions. Advances in technology chafed against a grimly conservative political landscape; the military-industrial complex ceaselessly promoted the "Communist menace"; young marrieds fled crumbling cities for artificial communities known as suburbs; and the corporate cipher known as "The Organization Man" was created, along with stifling images of women.