Dan Taylor
Exploitation Retrospect
About Exploitation Retrospect: The Journal of Junk Culture and Fringe Media
Started by Lou Goncey and Dan Taylor (that's me), Exploitation Retrospect debuted in the fall of 1986 with tons of reviews and an interview with the legendary John Waters. (You can read that first interview here on their site.) Unknown to us, there was an entire drive-in film zine movement afoot and we quickly became familiar with publications like Steve Puchalski's great SLIMETIME, Craig Ledbetter's influential EUROPEAN TRASH CINEMA, Jeff Smith's brilliant WET PAINT and other great examples of B-movie fandom.
Originally intended as a quarterly publication, ER made the jump to a more frequent distribution schedule with issue #3. The review zine format stuck and though not published as often as I would have liked, ER did make it into the hands of our subscribers on a regular basis.
By the mid-1990s, the drive-ins we frequented were gone and it was getting harder and harder to find diamonds in the cinematic rough. We'd tackled such weighty issues as The Guide to Klaus Kinski (also reprinted here), Women in Prison Films, and other junk film topics, but found the zine drifting into offbeat pop culture coverage (like horror movies made into Atari 2600 games) as well as music reviews. Subscribers were often confused about the publications direction, especially those who had loyally followed the zine since its blood-spattered debut.
When I moved to Pittsburgh in the fall of 1995 I figured on putting ER to rest, at least as a print publication. This web site had been launched that spring and the idea of being able to distribute via the Web became more attractive financially and personally.
But some zines refuse to die. Friends and felow publishers Larry Kay and Leslie Goldman approached me with an offer that I couldn't refuse. For as long as I wanted, they would publish ER as a supplement to their excellent art/music/smut/westling mag CARBON 14, online version here. That arrangement stuck for seven more issues and the decision was finally made to let ER go. Issue #50 marked its final installment as a print-based publication.
With nearly 20 years of b-movie coverage under my belt, I'm proud to say that ER attracts more and more visitors each month. We've added some new contributors, the Kinski Guide grows bigger and better all the time, and it's safe to say that my love for junk cinema will never end.
--Dan Taylor via http://www.dantenet.com/er/about/index.html [Jun 2005]
See also: b-movie - magazine - film - euro trash films - John Waters - Klaus Kinski
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