Rumble Monster Dooms Erostika!

As promised, here are some posters by Rockin' Jelly Bean that I picked up at Erostika in Harajuku, Tokyo! (for full story, click here) The posters are beautifully printed and signed, in limited editions of 500 or less. I only regret one thing: that I did not buy ALL the posters in the store!

These two are my favorites, perhaps because they look like movie posters. But if these were real movies, they would be the greatest movies ever made - a bizarre mix of grindhouse / kaiju / explotiation / race car sleaze, all crashing together in Rockin' Jelly Bean's deranged mind!



I also love this series of 3 matching "Barbarockets"



Erostika also does big business in T-shirt featuring Rockin' Jelly Bean designs. I picked up this one, riffing off Japan's unique Sukeban (girl gang boss) and Sasori (female prison) genres.


Talking of Sasori, I'll finish with a T-shirt from Hardcore Chocolate in Shimokitazawa, another shop well worth visiting if you find yourself in Tokyo

Silent night, bloody night...

Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year - I hope to see you soon with more amazing posters from the vaults! Here's the Swedish poster for Black Christmas (1974), directed by Bob Clark, who was also behind classic like Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, and, ahem, Porky's, but who died tragically in a car accident earlier this year.

Tales from Tokyo part 4: Pop on with the Wimpy's!

My last night in Tokyo I went to a pop concert at Shelter in Shimokitazawa. Shimokitazawa is one of the nicest parts of Tokyo, with a lot of record shops and low-key bars, but is currently under threat since there are plans to build a motorway that would destroy the whole area! If you have a chance, you should go there and remember to take the South exit from the train - that is where the action is!

Due to a series of strange coincidences, I was introduced to Takeuchi "Hirocky" Hirokai of Oasaka indie pop combo The Wimpy's through Ola Hermansson, neuroscientist and singer in classic Swedish surf band Sonic Surf City. As luck would have it, The Wimpy's were supporting Australian garage rockers The Stems together with Japanese acts Faceful and Supersnazz! Being a long-term Stems fan and curios about the Japanese pop scene, I simply had to go...! I arrived early and had time to hang out with Hirocky (center), his wife Beccee and friend Lee (as in Marvin, not Bruce!)


First band on stage was Faceul, with an energetic female singer

Then came veterans Supersnazz, who started out as an all-girl rock band but now is gender neutral

Hirocky's band The Wimpy's were next, and I could see the connection with Sonic Surf City right away - both have a hard, poppy sound that really gets the crowd going!

Finally, The Stems - I thought they went away in the 80's but apparently they reformed 10 years ago and have a new album out!

It was a lot of fun meeting some musicians and fans and seeing some cool live music! And just to prove what a small town Tokyo sometimes can be, Ox from Rockin' Jelly Bean's shop Erostika showed up, and of course it turns out he knows Hirocky! Next time in Japan I really hope I can catch Rockin' Jelly Bean's surf band Jackie and the Cedrics who played Shelter just a few weeks ago!

Thanks to Hirocky and all the bands and the great people at Shelter! I won't be blogging for a while but stay tuned - next time I'll post some great poster from Japan and elsewhere...

Tales from Tokyo part 3: Biru Mecha!

One night in Tokyo, when going out to an izakaya with some people attending the Tokyo Filmex, I happened upon this amazing contraption: A draft beer vending machine! Yes it is true: you put in some coins, place your glass, press a button and the machine pours your a perfect glass of beer, complete with foam crown!


Press play if you don't believe me, and excuses for the fact that I couldn't figure out a way to rotate the picture right...

Intermission: Plugging the pluggers

Many thanks to Popcorn and Sticky Floors for the recent plug for yours truly! For a blogger who doesn't read many blogs, P&SF is easily the one I appreciate the most, and Colin and Michael are as close to being my soul mates as we can get without turning all gay here (don't know about that Jesse guy though). Group hug!

Our regular Tokyo Tales programming will return soon.

Tales from Tokyo part 2: Rockin' Erostika

Finding anything in Tokyo is almost impossible unless you know exactly where it is. Well, you will stumble on the obvious things (Shinjuku crossing, Akihabara electronics shops, Kiddyland in Harajuku) but to go deep, you need help. The most interesting places are invariably hidden away in a basement (like Secret Base), or several floors up in an unmarked residential building (like Akasaka Cinematheque), or many train stops off the regular tourist haunts (like Nakano Broadaway). This is where alternative guides like Tokyo Underground and Cruising the Anime City are invaluable, because no matter how many times you visit the city, there will be places you never heard of.

Of all the new shops I visited this time the best one was Erostika, which can be found in a basement in Harajuku, and is the official shop of artist Rockin' Jelly Bean. The mysterious wrestling-masked avenger and part-time musician, with shops in Los Angeles and Tokyo, designs posters and T-shirts that are a delirious blend of rock'n'roll, sex, horror and exploitation - like the best grindhouse movies never made! I was led to the shop by film expert Marc Walkow, who was in town for a festival, but it also appeared in the Tokyo Underground guide. The Erostika operators had not seen the book so they were more than happy to pose with my copy!

I bought 5 signed limited-edition posters, a Sukeban (Japanese girl-gang) T-shirt, and a bunch of stickers. I'll post images of those later, but here are a few interiors...

Tales from Tokyo part 1: Shopping in strange places

I'm back from Tokyo (and London and Cambridge and Amsterdam, but that's another story) and had a great time as usual! I only bought a few movie posters, but of course I shopped a lot of other stuff. A great help was the new book Tokyo Underground from Super 7. It's a detailed guide to shops selling designer toys, T-shirts and other amazing stuff, complete with maps (always a necessity to find anything in Tokyo!) Among the highlights I found through the book were Hardcore Chocolate in Shimokitazawa, which sell rock'n'roll, wrestling and B-movie wear; Graniph, great for unique T-shirts with shops in Shinjuku and elsewhere; and Secret Base in Harajuku, home of the bizarre Skullbrain toys.

But the most mysterious shop (at least for an un-initiated shopper like me) is Original Fake. Located in super-trendy Ayoma, in an exclusive basement shop next to Gucci, Prada and BAPE, I had a really hard time figuring out exactly what they sell! Most of the items seem to be either variations of artist KAWS' signature weird toys, or clothing with very subtle, almost invisible designs (like the XX embroidered on the sleeve of an extremely expensive plain black T-shirt!) - but almost nothing seemed to be actually for sale! Still, the space is amazing, with the signature feature being the almost 3 meter high KAWS "Companion" in the entrance - take a look...






Watch out for more Tokyo tales very soon!

The Blogger Travels Around Japan

I will be in Tokyo next week (November 18-23), and even though it's mostly work I hope to check out one or two of the major poster haunts - good old Nakano Broadway in particular. I will also attend a concert at Shimokitazawa SHELTER with The Wimpy's, Faceful, Supersnazz and the mighty Stems from Australia! If you are in Tokyo and want to meet up for a meal at Watami, a beer in Golden Gai, or a trawl through DVD shops in Akihabara, get in touch.

When it comes to Japanese posters, I mostly collect gangster and girl-gang posters from the 60's and early 70's, but most of them are not properly photographed yet. Instead I'll show two of my favorite recent Japanese posters, for Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie from Montmartre and Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away - both bought during previous Tokyo trips!

You! Killed! My! Teacher!!!

Martial artist Bruce Lee was one of the world's greatest action stars. Director Robert Clouse was an untalented hack. Exactly why they worked together on Enter The Dragon is a mystery, but thanks to Lee's total control of the action scenes it became a classic. When Lee died, Clouse scooped up the 12 minutes of finished Lee footage of the planned follow-up, and constructed the abysmal Game of Death, a Frankenstein's monster of a movie made from dead bodyparts and Lee look-alikes. 30 years later, Bruce is finally avenged by Justin Lin's mockumentary Finishing the Game, about the imagined casting sessions of Clouse's disasterpiece. Check out the pitch-perfect 70's vibes in this trailer...

Mexican Mayhem

Yesterday I showed some examples of the linenbacking and restoration undertaken by Dario Casadeo at Vintage Movie Art. But some posters need treatment even if the haven't been sitting in a barn with only some chickens for company in the last three decades! In particular, Mexican posters from the 1960's and earlier were printed on paper that is so thin and low quality, they can be in bad shape even if the have never been unfolded since leaving the printing press. Due to the acid in the paper, as well as dirt in the environment (like cigarette smoke) these posters slowly but surely deteriorate until there is nothing left. The only way to stop this process is to wash out all the acid and dirt, and then mount the poster on paper or linen.

Here is an example. This amazing 1962 poster for El Baron del Terror (re-named The Brainiac in the US) had never been used, yet the paper was is such bad shape, it was literally falling apart in my hands when I unfolded it.


After Dario had soaked the poster in his special bath, it did fall apart! The fold lines were so fragile the poster separated almost completely, and the paper was like mush - a very gentle hand was required to get it all out of the bath in one piece and mount it on linen.


But he made it! Here is the Baron looking better than ever, and ready to suck brains for many years to come!


Here is an example of a more recent Mexican poster. It seems that between the early 1960s and 1969, when Las Vampiras came out, paper quality was radically improved, and this poster was not on nearly as bad paper as the older examples. However, it still had many other problems - stains, tears, wrinkles, etc.


But this is where linenbacking shines - the dirt was washed away, the paper loss filled in ,and wrinkles magically disappeared! Here are Las Vampiras cleaned up and looking better than ever!


Finally, two recent restoration works by Dario. El Santo Contras las Mujeres Vampiro (1962) is another example of a poster that was literally crumbling in my hands when I first unfolded it, and one that would not have survived for much longer without linenbacking. Like the Baron, it separated in the bath but came together nicely in the end.


Blue Demon Contra las Diabolicas is of later vintage - 1968 - but apparently did not benefit from the better paper of the later 60's, being almost as brittle as some of the older posters. But with linenbacking the Demon is ready to fight another day!


Not all posters benefit from linenbacking, and many collectors prefer an un-backed poster in very good condition as opposed to a linenbacked copy. But if you have a poster that is worse for the wear, or one where the paper is visibly falling apart by age, or even one that the dog ate, you should drop Dario a line...

An Italian Master

Movie poster restoration artist Dario Casadei has an unusual background. Born in Sweden by Italian parents, he moved to Vancouver, Canada with his family and was set to continue his father's restaurant business. But a chance discovery of some movie posters his father had brought over from Sweden prompted a change of careers. He set out to learn all about movie posters and the process of linenbacking, where a poster is washed in a bath and mounted on linen fabric. Linenbacking makes a poster much more sturdy and visually appealing, stops deterioration from acid and other substances common in poster paper, and is usually combined with minor or major restoration. Dario now runs a successful linenbacking business, Vintage Movie Art. I have used his services several times and been very pleased with the results - here are some examples!

One of the first posters I ever bought was also one of the first I linenbacked: The Swedish one-sheet for the revenge-of-nature thriller Frogs. It is not a valuable poster, but has a lot of sentimental value for me. Over the years it has spent time tacked to the walls of my many flats, been roughly folded through many moves and stored away in various cupboards, but somehow it always turned up again. When Dario was through with it it looked like a new poster - all the wrinkles, folds and small tears were gone!


Another poster that had a rough time was the superb psychedelic Spanish poster for Sergio Martino's thriller All the Colors of the Dark. This poster was wrinkled and dirty from many years of mishandling, but Dario made the crazy colors pop out like it was printed yesterday!


Another poster that had a rough time was one of my favorite Swedish posters of all times, Hans Arnolds amazing image for Hammer's Horror of Dracula. I bought this poster in a lot with a dozen others which must have spent the last three decades on a floor in a barn somewhere. Fortunately, Dracula was one of the best preserved, and with a little restoration magic it looks fantastic!

But linenbacking is not only a way to restore mishandled posters to their former glory. For some, even posters that have been stored folded since they were printed never been used, it can also be the only way to preserve them for posterity. Some countries, like Mexico, have printed posters on paper that is so low quality it literally crumbles in the hand. Check back tomorrow for a few mind-blowing Mexican horror and wrestling posters on linen...

Manly Men!

I have received many complaints that I have been showing so many posters with good-looking women lately, and so few hunky he-men... well actually I haven't received any complaints at all, but there's nothing wrong with a little variety!

So here are a few handsome devils for your pleasure... We start of with John Philip law (flanked by Marissa Mell) in the rare, full-on psychedelic color variant of the French poster for Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik.


Then, one of my favorite posters of all time, the Japanese country-of-origin poster for Seijun Suzuki's off-beat yakuza classic Branded to Kill, where Jo Shishido portrays a professional killer who gets unusually excited by the smell of boiled rice.

And from noodles to spaghetti, here's Giuliano Gemma on a Swedish one-sheet "one of the toughest westerns ever made", Blood for a Silver Dollar.


And who wouldn't like to swap places with Ray Danton as Lucky the Inscrutable in Jess Franco's fun Eurospy parody, here seen on a Spanish one-sheet.

And finally, the manliest men of all time: Mexican wrestlers Blue Demon and El Santo, here seen in rare country-of-origin one-sheets for two of their most sensitive performances.

Locandina Ladies!

When in doubt, a few Italian locandinas will always do the trick. Small, portable, and often with striking artwork, locandinas are a great and inexpensive way to start a poster collection. Here are a few tough girls from locandina-land...