Saturday, February 25, 2012

BIZARRE 'HIP POCKET SLEAZE' Review

Here's a transcript of the review of Hip Pocket Sleaze from the current issue (Feb 2012) of the UK magazine Bizarre.

SLEAZY READS

Back in the 1960s and 70s, grubby, well-thumbed paperbacks with raunchy covers were sold from beneath the counter in bookshops across the world. And Hip Pocket Sleaze is a sublime celebration of these shocking vintage gems…

Here at Bizarre Towers, we’re inundated with books each month sent in by PRs and publishers hoping for a good review. As you might expect, the vast majority of these books are utter gash, and even our local charity shop won’t touch them. But sometimes a book lands on our desk that we can’t wait to share with you, our beloved readers – and they don’t come much cooler than Hip Pocket Sleaze.

An introduction to the world of lurid adult paperbacks from the 1960s and 70s – where the cover art is often more important than the contents of the book itself – Hip Pocket Sleaze is crammed with images that are edgy, sexy, camp, hip, unintentionally hilarious and just plain wrong.

The brainchild of Australia-based author and pulp paperback expert, John Harrison, Hip Pocket Sleaze takes a geeky, deeply passionate look at the golden age of dodgy paperbacks, including a raft of publications designed for gay and lesbian audiences that were ground-breaking in their time.

As these forgotten books were often a training ground for alternative artists and writers such as filmmaker and ‘godfather of gore’ Herschell Gordon Lewis, lesbian author Ann Bannon and fetish artist Bill Ward, Hip Pocket Sleaze isn’t only a fun read – it also shows that even the trashiest of publications can sire cult genius.

But, hell, enough of our yappin’! Hip Pocket Sleaze is all about the joy of poring over vintage book covers and marvelling at their wrongness, so here’s a selection of Bizarre’s favourites to get you in the mood for more. Are you game for a Blood Feast, or an Enema For Emilia?


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