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Check out more of my writing on my blogger page at The Graveyard Tramp Blog Spot
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I was born and raised (and still spend most of my time in) the Melbourne suburb of St. Kilda. While growing up in the late-seventies and early-eighties, St. Kilda was one of the major hubs for Australia's drug and prostitution racquets, a beachfront suburb dominated by the infamous Fitzroy Street, whose string of skid-row pubs, grimy adult book shops, neon-lit pinball parlours and greasy take away shops (where you could easily order a hit of smack with your potato cakes or Chiko Roll), made it Melbourne's own miniature version of L.A.'s Sunset Strip (unfortunately, it has now become a haven for yuppies, with pretentious coffee houses and over-priced department stores). There was also the gaudy spectacle of Luna Park, an ancient amusement park constructed of wood and featuring rickety roller coasters, tacky ghost trains, and sickeningly sweet fairy floss (or cotton candy, as the Americans call it). It was a great atmosphere to reach puberty and mature in, and one which I've always felt helped nurture my attraction towards things that a lot of my family and friends didn't consider normal or particularly healthy.
Unlike most of the boys at the Catholic School I attended, I was never big on playing sports, and took pride in always being virtually the last person picked for any team (at least they knew not to expect any sort of effort out of me!). My big early obsessions were Marvel and DC Comics (especially Spider-Man, Batman and horror comic books), the 1960s Batman television series, Planet of the Apes, Glam Rock (The Sweet, The Runaways, KISS and Alice Cooper) and Australian detective shows from that era (Matlock Police, Division 4, Homicide and later in the decade, Cop Shop and Prisoner).
Sneaking out of bed to watch early-1970s Australian adult TV shows Number 96 and The Box is also a fond memory from my childhood, as is my introduction to cheesy (and politically incorrect) UK comedies such as On the Buses, Love Thy Neighbour and the Carry On films (particularly the early-1970s entries like Carry On Camping and Carry On Girls).
Horror films became an increasingly important part of my life around 1978, when I discovered my first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland (No. 145, with a great cover photo of The Incredible Melting Man). I started purchasing books, posters, model kits and other great monster related items through the pages of Famous Monsters, and began sneaking off into the city to see screenings of Squirm, Piranha, Starship Invasions and other b-grade schlock and horror flicks (unfortunately, my attempt to sneak into the R-rated Dawn of the Dead proved unsuccessful, and I had to wait six years before finally seeing George Romero's zombie masterpiece - on home video). On a holiday trip to Cairns (North Queensland) I stumbled upon a copy of David Pirie's excellent 1977 book The Vampire Cinema in a newsagency, which was instrumental in introducing me to the world of European horror films, in particular the surreal, erotic vampire films of French director Jean Rollin.
As the 1980s progressed and video became more widespread, my appreciation for more obscure cinema increased. Spurred on by Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (1983) and RE/Search's Incredibly Strange Films (1985), I began to seek out the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, Ray Dennis Steckler and others (today, films by these directors are easy to obtain, but back then it often took quite some searching to find certain titles, especially when living in Australia). An interest in sexploitation/adult cinema and vintage classroom scare films, along with a growing fascination with true crime cases (influenced by the notorious 1981 mondo documentary The Killing of America) also began to develop at this point.
After six years of heavy parties and drug experimentation, I decided to become a writer in 1990. My first published piece was a review of Die Hard II for my university magazine, The Swine, and I haven't really wanted to look back since. I have had articles/reviews published in local and overseas magazines such as Headpress, Fatal Visions, Scary Monsters, Oriental Cinema, The Eros Journal, Collectorholics, European Trash Cinema, Crimson Celluloid, Betty Paginated, Trash Confidential, Wrapped In Plastic and many others . I have also spent time as a regular writer for Australia's Filmink magazine, and the Something Weird Video company in Seattle, contributing video reviews for their website and catalogues.
Recently, I have completed a chapter on gory Driver Education films from the 1950s & 60s for a compendium entitled Suture 2, to be published by Amok in 2008. I also contributed two chapters for a book on Death Cults which was published in August 2002 by Virgin Books in the UK. Other recent writing projects include an essay on Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army for a book on 1960s/70s radical groups titled Guns, Death, Terror, published by Creation in August 2003, and a chapter on Australian policeman Denis Tanner for another Virgin true crime volume, this one dedicated to Bad Cops and also published in August of 2003. More recently I contributed an essay on serial killer Charles Sobhraj for the upcoming book Saturn In Retrograde, a look at counter-culture based true crime cases from the 1960s & 70s.
Above: Cover for my upcoming Headpress book Hip Pocket Sleaze.
In the mid-1990s I self-published a number of zero-budget fan magazines, mostly devoted to off-beat films, including Strait-Jacket, Reel Wild Cinema!, Blimey (1970s UK sex comedies), Battle Stations! (war in pop culture) and Hip Pocket Sleaze (vintage adult paperbacks). A book version of Hip Pocket Sleaze is due to be published by Headpress in the UK, hopefully sometime before the world ends! Samples of my writing can be found in my My Space blogs as well as on my own blogger page at The Graveyard Tramp Blog Spot
Apart from my various book projects and magazine articles which I am currently working on, I also have completed three feature length screenplays, which I am presently trying to raise interest in. When not typing away on the computer, I am kept busy running my small mail-order company, The Graveyard Tramp , which specialises in off-beat items of pop culture memorabilia. Visit my eBay Page at The Graveyard Tramp
The Graveyard Tramp is also currently developing several unique projects, including a line of customized action figures for Melbourne girl group DollSquad, and The Black Widow doll and comic book.
Above: Prototype for my Black Widow doll.
Above: Black Widow comic book cover mock-up, by My Space friend and talented UK artist Charlotte Thomson.
Above: Action figures I made for DollSquad.
My hobbies include freaking out the normal people, bugging the neighbours with my electric guitar, as well as adding to my many varied collections, which include vintage adult and true crime paperbacks, 1960s monster magazines, Charles Manson and Kennedy assassination items, records (early-1970s Stones, The Cramps, New York Dolls, Southern Culture On the Skids, The Runaways, The Trashmen), Aurora monster model figure kits, 8mm adult and horror films, 16mm educational film shorts, tattoo books and carnival sideshow oddities, underground comics and art and much, much more!
I was recently featured on the national ABC television program Collectors - you can read about my segment here: Collectors - John Harrison In the late 1990s, I also appeared regularly as a film reviewer/interviewer on radio (3RRRs Film Buffs Forecast) and television (Optus TVs Video In Focus), and provided the Melbourne location footage for the 1997 low-budget American sci-fi/horror film Alien Agenda: Under the Skin. In 2004 I curated a season of screenings of Charles Manson related films and documentaries as part of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
