Sleaze Artists

“Sleaze Artists is highly readable and recommended for anyone interested in cinema and willing to acknowledge that sleaze is more central to cinematic practice and film culture than is currently acknowledged.” - Adam Capitanio, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

“Sleaze Artists provides a useful overview of the historical and sociological meta-narratives and theoretical debates associated with the 1960s and 1970s exploitation films central to so much trash cinema culture. Importantly, it also points to some new avenues through which to research ongoing and future cinematic taste wars.” - Maura Edmond, Screening the Past

“[A]n exquisite collection of writing and a demonstration of excellent scholarship.” - Ernest Mathijs, Screen

“[T]he distinguished scholars who contribute to this volume valorize a new generation of cinephiles—one interested in film ‘unencumbered by the delusions of art and gravitas.’ Highly recommended.” - J.C. Tibbetts, Choice

“[T]here is a great deal of fast food for thought in these essays.” - Kim Newman, Sight & Sound

“[T]here is not a weak essay in Sleaze Artists and several that are excellent. One might presume that trash and the academy cannot afford to get too comfortable in each other’s presence, but with collections of this quality, their relationship is unlikely to end any time soon.” - Leon Hunt, Science Fiction Film and Television

“[T]his eclectic volume should interest anyone studying popular film, especially those whose inquiries delve into the more ‘unseemly’’ genres.” - Beth Kattelman, Journal of Popular Culture

“I appreciate the collection's desire to expand notions of ‘worth’ for avenues of academic inquiry. . . . book is a welcome corrective to those overwrought narratives of cinema's development that have displaced the popular, the populist, and the profane in cinema to the margins.” - Andrew Scahill, Velvet Light Trap

“Aztec blood sacrifices! Knife-wielding psychos!! Libido-crazed military men!!! Martin Heidegger!!!! With verve and vigor, Sleaze Artists offers this . . . and more! The book boldly rips the lid off the wacky world of sleaze movies with subversive delight and intellectual insight!! Don’t go into this volume alone!—unless you are ready for sharp scholarship, rigorous historiography, careful argument, and a deep commitment to an understanding of cinema in all its richness across a variety of taste cultures!!” - Dana Polan, New York University

“Sleaze Artists constitutes an honest attempt to trip the cultural rift. There's a becoming undercurrent of humility to most of the essays, which suggests that even the brightest minds in cultural studies are still refining their approach to what is generally a back-breaking endeavor—elevating the low into the rarefied (and suffocating) air of academic contemplation.” - Adam Nayman, Cineaste

“Sleaze Artists is an excellent collection, which covers a wide range of topics important to the understanding of sleaze cinema, and is a great addition to both cinema and cultural studies.” - Lyndall Clipstone, Media International Australia

“Sleaze Artists represents an articulate, accessible, and thoughtful adventure into the world of cinematic bad taste and low culture. . . . Sleaze Artists provides us with clear, thoughtful discussion about some great sleazy movies.” - Parley Ann Boswell, Journal of American Culture

“One of the most intriguing essayists in the book is Kay Dickinson, on how music figured in Britain’s banning of five Italian films from videotape distribution.” - Nina C. Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education

“Personally, I found the book’s first section, ‘Sleazy Historyies,’ to be the most compelling . . . . The book’s second section, ‘Sleazy Afterlives,’ contains some top-notch retrospective analyses of marginal films.” - Mikita Brottman, PopMatters

“There is a certain thrill inherent in a scholarly anthology that wholly embraces those films usually deemed disreputable, disgusting, cheap, and perhaps even anti-intellectual. . . . A satisfyingly subversive addition to film studies and cultural studies. . . .” - Adam Dodd, M/C Reviews