Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street

By Preston Fassel

At the dawn of the 1980s, there was one serious name in horror and exploitation film criticism: Bill Landis. While other magazines were concerned with behind-the-scenes information, tributes, and SFX tutorials, Landis' Sleazoid Express was one part film journal and one part anthropological study, seriously critiquing the grindhouse movi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087982199

Preston Fassel

Preston Fassel is an award-winning novelist and journalist whose work has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue, and Screem Magazine. His debut novel, Our Lady of the Inferno, and debut novella, The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov, each won the Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Horror in 2019 and 2022, respectively. His debut nonfiction book, Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street, the first published biography of film critic and magazine founder Bill Landis, was nominated for the 2022 Rondo Hatton Award for Book of the Year. His second novel, Beasts of 42nd Street, will be published in March of 2023. He graduated Cum Laude from Sam Houston State University in 2011 with a BS in psychology. 

Book preview

Landis

The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Stree

Preston Fassel

Encyclopocalypse Publications Encyclopocalypse Publications

Bill Landis, 2005

Bill Landis

Photo by/used with the permission with Carl Abrahamsson

Cover Photo by Jamie-Summers Ettinger,

courtesy Art Ettinger

Copyright © 2021 Preston Fassel.

All Rights Reserved.

Portions of this book originally appeared on dailygrindhouse.com

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR PRESTON FASSEL’S LANDIS: THE STORY OF A REAL MAN ON 42nd STREET

Dreamy, seamy, and deliciously (and, occasionally, nauseatingly) detailed, this is an engrossing dive into an evolving New York City as experienced by one of its now-extinct species of men: the singular Bill Landis. Fassel takes clear care to depict Landis in all dimensions, through his own writings as well as the accounts of those who knew him best. The result is a stunning work of longform investigative journalism that reads as richly as a novel. Kat Rosenfield, journalist and author of No One Will Miss Her

A luminous portrait of a complex, haunted figure... The story of Landis’s life is a must-read for both biography hounds and fans of grindhouse cinema. Alex Kane, editor at USA Today’s Reviewed

…a respectful and poignant portrayal of a singular man living in a legendary time for cinema and culture... Bill Landis wasn’t like other cinephiles, and yet, as the pages slip through your fingers, you’re bound to find a connection to him. His devotion to film, and the larger story it can tell about our collective history, was ahead of its time. So sit back, dim the lights, and let his story carry you away to the delicate, decaying world of the Deuce. Adrienne Clark, Phantastiqa

Fassel writes with true reverence for his subject and I challenge you to find a writer as tuned into what makes grindhouse films so special as this one. A true must read. Jerry Smith, Scream Magazine

Landis represents an important piece of grindhouse history that has all but been lost to time. It also tells you as much about its subject as it does about its author. Preston has passionately spent countless hours bringing this book to life, motivated purely by the intent to share Bill Landis with the digital world. We should all be so lucky to have a Preston Fassel looking after our legacies. Mark Alan Miller, producer of Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut

Exhaustive, tenderly written, and incredibly informative, Fassel writes on Landis’s life with equal parts thoughtful and critical eye that never slips into unabashed reverence. It would do well for young film writers like myself to read this book and seek out Bill Landis’s work. Brianna Zigler

"…an exploitation film as Greek tragedy, like if Boogie Nights began in act three and only got darker. Landis is fascinating and troubling in equal measure, and this book is the rare work of nonfiction that plays out in almost supernatural fashion. Landis’ life is a ghost tale...Fassel weaves the narrative like a man exorcising a story that has long possessed him. Like Landis himself, this book is compelling and over far too soon." Chris Vander Kaay, Council of Zoom

The sheer amount of detail packed into its pages is quite astounding... A must read for cinephiles and genre fans alike. Paul Downey, Bloody-Flicks

…Fassel’s account is one of a tragic, complicated figure who died far too young but left a legacy that is still inspiring...essential reading for anybody who calls themselves a fan of cult cinema. Chris Ward, Gore in the Store

PRAISE FOR PRESTON FASSEL’S OUR LADY OF THE INFERNO

One of the ten best horror books of 2018. -Bloody Disgusting

"...a delicious piece of grindhouse literature stocked with strong characters, a vivid sense of place, and real, raw emotion." - Cemetery Dance Magazine

Fully rich and deep, Fassel’s characters leap off the page with colorful descriptions. Never sentimental, the hope and agony is robust and palpable… – Barbara Crampton, actor and producer

Written with grace, restraint and poise, the prose is evocative, at times almost poetic; edgy when it needs to be, sometimes suggestive...And when the horror does take place, its detail is measured and carefully crafted. - Isobel Blackthorn, author of The Drago Tree

Fassel's writing, quite simply, is spectacular... like a fiery lighthouse beam pinning me to the page. - Herman Raucher, author of Summer of '42

"...the final showdown is a fitting knockdown, drag-out battle between two of the toughest broads in the Big Apple. If you've ever felt the '80s needed more chicks that kicked ass, Inferno has them in spades." - Rue Morgue Magazine

...reminiscent of a 70s grindhouse style, using transgressive violence to elevate and illuminate... fantastic and will leave your gut churning. - Rebekah McKendry, Ph. D., Shock Waves Podcast

"...well-paced, full of intimate detail, and so unlike anything I've ever read that I can't help but give it my highest recommendation.... – Izzy Lee, Diabolic

PRAISE FOR PRESTON FASSEL’S THE DESPICABLE FANTASIES OF QUENTIN SERGENOV

Fassel is a double threat of insane imagination and graceful command of storytelling. Quentin's tale is heartbreaking, relatable, and seriously out of this world. -Ahlissa Eichhorn, FANGORIA

... strange, weird and heartfelt in the best of possible ways... Fassel's work is quickly defining its own singular voice in genre fiction. -John Palisano, Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of Ghost Heart, President of The Horror Writers Association"

...part Wolverine origin story, part Darren Aronofsky sports drama on ecstasy, with a generous sprinkling of Kafka's Metamorphosis...Yes, it is bananas at times... but bananas in a delightfully fun way." -Rebecca Rowland, Ginger Nuts of Horror

...an absolutely bonkers thrill-ride through the heyday of professional wrestling and bizarro fiction... a ridiculous page-turner that both surprised and delighted me! Buckle up, because Quentin is a wild ride... secret Nazi experiments, professional wrestling, and gore galore. What more could you want?! -Jeff Heimbuch, Horror Buzz

I love everything about it... a nonstop thrill ride. It's so crazy-- but in a good way. Fassel has a way with developing both relatable characters and story you can't get enough of. -Jennifer Bonges, Pop Horror

...gloriously, over-the-top insane. It's also a hell of a lot of fun...Tammy and the T-Rex by way of John Waters with a dash of Tusk for good measure..." -Michael Patrick Hicks

I didn't know I needed a book about wrestlers, Nazis, twisted love, and dinosaurs, but thank goodness it exists... readers will quickly sink into this bizarre reality, eagerly soaking up the vivid descriptions and unsavory characters until the final moments. -Nico Bell

Other Books By Preston Fassel

Our Lady of the Inferno

The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov

Contents

INTRODUCTION: Ghosts of Times Square

1. BILL

2. MR. SLEAZOID

3. BOBBY SPECTOR

4. MRS. SLEAZOID

5. JUPITER AND BEYOND THE INFINITE

Appendix: The Fangoria Milligan Interview

A Guide to Milligan Horror

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Kayleigh, my Agrippina, who cut down the obstacles in my path and helped me carry Bill into the light.

A picture you won’t ever forget because it touches the full spectrum of the bizarre, the forbidden, the twilight areas of a life destined to be spent in shadow and agony. The screen may never again relate to this subject matter. It will certainly never again approach this treatment… The only ones left to mourn, the last witnesses to the execution; suspended in time by a puppeteer with blood on his hands. Little dolls that go on dancing after the music has stopped…

--Ad copy, Three on a Meathook

INTRODUCTION: Ghosts of Times Square

The dead speak but we as a people have forgotten how to listen.

Patti Smith

It's a sweaty autumn afternoon in a motel in Nyack, and there's a panic in the air. It's 1985, the tail end of the Golden Age of Pornography; video has supplanted film as the genre's preferred medium and the shoulder-mounted camcorders are humming. Production values, storytelling, and trappings of arthouse legitimacy have given way to quick, cheap thrills. Now, the name of the game is loosely plotted, inexpensive smut shot on the fly to create the minimal viable product— reasonably attractive people fucking to climax with a clear enough a focus to satisfy the indiscriminate horndogs who'll be buying the VHS tapes for $60 bucks a pop in some florescent-lit nightmare Times Square sex shop, the kind of place where the customers wear trench coats and knee-socks even in July.

The problem today: that all important climax is critically missing. Maybe it's nerves; maybe it's inexperience; maybe it's too high a dose of the party drug of the day— ubiquitous, omnipresent cocaine, heaped around porn sets like mountains of Alpine snow free for the snorting— but the male star of the hour is unable to perform. His sequence has already been shot; stubble-beards are being stroked, moist foreheads dabbed. Thousands of dollars are riding on the ability of an overly-muscled, overly-narcotized man to blow his load for all of perverted posterity. The clock is ticking. Our leading man can't be counted on any longer.

It's time to call in the ringer.

Out of the shadows steps a man short in stature and swarthy of complexion. He looks boyish in comparison to his fellow costars; doffing the oversized plastic sunglasses that swallow the upper portion of his face, his eyes bulge in manic anticipation of what's about to transpire. In short order his shirt, jeans, and undergarments have joined the glasses on the floor in a costume change worthy of an oversexed Clark Kent. He is eager; he is willing; he is ready; and he is more than capable.

He is a man of many talents: writer; ethnographer; critic; historian; porn star; IT guy. His name