John Harrison is the pied piper of sleaze. A passionate advocate of all things weird and wild, John is a collector and expert on a number of sordid subjects including comic books, amusement parks, horror movies, true crime, stag films (Anal Dwarf is one of his prize possessions), and vintage paperback novels.

John is also the author of Hip Pocket Sleaze, the definitive book paperback pulp from Headpress Books. Hip Pocket Sleaze is not only an entertaining and insightful overview of the pulp paperback and its many interesting incarnations- lesbian pulp, Nazisploitation, sexploitation, hippiesploitation, and more- but also a handy how-to guide on how to get some of these lurid, lusty and oddly fascinating vintage books into your grubby little hands.

A freelance writer based in Melbourne, Australia, John has written for scads of print and online publications (including the Mr Skin blog!), is currently working on a new book, Rene Bond: America's Tragic Teenage Fantasy.

Skin Central: What's the first nude scene you remember seeing, and under what circumstances?

John Harrison: It would have been on television, in an episode of Number 96, which was a trashy but incredibly popular nighttime soap opera that ran from 1972 till 1978, and revolved around the sordid lives of the tenants who inhabited a small block of apartments in a fictional suburb of Sydney. At the time, Australian television was much more liberal than its American counterpart, particularly in terms of sexual harrison 1expression, so Number 96 always had its female stars stepping out of showers stark naked, getting attacked by bikers and hopping in to bed with almost anyone (including their onscreen siblings). Of course, my mum would never let me watch any of that ‘trash’, but my dad and older siblings always tuned in, so I had to surreptitiously sneak glances at it by dawdling to get ready for bed or pretending that I had to get up to go to the bathroom, hoping I’d catch a glimpse of something racy as I passed through the lounge [that's Australian for 'living room', yanks- SC].

SC: What’s your all-time favorite movie that includes a nude/sexy scene?

JH: Hmmm....even trying to narrow that down to a baker’s dozen would be a tough ask! I guess I would have to include Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers (1970), which I would excitedly anticipate and watch religiously whenever it came on late-night TV as a kid. Ditto Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), and I never fail to get excited by Auretta Gay’s topless underwater encounter with a member of the living dead in Fulci’s Zombie (1979).

SC: Who are the three sexiest actresses of all time, in your estimation?

JH:Lana Turner - the epitome of the classic femme fatale. Who can forget that stunning entrance she made in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)? Plus she had a taste for a bit of scandal and the wild side in real life as well, which only helps to increase her allure.

Erica Gavin - not so much my favorite Russ Meyer starlet (Cynthia Myers and Tura Satana would be at the harrison 2top of that list), but Erica Gavin in Vixen! (1968) always epitomised to me the essence of raw, late-1960s sexuality. She had a killer body, a wicked, teasing smile and a very animalistic quality about her. Plus I loved that beehive hair and the painted eyebrows!

Rene Bond - my all-time fave sexploitation actress, and one I am currently researching a much-deserved book on. She did both soft and hardcore, worked with some interesting names like Ed Wood and Harry Novak, had a killer body (both before and after the implants) and a gorgeous face with that sexy chipmunk smile, and always seemed very enthusiastic in her performances. Unfortunately, she also had the all-too-familiar early death, succumbing to Cirrhosis of the liver in 1996 at just 45 years of age, and possibly not even aware of her lingering appeal amongst those who grew-up worshipping her at grindhouses, drive-ins and, later, on the video store shelves.

SC: What is, in your opinion, the sexiest movie genre?

JH: As much as I love the sexploitation films of the 1960s and 70s, I would have to say that the classic film noir genre ranks as the sexiest to me. There’s something about the 1940s femme fatale, with her seductive skills that can lure even the most sensible of men to commit the most heinous of crimes and flush their whole lives down the toilet just for the chance to spend one night alone in a cheap roadside motel with her, that I have always found tremendously erotic. Don’t know what a psychiatrist would have to say about that....

harrison 3 SC: Is there one time and/or place that stands above all others in terms of sleaziness, in your opinion?

JH: I think a lot of those black white sexploitation ‘roughies’ from the sixties had a very grimy level of urban sleaziness to them that are hard to top - Joe Sarno’s Sin in the Suburbs (1964), some of the Doris Wishman films like Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) and Indecent Desires (1968), films distributed by Distribpix like Scare Their Pants Off! (1968), the trilogy of Olga films, etc. Some of the titles Harry Novak picked-up in the 70s, like Toys Are Not for Children (1972) and Hitch Hike to Hell (1977) also had a nice disturbing combination of sex and sleaze.

SC: How does Australia stack up to America in terms of skinema?

JH: Unfortunately, Australia has really only had one brief golden age of skinema, which was the early-to-mid 1970s. The age of sexual liberation, an increase in government arts grants, as well as the introduction of the ‘R’ classification (18+) for films saw an increase in local film productions which took advantage of all these new liberties. The result was a flood of uniquely Australian sex comedies like Alvin Purple (1973), Alvin Rides Again (1974), The True Story of Eskimo Nell (1975) and Plugg (1975), as well as faux exposes like harrison 4The Naked Bunyip (1970), Australia After Dark (1974) and The ABCs of Love and Sex (1978). Mark Hartley’s excellent 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood provides a great overview of Australian sexploitation cinema from this era.

SC: In your bookHip Pocket Sleaze, you talk about collecting paperbacks (prices, sources, etc) with the authority of a collector- approximately how many titles do you have?

JH: I always have my eye out for more acquisitions but my collection isn’t an overly large one - I like to keep it lean and mean! Plus I have several other areas of collecting interest, so space is a premium as well. I’d say at the moment I have around 500 paperbacks, and about half of those are on display on the shelves. I like to change the display around regularly, to showcase different titles and covers - sometimes I’ll go with a theme (artist, author, subject, publisher) and other times it will just be a random selection of my fave books.

SC: I had no idea that there were so many film tie-in paperbacks! Can you think of any that might be of particular interest to Mr. Skin fans?

JH: Yes, in the years before VHS machines started becoming common household items, the film tie-in became the only real way for many people to relive a film after its cinema run was over (aside from waiting for it to show up on television). While the adult paperback market back in the 60s/70s was an incredibly vast and prolific one, there sadly doesn’t seem to have been an abundance of sexploitation tie-ins.

A few exceptions would be the Olympic Foto-Reader series published in the late-60s, which novelized sexploitation flicks like The Acid Eaters (1968) and The Love Rebellion (1967), with copious amounts of stills included, which helps make them highly sought after by collectors. In the 1970s you had paperbacks like Playboy’s series of Sex in the Cinema books, and quickie autobiographies which capitalized on the success of legalized hardcore cinema - titles like Inside Linda Lovelace, Here Comes Harry Reems! and Xaviera Hollander Meets Marilyn Chambers.

In terms of more general exploitation fare, some holy grails would be the original paperback novelizations from the 60s of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ notorious ‘Blood’ trilogy (Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red), all written (under pen names) by the Wizard of Gore himself . The 1970s saw an amazing amount of low-budget horror cinema receive the paperback treatment (Squirm, Grizzly, Kingdom of the Spiders, etc.), and there was a tie-in for the gritty 1974 WIP TV movie Born Innocent (starring Linda Blair) issued by Ace Books.

SC: There are lots of interesting sub-genres of paperback sleaze you talk about in the book- drugsploitation, Nazisploitation, lesbian novels, black magic, etc. Is there any one sub-genre that's particularly close to your heart?

JH: My favorite genres and individual paperbacks often chop and change depending on my mood, and sometimes a new discovery becomes your favorite book for a while and leads you to seek out other titles in a similar vein. And other times I might come across, say, a couple of '60s drug paperbacks I never knew existed, and this will bring my interest in that genre back to the fore for a while.

Currently, I am researching a piece on Jack W Thomas, a former LA deputy probation officer who used his experiences as grist for a series of great, lurid teensploitation paperbacks he churned out between 1969-1984 (Turn Me On!, Reds, High School Pusher, Heavy Number, etc.). So at the moment, his work is the main focus of my attention, but if pushed I suppose I would have to say that the 70s horror movie tie-in genre is the one that has a slightly more special appeal to me than the others, mainly I guess for nostalgic reasons. A lot of those films I got to ‘watch’ on the printed page long before I got to actually see them on late-night TV or, eventually, VHS and DVD, so I have fond memories of devouring paperbacks for films I thought I might never get to see, taking them away with me to read on family vacations and having them horrify my God-fearing aunties who looked at me like I was the Son of Satan because I was lounging by the pool reading the tie-in for The Devil’s Rain.

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