There must be a reason why people’s behavior ends up so cyclical. An explanation for why, time and again in different groups and settings, the same pattern emerges where an activity is seen as odd or niche, then becomes hip and cool, and eventually is revered and one cannot recall a time it wasn’t around or respectable. The freaks shall inherit, with nerdy pastimes getting embraced and the ways of the outsider becoming adopted by the mainstream. Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday And The Birth Of The American Film Genre Archive, edited by Kier-La Janisse, chronicles the inception of Alamo Drafthouse’s weekly dive into forgotten and/or bizarre films and how it attracted its own tribe, which grew and morphed with time from a niche event into a defining characteristic of the burgeoning Drafthouse empire (which would eventually include Fantastic Film Fest, film distribution, and Mondo—whom publishes the book). It’s a tale of a handful of oddballs with a particularly bold vision that resonates with thousands upon thousands around the globe and transforms from a punk rock sideshow act into a legitimate, venerated institution that inspires generations to come.
Warped & Faded can essentially be broken down into three sections: the oral history of Weird Wednesday at Alamo Drafthouse, an alphabetical compendium listing and describing all the titles shown at Weird Wednesdays, and then a Hall of Fame wherein 21 artists are highlighted and championed for their contributions to exploitation/transgressive/bonkers cinema. There is an introduction by Lars Nilsen and an epilogue that delves more into the creation and mission of American Genre Film Archive. Throughout all sections it is filled with photos of folks involved, screenshots and posters of films discussed, and old marketing flyers and more from Weird Wednesdays’ existence.
While intriguing to offer firsthand perspective, especially when delivered by so many participants, the opening segment devoted to Weird Wednesdays’ origins is easily the driest and a bit too-inside baseball. The oral history has accounts from Tim League (Co-Founder and former CEO of Alamo Drafthouse), Karrie League (Co-Founder of Alamo Drafthouse), Lars Nilsen (former programmer at Drafthouse and host for Weird Wednesday), Ant Timpson (filmmaker, producer), Lisa Petrucci (CEO, Something Weird Video), Harry Guerro (co-founder, Exhumed Films), Janisse herself (former programmer at Drafthouse), Zack Carlson (former programmer at Drafthouse, star of DEADLIEST PREY), and many more. Filled with interesting accounts of the phenomenon as it was born and grew, there are a lot of great anecdotes from fascinating people, with some of it going on far too long while making the same points.
Like most oral histories of a specific time and place, Warped & Faded has romanticized tales of Weird Wednesdays’ grungy beginnings. There are plenty of funny escapades mixed in with the practical efforts needed to secure these reels and pull off these screenings, all while slowly mythologizing the Drafthouse and Austin in the early 2000s.
Those featured in Warped & Faded who physically hunted down THE SINFUL DWARF and STUNT ROCK and the like absolutely did a service for genre fans and filmmaking at large, not to mention scores of viewers that delight in these titles. It’s a hard mindset to get back into, remembering that these flicks weren’t just available somewhere—even badly scanned on the Internet—and it took time, effort, and money to track down something that may not even be as crazy or entertaining as it got built up into being in one’s imagination. But on the other hand, there’s a real “you kids today” atmosphere that runs through this section, which is understandable but still odd. As Gary Huggins, print collector and founder of Chucky Lou AV Club says:
There’s a screening series now for some young kids—early 20s, just got out of school—sharing all this weird obscure stuff that I would have been thrilled to see 20 years ago, but now cranky me is like, “You guys didn’t have to work for this. You’re not really discovering anything,” which is not fair. But at the same time, we really had to work hard to get these fucking movies and go into dirty, dangerous, dark, dank places, and risk our liberty because they were not necessarily legal things we were doing. It’s a little different from opening up a case and putting in a Blu-ray.
This is the most “you weren’t there, man!” type sentiment that Warped & Faded offers, though there are echoes of it in other statements by Timpson, Carlson, and other folks that long for the more freewheeling analog days of Weird Wednesdays’ beginnings. Again, this makes sense and is how most recollections go of any unique and influential scene. Weird Wednesdays was born from a perfect storm of time and place and personality colliding to produce something exceptional and unique.
But it’s a bit at odds to grumble about accessibility of these titles when, even in the book’s subtitle, Warped & Faded is leading to the creation of the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA), an organization that finds and restores genre films, distributing them for screenings (as well as licenses for Blu-ray). Isn’t the point of scraping and scrounging to find these things so that others can enjoy them? There’s much in this section that’s hilarious and worth championing, but also some less-than-positive aspects of the situation that deserve more objective distance and frank exploration.
But the oral history is but one part of the Warped & Faded. It is the clunkiest and driest, and unfortunately the first, but the other two main segments are terrific for genre film lovers. The compendium of titles is tremendous not just as a collection of movies to add to one’s watchlist, but because they are accompanied by descriptions that originally ran advertising the screenings. The prose radiates love as it hypes up the flaws and strengths of each of these oddities, and it gives a far better snapshot of why one should seek out 1982’s KILL SQUAD than a basic synopsis ever could. There are many books with such lists but Warped & Faded not only collects great titles to watch that cover a wide variety of genres, countries, and decades, it also lets the reader know what to expect when sitting down to watch PASSION PLANTATION (1976).
The final section (not including the epilogue about AGFA’s formation and ongoing mission) focuses on actors, writers, directors, and more who are part of Weird Wednesdays’ “Hall Of Fame”. It’s funny how many of these names have recently shown up in boutique Blu-ray boxed sets or have recently become enshrined among genre film freaks, proving how visionary Weird Wednesdays is and how it has helped improve recognition for many of these artists for years. Andy Milligan, Susan Tyrrell, Jess Franco, and Jamaa Fanaka are just a few of the creatives highlighted. These profiles benefit strongly by each being written by a different person (a programmer or someone else intimately connected with Weird Wednesdays). This segment of Warped & Faded becomes especially impactful because not only are different people covered (with their own wide-ranging works and fascinating histories) but are done so in different ways that reflect the author’s own style and voice, constantly switching it up and emphasizing different aspects while revealing why they mean so much to these cinephiles. It’s far more engrossing than most biographies and retrospectives, showing true admiration and passion for people who may never have properly received the praise they were due.
There are many pages devoted to overlooked/forgotten pieces of exploitation cinema made by outsiders and are now worshipped by a new set of outsiders. Warped & Faded proves itself to be an invaluable addition to that group that stands out on its own. Not because it is the most complete list of obscure movies, but because it has a true sense of personality ingrained into its celebration of these wonderful slices of weird. Janisse, Nilsen, and others have found a way to get disparate voices to come together to offer multiple perspectives and interests on a wide range of topics but coalesce into a singular vibe. Which is ultimately what these scenes are: a collision of oddballs that share certain basic tenets but ultimately are each their own brand of bizarre that complement each other to form a singular moment in time that carries a spirit and energy that can’t be easily labeled but is instantly recognizable. Despite some stumbles in the oral history portion, Warped & Faded has a ton to offer in terms of filmmakers to study, movies to see, books to read—but it also gives readers a healthy dose of enthusiasm and giddiness not just to immerse themselves in the world of weird cinema, but to apply it to their own quirky niche interest. Warped & Faded isn’t just a love letter to a time and a place, but it’s a blueprint for following your passion to create something unique.
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