Bloody Disgusting has learned that Encyclopocalypse Publications, the company founded by Saturn and Rondo Award-winning writer/producer Mark Alan Miller (Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut, BOOM! Studios’ Hellraiser comics), is partnering with genre site DailyGrindhouse.com to launch a new imprint to publish both fiction and nonfiction books related to exploitation cinema, kicking off with a first-of-its kind biography and a unique holiday-themed grindhouse tale.
Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street, by award-winning novelist and journalist Preston Fassel (Our Lady of the Inferno; FANGORIA magazine), is a biography of Bill Landis, founder of the seminal 1980s magazine Sleazoid Express, which documented the movie theaters of New York’s famed 42nd Street, the films that played there, and the subculture that grew up around them. Part movie magazine, part ethnographic journal, Sleazoid—whose original run lasted from 1980 to 1985— broke new ground in seriously critiquing genre cinema and laid the foundation for today’s socially-conscious, critically driven approach to nonfiction horror writing.
“When Sleazoid came out, horror magazines were either dedicated to tributes, SFX tutorials, or offering fans behind-the-scenes photos and news on upcoming releases,” says Fassel. “Landis was one of the first people to find serious artistic merit even in so-called low art.” The product of over three years of research, Fassel says he hopes the book will shine new light on Landis’ life while also bringing him into the mainstream. “Bill had a difficult life, and especially a difficult last few years as he dealt with personal issues and a lifelong drug addiction that finally caught up with him. He burned a lot of bridges near the end, and as a result his legacy and reputation have really suffered, and he’s remembered now largely as a cartoon character instead of the pioneering journalist he deserves to be remembered as. I want to preserve the real, brilliant, hurt human being behind Sleazoid Express.” Landis died in 2008 of a drug-related heart attack at the age of 49.
The Daily Grindhouse imprint will also offer fictional work, kicking off with director/author Andrew Allan’s grindhouse pulp novella Miracle on 42nd Street. Set in Manhattan during the Christmas season of 1986, the book tells the tale of a young street walker named Special, who comes to realize that her fellow sex workers are being marked for death as part of a clandestine campaign by the NYPD to “clean up” Times Square. With time running out and a target on her own back, Special is forced to make a strange alliance with an alcoholic Santa Claus to survive the holiday season.
“M42 was written to be a grindhouse movie in book form—lean, mean, demented, and deranged,” says Allan. “It puts you on the Deuce amongst the drunks, punks, thugs, junkies, killer cops, menacing mobsters, even a serial killer, just as anarchy explodes throughout the city, turning Manhattan into a crime zone.” Part of Allan’s popular Grindhouse Pulp series, Miracle on 42nd Street is being published, per Allan, “Because there just isn’t enough time to make every movie. Encyclopocalypse and Daily Grindhouse Books is the perfect home for this kind of story.”
Landis will be released December 7th, 2021, to coincide with the 13th anniversary of Landis’ death. “Dates and numbers meant a lot to Bill, so for this to come out in honor of that anniversary I think would mean a lot to him,” says Fassel. Miracle on 42nd Street will be released in time for the Christmas holiday, in which it is set.
Says Miller, “We believe in authors and their stories. The idea of introducing them to an entirely new audience is baked into the foundation upon which Encyclopocalpyse was built. That’s why we jumped at the chance to work with Andrew and Daily Grindhouse. 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.”
