Greg Stanina – författare

Forget prestige cinema. Leave your good taste at the door. Welcome to the glorious, unhinged gutter of the American drive-in.If you have ever sat through a polite, multi-million dollar blockbuster and thought, "e;This is fine, but what it really needs is a guy in a discount rubber gorilla mask, aggressive nude volleyball, and a killer wearing a Richard Nixon mask,"e; then you have just found your new holy text.This collection is a passionate, hilarious, and deeply affectionate roadmap through the golden age of grindhouse, spook shows, and underground trash cinema. We bypass the Oscars and dive straight into the dumpsters of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s to celebrate the rogue auteurs, the shameless hucksters, and the zero-budget visionaries who armed themselves with 16mm cameras and absolutely zero common sense.Inside, you will explore the fascinating histories and mind-melting logic of ten of the most gloriously inept, unintentionally surreal, and wildly entertaining outsider films ever committed to celluloid.Prepare to discover: The Hustle of the "e;Spook Show"e;: How theater managers in the 1960s legally allowed teenagers in rubber masks to terrorize live audiences. The "e;White Coater"e; Loophole: How future horror legends bypassed strict censorship laws using nothing but a rented lab coat and a clipboard. Accidental Surrealism: Masterpieces of zero-budget ambition where actors were paid in pizza and special effects were constructed from actual landfill garbage. Inexplicable Casting: What happens when an adult film star plays a CIA agent fighting chatty, blue-faced Nazi zombies who are allergic to fire extinguishers. The Limits of Method Acting: A 1970s micro-budget classic where the cast actually consumed live, squirming earthworms on camera.This book is not a clinical, dry academic study. It is a wildly entertaining love letter to the scrappy, the grotty, and the outright bizarre. It is a tribute to movies that swung for the fences of artistic expression, missed entirely, and landed squarely in the realm of accidental genius.Whether you are a seasoned midnight-movie veteran or a curious newcomer looking to dip your toes into the wild world of exploitation cinema, this guide will leave you laughing, bewildered, and hungry for more.Grab your cheap popcorn, turn off your critical faculties, and scroll up to secure your copy today. The feature presentation is about to begin.

Step into a world where the bizarre is ordinary and the ordinary is bizarre. In this eclectic collection of tales, a dyslexic kickboxer battles both opponents and book reports, a queen defends her kingdom with terrible baking, and a werewolf with a hatred of Charlie Chaplin lurks on Hollywood Boulevard.Blending surreal humor, dark comedy, and poignant glimpses of humanity, these stories introduce an unforgettable cast of characters—including a lens-happy girl in a wheelchair, a talkative paper towel, and the enigmatic "e;Sugarville Queen."e; If you enjoy the whimsical darkness of Tim Burton or the absurdity of classic surrealist literature, this collection offers a wildly imaginative escape from the mundane.

West Berlin, 1974. To record a masterpiece, you first have to burn your life to the ground.Failed playwright Klaus Kinski arrived in a divided Berlin searching for authenticity. Instead, he found cheap amphetamines, biting cold, and a dangerous obsession with the acoustics of human suffering. Forming the avant-garde rock band The Iron Balcony with his wife, Caroline—a former cabaret singer slowly disappearing into heroin addiction—Klaus turns their crumbling Schöneberg flat into a chilling recording studio.Their debut album isn't just music; it's a meticulously engineered psychological trap. Klaus doesn't simply document his marriage's collapse—he actively directs it. He weaponizes Caroline's withdrawals to capture the perfect, agonizing vocal takes. He pushes cellist Marta to the brink of a nervous breakdown for the sake of a single note. And as the winter sets in, he ignores the freezing conditions of his own young children just to record the resonant sound of an empty nursery.As the band descends into a pharmaceutical hell and the West Berlin child welfare authorities close in on Apartment 4-B, the boundary between art and abuse completely disintegrates.A harrowing, high-contrast psychological thriller set against the claustrophobic backdrop of the Cold War, Cigarette Architecture is a devastating exploration of toxic ambition, domestic decay, and the terrifying price of genius."e;The most beautiful thing in the world is a building on fire, provided you aren't the one living inside."e;

Welcome to the cinematic gutter. And I mean that as the highest possible compliment.If you've made it to this chapter of Unbridled Awesome: The Monsters, The Worms, and the Grindhouse Hustle, you already know we aren't here for pristine cinematography, airtight logic, or even basic continuity. We are here for the hustle.The ten films you are about to encounter represent the absolute zenith of poverty-row ambition, brazen copyright infringement, and spectacular false advertising. These are the legendary bait-and-switches that lured teenagers into humid drive-ins with posters promising radioactive terrors and blood-soaked nightmares, only to deliver heavily sedated zombies, beatnik artists boiling wax, and Donald Pleasence screaming at a painted leopard in a bathrobe.In the pages ahead, we are taking a one-way ticket into a beautiful, chaotic mosaic of corner-cutting desperation. We have Italian gothic soap operas masquerading as werewolf pictures. We have West German softcore travelogues rudely interrupted by hairy men. We even have a $100,000 jungle fever dream where a legally distinct Jerry Lewis impersonator fights a fully committed Bela Lugosi. None of these movies are "e;good"e; by any traditional metric, and that is exactly what makes them essential viewing.So, lower your expectations, ignore the fact that the monster's zipper is completely visible, and get comfortable. We are diving headfirst into the strangest, sleaziest, and most unintentionally hilarious miracles ever committed to celluloid.

Exiling himself from the cinematic world he despises, volatile actor Klaus Kinski seeks ultimate isolation as the keeper of the remote Blackwater Reef Lighthouse, a monolithic, 19th-century granite tower perched above the most treacherous trench in the Atlantic Ocean. But he is not alone. Three miles out and three miles down, the voice of an ancient, slumbering leviathan rises from the depths with telepathic resonance.

In a city divided by concrete and Cold War paranoia, Leni is making a clean getaway—one piece at a time.West Berlin, 198X. The city is a claustrophobic monument to brutalist architecture and oppressive silence. For Leni, a former cabaret dancer systematically broken by the men in her life, the crushing weight of the divided city has finally become too much to bear.There was Jim, who demanded her complete silence. Viktor, the tyrannical choreographer who demanded her physical gravity. Wilhelm, who only wanted her skin. They all wanted a piece of her—so Leni has decided to give them exactly what they asked for.Armed with heavy iron shears, a butcher's cleaver, and a fistful of Deutsche Bundespost stamps, Leni begins a methodical, horrifying process of self-amputation. She is boxing up her trauma, addressing it to the men who wronged her, and sending her ghosts through the mail.As the bloody parcels begin to arrive, the city's Kriminalpolizei and a deeply disturbed attending psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Muessler, must piece together the physical and psychological dissolution of a woman who refuses to be a victim. But how do you catch a woman who is steadily turning herself into a U-Bahn ghost?Told through a chilling blend of visceral prose, clinical psychiatric transcripts, and the haunting lore of a 1980s underground proto-industrial band, Love Letters From Leni is a masterclass in psychological horror.Are you ready to sign for your package?

Edna and Gerald wanted the joys of parenthood without the messy realities, making a wind-up robotic boy named Robbie their perfect, controllable solution. But when Robbie's key mysteriously begins turning on its own and he starts asking profound questions about life, death, and his own soul, their convenient child becomes frighteningly human. Confronted with the unpredictable burdens of true parenthood they tried so hard to avoid, the couple must make a dark and desperate choice to reclaim their quiet lives in this gripping sci-fi tragedy about the true cost of conditional love.

There are a lot of great albums out there. Masterpieces, even. Hundreds, perhaps? But I need more than just a bouquet of ear-catching melodies. I want an album that refuses to behave. One that doesn't sit politely on the shelf of "e;classics"e; but snarls when I reach for it, daring me, challenging me, to press play. I want to feel uncomfortable in the way that only art can manage—like it's staring back at me, judging my attention span, my taste, my willingness to surrender control. I want it to drag me through the dirt and right into the very bowels of hell. Because, for me, the best albums aren't hospitable. They don't roll out a welcome mat or explain themselves on first listen. They demand time, patience, and occasionally a strong stomach. They test your loyalty by sounding ugly on purpose, by stretching a single idea until it snaps or collapses under its own weight. They flirt with boredom, flirt with chaos, flirt with disaster. These are the records that make you question your own reactions. Why does this make me uneasy? Why does this passage feel wrong but necessary? Why do I want to turn it off—and why do I keep letting it play? But somewhere between revulsion and revelation, something clicks. The mess becomes meaning. The noise becomes a confession. The album stops being entertainment and starts feeling like an ordeal you volunteered for. Argue with me, exhaust me, and haunt me. I can always find beauty elsewhere. I want it soft, but loud; beautiful, but ugly; middling, but overwhelming—all delivered without apology. And when it's over, that's the real test. Not whether you loved it, but whether it left a mark. Whether silence afterward feels heavier. Whether you're changed in some small, indefinable way. The albums I cherish most aren't the ones I can hum along to without thinking—they're the ones that make me feel like I've been somewhere I can't quite describe and might not fully want to return to. And yet we return to these difficult records because they offer something rare in a world of instant gratification: earning the resolution. When the melody finally breaks through the noise, or the rhythm finally finds its heartbeat after minutes of discord, the payoff is euphoric. We don't just hear the music; we survive it.

A cursed theater. A time-traveling oak tree. A teenage murderer. Just another day on the job.Marty Hamm and Tepper Gibbons are the S.C.A.R.E. Team—a pair of washed-up paranormal investigators whose cheesy reality TV show just got the axe. Forced back into freelancing, the brothers take a gig investigating supernatural mischief at a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. Marty sees it as his big Hollywood break, landing the coveted role of Oak Tree #3, while Tepper remains skeptical of the supposed "e;Phantom"e; haunting the cast.But the curtain rises on real disaster when a sabotaged sandbag knocks Marty out cold. In the Dreamscape: Marty finds himself trapped in a twisted, 14th-century Verona. Armed with future knowledge and a clumsy sword, he races to rewrite Shakespeare's tragic ending while battling a demonic, knife-wielding Rosaline. In the Waking World: Tepper is locked inside the burning theater with a mounting body count. The Phantom is no ghost, but a deranged killer with a thirst for good reviews and fresh blood.With the exits chained and the theater going up in flames, Tepper must survive the night and save the surviving cast, while Marty fights to wake up before it's too late.Blending sharp fantasy-comedy with pulse-pounding, slasher-style thrills, this adventure delivers supernatural hijinks, brotherly banter, and stage-crashing action.

A harmless college thesis. A legendary monster. A heist that unleashes hell.Frederick Rollason has the perfect plan to guarantee an 'A' for his college thesis—and secure an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Himalayas. His target? The Yeti Woman, a bloodthirsty, half-human monstrosity born from the violent aftermath of a doomed 1938 Everest expedition.The only catch is that they need a map to find her.When Fred coerces his skeptical girlfriend, Melissa, into breaking into the university's forbidden science storage room to steal the coordinates from a previous expedition, the plan seems foolproof. But deep within the dust and forgotten relics, Melissa uncovers more than just a map. A mysterious ruby ring calls to her, and the moment it slips onto her finger, the mythology becomes a terrifying, blood-soaked reality.Trapped in a locked house as a rapid, gruesome transformation takes hold, Fred and his friends must face the horrifying consequences of their own hubris. They wanted to hunt a legend, but the legend found them first.The Yeti Woman is a visceral, fast-paced creature feature packed with escalating dread, brutal body horror, and chilling suspense.

It started with a single bumblebee millipede in the breakroom—a disgusting nuisance swiftly dealt with. But within days, the trickle becomes a flood. Driven from their subterranean nests by the relentless demolition of the neighboring lot, thousands of armored, multi-legged refugees begin colonizing the office walls, keyboard trays, and server racks.When the local exterminator is found brutally slaughtered at the back of the building, the cubicle-dwelling staff realizes they aren't just dealing with an invasive pest problem. They are dealing with a coordinated, flesh-eating army that has marked their office as a feeding ground.Trapped inside a dark, power-compromised building, an unlikely band of survivors must navigate collapsing ceilings, a colossal mutant behemoth, and a literal ocean of ravenous mandibles. But as they flee deeper underground in search of an exit, they stumble into a abandoned biochemical laboratory—and discover a chilling corporate secret that proves they aren't just hostages.They are the feast.

Leave your high-brow cinematic standards at the door. Welcome to the sticky-floored, polyester-scented golden age of grindhouse cinema.Schlock! Thirteen Underground Masterpieces of Grindhouse Cinema is a hilarious, affectionate love letter to the darkest, strangest, and most unapologetically vile films of the 1960s and 70s. This isn't a pristine guide to mainstream horror. This is a celebration of zero-budget outsiders, accidental visionaries, and absolute hucksters who grabbed a camera, hired their neighbors, and decided that logical narrative structure was entirely optional.Inside this chaotic, neon-lit time capsule, you will discover: The Ultimate Cinematic Grift: How the producers of Meatcleaver Massacre tricked a completely oblivious Christopher Lee into starring in their movie (which, coincidentally, features ZERO meat cleavers and highly debatable massacring). Accidental Avant-Garde: Why a meat-cleaver-wielding apex predator addicted to cold cuts (Criminally Insane) and a radioactive gardener with severe anger issues (The Monster of Camp Sunshine) are unironic masterpieces of independent filmmaking. The "e;Wishman Touch"e;: How legendary zero-budget auteur Doris Wishman masked terrible, out-of-sync audio with disorienting close-ups of random ashtrays, potted plants, and gold earrings in The Amazing Transplant. Psychedelic Dread & Suburban Witches: Analytical deep dives into the genuinely unsettling California Gothic nightmare of Messiah of Evil and George A. Romero's forgotten, beige-wallpapered feminist critique, Season of the Witch.Whether you are a seasoned connoisseur of trash cinema or a curious newcomer ready to witness the spectacular, mesmerizing ineptitude of the drive-in era, this book is your definitive survival guide.Grab your ticket, secure a cheap velvet seat, and prepare for a guided tour through the unseen, the unpredictable, and the absolutely unforgettable.Just remember to take a shower afterward.

Sebastian T. Herd is a drug addled, sex fueled degenerate rock star with a major problem: He's dead.  With his soul hanging in the balance, God (in the guise of Rick Springfield, obviously) offers him an ultimatum: If he returns to earth as an angel to help a down on his luck Charlie Chaplin impersonator, who lives somewhere in the heart of Los Angeles, find love and happiness, then he will get to climb the stairway to Heaven, rather than take a one-way trip down the highway to Hell. Seems an as easy enough task, especially with his 274-year old cherub angel sidekick Esmerelda assisting him. But when the duo is beset upon by a knife-wielding psychopath, and the Charlie Chaplin impersonator is thrown in jail for a murder he didn't commit, a wrench is thrown in the works, and with time quickly running out, this could spell eternal damnation for the deceased rock-n-roller.

A sweltering Florida road trip. A fifteen-year friendship on the verge of romance. And a thirteen-acre garden of pure, blood-soaked terror.Nikki and Brian are platonic best friends driving an un-air-conditioned '84 VW Beetle through the sweltering backroads of rural Florida. When a spontaneous midnight swim finally sparks the romance they've avoided for fifteen years, their picture-perfect moment is shattered by a blood-curdling scream from the nearby woods.Investigating the dark thicket, they stumble into a grueling, botanical nightmare: a sprawling garden of alien flora, fertilized with pulsing human blood. Cultivated by a deranged, scalpel-wielding botanist who sacrifices the living to feed his satanic shrubbery, the garden's thorny, flesh-eating vines are rapidly growing—and hungry for their next harvest.Trapped miles from civilization, Nikki and Brian must trade their romantic confessions for garden tools, gas cans, and a desperate fight for survival. Plunged into a gruesome, high-octane battle against a madman and a monstrous hell-plant, they have to burn it all down before the vegetation consumes them whole.Will their newly blooming love survive the night, or will they become the garden's next gruesome fertilizer?