Inferno: The Trash Project (Volume 1) by Ken Hollings

Publisher: Strange Attractor Press

Year: 2020

Format: Softcover

Edition: First

Condition: New

A journey deep into the heart of the trash experience: tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s.

With Inferno, Hollings offers a complex and intricate timeline of connections, coincidences, and resonances that have mostly gone unnoticed. He traces the transmission of “the Purple Death,” a deadly and exotic virus first depicted in an old episode of a Flash Gordon movie serial, through the films of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and Kenneth Anger and into the output of such exploitation pioneers as Ray Dennis Steckler, Hershel Gordon Lewis, and Russ Meyer. Hollings also turns his idiosyncratic gaze upon key aspects of teenage culture during the 1960s, including hot rods, “Rat Fink,” surfers, bikers, and beach parties, uncovering a secretive and hidden universe of masks, fake identities, and secret desires. Even Dante would think twice about taking this trip into Hell.