A couple of nights ago, I had occasion to enjoy a lengthy telephone conversation with Charles Kilgore, the erstwhile publisher-editor of the award-winning fanzine ECCO: THE WORLD OF BIZARRE VIDEO. We've been friends for more than sixteen years now, and Donna and I get together for dinner with Charles and the charming Mrs. Kilgore every other year when they visit family in Cincinnati over the holidays. As well as we get along, we speak irregularly -- I don't know why -- so we had a lot of catching up to do. It was good catching up, comparing notes on films and music, and also on matters of life and death. This particular talk was prompted a mutual wish to commiserate in the wake of Audrey Campbell's death, because it was Charles who put her and me in touch initially.
Charles also broke the news to me about the death of another friend we had in common, Sam Stetson, an adult film scholar and researcher who passed away last December 27 as the result of a brain tumor. Sam entered my life many years ago, after VW published a news story about a domestic video release called THE SEDUCTION OF AMY, which turned out to be a retitling of one of Jean Rollin's hardcore films, PHANTASMES (1975). Sam provided me with a copy and he and I swapped tapes for awhile; Sam had also built his own 16mm to video chain set-up, and it was he who provided us with the rare "Captain Howdy" images from the EXORCIST TV spots that we published way back in our 6th issue. In the days before Something Weird and Retro-Seduction Cinema, I got most of my Joe Sarno titles from Sam's collection. He also put me in touch with Joe, with whom I continue to stay in touch by phone... and I, in turn, introduced Sam to the Kilgores, who lived near him. Sam came to Fanex in 1992 to meet EUROPEAN TRASH CINEMA's Craig Ledbetter and me, and I have a lasting memory of his story about working as a taxi driver in Los Angeles in the early 1940s and picking up a hooded fare at a remote house one evening who turned out to be Peter Lorre! As my own interest in adult films is limited, Sam and I gradually fell out of touch, but his friendship with the Kilgores, however, turned out to be lifelong and fortuitous; they were of great assistance to him in his last years, and Charles and his wife were astonished to discover, after Sam's death, that he had willed them his house. Charles and I hadn't spoken since last December, before this happened, and I was sorry to hear about Sam's passing.
Whenever people learn of my friendship with Charles (which is a pseudonym, by the way), they often ask if there's ever going to be another issue of ECCO. Considering that the most recent issue (#22) was published eight years ago, this is quite a compliment -- and a well-deserved one. In a nutshell, ECCO was a literate, intelligent, well-written exploration of the films no one else wanted to write about -- K. Gordon Murray movies, X-rated Westerns, swamp movies, hillbillies in the cinema. It also appeared at a time when these movies were harder to find on video, which made its scholarship all the more remarkable. Over the past eight years, Charles has been promising to do at least one more issue, but when I asked him about ECCO's status this time, I found his intentions somewhat revised.
Now in his 50s, Charles tells me that his retirement is coming up in two years and, rather than try to squeeze out another issue in his spare time at this point in his life, he'd rather wait until he can devote his full time to reviving ECCO. He also said that, if and when ECCO returns, it is likely to reincarnate as an online magazine or blog -- and it won't be returning with the subtitle "THE WORLD OF BIZARRE VIDEO." Since ECCO last appeared, the word "bizarre" has been co-opted by the the rubber and latex fetish communities, and Charles doesn't wish to encourage any misunderstandings -- "You wouldn't believe some of the catalogues and things I get in the mail," he chuckled. He also confessed to having lost a good deal of his interest in exploitation films in the past few years, and said that any reincarnation of ECCO would have to reflect his growing interest in international art cinema to be worth his while.
Whatever ECCO becomes, it will be worth reading... and certainly worth the wait.
