Trash: The Graphic Genius of Exploitation Movie Posters
By Jacques Boyreau

Exploding with garish colors, cheesy hyperbole, lurid images and powerful prose, Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie posters (Chronicle books) is like a history course conducted by a stoned hippie with assistance from a burlesque stripper. Brilliant beatnik Jacques Boyreau and his fellow pop culture curator Scott Moffett (of San Francisco's ultimate cult movie nightclub, The Werepad) display their astonishing collection of movie posters from the golden years of drive-in cinema. The assemblage runs roughly from the mid-1950's to the mid-'80s, concentrating heavily on the heyday of '70s sleaze, when underground filmmakers were exploring and expounding on their newfound freedom from censorship with reckless abandon. The book is beautifully laid out and designed, and although the always dynamic, sometimes disturbing pictures are the main attraction, Jacques' passionate introductions to each chapter (including categories ranging from "Sex Trash" to "Race Trash") reveal his authoritative position as a poetic guardian of his subversive art form, preserved in all its perverse glory within these pages. The compendium reminds us that exploitation cinema of this era was as daring, challenging, outrageous and entertaining as the rebellious generation and raucous events that spawned it. It also sadly reveals how safely made and marketed most modern movies are.

—Will "The Thrill" Viharo

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