Sleazoid Express

Sleazoid Express (1980–1985, and later editions) was the house journal of the grindhouse movie scene in New York circa 1964-1985. Founded as a one-sheet (later to expand to four to six pages) by Bill Landis, an NYU graduate, projectionist, and devotee of the crime-ridden sleaze houses, the magazine not only captured the genre affections but the whole Times Square milieu of drugs, violence and prostitution. Typical films shown in the movie houses, which centred on the city's 42nd Street, included Bamboo House of Dolls, The Corpse Grinders, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Miss Nymphet’s Zap-In and The Ultimate Degenerate. Approximately 48 issues were published over a five-year period, the first issue being dated June 18, 1980, and the last issue appearing in the fall of 1985.

In 1999, Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford (co-author of the Kenneth Anger biography, Anger (HarperCollins) and Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square (Simon & Schuster) began to publish Sleazoid Express again. Six issues of the revamped magazine were published, each issue running more than 70 pages.

Far from representing a marginal offshoot of the movie business, the grindhouse films would be later plundered for ideas and imagery by mainstream cinema, as well as bloggers and podcasts, while the trash ethic and aesthetic of the magazine itself would be copied by many others.