Bill Landis: Legendary Grindhouse Journalist Gets Biography From Author Preston Fassel
Nick Taylor
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Preston Fassel is an author and journalist primarily known for his work in the horror and crime genres. His articles have appeared in FANGORIA, Rue Morgue, Scream magazine, and Cinedump.com. In the horror circle, Fassel perhaps may be best known for his debut novel, Our Lady of the Inferno, a blood-soaked romp through the gritty streets of New York’s 42nd Street during the ’70s. In his last novel, The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov, Fassel takes on the world of pro-wrestling and prehistoric shape-shifting. Fassel’s latest release is a biography of the late great Bill Landis, perhaps the most respected and notorious name in Grindhouse journalism. The book is titled Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street.
While other magazines were concerned with behind-the-scenes information, tributes, and SFX tutorials, Landis’ Sleazoid Express was one part film journal and one part anthropological study. He seriously critiqued the grindhouse movies that played the theaters of 42nd Street while also documenting the dying subculture that had grown up around them.
Profiled in Film Comment and Rolling Stone for his pioneering work, Landis’ over-the-top “Mr. Sleazoid” persona and double-life as an adult film star masked the pain behind the excess. He was a child genius whose intellect alienated him from his peers; a sexual abuse survivor who numbed his trauma with drugs; a consummate outcast who only felt at home among other outcasts. After achieving sobriety and settling into life as a husband, father, and author, it seemed that Landis turned a corner. But the ghosts of Times Square were never far behind him.
Also Read: Exclusive: Preston Fassel on Grindhouse Cinema and his New Novel THE DESPICABLE FANTASIES OF QUENTIN SERGENOV
Dead at the age of 48 on the eve of what should have been a successful comeback, his legacy has nominally been forgotten, most of his work lost, and his memory relegated to a footnote in journalism history. Finally, through this biography, fans will have a book that pieces together the full story of his life, from his childhood in England to his meteoric rise in the 1980s New York vice scene to his tragic demise on the streets of Chicago.
“When I first read Sleazoid Express as a teen in Oklahoma, Bill’s work opened up my eyes to 42nd Street and this kingdom of the damned I’d never known existed. He and Michelle Clifford’s writing is what got me interested in exploitation cinema and grindhouse culture in the first place, and, I’d literally have no writing career today if I’d never picked up that book. The more I found out about him and this incredible life that he’d led and this very sad, premature death at only 49, the more I became determined that he wouldn’t sink into obscurity and that his influence and importance to genre writing wouldn’t be lost or forgotten,” says Fassell.
Landis will be released on December 7th 2021, to coincide with the 13th anniversary of Landis’ death. “Dates and numbers meant a lot to Bill, so for this to come out in honor of that anniversary I think would mean a lot to him,” concludes Fassel. Preorder Landis: The Story of a Real Man on 42nd Street on Amazon at this link.
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