Sex Religion Death
An Interview with David Kerekes
by Lance Hahn

David Kerekes has been editing and publishing Headpress, the journal of Sex Religion Death, since 1991. David also heads Critical Vision, the poison press that unleashed Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit, See No Evil, and The X Factory onto an unsuspecting world. Lance Hahn recently caught up with Mr. Kerekes for an in-depth chat about independent publishing, “video nasties”… and Led Zeppelin.

Barrel Entertainment: What inspired you to start Headpress? Had you any involvement with fanzines or fanzine culture before that?

David Kerekes: It all started in 1991 when myself and two friends decided to pool some money together in order to try and release Jörg Buttgereit’s (then current) film Der Todesking on video in Britain. As you may know, each film released on video or theatrically in Britain has to carry a certificate from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which isn’t cheap. And there’s no guarantee you’ll be given a certificate once they’ve viewed the film anyway. You give the BBFC your money, they watch the film and then decide whether to classify it, request cuts, or reject it. We figured that, in spite of its subject matter (seven suicides), Der Todesking had a good chance of getting through. Which it did. We released it as a limited numbered edition and with the money we made on that, decided to put out a magazine rather than split it three ways. That was Headpress. Before that I had written some stuff for Shock Xpress and Sheer Filth.

BE: What other publications or writers do you look up to? What inspires Headpress?

DK: I generally tend to still read film based fanzines, although that kind of subversive edge to them—prevalent in the film zines of the eighties when there was a lot less of them about—has generally disappeared. My favourite film zines at the moment are Is it… Uncut? and Shock Cinema. They always make me wish I had another publication running alongside Headpress, dedicated solely to film. What inspires Headpress? Everyday stuff… I live it.

BE: Who is David Slater and how did you two get together?

DK: Dave Slater is one of the founders of Headpress (the third guy is Dave Flint, who published Sheer Filth and Divinity for a time). We got together through the ‘video nasties’ furore in Britain—which threw an awful lot of people together—and became drinking buddies.

BE: How closely do you work with your various contributors? How do you find your contributors?

DK: It depends. A lot of contributors write in to say, “I’ve got an idea for this or that,” while others will ask about the themes we have planned for future editions and write something specifically with that in mind. On the odd occasion I will ask a regular contributor to write something specifically. It’s all very much ‘play it by ear’.

BE: Have you ever turned down a submitted article due to content?

DK: I assume you mean an article where I considered the content a bit too extreme or racy? Nothing springs to mind. For space reasons, however, I do tend to bounce articles back an issue or two quite often. Occasionally I won’t run something because for whatever reason I don’t think it ‘works’. Actually, I did turn down the idea of a comic strip based on the ‘Moors Murders’ for Killer Komix 2. The Moors Murders remains an extremely volatile case here, which exists in a kind of critical limbo—by that I mean no one can say anything about the case which is at all ambiguous, and isn’t one-hundred per cent damning of the killers. And to interpret child-killers in a comic strip? Comics are for kids, right? Plus, I live only a trunk-of-a-car ride from the Moors!

BE: In an early issue, you mentioned that the NME wouldn’t run an ad for Killing for Culture because it contained the word “snuff”. Have you run into any other attempts to sabotage Headpress or your writing in the past?

DK: That’s right, they had to drop the word ‘snuff’ from the ads. But I wouldn’t say it was a case of the NME trying to sabotage Headpress or Killing for Culture! I think it’s more a political correctness issue on their part, and testament to the weird mythology that surrounds the idea of the ‘snuff’ film.

BE: In earlier issues, you covered a lot of the Hong Kong action cinema before it really took off as a genre in the West. Do you feel like that film world is totally played out? Do you still keep up with it? Do you think that scene died with so many of the stars selling out to the States?

DK: I’ve never been a big fan of Hong Kong films, and you’d probably find that the majority of those pieces and reviews weren’t written by me. There are Hong Kong films which I do enjoy, of course. Before Hong Kong cinema really took off in the West, it was only the more exceptional movies that used to sneak through. Now that everything Hong Kong has a market in the West, we can see just how mediocre much of the stuff actually is. Take violence, for instance. I prefer to see violence in Western films more than I do in Hong Kong films. With Western movies I know and appreciate the lineage that the violence has gone through to get where it is: Violence in Western films to me is often more audacious because I know what has gone before in other Western movies, and where its inspirations lie. Hong Kong cinema draws on a cultural background and a society that is largely alien, and therefore there is little for me to measure the violence against. Violence is often meaningless because I can’t fully appreciate the path it has taken to get to where it’s at. (I don’t want to watch any romantic Hong Kong films.) There are exceptions, of course: I find Sonny Chiba movies more interesting than Chow Yun Fat’s, because with Chiba violence is for violence sake; a universal language. I also like The Story of Ricky for the same reason. I appreciate The Matrix and Charlie’s Angels are Western movies derivative of Hong Kong action cinema, but I know that and that’s what makes the difference.

BE: I like that many of the issues have themes. What was the most enjoyable theme that you worked on?

DK: I enjoy each new Headpress as I’m preparing and developing it. When it comes back from the printers, I’m already thinking of the next project. I rarely go back and look over previous issues, unless it’s to check some detail or something.

BE: I’ve heard Headpress compared to Answer Me!, Bizarre, a lot of different things—none of which I think are at all like what you do. How would you describe the differences between Headpress and those types of publications? How do you describe Headpress to people unfamiliar to it?

DK: I think comparisons between Headpress and Answer Me! are drawn because we are independent, idiosyncratic publications, with a very strong sense of identity, that aren’t necessarily devoted to any one particular topic. With Bizarre it’s a little different—they aren’t independent and I expect they started because they saw a market potential. With Headpress it’s the other way around: publish first and look for the market afterwards! Describing Headpress is a tough one: I’ve got a standard-line which uses terms like ‘pop culture’, ‘counter culture’, ‘underground’ and ‘transgressive’, but it’s really about stuff that I find of interest, or suspect may be of interest to other people.

BE: The sub-title of Headpress is “The Journal of Sex-Religion-Death”. What does that mean to you? Is it an existential journey or do you feel that it’s some sort of human desire for immortality?

DK: Calling something Headpress really doesn’t give too much away. So it’s important to give people a little more of an idea. Of course, when you think about it, ‘sex, religion & death’ pretty much encompasses everything there is to encompass, but at the same time has certain connotations. And any combination of any of those words would be seen as a subversive act to a lot of people.

BE: Do you think there is a Freudian connection between sex fetishism, religious fanaticism and random violence? Or are they all just random occurrences within a population of several billion?

DK: Maybe I thought it was important for me to know the answer to this question once upon a time, but not any more. Leave it to the scientists.

BE: Were you brought up in a religious household? Do you consider yourself at all religious or spiritual?

DK: I was brought up a Roman Catholic. Went to Catholic schools. Was taken to church whilst at school. And, like the majority of kids at school, I always considered Catholicism as something you had to do, not something you especially believed in. ‘Going to church’ was not a ritual that I ever believed important for the sake of my soul. I was always nagged by the idea that such a Great and Powerful God would need to dream something like that up. Rules of worship. It never made sense. As for me being religious… You don’t shake a Catholic upbringing, and to be honest I wouldn’t want to. It clarifies my perception, like being given a drug and becoming immune to it. It makes me make Headpress.

BE: Do you ever worry that you trivialise or desensitise people with some of the harder issues you cover like serial killers or suicide?

DK: I try not to.

BE: Do you feel that such intense intellectual space being dedicated to such subjects affects your own psyche? Is it ever just too much for you?

DK: Working a nine-to-five grind wouldn’t make me happy. I’ve had too many jobs were you pick one component out of the box on the left and drop into the box on your right, and believe me that affected my psyche a lot more than Headpress does.

BE: Your critiques and investigation of sexual and pornographic literature varies greatly from standard porn fair to De Sade. What nerve do you think connects all of those forms of erotica?

DK: The nerve that is sex and horror. And the nerve that is entertainment and information.

BE: Do you feel that standard pornography needs to be subject to the same aggressive literary criticism as De Sade?

DK: No, it doesn’t need to be. But I like it when it is.

BE: You also have random coverage of music. What are the criteria for your musical coverage?

DK: I think the music coverage in Headpress is too random. We used to get a lot of extreme noise stuff, but thankfully that has stopped now.

BE: What music do you listen to?

DK: Sixties garage rock, psych, beat music, bad prog rock, folk-rock; some off-the-wall stuff… I’m pretty particular.

BE: Do you feel that a publication like Headpress could exist in the States or do you think that what you do can only exist in the context of England and England’s morality?

DK: That’s a good question. I wouldn’t like to say Headpress couldn’t exist outside of England, but it exists in the form that it is now because of England and England’s morality. Initially, in the early days, we considered British obscenity laws a hindrance and an obstacle, but it didn’t take long to realise that we could use the laws to our own ends. It helps us be more creative: We can’t show this picture or that picture, so what can we show in its place? Nowadays I don’t even have that kind of dilemma. I kind of look at things askance if they prove too easy.

BE: What led to your love / hate relationship with Led Zeppelin?

DK: A jukebox in a pub when I was a teenager seemed to have only two records on it, one of which was Whole Lotta Love. It got played about every twenty minutes. I liked it at first, then I hated it and hated the band that created it. One day I decided to pick up Houses of the Holy (I can’t remember why that Zep album in particular, maybe it was cheap), and felt thoroughly burned. It was awful. I’ve never listened to it since. That cemented my hate relationship with Led Zeppelin. I came around when a friend of mind taped a bunch of live Zep boots for me, and I got to see Dread Zeppelin in concert. Both were insane. I also liked the title of an article in Sleazoid Express, which was essentially a review of The Song Remains the Same: ‘Are Led Zeppelin Faggots?’ Now I’m on a downward turn again: I’m bored by Zep.

BE: What do you think of Taschen and the erotic books they do? Do you think they’re really taking chances or do you think they’re just acting like they’re taking chances?

DK: I really don’t think Taschen work like that. They’re not based in Britain, so I guess they don’t worry too much about having to ‘take chances’. I like some of the stuff they do—what we review in Headpress is the stuff of theirs that I generally find most interesting. As interesting as coffee table, photo books ever are.

BE: I really loved Killing for Culture. What made you want to write that book?

DK: A love for Mondo films (circa sixties, seventies & eighties) and a fascination with the weird, mythological concept of the ‘snuff’ film.

BE: Do you think films like Snake Feast or Gator Bait 10 really exist?

DK: No, I don’t. I doubt that such volatile, criminal subject matter would be given such volatile titles that are positively crying out for attention.

BE: Surely some “real” snuff films must exist though maybe not mass-marketed by porn standards.

DK: We are living in a culture of realty based TV, where virtually every night of the week you can tune into programmes featuring ‘funny’ home movie clips, cops on the beat, natural disasters, man-made disasters, stunts going wrong, criminals caught in the act, bad drivers, Big Brother, reality-game shows, and so on. Technology and media have created a new medium, where blurry acts on film—no matter how dull, dangerous or despicable—are processed into mass entertainment. It’s voyeurism at a safe distance. The media wants your film clip, and technology gives everyone the means to go out and get it. If Concorde falling out of the sky in flames can happen to be caught on film by a passing motorist, it’s not illogical to assume that a calculated murder may one day ‘happen’ to pop up on the news. Hollywood is priming us with the likes of 15 Minutes and 8mm.

BE: What do you think is the fascination with snuff films? Is it anything to do with idle hands being the devil’s tools? Or are people so alienated, they’re desperate for any form of reality? Sort of like an abused child who learns to love punishment as a form of attention from its abuser.

DK: Snuff is like a good detective novel, and we’re still waiting for the ending.

BE: I just read See No Evil. It’s fascinating to me that so many films are banned in England. How can they completely ban a film? Aren’t there any underground film theaters that just play what they want?

DK: A film qualifies as being ‘banned’ if it doesn’t have a certificate. The BBFC—the governing body which examines and classifies films—don’t actually say they ban movies, and they don’t like to be regarded as censors, even though they continue to advise distributors on what scenes ‘need’ to be cut before they will pass a movie! There’s no way a film can legally be made available on video in Britain if it doesn’t carry a BBFC certificate. This makes truly independent filmmaking and distribution virtually non-existent here, though it does exist. Theatrically it’s a little different, as local government can over-rule the BBFC and decide on what films can play. For instance, Last House on the Left and I Spit on your Grave are two films refused a certificate on video, yet have seen limited theatrical screenings.

BE: A lot of the films banned in England seem almost chosen at random whereas other films that are at times even more brutal are permitted. How political are these decisions?

DK: You’re quite right about the random aspect. High-profile videotapes stood a greater chance of being singled out as liable for prosecution. Many of the films that landed on the ‘banned list’ were no more graphic or shocking than many films which didn’t. Indeed less so in a lot of cases. A film’s title could often have a lot to do it, hence you had cops confiscating copies of The Big Red One and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, believing them to be porno. Laws are created and passed in Parliament that govern what we see and what we shouldn’t be allowed to see; politicians also like to be seen doing the right thing, and campaigning for the sake of ‘the children’. So, yes, it is fairly political.

BE: Do you think that in time the censorship laws in England will fade and you won’t have controversies like the one with Crash? Do you feel that all the films in your book will at some point be allowed in England?

DK: There has been a shake-up at the BBFC in the last year-or-so, since the retirement of its director James Ferman. Many of the films that were once ‘banned’ have come out over here, albeit some with minor cuts. However, other films have appeared in longer versions than they were originally released back in the eighties, before the clampdown on videos, This is because it is illegal to make a film that was once rejected by the BBFC available again in the same ‘rejected’ form. Getting around the loophole means that the film has to be in some way different from the earlier version, whether it’s in making cuts or reinstating ‘found’ footage. Even Natural Born Killers—the video release of which was pulled by a nervy Warner Brothers following the murder of James Bulger—is finally set for a video release in Britain, despite the fact that it played nationally in theatres years ago, and even on TV a number of times.

BE: What are you working on now?

DK: I’m currently working on Headpress # 22. That’s followed by a book of Rock interviews called I Was Elvis Presley’s Bastard Love-Child, which I haven’t written but will be publishing in October 2001.

BE: What’s next for you?

DK: Lots of stuff. It never ends…

Lance Hahn is the singer/guitarist for the pop punk band J Church and former front man of the legendary Cringer. Drop in on J Church at www.hbrecords.org. While you’re at it, visit the “official unofficial” Headpress web page at www.headpress.com. This interview was originally intended to appear in Maximum Rock N Roll. Copyright © 2001, Lance Hahn.

By David Kerekes:

• Killing for Culture: An Illustrated History of Death Film, From Mondo to Snuff (with David Slater); 1994, Creation Books
  
• Critical Vision: ‘The Best of Early Headpress’ (with David Slater, Eds); 1995, Critical Vision/Headpress
  
• Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit; 1994/1998, Critical Vision/Headpress
  
• See No Evil (with David Slater); 2000, Critical Vision/Headpres