By Dennis Harvey

DEAD SEXY: Ulli Lommel's Zombie Nation has its world premiere
at Fearless Tales Genre Fest. Photo © 2005 by Ulli Lommel

Our culture is so fascinated by the obvious luminaries that true connoisseurs inevitably gravitate toward the obscure. Somebody, somewhere, is at least kinda obsessive about every actor who ever dropped trou and every director to yell, "Cut!" There are Web sites devoted to documenting every last artistic spasm by such ultraprolific auteurs of oft-unwatchable flotsam as Fred Olen Ray (Bikini Hoedown) and Joe D'Amato (Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals). Their point being, of course, to find diamonds amid the trash heap – or, at least, some really unique trash.

Precious-metal detectors duly in hand, the minds behind Fearless Tales Genre Fest have dug up interesting esoterica both old and new for their mostly horror forum's expanded second annual program. There are funny shorts, creepy shorts, numerous recent indie features, archival selections from Herschell Gordon Lewis and Dario Argento, and in-person salutes that include April Fools' Day groveling at the feet of John Landis.

Landis will no doubt prove great company on the Castro Theatre stage. But I confess that hearing the anecdotes of he who directed An American Werewolf in London and Trading Places intrigues me less than the prospect of ditto from guys responsible for such unlikely commodities as Yodeling Is No Sin and Lady Cocoa (as in "Lola Falana IS"). Those latter are among the scarcer endeavors in the already murky oeuvres of Ulli Lommel and Matt Cimber, veteran uphill sloggers whom most psychotronic devotees have heard – but know little – about. We'll know more after they leave San Francisco, but let's hope some mystery remains. These are men whose movies emerge dripping from a primordial soup of personal necessity, commercial guesswork, and tangled multinational financing. Are their motivations as weird as their filmographies? It would be a major bummer to learn otherwise.

Certainly Lommel has a great autobiography to write, though he's associated with too many creative liars for it to promise much accuracy. The son of a popular German comedian, he started out as an actor, eventually landing in the notoriously incestuous corps of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose aesthetic carried over to his own early directorial efforts – films about an actual 1920s Hanover cannibal boy-killer, an imagined Adolf Hitler-Marlene Dietrich liebe connection, and so on. Then he was lured to the United States by Andy Warhol, for whom he created two of the dullest midnight-movie perennials ever.

The first, The Blank Generation, featured punk trailblazer Richard Hell. The second was Cocaine Cowboys; Lommel married its leading lady, Suzanna Love, a DuPont heiress whose open checkbook helped fuel his productions through the '80s. Some even made money – in particular, a series of horror films launched by the low-budget hit The Boogeyman.

Serpentine subsequent funding deals may explain why Lommel's recent output includes so many completed yet unreleased titles. Two will get their world premiere at Fearless Tales, with the man himself rocking the Victoria Theatre. Both feature him in significant roles, are set in a Los Angeles curiously packed with German-accented people, incorporate clips from prior Lommel epics, and make cryptic digs at the adopted homeland he's called an "evil empire."

Zodiac Killer is strange enough. Yet it's a walk in the park compared to the advanced derangement that is Zombie Nation. This screwy, how-kidding-is-he? delight manages to throw together voodoo priestesses, screaming naked asylum flashbacks, cheerful house music during gore interludes, corrupt LAPD cops who served together in Iraq and Afghanistan, and serial murder victims who return from the dead looking like Spice Girls knockoffs. Not to be missed.

Italian stallion Cimber (a.k.a. Matteo Ottaviano) has also lived a full life that ain't over yet. Connect these dots: last husband to platinum bombshell Jayne Mansfield; schooled in theater at the Actors Studio; is currently ancillary-rights executor for the Harold Robbins estate; directed some of those pre-Deep Throat hardcore flicks (e.g., He and She) that avoided prosecution by claiming "educational" content; made a few crazy '70s blaxploitations, such as Candy Tangerine Man; logged 104 TV episodes of G.L.O.W. (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling); was a two-time loser in the struggle to make Pia Zadora a movie star; didn't get much further with Laurene Landon in two fantasy adventures. All this was a while back. But, hell yes, he's got a Web site (www.cimero-ent.com) and a production company and at 70 is shooting his first new big-screen feature in nearly 20 years. Canadian roller-disco babe Landon – Christian Brando's pre-prison squeeze – plays man-hating warrior chick Hundra ("I prefer a horse between my legs!") in Cimber's 1983 grrrl-power Conan knockoff of the same name. This never-ending story is big, bloody, and Morricone-scored and should look handsome in its restored print.

Cimber's most indelible hour, however, remains The Witch Who Came from the Sea, which he'll also introduce March 29 at the Victoria. This bizarre, disorienting 1976 psycho-thriller was little seen after the Motion Picture Association of America threatened an X rating. Erstwhile Anne Frank portrayer Millie Perkins plays Molly, a Santa Monica dive-bar cocktail waitress living with her two young nephews and welfare-mother sister. No one seems to notice that Molly is going hide-all-sharp-objects insane, a progression not helped by binge-drinking blackouts, indiscriminate pill popping, and irrational rages.

Drawn to he-men, Molly's a "swinging" sex-o-phobe quite capable of garroting two pumped NFL stars during a hotel three-way. As bodies pile up – or do they? – delusion and reality blur, a condition that may also affect viewers who ingest too many Fearless Tales over five days' course. 'Fearless Tales Genre Fest' runs March 29-April 3, Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, S.F.; and Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., S.F. Most shows $10 (passes $95-$125); gala dinner with John Landis at Medjool March 31 is $49. (415) 863-7576, www.fearlesstales.com. See Rep Clock for show times.