By Johnny Ray Huston

THE ASCENT OF the DVD has broadened the packaging of movies for television: historical essays and collectible paraphernalia are often on the menu. But even as the DVD legitimizes and popularizes strange alleys and byways of film history, the comparatively primitive CDs issued by Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster God retain a unique allure.

Mysterious by necessity, the Cali-based label has specialized in unauthorized obscure recordings of (and by) rock and movie stars. It's produced a series titled Celebrities at Their Worst, and it's uncovered a contract-fulfilling album Van Morrison recorded not just for but also about a label that held him hostage artistically. I thought Mad Deadly's trips into Hollywood babble-on had reached an absurdist zenith with Criswell Speaks, in which the uniformly incorrect predictions of Ed Wood's favorite psychic are preserved for posterity. But that was before it turned its attention to two camp icons, uncovering a pair of unholy grails.

Judy Speaks! And Joan Crawford: Live at Town Hall counter the common legends of get-happy Judy and raging maniac Joan. This time it's the latter who comes across as an affectionate lush, while the former refers to a wire hanger. As Garland herself says during one of the numerous tirades in Judy Speaks!, "I'm an angry woman! I'm a woman who is angry!" Is she ever: attempting to record her life story for an autobiography that never materialized, she's interrupted by a number of things – first and foremost, an apparently confounding tape recorder that she calls "a Nazi machine," "a red China, Manchurian Candidate machine," and "this Donovan's Brain machine." But primarily it's rage that pulls her away from narrative into pure vendetta.

"It's high time to cut the comedy and high time to stop the trolley ride, because I, Judy Garland, am gonna talk, and everybody just better sit on the bench and watch the ball game," Garland threatens at the close of the second of 13 audio-diary entries that make up Judy Speaks! One player in the ball game is ex-husband Sid Luft, whom she deems an animal, a thief, a blackmailer, a sadist, a bum, a tramp, a drunk, a derelict, and "some kind of breed" destined to sink into the La Brea tar pits. Two other players are gossip columnists Louella Parson and Hedda Hopper: "I know their makeup man," Garland seethes. "I know the tricks they have to do to pull these women's faces up." Another newspaper reporter, F. Scott Fitzgerald's ex-wife Sheila Graham, doesn't fare much better: "She's a fat redheaded English idiot. But she gets paid."

Though Garland made these tapes in the '60s with a public product in mind – a tell-all book – the recordings aren't simply (or ultimately) hilarious; they're disturbing. Even if the rants had been recorded by Jane Doe, their beyond-intimate, confessional quality would be bizarre. Garland starts out relatively chipper but becomes more inebriated with each entry. Me and My Shadows seems like kid's stuff (which, actually, it is) in comparison to the long journey into the blackest night of existence that is Judy Speaks!. Listening from start to finish is like crawling into bed, and then under the covers, with a lonely person whose impending death is audible.

Next to Judy Speaks!, the Crawford tape is a delightful farce. As the title makes clear, Joan Crawford: Live at Town Hall documents a public appearance, so the dark revelations usually associated with its subject aren't on the agenda. Instead listeners are privy to an Inside the Actor's Studio-style tribute to Crawford that took place in 1973, three years after she costarred with a prehistoric ape in Trog. Greeted with an ovation, the slightly sloshed-sounding guest of honor sputters, "I never knew there was so much ... love!" Then effete interviewer John Springer begins firing questions. Describing the on-set atmosphere of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, the star claims Bette Davis liked to yell, whereas she (oh so reserved and demure) knitted "a scarf from Hollywood to Malibu." Other topics of discussion include gold dresses, turbans, pinafores, and magnificent topaz bracelets. And Pepsi Cola, of course.