Nose Bubbles and Rado Echoes

In observance of April Fool’s Day, I am sharing photographs of rare novelties from my collection. These are particularly interesting because they are featured prominently in the work of Anton Szandor LaVey.

LaVey found great wisdom where others have found mere amusement, little of interest or, in many cases, nothing at all. This is the true occult. One especially overlooked area of this realm of hidden meaning is that of the prank.

Often perpetrated against innocent friends and acquaintances, pranks are treated differently within Satanism. As LaVey said more than once, it is far more fulfilling to employ unpleasant surprises toward the balancing of egos and as a form of humorous revenge. He also discussed more than one specific gag, including a couple from the old Johnson Smith & Co. Catalogue, which is featured in the Church of Satan’s recommended reading list. LaVey called it his Necronomicon.

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THE SNEEZE-O-BUBBLE

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On the dedication page of The Devil’s Notebook, LaVey mentions the inventor(s) of the Sneeze-O-Bubble. In Satan Speaks!, he dedicates an essay to the artful use of a rubber “nose bubble.” I have always deeply enjoyed that essay, and it has seemed to me that its subject is none other than that enigmatic Sneeze-O-Bubble.

I had the good fortune of finding this incredibly rare gag on eBay. It is a set of four bubbles, and they appear to be made of blown glass. Perhaps this is an earlier version of LaVey’s nose bubble. Either way, it is one of my most cherished possessions. I took some time to photograph it for both my own pleasure and this blog.

This is the top of the Sneeze-O-Bubble box. In the background is an open copy of the 1941 Johnson Smith & Co. Catalogue.

Opening the magnificently decorated box, one reveals the faux mucus globules and, nestled beneath them, a pink instruction sheet.

And here are the legendary bubbles themselves. What schnozzes have these delicate baubles graced in eras past? Though crystal-clear, these replicas of inflated snot are among the most mysterious relics in all Americana.

Click for a closer look!

But what good are nose bubbles if you don’t know how to use them? Study this sheet, stick a few Sneeze-O-Bubbles in your jacket pocket, and you’ll be good and ready for that next cocktail party or family gathering. Again, you should also read (or re-read) LaVey’s excellent tips and scenarios for artificial snot in “The Nose Bubble,” from Satan Speaks!

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THE RADO ECHO VOICE-TESTER

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Another sacred object I have managed to acquire is the Rado Echo Voice-Tester, which LaVey discussed in the documentary Speak of the Devil. This cruel device conceals a particularly nasty surprise. To learn more about it, see the film. It is chock-full of wisdom, including an entire segment about “practical” jokes. That’s where you’ll find an anecdote about this wicked little item.

This is the face of the “voice-tester.” The box is made of cardboard, and the old-fashioned “speaker” is made of cloth.

Here, you can clearly see the tester’s wooden button. Anyone who has seen Speak of the Devil knows what it does. Even if you haven’t, I’m sure that you get the point.

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Enjoy an impish April Fool’s Day, my mischievous readers! And remember: it’s funnier when they deserve it!

An Eye for Carnage: Anton Szandor LaVey on the Horror Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis

A few years ago, I acquired an old catalog. Someone I knew was probably discarding it; I forget. But I kept this white elephant because it struck me as a unique reference for my cinematic explorations. Audio Brandon Films 16mm International Cinema, 1978-79, contains well over 500 pages of films then available for rental by educational institutions, theaters, etc. Instead of a dull list, however, Audio Brandon fattened its catalog with striking stills and critical, even scholarly descriptions by educators, journalists, and other qualified aficionados. Among these contributors was Anton Szandor LaVey, who wrote about Herschell Gordon Lewis and two of his films.

When I discovered that this catalog, whose great worth was already apparent, included material by LaVey, I was all the more excited to have re-discovered this nearly discarded volume. Although this and other editions of the catalog have been quoted in academic works, it seems fairly rare. Especially because I was getting rid of clutter at the time, I felt that I had just narrowly missed losing a valuable bit of Satanic history. Not to mention a veritable encyclopedia of international cinematic history up until the late 1970s!

The following is LaVey’s contribution to this catalog. It involves horror films, as the average reader might expect, but offers keen observations that only the Black Pope himself could have penned. Of course, he could have also written illuminating pieces about many other films in the book, most of which are not horror, and some of which are recommended in the appendices of Blanche Barton’s The Church of Satan. I, for one, would have relished a book of cinema criticism by the premier pioneer of contemporary Satanism! But at least we have this passage, which in itself includes enough history and insight for a creative manifesto.
 

Herschell Gordon Lewis

In 1963 ex-English professor Herschell Gordon Lewis decided that the skinflick market was waning, limited as it was to nudie films. Not wishing to make history nor waste time and money in courtrooms pioneering porn, he recognized an unexploited realm of living-color, perfectly legal blood-and-gore cinema that the big companies wouldn’t touch. Though horror and the supernatural had always been good box office, no one had really pulled all the stops. Lewis’ first film of the type, Blood Feast, was received with such revulsion that it was yanked under protest from many theatres before its bookings expired. Yet it made money and made cinema history, inspiring and uninhibiting virtually every other producer and director with an eye for carnage. Later Lewis commented, “Peckinpah’s blood is much more watery than ours… Peckinpah shoots people. We dismember them!” The discerning viewer will find Lewis’ films to be much more than superficial gore; rather an eerie reflection of the repressed sado-masochism in us all that even the smallest voice inside seldom admits to. From Bonnie And Clyde to The Exorcist, from The Wild Bunch to Jaws, fragments of Lewis’ kaleidoscope radiate.
 

Two Thousand Maniacs (1964)

A horror version of Brigadoon, this is Lewis’ tale of a Southern town which was savagely destroyed by Union troops and rises from its swampy site every hundred years. Overlooked by American critics because of excessive gore, it was praised by European masters such as Jean-Luc Godard and classed with Polanski’s Repulsion and Hitchcock’s Psycho. The musical score (also by Lewis) inspired Bonnie And Clyde’s and many other later films. Because, rather than in spite, of its low budget and unknown performers (Connie Mason was a Playboy foldout), amateurism transcends into chilling super-realism. The plot is equal to the best old-school  pulp thriller, combining suspense, kinky sexual innuendo and the supernatural. Made in 1964, Two Thousand Maniacs is rapidly achieving the stature it deserves, now that “respected” filmmakers have saturated the public with bloodier but less effective results. In the genre of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Night Of The Living Dead, the townspeople extras convey the feeling that this film is the Real Thing!

Color Me Blood Red (1964)

A temperamental beatnik artist who occupies a desolately situated beach house becomes dissatisfied with ordinary pigments and materials. Pretty girls become his source of supply in what must be the only Grande Guignol treatment of the Frankie Avalon / Annette Funicello beach blanket theme. As with other Herschell Lewis films, this is not for the squeamish.

Biomimicry: It's About Time

I've just heard another BBC segment, this one containing much more Satanic insight than anyone in the report seems to recognize. Researchers are picking up a "new" trend: biomimicry. Through biomimicry, analysts apply formulae discovered in "natural" settings and apply them to human technologies, business models, etc. I put "natural" in quotes because humans are part of Nature, no matter how humanity attempts to distinguish itself from other fauna.

It's folly to use the word "nature" as though it excludes humans. Yet that is exactly what these analysts and reporters often do. While I think it's excellent that humans are returning to the cyclical balance of the systems they've rejected for imbalanced, man-made constructs, we all know it's nothing new.

It's a bit embarrassing that people are hailing this as innovation, when we're really just playing catch-up to bring harmony to systems that should have been based on harmonious systems to begin with. Our human ancestors did this. Their evolutionary predecessors did this. How did modern man not get that memo?

To label biomimicry as innovation is to commit Satanic Sin #7 – Forgetfulness of Past Orthodoxies. Not only is it stupid (Satanic Sin #1) to ignore the laws of natural balance, but it is just as beneficial to work in harmony with them. These geniuses are finally coming around to the eternal principles that were not only under their noses, but all around them all along. Bravo.

The least cynical point I can take from this trend is that our current technologies allow us to learn more than ever from Nature's arrangements. I only hope that mankind can take that knowledge and apply it with wisdom.

That's my rant. Here's a link to the Biomimicry Institute. Let's see what it took so long for Homo "sapiens" to figure out.