CARLOS BATTS
Scapegoat Publishing, Baltimore ***
After his takes on fetish imagery in Wild Skin and on Tinseltown trash-erotica in Crazy Sexy Hollywood, you might expect Carlos Batts’ third book to be a further exploration of kink and sleaze.
In fact, American Gothic (left) is a complete departure from that style. Although, to judge from his earlier experimental film-making, examples of which can be found on Batts’ simultaneously released DVD (also titled American Gothic and available from Cult Epics), it is closer to his true creative vision — which is somewhere to the south of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The book’s mixture of anarchic collage and montage styles sees Batts in full flight as an artist, relegating fetish imagery to a very minor rôle as source material. The main feature on the DVD (below right) — a jerky blend of collage, montage, stop-frame animation and other techniques — is similarly bereft of much that could be called fetish-friendly. And like the free CD tucked into the book, it features some brain-numbing death metal music. 
Buy them if you just have to have everything Batts has done, regardless. But don’t expect to encounter more than a ghost of the style that made him interesting to the perv market. TM (Reviewed Sep 05)
www.scapegoatpublishing.com
www.cultepics.com
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