John Michael McCarthy

A feature length documentary about the making of Gorotica, a shot on video horror film by Hugh Gallagher. Includes new interviews with a lot of the cast, crew, and other filmmakers and never before seen behind the scenes footage from on the set of Gorotica.

The world has ended. All that is left behind are individual beauty cults, groups of girls seeking safety and identity in numbers. Basing their bond on hair color and giving themselves strangely evocative gang names, the blond Phayrays (King Kong), the brunette Satanas (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!), and the wicked, redheaded Tempests (as in Storm, the stripper) are constantly battling the brutish cavemen roaming the afterworld ruins and looking for potential dye job converts. Only one group tries to incorporate all follicle factions. They are the Superstarlets.

While delivering an apocalyptic message to his sect, the unearthly Black Jesus orders his leather-clad, biker converts to destroy the pagan mistress Damselvis before she can raise her father, the fabled rock and roll deity Helvis, from the dead. When a sheltered, country schoolgirl named Isla M. (Sherry Lynn Garris) is nearly butchered by Black Jesus’ murderous disciple Candy (Ghetty Chasun), she is miraculously reborn as the fringe-adorned, Harley riding Damselvis; who promptly embarks on a pilgrimage to Memphis, spreading the gospel along the way by disseminating Helvis records to a burgeoning and ardent congregation of fans. Once Helvis is resurrected from his pyramid tomb, he must confront the monstrous Woofman in a final battle to the death to determine the religious rites for the new millennia!

Filmmaker Craig Brewer highlights a number of independent Memphis filmmakers, and shows the full short films Broke on a Saturday, You Better Behave, Blown, Two Hundred Dollars on E-Bay, Clean Up in Booth B, The Morning Ritual and Eso-Phagas.

In Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1962, a poor, young, single mother is impregnated by a womanizing has-been singer. Her mother tries to force her to give the child away but our heroine isn't sure. As she tries to solve her problems she receives assistance from unlikely quarters: a lesbian gang and the feminist/nudist/stripper/adult film star they idolize.

An enchanted tale of an artist, a critic, and a leather-clad, tree-dwelling gang who fall in love with a French girl, who takes them on an odyssey of Love, Sex and Dreams.

Set in present day Northeastern Mississippi and Memphis, Blackie returns to Earth 42 years after his first visit to complete a mission: Given a second chance by The Elder of the Lo-Fi Frequency, he is to finish his original mission of killing 12 victims. He hooks up with his old friend Mike then eventually meets Kerine and Goliatha. Trouble begins...

A businessman is led around Tupelo, Mississippi by a '50s tour guide showing him its connection to Elvis Presley.

An amazing and timeless collection of pretty peelers brought to the masses by super 8 seamstress Victoria Renard and Memphis Movie Messiah JMM [Superstarlet A.D.]. Set against a backdrop of sock dropping rock and roll and beautifully bizarre screen-warped colorization. Featuring the timeless toasts of the modern burlesque scene such as Miss Exotic Wood 2002 KITTEN DeVILLE [Auto Focus], URSULINA [Lucha Va Voom], THE FISHNET FLOOZYS, Miss Exotic Wood 2004 DIRTY MARTINI, MIMI LeMEAUX, CANDY WHIPLASH, THE DEVILETTES, THE SOPHISTIKITTENS, and MORE! See Starlets "burlesque" to garage rocknroll recorded in the most primitive conditions!

In the near future laws against smoking have increased to the point where you must live in a certain part of town called the Smoking Section if want to smoke cigarettes. Once you have passed the line of demarcation you just know you've crossed the tracks because things get a little grimier, a little more industrial. If you travel there to smoke or to buy, the main place is the Vice Club. Cigarette Girl becomes an angel of death when she stops smoking and starts killing on the third day to alleviate her acute psychological withdrawal manifested primarily by the ghost of a cowboy who is always on her back to keep smoking. Cigarette Girl would rather kill than smoke.

A David Bowie sculpture idea for Overton Park and the new Metal Museum: An ‘Aladdin Sane’ “weather vane” to celebrate the 50th anniversary appearance of Ziggy Stardust in Memphis and his visit to the Memphis Academy of Art in February, 1973. Named after an article in The Commercial Appeal from 1984.

TV Horror Host is shown on set and behind the scenes with various cast members on his show...he is the star and he doesn't take kindly to advice from the floor manager...the Host is attracted to a pretty young girl who comes to the set in hopes of becoming a star herself but not before the vampire Horror Host shows her that he has an 'inner desire' for her affections.

Short film made for a course at the Memphis College of Art in 2008 that celebrated David Bowie's visit to the school in February 1973 during the Aladdin Sane tour. The 6 week course instructed by Mike McCarthy was called THE FILM CLASS THAT FELL TO EARTH.

A documentary about the razing of Memphis history.

The film documents the making of the seven-foot tall “Tupelo Elvis” bronze statue by sculptor Bill Beckwith, modeled on Elvis’ pose in the Roger Marshutz photograph shot at the 1956 Tupelo Fair and slated to be unveiled at Fairpark in Tupelo on August 9.

Based very loosely on a brief account in Peter Guralnick's Elvis biography Careless Love, the film is a fantasia about the night the Fab Four and the King spent together in 1965.

Documentary about the Memphis Academy of Art, culled from the archives of sculptor John McIntire's super 8 films from 1972.

JMM and his friendly elitist entourage shot super-8 stag footage of starlets and collected music from bands who played with The Sore Losers!

Destroy Memphis short

Waif, a telekinetic teenage robot-fighter survives a crashed spaceship and the death of her little sister at an old abandoned drive-in.