Spectacular Optical #1: KID POWER!
December 1, 2013 
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Nearly a year after the online journal Spectacular Optical went on indefinite hiatus, it’s back in a new form: as a small-press cult film and pop culture book company with a goal to release two to four books a year, with an emphasis on the work of Canadian genre film writers.
Spectacular Optical Book One: KID POWER! will be the first in an ongoing line of themed anthology projects, this time focusing on cult children’s film and TV. Writers were given carte blanche, so long as the film featured a cool or sassy kid – with bonus points for any kid character that was empowered to problem-solve independently. Cover and key art come courtesy of Portland designer/illustrator Austin Sellers, and interior contents range from the strange films of producer Rock Demers (THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION, THE DOG WHO STOPPED THE WAR) to the all-kid cop movie HAWK JONES; British John Wyndham-based sci-fi show CHOCKY; a Who’s-Who of ABC Afterschool Specials; the short-lived 1970s ‘Wee Pals’ cartoon adaptation KID POWER; Isaac Asimov-based classroom staple THE UGLY LITTLE BOY; half-bodied skateboarding hero Kenny Easterday; the cheapo 1979 adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s JACOB TWO-TWO MEETS THE HOODED FANG; 40s misadventures from CURLY & HIS GANG; Canadian/German sitcom THE LITTLE VAMPIRE; 90s straight-to-video oddity THE LITTLE MARINES and more, more, more!
Spec Op’s online and print output will be edited by Creative Director Kier-La Janisse, with the help of Managing Editor Paul Corupe of Canuxploitation.com, and contributors for Book One: KID POWER! include Janisse and Corupe along with Bret Berg, Zack Carlson, Chris Alexander, Jacques Boyreau, Cheryl Singleton and more. The book will be full colour throughout, with interviews, essays and rare stills.
Stay tuned for pre-ordering info!
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About the author:
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).
