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Clairvoyants vomiting otherworldly ooze, teenage delinquents succumbing to the evils of reefer, hepcat aliens in search of a happening beach party-some will call it "degenerate," others "corrupting," and still more will label it "hoodlum-izing." Julia Zinn and Lauren Kimball-Brown, two Lawrence hop-heads with a taste for extreme cinema, prefer to call it "Nife Fite."

Zinn and Kimball-Brown have been making freaky flicks together since their teens, but in the last three years while studying film-at the School Of Art Institute of Chicago and School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, respectively-have focused their efforts on recreating the sordid '60s underground genre of exploitation films. Marked by cheap production values and taboo sensationalism, notable gems in this distinguished movement of American filmmaking include "Diary of a Swinger," "Blood Feast," and "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

Amassing a gang of like-minded connoisseurs, Zinn and Kimball-Brown have been making their own, updated contributions to the exploitation cannon under the collective title Nife Fite. They'll be screening their salacious output, with titles such as "The Slaves of Mary Jane" and "Slapdown at Sassafras Swamp," at the upcoming "Nife Fite and Friends' Locally Grown Filmsploitation Show." In anticipation of the Filmsploitation fest, Lauren Kimball-Brown and Julia Zinn joined us to talk about foot fetishes, ectoplasm and potential Sasquatch.

Podcast musical interludes by Nife Fite collaborators, The Spook Lights.

No-fi highlights of the podcast

lawrence.com: First of all, what is Nife Fite? Could it best be described as "ginchy," "gear," "fab" or "mondo"?

Julia Zinn: Definitely "mondo." Nife Fite as an organization is just a group of people from Lawrence that we make a lot of movies with.

Lauren Kimball-Brown: We started using the name Nife Fite a couple of summer ago. We were really obsessed with knuckle tattoos at the time and we would make a lot of lists of potential knuckle tattoos. "Nife Fite" was one of them. We needed a name for our group when we entered the "Wild West Film Festival," and that was the one we picked.

Aside from Nazi surf werewolves and beatnik cannibals, what's the appeal of exploitation cinema?

Julia: It's trashy, good fun:

Lauren: The appeal for me when I watch old exploitation movies is that there's something about movies that are made by relatively anonymous people. That's really appealing:it makes you wonder who they are and where they came from. Also, the whole no-name, no-budget thing makes filmmaking seem a lot less intimidating.

What are some of your favorite examples of exploitation cinema?

Lauren: "Teenage Gang Debs" was highly influential on us. There's also one called "Hot Rod Gang" that I really like.

Julia: I'm really interested in Doris Wishman and her oddball editing style, and her kind of hand/foot fetish. She shows a lot of walking and severed body parts. And I'm really into Joe Sarno, the Findlays and the Amero brothers:lot of '60s, New York sexploitation.

Do you feel like you're continuing the legacy of Lawrence exploitation which began with Herk Harvey's 1962 classic, Lawrence-produced "Carnival of Souls"?

Lauren: Well, those are big shoes to fill, so I wouldn't presume anything like that. We do love that movie a lot, and I think it was really inspiring that he was able to do that here. We definitely feel that Lawrence is a really great place to make movies. There are so many great people and so many great locations.

Julia: A lot of people are really willing to just jump into projects.

How long have you guys been making films?

Lauren: I got my first video camera when I was 15. I think my first movie was a spy thriller with my cousin and my sister.

Julia: I just kind of on a whim decided to take a film class in high school and knew that Lauren was making movies, so we ended up getting together on that, even though she wasn't going to school there:I was in Freestate and Lauren wasn't in school.

Lauren: I'm a high school drop-out, which is why I'm so qualified for making movies about juvenile delinquents. No, I was actually home schooled.

What's the most lurid, disgusting exploitation-iest thing you've ever committed to celluloid? Any exploding heads or deviant cadaver sex?

Julia: We've done some foot fetish stuff.

Lauren: I think Kevin Corcoran stepping on a tube of Go-Gurt and it spraying erotically all over his face was really disgusting. We all felt really dirty doing that.

You guys seem to be obsessed with ectoplasm, the fake ghost goo that mediums would secrete out of their bodies during seances in the early 1900s. It appears in one of your films and Julia has an extensive blog on the subject-what's the deal?

Julia: I find the fact that it emerged from so many orifices pretty fascinating.

Lauren: The reason I got into ectoplasm was when I was at school in Boston. I work at the library and we got this book called "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," and it's basically all ectoplasm, all the time.

Julia: She told me, "There's a picture of ectoplasm strung between a medium's nipples!" And I was like, "I have to see that:that sounds great!"

Will there indeed be a Sasquatch at the Filmsploitation show as advertised?

Lauren: Some people think he's more of a gorilla-man, so you'll just have to come and find out for yourself.

Julia: He appears sometimes around these parts, but no one has confirmed his existence. He may or may not be there.

Are goofballs and jazz cigarettes required for attendance to the "Nife Fite and Friend's Locally Grown Filmsploitation Show"?

Lauren: Not required, but welcome.

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