It’s unfortunate that in the year 2017, burlesque has become a bit of a lost art form. Thankfully, we have performance troupes like Untamed Babes to breathe a new life into it.
Hailing from the sleepy desert town of Lancaster, CA, Untamed Babes is an alternative burlesque troupe led by Miss Loretta Lust, who has created a family of ladies (and gentlemen) who have a passion for burlesque, cabaret, and sideshow performances. No two shows will ever be the same, and often delve into the horrific, bizarre, or just plain camp. No matter your taste, you couldn’t say it wasn’t creative, or that you weren’t entertained.
Promotional shot for the “Welcome To Grindhaus” show. Photo by Jazmin La.Shae Photography
This particular show was a tribute to the upcoming horror film Welcome To Grindhaus, created by director Otis Johnson, who is a close friend of the Babes. I caught up with the group at Pizza Studio in Burbank, CA a few hours before their performance, white included Miss Loretta Lust, Otis Johnson, Suzey Johnson (costumer), Volta Charge (drag queen host and performer), Demonicupcake (performer), Foxy Love (performer), Kaylithium Von Kola (performer), and Smash Attack (performer and stage kitten). They were kind enough to give me the lowdown on what Untamed Babes was really all about.
HorrorBuzz: Performers, how long have you been with Untamed Babes?
Demonicupcake: So this is my first show.
Foxy Love: I’ve been with the Babes for a year.
Kaylithium Von Kola: I’ve been with the babes for ALMOST a year.
Volta Charge: SINCE THE BEGINNING.
HB: What is the beginning?
Loretta Lust: The beginning would be today of last year. So this is our one-year anniversary.
HB: Hell yeah! That’s awesome. And going off of that, how far do you think you guys have come in the past year?
LL: We’ve come a LONG way from a venue closing down on us the week of a show, so we had to cancel that, and we found a new venue. And that venue wasn’t all that great, and we found a theater at CIA [California Institute of Abnormal Arts] in Burbank.
HB: What initially inspired you to start this troupe?
LL: The fact that in Antelope Valley there’s nothing to do out there, there’s no burlesque troupe out there, so I’m like, hey! I know some people who can dance, I’ve had years of dancing. I wanted to start something that’s not in the Antelope Valley, something that’s fun and worth a try.
HB: Right on. Where in Antelope Valley?
LL: Well Antelope Valley has Lancaster and Palmdale, they’re right next to each other. But we perform in Lancaster, we started off in bars. And now we just got a theater, so it’s gonna be a lot of fun.
HB: So you guys use the same theater?
LL: Next month will be the first time we use the theater.
HB: And this is your set theater?
LL: Yes, this will be our set theater for all of 2018! (laughs)
HB: So this is a question for all of you guys. What is the show about tonight?
LL: (points to Otis) Ask him.
Otis Johnson: This is a show about living in the desert, and about religion and drugs gone bad.
VC: So a Tuesday.
OJ: In Lancaster. So it’s about some freaky people who live off in the desert by themselves and have a cult, and they range out and occasionally kill people, and the powers that be need to shut them down. It’s a lot of fun.
HB: That’s awesome. For people who don’t know about this, could you kind of just give us an overview about the show’s theme and what it’s all about?
LL: The Untamed Babes Burlesque is basically an alternative, unique group. Every month we have a new theme so you’ll never see the same thing twice in the same city. So that’s the way that I challenge everyone, but we try to pick popular things that we know people will enjoy. For tonight’s theme, since it’s [Otis’s] birthday today, we said hey, let’s use your movie! Other than that, when it’s Halloween season we’ll do Halloween-themed shows, November/December will be more classic burlesque. But other than that we’ll do crazy alternative stuff like Babes in Wonderland, which was a couple months ago. We try to do one annual thing which is a carnival. This year was freaky carnival, last year was creepy carnival, I forgot what next years’ is gonna be.
HB: [To Otis] So you’re the director of a movie.
OJ: Yes, I’m the director of Welcome To Grindhaus.
HB: And that’s what this show is based on?
OJ: Yes, that’s what this show is based on. This is a burlesque revue of Welcome To Grindhaus, a film that no one has seen yet. (laughs)
HB: When can we see your movie?
OJ: I’m trying to get it into festivals for October. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Screamfest, I just submitted to them yesterday.
Watch WELCOME TO GRINDHAUS Trailer HERE
HB: Can you give me an overview about the film, what it’s about, what inspired it, etc.?
OJ: Welcome to Grindhaus came out of a haunt. Someone approached me to create characters for a haunt, so I created Welcome To Grindhaus, which is about a crazy reverend Evan Evans and his creepy scientist pal Morgan, they have a cult compound out in the desert. And the haunt itself, you came in and you were greeted by my wife who had a nice swaggery drawl, she led you in and you’d meet Evan Evans. He’d try to save your soul and push you into my room, where I’d be torturing someone while wearing a bird mask, with strobe lights going and Skinny Puppy playing or something. Then I’d proceed to scare the shit out of people and push them into the next room for clown scares by Kaylith. And at the end we had guys with chainsaws for no reason, just chasing you around.
HB: Apparently Skinny Puppy is so great for horror movies that they had one of their members be in Repo! The Genetic Opera. That’s how goth they are.
OJ: Well honestly if you wanna talk about Skinny Puppy, that’s one of my primary influences. In the 80s I used to follow them around and went to as many shows as I could.
HB: Performers, who are you and what are you doing in the show, and what are your favorite aspects of performing with the group?
VC: So I’m Volta Charge, I’m the drag queen host of the entire show. I introduce the acts and make fun of everybody, which is my favorite part of the whole thing, cracking jokes and making people laugh. My favorite of part of the whole show is if they need to stall or something, we call it Volta’s Storytime, and I get to tell whatever ridiculous story happens in my life at that particular time, and it’s usually really inappropriate, and everyone laughs! So that’s definitely my favorite part of it.
Volta Charge
DC: I’m Demonicupcake, for this show I’m our sexy S.W.A.T. team leader, General Potato. My favorite part of hanging out and performing with the Babes is that honestly we can kind of do whatever we want and none of us are gonna be like “wow, that’s too weird.” Instead it’s more like “YOU have fun.” Sometimes Sam [Loretta Lust] is gonna look at us like we’re crazy.
Demonicupcake as the S.W.A.T. leader
FL: For this show I’m Agent Rodriguez, and I am a performer/manager.
ALL: What’s your name?
FL: Nancy.
ALL: No, your stage name!
FL: OH, it’s Foxy Love! That’s my stage name. What a like about this group is what [Demonicupcake] said, we can do anything we want. A year ago, if you asked me to come up with a concept or any choreography I would not do it. But now I push myself to be more creative, and try to make everything a little more different every month. It just gets my creative juices going.
Foxy Love as Agent Rodriguez
KVK: I am Kaylithium Von Kola, a name that you can never understand in any loud club ever. I started out as a stage kitten for the Untamed Babes and our lovely leader, Miss Loretta Lust, decided “hey, you know that sideshow thing you do with the nail up your nose? You should come do that! And here, I’ll help you build a giant bed of nails!” So in the troupe I have developed a sideshow routine and I’ve really blossomed as a sideshow and burlesque performer. I just feel at home with all these lovely ladies, and it’s honestly an art collective where we all support each other and do creative concepts that are out of the norm. We leave people thinking “wow, that was awesome” or “what the fuck?”
HB: Hopefully both.
DC: Either way they’ll be entertained.
KVK: And I shove scissors in my face for a living.
VC: And you’re in the movie, too!
KVK: Oh yes! I’m also in the movie. I play Orphan Evans, one of the more violent characters of the Evans family. I have the highest kill count in the movie, and let’s just say that some clown-nanigans go down that you’ll wanna see.
Kaylithium Von Kola as Orphan Evans
HB: Clown-nanigans.
KVK: Clown-nanigans.
HB: I’m really hoping that becomes a frequently used term. So more specifically, what are some of the most weird or exciting things that we’ll be able to see at tonight’s show?
KVK: Okay so I have a pair of scissors, and they’re my friend’s good scissors, and I take those and shove them up into my nose and into my skull, all the way until they start dipping into the back of my throat. So you’ll be able to see that live.
HB: Word.
FL: I’ll be eating cake.
LL: Cake? No, not cake. She will be eating intestines. Cake??
KVK: Where’s my cake?
OJ: You will see a story of horror, madness, degradation, torture, and violence told through snappy comedy and stripping routines!
HB: That’s going to be the headline.
DC: You’re gonna see a creepy baby do some weird shit.
FL: There’s gonna be a creepy baby that’s probably something you should not get close to.
LL: It’s a baby that’s in the movie that we now brought to life.
HB: Oh, so it’s an actual baby.
LL: Almost.
OJ: In the film it’s an IED baby doll that’s covered in spikes and nails. It’s a nail bomb baby. But they’ve decided to turn it into a dance routine, and the nail bomb baby is a performer.
Foxy Love as Nail Bomb Baby
KVK: We’re gonna kill you with sexiness!
LL: I’m really excited about that baby.
HB: I am fucking HYPE for this show. This is gonna be crazy. Performers, how did you find out about Untamed Babes and what initially brought you here?
KVK: My journey with the Untamed Babes is because of the dark eclectic art collective known as Grindhaus. We, in house, actually made the film Welcome To Grindhaus, and it was through Grindhaus that I met Miss Loretta Lust, and she was like “hey! I need a stage kitten” and I’m like “sure!” and she said “hey, do you wanna perform?” and I said “WHY NOT!” So that’s how I became a Babe, it just kind of happened.
FL: Well I know that Loretta Lust was asking to have some people audition/perform for a charity event, and I asked her if I could do it, she let me and that was basically my audition performance. I knew her since high school so she was probably gonna end up asking me anyway cause we were in the same dance club.
DC: So after I met Klown [Kaylithium] at Bar Sinister a couple months back, she posted about looking for people because it was time for auditions, and I was like, well fuck, I have some weird-ass talents, I might as well go and audition. And apparently my weird-ass talents were really cool, so that’s how I got to be a Babe.
VC: Ours is a bit more interesting. [Loretta and I] were previously in a burlesque troupe that shall remain nameless, we’ll just call it Voldemort’s troupe. And we met there, and when that troupe crumbled, magically Loretta had one in the making. So I went from hosting a garbage one to a great one.
HB: I kinda wanna know more about—
LL: —You gotta do that story on its own.
VC: That’s a different story for a different day.
LL: There’s some legal shit involved.
HB: Mum’s the word, I won’t say anything. Otis, how did you initially get involved with Untamed? How did you all meet and how did you form that partnership?
OJ: I had the dark eclectic art collective know as Grindhaus, [Loretta] is a good friend of mine and the founder of the Untamed Babes, and she comes over to our house a lot. My wife and I inspired her to branch out on her own and start her own troupe. And we promised that we’d give her all the resources and whatnot, so many of us here are also in the collective known as Grindhaus, as well as performers in Untamed Babes.
LL: All of our production is in-house.
VC: Or in an alleyway.
At this point, Suzey Johnson (Otis’s wife) had reappeared.
HB: [to Suzey] Aren’t you the person who dresses everyone?
Suzey Johnson: Yes!
HB: Where were you?
SJ: Uh, hiiiiiiiiii! Yes, I dress the Untamed Babes.
HB: Have you also been with them since the beginning?
SJ: I have been with them since the beginning. [Loretta] roped me in early.
HB: What was it like to costume this particular show and what are some of the things you had to create specifically for this show?
SJ: I had so much fun making Nail Bomb Baby’s mask and hat.
HB: I’m really excited to see this Nail Bomb Baby everyone keeps talking about.
SJ: And I play Hunter Evans in the film. How would you describe Hunter Evans?
OJ: A badass, swaggery, scary female. She’s mean.
SJ: Yeah, Hunter Evans is mean.
OJ: Kaylith has the highest kill count but Hunter Evans is the most sadistic. She brands people, tricks people into running off the compound and falling into traps, yeah she’s bad.
HB: What’s been your favorite part about working with Untamed?
SJ: I really like thrifting and putting together costumes with pieces that I’ve thrifted, so it’s all about the thrill of the hunt for me. I love figuring out what the themes are gonna be every month and then going out and finding costume pieces for that.
HB: [pointing to the stage kitten girl nearby] Stage kitten! Get over here, I wanna talk to you too. What’s your stage name?
Smash Attack: I’m Smash Attack, or Smash, one of the two. And I’m basically the sacrificial lamb in this whole show.
HB: Does your character have a name?
SA: Uh, no actually. Suzey, my character doesn’t have a name, right? I just die?
SJ: Yeah, cause you’re a bunch of different characters.
SA: Yeah, so I’m just dying a little bit here, dying a little bit over there, run around here, etc.
Loretta Lust (left) and Smash Attack (right)
HB: And how long have you been with the Babes?
SA: Only like a week or two. I’m just excited to scream and run around, I’m the one that gets eaten. Foxy Love eats my intestines.
HB: I know you’ve only been here a week, but what’s your favorite part of performing with the Babes?
SA: Already it’s just, THEM, you know? Everybody in this group just makes you so comfortable, it’s like another family. So I feel like I can come out of my shell more being in this group than anywhere else.
HB: Well thank you so much guys, I’m really excited to see this show! This is gonna be crazy.
And crazy it was. I followed the Babes to the California Institute of Abnormal Arts in Burbank, CA, a small sideshow-themed theater full of garish colors and patterns, dramatic lighting, and creepy decor perfectly fit for a psychotic clown’s living room.
The Babes put on a hilarious, sexy, and camp performance that chronicled all the most iconic scenes from Welcome to Grindhaus, complete with stripping at gunpoint, rifle twirling, human blockhead stunts, drag lip-synchs, and feigned cannibalism–all to a sold-out audience.
For those of you who missed out, never fear: Untamed Babes has plenty of exciting upcoming shows in LA and Antelope Valley, including a Halloween cult-classic-film themed performance in Lancaster, just in time for the season. Giving into your freaky side has never been so much fun.
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