About Us

I’m Dean Pickles. That might not be my real name. But sometimes I travel places where they don’t like bloggers.

I used to work for Troma. You know, the legendary schlockmeisters behind The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High, and Surf Nazis Must Die. At 20, I co-wrote the first spec draft for a film called Tromeo & Juliet. Kaufman practically tore it up on the spot. James Gunn did a much better job. At 33, I returned to Troma like a desperate junkie, produced the shock-musical Poultrygeist, and co-wrote and co-directed the shock-doc Poultry in Motion: Truth is Stranger Than Chicken. You can buy both of these at Amazon, or in Chinese, Serbian and Thai bootleg shops.

“It is just about as perfect as a film predicated on the joys of projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea can be!” NATHAN LEE, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“As savage as Dawn of the Dead, as slapstick nutzoid as Evil Dead 2, as gag-on-your-popcorn gross as Pink Flamingos, and as dementedly foulmouthed literate as a Kevin Smith raunchfest. It’s genuine sick fun, and there isn’t a boring moment in it!” OWEN GLEIBERMAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“A vegetarian-manifesto masterpiece… (one of) the top 10 films that’ll inspire you to go vegetarian!” PETA

You can also see me acting in Rick Popko and Dan West’s glorious double-feature Monsturd and RetarDEAD, and somewhere in Robert Altman’s Nashville. Sadly, I can’t act.

I can travel, though, and usually do so with my girlfriend Woo (who shoots many of the pix for the site when I’m too shy or too obviously foreign.) She makes artisan Beijing ice cream, and comes up with project ideas.

One was a North Korea recreation of Guy Delisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang. We shot it mostly in the capital, and called it Pyongyang Too.

There’s also our tribute to Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho. That involved more sewing and alcohol.

As did this music video we made together, for Girls Are Waiting To Meet You’s Zombie Girl. Pity that zombie movies are illegal in China.

We sometimes do taxidermy. You can read about our experiences learning the art in a Chinese trade school, or just appreciate the below:

You can contact me, Dean Pickles, by emailing “asiaobscura” at Google’s “gmail.com” service.

This site has nothing to do with the oh-so-unfortunately-similarly-named-and-concepted AtlasObscura or Mark Leong’s great book China Obscura, or the sweet band Camera Obscura — but I couldn’t recommend anything more than those three things. They’re all quite wonderful.