One-Sheet(s) of the Week: POOR PRETTY EDDIE

POOR PRETTY EDDIE / REDNECK COUNTY / BLACK VENGEANCE (1975)

Alternate version: HEARTBREAK MOTEL

Arthur Davis & Factual Reports

“Some men are driven to investigate, to explore, to come to grips with the motivating forces that shape our lives. Arthur Davis is such a man, and BRUTES AND SAVAGES is the result of his desire to search out the roots of our civilization in the places where mankind first developed.”

[from the back cover of the BRUTES AND SAVAGES novelization]


Arthur Davis, known as “Mr. International Showman” in the film distribution world, was a familiar face to most people who read Variety during the 1960s and ‘70s. The son of a Florida movie theater owner, Davis followed in his father’s footsteps as an exhibitor before landing a job as a publicist for the film import company Mayer-Burstyn. He ran his own film import business in the States for several years before relocating to Tokyo in the early 1960s and establishing The Arthur Davis Company, a distribution outfit that provided Japanese TV stations and movie theaters with Italian and French movies. After more than a decade in Japan, Davis expanded his operation to Hong Kong and formed The Arthur Davis Organization -- “The leading independent showmanship group in Japan, Hong Kong and all the Far East,” according to the ads that frequently appeared in Variety (accompanied by a photo of Davis, always smiling). He also widened his scope to include the handling of German, British, and some American films, and by the mid-1970s his company was distributing over 22 titles a year throughout Asia. Logically, the next step for Davis would be the production of his own films.


It took an action-packed vacation in South America to convince Davis that truth was indeed stranger than fiction, at least in certain corners of the globe, and that a sensationalistic travelogue in the tradition of the enormously successful Italian “shockumentary” MONDO CANE (1962) -- and all its “Mondo” imitators -- would be a good way to ease into film production. The lifestyles and rituals of so-called primitive cultures in South America and Africa, committed to film, would hopefully provide enough shock value to get the movie sold in every conceivable film market in the world. Davis formed a new company called Factual Reports, opened a production office in London, and immediately put up $750,000 of his own money to start the motion picture that would become BRUTES AND SAVAGES. “Such films are relatively easy to make,” he boasted to Variety. “They have no cast and don’t need a name director to sell them” (Variety, May 11th, 1977, p. 6). Meanwhile, a second “factual report” -- a documentary about Japanese martial arts called THE ART OF KILLING -- would be shooting at the same time in Japan, with producer Hisao Masuda and director Masayoshi Nemoto in charge.


Davis' third Factual Report, WITCHCRAFT, was set to roll in September of 1977. Based on the files of UCLA professor Michael Donaldson and focusing on Japanese ghosts, Malaysian voodoo and other psychic phenomena, Davis had pre-sold the documentary to a dozen distributors on the strength of his claims that it would contain footage of an actual exorcism. That summer, after seeing EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC bomb with both critics and ticket buyers, the distributors got nervous and asked to be released from the deal. WITCHCRAFT was scrapped, at a cost of nearly $100,000 of Davis’ own money.

BRUTES AND SAVAGES and THE ART OF KILLING remained unreleased in the United States until 1982, when the former was given limited grindhouse exposure through Aquarius Releasing and the latter was re-titled BUDO and released briefly through Crown International Pictures. By that point, Davis had sold the Arthur Davis Organization to his Japanese employees, who split into 3 separate companies (Medallion Enterprises, Nan Enterprises, The Dela Corporation), and returned to Florida to begin a new career in real estate. He passed away sometime in the 1990s.


To learn more about BRUTES AND SAVAGES and BUDO: THE ART OF KILLING, read Chris' liner notes inside the DVDs from Synapse Films.


UPDATE: Longtime Temple contributor John W. Donaldson sent in a cool BRUTES AND SAVAGES graphic (below) and also drew our attention to an amusing entry on Arthur Davis at the Museum of Hoaxes website.

Kris' Movie Crossword #5

by Kris Gilpin

ANSWERS TO PUZZLE #4

ACROSS:
1) Pretty Peggy, or tea: LIPTON
4) Once they freakily rained down on film: FROGS
7) Aldo Ray shit flick about a stupid swamp creature: BOG
8) Ed & Gretch & 52 Bicycles: ROUNDERS
9) Row yer boat: OAR
11) David B.'s musical brothers: BEWLAY
12) Ron H. as a young'un: OPIE
14) Rockin' dirigible: LED (Zeppelin)
16) Son of monkey: APEBOY
17) (Almost got ass): AS
19) "__-Nuff!": SHO
21) She told Coop from death, "I will see you again in 25 years": LAURAPALMER
24) Typically good Gabriel CD: SO
25) Relayer(s) of great, sometimes fragile progc -- and Howe!: YES
27) 7 Down's tattooed man was this: ILLUSTRATED
29) Moi: ME
31) Do midgets suck this?: HELIUM
32) Jenny & Meg: TILLYS
33) Filmmaker's right-hand man/woman: AD
34) Roberts & some school exams: ORALS
35) Badass Frank Doubleday in "New York:" ROMERO
36) Group of thespians: SAG

DOWN:
1) Lauren & a key: LARGO
2) Debbie R.'s trap: TENDER
3) Kitty Winn got wasted in this square: NEEDLE
4) A foreign exchange student: FES
5) Oh, ____ __!: GROWUP
6) The Frenchie Tognazzi: UGO
7) Wrote classic film about a big fish: BRADBURY
10) Lettieri or Molinaro: AL
13) Gross yellow ooze: PUS
15) Women have these balls: EYE
16) Crappy internet: AOL
17) Kevin S. shot a white one: ALLIGATOR
18) He finally said, as an old man, "I don't even bother making love to small-breasted women now. It's a waste of my time": RUSSMEYER
19) Cool blood patterns: SPLATTERS
20) Larger tee-hee: HA
22) Routine: ROTE
23) Created golden turkeys: MEDVEDS
26) '50's rubber: SCUMBAG
28) A mystery man: LUDLUM
30) York & Sargeant (& Bush, too!): DICKS
31) S.K.'s ___-9000 computer: HAL

'Evil' Director Sam Raimi: Craftsmanship on a Lower Budget

In 1982 THE EVIL DEAD was let loose upon an unsuspecting world; it was an instant cult success and some genre fans considered it the best horror film ever made. EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN, the sequel film, has now been unleashed and is an excellent example of craftsmanship on a lower budget; the camerawork, breakneck pace and humor (a refreshing change for the genre) are all extremely impressive.

The director responsible for both films is young Sam Raimi, who also co-wrote the new movie with Scott Spiegel. His inspiration for this intense pair of blood-and-bile-baths came to him 10 years ago while Raimi was still in school. “My ancient history professor was giving a dissertation on Sumerian culture,” he explains, “and I was phasing out, as I was likely to do in those days. And she mentioned the ancient Sumerian Book of the Dead which is actually a series of scrolls and not one bound book, as in the pictures. They were about burial rights, funerary incantations and passage explaining the trip into the netherworlds beyond death, and that suddenly pricked up my ears. So I thought, ‘What if someone found the Book by accident and released the spirits from the spirit world?’" Which is, of course, exactly what happens in both films. The action in EVIL DEAD 2 is non-stop, from the very beginning to its ironic end (different from other horror features of late), and ferocious.

The first EVIL DEAD was also influenced by George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (a cult film of its own) which scared the even younger Raimi when it first came out in 1968. The budget of the first EVIL DEAD was $385,000; it was shot in 16mm over “11 weeks in Tennessee, two weeks in Michigan and an unknown amount of time on special effects in my garage, basement and backyard in Detroit because we kept running out of money.”

Since it was an independent picture Raimi and crew would shoot until they’d have to raise some more money, then they’d shoot some more. THE EVIL DEAD went on to develop some very healthy legs as it sold about 70,000 videocassettes in the U.S., was the number one selling video in the U.K. in 1983 before the police board confiscated it when it hit the top, and was No. 20 for the year when it was released theatrically in Japan.

The original movie’s publicity campaigns started with no less an authority than Stephen King. “He saw the picture at the Cannes Film Festival,” the director relates. “I met him briefly – he’s my favorite horror author and some people told me he jumped during the screening of the film – and asked him, ‘Mr. King, you think you could give me a line I could use in the advertising to help promote the picture?’ And he said, ‘I’ll write a review of it for Twilight Zone magazine and you can pull a quote from there.’ I was thrilled about that; it brought the picture to the attention of the public.”

The cinematic ball of horror King had started rolling would, over the years, allow Raimi to be able to helm the sequel in 35mm. There are a walloping 250 special makeup effects in EVIL DEAD 2. It also expands more on the Book of the Dead and contains some imaginative animation work by Tom Sullivan, who also worked on the first picture. While there should be enough viscera to satisfy the hardcore gore fan the new film is also more intense and features more monsters (such as the disgusting, possessed Henrietta, played in full body makeup by the director’s brother, Ted).

Born in Detroit, Raimi’s first fascinations with film began with his father’s home movies. “They were very interesting,” he recalls, “the fact he could record our birthday parties and show them the next year. It was very magical that he could record reality and play with the speeds – alter reality – and then recreate it for us on the wall.”

Sam Raimi’s first film was called OUT WEST, a Three Stooges-inspired comic western he shot in 8mm, which was “about 22 seconds long,” he chuckles. As a teen he cranked out around 50 Super 8 movies with friends, all of them comedies, and in college he and his buddies formed a film society in which they charged admission for their films to the college audiences. “With good or bad responses it’s good feedback, especially when they’re paying a buck-fifty. I highly recommend [such a film society] for young filmmakers.” Some of these titles included IT’S MURDER, SIX MONTHS TO LIVE and CLOCKWORK.

Interestingly, Raimi has always been more of a fan of comedy than horror and/or gore. “I was always a fan of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers,” he says. “We wanted to make a first feature in college and realized that, no matter how badly it might’ve turned out in case we failed, the investors could still make some of their money back if we learned how to make a horror movie. So we sat in a drive-in for a summer and studied double feature after double feature of Italian horror pictures, trying to figure out what made them work. And then we tried to make our own.”

The first one was CLOCKWORK, “a short experiment in terror which didn’t exactly work properly. [In it] a man stalks a woman and she kills him – the old knife-in-the-mouth routine.” Then came WITHIN THE WOODS, a 30-minute horror film Raimi used to raise money for what would be THE EVIL DEAD. “We showed the short film to doctors, dentists, attorneys, anyone who had any money who would listen to us. I think, in Detroit, it was enticing to be involved in a movie because it was sort of exotic and exciting. [Showing them the short film] we’d make people sick and then ask them to invest.” A sort of synopsized version of Raimi’s first feature, WITHIN THE WOODS dealt with an American Indian graveyard which is despoiled; it starred Bruce Campbell as a monster and Ellen Sandweiss as the survivor, opposite roles to the ones they would play in the original DEAD film. The effects were good enough to raise financing for THE EVIL DEAD.

“I know the first DEAD movie did offend some people so in EVIL DEAD 2 we tried to make it less offensive by cutting down on the viciousness of the gore and trying to make it more entertaining,” says the soft-spoken, even gentle director. “Because our goal was never really to offend people but just scare them and give them a rollercoaster ride of romping good fun.”

Comedy came back to Raimi between the EVIL DEAD films in the form of CRIMEWAVE, a farce which received very little theatrical distribution before eventually winding up on videocassette. What happened to the writer-director’s CRIMEWAVE? Embassy Pictures took it away [from us], forced Bruce Campbell out of the lead, recut the picture a number times, dumped our score and put ‘funny’ music behind it and now it’s some weird picture I don’t think anyone is particularly interested in, really. God later dismantled Embassy Pictures for their cruelty to filmmakers,” he laughs.

“CRIMEWAVE appeared in one or two forlorn markets and then disappeared off the face of the earth. It’s being used as fill now for pornos,” he jokes. Obviously, Raimi now “can’t recommend the film; I don’t like it. I’m sorry to the audience it didn’t work but I won’t falsely advise them to spend any bucks in renting it. It just didn’t come out properly.”

Before the sequel to his infamous EVIL DEAD was produced Raimi kept busy writing other scripts such as W.O.W. (WOMEN ON WHEELS) (written with another brother, Ivan) and THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, co-written by RAISIN’ ARIZONA’s own sibling team of Joel and Ethan Coen. Raimi is also writing a thriller for Universal Pictures entitled THE DARK MAN, which he is set to produce. He will soon be seen as an actor in the upcoming STRYKER’S WAR (produced by Scott Spiegel), in which the young filmmaker plays “the leader of the bad guys; a bad man who’s terrorizing people and the Marines are called in to put me to rest.” Raimi cast himself in a cameo at the end of EVIL DEAD 2, giving himself the last line of dialogue in the film.

Because of miles of legal red tape resulting from too many cooks in the cinematic kitchen, the director still doesn’t know exactly how much profit his first horror feature has made to date, which is why he decided it was time to produce its sequel. “We realized our investors hadn’t broken even yet,” he says. “Because we had been shortchanged, we still hadn’t paid back enough money for them to break even. So we decided to go for it.”

Raimi summarizes his latest EVIL DEAD outing (he has written the treatment for a third DEAD movie in case this one takes off) as “the story of one man and his battle with the supernatural. He’s at war with all the demons of hell, and with the darker side of himself as well.” The new film has special effects of all types, and this time Tom Sullivan supervised a grand total of 1,200 effect shots. “When we took out the really gross sequences; we replaced them partially with more thrills and chills, and more humor.”

The director, however, still hadn’t taken out enough gore to earn the R rating he was going for this time out so, as with his first DEAD feature, EVIL DEAD 2 has been released without an MPAA rating. “They looked at it and said, ‘Sam, it’s still not R-rated.’ But I really tried to make it R-rated,” he grins. “The gore the merrier, we always say.” He believes the grossest effect in the film is what he calls “the flyball-eyeball. They slam a creature’s head in a trapdoor and one of its eyes pops out of its head like a cork from a champagne bottle; it flies through the air and down a screaming woman’s throat,” he says with a laugh.

As in the first film, Raimi and company also jerrybuilt a number of ingenious homemade camera tricks, including their “Ram-o-cam,” a long, steel ramrod which was used to simulate an evil spirit’s point-of-view as it races through a car’s back windshield, on through the interior and straight out the front window. Also employed was their effective version of the Steadicam, which the crew dubbed their “Shakicam.”

With three feature films, several screenplays and treatments under his belt, Sam Raimi wants to make “different, interesting movies which will generate excitement, like throwing sticks of dynamite into the audience. Give them things they want but don’t expect. And it doesn’t matter to me what the genre would be as long as it’s something unusual and powerful.”

Written by Kris Gilpin
[Originally published in Drama-Logue, 4/9/1987, p. 4]

This Week on 42nd Street -- 1978

Here are the double and triple features that played the Deuce thirty-one years ago this week. Theaters are listed in east-to-west order.


North Side of the Street

Rialto: WATERPOWER / SENSUOUS FLY GIRLS

Victory: SWEETHEARTS / THE JOURNEY OF O. / TEENAGE SEX KITTEN

Lyric: NO. 1 OF THE SECRET SERVICE / THE SECOND BEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Times Square: THE BODYGUARD / GOODBYE BRUCE LEE: HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH

Apollo: COMING HOME / BUSTING

Selwyn: SINGLE FIGHTER / TIGER FROM HONG KONG


South Side of the Street

New Amsterdam: THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY / LORDS OF FLATBUSH

Cine 42: THE MANITOU / JENNIFER

Harris: IT LIVES AGAIN / UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT

Liberty: THE FURY / EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER

Empire: DRAGON FIST / THE KILLING MACHINE / DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER

Anco: NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS / FIVE ANGRY WOMEN

Happy Birthday CHRISTOPHER LEE

Happy Birthday VINCENT PRICE

VINCENT PRICE
May 27, 1911 - October 25, 1993

One-Sheet of the Week: Pam Grier

Instead of running an actual 27 x 41 movie sheet for our birthday girl, we decided to go with her super smooth Pro-Arts poster from 1978, which we knew we had somewhere in the Temple archives but couldn't immediately locate (why we never got this bad boy framed is beyond us). After an hour of searching poster tubes -- and stumbling upon both Lola Falana's and Marilyn Joi's dual Pro-Arts offerings -- we finally found the Pam Poster, only to discover that it was still rolled and sealed inside the plastic! Paul broke out the wine and cheese, Po-Man got side one of Minnie spinnin' on the turntable, and we all verrrrrrry carefully unsheathed this rolled 20 x 28 deadly weapon from its scabbard. We say "deadly weapon" because after 30 years of confinement this beauty was determined to take off a few fingers during the unfurling. With the help of our hunchbacked servant Quasi Schlocko and about 15 telephone books, we managed to get it unrolled and spread out flat on the library floor for a very quick photo shoot. The image here doesn't represent the whole poster (we had to crop out the telephone books on Photoshop) but you get the idea. We're on our way to Target right now to snag some frames. Enjoy. Just don't get too close -- and God help ya if you knock away one of those phone books.

Trading Cards: The Pam Grier card from Players

In 1994, Players magazine issued a set of collectible trading cards. All of the nude beauties featured were either porn stars (Angel Kelly, Heather Hunter, Sahara) or Players models, with one exception: PAM GRIER. Naturally, her card was #1. Here it is.

(front)

(back)

Happy Birthday PAM GRIER

Happy Birthday PETER CUSHING

PETER CUSHING
May 26, 1913 - August 11, 1994

The Endangered List (Case File #31)

Notable for being the directorial debut of Michael Schultz (COOLEY HIGH, CAR WASH, THE LAST DRAGON), the first film appearance of Samuel L. Jackson, and the sole big-screen performance by ill-fated Sesame Street cast member Northern Calloway...

TOGETHER FOR DAYS (1972)
a.k.a. BLACK CREAM

CAST

Clifton Davis (Gus)

Lois Chiles (Shelley)

Northern Calloway (Calvin)

Leonard Jackson (Phil)

Gisela Caldwell (Karen)

Woodie King, Jr. (Jerry)

Liz Wright (Miriam)

Ben Jones (Douglas)

Andrea Frye (Sister Sonji)

Gilbert Lewis (Big Bubba)

Samuel L. Jackson (Stan)

Brooks Clift (Officer Hanratty)

Sherman Perkins (Officer Murchinson)

Scott Childress (1st Policeman)

Michael Hatfield (2nd Policeman)

Emmanuel Hall (Reporter)

J.E. Nation (Museum Guard)

Dennis Henry (1st Sponsor)

Bob Hill (2nd Sponsor)

Eileen Gordon (Party Hostess)

Frank Hines (Shelley's Dance Partner)

Brad Blaisdell (Hippie)

Georgia Allen (Gus' Mother)

Mimi Honce (Wig Lady)

CREW

Directed by

Michael Schultz

Produced by

Robert S. Buchanan

Screenplay by

William B. Branch

Story by

Lindsay Smith

Cinematography by

Donald H. Hudgins

Original Music by

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Edited by

Marshall M. Borden

Art Direction by

Carlton Moulette

Sound Mixer

David Patterson

Camera Operator

Brian Roy

Memorial Day dusk-to-dawn shows, part 2

Here are more Memorial Day dusk-to-dawn programs from other parts of the U.S.

Memorial Day dusk-to-dawn shows in Syracuse

Here are some of the great Memorial Day dusk-to-dawn programs that played our Syracuse, N.Y. hometown drive-ins back in the 1970s and '80s, when there actually were drive-ins within an hour's drive of the Temple. Sadly, these ozoners and several others in the Syracuse area (like the Salina Drive-In) are gone now, giving us all something else to look back on this holiday weekend.