The Endangered List (Case File #51)

Cleveland Plain Dealer - June 22, 1973 - "Action Tab" p. 4

THE WEDNESDAY CHILDREN (1973)

Written and directed
by
Robert D. West

Produced by
Homer Baldwin and Cal Clifford

Cinematography by
Homer Baldwin

Edited by
Homer Baldwin

Music by
Tom Baker and Dene Bays

A Venture Film Production Co. release
Running time: 88 minutes

Original title: MR. FENTON


CAST

Marji Dodril (as Mrs. Miller)
Donald E. Miller (as Mr. Miller)
Tom Kelly (as Scott Miller)
Carol Cary (as Mrs. Edith Barlow)
Al Miskell (as Mr. Fenton)
Robert D. West (as The Minister)


Variety - June 20, 1973

Boxoffice - March 12, 1974

Special thanks to John W. Donaldson

"Mondo Mandingo" by Paul Talbot -- Now Available!

PRESS RELEASE

In 1957, the novel Mandingo stunned readers with its lurid, unforgettable tale of Falconhurst -- a pre-Civil War slave-breeding plantation where unspeakable acts of sex and brutality took place everyday between the masters and slaves. Over the next three decades, Mandingo sold millions of copies worldwide and spawned thirteen official sequel books as well as dozens of paperback imitators. The big-budget movie version of 1975 was one of the biggest hits of the year, as well as one of the most reviled films of all time.


Now, for the first time, the complete history of the bizarre Mandingo phenomenon is told, including: the life of the eccentric author Kyle Onstott and the scandalous true stories that inspired him; the two writers who continued the Falconhurst series; and the background of the disastrous Broadway adaptation.

Also covered extensively (including deleted scenes and alternate cuts) is the making of the MANDINGO film and the production of the sequel, DRUM (1976), as well as several other "slavesploitation" and "spaghetti Mandingo" movies.


Mondo Mandingo: The Falconhurst Books and Films is exhaustively researched and contains dozens of rare illustrations and photographs plus exclusive, candid interviews with director Richard Fleischer, actor Ken Norton, and many others.

"Psychedelic Zombie BBQ" episode of PLUG-IN

PLUG-IN: The Home Recording Show Presents:
"Psychedelic Zombie BBQ"

Our good friend Daniel Griffith sent us this link to a free web series he's working on that's designed to show viewers how to record their own music at home using all the tricks found in a professional music studio. In this very special (and spooky) Halloween scream-isode, host NASTY NED and award-winning music engineer BEN ELLIOT join a cult of ghoulish surf rockers (The Dead Elvi) as they cook-up their greasiest batch of musical mayhem yet, deep within the dreary bowels of legendary Showplace Studios. But their Psychedelic Zombie BBQ is cut short by an uninvited guest (Eddie Trunk, co-host of VH1 Classic's "THAT METAL SHOW"). When it comes to their finger-licking frights, his spirit just isn't in it. Luckily, the rest of him made it in just fine. Ben also describes how to 'resurrect' that surf rock guitar sound made famous by artists like The Ventures and Dick Dale. What's their secret? Well, it's in the sauce!!!!

www.plug-inhomerecording.com

This Week on 42nd Street -- 1986

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

North Side of the Street

Victory: 3 adult hits

Lyric: JUMPING JACK FLASH / BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

Times Square: FROM BEYOND / RE-ANIMATOR

Apollo: CROCODILE DUNDEE / unlisted co-feature

Selwyn: FORMULA FOR MURDER / WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE


South Side of the Street

Cine 42
Theater I: ARMED RESPONSE / DEADLY IMPACT / AVENGING FORCE
Theater II: CAT VS. RAT / SHAOLIN VS. LAMA

Harris: DEADLY FRIEND / COBRA

Liberty: HANDS OF STEEL / RUSH

The Endangered List (Case File #50)

THE BAGEL REPORT (1972)

Written, produced and directed
by
Hugh Wilson

Cinematography by
Joe Shelton

Starring
Bill Dial
as
Dr. Bagel

with
Angela Gale (a.k.a. Gale Sigmon)
Steve Ullman
Janet Wells
Janet Meshad
Roger M. Teeter
and
Ben Jones

MPAA rating: X

This film supposedly had three screenings at the Ansley Mall Film Forum, an independent art house/revival house in Atlanta, sometime in 1972. After scrolling through 4 years of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on microfilm (1972-1975), we found no evidence of these screenings nor any other theatrical exposure for THE BAGEL REPORT in Atlanta during those years.

[TOS trivia: the Ansley Mall Film Forum was managed by actor George Ellis, who turned his "Bestoink Dooley" character from THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN into a horror host on Atlanta's CBS affiliate WAGA]

from the Atlanta pages in Boxoffice magazine...

Chalk up another "local boy makes good in Hollywood" for localite Hugh Wilson. Just three years after he left Georgia, Hugh is a Hollywood success story. He is the creator and producer of WKRP IN CINCINNATI, which debuted on CBS-TV and has garnered rave reviews from critics coast to coast. Wilson, a 35-year-old former advertising man, is an affable, unassuming personality with a wide creative streak. Wilson once made his own motion picture here, THE BAGEL REPORT. It had a $40,000 budget. "I borrowed $25,000 from good old Citizens & Southern Bank," he recalls. It was supposed to be a funny takeoff on the Kinsey Report, but it didn't have enough sex in it, says Hugh. THE BAGEL REPORT now is gathering dust in a city warehouse. "The day when I'm back in town, I'm gonna pick up all those cans of film, go down to the Gulf, rent a boat, travel a few miles and bury them at sea." -- Boxoffice, October 9, 1978, p. SE-2

Ben Jones says...

"Once I was in a low-budget sex comedy called THE BAGEL REPORT, a spoof on The Kinsey Report. I played a character whose fetish was wearing women's panties over his head. He was also a chain-smoker, and as he talked the panties caught fire....It was directed by Hugh Wilson, who went on to produce WKRP IN CINCINNATI, among other successes. I think that by now he has probably destroyed all copies of THE BAGEL REPORT." -- from Redneck Boy in the Promised Land: The Confessions of "Crazy Cooter" by Ben Jones (Harmony, 2008, p. 141)

[More TOS trivia: Lead actor Bill Dial, a former critic for the Atlanta Constitution, became a successful TV writer and producer thanks to his association with Wilson a few years later on WKRP IN CINCINNATI]

One-Sheet of the Week: THE BLAZER GIRLS (1975)

THE BLAZER GIRLS (1975)

Re-released by NMD Film Distributing in 1976 as NAUGHTY SCHOOL GIRLS

Interview with Samuel M. Sherman

Coming soon!

Random movie ads: The Independent-International edition, Part 2

And don't forget to check back later in the week for our interview with Independent-International Pictures owner and co-founder Samuel M. Sherman!

Hippie psychos on a mad murder spree!

Continuing our Sam Sherman retrospective, longtime TOS contributor John W. Donaldson sent in these frame scans from the B&W addition to the SATAN'S SADISTS trailer, which was quickly thrown together after the Sharon Tate murders. Thanks, John!

One-Sheet of the Week: VOYAGE TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1975)

VOYAGE AU BOUT DU MONDE (1975)

U.S. release beginning in December of 1975 as VOYAGE TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

This Week on 42nd Street -- 1979

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

North Side of the Street

Victory: KUNG FU MASTER, BRUCE LEE STYLE / LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH / THE HOT, THE COOL, AND THE VICIOUS

Lyric: NURSE SHERRI / HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN

Times Square: SCREAMS OF A WINTER NIGHT / THE REDEEMER

Selwyn: ROCKY II / EBONY, IVORY & JADE


South Side of the Street

New Amsterdam: THE KOREAN CONNECTION / THE BIG RIP-OFF

Cine 42
Theater I: THE HITTER / GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK
Theater II: THE LEGACY / CHAMPION OF DEATH

Harris: EDGE OF FURY / SNUFF

Liberty: PATRICK / BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL

Empire: BRONSON LEE, CHAMPION / SOUL OF CHIBA / PORK CHOPPER

Anco: ALIEN / DAMIEN: OMEN II

The Endangered List (Case File #49)

THE CAPTIVES (1970)

Directed by
Carl Borch
[Lee Frost]

Produced by
B.T. København
[Armand Atamian]

Photographed by
E.R. Frederiksen

Assistant Director
Brüel Marquart

Sound Recording
Hans Sørensen

Editing Supervisor
Peter Cooke

CAST
Brigit Krøyer (Avi)
Karl Hansen (Max C. Kragh)
Orla Nsu (Edith)
Leif Betheas (Jorgen)
Annelise Dette (Liala)
Emil Kjarum (Steen)

Rating: self-applied X

Released by
Phoenix International Films


PLOT

Max C. Kragh (Karl Hansen), a wealthy industrialist, and his wife Edith (Orla Nsu) are traveling through the hills of Denmark heading toward their weekend retreat, when they see a young girl, Avi (Birgit Krøyer), thumbing for a ride. They stop for the girl, and suddenly Max is pulled from the car by two of Avi’s friends, Steen (Emil Kjarum) and Jorgen (Leif Betheas), while Liala (Annelise Dette) watches happily from the other side of the road.

The kids seem unmotivated in their violence, as though they were a representation of a future generation of wild human animals that our society has only begun to get a taste of.

Half crazed with drugs, they kidnap Max and his wife and break into an unoccupied house. Now their hidden, depraved thoughts are brought out into the open. The night becomes an orgy of lust and terror for Max and Edith. They are subjected to countless indignities. Max best represents their hatred for the establishment and becomes the focal point of their terror. At last, Edith is sexually assaulted by all while Max is forced to watch, the final act of debasement in an already lust filled night.

Film director Carl Borcht moves his cast expertly through a story that on occasion seems almost stylized and unreal, which only heightens by contrast the scenes concerning human sex. The film has a message far greater than “don’t stop for hitchhikers.” Denmark is the first country in the world to legalize pornography. Perhaps through that the generation depicted here could be possible.


The second of three micro budgeted, non-sync-sound softcore quickies that director Lee Frost and producer Armand Atamian made using short-end scraps of film and then passed off as Danish productions through their Phoenix International Films -- the other two "imports" being RIDE HARD, RIDE WILD (1970) and SLAVES IN CAGES (1971) -- THE CAPTIVES first hit theaters in March of 1971. Phoenix International later collapsed into Freeway Films when Atamian started producing hardcore hits like BEACH BLANKET BANGO, CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE PEANUT BUTTER FREAK and the Johnny Wadd series. According to Atamian's niece, Julia St. Vincent, Frost loosely remade this for Freeway as the hardcore SWEET CAPTIVE (1979), starring Rhonda Jo Petty, John Holmes and Paul Thomas.


The older actor pictured below -- credited as "Karl Hansen" -- looks a lot like John Dunn from Richard Robinson's ADULTERY FOR FUN & PROFIT and IS THERE SEX AFTER MARRIAGE?


Julia St. Vincent and her sister worked for their Uncle Armand while they were in high school and designed many of the Phoenix International one-sheets and ad mats, including the ones featured here.

View-Master: JULIA

Two weeks ago at the Cinema Wasteland convention we heard Fred Williamson proudly recount how he smooth-talked producer Hal Kanter into giving him the recurring role of Steve Bruce, steady boyfriend of nurse and single mom Julia Baker (Diahann Carroll) on the TV show JULIA, and we made a mental note to dig up this View-Master packet from the Temple archives. Controversial at the time but in retrospect viewed as something of a joke, despite the fact that it was the first program centered around a black professional woman in a non-demeaning role, JULIA ran on NBC from September 17, 1968 until March 23, 1971 (86 episodes) and had a number of product tie-ins including paper doll books, a lunchbox, Colorforms, a line of Mattel dolls (including a talking Julia doll) and this View-Master pack issued in 1969. Carroll took a lot of heat from large segments of the black community because of the show's safe, lighthearted, nonpolitical and unrealistic depiction of African-American life, but we'll bet JULIA plays better nowadays than it did during the turbulent sixties. It looks great in steroscopic 3-D anyway! We can't post any of the pictures, sadly, but below is the booklet that was issued with the pack. Enjoy!