Movie Ad of the Week: BLACK ON WHITE (1969) a.k.a. THE ARTFUL PENETRATION and BARBARA THE YES GIRL (1970)

Released by Audubon Films with a self-applied X rating, Tinto Brass' pop art stunner NEROSUBIANCO/BLACK ON WHITE had its U.S. premiere in New York City on October 10, 1969. Within a few months the title was changed to THE ARTFUL PENETRATION OF BARBARA, shortened to THE ARTFUL PENETRATION for newspaper advertising.

Sporting the new title and a different advertising campaign, it returned to New York on April 22, 1970 -- with the "y" in psychological missing on the opening day ad.

A week later (May 1, 1970) the film appeared in Chicago as BARBARA THE YES GIRL with a completely different ad campaign.

Movie Ad of the Week: KUNG FU MANIAC (1981)

BAI CU SHI FU KOU CU TOU (1979) a.k.a. THE EAGLE'S KILLER - a Hong Kong production starring Hwang Jang-Lee ("King of the Legfighters") and John Cheung (Chang Wu-liang) - was released to theaters in the U.S. by Unifilm International as KUNG FU MANIAC beginning in 1981.

Movie Ad of the Week: SKIP TRACER (1977-1979)

If you listened to my interview on the podcast Supporting Characters last week, you heard me speaking fondly of Manhattan stores like Record Explosion and Entertainment Outlet, which had bins of cheap used VHS tapes purchased from mom & pop video shops that had gone out of business. One tape you could always find in these places (or in the 60/40's, which were porn shops that had to devote at least 60% of their floorspace to non-porn merchandise or get shut down) was the Academy Home Entertainment release DEADLY BUSINESS, which everyone avoided because of the cheesy cover photo...

...until word got out that it was actually a really good, moody, '70s character piece called SKIP TRACER, and had been the first Canadian film to play the New York Film Festival. The world premiere was at the Varsity Theater in Vancouver on July 22, 1977 during their Festival of International Films.

The film returned to the Varsity for another "world premiere" on March 28, 1978...

...before playing the New York Film Festival and landing a deal for distribution in the States.

Of all the low-budget indie distributors of the '70s, it was N.W. Russo -- whose G.G. Communications was mostly known for stateside releases of European exploitation (ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, A HATCHET FOR A HONEYMOON, FIND A PLACE TO DIE) and kid pics (PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, DUNDERKLUMPEN, ONCE UPON A TIME) -- who saw this downbeat, moody character piece and thought it would be a good tax shelter his golden ticket into the arthouse scene. Apart from its month-long U.S. premiere run at the Orson Welles Cinema in Boston in January-Feburary '79, SKIP TRACER doesn't seem to have gotten much of a release through Russo. The next stop was Cinemax in 1980, followed by Academy Home Entertainment's video release in 1986 (under the title DEADLY BUSINESS) and showings on the USA Network in '87 and '88. Sightings outside of Canada since the early '90s, such as a festival of Canadian tax shelter films at the Anthology Film Archives in 2015, have been few and far between -- except for Youtube.

Movie Ad of the Week: HE KILLS WITHOUT WARNING (1981)

The Taiwanese production DA YING WANG (1978), a.k.a. THE EAGLE KING and starring Hua Tsung, was released to theaters in the U.S. beginning in 1981 as HE KILLS WITHOUT WARNING by Unifilm International.

Don't miss Chris P's first podcast appearance!

Last month Bill Ackerman of the great Supporting Characters podcast interviewed Po Man about his "many endeavors in film culture, from co-creating the Temple Of Schlock fanzine and founding the long-running blog of the same name, to contributing to various magazines and video releases, distributing BLACK SAMURAI and working on books with Grady Hendrix, Michael Gingold and Sam Sherman. Topics include: Jack Starrett, the impact of crack on 42nd Street theatres, Steve Puchalski’s Slimetime and horror fanzines, The Journal of Interstitial Cinema, William Smith, blogathons, Paul Talbot, lost and endangered films, the link between THE GREEN HORNET and WANDA, bootlegs, THAT’S HOLLYWOOD, screenwriting for William Grefé, identifying PETS with Vinegar Syndrome and how interviews can become derailed by criminal confessions." Check it out HERE!