TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK

Movie Ad of the Week: THE DIRTY DOLLS IN KATMANDU (1971)

2012-01-29T09:00:00.086-05:00

LES CHEMINS DE KATMANDU (1969) is a French exploitation film starring Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Elsa Martinelli, Arlene Dahl, Renaud Verley, and Pascale Audret, directed by André Cayatte (LE MIROIR À DEUX FACES) and based on a novel by René Barjavel (author of the groundbreaking sci-fi work Le Voyageur Imprudent). United Producers acquired it for U.S. release through American International Pictures beginning in 1971, first under the title THE DIRTY DOLLS IN KATMANDU and later as THE STRANGE WORLD OF KATMANDU and THE PLEASURE PIT. Its frequent co-feature was KAMA SUTRA (1970), a United Producers/AIP recut of the West German sex documentary KAMASUTRA, VOLLENDUNG DER LIEBE (1969), which featured an early screen appearance by Persis Khambatta (STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, NIGHTHAWKS, MEGAFORCE). First released by AIP with an MPAA-awarded X rating beginning in December 1970 (with the Italian pickup BORA BORA as its co-feature), KAMA SUTRA was cut for an R rating in 1971 when paired with THE DIRTY DOLLS IN KATMANDU.

The Endangered List (Case File #118)

2012-01-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

STEVIE, SAMSON AND DELILAH (1975)

a.k.a. TIGER BOY and THE NEW COMMANDMENT

Starring
Steven Hawkes, Jr. (Stevie)
Samson (The Lion)
Delilah (The Tiger)
Steve Hawkes (Steve Wilson)
Joey Marie (Ann)
Chuck Hall (Mayor)

Produced and directed
by
Steve Hawkes

Screenplay by
Barry Mahon

Director of Photography
Jack McGowan

Music by
Franklin W. Lawson

Edited by
Robert J. Emory

Special Music Effects
Titan Sound

Color by
Capital

Running time: 86 minutes

MPAA rating: G (1974)

Released by
Libert Films International

SYNOPSIS

Steve Wilson, who manages a wild animal preserve in Africa, has a ranch in Florida on which he keeps a number of lions and tigers. Two of the big cats, a lion named Samson and a tiger named Delilah, are the favorite pets of Steve’s six year old son, Stevie. When the local animal control office forces Steve to give up his animals, he hides Samson and Delilah inside his house because of their strong bond with Stevie.

Later, while Steve is in Africa, Samson and Delilah are accidentally discovered on the Wilson ranch and are taken away with the begrudging help of Stevie. However, after Stevie overhears a conversation in which there is talk of shooting Samson and Delilah, he manages to sneak inside the animal shelter and free his pets. All three head for the safety of the Everglades.

Exhausted by the pursuit of the sheriff’s posse, Stevie falls into a snake pit just as Samson and Delilah charge and rout the posse.

Meanwhile, Steve has returned from Africa and is taken by helicopter to a location where the three fugitives had previously been spotted. Upon finding Stevie’s footprints leading into a swamp full of alligators feeding on a carcass, Steve is grief-stricken as he fears the worst. All ends well, however, as Stevie is pulled from the snake pit by Delilah and is reunited with Steve.

In a final tender scene, the Mayor meets Samson and Delilah in person and comes away convinced they are not dangerous.

Mystery Movie: SCHOOL GIRLS BUST OUT (1980)

2012-01-27T10:00:00.044-05:00

Originally slated for a September 1978 release from Intercontinental Releasing Corporation (IRC), this movie's unveiling was apparently delayed when IRC co-founder David Baughn split from partner Sandy Cobe in 1979 and started his own company, IFI/Scope III. The film's belated debut came in June of 1980, with the cast members credited as "Pretty Young Girls" and the filmmakers billed as "Dirty Old Men." We emailed Mr. Baughn for more details and he sent this response: "It was a German import and a tame core X rated movie. I couldn't begin to remember cast or original title."

Movie Ad of the Week: SUBSTITUTE TEACHER w/ PEPPER (1978)

2012-01-22T12:42:00.054-05:00

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER is the Italian sex comedy LA SUPPLENTE (1975), featuring Italian beauty Carmen Villani as the titular lead and Dayle Haddon in a supporting role. Empire Releasing handled its U.S. distribution in 1978. The co-feature, a sexy secret agent spoof from the Amero Brothers, was first released as CHECKMATE in 1973 and was also known as BLONDES COME FIRST before Mid-Broadway Productions re-released it in 1975 as PEPPER to cash in on Cheri Caffaro's popular "Ginger" series. Some ads carried an X rating, but the film was given an R by the MPAA in 1973. Roberta Findlay was the director of photography.

Movie Ads of the Week: THE IMMORAL WEST (1962) and CARNAL MADNESS (1974)

2012-01-15T12:20:00.003-05:00

Russ Meyer's western-themed nudie THE IMMORAL WEST began its theatrical life in May 1962. Below is an ad from its Tucson, Arizona booking in July of that year, co-billed with a 1956 nudist documentary from Switzerland titled THE ISLE OF LEVANT (U.S. release: 1959).

Within a year, THE IMMORAL WEST was retitled WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST and continued to play theaters under this showier title for the next decade (It received an R rating from the MPAA in 1973). Here's an ad from October 1974, where Meyer's movie is sandwiched between Gregory Corarito's CARNAL MADNESS (1974) and Stephanie Rothman's GROUP MARRIAGE (1972) at a Kansas City drive-in.

CARNAL MADNESS, rated R in 1973, was getting playdates under that title in 1974 but was retitled DELINQUENT SCHOOL GIRLS by January 1975. In the ad below, from December '75, a Miami grindhouse was advertising it as BLACK CARNAL MADNESS on a double bill with the Filipino martial arts actioner MURDER IN THE ORIENT ("See Renbu-Kai, world's only killing karate!"), starring Leo Fong and Ron Marchini.

Movie Ad of the Week: "The First Annual Chop-Saki" festival (1974)

2012-01-08T09:00:00.018-05:00

This action-packed program was put out by Cannon Releasing in 1974 to promote their latest martial arts acquisition, THE HONG KONG CONNECTION. The other three features -- THE THUNDER KICK, FISTS OF THE DOUBLE K and THE GODFATHERS OF HONG KONG -- had been released by Cannon the previous year.

Movie Ad of the Week: THE NAUGHTY CHEERLEADER w/ PLAYMATES (1978)

2012-01-01T09:00:00.074-05:00

THE NAUGHTY CHEERLEADER (1978) is a West German production starring Barbi Benton, Klaus Kinski, Lionel Stander, Jeff Cooper and Broderick Crawford. Filmed in 1970 and based on Lynn Keefe's novel How Did a Nice Girl Like You Get Into This Business?, it was released in the U.S. under that title (later shortened to HOW DID A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU...?) by Saxton Films/Hampton International in 1972. Later, it was acquired by Sam Sherman of Indendent-International, who shortened the title again (to NICE GIRL) and booked it as a flat-rate second feature before hitting pay dirt with the cheerleader angle (For the whole story, read our interview with Sam Sherman).

The second feature, PLAYMATES, is a French film originally titled LE BAL DES VOYOUS (1968), starring Donna Michelle (MICKEY ONE, BEACH BLANKET BINGO) and Linda Veras (FACE TO FACE, SABATA). Presented in the U.S. by Jack H. Harris, it was first released with a self-applied X rating in 1969, through V.I.P. Distributors. Harris submitted it to the MPAA for a rating in 1973 (it received an R), and kept it in circulation for the rest of the decade.

Guest Book Review: Jason Zinoman's SHOCK VALUE

2011-12-31T11:00:00.006-05:00

Our latest guest review is written by longtime friend and Temple of Schlock researcher Jon Putnam, who many of you may remember for his wonderful liner notes in the Anchor Bay DVD of THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Here is Jon's take on the critically lauded film book...

If you could interview George Romero, Wes Craven, William Friedkin, and just about every other living legend of 1970s movie horror, what would you ask them? A journalist named Jason Zinoman, who first covered this subject matter for a story in Vanity Fair, found himself in that enviable position, and the result is a book called Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror.

So much has already been written about this era that Mr. Zinoman's real challenge was to come up with new and interesting material. The good news? He is more than up to the task. Where he falls down -- not just falls, but crashes and burns -- is that his book is filled with mistakes. Dates are wrong, citations are incorrect, plot points are sometimes astoundingly off ... perfection is one thing, but Shock Value contains so many howlers that when the author at one point accuses the original HALLOWEEN of being "riddled with errors, big and small," it's hard not to cringe.

Shock Value's focus is the first eleven years of "New Horror" that Mr. Zinoman claims began in 1968 with ROSEMARY'S BABY. "Old Horror" was cobwebs and castles and Vincent Price in a cape. "New Horror" relocated the menace to everyday settings with ambitious young directors at the helm; the author observes that pre-1968 movie horror was the province of actors like Price, while the directors "were largely unknown and considered easily replaceable." The original director of ROSEMARY'S BABY was "Old Horror" vet William Castle, known more for his elaborate gimmicks than for the quality of his films. However, the studio's decision to go with the younger, hipper Roman Polanski -- relegating Castle to producer -- not only changed the direction of movie horror, but also symbolized "a passing of the torch from the Old Horror to the New."

In addition to Polanski, Romero, Craven and Friedkin, Mr. Zinoman identifies John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, Tobe Hooper and Brian De Palma as the most important of the "New Horror" filmmakers. One of the book's tenets is that these men paid homage to their forefathers (particularly Alfred Hitchcock), while at the same time rebelling against them, most significantly by refusing to provide easy answers. Therefore, while PSYCHO concluded with a lengthy explanation of Anthony Perkins' madness, the new directors opted instead for "ambiguity and confusion," finding them to be "scarier than certainty." Insisting that Hitchcock's influence is overrated, Mr. Zinoman points instead to H.P. Lovecraft and to live theater, particularly the plays of Harold Pinter ("no playwright had a greater influence on horror") and Samuel Beckett (when making HALLOWEEN, John Carpenter was "[i]nfluenced by the terror of Beckett" and "wanted an empty space at the heart of the movie, where the answers usually are").

Mr. Zinoman has a gift for digging up interesting background on familiar material, including a fascinating chapter on how THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was bankrolled ("the tale began the same way that the movie ended: with an obsessed man chasing a beautiful woman"). He also calls attention to movies that haven't necessarily gotten their due, including Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 TARGETS, whose "chillingly matter-of-fact style ... anticipated the future of the genre in some ways even more than ROSEMARY'S BABY and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD."

If for no other reason, the book is indispensable for documenting FOSTER'S RELEASE, a 1971 student feature directed by John Carpenter's film school classmate Terence Winkless. The story of a babysitter terrorized by threatening phone calls (coming from inside the house!), FOSTER'S RELEASE was years ahead of BLACK CHRISTMAS, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, and of course HALLOWEEN, about which Mr. Winkless is quoted as saying, without rancor, "John took it from me no question." Although he seems congenial and easygoing in interviews and DVD audio commentaries, Carpenter comes across here as something of a ruthless jerk who "had been sponging up ideas throughout the decade."

The author bends over backward to paint these "New Horror" filmmakers as misunderstood loners -- the "eccentric outsiders" of the title -- but by and large they seem here like pretty average guys who happen to have talent and leadership ability. The book's most memorable passages are those that probe into their personal histories, yielding some surprisingly intimate and touching results. This might be the first time that Brian De Palma (in a chapter called "He Likes To Watch") has opened up publicly about his troubled family life and its link to the voyeurism theme in his movies. Equally affecting is the portrait of Dan O'Bannon and his father Thomas, a Missouri "hillbilly" whose affection for his only child was preserved in a handwritten journal called "The Book of Daniel."

Dan O'Bannon never hit the heights of his Shock Value colleagues, and his journey seems to have been the roughest. Seething with bitterness toward his former friend and collaborator John Carpenter (who O'Bannon once described as "somewhere below Wes Craven"), and resentful of the success he never quite achieved, O'Bannon was tormented by the Crohn's disease that would claim his life in 2009 -- although, ironically, the stomach pain from that ailment apparently inspired ALIEN's infamous chest-bursting scene.

What undermines Shock Value is its staggering over-abundance of bad information. How did this happen? We are informed that Russell Streiner "played a policeman" in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD; that "Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins from PSYCHO" are played just before the closing credits in CARRIE; that in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, "Craven borrowed a plot device from ROSEMARY'S BABY (the trick of a phone call to the protagonist that looks reassuring but is actually a fake)." A longer list appears at the end of this review.

For some reason, Mr. Zinoman is at his shakiest when discussing LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Where on earth did he come up with the idea that one character "is slashed to death by an electric boat fan"? Or that the lead killer Krug carves the word "Love" onto a victim's chest? Or that the villains "spit at" their victims?

It also seems like a stretch to argue that LAST HOUSE's "dramatic center was an excruciating rape scene" where the attackers "take turns raping one girl" and "make her friend watch." Presumably the author is referring to the early scene in the apartment, when the girls Mari and Phyllis are first taken captive. Phyllis is raped while the camera lingers on Mari's face. But excruciating? This part of the movie is relatively tame compared with the much rougher and more graphic scenes to follow, including the "piss your pants" sequence in the woods and Mari's mutilation/rape by Krug.

Mr. Zinoman further argues that LAST HOUSE takes place in "a godless world" that "includes no struggle with faith." Actually, Mari and her parents are established as Christians -- Mrs. Collingwood mentions God during the opening sequence, and Mari prays aloud moments before her death. The Collingwoods also display a Bible in their living room, at which Krug pokes fun. Characters in Wes Craven's movies are often people of faith, although it seldom serves to protect them from harm.

In the end, the many inaccuracies don't prevent Shock Value from being a worthwhile book. It should make for interesting reading for newcomers and diehard fans of the genre alike: it's a very good introduction to 1970s horror; and for skeptical fans who think they already know everything, there are some pleasant surprises.

**(Following is a list, arranged by chapter, both of outright errors and also what might be errors)**

---INTRODUCTION---

In LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, "Krug carved the word 'Love'" onto his victim's chest (p. 2). Two paragraphs later on the same page, the author writes that Krug carved "his initials." He carves his first name.

The author quotes the tagline for the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT ad campaign as "Just keep telling yourself: It's Only a Movie. It's Only a Movie."
The tagline is "To avoid fainting keep repeating, It's Only a Movie ..."

---CHAPTER ONE ("The Devil's Advocate")---

The author writes that William Castle read the galleys for the novel Rosemary's Baby and that one day later his wife read "the script" (p. 12).
She would have read the galleys, since the novel hadn't even been published yet.

---CHAPTER TWO ("The Problem with Psycho")---

"Directors of the horror movies of the late sixties and seventies wanted more ... rock music" in their movies, among other things (pp. 30-31).
None of the directors profiled here relied on rock music in their films.

The author maintains that Alfred Hitchcock "scoffed at a screening of De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL," and quotes John Landis as saying that Hitchcock "'was personally insulted because in the ads, all the critics said that the movie was Hitchcockian'" (p. 31).
Hitchcock died in April 1980 and DRESSED TO KILL was not released until July, three months later. While it's possible that Hitchcock could have seen an early preview of the movie, it doesn't seem very likely, as he was (according to his biographers) in failing health in the months before his death. However, assuming that he did see a preview, there would have been no ads or critical commentary at such an early date.

Herschell Gordon Lewis' TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! "showed the nipples of a woman cut off, milk dribbling out of the holes in her breasts" (p.34).
This scene was in Lewis' THE GORE-GORE GIRLS.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD "opened ... to admiring reviews in the summer of 1968" (p. 37). On page 47, the author again cites NOTLD as one "of the major horror movies of the summer of 1968."
First, NOTLD's world premiere was in the fall (10-1-68 in Pittsburgh). Second, was it considered a major release? And did it receive any admiring reviews at that time? Variety panned it in their 10-16-68 issue, and the New York Times followed suit when it opened there in December. The movie didn't open in Los Angeles until January 1969, but it did receive a positive review from Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas. (Mr. Zinoman cites the French journal Cahiers du Cinema as having praised the movie, but that wasn't until 1970.)

---CHAPTER FOUR ("Assaulting the Audience")---

All of the comments below are about LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT:

The movie's "dramatic center was an excruciating rape scene" (p. 74). See discussion in review above.

The killers "abduct two middle-class girls in the woods" and "spit at them," among other things (p. 75).
The girls are abducted in the city and later taken to the woods. Although Krug drools on Mari while raping her, the only person who actually gets "spit at" is one of the killers (Weasel) by a victim (Phyllis).

Wes Craven "claims the graphic murders were a response to the media's delicate treatment of the Vietnam War" (p. 79).
Craven has stated the opposite -- that the media's explicit TV coverage brought the raw horror of war and bloodshed into people's living rooms for the first time, and therefore the public was no longer able to accept conventionally tidy movie deaths.

The movie takes place in "a godless world" that "includes no struggle with faith" (p. 79).
See discussion in review above.

"Junior desperately wants his [father Krug's] attention" (p. 79).
Is this really true? While resentful of his father, Junior never seems to be craving his attention.

The author refers to Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood as "the parents of the victims" (p. 79) instead of the parents of *one of* the victims.

The Collingwoods "do not do the civilized thing and call the police" once they have identified their daughter's killers (p. 80).
They are unable to call the police because the phone is dead.

In the revenge sequence, one "character is slashed to death by an electric boat fan" (p. 80).
Is the author confusing this with the ending of the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, where one of the rapists is killed with a speedboat's propellers?

The castration scene is "[o]ne of the most humiliating scenes" in the movie (p. 80).
I guess it's a matter of opinion, but considering the many more disturbing moments in the movie, calling this scene "humiliating" seems like a stretch. It inspires more groans or laughs than anything else.

When LAST HOUSE first "started getting picked up by theaters," it "mov[ed] from city to city in short runs" (p. 81).
Actually, it had lengthy runs in several cities. It also opened in multiple cities at once, such as Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Washington, DC (in October 1972). This raises doubt about the author's assertion that "[t]here were very few prints" of the movie (p. 82).

Roger Ebert's column about watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at a matinee filled with children was "a story for Reader's Digest in 1970" (p. 83).
The story was published in the Chicago Sun-Times in January 1969, and was reprinted in June 1969 in Reader's Digest.

"As a kid, George Romero stayed up nights in New York curled up in bed reading old copies" of Famous Monsters of Filmland (p. 84).
Romero was born in 1940 and Famous Monsters was not published until 1958.

---CHAPTER FIVE ("Shock or Awe")---

THE OMEN "returned to the theme of a woman who gives birth to the Antichrist" (pp. 103-104).
The woman (Lee Remick) gives birth to a normal child who is secretly replaced by the Antichrist, whose mother was "a jackal."

---CHAPTER SEVEN ("The Dance of Death")---

In THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, "Sally Hardesty" is "the pretty blonde" (p. 127).
The other girl (Pam) is blond too.

"Before heading into the house for the first kill by Leatherface, the roaming camera sets up behind a blond girl on a swing" (p. 141).
This is the second kill. The first kill is the blond girl's boyfriend, while she waits outside on the swing. Eventually she gets up to look for him, which is when the camera follows her into the house.

"Prominent critics," including Roger Ebert, did not start taking THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE seriously until two years after its original release, and the author quotes Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review (pp. 147-148).
Ebert's review appeared at the time of the movie's original release in October 1974.

---CHAPTER EIGHT ("He Likes to Watch")---

**The author quotes Brian De Palma's description of an experimental theater performance where a man threw coins at the stage and hit an actress, who responded violently. "'She went after her,'" the author writes, instead of "She went after him" (p. 160).

"As CARRIE returns to the bird's-eye view of the opening shot right before the credits, Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins from PSYCHO can be heard" (p.168).
The shrieking violins appear elsewhere in CARRIE, but not in the final scene.

Nancy Allen in CARRIE "started working on the scene with P.J. Soles on top of a ladder" (p. 170).
Nancy Allen and P.J. Soles are on the floor in this scene; two other actresses (Amy Irving and Noelle North) are on top of the ladder.

---CHAPTER NINE ("The Thing In-Between")---

THE HILLS HAVE EYES "places a lost family in the middle of the desert, where they are abducted by a mutant gang of maniacs" (p. 176).
Only one person (an infant) is abducted.

In THE HILLS HAVE EYES, "Craven borrowed a plot device from ROSEMARY'S BABY (the trick of a phone call to the protagonist that looks reassuring but is actually a fake" (p. 177).
There is no "fake" phone call to the protagonist in ROSEMARY'S BABY.

At the end of HALLOWEEN, "when Laurie asks the doctor about who the killer was ... [h]e simply tells her, 'It's the bogeyman'" (p. 182).
He tells her, "As a matter of fact, it was."

**The author writes that the audience never sees the killer in BLACK CHRISTMAS "except for one shot of his eyes peeking out of the crack in the door to the attic" (p. 186).
The audience glimpses the killer in Margot Kidder's death scene. Also, the eye (just one) mentioned above is peeking out of the crack in a bedroom door, not the attic door. (There is no door to the attic: it is reached via a ladder and trapdoor.)

HALLOWEEN was released in 1978 "with a carefully planned rollout starting in Kansas City, far away from the media on the coasts. It moved on to Chicago ..." (p. 188).
Actually, Los Angeles and New York were among the first (if not the first) cities where the movie opened in October 1978. It did not reach Chicago until mid-November.

One of the "early reviews" of HALLOWEEN came from Roger Ebert, who "singled it out on his popular television show AT THE MOVIES" (p. 188).
At that time, the show was called SNEAK PREVIEWS and was co-hosted by Ebert and Gene Siskel. When HALLOWEEN opened in Chicago in November 1978, Siskel and Ebert reviewed (and praised) it on their show. However, the author here cites a 1980 SNEAK PREVIEWS episode on the "slasher movie" trend, not the 1978 episode where HALLOWEEN was originally reviewed. (Ebert and Siskel also gave HALLOWEEN very favorable print reviews in their respective newspapers.)

---CHAPTER TEN ("Stomaching It")---

"Carpenter went on to make his own repulsive movie in his 1981 remake of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD" (p. 207).
The remake (THE THING) was released in 1982.

---CHAPTER ELEVEN ("The Fear Sickness")---

**The author mentions DARK STAR as "more influential than great" (p. 214). Can DARK STAR be considered influential?

---EPILOGUE---

Russell Streiner "played a policeman" in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (p. 232).
He played Johnny, the first victim in the opening cemetery scene!

---NOTES---

Roger Ebert's article "Just Another Horror Movie--Or Is It?" originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in January 1969. However, it is incorrectly cited twice as a Reader's Digest article, and with two different dates: June 1969 (in the Notes for Chapter 4) and June 1968 (in the Notes for Chapter 5).

Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times reviews of MACBETH, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and JAWS are each cited incorrectly, with January 1 given as the date that each review initially appeared. The actual publication dates are: MACBETH (4/3/72), THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (10/30/74) and JAWS (6/20/75).

Review & research by Jon Putnam

Mystery Movie: REFLECTIONS OF PASSION (1975)

2011-12-30T09:00:00.014-05:00

Theatrical release

December 1975

A William Rowland presentation

Television syndication info (circa 1981)

1979, starring Joe Schneider, Donna Anderson

"An upper class Englishman uses black magic as revenge on the artist who stole the heart of his fiancee."

"A 19th-century English officer conducts a campaign of terror against an artist."

The Endangered List (Case File #117)

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

EASY VIRTUE (1972)

a.k.a. MÄDCHEN ZWISCHEN LUST UND LASTER

and TEENAGE PARTY GIRLS

Starring

Krista Karlsen

William Bonds

Lynn O’Hara

Jeannie Collins

Screenplay by

Allen Hall

Directed by

D. (David) L. Monty

Photography by

Jay Lloyd

Edited by

Karl Viby

Music by

Peter Weaver

Running time: 82 minutes

Rating: Self-applied X

Released by

Vogue Productions

SYNOPSIS

PROLOGUE: A psychiatrist briefly discusses the history of prostitution.

THE STORY BEGINS:
Kirsten, a young New York girl, is lured to California with false promises of employment as a high fashion model. George, the chief procurer for a prostitution ring, forced Marie – his latest recruit – to sign the fraudulent offer after she was physically and sexually abused.

Kirsten finally arrives at Marie’s forwarding address after a series of harrowing evens including an attempted rape by a hillbilly motorist. He is thwarted however through her skilled use of karate. Marie has moved out, but Hank, the new tenant, gives her the forwarding address as well as an offer of food and lodging. Kirsten accepts his offer, and submits to his physical advances to show her gratitude.

Marie is now set up for business in a luxurious high rise apartment. To keep her in line, George installs Luv, a feisty dyke, as her roommate, who introduces her forceably to the use of drugs and then seduces her.

Meanwhile, Kirsten arrives at Marie’s new address only to find George operating a “service station.” George offers Kirsten employment performing a new kind of “service,” but she refuses, hoping to find a job in a neighboring town. However, George has already phoned every potential employer in town and persuaded them not to hire her. Having no choice, Kirsten accepts George’s initial offer. What follows is a series of sexual encounters culminating in a brutal rape by a motorcycle gang.

Hank, whose previous attitude toward Kirsten was one of indifference, has now become concerned for her safety. He finds Marie, who is strung out on drugs. Marie’s new roommate offers him a soft drink laced with LSD. He now engages in a threesome, forgetting his primary purpose in being there.

The next day, his senses restored, Hank forces Marie to reveal the whole sordid mess. He goes to Kirsten. They decide to get married, but not before George is given his just desserts.

EASY VIRTUE was re-released by Parliament Films in 1975, with an MPAA-approved R rating, under the title TEENAGE PARTY GIRLS.

View-Master: ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL

2011-12-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

After finding success with psychedelic live-action Saturday morning kid’s shows like H.R. PUFNSTUFF, LIDSVILLE and THE BUGALOOS and a prime time variety show starring Donny & Marie Osmond, producers Sid & Marty Krofft combined the two formats and came up with THE KROFFT SUPER SHOW, which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1978. A children’s variety hour hosted by the fictitious (and irritating) bubblegum rock band Kaptain Kool & the Kongs, this “super” show consisted of several 15-minute live-action programs that were threadbare even by Krofft standards and probably wouldn’t have flown on their own in a 30-minute timeslot. One of the more tolerable segments was ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL, a female knockoff of Batman and Robin done on a $1.98 budget, starring future soap opera celeb Deidre Hall and pigtailed Judy Strangis (Helen from ROOM 222) as reporters Lori and Judy, respectively, who transform into the titular super heroines and use an array of wacky gadgetry to protect humanity from such cut-rate villains as the Spider Lady (Tiffany Bolling, featured in this View-Master pack), the Genie (Sid Haig), the Empress of Evil (Claudette Nevins), the Pharoah (Peter Mark Richman), Ali Baba (Malachi Throne), King Alex (Michael Blodgett), and the Sorcerer (Strangis’ ROOM 222 co-star Michael Constantine). The Kroffts may have envisioned these spandex-clad cuties as role models for little girls, but we're willing to bet the real audience for EW & DG were their older, teen-aged brothers.

For whatever reason, ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL was dropped from the show at the start of the second season (along with DR. SHRINKER) to accommodate two newer segments, BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY and MAGIC MONGO. Kaptain Kool & the Kongs were replaced by the Bay City Rollers for the third season, when the show moved to NBC and was re-titled THE KROFFT SUPERSTAR HOUR. Eight episodes later the "Superstar Hour" was shortened to 30 minutes and renamed THE BAY CITY ROLLERS SHOW, but that format lasted for only five episodes before the show was axed altogether. The Krofft name wasn't seen on Saturday mornings again until five years later, when Sid & Marty tried to turn Richard Pryor into a kiddie show star (!) with PRYOR'S PLACE.

It's been a long time since we’ve done one of these View-Master entries, and unfortunately we still haven't figured out how to post any the eye-popping 3-D images. However, the booklet that was issued with the pack has been scanned for your amusement. Enjoy.

Movie Ad of the Week: XMAS MASSACRE (1977)

2011-12-25T09:00:00.034-05:00

Newspaper ad from San Francisco, where Aldo Lado's L'ULTIMO TRENO DELLA NOTTE (1975) was known as XMAS MASSACRE. Bryanston Releasing first put this out in May 1976 as LAST STOP ON THE NIGHT TRAIN before Newport/Central Park acquired it for re-release as XMAS MURDERS and THE NEW HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It's available on DVD as THE NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS.

Movie Ad of the Week: ZATOICHI, THE BLIND SWORDSMAN w/ I CROSSED THE COLOR LINE (1974)

2011-12-18T16:00:00.000-05:00

Here we have two disparate movies that were a decade old when paired for this New York City double bill in the mid-'70s. ZATOICHI, THE BLIND SWORDSMAN is the dubbed U.S. release version of ZATOICHI ON THE ROAD (1963), the fifth entry in the long-running Japanese swordplay series starring Shintarô Katsu, while I CROSSED THE COLOR LINE is a re-titling of THE BLACK KLANSMAN (1966), a Joe Solomon production directed by Ted V. Mikels and featuring Max Julien (The Mack!), James McEachin (Tenafly!) and Whitman Mayo (Grady!) in the cast.

Movie Ad of the Week: I REMEMBER LOVE (1981)

2011-12-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

I REMEMBER LOVE (1981) was a late-night Cinemax favorite from 1988 until the mid ‘90s, when it was known as DREAMS OF DESIRE and frequently carried an erroneous 1985 release date (Paragon Video Productions issued it on videocassette as DREAMS OF DESIRE circa 1982). Actor-turned-director Norbert Meisel had previously helmed THE ADULTERESS (1973), starring Tyne Daly and Eric Braeden, and the triple-X crime pic LOVE, LUST & VIOLENCE (1975).

Movie Ad of the Week: ALIEN ZONE (1978)

2011-12-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

World Premiere - Tuesday, November 14, 1978 - Stillwater, OK

Guest Review: DEAD MEN DON'T DIE (1991)

2011-12-03T18:30:00.007-05:00

Today's guest reviewer is Michael Gingold, the managing editor of Fangoria since 1990, titular star of THE SUCKLING (1990) and the screenwriter of LEECHES (2003) and SHADOW: DEAD RIOT (2006). We've been friends with Mike for nearly 25 years, going back to the days when he was cranking out his fanzine Scareaphanalia while attending NYU and we were pasting together issues of TOS during study halls and lunch hours at Henninger High. And speaking of "high," you'll wonder what was being smoked, snorted and/or shot up when Elliott Gould's agent decided a third collaboration with the writer of S*P*Y*S and WHIFFS would be a good career move for his client. Heeeeeere's Mikey with his old-school 'zine review of...

DEAD MEN DON'T DIE

It must have been someone’s idea of a gag to open DEAD MEN DON’T DIE in New York on the same day as FREDDIE’S DEAD. Then again, the title might be construed as a jest about the career of Elliott Gould, who stars in the film. In either case, the joke is funnier than anything writer/director Malcolm Marmorstein comes up with in the film itself. A combination of brain-dead horror comedy and toothless satire about TV news, it’s a riot of running gags that weren’t funny the first time, pregnant pauses for laughs that never come, and more mugging than the last couple of DEATH WISH movies. Academy releases it on video next month, but even the small screen seems way too large to house this pitiful offering.

Gould plays Barry Baron, a broadcast newscaster with a big ego. He thinks he’s run across the scoop of the year when he discovers drug dealings going on in the very building housing the station he works for; unfortunately for him, the thugs murder him before he can break the story. Unfortunately for us, he’s brought back to life by the studio’s voodoo-practicing cleaning woman, Chafuka (Mabel King in a cringingly demeaning role), who sets herself up as his manager and gets him back on the air. He’s looking pretty green and stiff now, but the show goes on anyway. And oh, the hilarity that ensues! Since he can’t read for himself, Chafuka hides backstage and dictates into a voodoo doll, and he echoes what she says, but as a result, he now announces the headlines in a Caribbean accent! And when one of the sheets falls from her grasp, he winds up saying, “De paper done fall to de floor” on the air! And since she reads everything on the page, he winds up saying everything that his pretty co-anchor Dulcie (Melissa Anderson) is supposed to say too! Stop, you’re killing me!

There’s more to the story, most of it having to do with the thugs being startled by Barry’s reappearance, their own deaths and subsequent resurrections at Chafuka’s hands, and an inept young detective who tries to solve the case and win Dulcie’s love at the same time. None of it is the least bit surprising, and Marmorstein brings a complete lack of pacing and timing to the material. No doubt a lot of money went into hiring Gould for this project, because the look is as low as low-budget gets. The entire thing is set in one night and day, almost entirely in one studio-and-office location; the action finally moves outside for a climactic chase that does provide a little zip, but the humor is just as strained here as in the rest of the movie. And whatever Gould was paid, it was too much; his performance is embarrassing, a catalog of bug-eyed stares and flailing arms. The rest of the cast understandably looks bored, with the exception of King, who brings more energy than a script deserves that forces her to say things like, “You be a zombie now, and I be your master!” The real tragedy here is that this tripe was released in the New York area by JGM Enterprises, who also own the rights to distribute Full Moon pictures to theaters. Would someone from the company please explain why DEAD MEN DON’T DIE was accorded a multiscreen break while Stuart Gordon’s PIT AND THE PENDULUM barely saw the light of a projector?

(Originally published in Scareaphanalia #105, September 1991)

Pam is back? Actually, she never left.

2011-12-02T10:50:00.002-05:00

Hot on the heels of Pam Grier’s comeback in Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN (1997) and the release of the Tarantino/Miramax-backed blaxploitation coffee table book What It Is, What It Was!, New Horizons Home Video reissued three of the movies that Grier starred in for producer Roger Corman under the tag line “She’s back.” Here’s the four-page promotional brochure that New Horizons sent out in early 1998 to advertise their Pam Grier (“The Queen of Blaction”) line of VHS tapes. It’s the same approach Orion Home Video had taken ten years earlier when they released a half dozen of Pam’s American International movies at the height of the video boom, except those were priced higher for rental and these carried a $14.98 SRP. Compare this brochure to the ho-hum way in which Shout! Factory is currently pushing the same movies on DVD/ Blu-ray -- three of them together in a “Women in Prison” collection and the fourth in a separate “Lethal Ladies” volume -- and you might actually believe for a minute or two that Pam's name is no longer a major selling point. It is, but since Shout can’t get its niche titles into major retail chains anymore unless they’re packaged as 3’fers, and because rental shops and smaller independent stores like Entertainment Outlet are nonexistent outside of a few major cities, no one is going to see Pam’s name on the front of a DVD/Blu-ray case anyway unless they go looking for it -- online.

Movie Ad of the Week: THE CATAMOUNT KILLING (1975)

2011-11-27T13:15:00.001-05:00

World Premiere - Wednesday, December 10, 1975 - Bennington, VT

Mystery Movie solved? KARATE AND THE KNIFE a.k.a. THE NIGHT OF THE CAT?

2011-11-26T07:00:00.006-05:00

UPDATE: Last week, John Charles of Video Watchdog sent us three old newspaper articles about the making of THE NIGHT OF THE CAT (1973), a long-forgotten North Carolina-shot exploitation flick that was recently unearthed and released by Something Weird Video. Yesterday morning, we received the following message from John pertaining to our most recent "Mystery Movie" entry, KARATE AND THE KNIFE: "In the 'Oh come on, what a coincidence!' Department, this could very well be THE NIGHT OF THE CAT. The things described in the ad do happen in that movie and I couldn't find any actual playdates for the film under the CAT title."

Thanks, John! It looks like you've solved this one!

The three NIGHT OF THE CAT articles that John sent us are posted below. Among other things, they reveal that the film -- credited to director "Jim Cinque" -- was partially re-shot by Mike Plumides, the owner of several strip clubs in Charlotte, after production was shut down because the original producer-director, Norman Williams, was arrested for writing $19,000 in bad checks. And from additional articles that Po-Man found this morning and threw into the mix, it's revealed that Craig Stevens and Aldo Ray were the original stars of THE NIGHT OF THE CAT, but never filmed their scenes because Williams was busted before they arrived on location!

“See a 110 lb. girl destroy a 500 lb. man”

“See five strong men completely disabled by a wisp of a girl
all at once!!”

“See the amazing escape of the girl spread-eagled on a bed.
She used her TOES”

“See the terrible revenge when she killed her sister’s killer!”

“See how good girls are turned into ladies of the night!”

Guest Review: THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (1973)

2011-11-23T21:38:00.005-05:00

Today's guest reviewer is Tim Ferrante, a 30-year-plus veteran of the world of fandom. In addition to writing for such publications as Fangoria, Starlog, Gorezone, Comics Scene, and The Splatter Times, he created the Westerns...All'Italiana! fanzine in 1983, co-founded The Phantom of the Movies' VideoScope magazine in 1993, and for 10 years owned and edited GameRoom, a magazine aimed at fans and collectors of coin-operated pinball and video games. He was the vice president of the publishing company Imagine, Inc. and also wrote, produced & directed the trailer compilation video DRIVE-IN MADNESS! (1987). Here he is with a new review of...

THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (1973)

Nathan Juran’s furry monster movie was released in 1973 by Universal Pictures as the bottom half of a double-bill with Bernard L. Kowalski’s scaly monster movie, “SSSSSSS”. The company treated both as little more than booking fodder, but for those in the know Juran’s film was the one with a special attribute. It was the third (and final) genre pairing of the director with Kerwin Mathews as his leading man. The duos’ earlier works, THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) and JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962), are stop-motion animation extravaganzas and rank amongst the most cherished by fans. While not nearly as demanding, THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (hereafter TBWCW) provides sufficient dramatic interest for adults even though the filmmaker’s broader approach is slanted toward a younger demographic. It is, after all, a fairy tale. And like any good fairy tale it meddles with childhood worries and fears which, in this case, bundles parental separation and authority distrust with one’s father becoming a werewolf! It’s about as nightmarish a situation as any youngster could imagine.

The movie wastes no time delivering a tone-setting opening sequence by introducing a werewolf (stunt coordinator Paul Baxley) within seconds of the Universal Pictures logo. The camera pans, zooms and finds something stirring amongst the brush and we catch a glimpse. The main title pops on the screen and a moment later we see a werewolf under a bright full moon, howling in the night! Tom Burman’s unique design of streaked long-hair and canine snout give the creature a fluffy and damn near friendly look. Not especially scary, but certainly something with which to reckon. Ted Stovall’s music is such a critical ingredient here, punctuating everything from the film’s logo to camera zooms to the magnificent reveal of the werewolf. It’s a grand and exhilarating sequence that gives way to more titles, exceptionally scored music, a prowling werewolf and our lead characters’ arrival. TBWCW is Stovall’s only film credit. He is a gifted composer and provided Juran’s film with an extraordinary score and sound. He’s well known within the music industry for his arranging, songwriting, conducting and instrument playing talents. It’s a pity his film music résumé begins and ends with one title.

It’s at his dad’s mountainside home where young Richie Bridgeston, portrayed by Scott Sealey in one of his two documented acting roles, is attacked by a werewolf. Robert (Kerwin Mathews) comes to his son’s rescue and is bitten during the fray, the elder now destined for a hairy future. Investigating the attack is the region’s straightforward sheriff who – in a bit of inspired casting – is played by character actor Robert J. Wilke, a familiar face that was tantamount with western bad guy roles. Richie pleads with the sheriff; he knows what he saw. It was a werewolf! Dad, though, says it was too dark and confusing to be sure about anything, especially when the creature was dispatched by a fall onto a fence post and quickly regressed to human form.

It’s here where we get a sense of Mathews’ reserved acting style. Never considered a thespian heavyweight, there are certain roles for which the actor is perfectly suited. This is a fanciful story with selected characters providing mild comic relief, but Mathews’ character is traditional and compassionate. The horror of a fanged monster within is intensified when embodied in such a mild and caring man. In werewolf makeup Mathews is downright regal! In scenes stalking Richie he’s lightly campy and rather ornery, conveying it all through eye movement and body language. Conversely, the mad snarling beast emerges when called for and he does so brilliantly. Juran’s direction of these scenes, while not technically winning, is pretty smart. There is a fright boundary, so to speak, within which Mathews works and both he and Juran sensed where and when a line should be crossed. The beast has a subtle and strangely fun personality at times while at others it’s a merciless killer. This is not an accidental performance. One could easily slam the film to pieces if judged on its surface. There is, however, nuance at work here. It’s so smartly weaved and balanced in all departments that it goes unnoticed on first viewing.

With the attacker dead and none of Richie’s protectors believing him, which now includes his mom Sandy (Elaine Devry), the assaults somehow continue and he soon realizes that it’s his father who’s the new mischief maker! Meanwhile, a motley Jesus freak collective encamp in a roadside clearing. Dad’s poorly-timed terrorizing of it and its pragmatic head, Brother Christopher (Bob Homel), is interrupted by a morning sunrise and transformation back to human form which everyone witnesses. Homel wrote the story and screenplay basing his werewolf on the established legend. He crafted a script that never strays into the offensive or horrible. The bloodletting ranges from extremely tame to none and it all manages to stay within a child’s mindset for what is scary, fun and entertaining. A perfect example is off-camera beheadings. For some bizarre reason Bridgeston’s alter-ego prizes the heads of his victims and buries one inside his garage! Richie sees the werewolf bury something and the whole scene provides a bit of queasy wonder. Think about it…a werewolf with a shovel in a garage burying a head while his son watches! You never see a severed head and it’s the ensuing dialog that suggests it all. The sequence also includes Richie’s witnessing of his dad changing back into human form just as the sheriff arrives and reports the missing heads.

Richie and his mom narrowly escape dad’s wolfish ways while Brother Christopher and his hippie flock try convincing the sheriff there’s something out there. It soon becomes clear that the cursed Robert Bridgeston is loose and seeking more victims. Everyone goes in search of the beast, only now they do so believing the boy who cried werewolf!

This would be Nathan Juran’s last directorial assignment, a man who 32 years earlier won an Academy Award for art direction in HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941). He is an iconic figure to genre fans, directing top faves such as 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, THE DEADLY MANTIS and ATTACK OF THE 50 FT. WOMAN. Lest we forget his television credits such as LOST IN SPACE, THE TIME TUNNEL and LAND OF THE GIANTS. Apparently, his knack for handling weird material was appreciated by everyone but himself, telling Starlog magazine in 1989, “I wasn’t a born director. I was just a technician who could transfer the script from the page to the stage and could get it shot on schedule and on budget.” While a valuable trait, he intuitively understood fantastical material and how to present it to its target audience.

Juran’s TV directing credits include several episodes of DANIEL BOONE, an NBC television series that ran from 1964-1970. He also wrote an episode for its fifth season. Its executive producer was Aaron Rosenberg who was also the producer of TBWCW. The show’s connection extends even further as co-stars Bob Homel, Harold Goodwin (Mr. Duncan) and Robert J. Wilkie all had guest-starring roles in the series. The film’s co-producer, Russell F. Schoengarth, also worked as an editor. For some, TBWCW was a reunion opportunity.

Kerwin Mathews retired from the business after TBWCW, but was lured back for a one day shoot for a cameo appearance in the opening sequence of John Stanley’s NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD (completed: 1975; released: 1978). His brief movie-within-a-movie role was shot near the Golden Gate Bridge and according to Stanley, Mathews accepted no money for his performance. The actor had settled in San Francisco by then and remained there with his lifelong partner, Tom Nicoll, until his death in 2007 at age 81. His friend Nathan Juran died in 2002.

Beyond its obvious purpose as movie entertainment, TBWCW is a pleasantly preserved recording of career milestones and endings. Its attraction goes deeper than its inventive title, proffering casual viewers, monster fans and film historians alike with more than enough things to enjoy and treasure. Imperfections aside, TBWCW is brought to life with a dose of charm, grandeur and understated style.

Tim currently writes soundtrack CD reviews for The Phantom of the Movies' VideoScope magazine, and can be reached on the web at www.timferrante.com. We highly recommend his excellent limited edition CD sountracks for MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (Composed & conducted by Tito Arevalo) and DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (Composed & conducted by William Lava), which can be purchased directly from Tim's company, Elysee Productions.

The Endangered List (Case File #116)

2011-11-22T15:45:00.064-05:00

“You’ve seen her as the nurse in ‘Deep Throat’…

now see her as Nancy in…”

YOUNG, RICH AND RIPE (1974)

Starring

Carol Connors

Jack Birch

Don Fowler

Al Del Bake

Aurora Davis

Brend Moore

Rating: Self-applied X

Released by

Re-Mart International

"Knowing and loving the right people
is not a guarantee to the top!"

One of four movies released by Re-Mart International, a Miami-based film production and distribution company co-owned by producer Joseph Fink (DEATH CURSE OF TARTU, STING OF DEATH) and director Rene Martinez, Jr. (THE GUY FROM HARLEM, THE SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR NIGGER). Their first release, ROAD OF DEATH (1973), was an R-rated biker flick directed by Martinez and starring Connors and Birch. RIDE TO ECSTASY (1974) and YOUNG, RICH AND RIPE were released with self-applied X ratings, but Re-Mart's final production, SHOCK (1974) -- also titled THE SANGUINARY and THE HOUSE OF THE OUT FRONTIER -- was rated PG. Fink succumbed to brain cancer shortly after these four hit theaters, Re-Mart dissolved and Martinez (who may have directed YOUNG, RICH AND RIPE) went on to make the two worst blaxploitation movies of all time.

Movie Ad of the Week: BANG, BANG, THE MAFIA GANG (1971)

2011-11-20T09:00:00.002-05:00

World Premiere - Wednesday, February 24, 1971 - Tucson, AZ

Rated X by the MPAA in 1970, Art Lieberman’s wacky sex comedy BANG, BANG, THE MAFIA GANG -– starring funny guy Frank Corsentino in full Woody Allen mode and exotic Russ Meyer starlet Haji in sexy-as-ever mode -- was released by Headliner and had its world premiere in Tucson with the stars in attendance. A year later the movie was picked up by Group 1, cut for an MPAA-approved R rating and re-released as UP YOUR ALLEY. It toured drive-ins and neighborhood theaters for 5 years under this handle before being sold off to producer/showman M.A. Ripps (of POOR WHITE TRASH infamy), who re-titled it HEADS 'N' TAILS ("Their tails are up, their heads are down, they're the most popular girls in town!") and finally THE MELON AFFAIR for a 1978/1979 roll-out through his EMC Film Corporation. The movie is currently available on DVD-R and for download from Something Weird under its original title.

State of the Temple Address 6

2011-11-19T09:00:00.004-05:00

Hey gang, thanks for swingin' by to say 'hi' on this fine November day. It’s hard to believe that 5 months have passed since the last State of the Temple Address, when Po-Man warned you all not to expect any kind of consistent posting out of him until September,
"'cause all the good stuff is boxed up and in storage," but there it is and here we are. All the good stuff is still boxed up and in storage, but things have calmed down enough for us to start posting again semi-regularly, with plans for a full-blast return on New Year's Day. Po-Man isn’t comfortable divulging family, health and other personal information online, nor does he want to bore you all with the mind-numbing details of his first and hopefully last real estate transaction, but he will say that the last 7 months have been grueling for all the reasons hinted at above, and he can’t wait for life to get back to normal. The good news is, he’s purchased a newer, bigger and better Temple -- located in downtown New Rochelle, just a short walk from his place of employment -- and he’ll be moved into it by the middle of December. And the bad news, you ask? Happily, there isn’t any bad news -- just more good news. Great news, actually, but we can’t tell you what it is...yet. Check back with us in a few days. Or, better still, follow us on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook so you don’t miss the big announcements.

Movie Ad of the Week: THE FIRST TIME...THE LAST TIME (1972)

2011-11-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

THE FIRST TIME...
THE LAST TIME (1972)

World Premiere - Waterloo, Iowa
Wednesday, December 6, 1972

"Vivacious star" Cindy Summers made personal appearances at the Cinema X theater from Saturday, December 9 through Tuesday, December 12.

Guest Review: ALEX JOSEPH AND HIS WIVES (1977)

2011-11-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

It's an honor and a privilege to have former Variety reporter/editor Lawrence Cohn with us today for this very special installment of Guest Reviews.  Readers unfamiliar with "Lor" are urged to delve into the volumes of Variety Film Reviews for the years when he was venturing into the roughest, toughest New York-area theaters to
review down 'n' dirty flicks like SHOCKING CANNIBALS, BLIND RAGE, BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z, CEMETERIO DEL TERROR, MY FRIENDS NEED KILLING, MONSTER SHARK, TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM, LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO, and CHESTY ANDERSON, US NAVY for the weekly industry trade paper.  Here he is with a new review of the
Ted V. Mikels polygamy propaganda pic...

Alex Joseph and

His Wives

(COLOR)
__________

Stillborn portrait of a free spirit.
__________

An American Republic Pictures Corp. release of a William Edward Thrush production. Executive producer, Thrush. Produced and directed by Ted V. Mikels. Screenplay, Thrush, Alex Joseph, Mikels; camera (Movelab color), Nickolas Von Sternberg; editor, Mikels; music, Nicholas Carras; production manager, John Curran. Reviewed on Shocking Videos DVD-R, N.Y., November 1, 2011. (No MPAA rating). Running time: 100 MINS.
Nora Grady................................................Undein Hampton
Sheriff Skinner........................................Noble “Kid” Chissell
F.D.A. Man, Perkins.....................................Tommy Simmons
F.B.I. Man, Wood..........................................Beau Billingslea
Motel Manager............................................Stuart Lancaster
Bobby Grey Fox.............................................Billy White Bird
Bar Troublemaker...........................................Patrick Wright
Car Rental Agent...........................................George Costello
Assassin....................................................Steve Blackmore
Special appearances: Danny Scholl, Edmon Kaiser, Jim Gillings
Also with: Alex Joseph and his wives (Dale, Margaret, Leslie, Lorraine, Carmen, Joanie, Pamela, Judy, Paulette, Melinda, Kitty, Carla) and Pius Whirlwind Soldier

__________

Ted V. Mikels’ loyal following of admirers who enjoy his horror and action films might be a bit puzzled at this rather flat biopic of one Alex Joseph, a polygamist and libertarian whose heyday was over 3 decades ago. Since Mikels shares Joseph’s fondness for the harem-lifestyle it was a natural project but emerges as propaganda rather than entertainment.

Because Joseph stars as himself and contributed to the screenplay (with Mikels and the film’s exec producer/instigator William Thrush), we’re treated to a typical ego trip. The wives (over a dozen) play themselves and are all attractive, though without acting skills. Mikels began his career with sexploitation pictures but this project emerges squeaky clean.

Alex’s run-ins with the government are depicted in mainly tongue-in-cheek terms. He’s the heroic outsider with a familiar “don’t tread on me” philosophy, and the minions of Order are buffoons, notably an FDA inspector trying in vain to meet up with Alex and inspect his ginseng health food operations. Paralleling many a latter-day reactionary right up through the Tea Party Movement, Joseph takes an extreme stance, belittling the state’s failed attempts to collect sales tax at the diner he owns, for example.

Mikels employs several actors to supplement the real-life protagonists, including soft porn talent like Stu Lancaster, wasted as a local motel manager delivering some exposition, and Patrick Wright, typecast as a male chauvinist barfly with rape on his mind.

Worst casting choice is the unappealing Undine Hampton in the key role of Nora Grady, a British journalist for a women’s magazine, interviewing Alex and his ménage. She doesn’t even try for any sort of British accent, and is mannishly styled, with clear lesbian tendencies. Ultimately she is merely a mouthpiece/structural peg in order to feed the viewer information about the goofy Alex Joseph. Film’s climax is a “surprise” marriage, and I was hoping that it would be her (illogical as that would be), but no such luck.

Film’s nadir is reached when Joseph attends a Constitutionalist convention of like-minded nutcases, who each get up and mount their particular soapbox to rant about how our government crushes free spirits. If they had included people like David Koresh, Charles Manson (I couldn’t resist name-dropping him) or Jim Jones it might have held some historical interest, but these folks, like Alex, are minor league cranks whose nutsy world views are not even interesting enough to make the cut in some Mondo documentary.

Major subplot has to do with Joseph’s many Native American friends, who naturally share with him a dislike of the U.S. government for so often mistreating them and their forebears over the centuries. I was far more interested in their problems than those of our self-appointed
Major Domo Alex, further detracting from the film’s intended impact.

Occasional comic relief is clumsy, notably Alex’s “funny” racism regarding a Black FBI agent on his case, or his sitting there reading Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book in an idle moment.

My take on Joseph, who is comically described in the end credit crawl as being in Hollywood working on movie projects (no takers after this fiasco, however), is unclear, since he obviously has enough charisma to win over a couple of dozen young women to the point of mindless adoration (end credits indicate that many of his wives are separated, however, by May '77) yet comes off onscreen as a big nothing. The communal life style depicted here was the rage in the ‘60s and still of minor interest today, but Joseph’s polygamous version, defended earnestly by the wives, is boring and strictly self-aggrandizing. - Lor.

Movie Ad of the Week: ALEX JOSEPH AND HIS WIVES (1977)

2011-11-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

World Premiere: June 22, 1977 - Provo, UT

Read the Lawrence Cohn review here!

Movie Ads of the Week: INVASION SINIESTRA and LA CAMARA DEL TERROR

2011-10-30T09:00:00.052-04:00

INVASION SINIESTRA and LA CAMARA DEL TERROR are two of the four U.S./Mexico co-productions that Boris Karloff starred in for producer Luis Enrique Vergara of Azteca Films. The scenes with Karloff were shot in Los Angeles by director Jack Hill sometime in 1968, and the rest of the movies were completed in Mexico by Juan Ibáñez. These schlocky south-of-the-border horrors marked the elderly star's final film appearances, and they didn't appear on the Spanish-language theater circuit until a year or two after his death.

The Endangered List (Case File #115)

2011-10-29T12:37:00.000-04:00

Compiled by Chris Poggiali & John W. Donaldson

TINY LUND: HARD CHARGER! (1966)

Starring

Tiny Lund

with

Bobby Allison

Buddy Baker

Cale Yarborough

Richard Petty

Darel Dieringer

Dan Gurney

Jim Hurtubise

Dick Hutcherson

James Hylton

Bobby Isaacs

Ned Jarrett

Junior Johnson

Sam McQuagg

Marvin Panch

David Pearson

Tom Pistone

J.T. Putney

Curtis Turner

Directed by

Dick Wallen

Camera

Charles Hartman

Edited by

Victor Kanefsky

Sound by

Michael Shrayer

Executive Producer

Lance Bird

Associate Producer

Edwin S. Webster

Production Manager

Gordon Brown

Running time: 89 minutes

Cinema Work

production

Marathon Pictures

release

First known theatrical playdates: June 1967

***

(Below: Spartanburg, SC Herald-Journal, January 16th, 1966)

(Below: Frederick, MD - The News, June 23rd, 1967)

(Below: Toledo, OH - The Blade, March 22nd, 1968)

Trivia: Marathon Pictures, the short-lived film company run by Audrey Williams (former wife of Hank Williams) and country music promoter Victor Lewis, also produced COUNTRY MUSIC ON BROADWAY (1965), SECOND FIDDLE TO A STEEL GUITAR (1966) and SING A SONG, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE (1966).

Guest Review: THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT (1979)

2011-10-28T11:14:00.002-04:00

The first entry in our new "Guest Review" column was written by Dylan Duarte of Star Costumes.

Everyone is familiar with the classic movie monsters. You've got Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, and a few more I'm sure I'm forgetting. These monsters are well known because they're so effective. They're scary, they're unique, and in their own odd way, they're very likable. I am of the opinion that bigfoot should be one of these monsters, that the hairy beast should have a permanent place the Halls of Movie Monsterdom. Being an urban legend, he carries his own mythos. He's mysterious, he's scary, and much like Frankenstein's monster, he's largely misunderstood.

That misunderstanding is a key element in THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT, a 1979 horror film now being distributed by Troma Entertainment and currently streaming on Netflix. Bigfoot is spotted in a small, snowy town, and while some people see a monster, others see dollar signs and set out to capture the illusive beast. What follows is one of the cheesiest horror flicks I've ever laid eyes on and I'm more than familiar with Troma's catalog.

Troma president Lloyd Kaufman listed this film among the five worst films his company has ever distributed, but I'm curious as to how you judge something like that. When I fired up THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT, it was clear from the get-go that this was a film created to be entertaining. I knew the characters would be paper thin, I knew there wouldn't be any subtext. You don't expect these sorts of things from Bill Rebane, the guy behind MONSTER A GO-GO and THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION. And that's alright, because you're watching for pure entertainment. I wanted to see a man stomp around in a poorly designed bigfoot costume and I got just that.

You've got your evil businessman (Richard Kennedy), your incompetent sheriff (Wally Flaherty), and your reckless children who excel at putting themselves in harm's way. The highlight of the film comes when Jake, the town drunk (George "Buck" Flower), whom nobody takes seriously, happens to know all about the bigfoot and how to go about stopping the creature from causing any more mayhem. Is there a more perfect plot device? We learn about the legend of Arak, which is the name the Native American's gave to the creature. There's even a magical amulet!

THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT is schlock, plain and simple. With all of the above elements featured in the movie, you know exactly what to expect. Truth be told, there's better schlock out there. There are a few gems in here, namely the drunken character I mentioned and the sheriff that's obsessed with celebrity impersonations, but for the most part, THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT is slow and takes itself too seriously. There was potential for over-the-top goodness, but it never quite reached that point. I can understand Kaufman's disappointment.

Guest author Dylan Duarte is a cinephile and freelance writer. When he's not writing about film, he’s writing about Halloween costumes. He can be reached at dylnduarte@gmail.com.

Jewel Shepard needs your help

2011-10-27T15:56:00.002-04:00

Actress & author Jewel Shepard is battling breast cancer. If you're a fan, please head over to the Dark Delicacies website and purchase a photo of Jewel or a signed copy of her book to help out with the mounting medical bills.

BOOK REVIEW: "Getting Off" by Lawrence Block

2011-10-26T09:00:00.003-04:00

The Chips Off A New Block

GETTING OFF

On Hard Case Crime's Slayfest Book On The Block

A Keeper in Crime

Reviewed by

Don K. Barbecue

Since, dear fears and leers reader, you axe me so slicely, all the lovely Gregory Manchess cover for Getting Off, the first new Hard Case Crime in way too long, needs is a big ole word balloon above the guy in bed's head. It should read as follows, since you arsed:

“Look, lady, all I SAID was, you got a knife butt!”

Butt first, before the review proper, bare with me and allow me to step into the way way almost slain back machine, and take it far, far in time behind ...

There I was, still a young kid of a man, stepping down off the curb in mid-60's Coletown, PA. Thing is, being already a big fan of Lawrence Block, I paid no attention to the Charles Chips truck heading right toward me. Now, Charles Chips were an outfit sold their munchies in cans that could be delivered, the contents consumed by the route regular, and if said customer wanted more of the same all he had to do was put the empty container out on the porch next delivery date, to be replaced by more Charles Chips whether the customer was home or not, no one the Wise's.

What I was reading back then was a battered old paperback belonged to my truck-driving uncle. Being on the road a lot, he'd buy every hard-boiled paperback he saw and leave them just Spillane around the house for anyone to pick up and enjoy. He'd read manly thing that had a big-fisted bruiser on the cover, gun in hand as he literally BANG!ed down a door behind which was a big-busted “broad,” as he called them, in danger. Needless to say, said cover gals were rather prone to wearing nothing much butt their latest set of damsel in distress perils. Bed her yet, if anyone asked Unc why he let his kids or myself borrow his books for a hot read he'd just shrug, go “Why knot?”

Guy kept me supplied with all the fifties and oily sixties sleuthly slam-bangers you can name. Hammer, Chet Drumm, Mike Shayne, Carter Browns, that guy Scott that always made me laugh to Shell and back. Not to mention a pre-Man from U.N.C.L.E. Mike Avallone that I'm sure many a big wheelin' tired trucker enjoyed before having an Ed Nooner.

Now, allow me to make like the Boy Scout I once was and change tense. The book in question was Mona, from Lawrence Block back when the thriller field hadn't yet gone all Pussy Galore a-ga-ga go-go over a certain super spy that I hope won't license to kill me just cuz he thinks my mentioning him here is Blass Fleming. Mona was mighty fine, so was the blonde gal on the yellow cover, which was the problem. My fault – I was the one about to step unknowingly into the path of that Charles Chips snack truck. Now, I won't say the driver couldn't spell, but what he delivered onto me was an unexpected SMACK!

Was I for just a minute or two floating up in hard-boiled heaven with my cover gal? I can't slay. I came to hearing this voice over and over again mumbling, grumbling, groaning. Took me awhile to realize that the voice was mine. Course it was mine, I was in Coletown ... with lotsa adult faces looking down at me, voices from afar and high up saying “Give the kid room to breathe already.” Me, I was flat out in the opposite side of the road I'd stepped onto, hoping somebody got the license number of the military machine that hit me, tanks.

Someone in the distance kept going “I'm fine, I'm okay, no really,” took forever for me to realize it was me, convincing no one. Somehow, eventually, my brain musta gone all Daffy Duck, cuz I swear I asked one guy “Uh, what's all the hub-bub, bub?” right before another concerned citizen said “Man, kid, you must really like that book a friggin' lot.”

Times were different then. He didn't say “friggin',” X-actly. Nobody got arrested, no cops showed, just as no uht-oh squad ever appeared. My scare-free stepping departing the curb hadn't got me medi-killed., obliviously. I shook myself, stood. Felt okay, I wasn't hearing angels or little cartoon birdies singing, although my head felt a bit shredded Tweety.

Seemed like a year of listening to Lawrence Welk, with all those friendly, helpful folks asking how I was, me saying “'Sokay, thanks, no really” over and over. On second thought, make that straight Lawrence Welk for, uh, vun anuh two years. Plus enduring a Coletown polka in the eye.

“Tru” it all, something hadn't made sense, what that guy had said even as the Charles Chips guy gave me a final “Glad yer okay, kid, I taught ya was a goner” thump.

“Uh, mister?”

“Yeah?”

“What did you mean, I must like this book” ... I waved it at him ... “a lot?”

“Well, kid,” he said, “that truck hit ya, ya flew across the street sideways a foot in the air and you landed like we did at D-Day. Only, I thought it was you got sunk, steada some'a my buds. And the whole time you held onto that book like yer holding onto it right the heck now.”

You got it, dear reader, he didn't say “heck.” More like a word sounds like what my head still felt a little like, which was muck.

I looked. Yup, my book was still in my hand, none the worse for scare. Me and my gun-blast of a book's cover gal had survived getting tossed, as they said in some Pennsylvania parts, “acrossed” our very own Block.

So, there was only one thing to do after I thanked everybody. Said I was off to meet my folks on Main Street, looked at my watch, in ten minutes. Only, I lied. I really, instead of heading directly to Main, cut down the alleyway and sleazed on over to look for maybe a Block book I didn't have yet over at “Books With Hooks,” the cover cutie in my mitt giving me back all her glove...

“Books With Hooks” is wordy of a whole story its own shelves. Some other time. THIS other time I remember I limped a mite ouch!-illy into BWH and immediately my eyes gloomed fright to my favorite section, the horror mag rack. Overnight a new paperback had apparently got itself creature featured: the Edgar Wallace novelization of a certain giant ape movie. Where oh pun I thought if I'd been holding that book a little earlier instead, I mighta been more than knocked onKongscious.

I won't tell ya the reaction of Ms. Mona when I bought the Kong book any Fay.

Years and many more paperback thrillers later, when I was at college, my paperback cover gal (slash) fender friend disappeared, never to gimme her red hot-blooded, killer diller thriller charms agun. Whoever took that book, I hope for my hard-boiled cover cutie that the thief wasn't the type who's tall, dork in hand scum ...

And with that, my apologies to readers hoping to get to a quick review while I try to make them feel a bit like I did when I was coming to that day, when all I could do was hold onto her and Mona lot. As she, I have no doubt, gave me a new Lisa on life.

-------

And now it's time to, like that not Manchess-tly comely cutie with a knife on the new Block book might GET OFF on saying, “Cut to the chase!”

It's, it figures, fall of 2004. I'm trying to find something to buy in the horror section of a loco, not overly ghouled bookstore, and I don't want to pick up just any ole, ahem, thing. Nertz, no luck. I wander to the mystery aisle and what's the first thing hits my eye and it can't get any cornea?

It's a book sitting face out like someone picked it up and put it down agun just for me. Cool. I'd been looking for old Robert Bloch and found a new Lawrence Block. Thing's got a cool garish cover of a drive-by gang shooting from car window, dying victim out front giving his own heart a clutch.

Title says Grifter's Game. Whoa, I go, I never read that one, and suddenly I'm floored, thinking about almost getting Coletown “kilt” over a Block book that got me knocked half a block away many years ago. See, I'd kept up on Block – guy's a master of mayhem, single stories and novels, with, what, four more series mystery adventures plus the Scudder or Tanner series books. What, someone out there never heard of 'em? Okay, for those gun-informed:

The Matt Scudder series features the world's best drink-slinging detective. Don't laugh. Scudder may have an on-and-off the meat wagon drinking problem, but he's one of the best tough guys in a whiskey business, and a killer shot. I'm a bit outta date how many Scudder books are out there by now, but they're surely all worth about 8 million ways to Dewar's.

Me, I like to think somewhere up in hard-boiled heaven Scudder's being played by Dean Martin over angel-winged cocktail houris. Don't even wanna know what's going down in Helm ...

And if anyone does know, ya bedher do yer best to SILENCER!

Then there's Tanner. Been reading Tanner, it seems, since around the time of me and Mona going airborne. If comparing Scudder to the usual private eye is like comparing Nero Wolfe to The Thin Man, comparing Tanner to anybody's really tough, guy! Is he part Shell Scott the way hilarious happenings just seem to Prather-fall on him? Or, being a spy kinda guy, is he more like Our Man Flint, mid-'60's Coburn on slow burn or just a notch lighter, or --- okay, you fill in the bullets or blanks. All I can slay? Best one's Tanner's Twelve Swingers, which absolutely no one can possibly start reading and be caught dozen!

Cuties to the chase. There I am, panning a new Lawrence Block, Grifter's Game, and from across the store I feel like I'm falling like the guy on the cover, only I think I'm waking up to “Hey, kid, you okay?” and I see my Mona's cover before my brain's eye for the first time in unfaithful years. Imagine my surprise when I pick my back in '04 self up, pick up the book already and read the fine print under the cover title: “Originally published as Mona.”

I bought that retitled Mona and got to the car to read it so fast I may have broken Barry Allen's old speed record, which he can now take to the toilet and give a good Flash.

Turned out Game was but the first of a new line of paperback thrillers new and reprint, Hard Case Crime, virtually all of them the sort with cover art like we used to say guys like to lick. Like Block's The Girl with the Long Green Heart, whose cover gal's one long, tall minx in minks even Scudder might enjoy. I mean, she looks like she's just beggin' for a shot of McGinnis.

Back in the day, guys like my old truck-driving Unc surely woulda chicked out the cover gal to Block's Lucky at Cards from HCC, lick thighs. Bedsides, the Chuck Pyle artwork definitely draws one quite the pair at which to stare. Man, surviving around her could be pretty acey dicey.

Naughty to mention the alleycat artfully decorating the HCC cover to Block's A Diet of Treacle, another piece of illustration that layback when coulda inspired many an old-timer to Pyle on.

Time's passed. Here we are, 2011.Before taking a slightly over a year break, Hard Case published 65 thrillers, from writers ranging from first novelists to oldtimers Day Keene, Donald Westlake AND Richard Stark, & even Michael Crichton, can ya come a-Lange with me and Congo for it?

They also gave modern masters, like Stephen King, quite the “Haven.” No word, either, that he gave it Bach,man! Plus new Max Allan Collins thrillers new AND what Mike Hammer's creator left Spillane around, stuff that even when they aren't Hard Case are well worth Goliath Bone-in' up on. In fact, reviews of MAC's latest HCCs, Quarry's Ex and The Consummata, are due from Temple of Schlock any day now, along with Angel Dare's lay fest, Choke Hold, once this piece gets done Faust.

My advice: hit the HCC site and enjoy making selections. Why? Simply: if literary mystery and thriller founding fathers and beyond were still around today, well, they'd have changed some. But I believe Hard Case Crimers would by Poe himself be found Allan ghouled fun, I wouldn't Ligeia. Why, Sherlock himself would buy each and every one and take it Holmes. Nero himself would Wolfe each one down, and if his helper Archie wants to bet me agun it, I'll have me a Goodwin.

So, here's to Getting Off on the first new Hard Case. Thing is, G O's cover guy and gal, lust seen as caught in the hacked, could by now have escaped via the WINDOW to the REAR!

-------

Getting Off is the best psicko killer thriller I've read since the other Bloc(h) guy's gore-iginal Psycho, and I was scare for the hard-cover! I know people may question me on that, gimme Hannibal Lecter lectures on other fine maniac not so mellow dramas, yet how CAN anybody look at G O's cover and not think, “Hey, it won't be that good, BUTT ... ?”

Trust me, Getting Off's wicked as spiked arsenic.

Yet often times the book's as neat and sweet as its cover gal's mollasses.

Book's also full of touches of loving human humor, and lick thighs sexy as skinning down for sin. Same time, G O's serial killer heroine could give Norman Bates lessons on techn-eeeek!

Getting Off to for thrills and bloodspills, book opens with our man-killing heroine reading She. And why not? By the time some readers finish this novel they just fright feel a wee bit Haggard! And I mean that in a ghouled lay.

I don't include, of course, any guys who buy the book just to see a nice arse ooh la undressed, oh no, although this is one rich and rampant book, wide open with rapacious carnage, yes! Which is exactly our heroine Kat's maim, I SAID main problem. At heart Kat's full of inner sweetness, yet she can get methodically hot with thrilling desire when what she means to do is kill. And that's not even her maim problem. It's mostly, see, a man thing. As in, their treating her like a thing.

It often takes serial mistreatment to seed the path of a serious reek-pitual killer. In Kat's case, make that ms.-treatment. Kat's father doesn't know from being bed her off. Worse, he gets away with it with the mom's consent. Sheldon Lord, lord, the woman might as well just say “Go ahead, have sex with our child, I incest.” Do these two predators get theirs? I'm giving it away here, so stop reading till next paragraph if you don't quite want to learn their fate yet, while I say:

“Yeah, they do, and then scum!” In ways to give shivers down the spine, even to hardened veterans from Children & Eeeee-Yew!th.

So, early on Kat's taken care of that grisly business, split town, changed names and looks a few times, things should be all behind her. Then she hits Pennsylvania, and finds a guy named Sid who ... well, you'll see. Let's say she more or less gets her Philadelphil of him. They separate, you see, and soon a snuff she wants to find him once more. Yer slay adead of me if you guessed she jest might not even care if he's still in Philly, long as she can put him Lansdowne.

Or what if since ole Sid's got married, will Kat show him such a slice of wife? Even though it's a bit more likely to be gonads make her go mad.

Mean slime, think of all the potential. What's Kat gonna do, slay, with that Zembo Shriner creep she meets, or will he get to her fez?

Yup, it's a Cross-Country trip worthy of Herbert Kastle, crossed with that other Bloc(h) again. In fact, our Kat would be quite capable of meeting Tony Perkins in a movie, dating him and taking him out, literally. Gee, and she looks like such a pretty poison ...

Ya see, Kat's got herself an immodest operandi. She's out to terminate each and every man who ever had carnal relations with her, and she's taken shames. And if Kat ever meets Hard Case heroine Angel Dare, their Ms. adventures just have to be called The Sexterminators.

Kat's nothing if naughty inventive. She much purrfurs giving her lovers the needle, but hey, there's other ways of being shot. And sometimes, not often, gore besides. Never mind, let her count the slays, cuz when she sez yer her ex-lover, she means it.

Now, you might think this could get predicta-bull. Okay, all those lovers Kat lethalizes she must get bedher as she goes aschlong. Yeah, but she soon learns the road giveth AND taketh lives at random sometimes. Not everything works in and out. Like, what happens to her when she finds one lover a helpless victim of one of our recent wars? Truth, I couldn't see it comin', and Iraq'ed my brains out.

Plus, all this slime on the road, the mad mistress of serial killers has gotta run into a serial killer who wants to take her out in the worst lay. Up to you, fear reader, to pick up Getting Off and see if the guy lives to see next Bundy.

What, you might axe, does Kat have to do on certain types of swinging scenes to work her mag-iccck? What if her hunt takes her into realms of different, say, purrsuasion? Could our Kat ever have just blue somebody away, and if so, would she even bother to Dahlia about it?

Glad ya asked. By now one might ponder where's all the humanity and humor I talked about? Kat's scary origin story makes us side with her, like it or not, who can sympathize with child abusers? No way around shite, most of the people Kat finds or runs across are pure cock-a-roach crap. Yet then there's Rita, or as I like to call her, “Rita no one sweeter.”

Push buttons on the web enough and you'll find how Block came to write G O as “Jill Emerson,” and that story's worth a book all by its moan some. Takes somewhat more than just Block and his Kat to make G O such a great Rita.

Hard Case ya haven't read publicity on this, book's heavily and heavenly into lesbian scenes. Some are set-ups Kat goes through to get revenge. Some wanna turn the tables on her. Many same sex scenes, though, are off scream, like as Kat and her older lady Rita make cross-country love calls that burn up the “Wire you doing this?”es.

Everything about Rita makes me love her. Makes Kat love her more. Affection mixed with malice toward scum. Lust with laughter. Hecate, even the phone stimulation scenes are, no men involved or not, in fact quite jockuleer.

Anyone doesn't like such material can book the other way, surely. Free country. Also free for folks to live as they like. Fussing and futzing about adults being adults is like staring down a him-or-her-icane. I look at it this way, love's love. I'm a scarely straight cat, but hey, if Kat and Rita or any gay lovers wanna get married, let 'em suffer with the rest of us.

Which brings my Unc to mind. He's still alive, you know, and you guessed it, the man loves Hard Crime. What's that? “What's his view on gay marriage?” Okayyyyyy ... love it or hate it, here it is:

“Gay guys, gay gals wanna get married, let me suffer with the rest of us!”

Me, I haven't the faintest idea what Unk ... he always sez I should spell it with a 'k' ... means by that, X-actly.

Off course, it ain't that folks living as they like happens much in G O. Not if they're Kat's old lovers, who seem inclined to swiftly when found acquire grassy & green mold covers. Still, least like Block's Tanner, they do get their own special plots. Just one reason I'm giving Getting Off grave reviews bonely!

And ya want lonely, whatever diddle happen to ole Sid? And if I know, should I tell ya? What if, say, Kat couldn't find Sid? What if she only found his twin brother Cyril in stud?

Wait, hold on, lemme get the phone.

I'm answering a voice I'm unfamiliar with. “Yeah, right, like I said, the brother's named CY..”

“Did he ever get married?”

“Far as I can SEE.”

“What's she do?

“SEW.”

“This CY, how do ya think Kat would most like to SEE him?”

“SLEW.”

“What will the guy who did Bugs Bunny do if he reads this?”

“Sue.”

CLICK!

Hey, whuzzat brown truck doing? Hey, watchit, buddy, I just had that road friggin' chipped!

Funny, it almost looks – are those guns sticking outta there?

ZING!

Hey, those guys aren't firing Blanc's! What's the lettering on their truck? Lesse. C - H - A - R. ... ? Whoa, gotta fly, looks like the chips are down and I'm about to be, uh, salted! (Here's hoping we all live long enough to read a Getting Off sequel with gouts'a she-kill!)

Movie Ad of the Week: THE BIRTH OF TRIPLETS / NO GREATER SIN (1972)

2011-10-16T16:24:00.007-04:00

Thanks to the inclusion of c-section, afterbirth and circumcision footage in full color, Claude Alexander's legendary birth-of-a-baby roadshow from the early 1950s was still getting playdates as late as 1975. This ad, from the program's Decatur, GA roll-through in 1972, is from the same pressbook Alexander designed a decade earlier. Our friends at Something Weird offer the definitive version of this show on DVD-R, as well as informative liner notes on its history, here.

The Endangered List (Case File #114)

2011-10-15T10:00:00.006-04:00

BABY VICKIE (1969)

Starring
Sharon Matt (Baby Vickie)
Sebastian Gregory [Tony Vorno](Tony)
Bonnie Clark (Lorne)
Bill Moore (Steve)
Barbara Kline (The Stripper)
Dana Raven (Vickie's Mother)
William Gary (Vickie's Father)

Directed by
Harold Perkins [John Hayes]

Produced by
William Dancer [Daniel B. Cady]

Written by
Harold Perkins [John Hayes]

Cinematography by
John Lyons

Running time: 75 minutes

MOTHER
You lay in a man’s bed, bear his child, raise it, clean it, teach it everything good, and then it disgraces you.

FATHER
Vickie is a good girl, everything will be all right, you wait and see.

MOTHER
Your daughter has been raped, don’t you realize that? Now we’ll have to move – to another town where nobody knows us.

FATHER
Everything will be all right.

The previous scene is the key to the meaning of the new Clover Film BABY VICKIE. Among the so-called “good things” that Baby Vickie was taught is that sex is dirty, and it is something we do not speak about in the home. Vickie believed in this, too.

Her only expression of sex is in dark, quiet places or in the back of the tailor shop owned by her father after everyone is gone and she can lock herself in. Vickie sets the expensive teacups and silverware on the table, sets the mood with music and lights, just before parting the curtains and admitting her lover, the store mannequin.

Vickie rejects the advances of Steve, the young man approved of by the parents. She runs from him through the dark streets and alleys finding herself lost in a remote section of the waterfront. She confides in a longshoreman buts gets beaten and raped.

One year later, Vickie and Steve are married. The feeling is one of gayety and young love as the two slip under the sheets on their wedding night. Vickie is unable to respond in this atmosphere of home and cleanliness. She sneaks out and returns to the scene of her rape. Vickie gets involved with all the lower forms of human life and finds satisfaction.

Innocent Vickie instinctively knows that love is beautiful, but her present involvement is not. She searches wide-eyed, opening herself to everyone regardless of sex.

At the climax of the film, Vickie is rejected and laughed at by all the people she has known. She surrenders completely and jumps up on the bar of a waterfront saloon.

Photo below courtesy of Bruce Holecheck

FRANCY'S FRIDAY (Endangered List Case File #98) has been found

2011-10-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

Curt Ledger's FRANCY'S FRIDAY (a.k.a. PLEASURE WITH A TWIST), which we posted about here, is now available on DVD-R and for download from our friends at Something Weird Video under the title IT'S FRANCY'S FRIDAY. Look for it in their latest catalog supplement.

Movie Ads of the Week: 4 from Sig Shore

2011-10-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

Before he made a name for himself as the producer of SUPER FLY, the late Sig Shore was a successful distributor of international films in the U.S. and responsible for bringing such diverse titles as THE 400 BLOWS, TAMANGO, THE ANGRY SILENCE, MY NAME IS IVAN, THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON and HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR to American shores. In this week's post we spotlight 4 movies released by Shore's short-lived company Plaza Pictures.

Romolo Guerrieri's UN DETECTIVE (1969), starring Franco Nero, opened in New York as DETECTIVE BELLI on December 16th, 1970.

Below is the ad from its Philadelphia theatrical run in March '71.

PIGEONS (1970), based on David Boyer's novel The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker, premiered in New York on February 1st, 1971.

This second ad for PIGEONS stresses critical acclaim.

ONDATA DI CALORE / HEAT WAVE (1970), starring Jean Seberg, opened in New York as DEAD OF SUMMER -- the title of the source novel by Dana Moseley -- on March 9th, 1971.

SEDUTO ALLA SUA DESTRA / SEATED AT HIS RIGHT (1968), Italy's official entry in the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, made its U.S. debut in New York as BLACK JESUS on August 25th, 1971. The film's press junket included star Woody Strode's appearance at the Harlem rodeo later documented in Jeff Kanew's BLACK RODEO (1972).

Marvel spoofs FROGS and BLACULA

2011-10-04T09:00:00.003-04:00

Our statistics went through the roof last week after we posted the Crazy magazine spoof of the SHAFT tv series (thanks in part to the referrals from our friends Marc Edward Heuck and Marty McKee on Facebook and Twitter, respectively), so we decided to dig one year deeper into the archives for this pair of parodies from an earlier Marvel Comics attempt to ride Mad's wave of success. The color comic book Spoof was only around for 5 issues, but it stood apart from its influences and competitors in that it seemed to eschew studio films in favor of ribbing the smaller but no less popular indy releases of the day, including 2 horror films from American International Pictures, FROGS and BLACULA. So without further ado, here's F-F-FROGS! from issue #3 (January 1973).

And heeeeeere's BLECHHULA! from issue #4 (March 1973). Enjoy!

Movie Ad of the Week: BIG BAD MAMA (1980)

2011-10-02T12:30:00.010-04:00

Pre-release publicity for Brian De Palma’s DRESSED TO KILL admitted that a nude stand-in had been used for Angie Dickinson’s steamy shower scene opener. On July 11th, 1980 -- two weeks before the film reached theaters -- some bottom feeding southern sub-distributor re-released the 1974 drive-in hit BIG BAD MAMA with the promise that audiences would “see all of Angie.” Sleazy for sure, but no one could accuse him of false advertising! The co-feature, DING DONG, is the West German sex comedy DREI BAYERN IN BANGKOK (1976), released in the U.S. in 1977 by Pro International.

The Endangered List (Case File #113)

2011-10-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

GAS CITY (1978)

Starring

Jeff Meyer

Gail Rosella

Barry Goren

Joyce Burdick

Stan Yale

Karl Krogstad

Written, produced, directed

Jeff Meyer

Photographed by

Joe Centenero

Sam Iaci

Music by

Eric Satie

The Warner Archive will SHAFT you on October 4th!

2011-09-30T10:22:00.002-04:00

Quasi-Schlocko just came lurching into the Temple library to tell us, with much enthusiasm, that the Warner Archive movies-on-demand service is making all 7 episodes of the SHAFT television series available on DVD next week, and he insisted that we put up a post alerting our readers to its ETA. Honestly, we have mixed feelings about this series. On the plus side, Johnny Pate's scores are terrific (a limited edition CD -- highly recommended! -- is still available from Film Score Monthly), the guest stars top-notch (including Darren McGavin, Robert Culp, Michael Ansara, Candice Rialson, Jayne Kennedy, our friends Clu Gulager and Robert Phillips, and a luded out Tony Curtis), and fellow New Rochellean Richard Roundtree wisely accepted 7 easy paychecks to return in the titular role. Unfortunately, these pluses are outweighed by some pretty heavy minuses: backlot-bound exteriors, pedestrian direction, flat photography, ho-hum storylines and, worst of all, a CBS-gelded "black private dick" who should've been renamed John Shaftless since he spends more time buddying up to the honky police than kicking ass or laying pipe. SHAFT creator Ernest Tidyman was apparently as unimpressed by the series as we are, because he killed off the character a year later in the most '70s-ironic style imaginable (think THE NEW CENTURIONS and HUSTLE) at the end of the aptly titled The Last Shaft. "Wait for a sale" is all the endorsement we're willing to give. In the meantime, check out the CRAZY magazine parody from issue #4 (May 1974), posted below for your amusement.

Alternate title roundup

2011-09-28T16:31:00.006-04:00

A handful of new alternate titles have recently come to our attention, but before we get to those, there's apparently still some confusion over whether or not Norman J. Warren's ALIEN-inspired birth-of-a-baby bloodbath INSEMINOID actually received stateside release under that handle. The answer is a very loud YES, and here's the proof: a May 1982 newspaper ad from Madison, Wisconsin. By the time the movie reached the New York City area six months later (on November 26th, 1982), the title had been changed to HORROR PLANET.

It's been almost a year and a half since we did a "Mystery Movies" entry on the Crown International obscurity KISS THE TEACHER GOODBYE, which was revealed by dedicated TOS reader and researcher John Black to be a re-release of HORROR HIGH. Lead actor Pat Cardi's name on the newspaper ad below should finally convince the IMDb to include this in their HORROR HIGH entry as a legitimate alternate title.

The sexy Tigon production ZETA ONE, produced in 1969 and co-starring Anna Gaël (THERESE AND ISABELLE) and Yutte Stensgaard (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE), was released stateside by Film Ventures International in 1974 under the title THE LOVE FACTOR. However, the newspaper ad below - from 1973 - indicates that Donn Davison, FVI's head of promotion, originally had another title and ad campaign in mind for the film.

Next we have another Donn Davison/Film Ventures campaign from 1973, for a New York-shot sexploitation flick originally titled THE MASSAGE PARLOR MURDERS (1973) but given its widest exposure as MASSAGE PARLOR HOOKERS beginning in 1975. I love how Davison implies that it's based on a book, hoping viewers will confuse it with Xavier Hollander's memoir The Happy Hooker (which was still on the New York Times bestseller list at this point and had sold 4 million copies).

Back in March we did a "Movie Ads of the Week" post containing 5 ads for S.F. Brownrigg's DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT under 5 different titles (See them all here). Below is a recently found sixth alternate title, DON'T GO IN THE ASYLUM.

And just when you thought it was safe to close the file on Al Adamson's HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS, yet another alternate title has been discovered. Big thanks to our pal John Charles of Video Watchdog and the ByJohnCharles blog for sending along this ad for its October '71 run in San Antonio as PLANET OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS.

An Endangered List update

2011-09-27T11:14:00.000-04:00

A few of the movies we've spotlighted in our ongoing and very popular series "The Endangered List" have recently become accessible to the public in one form or another. Win Chamberlain's counterculture spoof BRAND X will be screened at UCLA and Harvard in October and at the DOX Festival in Copenhagen in November. Check out the film's official website for details.

A 3/4 U-Matic film transfer of David Feldshuh's 1973 Minneapolis-shot indy JUST BE THERE (a.k.a. SWINGING TEACHER) was recently discovered by cinematographer Gene Borman, who will make a DVD-R for anyone interested. Write for details: geneborman@gmail.com

An English-language version of the long-sought-after Filipino kung fu/fantasy/horror pic BRUKA, QUEEN OF EVIL is now available from Video Screams.

The elusive jungle adventure BROTHER, CRY FOR ME (a.k.a. BOCA AFFAIR) has surfaced twice this year, but as a "top secret" title available for a limited time only from Shocking Videos. Keep your eyes peeled for it during their next advertised sale.

Leopoldo Pomés' outrageous ENSALADA BAUDELAIRE, which received a U.S. release under the titles ANDREA and SEX AND VIOLENCE, is now available from Cinema De Bizarre -- in Spanish, with no English subs.

And finally, the Temple of Schlock gang has acquired a nice 35mm print of Jerry London and Lloyd Schwartz's GOODNIGHT JACKIE (1973), under the title GAMES GUYS PLAY, and will be arranging a few screenings early next year.

Movie Ad of the Week: LADY TERMINATOR (1989)

2011-09-18T09:25:00.046-04:00

This blood-soaked Indonesian knockoff of you-know-what blasted across 27 tri-state screens on June 9th, 1989 and sent out-of-town fanzine editors like yours truly scrambling to find Times Square correspondents to write it up (Roger Corman's water-logged cheapie LORDS OF THE DEEP opened the same day in many of the same venues, beating another James Cameron film to the punch by 2 months). SONNY BOY hit town a year later, but we consider Lady T. and her vagina serpens-dentata the last pure exploitation import to make a surprise appearance in the Big Apple.

The Truth About Eddie: Remembering POOR PRETTY EDDIE

2011-09-10T10:00:00.009-04:00

The Truth About Eddie:

Remembering POOR PRETTY EDDIE

by Chris Poggiali

I’m willing to bet that if you were a fly on the wall during any conversation about POOR PRETTY EDDIE that has ever taken place in the 36 years since it was first released, at some point during every one of those discussions you would’ve heard somebody say “I’d love to know the story behind that one!” Both stylish and sleazy, frequently at the same time, it’s a creepy melodrama to some viewers and a black comedy to others. Self-consciously arty one minute, gleefully tasteless the next, it stands with FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE as one of the most durable genre-blending oddities to ever hit the exploitation circuit, sold to the masses as everything from a horror film and a sexy thriller to a redneck revenge flick and a blaxploitation programmer during its nearly decade-long tour of drive-ins and grindhouses. Made by pornographers yearning to go legit, it drops a talented cast of familiar faces and old pros into a rundown hotel in the Georgia backwoods and sticks them with a dialogue-heavy script more suited for an off-off-Broadway stage than the silver screen.

Ironically, as strange and sordid a movie as it is, POOR PRETTY EDDIE was viewed as a mainstream Hollywood project with crossover appeal by its chief investor, notorious Atlanta porn kingpin and underworld figure Michael Thevis. Responsible at one time for the distribution of 40% of the pornography in the U.S. -- not to mention the violent deaths of several competitors -- Thevis owned over 400 sex shops and X-rated theaters across the country and realized he could be heading for a very big Capone-like fall at the hands of the FBI without a few legitimate business ventures to funnel his money through. He already owned Cinematics, a company that made peepshow booths, as well as a music distribution firm, General Recording Corporation (GRC), which would later find great success with Sammy Johns’ multi-platinum hit “Chevy Van,” but in 1972 Thevis decided to expand his interests and try his hand at filmmaking. He invested first in the stateside release of a Chinese kung fu movie, BLOOD OF THE DRAGON (1973), then began production on a western comedy with Troy Donahue titled THE HOLE IN THE LEG GANG (a.k.a. THE LAST STOP), which has seemingly vanished if it was indeed ever finished.

Meanwhile, another low-budget western, TO HELL YOU PREACH (1972), had just been completed by director Richard Robinson and cinematographer David Worth, a production team that had previously made ADULTERY FOR FUN & PROFIT (1971) and other “adults only” movies of the soft as well as hard variety. Robinson and Worth knew Thevis through the distribution of those X-rated films and approached him with a script they owned, which had been penned by busy TV scribe B.W. Sandefur. “Richard got Thevis to finance the film,” says actor Michael Christian, one of the stars of TO HELL YOU PREACH and best known to TV viewers as the streetwise Joe Rossi on the popular series PEYTON PLACE. “Robinson knew Thevis wanted to make ‘straight’ motion pictures for PR and because I think [the FBI] was after him for any number of things. So that’s actually how I got the job. I had just played a Billy the Kid type of character for Richard in TO HELL YOU PREACH, and that led to me getting the part of Eddie. The girl I was dating at the time was friends with Shelley Winters from the Actors Studio, and so Richard hired Shelley through Jack Gilardi, who was an agent of mine, to play the part of Bertha.”

STAR TREK fans take note: Before singer Leslie Uggams landed the lead role, Nichelle “Uhuru” Nichols was up for the part of Liz Wetherly. “[The producers] flew her to Atlanta to meet with them, and she was going to do it,” says Christian, “but then they went with Leslie instead and they were very pleased with that decision, as was I. Leslie was a joy to work with.”

Uggams had won a Tony Award (for Hallelujah, Baby!) and hosted her own musical variety TV series on CBS, but was having a difficult time making the transition from stage and television to the big screen. “It was very hard for me to get films because, back then, everyone thought singers should sing and actors should act,” the entertainer reveals. “When I did SKYJACKED, the director [John Guillermin] said to me, ‘Why do you want to do this? You sing.’ I said ‘Well, I don’t just sing.’ I had studied acting since I was 8 years old. He just didn’t get it. There weren’t a whole lot of parts [for black women] other than in what they called ‘black exploitation’ movies, and I had never been asked to do any of those anyway.”

So when she was offered a substantial lead in a movie co-starring Shelley Winters, who had just received her fourth Academy Award nomination earlier that same year (for THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE), Uggams grabbed the role in a heartbeat. “I liked the cast, so to me this looked like a great opportunity that would hopefully turn into something,” she says. “I had not done many movies, so naturally I wanted to be in the company of people that I knew were wonderful actors and actresses. And then we all got down there [to Athens, GA] and were looking at each other going, ‘What happened? Did we miss something here?’ Because on paper it didn’t look like it was going to be a bizarre picture. It looked like this girl is on the road, her car breaks down and then she gets into this situation. It turned out the director had another thing in mind, and none of us could figure out what the heck it was!”

Uggams portrays a popular singer in POOR PRETTY EDDIE, but don’t think for a second that she’s simply playing herself. Liz Wetherly is a bitchy and selfish person, the polar opposite of Uggams, who’s one of the friendliest and most un-diva-like personalities this writer has encountered. “That’s another reason why I wanted to do it, because it was totally different from the kind of person that I am -- thank the Lord.”

In addition to tackling her first starring role on such an offbeat project, the actress had other new and awkward experiences to contend with. “I had never shot a gun before in my life. That was frightening. I had never driven a stick shift car before. That was frightening. And we were eating strange food all the time. It was like someone had just gone hunting and that was our meal for the day.”

The film’s main location was Charlie Williams’ Pinecrest Lodge, a legendary Athens eatery that needed almost no set dressing to become Bertha’s Oasis, the rustic hotel/restaurant owned and operated by Winters’ ex-stripper character. Every morning before the cast and crew call, Worth would roam the property with an Arriflex 2C camera and shoot atmosphere footage of everything from abandoned vehicles and creaky waterwheels to the myriad hunting trophies that adorned the walls of the restaurant-bar. “They had a 12-foot rattlesnake skin hung over the bar,” remembers stuntman Paul Nuckles. “I used to catch rattlesnakes in Malibu Canyon, and I’ve never seen a 12-footer. Six-foot is the biggest I’ve seen, and that’s plenty big enough.”

Thanks to the genius of film editor Frank Mazzola (who had previously worked on PERFORMANCE and THE HIRED HAND), Worth’s footage of the snakeskin and other animal trophies was used to great effect as segues and shock cuts, and his early morning exterior shots of the lodge laid the groundwork for a beautiful opening credit sequence.

Despite being in the company of so many professionals and having her mother, her 3-year-old daughter Danielle and occasionally her husband Grahame with her during the shoot, Uggams still felt uncomfortable being on location in such an out-of-the-way setting. “It was really kind of spooky and dark, because we were surrounded by woods and the sun could hardly get through. It was scary. Later I heard that Kenny Rogers had moved to Athens and I thought, ‘Well, he obviously isn’t living in the area that we were in!’”

Scenes were also filmed at the county jail and the American Legion hall in nearby Lexington. University students helped out on the production and also were cast in minor acting roles. Harbin “Red” Lawson, the former University of Georgia basketball coach, has a supporting role as a sleazy traveling salesman who, in one of the film’s more surreal sequences, becomes a victim of Eddie’s homicidal rage while taking sexual advantage of Liz. Sheriffs Gene Smith of Oglethorpe County and Tommy Huff of Clarke County also appear in supporting roles.

The shooting schedule was 6 weeks and the budget was announced in the press as being anywhere between “just under $1 million” to around $1.25 million. “I would say it was about $1.1 million,” figures Christian. “I know they were bringing Shelley’s money to her in a suitcase in cash, weekly, all the way from Atlanta out to Athens. I thought that was very interesting.” He laughs before adding, “She wanted the cash, and then she got all scared about where she was going to hide it.”

Winters was lucky that she made it to the location at all. While en route to Atlanta the night before shooting was to begin, the plane she was traveling on had to circle the airport for over 2 unbearably tense hours while the pilot attempted to lock the landing gear into place, forcing ground crews to foam the runway and prepare for the worst. The plane eventually made it to the tarmac safely, but the grueling experience may have pushed the normally bold and outspoken actress to new levels of brashness during the first few days of filming.

For example, the opening scene -- in which Uggams sings "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a capacity crowd -- was filmed at Atlanta Stadium on November 4th, 1973 before a game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Los Angeles Rams. Robinson and the cast joined Falcons owner Rankin Smith and several of his associates for an alcohol-fueled party in the owner’s box. Winters walked in and immediately began devouring a sandwich, unaware that it was Smith’s. “Does that dame know she’s eating my food?” the Falcons owner reportedly blurted out, to which Winters replied “Okay, you can have it back!” and smashed the mayonnaise-smeared top slice of bread into his face.

That’s not the only example of the feisty actress’ loose cannon behavior around food. At a surprise birthday party for Uggams’ husband, Winters threw a piece of cake into Robinson’s face. He responded by throwing a piece of cake into her face. Other members of the cast and crew quickly joined in, and soon food and drink was flying everywhere. “She and Robinson just got totally carried away,” Christian says with a noticeable lack of amusement. “It was like something out of ANIMAL HOUSE.”

“Shelley was a wild and crazy lady,” Uggams recalls. “She was so unpredictable. You never knew exactly what to expect.”

“She was wild,” agrees Christian. “We were all staying at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, and she jumped into the pool naked one night.” While filming one of their boudoir scenes, the two-time Academy Award winner tried to impress her hunky young co-star with a list of her many famous bedmates. “She gave me a rundown on all the lovers she’d had, from James Dean to Paul Newman to Marlon Brando, giving me ratings for Vittorio Gassman, Tony Franciosa -- while we’re in bed together waiting for the camera to be set up to do a scene, I gotta listen to all this, right? God bless ya, Shelley, I think you’re great, but really.”

“I had known Shelley from before, so there was already a friendship there,” says Uggams. “If she didn’t respect you, she would try to get away with things. I made sure that she respected me, so she and I got along very well, but with a couple of other people she would try to pull some fast things.”

Christian describes Winters as “terrific” and “very giving” but admits that the veteran actress did rub him the wrong way during the filming of the climactic wedding shootout. “When I flew off onto the table and was dying at the end, instead of relating with me, she was listening to music to get herself emotionally ready and crying,” the actor explains. “I ended up hitting the ice machine with my fist. I was trying to relate to her in the scene, and she was just listening to this music in her ear. I said, ‘Would you please relate with me?’ She said, ‘I worked with this one, I worked with that one, I worked with Monty Clift…’ I said, ‘Well you’re working with Michael Christian now, so just look into my eyes, I definitely can scare the shit out of you and make you cry a little bit, so come on, let’s get with it.’ But she just turned the music up louder. It was some classical music -- wonderful music, but I’d rather have an actor or actress relate with me instead of using references. So out of frustration I hit the ice machine and my hand swelled up. After we finished the scene I had to be taken to the hospital to make sure my hand wasn’t broken.”

“But working with her was a good experience for me,” he insists. “I started out playing Eddie more like an introverted, moody southern James Dean-type character and it was Shelley who said, ‘Nah! Be extroverted! Give him some life! Do the Presley thing!’ So I said, ‘OK!’ They gave me some outfits and I played him a little more flamboyantly. Shelley deserves credit for that particular touch on my character.”

“She just had her own way of doing things,” he continues. “She would let the makeup people do her makeup and hair – it would take two or three hours – and then she’d tear it all down and do it again herself. This was a daily ritual. She was always on a diet, too. She’d say, ‘I don’t want to eat this, I don’t want to eat that,’ and then suddenly she’d splurge and have three desserts at Howard Johnson at the end of the day.”

Luckily, someone had the foresight and good sense to invite legendary Hollywood columnist James Bacon to the location, resulting in several amusing pieces on the film’s production in general and Winters’ shenanigans in particular. All the silliness was very good publicity for the dark, offbeat film. According to Christian, in a Beverly Hills 213 article by Bacon just a couple of years ago, the writer was still referring to POOR PRETTY EDDIE as one of the most enjoyable times he’s ever had on a film set. He even shows up in the movie as an extra in the American Legion hall scene.

Also onscreen during this scene is musician Grant Boatwright, who composed the score and performed all the songs with Red, White & Blue(grass). Formed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1969 and also featuring Grant’s wife, singer-guitarist Ginger Boatwright, and banjo player Dale Whitcomb, the Grammy nominated band put out a couple of charting albums on GRC Records before signing with the higher profile Mercury label. Grant Boatwright also appears in Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE.

The cast and crew screening turned out to be one of the most eye-opening and memorable experiences of Uggams’ acting career. “First of all, Mae West was there. I said ‘Wow! Mae West! [Pause] What is she doing here?!’ And then sitting there watching the film, I kept thinking, ‘What the heck is this?!’ Look, I knew it was a crazy film, but I had no idea just how crazy it was going to be until I went to that screening and my husband and I looked at each other and said, ‘Where did all these dead squirrels come from?!’ I mean, they kept panning to shots of dead squirrels and possums and other kinds of dead things and I’m thinking, ‘What is this?!’ And then I thought, ‘Well, there goes my Oscar!’”

“It was a very weird film,” Christian concurs. “But Richard had that kind of personality, that kind of macabre style in him. He was like Lee Frost (PRIVATE OBSESSION) in that sense. Lee had a little bit of an imagination with the macabre in the films he did. I always ran into those kinds of guys. You just do your best as an actor, that’s all you can do. You go out there and try to fulfill the obligation of the part. In that way, I felt we pulled it off for what it was.”

“Listen, if they had made a film about making that film it would’ve been a much better film!” laughs Uggams. “The best thing about it was that my husband and I got to be dear friends with Ted Cassidy. We met him and his wife while doing the film and we became best, best friends with him. He was the calm person on the set who had some sanity.”

“Ted and his wife were very nice,” agrees Christian. “My girlfriend and I used to go out to Pacific Palisades where they lived to have dinner with them. We also went to Vegas to hear Leslie sing. And of course, Slim and Dub were old pros.”

“I got a call out of the blue [from stunt coordinator Ron Ross] to go down to Georgia somewhere to work on a film,” Nuckles says, trying to suppress laughter. “So when I get there, I walk into the bar, which was dark – it was noon and the whole company was in there, they’d just broke for lunch – and I hear this voice I recognize say, ‘Hey Nuckles! What’s the sweetest smelling flower in the world?’ I knew that voice was Dub Taylor’s. I said, ‘Jesus, Dub, I don’t know. What do you think it is?’ He said, ‘It’s the Morning Glory, ‘cause it grows right outside the shithouse! Hee hee hee hee!’” Nuckles lets out a laugh before adding, “He was a funny, funny guy. Slim was, too. They were trying to hook me up with Shelley Winters through the whole production.”

“I loved Dub Taylor,” says Uggams. “He was a riot and kept us laughing the whole time. We all got along very well. We had to -- we were all walking around saying to each other, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’ and ‘What the heck is going to happen next?’”

Denver-based distributor Jay O’Malin acquired POOR PRETTY EDDIE and gave it a decent theatrical release through his company Westamerica Distributing beginning in March of 1975. “The girl who was the head of the Elvis Presley Fan Club did a promotion with me,” Christian remembers. “She sent something out in the newsletter to all the Elvis fans telling them to see the movie because she thought they’d get a kick out of me shaking my hips.” The actor also heard that the movie’s racial subject matter had caused a riot at a Memphis drive-in during its initial run, but couldn’t recall the details. “Y’know, a black woman being kidnapped and raped by a honky -- I heard that didn’t go over so well at a drive-in down there.”

When Westamerica went out of business a couple of years later, Christian and Worth (along with several partners) bought the rights to POOR PRETTY EDDIE and all prints of the film and set about creating a lighter, more marketable alternate cut. “There’s no way in the world that the original version could play on TV back then, as hard as it was and as grotesque as it was in some scenes, like with the intercutting of Leslie’s rape with the dogs making lust,” Christian says matter-of-factly. “There were things in the central story that were pretty violent and racial, so this other version was a softer cut with all the macabre stuff taken out.”

The result, HEARTBREAK MOTEL (1978), eliminates all of the violence of POOR PRETTY EDDIE, downplays Eddie’s rape of Liz, moves Uggams’ performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" from the beginning of the film to the end, and adds light-hearted narration by Eddie himself. The most important difference, however, is the addition of several outtakes that don’t appear in POOR PRETTY EDDIE, including one very good scene that reveals the back-story of Cassidy’s character, Keno. In another outtake, a shotgun-wielding Eddie protects Liz from a pack of hillbilly rapists.

“There’s some interesting stuff in there, and we put some bucks into it, but when you add it all up, it doesn’t add up to much,” Christian admits. “It was just us throwing some scraps and added footage together to try to make it work in a non-violent fashion so it could be marketable. I wanted something that wasn’t so ugly, but it didn’t hold because it was too thin. There’s no real storyline to it like there is in POOR PRETTY EDDIE.”

HEARTBREAK MOTEL also differs from POOR PRETTY EDDIE in that David Worth is credited as the director rather than Richard Robinson, who is billed as director of production on this version. “Richard and David actually co-directed POOR PRETTY EDDIE,” Christian explains, “and David had done so much work on it and was promised certain credit, so that’s another reason why we did the soft version. The credits changed because a certain amount of money was invested the film at that time.” Christian receives producer credit on the HEARTBREAK MOTEL edit, and several other co-producers are listed on this version as well, including Christian’s girlfriend at the time, actress Linda Marsh (from HOMEBODIES, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN and Elia Kazan's AMERICA, AMERICA), and his agent, Robert Diamond.

Christian and his partners sold POOR PRETTY EDDIE to Group 1 Films, who changed the title to THE GIRL IN THE WEB and then THE VICTIM before settling on REDNECK COUNTY for a 1979 re-release.

“They were originally calling it REDNECK COUNTY RAPE but they thought that was too hard so they took [rape] off the ads at the last second. Little did they know there was another REDNECK COUNTY out there already with Alex Karras,” Christian says, referring to Harry Thomason’s 1974 comedy THE GREAT LESTER BOGGS, which was still playing the drive-in circuit in '79 and had gone through even more title changes than POOR PRETTY EDDIE by that point.

Group 1 had no interest in handling HEARTBREAK MOTEL, however, so the alternate cut ended up being sold to Gold Key Entertainment. "It didn't get out into the marketplace that much," says Christian of the softer version. "It went to some little bitty video company and I think that’s the only thing that’s been seen of it." [HEARTBREAK MOTEL made its debut on home video in 1986 from VidAmerica].

For urban venues, Group 1 ditched the REDNECK COUNTY moniker and instead released the movie as BLACK VENGEANCE, usually paired with SLAMMER, a re-titling of the tough 1977 prison film SHORT EYES. Although POOR PRETTY EDDIE had already played the New York City market during its initial run in June of 1975 (through sub-distributor Aquarius Releasing), the BLACK VENGEANCE / SLAMMER double bill opened in eight theaters in the New York tri-state area on January 23rd, 1981 courtesy of Bedford Entertainment, another Manhattan-based sub-distributor. Christian was unaware of this incarnation, but not Uggams. “Oh, they tried everything with that movie!” she says, bursting into laughter. “Every time I turned around someone was telling me ‘It’s out again as such-and-such!’ They kept trying to sell it every different way!”

As if the history of this movie wasn't confusing enough, someone recently started a rumor that Floridian actor-director Chris Robinson (of STANLEY fame) was actually the director of POOR PRETTY EDDIE and not Richard Robinson, a total inaccuracy that has made its way onto a number of websites and message boards thanks to its appearance on the Internet Movie Database. This misinformation probably stems from the fact that Chris Robinson directed two movies with Ted Cassidy in the early ‘70s, one of them released as THUNDER COUNTY a few years before POOR PRETTY EDDIE was making the rounds as REDNECK COUNTY. In the small world department, Chris Robinson did call Christian shortly after seeing POOR PRETTY EDDIE in Florida to offer him a role in an episode of the TV series CANNON that he was going to direct. "He wanted me to play a football player, so I went over to the lot with him and threw the ball around, but the money wasn’t right so I didn’t do it," says Christian. “But otherwise, no, he had nothing to do with POOR PRETTY EDDIE. It was all Richard Robinson and David Worth.”

Hopefully this post has cleared up some of the confusion surrounding POOR PRETTY EDDIE. Looking at the new widescreen transfer on the recent DVD/Blu-ray combo from Cultra, it's safe to say that this warped and unique motion picture hasn't looked this good since -- well, since that very first cast and crew screening, when most of the participants stared at the finished film in slack-jawed disbelief. "And after it was over I remember thinking, ‘Wellllllll, maybe no one will ever see it,’" Uggams says with a laugh, "but somehow it just keeps rising like the phoenix!"

Special thanks to Leslie Uggams, Michael Christian, Paul Nuckles, Lawrence Cohn, Fred Adelman and Joe Rubin

Mystery Movie: BLACK BELT SOUL BROTHER (ca. 1980)

2011-09-09T09:15:00.045-04:00

A movie titled BLACK BELT SOUL BROTHER passed through Atlanta during the summer of 1980. Since it had no co-feature, we're pretty sure it was a newer film and not a re-release of THE DYNAMITE BROTHERS (known as BLACK BELT BROTHERS during production) or SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (which had played the same theater two years earlier without a co-feature) or one of the Ron Van Clief movies. Our best guess is that it's an alternate title for A HARD WAY TO DIE (1980), a Carl Scott-Billy Chong team-up that was in theatrical release at the time.

The Endangered List (Case File #112)

2011-09-08T18:00:00.001-04:00

Compiled by Mike MacCollum & Chris Poggiali

THE CIRCLE (1972)

Produced, co-written and directed
by
Tom Moyer, Jr.

Photographed by
Will Vinton

"Circles"
Written by
Harry Chapin
Performed by
The New Seekers

Starring
Tim O'Callaghan
Tom Gohn
Carol Crittenden
Mary Schram
Jim Bosley
Alan Hirsch
Mark Allen
Mary Saracco
Dianna Ferrua
Joe Libonati
Gracie Hansen

Filmed in
Portland, OR

MPAA rating: PG
Running time: 95 minutes

World premiere: Portland (10/5/1972)

Don't miss DRIVE-IN SUPER MONSTER RAMA 2011 this weekend!

2011-09-07T22:30:00.011-04:00

Go HERE for more information!

Read our review of the 2009 show HERE!

Movie Ad of the Week: THE BLACK CAT (1984)

2011-08-14T17:18:00.017-04:00

Lucio Fulci's THE BLACK CAT (1981), which received limited theatrical exposure in the U.S. through World Northal, opened in a dozen New York-area theaters (including the RKO Proctors here in New Rochelle) on February 4th, 1984.

The Endangered List (Case File #111)

2011-08-12T16:00:00.001-04:00

Compiled by Chris Poggiali & Mike MacCollum

IMAGO (1970)

Alternate version: TO BE FREE (1972)

Starring
Barbara Douglas (Carole)
John Morgan Evans (Dr. Keith)
Victoria Wales (Althea)
Jenie Jackson (Molly)
Najila (Barbara)
Buddy Arett (Dobbs)
Peter Cord (Peter)
Raul Hernandez (Reagan)
Dick DeCoit (Bruce)
Robert Webb (Dr. O’Donnell)
Parker Herriott (Blind Priest)
Michael Rae (Red/Keystone Cop)
Michael Loring (Tom)
Harvey Goldstein (Jay)

Written, produced and directed
by
Ned Bosnick

Music by
Lalo Schifrin

Cinematography by
Gregory Sandor

Edited by
Gary Kurtz

Assistant Director
Walter Robles

Art Director
Roger Collins

Sound by
Bob Dietz
and
Keith A. Wester

Running time: 88 minutes (IMAGO)

Shooting title: HOW NOW, SWEET EROS?

Received simultaneous world premieres in Houston and San Francisco as IMAGO on 12/9/1970. Released by Emerson Film Enterprises with a self-applied X rating.

Rated R by the MPAA in October 1971

Re-cut with new scenes added, and self-distributed by Bosnick [as Joe Magarac, Inc.] in 1972 and ‘73 under the title TO BE FREE

Penn Hills Man Directs Film
“Stage and Screen” column
by George Anderson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 1st, 1971, p. 20

May your new year be as exciting as it promises to be for a 33-year-old Penn Hills film-maker who has just completed directing his first feature-length movie.

He’s Ned Bosnick, and his film is called IMAGO. He wrote it, produced it and directed it, and it has been picked up by a West Coast distributor who has already released it in San Francisco and Houston.

The film’s and Bosnick’s ties to Houston are important.

“When I graduated from UCLA film school, Stanley Kramer told me not to try to get a studio job in Hollywood,” the new director said the other day while visiting his family here over the holidays.

“He advised me to go somewhere and write a script, and then line up financing for it. That’s the way Kramer started.

“I had no friends in the film industry, so I took off, stopping in various places in Nevada, Idaho, working my way eastward until I wound up in Houston.

“I lived there for a year, made some friends and grew to love the place. I wrote my script and the movie was financed by people in Houston.”

The budget came to more than $300,000.

Bosnick likes Houston so much he has made it his home, and he is heading back now to write the script for his second film.

IMAGO is about a woman in analysis and her sexual fantasies. She is played by newcomer Barbara Douglas, whom Bosnick thinks is headed for stardom.

The film has no production code rating yet. “The distributor thinks it would get an X, but I think it would be given an R today, even though there is some strong stuff in it,” Bosnick said.

The Technicolor film has a score by the noted Lalo Schifrin, composer of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme. He scored IMAGO as “a work of love.”

Bosnick’s only previous film was THE SILENT CRISIS for education television, which won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

“The toughest part of making the movie was just raising the money,” Bosnick said.

The experience also gave him a healthy appreciation for the craft of writing. “Writing is what everything else is about,” he said. “Directors have been getting a little more attention than they deserve. Writing is equally important.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/14/71
Penn Hills native Ned Bosnick submitted his first feature film, IMAGO, for a rating, and after a little cutting, got an R from Dr. Aaron Stern’s new stricter administration. “It seems that most of the American public that I have personally come in contact with equate an X rating with pornography – hardcore. We are happy to be out from under that onus, especially since it never applied.” -- George Anderson, "Stage and Screen" column

Renoir Big Influence on Local Film-Maker
“Stage and Screen” column
by George Anderson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 10th, 1972

When he was growing up in Pittsburgh, Ned Bosnick thought he would be a golf pro. Now he’s coming home as a film-maker.

Bosnick’s first feature, TO BE FREE, will have its world premiere next week at the Shadyside Theater.

Was there more than sentiment involved in choosing Pittsburgh for the first commercial showing of the film?

“There were three reasons for choosing Pittsburgh,” the young writer-producer-director said. “First, it is my hometown. Second, it is close enough to New York where the people I’m working with are located. Third, it is the right size city so that we will be able to launch the film properly, giving it a big campaign without spending $50,000 or more.”

Bosnick and his associates are distributing the film themselves under the name Joe Magarac, Inc. Being the son of a former steelworker, Bosnick chose the name although he said everyone else working on the film was unaware of the Steel City’s Paul Bunyan.

Financing for TO BE FREE came from Texas, and the movie had an unusual history, which I related in this column some time ago.

First released as IMAGO by a West Coast distributor, it was re-edited and partly re-shot by Bosnick to more fully satisfy his ideas.

The story of a young girl who finds her traditional upbringing in conflict with the more permissive ideas of other young people, TO BE FREE is, Bosnick says, open to interpretation.

“Some people who have seen it accept its events as actually happening,” he said.

“Others think of it as being past events related by the girl. Still another interpretation is that it is all a projection in her mind of what will happen or could happen.

“Every knowledgeable film buff who has seen it finds something in it he likes.”

Bosnick insists he did not show TO BE FREE to any of the established film distributors after his rather disenchanting experience with the handling of the film’s first version.

A graduate of the UCLA film school, Bosnick said, “The last few years have really been an education for me. UCLA is really the art-film school. At USC they learn more about the practical side of the business – budgets, etc. I think UCLA needs to teach more of that.”

It was his experience in taking a one-semester course at UCLA from the great French director Jean Renoir that saved Bosnick from dropping out when he was beginning to wonder just was he was doing there.

“He’s such a great man. Even though I really knew nothing about him, I could sense his greatness after just five minutes. Being a little older than some of my fellow students” – Bosnick had previously graduated from Dickinson College – “I found myself out of step with some of their life-styles. So it made a great impression on me that Renoir said a lot of things that I believed.”

“I don’t know if you can appreciate how much it means to a film student to have his first movie shown in a theater, to see it up there on a screen with your name. It’s like a sexual experience.”

When his student film, THE SILENT CRISIS, a 27-minute film about a 17-year-old in a school for the deaf played in a theater, Bosnick invited all his former instructors to see it.

“And it’s hard to believe, but of all those teachers, who do you think was the only one to show up? Jean Renoir, who came with his wife. And he sent me a note afterwards, commenting on the film.”

THE SILENT CRISIS, by the way, received a prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Besides Renoir, other film-makers Bosnick admires are Federico Fellini and Luis Bunuel. “Fellini was the hero of my era,” he recalls. “His 8½ came out then, and he was at the peak of his form. I thought that was the greatest film ever made.”

A tall, lean, youthful figure, Bosnick is already planning his future films. He has one he would like to do with Dustin Hoffman, whom he admires, and another about a rock group traveling across country, which he describes as being “as beautiful as EASY RIDER, but an upbeat film. America the Beautiful.”

TO BE FREE Has Premiere at Shadyside
“Stage and Screen” column
by George Anderson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 19th, 1972

TO BE FREE, which had its world premiere last night at the Shadyside, is not an easy film to describe or to categorize.

The first feature by director Ned Bosnick, who was born in Penn Hills, it starts out to be the story of the personal conflict of a young girl whose traditional upbringing gives her such sexual hang-ups that she must seek psychiatric help.

But, it gradually and unexpectedly evolves into another story of a fraudulent psychiatrist into whose hands she has the misfortune to fall.

That these dual plot elements are not satisfactorily integrated is one of the film’s difficulties. This reconciliation is not helped by the film’s insistence on ambiguity, sometimes for its own sake.

We are presented with many quick cuts, a wholesale juggling of time sequences and scenes representing the heroine’s private fantasies, all of which make it troublesome to come to grips with the scenes involving the psychiatrist, in conversation with an older colleague or with his receptionist.

Are these fantasies, too? I think not, but Bosnick has said that the entire film can be interpreted as existing in the girl’s mind.

These confusions – whether the film’s or the audience’s, the result is the same – plus occasionally clichéd dialogue and a lack of narrative thrust are the movie’s chief handicaps.

Its assets include superb color photography by Gregory Sandor. Visually, TO BE FREE is an unending delight, except, perhaps, for one needlessly gross bit of burlesque involving a fat woman splashing in a mud puddle.

Bosnick shows genuine talent in handling the film’s visual and technical aspects. The film looks throughout like a big-league entry.

It also boasts a thoroughly ingratiating performance from newcomer Barbara Douglas as the troubled heroine. Blessed with a voluptuous figure, a pixie face, a pleasing personality, a fine air of naturalness and real acting talent, she is a true find.

In fact, she is so good that her character assumes dimensions which make the woodenness and superficiality of the psychiatrist all the more harmful. Indeed, the lack of characterization in every other player except her is conspicuous.

Any list of the film’s merits should also include Lalo Schifrin’s modern score and the overall sense of serious purpose in Bosnick’s work.

This latter quality makes doubly unfortunate the film’s occasional and coincidental similarities to more exploitative films like TOGETHER or WITHOUT A STITCH or GUESS WHAT WE LEARNED IN SCHOOL TODAY in which dubious medical or psychological authorities preached a let-it-all-hang-out philosophy to sexually inhibited characters.

These unearned associations may not bother everyone, however. A more widespread concern may be a lack of emotional involvement in the girl’s problems, regardless of how valid they may be and how warm Miss Douglas’ performance is.

But, even those of us who are left out in the cold in this respect can recognize Bosnick’s potential as a gifted filmmaker and can look forward to future work in which he will have, hopefully, better basic material to work with.

American Film Institute (AFI) catalog description: Carole, a virgin, finds herself incapable of having sex with her fiancée. She goes to Keith, a psychiatrist who prescribes therapy including hypnosis and group encounter sessions. Carole becomes involved with lesbian Althea (the doctor’s receptionist), tries marijuana, and experiences wild nightmares as she struggles to cope with her problems.

Interview with New World's Frances Doel (1981)

2011-08-11T08:00:00.006-04:00

One of the only nice things about packing for a move is that you're bound to unearth one or two dusty items you completely forgot you owned. Take for instance Derek Castle's 1982 Screenplay Sales Directory, "The only complete how, who and where of selling your film or TV script," which 30 years later is chock full of contact information for dozens of now deceased actors, producers and directors, as well as companies that haven't been heard from since VHS killed off Betamax. Any normal person would've trashed this book 20 years ago, but the inclusion of a Q&A with Frances Doel, the story editor for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, ensured its survival all this time in Po-Man's overstuffed filing cabinet. Because of the renewed interest in New World classics like BIG BAD MAMA, PIRANHA and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS -- mostly due to the special edition DVDs that have come out in the past year -- we've scanned the interview with Ms. Doel and posted it below. Enjoy.

Bill Grefe to speak in Orlando on Monday

2011-08-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

Florida’s Motion Picture Experience Through the Eyes of a Legend

Altamonte Springs, Florida – Florida Motion Picture & Television Association (FMPTA), Metro Orlando Chapter is proud to present Mr. William Grefe, FMPTA’s Co-Founder, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and Metro Orlando Chapter Life Member as well as Film Florida Legend, as its honored guest and speaker on Monday, August 15th at 7:02 pm at the Hilton Orlando, Almamonte Springs. A reception for Mr. Grefe precedes the presentation at 6pm.

William Grefe’s career began as a television writer, and when the opportunity presented itself, he turned to writing feature films. During the production of his first motion picture script, THE CHECKERED FLAG, the movie’s director became ill and Grefe was drafted into assuming the director’s chores. He brought the film in ahead of schedule and it ended up grossing ten times its negative costs. Riding the wave of that first big success, Grefe continued to write, produce and direct many theatrical, money-making motion pictures including STANLEY, MAKO and CEASE FIRE.

Grefe’s film and television career has run the gamut from Producer/Director of over 25 feature films, to chief operating officer of three film companies. He has directed countless TV commercials for major corporations such as General Motors, Whirlpool and Bacardi. He is a filmmaker who has the reputation of controlling the budget, yet delivering quality film. He is an all around filmmaker who has worked as a producer, director, writer, executive producer, line producer, studio executive, and distributor whose feature films and television shows are being shown theatrically, on TV, cable, video tape, and DVD worldwide. He is not only an internationally known filmmaker, but is a respected business man and executive who has excellent experience in film distribution. He has advised and negotiated distribution contracts for dozens of companies and individuals.

“I am absolutely thrilled to have Bill, as our founder, reach out to me, expressing his pleasure of the FMPTA’s current activities and that he has agreed to share his experiences with us,” explained Metro Orlando Chapter President and State President, Thomas P. Mitchell, Sr. “We are honored to be in the presence of an FMPTA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and a Film Florida Legend and look forward to experiencing Florida’s motion picture history and opportunities through his eyes.”

Reception and presentation are open to the public.

FMPTA serves the motion picture, television, audio recording, theater, and digital media industries in the State of Florida. Members include producers, directors, casting agents, cameramen, actors, stuntmen, technicians, make-up artists, set designers, equipment rental companies, recording studios and trade/craft services.

Contact – Linda Nesmith, FMPTA, Metro Orlando at (386) 873-2453

Movie Ad of the Week: ALIEN CONTAMINATION (1981)

2011-08-07T09:00:00.002-04:00

Luigi Cozzi's earthbound ALIEN knock-off CONTAMINATION (1980) opened in Miami, FL on June 12th, 1981 under the title ALIEN CONTAMINATION.

Movie Ad of the Week: SEDUCE AND DESTROY w/ ANGELS' BRIGADE (1982)

2011-07-31T11:46:00.004-04:00

The Aaron Spelling/Leonard Goldberg series CHARLIE'S ANGELS enjoyed three wildly successful seasons on ABC before the ratings went south at the start of the fourth, mostly in response to the departure of Kate Jackson (whose Sabrina Duncan character was certainly our favorite Angel). The show ran for another two seasons but was gone from prime time for almost a year when this cash-in double feature rolled into six Atlanta-area theaters on March 12, 1982. Ironically, SEDUCE AND DESTROY is a retitling of Ted V. Mikels' THE DOLL SQUAD (1973), the snail-paced tale of an all-girl commando team's mission to stop a rogue government agent from stealing U.S. missiles, which Mikels claimed for years was the uncredited blueprint for the Spelling/Goldberg show (One of the characters is even named Sabrina). The second feature, Greydon Clark's ANGELS' BRIGADE (a.k.a. SEVEN FROM HEAVEN) -- about seven young women in a customized van who wage war against drug dealers led by Peter Lawford and Jack Palance -- was sold as a CHARLIE'S ANGELS knock-off when first released in 1979, but it also predates the hit TV show. Announced in the trades in January 1973 as a blaxploitation film titled SEVEN SOUL SISTERS, it was originally to star R&B singer Ginji James in the role that eventually went to leading lady Susan Kiger (Playboy's Miss January 1977), and Aldo Ray as a corrupt cop in business with the drug dealers.

Movie Ad of the Week: FIRECRACKER w/ BAMBOO DOLL HOUSE (1981)

2011-07-24T15:51:00.002-04:00

This double bill of Philippines-shot exploitation from New World Pictures opened at the Rialto Theater (Atlanta, GA) in May 1981. Cirio H. Santiago's first directorial effort for New World since COVER GIRL MODELS six years earlier, FIRECRACKER was a remake of Santiago's own TNT JACKSON (1974) and starred Jillian Kesner, "1981 Winner of the North American Black Belt Olympics" (Similarly, the publicity for TNT JACKSON claimed that star Jeanne Bell was an "Ebony Fist Award" winner). The music is mostly taken from SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980) and the film's most memorable setpiece was shot in L.A. by director Allan Holzman and cinematographer Don Jones.

BAMBOO DOLL HOUSE is a re-release of WOMEN IN CAGES (1971) that utilizes the ad campaign for THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (also '71).

The Endangered List (Case File #110)

2011-07-22T15:00:00.002-04:00

HEROINA (1965)

Starring
Kitty de Hoyos (Laura)
Jaime Sánchez (Chico)
Otto Sirgo (Marcos)
Jeddu Mascorieto (Tito)
Marta Casanas (The Mother)
José de San Antón (The Father)
Nydia Caro (Nina)
Félix Monclova (Nick)
Olga Guillot (The Singer)
Freddie Baez (The Addict)

Produced and directed
by
Jeronimo Mitchell Melendez

Screenplay by
Enrique de la Torre

Story by
Jeronimo Mitchell Melendez

Music by
Charlie Palmieri

Cinematography by
Luis A. Maisonet

Film Editing by
Gloria Piñeyro

Released by
Royal Films International

Also released by
Columbia Pictures
(to Spanish language theaters)

Black-and-white
Running time: 105 minutes

Shot in Spanish
entirely on location
in New York, NY

Special thanks to John W. Donaldson

Contest winners announced

2011-07-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

1. Eric Geggus -- Congratulations! You won the Party Animals for Hire comic book! We'll contact you tonight for your address.

Runner-up winners
2. Michael Irelan
3. Jill Hunter
4. Matthew St. Cyr

(Quasi-Schlocko thought we had 4 copies of Party Animals for Hire to give away, so he pulled another 3 names out of the pickle barrel before we could stop him. We're not exactly sure what the runner-up winners have won, but we'll figure something out).

Bob Chinn book signing/reading this Friday in L.A.!

2011-07-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

Friday, July 8 · 7:30pm

Spring Arts Tower, 453 South Spring Street,
Mezzanine, Los Angeles, CA 90013 (Enter through
The Last Bookstore, acceessible via 5th Street)

Join legendary adult film industry icon Bob Chinn (Johnny Wadd series creator/director and author of Flesh of the Lotus), filmmaker Julia St. Vincent (director of EXHAUSTED), John Holmes biographer Jill Nelson (John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches) and host Bill Margold for the 30th Anniversary of EXHAUSTED and publication party for Bob Chinn’s first Johnny Wadd mystery novel, Flesh of the Lotus. The evening will feature readings by Bob Chinn and Jill Nelson, followed by an intimate screening of EXHAUSTED and more.

Suggested donation is $5.00. Proceeds from book sales and donations will benefit Japan Disaster Relief.

For more information, please contact Rare Bird Lit directly at (213) 623-1773 or , or visit Rare Bird Lit.

The Endangered List (Case File #109)

2011-07-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

THE PLASTIC DOME OF NORMA JEAN (1966)

Starring

Sharon Henesy (Norma Jean)

Robert Gentry (Vance)

Marco St. John (Bobo)

Sam Waterston (Andy)

Skip Hinnant (Francis)

Arthur Hughes (Chris)

Henry Oliver (Mayor)

Jack Murray (Announcer)

Jerry Serempa (Spelunker)

Emma Cody (Mrs. Meekas)

Gilbert Elmore (Chance Lawson)

Stanley Tiffany (Johnny)

Karl Wallace (Sheriff)

George Jackson (Elmer)

Roger Krieger (Finch)

Written and Directed

Juleen Compton

Produced by

Juleen Compton

and

Stuart Murphy

Cinematography by

Roger Barlow

Music by

Michel Legrand

Edited by

Stuart Murphy

Set Decoration by

Sterling Merritt

Filmed in 1965

Premiered at
the San Francisco Film Festival
October 1966

Released in 1974 by Compton-Murphy Productions

Movie Ad of the Week: "The Holy Smoke Show" (1976)

2011-07-03T09:00:00.022-04:00

In 1973, New Line Cinema acquired a trio of 1930s "scare" films -- COCAINE FIENDS (1935), REEFER MADNESS (1936) and SEX MADNESS (1938) -- and reissued them as campy cult films on the college/art house circuit. Here's an ad from January 1976, where they're together on a triple bill advertised as "The Holy Smoke Show."

Big Dusk-to-Dawn Drive-In Show this weekend in Pennsylvania!

2011-07-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

Mystery Movies: THE SAVAGE RIDERS (1973) and TORNADO ON WHEELS (?)

2011-06-28T09:30:00.000-04:00

THE SAVAGE RIDERS was submitted to the MPAA in 1973 (by Pioneer World Distributors) and received an R rating, but we have nothing for TORNADO ON WHEELS. We're hoping one of these turns out to be the elusive MOTORCYCLE MASSACRE.

The Endangered List (Case File #108)

2011-06-27T12:30:00.026-04:00

A Harold Robbins presentation with a score by Quincy Jones? We want a copy! Rated PG by the MPAA in 1972, we know nothing more about YAO OF THE JUNGLE than what's revealed in the grainy newspaper ad above (from Long Beach, CA in 1972).

Movie Ad of the Week: FAST WAY NOWHERE (1966)

2011-06-26T08:00:00.022-04:00

Produced and distributed by Gospel Films of Muskegon, MI (now known as Gospel Communications International), this Christian JD/biker movie was still getting church bookings as late as 1980.

State of the Temple Address 5

2011-06-23T08:36:00.006-04:00

Hey guys & gals! Thank you, as always, for dropping by to say hi. A lot of you have been wondering where the heck we’ve been for the past month and a half. First of all, we appreciate all of the emails we’ve received inquiring about our health, financial state and general well-being, and we apologize if we haven’t had the time or energy to respond to them all in a reasonable fashion. We should've posted a simple "Be back soon!" or something else that would've set minds at ease, but we didn't, and our silence only fanned the flames of gossip. Yes, we’ve heard the rumors that have been circulating, so let’s put an end to one or two of the more eyebrow-raising ones that have come down the pike in the past 5 weeks. No, Po-Man was not Al Green’d into the emergency room by a crazy ex-girlfriend, nor was he shamed into seclusion by a certain pesky message board moderator who dared question your humble editor’s allegiances in a public forum a couple of months ago. You can also breathe easier knowing that we were not victims of Randy Quaid’s “star whacker” conspiracy, which may or may not have claimed the life of legendary Intervision Picture Corp. founder and president Larry Gold III earlier this year in Thailand. Nope, none of that.

So what the hell happened? Well, we took off on a month-long cross-country road trip back in April, and right about the time we were strolling into the Billy the Kid Museum in Fort Sumner, NM, we got a call from Quasi-Schlocko that all hell had broken loose back at the Temple. Instead of returning promptly to take care of business, we boldly (stupidly?) pushed on, hitting the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Graceland and Stax and Sun Records in Memphis, the Buford Pusser Home & Museum in Adamsville, the Shiloh and Chickamauga battlefields, and a bunch of other places we'll post about eventually if we ever clear up the shitstorm that erupted in our absence and is still swirling around us.

The long and short of it: We have to move out of this Temple into a new Temple, so don't expect any kind of consistent posting from us until September, 'cause all the good stuff is boxed up and in storage.

Contest: Win the "Party Animals for Hire" comic book!

2011-06-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Our long-time pal Mike Wood, who’s determined to not become that guy Steely Dan is singing about in “What a Shame about Me,” has collaborated with artist Ed Suckling on a very entertaining comic book titled Party Animals for Hire, Part 1: The Net is Cast. From the back cover: “In their first collaboration since the international crowd-pleaser You. Me. Let’s Hug!, Ed Suckling and Mike Wood return to triumphant form with this biting satire that has everything you could conceivably want in a comic book, and possibly more. Movie stuntmen, courtroom mayhem, big hairy animals…it’s all here, including one helluva plucky heroine! But be warned…you might just end up caught in the net!”

Mike and Ed were nice enough to send us an extra copy of their book, so we’re going to have a drawing on the 4th of July and give it away to one lucky Temple of Schlock subscriber.

Contest rules? There’s only one: If you’re already following us on Blogger, you’ll automatically be entered, but anyone else who wants in on this action needs to either become one of our Worshippers (Followers) or drop us an e-mail that includes your name in the message area and "comic book contest" in the subject line. If Quasi-Schlocko picks your name out of the -- er, whatever hat, box or nearby bucket he's planning to use for this drawing -- we’ll contact you and ask for your mailing address so we can send the book out to you by the end of next week. Cool? OK, so get to it! Let's see some new faces at this party!

Mystery Movies: HOUSEWIFE'S DELIGHT and DIVORCEES ON THE LOOSE (1982)

2011-06-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

The double bill of HOUSEWIFE'S DELIGHT and DIVORCEES ON THE LOOSE opened at two drive-ins in Elyria, OH on October 15th, 1982. They sound like West German sex comedies. All we have so far are the ads below.

The Endangered List (Case File #107)

2011-06-20T09:00:00.003-04:00

CALLIOPE (1971)

a.k.a. LOVE IS CATCHING

Starring

Sherry Miles

Mark Gottlieb

Sherry Bain

Marty Huston

Gwen Van Dam

Lou Epton

Diana Jones

Shelly Fisher

Choo Choo Collins

Borah Silver

Marjorie Bennett

Stan Rose

Directed by

Matt Cimber

Produced by

Harry Korshak

Screenplay by

Beth Keele

Music by

Tommy Oliver

A Moonstone release

Running time: 81 minutes

MPAA rating: R

Movie Ad of the Week: HOMEBODIES (1974)

2011-05-08T12:00:00.020-04:00

Free admission and a prune for the grandmothers of the world on this beautiful Mother's Day. And for their grandkids, look, there's a kiddie matinee of Burt Kennedy's THE WAR WAGON (1967)!

William Grefé double feature at the New Beverly Cinema on May 19th!

2011-05-07T17:00:00.000-04:00

Three weeks ago we had the pleasure of spending the weekend with legendary Florida filmmaker William Grefé and his wife Grace at their North Carolina mountain home. We'll post more about that visit later this week, but right now we're pleased to announce that Bill will be appearing at the New Beverly Cinema on May 19th for a rare double feature screening of his films THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968) and IMPULSE (1974). Details are below.

Eric Caidin & Brian Quinn
with
Grindhouse Releasing
present
The Grindhouse Film Festival

New Beverly Cinema
7165 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-4038

Time: 7:30-11:30 pm
Admission: $8.00
Special guest: William Grefé

7:30pm
THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968)
Directed by William Grefé
Starring Jeremy Slate, Steve Alaimo, John Davis Chandler, Willie Pastrano, Cece Stone, Socrates Ballis and William Kerwin

9:30pm
IMPULSE (1974)
Directed by William Grefé
Starring William Shatner, Ruth Roman, Jenifer Bishop, Kim Nicholas, James Dobson and Harold "Odd Job" Sakata

POOR PRETTY EDDIE finally available on DVD/Blu-ray combo pack!

2011-05-06T11:17:00.002-04:00

POOR PRETTY EDDIE is now available in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Cultra/HD Cinema Classics in the best looking and most complete transfer that's ever been available for your home viewing enjoyment. Extras include an informative audio commentary with cinematographer David Worth (moderated by exploitation film historian Joe Rubin) and a lengthy, exhaustively researched historical essay on the movie by our own Chris Poggiali, packed with quotes from recent interviews he conducted with stars Leslie Uggams and Michael Christian. Check out the reviews for this disc below:

DVD Drive-In
Blue-ray.com
Rock! Shock! Pop!
DVD Verdict
DVD Talk

What are you waiting for? Grab POOR PRETTY EDDIE from your favorite Blu-ray/DVD supplier now!