Mystery Movies: Two from Group 1 Films

Brandon Chase's Group 1 Films (also known as V.I. Productions, Ltd. and BLC Services, Inc.) was a distribution company that specialized in sleazy European imports (AMUCK!, THE SENSUOUS THREE, NAZI LOVE CAMP #27) that frequently sported cool Robert McGinnis artwork and claimed to be banned in 27 countries but rarely had opening credits or billing blocks to identify the actual movies being ballyhooed. We've solved a couple of these Group 1 mystery movies (like THE MODELS) but there are at least two we have yet to ID.

But before we deal with those, let's get one we have solved out of the way first. The IMDb claims THE GIRLS WHO'LL DO ANYTHING (Group 1 release: 1976) is an Israeli film directed by Boaz Davidson...

...but after a thorough investigation we've come to the conclusion that it's actually Tonino Cervi's LA NOTTATA (1975).

OK, now to the unsolved mystery movies. We know that THE FOUR OF US was rated R by the MPAA in 1974, and earned a domestic gross of $3,276,000 during its first eight months in release in '75.

We also know that there's a print in the American Genre Film Archive, so we reached out to AGFA head archivist Sebastian del Castillo and he sent us the following frame grabs...

We're hoping someone recognizes this movie, or at least the actor in the shots, because we're stumped.

The second unsolved mystery movie is GIRLS IN TROUBLE.

It's a 1974 Group 1 release mistakenly cited everywhere as the West German abortion report PARAGRAPH 218 - WIR HABEN ABGETRIEBEN, HERR STAATSANWALT (1971), which we reviewed as IN TROUBLE, but that film was released in the U.S. as THE JOY OF LOVE in 1974 by United International Pictures. Same year, different movie.

Here's a newspaper ad for THE JOY OF LOVE...

...and this is the trailer for GIRLS IN TROUBLE, which contains not a single shot from PARAGRAPH 218/IN TROUBLE/THE JOY OF LOVE.



Can anyone identify THE FOUR OF US or GIRLS IN TROUBLE, or any of the performers in these movies?

Movie Ad of the Week: THE MODELS (1974)

Here's a post that started as a "Mystery Movie" but quickly morphed into equal parts "Updating the IMDb" and "Movie Ad of the Week." A couple of days ago, our friend Marc Morris asked us to find the true identity of THE MODELS, a Euro sleaze pic that was released in the U.S. by Group 1 Films beginning in 1974. Some sources claim that it's Claude Pierson's AFFAIR (1974), starring Lucretia Love and Paola Senatore, but that was released stateside (with an X rating) in 1976 by Intercontinental Releasing Corporation. After digging our old Alpha Blue Archives tape out of storage, we quickly ascertained that THE MODELS is actually DONNEZ-NOUS NOTRE AMOUR QUOTIDIEN / IN LOVE WITH SEX (1973), also directed by Pierson and starring Love and Senatore.

For a better look at that Robert McGinnis artwork, click below.

Let's get our Teasers straight

Between 1974 and 1978, Group 1 Films commissioned artist Robert McGinnis (best known for his Dell and Gold Medal paperback covers of the 1950s and '60s) to create ad artwork for several of their R-rated softcore sex films. One of the campaigns McGinnis worked on was for a movie called THE TEASERS (1977)...


...which turned out to be an Italian comedy titled LA LICEALE (1975), starring Gloria Guida. This movie was so popular in the U.S. that Group 1 acquired another foreign film they could quickly re-title and pass off as a sequel, THE TEASERS GO TO PARIS (1978), which is actually MARCHE PAS SUR MES LACETS (1977), a French comedy directed by Max Pécas.


Now, this is where things get a little mixed up. At some point in the early '80s, Group 1 re-released THE TEASERS under the title SOPHOMORE SWINGERS, but instead of coming up with new artwork or a different ad campaign, they created stickers of the new title and tag line which could be affixed to existing one-sheets. Unfortunately, this new title was attached to THE TEASERS GO TO PARIS one-sheets instead of THE TEASERS, as you can see below. The result: most online sources now claim that SOPHOMORE SWINGERS is a re-titling of THE TEASERS GO TO PARIS, when it's actually a re-titling of THE TEASERS. To make things even more confusing, SOPHOMORE SWINGERS (THE TEASERS) played double bills with something called LOCKER ROOM TEASERS, which may or may not have been THE TEASERS GO TO PARIS. Whew! Got it? Good. Now all we have to do is explain this mess to the folks at the IMDb!


Oh, and one more thing before we call it a night: compare McGinnis' work on THE TEASERS GO TO PARIS (above) with the two designs he came up with for SEMI-TOUGH one year earlier (below).




Pretty cool, huh?

HARRY AND THE BIKINI BANDITS

The title and the Robert McGinnis artwork hooked me, but what made the sale final was the fact that Harry -- as pictured on the cover -- bears more than a passing resemblance to tough guy actor William Smith. Indeed if this had been produced as a movie in the early 1970s, Smith would’ve been perfectly cast as the macho, carefree and conniving Harry Bullmore, a.k.a. Captain Harry Hook, who makes the national press when he sets sail from New York with an all-girl crew in an old bucket called the Jezebel, destination the Bahamas. The news reaches all the way to Peckinpaugh, Nebraska and the eyes of his 17-year-old nephew Clayton Bullmore III. Hungry for action of any kind -- but preferably the female kind -- Clayton leaves home against his father’s wishes and meets up with the Jezebel in Miami, only to find that the five-girl crew has been whittled down to one: his Uncle Harry’s foxy Chinese bedmate, Miss Wong. Luckily, the broken-down Jezebel is such a conversation piece (and aging beach bum Harry a natural chick magnet) that Clayton is soon playing footsy with Charity Smeeton, a blonde British beauty they find adrift in a rubber life raft, and sepia stunner Elvira McGee, the kept woman of a U.S. senator. Meanwhile, Harry is cuckolding the millionaire owner of a hugely popular hamburger franchise, who trails behind the Jezebel in his fully-equipped yacht Charisma.

Author Basil Heatter settles into a relaxed, humorous R-rated groove for the first act, but switches gears around page 60 when Harry’s shady, diminutive business partner Grogan arrives in Nassau and Clayton finds out the two are planning to rip off the new Paradise Island Casino by replacing the freon tanks in the building’s air conditioning unit with nitrous oxide! Heatter is a decent writer but I suspect his real strength was in the pitch; fully cognizant of what was selling books for publisher Fawcett Gold Medal in 1970, he gleefully crammed everything he could into Harry and the Bikini Bandits. Building upon the marina milieu of John D. MacDonald’s popular Travis McGee mysteries, the story is told first-person by a horny 17-year-old, exactly what Lawrence Block had done successfully the same year with his first two pseudonymous Chip Harrison books. The heist is straight out of a Richard Stark novel -- Parker and Grofield had ripped off an island casino a few years earlier in The Handle -- and all the other bells and whistles (beatniks/hippies/dropouts, pot smoking, exotic beauties, interracial sex) had been staples of trash fiction for years. The result is the paperback equivalent of a late ‘60s drive-in movie from American International Pictures, which is pretty much all I wanted from a book titled Harry and the Bikini Bandits in the first place.

Robert McGinnis' KISS KISS, BANG BANG art

One of the things I enjoy so much about Shane Black's screenplays is that his love of reading -- especially his interest in mysteries and pulp paperbacks -- always manages to cut through the gunfire, explosions and wall-to-wall wisecracks, and it's what ultimately makes his work so distinctive. You can't watch Bruce Willis as Joe Hallenbeck in THE LAST BOY SCOUT without thinking of the hardboiled private eyes of the past, while LETHAL WEAPON and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT owe quite a bit to Warren Murphy's action series writing of the '70s. Black's directorial debut from 2005 -- KISS KISS, BANG BANG (written under the title YOU'LL NEVER DIE IN THIS TOWN AGAIN) -- is broken into chapters named after Raymond Chandler novels, but the story is based on Bodies Are Where You Find Them, one of the many Mike Shayne mysteries written by the prolific Brett Halliday. The artist most associated with Halliday's novels, Robert McGinnis, was hired to create cover art for the mock paperbacks referenced in the movie, and the four postcards below were distributed at sneak preview screenings of KISS KISS, BANG BANG. Enjoy!