The Endangered List (Case File #3)

WILLY’S GONE (1968)
a.k.a. GHETTO RAT

CAST
Ronald Bagley
Deborah Massey
James Sherouse
Ed Wolf
Mike Yeager
Bruce Watkins

Produced and directed by Joe Wiezycki

Color by Movielab
A Mix Ten Motion Pictures production

Five years before he made the truly diseased SATAN’S CHILDREN, Joe Wiezycki's first stab at feature filmmaking was the long-lost race drama WILLY'S GONE. A cameraman for WTVT (channel 13) in Tampa Bay at the time, Wiezycki obtained the money to make the movie from his colleagues at the station, many of whom invested $1,000 each. WILLY'S GONE was later re-released as GHETTO RAT, on a double bill with GHETTO FREAKS (a re-titling of another Florida-lensed exploitation film, Robert Emery's AGE OF AQUARIUS).

Read more about Joe Wiezycki here: http://www.big13.net/Satans%20Children/making_of_satans_children.htm

'Satan's Children' Didn't Inspire Murder: Wiezycki

TAMPA, FLA. – Joe Wiezycki, producer for Sterling International Films, discounts the theory that his motion picture "Satan's Children" in any way "inspired" the murder of 20-year-old Kenneth Robert Houston here March 6, 1975. The R-rated film had been completed a week before the slaying, described as being of a "satanic, occult" nature, on location just a few miles from the scene of the killing.

An 18-year-old girl described as a "witch" and her 19-year-old boyfriend, allegedly a "cult wizard," have been charged with first-degree murder by Tampa authorities.

"We just don't see any connection between this senseless murder and our picture," said Wiezycki, "other than the fact that these satan cults do exist and they worship the devil as opposed to God."

He and Gary Garrett, who wrote the screenplay, agree that "Satan's Children" may be "one of the most gory and frightening films of 1975 and has a storyline even more violent than the recent murder."

"Satan's Children" is being distributed in the U.S. by Rex Hansen Films.

(Boxoffice, 5/26/1975, p.10)