Movie Ad of the Week: THE HALLUCINATORS (1971)

William Grefé's THE NAKED ZOO (1970) -- filmed under the title THE GROVE and starring Rita Hayworth, Stephen Oliver, and Fay Spain -- opened in Lima, OH on May 12, 1971 as THE HALLUCINATORS. The tag line "See it the way it isn't" seems especially fitting since this is the Barry Mahon revision of Grefé's film, featuring nudie footage and an appearance by blues rockers Canned Heat. Both versions will be issued on a DVD/Blu-ray combo in 2014 by Vinegar Syndrome.

Stephen Oliver: Two years later

November 29, 1941 - April 5, 2008

Today marks the two year anniversary of the passing of tough-guy actor Stephen Oliver, who played Lee Webber on the TV series PEYTON PLACE but is probably best remembered to Temple of Schlock readers for his lead role in Russ Meyer's MOTOR PSYCHO! and also for his appearances as aging beach bully Dugan Hicks in the Crown International comedies THE VAN and MALIBU BEACH. I mention this because my buddy Bob Plante called Oliver on February 28, 2008 to interview him for the Jack Starrett book we've been working on for over 10 years, and found out that Oliver had just been told a few minutes earlier that he only had 5 weeks to live. Sure enough, five weeks and a handful of days later Oliver succumbed to gastric cancer at age 66. Most sources erroneously cite March 5th as his date of death, which led to some confusion last month when Bob posted a part of his conversation with Oliver as a "two years ago today" post at his blog, Chateau Vulgaria, when the actual date of death was April 5th. We decided to wait the extra month and make it official, and later today we'll probably go to the IMDb and try to correct the mistake, but for now let's all have a moment of silence and then head over to Chateau Vulgaria to read Bob's interview with the late Stephen Oliver.