Movie Ads of the Week: The Many Faces of CAMPER JOHN (1973)

Filmed in the summer of 1972 under the titles ONCE UPON A TRIBE and UP YOURS, PILGRIM! by director Sean MacGregor (DEVIL TIMES FIVE, NIGHTMARE COUNTY), the low-budget "Indiansploitation" action pic CAMPER JOHN stars William Smith as Camper John Allen, a Native American falsely accused of raping and murdering a white girl. Smith co-produced the film with his LAREDO co-star, Peter Brown. The cast also includes Gene Evans, Joe Flynn, Barbara Luna, R.G. Armstrong, Henry Brandon, and Arch Johnson. Cinemation Industries acquired the film for a theatrical release in 1973. The ad above is from the Iowa City, IA opening on October 2, 1974.

A month later (November 15, 1974) it played in Tucson, AZ with a different ad campaign as THE SINS OF BETTY SCHAFFER.

When the film opened in Detroit, MI on June 18, 1975, the title had been changed again, to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. Cinemation president Jerry Gross ripped off this title from a 1959 black-and-white French film that had been released in the U.S. by Audubon Films in 1963 (Audubon had also published a paperback of the Boris Vian source novel, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes). Gross used the title again more famously in 1980 when he re-released Meir Zarchi's notorious rape-revenge flick DAY OF THE WOMAN (1978) as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.

In the 1980s, the film played on TV and was released to home video as GENTLE SAVAGE.

Movie Ad of the Week: PIRANHA! PIRANHA! w/ THE FEARMAKER (1972)

This double feature from Lyman Dayton's short-lived Seventh Seal Distribution opened in Provo, UT on November 8, 1972. PIRANHA! PIRANHA! -- shot in Venezuela under the title CARIBE -- was the second of three low-budget action films co-starring William Smith and Peter Brown, who had played Texas Rangers Joe Riley and Chad Cooper, respectively, on the NBC western series LAREDO (The other two films were CHROME AND HOT LEATHER and CAMPER JOHN). The second-billed THE FEARMAKER is a horror movie filmed in Mexico in 1968, starring Katy Jurado and Paul Picerni. Both films were rated PG. Dayton later formed Doty-Dayton Productions with his father-in-law, George Doty, and specialized in G-rated family entertainment like WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS, SEVEN ALONE, AGAINST A CROOKED SKY, and BAKER'S HAWK.

A Jack Starrett/William Smith double feature to screen in Philadelphia on 7/26

Hey there! I'll be at the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art on Friday, July 26 to introduce 16mm screenings of two movies starring William Smith and directed by Jack Starrett: RUN, ANGEL, RUN! (1969) and HOLLYWOOD MAN (1976). The show starts at 7:30 pm. The event site is here, the press release is below. I hope to see some of you there! -- Chris Poggiali

FINAL FRIDAY FILMS AT THE MAUSOLEUM

Introducing a new monthly 16mm double-feature from Exhumed Films and Cinedelphia.com

Exhumed Films, Philadelphia’s long-running genre film programmers, are teaming with Cinedelphia.com, the online center of Philadelphia’s film community, to present a monthly double-feature of rarely screened films. The series will be held on the final Friday of every month and will feature thematically-related movies projected on 16mm.

The ongoing series debuts on Friday, July 26 and will feature two films from director Jack Starrett and star William Smith:

RUN, ANGEL, RUN! (1969)

Motorcycle gang member Angel reveals the secret inner workings of his club to a journalist and is then forced to go on the run with his girlfriend in tow. Actor Jack Starrett’s directorial breakout hit and William Smith’s first role in a biker film, a genre that he would go on to dominate.

HOLLYWOOD MAN (1976)

Smith stars as Rafe Stoker, a movie producer who gets mixed up with the mob while trying to raise completion funds for his new biker picture. Co-written by Smith, the film is a somewhat autobiographical tale of the toils and tribulations that come with working in the low-budget biker movie industry.

Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art (PhilaMOCA)
531 N. 12th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19123

http://www.philamoca.org
http://www.exhumedfilms.com
http://www.cinedelphia.com

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.