Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

May 13, 2020, 7:23 am

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Babes of Yesteryear: a wasted life's irregular and P.I. feature that takes a look at the filmographies of the underappreciated actresses cum sex bombs of low-culture cinema of the past. Some may still be alive, others not.

As the photo (maybe) and blog-entry title above reveal, we're currently [still] looking at the films of one of the ultimate cult babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded American cis gender, tendentially hetero male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of the 80s: the great Uschi Digard.*

As The Oak Drive-In puts it: "With her long hair, Amazonian build & beautiful natural looks (usually devoid of make-up), nobody seems to personify that 60s & early 70s sex appeal 'look' better than [Uschi Digard]. She had a presence that truly was bigger than life — a mind-bending combination of hippie Earth Mother looks and a sexual wildcat. […] She always seemed to have a smile on her face and almost seemed to be winking at the camera and saying 'Hey, it's all in fun.' Although she skirted around the edges at times, she never preformed hardcore…"

Today, Uschi Digard is still alive, happily married (for over 50 years), and last we heard retired in Palm Springs, CA. To learn everything you ever wanted to know about her, we would suggest listening to the great interview she gave The Rialto Report in 2013. You can find her on that predatory thing known as Facebook.

Please note: we make no guarantee for the validity of the release dates given… or of the info supplied, for that matter.

Herewith we give a nudity warning: naked babes and beefcake are highly likely to be found in our Babes of Yesteryearentries. If such sights offend thee, well, either go to another blog or pluck thy eyes from thee...

Go here for

Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69

Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part V: 1971, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part VI: 1972

Uschi Digard, Part VII: 1973-74

Uschi Digard, Part VIII: 1975

Uschi Digard,Part IX: 1976

Fantasm Comes Again

(1977, dir. "Eric Ram")

Richard Franklyn's Fantasm(1976, see Part IX) proved such a success that a sequel was promptly made — but not by Richard Franklyn. No, this time around Australian producer Antony I. Ginnane hired "Eric Ram" instead, who made his feature film debut with the movie, which was written by "Robert Derriere". For all subsequent film projects, however, the director, Australian Colin Eggleston (23 Sept 1941 – 10 Aug 2002), would use his real name instead of "Eric Ram".Presented in Moanaround.

Theme to

Fantasm Comes Again:

Eggleston is probably best known for his nature-gone-wild flick Long Weekend (1978 / trailer), starring his wife Briony Behets, which was later remade by Jamie Blanks in 2008 (trailer), starring Jesus (otherwise known as Jim Caviezel). Among his films to date, Blanks also directed the slasher Valentine (2001). Producer Antony I. Ginnane, on the other hand, has a yitload of notable and/or successful genre film production credits to his name, including Screamers (1995), one fun genre film amongst many.

The image directly above as well as below the title come from the great website,Temple of Schlock, which, regrettably, seems no longer to get new blog entries. The web was a better place while that blog was still active…

Just as in the first movie, the framing sequences of Fantasm Comes Again were shot Down Under while the soft core stuff was shot in the US with the current crème-de-la-crème of the (mostly) soft-core porn scene and assorted future unknowns. The film was not a hit. John Holmes appears as a glorified extra in the background because, supposedly, "He refused to get into the pool"— which is why William Margold has the pool tryst. In any event, there's a lot of nekkid flesh in this movie, male and female, so if you fear the sight of dangling sausage, you probably shouldn't watch it. But should you want to watch it, Fantasm Comes Again can be found on many of the common virus-infected porn tube sites, so look around.

Digital Fix, however, sees other reasons to skip the flick, saying: "Fantasm Comes Again was much less successful than its predecessor. The use of two actors instead of one in the linking sequences makes the film much longer — and their awful acting doesn't help much either. Also the presentation of the ten episodes as apparent fact rather than fantasy makes them rather more uneasy to watch — and that includes another rape scene, featuring American exploitation veteran Rainbeaux Smith*(at a drive-in cinema that just happens to be showing Fantasm). Ginnane turns up in the last episode in a monk's habit."

*Cult icon Cheryl Lynn "Rainbeaux" Smith (6 June 1955 – 25 Oct 2002) — of, among other movie, Lemora (1973 / trailer), Drum (1976 / trailer), Massacre at Central High (1976 / trailer), and Cinderella (1977 / trailer) — "died in the early morning hours on October 25, 2002 of complications from liver disease and hepatitis after a two-decade struggle with heroin addiction." That's her below with some unidentified dude from a May 1976 Penthouse layout called "Easy Rider".

The wrap-around plot used to frame the "real stories": "Cub reporter Libbie (Angela Menzies-Wills, also found somewhere in the Ozsploiters Nightmares [1980 / trailer]) is given the job of writing her newspaper's sex advice column. A venerable, cynical old hack Harry (Clive Hearne [8 May 1931 – 8 Nov 2003]) does a Miss Lonelyhearts on her by telling her about the wide-ranging tales of sexual experiences and events that have been sent in to him by the rag's readers. Naturally as Harry comments on the heartbalm letters, we see the experiences illustrated visually. [Oz Movies]"

Although some situations are different from the first film, as Mondo Digitalpoints out, the movie follows the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", right down to Uschi having a lesbian role in the hay (literally)….

The individual segments…

"Silence Please": Sex amidst the stacks at a library when the librarian takes advantage of some gals reading the Kama Sutra. A young Johnny Legend (of Bugbuster [1998]), credited under his real name, "Martin Margulies", is amongst the patrons.

"Workout": Coach Rick Cassidy, aka Jim Cassidy (22 July 1943 – 23 Dec 2013), above, who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag but always looks great naked (see, for example, Pat Rocco's downer gay porn drama A Deep Compassion [1972 / scenes], poster below), has uncomfortably under-age-looking gymnast Michael Barton jump around naked on the trampoline before stripping down to join her for an oily massage. (This is the episode that inspired former doctor Larry Nassar to take up sports medicine.)

"Double Feature": Another badly dated misogynistic rape sequence in which No once again means Yes! when Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith gets the rape she actually wanted in a van at a drive-in where Rene Bond's rape sequence of the Fantasm (1976, see Part IX) happens to be on the screen.

"Going Up": A dorky Bill (Herb Layne) is first shocked at some lesbian passion between Penny ("Suzy A. Star") and Sally (Amanda Smith) before joining in the fun for a three-way in a stuck elevator.

"Straw Dolls": "Oh, I just love your breasts! They're like watermelons!" Leslie (Uschi Digart) bares her assets alongside Bianca's (Dee Dee Levitt) lesser assets for a lesbian roll in the hay when the horse-riding duo take refuge from the rain in a barn. Western character actor Dee Cooper ([25 May 1920 – 14 Dec 1989] of Scream [1981 / trailer]), one-time owner of the Paramount Ranch, shows up as a farmer with a pitchfork.

"The Good Old Gang at the Office": Con Covert (1935-90), who in real life supposedly died two days after winning the California State lottery, throws an orgy at his house for his employees. As (almost) always, he finds the time to do drag yet again (see: A Scream in the Streets [1973 / trailer] — and almost any other film he worked on).

"The Kiss of Life": The pool sequence famous for having a clothed John Holmes, who doesn't get into the pool. Instead, early Clown Prince of Porn William Margold shows his family jewels underwater as he romps in the water with three women. Titus Moede ([5 March 1938 – 6 Feb 2001] of The Thrill Killers [1964 / trailer], Rat Pfink a Boo Boo [1966 / trailer below] and more) plays the waiter with the slippery fingers.

Trailer to

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo:

"Family Reunion": Candy Samples (12 Apr 1928 – 23 Sept 2019) returns to play Mom again, whose waterbed action with Uncle Fred (Al Ward) turns her daughter Virginia (Nancy Mann) on so much she joins in the action. Lots of close-ups of Samples's at the time supposedly only 49-year-old love pillows.

"Overdrive": Sterling (Jesse Adams) does some pretty fancy driving of his red convertible when his main squeeze Carol (Christine De Shaffer) does oral duty to his stickshift.

"True Confession": Imogene (Serena) goes to church again, this time to confess her sins, and ends up taking it from by behind from the church janitor Joe (Michael Karnitz). Serena, once famous for never saying no to any sex activity to be filmed, was also one of the most popular porn stars of the Golden Age by the time she simply disappeared. She's since reappeared, but not on screen: go here to the Rialto Report.

Secret Dreams of Mona Q

(1977, dir. Charles Kaufman)

"Marriage without fantasy is like a feast without wine."

Guy de Maupassant

Directed by Charles Kaufman, cinematography by Lloyd Kaufman, and produced by the two combined; one can probably assume they wrote it as well, though it is credited to some one-film wonder named Rolf Schonfeld... It's Sex Troma! As the great Temple of Shock points out, "During the 1970s, before he became known as the producer of The Toxic Avenger (1984 / trailer), Tromeo and Juliet (1997 / trailer) and Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986 / trailer), Troma president and co-founder Lloyd Kaufman dabbled in the New York porno scene. You'll have to hunt around […] because they're certainly not available through the Troma website."

This one, however, is pretty easy to find on DVD, and is also considered to be one of the better (if forgotten) porn entries of the Golden Age. (Odd that so few have ever bothered to write about it — maybe no one had a free hand to do so.) But then, as Charles Kaufman proved well in his next film, the original version of Mother's Day(1980 / trailer below), he could direct a good movie. (Too bad he has directed so few movies in general.) One wonders whether he is as good a baker as filmmaker.

Trailer to the original

Mother's Day (1980):

The possibly now-defunct Uschi Digard website, which if it works again would be found here and was one of the sources we used when compiling our original list of Uschi films, listed this movie in her filmography, as do various other websites, often also claiming she plays the part of "Rebecca" in this East Coast production. But let us set the record straight: No, the titillating West Coast-based actress is not in this movie, and Rebecca is played by an unknown one-shot actress named "Ushi Inger", which contrary to belief, is not an Uschi pseudonym.

But, to grasp at straws, there is a slight link to Uschi, nonetheless: Monique Cardin, the headlining star (she's even named on the poster), supposedly made her un-credited film debut as a"Blonde Secretary"in the Uschi movie Heads or Tails a.k.a. Honey Buns (1973, see Part VII). Unlike Uschi, who didn't do hardcore, Monique, who obviously enoughdid do hardcore, didn't last long in thebusiness: like so many porn actresses, one day around 1979 and after nine films under diverse names (including the porno oddityBaby Rosemary [1976 / full NSFW film]), she simply disappeared.

In Secret Dreams of Mona Q, Monique Cardin plays the titular Mona McKenzie, the frustrated and ignored wife of Bob McKenzie, who is played by one of our fave Golden Age sausages, Wade Nichols (28 Oct 1946 – 28 Jan 1985), born Dennis Posa. Over at the imdb, Woody Anders supplies the core info about the handsome lad (but the Rialto Report has the full story): "Nichols […] worked as a male escort before making his hardcore gay porn film debut in 1975. Wade subsequently appeared in a handful of both straight and gay X-rated movies alike throughout the mid to late 1970's, with an especially memorable turn in the hardcore classic Barbara Broadcast (1977 / trailer) as the hunky kitchen worker who makes love to C.J. Laing. Moreover, Nichols in 1979 recorded the disco album Like an Eagle for Casablanca Records using the name Dennis Parker and toured Europe to promote said album. Wade also first began playing the character of Police Chief Derek Mallory on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night(1956-84) in 1979 under the same alias. Alas, Nichols's character was eventually written out of the show due to the fact that Nichols was seriously ill from AIDS. He died at age 38 of complications from AIDS on January 28, 1985. Nichols was survived by his mother, his older brother Richard, and his partner at the time of his death."

Dennis Parker sings

Like an Eagle:

Speaking of the Rialto Report and now deceased working stiff with moustaches: the cast of Secret Dreams of Mona Q includes David Savage (24 Sept 1948 – 15 June 1992), born David Wayne Zinsavage, who, like Wade, was a slim dude who worked both ways and has since been researched by the Rialto Report. (The advert below for In the Heat of the Knight [1976 / trailer] comes from their website.)

But to return the movie that doesn't feature Uschi Digard, The Secret Dreams of Mona Q. Excalibur Filmy has the plot:"Monique Cardin stars in this freaky, funny, fiery look at a marriage on the rocks. Monique plays Mona Q, a woman who just can't seem to keep her husband (Wade Nichols) interested when it comes to sex. She tries everything, but he still prefers staring at magazine centerfolds to ravishing her. Mona is forced to retreat into her fantasies, where she dreams up a series of explosively erotic encounters. Many of her dreams take place in the woods near their house, and we get to watch as these powerfully passionate outdoor pile-ups take place. Among the hottest is a riveting threesome that finds Alexandria (of Doris Wishman's A Night to Dismember [1983 / trailer]) taking on a couple of studs in a rip-roaring threesome. She also joins luscious Sharon Mitchell (of Daughters of Discipline [1978 / full NSFW film] and Feast [1992 / trailer]) for a little lesbian loving out in the forest. Mona also dreams up a strange fantasy segment in which she's a washing machine repairwoman who trysts with her buffed-out black customer. Meanwhile, Mona's husband is having some decadent dreams of his own. He fantasizes about taking on his sassy secretary and two of her gal pals in a freaky group session. The whole thing escalates until we arrive at a climactic dinner party. There, Mona and her husband come to some shattering realizations. Filled with great performances and stunning sirens, this feature still holds a powerful erotic spell."

Over at the imdb, the DVD-addicted lor_ calls the movie "an above-average specimen" and "a free-form fantasy directed by Charles Kaufman and photographed by his brother and Troma chieftain Lloyd Kaufman with attention to detail generally absent from their later non- X-rated product." He adds, "Among Mona's dreams is an interesting wish-fulfillment where she's chief executive of a firm, lording it over her hubby, alternately putting him in bondage or servicing him. She also masturbates with a huge ribbed dildo here, all with wailing saxophone music playing. […] But the best sequence is Wade's fantasy of girls tending to his every need in the office, nude and fitted out comically with gag devices making one a human lamp (guess where the on/off pull-chord is located) and another a human water cooler (again obvious where the spout for filling Dixie cups is situated). Wade signs a series of documents by shooting (off-screen FX) cum on each page instead of his signature."

Were Uschi truly in the movie, lor would surely have pointed her out — as he has with other hand-helpers he has reviewed.

Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses?

(1977, dir. Robert Levy)

Two years after If You Don't Stop… You'll Go Blind (1975, see Part VIII), director Levy made this sequel, which is now probably known, if at all, primarily for being the feature-film debut of Robin Williams (21 July 1951 – 11 Aug 2014). Uschi Digard"appears for a nanosecond during the opening credits, topless astride an elephant"(photo below), but the truly prominent breasts of the movie are the massively enhanced mounds of LA icon Angelyne (photo further below), who is locally famous, if at all, primarily for being Angelyne. Oddly enough, her famous assets are not emphasized in her small segment.

In regard to Robin Williams' segments, the one which takes place in a courtroom wasn't even in the original release, having been left on the editing room floor. But soon after Mork & Mindy (1978-82) became a hit, the couple of minutes were picked up again and cut back into the movie, which was then re-released as a Robin Williams movie. ("The funniest man on television is now the funniest man in the movies.") A real court case naturally soon followed…

Robin Williams, still alive, in court:

10K Bulletsseems to have liked the movie, and says "Can I Do It ‘Till I Need Glasses?revolves around a series of sexual-themed comedy vignettes. The story are all quick and to the point. The pacing of the film is fast and at times chaotic. […] The direction and performance are all more than adequate in conveying the subject at hand. Even though some the situations and jokes in most of the skits are not original and have been used before. They still remain funny even if they are recycled."

DVD Beaver, on the other hand, was not impressed: "Not even intermittently funny, Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses?is as low-brow as seventies comedy can get. A random series of comedic sketches with no framing device, most of the skits are protracted enactments of jokes that could have been told in two or three sentences. For instance: a husband answers his door and finds a naked man on the doorstep with a bag over his head holding a gun. The husband begs the man not to kill him. The man reveals he's not a robber but a rapist. The punchline: the husband shouts to his wife 'Honey, it's for you.' That's it, end of sketch. It's like R-rated visualizations of pages from those politically incorrect joke books from the sixties and seventies you find on the bookshelf in your uncle's den (which hasn't been remodeled since presumably the seventies). […] Recommended for those who like their humor politically incorrect BUT dated."

Trailer to

Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses?

Among the jokes DVD Talkthought worth noting: "A Native American girl, sitting outside her teepee, learns from her father how she got the name Broken Rubber. A Confucius-like Chinese man accuses his daughter of dating a Jew; 'What schmuck tell you that?,' she counters. A fat guy tells his girl, 'I really want to get in your pants'; cut to him walking away, wearing her tight pink panties. The great comfort in all this is the knowledge that each tableau will be over in a minute or two. (I did chuckle, though, at a male nudist delivering two coffees and two doughnuts.*)"

*Who is the most popular guy in a nudist colony? The one that can carry two cups of coffee and a dozen doughnuts at the same time. The most popular woman? The one that can eat the 12^th doughnut. [Reddit thread]. Rest assured, anyone who tells jokes like this has never actually been to a nudist colony. Here's one we knew a wee kids...

As typical of the Golden Age of Drive-Ins, and as the 1983 advert above reveals, at least at the Ascot Triple Drive-In in Akron, Ohio, the comedy Can I Do It 'til I Need Glasses? was at one point incongruently screened with a nice variety of forgotten sleazy-sounding titles: House of Shame (probably Olga'sHouse of Shame [1964 / trailer]), Women in Bondage (possibly Monogram's 1943 exploiter/ scene), State Line Motel (possibly the Italo Stateline Motel aka L'ultima chance [1973/ trailer]), and trashmeisterErwin C. Dietrich's TheYoung Seducers aka Blutjunge Verführerinnen (1971 / full NSFW film) — although we believe the lady shown in the advert might be the pre-overly plasticized Babe of Yesteryear Joyce Gibson/Mandel (10 Mar 1950 – 13 Oct 2016), who isn't in that film...

The Kentucky Fried Movie

(1977, dir. John Landis)

"Never before has the beauty of the sexual act been so crassly exploited!"

The classic amongst the anthology sketch comedy films that flooded the screens in the 70s, a genre that has for the most part died out (the last one we saw, and laughed our heads off at, was the immensely tasteless Movie 43 [2013 / trailer]). Also typical of the times and found in KFM: lots of naked breasts. And P.I. humor.

Trailer to

Kentucky Fried Movie:

As directed by John Landis, who made his directorial debut six years earlier with Schlock! (1971 / trailer), the movie helped launched a directorial career that even survived the death of Vic Morrow and two children during the filming of his segment of The Twilight Zone Movie (1982 / trailer). The scriptwriters — Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker — also went on to substantial careers, together and apart, though our favorite movie of theirs, Top Secret! (1984 / trailer), typically enough, was their biggest flop.

"The Kentucky Fried Movie," saysCracked Rear Viewer,"takes guerilla comedy to the extreme. A series of unrelated events, KFM skewers local news, commercials, PSAs (Henry Gibson in a United Appeal for the Dead), TV shows, and movies. There's some previews of Coming Attractions thrown in, touting 'Samuel L. Bronkowitz' productions of R-rated titillation pics (Catholic High School Girls in Trouble), disaster movies (That's Armaggedon!!), and Blaxploitation (Cleopatra Schwartz). The big set-piece is A Fistful of Yen, a pitch-perfect kung-fu parody with leads that can't pronounce their R's ('Total consentwation'), cheesy sound effects, an evil villain bent on world domination, and an insanely funny conclusion."

We re-watched the movie recently and came away with laugh cramps. A Fistful of Yen probably couldn't get made nowadays, nor would the short skit Danger Seekers (the N-word alone negates it), and there wouldn't be either as much nakedness or as many gay jokes, but the movie as a whole remains more funny than dated. Our favorite segments remain the trailer for Cleopatra Schwartz, with the delicious, doe-eyed Babe of Yesteryear Marilyn Joi, of the Jim Kelly-vehicle Black Samurai (1977 / trailer), Mansion of the Doomed (1976 / trailer) and a lot of other fun trash, like Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976, see Part IX), as the titular Cleopatra.

Cleopatra Schwartz:

Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, famously enough, is the segment featuring Uschi Digard, whose famous breasts are felt up in a zoom to squeaky-balloon sound effects and subsequently squashed against a shower door during a shower sex scene. But hers are not the only merry melons paraded in the 2-minute faux-trailer: there's the memorable topless conversation between three healthy Catholic high-school girls (Nancy Mann, Lenka Novak [of Vampire Hookers(1978 / trailer) and Betsy Genson] who are later chained up and whipped by a dwarf...

The Wonderful World of Sex sketch is pretty funny, and a good argument against instructional records. Stuntman Manny Perry, in his full yummy muscular prime, shows up for the punch line as "Big Jim Slade".

But though we find The Kentucky Fried Movie funny, not everyone does. Flick Filosopher, for example, says, "If I had been introduced to the film at a more impressionable age, I might today have pleasant adolescent memories of it that would color my grownup response to it today, and perhaps I could be kinder to a movie considered a comedy classic by some. But I wasn't, I haven't, and I can't. […] The Kentucky Fried Movie believes itself to be wild, but it's depressingly quite restrained: it sets up a formula for itself — cheap setup, obvious punchline, then a treadmill of repeating the punchline instead of developing it even further — and never once deviates from it." (Sounds like the Trump presidency to us, actually.)

Female Fever

(1977, dir. Alain Patrick)

Though listed at the imdband at the (possibly now-defunct) Uschi Digard website as 1977 release, more than one on-line lead indicates that the movie was actually shot in 1970, possibly 1972.

Occasional actor/filmmaker Alain Patrick disappeared by 1979, two years after his last directorial release (this one), which is credited to the pen of Mikel Angel (31 Oct 1926 – 21 April 2001), who wrote a number of movies for Matt Cimber. (See our typically meandering blog entry at our dead blog Mostly Crappy Books on Gregg Tyler's trashy "biography"The Joy of Hustling.)

The generally highly reliable Temple of Schlock, whence the advertisement below comes and which has the film on its "Endangered List", gives Fusion as an A.K.A. title to Female Fever, and indeed we tend to think that Female Fever and Fusion are indeed one and the same movie, though Fusion (1970) is generally credited as a directorial effort of Paul Hunt. Both movies, however, are always credited as having the same producer, "the elusive Ed De Priest"— and going by what De Priest says at the Rialto Report, they could indeed be one and the same movie: "Fusion was an R-rated movie. It was shot during the transition period to hardcore, and I said, 'Let me try to transition to an R-rated movie instead', so I produced this movie. We filmed it at my A-frame house in the Hollywood Hills and then around Hollywood. It was a murder thing. It was not a very good film but we did have some good camera work and it was photographed real nice. I don't remember if Alain Patrick was the director but Paul Hunt did some second unit photography and he'd built a little opening scene for that movie with Ron Garcia. I did a little intro, a little prologue, to it. It had Luanne Roberts and somebody, Michael Stern maybe. I forget the actors, but it wasn't a success so I went back to the sex films."

De Priest makes no mention of any novel by an author named Richard Evan, upon which the Temple of Schlock claims the film may be based, nor, for that matter, of Uschi.

One-Sheet Indexhas the full plot to Female Fever aka Fusion, which it also proclaims a 1970 release: "A bizarre tale of sex and psychodrama begins when Cathy (Damian Zisk), an inexperienced young artist is befriended by Ruth (LuAnn Roberts), a worldly and sophisticated woman. On the spur of the moment Ruth invites Cathy to live with her. At first, Ruth is flattered by Cathy's devotion and the undertones of a lesbian relationship bring them closer and closer. As Cathy develops a possessive fixation on the older girl, we begin to realize that she has a dark, psychotic side to her nature. At a house party given by Ruth, she encourages Cathy to mingle with her guests. Cathy is persuaded by Michael (James Lemp [2 Aug 1938 – 6 Nov 2012] of The Love Butcher [1975 / trailer] & The Garden of the Dead [1972 / full film]), a gentle, handsome man, to go with him to his home. There, in spite of herself, she succumbs to his masculine charm. It is her first love affair with a man and she is torn by her feelings toward Ruth and her newly found attraction to Michael. She confesses to Ruth these mixed emotions and of her affair with Michael. Ruth tries to explain to an innocent Cathy that it is possible to love more than one person at the same time. Later, in a chance meeting, the triangle takes form. Ruth and Michael are attracted to each other and begin an exciting courtship. They try to let Cathy down gently but she is hurt and confused. In their desire not to hurt her, they include Cathy in all their activities, but soon their longing to be only with each other leads Ruth and Michael to exclude Cathy more and more from their company. Eventually in a desperate move to break away, Ruth and Michael go to Acapulco. Brooding alone, Cathy is torn between the two people she loves. In a scene remarkable for its outstanding photography, she fantasizes the murder of Ruth and Michael, her tortured mind rationalizing her act because she had loved them both. She has crossed the thin line between love and hate and now they must pay for her rejection. This is one of the most eerie and bizarre murder scenes ever put on film. As Cathy's fantasy comes to an end, we find Ruth and Michael at the door. They are returned from their vacation and together they inform Cathy that they were married in Acapulco. Cathy feigns delight, but starts living out her nightmare in reality. As the picture ends, suspense grips us and we are left wondering whether or not Cathy's murderous fantasy will become real."

Uschi Digard is there for the ride, somewhere, along with Neola Graef. Indeed, Female Fever appears to be the last movie Neola Graef ever appeared in before she decided to give up films and work on her tan under coconut trees.

At the Ohio Midway Drive-In, as revealed above, Female Fever was screened with a movie we couldn't locate, Everyday (year and everything unknown by us) and the 1968 faux-Swedish exploiter Sappho Darling (1968, see Part I).

Trailer to

Sappho, Darling:

Needless to say, Alain Patrick's Female Fever should in no way be confused with the possibly as equally lost documentary entitled Female Fever aka Image of Love (poster below) by the respected (and dead) documentarian Louis ("Lou") Clyde Stouman (15 July 1917 – 13 Sept 1991), "an ambitious review of man's sacred and profane concepts of love as expressed and revealed through the ages in various works of art […]."

BTW: Female Fever aka Image of Love has Anthony Newley (24 Sept 1931 – 14 April 1999, of Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness... [1969 / trailer]) speaking the commentary, "which is a jumble of erudition, passable wit and feeble jokes [with which] Mr. Stoumen presents us with the evidence of man's eternal quest for ideal beauty, ranging from a primitive carving of a fat and fertile female to modern girls in bikinis or less, from fragments of Greek statuary to the latest in foreign sports cars." We mention that as an excuse to embed the song below — enjoy!

Anthony Newley — Princess Trampolina

(from Heironymus Merkin):

Hot Skin in 3-D

(1977, dir. "Norm de Plume")

A.k.a. Disco Dolls in Hot Skinand Blonde Emanuelle. "Norm de Plume", aka "Giorgio Ferrari", is probably the nom de plume of Stephen Gibson — aka S.C. Gibson, Steve Gibson, Stan Gelson, Stephen Charles Gibson and Pierre La Farce. Indeed, we wouldn't be surprised if he were also Ann Onymous & Mark Thunderbuns, the two supposed authors of the screenplay to Disco Dolls in Hot Skin, as he seems to have written the screenplay to many of his known production/directorial credits, which are all 3-D movies: The Playmates (1973 / full film), Black Lolita a.k.a Wildcat Women (1975 / intro), Hard Candy (1976 / trailer), this flick here and, most recently, the obscure splatter comedy Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick (2014 / trailer directly below).

Trailer to

Hackin' Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick:

Disco is the original hardcore cut, Blondethe "softcore" cut; in Disco, the name of the main character, played by Serena, changes from Jennifer to Emanuelle. (Trivia: Serena's feature-film debut may have been an un-credited part in Black Lolita as an agent — a fact mentioned as an excuse to embed the poster, which we have always liked for some odd reason.)

In any event, both versions of the movie enjoyed some cult popularity towards the end of the last century as a "So Bad It's Good" product. (Over at efilmcritic, for example, it gets a non-Siskel & Ebert ranking of "Two dicks down".)

Though John Holmes is listed everywhere and by almost everyone as a star of the film, he is but an extra that appears in the background during a party scene; he doesn't even have a real scene. Uschi does, however, though not hardcore: she plays Anna, who gets it on with Harry Balls (William Margold), whose name is the joke that famously gets flogged like a dead horse over the course of the movie. (Her scene, however, is not only not hardcore, it isn't even in the hardcore version of the movie.)

Over at All Movie, Mark Deming offers the following plot description: "A kiss is just a kiss, but it often leads to other things in this farcical adult comedy which bears a certain narrative resemblance to Casablanca (1942 / trailer). Chick (Mike Ranger) is the owner of a combination nightclub and brothel. One night he is surprised to see Emmanuelle (Serena) walk through the door with her lover, Harry Balls (William Margold [2 Oct 1943 – 17 Jan 2017]). Chick used to be involved with Emmanuelle, but her sexual appetite so sapped his strength that he's been unable to perform with another woman since, including his new girlfriend (Leslie Bovee), so he's a bit taken aback by her sudden appearance. It turns out that Emmanuelle and Harry are on the run from a police detective (Con Covert [1935 – 1990]) looking to bust Harry for embezzlement; Emmanuelle and Harry give Chick an incriminating note for safekeeping, and when it goes missing during an erotic free-for-all, there's a rush among several parties to find it. A psychiatrist (Bert Davis) appears periodically to counsel the various characters along the way. [...]"

Uschi's Anna character is the main waitress at Chick's club. For a change, Con Covert doesn't do drag in the movie. Mike Ranger's legendary big & fat & left-curving weapon of wonder is indeed one of mass destruction, and he looks great from the neck down, but for all his popularity during the Golden Age, he is a man whom we think we would find hotter if he had a bag over his face. (That said, in comparison to John Holmes, who was/is ugly personified, he is good looks personified.)

Ranger whipped out his rent-payer for the last time in the mid-1980s, probably for Taboo III(1984 / scene), the last non-loop porno movie with any semblance of a plot in which he is found; where he is now or what he is doing, no one knows.

Over at Whateverishly: The Greatest Blog Ever Hula'd, Coco Buchanan did not find the movie all that culty fun, saying that the flick "contributed to me feeling like I just wanted to go home and chop my genitals off". Aside from the fact that there was one too many blowjobs for her taste and an audience of obnoxiously drunk dudes, there was the typical (for the time) "no means yes" forced sex scene and "a scene towards the end that involved one of the main characters (Harry Balls, played by William Margold) drowning a dom (Pat Manning) as he's fucking her. I think that might have been where it took its most repulsive turn, for me. There was also this running gag with her dead body that made light of the fact that this woman had been killed. I mean, I know it's a porn, so it's supposed to be raunchy, crass, etc., but I honestly cannot not think of anything less erotic. [...]"

More Uschi coming next month…

↧

Short Film: Very Lonely Cock (2015)

May 19, 2020, 11:13 pm

≫ Next: R.I.P.: Peter Thomas

≪ Previous: Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part X: 1977

"It is a hard day for the very lonely cock."

[Odense International Film Festival]

Contrary to what the one-line blurb above, and even the (probably poorly translated) title might make the film sound like, a wasted life's May 2020 Short Film of the Month, Very Lonely Cock, is not a documentary on the atrophied member of some incel who's too dim to realize that women opening their legs wide to misogynist white losers is not a god-given right of idiots who refuse to accept the fact that they themselves are their own biggest problem. No, this month's short film is a Russian kiddie film created by Leonid Shmelkov, whose English is obviously somewhat shaky or who doesn't know that cocks — that's "roosters" to us god-fearing folks who know a nasty word when they see it — don't lay eggs. (Unless…)

We stumbled upon the endearing but relatively obscure animated short at the (regrettably) now-inactive short-film blog, Kafkian Mood, a site we recently found and we suspect will lead us to further Short Film(s)of the Month in the future. And why do we like Ohen' Odinokiy Petux (a.k.a. Very Lonely Cock)? Because it is an oddly sweet but nevertheless melancholic one-joke movie that never bores. Also, it doesn't have a nasty bone in its body — even visual concepts that should be unsettling remain incongruously un-mean — and goes to surreal levels as found only in kiddie films, thus remaining watchable and enjoyable until its final frame. Which, like life, is almost anti-climactic.

"Essentially the tale of what happens to a farmer's chicken [...] when its routine is unexpectedly interrupted, Shmelkov's film really excels in the unanticipated direction it takes. Unleashing a series of bizarre scenarios for his feathered protagonist to face beak-on, Very Lonely Cockis laugh-out-loud fun and damn stylish to boot. [Short Film of the Week]"

Very Lonely Cock from Leonid Shmelkovon Vimeo.

As a contrast to Very Lonely Cock, may we suggest you check out that other chicken-featuring Russian short we chose as our Short Film of the Month in November 2017, the bizarre Ego zhena kuritsa / Hen, His Wife[Soviet Union, 1990], which may be watchable until the last frame but is both definitely not for kids and oddly unsettling.

↧

R.I.P.: Peter Thomas

May 25, 2020, 12:52 pm

≫ Next: Jusqu'au déclin / The Decline (Canada, 2020)

≪ Previous: Short Film: Very Lonely Cock (2015)

(1 Dec 1925 – 17 May 2020)

Were we in Berlin, where we live, instead of on Mallorca, where we've been on lockdown since March, we might have heard sooner, but we only learned the other day from the blogspot Dwrayger Dungeon that the last of what we always thought of as the "Big Three"*, Peter Thomas, died last week. Relatively unknown in the USA, Peter Thomas "was a German composer and arranger with an active career of more than 50 years. He was known for his TV and film soundtracks such as Raumpatrouille, the Edgar Wallace movies film series, and the Jerry Cotton film series. [Wikipedia]"

Indeed, his soundtrack to Raumpatrouille, like The Jerry Cotton March, are part of the communal kulturgutof contemporary Germany, musical compositions that are perhaps better known and recognized than even some of the greatest works of Beethoven, if not (definitely) those of other German composers like Mendelssohn, Schumann, Strauss or Telemann.

*We here of a wasted life is surely not alone in thinking that the trio of Martin Böttcher (17 June 1927 – 20 April 2019), Gert Wilden (15 April 1917 – 10 Sept 2015) and Peter Thomas, all of whom rose to prominence in the 60s scoring German movies, can be seen as the three masters of German film music of Germany's heyday of genre films, which we see as spanning from the start of the 60s to the early 70s.

What follows is an arbitrary selection of examples of Thomas compositions mostly in the order of how they came on YouTube when we searched his name +movie, beginning with his two best-known works. We don't include any of his non-film compositions or groovy space-age cum stereophonic or go-go cover versions.

It is but a small selection of example: Peter Thomas composed for an excess of 170 movies and TV programs.

Raumpatrouille (1966):

Jerry Cotton March:

The Jerry Cotton franchise, starring American George Nader (19 Oct 1921 – 4 Feb 2002), a man perhaps best remembered for his first starring role in the classic 3-D disasterpiece Robot Monster (1953), spans eight films between 1965 and 1969. The first of the series was Schüsse Aus Dem Geigenkasten a.k.a. The Violin Case Murders (credit sequence).

Melissa
(1966, dir. Paul May)

Title track to a three-part mini-series on German TV, a hit in 1966 and remade in 1974. Did the husband or didn't the husband kill his wife?

Verräter [Traitor]
(1967, dir. Michael Braun)

Title track to a three-part mini-series on German TV, a hit in the country in 1967. We know nothing about the mini-series, other than it is a spy "thriller" supposedly based on a Victor Canning(16 June 1911 – 21 Febr 1986) novel.

Das indische Tuch
(1963, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. The Indian Scarf. A great German Edgar Wallace krimi, for a change not about a purty girl and an inheritance— we reviewed it back in 2016. Hit the linked title to go to find out what we wrote…

Der unheimliche Mönch
(1965, dir. Harald Reinl)

A.k.a. The Sinister Monk. Another great B&W Edgar Wallace krimi, this time about a purty girl and an inheritance and a mysterious murderer dressed like a monk with whip knocking off people at a private school for girls.

Main theme to

Der unheimliche Mönch:

Der Mann mit dem Glasauge
(1969, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. The Man with the Glass Eye (trailer) — a later film in the German Edgar Wallace franchise, this pop-burlesque krimi, the 14th and last Wallace directed by Alfred Vohrer, has a lot of great things about it but a disastrous ending. The following is not the title track, but the track, Nora.

Nora from
The Man with the Glass Eye:

Chariots of the Gods?
(1970, dir. Dr. Harald Reinl)

"Documentary based on the book by Erich Von Daniken concerning the ancient mysteries of the world, such as the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, ancient cave drawings, the monuments of Easter Island, etc. and the fact that these things and modern civilization could have been influenced by extra-terrestrial visitations hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of years ago. [Humberto Amador at imdb]"

Also from imdb: "[The film] was banned in East Germany one day after its release" and "The director, Oscar-nominee Harald Reinl (8 July 1908 – 9 October 1986), was stabbed to death [on Tenerife] by his wife [Daniela Delis], a former actress."

Main theme from

Chariots of the Gods:

Die Tote aus der Themse
(1971, dir. Harald Philipp)

A.k.a. Angels of Terror, the last Rialto Edgar Wallace krimi to be shot in Germany before the franchise went giallo, and not one of the best. Great music, though, and Ingrid Steeger bares her magnificent pair.

Plot: "An Australian woman arrives in London to search for her sister who she finds is involved with a heroin smuggling gang. The gang itself is under attack from an unknown rival, who is methodically assassinating them with a shot to the head. [imdb]"

Music to

Die Tote aus der Themse:

Playgirl
(1966, writ. & dir. Will Tremper)

The decidedly non-grindhouse film got released in the U.S. as an exploitation film entitled That Woman.

Plot: "Highly paid, much-adored fashion model Alexandra Borowski (Eva Renzi, see Don Sharp's Taste of Excitement [1970]) wants a steady, traditional relationship with a strong, caring man, but she can't seem to find one while she bed-hops from creep to creep. She pauses with rich businessman Siegbert 'Bert' Lahner (Harald Leipnitz), a potential candidate for marital bliss, but he too proves incompatible, so she moves on to an uncertain future. [TV Guide]"

Title track to

Playgirl:

Tang shan da xiong
(1972, writ. & dir. Wei Lo)

A.k.a. The Big Boss and, in Germany, Die Todesfaust des Cheng Li— the movie that made Bruce Lee a star, at least in Asia. His first big project after the end of the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-67) a full four years earlier, The Big Bosshas had in total three different soundtracks at three different times. The second was by Peter Thomas.

Wikipediasays: "The Big Boss is unique in having not only two, but three completely different music scores. […] The first music score for it was composed by Wang Fu-ling […]. This was made for the original Mandarin language version, and was also used in the English export version, in addition to the theatrical French and Turkish versions. […] The second and most popular of the music scores was by German composer Peter Thomas. […] Thomas's involvement stems from a complete reworking of the English version of the film. The early version featured the British voice actors who worked on all Shaw Brothers films and used Wang Fu-ling's score. It was decided to make a new English version that would stand out from the other martial arts films. New actors were brought in to voice the film in English, and Thomas re-scored the film, abandoning Wang Fu-ling's music. The German dubbed version features his score, especially in the German title of the film […]."

Plot: "Cheng (Bruce Lee) is a city boy who moves with his cousins to work at an ice factory. He does this with a family promise never to get involved in any fight. However, when members of his family begin disappearing after meeting the management of the factory, the resulting mystery and pressures forces him to break that vow and take on the villainy of the Big Boss (Ying-Chieh Han). [Kenneth Chisholm @ imdb]"

Peter Thomas's music to

The Big Boss:

Der Letzte Mohikaner
(1965, dir. Harald Reinl)

A.k.a. The Last Tomahawk. A German version of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans.

We took a look at this film in Part II of our RIP piece on Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, where we wrote: "Joachim Fuchsberger plays Captain Bill Hayward in the first of his only two westerns and the last film he was ever to make together with director Harald Reinl. Karin Dor is of course along for the pony ride. Unlike the novel, this version of the tale includes a chest full of government gold, an exploding mountain, and a cavalry charge. […]

"To loosely translate the plot given at the Film Reporter: 'North America during the times of the American Indian Wars: the English and French are fighting for the colonial control of the new world and pull in Native Americans as allies. The Iroquoian Chief Magua (Ricardo Rodríguez) attacks the Mohicans [in some versions, the "Tomahawks"]. With the help of the whiteys, he destroys the entire tribe. Unkas (Daniel Martín of Demon Witch Child [1975 / full movie], Devil's Guests [1976 / fashion show], Crypt of the Living Dead [1973 / full movie] and Mystery on Monster Island [1981 / trailer]) is the only survivor of the dastardly attack. He swears revenge upon his Chingachgook (Mike Brendel). Magua continues his nasty deeds, and as return for the previous assistance of whitey Roger (Stelio Candelli), he helps Roger and his gang attack a money transporter. But the attack goes wrong and the soldiers escape with the money to a nearby farm where the British officer Munroe (Carl Lange of Die blaue Hand [1967 / trailer]) calls the shots. He's holding the fort with the last his soldiers, but his thoughts are with his daughters Cora (Karin Dor) and Alice Munroe (Marie-France). They are underway to him, a dangerous journey in that day and age. Magua pretends to be a messenger of Daddy Munroe so as to lure women and their companions into a trap...' […]"

The main title to

The Last Tomahawk:

Van de Velde: Die vollkommene Ehe

(1968, dir. Franz Josef Gottlieb)

A classic example of late-60s/early-70s German sexploitation, a.k.a. The Perfect Marriage, Ideal Marriage and Intimate Desires of Women. Director Gottlieb's oeuvre spans krimis like Die Schwarze Abt (1963) to sexploitation like this or the great comedy horror Lady Dracula (1977, see R.I.P. Walter Giller) to bottom-of-the-barrel trash like Die tollen Tanten schlagen zu (1971 / German trailer).

At imdb, the great purveyor of porn culture, lor, writes: "[…] [Theodoor Hendrik] van de Veldeof the title was a Dutch author, who penned the marriage manual in question back in 1926. We're shown a series of dumb vignettes, amounting in content to the format of the Love American Style series of a couple years later, but German. A U.S. professor serves as our white-coat host. Perhaps the only odd element is a family taking their little kids to watch horses mating on a farm — they find this a natural process of maturation but I daresay it would still offend on American shores. Similarly, an eight-year-old girl bathing with her old daddy in the bathtub is another paean to 'natural behavior', but in an acted context like this one it is again suspect. Some of the actresses are quite attractive, especially a busty girl who's frustrated because hubby only wants to watch TV. Overall this is dull soft porn pretending to be educational. The crude diagrams showing male and female private parts (external and internal) hardly constitute hardcore content by any definition."

Van de Velde's book already inspired a film version as early as 1929, Eberhard Frowein's Marriage, the German poster for which, seen above, was created by the great Josef Fenneker(1895-1956). Early exploitation filmmaker Frowein went on to write the contentious Nazi pro-euthanasia film, Ich Klage an a.k.a. I Accuse (1941 / scene), as well as the anti-Jew novel, Am seidenen Faden, which got filmed in 1938 by Robert A. Stemmle.

Peter Thomas's Natascha from

The Perfect Marriage or maybe Every Night of the Week:

Followed by Van de Velde: Das Leben zu zweit — Sexualität in der Ehe (1969), also known as Every Night of the Week and likewise scored by Peter Thomas.

Per @ imdb: "The 2nd of 2 Franz Josef Gottlieb films supposedly based on the works of Dutch gynecologist Van de Velde. A precursor to the more popular Schoolgirl Report pseudo-documentaries, the Gottlieb 'Van de Velde' films tried to take a scientific approach to various sexual discoveries within relationships. Taking the documentary route would allow Gottlieb (and other director's of the time) to introduce more graphic and risqué subject matter that was normally not shown in Germany during this time period."
In other words: the films were German white-coaters.

Peter Thomas's The Wolrd's History from

The Perfect Marriage or maybe Every Night of the Week:

Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand
(1966, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. Winnetou and Old Firehand and Thunder at the Border. A classic film score that is also embedded deep in the kulturgut of contemporary Germany is Martin Böttcher's main theme to Winnetou a.k.a. Apache Gold (1963 / trailer), the second of twelve films if you count the last, Winnetous Rückkehr (1998), a TV movie.

Martin Böttcher's
Winnetou:

The franchise lasted way too many films, but Peter Thomas only scored one, the tenth. (Böttcher scored them all but for this film and the third, Old Shatterhand a.k.a. Apaches' Last Battle [1964 / trailer], which was scored by the great Riz Ortolani.)

Plot: "Horse thieves unwisely attempt to steal mustangs from Winnetou's (Pierre Brice) Apache tribe. Four Indians are killed and Winnetou's sister, Nscho-tschi (Marie Versini) is wounded in the arm. Seeking justice, Winnetou, accompanied by an old friend, trapper and mountain man Jason Waade, better known as Old Firehand (Rod Cameron), ride to the nearby Mexican pueblo of Mira Monte along with Old Firehand's companions, cocky young gunfighter Tom (Todd Armstrong) and wily old coot Caleb (Vladimir Medar). There they learn that Billy (Walter Wilz), the gambler kid brother of the gang's leader, Silers (Harald Leipnitz […]), is being held on murder charges by Capt. Mendoza (Rik Battaglia), the leader of a patrol stationed there. Silers threatens to wipe out the entire village unless Billy is released. Meanwhile, Tom and Nscho-tschi fall in love, while Old Firehand, reunited with old lover Michèle Durell (Nadia Gray), discovers she bore him a son, 17-year-old Jason, known as Jace (Jörg Marquardt). […] [DVD Talk]"

Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand — A Symphony:

Im Banne des Unheimlichen

(1968, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. The Hand of Power. Fun film! Click the link to read what we had to say about it. Over in Part III of our R.I.P. Career Review of Joachim Fuchsberger we "loosely translate[d] the plot description as given at and by Rialto Film: 'At the funeral for Sir Oliver, the ghastly laughter of the dead man resounds from the coffin. Peggy Ward (Siv Mattson) — a reporter — writes about and continues investigating the incident. Then, those belonging to the immediate circle of the dead Sir Oliver begin dying mysterious deaths — indeed, Sir Oliver's brother, Sir Cecil (Wolfgang Kieling), believes that Sir Oliver's ghost is out to get him. But Inspector Higgins (Fuchsberger) does not believe in ghosts. Together with the reporter Peggy, he sets out to unravel the mystery of the laughing corpse.' […]"

The Space of Today from
Im Banne Des Unheimlichen:

Die Weibchen
(1970, dir. Zbynek Brynych)

This now obscure but once scandalous and movie, which one could easily argue as being anti-feminist propaganda disguised as a feminist film, has long been on our "To Watch" list.

While the official English title is The Females, a more on-the-mark translation of the title to this man-written — by Manfred Purzer — and man-directed — by Zbynek Brynych (12 June 1927 – 24 Aug 1995) — prime slice of once topical (and "insanely hilarious" and "delirious") "horror fantasy"exploitation would probably be "The Little Broads" or "Little Chicks" or even "Little Women"— you get the general idea.* Outside of Germany, the title usually given was, if translated into English, Cannibal Women.

Trailer to

Die Weibchen:

*If not, then how about this slice of trivia supplied at imdb: "When Eve (Uschi Glas) first arrives at the health spa, the first woman to greet her on the grounds is carrying a German translation of Valerie Solanas' radical feminist SCUM Manifesto." (SCUM you may remember, is the Society for Cutting Up Men.)

Die Weibchen, oddly enough, is virtually unknown today — but available on DVD. A few dedicated men at Letterbxdhave seen this "outrageous sleaze" about "a young woman [who] joins an exclusive women's health clinic only to discover it's run by feminist cannibals". There, Smellingtonwrites "Well, it's no Female Chauvinists (1975, seeUschi Part VIII) […]. The Females (or more appropriately Femmine Carnivore) is pretty interesting (especially the camera work) but not very smart. Music is groovy but thrills are minimal, Overall, it's either very sexist or VERY feminist depending on your mood/viewpoint/sobriety (or maybe kinda pointless), but it's all a fucking dream anyhoo, anyway, whatever. But hey if you're writing a paper on Gaslighting, cannibalism, euro gender politics and the counter culture of the late 60s, and you're an asshole (heh) then I've got a movie for you."

Go go go to

Die Weibchen:

Das Verrätertor
(1964, dir. Freddy Francis)

A.k.a. Traitor's Gate. Yet another Edgar Wallace krimi, this time written by Jimmy Sangster, which is why we took a look at it in his R.I.P. Career Review, where we wrote: "Writing under the nom de plume 'John Sansom', Sangster supplied the script to this Edgar Wallace film, the 21st* of the series of 32 Rialto Wallace films produced by the German producer Horst Wendlandt, this time around as a coproduction with the English film company Londoner Summit. According to Florian Pauer in his book Die Edgar Wallace Filme (1982), 'Das Verrätertor is one of the most boring and least ambitious Wallace films of the entire Rialto series.' It is a sentiment shared by most contemporary write-ups of this relatively unknown Wallace film. The book upon which the film is based, The Traitor's Gate, was originally conceived as a stage musical; in fact, the first film version from 1930, entitled The Yellow Mask, was a musical.

The plot: The wealthy businessman Trayne (Albert Lieven) decides to steal the UK Crown Jewels, but fails to take either the clumsy tourist Hecto (Eddie Arendt) or his [own] duplicitous colleagues into account..."

*That number came from here, but other sources list it as the 18th.

Aha!from

Das Verrätertor:

Der Hund von Blackwood Castle
(1968, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. The Monster of Blackwood Castle& The Horror of Blackwood Castle — yet another Wallace krimi, though this one feels closer to a kiddy horror movie. Fantastic Musings has the plot to what it calls "one of the krimis that actually does all […] things right": "Visitors to Blackwood Castle are killed by a mysterious hound. Could this have anything to do with the death of the owner… and the fact that a hidden fortune may be found there?"

Main theme to

Der Hund Von Blackwood Castle:

The film probably has less to do with an Edgar Wallace book than The Hound of Baskervilles, but it also has basically nothing to do with that book either.
"Now the German Edgar Wallace adaptations were never known for their great writing, but this one surely takes the cake, as it's convoluted to the hilt and full of plotholes and leaps of reason, so much so that it at times seems to enter parody territory, and one really has to turn off one's brain for this to properly work — and even then there's plenty of weirdness, like why would one give the dogs poisonous teeth if they rip their victims apart anyway? And what's the strange relationship between Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) and Miss Finley (Ilse Pagé), with the former constantly groping the latter, and the latter not minding one bit?* And why would Grimsby put a snake into Jane's bed only to save her minutes later? And what is that skeleton doing in front of her room door? But despite all this weirdness, I don't want to dismiss the film, as it only adds to the movie's (nostalgic) charm, and Alfred Vohrer's solid direction turns this into an old-fashioned yet atmospheric spooker. Not good in the original meaning of the word perhaps, but highly entertaining all the same. [(Re)Search My Trash]"

*The Rialto Wallace films were made in another age, long before #MeToo, when old men bosses not only were allowed to molest and harass their willing secretaries, who liked it, but audiences also found it funny. The various Sirs of the Rialto films all were womanizers surrounded by willing female workers.

Bossa for Jane from

Der Hund Von Blackwood Castle:

Der Bucklige von Soho
(1966, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

A.k.a. The Hunchback of Soho. Not everyone always likes the wacky turn in the music of the Edgar Wallace films not, fot that matter, the turn towards the burlesque that began with this movie: "This was the first of the German Edgar Wallace movies of the sixties to be shot in color. To my mind, this stripped the series of one of its strengths; the black-and-white photography of the earlier movies gave them a serious, moody ambiance that is missing in this brightly lit movie. Furthermore, though it may be just the dubbing, I do really get the sense that the comic relief has inexplicably taken over the movie; it gives the impression that everyone is playing for laughs which aren't in the script. On top of that, the score sounds like someone hired an avant-garde jazz composer [Peter Thomas] to write a James Bond-style score with vocals by a black-belt karate expert practicing his kicks; it's disorientingly strange. [Fantastic Musings]"

As per Dwrayger at his dungeon, "The Hunchback of Soho has got it all!"

Title track to
The Hunchback of Soho:

Lastly, the by now very familiar plot, from Dan Pavlides at All Movie: "Although The Hunchback of Soho is primarily a mystery, there are moments of levity, suspense, and horror that added to the tempo of the film. An American girl in London is kidnapped when she arrives to claim a sizeable inheritance, and a home for wayward girls is the scene of several unsolved murders, prompting Scotland Yard to send Inspector Hopkins (Guernther Stoll) to investigate."

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Traume Sind
(1972, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

"Based on a bestseller spy novel by popular German author Johannes Mario Simmel, this 1972 movie is a boring mixture of a typical cold war political thriller and a greasy love story. It is far too long, and the direction can't decide which way to take. The tempo of the film is boring, the plot is too twisted and there are nearly no thrills at all, but dull dream sequences, stereotype love scenes, a maniac old woman talking religious stuff all the time and ridiculously produced special effects such as the explosion of a car which looks rather like a burnt plastic model. The actors also seem not very enthusiastic about their job. The only outstanding things about The Things Dreams Are Made Of are the weird, electronic-orchestral sound track by the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra and an early performance by young Hannelore Elsner. Forget the rest! [Mike3001at imdb]"

Theme to

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Traume Sind:

Engel, die ihre Flügel verbrennen
(1970, dir. Zbynek Brynych)

A.k.a. Angels Who Burn Their Wings and Angels with Burnt Wings. The second of three feature films directed by Brynych, all from 1970, for which Peter Thomas composed the music.

Plot of this "weird but entertaining flick", as presented at Letterbxd: "Munich at night: Robert Susmeit (Jan Koester), a 16-year-old teenager who is jealously obsessed with his mother Hilde (Nadja Tiller), traces her and her latest lover at a mundane apartment building where he kills the man in the heat of the moment at a swimming pool. His fatal outburst is secretly witnessed by Moni Dingeldey (Susanne Uhlen), a girl of the same age as his. Fascinated by the shaken and devastated strange boy who she hopes to be a soul-mate, she hides Robert in her mother's apartment. Meanwhile, a crowd of policemen and reporters frantically comb through the building in search a murderer whose identity is known only to Robert's parents who are searching as well…"

Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra —

Engel, die ihre Flügel verbrennen:

"[I]t's hard to watch a Brynych film without thinking […] Brynych escaped Czechoslovakia for the lurid sex films of West Germany […]. But one cannot fail to see a sort of puritan streak come out that feels slightly at odds with the film itself. The film wants to have its cake and eat it too at the same time and, try as they might, everyone can't help but feel just a little two dimensional at the best of times. […]. Whether this is something that's lost in translation or just a case of taking a devil-may-care attitude towards the scripts, I'm not sure but watching this film, I'm inclined to miss the 60s Czech Brynych. A film-maker with a compassionate touch lost in the murky depths of political history. [filterite@ imdb]"

Die weiße Spinne
(1963, dir. Harald Reinl)

A.k.a. The White Spider— we saw this imitation Edgar Wallace krimi long ago and would watch it again. Follow the link to read our verbose review.

We also took a quick look at it in Part II of our R.I.P. Career Review of Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, where we wrote: "Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Dor and Harald Reinl together again for another Louis Weinert-Wilton adaptation; we've seen it and love it — it is one of the best non-Wallace Wallaces around. […] The blogspot Hallo, hier spricht... has the following plot synopsis: "When her husband, a gambler, is found killed in a car crash with a white spider as a key ring in his possession (his talisman but also the symbol for one of London's most notorious contract killer gangs) the insurance company refuses to pay for his life insurance and his wife (Karin Dor) is forced to work for her living in a reform society for convicts where she meets Ralph Hubbard (Joachim Fuchsberger) who was recently released from Dartmoor. Scotland Yard strongly suspects the wife of being involved in the killing but also needs to take drastic measures when one leading policeman is found dead as well. They bring in a mysterious Australian crime fighter who prefers to hang on to his anonymity and conducts his interviews hidden from view by a couple of beaming lights. One-eyed men, strange Indians and oh-so altruistic priests all stand in the way of solving the mystery behind the killings that shock London."

Title track to

Die Weiße Spinne:

Onkel Toms Hütte
(1965, dir. Géza von Radványi)

Better known as Uncle Tom's Cabin (German trailer). We took a look at this film in 2012 in our R.I.P. Career Review of Herbert Lom, and will be taking another look at it in a few months in our Babes of Yesteryear look at the films of Marilyn Joi.

We assume, but are unsure, that Al Adamson retained the full soundtrack when he shot new scenes and re-cut the film for his re-release of the movie in the seventies.

Cottonpicker's Leisure Time

from Uncle Tom's Cabin:

But back in 2012, we wrote: "Among other fun projects by Hungarian director Géza von Radványi are his remake of Mädchen in Uniform (1958 / German trailer— set to the theme of Hawaii 5-0!!!) as well as three films he helped write, Walerian Borowczyk's Eurotrash Lulu (1980) — a remake of Pabst's classic silent film starring Louise Brooks, Pandora's Box (1929 / fabulous full film) — and the two trashy Euro-horrors Parapsycho, Spektrum der Angst (1975), which in classic exploitation film fashion features a real autopsy scene, and Naked Massacre(1976 / full film). His big budget version of Uncle Tom's Cabin may have been mostly sincere, but many years after its initial release it was briefly re-released in 1977 on the grindhouse circuit as Cassy. To quote Temple of Schlock, whence the poster way at the top comes, 'The G-rated movie was subsequently acquired by distributor Samuel Sherman, who hired Al Adamson [the director of Dracula Vs Frankenstein (1970)] to shoot new sex and violence scenes for an R-rated Mandingo-inspired re-release in 1977 under the title Uncle Tom's Cabin and later as White Trash Woman.' Herbert Lom plays the bad guy, Simon Legree. Needless to say, no matter which version of the film you see, they are all more salacious than the original book."

The Great Eartha Kitt singing

Mississippi Blues from Uncle Tom's Cabin:

Der Hexer
(1964, dir. Alfred Vohrer)

More Edgar Wallace! We took a look at this one in Part II of our career review of Joachim "Blacky" Fuchsberger, where we wrote a lot:

"In the US, aka The Mysterious Magician, The Wizard and The Ringer. Video Cheese knows what makes for a good video experience: 'Goofy fun with ornate action, sudden violence, broad comic relief, booby traps, secret panels, spies, double crosses, sword canes, killer priests, lots of — as the film calls them — pretty girls, and a hero who routinely gets himself beaten up. A very stylish effort. I especially liked the shot from 'inside' a phone, with the camera looking out at the guy placing a call through the rotary dial holes. (!!) I don't think I've ever seen that one before.'

"The 'pretty girls' of the movie include the dead sister (Petra von der Linde), the secretary (Ann Savo), the girlfriend (Sophie Hardy, who got naked in her next Wallace movie, The Trygon Factor a.k.a. Das Geheimnis der weißen Nonne [1966 / German trailer]), and the wife (Margot Trooger [2 June 1923 — 24 April 1994]). Earlier versions of the movie include but are not limited to Arthur Maude's The Ringer(1928), Carl Lamac& Martin Fric's Der Hexer a.k.a. The Sorcerer (1932 / trailer, with a young Fritz Rasp [!]), Walter Forde's The Ringer (1932) and The Gaunt Stranger (1938), and Guy Hamilton's The Ringer (1952 / music), the last of which we looked at briefly in our R.I.P. Career Review of Herbert Lom.

"Der Hexer, Alfred Vohrer's sixth Wallace movie, is noteworthy as being not only the only Wallace film, but also the only movie project in general, to feature the two good-guy stalwarts of the Rialto Wallace movies — Joachim Fuchsberger and Heinz Drache (9 Feb 1923 — 3 April 2002, of Nur tote Zeugen schweigen [1962], Sanders und das Schiff des Todes (1965) and much more) — together on the screen. (Unlike Fuchsberger, and not in this movie, Heinz Drache, who appeared in a total of 9 Wallace films, once broke mold to play the bad guy in Der Hund von Blackwood Castle [1968 / German trailer].) Fuchsberger, unlike Drache, did not return the next year for the movie's less-satisfying sequel, Neues vom Hexer (1965 / trailer).

"To loosely translate the plot description as given at and by Rialto Film: 'The Wanted posters are out for Arthur Miller, aka Der Hexer— for murder! Without mercy, Arthur Miller exercises vigilante justice when he returns from exile in Australia to revenge the murder of his sister (Petra von der Linde). Inspector of Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) of Scotland Yard has a tricky case to solve, because Der Hexer is a master of disguise who can change his face at will — he has hundreds of them! He conducts his terrible mischief everywhere and can't be caught. Questions upon questions arise as Scotland Yard confronts a nearly impossible task...'

"To loosely translate the text at New Video: 'A lot of tension, an involved story with many suspects, gloomy atmosphere and not too much slapstick: this is definitely one of the best German Edgar Wallace films, the title of which was ambiguously modified 40 years later [for Der Wixxer (2004 / trailer) and Neues vom Wixxer (2007)]."

Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, it seems, agrees: 'Outside of a little horror atmosphere in this one, there's really not much in the way of fantastic content here. It is, however, one of the most entertaining of the krimis; it's easy to follow, has an interesting premise, and the humorous content is fairly good. The movie even has a bit of William Castle-like gimmick feel to it [...]. At any rate, this is a very good choice for anyone out there interested in trying out a krimi.'"

Title track of

Der Hexer:

Flucht nach Berlin
(1961, writ. & dir. Will Tremper)

A.k.a. Escape to Berlin. Will Tremper's directorial debut; at the 1961 German Film Awards, Peter Thomas's music took the prize for Best Film Score.

Flucht nach Berlin is the German B-film as anti-Ost propaganda — but seeing that the Wall went up a year after this movie came out, it is not as if the East was anything to make a positive movie about. Oddly enough, anti-Ost movies of any budget were a rare thing in Germany at the time. We caught this suspenseful low budget jewel on late-night TV decades ago, and we would watch it again were they ever to broadcast it again. Not likely, as even in Germany B&W films have more or less been relegated to the closet.

The plot of this movie about "the German division and the flight from the East to the West, told in the lapidary style of Italian neorealism": "The East German farmer Hermann Güden (Narziß Sokatscheff) has enough of the state-arranged harassment of the SED superiors. He is no longer willing to submit to compulsory collectivization at home in his Saxon-Anhalt village, as this condition no longer offers him any prospects. And so he plans a long-run escape to the West. Güden initially sends his wife and child to the West of Berlin and wants to follow as soon as possible. But the SED apparatchiks get wind of the matter. In the heat of the moment Güden beat up the party comrade Baade (Christian Doermer) and then flees. [UCM.ONE]" Along the way he unintentionally gets a Swiss woman, Doris Lane (Susanne Korda), caught up in his dilemma, and as a result they must flee together…

Nightclub 61, music by Peter Thomas, was sung by Nina Westen, otherwise known as the German Schlager singer Ingrid Werner.

Nightclub 61 from
Flucht nach Berlin:

Other movies of note for which he did the music include but are hardly limited to: The Gorilla of Soho / Der Gorilla von Soho (1968), The Trygon Factor / Das Geheimnis der weißen Nonne (1966), Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel — a.k.a. The Blood Demon / Castle of the Walking Dead / Pendulum / The Snake Pit and the Pendulum / The Snake Pit / The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism / The Torture Room (1967), The Strange Countess / Die seltsame Gräfin (1961), The Puzzle of the Red Orchid / Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee (1961), The Door with Seven Locks / Die Tür mit den sieben Schlössern(1962), The Squeaker / Der Zinker (1963), Room 13 / Zimmer 13 (1964)…

Extra —
The Best of Edgar Wallace, full album with compositions from
Peter Thomas & Martin Böttcher:

Extra —
Peter Scores. The Erotic World of the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra:

↧

Jusqu'au déclin / The Decline (Canada, 2020)

May 31, 2020, 9:27 am

≫ Next: The Never Ending Horror Story...

≪ Previous: R.I.P.: Peter Thomas

Not too far into this movie, one of the characters remarks that "In order to live, you have to survive." Perhaps that is a reason we here at a wasted life have never been all that survivalist-minded — or, to use more contemporary vocabulary, prepper-oriented: as far as we can tell, too many people are already just surviving (but barely), and not living. The concept of suddenly having to work even harder to survive as our bodies rot away due to nuclear fallout, or everyone reverts to cannibalism due to a shortage of food, or we slowly puke our insides out due to flesh-rotting bacteria, or simply lose our glasses in a situation in which new ones are as impossible to attain as having toothache taken care of, getting a decent glass of wine, or treating an old-fashioned case of the clap or hemorrhoids, appeals to us about as much as having kids. (In other words: nada.) Life is meant to be lived, and surviving ain't living. And if you can't live, why survive? (Of course, we have the luxury of saying that from a continent where, amidst the current "corona crisis", if we want toilet paper and fresh eggs or vegetables or milk or coffee, we just have to walk three short blocks to the nearest store, where they give away free facemasks — unlike our sister who, living in "god's chosen country", can't get anything.* She's started her vegetable garden on her patio because she's frightened; we, on the other, have started planting stuff between our citrus trees because we've got the space and time and lockdown needs variety.)

*Now, since the day we wrote this review some weeks ago, she can get almost everything again, but the streets are burning. Oddly enough, her medical-necessity smoke gets delivered with a regularity that truly deserves the description of "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds".

But, whatever. The Decline is a French Canadian movie about preppers, one which you can watch in English, if you don't mind too much that the lips onscreen don't always move correctly to words said. A thriller, it never truly ascends it Netfux TV roots and is often rather predictable, but for that it is well-shot and offers enough suspense to keep you interested.

The Decline opens with a family suddenly gathering their shit together and disappearing into the night, as if the film that should follow will be one of preppers in the decline of society. But the movie quickly pulls the rug out of that expectation, revealing instead that the family of three is merely conducting a dry run similar, you might say, to the fire drills we used to do in school and the shooter-on-campus drills school kids do now. The scene not only introduces us to the main white male character of identification, but also serves to point out something that should be obvious: all kinds of people are preppers, including young yuppie couples with kids — and single women who like canning, hot mixed-race chicks suffering guilt more than war-induced post-traumatic syndrome, overweight guys that probably mistake their real abilities for those of their avatars in their favorite computer game, over-strung jerks just one step away from snapping, and mildly overweight piano players. (Generically black people, less likely — possibly because they're too busy trying not to be accidentally killed by the local cops and/or stand-your-ground idiot[s].) Basically, anyone dominated by a fear of social/societal collapse, a fear that has been around probably as long as society has, is a viable prepper. In turn, being a prepper in itself doesn't make a person the bad guy — and, initially, no one in the movie is a "bad guy". Some are merely more likable than others.

And that is one of the strongest points of The Decline: it doesn't really point fingers — it is only after the shit hits the fan that anyone truly becomes "the bad guy(s)" or the "hero(es)". And even then, there are probably those out there that would even see the actions of the "bad guys" as justified, or at least of the actions of Alain (Réal Bossé). He merely wants to save that which is his, that which he has built up — and society is going to collapse, after all (eventually). That said, however, even if no one in this movie starts out as an obvious villain, the fact that the shit is bound to hit the fan hangs in the air like a Damocles sword from the moment Antione (Guillaume Laurin) parks his car amidst the snowy landscape and hands over his smartphone. And it is when the shit hits the fan that the chaff is separated from the wheat: there are those who still turn to the society they expect to collapse, and those who want to keep their off-the-grid safety for that unavoidable, if date-unknown, disaster they know is to come one day.

All that subsequently happens in The Decline after Antione arrives to Alain's survivalist training, possibly excluding the mid-film Psycho-inspired change of character focus, is predictable to say the least, but it is the very predictability of the train of events that keeps the movie so grounded in reality — excluding, we would argue, the unrealistic river scene that truly bonds Antione and Rachel (Marie-Evelyne Lessard), the latter the kind of totally hot and capable survivalist woman that any and all man or woman would want by their side when the world as we know it finally, truly, succumbs to a zombie virus.

Hardly a masterpiece, The Decline remains highly watchable, and as a feature-length film debut, it also indicates promise regarding the director, Patrice Laliberté. There are worse Netfux movies out there to watch on a corona-induced lockdown evening at home — like 6 Underground (2020), which we've chosen to forget we ever saw. (Tyler Perry's car wreck of a movie, A Fall from Grace [2020], on the other hand, is so unbelievably unprofessional and bad on every level that it achieves a transcendentally Ed Woodian intensity. That, in turn makes the movie immensely enjoyable, if you like your films as bad as we tend to.)

↧

The Never Ending Horror Story...

June 4, 2020, 2:11 am

≫ Next: Short Film: Lupo the Butcher (Canada, 1987)

≪ Previous: Jusqu'au déclin / The Decline (Canada, 2020)

Why grab them by the pussy when you can kneel on their necks?

Thank you boing boing for the image.

↧

Short Film: Lupo the Butcher (Canada, 1987)

June 6, 2020, 11:24 pm

≫ Next: Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part XI: 1978 to Addendum

≪ Previous: The Never Ending Horror Story...

A possibly somewhat forgotten cult classic, Lupo the Butcher is short, profane, bloody and funny as hell. It's the first solo animated production of writer/director/animator Danny Antonucci (b. 27 Feb 57), who went on to create the much-hated MTV series The Brother Grunt (1994-95) and the far more successful (and less-despised) animated TV comedy series Ed, Edd n Eddy(1999-2008). Those shows, like Lupo the Butcher, are stylistic testaments to Antoncci's advocacy of hand-drawn animation.

The three-minute short is about an overweight, ill-tempered butcher and was produced by Marv Newland's International Rocketship Limited.* Even in the days before the Net, Lupo achieved sizable cult popularity — the butcher himself was even given a quick cameo in Bill Plympton's great feature animation film, The Tune (1992). Of greater financial remuneration for the filmmaker, however, was probably the licensing of Lupo to Converse's, which resulted in the animated commercial Lupo's Nightmare (1995).

The toon's former popularity is easy to understand, and Lupo the Butcher stands as a testament that sometimes the execution of an idea can make a one-line, one-laugh concept to go a long, funny way. Enjoy!

*Newland's graduation project at Pasadena's Art Center of Design, Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969), was chosen as our Short Film of the Month way back in September 2009. Go watch it.

Lupo the Butcher (1987):

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Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part XI: 1978 to Addendum

June 13, 2020, 7:58 am

≫ Next: Death at a Funeral (Great Britain, 2007)

≪ Previous: Short Film: Lupo the Butcher (Canada, 1987)

Babes of Yesteryear:a wasted life's irregular and PI feature that takes a look at the filmographies of the underappreciated actresses cum sex bombs of low-culture cinema of the past. Some may still be alive, others not. Our choice of whom we look at is idiosyncratic and entirely our own — but the actors are/were babes, one and all.

As the photo (possibly) and blog-entry title above reveal, we're currently looking at the films of one of the ultimate cult babes ever, a woman who needs no introduction to any and all red-blooded American cis gender, tendentially hetero male whose hormonal memory goes further back than the start of the 80s: the great Uschi Digard.*

As The Oak Drive-Inputs it: "With her long hair, Amazonian build & beautiful natural looks (usually devoid of make-up), nobody seems to personify that 60's & early 70's sex appeal 'look' better than [Uschi Digard]. She had a presence that truly was bigger than life — a mind-bending combination of hippie Earth Mother looks and a sexual wildcat. […] She always seemed to have a smile on her face and almost seemed to be winking at the camera and saying 'Hey, it's all in fun.' Although she skirted around the edges at times, she never preformed hardcore…"*

* Actually, if you search long and hard and go to the type of websites that install all sorts of nasty bugs onto your computer, there is a grainy, B&W single shot loop-like film around that looks very much like a private home movie that somehow escaped the home closet. Hard, it is; hot, it is not. We found it once, but didn't save it — much like we did with Neola Graef's current whereabouts.

Today, Uschi Digard is still alive, happily married (for over 50 years), and splitting her time Palm Springs and Los Angeles, CA. To learn everything you ever wanted to know about her, we would suggest listening to the great interview she gave The Rialto Report in 2013. You can find Uschi on that evil thing known as facebook.

Please note:we make no guarantee for the validity of the release dates given… or of the info supplied, for that matter.

Herewith we give a nudity warning:naked babes and beefcake are highly likely to be found in our Babes of Yesteryear entries. If such sights offend thee, well, either go to another blog or pluck thy eyes from thee...

Go here for Babe of Yesteryear

Uschi Digard, Part I: 1968-69

Uschi Digard, Part II: 1970, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part III: 1970, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part IV: 1971, Part I

Uschi Digard, Part V: 1971, Part II

Uschi Digard, Part VI: 1972

Uschi Digard, Part VII: 1973-74

Uschi Digard, Part VIII: 1975

Uschi Digard, Part IX: 1976

Uschi Digard,Part X: 1977

The Only Way to Spy

(1978, writ. & dir. Michael Ullman)

"Any resemblance to characters living or dead is strictly intentional."

Uschi Digard supposedly appears, uncredited, somewhere in the background of this super-obscure, R-rated spy comedy that seems once upon a time to have received video release in many a country but is otherwise completely forgotten.

The "plot", as found on the back of the video box above, which makes The Only Way to Spy look like a serious spy film, and as given at Pre-Cert, whence the image below comes: "When the nose cone from a deadly missile disappears, a group of secret agents are called to locate its whereabouts and who is behind it all. Deadly ... Dangerous ... Zany Excitement that explodes across the screen!"

The only two people we could locate who have watched and written the movie both think that it sucks. They wrote their reviews at the imdb, where one, Gridoon, goes into greater detail as to why it's so crappy: "The Only Way to Spy is not a movie. It is a random collection of images shown out of order. To say that it doesn't make sense would be an understatement; any given scene has no connection to the previous or to the next one. There isn't a shred of talent or professionalism to be found in any frame of this picture. [...] It's supposed to be a soft-core action spy comedy: there is no spying, no comedy, very little — and badly filmed — action, and, infrequently, some naked breasts. The busty actress who plays 'OO6' is game enough, and with a different cast and crew around her, she could have been the lead in a genuinely sexy spy spoof."

The man behind the movie, Michael Ullman, did not have much of a movie-making career: he was never heard of again before or after this movie, at least not under that name.

Of the participating actors, some actually had careers. Pamela Palma (above), for example, was a former burlesque dancer from Italy who had also danced in an occasional film, this being the last before she hung up her feather fans and veils. Andrea Adler is now a novelist into the I Ching. Patrick Wright (28 Nov 1939 – 9 Dec 2004), born Michael E. Wright, husband of the spunky exploitation actress Tallie Cochrane (7 Oct 1944 – 21 May 2011),* was a regularly employed character actor (usually as a "heavy") found somewhere in many a fun film, including the rare and contentious Night of the Strangler (1972 / movie), the cult faves Maniac Cop (1988 / trailer), Graduation Day (1981 / trailer), Caged Heat (1981 / trailer), Russ Meyer's Good Morning & Goodbye(1967 / opening credits below) and The Candy Tangerine Man (1975 / which we look at in our upcoming Babes of Yesteryear series on Marilyn Joi); he also directed the "shockingly inept" sexploiter Hollywood High(1976 / movie) and produced Frightmare (1983 / trailer), both classics of bad cinema.

*Go here to Chateau Vulgaria for an interview of Tallie, put online in 2012, where she mentions, in regard to the great Uschi, "I knew her very well, she was a sweetheart. She was very quiet. I had dinner with her a few times. She was very busy back then. I hooked her up with a few jobs. I have no idea what happened to her. She was an L.A. girl."

Opening credits sequence to

Good Morning & Goodbye:

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens

(1979, writ. & dir. Russ Meyer)

Russ "King Leer" Meyer's last feature-film release, co-written by Roger Ebert (as "R. Hyde") is, in an oblique manner, a spoof of Our Town (1940 / fan trailer). Uschi has a cameo as SuperSoul, but she was primarily active behind the scenes. Still, her short appearance in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens might well be her last "real" appearance in a movie: as far as we can tell, all subsequent appearances are either merely soft-core and/or lesbian shorts, scenes from older films edited into new (mostly porn) flicks, or tiny non-sex cameos in real sex films.

We saw Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens somewhere, decades ago, and didn't like it — but maybe we might give it a second go, one day. Maybe... in all truth, we were never truly enamored by either Kitten Natividad or Ann Marie, and this movie is truly theirs.

Ann Marie dancing,

but not in a Russ Meyer movie:

Nowadays, Kittenappears in an occasional (intentionally bad) movie, while rumor has it that Ann Marie (born Kathy Ayers), whose boobs (according to Boobpedia) were — like Kitten's — not 100% natural, now lives in Norway.

Let's go to good ol'All Movie for Robert Firsching's plot synopsis: "Like most of cult director Russ Meyer's later films, his final ode to the superhuman bosom largely dispenses with plot in favor of episodic sexual sight-gags. The ostensible storyline, narrated by Stuart Lancaster (30 Nov 1920 – 22 Dec 2000) in hilarious deadpan style, deals with the bedroom hijinx of small-town America — in this case the fictitious community of Rio Dio, Texas. Junkyard worker Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr) is in trouble with his sexually ravenous wife Lavonia (Natividad) because he can only achieve satisfaction through unconventional openings. While Lavonia proceeds to bed down the local garbageman (Pat Wright [28 Nov 1939 – 9 Dec 2004]) and others with more standard tastes, Lamar is put through a series of increasingly silly 'cures,' including a visit to a chainsaw-wielding gay dentist (Robert Pearson [31 Jan 1921 – 4 July 2009]). Eventually, a radio faith-healer with enormous breasts (Anne [sic] Marie) gets him back on the right track. The amazing June Mack (26 Jan 1955 – 3 May 1984 [murdered]), who looks like she stepped straight out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, is the film's highlight as Kerr's insatiable black employer, Junk Yard Sal. The usual comic fight scenes are augmented here with different colors of blood for each character, but the high-voltage action of many earlier Meyer films is absent, as he was obviously trying to keep up with the booming porn market by including as many naughty close-ups as possible."

Who killed June Mack?

As common for a Meyer's film, Henry Rowland, born Wolfram von Bock (28 Dec 1913 – 26 April 1984), shows up to play Martin Bormann: he gets bonked in a coffin by Ann Marie's faith healer. The actor playing "14-year-old" Rhett, Steve Tracy(born Steve Crumrine on 3 Oct 1952), was 27 when he made the movie; gay, he died of complications arising due to AIDS on 27 Nov 1987.

"It's as lewd as it is crude, as dirty as it is flirty, as right as it is wrong, as deep as it is long. The plot is little more than a ruse as it prefers we peruse and the one thing it won't do is allow for the blues," says Rivers of Grue. They also point out that "only the word Brobdingnagian comes close to defining their DD cup majesty" of Meyer's females, and that "while his many detractors accused him of portraying the fairer sex purely as objects, more often than not, these Amazonians were stronger than their alpha counterparts which I guess made him an accidental feminist. Funny that."

The Spinning Imagecomes the closest to explaining our own problems with Meyer's last feature film, saying: "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens holds a special place in film history as the last ever, proper film directed by cult auteur Russ Meyer. It was scripted by critic Roger Ebert [...], but if you're expecting the over-the-top laughs of Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970 / trailer, with Charles Napier) then you may well find this film curiously laugh-free. It takes Meyer's particular style about as far as it would go, and although promising a sequel at the close ('The Jaws of Vixen'), it was the end of the line for its creator, unless you count the video documentary on Pandora Peaks he made about twenty years later [...], and the virtually plotless ramble includes an abundance of sex scenes bringing the usually teasing Meyer about as close to hardcore as he ever got. [...] And so Ultravixensdrags on, being one of Meyer's longest films and feeling it. The cast are cartoonishly energetic, and appropriate for the stag film humour, with Natividad displaying uncommon enthusiasm in her performance but there's only so many times you can see her bouncing up and down before it begins to get tiresomely repetitive. [...] It seemed the times were catching up with Meyer, and here he showed himself to have run out of ideas."

Trailer to

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens:

El Gore, on the other hand, sees the movie, at least on a cinematic level, as "one of Meyer's more experimental films, containing a lot of gamy, curious but also remarkable and innovative camera angles and perspectives," and says: "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens focuses on women's struggle for sexual satisfaction and men's inability to fulfill the distorted male sexual role which is imposed by society. In a more simplified or superficial version this means that it is all about big-breasted, hairy nymphomaniacs and a man who only gets sexual satisfaction by anally raping women.

Fantasy

(1979, writ. & dir. Gerard Damiano)

A.k.a. That Prickly Feeling. Oddly enough, although this San Francisco-shot movie is not listed on any of her filmographies, and although she does not even appear in it, Uschi has autographed copies of the poster (see above: that's her John Hancock). It could be that she simply confused the movie with some other project, like Fantasm(1976, see Part IX), or maybe she did some background work that no one has noticed yet, but let's take a look at it anyway.

End credits to

Fantasy:

Gerard Damiano (4 Aug 1928 – 25 Oct 2008) is most famous for his classic porn films Deep Throat (1972, see Harry Reems Part II) and Devil in Miss Jones (1973, see Harry Reems, Part III). The basic concept of one of Damiano's less well-known films, Let My Puppets Come (1976 / first 22 minutes), recently got a Hollywood spin as The Happytime Murders (2018 / trailer). For a truly excellent spin on the transgressive concept of Let My Puppets Come, however, one should check out the early Peter Jackson classic, Meet the Feebles(1989).

Trailer to

Meet the Feebles:

Fantasy is a porn version of the then-popular television show Fantasy Island (1977–84)*, but without short people. As the backside of the DVD explains: "Set in an elegant cafe at an island resort, Director Gerard Damiano takes us inside the minds of the characters to examine their fantasies about each other. Each vignette is increasingly erotic, with heat generated by the thoughtful examination of interpersonal relationships. This is one of the few films that draws applause at its conclusion. A masterpiece."

*Which got a bizarre reenvisionment this year as a horror movie (trailer), perhaps the most oddly thought-out revamp of a "vintage" TV show since, dunno, last year's even more bizarre R-rated horror version of Hanna-Barbera's cult kiddie TV show, The Banana Splits(1968)

Trailer to

The Banana Splits Movie (2019):

At the imdb, bruimaud says "[...] Come and see how Gordon (Jon Martin, born Gerald Michael Heath), the barman of Fantasy, is one of the most sad and lonely characters created by Gerard Damiano, a sort of 'alter ego' who tries to understand the whole mystery of world, dreams and creation. This introspective movie is Damiano's 8 ½ (1963 / trailer), a very unknown one but a masterpiece."

About the only other person we could find who felt the need to write about the movie was Robert Firsching at All Movie, who mentions that the characters of the "hardcore spoof" include "a not-so-blushing bride wondering if her husband would be shocked by her unusual desires and a bored married couple who are only aroused when partaking in group sex activities" and that "the plot is fairly unimportant, as the framework is basically an excuse for endless graphic sexual activity." Sounds like a porn film.

The Best of Sex and Violence

(1982, dir. Ken Dixon)

As mentioned further above, although Uschi was still found here and there in photo shoots, by 1982 the Great Digard's film appearances were pretty much reduced to lesbian trysts with the now-departed Candy Samples* (12 April 1928 – 23 Sept 2019), a rare non-sex role in shorts or porn movies, and recycled clips cut (usually) into porn video releases, some with and some without "plots". In other words: nothing really worth taking look at.

*"Whatever Happened to Candy Samples?"— a podcast from The Rialto Report.

If you get down to it, most Ken Dixon documentaries also pretty much a recycling of clips, but this project, produced by Charles Band and Michel Catalano and Frank Ray Perilli, is less a documentary than a collection of 28 trailers. As such, it is a lot more fun than the average hairy-palm movie with a fake plotline, which is why we thought we'd take a look at it — that, and because it was "written" by the recently departed Frank Ray Perilli (30 Aug 1925 – 8 Mar 2018), the former stand-up comic who also did occasional character roles in diverse movies (for example, New Orleans Uncensored[1955 / movie], Invasion of the Star Creatures [1962 / trailer below], Michael Pataki's Cinderella[1977 / trailer, which he also wrote] and Adult Fairy Tales [1978, / trailer, which he also co-wrote] and more), and wrote or co-wrote some fun trash (Alligator [1980], Dracula's Dog [1977 / trailer], Mansion of the Doomed [1976, which we'll take a look at in our upcoming Babes of Yesteryear feature on Marilyn Joi] and more).

Trailer to

Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962):

At All Movie, Brian Gusse has the basic facts: "This compilation of previews from low-budget action films & softcore sex films is hosted by veteran horror actor John Carradine (5 Feb 1906 – 27 Nov 1988) […]."

The fabulous blogspot Temple of Schlock, whence the advert shown further above is taken, mentions that "The Charles Band-produced trailer compilation The Best of Sex and Violence played midnight shows in 14 Chicago area theaters on February 5-6, 1982 as a presentation of The Alternative Film Society, a New Jersey-based organization that 'four-walled' theaters for midnight movie screenings and dusk-to-dawn shows in the early 1980s. […] None of the movies pictured in the ad (The Dirt Gang [1972, see Uschi Part XI], Werewolves on Wheels [1971/ trailer], two different Ginger flicks) have anything to do with The Best of Sex and Violence."

At Unrated Film James Klein slaughters the English language as he says, "This video […]was the first video to ever be released of just movie trailers […]. Full Moon has released this gem of trailers ranging from Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde [(1976 / trailer], Zombie(1979) […] and The Doberman Gang([1972 / trailer] one of my own personal favorite trailers). What I loved about these trailers from the 70s was that they showed everything: faces being blown apart, breasts bouncing everywhere (back when women had some damn meat on their bones) and profanity that could make a truck driver blush. Sometimes these trailers were even better than the films themselves. The Best of Sex and Violencemixes all sorts of genres so that you may see a few horror trailers and then it will jump into a trailer for Dolemite (1975 / trailer). […] But be warned, this is not the best quality. Maybe my favorite part of The Best of Sex and Violencemay be David [8 Dec 1936 – 3 June 2009] and Keith Carradine's cameo appearance alongside their dad and their awkward interaction between the three. Oh wait, the opening has a woman (Laura Jane Leary) being chased topless down a street as an unseen killer chases after her. Yeah, boobs always trump Carradine's."

Trailer to

Best of Sex and Violence:

Uschi is underrepresented to say the least, considering her career, but she is there because one of the trailers is to Truck Stop Women (1974, see Part XII). In general, the quality of the images sucks: everything seems to be taken from VHS versions of the movies.

Famous T & A

(1982, dir. Ken Dixon)

Remember the day when (discreet) T&A was the staple of the prime-time programming of the traditional big three? When, unlike on pay TV, the hard nipples were always kept under a T-shirt…?

Saturday Night Live:

The immediate follow-up to Charles Band & Michel Catalano & Ken Dixon's The Best of Sex and Violence, this time without host John Carradine or"scritptwriter" Frank Ray Perilli.

More so than the previous "film" we looked at, The Best of Sex and Violence, which is a collection of trailers, Famous T&A is closer to the typical Ken Dixon documentaries in that it is pretty much also just a recycling of clips (to be exact, "archive footage", movie outtakes and trailers). Here, he actually cannibalizes his own previous project and reuses a lot of stuff already seen in The Best of Sex and Violence. Still, since we find movies like this a lot more fun than the average hairy-palm movie with a fake plotline, let's take a look at it.

At the imdb,frankfob2@yahoo.com hits the nail on its head with his one-sentence film description: "A collection of nude and/or topless scenes from various films featuring actresses who were either famous at the time or who became famous later on." Cult babe Sybil Danning, at the time but 30 years of age and herself in possession of some fine T&A, hosts the filmic journey.

Over Unrated Magazine, James "Who needs an editor?" Klein was not impressed: "Just one year later after The Best of Sex & Violence was released, director Ken Dixon came up with another idea in which to make a quick buck on the video market: naked celebrities. […] Basically this is just the same recycled boobs that we saw in the last trailer compilation. […] Famous T&A shows clips from mostly films that Charles Band produced or distributed, so there isn't a lot to choose from. It is nice to see Ursula Andress get a naked rub down from Mountain of the Cannibal God(1978) or Laura Gemser have a naked make out session with another woman in Emmanuelle Around the World (1977 / SFW trailer) but I personally would rather see these films than watch quick (or in some cases overlong) clips that are just randomly thrown together. I did enjoy […] watching a bottomless biker chick drive down the highway provided me with some laughs but it just wasn't enough to hold my interest. […] I will say that if you are an Elvira fan and always wanted to see what those huge jugs of hers look like, you get a clip from The Working Girls(1974 / trailer) in which she shows off those milkers. Maybe for some of you, this DVD is worth purchasing just for that."
Video Vacuum liked the video/DVD a little bit more than James, saying, "Sybil Danning hosts this shot-on-video compilation of nude scenes of famous (and not-so famous) women. […] Sybil appears (dressed as a gladiator no less) and introduces a bunch of clips for 75 minutes. Some of the highlights include Phyllis Davis appearing in outtakes from Terminal Island ([1973 / trailer below] including some full frontal nudity that doesn't appear in the film), a pre-Flash Gordon (1980 / trailer) Ornella Muti, […] Bridget Bardot, Claudia Jennings (in scenes from Truck Stop Women [1974, see Part XII]), Elvira (her striptease from Working Girls), Jacqueline Bisset, Laura Gemser, Vanity, and Russ Meyer stars Edy Williams and Uschi Digard. […] The trailers are an especially nice touch. They break up some of the monotony of the unedited clips, some of which play out too long. […] At 75 minutes, Famous T & A is just long enough not to wear out its welcome. However, if the filmmakers cut out all the filler of non-famous T & A […] and kept the running time to about an hour, it might've been classic."

Trailer to

Terminal Island:

Ha ha, it's Burl was in turn less impressed than James, saying that Famous T & A"seems to have been organized much in the manner that Jackson Pollock organized his paint droplets! […] All in all, it's kind of a boring cruickshank of a motion picture! The video box implies that we'll see all sorts of now-famous people in various states of undress, and sure, we do see naked ladies, but they somehow manage to drain that experience of any prurient interest whatever! Ha ha, quite a feat! […] And worst of all perhaps is the stuff they make Sybil Danning say! My gosh, it makes the end credits of Howling II (1985 / trailer) seem like an exercise in dignified solemnity by comparison! The poor woman — I hope she was at least well paid!"

In general, the quality of the images sucks: everything seems to be taken from VHS versions of the movies.

Played somewhere during the film —

For Your Love by The Yardbirds:

Gunblast

(1986, writ. & dir. Nick Millard)

"Hey man, you fucked my woman last night. I'm going to kill you."

Yet another 66-minute direct-to-video release from the no-budget auteur that virtually no one has seen. Aka Mac 10andShotgun, like so many of Millard's movies this one has met little resonance — and most of that which it has gotten is universally negative. Uschi Digard, who worked with Millard over 1.5 decades previously on softcore sex films like Roxanna(1970, see Part III) and The Pimp Primer(1970, see Part II), is seen onscreen in some sex cinema in some Tex-Mex border town in a softcore porn film (Millard's Fancy Lady [1971, see Part IV]) licking her boobs.

Unrelated to this movie, but related to Uschi, in an interview at [Re]Search My Trash, Millard says, "I can tell you that Uschi was always very professional to work with ... and I can tell you about the first time I ever saw her, because I will never forget it: It was in March of 1970, at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California (very close to Beverly Hills). One word can describe Uschi, magnificent — I had never seen anything like her breasts in my life (and I was raised around a burlesque theater, the Moulin Rouge theatrein Oakland, California). She also had a very pretty face and a nice derriere. […] About twelve years ago, her agent, Hal Guthu(1923 – 27 Feb 2000), told me she was living in Palm Springs, California."

The plot? "Grant Marland Proctor (19 Sept 1939 – 8 Oct 1988) is an ex-convict just released from an eight-year stretch in San Quentin. He gets involved in the twilight world of an international narcotics syndicate importing heroin into the United States. The stakes are high and the risks are great in this hard-hitting powerhouse action thriller."

At Letterboxd, they add some details: "A femme fatale non-extraordinaire (Christina Cardan of Chained Heat [1983 / trailer]) lures an aging ex-con to Mexico to intercept a mega-volume heroin delivery. Sparks fly between the two, and romance ensues. Also featured are some bloodless gun violence and a hitman with a Mac-10." Indeed, at Letterboxd, some guy named Tyler Baptistbitches that "this 65-minute-long snooze inducer features no plot, bloodless and bullet-less violence, a hella-boring striptease, and weird random early 80s porn scenes that have nothing to do with the movie." And somewhere along the way Roy Grant (Proctor) reads the December 1985 issue of Playboy as he eats canned Beans and Wieners in a motel room.

Bleeding Skull tells it like it is: "At this point, Nick Millard has nothing to prove — to me, you, or anyone else in the world. Earnest in his intent and inspiring in his tenacity, Mr. Millard remains the most singular, inventive, and beautifully disconnected filmmaker that no one cares about. […] It's difficult to communicate how powerful Gunblastcan be. Like most of Millard's films, it runs just over 60 minutes. And, like .357 Magnum(1977 / clip below) and The Terrorists(1988), this movie is filled with shockingly terrible compositions, uncomfortably misplaced music cues, and the same exact people playing the same exact roles with different character names. Elements are reused with such rapid proclivity (the car from Doctor Bloodbath [1987 / full movie], the house from pretty much every Millard film spanning 1976-1988), that the blurring of filmic perimeters becomes inevitable. This is a lovely netherworld. It never changes. It just spreads, organically, in 60-minute increments. But Gunblast, in contrast to .357 Magnum, requires no commitment to accept. There's no need. This film is instantaneous elation. It moves quickly and never stops to ponder anything less than complete hilarity, bafflement, and talk of the 'shooting off' of people's balls. As such, it's Nick Millard's most consistently fulfilling 'action' film."

Scene from

.357 Magnum (1977):

Trash Film Guru understands this, and long after saying "Please understand — if you actually likeaction, you might not enjoy Gunblast very much," continues with: "What's that, you say? The plot? You want to know about the fucking plot […]? What are you, a square? Things go south. Off the rails. Down the toilet. Up shit creek. Oh, and tits up. Of course. But you knew that already. The beauty of it is, though, that it absolutely, positively, unequivocally doesn't matter. You don't watch Nick Millard movies for the story. You don't watch them for the acting. You don't watch them for the characterization. You don't watch them for the action. And you don't even watch them for the boobs-to-face mash-ups. You watch them because nobody else ever made movies the way he did and no one else ever will because no one else would a)want to; or b)know how to. There's no mistaking Millard's work for that of anyone else just as there's no way Millard could possibly make a film the way anyone else makes them. He operates by his own set of quite-likely-not-of-this-dimension rules. Things like shot composition, logically sound dialogue, sensibly-placed musical cues, or coherent storylines are beneath his notice. His mind is just plain moving too fast to even consider such banalities. He's working at 1000 MPH to come up with films that — irony of all ironies — move at a truly glacial pace. He can barely fill up an hour's worth of tape — and has to recycle 25% or more of the material we see from his other movies to do it — but it feels like six. Or seven. Or more."

Whether Gunblast or Mac 10orShotgun: an auteur film by an auteur filmmaker.

Slaves of Sin, Part I

(1999, dir. Unknown)

We couldn't find out anything about this "documentary" that supposedly uses segments taken from Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses? (1977), featuring Uschi Digard and Robin Williams (21 July 1951 – 11 Aug 2014). The third credited person is Mary Yates (8 March 1929 – 1 Sept 2012), the former wife of Ted Yates and Mike Wallace.

Over in Germany, the website Moviepilot claims that Slaves of Sin is a "Dokumentarfilm über die Dienstleister im Rotlicht Bezirk"— that is, literally translated: "a documentary about service providers in the red light district." (Hookers, possibly, or maybe their cleaning ladies. Who knows.) Personally, we think they have this movie confused with some other film. It supposedly also uses outtakes from Bloodsucking Freaks (1976 / trailer below), as well outtakes from Dying: Last Seconds of Life, Part II (1988) — but the latter film also uses outtakes from Bloodsucking Freaks, so maybe the outtakes are actually only from one of the two movies.

The backside of the video box, in any event, makes the film sound like a documentary about the contemporary Republican Party: "Enter the realm of mystery where fantasy and obsession run wild and sin runs deep. You will wonder how certain things actually take place: ∙Rich crazies and their hobbies ∙Twisted Career 'Peeping Toms'∙Sneaky Surveillance ∙Outrageous Outcasts ∙Satirical Stardom ∙Sick Psychos… and much, much more! Prepare yourself. You are about to experience bizarre people & bizarre situations. You will be forced to decide who are the naughty and who are the daring. Are they those on camera or those with the cameras…or both. AND WHO IS WORSE????"

NSFW Trailer to

Bloodsucking Freaks:

In any event, Uschi Digard didn't list Slaves of Sin, Part I on her filmography once found at her now-dead website. Video Detective, on the other hand, goes so far as to list her as the producer of this low-rent mondo documentary. And as far as we can tell, Part II was never made.

Pandora Peaks

(2001, writ & dir. Russ Meyer)

This direct-to-video "documentary" on Pandora Peaks (born Stephanie Schick in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1964) was the last film Russ Meyer (21 March 1922 – 18 Sept 2004) completed before sliding into total senility. Uschi Digard supplied some of the female narration. Pandora Peaks, since retired, is a former stripper known for her artificial triple-H breasts. Her mega-silicon mambos that can be seen in hundreds of photo layouts as well as in the movie mistake Striptease (1996 / trailer) and the Andy Sidaris' (20 Feb 1931 – 7 March 2007) disasterpiece Do or Die (1991 / trailer). Though ostensibly about Pandora, Meyer's straight-to-video project is arguably less a traditional documentary than a boob-fixated example of occupational therapy.

Opening credits plus…

"Who ever went to see a Russ Meyer movie, to actually see Russ Meyer?" asks Mikey Mo, before continuing to say: "Meyer has claimed on multiple times his least favorite movie was Mondo Topless (1966 / first 4 minutes). […] There was no plot, just these women dancing and sharing random tidbits about their everyday life. It was shot in 5 days and only produced to make a quick buck to cover for the losses on the previous movies. Because Meyer disliked Mondo Topless so much it's a mystery why he chose to use the same set-up for this movie. Pandora Peaks is nothing more than 70 minutes of Pandora dancing and stripping at several in- and out-door locations while she tells us her life story. Her segments are intercut with those of Tundi, which were obviously shot in the 80s, and narrated by Uschi Digard pretending to be her. […] There is also some sort of Russ Meyer travelogue going on as he himself brings up stories about the war, has made some new shots on location in Germany where he visits old war buddies and tells us all about the history of the city of Palm Desert."

Two other sets of bodacious bazookas, those of Candy Samples and Leasha, are also worked into the film towards the end of the movie, but all the disparate parts don't really come together to create an interesting film, unless looking at big beamers is enough to make you happy.

Steve the Movieman, for example, liked this exercise in editing featuring "reused footage, large breasts, rapid-fire editing, and crystal-clear photography used over and over and over again for seventy-one minutes": "The film largely spends its time follows Peaks around as she dresses and undresses, usually in public, and wears outrageously tight outfits that only go on to emphasize her voluptuous figure. During Peaks' scenes, she narrates and discusses her early years, largely spent hiding her unusually large figure thanks to her Christian-Conservative parents before embracing her body and her form later in her years as a stripper and a porn actress. Peaks is a pretty attractive force, thanks to her beautiful blonde hair, dashing figure, confidence in appearance and position, sensual voice, and, of course, her assets. We get a lifetime's worth of scenes of her having fun with her assets and dressing and undressing for our pleasure. […] Peaks' story — which commands a good 60% of the film — is an intriguing one and one of sustainable interest. We get the impression that she is undercutting Meyer's lax approach to this particular project by using this potential-vehicle as an opportunity to allow her personal story to be heard and sincerity on her behalf to prevail. Through her efforts to do this, Peaks becomes likable and more than a big-breasted enigma. Few would be able to erect a personality while the camera's fixation seems to constantly be on your oversized assets."

Ban the Sadist Videos! Part 2

(2006, writ. & dir. David Gregory)

David Gregory is an extremely productive maker of documentaries, most of which appear as extras on diverse DVDs; in between, he does an occasional feature-film doc like this one. We were not exceptionally impressed by his last feature narrative film, Plague Town (2008), though it did have some good aspects. ("Plague Town is a bit like an excellently made carrot cake dressed to look like a Black Forest Cake: in the end, no matter how good the carrot cake is, you're sort of disappointed it isn't Black Forest Cake — even as you take a second slice.")

Gregory also made Ban the Sadist Videos! Part 1 (2005), about which KQEKsays, "Named after a salacious Daily Mailheadline and written & directed by veteran documentarian / film historian David Gregory […], Ban the Sadist Videos! Was original released in two parts as bonus material in Anchor Bay UK's Box of the Banned series — a pair of sets featuring films formerly banned/cut by the BBFC censors in Britain. Known as 'Video Nasties', the list of films branded as taboo original totaled 72 but was significantly whittled down in later years."

In regard to Part II, Video Vacuum says, "The British government used 'Video Nasties' (mostly thanks to the country's sensationalized tabloids) as the public scapegoat for violent real-life incidents. The infamous Bulger case, where two boys killed a toddler, is blamed on Child's Play 3 (1991 / trailer), even though the kids never even saw the movie! […] There are a couple of interesting side notes here, like the rise of the black market for movies without certificates. I also enjoyed seeing the logistics of putting censorship into action (the board has to go back and watch thousands of videos that have already been released, leading to a huge backlog). Gregory also does a side-by-side comparison of Evilspeak(1981 / trailer) and its eventual censored version. I wish there were more of these comparisons, because seeing the actual cut footage gives you a good idea of what the censors found objectionable."

In any event, Uschi supposedly pops up somewhere in some "archive footage"— i.e., outtake from some past movie — but isn't a talking head. (Odd, actually, considering the wealth of her past, that Digard hasn't reemerged yet as a talking head in contemporary projects or started making appearances at pop culture festivals and conventions.)

Bad Biology

(2008, writ. & dir. Frank Henenlotter)

Another fabulously strange movie by the great cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter (Brain Damage [1988 / trailer], Basket Case [1982], Frankenhooker[1990 / trailer] and more), who returned to the directorial chair to deliver his first feature fictional film after a 16-year absence. But then, as The Pink Smokepoints out, "Henenlotter is a rarity among filmmakers: he does what he wants to do, and if he can't then he's not interested. He makes his 'weird little movies' on his own terms... Unfortunately nobody would meet those terms sufficiently enough to suit him, hence the long cold winter of no new output. Until now. [… ] His latest, Bad Biology (A God Awful Love Story), is pure and uncompromised Henenlotter."

Perhaps the most laughably restrained plot description of the movie is found at TCM, which simply says that the movie "Centers on a woman with a unique physical condition and her discovery of a man seemingly made just for her."

Trailer to

Bad Biology:

At All Movie, on the other hand, Jason Buchanan goes into a bit more detail: "[…] A warped love story about a fashion photographer with an mutated sex organ who meets a man with a truly magnificent tool. Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) is a shutterbug who specializes in edgy imagery. Her sex drive is always in the red, and she likes to ride bareback. She's also prone to killing her lovers during intense bouts in the bedroom. When Jennifer gets pregnant — which happens quite frequently — her rapid metabolism causes her to birth malformed infants in a matter of minutes. Sexually frustrated by the fact that she can't find a man who can truly please her, Jennifer is elated when she happens across Batz (Anthony Sneed), a man who keeps his monstrous organ under control by injecting it with lethal amounts of animal tranquilizers. Bats, too, has been having a rather difficult time finding a compatible mate, but when these two get together it's a match made in mutant heaven."

Dr. Gore gives the movie, which "feels like it was directed by a guy who spent a lot of time hanging out in Times Square in the 70s and 80s", "3 out of 4 mutant orgasms", saying: "Bad Biology attempts to answer the age-old question that keeps me up at night. How can mutated freaks of nature find love? As for seven-clit Jennifer, she stalks the bars and clubs hoping someone can feed her vagina the loving it needs. […] As for 24-inch Batz, he is trying desperately to control his third leg before it winds up hurting someone. His python of love gives women unending orgasms. Jennifer needs orgasms to live. These two were made for each other. […]"

"The epitome of unsavoury and vile, Bad Biology is a film that will cause you to look at your genitals with an air of distrust by the time it's over. The long-awaited return of writer-director Frank Henenlotter, this sebaceous cyst masquerading as cinema repeatedly tests one's tolerance for things that secrete an unconventional brand of ooze," says House of Self-Indulgence, and continues: "Teaming up with rapper turned writer-producer R.A. Thorburn (a.k.a. The Rugged Man), the wily filmmaker has dragged his wonderfully disgusting outlook kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It's true, the campy effects, unprofessional acting and gritty locations of his past movies are well represented in this outing, but they don't quite feel at home in this starkly modern universe. (Hip Hop and Henenlotter is a dicey combination.) While not as aesthetically pleasing as his previous films, the outrageous premise and twisted humour more than make up for its lack of flair. Outrageous premise? Really? I mean, Mr. Henenlotter's previous films involve a murderous mound of flesh who gets around via a wicker basket, a parasitic worm who shoots hallucinogenic blue liquid through a straw located in its mouth, and an amateur mad scientist who reanimates his dead girlfriend with spare hooker parts, so how outrageous can it be?"

So where is Uschi Digard in all this? She's the babe in a porn loop Batz watches.

Henenlotter followed this movie up with a documentary, That's Sexploitation(2013). It would have been the perfect place for Digard to perhaps start a new career as a talking head, but she isn't even in any of the outtakes shown.

Trailer to

That's Sexploitation:

Addendum — the One that Got Away:

The Last Days of Pompeii

(date & director unknown)

No, Uschi did not appear in the movie advertised in the poster above. That movie is, obviously enough, a John Holmes's penis (8 Aug 1944 – 13 Mar 1988) vehicle; less obvious, perhaps, is that it is a Hawaii-set porn version of James M. Cain's novel Double Indemnity, which had already gotten the non-porn Hollywood treatment in 1944 (trailer).

The synopsis to director Sam Norvell's (a.k.a. Stanley Kurlan) Eruption (1977), as found at One-Sheet Index: "[Leslie] Bovee, a devious partner in crime, shows that she too can handle her part as easily as she handles Holmes. Married to wealthy but no longer (to her) desirable executive (Gene Clayton), she hatches a scheme to have Holmes insure [her husband's] privates for $1,000,000 and then, of course, do him in — and that's one-half mil each for our two main characters. However, Bovee's stepdaughter Angie (Susan Hart) soon steps in and exposes (1) a few facts about her mother's background to Holmes and (2) her own lovely teenage body, every orifice of which Holmes promptly fills with his legendary part. The denouement takes enough twists to bedazzle a Hitchcock fan, but it is sex that people come to see in Eruption, and it is sex that they get."
The full NSFW film can be found at Tube Porn, which says "In the long list of unforgettable John Holmes classics, Eruption may be his finest work. Notorious for his gigantic member, people often overlook his sincere and talented acting ability. Hired by a devious sexpot played by Leslie Bovee, Holmes destroys her husband for the life insurance money that will make them both rich. The crime goes off withput a hitch, but when a persistent investigator causes trouble, the Hawaiian Islands grow increasingly treacherous."

SFW and just for fun —

the first film version ever made of

The Last Days of Pompeii

(dir. Mario Caserini, Italy, 1913):

In any event, we only use the Eruptionposter above only because it fits so well to "the one that got away": the movie that may or may not exist, and for which we could not find any image. Namely, The Last Days of Pompeii (1975), supposedly featuring the volcanic talents of both Uschi and her regular partner in lesbian trysts, Candy Samples (12 Apr 1928 – 23 Sept 2019). Way back in 2005, Timemagazine even made reference to the movie (but not Uschi), writing "The last days of Pompeii has been the title of, among other things, a historical romance by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a mini-series featuring Lesley-Anne Down and a porn flick starring one Candy Samples." The problem is, there seems to be literally no real documentation of the film anywhere else online, and almost everywhere that mentions it simply reiterates the little info supplied at the notoriously unreliable imdb— all of which was taken from a since-deleted page at the website Imagine Casting. (And yes, we saw that page once — as little as four months ago, it was still up.) Not reliable stuff, in other words.

But then, there is an odd reference in another often equally unreliable source that makes us sort of wonder: Wikipedia's page on the Adam Film Awards. If we are to believe that entry, in 1976 the Adam Film World's annual X-Caliber Awards for "Largest Breasts on the Sex Screen" went to "Uschi Digart in The Last Days of Pompeii". (The cover above, by the way, is from the January 1972 issue, long before the supposed release of Pompeii, and shows Uschi in the movie Below the Belt [see Uschi, Part IV].)

Could The Last Days of Pompeii truly have existed, once upon a time…? After all, every other movie referred to in that Adam Film Awards entry does exist.

Will we ever know for sure? Doubtful. Until then, The Last Days of Pompeii remains the Uschi maybe-movie that got away, the unknown HIM (1974) of big-breast fans.

As a side note: the original artwork for the Hawaii poster, artist unknown, was also used, complete with title, in Germany at some point as the poster for a release of the Russ Meyer classic Supervixens (1975, see Uschi, Part XIII). Which usage came first, we dunno.

May she live forever — The Great Uschi!

Coming soon:
Babes of Yesteryear looks @ Marilyn Joi

↧

Death at a Funeral (Great Britain, 2007)

June 20, 2020, 4:15 am

≫ Next: Eli (USA, 2019)

≪ Previous: Babes of Yesteryear – Uschi Digard, Part XI: 1978 to Addendum

This British flick directed by the American director Frank Oz got a lot of positive press in its day, and was enough of a success outside the US that it got remade in Bollywood (as Daddy Cool [2009 / trailer]) and in the USA by Neil LaBute (as Death at a Funeral [2010 / trailer]), the latter version of which even kept talented star-name short guy Peter Dinklage in the same part he played in the original. And while we do wonder how a farcical comedy about an uptight British family with familial differences dealing with a funeral gone wrong works when the setting is changed to an uptight Afro-American family, this version here had hardly enough true laughs to instigate the desire to see the newer American version, despite the last's intriguing cast.

Not to say that Oz's movie was absolutely terrible, but it is pretty much a waste of time. Neither all that funny nor all that shocking, Death at a Funeralmakes the mistake of basing most (though admittedly not all) of its laughs on two stale concepts: accidentally ingested drugs and the sudden appearance of the gay lover of the "straight" male patriarch — oh, and because it's funnier, the lover is a dwarf.

Trailer to

Death at a Funeral:

Personally, it would seem to us that such a difference in height does have its advantages: at least one of such a couple would seldom chafe their knees. Indeed, the gay dwarf lover bit does have its humorous aspects, though it is somewhat distressing that the filmmakers reduced his need for recognition or possible closure to mere greed (them shifty gay folks are just bad people, and worse when they be short). But then, had Peter Dinklage's character, Peter, been presented as a truly sympathetic person, most of the related "dark humor" would have left a bad taste in one's mouth and the Brits in the flick would have seemed much more like the uptight jerks they truly are than they do when they're merely losing grip on an inane and unexpected situation caused by a blackmailer.

As for all the drug-related stuff, well, the concept of accidental ingestion of hallucinogens is generally funnier to people who have never taken them, and the scriptwriters don't seem to display any founded knowledge in how hallucinogens work. (Which, perhaps, is why we found it all so unfunny.) If the drugs were really as strong as they are said to be at one point, Little Peter would have a permanent brain of mush, a fact that makes it hard to laugh at anything that happens to him. Ditto with wimpy nice guy Simon, played by Allan Tudyk, a man who is truly very funny in Tucker and Dale vs Evil(2010) but not very here: his dosage may only have been enough for a strong but simple trip, but even a simple trip can turn damagingly bad in the wrong environment, and the funeral environment at the House of British Twits as shown in the movie is not a good environment. (Indeed, a funeral anywhere is probably not a good environment to drop hallucinogens — Timothy Leary's excepting.) That his girlfriend (Daisy Donovan) nevertheless did not blow off the funeral for his own safety once she discovers she's accidentally dosed him (with mislabeled drugs) is simply irresponsible on her part, regardless of how relationship-reaffirming their narrative ends.

In any event, if unrealistic drug ingestion and dwarf lovers and watching farcical disaster after farcical disaster, small and large, pile up one after the other and on top of one another is fun or might be funny for you, then this day in the life at a funeral held at the home of an uptight family of upper middle class twit Brits might be your tepid cup of tea. Others will probably come away feeling like they have wasted their time…

But then again, for the benefit of doubt: if Death at a Funeral is watched with a larger group of people (say, in a cinema), where the laughter of other, easier-to-please viewers can help carry along those who find the darkly "humorous" events of the narrative a bit too predictable and too easy, it is possible that the movie might come across as far funnier than when viewed in just a small group or alone.

Death at a Funeral is, in any event, well cast and well acted and well shot — it's everything else about the movie that just isn't right.

↧

Eli (USA, 2019)

June 27, 2020, 1:56 am

≫ Next: Babes of Yesteryear – Marilyn Joi, Part I: 1972-73

≪ Previous: Death at a Funeral (Great Britain, 2007)

While director Ciarán Foy didn't exactly make waves with Sinister II (2015), his sophomore feature film, that somewhat listless and predictable movie did reveal a possible talent for achieving an enduring and appropriate dank atmosphere as well as the effective direction of child actors. But if both were merely inferred in Sinister II, they are proven hands down in Eli, Foy's latest feature film horror, a movie that is far better made and far more effective than Paramount's ignoble relegation of distribution rights to Netfux, where it premiered and is now found, would indicate. That the dinosaur of a movie production studio chose not to try to give the movie a real cinematic release reveals a substantial lack of foresight on their part, if not mental ossification, for if flawed-but-effective films like The Conjuring (2013 / trailer) and it's tangential sequel Annabelle(2014 / trailer) could become both hits and successful, semi-separate franchises, a movie like Eli surely could have, too, had it been handled properly. Rich in atmosphere, well-acted (particularly by the kids), and often quite scary, Eli is an efficient horror movie steeped in ever-increasing dread that has more real scares than jump scares and also packs one of the hardest and most unexpected twist endings seen in a long time.

Trailer to

Eli:

Eliopens on a note that is both sunny and summery, but it is quickly revealed to be a lie: a wishful dream that segues into a nightmare before returning to the real life of Eli Miller (Charlie Shotwell), a young boy apparently deathly allergic to everything. He and his obviously financially-strapped parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly of Eden Lake [2008 / trailer]) and Paul Miller (Max Martini of Sabotage [2014 / trailer]), are on the way to their last hope for a cure, a sanatorium deep in backwaters of Louisiana run by Dr. Isabella Horn (Lili Taylor of Leatherface[2017 / trailer],The Notorious Bettie Page[2005 / trailer], John Waters' Pecker [1998 / trailer] and more), who claims to have previously cured three other children suffering the same affliction. But the safe haven proves quickly to be anything but safe, though whether the danger lies in the ghosts that truly come to haunt Eli in the house or the treatment itself is very much open to question.

The basic atmosphere of dreary loss and hopelessness fully infuses the film from the initial dream sequence onwards: the world is a constant and deadly threat to the young boy, as is already very apparent in the run-in he and his parents have with the some of America's typical citizens when checking out of the last cheap & sleazy motel on their journey to the "safe house". But if the physically real can be left behind by driving away, Eli is unable to flee the "safe" walls of the sanatorium once the ghosts there go beyond making themselves known and actually begin to get hands-on with him — unluckily, as the ghosts only give him their attention, and not his parents, his panic is easily and quickly dismissed as due to the delicate nature he has acquired owing to his sickness.

Eliuses a unhurried pace interspaced with moments of terror, beginning first with beer-swilling rednecks and then with words writing themselves of fogged-up windows and escalating to unexpected ghostly appearances, but hardly crescendoing with physical attacks of the spectral or the apparent betrayal of those one trusts the most. For most of the movie, the viewer is as lost as Eli, unsure of what one should — or even could — do in a situation as hopeless as the potentially deathly ill as Eli finds himself. And if the kid initially seems wimpy and almost unlikable, little by little he become a figure of identification, someone the viewer begins to root for, if only because the viewer can recognize the spark of a strong will for survival that awakens in Eli. An extremely futile desire for survival, however, for it would seem doomed to lead Eli to his own demise no matter where he turns or what he does — re-entry into the world outside, after all, would death for him.

By the time Eli pulls its sucker punch — a sucker punch that easily equals the best ever pulled by [yawn] M. Night Shyamalan,the one pulled in the final scenes of The Sixth Sense (1999 / trailer) — the viewer has come to truly worry for Eli, to identify with him, and to hope that he somehow manages to find a solution for what appears, by all accounts, to be a hopeless situation. Kudos to director Ciarán Foy and his cast for taking the audience on such a decent ride, and for building and sustained such a pervading sense of horrific no-way-out — a sense of horror that is hardly dispersed by the movie's extremely left-field ending, an ending the infers consequences that will far transcend anything that occurred in the sanatorium.

We here at a wasted life tend to be indifferent to against remakes, as few are ever even half as successful as that (2004 / trailer) of the original Dawn of the Dead (1978 / trailer), but after watching both Sinister II and Eli, we cannot help but think that should anyone ever come up with the idea to redo some flawed non-classic or semi-classic, forgotten kiddie-terror movies of the past — say, The Child (1977) or The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971 / trailer) or Bloody Birthday(1981 / trailer) or The Children (1980 / trailer) or Devil Times Five(1974 / trailer) — Ciarán Foy could well be the perfect person for the project. He's got a talent with directing kids, one equaled only by his ability to create atmosphere. He's a director to watch, to say the least…

↧

Babes of Yesteryear – Marilyn Joi, Part I: 1972-73

July 5, 2020, 6:16 am

≫ Next: Totem (USA, 2017)

≪ Previous: Eli (USA, 2019)

Let's hear it for Marilyn Joi. Between 1972 and 1989, this Babe of Yesteryear made indelible as well as blink-and-you-miss-her appearances in a variety of fondly remembered, unjustly forgotten, or gladly overlooked grindhouse products. But fame (and non-fame) is a fickle thing, especially in the nether regions of exploitation movies, and although Ms. Joi always exuded a memorable presence and has some notable films in her resume, she never became a "name"— hell's bells, more people know the name Jean Bell than they do Marilyn Joi,* although Joi arguably displayed far greater thespian talent, far more variety of facial expression, and definitely appeared in a larger number of noteworthy movies. Indeed, "Joi brought variety and a measure of depth to her big and small screen performances. She never walked through a role and she knew the meaning of nuance. She could be a bad girl, a traditional action film heroine, or a light comedienne of considerable charm. [Bob McCann in Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television]"

To that, we might add that she had a killer figure and she was sexy, and she had fabulous eyes.

*Perhaps due in part to Ms. Bell's status of being one of the first Afro-American women to get nekkid in Playboy, while Ms. Joi only did cheesecake for race-specific publications like Players, "the Black Playboy". (Although, according to Ms. Joi, "I did do some [nude] pictures, but they were never published. I'm sure they're floating around somewhere."**) The original photo of the above altered image— found at Pulp International— is actually a cover photo from Players. Playersdeemed Marilyn "America's Favorite Black Poster Girl" in 1980 and, two years later, voted her one of "America's Ten Sexiest Black Women"— and she was.

**Quote taken from an informative interview published in Shock Cinema #16 in 2000, which can be found at the Internet Archives. We make extensive use of that interview in the following blog entry. For those of you who don't know Shock Cinema, it is one of the best magazines around, particularly for people who waste their lives reading sites like this one. Check it out, buy an issue — you'll love it!

A beautiful and bubbly Marilyn Joi interviewed:

"Marilyn Joi" was born 22 May 1945 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA. Her full real name is not general knowledge, though her real first name seems to be "Mary"; on screen, she was at times also credited as Tracy King, Tracy Ann King, T.A. King and even Anita King. She is alive and well and (unlike us) on twitter. A true Babe of Yesteryear, her film career was much too short and she is unjustly unknown — which is why we here at a wasted life have decided to take one of our typically meandering and unfocused looks at her filmography. If it's even more meandering and unfocused than usual, well, in this was researched and written while on coronavirus lockdown and we had more time on our hands.

As always, we make no guarantee that anything we write is 100% correct (feel free to tell us where we're wrong — preferably in a non-trolly tone of voice). And if we missed a film, let us know…

Hammer

(1972, dir. Bruce D. Clark)

"Women are like buses. Miss one, catch another."

Hammer (Fred Williamsom)

Marilyn Joi, credited as "Tracy King", made her film debut in a minuscule but noticeable role in this lesser classic from the early years of the Golden Age of Blaxploitation, a movie that is perhaps most notable now for having truly launched the film career of Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, seen below playing with a pussy (not from the movie).

Joi, seen below from the movie, was working as a dancer when, as she explains it, "[Hammer] just sort of fell on me, really. I was dancing, and someone came into the club and asked me, 'Do you want to be in a movie?' I was like, Yeah, right, sure!' (Laughs) That was Al Adamson, and he wanted me to do a dance [in the movie] with Vonetta McGee. [Shock Cinema #16]" As one might infer by the screenshot below, Joi does an S&M-themed strip show.

With Hammer, Al Adamson (25 July 1929 – 2 Aug 1995) acted only as a producer for a change, which might explain why the film displays somewhat greater directorial skill than most of his productions tend to: the New Zealand-born, now long-inactive director Bruce D. Clark — see: the trash anti-classic Galaxy of Terror(1981 / trailer) and the snoozer The Ski Bum (1971, with Zalman King / trailer) — may not have exactly been directorially talented, but his style definitely displayed greater mundane workmanship than Adamson's ever did. The screenplay is the first credited screenplay of Charles Eric Johnson, who went on to do a variety a blaxploitation films, the most famous being Slaughter's Big Rip-off (1973 / trailer), as well as the psychotronically fun Eddie Romero flick, Beyond Atlantis (1973 / trailer).

Trailer to

Hammer:

The plot to this "pretty decent slice of gritty 70's cinema [but] not something I would classify as an essential piece of blaxploitation cinema": "B.J. Hammer (Williamson) is a past-his-prime former boxer working the warehouse district of L.A. when he is fired after wiping the floor with a racist co-worker. Word of his fighting skills reach the ears of mafia-connected boxing promoter Big Sid (Charles Lampkin [17 Mar 1913 – 17 Apr 1989] of Five [1951 / trailer] and The Black Godfather [1974 / trailer]), who brings Hammer into his corner under the watchful eye of legit trainer the Professor (Mel Stewart [19 Sept 1929 – 24 Feb 2002] of The Bride of Re-Animator [1990 / trailer] and the film version of Iceberg Slim's Trick Baby [1972 / trailer]). Things look great for the boxer as he works his way through a series of victorious fights and he begins a relationship with Sid's secretary Lois (Vonetta McGee [14 Jan 1945 – 9 July 2010] of The Big Silence [1968]), but he begins to get some blow back from the neighborhood, who accuse the fighter of selling out to the Man. Furthermore, local cop Davis (Bernie Hamilton) is after Sid, who is dabbling in the drug trade. While Hammer initially refuses to believe his new employer is corrupt, his attitude changes when Sid demands he take a dive during the next big fight. Crushed by the request, Hammer refuses to take the dive but Sid's right-hand man Brenner, played by 70s baddie William Smith, threatens to kill Lois. [McBastard's Mausoleum]"

The fab soundtrack — is there even a blaxploitation film out there that has a bad soundtrack? — is from Solomon Burke (21 March 1936 or 1940 – 10 Oct 2010).

Solomon Burke's
Hammer:

"There isn't much to Hammer than what you would find in your average blaxploitation. If anything, the film pretty much goes through the motions without too much fuss. There's the obligatory slayings, the soft-focus sex scenes, the kitschy '70s-esque jive-talking, and the good-hearted (sometimes bull-headed) lead. Just about every cliché regarding pimps, street kids, hookers and hitmen is thrown into a cauldron that never really reaches a boiling point. What the film does do successfully is present one of blaxploitation's more charismatic figures. Williamson has charm to spare, and his good-natured humour and easy smiles make it very clear that he wasn't taking himself all too seriously while making this film. [Pop Matters]"

Some people, however, think the film is pure shit. For example, KO Picture, which seethes: "There was a real recklessness about the entire production: Continuity errors (within the first 5 minutes!), unintelligible dialogue, editing-via-hatchet or other blunt objects within reach, obvious non-actors in pivotal roles, plot points dropped and never picked up again, Fred Williamson's visible panty lines (those were some snug slacks!). And the most bizarre part is that there was a definite inkling of 'sequel' at the end of it all, like they felt this Hammerwould be an enduring character. One could almost argue that this was all a set-up in order to GET to a sequel. That all the dropped plot points and the absolute refusal to reveal who 'THE MAN' was and why he does what he does was, in fact, intended.* But that would be almost unimaginable. I refuse to give the filmmakers that much credit."

* This statement, needless to say, reveals the writer as a total honky that transcends simple skin color. How the hell can anyone not know who the Man is?

Hit Man

(1972, writ. & dir. George Armitage)

Another blaxploitation film written and directed by a white man, although Armitage has gone on record as having wanted Bernie Casey (8 June 1939 – 19 Sept 2017, of Cleopatra Jones [1973] and Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde [1976 / trailer]), the film's star,* to direct and only remained on the job when it looked like the producer, Gene Corman, would pull the plug on the project before giving it to a first-time [Afro-American] director. Like many blaxpoitation films of the time, Hit Man is a retooled version of a former lily-white hit film, in this case the British movie Get Carter (1971 / trailer)**— so both flicks, basically, are based on the Ted Lewis crime novel, Jack's Return Home. Marilyn Joi, now credited as "Tracy Ann-King", is there to play Rita Biggs According to Joi, "When I auditioned for Corman, I showed up in a mink coat with just a bikini under it! (Laughs) When I dropped the mink coat, that was it!"

*Another former football player who, if you like 'em big, was a total hunk in his prime.

**Remade in 2000 as a Sylvester Stallone movie (trailer).

"Actually, Corman's trend-setting with black-oriented films goes back over ten years. At that time he produced a motion picture called The Intruder, which dealt with racial intolerance and injustice in the South. 'It exposed the doctrine of hate and prejudice,' Corman says, 'but it turned out that the film was far ahead of its time.' The then-explosive nature of the film kept The Intruder from receiving the exposure it rightfully deserved. With the excellent response to his Cool Breeze* this year, Corman felt encouraged to produce another film in the now totally accepted field of black action dramas of today. Hit Man he feels comes into the marketplace at just exactly the right time for all audiences. [Press Release @ One-Sheet Index]"

*Cool Breeze (1972/ trailer), like Hit Man, is a blaxploitation version of an older lily-white classic; in the case of Cool Breeze, Gene Corman retooled the 1950 classic Asphalt Jungle (trailer) into something arguably less interesting.

The plot of Hit Man, as found at Blaxploitation.com: "Petty crook Tyrone Tackett (Bernie Casey) attends his brother's funeral in LA to discover that the death was suspicious. Rather than returning to his native Oakland he starts to make his own investigations into the murder. Tackett discovers that his niece (Candy All) had been making adult movies and begins to follow the trail through LA's porn underworld from motel to campus to Watts Towers and back. He encounters starlet Gozelda (Pam Grier), porn star Julius and others before arriving at crime lord Zito (Don Diamond [4 June 1921 – 19 June 2011] of the original version of The Toolbox Murders [1978 / trailer]) and henchman Shag (Bob Harris of The Student Teachers[1973, see further below]). Always alert and ready for action, he's apparently as merciless and uncaring as those he meets. Only his lover Laural (Lisa Moore [12 Sept 1940 – 10 Apr 1989] of Rape Squad [1974 / trailer]) sees the real Tackett..."

Trailer to
Hit Man:

"Hit Man is George (Miami Blues [1990 / trailer]*) Armitage's blaxploitation remake of Mike Hodges'Get Carter. While it lacks the punch of the original, […] it's a solidly entertaining revenge picture. It also happens to be a great vehicle for the late Bernie Casey. […]It contains more than its fair share of sex, violence, and exploitation goodness. It takes its time unfurling its premise, maybe a bit too much. Once it gets going, it's a rather satisfying thriller. Casey is front and center in nearly every scene. Even though the pacing gets a little pokey in places, his performance is so strong that you are with him every step of the way. The supporting performances are uniformly fine. […] Pam Grier and Marilyn Joi [below, from the film] are around as the eye candy, although you'll wish they had more to do. Still… if you ever wanted to see Pam Grier get eaten by a lion… [Video Vacuum]"

*Speaking of the excellent but totally overlooked and forgotten film Miami Blues, over at Pink Smoke, John Cribs ponders things we here at a wasted life have, too: "There's nothing mysterious about George Armitage, but his complete lack of prestige has always perplexed me. I spent a better part of the 90s wondering how the hell Miami Blues didn't open to the same kind of enthusiastic reception or at least develop the same reverential reputation as, say, Pulp Fiction. When his follow-up film Grosse Pointe Blank (1997 / trailer) was released seven years later, it drew mixed reactions from critics and fell into the iniquitous late 90s pit of 'Tarantino imitations' just because it featured comedic hit men and a soundtrack made up of popular songs. And after 2004's depressing flop The Big Bounce (2004 / trailer), […] I couldn't quite figure out why Armitage's track record had faltered so abruptly […]." Armitage is a much better filmmaker, in other words, than his obscurity and lack of film credits would indicate.

H.B. Barnum's title track to
Hit Man:

In any event: "Bernie Casey strides purposefully through Hit Man, his flamboyant hat tilted at a rakish angle over a graying Afro, his ex-professional-football player frame squeezed into a series of tight trousers. If he emerges as Hit Man's hero, it's only because his brutally efficient enforcer qualifies as marginally less evil than the human parasites around him. […] [George Armitage] strands Casey's grittily charismatic protagonist in some of the seamiest corners of a Los Angeles rotting from the inside out, then watches in admiration as Casey leaves behind a trail of bullet-riddled corpses and sexually satisfied women. […] Armitage's thriller inhabits a shadowy realm of porn theaters and brothels, mob palaces and dogfights. It's a hard-boiled world devoid of sentimentality or good intentions, where everyone is motivated by the ugliest and least egalitarian instincts. In this poisonous context, Casey's hunger for revenge almost qualifies as noble, though his means of accomplishing his goals are anything but. Casey gives his character a powerful internal calm and casual authority. He's a bad man in a wicked world, but at least he has style, and in the funky world of blaxploitation, that counts for an awful lot. […] Armitage's tight, minimalist, thoroughly badass fusion of blaxploitation and film noir proves that greed, lust, and the quest for revenge remain depressingly universal. [AV Club]"

Over at Expelled Grey Matter, they grapple with the philosophical question of whether a single but probably real scene can keep a movie from being "one of those forgotten films that needs to be reconsidered": "This is largely a decent action film once you get past the beginning, which involves […] a trip to a dog fighting ring — in which, it appears, we get to see a real dog fight, including one [dog] getting killed and its final death throes. This movie, I take it, is not famous enough to have sparked real outrage about that scene — or, maybe (hopefully) it was not real. Very few times am I sickened by violence in movies, since I know it is pretend. […] Whatever fun may be had watching a bunch of red paint splash around the screen later on is almost completely ruined by that one scene. This is a shame because, without it, I would be praising this movie up and down as one of those forgotten films that needs to be reconsidered […]."

"Bernie Casey exercises his right to bear a chrome plated Colt Super .38 automatic in this cool promo photo made for his 1972 blaxploitation flick Hit Man. We love Casey. He died [...] pretty much unheralded [19 Sept 2017], but he appeared in a lot of fun movies [...]. He also had the good fortune to get naked with both Pam Grier and Claudia Jennings. The Jennings scene is flat amazing, but the Grier scene, which is actually from Hit Man, is hilarious. As Grier climbs atop him and presses her naked body full length onto his the expression on his face reads something like: 'Oh. My. Freaking. God.' That's probably the only time in his life he wasn't 100% cool. [Pulp International]"

Wonder Women

(1973, dir. Robert Vincent O'Neil)

A.k.a. The Deadly and the Beautiful.

"There have been several great baseball movies and a handful of memorable football films over the years. Even track and field has inspired pictures like Personal Best and Chariots of Fire. But one sport above all is indisputably made for the big screen: Jai alai. Just imagine the thrill of plunking down $8.50 to watch two guys play catch with raisin scoops, and you can understand the excitement with which we viewed The Deadly and the Beautiful. Alas, the jai alai match that opens this film is a classic piece of bait-and-switch, and before long we find ourselves knee-deep in a Ross Hagen movie. [Scott Clevenger & Sheri Zollinger in Better Living through Bad Movies]"

Trailer to

Wonder Women:

Aside from the fact that we here at a wasted life have never understood what everyone has against Ross Hagen movies — who doesn't enjoy disasterpieces like The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968 / trailer) or Merchants of Death (1989 / full movie) or all his Fred Olan Ray flicks? — or how anyone can even like sports films, Clevenger & Zollinger can't see the forest for the trees: "Wonder Women is a rollicking B-movie and a perfect example of 1970s grindhouse cinema. [Criminal Element]" Indeed, the movie is some fabulous trash and finely aged kitsch, truly of the memorable kind that simply don't get made anymore. (Instead, nowadays we're stuck with Michael Bay movies — a sad culturally state, to say the least, fitting to the sad state of the so-called American democracy.)

Director Robert Vincent O'Neil adapted the script to this fun slice of Philippine-shot grindhouse trash from a screenplay written by Lou Whitehill, probably the very Whitehill script that was used more or less at the same time for the oddly better-known (?) slice of Philippine-shot grindhouse trash, The Thirsty Dead (1974 / full movie), which replaces jai-alai players with women. O'Neil, who (sadly) has remained inactive for decades now, had a brief productive flurry of about 15 years during which he wrote and/or directed some fun trash, most famously The Psycho Lover (1970 / trailer), Blood Mania (1970 / trailer), Angel (1984) & Angel 2 (1985) — the latter two both with Susan Tyrrell— and Don Sharp's What Waits Below (1984). (Oh, where did you go, Joe?)

Though an American production, most of Wonder Women was shot in the Philippines — but not the scenes of the uncredited Marilyn Joi [seen above from the movie], who revealed "My scenes were shot in an Asian restaurant here in L.A. Those were just some pick-ups they had to do — I don't know if they forgot to do them in the Philippines or what, but they asked me to do them and I said, 'OK!' It was just a tiny thing."

Tiny thing is right: basically, they dressed Joi in similar outfits to the only Afro American of the film's gang of "wonder women", Maggie (Shirley Washington of Dead End Dolls [1972] and Darktown Strutters [1975 / see Dick Miller, Part IV]), seen above from the movie, and then dropped Joi into the movie. (You see both Marilyn and Shirley in the trailer, by the way — but more of Marilyn.)

Title track to Wonder Women,

sung by Annette Thomas:

"[...] Wonder Women is essentially a sixties Eurospy movie transplanted to another continent and another decade, the 1970s. It has all the usual sixties Eurospy hallmarks: evil Oriental villain with an island full of beautiful, deadly, scantily-clad babes (why is it always a babe army?), weird science (unusual organ transplants), cool chases in exotic but low-budget locations, an 'escape from the island as the base blows up' finale and, most importantly, a supremely obnoxious hero. [Double O Section]"

The "loopy" plot, as found at criminal element: "Fourteen prized athletes from around the world suddenly disappear over a short span of time. […] It turns out the guys have been put into comatose states and shipped to an island retreat in the Philippines […] run by a Dr. Tsu: a disgraced lady physician turned mad scientist ('100 years ahead of her time'), played by exotic beauty Nancy Kwan (of The Wrecking Crew [1968 / trailer], The McMasters [1970 / credit sequence] and Walking the Edge [1985 / trailer]). What Tsu's up to at her freaky complex is — with the help of a bevy of go-go boots-wearing, machine gun-toting honeys — managing an organ transplant clinic. […] Sometimes she executes these operations just as experimental play, to see what will happen if you, say, swap brains between two people. But mostly she's after money. She lures in rich clients who will pay to trade vital parts with more fit persons; thus, the need for super-bodied athletes. So, for instance, there's one wealthy old geezer who's going to pay Tsu mad bucks to have his brain inserted into the body of a jai alai player Tsu and her girls have captured. Lloyd's of London, who has a financial interest in the jai alai star, starts to get some clues about where he's been taken. They hire the services of virile, square-jawed former CIA agent Mike Harber (played by Ross Hagen [21 May 1938 – 7 May 2011]), who happens to be in Manila […]. It doesn't take Harber long to zero in on Tsu's institute, and likewise the mad lady doctor and her henchwomen are fully aware of Harber and his investigations into their sinister doings. […]"
The film ends in a manner that indicates a planned sequel never happened.

Regarding this slice of "Filipino exploitation trash, boasting some nice 70s T&A and some crazy stuntwork", Alex in-Wonderland raves: "It's delightfully tacky, and quite harmless by today's standards. The women are moderately attractive and it's fun seeing them in such strong and physically demanding roles. Nancy Kwan is gorgeous, and plays her role as a megalomaniacal Bond villain to sweet perfection. Her refined manners and delicate poise belie her cold and wicked nature, and she's more than a match for the brutish Harber. While it's full of amusing bits, the funniest moment has to be when Harber is being chased through a cemetery and he pulls a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun out of his shirt. Where the hell did that come from?!? Talk about a master of concealment! The film's big set piece is a foot chase through a crowded marketplace, followed by a dangerous Jeepney chase. The most chilling and astonishing scene is when a speeding car accidentally hits a security guard — for real. It's a fantastic shot, but very unsettling. There's also some local flavor thrown in with an extended cock-fight sequence that's difficult to watch. Overall, it's a fun little female action romp for anyone who enjoys watching women in power roles. The only disappointment is when the action shifts to Harber, and the once powerful female assassins become meek and helpless in his presence."

Over at Letterboxed, Evan might add: "Kinda like a Ted V. Mikels (29 Apr 1929 – 16 Oct 2016) movie where things actually happen, this takes an already irresistible premise and keeps piling on the PG-rated sleaze for the entire duration of its 80-minute runtime. A decidedly capitalist take on Sumuru [see Maria Rohm Part I& PartII] quickly zigs and zags through cosmically soundtracked slow-motion cockfights, elektro brain sex, erotic chess games, and an entire room of fifth-reel Dr. Moreau freaks with the crazed abandon of Franco at his most feverishly pulp. Reading that this was shot on short ends and with a cast of Americans already in the Philippines doesn't surprise me in the least. Outlaw filmmaking at its most impulsive and fun […]".

The Student Teachers

(1973, dir. Jonathan Kaplan)

Marilyn Joi, credited as Tracy Ann King, has a tiny role in this film doing her specialty at the time: topless dancing. As The Student Teachersalso features the dearly departed cult character actor Dick Miller playing Coach Harris, we took a look at the film in R.I.P.: Dick Miller, Part III (1968-74), where we never made mention of Joi. We wrote:

A.k.a. College Coeds and Self-Service Schoolgirls (the poster below might be to the movie; neither name on it seem to be real — or at least neither "star" ever made another movie).*

*Since we wrote the original entry in May 2019, we've come to believe that Self-Service Schoolgirls might actually be another title for Erwin C. Dietrich's German exploiter Mädchen, die sich selbst bedienen (1975), a.k.a. Self-Service Girls (full NSFW film). Of course, there's no saying that the two different movies might simply share a same a.k.a. title.

Kaplan's second directorial project, once again a Corman production — a Julie Corman production, that is. It would seem that after nurse T&A, the time seemed right for teacher T&A. Dick Miller has a relatively major/important part as "the penultimate dumb" and chauvinist Coach Harris. (Major spoiler: He turns out to be the rapist!)

As Kaplan explains in Chris Nashawaty's Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman: King of the B Movies"After Night Call Nurses was done, I didn't talk to him [Corman] again for a while. Then Julie [Corman] called me and said, 'We're a big hit in Tallahassee! Roger wants you to come out and make the same movie, but with teachers instead of nurses.' That's how I got The Student Teachers."

Trailers from Hell on

The Student Teachers:

As an exploitation franchise, teacherploitation didn't last all that long: the Corman Mafia only made one unofficial "sequel", Summer School Teachers(1974 / trailer), and aside from the later cheapie The Teacher (1974 / trailer) and the far cheaper and more violent exploiter Trip with the Teacher (1975 / trailer, with Zalman King) — the latter a semi-remake of the even cheaper and sleazier Harry Novak production, Convicts Women a.k.a. Bust Out (1970, with Candy Samples) that was later semi-remade as Delinquent School Girls (1975 / trailer, with Roberta Pedon) — and the Italo sex farces Substitute Teacher aka La supplente (1975, poster below) and School Daysa.k.a. La professoressa di scienze naturali (1976 / full movie in Italian), we can't really remember that many female teacher-centric sexploiters out there.

The screenplay was by Danny Opatoshu, one of the less prolific screenwriters of the Corman factory of the 70s. Plot and opinion from B&S About Movie: "Rachel (Susan Damante of Blood Sabbath [1972, with an uncredited Uschi Digard] and The Photographer [1974 / trailer]) who wants to teach the good parts of sex education after school (that is, birth control and that sex isn't this alien, frightening thing); Tracey (Brooke Mills of The Big Doll House [1971 / trailer]) dates an art teacher who cheats on her [and gets involved in nude photography]; and Jody (Brenda Sutton of the WTF biker flick J.C. [1972 / WTF?]) works with an inner-city education effort but also gets involved in selling drugs. [...] To say this movie is dated is an understatement. That said, it's packed with the earnestness of the end of the 1970s and the feeling that young people would change the world. They all ended up repeating the same cycle as their parents by the early 80s. But for now, they would be the student teachers."

"An early film [...] from the days when New World Pictures was Hollywood's hottest training ground for new talent (1973). The plot, a rape mystery, is an ugly, exploitative downer, but Kaplan puts some infectious high spirits into the incidental action. Everyone is having so much fun that it seems a shame when the film is forced to stop every 10 or 15 minutes so the three lead actresses can take off their shirts. [The Chicago Reader]"

Chuck Norris has no lines in his first [short] appearance in a US movie in The Student Teachers as a karate instructor. And as one sees by the advert below, at least at the Grand Island Drive-in Theatre, The Student Teachers was once on a double bill with the WIP/nursesploitation Corman production, The Hot Box (1972).

Trailer to

The Hot Box:

In any event, the shot of Marilyn Joi below — found obviously enough at Mr. Skin— is of her stripping in the background of The Student Teachers.

Coffy

(1973, dir. Jack Hill)

Truth be told, you can't call yourself a true fan of blaxploitation — no, of exploitation film in general — if you have not yet gotten around to screening this fabulous trash masterpiece. Hit the title above to go to our extremely verbose and long-winded "review" (Spoilers!) of Jack Hill's classic, which we wrote way back in 2008.

Trailer to

Coffy:

In our review of Coffy we mention Marilyn Joi not even once — though she is found in an image we used for the blog entry (the three-gal stable photo seen further below) and does indeed stand out amidst the rather generic white babes in her brief, un-credited appearance*— we just could never take our eyes off the Queen of Blaxploitation, Pam Grier, in her first starring role, who just walks away with this perfectly tailored slice of grindhouse fabulousness, a film that fails in being 100% perfect only due to its final scenes, which reduces the righteous, revenge-driven, ass-kicking Amazon to a pissed-off cuckqueen.
*And also loses her top in the catfight, revealing a typically 70s distaste for wearing a bra.

But to return to Marilyn Joi [above]: Pulp International writes, "[…] Here she is again, chilled out, sporting an afro, and looking like she has something naughty on her mind. The shot was made in 1973 as a promo for the blaxploitation flick Coffy. The fact that the photo exists is a bit is unusual due to the fact her role in the film was so brief she never got screen credit. She was one of the prosties in the pimp King George's stable, competition for an infiltrating Pam Grier, who was on a revenge mission. Joi probably got fifteen seconds of screen time, which may be why this photo is often misattributed. It's Joi, though." As proof of her presence, below you find a photo of King George's stable, she being the only non-honky of the bunch.

Oh, yeah — the plot of Coffy, in short, as found in Clive Davies'Spinegrinder: The Movies Most Critics Won't Write About: "[Pam Grier] is Coffy, a nurse who takes the law into her own hands when her younger sister becomes hooked on drugs. The opening scene when she seduces a pimp/pusher before offing him is a perfect example of how films should begin. Sig Haig (14 July 1939 – 21 Sept 2019) works as a henchman for a crime kingpin (Allan Arbus* [15 Feb 1918 – 19 Apr 2013]) who likes to humiliate women. The outrageously dressed pimp King George (Robert Do Qui [20Apr 1934 – 9 Feb 2008]) has the best death scene. With Bob Minor and Marilyn Joi."
*The first (and only) husband of everyone's favorite photographer, Diane Arbus. (Fur, anyone?)

Detroit 9000

(1973, dir. Arthur Marks)

"In the underrated style of so many so-called grindhouse and exploitation films, Detroit 9000 has a lot more on its mind than most mainstream film. Even today, I think you'd have a hard time finding a big-budget, studio production that would be willing to take as honest a view of race relations as Detroit 9000 does. Beneath all of the exploitation trapping, there lies a film that was actually saying something about the way life was being lived in 1973 and which still has a lot to say about how life is being lived today in 2015. [Lisa Marie Bowman @ Through A Shattered Lens]"

Marilyn Joi, once again un-credited, shakes her booty as a "dancing hooker in whorehouse", assumedly the house-that-isn't-a-home in which Vonetta McGee's character, Roby Harris, works. Shot on location, Detroit 9000 has gained some attention in recent years as one of the Tarantino's favorite films and can even be seen briefly on a TV running on the background in Jackie Brown (1997 / trailer), a film from the days when the director didn't pointlessly rewrite history in his movies. The title comes, supposedly, from a since phased-out Detroit police radio code, "9000", for "officer down".

Trailer to

Detroit 9000:

In her book If You Like Quentin Tarantino…, Katherine Rife takes a look at this flick, yet another of the many exploitation flicks of yore that the Great T helped rediscover (he re-released it on VHS/DVD via Rolling ThunderPictures, his short-lived film distribution company) and writes: "Detroit 9000 […] is a scrappy cop movie full of naïve charm and funky blaxploitation attitude, and baby, there ain't nothing wrong with that. […] It's the spirit of the thing that counts, and the spirit of Detroit 9000 is the kind of thing that makes you happy to be alive. The crème de la crème of Detroit's black elite has come to fete congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger of Sheba, Baby [1975 / trailer]), but before the ink on the checks can dry, the party is interrupted by stick-up men in black ski masks. […] As you might expect, the wealthy and influential people are quite upset about the incident, so the cops put two detectives on the case: world-weary white detective Danny Bassett (Alex Roco [29 Feb 1936 – 18 July 2015], who later costarred in The Godfather [1972 / trailer, not to mention Return to Horror High (1987)]) and suave, intelligent black cop*Sergeant Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes [10 Apr 1932 – 15 Jan 1992]). They're polar opposites: Danny has been ground down into a cynical, hunched-over little man by years of watching his peers get promoted while he's busting skulls on the streets, and Jesse is not only a perfect physical specimen ("whoever doesn't believe black is beautiful never saw my big hunk's man meat," as his girlfriend puts it), he's well educated, charismatic, honorable and clean cut — he was an all-American jock in high school, for Christ's sake. It's kinda like Lethal Weapon (1987 / trailer) with more loaded racial rhetoric, and the racial element is loaded with rocket fuel in this movie. Detroit 9000 goes there, over and over again, from throwaway lines such as "No wonder the honkies think we're oversexed" to vicious, bigoted rant from a feeble old lady in a wheelchair, but it saves special vitriol for its portrayal of the deeply hypocritical nature of institutional racism. […]"

*"Intelligent", like, needs to be pointed out 'cause you just can't assume a suave black cop also has brains, can you?Like, because the world-weary Danny Bassett isn't described as "intelligent", we automatically assume/know the white guy is an idiot, right?

From Luchi De Jesus's soundtrack to

Detroit 9000— Newness in Rhythm [Throw A Punch At Me]:

Director Arthur Marks (2 Aug 1927 – 13 Nov 2019) is a man that needs some long overdue appreciation, if you ask us. True, he is remembered by some as yet another white man who made some (superior but underappreciated) blaxploitation flicks — aside from this one he did Bucktown(1975 / trailer), Friday Foster (1975 / trailer), J.D.'s Revenge (1976 / trailer) and The Monkey Hustle (1976 / trailer) — but he also made fun trash like The Roommates(1973, with the Great Uschi) and Bonnie's Kids (1972 / trailer). Cutting his teeth doing un-credited reshoots for the masterpiece that is Orson Welles's Lady from Shanghai (1947 / trailer), Marks went on to supply the story to one of the nastiest exploitation films out there, The Centerfold Girls (1974 / trailer, starring Andrew "Horse" Prine, seen below not from the movie), producing or distributing fun trash as Linda Lovelace for President (1975 / trailer), William Girdler's The Zebra Killer (1974 / trailer), and even acted in an Italo soft-core porn musical version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Eros Perversion (1979 / some music) — and more! The guy was talented!

Of course, Orville H. Hampton (21 May 1917 – 8 Aug, 1997), the guy who supplied the screenplay for Detroit 9000, was also no slouch. He received an Academy Award nomination with co-writer Raphael Hayes (2 Mar 1915 – 14 Aug 2010) for his story and screenplay to One Potato, Two Potato (1964 / final scene), based on the true story leading up to the Loving vs. Virginiacase, but prior and after he lent his writing talents to such fondly remembered fodder as The Alligator People (1959 / trailer), The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959 / trailer), Riot on Sunset Strip (1967 / trailer) and The Snake Woman (1961 / trailer).

Trash Film Guru also thinks that Arthur Marks and the film, which he calls "the real deal", needs more respect: "Recently I more or less politely begged for a long-overdue reappraisal of [Marks's] fine Pam Grier flick Friday Foster, and today I'm here to spread the good word about what is undoubtedly his absolute masterwork (a term regular readers of this site will know I don't toss around loosely), 1973's Detroit 9000. […] What sets Detroit 9000 apart from much of the other blaxploitation fare of the time (a category which this flick may or may not actually fall into — it's certainly debatable) is the intelligence and extra level of humanity and characterization that Marks, his fine cast, and screenwriter Orville H. Hampton inject into the proceedings. […] Both leads are deeply flawed, all-too-human individuals, and Rocco and Rhodes turn in superb performances that bring out all the nuances in the script. This is an intelligent story delivered by intelligent performers with a firm grasp on the surprising subtlety inherent in the material. […] Marks, absolute master of pacing that he is, keeps things moving along at a very nice clip here, and there's never a dull moment — the action scenes are explosive and fraught with drama and tension, but even the quieter moments aren't so quiet as every word in every off-handed exchange does at least something to propel the main narrative forward. This is a very economical film (both metaphorically and, I'm sure, literally), and the always-resourceful Arthur doesn't waste a frame. […] Buckle up, folks — the road starts out bumpy and it only gets bumpier. All of which is fun, of course, but it means you've gotta keep your wits about you, as well — and trust me, when the shit hits the fan at the end, you'll be glad you did. […] This flick is a terrific piece of crime drama from start to finish, but it demands — and takes — its pound of flesh along the way. Get your ass off my blog and watch it right now."

Three minutes of Marks talking:

Arthur's Kids: A Conversation with Arthur Marks
from Elijah Drenner on Vimeo.

After all the praise above, a word to the contrary from Every 70s Movie: "Rhodes […] was a man of letters off-screen and, accordingly, brought eloquence and poise to his acting. Therefore, it's a shame that Detroit 9000 give Rhodes one of his only leading roles, since he's got nothing to do here but strive to retain his dignity while running through gutted urban locations and/or spewing bland dialogue. Rocco, a versatile character actor […], provides a totally different flavor of authenticity, although he, too, is handicapped by an underwritten characterization. Among the supporting cast, Scatman Crothers does some energetic speechifying as a preacher; Vonetta McGee classes up a trite hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold role; and Herbert Jefferson Jr., later a regular on the original Battlestar Galactica (1978-79 / movie trailer) series, shows up in full pimp regalia. The problem is that everyone involved in Detroit 9000, including second-rate blaxploitation director Arthur Marks, did better work elsewhere — so why this mediocre flick lingered in Tarantino's memory is a mystery."

Also used in the movie —

Honey Cone singing Sunday Morning People:

More addendum stuff: [Spoilers.] Prior to Tarantino 's re-release of the flick, oddly enough Detroit 9000was also released by that cheap purveyor of public domain movies and stuff no one else would ever dream of releasing, EastwestDVD. Their website is currently offline, so perhaps they were a bit lax on the definition of public domain. Vonetta's character gets shot in the back by the bad guys and dies, as do most hookers with hearts of gold. Somewhere along the way, probably in Great Britain, Detroit 9000 got released on a double bill with the second-rate French film Popsy Pop (1971), also known as The 21 Carat Snatch, a movie noted primarily for having been scripted by Henri "Papillon" Charrière, which is why the movie is also aka The Butterfly Affair. It's a movie that "will probably only appeal to a small audience of movie lovers […] who enjoy unusual caper films shot in exotic locations with great soundtracks. If you’re looking for a solid well acted film with a coherent script, you should probably look elsewhere since Popsy Pophas very little to hold it together besides Claudia Cardinale's fabulous wardrobe and wacky wigs. [Cinebeats]"

Tender Loving Care

(1973, writ. & dir. Don Edmonds)

As might possibly be expected with a blog focusing on the kind of films we do, the name of Don Edmonds pops up again and again and again — for example, in our Babes of Yesteryear look at Uschi Part V-Pt. II, Part VI and Part XVIII, our Haji and Charles Napier RIP career reviews, Part II of our Dick Miller tribute, and Part IX of our look at Harry Novak's career… and, who knows, maybe elsewhere as well. In Uschi, Part V-Pt. II, we mentioned the following about him when writing of his sex flick, Wild Honey: "Wild Honey is the directorial début of Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009), former and occasional actor (for example: Beach Ball [1965 / trailer] and Wild Wild Winter [1966]) who, after this film, still did an occasional acting job (Home Sweet Home [1981 / trailer], for example) but concentrated mostly on writing, producing and directing — including some true sleaze classics: Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer) & Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976 / trailer). Other films we find of note that he touched: Skeeter (1993 / trailer, with Charles Napier), True Romance (1993 / trailer), Beyond Evil (1980 / trailer), Saddle Tramp Women (1972), […] the Charles Napier vehicle, The Night Stalker(1987)."

Although Tender Loving Care is not generally lumped together with Roger Corman's other nurse movies — The Student Nurses (1970 / trailer), Private Duty Nurses (1971, see Dick Miller Part III), Night Call Nurses (1973, see Dick Miller, Part III), TheYoung Nurses (1973, see Dick Miller, Part III) and Candy Stripe Nurses (1974, see Dick Miller, Part IV) — it was coproduced by Corman (though he probably got the credit only 'cause he took over the movie's distribution). But instead of the normal Corman-factory format of four females (including one minority female), Edmonds concentrates his films on a female triad (including one minority female). Here, in what is Marilyn Joi's first major role outside of an Al Adamson flick, she fills the role of the mandatory minority female character. As one of the three main babes, she even makes onto the poster, credited as "Anita King". That's her, of course, in the photo below at the right.

The American Film Institute has an extremely detailed synopsis about a film in which "nurses dole out more care than called for in their job descriptions [Kristie Hassen@ All Movie]", of which we present only the first couple of lines: "Nurse Karen Jordan (Donna Young) arrives at an airport in Los Angeles, CA, to take her new job at West Ridge Hospital. Meanwhile, African American boxer Jackie Carter (John Daniels of Flesh-Eating Mothers [1988]) goes into cardiac arrest after being punched in the chest, and is rushed into West Ridge's emergency room. Dr. Ben Traynor (Michael Asher), assisted by intern Dr. David Aaron (Tony Mumolo) and African American nurse Lynn Pierce (Joi), revive him. Afterward, Lynn meets Karen and agrees to let her move into the apartment she shares with Tracy Dean (Lauren Simon), another nurse. Later, at the instigation of her boyfriend David, Tracy steals a bottle containing a stimulant at the nurses' station pharmacy. An orderly, William Simpson (George 'Buck' Flower), sees the theft, but says nothing. […]" What then follows is a T&A tale of sex and drugs and pimps and gangsters and motocross racing and romance and dune buggies and group sex and blackmail and murder and both happy and tragic endings — more or less everything one expects and wants in an exploitation movie.

Over at Cult Collectables, they ask Don Edmunds about the movie, and he says: "[…] That was back in the day when there weren't a lot of Blacks in pictures, and you didn't refer to them as Blacks. And if you saw Tender Loving Care, there's no reference to him being Black. $25,000 in eight days, we made that picture for. We didn't have nothing. We didn't have any permits on that film. We would just steal anything. When you're making a picture in eight days, you don't have time to breathe. You don't have time to sit down at dinner. You don't have to sleep. You just make a picture. You drive down sleeping in cars, you're driving to the next set. I don't care who you talk to, if they can tell you they had this leisurely time making an eight-day picture, I'm telling you, they're liars. They don't. I couldn't take time to take a piss. Corman picked up Tender Loving Care, and he was making other movies in the nurse genre. Again, I was out of work, standing around writing scripts, and it was one I had in my trunk. I'd written the picture, and nobody was making it. So I ran into this woman named Chako van Leeuwen, who went on to do Piranha(1978), and I got a call one day from her and she says she'll meet me at this drive-in restaurant, not even an office, and I said, 'Yeah, right.' I had been eating Top Ramen, so I thought, at least I'll get a chicken sandwich out of this thing. So I went down to this restaurant, and I met this lady, and she said that she wanted to make a movie. I pulled out a bunch of scripts that I had written that nobody had ever made, and I said 'Here, read these.' She picked out Tender Loving Care, and she said, 'I've got thirty-five thousand dollars.' I said that's not quite enough, but took it. I'm just a kid around Hollywood, and I haven't got gas for the car and I thought hey, it's another movie, let's go make that. That's the way my whole career's been. I've never had that luxury of going oh, I'll only make this or I'll only make that. I look back on it and maybe wish I had, but it's a waste of time. I made what I made, and there it is."

The dude at Toxic Fletch is currently the only person who's seen the flick and thought it worth writing about: "[…] Tender Loving Care is a short movie at 72 minutes,* and despite that it does have an occasional drag, but not too many and the skin content is much better than the more successful nurses drive-in movies of the 70s that Julie Corman produced. Of what I have seen of the Corman-produced nurses movies, Tender Loving Care has a stronger story that moves along with few glitches. What glitches there are is in the department of acting capability and silliness in some characters. Of the three primary actresses, of course that would be the nurses, Donna Young's performance, even though she is the top billed of this movie (as Donna Desmond), is the weakest. […] Marilyn Joi […] gives an expected good performance that is above the means of this film. Lauren Simon also turns in a good performance as the put-upon girlfriend of a drug-addicted doctor […]. And of course George Buck Flower delivers a good performance as a lecherous hospital orderly, as does John Daniels as a troubled young man facing the end of his boxing career."

* Depending on which source you look at, it would mean the movie has been cut of about 6 minutes.

Used in the movie —

Maxayn's Trying for Days:

More Joi to come — next month.

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Totem (USA, 2017)

July 13, 2020, 12:22 am

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Some years ago, director Marcel Sarmiento directed the disturbingly odd and transgressive, blackly humorous horror flick, Deadgirl (2008 / trailer), which, due to its decidedly exploitation-film elements, arguably upset too many people to ever find a mainstream audience or general popularity. Totem, his first feature-length directorial project since then, is far more standard in its supernatural horror narrative than the zombie sexual horror of Deadgirl, but nevertheless also manages, at the end, to suddenly slip in a quick dash of disturbing sexuality that succeeds in putting the viewer uncomfortably on edge — far more than most of the movie's extremely traditional horror elements that precede the unexpected resolution. Despite being far more accessible on the whole than Deadgirl, Totem pretty much tanked when released and quickly slid into oblivion.

Totem opens with a shock and a splash, though the event shown should probably have been more clearly marked as occurring prior to the rest of the movie. But soon enough the viewer realizes that the opening violent death is that of the mother — and thus a tale unfolds that is hardly new: a few years later, just when daddy James (James Tupper of Beneath Us [2019 / trailer]) decides that the time has come for his artist girlfriend Robin (Ahna O'Reilly of Sleepwalker[2017 / trailer]) to move in and join the family, his decidedly non-chill oldest daughter Kellie (Kerris Dorsey), who has pretty much taken over the maternal role within the family, is suddenly confronted by a seemingly evil presence out to harm the family. Thus family drama meets supernatural horror as Kellie tries to discover the what and the why of the dangers her family now faces.

Whether the inter-familial drama and difficulties resulting from daddy moving on or Kellie's realization and exploration of the sudden appearance of the supernatural threat, the elements of the plot are indeed nothing new. What saves the movie is the convincing acting and surprisingly tightly drawn characters — the latter is particularly noteworthy, for none are really fleshed out enough for them to be as convincing and "real" as they are. True, Kellie's high-school sports background is given some focus, but what dad does other than being daddy (e.g., how he puts bacon on the table, for example) is never broached, and while Robin is said to be an artist and even moves her sculptures into the house, she never seems to be actively creative. They, like the youngest daughter Abby (Lia McHugh of The Lodge [2019 / trailer]), all simply agitate within the setting, coming forward as needed, but are also far more present as people than the sketchiness of their respective part should allow. Ditto with, Kellie's boyfriend Todd (Braeden Lemasters of The Stepfather [2009 / trailer]), who is never anything more than an unnaturally understanding and perfect boyfriend, even if he does now and then assist in advancing the plot (e.g., he is the source that explains exactly what a totem is, and how it could be the source of the supernatural threat). Nevertheless, he like every other stock character of the tale is acted with such conviction that he achieves a presence that makes his final fate all the more tragic — although the movie's twist also makes him obvious fodder in retrospect.

It is arguable whether Totem deserves its ignominiously quick fate of total obscurity, for despite its by-the-numbers plot development, Totem manages to be as surprisingly involving as it is well-acted, far more so than many a far more popular horror movie. Likewise, while most of the shocks and special effects do lean towards the cheap and cheesy, the final money shot(s) don't lack in punch and effective realism, not to mention some cringe-inducing ick-factor moments of icky sexuality. Totem is an entirely watchable movie.

In the end, however, the mainstream mediocrity of the first two-thirds of Totemovershadows the final shocks and the sucker-punch of the unexpected socially transgressive twist so important to the movie's resolution. This, in turn, substantially mitigates the movie's overall effectiveness — especially since that once the twist is revealed, certain prior events (like the fate of the cat) no longer make any sense. Totem may never bore, but despite its ability to hold the viewer's interest and the violence and ick-factor arising in its final moments, on the whole Totem feels more like a surprisingly good pay-TV movie than a feature film.

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The Purge: Anarchy (Non-USA, 2014)

July 20, 2020, 3:52 am

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It is easy to see why the sequel to 2013's The Purge enjoys greater popularity than its predecessor. It's not because it's a better film — it's not, if you're looking for a movie with a message — but it is definitely a more traditional action cum horror movie of the hunt-the-human genre begun with, dunno, the first version of The Most Dangerous Game(1932 / complete film). Whereas the first Purge movie, one much more in the tradition of the home-invasion flick, still spent energy on the somewhat didactic exploration of the philosophical question of complacency and compliancy, The Purge: Anarchy, having the advantage of a pre-built context and world, might still offer a few superficial head-nods to one or the other unpunctuated semi-questions regarding guilt and morality, but is really far more interested in simply being a well-made survive-the-night action movie that follows a checklist of scenes. This time around, however, the narrative moves through the lower echelons of a society that is, perhaps, but a few goosesteps away from what America could easily become and, to an extent, already is.

Trailer to
The Purge: Anarchy

In Purge: Anarchy, instead of a well-to-do neoliberal family confronted by a system they make money from, we are given a variety of salt-of-the-earth individuals with just enough generic background story to allow us to find points of identification in them. We have the hardworking, single-mom Eva (Carmen Ejogo of It Comes at Night[2017 / trailer]) and her daughter Cali (Kielo Sanchez), the mom doomed to the minimum wage, ends-never-meet life familiar to so many in the US. First the two are confronted by the an unexpected Purge-related personal tragedy, and then by macho sexual entitlement, before the real reason (i.e., the governmental conspiracy to cull the lower classes) forces them onto the streets on Purge Night. Then we meet Shane (Zach Gilford of The Last Stand [2013 / trailer] and The Last Winter [2006 / trailer]) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez of A Perfect Getaway [2009 / trailer]), a young married couple on the brink of separation who, for some odd reason, are still underway two hours before lockdown and get stuck downtown when their sabotaged car breaks down. And finally, we meet Sergeant (Frank Grillo of Hell on the Border [2019 / trailer] and the Wes Craven car wreck known as My Soul to Take [2010 / trailer]), a former cop and man of some means who functions as movie's unbelievable dues-ex-machina character: he gets distracted from his personal mission of revenge, the killing of the drunk driver who killed his son, and ends up the unwilling leader of the motley group as they make their way through the murderous masses and insanities of the after hours. And as the five do plod onwards, people drop left and right around them, but the quintet proves harder to kill than you or we would probably be.

Good set pieces, horrifically fun costumes, (predictably) unpredictable twists and a lot of shooting propels the movie forward, keeping the viewer tensed and on the edge of the seat despite the occasional unsatisfying turn (like not seeing what happens to the Grand Dame [Judith McConnell of The Doll Squad (1973 / trailer), The Thirsty Dead (1973 / full movie) and The Brotherhood of Satan (1971 / trailer)] that Sergeant lets run). The end result: a tense film, a fun film, a mostly intellectually empty film that jettisons much of the first's message and offers well-made and well-timed entertainment following a familiar pattern… and a groaner of an ending meant to underscore the Sarge's own personal redemption.

If there is a message to the movie, it might be that aside from the upper echelons feeding from the lower, all echelons are capable of being infected by such a moral and social rot that, in the end, the average person has little if any humanity left within them. After all, it is our right to be fuckwads, as per the Constitution. In Purge: Anarchy, it is not just the rich that are out to destroy the lower classes, the poor are cannibalizing themselves as well, with those that simply want to survive, to live, are at victim of both. The America shown in the movie, an America that is oddly familiar in so many ways, is a society and a nation that is too sick to ever be great [again], in part because it's a society and a nation that prefers to ignore its own illness.

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July 24, 2020, 2:47 am

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Short Film: Dementia / Daughter of Horror (USA, 1955)

July 29, 2020, 2:47 am

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Dementia— is it art or is it exploitation? Or proof that a film can be both in one?At little less than an hour in length, this short movie is perhaps the longest "short film" we've ever presented — but Dementia / Daughter of Horror is one our favorite films here at a wasted life, and we think it's time to finally give it the honor.

Prior to [Re]Search's seminal book Incredibly Strange Films (1986), this movie, an obvious labor of love by the unknown filmmaker John J. Parker, Jr., was pretty much forgotten by the world. Now, over 30 years later, thanks to the Internet and the plethora of obscure-film lovers with time on their hands, this oft-maligned surreal mini-masterpiece is hardly forgotten and rather well-documented — it's reputation is no longer merely that of the film everyone's laughing at when the blob attacks the movie theatre audience in the original version of The Blob(1958).

Wikipedia has the core details: "Dementiais a 1955 American black-and-white experimental horror film produced, written, and directed by John Parker, and starring Adrienne Barrett and Bruno Ve Sota (25 Mar 1922 — 24 Sept 1976, of Attack of the Giant Leeches [1959], The Wasp Woman [1959], A Bucket of Blood [1959] and so much more). The film, which contains no dialogue, follows a young woman's nightmarish experiences during a single night in Los Angeles's skid row. Stylistically, it incorporates elements of horror, film noir, and expressionist film. Dementiawas conceived as a short film by writer-director Parker and was based on a dream relayed to him by his secretary, Barrett. He cast Barrett in the film, along with Ve Sota, and ultimately decided to expand it into a longer feature. The film received a troubled release, being banned in 1953 by the New York State Film Board before finally being released in December 1955. It was later acquired by Jack H. Harris (28 Nov 1918 – 14 March 2017) [the producer of The Bloband other fun stuff], who edited it and incorporated voice-over narration by Ed McMahon before re-releasing it in 1957 under the title Daughter of Horror."

Personally, we always found the B&W cinematography of Dementiaparticularly noteworthy — and a far cry from what one might expect, seeing who held the camera: cinematographer William C. Thompson (30 Mar 1889 – 22 Oct 1963), photo above from Tar & Feather's, a man best remembered — if remembered at all nowadays — as the cinematographer of the Ed Wood Jr disasterpieces Plan 9 (1957 / trailer), Glen or Glenda (1953 / full masterpiece), Bride of the Monster (1955 / trailer), Jail Bait (1954), The Sinister Urge(1960 / trailer) and Night of the Ghouls (1959 / full movie), as well as his short Final Curtain (1957 — our Short Film of the Month for March 2019). Other films of note include Dwain Esper's breathtaking roadshow "horror" film (and imperative viewing) Maniac(1934) and other fun precode independent trash product like Esper's Marihuana (1936 / trailer), Crane Wilbur's Tomorrow's Children (1934 / full film) and High School Girl (1934), and W. Merle Connell's The Devil's Sleep (1949 / trailer). Allegedly either colorblind or missing an eye (the legend varies, or is completely missing, depending on which website you read), Thompson exploitation roots were set with his first film job, the "drama"Absinthe(1914).

For Dementia, for a change Thompson seems to have pulled out the creative stops and gone arty. Much like the music, which was arty from the start, as it is by the influential American avant-garde composer George Antheil (8 July 1900 – 12 Feb 1959), with vocal gymnastics by the great Marni Nixon (22 Feb 1930 – 24 July 2016), whom some might know as the singing voice of Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956 / trailer), Natalie "Doesn't Float" Wood in West Side Story (1961 / trailer), and Audrey Hepburn in the shitty film that is My Fair Lady (1964 / trailer).

Dementia is a great film, and a mysterious one. Ignoring the questions of interpretation that the surreal narrative opens, the project itself raises many questions. Why did director John J. Parker, Jr., decide to suddenly make a film, this film? And why, after such a unique blast of creativity, did he never again get involved in another film project? Who exactly was John J. Parker, Jr., and whatever happened to him? Ditto with his secretary Adrienne Barrett, for that matter…

Adrienne Barrett will probably remain a mystery, but at least some questions have been answered over the years about John J. Parker, Jr., if sketchily… for example, what the AFI Catalogwrites opens as many questions as it answers: "Producer-writer-director John Parker, whose only onscreen credit is 'A John Parker Production,' was the son of prominent film exhibitors, and Dementiawas his only feature-length production. Parker made a short film, based on a nightmare experienced by his secretary, Adrienne Barrett, and used it to obtain funding to produce Dementia. Barrett starred in the feature film, which was co-produced by fellow actors Bruno Ve Sota and Ben Roseman. Although Dementia, which was shot partially on location in Venice, CA, was produced in 1953, it encountered serious censorship difficulties and was not released until 1955."

In regard to the censorship problems, DVD Savantexplains: "[Parker] did submit the movie over ten times to the New York censors between 1953 and 1955, only to be refused a license for exhibition due to its horror content. Their gripe sheet includes just about every forbidden item in the Code: Although only a fairly grim dismemberment is depicted, the implications of the film cover prostitution, pimping, police corruption, adultery, incest (maybe) and heroin addiction. The censors demanded the deletion of practically every event in the film. Commercially, Dementiawent exactly nowhere."

And what did the NY Censors think? Well, according to Thrilling Days of Yesterday— which thinks 'Dementia is not a particularly good movie. […] But it's a movie well worth checking out at least once for the simple reason that no movie title better describes its contents than this one.'— one of the board wrote: "This six-reeler is a cinematographic attempt at the pictorial translation of some notions engendered by a sick brain. The attempt has produced a film which overflows with horror, hopelessness, strong sadism, violent acts of terror, and outbursts of panic. Its characters, who all move about like the vagrant phantasms of dreams, do not speak. The sound track is nevertheless alive with a line of musical commentary ranging from sour lyricism to noisy pathos…"

Thrilling Days of Yesterdayalso mentions that "Dementia sprung from the ambitious mind of John J. Parker, the son of a family who owned a chain of theatres. Parker had a bit more motivation beyond just distributing other people's movies — he wanted to make them on his own, and one of his first projects was a thirteen-minute short entitled Citizen Clute (1951), devised to be a TV pilot starring legendary character veteran Chester Clute. […] When you have money, you'd be surprised at how much pull you can exert in any industry — and such was the case with John J.; he was able to secure an office inside Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood and start what would become his production company (J.J. Parker Productions, Inc.) and his only directorial effort (Dementia)."Citizen Clute (1951), in any event, was screened in Portland by the "pioneer Oregon theatreman" John J. Parker, Jr., in 1951 [Archive.org] and is now, presumably, a lost film.

It seems somehow fitting that one of the few known screenings of Dementia, on a double bill with a documentary on Pablo Picasso, was at New York's legendary 55th Street Playhouse. Among the many films of note that cinema screened before becoming history is nothing less than the legendary (and lost) gay porn film...

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August 4, 2020, 2:47 am

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The Stepfather (USA, 2009)

August 5, 2020, 12:51 am

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What a poopsicle. In theory, we here at a wasted lifehave nothing against remakes, or "reboots" or "re-envsionments" or whatever they are wont to be called today. Admittedly, however, we also like them to try to go a totally new direction — as such, though it is a perfectly fine film in its own way, we find The House of Wax (dull trailer), the 3-D 1953 Vincent Price remake of 1933's Mystery of the WaxMuseum (trailer), far more superfluous than, say, Jaume Collet-Serra's version from 2005 (trailer), which is pretty much a completely different movie, even if it is in the end not much more than a dead-teenager bodycounter populated by over-aged teens (its overall genericness is primarily redeemed by its setting and some unsettling wax-related gore scenes). Collet-Serra tried to take the basic wax idea someplace else, at least, and wasn't frightened of an R-rating.

Unlike, on the otherhand, the loser that made this flick here, Nelson McCormick, who basically only changes the brand of salt and pepper to no-name this time around but keeps the recipe pretty much the same, even as he does somersaults to get a PG-13 rating. (Note: we saw the "unrated" director's cut, and it still felt like the ballsack of a castrated cat.)

Trailer to

The Poopsicle (2009):

Joseph Ruben's original Stepfather (1987) is a pretty good, well-acted flick with some nice twists, including one that was probably lifted from The Shining (1980 / trailer) but that also works really well and adds an intriguing "sisters are doing for themselves" aspect uncommon to most horror flicks (especially back in the 80s). Unluckily, the new version jettisons all that made the first flick good and instead goes full generic and dumb. (And the substandard acting doesn't exactly help, either.)

The young, doubting-daughter heroine of the first flick, for example, has been replaced by an oddly dislikable young, untrusting son hero (Penn Badgley), and any possible non-intentional feminist intonations are squashed by the presence of an unneeded girlfriend eye candy, Amber Heard (of All the Guys Love Mandy Lane[2006 / trailer]), who spends most of her time looking droolable in a bikini. The impulsive mom (Sela Ward), already on the edge of believability in the original, is even less of a believable figure in this flick, a woman who doesn't even bother with doing the now-universal internet search common to contemporary dating-and-mating habits and etiquette. The deaths are all PG-13, a rating which not only explains the bikini but also means the movie never really manages to transcend the level of a contemporary pay-TV filler film. As for Stepdaddy (Dylan Walshof that guilty pleasure known as Congo[1995 / trailer] and Fright Fest [2018 / trailer]), well, maybe the actor wasn't given all that much to work with, but he also doesn't exactly have presence. (But he does seem to have ESP, which is very helpful when you're a murdering psychopath.)

As for the ending, obviously enough the filmmakers were hoping for a hit and thus they wanted to leave the movie open for a sequel (indeed, the original spawned two successively worse films, The Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy [1989 / trailer] and The Stepfather III: Father's Day [1992 / trailer]), but the manner in which they allow the possibility of a sequel is a groaner — as is most of the movie. But before the final groaner, the hospital-set expository scene, one is faced with a protracted "climactic" segment of running around, non-kills and fighting that lacks creativity, tension, unpredictability, horror or anything that might have made it interesting. And then there is the rooftop fight, the biggest joke of the movie: one literally has to start laughing when Stepdaddy reappears in a way that indicates he can fly like Superduperman.

What a poopsicle. Do yourself a favor, skip this third-rate piece of uninteresting, by-the-number pap and go for the original. Sure that one is over 30 years old and looks and feels a bit dated — as does this one, actually — but unlike the remake it not only doesn't feel like a lazily made pay-TV movie, but also displays thespian and directorial talent and comes across as a decent suspense movie with some unexpected twists that really work.

Trailer to the first version of

The Stepfather (1987):

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84 days and counting...

August 11, 2020, 12:48 am

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Short Film: X-Ray Film (USA, 1968)

August 12, 2020, 4:02 am

≫ Next: 77 days and counting...

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We stumbled upon this intriguing little exercise in arty filmmaking while preparing this month's Babes of Yesteryear feature, Marilyn Joi, Part II: 1974, which goes online next week. (For Part I: 1972-73, follow the link.) Joi has a teenie-weenie appearance in Chris Munger's feature-film directorial debut, Black Starlet (1974), so we take a look at that film there in Part II. But this little exercise in short filmmaking we've decided to present alone...

Director Chris Munger, like so many people in the film industry, mainstream or not, appeared more or less from nowhere (the little we found we supply further below) and disappeared into nowhere. This long-gone Munger should not be confused with the currently active music-minded Chris Munger, the composer of the music to the D-2-DVD flick Aliens vs. Zombie(2017 / trailer). Unlike so many "filmmakers", Munger the First at least left behind two intriguing projects: the Blaxploitation sleaze fest that is Black Starlet, and the Georgia-shot cult creepy-crawly chiller Kiss of the Tarantula (1976 / trailer), the latter "a Willard(1971 / trailer) inspired movie with spiders in place of rats, a female protagonist, and a much lower budget". The end of his known directorial career seems possibly to have been an episode of Grizzly Adams in 1978, after which one can only say, "Oh Munger, Munger, wherefore art thou Munger?"

While we don't know where the Chris Munger the First went, we were able to find out a little about whence he came: as per the Los Angeles Free Press, Vol. 6, Issue 244 (3/21/1969), Chris Munger was one of six UCLA student filmmakers — the other five being John Gufiderson, Bill Haugse, Jim Martin, Kent Smith and future bad-movie auteur Jim Bryan— who, as a self-help cooperative called "the Venice Film Group", hosted a program at the Los Angeles Cinematheque to earn money to finance their own projects. Considering the year, it might be feasible that the screening included Munger's not-but-almost forgotten experimental short X-Ray Movie (filmed 1968, released 1971, according to the Library of Congress Catalog: Motion Pictures and Filmstrips), which "makes a cynical comment on our romantic naiveties of our bodies, particularly in terms of lovemaking. [alternative projects]" The music is from the Dutch composer Hank Badings. "In Chris Munger's X-Ray Film (1970, 4:20 mins, 16mm), the entire arc of life, from birth to death, is played out with medical footage. [bampfa]"

Chris Munger's 1968 short,

X-Ray Film:

[X-ray film] from I•HATE•THIS•FILMon Vimeo.

Speaking of Munger's fellow UCLA film studies classmate, the bad-film auteur Jim Bryan, Chris Munger — or, rather, "C. E. Munger"— was an associate producer of Bryan's "low-budget crime film with a lot of soft sex thrown in", Escape to Passion (1971 / full film), featuring the Babes of Yesteryear Kathy Hilton ("Oh Kathy, Kathy, wherefore art thou Kathy?"), Barbara Mills (23 Feb 1951 – 15 Dec 2010) and Bambi Allen (2 May 1938 – 21 Jan 1973, billed as Holly Woodstar). Three years earlier, in 1968, Munger was the cinematographer on Bryan's equally sleazy The Dirtiest Game— Bryan: "My budget was well under $20,000. [love it loud]"—which didn't get released until 1971 (full film) and is "all near-hardcore exploitation until the wife goes berserk, leading to a bloody, violent ending with razor blades and a gun". Bryan's most notorious film is probably the disasterpiece that is Don't Go in the Woods (1981 / trailer), but his last directorial effort was Jungle Trap[2016 / trailer], starring the infamously untalented Renee Harmon (see: Frozen Scream [1975]), with whom he collaborated regularly. Unlike Munger, Bryan managed to carve himself a niche as a jack-of-all-trades in no-talent independent filmmaking....

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77 days and counting...

August 17, 2020, 11:21 pm

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Babe of Yesteryear – Marilyn Joi, Part II: 1974

August 18, 2020, 11:05 pm

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Let's hear it for Marilyn Joi. Between 1972 and 1989, this Babe of Yesteryear made indelible as well as blink-and-you-miss-her appearances in a variety of fondly remembered, unjustly forgotten, or gladly overlooked grindhouse products. But fame is a fickle thing, especially in the nether regions of the grindhouse, and although Ms. Joi always exuded a memorable presence and has some notable films in her resume, she never became a "name"— hell's bells, more people know the name Jean Bell than they do Marilyn Joi,* although Joi arguably displayed far greater thespian talent, far more variety of facial expression, and definitely appeared in a larger number of noteworthy movies. Indeed, "Joi brought variety and a measure of depth to her big and small screen performances. She never walked through a role and she knew the meaning of nuance. She could be a bad girl, a traditional action film heroine, or a light comedienne of considerable charm. [Bob McCann in Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television]" To that, we might add that she had a killer figure and she was sexy, and she had fabulous eyes.

*Perhaps due in part to Ms. Bell's status of being one of the first Afro-American women to get nekkid in Playboy, while Ms. Joi only did cheesecake for race-specific publications like Players, "the Black Playboy". (Although, according to Ms. Joi, "I did do some [nude] pictures, but they were never published. I'm sure they're floating around somewhere."**) Players deemed Marilyn "America's Favorite Black Poster Girl" in 1980 and, two years later, voted her one of "America's Ten Sexiest Black Women"— and she was.

**Quote taken from an informative interview published in Shock Cinema #16 in 2000, which can be found at the Internet Archives. We make extensive use of that interview in the following blog entry. For those of you who don't know Shock Cinema, it is one of the best magazines around, particularly for people who read sites like this one. Check it out, buy an issue — you'll love it!

A beautiful and bubbly Marilyn Joi interviewed:

"Marilyn Joi" was born 22 May 1945 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA. Her full real name is not general knowledge, though her real first name seems to be "Mary"; on-screen, she was at times also credited as Tracy King, Tracy Ann King, T.A. King and even Anita King. She is alive and well and (unlike us) on twitter. A true Babe of Yesteryear, her film career was much too short and she is unjustly unknown — which is why we here at a wasted life have decided to take one of our typically meandering and unfocused looks at her filmography. (If it's more meandering and unfocused than usual, well, it was done during thee Spanish-wide corona lockdown and we had a lot of time on our hands…)

As always, we make no guarantee that anything we write is 100% correct (feel free to tell us where we're wrong — preferably in a non-trolly tone of voice). And if we missed a film, let us know…

Go here for
Marilyn Joe, Part I: 1972-73

Black Samson

(1974, dir. Charles Bail)

A fun if somewhat less-noteworthy slice of 70s blaxploitation from white man Charles Bail, a longtime Hollywood factotum who made his directorial debut with this movie, which he followed up by directing the amusing piece of fluff that is Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold(1975 / trailer). If the imdb is to be believed, Bail was last seen raising horses in Texas.

The screenplay, by Warren Hamilton Jr., is based on a story by Daniel Cady, who had a long and productive career in watchable, no-budget Californian exploitation, sexploitation and porn (often credited as "William Dancer"). He produced The Cut-Throats (1968) and All the Lovin' Kinfolk (1970), for example, both of which feature the Great Uschi (see Part I& Part II), and the trash anti-classics Grave of the Vampire (1972 / trailer) and Dream No Evil (1970 / scene), not to mention the no-budget Henning Schellerup blaxploitation anti-classics Sweet Jesus, Preacherman (1973 / trailer) and The Black Bunch (1972 / trailer). Credited as Tracy Ann King, Marilyn Joi has a small part somewhere in Black Samson as a widow.

Trailer to

Black Samson:

The plot: "Nightclub owner Samson (Rockne Tarkington [15 Jul 1931 – 5 Apr 2015]) does his best to keep his neighbourhood clean of crime and drugs. He is assisted in this endeavour by a heavy staff that is able to subdue every adversary. When vicious mobster Johnny Nappa (William Smith) tries to muscle in on Samson's territory, Samson takes a brave stand against Nappa and his flunkies. Nappa sends his girlfriend (Connie Strickland [whose six-film acting career consists of nothing but prime-quality trash]) to spy on Samson's activities. She becomes a topless dancer in his club and her lover immediately becomes jealous, taking his wrath out on the various thugs sent unsuccessfully against Samson. [Nostalgia Central]" Samson's main squeeze in the film, Leslie, who of course gets taken hostage at one point, is played by another Babe of Yesteryear, Carol Speed, well remembered for her tour-de-force acting turn in William Girdler's classic disasterpiece Abby (1974 / trailer below).

Trailer to
Abby:

Black Samson ends with a classic showdown on a rundown street in the hood, where "the rooftops come alive as people hurl every obtainable object at Johnny and his men. The debris continues to fall until Samson raises his staff. He and Johnny stand alone in the center of the rubble, two gladiators engaged in monumental battle. Samson downs Johnny with his staff, and the war is over. [Original press release synopsis @ One-Sheet Index]"

Of that scene, in an interview now found at the Internet Archives conducted while rewatching that scene, William Smith once said, "They were throwing pans, bottles, bricks, mattresses. Hell, they were throwing refrigerators. It was all real. [Pause] Well, so I guess there was a little bit of racial tension. Not from the other actors. But those guys on the roof were just extras. I think they only got about $20 a day. They were really trying to hit the white actors. That part of the scene was real. [A clip showing the white actors in the street] Look at me. I was so mad, man. That son of a bitch was trying to hit me there. They didn't care. […] Rockne Tarkington was really a nice guy. Oh, he was a big guy. He weighed more than I did. And a muscular guy, a basketball player. Weighed about 250, about 6'5". He was good in that fight scene."

Over at the Austin Chronicle was back in 1999, Mike Emery wrote: "He's big, bad, speaks softly, and carries a big stick. No, this isn't the Teddy Roosevelt Story. It's Black Samson, one of the lesser-known blaxploitation flicks of the Seventies. Samson (Tarkington) is a dashiki-clad owner of a topless night club who keeps his 'hood drug-free with the help of an African fighting staff and a pet lion named Ubu. […] Samson's no pushover, so when he's not throwing funky parties at his club, he's busting heads and saving his girlfriend from the torturous clutches of his nemesis' henchmen. Meanwhile, Nappa manages to be a brilliantly psychotic screen villain […]. Directed by Chuck Bail […], the film rolls along fairly smoothly. Most notable is the engaging rivalry between the two big men, Tarkington and Smith. Of course, much of the flick is laughable, but it's surprisingly cohesive, which is more than can be said for many of its contemporaries."

Allen Toussaint's theme to

Black Samson:

The ain't bad but there are better attitude of Mr. Emory above is pretty much shared by everyone who has seen the movie, including Monster Mania, which says: "Black Samsonis not what I'd call an intelligent film, though it certainly has a little more to say than other films of the period. Samson is decent, if dull, character who really tries to keep his community strong, keeping out both white and black dealers. I don't know what the deal is with the staff, if there is any significance, or why he's called Black Samson. I suppose this may be alluding to the character from the bible, but that feels like a stretch, considering there's no Delilah […]. Tarkington is not as charismatic as actors like Richard Roundtree, Ron O' Neal, and Fred Williamson, but has some quiet presence and looks good in the action scenes. His two funniest, being his encounter with a shady lawyer, whom he holds over a high ledge and a run-in with some robbers, who get their skulls smashed in, and make the character appear a bit psychotic as he repeatedly pummels one dude's brain into mush, though he does give him a dime for his troubles!

Black Samson is of course in no way inspired or based on Levi Keidel book Black Samson, which was not only published years after the movie came out but, despite its wonderful, almost Holloway House cover, is less Black Lit than born-again lit narrating "an African's astounding pilgrimage to personhood"… (You know that Christian idea: you ain't no person till you done become Christian.)

Mean Mother

(1974, "dir." Al Adamson)

Three years earlier, in Spain, the great Argentinean-born Spanish exploitation director León Klimovsky (16 Oct 1906 – 8 Apr 1996) directed the Spanish-language movie El Hombre que Vinodel Odio(a.k.a. The Man Who Came from Hateand Run for Your Life), poster and full film below, about a draftee sentenced to jail in Viet Nam who manages to escape and ends up traveling to Rome to kidnap an Albanian dancer, "a decent little intriguer that deserves better than to be completely forgotten. [John Seal@ imdb]"

El Hombre que Vino del Odio:

El Hombre que Vinodel Odio was bought for US distribution by producer Samuel M. Sherman, Al Adamson's partner at Independent-International Pictures. But after Sherman bought the flick, he decided it wouldn't appeal to US audiences — so Al Adamson shot new scenes with an Afro-American cast and re-edited the movie, turning it into a "blaxploitation" action film entitled Mean Mother (1974), directed by "Albert Victor".

Trailer to

Mean Mother:

Marilyn Joi, credited as Tracy King, is found in Adamson's version of the movie — hell, she's even on the poster! Joi herself didn't even know that, however, until she was interviewed by Shock Cinema, to which she then said: "[Al Adamson] was always filming something. He'd splice me in here and there — I could be the star of 30 movies and not even know it! Which is fine, as long as I didn't end up in a triple-X movie or something like that!" In any event, as the stripper squeeze of the movie's lead she supplies the prerequisite nudity of the movie.*

*As explained at the great and now possibly no-longer-defunct blogspot Temple of Schlock: "Marilyn Joi was an exotic dancer at The Classic Cat […] when Adamson first approached her with an offer to be in movies. She agreed, and appeared in Hammeras 'Tracy-Ann King,' performing a sexy nightclub strip for Fred Williamson and co-star Vonetta McGee (Tracy-Ann King was one of several names Joi used while touring the strip club circuit […]). Adamson elevated her to leading lady status when he cast her in the new parallel plotline footage for Mean Mother. 'When I first saw the footage of her,' Sherman says, 'I said to Al, "I like her! She's really good, she's really pretty, she's willing to do nudity — let's keep using her."' The gorgeous starlet would go on to do several other films for Adamson […]." The title above is linked to the Temple — do your duty, and go there today.

Rock! Shock! Pop! was able to follow the narrative of Mean Mother and describes the plot as follows:"Dobie Gray (who appears here as Clifton Brown) plays Beauregard Jones, a soldier who has gone AWOL from the Vietnam War and ends up in Los Angeles and involved in a heroin smuggling ring based out of Saigon. When a deal goes wrong, Jones heads back to 'Nam and meets up with his old platoon where he hangs with Joe Scott (Dennis Safren, from the original film […]).* It doesn't take long for the two of them to split up and get out of the jungle during a Vietcong raid. Jones ends up in Spain, while Scott ends up in Rome. Of course, trouble follows each of them to Europe and the Spanish mafia and a gang of Communists ends up hunting them down. Jones eventually finds Scott and convinces him that what they need to do is head to the land of high sales tax and good beer, so they grab their hoochies and head off to Canada. But little do they know, the Euro-mobsters are hot on their trail as they make their way to The Great White North, and things are gonna get worse before they get better."

*Joe's gal, of course, is his gal from the original film, Terry, played by former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi — she's the SPECTRE hit-babe Fiona Volpe in Thunderball (1965 / trailer) — and is also found in such fin stuff as Muscle Beach Party (1964 / trailer), The Green Slime (1968 / trailer), Jess Franco's 99 Women (1969, with Herbert Lom), and Umberto Lenzi's Manhunt in the City (1975).

"Using screenwriter Charles Johnson, who wrote Fred Williamson's Hammer, Adamson and Sherman […] create a racially edgy film with a shady, violent black lead, with a supposedly international feel. To make things even more surreal, historically, Clifton Brown was cast to play the film's lead character Beauregard Jones. The surreal part is that Brown was actually pop singer Dobie Gray (26 July 1940 – 6 Dec 2011), who had the 1973 single Drift Away [and, in 1965, sang the classic hit, The 'In' Crowd]. In the disjointed Mean Mother, […] the stories never seem to really feel connected. The Beauregard Jones storyline gets almost forgotten during the middle portion, and we're left with the tired, and difficult-to-follow Klimovsky footage until a nonsensical car chase/shootout in the final act. Adamson and Sherman tried to spice up the blaxploitation angle, adding gratuitous nudity, courtesy of former stripper Tracy King as Beauregard's main squeeze, and some horribly edited fight sequences. […] [Digitally Obsessed]"

Dobie Gray singing
Drift Away:

Over at b-independent, they say that "Sam Sherman is the King of DVD commentaries. Listening to his audio tracks on movies […] is the closest thing to living the 1970s' exploitation scene as a kid who grew up in the 1990s can get. Expansive and detailed, Sherman hits on everything from the evolution of an actor's career to the marketability of the final product, a subject he spends a good bit of time on with Mean Mother, a U.S.-Italian production with a long and arduous history. […] Even Sherman admits he really needs to pay attention to follow the action. Relying solely on plot highpoints, both stories are underdeveloped and do little to complement the other. To bridge the gaps in logic and time, the dialogue contains more exposition than an entire week of daytime soap operas. The result is tediously painful to watch."

Complete Soundtrack to
Dynamite Brothers:

Somewhere along the way, Mean Mother was also sold as a double feature with another obscure Al Adamson Independent-International picture, Stud Brown— a flick better known as the "East meets West" actioner, Dynamite Brothers (1974), with Alan Tang (20 Sept 1946 – 29 Mar 2011) and the delicious hunk o' chocolate that was Timothy Brown(24 May 1937 – 4 Apr 2020). As to be expected, the Stud Browntraileris cut in such a way that East meets West turns into pure Black Power.

OK, has nothing to do with the movie, but... the great Etta James (25 Jan 1938 – 20 Jan 2012) cut a great album in 1980 (one of many great albums throughout her troubled career) called Changes, and the first song on the LP is entitled Mean Mother...

Not from the movie —

Etta James singing Mean Mother:

The Naughty Stewardesses

(1974, dir. Al Adamson)

"How small-town can I be? Imagine! I'm so provincial that the thought of making love to a naked man in front of strangers just makes me sick!"

Stewardess Debbie (Connie Hoffman)

"By the mid-1970s it had pretty much become obvious that sex cinema had become a goldmine, and obviously inspired by the success of the Swiss import Die Stewardessen a.k.a. Swinging Stewardesses a.k.a. Stewardess Report (1971 / full film, dir. by the great Erwin C. Dietrich) — a slightly episodic softsex comedy about, you guessed it, stewardesses — Sherman and Adamson decided to make Naughty Stewardesses (1975) — a slightly episodic softsex comedy about, you guessed it, stewardesses (Connie Hoffman [as Debbie], Marilyn Joi [as Barbara], Sydney Jordan [as Jane], Donna Young [as Margie]). The film, which also features […] former silver screen cowboy Robert Livingston (having probably his first sex scene in his long career), actually is almost a little too blunt in its execution and has also remarkably little to do with stewardesses — but it became one of Adamson's and Sherman's production company Independent International's biggest hits. [(Re)search My Trash]"

And thus was made the sequel, Blazing Stewardess (1975), which we look at next month in Part III.

Trailer to
The Naughty Stewardesses:

"The plot follows the exploits of four sexy flight attendants, and each of them disrobes in front of the camera and/or engage in intercourse at one point. There's raunchy action with a captain and a lass aboard his plane (in which a small child looks on to get a first-hand sex-ed class), and a wild party where a nude dude is actually a cake (he gets slobbered by one of the stewardesses!). The stewardesses include African-American starlet and Adamson regular Marilyn Joi (here using the name Tracy King) who does a poolside striptease. But the real attraction is cute shorty Connie Hoffman. This cupcake has a body to die for and she plays a half-witted blonde torn between a young photographer/pornographer (Richard Smedley) and a much older wealthy playboy (Robert Livingston [9 Dec 1904 – 7 Mar 1988] of Valley of the Zombies[1946 / trailer] and The Black Raven [1943 / full film]). Smedley plays a slightly cracked impotent character that devises a plan to hold the stewardesses at ransom for $50,000 in hopes that old man Livingston will come running with the dough. Instead, he comes running with a shotgun. [DVD Drive-in]"

"Nurses and cheerleaders were the first uniformed T&A starlets. Then cinematic exploiteers took notice as airlines began to sexualize their female flight staffs with daring outfits and suggestive advertising campaigns designed to lure horndog business travelers. […] Notables: Eight breasts. Two corpses. Hitchhiking. Gratuitous shower scene. Knitting. Budding romance montage. Road rage. Gratuitous food fight. Nekkid photo session. Pool-side striptease. Hare Krishnas. One foot chase. Bimbo tossing. […] Time codes: Crew member's kid gets an eyeful (6:55). Maggie has her nethers shaved by a gal pal before a night on the town (15:00). Originator of the Blue Man group (31:08). Shutterbugs get all the girls (46:30). Glimpse into the seedy world of underground porn (58:08). Final thought: Who knew a stewardess picture could be dull!? [DVD Talk]"

Sex Gore Mutants hated the movie, which "involves the Stewardesses — Debbie, Lori and Barbara — going somewhere, but end-up with only men on their mind. That's pretty much all there is to it! Other than that, it's scene after scene of minor titillation, cheesy nude scenes and naff jokes that even Tesco wouldn't use in their Christmas crackers! I can't begin to describe how utterly pathetic these films [Naughty Stewardesses & its sequel, Blazing Stewardesses] are. There are films that are so bad, they're actually quite good. And there are films that are so bad, so utterly dire in every, single aspect, that you can still get some minor enjoyment at their shite-ness! But Blazing Stewardesses and its sister movie don't even get that far! What we have here are two of the most dumb-ass films I've ever endured! This is crapola of the most frivolously nauseating variety!"

Trailer to

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson:

Digital Obsessed might disagree: "You know you've got a classic when the first scene is one of our girls inducting the co-pilot into the mile-high club. Sure, this isn't any cinematic masterpiece, and doesn't offer much in the way of real content. However, it does have that groovy 1970s music going for it, as well as a lot of flavor from the era, and who would want to miss the funky uniforms, short-cut skirts, knee-high boots, and poofy hats? Locations cover Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and several of the directors' homes, which were also former dwellings of old Hollywood stars like Harold Lloyd. This and its sequel, Blazing Stewardesses, were anomalies for Adamson, whose mainstay were B horror flicks like Satan's Sadists (1969 / trailer or Dracula vs. Frankenstein(1970). Not nearly as sleazy as they would have you believe, The Naughty Stewardesses is wonderful cheese. It does go beyond the average, working in some timely topics and subplots, a bit of action and some off-the-wall characters. A perfect time capsule for 'Women in Uniform' B movies, where the sky's the limit, and the girls go first class—and all the way."

B-independent, which rightly believes that in the 70s "even sexploitation was elevated to art by merely possessing a social awareness", tends to uncover the deeper levels of classic trash: "With all its comedy, The Naughty Stewardesses is still a dark movie about troubled times. […] For a sexploitation film, The Naughty Stewardesses is a pretty feminist piece of work. The women are all strong-willed who know what they want and don't take any grief from their would-be suitors. In fact, it's the stewardesses who keep their men on the leash. While the girls live in the excess of the times, they don't allow themselves to fall victim to that excess. They have good heads on their shoulders and know how to use them. […] The men, on the other hand, are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Dirty old men. Pornographers. Psychopaths. Criminals. Deadbeats. There's only one truly respectable male in the bunch, and that's a throw-away character […]. Sexual empowerment isn't the only issue The Naughty Stewardesses tackles head on. It's a movie that embodies all that the 1970s were about, and that's infecting the societal changes brought to light in the 1960s. The most apparent being to oust the regime of old men running the country who were stamping out the freedoms our country has prospered on.* It's these old men who reap the rewards given freely by the youth culture, but hold young America at bay and kill them if their tightly woven power circle is threatened. It would be hard to sell a movie like The Naughty Stewardesses today. It's too dark, too raw, and all the endings aren't happy ones."

*Unluckily, as proven by today's failure that is Trump's America, the old men not only won the battle, but have also convinced the enslaved masses that enslavement is freedom.

Music to the movie —

Don't Ask Me by Sparrow:

Trivia from the DVD commentary supplied by San Sherman: "Sherman remembers just about everything about the cast and crew, and the anecdotes are abundant. Some of the best include his recollection of Adamson wanting to walk off the project (the only time he ever threatened to do so), and a furious visit from Lana Wood(married to actor Richard Smedley at the time and fearing he was participating in a porno!) who was appeased by Sam's knowledge of John Ford! [DVD Drive-in]"

In case you didn't know: Lana Wood, an actress with "naturally large breasts" and of "arresting beauty", is the younger and less-renowned sister of Natalie "Doesn't Float" Wood; Smedley was the second of Lana's six husbands, and seeing that he was rather active in early Southern Californian exploitation and soft-core films of the 70s — for example, Skin Flick Madness (1971), where he is credited as "Bigi Dicki" and Affair in the Air (1970), both with the Great Uschi (see: SFM& AITA) — perhaps her suspicions were justified.

Black Starlet

(1974, dir. Chris Munger)

The full movie can be found online here at Itinerant Blog. We here at a wasted life fondly remember seeing the trailer to this as a 12-year-old kid in some grindhouse in Anacostia, where we had talked an of-age man we knew, Mike, into taking us for a screening of William Girdler's anti-classic Abby (1974 / trailer) — we were the only two white folks in the audience. For some reason, the scene (GIF below) of the "black starlet", Juanita "Where Is She Now?" Brown, throwing the script at the shrimpie little producer masturbating at the audition has remained ingrained in our memory…

Somewhere along the way, for a VHS release, this drama got re-titled Black Gauntlet, possibly to be re-sold as a Black version of Clint Eastwood's lesser action flick, The Gauntlet (1977 / trailer). No similarity, of course.

The story was supplied by Daniel "Where Is He Now?" Cady (see Black Samson @ Part I) and the screenplay by TV scribe Howard Ostroff (25 Nov 1934 – 25 Aug 1990); it was possibly the latter's only foray into "feature films". On the wall in the background of the screen shot below, you can see the posters of the classic Harry H. Novak productions The Black Alley Cats (1973, with Uschi!) and the supposedly lost Lee Frost movie, Female Factory* (1971), which indicates that Novak may have been involved in some form with this movie here.

*Go to Harry Novak Part XV for our argument why we think that Female Factory isless a lost movie than a re-release of Frost's 1992 movie, Surftide 77.

"A 23 Oct 1974 Variety article reported that Atlanta, GA, based distribution company, Omni Pictures Corp., an investor in Black Starlet, had sued producer Daniel B. Cady and Cady's Entertainment Pyramid Corp. for control over the film, alleging that Cady committed fraud, padded the film's budget with costs that were never accounted for, and diverted funds for his personal use. Omni further claimed that Entertainment Pyramid Corp. was a 'shell and a sham set up with intent to defraud.' Elaine Clara Cady and film editor Warren Hamilton, Jr., amongst others, were also named as defendants. According to Variety, Omni regained possession of Black Starlet, but the article also noted that Cady had countersued, claiming that Omni had not fully paid writer-producer fees on either Black Starletor Black Samson(1974), another collaboration between Omni and Cady. In addition, the producer claimed that Omni had been withholding $200,000, allegedly owed to Cady since 1 Jul 1972. [AFI]"

The advert above, found at the always entertaining blogspot Temple of Schlock, is for the film's Atlanta premiere, where it was screened at the still-surviving former movie palace, the Fox Theatre. Below, it was screened somewhere with Black Love (1974), not to be confused with the French film L'homme qui voulait violer le monde by the "French Tinto Brass" José Bénazéraf (8 Jan 1922 – 1 Dec 2012), which is about "a black American revolutionary who absconds with party funds and is tracked down and eventually killed by his lover" and was released in the U.S. as "Black Love". No, this Black Love is, as mentioned atH.G. Lewis Part V, "HG Lewis's long-lost porn flick, though to the end he denied directing it — and, indeed, not only is he credited only as the cinematographer (using his beloved 'Sheldon Seymour' moniker), but the credited director and producer R.L. Smith truly existed."

Ten Minutes of

Black Starlet:

The AFI has a through, scene-for-scene plot description here, but we'll present the short and sweet one from theMuseum of Uncut Funk instead: "Chris Munger directed this Blaxploitation version of the popular skinflick Starlet! (1969, poster below) [a David Friedman production]. The story concerns Clara (Juanita Brown), an aspiring actress from the housing projects of Gary, Indiana, who goes to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Predictably, she is robbed, betrayed, and must hit the casting couch before her dreams can come true."

Among the many familiar faces in the cast of Black Starlet, including Al "Grampa" Lewis, Marilyn Joi (or, rather, "Tracy King") flits by in the blink of an eye as someone the imdb calls "the Kiss Girl". For a change, however, someone else plays the uncredited topless dancer, namely the pneumatic Deborah McGuire (see Female Chauvinists [1975] at Uschi, Part VIII).

Every 70s Movie has the insight to see more in the movie than most: "Telling the familiar story of a young woman degraded by the humiliating compromises she makes while pursuing Hollywood stardom, Black Starletshould be a disposable exploitation flick. The budget is low, the cast is unimpressive, and the exploitation quotient is high enough to become bothersome, with gratuitous nudity periodically distracting from the story. Yet Black Starlet meets and nearly exceeds the very low expectations set by its subject matter and title. Star Juanita Brown […] grows into her role, becoming stronger as her character falls from hopefulness to cynicism. While certainly not a skillful performance, her work is committed enough to put the movie across. Similarly, director Chris Munger and his collaborators put sincere effort into making clichéd characters and scenes feel fresh. Everything in Black Starlet is rote on the conceptual level, from the sleazy agents and producers to the horrific scenes of men demanding sexual favors in exchange for career opportunities, but the way Munger lingers inside scenes — rather than speeding through them — allows a sense of unease to take root. […] What makes Black Starlet more or less palatable are the moments wedged between exploitation-flick extremes. An early scene features Clara waiting on a street corner for a bus. After several men stop their cars to solicit her, presuming a black woman alone on the street must be a hooker, a motorcycle cop threatens to arrest her, so Clara jumps into the next man's car just to get away from the cop. That man steals all of Clara's money. Lesson learned. Later, in the dry-cleaning shop, Clara endures hectoring from her boss, Sam (Al Lewis), a cigar-chomping putz who refers to all his customers as 'slobs' and obsessively yells: 'Don't press above the crotch!' Individually, each of these scenes is serviceable, but cumulatively, they give the vapid storyline a foundation in human reality."

From the movie —

Hollywood Faces:

The soundtrack is from the American soul singer Joe Hinton and Big Dee Irwin (6 July 6 1932 – 27 Aug 1995). We would assume that despite as is found all over the web, Joe "Black Starlet" Hinton is NOTthe American soul singer Joe Hinton who was already around 8 years dead (15 Nov 1929 – 13 Aug 1968) when this movie was made. The Joe Hinton who made the music to this film also performed as Jay Lewis and possibly Little Joe Hinton. In any event: Big Dee Irwin has a Wikipediapage, but Joe "Not Dead at the Time" Hilton seems to have been forgotten and disappeared. Their song Hollywood Faces is heard in the movie, and found on "one of the holy grails from [the] US Blaxploitation genre: back in the days, this funk soundtrack was available as a a give-away record to radio stations, theaters and reviewers only to promote the cinema movie. [Soundcloud]"

Black Starlet was novelized by someone named Bobby B. Vance for one of our favorite publishing houses, Holloway House, which brought out at least two different printings of it. A search of the web reveals little about the author, other than a few copyright entries for other written works, usually in conjunction with a "Samuel Vance". Holloway House, on the other hand, should be a familiar name to all collectors of vintage sleaze, trash and Black literature — the firm can perhaps be described a bit as a kind of Afro-American Grove Press in miniature. We originally stumbled on the firm's imprint by way of thriftstore copies of Iceberg Slim novels; since then, if we see any affordably priced book with the Holloway House imprint on it, we buy it. The firm remains criminally under-documented and overlooked, but in 2008 Kensington Publishing"acquired most of the publishing assets of Holloway House Publishing in Los Angeles, the original publisher of such classic black crime writers as Donald Goines, adding an historic trove of gritty African American popular literature to its publishing program. The acquisition includes about 400 backlist titles which will become part of a new imprint at Kensington called Holloway House Classics. Holloway House also publishes a range of popular fiction and nonfiction titles including biographies of famous African Americans. Kensington's Holloway House Classics will begin releasing titles in mass market and trade formats, in addition to releasing original urban fiction that complements the line. Holloway House Classics will join Kensington's growing list of African American oriented imprints like Dafina, Urban Soul and Vibe Street Lit. [Publisher's Weekly]"

Over at the University of Chicago Press, their blurb on Kinohi Nishikawa's non-fiction book Street Players explains Holloway as follows: "The uncontested center of the Black pulp fiction universe for more than four decades was the Los Angeles publisher Holloway House. From the late 1960s until it closed in 2008, Holloway House specialized in cheap paperbacks with page-turning narratives featuring black protagonists in crime stories, conspiracy thrillers, prison novels, and Westerns. [...] The thread that tied all of these books together — and made them distinct from the majority of American pulp — was an unfailing veneration of black masculinity. [...] Kinohi Nishikawa contends that black pulp fiction was built on white readers' fears of the feminization of society — and the appeal of black masculinity as a way to counter it. In essence, it was the original form of Blaxploitation: a strategy of mass-marketing race to suit the reactionary fantasies of a white audience. But while chauvinism and misogyny remained troubling yet constitutive aspects of this literature, from 1973 onward, Holloway House moved away from publishing sleaze for a white audience to publishing solely for black readers. The standard account of this literary phenomenon is based almost entirely on where this literature ended up: in the hands of black, male, working-class readers. When it closed, Holloway House was synonymous with genre fiction written by black authors for black readers — a field of cultural production that Nishikawa terms the black literary underground. [...]"

BTW: Holloway House was founded by Bentley Morriss and Ralph Weinstock, the publishers of Players, which was in fact a Holloway House publication. Players, of course, is the Black men's magazine that once voted Marilyin Joi on of "America's Ten Sexiest Black Women". Interestingly enough, if we're to believe Wiki,Ajita Wilson (12 Jan 1950 – 26 May 1987), the too-soon-departed international model & actress & trans-woman, seen above as a Playerscover model, was considered "Holloway House's ideal black woman". "Morriss and Weinstock had only three requirements for women to be featured in the magazine: the models had to look like they were eighteen years old, they had to have European features, and they had to have large breasts."

More Joi to come!

But first, why not check out our

Short Film of the Month for August 2020?
Chris Munger's 1968 short

X-Ray Movie

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